Good news Bush 
By Roger Mitton 

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush gets a great deal of flak in the overseas media about 
everything from his pre-emptive doctrine to his fractured oratory.

Citizens outside the United States may think he suffers from some of the worst press that any US 
president has ever received.
 
That would be a chronic miscalculation.

Mr Bush receives very favourable press coverage at home. He might be famous for not reading 
newspapers, but his rapport with American journalists is excellent.

He calls them by their first name and he is happy to pose for photographs with them and to ask 
about their family and their hobbies. It is all done with buddy buddy, Texas-style charm. And it is 
done well.

Because it is what counts to Mr Bush. He does not care about negative stories on television or in 
newspapers outside the US. They have no impact on his political standing and his re-election next 
November.

But stories appearing in states such as Florida, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri do. 
They sway voters who decide who the President of the United States is.

So Mr Bush is much more concerned about his coverage in the Miami Herald than in The Times of 
London, or in the Cleveland Plain Dealer than in Le Monde or El Pais. 

And his White House staff have been superb in shaping his coverage in these and other national and 
regional newspapers and television stations.

Intriguingly, their job has been aided by the way supposedly hard-nosed, cynical, truth-seeking 
American pressmen have been willingly complaisant in their own co-opting.

Remember, these are the hacks who chortle in their chardonnays about the alleged sycophancy of 
Asian journalists. Their hypocrisy is shocking.

Of course, if American reporters want to go easy on Mr Bush and the rest of his administration, 
that is their own business and their democratic right.

But one might think their reportage ought to be leavened with the kind of no-holds-barred criticism 
that was directed against former presidents such as Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson. 

With remarkably few exceptions, it is not the case. 

The affable Mr Bush is rarely hounded over the awful situation in Iraq the way that Mr Johnson 
habitually was over Vietnam. Nor is he roasted over his dissembling about the presence of weapons 
of mass destruction in Iraq the way Mr Nixon was pounded relentlessly about his deceptions over the 
Watergate scandal.

The White House team has boxed in the American media brilliantly. Bad news is neutralised in a 
variety of ways. Often it is simply not made available to newsmen.

When the remains of troops killed in Iraq are returned to the United States, no press coverage is 
allowed. The White House does not want public opinion soured against the Iraq campaign the way it 
was against the Vietnam war by the sight of bodybags arriving every day.

And invariably, the news presentation is choreographed for the best effect. 

Recall that image of one of Saddam's statues being toppled. It was played again and again on 
television, but the US Marine tank actually pulling it over was cropped from the pictures which 
were allowed to be transmitted by the 'embedded' TV crews in Iraq. 

Naive souls in Wichita or Peoria might have thought jubilant Iraqis had done it themselves and that 
the administration was right about cheering in the streets and the widespread lasting welcome that 
US forces would get.

At other times, bad news is conveniently forgotten or repackaged or denied. Where once the 
administration insisted that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, now they veer 
towards just saying he must have had a programme to make such weapons.

And where back in May the famous banner proclaiming Mission Accomplished was happily highlighted, 
it is now disowned and said to be the work of over-exuberant sailors, not of Mr Bush's men who knew 
that there was still work to be done.

Sometimes, the bad news is simply eliminated. Government websites, for example, surreptitiously 
edit out material that subsequently reflects badly on the administration. 

In April, the presidential senior staffer, Mr Andrew Natsios, who runs the US Agency for 
International Development (USAID), said that US taxpayers would only pay US$1.7 billion (S$2.9 
billion) for the reconstruction of Iraq. 

Asked if he believed this could be true, Mr Natsios said: 'Well, in terms of the American 
taxpayers' contribution, I do. This is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be 
done by other countries.'

Last month, Mr Bush signed a law allocating US$87.5 billion for Iraq's reconstruction. It came on 
top of US$79 billion that had already been approved. 

Mr Natsios's unfortunate remarks have now been removed from the USAID website.

Naturally, as the bad news is sidetracked or expunged, the good is played up.

President Bush's recent trip to Baghdad for a 'warm meal' was treated as if it were equivalent to 
Columbus discovering the new world. In truth, it was largely an act of domestic political 
expediency, designed to boost his image as the election campaign gets under way. 

Mr Bush's minders knew very well that Senator Hillary Clinton was going to visit Baghdad on 
America's important Thanksgiving holiday. How could he be upstaged by a Democratic opponent, a 
woman, and a Clinton! 

It could not be. So Mr Bush went secretly at night for a few hours and took along a few compliant 
journalists who happily dissembled to their editors and then reported the President's flying visit 
gushingly. They did not dwell, of course, on the upstaging of Senator Clinton, or the cost of the 
trip, or the fake turkey that Mr Bush carried towards the cheering troops. 

That would have been like one of their embedded colleagues in Iraq dwelling on the negative. Or 
like sneaking pictures of coffins arriving from Baghdad. Or reminding folks that those dastardly 
WMDs have not been found yet. It might be raw, honest journalism, but it would be seen as a tad 
unpatriotic. 

That has been the brilliance of the White House manipulation of the press in the post-9/11 era. It 
has cowed journalists into treating the US President in a manner that would have been unthinkable 
under previous incumbents. For that it can only be praised. It has done an outstanding job. 

The US press has not.