The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama [60]
Moynihan’s assertion no longer holds. We have no authoritative figure, no Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow whom we all listen to and trust to sort out contradictory claims. Instead, the media is splintered into a thousand fragments, each with its own version of reality, each claiming the loyalty of a splintered nation. Depending on your viewing preferences, global climate change is or is not dangerously accelerating; the budget deficit is going down or going up.
Nor is the phenomenon restricted to reporting on complicated issues. In early 2005, Newsweek published allegations that U.S. guards and interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detention center had goaded and abused prisoners by, among other things, flushing a Koran down the toilet. The White House insisted there was absolutely no truth to the story. Without hard documentation and in the wake of violent protests in Pakistan regarding the article, Newsweek was forced to publish a self-immolating retraction. Several months later, the Pentagon released a report indicating that some U.S. personnel at Guantanamo had in fact engaged in multiple instances of inappropriate activity—including instances in which U.S. female personnel pretended to smear menstrual blood on detainees during questioning, and at least one instance of a guard splashing a Koran and a prisoner with urine. The Fox News crawl that afternoon: “Pentagon finds no evidence of Koran being flushed down the toilet.”
I understand that facts alone can’t always settle our political disputes. Our views on abortion aren’t determined by the science of fetal development, and our judgment on whether and when to pull troops out of Iraq must necessarily be based on probabilities. But sometimes there are more accurate and less accurate answers; sometimes there are facts that cannot be spun, just as an argument about whether it’s raining can usually be settled by stepping outside. The absence of even rough agreement on the facts puts every opinion on equal footing and therefore eliminates the basis for thoughtful compromise. It rewards not those who are right, but those—like the White House press office—who can make their arguments most loudly, most frequently, most obstinately, and with the best backdrop.
Today’s politician understands this. He may not lie, but he understands that there is no great reward in store for those who speak the truth, particularly when the truth may be complicated. The truth may cause consternation; the truth will be attacked; the media won’t have the patience to sort out all the facts and so the public may not know the difference between truth and falsehood. What comes to matter then is positioning—the statement on an issue that will avoid controversy or generate needed publicity, the stance that will fit both the image his press folks have constructed for him and one of the narrative boxes the media has created for politics in general. The politician may still, as a matter of personal integrity, insist on telling the truth as he sees it. But he does so knowing that whether he believes in his positions matters less than whether he looks like he believes; that straight talk counts less than whether it sounds straight on TV.
From what I’ve observed, there are countless politicians who have crossed these hurdles and kept their integrity intact, men and women who raise campaign contributions without being corrupted, garner support without being held captive by special interests, and manage the media without losing their sense of self. But there is one final hurdle that, once you’ve settled in Washington, you cannot entirely avoid, one that is certain to make at least a sizable portion of your constituency think ill of you—and that is the thoroughly unsatisfactory nature of the legislative process.
I don’t know a single legislator who doesn’t anguish on a regular basis over