A dangerous culture at the Bush White House

Warning! This blog post is uncommonly partisan in nature.

I have of course been following with great interest the latest developments in President Bush's attempts to maintain absolute control over his War on Terror. His shenanigans over torture and domestic spying are, I believe, part of a pattern of extra-legal activities that shows Bush's imperial and unConstitutional instincts clearly on display. And now a number of conservatives are saying the same thing, or at least exhibiting grave concerns at the President's actions. Their number includes Sen. Arlen Spector and Sen. John McCain; and, in media-land, David Brooks and George Will. And I was stunned to hear three prominent conservatives on NPR's Diane Rehm Show all excoriate Bush for his recent activities. I'm glad to hear this, because it shows that the rising tide of criticism against this warped presidency isn't simply a matter of whinging lefties.

Thank God for that. It's about time. I hope that a critical mass of all Americans are starting to realize just how dangerous to democracy this presidency - and this president - has become. And this danger manifested itself first in Bush's clear disregard for the media and its proper function in a democracy. And that's what the rest of this post is about. Ever since September 11, 2001, I've been increasingly concerned by the attempts by the Bush administration to control what passes for "news" in the American media. Of course, presidents have attempted to "spin" the press for generations. Theodore Roosevelt famously used his "bully pullpit" to cajole the press. (He also sought to gain favor among journalists in other ways; it was Roosevelt who set up the first White House press room, to give reporters a warm place to work, shielded from the elements, while interviewing officials and writing up their articles.) Other presidents have tried to go over the heads of the White House Press Corps to appeal directly to the American people. TR's later namesake, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, inaugurated his radio "fireside chats" to achieve just such a goal. All 20th century presidents have tried to some extent to set the agenda and spin the news in ways that are favorable to them. Especially in recent years, all administrations have engaged ever more heavily in what Penn Annenberg professor Oscar Gandy called an information subsidy. (As I've written before, massive information subsidies allow journalists to look like they're doing a whole lot of work while in reality much of the content they present under their byline is actually "borrowed" from spin doctors and PR professionals pushing a particular point of view.)

But George W. Bush's presidency is qualitatively different from most that have preceded him. A recent piece in Slate.com ("Beyond Spin: The propaganda presidency of George W. Bush") by Jacob Weisberg points to the "familiar litany" of the Bush administration's disinformation campaigns within the United States. In the past year-plus there has plenty of evidence of wrongdoing. The adminstration's use of VNRs (Video News Releases) to promote Medicare "reform," first reported by the New York Times, was bad. Then there was the Department of Education's dodgy relationship with Armstrong Williams. USA Today early in 2005 reported that the Education Department, through a contract with the Ketchum public relations firm, apparently paid $240,000 to Williams, a conservative African-American print, radio and television pundit, to help promote Bush's No Child Left Behind program to minority audiences on his news radio show. USA Today also noted back in Jaunary that, as of early 2005, the Bush administration had paid PR firms $250 million to help push their ideas and proposals. That's double what the Clinton administration spent on all P.R. from 1997 to 2000.

Just weeks after the Williams revelation earlier this year, Eric Boehlert in Salon uncovered government-funded activities by Michael McManus, "a marriage advocate whose syndicated column, Ethics & Religion,' appears in 50 newspapers. Briefly, McManus "was hired as a subcontractor by the Department of Health and Human Services (the same agency that had paid for and distributed the prepackaged VNRs) to foster a Bush-approved marriage initiative. McManus championed the plan in his columns without disclosing to readers he was being paid to help it succeed." Horn's move came on the heels of a contemporary report in the Washington Post that HHS had paid syndicated columnist and marriage advocate Maggie Gallagher $21,000 to write brochures and essays and to brief government employees on the president's marriage initiative.

Noted Boehlert a couple of weeks ago: "Any of of these incidents might be excused as an episode of poor judgment by an underling. In combination and accompanied by various presidential comments about not reading the newspaper, preferring to get his news from aides, and so on, they suggest a propaganda ethic."

More recent developments, both at home and abroad, suggest that this might be an understatement - don't forget the Valerie Plame/Scooter Libby/Dick Cheney revelations, and the recent news that the U.S. government paid for planted propaganda in the free Iraq media (here's the original piece that broke the story in the Los Angeles Times). The latest New York Times revelations about the administration's covert, extralegal spying on the American people, and Bush's reaction to that story, leaves no doubt: There is a something serious going on here, and it is very dangerous and deeply corrosive to democracy.

Yes indeedy.