One thing has become clear since Tuesday night’s presidential press conference: Big-name reporters have settled on the conventional wisdom to be used from now through November to inform coverage of President Bush.
David Sanger of the New York Times laid it out in his analysis the following morning: “Bush drove home the single-mindedness that has become the hallmark of his presidency, his greatest strength in the eyes of his admirers and a dangerous, never-change-course stubbornness in the eyes of his detractors.”
Richard Wolffe, writing a “Web Exclusive” for Newsweek, picks up the ball and runs with it:
At his press conference on Tuesday evening, George W. Bush was strong, confident and aggressive — and weak, hesitant and defensive. He was humble, he was arrogant. He showed his fine political antenna and his tin political ear. He was eloquent, and he was tongue-tied. You can see why people love or hate him. It’s not just because of his policies. It’s because he embodies those black-and-white contrasts himself.
And finally, we have the “dean” of the Washington press corps, David Broder (hey, we’re talking about conventional wisdom, after all). In an opinion column in today’s Washington Post, Broder writes of Bush:
Combined with his assertiveness in proclaiming that he will not be deflected from his chosen course by criticism or evidence of public doubts about the wisdom of his policies, this idealism forms an image of resolute leadership.
All this is to the good. But by themselves, these qualities do not suffice for the presidency in times as troubled as these. The public also expects prudent judgment, candor and enough attention to the complexity of real-world choices to sustain confidence that the leader is up to the challenge.
And here Bush failed as completely as he succeeded in projecting those other attributes of leadership.
As we all know, in journalism three makes a trend.
To be sure, the developing characterization of Bush as both a strong leader and as stubborn in the face of alarming news is not without validity — if anything, it’s obvious. That’s in part why everyone’s pointing it out.
But we can’t help thinking there’s another reason this narrative has seized the press corps lately: First, it serves to reinforce the press’s ostensible “objectivity” at a time when accusers on both the left and the right say there’s none. It’s a ready-made storyline, with both pro-Bush and anti-Bush strands already built into it. For reporters terrified of being accused of partisanship, that’s a valuable commodity. And it has the added advantage of supplying a handy storyline for the remainder of the election campaign: Paint the contrast between Bush and John Kerry, whose supposed tendency to take more “nuanced” views on everything from Iraq to gay marriage has already been set in concrete by Kerry campaign reporters looking for a hook to hang their hat on for the next seven months.
Sticking to the “strong-but-stubborn” thesis (like sticking to any thesis) requires reporters to ignore any evidence that runs counter to the new conventional wisdom. Neither Sanger, nor Wolffe, nor Broder, for example, mentions any of Bush’s various reversals — on the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, on steel tariffs, and on whether to let Condoleezza Rice testify publicly before the 9/11 commission, to name just a few. Whether you see those as the moves of a weak and unprincipled flip-flopper, or of a mature decision-maker in touch with public opinion, they sure don’t fit the “strong-but-stubborn” framing.
But once a storyline is settled on, evidence to the contrary is brushed aside. Check out Wolffe of Newsweek, following his own logic into an absurd cul-de-sac:
Such contrasts help explain why there are so few don’t-knows about the president. In the latest Newsweek poll, just 6 percent said they didn’t know if they approved or disapproved of his performance as president. In the days before 9/11 that number was 15 percent. John Kerry’s don’t-knows are 12 percent.
So Bush’s “don’t-know” figure is six percent, and Kerry’s is twelve percent. Could it be because Bush has been president of the United States for over three years, while Kerry is still largely unknown to much of the electorate? If anything, the six point difference strikes us as smaller than one would expect.
Emerging narratives like this have the potential to harden into accepted truths — and to affect the outcome of elections. If previous years are any guide, reporters will devote far more attention to developments that correspond to this script than to those that depart from it.
That’s bad news for readers seeking a more “nuanced” picture.
–Zachary Roth
Zachary Roth is a contributing editor to The Washington Monthly. He also has written for The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Slate, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Talking Points Memo, among other outlets.