Why Michael Moore is doomed

I haven’t posted much on Fahrenheit 9/11 — unless you count my Tech Central Station column that questions one of Moore’s underlying theses involving the Bush administration and Saudi Arabia. Richard Just does an brilliant job of deconstructing the film itself [Full disclosure — Just is my editor at TNR Online], so there’s no point going there. More interesting has been the media response to Moore and his own counter-response. David Adesnik appears to be correct in pointing out that:

In my own discussions with journalists, I’ve found them to be at least as annoyed by leftists’ accusations that they are conservative mouthpieces than by conservatives’ accusations that they are inveterate liberals. So don’t expected Moore’s bumpy ride to end anytime soon.

And bumpy it has been. David Brooks had a column that highlighted some of the zestier comments Moore has made about the U.S. in overseas venues. Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball rip to shreds one of Moore’s flimsier allegations in Newsweek (link via Glenn Reynolds). That last story mentions a fact that strongly suggests Michael Moore’s public support is about to take a major hit:

In light of the extraordinary box office success of “Fahrenheit 9/11,” and its potential political impact, a rigorous analysis of the film’s assertions seems more than warranted. Indeed, Moore himself has invited the scrutiny. He has set up a Web site and “war-room” to defend the claims in the movie—and attack his critics. (The war-room’s overseers are two veteran spin-doctors from the Clinton White House: Chris Lehane and Mark Fabiani.)

Lehane? Lehane??!! Yeah, let’s review his impressive achievements at spin:

1) Was Al Gore’s principal spokesman during the 2000 campaign — ’nuff said. [UPDATE: Well, check out this February 2000 Jewish World Review story by David Corn that’s partially about Lehane. 2) Was Kerry’s spokesman in mid-2003 — when Kerry started to get clobbered by Howard Dean (here’s a link to one example of his work from that era); 3) Then moved on to Michael Moore’s favorite Democrat, Wesley Clark — another whopping success; 4) In the last days of the Clark campaign, Lehane appears to have played a role in spreading rumors about a Kerry affair with former reporter Alexandra Polier. Polier provides the following account of her efforts to ascertain Lehane’s role:

I called Lehane himself, who, having backed the wrong team, is now running his own political PR firm in San Francisco. I asked him where he’d first heard the rumors about Kerry and me. He blamed political reporters. I asked him if he had used the rumors to try to help Clark. He denied it. “There are just so many media outlets out there now, Alex, that these kind of baseless rumors can easily get turned into stories,” he said smoothly, and then the phone went dead. I called him right back, but he didn’t answer. I called again less than an hour later, and this time his outgoing message had been changed to, “Hi, you’ve reached Chris. I’m traveling and won’t be able to retrieve my voice mail.” I wondered how he was able to run a PR company without retrieving voice mail.

Well, that sounds like a clean bill of health to me.

Michael Moore hired this guy to protect his reputation? His reputation is toast. UPDATE: Thanks to Brennan Stout, who links to this Daily Kos post about Lehane from September 2003. Also, I see that Michael Moore is planning to start a blog. No posts yet, however. ANOTHER UPDATE: Some free advice to Lehane — go read Ted Barlow’s disturbing post about Focus on the Family‘s efforts to harrass Moore and run with that for a while. Of course, that raises some vexing questions about Moore’s tactics as well.