CBS documents story

I think we'll be hearing about the CBS documents story for the next few weeks.  But I expect the "Bush Guard" story to be appearing only as an adjunct to that one.  Before getting to the Daily Howler's latest take on this, a few observations.

The core part of the "Bush Guard" story has always been the undisputed fact that in 1972 he failed to take a required physical.  This meant he was removed from flying status (i.e., not allowed to fly any more), thereby forfeiting the benefits to the Guard of the $1 million worth of flight training they had given him.  As commentator Mark Shields has pointed out on more than one occasion, it's very unusual for any pilot to voluntarily give up flying in this way.  It would also be very unusual if no significant disciplinary action were taken against someone  behaving this way in the Guard, though it Bush's case that apparently did not happen.

In the "CBS documents" story, the purported Killian documents have not been proven to be forgeries.  CBS no longer vouches for the authenticity of the documents due to new information on their provanance (chain of possession).  The objections batted about by instant documents experts on the Internet - the "th"-superscript, the type font, the proportional spacing, etc - were not the reason for CBS retraction.  At this point, no one will be terribly surprised if we find out the physical items were faked; but that has not been established in the public record at this point.

Finally, the story has become a textbook example of contemporary media dysfunction.  And that's by no means limited to the carelessness and/or gullibility of CBS News on the "Killian documents."  For that aspect, the Daily Howler's Monday analysis is on the mark: A Fallen Culture! 09/21/04.  He writes of CBS News' failure to properly vet the source of the documents:

Let’s face it—that is quite a lapse. So why is this story only somewhat remarkable? The story is only somewhat remarkable because of something you won’t learn on cable TV. On cable, all good pundits must pretend to be shocked—just shocked—at what has occurred. In fact, slipshod, lazy, incompetent work has long been the norm for America’s press corps. As we’ve noted again and again, bungled stories were also the norm in our last three White House elections. Despite what trained pundits tell you on cable, this latest bungling is the norm. Rather’s bungling is not the exception.

He then quotes conservative commentator David Gergen asking what it is in the culture that allows professionals - in this case journalists - to get things like this so wrong.  And the Howler observes:

And there you see the seminal question, the question we’ve asked for the past seven years. How can it be that our mainstream “press corps” is so inept, so incompetent, so reckless? All good pundits will know to pretend that the CBS incident in an outlier. But in our press corps, crazy incompetence has long been the norm, although trained cable pundits deny it.

Yes, all good pundits will know to act like this is some sort of puzzling outlier. And when trained seals slap their mitts and shout “liberal bias,” all good pundits will know not to mention the crackpot stories about Clinton and Gore. Only Gergen’s formless question suggested the shape of what lies beneath. “What is it in our culture?” he asked. “How is it that professionals are so often getting it so badly, so desperately wrong?” That is the question that needs to be asked—but it’s the question cable pundits all know to avoid. If you watched cable TV last night, you didn’t hear a single person mention those other bungled stories. Instead, you heard the trained seals as they yelled “liberal bias,” and you heard good pundits who knew the rules—who knew that they must never mention how foolish that cry really is.

The Kerry campaign was partially successful in using the Bush Guard story to offset some of the static coming from the Swift Boat Liars for Bush crowd.  Then the Bush campaign was able to use the "unsubstantiated documents" flap to move the story to Dan Rather's performance as a journalist.

At this point, I'd be surprised if the Kerry camp has much interest in keeping either the Bush Guard story or the CBS documents story in the news, although they may encourage the former if the latter becomes an annoyance for them.  The mainstream media never probed the core of the Bush Guard story correctly, and probably never will.  But whatever benefit Kerry's campaign has received from it has likely been received already.

Kerry will (hopefully!) want to keep the Iraq War, jobs and health care the focus of the campaign from here until election day.