I wrote earlier in the year about a background rumble that can be heard behind the Bushies effort to define John Kerry before Kerry has a chance to define himself. Its the International Man of Mystery theme promoted by the Republican National Committee (RNC). The obvious subtext, which goes over well in Bushs half of the country, is that only the kick-ass dynast qualifies as a Real American, as his untraveled, uncurious biography amply testifies.
Kerry is said to look French. His paternal grandfather was a Czech Jew (a fact he learned only recently). He attended a Swiss boarding school. And now come the Republicans, amplified by their wholly-owned media and then by the dutiful mainstream, harping on Kerrys brash (though unexceptionable) remark that unnamed foreign leaders hope he defeats George Bush.
Now, anyone who has traveled outside the American frontier, as I just did for seven weeks, will testify that out-of-country elites cant abide Bush. He frightens them. He exemplifies reckless disregard for the lives lived in most of the world. Hes trashed American honor. Hes skirted real enemies, manufactured more of the same, and offended friends. Only in the United States is the obvious not obvious. But still, the Republican tattoo to the effect that Kerry exaggerated his knowledge of foreign leaders disaffection finds an echo on lazy mainstream news.
On 18 April, Tim Russert of NBCs Meet the Press, the reigning king of Sunday morning chat and a man with an undeserved reputation for tough questions, cited an article in the Reverend Sun Myung Moons Washington Times to this effect: Although Mr. Kerry indicated that he had met in person with foreign leaders who privately endorsed him, he has made no official trips abroad in the past two years. Within the United States, he has had the chance to meet with only one foreign leader since the beginning of last year, according to a review of his travel schedule. Russert pressed Kerry: But you have talked to foreign leaders? Kerry replied: Tim, what I said is true. You can go to New York City and be in a restaurant and meet a foreign leader. There are plenty of places to meet people without traveling abroad. (Meet the Press transcript).
Leave it to Bush, at an Ohio campaign stop 4 May, to give the innuendo a push in his folksy way: I got a hunch this whole thing might be a case of mistaken identity. Just because somebody has an accent, and a nice suit and a good table at a fancy restaurant in New York, doesnt make them a foreign leader. But whoever these mystery men are, theyre not going to be deciding this election. The American people will be deciding this election.
Bush here was also promoting the same story that the mainstream press carried about Al Gore in 2000, namely that he was a serial exaggerator or worse. Expect to see more of that sort of thing from the Bush camp and reporters seeking a cartoon summary on the cheap.
Bush, whose major occupation for most of his life was heir, who was always bailed out of bad business deals with family and family-raised money, must relish the chance to play humble populist in contrast to Kerry, whose lineage includes old Boston money and who married exceedingly well. Now, as George Bush I affected a taste for pork rinds, George II intimates that he wouldnt know a good table at a fancy restaurant if he scuffed his boots on one.
The party apparatuses not only the Republicans do their dirty work with impunity. In the buddy-buddy world of Washington journalists and their political sources, neither the front men who serve as presidential surrogates nor the backdoor operatives who do much of the dirty work come under scrutiny, partly because the mainstream press wont out its sources or even call them into question.
According to a cozy, lazy profile of Republican chairman Ed Gillespie in the 16 May New York Times, it was Gillespie himself who devised the International Man of Mystery label for Kerry, and also joked about the senators imaginary friends after Mr. Kerry, in response to a question at a fund-raiser, suggested that unnamed leaders from overseas had said that they privately hoped he would beat Mr. Bush.
As Joe Conason noted in Salon, this piece, while mentioning Gillespies successful lobbying career, omitted any mention of Gillespies erstwhile lobbying firms clients which include not only the notorious Enron but no less French a firm than Airbus Industrie.
On a related front, just how mysterious is the International Man? It remains true that Kerry is playing it cautious, refraining from making big statements about, among other things, foreign policy. Some Democrats think this is not unwise at this stage of the campaign, since Bush and the Abu Ghraib pictures between them are doing an adequate job of beating up Bush.
But its also worth noting that when Kerry does step forward with large statements, the national media neglect them. The NYTs Jodi Wilgoren, their prime Kerry correspondent, had this to say on 19 May about Kerrys speech on employment at a job-training center in Oregon: Dr. [Howard] Dean sitting silently in Mr. Kerrys shadow here Tuesday morning, a smile of sorts breaking the bored look when Mr. Kerry, after an hour of going on about creating jobs, appropriated Dr. Deans most famous line, and told the audience, You have the power.
An hour of going on. Thats how the newspaper of record addressed the candidates (probably ambling) words about a central campaign topic.
When, on 17 May, the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Courts desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Kerry spoke on race relations in Topeka, Kansas, national media chewed him to sound bites. As the Washington Post noticed:
Kerry got a one-sentence summary on the CBS Evening News and a two-sentence summary on NBC Nightly News. ABCs World News Tonight aired a two-sentence sound bite to Bushs three.
On foreign policy, which Kerry seems to want to skirt as long as he can, he does offer a piece of non-mysterious advocacy on his website:
A bold progressive internationalism that focuses not just on the immediate and imminent, but insidious dangers that can mount over the next years and decade, dangers that span the spectrum from the denial of democracy, to destructive weapons, endemic poverty and epidemic disease. These are not just issues of international order, but vital issues of our own national security.
He needs to say more, and presumably will. But for now, if a candidate climbs a tree to shout in an untelevised forest, does he make a sound?
