If you watched the Tuesday, Dec. 2, “Countdown With Keith Olbermann” on MSNBC, you saw Newsweek senior Washington correspondent Howard Fineman make a remarkable statement (emphasis ours).
Well, Keith, I have known George (W.) Bush for 20 years. I’ve covered him for 15, starting when he was running for governor down in Texas. It’s not just his economic philosophy, Keith. I think George Bush always had nothing short of contempt for the process of government. That’s a harsh thing to say but I think it’s true. I think he was unfamiliar with it. He didn’t really like it. He kept it as arm’s length when he was governor of Texas and when he was president of the United States. There were relatively few risks involved in doing that in Austin, Texas. There were global risks of catastrophic proportions in doing that, having that attitude in the White House.
Your setup piece used the term ‘ignored early warnings,’ you could say that about Katrina, you could say it about terrorist attacks in the United States, and you could say it about the economic meltdown that we’re now in the middle of. He ignored them because he really didn’t care that much about how government really worked at a time when we desperately needed government to work.
That raised in our mind a burning question about the need for early warnings: Why didn’t Fineman and the rest of the Washington press corps hit that nail on the head loudly and repeatedly, oh, say, eight years ago or even four years ago?
Back then, a frank, even harsh, early warning about Bush’s exceptionally strong potential for indifference and incompetence might’ve been enough to keep him out of the White House or at least deny him a full eight years there.
Yes, there were mentions of a general nature that the neoconservative Bush was no fan of big government. They were a lot like saying mail carriers dislike blisters.
Yeah, sure, that figures.
What we mostly recall hearing in 2000 was how Bush had been a popular governor in Texas, one who worked amicably with Democrats and Republicans alike. He was described as moderately conservative, tough on convicted criminals and pro business.
No red flags and sirens there, just gnawing anxiety for those of us who long ago had enough of conservative Republican misrule.
Not having read everything Fineman has written or heard everything he’s said over the last eight years, we can’t say for sure he never provided a proper warning about Bush.
That said, we know damned well nearly all the Washington press corps and punditocracy tread very lightly on Bush in 2000, giving him every benefit of any doubt that cropped up. We can say their 2004 performance was, with rare exception, an unforgivably shoddy sellout.
No, not a sellout for money directly. Rather, too many — Bob Woodward’s name leaps to mind — seemed more concerned about not risking their access to the offices, hallways and cocktail parties of the partisans in power than about informing people they were primed to elect and then re-elect an ill-informed, lazy, incompetent jerk with a bad attitude.
That incompetent jerk had plenty of accomplices in making a mess of America these last eight years. More than a few of his accomplices were members of the Fourth Estate.
A dire warning was needed before Bush made a complete mess of things, not now, when he has one foot out the White House door and the other on a banana peel.
on Dec 5th, 2008 at 9:49 am
One of the most annoying things about the last 8 years was the cowardice of the American press. And Fineman is a good example of that.
on Dec 5th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Yes, now they tell us; now that it’s too late and it’s a moot point anyway.
And speaking of too little too late, there was an online news headline (I didn’t even bother to click on the story) that Bush admitted the Iraqi war was more expensive and longer-lasting than he anticipated.
on Dec 6th, 2008 at 9:32 am
And all these jokers will still be given column inches and minutes on the tube as “experts” while those who actually sounded warnings are still ignored.
on Dec 6th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Vic, agreed.
Tom, preinvasion, Bush was getting attaboys from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz and the rest of the crackpot crusaders. Plus, he was deep into delusions of democratization by force.
RG, if there was any justice and good sense, the usual pack of pro-Republican bloviators on ABC’s “This Week” would be immediately replaced with David Sirota, Arianna Huffington, Al Franken and Kos, or others more in tune with reality. Fat chance that will ever happen.
on Dec 7th, 2008 at 11:35 am
It’s funny so many of the “Liberal Media” are now coming out and saying I told you so. I think this paragraph pins it down most accurately.
“No, not a sellout for money directly. Rather, too many — Bob Woodward’s name leaps to mind — seemed more concerned about not risking their access to the offices, hallways and cocktail parties of the partisans in power than about informing people they were primed to elect and then re-elect an ill-informed, lazy, incompetent jerk with a bad attitude.”
Access controls much of what the Press makes public and what it does not. Losing that White House Press Pass is a fate worse than death for many of them. Ideologies run a distant second, third, or fourth to this and other factors. They would rather tell us what we should have known in the present after the fact than risking the wrath of the leaders they are supposed to be keeping tabs on.
on Dec 7th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
MrMacrum, I think media types were especially access conscious over the last eight years because of how proactive and unforgiving the Bush-Cheney cabal was about punishing those they considered enemies.
on Dec 8th, 2008 at 4:39 am
SW - On this we agree for sure. What is it with the right wing mentality and it’s propensity to view anyone outside as an enemy? One of the reasons I left their not so loving arms 30 years ago.
on Dec 13th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
We are hardly speaking here of the faces of kindness, and benevolence toward their fellow man.
The American Press has been terribly remiss in it’s duties to the American people in the last 7+ years concerning the actions of this presidency.