I’m following up on Tim Johnson, the Democratic senator who is currently listed in critical condition after “successful” brain surgery – and whose illness could imperil the fragile ’07 Democratic Senate majority, as I wrote here late yesterday.
Undoubtedly, a lot of people are reacting to this story by asking, “Who’s Tim Johnson?” So while everyone is scrambling to understand the laws and precedents relating to senatorial incapacity, let’s also focus a bit on Johnson – and the important role that he played in national politics, back in 2002.
Early that year, Tim Johnson of South Dakota was the canary in the coal mine. He was arguably the first Democratic senator to be targeted for electoral defeat by the Bush administration on the charge that he was insufficiently patriotic.
I know this well, because I spent a week in South Dakota, in February of 2002. Actually, what I remember most was that you could drive in South Dakota for two straight hours without seeing a tree. What I next remember is that Johnson, a freshman Democrat, was slated to be up for re-election in November – and yet, even at the start of the year, the White House was already trying to take him apart.
Bush, at this particular time, was at the apogee of his popularity. The 9/11 attacks had just happened only a few months earlier, the retaliatory war in Afghanistan was front and center, and the Iraq sales job had barely begun. Moreover, Bush in the 2000 election had won South Dakota by 22 percentage points. Hence, the early decision to go after Johnson, assailing him as a weak obstructionist of the unassailable commander-in-chief. That winter, the White House knew that if they could eject Johnson from his job, the Democrats would lose their one-seat Senate majority (sound familiar?).
So the Bush strategists dispatched Bush emissaries to South Dakota, to deify the Decider; I recall being at a banquet where Secretary of Commerce Donald Evans said of his Texas buddy, “This is a man who has a great mind, a big heart, an extraordinary leader, judgment you can trust.” And the Bush strategists followed up by running a slew of TV ads, sponsored by the national GOP, depicting Johnson as a national security softy whose judgment should not be trusted. (Locals told me that they had never seen such an early barrage of ads, nine months before an election.)
Johnson was a bit of a challenge for the Bush strategists, because he did have a son in the military; in fact, the kid was stationed with the 101st Airborne in Kandahar, Afghanistan. And Johnson himself was an Army vet. But these trifling details didn’t deter the strategists (just as they were not deterred later that year, when they questioned the patriotism of Democratic Sen. Max Cleland, a triple-amputee war vet).
Nor were they deterred by the fact that so many South Dakotans seemed to be ignoring the ads. People complained that the ads were a big waste of money, and that folks were more fixated on their local worries, such as the fact that pine beetles were chewing up the mountain forests on the western border, and prairie dogs were ravaging the land. One rancher named Bill Hutchinson told me, "Maybe if you could believe the ads, you'd pay attention. But you know there's always a shady area, or some exaggeration, or something left out. These [candidates] are good men, but the people writing those ads? I wouldn't want them working for me, because they're not honest."
No matter. South Dakota was a test market for the TV messages that would ultimately help Bush recapture the Senate that November, and Tim Johnson was a test target. Most vividly, there was this TV ad: “Al Qaeda terrorists, Saddam Hussein, enemies of America, working to obtain nuclear weapons. Now, more than ever, our nation must have a missile defense system to shoot down missiles fired at America. Yet Tim Johnson has voted against a missile defense system 29 different times.”
Note the facile linking of al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein; we would hear a lot more of that during the prelude to war in Iraq. More importantly, the ad attacked Johnson for voting against a system that America didn’t have, that America probably won’t have, and that would have been ineffective against the 9/11 attacks anyway. But this was probably a smart ad to run in South Dakota, where the Cold War missile silos had been emptied only a decade earlier.
Nevertheless, Tim Johnson survived on election night – by 524 votes. Yet another squeaker in this era of squeakers. Republicans cried foul, charging fraud at the polls; the Republican state attorney general dismissed the outcry, calling it “shoddy and irresponsible and sensationalistic and garbage.”
So here we are today, fixed again on South Dakota. Will the ’07 Senate stay in Democratic hands, even if an ailing Johnson remains horizontal for the foreseeable future? Quite possibly, because the rules do not require that convalescent senators give up their jobs – which is why Strom Thurmond was able to hang onto his, despite the fact that he was virtually bedridden in his final years.
And we also have the case of Clair Engel, a California senator who was rendered mute by a brain tumor – yet stayed in his seat, and showed up to vote for the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act. Since he could not speak, he indicated “aye” by pointing to his eye.
He died a month and a half later, with no attendant political speculation about his seat. This was, after all, the era of strong Democratic majorities.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Democrats win Senate...wait, not so fast
As I have often observed, Democrats are a lot like Phillies fans - always dreading the worst, usually for good reason. It did appear, however, that their habitual gloom was dispelled on Nov. 9, when the U.S. Senate officially went Democratic, 51-49.
But not so fast. As the late great Gilda Radner used to say, it's always something.
There is news tonight that Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota has been hospitalized with a possible strike. We all wish him a speedy recovery, and that's what matters most. The political stakes, however, are obvious. Let's play this one out:
If Johnson is somehow unable to serve, he might have to step down.
If he steps down, the governor of South Dakota is empowered to appoint a replacement (who, as I read the state law, would be allowed to serve until a special election is held - on the same day as the next general election...in 2008).
The governor of South Dakota is a Republican. The odds that he would appoint a Republican are approximately 200 percent.
If a Republican takes Johnson's seat, the '07 Senate party breakdown would be 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.
If it's a 50-50 breakdown, Vice President Cheney is empowered to break the tie.
Which means that the Republicans would probably get to run the Senate after all...although, as explained here, it's not necessarily that simple. Is there ever a dull moment in national politics anymore?
And speaking of political power swings, am I the only person who remembers that Al Gore conceded his presidential candidacy six years ago tonight?
But not so fast. As the late great Gilda Radner used to say, it's always something.
There is news tonight that Democratic Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota has been hospitalized with a possible strike. We all wish him a speedy recovery, and that's what matters most. The political stakes, however, are obvious. Let's play this one out:
If Johnson is somehow unable to serve, he might have to step down.
If he steps down, the governor of South Dakota is empowered to appoint a replacement (who, as I read the state law, would be allowed to serve until a special election is held - on the same day as the next general election...in 2008).
The governor of South Dakota is a Republican. The odds that he would appoint a Republican are approximately 200 percent.
If a Republican takes Johnson's seat, the '07 Senate party breakdown would be 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans.
If it's a 50-50 breakdown, Vice President Cheney is empowered to break the tie.
Which means that the Republicans would probably get to run the Senate after all...although, as explained here, it's not necessarily that simple. Is there ever a dull moment in national politics anymore?
And speaking of political power swings, am I the only person who remembers that Al Gore conceded his presidential candidacy six years ago tonight?
Rahm Emanuel gets Clintonesque about Mark Foley
To update a line uttered by Captain Renault in Casablanca, I am shocked, shocked to learn that the House Ethics Committee has recommended that no action be taken against the Republican leaders who allowed a sexual predator in their ranks to roam free.
Yes, the leaders were “willfully ignorant,” and, yes, they failed “to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention” to Mark Foley’s behavior, but the Ethics Committee report said nonetheless that nobody broke any rules and therefore nobody should be punished in any way. Pretty toothless stuff. I finally got around to reading the report on Sunday night – it was released last Friday, which was no surprise, because Washington politicians always release embarrassing information on Fridays – and its general thrust was fairly predictable.
…Except for all the juicy info about the Democrats.
And the material is even juicier now, in the wake of the NEWS that Democratic congressman Rahm Emanuel, the party’s chief hardball strategist for the ’06 House campaign, actually knew about Foley’s predilections back in ’05 – even though he insisted, in an ABC interview this autumn, that he had known nothing about Foley until the network broke the news on Sept. 28.
I started to wonder about Emanuel when I reached page 45 of the report, and read that some of Foley’s emails had been forwarded, in autumn 2005, to a staffer on the House Democratic Caucus, who in turn shared them with Matt Miller, the communications director of the House Democratic Caucus, who in turn shared them with the communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. As Miller testified, “I gave them to him…with the understanding that [the DCCC communications director] is someone that talks to reporters all day….maybe there's a way that he could get the - you know, that he could give them to a reporter.”
Rahm Emanuel was the DCCC flak’s boss. Emanuel’s name does not appear in the Ethics Committee Report, but it strained credulity to believe that the DCCC flak would not give a heads-up to the top DCCC honcho. Which, it turns out, is exactly what happened – as evidenced by this report the other day on the CNN website:
“The head of the House Democrats' campaign committee, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, had heard of former Rep. Mark Foley's inappropriate e-mails to a former male page a year before they became public, a campaign committee aide told CNN. . . .the Illinois Democrat was informed in 2005, but never saw the correspondence and did not have enough information to raise concerns. The aide said Emanuel took ‘no action’ because his knowledge was ‘cursory’ and little more than ‘rumor.’”
That defense doesn't score well on the Washington spin meter. The entire Democratic argument, in the Foley scandal, rested on the proposition that House Speaker Dennis Hastert and his fellow Republicans took no action because they conveniently chose not to probe deeply into the information they already had in their possession about their predatory colleague. Indeed, Emanuel told ABC on October 8 that the Republicans should pay a price simply for being so incurious. He offered this analogy: “If a high school teacher was found doing this with a child, and the principal knew . . . the community and parents would have that principal and teacher out."
He wasn’t wrong to characterize the Republican leaders in that fashion; and the Ethics Committee report rebukes the Republican leaders for their convenient incuriosity. But the point is, Emanuel covered up the fact that he – for his own political reasons – had been conveniently incurious as well.
And here he is, in cover-up mode (video link, here), leaving the clear impression that he had no advance knowledge of the Foley emails:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: “I just want to ask you plainly -- did you or your staff know anything about these emails or instant messages before they came out?"
EMANUEL: “No…George, never saw ‘em.”
STEPHANOPOULOUS: “So you were not aware of them? Had no involvement?”
EMANUEL: “No. Never saw ‘em.”
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN ADAM PUTNAM (interjecting): “Was there an awareness?”
EMANUEL: “No. Never saw ‘em. The first time I ever saw these things…was when (ABC reporter) Brian Ross broke the (story).”
Well. One can see how Emanuel, the former Bill Clinton aide, left himself a bit of Clintonesque wiggle room. He kept insisting that he never “saw” the emails in 2005, and maybe that’s literally true. But that’s not what he was asked. Stephanopoulos asked, “Did you or your staff know anything”? Putnam asked, “Was there an awareness?”
So maybe it just comes down to what the meaning of the word “saw” is.
To recap, nothing in the House Ethics Committee report disputes the meta-narrative of the Foley affair, which is that the ruling Republicans acted in their political self-interest when they turned a blind eye to Foley’s behavior. Nor does the report dispute statements made earlier this autumn by ABC’s Brian Ross, who said that he ultimately got wind of the Foley story from Republican contacts.
But now, in the wake of the news about Rahm Emanuel, we have a fuller picture: the House Democrats turned a blind eye as well, clearly hoping – in their own political self-interest – that the Foley info would somehow surface in the press and thus hurt the GOP in campaign ’06.
All told, Americans who believe that politicians should strictly police their ranks were not well served by either party in the Foley affair.
Yes, the leaders were “willfully ignorant,” and, yes, they failed “to exhaust all reasonable efforts to call attention” to Mark Foley’s behavior, but the Ethics Committee report said nonetheless that nobody broke any rules and therefore nobody should be punished in any way. Pretty toothless stuff. I finally got around to reading the report on Sunday night – it was released last Friday, which was no surprise, because Washington politicians always release embarrassing information on Fridays – and its general thrust was fairly predictable.
…Except for all the juicy info about the Democrats.
And the material is even juicier now, in the wake of the NEWS that Democratic congressman Rahm Emanuel, the party’s chief hardball strategist for the ’06 House campaign, actually knew about Foley’s predilections back in ’05 – even though he insisted, in an ABC interview this autumn, that he had known nothing about Foley until the network broke the news on Sept. 28.
I started to wonder about Emanuel when I reached page 45 of the report, and read that some of Foley’s emails had been forwarded, in autumn 2005, to a staffer on the House Democratic Caucus, who in turn shared them with Matt Miller, the communications director of the House Democratic Caucus, who in turn shared them with the communications director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. As Miller testified, “I gave them to him…with the understanding that [the DCCC communications director] is someone that talks to reporters all day….maybe there's a way that he could get the - you know, that he could give them to a reporter.”
Rahm Emanuel was the DCCC flak’s boss. Emanuel’s name does not appear in the Ethics Committee Report, but it strained credulity to believe that the DCCC flak would not give a heads-up to the top DCCC honcho. Which, it turns out, is exactly what happened – as evidenced by this report the other day on the CNN website:
“The head of the House Democrats' campaign committee, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, had heard of former Rep. Mark Foley's inappropriate e-mails to a former male page a year before they became public, a campaign committee aide told CNN. . . .the Illinois Democrat was informed in 2005, but never saw the correspondence and did not have enough information to raise concerns. The aide said Emanuel took ‘no action’ because his knowledge was ‘cursory’ and little more than ‘rumor.’”
That defense doesn't score well on the Washington spin meter. The entire Democratic argument, in the Foley scandal, rested on the proposition that House Speaker Dennis Hastert and his fellow Republicans took no action because they conveniently chose not to probe deeply into the information they already had in their possession about their predatory colleague. Indeed, Emanuel told ABC on October 8 that the Republicans should pay a price simply for being so incurious. He offered this analogy: “If a high school teacher was found doing this with a child, and the principal knew . . . the community and parents would have that principal and teacher out."
He wasn’t wrong to characterize the Republican leaders in that fashion; and the Ethics Committee report rebukes the Republican leaders for their convenient incuriosity. But the point is, Emanuel covered up the fact that he – for his own political reasons – had been conveniently incurious as well.
And here he is, in cover-up mode (video link, here), leaving the clear impression that he had no advance knowledge of the Foley emails:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: “I just want to ask you plainly -- did you or your staff know anything about these emails or instant messages before they came out?"
EMANUEL: “No…George, never saw ‘em.”
STEPHANOPOULOUS: “So you were not aware of them? Had no involvement?”
EMANUEL: “No. Never saw ‘em.”
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN ADAM PUTNAM (interjecting): “Was there an awareness?”
EMANUEL: “No. Never saw ‘em. The first time I ever saw these things…was when (ABC reporter) Brian Ross broke the (story).”
Well. One can see how Emanuel, the former Bill Clinton aide, left himself a bit of Clintonesque wiggle room. He kept insisting that he never “saw” the emails in 2005, and maybe that’s literally true. But that’s not what he was asked. Stephanopoulos asked, “Did you or your staff know anything”? Putnam asked, “Was there an awareness?”
So maybe it just comes down to what the meaning of the word “saw” is.
To recap, nothing in the House Ethics Committee report disputes the meta-narrative of the Foley affair, which is that the ruling Republicans acted in their political self-interest when they turned a blind eye to Foley’s behavior. Nor does the report dispute statements made earlier this autumn by ABC’s Brian Ross, who said that he ultimately got wind of the Foley story from Republican contacts.
But now, in the wake of the news about Rahm Emanuel, we have a fuller picture: the House Democrats turned a blind eye as well, clearly hoping – in their own political self-interest – that the Foley info would somehow surface in the press and thus hurt the GOP in campaign ’06.
All told, Americans who believe that politicians should strictly police their ranks were not well served by either party in the Foley affair.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Give that clueless Democrat an "F"!
As the Democrats prepare to share power in 2007, one of their top priorities is to demonstrate that they can be trusted on matters of national security. They have been handed a golden opportunity – thanks to White House bungling and GOP congressional complicity – and their ’08 presidential prospects may well hinge on whether they can convince independent swing voters that they are worthy of that trust.
Too bad they have flunked their first test.
Consider the case of Democratic congressman Silvestre Reyes. He’s the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Nancy Pelosi’s compromise choice. She didn’t want to pick the hawkish Jane Harman (they have personal issues). Nor did she want to pick the next Democrat on the panel, Alcee Hastings (he’s a former federal judge who was once impeached by the House and ousted from his job by the Senate). So she went to the next Democrat on the panel, Reyes. He’s considered a decent guy, and he’s a Vietnam vet as well.
The only problem is that, despite his service on the panel, Reyes apparently doesn’t know all that much about the global war on terror.
As Jeff Stein, the national security editor of the nonpartisan Congressional Quarterly magazine put it the other day, “Reyes can’t answer some fundamental questions about the powerful forces arrayed against us in the Middle East….How can the Intelligence Committee do effective oversight of U.S. spy agencies when its leaders don’t know basics about the battlefield?... Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East.”
Stein has a reputation for giving pop quizzes to national security officials, just to see what they know. He has embarrassed some FBI people this way. He has also embarrassed some House Republicans in the past. Maybe he’d even embarrass President Bush, who, as I recall, stumbled during his first campaign when a TV reporter gave him a pop quiz. (Politicians hate pop quizzes. I remember a snowy day in New Hamsphire, in 1996, when GOP candidate Lamar Alexander was asked whether he knew the price of a gallon of milk and the price of a loaf of bread. He flunked both.)
Anyway, now that the Democrats have a chance to show some national security expertise and project an image of strength, it’s fair enough to put Reyes on the hot seat. And it turns out that Reyes couldn’t answer the most basic question about al Qaeda. Here’s how it went, according to Stein:
Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?
“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.
That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up al Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics. Al Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the Saudi Royal family besmirched the true faith through their corruption and alliance with the United States, particularly allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil.
It’s been five years since these Muslim extremists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center. Is it too much to ask that our intelligence overseers know who they are?
As Stein also demonstrated, Reyes didn't know all that much about Hezbollah, either. In the end, Stein asks the reader facetiously, “If President Bush and some of his closest associates, not to mention top counterterrorism officials, have demonstrated their own ignorance about who the players are in the Middle East, why should we expect the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee to get it right?”
I can answer that, at least in political terms. If the Democrats expect to win back the White House in 2008, they need to seriously demonstrate during 2007 that they can get it right.
-------
Indeed, they have rarely had such an opportunity. The latest CBS News poll, released last night, shows that just 21 percent of the American people support Bush’s handling of the Iraq war – a record low. Yet the White House is still trying to shrug off its critics, even though the ever-expanding pool of critics now includes rank-and-file Republican senators like Gordon Smith of Oregon.
As I mentioned here last Friday, Smith delivered a long Senate floor speech that upbraided Bush for his failed prosecution of the war. But when Bush spokesman Tony Snow was asked yesterday about Smith’s defection, he dismissed any suggestion that Smith had made any substantive arguments. Rather, Snow simply said that “politics are emotional in the wake of an election.”
In other words, the White House is not prepared to take even its Republican critics seriously. The circling of the wagons continues.
-------
There's a prominent new blogger at work this week - Tom DeLay. No word yet on whether he'll be tapping the keyboard in his bathrobe down in his Sugarland basement (seriously, it appears the blog will be ghost-written), although it does appear that The Hammer means business. He says he is hoping to use his blog as a rallying point for conservatives.
As a blogger, however, he doesn't seem very comfortable with the notion that he will attract comments from people who don't like him. For instance, on his very first day, this message was posted for his perusal: "You corrupt hypocrite, crawl back to the hole you came out of."
Well, DeLay's blog team reportedly got rid of that message - maybe 100 in all. It appears that the indicted ex-congressmen who once threatened federal judges ("judges need to be intimidated") just can't take the heat when it comes his way.
Too bad they have flunked their first test.
Consider the case of Democratic congressman Silvestre Reyes. He’s the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Nancy Pelosi’s compromise choice. She didn’t want to pick the hawkish Jane Harman (they have personal issues). Nor did she want to pick the next Democrat on the panel, Alcee Hastings (he’s a former federal judge who was once impeached by the House and ousted from his job by the Senate). So she went to the next Democrat on the panel, Reyes. He’s considered a decent guy, and he’s a Vietnam vet as well.
The only problem is that, despite his service on the panel, Reyes apparently doesn’t know all that much about the global war on terror.
As Jeff Stein, the national security editor of the nonpartisan Congressional Quarterly magazine put it the other day, “Reyes can’t answer some fundamental questions about the powerful forces arrayed against us in the Middle East….How can the Intelligence Committee do effective oversight of U.S. spy agencies when its leaders don’t know basics about the battlefield?... Members of the Intelligence Committee, mind you, are paid $165,200 a year to know more than basic facts about our foes in the Middle East.”
Stein has a reputation for giving pop quizzes to national security officials, just to see what they know. He has embarrassed some FBI people this way. He has also embarrassed some House Republicans in the past. Maybe he’d even embarrass President Bush, who, as I recall, stumbled during his first campaign when a TV reporter gave him a pop quiz. (Politicians hate pop quizzes. I remember a snowy day in New Hamsphire, in 1996, when GOP candidate Lamar Alexander was asked whether he knew the price of a gallon of milk and the price of a loaf of bread. He flunked both.)
Anyway, now that the Democrats have a chance to show some national security expertise and project an image of strength, it’s fair enough to put Reyes on the hot seat. And it turns out that Reyes couldn’t answer the most basic question about al Qaeda. Here’s how it went, according to Stein:
Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?
“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately?”
“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.
That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up al Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics. Al Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the Saudi Royal family besmirched the true faith through their corruption and alliance with the United States, particularly allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil.
It’s been five years since these Muslim extremists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center. Is it too much to ask that our intelligence overseers know who they are?
As Stein also demonstrated, Reyes didn't know all that much about Hezbollah, either. In the end, Stein asks the reader facetiously, “If President Bush and some of his closest associates, not to mention top counterterrorism officials, have demonstrated their own ignorance about who the players are in the Middle East, why should we expect the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee to get it right?”
I can answer that, at least in political terms. If the Democrats expect to win back the White House in 2008, they need to seriously demonstrate during 2007 that they can get it right.
-------
Indeed, they have rarely had such an opportunity. The latest CBS News poll, released last night, shows that just 21 percent of the American people support Bush’s handling of the Iraq war – a record low. Yet the White House is still trying to shrug off its critics, even though the ever-expanding pool of critics now includes rank-and-file Republican senators like Gordon Smith of Oregon.
As I mentioned here last Friday, Smith delivered a long Senate floor speech that upbraided Bush for his failed prosecution of the war. But when Bush spokesman Tony Snow was asked yesterday about Smith’s defection, he dismissed any suggestion that Smith had made any substantive arguments. Rather, Snow simply said that “politics are emotional in the wake of an election.”
In other words, the White House is not prepared to take even its Republican critics seriously. The circling of the wagons continues.
-------
There's a prominent new blogger at work this week - Tom DeLay. No word yet on whether he'll be tapping the keyboard in his bathrobe down in his Sugarland basement (seriously, it appears the blog will be ghost-written), although it does appear that The Hammer means business. He says he is hoping to use his blog as a rallying point for conservatives.
As a blogger, however, he doesn't seem very comfortable with the notion that he will attract comments from people who don't like him. For instance, on his very first day, this message was posted for his perusal: "You corrupt hypocrite, crawl back to the hole you came out of."
Well, DeLay's blog team reportedly got rid of that message - maybe 100 in all. It appears that the indicted ex-congressmen who once threatened federal judges ("judges need to be intimidated") just can't take the heat when it comes his way.
Monday, December 11, 2006
In decorous language, the wise men expose the Bush credibility gap
Appearing yesterday on Meet the Press, Bush family consigliere James Baker was in the midst of discussing his Iraq Study Group report when he flatly stated: “We don’t spend any time wringing our hands about what happened or might not have happened in the past…Everything in our report is forward-looking.”
Well, Baker is a seasoned political poker player, and that surely explains why he was able to utter those remarks with a straight face. Because, in reality, one of the prime strengths of the bipartisan report is its willingness to revisit the past and boldly chart the Bush administration incompetence that has brought the American mission in Iraq to the brink of ruin.
The Bush team and its defenders have frequently sought to blame “the media” for the woes in Iraq, essentially by arguing that domestic morale has been sapped by journalists who report the bad news while ignoring the good. Bush himself has complained about this since the autumn of 2003, when he said: “we’re making good progress in Iraq. Sometimes it’s hard to tell it when you listen to the filter.” He complained again this past March, saying, “People resuming their normal lives will never be as dramatic as the footage of an IED explosion,” and, as always, the Fox News team seconded the sentiment. Sean Hannity said there has been "a total and almost complete focus on all the negative aspects of the war."
But Baker and his ISG colleagues demonstrate in their report that blaming the media is a fraudulent exercise. They take no issue with the journalists’ reporting of the violence in Iraq; their beef is with the Bush war team – which, as a matter of official statistical policy, has consistently sought to minimize the violence in Iraq…and has done so in order to protect the Bush administration’s ideological agenda.
It’s right there, in passages buried deep in the report:
“(T)here is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases.
“A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count.
“For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks of significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence.”
93 acts of violence reported, as opposed to 1,100 acts of violence committed…Baker and his colleagues are too decorous to state the obvious, but what they are essentially saying here is that the Bush administration, in its official capacity, falsely skews its information.
The next line in the ISG report is particularly damning, even though its bureaucratese may require you to read it twice: “Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.” That’s dry stuff, intentionally so. But, as an attack on the Bush administration, it has real power. Baker and his colleagues are saying that the war team has “systematically” sought to hide the true extent of the Iraq violence so as not to expose the flaws in the neoconservative mission.
(Read that italicized sentence again. Now read what British officials wrote in their now-famous Downing Street memo, about the Bush team's prewar sales pitch: "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Sound familiar?)
All told, the ISG report demonstrates that there has been a serious disconnect between the facts on the ground, and what Americans were being told by the Bush administration (in the president’s words in December 2005, there is “quiet steady progress”). And by exposing the in-house informational coverup, the ISG report probably makes it far less likely that the administration will try in the future to blame the downward spiral in Iraq on the journalists who are reporting it. (Although, on CNN this weekend, Bush spokesman Tony Snow made one drive-by remark, accusing the Iraq correspondents of peddling "a failure narrative.")
But journalists well know that the release of the ISG report will not prevent the war’s staunchest defenders from seeking to blame them anyway. Four decades after Vietnam, it’s a virtual axiom in some circles that “the media” “lost” that war, by reporting so much of the bad news. And as Iraq continues to deteriorate, the same line is being floated again; as Michael Novak argues on Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard website, “What we have discovered in Iraq is the weakest link in the ability of the United States to sustain military operations overseas. That link is the U.S. media. They are Islamists' best friends.”
The people who now consider Baker to be a “surrender monkey” are not likely to endorse his contention that it’s the Bush administration, not the media, that should be blamed for destructively shoddy reporting.
Well, Baker is a seasoned political poker player, and that surely explains why he was able to utter those remarks with a straight face. Because, in reality, one of the prime strengths of the bipartisan report is its willingness to revisit the past and boldly chart the Bush administration incompetence that has brought the American mission in Iraq to the brink of ruin.
The Bush team and its defenders have frequently sought to blame “the media” for the woes in Iraq, essentially by arguing that domestic morale has been sapped by journalists who report the bad news while ignoring the good. Bush himself has complained about this since the autumn of 2003, when he said: “we’re making good progress in Iraq. Sometimes it’s hard to tell it when you listen to the filter.” He complained again this past March, saying, “People resuming their normal lives will never be as dramatic as the footage of an IED explosion,” and, as always, the Fox News team seconded the sentiment. Sean Hannity said there has been "a total and almost complete focus on all the negative aspects of the war."
But Baker and his ISG colleagues demonstrate in their report that blaming the media is a fraudulent exercise. They take no issue with the journalists’ reporting of the violence in Iraq; their beef is with the Bush war team – which, as a matter of official statistical policy, has consistently sought to minimize the violence in Iraq…and has done so in order to protect the Bush administration’s ideological agenda.
It’s right there, in passages buried deep in the report:
“(T)here is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases.
“A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count.
“For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks of significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence.”
93 acts of violence reported, as opposed to 1,100 acts of violence committed…Baker and his colleagues are too decorous to state the obvious, but what they are essentially saying here is that the Bush administration, in its official capacity, falsely skews its information.
The next line in the ISG report is particularly damning, even though its bureaucratese may require you to read it twice: “Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals.” That’s dry stuff, intentionally so. But, as an attack on the Bush administration, it has real power. Baker and his colleagues are saying that the war team has “systematically” sought to hide the true extent of the Iraq violence so as not to expose the flaws in the neoconservative mission.
(Read that italicized sentence again. Now read what British officials wrote in their now-famous Downing Street memo, about the Bush team's prewar sales pitch: "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." Sound familiar?)
All told, the ISG report demonstrates that there has been a serious disconnect between the facts on the ground, and what Americans were being told by the Bush administration (in the president’s words in December 2005, there is “quiet steady progress”). And by exposing the in-house informational coverup, the ISG report probably makes it far less likely that the administration will try in the future to blame the downward spiral in Iraq on the journalists who are reporting it. (Although, on CNN this weekend, Bush spokesman Tony Snow made one drive-by remark, accusing the Iraq correspondents of peddling "a failure narrative.")
But journalists well know that the release of the ISG report will not prevent the war’s staunchest defenders from seeking to blame them anyway. Four decades after Vietnam, it’s a virtual axiom in some circles that “the media” “lost” that war, by reporting so much of the bad news. And as Iraq continues to deteriorate, the same line is being floated again; as Michael Novak argues on Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard website, “What we have discovered in Iraq is the weakest link in the ability of the United States to sustain military operations overseas. That link is the U.S. media. They are Islamists' best friends.”
The people who now consider Baker to be a “surrender monkey” are not likely to endorse his contention that it’s the Bush administration, not the media, that should be blamed for destructively shoddy reporting.
Friday, December 08, 2006
A Republican senator says: Mr. President, you're no Churchill
I contended here the other day that President Bush is likely to suffer further political damage because of his Iraq debacle - and that the wounds would be inflicted by Republicans who are “fearful of an ’08 defeat."
Well, this is exactly what I was talking about: Republican Gordon Smith, who is up for re-election in 2008, spoke yesterday on the U.S. Senate floor, signaling that he could no longer stand with a Decider who, among other things, doesn't understand the Middle East and doesn't have a clue about history. Other Republicans are bound to follow.
To give you an idea of how fed up the GOP rank and file has become, I yield the balance of my time today to the junior senator from the blue state of Oregon:
“I have tried to be a good soldier in this Chamber. I have tried to support our President, believing at the time of the vote on the war in Iraq that we had been given good intelligence and knowing that Saddam Hussein was a menace to the world, a brutal dictator, a tyrant by any standard, and one who threatened our country in many different ways, through the financing and fomenting of terrorism. For those reasons and believing that we would find weapons of mass destruction, I voted aye....
“But since that time, there have been 2,899 American casualties. There have been over 22,000 American men and women wounded. There has been an expenditure of $290 billion, a figure that approaches the expenditure we have every year on an issue as important as Medicare. We have paid a price in blood and treasure that is beyond calculation, by my estimation.
“Now, as I witness the slow undoing of our efforts there, I rise to speak from my heart. I was greatly disturbed recently to read a comment by a man I admire in history, one Winston Churchill, who after the British mandate extended to the peoples of Iraq for five years, wrote to David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England: ‘At present we are paying 8 millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano.’ When I read that, I thought ‘not much has changed.’ We have to learn the lessons of history and sometimes they are painful because we have made mistakes….
“Many things have been attributed to George Bush. I have heard him on this floor blamed for every ill, even the weather. But I do not believe him to be a liar. I do not believe him to be a traitor, nor do I believe all the bravado and the statements and the accusations made against him. I believe him to be a very idealistic man. I believe him to have a stubborn backbone.
“He is not guilty of perfidy, but I do believe he is guilty of believing bad intelligence and giving us the same.
“I can't tell you how devastated I was to learn that in fact we were not going to find weapons of mass destruction….I believe the President is guilty of trying to win a short war and not understanding fully the nature of the ancient hatreds of the Middle East. Iraq is a European creation. At the Treaty of Versailles (in 1919), the victorious powers put together Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia tribes that had been killing each other for time immemorial. I would like to think there is an Iraqi identity. I would like to remember the purple fingers raised high. But we cannot want democracy for Iraq more than they want it for themselves. And what I find now is that our tactics there have failed….
“I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore. I believe we need to figure out how to fight the war on terror and to do it right. So either we clear and hold and build, or let's go home.
“There are no good options, as the Iraq Study Group has mentioned in their report. I am not sure cutting and walking is any better. I have little confidence that the Syrians and the Iranians are going to be serious about helping us to build a stable and democratic Iraq….
“Iraq is a battlefield in that larger (global struggle against terrorism)…But we have no business being a policeman in someone else's civil war.
“I welcome the Iraq Study Group's report, but if we are ultimately going to retreat, I would rather do it sooner than later. I am looking for answers, but the current course is unacceptable to this Senator. I suppose if the President is guilty of one other thing, I find it also in the words of Winston Churchill. He said: ‘After the First World War, let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe that any war will be smooth and easy or that anyone who embarks on this strange voyage can measure the tides and the hurricanes. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.’ That is a lesson we are learning again….
“I believe now that we must either determine to (fight more aggressively), or we must redeploy in a way that allows us to continue to prosecute the larger war on terror. It will not be pretty. We will pay a price in world opinion. But I, for one, am tired of paying the price of 10 or more of our troops dying a day. So let's cut and run, or cut and walk, or let us fight the war on terror more intelligently than we have, because we have fought this war in a very lamentable way.
“Those are my feelings. I regret them. I would have never voted for this conflict had I reason to believe that the intelligence we had was not accurate. It was not accurate, but that is history. Now we must find a way to make the best of a terrible situation, at a minimum of loss of life for our brave fighting men and women. So I will be looking for every opportunity to clear, build, hold, and win - or how to bring our troops home.”
Well, this is exactly what I was talking about: Republican Gordon Smith, who is up for re-election in 2008, spoke yesterday on the U.S. Senate floor, signaling that he could no longer stand with a Decider who, among other things, doesn't understand the Middle East and doesn't have a clue about history. Other Republicans are bound to follow.
To give you an idea of how fed up the GOP rank and file has become, I yield the balance of my time today to the junior senator from the blue state of Oregon:
“I have tried to be a good soldier in this Chamber. I have tried to support our President, believing at the time of the vote on the war in Iraq that we had been given good intelligence and knowing that Saddam Hussein was a menace to the world, a brutal dictator, a tyrant by any standard, and one who threatened our country in many different ways, through the financing and fomenting of terrorism. For those reasons and believing that we would find weapons of mass destruction, I voted aye....
“But since that time, there have been 2,899 American casualties. There have been over 22,000 American men and women wounded. There has been an expenditure of $290 billion, a figure that approaches the expenditure we have every year on an issue as important as Medicare. We have paid a price in blood and treasure that is beyond calculation, by my estimation.
“Now, as I witness the slow undoing of our efforts there, I rise to speak from my heart. I was greatly disturbed recently to read a comment by a man I admire in history, one Winston Churchill, who after the British mandate extended to the peoples of Iraq for five years, wrote to David Lloyd George, Prime Minister of England: ‘At present we are paying 8 millions a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano.’ When I read that, I thought ‘not much has changed.’ We have to learn the lessons of history and sometimes they are painful because we have made mistakes….
“Many things have been attributed to George Bush. I have heard him on this floor blamed for every ill, even the weather. But I do not believe him to be a liar. I do not believe him to be a traitor, nor do I believe all the bravado and the statements and the accusations made against him. I believe him to be a very idealistic man. I believe him to have a stubborn backbone.
“He is not guilty of perfidy, but I do believe he is guilty of believing bad intelligence and giving us the same.
“I can't tell you how devastated I was to learn that in fact we were not going to find weapons of mass destruction….I believe the President is guilty of trying to win a short war and not understanding fully the nature of the ancient hatreds of the Middle East. Iraq is a European creation. At the Treaty of Versailles (in 1919), the victorious powers put together Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia tribes that had been killing each other for time immemorial. I would like to think there is an Iraqi identity. I would like to remember the purple fingers raised high. But we cannot want democracy for Iraq more than they want it for themselves. And what I find now is that our tactics there have failed….
“I, for one, am at the end of my rope when it comes to supporting a policy that has our soldiers patrolling the same streets in the same way, being blown up by the same bombs day after day. That is absurd. It may even be criminal. I cannot support that anymore. I believe we need to figure out how to fight the war on terror and to do it right. So either we clear and hold and build, or let's go home.
“There are no good options, as the Iraq Study Group has mentioned in their report. I am not sure cutting and walking is any better. I have little confidence that the Syrians and the Iranians are going to be serious about helping us to build a stable and democratic Iraq….
“Iraq is a battlefield in that larger (global struggle against terrorism)…But we have no business being a policeman in someone else's civil war.
“I welcome the Iraq Study Group's report, but if we are ultimately going to retreat, I would rather do it sooner than later. I am looking for answers, but the current course is unacceptable to this Senator. I suppose if the President is guilty of one other thing, I find it also in the words of Winston Churchill. He said: ‘After the First World War, let us learn our lessons. Never, never believe that any war will be smooth and easy or that anyone who embarks on this strange voyage can measure the tides and the hurricanes. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.’ That is a lesson we are learning again….
“I believe now that we must either determine to (fight more aggressively), or we must redeploy in a way that allows us to continue to prosecute the larger war on terror. It will not be pretty. We will pay a price in world opinion. But I, for one, am tired of paying the price of 10 or more of our troops dying a day. So let's cut and run, or cut and walk, or let us fight the war on terror more intelligently than we have, because we have fought this war in a very lamentable way.
“Those are my feelings. I regret them. I would have never voted for this conflict had I reason to believe that the intelligence we had was not accurate. It was not accurate, but that is history. Now we must find a way to make the best of a terrible situation, at a minimum of loss of life for our brave fighting men and women. So I will be looking for every opportunity to clear, build, hold, and win - or how to bring our troops home.”
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Why McCain's "maverick" label no longer applies
At an event last month in New York City, I got into an interesting conversation with some notable journalists. The topic was John McCain. More specifically, the topic was why so many notable journalists give such a free ride to John McCain. And, of course, it only took about 30 seconds before we came up with a consensus answer:
McCain is at ease around journalists, he gives them access, he’s not afraid to think out loud – all of which is so unlike so many contemporary pols, who treat the press like dirt unless they are armed in advance with robotic talking points that are bound to make them look good.
It’s a simple formula, really: Give access, get good press….And it continues to pay off. Even though ’08 GOP candidate McCain continues to curry favor with the religious conservatives leaders whom he once condemned as “the forces of evil,” he is still widely described as a “maverick.” Even though McCain was ranked in 2005 (by voteview.com) as the third most conservative U.S. senator, he is he is still widely described as “independent.” Even though he has flip-flopped lately on a number of issues (he voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001, but voted to extend them last winter), he is still widely described as a “straight-talker.”
One of his effective selling points, during his failed ’00 presidential bid, was his image as a boat rocker, an insurgent in full cry against the Republican establishment. But now, today, we have further factual evidence that the old labels should not apply. Reports indicate that he has hired, as his 2008 campaign manager, one of the most notorious hardball specialists of the Republican establishment.
Here’s the abridged book on Terry Nelson:
1. Two months ago, Nelson was one of the key GOP consultants who produced the now-famous Tennessee TV ad attacking Democratic senatorial candidate Harold Ford. Ford is black; at the ad’s conclusion, a white actress playing a semi-naked bimbo winked at the camera and said, “Harold. Call me.” The heat over this ad was so intense that Wal-Mart, another of Nelson’s clients, subsequently decided it would be “the right course of action” not to work with him anymore.
2. Three months ago, when the Republicans decided they could not retain the House or Senate unless they dug up personal information against their opponents and launched a massive negative ad blitz, they hired Nelson to run the effort.
3. Last year, when Nelson launched a new firm, Crosslink Strategy Group, he enlisted the aid of Chris LaCivita, one of the ’04 principals behind the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (whose ads were condemned at the time by John McCain).
4. Nelson’s name surfaces repeatedly in the Texas indictment against former House Republican leader Tom DeLay. Nelson has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing, but the indictment indicates that Nelson, in his capacity as a national Republican official back in September 2002, played a key role in helping DeLay and his money men allegedly evade a Texas law that bans the use of corporate money in Texas campaigns.
5. Nelson’s name also surfaces in the New Hampshire “phone-jamming” case. Late last year, James Tobin, the national GOP’s New England political director, was convicted and jailed for his criminal role in a successful effort to jam Democratic party phone lines and thus impede Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts on election day 2002. Nelson, as the GOP political director, was Tobin’s superior. (A New Hampshire GOP official was also convicted and jailed.) At trial, Nelson was on the prosecutor’s witness list, but he was never called.
McCain first hired Nelson as an advisor last winter, apparently unaware of Nelson’s track record. He said at the time he was unaware, anyway. While appearing last March on a Seattle radio show, a caller quizzed McCain about Nelson, citing some of the examples listed above. McCain’s first response: “None of those charges are true.” Then moments later: “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Which to me prompts the question, how can he know the charges are untrue, if he’d never heard them before? In any event, assuming that he has learned more about Nelson in the subsequent months, he is clearly not concerned. Today, he said: “I am honored to have Terry’s leadership.”
I’ll stress again: Nelson has not been criminally charged with anything. But, in view of his hardball track record, his presence at McCain’s side is sufficient proof that the “maverick” label no longer applies.
On the other hand, it's not hard to see why the McCain camp has taken Nelson aboard. McCain wants to win; Nelson plays to win. And, to paraphrase a line from the film Apocalypse Now, charging a politico with shady dealings is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.
McCain is at ease around journalists, he gives them access, he’s not afraid to think out loud – all of which is so unlike so many contemporary pols, who treat the press like dirt unless they are armed in advance with robotic talking points that are bound to make them look good.
It’s a simple formula, really: Give access, get good press….And it continues to pay off. Even though ’08 GOP candidate McCain continues to curry favor with the religious conservatives leaders whom he once condemned as “the forces of evil,” he is still widely described as a “maverick.” Even though McCain was ranked in 2005 (by voteview.com) as the third most conservative U.S. senator, he is he is still widely described as “independent.” Even though he has flip-flopped lately on a number of issues (he voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001, but voted to extend them last winter), he is still widely described as a “straight-talker.”
One of his effective selling points, during his failed ’00 presidential bid, was his image as a boat rocker, an insurgent in full cry against the Republican establishment. But now, today, we have further factual evidence that the old labels should not apply. Reports indicate that he has hired, as his 2008 campaign manager, one of the most notorious hardball specialists of the Republican establishment.
Here’s the abridged book on Terry Nelson:
1. Two months ago, Nelson was one of the key GOP consultants who produced the now-famous Tennessee TV ad attacking Democratic senatorial candidate Harold Ford. Ford is black; at the ad’s conclusion, a white actress playing a semi-naked bimbo winked at the camera and said, “Harold. Call me.” The heat over this ad was so intense that Wal-Mart, another of Nelson’s clients, subsequently decided it would be “the right course of action” not to work with him anymore.
2. Three months ago, when the Republicans decided they could not retain the House or Senate unless they dug up personal information against their opponents and launched a massive negative ad blitz, they hired Nelson to run the effort.
3. Last year, when Nelson launched a new firm, Crosslink Strategy Group, he enlisted the aid of Chris LaCivita, one of the ’04 principals behind the anti-Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (whose ads were condemned at the time by John McCain).
4. Nelson’s name surfaces repeatedly in the Texas indictment against former House Republican leader Tom DeLay. Nelson has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing, but the indictment indicates that Nelson, in his capacity as a national Republican official back in September 2002, played a key role in helping DeLay and his money men allegedly evade a Texas law that bans the use of corporate money in Texas campaigns.
5. Nelson’s name also surfaces in the New Hampshire “phone-jamming” case. Late last year, James Tobin, the national GOP’s New England political director, was convicted and jailed for his criminal role in a successful effort to jam Democratic party phone lines and thus impede Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts on election day 2002. Nelson, as the GOP political director, was Tobin’s superior. (A New Hampshire GOP official was also convicted and jailed.) At trial, Nelson was on the prosecutor’s witness list, but he was never called.
McCain first hired Nelson as an advisor last winter, apparently unaware of Nelson’s track record. He said at the time he was unaware, anyway. While appearing last March on a Seattle radio show, a caller quizzed McCain about Nelson, citing some of the examples listed above. McCain’s first response: “None of those charges are true.” Then moments later: “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Which to me prompts the question, how can he know the charges are untrue, if he’d never heard them before? In any event, assuming that he has learned more about Nelson in the subsequent months, he is clearly not concerned. Today, he said: “I am honored to have Terry’s leadership.”
I’ll stress again: Nelson has not been criminally charged with anything. But, in view of his hardball track record, his presence at McCain’s side is sufficient proof that the “maverick” label no longer applies.
On the other hand, it's not hard to see why the McCain camp has taken Nelson aboard. McCain wants to win; Nelson plays to win. And, to paraphrase a line from the film Apocalypse Now, charging a politico with shady dealings is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
Will Bush listen to inconvenient truths?
Everybody seems to be blasting feathers off the lame duck.
For starters, the American electorate, infuriated by the debacle in Iraq, took aim at President Bush four weeks ago today and delivered a decisive no-confidence verdict. Then Robert Gates, the next Defense secretary, auditioned for his new job yesterday on Capitol Hill by (a) flatly contradicting Bush’s Pollyanna spin on the war, and (b) frankly acknowledging the long string of Bush war team blunders.
And now, today, we have the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (full text found here), which is really an attempt by some grown-ups in the Washington establishment to pierce the Decider’s protective bubble and offer some reality-based advice - even at the risk of telling him some inconvenient truths that, even now, he may not not want to hear. Indeed, the big story in the days and weeks ahead is whether Bush will welcome new thinking, or simply take refuge in his old certitudes.
He was talking a new game at the White House this morning; one line was particularly amusing: “The country, in my judgment, is tired of pure political bickering that happens in Washington, and they understand that on this important issue of war and peace, it is best for our country to work together.” It’s good that he feels that way, since so much of the “pure political bickering” on the issue of war and peace was fostered by the Bush administration, which, this past summer, was still suggesting that those who opposed the White House approach to Iraq were defeatists and appeasers.
Anyway, this morning he lauded the Iraq Study Group for floating “some really very interesting proposals,” which, in translation, means that he of course reserves the right to reject whatever he doesn’t like. And there is plenty of stuff that he won’t like, starting with the recommendation that he bulk up on the diplomatic front by initiating “new and enhanced” efforts to negotiate with the evil-doers in Iran and Syria; and that he establish a goal of phasing out most U.S. combat troops by early 2008, barely a year from now.
Regarding the latter recommendation, it sounds a lot like cut-and-walk; in the words of the Study Group’s executive summary, we need “a change in the primary mission…that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly.” This sounds suspiciously like a prescription for a graceful exit; the problem, however, is that the man who constitutionally remains commander-in-chief until January 2009 signaled last week that he rejects the idea of any graceful exit.
Politicians in Washington have long hoped that the Study Group, headed by ex-Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton and ex-Secretary of State James Baker (a senior George Bush insider who is trying to clean up the son’s mess), would somehow conjure some magical solutions for Iraq. Clearly that hasn’t happened, largely because the White House’s neoconservative dream has devolved into such a nightmare. At this point in the spreading civil war, it is fanciful to believe that any magic can be conjured by anyone in Washington, because Washington is not in control of events on the ground in Iraq.
Hence the humble tone in the Study Group’s executive summary; referring to its own recommendations, it says: “All have flaws…There is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq.” Hence the carefully hedged remarks in the report, which says, for example, that combat troops should be phased out, but not in accordance with any timeline. In the words of Andrew Bacevich, a national security expert and retired Army lieutenant colonel, almost any recommendations at this point would be “laughably inadequate….One might as well spit on a bonfire.”
The Study Group recommendations, most of which have been leaked in recent weeks, have already drawn fire from both the left and right. Antiwar liberals are attacking the report for recommending a long-term (albeit reduced) U.S. military presence in Iraq, while the unrepentant hawks on the right are ridiculing Baker and Hamilton for suggesting that, in the interests of stabilizing Iraq, Bush should negotiate with Iran and Syria, both of which are members of the “axis of evil.”
Nevertheless, most Americans are hungry for new thinking; in the latest Harris poll, only 26 percent (a record low) support Bush’s handling of the war. This suggests that Baker and Hamilton have the upper hand, politically speaking, in their efforts to talk sense to the president. Basically, these Washington establishment figures see wisdom in phasing out the U.S. combat role and stressing diplomatic initiatives - and those stances are endorsed by most Americans and by most congressional Democrats. The risk for Bush is that, if he rejects these ideas and retreats to his bubble, many of his fellow Republicans, fearful of an ’08 defeat, might bail out as well, leaving him increasingly isolated – and with his international credibility further diminished.
Baker and Hamilton, despite their hedged prose, have thrown down the gauntlet to Bush. There is a clear warning in the executive summary that he should not simply cherry pick the recommendations that he likes while spurning the stuff he doesn’t want to hear. Baker and Hamilton flatly contend that we can’t salvage the Iraq disaster unless Bush accepts their advice on all fronts: “(These) recommendations….are comprehensive and need to be implemented in a coordinated fashion. They should not be separated or carried out in isolation.”
One wonders how Robert Gates, the next Pentagon chief, will react if Bush defies the Baker-Hamilton suggestions and sinks further into the desert sands. As evidenced by Gates’ statements yesterday to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he now officially on record as an open critic of Bush’s war stewardship and his rhetorical spin.
Asked whether we are winning in Iraq, Gates said, “No, sir,” which is a far cry from Bush’s October declaration that “absolutely, we are winning.” (Gates and the Study Group are in sync; Baker and Hamilton say the situation in Iraq is "grave and deteriorating.") Asked whether invading Iraq was a good idea in hindsight, Gates said, “That’s a judgment the historians are going to have to make,” which is a far cry from the Bush-Cheney contention that they made the right call in 2003 and still think so today.
He also said that we sent insufficient troops to stabilize the country after the invasion (a direct slap at his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld), and he said it was the wrong call to disband the Iraqi Army, a move that fueled the ranks of the Sunni insurgents. And he rebuked the neoconservative hawks who today think it might be a good idea to invade Iran, by deftly dumping on the prewar optimists of 2003: “I think that we have seen in Iraq that once war is unleashed, it becomes unpredictable.”
Back in the distant days when Bush was riding high, when cowed critics were deemed to be lacking in patriotism, this kind of candor by an aspiring Bush official would have been inconceivable. But we are in a different era now. The political test for Bush, as autumn turns to winter, is whether he recognizes that fundamental fact.
For starters, the American electorate, infuriated by the debacle in Iraq, took aim at President Bush four weeks ago today and delivered a decisive no-confidence verdict. Then Robert Gates, the next Defense secretary, auditioned for his new job yesterday on Capitol Hill by (a) flatly contradicting Bush’s Pollyanna spin on the war, and (b) frankly acknowledging the long string of Bush war team blunders.
And now, today, we have the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (full text found here), which is really an attempt by some grown-ups in the Washington establishment to pierce the Decider’s protective bubble and offer some reality-based advice - even at the risk of telling him some inconvenient truths that, even now, he may not not want to hear. Indeed, the big story in the days and weeks ahead is whether Bush will welcome new thinking, or simply take refuge in his old certitudes.
He was talking a new game at the White House this morning; one line was particularly amusing: “The country, in my judgment, is tired of pure political bickering that happens in Washington, and they understand that on this important issue of war and peace, it is best for our country to work together.” It’s good that he feels that way, since so much of the “pure political bickering” on the issue of war and peace was fostered by the Bush administration, which, this past summer, was still suggesting that those who opposed the White House approach to Iraq were defeatists and appeasers.
Anyway, this morning he lauded the Iraq Study Group for floating “some really very interesting proposals,” which, in translation, means that he of course reserves the right to reject whatever he doesn’t like. And there is plenty of stuff that he won’t like, starting with the recommendation that he bulk up on the diplomatic front by initiating “new and enhanced” efforts to negotiate with the evil-doers in Iran and Syria; and that he establish a goal of phasing out most U.S. combat troops by early 2008, barely a year from now.
Regarding the latter recommendation, it sounds a lot like cut-and-walk; in the words of the Study Group’s executive summary, we need “a change in the primary mission…that will enable the United States to begin to move its combat forces out of Iraq responsibly.” This sounds suspiciously like a prescription for a graceful exit; the problem, however, is that the man who constitutionally remains commander-in-chief until January 2009 signaled last week that he rejects the idea of any graceful exit.
Politicians in Washington have long hoped that the Study Group, headed by ex-Democratic congressman Lee Hamilton and ex-Secretary of State James Baker (a senior George Bush insider who is trying to clean up the son’s mess), would somehow conjure some magical solutions for Iraq. Clearly that hasn’t happened, largely because the White House’s neoconservative dream has devolved into such a nightmare. At this point in the spreading civil war, it is fanciful to believe that any magic can be conjured by anyone in Washington, because Washington is not in control of events on the ground in Iraq.
Hence the humble tone in the Study Group’s executive summary; referring to its own recommendations, it says: “All have flaws…There is no magic formula to solve the problems of Iraq.” Hence the carefully hedged remarks in the report, which says, for example, that combat troops should be phased out, but not in accordance with any timeline. In the words of Andrew Bacevich, a national security expert and retired Army lieutenant colonel, almost any recommendations at this point would be “laughably inadequate….One might as well spit on a bonfire.”
The Study Group recommendations, most of which have been leaked in recent weeks, have already drawn fire from both the left and right. Antiwar liberals are attacking the report for recommending a long-term (albeit reduced) U.S. military presence in Iraq, while the unrepentant hawks on the right are ridiculing Baker and Hamilton for suggesting that, in the interests of stabilizing Iraq, Bush should negotiate with Iran and Syria, both of which are members of the “axis of evil.”
Nevertheless, most Americans are hungry for new thinking; in the latest Harris poll, only 26 percent (a record low) support Bush’s handling of the war. This suggests that Baker and Hamilton have the upper hand, politically speaking, in their efforts to talk sense to the president. Basically, these Washington establishment figures see wisdom in phasing out the U.S. combat role and stressing diplomatic initiatives - and those stances are endorsed by most Americans and by most congressional Democrats. The risk for Bush is that, if he rejects these ideas and retreats to his bubble, many of his fellow Republicans, fearful of an ’08 defeat, might bail out as well, leaving him increasingly isolated – and with his international credibility further diminished.
Baker and Hamilton, despite their hedged prose, have thrown down the gauntlet to Bush. There is a clear warning in the executive summary that he should not simply cherry pick the recommendations that he likes while spurning the stuff he doesn’t want to hear. Baker and Hamilton flatly contend that we can’t salvage the Iraq disaster unless Bush accepts their advice on all fronts: “(These) recommendations….are comprehensive and need to be implemented in a coordinated fashion. They should not be separated or carried out in isolation.”
One wonders how Robert Gates, the next Pentagon chief, will react if Bush defies the Baker-Hamilton suggestions and sinks further into the desert sands. As evidenced by Gates’ statements yesterday to the Senate Armed Services Committee, he now officially on record as an open critic of Bush’s war stewardship and his rhetorical spin.
Asked whether we are winning in Iraq, Gates said, “No, sir,” which is a far cry from Bush’s October declaration that “absolutely, we are winning.” (Gates and the Study Group are in sync; Baker and Hamilton say the situation in Iraq is "grave and deteriorating.") Asked whether invading Iraq was a good idea in hindsight, Gates said, “That’s a judgment the historians are going to have to make,” which is a far cry from the Bush-Cheney contention that they made the right call in 2003 and still think so today.
He also said that we sent insufficient troops to stabilize the country after the invasion (a direct slap at his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld), and he said it was the wrong call to disband the Iraqi Army, a move that fueled the ranks of the Sunni insurgents. And he rebuked the neoconservative hawks who today think it might be a good idea to invade Iran, by deftly dumping on the prewar optimists of 2003: “I think that we have seen in Iraq that once war is unleashed, it becomes unpredictable.”
Back in the distant days when Bush was riding high, when cowed critics were deemed to be lacking in patriotism, this kind of candor by an aspiring Bush official would have been inconceivable. But we are in a different era now. The political test for Bush, as autumn turns to winter, is whether he recognizes that fundamental fact.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Florida again: the mysterious case of the vanishing votes
The widening civil war in Iraq (or, as President Bush prefers to calls it, “the young democracy”) will continue to dominate the news this week, as we await the official release of the Baker-Hamilton recommendations. In the meantime, however, a fascinating – albeit underreported – story is unfolding right here in the old democracy, one of those high-tech nightmares that voting experts have long been warning us about.
In a print column last month, after noting that nine separate reports have found fundamental flaws in the new-fangled electronic touch screen machines, I concluded that “a festering problem could well become a future crisis.” Well, it turns out the crisis is at hand right now, on a blessedly small scale, in the southern Florida congressional district that includes Sarasota. We can at least be grateful that, on Nov. 7, control of the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t hinge on the results of a single seat, because, if it had, Sarasota right now would be ground zero in a national psychodrama.
Just do the math: Back on Nov. 20, Florida state election officials decreed that Republican congressional candidate Vern Buchanan was the winner in the 13th congressional district, topping Democrat Christine Jennings by 369 votes. The problem – the enduring mystery, actually – is that nearly 18,000 touch screen voters in Sarasota County went to the polls, and chose their favorite candidates in all the major races…except in the hotly-contested, high-publicized congressional race. According to the touch screen machines, 18,000 people somehow skipped the Buchanan-Jennings contest.
All told, about 15 percent of the voters in Sarasota decided not to choose between Buchanan and Jennings – according to the machines, anyway. Yet elsewhere in the congressional district, the percentage of people who skipped that race was much lower, anywhere from two to five percent. Nobody has yet explained this stark discrepancy, but it’s clear that Jennings, the Democrat, has a major stake in finding out what happened – because, as the Orlando Sentinel has already reported, those 18,000 voters were predominantly Democratic, strongly backing virtually all the other Democratic candidates, up and down the ballot.
Many voters have come forward in recent days to complain that they tried to vote for Jennings, but discovered that their preference was not recorded when the machine displayed a review screen. Jennings is suing for a new election, and she is suing the touch screen manufacturer, Electronic Systems & Software, alleging “evidence of machine malfunction.” The state’s initial probes have not uncovered any malfunctions, but the authors of those aforementioned nine reports (at Stanford and Princeton and Johns Hopkins, among other esteemed locales) have all warned that these machines are prone to either lose votes or simply fail to register votes.
And the post-election probe is hindered by the fact that these machines lack any kind of backup paper trail. Well, what a surprise. Congress has spent the last three years sitting on a bill that would require paper trails on the new touch screens, and now here we are. In addition, we now have a new federal draft report, issued last Thursday, which concludes that paperless electronic voting machines “cannot be made secure.” In the words of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency, the absence of a paper trail “is one of the main reasons behind continued questions about voting system security and diminished public confidence in elections.”
ES&S, the touch screen manufacturer, issued this statement the other day, absolving themselves of blame for the mystery results in Sarasota: "Testing and recounts conducted by Sarasota County and the state have both shown that the touch-screen voting system used in Sarasota County accurately records and tabulates voter selections. Specifically, Sarasota County has conducted a recount - as required by state law. That recount confirmed election day results from the touch screen machines.”
The problem, however, is that this recount was essentially worthless. All it means is that the elections officials recounted the actual votes that the Sarasota machines had already recorded, as opposed to all those they may have failed to record. These are precisely the kinds of “software dependent” machines that NIST, the federal agency, wants to abolish – because they provide no paper trail that could help auditors determine what really happened.
The Republicans and their supporters, meanwhile, have come up with a number of curious arguments that seek to explain away the mystery of the “undervotes”. Buchanan, the certified winner of the election, suggested to the Associated Press that 18,000 Sarasota voters chose to skip the race out of protest, simply because they were “turned off by negative campaigning.” The flaw in that explanation is obvious. Why would predominantly Democratic voters in one county be three to six times more likely to be “turned off by negative campaigning” than the voters in the congressional district’s other three counties?
Charles Stewart III, a voting technology expert and political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has filed a brief on Jennings’ behalf. He summarily rejects the negative-campaign argument: “Evidence that such alternative explanations were causing high undervote rates would have shown up throughout the district, not just in a single county, and not just in one type of voting machine in one county.”
Then we have the Wall Street Journal editorial page, an outpost of the conservative media that has long been known for coming up short on fundamental factual homework. Here’s what the editorialists said last Friday: “if anyone ought to be complaining about undervotes, it’s the GOP. Sarasota is the largest and most Republican country in the district…which makes it more likely that it was Republicans who declined to vote in the congressional race, not Democrats.”
Somehow the editorialists missed the Orlando Sentinel’s report, eight days earlier, which documented that the undervoters were predominantly Democratic. And the Journal neglected to mention that, among all the recorded votes, Democrat Jennings defeated Republican Buchanan in Sarasota County by 52 to 47 percent -- thereby feeding Jennings’ argument that she might have won the election if all votes had been properly counted. Stewart, the MIT expert, agrees; if not for “factors related to machine malfunction,” he contends that Jennings would have won the election, albeit narrowly.
The general public may not be watching this story closely, but the political community certainly is. The topic came up last Thursday at a Washington confab, while I was in attendance. Larry Sabato, the noted University of Virginia pundit, was incensed at the prospect that so many votes had been lost: "It's really outrageous....Imagine how you would feel if that happened in your state or congressional district."
And one of his panelists, former Republican National Committee attorney Michael Toner, while not necessarily endorsing the machine-glitch scenario, said that the United States lags far behind other western democracies "in the professionalization of its elections." Most of the people manning the polling places, he said, are basically "70-year-old volunteers who are making maybe $6 an hour," and are therefore ill-qualified to master and oversee these patently flawed touch screen machines. (Actually, it's worse than that. The feds have yet to put in place a certification procedure that would vet - or question - the reliability of these machines.)
So what happens next in Florida? A state audit of the machines is in the works, Buchanan is setting up his Washington office, while Jennings (who refuses to concede) is demanding that ES&S give up its “source codes,” the proprietary information that would allow independent investigators to probe inside the actual machines. What a mess. Let’s just hope that the latest Florida flap is not just a gruesome dry run for the 2008 presidential election.
And we have been warned enough already; as the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress concluded one year ago, “problems with the security and reliability of electronic voting systems (are) potentially affecting the reliability of future elections, and voter confidence in the accuracy of the vote count.”
Let’s hope the Iraqis with the purple fingers don’t hear about this one.
In a print column last month, after noting that nine separate reports have found fundamental flaws in the new-fangled electronic touch screen machines, I concluded that “a festering problem could well become a future crisis.” Well, it turns out the crisis is at hand right now, on a blessedly small scale, in the southern Florida congressional district that includes Sarasota. We can at least be grateful that, on Nov. 7, control of the U.S. House of Representatives didn’t hinge on the results of a single seat, because, if it had, Sarasota right now would be ground zero in a national psychodrama.
Just do the math: Back on Nov. 20, Florida state election officials decreed that Republican congressional candidate Vern Buchanan was the winner in the 13th congressional district, topping Democrat Christine Jennings by 369 votes. The problem – the enduring mystery, actually – is that nearly 18,000 touch screen voters in Sarasota County went to the polls, and chose their favorite candidates in all the major races…except in the hotly-contested, high-publicized congressional race. According to the touch screen machines, 18,000 people somehow skipped the Buchanan-Jennings contest.
All told, about 15 percent of the voters in Sarasota decided not to choose between Buchanan and Jennings – according to the machines, anyway. Yet elsewhere in the congressional district, the percentage of people who skipped that race was much lower, anywhere from two to five percent. Nobody has yet explained this stark discrepancy, but it’s clear that Jennings, the Democrat, has a major stake in finding out what happened – because, as the Orlando Sentinel has already reported, those 18,000 voters were predominantly Democratic, strongly backing virtually all the other Democratic candidates, up and down the ballot.
Many voters have come forward in recent days to complain that they tried to vote for Jennings, but discovered that their preference was not recorded when the machine displayed a review screen. Jennings is suing for a new election, and she is suing the touch screen manufacturer, Electronic Systems & Software, alleging “evidence of machine malfunction.” The state’s initial probes have not uncovered any malfunctions, but the authors of those aforementioned nine reports (at Stanford and Princeton and Johns Hopkins, among other esteemed locales) have all warned that these machines are prone to either lose votes or simply fail to register votes.
And the post-election probe is hindered by the fact that these machines lack any kind of backup paper trail. Well, what a surprise. Congress has spent the last three years sitting on a bill that would require paper trails on the new touch screens, and now here we are. In addition, we now have a new federal draft report, issued last Thursday, which concludes that paperless electronic voting machines “cannot be made secure.” In the words of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency, the absence of a paper trail “is one of the main reasons behind continued questions about voting system security and diminished public confidence in elections.”
ES&S, the touch screen manufacturer, issued this statement the other day, absolving themselves of blame for the mystery results in Sarasota: "Testing and recounts conducted by Sarasota County and the state have both shown that the touch-screen voting system used in Sarasota County accurately records and tabulates voter selections. Specifically, Sarasota County has conducted a recount - as required by state law. That recount confirmed election day results from the touch screen machines.”
The problem, however, is that this recount was essentially worthless. All it means is that the elections officials recounted the actual votes that the Sarasota machines had already recorded, as opposed to all those they may have failed to record. These are precisely the kinds of “software dependent” machines that NIST, the federal agency, wants to abolish – because they provide no paper trail that could help auditors determine what really happened.
The Republicans and their supporters, meanwhile, have come up with a number of curious arguments that seek to explain away the mystery of the “undervotes”. Buchanan, the certified winner of the election, suggested to the Associated Press that 18,000 Sarasota voters chose to skip the race out of protest, simply because they were “turned off by negative campaigning.” The flaw in that explanation is obvious. Why would predominantly Democratic voters in one county be three to six times more likely to be “turned off by negative campaigning” than the voters in the congressional district’s other three counties?
Charles Stewart III, a voting technology expert and political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has filed a brief on Jennings’ behalf. He summarily rejects the negative-campaign argument: “Evidence that such alternative explanations were causing high undervote rates would have shown up throughout the district, not just in a single county, and not just in one type of voting machine in one county.”
Then we have the Wall Street Journal editorial page, an outpost of the conservative media that has long been known for coming up short on fundamental factual homework. Here’s what the editorialists said last Friday: “if anyone ought to be complaining about undervotes, it’s the GOP. Sarasota is the largest and most Republican country in the district…which makes it more likely that it was Republicans who declined to vote in the congressional race, not Democrats.”
Somehow the editorialists missed the Orlando Sentinel’s report, eight days earlier, which documented that the undervoters were predominantly Democratic. And the Journal neglected to mention that, among all the recorded votes, Democrat Jennings defeated Republican Buchanan in Sarasota County by 52 to 47 percent -- thereby feeding Jennings’ argument that she might have won the election if all votes had been properly counted. Stewart, the MIT expert, agrees; if not for “factors related to machine malfunction,” he contends that Jennings would have won the election, albeit narrowly.
The general public may not be watching this story closely, but the political community certainly is. The topic came up last Thursday at a Washington confab, while I was in attendance. Larry Sabato, the noted University of Virginia pundit, was incensed at the prospect that so many votes had been lost: "It's really outrageous....Imagine how you would feel if that happened in your state or congressional district."
And one of his panelists, former Republican National Committee attorney Michael Toner, while not necessarily endorsing the machine-glitch scenario, said that the United States lags far behind other western democracies "in the professionalization of its elections." Most of the people manning the polling places, he said, are basically "70-year-old volunteers who are making maybe $6 an hour," and are therefore ill-qualified to master and oversee these patently flawed touch screen machines. (Actually, it's worse than that. The feds have yet to put in place a certification procedure that would vet - or question - the reliability of these machines.)
So what happens next in Florida? A state audit of the machines is in the works, Buchanan is setting up his Washington office, while Jennings (who refuses to concede) is demanding that ES&S give up its “source codes,” the proprietary information that would allow independent investigators to probe inside the actual machines. What a mess. Let’s just hope that the latest Florida flap is not just a gruesome dry run for the 2008 presidential election.
And we have been warned enough already; as the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress concluded one year ago, “problems with the security and reliability of electronic voting systems (are) potentially affecting the reliability of future elections, and voter confidence in the accuracy of the vote count.”
Let’s hope the Iraqis with the purple fingers don’t hear about this one.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
The envelope, please...Heckuva job, Rummy!
Last night, the venerable Union League of Philadelphia awarded its prestigious Gold Medal to an American whose track record of public service has been deemed by the cream of the city’s tuxedoed establishment to be an inspiration to us all.
That would be Donald Rumsfeld.
I can understand the Union League’s reasoning. If President Bush can award the Medal of Freedom to CIA director George Tenet (the guy who declared that the evidence of Iraq WMDs was a “slam dunk”), and if Bush can award the Medal of Freedom to Paul Bremer (who quickly disbanded the Iraqi army, thereby sowing the seeds for the ensuing insurgent chaos that afflicts us still), then why should Philadelphia’s elite insist on stronger award criteria?
Indeed, why should merit be considered the prime qualification for a Gold Medal, much less any other kind of prize? As a concept, that is so old school. Hang out with any losing Little League team these days, and you quickly discover that every kid gets a trophy, even the one who batted .100 and let every ball squirt between his legs.
So let us join the Union League applause for Donald Rumsfeld, and celebrate some of the various whiffs and errors that apparently won the hearts of the city’s besotted swells. They could've rolled this video at the black-tie soiree:
Here’s the Gold Medal winner on Feb. 7, 2003, predicting that the impending Iraq war “could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months."
Here he is on Feb. 20, 2003, predicting that the American troops "would be welcomed," as happened in Afghanistan, where people in the streets were "playing music, cheering, flying kites."
Here he is a few months later, declaring that we had found Hussein’s WMDs: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Here he is, even before the war began: “…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."
Here he is, on June 27, 2005, seeking to defend Vice President Cheney’s claim that the anti-American insurgency was in its last throes: "Last throes could be a violent last throes, or a placid and calm last throes.”
Here he is on NBC News, that same day, talking about how, during the prewar phase, he had drawn up a list of "15 things that could go terribly wrong," including oil fields set afire and a mass exodus of refugees. When asked whether he had also listed the dangers of a robust insurgency, he replied: “I don’t remember if that was on there.”
And here's a rave review of Rumsfeld, from the editors at the conservative National Review magazine. Put these words in the video: "Rumsfeld has made serious - perhaps catastrophic - mistakes...(Insufficient) troops on the ground, this was a terrible mistake...(He) showed very little interest in planning for post-combat stability operations in Iraq. This was an error too, one for which we are still paying and from which we may never recover...All of this has brought us to a perilous position in which defeat seems more likely than victory."
In fact, let's put Philip Carter - former Army officer and adviser to the Iraqi police - into the video, too: "Iraq dominates the list of Rumsfeld errors because of the sheer enormity of his strategic mistakes. Indeed, his Iraq blunders should have cost him his job long before the 2006 midterm elections....Rumsfeld's failures transformed the Iraq war from a difficult enterprise into an unwinnable one.....These were not tactical failures, made by subordinate military officers. Rather, these were strategic errors of epic proportions that no amount of good soldiering could undo."
Hence his prizeworthy qualifications. So bravo to the Union League, which is merely embracing the elastic contemporary definition of merit. Or, as Rummy himself would put it:
You go to the podium with the winner you have, not the winner you might want or wish to have at a later time.
That would be Donald Rumsfeld.
I can understand the Union League’s reasoning. If President Bush can award the Medal of Freedom to CIA director George Tenet (the guy who declared that the evidence of Iraq WMDs was a “slam dunk”), and if Bush can award the Medal of Freedom to Paul Bremer (who quickly disbanded the Iraqi army, thereby sowing the seeds for the ensuing insurgent chaos that afflicts us still), then why should Philadelphia’s elite insist on stronger award criteria?
Indeed, why should merit be considered the prime qualification for a Gold Medal, much less any other kind of prize? As a concept, that is so old school. Hang out with any losing Little League team these days, and you quickly discover that every kid gets a trophy, even the one who batted .100 and let every ball squirt between his legs.
So let us join the Union League applause for Donald Rumsfeld, and celebrate some of the various whiffs and errors that apparently won the hearts of the city’s besotted swells. They could've rolled this video at the black-tie soiree:
Here’s the Gold Medal winner on Feb. 7, 2003, predicting that the impending Iraq war “could last six days, six weeks, I doubt six months."
Here he is on Feb. 20, 2003, predicting that the American troops "would be welcomed," as happened in Afghanistan, where people in the streets were "playing music, cheering, flying kites."
Here he is a few months later, declaring that we had found Hussein’s WMDs: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
Here he is, even before the war began: “…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."
Here he is, on June 27, 2005, seeking to defend Vice President Cheney’s claim that the anti-American insurgency was in its last throes: "Last throes could be a violent last throes, or a placid and calm last throes.”
Here he is on NBC News, that same day, talking about how, during the prewar phase, he had drawn up a list of "15 things that could go terribly wrong," including oil fields set afire and a mass exodus of refugees. When asked whether he had also listed the dangers of a robust insurgency, he replied: “I don’t remember if that was on there.”
And here's a rave review of Rumsfeld, from the editors at the conservative National Review magazine. Put these words in the video: "Rumsfeld has made serious - perhaps catastrophic - mistakes...(Insufficient) troops on the ground, this was a terrible mistake...(He) showed very little interest in planning for post-combat stability operations in Iraq. This was an error too, one for which we are still paying and from which we may never recover...All of this has brought us to a perilous position in which defeat seems more likely than victory."
In fact, let's put Philip Carter - former Army officer and adviser to the Iraqi police - into the video, too: "Iraq dominates the list of Rumsfeld errors because of the sheer enormity of his strategic mistakes. Indeed, his Iraq blunders should have cost him his job long before the 2006 midterm elections....Rumsfeld's failures transformed the Iraq war from a difficult enterprise into an unwinnable one.....These were not tactical failures, made by subordinate military officers. Rather, these were strategic errors of epic proportions that no amount of good soldiering could undo."
Hence his prizeworthy qualifications. So bravo to the Union League, which is merely embracing the elastic contemporary definition of merit. Or, as Rummy himself would put it:
You go to the podium with the winner you have, not the winner you might want or wish to have at a later time.
Friday, December 01, 2006
An annual Washington ritual: spinning the unknowable
One venerable Washington ritual is the post-election confab, in which various strategists and spin doctors sit on a stage with their bottled water and ponder the lessons of the latest vote tallies, while opining about future events that are essentially unknowable. It’s fair to say that, within 48 hours, virtually everybody will have forgotten what was said, which is a blessing in a way, at least for the speakers, because it insulates them from embarrassment when subsequent events prove them wrong.
For instance, I spent much of yesterday at one such annual ritual, the American Democracy Conference, co-sponsored by the University of Virginia (specifically, political swami Larry Sabato) and The Hotline (an online newsletter that is catnip for those political junkies who can afford the steep subscription tab). And I kept reminding myself that, since most of the folks on stage were spinning for one prospective ’08 presidential candidate or another, it means that almost all of them would turn out to be wrong.
As Steve Murphy sees things, for example, the ’06 midterm results prove that Bill Richardson – the ex-Clinton UN ambassador, now the governor of New Mexico – would be the perfect Democratic presidential candidate in 2008.
Murphy, a Richardson consultant, argued that since the Democrats made some serious gains in the interior western states (Colorado, Arizona, Montana), it behooves them to nominate a westerner – someone, like westerner Richardson, who doesn’t “look down” on blue-collar voters, the way that eastern Democrats typically do. Plus, Richardson has cut taxes in New Mexico, he’s “pro-growth,” and he’s “pro-gun.” Plus, because of his Clinton era foreign policy creds, Richardson “has dealt with the bad guys” and wouldn’t hesitate to go face down Kim Jung Il and threaten “to cut off his toes.”
Murphy omitted some interesting material, but, since good cheer abounds at these kinds of events, his rival flaks didn’t bring it up. Such as the fact that Richardson, while serving as Clinton’s last chief of the Department of Energy, was slammed by Democratic senators for security breaches in the nuclear program at Los Alamos (a scandal that may have persuaded Al Gore not to tap him as the 2000 running-mate). And the fact that, in 1995, Richardson, during a stop in Iraq, had his picture taken with Saddam Hussein (and reportedly said, “This picture is going to cost me votes”).
But Murphy wasn’t alone as a spinner. Anita Dunn, a consultant for Senator Evan Bayh of red-state Indiana, said that the ’06 results – which showed some big gains for Democrats in the Midwest - vividly demonstrate why a midwesterner (specifically, Bayh) would be the perfect Democratic nominee. She noted that 10 of the 29 new Democratic seats are located in the Midwest, three of them in Indiana. What she wouldn’t say, of course, and what others on the panel were to polite to point out, is that there are many Democrats who privately say that if Evan Bayh was a Baskin Robbins flavor, it would be vanilla.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, I heard consultant David Kensinger hint strongly that one of his clients, Kansas senator and religious-right favorite Sam Brownback, is exactly what Republican voters are looking for – “a consistent, principled, Reaganite conservative.” He also said that, ’06 results notwithstanding, most Americans still view the GOP as “a natural governing party at the presidential level.” But he didn’t bother to explain how an outspoken social conservative who opposes legal abortion and embryonic stem-cell research would play well in the Northeast and Midwestern suburbs, where the party suffered heavy losses in the ’06 election and badly needs to recoup.
Then there was Jan van Lohuizen, a pollster for Mitt Romney, who scoffs at the notion that any voters have a problem with the fact that his client is a Mormon: “(People) will hear questions about the Mormon thing until it’s ridiculous…The question will wear itself out. There’s no answer to it, because the question is a weapon.” While he clearly sees America as a tolerant land, he omitted the fact that, last June, a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll found that 37 percent of Americans wouldn’t vote for a Mormon; and that, in a Rasmussen poll two weeks ago, 53 percent of Christian evangelicals - a key group in the GOP primaries - said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon.
And, lastly, there was longtime strategist Rich Galen, making the case for why the post-’06 landscape is fertile turf for Newt Gingrich – maybe as a presidential candidate, maybe as backstage policy maestro. In Galen’s words, “Newt will go just go out and do what he does….He wants to be in a position not so much to be President of the United States per se, but to frame the debate for the nomination process.”
The Gingrich pitch these days is that congressional Republicans tanked in the ’06 elections because they have fatally strayed from their core values, notably clean government and conservative reform. Yet I have been waiting for somebody somewhere to note the fact that Newt is probably ill-suited to lead the charge for this message – because, after all, he was one of the first to violate those core values.
In 1997, just two years after leading the conservatives to power, he became the first sitting House speaker in history to be reprimanded by the chamber for an ethics breach. Nailed by the House Ethics Committee for financial improprieties and for twice providing the panel with false information, he finally admitted, “my actions did not reflect creditably on the House.” And not long after, a band of House conservatives tried to stage a coup to remove Gingrich from his post – on the grounds that he was betraying the conservative faith. One of the ringleaders: Tom DeLay.
Given the restive national mood, the wide-open nature of the ’08 race, and the flaws that nag virtually all the major party candidates, perhaps the day’s most intriguing remark was uttered in passing by Doug Sosnik, a former Clinton White House aide who has signed up with ’08 Democratic hopeful Christopher Dodd. He said that “there’s a reasonably high chance of a third-party candidate.” Later, he elaborated: “Take a look at any of the polls. Neither party is held in particularly high esteem. Most voters at this point aren’t emotionally attached to either of them.”
Indeed, there is persistent backstage buzz about New York mayor Michael Bloomberg perhaps spending half a billion from his personal fortune on an independent bid, selling himself as a bipartisan technocrat who can repair the broken political process. Much ink has already been expended on this scenario. But is America ready for a divorced billionaire urban Jew? Frankly, I’d give a Mormon better odds.
For instance, I spent much of yesterday at one such annual ritual, the American Democracy Conference, co-sponsored by the University of Virginia (specifically, political swami Larry Sabato) and The Hotline (an online newsletter that is catnip for those political junkies who can afford the steep subscription tab). And I kept reminding myself that, since most of the folks on stage were spinning for one prospective ’08 presidential candidate or another, it means that almost all of them would turn out to be wrong.
As Steve Murphy sees things, for example, the ’06 midterm results prove that Bill Richardson – the ex-Clinton UN ambassador, now the governor of New Mexico – would be the perfect Democratic presidential candidate in 2008.
Murphy, a Richardson consultant, argued that since the Democrats made some serious gains in the interior western states (Colorado, Arizona, Montana), it behooves them to nominate a westerner – someone, like westerner Richardson, who doesn’t “look down” on blue-collar voters, the way that eastern Democrats typically do. Plus, Richardson has cut taxes in New Mexico, he’s “pro-growth,” and he’s “pro-gun.” Plus, because of his Clinton era foreign policy creds, Richardson “has dealt with the bad guys” and wouldn’t hesitate to go face down Kim Jung Il and threaten “to cut off his toes.”
Murphy omitted some interesting material, but, since good cheer abounds at these kinds of events, his rival flaks didn’t bring it up. Such as the fact that Richardson, while serving as Clinton’s last chief of the Department of Energy, was slammed by Democratic senators for security breaches in the nuclear program at Los Alamos (a scandal that may have persuaded Al Gore not to tap him as the 2000 running-mate). And the fact that, in 1995, Richardson, during a stop in Iraq, had his picture taken with Saddam Hussein (and reportedly said, “This picture is going to cost me votes”).
But Murphy wasn’t alone as a spinner. Anita Dunn, a consultant for Senator Evan Bayh of red-state Indiana, said that the ’06 results – which showed some big gains for Democrats in the Midwest - vividly demonstrate why a midwesterner (specifically, Bayh) would be the perfect Democratic nominee. She noted that 10 of the 29 new Democratic seats are located in the Midwest, three of them in Indiana. What she wouldn’t say, of course, and what others on the panel were to polite to point out, is that there are many Democrats who privately say that if Evan Bayh was a Baskin Robbins flavor, it would be vanilla.
Meanwhile, on the Republican side, I heard consultant David Kensinger hint strongly that one of his clients, Kansas senator and religious-right favorite Sam Brownback, is exactly what Republican voters are looking for – “a consistent, principled, Reaganite conservative.” He also said that, ’06 results notwithstanding, most Americans still view the GOP as “a natural governing party at the presidential level.” But he didn’t bother to explain how an outspoken social conservative who opposes legal abortion and embryonic stem-cell research would play well in the Northeast and Midwestern suburbs, where the party suffered heavy losses in the ’06 election and badly needs to recoup.
Then there was Jan van Lohuizen, a pollster for Mitt Romney, who scoffs at the notion that any voters have a problem with the fact that his client is a Mormon: “(People) will hear questions about the Mormon thing until it’s ridiculous…The question will wear itself out. There’s no answer to it, because the question is a weapon.” While he clearly sees America as a tolerant land, he omitted the fact that, last June, a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll found that 37 percent of Americans wouldn’t vote for a Mormon; and that, in a Rasmussen poll two weeks ago, 53 percent of Christian evangelicals - a key group in the GOP primaries - said they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon.
And, lastly, there was longtime strategist Rich Galen, making the case for why the post-’06 landscape is fertile turf for Newt Gingrich – maybe as a presidential candidate, maybe as backstage policy maestro. In Galen’s words, “Newt will go just go out and do what he does….He wants to be in a position not so much to be President of the United States per se, but to frame the debate for the nomination process.”
The Gingrich pitch these days is that congressional Republicans tanked in the ’06 elections because they have fatally strayed from their core values, notably clean government and conservative reform. Yet I have been waiting for somebody somewhere to note the fact that Newt is probably ill-suited to lead the charge for this message – because, after all, he was one of the first to violate those core values.
In 1997, just two years after leading the conservatives to power, he became the first sitting House speaker in history to be reprimanded by the chamber for an ethics breach. Nailed by the House Ethics Committee for financial improprieties and for twice providing the panel with false information, he finally admitted, “my actions did not reflect creditably on the House.” And not long after, a band of House conservatives tried to stage a coup to remove Gingrich from his post – on the grounds that he was betraying the conservative faith. One of the ringleaders: Tom DeLay.
Given the restive national mood, the wide-open nature of the ’08 race, and the flaws that nag virtually all the major party candidates, perhaps the day’s most intriguing remark was uttered in passing by Doug Sosnik, a former Clinton White House aide who has signed up with ’08 Democratic hopeful Christopher Dodd. He said that “there’s a reasonably high chance of a third-party candidate.” Later, he elaborated: “Take a look at any of the polls. Neither party is held in particularly high esteem. Most voters at this point aren’t emotionally attached to either of them.”
Indeed, there is persistent backstage buzz about New York mayor Michael Bloomberg perhaps spending half a billion from his personal fortune on an independent bid, selling himself as a bipartisan technocrat who can repair the broken political process. Much ink has already been expended on this scenario. But is America ready for a divorced billionaire urban Jew? Frankly, I’d give a Mormon better odds.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Pelosi nixes Alcee, Bush leaks on Maliki, Webb disses W, Frist pulls plug
A quartet:
No doubt the Republicans were disappointed to learn last night that ‘07 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t be tapping the scandal-marred congressman Alcee Hastings to head the Intelligence Committee. No doubt the GOP message machine was revving its engines for the joyful task of tagging Pelosi as a sleazebag and national security wimp.
And if Pelosi had indeed bypassed hawkish congresswoman Jane Harman and instead chosen a guy who had once been impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate for sleazy doings as a federal judge (including seven counts of making false statements), the GOP would have had a lot of potent ammo to work with.
Clearly, Pelosi became convinced the political downside of naming Hastings trumped the upside of naming the designated favorite of the Congressional Black Caucus. After losing her first big battle – she wanted John Murtha as her chief deputy, but the House Democratic rank and file said no – she could ill afford another political embarrassment, particularly since she hasn’t even picked up the gavel yet.
But even though Pelosi foes were denied the gift of Hastings yesterday, some are still trying to salvage some useful spin. On one popular conservative website early this morning, for instance, a blogger basically says that, OK, Pelosi did right by denying the post to Hastings…but she didn’t act fast enough: “it should have been an easy call from the outset to say that Hastings would not be allowed to chair the Intelligence Committee.
And yet, we were actually kept in suspense regarding the issue. Astonishing…In a better world, the Hastings candidacy would have been dead in the water from the moment that it was announced as a possibility.”
Pelosi can live with that kind of fallout. On the umbrage meter, that’s 2 on a scale of 10.
Probably more noteworthy is Hastings’ reaction to this whole affair. Here’s a guy who, as a federal judge in 1988, was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House on a vote of 413-3, because he took a $150,000 bribe; who was convicted by the Senate on eight articles, and thus tossed off the federal bench; whose removal was supported by the likes of Ted Kennedy., John Kerry, and Harry Reid; and who, as a result, would not pass the simplest background check that is required of low-level CIA job applicants…and yet his reaction in recent days has been to paint himself as a victim of an unfair political conspiracy.
Last week, he circulated a letter blaming his woes on “Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael Barone, Drudge, anonymous bloggers, and other assorted misinformed fools,” as well as “faceless and nameless people at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, the L.A. Times, the Dallas Morning News.” He somehow omitted all the Democrats who ran the impeachment process, most notably fellow black congressman John Conyers. His parting shot yesterday: “Sorry haters, God has not finished with me yet.”
Bottom line: Curt Weldon, meet Alcee Hastings. When pols find themselves in a fix, their gut instinct is to blame others. Human nature transcends political affiliation.
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Remember how the Bush administration always takes great umbrage whenever somebody leaks a classified document to the New York Times, to the point where both the leakers and leakees are threatened with prosecution and tagged as enemies of the state?
Well, this morning I glanced at the front page, found yet another story based on the leak of a classified document – and then I saw this: “An administration official made a copy of the document available to a New York Times reporter seeking information of the administration’s (Iraq) policy review. The Times read and transcribed the memo.”
So there it is: If somebody outside the inner circle leaks a document, it’s treasonous. When somebody inside the inner circle leaks a document, it’s statecraft.
In this particular case, the White House clearly seems intent on blaming the Iraqi prime minister for the mess in Iraq, in advance of President Bush’s meeting today with the prime minister; as the document puts it, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “is either ignorant of what’s going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or…his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”
Ignorant of what’s going on, misrepresenting his intentions…One is tempted to invoke the old saw about the pot calling the kettle black, but let’s move on:
The main problem with this administration-sanctioned leak is that it exposes a core contradiction in the current White House stance toward Iraq. On the one hand, Bush yesterday referred to Iraq as “a sovereign country,” yet the leaked memo makes it clear that the White House at this point views Iraq as barely a country at all, and that propping it up might require thousands more U.S. troops in Baghdad, as well as greater U.S. involvement in the Iraqi political process, starting with “monetary support to moderate groups.”
And while the Bush team is leaking a memo warning that it’s Maliki who better shape up, the Republican establishment back home continues to broadcast warnings that it’s Bush who better shape up. The latest salvo comes from Senator John Warner, chair of the Armed Services Committee (underscoring his earlier warnings). Yesterday, he said: “We’re going to try and devise some new strategies, hopefully with the president’s concurrence…Our soldiers, sailors and airmen should not be in there, risking their lives, losing their lives to stop a civil war.”
Hopefully with the president’s concurrence....Translation: Either Bush goes along with us, or he should just get out of the way. And take note of Warner’s closing words; his endorsement of the term civil war is another shot across the bow.
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Dialogue of the day, a harbinger of the ill feeling that will permeate Washington as the next election season draws closer:
At a recent White House reception, incoming Virginia Democratic senator Jim Webb, the feisty soul and potential loose cannon whose son is a Marine serving in Iraq, had a close encounter with the president.
BUSH: “How’s your boy?”
WEBB: “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President.”
BUSH: “That’s not what I asked you. How’s your boy?”
WEBB: “That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President.”
-------
Bill Frist, the lame duck Senate Republican leader, won’t be running for president in 2008. His statement today: “In the Bible, God tells us for everything there is a season, and for me, for now, this season of being an elected official has come to a close. I do not intend to run for president in 2008.”
It’s easy to understand why Frist made this decision. Considering the results of the 2006 elections, one can conclude that a Beltway insider from the discredited GOP Senate leadership would be toast in Iowa and New Hampshire. The conservative faithful would have slapped him silly, for failing to sufficiently advance their agenda; and, even if he had successfully run that gauntlet, independent swing voters would have spurned him for, among other things, his role in the Terri Schiavo affair, in which he politicized his medical bona fides by insisting, on the basis of a video, that the comatose woman was not in a vegetative state.
All told, he appears to be facing reality. There are many Democrats who undoubtedly wish he would now reach across the aisle and convince John Kerry to do the same.
No doubt the Republicans were disappointed to learn last night that ‘07 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t be tapping the scandal-marred congressman Alcee Hastings to head the Intelligence Committee. No doubt the GOP message machine was revving its engines for the joyful task of tagging Pelosi as a sleazebag and national security wimp.
And if Pelosi had indeed bypassed hawkish congresswoman Jane Harman and instead chosen a guy who had once been impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate for sleazy doings as a federal judge (including seven counts of making false statements), the GOP would have had a lot of potent ammo to work with.
Clearly, Pelosi became convinced the political downside of naming Hastings trumped the upside of naming the designated favorite of the Congressional Black Caucus. After losing her first big battle – she wanted John Murtha as her chief deputy, but the House Democratic rank and file said no – she could ill afford another political embarrassment, particularly since she hasn’t even picked up the gavel yet.
But even though Pelosi foes were denied the gift of Hastings yesterday, some are still trying to salvage some useful spin. On one popular conservative website early this morning, for instance, a blogger basically says that, OK, Pelosi did right by denying the post to Hastings…but she didn’t act fast enough: “it should have been an easy call from the outset to say that Hastings would not be allowed to chair the Intelligence Committee.
And yet, we were actually kept in suspense regarding the issue. Astonishing…In a better world, the Hastings candidacy would have been dead in the water from the moment that it was announced as a possibility.”
Pelosi can live with that kind of fallout. On the umbrage meter, that’s 2 on a scale of 10.
Probably more noteworthy is Hastings’ reaction to this whole affair. Here’s a guy who, as a federal judge in 1988, was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House on a vote of 413-3, because he took a $150,000 bribe; who was convicted by the Senate on eight articles, and thus tossed off the federal bench; whose removal was supported by the likes of Ted Kennedy., John Kerry, and Harry Reid; and who, as a result, would not pass the simplest background check that is required of low-level CIA job applicants…and yet his reaction in recent days has been to paint himself as a victim of an unfair political conspiracy.
Last week, he circulated a letter blaming his woes on “Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael Barone, Drudge, anonymous bloggers, and other assorted misinformed fools,” as well as “faceless and nameless people at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, the L.A. Times, the Dallas Morning News.” He somehow omitted all the Democrats who ran the impeachment process, most notably fellow black congressman John Conyers. His parting shot yesterday: “Sorry haters, God has not finished with me yet.”
Bottom line: Curt Weldon, meet Alcee Hastings. When pols find themselves in a fix, their gut instinct is to blame others. Human nature transcends political affiliation.
-------
Remember how the Bush administration always takes great umbrage whenever somebody leaks a classified document to the New York Times, to the point where both the leakers and leakees are threatened with prosecution and tagged as enemies of the state?
Well, this morning I glanced at the front page, found yet another story based on the leak of a classified document – and then I saw this: “An administration official made a copy of the document available to a New York Times reporter seeking information of the administration’s (Iraq) policy review. The Times read and transcribed the memo.”
So there it is: If somebody outside the inner circle leaks a document, it’s treasonous. When somebody inside the inner circle leaks a document, it’s statecraft.
In this particular case, the White House clearly seems intent on blaming the Iraqi prime minister for the mess in Iraq, in advance of President Bush’s meeting today with the prime minister; as the document puts it, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “is either ignorant of what’s going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or…his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.”
Ignorant of what’s going on, misrepresenting his intentions…One is tempted to invoke the old saw about the pot calling the kettle black, but let’s move on:
The main problem with this administration-sanctioned leak is that it exposes a core contradiction in the current White House stance toward Iraq. On the one hand, Bush yesterday referred to Iraq as “a sovereign country,” yet the leaked memo makes it clear that the White House at this point views Iraq as barely a country at all, and that propping it up might require thousands more U.S. troops in Baghdad, as well as greater U.S. involvement in the Iraqi political process, starting with “monetary support to moderate groups.”
And while the Bush team is leaking a memo warning that it’s Maliki who better shape up, the Republican establishment back home continues to broadcast warnings that it’s Bush who better shape up. The latest salvo comes from Senator John Warner, chair of the Armed Services Committee (underscoring his earlier warnings). Yesterday, he said: “We’re going to try and devise some new strategies, hopefully with the president’s concurrence…Our soldiers, sailors and airmen should not be in there, risking their lives, losing their lives to stop a civil war.”
Hopefully with the president’s concurrence....Translation: Either Bush goes along with us, or he should just get out of the way. And take note of Warner’s closing words; his endorsement of the term civil war is another shot across the bow.
-------
Dialogue of the day, a harbinger of the ill feeling that will permeate Washington as the next election season draws closer:
At a recent White House reception, incoming Virginia Democratic senator Jim Webb, the feisty soul and potential loose cannon whose son is a Marine serving in Iraq, had a close encounter with the president.
BUSH: “How’s your boy?”
WEBB: “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President.”
BUSH: “That’s not what I asked you. How’s your boy?”
WEBB: “That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President.”
-------
Bill Frist, the lame duck Senate Republican leader, won’t be running for president in 2008. His statement today: “In the Bible, God tells us for everything there is a season, and for me, for now, this season of being an elected official has come to a close. I do not intend to run for president in 2008.”
It’s easy to understand why Frist made this decision. Considering the results of the 2006 elections, one can conclude that a Beltway insider from the discredited GOP Senate leadership would be toast in Iowa and New Hampshire. The conservative faithful would have slapped him silly, for failing to sufficiently advance their agenda; and, even if he had successfully run that gauntlet, independent swing voters would have spurned him for, among other things, his role in the Terri Schiavo affair, in which he politicized his medical bona fides by insisting, on the basis of a video, that the comatose woman was not in a vegetative state.
All told, he appears to be facing reality. There are many Democrats who undoubtedly wish he would now reach across the aisle and convince John Kerry to do the same.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
The politics of a semantic debate
As the civil war in Iraq continues to wreak havoc, the big news today is that President Bush has again decreed that there is no such thing as a civil war in Iraq.
Of course, the case can be made that Bush at this point has little credibility on the issue of Iraq; that the polls show that most Americans have simply stopped believing whatever he says about Iraq; that his own emergency tutor on Iraq, Henry Kissinger, has been casually referring to Iraq as “the civil war”; that former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi (a one-time Bush favorite) is calling it a civil war; that Larry Diamond, a former advisor to Bush's Coalition Provisional Authority, calls it a civil war; that a growing legion of scholars are calling it a civil war; that mainstream press operations such as NBC, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, and McClatchy Newspapers, having examined the facts on the ground, are now calling it a civil war; and that 65 percent of Americans told CNN pollsters two months ago that they believe it’s a civil war….
But none of this holds sway with The Decider.
Stopping earlier today in Estonia, Bush contended that "the sectarian violence rocking Iraq is not civil war, but part of an al Qaeda plot to use violence to goad Iraqi factions into repeatedly attacking each other."
He really needs to get his talking points straight. There have been times in the past when he has sought to educate his fellow Americans by sharing accurate information – for instance, the fact that foreign al Qaeda terrorists are actually only a small percentage (maybe 10) of all the insurgent and sectarian fighters in Iraq; the vast majority are natives. But then there are times, such as today, when Bush either forgets those facts, or simply prefers to conflate the al Qaeda role into a centrally organized plot; either way, his intent today was to find an argument that would help him deny what so many others are seeing with their own eyes, and processing with their own intellects.
Nor is he even in sync with his own White House spin. Yesterday, national security advisor Stephen Hadley surfaced with the argument that the spiraling sectarian violence in Iraq, far from meeting the criteria of a civil war, is actually just a “new phase” of the American mission. But now comes Bush with the argument that, actually, the sectarian violence is just part of an old phase. In his words, “We’ve been in this phase for awhile.” (Apparently, the term “new phase” sounded too much like “worse phase.”)
Actually, given the fact that the spiraling violence is now killing an average of 120 Iraqi citizens a day (that’s the October figure, according to the United Nations), a debate over the civil-war label seems somewhat irrelevant. What difference does it make, to the average Iraqi, whether the 40 or 50 mutilated bodies that turn up each morning on the Baghdad streets were victims of a “civil war” or “sectarian violence?”
In truth, this labeling debate is an American indulgence, intended for an American audience. This is really about domestic politics.
Bush is basically stuck with his denial, because if he was to admit that Iraq was embroiled in a civil war, he would then be virtually declaring that the signature mission of his White House tenure had irrevocably failed; and if he did that, he would come under even more pressure to scale back the number of U.S. troops, since few Americans would see the wisdom of allowing our fighting men and women to remain trapped in a civil war. Indeed, the White House has known this for many months; back in August, a White House aide told Newsweek, "If there's a full-blown civil war, the president isn't going to allow our forces to be caught in the crossfire.”
So, in the next phase, we can probably look forward to a semantic debate over the proper definition of “full-blown.” But for now, as Bush prepares this week to meet with the Iraqi prime minister, and as Democrats and Republicans alike nervously await the findings of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (in the hopes of finding some political cover), the bottom line is that, regardless of whether the facts on the ground constitute a civil war, there is now a broad consensus that the downward spiral is accelerating. And that the lame duck in the White House lacks the clout to halt it.
Of course, the case can be made that Bush at this point has little credibility on the issue of Iraq; that the polls show that most Americans have simply stopped believing whatever he says about Iraq; that his own emergency tutor on Iraq, Henry Kissinger, has been casually referring to Iraq as “the civil war”; that former Iraqi prime minister Ayad Allawi (a one-time Bush favorite) is calling it a civil war; that Larry Diamond, a former advisor to Bush's Coalition Provisional Authority, calls it a civil war; that a growing legion of scholars are calling it a civil war; that mainstream press operations such as NBC, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, and McClatchy Newspapers, having examined the facts on the ground, are now calling it a civil war; and that 65 percent of Americans told CNN pollsters two months ago that they believe it’s a civil war….
But none of this holds sway with The Decider.
Stopping earlier today in Estonia, Bush contended that "the sectarian violence rocking Iraq is not civil war, but part of an al Qaeda plot to use violence to goad Iraqi factions into repeatedly attacking each other."
He really needs to get his talking points straight. There have been times in the past when he has sought to educate his fellow Americans by sharing accurate information – for instance, the fact that foreign al Qaeda terrorists are actually only a small percentage (maybe 10) of all the insurgent and sectarian fighters in Iraq; the vast majority are natives. But then there are times, such as today, when Bush either forgets those facts, or simply prefers to conflate the al Qaeda role into a centrally organized plot; either way, his intent today was to find an argument that would help him deny what so many others are seeing with their own eyes, and processing with their own intellects.
Nor is he even in sync with his own White House spin. Yesterday, national security advisor Stephen Hadley surfaced with the argument that the spiraling sectarian violence in Iraq, far from meeting the criteria of a civil war, is actually just a “new phase” of the American mission. But now comes Bush with the argument that, actually, the sectarian violence is just part of an old phase. In his words, “We’ve been in this phase for awhile.” (Apparently, the term “new phase” sounded too much like “worse phase.”)
Actually, given the fact that the spiraling violence is now killing an average of 120 Iraqi citizens a day (that’s the October figure, according to the United Nations), a debate over the civil-war label seems somewhat irrelevant. What difference does it make, to the average Iraqi, whether the 40 or 50 mutilated bodies that turn up each morning on the Baghdad streets were victims of a “civil war” or “sectarian violence?”
In truth, this labeling debate is an American indulgence, intended for an American audience. This is really about domestic politics.
Bush is basically stuck with his denial, because if he was to admit that Iraq was embroiled in a civil war, he would then be virtually declaring that the signature mission of his White House tenure had irrevocably failed; and if he did that, he would come under even more pressure to scale back the number of U.S. troops, since few Americans would see the wisdom of allowing our fighting men and women to remain trapped in a civil war. Indeed, the White House has known this for many months; back in August, a White House aide told Newsweek, "If there's a full-blown civil war, the president isn't going to allow our forces to be caught in the crossfire.”
So, in the next phase, we can probably look forward to a semantic debate over the proper definition of “full-blown.” But for now, as Bush prepares this week to meet with the Iraqi prime minister, and as Democrats and Republicans alike nervously await the findings of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (in the hopes of finding some political cover), the bottom line is that, regardless of whether the facts on the ground constitute a civil war, there is now a broad consensus that the downward spiral is accelerating. And that the lame duck in the White House lacks the clout to halt it.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Groping toward an exit, Vietnam style
You know that President Bush’s “freedom agenda” for Iraq must be in deep trouble when someone like Trent Lott is toying with the notion of withdrawing our troops. Trent Lott, the conservative Republican from Mississippi. Trent Lott, the number two guy in the ’07 Senate minority.
In other words, even mainstream Republicans are now getting fed up with Bush’s war, to the point where they are willing to fantasize openly about some kind of face-saving exit strategy. (No doubt their patience has been further taxed by the news yesterday that Iraq's "last throes" insurgency is actually well financed and self sustaining.) Indeed, Lott's impatience was almost palpable yesterday on Fox News. He was lamenting that we are “stuck” with an Iraqi leader, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who can’t seem to get the sectarian killers under control. Then he said:
“I think we're going to have to be very aggressive and specific with him. And if he doesn't show real leadership, doesn't try to bring the situation under control; if, in fact, he becomes a part of the problem, we're going to have to make some tough decisions. Do we go in there, try to do it for them? Or do we make it clear to them, ‘Look, we've done what we needed to do, we got rid of Saddam Hussein, we've tried to help you with the infrastructure, we've tried to train your police, your military, we tried to set guideposts of what must be done. And if you don't want to, you know, deal with that, then we're going to be done with it.’ At some point, they're going to have to decide if they want to live in democracy and peace or freedom or not. And right now it's in doubt.”
Then we’re going to be done with it....When I heard that, I realized that the center of gravity in the GOP had shifted. If Lott is willing to talk that way in public, it’s proof that the rank and file is no longer willing to stay the course with open-ended patience; rather, it’s a signal to Bush that their patience is fast running out, and that they are increasingly open to a pullout scenario, albeit something that can salvage the nation’s honor.
It’s starting to feel like the early ‘70s all over again, back when the Nixon administration – mindful that political support for the Vietnam war was waning within GOP ranks - was working hard to train the South Vietnamese army (“Vietnamization”), even while seeking to craft some kind of honorable extrication strategy for the American troops.
Over the past several years, a few Republican senators have been openly critical of the Bush war team’s well-documented ineptitude; indeed, one of those rarities, Vietnam vet Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, wrote yesterday that "we have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam.” But Lott, as the ’07 Senate minority whip, arguably echoes the increasingly restive mood within the GOP caucus.
And there’s little doubt that the war’s dwindling band of defenders are well aware of that mood; witness these remarks, uttered on Fox News eight days ago, by neoconservative commentator William Kristol: “I think Bush has two or three months (to recoup)…. If by (early 2007), things aren't getting better on the ground, or there's not a really plausible change of tactics here at home, I am very worried that political support will crumble; not among Democrats, but among Republicans.”
If GOP support does crumble, a strange-bedfellows consensus might even develop. In 2007, most Democrats and most Republicans might generally come to agree that the best solution is to effectuate some kind of honorable, incremental exit, coupled with accelerated training of the Iraqi forces. (Such a development might not please the Bush people, but they are not in control of events anymore, not in Iraq nor here at home.)
There are plenty of military experts who concur. Retired Gen. Wayne Downing, a Vietnam vet, Desert Storm commander, and a terrorism expert who worked for several presidents, yesterday offered a scenario on NBC that broadly echoed Trent Lott:
“I think we’re reaching a point right now where the Iraqis are going to have to produce, or America is going to start a wholesale withdrawal from Iraq. I hope we’re patient because I think the (training) program we have in place now…basically has it right….Maliki must, however, make the right kind of political decisions. If that happens, we’re going to be able to withdraw in a very systematic and probably a very, very smart manner. If (Maliki errs), then we’ve got to figure a way to cut our losses and do this thing smart.”
Fareed Zakaria, the foreign policy analyst at Newsweek, is writing in a similar vein – and he invokes Vietnam to buttress his point: “America's predicament in Iraq is becoming increasingly similar to the one it faced in Southeast Asia more than 30 years ago. Henry Kissinger's negotiations to end the Vietnam War have been criticized from both the left and right. One side thought he moved too slowly to get us out, the other that he gave up too much. But looking at our circumstances in Iraq should give us some appreciation for the difficulty of his task. With a losing hand and deteriorating conditions on the ground (in Vietnam), Kissinger maneuvered to extricate the United States from a situation in which it could not achieve its objectives, while at the same time limiting the damage, shoring up regional allies and maintaining some measure of American credibility. A version of such a strategy is the only one that has any chance of success in Iraq today.”
And speaking of Vietnam parallels…This weekend, I was reading an old book by David Halberstam, the former Vietnam correspondent, and I stumbled across a noteworthy passage on page 659. Writing in 1979, Halberstam described what happened to the older journalists, many of them military veterans, who came to Vietnam feeling upbeat and gung-ho about the American mission.
“The first stage: very upbeat, Americans can save these people and they really want to be saved and will be grateful for it. Second stage (usually about three months later): we can do it but it’s harder than I thought and right now it’s being screwed up. Third stage (perhaps six to nine months later): you Vietnamese (always the Vietnamese, never the Americans) are really screwing it up. Fourth stage (12 to 15 months later): we are losing and it’s much worse than I thought. Fifth stage: it isn’t working at all, we shouldn’t be here, and we’re doing more harm than good.”
As metaphor, does any of this sound familiar?
In other words, even mainstream Republicans are now getting fed up with Bush’s war, to the point where they are willing to fantasize openly about some kind of face-saving exit strategy. (No doubt their patience has been further taxed by the news yesterday that Iraq's "last throes" insurgency is actually well financed and self sustaining.) Indeed, Lott's impatience was almost palpable yesterday on Fox News. He was lamenting that we are “stuck” with an Iraqi leader, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who can’t seem to get the sectarian killers under control. Then he said:
“I think we're going to have to be very aggressive and specific with him. And if he doesn't show real leadership, doesn't try to bring the situation under control; if, in fact, he becomes a part of the problem, we're going to have to make some tough decisions. Do we go in there, try to do it for them? Or do we make it clear to them, ‘Look, we've done what we needed to do, we got rid of Saddam Hussein, we've tried to help you with the infrastructure, we've tried to train your police, your military, we tried to set guideposts of what must be done. And if you don't want to, you know, deal with that, then we're going to be done with it.’ At some point, they're going to have to decide if they want to live in democracy and peace or freedom or not. And right now it's in doubt.”
Then we’re going to be done with it....When I heard that, I realized that the center of gravity in the GOP had shifted. If Lott is willing to talk that way in public, it’s proof that the rank and file is no longer willing to stay the course with open-ended patience; rather, it’s a signal to Bush that their patience is fast running out, and that they are increasingly open to a pullout scenario, albeit something that can salvage the nation’s honor.
It’s starting to feel like the early ‘70s all over again, back when the Nixon administration – mindful that political support for the Vietnam war was waning within GOP ranks - was working hard to train the South Vietnamese army (“Vietnamization”), even while seeking to craft some kind of honorable extrication strategy for the American troops.
Over the past several years, a few Republican senators have been openly critical of the Bush war team’s well-documented ineptitude; indeed, one of those rarities, Vietnam vet Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, wrote yesterday that "we have misunderstood, misread, misplanned and mismanaged our honorable intentions in Iraq with an arrogant self-delusion reminiscent of Vietnam.” But Lott, as the ’07 Senate minority whip, arguably echoes the increasingly restive mood within the GOP caucus.
And there’s little doubt that the war’s dwindling band of defenders are well aware of that mood; witness these remarks, uttered on Fox News eight days ago, by neoconservative commentator William Kristol: “I think Bush has two or three months (to recoup)…. If by (early 2007), things aren't getting better on the ground, or there's not a really plausible change of tactics here at home, I am very worried that political support will crumble; not among Democrats, but among Republicans.”
If GOP support does crumble, a strange-bedfellows consensus might even develop. In 2007, most Democrats and most Republicans might generally come to agree that the best solution is to effectuate some kind of honorable, incremental exit, coupled with accelerated training of the Iraqi forces. (Such a development might not please the Bush people, but they are not in control of events anymore, not in Iraq nor here at home.)
There are plenty of military experts who concur. Retired Gen. Wayne Downing, a Vietnam vet, Desert Storm commander, and a terrorism expert who worked for several presidents, yesterday offered a scenario on NBC that broadly echoed Trent Lott:
“I think we’re reaching a point right now where the Iraqis are going to have to produce, or America is going to start a wholesale withdrawal from Iraq. I hope we’re patient because I think the (training) program we have in place now…basically has it right….Maliki must, however, make the right kind of political decisions. If that happens, we’re going to be able to withdraw in a very systematic and probably a very, very smart manner. If (Maliki errs), then we’ve got to figure a way to cut our losses and do this thing smart.”
Fareed Zakaria, the foreign policy analyst at Newsweek, is writing in a similar vein – and he invokes Vietnam to buttress his point: “America's predicament in Iraq is becoming increasingly similar to the one it faced in Southeast Asia more than 30 years ago. Henry Kissinger's negotiations to end the Vietnam War have been criticized from both the left and right. One side thought he moved too slowly to get us out, the other that he gave up too much. But looking at our circumstances in Iraq should give us some appreciation for the difficulty of his task. With a losing hand and deteriorating conditions on the ground (in Vietnam), Kissinger maneuvered to extricate the United States from a situation in which it could not achieve its objectives, while at the same time limiting the damage, shoring up regional allies and maintaining some measure of American credibility. A version of such a strategy is the only one that has any chance of success in Iraq today.”
And speaking of Vietnam parallels…This weekend, I was reading an old book by David Halberstam, the former Vietnam correspondent, and I stumbled across a noteworthy passage on page 659. Writing in 1979, Halberstam described what happened to the older journalists, many of them military veterans, who came to Vietnam feeling upbeat and gung-ho about the American mission.
“The first stage: very upbeat, Americans can save these people and they really want to be saved and will be grateful for it. Second stage (usually about three months later): we can do it but it’s harder than I thought and right now it’s being screwed up. Third stage (perhaps six to nine months later): you Vietnamese (always the Vietnamese, never the Americans) are really screwing it up. Fourth stage (12 to 15 months later): we are losing and it’s much worse than I thought. Fifth stage: it isn’t working at all, we shouldn’t be here, and we’re doing more harm than good.”
As metaphor, does any of this sound familiar?
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Hillary's authenticity challenge
In the spirit of contrarianism, I argued today in a print column that the current conventional wisdom about Hillary Clinton might be all wrong; that the Democrats who dread the prospect of her running for president might well be needlessly gnashing their teeth; that, in fact, she might actually be quite electable, when one considers both her political skills and the broader political landscape.
Obviously, naysayers can cite plenty of reasons why Clinton would join Al Gore and John Kerry in the Democratic pantheon of losers; indeed, in the hopes of provoking discussion, I expected that my Sunday email correspondents would provide substantive rebuttal. But since most of the keyboarders, from all corners of the nation, turned out to be people who would probably be most comfortable writing with crayons, or etching graffiti on the bathroom walls of the Bada Bing, I’m going to take the initiative and rebut myself.
Notwithstanding my four electability arguments, it would appear that Clinton’s biggest problem is in the realm of the personal. Undoubtedly, millions of people – many of them swing voters – still aren’t sure whether they can trust her. The fact that she has been a diligent, effective, bipartisan senator will not necessarily matter to these skeptics. More important is the lingering perception (which she would need to address on the stump every day) that she is cold, calculating, power hungry – and, therefore, inauthentic. And incapable of bonding with the averge citizen.
Scores of male presidential candidates, past and present, qualify for that description. But Clinton’s history is a complicating factor. There are women in this country, a not inconsiderable number, who still can’t fathom why Clinton stayed with her husband after the Lewinsky affair went public; and they have concluded (distastefully) that she did so only because she calculated that her future career would best be served by standing by her man.
As a candidate, she would need to find ways to neutralize these nagging character questions. More broadly, she also would need to address concerns, even among Democrats, that a Hillary Clinton presidency would doom America to eight more years of strongly polarized politics. (If we start the clock with her husband’s ascendance, that means we’re currently in our 14th straight year).
But, for Clinton, these are not insurmountable challenges. Our politics are fluid - especially now, in the wake of President Bush’s Iraq wreckage. And I have observed the limitations of conventional wisdom too many times. Two years before the 1992 election, everybody “knew” that the main contestants for the Democratic nod were Al Gore and Mario Cuomo. And four years earlier, everybody “knew” that the senior George Bush could not get elected because he was a sitting vice president, and no veep had succeeded directly to the presidency since 1836. But after Bush won, nobody was talking about Martin Van Buren anymore.
Obviously, naysayers can cite plenty of reasons why Clinton would join Al Gore and John Kerry in the Democratic pantheon of losers; indeed, in the hopes of provoking discussion, I expected that my Sunday email correspondents would provide substantive rebuttal. But since most of the keyboarders, from all corners of the nation, turned out to be people who would probably be most comfortable writing with crayons, or etching graffiti on the bathroom walls of the Bada Bing, I’m going to take the initiative and rebut myself.
Notwithstanding my four electability arguments, it would appear that Clinton’s biggest problem is in the realm of the personal. Undoubtedly, millions of people – many of them swing voters – still aren’t sure whether they can trust her. The fact that she has been a diligent, effective, bipartisan senator will not necessarily matter to these skeptics. More important is the lingering perception (which she would need to address on the stump every day) that she is cold, calculating, power hungry – and, therefore, inauthentic. And incapable of bonding with the averge citizen.
Scores of male presidential candidates, past and present, qualify for that description. But Clinton’s history is a complicating factor. There are women in this country, a not inconsiderable number, who still can’t fathom why Clinton stayed with her husband after the Lewinsky affair went public; and they have concluded (distastefully) that she did so only because she calculated that her future career would best be served by standing by her man.
As a candidate, she would need to find ways to neutralize these nagging character questions. More broadly, she also would need to address concerns, even among Democrats, that a Hillary Clinton presidency would doom America to eight more years of strongly polarized politics. (If we start the clock with her husband’s ascendance, that means we’re currently in our 14th straight year).
But, for Clinton, these are not insurmountable challenges. Our politics are fluid - especially now, in the wake of President Bush’s Iraq wreckage. And I have observed the limitations of conventional wisdom too many times. Two years before the 1992 election, everybody “knew” that the main contestants for the Democratic nod were Al Gore and Mario Cuomo. And four years earlier, everybody “knew” that the senior George Bush could not get elected because he was a sitting vice president, and no veep had succeeded directly to the presidency since 1836. But after Bush won, nobody was talking about Martin Van Buren anymore.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Bon Appetit!
I’m going to cut and run for the Thanksgiving holidays. I’ll return briefly on Sunday – to post a link to my new print column (about Hillary Clinton’s ‘08 prospects) – and resume the normal schedule on Monday.
But, in the meantime, here’s what I am most thankful for in 2006:
1. Freedom of speech and the right to dissent, staples of the First Amendment that have made quite a comeback since the prelude to war in Iraq, when it was unwise to second-guess The Decider.
2. The Internet, which has given us more tools for holding politicians accountable, fact-checking their veracity, and exposing their character flaws via YouTube (as Senator George Allen in Virginia recently discovered, on the way to unemployment).
3. The mainstream media (yeah, bloggers, you heard me) for demonstrating its continued relevance by breaking virtually every political story that mattered most in the '06 election – from the Jack Abramoff scandal (The Washington Post) to the Duke Cunningham scandal (San Diego Union-Tribune and Copley News Service) to the warrantless wiretaps (The New York Times), to the Mark Foley scandal (the website of ABC News), to the state of denial (Bob Woodward), to the string of deceptions about Iraq WMDs (the Washington bureau of now-defunct Knight Ridder). As Dylan Thomas might put it, we shall not go gentle into that good night.
4. America’s military men and women, who continue to do their laudably professional best under increasingly treacherous circumstances in a no-win war, tragically far from their families on feast day.
5. And a whole lot of other important things, such as family & friends, Neil Young’s archival music, Monet’s impressionist paintings, Elmore Leonard’s pitch-perfect dialogue, Ryan Howard’s most valuable ballplaying, and Robert Altman’s path-breaking cinema (may he rest in peace).
Make up your own lists, and have a great holiday.
But, in the meantime, here’s what I am most thankful for in 2006:
1. Freedom of speech and the right to dissent, staples of the First Amendment that have made quite a comeback since the prelude to war in Iraq, when it was unwise to second-guess The Decider.
2. The Internet, which has given us more tools for holding politicians accountable, fact-checking their veracity, and exposing their character flaws via YouTube (as Senator George Allen in Virginia recently discovered, on the way to unemployment).
3. The mainstream media (yeah, bloggers, you heard me) for demonstrating its continued relevance by breaking virtually every political story that mattered most in the '06 election – from the Jack Abramoff scandal (The Washington Post) to the Duke Cunningham scandal (San Diego Union-Tribune and Copley News Service) to the warrantless wiretaps (The New York Times), to the Mark Foley scandal (the website of ABC News), to the state of denial (Bob Woodward), to the string of deceptions about Iraq WMDs (the Washington bureau of now-defunct Knight Ridder). As Dylan Thomas might put it, we shall not go gentle into that good night.
4. America’s military men and women, who continue to do their laudably professional best under increasingly treacherous circumstances in a no-win war, tragically far from their families on feast day.
5. And a whole lot of other important things, such as family & friends, Neil Young’s archival music, Monet’s impressionist paintings, Elmore Leonard’s pitch-perfect dialogue, Ryan Howard’s most valuable ballplaying, and Robert Altman’s path-breaking cinema (may he rest in peace).
Make up your own lists, and have a great holiday.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Kissinger to Bush: forget the victory rhetoric
Did you happen to catch Henry Kissinger’s comments this weekend? Quite extraordinary, really.
Here is the purported Republican wise man of foreign policy, the backstage tutor of President Bush during the latter’s hour of need…and yet even he is now saying, in public, that the Bush mission in Iraq is a hopeless quagmire.
First, a bit of context: Bush has long argued that we are “winning” the war in Iraq, that “victory” is either at hand or in sight or conceivably around the corner. The rhetoric has been dispensed to Americans seemingly on a continuous loop. During the 2004 campaign, for instance, he said he had “a strategy that will lead to victory,” and on Nov. 30, 2005 he said he had “a clear strategy for victory,” and that “we would never accept anything less than complete victory,” and on July 4 of this year he said that “when the job in Iraq is done, it will be a major victory,” and on Aug. 31 he said that “victory in Iraq will be a crushing defeat for our enemies,” and on Sept. 11 he said that “we can be confident in victory, because of the skill and resolve of America’s armed forces,” and just a few weeks ago he said that “absolutely, we are winning.”
Yet now we have Henry Kissinger himself telling the BBC that (a) we are not winning, and (b) we will never achieve victory.
Bush and his surrogates have long said that we would achieve victory in Iraq when a democratic central government, backed by its own effective military, is able to stand up for itself and stabilize the country. But Kissinger basically told the BBC this weekend that, by that definition, victory is no longer achievable.
His words: “If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible."
Note, also, that Kissinger is matter of factly observing that Iraq is now embroiled in a civil war – something that Bush has never acknowledged. I am awaiting the Republican National Committee press release claiming that Kissinger is merely a “Defeat-o-crat,” but, given the fact that frustration with the war now extends deep into the GOP and military establishments, it’s clear that such a political attack strategy is no longer operative. Not even our top fighting men seem to have faith in the Bush rhetoric; as Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said the other day, “You have to define ‘win,’'' and he doesn’t believe that building a “democracy,” as Americans typically understand the word, has anything to do with it.
Kissinger’s willingness to speak out is further proof that Bush not only has lost control of events, he has also lost control of the administration message. Kissinger told the BBC that America should be talking to Iraq’s neighbors (Syria and Iran) in order to quell “the civil war” – a stance that is openly at odds with Bush’s longstanding refusal to talk to Iraq’s neighbors.
At the same time, Kissinger told the BBC that it would be wrong for America to withdraw its troops prematurely, because such a move, he said, would further destabilize the country. Bush defenders no doubt will point to that remark as proof that the administration is right to resist calls for a troop phase-down in 2007.
But take a step back and look at Kissinger’s overall message: He is essentially saying that we cannot win this war, and yet, for the foreseeable future, we should keep our troops in harm’s way nevertheless. That’s quite a message for the soldiers, as well as for their families back home. Forgive me, but this sounds like the early 70’s Kissinger prescription for Vietnam – a prescription for a quagmire that prompted the young John Kerry to wonder, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
From the Republican perspective, it’s a good thing that Bush’s tutor didn’t utter his remarks prior to the congressional elections, or else the GOP might well have coughed up even more seats. Which is arguably why we are hearing this kind of frank admission only now, after the election.
Here is the purported Republican wise man of foreign policy, the backstage tutor of President Bush during the latter’s hour of need…and yet even he is now saying, in public, that the Bush mission in Iraq is a hopeless quagmire.
First, a bit of context: Bush has long argued that we are “winning” the war in Iraq, that “victory” is either at hand or in sight or conceivably around the corner. The rhetoric has been dispensed to Americans seemingly on a continuous loop. During the 2004 campaign, for instance, he said he had “a strategy that will lead to victory,” and on Nov. 30, 2005 he said he had “a clear strategy for victory,” and that “we would never accept anything less than complete victory,” and on July 4 of this year he said that “when the job in Iraq is done, it will be a major victory,” and on Aug. 31 he said that “victory in Iraq will be a crushing defeat for our enemies,” and on Sept. 11 he said that “we can be confident in victory, because of the skill and resolve of America’s armed forces,” and just a few weeks ago he said that “absolutely, we are winning.”
Yet now we have Henry Kissinger himself telling the BBC that (a) we are not winning, and (b) we will never achieve victory.
Bush and his surrogates have long said that we would achieve victory in Iraq when a democratic central government, backed by its own effective military, is able to stand up for itself and stabilize the country. But Kissinger basically told the BBC this weekend that, by that definition, victory is no longer achievable.
His words: “If you mean by clear military victory an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible."
Note, also, that Kissinger is matter of factly observing that Iraq is now embroiled in a civil war – something that Bush has never acknowledged. I am awaiting the Republican National Committee press release claiming that Kissinger is merely a “Defeat-o-crat,” but, given the fact that frustration with the war now extends deep into the GOP and military establishments, it’s clear that such a political attack strategy is no longer operative. Not even our top fighting men seem to have faith in the Bush rhetoric; as Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said the other day, “You have to define ‘win,’'' and he doesn’t believe that building a “democracy,” as Americans typically understand the word, has anything to do with it.
Kissinger’s willingness to speak out is further proof that Bush not only has lost control of events, he has also lost control of the administration message. Kissinger told the BBC that America should be talking to Iraq’s neighbors (Syria and Iran) in order to quell “the civil war” – a stance that is openly at odds with Bush’s longstanding refusal to talk to Iraq’s neighbors.
At the same time, Kissinger told the BBC that it would be wrong for America to withdraw its troops prematurely, because such a move, he said, would further destabilize the country. Bush defenders no doubt will point to that remark as proof that the administration is right to resist calls for a troop phase-down in 2007.
But take a step back and look at Kissinger’s overall message: He is essentially saying that we cannot win this war, and yet, for the foreseeable future, we should keep our troops in harm’s way nevertheless. That’s quite a message for the soldiers, as well as for their families back home. Forgive me, but this sounds like the early 70’s Kissinger prescription for Vietnam – a prescription for a quagmire that prompted the young John Kerry to wonder, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
From the Republican perspective, it’s a good thing that Bush’s tutor didn’t utter his remarks prior to the congressional elections, or else the GOP might well have coughed up even more seats. Which is arguably why we are hearing this kind of frank admission only now, after the election.
Monday, November 20, 2006
The '08 GOP presidential race: "base" ball and hardball
The 2008 Republican presidential race is in full swing already, as evidenced in recent days by the behavior of all the top contenders. Clearly, their first priority is to look rightward, in the hopes of nailing down early conservative support in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina:
1. Consider John McCain. He badly wants to establish his bona fides with the suspicious conservative base, even if it means taking the wheel of his purported “Straight Talk” Express and weaving all over the road.
Yesterday, on ABC News, he basically stated that it would be fine with him if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and thereby erased the 33-year-old federal right to an abortion. McCain said: “I do believe that it’s very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should — could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support….I do believe that we would be better off by having Roe v. Wade return to the states. And I don’t believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade.”
Oh really? Here’s what McCain told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999: “Certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to (undergo) illegal and dangerous operations.” He then reiterated this argument on CNN: "We all know, and it's obvious, that if we repeal Roe v. Wade tomorrow, thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations."
In other words, McCain was for it before he was against it. In politics (or at least when someone like John Kerry acts this way), this is known as a flip flop.
But it’s easy to understand the McCain flip flop. Six years ago, when he was wiped out by George W. Bush in the pivotal South Carolina primary, McCain strategist John Weaver diagnosed the defeat this way: “We lost the religious right by 57 points, proudly.” But the McCain camp has concluded that if he really wants to win the ’08 primaries, he has to consider pride to be a luxury. And that means throwing Roe v. Wade under the Straight Talk bus.
2. Consider Mitt Romney. He too is fixated on the base. He has some centrist credentials, as the blue-state Massachusetts governor who has crafted a universal health care program, but two moves in the past few days are aimed at the right. Yesterday, for instance, he demanded that state officials put the same-sex marriage issue on the ballot so that Bay State citizens can vote for themselves on whether gays should be allowed to wed.
Three years ago, the state supreme court (with its Republican majority) ruled that gay marriages were consistent with language in the state constitution, but grassroots opponents in Massachusetts have long been demanding a ballot referendum that could allow the voters to overturn the judges. Romney said yesterday that, unless the secretary of state puts the issue on the ballot, judicial “tyranny” will have prevailed. In political terms, if Romney expects to garner sufficient support among conservative primary voters, he needs to demonstrate that he has done all he can to push traditional values in his blue backyard.
Meanwhile, he sent another signal to these voters last week, by hiring Alex Castellanos as a media consultant. Castellanos is hardly a household name, but within activist and donor circles, his hiring is a sign that Romney means business, and that Romney is prepared to play hardball in order to win. Because Castellanos is a famous (some would say infamous) hardball practitioner of conservative TV messaging.
He’s so aggressive that even some of his most prominent clients have refused to put his ads on the air; for instance, during the ’96 campaign, when he produced some spots that directly called President Clinton a liar, GOP candidate Bob Dole nixed them. In 1999, when Hillary Clinton was doing her early spadework for her first Senate race, Castellanos called her “a cross between the Kennedy agenda and Nixon’s ethical judgment.” In 2000, he produced an ad that equated the Democrats with “rats,” by allowing the final four letters of the party name to linger on the TV screen. To quell the ensuing controversy, the Bush campaign yanked the spot. And in 2004, he produced a spot claiming that John Kerry would raise taxes by $900 billion, whereas Kerry had said no such thing and the budgetary issues were far more complicated than what was portrayed in Castellanos' ad.
The bottom line for Romney, however, is that Castellanos knows to talk to the base.
3. Rudy Giuliani, who, like McCain, filed papers this past week for an “exploratory” campaign committee, is also fixated on the base. He can’t talk about his stance on social issues (because he is pro-gay rights and pro-abortion rights) and he can’t really talk up his personal story either (because he has dumped two wives, and, after the second dumping, moved in with a gay couple). But he has been relentlessly plucking the base’s heartstrings by invoking 9/11 – the visuals of Giuliani, coated with dust and striding through the rubble, are potential grist for TV ads – and tying his behavior on that tragic day to a broader narrative about being tough on terrorists.
As he put it on the eve of the ’06 elections, “Five years ago, our nation learned a painful lesson about the dangers of an inconsistent approach to dealing with the evil of terrorism. In his speech to Congress on September 20th, 2001, President Bush declared that we would go on offense against terrorists, and he has made good on that promise. Terrorists have been destabilized and put on defense around the world - including Afghanistan and Iraq.”
For the conservative base, the Giuliani message has potential visceral appeal. And if he does run, his 9/11 visuals will presumably trump the actual factual details of his spotty anti-terrorist record, pre-9/11. Because as a well-researched new book makes abundantly clear, Giuliani made a number of regrettable decisions prior to the attacks:
He put the city’s emergency command center inside the World Trade Center, defying the pleas of his security advisors who (citing the 1993 attacks on that building) wanted the command center placed elsewhere; he dragged his feet on establishing any plan for interagency cooperation in the wake of a high-rise terror attack, even though his own emergency management director was insisting on such a plan; and he failed to act on evidence, going back to 1990, that the fire department’s emergency radios were so outmoded that lives would be lost in the event of a major disaster operation.
But only a fraction of conservative primary voters will know about any of that…and even if a rival brings it up, it may well be dismissed as ancient history. To quote a line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a classic western: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
1. Consider John McCain. He badly wants to establish his bona fides with the suspicious conservative base, even if it means taking the wheel of his purported “Straight Talk” Express and weaving all over the road.
Yesterday, on ABC News, he basically stated that it would be fine with him if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and thereby erased the 33-year-old federal right to an abortion. McCain said: “I do believe that it’s very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should — could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support….I do believe that we would be better off by having Roe v. Wade return to the states. And I don’t believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade.”
Oh really? Here’s what McCain told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999: “Certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to (undergo) illegal and dangerous operations.” He then reiterated this argument on CNN: "We all know, and it's obvious, that if we repeal Roe v. Wade tomorrow, thousands of young American women would be performing illegal and dangerous operations."
In other words, McCain was for it before he was against it. In politics (or at least when someone like John Kerry acts this way), this is known as a flip flop.
But it’s easy to understand the McCain flip flop. Six years ago, when he was wiped out by George W. Bush in the pivotal South Carolina primary, McCain strategist John Weaver diagnosed the defeat this way: “We lost the religious right by 57 points, proudly.” But the McCain camp has concluded that if he really wants to win the ’08 primaries, he has to consider pride to be a luxury. And that means throwing Roe v. Wade under the Straight Talk bus.
2. Consider Mitt Romney. He too is fixated on the base. He has some centrist credentials, as the blue-state Massachusetts governor who has crafted a universal health care program, but two moves in the past few days are aimed at the right. Yesterday, for instance, he demanded that state officials put the same-sex marriage issue on the ballot so that Bay State citizens can vote for themselves on whether gays should be allowed to wed.
Three years ago, the state supreme court (with its Republican majority) ruled that gay marriages were consistent with language in the state constitution, but grassroots opponents in Massachusetts have long been demanding a ballot referendum that could allow the voters to overturn the judges. Romney said yesterday that, unless the secretary of state puts the issue on the ballot, judicial “tyranny” will have prevailed. In political terms, if Romney expects to garner sufficient support among conservative primary voters, he needs to demonstrate that he has done all he can to push traditional values in his blue backyard.
Meanwhile, he sent another signal to these voters last week, by hiring Alex Castellanos as a media consultant. Castellanos is hardly a household name, but within activist and donor circles, his hiring is a sign that Romney means business, and that Romney is prepared to play hardball in order to win. Because Castellanos is a famous (some would say infamous) hardball practitioner of conservative TV messaging.
He’s so aggressive that even some of his most prominent clients have refused to put his ads on the air; for instance, during the ’96 campaign, when he produced some spots that directly called President Clinton a liar, GOP candidate Bob Dole nixed them. In 1999, when Hillary Clinton was doing her early spadework for her first Senate race, Castellanos called her “a cross between the Kennedy agenda and Nixon’s ethical judgment.” In 2000, he produced an ad that equated the Democrats with “rats,” by allowing the final four letters of the party name to linger on the TV screen. To quell the ensuing controversy, the Bush campaign yanked the spot. And in 2004, he produced a spot claiming that John Kerry would raise taxes by $900 billion, whereas Kerry had said no such thing and the budgetary issues were far more complicated than what was portrayed in Castellanos' ad.
The bottom line for Romney, however, is that Castellanos knows to talk to the base.
3. Rudy Giuliani, who, like McCain, filed papers this past week for an “exploratory” campaign committee, is also fixated on the base. He can’t talk about his stance on social issues (because he is pro-gay rights and pro-abortion rights) and he can’t really talk up his personal story either (because he has dumped two wives, and, after the second dumping, moved in with a gay couple). But he has been relentlessly plucking the base’s heartstrings by invoking 9/11 – the visuals of Giuliani, coated with dust and striding through the rubble, are potential grist for TV ads – and tying his behavior on that tragic day to a broader narrative about being tough on terrorists.
As he put it on the eve of the ’06 elections, “Five years ago, our nation learned a painful lesson about the dangers of an inconsistent approach to dealing with the evil of terrorism. In his speech to Congress on September 20th, 2001, President Bush declared that we would go on offense against terrorists, and he has made good on that promise. Terrorists have been destabilized and put on defense around the world - including Afghanistan and Iraq.”
For the conservative base, the Giuliani message has potential visceral appeal. And if he does run, his 9/11 visuals will presumably trump the actual factual details of his spotty anti-terrorist record, pre-9/11. Because as a well-researched new book makes abundantly clear, Giuliani made a number of regrettable decisions prior to the attacks:
He put the city’s emergency command center inside the World Trade Center, defying the pleas of his security advisors who (citing the 1993 attacks on that building) wanted the command center placed elsewhere; he dragged his feet on establishing any plan for interagency cooperation in the wake of a high-rise terror attack, even though his own emergency management director was insisting on such a plan; and he failed to act on evidence, going back to 1990, that the fire department’s emergency radios were so outmoded that lives would be lost in the event of a major disaster operation.
But only a fraction of conservative primary voters will know about any of that…and even if a rival brings it up, it may well be dismissed as ancient history. To quote a line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a classic western: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
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