Bullying, Brazen Bush? -- October 12, 2004 -- TimesWatch.org

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Times Watch for October 12, 2004

Bullying, Brazen Bush?

Tuesday's front page is dominated by the latest in the Times' series on the Bush presidency record, this time with a focus on foreign policy. "Challenging Rest of the World With a New Order," by reporters Roger Cohen, David Sanger and Steven Weisman, begins with an anecdote from a Mexican diplomat to demonstrate how Bush rubs other countries the wrong way: "Jorge Castañeda, Mexico's former foreign minister, has two distinct images of George W. Bush: the charmer intent on reinventing Mexican-American ties and the chastiser impatient with Mexico as the promise of a new relationship soured. The change came with the Sept. 11 attacks. 'My sense is that Bush lost and never regained the gift he had shown for making you feel at ease,' said Mr. Castañeda, who left office last year. 'He became aloof, brusque, and on occasion abrasive.' The brusqueness had a clear message: the United States is at war, it needs everybody's support and that support is not negotiable. Mexico's hesitant stance at the United Nations on the war in Iraq became a source of tension."

Cohen and Co. parrot the same charges that Times reporters (and especially Sanger) have long repeated about Bush: "It is a characterization of Mr. Bush's foreign policy style often heard around the world: bullying, unreceptive, brazen. The result, critics of this administration contend, has been a disastrous loss of international support, damage to American credibility, the sullying of America's image and a devastating war that has already taken more than 1,000 American lives. In the first presidential debate, Senator John Kerry argued that only with a change of presidents could the damage be undone. Mr. Bush had a sharp rebuttal, just as his advisers have long told a different story. In their narrative, Mr. Bush's presidency has been an era of historic change, of new alliances bravely embraced, critical relationships solidified, rapid adaptation to a mortal threat and, above all, a bold undertaking to advance freedom in the Middle East through Iraq."

Of Bush's campaign stops: "The rhetoric at his rallies is of an America unbowed and unrestrained. The day after the first presidential debate Mr. Bush said Mr. Kerry would subject decisions on national security to vetoes 'by countries like France.' The U.N. is often derided at Republican events. This sort of talk may bring partisan crowds to their feet, but it makes the world uneasy."

They claim that Bush "short-circuited" the diplomatic process, even though Bush went to the United Nations in a failed attempt to get the body to enforce its own resolutions against Saddam Hussein: "But he was unapologetic about short-circuiting that process to invade Iraq. 'It became clear to me that we were never going to get a second resolution out of the United Nations,' he said. He realized, he added, that it was time 'for an American president to set an agenda, make it clear, not change, not get blown around because of political winds.'"

Under a subhead that reads: "A World Alienated," the Times argues: "But the complaint often heard around the world is that from the outset the Bush administration's dismissive attitude set a pattern of take-it-or-leave-it policies that needlessly alienated friends. The Iraq war accelerated that process. Then, the acknowledgment that there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and no proven links between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda cemented the view in Paris, Berlin and elsewhere that Mr. Bush governed from ideology first, facts second."

Despite the Times' myriad attempts to mislead on the issue, the 9/11 commission found ample ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda.

The reporters also wonder why Bush hasn't apologized for the war, even though the intelligence agencies of virtually every country "knew" Hussein had weapons of mass destruction: "Even Mr. Blair had to apologize for the intelligence about unconventional weapons in Iraq, something Mr. Bush has resisted."

For the rest of the Times on the Bush foreign policy record, click here.

Still Hunting Fox News

Frank Rich's latest "arts" column, "Why Did James Baker Turn Bush Into Nixon?" is on Bush's performance in his first debate and features an attack on Fox News viewers: "But those who live by Fox News can die by Fox News. If you limit your diet to Fox and its talk-radio and blogging satellites, you may think that the only pressing non-Laci Peterson, non-Kobe, non-hurricane stories are 'Rathergate' and the antics of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Your diet of bad news from Iraq is restricted, and Abu Ghraib becomes an over-the-top frat hazing. You are certain that John Kerry can't score in the debates because everyone knows he's an overtanned, overmanicured metrosexual. You reside in such an isolated echo chamber that you aren't aware that even the third-rated network news broadcast, that anchored by the boogeyman Dan Rather, draws 50 percent more viewers on a bad night than 'The O'Reilly Factor' does on a great one (the Bush interview)."

As opposed to "sophisticated" New Yorkers who only read the Times? Besides, if Fox is such a tiny player, then why does Rich feel such a need to bash its viewership?

For the rest of Rich's self-satisfied anti-Fox rant, click here.

• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Debates | Fox News | Frank Rich

Bush's "Hang Tough" Decision Echoes Vietnam

David Sanger's Sunday Week in Review story tries to make a stark campaign issue out of Bush's alleged refusal to admit to mistakes in "Bush's Pivotal Decision: I Haven't Made a Mistake."

Sanger asserts that the decision "has come to look far riskier than it did in the flush of handing Iraq back to Iraqis. Win or lose, when the history of the 2004 Bush campaign is written, it may turn out that the bet about how to talk about the war will prove pivotal. Mr. Bush held his bet through the presidential debate Friday, declining a questioner's invitation to describe any mistake he had made. The bet was a mix of political and military calculation, of Mr. Bush's own temperament, and of what proved to be an overly optimistic projection of what Iraq would look like in early October….'It's been a really, really bad week,' a senior White House official conceded after three successive days in which the news seemed to be eroding the sand under some of the president's justifications for the war, and his explanations of its aftermath. It started with a concession by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who said at the Council on Foreign Relations that he was never convinced by the evidence that Saddam Hussein had deep ties to Al Qaeda. That day, the former head of the coalition authority, L. Paul Bremer III, thinking he was speaking off the record, insisted that he had long thought that America needed more troops early in the occupation to prevent lawlessness. Outraged, White House officials denounced him in background conversations with reporters. And by week's end, Mr. Bremer was backing and filling."

Then Sanger provides another take on Iraq as Vietnam: "Mr. Bush's decision to hang tough has echoes of the strategy used by another president from Texas. In the 1968 campaign, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey began edging back from the Johnson Administration's plan to admit no fault with its policy in Vietnam. He got an angry call from his boss, who threatened to 'dry up every Democratic dollar from Maine to California.'"

Sanger picks up the Bush-as-failure idea for his Monday critique. "A Doctrine Under Pressure: Pre-emption Is Redefined" assumes the Duelfer report about the state of Hussein's WMD is "damaging" to Bush and argues that the president is changing his justification for the war: "Under pressure to explain anew his decision to invade Iraq in light of a damaging report from the C.I.A.'s top weapons inspector, President Bush appears to be quietly redefining one of the signature philosophies of his administration -- his doctrine of pre-emptive military action. Traditionally, pre-empting an enemy is all about urgency, striking before the enemy strikes. In the prelude to the invasion in March of last year, Mr. Bush and his aides stopping short of saying Saddam Hussein posed an 'imminent' threat. Still, they used urgent-sounding language at every turn to explain why they could not afford to wait for inspectors to complete their work, or for the United Nations Security Council to come to a consensus on authorizing military action. 'Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud,' he said in a speech delivered Oct. 7, 2002. But the C.I.A. report released last week, written by Charles A. Duelfer, described the evidence as anything but clear and the peril as far from urgent."

Later, watching Bush on the trail, Sanger chooses words that portray Bush's typical politicking in the most negative possible light, portraying Bush controlling an audience of knee-jerk automatons: "The 'global test' phrase comes from a statement by Mr. Kerry in the first presidential debate that Mr. Bush now regularly throws back at him. 'Now he says he wants a global test before we take action to defend our security,' Mr. Bush said on Saturday in Chanhassen, Minn., waiting for the crowd to yell 'Boo!' When the audience obliged, he added that 'The problem is that the senator can never pass his own test,' going on to list military action that Mr. Kerry has opposed, including in the Persian Gulf war."

For Sanger's Week in Review piece, click here.

For Sanger on Bush's Iraq reaction from Monday, click here.

No Hedging When It Comes to Pushing Lefties

Liberal reporter Chris Hedges again uses the pages of the Times to publicize a left-wing religious figure, this one Rev. James Forbes Jr. In his latest "Public Lives" profile, Tuesday's "From the Pulpit, a Struggle for Justice," he writes: "In the battle over Jesus, what he stood for, what he represents and how faith is experienced and sustained, the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., the senior minister of Riverside Church, is determined to provide an alternative vision to the one offered by religious conservatives."

After noting the religious activism of decades ago, Hedges adds, as if regretfully: "But times have changed. The social activism that was more widely accepted within the mainstream church decades ago has given way to a narrower belief that stresses personal piety and devotion."

So one must be a liberal activist to be fully religious?

"Dr. Forbes, who travels the country trying to galvanize liberal clergy members into a national network, is often a voice crying in the wilderness. He seeks, he said, to remind Americans that they also have carried out violence and oppression in the name of God."
The photo caption quoting Forbes reveals his liberal priorities: "Poverty is the real weapon of mass destruction."

For the rest of Hedges' profile of Rev. Forbes, click here.

• Rev. James Forbes | Chris Hedges | Public Lives | Religion

Iovine's Odd Museum Piece

Julie Iovine writes about a proposed U.S. Army museum/entertainment complex in Sunday's Arts & Leisure section (under the neatly titled headline "The Army Wants You For the Afternoon") but sets the story up with this grim, off-point detail: "The United States Army has a lot on its plate these days. In Iraq, costs and casualties are mounting; back home, recruitment is dwindling. So the oldest branch of the armed forces might be forgiven for putting off new ventures. Nevertheless, it is about to announce a bold new experiment in multimedia entertainment -- and brand-name architecture."

For the rest of Iovine, click here.

• Arts | Defense | Julie Iovine | Iraq War

How About Those Pro-Kerry Polls?

Another campaign story (this one from Jodi Wilgoren and David Sanger) embraces recent poll findings -- now that they show Kerry doing better: "But Democrats, buoyed by a week of developments that undercut Mr. Bush's claims of vigorous job growth and his main justification for invading Iraq, said they would not lose the momentum heading into the final debate, in Tempe, Ariz., on Wednesday. An Associated Press survey published Friday, just before the debate, showed Mr. Kerry leading Mr. Bush 50 percent to 46 percent, reversing Mr. Bush's 52 percent to 45 percent lead from two weeks before. The margin of error was three percentage points. Time magazine has the two deadlocked at 45 percent, with Mr. Bush having lost a six-point lead, and Mr. Kerry with a strong advantage among women."

They conclude: "As the past few roller-coaster weeks of the campaign have shown, the two campaigns' plans may be upended by news developments here and abroad; Mr. Kerry was handed powerful ammunition for his arguments last week with the Duelfer report on Iraq's weapons and a report showing weak job growth."

For more from Wilgoren and Sanger, click here.

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