It Was A Publicity Stunt - Not A Foreign Policy Statement

The following post is much of a column by Paul Krugman in the New York Times:

. . . showy actions that win a news cycle or two are no substitute for actual, coherent policies. Indeed, their main lasting effect can be to squander a government’s credibility. Which brings us to last week’s missile strike on Syria.

The attack instantly transformed news coverage of the Trump administration. Suddenly stories about infighting and dysfunction were replaced with screaming headlines about the president’s toughness and footage of Tomahawk launches.

But outside its effect on the news cycle, how much did the strike actually accomplish? A few hours after the attack, Syrian warplanes were taking offfrom the same airfield, and airstrikes resumed on the town where use of poison gas provoked Mr. Trump into action. No doubt the Assad forces took some real losses, but there’s no reason to believe that a one-time action will have any effect on the course of Syria’s civil war.

In fact, if last week’s action was the end of the story, the eventual effect may well be to strengthen the Assad regime — Look, they stood up to a superpower! — and weaken American credibility. To achieve any lasting result, Mr. Trump would have to get involved on a sustained basis in Syria.

Doing what, you ask? Well, that’s the big question — and the lack of good answers to that question is the reason President Barack Obama decided not to start something nobody knew how to finish.

So what have we learned from the Syria attack and its aftermath?

No, we haven’t learned that Mr. Trump is an effective leader. Ordering the U.S. military to fire off some missiles is easy. Doing so in a way that actually serves American interests is the hard part, and we’ve seen no indication whatsoever that Mr. Trump and his advisers have figured that part out.

Actually, what we know of the decision-making process is anything but reassuring. Just days before the strike, the Trump administration seemed to be signaling lack of interest in Syrian regime change.

What changed? The images of poison-gas victims were horrible, but Syria has been an incredible horror story for years. Is Mr. Trump making life-and-death national security decisions based on TV coverage?

One thing is certain: The media reaction to the Syria strike showed that many pundits and news organizations have learned nothing from past failures.

Mr. Trump may like to claim that the media are biased against him, but the truth is that they’ve bent over backward in his favor. They want to seem balanced, even when there is no balance; they have been desperate for excuses to ignore the dubious circumstances of his election and his erratic behavior in office, and start treating him as a normal president.

You may recall how, a month and a half ago, pundits eagerly declared that Mr. Trump “became the president of the United States today” because he managed to read a speech off a teleprompter without going off script. Then he started tweeting again.

One might have expected that experience to serve as a lesson. But no: The U.S. fired off some missiles, and once again Mr. Trump “became president.” Aside from everything else, think about the incentives this creates. The Trump administration now knows that it can always crowd out reporting about its scandals and failures by bombing someone.

So here’s a hint: Real leadership means devising and carrying out sustained policies that make the world a better place. Publicity stunts may generate a few days of favorable media coverage, but they end up making America weaker, not stronger, because they show the world that we have a government that can’t follow through.

And has anyone seen a sign, any sign, that Mr. Trump is ready to provide real leadership in that sense? I haven’t.

Bombing Of Syria Was Just A Trump Publicity Stunt

(Cartoon image is by Paul Zanetti at cagle.com.)

The Trump administration is trying to pass off its bombing of a Syrian air base as a humanitarian action to prevent Syria from gassing the rebels that oppose them. The more I think about the bombing, the more convinced I am that this is simply not true. The bombing was just a publicity stunt by the Trump administration.

Why do I say that? Consider how the bombing (by cruise missiles) was done. The Trump administration warned the Russians in advance of the bombing, knowing full well that Russia would warn its ally Syria. And that's exactly what happened. Both Russia and Syria used the warning to send both personnel and planes to a safe location. The only planes damaged in the bombing were six that were being repaired (and could not be removed).

The runway for the base was not bombed at all -- and according to observers, was back in operation the next day. How can you take an air base out of commission without bombing and destroying its runways? You can't. This tells me that Trump never intended to destroy the air base (or he would have targeted the runways with at least a few of the 59 missiles fired). It was all just an exercise in political theater (i.e., a publicity stunt). A few buildings were destroyed, but the base is still operational (and Syria has the same military capability it had before the bombing).

Why would Trump waste 59 cruise missiles on a publicity stunt? Because his job approval rating has been falling like a rock -- and currently rests in the mid-thirties (lower than any modern president in his first months in office) -- and that is unacceptable for a narcissist like Trump.

He could straighten out his chaotic White House, or alter his policies to more closely align with the wishes of the general population, but those would take time -- and he would have to admit that he's the architect of his own dismal approval ratings (something he seems incapable of doing).

The far easier way was to take military action against a supposed enemy (even though Syria has done nothing to endanger the United States). By sending Haley to the United Nations to claim the U.S. was acting out of a humanitarian concern, and then firing some missiles at Syria, Trump is able to pose as a warrior president -- a leader who worries about the Syrian people (the same people he is denying entry into the United States as refugees).

When presidents take military action, the country tends to unify behind them -- at least for a while. That was true when Bush I attacked Iraq, when Bush II attacked Afghanistan, and when Obama sent Navy Seals to take out Osama bin Laden. Trump is hoping that his publicity stunt will have the same effect, and that he can get his job approval up (without doing anything to justify it).

None of this should surprise us. Trump has always been more about show than substance (or as we say in Texas -- all hat and no cattle). Trump is a poser, and now he's posing as a military leader. I hope most Americans are smart enough to see through it.

Clinton & Trump Are Candidates Most Mentioned On News

Publicity is the life-blood of a political campaign, and the more coverage a candidate gets through the news media, the less critical it is to have huge amounts of money to spend on campaign advertising. As the chart above (from Television Campaign Tracker) shows the "winners' of being mentioned by the news media are Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Is that really good? Much, if not most, of the mentions have been negative for Clinton and for Trump. Considering that, I think it shows the strength of both candidates that they both still hold large leads in their respective primary races.

Some might say that any mention, even negative ones, are good -- but I'm not at all sure I buy that. There have been times in the past when negative publicity on the news programs have killed campaigns.

Sanders supporters have been complaining loudly that their candidate doesn't get his fair share of coverage. But I wonder if they'd really like to have an enormous amount of negative coverage. I suspect they'd then be complaining about how that large coverage was still unfair.

The charts below show the percentage of news media mentions by each candidate in their own party race.

Recent Bad Publicity Hasn't Hurt Professional Football

During the past few weeks and months, the National Football League (NFL) has gotten a significant amount of bad publicity. First there were players who were violent to women in their lives. Then came a player who physically abused his 4 year old son so badly with a "switch" that ugly scars were still visible several days later. The NFL was pilloried not only for what those players did, but also for the league's rather tepid reaction to those crimes (and they were crimes).

Then PBS aired a documentary about research that is showing that collisions (a part of the sport) may be causing brain damage in players -- damage that grows even more serious after players grow older and retire. The NFL's only answer to this growing body of research is to deny there is a problem (pointing to a thoroughly inadequate study of their own).

With all the negative publicity the NFL has gotten recently, a reasonable person might think it would have hurt the popularity of professional football -- but he/she would be wrong. The charts in this post were made from information in a new Harris Poll (done between September 10th and 17th of a random national sample of 2,543 adults). It shows that the popularity of professional football has not waned in light of the bad publicity.

Note that the popularity of professional football has actually risen a point over last year (from 54% to 55%) -- and it remains the most popular professional sport in America. And when you break the population down demographically, you find that every group but one has a majority following the sport -- and that one group, women, has 43% still following the sport. It is readily apparent that, while the negative publicity got a lot of headlines and airtime, it has not put even a small dent in the popularity of professional football.

Where's The News?

Looking at the "news" headlines the last couple of weeks, it's not hard to see why many Americans are ignorant of what is happening in this country and the world. Many Americans are very poor at world geography and history. They couldn't even find such countries as French Guyana, New Guinea, Burkina Faso and Oman on a map.

How many of your neighbors do you think could tell you what is happening in Sudan, Dardur, Venezuela or Lebanon right now? And these are countries that have had a tiny bit of coverage lately.

I'll bet nearly anyone you meet could tell you what's happening with Anna Nicole Smith or Britney Spears though. After all, these have been the top stories on all the news programs lately. But is this really news?

When I was younger, news giants like Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntly and David Brinkley filled us in on what was happening in our country and the world. They left the entertainment updates to others because they knew it was not really news.

Nowdays, a good part of a newscast is spent advertising the networks other shows that are coming up. This is even true for the so-called 24 hour news stations. Maybe it is time to remind these networks just what news is.

I forget who said it, but I like this definition. News is what makes those in power uncomfortable - everything else is either publicity or propaganda.

How can we expect Americans to be educated to what is going on in our country and the world, when all we give them is publicity and propaganda?