Blair Whines About Media He Helped Create

IT REALLY is too bad of Tony Blair to complain about the savagery of the modern media. After all, it was Bill Clinton and he that created and developed to a fine art the modern “war room,” ready 24-7 to demolish the opposition. And it is George W. Bush and David Cameron that are trying to find a way beyond the ferocious Clinton/Blair campaign methodology that is based on a win-at-all-costs approach to politics.

In his speech today he characterized the media, according to George Jones, as a “feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits.”

That reads exactly the way that the Republican Party experienced the Clinton politics of personal destruction and the Conservative Party experienced the Blair media bulldogs like Alistair Campbell. The Clinton/Blair war rooms operated on the Al Davis principle: “Just Win Baby.” And it didn’t matter what they said and who they destroyed in order to get to the finish line first.

The tragedy is that both Clinton and Blair entered office with a media in love with them. Once elected they didn’t need the politics of personal destruction. But once they had got the war room genie out of the bottle and had seen what it could do for them they could never bring themselves to put it back.

So when Blair’s New Labour Party got into office it governed on the basis of constant media-friendly “eye-catching initiatives.” Governing, the deadly dull business of making things work, came a very definite second.

Now Tony Blair leaves office whingeing about the unfairness of it all. The real unfairness is the legacy of ten years of Labour Party domestic policy: a huge increase in public spending but very little in the way of genuine reform.

What a waste.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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