Fault Lines

by Kevin M. Kruse

  Suddenly a media sensation, Colbert was asked to provide the entertainment in April 2006 for the White House Correspondents Dinner. Much like his show, his dinner routine mocked the president and the press in equal measure. “I know there’s some polls out there saying this man has a 32-percent approval rating,” Colbert said in character, with Bush at his side. “But guys like us, we don’t pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking ‘in reality.’ And reality has a well-known liberal bias.” At the same time, Colbert mocked the media’s handling of the Bush White House. “Let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: The president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home,” he said. With so much free time, Colbert continued, reporters could do other things: “Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration? You know, fiction!” Neither the president nor the press in the ballroom seemed to appreciate the withering sarcasm leveled by Colbert, but the speech quickly became a viral sensation online.24

  As comic pundits like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart proved that criticism of the president could be popular and profitable, “real news” followed suit. Notably, MSNBC, the station that had previously assumed antiwar dissent was a ratings killer, belatedly emerged as a critic of the administration, especially on its handling of the war on terror and the war in Iraq. Keith Olbermann, a former sports anchor at ESPN, emerged as MSNBC’s new star, hosting a nightly program called Countdown with Keith Olbermann. On August 30, 2006, the host introduced viewers to his first “special comment,” tearing into administration figures with vitriol previously unseen from the Left on cable television. “The man who sees absolutes where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning is either a prophet or a quack,” the host said, staring sternly into the camera. “Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.” The new feature soon became a staple of Olbermann’s show, prompting strong ratings as a result. The MSNBC host had become, in the double-edged praise of a New York Magazine title, the “Limbaugh for Lefties.” 25

  As criticism mounted in the press and its public approval collapsed, the Bush administration also faced serious setbacks in the war on terror. Controversies over the counterterrorism programs arose with revelations of violations of human rights and international treaties. Guantanamo Bay, or “Gitmo,” became a symbol for many Democrats of how the administration had violated the law in pursuit of terrorists. Even the Supreme Court struck a blow to the administration here. In its June 2006 decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the court ruled 5–3 that the special military commissions at Guantanamo violated both the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (Chief Justice Roberts, appointed by Bush the previous year, recused himself because he had been involved in an earlier stage of the case.) Contradicting the legal claims constructed by Vice President Dick Cheney and his allies in the executive branch, the court’s majority held that detainees had both the right to legal counsel and the right to challenge their arrest within the parameters of the US law. “The ruling destroys one of the key pillars of the Guantanamo system,” noted Gerald Staberock, director of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva. “Guantanamo was built on the idea that prisoners there have limited rights. There is no longer that legal black hole.” 26

  The war in Iraq also continued to disintegrate. With Saddam Hussein’s repressive regime out of power, internal ethnic conflict increasingly tore the region apart. Unlike the swift and seemingly decisive victories of the “shock and awe” bombing campaigns and the initial invasion, American troops found themselves fighting an ever more complex and frustrating war. Increasingly, they came under attack through the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Set up as booby traps or detonated through radio-controlled detonators, IEDs were often buried in unpaved roads, hidden inside dead animals, or placed alongside railroad tracks. These homemade bombs originally cost about $1,200 to make, but by 2009 they could be assembled for under $300, as insurgents learned how to use American military material that had been left behind in the initial invasion. “There’s more ammunition in Iraq than any place I’ve ever seen in my life, and it’s not securable,” complained General John P. Abizaid, head of the US Central Command.27

  As the administration’s political problems escalated, Democrats seized the initiative. Polls in late 2006 showed that two-thirds of the public said the war in Iraq was not going well and directly disapproved of the president’s handling of the issue. In a stunning reversal of the 2002 midterms, it was the Democrats who now politicized national security concerns and the Republicans who found themselves playing defense. With TV ads spotlighting their resistance to the war and highlighting the administration’s failures, the opposition party turned the tables. “For the first time in modern memory, Democrats are actually on the offensive when it comes to national security,” marveled a political consultant. “It is really stunning.” To be sure, other issues helped the opposition party recover its footing, from the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina to a series of ethical scandals involving the House GOP leadership. But anger and frustration over the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq remained central.28 Campaigning against the Iraq war, Democrats took control of both houses of Congress that fall. They won thirty-one seats in the House and five in the Senate, flipping both chambers back to Democratic control and returning America to its new norm of divided government. “It was a thumping,” a chastened Bush admitted at a White House news conference soon after the election. “I’m confident that we can work together,” he announced. “I’m confident that we can overcome the temptation to divide the country between red and blue.” 29

  Seeking to forge a compromise between the parties, President Bush looked to an issue on which he had solid credentials: immigration. As governor of Texas during the 1990s, Bush had resisted calls for restrictions on immigration and immigrants’ rights as championed by hard-liners in his party. In pointed contrast to Governor Pete Wilson of California, the sympathetic Bush told reporters that immigrants were good people who “come to Texas to provide for their families. . . . They come for love.” As president, Bush had worked to win over Latino voters to the Republican Party and now saw immigration reform as the key to his plans. The administration rallied around a bipartisan proposal in the Senate that struck a compromise between those who wanted increased border patrols to cut down on new waves of illegal immigration and those who sought a path to citizenship for the twelve million undocumented immigrants already in the nation. While the measure won significant support from politicians in both parties, a revolt by conservatives—who complained that the bill represented “amnesty” for those who had entered the country illegally—effectively killed the measure that summer. Talk radio had been a “big factor” in derailing the plan, noted Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an outspoken opponent. Supporters had hoped to pass it quickly, he said, “before Rush Limbaugh could tell the American people what was in it.” But conservative media had shored up the resistance on the right and killed the bill.30

  Unable to win over hard-liners in his own party, Bush looked to foreign affairs, where he had a freer hand. In a sign of his new conciliatory stance toward Democrats, but also a recognition that the administration’s approach in Iraq needed new leaders, Bush now accepted the resignation of his long embattled defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Publicly, the president announced he wanted to “stay the course” in Iraq, but the White House soon shifted its strategies. Rather than pulling back from the conflict, as many of his critics expected, however, the president doubled down. In early 2007, Bush announced a major change known simply as “the surge.” Under the leadership of the new defense secretary, Robert Gates, and General David Petraeus, the military launched a significant escalation with 21,5
00 additional troops. The strategy involved much more than an increase in the size of the military presence, as troops redirected their energy away from fighting insurgents to trying to win over the loyalty of local Iraqis. Though Bush’s popularity still fell and support for the wars declined, the new strategy succeeded. The situation on the ground started to stabilize with the number of deaths decreasing. As early as April 2007, military officials claimed that areas such as the Anbar province, recently thought to be lost to insurgents, were now under US control as local Sunni recruits started to turn decisively against al-Qaeda leaders.31

  Meanwhile, the domestic war on terror continued to expand as well. In 2007, the administration secretly launched the PRISM program. Through this covert operation, the National Security Agency (NSA) began to collect internet communications in a sweeping virtual dragnet meant to capture interactions among potential terrorist threats. The program involved nine of the largest internet companies in Silicon Valley: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. Ironically, just as Americans were starting to feel more liberated by their ability to communicate easily through cell phones and social media sites, the federal government was working with key companies among them and strengthening its ability to pry into Americans’ daily lives. Employing the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the NSA gradually expanded the scope of its program, working closely with telecommunications and internet firms to obtain a huge bank of collected data. Secret until 2013, the NSA program represented a massive expansion of federal surveillance and spying.32

  In many ways, the private program of domestic spying revealed a growing level of public mistrust between Americans. In sharp contrast to the bipartisan spirit that had briefly flourished in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the nation’s early interventions in Afghanistan and even Iraq, the Bush presidency came to a close marked by levels of partisan polarization that were even deeper than the ones it had inherited. Potential areas of agreement—like immigration reform—had resulted in failure, encouraging both sides to retreat from the middle and shore up their bases. The fault lines of politics had once again been amplified by new fault lines in media, as the Left finally caught up to the Right in establishing a sustained and successful partisan media presence. With both sides more evenly matched, the domestic politics of mass destruction now carried the dangers of mutually assured destruction too.

  CHAPTER 14

  Polarized Politics

  WHEN ILLINOIS STATE SENATOR BARACK OBAMA DELIVERED the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, few knew who he was. On the morning of the speech, the Philadelphia Daily News, echoing the famous question posed about Jimmy Carter in 1976, asked: “Who the Heck Is This Guy?” Even inside the Democratic campaign, the choice had been a late surprise. John Kerry’s campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, only decided to tap the young African American politician for the keynote speech after hearing him deliver a response to President Bush’s weekly radio address a month earlier.1

  Although few Americans knew anything about this young Harvard Law School graduate then running for a vacant Senate seat, millions found themselves enamored by the fresh perspective he offered at the convention. In an era of political dynasties like the Bushes and the Clintons, a new face stood out. After recounting his own personal background, Obama challenged the claim that the nation was irreparably divided between “red states” and “blue states.” Rejecting the portrait of division and disagreement that dominated the way that political pundits regularly spoke of the country, Obama insisted that there was more commonality throughout the electorate than people acknowledged. “There’s not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.” He continued: “The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states. . . . But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states. We coach little league in the blue states, and, yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the red states.” The message resonated particularly with younger Americans who had grown up in an era of stark polarization and longed for something new. The speech became a sensation, launching Obama into the US Senate that year and, moreover, propelling him toward the presidency.

  Obama’s decision to confront the fault lines of polarization—political, racial, economic, and sexual—and the overwhelming response it generated, highlighted the ways in which Americans were still searching for common ground after decades of growing apart. There were reasons to hope, as he did then, that the people of the United States were, in fact, united around basic values and a shared sense of national purpose. But as his own presidency would make clear, the deep divisions in the country proved difficult to bridge, and indeed many of them only continued to grow.

  The Meltdown

  In 2008, the once-unknown Obama was himself the Democratic presidential nominee, facing off against Arizona senator John McCain. Despite Obama’s optimism four years before, the nation had only become more deeply divided over the war in Iraq in the intervening years. With President Bush’s approval ratings in the low 30s and sinking fast, many Democrats were excited about their candidate’s odds. During the primaries, Obama had mounted a surprising and successful challenge to the presumed frontrunner, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, who couldn’t match Obama’s grassroots organizational prowess and social media presence. More substantially, Obama presented a stark contrast between himself and Clinton by pointing to her vote in favor of the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Though not in Congress when the Iraq War began, Obama reminded voters that he had delivered speeches against the war from the very start. Wrapping up the nomination with relative ease, Obama became the first African American to stand as the presidential nominee on a major party ticket.

  Senator McCain, who had presented a strong challenge to Bush in the 2000 primaries, proved to be a weak candidate this time around for the Republicans. Unable to escape the shadows of the Bush presidency, his campaign seemed sluggish from the start. His selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate—the second woman to appear on a major party ticket—initially seemed an inspired choice, a fresh face that excited Republicans much as Obama had energized Democrats. But as she made controversial statements that appealed to the most conservative, and sometimes radical, elements in the Republican base, Palin’s evident inexperience quickly became a liability. To the alarm of her handlers, she stumbled with the most basic information during high-profile media events. When Katie Couric of CBS News asked Palin to explain her claims that she had foreign policy insights due to her state’s geographic proximity to Russia, the vice presidential candidate offered an odd response. “Our next-door neighbors are foreign countries,” Palin said, “there in the state that I am the executive of. As [Russian president Vladimir] Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska.” Comedians had a field day. On Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey delivered a devastating impersonation of the governor, obliviously yelling: “I can see Russia from my house!” 2

  More substantively, the financial meltdown in the fall of 2008 ruined the Republican ticket’s chances. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, it revolved around the collapse of a housing sector that had soared during the early 2000s. Lenders had embraced a new trend of “subprime mortgages,” extending extremely risky loans to borrowers who normally would not have qualified, ballooning the national market into a dangerous bubble. When interest rates on subprime mortgages rose in 2005 and 2006, millions of new homeowners started to feel the pinch. In 2007, the number of foreclosures rose by about 79 percent from the previous years. The housing bubble burst across the country, but some areas were hit particularly hard. Nevada, for instance, emerged as “ground zero” of the foreclosure crisis. More than 77,000 Nevadans lost their homes during 2008, with experts predicting that over
the next two years one out of every eleven homes in the state would face foreclosure. Even those who managed to hang on to their house, studies suggested, would see a steep drop in their property values as a result. Homeowners increasingly believed they’d been duped by the banks. Buddy Yates, a 60-year-old preacher in North Las Vegas, lost his three-bedroom home when he couldn’t keep up with the $2,365 monthly mortgage payment. Foreclosure, he insisted, had been the banks’ plan all along. “When they sold you the home, they knew you weren’t going to be able to make the payment,” he said. “They don’t have compassion for the family who’s in the home.” 3

  Back on Wall Street, the burst of the housing bubble not only destroyed a significant segment of that particular market but also revealed that the entire financial sector was riddled with fundamental problems. In 1999, Congress had repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a New Deal measure passed to separate commercial and investment banking and thereby avoid the catastrophic collapses that had propelled the Great Depression. With the regulations of Glass-Steagall removed, commercial banks were able to engage in much riskier investments. Many of them bought up mortgage debts, bundling them and selling them to investors as mortgage-backed securities. Moreover, the repeal of Glass-Steagall also allowed these banks to grow in size considerably through a series of major mergers. The changes here were remarkably swift. In the early 1990s, there had been about three dozen significant financial institutions in the United States; two decades later, they had all merged into just four massive banks.4

  As such changes allowed banks to grow to an unprecedented size, other developments encouraged them to take greater risks. As chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Texas Republican Phil Gramm did everything in his power to reduce government oversight in the financial and business worlds. In 2000, Gramm pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which essentially prohibited the regulation of financial instruments known as “derivatives” that would prove vitally important in bringing about the housing bubble and the financial meltdown that followed. Meanwhile, when SEC chair Arthur Levitt sought to introduce new rules that would eliminate conflicts of interest in accounting firms—something that had played a major role in the 2001 collapse of the energy trading giant Enron and sparked a large number of corporate scandals—Gramm responded by threatening to slash the SEC’s budget. He demanded that Levitt and the SEC stay out of Wall Street’s way: “Unless the waters are crimson with the blood of investors, I don’t want you engaging in any regulatory flights of fancy.” 5