"The signs are not so awful"

Tiny, like President Bush, has a great poker face. From her expression, you might think "worried exotic cat, caught in a trap and about to be traded in the illegal rare-species market." But no. She's just jumped into the laundry basket and preparing to attack -- and vanquish -- an enemy sock being dangled before her.

When we first learned from Rob A's Fine? Why Fine? first thing this morning that the broadcast networks aren't planning to carry President Bush's primetime speech tonight at 8 -- in which he will lay out a "clear strategy" for the future of Iraq -- we shared his outrage:

All we hear is how the Bush administration has no clear strategy and hasn't told the American people the hard truths about what's going on in Iraq. Well, here he is trying to do just that, but the media won't cooperate. Every time Bush goes public with his thoughts about Iraq, he usually gets a bump in the polls because the American people do trust him. He doesn't get out in front of the disparaging media coverage enough. And when he tries, it's not surprising that the same media that attacks him refuses to help him.

But then we checked out Andrew Sullivan's Bushometer readings, which have been just this side of wobbly of late, and we started to feel a lot better:

After a while, you get to know how to read the major media about Iraq. Much good news will be reluctantly produced and buried within the paper. All bad news will get banner headlines. But today, the Washington Post leads with the Coalition's successes in Kufa and the Times publishes this story by Edward Wong, whose reporting has been excellent. The Mahdi Army, Moqtadr al-Sadr's gang, has essentially withdrawn from Karbala under fire in part from Iraqi soldiers, trained by the U.S. Special Forces. The militia has also withstood terrible casualties in Kufa, and may be on the verge of collapse. Fallujah, for the time at least, seems relatively pacified (if by worrying means). We are, in other words, seeing some modest military progress in Iraq. Politically, we are just at the beginning of a critical period, but, again, the signs are not so awful. The jostling for positions in the new government is surely a sign that Iraqis are beginning to battle politically for new power. Better than a civil war.

Hope is not a strategy, but we're feeling hopeful, as are many Iraqi bloggers -- their opinions summarized here by Jeff Jarvis -- who aren't all gloom and doom as the Western press is. And don't forget blog reports straight from our own troops at the front -- like those you should check out at Marine Corps Moms -- where the bad news is fairly balanced with the good. GW specifically did not request those "Big Four" networks to broadcast his speech live. We know what a great poker player he is. While those about him are frantically showing their cards, we suspect he's holding an ace or two up his sleeve.

Comments

[Rob A.]

I don't know about this one.

The "rope-a-dope" strategy does seem to work for Bush, but maybe the adminstration's going to the well one too many times.

They're saying this is only the first of 6 big speeches he's going to give in the near future, so maybe this will build toward a speech delivered on the "big 4."

[Carole]

I think the fact is that President Bush is working
as hard as any human can to keep the promises he
made to the people of America. Keeping them safe
is what he works for, as well as the world where
everyone benefits, they just won't admit it.
Who cares?