The weekly PBS Newshour Political Wrap segment with Mark Shields and David Brooks is the only TV news that I make sure to watch every week. They usually cover the national political issues in an informative and even insightful way.
But this week, they were almost another case study for the Daily Howler's view of the national press corps. Not quite, but almost. It's very tempting to adopt Bob Somerby's tone in describing it, but I couldn't do justice to it. "Why do you think he did [it]?" Jim Lehrer asks the two celebrity pundits. "Why do you think he did it now?"
So Brooks and Shields puzzle over what reason there could have been for Al Gore to endorse Howard Dean. Why? Why? Why? Brooks did redeem himself from total conformity to the clichees by saying, "He is someone who now agrees with Dean on the war, on domestic policy, on secular values." So Brooks at least managed to mention in passing the reason that Gore himself put front and center: the Iraq War. Brooks did avoid actually using the word "Iraq."
But to Brooks, it was all psychological. "I think he wishes he were Howard Dean." Shields, who more often than not is a canny liberal, was very, very concerned that poor Joe Lieberman didn't get a call from Al Gore first. Why, according to Shields, this was dowright indecent of Gore! Brooks chimed in to say that it was "monumentally selfish" of Gore not to call Dean. Lehrer threw them off momentarily by saying there was a credible report that Gore had tried to call Lieberman repeatedly. But they recovered.
That indecent Gore! Why, oh, why, oh, why would he endorse Howard Dean?
But I think we have to give these guys at least a "C" on this one. Shields rather graphically recalled that Gore "got more votes than anybody who ever ran for president except Ronald Reagan. More votes than anybody that has been elected since, either of the Bushes, Bill Clinton, anybody." They did manage to at least mention the war - though one would not have gathered from their conversation that the Iraq war was the main reason that Gore himself gave. And neither of them brought up the "Gore said he invented the Internet" canard.
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