Some News Bad for GOP?

I was channel surfing yesterday in the early evening and I saw something almost shocking on CNN. It was Candy Crowley explaining that yesterday's National Intelligence Estimate on al-Qaeda was good news, politically, for the Democrats. For years now it's been a staple of press analysis of politics that, in essence, all news -- or at a minimum, all terrorism-related news -- is good news for Republicans. Events or reports that make the threat seem less severe demonstrate how awesome Bush's leadership has been. Events or reports that make the threat seem more severe demonstrate how badly we need Bush's leadership. Now something seems to have snapped, because it's not just Candy Crowley.

Check out this news analysis by Michael Abramowitz in The Washington Post that leads with the idea that the report is "fresh political peril" for the White House and that Bush's key argument in favor of his approach to terrorism "seemed to unravel a bit" given the report. It's a big change. Of course nothing in the world has changed, but now that Bush is unpopular already, this is the kind of coverage he gets.

Comments

Pilin' on? Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Posted by Stuart Eugene Thiel | July 18, 2007 9:11 AM

Even more impressive, it's good news for Democrats rather than just bad news for Bush. Because even Peggy and Laura are now burnishing the "Bush isn't one of us" plaque, but they sure haven't been saying anything positive for Democrats.

Posted by Avedon | July 18, 2007 9:17 AM

You mean now that Bush has been unpopular for two years, this is the kind of coverage he finally gets.

Posted by none | July 18, 2007 9:19 AM

Bush has been unpopular for years. he's been below 50% since the start of 2005. (see pollkatz)

but, something has recently changed in newsrooms, and critical reporting is starting to squeak out here and there. i like to think it was because of Bush's brazen disregard for even the appearance of morals in the Libby commutation. it's hard to spin that one so that Bush doesn't end up looking like a total fucking hack.

Posted by cleek | July 18, 2007 9:20 AM

Those of us who hated Bush before it was cool can only sneer at the wannabes.

Posted by Sacanagem | July 18, 2007 9:22 AM

This is shocking, and makes me wonder all the more just what the blazes is going on inside these newsrooms. That is, what if anything finally rammed its way through someone's thick head about what is going on in this country? I suppose the quick and glib answer is 'money' at least in some abstract sense, although I'm not even sure what I mean by that. But if it's not that, I can't even begin to figure it out.

Posted by Ferruge | July 18, 2007 9:23 AM

At the risk of sounding trite, the pertinent point is not whether the latest report is good or bad news for either Republicans or the Democrats, the point is whether it is good news for the United States. Even more to the point, it should be evidence that some strategy is or is not working.

Take the Cold War, for example. It would be like chorteling over whether the Berlin Air Lift, the firing of McCarthur, or the Cuban Missile Crisis was good or bad news for some political faction and not whether they were good or bad strategy. Back then, Republicans may have favored John Foster Dulles' brinkmanship while Democrats opposed it; but its the success or failure was a critique of that strategy with reference to some policy of advancing or maintaining the United States' position in the world.

Of course, maintaining such a policy would require a press corps - and bloggers - who were competent in the nuts and bolts of policy and not in the latest Washington Insider chitchat. But that would call for different personnel - and we can't have THAT, now can we?

Posted by Duncan Kinder | July 18, 2007 9:26 AM

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

That some in the press are now reporting something closer to reality is really good news for Republicans.

Posted by gregor | July 18, 2007 9:33 AM

Those of us who hated Bush before it was cool can only sneer at the wannabes.

Wonderful. Good for you. Make a game of it.

Me, I've wanted to slap the smirk off Bush's face since I first laid eyes on him. On 9/11 and after, he didn't get even a blip of approval from me. That barn-storming tour of the Midwest was cowardice and an empty space where leadership should've been.

But sneer at those you call "wannabes"? Why would you do that? You want to continue the partisan fighting that, other than Bush's belligerence, is his only remaining source of power?

Posted by Lindy | July 18, 2007 9:37 AM

Let's not get excited, folks. They'll find some way to spin it as good news for Bush within a few days.

Posted by TomT | July 18, 2007 9:39 AM

the pertinent point is not whether the latest report is good or bad news for either Republicans or the Democrats, the point is whether it is good news for the United States.

Well put.

Posted by James Gary | July 18, 2007 9:39 AM

Lindy, I think Sacanagem was just making a joke. At least that's how it read to me.

Posted by Ferruge | July 18, 2007 9:43 AM

At the risk of sounding trite, the pertinent point is not whether the latest report is good or bad news for either Republicans or the Democrats, the point is whether it is good news for the United States.

That does indeed run the risk of sounding trite.

Posted by lowellfield | July 18, 2007 9:45 AM

Of course nothing in the world has changed, but now that Bush is unpopular already, this is the kind of coverage he gets.

In other words, a grudging acknowledgement that white might be "a bit" like white and black sorta looks like black.

But a "filibuster" is still a "60 v0te requirement".

Excuse me if I hold the fucking applause.

Posted by Peter Principle | July 18, 2007 9:46 AM

??You are surprised that analysis on CNN suggests things are bad for Republicans and good for Democrats????

Sk

Posted by Sk | July 18, 2007 9:47 AM

I believe Kaus calls this the 'CW' short for 'conventional wisdom' which Kaus wisely examines as a completely different animal than 'reality'.

Looks like the CW has changed and 'reality' usually has very little to do with the CW.

Posted by j mct | July 18, 2007 9:49 AM

Ferruge,
I think it's money in that people are not reading or watching the MSM anymore. They know that they are not going to learn anything from them so they've gone searching for answers elsewhere and that costs them money.

Posted by bajsa | July 18, 2007 9:50 AM

I would have preferred to hear that Crowley had said that the report shows that Bush's approach to fighting terrorism is not working. If Republicans were actually making the US a safer and better country, I would support them. Clearly, they are not.

Posted by Th | July 18, 2007 9:55 AM

Beware that the right-leaning Crowley et al in the MSM don't spin the at-first-hearing-sounds-good "good news for Dems" bit into the "the Dems love it when bad things happen to the U.S. - it helps their cause" ........

Posted by dd | July 18, 2007 10:00 AM

Newscasters saying something "is good news for the Democrats" can only help the Republicans.

Posted by the endless chain of unreason | July 18, 2007 10:17 AM

Maybe I've just missed it or the media coverage has been poor, but I wonder why Democrats are not hammering home the idea that the war in Iraq is creating more terrorists by stoking anti-US sentiment than we're killing? I often see Reid et al. calling for a pullout on the grounds that our presence is encouraging violence in Iraq and there's nothing more we can do there, but I have not seen/heard any Democrats making the case that the war in Iraq is effectively making us less safe. Ron Paul has made that case a lot more persuasively than any Dem I can think of. The war in Iraq is an expensive pet rock - I wish the Democratic party as a whole and the potential '08 candidates in particular would make that case more forcefully.

Posted by Mike LePost | July 18, 2007 10:19 AM

This is significant -- it's big corporations starting, finally, to bail out of a stock (Bush/Cheney) that's been tanking for the past 2 years or more (since the Schiavo and Katrina disgraces and the Social Security debacle).

Their greed in continuing to milk their war profits is why it took so long for the CW to catch up with the reality-based community.

Posted by Steady Eddie | July 18, 2007 10:30 AM

I wish that someone in the media would point out that the NIE means that we have to stay in Iraq to fight them there so that when they come here they won't have any place to return to so they'll have to stay here where we can finally get them when we've finally had enough over there and come back here so that we can get them before they slip away.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | July 18, 2007 10:48 AM

Well, well. It won't be long, however, before someone in the MEdia will start the meme: "Democrats happy that terrorists are stronger." Wait for it. Wait.......for....................it.

Posted by digitusmedius | July 18, 2007 11:00 AM

"Now something seems to have snapped, because it's not just Candy Crowley."

Rumblings.
The man who fixes their car/pipes/internet has a friend who just lost someone in Iraq.
The woman who does their hair/teeth/carpet/cooking has a neighbor whose child just got redeployed again.
That young person in the news department got back from some time in the sun with a thousand yard stare. There's an open spot now in the Green Zone but nobody's lining up to take it.
They were in a club/bar/restaurant where the news was on and Bush appeared and a stranger began cursing.

Rumblings.

Posted by Steve Paradis | July 18, 2007 11:08 AM

??You are surprised that analysis on CNN suggests things are bad for Republicans and good for Democrats????

Given that they almost never actually do this, yes.

Posted by Chilly | July 18, 2007 11:26 AM

Wow. If Bush has lost Candy Crowley, he's lost the country.

Posted by Chris | July 18, 2007 11:27 AM

If Bush has lost Candy Crowley, he's lost the country.

And given the Grand Canyon-sized chasms between Walter and Candy, what a country it's become, eh, Chris?

Posted by Steady Eddie | July 18, 2007 11:54 AM

I hated Bush before I...hated Bush.

Posted by Mellifluous | July 18, 2007 12:34 PM

Candy and the rest will snap back into position when the time comes. Don't forget, these people work for a living. They know, in subtle and not so subtle ways which side they are supposed to be on. The MSM is controlled by a very select group of men who are concerned with one thing and one thing only. Profits. They like war. War is conflict writ large. There are some who will say that is has always been this way but if fact, it is a relatively new development. News was separate from entertainment in the old days. Not anymore. Conflict creates winners and losers. Good vs evil. The war in Iraq is a big money maker. Think of it. Between the two parties, they will likely spend well north of $2B on this election cycle, a very large precentage of it will find it's way into their pockets. How much money have they made already from previous election cycles? How much money did the "swiftboat" gang pay to get their message out? Do you think these adds and the spokespeople who defended them got so much airtime by accident? War to these people is no different than a dead white chick or a celebrity murder trial except it lasts much longer. Just another way to draw eyeballs to the screen. That real people get killed matters little to these folks. It's not their kids. For them, it's just great television. See the brave mother and father who, in their hour of deepest dispair, having lost a son or daughter in Iraq, are willing to pose for the camera and tell the world how proud they are of their son/daughters' sacrifice for our freedom.
To the parents who have suffered, these sentiments are critical. The greif stricken need reasons, some way to explain. For CNN, MSNBC and Fox, it's just another piece of raw footage to be packaged and cut down to fit a 5 second gap in a continuing narrative. These guys are not interested in finding a way out. They are actively engaged in making sure the Iraq war lasts a long, long time. When they see the families suffering, they probably snicker to themselves. Trust me, Candy Crowley knows this. She can be counted on to do and say the right things when it really counts.

Posted by ny nick | July 19, 2007 4:24 PM