At The New York Times: It's about wishes

However the rest of America may be feeling, you know it’s a good day at The New York Times when the paper runs this headline: Chaotic Week Leaves Bush Team on Defensive

The headline leads what The Times calls "an analysis" by reporter Todd Purdum who begins:

Perhaps not since Richard M. Nixon faced Vietnam-era tumult abroad and at home has an American president had to meet quite the combination of foreign war, domestic tribulations and political division that President Bush now confronts, from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf Coast to Capitol Hill.

Wow! In just one sentence Purdum links Nixon , Vietnam, foreign war, domestic tribulations, and political division to President Bush and events in the Persian Gulf, Gulf Coast, and on Capitol Hill.

Do we need hear anything more? Well, The Times wouldn’t want you to miss this.

The war, high gasoline prices and persistent, low-grade unease that good economic statistics have not left more Americans feeling secure had already taken a toll on Mr. Bush's job approval ratings. The wave of bipartisan criticism of his administration's handling of the hurricane may well constrict his options as he seeks a successor for Chief Justice Rehnquist. His presidency might not be on the level of peril faced by Lyndon B. Johnson, but his authority has come under challenge as never before.

So President Bush’s “authority has come under challenge as never before?” How sweet those words must sound to The Times editorial staff, which has worked ceaselessly since January 2001 to make them a reality.

And lest anyone doubt who’s responsible for the President’s difficulties, The Times has a “presidential historian” explain things to us.

"I think he's really undermined his credibility at this point, and it really saddles him with the kind of problems that Johnson and Nixon faced," said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian and Johnson biographer. "These crises are such a heavy burden, and they are so self-inflicted, except for the court vacancies, that if he is not very careful and tries to put across someone who is seen as an ultraconservative, he is going to touch off a conflagration in the Senate."

Robert Dallek, like historians Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Doris Kearns Goodwin, is a Kennedy family “favorite” who can be counted on to provide quotes such as the ones we read above. You wouldn’t expect Purdum to also call someone like Harvard government professor Harvey Mansfield, a conservative, would you?

Dallek overreached on a number of points, especially his remark about an “ultraconservative” Bush Supreme Court nominee possibly touching “off a conflagration in the Senate.”

Federal appellate court nominee Priscilla Owen, unanimously awarded the American Bar Association’s highest rating, is no ultraconservative. But that didn’t stop Sen. Tom Harkin from calling her a “whacko?” Or Sen. Ted Kennedy from grouping her with judges he called “Neanderthals?”

When did the likes of Kennedy, Boxer, Schumer, Leahy, Byrd, Clinton, Harkin, Durbin et al need an “ultraconservative” to set off a “conflagration?” They conflagrate regularly.

No liberal journalist’s current Bush hit piece would be complete without a reference to “the grieving mother.” Here’s Purdum’s:

And that was before a grieving mother named Cindy Sheehan put an unexpectedly galvanizing human face on criticism of the war in Iraq, before the hurricane's desperate victims shined a similar spotlight on the government's failings

Cindy Sheehan a “galvanizing human face on criticism of the war?” Polls show she’s had little effect on public opinion. Here, as in most of his analysis, Purdum’s engaged in wishful thinking.

But count on this: The Times and much else of MSM will do all they can to make those wishes come true.

Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin