Misty, Watercolored Memories

Exactly as she shone during the weeks around the GOP convention, Elisabeth Bumiller has been luminescent in the weeks leading up to and including the inaguration. Not surprisingly she's had a story nearly every day - a few on the front page. Her experience as a style reporter has held her in good stead to be able to handle the gripping questions facing our country like Which millionaires are pals with BushCo? and Which will be raising money for him? Equally valuable is her facility for morphing a political story into a frontpage paean to Dear Leader, which we're sure has not gone unnoticed.

I put off looking at Ms. Bumiller's inaugural oeuvre until the day was mercifully behind us. But now let's walk together down Ms. Bumiller's Road to the Coronation.

The journey started weeks ago with three puff pieces that explained to the peasants how the coronation would be funded (PRIVATELY! With no help from Enron!) and why, in the face of the greatest natural disaster of our lifetimes and while we're in the middle of losing a war fought on false premises, it's a good idea to spend tens of millions of dollars on parties for people who are buying access to power. (here, here and here) Over the weeks, Ms. Bumiller faithfully regurtitated WH spin, including the idea that anyone who questioned the wisdom of the four-day wartime exercise in excess was taking a "political shot."

Those three stores were followed by a two-page spread devoted to an Up Close and Personal look at one of BushCo bestest friends, some rich guy he knew at Yale. From rich guy we learned that BushCo is full of common sense and isn't as conservative as people think. He, via Ms. Bumiller, told us that BushCo brought Cheney to the 9/11 panel because he wanted to show how he was "calling all the shots." We learned that it was this rich guy who persuaded BushCo to have the GOP convention in NYC even though we had been told in previous Bumiller stories that the idea was all BushCo's - or was it Rove's? Those are RNC talking points and Ketchum point-grabbers 2 - 5, 11, 17, 25 and 46 for those of you keeping score at home.

But there's more! On the Tuesday before the Big Day, Ms. Bumiller teamed up with Richard Stevenson to crank out an apparently in-depth look at how the administration's own superhero, Dick "dick" Cheney, is working to advance his BushCo's reckless bold domestic agenda: (emph mine)

Vice President Dick Cheney is playing a potentially pivotal role in shaping the Bush administration's ambitious domestic agenda, supporting larger personal investment accounts for Social Security than many other Republicans and helping gauge how the White House should proceed on Capitol Hill, administration officials and associates of Mr. Cheney say.

On issues like Social Security and overhauling the tax code, they say Mr. Cheney tends to mix an instinct for free-market conservatism with a pragmatic knack for vote counting, being the former House member that he is. Although Mr. Cheney is most identified in the public mind with foreign policy, he has also begun assertively rebutting administration critics on domestic issues, as he did in a speech last week on Social Security, while he works behind the scenes to hold together an increasingly fractious Republican Party.

As on Iraq and other foreign policy issues, Mr. Cheney's views on domestic matters tend to favor bold action even at the risk of short-term political backlash - what his critics would consider overreaching, reinforcing President Bush's own instincts. But even as he usually favors conservative approaches to whatever issue is under consideration, he also has a realistic streak honed by his keen sense of what members of his party on Capitol Hill are willing and able to push through Congress and deliver to Mr. Bush's desk, people who have discussed domestic issues with him say.

Holy politics, Batman! After that the rest of the story goes into sleeping-pill mode as it drones the list of Cheney's plans for the country's economy. We could use some of Stevenon's trademark action-packed writing in this section but instead we get innocuous, WH/Ketchum-approved phrases like "incentives for more savings and investment" and a story that makes it seem as if Supply Side Economics wasn't a giant scam to redistribute wealth. And, despite the excrutiatingly obvious comparisons between the way the country was hustled into a bad war in Iraq and the way BushCo is currently trying to hustle through the destruction of Social Security, there's no mention beyond the above, As on Iraq and other foreign policy issues. And, just in case that phrase rang any bells with the odd reader, threatening to wake her up, the story is quick to tell us that Mr. Cheney's supporters say he has no desire to elbow aside cabinet secretaries or run economic policy day to day. That should shut up any nagging voices that try to remind us that Cheney did exactly that when he strongarmed the CIA to come up with intelligence that would get us into Iraq.

The WHLetter for Coronation Week was a profile of Michael Gerson, the man responsible for Bushco's dreadful speech that mentioned freedom and liberty 237 times, but justice not once. Gerson "defended" his use of religious imagery. It's too bad Ms. Bumiller didn't interview him after we heard the speech so he could have defended his use of revisionist history and mind-numbing platitudes that rendered any ideas in the speech meaningless. Live and learn.

Despite her best efforts to stay in the plus column Ketchum-wise, she couldn't help but stir up some trouble for the WH, which goes to show you that even a blind, bound and gagged squirrel can find an acorn every once in a while. On the day after the coronation, Ms. Bumiller had one more column reminding us why BushCo the country desperately needed this four-day extravaganza. It was all about the troops and democracy:

When President Bush delivered his Inaugural Address on Thursday, it was the culmination of a meticulously planned White House communications strategy to portray a $40 million weeklong party as a tribute to troops overseas and an enduring symbol of American democracy.

The rest of the story is a look at exactly how insecure and needy BushCo is hidden in talk about the troops and BushCo's pre-inauguration media blitz. But in the last two paragraphs, Ms. Bumiller, who's practically Nellie Bly if you think about it, can't resist reminding us that she did break two stories over the last several weeks. It was she who had the scandalous Kid Rock booking first, almost three weeks before the Big Day - even though the WH insisted on saying that he was never confirmed, although she backs off that part:

Kid Rock, the rap star whom Barbara Bush, the president’s daughter, wanted to perform at a youth concert, did not. Conservatives had complained about the often profane lyrics of the rapper, who has described himself as the “pimp of the nation.’’

She also reminds us that way back in November, she helped to ruin the day for one of the chief inaugural fundraisers, Brad Freeman, when he told the LAT a sexist joke that she reprinted verbatim

"I told the president, 'I finally figured out that dating one 50-year-old is better than two 25-year-olds,' " Mr. Freeman told The Los Angeles Times. In any case, Mr. Freeman is now focusing his attention on what he estimates will be at least a hundred phone calls he needs to make to the best names in his Rolodex. As incentives for a big check - there are no limits, unlike those on campaign contributions - Mr. Freeman and the inaugural committee will offer benefits like invitations to select dinners with Mr. Bush, good seats at the swearing-in on Jan. 20 and tickets to the best balls.

My goodness - imagine telling the president that! He loves his old girl, Waura. Mr. Freeman was not allowed to talk to the press after that.

And so here we are, full circle, back at the early days of Ms. Bumiller's excellent coronation adventure, when she was unknowingly breaking meaningless stories, simply by taking dication. It's good to be king - or, you know, the king's stenographer.

Comments

[Rick]

Hmmm...I wonder why the Republican Party would be "increasingly fractious"?

Are some of them starting to remember they're Americans or something?

[eRobin]

Good point. They're probably also frightened that some of their constituents may be remembering that as well.