The bigger, badder, more bellicose bullies than Bush and the Mainstream Media

It's disturbing that the Republican candidates for prez are almost all making George W. Bush look like a moderate. All of them want to be bigger, badder, more bellicose bullies than Bush. My fear is that this will encourage the Democratic candidates to move to the right so that they don't look to the idiots in our news media like they're too far to the left of these hairy chest thumpers. My hope is that they are driving the Republican Party right off the cliff, but that pre-presumes that the American public has a brain. Up till now, they haven't been able to demonstrate much of one since 2000.

On that note, Paul Krugman launches into our somnolent mainstream media once again in today's NY Times [behind subscription wall]. Here are some excerpts:

In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the “gaffe of the night”?

Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven’t changed a bit.

... Now fast forward to last Tuesday. Asked whether we should have invaded Iraq, Mr. Romney said that war could only have been avoided if Saddam “had opened up his country to I.A.E.A. inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction.” He dismissed this as an “unreasonable hypothetical.”

Except that Saddam did, in fact, allow inspectors in. Remember Hans Blix? When those inspectors failed to find nonexistent W.M.D., Mr. Bush ordered them out so that he could invade. Mr. Romney’s remark should have been the central story in news reports about Tuesday’s debate. But it wasn’t.

... Look, debates involving 10 people are, inevitably, short on extended discussion. But news organizations should fight the shallowness of the format by providing the facts — not embrace it by reporting on a presidential race as if it were a high-school popularity contest.

For if there’s one thing I hope we’ve learned from the calamity of the last six and a half years, it’s that it matters who becomes president — and that listening to what candidates say about substantive issues offers a much better way to judge potential presidents than superficial character judgments. Mr. Bush’s tax lies, not his surface amiability, were the true guide to how he would govern.

And I don’t know if this country can survive another four years of Bush-quality leadership.

I do know, and the answer is, it can't!