Payback is Hell

The Dangers of Dissing Pompous Bureaucrats

by Patrick J. Shanahan
04/01/04

When one is faced with a silly made-for-TV political brouhaha, it is often useful to take a small step backwards and ask, “What is the worst case scenario? What is everything that so-and-so is saying is true? What does that actually mean?”

Not only does this work well with the likes of James Carville, Michael Moore, and Al Franken, it quickly reveals the silliness of the Richard Clarke story.

So many conservatives have been so busy defending the President from Clarke’s assault, so busy trying to assail his motives and obvious partisanship that they haven’t take the time to focus on the emptiness of what he is actually saying. If one fights past his Thurston Howell III Northeastern Lockjaw, what is this condescending little man actually saying? If everything he says is true, what does it actually amount to?

Well, it would appear that the incoming Bush Administration did not value Clarke’s opinion quite as highly as he thought they should, and that they pursued a slightly different approach to fighting terrorism and al-Qaeda than he would have recommended. And so he’s angry with them and wants to make them pay.

That’s it. Nothing that would have made a bit of difference in what happened on 9/11. Clarke has clearly said so in his own words. His only beef is that his pride was wounded, and so he responds by getting even with those he perceives as having disrespected him.

That this emptiness has been ginned up into a political frenzy says a great deal about the nature of the contemporary political and media landscape, and how politics and media work together in Washington in pursuit of the same agenda. Let’s face it. In the absence of external intervention, Clarke’s book and his story would have had the shelf life of a high-livin’ fruit fly. Not only is there very little there there, the stuff that is worth anything at all is dull, boring, policy wonk fodder of the worst sort. The only way that a story like this can develop “legs” is if there is a political agenda to put focus on it and a media megaphone to amplify it.

The political agenda at work is obvious. It is installment # 257 in the Democrat effort to define President Bush as a scheming liar. (Which, on a side note, I find very interesting. The previous Democratic President in fact was a scheming liar of remarkable proportions. He committed perjury. At that point we were told that “everybody does it.” When President Bush took office this apparently no longer held true. Dishonesty was no longer judged to be a sign of scampish creativity, but rather once again was defined as a character flaw.)

This agenda does not require actual facts. Actually, it is helpful to avoid facts, as they tend to reflect the reality that President Bush is a remarkably honest man with a straightforward and very public agenda. Agree with that agenda or not, all reasonable people must concede that he has done pretty much exactly what he said he would do when he took office. But by managing a steady stream of baseless changes into the mainstream media, the Democrats have had some success in creating a vague image, a perception, of the President and his administration as dishonest and/or incompetent.

The mainstream media is completely complicit in this effort. The New York/Washington/LA media establishment just drips contempt for the President. This is probably more cultural than political in nature, but they are unable to resist any opportunity to cast him in bad light, or to lionize any and all who would attack him. To watch Matt Lauer and Katie Couric on the Today show is painful. The point at which overly earnest liberal concern begins to meld into contempt is frightening.

And so all it takes is a petty man with a fragile ego to feel that he has been devalued, and the attack machine kicks into gear. In the case at hand the media has created such a ruckus that this story has dominated the news for a good week. I predict that it will continue to dominate the news until a) there is an update in the Kobe Bryant case, or b) the Administration begins to effectively fight back, at which point the story will be immediately dropped. The job will be done. The fragile little man can claim vindication, the Democrats can smile at their success in defining the President down, and the media can bask in the glow of having made it all happen (aka “The Watergate Halo Effect”).

And the rest of us can be assured that in the end it will make no difference in anything. None. Zip. Nada. The President’s image will not suffer any undo harm. Those who believe him to be a cretin/villain will find validation. Those who admire him will take offense. And those without a serious opinion one way or the other will simply shrug their shoulders and go about their business. And the War on Terrorism will proceed in exactly the same direction it is headed. It will be neither helped nor hurt.

For those with half a serious bone in their body this must be discouraging. This sort of Washington political drama may be inevitable, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it!