Spin Zone

North Korea is in rarefied status among the world's evildoers these days. This is due to both the attention President Bush brought to North Korea in naming it among the axis of evil (a good thing) and the inattention President Bush gave to North Korea while concentrating all resources on Iraq (not a good thing). This month’s nuclear test revealed the result of the Bush Administration’s distraction: WMDs in North Korea. North Korea has gone from an isolated, hostile, dangerous country engaged in negotiations with the global community that helped prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon in 2000 to an isolated, hostile, dangerous country that has tested a nuclear weapon in 2006. The George W. Bush era, it would seem, has not been terribly unkind to North Korea.

Yet, to hear Bill O’Reilly tell it, North Korea is working feverishly to support the Democrats in the upcoming mid-term election. In his “no spin zone,” O'Reilly declared the North Korean nuclear test a calculated effort to influence the American election. Similarly, O’Reilly asserted that Iran is ramping up the violence in Iraq so Americans will turn against the Bush Administration. “Why does Iran want the Democrats to win in November?” O’Reilly asks. Iran, it seems, is pushing insurgents to increase the violence in Iraq not to crush Iraqi democracy, but to influence American democracy.

Normally, what Bill O’Reilly says is as meaningless as it sounds, but on this issue, it appears he is not alone in his thinking. Discussing the similarities between the recent spike in violence in Iraq and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, President Bush threw out the election card: “There’s certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election.” Lest anyone be confused as to what the President meant, Press Secretary Tony Snow explained that Bush “was making a point he’s made before, which is that terrorists try to exploit pictures and try to use the media as conduits for influencing public opinion in the United States.”

The O’Reilly/Bush argument goes something like this: North Korea/Iran/Iraqi insurgency are taking action aimed at helping Democrats win elections in the United States, so if you vote for the Democrats, you are actually helping the cause of North Korea/Iran/Iraqi insurgency.

But a look at American politics from the perspective of our enemies makes you wonder why these regimes would be so eager to end the Bush era. Assuming that the goal of American enemies is to weaken the United States, it seems that these regimes ought to be rooting for more of the same from the Bush Administration rather than working for a Democratic majority in Congress.

The Bush Administration has done more to weaken America’s standing in the world than any anti-American rhetoric from Tehran or nuclear test from Pyongyang. By thumbing its nose at international treaties, flouting international standards for the treatment of prisoners, and starting a war without an international mandate, the Bush Administration has put the U.S. in an increasingly isolated global position. That position is further weakened by the enormous commitment of resources to Iraq and the lack of short-term success there. Given the kind of bumbling they’ve seen from Bush Administration, why would North Korea or Iran really want change?

Neither O’Reilly nor Bush wants you to answer, or even ask that question. They are instead searching for any way possible to save the Republican majority by shifting the focus off the Bush administration’s record.

Given that record, Democrats do not need any help from America’s enemies to convince voters that change is necessary, no matter what Bill O’Reilly says.