Anthony Barnett (Athens, OK): While we wait for Peter Oborne to deliver, in OK or elsewhere, his verdict of the Campbell diary (for Peter was the first person to skewer him with the question that matters, namely ‘what is wrong with the constitution of our country that permits this tabloid journalist to be its second most powerful person?’) two comments.
The cataract of coverage is pure media torrent. This was analysed by Todd Gitlin as an inescapable self-referential roaring and frothing. By exaggerating the importance of Campbell’s scribbling the media is saying, look how important WE are that this hugely important man – he must be, look at how much coverage we are giving him – spent all his time worrying about us the media!
Even so I did not expect three pages in Time Magazine including a full-page portrait, sampled above, which alone is worthy of a Soviet prize for cult of the personality, and the preposterous headline, “Blair’s Boswell”. (Someone on their website, however, could not stomach it and changed the articles on-line headline to “Blair’s Barnham”.)
The copy, it hardly deserves to be called an article, is lickspittle. The ending must mark some kind of nadir for Time. “I don’t mind people saying we made the wrong call”, Campbell generously grants opponents of the Iraq war, and notice the ‘we’, “What I can’t stand is the motive thing”. Blair did it, Campbell emphasises, taking the hapless reporter Catherine Mayer on the ride of his choice, because “he thought it was the right thing to do”. To suggest anything else is “crap”. Intimidated, Mayer concludes that while it may be spin “It also happens to be true”.
Oh yes? Is this reporting? How does she know? Would Blair have argued it was a priority if Bush had said solving the Israel/Palestine conflict came first? But there I go, down the wrong track! The issue of motivation is beside the point.It was not just a “wrong call” it was a catastrophic and murderous error – not the overthrow of Saddam but the occupation of Iraq that was the Bush administration’s aim. A considerable, wise and experienced body of official opinion, as well as the public understood this and said it was folly. Not only did Blair and Campbell, because, it seems, we must now regard it as a joint “call”, make a disastrous mistake. They were clearly warned of disaster and took no notice.
In any principled walk of life, someone who makes a big mistake when clearly warned against it, resigns when the evidence comes in. How can Campbell and Blair get round this? The answer is by displacing attention onto their sincerity. In this way, what I’ve called the Campbell Code retains its instrumental use of ‘truth’. The media torrent is easily whipped up over issues of sincerity because narcissism is the name of its game. But it is a pity that Time should take its readers into such blatant displacement activity. One expects it of life-style magazines, it should not masquerade as reporting.
