In today’s NY Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes about the President’s intimate relationship with members of military families whose soldiers have perished on the Commander-in-Chief’s watch. The headline, “Bush and Relatives of Fallen Lean on Each Other,” indicates a close and open emotional bond between some of the military bereaved and the President. Stolberg’s article, however, also takes note of apparent screening of families by political handlers at the White House before putting them together with Bush.
While President Bush has opened his heart to some families of the fallen who have written to express their support for his war policies, those family members whose opinions are less sympathetic have mostly been excluded from the intimate Presidential gatherings. This isn’t a big surprise, given this Administration’s history of maintaining an echo chamber for the President, in which he hears only supportive voices, wherever he travels.
Having personally talked with military family members who oppose the Iraq War, I know there is a rich diversity of opinion about the conflict within the military community. Having also corresponded in particular with the sister of one soldier killed in Iraq, I have witnessed how deeply her anger cuts toward the President and the result of his policies. Hopefully, media coverage of military kin and their perspectives will continue to reflect to the President that his minions have taken pains to avoid exposing him to the fullness of familial feelings against his prosecution of a bitter and unpopular war.
Stolberg’s article includes an interview with a family member who opposes the Iraq War:
Bill Adams, who has been leading war protests
in Lancaster, Pa., wrote Mr. Bush a letter — not
to praise the president, but to question the
military’s account of the death of his son, Brent.
When Mr. Bush held a town-hall-style meeting
in Lancaster last month, Mr. Adams asked a
friend with a ticket to deliver his missive to the
president. It worked, and a top aide to Mr. Bush
later called Mr. Adams.
But when the president met families of the fallen
that day in Lancaster, it did not escape Mr.
Adams’s notice that he was not among them.
“I can’t help but be left with the suspicion that
possibly his advance team screened those
families for people who would be sympathetic,”
Mr. Adams said. Given the chance, he said, he
would have told Mr. Bush “that my son’s life was
squandered.”
One wishes that Presidential advance teams, who now screen out kin like Mr. Adams, will in the future at least include his opinions in their daily digests of press coverage they put in front of the President.
While hoping for better Presidential perspective, maybe we can also hope that in the future, Times headline writers for articles like Stolberg’s will be more reflective of the content of the piece, rather than simply spinning a warm and sympathetic glow, like today's page-one headline bestowed on Stolberg’s more evenhanded reporting.
The heading on the page 12 continuation of the story was actually more balanced than the one that ran on the front page. It read, “Bush and Some Relatives of Fallen Are Leaning on Each Other.”