Back in August, Campaign Desk awoke one morning to find a press corps aggressively dissecting and discrediting charges from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that had been filling the pages and airwaves of our news all month.
What had happened to push previously dormant campaign reporters to actually seek out available records and report back? Perhaps, Campaign Desk wondered, was it John Kerry’s own decision to shift strategies and go after his opponents that caused the press to act?
Today, after reading a transcript of the President’s press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi, we sense the same is happening. This week, for those who have been holed up in a Tora Bora cave, Sen. Kerry has come out firing, attacking Bush for misrepresenting realities in Iraq saying, “I think [Bush is] living in a make believe world.”
Now (after months of dreadful news from Iraq) it seems the campaign press is suddenly curious to know if Kerry is on to something.
NBC’s David Gregory asked the president if he understood why Americans may not believe him as he simultaneously argues from the stump that prevailing in “Iraq is tough and will remain tough,” but America is safer because we’re there.
Bush answered, repeating his campaign’s talking point that, “I think it’s a preposterous claim to say that America would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power.”
As Peter Jennings pointed out on Tuesday’s “ABC World News Tonight,” this is Bush’s canned rebuttal to Kerry’s speech on Monday night in which he said, “Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator, who deserves his own special place in hell. But that was not — that was not in and of itself, a reason to go to war.”
Gregory displayed an unaccustomed disinterest in playing court recorder, pressing Bush with this follow up:
Sir, may I just follow, because I don’t think you’re really answering the question. I mean, I think you’re responding to Senator Kerry, but there are beheadings regularly, the insurgent violence continues, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. My question is, can you understand that Americans may not believe you when you say that America is actually safer today?
Bush responded as he did before, “I think the argument that says that Saddam Hussein — if Saddam Hussein were still in power, we’d be better off is wrong.”
So perhaps we now know how to snap the press out of its lassitude and put it to work asking tough questions: Have a candidate ask them first.
–Thomas Lang
Thomas Lang was a writer at CJR Daily.