Scandal My #$+*%!

NPR does have perseverance. They have found yet another angle for trying to bury the voter's revolt of the 2006 midterms (see earlier post). This morning they turn to Lanny Davis, former Clinton advisor, who has written a book about scandal in American politics. Davis tells us that during the last decade "there was vitriol on the left and the right unlike anything seen in America for many years. I saw a revolt of the center and I think we’ve seen the great center of American politics coming back together again." And later, "in the last election the American people are starting to say we need to do it differently."

There are several starkly obvious questions that a decent journalist might ask Mr. Davis:

• What polling data do you base your conclusions on?
• What "left" in American politics are you talking about--or do you mean the center right Clinton administration that you were a part of?
• Are you suggesting that a scandal of sexual harassment between a President and an adult intern and his lies before a grand jury about it is equivalent to the scandals of "fixing intelligence" for launching a war, eavesdropping on Americans without court approval, issuing torture guideline memos, and setting up clandestine prisons?

Of course that is exactly what Davis and the NPR reporters are suggesting. For whatever reason NPR is working hard to create the lie that the midterm elections were a call for "bipartisanship" and not the call for the end to the occupation of Iraq and CORRUPTION in politics that polls have shown.

It's as if NPR has launched it's own preemptive strikes against any movement to quickly end the occupation of Iraq and to investigate the Bush administration and hold it accountable for behaviors that clearly fit the "high crimes and misdemeanor" standards for impeachment written into our Constitution.

Shape Shifting

NPR continues trying to shape the analysis of the 2006 elections by shifting its meaning to the right. NPR's line is that voters want a non-partisan get work done Congress (see my post above on the Invisible Issue). NPR's other line is that Democrats won because they ran on a more rightwing "centrist" platform. Today Andrea Seabrook interviews Jim Matheson (D-UT), co-chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition, a group of conservative Democrats, who NPR's website claims "helped bring the Democrats to power in last week's elections."

In the report Seabrook says, "politicians from both parties are vowing to work together to get things done" and "with moderate to conservative democrats picking up seats in the house…there is a least a chance of bipartisan cooperation." At one point in the interview Seabrook also asserts, "Leaders of both parties are to the far extremes of their parties. "

The problem with this is that instead of presenting these positions as two of several debated interpretations of the elections, NPR gives them as established fact. Notice that NPR gives no coverage to the role of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, no notice of centrist candidates who got defeated, and no notice of Internet leftists. Instead we get the boring Sunday pundit spin on this very interesting election.

The Invisible Issue

I've heard an odd conclusion on the news following Tuesday's dramatic elections. Several times NPR has talked about the message of voters to Congress and the President being "to work together" and "get things done." Funny, I've been looking at polls of issues that motivated voters on Tuesday and have yet to find one result indicating that ending gridlock or "bipartisanhip" was a key issue. (See CNN's and Gallup's pre-election polls and CNN's, Greenberg's and the Pew's post election polls.) The stand-out issues again and again are the Iraq war, corruption, and anti-Bush sentiment.

But on ATC yesterday I heard Melissa Block say "both Democrats and President Bush have been saying they got the message. They say they’re ready to work together to get things done for the American people. " Mara Liasson follows this up by talking about how successfully Clinton followed the demise of his party in 1994 by "triangulating and cutting deals with the Republican Congress." Questioning whether Democrats can be effective, she quotes Clinton's onetime chief of staff, "Panetta asks the same question of the Democrats, who he says have gotten used to throwing grenades from their position in the minority." I'm curious what "grenades" these are--the resolution on use of force against Iraq in 2002, the Patriot Act passage, the continued blank check for funding the Iraq War, the confirmation of Rice, Justice Roberts and Alito, and joint saber-rattling on Venezuela and Iran.

And this morning Daniel Schorr brings up this made-up issue of working together; he says, "the first mandate I think they [Democrats] have is that I think the public wants them very much to try to get together [with Bush and Republicans]….they [Bush and Democrats] feel a lot of pressure from around the country to stop all this nonsense and all the politics and get something done for a change."

This talk of bipartisanship and "working together" is especially odd, since turning over the House in dramatic fashion, and the Senate narrowly, suggests that voters want a Congress that will OPPOSE the President, not compromise with his policies. Of course people want to see action on ending the war in Iraq, improving wages, and ending corruption (getting things done)--but the message was clearly one rejecting the policies of Bush and his Republican allies.