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Sound judgment?

Thursday, July 12, 2007

One ready-made answer just plopped into my mailbox, to a question I’m often being asked these days. Why do I seem so exercised in THE MEDIA BEAT by a past president’s (Richard M Nixon’s) crimes and his refusal, despite all the journalistic cross-examination he received, to acknowledge his guilt? Well, the answer – not in itself complete, but very “indicative” as they say in the trade – has come from one of the media’s greatest handmaidens -- the polling industry, and in particular that venerable firm The Gallup Organization.

Out of all the various American yardsticks of public political opinion Gallup enjoys the advantage of having been around the longest, since it was founded in 1935 by market researcher George Gallup, from Iowa (– more on that provenance later). And, regarding our current question, the company has closely tracked public approval and disapproval of presidents since the days of Franklin D Roosevelt. (“That man”, as his exasperated detractors called him, scored the worst disapproval rating of his presidency in early 1940, at a not-too-terrible 40%).

 

So what’s the news this week? Gallup reports that George W Bush (above left) now scores a whopping 66% disapproval rating. That’s higher than Jimmy Carter at the nadir of his “malaise” problems and US hostage-holding in Iran (59%), higher than Lyndon B Johnson when anger over Vietnam was forcing him not to run again (52%), higher than any president since this kind of record-keeping began - except, that is, for one.

 

That sixty-six percent disapproval rating is actually a directly equal score with the aforesaid Richard Nixon – recorded at the point when the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee voted to impeach him, a crucial step toward his ignominious resignation. (The photograph that THE MEDIA BEAT carried recently showing Nixon’s media staff, Ron Zeigler, Frank Gannon and Diane Sawyer gathered disconsolately in the West Wing, was taken the day - July 27th, 1974 - of that Congressional vote.)

 

The current movement to impeach Bush has generally been treated by the mainstream media as a wild, impractical mission. But given these numbers … I begin to wonder.

 

 

 

IOWA REPUTEDLY OWES ITS NICKNAME, “THE HAWKEYE STATE”, to a canny editor, James Edwards of the Iowa Patriot (est. 1838), and - basking in its reputation for always viewing matters with well-focused acuity - the state is once again, as every four years, the venue for an almost continual media circus.

 

But this time round, the circus is early. Presidential hopefuls are already performing under the judicious scrutiny of audiences in this predominantly farming territory - far ahead of the state’s “Caucus Night”, which is still a full six months away on January 7th, 2008.

 

Only two days ago Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were forcing some camera crews (those of news outfits that don’t have the resources to allot one crew per candidate) to run 4 city blocks in Des Moines, between two dueling, but not quite simultaneous, stump speeches.

 

I regard keen-eyed Iowans as a fine first filter in America’s process of narrowing the field of choices – maybe because I originally hail from another very down-to-earth region, the arable Scottish Borders, and maybe because I have some much-admired family connections in Iowa.

 

But sometimes, I've learned, an Iowan pedigree - with its reputation for sharp and sound judgment - can be betrayed.

 

Among the staffers backing up White House spokesman Tony Snow (who himself comes initially from "The Bluegrass State" of Kentucky by way of “The Fair-and-Balanced State” of Fox News) stands a certain Scott Stanzel (above right). He’s the son of a farmer from Sac City (pop. 2,400), one of Iowa’s numerous French-named communities - evidence of Pere Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet’s seventeenth century explorations. This soi-disant “Bagtown” - perhaps connected with a sack of corn? - lies just seventy miles from the area’s effective metropolis, Sioux City.

 

Last October the Sioux City Journal (regular reading material among my relatives) enthusiastically hailed the local boy’s appointment as an Administration Deputy Press Secretary at the age of 33, from a position in public relations for Microsoft Corporation, where - incidentally - he had blogged mercilessly about his enthusiasm for George Bush, Microsoft products and the “awesomeness” of musicians like Nirvana and The Foo Fighters. Stanzel had earlier, unsurprisingly, done much vigorous campaigning work for the Republicans, in 2000 and 2004. The Journal attributed to him a claim that his dedication to politics grew from “attending a church-sponsored trip to the then-Soviet Union”.

 

This summer Stanzel has taken his turn driving what’s called the daily presidential press “gaggle” (- an interesting piece of industry slang – in a farmyard setting, of course, “gaggle” applies to a group of geese). He was specifically called upon, in one rather more formal Press Briefing, to discuss the continuing criticism of the President commuting Lewis Libby’s jail sentence for perjury and obstruction - and in particular whether Libby was getting more than equal justice under the law. The following was this sturdy Iowan son-of-the-soil’s all-too-revelatory answer:

 

Mr STANZEL: "Well, I guess I don’t know what you mean by “equal justice under the law.”

 

[Watch him say it, if you can bear to, courtesy of the official White House camera in Room 450.]

 

What a splendid - and in a sense wonderfully innocent - representation of this Administration’s values! They do say: “Out of the mouths …”

 

And all I can say is that the hawkeyed Iowa Patriot editor James Edwards must be at least blinking in his grave.