Yesterday in Suskind's brilliant diary,
It Can't Happen Here, I just lost it in the comments section. In trying to point out the fact that
The New York Times pretty much stands alone, all of the bile that I have been suppressing for the Party I have been voting for and supporting all of my life just rose to the top.
Here is the comment and below is the extended version.
I don't think The New York Times deserves all the heat for holding back the story and I don't think the Republicans deserve all of the credit for coming way to close to destroying this nation.
While many are ranting about what the Times didn't tell us, how about we take a look at what they did and consider what our Democratic leadership did with those stories.
The New York Times had already cleared up the report on aluminum tubes and had actually printed an apology for trusting the White House. The now famous Joseph Wilson Op-Ed piece appeared in the same paper on July 9, 2003 but our leadership couldn't do a thing with any of those items.
Most of the information about torture in Iraq was already out but I don't think John Kerry mentioned Abu Ghraib once on the campaign trail.
But this diary isn't about our failed Democratic nominee. This diary is about the rest of our Nebbish Democratic Leadership.
What sort of job have the Democrats done of opposing the Republicans? We have an opposition party that hasn't done a whole lot of opposing. The American television set is the one place where they can address the people. I don't know of any bans on Democrat Senators or Congress people appearing on news shows.
Prior to the 2004 election, there was a host of Executive Orders, many of them pointing to a power hungry president who had no regard for the people. The Democratic leadership was well aware of these Executive Orders but I can't recall them lining up at the microphones to tell the average American.
Our Democratic leadership should have been holding press conferences and taking inventory of what the Republicans have done for Halliburton, Big Tobacco, banks, credit card companies, drug manufacturers and hospitals. Our Democratic leadership needed to get lots of air time to ask the question, What has the Republicans done for the people?
As the election approached, it seemed to me that the only people with an official capacity in government that gave the Neo Cons any real trouble were Republicans. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke took on a corrupt White House administration. Clarke and O'Neill's statements combined with those newspaper articles were enough fire-power for a competent party to take Bush down!
How about since the Democrats lost the election that seemed almost impossible to lose. On January 11, 2005 just prior to the Coronation Ceremony when Bush said in an interview with New Yorker reporter Ken Auletta "No president has done more for human rights than I have!" you would think that every Democrat in a position of power would be on the phone to network television for a chance to discuss that statement.
Or take a look at how the Democrats handled the revelations found in The Downing Street Memo. This was an issue where the Democrats definitely needed to push. Had our Democrats put half the effort into bringing this Memo to the light of day that the Republicans put into spinning President Clinton's denial of Oval office sex, the revelations about Karl Rove may have put the Neo Cons on the defensive until they are gone. And the wire tapping probably would have taken down the house.
The fact is that many of our Democratic leaders hung out Rep. John Conyers to dry. Sure there were lots of signatures on that petition that Mr. Conyers delivered to the White House but very few had his back. Outside of Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Congresswomen Louise Slaughter (D-NY) the highest ranking Democrat to try to bring this issue to the press was Tim Robbins! The MSM ignored that Capital basement meeting and the delivery of over five hundred thousand signatures but our leadership should have been fighting that one at the level of the press.
Would The New York Times have covered the story with a headline as misleading as Antiwar Group Says Leaked British Memo Shows Bush Misled Public on His War Plans if the Democratic leaders were holding press conferences about Mr. Conyers meeting in the Capital basement? Would The Washington Post print an opinion as openly hostile as Democrats Play House to Rally against the War if the Minority Leaders were standing behind Mr. Conyers?
What if Nancy Pelosi went on the Sunday Spin Circuit on the week of John Conyers basement hearing and said "You have to understand how this memo makes the United States look in the international community. The Downing Street Memo may not be in American newspapers but it is being carefully scrutinized in other countries. If we don't have a proper investigation, it looks to the rest of the world like a big cover up. Keeping it quiet makes us look guilty."
If Harry Reid appeared on another Sunday morning talk show the same day and exclaimed "This memo has to be investigated for our children. It may not be in our nation's newspapers but the Downing Street Memo is all over the blogosphere. Children are internet savvy and printouts are being passed around our schools. Can we afford to send a message to our children that it is presidential to lie?" That would have been a sure sign that our Democratic leadership has learned a few lessons from the Republicans.
If Dick Durbin sat down on one of those news channels and defended the children ploy with something so off the wall that it started another Republican outcry for an apology, something like "Oh yes, Senator Reid's statement couldn't have been more on the money. Think about the Republicans pushing Oval Office sex onto the morning news shows. The indiscretion of Kenneth Starr made fellatio look Presidential. A few years later, oral sex in our High Schools reached pandemic levels." That would be a sign that not only had the Democrats leaned a few pointers from the Republicans, they would have proven to be very good students.
What would the Monday morning headlines looked like after those comments? Would CNN, MSNBC and the Networks have spent the rest of the week following them around with a microphone, waiting for another incendiary remark? Because that is really what the media is all about. The newspapers are whores to their circulation numbers and T.V. News will prostitute themselves to anyone who can raise those ratings.
Where would the Downing Street memo be now? Would we not have gotten a humbled George W. Bush out of those statements? And wouldn't Karl Rove been fired the day he was implicated? He would have been back the day Libby took the fall but we would at least enjoyed a temporary downfall of Bush's brain!
Later during the summer, another golden opportunity was lost on the Democrats.
On Tuesday July 12, 2005, it seemed like a liberal media was on the comeback. The White House press corps was out for blood. They were very aggressive and the questioning became hostile when he press secretary refused to either stand by or step back from his previous statement that "Karl Rove is innocent." After Scott McClellan said 23 times that the investigation was ongoing and thus he could not comment, David Gregory ripped into McClellan saying that his evasiveness and excuses were ridiculous.
All though the day, CNN was giving the White House a very hard time. The news channel once know as "The Peoples Network" wasn't just giving Karl Rove a hard time. They were all over Scott McClellan's evasive maneuvers. Going so far as to edit together how many ways he could say "I'm not going to answer any questions." A tactic that seemed more like Air America Radio or The Daily Show and there was even mention of the call for an investigation into a White House cover up.
On this particular day the Republicans were uncharacteristically mute. The cracks were beginning to show in the Republican Party. Since every Republican in Washington simply clammed up while waiting for a set of unified instruction on how to spin this one, the Democrats were given a chance.
The Democrats were freely given the microphone and they had a chance to come in for the kill. But what did the viewers end up with?
CNN covered John Kerry's take on the issue. With all the passion of Steven Wright, he stretched "Karl Rove should be fired" into as many sentences as possible. The commentator said "you can't see it but Hillary Clinton is off to the side, nodding her head in agreement." Was that the best our Presidential has-been and hopeless hopeful could do? It was an embarrassment!
The next week, Tim Russert said on the Today Show "As one Republican said to me last night, if this was a Democratic White House we'd have congressional hearings in a second." Russert was literally cueing our leadership to get into the fight. Come onto NBC and raise the ratings with some good back biting and cat calls.
Katrina was a tragedy that woke up many Americans. It was also the shining moment of our House minority leader. "Oblivious, in denial, dangerous" was a memorable sound bite and when Congresswoman Pelosi told Kyra Phillips off, it was one of our finest moments in T.V. News. But there should be hundreds of those incidents to look back on for 2005.
The list of missed opportunities is very long. How many missed opportunities can we allow before we start talking about the complete failure of the Democratic representatives at the level of the press. What if the Democratic leadership had been fighting like dogs as long as we have. Where would the people stand on Abramoff and wire tapping?
Instead of walking around saying "The president has a right to spy on terrorists and you desperate liberals are just bitching as usual," they would be calling for blood!
You could say that hindsight is always 20/20 but the Democratic leadership knew both these scandals were coming to a head and I still don't hear a whole lot out of them.
The fact is that The Republicans have gone so far because there is almost no one in a position of power who is willing to call them on these acts. When George W. Bush got away with saying "you saw the same intelligence that I did" over and over, it is obvious that there is something very broken in the upper echelon of the Democratic Party.
Why weren't our Senators screaming bloody murder? Why was it that the Democratic leadership was not focusing the public on the fact that the Senate saw very different intelligence from the Chief Executive? The Senate was given intelligence that was doctored by the Executive Office.
Well that same bullshit is happening all over again because Bush is telling America that the senior Democrats knew all about the fact that he was spying on us without a warrant. While these representatives are caught in a George W. Bush version of Catch 22, why don't they just get on the air and relate the fact that disclosure of those facts learned behind closed committee doors would have meant jail time. All the public gets to hear is wimpy little stories about how they expressed doubt back then.
Oh yea, Murtha is a hero and Dean gives them Hell. Hackett and Cindy Sheehan did us proud but they don't even hold office. There is never a dull moment when Russ Feingold gets the microphone and Senator Edward Kennedy has a few good ones. Every now and again we get a few good sound bites from someone but this is bullshit.
This is war! The White House has declared war on the Constitution of the United States and every Democratic leader should be saying that every day.
We can spread the blame around and not put this all at the feet of The New York Times.
In a perfect world the primary purpose of our Forth Estate would be freedom and justice. However, The New York Times and The Washington Post answer to their share holders first and their circulation comes before their obligation to report the news.
It would be great if the media was placed on this earth to watch over the Republicans on our behalf but that is not their job. Making money is their job!
There is an American agency that holds that position. The Republicans have been slamming the ACLU for over fifty years and there has been very little support from the Democrats. It reached a fever pitch when the ACLU tried to defend Americans against the Patriot Act.
How Many Democrats can you recall making a statement like "Of course Ashcroft and the Bush administration hate the ACLU. When you are a member of that sect, defenders of freedom are your worse nightmare. There is no way that Patriot Act is about protection from terrorist. If that was the case, the White House would have spent some money on border and port security. If that was the case the Republican controlled Congress would have sent security money to the municipalities that are most like to see a Terrorist Attack instead of turning it into another pork barrel project. The Patriot Act has nothing to do with public protection and everything to do with control of the public.
After the Republican machine had devoted so much effort into convincing Americans that the ACLU was evil, the Democrats had distanced themselves from a not-for-profit organization devoted to insuring civil rights. If the Democrats came out in defense of the ACLU, swing voters may have asked themselves why the Republicans were enemies of the people responsible for defending the "Bill of Rights."
Running away from controversy is bad but distancing themselves from allies is a very serious defect of character. A quote from Wesley Clark sizes up his fellow Democrats.
The American people will trust the Democratic Party to defend America when they believe that Democrats will defend other Democrats.
This diary of mine from two weeks ago, Have you seen the Nixon/Bush ad from the ACLU gives me the impression that the ACLU is the only organization that has what it takes to stand up to the White House. The performance of our Democratic leadership is starting to give me bad feeling that they have become a "Fifth Column" for George W. Bush.
The New York Times learned a valuable lesson from what the Democratic Party allowed the Republican Party to do to the ACLU over all those years. het learned just how alone they are during the Blaine incident, as all of the Wingnut newspapers that haven't checked a fact in years had a field day.
The excuses for not revealing the warrantless wiretaps are all lame but there is only one party with a strong voice in America and the White House is pretty hard to mess with when the Democrats offer so little.
Blaming the corporate Media is an exercise in futility. If our Democratic leadership was willing to master the sound bite and confront the enemy, the press would come back.
And every time one of these thinly veiled talking heads comes out against a Democrat how come when they get asked about it we don't hear something like "Bill O'Reilly is a lying embarrassment and traitor to this nation who sold his soul to an Australian billionaire who's only interest in this nation is how much money he can drag out of it." An answer like that would get some Red State voters to say "Hey, these Democrats are all right."
It is our Democratic leadership that should be telling the nation what FoXNews is all about because how many people read or listen to Al Franken?
We have few entertainment empires that are dependent on Republicans and they gather news and information for us. One of the networks is owned by a defense contractor! I often think that future historians will place the blame for the fall of the United States on Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch.
And when did all of that Media consolidation happen?
The Republican Party leaders can spin a web of deceit, going way out on the limb with the confidence of the full backing of his fellow party members. Meanwhile, a Democratic Senator or Congressperson can say something that is completely true but controversial and the news media will find another Democratic leader to say his fellow Democrats statement was wrong.
If there is one thing Democrats should have learned from the Republicans it is the days of civil behavior are long past. The era of the "honorable gentleman from wherever" ended when the Republicans began viciously confronting every Democratic platform and every Democratic leader. The successes of these tactics are undeniable. The constant accusations while the Democrats were in charge didn't have to a base in fact. They just needed to be a unified defamation that grabbed headlines. Since these confrontations became the norm, the Republicans have taken the majority everywhere.
And while the Democratic leadership can't seem to put together a good offensive campaign against the Neocon traitors, our losses continue to mount. If the Democrats want to start calling these people names like the ones we use, than Americans will start to listen.
The situation that has developed is publishers and T.V. newsrooms who desperately don't want to be "Ratherrized." And they know that there is no one in government that will stand up to the Bullies in the White House.
Maybe that is all it boils down to, the defamation of Dan Rather. When the White House used all of their power against one of the most respected names in television news, ABC and NBC weren't about to come to hid defense in a highly completive business. What if our democratic leadership came on strong with the message "I can't believe the chutzpa of these people. Dan Rather's fact checkers missed the fact that a document was too recent for the Viet Nam era and we hear about it for weeks but the man with the most extensive research facilities on earth screws up the intelligence that took us to war so bad that it is obvious the slip ups were deliberate and that's no big deal."
Maybe The New York Times just didn't want to go out on a limb with the knowledge that no one had their back.
You can blame the press all you want but I think the responsibility for this desperate situation is more than just shared by the Democratic leadership. I see them starting to get into it now but it's a little late.
What about the minority opinion. Where is it? Just because our party isn't in power and our representatives can't make any laws, doesn't mean that our party can't make noise.
And I am getting fed up!