Right-wing talking points are known for making the rounds quickly, but “slow bleed” seemed to break new speed records. Rep. [tag]John Murtha[/tag] (D-Pa.) recently came up with a policy proposal, which he called the “readiness strategy,” which would insist that only troops with adequate training and equipment be sent to Iraq. Republicans have a different name for it: “[tag]slow bleed[/tag].”
Now, to hear them tell it, the phrase is a Democratic invention — it’s what Dems call their own policy idea. The RNC’s Mike Duncan published a letter to supporters explaining that Murtha had “let slip what he and Nancy Pelosi really intend to do, and it is genuinely frightening. They call it their ‘slow-bleed’ plan.”
Like most RNC claims, this is false, but for most of the media, it didn’t matter. “Slow bleed” was the new name for Murtha’s policy. Mainstream outlets embraced it as a fair and legitimate moniker. Today, The Politico’s John Harris confesses this is his fault.
“Slow bleed” is my phrase. Murtha had nothing to do with it. Neither did John Bresnahan, the reporter whose name was on the Politico story in which the “slow-bleed strategy” made its debut.
You can understand my pride of authorship. Editors labor in obscurity. Our job is to keep reporters from looking bad, and to let them take the credit when they look good. Rarely is there tangible evidence that we are having any impact. But in 20-plus years in the business, I can scarcely recall an instance when words typed on my keyboard have had such a loud and immediate echo.
As Harris explains, he just wanted to jazz up a dry lede, and this is what he came up with. Now, Harris would “prefer” that he hadn’t created “ammunition in the form of evocative but loaded language.” He added that “it was never my plan” to make Republican operatives’ “work so easy.”
How convenient for him.
There are, however, a couple of additional concerns here. First, Harris’ remorse for literally writing the right-wing’s anti-Murtha talking point seems half-hearted, at best.
Please note the context: What is slowly bleeding away is the administration’s political support to keep fighting the war. Republicans pounced on the phrase because of the ease with which that context could be shorn away, to give the impression that what Democrats were slow-bleeding were the bodies of troops in Iraq.
Harris isn’t sorry he handed Republicans a cudgel, he’s sorry they picked it up and started clubbing Murtha.
Second, Will Bunch raises a good point about creating a narrative.
[I]t is odd how the framework of a right-wing talking point just flowed so easily from his unconscious mind, isn’t it? It makes one think that too much cholesterol from those lunches at the Palm and Charlie Palmer’s can subtly poison the unconscious narratives that journalists like Harris produce, and it shows again why our best political reporting tends to start outside the Beltway these days.
The whole selling point of the Politico was the political savvy of its team of veteran insiders. Yet they weren’t savvy enough to see this coming?
And third, Salon’s Tim Grieve asks the pertinent questions.
Now that Harris has made it clear that Democrats didn’t call their plan a “slow bleed,” will the media stop referring to the plan that way? Will Duncan retract his smear?
Take a wild guess.