{"id":6260,"date":"2006-01-05T15:21:19","date_gmt":"2006-01-05T20:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6260"},"modified":"2006-01-05T15:21:19","modified_gmt":"2006-01-05T20:21:19","slug":"under-normal-circumstances-this-wouldnt-be-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/under-normal-circumstances-this-wouldnt-be-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Under normal circumstances, this wouldn’t be news"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suppose there’s a temptation to think this<\/a> is good news, but I’m having a hard time feeling encouraged.<\/p>\n

President Bush promised to “take to heart” suggestions on Iraq he heard Thursday from former secretaries of defense and state who have disagreed — sometimes sharply in the past but apparently only mildly in person — with his approach there.<\/p>\n

Bush offered no evidence he plans any significant changes in strategy.<\/p>\n

The president invited more than a dozen foreign policy leaders from previous administrations, split nearly evenly between Democrat and Republican, to the White House for a detailed briefing on Iraq.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Bush tried to convince everyone at the meeting that he’s right, but he also allowed former officials to offer their perspectives in a closed-door session. The president promised to “take to heart the advice.”<\/p>\n

What’s fascinating to me is that this is considered quite newsworthy. Before Bush, there’d be no reason to write a story that reads, “President talks to experienced experts.” It was just assumed that a chief executive would seek out a variety of perspectives and hear a diversity of thoughts. Now, the fact that the president is even willing to stay in the same room, for a short while, with a handful of former administration officials who might disagree with him, is a fairly big news story.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind, there’s been no change in direction, no new policies, and no new positions. It’s just news that Bush talked to a couple of foreign policy experts, some of whom worked for Democratic presidents, and whose advice he’ll no doubt ignore.<\/p>\n

Also note, Newsweek reported<\/a> about a month ago that the Bush gang has crafted a new public relations strategy — which the magazine described as “more show than substance” — to help “dispel the image of the Bush Bubble.” Rove & Co. would arrange some meetings with non-sycophants and characterize it as a breakthrough.<\/p>\n

In other words, today was probably just public-relations hackery designed to give the appearance<\/i> of openness. And the media will be impressed that the president deigned to be in the same room for a little while with mild critics.<\/p>\n

The soft bigotry of low expectations strikes again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suppose there’s a temptation to think this is good news, but I’m having a hard time feeling encouraged. President Bush promised to “take to heart” suggestions on Iraq he heard Thursday from former secretaries of defense and state who have disagreed — sometimes sharply in the past but apparently only mildly in person — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}