I was glad to see a strong ad from the DNC capitalizing ont he debate last night as soon as I browsed to a story in this morning’s New York Times on-line. It was also nice to see an add for PBS’ Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, a source of thoughtful articles on those topics.
As usual, Frank Rich weighs in at nytimes.com with a don’t-miss column. If this follows the usual pattern, it will run in next Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section, but is available on the web now.
The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: Will We Need a New ‘All the President’s Men’?
… But if our current presidency is now showing symptoms of a precancerous Watergate syndrome – as it is, daily – we have not yet reached that denouement immortalized by Hollywood, in which our scrappy heroes finally bring Nixon to heel in his second term. No, we’re back instead in the earlier reels of his first term, before the criminality of the Watergate break-in, when no one had heard of Woodward and Bernstein. Back then an arrogant and secretive White House, furious at the bad press fueled by an unpopular and mismanaged war, was still flying high as it kneecapped with impunity any reporter or news organization that challenged its tightly enforced message of victory at hand.
Even Tom Friedman, once a strong supported of invasion of Iraq, is fed up with the administration
The Bush team’s responses to Mr. Kerry’s musings are revealing because they go to the very heart of how much this administration has become addicted to 9/11. The president has exploited the terrorism issue for political ends – trying to make it into another wedge issue like abortion, guns or gay rights – to rally the Republican base and push his own political agenda. But it is precisely this exploitation of 9/11 that has gotten him and the country off-track, because it has not only created a wedge between Republicans and Democrats, it’s also created a wedge between America and the rest of the world, between America and its own historical identity, and between the president and common sense.