Trashing "Unfit for Command," Loving Kitty Kelley -- October 11, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for October 11, 2004

Trashing "Unfit for Command," Loving Kitty Kelley

After spending seven weeks at or near the top of the Times best seller list, the paper finally deigns to issue a brief, shallow, 100% negative review of the Swift Boat Veterans book "Unfit for Command," courtesy of Susannah Meadows, who just happens to cover the Kerry campaign for Newsweek.

Meadows writes: "If John Kerry loses the presidential election, 'Unfit for Command,' by John E. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, will go down as a chief reason. The book -- a sort of companion piece to the political attack ads placed by O'Neill's group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- is a furious assault on Kerry's character and service in Vietnam. Navy records have discredited the book's claim that Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star and third Purple Heart -- though only after the sensation hijacked cable news for a month. But for all the impact it's had on the race, the book itself is totally unconvincing. The problem is that John O'Neill, who is the driving force and public face of the book, is so curdled with hatred for Kerry that, as though he were an unreliable narrator in a Nabokov novel, you can't trust what he says….As with many moments in the book, his fixation on attacking Kerry would be funny if it weren't so sad. But O'Neill and Corsi refuse to back down, even in the face of logic or history."

Meadows concludes: "In its determination to wreck Kerry's candidacy, 'Unfit for Command' seems to reveal more about the authors than about Kerry."

(Blogger Beldar writes: "This is an effort so pathetic that it actually should be insulting even to Sen. Kerry's partisans." And Powerline prints some letters sent to the Times by veterans who take issue with the review.)

Contrast that with Ted Widmer's favorable review of Bush-hating Kitty Kelley's "The Family" from the same issue (marking the NYT's second review of Kelley's book, which has been on the best seller list a mere two weeks).

Widmer writes: "'The Family,' her plump new offering, has left few stones unturned in its quest to present what she calls 'the real story' of the Bushes." He adds: "Sensational allegations are now filling water-cooler conversations around America."

And Times editors give Widmer space to provide the details of several of those unsubstantiated allegations. He then switches to another kind of slur: "Kelley's Bush is hungrier for power than we remember and willing to do just about anything to achieve it. After moving to Texas in early adulthood, he quickly embraced the orthodoxies of his time and place, which included distrust of the government, misogyny and racism."

For the Times' hostile take on "Unfit for Command," click here.

For the Times' friendly take on Kitty Kelley's "The Family," click here.

"Confident" Kerry, "Defensive" Bush

Saturday's front-page story by Todd Purdum on Bush's debate performance pits confident Kerry vs. a defensive Bush.

In "Best Defense: More Offense," he writes: "Halfway through last night's debate, President Bush declared: 'The best way to defend America in this world we live in is to stay on the offense,' but he spent much of the evening on the defensive against John Kerry's unyielding accusations that he had mishandled the war in Iraq and the American economy. At the outset, Mr. Bush seemed a bit strident and on edge, as if over-eager to avoid a repetition of his pained performance eight days ago. But he appeared to gain comfort as the encounter wore on, sounding considerably more confident and collected than he did last week. He strolled the stage, microphone in hand and characterized Mr. Kerry as 'just not credible.' But as often as not, it was Mr. Kerry who was on the offensive on topics like tax cuts in wartime, prescription drug imports, the ballooning deficit, homeland security, the rationale for the war in Iraq and the daunting conditions on the ground there that he said had led to a 'back-door draft' of National Guard and Reserve troops."

Purdum pushes the image of a confident Kerry while portraying Bush as a bit lost without his supportive audience in tow: "Mr. Kerry generally seemed to be more in command of his brief, more confident in demeanor and more intent than Mr. Bush to reach across partisan boundaries as he invoked the leadership of Ronald Reagan and Dwight D. Eisenhower and talked of the importance of balancing budgets. Mr. Bush seemed more content to play to his conservative base….Unlike their first debate, which produced a sharp swing in national polls to Mr. Kerry's advantage, their exchange last night seemed more apt to reinforce the views of each man's supporters, while offering undecided voters some fresh context and insight into their divergent policies and personalities. Both men recycled lines from their stump speeches, but some of Mr. Bush's seemed to fall flat without the supportive applause he can count on at partisan rallies."

For the full debate analysis from Purdum, click here.

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

Defensive Bush, the Sequel

Saturday's review of Bush's debate performance by TV critic Alessandra Stanley, "Bush Shows a Different Side, but Not His Best One," picks up where her critique of the first match-up left off, with Bush on the defensive: "The president managed not to scowl. But he let his feelings get the better of him, getting hot under the collar in a medium best served cold. From the outset, his clenched jaw twitched, and he blinked repeatedly, like a man whose contact lens hurt….Mr. Bush tried to charm his audience, but there was little laughter when he tried a self-deprecating joke about his first debate, saying his opponent's answer almost made him want to 'scowl.' And he barely won a polite laugh when he looked startled when Mr. Kerry suggested that he owned a timber company. 'I own a timber company?' Mr. Bush exclaimed. 'News to me. Need some wood?' He scored rhetorical points, but a television debate often turns on demeanor. And the president never seemed to make Mr. Kerry, cool and stately, squirm….At times, he spoke so loudly he was yelling, getting testy with the audience as well as Mr. Kerry. And not unlike that first battle, the president sounded angry and defensive, as if scolding the undecided."

Her colleague James Bennet agrees: "At the beginning of the evening on Friday night, the president's demeanor sometimes verged on overheated, even angry. But as the night went on he was trying, obviously and meticulously, to stay on his best behavior."

For the rest of Stanley's take on the debate, click here.

The NYT: Your Source for Left-Wing Conspiracy Theories

After ignoring a similar rumor on the Drudge Report about John Kerry having a "cheat sheet" at the first debate, the Times helps to spread a left-wing Internet rumor that Bush was "wired" for his first debate to receive answers from anti-Bush bogeyman Karl Rove (which of course would explain why all the pundits found his performance in that first debate so impressive).

In a full story, "The Mystery of the Bulge in the Jacket," complete with "incriminating" photo, White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller gasps: "What was that bulge in the back of President Bush's suit jacket at the presidential debate in Miami last week? According to rumors racing across the Internet this week, the rectangular bulge visible between Mr. Bush's shoulder blades was a radio receiver, getting answers from an offstage counselor into a hidden presidential earpiece. The prime suspect was Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's powerful political adviser. When the online magazine Salon published an article about the rumors on Friday, the speculation reached such a pitch that White House and campaign officials were inundated with calls."

She actually seems to take the charge seriously: "First they said that pictures showing the bulge might have been doctored. But then, when the bulge turned out to be clearly visible in the television footage of the evening, they offered a different explanation….Ms. Devenish could not say why the 'rumpling' was rectangular."

For the rest of Bumiller's left-wing conspiracy theorizing, click here.

• Elisabeth Bumiller | George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Debates | Gaffes

Pity the Put-Upon French in Oil-for-Food Scandal

Steven Weisman's story on the United Nations' oil-for-food scandal in Iraq, "Report on Iraq Arms Deals Angers France and Others," (along with some selective reporting in a front-page Saturday story), suggests an anti-war spin effort by the part of the Times.

For whatever reason, Weisman chooses to look at the United Nations scandal involving French involvement in the corrupt oil-for-food program as yet another unfair and anti-French Bush failure of diplomacy: "The Bush administration's handling this week of a report on Saddam Hussein's attempts to purchase weapons and buy influence has angered French officials and set back a year of American efforts to repair the rupture caused by the Iraq war, French and other European officials said Friday. The anger of France and others is focused on the assertions in the report by Charles A. Duelfer, the top American arms inspector in Iraq, that French companies and individuals, some with close ties to the government, enriched themselves through Iraq's efforts to gain influence around the world in the years before the war."

The Times indulges in some fine French whine: "French officials say that the report's charges, based on documents and interviews in Iraq, have been denied in the past, but that Mr. Duelfer's report did not contain the denials. They also complain that France was not given more than one day's notice before the report was issued. They were incensed that the report also mentioned Americans in connection with similar charges but that unlike the French they were not identified because of American privacy regulations."

For the rest of Weisman's Francophone story, click here.

More Fact-Checking of Bush on the Trail

Elisabeth Bumiller's latest White House letter, "In a New Offensive, Bush Rearms His Stump Arsenal," fact-checks the newest version of Bush's stump speech. Just as the Times did Friday, Bumiller helps the Kerry campaign out with pre-emptive fact-checking of Bush.

First she portrays Bush playing defense over the just-released Duelfer report on the state of Saddam Hussein's WMD: "The speech, Mr. Bush's campaign officials said, revealed a president on an all-out offensive in the final stretch of the race. But what was really revealing was what the president left out. Gone was one of Mr. Bush's favorite phrases, used just four days earlier in Ohio, about the 'transformational power of liberty.' Gone was his familiar line that freedom is 'the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world." Gone, too, was his sunny prediction that someday an American president would sit down with 'a duly elected leader of Iraq' to talk about how to keep the peace in the 'greater Middle East.' Campaign officials insisted that Mr. Bush was not ditching his well-worked lines --all of them in the hopeful language of his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson -- to keep pace with reality on the ground in Iraq. Instead, the officials said that with all the new attack lines against Mr. Kerry, something had to go."

Later she pivots to protest Kerry on the tax-hike front: "In his new speech, Mr. Bush read a virtual indictment of what he described as Mr. Kerry's record on taxes: 'He voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes 98 times.' 'He voted for higher taxes on Social Security benefits.' And, not least: 'My opponent was against all of our middle-class tax relief.' (In truth, Mr. Kerry essentially voted for one large tax increase, the Clinton tax bill of 1993, which mostly imposed additional income taxes on the wealthy but did include an increase in taxes on Social Security benefits for middle-income retirees. Mr. Kerry also supports middle-class tax breaks, but voted against them in 2001 as part of an overall tax bill that he opposed.)"

The Republican National Committee, for one, begs to differ.

For the rest of Bumiller's story, click here.

• Elisabeth Bumiller | George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry | Taxes

Inconvenient Victory for Pro-War Ally in Australia?

A pro-war Bush ally wins reelection in Australia, and the Times trumpets the news -- on page A16. Sunday's report from Sydney by Raymond Bonner does its best to play down the war angle, as revealed in the headline, "Australians Re-elect Howard As Economy Trumps the War."

Yet when Spain's pro-war Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar lost an election to an anti-war candidate in March, it made the front page ("Blow to Bush: Ally Rejected--Voters Clearly Reiterate Opposition to Iraq War") and David Sanger reported it as a setback for Bush.

In the case of the victory by Australia's pro-war PM John Howard, the Times cautions "the voting was not a referendum on the war": "Iraq loomed in the background during the campaign, but Australian political analysts cautioned that the voting was not a referendum on the war. The main issue was the economy, and that is booming….At this point, Australia's contribution to the war is of more symbolic importance to the Bush administration than it is militarily. Fewer than 200 Australian troops are in Iraq now, and none are engaged in combat. Most are security forces at the Australian Embassy, and some are trainers."

Spanish troop presence was equally "symbolic," but that didn't stop the Times from putting Aznar's defeat on its front page.

For the full Bonner report from Australia, click here.

• Australia | Raymond Bonner | Iraq War | David Sanger | Spain

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