Posted on 04/09/2004 3:56:50 PM PDT by RatherBiased.com
U.S. Supreme Court justice John Marshall is famous for arguing that "the power to tax involves the power to destroy." But that was before the emergence of the special commission. Marshall might have written differently had he witnessed one in action using its powers as much for political gain as for legitimate investigation.
As a long-time political observer, Dan Rather knows this very well, or at least he did back when Republicans were interested in using hearings as a weapon against President Clinton (more on that later). But now that Democrats are using the 9/11 commission to try and diminish the popularity of President Bush, Rather seems to have forgotten that lesson. Covering yesterday's testimony of Bush national security aide Condoleezza Rice before the commission, Rather and his colleagues skewed the news, quoting Democratic members much more frequently, declining to disclose party affiliations, and portraying an anti-Bush 9/11 victim as representative of the entire group.
Opening up Thursday's Evening News, Rather cast Rice's appearance in Nixonian terms:
"The attack on America. Was there any way to prevent it? What did President Bush know? What should he have known? What should he have done? Tonight, his National Security Adviser under oath an under oath and under fire, tells her story to the 9/11 commission and the American people. Does it all check out?"
"President Bush's National Security Adviser testified in public and under oath today about the biggest national security failure in U.S. history," Rather continued, ignoring the catastrophe of Pearl Harbor.
The New York Times described the situation as full of "often harsh questioning from Democratic members of the panel," Rather stressed the commission's neutrality, (though he did at least acknowledge that things weren't always civil):
"Condoleezza Rice, with great presence, told the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks that President Bush never saw them coming. She insisted that there was no way the administration could have prevented them. Some members of the panel, some Republicans as well as Democrats, did not fully agree. The exchanges were at times sharp, sometimes even testy."
After Rather's intro, correspondent Jim Stewart filed an extraordinarily slanted piece which didn't quote a single Republican commission member and failed to identify the Democrats mentioned in it. Next, following a segment which added some Republican remarks and some more Democratic ones, long-serving backup White House correspondent Bill Plante attempted to discern whether or not Rice's appearance helped President Bush. Most TV watchers seemed to think so, including liberal TV columnist Tom Shales, but Plante was dubious.
"While not everyone agrees, a senior White House official told us there is now a full and accurate picture of what happened and what we did," he said. "A joint congressional investigation concluded that the Bush Administration did not begin looking at terrorism until April 2001, and said that there may have significant slippage in 1 policy in late 2000 and early 2001. The congressional document also cites 12 intelligence reports over a 7-year-period ending in 2001 of chatter about crashing airplanes into us landmarks. That's a key issue since Rice was on record as saying in May 2002 no one could have imagined terrorists using aircraft as weapons."
Besides journalists, there are many people who claim to be objective, despite the protests of others. Sadly, unless it is Democrats who are raising questions about a person/group's objectivity, Dan Rather does not seem to take them seriously.
Despite the fact that many political observers see the 9/11 commission as nothing more than a cudgel with which Democrats can bash the president, as noted above, Rather harbored no doubts about the objectivity of its members. In the past, though, when the Republicans' elephant wasn't being gored, Rather was much more cautious about claims of neutrality.
He was particularly distrustful of special investigations during former president Clinton's term in office, regularly casting aspersions on their real intentions. Such investigations, especially when they are conducted via public hearings are often more about getting free media than problem-solving, but unlike yesterday where he turned a blind eye to attempts by Democrats to entrap and embarrass Condoleezza Rice, Rather was much more attuned when Republicans employed similar tactics to Clinton staffers.
"The Republicans are finally getting what they wanted," Rather declared on July 26, 1994 Evening News. "The House Banking Committee opened hearings today on Whitewater and the Clinton administration. What the Republicans are not getting is an opportunity to ask many of the questions they wanted to ask--questions that could embarrass the president."
(Excerpt) Read more at ratherbiased.com ...
I get a chuckle out of the following description of the very distrustful Rather
Rather is like Rapunzel, locked in a tower, peering out from his window, giving the evening news.Dan Rather, Dan Rather, let down your hair!
But no, he's cut it short.
He doesn't want to be saved.
Fortunately, more than half of Dan's octogenarian yellow-dog FDR Democrat audience will probably go to their reward before November.
On, Off, or grab it for a Media Shenanigans/Schadenfreude ping:
http://www.freerepublic.com/~anamusedspectator/
The local CC station is running an Imus promo with Trump, who says "I could go down to 5th Avenue and pick someone at random
who could get higher ratings than Rather...."
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