THE PROPAGANDA PRESIDENT...BUSH DOES HIS BEST KIM JONG-il

[Guest guest]

George W. Bush does his best Kim Jong-il.

By Jack Shafer

 

Posted Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005

 

If " Dear Leader " Kim Jong-il of North Korea and George W. Bush ever

meet, I suspect the two will bond like long-lost brothers. Both men

are first-born sons of powerful fathers who partied like adolescents

well into their adult lives, after which they submitted to their

dynastic fates as heads of state.

 

Both avoid critical thought, preferring to surround themselves with

yes men and apply propagandistic slogans to the onrushing

complexities of justice, culture, economics, and foreign policy. Bush

churns out buzz phrases with the best of them: He believes

in " compassionate conservatism " and fancies himself part of the " army

of compassion. " He's the " reformer with results " who embraces

the " culture of life. " He shouts his paeans to " liberty "

and " freedom " (a combined 27 times during last night's State of the

Union speech, according to today's Washington Post) while reducing

civil liberties at home.

 

But slogan-chanting is only one small part of an effective propaganda

operation. Successful propagandists must also discourage dissenters

who might disrupt the party line. And the two best ways to keep

people stupid and nodding is by shutting down the information flow

and by stiffing the press. At these chores, Bush excels.

 

The administration's idea of a conversation is a long, platitudinous

presidential monologue. Every administration has warred with

reporters, but Bush's is the first to challenge the very legitimacy

of the press. Inside the White House briefing room, press secretary

Scott McClellan controls the topics discussed by playing rope-a-dope

with reporters, absorbing and ignoring the tough questions until they

give up. When Vice President Dick Cheney didn't like the campaign

coverage he read in the New York Times, the Times reporter was tossed

off the plane. In the February/March American Journalism Review, Los

Angeles Times reporter Edwin Chen complains that his newspaper has

yet to score an interview with President Bush. " This White House

doesn't need California, has no use for California politically, " says

Chen, " so we carry no clout. "

 

Bush regards the press as a filter— an unnecessary one. " I'm mindful

of the filter through which some news travels, and somehow you just

got to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the

people, " he said in October 2003 during a media push in which he gave

interviews to five regional broadcasters about his Iraq policy

because he disliked the national news coverage.

 

In fact, as Michael Kinsley wrote in Slate a year and a half ago,

it's not that Bush favors unfiltered news; he wants everybody to

receive it through his filter. In recent weeks we've learned what

extremes he'll go to in working around reporters. The Armstrong

Williams case, which may be a harbinger of a greater secret

propaganda campaign by the administration, further illustrates Bush's

distrust not only of the press, but of the public. The

administration's Department of Education paid the conservative

commentator $240,000 through the cut-out of a public relations firm

to promote its No Child Left Behind law on his broadcasts, as USA

Today reported on Jan. 17. The administration has also gotten busted

for camouflaging video press releases as legitimate news segments to

promote its Medicare drug plan and warn about the dangers of illicit

drugs.

 

Persuasion, Aristotle taught, depends on the speaker's skill at

portraying himself as a trustworthy source. With his " aw, shucks "

demeanor and his maudlin speechifying, the former Andover cheerleader

knows how to stage a " drama " and tap the audience's emotions. He and

his co-propagandists arranged one such emotionally

manipulative " gallery play " during the State of the Union. Rather

than explain his Iraq policy, he had the mother and father of a slain

U.S. Marine seated behind an Iraqi voter in Laura Bush's box. When

the president paid tribute to the parents in his speech, the Iraqi

turned and quite predictably embraced the sobbing mother.

 

Though he opposes filtration, Bush never hesitates to exploit

national security as a tool to suppress and distort information.

Steve Aftergood, head of the Project on Government Secrecy at the

Federation of American Scientists, describes the Bush

administration's style as governance by fear. In the name of national

security, Bush has extended the authority to classify information to

the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of

Agriculture, and the EPA, he says. After Sept. 11, his attorney

general issued a new directive making it easier for agencies to

reject Freedom of Information Act requests.

 

Aftergood also criticizes the secrecy of the Bush administration's

task forces on energy, its refusal to comply with congressional

requests for information, and its ambiguity on the torture question.

 

" They've propagated the idea that we're all at risk of violent death

at any moment and at any place, and we must all do everything we can

to secure our borders, ports, parks, and miniature golf courses, "

Aftergood says.

 

Reporter Ron Suskind tagged the born-again Bush as the creator of

the " faith-based presidency " in a New York Times Magazine feature

last October. Bush's " with-us-or-against-us model … has been

enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and

temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret, " Suskind

writes. Only the president is authorized to speak for the president.

Sing the same song, or none at all, is the administration's law:

Doubters and people with competing facts are shunned and ostracized

for their disloyalty. Because the maximum leader trusts his

instincts, we're supposed to trust them, too, Suskind explains. We

know best is the Bush administration's unstated premise. You mustn't

question our higher motives.

 

Two years ago, an unnamed Bush aide told Suskind, " We're an empire

now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're

studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again,

creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how

things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you,

will be left to just study what we do. "

 

George Wallace invented the politics of running for president by

running against Washington. Richard Nixon, who perfected the

technique and handed it forward to Ronald Reagan and the Bushes,

pioneered the politics of running for president by running against

the press. He and Vice President Spiro Agnew dished the press more

savagely than Bush has. But battling the press ultimately backfired

on Nixon, and Reagan found charm and manipulation worked better than

overt hostility.

 

" [James A. Baker III] decided early on that there were only two

constituencies that mattered—the national media and Congress—and he

devoted a great deal of time and energy to wooing the media, " Reagan

administration veteran Ed Rollins told Michael Kelly in an October

1993 New York Times Magazine feature.

 

It's been George II's good fortune to launch his campaign against the

nattering nabobs of the media at a time when the Jayson Blair/Jack

Kelley/60 Minutes Wednesday scandals have turned journalists into

inviting targets of scorn. At this point, the average citizen thinks

the average Washington reporter is a full-of-himself jackass. The

Bush administration probably figures that if the press swings at it

and connects, 1) the blow won't hurt and 2) over-aggressive reporting

will only play to the White House's favor.

 

The upside of the information lock out, of course, is that few

reporters find themselves sweetly spun by such head-patters as Baker.

The Bush administration may be doing the press a small favor by

snubbing it, freeing reporters to abandon the scripted palaver of the

White House and dig elsewhere for stories.

 

But what of George W. Bush? How does he gain by fortressing himself

and his administration away from critics, skeptics, and questioners?

How, exactly, does it benefit him to follow the philosophy of Kim

Jong-il?

~~~

Jack Shafer is Slate's editor at large.

 

http://www.slate.com