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For all that the average member of the Washington Press Corps is wetting himself in excitement and joy at the parallels between 1994 and 2006, only this time in favor of the Democrats, they seem remarkably blind about one very important factor in the mid-term elections of 1994. The GOP had a clearly defined agenda i.e. "The Contract With America", detailing the hows and whys of what they intended to do if they were to be elected to the majority in either House of Congress.

The Democrats in 2006, in contrast, have absolutely nothing beyond bumper-sticker slogans, anti-Bush hate and vague, and quite frankly, nonsensical promises. But yet, today, they stand a better than even chance of winning one or even both Houses of Congress in November. But the simple fact is that if the Democrats are to successfully win back any of the Houses of Congress this November, the major part of their success would not be owed to Chuck Schumer, Rahm Emmanuel, Howard Dean or the Koskidz, however much they would strut and preen. Every newly minted Democrat Committee chairman in the House or Senate would know that they ought to troop down to New York, prostrate themselves to the floor and kiss Bill Keller and Pinch Sulzberger's feet.

Fact; the Democrats are poised to reap the fruits of what has been a long-running and continuing low-intensity propaganda campaign by the Press against the Bush Administration. However, this campaign involved no conspiracy, no shady characters gathering together in some out of the way cabin, no collusion with the Democratic National Committee, no money changing hands. It was simply the natural result of having all the major regional and national Press organs of the nation exclusively staffed by people ideologically inclined to one side of the political spectrum, and both elected branches of Government in the hands of the other side.

It is bad enough when every single member of the editorial board and reporting staff of a news organization all lean in one political direction, when practically not a single one of them can call a person from the other side a friend or neighbor. An environment so intellectually incestuous is bound to have those who live and work in it convinced that not only are they right, they are unquestionably and obviously right, so much so that they question the intelligence and sanity of those they encounter who disagree with them. Worse, they come to believe that their views are the benchmark of "normal", of the "mainstream", and those who disagree with them as being on the extreme fringes of society.

It becomes remarkably easy in these types of environments to regard those on the other side as either ignorant, stupid or, failing that, motivated by malevolence. News organizations so staffed and insulated against differing views are naturally bound to produce news slanted in favor of the side commonly seen in that organization's culture as that of the angels and against the side that seems to be that of the demons.

This situation becomes even more extreme when the populace in its wisdom, inexplicably puts the side of the demons in charge of the nation's governing institutions. For people who consider themselves to be at the highest heights of the nation in intelligence, education, compassion and, most importantly, sophistication, it is the equivalent of a wholesale rejection of everything they believe to be good and right. Virtually exclusively surrounded by only those who share and therefore re-enforce their views, they find it impossible to believe that the voters who just rejected their so obviously superior worldview found their opponent's arguments more logical, respectful or relevant to their lives.

Witness the large number of books with titles like "What's The Matter With Kansas?" and the frequency with which columnists reprise that particular book's central arguments that voters in the so-called Red States stupidly vote "against their own interests" and that Republicans only win by the use of subterfuge, wedge issues, hate, fear and increasingly, outright fraud and vote-rigging to win elections.

A bunker mentality has taken hold of a significant number, including the most influential, of newsrooms around the country. Like the average Kossack, a reporter from an environment as intellectually incestuous as the New York Times' newsrooom feels under existential threat from the current Administration. He or she sincerely believes that the continued rejection of their preferences would lead to the nation going to hell in a handbasket; Americans would lose all their Constitutional rights, a theocracy would come into being, women and minorities would be relegated to second class citizens and there would be children dying of starvation on the streets of America.

For someone who truly believes this, and a significant majority of news reporters do, it's an "Us versus Them" world. It is only natural that they would instinctively seek out the negative on any event, announcement or policy, no matter how remote, and give it more significance and ignore or de-emphasize the positive because they automatically dismiss it as irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, when there's a Republican in the White House. This explains why when all economic indicators are good and the macro trends of the economy suggest a healthy state of affairs, many of members of the Press head for the most economically strapped regions of the nation in search of anecdotal stories that belie this narrative. When one repeatedly reads or sees the story of the unemployed John Smith of Flint, Michigan complaining of struggling to put food on the table, it becomes very hard for one to reconcile that image with the fact of a nation with less than 5% unemployment and more than twelve quarters of 3% economic growth.

This does not happen when a Democrat is in the White House. In an "Us versus Them" world, nothing "They" do can be good for the nation, and even if it does turn out to be good for the nation, the motivation was nefarious. Nothing "They" do can be sucessful because "They" can never be right, but even if by some strange chance "They" record some success, it was by chance and it is only a small detour on the path to inevitable failure. When one of "Them" is caught in a compromizing position, his behavior must be representative of "Them". Everything "They" say is either false, or merely masking what "They" truly mean, which is always evil, etc.

It is instructive to note that most of these reporters, including reporters working in the most intellectually incestuous environments, such as the newsroom of the New York Times, honestly believe that they are perfectly fair, objective and thoroughly non-partisan in their reports and analyses.

Either way, the steady drip-drip of bad news, the constant lack of any news on the front pages that could be considered good for the Bush Administration is not the result of any conspiracy. Most of it is simply an unconscious reaction that most journalists, like the most ideologically committed, are unaware or in denial of. Most have imbibed whole the institutional culture of the organizations they work for; thoroughly to the Left of the average American and rabidly anti-Republican and anti-Bush. So they instinctively always start from the premises that support the prevalent beliefs of themselves and their peers.

As Morton Kondracke has pointed out, no establishment reporter of the Washington Press Corps ever asks a "critical question from the Right" of President Bush. In truth, they never asked questions that paid tribute to Conservative premises of President Clinton either, because they uniformly see them as having no validity or relevance to the average American; which they consider themselves to be. They demand to know why the President will not rescind the tax cuts to close the deficit, as opposed of demanding why he refuses to cut unnecessary social spending. They demand to know why the President nominates "controversial" nominees, without even examining what exactly it is and from whose viewpoint is it that it makes them "controversial." They demand to know why the President has not set a withdrawal timetable for Iraq, as opposed to whether or not he should send more troops if necessary to finish the job.

However, this does not mean that there are no people who deliberately set out to slant and manipulate the news. Far from it. For example, every single member of the New York Times editorial board is more than willing to carry false charges on the front page, burn any and all sources, run false stories, compromise national security information and cover up any wrongdoing if it would advance the prospects of their preferred party. As true believers of the idea that Republicans in continued control of the government is tantamount to the ruination of the United States they have proven themselves to be more than willing to abandon all semblance of ethics and integrity to smear the President and his party. Witness the deceptive Al Qaqaa story that appeared eight days before the election of 2004 and then disappeared immediately afterwards.

For example, the Associated Press has long developed a very noticeable habit of reporting stories about political maladriotness and malfeasance very differently based on which party the politician in question belongs to. If a Republican, the partisan affiliation is featured prominently in the headline and in the lede paragraph. If the politician is a Democrat, the treatment of his partisan affiliation is very different; except for indirect hints and allusions, it is often simply not mentioned at all. This has been happening for years, concentrated especially around campaign season, and has been happening far too consistently to be coincidence.

Over the past six years, we have seen the Press leap on practically every single accusation of impropriety levelled against the Bush Administration and put it on the front page without any critical examination of the motives of those levelling the accusation or even whether or not the the accusations had any basis in fact. The simple reason is that their deeply held and constantly re-enforced political beliefs make it very easy for them to believe that a Republican is up to some malfeasance. An accusation against a Democrat they would have some skepticism for and proceed to investigate as thoroughly as possible to avoid any mistake that could harm the side of "Us".

For Republicans, the corrections, if they come at all, are often days or even weeks late and on the back pages, long after the false allegations have become so entrenched in the conventional wisdom that they have taken on the mantle of truth. An extremely recent example is the recently concluded Joe Wilson imbrolio; the storyline pushed by the most influential news organizations of the nation has been proven to be totally false. There were clear indications that it was false, yet the Press ignored all the evidence to the contrary and proceeded to act as a vehicle for transmitting wholesale to the public the most scurrilous of accusations against the President by his partisan foes.

To make matters worse, a great number of the accusations have been coming from anonymous sources, so it is even less likely that the American people would ever have the opportunity to know whether indeed the source is credible, what his or her motives are and even if the information he or she gave is complete, distorted or even thoroughly made up from his or her imagination.

Another example of this type of journalistic malpractice is the constant mangling, chopping and context-stripping of the statements of Republican politicians and spokesmen until they mean something quite different (and largely provide a negative portrayal of the speaker (or his boss)), from what the politician in question intended. Again, we find that the Press leads on with these stories as if these statements were actually truly representative of what was said and proceed to gin up a controversy with Democrat officials and editorial pages loudly denouncing the person's faux pas. Donald Rumsfeld had to read out his entire statement from a transcript on Meet The Press to Tim Russert before the Press put to rest "the army you have" story. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek Magazine reported a statement of Alberto Gonzales that, by cutting a sentence in half, had the man saying that the Geneva Conventions in their entirety were "quaint". Till today, the Attorney General is lambasted world-wide for his supposed dismissal of the Geneva Conventions.

A simple cross-check to make certain that what was said was really said, something that would have been done automatically if Rumsfeld and Gonzales were serving a Democrat President, would have made a serious difference in how these stories were reported. Instead, they were reported in such as way as to make these two men seem callous and inhumane. Donald Rumsfeld did not care that his troops did not have sufficient armor on their vehicles and Alberto Gonzales is expressly giving sanction to the use of torture and other forms of sadistic mistreatment of captured prisoners by the United States government.

We have seen people with deeply partisan Democrat, Left-leaning backgrounds or compromised by naked self-interest presented as impartial or non-partisan "experts" to critique the Bush Administration's decisions and actions. We only find out later about the "experts'" conflicts of interest, and often liberties with the facts, through the efforts of the Conservative blogosphere, and often discover a deliberate attempt by the Press at the time to shield these facts from the public.

Hardly ever are these facts about the so-called "experts" ever revealed, even after being exposed. And some continue to be presented as dispassionate "experts" even after they have been revealed as frauds. An example is Richard Clarke, often introduced as being a non-partisan due to the fact that he has "worked in both Democrat and Republican Administrations" and the fact that he voted in the 2000 Republican Presidential Primaries in Virginia. The fact that he has long been donating the lion's share of his political contributions to Democrats and that Virginia does not have partisan primaries has never been alluded to by the many reporters who have appealed to his impartial "expertise." Nowadays we even have people cited as Republicans who are brought forward to criticize the Republican party and repeat Democrat talking points in order to substantiate claims that increasing numbers of Republican voters are abandoning the GOP.

We have seen the lionization of people whose only claim to fame was their professed hatred of the President and the deliberate ignoring of the multitudes of other people in the same situation who beg to differ. People who oppose the President are given oodles of attention with none of their statements subjected to any skepticism or any fact about them made public that would endanger their credibility. The Press even goes as far to actively prevent or downplay any such facts from coming out.

An obvious example is Cindy Sheehan, the woman Maureen Dowd, echoing the thoughts of most members of her profession, pronounced to have the "absolute moral authority" on the war in Iraq because she lost her son there. Never mind that there were as many women who lost sons, husbands and fathers in Iraq who still supported the war, and who by definition, must have also had absolute moral authority on the war. But this was not the position favored by the Press and so they were deemed unimportant. The Press worked assiduously throughout the summer of 2005 to protect and give legitimacy to Cindy Sheehan's demands. One barely heard that she had met Bush before, that she had said and was saying things that called her sanity into question.

Another example are the Jersey Girls, the group of four widows who had lost their husbands in the 9/11 attacks forged and wielded into a political weapon to be used against the Bush Administration. Like Cindy Sheehan in 2005, they were also granted "absolute moral authority" by members of the Press and any challenge or protest at their highly partisan attacks on the President and ardent defenses of Bill Clinton was immediately re-interpreted as a denigration of their suffering. Women who had similarly lost their husbands, brothers and fathers and were not inclined to place the blame on President Bush were completely ignored.

We have seen the deliberate burying and negative spinning of anything that could be termed as good news for the White House, sometimes to the extent that things are made up out of whole cloth, when we have seen the exact same type of news placed on the front page for days when the President was a Democrat. The economy has experienced nearly sixteen straight quarters of growth in GDP, the deficit - which should never have been that high to begin with - has been nearly halved in that time and is at a historically low percentage of GDP and unemployment is steady at below 5%.

By any rational standard, the American economy is remarkably healthy. But this bit of news hardly graces the headlines and front pages of America. On the networks, it is news that is touched on for only about twenty seconds and only when new figures come out from the Departments of Commerce, Labor or the Treasury. On the newspapers, it's buried in the business pages. The news disappears in one day. And if indeed more than thirty seconds is spent on it, in most cases, a "non-partisan" expert is brought out to try to convince the nation that the nation is on the brink of a depression, or, like Paul Krugman, that the nation is actually in a depression.

People like Jay Rosen over at PressThink and his regular Left-Wing commenters regularly bemoan how so very "tough" and "brutal" the Press was on Clinton during his difficulties with Monica Lewinsky and impeachment, and often point to that period as sure-fire evidence that the media is even-handed. This is a sophistic argument; it was a story no news organization could ignore and retain its credibility. They all pretend to forget that Newsweek actually had the story and was seeking to bury it until Matt Drudge got a hold of it and published it on his website. And even as the Press covered the story, they were instrumental in saving Clinton's presidency by highlighting good economic news with each and every story about the impeachment. That explains the mystery of how Bill Clinton's job approval numbers shot up even as his personal popularity tanked.

We have seen stories of Democrats caught with their hands in the cookie jar buried after a perfunctory article in the back pages when the same acts by Republicans would have led to weeks of front page coverage and shrieking editorials. We have seen Democrats with less than savory aspects of their pasts ignored or whitewashed but every opportunity taken to remind voters of the less than illustrious pasts of Republican office holders. Strom Thurmond's segregationist past was always mentioned in every article about him, yet Robert Byrd's membership and leadership position in Ku Klux Klan is practically verboten.

When a memo was discovered that detailed collusion between Ted Kennedy and certain Left-Wing groups to block or stall the appointment of judges to courts about to hear certain cases until the cases were heard, the story was covered on page 34 and the focus was forcefully shifted to the provenance of the memo, despite the confirmed authenticity of it. When a memo by Jay Rockefeller came out that clearly defined the ways and means the Democrats intended to politicize the investigations on pre-War Iraq intelligence, the Press' response was the effective equivalent of yawn and dismissal. Sandy Berger pled guilty to taking national security documents, stuffing them down his pants and burning them when he got home ... and yet there is virtually no interest on the part of the Press to discover precisely what it is he destroyed and why he destroyed them.

We have seen Democrat politicians and Dem-leaning officials say things entirely opposite to what they said within recent memory, and others practically lie through their teeth with complete confidence because they can be certain that, with the notable exception of Brit Hume, they would not be asked any question that would expose what they're saying to be the illogical spin, lies and contradictions they truly are.

General Anthony Zinni recently stated that he had never seen any intelligence that indicated that Iraq posed any threat to the United States, and for that he received kudos and praise for his honesty and his incredible "bravery" in exposing the "lies" of the Bush Administration. That is; until Brit Hume exhumed the transcript of his testimony before a Congressional Committee as CENTCOM Commander in 2000 where he explicitly and in some detail identified Iraq as the greatest near-term threat to the interests of the United States he could see.

Today, Jay Rockefeller is claiming that he was misled by the White House on the Intelligence on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Fact; no Republican Senator serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee, especially one serving in one of the two chair positions, would get away with claiming to the American people that a Democrat White House misled him on Intelligence. That's because the New York Times, and by definition, every other major news media organ in the country would promptly and loudly inform the American people of the fact that the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Congressional Intelligence Committees have the same security level clearance as the President, and by law have access to the same raw data and analysts that the White House has.

In addition, Jay Rockefeller has served on the Senate Intelligence Committee since long before Bush took the oath of office and has had practically unparalleled access to the nation's intelligence products on Iraq since then. Not only that, prior to the war in Iraq, prior to even President Bush taking the oath of office in 2001, Rockefeller (as well as many other prominent Democrats) has gone on the record warning against the threat posed to the United States by Saddam Hussein's WMD programs. The only way he can claim to have been fooled by the Administration on Iraqi intelligence is if he was somehow hypnotized by the President (or Karl Rove) and it is only just wearing off.

We have increasingly seen news reports on the President and other Republicans with highly damning headlines and ledes heavily hinting at wrong-doing that upon reading the whole thing reveal that both headline and lede were unwarranted and nothing more than partisan spin. Usually, at the bottom of the article, in the tenth paragraph, we are provided with the information that reveals that the supposedly questionable act or statement by the subject was either innocuous, clearly legal or long-standing practice that is indulged in by both parties.

A perfect and recent example is Jennifer Loven's Associated Press article on the President's trips around the country to fundraise and campaign for his Party's Federal and State electoral candidates. The headline practically assured the reader of wrongdoing about to be exposed; "Taxpayers Pick Up Tab as Bush Campaigns for GOP.". Loven spent the lede and the immediate following paragraphs informing her readers of the "news" that the President is using tax payer dollars to engage in partisan politics in a way that clearly indicated some impropriety at the President's actions. It was only near the bottom of the article that Loven informed her readers that this was nothing new, the law specifically allows for it and that the President's predecessors had done the exact same thing.

Another recent example; the New York Times published a full page article in its business section about the contributions given by the Walton Family Foundation to Conservative and Free Market think tanks. It featured a graphical representation with lines drawn from the foundation to the various think tanks, amounts in dollars, and pictures of famous fellows of those think tanks like Thomas Sowell (Hoover Institution), John McWhorter (Manhattan Institute), Karl Zinsmeister (American Enterprise Institute), etc. The graphic sported the remarkably suggestive caption; "The Money Behind The Voices." The writers made sure to note that these writers have all at some time written papers and articles that were favorable to Wal-Mart, clearly implying that these men and women wrote what they did only because they were paid to do so. It was in a paragraph at the bottom of the article that the writers finally noted that unions and other Left-leaning foundations just as regularly gave money to Left-wing think tanks, often in much greater amounts, but made no implications as to whether the output of these Left-wing think tanks' resident scholars was similarly tainted their donors' dollars.

This type of writing and headlining is deeply unethical, all the more so because the journalist holding the poison pen can loudly claim that everything he or she wrote is a hundred percent true. But yet the story the average reader would take away from that article would be false. Imagine a newspaper printing a story with a headline like; "Congressman Slept With 15 Year Old Girl" and then only revealing in paragraph seven that this happened when he was sixteen. Knowing that the majority of people only read the headlines and the next numerous only read the lede paragraph in addition to the headline, this type of journalism is no better than push-polling. The vast majority of people would come to the conclusion that the Congressmen is a peodophile at worst, a statutory rapist at best. And barring a full and timely front page retraction of the story (which the newspaper could resist by claiming that every statement of the article is accurate and placement doesn't matter), and often even after that, the Congressman's career and reputation would lie in ruins.

Unfortunately, these and many other questionable practices have become standard operating procedure when it comes to the treatment of this President and his party in the Press. And it has had an effect, like a thousand tiny cuts that lead to blood loss serious enough to cause death. The constant burying of any good news, the constant seeking out and focussing on the negative anecdote when the overall picture is overwhelmingly positive, the uncritical repetition of charges, whether true or untrue by political foes, the consistent use of negative headlines even on stories that are positive have all combined to really tell one story. George W. Bush and his Party are no good for America. As Instapunk explains; the headlines may change, the events may be different but whether the story is "Abu Ghraib, European disdain, Tom Delay, [Abramoff, Enron], Katrina, Deficits, Valerie Plame, Gas prices, Karl Rove. Death in Iraq, Angry mothers, NSA wiretaps, [SWIFT], 9/11, etc." George W. Bush is the bad guy, George W. Bush is no good.

This constant barrage of negativity must have an effect.

When Bill Clinton was President, the entire nation was made aware of the excellent state of the economy. Yet today, despite the economy posting up numbers on a par with the best tech-bubble buoyed years of the Clinton Administration for well over four years, upwards of 30% of the population believe that the United States is in a recession and that Iraq is already in a state of Civil War. The overwhelming majority of the American people believe the nation is heading in the wrong direction and while the Administration has had its share of scandals (largely contrived, i.e. Valerie Plame), brushes with corruption (i.e. an unrecognizable Abramoff in the far background of a picture of Bush shaking hands with somebody else), bungles (Katrina was far more of a PR disaster) and bad luck (misconstructed levees failing after a hurricane has passed), no Administration has failed to suffer from these things. The wrong direction numbers are far too high for the little tempests in a teapot that the Administration has weathered through.

It is the rare American who follows politics with the avidity it would take to know that things are often not as they are presented. Rumsfeld did not callously upbraid the soldier who asked him about under-armored Humvees and Gonzales did not advise the President to ignore the Geneva Conventions. The Bush Administration did not reveal the identity of a covert CIA operative to punish her husband. The Bush Administration did not abandon the poor black community of New Orleans. And neither did the Bush Administration start a surveillance program specifically to eavesdrop on American citizens - even political opponents. But the perception exists among a significant portion of the "Independent Middle" that all these things are true.

In other words, perceptions matter, perhaps even more so than the facts. In today's media environment, controversies, scandals, bungles and instances of bad luck are covered obsessively and the most salacious charges are constantly and loudly repeated by those who stand to profit most from them being believed as well as reporters inclined to believe the worst about those being so accused. After days of blaring headlines on broadcast and print repeating the allegations again and again, a short thirty second (or ten paragraph in the back pages) piece finally revealing that there was really nothing there after all, is hardly noticed. The average viewer or casual reader of the news (headline and lede scanner) may not be able to recall the exact details of the controversy, but he can tell you that the Administration did something wrong - that'll be the impression because all that smoke must have had a fire as its source.

As Greg Sargent, no Conservative or Republican sympathizer he, complained; "political reporters love to write about politics as if they are merely disinterested observers of political events and the public's perceptions of them, when in fact they play a very key role in shaping those events and perceptions." Sargent is correct; the way political reporters choose to frame and report an event can play a very key role in how that event is perceived by the voting public. The New York Times' Andrew Rosenthal proved that when he wrote that George H. W. Bush was amazed at an ordinary check-out scanner in 1992, thus proving he is out of touch with ordinary Americans. This was not true, considering that Rosenthal was not even there and every other person that was there said it was not so. But it was repeated again and again on the news broadcasts, newspapers published editorials and front page articles and Democrats attacked the former President on the floors of Congress. The image of the President as out of touch was successfully cemented into the public mind just in time for the Presidential election.

What makes this so effective, as it was then and as it has proven now with another President Bush is that the political reporters in question, with only a few notable exceptions, honestly do not believe that they are being biased or in anyway below-board when they report their stories. They are reporting based on what they believe to be the truth. David Gregory does not ask questions of Republican Press Secretaries with a disbelieving sneer on his face and purr like a cat when faced with Democrat spokesmen because he is out to improve Democrat chances of electoral victory (though he does hope for it), he does so because he simply does not believe any good can come of a Republican White House or Congress. It is quite literally beyond the scope of his imagination. Unfortunately, though, he is emblematic of the average member of the Washington Press Corps that plays such a key role in setting the perceptions of the nation's politics.

Interestingly enough, these same members of the Washington Press Corps are often at the forefront of questioning whether or not certain judicial nominees are capable of setting aside their "deeply held beliefs" in order to do their duties as judges - and these are people who, unlike journalists, actually swear oaths to do just that. All would bristle indignantly at any accusation of bias against them, considering such an idea so outlandish that they question the mental balance of the person who questions their impartiality. They are completely stunned that anybody can read their work and immediately perceive whether or not they are in favor of or opposed to a stated policy, politician or party. They pride themselves in their supposed ability to set aside all emotional, political and ideological attachments, achieve as perfect a zen-like state of objectivity as is humanly possible and report with neither fear nor favor.

Quite frankly, they are only fooling themselves, and they are hurting the Republican Party in doing so. So the question is; what should Ken Mehlman and his Republican Party do about it?