Village Wisdom
by digby
MSNBC is flogging a new poll that hasn't been released yet, with winks and nods and hints all day. Here's how they are characterizing the Afghanistan question:
Norah O'Donnell: {The president} has a lot on his plate right now, of course, health care and Afghanistan. We have a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out tonight, I kinow you're going to be previewing it tonight on NBC news. but can you just bgenerally talk about the mood of the public when it comes to Afghanistan?
Todd: Well, I'll just say this. Health care and the economy have ben very difficult topics. You ain't seen nothing yet as far as the politics of dealing with Afghanistan for this president. Because it won't be surprising, you've seen this on other surveys. Politically, this is going to be a tougher sell for the presidents most ardent supporters. What we found in our survey, I don't want to give away the numbers, but democrats and Republicans are in their respective divides when it comes to issues like sending more troops or not sending more troops., to stay in there to stay and fight or to immediately start an orderly withdrawal. So, we're seeing the same sort of democratic and Republican divides that we saw three or four years ago on iraq.
Basically it's remarkable that a lot of these numbers that we are seeing on Afghanistan are very similar that we saw on the pre-surge Iraq days, remember Norah, when that was a very politically divisive time politically in this country on that issue, never mind the actual violent time that was taking place in Iraq.
chatter, chatter about nonsense
Tamryn: how will this change the conversation tomorrow when those numbers come out?
Chuck: Well, I'll say this, I think there are bigger things that could change the public's view on Afghanistan. It could be as simple as, the more we learn about this terror pliot, I mean, we don't know...
Tamryn: ...exactly ...
Chuck: .. how connected is this terror plot, I mean we don't know, how connected is this terror plot with, did there, or were there contacts with pakistan, and in Afghanistan, you know connecting all of those, the public pays very close attention and I think we don't know what's going to have an impact on public opinion here.
Another thing to remember, when a president makes a significant national security decision, the country rallies around that president, it doesn't matter which party they are. So, don't be surprised if these numbers are more fluid than they seem right now.
First of all, note all the assumptions here. The first is that there's no doubt that Obama is going to escalate and that he's going to disappoint his most ardent followers. Village CW 101. The president must do what the right and the military wants --- always. It's just a matter of managing the dirty hippies.
The second assumption is that the Republicans are all going to fall in line with whatever the president does decide and I am not convinced that will happen. I think it's entirely possible that the Republicans are going to oppose the president on two fronts. One will be the McCain faction which will oppose Obama because he isn't going far enough and the other will be the Beck faction which reflexively opposes everything Obama does. They could all rally around Obama and "help" him escalate the war, but I will be surprised. I have a feeling that a fair number of Republicans will find a good reason to oppose his Afghanistan policy. They have certainly had no problems opposing military action undertaken by Democratic presidents before.
Finally, while I have certainly observed the phenomenon of rallying around the president when the country goes to war, I've never understood it to mean that they will rally around any "significant national security decision." Where does he come up with such nonsense?
If he's speaking about he political establishment, well, that's a different story. They pretty much always back any national security decision that results in more blood being shed and the United States being able to metaphorically strut around the world stage with a big, hard helmet. I don't know for sure what their motives are, but my suspicion is that they vicariously enjoy the martial glory of battles they don't personally have to fight. (And to them, the only things that are too expensive are those things that directly benefit the American people.) But that's just a guess. Their motives are far too complicated for mere mortals to fully understand.
In any case, Todd is probably parroting the lazy narrative that's about to emerge about Afghanistan and without any self-consciousness whatsoever, falsely attribute to the public the attitudes of the Village --- as usual. Like all pundits and fatuous gasbags he believes that he is a reflection of public opinion, not a shaper of it. (And when you think about that, it's a remarkable admission that they truly believe nobody cares what they say about anything.)
The problem is that Todd and his ilk do shape the way the straight news is presented and so his attitudes are quite influential. The public often goes its own way in spite of that, but it's only because the attitudes of the villagers are so often ridiculously out of step with what Americans actually believe and so their "shaping" of the news doesn't make sense to average consumers. But the media doesn't make it easy for Americans to understand their world and make rational assessments about it because people like Chuck Todd are working so hard to push these lazy story lines.
The people are not rising up against Afghanistan out of the usual partisan rancor. Obviously. most of the poeple who are against the war are of the same party as the president who so far, supports it. And a fair number of others are at least ambivalent because of that. Todd's analysis on every level is nonsensical.
Update: Chris Matthews seems to think that the war in Afghanistan is more immediately "life threatening" to average Americans than the inadequacy of their health security and they probably want the president to stop obsessing over this health care nonsense. I don't know about you, but I know that I am far more likely to be killed by inadequate health care than I am by the off chance that the Taliban is plotting an attack in Santa Monica. I think there are quite a few of my fellow citizens who are a bit more concerned at the moment about such mundane (to the villagers) topics as the economy and medical coverage.
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