Friday, May 22, 2009

National Security Showdown - washingtonpost.com

National Security Showdown - washingtonpost.com

cheney Vs. Obama
Posted by Frank Smith at 22.5.09

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Frank Salvato, Managing Editor

Obama, Cheney & The Bright Shiny Thing
May 22, 2009

It couldn’t have been planed more perfectly. President Barack Obama uses the power of the presidential bully pulpit to show his dismay with anyone and everyone who dares to question his version of morality where the war on terrorism is concerned. Just moments later, former Vice President Dick Cheney effectively rebuts the president and dismantles several of the president’s talking points. The “impromptu” tele-debate made for great television. What it didn’t do was move anyone to question what they believe on the issues that were presented. In fact, it simply ensconced each to his or her position.

The American public has long suffered from what I call a sitcom attention span (I blame Norman Lear but I digress). Truth be told, the limited attention span of the American people goes back to well before the invention of television, having become an increasing problem ever since the American Revolution. Politicians recognized this malady – or opportunity as they see it – right off the bat and have been taking incredible advantage of the public’s limited attention span for almost as long as our country has been sovereign. It is for this reason that troublesome reports, testimonies and declarations are usually released after 2pm on Friday as Americans turn their brains off in preparation for the weekend. Where they may be outraged at something on Friday at 2pm – if in fact they even become aware of it then – by Monday it is just one more reason why all politicians can’t be trusted and anyway, what are you going to do about it, right?

The politicians understanding of the capabilities of the American attention span is also the reason why savvy politicians employ ex-media operatives in their cabinets and administrations. It wasn’t an accident that President Obama chose former Chicago political writer David Axelrod as a senior advisor. As a product of the Chicago Democrat Machine (The Daley Machine), Barack Obama understood the importance of controlling the message. It is all important for a politician. If you control the information that creates a news cycle then you control that news cycle. If you control the news cycle then you can always frame yourself in a light that is most flattering and that turns into elevated approval ratings and that turns into votes.

This is where the “bright shiny thing” comes into play. What is the bright shiny thing, you ask? Simple. It’s a distraction; a diversion. Any sleight-of-hand artist, any illusionist will tell you, the bright shiny thing makes all tricks, all illusions possible. While the audience is looking at the bright shiny thing, the illusionist is performing the tasks that makes the trick look like something magical has happened...”Nothing up my sleeve, presto!” Truth be told, the bright shiny thing tactic also works in politics and politically opportunist government and every savvy politician knows it.

As President Obama stood in front of a display of the US Constitution at the National Archives to perform his speech on terrorism, interrogation techniques, American morality and Guantanamo Bay, the grand nature of the setting and the emphasis he put on his preferred talking points helped to distract from several things:

▪ The debate over whether the United States employed “torture” in the waterboarding of three high-value al Qaeda detainees is an on-going one. Many believe that classifying a harsh interrogation technique that is also a part of our military survival training for pilots marginalizes the claim that the procedure qualifies as “torture.” As I stated in a prior article, worse things than waterboarding happen at the public pool between roughhousing teenagers and at fraternity hazing rituals. For the neo-Marxist Left, the anti-war crowd and the Liberal Democrats to simply expect everyone to acquiesce to their definition of torture simply because they “won the election” disqualifies their argument of being correct when they were in the minority.

▪

May 22, 2009 at 1:06 PM

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