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Times Watch for November 23, 2004

Condoleezza Rice Not as "Bellicose" As Feared?

     From the damn-with-faint-praise department comes David Sanger's Sunday Week in Review analysis ("Hawk Sightings Could Be Premature") of Condoleezza Rice, Bush's pick to succeed Colin Powell as secretary of state.

     Sanger holds out hope that the Bush-Rice team won't be as "bellicose" as some fear: "But just as it proved unwise to draw a straight line then between what the president-elect was saying and how he would act, it may be equally risky to race to the certainty -- as many in Washington did last week -- that a second Bush administration, unrestrained by the caution of Colin Powell, will lead the United States into an unending series of confrontations with the world, starting with bellicose approaches to controlling the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. It could turn out that way, for sure. But it has been quite a while since the words 'Axis of Evil' sprang from the president's lips. And during the election campaign, it was clear from the president's words and actions that the limits on American power had begun to sink in on this White House."

     Sanger unironically refers to "disciples" of Dick Cheney: "Mr. Cheney's office was already moving last week to put his disciples into key second-tier jobs. Mr. Rumsfeld, White House insiders said, was maneuvering to hold on to his job as defense secretary as long as possible. And Ms. Rice's views as national security adviser have been somewhat inscrutable. In that job she swung from her initial role as Mr. Bush's tutor in the ways of the world to a new one, as the woman who tried to read Mr. Bush's post-Sept. 11 instincts and shape them into a new national strategy."

     For the rest of Sanger on Rice, click here:

• Dick Cheney | Iraq War | Condoleezza Rice | David Sanger | Terrorism

If Only Powell Had Been a Democrat

     Todd Purdum sighs after well-loved departing moderate Colin Powell in a "What If?" think piece for the Sunday Week in Review, "Imagining How Powell Might Still Have a Job."

     If only he'd been a Democrat, Purdum muses: "Colin Powell's taste in verse runs to naughty calypso and Broadway lyrics, not John Greenleaf Whittier, the 19th-century Quaker abolitionist and poet who famously wrote: 'For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: "It might have been!"' But it seems probable, as he ends his tenure as the 65th secretary of state, that Mr. Powell would second that emotion. What if this four-star general had been the nation's chief diplomat in a time of peace, not war? What if he had not clashed so often with powerful rivals, and lost so much of the time? What if he had served a president who fully shared his world view? What if he had become a Democrat, not a Republican? The answers will never be known. But a perfectly plausible political fantasy can be fabricated that Mr. Powell might well now be preparing to start his second term in the White House."

     For the rest of Purdum on Powell, click here:

• Campaign 2004 | Democrats | Colin Powell | Todd Purdum

Bush Should Squeeze Congress, Says Suddenly Supportive Times

     Well, that makes a change: After issuing many stories and editorials criticizing the Bush administration for its heavy hand, the Times is suddenly in favor of the White House putting the squeeze on Congress -- as long as it's on behalf of a cause the paper supports.

     That's the impression one gets from the impatient tone of Elisabeth Bumiller and Philip Shenon's story, "Bush Urged to Get Pentagon In Step on Intelligence Bill."

     The Times has made no secret of its approval of the 9-11 commission report, which calls for a number of reforms in the way government spy agencies operate, ideas which some in the military oppose. Bumiller and Shenon write: "A number of Congressional Republicans and members of the Sept. 11 commission called on President Bush on Monday to force Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his military commanders to offer public support for a bill, blocked by House Republicans, that would overhaul the way government spy agencies gather and share intelligence. They said that Mr. Bush, who has vowed to revive the bill, also needed to put pressure on a handful of House members aligned with the Pentagon who defied the president over the weekend and blocked a final vote on the legislation."

     In another convenient turnaround, the Times doesn't see a Republican opposing Bush on an issue as a refreshing maverick, but instead implicitly criticizes him for embarrassing Bush: "[Rep. James] Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was a leader of a faction of conservatives who seemed determined to kill the legislation despite the potential embarrassment to the White House."

     For more from Bumiller and Shenon, click here:

• Elisabeth Bumiller | George W. Bush | CIA | Congress | Philip Shenon | Terrorism

A Triple Play of Politicized Sports Stories

     Not even sports stories are immune from liberal politics at the Times. First there's the opening to a Saturday piece by sports columnist William Rhoden on the violent end to an NBA game between the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers: "At the Summer Games in Athens in August, everyone walked a tightrope of tension. The N.B.A. players, the symbol of American strength and arrogance, were potential targets of violence." (Last year Rhoden advocated canceling the NCAA basketball tournament because of the impending war in Iraq.)

     The front of Monday's Sports page features a Selena Roberts' column on the same matter, "Sports Rage Has Yet to Reach the Ovals." While noting NASCAR has yet to succumb to fan violence, she has this snide and condescending explanation: "The economics of fan hostility has yet to catch Nascar drivers, who still talk in Tobacco Road speak with their red-state base as a nifty camouflage for their Wall Street wealth as living, breathing commodities. A racial undertone has yet to develop into an unspoken tension between the stars of Nascar and their racing audience because many of the drivers and their fans share a conservative ideology, evangelical roots and white privilege."

     Finally, there's this from Eddie Goldstein's review Saturday of a new Manhattan play on baseball hero Jackie Robinson, headlined "A Baseball Legend Playing a New Position: Flawed Human."

     Goldstein writes: "Sports fans wonder if the long-ball histrionics of Barry Bonds are chemically enhanced and hear that a $27 million offer offends Latrell Sprewell, who explains that he's concerned about feeding his family. So what happened to true sports heroes like Jackie Robinson? He's featured in a new play where even a treasured icon is not sacrosanct….Respectful of Robinson's historical impact, Mr. Newman shows us the competitive, prideful and playful star -- then jump-cuts to Robinson's defending his rarely recounted later years supporting Richard Nixon and testifying against Paul Robeson at the Army-McCarthy hearings."

     So testifying against an unrepentant Stalinist like the late actor Robeson (or supporting Republican president Nixon along with millions of other American voters) is evidence of being a "flawed human"?

     For the rest of Rhoden's column, click here:

     For the rest of Roberts' column, click here:

     For Robinson's review in full, click here:

• Richard Nixon | Selena Roberts | Paul Robeson | Sports

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