Goodbye To All That

n September and early October, American military forces received their war orders and made for Southwest Asia with remarkable speed. But the battleship that turned around most quickly was the American media. Literally overnight, the collective journalistic mind acquired new attitudes on everything from airport security to the virtues of New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

The most dramatic shift in media thinking was also one of the least noticed. On the question of government itself-its value to society, its effectiveness in solving problems-the information establishment did an almost perfect inversion. In the past few decades, the media had pretty much acceded to the view that has dominated American political life since the election of Ronald Reagan: the less government, the better.

Across all mainstream media outlets, in both reporting and editorial content, there was a quiet but unmistakable presumption against spending on government programs, especially new ones. When the New Democrats of the Clinton administration shrank large swaths of the government, journalists pronounced it one of the era's signal achievements.

It's an exaggeration and a cliché to say everything in American life changed on Sept. 11. But on this one question, the media transformation that followed the terrorist attacks really was breathtaking. On Sept. 7, four days before the attacks, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by Thomas L. Freidman that argued President Bush was not governing as wisely as . . . Ronald Reagan. Friedman praised Reagan (and Margaret Thatcher) for "reforming the least popular and least successful aspects of the welfare state, while leaving intact the most popular." Pre-attack, that's about as far as liberalism dared go with its pro-government leanings: praising conservatives who allowed some vestiges of the old federal leviathan to live on.

On Sept. 23, 12 days after the attacks, Times economic writer Lewis Uchitelle wrote: "Years of resistance to government spending probably dissolved on Sept. 11. That is beneficial. . . . Now that terrorism has suddenly given federal spending a higher priority than preserving the budget surplus, we have chosen to splurge initially on the military, on airport security, on saving the airlines, on helping New York. These are all worthy choices. But should we stop there?"

The last time words to this effect appeared in a major national publication, Elvis was still touring. And whom did Uchitelle call on to assure Times readers these weren't the deluded ravings of a newsroom leftist? Why, William Kristol, the conservative philosophe and editor of The Weekly Standard, who said: "This is a big moment in American history, and the definition of a big moment is that things change, including attitudes toward public spending."

In case anyone missed the fact that this article was composed entirely of ideas that days earlier could not be raised in polite company, the headline was: "Priorities in the Wake of a Shattered Taboo."

It's shattering over and over these days, as media folk leap at this unexpected chance to say the recently unsayable. On Sept. 22, The Washington Post reported, in a front-page article on President Bush, that "a man who came to power offering himself as an ideological descendant of Ronald Reagan has emerged nine months later as something closer to an heir of Franklin D. Roosevelt." The story went on: "Bush's words in recent days. . . suggest he has concluded that few of the old faiths that animated the conservative agenda before Sept. 11 have much relevance in the current emergency. Suspicion of a powerful national government gave way to a massive federal commitment to rebuild New York City. Devotion to free markets has yielded to an expensive promise to rescue the failing airline industry with government subsidies." Bush, the Post noted, appeared to be adopting Keynesian economic ideas.

Buttressing all this pro-government rhetoric is something more powerful: the images that have been dominating magazine layouts, television, and Internet news sites for weeks. Suddenly the media are telling us the heroes of our time are not software moguls or movie stars, but government employees: firefighters, cops, rescue workers, soldiers, sailors and special ops commandos.

This stunning change in journalistic tone will displease some. Others, including government workers who have long felt under-appreciated, will be delighted. But whatever one makes of the shift, nobody should expect it to last. Media people adopt bold new positions only when it's absolutely safe to do so-it was after White House spokesman Ari Fleischer started talking about Bush's Keynesian conversion that most journalists climbed on board. And they are as steadfast as passing clouds.

Some day, the war will subside, government won't seem such a priority, and the public will lose interest. On that day, if you blink you'll miss an amazing sight: battleship media turning right around and steaming off in the opposite direction.