Fool us four times, shame on…

October 6, 2005

On Oct. 6, 2004, just a month before the presidential election, the White House announced that Bush would deliver a “major speech” about the war in Iraq. Reporters dutifully showed up, all the networks broadcast it live to a national television audience, and Americans heard … nothing new. It was just another pep rally in which Bush attacked John Kerry for the better part of an hour. The networks, as a practical matter, ran one-hour, uninterrupted commercials for the Bush campaign.

Two weeks later, on Oct. 18, it happened again. Bush’s aides billed an event in New Jersey as a “major speech” on terrorism. The networks, once again, showed up, and the president, once again, gave his standard stump speech.

It worked so well during the campaign it seems to have become a standard practice. In June, Bush delivered another speech on Iraq. Sticking to the game plan, the White House told reporters it would be — you guessed it — a “major speech.” It wasn’t.

Sure enough, the Bush gang keeps going to the same well. Yesterday, Scott McClellan said today’s presidential remarks will be “a significant speech on the war on terrorism.” Aside from some unsubstantiated claims about foiling alleged al Queda plots, viewers learned that Bush believes Iraq is central to the war on terror and Bush is commited to “complete victory.”

How many more times do you suppose the White House will try to get away with the same trick?

The question is, how many times do you suppose the media will fall for this trick?

  • Could we be so lucky (or W so unlucky) that the day will come when a sitting president will give a speach or P.C. and only FOX will show up?

    Talk about neutered!

  • I will let Josh Marshall make my comment for me…..

    Late Update: The fact that the president has decided to schedule a “major speech” on Iraq and terrorism, apropos of more or less nothing, would seem to suggest some bad coming down the pike. On the other hand, he seems to schedule these speeches about twice a month nowadays.

    http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_02.php#006695

    I do wonder if it is still considered “major” if the press grow some balls and not show up? But then that is not likely to happen is it so we will never know? But of course a “major” speech with not press would be news.

  • The media is in kind of a bind here. What if he DID give a major speech with important new information. Like a timetable for withdrawal. They’d look pretty foolish in not covering it. OTOH, if they did slip some major new info into one of these daytime, not prime time, speeches and the media didn’t cover it, they could pretty much guarantee themselves complete coverage of every subsequent speech the preznit ever gives.

  • They should cover the speech with a one-hour delay, which would give them time to see whether it is indeed major, or whether a two-minute extract would be enough “and now we return you to our regular programming.” I don’t think anything Bush would have to say is so critical that people couldn’t wait for an hour to hear it, and if it’s not worth hearing at all, people would be grateful to get the hour back–like when you’re scheduled for a one-hour meeting and then it’s cancelled: a whole hour you can spend on what actually needs to be done.

  • If NOLA can wait 3 days for Bush to pay attention when they’re struck by a natural disaster, Bush can wait 1 hour for his drivel to be checked for significance before networks choose to broadcast it.

  • I think both smiley and LeisureGuy make excellent points. Personally I’m glad to see Bush making speeches so often because it lets the all-important American public see that he really has nothing to say, only more the of the same old useless blather and fear mongering.

    And the more often they see it the faster they’ll get so sick of it that they’ll rush to the polls to vote his party out of office from sheer annoyance as soon as they get the chance, I hope.

    The House of Bush is crumbling faster than a vampire in the Mojave Desert and all he can do is another lame speech? That bubble he lives in must be made of solid neutronium.

  • Repugs know how to play the media, baby.

    The only people we have who come anywhere close are Michael Moore, and perhaps Cindy Sheehan. And Sheehan wasn’t even doing it intentionally– she just happens to have a compelling story. Old Big Dog too, he was good. Moore is just a genius showman– a rarity on the left. Of course, this is why the wingnuts hate the three of them– they know how to *win* at media manipulation.

    In the world of intense competition for 24-hour news coverage, the White House can schedule whatever they want and the media will cover it, because, as you note, they’re all falling over themselves to out-scoop each other.

    Divide and conquer.

    The fastest and surest way to defeat or neuter an enemy is to get them to compete with each other. This is the best thing about capitalism– when it works: consumers divide producers, make them compete with each other, and thus conquer them (checked the price of computers lately? Consumer gadgets?). It’s also what sucks about monopoly or cronyism: producers collude and force consumers to compete with each other (checked the price and terms of a Microshaft software license lately?). And the Cheney administration is brilliant at it. They are the “producers” of news information, and they make the various media outlets compete for “access” to it, and thus control them utterly.

    By the way this is also what’s great about keeping the pressure on the Repugs. The more they falter, and run into trouble, and since they are fat and spoiled with riches, the more likely they are to start knifing each other in the back as times get lean for them. It’s inevitable. All we have to do is stand together and keep pressuring them, and force them to kill each other for the remaining crumbs.

  • They should cover the speech with a one-hour delay, which would give them time to see whether it is indeed major….”

    LeisureGuy’s point is about where I’m at. I wouldn’t literally use a delay, but there’s another option.

    If I’m, say, CNN, I can’t very well ignore a presidential address on an ongoing war. First, I’d ask for an advance copy of the speech to see if there’s anything substantive. Assuming the White House says no, or hands it over a few minutes before the speech is delivered, I’d then show the speech from the beginning. If there’s nothing new (or newsworthy), I’d just break away, return to regular programing, and tell viewers to stay tuned to CNN for full coverage of the speech later on in the day.

    I suspect the White House tries to give Bush a little boost now and then with these “I’m a war president” speeches. There’s no reason for the networks to play along.

  • They always have photogs taking pictures of Air Force One taking off, just in case something happens. Very unlikely, but they have to do it.

    The odds of Bush saying anything new are similarly low, but they have to cover it anyways.

  • If you schedule a speech mid-morning on a weekday when only the unemployed, stay-at-home moms/dads, and kids home with the flu can watch, I’d say that’s for sure an indication that it ain’t gonna be “major.” Media should regard attendance as strictly optional.

    Obviously they don’t want to piss off primtime viewers by preempting regular programing just to reiterate the same old routine Iraq speech. “I missed half the play-off game for that???”

  • I dunno, seemed major to me. 😉

    In fact, it motivated me. Tonight I will do some major laundry, have a major dinner, do a major sudoku, maybe even watch some major TV. Then tomorrow, same major line-up! Yeah!

    I think “major” is just the administrations “extreme.” Late ninties, early ohs marketing dictated that to make a product cool, no matter how mundane, just add the word extreme.

    From now on, just substitute the word “extreme” for “major” or “significant” when said by an administration official, and then add the words “to the max, yo,” at the end of the sentence.

    Scotty says Bush will deliver an extreme speech on the war on terrorism, to the max, yo!

  • The TV media could have a one-hour delay on the “speech” — or they could leave it in real-time and have one person representing all media show up for it. This has been done with other media events. A common feed. One person in the audience. The networks could do it on a rotational basis — Bush seems to give enough of these “speeches” to give everyone a shot at covering one of them.

    Come to think of it, this could work for his so-called “press conferences,” too. Bush sparring with Terry Moran in an otherwise empty room…

  • I think it’s clever strategery. Nobody’s going
    to watch him in prime time. Baseball, football,
    new fall tv series lineup, and what’s he got to
    say, anyway? Americans aren’t into politics.
    But this way, it gets covered on all the evening
    news programs, network and cable, that most
    Americans get all their news from, and the
    fawning media shills pick out his best sound
    bites to present to the public. And the gullible
    American sits there smiling about how
    presidential Bush looks and sounds for
    sixty seconds.

    You guys always underestimate how smart
    these Repugs are. That’s one reason that
    they’re drubbing us, really drubbing us.

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