I wasn't aware that the WP online editors were changing the Headlines from the "dead tree" version.
WISH FULFILLMENT
By Cori Dauber - Ranting Profs
Here's the neutral headline for Dana Milbank's article in the (online) Post today:
9/11 Panel's Findings Vault Bush Credibility To Campaign Forefront
Here's the headline (as of 9:30 am, these things have a way of changing) on the Post's home page that you would click on to get there, that is, the headline that advertises Milbanks article:
9/11 Panel May Hurt Bush
It's not clear to me why the editors of the online edition of the Post do that. I understand they need to shorten headlines for space purposes, but they don't necessarily need to jazz them up.
On the other hand, looking at the actual article, it may be that the headline writers for the online edition are just being more honest than the headline writers for the Post itself.
The question we are confronted with in this article is a simple one. Will the 9/11 Commission hurt President Bush politically? He begins:
The White House's swift and sustained reaction last week to the preliminary findings of the Sept. 11, 2001, commission showed the potential threat the 10-member panel poses to President Bush's reelection prospects.
After the commission staff released its findings Wednesday that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda -- challenging an assertion Bush and Vice President Cheney have made for the past two years -- Bush declared again that there was, in fact, a relationship.
The commission isn't going to do anything to the president one way or another. The press coverage of the commission, on the other hand, and what it might convince people the commission said, whether it said it or not, well, that might be devastating, as is demonstrated right here in the first two sentences all over again.
The White House did not have a "swift and sustained reaction" the findings of the commission. As far as I know they said nothing one way or the other about the commission. They had a pretty violent reaction to the way the press covered what the commission said, however. And the need for them to have had that "swift and sustained reaction" is demonstrated again when in the second sentence the same mistake is repeated, so that in the same sentence it's noted that the commission spoke of a lack of a collaboration while the President reaffirmed some kind of a relationship.
But Milbank doesn't think the power to shape public perceptions rests with the press. (The press will never concede they have the power to impact the way the public views things, not publicly.) Instead:
Democratic and Republican strategists agree that many details of the controversy do not pose a grave threat to Bush's reelection chances.
The significance, rather, is whether Bush's Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), can use the commission's findings to split the Iraq war from the war on terrorism in the public's mind, and, more broadly, raise doubts about Bush's credibility and competence by building on the failure to find weapons of mass destruction and the miscalculations about the Iraqi resistance.
Now what, you might wonder, the 9/11 commission would legitimately have to say about the war with Iraq, is not addressed here. But it might speak to why, after Vice President Cheney in his CNBC interview mentioned that he probably knew things the commission didn't about the links between Saddam and al Queda (a subject pretty far afield from their purview except in the very narrow question of collaboration on 9/11) the rumour began to circulate that they were going to ask him for more documentation. I am, of course, speculating wildly, but this is not supposed to be the commisson on how we got into the Iraq war.
Bush has long sought to link the Iraq invasion to his popular war on terrorism after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. With the commission's final report due on July 26 -- as the Democratic convention begins -- Kerry is already trying to use the panel's findings to his advantage to decouple the Iraq war from the post-9/11 U.S. retaliation in Afghanistan.
True, but the President's argument is a conceptual one, Kerry's argument is a political one, and neither has anything to do with the commission.
"The 9/11 report is just one more issue that casts doubt on the truthfulness of this White House," said Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's campaign spokeswoman. "This White House is operating under a cloud of secrecy, and the American people have lost the ability to trust them."
Well, again okay, this isn't a neutral political analysis about whether the Kerry camp will be able to successfully use the commission politically, it's the Kerry camp using the commission politically. (And how do we get from truthfulness to secrecy, by the way? Is every classification of every document "operating under a clound of secrecy"?).
Oh, look, it isn't a rumour:
Late last week, commission leaders invited Cheney to provide intelligence reports that would buttress the White House's insistence that there were close ties between Hussein and al Qaeda, a commission member said. Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton told the New York Times they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Cheney said Thursday in a television interview that he "probably" knew things about Iraq's ties to terrorists that the commission did not.
Are they writing the definitive history of al Queda? I guess you could make the argument, on second thought, that they're supposed to be doing that, that that's the reason they're looking at everything that happened in the '90s. That sure isn't what the staff report looks like. The amount of superb material available is staggering. We've been told they (or their staff) is looking at all of it. It sure didn't read that way.
This is good:
Many Republicans are furious about the commission -- though its members are evenly split between the two parties and it is chaired by a Republican appointed by Bush. They say that Bush was right to oppose the commission in the first place, and that House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was right this year when he unsuccessfully fought an extension of the commission's deadline.
The panel has become "a tool for partisan politics," Rep. Eric I. Cantor (Va.), a member of the House Republican leadership, charged in an interview last week. "With the latest commission finding coming out that there were allegedly no ties between Hussein and al Qaeda, I think they are totally off their mission, and I think that's indicative of the political partisanship."
I'm sure that Democrats are just doing cartwheels about the treatment over Commissioner Gorelick, yes? Of course it's the Republicans complaining -- it's a Republican guy whose watch is getting the most extensive attention. If more time was being spent on the embassy bombings, do you think the Dems would sound happy? When articles were being written about the treatment of Gorelick, wasn't the question of "partiisan politics" coming up? Suggesting it's only Republicans who are bothered, while Democrats are sitting on a sea of calm waters is ridiculous.
This is interesting:
Bush so far has survived challenges to his war rationale, and most Americans believe the war in Iraq was worth fighting. Still, the debate over the war, and the credibility of Bush's justifications, has kept the president's reelection campaign on the defensive and limited coverage of favorable news domestically such as a steady improvement in the economy and jobs growth. "We're challenged by the fact that there's been so much in terms of world events that we haven't gotten much out" on the economy, a senior Bush campaign aide said. "How do we fight this wave of events in a very crowded news climate?"
Indeed, the past four announcements of expanding payrolls have been overshadowed. The commission and its related disputes, said Republican pollster David Winston, are "complicating things, because this administration wants to get out information about how the economy is doing."
I just think it's interesting that Milbank includes those items in an article.
But Milbank just isn't getting it:
Bush aides have sought to blunt the Democratic offensive not by challenging the commission's findings but by arguing that Kerry and the media have mischaracterized the findings. The White House issued a 1,000-word document titled "TALKING POINTS: 9-11 Commission Staff Report Confirms Administration's Views of al-Qaeda/Iraq Ties."
"The 9/11 commission came to the same conclusion as the administration regarding ties between Iraq and al Qaeda," campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish said. She said this is Kerry's "desperate attempt to put a negative spin on what was broad consensus between the administration and the commission."
Similarly, Cheney, on CNBC, said the media had been irresponsible in reporting the commission's findings. "What they [the commission] were addressing was whether or not they [Iraq] were involved in 9/11," he said. "They did not address the broader question of a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda in other areas, in other ways."
In fact, commission spokesman Al Felzenberg on Friday confirmed that the commission was addressing the broader relationship. "We found no evidence of joint operations or joint work or common operations between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government, and that's beyond 9/11," he said.
Yes, no joint operations at any point. Joint operations not no relationship, which is why Lee Hamilton stepped forward (still unquoted.)
He proceeds to discuss the most recent Pew poll, and you can take a look at how that might or might not play out.
In short, in the very effort to discuss how the commission might impact the political situation, Milbank merely proves again -- the real question is how the press will cover the commission.
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