Ron Suskind, who wrote the stunning “Without a Doubt” piece for the New York Times Magainze, talked to Salon today and added some interesting details to what he’s learned and noticed.
First, and perhaps most importantly, Suskind fleshed out something he mentioned only in passing in the NYT piece.
[T]he president said, “I’m going to have an opportunity to name somebody to the Supreme Court right after my swearing in.” That certainly suggests to me a quid pro quo, that there’s been at least a passing of communication, if you will, between someone on the Supreme Court and the White House that immediately after the president’s swearing in he’ll have his first of what he considers, as he said at the luncheon, the first of four spots that he’s expected to [be able to name] in his second term.
That alone should be enough to send shivers down the spine of anyone who takes the judiciary and constitutional rights seriously.
My friend Phil, who alerted me to the interview, also noticed that Suskind had an interesting response to a question about whether there’s a coordinated attempt to knock reporters down so media accounts of government will be taken less seriously. Suskind responded:
“There is a varied, national, forceful, coordinated campaign to do that, to try to create doubt about the long-held and long-respected work of the mainstream media. Absolutely. So that Americans believe that what we do and say, what the mainstream media offer, is not of value, is not honest, is not factually accurate. And [that we are] not in any way connected to strong traditions of American public dialogue, that we’ve been co-opted, that we’re not objective, and that essentially we are carrying forward an agenda.
“I fiercely disagree with that. I talk to more Republicans now than Democrats [for my stories]. This is not simply the effort of a single party [of people criticizing Bush]. It’s the effort of a group within a single party. There are many, many conservatives and libertarians and Republicans who believe ardently in the value of public dialogue based on fact. Paul O’Neill is one of them. There are lots of Republicans who are troubled by this tactical force, this kill-or-be-killed desire to essentially undermine public debate based on fact.”
It’s a good point that’s obvious but often unsaid. The right’s constant whining about a “liberal media” is not just to have another arrow in their rhetorical quiver. Conservatives need to discredit those who may criticize them. Reporters — well, most of them — deal with facts and truth. The White House wants to make up its own facts and truth as it goes along, so naturally the media is dismissed as the “reality-based community.”