I wrote something about this when the book came out, though I can't recall whether or not it was ever used anywhere. Part of this was adapted for an episode of CounterSpin, that much I know for sure.

Covering Bush, or Covering Up for Him?

By Peter Hart

Though conservatives still pound away at the idea that the media won't cut them a break, it's hard to argue that Bush has been given anything but kid glove treatment from the mainstream press, all the way back to the early days of his candidacy.

A new book by New York Times correspondent Frank Bruni fills in some of the details in Ambling Into History: The Unlikely Odyssey of George W. Bush. While it is a peek behind the curtains of one of the most guarded and careful administrations in recent memory, the book also tells another, perhaps more important story about a rather lazy and inconsistent press corps.

Though he doesn't make much of it, Bruni offers some valuable evidence that he pulled his punches while covering Bush. Sometimes the evidence is clear. Bruni explains that at one point he "deliberately soft-pedaled" Bush's difficulties explaining his tax cut and his apparent trouble communicating in his native tongue. In the home stretch of the campaign, Bruni writes that he gave only cursory attention to Bush's late acknowledgment of an arrest for driving under the influence. Bruni's story led not with the arrest details but with Bush's "lashing out" at Al Gore over an unrelated matter. The curious news judgment earned Bruni a hearty endorsement from the Texas governor: "You're a good man."

In other areas, Bruni is not so forthcoming. In the book, Bush is "at best mediocre" in his first debate with Al Gore, and from where Bruni sat it looked like "Bush was in the process of losing the presidency." Sadly, his newspaper reporting was almost a mirror image: Bruni led his October 4 debate report not with how bad Bush was, but how obnoxious Al Gore was. In fact, the first four paragraphs are all Gore, whose "self-satisfied grin" and "oratorical intimidation" just rubbed Bruni the wrong way. It's nice to now Bruni's now getting around to telling us how he really felt--long after it matters.

This revisionism continued once Bush took office. As Bruni explains in the book, on Bush's first day in office he reinstated a ban on federal funding for groups overseas that provide abortion counseling, sometimes called the "gag rule." Bush's explanation was different, though; he said that he was acting to limit federal dollars from being used to promote abortion. A good catch, but one Bruni failed to make at the time, preferring instead to accept Bush's "conviction" without a word to suggest Bush was not telling the whole truth.  Other reporters managed to nail Bush for his deception.

Since Bruni provides little evidence to suggest that he was a cut above his peers on the campaign trail, one can assume that the image of a president that seems aloof, careless or even inattentive has nothing to do with media being too critical of him. In fact, it's more likely that we only know the half of it. And who's to blame for that? Bruni, for one, thinks that "modern politics wasn't just superficial because the politicians made it so. It was superficial because the voters let it be." If that’s the case, then those charged with exposing political chicanery--namely, folks like Bruni himself--have plenty of work to do. It's too bad they seem so unlikely to step up to the plate.

Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler also documented the wide gap between what Bruni wrote in his book and what he wrote in the New York Times.

On Sunday, George Will joined Cohen in praising Teach for America--more evidence, if any was needed, that TFA enjoys a great ride in the corporate media. In Will's column, was "Teach for America: Letting the Cream Rise," he explains:

Until recently--until, among other things, TFA--it seemed that we simply did not know how to teach children handicapped by poverty and its accompaniments--family disintegration and destructive community cultures. Now we know exactly what to do.

Will says TFA is "a template for transformation." And the cream is, obviously, rising:

TFA has become a flourishing reproach to departments and schools of education. It pours talent into the educational system--80 percent of its teachers are in traditional public schools--talent that flows around the barriers of the credentialing process. Hence TFA works against the homogenization that discourages innovation and prevents the cream from rising.

As Bob Somerby noted at the Daily Howler, Will offers no evidence to back up his argument. And even Teach for America doesn't make such claims; Somerby points out that the TFA website offers this lukewarm assessment:

TEACH FOR AMERICA: Research over time has conclusively shown that Teach For America corps members' impact on their students' achievement is equal to or greater than that of other new teachers.

So this program takes the best and brightest, the talented cream, and turns them into...average new teachers?

Somerby adds:

Indeed, in a new C-Span tape (click here), Malcolm Gladwell asks Kopp how well TFA teachers perform. To her credit, Kopp abandons her practice of making anecdotal miracle claims and seems to suggest that TFA teachers aren’t a whole lot better than everyone else. (This happens at 0:51. Rather typically, Gladwell shows no sign of having prepared for his session with Kopp, whom he describes as one of his heroes.) By the 1:05 mark, Kopp is back to making a miracle claim about a beginning teacher in Phoenix. But again: Will doesn’t cite any research about such miracles because it doesn't exist.

Luckily for Will and Cohen, tributes to TFA don't require any evidence. Call it faith-based punditry.

To anyone with bad memories of how Gore's fact-filled debate performances against George W. Bush in 2000 failed to connect with voters, it may come as no surprise that Our Choice has a graphic on "how a wind turbine works," and a long section that begins: "Conventional hydrothermal plants are built according to one of three different designs. The steam can be taken directly through the turbine and then recondensed...."

A wind turbine GRAPHIC! In a book about green energy!? What on Earth was he thinking.

As to our memories of those 2000 debates, maybe Begley meant to type "reporters" instead of "voters." As Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler has been doggedly remembering for years now,  actual voters seemed to think Gore did pretty well in those debates--"instant polls of viewers credited Gore with a rather decisive win." The media created a different narrative--one of a petulant and sighing Gore who couldn't behave himself. And that's the way that they want everyone else to remember it.

Zakaria: As I was thinking about the smartest people I could gather to talk about the first stage of Barack Obama’s presidency, I thought of that wonderful quotation from Oscar Wilde: "Any fool can make history, but it takes a genius to write it."

So today, I'll be talking with a panel of geniuses. Each of them has books and accomplishments too numerous to mention. I'll talk about a few. The others will be on the screen.

With a set up like that you must be on the edge of your seat, right? Well here's the full roster of Zakaria's "panel of geniuses": Jon Meacham, Walter Isaacson and Peggy Noonan. Click on each of those names for a look at the real nature of their intellects. And click here to read of Zakaria's--Extra!: "Fareed Zakaria, Spokesperson for the Global Elite: Newsweek Pundit Presents Pro-Corporate Views as the Poor’s Perspective" (7-8/08) by Roger Bybee.