Obama still working for Zeleya’s return

The New Neo Posted on by

Our president hasn’t given up on overturning the rule of law in Honduras, as well as subverting the autonomy of the people in that supposedly sovereign state. And Hugo Chavez obviously sees Obama as his ally in this endeavor:

Mr. Zelaya was shipped out of the country because Honduras believed that jailing him would make him a lightning rod for violence. Interim President Roberto Micheletti promised that presidential elections scheduled for November would go forward.

That might have been the end of it if the U.S. had supported the Honduran rule of law, or simply refrained from meddling. Instead President Obama and the State Department joined Mr. Ché¡vez and his allies in demanding that Mr. Zelaya be restored to power. This has emboldened Venezuela….

Mr. Ché¡vez understands that Mr. Zelaya’s star is fading, which is why he called Tom Shannon, the State Department’s assistant secretary for the Western Hemisphere at home at 11:15 p.m on July 9. Mr. Shannon told me that Mr. Ché¡vez “again made the case for the unconditional return of Mr. Zelaya, though he did so in a less bombastic manner than he has in the past.”…

[T]he U.S. continues exerting enormous pressure for the return of Mr. Zelaya.

Why?

Please forgive me if I’m starting to resemble Cato the Elder in my repetitive monomaniacal insistence that Obama is a smooth-talking hypocrite who is attempting to sell the American public a socialist bill of goods, and who’s not above going the Chavez/Zelaya extra-constitutional route himself if he needs to. That’s what I see, and I feel the need to get the word out.

[NOTE: See Fausta for more Honduras links.]

[ADDENDUM: Meanwhile, there’s more important things to talk about.]

Obamaspeak: redefining “bipartisan”

The New Neo Posted on by

Anyone who really believed Obama’s campaign rhetoric that he would govern in a bipartisan manner wasn’t paying attention to anything but his lofty words. Unfortunately, far too many of the voters fit that description.

I didn’t believe Obama, but I retained hope. Yet when I looked at his record, all I saw was a man with a liberal/Left agenda who might be good at pretending to listen to other viewpoints but was likely to do exactly what he’d wanted to in the first place, if he got the power. And the election gave him the power, not so much because he was now president, but because the makeup of Congress became so heavily and resoundingly Democrat.

And now we hear the Orwellian spin: it depends on what the meaning of “bipartisan” is. Dummy me, I always thought it meant not only listening to the suggestions from the other side, but putting in place some sort of compromise on the specifics of one’s agenda in order to get their support.

But how does “yes, we can” Obama define bipartisanship in his administration? Here’s a good summary from an editorial in today’s WSJ:

The redefinition [of bipartisanship] started during the stimulus debate, but it really picked up steam late last month with David Axelrod’s appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” There the president’s chief strategist explained that a bill didn’t need Republican votes to be “bipartisan”; it was enough if Republican “ideas” were included. A few days earlier, Rahm Emanuel had offered reporters another redefinition, suggesting that a bill was bipartisan if people merely “saw the president trying” to get Republicans on board.

The president himself endorsed this redefinition during Rose Garden remarks delivered after a Senate committee passed a health-care bill on a strictly party-line vote. Perhaps only someone who truly embraces “the audacity of hope” could see healthy bipartisanship at work in the complete lack of GOP votes. Here’s how he put it: “It’s a plan that was debated for more than 50 hours and that, by the way, includes 160 Republican amendments””a hopeful sign of bipartisan support for the final product.”

Let’s leave aside specific complaints from Republicans, who note that the “Republican” amendments the president cited are mostly technical in nature. The larger point is that the White House’s new definitions of bipartisanship are just like the fake “jobs saved or created” numbers Mr. Obama used to justify the stimulus at a time when the economy was in fact shedding tens of thousands of jobs. And the press should call him on it.

The article goes on to say that conservative Democrats from Obama’s own party are very upset about the President’s refusal to allow the inclusion of some policies would give the bills some Republican votes, and therefore provide a bit of Republican cover for their own support. It also mentions that Bush, who was derided for his partisanship by the press, actually passed most of his agenda with solid Democrat support.

Of course, that’s because he usually needed to. During the Bush administration the Republicans never had the sort of majorities currently held by Democrats in Congress.

Now, it’s certainly possible that most presidents would do what Obama is doing right now and pass their agendas with the support of only one party, if they had the numbers to do so. But to pretend this is actual bipartisanship is disingenuous and hypocritical. But hypocritical disingenuousness is exactly what we’ve come to expect from Obama, as well as the Orwellian redefinition of key terms.

[NOTE: In case you think these tendencies (hypocrisy, disingenuousness, and Orwellian speech) were not already quite clear even early on in Obama’s campaign, see this, this, and this.]

Summing Obama up

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an especially trenchant description of President Obama in a comment on a Victor Davis Hanson article at PJ:

Americans, vdh and others talking about debt, no debt, the value or negative value of debt or any BHO issue is like a conversation on the Titanic or like the conversations of dieing men. It is diversionary and escapism only. There will be no useful purpose. There is no useful purpose.

Action on any one individual issue means nothing to the nature of the problem nor will the conversations lead to any real solutions. Just the opposite. Misdirection is in play.

Why? Because BHO is not about the details of the last political or legislative move by BHO functionaries. BHO and his cronies are about control.

The BHO administration is about control of America and the Assets of American Citizens. A revolution and time of retributions and destruction of America is now ongoing.

A revolution transported only on Utopian words to Americans that have become indoctrinated functionaries. Not your real grandfather Americans. Just victim groups, just illegals looking for a handout, just shell Americans who by indoctrination substituted for education are helpless without the “government” taking care of them.

Stick around to see what happens if you do not believe this. It will only take about 4 years for the actual destruction of private enterprise to take place. 250+ years of building the high water mark in human culture destroyed in 4 years or less. Not a shot being fired. It is starting to occur now by impacting and holding decisions that are necessary for business to function.

…For everyone the BHO policy helps more Americans will be hurt or destroyed. All of this revolution is covered over and “perfumed” by the Utopian language that simple Americans dumbed down within the last 50 years cannot comprehend other than to believe something can be gotten for nothing. Who is not for universal medical care and perpetual motion.

There are no details only “grand Utopian pronouncements” that fit the 10 second attention span in our drug fed populations.

The known past results of other such con games in the world aka Communist games created millions of dead in addition to a “privileged class” determined only by a “loyalty” test. No merit in play here. Cult family members only…

Other Americans especially those leaders that may stop such subversion simply by their common sense and leadership abilities must be destroyed and discredited”“such as Sara. The MSM are the useful idiots of personnel destruction as needed by the BHO’s.

…This is a full blown communist revolution taking place under the nose of primitive Americans who have been so dumbed down they don’t recognize that a revolution can take place without a shot being fired…

And here’s another good comment at the same Hanson article:

What is most dangerous is not the methods that Obama and his minions are using, and taxes, legislation, establishment of a huge and wastefully corrupt bureaucracy are among those methods, but their goal, which is a Europeanization of the American soul. Obama is smart, but it’s a kind of feral cunning, devoted to control, power and destruction. He knows that all of his initiatives must be done quickly before anyone can take the time to read and discover that what he proposes is not only unconstitutional, un-American and destructive, but quite insane.

But that’s the point. If he can change the nature of America, he wins. If Americans no longer see America as exceptional, but just another welfare state, he wins. If Americans see no reason to work hard, to innovate, to take risks, to pioneer and excel, Obama wins. If those who do excel flee, taking their productivity and income with them, Obama wins. When religious faith, hope and charity die, Obama wins. When Americans no longer care for their fellow man, expecting government to do everything, Obama wins. When Americans complacently accept whatever table scraps our betters see fit to provide, in terms of energy, health care or myriad other facets of life, Obama wins. When all of the positive character traits that have made America the last, best hope of mankind have been extinguished, Obama wins, for who will try to stop him from becoming ruler for life?…

One more, here:

Obama sees the presidency as a larger (and more suited to his extraordinary talents) version of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Some rich guy gives him a pile of money to throw at flaky schemes. He supports the flakiest and gets praise for his innovation. The projects ends. No positive results are achieved, but no one cares. Wasn’t that fun?

I truly think that represents the depth of Obama’s thinking. People who worry about debt and dictators are just like those rubes clinging to their guns and religion. The people who count are those who can discuss the merits of wagyu beef with appropriate footnotes to philosophical works.

The sad thing—or at least one of the sad things—is that most Americans would have no idea what that last commenter is referring to when he mentions the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and Obama’s role in it. It’s just one of so many important things about Obama’s past that the press neglected to explore when it would have mattered.

Obama “the iceman” melteth: but Politico’s Ben Smith hasn’t been paying attention

The New Neo Posted on by

Ben Smith of Politico seems to think Obama’s getting rattled, and that this has caused a change in the persona he’s showing to the country and the world.

But everything the article describes as new behavior was already in evidence during the campaign—that is, to those paying attention to the details. Obama has always had a tendency to get nasty and emotional, or haughty and dismissive, when pressed—but during the campaign he was rarely ever pressed. As for the trash talk, didn’t Politico see Obama give Hillary the finger, or flick the dirt off his shoulder? Or how about getting acquainted with the ancient history of how Obama got his start against Alice Palmer? Not to mention the fact that Obama’s lack of reaching across the aisle for Republican input began nearly at the start of his presidency, not just now.

This in particular struck me as disingenuous on the part of Obama’s spokesman, as well:

White House Deputy Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer dismissed the suggestion that Obama should be expected to succeed effortlessly ”“ or that he’s on a path toward failure on any of these varied fronts.

“Obama and his team have been down this road dozens of times and been declared dead many times and always succeeded,” he said. “No one gets rich betting against Barack Obama.”

Now that I think of it, perhaps it’s not disingenuous after all; perhaps it just shows ignorance (or denial) of the fact that Obama has never had to succeed at anything political before except for getting elected, and then ingratiating himself with the leader of the Illinois Senate who allowed him to take credit for the work of other people on legislative bills. After that, all Obama really had to do was give speeches and run a campaign.

Granted, he was very good indeed at that. But a campaign and a presidency are different. I am beginning to think that one of the problems with Obama and his advisers is that they actually believe an administration is merely the continuation of a campaign. After all, Obama has never had to face that hard truth before—each office of his has been useful only as a springboard for the next one. The idea that he is now in office for at least four years, with no higher office in sight, and that people may actually for the first time in his life expect him to produce some actual results in addition to lofty words, is very slow to dawn on Obama and the people around him.

They probably think if he bobs and weaves and spins enough, his chickens will never come home to roost. And perhaps they are correct; perhaps the press will stay in his pocket, partly to avoid admitting its own failure to evaluate and vet Obama properly. But there are signs—and the Politico article is one of them—that even the press cannot deny that this man is not what he appeared (to them) to be.

Cronkite and Vietnam: Part II

The New Neo Posted on by

[Part I is here. Both parts are reprints of previous posts, but I have updated this one to reflect that fact that Cronkite is now deceased.]

In his introduction to that Cronkite interview featured in Part I, Dick Gordon writes:

It was February 1968, and in a three minute editorial essay on the CBS Evening news Cronkite quite simply changed the course of history. On that night, the anchor told Americans that the war in Vietnam was unwinnable; that the generals and pundits were wrong…

Think about that for a moment. Cronkite, a news anchor, goes on a trip to Vietnam (I can’t find any information on how long it lasted, but my guess is a couple of weeks at most). This happens around the time of the Tet Offensive, and he’s briefed on that, among other things. Then he returns home. With no particular military expertise—and, as it turns out, no basic understanding of the strategic realities of the Tet Offensive itself—he comes to the opinion that the war cannot be won.

Although prior to this he’s always considered his role to be the reporting of facts and events, he now develops the idea that he must use his bully pulpit, and the influence he’s gained throughout his years as a solid and relatively nonpartisan newsman, to tell the “truth” that the government and the military have been keeping from the American people.

Why Cronkite decided to make that transition is still somewhat mysterious, although I aired some theories about it in Part I. Of course, there’s no doubt that Cronkite had a right to his opinion; but we’re not talking about merely having an opinion. Did he have a right to leap over the traditional boundaries of news reporting and to intone, in a voice almost all Americans had grown to implicitly trust and revere, that the situation was hopelessly stalemated?

The rules about reporting were there for a reason, after all. The responsibility journalists have is an awesome one; we rely on them for the information on which we base our votes in a republic. Journalists need to make sure that the information they convey is correct, properly sourced, accurate. But anchors are generalists, not experts—except in a very narrow field, that of conveying the news. They are good writers and talkers. They are able to keep their calm with a camera on them, and even to ad lib if necessary. But reporters should guard against the hubris of thinking that they’ve become expert in every field they cover.

In his broadcast of February 1968, Cronkite was careful to say in his introduction that what he was about to say was “speculative, personal, subjective.” He then indicates he doesn’t know who won the Tet campaign. He goes on to list a series of battles and conflicts that haven’t been resolved to his satisfaction; according to him, the whole thing is a stalemate.

He then makes a rather extraordinary leap, saying it’s clear this will always be the case. He says that North Vietnam can—and most definitely will—match us for every measure we can come up with, not just in the past but in the future.

In fact, in clinical terms, one might say Cronkite was speaking of his own weariness and depression in the face of the ongoing conflict. He offers no proof of his assertions of hopeless quagmire, even for Tet—he just doesn’t know about it. But his language is the language of emotion, not facts or strategy. He is dispirited and disillusioned, experiencing a loss of faith more than anything else:

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds.

He calls the conclusion that we are “mired in stalemate” the “only realistic” one. And then he makes the most peculiar declaration of all:

…in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

So, even if Tet turns out to have been a last-ditch effort for the North and the Vietcong, and if the enemy really does prove to have nothing left (“his last big gasp”) before submitting to negotiations—Cronkite sees the US “not as victors, but as honorable people who…did the best they could.”

But under the circumstances, why wouldn’t the US then be negotiating as victors? We see that, even when Cronkite posits a relatively optimistic position as a hypothetical, he still can’t bring himself to draw the proper conclusions from it: that it would represent at least some sort of victory. What comes across instead is an utter weariness, a personal one: that of Walter Cronkite himself.

Cronkite remained exceedingly proud of this broadcast. He was often called “avuncular,” but I think the following statement of his could be more rightly called paternalistic:

There is a point at which it seems to me if an individual reporter has gained a reputation of being honest, fair as can be, and helps the American people in trying to make a decision on a major issue, I think we ought to take that opportunity.

This illustrates better than anything I can think of the slippery slope that comes from being a reporter and especially an anchorperson. For it’s clear that Cronkite had come to believe in his own persona, and to feel that it conferred a certain amount of wisdom on him. If he was honest and fair and trusted in his reportage of the facts, then he seems to think it followed that his own personal opinions and judgments—even about matters outside his field of expertise, journalism itself—were also reliable ones. And that he was therefore qualified to advise the American people in decisions they made on matters of national and military policy.

So, how wrong was Cronkite about Tet? About as wrong as can be, it turns out. History has declared unequivocally that there were winners and losers in Tet: it was a grand strategy that failed miserably for the North in the tactical military sense but succeeded beyond its wildest dreams as a propaganda ploy—due in large part to Cronkite and his colleagues in the MSM.

One of the oddest things about Cronkite isn’t what he did then; it’s that apparently he remained proud of it for the rest of his life. I’ve read and listened to a number of his interviews on the subject; at no time did he even address the fact that he was wrong about Tet in the military sense—nor did his questioners bring it up. Was this reticence on their part a show of respect for the frailty of an elderly man? Or were both he and his interviewers largely unaware of the discrediting facts that had been uncovered and widely aired in the intervening decades? Or did they not care if they were wrong about those things, because, after all, they were pursuing that “higher truth?”

The “lower” truth (otherwise known as the actual truth) is that Tet was a disaster for the Vietcong and the North—especially the Vietcong, who never recovered from the blow. But, in the end , it didn’t matter. How they managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat was detailed in the definitive work on the subject, Peter Braestrup’s 1978 analysis of MSM coverage of Tet, entitled “The Big Story.”

…the nationwide Vietcong offensive turned out to be an “unmitigated disaster” for the communist side. But the media consensus was just the opposite—an “unmitigated defeat” for the United States.

Cronkite, along with several hundred reporters from two dozen countries, focused on how the Vietcong guerrillas managed to blast their way into the U.S. Embassy compound (but didn’t make it past the Marines in the lobby). War correspondents were also impressed by the view from the cocktail bar atop the Caravelle Hotel: C-47s, equipped with three Gatling guns on one side, were strafing Vietcong pockets in Cholon, the capital’s twin city 2½ miles away.

Yet the Vietcong didn’t reach a single one of their objectives and lost most of their 45,000-strong force in their attacks against 21 cities. It was also a defeat that convinced North Vietnam’s leaders to send their regular army—the NVA—south of the 17th parallel to pick up where the Vietcong left off.

If you want to read a summary of the conclusions Braestrup—a seasoned war reporter and former Marine who had served in Korea—reached in his book, please see this. You’d do well to read the whole thing; it’s rich in important and informative detail.

Interestingly enough, Braestrup doesn’t posit press political bias as a major part of the problem. The real difficulty was sheer ignorance, especially about anything military. Here are just a few of the MSM-created myths about Tet that Braestrup effectively destroys:

There had been no warning of a coming offensive.

The offensive was a victory for Hanoi.

The North Vietnamese military initiative bared the unreliability and inefficiency of our own allies, the South Vietnamese.

The characteristic American response was to destroy city districts and villages with overwhelming, indiscriminate firepower.

The sapper raid on the American embassy, the fighting in Hue, and the siege of Khe Sanh typified the war.

Khe Sanh was to be America’s Dien Bien Phu.

How did the press get it so very wrong?

The press corps lacked military experience and the ability to grasp and present matters of strategy and tactics…The press’s lack of knowledge and maturity resulted in a lack of discrimination in the presentation of hastily gathered or incomplete facts and contributed to the disaster theme.

The views of experienced military commentators like Joseph Kraft and Hanson Baldwin and the analyses of Douglas Pike were virtually ignored. The press reflected American ignorance of Vietnamese language and culture, had no expertise in the area of pacification, and almost no sources on the South Vietnamese government or army.

…The press was impressionable. General Bruce Palmer succinctly summed up the problem when he stated that the foe “took the battle down around the Caravelle Hotel and, so, from the standpoint of the average reporter over there, it was the acorn that fell on the chicken’s head and it said ‘The sky is falling.'”

And then you have what I think are the three most important press failings of all, of which Cronkite was guilty as charged, their staying power reflected in his inordinate pride about his stance that persisted in the face of a book like “The Big Story” (one wonders whether Cronkite had ever read it):

There was no willingness to admit error or correct erroneous reporting after the fact. The classic example was the Associated Press’s continued assertion that sappers had entered the U.S. Embassy building in Saigon more than twelve hours after it was clear the attack had been repulsed on the grounds.

…By the time of Vietnam, it had become professionally acceptable in some media to allow reporters to “explain” news, not merely report it…

…In their commentary on events in Vietnam, reporters “projected” to the American public their own opinions and fears based on incomplete data and their own inclinations.

Has any of this changed today? I think things have gotten worse, if anything; the MSM failures illustrated by the press coverage of Tet have become institutionalized in the intervening years.

Tet was a turning point all right, but in a very different way than Cronkite envisioned it: it marked the beginning of a special and destructive type of MSM hubris, in which our own media—without realizing it was doing so, and without meaning to—became, effectively, the propaganda arm of the enemy.

Europe starts to sour on Obama?

The New Neo Posted on by

Spiegel reports quite a bit of German dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s economic policy:

It is an unsettling situation. The prosperity and well-being of ordinary people are more threatened than they have been in a long time, and yet Germany and its most important partner seem unable to agree on a common course. It isn’t even clear that the United States still perceives Germany and Europe as important partners. The emphasis is shifting toward China, and Merkel will find herself having to campaign on behalf of Germany — something which makes it difficult for her to voice criticism of the US….

A clash of cultures is raging between Berlin and the United States on the issue of financial policy…

Obama himself has also been a trial in his meetings with Merkel, foregoing protocol and putting her on the spot by asking questions (in public) that have not been agreed on in advance, forcing her to think on her feet. Too bad she doesn’t return the favor and let Europe get a dose of the non-teleprompted US President.

Here’s another Spiegel article in a similar vein. After the obligatory Bush-bashing appetizer, the meat of the piece is a condemnation of Obama’s economic policies.

And then there’s this especially interesting tidbit from the first article:

Obama’s visits to Dresden and Buchenwald also ruffled some feathers in Germany. The US president’s advance team, which had been sent to help prepare for the trip, made a negative impression on the Germans through their coarse language and overbearing behavior. German officials were shouted at, treated like schoolchildren and told to wait their turns…As it is, the US president in person is by no means the charming and smiling character many have come to expect from his television appearances. He cultivates a cool style or, as one of the members of the delegation describes it, “an almost unfeeling style.”

But but but—-Obama’s the nice one! He’ll make those Europeans love us!

[Hat tip: Rachel Lucas.]

RIP Walter Cronkite

The New Neo Posted on by

Walter Cronkite, the anchorman for whom the word “avuncular” seemed to have been invented, has died at the age of ninety-two.

The tributes will pour in. He was a giant of a newscaster in a way that no one can be anymore, because television news was in its infancy then and limited to the big three stations.

Cronkite started in print journalism, but segued to TV and earned renown for the reassuring timbre of his deep and sonorous voice. Who could ever forget his struggle to suppress the emotion that overcame him when he announced to a shocked nation that its young president had died so suddenly and cruelly on a beautiful November day in 1963?

See the video; it’s in the last 45 seconds that Cronkite delivers the official word on JFK’s death. He shows his grief and anger by pressing his lips together tightly and doing a repetitive bit of business with his glasses, taking them off and on, off and on. A consummate pro, he never really falters. But it clearly costs him a great deal to maintain his composure:

We all bonded to Cronkite that day.

[But see this post of mine on Cronkite and Vietnam for “the rest of the story.”]

Cronkite and Vietnam: Part I

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous two-part post. Part II is here.]

Cronkite’s famous post-Tet broadcast of February 27, 1968, delivered on the CBS Evening News, is widely regarded as a turning point in the Vietnam War, as well as broadcast journalism. It caused President Johnson to famously say, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost the country,” and was apparently instrumental in Johnson’s decision to drop out of the 1968 Presidential race.

Those too young to remember may find such a set of circumstances almost impossible to believe. But Walter Cronkite,”the most trusted man in America” during his 18-year tenure as the anchor for the CBS evening news, is widely regarded to have had great influence on public opinion.

Take a moment to mull that one over and contemplate how the times they have a’changed: it would not seem possible for a major network anchor to be the “most trusted man in America” today (and, by the way, that “most trusted” designation wasn’t just hyperbole; Cronkite was actually judged that in a Gallup Poll of the time. And, of course, today it would be “the most trusted person in America.” But I digress.)

The avuncular Cronkite (and it seems no piece on Cronkite can avoid that perfect description of the man: “avuncular”) held America’s trust for most of his time at the job. Was it simply a more naive era? The fact that so many Americans got their news from that TV half hour (which Cronkite was instrumental in making a full half hour rather than the 15 minutes he originally inherited) through either CBS, or NBC’s rival Huntley-Brinkley, made it seem as though the truth were being told there—after all, there were few competing stories to hear.

And do not underestimate Cronkite’s voice and demeanor, perfect for television. Never slick, not handsome, he seemed profoundly sincere, with a deep and resonant voice and a slight (at least to me) resemblance to another familiar and fatherly icon of the times with the same first name, Walt Disney. Cronkite had distinguished himself during his coverage of the Kennedy assassination, displaying controlled but moving emotion as he took off his glasses to announce the President’s death. It was a deep bonding with the US public through a traumatic time.

Cronkite earned his trust the hard way: by reporting the unvarnished news. In this 2002 radio interview (well worth listening to for insight into his thought process at the time) Cronkite describes his orientation towards his job prior to that watershed moment of the Tet offensive broadcast.

Previously the top brass at CBS, as well as the reporters there, had understood their function to be reporting “the facts, just the facts.” Editorializing was kept strictly separate; at CBS, it was a function of Eric Sevareid, and clearly labeled as such.

The president of CBS news, Dick Salant, was a man of almost fanatical devotion to the principles of non-editorializing journalism, according to Cronkite’s interview. Cronkite said that, till Tet, he “almost wouldn’t let us put an adjective in a sentence” when reporting, he’d been such a stickler for “just the facts.”

But, according to Cronkite, as the Vietnamese War had worn on, and because of the confusion of the American people about the war, reflected in letters to the station, Salant sent Cronkite on a trip to Vietnam with the idea of doing a piece of opinion journalism when he came back, in order to help the American people “understand” what was going on by explicitly editorializing and advising them.

One can speculate long and hard about why Salant decided it was time to make such a drastic change. From Cronkite’s interview, it appears that the brass at CBS was part of the turmoil of the 60s with its “question authority” ethos. If you listen to Cronkite (and he expresses not a moment’s ambivalence about his actions), you may hear, as I did, an anger at a military that seemed heedless of the difficulties of the Vietnam endeavor, and too sanguine–similar to the “cakewalk” accusation towards the present Iraq War.

Another fact that becomes apparent in the Cronkite interview is that he felt personally betrayed by the military men he’d talked to as Vietnam churned on. He’d been a war correspondent in the Second World War, and that conflict, in which the press had been heavily censored, had featured public pronouncements of public optimism but private “off the record” discussions with the press that were more realistic and often more gloomy. Cronkite had been privy to these. But during Vietnam, when there was no official censorship, the military self-censored when talking to the press—they were profoundly optimistic, because they knew everything they said would be reported. Cronkite seemed miffed that he wasn’t given the inside info, as he had been in WWII.

Cronkite is up-front about these differences in his interview. I think it’s ironic that, if there had been more censorship during the Vietnam War, war correspondents such as Cronkite might have understood better where the military was coming from and might have cut them some slack. However, that’s mere speculation. What actually happened is that Cronkite felt betrayed, and he and Salant thought the American people had been betrayed, and they felt it was important enough that they needed to break their own long-standing rule and spill the beans to the American people.

It never seems to have occurred to them, of course, that in reacting to Tet as they did they were participating in a different falsehood, the propagation of North Vietnamese propaganda about the situation.

Whatever Cronkite’s motivations may have been, it’s hard to overestimate the effect it had when he suddenly stated on air that the meaning of Tet was that the situation in Vietnam was hopelessly stalemated and the war could not be won. We’re used to this sort of thing now, and many of us have learned to brush it off. But then, to much of America, Cronkite’s was the voice of trusted authority that could not be denied—despite the fact that he had no special expertise to make such a proclamation.

Of course, we are reaping the fruit of that moment today. Journalism has changed, and not for the better, mixing opinion and facts in messy attempts to influence public opinion rather than inform. In connection with that radio interview, for example, see this statement, rather typical of the genre:

It was a bold move for Cronkite, and it was an seminal moment for journalism, to go beyond the reporting of events, to tell a conflicted people a higher truth, something beyond the cataloguing of casualties or shifting front lines.

To tell a conflicted people a higher truth. That seems to say it all, does it not?

[ADDENDUM: Here is the text of Cronkite’s Tet statement:

“Report from Vietnam,” Walter Cronkite Broadcast, February 27, 1968.

Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we’d like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I’m not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of ground. Another standoff. On the political front, past performance gives no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems, now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold on, but it probably won’t show the dynamic qualities demanded of this young nation. Another standoff.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi’s winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that-negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.]

[Part II here.]

Policy on back-and-forth fighting in the comments section

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Nothing I say in this post refers to bona fide political discussions and disagreements. But I’ve noticed an increase in personal attacks and infighting between/among commenters on this blog, and some of it has gone on for quite a while.]

I do not have time to police this blog for personal fighting. I know that I find it takes away from the point of the blog, as well, when that sort of thing comes to dominate too much in the comments section.

I don’t mind a little of it, but I do mind when it goes on for a while. I don’t have time to determine who’s right and who’s wrong in any given altercation, nor do I believe it should be my job.

I am saying to everyone on the blog that I am going to adopt a less hang-loose policy about repetitive personal attacks between commenters. It’s not that it can never happen. But if I see it going on too long, I will delete the entire comment of the person involved (that is, if I see the comment; I don’t always catch everything). Defending oneself is fine, but if the defense includes an attack, that’s not okay and will be deleted. And then, if it goes on again, I will ban the person or people involved.

We really need to focus our energies on the truly important issues facing us. That doesn’t mean everything has to be serious—certainly not!—but I’m adopting a much less tolerant attitude for this sort of repetitive personal sniping.

Of course, trolls are fair game. But they tend to be banned here pretty quickly.

It’s time…

The New Neo Posted on by

…for another rara avis.

[NOTE: Yes, I know there’s sometimes a way to make these things smaller to fit on the blog properly. But for this particular video, the method didn’t work (sigh).]

Obama: fooled you once

The New Neo Posted on by

Ted Van Dyk doesn’t get it. In his new WSJ piece he’s addressing an Obama that doesn’t exist—a reasonable guy who’s just a bit overwhelmed and misguided, one who’s ceded his program to others and who just needs to “get back to himself” in order to be more reasonable and bipartisan.

Sorry, Mr. van Dyk. You were sold the Brooklyn Bridge by a silver-tongued demagogue who never had any intention of doing the sort of things that appealed to you so much during the campaign. He counted on you to fill in the blank screen, and to do so while wearing your rose-colored glasses.

Ted Van Dyk was Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s assistant in the Johnson White House, and has been active in Democratic politics over 40 years. He has recently written a book called “Heroes, Hacks and Fools,'” according to the article’s bio. It’s a memoir about his many years in politics as adviser to many leading Democrats. Too bad that, in this case, the man he thought would be a hero turned out to be a villain in disguise, and Van Dyk and so many others were played for the fools.