I once mentioned to you that I had never seen a media story on any topic on which I had direct and detailed knowledge to be done correctly. This is just the nature of media, people presumably skilled at gathering news on a variety of topics but with little collateral education or experience at evaluating any of them. Add to this the nature of a bitterly competitive bu$ine$$, a desire to give the people "what they want to hear", and the mandate to scoop everyone else with an "Aha!" moment or a smoking gun. This has been the nature of the press from the beginning. As for partisanship in the press, we have only to review the broadsides of the Revolutionary days and the early republic to see that that is nothing new either. Look at what the press did to Lincoln, Nixon, Carter and Clinton if you feel what Bush is getting is extreme. And if you feel my concern about attacks on Democrats is exaggerated, perhaps you might review your own feelings about attacks on Republicans and ask if they are not reminiscent of liberal complaints just a few years back. Today we have an even further impediment, the desire of some press outlets to be so impartial on the surface that they approach the ridiculous, like giving a detailed description of a bank robber without mentioning his race.

But there's more than press malfeasance at work here, the conservative outrage against the "liberal" press, although perhaps partially justified, goes much deeper than that. The source of it is in the collapse of conservative expectations. After the attacks of 9/11, the conservatives finally saw the perfect situation to demonstrate the validity of their views: an unprovoked and devastating attack by a monstrous and inexcusable enemy, full public and world support for our cause, political hegemony in congress and an electorate increasingly sympathetic to conservative views, a fully functional and effective alternative press apparatus to disseminate their proposals and attack their opponents, the best military in the world, and a leadership embodying all the moral and psychological attributes conservatives see in themselves and which they feel their political opponents lack. Now was their opportunity to get things done their way, and get them done right.

Well, in spite of these advantages, the administration was not able to translate them into successful policy. The Iraq adventure failed, and it soon became clear that it was a failure in execution as well as conception, that it solved no problems, exacerbated others and generated new ones, and squandered the advantages and good will, political support and military resources that we brought to the war on terror. It became a psychological necessity for conservatives to find a reason why these things turned out so badly, and the press was the target. Surely, with all these things going for the administration, the treachery or ignorance of their opponents must be the reason everything went south. And that nattering negativism had to be communicated by an (at best) naive, or (at worst) seditious press.

But there is more than the demonization of the press at work here. Some conservatives disagreed with the Bush Doctrine from the beginning, and many more are concerned about it now. These individuals have no love for the mainstream media either, but they did recognize incompetence in government when they saw it. After all, talented and well-meaning liberals can make mistakes too, a fact many liberals tend to forget. And the president who most recently handled a situation similar to our present one, Bush I, was both conservative AND highly competent and successful in achieving his aims.

The most destructive aspect of the current situation is the unquestioning loyalty and support by some conservatives for the current administration, long after it was obvious (regardless of what the press was saying) that they had mismanaged the world. This dogged determination to endorse the White House on every single issue, straight to disaster, and to insult and humiliate and accuse anyone who objected, has added to our troubles, and left a legacy of division and distrust in American politics which will long survive our current crises. Rather than just admitting that the leadership had failed, they conflated an attack on that leadership with an attack on the entire conservative agenda, which they see as the only possible legitimate American agenda. The result was a blind adulation and total forgiveness of a government so inept and corrupt and ideologically driven by it's own domestic economic interests that it pretty much got its own way in everything it wanted. Unfortunately, this unobstructed mandate and carte blanche didn't quite turn out the way they expected.