Frank Rich
VanDeCarr, Paul
THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW by Paul VanDeCarr Frank Rich How fitting that Frank Rich's new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina, should have...
...I think that's where we're going...
...People are ready now to go back and look at something that's very much more along the lines of the New Frontier or the Great Society and the New Deal-maybe not necessarily in the form of huge government, maybe in the form of private sacrifice...
...That's really replacing a reality with fiction...
...Stagecraft is among Rich's areas of expertise...
...They pulled out all the stops-they, being the Republicans, or Karl Rove, more specifically-but they could not paper over Iraq...
...In the introduction, Rich cites "what may have been the single most revealing paragraph anyone has reported about the Bush Administration...
...Q: Why did you highlight that paragraph in Ron Suskind's article about the "reality-based community...
...He lives in San Francisco...
...For instance, Bush's whole history is the creation of him as a compassionate conservative, a uniter not a divider, a person who somehow had some biography to justify him being President of the United States...
...It's not because of ideological reasons...
...Q: What response have you gotten to the book that has most moved you or challenged you...
...But The Greatest Story is not just about what the Administration did or did not do...
...That there was a connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, and that Saddam had WMDs, not just the biological and chemical WMDs that everyone was wrong about, but also that he was on the path to bringing nuclear Armageddon to America if we didn't act...
...Paul VanDeCarr writes about narrative art forms, mostly theater, film, and fiction...
...And while it seemed like highfalutin bragging, if you will, we now know there was actually a real plan...
...When that aide said that, it was the summer of '02...
...After scoring a touchdown against the Taliban, or so it was thought, this would be a little three-point addon...
...Buoyed by the results, he spoke with the vigor, humor, and insight that readers of his column will recognize...
...It is about people wanting to extend their power...
...And to me, this election is a vindication of that...
...Before joining the Times, he worked as a film and television critic for Time magazine and as a film critic for the New York Post...
...THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW by Paul VanDeCarr Frank Rich How fitting that Frank Rich's new book, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina, should have reached the New York Times bestseller list- quickly landing in the top ten of hardcover nonfiction...
...Cindy Sheehan was a turning point, not so much because of her politics or even what she said, but the fact that this woman had lost a son in Iraq, and the only time Bush left Crawford while she was camping out was to go to a fat-cat fundraiser nearby, sort of spewing dust in her face...
...Q: You say in the book that this culture of theatricality and truth-bending is bipartisan...
...As far as the war in Iraq goes, this was something that was easy to manufacture and sell, and that they thought would be a cakewalk...
...I was convinced, watching the federal response to Katrina, that the public snapped back to reality then...
...Rich: I feel it was a lesser value to them, and I base that on the fact that even before 9/11, we saw signs of a Presidency that was inclined to fictionalize almost everything...
...I'm convinced if they knew it would have cost, as we're talking now, almost 3,000 American casualties, and go on as long as World War II, that they would have come up with something a little more efficient and economic...
...I have a hard time imagining what an honest national political life would look like...
...they made no plans for afterwards...
...The anger and hatred with which some people regard the President-this or any other-may be proportional to the power he wields...
...Rich: The most gratifying thing has been people who shared my conviction that this was a very sophisticated operation, that [the Bush Administration] really had a story to tell, that it was not some improvisation figured out on the fly...
...For critics of President Bush, reading The Greatest Story may provoke a resurgence of the animosity that his actions over the past several years inspired, only in diluted form now that the midterm elections have rendered him more of a lame duck...
...He is referring to a passage from Ron Suskind's article in The New York Times Magazine two weeks before the 2004 election, in which a Presidential aide speaks derisively about journalists and their "reality-based community...
...Rich: I don't blame you...
...We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do...
...And we know now, of course, that both these storylines were completely false...
...But is it really...
...It wasn't just arrogance and nonsense...
...Americans do believe in being a part of something bigger than their own community, their own state, their own political party...
...Frank Rich: When I started talking to my editor about doing this book, me being an old theater person, I was looking for the final curtain...
...He was named chief theater critic of the Times in 1980, and in 1994 he became an op-ed columnist for the paper, exploring the intersection of culture and politics...
...Which is to say, it's the bestselling true story of an even better sold false story...
...He had done very little before he was governor of Texas-and even governor of Texas is not a particularly powerful chief executive's job-and so it always was about merchandising...
...We were subjected to a real assault in terms of altering the truth and reality, and it bleeds out into other areas that have nothing to do with the Bush Administration, whether it be in corporate America or the Catholic Church...
...Rich shows how the Bush Administration created what amounted to an elaborate stage play-complete with set design ("Mission Accomplished") and fake reviews (Jeff Gannon)-and how the audience, so to speak, abandoned the show in increasing numbers as the plot became less and less believable...
...The aide goes on to say, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality...
...Q: Are the recent election results an affirmation of the "reality-based community...
...It is also about how the press and the broader culture allowed it...
...That, to me, sent a message to a lot of the public...
...Americans were dying, the situation was out of control, they were at war with no fixed goal, and with a murky premise...
...Even his alcoholism seems to be overstated just to give him some mountain he climbed and was victorious on...
...Or is it just that truth was a lesser value to them than fulfilling their agenda...
...it reads both as a timely political document and as an engrossing work of history...
...And that was the summer when the White House Iraq Group was being formed to sell the war in Iraq, even as the government maintained that no decision had been made...
...this was a plan to impose a reality, to create our own reality as an empire, and you all just watch...
...Others can decide whether I've succeeded or failed, but I wanted to write it as a pageturner about a story you thought you knew...
...But I'm willing to believe that they would want to exploit similar things...
...But they thought it'd be like Reagan going into Grenada...
...Keep in mind, the Democrats have been out of power for twelve years, and so they didn't have the apparatus...
...Politics is always about compromise and always requires some building of coalition, but in this media age we live in, the cynicism pops out at you...
...Happily, his new book is not a rehashing of his columns, but rather a cohesive account of how the story was peddled...
...they want an authentic leader...
...Rich: The piece ran just a few weeks before the election of '04...
...Q: I came of age politically during the Reagan Administration...
...And that's sort of the premise of my book...
...People are sick of it...
...He is the author of Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for The New York Times, 1980-1993, and Ghost Light, a childhood memoir, as well as co-author, with Lisa Aronson, of The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson...
...With the election results, it's a very good moment-not necessarily for the Democrats, who we all know are capable of screwing it up, but for that much-maligned group, the American people...
...Q: Do you think the Bush Administration officials believed their own stories...
...I hope that set of eyes might be useful for readers as we now move beyond this Administration and this war and look at whatever is coming next on our national stage...
...So essentially what this aide was boasting about-and, keep in mind, this is only nine months after 9/11-was, "We have a reality that we're going to impose...
...My point is, I don't think this is necessarily just about ideology...
...Judging from this campaign season, it seems that the Republicans are so much worse than the Democrats...
...Rich: They were, in this campaign...
...What interests me is that they were never really up on the history of Iraq...
...Rich: It had two storylines...
...He also is a writer, researcher, and editor for foundations and nonprofits, in the areas of the arts, religion, and community economic development...
...I spoke with Rich by phone the Sunday after the midterm elections...
...I think it's just laziness...
...Q: What was the reality they created and the story they sold...
...Maybe they are too undisciplined to impose something as tight as the Republicans...
Vol. 71 • January 2007 • No. 1
