A Different Kind of Trickle-Down

Like most Coastal and Beltway Liberal Elites, I tend to rely on the major newspapers as a gauge of the news. Here on this blog, I tend to over-emphasize the NY Times, LA Times, and Washington Post, mainly because those are what the Washington politicians and officials read. However, the US is a big country, and the national frame of mind (assuming there is such a thing)is as much influenced and educated by local and regional papers as anything else. For example, the papers in Florida are giving Katherine Harris fits in her campaign for the Senate by their non-stop coverage of the contributions to her earlier successful House campaign by a man closely allied with Jack Abramoff.

For that reason, I think it's time to start paying attention to some of the 'smaller' papers, like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune, and (today) the Minneapolis Star Tribune. These papers tend to print "second tier" syndicated columnists for national pieces, people like Molly Ivins and Steve Chapman. Yesterday, in the STrib, Chapman had a column which quite nicely analysed the recent Zogby poll of members of the military in Iraq.

In Iraq, the Bush administration has learned to set the bar low: Avoiding the worst possible outcome now passes for success.

For nearly three years, Americans have been told that we are making progress in bringing stability and democratic government to Iraq. But that state of affairs, like the horizon, keeps receding as we approach. Lately, the carnage has been waxing, not waning. Last month, for example, Iraq suffered 39 "multiple fatality bombings." The previous February, there were 18.

...[Secretary of State]Rice may be optimistic, but Americans find it hard to justify the loss of American lives in a war we don't seem to know how to win, no matter how many insurgents we kill. In the latest poll, only 30 percent approve of how President Bush is handling Iraq.

War supporters can no longer pretend to represent the silent majority of Americans. So in the face of popular disenchantment, they now claim to be speaking for the men and women fighting in Iraq. The conservative group Progress for America has begun airing TV ads asserting that "American troops overwhelmingly support the mission President Bush has given them."

In this view, Americans have turned against the war only because the news media have denied them the truth about everything our military is achieving in Iraq -- and anyone opposing the war is guilty of betraying the troops.

But that claim turns out to be fraudulent. A new poll by Zogby International finds that 29 percent of those serving in Iraq think the United States should leave "immediately," and 51 percent favor a pullout within the next six months. Fewer than one in four of our soldiers agrees that we should remain as long as necessary.

More than 40 percent of those carrying out the mission President Bush has given them say they are not sure what that mission is. Amazingly, the people with an up-close view of Iraq see things pretty much the same way as those forced to rely on the defeatist news media.

...In this debate, war supporters are at odds not so much with critics as they are with reality. [Emphasis added]

Now, the Zogby poll has received plenty of ink and face time from the major media outlets, not to mention plenty of spinning electrons on the internet. It is nice to see that people in the midwest are also reading about that poll, especially from a gentleman like Mr. Chapman, who can hardly be called a shrill partisan.

This might also explain why the President's poll numbers are dropping like a stone all over the country. People outside the Beltway are actually getting the news, and, well, getting the news.

Now if we can just get them to actually vote this November...