Is it my imagination, or have I been detecting a shift in the way the Times treats the Executive Moment lately? David M. Sanger on the Kay WMD revelations last week, and today Richard W. Stevenson on the new BushCo federal budget ("Bush, in Budget, Seeks Increases Tied to Security"). Far be it from me to praise Stevenson (or Sanger) for incisive reporting, or award them style points—and by the adequacy test Brad DeLong offers, reacting to budget coverage in today's Washington Post, Stevenson isn't much of an improvement over his WaPo counterpart. But in apparatchik reporting like this, nuance is everything. The shift I mean is actually embodied, in my print edition, in the difference between one of the secondary headlines and the first graf of the piece itself. The subhead labels the budget "A Plan to Reduce Deficit," and here's the graf:

President Bush submitted a $2.4 trillion budget on Monday that would substantially increase spending next year for national security and give the administration a claim to reducing the deficit but would also cut or strictly limit money for most domestic programs.

Give the administration a claim. By the rigid laws of deference, which prescribe that the first few paragraphs of an article about an Executive initiative must report the Executive's own self-assessment of said initiative, this is practically a thunderclap. The subhead sees "a plan," but skepticism has infected the first graf, which while it follows the letter of the law still manages to drip with cynicism.

And the piece goes on in that vein. Democratic criticism is mentioned high in the article, third graf, and is offered again at several other points, including a quote from John Kerry (as the nominee-presumptive). Stevenson notes the White House's failure to "provide figures on what would happen to the deficit in the years beyond the next half-decade," after the now-permanent tax cuts start their shredding action. He mentions as well how "deficit reduction" is massaged by the omission of certain inconvenient spending categories, like money for the occupation of Iraq and for the Afghanistan adventure. He has the audacity—a real stretch in this kind of piece—to call the budget "a bit of an oddity" for an election-year plan.

And then there's the little matter of the photo: Josh Bolten, the Budget Director, is quoted in the article (after the jump, i.e. not directly pointing a contrast with the pic) as saying "the numbers are highly realistic," but this really doesn't look like a guy who's about to strike up the band for the Dear Leader, does it? More like Bolten's got his "Hey, I just stand up here and say the stupid shit they make me say" face on. I can't think the choice isn't deliberate on the part of the Times, another scarcely concealed expression of skepticism. [I love the finger placement, by the way. I think he's checking to see if his implant's still in place—the one they gave him when he signed on so his head shouldn't explode from defending the completely fucking indefensible.]

posted by michael  4:25:33 PM  
tell me about it []  

 

Diversionary tactics. Katharine Seelye don't need no stinkin' facts, not where the Presidential campaign is concerned. In her overview piece on Monday, she leads with and devotes her first ten grafs to the challenge Terry McAuliffe issued on Sunday's "This Week" against Dubya's so-called military service record. (This despite the fact that McAuliffe, last time I looked, was not himself a candidate for the Democratic nomination, and that none of the actual candidates appears to have discussed the issue this last week.*) Seelye has a practiced hand in these sorts of maneuvers, and you kind of have to admire her skill in making an issue disappear while seeming to foreground it. Here's what you'd "know" about the Bush-AWOL issue if you relied on Kit for your information:

• The issue of Bush's absence during his Air National Guard service "arose briefly at the end of the last presidential election."
• McAuliffe, "revisiting" the issue now, claims Bush was "AWOL," that he "never served in our military in our country," that "he didn't show up when he should have showed up." Ed Gillespie, his Republican counterpart, claims the accusation has "no basis in fact" and that making it as McAuliffe did "on national television ... is despicable."
• The AWOL issue has emerged this time around as a result of Michael Moore calling Bush a "deserter" at a Clark rally last month.

And that's it! Since Seelye herself adduces not even the most elementary facts about the AWOL charge, how can Ed Gillespie's reaction seem anything but reasonable? The charge made a brief appearance late in the 2000 campaign, and it's been revived by that noted rabble-rouser Moore, and we know how much his opinion is worth—never mind that the "brief" appearance in 2000 was confined to those obscure rags, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the New York Times (see this good backgrounder at The Daily Howler), or that even the most cursory look would reveal that the charge can hardly be said to have re-emerged because it never went away in the first place, having been extensively documented and debated on the Web for the last three years.

Actually, we're not quite done yet. The real art of Seelye's piece is in the framing. We might wonder, why is McAuliffe "revisiting" this bit of 2000-era trivia? Seelye starts her piece by calling Terry Mac's statement "a signal of the ferocious campaign ahead once the Democrats finish with one another," and rounds back on that assertion as she concludes the discussion:

Mr. McAuliffe's attack on Mr. Bush seemed partly pre-emptive, suggesting that the Democrats would swing back hard if the Republicans tried to portray Mr. Kerry, decorated for his service in Vietnam, as weak on national security because in his Senate career he has voted against increasing the Pentagon budget.

It might also have been a diversionary tactic by Mr. McAuliffe, who has watched with dismay as the Democratic candidates deliver increasingly harsh blows at one another. If that was the case, it failed.

Howard Dean continued to blast Mr. Kerry on Sunday, saying Mr. Kerry had taken more money from lobbyists than any other senator in the last 15 years.

See, it's all just tactics. The charge itself is unimportant: the crucial datum, as any insider would know, is how it's going to be used. And why bother with facts when, like Kit, you're gifted with second sight? For she has seen the dismay in McAuliffe's soul, and with her mystic discernment (nothing else is offered to explain it) has divined the real purpose behind his outburst: he wants his beloved Democrats to stop fighting with each other already! (I guess it couldn't be as simple as that McAuliffe thinks the issue actually deserves some scrutiny, could it, Kit?) And then she hits you with the pathos: it didn't work; there's that nasty old Howard Dean "blasting" again, just like his angry self.

And without missing a step we're back in that normative territory so beloved of the Times political pack, where it's all about whether or not the candidates are willing to behave themselves. Was there any substance in that AWOL thing? The way Kit Seelye writes, if you blink you missed it.

Update: I missed this campaign roundup from the Boston Globe, which notes Max Cleland addressing the AWOL charge at a Kerry event—a report that actually manages, in the space of a mere half sentence, to allude to the substance of the accusation. Kit Seelye, of course, as a Times correspondent, has more important things to worry about. Those tea leaves don't just read themselves, after all.

posted by michael  11:00:17 AM  
tell me about it []