Politico Falsely Reports That Skelton Distanced Himself From MoveOn
September 11, 2007 -- 8:45 PM EST // //
The Politico has a story today claiming that MoveOn's ad attacking General Petraeus yesterday threw the Dems "off stride" and gave a big boost to Republican efforts to paint the party as antimilitary.
To bolster this point, Politico includes this anecdote about Dem Rep. Ike Skelton:
In an expression of his own alarm, when the hearing started, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat in charge of the proceedings, distanced himself from MoveOn’s claims, calling Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker “two of America’s finest.”There's only one problem with this assertion that out of "alarm" Skelton "distanced himself" from MoveOn when the hearing started yesterday: It never happened.Skelton directed his criticism instead at the general’s predecessors at the Pentagon for failing to employ an effective strategy during the first three years of the Iraq conflict...
But Skelton’s efforts at damage control failed to satisfy Republicans.
I just went through a transcript of Skelton's opening statement, which is where these Politico quotes are taken from. Ironically, you can read it right here on the Politico's Crypt blog. And nowhere in it do you find a mention of "MoveOn."
Yes, Skelton praised the two men. But to say Skelton's praise was mere "damage control" undertaken out of "alarm" is an enormous stretch, particularly since he never brought up the ad. After all, Skelton has praised Petraeus in similar terms in the past -- before the MoveOn ad.
What's really unsightly about this is the implication that Skelton's real motive for praising Petraeus and Crocker wasn't that he was being sincere, but that he was worried about MoveOn and distancing himself from it. Skelton's praise of them was nothing but "damage control," we're told.
This is a very sloppy screwup in service of the larger chosen narrative here -- that Republicans would automatically gain from this, and that Dems would automatically be thrown on the defensive by it. This is of course because voters are automatically susceptible, by instinct, to the GOP message that Dems are anti-military.
This little screwup is symptomatic of something larger: A developing media and pundit narrative which has it that the alleged gains of the "surge" and the gleam of Petraeus' medals have made it inevitable that public opinion will shift on Iraq and that the Dems will inevitably revert to a defensive crouch while the GOP is already basking in the confidence of inevitable success.
Look, who knows what Dems will end up doing, but the picture is much more complex and fluid than this. What always puzzles me is this bizarre eagerness to report the story this way, even to the point of concocting anecdotes out of nothing to support it.
Update: This piece in The New York Times demonstrates pretty clearly just how uncertain the political situation is right now by quoting numerous key Republicans saying that despite Petraeus' testimony, they will still pursue a shift of mission in Iraq.