John McQuaid

I’m taking a few days off, so posting will be light to nonexistent until next week. Bye!

Kevin Drum responds to my previous post with an interesting suggestion for President Obama:

So how does he work to change things? McQuaid warns that tightly controlling media access the way George Bush did isn’t the answer, and I agree. Instead, I’d say that he should send a consistent message about the value of serious journalism by providing the best access to the most serious journalists. Not the ones who are the most famous, or have the biggest audiences, or who agree with him the most often, but the ones who have written or aired the sharpest, liveliest, most substantive, most penetrating critiques of what he and his administration are doing. He should spar with them, he should engage with them, he should take their ideas seriously. Eventually, others will start to get the message: if you want to get presidential attention, you need to say something smart. It’s too late to for this to have any effect on media buffoons like Maureen Dowd or Chris Matthews, but you never know. It might encourage a few of the others to grow up. It’s worth a try, anyway.

I’d love to see Obama set up regular bull sessions with insightful journalists. It would offer a window on his thinking and also just be interesting and fun to watch. But since the problem exists in the broader media culture, not just Washington salons, this probably wouldn’t help all that much.

But two things offer hope on this front. First, the country faces grave crises, so serious news tends to crowd out trivial, character-driven stories. If Tim Geithner had been nominated during the Clinton administration, he likely would not have survived TurboTaxgate. (How many attorney general nominees did Clinton go through before settling on scandal-free Janet Reno?) But because we need competent, skilled leadership to forestall a second Great Depression, Geithner’s confirmation has never been in doubt. Of course, we have always needed competent, skilled leadership; too bad it takes terrible news to keep the psuedo-scandals at bay.

Second, Obama himself is good at breaking the rhythm of a feeding frenzy, either by starving it or by reframing the entire discussion. Last spring, for example, as damaging revelations about Rev. Jeremiah Wright poured forth, talking heads were urging Obama to publicly repudiate his former pastor — to take part in a crass, familiar ritual to appease and silence the media gods. He rejected that premise and instead gave his excellent speech on race, which both gobsmacked and impressed the establishment media.

The White House press corps is not going to stop asking gotcha questions. Talking heads are going to keep spouting speculative nonsense. But between the doom and gloom, major structural changes in government and a president who will occasionally talk substance, the media may be forced to set aside some of its trivial obsessions.

Barack Obama deserves kudos for his newly-announced policies on the Freedom of Information Act and other transparency-related issues. Of course, it will take some time for presidential directives to work their way down through the vast government bureaucracy, where they will encounter resistance due to habit, laziness, and limited resources. But Obama has clearly broken with the past — in the only way that makes any sense in the information age. The question now is: what are we, the people, going to do with all this information our government is making available?

But it’s interesting that, at least on the surface, Obama’s approach to the establishment media – the TV and radio networks, wire services, newspapers and magazines that still cover the White House – doesn’t differ all that much from George W. Bush’s. As in, their correspondents are not getting much access. They are tightly managed. The White House press office doesn’t say very much, and what it says isn’t very revealing. What’s more, it’s signaling that past press rituals will not necessarily be observed. The Obama team declined to give the New York Times a pre-inauguration interview. Yesterday, the White House didn’t even let press photographers in to get some shots of Obama working in the Oval Office, provoking an AP announcement that it would not distribute what amounted to “visual press releases.”

Bush and Cheney viewed themselves in a manichean struggle with the forces arrayed against them, a list that includes not jihadists but the federal bureaucracy, the Democratic Party, reality itself! — and the media. As Jay Rosen has pointed out, they attempted to “de-certify” the media by strangling its access to information and using a variety of alternative, propagandistic avenues to get its message across. This proved disastrous.

Like Bush, Obama appears to view the media agenda in fundamental conflict with his own. But now, the perceived difference isn’t ideological. It’s programmatic. Obama (correctly, I think) sees the press representing two things that are clear obstacles to his ambitious plans: official Washington and a trivia-obsessed media culture.

First, the official Washington view: There’s a certain, Broderesque way of doing things. Be centrist, bipartisan – especially if you’re a Democratic president. Listen to the conservative talking heads who dominate Sunday talk shows, who will advise you to be … conservative. This world, shaped by the rise of conservative media since the Reagan era, remains several steps behind where the country is, or is ready to be, on politics and policy.

Second, the media culture: The cable maw must be fed with transient panics. Feeding frenzies and micro-scandals dominate. They fuel the chat shows, opinion columns and blogs. These faux crises and dramas, which usually pass with little consequence, can knock a presidential agenda off-stride or even destroy it.

These phenomena reflect the growing insularity of the establishment press over the past generation. They are obstacles both to good journalism and to the kind of bold political reforms Obama is pursuing.  He is right to be wary of them. But this doesn’t diminish the importance of openness. As a journalist and a citizen, I’d like to see more give-and-take between reporters and the president – and I expect we will see that. And I want insights on what’s happening in the West Wing and OEOB from experienced journalists. What we ultimately get depends not just on Obama’s willingness to engage, but on the media’s ability to break free of its own outmoded habits and prejudices.

Image of original edition of "The American Crisis"

Another thought on Obama’s speech: I loved the reference to Washington’s crossing the Delaware:

In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: “Let it be told to the future world … that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it).”

Those words were not Washington’s. They are from Thomas Paine’s The American Crisis, published in December 1776. Washington had them read to his men encamped on the Delaware on Dec. 23. It was a low point for American hopes and for the bedraggled Continental Army, which had been driven from New York and retreated across New Jersey over the preceding months. Enlistments were to expire with the old year, raising fears that in another week there wouldn’t be an army left to speak of. Yet two days later Washington brought his force across the Delaware in the sleet and launched an audacious surprise attack on the Hessian encampment in Trenton. It was a spectacular success that buoyed morale at exactly the right moment: Virtually the entire enemy force, along with its weapons and supplies, was captured; American casualties were minimal. This is one of the most inspiring stories in American history, displaying very American qualities – determination in the face of hardship, daring and improvisation. (I also took my kids to the site of Washington’s crossing last year – worth a visit.)

This morning my two kids and I departed my sister-in-law’s apartment in Adams Morgan at about 7:30 a.m., diverted to 16th Street to meet some friends, and then made our way down to the Mall. (My wife wisely stayed at home.) At first, so soon after dawn, the streets were quite empty and the air was still. Small groups of people were heading south. We stopped for hot chocolate near Farragut Square (no Inauguration is complete without it) and then joined what had become a river of people down 18th Street. Now part of what was obviously going to be a huge crowd, my son and daughter began to get excited. At least my son, who is almost 10, did. My daughter, nearly 8, no longer seemed miserable, as she had earlier, but ready for … something.

We made it onto the Washington Monument grounds and were heading east toward the Capitol. But when we got to 15th Street, which cuts across the Mall, it had been blocked off. Our friends had made it to the other side – though had not gotten very far. We were nowhere near a jumbotron. Then National Guardsmen sealed off the road behind us too. Trapped! Fortunately, that way soon back opened up again. Holding hands, we squeezed through the crowd and eventually ended up against the north face of the small utility building at the foot of the hill in front of the Washington Monument.

This worked out surprisingly well. There was only an hour to go before the swearing-in. (I had envisioned standing upright for three hours w/nothing to do.) There was a clear sightline to a jumbotron. My son was able to climb up and sit on a window ledge six feet up, perched between two African-American men. They all grinned for some photos, broadcasting racial unity. So he had a great view of the crowd and screen. My daughter was less interested in the proceedings and didn’t want to be hoisted up anywhere, but contented herself with playing Brickbreaker on my phone. I gave a granola bar to a woman who had become separated from her husband and her lunch. And the sun was shining directly on us and reflected by the building’s white wall, so it was much warmer than expected.

Then we watched it all unfold.

Being out there was almost too much for the senses. The cold. The slightly jarring 3-second lag between the video and audio on the giant screens. The sense of mass anticipation and relief. The feeling of being part of something really, really big, the center of the whole world’s attention. The sense of being at the start, the birth of something. The grandeur of the setting and the diagrammatic precision of the ceremony. Fidel Castro would give 8-hour speeches; we can change leaders in a matter of minutes.

So it’s hard to sit now and analyze what Obama said. Just a few impressions: His speech came off as more workmanlike than soaring and eloquent, but that also provided some of its blunt force. It was, in some sense, the call to common purpose that George W. Bush never managed to deliver despite his opportunities to do so as various problems erupted. It was also tonally conservative in many ways even as it prepared the ground for a liberal restoration in Washington. The result, I think, will be to keep both Republicans and Democrats guessing and a little off-balance. Probably a good thing.

Finally came Rev. Joseph Lowery’s great and funny benediction: “Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around — (laughter) — when yellow will be mellow — (laughter) — when the red man can get ahead, man — (laughter) — and when white will embrace what is right. Let all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.” AUDIENCE: “Amen!”

And we trudged up to DuPont Circle (never managing to rendezvous with our friends) grabbed some lunch and took a surprisingly empty Metro train back home.

I have a piece out on Culture11 that tells the strange story of the still-unbuilt Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Building a memorial on or near the Mall is always a challenging exercise in cultural and bureaucratic politics, but somehow the MLK memorial has hit every contemporary hot button imaginable, ranging from race (predictable) to our relationship with China (not so predictable):

As crowds gather on the Mall for Barack Obama’s inauguration, thousands of people will tromp past a nondescript patch of ground along the Tidal Basin, about 100 yards from the FDR Memorial. Some of them – but probably not many – will notice a small plaque in the grass, dedicated in September 2000, informing them they’re looking at the future site of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. The site is a narrow, curving plot, a few acres total, between the Tidal Basin walkway and a service road. In the gray midwinter light, it seems a pretty forlorn spot, dotted with a few cherry trees and scattered with fallen leaves.

The plaque will be a strange footnote to a momentous day. President Obama’s inaugural address and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech are historical – and, on the Mall, spatial – bookends: King spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as part of a huge protest march. Obama will be echoing back from the west front of the Capitol 45 years later, assuming authority over the institutions King sought to change.

So why, more than eight years after that plaque was installed, and 13 years after the memorial got the green light from Congress, is the King site still empty?

As they say, read the whole thing.

The earliest known portrait of Washington, painted in 1772 by Charles Willson Peale, showing Washington in uniform as colonel of the Virginia Regiment.

I went with my family yesterday to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate on the Potomac. Mount Vernon has a new underground museum complex, opened in 2007, that we really wanted to see, and which did not disappoint. One thing that struck me, especially as the city named for him is descending into a total frenzy for Barack Obama’s inauguration, was the interesting nature of Washington’s charisma. Like any leader, he cultivated an image: one of dignity, probity, nobility. It was also a bit dull. Washington’s decisions often incited political passions. But his personality, the familiar image of him in his constituents’ minds, did not. And that stolidity served the nation well. Washington aimed to be a stable, calming figure in unstable times and succeeded. Most important and remarkable of all, unlike most generals in history who found themselves in a similar position, Washington did not love political power or actively seek it. He rejected attempts to crown him king, or even, as president, to address him using exalted, royal-sounding titles. Mr. President it was, and remains.

This is important to remember today, as the rhapsodizing reaches a fever pitch. Obama is inspiring not just high hopes, but wild adulation. All Hollywood’s starpower has assembled to lend its wattage to the occasion. The media are filled with every manner tribute to the perils and opportunities of this moment and Obama’s pivotal role in American history. (And let’s not forget those engraved Obama victory plates from the National Historic Society. Order now!)

In his various roles, Washington appeared an idealized figure, unreal and above-it-all and near Godlike to some. But, paradoxically, Washington (and his image) were also fundamentally ordinary. He was a man serving his nation, doing a job. The job wasn’t all he was or wanted to be. That approach has defined the presidency and the nation to this day. (And was one that Obama’s predecessor occasionally lost sight of, to the nation’s detriment.)

Obama appears to have a certain ironic distance on all the adulation coming his way, which is certainly an asset. And as we watch the inauguration, we should remember that he is a man (albeit a very talented, intelligent, charismatic one), doing a job like the rest of us.

It’s hard to say anything new or interesting about George W. Bush’s farewell address last night. But one thing is worth noting about Bush’s self-presentation: several times he refers to “tough decisions” that proved unpopular:

Like all who have held this office before me, I have experienced setbacks. There are things I would do differently if given the chance. Yet I’ve always acted with the best interests of our country in mind. I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right. You may not agree with some of the tough decisions I have made. But I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions.

Here’s the thing: Bush has never conveyed the impression that he found it hard to make decisions. Quite the opposite. Being “the decider” seemed quite easy for him, something he relished. Bush never really bucked public opinion — that would imply some reckoning with the reasons for opposition to his policies and for his own unpopularity — he simply ignored it. And once he made a call he rarely looked back, claiming to be untroubled by whatever negative consequences might flow from it.

So, I think the focus on “tough decisions” is another post-hoc rationalization. Bush’s decisions were “tough” not because he carefully weighed difficult issues and possible outcomes, but tough in hindsight because many of those decisions  had disastrous results that the public deplored.  Bush is trying to make himself look courageous for keeping his hand on the tiller during hard times, implying that was what made him unpopular. But in fact most of this mess was of his own making.

Once, the media could unilaterally shape the political debate – a legacy of the (short-lived) postwar political consensus and the media’s monolithic dominance of airwaves, newsprint, etc. Jay Rosen has mapped out the arbitrary ways this consensus-generating machine worked, and why it’s now breaking down:

Now we can see why blogging and the Net matter so greatly in political journalism. In the age of mass media, the press was able to define the sphere of legitimate debate with relative ease because the people on the receiving end were atomized— meaning they were connected “up” to Big Media but not across to each other. But today one of the biggest factors changing our world is the falling cost for like-minded people to locate each other, share information, trade impressions and realize their number. Among the first things they may do is establish that the “sphere of legitimate debate” as defined by journalists doesn’t match up with their own definition.

It’s good to have a million voices calling BS on big media’s persistent, strange, Reagan-era take on American politics. I wonder, though, what effects the combination of declining cultural relevance and the implosion of the media business will have on the relationship between media and government. One virtue of having big media institutions is that, sometimes, their clout and claim to represent a consensus view could be brought to bear on serious government transgressions – the classic examples being Watergate and the Pentagon Papers, and more recently, the New York Times’s exposure of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program.

Obviously, you can’t turn back the clock. You can’t leverage authority that no longer exists. A new configuration of old/new media is still taking shape. So: will a vastly more diverse but also more diffuse media ecosystem still have the ability (via individual media outlet, or via a swarm) to bring pressure to bear on the upper levels of government?

I’ve argued that it’s unlikely any top Bush administration officials would be prosecuted for war crimes in the United States. This because the U.S. is an amnesiac country. We don’t like facing hard truths about ourselves. (Exhibit A: Why is New Orleans still so vulnerable?) We prefer to make a brief nod to whatever horrible disaster we’ve collectively enabled, then “move on.” And it seemed logical that this same attitude would apply to the torture regime created under Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Jack Bauer’s antics notwithstanding, it’s pretty clear our dalliance with the dark side is ending, and Barack Obama would very much like to concentrate on other things, given that torture investigations would inevitably suck up a lot of political oxygen during a time when he is trying to accomplish other, more positive things.

But now I’m starting to think that Obama’s hoped-for outcome – that this all goes away for now – isn’t realistic. The reason is Bob Woodward’s story in today’s Washington Post, in which Susan Crawford, a Bush administration appointee who oversees Guantanamo’s military courts, comes out and calls torture “torture.” She refers to the treatment of Mohammed al-Qahtani, the alleged “20th hijacker” in the 9/11 plot. He never made it to the U.S., but was later captured in Afghanistan and shipped to Guantanamo, where he was subjected to harsh and degrading treatments over a 7-week period. Crawford ultimately judged that this met the legal definition of torture and blocked the case from proceeding.

This single case won’t make the difference on high-level torture prosecutions. But it is likely just the beginning of a parade of frank admissions about the torture regime. Why? It’s less about the nature of the acts committed than about how government and politics work.

We won’t see high-ranking officials suddenly going public anytime soon. Rummy ain’t gonna flip on himself.  But the Bush White House can no longer shut people up.  And lower-level officials in the Bush-era Pentagon, Justice Department, and intelligence agencies may decide they want to be on the right side of this issue, either for moral or legal reasons, as investigators (if there are any) will start looking at torture at the lowest levels and then work their way up the political food chain. If there are more torture findings like this one, from inside the system itself, the likelihood that criminal acts occurred becomes impossible to ignore. Impossible for career prosecutors, who will see a crime just sitting out there in plain sight; and impossible for Obama and his appointees, who may come to see a reckoning, rather than indefinite postponement, as the only viable way forward.

That said, Crawford took pains to note that individual techniques were approved, and thus hypothetically legal, just that the way they were employed crossed a line:

“The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge” to call it torture, she said.

Pay attention, Rumsfeld & company – the “overly aggressive” interrogators is your defense argument.