Howard Fineman: Sooper Political Genius?

Every time I see some journalist writing about the differences between the MSM and the blogosphere, one things they always seem to mention is that journalists are well-trained, credentialed wordsmiths with finely-honed powers of observation and wisdom born of decades of experience. That’s why their opinions matter more than some unwashed and barely-lettered cretin like me, or this guy.

Well, someone better tell Howard Fineman that, because his last column in Newsweek is dragging down the Ginormously-Brained Journalism Curve something horrible. Here’s how he phrases his latest quest into the Minds of the American Voter:

What type of leader does the country want? Here is my sense of it, based on talking to politicians, strategists and voters here and around the nation.

Okay, so I’m expecting something pretty good here. Howard Fineman is a veteran political pundit. He knows his stuff, right?

Well, I suppose. Here are his bullet points, shorn of the keen insight. I’ll give you some of that later.

• NO IDEOLOGUES, PLEASE
• SERIOUS STUDENT
• WASHINGTON EXPERIENCE NOT NECESSARY
• NO MORE BOOMER OBSESSIONS
• KNOW THE MIDDLE CLASS

I’m afraid that what Fineman did wasn’t to form opinions of what we actually think. He formed an opinion of what he wanted, which is quite clearly not George Bush (or at least the stereotypical cartoon view of George Bush the MSM has been giving us every day for six years). That or he wrote down a few cliched phrases he’s seen over the past few years, tossed them into a hat, then picked five of them randomly. We’re lucky that one of his qualifications wasn’t “INSPECTED BY NUMBER 4″.

Think I’m exaggerating? Let’s look at his bullet points, just to see what he was thinking.

NO IDEOLOGUES, PLEASE
There was a time when President George W. Bush’s ideological certitude was politically appealing and perhaps functionally necessary. That time has long since passed. The country is tired, even fearful, of leaders with fervent beliefs that seem impervious to new (or even old) facts.

Does 2004 count as “long since passed”? I only ask that because that’s the last time we elected George Bush, might I remind Mr. Fineman, with the largest total number of votes any President has garnered in any election in American history. Did George Bush somehow change in two years? Did we?

Well, obviously neither of us changed. In fact, the situation in the world hasn’t changed appreciably in two years either and they are not likely to change in two more. Islamists are still wholly dedicated to destroying or converting us. Mad Mahmoud is still working with all the might and weath he can wring fron his country toward building a nuclear weapon, all the better with which to usher in the return of the Twelfth Imam. Oh, and he’s still sending his soldiers, money, and equipment into Iraq to kill Iraqis and our soldiers. Kim Jong-Il is still rattling his sabers in North Korea (and he really does have a nuke. Thanks Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton!).

All of these things will very likely be true in 2008 also. What does Mr. Fineman think will change that would warrant our changing our mind about the type of leader we require? To what “facts” does Mr. Fineman refer?

And one last point. The last President before George Bush to get a clear majority of votes in an election? Ronald Reagan, another “ideologue”.

SERIOUS STUDENT
Presidential elections are a never-ending series of mid-course corrections. Voters look to compensate for the leadership weaknesses of the incumbent.
…
The counterpoint thinking continues. Voters in 2008 are going to want someone who prides himself (or herself) on spending time in the library—who has a hands-on curiosity about the details.

This one strikes me as funny because it’s obvious to anyone who pays even a little bit of attention, that George Bush is a voracious reader. What he doesn’t read, and maybe this is what irks Fineman so, are newspapers. As I would in his position, the President gets his news straight from the tap, so to speak. Why should he rely on what the New York Times tells him is going on, say, in Uzbekistan? He can call any one of several people and get the scoop.

But Fineman’s a journalist and goodness knows how journalists hate to be dissed. That’s why Gerald Ford got a four-day lovefest in the MSM. He loved him some journalists and, even though they savaged him like a pack of starved hyenas when he was in office, they coldn’t help but keep a little soft spot in their hearts for the President Who Loved Journalists.

On the other hand, I do want to bring the 2004 election back into focus. I expect that the current President was just as big a dullard then, in Fineman’s mind, as he is now. So why, I wonder, did America not chart a “mid-course correction” and pick the man the MSM was telling us was Super Duper Smart, John Kerry? Okay, sure. Bush got better grades in college than Kerry, but that’s beside the point. If Bush is so poorly read, why didn’t we pick the guy who could speak eloquently of “Jhenjhis Khan” before Congress?

WASHINGTON EXPERIENCE NOT NECESSARY
Voters these days not only do not value Washington experience—or any office-holding experience—it can make them suspicious.

Oh, this one is brilliant. How hard is it to look at the fact that we’ve not elected a member of Congress to the Presidency since John F. Kennedy and reach this conclusion? Does it take much smarts to look back at the last five Presidents and see that four of them were state governors?

Heady analysis here.

NO MORE BOOMER OBSESSIONS
Not all elections are about change, but 2008 will be. Americans are moderately upbeat about the country’s prospects, but deeply worried about the world—and they have come to realize that they can’t separate one from the other. One thing for sure, says Pfeiffer, voters are tired of arguing about the culture of the 1960s and other boomer issues. “There is a sense that the 2004 election was too much about who did or did not do what in Vietnam,” said Pfeiffer, referring to the Bush campaign against Sen. John Kerry.

Uh, Howard? I’m not quite sure how to tell you this, but George Bush wasn’t the one who brought up Vietnam in 2004. He wasn’t the guy who put John Kerry on that stage, made him salute, and say he was “reporting for duty”. George Bush also wasn’t the guy who brought up George Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard and faked up some documents to make his case look better.

In fact, we out here in “the folks who voted for Bush”-land could care two stale saltines about who did what in Vietnam. But we’re not the ones who keep bringing it up. We just don’t like when folks lie about it.

Now, what profession of people keep using the word “quagmire” in their reporting and likening it to a certain war fought in a certain country that rhymes with “Kietnam”? One hint, Howard Fineman is one.

But, that factual mistake aside, we’re not nearly done with “boomer issues” because Boomers are still the demographic big dogs. Whether they flex any electoral muscle from here on out or not, their very existence warps politics around them. Let’s take Social Security for example. If we don’t fix it – and I don’t mean slap a patch on it and walk away, whistling – it’s going to collapse entirely thanks mostly to the overwhelming weight of the Boomers that will crash into it like a North Atlantic iceberg. That’s a Boomer issue that matters a lot. Other issues like health care are still going to be big issues not because boomers expressly make them issues (though they do at times) but because boomers are simply still alive in enormous numbers.

So even if the President we elect isn’t a boomer, that person would be well advised to obsess a little about some boomer issues. We know that, too. It’s one reason we reelected George Bush. He, more than any other President in the past, has tried to get out ahead of the looming social security and health care disasters. He’s been solidly thwarted by Congressional Democrats, but at least he’s made the attempt. The next President is going to have to do better than that. Time’s a’wastin.

KNOW THE MIDDLE CLASS
Bushes have a congenital family problem with this, and it leaves an opening for someone—of either party—who can prove that he or she really understands the strains of middle-class life. It’s not just about money, but about cultural assaults and the lack of time for family in an era when both parents or partners need to work.

Gah! How many bad assumptions can we find in this excerpt?

Okay, there’s the one about the Bush family being out of touch. That comes from one single incident – interpreted exactly wrong by the MSM – where George H.W. Bush seemed to be baffled by a sup[ermarker OCR scanner. Since then, the mantle hung ’round the Bushes is that they are upper-crust snobs.

That’s never been true. You’d have to go a long way back to find a President who lived less in touch with the intellectual and cultural hoi polloi than George W. Bush. He doesn’t vacation with his rich friends in Cape Cod. He doesn’t hang out with movie stars and authors. He isn’t sitting in his office smoking sigars and yukking it up with his political donors.

I”m not sure where this “George Bush doesn’t know beans about the middle class” fiction keep s coming from, but it’s not true. It’s been a hallmark of his administration that he’s connected solidly with the middle class precisely because we believe that he does understand where we’re coming from. It’s a dead solid lock that he understands the middle class a lot more than his predecessor.

Let me also point out that if Fineman believes that we’re in an era where both parents “need” to work, then he doesn’t understand the middle class very well either. In fact, over most of this country, one salary is sufficient to support a family. Now, that may mean that the family does without brand-name clothing, that third television, perhaps all the cable television channels right up to six-hundred-something, the newest electronic gadgety toys, or two spanking-new cars, but that family will be fed, clothed, shelterd, and (I highly suspect) happy.

But it’s a convenient myth that the middle class is miserable, worked to the bone, and about to completely collapse into rags and shantytowns. I don’t suppose that Fineman sees any reason not to go right along with it.

What I want to know about this whole article is, did Howard Fineman actually get outside of the rather leftist and insular confines of either New York City or Washington, DC to talk to anyone before he wrote his story or did he simply holler a bit around the Newsweek offices to see what the folks there thought?

Because I have to tell you, Fineman’s keen “sense” of what we want really doesn’t appear to be all that smart and flies right in the face of recent history.