By Patricia H. Kushlis
Why is it that I need to rely on the blogosphere – and Steve Clemons thewashingtonnote.com in particular - for up-to-date information on and analysis of the Bolton hearings? Laura Rozen’s warandpiece.com and the Colorado-based Stygius are also interesting, but Clemons accounts are by far the most complete and timely because he is clearly most in the political thick of things.
Sure, short and occasionally medium sized articles on Bolton appear in the major U.S. media, namely The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, but usually on an inside page or below the fold. None are the in-depth stories these papers are capable of delivering or do they contain much breaking news. The New York Times ran a fun column on its New York page today – based on a telephone interview with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson – who was US UN Ambassador under Clinton – on how Bolton, if he should be so lucky to survive the hearings, could get along best with the New Yorkers. But that’s not the kind of coverage I mean.
It’s as if the established media perceives the dissention over the Bolton nomination as just so much Washington-insider wrangling that it would be far too difficult to try to explain its complexities to those of us who live outside the Beltway. But somehow that very same media blanketed us with coverage of the College of Cardinals election of a new Pope and explained in agonizing detail the politics that went on behind the Vatican’s locked doors. Talk about media overplay of a single story.
Regardless. Of the big three U.S. newspapers, I rank ordered their coverage of the Bolton circus from best to worst in paragraph two above. AP reports, by the way, fall well below those in The New York Times.
I also read the Wall Street Journal but its news coverage of the hearings is essentially non-existent. Instead, the WSJ seems content to run biased op eds by the likes of Bolton’s pal Otto Reich who spent most of last week’s commentary justifying his own questionable record when he was Assistant Secretary for Latin America during George W. Bush’s first term.
The WSJ, perhaps along with the White House, is apparently in a state of denial that this nominee is in trouble. I guess the right wing seems to think if it yells loudly enough about a “Democratic smear campaign” the Senate will cave and support their man. As if the Republicans – and the WSJ – didn’t themselves regularly engage in worse below-the-belt tactics against Democratic opponents.
Yet my guess from reading the meager reports of the hearings in the established media over the weekend – as additional revelations became public but were barely reported if at all - is that the reporters assigned to cover the Bolton hearings assumed that the outcome would be yet another rapid victory for a substandard presidential nominee regardless of what the Democratic opposition brought to the table. And that’s what the Bush Administration has clearly been assuring the press.
So why, therefore, should the media bother too much - after all the American public doesn’t understand the arcane practices of Capitol Hill and the Senate anyway. Well in my view, if they don’t, here’s an excellent educational opportunity and a great place to start.
These hearings are proving better than “reality TV” because the hearings are real. They are about real people with real lives and real stories to tell. And who expected Republican Senator Voinovich to pull the rug out from under Senator Lugar’s rush to vote late Tuesday afternoon by thoughtfully asking for more time to sort out the allegations still coming in?
And the suspense factor? Who knows what those 10 or so NSA telephone intercepts Bolton requested will reveal. Or whose testimony will bring what skeletons to light that had been relegated to the attic over the years?
Since the hearings have been postponed for two weeks, the identities of the U.S. government officials Bolton spied upon thanks to the NSA’s high tech listening capabilities will certainly be revealed – at least to those behind the Senate’s closed doors. Maybe his true motives will radiate forth, too. And allegations against Bolton by the people he tried to skewer will be proven – true or false. This is all to the good.
In my view, the outcome of these confirmation hearings is important. It might even signal the turning of a political tide. Or not. At least, the hearings should issue a warning that Mr. Bush needs to think more carefully about the quality of his nominees for high positions. Just maybe, this Congress won’t always prove the rubber stamp he has come to expect.
But the mainstream news media also need to begin to cover this and other hearings properly – and report to the American people the whats, the whys and the whens in a timely fashion. That’s why the media was once called the fourth branch of government. It needs to behave that way again.