blink and you missed it

That is the bottom-line experience of our era: No one, no matter how astute and attentive, can possibly follow everything that is happening in the world—or even a fraction of everything that is being reported about what is happening in the world. The “news” is merely a distillation of the stories that are easiest to “report”—i.e., communicate the essence of—in a given 24-hour period. Even news junkies like me, dedicated to the pursuit of trying to figure out the vague outlines of what is going on, are almost totally clueless. After a while, it is all “video wallpaper.”

In these circumstances, perhaps it’s understandable that Tony Blair’s announcement last week that he would step down as Britain’s prime minister got only a tiny sliver of attention. It came 24 hours after the huge breakthrough in Northern Ireland that certainly didn’t get the attention it deserved.

But it will be Blair’s true legacy, as Time reports.

When Unionists dumped Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble as their leader, Blair adapted the process to bring in Paisley. He also employed “creative ambiguity” to get over the toughest hurdles by letting each side believe they were scoring points. Even today the central question of whether Northern Ireland will ultimately be British or Irish remains unresolved, but the matter will be settled in politics.

Perhaps more than anything, though, Blair brought patience and determination. Even when more pressing issues of global importance put demands on him, he still devoted extraordinary amounts of time to Northern Ireland — even though it offered him almost no political benefits.

Blair’s hard work usually bought time, however, and that was crucial. The more people in Northern Ireland became accustomed to a peaceful atmosphere, and the improving economy that came with it, the harder it became to contemplate a return to violence. A decade after he launched the process, Blair — and the IRA leadership — can contemplate retiring in peace.

Of course Blair will have to wait a long time to be vindicated by “opinion” (as he refers to the Western media elite), if BBC Radio correspondent Justin Webb and BBC presenter Katty Kay are any indication. Webb gave Howard Kurtz an interview in which he insulted America in the most extraordinary way (a fact Kurtz commented on as they sat face-to-face ***) just to take a swipe at Blair. And Katty Kay, a frequent panelist on the Chris Matthews Show, isn’t being herself when she isn’t being vituperative. +++

As I said, it will be a long time before Blair’s legacy can be judged. Even Anne Appelbaum, who is actually interested in the Blair phenomenon and addresses it in ”The Riddle That Is Blair“— wonders: is he a genuine humanist or the slickest of slick politicians?

Fundamentally, the man’s character is a riddle. On the one hand, he frequently describes himself as a true conviction politician, a man who sticks to his guns whatever the opinion polls say. Certainly that’s how he explains Iraq. “I decided we should stand shoulder to shoulder with our oldest ally,” he stated in his resignation speech:

“Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong. That’s your call. But believe one thing if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country.”

Yet, at the same time, Blair is perhaps the most outstanding contemporary example of the politician who wants to be loved and who tries at all times to be all things to all people. He speaks the language of the left when he is talking to his own party, dwells on free markets when he addresses business executives and, at least for the first few years of his term, appeared to believe that getting everyone to agree with him about everything was only a matter of time.

Appelbaum goes on to explain how Blair went about trying to get everyone on board [e.a.]:

But since he couldn’t always “get out and explain to people what we’re doing,” he invented the British version of the modern media machine. Though “spin” wasn’t unheard of in pre-Blair Britain, it is fair to say that he perfected the arts of the well-aimed leak, the removal of fingerprints from the evidence, the careful timing of bad news. On the very day of his resignation speech, the British government quietly revealed that one of Blair’s pet programs was going to cost far more than anticipated — presumably because no one would write about a such a lowly subject on that day of bigger news.

Indeed, his fiercest critics claim that even the decision to invade Iraq is not evidence that Blair “did what I thought was right.” On the contrary, they say: He invaded Iraq because he thought it was going to be popular.

Impugning his motives is par for the course for Blair’s political enemies and rivals and for Britain’s increasingly shrill chattering classes. I was surprised, however, to find a gaping hole in Appelbaum’s logic as she attempts to understand Blair’s contradictions:

Is he deeply moral, a man of conviction? Is he deeply cynical, a man who governs by spin? Or does he use spin to make himself look like a man of conviction?

Did it not occur to Appelbaum that Blair is “deeply moral, a man of conviction” and also “deeply cynical” about how a 21st-century leader must communicate to those he governs (and also those he doesn’t govern)?

Does no one get it that spin is what everyone—politicians more than most!—needs to do in order to be present in the gaze of the public? to get a fraction of the public’s attention? to connect? to communicate?

Or is everyone, including thoughtful writers like Appelbaum, in on the “it’s black OR white” partisan media game?

Sheesh.

——–

*** Reliable Sources, May 13:

WEBB: And you know, the manner of his departing is seen as American too. And not American in a good sense.

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: I read a columnist who said it was very American, is that an insult?

WEBB: It is an insult, frankly speaking. Yes. Let’s be blunt about it. It is an insult. Because as I was saying with Winston Churchill, we like our (INAUDIBLE) to go, Margaret Thatcher just went. He is now staying on, he is doing kind of a world tour. He’s not going on until the end of June. What’s going on now? It’s an un- British thing. The fact that he said in his leaving speech, Britain is the finest country in the world, the greatest nation on the face of the Earth, that’s not something a British person would ever say. It’s utterly American (ph).

STEVENSON: Absolutely appalling (ph).

KURTZ: Absolutely appalling? I don’t understand why.

STEVENSON: I was watching it — I was watching with a group of people, and as he came to this “British are the greatest people in the world,” he subsequently referred to them as “it,” which was rather strange. But as he said this, everyone in the room gagged and said, take it back to Texas.

(LAUGHTER)

——-

+++ May 13:

Katty, a columnist wrote this week that Tony Blair is not only disliked by the
British people overall, he’s loathed by his political party. Is that true?

Ms. KAY: He’s not just loathed by his political party, he is loathed by the
British public. I think it’s hard, sitting here, to really understand the
level of vitriol that the British feel for Tony Blair. And you know why?
It’s because he stuck with George Bush so firmly. He became a superstar in
America and as he did so, he was being called “the poodle” back home. The
more he was loved on this side of the Atlantic, the more he was disliked on
that side of the Atlantic. And it wasn’t a coincidence.

GREGORY: And yet one of the things that he, I think, did very
effectively–whether you agree with him or not–in this country is give
articulation to the broader context of what the war was about, the war of
ideas, the war against fundamentalism beyond the nuts and bolts tactical…

Ms. KAY: Without doubt, he was–he was the eloquent voice.

Mr. STENGEL: (Unintelligible).

GREGORY: Right.

Ms. KAY: He was the eloquent voice for George Bush. He was the diplomat for the war in Iraq.