By Michael Barone Wed Jul 27, 4:59 PM ET
This summer, one big story is replaced by another--the London bombings July
7, the speculation that Karl Rove illegally named a covert CIA agent, the
nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, more London bombings last
week. But beneath the hubbub, we can see the playing out of another, less
reported story: the collapse of the attempts by liberal Democrats and their
sympathizers in the mainstream media--the New York Times, etc., etc.--to
delegitimize yet another Republican administration.
This project has been ongoing for more than 30 years.
Richard Nixon, by obstructing investigation of the Watergate burglary,
unwittingly colluded in the successful attempt to besmirch his
administration. Less than two years after carrying 49 states, he was
compelled to resign. The attempt to delegitimize the Reagan administration
seemed at the time reasonably successful. Reagan was widely dismissed as a
lightweight ideologue, and the rejection of his nomination of Robert Bork to
the Supreme Court in 1987 contributed to the impression that his years in
office were, to take the title of a book by a first-rate journalist, "the
Reagan detour." As time went on, as the Berlin Wall fell and Bill Clinton
proclaimed that the era of big government was over, it became clear that
Reagan was a successful transformational president--something the mainstream
media grudgingly admitted when he died in 2004 after a decade out of public
view.
You think they'd learn. But for the past five years, the same folks have
been trying to undermine the presidency of George W. Bush. The Supreme
Court's decision in Bush v. Gore was denounced as an outrage, and Democrats
noted, accurately, that Bush did not win a plurality of the popular vote in
2000. The nation rallied to his support after September 11, but Democrats
held up his judicial and other nominations even if they had to violate
Senate tradition to do so. Coverage of Bush during the 2004 campaign was
heavily negative; for months the mainstream media mostly ignored the swift
boat vets' charges against John Kerry and broadcast accusations against Bush
based on forged documents eight weeks before the election. News of economic
recovery in 2003 and 2004 was pitched far more negatively than it had been
when Bill Clinton was president in 1995 and 1996.
Now the unsupported charges that "Bush lied" about weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq have been rekindled via criticism of Karl Rove. A key
witness for the Democrats and mainstream media was former diplomat Joseph
Wilson. Unfortunately for his advocates, he turned out to be a liar. A year
after his famous article appeared in the New York Times in July 2003
accusing Bush of "twisting" intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee,
in a bipartisan report, concluded that Wilson lied when he said his wife had
nothing to do with his dispatch to Niger and Chairman Pat Roberts said that
his report bolstered rather than refuted the case that Saddam Hussein's Iraq
sought to buy uranium in Africa. So despite the continuing credulousness of
much of the press, it appears inconceivable at this point that Karl Rove
will be charged with violating the law prohibiting disclosure of the names
of undercover agents. The case against Rove--ballyhooed by recent Time and
Newsweek cover stories that paid little heed to the discrediting of
Wilson--seems likely to end not with a bang but a whimper.
Court intrigue. So, too, with the political left's determination to defeat
Bush's first nominee to the Supreme Court. Democrats, with much help from
the press, argued successfully in 1987 that Robert Bork was out of the
mainstream and in 1991 brought up spectacular charges that cast a pall on
Justice Clarence Thomas. They seem almost certain not to have such success
against the obviously highly qualified John Roberts. They may try to argue
that Roberts is "out of the mainstream." But the vote on Roberts's
nomination to the appeals court was 14 to 3 in the judiciary committee. Who
is in the mainstream now?
The bombings and attempted bombings in London have brought home to the
American public that we face implacable enemies unwilling to be appeased by
even the most emollient diplomacy. Yet, mainstream media coverage of Iraq
has been mostly negative. But mainstream media no longer have a monopoly;
Americans have other sources in talk radio, Fox News, and the blogosphere.
Bush's presidency is still regarded as illegitimate by perhaps 20 percent of
the electorate. But among the rest, the attempt to delegitimize him seems to
be collapsing.
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