Republicans and Bush, in particular, thrived under the Ari Fleischer school of media management. An old story I read somewhere recounts how Ari, working for a congressman, dealt with a sticky situation. A reporter called to ask why Ari's boss had voted for a certain bill. Fleischer denied the vote. The reporter, flummoxed, said he'd confirm the vote and call back.
Fleischer's boss had voted for the bill. But having confirmed the vote, Fleischer made sure not to take that reporter's call again.
Simple and genius. Lie, force doubt into the reporter's mind, and change the subject as quickly as possible. It worked for Bush in 2000, and a complacent media went along for the ride.
The media stuck with the Bush bandwagon through the first three years of his term, through a disastrous war and one tax-cut-motivated lie after another (tax cuts create jobs! said the Republicans after presiding over the loss of 2.4 million jobs).
But something funny happened in 2003. The media landscape shifted. Suddenly, the Internet became a 24/7 oppo research and fact checking tool. The Republicans remain wilfully ignorant of their online would-be allies. The Democratic Party -- outgunned, outmanned, outfinanced, and out-of-power -- was not so myopic.
Hardly a day goes by when I don't see a blog-inspired email blasted out by some party functionary, be it the DSCC, DCCC, DNC or affiliated organizations. Those institutions -- the very core of the "Democratic Party Establishment" -- are linking to blogs at increased rates. And the results speak for themselves.
For example, my reader-powered "Bush Flip Flops" post on Saturday hit Andrew Sullivan, WaPo and dozens, if not hundreds, of blogs today. In one fell swoop, we turned a GOP talking point against our candidate against theirs, and people outside of the blogosphere "echo chamber" were receptive to the message.
I didn't write that flip-flop post. Reader TK did. Yet it'll now be picked up by the party and other media outlets when "balancing" out the RNC spin points. We are on our way to neutralizing what might've been the GOP's strongest line of attack against Kerry.
Fact is, this is a brutal time to be in GOoPer politics. The old tricks of the trade don't work anymore. Once upon a time, politicos preyed on the public's short attention span. Say one thing today, pretend you never said that tomorrow knowing no one would call you on it. ("Imminent threat", anyone?)
Bloggers like Bilmon started exposing the administration's blatant lies, and surprise! discovered that they had a hungry audience. It was thus inevitable that such blog-provided "context" started making it into news stories (the Billmon expose of the WMD quotes was hugely influential in driving down the administration's credibility on the issue). And Google makes political research as easy as typing in a phrase in a text box. No more hours of microfiche headaches at the public library.
The Bush Administration is now in a quandry, never before faced by a political campaign. EVERY WORD IT UTTERS can be instantly fact checked and vetted against previous administration proclamations. And the press, lazy as it is, doesn't even have to do the research. They simply have to read the blogs (and they certainly do). The party can pick the best bits of the day and mold them into spin and talking points. Their overstretched, overworked research departments now have reinforcements of major caliber.
For an administration and a party built on ignorance, short-term memory and outright lies (see post below), the harsh glare of this new medium must be excruciating.
The Democratic Party is no longer 75 or 100 employees in Washington DC. We are all now adjunct DNCers (whether you like it or not!). When we fact-check Bush, develop new avenues of critique, bring attention to some lonely article in Bismarck, Montpelier, or Dallas (again, see post below), and spread the word about the latest GOP lies and/or outrages, we are helping the party do what it can't do on its own -- reclaim the nation from the ravages of the GOP wingnuts.
