All conservative, all the time

Failing to bring down the Clinton presidency, the press took out its pique on Al Gore during the 2000 campaign. The "almost universal hostility he inspired in the reporters and editors who covered the race" was palpable, according to Alterman. Overlooking the issues, the press focused on Gore's stuffed-shirt personality, comparing it unfavorably to Bush's frat-boy cool, and turning the presidential race into the equivalent of a school election, where the dim but likable party animal was destined to beat the goody-goody student council know-it-all. During the disastrous Florida endgame, the media quickly took the aggressive Republican side (aided by the bungling and defeatism of the Gore-Lieberman team), making fun of the dangling-chad recount and fretting loudly about the "chaos" that could befall the country if the democratic process was fully honored (the American public, meanwhile, was sublimely patient). When Gore headed for his inevitable coup de grâce at the hands of the GOP-packed Supreme Court, the press cheered the smelly outcome as an affirmation of American democracy.

"A truly independent media, much less an allegedly liberal one, might have investigated some of the following questions in the context of the court's decision," writes Alterman. "Did it matter that Clarence Thomas was appointed by Bush's father and had a wife working with Bush's transition team? What of the fact that Antonin Scalia's sons worked in the same firm with Bush's lawyers? What of the comments made by Justice Sandra O'Connor at a Washington dinner party on Election Day, complaining of the Gore team's tactics, and informing partygoers that Gore's then-perceived victory was 'terrible' because, as her husband helpfully explained, she had hoped to retire from the court and did not want Al Gore appointing her successor ... Whatever happened to that beloved old journalistic standby, 'the appearance of a conflict of interest.'?"

A handful of liberal pundits decried "the court's nakedly partisan performance," Alterman remarks, but "most media types pronounced themselves pleased with the script's ending." He quotes the endlessly smug and irritating Cokie Roberts of ABC as blithely saying, "People do think it's political, but they think that's OK. They expect the court to be political, and they wanted the election to be over." How Roberts, a born-and-bred product of elite Washington, managed to divine what "the people" were feeling, she left unsaid.

Liberal columnists Al Hunt and Richard Cohen offered this novel rationale for why the majority who voted for Gore should welcome a Bush presidency: The far right had turned America into such a nasty and brutish place that it could not be governed by a Democrat. Only Bush, wrote Cohen, could keep the "GOP Dobermans" on a leash. To which the only response could be: Why had the country bothered with an election at all?

The media's fondness for Bush has continued, for the most part, throughout his administration, even unshaken by the brief turbulence over his embarrassing Harken Energy affair (in contrast with Clinton's crisis-level Whitewater treatment), Enron (more of a business story than a political one, the press decided, despite Bush's cozy relationship with "Kenny Boy" Lay) and Dick Cheney's Halliburton and energy task force controversies (stonewalling didn't pay off for Hillary Clinton on the Rose Law Firm files, but the vice president clearly succeeded in staring down the press).

When Republicans are in power, they benefit from a fear factor in the media that the Democrats don't enjoy. During the media's fleeting spasm of interest in Harken and GOP-related corporate scandals, writes Alterman, "ABC's politically savvy Web publication The Note warned its fellow journalists: 'Since the Republican party is the only one of our two major political parties in America who believes the press is routinely biased against them, when such a frenzy is going on for a GOP administration, the press needs to be extra careful in making sure that perspective and fairness are maintained." Thanks for the warning, guys! That's just one more example of the way conservatives succeed at "working the refs."

After 9/11, the media crush on Bush bloomed into a torrid romance. A lightweight blessed with his father's name and his family's Supreme Court connections suddenly -- in the eyes of the press -- assumed the grave mantle of leadership. Neglecting the pre-9/11 security lapses and failures that might have allowed al-Qaida to succeed, the media's most celebrated investigative reporter, Bob Woodward, teamed up with his Washington Post colleague Dan Balz to produce what Alterman calls "a 40,000 word epic poem" in tribute to Bush's leadership. "The impression this report created was not unlike that of an official Soviet-era account of the Great Patriotic War."

Tim Russert went one step further on "Meet the Press," asking first lady Laura Bush whether she thought her husband had ascended to the White House due to divine intervention. "To her everlasting credit," writes Alterman, "she declined to credit the Almighty."

Even now, with the economy in disarray, the terrorist leaders responsible for 9/11 still at large and mocking the U.S. efforts to capture them, his poll numbers falling, and his administration further alienating world opinion by threatening a unilateral war with Iraq, Bush still enjoys a warm reception in the press, apart from such outposts of media vigilance as the New York Times. The "liberal" Washington Post editorial page has been sounding such a one-note bugle blast for Bush's war with Iraq that it was forced to respond on Thursday to irate readers who, in the words of one, "have grown tired of your bias and endless drumbeating for war."

While Alterman makes a powerful case for how the news media have shifted dangerously to the right, he does not fully address the left's role in allowing this to happen. Liberals like to say that one reason they have failed to produce their own Rush Limbaugh is that their views are too nuanced and complex to fit the black-and-white format of shout TV and radio. (Jeffrey Scheuer wrote a whole book elaborating this theory, "The Sound Bite Society.") Conservatives like Bill O'Reilly are quick to endorse this explanation. And why wouldn't they? It reinforces the image of liberals as too highbrow and snooty to duke it out in the rough-and-tumble populist bullrings.

The truth is, there are plenty of progressive pundits, authors and political activists who know how to express themselves passionately and in the idiom of talk TV. This list would begin with Al Franken, Michael Moore, Joe Conason, Arianna Huffington, Molly Ivins, Mario Cuomo, Robert Reich, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Janeane Garofalo and Eric Alterman himself. The problem is that no one in progressive circles ever seems to get their act together to package these gifted talkers in a compelling way.

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