This Media Life

In Search of WM(S)D

The problem, however, with these story lines is that they are at odds with each other. Indeed, the reason we are in Iraq in the first place is that significant parts of the Bush administration really want to be there. Wolfowitz, even with his caught-in-the-headlights look, doesn’t want to give up on this—doesn’t (perhaps sensibly) want to trust Iraqis with the process of democratization. And for much of the non-Powell side of the administration, only over their dead bodies would we turn back to the U.N. Not to mention, Rumsfeld surely thinks we can fight our way out of this.

So, dangerously, the story line from the Bush writers is full of divided motivations and intent.

If the Bushies can’t succeed with their narrative, we default to the alternative. The plotline becomes: Who’s responsible for this mess?

What if the Bushies lied to get us into this war? What if lots of people conspired to lie?

There are, in this regard—and very bad for the Bushies—the Brits.

Even the very smart media people in the Bush White House probably did not think through the fact that hooking up with Blair meant that we were going to hook up with British media—a more sour, more skeptical lot than our own. Major parts of the Brit press—including the BBC—have turned against their government in something of an us-or-you face-off. There’s now the sexed-up dossier and a dead civil servant (in terms of story line, the suicide of David Kelly, the weapons expert and BBC source, will function something like the suicide of Vince Foster—it provides the sinister subtext). And the sense that the Blair government hangs in the balance.

Now, not only does the British fudging of the evidence cast further doubt on the Bushies’ WMD sales pitch, but it makes the U.S. media more competitive. If the British media has found a story, why haven’t we? If they’re having fun, we should be having fun, too! The Brits, in their own competitive view, see the U.S. media as running three to four weeks behind them. Indeed, that’s a good narrative strategy: When you don’t have a clear story line, follow somebody else’s.

In the second act, after the smoking gun has been uncovered (or at least when the smoke from the smoking gun is swirling all around), there begins, for the Bush writers, the inevitable process of trying to assign the gun to somebody else.

This is the moment that in hindsight is always the one remembered as when the confession should have occurred. And indeed, someone obviously urged contrition from the president at his press conference last week. But while he got as far as the obligatory buck-stops-here mea culpa, he did not confess to the main charge: overselling the weapons.

That hot potato still exists—if the weapons aren’t found, someone will be stuck holding it.

Blame is in play.

It’s on the CIA now. It’s hovering near Condi Rice (who hovered near the president during his press conference). It keeps moving and spreading. The inevitable effect of reassigning the blame is that you start to really piss people off. Indeed, you piss off vast and powerful parts of the bureaucracy itself. And the bureaucracy, loyal only to itself, inevitably turns on you.

This is when, at the end of the second act, the other shoe drops—and it’s often a rebelling (read: leaking) bureaucracy that drops it. This is when we find out it’s not just sixteen words or a dodgy dossier but a big plan, a concerted effort—as that little box of italicized names in the New York Times of the latest American war dead grows.

And then the Blair government falls—which really gives the story a powerful kick.

Meanwhile, the Bushies are seeing this story in pulpier and less literary terms. For them, it’s a patriotic tale. A nation triumphant. It’s not about individuals, or this or that person’s career, but about national pride and aspirations.

There is, of course, a big audience for that sort of pageantlike drama. There’s also the fear theme that comes into focus now—uncovered cells, more arrests, more orange alerts. And then the September 11 motif—which may or may not have declining power.

Likewise, there are various potent plot twists and “wow” factors the Bushies are counting on.

Producing Saddam Hussein would be a trump card—of course, if the box in the New York Times keeps growing, that trump card would be one of depreciating value. (And not producing him may be something of a reverse trump card.)

Getting Osama would also really be a wow—he could be worth ten approval points overnight.

That approval rating, the Bushies know, is the real engine of the story. It’s the ultimate commercial imperative (and the true interactive element).

The media won’t go against great box office. On the other hand, if the approval rating, which has fallen from 86 to 56 percent, keeps on dropping, the Bushies are screwed.

But the polls remain equivocal.

That’s the problem now and the cause of the uneasiness: Nobody knows what the audience is thinking.

Does it rally for a long campaign, or is it distracted from it? Is it in a shock-and-awe mood (could it be put back in a shock-and-awe mood?), or is that so over with?

How to get its attention? The Brits at least have a suicide.

And yet nobody wants the muddle to go on forever.

A compelling story has to be told.

Either you have a hero, or you have a villain.

You have success, or you have failure.

There are rules.