Today's Meet the Press was about what wasn't there. The first segment raised so many good questions, you'd assume the second would explore them and move the debate forward. But you would assume wrong.
The first segment featured Congressman John Murtha, the much-decorated and definitely non-cowardly ranking member on the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. The subject was, of course, Murtha's call for the "immediate redeployment" of U.S. troops in Iraq.
The main reason Murtha's proposal has provoked such hysterics from the GOP and the administration is the source: here's a member of Congress devoted to the military, who visits military hospitals almost every week, who was the first member of Congress to have served in Vietnam, where he earned the Bronze Star and Two Purple Hearts, and who re-enlisted to serve at the age of 34. This is the guy whose backbone Vice President Five Deferments is questioning.
It was a great get for Meet the Press, the man you really wanted to hear from today, and he lived up to it.
Russert quickly moved to his patented "you said one thing a long time ago and now you say something different" thing. "As you well know," he asked Murtha, "this is a profound change in your own thinking... Why is it any different now than it was a year ago?"
Well, Tim, that's because lots of things are different now than they were a year ago (not Meet the Press, of course). Some people even consider it wisdom when politicians respond to changed realities by accordingly changing their positions. Tim is not among these people. John Murtha is:
"I'll tell you why it's different. It's different because there's no progress at all. When I went to Iraq about two months ago, I talked to the commanders. Now the commanders say what they're supposed to say, but I can tell how discouraged they are... Since we've become the enemy, since they're attacking our troops and we've destabilized the area, I have changed my mind and have come to the conclusion now is the time to start to redeploy our troops to the periphery and let the Iraqis take over."
In fact, Murtha had a good answer for everything. And in contrast to the usual poll-driven hairsplitting on the show, he offered up one stand-up truth after another. Here's a sampling:
"There's nothing that's happening that shows any sign of success...
"This has been mishandled and we should be firing people and going in another direction...
"I have never seen such an outpouring in the 32 years I've been in Congress, of support and people with tears in their eyes, people walking along clapping when I'm walking through the halls of Congress, saying something needed to be said. So they're thirsting for a solution to this and the president can't hide behind rhetoric and neither can the vice president."
He also hit Tim's last question out of the park:
RUSSERT: In hindsight, do you now believe your vote for the war in Iraq in 2002 was a mistake?
MURTHA: Obviously, it was a mistake.
Words don't quite capture it. You should have seen his face. No doubt, no hesitation: "Obviously, it was a mistake." Impressive.
So what do we do now? It's obvious the President's plan (the distinguishing characteristic of which is the absence of a plan, or even of an idea that the public deserves a plan) isn't working. In the absence of any leadership from the White House, we are thirsting -- as Murtha put it -- to hear from people from both parties who do have the guts to wrap their minds around the crisis and offer real solutions.
So what does Tim do? He devotes the rest of the show to the bird flu. It was like popping a few downers to take the edge off too many uppers. And that's the effect it had. Just when the show was on the brink of Something Actually Happening, wham! Over thirty minutes of bird flu.
Now, I'm not saying the avian bird flu isn't an important issue. It's the decision to devote the rest of the show to it on the heels of someone finally telling the truth about what is clearly the most important issue of the day that I'm questioning.
And that wasn't the whole problem. Even within the bird flu topic, Tim managed to miss the most important question. He spent a large part of the segment asking resource-allocation questions -- who gets the scarce vaccines... healthcare officials, elected officials, children? -- but failed to raise the resource-allocation question that stared him in the face.
It doesn't, after all, take much dot-connecting prowess to go from a segment on the Iraq war to a segment on our preparedness to fight the avian flu and note the opportunity cost of the resources we're expending in Iraq. Yes, there are all sorts of reasons why it's hard to come up with vaccines for 300 million people, but even a small percentage of the resources devoted to the war would make the job dramatically easier.
But that didn't occur to Tim. Instead, we got lots of hypothetical doomsday talk: "What happens if it strikes within the next six months to the year and we don't have the vaccinations?"
And we got this really helpful assurance from Dr. Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control:
"...So when you sit down for your Thanksgiving dinner and you enjoy your turkey or your chicken, there's not an avian flu issue at all and we really encourage people to enjoy the holiday without concern about that threat."
Well, gee, thanks, Dr. Gerberding, because while we sit down for our Thanksgiving dinner, we certainly can't tell ourselves that there isn't an Iraq issue at all to worry about.
"Thank you all for joining us this morning," Tim concluded the show. "And let's get this one right." He was referring to the avian flu. Sure, Tim. And how about getting Iraq a little less totally wrong, too?