Bush's Holiday Hit

Washington Post ^ | 12/3/03 | David Broder

[VANHALEN2002]

Bush's Holiday Hit By David S. Broder Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A29 As historian Doris Kearns Goodwin pointed out this week on NBC's "Meet the Press," there is nothing unusual or unprecedented about presidents visiting the troops in wartime. Lincoln did it several times during the Civil War and FDR managed it during World War II. More recent presidents have shared meals with the military in Korea, Vietnam and Kosovo. So, despite the stealth and drama that marked President Bush's flight into Baghdad, he was doing what the commander in chief often does, and his visit, brief as it was, clearly cheered the troops. Democrats properly refrained from criticizing the trip. But the absence of controversy does not diminish the political significance of the journey, which dominated television coverage and newspaper headlines over Thanksgiving weekend.

[hellinahandcart]

I think that's way too big of an excerpt from the Washington Post.

(If there were any PARAGRAPH BREAKS, I'd know for sure...)

[BibChr]

Dang. You'd think an old guy like Broder'd've learned to use paragraphs by now.

Dan

[anniegetyourgun]

"And the Democrats can't even complain."

Tell that to Hillary....et al.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

I think the lame stream media would crawl naked on a mile of broken glass before saying one positive thing about Dubya.

They have never been able to do a paragraph in the W. Compost with the obligatory, "but" and then on to the negatives.

Sickning, just sickening.

[The_Victor]

The Democratic aspirants are debating in serious and sensible terms whether further international help can be obtained in Iraq and whether current troop levels are adequate.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah...*breath*
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah...etc...

What universe is Broder living in? He certainly isn't watching the same debates that I've seen.

[Pokey78]

That's no excerpt. That's the whole column.

[Pokey78]

Or was, beofre Admin did his/her thang. eheh**

[Ceoman]

Did anyone listen to IMUS this a.m. when Andrea Mitchell was on? Called Bush's trip a "stunt" and said Karl Rove must have really been enjoying planning the trip when he heard Hillary was going...etc.. Andrea Mitchell is the most biased reporter....I cannot believe she is NBC Foreign Affairs reporter (I guess I can, considering)!

[hellinahandcart]

That's the whole column.

How the heck did that get thru the perimeter, General?

I didn't think one COULD post an entire WP article anymore, even if they tried...

[anniegetyourgun]

She didn't even know that his trip had been planned far in advance of Hillary making her announcement? What an uninformed so-called journalist.....

[Eva]

DOROTHY RABINOWITZ'S MEDIA LOG (from WSJ, Opinion Journal)

Baghdad in an Alternate Universe
There's little reality in the coverage of Bush's Iraq trip.

Tuesday, December 2, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

Bulletin: The president's surprise Thanksgiving visit to U.S. troops in Iraq isn't going to change the outcome of the war!

That keen analysis, delivered by any number of instant commentators in the hours after the news of the visit broke, must have come as something of a surprise to U.S. audiences paying attention--even those accustomed both to the steady flow of irrelevancies and to the solemn warnings about assumptions it would have occurred to no one to make that we can always depend on hearing on occasions of this kind. Just how many people watching that Thanksgiving mess-hall scene would have been struck by the thought that this would--aha!--change the outcome of the war, most of us know. The answer is of course no one--no one in his right mind.

But the reality of the audience and the condition of their minds is a matter wholly foreign to the concerns of most of the correspondents--a truth most Americans have long understood and accepted. Somewhere along the way, they realized that occasions like this (short on dark aspects and close to a purely moving event) pose a problem in that universe inhabited by a good part of the press--a place where journalists toil and compete, disconnected from the realities governing the rest of the world.
There were, generally speaking, two kinds of reporting on this event, so imbued with emotion. One type offered the occasion as it had unfolded and let the facts and pictures--the footage capturing the roars of joy from the weary troops when they spied their commander in chief, there with them so unexpectedly--tell the story.

For an exemplar of the other sort we had the commentary of CNN's Walter Rodgers, a sturdy on-the-scene journalist for the most part, though on this occasion he was not among the reporters at that mess hall. Minutes after the news broke, his report focused on one central point: He didn't want to be a spoiler, he let it be known, but it was clear that, whether deliberately "or unconsciously," the president's trip had been timed as a way of upstaging Sen. Hillary Clinton's visit to the region the next day. Mr. Rodgers delivered this point several times more, his tone suggesting bountiful gratitude for the powers that had led him to unearth this insight--Thanksgiving comes but once a year.

To someone imbibing the ethers of the aforementioned hothouse journalistic world, it must have seemed perfectly reasonable to conclude--however bizarre the proposition sounded to anyone out there in the real world--that all the months of secret planning that had gone into this venture had been undertaken for the sole purpose of deflecting attention from Mrs. Clinton's trip. Not only reasonable but important enough to repeat several times. And it offered plenty of inoculation against any charge that this veteran reporter had failed to cut through the joyful nature of this story to discern its dark underside.

Departing from the subject of the president's unconscious, Mr. Rodgers turned to historical parallels to announce that Lyndon Johnson had gone to Vietnam--and that that trip hadn't changed the outcome of the war.

The next day, we were to hear from Tom Rosenstiel, the head of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, an institution that could only in times like ours be regarded as a light unto the press. Well known for emissions of the highest purity as regards press standards, Mr. Rosenstiel told the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz that the secrecy of the trip was "just not kosher," that reporters are in the business of telling the truth and that they couldn't decide it was OK to lie sometimes because it serves a "higher truth or good."

Fortunately, those involved in making security arrangements to Iraq--a war zone--failed to consult Mr. Rosenstiel and colleagues to determine whether they passed proper journalistic standards. We can scarcely imagine how distressed the latter must be at all the U.S. journalists who have kept the secrets of troop movements to themselves in wartime--much less what they would have said about all the Allied leaders' efforts to mislead the world about the target of the D-Day invasion.
Most of the press, it should be said, understood perfectly well that there were good reasons the security requirements for the president's trip were what they were and said so--which fact did not diminish Mr. Rosenstiel's apparently profound distress. Feelings whose source may perhaps best be explained by another of his charges--that the unexpected nature of the president's visit made it a big story and that, by going along with the secrecy, reporters had "helped Bush politically."

The ethers in that special world of journalists, and particularly in the case of the Project for Excellence and its head--who seems to have been imbibing a particularly potent kind--appear to be taking their toll. Nothing, though, that a case-hardened public couldn't take in stride.

[Clint Williams]

As a freeper posted in another thread:

[nightdriver]

"The Democratic........are challenging the administration's policy judgments. It is all very rational -- and appropriate"

David Broder's biases are showing again!

[astounded]

You got that right. There is nothing sensible about any of the 9 dwarf losers. They have no ideas, no leadership capability, they only know how to whine and moan.

[expatpat]

Democrats properly refrained from criticizing the trip

That's news to me!

[LS]

I wrote Broder about this idiotic comment:

"The Democratic aspirants are debating in serious and sensible terms whether further international help can be obtained in Iraq and whether current troop levels are adequate."

In fact, there is NO "serious" or "sensible" discussion on the War on Terror from the Democrats, other than to call for the mealy-mouthed cowardly UN "peacekeepers" to take over. One obvioius problem is that for "peacekeepers" to do anything, there has to be "peace" to "keep," which there is not in Iraq. I pointed out to Broder that by isolating Iraq from the War on Terror, the Dems once again show they cannot be trusted with America's security, and that they are clueless.

[gridlock]

She didn't even know that his trip had been planned far in advance of Hillary making her announcement?

Why do we accept as a given that this is true? Could not the President have thrown this trip together on the quick? The White House has said it was in the works for some time, but is it not possible that Hillary!'s trip is the factor that placed this particular contingency plan into execution?

Not that that bothers me, if true. Anything the President does to keep his boot on the neck of this particular viper is fine by me. Hillary! is obviously positioning herself as the only 'Rat with credibility on national security issues, with an eye toward stealing the nomination in 2004. Any road blocks the White House can throw in her way are good things, IMHO.

[anniegetyourgun]

Let's see....I'm checking my credibility scale now. Do I believe a prez who has a track record of honesty (whether or not you agree with his policies) or a woman who has spent years telling whoppers? Tough call.....

[gridlock]

No question the President is a lot more credible than Hillary!. If Hillary! says it's raining, I'll look out the window to check myself. But the question is whether or not Hillary!'s trip to Iraq was a deciding factor in whether or not the President went on his trip.

To my mind, the President had a duty to go to Iraq to counter Hillary!'s inevitable vicious defeatist spin. If GWB had allowed her to spew her bile unchallenged, she would have been a disaster for troop morale. So if Hillary!'s trip tipped the scales toward the President's surprise visit, that's completely OK with me.