Romney’s Willful Failure to Address Libya May Have Doomed His Chances

“Out of these characteristics [of the conflict] a certain center of gravity develops, the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends. That is the point against which all our energies should be directed.”

– Carl von Clausweitz, On War

I don’t want Mitt Romney to lose this election, but if he does, here’s why he’ll have lost it: He never read Clausewitz.

Pace Team Romney, the center of gravity in this campaign is not the economy; it’s leadership — or the lack thereof. Yet, Romney has foolishly adopted James Carville’s mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid” as his own, and thus forfeited any and all opportunities to attack Obama over the Benghazi fiasco and cover-up.

But make no mistake: what Obama did and did not do in Benghazi is emblematic of his entire presidency.

There was the lack of understanding of the problem, a failure to comprehend the threat; the dithering and delay and manifest failures of leadership — nay, the complete lack of leadership! And then the willful denial of reality in the face of all evidence, and the assertion of the primacy of domestic political concerns above all else.

It’s a story we’ve seen play out in this administration time and time again.

Obama’s Record of Failure. The Iranian dissidents? Ignore them. Our allies? Screw them. Our enemies? Appease them. Fracking? Kill it. Coal? Kill it. The Iranian nuclear threat? Play with it.

The budget? Drive over the fiscal cliff. The Bowles-Simpson debt reduction commission? Forget it. Iraq? Also forget it. Afghanistan? Get out of it. Taxes? Raise them. Medicare? Raid it. Entitlement reform? Dismiss it.

And all the while: deny, deny and deny.

It is Obama’s determined refusal to lead, and to address the nation’s very real and serious problems, that makes him an unworthy chief executive officer and commander in chief. And that is why Romney should have devoted his entire campaign to undermining Obama’s pretensions to leadership — from the budget to Benghazi, and from the fiscal cliff to the foreign policy ledger.

But unfortunately, Romney hasn’t done that. He’s largely ignored foreign policy and has completely ignored Libya. He’s thus forfeited the opportunity to make a deeper, broader and more compelling indictment of Obama.

This has been a huge political mistake. It’s not that the American people care deeply about foreign policy per se (though they care more about it than the polls and the pundits suggest). It’s that foreign policy fluency and commitment in a presidential candidate is a proxy for competence and leadership, which voters very much do care about.

Yet, Romney has been campaigning as if the only thing of concern to the American people are jobs and material wellbeing. These are important, to be sure; but economic issues are not as politically determinative and as electorally decisive as Romney seems to think.

The economy, after all, is still growing (albeit anemically); and people can collect unemployment for almost two years (99 weeks). Surely, this helps to explain why so Americans have dropped out of the labor market. In any case, American economic misery and deprivation are not all that severe.

Moreover, since its founding in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, the Republican Party has been concerned with much more than economics. It’s been animated by larger-scale issues and concerns: liberty and opportunity, emancipation from the state, freedom from crushing regulation, victory in our nation’s wars, and cultural integrity and restoration at home.

The GOP’s Lost History. Lincoln, for instance, freed the slaves and restored the Union. Theodore Roosevelt championed the “manly virtues” and a robust U.S. foreign policy. Calvin Coolidge gave U.S. citizenship to American Indians and pushed for anti-lynching legislation. Dwight Eisenhower used covert forces to support liberty abroad and overt forces to protect liberty at home (Little Rock, 1957).

Richard Nixon won in 1968 because he promised to restore law and order at home and peace and honor in Vietnam. And of course, Ronald Reagan won in 1980 in part because of the economy, yes; but equally important was his commitment to defending America against Soviet and Iranian-Islamist aggression. Reagan also inspired millions of socially conservative Democrats through his commitment to life and religious liberty.

His vice president, George H.W. Bush, won Reagan’s third term by running as a cultural conservative who would be no less steadfast in his defense of traditional American values. And Bush’s son, George W., won election in 2000 as a “compassionate conservative” who would harness the power of the state for conservative ends.

Bush was reelected in 2004 because he was perceived as a more resolute commander in chief, and also because culturally conservative voters (in Ohio especially) were motivated by his commitment to defend the institution of marriage from radical legislative and judicial assault.

My point is that economics has never been enough for the Grand Old Party and its supporters; that’s not how we win elections. We Republicans win elections when we successfully weave economic issues into a more elevated program of national renewal and achievement.

That’s why taking Obama to task for his manifest failures of foreign policy leadership is so important politically: Because it confirms for voters that the problem is not simply that Obama was dealt a bad economic hand. The problem is that, whatever hand he’s been dealt, Obama, more often than not, has played it very badly. Simply put, he has failed as a leader.

Yet, Romney never says that.

Sure, Obama agreed to let the Seals take out bin Laden. But the effort to take out bin Laden was a long-standing initiative that began in the Bush administration; it was not a new initiative begun by Obama.

Libya was a new and worthwhile Obama initiative; but as the Benghazi fiasco shows, Libya has failed due to presidential neglect and dereliction of duty. Romney needed to say this, but he hasn’t.

And now, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, we have the spectacle of Obama, with Chris Christie’s fawning assistance, pretending to be a leader. Obama recognizes what Romney does not: We Americans elect leaders, not treasury secretaries. And so, leadership, not economic prowess or understanding, is what moves voters.

Strategic Mistakes. Romney may still win this election, and I certainly hope that he does. It may be that whatever strategic mistakes Romney has made have been dwarfed by Obama’s own. But even in victory, no Republican should think that Romney has run a wise or model political campaign, because he hasn’t.

Oh, Romney’s done some things well. His first debate performance was arguably the greatest presidential debate performance that we have ever seen. Romney successfully undermined Obama’s pretensions to leadership and, in so doing, transformed the race.

But ever since that first debate, Romney hasn’t been playing to win; he’s been playing not to lose, and it shows. His momentum has slowed and the race has froze. Romney dropped a winning strategy because he failed to grasp Obama’s center of gravity upon which this election will be decided — not the economy, but leadership.

We’ll find out Tuesday if Romney’s mistake, motivated by extreme and misguided caution, has cost him the presidency. I hope not.

Mitt Romney made a calculated decision in this third debate to soft-pedal his disagreements with Obama, and not to criticize Obama on key foreign policy issues such as Libya.

His calculus was that he’s already won the election; and therefore, the best thing he can do is to appear reasonable, non-threatening, and to play for a tie.

Romney may be right. In fact, after the first debate, I was the first commentator to say that “Mitt Romney just got himself elected president” (by which I meant: the dynamics of the race had been fundamentally, and perhaps irrevocably, altered). But there are two big problems with Romney’s refusal to press his advantage:

First, it is far from clear that Romney has won this election. In truth, the race is a statistical tie, which could go either way depending on unforeseeable events and developments.

Romney’s first debate performance shook up the race and gave him much-needed momentum. Yet, by refusing to attack Obama where he (Obama) is most vulnerable (i.e., Libya), Romney has denied himself the opportunity to build upon that initial success.

Second, presidential debates play a key civic and educational role in American democracy. Yet, by not showing up and not fighting, Romney is cheating American democracy and our civic culture. He is denying the American people the opportunity to learn and to become better informed citizens.

Moreover, should he be elected president, Romney will have a more difficult time securing congressional and popular support for bold foreign policy initiatives (such as intervening in Libya), which he purposely skirted and evaded during the debates.

I hope Mitt Romney is elected president. But I also want Mitt Romney to be a successful president. And success is dependent, in large part, on being candid and forthright with the American people — so that their support is forthcoming when it needed most: on difficult but challenging issues of U.S. foreign policy.

And on that score, I’m afraid, Mitt Romney tonight fell disappointingly short of what his supporters should expect of him.

Let’s hope that Mitt Romney tonight has the courage of Bill Kristol’s convictions, because Kristol sure doesn’t. The Weekly Standard editor, as I noted here last week, rightly argued that this third and final debate will be decisive.

“If Romney can’t win the foreign policy debate, he probably won’t win,” Kristol wrote. “If he can — if he rises to the challenge — he’ll deserve victory, and he’ll probably achieve it.”

Well, that was then then, this is now:

There’s no need for Mitt Romney to flyspeck Barack Obama’s foreign policy record… Romney doesn’t have to mount a detailed critique of various Obama foreign policies. He has to stipulate that all is not turning out as Obama claimed it would, that all is not well in the state of the world…

Romney has to…speak less as a challenger to the current president, less as a critic and a prosecutor of the current president, and more as .  .  . the next president. Romney should appear by Election Day to be more presidential than the incumbent.

Mitt Romney is a combative and competitive man. But his worst moments in the debates were when he became too pettily combative.

His best [moments] were when he briefly stipulated the failures of President Obama’s policies, then pivoted to lay out his own agenda for the nation for the next four years and beyond.

Kristol is completely and utterly wrong here. He’s proposing that Romney sit on a perceived lead and coast to victory. That’s the strategy too many GOP presidential candidates, starting with Thomas E. Dewey, have adopted in the past and the result has usually been the same: They’ve lost!

Make no mistake: Romney’s problem is not that he’s too combative or competitive; just the opposite: His most politically beneficial and rewarding moments have been precisely when he has been combative and competitive. Just ask Newt Gingrich, whom Romney vanquished in the primaries.

Or, better yet, recall the first debate, which Romney dominated and which, as a result, catapulted him to the lead in this election. And pace Kristol, Romney’s worst moments in the se debates were not when he became too “pettily combative.”

Romney’s worst moments in these debates have been when he’s lacked the courage of his convictions, failed to attack Obama, appeared weak and irresolute, and fumbled key policy questions. His mishandling of the Benghazi fiasco in the second debate is a case in point.

Then there’s the isolationist cons, such as my friend, Jim Antle. Jim is worried that by being too much of a hawk, Romney will “bomb the election” (pun very much intended). Well, credit Jim for having a sharp wit and a fine sense of humor, but he’s also wrong.

Sure, the American people have little appetite for any new wars; but they also recognize and support the need for American international leadership. And, at a minimum, that means supporting our friends and allies, and assiduously cultivating new friends and allies.

Yet, Obama has done nothing but alienate our friends and allies, starting with the Israelis and including the Brits, the Poles, the Czechs, the Iranian “Green” dissidents, and everyone across the entire Egyptian political spectrum.

It takes a rare U.S. president who can anger and offend so many allies with so little effort. Romney absolutely should go after Obama for his myriad and manifest failures of leadership.

In short, Romney has no need to apologize for his conservative foreign policy views, nor need he trim his sails. And if he wishes to win this election, he has to stay on offense and take the fight to Obama.

Pretending that he’s already won this election when he hasn’t (the race is a statistical tie, which could go either way) will only cause Romney to lose. Just ask old Tom Dewey.

At the Al Smith Dinner: superior intelligence, superior wit, and amazing grace.

“It’s noteworthy that Romney did not mention Libya in this afternoon’s speech in Virginia,” tweeted Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker.

For “whatever reason,” responded the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, [I] don’t think he feels comfortable with it.”

Indeed, he doesn’t. And the reason Romney doesn’t want to talk about Libya, it seems, is because he essentially agrees with Obama and holds the president blameless for the terrorist attack there.

I know this sounds absurd given Obama’s manifest failures of leadership and penchant for “leading from behind,” but consider what Romney said during last night’s debate:

I think the president just said correctly that — that the buck does stop at his desk, and — and he takes responsibility for — for that — for that — the failure in providing those security resources, and those terrible things may well happen from time to time [emphasis added].

I — I’m — I feel very deeply sympathetic for the families of those who lost loved ones. Today there’s a memorial service for one of those that was lost in this tragedy. We — we think of their families and care for them deeply.

[But] there were other issues associated with this — with this tragedy…

Those other issues concern how Obama responded to the terrorist attack after it happened (belatedly and with little apparent understanding for what transpired and why it occurred).

Romney tried to attack Obama for his weak response to the terrorist attack, but got hung up on whether Obama uttered the precise words “acts of terror.”

And now it seems, after getting beaten badly by Obama on this issue, Romney has decided to ignore Libya altogether until he absolutely must again broach the subject.

The problem with this approach is that it won’t work. Libya is a hot topic right now, in large part because Romney fumbled the question so badly during last night’s debate. And with the third and final debate (on foreign policy) rapidly approaching, Romney will be forced soon to speak anew on this vital topic.

But if he really doesn’t think Obama’s policy of “leading from behind” helped precipitate the massacre in Libya, then there’s not much Romney can and should say.

All of which means that this third and final debate could go very badly for Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. Stay tuned.

Lessons from the Gipper. New Hampshire, 1980.

There’s been a lot of whining on the Right about how CNN’s Candy Crowley was unfair to Romney. She was. This is true. Crowley was unfair to Romney because she took sides in the debate. She said Romney was wrong and Obama was right re: Libya.

The two candidates were disputing whether Obama had described the massacre in Benghazi as a terrorist attack. Romney said he hadn’t; Obama said he had.

It so happens that Romney had the better of the argument: Obama described the massacre in Benghazi as a “type of senseless violence,” but not a “terrorist attack.”

“He only used the phrase [acts of terror] after talking about the original 2001 9/11 attacks,” explains the Daily Caller’s Mickey Kaus.

Still, it does no good to whine about Crowley’s decision to play judge and jury in this debate. That hardly was the reason Romney lost. He lost because he failed to capitalize on his opportunities to take the fight to Obama.

Why, just imagine if instead of becoming subdued, Romney had seized upon Crowley’s mistake and made an impassioned case against Obama’s dereliction of duty re: Libya.

That, after all, is what another successful GOP presidential candidate once did: He turned a debate moderator’s misdeed into an opportunity to score politically. Would that Romney had done the same.

Two weeks ago, after the first debate, I proudly reported that Mitt Romney had just gotten himself elected president. His performance was that good and that impressive.

Well, I’ve never been one to pull a punch, and I’m not going to start now. Here’s the deal: Mitt Romney did not win this second debate. In fact, he lost it, and by a wide margin.

In the first debate, Romney was brimming with confidence, and he dominated; he was on the attack. Tonight, by contrast, it was Obama who was brimming with confidence and on the attack.

Oh, Romney got in some punches; but for the most part, he was on the defensive. And he seemed increasingly deflated and subdued as the debate wore on.

Romney’s most cringe-inducing moment was when he allowed Obama to escape unscathed for his dereliction of duty re: Libya. Obama threw up a veil of emotional rhetoric about how he cared deeply for our diplomats; yet he refused to explain why he denied their request for additional security.

The Obama administration has been engaged in an elaborate cover-up and willful deception and denial re: Libya. Romney should have hit the president hard over this issue. But instead, he seems to have been cowed by the media and foreign policy establishment, which have attacked him (Romney) for criticizing Obama.

It was a significant lost opportunity; and it does not bode well for Romney in the third debate, which focuses exclusively on foreign policy.

If there is a saving grace for the Republican nominee, it is this: He did not lose this debate nearly as decisively as Obama lost the first debate. Equally important, Romney already has a clear and unambiguous debate win under his belt.

For these reasons, this second debate will not prove to be electorally decisive in the way that the first debate was and is. This means that the outcome of the election hinges upon the third debate.

If Romney can again make Obama the issue, if he can again attack Obama for his myriad and manifest failures of leadership, then he will win this election and become our forty-fifth president. And if not, then not: Obama will have four more years to complete his fundamental transformation of America. Shudder at the thought.

Update: Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol agrees. “Obama,” he writes,

may have stopped Romney’s momentum, but it’s hard to believe he reversed it. So we’re likely to have a dead-even race going into the third and final debate Monday night. That potentially decisive debate is on foreign policy. So, after all the talk about how this election was inevitably and only going to be about the economy, foreign policy could well be the tie breaker.

The problem, as Kristol points out, is that Romney isn’t all that confident discussing foreign policy. He seems to lack strong convictions and ideas beyond the platitudinous (i.e., “peace through strength”).

Some conservatives, such as talk radio host Laura Ingraham, argue that it doesn’t matter. This election, they say, won’t be decided on the basis of foreign policy; that’s not what people care about.

But that misses the point. People may not care about Libya per se; but they do care about presidential competence and presidential leadership. They do care if a candidate can assume the role of commander in chief and leader of the free world.

The problem with Romney’s fumbling of the Libya question is that it calls into question his ability to be president and his competence as commander in chief. In that sense, the sum and substance of Romney’s response is less important than the confidence and coherence that underlie his response.

In short, Romney needs to find his voice re: Libya and other pressing foreign policy questions or risk losing this election. And he needs to attack Obama’s foreign and defense policies with the same vim and vigor that he attacks his domestic policies, or again, he will lose.

Jim Antle has nailed it. “One in six bundlers,” he tweets, “speaks louder than seven of ten African Americans.”

Indeed, the subtext of Obama’s “marriage” announcement today is that candidate Obama is more afraid of losing campaign money from gay donors (and from Hollywood in general) than he is concerned about a possible erosion of support amongst socially conservative black and Hispanic voters.

In fact, it just so happens that Obama has a fundraiser scheduled tomorrow with Hollywood lefties George Clooney, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Barbra Streisand. As the old church lady might say, “How convenient!”

In other words, Obama’s saying, Jerry Maguire-like, Show me the money! And, apparently, he’s gonna get a lot of it: an estimated $15 million in cool, hard cash with which to bash the Republicans.
 

Originally published at the American Spectator.

What’s worse: ‘dangerous’ or ‘racist’ thinking, or firing a writer for expressing such thinking?

As a private entity, National Review had every legal right to fire John Derbyshire. But let’s not pretend that his dismissal is anything less than a blow to freedom of thought and freedom of speech.

Derbyshire, after all, had been writing for National Review for at least 10 years. He was summarily dismissed on Saturday, though, after he published a controversial article about “the talk that nonblack Americans have, [or should have], with their kids.”

Critics have denounced the article as a “racist screed,” and that certainly is one way to read the piece. Derbyshire references the socioeconomic difficulties that disproportionately affect African Americans. He then cites these difficulties as sufficient reason for non-blacks to avoid, and even to discriminate against, African Americans.

I don’t agree with Derbyshire’s group-centric approach to race relations. I’ve known, served and worked with too many upstanding African Americans — including a young Haitian immigrant U.S. Marine — to harbor any ill will toward blacks. The truth is they are our fellow Americans. And our culture — especially in the arts and the sports and entertainment fields — would be far poorer were it not for their contributions.

In any case, there is, I think, another way to read Derbyshire’s piece; and that is as the exasperation of a man at his wit’s end because of the myriad problems that all of us know destroy the lives of too many African Americans.

For example, in one seemingly cruel passage, Derbyshire writes: “Do not act as the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g.., on the highway.”

Of course, Jesus counseled the exact opposite: Jesus implores us to be the good Samaritan, to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and to help the man in distress.

So is Derbyshire the devil for contravening Jesus? No, of course not. He’s human; he’s annoyed; and he’s upset — and for good reason: He’s seen senseless and violent behavior play itself out too often within African American communities. And, to illustrate, he cites one telling anecdote:

A 61-year-old good Samaritan, Quintin Guerrero rushed to help one young black woman after she jumped out of a moving cab in front of Guerrero’s house.

However, reports the Daily News in a piece linked by Derbyshire, Guerrero was stomped to death by the woman he attempted to save and her boyfriend.

In other words, Derbyshire is saying, the breakdown in civilization has become endemic within certain parts of the African American community that no good deed there goes unpunished. So tread cautiously and avoid becoming the victim.

Can anyone dispute that this is true? Sure, we may not share Derbyshire’s conclusion — and certainly I don’t — that blacks should be looked upon as representatives of a dangerous group and not as distinct and often praiseworthy individuals. But can anyone deny the humanity and deep frustration that underlies Derbyshire’s writing?

In short, it is too easy — and all too wrong — to simply dismiss Derbyshire’s provocative piece as a “racist rant.” In point of fact, as even National Review editor Rich Lowry acknowledges, Derbyshire is a “deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer.”

Which is why his dismissal is, I think, so wrong and so misguided.

The hard and difficult truth is that Derbyshire was fired for expressing unpopular ideas — ideas that many people say they loathe and abhor. But the very purpose of the First Amendment is to promote the vigorous exchange of ideas in a free, open and contested market. It is not to preemptively censor or punish people for saying things that people don’t want to hear.

“I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe,” explained the late great Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

In short, bad ideas should be countered with good ideas; and poor thinking should be confronted with better thinking. The consequence of Derbyshire’s piece should have been an outpouring of articles and opinion pieces explaining how and why he erred.

Curiously, though, that hasn’t happened. Instead, we’ve had a much-needed dialogue and debate about race short-circuited by indignant cries of “racism” — as if promiscuously throwing that word about absolves us of our need to think and to argue.

I’m sorry, but it doesn’t. And calling people bad names (“racists”) and labeling them with the modern-day equivalent of the scarlet letter won’t do. That tactic has grown old, and that dog won’t hunt. Not anymore. Not after the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other racial charlatans have rendered the word racist all but meaningless today.

Again, as a private entity, National Review had the legal right to to fire Derbyshire. But in so doing, they flouted the very purpose and intent of the First Amendment, which is to promote, and not squelch, hard-hitting dialogue and debate. And, for a think magazine dedicated to intellectual combat, that is, I think, a mortal sin far greater than any wrong committed by John Derbyshire.

Cross-posted at the Minority Report blog.

Sandra Fluke's congressional testimony has been show to be a gross lie and a deliberate distraction.

The Sandra Fluke brouhaha seems to be dying down; but I would be remiss if I didn’t make two key points about this ridiculous controversy:

First, Sandra Fluke is no fluke. Instead, she is part and parcel of an elaborate left-wing campaign to bait and smear the Right, change the subject, and protect and reelect Obama. And no, this doesn’t mean there is a conspiracy; it simply means there is a strategy.

Contraception, after all, has never been at issue. Americans enjoy free and easy access to contraception; and there is absolutely no one in American politics — including Rick Santorum — who proposes that this change in any way.

What is very much at issue, however — and this is my second point — is religious liberty and individual conscience. That is, will religious institutions (such as the Catholic Church) be forced by the state to prescribe contraception when the longstanding tenants of their faith demand otherwise?

Everything in the American political tradition tells us that the answer to that question is an obvious and resounding no. Our Constitution, after all, expressly protects the free exercise of religion. Problem is the Obama administration disagrees and thus has been trying to force its will upon religious folk.

But rather than debate in good faith, fairly and squarely, the issue of religious liberty, Obama and his minions have decided to create an elaborate sideshow to distract the American people.

Thus we hear about the wholly fictitious “right-wing war on women’s health.” Though in reality, it would be far more accurate to talk of a “left-wing war on religion.”

In any case, do they really think the American people — and American women especially — are that stupid?

Why, apparently they do! And some polling suggests that, as Abraham Lincoln put it, you can, indeed, fool some of the people some of the time. Indeed, according to Politico, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that,

Obama has gained support among white and suburban women. In both groups, the president is up to a 45 percent approval rating from 40 percent in December. Overall among women, approval for the president rose to 54 percent versus 40 percent disapproval. In December, both his overall approval and disapproval among women were 47 percent.

But Lincoln also said that you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. And so, I have got to believe that as women (and men) learn the truth about what Obama is proposing — which is to crush individual conscience and steamroll religious liberty — that they will recoil in anger and refuse to be played for fools. We will see.

UPDATE: Robert Stacy McCain has been covering this issue well, with his characteristic wit, verve and flair. “Since we can’t call Sandra Fluke a ‘slut,’ he asks, “would ‘lying liberal bitch’ be OK?”

Far be it from me to stoop to name-calling as a substitute for argument, but this question is not merely rhetorical. It seems that Sandra Fluke — who is receiving media Martyr of the Month beatification as the Matthew Shepard of ”reproductive rights” — stands accused of makin’ stuff up.

Stacy picks up on a story by the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack, who actually did some real reporting on the cost of contraception. McCormack found that, Fluke to the contrary notwithstanding, birth control pills don’t cost a student $1,000 a year. Instead,

Birth control pills can be purchased for as low as $9 per month at a pharmacy near Georgetown’s campus. According to an employee at the pharmacy in Washington, D.C.’s Target store, the pharmacy sells birth control pills — the generic versions of Ortho Tri-Cyclen and Ortho-Cyclen — for $9 per month.

“That’s the price without insurance,” the Target employee said. Nine dollars is less than the price of two beers at a Georgetown bar.

As Stacy says, “WHOA! … Give that man a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism.” Or at least charge the rest of the media with professional malpractice.