Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

I was engaged in a bit of multi-tasking, so I wasn't listening as closely to the President's speech as I might have, on the theory I'd read it later, but here's my initial thinking:

I've argued before that during a time of war, one of the President's key responsibilities is to use the Bully Pulpit, to constantly engage the people, explain, rally, exort -- in short to continue to make the case, to persuade, in the old time, positive sense of that word. And I've argued that this White House has massively fallen short on this, starting pretty much right after the election, when all the President's speaking time began to be devoted to Social Security. What was that about? You want to make arguments on your domestic agenda, that's fine -- but in wartime, you take care of wartime responsibilities first, not as an afterthought.

So today's speech I saw as a return to taking care of business, and the White House was correct in characterizing it as a "major speech" in that sense.

However, my sense is that, for the press, the White House was mischaracterizing the speech because it didn't "make news," it didn't announce anything new.

The problem for this White House is that when the President's speeches are designed to exort and persuade, to elicit support to stay the course, they won't be "making news" in the sense the press means that -- that is, making change. There is a fundamental disconnect here, I realized listening to the Post's Dana Priest instaresponse to the speech on MS, that this White House will never be able to resolve.

The press will never like any of these speeches, and will never believe they're being treated fairly when they're told in advance that they're "major."

This is a gap I suspect the White House will never be able to make up. And so no matter how good the speeches are, they'll never be reviewed positively by the usual talking heads precisely because "there's nothing new here."

Comments

[Bryguy]

It's not like there's anything more important going on at the moment than reiterating Bush's Iraq policy, right? Stop the presses! Forget Plame, Katrina and Miers; the President wants to stay the course some more!

[Dusty]

I think you're very much on target here. Moreso, I think the media (the fat part of the bell curve) need 'kick in the head' transparency of the 'news' for it to be news.

Here's a few things I considered very interesting:

- It is ratcheting up the program for defining what Islam is. Consider this in the sense of boxing Islam into the breadth and width to which Islam will be accepted. It's still quite broad but it begins to shunt the most vile ways in which Islam can be used for preaching.

- Maybe it is my memory, but this speech certainly seemed to use the fundamentalist, militant and insurgents modifiers alot in relation to the term terrorist, yet the rhetoric was more damning. I got the feeling the President is attempting to co-opt the terms, i.e., if people won't brand them terrorists, I'll brand them militants, etc. If done well, those who retreat from calling a spade a spade, will eventually have to retreat from calling them all the things they prefer too, like hearts, diamonds, and clubs.

- North Korea is out, Syria is in. I try to keep in mind that what an administration does is like an iceberg - only a small portion is visible. Maybe it is better to say that what I apply in making judgments of day to day events is what I know (or readily remember) and that is like an iceberg. I mention this because I believe more goes on in lots of these hot stories than meets the eye or ear. If Syria is now in and I were Syria, I would sweat alot. Similar point to the above for Hamas, Hezbollah, etc. -- there were too many observations relating to their activities in the speech.

- There were many references that you could interpret as 'We know what you're doing.' with several different meanings, such as 'Keep moving.', 'We're watching.', 'We're not fooled.' A couple of the last had an ominous sound to them.

There's lots more to read and consider in this speech. It wasn't as I was lead to believe by some of the media's announcements of it. This speech was not given for American ears.