Best of the Web Today - January 12, 2005
By JAMES TARANTO
The Case for Dean
Howard Dean made it official yesterday: He's running for chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Republicans are thrilled, and, as the Associated Press reports, Democrats are anxious:
Moderate Democrats have been searching for an alternative to Dean for the chairmanship, concerned that the former governor would lead the party in a more liberal direction. Some senior Democrats have approached current chairman Terry McAuliffe about staying in the job.
"Dean will have a tremendous edge with party insiders," said veteran Democratic activist Donna Brazile, a DNC member. "But this race remains very fluid. He will have to continue to work very hard to win the heart and soul of the party."
It strikes us, though, that Dean very well could turn out to be an excellent choice. He's something of a political celebrity, which could make him a more effective spokesman for a party out of power. As Bob Tyrrell points out, Dean "relishes the great game of politics"--his explanation for the famous Iowa scream was that he was just having "fun"--and the dour Dems could use a happy warrior. His fund-raising and organization efforts, though far from sufficient to win the presidential nomination, were innovative and allowed him to be much more competitive than anyone could have expected two years ago.
Tyrrell also argues that Dean "is no radical":
Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, I appeared with him regularly on "The Editors," a PBS show taped in Montreal. Through all those shows, he was a centrist. He was also an automaton of the Clinton party line. Whatever the issue of the hour might be, whatever the Clinton scandal in need of defense, Dean was there.
We taped on Saturday mornings, and it often occurred to me that he had been sent the Clinton "talking points" the night before. He had them down pat. He elucidated them smoothly. . . .
There is much hand-wringing going on amongst the Democrats today. They wonder aloud if they should move to the left or to the far left. Not many are heard in public saying what is right--to wit, the party needs to stay near the center. My guess is that Dean, the "antiwar candidate," would keep the party close to the Clinton paradigm of the 1990s.
This analysis raises the small problem of how a "centrist" became the tribune of the Angry Left. We'd say this is a testament to his political talent--specifically, his knack for anticipating the mood of his party. He was a robotic defender of the establishment back when the Democrats had an establishment to defend, and a raving lunatic when the party was becoming unhinged.
Dean lost the nomination in part because he overdid the angry act, but also in part because Democratic voters erred in believing that President Bush was a "miserable failure" (in the words of one now-retired pol) and that if only they nominated someone "electable" they would win by default. Our guess is that the Dems are coming to accept that they are now the minority party, and that will free them to be bolder. Dean just may be the right man for this stage in his party's history.
The Party's Over?
Over on MSNBC.com, Newsweek's Howard Fineman weighs in on the CBS scandal with a provocative piece arguing that for decades the "mainstream" media have in effect been a political party--the AMMP, or American Mainstream Media Party, as he infelicitously dubs it. "The notion of a neutral, non-partisan mainstream press," he argues, is "pretty much dead, at least as the public sees things." And it's been a long time in going:
The seeds of its demise were sown with the best of intentions in the late 1960s, when the AMMP was founded in good measure (and ironically enough) by CBS. Old folks may remember the moment: Walter Cronkite stepped from behind the podium of presumed objectivity to become an outright foe of the war in Vietnam. Later, he and CBS's star White House reporter, Dan Rather, went to painstaking lengths to make Watergate understandable to viewers, which helped seal Richard Nixon's fate as the first president to resign.
The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans. The problem was that, once the AMMP declared its existence by taking sides, there was no going back. A party was born.
The broadcast in which Cronkite declared America "mired in stalemate" and urged withdrawal from Vietnam aired on Feb. 27, 1968. In November of that year, Democrats began an almost unbroken string of electoral losses, including seven of the past 10 presidential elections.
If you accept Fineman's thesis, then the 2004 election was also a repudiation of the AMMP. As an erstwhile antiwar activist who never renounced his "war crimes" calumnies, Kerry was the perfect candidate of the partisan media. No wonder CBS and others tried to puff up Kerry as a "war hero" while obsessing over supposed deficiencies in President Bush's National Guard record.
The New York Sun's Seth Lipsky calls the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "the flip side of the tarnished coin of CBS":
One was the vaunted network that flubbed the story of a generation. The other was a true band of brothers, professional newsmen not, who had a story that none of the big institutions wanted. They put it on the air themselves with the contributions of more than 150,000 ordinary Americans and discovered that it resonated powerfully with an electorate that had grown tired of being treated with cynicism.
If the downfall of CBS and the voters' rejection of Kerry are the denouement of the Vietnam War, it couldn't have come a moment too soon. For many in the media have been working feverishly to discredit another war--a war that, unlike Vietnam, America cannot afford to lose.
CBS, though, still seems to be in denial about the whole thing. Here's an astonishing quote from the Baltimore Sun:
Executives at the network--long a target of critics who detect a political agenda in its news division--are clinging to the panel's finding on political bias.
"That for us was the big headline: That there was no political agenda, because that would have been terrible," said Linda Mason, CBS News' senior vice president for standards and special projects, whose position was created Monday in response to the report. "We were all greatly relieved to see that the panel did extensive work and gave us a clean bill of health in terms of it not being politically motivated."
Lipsky writes that he is not "terribly troubled by the prospect of bias at one, or even several, of the big networks or newspapers":
The First Amendment doesn't require that one must check his or her biases to enter journalism. On the contrary, to protect the airing of bias is precisely one of the purposes of the Founders in crafting the First Amendment.
We're not sure we agree with Fineman's conclusion that the idea of a nonpartisan press is "pretty much dead." But if CBS won't acknowledge its bias even in such a clear-cut case, it's hard to see how that network can ever restore its credibility as a neutral source of news--or why anyone should bother to watch, especially with so many alternatives available. We wouldn't be surprised if sometime in the next decade the network decides to put its news division out of business altogether.
Yellowhammer Democrats
Reader Mark Conversino, who describes himself as "a retired military officer and transplanted Yankee" now living in Montgomery, Ala., offers this interesting response to our item yesterday on Sen. Russ Feingold's visit to the state:
Alabama has long lagged behind many other states in terms of education and economic development. The governor, both senators and the majority of the state's House members are Republican. But this trend toward a Republican ascendancy is not even a decade old.
What the senator from Wisconsin apparently chose to ignore is that at the state level, the Democratic Party has been firmly in control for decades. The most powerful lobbying group in the state is not the Christian Coalition but the Alabama Education Association, as bloated and worthless a teachers' union as any.
Granted, most Alabama Democrats are "conservative," relative to the standards of the national party, and most of these state Democrats share their constituents' views on God, guns and gays. Yet perhaps the Republican Party is gaining strength here and elsewhere across the South because of the failure of the old Democratic establishment to move their states forward. If Feingold finds Alabama in such desperate straits, therefore, he must give credit where credit is due--to the Democratic Party.
Another Fine Mess
"Flu shots save lives. Three years ago, medical experts warned George Bush that a dangerous shortage loomed. Instead of fixing the problem, production of the vaccine was sent to a factory overseas--the vaccines were contaminated. Now Bush wants Canada to help, even though his own policies make it illegal for us to import medicine from Canada. Seniors and children wait. Not enough vaccines for pregnant women. A George Bush mess. It's time for a new direction."--John Kerry campaign ad, Oct. 16, 2004
"N.E. Pushes to Find Takers for Flu Shots: Remaining vaccine could go to waste"--headline and subheadline, Boston Globe, Jan. 12, 2005
'Our Basic Values'
"Sen. Edward Kennedy, the leading liberal voice in Congress, said on Wednesday that Democrats 'must do a better job' of promoting what he called their basic, unifying values if they are to rebound from their defeat in the November elections," Reuters reports from Washington:
"Unlike the Republican Party, we believe our values unite us as Americans, instead of dividing us," the Massachusetts Democrat said in a speech prepared for delivery at the National Press Club.
"Today, I propose a progressive vision for America, a vision that Democrats must fight for in the months and years ahead--a vision rooted in our basic values of opportunity, fairness, tolerance and respect for each other."
Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.
Fatah Fatuity--II
Ethan Bronner, deputy foreign editor of the New York Times, e-mails to take exception to our statement, in an item Monday, that the Times was "rewriting history" when it said Yasser Arafat's Fatah political movement has a "stated goal of an end to Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, leading to Israeli and Palestinian states side by side." Says Bronner:
The Fatah central committee endorsed the Oslo Declaration of Principles on Sept. 4, 1993. That accord calls for "an end to decades of confrontation and conflict" as well as on "mutual legitimate and political rights" and "peaceful coexistence" and a whole host of other things that set aside its previous ideology.
Fair enough. But as we noted Monday, the Fatah constitution, which as far as we know has not been amended or repealed, calls for the "eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence." And the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (since renamed the Yasser Arafat Martyrs Brigades) have undertaken numerous terrorist attacks against Israelis, in both the disputed territories and Israel proper, since 1993. So we would still say the Times was guilty of an error of omission.
Best of the Web Imitates the Times
"Move over, Cambodia. Bhutan is the new must-see destination in southern Asia. . . . 'Among those who have been everywhere, seen everything,' said Rok Klancnik of the World Tourism Organization, a United Nations agency based in Madrid, 'interest in Bhutan is growing.' "--New York Times, Jan. 9
"It seems Jill Lawrence was in Bhutan all last year when the Democrats were busy calling President Bush a liar, a moron, a coward, a military deserter, a puppet of Dick Cheney and the Jews, and another Hitler. . . . [Michael] Kinsley must have been in Bhutan with Jill Lawrence when the World Trade Center fell."--Best of the Web Today, Jan. 11
First Things First
We forgot to include a hat tip to First Things for yesterday's item on the American Civil Liberties Union's dowdification of the First Amendment, which the magazine noted in its January issue. That issue isn't online yet, but in last February's issue (24th item), Richard John Neuhaus cites a national survey of college students and administrators that found the ACLU isn't alone:
Only 21 percent of administrators and 30 percent of students knew that the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom. Only six percent of administrators and two percent of students knew that religious freedom is the first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment.
"Students surveyed said they remember having heard something about the Bill of Rights back in high school," Neuhaus writes. "But then they moved on to higher things."
The Jurors Certainly Hope It Does
"Police Shooting Grand Jury May End Today"--headline, News Star (Monroe, La.), Jan. 12
Then Again, They May Not
"Storms May Mean Less Drought"--headline, FoxNews.com, Jan. 11
What Would We Do Without Snowmobiling Experts?
"Snowmobiling Experts: Use Common Sense"--headline, Lowell (Mass.) Sun, Jan. 11
This Just In
"The bulk of winter lies ahead."--New York Times editorial, Jan. 12
The Cro-Magnon Diet
The Associated Press reports on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's new dietary guidelines:
Cave men lived a healthy lifestyle: Their calorie intake stayed low because food was hard to find, and they exercised regularly to bring home the bacon. The government wants Americans to follow that approach.
How about that? The Bush administration really is radically conservative! |
