No News is Good News (Sort of)

Whatever you want to say about George W. Bush, he certainly has the whole “vision thing” that his father so conspicuously lacked. On the issue of terrorism, Bush has tried to look ahead, but he has done so by neglecting the present.

Unlike most people in politics and many in that diffuse group clumped together as “the media,” Bush does not think in the short term. For him, the war on terror is “intergenerational,” and he sees himself as setting up the procedures and systems necessary for future presidents to combat Islamic extremism.

In his Sept. 14 column in the New York Times David Brooks tried to piece together something of an explanation for Bush’s seeming obsession with the longue duree (and his failure in implementing his own vision). According to Brooks, Bush has been influenced largely by his experience in the business world: “Like many executives, he believes that the higher you go, the further into the future you should see.”

Perhaps there is another reason for the president’s hyperopia: By his own admission, Bush rarely opens up a newspaper. Of course when this rare glimpse into Bush’s psyche was revealed in the fall of 2003, commentators almost universally saw it as a bad thing, but there might be something to be said for steering clear of the cavalcade of facts and (occasionally) half-baked opinions found in newspapers.

The British cleric and essayist John Henry Newman, for one, despised the “parti-colored ingenuities” and “reckless originality of thought” that periodical literature seems to engender. He saw the continual arrival of deadlines as a type of “cruel slavery,” driving writers to reduce everything to “nutshell truths for the breakfast table.”

Newman was writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, but his criticism has a ring of truth to it. While he may sound like a bit of a curmudgeon, the format of the daily newspaper is certainly not conducive to reflection.

Please bear in mind that I am loath to denigrate newspapers in any way. I myself am an avid reader of newspapers, and this piece itself is published in a paper. Then again, Plato decried the pernicious new invention of writing by writing his Phaedrus, so there is at least some precedent for this type of thing. Despite my inclinations there are some ways in which newspapers do bring harm.

It is an unfortunate truth that an equitable Middle East settlement or a full portrait of broad trends like globalization cannot be reduced to 600-800 words. Thomas Friedman, recognizing the limitations of his column, wrote a full-length book on globalization to fill in the gaps of analysis left in the interstitial spaces between his previous columns. Then he did it all over again.

News stories do, however, differ from columns. Here the problem is not poor and hasty analysis (although Bush, in fact, does refer to the media as a “filter” of the news). Instead the type of news found in newspapers, on the radio, and on television can act as a distraction to more important issues. The immense focus on the short-term particulars so rampant in many articles is anathema to Bush’s focus on large blocks of time.

Of course, by not picking up a newspaper, the President has stopped himself from picking up a few bad habits, but at the expense of picking up others. By acquiring the whole “vision thing” Bush has become far-sighted, but his vision of the details has significantly deteriorated.

Too bad Bush has been unable to combine his visionary and perceptive take on what is becoming the ideological struggle of our times with a greater attention to the details which are attendant upon resolving this same struggle. Hopefully future leaders will see matters more clearly. While there is a time and place for Bush’s sweeping and grandiose take on culture and civilization, he could use a little bit more of a newspaper mentality in his daily governance.

However, it’s not only the president who needs to change; we all need to be aware of the media’s limitations. Here at Harvard people tend to be rapid consumers of news. We could use some bifocals just as much as Bush. Now, if that could happen wouldn’t it be a truly stellar “vision thing”?



Charles R. Drummond ’09, a Crimson editorial comper, is a history oncentrator in Adams House.