Lenin, News Accounts, and Anti Bush Sentiment

I sometimes get the impression that some members of the Washington press corps employ tactics that came out of Lenin’s playbook. Lenin argued what is good is what advances the proletarian revolution. It doesn’t have to be true or humane; it must simply advance the goals of the Party.

In 2004 there is a new refrain, but an echo from the past: what is good is what advances anti-Bush sentiments. Here too the claims do not have to be true as long as the cause is advanced.

For months newspaper editorials decried the loss of jobs. The rather odd word “outsourcing” became a source of disdain. Bush was credited with destroying the employment market.

Then, of course, a funny thing happened on the way to the editorial page—the March Labor Department figures were published which showed remarkable growth in job creation and acquisition. In fact, these are the most favorable numbers in four years.

Similarly, Bush was saddled with a “near depression” by the journalistic community until the statistics for the last half of 2003 were published. These numbers showed a startling 13 percent growth rate during that period, the fastest g.d.p. growth in twenty years.

On the foreign policy front the press corps stumbled all over itself in an effort to embrace the claims and criticism of Richard Clarke. It refused to examine the obvious: how is it possible that Condi Rice “never even heard” of al Qaeda in 2001 and was it unreasonable for the president to ask about Iraq’s involvement with terrorism after two of those who attacked the World Trade Center in ’93 were Iraqi citizens who returned to their country of origin as heroes?

Pushing the ball forward invariably means embarrassing the president. Since weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq, the president must ipso facto have been lying about his casus belli. It hasn’t occurred to most journalists that President Clinton also believed Saddam Hussein possessed these weapons and, as a matter of fact, Hussein used poison gas to kill 40,000 Kurds. Isn’t that a weapon of mass destruction?

Then there is the press canard bolstered by Richard Clarke that Saddam was a distraction, the wrong enemy. However, Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas—two of the world’s most notorious terrorists—found a congenial home in Iraq. Al Qaeda maintained a training camp in Iraq and the head of Iraq’s secret police met with Mohammed Atta, the prime planner of 9/11.

Moreover, from a geostrategic point of view doesn't it make sense to have a presence in “the neighborhood” that spawns terrorism? What nation other than Iraq shares a border with Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, three nations largely responsible for promoting international terrorism?

As I see it, strategic Leninism is alive and well ensconced in press corps opinion. Fortunately most Americans are suspicious of press accounts and editorial opinions. But that is most Americans, not all Americans. Some people are suggestible and some welcome anti-Bush sentiment even when transparently untrue.

What has happened in recently years is that some sectors of the journalistic community are an extension of a political party, partisan to the core. They view their job as defeating President Bush thereby using news accounts, or should I say selective news accounts, as an instrument to promote their aims.

Lenin is gone thank God, but his tactics survive. As a consequence, news is now what advances the party apparatus, a condition not dissimilar from days of yore in the erstwhile Soviet Union.

receive the latest by email: subscribe to herbert i. london's free mailing list