Views » February 24, 2003

Sweeps Week War

By Ana Marie Cox

The latest pronouncement by our Cowboy-in-Chief about the possibility of war dipped into the president’s vocabulary of the vernacular: “The game is over.”

Could the administration be looking to popular culture for more than just catch phrases? A recent article in the Wall Street Journal pointed out a new development in television that is disappointing, inevitable and curiously reminiscent of Bush’s governing strategy.

The Journal reported that “sweeps week,” long the haven of stunt programming designed to breathe momentary life into established series (with such attention-getting stunts as celebrity guest stars and the opening of various tombs and vaults), has become a sad, self-contained mini-season all its own—designed to expire ingloriously after the advertising rates are secured. Upcoming during this February’s sweeps week: ABC’s Are You Hot?—a contest that adopts the ruthless ego-bashing celebrity panel of judges of FOX’s American Idol, but eliminates any need for talent.

Also coming in February, if you believe the president’s boast of “weeks, not months,” is a sensationalist sequel to the Gulf War. I predict high ratings.

An organized PR offensive is already underway. The administration has placed key officials not just on the usual round of Sunday chat shows, but in the warm embrace of local newscasters. Donald Rumsfeld chatted with the anchors of affiliates in Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and Minneapolis. Paul Wolfowitz oozed charm with the folks of New York and San Francisco. In Cleveland, WJW-TV came after Wolfowitz with the following: “Mr. Secretary, you’re the expert on Iraq. You’re the guy the president calls for information here. What is the strongest case [Colin Powell made] in front of the United Nations?”

Not exactly a hard-hitting question. But the depressing spectacle of the sweeps week war hides more than a unilateralist will to empire. The war and its accompanying show, good idea or bad, distract us from the rest of Bush’s dismal programming schedule. Worst of all is the Bush budget, a $2.23 trillion-dollar deficit-expanding bonanza of tax cuts, reduced social spending and defense-contractor-pleasing.

The bad news is about what you’d expect. There’s the bald-faced retreat on several programs the president proudly trotted out as recently as last month. At a visit to the National Institutes of Health, Bush lauded a “bioshield” initiative to guard against bioterrorist attacks, but NIH will have a difficult time enacting any new programs under a budget that caps its spending at current levels.

Recently, Housing Secretary Mel Martinez told homebuilders that the administration would put $200 million toward boosting homeownership by low-income families, but the new budget cuts more than twice that amount—$574 million—out of a program for refurbishing existing public-housing units.

And the $15 billion in African AIDS relief Bush proposed in the State of the Union address matches the cuts made from a separate development-aid initiative, a move that prompted one activist group to complain of “robbing Peter to pay Peter.”

But this zero-sum math pales next to the much larger issue no one in Washington is seriously addressing: How the proposed spending and massive tax cuts would move the country toward bankruptcy. By 2050, according to the administration’s own numbers, the United States will incur a debt that’s 250 percent of GDP. So much for another one of the president’s State of the Union promises: “We will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations.”

Economists and oracles, including Alan Greenspan, are mystified by the president’s outrageous contention that a deficit of a few trillion dollars is exactly what the economy needs. Addressing the Senate Banking Committee, Greenspan dispensed with his usual cryptic pronouncements and plainly stated, “We have to make sure the fiscal vehicle does not run off the road.” Economist J. Bradford Delong criticizes the plan in clearer terms: “I really cannot understand why anyone would do this.”

To those who simply point to the pattern of the Reagan years, where huge deficits justified gutting social programs, one can only reply that at least Reagan was honest about his intent. Bush continues to make empty promises about mentoring programs, childcare and housing.

The White House’s self-serving neglect of the lessons of the recent past parallels the precarious state of the president’s popularity right now, war or no war. While outright approval ratings are holding steady at around 60 percent, nearly half of those polled disapprove of how he’s handling the economy.

The fiscal irresponsibility exhibited by the administration has even Republicans scratching their heads. The Washington Post reports that the White House’s congressional allies are balking at some of the budget’s centerpieces, including the elimination of taxes on stock dividends.

At a hearing with White House Budget Director Mitch Daniels, Minnesota Republican Rep. Gil Gutknecht declared, “I must say, this is a tough pill to swallow.” Gutknecht went on: “It’s very difficult for us to justify borrowing an extra million—oh, I’m sorry, an extra trillion, or two trillion, whatever the number is, from our grandchildren—in order to say yes to all these national priorities.”

The presidency of George W. Bush has been built upon an unspoken desire not to repeat the mistakes of his father. But seeing the debacle over the budget unfold, one can only hope that in 2004 we’ll be watching a re-run from 1992.

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• Reader Comments

  Re:Sweeps
  The part of all of this that is truly insulting is the insult to our intelligence!  Obviously Mr. Bush thinks that we were left farther behind than he was. It would be funny if didn’t feel that he is trying to destroy America as we know it. Oh well, I am nearly 66 years old so I will miss the most of the really terrible things. I worry about my family that will be left behind though.  I have sent e-mails and etc. to all of my family and friends. They ,for the most part, seem deaf, dumb and blind. They are nearly all mad or frustrated with me and what they call my obsesssion.  HAH

  Posted by Sue McFadden on Feb 25, 2003 at 11:25 PM

  This situation grows more and more worrying by the day and the only solution I can see is to keepas many people as informed as possible about the true events. Too much information is not making it through the filters of the media (Murdoch, you are stifling the most important information available). Therefore, I too have engaged in email campaigns,.spreading those news stories that don’t wuite make the 6 0’clock. I’ve also constructed a website based around the ‘untold’ information.
  http://uk.geocities.com/heffalump3/iraq.htm

  Please visit the site as I keep it regularly updated.

  Posted by Jonathan Crossfield on Mar 3, 2003 at 12:45 AM

  So very true.  So many people tend to be focusing on the war as a major problem—which I am not discrediting, but there are other things that are being completely ignored.  How will Bush manage to provide childcare, health care, AIDS research, Hydrogen Car research, etc. and not hurt the economy more.  I am only 23 years old and already I fill that the US is digging themselves so far into debt that the US will not be a prosperous place for me to live when I’m 50 or for my grandchildren to live.  It is a sad, sad state. 

  Posted by Lauren on Mar 4, 2003 at 3:31 PM

  Even more disgusting than this “President’s” fiscal irresponsibility and rush to war, is the fact that it’s all being orchestrated by an administration with no legitimate claim to the White House in the first place. Here’s a man who lost not only the popular vote by half a million, but also (as has been well documented and widely reported outside of the U.S.) lost the Florida electoral vote by more than fifty thousand. If America were truly a nation of laws (which it clearly isn’t); if we were a genuine democracy (which, sadly, we never have been), George and his assorted cohorts would be in the west wing of Levenworth, instead of the White House; and the five Supreme Court “Justices” who aided him in his coup would, at the very least, be out of work and disbarred. We owe it to future generations to never forget what Bush and his party pulled off. And we must, no matter how futile the situation may seem, always come out in mass to defeat the Republican party in future elections. There are far more registered Democrats and Independents than Republicans. It comes down to a simple matter of numbers. If we all (or at least, most of us) actually went to the polls at every opportunity, the Republican party wouldn’t stand a chance. It’s not the strength of their supporters that keeps them in power. It’s the apathy of ours. Of course it’s disheartening to vote for a Democratic candidate who is often almost as conservative, and absolutely as corrupt, as his opponent. But we must first bite the bullet and unseat the Republican power structure. Then we will be in a viable position to either change the Democratic party, or build the popular support that’s necessary to replace it with a new alternative. But we must first resolve to unseat this party, who has shown through its actions in the last presidential election, that when the outcome isn’t to their liking, they have an inalienable right to simply seize power through fraud and voter intimidation. We can’t let this stand. We can’t ever just sit by complacently, and let it happen again.

  Posted by Gregory J. Tyrey on Mar 9, 2003 at 4:36 PM

  Gog ---Were are the people when men like this get elected.  This president has made such a mess of just about everything.  One can only hope that we vote him out in the next election and pray he has not destroyed us all in the mean time!!!!!!!!! 

  Posted by Carol Berkeley on Mar 12, 2003 at 11:07 AM

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