The fact that politicians have to be adept at talking their way around uncomfortable realities while mustering public support (or at least sympathy) for their vision is hardly a secret. Airy rhetoric and sweeping generalizations are the hallmarks of political speech. It’s a sort of bargain we strike with out leaders: they spin, and we decide how much of what they’re selling we want to buy. In this transaction, ideally the media would act as a middleman, both reporting what was said but also calling politicians on their more dangerous flourishes. But we’re not living in ideal times.
The president’s trip this past week to Russia and several former Soviet republics provided a great opportunity for him to spin and extol the so-called “Bush doctrine” of democracy promotion. And you can bet he took it. He rattled a few Russian cages while visiting Latvia and Moscow over the weekend by calling for democratic reforms in eastern Europe, and he is venturing to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to visit President Mikhail Saakashvili (or, as nearly every media report phrased it, “US-educated president Saakashvili”) and to praise democratic reforms there. Saakashvili came to power in January 2004 after leading the peaceful “Rose Revolution” that ousted a corrupt regime, and Bush is making a larger point about fledgling democracies (nudge, nudge, Russia) when he lifts the peaceful Georgian example up as one to be emulated.
All this is inspiring stuff, but we would still hope that reporters covering the trip would take a closer look at the reality behind the rhetoric. You would be hard pressed, however, to find anyone this week mentioning the fact that while the president is extolling the virtues of democracy in eastern Europe, U.S.-funded democracy-building programs for the region have been slashed by 38 percent, while those for the former Soviet Union have been cut 46 percent in recent years, according to a Washington Post story back in March.
An excellent corrective (as least as far as Georgia is concerned) for some of these lapses by the media ran in today’s Christian Science Monitor. Irakly Areshidze — a strategist in the November 2003 and March 2004 parliamentary election campaigns of Georgia’s opposition New Conservative Party — writes of the realities of political and press freedom under Saakashvili.
Areshidze notes that since the revolution, two of the six original private TV networks have closed, and “Of the four remaining, one was ‘sold’ to the brother of the president’s national security adviser; another was ‘sold’ to the defense minister’s best friend. A new network was refused a transmission license,” and the government regularly puts pressure on political journalists.
Politically, the country’s parliament last month passed legislation allowing only presidential appointees to work as central and district election commissions — without any representation for opposition groups — and during Saakashvili’s State of the Nation address in February, he declared that that opposition parties that disagree with him on issues such as membership in the European Union (which he supports) should be “outlawed.”
True, there are complicated internal pressures involved in all of this, and Georgia has seen its share of ethnic and political violence since the breakup of the Soviet Union; but some of this might be worth a mention when covering a presidential visit whose stated purpose is to promote democracy and freedom.
Rhetoric can only go so far before the press must step in and provide some context to the endless sound bites and sunny picture that politicians invariably try to sneak past the “filter.”
–Paul McLeary
Paul McLeary is a former CJR staff writer. Since 2008, he has covered the Pentagon for Foreign Policy, Defense News, Breaking Defense, and other outlets. He is currently a defense reporter for Politico.