Murdoch’s Bid to Install a President

[Guest fountainhall]

Here’s an interesting one. It’s at least two weeks old, and yet no-one seems to have raised much hue and cry about it, something which Britain’s Guardian newspaper finds strange. It suggests that in any other similar circumstance this would have happened –

 

the hue and cry, especially from Fox News and Republican/Tea Party America, from the Congress to the US Chamber of Commerce to the Heritage Foundation, would be deafening and not be subdued until there was a congressional investigation, and the resignations were in hand of the editor and publisher of the network or newspaper. Or until there had been plausible and convincing evidence that the most important elements of the story were false. And, of course, the story would continue day after day on page one and remain near the top of the evening news for weeks, until every ounce of (justifiable) piety about freedom of the press and unfettered presidential elections had been exhausted.

 

And yet little of this has actually happened. Why the fuss? Well, it turns out that Rupert Murdoch, unable any more to exert his usual influence on British politics, had decided in 2011 to back a run for the Presidency by none other that General David Petraeus. Whilst still commanding US forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus learned that Fox News Chairman, Roger Ailes, wanted him to challenge Obama. He also attempted to persuade him to reject the offer to run the CIA.

 

All this was told to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post.

 

"I thought the Republican field needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate," Mr Ailes told Bob Woodward, the veteran Washington Post reporter, who disclosed news of the talks. Mr Ailes passed his message to General Petraeus via an emissary sent to interview him in Kabul 18 months ago for Fox News, Mr Murdoch's American news channel beloved by US conservatives.

 

"I've got something to say to you directly from Roger Ailes," Kathleen McFarland, a national security analyst for the channel, told Mr Petraeus. "He loves you and everyone at Fox loves you.

 

"He says that if you're offered chairman [of the joint chiefs of staff], take it," McFarland continued. "But if you're offered anything else, don't take it, resign in six months and run for president."

 

General Petraeus was at the time the subject of fevered speculation among Republicans, who believed that he could return to the US as a respected war hero able to defeat Mr Obama in last month's election. The President's decision to make him CIA director was seen by some as an attempt to sideline a potential rival.

 

McFarland's 90-minute conversation with General Petraeus was recorded, and a digital copy of it somehow made its way into Woodward's hands.

 

McFarland, a Pentagon adviser to the Reagan administration, did not take no for an answer. The next time General Petraeus was in New York, she said, he should come and "chat to Roger and Rupert Murdoch", to which General Petraeus, for whom this conversation was clearly not the first of its kind, replied: "Rupert's after me as well."

 

"Tell him [Mr Ailes] if I ever ran," Petraeus laughingly says as the meeting is wrapping up. "I'd take him up on his offer. He said he would quit Fox."

 

McFarland says that "the big boss" would "bankroll" the campaign – a clear reference to Mr Murdoch. "The big boss is bankrolling it. Roger's going to run it. And the rest of us are going to be your in-house."

 

http://www.smh.com.a...1205-2au2o.html

 

In its expression of surprise that the story has not commanded major headlines around the US, the Guardian adds:

 

The tape that Bob Woodward obtained, and which the Washington Post ran in the style section, should be the denouement of the Murdoch story on both sides of the Atlantic, making clear that no institution, not even the presidency of the United States, was beyond the object of his subversion. If Murdoch had bankrolled a successful Petraeus presidential campaign and – as his emissary McFarland promised – "the rest of us [at Fox] are going to be your in-house" – Murdoch arguably might have sewn up the institutions of American democracy even more securely than his British tailoring.

 

http://www.guardian....eaus-presidency

 

Fox News of course makes light of the suggestion with an “it’s a joke” defense. Ironically, perhaps, in the light of later events, Petraeus’ response was –

 

"It's never going to happen," he said. "My wife would divorce me. And I love my wife."

 

And we know how true that last statement turned out to be!