Advice for Bush on the election

World Net Daily ^ | June 4, 2004 | Bob Kohn

[Luis Gonzalez]

In his re-election campaign, Bush is fighting a two front war: one against the Democrats and one against the false perceptions being created by the mainstream media – lead by the New York Times, which has turned its newsroom into the journalistic party of opposition. Let me explain with a true story which I'm afraid to say is not altogether uncommon.

A retired friend of mine – an elderly gentlemen who I see at the health club every day – gets nearly all his news from the New York Times. He has been a longtime Republican, but lately he is having grave doubts about President Bush's foreign and economic policies. I asked him how he can think that, and he tried to explain to me – entirely unarmed with specifics – how poorly things are going in Iraq and how poorly the economy is doing.

I took a few moments to inform him about some of the more important accomplishments over the past 18 months:

• The elimination of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its replacement by a democratic government.

• The removal of Saddam Hussein, one of the world's worst tyrants and mass murderers since Hitler and Stalin, and the threat he posed to Israel, its Arab neighbors in the Middle East, and more directly to us through his weapons of mass destruction programs (yes, we found – in Iraq – the strains of viral agents, sarin gas, the laboratories that produced them, and the long-range missiles to deliver them!)

• The ongoing reconstruction of a country which 35 years of brutal dictatorship had left in ruins, including the creation and dissemination of a new Iraqi currency, the establishment of a central bank, the $10 billion in oil exported by Iraq in the past year, the schools built, the hospitals repaired, all leading up to this week's selection of a new Iraqi government and the imminent sovereignty of a nation naturally impatient to shake loose the occupation, but grateful for what we've done for them.

I reminded him that he is old enough to remember the grief Harry Truman was getting over the reconstruction of Germany in the aftermath of World War II. He didn't remember the headlines, but Mark Levin, writing for National Review, dug out some beauties from the pages of the New York Times: "Germans Reveal Hate of Americans" (Oct. 31, 1945), "Loss of Victory In Germany Through U.S. Policy Feared" (Nov. 18, 1945), and "Germans Declare Americans Hated" (Dec. 3, 1945). The second of those New York Times articles lead with the following paragraph:

Grave concern was express today by informed officials that the United States might soon lose the fruits of victory in Germany through failure to prepare adequately for carrying out its long-term commitment under the Potsdam Declaration.

Sound familiar?

I then told my friend some facts about the economy that I'm sure he hadn't read on the front page of the New York Times lately:

• The economy has created 1.1 million jobs since last August. In the manufacturing sector alone, new factory hiring has jumped to a 31-year high. Unemployment has fallen to 5.6 percent, a rate that has been bested in only two of the last 22 years, and is lower than the average rate of employment during the Clinton years.

• During the last 12 months, the nation's Gross Domestic Product grew at its highest rate in two decades.

• Home ownership has reached a record high of 68.6 percent, 5 percent above a decade ago.

My friend, who reads the New York Times religiously, was aware of none of this, though he was quite aware that the price of gasoline is at a 20-year high – which, adjusting for inflation, is just not true. My friend, it seems, is hopelessly misinformed – yet, because what I was telling him was so inconsistent with the sense he was getting from the "newspaper of record," he actually had trouble believing me.

What we have here, folks, is a failure to communicate. As far as the Times is concerned, it's a failure to communicate the truth.

In a piece I wrote for the Weekly Standard last week, I pointed out how the Augusta National Golf Club managed to successfully beat back an attempt by the New York Times to bully the club into changing its tradition of all-male membership. Early on, the club made a crucial decision: to win the battle, they had to take the press head on, making criticism of the media itself part of the story. "Stopping the New York Times dead in its tracks," said the club's publicity manager "was critical to the overall effort, because the Times sets the agenda for the broader media world."

The club was right, and eventually succeeded in shifting the story from how the Times wanted it positioned – sex discrimination – to something the Times had long thought it was immune from – questions about the paper's journalistic integrity.

There is a lesson here: The New York Times is mounting a relentless campaign to defeat President Bush this fall. Concealing reality, they are creating in their news pages the perception of a failing economy and the collapse of our foreign policy. If the New York Times provided its readers with reality, giving our victories their due and putting our setbacks in perspective, Bush would be looking forward to a landslide this fall.

Quite simply, what the Bush campaign must do to win re-election is follow its own prescription for winning the war on terror: adopt an uncompromising resolve, an aggressive battle plan, and an enlightened understanding of who the enemy is. In other words, it's time for Carl Rove to take off the gloves by making the press – and the false perceptions they are striving to create – the issue. In that way, the debate will shift from a false premise (e.g., bad economy and how to fix it) to a premise that favors Bush: the truth (i.e., the economy is doing well).

It is going to take a loud voice to cause such a monumental shift in the debate, but who else could better make the case than a president who already believes that so-called straight news articles are laced with opinion?

[The Wizard]

attack the media everyday, drive them into the sea

[randog]

...the Augusta National Golf Club managed to successfully beat back an attempt by the New York Times to bully the club into changing its tradition of all-male membership. Early on, the club made a crucial decision: to win the battle, they had to take the press head on, making criticism of the media itself part of the story. "Stopping the New York Times dead in its tracks," said the club's publicity manager "was critical to the overall effort, because the Times sets the agenda for the broader media world."

The club's publicity manager needs to write a book, go on tour, give seminars, do whatever it takes to educate the public on what he did to take down the NYT. If a country club can do it then so can corporations, even individuals.

[b9]

Yes, we are fast approaching a point in time where we need a fully funded organization that is dedicated to professionally debunking the credibility of the major news outlets.

Fox News?

[Christian4Bush]

Bump for later!

[liberty or death]

What stops the truth from having this same voice? Why don't we have the truth in our news. The majority is somewhere in the middle but we have a left wing propogation of lies in 98% of the media. Why?
Conservatives have a ton of money yet none are a media force of the likes to counter the left. Why?
What stops them???
The answer lies in the Holy Bible.

[b9]

Whatever happened to "One on God's side is a majority?"

[nopardons]

Thanks for the ping,Luis.

[Keith]

The news media has always like to say that the reason GHWB won against Dukakis was the Willie Horton ads. Wrong. Bush I won that election when he kicked Dan Rather's ass one night...Rather was trying to tie him to Iran-Contra, and Bush quickly retorted, "How would you like it if everyone measured your career by the night you walked of the set of the evening news."

I was watching that with a bunch with mixed sympathies. ALL loved him kicking ass on arrogant Dan Rather. It dissapated the "wimp" label the Dems were trying to hang on Bush. If he needs to, Bush should kick ass on the media as well. Talk about winning the war, but the "truth being held hostage by the partisan press."

People will eat it up. The only profession with a lower approval rating than the press right now is child molester.

[537cant be wrong]

short conversation.

i get that alot when the st louis post discrace calls to see if i want to subscribe and i go into my "only thing they are good for is house training a puppy or bird cage liner' rant.