“Stumbling” Over Timor
A New York Times article (2/18/99) about East Timor, an island nation occupied by Indonesia since 1975, claimed that “for almost a quarter-century, relations between Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation, and the United States—as well as the rest of the outside world—have often stumbled over the fate of half of an impoverished island.”
It’s not clear which “stumbles” the Times is thinking about: whether it means the approval then-President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger gave to Indonesia’s invasion beforehand, or the diplomatic cover Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave to Indonesia at the U.N. afterwards. Or perhaps it’s the hundreds of millions of dollars in weaponry the U.S. has sold Indonesia, much of which has been used to maintain its illegal hold on East Timor. Aside from these incidents, the relationship between the U.S. and Indonesia has been fairly smooth.
Stuck in the Middle
Pat Buchanan, poster child for the revolving door between media and politics, has once again stepped down as CNN’s Crossfire co-host to seek the Republican nomination for president. While further mocking the distinction between press and state, Buchanan’s leave also raises the question of who will take his place as the debater “from the right.” But perhaps Bill Press, the voice “from the left,” solves the problem.
On a recent show (2/26/99), Press criticized the left and praised the center: “Now, I’m a Democrat who lost a lot of elections, I mean, not as a candidate, but as part of the Democratic Party, because we’re so far to the left. Bill Clinton brought Democrats back to the middle, won the White House. What’s wrong with the middle?” He went on to look back with nostalgia to a Republican president: “There’s a big difference between Ronald Reagan and conservatives of today. Ronald Reagan was warm. Ronald Reagan was fuzzy. Ronald Reagan had a strong economic platform, and he cut taxes, you know, and ran up the deficits, by the way, but he wasn’t out there talking about these social issues.”
When the “left” is represented by a pro-Reagan centrist, what do you need a right for?
All in the Family
A Washington Post story (2/16/99) about potential GOP candidate Elizabeth Dole probed her tendency to hire political allies during her tenure as president of the Red Cross. It was a refreshing example of critical reporting on the conflicts of interest often involved in running for office. But as Scott Shuger of the online magazine Slate pointed out (2/16/99), at the Washington Post all conflicts of interest don’t appear to be created equal. As examples of Dole’s questionable hires, the story noted the wife of Archer Daniels Midland chief Dwayne Andreas, as well as a woman named Man Masing-Will, who was identified as Dole’s husband Bob’s communications director during his 1996 presidential bid.
But if marital connections were important to the Post, they might have mentioned another tie of Masing-Will: She is the wife of George Will, a Washington Post opinion columnist who often wrote critically of Mr. Dole’s Republican rivals during the 1996 primaries. Readers might keep that in mind as they read George Will’s commentary on 2000’s presidential race.
Markets: The Deepest Truths
Time’s February 15 cover featured Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Rubin’s deputy Larry Summers—dubbing the trio “The Committee to Save the World.” Inside, reporter Joshua Cooper Ramo described Greenspan as having a “pragmatism” that “recalls nothing so much as the objectivist philosophy of the novelist and social critic Ayn Rand…. Greenspan found in objectivism a sense that markets are an expression of the deepest truths about human nature and that, as a result, they will ultimately be correct.”
Ramo reported that Rubin and Summers share this point of view with Greenspan: “They all agree that trying to defy global market forces is in the end futile. That imposes a limit on how much they will permit ideology to intrude on their actions.” For Time, apparently, a mystical belief that it’s futile to defy market forces isn’t “ideology”—it’s “pragmatism.”
The Press Obsessed
A New York Times op-ed by Richard L. Fox (2/11/99) ought to be required reading for journalism students. It described a speech Jesse Jackson gave at Union College in Schenectady, New York, where Fox is a political science professor.
After speaking about poor conditions in urban schools, the rate of child poverty and prisons, Jackson first took questions from the reporters in attendance: Would Jackson run for president in 2000? What did he think about what was going on in Washington? Did he think the president should be removed from office? Had he and Clinton gotten closer since the scandal? How would he like to see the scandal resolved? And, finally, which team did he root for in the Super Bowl?
The first student’s question, on the other hand, was: How can we help to bridge the economic gap you spoke of? The audience didn’t fail to notice the dramatic gulf between their concerns and those of the press corps. Fox wrote that the loudest applause of the evening came in response to a student who asked Jackson, “You just gave a very powerful and moving speech, and the press asked you only about the scandal in Washington. What does that say to you?” The question was directed to Jackson, but let’s hope the reporters were listening as well.
