Please Don't Let Me be Misunderstood

I really try to avoid creating multiple posts in one day, primarily because I'm worried that I won't have enough to write about on other days. However, I just saw this video clip from what appears to be a Republican response to Slate and just had to respond:



Now, I'm no political guru, but what Mark McKinnon says about President Bush not revealing his lighter side to the national media runs counter to everything we've been taught to believe about the press. I'm not talking about the presumed bias against anything Republican here; Fox News and Rush Limbaugh fill that void. No, it is this direct quote from McKinnon:

It’s really hard, and it’s increasingly hard with the proliferation of media, to provide that kind of exposure and transparency that we’d like to. To get kind of behind the curtain and show the human side.

Wait, you're trying to make the claim that the reason why no one ever saw the softer side of Bush 43 is because of the proliferation of media? That there are too many sources from which we voters can get to know a candidate?

I don't think I've ever heard anything more patently false* than that. I know that these political insiders, spin doctors, and apparatchiks have their own agendas any time they open their mouths. Michael J. Fox had a wonderful TV show for a long time based on that one premise. But there should be a line drawn between simple spin or image control and outright falsehoods.

* Well, maybe that the Soviets invaded Afghanistan because they were looking for a warm water port, but that's beside the point.

Case in point: The current (and soon to be former) Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is currently undergoing impeachment hearings in the Illinois state Senate. He decided to boycott the proceedings, claiming a denial of his due process, and instead is waging the public perception war for his image by making personal appearances on 20/20, Good Morning America, and whatnot. That's his right, and certainly lots of people who have screwed up royally decided to take a similar path. Why admit any wrongdoing, when you can shed a few tears in front of Barbara Walters and get a few sympathetic people on your side? It's as American as apple pie, these days.

However, that doesn't mean we have to like it or accept it. Falsehoods are falsehoods, no matter how they are spun. Getting back to the original comment, doesn't McKinnon think there was a single TV show host who would have loved to bring Bush 43 on the set and present him in a favorable light? His statement is that not a single event like that was possible for the eight years of the Bush administration, and that is impossible to believe. Were the shots of Bush relaxing on his Crawford, TX ranch not enough to humanize the man? What about the stills of Bush riding his mountain bike?

No, the real culprit here is not the fact that too many media choices exist to showcase a candidate's sense of humor. For too long, politics have revolved around the ability to show candidates in more open settings. Think of Bill Clinton appearing on MTV to field the infamous "Boxers or briefs?" question, or of him appearing on The Tonight Show to play the sax for Jay Leno. The real danger is that those fluff pieces can drown out more serious discussions on policy stances or political agendas.

Ask yourself this question: what was the alternative before these media avenues existed? Political machines like Tammany Hall used to pick our candidates for us, didn't they? Behind closed doors in smoke-filled rooms, they did. Would we really want to head back to that style of process?

No, the real culprits for not knowing enough about a candidate are those spin meisters like McKinnon himself. As access to the candidates improved with radio and television this past century, those candidates best able to work with the new technologies benefited the most. Think of JFK in the first televised debate with Richard Nixon. Anyone listening to that debate thought Nixon won; those watching on TV had a vastly different impression. Heck, think of those candidates (including Obama) now blogging and using the Internet to spur grassroots organizations and fund-raising machines.

But as access has increased, so has the worry (again, on the part of the spin meisters like McKinnon) that their candidate will say or do something stupid while a camera or like device is recording. The only alternative? To severely restrict access to a candidate and heavily script every appearance, every utterance, to make sure the candidate remains on topic and on message, lest any words that could be used in a negative campaign ad be caught on tape.

The same is true in sports, as well. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, at one point of their lives, were happy, confident young men who delighted in telling their own story to the press. As they realized the power (and lucrative nature!) of marketing themselves, they clammed up to the point of only saying the most droll of sound bites. It's also why Jordan never took up a side for a politician, using the old line that "Republicans buy shoes, too."

So, the problem is not that there are too many media outlets "...to provide that kind of exposure and transparency that we’d like to." The problem is that the candidates' or President's handlers won't allow him (or her) to speak for him- or herself while on the campaign trail or while in office. Just give credit where credit is due. You can't blame mass media for every ill in society, as tempting as that might be.

Russian Help on Afghanistan

No, the headline above is not a non-sequitur, as much as it may seem like one. It springs from this article I just read on Yahoo!'s news aggregation service.

Now, there are many ways of reading this fairly short news article from Reuters. On the surface, it appears like the incoming Obama administration is already fostering hope in renewed or strengthened relations with the international community. That could be one way of looking at it, since the U.S., NATO, and Russia had a bit of a falling-out after Russia's war with Georgia last summer. Perhaps Big Bad Vlad Putin and Russian President Dmitry* Medvedev felt like they could mend relations with the new Obama administration better than they could with the outgoing Bush administration.**

* I still can never think of a Russian President/Soviet Premier named Dmitry without thinking, of course, of Stanley Kubrik's all-time classic Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Dmitri Kissoff... ha! Still makes me laugh! There are not many Peter Sellers roles that even begin to approach the hilarity of the three he had in this one movie.

** This, despite Bush's famous quote about meeting with Putin and seeing into his soul.

Another way of looking at the news is that Russia, perhaps, sees another opportunity to exert its influence in a region it has long coveted (unless coveted is too strong a word) during a time of leadership transition in the U.S. government. Russia's offer to "help" us in Afghanistan comes hard on the heels of Tuesday's Inauguration, you have to admit. This honestly could be Obama's first foreign-policy test, but it is too early to tell the true intent of the Russians here.

I loved this quote taken directly from the Reuters article:

"Let us hope the new U.S. administration will be more successful in the Afghan settlement than its predecessor," Medvedev told a news conference after talks with Uzbek President Islam Karimov.

Or did he mean, "...more successful than WE were in suppressing the Islamic Mujahideen resistance during our decade-long entanglement in Afghanistan"?!! Which raises a great deal of questions all on its own.

I was old enough to remember the nightly news covering the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when I was a child. I clearly remember President Jimmy Carter boycotting the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow in retalliation for the invasion, which then was repaid in kind by the Eastern Bloc countries boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, CA.

One thing I was never fully clear on, and I don't think the nightly news programs* ever answered on their own, was WHY the Soviets felt compelled to invade Afghanistan in the first place. It was pretty clear why the U.S. responded the way it did, and the movie they made starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts on Charlie Wilson's War (2007) provided a nice historical perspective, even if it wasn't 100% true. On this topic, the Wikipedia page provides some information related to the events leading up to the Soviet invasion, but it should not be trusted as a source for a deeper understanding of the Soviet rationale.

* The one we probably watched over any others at the time was Dan Rather on the CBS Nightly News, and oh, how long ago does that seem now! Who watches the evening news any more these days?

So, before I go off to the library in search of more scholarly tomes on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I thought I would post the question here: does anyone know which book(s) are the best one(s) on this topic? Wikipedia actually does a decent job of listing source material for the footnotes, all of which are found at the bottom of the page linked above. I could sift through those footnotes to find books on the topic, I suppose. Even then, you always want to be reading the right books, right?

All I know is this: the rationale for the Soviet invasion I remember as being provided at the time, that the Soviets were looking to secure a warm-water port outside their Black Sea fleet, is completely bogus.