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 Recent commentary from National Journal: Wealth of Nations: In Europe, Governments On One Side, Voters On the Other (February 25, 2003) Tony Blair's backing of Bush is proving to be a much bigger political gamble than he ever imagined. By Clive Crook. Legal Affairs: How Civil-Libertarian Hysteria May Endanger Us All (February 25, 2003) Congress was stunningly irresponsible in hobbling a program aimed at catching terrorists. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: From 'Yes, But' to 'We Told You So'? (February 25, 2003) If a war with Iraq were to go badly, top Democrats could point out they'd had qualms. By William Schneider. Media: The Poodle Speaks (February 19, 2003) Foreign critics are barking up the wrong tree when they complain about U.S. news media coverage of Iraq. By William Powers. Social Studies: America Can Beat Iraq. But Can It Vanquish France? (February 19, 2003) There's nothing new about France's self-defeating line. What is new is that the administration isn't buying it. By Jonathan Rauch. Legal Affairs: Perverting the Legal System: The Lead-Paint Rip-Off (February 19, 2003) No victim of lead poisoning will get a dime in compensation from Rhode Island's pending lawsuit. By Stuart Taylor Jr. Political Pulse: The Cowboy and the Diplomat (February 19, 2003) Together, Bush and Powell bring leadership and legitimacy to the U.S. policy on Iraq. By William Schneider. More from National Journal. |
Media 
A Soft, Cracking SoundThe selling of war with Iraq is not going as well as the White House wants us to believe by William Powers ..... For a White House said to be oh-so-brilliant at spin, these people are doing a lousy job of spinning the war. Conventional wisdom says that a new war against Iraq has already been sold to the only audience the Bush administration really cares about, the American public, and all systems are go. The polls show a solid domestic majority in favor of the U.S. military forcibly removing Saddam Hussein from power. But there's another instrument for reading how effectively the PR effort is going: the news. And the media can sometimes be a more useful gauge of the popular climate than the polls, which offer crude numbers but little sense of the thinking behind them. The media, on the other hand, are full of people thinking right before your eyes, smart people (some are!) having opinions and making judgments. And the media are not as removed from public opinion as their critics like to pretend. We hacks know where our bread is buttered and often pick up on crucial nuances and shifts in public opinion before they emerge in the polls. Right now, the news is full of signs that the selling of this war is not going as well as the White House wants us to believe. The most obvious crack in the facade was the anti-war demonstrations of last weekend, which played very prominently in the mainstream media, and would have been bigger if the blizzard hadn't distracted the big East Coast outlets. The media are chary of all demonstrations, and with good reason: These are inherently synthetic events, orchestrated to promote one point of view at the expense of all others. A protest march is pure political burlesque. But last week's marches were truly remarkable both in numbers and fervor, and you could tell from the coverage that the media were actually impressed. "Millions Worldwise Protest Iraq War," headlined The Washington Post in a front-page, above-the-fold story accompanied by a huge, dramatic photo of thousands jammed in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. "From New York to Melbourne, Cries for Peace," announced The New York Times, at the top of its Sunday front. Even the decidedly unsensational Associated Press seemed stunned: "Millions of protesters—many of them marching in the capitals of America's traditional allies—demonstrated Saturday against possible U.S. plans to attack Iraq. The protests that started Friday in Australia continued through the weekend with a massive Sunday demonstration of more than 100,000 people in Sydney. The protests were the biggest in Australia since the Vietnam War three decades ago. In a global outpouring of anti-war sentiment, Rome claimed the biggest turnout—1 million, according to police, while organizers claimed three times that figure. In London, at least 750,000 people demonstrated in what police called the city's largest demonstration ever.... In New York, rally organizers estimated the crowd at up to 500,000 people." Of course, there were protests against the Persian Gulf War, too. But if you pull the clips on those demonstrations, they were minuscule compared to what we're seeing now. "Anti-war protesters rallied across the globe ... chanting 'No blood for oil!' and praying for peace as war clouds darkened over the Persian Gulf," began an AP story of January 16, 1991. It all sounds eerily familiar, until you get into the details: "up to 5,000" demonstrators in London; "about 10,000 students" in Berlin, "hundreds" in front of the White House; just 2,000 in Los Angeles. What's more, last week's protests, as translated by the media, were intensely personal in nature, directed not so much against the United States as against George W. Bush the person. "Bush is the unacceptable weapon of mass destruction," read one sign in London, according to a typical dispatch from Knight Ridder. What's interesting about this aspect of the story—also largely absent from the 1991 coverage—is that it connects to another problem the White House faces as it attempts to rally support for a war: lingering mainstream doubts about Bush. There's a hard-core Left that will always hate this president, and a hard-core Right that will always love him. But these ideologues don't matter so much right now. The crucial audience, the one that Bush must convince if he's going to pull off this war, is everybody else: all those open-minded, middle-of-the-road types who decide national elections and generally set the country's sway. Are those people with the president in his determination to bring down Saddam, willy-nilly, with or without the United Nations? The polls suggest maybe not. While a majority of Americans believe Bush has made a case for war, according to the Gallup Organization, "only four in 10 are willing for the United States to invade Iraq without a new authorizing vote by the U.N. Security Council." And the media equivalent of those swing voters—the more-centrist American news outlets and commentators—are just as lukewarm. Even when they come out for war, the centrists do so with elaborate hand-wringing about Bush's leadership style and agenda. Bill Keller, The New York Times columnist who has emerged as the most compelling voice of the reasonable center, recently wrote about what he called "The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-a-Hawk-Club." He described himself as one of many "reluctant hawks," people in the media and elsewhere who lean toward war even as they "deplore the arrogance and binary moralism" of this administration, and "disavow Mr. Bush's larger agenda for American power." Maybe the views of moderate, thoughtful liberals don't matter much to this White House. But when the question is war, shouldn't they?
What do you think? Discuss this article in the Politics & Society conference of Post & Riposte. More from National Journal. More on politics and society in Atlantic Unbound and The Atlantic Monthly. William Powers is media columnist for National Journal. He recently spent three months in Japan as a Japan Society Fellow, studying the role of reading in Japanese life. This column appears every week in National Journal, a weekly magazine covering politics and government published in Washington, D.C. For information on National Journal Group publications, see NationalJournal.com. Copyright © 2002 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved. |
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