Despite Hillary Clinton surging past 40,000 minutes without answering a single question from the press, the media have continued to attack Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio for their answers about the wisdom of invading Iraq. This time, former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather joined the chorus on MSNBC, going as far as to tell Rachel Maddow that Bush and Rubio would “score in the high 90s on a dumb test, because no one would give these kinds of answers.”
Of course, it was not enough for Rather to attack the two presidential candidates personally. He even implied that the two presidential candidates were nothing more than puppets for their big donors: “I think one of the reasons that the candidates are getting in trouble early on with answers is they are trying to give answers that will satisfy their biggest contributors, the kind of contributors who can give $100 million at a shot. It's the only explanation I can come up with why they`re staggering around it.”
Rather and Maddow continued the discussion by voicing skepticism that media – according to Maddow, they are in the business of protecting Republicans on the Iraq question – would appropriately rebut conservative claims about the Iraq War. Maddow asked Rather: “Do you have faith that the campaign -- either through the process of journalists covering the campaign and interviewing these candidates or the debates or the way they`re going to go after each other, do you have faith that the campaign process can actually do that hard work?” Rather replied that he did not have faith, but he did have hope.
Earlier in the segment, Maddow insisted that the media was doing an insufficient job of pointing out the supposed errors that candidates made when answering questions on Iraq: “When these Republican presidential candidates flub the answer on Iraq, they get dinged for flubbing the answer or saying things inartfully. But when they come up with this answer that the Iraq War was the right decision at the time, it was well-meaning, it was just that bad intelligence and -- oh, by the way, it`s nice Saddam`s gone -- by and large that`s treated as the right answer.”
She argued that the debate about the Iraq War was “an almost existential moral question” about how America went to war “on the basis of a deliberate lie.” It seems that the media’s already hostile position toward Republicans on Iraq is not enough for Ms. Maddow; rather, she expects the media to attack Republicans who find it dubious that the Bush Administration intentionally lied to the public regarding the war.
The relevant transcript is below:
MADDOW: It is satisfying in an uncomplicated way, right, to see Jon Stewart take Judith Miller apart as she continues to try to say it was an intelligence failure – you know, continues to try to deflect from her own portion of the responsibility for helping to start the Iraq War under false pretenses.
But at another level, right, yes, that`s satisfying to see but we really are back in a situation again where great liberal heroes like Jon Stewart and The Daily Show and liberal columnist Paul Krugman in The New York Times today, and leading lefty bloggers like the great Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo and good old Greg Sargent at The Washington Post, they are all arguing passionately again about the fact that this wasn`t an intelligence failure, that this is the Bush administration lying us into war.
But that's kind of just the left, right? The Republican political position and the mainstream media position on the Iraq War in 2015 is now becoming something that's not that. When these Republican presidential candidates flub the answer on Iraq, they get dinged for flubbing the answer or saying things inartfully. But when they come up with this answer that the Iraq War was the right decision at the time, it was well-meaning, it was just that bad intelligence and -- oh, by the way, it's nice Saddam`s gone -- by and large that`s treated as the right answer.
You know, on Sunday morning that doesn't get followed up with questions rebutting that. That is seen as the correct answer. If the hard questions we ask ourselves about the Iraq War is whether or not there`s a more stable or less stable Anbar province now with Saddam gone, if that's the hard question, then we are arguing about the relative merits of where to sell our volcanic ash and sand after it buried us in that disaster, right?
The problem here is not, you know, what to do with the side effect that you might feel good or bad about. The problem of the Iraq War is not, how did it work out? The problem here for us as a country -- which is an almost existential moral question for us as a country -- is how did we go to war on the basis of a deliberate lie? That's the question.
And if that`s not what we are debating, it doesn't matter what the answer is.
Joining us is Dan Rather. He`s host of The Big Interview on AXS TV.
Dan, it is great to you. Thank you so much for being here.
DAN RATHER, AXS TV: Delighted to be with you.
MADDOW: I love covering politics and I love election season because it gives us these crystalline moments to tell good stories about who we are as a country and who we want to be and to have big fights about important things. I'm so excited we're fighting about Iraq but I'm bereft at the way we're fighting it. How do you see this issue?
RATHER: Well, first of all, I see it as something the American people in the main and as a whole understand. They understand that going into Iraq was a strategic blunder of historic proportions --
MADDOW: Yes.
RATHER: -- with terrible consequences that are going to echo and resonate for a long time. They understand that this was a colossal mistake.
If I'm any judge, and frequently I`m not, they want to talk about what do we do now? We`re paying the price for it now. Listen, in Iraq, several trillion dollars went. More importantly, 4,500 or so of our best men and women, American men and women, died in that battlefield. Tens of thousands of Iraqi died and for what?
MADDOW: Hundreds of thousands.
RATHER: Hundreds of thousands.
This was a result of this colossal mistake. So, I think the American people see this clearly for what it is. I think that they are surprised, stunned, I`m tempted to use the word sort of stupefied by the Republican candidates who have responded thus far, particularly former Governor Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio that they seem to be unprepared for the question.
Now, let`s say it clearly. These are two intelligent men. And they do have a record of public service of their own. You cannot like them if you -- but nonetheless, these are not dumb people. How and why they made these mistakes with former Governor Bush giving four different answers to the question as you pointed out, Marco Rubio giving several answers -- I simply don't understand it. They're too intelligent to do this.
On the other hand, not only have they done it, they continue to do it and they leave the impression, I think an erroneous impression that they would score in the high 90s on a dumb test, because no one would give these kind of answers. Fortunately for them, it`s still early in the campaign. It`s still long way to go. And can they recover from this? I think the answer is probably they can.
But it leaves unanswered two questions. Number one, how and why did this happen? They`re too smart for this. They`re too experienced for this and each of them, by the way, have very strong, very smart advisors. I know some of the advisors in each of these two camps. They`re smart people.
But I`m mystified how this can happen. The other question is, are we going to ask ourselves the really tough questions.
MADDOW: Yes, exactly.
RATHER: And are we going to seek answers on the really tough questions or are we just going to kind of plow around the base of the mountain with this business of -- well, they misspeak. I think those are the important things.
MADDOW: Do you have faith that the campaign -- either through the process of journalists covering the campaign and interviewing these candidates or the debates or the way they`re going to go after each other, do you have faith that the campaign process can actually do that hard work. Not the gotcha stuff but the real hard work there.
RATHER: I do not have faith. I do have hope.
MADDOW: Okay.
RATHER: That hope springs eternal to use the cliche but I don`t have faith in it because it hasn`t been the case in the past. And I think we have to remember in the background of this, and I think one of the answers possibly to why did they do this, why did they bungle answers to the obvious question being asked is this will be a $5 billion plus presidential campaign.
And I think one of the reasons that the candidates are getting in trouble early on with answers is they are trying to give answers that will satisfy their biggest contributors, the kind of contributors who can give $100 million at a shot. It`s the only explanation I can come up with why they're staggering around it.
