Newsweek, ABC, Newsday, Dowd Join Media's Anti-Bush Assault
NewsMax.com
Thursday, Sept. 13, 2001
The leftist media's shocking anti-Bush hatred in the face of national tragedy continues to grow.
Newsweek's Howard Fineman joined the media's pack mentality (i.e., lack of original thought) by moaning about Bush's flight on Air Force One. Of course, if Bush had immediately returned to Washington these same elitists would have bitched about how he endangered himself.
Fineman, apparently referring to himself and his ilk, describes "a nation that harbors doubts about the president’s ability." He pouts that "Bush has yet to find a note of eloquence in his own voice" and judges that the president "did not look larger than life at his Oval Office desk, or even particularly comfortable."
Then, referring to Al Gore's failure to steal the White House despite widespread nationwide Democrat vote fraud, Fineman continues to hammer at Bush:
"The tasks he faces now were made harder by the way in which he entered office, and by how he has conducted himself there so far. He got 500,000 votes fewer than his foe and needed a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling to seal the deal. As president he has avoided the bully pulpit; now he has to build one and speak from it at the same time. Leaders in Congress who know him like him, but some still quietly disparaged his ability even as they marveled at what, until that day, was his enviable string of good luck. "Now he looks like a luxury we can’t afford, said one Democrat and likely 2004 rival.
"Nor has Bush built a consensus behind a foreign policy to justify the war he is about to make. To the contrary: the president, as some critics see it, has pursued a pull-up-the-drawbridges mentality that has only made matters worse. 'Our foreign policy for the past year has been too unilateral,'Fineman quotes some Democrat senator as saying.
Anyone so unfortunate as to have Newsweek's poison delivered to his home ought to cancel his subscription immediately - and say why he is canceling.
Then there's Ellis Henican, a Clinton idolator employed by the liberal Long Island newspaper Newsday:
"Mostly, George W. Bush has been keeping his head down, staying out of harm's way. He certainly hasn't shown his face around here.
"And really, isn't it about time? It's been two full days now since the first hijacked airplane slammed into the first twin tower, the start of the bloodiest terror attack in history. But since that very moment, the leader of the world's one superpower has been - where?
"Lingering for hours in the clouds. Nervously hopscotching across the country. From Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska. Unsure what direction to fly, while his aides bickered about where the president should land.
"And that first stilted statement from the president was released on videotape.
"Was Bush that frightened he'd flub the 'prompter read?
"Do we have a president too nervous to work live?"
And the hatred drones on and on.
Maureen Dowd, a fellow traveler at the New York Times, also wondered why Bush didn't make himself a target for terrorists. She and her like seem to think it's more important that they - and terrorists - know where the president is at all times.
"For much of the day we weren't sure where the president was. There were statements floating in from him from various secure zones in the air or underground. The vice president was out of sight. We didn't know where the first lady was. The secretary of state was in the air somewhere. The Capitol had been evacuated. Congressional leaders had gone off to a bunker somewhere. The Joint Chiefs of Staff could not be immediately accounted for," Dowd whined.
Maureen, take a Valium. Or two, or three, or 50.
Mark Halperin, in an "analysis" for ABC headlined "Bush Free Ride Won't Last," could think only of himself and his fellow media elites just one day after the bombings:
"Many senior officials in this administration have records suggesting they don't believe the press ought to be able to run terribly free during times of war," he cried.
"... It's always hard and often tactless to question government statements during war, particularly while a war like this one commands significant public support. But this White House is secretive about the most routine of operations, thin-skinned about criticism and appeals for openness, and especially quick to assert the prerogatives of the executive branch.
"Neither the congressional opposition nor the press is likely nor should they be expected to show such deference for long."
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