Spin, Or Worse?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 9, 2005 11:24 AM

When people accuse the Bush White House of excessive spinning--the harshest critics use the L-word--I sometimes wonder if they remember anything that happened before 2001.

Some Clinton White House aides could spin faster than a top, especially in the face of multiple scandals. Bush I reneged on no new taxes. The Reagan White House was state-of-the-art when it came to message management, creative use of visuals and explaining away factual blunders by the president. Each administration builds on the news-manipulation techniques of its predecessors.

Still, we're approaching critical mass in terms of the debate over the Bush administration's veracity: WMD. Paying off pundits. Bogus news releases. Planting stories in Iraqi papers. Plamegate and the promise to fire anyone involved. Condi's tortured explanations of what constitutes torture and whether the United States is engaged in it.

Not to mention a president who rarely meets the press, at least in full-blown news conferences.

But is this substantially different from the self-serving reality peddled by previous administrations or different only in degree? Does it seem worse because of the passions surrounding the war and the polarization over Bush? Or will the anti-Bush partisans have a more tolerant view if a future Democratic president engages in factual flimflammery?

One strike against the administration is the people who leave (Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke) and then offer evidence of dishonesty of their former employer. Do some Bush loyalists, as an unnamed White House aide told journalist Ron Suskind, believe that reporters and others are members of the "reality-based community"? ("We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.") Or do we have to wait for more memoirs to find out?

Slate Editor Jake Weisberg tries to make the case that the Bush approach is far, far worse:

"A calculated and systematic effort to manage public opinion, it transcends mere lying and routine political dishonesty. When the Bush administration manufactures fake 'news,' suppresses real news, disguises the former as the latter, and challenges the legitimacy of the independent press, it corrodes trust in leaders, institutions, and, to the rest of the world, the United States as a whole . . .

"For the Bush team, rolling-your-own news has the further advantage of supporting the revolving-door conservative welfare state that has flourished in five years of expanding, undivided government. The administration's need to outsource its propaganda work--for reasons of deniability, not efficiency--has promoted the emergence of a new kind of PR-industrial complex in the nation's capital. Outfits like the Ketchum's Washington Group, the shadowy Lincoln Group, and the even more flourishing, even more shadowy Rendon Group are the parasitic fruit not just of unchecked self-puffery but of a lucrative new patronage network.

"In a way, what's most troubling about the Bush's administration's information war is not its cynicism but its naivet. At phony town hall meetings, Bush's audiences are hand-picked to prevent any possibility of spontaneous challenge. At fake forums, invited guests ask the president to pursue his previously announced policies. New initiatives are unveiled on platforms festooned with meaningless slogans, mindlessly repeated ('Plan for Victory'). Anyone on the inside who doubts the party line is shown the door. In this environment, where the truth is not spoken privately or publicly, the suspicion grows that Bush, in his righteous cocoon, has committed the final, fatal sin of the propagandist. He is not just spreading BS but has come to believe it himself."

Another example of the administration's approach to press relations has given us a new phrase: "reporter compensation." Which sounds suspiciously to me like payoffs:

"A U.S. investigation into allegations that the American military is buying positive coverage in the Iraqi media has expanded to examine a press club founded and financed by the U.S. Army," says USA Today .

"The Baghdad Press Club was created last year by the U.S. military as a way to promote progress amid the violence and chaos of Iraq, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman.

"The Army acknowledges funding the club and offering 'reporter compensation,' but insists officers did not demand favorable coverage. 'Members are not required nor asked to write favorably,' said Lt. Col. Robert Whetstone. 'They are simply invited to report on events.'"

And just how do they decide who gets into this "club"?

The latest flap over Dean? The New Republic's John Judis says the DNC chief is getting a bum rap:

"Howard Dean is being vilified again--not only by Republicans in the White House and Congress, but by his fellow Democrats as well. And once again it's for making a critical comment about the administration's conduct of the Iraq war. In an interview Monday with a San Antonio radio station, Dean, comparing the conflicts in Iraq and Vietnam, said, 'The idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.' Dean also likened the Bush administration's lack of candor about the war to that of the Nixon administration. 'What we see today is very much like what was going on in Watergate,' he said."

The question, says Judis, is whether Dean's "judgment on Iraq has been sound. And there I would say that it certainly has been. During the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq, and during the invasion and occupation, Dean has been almost consistently correct in his statements. He has been the Democrats' and the nation's Cassandra--willing to reveal bitter truths about which Republicans and his fellow Democrats would prefer that he remain silent.

"Dean's statements perfectly fit Michael Kinsley's definition of a 'gaffe'--an assertion that is impolitic but true."

For the record, here's what Dean said on CNN yesterday about the Republican attacks:

"It was a little out of context. They kind of cherry-picked that one the same way the president cherry-picked the intelligence going into Iraq. We can only win the war, which we have to win, if we change our strategy dramatically. The Democrats are coalescing around a very different strategy. We hope the president will join us. This is a strategy of strategic redeployment . . .

"The president has said himself we couldn't win this war . . . The truth of the matter is this president got us into this war without telling us the truth. He didn't listen to his own military advisers. This sounds an awful lot like Vietnam, when the government's not truthful with our soldiers, our citizens or our allies. We will be, as Democrats. We can, and we have to, win the war on terror. We can't do it with this kind of approach and with this leadership that the president is showing, as he's going in the wrong direction."

The GOP isn't letting the matter drop, according to Matt Drudge :

"The Drudge Report has learned from a top GOP operative that the Republican National Committee will provide state parties with a web video prior to release tomorrow afternoon that shows a white flag waving over images of Democrat leaders making anti-war remarks. "The ad is in response to the controversial comments Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean and 2004 Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry made earlier in the week."

By the way, yesterday I made a tongue-in-cheek crack about Nancy Pelosi being against Jack Murtha's pullout proposal before she was for it. A spokesman for the House minority leader says she never opposed it, she just declined to endorse it at the time. (Isn't declining to endorse something the same as being against it?) At any rate, says the spokesman, Pelosi was actually for Murtha's plan at the time but decided, as a matter of strategy, to wait to announce her support. To the outside world, though, it looked like a change of position. And I still think it deserved more media coverage as a significant shift in the Iraq debate.

Meanwhile, the deal has been cut on the Patriot Act:

"House and Senate negotiators reached agreement today to extend key provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the controversial anti-terrorism law passed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks that were due to expire Dec. 31," says the LAT .

"The agreement would make permanent 14 of 16 provisions. Two provisions -- the so-called 'library' provision, which allows the FBI broad leeway to subpoena business records in intelligence and terrorism cases, and a 'roving' wiretap provision that allows law enforcement to tap any phone a suspected terrorist uses -- would expire in four years."

Congress has a hard time cutting even a little spending, and Katrina legislation remains stalled, but House Republicans can move quickly when it comes to helping certain constituents:

"The House voted yesterday to extend a series of tax cuts from President Bush's first term, arguing that the lower rates were crucial to sustain a rebounding economy, and shrugging off concern that the cuts would swell the federal deficit," says the Philadelphia Inquirer .

"The House voted 234-197 for tax cuts that would benefit mainly businesses and investors and cost the Treasury $56.1 billion over five years."

From the right, David Brooks offers one of the most unflinching critiques of conservatism I've seen:

"A lot of the energy that used to go into ideas is now devoted to defending Republican politicians. Many former conservative activists have become Republican lobbyists. (When conservatism was a movement of ideas, it attracted oddballs; now that it's a movement with power, it attracts sleazeballs.)

"Most important, there is greater social pressure to conform to the party's needs. Even writers and wonks are supposed to stay on message. In the 1970's, supply-siders mounted an insurgency against the Republican House leadership and against some sitting G.O.P. senators. If any group tried that today, it would be crushed by the party establishment . . .

"Conservative media success means intellectual flabbiness. Conservatives used to live in a media world created by people who thought differently than they did. Reading certain publications and watching the evening news was like intellectual calisthenics. Now conservatives can be just as insular as liberals, retreating to their own media sources to be told how right they are."

Former Democratic Hill aide David Sirota must not have been a big fan of the No. 2 House Democrat, because in this HuffPost screed he really lets the man have it:

"Here are some questions every Democrat in America should be asking: why is Steny Hoyer, the House's second-ranking Democrat, going out of his way to undermine the Democratic Party's message on Iraq? Why is Hoyer using his taxpayer-paid staff to place stories bragging about his efforts to shake down corporate lobbyists? And why has Hoyer undercut his party on critical votes that would have helped Democrats craft a strong, crisp message?

"I used to think it was because Steny Hoyer was just an extraordinary stupid person who had been insulated in the Beltway for so long that he was simply suffering from severe brain rot. But alas, I was stupid in thinking that. What's really going on is very obvious: Hoyer is waging a not-so-secret, but oh-so-self-serving campaign to topple House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D) and assume the top job in the Democratic Caucus - a job he has coveted since Pelosi beat him out for whip a few years back. And he's waging his campaign even though it is destroying his own party.

"You don't need to look very far to see how Hoyer is doing everything he can to self-servingly undermine his party as a way to hurt Pelosi. In yesterday's Washington Post , for instance, the paper reported that according to congressional sources, Hoyer 'told colleagues that Pelosi's recent endorsement of a speedy withdrawal [from Iraq] combined with her claim that more than half of House Democrats support her position, could backfire on the party.' "

Andrew Sullivan offers his prescription for the war:

"Next week will be the most critical election of them all: one which actually leads to the first, real constitutional, democratically elected government in decades. We still have so much to do; and our guide should be the millions of ordinary Iraqis who do not kill, who are not mass-murderers or religious fanatics, but who want to lead a normal life. After all this, we owe it to them to stand by them. However long it takes. For all the blunders of this blighted administration, it is absurd to expect perfection a mere three years after being liberated from totalitarian dictatorship. Thirty years is a more reasonable time-line. My hope is that U.S. troops, albeit in a minuscule presence compared to today, will still be there in thirty years' time. Just as they are today in Japan, Germany and South Korea."

Politically, though, 30 years is what I'd call a tough sell.

Byron York engages in a bit of political cross-dressing, writing about McCain not for National Review but for the New Republic:

"There are several reasons why GOP establishment types are warming to the man they once rejected -- and who rejected them. First is the loyalty McCain showed toward Bush in the last election. Second is his stand on the war in Iraq. Third is his hard line on federal spending. And the fourth reason is not an issue, but the absence of one: In 2008, McCain, having won his fight for campaign finance reform, will no longer be showcasing a cause that most Democrats loved but most Republicans hated . . .

"More than any other issue, the war is the reason why Republicans thank McCain for standing by Bush. As the level of public approval for the war goes down, and some Republicans worry that they have to accommodate Democratic calls for withdrawal, McCain's hawkishness looks better and better to those in the GOP -- still a majority -- who want to stay the course. McCain is their man; he has a way of talking about the war that simply sounds right to Republican ears: stronger, clearer, and more direct than Bush himself. 'We cannot afford to lose it,' he tells me. 'Just read Zarqawi. We lose it, and they're coming after us.'

"With his war hero credibility, McCain is able to dismiss the calls of some of his fellow lawmakers -- and fellow veterans -- who want to get out of Iraq."

Programming note : I'm off next week. You'll have to Web-surf on your own!