[updated to add a link, and to fix garbled syntax]

By now it’s hard to deny that the situation in Iraq seems improved, which is why the New York Times fronts a story about the Democratic candidates’ change of “tone.”

Change of tone? They’re all going to be spinning like tops soon enough.

But that doesn’t mean that the usual suspects aren’t trying to downplay the importance of the decline in violence, the reports of inter-ethnic and inter-confessional cooperation, the stories about Iraqis moving back home, Osama bin Laden’s declaration of defeat for al Qaeda in Iraq (and/or Mesopotamia), the Mahdi Army’s cooperation with the U.S., the Anbar Awakening, and all the other successes and lucky breaks for the counterinsurgency being conducted under the leadership of General David Petraeus (aka the New Jesus).

None of this matters, of course. It’s only political benchmarks that should concern us—that’s all that has ever mattered, according to Ilan Goldenberg at DemocracyArsenal:

I have to agree with Kevin Drum. There really hasn’t been a major shift in tones. The Democrats and critics of the war have always made political progress the number one issue. The argument all summer over the benchmarks ultimately revolved around political progress. There has been no shift in tone. …

[D]espite the drop in violence, all the polls show that opposition to the war is at an all time high at almost 70%.

A commenter responds:

Both the Bush administration and the war’s critics have a paper trail to support the idea that they have always thought the core issue was political progress in Iraq. Both the Bush administration and the war’s critics also know that for the American public the core issue is the level of American casualties, as well as the overall level of violence, in Iraq. If American casualties are down and stay down, and the overall level of violence is down and stays down, the intensity of public feeling about the war should be expected to decline, even if large majorities continue to feel the war was a bad idea. [e.a.]

This sounds right to me. The public responds to what it sees or hears on the news. Public feeling about the war will start to decline also in response to the drop in “news” coverage of the war.

Out of sight, out of mind.

And Iraq is out of sight on the MSM because there aren’t any dramatic pictures to show—simple as that. No carnage and blood and gore and fire and ash and wailing Iraqis to put into heavy rotation 24/7. Fairly or not—even if Iraq is a huge mess for a long time, people will start to get the idea that things must be better—because it isn’t on their TV screens.

So the mewlings of the partisan Democrats who are now heavily invested in bad news emanating from Iraq—and, as the charming Nancy Pelosi might say, branded as “defeatocrats” to boot. And no one’s in the—will not find much of a market for their wares, I’m afraid.

For what it’s worth, I think Hillary is obviously the best positioned to take advantage of a turn of fortune for America’s adventure in Iraq.

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*** Nancy Pelosi to Matt Bai, quoted in the New York Times Magazine:

”We branded them with privatization, and they can’t sell that brand anywhere,” Pelosi bragged when I spoke with her in May.

I’ve been re-reading Daniel Boorstin’s classic 1961 work of social criticism The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (which is extraordinarily fresh and insightful for a 45-year-old book, by the way, but that’s a topic for another day).

Underlying Boorstin’s thesis of a mid-twentieth-century American populace transfixed by images is his notion that advertising—or any kind of marketing—succeeds by holding up a mirror to potential customers and offering them an enticing, image of themselves (more on this another day, but let’s just say for now that advertising is about fantasy-fulfillment).

Now, along comes the NYT’s Elisabetta Povoledo to tell us that Italians are transfixed by a six-part TV biopic, “The Boss of Bosses,” because the mirror it holds up to its audience shows a somewhat less than flattering image of itself [e.a.]:

“Italy has always been fascinated by the Mafia, by its personification of evil,” [a reporter] said in a phone interview.

Another possible explanation for the popularity of “Il Capo dei Capi” may be that it goes beyond mere storytelling and puts Italy in front of an unflattering — if engrossing — mirror of itself. It suggests that if Mr. Riina became the most formidable and feared mobster in Italian history, it was thanks to the collusion of political and economic forces at various levels of Italian society.

“It’s not fiction — it’s a real story that tells 50 years of Italian history, and it names names,” said Pietro Valsecchi, who produced the series. “It tells us just what sort of country we have been living in, it shows us the complicity of the state, it puts the Mafia in our face.”

There’s some evidence for the notion that its roots in reality drive the popularity of the series:

“The Sopranos,” the HBO drama about Italian-American bad guys, never caught on here.

The producer gets the last word [e.a.]:

Fictionalizing reality may be the best way to educate Italy’s distracted audience, Mr. Valsecchi said. “Italians don’t read newspapers — they barely glance at headlines. But here they’re getting the full story, with all its implications.”

Well, he gets the next-to-last word. I get the last word, which is a minor amendment to Mr. Valsecchi’s proposition: Fictionalizing reality is a way to infotain an audience—that is, to capture its attention. But let’s not get carried away. That is different from educating the audience.