Yesterday, President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to three officials integral to the war in Iraq. On the surface, this appears to be a story about a president rewarding three public servants for hard work during hard times.
Of course, in politics there's nearly always more than meets the eye. The Associated Press, however, apparently didn't think so. The wire service's story covering the event opened with these paragraphs:
President Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Tuesday to three figures who were central to his Iraq policy, former CIA Director George Tenet, former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer and retired Gen. Tommy Franks.
Democrats suggested Bush should have looked elsewhere, at least in the case of Tenet, in awarding the government's highest civilian honor.
The trite partisan framing -- "Democrats say it's bad, the White House says it's good" -- leaves the reader with the impression that only partisan Democrats could possibly view with cynicism the administration's decision to award the medals. A casual reader could easily conclude that any skepticism about the reason for granting the award to these three figures, all key players in the U.S.-led campaign in Iraq, is simply a function of the usual Democratic vs. Republican gang fight in Washington.
The New York Times' David Sanger gave his readers a far more complete presentation of the context of the awards ceremony, without pegging it to "he said/she said" bickering:
President Bush on Tuesday bestowed the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on three of the central architects and executors of the war in Iraq, one of the president's strongest efforts yet at putting a formal stamp of success on a war whose outcome is still a question ...
It was a remarkable moment in a city still gripped by uncertainty about whether Iraq will become the democracy Mr. Bush speaks of almost weekly or descend further into chaos and American casualties.
Sanger's report calls into question the success of the efforts of the three men, but does so without relying on critiques from Democrats. Rather, Sanger lays out their records for the reader to examine. The CIA came in for harsh criticism in the report of the 9/11 Commission, we hear, and Sanger reminds us that the agency is largely responsible for the faulty intelligence used to build the case for war in Iraq. The security situation in Iraq deteriorated during the second half of Paul Bremer's term, and many problems in Iraq have been attributed to his decision to alienate former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party. And Franks has been criticized for his failure to plan effectively for the post-war occupation.
Sanger states a case, and lays out the facts. And in doing so, he demonstrates the importance of reporting the story rather than the event. After all, those interested only in the latter can just point their browsers to the official White House transcript.
