Flashback: Milbank Hailed Bush’s Mission Accomplished Moment As “Bold”
Updated below.
I’m going to have another crack at making the case that the contrast between the media’s reaction to Pitney-gate and its reaction to Bush’s “mission accomplished” moment is relevant and instructive.
Exhibit B: Dana Milbank’s piece attacking the White House for Pitney-gate, which is still getting attention today as representative of the press’ overall reaction. Milbank attacked the Obama White House for its “arranged question,” adding: “Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing.”
Here’s what Milbank published the day after an even more infamous example of presidential stagecraft:
When the Viking carrying Bush made its tailhook landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off California yesterday, the scene brought presidential imagery to a whole new level. Bush emerged from the cockpit in full olive flight suit and combat boots, his helmet tucked jauntily under his left arm. As he exchanged salutes with the sailors, his ejection harness, hugging him tightly between the legs, gave him the bowlegged swagger of a top gun.
For Bush — who also gave a national address from the carrier and spent the night aboard — it was a bold bid to surround himself with the aura of the U.S. military.
Here’s the point: Presidential stagecraft is a fact of modern life. Reporters know this better than anyone. Yet they pick and choose, for all sorts of different reasons, which ones to get outraged about. That’s why this comparison is significant. In a very general sense, Pitney-gate has generated far more media outrage than “mission accomplished” did. This strongly suggests that the current outrage is not rooted purely in an objection to presidential “stagecraft.”
This isn’t a perfect parallel. Pitney-gate involved press conference protocol, and “mission accomplished” didn’t. But that’s irrelevant. The broader point is that there is nothing inherently wrong with presidents staging or managing events. The question, rather, is this: Was Obama’s reason for doing it in this case justifiable?
Pitney-gate may have partly been intended to help the president by portraying him as concerned about ordinary Iranians. But it also did allow an ordinary Iranian to ask a tough question of the president at a critical moment of international crisis. Did this goal justify the White House’s relatively minor breach of Beltway press protocol? That’s the core question, one that reasonable people can disagree about. But it’s the question that the critics still refuse to answer.
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Update: I probably should have noted that Milbank’s role is different now than it was then — he’s now an opinion columnist, whereas before he was a White House correspondent. Also, his original piece does quote several people criticizing the “mission accomplished” stunt, notes that it was at odds with Bush’s lack of a military record, and points critically to the phantom WMDs.
That said, I still think the original piece was praiseworthy in tone about the stagecraft itself, at least in part, in a way that represented the broader media reaction to “mission accomplished” at the time. But here’s the whole piece so you can judge for yourself.
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I dont so much look at Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment as presidential stagecraft, but as yet another imbecilic publicity stunt. This is the same party that thinks that winning elections can be done by “marketing” candidates, instead of coming up with common sense solutions to the issues of the day.
Thanks, Greg. This is the thing that has bugged me most: for days, critics complained about Obama’s tepid response to the protester’s plight. When he takes a careful step to reach out, his method is immediately critiqued. Which, in a way, undercuts his efforts by calling attention to the means rather than the message.
What was the last serious article Milbank wrote? I don’t think I can read more than 4-5 sentences of his garbage. It’s all snark that isn’t funny. He must be giving lip service to someone to keep that slot on the print version of WP. So many journalists today are trying to inject themselves into the story they are delivering rather than just delivering the story. Milbank is a perfect example of this. Pitneys’ reporting regarding Iran has been exactly what reporting should be, accounts and with serious narrative to explain what you’re looking at, much like C-Span reporting. Pitney is the hero, Milbank the big zero imho.
Shouldn’t you be careful about that since you work for the Washington Post– I really like your work and I don’t want you to be Froomkin-ed.
What Obama and co. did with Pitney was an innovation in the game. The West Coast offense of press conference management.
The quote from Joe Lockhart in the Times piece says it all:
“They’re now getting an object lesson that the most interesting story in the briefing room to reporters is a story about themselves.”
Lockhart is a killer. He was also right, I think, to point out that the white house could have handled it better. but that’s really a peripheral issue.
GS — Your RSS just shifted to excerpt format. Please tell your bosses that this isn’t going to do your site any good. Your competition (frex your former home or Ben Smith) all provide full RSS. Your posts simply aren’t going to be read as much.
Trust me, I won’t bother to click thru unless I expect your particular angle or coverage on a specific news item is likely to be superior. So rather than looking at your feed first, which I usually do, I’m going to look at your competition and then only check you out to see if you’re covering something they haven’t. I doubt my blog-reading practices are all that unique among RSS users. And the lions’ share of bloggers from whom you are likely to want links almost certainly consume blogs via RSS.
What your site should provide is a full feed with an indicator of number of comments next to the “comments” link in the footer of the post feed, so if a post has an active discussion, it encourages click thru. But otherwise treats RSS as the service it is — not just as an updating service, but allowing rapid consumption of lots of sites.
Please teach your bosses the facts of life in the big time political blog world.
Turning to the subject at hand, good on you for going after the Millbanks of the political press. It’s another prime example of digby’s Village in action — press attitudes and coverage, shaped by social anxieties, which reward certain values (no matter how toxic), thrive on conflict and drama (no matter how ginned up or bogus) and punish non-conformity with unwritten, arcane (to the rest of us) social rules of a little sub-culture. Jay Rosen calls it the Church of the Savvy — and they intend for everyone to know in no uncertain terms that the Obama Admin and HuffPost are heretics whenever they don’t acknowledge the rules or play the game the same way.
Completely missing is any perspective on either content or priorities from the standpoint of the consumers of information whom, in theory, they’re supposed to be serving.
And it will continue to get worse as the MSM as an industry continues to melt down economically, threatening the Villagers’ economic status and social identity.
nadezhda, are you sure it hasn’t always been that way? how are others experiencing the RSS feed?
nadezhda — turns out that problem was a temporary glitch and is now fixed. apologies for the inconvenience.
Here is a flashback:
http://www.nypress.com/article-7203-bush-gets-a-free-pass-from-the-white-house-press-corps.html
Remember Bush’s press conference on the eve of the war, where he read the names of who he was going to call on off a script and answered some pre-approved softballs?
And can someone tell me if the people who asked questions at ABC’s healthcare forum knew they were going to get called on, and whether their questions were pre-approved? I just can’t imagine that AMA guy of the Insurance CEO would have been there if they hadn’t been assured that they were going to get to ask the Prez a question.
GS — Thanks for the quick response re the feed. It now has, indeed, cleaned up and is back to the full format. I went ballistic in part because Ezra seems to be having a to-and-fro with his overseers on that very subject. Which suggests that at least a part of the WaPo establishment doesn’t “get” RSS. Happily, I can now stick to checking Plum Line first among the political feeds.
And while we’re on the topic of site features — any way that your comments can retain para formatting? I can understand not enabling full html or WYSIWYG comments. But paras are a pretty standard feature of most comment services and make the comments much more readable. My earlier, multi-topic comment, was virtually unreadable all squished together.
nadezhda — we’re actually working today on fixing the paragraph problem. apologies for that, too. and thanks for reading…
Well, if Dana Milbank can’t take a joke…
As I pointed out before, as you look through each MSM criticism of the incident is mirrored by one thing. None of them put the actual text of the question that Nico Pitney asked in their columns criticizing him being given that opportunity. It just shows you that they all know the question itself was more that worthy to be asked. And it also shows they know they are full of sh*t. None of them, Milbank included can explain why the didn’t include the text of the question in their criticism. What a bunch of losers.
Sgw, spot on buddy. Those of us not invested in the system and who are instead looking for results rather than being mired in courtly conduct can’t even understand what all the fuss is about. Not to mention that after the amazing job aggregating news on the uprising in Iran better than any mainstream source, only Nico,Sullivan and a few others had earned enough credibility to ask about Iran. Witness the laughable questions about whether Senatorial grandstanding was the reason for Obama condemning the recent escolation in violence, the answer (of course) was Obama responded to events on the ground instead of domestic political squabling.
What Pitney-gate involved was calling into question the importance of the press. And that makes all the difference. Obama told them they’re not that big a deal and Bush played to them with pomp and pageantry.
WH reporters have long told themselves that the reason they aren’t more confrontational is that they need the “access”, and that if they behaved in a manner that could be seen as too adversarial, they would lose access, and that would of course be bad for reporting (not to mention to their own jobs).
Now, if people find out that the WH press corps isn’t actually even that influential anymore, since there are BLOGGERS who get to ask questions (the nerve!) and don’t feel the need to be subservient in exchange for access, where does that leave the “real” journalists?
That’s what it all comes down to. Poor little WH press corps.
From an International perspective (I’m Australian), it’s a bit amusing to see you guys dedicating so much attention to this press conference ploy over Obama’s actual response, which was quite vague and pathetic. I think it’s partly Nico’s fault and I think it is so because of his age; ie. he doesn’t have to prove himself on this issue, it’s Dana Milbank et. al. who are making fools of themselves, and everybody (from my understanding) knows this. At Obama’s non-event of a response, I’d be surprised if he did a similiar thing in the near-future, it’s shown that the internet-borne press has less to lose in asking bold questions like Nico did, which Obama wouldn’t be a fan of.
No doubt this issue of old and new presses is very interesting. It would be good to see more internet-only newspapers rise in popularity. Especially since HuffPost often publishes such rubbish!
It seems to me the difference between this example, where Milbank wrote _about_ the stagecraft, and the Pitney question is that Pitney _participated in_ the stagecraft.
A huge, huge difference, where journalistic ethics is concerned. However to Pitney’s credit, we know about his participation because he told people, there appeared to be full disclosure everywhere but on the press room floor when he was called upon.
remember Jeff Gannon anyone? these same lame journalists such as Milbank happily accepted and even lamer non-journalist and “front man” into their ranks. and now we’re supposed to believe their hype over this blogger “scandal?” it’s just too funny…
Last years prima donna all in a huff that this newcomer was given a chance to interact in a new way… precisely because last years news was about which reporters are cool and how some dude looks in a bathing suit.
Frankly… I loved the question… and it was so very real and to the point that the president had to dodge it. To say such a thing was staged is bitchy and disingenuous to the extreme… which defines last years news style.
Congratulations to Obama for departing from the cliquish gossipy meaninglessness and encouraging relevance. What he got was a real and difficult question that I was wondering about myself.
No wonder that the only time I’ve read the washington post lately was when it was referred to by Huffington Post… and usually the reference was to point out the irrelevance of the entertainment approach to global news.
Indeed… I’ve been entertained by watching Milbank strut his inane stuff… and humor has been the only value he has delivered.
I don’t really think the passage you cite was journalistic malpractice on Milbank’s part. The passage pretty aptly captured the most important takeaway from the “Mission Accomplished” moment, namely that the whole thing was stagecraft, an attempt by the Bush team to wrap itself in the aura of the military. I’m not sure what more you thought Milbank should have portrayed?
===It seems to me the difference between this example, where Milbank wrote _about_ the stagecraft, and the Pitney question is that Pitney _participated in_ the stagecraft. A huge, huge difference, where journalistic ethics is concerned.===
Exactly. Only if Bush had a Fox reporter planted on the flight deck asking a loaded question could the two events be considered even remotely similar.
the scene brought presidential imagery to a whole new level
IT CERTAINLY DID! It brought it to an imperial level George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, etc. would have been HORRIFIED by!
THE PRESIDENT IS A CIVLIAN! HE DOES NOT – EVER – WEAR A MILITARY UNIFORM!!!!!
“Only if Bush had a Fox reporter planted on the flight deck asking a loaded question could the two events be considered even remotely similar.” Not on the flight deck, but as was pointed out earlier Jeff Gannon was an even more blatant participation by the White House, except Shrub’s folks did it. Where was Millbank’s outrage then?
A number of you are saying these two situations aren’t a perfect parallel. I never said they were. The point is merely that media outrage about presidential stagecraft is highly selective.