Sunday, October 17, 2004
The Reality-Based Community Hates America
The article everyone in the world will be talking about today is Ron Suskind's profile of Bush in the New York Times Magazine, "Without a Doubt." It paints a picture of a president, with an administration alongside him and millions of supporters behind him, convinced of their own rectitude and of their being chosen by God and history to act in this moment. As for those of who find this certainty disturbing, as Suskind writes, we'd best get with the program or be left behind:
You will be able to find increasing amounts of commentary on this piece around the blogosphere as people wake up, have coffee, and plunge in. Juan Cole's been at it already, suggesting that the adminstration's "reality is whatever we make it" approach is like nothing so much as the philosophy of Mao Tse-Tung--not exactly a popular model for American statesmanship.
Recommended Reading: If you hang around reporters for any length of time, you will learn that on every major story, they know stuff that they can't report or wouldn't dream of reporting if they could, and that they hold opinions that they would never put down in writing with their names attached. So you can bet that at least some American reporters covering the presidential campaign have had thoughts along the lines of those Andrew Stephen put in a recent Guardian column headlined "Has Bush lost his reason?" Bush's mental state is the great unmentionable, at least by the so-called "serious" news organizations in the United States, although we talk about it endlessly in BlogWorld. Nobody wants to be the one to stand up and say he thinks the president's elevator no longer reaches the top floor. Why, people wouldn't stand for it. We learn in civics class that the heirs to the seat of Washington and Lincoln are chosen by our great democratic process, and what transpires through the will of the people cannot be wrong. Thus we simply could not have elected a man who would whack out on us in the middle of the job. And so reporters dare not say it, even if they have a pretty good reason to believe it's true.
What I love about The Guardian in particular and foreign papers in general is the way they operate without the blinders our reporters apply to themselves. And what Stephen sees with his blinders off in this campaign is not complimentary to either candidate. What American journalist would dare write, "Kerry is a poor candidate who has only recently woken to the need to fight"? Criticism of Kerry's style hasn't been absent from the American press, but it's always softened, qualified, or issued with some sort of caveat--which is exactly what an American editor, conscious of his paper or channel's need to appear objective, would do to the sentence "Kerry is a poor candidate."
One More Thing: My bit on Best of the Blogs yesterday regarding the question of whether Kerry should accept Sinclair Broadcasting's invitation to appear as part of their hatchet-job documentary this week has generated a lot of comments. If you're interested, go here.
The article everyone in the world will be talking about today is Ron Suskind's profile of Bush in the New York Times Magazine, "Without a Doubt." It paints a picture of a president, with an administration alongside him and millions of supporters behind him, convinced of their own rectitude and of their being chosen by God and history to act in this moment. As for those of who find this certainty disturbing, as Suskind writes, we'd best get with the program or be left behind:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend--but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.Take note of that: Enlightenment, shlightenment. "That's not the way the world really works anymore." And if you don't buy this supposed new reality, and if, furthermore, you don't buy the idea that God himself has more-or-less ordained it by putting George W. Bush in the White House?
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore,"' he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. "You think he's an idiot, don't you?" I said, no, I didn't. "No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read the New York Times or Washington Post or the L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!" In this instance, the final "you," of course, meant the entire reality-based community.That Suskind's piece underlines yet again the absolute imperative that Bush be defeated in 16 days goes without saying. Alas, Suskind's piece also underlines the fact that Bush and his supporters will not go quietly even if the numbers go against them. With the Repugs starting to prepare the ground for another post-Election Day counting crisis that could last for weeks, those of us in the reality-based community had better summon all the political will and personal courage we can find. We may have to fight for John Kerry's right to take office against people who think he and we are agents of the devil trying to thwart the ordained progress of history.
You will be able to find increasing amounts of commentary on this piece around the blogosphere as people wake up, have coffee, and plunge in. Juan Cole's been at it already, suggesting that the adminstration's "reality is whatever we make it" approach is like nothing so much as the philosophy of Mao Tse-Tung--not exactly a popular model for American statesmanship.
Recommended Reading: If you hang around reporters for any length of time, you will learn that on every major story, they know stuff that they can't report or wouldn't dream of reporting if they could, and that they hold opinions that they would never put down in writing with their names attached. So you can bet that at least some American reporters covering the presidential campaign have had thoughts along the lines of those Andrew Stephen put in a recent Guardian column headlined "Has Bush lost his reason?" Bush's mental state is the great unmentionable, at least by the so-called "serious" news organizations in the United States, although we talk about it endlessly in BlogWorld. Nobody wants to be the one to stand up and say he thinks the president's elevator no longer reaches the top floor. Why, people wouldn't stand for it. We learn in civics class that the heirs to the seat of Washington and Lincoln are chosen by our great democratic process, and what transpires through the will of the people cannot be wrong. Thus we simply could not have elected a man who would whack out on us in the middle of the job. And so reporters dare not say it, even if they have a pretty good reason to believe it's true.
What I love about The Guardian in particular and foreign papers in general is the way they operate without the blinders our reporters apply to themselves. And what Stephen sees with his blinders off in this campaign is not complimentary to either candidate. What American journalist would dare write, "Kerry is a poor candidate who has only recently woken to the need to fight"? Criticism of Kerry's style hasn't been absent from the American press, but it's always softened, qualified, or issued with some sort of caveat--which is exactly what an American editor, conscious of his paper or channel's need to appear objective, would do to the sentence "Kerry is a poor candidate."
One More Thing: My bit on Best of the Blogs yesterday regarding the question of whether Kerry should accept Sinclair Broadcasting's invitation to appear as part of their hatchet-job documentary this week has generated a lot of comments. If you're interested, go here.
