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Thursday, August 25, 2005

By Ralf Seiffe

OPINION - One of the few compensations of hitting deep middle age is that life leaves you with some experiences and with them, some perspective. Perspective, properly applied, equals judgment. That judgment is why old guys can sometime beat the young and exuberant.

The news media gleefully reports that president’s poll numbers have collapsed and that Americans are becoming frustrated with the management of the war in Iraq. This has lured many reporters who do not have the benefit of middle-aged perspective, to conclude that there is a burgeoning anti-war movement.

The problem with this is that when the network news operations hire the bright and shinys to news attract the 18-34 year olds after which advertisers lust, they must trade beauty for experience.

The effect of this is that these young hosts don’t have the judgment to avoid elevating ditch-dwelling seditionists to iconic status. They are blinded by opportunity to bash Bush so they use thin stories to incorrectly frame issues or even ignore the salient facts. Such flawed judgment combined with the media’s traditional bias gives us aberrations like Cindy Sheehan.

The media’s purpose in over-exposing Sheehan’s Crawford circus is to leverage her sideshow into a public perception that there are many more such activists, at large. They want us to believe that but for the courage of Ms. Sheehan, the government would be besieged by more of these “committed” Americans. From that, they imagine creating a Viet Nam-style protest movement that will bring down George Bush the way their elders brought down Lyndon Johnson.

This is where perspective comes in handy. Those of us who remember the Viet Nam era are blessed with memory---and some the judgment---to understand that the facts and the symptoms of Viet Nam do not fit the Iraq situation. This means the media will not succeed in fanning the summer’s spark in Crawford into a widespread conflagration in the fall---or at any time soon.

The most important reason the media will fail to achieve the effect they desire is the preparation and background of the commanders-in-chief. Lyndon Johnson, for all his successful thuggery in the U.S. Senate, thought himself inferior to the East Coast, Political-Intellectual cartel he inherited from the JFK administration. His Texas teacher’s college diploma simply did not provide him the luster of a Harvard Business School, Class of ’49 whiz kid’s. The great biographies portray Johnson as the victim of his aide’s intellectual arrogance resulting in his inability to resist their push towards an ever-larger, Asian war.

George Bush, on the other hand, is not only a product of a fancy, east coast education, he has mastered the Ivy Leaguers. He’s a member of Skull and Bones, the gold standard of social and educational achievement and it turns out that he’s actually and substantially more accomplished than the two “intellectuals” the Democrats have nominated to tangle with him.

Another difference is each president’s regard for the war. The Viet Nam war was thrust onto LBJ by the Kennedy Administration and, to a lesser extent, Dwight Eisenhower’s. By the time LBJ actually became president, the best and the brightest had already begun to turn it into a quagmire. Johnson, who had no real interest in foreigners because he could not count on their votes was, himself, dragged into it.

Bush’s war is quite different. We were attacked and the twin towers did collapse like dominoes on live television. This had a galvanizing effect and became our generation’s Pearl Harbor.

One other thing---LBJ always had his eye on a second term of his own. Accordingly, he had to make decisions on the basis of what would be best for winning a second term. George Bush has already won his second term---with a larger majority---and is now focused on succeeding in the Middle East.

Another huge fact is that American has changed. The 1960’s were a time of discovery and exhibitionism; the conventionalism of the 1950’s had been swept away by media, entertainment and cultural options. Baby boomers looked for ways to express themselves, embracing sex, drugs, rock and roll and protest. From personal experience, I can tell you that protest marches were as much a medium as a cause and that they were a great place to meet girls.

Now, the cultural landscape is quite different. Since the ‘60’s, the media has exposed every possible lifestyle, cultural choice and depravity so that the protest experience, so invigorating then, now appears tame by comparison. The Hollywood leftists that complain about the war have themselves so cartooned the American experience that their cause simply does not rise above the culture noise level they have created. It’s easier to watch the human debris Jerry Springer presents on TV than it is to rally with him in the streets.

The military has changed, too. Draftees in the late 1960’s did not want to be in ‘Nam for good reason. This discontent took the form of widespread drug abuse and the occasional Zippo applied to thatch-roofed hovels. Some of these folks came back from Southeast Asia and organized into the sort of group John Kerry joined. Viet Nam Veterans against The War effectively lobbied Americans into opposing it.

There is no such equivalent with Iraq or Afghani war volunteers. Quite differently, the returning veterans almost universally praise the job that they are prosecuting in the desert. This could be because they are volunteers or because they do understand the danger facing the United States and other Western countries. Either way, it really does not matter. Moreover, the soldiers’ professional and honorable behavior will deny an issue to the war’s opponents that they so effectively exploited during Viet Nam.

Finally, there is no Walter Cronkite. His switch from “neutral” to becoming opposed to the war was the signal to Lyndon Johnson that Viet Nam was lost. This loss was not on the battlefield---indeed we had just won the Tet Offensive---but a loss that the newsreader created between the ears of his viewers.

The very same battle is waging in today’s much more diffuse media. The war on terrorism will be won here, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. Reporters and the insurgents understand this. News operations want to exert the same power their predecessors did but now there is a competitive news set. As a consequence, we are seeing quite different reportage have more opinions than those of Eric Severeid or Daniel Schorr.

As much as they wish her to be, Cindy Sheehan is not the harbinger of a cresting anti-war movement. She will not be the anvil on which the left will forge false public opinion as they did 40 years ago. Now, the context is different and the left will fail to reprise their anti-American success. George Bush is not Lyndon Johnson and from my perspective, that’s an easy judgment to make.

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Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader.