Double Standards on Speeches -- September 3, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for September 3, 2004

Double Standards on Speeches:
U.S. "Divided," "Distressed," "Dubious" About Bush Years--But Kerry's Speech "May Well Have Turned a Corner."

Todd Purdum's "news analysis" of President Bush's acceptance speech from the Republican Convention, "Bold Strokes, Few Details," is dominated by criticism of the Bush administration right from the opening lines: "For a nation divided over his stewardship, distressed about the economy and dubious about the war with Iraq, President Bush had one overriding message last night: He's still the one."

Then Purdum sniffed: "But he offered few critical details of the second-term domestic agenda he outlined. His big policy ideas--restraining government spending, simplifying the tax code, offering tax credits for health savings accounts, allowing personal investment accounts for Social Security--were vague. And the specific proposals he cited--increasing money for community colleges, opening rural health centers--were mostly small."

Later he characterizes Bush's tax-cut push as "steamrolling" a "compliant Congress," before continuing the critical refrain: "Four years ago in Philadelphia, Mr. Bush criticized eight years of Democratic rule with the refrain: 'They had their chance. They have not led. We will.' No one--not even the two protesters who sneaked into Madison Square Garden to interrupt his speech--can dispute that he has, first by steamrolling big tax cuts through a compliant Congress, then toppling the Taliban and winning support for the controversial war with Iraq. But Mr. Bush's promise then to 'extend the promise of prosperity to every forgotten corner of this country' remains unmet, slow job growth makes his assertion last night that 'we have seen a shaken economy rise to its feet' debatable, and the war is enmeshed in what even he recently acknowledged as a 'miscalculation of what the conditions would be.' The overriding question for an electorate that remains as polarized as the one that failed to give him a popular victory in 2000 is where Mr. Bush wants lead the nation next, and how he intends to get there….But Mr. Bush's own stated rationale for deposing Saddam Hussein has shifted repeatedly, the unconventional weapons that he said threatened the world have not been found, and his opponents contend that his actions have inflamed Muslim extremists and put Americans at greater risk."

Purdum's reaction to Kerry's acceptance speech in July was considerably warmer, as was the headline: "Strong Show of 'Strength'--Speech to Big Audience As a Test of Leadership."

While Purdum put Bush on the defensive, his Kerry coverage opened with a zestful, "Mission Accomplished" vibe: "For months, John Kerry and his supporters have told voters that he is strong enough to keep the nation safe and caring enough to make it comfortable with him as president. On Thursday night his goal was to show the biggest audience of his life that both claims were true, and he gave it his best shot. In an emphatic speech that used some variation of the word 'strength' 17 times, Mr. Kerry portrayed himself not only as a plausible, but also as a vastly preferable commander in chief to President Bush, one whose own combat service left him with a special understanding of the twin American traditions of force and restraint."

Later Purdum gushed: "Mr. Kerry may well have turned a corner on the path toward inspiring his party, and inviting swing voters to put him in the White House. He perspired visibly in the overcrowded hall, but his delivery was fluid, relaxed and assured, and he smiled often."

For the full Purdum analysis of Bush's speech, click here:

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry | Todd Purdum | Republican Convention

Zell Miller's "Furious Assault"-- in 2004, Not 1992

Carl Hulse lets both his fellow Democrats and Republicans attack Sen. Zell Miller for his "furious assault" on Kerry on Wednesday night: "Democrats lashed out at Mr. Miller on Thursday, questioning the claims he made in his speech and predicting that it would backfire by exposing voters to a bitter side of the convention. 'I think Zell Miller spoke for himself last night, and I think he turned America off last night,' said Terry McAuliffe, the national Democratic Party chairman. 'I think he frightened even the Republican base.' Mr. McAuliffe and other party leaders said the address was reminiscent of a divisive speech given by Patrick J. Buchanan to the Republican convention in Houston in 1992, when the combative tone of the event was later judged a factor in the defeat of the first President Bush. The Democrats said Mr. Miller's speech stood in stark contrast to what they described as the inspiring Democratic keynote delivered in Boston by Barack Obama, a Senate candidate from Illinois."
Hulse found some Republicans who somewhat agreed: "But other Republicans said the tone was off. A spokesman for Senator John McCain of Arizona said Mr. McCain believed 'the two parties should not treat each other as enemies but focus on policy differences.' And even some delegates who cheered the speech in the convention hall said that when they later saw television replays, they thought the close-ups of Mr. Miller's clenched features presented an intensity that could have been overwhelming."

Hulse paints the Democrats as shocked, shocked, that Miller lit into Kerry: "Democrats were prepared for Mr. Miller's moment in the Republican spotlight, circulating praise he offered for Mr. Kerry three years ago at a dinner in Georgia. But they were taken aback by his aggressiveness. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, accused Mr. Miller of participating in the 'shameful smears' being hurled by Republicans and said that Mr. Miller was not the best authority on Mr. Kerry's record. Mr. Miller is leaving the Senate this year after one term. 'He has been retired from the time he was elected,' Mr. Reid said."

But later Hulse notes the speech may have actually been effective: "While the Democrats were attacking the attacker, a Republican pollster said a focus group of swing voters in Ohio rated Mr. Miller a hit, particularly with his sarcastic line that Mr. Kerry would arm American troops with spitballs."

The Times seems to have a double standard on Zell's harsh rhetoric, depending on who he's attacking. Back in 1992, the Times didn't much mind Zell Miller's keynote address for Bill Clinton, in which Miller, then governor of Georgia, lashed into Bush Sr. and Vice President Quayle. Besides calling Bush an "aristocrat," Miller said: "Let's face facts: George Bush just doesn't get it. He doesn't see it; he doesn't feel it, and he's done nothing about it. That's why we cannot afford four more years. If the 'education President' gets another term, even our kids won't be able to spell potato. If the 'law and order President' gets another term the criminals will run wild, because our commander-in-chief talks like Dirty Harry, but acts like Barney Fife. If the 'environmental President' gets another term, the fish he catches off Kennebunkport will have three eyes. And folks, after January, George Bush is going to have plenty of time to go fishing."

Back then the Times shrugged off Miller's rhetoric against Bush Sr. In contrast to the Times intense coverage of Miller's attacks on Kerry, in 1992 only reporter R. W. Apple mentioned the tone of Miller's speech, in a single paragraph: "After savaging Mr. Bush at length in his keynote speech, Mr. Miller said, 'So much for the millionaire, now on to the billionaire,' and delivered a shorter indictment of Mr. Perot."

For the rest of Hulse on Miller's keynote address, click here:

Bush "Less Strident" Than Other Speakers

After accusing previous Republican Convention speakers of "brutal attacks" on Kerry, Adam Nagourney and Richard Stevenson give Bush's speech some backhanded praise: "The speech was distinctly less strident than the harder edged speeches that served as the four-day warm up for the president's climactic acceptance speech. As he did in 2000, Mr. Bush warmed the audience with self-deprecatory jokes, including one about his tendency toward malapropisms."

They refer to the Republican's "combative" convention of 1992 and more unsubstantiated claims that Republicans have questioned Kerry's patriotism: "The speech opened an elaborate roll-out of Mr. Bush's fall campaign, and it capped the most combative Republican convention since the party gathered in Houston to renominate Mr. Bush's father in 1992. After four days in which speaker after speaker attacked Mr. Kerry's credibility, credentials and even his patriotism, and focused almost entirely on national security, Mr. Bush expanded his appeal with a discussion of domestic policy….For all that, there was one notable omission from Mr. Bush's speech. The president made no mention of the foreign figure who arguably most influenced his first term in the White House: Osama bin Laden, the yet-to-be-captured leader of Al Qaeda."

For more of Nagourney and Stevenson's coverage of Bush's speech, click here:

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Adam Nagourney, Patriotism, Republican Convention, Richard Stevenson, Terrorism | Al Qaeda

Fact-Checking Bush's Speech, But Not Kerry's

David Sanger and Elisabeth Bumiller perform a highly unusual "reality check" on Bush's speech in Friday's "Comparing President's Address And History." While Kerry's Boston acceptance speech didn't receive any morning-after spin, the Times for some reason feels compelled to "fact-check" Bush's speech, even letting the Kerry campaign defend itself against some of Bush's charges: "President Bush's acceptance speech last night included assertions about his accomplishments and Senator John Kerry's past statements and voting patterns that were at best selective, and in some cases challenged by the historical record."

Here's a sample:

"PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT 'Senator Kerry opposed Medicare reform and health savings accounts,' Mr. Bush said halfway through his speech, taking on his opponent, but not with the ferocity that Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator Zell Miller, Democrat of Georgia, did on Wednesday night. He added, 'I brought Republicans and Democrats together to strengthen Medicare.'

FACT The reform was an overwhelmingly Republican initiative, with only 16 Democrats voting for it in the House, and 11 in the Senate. Mr. Kerry was on the campaign trail and did not vote on Mr. Bush's favored version of the Medicare plan, but he is on record as being opposed to it, saying it benefited drug companies at the expense of the elderly. Mr. Kerry, like most other Democrats, favored a more ambitious plan."

Bumiller and Sanger also attempt to rebut Bush on statements regarding his Medicare drug benefit and education reform, and throw cold war on Bush's claims of a growing economy:

"PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT 'I believe in the energy and innovative spirit of America's workers, entrepreneurs, farmers and ranchers--so we unleashed that energy with the largest tax relief in a generation. Because we acted, our economy is growing again, and creating jobs, and nothing will hold us back.'

FACT The economy was in recession for much of 2001. It has been growing since then, although the pace of growth, after picking up last year and early this year, appears to have faltered again. Throughout the recovery, the rate of job creation has lagged the rate typical of past economic cycles."

That hardly rebuts what Bush said.

At the end of this litany, the Times defends its historical reputation regarding a crack Bush made in his speech about a Times column from 1946 doom-saying the state of occupied post-war Germany. Yet the Times does so in a way that not only doesn't refute what Bush says, but actually seems to indirectly (unwittingly?) lend support to Bush's current policy in Iraq, something Sanger has never been eager to do:

"PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT Mr. Bush cited a column in The New York Times, published in 1946, that described the desperate state of occupied Germany. He quoted it as saying that Germany was 'a land in an acute stage of economic, political and moral crisis,' and that everywhere in the country 'one meets alarmed officials doing their utmost to deal with the consequences of the occupation policy that they admit has failed.'

'Maybe that same person's still around, writing editorials,' Mr. Bush said, going on to say that the country had a 'resolute president named Truman' who stuck with the occupation.
FACT Mr. Bush accurately quoted the column, written by Anne O'Hare McCormick, but he failed to mention that Ms. McCormick also praised the conditions in the American sector of Germany, saying it was working better than other sectors because the United States had turned over more of the administration of the area to Germans to 'encourage initiative and develop self-government.' It is, of course, a policy similar to what Mr. Bush did in Iraq in June."

For the rest of the unusual "reality check" of Bush's speech, click here:

GOP "Buoyed" by Convention

The headline and photo that dominate Friday's front-page renders a fair portrayal of the mood at the Republican convention, with a smiling Bush and Cheney under the headline, "Buoyed G.O.P. Says It Has Framed Agenda for Fall."

Reporters Robin Toner and Jodi Wilgoren begin: "Republicans ended their convention yesterday on a confident note, optimistic that they had framed the debate for the fall campaign around President Bush's strengths as a wartime president--and that they had succeeded in raising significant doubts about Senator John Kerry with slashing attacks on the Democrat as too indecisive and liberal to lead."

But a Democratic rebuttal arrives in the next paragraph "Scrambling to regain their political footing, Democrats vowed to recover from the attacks of August and return the voters' focus to the economy, with an aggressive new advertising campaign that highlights Mr. Bush's 'failure to deliver' on issues like job creation and prescription drugs, and with a fiery new attack by Mr. Kerry last night on those 'who refused to serve when they could have' and 'who misled America into Iraq.' The Democrats scoffed at Mr. Bush's speech as an empty defense of the status quo, devoid of new ideas."

Then there's another occurrence of the Times favorite word to describe charges made by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: "But Mr. Kerry was thrown off-stride by the largely unsubstantiated attacks of a group of conservative Vietnam veterans last month."

They wonder if Kerry made a strategic mistake at his convention by spending so little time on his Senate record, while noting Bush's speech wasn't as harsh as the preceding ones: "There was another major piece of unfinished business from the Democratic convention--by spending so little time focused on Mr. Kerry's 20 years in the Senate, it gave the Republicans something of a blank slate to fill this week. Speaker after speaker took the stage at the Republican convention to denounce Mr. Kerry's voting record on foreign and domestic policy as liberal and extreme. Even Mr. Bush, in a much more positive speech than many of the Republicans who preceded him, had harsh words for Mr. Kerry's values and votes."

For more from Toner and Wilgoren, click here:

Bush on Stage: "The Tootsie Roll Center of a Tootsie Pop"

Fresh off the Israel beat, James Bennet surveys Bush's "Survivor"-style speech stagecraft in "From an Island of a Stage, Bush States Case for Serving Another Term."

Bennet focuses on whatever alleged contradictions he can scope out at the festivities: "Almost all the singers who entertained the overwhelmingly white crowd before the president arrived were black. Several of the speakers were members of minorities, but one representative of the Republicans' diversity was missing last night: Unlike her sister, Elizabeth, Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter, who is lesbian, was not seated in Mr. Cheney's box. Mr. Cheney, with a child on his lap, did not clap when Mr. Bush advocated 'protection of marriage'--a reference to preventing same-sex marriage….It was hard to imagine that the first President Bush, who seemed uncomfortable with the pronoun 'I' and whose mother raised him not claim too much credit, standing on his son's proud island last night….Depending on one's elevation in the raucous hall, Mr. Bush looked as he delivered his speech like a model at the end of his catwalk, a figurine on a layered cake, or, from the cheap seats against the rafters, like the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop."

For more of James Bennet's musings, click here:

Kerry's "Fed Up With the Relentless Assault."

Reporter Carl Hulse writes "As Convention Ends, Political Fistfight Begins" for the Times blog-type online feature "Political Points" and rehashes the theme of an attacking Bush and a fed-up Kerry: "Mr. Bush finished off the assault on Mr. Kerry in his acceptance speech, honing some of the ridicule and criticism he has heaped on the Massachusetts senator for weeks on the stump. 'To be fair,' he said. 'there are some things my opponent is for. He's proposed more than $2 trillion in new federal spending so far, and that's a lot even for a senator from Massachusetts.'"

Kerry comes off as the aggrieved party in Hulse's telling: "Apparently fed up with the relentless assault, Mr. Kerry was starting to fight back. At a rally in Ohio shortly after Mr. Bush's speech, Mr. Kerry was aiming take on the Bush ticket over its own military records."

For the rest of Hulse, click here:

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Carl Hulse | Sen. John Kerry | Republican Convention

Republicans "Hate America"

The headline to columnist Paul Krugman's "Feel the Hate" is self-explanatory: "For many months we've been warned by tut-tutting commentators about the evils of irrational 'Bush hatred.' Pundits eagerly scanned the Democratic convention for the disease; some invented examples when they failed to find it. Then they waited eagerly for outrageous behavior by demonstrators in New York, only to be disappointed again. There was plenty of hatred in Manhattan, but it was inside, not outside, Madison Square Garden. Barack Obama, who gave the Democratic keynote address, delivered a message of uplift and hope. Zell Miller, who gave the Republican keynote, declared that political opposition is treason: 'Now, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.' And the crowd roared its approval."

He goes into some cheap-shot psychoanalyzing and reheats the "questioning Kerry's patriotism" canard: "At some level the people at that convention know that their designated hero is a man who never in his life took a risk or made a sacrifice for his country, and that they are impugning the patriotism of men who have."

Then Krugman goes perhaps further out than he's ever been, arguing that many of the Republican conventioneers "hate America." "But the vitriol also reflects the fact that many of the people at that convention, for all their flag-waving, hate America. They want a controlled, monolithic society; they fear and loathe our nation's freedom, diversity and complexity….Mr. Bush, it's now clear, intends to run a campaign based on fear. And for me, at least, it's working: thinking about what these people will do if they solidify their grip on power makes me very, very afraid."

For more from the easily frightened Krugman, click here:

• George W. Bush | Columnists | Paul Krugman | Republican Convention

Fox News' "Cozy Duvet of Rage"

Alessandra Stanley's "TV Watch" column is a backhanded tribute to Fox News, which had massive ratings success during the convention. In "Fast, Frisky and Caffeinated, Fox News Looked Right at Home All Week," she writes: "It is the favorite news source of conservative-minded viewers, but Fox's anti-liberal sensibility is not its only draw. Even on matters as uncontested as the weather, Fox News's heart ticks to a faster, louder beat; it is a network that presents the news with pizazz and a frisky tone. ('Back to you, guys' is how reporters in the field address the anchors in the studio.) And its top commentators express a righteous indignation--mostly at the mainstream media, Hollywood liberals and the Democratic Party--that envelops loyal viewers in a warm, cozy duvet of rage."

Later she gives the "enraged" their due: "This has not been an angry week for the network, however. Fox News's ratings soared during the Republican National Convention; for the first time ever, more viewers watched the convention on Fox than on ABC, CBS or NBC. On Wednesday night, more people watched Zell Miller and Dick Cheney on Fox than on ABC and CBS combined….The difference between Fox and other cable networks was clearest at the beginning of the war in Iraq, where it was gung-ho from the start, then lashed out at other news organizations when the seemingly easy victory turned sour. Its choice of special correspondents, Geraldo Rivera and Oliver L. North, was also distinctive."

In a surprise, Stanley even admits that Fox plays it straight in its reporting: "But for the most part, Fox reporters report by the book, and the convention coverage has not proved any different: Wendell Goler, a White House correspondent, reported yesterday morning about Mr. Bush's endorsement by New York firefighters on Wednesday, then noted that Mr. Kerry had won the support of their national organization."

She concludes with some of the kindest words that have appeared in the paper about Fox News (a network the paper's Executive Editor Bill Keller derided this week as "pseudo-journalism"): "Fox News has many excellent reporters and its share of scoops, but its bristly anchors sometimes bring to mind the old joke about Claire Booth Luce's audience with the pope. Mrs. Luce could be heard passionately hectoring her host, who weakly protested, 'But madam, I too am a Catholic.'"

For the rest of Stanley on Fox News, click here:

E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org