So.
What did Katie Couric know when she was assigned to cover the
Pentagon?
Who will be investigating Chris Dodd and Barney Frank?
Why is the government in the mortgage business in the first
place?
These three questions go straight to the heart of the new world
that is emerging in the aftermath of the economic crisis, of the
Palin nomination and the advent of the New Media. It is a world of
paradigms lost. You know paradigms, that collection of pesky
“assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a
way of viewing reality for the community that shares them” as the
online Free Dictionary has it.
Assumptions such as the notion that a multi-millionaire
television anchor gets to ask snooty questions of a female
vice-presidential nominee while being forgetful of just what got
the said anchor on the road to being that anchor in the first
place. Assumptions such as the idea that those in Congress who
created the crisis at Fannie Mae, which in turn set off the Wall
Street implosion, are somehow invulnerable to everything from
Congressional hearings to federal investigations. Assumptions such
as the concept that the New Deal must still reign supreme and that
the federal government simply must be engaged in the mortgage
business or run your health care or God only knows what else.
The world has changed, the old paradigm is gone with it. So
let’s see how things look anew in a 21st century paradigm.
ASSUMPTION ONE: For those who heard the Couric CBS News interview
of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin it is perhaps best to start with
Couric herself. The not-so subtle message Couric was sending in her
interview was that Palin, a sitting Governor, is unqualified to be
vice president.
OK. Got it. Couric disdains putting unqualified people in
important jobs.
So let’s turn to the new paradigm that allows us to question the
credibility of mainstream journalists. When, exactly, did Katie
Couric begin to dance on the national mainstream media scene and
what qualified her to do so? Well, to start, Katie is a public
school product, including Yorktown High in Arlington, Virginia. She
was a cheerleader there. Then she moved on to the University of
Virginia, a state school as was Palin’s University of Idaho, where
our Katie was an English major. Then Ms. Couric headed into
journalism, starting at the bottom with perhaps the journalistic
equivalent of Palin’s PTA — a lowly desk assistant at a network.
After a couple more rungs on the ladder she made it to general
assignment reporter at a Miami TV station, where she doubtless
covered every street festival and homicide there was to be had in
the big city. Then it was back to Washington for a reportorial
stint at the local NBC affiliate.
Here’s where the new paradigm kicks in. Having been through the
journalistic equivalent of politics in Wasilla, Alaska, Katie
suddenly is appointed — are you ready? — Deputy Pentagon
Correspondent for NBC News. Whoa, Nelly! What just happened here?
Are we to understand that this young woman — the cheerleader from
Yorktown High, the English major, the “general assignment reporter”
in Miami — is suddenly qualified to be covering the Pentagon for
NBC News? Can it be that the network of Huntley and Brinkley was
sending someone to cover the headquarters of the United States
Armed Forces — in the middle of the Cold War — who had never had
a nano-second’s worth of experience with the military? Well, yes.
That’s exactly what they did. Our Katie had evidenced not a
scintilla of experience in this area anywhere in her career. Did
she know the difference between an F-14 and a B-52? How many
military bases had she visited? Did she have a clue what the Navy’s
SLEP program was?
Let’s do a little time travel. Let’s go back to the day of
Katie’s appointment to the Pentagon in 1989 and rephrase some of
the questions Ms. Couric asked of Governor Palin the other day as
they strolled in front of the United Nations building in New York.
Let’s see how they would sound if we had the chance back then
(through a correspondent we’ll call Ike the New Media guy) to ask
them of Katie the cheerleader, English major, and Miami street
reporter as Katie and Ike strolled in front of the
Pentagon.
Couric to Palin: As we stand before
this august building and institution, what do you see as the role
of the United States in the world?
Ike to Couric: As we stand before this august
building and institution, what do you see as the role of the United
States military in the world?
Couric to Palin: In preparing for this
conversation, a lot of our viewers … and Internet users wanted to
know why you did not get a passport until last year. And they
wondered if that indicated a lack of interest and curiosity in the
world.
Ike to Couric: In preparing for this
conversation, a lot of our viewers wanted to know why you did not
either serve in the military yourself or get any kind of degree in
international politics or national security. And they wondered if
that indicated a lack of interest and curiosity in the military, or
perhaps hostility.
Couric to Palin: You’ve cited Alaska’s proximity
to Russia as part of your foreign policy experience. What did you
mean by that?
Ike to Couric: You’ve cited growing up near the
Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery as well as covering night life in
Miami and Washington Mayor Marion Barry as part of your national
security and defense policy experience to cover the Pentagon. What
did you mean by that?
Couric to Palin: Have you ever been involved in
any negotiations, for example, with the Russians?
Ike to Couric: Have you ever been involved in
covering any U.S. military actions from the scene, for example, in
Lebanon or Grenada?
Does the phrase “double standard” ring a bell with any readers
out there? Good for Katie Couric that she’s a hardworking soul who
has ambition and may be a quick study. But by her own standards,
she should never have been given a Pentagon press pass back there
in 1989.
ASSUMPTION TWO: Where is it written that when members of Congress
screw up big time — like, say, Wall Street executives — only the
Wall Streeters are going to be investigated? (At the moment the FBI
has opened a number of investigations into the Wall Street
belly-ups.) Are any of the people on Wall Street or at Fannie Mae
who caused this problem going to be summoned from their cushy lives
to clean up Wall Street and investigate what happened? Are you
kidding? But yes indeed, our friends Senator Chris Dodd, chairman
of the Senate Banking Committee and recipient of a cushy deal from
Countrywide Financial, is going to look into all of this. So too
will Congressman Barney Frank over in the House, where he used his
perch on the Financial Services Committee, of which he is now
chairman, to shield Fannie Mae from calls for tightened
regulations. Calls made by then-Bush administration Secretary of
the Treasury John Snow and Senator John McCain, among others. Said
Barney on the floor of t he House on June 27, 2005 (highlights
mine):
“This is not the dot-com situation. We had problems
with people having invested in business plans for which there was
no reality and people building fiber-optic cable for which there
was no need. Homes that are occupied may see an ebb and flow in the
price at a certain percentage level, but you will not see the
collapse that you see when people talk about a
bubble.”
Right. Thanks for the look into the liberal crystal ball
Congressman Frank.
So now the question has to be asked in the new paradigm. Who
will investigate the greed for political power? Who will
investigate Chris Dodd (33 years in Congress) and Barney Frank (27
years in Congress)? Dodd alone received not one but two cushy deals
for nearly $800,000 in mortgages. He received $133,900 in campaign
contributions from Fannie Mae. And he is assailing greedy
capitalists?? Why are these two guys still serving as Chairmen of
their respective committees? Why are they involved in any fashion
whatsoever in structuring the bailout package? Who in the Senate
and House will now pick up the ball and insist that these two rogue
politicians be dismissed from their posts and investigated — for
their conduct, their ties to the industry they were charged to
regulate, their campaign contributions from Fannie Mae, and their
precise role in pushing the entire financial system of the United
States to near-implosion. And how about a little straight talk on
the greed for power?
ASSUMPTION THREE: The paradigm that the New Deal is the gold
standard for American government. For this we turn to the late
Senator Barry Goldwater, who wrote the following in his classic
The Conscience of a Conservative almost fifty years
ago:
The government must begin to withdraw from a whole
series of programs that are outside its constitutional mandate —
from social welfare programs, education, public power, agriculture,
public housing, urban renewal and all other activities that can be
better performed by lower levels of government or by private
institutions or by individuals. I do not suggest that the federal
government drop all of these programs overnight. But I do suggest
that we establish, by law, a rigid timetable for a staged
withdrawal.
Do the words Fannie Mae mean anything in this context? Fannie Mae
is a New Deal chestnut from 1938, but why stop at Fannie Mae with
the new paradigm? As Senator McCain says over and over again,
government expenditures are now completely out of control. For
those of you with liberal friends who keep chanting the Obama
mantra of change, suggest the Goldwater principle above and see how
fast the Obama-acolytes race in the other direction. The single
biggest con of the Obama campaign is that it is committed to
serious change. Obama is a prince of the New Deal Establishment.
His role as a community organizer was not to get rid of government
bureaucracies and create jobs. It wasn’t a fight for change. It was
a fight to beg for favors from government bureaucracies, to milk
the status quo. As a liberal Senator he is reflexively committed to
extending the status quo. Listen to this unnoticed remark from the
debate the other night as Obama responded to McCain’s suggestion
that there be a freeze on federal expenditures:
“The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet
where you need a scalpel. There are some programs that are very
important that are underfunded. I want to increase early childhood
education…”
Catch that? Mr. Change is horrified at the notion of even a
freeze on federal spending, and oh, by the way, he wants to raise
your taxes so he can “increase early childhood education.” To
return to Goldwater, the paradigm here is to ask why the federal
government should be involved in early childhood education at all?
This is precisely why this country is in financial trouble, whether
it’s Dodd and Frank re-arranging credit to ensure, in the words of
the now infamous Clintonite Fannie Mae chief Mr. Franklin Raines,
“millions of families” receive mortgages they can’t afford, or
raising taxes because Senator Obama has a thing for appeasing
teachers unions by increasing spending for early childhood
education. All the hue and cry over the role of lobbyists in
Washington begs the question: they are only there because
politicians have created these huge bureaucracies that attract
lobbyists both to the bureaucrats and the Congressmen who have
created them. It is the Washington equivalent of spreading chum in
the water to attract sharks. Guess what? It works!
WHATEVER ELSE COMES OUT of the last few weeks, the paradigms of the
last several decades have begun to shatter. Never again will the
media be able to pronounce judgment on others while conveniently
avoiding a similar self-examination. More and more angry Americans
are understanding the importance of not letting incompetent or
corrupt members of Congress go un-investigated after almost
bankrupting the country. And the idea of simply assuming that a
governmental paradigm installed in 1933 — 75 years ago! — is
still valid is, thanks to the Fannie Mae debacle, being shredded in
front of our eyes. The idea that the greed for power is just as
important — if not more so — than the greed for money has taken
root.
Perhaps we can borrow a phrase from the now-famous Obama pastor
the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
After decades, finally, for the mainstream media, the corrupt
members of Congress and the New Deal itself the pot has begun to
boil.
The chickens have come home to roost.
Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political
director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania.
