People's general happiness has a lot to do with the constant drumbeat of negativity that they get from the media. The MSM learned their lesson well from Nixon and Ford. If the president is a Republican, vilify or ridicule him at every opportunity. They failed with Reagan, partly because he was incredibly successful, partly because the American people remembered Carter, but succeeded with Bush 41, where a minor recession was trumpeted as the return of the Great Depression. Going into the campaign, Bush was riding high after Desert Storm, with over 90% approval ratings, but constant attacks by the Clinton machine and the media, not to mention a truly wretched campaign by Bush, sealed the deal for the Dems. From 2000 through 2008, the media has done everything short of blood libel to attack Bush 43, including the presentation of fabricated documents, publication of classified documents that were deliberately leaked to undermine the war on terror and the relentless mischaracterization of the administration as corrupt, incompetent and evil, in order to hand the presidency to their handpicked candidate. The MSM lessons learned are:Originally Posted by Goldwater
- Attack, attack, always attack.
- Do not allow Republicans to respond to the left's talking points (seen any McCain spokesmen on CNN?) and ensure that their message is diluted by a rebuttal from the Democrats when they do get something out.
- When Republicans do get their message out, attack it as dishonest, unfair, racist, sexist, fattening, whatever it takes to create the impression in the public's mind that the Republicans are the bad guys, then go to a Democrat for the last word (this is what the MSM considered being evenhanded).
- Do not cover negative stories about the Democratic nominee unless you're forced to, and then complain about how this distracts from the important coverage of the campaign and how unimportant it all is.
- Investigate and undermine the reputation of every person who supports the Republican ticket, and lie if you can't find any ugly truths (Sarah Palin's kid is fair game, as is Joe the plumber's background, but Jeremiah Wright???).
- Ignore the investigations of the Democratic nominee's background (see #4)
- Remind the voters that it's in the bag for the Democrat, and they all need to get on the bandwagon.
Initial reports from media outlets always suggest otherwise. Sometimes, they're even true, although that's not the critical criteria. The terrorists like to surround themselves with women and children because they know that we will hesitate to attack them, and if we do attack, the media will present the collateral damage as our fault, rather than as the result of a war crime on the part of the terrorists.
