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Fri 22 Sep, 2006 03:53 pm
Independence Days
By David S. Broder
Washington Post
Thursday, September 21, 2006
American politics reached a critical turn last week. The revolt of several Republican senators against President Bush's insistence on a free hand in treating terrorist detainees signaled the emergence of an independent force in elections and government.
This movement is not new, but the moral scale of the issue -- torture -- and the implications for both constitutional and international law give it an epic dimension, even if it is ultimately settled by compromise.
The senators involved -- John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner -- were also instrumental in forming the "Gang of 14," the bipartisan bloc that seized control of the Senate last year and wrote the compromise that prevented a drastic change in the filibuster rule that otherwise would have triggered a bitter partisan divide.
These are not ordinary men. McCain, from Arizona, is probably the leading candidate for the 2008 presidential nomination. Graham, from South Carolina, is the star among the younger Republican senators. Warner, from Virginia, embodies the essence of traditional Reagan conservatism: patriotism, support for the military, civility.
They were joined in their opposition to Bush's call for extraordinary interrogation techniques by Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is still, despite the controversies over his role in Iraq policy, one of the most admired Americans.
That these Republicans -- and others -- were ready to join the Democrats in rejecting Bush's plan caused the White House to scramble for alternatives and House Republican leaders to postpone a scheduled vote. The revolt goes well beyond three men.
What it really signals is a new movement in this country -- what you could rightly call the independence party. Its unifying theme can be found in the Declaration of Independence's language when Jefferson invoked "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind."
When Powell wrote that Bush's demand would compound the world's "doubt [about] the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," he was appealing to Jefferson's standard.
It is a standard this administration has flagrantly rejected. Bush was elected twice, over Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry, whose know-it-all arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself. The country thought Bush was a pleasant, down-to-earth guy who would not rock the boat. Instead, swayed by some inner impulse or the influence of Dick Cheney, he has proved to be lawless and reckless. He started a war he cannot finish, drove the government into debt and repeatedly defied the Constitution.
Now, however, you can see the independence party forming -- on both sides of the aisle. They are mobilizing to resist not only Bush but also the extremist elements in American society -- the vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left and the doctrinaire religious extremists on the right who would convert their faith into a whipping post for their opponents.
The center is beginning to fight back. Michael Bloomberg, the Republican mayor of New York, is holding a fundraiser for Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Democrat running as an independent against the bloggers' favorite, Ned Lamont.
His election is important, as is Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee's in Rhode Island, because both would signal that independence is a virtue to be rewarded.
Similarly important, though less publicized, is Republican Sen. Mike DeWine's race in Ohio. DeWine is an ally of McCain & Co. in forming a center for the Senate; his opponent, Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown, is a loud advocate of protectionist policies that offer a false hope of solving our trade and job problems.
A "decent respect" begins at home, with an acknowledgment of public opinion. Americans are saying no to excess greenhouse gases and no to open borders; yes to embryonic stem cell research, yes to a path to earned citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants and yes to a living wage. Six more states are likely to approve increases in the minimum wage through ballot initiatives in November.
A congressional election with lots of new faces and a scare for many returning veterans is important as a signal to next year's likely leaders such as Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell and Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi that they can't design their strategies simply to satisfy the most rabid of their party's extremes; they have to govern down the center and work across party lines.
And that in turn would set the stage for a 2008 election in which the two branches of the independence movement -- Republican and Democratic -- could compete in a campaign that would, for a change, show a "decent respect" for the intelligence of the American people.
Let's get some more people to read this.
then we'll talk.
Joe
BBB
There is one thing Bush should have learned from a very wise man before he put on his revolutionary superman costume:
"You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution."
---Gilbert K. Chesterton
All you need to know about the Beltway journalist mind
Glenn Greenwald - Salon
Wednesday May 9, 2007
All you need to know about the Beltway journalist mind
Radar Online has a new profile of presidential candidate Mike Gravel. The article recounts what happened when the reporter, Jebediah Reed, basically followed Gravel as he was profiled by The Today Show.
The article is amusing in general, but Reed recounts this unbelievably revealing incident along the way:
Beaming after the Columbia event, Gravel walks with [Newsweek's Jonathan] Alter to a nearby Cuban restaurant for a late lunch. On the way they encounter a gray-haired gentleman in owlish glasses. Alter greets him very respectfully. "This is Tom Edsall," he says. Edsall was a senior political writer for the Washington Post for 25 years. He retired from the paper in 2006 and now writes for the New Republic and teaches at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
Gravel smiles broadly and says, "Hey, can you straighten out David Broder?" Broder, an influential columnist at the Post and the unofficial godfather of the D.C. press corps, has been a target of much criticism from liberal blogs for seeming to provide political cover for Bush on Iraq, even with a majority of Americans now opposing the war. "He doesn't believe in the power of the people!" Gravel says.
Edsall blinks and looks perplexed. "David Broder is the voice of the people," he replies matter-of-factly. Gravel starts to smile, assuming Edsall is making an absurdist joke. But Edsall is not joking. The two men look at each other in awkward silence over a great gulf of unshared beliefs, then Gravel chuckles and walks ahead into the restaurant.
I would be willing to wager that the vast majority of Beltway journalists agree with Edsall -- that Broder is a real, true, salt-of-the-earth representative "of the people." That's more or less what Joe Klein said recently in praise of Broder:
No, what I most like about Broder as a reporter is that he has taken pains over the years to talk at length with the sort of people who don't go to protests, and even to folks who don't go to political meetings in Iowa and New Hampshire. He'll actually go door to door, or convene a group of neighbors, to find out what's important to them.
See, Broder knows how the "ordinary people" think because he leaves the Beltway and goes and studies them real up close like farm animals and then comes back to Washington and publishes his findings about the behavioral patterns of this odd species known as "the people."
Beltway journalists want to believe that Broder is "the voice of the people" because that means that they are, too. After all, he is their Dean, their representative, and by convincing themselves that he has legitimacy with "the people," that he speaks for the "real, ordinary Americans," it means that they do, too. Just marvel at the drooling praise they heap on the platitude-spewing Broder:
The accolades for Broder have shown no sign of slowing down in recent years: his colleagues routinely speak of him in the hushed, awed tone they typically reserve for John McCain and Joe Lieberman. NBC's Tim Russert -- himself often described as the nation's most influential journalist -- calls Broder "the most objective and respected reporter I know in this town."
In 2005, Russert praised Broder's "superb" analysis and noted that he had appeared more often on Meet the Press than any other guest -- nearly 400 times in all. Just this week, the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza placed Broder alongside the late David Halberstam as "titans of journalism." Conservative pundit Bill Kristol says things like "I disagree with David Broder on this, which means I'm probably wrong..." While still working at The Washington Post, Politico executive editor Jim VandeHei wrote "Broder is the best of the best. His columns are fair and illuminating."
The greatest and most fictitous conceit of the Beltway media class is that they are the real voice of What Americans Think. Man of the People Rick Stengel of Time will simply take his own personal views and falsely claim that this is "what voters want to see." David Brooks does that constantly, as do people like Andrea Mitchell. And the painfully self-conscious obsessions which Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, and Maureen Dowd (among others) have with trying to demonstrate what salt-of-the-earth regular people they are is depressingly familiar, not to mention glaringly false.
And the idea that David Broder is the "voice of the people" is particularly ludicrous given that the crux of David Broder's worldview -- to the extent that he has such a thing -- is that whatever else happens in Washington, the top priority is that our elegant and elevated power centers be shielded from the wild passions and uncontrolled fervor of the lowly, rambunctious, impetuous masses. Broder is the "voice of the people" in the most condescending manner possible -- he loves them like his misguided and ignorant children, innocents and vulnerables who need to be protected by the sober and wise adults who know best.
The disconnect between, on the one hand, what Beltway media stars think about and care about, and the lives of most Americans on the other, is so vast that it is difficult to describe. One could argue that the complete disconnect between our Beltway power centers and the lives of most Americans is the single greatest deficiency in our political culture. Yet the preening, insulated pundits of the royal court think the opposite.
They think that they are the real representatives of The People, and that their King, David Broder, is the Real Voice of the People. Mike Gravel apparently "chuckled" in Tom Edsall's face after Edsall bestowed Broder with that title, thinking that he had "made an absurdist joke."
But most national journalists would almost certainly walk away exactly the way Edsall did -- deeply confused and disoriented over the fact that someone did not perceive David Broder as the Man of the People. They live in a different universe and -- especially for the ones who have been there for so long, as well as for the ones who are most desperate to rise within it -- they cannot and do not recognize that any other exists.
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