WASHINGTON — The American media, whether consciously or
unconsciously, believe in the “winning side.” Always their
journalists find themselves on it. The facts of almost every story
matter only ephemerally. What matters most is that the whole bovine
community of scribes ends up on the winning side.
Perhaps in the aftermath of the Michael Jackson trial you have
noticed how the journalists have retreated from the pandemic sneer
they had adopted toward Jackson when his case went to the jury. The
sneer has been replaced with general sympathy for the nincompoop.
Of a sudden he is the wronged celeb; and yes, the journalists
admit, the media were among the many forces that wronged “Michael.”
Once again these journalists have found the winning side.
Then there is the case of Dr. Howard Dean. Have you noticed the
growing consternation amongst Democrats and members of the media
that the new chairman of the Democratic Party is “a problem”? The
“feistiness” that won him admiration en route to the 2004 Iowa
caucus is now causing such Democrats as Senator Joe Biden and
former Senator John Edwards to “distance” themselves from him. As
things appear to me in this news cycle, the journalists are
instinctively moving to the consensus that the winning side is
going to be sayanora Dr. Dean. If he bows out, the media
will again be vindicated. Once again their journalists somehow
sensed that they knew best.
The line will be that this wild man lost touch with his party
whose members are not in sympathy with calling Republicans “brain
dead,” “corrupt,” “evil,” “liars” who never did an “honest day’s
work” in their lives. Yet has he really lost touch with his party?
Are there many activists or even party leaders who disagree with
his contemptuous description of Republicans? Not long ago the most
popular of the likely candidates for the party’s 2008 presidential
nomination, the newly-moderate Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton,
described the Bush Administration as “intent on abusing power,
destroying the United States Senate and undermining our
Constitution.” She has had several such outbursts of late.
I actually know Dr. Dean quite well. Throughout the 1990s and
into the Twenty-First Century I did a weekly television show with
him, a PBS show out of Montreal called “The Editors.” He was cocky
and combative, but never inordinately so. Nor was he a political
extremist. He was what is traditionally called a “Democratic
regular.” Perplexed that this seemingly moderate Democrat is about
to be booted by the media from the winning side, I recently called
fellow panel members on the show and they agreed with my estimate.
One said that there was always a “strain of extreme grabby language
about the other team” that would spill out of Dean’s mouth. He
might accuse panelists, usually me, of intoning “right-wing tripe”
or “right-wing extremism,” but within the bounds of acceptable
discourse and never overdone. Said my fellow panelist, “the spirit
and the heart of ‘The Editors’ was lively but thoughtful, the best
of public conversation.”
Dr. Howard Dean would not have been invited back if he were
obnoxious. Admittedly I find his vituperation today obnoxious, but
knowing Dean I can tell you it is not a sign that he is a wild man.
He is a skilled politician talking to his party’s activists, and
this “raw meat” is just what his activists want. The term “raw
meat” was Spiro Agnew’s for his rhetorical flourishes that pleased
the Republican activists of the late 1960s.
The activists are by nature excitable and actually in need of
excitement. Dean understands them. So on behalf of my colleagues
who served with Dr. Dean on “The Editors,” lay off Dr. Dean. He is
not a nut. The paranoiacs in the Democratic Party are those who
talk of a “Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy,” to a general audience of
American television watchers. They are the Democratic leaders who
accuse journalists of playing “into the service of the right wing,”
as Democratic minority leader Richard Durbin recently did when he
chastised the press for reporting Dr. Dean’s outbursts. Senator
Durbin went on, “I think we understand what’s happening with you
all [the journalists]. The right wing has got the agenda moving?
You’ve bought into it. You can’t let up on it. You ought to be
ashamed of yourselves.”
Now that is another example of what in American history is
called The Paranoid Style. It seems to afflict many leaders of the
Democratic Party, first the Clintons, now Senator Durbin. By
comparison with them, Dr. Dean is a perfectly sensible chairman of
his party.
