A PET PRESS CORPS
Eric Fetterman - NY Post
March 10, 2004 -- <font size=4>JOHN Kerry is doing something very clever. He's launched a pre-emptive strike against GOP attempts to raise legitimate questions about his political record and his character by warning voters about the "Republican smear machine."
The idea, clearly, is to discredit any negative ads from
the Bush-Cheney campaign before they even appear. Indeed,
Kerry's surrogates have taken to linking any reproach of
the Democratic candidate, no matter what the source,
directly to the president.
Not that the candidate himself has been reticent: "It's
time for George W. Bush to call off his right-wing slime
machine," he's declared.
Of course, this aggressive stance could easily backfire: Too many public complaints about what many will see as justifiable critiques of his record runs the risk of making Kerry and the Democrats look like a bunch of whiny crybabies.
Still, it's probably smart politics. Every candidate tries to spin the daily campaign news his way. And in Kerry's case, it looks like much of the normally prickly political press is going along for the ride.
Now that he's the Democrats' de facto nominee against President Bush, no longer do we read (as we did last fall, when he announced his candidacy) about how Kerry "must win a struggle against the label" that "he is aloof and arrogant."
In fact, much of the press seems eager to help him out as
he challenges a president who, it's fair to say, is not
popular with the Washington press corps.
There was an amazing incident a couple of weeks ago:
Kerry, campaigning in Dayton, Ohio, delivered a boring
rendition of his economic message, leaving TV reporters
without a usable soundbite. Until, that is, a producer for
Dan Rather's "CBS Evening News" asked him to try again.
This time he came up with something more memorable - which
was used on that night's broadcast.
That's a new one - ever hear of a presidential candidate
being given a mulligan by the press? Especially when he
didn't even ask for it? (To the credit of Kerry's hometown
paper, the incident was revealed by Patrick Healy of the
Boston Globe.)
But that's hardly the only instance of an emerging
favoritism.
For three years, almost no one in the press corps gave a
hoot about President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard
service - until Democratic National Chairman Terry
McAuliffe went ballistic, accusing Bush of having
been "AWOL."
Suddenly, it was the hottest topic in Washington; one news
agency after the other dispatched reporters to pore over
the relevant records and search for Bush's service
colleagues.
Until, that is, John Kerry asked McAuliffe and the rest of
the Democrats to back off - which they did. Almost
overnight, it seemed, most of the news media followed
suit.
The pro-Kerry tilt has also been seen in the manufactured furor over Bush's initial set of (positive) ads - the notion that he'd insulted 9/11 victims' families by using images from Ground Zero.
As The Post's editorial page noted yesterday, the objections came from a fringe group that has opposed Bush and the entire War on Terror all along - even declaring a truly insulting moral equivalence between U.S. bombing of Afghanistan and the events of 9/11.
Yes, some firefighters also objected to the ads - but those protests came from a union that endorsed Kerry's candidacy early on.
Or consider a story that first ran three weeks ago and has been the subject of scores of news articles and angry editorials: Some 40 scientists signed a letter accusing the Bush administration of politicizing science policy.
The group's spokesman and widely quoted front man was Russell Train - the perfect choice to attack a Republican president, it would seem, since he'd run the Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Nixon and Ford.
But it took all of three seconds using the Google Internet
search engine to discover something else about Train: In
2000, he was the recipient of the Heinz Award, which
carries with it a gold medallion and an unrestricted
$250,000 cash prize.
The award honors the work of the late Sen. John Heinz; it
was set up - and is still run - by Heinz's widow, Teresa.
Who just happens to be running for first lady with her
current husband, Sen. John Kerry.
Not a single one of the stories and editorials about the
scientists mentioned the Train-Kerry connection.
Coincidence? Maybe.
As "The Note," ABC News' daily political memo, conceded
Feb. 10, "the Washington and political press corps operate
with a good number of biases and predilections." Expect to
see them on display in the months between now and
November.
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NEW YORK POST |
