Fight Club

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 30, 2009 7:50 AM

The media say they want bipartisanship--as long as it doesn't apply to them.

Politicians should bridge their differences and come together in the public interest. Put aside petty politics and forge reasonable compromises.

But should the pundit class adopt a similar tone? No way!

That would amount to a collective hari-kari for a business built on argument and finger-pointing.

Who would Hannity accuse of being socialists? How could Olbermann face the public without naming his Worst Persons in the World? Would Dobbs bury the hatchet with illegal immigrants? Could O'Reilly get through a whole show without ridiculing pinheads? How would they play softball on "Hardball"? Who would the Wall Street Journal editorial page blame for undermining capitalism?

No, what's great about the debate over Obama and bipartisanship is that media outlets can pretend to be high-minded about it while slugging it out. If we had real bipartisanship--if the president and congressional leaders held a joint news conference to slap backs and hail an economic package that would pass unanimously--television ratings would plummet. Blogs would go unlinked. Magazines would sit on newsstands, unsold. Newspaper circulation would drop. (Oh wait, that already happened.)

So despite the ritual hand-wringing, the House vote passing the $819-billion stimulus with no Republican support is a boon to the media-industrial complex.

So, by the way, is Obama's slam at Wall Street bonuses--a direct response to this NYT story on the big investment banks paying out nearly $20 billion last year, despite the fact that they wrecked their companies and much of the economy along with it. ("But we need to be able to retain the best people!"--right, like the ones who led you to the brink of bankruptcy.) Ordinarily, the president would just be jawboning, but the government now has a substantial stake in many of these companies. Media organizations will be kicking this one around for weeks.

Let's let the Times follow up:

"President Obama branded Wall Street bankers "shameful" on Thursday for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was deteriorating and the government was spending billions to bail out some of the nation's most prominent financial institutions . . .

"It was a pointed--if calculated--flash of anger from the president, who frequently railed against excess in compensation on the campaign trail."

Salon's Andrew Leonard scoffs at arguments that Obama should never have bothered cutting a deal with the GOP:

"Paul Krugman is annoyed with President Obama. Referencing the fact that not a single House Republican voted for the White House-backed stimulus bill, Krugman writes:

"Aren't you glad that Obama watered it down and added ineffective tax cuts, so as to win bipartisan support?

"This is unfair. For at least a month now, Krugman has been acting as if Obama could unveil a new New Deal, or at the very least a stimulus plan considerably bigger than what is currently proposed, simply as an act of will, without regard to political reality.

"Granted, the House Democrats can unilaterally pass pretty much whatever they want, although it should be noted that 11 centrist 'Blue Dog' Democrats also opposed the House bill, so there are limits even to what some members of Obama's own party will accept. But Krugman should know better: The White House may have mistakenly thought it could sway a few moderate House Republicans to their side, but I strongly doubt that gestures to bipartisanship were primarily aimed at the House. They are directed, it seems to me, at the handful of Republican Senators who are critical to getting any bill at all passed.

"By my count, the Democrats now have 58 votes in the Senate (and will have 59 once Al Franken is seated.) They need 60, because you can be well-assured that self-styled 'freedom fighters' like South Carolina's Jim DeMint will be delighted to filibuster from here to kingdom come if they think they have a chance of sticking it to the president."

Washington Monthly's Steve Benen picks a different media target:

"Time's Mark Halperin, naturally, is blaming Obama. From Thursday morning's appearance on MSNBC:

"'This is a really bad sign for Barack Obama to try to change Washington . . . He needs bipartisan solutions. They went for it and they came up with zero . . . [This] does not bode well for a future that is supposed to be post-partisan. [ . . . ]

"'[Obama] could have gone for centrist compromises. You can say to your own party, "Sorry, some of you liberals aren't going to like it, but I am going to change this legislation radically to get a big centrist majority rather than an all-Democratic vote." He chose not to do that, that's the exact path that George Bush took for most of his presidency with disastrous consequences for bipartisanship and solving big problems.'

"It's hard to overstate how foolish this analysis is. Halperin believes, for reasons that are unclear, that the paramount goal was to win the support of lawmakers who were wrong and who were advocating bad ideas. It's not about what works, or what would actually improve the economy in the midst of a serious recession. What really matters is 'bipartisan solutions.' Why? Because Mark Halperin says so. Merit be damned -- if Democrats liked the legislation and Republicans didn't, it's necessarily flawed.

"In our reality, Obama did make 'centrist compromises,' and liberals in the Democratic Party didn't like it. Obama did the opposite of Bush's style of governing -- he engaged the congressional minority, listened to their ideas, and weakened his own bill to garner a larger majority. House Republicans insisted on a worse bill, Democrats wouldn't give them one, so the GOP voted against it. Halperin inexplicably believes that's Obama's fault."

For my part, I don't buy the notion that Obama was following the "exact path" that Bush did in trying to steamroll Democrats. And the fact that not even two, three or four House Republicans would vote for the measure suggests that no compromise, other than outright capitulation by the man who won the election, would have succeeded.

"Do you know anyone, Democrat or Republican, dancing in the street over this?" Peggy Noonan asks, "You don't. Because most everyone knows it isn't a good bill, and knows that its failure to receive a single Republican vote, not one, suggests the old battle lines are hardening. Back to the Crips versus the Bloods. Not very inspiring.

"The president will enjoy short-term gain. In the great circle of power, to win you have to look like a winner, and to look like a winner you have to win. He did and does. But for the long term, the president made a mistake by not forcing the creation of a bill Republicans could or should have supported."

The new president may not have gotten the deal, but Andrew Sullivan says he did the right thing:

"Obama's public and sincere attempt to win many over, his early inclusion of more tax cuts than many Democrats wanted, his outreach to the House GOP, which Bush merely dictated to: these are all good things. More to the point: the public will see them as good things. Obama seems like the reasonable future at this point. The GOP seems like a very ideological past.

"But one fears that the logic of the election means that many Republicans who might otherwise have been open to a real compromise - or at least less partisan rhetoric - are no longer in the Congress. The remaining rump will seek ideological purity and attack the president from the get-go."

At the Huffington Post, Cenk Uygur, while not thrilled with the bill, blames the Republicans:

"Now, Obama might be playing a chess match here. He might be positioning himself politically to be able to say to the American people, 'Now look, I tried to be bipartisan. I did all I could. And they did not budge. They are obstinate, partisan and obstructionist.' He would have an excellent case to make.

"Maybe he is that smart. But I believe he was also partly naïve enough to believe that he could convince them. That they would listen to reason. That they would be swayed by his compromises. That's not how they roll.

"The maddening part of all this is that the stimulus package, in my opinion, is bloated, vague and rushed. Does anyone really know how we are going to spend $819 billion? Let alone how we're going to pay for it? Has anyone done the analysis on whether spending $142 billion on education by the federal government is efficient or necessary? Could we have made do with $132 billion?

"Instead, the Republicans went the same old tired route - more tax cuts. They have not had an original idea in at least 30 years. Look, we tried endless tax cuts under Bush. Did that seem to do the trick?"

But what if the whole reach-across-the-aisle demeanor is a facade? Victor Davis Hanson argues that in National Review:

"Throughout the campaign and after the inauguration, Obama also talked grandly of bipartisanship. The fact that he once had the most partisan record in the U.S. Senate, played tough Chicago-style politics to win elections, and toed a strict liberal line in the Illinois legislature caused few in the media to wonder about such promises.

"Yet despite aspiring to be an Olympian president, Obama just warned Republicans not to listen to earthly Rush Limbaugh. In words more like those of George Bush than of Mahatma Gandhi, Obama privately rubbed it in with, 'I won.'

"Despite the near-evangelical sermons, Obama, like most savvy presidents, assumes bipartisanship is the art of persuading--and coercing--the opposition into following his polices. George Bush likewise called for an end to acrimony while he pushed his agenda. The only difference is that the media mocked the 'divider' Bush's clumsy talk of bipartisanship but so far is still hypnotized by the 'uniter' Obama.

"Why is Obama's grand talk already at odds with his actions? For one reason, he is unduly empowered by a media that too often roots for him, rather than reporting critically about his actions."

Early in his presidency, when Bush was teaming up with Ted Kennedy on education, he did get some good press about bipartisanship. It was after 9/11, when he went to a 50-plus-1 strategy built around terrorism and attacking Iraq, that he was no longer depicted as a uniter.

Anyone who was near a TV set yesterday saw the final act of the Blago drama--how he interrupted his media tour to make an impassioned speech in Springfield that changed, let's see, no votes.

"Rod Blagojevich's tragic reign as governor of Illinois came to a spectacular and stirring end here Thursday in a day filled with one historical moment after another," Eric Zorn says in the Chicago Tribune.

"Tragic? Yes, in the sense that Blagojevich is a truly gifted man with corresponding truly enormous flaws.

"You saw his late-morning closing argument, right? It was a brilliant speech, as far as it went. Passionate. Eloquent. Even moving in places. Viewers across America just tuning in to our little melodrama might well have wondered why the General Assembly and Illinois punditocracy were so strongly arrayed against this impressive, earnest, caring governor.

"He merely pushed a little too hard in a selfless effort to help working people! And look where it got him!"

"It was a farcical week," Richard Roeper writes in the Chicago Sun-Times, "beginning with the madness in New York and ending with the sadness in Springfield. (Sadness for the people of Illinois, that is. And yes, sadness for the downfall of a human being and the pain it has caused his family.) Blagojevich avoided the tough questions from Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer; he filibustered on other shows. He talked about his children and how he and his wife bought a new puppy to help them get through these difficult times -- as if those difficult times weren't brought about by his own actions. He soaked up the media spotlight and seemed oblivious to the laughter and the jeers.

"In Blagojevich's final act as governor, he delivered a me-me-me speech. It was an utterly futile gesture."

And then, last night, the ex-gov met the press again in front of his house:

"Blago ran through the usual list of wondrous things he did for the citizens of Illinois. He was the Health Care Governor, the Wage-Raising Governor, the Education Governor. 'I want to say to all of you, the people of Illinois . . . that I love the people of Illinois today now more than ever before . . . and the fight goes on . . . those simple values that they teach us in Sunday school, the Golden Rule . . . those are the things I'm going to keep fighting for, now that I'm in the private life . . . I haven't let you down . . . "

"Some may differ with that, sir.

"Blago walked up the steps, then came back down, pulled a neighborhood kid into a photo op-and then launched into yet ANOTHER self-aggrandizing monologue about his accomplishments getting health care, creating jobs, etc., etc."

When he says the fight goes on, I guess he means the fight to stay out of jail.

Blast from the past: I can personally attest to the sheer hostility toward the media that some of McCain's campaign lieutenants felt, having frequently interviewed them about it. Now comes Roger Simon with a look back at that period:

"The Columbia Journalism Review revealed this week that the 'high command' of the John McCain campaign hired a blogger 'to attack' and engage in 'bullying' the press during the last six months of the presidential campaign. Gee, how did that work out? Help much? And why did the campaign need to hire outside help for that? I thought it had been doing a pretty good job of not liking the press on its own.

"The blogger, Michael Goldfarb, who was hired by the McCain people from The Weekly Standard, appears to be a pretty reasonable guy in the CJR interview. The McCain campaign, he says, 'assured me that they were looking for someone to attack the press. And that struck me as a really bad idea, but when a presidential campaign calls up and offers you a job, you take it.' One of the things Goldfarb reveals is that the McCain campaign was going to throw The New York Times off the campaign plane (presumably when it was on the ground). Goldfarb wrote a memo that was supposed to explain that decision to the public, but the idea was dropped. Some other reporters were banned from the McCain campaign plane, however. Joe Klein, a columnist for Time, was not allowed on the McCain or Sarah Palin planes in the last four months of the campaign, though other Time reporters were. Maureen Dowd of The New York Times told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that she had been banned by the McCain campaign, though other Times reporters were allowed to travel . . .

"Attacking the media is a waste because it is not an issue voters care about. Many voters already have a low opinion of the media, and it is unlikely that a campaign can lower it further. All it does is make the campaign look petulant."

Besides, smart campaigns find ways to overcome media hostility, real or imagined. And it wasn't like John McCain hadn't gotten plenty of great press in his life.