By Far the Worst Performance and Demagoguery at Last Wednesday’s Democratic Debates

[Time for change]

Perhaps some might think it surprising that the award for the worst performance at last Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debates at Dartmouth would be earned by someone who’s not even a Democrat. But anyone familiar with the so-called journalist who moderated those debates shouldn’t have been surprised.

My first insight into Tim Russert’s true character came when I observed the contempt with which he announced the Florida Supreme Court’s decision that, because of technological problems that made it impossible for voting machines to ascertain the intent of Florida voters, Florida’s ballots in the 2000 presidential election must be recounted by hand in order to determine the intent of the voters.

More than a year ago I posted an article on DU titled “What if Dems Fought Back Against Corporate Media Shills Like Tim Russert?”, which described how Russert: bullied Joe Lieberman into conceding the validity of 680 highly questionable Florida overseas ballots in the 2000 election; virtually destroyed Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential candidacy; slyly revealed a hidden Bush campaign button to George Bush while appearing at a 2004 presidential campaign function; let George Bush get away with bald faced lies in responding to accusations of his being AWOL from the Air National Guard as a young man; and let Dick Cheney get away with bald faced lies in responding to egregious Bush administration lapses on 9-11-01.

Well, the so-called journalist is at it again. Consider the following from last Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debates:


Mischaracterizing responses to his question about pledging withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013

Russert put the following question or a close version of it to all the Democratic candidates:

Will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term, more than five years from now, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq?

The use of the word “pledge” and the phrase “no U.S. troops” make that an extreme question. No candidate should be asked by a debate moderator to “pledge” to accomplish something where there is a possibility that unforeseen circumstances may make it impossible to fulfill the pledge. Instead, real journalists interested in real debate would simply ask how the candidate intends to handle the issue, without asking for a “pledge”.

There are few people who are against George Bush’s war in Iraq more than I am, but I can see at least two reasons why, if I were running for President, I would have refused to go along with Russert’s “pledge”. First, because it is possible that unforeseen circumstances might cause me to have to break the pledge; and second, because even if I believed it was reasonable to pledge such a thing, doing so would lay me wide open to attacks that could derail my candidacy. You can bet your bottom dollar that had the future 2008 nominee of the Democratic Party agreed to Russert’s pledge and then appeared on “Meet the Press” during the 2008 general election campaign, Russert would grill him or her mercilessly for making what he would then term an irresponsible pledge.

All three of the leading candidates said essentially that they would drastically reduce our presence in Iraq and that meeting Russert’s pledge would be a goal of theirs. But they wouldn’t promise that they would be successful in withdrawing all troops from Iraq by the end of their first term. I thought that Edwards’ response was especially reasonable. He said that he would immediately draw down about half of the 100,000 troops that General Petraeus expects to be there by January 2008, attempt to draw down the good majority of the remaining troops over the next few months, and probably have to leave in place about 4% of the original total in order to protect our embassy and humanitarian workers who would likely be there.

Following those responses, Russert turned to Bill Richardson and said, “You’ve heard your three other opponents say they can’t do it in four years.” BULLSHIT, you lying sack of garbage! They said nothing of the sort. They didn’t say anything remotely resembling that they couldn’t do it. They simply refused to make an iron clad promise.

But, the next morning on C-SPAN, picking up on Russert’s claim that “they can’t do it in four years”, the whole theme of the program was about that specious claim. And so, I listened to one Democratic caller after another pillory all the leading Democratic candidates for refusing to get out of Iraq in four years.


Invoking Rudy Giuliani as the ideal candidate for preventing nukes from falling into the hands of Iran

A little later Russert hyped the Iran threat by asking if Israel would be justified in attacking Iran if they concluded that Iran’s nuclear capability posed a threat to them. After Senator Clinton refused to take the bait, Russert held up Rudy Giuliani’s answer to the same question as a model:

You will all be running against a Republican opponent, perhaps Rudy Giuliani. This is what he said:

“Iran is not going to be allowed to build a nuclear power. If they get to a point where they're going to become a nuclear power, we will prevent them, we will set them back eight to 10 years. That is not said as a threat. That should be said as a promise."

Russert then asked the Democratic candidates:

Would you make a promise as a potential commander in chief that you will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power and will use any means to stop it?

So there we go again. Rudy Giuliani essentially promises that he will go to war if necessary to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability, and Russert challenges the Democratic candidates to agree with that extreme and dangerous position.

Yet all the Democratic candidates handled it quite well. Senator Obama’s response to Giuliani’s warmongering was typical: “I think what Mayor Giuliani said was irresponsible, because we have not yet come to that point. We have not tried the other approach.”

And Russert’s response to that was to put Obama’s responsible caution in the worst possible light, challenging him to equal Giuliani’s extremism:

So you would not offer a promise to the American people, like Giuliani, that Iran will not be able to develop and become a nuclear power?

Bringing John Edwards’ haircut into the debate

Turning to one of the most important issues facing the American people today, and believing that we haven’t yet heard enough about it, Russert zeroed in on John Edwards’ haircut:

Senator Edwards… your campaign has hit some obstacles with revelations of about $400 haircuts… Do you wish you hadn’t made that kind of expenditure for a haircut?

Gee Tim, I wonder what YOU spend on haircuts ... or meals … or whatever. Or I wonder how whoring for your corporate masters while disguising yourself as a journalist stacks up with what John Edwards has made of his life. Maybe that would have been a good debate subject. And have you ever talked publicly about the tens of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts that have been given to Bush/Cheney cronies to do the reconstruction in Iraq that has never been done? Or do you consider that unimportant compared with John Edwards’ haircut? …


Mischaracterizing the torture issue

Towards the end of the debate Russert got into the subject of torture:

Imagine the following scenario. We get lucky. We get the number three guy in Al Qaida. We know there's a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is. RUSSERT: Don't we have the right and responsibility to beat it out of him? You could set up a law where the president could make a finding or could guarantee a pardon. Obama – Would you do that as President?

Torture is indeed an important issue for our country to think about today. It is likely that since George Bush started his “War on Terror” our country has been responsible for the torture of thousands – the good majority of them innocent of any crime.

And what do we have to show for all this brutal inhumanity? Well, we got a high ranking member of al Qaeda to admit to a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda that didn’t exist. That in turn helped George Bush to justify his invasion of Iraq. And we’ve antagonized the rest of the world through our lawless and inhumane actions, especially Muslims, thus greatly increasing the recruitment of new anti-American terrorists.

Tim, let me tell you something. If a real journalist wanted to talk about torture, that’s what he should have talked about. That is an issue which, as you read this (I wish) is ruining the reputation of our country, causing us to lose ground in our efforts to combat terrorism, putting our own soldiers at extreme risk for being tortured, and greatly reducing our influence to control world events. It would have been very educational for the American people, and well worth the effort for you to have discussed this issue, as a lesson in what the official sanction of torture leads to.

But instead of talking about that you introduce a scenario that has a remote chance in hell of occurring. Why? You did it so that if the Democratic presidential candidates did the right thing they will appear to a certain percentage of your audience to be “weak on terror”. And then you can grill them some more about it if you can get them on your show.

Well, none of the Democratic candidates succumbed to panic over Russert’s torture scenario. So he persisted:

Senator Clinton, this is the number three man in Al Qaida. We know there's a bomb about to go off, and we have three days, and we know this guy knows where it is. Should there be a presidential exception to allow torture in that kind of situation?

Translation: Do you really care more about abstract civil liberties and moral concepts than you do about protecting the American people against a terrorist attack?

Senator Clinton responded by telling him where to go with his torture mongering, and I couldn't say it any better:

You know, Tim, I agree with what Joe and Barack have said. As a matter of policy it cannot be American policy period… But these hypotheticals are very dangerous because they open a great big hole in what should be an attitude that our country and our president takes toward the appropriate treatment of everyone. And I think it's dangerous to go down this path.

The implication for national politics of frauds like Tim Russert

The damage that people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly can do is somewhat limited by the fact that their extremism is so visible that most people don’t take them very seriously. But corporate media whores like Tim Russert are much more dangerous because they pretend to be serious, unbiased journalists – or rather, they are better at pretending to be serious unbiased journalists than are some of the more obvious types. Consequently, when they frame issues like Russert did as the moderator for last Wednesday’s Democratic debates, opinions are often swayed.

Consider for example the situation in February 2004, shortly after chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay exposed the Bush administration’s multiple lies of Iraqi WMDs. To repair the damage, George Bush appeared on Meet the Press with Tim Russert. Anthony Lappe, in his book “True Lies”, summarizes that interview of February 8th, 2004.

For over an hour, six million viewers were treated to one of the biggest journalistic letdowns of the election year. With so much on the table – from the nonexistent WMDs to the Iraqi quagmire to accusations that Bush was AWOL from the National Guard – Russert could have hog-tied the president and left him twisting in the wind. Instead, he let him off easy, failing to counter Bush’s dodges with obvious follow-up questions.

The implications for national politics have been quite unfortunate, as Democrats feel the need to move further and further to the right, lest they risk being ignored, mocked, or attacked by our corporate news media.

What I had to say about this situation in my DU post of May 2006 is just as true today as it was then:

Corporate journalists will attack Democrats whether or not they aggressively fight back against the corporate media attack on them. So why not change the rules of the game and expose those corporate shills for what they are? If they want to attack us for that, fine. But they’re doing that anyhow, and I don’t believe that they could do a better job of it than they are currently doing. In any event, with an open fight between Democrats and the corporate media, Republicans will have a hard time trying to sound legitimate when they whine about the “liberal media”.

I think that the Democrats did a good job of standing up to Russert last Wednesday evening. But I’d love to see them go even further, by lambasting him in front of a national television audience in response to his stupid hypocritical questions and comments, as he so richly deserves.