Out of Touch, But Not out of Office

The Bush-Cheney reelection website contains an ingenious propaganda device allowing supporters to piece together letters to the editors of their local newspapers—without typing a single opinion. Form letters are nothing unusual, but this clever cyber writing tool allows you to include your own selection of pre-approved “talking points” using the point-and-click method. If you want to include the line “President Bush should be commended for his strong leadership on the economy,” you click a green check mark beside the paragraph; if you want to forgo the point “President Bush understands that we must save Social Security for seniors and for generations to come,” click the red X to delete it. You hardly have to think at all—just the way the GOP campaign machine likes it.

The site even streamlines the mailing process, providing a comprehensive list of local newspapers, and their contact information, according to the zip code you input. Simply check a few boxes, fill in your contact info, and the website prints out a perfectly prepared personal letter with your very own name on it—written by a Bush-Cheney campaign staffer. All you have to do is print, put a stamp on the envelope and mail it off. Or, if you are obscenely lazy, the site will even e-mail the letter for you. The whole process takes literally seconds, cunningly facilitating the Bush camp’s dissemination of its finely-tuned talking points through the guise of average Americans. According to a January New York Times report, over 37,000 such e-mail messages have already been sent to newspaper editors.

The letters are disingenuous and deceptive—but they could easily be dismissed, if only they were an isolated affair. Instead, they reflect a far broader, more disturbing trend. They are blatant attempts to manipulate editorial pages and fill them with campaign propaganda misrepresented as personal views. The entire operation smacks of utter disrespect for the role of journalism and uninhibited debate within a free society. It parallels the Bush administration’s general approach to the media, which includes a sense of entitlement and contempt—an attitude which is echoed regularly in the White House’s theatrical misinformation campaigns and denunciations of “unpatriotic” dissent.

Ken Auletta’s recent article in the New Yorker, detailing the Bush administration’s peculiar relationship with the press, draws much the same conclusion. Rejecting common notions of the venerable fourth estate operating on people’s behalf to check government power, the White House views the media as a self-serving special interest. While there are certainly valid reasons to distrust the press—especially its contemporary profit-driven variations—the Bush White House seems to believe that an ideal press should serve as a mouthpiece for its pre-packaged sound bites, and that anything less is a profiteering scheme.

In an October effort to punish those network media outlets perceived as straying too far from the administration’s message (i.e., covering the lack of progress in Iraq), Bush courted regional media sources. At the time, the Washington Post cited media analysts who speculated the move amounted to “shopping for softer questioning.” Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, admitted to the Post that the Bush administration did in fact view local media and regional broadcasts as “less analytical and more reporting,” but the emphasis on unsophisticated, uncomplicated regurgitation of presidential talking points was touted as a virtue, not a vice.

The White House, through the skillful planning of political mastermind Karl Rove, has also learned to exploit the news media’s reliance on dramatic spectacle for its own special interests. Bush’s covert Thanksgiving Day stopover at the Baghdad airport for two and a half hours was a particularly fitting example. Encircled by soldiers, the president smiled widely for the cameras, carrying a huge platter with a giant golden-brown turkey, lavish trimmings and bunches of grapes. The image was plastered on practically every online site, television broadcast and newspaper front page, helping to amplify optimism about the deteriorating state of affairs in Iraq.

The event turned out to be meticulously choreographed to a devious degree. The White House eventually acknowledged that the plentiful platter Bush carried was a table decoration—not for actual consumption. And a thrilling anecdote about a passing pilot who nearly blew Air Force One’s cover—while it posed as a much smaller plane in order to slip through British airspace—was mysteriously unverifiable, if not wholly fabricated.

Bush’s handlers have proven themselves extraordinarily deft at managing the media, but that revelation is old news. With budget deficits soaring at an alarming rate, the prospect of Iraqi democracy becoming ever more uncertain and Bush now submitting to bipartisan calls for a potentially devastating intelligence review, another Rove-conceived media stunt is undoubtedly waiting in the wings. And it will likely give Bush the boost he seeks.

What is far more surprising is the extent to which Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld actually seem to believe in the fantasies they peddle. Auletta quotes Bush as boasting, “No president has ever done more for human rights than I have.” In fact, no president has persisted for so long with his fingers in his ears. It has been well-publicized that Bush distrusts most media sources and instead receives his information from close (and biased) advisers. It is no wonder then that Bush remains so out of touch with reality—and so willing to dismiss the many critics who raise valid concerns domestically and abroad. With any luck, voters will send him a message that hits a lot harder than an electronic political Mad Lib this November.

Benjamin J. Toff ’05 is a social studies concentrator in Winthrop House. He is an editorial chair of The Crimson.