Media Musings: Bush’s speech pure Hollywood
Like a mythic warrior-king, President Bush commanded the deck of the largest ship in the most powerful navy in the world, proclaiming the end to the brief war with Iraq. It was pure Hollywood, a place the Republican Party openly loathes but has learned from since the days of Ronald Reagan’s long walk into and from his press conferences, drawn from the old B-westerns in which he played.
The great carrier Abraham Lincoln was turned to make it appear the president was at sea, after landing on the deck of this great carrier. Note the regalia of the president, the garb of the combat pilot. Today, image is everything and that image plays very, very well with the American electorate.
Karl Rove Productions is fully engaged here, the mastermind of the battle to keep Bush as president, and he has learned better than most political advisers the power of building an icon so deeply etched that the Oval Office can be won handily.
So, too, has the Rove Machine worked well to convince a majority of Americans in a recent poll that Iraq – a terrorist nation – was directly linked to Sept. 11, even though no linkage has been proven and the attacks were carried out, in the main, by Saudis.
The attack, so the not-so-subtle shift has been, is part of an anti-terrorism campaign, and we are still looking for those weapons of mass destruction and we will find them someday soon. Give it to the Rove Machine: it’s winning the day.
Recent CBS News polls finds Americans saying the Republicans are the best able to keep the country safe from terrorism by a margin of 51 percent to 27 percent saying the Democrats are. Democrats have shifted since the war began, with about two-thirds of them now approving of the war and 80 percent of them approving of the job the president is now doing.
The current logic has been that the place the Democrats can make their difference is over a struggling economy that has not revived in four years. The actual numbers are not really known now, but it’s obvious that far more than 2 million of us have lost our jobs and 5 million are now working only part-time and wants full-time jobs.
But the polls give Democrats little comfort even there. In the latest CBS news poll, the nation is divided, with 42 per cent saying the Democrats are the best able to revive the economy, 42 percent saying the Republicans are, and the rest apparently uncommitted.
The economy is the uncertainty, now. The president’s role as commander-in-chief earns him an 80 percent rating but when it comes to his handling of the economy, it drops below 50 percent.
What haunts Bush’s reelection campaign – which really began aboard the carrier – is the family history, where his father lost the election over his handling of the economy. Rove knows that full well, and even told the National Press Club the election will have only two agenda items, the war on terrorism and the economy.
There’s a way out for the president, but he won’t use it. Take the billions he wants in tax cuts and give help to the struggling states, which would directly infuse dollars into the economy now. Quit approving of laws requiring the states to improve the lives of children – like the Leave No Child Behind Act – and not funding them. The details of the tax cut show bias toward the rich and super-rich and the American people know that.
It’s early in the campaign, of course. But the modern presidency enjoys the power of manipulation of the media just by the course of events. Rove is running hard and knows the president believes in him and his advice, because Rove knows how to win.
The question is, do the Democrats?
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)