From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23226-2000Aug25.html ONLINE EXTRAS/ Media Notes Media Chaos Theory Takes Over By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 25, 2000; 10:00 AM This just in: Bush campaign in disarray! Candidate mangling words. Signs of laziness. On the defensive. Off message. This is, of course, largely a media-manufactured story, tied to Vice President Gore's recent surge in the polls. But under the tenets of media chaos theory, if one candidate is doing well, the other must be, ipso facto, stumbling and bumbling. And so George W. Bush, a man who three short weeks ago seemed to be cruising toward the presidency, is now being depicted as Dudley Do-Wrong, sheriff of the gang that couldn't shoot straight. The evidence for Bush's alleged mini-meltdown is pretty thin. But the press is stringing together incidents and anecdotes to produce such a portrait � most of which would be discounted or ignored if Bush were still riding high in the all-important opinion surveys. Consider this morning's broadside from the Los Angeles Times: "Ever since his campaign began, George W. Bush has tried to shuck one central notion: that he doesn't have the brains for the job. But campaign officials recently have worked to head off a second 'Wizard of Oz'-style problem: that he doesn't have the heart for a tough campaign." Bush spokesman Scott McClellan was dismissive, saying: "We've heard this all before. He doesn't have enough Washington experience, he's not smart enough, now he's not campaigning hard enough. This campaign will be won on issues and ideas." But noting that "suggestions that Bush lacks drive" have popped up since the New Hampshire primary, the paper says: "The issue bubbled up again last week as Bush responded to the end of the Democratic National Convention with a single stop in Tennessee, after which he returned to Texas to jog at a favorite athletic club. "Looking ahead, Bush's tentative schedule leading up to Labor Day also indicates that he will only be on the campaign trail four days a week. Bush officials, hit by questions about his zest for the hustings, produced a statistical tally of his campaign stops last week that suggested he was working harder than Gore." A second LAT piece contains this revealing paragraph: "Karen Hughes, Bush's communications director, said that Bush has not gone off message. Bush is actually shifting his strategy, she said, and 'throughout the fall campaign, we will have multiple messages. That's the nature of the fall campaign.'" The New York Times sees great significance in the Bush camp pushing to yank a harsh � and misleading � Republican National Committee ad that showed Gore stammering to defend President Clinton's veracity, based on a six-year-old interview. The ad's cancellation Wednesday "has exposed tensions within the Bush campaign over whether to go negative against the vice president now," the paper says. (Disarray alert!) Bush now says he blocked the ad before it ran, but "despite his insistence that voters abhor negative advertising and yearn for an elevated discourse, some of his advisers had argued that the party should run the advertisement, officials close to the discussions said. Mr. Bush's objections aside, the officials said that his campaign was still poised to run other commercials that raise questions about Mr. Gore's truthfulness and ethics." "There's plenty to let loose on," said one Bush adviser. "We can have a pretty effective fusillade. All the research has been done. It's all there." "Some Bush advisers were so determined that the campaign play hardball against Mr. Gore that they urged that the commercial be used even after concerns were raised about its fairness, according to people close to the discussions. The night before the advertisement was pulled, Matthew Dowd, a Bush campaign official, attended a focus group at which the Republicans sought reaction to an assortment of possible advertisements, including the one that was shelved. And � here it comes � such debates "take on an urgency as polls show the race is tightening." A second NYT piece delivers the flip side of the Bush-is-struggling story line by highlighting the seemingly soaring fortunes of his opponent. "In the last three weeks, as he has watched the country and the polls respond approvingly to his selection of a running mate, to his separation from President Clinton, to his speech to the Democratic National Convention, and to a picturesque postconvention cruise down the Mississippi, Mr. Gore is finally in a political groove. "It has clearly made him a better candidate, firmer in his purpose, confident in his message, comfortable in his skin. . . . If Mr. Gore defeats Gov. George W. Bush in November, historians will undoubtedly see this period as a turning point. And voter surveys released yesterday show that Mr. Gore is on a roll." Better. Firmer. Confident. Comfortable. On a roll. Doesn't get much better than that. USA Today weighs in by noting that while the vice president's attacks on Bush's domestic policies are nothing new, "Gore's punches now seem to be scoring among registered voters. "This past week Bush appeared to be on the defensive, acknowledging he may need to do a better job of explaining his tax cut plan, while his aides countered that Gore has resorted to distortion and 'class warfare' . . . "Gore's campaign spokesman Chris Lehane said Bush's slippage in the polls buttresses a point the campaign has been making all along: 'The reason George W. Bush has been having such a difficult week is because it's impossible to defend the indefensible or explain the unexplainable.' "Gore himself has come across as a looser, more energized candidate since the convention." The Washington Post serves up an issue-based story on Bush in Louisiana, trotting out a high school football coach who says yes, he wants the big tax cut proposed by the Texas governor. Yet Bush "continued to roll out new spending initiatives," announcing a plan "to boost federal funding by $600 million over five years for historically black colleges and institutions that serve large Hispanic student populations. But The Post was an early entrant in the disarray sweepstakes, reporting on Tuesday: "After five months in firm command of the presidential race, Texas Gov. George W. Bush suddenly finds himself on the defensive, behind in polls and struggling to fend off attacks on his policies." Bush was "fumbling" to explain his tax cut during this "awkward" period and pursuing a campaign style "that has often been described as leisurely," the story said. "Bush also seems to be experiencing a bout of the bloopers that beset him during the primaries. Nothing can be further than the truth," he said today while rebutting criticism from Gore. During a 15-minute speech Monday night, he mistook 'terrors' for 'tariffs' and 'hostile' for 'hostage' (twice in one sentence), and suggested President Clinton had been in office four years instead of eight. The Washington Times, a self-described conservative newspaper (a headline today describes a bill to abolish the estate tax by using the GOP label "death tax,") doesn't think much of the recent spate of Bush-bashing. While playing up the one poll that shows Bush 2 points ahead of Gore (with a 2.1 percent margin of error,) the paper observes quite correctly that "some in the press are focusing once again on Mr. Bush's rhetorical bloopers and depicting his campaign as going on the defensive. Bush spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said "they might want first to look at some video footage of the boat tour Mr. Gore just finished and see the gaffes he made on the way down the Mississippi River." But it is Mr. Bush's linguistic errors and halting attempts at budget talk that much of the press has focused on. Bush partisans say the press is playing into the Gore campaign line that the Texas governor is not smart enough to be president. Citing examples from the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Associated Press, the piece says that "Mr. Bush has tripped over his tongue before, but so have Mr. Gore and his mentor, President Clinton." With Bush slipping in the polls, the sublimated journalistic instinct to offer advice has kicked into overdrive. Armchair quarterbacks, particularly on the right, think they know EXACTLY what the Bushies need to do to get back in the game � if only the Austin brain trust could be persuaded to listen. Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, says Bush needs to dust himself off and kick some tail. Bush's natural instinct, says Lowry, is to chide Gore for being too aggressive in his "fighter for the people" mode. Bush, after all, has been pledging a more civil tone in Washington. But such an approach, he says, would be flat wrong: "No one really cares about any of that. In a similar way, no one cares that Gore says he's going to 'fight' (process), as long as they agree with what he says he's fighting for (substance). Indeed, unless kept within some limits, Bush's bipartisanship risks becoming incoherent. Should the voters elect Bush with a Democratic Congress, so he can really work on a bipartisan basis? . . . "As a tactic, Bush's positive emphasis was working for long time because it kept Gore in a box � every time he attacked, it reinforced the idea that he is a 'war-room' politician just like Clinton. But now Bush may be in the box. The Bush campaign has always said that if attacked it will rebut. Well, now Gore is not attacking Bush directly, but corporate America. Would it constitute 'going negative,' for Bush to rebut on its behalf? "The Bush campaign would be foolish to allow itself to get hung up on such questions. It needs to respond aggressively to Gore, on substance, not process and without mincing words: Gore, it should say, is simply anti-business . . . "In short, it has been useful so far for the Bush campaign to play to the public's impatience with political argument. But now it's time actually to engage in some." Or would the press simply view that as another sign of desperation? � 2000 The Washington Post Company ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
