When the Bully Pulpit starts to lose its allure

May 20, 2005

On the 78th day of Bush 60-day “tour” to promote Social Security privatization, the president went to Milwaukee for another predictable event. While the tired speech and scripted Q-and-A was about as engaging as watching paint dry, there was one interesting, and important, development that shouldn’t get lost in the shuffle: Reporters no longer care about the Bamboozlepalooza Tour. Good for them. And for us.

The Washington Post’s Peter Baker noted today that this roadshow “has the feel of a past-its-prime Broadway production that has been held over while other, newer shows steal the spotlight.”

[T]he half-empty press charter and filing center Thursday spoke to the dwindling news media interest. None of the networks sent its regular White House correspondent. USA Today, the Washington Times and other papers that usually cover presidential trips saw no reason to cover this one. Even some White House aides weary of the barnstorming privately roll their eyes and groan at the notion of yet another Social Security trip.

Bush, himself, seemed to recognize that this was not going to lead the nightly news. “Look at it this way,” he told the local crowd proud of its museum. “It’s a chance to show it off for the world — to the extent the world is watching C-SPAN.”

It was a joke that spoke to a salient truth. The point isn’t that reporters have given up on this nonsense because of some ideological bias; the point is they know these events are not newsworthy. Bush delivers the same speech, pre-screened and well-rehearsed sycophants ask the same set-up questions, and advance teams position the same Orwellian props for the cameras. There’s no spontaneity, no surprises, and no news.

Why in the world should political reporters travel half-way across the country to report on such an empty masquerade? Fortunately, they’re no longer taking the bait.

It may not be time for Bush to accept defeat on privatization, but it’s past time for him to realize that this traveling circus is an embarrassing debacle that hasn’t changed a single mind about his proposed scheme. When White House aides, hired for their unwavering loyalty, “roll their eyes and groan at the notion of yet another Social Security trip,” you know there’s been one event too many.

May 20, 2005 at 1:29 pm

I guess setting up all those Potemkin Villages is getting tiring. BTW, Georgie, I think there’s still fighting going on in Iraq. Why not do a few town halls over there? I’m sure they could round up 5 or 6 people who like you.

Bush has brought chaos and disaster to an entire world (ok, a large chunk of it, anyway), and still manages to sleep at night.

Do you really think he’s gonna worry about dwindling attention to his roadshow?

I thought that was his strategy: to bore us until the issue disappears so that it can’t be used to rally people in the midterms. Bush knows it’s dead, but he doesn’t want to ever have a story written about his “defeat” or “retreat” on this issue the way Clinton got beaten up over health care reform.

But – getting away from the “inside the Beltway” viewpoint, I would think that the localities and the true believers and the local media still would get excited over a Presdidential visit. If Bush’s visit (and his spin of the Social Security issue) lead off the evening local news in Milwaukee one night, then Syracuse the next night, then Nashville the next night, etc., etc., does it really matter that the USA Today guy isn’t following him around?

I guess ole George would like staying mobile just in case. Lame ducks are easier to impeach. Besides, he’s not really the hardworkin type and the value of the dollar is too low for a European vacation. Oh, yeah, they don’t play reporter real nice in Europe anyway.

And how much is this failed road show costing us taxpayers? And, it is just another form of one-sided propaganda AT OUR TAXPAYER EXPENSE. I say enough of the ideology-on-tour crap.

I hope the roadshow never ends. It’s not that the media has moved on. It’s the people who have moved on. And, thanks in large part to Bush’s silly tour, we’ve decided his SS plan is a awfull joke.

Now, if we could get him to go on tour in support of his judicial nominations and assorted policies, we might get to see his approval numbers drop into the low 30’s.

Andy – I believe our own Carpetbagger has written posts relaying some articles about the difficulty of filling the arenas GWB has chosen. Excitement indeed.

Andy – I believe our own Carpetbagger has written posts relaying some articles about the difficulty of filling the arenas GWB has chosen.

Good point. Here’s one recent example I found pretty entertaining.

Sadly, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel had breathless headlines which implied the “specialness” of this visit. Check it out here.(registration required.) Apparently, 500 people lapped it all up.

I decided not to buy today’s issue. I’m not paying money to read about this circus.

That is the best news I’ve heard all week!

And, since this has been a week of proving Godwin’s Law, I’ll try my hand at it too:

I just finished watching a fascinating movie from 1969 called “The Sorrow and the Pity”, about the occupation of France in WWII. The former Secretary of State is talking about the cinema in occupation times. He said that in the beginning people loved goign to the movies, because the Nazis used a lot of French movie stars and directors to make their films, and, while not as good as French films, they weren’t bad. Then the films got more and more propogandistic, and boring, and simplistic and heavy-handed, really quite vile (like the anti-Semitic ones), and eventually the French people just recoiled in horror and stopped going to the movies. It took them years, but they finally realised the films were pure propoganda and had no merit. And then they just stopped going to see them.

A friend’s girlfriend grew up in the old Eastern Bloc. She said that by the 1980’s people were so jaded and cynical, and so dismissive of the state propoganda, that when the news gave reports of earthquakes and hurricanes in the USA, nobody believed it. “Oh, it is all just a lie. Yawn.” She later moved here and found out that a lot of those reports were actually true (i.e. the 1989 SFO earthquake was definitely not a lie), but they had gotten so accustomed to the propoganda that they just assumed it was all lies.

I think Shrub may be approaching that time here; when people finally wake up to propoganda, it becomes ineffective.

George W Bush Will Win This War…Against the Middle Class, that is…

Bush should be presented with a pin of a pair of gold plated crutches upon his return from the last gathering of the privitization parade. They can honor his lame duck status as he moves into the closing stages of his wasted presidency.

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