When the Story Goes Awry

That swap of five high-ranking terrorists for a sergeant isn’t proving the public relations bonanza that President Barack Obama expected. We must confess our surprise that it’s even turning out to be a public relations debacle, as we’d predicted the media would play along with the heartwarming tale of an American boy returned to the warm embrace of his family and small Idaho town, and we can only imagine very taken aback Obama must be.

The heartwarming tale seemed promising when Obama trotted it out on Sunday at the White House with the soldier’s grateful parents by his side, with the photo opportunities of a mother and child reunion and the hero’s homecoming in the Frank Capraesque small Idaho town scheduled to overcome any coldhearted calculations about the wisdom of dealing with terrorists and releasing dangerous war criminals and flouting a law the president had signed in the process, but it all started to fall apart as soon as the anti-American crazy-pants dad with the Taliban beard started took to the podium with the presidential seal and started reciting Koranic verses in Arabic and Pashto. Within hours even such usually reliable media as CNN, CBS, National Public Radio, and the American Broadcasting System were reporting that the rescued son had also expressed similarly anti-American crazy-pants opinions before wandering off base in his civvies, complete with quotes from just about everyone in the son’s platoon that the son was a “deserter at best and traitor at worst.” Other media soon reported at at least six men died in the resulting search, all of whom also had mothers who could provide compelling quotes to the Fox Network and other of the more aggressive outlets, and some suggested that the son even aided the enemy while he was what his father described as a “guest” of the enemy combatants. There were also stories about the terrorists being released, one of them wanted for war crimes by the same World Court that the lefties always want to hand Dick Cheney, and some unhelpful photos of them being welcomed as heroes by the terror networks that were claiming great victory. The Washington Post did its best to cast the anti-American crazy-pants dad in a sympathetic light, and a plucky columnist for The Daily Beast tried mightily to be offended by all the hubbub, and the same National Security Advisor Susan Rice who’d peddled the bogus Benghazi story while United Ambassador was going on the record that the son had served “with honor and distinction,” but for the most part the press was awful.

By Tuesday the conventionally wise The Hill was declaring that “Prisoner swap blows up on White House,” the same Time Magazine that once portrayed Obama as Franklin Roosevelt was reporting that the highest-ups at the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies were washing their hands and covering their behinds over the matter, the small town parade and its promising optics had been cancelled, and Democratic Senators facing re-election were going far off-script. Things got so bad that administration officials were apologizing to California Sen. Diane Feinstein for not giving her early notice of the deal, although they didn’t go so far as to apologize for breaking the law by not seeking Senate approval, probably because they knew that even the likes of Sen. Diane Feinstein would have balked at such a lopsided swap of five high-ranking terrorists for a deserter, and the apologists were working on a new narrative.

The best argument they’re likely to come up with is that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl might well by an anti-American crazy-pants deserter at best and traitor at worst, but that he’s ours and must be brought home to whatever fate awaits here even at the high cost of releasing dangerous terrorists. There might even be some merit to it, but it’s a hard to settle for after the high hopes of that story about the American hero being returned to the loving arms of his parents and proud hometown, especially after inviting an anti-American crazy-pants dad to recite Koranic verse at the podium with the presidential seal. Obama seemed pleased to be in Poland on Tuesday, where he looked very tough posing next to some F-16s that were intended as a stern warning to Russia’s Vladimir Putin or any other anti-American crazy-pants leaders looking to expand their territories. That’s a promising narrative, too, and the press might well get back on board for it, but Putin and the rest of them are probably more convinced by the sad story about the prisoner swap.

— Bud Norman

Farewell, Michelle

Minnesota’s Rep. Michelle Bachmann has decided not to run for a fifth term in Congress, and she will be missed. Those on the right will miss her courageously outspoken defense of conservative principles, while those on the left will even more dearly miss hating her guts.

Perhaps some day psychiatry or one of the social sciences will provide a explanation for the red-hot hatred that Bachmann has long provoked among her ideological opponents, but for now it remains a baffling mystery. The vile and vulgar vitriol directed at Bachmann was always inordinate to her political influence, which peaked with a win in one of those pointless Iowa straw polls during her short-lived presidential campaign, and even her national fame was mostly a result of the obsessive coverage by her adversaries in the press. She was the unapologetic sort of conservative that always draws the wrath of liberals, but no more so than any number of lesser-known congressmen who sat beside her in the back benches of Congress, and there was nothing noticeably hateful or otherwise remarkable about the way she articulated her more or less mainstream beliefs.

Only Sarah Palin has been more thoroughly ridiculed, reviled, and rudely cussed than Bachmann in recent political history, though, and the comparisons between the two point to possible reasons for the hatred directed at them. Both are women, and according to liberal orthodoxy they are therefore traitors to the cause of feminism for daring to think for themselves. They’re both physically attractive women, too, and that only compounds the offense. Worse yet, they’re happily married, baby-having, unabashedly middle class women who have retained old-fashioned notions of femininity even as they availed themselves of the career opportunities that modernity had provided. Both were so outrageously indifferent to the contemporary pieties that they even embraced a common cause with the so-called Tea Party, the most ridiculed and reviled political movement of modern times, and that probably proved the ultimate affront.

There will be much gloating among liberals that they have at last forced Bachmann out of office, but they might be giving themselves too much credit. The congresswoman says that she’s acting in accordance with her belief in a four-term limit, which is precisely the sort of the populist principle that she’s always adhered to, and it’s also believable that she sees opportunities to serve her causes more effectively outside of government. Bachmann’s opponents in her reliably Republican district were always well-funded by out-of-state donors, and the relentlessly negativity of the national press offered an even more substantial in-kind contribution, so her last race was uncomfortably close, and a minor scandal concerning some campaign finance rules during her short-lived presidential campaign would have been given far more attention than Benghazi or the Internal Revenue Service’s harrassment of the Tea Party and any number of other Democratic scandals, but Bachmann has never seemed the type of women who would back away from such a rowdy fight. Given that the Tea Party has gained a newfound respectability from its persecution by the IRS and that Obamacare and the economy and a slew of scandals provide a more favorable next time around there is no reason to believe that Bachmann couldn’t have kept her undefeated streak in Minnesota politics going for at least another round.

Whatever the future holds for Bachmann, we wish her well. Anyone who can drive the liberals so thoroughly crazy must be doing something right.

— Bud Norman