Reality's Revenge Dan Froomkin/WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/11/02/BL2006110200794.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email


Reality's Revenge

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, November 2, 2006; 12:54 PM



The White House's unmistakable delight at its ability to fixate the media on a John Kerry blooper serves as a potent reminder of how much happier Bush and his aides are engaging in rhetorical games than dealing with reality. But the upcoming election is turning out to be about reality -- and about the reality in Iraq, in particular....

"'The media is easily duped,' said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, who credited -- or perhaps blamed -- Republicans for being 'very good at translating misstatements into news.'"


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15512649/site/newsweek/

Maybe Not Such a Great Move After All?

Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey write for Newsweek: "The risks for President Bush are greater than they are for Senator Kerry, who may have suffered the deep embarrassment of falling into a familiar self-made trap. But he leads nothing inside his party, sets no strategy and the Democrats can easily disown him -- as several candidates have done by canceling events with him this week.

"President Bush, on the other hand, enjoys no such luxuries. In fact, the concerted attack on Kerry -- complete with White House and Republican National Committee press releases -- threatens to undermine a central premise of the party's strategy. For months on the campaign trail, GOP candidates have insisted the election isn't a referendum on Bush or national politics; it's a choice between two local contenders. The president may have diverted attention back onto Democrats, but he also turned the focus back on himself and the war."

Wolffe and Bailey also write that "it's easy to see why President Bush is vastly happier campaigning like it's still 2004. His rhetoric on the campaign trail reflects those relatively comfortable days much more than the somber statements he has recently issued from the White House.

"But the strategy of dividing the world into good and evil may now backfire on the president and his party. If you're an unpopular president -- and Bush is one of the most unpopular in the modern era -- you don't want a world divided that way. In that world, you end up on the wrong side of the equation."

[glitch]

1. K &R for Reality! nt