Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) likes to say, "If you don't deal with reality, other people will." One wonders whether Feinstein's fellow Washingtonian, living at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, has truly taken DiFi's wisdom to heart. That other Washingtonian, of course, is George W. Bush. He seems to be living in his own world--he told us so. Yet because he's president of the United States, the rest of us have to live with his decisions, based as they are on whatever reality W. perceives.
      Bush told Brit Hume of the Fox News Channel last year that while he scans newspaper headlines to get the "flavor for what's moving" he "rarely reads the stories." The president insisted he had "great respect" for the media but criticized it for a lack of objectivity: "I also understand that a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with the news."
      So where does President Bush get his information from? He is "briefed by people who have probably read the news themselves," he answered.
      Bush did not say he didn't have the time to read newspapers, as this would be untrue. In contrast to most of his recent predecessors, Bush is not a workaholic president. His vacations are long, and he is famous for admonishing his staff that they should follow his example and leave the office early enough to maintain a decent family life. This is sound advice, as overwork tires the body and dulls the mind.
      But there is little evidence that President Bush uses his copious leisure time to expand his knowledge. This he delegates. As he told Hume, "The best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."
      If only understanding the world were that easy. As the journalist Claud Cockburn once said, "To hear people talking about the facts you would think that they lay about like pieces of gold ore in the Yukon days waiting to be picked up-by strenuous prospectors whose subsequent problem was only to get them to market." In fact, in putting his trust in his staff--it never seems to occur to him that his underlings might not be "objective--Bush is relying on others to prospect, mine, sift, and smelt the information that he needs to make wise decisions. Which might explain why his decisions haven't been so wise.
      What are the facts about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction? We know by now that he didn't have any when America invaded, but this is not what President Bush told us as he launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. And where did he get his "facts" about WMDs? From the people on his staff who told him "what's happening in the world." Only too late, the rest of us who do pay attention to the world, as it is, are starting to realize what a cracked vision of the world some of his advisers had. And it's this vision that became Bush's vision. Here, for example, is how Bob Woodward, in his best-seller, Bush at War, described Vice President Dick Cheney's role in the run-up to the Iraq war: "Cheney was beyond hell-bent for action against Saddam. It was as if nothing else existed." Let's think about that phrase a bit, "as if nothing else existed." Folks with a firm grip on reality don't eliminate all variables--you can't. That is, you can't say that you're only going to worry about airplane crashes when you are walking across a busy street. You have to see the world as it is, large and whole. That's the nature of reality, and dealing with it.
      To be sure, total objectivity is a myth. All analysis is colored by the biases of the analysts. This is why a diversity of opinion is crucial, especially for the powerful, for those who have the power of life and death over all of us.
      And for all their faults, diversity of opinion is what newspapers supply. Thomas Jefferson was right when he observed that if he had a choice between a country with no newspapers, and a country with no government, he'd rather have no government.
      Bush is certainly correct that in newspapers "a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with the news," but this is no less true of presidential advisers, as we have seen; it doesn't seem to have occurred to Bush that his advisers, who serve at his pleasure, might only be telling him a) their opinions, or b) what they think that he wants to hear.
      Newspapers also tell their readers what they think they want to hear, but the big difference is that there are lots of different audiences for newspapers, and therefore, lots of different opinions expressed therein.
      Republicans love to rail against the "liberal media," with considerable justification. The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe are certainly liberal, but the Wall Street Journal, the Orange County Register and the New York Post (to give only three examples) are most certainly not. The Bush administration does not lack for friends and even cheerleaders in the print media.
      Even if Bush restricted his newspaper reading to the conservative press, he would at least know what his well-wishers think. (And he would have learned that not all right-wingers supported the invasion of Iraq, or his immigration plan, or his vast expansion of government spending.)
      But even more important shouldn't the President of the United States care what his enemies think? Even the kings of the Middle Ages employed fools to say what their courtiers dared not.
      And, make no mistake, the President of the United States is as isolated as any medieval monarch. He is not forced to defend himself in a parliamentary "question time," as prime ministers are in Great Britain and most other English-speaking countries. And any commoners he meets are often overawed, and thus dumbstruck, in the presence of the most powerful man in the world.
      Needless to say, there are lots of different ways to get unvarnished--if not unbiased--news and commentary. But newspapers--most of which are free on the Internet--are the best, most efficient way of gathering information about current events. And not just from reporters and pundits, but also from ordinary citizens, on the letters to the editor pages. Radio is too concerned with emotion, television with visuals and both with speech to deliver the data that printed words provide. An hour spent reading newspapers provides as much information as a day watching television.
      But alas, newspapers may be going the way of the telegraph or the carrier pi geon. It is said that John F. Kennedy killed the hat industry when he insisted on delivering his 1961 Inaugural Address bareheaded, despite the extreme cold. So who knows? Maybe Bush's announcement that he doesn't read newspapers will be another blow, because newspapers have been losing readers (and influence) for years.
      Indeed, just as hats were on their way out before Kennedy's Inaugural Address, so, too, newspaper have been fading. According to a Pew Research Center poll released in January, only 31 percent of Americans regularly get their political campaign news from that medium, down from 40 percent in 2000. Forty-eight percent get their campaign news from local TV, 35 percent from network nightly newscasts and 38 percent from cable news networks.
      Among young people, the trend against print is even more pronounced. Only 23 percent under the age of 30 regularly get their campaign news from newspapers. Almost as many Americans under 30 (21 percent) regularly get their campaign news from comedy programs such as Saturday Night Live and Jon Stewart's Daily Show. Laughter is a good thing, but it rings hollow when you don't know why you're laughing.
      To be sure, not everyone needs to deal with reality. If you wish to live in a cave, be a hermit, or be drunk or stoned all the time, then maybe it's possible to evade a rendezvous with reality. Of course, your life will be solitary at best. And also, most likely, your lifetime of reality-avoidance will be nasty, brutish and short.
      So it's back to reality for all the rest of us--we have to deal with it. Reality-dealing is, in fact, a survival mechanism. Some say that reality, made by Bush, is that we have a terrible war in Iraq, surging deficits, an economy that's being offshored to India and China, and social policy made in Lynchburg, Virginia. Others say different, of course, but both sides are at least trafficking in some kind of reality. And so long as that happens, representative government is in good enough shape.
      But if Bush's ignorant ways become America's ignorant ways, then we are in deep doo-doo, as Bush's father, the 41st president, once put it.
      President Bush believes "no child should be left behind" and has stressed the importance of "family literacy." Political literacy is no less important. Bush should lead by example and start his day with the newspaper habit. Although, of course, a wised-up public might well get wise to Bush.


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