I just finished watching my nightly 30 minutes of painful television that is the CBS Evening News. Surprisingly, Gloria Borger was alright tonight. The coverage on wiretapping was somewhat better than
the other day, but was still lousy.
Instead of talking about the legality of the program, they instead focus on the Bush administration's political strategy to try and weasel out of the mess. While it is informative to learn about the Orwellian tactic Rove has decided to spring on the country each day, the news shouldn't just be about explaining what Bush is doing -- just play his speech and any American with an IQ equal to or greater than the President will get the point.
(rest on flip)
But all of that basically amounts to lazy journalism. These journalists have no incentive (courtesy of their mega-corporate owners) to do any actually investigating, so, instead, they listen to Bush's speecn and tell everyone what he just said and why. More troubling than the reporting are the carefully worded polls that ask things like, "would you support the President's program if they really only were eavesdropping on terrorists?" Despite the fact that only 53% of the public said 'yes' to that poll, CBS basically lauded it as a victory for the President.
Needless to say, I was pretty depressed after deleting the Evening News off of my TiVo tonight. We're losing the debate on wiretapping. This is a black and white issue and, yet, Rove, despite being under investigation, has been able to convince about half of the country that the President's critics don't want to wiretap anybody.
We need to hit back against Rove's despicable Orwellian bile, but we also need to realize why Rove's strategy has been so successful. It comes down to this: average Americans don't really understand civil liberties very well. They don't really care if the government is wiretapping people because they don't have anything to hide. The President crosses his heart that he will only wiretap terrorists, so they don't think it affects them.
Of course, one of the central themes in our Constitution is that we don't ever simply take the President at his word. Because of all the media narratives, I think a good portion of the country, despite everything, generally trusts George W. Bush. Many of them are beginning to believe that he is monumentally incompetant, but I think most people think that he at least means well -- especially when it comes to national security. They have a hard time believing that he would ever spy on somebody like Christian Amanpour. We know better, of course; I just think this is what we're up against.
Our response to this needs to be strong and clear. Here are a few things I think we need to focus on:
- This scandal is very simple. Bush intentionally violated a Congressional statute and has brazenly claimed that he intends to continue to violate the law. Why didn't Bush pitch his idea to the FISA court? If that didn't work, why didn't Bush suggest it to Congress? The fact that he did neither of those things shows that Bush believes that he is above the law.
- Bush's actions set precedent. Eventually, the President will be someone who doesn't share your beliefs, or someone you don't trust. Do you want that person to be able to spy on whomever he or she wants?
- The Republicans have tried to avert the public's eye away from the real scandal by insinuating that critics are against wiretapping in general. We need to expose this. The naming of the program the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" is an obvious political stunt -- Bush never wanted this to see the light of day; now he's parading it around as if it's been part of his platform all along.
- Talk about the administration's changing positions. Is this a broad data mining operation as they initially said, or does the program target "very specific communications that our professoinal judgment tells us we have reason to believe are those associated with people who want to kill Americans," as General Hayden said a few days ago? It appears as if they're just making this stuff up as they go along.
- And, finally, we need find a way to educate the public on the imporance of civil liberties. While most of the polls out there are very poorly worded, I do think that a large portion of the public hasn't really thought through the implications of Bush's actions.
Thoughts, comments? We can't let this sit during the Alito hearings. Rove is working around the clock; we have to keep up.