Criticizing But Not Listening

Reginald Dale is Editor of European Affairs, a policy quarterly, and a media fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In a column published in the International Herald Tribune today, he wrote about the phenomenon of criticizing President Bush without listening to what he says. He uses a number of examples from both the U.S. and Europe to illustrate his point.

A woman who is no fan of President George W. Bush in this rural red-state community [Madison, Virginia] recently wrote the local paper boasting she had switched off the president's State of the Union address after only five minutes. She then proceeded to castigate his policies on Iraq and the Middle East for the best part of 600 words.

Of course, having missed most of what he said, she got it completely wrong, all the less surprisingly as she also proudly admitted her views were heavily influenced by Hollywood movies. Her irrational if entertaining letter would be trivial were it not representative of a much wider conundrum surrounding the Bush presidency: Why is that so many people think they know what Bush thinks, while so few appear to listen to what he says?

The phenomenon is particularly widespread among Bush's many critics in America. But it also seems to have afflicted Europeans, who long ago formed their opinions of Bush, often on the basis of crude caricatures in the European media, and don't want to change them now.

There is little doubt, however, that many people who think they know what Bush thinks are wrong. And that in turn makes it harder for them to criticize Bush effectively. If you don't know what you are aiming at, you'll probably miss the target.

Dale continued with a number of specific examples of criticisms directed at President Bush which are simply wrong or completely unfounded.

It isn't hard to find this odd phenomenon in both the media and the blogosphere. It's not a particularly serious concern among bloggers because there's no expectation of professional journalism or scholarly research. They're just people saying what they think, sometimes without having done the work to find and understand facts. I have to say, however, that some bloggers are better informed and more fair-minded that most media reporters and pundits.

Perhaps the most disquieting charge levied against President Bush is that he's a liar. Or, in the words of Teddy Kennedy, who has no moral standing to make such charges, he's a "liar, liar, liar." The problem is, to my knowledge no one has provided specific evidence that the President has told even one lie. If his critics can't prove that he has committed an intentional violation of the truth, then they should chose their words more carefully. English and the European languages have many other crude and insulting words that can be used to attack President Bush and his policies or, if need be, to simply express juvenile hatred.