Frank Rich Hits Media's 'Fictional Story Line' Since the Elections

By: E&P Staff In his Sunday column for The New York Times, behind its online paid wall, Frank Rich hits the "fictional story line" in the media this past week following the Democrats' midterm election triumph. "Elections may come and go," he writes, "but Washington remains incorrigible. Not even voters delivering a clear message can topple the town?s conventional wisdom once it has been set in the stone of punditry."

The false story line, he explains, includes the myth of a party in shambles over the Murtha vs. Hoyer right, while downplaying the re-emergence of Trent Lott as a GOP leaders in the Senate. But the primary alleged falsehood is that the Democrats' sweep was "more or less an accident. The victory had little to do with the Democrats? actual beliefs and was instead solely the result of President Bush?s unpopularity and a cunning backroom stunt by the campaign Machiavellis, Chuck Schumer and Rahm Emanuel, to enlist a smattering of 'conservative' candidates to run in red states.... And now the party is deeply divided as its old liberals and new conservatives converge on Capitol Hill to slug it out.

"The only problem with this version of events is that it?s not true. The overwhelming majority of the Democratic winners, including Jon Tester of Montana, are to the left of most Republicans, whether on economic policy or abortion. For all of the hyperventilation devoted to the Steny Hoyer-John Murtha bout for the House leadership, the final count was lopsided next to the one-vote margin in the G.O.P. Senate intramural that yielded that paragon of 'unity,' Trent Lott.

"But the most telling barometer is the election?s defining issue: there is far more unanimity among Democrats about Iraq than there is among Republicans. Disengaging America from that war is what the country voted for overwhelmingly on Nov. 7, and that?s what the Democrats almost uniformly promised to speed up, whatever their vague, often inchoate notions about how to do it. "

Rich adds that "the one truly serious story to come out of the election ? far more significant than the Washington chatter about 'divided Democrats' ? is that the president has no intention of changing his policy on Iraq or anything else one iota....The Washington story that will matter most going forward is the fate of the divided Republicans. Only if they heroically come together can the country be saved from a president who, for all his professed pipe dreams about democracy in the Middle East, refuses to surrender to democracy?s verdict at home."