It would be abhorrent if it weren't so predictable. Bush wrested network time for his 9/11 speech by arguing that it would be, in no way, a political address. Tony Snow promised that it was "not going to be a political speech — there are no calls to action, there are no attempts to segregate Democrats from Republicans." Unfortunately, as the LA Times found, the speech was peppered with lines lifted directly from his election stumps: Defenses of the war in Iraq, criticisms of those who advocate withdrawal, and all the rest. The networks were left scrambling to assemble political analysis teams and had to give over more of their evening to the pundits. And they are pissed:
A network news executive, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of relations with the White House, said Tuesday that the speech would prompt greater scrutiny of future White House requests for air time.
"On a scale of zero to 100, with 100 being a speech of national significance and zero being purely partisan, this clearly was not a 100 on that scale," the executive said. "And I guess over time if that pattern kept occurring, then … you'd start to look long and hard at those formal requests."
The only surprising thing about this story is that the networks believed, even for an instant, that Bush sought to comfort and unify rather than attack and condemn. This is an election year, and this is a perpetually campaigning presidency: To believe that Bush ever acts or thinks as the president of all rather than the leaders of some is straight fiction.
