I didn’t watch Bush last night. I was teach­ing and for­got to set the ReplayTV. (Bet­ter than Tivo!) I don’t know that it would do any good for me to watch it any­way. My opin­ions are pretty set on this guy and I wouldn’t do any­thing more than throw some red meat to the peo­ple who already feel strongly about the pres­i­dent.

Pres­i­dent Bush said on Tues­day night that he still intended to turn over con­trol to a gov­ern­ment in Iraq by June 30. (Stephen Crowley/The New York Times)Which is part of the prob­lem for Amer­i­cans and their media, pol­i­tics and dis­courses. We’ve become way too polar­ized as to how we view the world, with barely an attempt to see what’s really hap­pen­ing. I’m guilty of it, and, truth be told, since I got back from Iraq in April last year, I’ve also pro­moted this polar­iza­tion. Right-wing, pro-war folks by and large have their uni­verse of friends and media in which to swim. The flip-side is true for the left as well — although we’re not nearly as well-funded.
So I’m try­ing to get back to just report­ing. Like I said, I’m try­ing to pitch an inter­view I did with a senior aide to Sayyid Sis­tani and when that hap­pens, I’ll post the tran­script. And when I go back to Iraq, I’ll keep the com­men­tary to a min­i­mum. Things are bad there, but maybe they’re not as bad as most peo­ple on the left seem to think. Right-wing blog­gers and their fel­low trav­el­ers cer­tainly seem to think so.
Or maybe it’s worse than we even imag­ine. The point is that I don’t know, and the rea­son I’m going is because I want to find out. And I want to tell you about it. A reporter should be able to hold an opin­ion — that Bush in an idiot and his poli­cies are dis­as­trous — and yet be able to acknowl­edge suc­cesses and report the events of the day. I did it dur­ing the war and I’ll do it again. The corol­lary to this is that the read­ers need to under­stand that as well: that reporters are human, we have our ideas, and most of us are try­ing our best to find out the truth.
But I don’t think I can watch a Bush press con­fer­ence and give an objec­tive take. So, I’m sorry, every­one, but the speech has been widely dis­sected on the blogosphere.