Friday, October 01, 2004
The Problem with Fortress Bush
I listened first on the radio to the debate last night on my way home from a pre-debate panel discussion. Listening to the President speak, you could hear it in his voice that he was not quite there. Long pauses as he fumbled through his head to try to remember which campaign message he needed to deliver, and certainly a lot of stammering through sentences. When I got home, I was shocked to see that what I heard fit the person who was speaking. President Bush clearly was rusty. He leaned over the podium as if it was the only thing keeping him upright. When the split screen was shown (in violation of the "Memorandum of Understanding"), the President looked at times irritated, at times clueless, and at times like he was having a terrible bout with gas. And for all of the Bush team's careful scripting, last night the production did not hold to script.
This brings me up to the why questions. Why did the President look so woefully unprepared? Since they knew the debate was coming, why didn't the President perform better than he did?
My answer goes into the way in which the Bush administration has managed the press for the President. In his article, "Fortress Bush," Ken Auletta documents the obsession the Bush administration has with press management. And it has clearly worked for this administration. There is the "Friday news dump" in which bad news is released Friday afternoon. There is the insistence that reporters submit their questions ahead of time before any interview is granted, and there is the slavishness towards message control. All of these things have helped the President navigate the difficult political road that has faced him since he took office in 2001.
But it also has hurt him. The message control obsession has left the President terribly vulnerable when he is forced into an unscripted event. Think of the interview the President did last winter with Tim Russert of "Meet the Press." In that interview, the President was clearly unprepared and looked at moments as if Russert was speaking in a foreign language. Afterwards, the administration placed pressure on NBC not to allow the interview to be replayed or given out for others to use.
When the President refuses to meet with the press and his critics, when he refuses to hold regular press conferences, he succumbs to sycophants and group think. He refuses to understand that people might disagree with him, and as last night showed, he gets irritated when John Kerry actually did. No, the administration has to figure out, in the month remaining, how to undo the effects of mind control that has lasted nearly four years. If the President went to bed last night and was not worried, then he has some major problems ahead. Even President Bush's most reliable spinmeisters could not get him out of the miserable performance from last night.
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This brings me up to the why questions. Why did the President look so woefully unprepared? Since they knew the debate was coming, why didn't the President perform better than he did?
My answer goes into the way in which the Bush administration has managed the press for the President. In his article, "Fortress Bush," Ken Auletta documents the obsession the Bush administration has with press management. And it has clearly worked for this administration. There is the "Friday news dump" in which bad news is released Friday afternoon. There is the insistence that reporters submit their questions ahead of time before any interview is granted, and there is the slavishness towards message control. All of these things have helped the President navigate the difficult political road that has faced him since he took office in 2001.
But it also has hurt him. The message control obsession has left the President terribly vulnerable when he is forced into an unscripted event. Think of the interview the President did last winter with Tim Russert of "Meet the Press." In that interview, the President was clearly unprepared and looked at moments as if Russert was speaking in a foreign language. Afterwards, the administration placed pressure on NBC not to allow the interview to be replayed or given out for others to use.
When the President refuses to meet with the press and his critics, when he refuses to hold regular press conferences, he succumbs to sycophants and group think. He refuses to understand that people might disagree with him, and as last night showed, he gets irritated when John Kerry actually did. No, the administration has to figure out, in the month remaining, how to undo the effects of mind control that has lasted nearly four years. If the President went to bed last night and was not worried, then he has some major problems ahead. Even President Bush's most reliable spinmeisters could not get him out of the miserable performance from last night.
