February 03, 2005, 8:38 a.m.
Bush’s Big Mo
The media can feel presidential momentum, but predict its sudden evaporation.

By Tim Graham

Like the onset of an infectious winter illness, reporters last night were coming down with a disturbing feeling. Despite their best efforts last year to convince Americans to drop President Bush and mark the Iraq war in the history books as a colossal military and political blunder — and despite pre-State of the Union address clucking that Bush is at a "historic low" in approval ratings — they can sense that the president is on a roll, that he's beginning to look bold, visionary, even "Churchillian" (to quote David Gergen on PBS last night).

Successful elections in Iraq, which occurred despite months of cynical media speculation that it was foolish not to delay, feel to the media like a rejection of their relentless vision of a hopeless quagmire in the making. (Or as John Podhoretz put it Sunday, the elections were "Ted Kennedy's Vietnam.") The touching human moment of Wednesday night's speech, when a fallen Marine's mother hugged an Iraqi woman who had voted, only cemented the momentum.

On ABC, usually dismissive Terry Moran gave away too much by calling it a "shattering" moment, one that "crystallizes" what the president has been trying to do. Cokie Roberts said it "leaves you with goose bumps." On CBS, Dan Rather said it was "the most poignant moment of any State of the Union night we can remember." Ted Koppel and his Nightline panel universally concluded it was a "grand slam." On MSNBC, Chris Matthews clumsily tried to conclude that this was a moment about growing the president's numbers on Social Security reform, which even media liberals like Newsweek's Jon Meacham dismissed as "absurd." Trying to suggest the grieving mother hugged the Iraqi voter at some focus group's urging makes you look like the world's most oafishly cynical pundit.

Bush supporters watching at home can be forgiven for sensing that the media elite feels that its fortunes are in direct competition with Bush's. When the president is riding high, they feel panic and hopelessness. Only predicting Bush's imminent political decline, through unpopularity or "lame duckery," as Peter Jennings put it last night, gives them confidence. So the conventional-wisdom assembly line insisted that Bush's second term doesn't actually last for the four years the voters just gave him, but that it would only last six or nine (or to be most generous, eighteen) months before Bush's bandwagon turned into a pumpkin. CBS's incoming interim anchor Bob Schieffer tipped his hand when he said the president has about nine months before all his handiwork will "evaporate," including the Social Security reforms, if there isn't success on the ground in Iraq. For the liberal media, the sun will come out tomorrow when Bush loses his effectiveness. But what if he boldly outperforms their predictions again?

Just in case people might think the media were too pro-Bush, ABC also seemed eager to puff up the Democratic response. Jennings hailed the Harry Reid speech as "good stuff" from a speaker some don't find telegenic. Reporting from Baghdad, ABC reporter Martha Raddatz added, "We went out as well, yesterday, with some people [who] say election hangover is, they're — they're getting over that. And they're talking about, frankly what Nancy Pelosi was talking about, and that is the infrastructure, saying we got to get these programs going." An "election hangover," like the vote was a drunken bender? That's an unfortunate metaphor.

Jennings also predicted the end of sickening euphoria soon: "Everybody's very euphoric about the fact that Iraqis went to vote on Sunday. When the numbers come in eventually, who did vote and what percentage they voted in, I think it will be clearer that perhaps the enthusiasm for the process is not as great as people here in Washington think." Translation: Just wait until my pessimism is all the rage again.

The Democrats were treated with typical tenderness. Their hooting down of the president on Social Security was rarely treated as rudeness. On PBS, New York Times reporter Elizabeth Bumiller declared it showed this was "not an auspicious start" for Bush's second term. Only ABC's Linda Douglass suggested the Democrats sounded "very shrill" (while she said seconds later the Republicans are "scared, period" on Social Security reform.) NBC's Brian Williams finished his Barbara Boxer interview by noting the senator played a "key dissenting role" in the Condoleezza Rice confirmation debate, instead of saying she "played a key role in attacking Rice as a liar." No one seemed to mention that as Nancy Pelosi projected her party's belief that the American military should remain "second to none," she was clashing with incoming DNC chair Howard Dean, who claimed last year on the campaign trail that American military superiority would eventually be eclipsed.

But the hard-left "Air America" crowd clearly thought the Democrats weren't rude enough. On MSNBC, celebrity leftist Janeane Garofalo was very upset that Mike Barnicle would use the term "Animal House" to describe Democratic behavior during the speech: "It wasn't Animal House behavior, and it was a very short, vocal response. And the inked fingers was [sic] disgusting...The inked fingers and the position of them, which is gonna be a Daily Show photo already, of them signaling in this manner [does the Nazi salute], as if they have solidarity with the Iraqis who braved physical threats against their lives to vote as if somehow these inked-fingered Republicans have something to do with that." Garofalo sounded almost as ridiculous as when she suggested on the night of the inauguration that "George W. Bush is unelectable, in my opinion."

After several years of projecting doom in Iraq, it's odd to see the media attacking the White House for building a sense of urgency about reforming Social Security with the Democrats kicking and screaming behind. The night before last, Ted Koppel concluded with the thought: "Yes, fear is a powerful force, but here's a lovely sign I saw the other day: 'Pessimism,' it read, 'is a misuse of the imagination.'" How any arrogant liberal media gloom merchant like Koppel can say that without an ounce of introspection on their own recent career is an amazing sign of the hermetically sealed desperation inside the shrinking bubble of liberalism.

— Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and an NRO contributor.

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