You can't read Ken Auletta's New Yorker profile of Lou Dobbs in his latest incarnation without noticing that TV "news" is largely made up of egos picking and choosing issues according to ratings. You may love Dobbs' embrace of hardline, mean immigration politics or admire his attacks on corporate America, but you can't fail to notice that it's all about Dobbs and the commercialization of populism. It's not about the news.
CNN’s news coverage coexists uneasily with its Dobbs-led populism. Among the viewers who are less than happy with the network’s current direction is Ted Turner, who told me, “CNN in the U.S. is quite a bit different than it was. They’ve gone more into emphasizing personality, and to some degree, particularly in the case of Lou Dobbs, they’ve encouraged him to promote himself and his own ideas to create a cult of personality to increase the ratings.”
Then there's Arlen Specter whose abrasiveness has been softened by a bout with cancer, but who appears to have thrown habeas corpus overboard out of irritation -- and perhaps to keep his job. Also in this week's New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin writes about Specter's role in "Killing Habeas Corpus."
Arlen Specter was an unlikely steward of the demise of habeas corpus. The Pennsylvania Republican, a senator since 1980, has long been known as a moderate in his caucus, one of the few remaining in a party that has shifted sharply to the right during his career...Yet it was Specter who, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, after leading the fight to preserve habeas corpus, at the last moment voted for the Administration’s plan restricting it. At seventy-six, Specter, having survived several bouts of life-threatening illness, has lost some of the abrasiveness that earned him the nickname Snarlin’ Arlen, but he generally says what he means, even when it might give offense. His self-confidence sometimes verges on arrogance; his most common expression is a knowing smirk. (It is evident in the cover photograph of his autobiography.) With some justification, and with typical bravado, Specter asserts that the debate over habeas corpus could have been avoided, if only his Republican colleagues had listened to him.
Specter skates so close to the edge of decency that you can see him wobble.
“It’s a pretty odd position for Specter to take,” [Akhil Reed]Amar, of Yale Law School, said. “He trusts the courts to take care of a problem when he’s voting for something that strips them of their jurisdiction to do it. It’s like saying, ‘I shot at her, but I knew I was going to miss.’
Let's hope the courts do "take care of the problem" because, Toobin writes, Patrick Leahy isn't about to try to reverse the habeas issue. Providing benefit of law to terrorists is too unpopular. (Of course, if we were forced to define "terrorist"...)
Finally, in the same issue, Hendrik Hertzberg reminds us that partisanship is alive and kicking. Kicking hard. Given Bush's support of Bolton and Keroack, the only conclusion can be that the White House has no intention of noticing the election outcome.
According to the “Backwards Bush” countdown clock, available on the Web and in key-chain and desk-accessory form at selected novelty and toy stores around the nation, the sitting Administration in Washington will, as of this writing, be in office for another seven hundred and eighty-nine days, five hours, twenty-three minutes, and 36.2 seconds. But, if present trends continue, it’s going to feel like forever... Who knows, really, what this President has been taught by this month’s election? The present President Bush, after all, is a decider of decisions, not a learner of lessons. And he likes to decide that he was right all along.
