April 22, 2003
...on Georgia 6
In Georgia's 6th District, state Senate Majority Leader Tom Price (R) will announce his candidacy to replace Cong. Johnny Isakson (R), who is running for Senate. According to local sources, Price will formally announce within days after the Legislature adjourns on Friday, April 25, with a simultaneous filing with the FEC.
Rumors are flying that former Cong. Bob Barr, who announced his candidacy for the 6th District seat in February, is reconsidering his congressional bid. Barr will make an announcement at an 11am event Wednesday in Atlanta. Our betting is that he's out of the race.
The district is solidly Republican, so the GOP primary will pick Isakson's replacement in Congress.
...on the Media
Why is the media missing the big story?
Raise your hand if you said (or even thought in passing ) that more than one and a half years after the attacks of September 11, 2001 the United States would not have been hit by at least one other act of international terrorism?
I thought so. Not a single hand. We all expected another attack (or many attacks) by now.
I've been waiting for months for newspaper and magazine articles to comment on the lack of more acts of terrorism, and to draw some conclusions from the fact. I'm still waiting. This is one of those cases where the lack of a specific event is huge news but is being ignored.
I remember talking with a number of well-known and well-respected political analysts shortly after 9/ll about the likelihood of another attack, and nobody doubted the nation's vulnerability of this country, or the ability of Al Qaeda to launch another attack on the United States.
Given the size of this country, the length of our borders and the ease in which terrorists were able to slip in and out of the US earlier, it's simply stunning that we have avoided another serious attack so far. I don't know if our luck and skill at rooting out prospective terrorists will change, but shouldn't some major media outlet have remarked by now on our nation's ability to avoid a second attack?
Why are members of the media ignoring the story? Most journalists probably would say that "news" is driven by events, and that the lack of an event isn't news. But that's hardly convincing, since it's obviously "news" when something that is expected to happen doesn't take place (sunrise, for example, or, as Sherlock Holmes has noted, at times even the barking of a dog).
It's certainly a challenge to tell a story about why something hasn't happened, but the fact that so many people were so wrong makes this a story worth telling. At the very least, it's worth a segment on the cable TV networks and in our finer publications of note.