No Longer Fearing Fear Itself

I was wrong. Frank Rich has not followed the Prez's lead from years past and taken the entire month of August off. After only two weeks gone, he's back in Sunday's New York Times, and he's channeling Jimmy Piersall (his title is "Five Years After 9/11, Fear Finally Strikes Out"). He argues that Americans are starting to see through the Bush administration charade of a terrorist under every bed. The recent terrorist raids in England, even before that story started to unravel, did not help the Prez's standing in any of the latest polls, and with Ned Lamont's win and the lackluster performance of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, Rich sees the public repudiating the Karl Rove fear strategy. I hope I'm wrong, but I worry that Rich is overly optimistic at the moment. While refusing to buy into the propaganda of fear is a good thing, I'm not sure that it translates into voting the bums out. But read what Rich has to say:

It's not as if the White House didn't pull out all the stops to milk the terror plot to further its politics of fear. One self-congratulatory presidential photo op was held at the National Counterterrorism Center, a dead ringer for the set in "24." But Mr. Bush's Jack Bauer is no more persuasive than his Tom Cruise of "Top Gun." By crying wolf about terrorism way too often, usually when a distraction is needed from bad news in Iraq, he and his administration have long since become comedy fodder, and not just on "The Daily Show." June's scenario was particularly choice: as Baghdad imploded, Alberto Gonzales breathlessly unmasked a Miami terror cell plotting a "full ground war" and the destruction of the Sears Tower, even though the alleged cell had no concrete plans, no contacts with terrorist networks and no equipment, including boots.

What makes the foiled London-Pakistan plot seem more of a serious threat — though not so serious it disrupted Tony Blair's vacation — is that the British vouched for it, not Attorney General Gonzales and his Keystone Kops. This didn't stop Michael Chertoff from grabbing credit in his promotional sprint through last Sunday’s talk shows. "It was as if we had an opportunity to stop 9/11 before it actually was carried out," he said, insinuating himself into that royal we. But no matter how persistent his invocation of 9/11, our secretary of homeland security is too discredited to impress a public that has been plenty disillusioned since Karl Rove first exhibited the flag-draped remains of a World Trade Center victim in a 2004 campaign commercial. We look at Mr. Chertoff and still see the man who couldn't figure out what was happening in New Orleans when the catastrophe was being broadcast in real time on television.

Take a look at the whole thing, either at The New York Times's subscription-only site, or at The Unknown Candidate. You read. You decide. (It's the new Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk slogan.)