<font size=4>Two Cheers for Media Bias
<font size=3>By J. PETER MULHERN
Washington Weekly
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The right is forever complaining about media bias. Rarely does any
conservative pause to reflect on the benefits of having to swim
against the liberal cultural current of the chattering class.
This is understandable. Reading a newspaper or listening to a news
broadcast can be painful for anyone with a firing synapse. Everywhere
one turns the DNC's crude political propaganda is amplified and
repeated. Unspeakable tripe about voter disenfranchisement, electoral
illegitimacy, social security lockboxes, global warming and
innumerable other subjects is broadcast as unassailable truth. All the
noise makes it difficult to count blessings.
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But swimming against the current is not all bad. When you have to
fight for every inch you are never in danger of overconfidence. When
your enemies are constantly in your face they can never ambush you.
The right has a few newspapers and opinion journals. It gets a
respectful hearing from Fox News. <font color=blue>For the most part, however
conventional political journalism is so much cheerleading for the
Democrats. Democrats have to go out of their way to hear a dissenting
view. They exist in an ideological cocoon, which sometimes lets them
believe that the people are with them when nothing could be further
from the truth.<font color=black>
The press never lets Republicans forget their political
vulnerabilities. Their opponent's playbook is splashed all over the
editorial pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Sometimes, even in politics, forewarned is forearmed.
Washington Democrats, saturated as they are in the culture of the
left, are forever setting themselves up for sucker punches. The Post
and the Times aren't going to tell them where they're likely to get
into trouble and they frequently can't figure it out for themselves.
Bill Clinton's ill-fated attempt to make the military embrace
homosexuality is a classic example. His administration was caught by
surprise when that attempt generated a powerful political backlash. It
never occurred to the Democrats that many people don't accept
homosexuality as a morally neutral life-style choice or that many
people view the military as a bastion of traditional virtues.
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The Bush administration has never had a similar debacle, in part
because competence has returned to the White House, but also because
Republicans know from bitter experience who's going to pummel them,
what they will be pummeled about, when they will be pummeled and where
the pummeling will take place.
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There are few, if any, surprises. The delusions that the liberal
cocoon nurtures may be the Republican's best political weapon. Dick
Gephardt surrendered to his delusions recently just long enough to
promise tax increases in the event of a restoration of Democrat
control in Congress after 2002. Gephardt tried to backtrack but the
damage was done.
When you read the Washington Post it is easy to suppose that the
people are clamoring for more taxation to support new and better
government programs. In fact, however, the surest route to electoral
oblivion is to promise tax increases. Just ask Walter Mondale.
Gephardt has traveled in the liberal cocoon so long that he forgot
this basic law of politics, at least for a moment. His lapse is sure
to play prominently in Republican campaign advertising during the next
round of the never-ending battle.
The liberal cocoon is always in evidence when Democrats formulate
campaign strategy. They have a touching faith that they stand for what
the people really want.
Every election cycle they spend a great deal of time reassuring each
other that they will win overwhelmingly if only they can make their
message heard. The only obstacle they see to their electoral success
is the well-financed disinformation campaign those rascally
Republicans are sure to wage.
Consider the words of Representative Nita Lowey who chairs the
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee: <font color=blue>"The Democratic issues
are the issues of the majority of the American people -- prescription
drug benefits, Social Security, protecting the environment. Our job is
to define the issues and make it absolutely clear who's for real
patients' bill of rights, real prescription drugs."
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Democrats don't own any of the issues Ms. Lowey mentions. On all the
health care issues Democrats are vulnerable because they pay no
attention at all to costs. The same is true when the subject turns to
protecting the environment.
The Democrats are riding for a fall on Social Security, if not now
then soon. They don't seem to have noticed that George W. Bush
benefited from his partial privatization plan in the last election.
Centralized command and control is so passe.
Democrats are poised to turn the next congressional election into a
referendum on whether or not Social Security could benefit from some
limited reform that would give individuals more choices about how to
finance their retirement. Only the liberal cocoon could keep them
blind to the political risks of this strategy.
Voters without any strong cultural or ideological commitment to either
party decide all the close elections. The Democrat delusion that those
people are naturally inclined to accept their arguments on all the key
issues can only help Republicans. It's hard to win an argument when
you start with the mistaken impression that you already won
For years the Democrats have been political underachievers. Given the
number of voters that identify themselves as Democrat and the
perennial Democrat lead in generic party preference polls Democrats
ought to control more elective offices. The liberal cocoon has
something to do with this anomaly.
Republicans should spend a little less time getting hot under the
collar about media bias. On the balance sheet of American politics
every asset has a corresponding liability. The liberal cocoon is spun
out of media bias and Republicans have to take the bitter with the
sweet. |
