We all know that the Main-Stream Media (sorry Kos) has a short attention span. Not only that, but shallow judgment as well. Time after time, we see the media spouting the results of "group-think", none so telling as when Jon Stewart shows a montage of media clips with each media outlet using the exact same words to describe a situation, as if they had coordinated their message.
They do coordinate their messages, but not intentionally. The do so unthinkingly and unwittingly, much to their embarrassment. In fact, the truth of the matter is, that in most of their reporting, the MSM uncritically passes on White House talking points, the latest Drudge Report memes, and the accepted inside-the-belt-way "conventional" wisdom.
One example of punditocracy Attention Deficit Disorder I heard was on the show, "Race to the White House" with this statement by David Gregory on July 15th:
All right. Well, Peter, why not listen to John McCain when he said, as he did today—we showed the pictures just a minute ago—saying, look, I have the judgment here. I know how to win wars. I was behind the surge when other people weren‘t. There‘s been a reduction of violence in Iraq that is actually measurable.
Why shouldn‘t he win a contest of ideas about how to turn Afghanistan around?
I’m not sure why David Gregory did not get the memo, but in January of 2007, George Bush said that the success of the surge would be measured by the goals of giving the Iraqi government the "breathing room" to come together, to achieve political reconciliation among the Sunnis, Shi’ites, and Kurds, and to pass laws that would further Iraq’s movement toward a true Democracy.
Yet, according to David Gregory, the "surge is working". He states that violence has been down, therefore the credit goes to the "success" of the surge. There has never been a question that if you add more forces to Iraq that violence could be quelled. Additional U.S. forces, the Al-Sadr militia cease-fire, the payment of the "Sons of Iraq", i.e., Iraqi Sunnis, to attack Al Qaeda instead of U.S. soldiers, walling off parts of Baghdad, and the completion of much of the ethnic cleansing have all led to a decrease in violence in Iraq.
But according to the President’s own criteria, the surge has not worked. The Kurds are not participating in the government, no reconciliation has been attempted, and major laws for redistributing the oil wealth among the nation's competing factions have not been passed.
David Gregory spoke of the success of the surge as if it was a given fact, and no one on the panel challenged his assertion. In fairness, Rachel Maddow was hosting Keith Olbermann’s Countdown and was not on the panel as usual. She would have called David Gregory on his inside-the-belt-way, political pundit talking-point as not being based in reality.
I find it disturbing that I, and most Kos diarists, are better-read and more fully-informed than most of the television pundits. I guess studying is just too much effort for our MSM "experts", as is doing critical thinking with the information that they do possess.
Speaking of reality, David Gregory uncritically accepts John McCain’s assertion that he "knows how to win wars", even citing "The Surge" as an example. Oh, really, David? John McCain knows how to win wars? Which wars? The Viet Nam war? The Afghanistan War? The Iraq War?
John McCain, which war did you know how to win, and when did we win it? Who surrendered to us at the end of combat operations?
The pundits like David Gregory point out that John McCain was for the surge, even when it was not popular. As we have seen above, the surge is not working, but the bigger point is that the political pundits conveniently forget that John McCain was for the Iraq War all along as well.
The punditocracy attempts to frame it like this: George Bush mismanaged the Iraq War, and John McCain was against that. When "The Surge" took place, John McCain was for that idea, and it has been proven successful. This is the honest-to-God conventional "wisdom" of the Washington media elite.
Never mind that John McCain supported Bush and the Iraq War in all the years before "The Surge", this man that has never experienced a military victory in his entire life, "knows how to win wars". The media tells us so.