ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 19, 2005
WASHINGTON - - It has been an exciting few days for those who watch President Bush for a living.
The president made a rare address to the nation from the Oval Office on Sunday and then held a formal press conference on Monday.
He said a whole bunch of things, but what he said didn't seem to matter that much. It was how he said it.
At least that was the media's take. The press and presidency have long been fixated on stagecraft and performance, which is why so many political stories read like theater reviews.
With his poll numbers climbing back to a still-anemic 40 percent or so, the president clearly needed a change of tone, a new performance.
While staying the course remains the fundamental principle of administration policy in Iraq, President Bush's team decided that his admitting to human frailty and the possibility of mistake would captivate his critics.
So on Sunday he admitted the war has been "more difficult than we expected" but he was only human and doing the best job he could to protect America.
Predictably, the press seized upon this. Commentator David Gergen called the president "frank and humble." The New York Times decided he was "more humble about the mistakes he has made over the past two and a half years." And the Associated Press called the speech "a high profile display of candor."
Tom Shales, the television critic of the Washington Post (in the modern era it is entirely appropriate to have a TV critic critique the President of the United States) said that Bush was "determined to sound determined."
In other words, the president did very, very well.
Why? Because when the media concentrate on how you are newly humble about your mistakes, then they are not concentrating on the mistakes themselves. Instead, they are concentrating on you and how more appealing you have become.
Americans love humility from those on high. They love the admission of error. They love redemption. (Ask Bill Clinton, whose approval ratings never dipped below 60 percent during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.)
So expect President Bush's approval ratings to rise. Even though much of what he says continues to be unchanged from the bad old days when he refused to admit to any mistakes.
Take, for instance, his flat assertion that "we are winning the war in Iraq."
When I heard that, I waited for him to give some examples, but he gave none.
Bush also continued to assert that more than 50 Iraqi army units could "take the lead" in fighting the insurgents, but he did not say how many could fight without U.S. help.
Fortunately, at least one journalist, Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times, pursued this point. And a very important point it is, considering the number of Iraqis that can fight without us will determine, President Bush says, when U.S. forces can leave Iraq.
The number, however, remains the same and pathetically small. As McManus wrote Monday: "Only one Iraqi battalion is currently listed at Level 1, capable of fully independent operations, officials said."
Which means that after two and a half years, only 750 Iraqis are capable of fighting for their country on their own.
McManus also found that President Bush was overly glowing about opinion polls showing how Iraqis feel about our invasion, the war and their daily lives.
According to the article: " 'A lot of the numbers throughout his speech spin reality almost out of control,' said Anthony H. Cordesman, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has been generally supportive of Bush's strategy in Iraq.
" 'He's cherry-picked numbers and I think rounded them up … [he's] ignored all the negatives,' Cordesman said on National Public Radio, referring to the polling results. "
But that doesn't really matter. Not as long as President Bush is humble about it.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 14, 2005
WASHINGTON - - "Good evening, Mr. President. Thank you for inviting me. Good evening, Mrs. Bush. The White House looks very lovely this year."
No, too long.
"Mr. President, thank you. Mrs. Bush, swell house."
Still too long.
"Mr. President, Mrs. Bush, gotta go."
Close.
This week the White House will hold its annual holiday party for the national press corps. It is a true gala. The White House is gorgeously decorated, uniformed Marines play delightful music, and reporters get to wander around eating and drinking in the State Dining Room, the Blue Room, the Green Room, the Red Room and the East Room.
The two things reporters like most about the party are the baby lamb chops (you never want to get between a journalist and a lamb chop) and posing for a picture with the President and First Lady.
Because hundreds of people are invited to this shindig, this means the actual amount of time you have to chat with the Bushes before the flash goes off and you are hustled away is about 10 seconds.
For the vast majority of the reporters attending, this is the longest time they will get with the president all year.
So you want to make it count. Whatever you might think of him, President Bush is a very engaging person (as is Mrs. Bush) and he has mastered the art of making everyone feel important.
Before you walk up to pose with the Bushes, a military officer calls out your name, so you never know if the president really remembers you or not.
At the last White House party I went to, the president gripped my hand and said, "Big Rog! How are you?"
I don't know who the next reporter in line was, but if his name was Louis, the president probably said, "Big Louie! How are you?"
Still, I appreciate the gesture. Each year, however, I resolve that I will ask the president a meaningful question.
I especially want to do so this year, because "NBC Nightly News" anchor and managing editor Brian Williams scored a huge coup this week by getting not just one, but three, exclusive interviews with President Bush.
As the network press release said: "In addition (to airing the interviews on the "Nightly News") Williams will report on his trip and interview with the president on NBC's cable networks MSNBC and CNBC. Coverage will also be included online on MSNBC.com and on the "NBC Nightly News Netcast," (www.nightly.msnbc.com). And Williams will blog throughout the day about the interview on "The Daily Nightly," (www.dailynightly.msnbc.com). Reports will also appear on NBC mobile, NBC radio and the podcast will be available for download after broadcast. Williams will do a follow up report on "Today" on Tuesday, December 13."
Talk about platforms! (By this time next year, NBC will have figured out a way to broadcast the nightly news to the fillings in your teeth.)
There is only one way I can compete with this: I will interview the president at the party this week and then I will come to your house and tell you about it.
True, it will be a slow process as I work my way across the country. And, true, unlike the very able Mr. Williams, I will have only 10 seconds with the president.
But I promise to make them meaningful seconds and I will do my best to bring them to you personally. So get the lamb chops ready.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 12, 2005
WASHINGTON - - Gene McCarthy walked into the hotel dining room in Manchester, N.H., and then paused for a moment.
Though the years had taken a certain toll - - this was 1992 and he was 76 - - he was still an imposing figure: tall, white-haired and dressed in a long black coat.
I watched him stand there and look around the room. The New Hampshire primary was just a few days away, and dozens of national political reporters were eating in the dining room.
McCarthy waited for a moment, as if expecting someone to hail him, to wave him over, to invite him to sit down and talk about old times.
In 1968, Gene McCarthy had changed the course of American history. He won more delegates in the New Hampshire Democratic primary than President Lyndon Johnson and forced Johnson to drop his plans for re-election.
Johnson, perhaps for reasons of ego, had refused to allow his name on the primary ballot in New Hampshire, and though a write-in campaign garnered Johnson 50 percent of the vote to McCarthy's 42 percent, McCarthy got 20 of the 24 delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
The actual numbers did not really matter. An anti-Vietnam war candidate had beaten the sitting president who was waging that war.
But all that had happened in 1968. And it hadn't been 1968 for quite a while.
And this night, nobody invited Gene McCarthy to come over and sit down and eat dinner with them.
So he just walked over to a table and sat there by himself, staring into the menu.
"Jeez," a reporter at my table said, "didn't that used to be Gene McCarthy?"
Yeah. Used to be.
McCarthy might have been a more heroic figure in the Democratic Party had he accepted his defeat in 1968. (Bobby Kennedy entered the race four days after McCarthy won New Hampshire, for which McCarthy never forgave him. After Kennedy's assassination in California, Hubert Humphrey was nominated by the Democrats in Chicago.)
But McCarthy refused to accept defeat gracefully. By 1992, this was McCarthy's fifth campaign for the presidency.
And if anybody cared that he was running, they weren't showing it.
McCarthy had been denied access to the big, nationally televised debates. He was rarely interviewed. He was not a grand old man of his party.
While he was still remembered by the public (a few of them, anyway) for his anti-Vietnam War stand and his "Clean Gene" nickname and "The Children's Crusade,"
Democratic Party regulars remembered him for other things:
They remembered how he did not campaign for the ticket after losing the nomination to Humphrey in 1968 and how narrowly Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon.
They remembered how in 1976 when McCarthy ran on a third-party ticket, he almost sunk Jimmy Carter by denying him victories in four states. And many thought that
if McCarthy had not been kept off the ballot in New York, he would have drained off enough votes from Carter to give the state and the presidency to Gerald Ford that year.
And the Democrats especially remembered how McCarthy endorsed Ronald Reagan for president in 1980.
Yet, when I finally walked over to McCarthy's table, I found a man with few qualms.
"The party has never forgiven me," he told me. "I have never been asked to speak at a convention. But I'll make an offer to the Democrats: I'll say I'm sorry I was right about Vietnam if it makes them feel better."
Gene McCarthy died last week. He might have had a few regrets, but he was never sorry.
ENDIT…ENDIT…ENDIT
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 7, 2005
WASHINGTON - - President Bush was subdued when he delivered his second of four planned speeches on Iraq Wednesday.
The mood was reminiscent of the speech he gave in New Orleans in September. All you had to do was substitute the word "terrorists" for "hurricanes."
Bush, following the example of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has dropped the word "insurgents." Instead, Bush used the word "terrorists" 23 times in his nine-page speech and "Saddamists" 10 times, often linking the two.
Bush spoke not in front a hoo-rahing military crowd for a change, but in front of the Council on Foreign Relations, a group not known for wild - - or any - - displays of emotion.
His speech was interrupted only once by a moderate ripple of applause when he said: "And now the terrorists think they can make America run in Iraq, and that is not going to happen so long as I'm the Commander-in-Chief!"
His last speech on Iraq a week ago was carried live by only CBS among the big commercial networks. This time, they all boycotted, leaving the job to cable.
Nor did the White House ballyhoo the speech as "major" as it did the last one. Aside from being about staying the course, the speech was about reconstructing Iraq, the progress made and the difficulties.
"Like most of Iraq, the reconstruction in Najaf has proceeded with fits and starts since liberation - - it's been uneven," Bush said. "Sustaining electric power remains a major challenge - - and construction has begun on three new substations to help boost capacity. Because there is a shortage of clean water, new water treatment and sewage units are being installed. Security in Najaf has improved substantially, but threats remain. There are still kidnappings, and militias and armed gangs are exerting more influence than they should in a free society."
As I said, a subdued speech.
The purpose of the speeches is not just to make a better case to the American people for the war in Iraq, but to boost Bush's approval ratings, which now hover either in the high thirties or low forties, depending on the poll.
Bush's most serious poll numbers, however, are not about job approval, but about the war itself and how we got into it.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll shows that 49 percent of the nation believes the White House deliberately misled the public about the war with only 46 percent believing the administration told "what it believed to be true."
According to Poll Track, "Four in 10 Quinnipiac respondents - - a plurality - - said they favored an immediate withdrawal from the country. Thirty-four percent were on the opposite end of the spectrum, saying they didn't want to set a pullout deadline at all; the rest of the respondents were sprinkled between withdrawal timetables from six months to three years."
In other words, Iraq is a tough sell. Nor is the White House able to control the national news agenda as White Houses once did
Three of the fours stories above the fold in the New York Times on Wednesday were: "Rice Is Challenged in Europe Over Secret Prisons," "Setback for U.S. In Terror Trial," and "Suicide Bombers Kill 36 Officers At Iraqi Academy."
Which is not to say there was no good news. In his speech, President Bush said of the Iraqi city of Najaf: "An elected provincial council is at work -- drafting plans to bring more tourism and commerce to the city."
You might want to check with your travel agent first.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
DECEMBER 5, 2005
WASHINGTON - - City News of Chicago, successor to the famed City News Bureau, is shutting down on Dec. 31. Together, they lasted for more than a century.
I wrote this for a special anniversary edition the City News Bureau put out years ago:
I was 22 and just out of college when I started at City News. It was a place with a lot of famous alumni such as Kurt Vonnegut and Mike Royko and Seymour Hersh.
It also was a place that specialized in tragedy.
Every day I would go to a different police station and
do stories on murders, rapes and armed robberies. I
would report on human misery. In other words, the kind
of thing that fills newspapers.
One of my jobs at City News was to check out coroner's
cases. Anybody who was not in a doctor's care when he
died was a coroner's case.
The desk at City News would get a report from the
coroner, it would be passed along to me and I would
call the survivors to find out about the dead person.
What I was really trying to find out was whether the
person was worth an obituary or not. Whether, in other
words, he was a somebody or a nobody.
If he was a nobody then I would, in a journalistic
phrase I have never forgotten, "cheap him out" to the
desk and no story would be done.
The first think you had to do was find out what the
person did for a living, which, in America, is a
pretty good guide to whether he is a somebody or a
nobody.
"Mr. Smith was a bricklayer?" you would say to widow.
"A very good bricklayer? Yes, I see. I'm sure he was.
And you are? A housewife? Very good."
And then you would call back to the desk and tell them
they wouldn't have to worry about Mr. Smith. He was
just another of God's creatures. And his passing was
nothing we had to be concerned about. Or even take
notice of.
There was a whole list of facts to check first, of
course. Not just the deceased's job, but whether he
was a member of any civic organization or fraternal
lodge. And - - my personal favorite - - whether he had
been awarded any significant military decorations. For
if he had been fortunate enough to have killed the
requisite number of human beings in some past
conflict, he might be elevated in death from obscurity
to 10 lines of type in a newspaper.
Every day I would call the grief stricken. The
shattered widows, sobbing widowers, stunned children,
speechless parents. I had my spiel down.
First, you tried to sound official so that they would
talk to you. You'd say something like, "This is Roger
Simon and I'm calling about a case from the Coroner's
Office."
You said the first part quickly, but said "Coroner's
Office" very slowly and dramatically and most people
would assume you were from the Coroner's Office and
that they had to talk to you.
I was always amazed that it worked. The grieving would
tell me whatever I asked. They would rummage through
the dusty drawers of their lives for a stranger on a
telephone.
And then, one day, a woman laughed. This was a first
for me.
I had heard choked sobs, angry silences, and once, a
scream. But never a laugh.
"That's my husband's name, all right," the woman said.
"But he isn't dead. He's fine. At least last I looked.
He went out for a paper." She laughed again.
I laughed with her and apologized. Then I called back
the desk and told them there had been a mistake.
"No, wait, can't be," the desk guy said. There was a
riffle of papers. "Must be a fresh one. She must not
know yet."
And so I knew what she did not. I knew that her
husband was not coming back with that paper. That he
was in a sliding drawer at the Cook County morgue with
a tag on his big toe.
So what am I supposed to do now? I asked the desk guy,
already knowing what his answer would be.
At this point, when I tell this story among friends, I
usually pause and wait. And if the people around me
are not newspaper people, they always ask the same
thing.
"So what did you do? You didn't really call her back,
did you? I mean not really."
If they are newspaper people, however, they never ask.
They know I called her back.
And told her I was calling about this case from the
Coroner's Office and I said that last part very slowly
and dramatically. I told her that her husband was
indeed dead and I needed to check some facts, such as
the deceased's profession and his civic organizations
and whether he had been awarded any significant
military decorations.
He had not, by the way.
I cheaped him out.