The Ashcroft/Ridge business is just manufactured to me. If it had been a Democrat administration it never would have come to public attention (and I saw no "back peddling: I saw the media trying to portray it that way.) This really gets to the heart of my point: what is to be done about this sort of coordinated attack? Remember that the fucntioningFederal bureaucracy is in the thrall of the Democrat Party. Is the administration to spend all of its energies on media news cycles? That is what Clinton did for 8 years and look where that got us. There is a war to fight.
Again, it ultimately comes down to the maturity of the American people. Bush seems to have an great deal of faith in us. Do we deserve it?
I imagine that thy have some sort of war room, the real question is if the strategy of going for select grass roots issues and organizations and side stepping the national media will work. We will not know this until election day. One gathers that Bush and Co. have come to this tack from observation of the Reagan administration. The difference is that Reagan spoke over the media to the American people and Bush speaks "around the media," as it were, to the nation. I think that this is because Reagan was after all an accomplished actor and was once a media insider. The media was also more balanced then and had a somewhat more sober understanding of its obligations.
I for one am glad he is not doing interviews twice a week. first, it would dilute his message , and second, he give terrible interviews when the interviewer is hostile. I think his strategy of giving the hostile interviews early in the campaign was wise. Perhaps now he can sneak in one or two friendly ones.
Lastly, to fire Rove now would be a PR disaster an would probably cost him the election.
Rove as got him this far, he should stick with him now.
I agree about McClellan. I do not understand it. It may be that there is not a single competent person in the entire GOP that wants this job. I certainly would not want it.
We have not had a starker choice since the Civil war and the danger to the nation is no less than that time either. We are at a cultural cross roads. The nation may not be able to take the right road and there may be little that Bush can do about it.
It may be beyond politics or media. This media war against the president is unprecedented. We are so inured to it that we do not see this or grasp just how scandalous and grave it truly is.
Certainly seems like it.
he should be doing interviews with Rush and Hannity et al each week - friendly forums. Our side has to do what it can to build up the so-called "alternative" media, since we have no hope of getting anything except lies and distortion from the mainstream media. He ought to do Letterman also. Bring Rollins in, don't fire Rove, let him make coffee in the war room.
Advice for Bush on the election
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.
..............................See Link for the rest of the article.