Something for Everyone

Howard Kurtz reviews the post-election spin from various quarters.

Less than an hour before the Iraqi polls closed, correspondent Jim Maceda was reporting on MSNBC that some voters were so afraid that they asked if they could sneak in the back of a polling station. At almost the same moment, CNN's Jane Arraf was interviewing a man who was proud to talk about his vote in front of a camera.

<...>

Later on Sunday morning, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was declaring the election process "better than expected" on "Face the Nation," one of four Sunday shows she dropped by, while Sen. John Kerry was cautioning on "Meet the Press" that "no one should overhype this election." President Bush went before the cameras at 1 p.m. to declare the elections a "resounding success," and most newspaper front pages trumpeted his assessment yesterday.

"Iraq has become part and parcel of American domestic politics, and subject to all the tricks of the trade of American politics," said Kenneth Pollack, an Iraq expert at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center. "Condi, the president -- the administration was definitely out there trying to turn it into something bigger. It was a very good day -- though it may be irrelevant in the long term -- but it could have been catastrophic."

That makes two elections in the past four months that John Kerry thinks are not to be "over hyped". It boils down to this: Democrats, who have had months to convince themselves that the American elections really don't reflect the level of support they have in this country (and thus don't mean much), are clearly (and predictably) stating that the Iraqi elections are equally insubstantial. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, it's a big part of the Tigris, Euphrates, and Potomoc rivers too.

From the same column, Donatella Lorch, a onetime foreign correspondent for Newsweek, NBC and the New York Times, explains why most American reporters don't really understand Iraqi thinking:

"What we've missed out on is Iraqi thinking," said Donatella Lorch, a onetime foreign correspondent for Newsweek, NBC and the New York Times, because "our reporters on the ground are so constrained. As a westerner, you can't go out and visit Hassan on the fourth floor of his apartment for dinner and find out how he's feeling. It's not a pleasant job, being a reporter in Baghdad," said Lorch, who directs the Knight International Press Fellowships.

Translation: "We were too terrified of the 'insurgents' to go out and learn that the Iraq people aren't that terrified of the 'insurgents'". I'm not sure who "we" are that she mentions, but I've gained some insight into Iraqi thinking via the blogs many Iraqis run - and that includes many who are anti-US.