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As with the terror debate, the kabuki also is playing out in Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as Republicans and right-wingers yank some quotes out of context to denounce her as a "racist," leading Obama and other Democrats to start backtracking and pleading with the Right to be nice.
The Kabuki's Origin
Essentially, today's Washington kabuki was set in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the rise of the right-wing media and the political clout of the Reagan-era Republicans. Those forces went on the offensive and made it clear that anyone who got in their way would be smeared as a "blame-America-firster," become a target of 30-second attack ads for politicians, or face accusations about "liberal bias" for journalists.
As the right-wing media grew and the Republicans became more powerful, many Democrats and most mainstream journalists learned that to survive they had to accept their assigned roles. Democrats became practiced at apologizing, equivocating and seeking accommodation; mainstream journalists mastered the skill of bending over backwards to appease the Right.
In that sense, the early Obama era continues to look a lot like the early Clinton era. In 1992, the voters also reacted to a recession by handing the government to the Democrats, but Clinton and other Democratic leaders then shunned any serious investigations of past Republican crimes, saw their extended hand of bipartisanship swatted away, and soon were cowering again in the face of GOP belligerence and the right-wing media's scandal-mongering.
By then, the mainstream news media knew its role, too. Tired of right-wing accusations about "liberal bias," the major news outlets, included the New York Times and the Washington Post, chose to be tougher on a Democratic administration than they had been on Republicans, especially during the Reagan era when the national press corps did its best to look the other way on Iran-Contra, Iraq-gate, contra-cocaine trafficking, etc., etc.
By contrast, the U.S. news media transformed even minor "scandals"- about Bill Clinton, like his Whitewater real estate investment and some firings at the White House travel office, into breathless front-page news.
The American Left also played its own negative role, albeit a mostly passive one, by avoiding any significant investment in media infrastructure--opting to excoriate the "corporate press"--and telling voters that there was "not a dime's worth of difference" between Al Gore and George W. Bush when the two faced off in 2000.
After eight disastrous years of President Bush--and another nasty recession--American voters again threw the Republicans out of the White House and elected a strong Democratic majority in Congress. President Obama also made clear that he intended to be a transformational leader who would address many of the deep systemic problems that three decades of Republican dominance had left behind.
But the U.S. political/media system remained remarkably static. With the exceptions of Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and MSNBC's experimentation with a few liberal hosts during its evening hours--and some under-funded Web sites and radio outlets--the American media still functions under the old rules, with an inordinate amount of time and space given to Republicans despite their weak minority status.
If anything, Fox News and right-wing talk radio have escalated their rhetoric; CNN, the Washington Post and other "centrist" outlets have pandered to Republican voices; and the premier business network CNBC behaves as if its treasured "free-market paradigm" had not been shattered by the ruinous behavior of Wall Street banks and major corporations, like AIG and GM.
But this pro-Republican bent of much of the news media had a predictable impact. Congressional Democrats and the Obama administration shied away from confrontations, refusing to hold the Bush administration accountable for its crimes and playing defense, whether in foreign affairs ("weak on terror") or on economic policy ("socialist!").
The American Left also stayed true to form, still unwilling to engage seriously in the political/media process. As it did during the Clinton-Gore years, the Left spends its energies criticizing Democratic failures (a reprise of the Bush-Gore "not a dime's worth of difference" chant) rather than investing in and building media and other institutions that might help change the dynamic.
So, more than four months into the Obama era--with the United States staggering through a major economic crisis and with global challenges mounting--the political/media kabuki continues.
The same ornately costumed characters--snarling Republicans, angry right-wingers, cringing Democrats, careerist media personalities and an ineffectual Left--maneuver around each other in a stylistically choreographed dance of national failure.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth' are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
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