Rick's Cafe Americain

Connecting the terror warnings to Bush’s political pitfalls.

There has been a great deal of debate - even within the little circle-jerk-blogworld we exist on the fringes of - about whether the Bush administration cynically uses the terror warnings to distract attention away from Kerry/Edwards or their own failings.

Not surprisingly, Karol comes to the opposite conclusion that I do.

In the comments section linked by Ugarte’s “circle jerk” phrase, I have a description of the logic behind raising terror alerts as an electoral strategy.  However, I don’t believe the Bush administration has an orchestrated strategy in this regard.  Call me naive, but I am not a bigger believe in conspiracy theories and just don’t think they are capable of orchestrating something as big as many are suggesting. 

I find the chart unconvincing primarily because there has been so much bad news for the Bush amdministration since the war in Iraq started going bad, that I think it would be hard to find time periods where an alert could be issued and not arguably tied to countering some sort of bad news for Bush.  I will admit, however, that the timing relating to the Padilla announcement was very troubling.  On the other hand, the post Edwards running mate and post convention announcements were so obvious and disorganized that if it is a grand conspiracy, we should vote out the Bushies for incompetence.

Ultimately, I suspect there are kernals of truth in what the conspiracy people are saying, after all, we would be naive if we thought that (for any adminstration in this day and age) they don’t think about and examine the effects of their announcements.  But Ugarte, and the others, I think you take things quite a bit too far—and give the Bushies too much credit.

As liberal as I am, I tend to agree that the chart is not convincing.  Bush’s ratings have been on a steady downward slide, except for big boosts like 9/11 and the Iraq invasion.  So of course whenever there’s an announcement, it will be keyed to a dip in his ratings. 

A more interesting comparison—and one that I think would yield a correlation—would be to test whether the warnings coincide with heavy media coverage of something Bush dislikes, either scandals in his administration, or good press for the Dems.  And several people have pointed out that Ashcroft comes out with some warning, or announcement regarding a captured suspect, just when media coverage becomes unfavorable.  In fact, there was a WaPo article awhile back about how Ashcroft made some announcement just when Abu Ghraib was breaking.  When a reporter called an unidentified official to follow up on Abu Ghraib, the official said—sarcastically—“Why are you asking about this?  Didn’t you hear we changed the subject?” And I believe that it was that warning where Ashcroft issued an alert without coordinating with Homeland Security, and Ridge even denied, at first, that there was any reason for an alert.  So I think the evidence of political games in undeniable.  The chart doesn’t prove it, though.

A more interesting comparison—and one that I think would yield a correlation—would be to test whether the warnings coincide with heavy media coverage of something Bush dislikes, either scandals in his administration, or good press for the Dems.

Actually, I thought that this was my point.  I have to take another writing class.

Sorry, Ugarte!  I was focusing more on the chart, which I understand was constructed based on approval ratings, right?  Also, a truly rigorous comparison would have been focused not just on what was in the news, but the intensity of coverage—if you’re me, it seems that every single day there’s a new horrible Bush story, so that measure alone wouldn’t do it.