|
Time for change
(1000+ posts) 
|
Sat Sep-29-07 07:24 PM
Original message |
| By Far the Worst Performance and Demagoguery at Last Wednesday’s Democratic
Debates |
 |
 |
Perhaps some might think it surprising that the award for the
worst performance at last Wednesday’s Democratic presidential
debates at Dartmouth would be earned by someone who’s not even a
Democrat. But anyone familiar with the so-called journalist who moderated those
debates shouldn’t have been surprised.
My first insight into Tim Russert’s true character came when I observed the
contempt with which he announced the Florida Supreme Court’s decision that,
because of technological problems that made it impossible for voting machines
to ascertain the intent of Florida voters, Florida’s ballots in the 2000
presidential election must be recounted by hand in order to determine the
intent of the voters.
More than a year ago I posted an article on DU titled “ What
if Dems Fought Back Against Corporate Media Shills Like Tim Russert?”,
which described how Russert:
bullied Joe Lieberman into conceding the validity of 680 highly
questionable Florida overseas ballots in the 2000 election;
virtually destroyed Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential candidacy; slyly
revealed a hidden Bush campaign button to George Bush while appearing at a 2004
presidential campaign function;
let George Bush get away with bald faced lies in responding to
accusations of his being AWOL from the Air National Guard as a young man; and
let Dick Cheney get away with bald faced lies in responding to
egregious Bush administration lapses on 9-11-01.
Well, the so-called journalist is at it again. Consider the following from last
Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debates:
Mischaracterizing responses to his question about pledging withdrawal of all
U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013
Russert put the following question or a close version of it to all the
Democratic candidates:
| Will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term, more than
five years from now, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq? |
The use of the word “pledge” and the phrase “no U.S. troops” make that an
extreme question. No candidate should be asked by a debate moderator to
“pledge” to accomplish something where there is a possibility that unforeseen
circumstances may make it impossible to fulfill the pledge. Instead, real
journalists interested in real debate would simply ask how the candidate
intends to handle the issue, without asking for a “pledge”.
There are few people who are against George Bush’s war in Iraq more than I am,
but I can see at least two reasons why, if I were running for President, I
would have refused to go along with Russert’s “pledge”. First, because it is
possible that unforeseen circumstances might cause me to have to break the
pledge; and second, because even if I believed it was reasonable to pledge such
a thing, doing so would lay me wide open to attacks that could derail my
candidacy. You can bet your bottom dollar that had the future 2008 nominee of
the Democratic Party agreed to Russert’s pledge and then appeared on “Meet the
Press” during the 2008 general election campaign, Russert would grill him or
her mercilessly for making what he would then term an irresponsible pledge.
All three of the leading candidates said essentially that they would
drastically reduce our presence in Iraq and that meeting Russert’s pledge would
be a goal of theirs. But they wouldn’t promise that they would be successful in
withdrawing all troops from Iraq by the end of their first term. I
thought that Edwards’ response was especially reasonable. He said that he would
immediately draw down about half of the 100,000 troops that General Petraeus
expects to be there by January 2008, attempt to draw down the good majority of
the remaining troops over the next few months, and probably have to leave in
place about 4% of the original total in order to protect our embassy and
humanitarian workers who would likely be there.
Following those responses, Russert turned to Bill Richardson and said, “You’ve
heard your three other opponents say they can’t do it in four years.” BULLSHIT,
you lying sack of garbage! They said nothing of the sort. They didn’t say
anything remotely resembling that they couldn’t do it. They simply refused to
make an iron clad promise.
But, the next morning on C-SPAN, picking up on Russert’s claim that “they can’t
do it in four years”, the whole theme of the program was about that specious
claim. And so, I listened to one Democratic caller after another pillory
all the leading Democratic candidates for refusing to get out of Iraq in four
years.
Invoking Rudy Giuliani as the ideal candidate for preventing nukes from falling
into the hands of Iran
A little later Russert hyped the Iran threat by asking if Israel would be
justified in attacking Iran if they concluded that Iran’s nuclear capability
posed a threat to them. After Senator Clinton refused to take the bait, Russert
held up Rudy Giuliani’s answer to the same question as a model:
You will all be running against a Republican opponent, perhaps Rudy Giuliani.
This is what he said:
|
“Iran is not going to be allowed to build a nuclear power. If they get to a
point where they're going to become a nuclear power, we will prevent them, we
will set them back eight to 10 years. That is not said as a threat. That should
be said as a promise."
|
Russert then asked the Democratic candidates:
|
Would you make a promise as a potential commander in chief
that you will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power and will use any means
to stop it?
|
So there we go again. Rudy Giuliani essentially promises that he will go
to war if necessary to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability, and
Russert challenges the Democratic candidates to agree with that extreme and
dangerous position.
Yet all the Democratic candidates handled it quite well. Senator Obama’s
response to Giuliani’s warmongering was typical: “I think what Mayor Giuliani
said was irresponsible, because we have not yet come to that point. We have not
tried the other approach.”
And Russert’s response to that was to put Obama’s responsible caution in the
worst possible light, challenging him to equal Giuliani’s extremism:
|
So you would not offer a promise to the American people, like
Giuliani, that Iran will not be able to develop and become a nuclear power?
|
Bringing John Edwards’ haircut into the debate
Turning to one of the most important issues facing the American people today,
and believing that we haven’t yet heard enough about it, Russert zeroed in on
John Edwards’ haircut:
|
Senator Edwards… your campaign has hit some obstacles with
revelations of about $400 haircuts… Do you wish you hadn’t made that kind of
expenditure for a haircut?
|
Gee Tim, I wonder what YOU spend on haircuts ... or meals … or whatever. Or I
wonder how whoring for your corporate masters while disguising yourself as a
journalist stacks up with what John Edwards has made of his life. Maybe that
would have been a good debate subject. And have you ever talked publicly about
the tens of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts that have been given to
Bush/Cheney cronies to do the reconstruction in Iraq that has never been done?
Or do you consider that unimportant compared with John Edwards’ haircut? …
Mischaracterizing the torture issue
Towards the end of the debate Russert got into the subject of torture:
|
Imagine the following scenario. We get lucky. We get the
number three guy in Al Qaida. We know there's a big bomb going off in America
in three days and we know this guy knows where it is. RUSSERT: Don't we have
the right and responsibility to beat it out of him? You could set up a law
where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon. Obama –
Would you do that as President?
|
Torture is indeed an important issue for our country to think about today. It
is likely that since George Bush started his “War on Terror” our country has
been responsible for the
torture of thousands – the good majority of them innocent of any crime.
And what do we have to show for all this brutal inhumanity? Well, we got a high
ranking member of al Qaeda to
admit to a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that didn’t
exist. That in turn helped George Bush to justify his invasion of Iraq.
And we’ve antagonized the rest of the world through our lawless and inhumane
actions, especially Muslims, thus greatly
increasing the recruitment of new anti-American terrorists.
Tim, let me tell you something. If a real journalist wanted to talk about
torture, that’s what he should have talked about. That is an issue which, as
you read this (I wish) is ruining the reputation of our country, causing us to
lose ground in our efforts to combat terrorism, putting our own soldiers at
extreme risk for being tortured, and greatly reducing our influence to control
world events. It would have been very educational for the American people, and
well worth the effort for you to have discussed this issue, as a lesson in what
the official sanction of torture leads to.
But instead of talking about that you introduce a scenario that has a remote
chance in hell of occurring. Why? You did it so that if the Democratic
presidential candidates did the right thing they will appear to a certain
percentage of your audience to be “weak on terror”. And then you can grill them
some more about it if you can get them on your show.
Well, none of the Democratic candidates succumbed to panic over Russert’s
torture scenario. So he persisted:
|
Senator Clinton, this is the number three man in Al Qaida. We
know there's a bomb about to go off, and we have three days, and we know this
guy knows where it is. Should there be a presidential exception to allow
torture in that kind of situation?
|
Translation: Do you really care more about abstract civil liberties and
moral concepts than you do about protecting the American people against a
terrorist attack?
Senator Clinton responded by telling him where to go with his torture
mongering, and I couldn't say it any better:
|
You know, Tim, I agree with what Joe and Barack have said. As
a matter of policy it cannot be American policy period… But these hypotheticals
are very dangerous because they open a great big hole in what should be an
attitude that our country and our president takes toward the appropriate
treatment of everyone. And I think it's dangerous to go down this path.
|
The implication for national politics of frauds like Tim Russert
The damage that people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly can do is somewhat
limited by the fact that their extremism is so visible that most people don’t
take them very seriously. But corporate media whores like Tim Russert are much
more dangerous because they pretend to be serious, unbiased journalists – or
rather, they are better at pretending to be serious unbiased journalists than
are some of the more obvious types. Consequently, when they frame issues like
Russert did as the moderator for last Wednesday’s Democratic debates, opinions
are often swayed.
Consider for example the situation in February 2004, shortly after chief U.S.
weapons inspector David Kay exposed the Bush administration’s multiple lies of
Iraqi WMDs. To repair the damage, George Bush appeared on Meet the Press
with Tim Russert. Anthony Lappe, in his book “ True
Lies”, summarizes
that interview of February 8th, 2004.
|
For over an hour, six million viewers were treated to one of
the biggest journalistic letdowns of the election year. With so much on the
table – from the nonexistent WMDs to the Iraqi quagmire to accusations that
Bush was AWOL from the National Guard – Russert could have hog-tied the
president and left him twisting in the wind. Instead, he let him off easy,
failing to counter Bush’s dodges with obvious follow-up questions.
|
The implications for national politics have been quite unfortunate, as
Democrats feel the need to move further and further to the right, lest they
risk being ignored, mocked, or attacked by our corporate news media.
What I had to say about this situation in my DU post of May 2006 is just as
true today as it was then:
|
Corporate journalists will attack Democrats whether or not
they aggressively fight back against the corporate media attack on them. So why
not change the rules of the game and expose those corporate shills for what
they are? If they want to attack us for that, fine. But they’re doing that
anyhow, and I don’t believe that they could do a better job of it than they are
currently doing. In any event, with an open fight between Democrats and the
corporate media, Republicans will have a hard time trying to sound legitimate
when they whine about the “liberal media”.
|
I think that the Democrats did a good job of standing up to Russert last
Wednesday evening. But I’d love to see them go even further, by lambasting him
in front of a national television audience in response to his stupid
hypocritical questions and comments, as he so richly deserves.
|
|