The most fascinating debate of the ’06 congressional election season is pitting the conservatives who want the GOP to win against the conservatives who want the GOP to lose.
Yes, it’s true. There is a sizeable contingent of prominent conservatives (and even a few party strategists) who actually hope that the Republicans cough up control of the House and/or the Senate on election day. This sentiment is a sign of deep pessimism within conservative ranks about the GOP’s November prospects; eyeing the latest polls and fearing electoral defeat, these people have convinced themselves, and seek to convince others, that maybe a Democratic takeover wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.
It’s quite a spectacle, in a way: Republicans haven’t even lost anything yet (and they may not lose at all), yet already some of their staunchest partisans are giving us pre-spin about the upside of a disaster.
Here’s Ramesh Ponnuru, a respected conservative commentator, writing a guest piece Wednesday in The New York Times: “A straight loss (in November) would make the Republicans hungrier and sharpen their wits. Freed from the obligation of cobbling together thin majorities for watered-down legislation, Republicans would be able to stand for something attractive…If Democrats win the House now, the next Republican presidential candidate will be able to run against Nancy Pelosi and the liberal committee chairmen who would suddenly be in the headlines…If Republicans play their cards right, and the Democrats prove unequal to the task of running the House, the voters could put the Republicans back in power on Capitol Hill in 2008.”
Jonah Goldberg, agrees, writing yesterday in the Los Angeles Times: “Yes, the thought of Nancy Pelosi as Housze Speaker and John Conyers Jr, Henry Waxman and Alcee Hastings as potential committee chairmen does cause an involuntary gag reflex and a shudder for the future of the republic.” However, “letting voters see this crowd try to have its way for two years would only help the GOP in the far more important 2008 election.”
One Republican strategist has even gone on the record about this. Tony Fabrizio, who in my experience I have long considered one of the most forthright Republican operatives, told The Atlantic Monthly Online, “If we hold on to both houses narrowly, we maintain the illusion of power and control, but…get blamed for all the problems.” On the other hand, Fabrizio argues, if the Democrats capture a chamber, then the GOP ’08 presidential candidates can run as outsiders against Washington – a scenario that easily trumps “having to take on the entire GOP establishment.”
Meanwhile, seven prominent souls have just vented on the Washington Monthly website. Consider Christopher Buckley, the conservative humorist, ex-GOP speechwriter, and son of conservative scion William F. Buckley Jr. Here’s a bilious, three-graf excerpt:
“With heavy heart, as a once-proud—indeed, staunch— Republican, I here admit, behind enemy lines, to the guilty hope that my party loses…Bob Woodward asked Bush 43 if he had consulted his father before invading Iraq. The son replied that he had consulted ‘a higher father.’ That frisson you feel going up your spine is the realization that he meant it. And apparently the higher father said, ‘Go for it!’ There are those of us who wish he had consulted his terrestrial one…
"Anyone who has even a passing personal acquaintance of Bush 41 knows him to be, roughly speaking, the most decent, considerate, humble, and cautious man on the planet. Also, the most loving parent on earth. What a wrench it must be for him to pick up his paper every morning and read the now-daily debate about whether his son is officially the worst president in U.S. history.
“What have they done to my party? Where does one go to get it back? One place comes to mind: the back benches. It’s time for a time-out. Time to hand over this sorry enchilada…My fellow Republicans, it is time, as Madison said in Federalist 76, to “Hand over the tiller of governance, that others may f--- things up for a change. (Or was it Federalist 78?)”
It can’t be a good sign for the GOP that its ranks include eminent conservatives who are so fed up with (in their words) high budget deficits, corruption, incompetence, and a mess in Iraq that they find defeat to be attractive. What does this say, potentially, about the mood of conservative voters nationwide?
Naturally, there are staunch conservatives who think that the defeatists are off their rockers; as commentator Dean Barnett (who blogs frequently on talk show host Hugh Hewitt’s website), contended Wednesday, “At a time of war, we cannot afford to have the party controlling Congress have as its sole mission an unending quest to undermine the Commander-in-Chief….I happen to agree that the Republican party deserves to lose the House. The past 12 years (since Newt Gingrich’s takeover) have been an epic disappointment. But for the sake of the country, we’d be a helluva lot better off reforming ourselves (while still in power) rather than as a result of an electoral repudiation that will weaken the country in time of war.”
This argument will persuade many conservative base voters to show up in November and vote GOP; certainly, the recent speight of speeches by President Bush and his surrogates have stressed that theme, in their efforts to fire up the base – and the latest polls do indicate an uptick of base support.
But here’s the key caveat: When disillusioned partisans start talking about the virtues of a defeat, it generally means that their ranks are not sufficiently motivated and that defeat indeed may be in the offing.
That’s precisely what happened to the Democrats back in 1980, when liberal base voters were ticked off at President Jimmy Carter, and argued that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Ronald Reagan won the election, because then the Democrats could recoup by exploiting inevitable Reagan screwups. So the liberals stayed home, Carter lost…and the Republicans kept the White House for the next 12 years.
Friday, September 15, 2006
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Can the GOP put Nancy Pelosi on every ballot?
I well remember the summer of 1984, when Ronald Reagan’s GOP coined the term San Francisco Democrats, crafting it as a synonym for gay-friendly, communist-coddling, tax-hiking liberal decadence. Caricature can be an effective political tool, and this one worked brilliantly.
Two decades later, we’re now seeing it again. With critical congressional elections just seven weeks away, George W. Bush’s GOP is trying to shift voters’ attention away from the unpopular George W. Bush by warning in essence, “If you think that Bush and his allies are bad, just imagine the horrific threat to the nation if Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco gets the keys to the House.”
It’s impossible to predict whether this demonization strategy will work, but she potentially provides the GOP with ample raw material: She represents a liberal and affluent San Francisco district, she votes for gun control and abortion rights, she was an early supporter of Iraq troop withdrawal, and some allies even fret that she comes off as too sophisticated for the average voter (remember the pictures of John Kerry wind-surfing?).
The other day, GOP chairman Ken Mehlman told Roll Call, a subscriber-only Capitol Hill paper, that it would be “a dereliction of our duty” if party headquarters fails to run TV ads that tie Democratic candidates to the House votes cast by Pelosi. This way, Republicans hope to thwart the Democrats’ ambitious efforts to run competitive candidates in non-liberal districts.
Hence the gist of Operation Pelosi: Any Republican incumbent locked in a tough race against a moderate or macho Democratic challenger, can simply try to tie that challenger to prospective House Speaker Pelosi, and hence transform that challenger into a San Francisco Democrat by association.
One can argue that targeting Pelosi is a fool’s errand, since her name won’t appear this fall on 434 of the 435 House ballots. And she’s not a household name, either; according to a June Gallup poll, 27 percent of Americans don’t even know who she is, 31 percent know her and like her, and 29 percent know her and dislike her. But this GOP tactic isn’t really aimed at most Americans; rather, it’s intended only for red states and competitive blue states, as a way to stoke anti-Democratic hostility among conservative base voters who, given their own frustrations with Bush and the GOP, might need an extra reason to rise from their sofas and trudge to the polls on Nov. 8.
This explains the email circulated yesterday by Pennsylvania GOP director Scott Migli. In his state, three Republican incumbents are facing competitive challenges from a trio of Democrats who served either in Iraq or in the military as careerists. But, having gotten word that those Democrats were heading to Washington for a party fundraiser, Migli pounced with the message that those vets “are the hand-picked political pawns of Nancy Pelosi,” or, as the email says elsewhere, “far-left liberal Nancy Pelosi,” and her “liberal tax-and-spend, soft-on-security” friends.
And this explains the radio ad that has been running in the mountains of North Carolina, where a Republican incumbent faces a tough challenge from a Democrat who defies the liberal stereotype; in fact, Democrat Heath Shuler is pro-gun, anti-abortion…and, just top it off, he’s an ex-NFL quarterback. Hence the radio ad: “Rookie Heath Shuler is following the playbook of San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi. The Pelosi game plan – Elect Heath Shuler and others like him, and take over Congress with the votes of illegal immigrants.” That same tactic is in play in South Carolina, where a Republican challenger has been trying to hang Pelosi around the neck of moderate Democratic congressman John Spratt.
Meanwhile, the national party has gone to work on Pelosi, contending that one of her most recent comments is a slur on our fighting men and women (San Francisco Democrat = security wimp). On Tuesday, Pelosi said, with reference to Osama bin Laden, “even to capture him now, I don’t think makes us any safer.” GOP headquarters circulated the remark, and top House Republicans sounded shocked that Pelosi would say such a thing. Duncan Hunter of California said that Pelosi’s remark “can only have a demoralizing effect on American troops and intelligence personnel who are currently risking their lives…” Phil Gingrey of Georgia said, “And the Democrats wonder why Americans think they’re soft on security.”
Maybe Pelosi’s remark will rouse conservative voters in the intended fashion; the problem is, she has plenty of company when she says bin Laden’s capture would not be a panacea. Republican company, in fact. Dick Cheney said four days ago on Meet the Press: “He’s not the only source of the problem, obviously…If you killed him tomorrow, you’d still have a problem with al Qaeda, with (bin Laden deputy Ayman) al-Zawahiri and the others.” The bipartisan 9/11 Commission essentially made the same argument; so did Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, when he said back in 2001 that if bin Laden was gone, “the same problem would exist.”
It is true that many Democrats privately cringe whenever Pelosi goes on TV; she recites rote talking points, and her bug-eyed stare provides the GOP with endless opportunities to depict her in photos as a fiend from Night of the Living Dead. Nor does it necessarily help that she has reportedly been weighing the idea, should the Democrats take the House, of installing Florida congressman Alcee Hastings as chair of the Intelligence Committee – the same guy who, as noted today in a GOP headquarters email, was once impeached and ousted from a federal judgeship on eight counts of bribery and conspiracy.
But will demonizing Pelosi let Bush and the GOP incumbents off the hook? There’s scant evidence that targeting a House personage can work nationwide. That’s what the Democrats tried to do with Newt Gingrich in 1996. He was actually running the House at the time, and Democrats figured they could pull their voters to the polls en masse by highlighting the various Newt-driven federal program cuts. Wrong.
On the other hand, as evidenced yesterday in Rhode Island, it would be also be wrong to underestimate the vaunted efficiency of Republican turnout operations.
-------
But maybe Bush has way bigger political problems than Nancy Pelosi.
Consider: If Pelosi had crafted a bill that protected terrorist suspects from being tortured in ways that breached the Geneva Conventions, and if, by doing so, she had brazenly defied the Bush administration (which says it should have the right to use such interrogation methods), then it's fair to say that the GOP political team would be spinning her behavior as further evidence of San Francisco Democratic decadence and security wimpsmanship.
But the problem for the Bush team is, the current practitioners of security wimpsmanship are Republican senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and John Warner. They have crafted precisely that kind of bill. Graham is a former military lawyer, McCain knows a few things about being tortured, and Warner is one of the Senate "old bulls," a barometer of GOP establishment thinking. They seem to have a few major objections with the Bush team's contention that Congress should sign off on a flexible-torture plan that essentially would contradict the prohibition handed down this summer by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Their defiance would appear to make them worthy of being labeled soft on terrorism, soft on the troops, in accordance with the Pelosi paradigm. That won't happen, of course, but their timing is not helpful to an administration that would much prefer not to have its internal rifts laid bare during election season.
And now, to foil matters further, retired Gen. Colin Powell has weighed in on the side of the defiant trio, with a letter that says in part: "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine (the Geneva Conventions) would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."
With even the normally reticent Colin Powell out there in opposition, can the Bush team get voters to care about Nancy Pelosi?
Two decades later, we’re now seeing it again. With critical congressional elections just seven weeks away, George W. Bush’s GOP is trying to shift voters’ attention away from the unpopular George W. Bush by warning in essence, “If you think that Bush and his allies are bad, just imagine the horrific threat to the nation if Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco gets the keys to the House.”
It’s impossible to predict whether this demonization strategy will work, but she potentially provides the GOP with ample raw material: She represents a liberal and affluent San Francisco district, she votes for gun control and abortion rights, she was an early supporter of Iraq troop withdrawal, and some allies even fret that she comes off as too sophisticated for the average voter (remember the pictures of John Kerry wind-surfing?).
The other day, GOP chairman Ken Mehlman told Roll Call, a subscriber-only Capitol Hill paper, that it would be “a dereliction of our duty” if party headquarters fails to run TV ads that tie Democratic candidates to the House votes cast by Pelosi. This way, Republicans hope to thwart the Democrats’ ambitious efforts to run competitive candidates in non-liberal districts.
Hence the gist of Operation Pelosi: Any Republican incumbent locked in a tough race against a moderate or macho Democratic challenger, can simply try to tie that challenger to prospective House Speaker Pelosi, and hence transform that challenger into a San Francisco Democrat by association.
One can argue that targeting Pelosi is a fool’s errand, since her name won’t appear this fall on 434 of the 435 House ballots. And she’s not a household name, either; according to a June Gallup poll, 27 percent of Americans don’t even know who she is, 31 percent know her and like her, and 29 percent know her and dislike her. But this GOP tactic isn’t really aimed at most Americans; rather, it’s intended only for red states and competitive blue states, as a way to stoke anti-Democratic hostility among conservative base voters who, given their own frustrations with Bush and the GOP, might need an extra reason to rise from their sofas and trudge to the polls on Nov. 8.
This explains the email circulated yesterday by Pennsylvania GOP director Scott Migli. In his state, three Republican incumbents are facing competitive challenges from a trio of Democrats who served either in Iraq or in the military as careerists. But, having gotten word that those Democrats were heading to Washington for a party fundraiser, Migli pounced with the message that those vets “are the hand-picked political pawns of Nancy Pelosi,” or, as the email says elsewhere, “far-left liberal Nancy Pelosi,” and her “liberal tax-and-spend, soft-on-security” friends.
And this explains the radio ad that has been running in the mountains of North Carolina, where a Republican incumbent faces a tough challenge from a Democrat who defies the liberal stereotype; in fact, Democrat Heath Shuler is pro-gun, anti-abortion…and, just top it off, he’s an ex-NFL quarterback. Hence the radio ad: “Rookie Heath Shuler is following the playbook of San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi. The Pelosi game plan – Elect Heath Shuler and others like him, and take over Congress with the votes of illegal immigrants.” That same tactic is in play in South Carolina, where a Republican challenger has been trying to hang Pelosi around the neck of moderate Democratic congressman John Spratt.
Meanwhile, the national party has gone to work on Pelosi, contending that one of her most recent comments is a slur on our fighting men and women (San Francisco Democrat = security wimp). On Tuesday, Pelosi said, with reference to Osama bin Laden, “even to capture him now, I don’t think makes us any safer.” GOP headquarters circulated the remark, and top House Republicans sounded shocked that Pelosi would say such a thing. Duncan Hunter of California said that Pelosi’s remark “can only have a demoralizing effect on American troops and intelligence personnel who are currently risking their lives…” Phil Gingrey of Georgia said, “And the Democrats wonder why Americans think they’re soft on security.”
Maybe Pelosi’s remark will rouse conservative voters in the intended fashion; the problem is, she has plenty of company when she says bin Laden’s capture would not be a panacea. Republican company, in fact. Dick Cheney said four days ago on Meet the Press: “He’s not the only source of the problem, obviously…If you killed him tomorrow, you’d still have a problem with al Qaeda, with (bin Laden deputy Ayman) al-Zawahiri and the others.” The bipartisan 9/11 Commission essentially made the same argument; so did Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, when he said back in 2001 that if bin Laden was gone, “the same problem would exist.”
It is true that many Democrats privately cringe whenever Pelosi goes on TV; she recites rote talking points, and her bug-eyed stare provides the GOP with endless opportunities to depict her in photos as a fiend from Night of the Living Dead. Nor does it necessarily help that she has reportedly been weighing the idea, should the Democrats take the House, of installing Florida congressman Alcee Hastings as chair of the Intelligence Committee – the same guy who, as noted today in a GOP headquarters email, was once impeached and ousted from a federal judgeship on eight counts of bribery and conspiracy.
But will demonizing Pelosi let Bush and the GOP incumbents off the hook? There’s scant evidence that targeting a House personage can work nationwide. That’s what the Democrats tried to do with Newt Gingrich in 1996. He was actually running the House at the time, and Democrats figured they could pull their voters to the polls en masse by highlighting the various Newt-driven federal program cuts. Wrong.
On the other hand, as evidenced yesterday in Rhode Island, it would be also be wrong to underestimate the vaunted efficiency of Republican turnout operations.
-------
But maybe Bush has way bigger political problems than Nancy Pelosi.
Consider: If Pelosi had crafted a bill that protected terrorist suspects from being tortured in ways that breached the Geneva Conventions, and if, by doing so, she had brazenly defied the Bush administration (which says it should have the right to use such interrogation methods), then it's fair to say that the GOP political team would be spinning her behavior as further evidence of San Francisco Democratic decadence and security wimpsmanship.
But the problem for the Bush team is, the current practitioners of security wimpsmanship are Republican senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and John Warner. They have crafted precisely that kind of bill. Graham is a former military lawyer, McCain knows a few things about being tortured, and Warner is one of the Senate "old bulls," a barometer of GOP establishment thinking. They seem to have a few major objections with the Bush team's contention that Congress should sign off on a flexible-torture plan that essentially would contradict the prohibition handed down this summer by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Their defiance would appear to make them worthy of being labeled soft on terrorism, soft on the troops, in accordance with the Pelosi paradigm. That won't happen, of course, but their timing is not helpful to an administration that would much prefer not to have its internal rifts laid bare during election season.
And now, to foil matters further, retired Gen. Colin Powell has weighed in on the side of the defiant trio, with a letter that says in part: "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine (the Geneva Conventions) would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."
With even the normally reticent Colin Powell out there in opposition, can the Bush team get voters to care about Nancy Pelosi?
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
The uphill Democratic challenge that cannot be spun
The winner of today’s Most Transparent Spin Award is Democratic senator Charles Schumer. Even though national Democrats took a big hit last night in Rhode Island – where moderate Republican incumbent Lincoln Chafee survived a GOP primary challenge and hence made it much more difficult for the Democrats to capture that critical seat in November – Schumer purports to believe that things turned out swell for his side.
He stated: “When Lincoln Chafee - an incumbent Republican Senator - can barely win his own primary, you know he'll have trouble in the general election. Rhode Islanders, more than voters in any other state, know we need a new direction and real change in this country which is why (Democrat) Sheldon Whitehouse will be the next U.S. Senator from Rhode Island."
Actually, contrary to what Schumer says, Chafee did not “barely win” his primary. By definition, an 8.4-point victory margin with high turnout is quite solid; it is therefore a leap of logic to conclude that such a margin portends “trouble” in November. Quite the contrary, potentially. Chafee handily defeated an outspoken conservative challenger, Stephen Laffey, with strong support from independent voters (who, under Rhode Island law, are allowed to vote in party primaries).
It’s those independent-minded Yankees who might well save one of their own in November – or, at the very least, keep Chafee so competitive that Schumer, who is helming the Democrats’ national bid to recapture the Senate, will have to spend serious money in Rhode Island in order to win a seat that is pivotal to his national ambitions.
Schumer and his lieutenants were rooting hard for conservative Laffey, knowing that he would have been far easier (and cheaper) to defeat. (If Laffey had won, they also would have argued that right-wing extremists had captured the Republican party.) But with Chafee’s primary win, their bid for Senate power just became much harder. Here’s why, in the context of the national map:
The Democrats need to post a net gain of six seats. They can do this by defeating six GOP incumbents, and successfully save all their own incumbents. Theoretically, this can be done by ousting the Republicans in Pennsylvania (Rick Santorum), Montana (Conrad Burns), Ohio (Mike DeWine), Missouri (Jim Talent), Virginia (George Allen), and Rhode Island (Chafee)…or ousting five of them, and picking up the Tennessee seat being vacated by Republican leader Bill Frist. Then they need to defend their five most vulnerable Democratic seats, especially New Jersey’s Robert Menendez. (More on Menendez in a moment.)
For Democrats, this is a tall order, even assuming that something close to an anti-Republican tsunami develops this autumn. Chafee’s win last night doesn’t help. Now they have to pump big money and resources into Rhode Island, where Chafee’s moderate-to-liberal record is actually in sync with the voters; every dollar and staffer that goes to Rhode Island is a dollar and staffer that can’t go to Ohio, Virginia, Missouri, or Tennessee.
Especially Tennessee. In the contest for that open GOP seat, the Democrats have nominated congressman Harold Ford. He is African American. Name the last time that a southern state elected a black Democrat in a statewide Senate race. You can’t.(Harvey Gantt came closest in North Carolina, in 1990, against winner Jesse Helms.) In other words, Ford will need all the national party help he can get, especially since his opponent, Bob Corker, is a millionaire. Chafee’s GOP win in Rhode Island was not good for Ford in Tennessee.
Nor is the Senate race in New Jersey boosting the Democrats’ national prospects. Once again, New Jersey Democrats potentially face a sleaze issue, as they did in 2002, when the ethically-challenged incumbent Senator Bob Torricelli was forced to step down just weeks before election day. This time, Bob Menendez (who’s only a semi-incumbent, having been appointed last winter to fill the seat vacated by Jon Corzine) is under a cloud, in the midst of a tight election against Thomas Kean Jr.
Menendez has been targeted in a federal criminal investigation of his financial dealings. He has already denounced the U.S. attorney as partisan (a politician’s standard defense), but that investigator has a long track record of targeting people in both parties. The bottom line, for Democrats, is that now they will also need to spend precious money and resources defending a blue-state seat - especially given the fact that Kean is a popular New Jersey brand name, which evokes warm memories of the senior Kean’s scandal-free gubernatorial reign.
And I haven’t even mentioned the imminent release of Jim McGreevey’s tell-all memoirs. Jim McGreevey, the Democratic governor who resigned a few years ago after he disclosed that “I am a gay American,” is releasing his book in the midst of this autumn campaign.
Forget Tony and Silvio and Paulie Walnuts. Who needs The Sopranos, when you’ve got Jersey reality?
-------
Good cop/ bad cop, Washington style...
President Bush, in his Monday night speech: "We must put aside our differences and work together" in the war on terror.
House Republican leader John Boehner, speaking yesterday about the Democrats: "I wonder if they're more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people."
He stated: “When Lincoln Chafee - an incumbent Republican Senator - can barely win his own primary, you know he'll have trouble in the general election. Rhode Islanders, more than voters in any other state, know we need a new direction and real change in this country which is why (Democrat) Sheldon Whitehouse will be the next U.S. Senator from Rhode Island."
Actually, contrary to what Schumer says, Chafee did not “barely win” his primary. By definition, an 8.4-point victory margin with high turnout is quite solid; it is therefore a leap of logic to conclude that such a margin portends “trouble” in November. Quite the contrary, potentially. Chafee handily defeated an outspoken conservative challenger, Stephen Laffey, with strong support from independent voters (who, under Rhode Island law, are allowed to vote in party primaries).
It’s those independent-minded Yankees who might well save one of their own in November – or, at the very least, keep Chafee so competitive that Schumer, who is helming the Democrats’ national bid to recapture the Senate, will have to spend serious money in Rhode Island in order to win a seat that is pivotal to his national ambitions.
Schumer and his lieutenants were rooting hard for conservative Laffey, knowing that he would have been far easier (and cheaper) to defeat. (If Laffey had won, they also would have argued that right-wing extremists had captured the Republican party.) But with Chafee’s primary win, their bid for Senate power just became much harder. Here’s why, in the context of the national map:
The Democrats need to post a net gain of six seats. They can do this by defeating six GOP incumbents, and successfully save all their own incumbents. Theoretically, this can be done by ousting the Republicans in Pennsylvania (Rick Santorum), Montana (Conrad Burns), Ohio (Mike DeWine), Missouri (Jim Talent), Virginia (George Allen), and Rhode Island (Chafee)…or ousting five of them, and picking up the Tennessee seat being vacated by Republican leader Bill Frist. Then they need to defend their five most vulnerable Democratic seats, especially New Jersey’s Robert Menendez. (More on Menendez in a moment.)
For Democrats, this is a tall order, even assuming that something close to an anti-Republican tsunami develops this autumn. Chafee’s win last night doesn’t help. Now they have to pump big money and resources into Rhode Island, where Chafee’s moderate-to-liberal record is actually in sync with the voters; every dollar and staffer that goes to Rhode Island is a dollar and staffer that can’t go to Ohio, Virginia, Missouri, or Tennessee.
Especially Tennessee. In the contest for that open GOP seat, the Democrats have nominated congressman Harold Ford. He is African American. Name the last time that a southern state elected a black Democrat in a statewide Senate race. You can’t.(Harvey Gantt came closest in North Carolina, in 1990, against winner Jesse Helms.) In other words, Ford will need all the national party help he can get, especially since his opponent, Bob Corker, is a millionaire. Chafee’s GOP win in Rhode Island was not good for Ford in Tennessee.
Nor is the Senate race in New Jersey boosting the Democrats’ national prospects. Once again, New Jersey Democrats potentially face a sleaze issue, as they did in 2002, when the ethically-challenged incumbent Senator Bob Torricelli was forced to step down just weeks before election day. This time, Bob Menendez (who’s only a semi-incumbent, having been appointed last winter to fill the seat vacated by Jon Corzine) is under a cloud, in the midst of a tight election against Thomas Kean Jr.
Menendez has been targeted in a federal criminal investigation of his financial dealings. He has already denounced the U.S. attorney as partisan (a politician’s standard defense), but that investigator has a long track record of targeting people in both parties. The bottom line, for Democrats, is that now they will also need to spend precious money and resources defending a blue-state seat - especially given the fact that Kean is a popular New Jersey brand name, which evokes warm memories of the senior Kean’s scandal-free gubernatorial reign.
And I haven’t even mentioned the imminent release of Jim McGreevey’s tell-all memoirs. Jim McGreevey, the Democratic governor who resigned a few years ago after he disclosed that “I am a gay American,” is releasing his book in the midst of this autumn campaign.
Forget Tony and Silvio and Paulie Walnuts. Who needs The Sopranos, when you’ve got Jersey reality?
-------
Good cop/ bad cop, Washington style...
President Bush, in his Monday night speech: "We must put aside our differences and work together" in the war on terror.
House Republican leader John Boehner, speaking yesterday about the Democrats: "I wonder if they're more interested in protecting the terrorists than protecting the American people."
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Five years later, without the bullhorn
Five years ago, President Bush brandished a bullhorn, stood on a mound of Ground Zero rubble, and made a successful pitch for American unity. How distant that day now seems.
Last night, reading off his Oval Office teleprompter, Bush again appealed for unity – declaring that winning the global war on terror “will require the determined efforts of a unified country, and we must put aside our differences” – but this time his prospects for success appear minimal. That autumn ’01 spirit of nonpartisan comradeship proved ephemeral, thanks largely to a divisive war in Iraq that a majority of Americans now deem to be a massive drain on the resources needed to fight the global war on terror.
Five years ago, few Americans could reasonably question the president’s arguments. Last night was a different story. Anybody with even a rudimentary talent for fact-checking could have a field day. One big reason why the spirit of ’01 has waned is because Bush’s credibility has waned. He did little to repair it last night, by making statements that failed to square with the factual record and political reality:
1. Bush said last night, “I’m often asked why we’re in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat…After 9/11, Saddam’s regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take.”
Yet, during the prewar phase, Bush’s “clear threat” was the specter of Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction that were already being aimed at the American homeland. That’s how Bush defined it at the time – even though there was plenty evidence, even during the runup to war, that this WMD threat was being hyped. More importantly, however, the postwar failure to find any WMDs has severely complicated Bush’s prospects of persuasively insisting, yet again, that Hussein posed a “clear threat.”
2. He said last night that “the world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.” The administration has been saying this since 2003, word for word, but the problem is that fewer and fewer Americans believe it. In fact, the basic verdict today is that the Iraq war has made us less safe. The latest CBS-New York Times poll, for instance, shows that, by a margin of four to one, Americans now believe that the war has worsened the terrorist threat against the U.S. (Forty eight percent say worse, 12 percent say otherwiser.) And, in response to a separate question, 54 percent say that the Iraq war has created more terrorists.
3. It’s worth returning to the line I noted earlier: “I’m often asked why we’re in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks.” Note his backhanded acknowledgment that Saddam had no role in 9/11; he attributes it solely to those who have “often asked.” Rhetorical trickery aside, he really had no choice but to confess that what he has so often implied was factually wrong.
That’s because Saddam was cleared again last Friday – in a report that was released by the Republicans who run the Senate Intelligence Committee. These are White House allies, and even they don’t believe the Saddam connection. Here’s page 105, to cite just one passage: “Debriefings also indicate that Saddam issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with al Qaeda. No postwar information suggests that the Iraqi regime attempted to facilitate a relationship with bin Laden.”
4. Nevertheless, in his Oval Office address, Bush stressed that al Qaeda is in Iraq today: “Al Qaeda and other extremists from across the world have come to Iraq to stop the rise of a free society in the heart of the Middle East. They have joined the remnants of Saddam’s regime and other armed groups to foment sectarian violence and drive us out.”
Yet, according to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (a nonpartisan think tank staffed with national security analysts), the vast majority of the insurgents in Iraq are home grown. Only about 4 to 10 percent of the insurgents are foreign-born fighters. Many of those foreigners are from Saudi Arabia, but the CSIS report says that “the vast majority of Saudi militants who have entered Iraq were not terrorist sympathizers before the war; and were radicalized almost exclusively by the coalition invasion.” Bush has acknowledged on occasion that the “extremists from across the world” are actually a fraction of the insurgent population, but last night he neglected to make that point.
5. As I noted earlier, Bush urged that we Americans must come together, and “must put aside our differences” in order to fight terrorism. But it’s questionable whether those citizens with doubts about the war (the majority, in fact) will be motivated to put aside their differences with the administration – at a time when Bush’s vice president and his Pentagon chief have been giving speeches that equate war opponents with the appeasers of Adolph Hitler.
6. Near the close of his address, he paused to praise the U.S. Army, which he called “the finest Army the world has ever known.” That’s a good unity line; who could object to lauding our Army? But the complicating truth, which he did not mention, is that many military experts think the war is severely straining the Army, to the point where “the finest Army the world has ever known,” might not be nearly so fine. As John Lehrman, a 9/11 Commission member and former Navy Secretary under Ronald Reagan, contended several weeks ago, “The military occupation in Iraq is consuming practically the entire defense budget and stretching the Army to its operational limits,…our ability to deter enemies around the world is disintegrating.”
With the congressional elections just eight weeks away, it’s clear Bush believes that the only way to fight the war on terror is his way. He again sought to frame that theme last night; and Vice President Cheney was blunter last weekend, saying, “if we had to do it over again (in Iraq), we’d do exactly the same thing.” But much has happened since Bush’s stint with the bullhorn. Perhaps too much for the GOP to withstand.
-------
Rhode Island is rarely on anybody's political radar, but tonight it will be critically important. Incumbent senator Lincoln Chafee (a card-carrying member of that increasingly endangered species, the moderate Republican) may well be defeated in a GOP primary. He is being challenged by a conservative, Cranston mayor Stephen Laffey, who views Chafee as a sellout to conservative principles. It's possible tonight that Rhode Island's relatively small population of GOP conservatives will dominate the turnout, and hand the party nomination to Laffey.
But if Laffey wins the right to run on the GOP ticket in November, Republicans have a big problem. Rhode Island is one of the most Democratic states, and Laffey's odds of winning in November (theoretically, by combining conservatives and moderates) are roughly on a par with Mel Gibson's odds of becoming the police chief of Malibu. As noted here, the national GOP recognizes this fact; it's prepared to concede the state to Democratic candidate Sheldon Whitehouse, in the wake of a Laffey primary victory.
So why should you care about this? Because if the national Democrats are to have any realistic chance of capturing the Senate in November, it needs to pick up that Rhode Island seat -- and put five other GOP seats in the blue column, as well. If Chafee survives tonight, the national Republicans will breathe easier.
Which is ironic, to say the least: The GOP is pinning its hopes on a moderate Yankee who has openly admitted that he refused to vote in 2004 for President Bush. He wrote in the name of Bush's father instead.
Last night, reading off his Oval Office teleprompter, Bush again appealed for unity – declaring that winning the global war on terror “will require the determined efforts of a unified country, and we must put aside our differences” – but this time his prospects for success appear minimal. That autumn ’01 spirit of nonpartisan comradeship proved ephemeral, thanks largely to a divisive war in Iraq that a majority of Americans now deem to be a massive drain on the resources needed to fight the global war on terror.
Five years ago, few Americans could reasonably question the president’s arguments. Last night was a different story. Anybody with even a rudimentary talent for fact-checking could have a field day. One big reason why the spirit of ’01 has waned is because Bush’s credibility has waned. He did little to repair it last night, by making statements that failed to square with the factual record and political reality:
1. Bush said last night, “I’m often asked why we’re in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat…After 9/11, Saddam’s regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take.”
Yet, during the prewar phase, Bush’s “clear threat” was the specter of Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction that were already being aimed at the American homeland. That’s how Bush defined it at the time – even though there was plenty evidence, even during the runup to war, that this WMD threat was being hyped. More importantly, however, the postwar failure to find any WMDs has severely complicated Bush’s prospects of persuasively insisting, yet again, that Hussein posed a “clear threat.”
2. He said last night that “the world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.” The administration has been saying this since 2003, word for word, but the problem is that fewer and fewer Americans believe it. In fact, the basic verdict today is that the Iraq war has made us less safe. The latest CBS-New York Times poll, for instance, shows that, by a margin of four to one, Americans now believe that the war has worsened the terrorist threat against the U.S. (Forty eight percent say worse, 12 percent say otherwiser.) And, in response to a separate question, 54 percent say that the Iraq war has created more terrorists.
3. It’s worth returning to the line I noted earlier: “I’m often asked why we’re in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks.” Note his backhanded acknowledgment that Saddam had no role in 9/11; he attributes it solely to those who have “often asked.” Rhetorical trickery aside, he really had no choice but to confess that what he has so often implied was factually wrong.
That’s because Saddam was cleared again last Friday – in a report that was released by the Republicans who run the Senate Intelligence Committee. These are White House allies, and even they don’t believe the Saddam connection. Here’s page 105, to cite just one passage: “Debriefings also indicate that Saddam issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with al Qaeda. No postwar information suggests that the Iraqi regime attempted to facilitate a relationship with bin Laden.”
4. Nevertheless, in his Oval Office address, Bush stressed that al Qaeda is in Iraq today: “Al Qaeda and other extremists from across the world have come to Iraq to stop the rise of a free society in the heart of the Middle East. They have joined the remnants of Saddam’s regime and other armed groups to foment sectarian violence and drive us out.”
Yet, according to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (a nonpartisan think tank staffed with national security analysts), the vast majority of the insurgents in Iraq are home grown. Only about 4 to 10 percent of the insurgents are foreign-born fighters. Many of those foreigners are from Saudi Arabia, but the CSIS report says that “the vast majority of Saudi militants who have entered Iraq were not terrorist sympathizers before the war; and were radicalized almost exclusively by the coalition invasion.” Bush has acknowledged on occasion that the “extremists from across the world” are actually a fraction of the insurgent population, but last night he neglected to make that point.
5. As I noted earlier, Bush urged that we Americans must come together, and “must put aside our differences” in order to fight terrorism. But it’s questionable whether those citizens with doubts about the war (the majority, in fact) will be motivated to put aside their differences with the administration – at a time when Bush’s vice president and his Pentagon chief have been giving speeches that equate war opponents with the appeasers of Adolph Hitler.
6. Near the close of his address, he paused to praise the U.S. Army, which he called “the finest Army the world has ever known.” That’s a good unity line; who could object to lauding our Army? But the complicating truth, which he did not mention, is that many military experts think the war is severely straining the Army, to the point where “the finest Army the world has ever known,” might not be nearly so fine. As John Lehrman, a 9/11 Commission member and former Navy Secretary under Ronald Reagan, contended several weeks ago, “The military occupation in Iraq is consuming practically the entire defense budget and stretching the Army to its operational limits,…our ability to deter enemies around the world is disintegrating.”
With the congressional elections just eight weeks away, it’s clear Bush believes that the only way to fight the war on terror is his way. He again sought to frame that theme last night; and Vice President Cheney was blunter last weekend, saying, “if we had to do it over again (in Iraq), we’d do exactly the same thing.” But much has happened since Bush’s stint with the bullhorn. Perhaps too much for the GOP to withstand.
-------
Rhode Island is rarely on anybody's political radar, but tonight it will be critically important. Incumbent senator Lincoln Chafee (a card-carrying member of that increasingly endangered species, the moderate Republican) may well be defeated in a GOP primary. He is being challenged by a conservative, Cranston mayor Stephen Laffey, who views Chafee as a sellout to conservative principles. It's possible tonight that Rhode Island's relatively small population of GOP conservatives will dominate the turnout, and hand the party nomination to Laffey.
But if Laffey wins the right to run on the GOP ticket in November, Republicans have a big problem. Rhode Island is one of the most Democratic states, and Laffey's odds of winning in November (theoretically, by combining conservatives and moderates) are roughly on a par with Mel Gibson's odds of becoming the police chief of Malibu. As noted here, the national GOP recognizes this fact; it's prepared to concede the state to Democratic candidate Sheldon Whitehouse, in the wake of a Laffey primary victory.
So why should you care about this? Because if the national Democrats are to have any realistic chance of capturing the Senate in November, it needs to pick up that Rhode Island seat -- and put five other GOP seats in the blue column, as well. If Chafee survives tonight, the national Republicans will breathe easier.
Which is ironic, to say the least: The GOP is pinning its hopes on a moderate Yankee who has openly admitted that he refused to vote in 2004 for President Bush. He wrote in the name of Bush's father instead.
Monday, September 11, 2006
The Clinton legacy and the '06 elections
On this tragic day, let’s stick with the ABC docudrama story a little longer. Part One aired last night, bracketed with stentorian warnings about its lack of historical accuracy. I’m not going to try to fact-check a work of infotainment; I’m more interested in the political subtext of this dispute.
Leaving aside the hypocrisy issue (which I covered in Friday’s post), it’s easy to see why the Democrats have been so hot to trash the miniseries: Elections are on the horizon, they’re trying to win back the House and Senate, and they probably can’t do it unless they convince swing voters that they’re at least as vigilant as the governing GOP about our national security.
In other words, the last thing they need is for people to watch (and believe) a fact-and-fiction smorgasbord that insinuates in certain episodes that Bill Clinton and his national security team screwed up during the long prelude to 9/11. If viewers are busy debating the Clinton legacy, that potentially shifts the focus away from President Bush’s record.
So the question does arise, what about that Clinton legacy? Was he as vigilant as he should have been? With the wisdom of 20-20 hindsight, probably not. Would another leader (say, a Republican) have done any better? That’s impossible to answer, especially given the ‘90s focus on domestic issues. What can be hard for partisans on either side to accept is the simply reality that these are complicated questions, and that all presidents leave complicated legacies that are grist for centuries of historical debate.
Clinton’s track record on terrorism is a perfect example. It appears to be a mixed bag, which may explain why Democrats are so sensitive about the issue; on the other hand, the GOP isn’t blameless, either. At the risk of riling everybody up, here’s my take on the dispute (based on my own files and notes).
The upside: Clinton signed four executive orders aimed at assassinating Osama bin Laden, raised counterterrorism spending over several years from $5.7 billion to $11.1 billion, gave major speeches on the terrorist threat, sought (unsuccessfully) to create a Domestic Terrorist Team and to ratchet up the FBI’s domestic surveillance tools. Also, according to the best available evidence, at least a dozen terrorist plots were apparently foiled on his watch. Paul Pillar, a career CIA man, has said that “many American lives” were saved during that period. And Richard Clarke, the Clinton national security man who was demoted by the Bush administration, has repeatedly said that the Clintonites were more focused on al Qaeda than their successors were during the first nine months of 2001.
But here’s the downside: Clinton never even bothered to meet with his first CIA chief, James Woolsey; the Lewinsky scandal was a major distraction at the time when bin Laden was gaining strength; he didn't oppose the Taliban's efforts to seize power in Afghanistan; he may have muffed a major opportunity in 1996, when Sudan offered to hand over bin Laden to U.S. authorities. (Five years ago, a Clinton friend who tried to broker that deal wrote: “Clinton’s failure to grasp the opportunity . . . represents one of the most serious policy failures in American history.")
I remember speaking a few years ago with Fred Greenstein, a Princeton historian and author of eight books on the presidency. He told me, “Clinton’s White House was disorganized and chaotic. It was like a kids' soccer game without rules. It was a presidency of loose ends. So there was very little chance he'd systematically address any problem - including terrorism."
But then we get into the rebuttals. Democrats and Clinton legacy defenders say that he spurned Sudan's offer because the U.S. lacked sufficient evidence to indict bin Laden in earlier attacks in Somalia, Yemen and at the World Trade Center in 1993. They say that Ronald Reagan and the senior George Bush sowed the seeds for the Taliban by doing nothing in Afghanistan after the Soviets were chased out in 1989.
And even though Clinton looked weak in 1998 after firing a missile at bin Laden and missing, there wasn’t exactly a major clamor from the Republicans for a more hawkish military response. In fact, the evidence shows, the congressional GOP was no more focused on al Qaeda than Clinton was – and maybe less, given their suspicion of all Clintonian actions.
In 1996, when Clinton wanted to give the FBI those enhanced domestic surveillance tools, the Republican Congress rejected the idea. Three years later, when Clinton wanted to create that domestic intelligence team, the Republican Congress slapped him down, claiming that he was just playing politics; as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly contended at the time, Americans "should not underestimate the deceit and deviousness of Clinton’s plans to use aggressive presidential actions to wipe out public memory of his impeachment trial."
So what’s the best assessment, and is it fair to judge him with the luxury of hindsight? A few years ago, I asked some experts that very question. They couldn’t agree, either.
Stephen Hess, a political analyst who once worked for Republican presidents, said: Looking back, it's clear Clinton was remiss. But would Bush or anyone else have done better? At the time, Clinton…didn't have a crystal ball." Yet presidential historian Allan Lichtman (who’s currently vying for the Democratic Senate nomination in Maryland) said: "Sept. 11 will shape our questions about the past. It's unfair that historians of Clinton will know about an event that he couldn't have foreseen, but that's always the way history works. We judge the past based on contemporary views. Today we fault Thomas Jefferson for having slaves."
Nevertheless, as the two parties vie this fall over who’s tougher on terrorism, the ABC docudrama will probably be forgotten within a week. And the Democrats might have one big advantage: It is Bush, not Clinton, whose national security record is most on the line in the ’06 election.
And, according to author Ron Suskind, citing an incident that has not been refuted, it was Bush, not Clinton, who received an urgent briefing from a CIA official, during the summer of 2001, about a potentially imminent terrorist attack…and responded by saying, “All right. You’ve covered your ass now.”
Leaving aside the hypocrisy issue (which I covered in Friday’s post), it’s easy to see why the Democrats have been so hot to trash the miniseries: Elections are on the horizon, they’re trying to win back the House and Senate, and they probably can’t do it unless they convince swing voters that they’re at least as vigilant as the governing GOP about our national security.
In other words, the last thing they need is for people to watch (and believe) a fact-and-fiction smorgasbord that insinuates in certain episodes that Bill Clinton and his national security team screwed up during the long prelude to 9/11. If viewers are busy debating the Clinton legacy, that potentially shifts the focus away from President Bush’s record.
So the question does arise, what about that Clinton legacy? Was he as vigilant as he should have been? With the wisdom of 20-20 hindsight, probably not. Would another leader (say, a Republican) have done any better? That’s impossible to answer, especially given the ‘90s focus on domestic issues. What can be hard for partisans on either side to accept is the simply reality that these are complicated questions, and that all presidents leave complicated legacies that are grist for centuries of historical debate.
Clinton’s track record on terrorism is a perfect example. It appears to be a mixed bag, which may explain why Democrats are so sensitive about the issue; on the other hand, the GOP isn’t blameless, either. At the risk of riling everybody up, here’s my take on the dispute (based on my own files and notes).
The upside: Clinton signed four executive orders aimed at assassinating Osama bin Laden, raised counterterrorism spending over several years from $5.7 billion to $11.1 billion, gave major speeches on the terrorist threat, sought (unsuccessfully) to create a Domestic Terrorist Team and to ratchet up the FBI’s domestic surveillance tools. Also, according to the best available evidence, at least a dozen terrorist plots were apparently foiled on his watch. Paul Pillar, a career CIA man, has said that “many American lives” were saved during that period. And Richard Clarke, the Clinton national security man who was demoted by the Bush administration, has repeatedly said that the Clintonites were more focused on al Qaeda than their successors were during the first nine months of 2001.
But here’s the downside: Clinton never even bothered to meet with his first CIA chief, James Woolsey; the Lewinsky scandal was a major distraction at the time when bin Laden was gaining strength; he didn't oppose the Taliban's efforts to seize power in Afghanistan; he may have muffed a major opportunity in 1996, when Sudan offered to hand over bin Laden to U.S. authorities. (Five years ago, a Clinton friend who tried to broker that deal wrote: “Clinton’s failure to grasp the opportunity . . . represents one of the most serious policy failures in American history.")
I remember speaking a few years ago with Fred Greenstein, a Princeton historian and author of eight books on the presidency. He told me, “Clinton’s White House was disorganized and chaotic. It was like a kids' soccer game without rules. It was a presidency of loose ends. So there was very little chance he'd systematically address any problem - including terrorism."
But then we get into the rebuttals. Democrats and Clinton legacy defenders say that he spurned Sudan's offer because the U.S. lacked sufficient evidence to indict bin Laden in earlier attacks in Somalia, Yemen and at the World Trade Center in 1993. They say that Ronald Reagan and the senior George Bush sowed the seeds for the Taliban by doing nothing in Afghanistan after the Soviets were chased out in 1989.
And even though Clinton looked weak in 1998 after firing a missile at bin Laden and missing, there wasn’t exactly a major clamor from the Republicans for a more hawkish military response. In fact, the evidence shows, the congressional GOP was no more focused on al Qaeda than Clinton was – and maybe less, given their suspicion of all Clintonian actions.
In 1996, when Clinton wanted to give the FBI those enhanced domestic surveillance tools, the Republican Congress rejected the idea. Three years later, when Clinton wanted to create that domestic intelligence team, the Republican Congress slapped him down, claiming that he was just playing politics; as conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly contended at the time, Americans "should not underestimate the deceit and deviousness of Clinton’s plans to use aggressive presidential actions to wipe out public memory of his impeachment trial."
So what’s the best assessment, and is it fair to judge him with the luxury of hindsight? A few years ago, I asked some experts that very question. They couldn’t agree, either.
Stephen Hess, a political analyst who once worked for Republican presidents, said: Looking back, it's clear Clinton was remiss. But would Bush or anyone else have done better? At the time, Clinton…didn't have a crystal ball." Yet presidential historian Allan Lichtman (who’s currently vying for the Democratic Senate nomination in Maryland) said: "Sept. 11 will shape our questions about the past. It's unfair that historians of Clinton will know about an event that he couldn't have foreseen, but that's always the way history works. We judge the past based on contemporary views. Today we fault Thomas Jefferson for having slaves."
Nevertheless, as the two parties vie this fall over who’s tougher on terrorism, the ABC docudrama will probably be forgotten within a week. And the Democrats might have one big advantage: It is Bush, not Clinton, whose national security record is most on the line in the ’06 election.
And, according to author Ron Suskind, citing an incident that has not been refuted, it was Bush, not Clinton, who received an urgent briefing from a CIA official, during the summer of 2001, about a potentially imminent terrorist attack…and responded by saying, “All right. You’ve covered your ass now.”
Sunday, September 10, 2006
A career recalibration
As the Inquirer reported this morning (in a note appended to this column), I am in the midst of diversifying. I am presently moving over to the University of Pennsylvania, joining the English Department's Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, and the Kelly Writers House, as "writer in residence." This is a full-time teaching job. I also bring in notable personages to speak at the KWH, and those forums are open to the public.
And thanks to some fruitful talks with the Inquirer, I will continue to write this blog. I'm pleased about that. It will continue to be excerpted in the daily newspaper. Meanwhile, on Sept. 24, I will be starting a new American Debate opinion column that will run twice a month in the Sunday Currents section.
And thanks to some fruitful talks with the Inquirer, I will continue to write this blog. I'm pleased about that. It will continue to be excerpted in the daily newspaper. Meanwhile, on Sept. 24, I will be starting a new American Debate opinion column that will run twice a month in the Sunday Currents section.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Partisan double standards, and fictionalizing for profit
The current flap over the upcoming ABC docudrama The Path to 9/11 is a textbook case of partisan hypocrisy. And that label applies to liberal and conservatives alike.
Let’s start with the liberals -- not all liberals, of course; I am referring to activists and bloggers -- since they’re the ones who are ticked off at ABC. Their outrage is directed at various fictionalizations of the 9/11 saga that the Hollywood types have either dreamed up or improvised. These scenes apparently depict Bill Clinton’s national security team as being less than vigilant about the growing threat of Osama bin Laden during the late ‘90s. Infuriated liberal activists are currently demanding that ABC either shelve those scenes -- or cancel the five-hour miniseries in its entirety. (And a new report in Variety says that outright cancellation is still possible.)
Looking at this case on the merits, it’s clear that the liberal camp does have a legitimate beef; even ABC has admitted taking some dramatic liberties with the known facts. But I don’t recall the liberal camp acting with similar concern back in 2003, when a CBS docudrama about Ronald Reagan was planning to take some dramatic liberties in its depiction of the former president.
Quite the contrary, in fact. Liberals thought that the Reagan show should air just as the miniseries producers intended it to air -- in the name of freedom of speech. And when conservative activists, led by the Republican National Committee, went after CBS and demanded (in the end, successfully) that the network dump the show, liberals were outraged that there could be such an assault on free expression.
People for the American Way railed in a press release about “right-wing thought police,” and Barbra Streisand (whose husband was playing Reagan) wrote on Nov. 4, 2003, “I don’t believe Democrats often, if ever, try to muscle the First Amendment like this....This (conservative effort) is censorship, pure and simple.” But now that liberals are going after ABC for taking similar liberties with Clinton, I don’t hear her, or other famed Friends of Bill, sounding any concerns about “censorship.”
Most conservatives, however, are also selective in their outrage. They don’t seem very concerned that the Hollywood types (whom they generally dislike) have filmed fictionalized scenes that depict a former president in a negative light. In fact, they’ve barely said anything at all, content instead to chuckle at the liberals’ discomfiture.
Yet the scene was very different in October 2003, when they were so outraged that Hollywood had filmed fictionalizeed scenes depicting their favorite former president in a negative light. Back then, when a major network acted in this fashion, it was viewed as fresh evidence of liberal-media perfidy.
As Ed Morrow of the National Review said, “Attempts to distort our history must be resisted. Historical truth is simply too valuable to be made a plaything for biased filmmakers rewriting it to fit their politics.” And Ed Gillespie, the Republican party chairman, said on MSNBC that “there’s infotainment and docudrama and reality TV and the lines between fact and fiction blur. That’s fine when it’s entertainment, but when you’re talking about...the Reagan legacy formation, I think that it’s important that we get things right.”
Where’s the plea from Gillespie today, demanding that ABC “gets things right” about the Clinton legacy?
Actually, some conservatives have spotted the double standard, and they have copped to it. Commentator Jonah Goldberg: “A pox on everybody...(C)onservatives howled in outrage (in 2003), and got CBS to drop it. Why shouldn’t liberals have a go at the same thing?” James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal website wrote the other day, “The Clintonites may have a point here. A few years ago, when the shoe was on the other foot, we were happy to see CBS scotch The Reagans.”
I could just leave the issue here, having made the argument about partisan hypocrisy. But that’s not the root problem. Actually, it was Gillespie, in the service of his partisan argument, who identified the root problem when he mentioned the rise of infotainment and the blurring between fact and fiction.
The networks have opened themselves up to these kinds of partisan attacks by embracing the docudrama format, apparently in the belief that mass audiences aren’t interested in history unless actors read the lines and scripts contain the dramatic “beats” that work best between commercial breaks. There once was a time when vital issues, such as the road to 9/11, would have been explored at length in news-division documentaries that aired in prime time -- I can remember NBC White Paper and CBS Reports; Edward R. Murrow came earlier -- but that format was not deemed sufficiently profitable, so it was dropped.
But now that the networks, in the pursuit of ratings and ad dollars, have embraced a format that necessarily mixes fact and fiction, they have in a sense reaped the whirlwind -- opening themselves up to attack from whichever partisan camp feels aggrieved about the fiction element. One Hollywood producer laments to Variety, "Starting with The Reagans, everything is now political. It's become so divisive and nasty. It's very sad."
Actually, what’s really sad is the networks’ assumption that, in our polarized era, they can somehow take liberties with history in the pursuit of profits -- and not get any grief about it.
Let’s start with the liberals -- not all liberals, of course; I am referring to activists and bloggers -- since they’re the ones who are ticked off at ABC. Their outrage is directed at various fictionalizations of the 9/11 saga that the Hollywood types have either dreamed up or improvised. These scenes apparently depict Bill Clinton’s national security team as being less than vigilant about the growing threat of Osama bin Laden during the late ‘90s. Infuriated liberal activists are currently demanding that ABC either shelve those scenes -- or cancel the five-hour miniseries in its entirety. (And a new report in Variety says that outright cancellation is still possible.)
Looking at this case on the merits, it’s clear that the liberal camp does have a legitimate beef; even ABC has admitted taking some dramatic liberties with the known facts. But I don’t recall the liberal camp acting with similar concern back in 2003, when a CBS docudrama about Ronald Reagan was planning to take some dramatic liberties in its depiction of the former president.
Quite the contrary, in fact. Liberals thought that the Reagan show should air just as the miniseries producers intended it to air -- in the name of freedom of speech. And when conservative activists, led by the Republican National Committee, went after CBS and demanded (in the end, successfully) that the network dump the show, liberals were outraged that there could be such an assault on free expression.
People for the American Way railed in a press release about “right-wing thought police,” and Barbra Streisand (whose husband was playing Reagan) wrote on Nov. 4, 2003, “I don’t believe Democrats often, if ever, try to muscle the First Amendment like this....This (conservative effort) is censorship, pure and simple.” But now that liberals are going after ABC for taking similar liberties with Clinton, I don’t hear her, or other famed Friends of Bill, sounding any concerns about “censorship.”
Most conservatives, however, are also selective in their outrage. They don’t seem very concerned that the Hollywood types (whom they generally dislike) have filmed fictionalized scenes that depict a former president in a negative light. In fact, they’ve barely said anything at all, content instead to chuckle at the liberals’ discomfiture.
Yet the scene was very different in October 2003, when they were so outraged that Hollywood had filmed fictionalizeed scenes depicting their favorite former president in a negative light. Back then, when a major network acted in this fashion, it was viewed as fresh evidence of liberal-media perfidy.
As Ed Morrow of the National Review said, “Attempts to distort our history must be resisted. Historical truth is simply too valuable to be made a plaything for biased filmmakers rewriting it to fit their politics.” And Ed Gillespie, the Republican party chairman, said on MSNBC that “there’s infotainment and docudrama and reality TV and the lines between fact and fiction blur. That’s fine when it’s entertainment, but when you’re talking about...the Reagan legacy formation, I think that it’s important that we get things right.”
Where’s the plea from Gillespie today, demanding that ABC “gets things right” about the Clinton legacy?
Actually, some conservatives have spotted the double standard, and they have copped to it. Commentator Jonah Goldberg: “A pox on everybody...(C)onservatives howled in outrage (in 2003), and got CBS to drop it. Why shouldn’t liberals have a go at the same thing?” James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal website wrote the other day, “The Clintonites may have a point here. A few years ago, when the shoe was on the other foot, we were happy to see CBS scotch The Reagans.”
I could just leave the issue here, having made the argument about partisan hypocrisy. But that’s not the root problem. Actually, it was Gillespie, in the service of his partisan argument, who identified the root problem when he mentioned the rise of infotainment and the blurring between fact and fiction.
The networks have opened themselves up to these kinds of partisan attacks by embracing the docudrama format, apparently in the belief that mass audiences aren’t interested in history unless actors read the lines and scripts contain the dramatic “beats” that work best between commercial breaks. There once was a time when vital issues, such as the road to 9/11, would have been explored at length in news-division documentaries that aired in prime time -- I can remember NBC White Paper and CBS Reports; Edward R. Murrow came earlier -- but that format was not deemed sufficiently profitable, so it was dropped.
But now that the networks, in the pursuit of ratings and ad dollars, have embraced a format that necessarily mixes fact and fiction, they have in a sense reaped the whirlwind -- opening themselves up to attack from whichever partisan camp feels aggrieved about the fiction element. One Hollywood producer laments to Variety, "Starting with The Reagans, everything is now political. It's become so divisive and nasty. It's very sad."
Actually, what’s really sad is the networks’ assumption that, in our polarized era, they can somehow take liberties with history in the pursuit of profits -- and not get any grief about it.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
When a Republican refers to his own leaders as "armchair politicians," you know he must be in trouble
The Democrats won’t capture the House in November unless they can knock off some heretofore unbeatable Republican congressmen -- Curt Weldon, for example. He has reigned supreme in his suburban Philadelphia district since the Reagan era, winning every time in his customary biennial landslide.
At the moment, however, Weldon epitomizes the GOP’s national political woes. This time he faces a credible challenger -- Joe Sestak, a retired Navy vice admiral, who has raised some real money -- and he has to stump for re-election as the local representative of a Republican White House that is broadly unpopular in his seventh congressional district. Worse yet for Weldon, his district has been trending Democratic over the past six years (thanks in part to migrants from Philadelphia); in 2000, voters there backed Al Gore over George W. Bush, and in 2004, they backed John Kerry over Bush.
All this undoubtedly explains why Weldon has now deemed it necessary to devise a creative way to demonstrate a bit of distance from Bush. Clearly he thinks he might be in trouble; why else would he have crafted a House resolution decreeing that the commander-in-chief of the armed forces should be stripped of the authority to decide when to withdraw the soldiers from Iraq?
The Hill, a respected newspaper that covers Congress, reports today: “The resolution (contends) that military commanders should put in place a system of criteria to assess the capability of Iraqi security forces. Once those criteria are met, the mission in Iraq would be considered complete and the president could begin withdrawing troops.”
In other words, the commanders in the field have more credibility to make the decision than the president or his top war planners.
Is my interpretation too strong? Not according to what Weldon told The Hill. He said that the commanding generals are “the ones we’re paying to do the job. They know what the criteria are, they’re the best to assess the readiness of the Iraqi brigades. They determine the timetable for bringing the troops back home.he commanders.” Under his plan, “There’s no armchair politician back here making those decisions, whether it’s an elected member of Congress or even the secretary of the defense.”
Armchair politician...That’s not a very nice thing to say about Donald Rumsfeld, but that’s politics when the heat is on back home. Not even the Senate Democrats went this far last summer, when they voted for an Iraq resolution calling on Bush to accelerate the transition to a limited troop presence in Iraq; they at least felt that the decision on troop levels should stay in Bush’s hands.
This is all symbolism, anyway; resolutions don’t have the force of law. But Weldon is aiming for some PR that would demonstrate he’s not in lockstep with Bush. He clearly realizes that his usual landslide margin of re-election victory (35 points or more) won’t be replicated this year; nor will his 2004 victory margin (19 points, his worst ever -- and a signal that his district was changing).
So here’s my advice: watch the Weldon race. If he goes down on Nov. 7, it probably means that the GOP House majority is doomed.
At the moment, however, Weldon epitomizes the GOP’s national political woes. This time he faces a credible challenger -- Joe Sestak, a retired Navy vice admiral, who has raised some real money -- and he has to stump for re-election as the local representative of a Republican White House that is broadly unpopular in his seventh congressional district. Worse yet for Weldon, his district has been trending Democratic over the past six years (thanks in part to migrants from Philadelphia); in 2000, voters there backed Al Gore over George W. Bush, and in 2004, they backed John Kerry over Bush.
All this undoubtedly explains why Weldon has now deemed it necessary to devise a creative way to demonstrate a bit of distance from Bush. Clearly he thinks he might be in trouble; why else would he have crafted a House resolution decreeing that the commander-in-chief of the armed forces should be stripped of the authority to decide when to withdraw the soldiers from Iraq?
The Hill, a respected newspaper that covers Congress, reports today: “The resolution (contends) that military commanders should put in place a system of criteria to assess the capability of Iraqi security forces. Once those criteria are met, the mission in Iraq would be considered complete and the president could begin withdrawing troops.”
In other words, the commanders in the field have more credibility to make the decision than the president or his top war planners.
Is my interpretation too strong? Not according to what Weldon told The Hill. He said that the commanding generals are “the ones we’re paying to do the job. They know what the criteria are, they’re the best to assess the readiness of the Iraqi brigades. They determine the timetable for bringing the troops back home.he commanders.” Under his plan, “There’s no armchair politician back here making those decisions, whether it’s an elected member of Congress or even the secretary of the defense.”
Armchair politician...That’s not a very nice thing to say about Donald Rumsfeld, but that’s politics when the heat is on back home. Not even the Senate Democrats went this far last summer, when they voted for an Iraq resolution calling on Bush to accelerate the transition to a limited troop presence in Iraq; they at least felt that the decision on troop levels should stay in Bush’s hands.
This is all symbolism, anyway; resolutions don’t have the force of law. But Weldon is aiming for some PR that would demonstrate he’s not in lockstep with Bush. He clearly realizes that his usual landslide margin of re-election victory (35 points or more) won’t be replicated this year; nor will his 2004 victory margin (19 points, his worst ever -- and a signal that his district was changing).
So here’s my advice: watch the Weldon race. If he goes down on Nov. 7, it probably means that the GOP House majority is doomed.
The Valerie Plame case again? Yes, I'm afraid so
Defenders of the Bush White House are declaring this week that the Valerie Plame scandal has been definitely exposed as a fraud perpetrated by a Bush-hating media, and that we who have covered that case should now be apologizing to those who were unjustly persecuted, namely Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
The defenders cite the fact that Richard Armitage, a State Department deputy with no love for the Bush team, has been revealed as the initial source who outed the CIA identity of Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak. As those of you who are not Plame scandal junkies may have already forgotten, she’s the wife of Joseph Wilson, the Bush critic and former ambassador who had publicly disputed one of Bush’s key WMD claims on Iraq.
In other words, the Bush defenders are now arguing that since Armitage was the first guy to blab on Plame, this means that, contrary to press reports, there was really no White House effort to retaliate against Wilson by exposing his wife’s spy status.
Fred Barnes, the longtime Rove defender at the Weekly Standard magazine, condemns “a journalistic jihad” against Rove, because, in reality,“there was no leak (against Plame) at all, just idle talk...It’s as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country...” Meanwhile, in my backyard, a letter to the Inquirer condemns the fact that the Armitage revelation was played on page two, and “I wait with bated breath for Dick Polman's front-page article decrying the perception of a Nixonian White House...”
It’s also true that David Broder of the Washington Post, the de facto “dean” of the Beltway press, believes the Plame story was overblown, and writes today that many in the media “owe Karl Rove an apology.”But these folks are ignoring some salient and inconvenient facts:
1. We now know about Armitage’s role because it was revealed in a new book. And the entire premise of that new book, Hubris, is that the Bush administration behaved shamefully and deceptively during the prelude to war in Iraq.
2. The book specifically cites Karl Rove as Novak’s second source on Plame (as special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s report signaled earlier), and confirms, once again, that Scooter Libby in the vice president’s offie spoke with two reporters about Plame.
3. The book further states that the only reason Armitage even knew about Plame was because he had seen a negative document about Joseph Wilson that had been put together for Scooter Libby.
4. Bush defenders have long sought to minimize the leak of Plame’s CIA status by claiming that she didn’t have an important job anyway, that (in the words of conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg) she was merely a “desk jockey.” But the book, citing interview with confidential CIA sources, that she was operations chief for the agency’s Joint Task Force on Iraq, which had tried during the prewar months to find confirmation of the White House’s WMD claims -- but had come up empty.
5. One of the Book’s authors, David Corn, writes this week on his blog that “Rove’s leak and Libby’s leak were part of a campaign to discredit...Wilson. That’s no conspiracy theory. The available evidence proves this point.”
Of course, it's possible that none of us would be debating this case any longer if Fitzgerald had made good on his original promise to say more about his long investigation. He made that vow 11 months ago...and counting.
The defenders cite the fact that Richard Armitage, a State Department deputy with no love for the Bush team, has been revealed as the initial source who outed the CIA identity of Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak. As those of you who are not Plame scandal junkies may have already forgotten, she’s the wife of Joseph Wilson, the Bush critic and former ambassador who had publicly disputed one of Bush’s key WMD claims on Iraq.
In other words, the Bush defenders are now arguing that since Armitage was the first guy to blab on Plame, this means that, contrary to press reports, there was really no White House effort to retaliate against Wilson by exposing his wife’s spy status.
Fred Barnes, the longtime Rove defender at the Weekly Standard magazine, condemns “a journalistic jihad” against Rove, because, in reality,“there was no leak (against Plame) at all, just idle talk...It’s as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country...” Meanwhile, in my backyard, a letter to the Inquirer condemns the fact that the Armitage revelation was played on page two, and “I wait with bated breath for Dick Polman's front-page article decrying the perception of a Nixonian White House...”
It’s also true that David Broder of the Washington Post, the de facto “dean” of the Beltway press, believes the Plame story was overblown, and writes today that many in the media “owe Karl Rove an apology.”But these folks are ignoring some salient and inconvenient facts:
1. We now know about Armitage’s role because it was revealed in a new book. And the entire premise of that new book, Hubris, is that the Bush administration behaved shamefully and deceptively during the prelude to war in Iraq.
2. The book specifically cites Karl Rove as Novak’s second source on Plame (as special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s report signaled earlier), and confirms, once again, that Scooter Libby in the vice president’s offie spoke with two reporters about Plame.
3. The book further states that the only reason Armitage even knew about Plame was because he had seen a negative document about Joseph Wilson that had been put together for Scooter Libby.
4. Bush defenders have long sought to minimize the leak of Plame’s CIA status by claiming that she didn’t have an important job anyway, that (in the words of conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg) she was merely a “desk jockey.” But the book, citing interview with confidential CIA sources, that she was operations chief for the agency’s Joint Task Force on Iraq, which had tried during the prewar months to find confirmation of the White House’s WMD claims -- but had come up empty.
5. One of the Book’s authors, David Corn, writes this week on his blog that “Rove’s leak and Libby’s leak were part of a campaign to discredit...Wilson. That’s no conspiracy theory. The available evidence proves this point.”
Of course, it's possible that none of us would be debating this case any longer if Fitzgerald had made good on his original promise to say more about his long investigation. He made that vow 11 months ago...and counting.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Can the Democrats score a touchdown with the Rummy political football?
Life can be refreshingly unpredictable. From the “who woulda thunk it” file:
(a) The Phillies, of all people, are competing hard for a playoff berth...
(b) Bob Dylan, of all people, becomes a cutting-edge pitchman for I-Tunes...
(c) the Democrats, of all people, take the offensive on the national security issue...
(d) Vanity Fair magazine shills for the celebrity culture by putting Tom Cruise and “baby Suri” on the cover of its new issue.
Just kidding about (d); that was totally predictable. But (c) is a bit of a stunner, given the Democrats’ behavior in recent election seasons, when they appeared to be either cowering at Karl Rove’s orchestration of the security issue (2002), or simply fumbling along, thanks to John Kerry’s inability to articulate concisely and consistently (2004).
Democrats are now signaling, however, that they will borrow a fabled Rove tactic: targeting the opposition’s strength and trying to convert it into a weakness. In this case, it means trying to persuade voters that the GOP, traditionally seen as the strong security party, has actually been weakening America in the war on terrorism. (The Democrats might actually have the wind at their back this time. The Bush White House probably won’t be pleased by this new finding, in a Fox News poll released today: When people were asked whether America would have been better or worse off if Al Gore had been president on 9/11, 34 percent said better and 33 percent said worse; among swing-voting independents, 37 percent said better and 27 percent said worse.)
One key facet of the Democratic plan is to target Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose failures of execution in Iraq have been copiously documented in two widely respected books -- Fiasco and Cobra II -- and who has famously brushed off criticisms by saying things like “stuff happens.”
I wonder whether the Democrats’ targeting of Rumsfeld will prove to be politically effective (for reasons explained down below), but first let’s look at the reasons why Democrats are confident. Rumsfeld is potentially a good “wedge” issue during this congressional campaign season; in other words, condemning him is a tactic that unites the Democrats and divides the Republicans.
Democrats may not all agree on whether the Iraq war was originally worth fighting, or whether a withdrawal timeline is smart or stupid. But they generally agree that the Pentagon has erred repeatedly in its execution of the war (too few troops to stabilize the postwar country, among many examples); therefore, they can see no downside in seeking a congressional “no confidence” vote on Rumsfeld, because it gives them the opportunity to bang away at their ongoing “incompetence” theme.
And the Rumsfeld issue potentially puts Republicans on the spot, forcing them to choose between sticking up for the war steward who still has President Bush’s full support, or acting in opposition to Rumsfeld and thereby demonstrating a lack of loyalty to Bush. Indeed, a number of Republicans in tough re-election races, have already either called for Rumsfeld’s resignation or strongly assailed him.
But maybe Democrats are overestimating Rumsfeld’s effectiveness as a political tool. Charles Schumer, the New York lawmaker who heads the party’s Senate campaign committee, may have unwittingly highlighted the problem, with this remark in this morning’s New York Times: “Both hawks and doves can call for Rumsfeld to step down and still be consistent with their position. It applies to both parties.”
Well, if war hawks who see Iraq as a glorious mission can dump on Rumsfeld, if antiwar pols who see Iraq as a disastrous distraction can also dump on Rumsfeld, and if indeed this “applies to both parties,” then where’s the partisan traction for the Democrats?
The Democrats might score PR points if some vulnerable Republicans choose to distance themselves from Bush by dumping on Rumsfeld. But if those GOP incumbents, touting their independence from the Bush team, wind up ekeing out victories in their states and districts; and if GOP challengers (such as New Jersey Senate candidate Tom Kean Jr.) assail Rumsfeld, show their independence, and thus successfully woo swing voters....well, I doubt the Democrats have gamed it out that far. But that scenario would certainly demonstrate the law of unintended consequences.
On the other hand, some Republican strategists remain seriously concerned about their prospects in November. They fear that the party's control of Congress is imperiled simply because swing voters equate the GOP with the status quo -- at a time when the status quo is not popular. Here's GOP pollster David Hill, writing today:
"(T)he vast majority of independents, even if they don’t hate Bush, are dissatisfied with the direction of the country....If nothing else changes, this portends a scenario in which Republicans lose control of Congress this November. If two of every three voters go into their polling places and cast their votes for change, the Democrats will win if the Republicans are stand-patters. There are Republican strategists who disagree, of course. They say that by moving security issues up the issue agenda we will scare swing voters away from voting for the squishy Democrats that might not protect us from terror. I’m less certain about that conclusion than I am about the desire for change. I say the mood for something different will trump even national security."
-------
On a related terrorism front, it was noteworthy that, in a speech yesterday, President Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden by name 17 times in 44 minutes.
But here was Bush on March 13, 2002: “I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority....I truly am not that concerned about him....We shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore."
So: If bin Laden was “on the margins” four years ago, yet now suddenly he warrants 17 mentions in 44 minutes, doesn’t that suggest he has become a greater threat, and that our security has become more imperiled, on Bush’s watch?
(a) The Phillies, of all people, are competing hard for a playoff berth...
(b) Bob Dylan, of all people, becomes a cutting-edge pitchman for I-Tunes...
(c) the Democrats, of all people, take the offensive on the national security issue...
(d) Vanity Fair magazine shills for the celebrity culture by putting Tom Cruise and “baby Suri” on the cover of its new issue.
Just kidding about (d); that was totally predictable. But (c) is a bit of a stunner, given the Democrats’ behavior in recent election seasons, when they appeared to be either cowering at Karl Rove’s orchestration of the security issue (2002), or simply fumbling along, thanks to John Kerry’s inability to articulate concisely and consistently (2004).
Democrats are now signaling, however, that they will borrow a fabled Rove tactic: targeting the opposition’s strength and trying to convert it into a weakness. In this case, it means trying to persuade voters that the GOP, traditionally seen as the strong security party, has actually been weakening America in the war on terrorism. (The Democrats might actually have the wind at their back this time. The Bush White House probably won’t be pleased by this new finding, in a Fox News poll released today: When people were asked whether America would have been better or worse off if Al Gore had been president on 9/11, 34 percent said better and 33 percent said worse; among swing-voting independents, 37 percent said better and 27 percent said worse.)
One key facet of the Democratic plan is to target Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose failures of execution in Iraq have been copiously documented in two widely respected books -- Fiasco and Cobra II -- and who has famously brushed off criticisms by saying things like “stuff happens.”
I wonder whether the Democrats’ targeting of Rumsfeld will prove to be politically effective (for reasons explained down below), but first let’s look at the reasons why Democrats are confident. Rumsfeld is potentially a good “wedge” issue during this congressional campaign season; in other words, condemning him is a tactic that unites the Democrats and divides the Republicans.
Democrats may not all agree on whether the Iraq war was originally worth fighting, or whether a withdrawal timeline is smart or stupid. But they generally agree that the Pentagon has erred repeatedly in its execution of the war (too few troops to stabilize the postwar country, among many examples); therefore, they can see no downside in seeking a congressional “no confidence” vote on Rumsfeld, because it gives them the opportunity to bang away at their ongoing “incompetence” theme.
And the Rumsfeld issue potentially puts Republicans on the spot, forcing them to choose between sticking up for the war steward who still has President Bush’s full support, or acting in opposition to Rumsfeld and thereby demonstrating a lack of loyalty to Bush. Indeed, a number of Republicans in tough re-election races, have already either called for Rumsfeld’s resignation or strongly assailed him.
But maybe Democrats are overestimating Rumsfeld’s effectiveness as a political tool. Charles Schumer, the New York lawmaker who heads the party’s Senate campaign committee, may have unwittingly highlighted the problem, with this remark in this morning’s New York Times: “Both hawks and doves can call for Rumsfeld to step down and still be consistent with their position. It applies to both parties.”
Well, if war hawks who see Iraq as a glorious mission can dump on Rumsfeld, if antiwar pols who see Iraq as a disastrous distraction can also dump on Rumsfeld, and if indeed this “applies to both parties,” then where’s the partisan traction for the Democrats?
The Democrats might score PR points if some vulnerable Republicans choose to distance themselves from Bush by dumping on Rumsfeld. But if those GOP incumbents, touting their independence from the Bush team, wind up ekeing out victories in their states and districts; and if GOP challengers (such as New Jersey Senate candidate Tom Kean Jr.) assail Rumsfeld, show their independence, and thus successfully woo swing voters....well, I doubt the Democrats have gamed it out that far. But that scenario would certainly demonstrate the law of unintended consequences.
On the other hand, some Republican strategists remain seriously concerned about their prospects in November. They fear that the party's control of Congress is imperiled simply because swing voters equate the GOP with the status quo -- at a time when the status quo is not popular. Here's GOP pollster David Hill, writing today:
"(T)he vast majority of independents, even if they don’t hate Bush, are dissatisfied with the direction of the country....If nothing else changes, this portends a scenario in which Republicans lose control of Congress this November. If two of every three voters go into their polling places and cast their votes for change, the Democrats will win if the Republicans are stand-patters. There are Republican strategists who disagree, of course. They say that by moving security issues up the issue agenda we will scare swing voters away from voting for the squishy Democrats that might not protect us from terror. I’m less certain about that conclusion than I am about the desire for change. I say the mood for something different will trump even national security."
-------
On a related terrorism front, it was noteworthy that, in a speech yesterday, President Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden by name 17 times in 44 minutes.
But here was Bush on March 13, 2002: “I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority....I truly am not that concerned about him....We shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore."
So: If bin Laden was “on the margins” four years ago, yet now suddenly he warrants 17 mentions in 44 minutes, doesn’t that suggest he has become a greater threat, and that our security has become more imperiled, on Bush’s watch?
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Further thoughts on the Santorum-Casey debate
A sequel to my Sunday post: While trolling through my notes on the Rick Santorum-Bob Casey NBC debate, and checking the transcript, I find even more grist for discussion.
1. Incumbent Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Santorum is fortunate that his Democratic challenger is either (a) slow off the mark, (b) insufficiently acquainted with foreign policy basics, or (c) exceedingly cautious.
Santorum repeatedly voiced his eagerness to shift the focus away from the war on Iraq by invoking a new enemy: “At the heart of this war is Iran. Iran is the, is, is the problem here. Iran is the one that’s causing most of the problems in, in Iraq....We need to do something about stopping the Iranians from being the central destabilizer of the Middle East...I think the focus should not be Iraq, should be Iran.”
Casey might have scored some points if he had countered Santorum’s argument with this factual observation: If Iran is more of a threat today, it’s because the Bush administration made it so -- because the U.S. invasion eliminated Iran’s top enemy in the region, and replaced Saddam, an avowed foe of Shiite Islamist parties, with a tottering government that is dominated...by Shiite Islamist parties friendly to Iran.
Aside from the fact that host Tim Russert was dominating many of the exchanges, it’s possible that Casey passed up this opportunity only because, as a cautious centrist, he didn’t want to sound like he was opposing the “mission” on principle, since he had just said that “I’m not ready to abandon the mission.”
2. Casey did make decent political use of Donald Rumsfeld. Most Americans now believe, at the very least, that Iraq has been fraught with multiple failures of execution. Even war supporters like Joe Lieberman and John McCain have long called for Pentagon chief Rumsfeld’s resignation. Casey goaded Santorum into defending the guy (“I think Secretary Rumsfeld has done a fine job”), but, given the current polls in Pennsylvania, Santorum’s view is out of step with sentiment in vote-rich moderate Republican suburbia.
On the other hand, Casey was vague on what he would do to improve the situation on the ground in Iraq; he kept talking about the need for “clear benchmarks” as a measurement of progress, but didn’t offer any criteria, much less anything that would suggest creative new thinking.
3. The public’s anti-incumbent mood is driven in part by a desire to hold the incumbents accountable. Santorum probably didn’t help himself by taking a stand against accountability: “I don’t play Monday morning quarterback. That’s not, that’s not what you do here in Washington, D.C.”
4. On the other hand, Santorum willingly played “Monday morning quarterback” on whether the Bush administration has been sufficiently militant. Santorum, eager to show that he has at rare moments differed with the White House, did so by running to Bush’s right: “A big problem I have with this administration is it hasn’t been tough enough on Iran...It should not have negotiated with the Iranians on their nuclear program.” But can Santorum win the hearts of moderate swing voters by claiming that he is more hawkish than Bush?
5. Casey didn’t exactly shine when Santorum brought up the administration’s intelligence surveillance programs. This is a good issue for Republicans, because at least half of all Americans seem willing to entertain civil liberties curbs, in the interests of national security.
Casey said last February that he was worried about civil liberties, remarking in an interview that even if the Bush programs are not illegal, “I think people get very concerned about tipping the balance in favor of a policy that impacts how Americans can communicate.” But in the NBC debate, Casey said that “we should keep the programs and keep the wiretaps...” He seemed to be poised to argue that a compromise could strike the proper balance, but didn’t bother to pursue the point.
6. But Casey got in a good jab on the issue of slapping sanctions on Iran (which both he and Santorum support). Here’s what Casey said (in his meandering way): “The number one, or the most prominent, at least, opponent of sanctions, critic of, Iran’s sanctions when he was in the private sector at least, his name is Dick Cheney. It’s not some, some European. Dick Cheney opposed sanctions when he was at the Halliburton company...Rick, do you, are you going to sit here today and not denounce him for continually opposing sanctions, and are you going to give the money back that he raised for you?”
This question was a three-fer: It put Santorum on the spot, reminding voters of his close ties to the administration and to the unpopular veep; it potentially reminded voters of the veep’s ties to a company that has played a key role in our cost overruns abroad; and it potentially positioned Casey as being tougher on Iran than the uber-tough number two (whose company has been doing a lot of business with Iran, most recently concerning natural gas).
Santorum’s answer, “I’m not going to denounce the vice president of the United States,” didn’t trump the question.
7. In terms of pure theatre, Santorum swamped Casey on the issue of legislative pay raises in Harrisburg. I doubt that most viewers knew anything about this dispute -- during the summer of ‘05, in the dead of night, state lawmakers used a loophole to dramatically raise their pay -- which probably helped Santorum to paint Casey, albeit briefly, as a complicit incumbent. Casey is the state treasurer who had subsequently signed those higher checks.
Santorum: “You didn’t do anything when you could’ve stopped it....Why didn’t you stop it, Bob?...Why didn’t you try to stop it? Why didn’t you try to stop it? You could’ve stopped it!”
And what Casey said was, “It’s called following the law, following the law...Following the law...Following the law...Following the law, Rick...”
Casey, again a tad slow on the uptake, missed the chance to say, for example, that the pay raise scheme was basically quarterbacked by the governing Republicans in Harrisburg (the GOP controls the legislature), and that 11 state Republican incumbents were thrown out of office during the May primaries.
Casey did play a role, since he was in the governing chain of command, but, politically, it appears that the voters most incensed about the pay raise are the fiscal conservative Republicans who already vented in May. In those vote-rich Philadelphia suburbs, will swing-voting moderates care more about that than about Iraq?
8. Many national Democrats have long lamented the fact that Ed Rendell tends to say things that hurt the party. Witness this gubernatorial comment (which Russert brought up during the debate), as it appeared this summer in the conservative Weekly Standard magazine: “Rick Santorum has proven that he gets the job done. Time and time again he has come through...I will eventually campaign with Casey. But, no, you won’t see me attack Santorum. I work well with him...When it comes to Pennsylvania, Santorum delivers.”
Asked about this Sunday, Casey said that “as a governor, you’ve got to work with both parties, and I’m glad that he does.” That response didn’t begin to address the reality that Rendell -- who heads the party ticket in November -- clearly wouldn’t mourn if Casey was beaten. Indeed, Santorum’s best asset might be his track record in bringing home the bacon, and the enhanced clout he would have if re-elected.
Given the current political mood, that issue might be all he has.
1. Incumbent Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Santorum is fortunate that his Democratic challenger is either (a) slow off the mark, (b) insufficiently acquainted with foreign policy basics, or (c) exceedingly cautious.
Santorum repeatedly voiced his eagerness to shift the focus away from the war on Iraq by invoking a new enemy: “At the heart of this war is Iran. Iran is the, is, is the problem here. Iran is the one that’s causing most of the problems in, in Iraq....We need to do something about stopping the Iranians from being the central destabilizer of the Middle East...I think the focus should not be Iraq, should be Iran.”
Casey might have scored some points if he had countered Santorum’s argument with this factual observation: If Iran is more of a threat today, it’s because the Bush administration made it so -- because the U.S. invasion eliminated Iran’s top enemy in the region, and replaced Saddam, an avowed foe of Shiite Islamist parties, with a tottering government that is dominated...by Shiite Islamist parties friendly to Iran.
Aside from the fact that host Tim Russert was dominating many of the exchanges, it’s possible that Casey passed up this opportunity only because, as a cautious centrist, he didn’t want to sound like he was opposing the “mission” on principle, since he had just said that “I’m not ready to abandon the mission.”
2. Casey did make decent political use of Donald Rumsfeld. Most Americans now believe, at the very least, that Iraq has been fraught with multiple failures of execution. Even war supporters like Joe Lieberman and John McCain have long called for Pentagon chief Rumsfeld’s resignation. Casey goaded Santorum into defending the guy (“I think Secretary Rumsfeld has done a fine job”), but, given the current polls in Pennsylvania, Santorum’s view is out of step with sentiment in vote-rich moderate Republican suburbia.
On the other hand, Casey was vague on what he would do to improve the situation on the ground in Iraq; he kept talking about the need for “clear benchmarks” as a measurement of progress, but didn’t offer any criteria, much less anything that would suggest creative new thinking.
3. The public’s anti-incumbent mood is driven in part by a desire to hold the incumbents accountable. Santorum probably didn’t help himself by taking a stand against accountability: “I don’t play Monday morning quarterback. That’s not, that’s not what you do here in Washington, D.C.”
4. On the other hand, Santorum willingly played “Monday morning quarterback” on whether the Bush administration has been sufficiently militant. Santorum, eager to show that he has at rare moments differed with the White House, did so by running to Bush’s right: “A big problem I have with this administration is it hasn’t been tough enough on Iran...It should not have negotiated with the Iranians on their nuclear program.” But can Santorum win the hearts of moderate swing voters by claiming that he is more hawkish than Bush?
5. Casey didn’t exactly shine when Santorum brought up the administration’s intelligence surveillance programs. This is a good issue for Republicans, because at least half of all Americans seem willing to entertain civil liberties curbs, in the interests of national security.
Casey said last February that he was worried about civil liberties, remarking in an interview that even if the Bush programs are not illegal, “I think people get very concerned about tipping the balance in favor of a policy that impacts how Americans can communicate.” But in the NBC debate, Casey said that “we should keep the programs and keep the wiretaps...” He seemed to be poised to argue that a compromise could strike the proper balance, but didn’t bother to pursue the point.
6. But Casey got in a good jab on the issue of slapping sanctions on Iran (which both he and Santorum support). Here’s what Casey said (in his meandering way): “The number one, or the most prominent, at least, opponent of sanctions, critic of, Iran’s sanctions when he was in the private sector at least, his name is Dick Cheney. It’s not some, some European. Dick Cheney opposed sanctions when he was at the Halliburton company...Rick, do you, are you going to sit here today and not denounce him for continually opposing sanctions, and are you going to give the money back that he raised for you?”
This question was a three-fer: It put Santorum on the spot, reminding voters of his close ties to the administration and to the unpopular veep; it potentially reminded voters of the veep’s ties to a company that has played a key role in our cost overruns abroad; and it potentially positioned Casey as being tougher on Iran than the uber-tough number two (whose company has been doing a lot of business with Iran, most recently concerning natural gas).
Santorum’s answer, “I’m not going to denounce the vice president of the United States,” didn’t trump the question.
7. In terms of pure theatre, Santorum swamped Casey on the issue of legislative pay raises in Harrisburg. I doubt that most viewers knew anything about this dispute -- during the summer of ‘05, in the dead of night, state lawmakers used a loophole to dramatically raise their pay -- which probably helped Santorum to paint Casey, albeit briefly, as a complicit incumbent. Casey is the state treasurer who had subsequently signed those higher checks.
Santorum: “You didn’t do anything when you could’ve stopped it....Why didn’t you stop it, Bob?...Why didn’t you try to stop it? Why didn’t you try to stop it? You could’ve stopped it!”
And what Casey said was, “It’s called following the law, following the law...Following the law...Following the law...Following the law, Rick...”
Casey, again a tad slow on the uptake, missed the chance to say, for example, that the pay raise scheme was basically quarterbacked by the governing Republicans in Harrisburg (the GOP controls the legislature), and that 11 state Republican incumbents were thrown out of office during the May primaries.
Casey did play a role, since he was in the governing chain of command, but, politically, it appears that the voters most incensed about the pay raise are the fiscal conservative Republicans who already vented in May. In those vote-rich Philadelphia suburbs, will swing-voting moderates care more about that than about Iraq?
8. Many national Democrats have long lamented the fact that Ed Rendell tends to say things that hurt the party. Witness this gubernatorial comment (which Russert brought up during the debate), as it appeared this summer in the conservative Weekly Standard magazine: “Rick Santorum has proven that he gets the job done. Time and time again he has come through...I will eventually campaign with Casey. But, no, you won’t see me attack Santorum. I work well with him...When it comes to Pennsylvania, Santorum delivers.”
Asked about this Sunday, Casey said that “as a governor, you’ve got to work with both parties, and I’m glad that he does.” That response didn’t begin to address the reality that Rendell -- who heads the party ticket in November -- clearly wouldn’t mourn if Casey was beaten. Indeed, Santorum’s best asset might be his track record in bringing home the bacon, and the enhanced clout he would have if re-elected.
Given the current political mood, that issue might be all he has.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
The political perils of sound-bite candor
It’s doubtful that more than a fraction of Pennsylvanians interrupted their holiday this morning to watch Rick Santorum and Bob Casey Jr. joust for the U.S. Senate job on Meet the Press. So the “winner” is probably going to be the guy who can best master the post-debate spin, probably by highlighting a sound bite (suitable for endless TV replay) that depicts his opponent screwing up in some memorable fashion. In other words, the debate itself is not nearly as pivotal as the subsequent debate over its interpretation.
Santorum, the GOP incumbent and Bush loyalist who trails in the polls, has to be a tad frustrated, because his soporific opponent refuses to talk in sound bites. As a result, Santorum probably didn’t get anything that showed Casey damaging himself with his own words. That’s because Casey just tends to meander along, repeating verbose talking points culled from his speeches, and deflecting the thrust of questions in a lulling tone of voice that would best suit a meditation instructor.
When host Tim Russert asked Casey whether he would have voted to authorize Bush to invade Iraq, knowing what he knows today, Casey replied by saying that most Americans would not have voted yes; and when Russert asked (multiple times) whether that meant that he would not have voted yes, Casey said only that he doubted there would have been a vote at all.
The same pattern was repeated midway through the debate when Russert asked Casey how he would tame Social Security and Medical expenses and balance the federal budget. Russert asked, what programs would you cut? Casey responded by saying he’d eliminate the tax breaks for people earning more than $200,000 a year, maybe close some off-shore tax loopholes, maybe make some changes in the estate tax, and maybe find other ways to cut costs, like the way Pennsylvania has trimmed the number of outside consultants, and grow the economy…Russert repeated his question, and Casey repeated some variation of his initial response.
Since Casey didn’t hang himself in a sound bite, Santorum was reduced to attacking Casey in his own sound bites. Samples: “He (Casey) is against anything that cuts government. He’s for raising taxes.” And, “No specifics, no answers.” And, “Your party has been trying to undermine our surveillance programs…What do you think has kept our people safe?” And because the anti-abortion Casey nevertheless supports the morning-after contraception pill, “His father (an avowed abortion foe) would be very upset if he was alive today.” But without Casey hanging himself in a phrase of his own, those one-liners probably have limited utility.
But from Casey’s perspective, however, this debate was probably a success, because on two key occasions, Santorum – who is, by nature, more glib and outspoken -- uttered two potentially damaging sound bites at his own expense.
The lesser of the two: “I probably spend maybe a month a year” at his home in Pennsylvania.
Santorum has been politically hurt by reports, over the past several years, that he was home-schooling five of his six kids at his Virginia residence with most of the tab being picked up by the Penn Hills School District in southwestern Pennsylvania; and now it turns out that state taxpayers, through the state Education Department, will compensate the school district to the tune of 55 grand. Under questioning today, Santorum said he’s really a Pine Hills guy (“I vote there, my dentist is there”), but when asked how much time he spends at his house there, he uttered his month-a-year line. This sounds like a parochial issue, but polls have indicated that the residency flap has already been hurting him in his home region.
But the more important one-liner, the potential gift to the Casey campaign, was his overall assessment of President Bush.
Santorum said that of course he and the boss don’t always agree on things – Santorum pointed out today that he still thinks that we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whereas Bush now says we have not – but the senator was still upbeat about his beleaguered leader. Hence, the debate’s number-one sound bite:
“I think he’s been a terrific president, absolutely.”
Santorum’s base probably liked that line; at least he doesn't bob and weave like his challenger. The problem is, statewide polls indicate that seven in 10 Pennsylvanians certainly don't view Bush as terrific, at least not in the positive sense. This could be a case when a politician's sound-bite candor puts him out of step with the voting majority. All year long, Santorum has been battling a headwind. That particular line could expose him to stormier weather.
Santorum, the GOP incumbent and Bush loyalist who trails in the polls, has to be a tad frustrated, because his soporific opponent refuses to talk in sound bites. As a result, Santorum probably didn’t get anything that showed Casey damaging himself with his own words. That’s because Casey just tends to meander along, repeating verbose talking points culled from his speeches, and deflecting the thrust of questions in a lulling tone of voice that would best suit a meditation instructor.
When host Tim Russert asked Casey whether he would have voted to authorize Bush to invade Iraq, knowing what he knows today, Casey replied by saying that most Americans would not have voted yes; and when Russert asked (multiple times) whether that meant that he would not have voted yes, Casey said only that he doubted there would have been a vote at all.
The same pattern was repeated midway through the debate when Russert asked Casey how he would tame Social Security and Medical expenses and balance the federal budget. Russert asked, what programs would you cut? Casey responded by saying he’d eliminate the tax breaks for people earning more than $200,000 a year, maybe close some off-shore tax loopholes, maybe make some changes in the estate tax, and maybe find other ways to cut costs, like the way Pennsylvania has trimmed the number of outside consultants, and grow the economy…Russert repeated his question, and Casey repeated some variation of his initial response.
Since Casey didn’t hang himself in a sound bite, Santorum was reduced to attacking Casey in his own sound bites. Samples: “He (Casey) is against anything that cuts government. He’s for raising taxes.” And, “No specifics, no answers.” And, “Your party has been trying to undermine our surveillance programs…What do you think has kept our people safe?” And because the anti-abortion Casey nevertheless supports the morning-after contraception pill, “His father (an avowed abortion foe) would be very upset if he was alive today.” But without Casey hanging himself in a phrase of his own, those one-liners probably have limited utility.
But from Casey’s perspective, however, this debate was probably a success, because on two key occasions, Santorum – who is, by nature, more glib and outspoken -- uttered two potentially damaging sound bites at his own expense.
The lesser of the two: “I probably spend maybe a month a year” at his home in Pennsylvania.
Santorum has been politically hurt by reports, over the past several years, that he was home-schooling five of his six kids at his Virginia residence with most of the tab being picked up by the Penn Hills School District in southwestern Pennsylvania; and now it turns out that state taxpayers, through the state Education Department, will compensate the school district to the tune of 55 grand. Under questioning today, Santorum said he’s really a Pine Hills guy (“I vote there, my dentist is there”), but when asked how much time he spends at his house there, he uttered his month-a-year line. This sounds like a parochial issue, but polls have indicated that the residency flap has already been hurting him in his home region.
But the more important one-liner, the potential gift to the Casey campaign, was his overall assessment of President Bush.
Santorum said that of course he and the boss don’t always agree on things – Santorum pointed out today that he still thinks that we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, whereas Bush now says we have not – but the senator was still upbeat about his beleaguered leader. Hence, the debate’s number-one sound bite:
“I think he’s been a terrific president, absolutely.”
Santorum’s base probably liked that line; at least he doesn't bob and weave like his challenger. The problem is, statewide polls indicate that seven in 10 Pennsylvanians certainly don't view Bush as terrific, at least not in the positive sense. This could be a case when a politician's sound-bite candor puts him out of step with the voting majority. All year long, Santorum has been battling a headwind. That particular line could expose him to stormier weather.
Friday, September 01, 2006
The new Bush plan for winning over the public: what would Dale Carnegie say?
We’ll keep it short here today, not for TGIF or holiday reasons, but because I’m on assignment for the paper. So let’s focus, almost exclusively, on the latest news concerning the Iraq war and public opinion.
Concerning President Bush’s speech yesterday to the American Legion, and similar addresses earlier this week by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, it is difficult to see how their arguments will achieve the result that they seek -- namely, a resurgence of public support for the war, hopefully in time for the November congressional elections.
Here is their fundamental challenge:
The swing groups in the electorate are independents and moderates. Every poll reports that most of those folks have long soured on the war; for instance, the latest CBS-New York Times survey shows that 67 percent give Bush a thumbs-down verdict on the war. The Fox News pollsters report that independents in ‘06 now favor Democratic congressional candidates over GOP candidates by a margin of 40 percent to 16 percent. And USA Today, citing its own new polling, reports today that independent voters are swinging toward Democratic senatorial candidates in five states.
Given such sentiments, can the Bush team feasibly expect to win over independents by giving speeches which imply that anyone with serious doubts about this war is merely an appeaser of fascism? To borrow a phrase from Dale Carnegie, is this a politically effective way “to win friends and influence people?”
In the New York Times report this morning on Bush’s speech, the most important comment is attributed to a senior Republican Senate aide: “For (Bush) to move the numbers in a way that benefits congressional Republicans, he needs to reach out to moderates, and it’s difficult to do that when his surrogates are contradicting him and calling opponents of his policy appeasers.”
On one point, this aide is merely being diplomatic: Surrogates Cheney and Rumsfeld were hardly “contradicting” Bush by using the word appeasement. Given the track record of White House rhetorical coordination, it’s more likely that the decision was made to have the surrogates use the tougher language while the boss supposedly hewed to the higher plane.
But again, in terms of political effectiveness, it’s hard to see how Bush can sway public opinion his way by arguing, as he did yesterday, that “if we give up the fight in the streets of Baghdad, we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities.” He is contending that winning in Iraq will make us safer at home -- but polls already show that most Americans now believe the war is already making us LESS safe at home.
The latest poll by Associated Press-Ipsos Public Affairs reports that, by a margin of 60 to 31 percent, most Americans now conclude that there will be more terrorism stateside because the U.S. invaded Iraq. Moreover, that same poll reports that, by a margin of 47 to 40 percent, Americans now favor the Democrats as the party that would do the better job of protecting this country. And what’s most noteworthy about that poll is the makeup of those who were surveyed: 70 percent described themselves as either moderate or conservative.
Yet perhaps these speeches aren’t even designed to win back the independents (although the endangered moderate GOP congressmen in Northeast districts would be grateful if that goal was achieved). Maybe these speeches are aimed at merely shoring up the conservative base. Because unless those voters are stoked to turn out in great numbers, the GOP is probably doomed in the midterm elections.
-------
Speaking of polls, the survey team at Fox News, hewing no doubt to the network credo about being “fair and balanced,” managed to ask a question that reads as if it was crafted by GOP chairman Ken Mehlman at national party headquarters.
Question #7: “If Democrats win control of Congress in the midterm election, do you think it is more likely that they will spend the next two years investigating and trying to impeach President Bush, or coming up with new ideas to move the country forward?”
But the respondents didn’t take the bait. Forty-seven percent said the Democrats would stress new ideas, while only 30 percent said they’d hound the president. And that spread was more pronounced among swing-voting independents: 48 to 23 percent.
-------
Missed opportunity of the week:
In his NBC interview with Brian Williams the other day, Bush said that he recently read “three Shakespeares.”
Williams whiffed by not asking a follow-up question. For instance,“Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter verse -- true or false?”
Just kidding. Seriously, here was the obvious follow-up: “Which ones, Mr. President? Tell us what they were about, and what themes or lessons you derived from reading them."
-------
Here's a political junkie tip for a rainy holiday weekend: Rick Santorum and Bob Casey, debating this Sunday on Meet the Press. The latest USA Today poll has incumbent Santorum trailing by 18 points among likely voters. If that's even remotely accurate, how will Santorum try to shift the dynamic? Check back here for a critique on Sunday afternoon.
Concerning President Bush’s speech yesterday to the American Legion, and similar addresses earlier this week by Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, it is difficult to see how their arguments will achieve the result that they seek -- namely, a resurgence of public support for the war, hopefully in time for the November congressional elections.
Here is their fundamental challenge:
The swing groups in the electorate are independents and moderates. Every poll reports that most of those folks have long soured on the war; for instance, the latest CBS-New York Times survey shows that 67 percent give Bush a thumbs-down verdict on the war. The Fox News pollsters report that independents in ‘06 now favor Democratic congressional candidates over GOP candidates by a margin of 40 percent to 16 percent. And USA Today, citing its own new polling, reports today that independent voters are swinging toward Democratic senatorial candidates in five states.
Given such sentiments, can the Bush team feasibly expect to win over independents by giving speeches which imply that anyone with serious doubts about this war is merely an appeaser of fascism? To borrow a phrase from Dale Carnegie, is this a politically effective way “to win friends and influence people?”
In the New York Times report this morning on Bush’s speech, the most important comment is attributed to a senior Republican Senate aide: “For (Bush) to move the numbers in a way that benefits congressional Republicans, he needs to reach out to moderates, and it’s difficult to do that when his surrogates are contradicting him and calling opponents of his policy appeasers.”
On one point, this aide is merely being diplomatic: Surrogates Cheney and Rumsfeld were hardly “contradicting” Bush by using the word appeasement. Given the track record of White House rhetorical coordination, it’s more likely that the decision was made to have the surrogates use the tougher language while the boss supposedly hewed to the higher plane.
But again, in terms of political effectiveness, it’s hard to see how Bush can sway public opinion his way by arguing, as he did yesterday, that “if we give up the fight in the streets of Baghdad, we will face the terrorists in the streets of our own cities.” He is contending that winning in Iraq will make us safer at home -- but polls already show that most Americans now believe the war is already making us LESS safe at home.
The latest poll by Associated Press-Ipsos Public Affairs reports that, by a margin of 60 to 31 percent, most Americans now conclude that there will be more terrorism stateside because the U.S. invaded Iraq. Moreover, that same poll reports that, by a margin of 47 to 40 percent, Americans now favor the Democrats as the party that would do the better job of protecting this country. And what’s most noteworthy about that poll is the makeup of those who were surveyed: 70 percent described themselves as either moderate or conservative.
Yet perhaps these speeches aren’t even designed to win back the independents (although the endangered moderate GOP congressmen in Northeast districts would be grateful if that goal was achieved). Maybe these speeches are aimed at merely shoring up the conservative base. Because unless those voters are stoked to turn out in great numbers, the GOP is probably doomed in the midterm elections.
-------
Speaking of polls, the survey team at Fox News, hewing no doubt to the network credo about being “fair and balanced,” managed to ask a question that reads as if it was crafted by GOP chairman Ken Mehlman at national party headquarters.
Question #7: “If Democrats win control of Congress in the midterm election, do you think it is more likely that they will spend the next two years investigating and trying to impeach President Bush, or coming up with new ideas to move the country forward?”
But the respondents didn’t take the bait. Forty-seven percent said the Democrats would stress new ideas, while only 30 percent said they’d hound the president. And that spread was more pronounced among swing-voting independents: 48 to 23 percent.
-------
Missed opportunity of the week:
In his NBC interview with Brian Williams the other day, Bush said that he recently read “three Shakespeares.”
Williams whiffed by not asking a follow-up question. For instance,“Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter verse -- true or false?”
Just kidding. Seriously, here was the obvious follow-up: “Which ones, Mr. President? Tell us what they were about, and what themes or lessons you derived from reading them."
-------
Here's a political junkie tip for a rainy holiday weekend: Rick Santorum and Bob Casey, debating this Sunday on Meet the Press. The latest USA Today poll has incumbent Santorum trailing by 18 points among likely voters. If that's even remotely accurate, how will Santorum try to shift the dynamic? Check back here for a critique on Sunday afternoon.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
The war drums are beating on the president's right flank
As President Bush ponders what to do next about the recalcitrant Iranians, he will undoubtedly pay close attention to the rumblings on his right flank.
The neoconservative thinkers who laid the groundwork for the war in Iraq have hardly been chastened by the setbacks that America has faced in that conflict, nor by the fact that the promised weapons of mass destruction never showed up. On the contrary, they are conspicuously vocal these days on the topic of Iran -- and the need, as they see it, for Bush to show some moxie and plan for a new military confrontation.
And they are likely to ratchet up their rhetoric, and prod the White House further, now that Iran has decided to ignore a United Nations deadline to suspend uranium enrichment and hence slow its suspected nuclear weapons program. For instance, the neoconservatives aren’t happy today about the news that the Bush team, in retaliation, is considering only mild sanctions, such as a travel ban. And Michael Ledeen at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday voiced what he calls his “worst fears about the administration. Talk, talk, talk, but when it is time to act, they are still talking.”
And what do they define as action? Enter neoconservative William Kristol, ex-GOP aide and editor of the movement’s bible, The Weekly Standard. His agenda for action includes “serious preparation for possible military action -- including real and urgent operational planning for bombing strikes and for the consequences of such strikes.”
What’s noteworthy is that he wrote those words last April, in the wake of the news that Iran had successfully enriched its uranium. The pressure on Bush’s right flank was intense that month, with cries de guerre in other neoconservative outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal opinion page, and the National Review (the latter called for an “air campaign” coupled with regime change).
Indeed, even though Bush this week is trying to reframe the war on terror as a war against “fascism,” that’s old hat in the neo camp. Last April, Kristol was already doing that very thing, contending that Iran’s nuclear program was akin to Adolph Hitler’s 1936 prewar march into the Rhineland.
There are plenty of foreign policy experts within the Republican camp who view the neoconservatives as too precipitous on the Iran issue; for instance, former Colin Powell deputy Richard Haass believes that anyone who thinks a conflict with Iran would be small or quick is harboring “the most dangerous delusion,” and key Republicans on Capitol Hill have said that the quality of U.S. intelligence on Iran is questionable. James Carafano, an expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said last year that “there are no good military options,” and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Sam Gardiner, a simulations expert at the U.S. Army’s National War College, after scenarioizing a war on Iran, told the Atlantic Monthly magazine nearly two years ago that “after all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.”
There are also plenty of people who think the neoconservatives have forfeited their credibility due to the mess in Iraq. Now that the Sunnis and Shiites are waging what some experts consider a civil war, it’s worth revisiting, for example, a prediction that Kristol made on National Public Radio three years ago: “I think there’s been a certain amount of...pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni.”
Nor does it appear that the neo position is widely popular nationwide. The pollsters at Fox News, querying Americans on Tuesday and Wednesday, asked whether the Bush team should do “whatever it takes to stop Iran -- including military action.” Only 37 percent said yes. Among swing-voting independents, only 32 percent said yes. Even 45 percent of Republicans said no. Those numbers suggest that most people prefer strong sanctions and aggressive diplomatic efforts.
But the neos have multiple media megaphones, and it would be wrong to assume that their influence has diminished, particularly since a key ally and patron remains one heartbeat away from the presidency. And this administration has long demonstrated that it closely monitors the sentiments of its conservative base. With Democrats and independents no longer in the Bush camp, that base is more important than ever.
The neoconservative thinkers who laid the groundwork for the war in Iraq have hardly been chastened by the setbacks that America has faced in that conflict, nor by the fact that the promised weapons of mass destruction never showed up. On the contrary, they are conspicuously vocal these days on the topic of Iran -- and the need, as they see it, for Bush to show some moxie and plan for a new military confrontation.
And they are likely to ratchet up their rhetoric, and prod the White House further, now that Iran has decided to ignore a United Nations deadline to suspend uranium enrichment and hence slow its suspected nuclear weapons program. For instance, the neoconservatives aren’t happy today about the news that the Bush team, in retaliation, is considering only mild sanctions, such as a travel ban. And Michael Ledeen at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday voiced what he calls his “worst fears about the administration. Talk, talk, talk, but when it is time to act, they are still talking.”
And what do they define as action? Enter neoconservative William Kristol, ex-GOP aide and editor of the movement’s bible, The Weekly Standard. His agenda for action includes “serious preparation for possible military action -- including real and urgent operational planning for bombing strikes and for the consequences of such strikes.”
What’s noteworthy is that he wrote those words last April, in the wake of the news that Iran had successfully enriched its uranium. The pressure on Bush’s right flank was intense that month, with cries de guerre in other neoconservative outlets, such as the Wall Street Journal opinion page, and the National Review (the latter called for an “air campaign” coupled with regime change).
Indeed, even though Bush this week is trying to reframe the war on terror as a war against “fascism,” that’s old hat in the neo camp. Last April, Kristol was already doing that very thing, contending that Iran’s nuclear program was akin to Adolph Hitler’s 1936 prewar march into the Rhineland.
There are plenty of foreign policy experts within the Republican camp who view the neoconservatives as too precipitous on the Iran issue; for instance, former Colin Powell deputy Richard Haass believes that anyone who thinks a conflict with Iran would be small or quick is harboring “the most dangerous delusion,” and key Republicans on Capitol Hill have said that the quality of U.S. intelligence on Iran is questionable. James Carafano, an expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said last year that “there are no good military options,” and retired Air Force Lt. Col. Sam Gardiner, a simulations expert at the U.S. Army’s National War College, after scenarioizing a war on Iran, told the Atlantic Monthly magazine nearly two years ago that “after all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.”
There are also plenty of people who think the neoconservatives have forfeited their credibility due to the mess in Iraq. Now that the Sunnis and Shiites are waging what some experts consider a civil war, it’s worth revisiting, for example, a prediction that Kristol made on National Public Radio three years ago: “I think there’s been a certain amount of...pop sociology in America that, you know, somehow the Shia can’t get along with the Sunni.”
Nor does it appear that the neo position is widely popular nationwide. The pollsters at Fox News, querying Americans on Tuesday and Wednesday, asked whether the Bush team should do “whatever it takes to stop Iran -- including military action.” Only 37 percent said yes. Among swing-voting independents, only 32 percent said yes. Even 45 percent of Republicans said no. Those numbers suggest that most people prefer strong sanctions and aggressive diplomatic efforts.
But the neos have multiple media megaphones, and it would be wrong to assume that their influence has diminished, particularly since a key ally and patron remains one heartbeat away from the presidency. And this administration has long demonstrated that it closely monitors the sentiments of its conservative base. With Democrats and independents no longer in the Bush camp, that base is more important than ever.
A few suggestions for the "gloom and doom" party
The national Democrats are fond of saying these days that they’re more united than ever. In terms of their shared antipathy toward President Bush, that’s certainly true. But harmony does not reign otherwise. There are still substantive intramural tensions, not just on issues, but on the best way to communicate those issues. And I’m not even talking about the ongoing party debate over whether it’s politically smart to push for a troop withdrawal timetable in Iraq.
Take, for instance, the party’s checkered efforts to court the average middle-class voter.
It’s a basic truism in national politics that whoever wins the white middle-class electorate wins the election. Care to guess which party has been losing lately?
Two Democratic camps in recent years have often squabbled, at times acrimoniously, about the best way to woo the white middle class: the liberal wing has argued that the party needs to craft a populist message that stands up for the little guy who is getting screwed by the rich and the special interests (big oil, big pharmaceuticals, big corporations that send our jobs overseas); however, moderate and pro-business Democrats have been arguing since the mid-‘80s that such a message is too gloomy and too combative, that most middle-class voters actually aspire to be rich, and that a more sunny, upbeat message will work best with that key electoral cohort.
The last two Democratic presidential candidates tried to straddle these two camps, without much success. Al Gore tried a populist message in 2000 (“the people versus the powerful”), and while it worked with wavering labor voters, it was basically phony, because (as I wrote at the time) Gore himself was hardly a working-class hero. By mid-summer that year, he had raised $30 million from the special-interest sector that he was publicly railing against.
As for John Kerry, he also tried a populist message, claiming that dark economic forces were threatening the middle class, and assailing “Benedict Arnold CEOs” who shipped jobs overseas. But this was somewhat phony too, because (as I also wrote at the time), Kerry had voted in the Senate for free trade agreements such as NAFTA, and he had also taken campaign money from “Benedict Arnold” firms and executives.
So, to review: The last two Democratic nominees adopted populist language that didn’t really suit them...and didn’t attract the white middle-class anyway. The stats say it all: In 2000, George W. Bush beat Gore among white middle-class voters by 15 points; that same year, with those same voters, Republican congressional candidates beat their Democratic opponents by 14 points. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry among those voters by 22 points, and congressional Republicans won them by 19 points.
Hence, the internal Democratic debate about how to woo the middle class is still very much alive. The latest salvo was launched this week by a trio of Democratic activists who believe that something is fundamentally wrong when the party that styles itself as the champion of the middle class can’t even win over white voters who make between $30,000 and $75,000 a year. (And that's quite a non-achievement, considering the fact that, as the polls indicate, the Republicans are still widely viewed as the party of the rich.)
Writing in a new publication, The Democratic Strategist, the authors, all of whom have ties to a new group called Third Way (which bills itself as “a strategy center for progressives”), lowered the boom on the party’s penchant for populist rhetoric:
“Democrats must first realize that they have a problem -- no, actually a crisis -- with the middle class....(In 2000 and 2004) we got slaughtered among the white middle class....Folks, if bashing rich people, the oil industry, and the drug companies were an effective political strategy, jets would be landing at Michael Dukakis National Airport in Washington.”
Anne Kim, Adam Solomon, and Jim Kessler are basically contending that the Democrats should quit their rhetoric about powerful forces threatening the little guy, because, they say, the little guy is actually an optimist by nature, and tend to respond more favorably to a sunny, aspirational message. The kind of message that the GOP has virtually trademarked since Ronald Reagan.
They write: “Whether it's the ‘people versus the powerful’...or John Kerry's ‘Benedict Arnold companies’ where American workers see their factories ‘unbolted, crated up, and shipped thousands of miles away,’ the Democratic economic message is pervasively pessimistic. Democrats see the American Dream fading, the middle class being squeezed, jobs disappearing, schools crumbling, and wages stagnating. That is not the way middle-class Americans view their own lives.” Basically, they say that modest wage earners aren’t motivated by resentment against the rich; rather, these earners want to BE rich.
The Kim-Solomon-Kessler argument is bound to enrage many Democratic liberals who would prefer to draw sharp contrasts between the parties and avoid any rhetoric that might sound like me-too Republicanese (such as a sunny Reaganesque message)....although I was somewhat surprised this morning to see a semi-friendly critique on the Daily Kos website.
During the runup to the ‘08 Democratic primaries, we will see this debate play out among the candidates. John Edwards’ “two Americas” message, for instance, appears more populist than Evan Bayh’s middle-class aspirational talk. But the bottom line, for now, is that the Third Way activists have at least defined one of the Democratic party’s core challenges, going forward.
Take, for instance, the party’s checkered efforts to court the average middle-class voter.
It’s a basic truism in national politics that whoever wins the white middle-class electorate wins the election. Care to guess which party has been losing lately?
Two Democratic camps in recent years have often squabbled, at times acrimoniously, about the best way to woo the white middle class: the liberal wing has argued that the party needs to craft a populist message that stands up for the little guy who is getting screwed by the rich and the special interests (big oil, big pharmaceuticals, big corporations that send our jobs overseas); however, moderate and pro-business Democrats have been arguing since the mid-‘80s that such a message is too gloomy and too combative, that most middle-class voters actually aspire to be rich, and that a more sunny, upbeat message will work best with that key electoral cohort.
The last two Democratic presidential candidates tried to straddle these two camps, without much success. Al Gore tried a populist message in 2000 (“the people versus the powerful”), and while it worked with wavering labor voters, it was basically phony, because (as I wrote at the time) Gore himself was hardly a working-class hero. By mid-summer that year, he had raised $30 million from the special-interest sector that he was publicly railing against.
As for John Kerry, he also tried a populist message, claiming that dark economic forces were threatening the middle class, and assailing “Benedict Arnold CEOs” who shipped jobs overseas. But this was somewhat phony too, because (as I also wrote at the time), Kerry had voted in the Senate for free trade agreements such as NAFTA, and he had also taken campaign money from “Benedict Arnold” firms and executives.
So, to review: The last two Democratic nominees adopted populist language that didn’t really suit them...and didn’t attract the white middle-class anyway. The stats say it all: In 2000, George W. Bush beat Gore among white middle-class voters by 15 points; that same year, with those same voters, Republican congressional candidates beat their Democratic opponents by 14 points. In 2004, Bush beat Kerry among those voters by 22 points, and congressional Republicans won them by 19 points.
Hence, the internal Democratic debate about how to woo the middle class is still very much alive. The latest salvo was launched this week by a trio of Democratic activists who believe that something is fundamentally wrong when the party that styles itself as the champion of the middle class can’t even win over white voters who make between $30,000 and $75,000 a year. (And that's quite a non-achievement, considering the fact that, as the polls indicate, the Republicans are still widely viewed as the party of the rich.)
Writing in a new publication, The Democratic Strategist, the authors, all of whom have ties to a new group called Third Way (which bills itself as “a strategy center for progressives”), lowered the boom on the party’s penchant for populist rhetoric:
“Democrats must first realize that they have a problem -- no, actually a crisis -- with the middle class....(In 2000 and 2004) we got slaughtered among the white middle class....Folks, if bashing rich people, the oil industry, and the drug companies were an effective political strategy, jets would be landing at Michael Dukakis National Airport in Washington.”
Anne Kim, Adam Solomon, and Jim Kessler are basically contending that the Democrats should quit their rhetoric about powerful forces threatening the little guy, because, they say, the little guy is actually an optimist by nature, and tend to respond more favorably to a sunny, aspirational message. The kind of message that the GOP has virtually trademarked since Ronald Reagan.
They write: “Whether it's the ‘people versus the powerful’...or John Kerry's ‘Benedict Arnold companies’ where American workers see their factories ‘unbolted, crated up, and shipped thousands of miles away,’ the Democratic economic message is pervasively pessimistic. Democrats see the American Dream fading, the middle class being squeezed, jobs disappearing, schools crumbling, and wages stagnating. That is not the way middle-class Americans view their own lives.” Basically, they say that modest wage earners aren’t motivated by resentment against the rich; rather, these earners want to BE rich.
The Kim-Solomon-Kessler argument is bound to enrage many Democratic liberals who would prefer to draw sharp contrasts between the parties and avoid any rhetoric that might sound like me-too Republicanese (such as a sunny Reaganesque message)....although I was somewhat surprised this morning to see a semi-friendly critique on the Daily Kos website.
During the runup to the ‘08 Democratic primaries, we will see this debate play out among the candidates. John Edwards’ “two Americas” message, for instance, appears more populist than Evan Bayh’s middle-class aspirational talk. But the bottom line, for now, is that the Third Way activists have at least defined one of the Democratic party’s core challenges, going forward.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Paraphrasing Rummy, we go to press with the president we have...
We interrupt our normally scheduled broadcast for this brief digression:A spirited and lengthy debate broke out on this blog last Friday, in the comments section, over whether I can or should be ideologically labeled in some fashion. As normally happens in such exchanges, various fuzzy definitions of ”bias” and “opinion” quickly surfaced, and nothing much was decided one way or the other. But thanks to all who sustained that impromptu symposium, especially those who don’t much like this online column, yet continue to read it.
Maybe I can help clarify matters, by framing my own declaration of principles (to borrow a phrase from Citizen Kane): I am a columnist. A good columnist doesn’t just spout opinions off the top of his or her head; rather, he or she does the requisite empirical reporting, then makes professional judgments based on the facts. (I addressed some of these issues in a June post, and that post was discussed on Monday, here.)
And it is natural that a good political columnist, empowered by the rigors of inductive reasoning, will focus most intensely on the people in power. Right now, the people in power happen to be Republicans, and they have amassed a track record. It behooves anyone in my position to examine that track record, assess any gap between promise and performance, and fact-check rhetorical claims.
There are many Republicans, and defenders of President Bush, who can’t seem to accept the fact that, if you control all the levers of government, you have to expect to be held accountable by independent voices. They keep talking about the need for more press “balance,” when, in fact, they have spent years working (successfully) to achieve a power imbalance in their favor. Hence, the disproportionate press scrutiny that such an imbalance warrants.
The same yardsticks should apply to whoever has the power, from whatever party. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we go to press with the president we have. Consider, for instance, this passage, from an article that ran on Dec. 20, 1998, at the height of Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal:
“At so many critical junctures, Clinton, whether by instinct or calculation, chose deception and recklessness over candor and restraint - in his deposition and grand jury testimony; in his semantic legalese; in his frontal attacks on independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr; in his early refusal to settle the (Paula) Jones case; and in his willingness to conduct secret trysts with Lewinsky while a sexual-harassment lawsuit was hanging over his head and while Starr and other hostile players were watching his every move.” The piece also rebuked Clinton for “his reluctance to take responsibility, his willingness to deceive, his tendency to see himself as a victim, and his eagerness to please the audience at hand...”
I wrote all that in the Inquirer. The subsequent abuse from Democratic readers and Clinton defenders was considerable. So be it. The facts and track record shaped my professional judgement -- then as now. It’s a disputatious world out there, especially in the increasingly polarized world of politics, and adoration is not part of this job description. I like the credo from J. J. Gittes, the private detective played by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. As he told his client, “I may not be in business to be loved, but I am in business.”
-------
Now it’s back to business:
President Bush, in the midst of his Katrina redemption tour, made some questionable remarks yesterday in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams. They came during an exchange about 9/11 and its aftermath. The topic was whether Bush had adequately summoned Americans to give of themselves in a spirit of shared national purpose.
Williams asked, “The folks who say you should have asked for some sort of sacrifice from all of us after 9/11 -- do they have a case looking back on it?”
Bush replied, “Americans are sacrificing. (pause) I mean, we are, we are, you know, we pay a lot of taxes. The Americans sacrificed when they, you know, when the economy went in the tank. Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover. I think Americans have sacrificed.”
When Williams asked the question, I assumed that Bush would slam-dunk it by simply noting that Americans have already been sacrificing in Iraq (at last check, 2637 dead soldiers and 19,323 wounded) as part of the global terror war. But he went in a different direction, with a response that will no doubt please his restive tax-averse conservative base, but this is where his claims become questionable.
Back in World War II (the war that the Bush administration is now equating with the war on terror), Americans sacrificed by weathering gas, coffee and food rationing. They also flocked to national service programs. Most tellingly, they also paid higher taxes -- as have Americans during every major war.
So here’s what’s wrong with Bush’s comment that Americans are sacrificing simply because they “pay a lot of taxes”:
1. In point of fact, the tax burden on most Americans is actually smaller than it used to be. The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities headlined a 2002 report this way: “Overall Federal Tax Burden On Most Families -- Including Middle-Income Families -- At Lowest Levels In More Than Two Decades.” In fact, the study stated, median income taxes for a family of four were at the lowest level in 44 years.
2. Bush, through his tax cuts, has further lightened this alleged American sacrifice. In fact, in the years since 9/11 and the war on Iraq, this spirit of national sacrifice has been eased most for the rich. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the effective tax rate on the top one percent of taxpayers fell by 20 percent between the spring of 2001 and the spring of 2004; by contrast, the effective tax rate for middle-income taxpayers fell during that same period by only 9.3 percent.
3. And even if you want to define paying taxes as the key measure of sacrifice, Americans aren’t sacrificing nearly as much as the rest of the western world. According to the latest data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international group founded in 1948 to help administer the Marshall Plan, married Americans with two kids have one of the lightest tax burdens, when compared to equivalent families elsewhere. Out of 30 democracies, the U.S. tax bite ranks 28th. Only Iceland and Ireland families have it easier.
So maybe it’s the removal of shoes at the airport that should be counted as a true sacrifice.
-------
A hat tip to Jim Geraghty at National Review Online for this one...
Here's Democratic strategist/pollster/firebreather James Carville two years ago, looking ahead to the 2004 presidential election: "If we can't win this damn election, with a Democratic Party more unified than ever before, with us having raised as much money as the Republicans, with 55 percent of the country believing we're heading in the wrong direction, with our candidate having won all three debates, and with our side being more passionate about the outcome than theirs — if we can't win this one, then we can't win s---! And we need to completely rethink the Democratic Party."
Here's James Carville this summer, looking ahead to the 2006 congressional election: "We have to go back to 1974 (during Watergate) to find such a favorable environment (for Democrats). If we can't win in this environment, we have to question the whole premise of the party.''
No wonder the Democrats can't seem to come up with a creative and compelling message. Even their portents of doom are recycled.
Maybe I can help clarify matters, by framing my own declaration of principles (to borrow a phrase from Citizen Kane): I am a columnist. A good columnist doesn’t just spout opinions off the top of his or her head; rather, he or she does the requisite empirical reporting, then makes professional judgments based on the facts. (I addressed some of these issues in a June post, and that post was discussed on Monday, here.)
And it is natural that a good political columnist, empowered by the rigors of inductive reasoning, will focus most intensely on the people in power. Right now, the people in power happen to be Republicans, and they have amassed a track record. It behooves anyone in my position to examine that track record, assess any gap between promise and performance, and fact-check rhetorical claims.
There are many Republicans, and defenders of President Bush, who can’t seem to accept the fact that, if you control all the levers of government, you have to expect to be held accountable by independent voices. They keep talking about the need for more press “balance,” when, in fact, they have spent years working (successfully) to achieve a power imbalance in their favor. Hence, the disproportionate press scrutiny that such an imbalance warrants.
The same yardsticks should apply to whoever has the power, from whatever party. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we go to press with the president we have. Consider, for instance, this passage, from an article that ran on Dec. 20, 1998, at the height of Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal:
“At so many critical junctures, Clinton, whether by instinct or calculation, chose deception and recklessness over candor and restraint - in his deposition and grand jury testimony; in his semantic legalese; in his frontal attacks on independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr; in his early refusal to settle the (Paula) Jones case; and in his willingness to conduct secret trysts with Lewinsky while a sexual-harassment lawsuit was hanging over his head and while Starr and other hostile players were watching his every move.” The piece also rebuked Clinton for “his reluctance to take responsibility, his willingness to deceive, his tendency to see himself as a victim, and his eagerness to please the audience at hand...”
I wrote all that in the Inquirer. The subsequent abuse from Democratic readers and Clinton defenders was considerable. So be it. The facts and track record shaped my professional judgement -- then as now. It’s a disputatious world out there, especially in the increasingly polarized world of politics, and adoration is not part of this job description. I like the credo from J. J. Gittes, the private detective played by Jack Nicholson in Chinatown. As he told his client, “I may not be in business to be loved, but I am in business.”
-------
Now it’s back to business:
President Bush, in the midst of his Katrina redemption tour, made some questionable remarks yesterday in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams. They came during an exchange about 9/11 and its aftermath. The topic was whether Bush had adequately summoned Americans to give of themselves in a spirit of shared national purpose.
Williams asked, “The folks who say you should have asked for some sort of sacrifice from all of us after 9/11 -- do they have a case looking back on it?”
Bush replied, “Americans are sacrificing. (pause) I mean, we are, we are, you know, we pay a lot of taxes. The Americans sacrificed when they, you know, when the economy went in the tank. Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover. I think Americans have sacrificed.”
When Williams asked the question, I assumed that Bush would slam-dunk it by simply noting that Americans have already been sacrificing in Iraq (at last check, 2637 dead soldiers and 19,323 wounded) as part of the global terror war. But he went in a different direction, with a response that will no doubt please his restive tax-averse conservative base, but this is where his claims become questionable.
Back in World War II (the war that the Bush administration is now equating with the war on terror), Americans sacrificed by weathering gas, coffee and food rationing. They also flocked to national service programs. Most tellingly, they also paid higher taxes -- as have Americans during every major war.
So here’s what’s wrong with Bush’s comment that Americans are sacrificing simply because they “pay a lot of taxes”:
1. In point of fact, the tax burden on most Americans is actually smaller than it used to be. The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities headlined a 2002 report this way: “Overall Federal Tax Burden On Most Families -- Including Middle-Income Families -- At Lowest Levels In More Than Two Decades.” In fact, the study stated, median income taxes for a family of four were at the lowest level in 44 years.
2. Bush, through his tax cuts, has further lightened this alleged American sacrifice. In fact, in the years since 9/11 and the war on Iraq, this spirit of national sacrifice has been eased most for the rich. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the effective tax rate on the top one percent of taxpayers fell by 20 percent between the spring of 2001 and the spring of 2004; by contrast, the effective tax rate for middle-income taxpayers fell during that same period by only 9.3 percent.
3. And even if you want to define paying taxes as the key measure of sacrifice, Americans aren’t sacrificing nearly as much as the rest of the western world. According to the latest data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international group founded in 1948 to help administer the Marshall Plan, married Americans with two kids have one of the lightest tax burdens, when compared to equivalent families elsewhere. Out of 30 democracies, the U.S. tax bite ranks 28th. Only Iceland and Ireland families have it easier.
So maybe it’s the removal of shoes at the airport that should be counted as a true sacrifice.
-------
A hat tip to Jim Geraghty at National Review Online for this one...
Here's Democratic strategist/pollster/firebreather James Carville two years ago, looking ahead to the 2004 presidential election: "If we can't win this damn election, with a Democratic Party more unified than ever before, with us having raised as much money as the Republicans, with 55 percent of the country believing we're heading in the wrong direction, with our candidate having won all three debates, and with our side being more passionate about the outcome than theirs — if we can't win this one, then we can't win s---! And we need to completely rethink the Democratic Party."
Here's James Carville this summer, looking ahead to the 2006 congressional election: "We have to go back to 1974 (during Watergate) to find such a favorable environment (for Democrats). If we can't win in this environment, we have to question the whole premise of the party.''
No wonder the Democrats can't seem to come up with a creative and compelling message. Even their portents of doom are recycled.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Terrorism as the central front in election '06
With each passing day, it becomes increasingly easy to discern the fundamental divide in the '06 congressional elections.
The White House, GOP headquarters, and most Republican candidates will argue this autumn that we are engaged in a global struggle more treacherous than World War II, that the war in Iraq is a front in that global struggle, and that any deviation from this GOP agenda is a sign of weakness. Witness Vice President Cheney's speech yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nevada, as well as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's speech yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nevada.
In the other camp, the Democrats will argue that we are indeed engaged in a global struggle, but that the war in Iraq is a wasteful diversion that weakens our ability to effectively wage that global struggle. And it would appear -- for the moment anyway -- that the Democratic argument is winning.
For the first time, a majority of Americans are telling the pollsters that they do not view the global war on terror as a seamless, one-size-fits-all crusade; rather, they now view Iraq as a distinctly separate issue. That's a renunciation of what the Bush administration has been arguing since 2002. It's hard to see how Cheney and Rumsfeld can advance the administration's argument by preaching to the choir in Reno, as opposed to making the case in crucial swing congressional districts.
Nor is it clear how they can regain lost ground by recycling old lines. (For instance: Cheney said yesterday, “We were not in Iraq on September 11, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway.” Can’t that line be interpreted in the opposite way that Cheney intends? In other words, that since we weren’t in Iraq when 9/11 happened, we need not have responded to 9/11 by going into Iraq?)
Nevertheless, despite new forecasts that the Democrats are well positioned to retake the House in November, and despite a new Pew poll which reports that most likely voters don't consider terrorism to be a top priority matter, I am skeptical. I can’t help noticing that Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is now making the Bush argument about a global war against “Islamic fascism,” and that he’s tightening the race against Bob Casey. Perhaps there is no direct connection, and that the fascism line is not a turn-on for Santorum's conservative base. But I have also been reading a New Republic piece by law professor Cass Sunstein (no friend of conservatives), who cites some interesting research in a new behaviorial field known as “mortality science.”
The upshot of the study was that when Americans, even self-identified liberals, are reminded of their own mortality in connection with terrorism fears, they tend to view the current commander-in-chief more favorably. Granted, this research took place in 2004, during the Bush-Kerry election, but, Sunstein argues, “Unless circumstances have relevantly changed since 2004, Bush--and almost certainly Republican candidates more generally--are likely to benefit from any reference to terrorism or the September 11 attacks. So Karl Rove knows exactly what he is doing.”
Sunstein says the Democrats basically have two choices: "show the same firmness and resolve -- and capacity for aggression -- that people have associated with Bush," or "try to keep terrorism out of the news." The latter is a loser, and impossible anyway. And the former will be a real challenge for Democrats, especially when the Republicans orchestrate autumn congressional hearings on domestic surveillance (a GOP strength, since most Americans say they favor security over civil liberties), and especially if Bush springs an October surprise by jaw-boning Iran over nuclear weapons.
On the other hand (we mainstream media types are always adept at saying on the other hand), I should acknowledge that even one of Bush's most slavish conservative pundits, Fred Barnes, seems somewhat downbeat about GOP prospects this fall:
"As favorable as recent trends have been (for Bush), they are not nearly enough to spare Republicans a nasty defeat, including the loss of the House and perhaps the Senate. The country is in a disagreeable mood and ready for a change. The Republican base is grumpy and apathetic. Bush may be America's choice to fight terrorism, but he falters on other issues. His boost in the polls doesn't mean he's now popular. He's merely less unpopular. And the August bounce may prove to be ephemeral, as earlier upticks have. There's much to do. Standing pat and expecting terrorism to dominate the campaign would be foolhardy. Grim reminders of the threat on the fifth anniversary of September 11 won't make terror the paramount issue. Nor will presidential speeches or lacerating Republican TV ads. Neither Democrats nor the media will play along. It's Bush's actions, not his words, that will matter."
-------
On another matter: A few weeks ago, I got knocked around in the usual fashion by the usual partisan readers when, in a print column about Bush's political difficulties in the Middle East, I invoked a famous line coined by a famous writer. (My lead paragraph: "In the midst of a 19th-century crisis, American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson declared that 'events are in the saddle, and ride mankind.' It's hard to imagine he would think any differently about today's bloodshed in the Middle East, or about the seeming inability of the world's most powerful leader to seize the reins.") The basic charge among Bush fans was that I used the great Emerson to dress up my obvious "Bush-hating."
Well, on this very day, here comes a noted conservative pundit, riding to my rescue. Thank you, Rich Lowry:
"The Gulf Coast disaster exists against the backdrop of the Iraq War, where America has been seemingly powerless to impose order on the country's warring factions or rebuild a country devastated by 30 years of tyranny and now a budding civil war. If there were a theme to the past two years it would be Ralph Waldo Emerson's 'events are in the saddle, and ride mankind.' Nothing is so damaging to a political leader. Bush's presidency will remain diminished until he finds a way to vindicate human ingenuity's power over events, and show that he again is in the saddle."
The White House, GOP headquarters, and most Republican candidates will argue this autumn that we are engaged in a global struggle more treacherous than World War II, that the war in Iraq is a front in that global struggle, and that any deviation from this GOP agenda is a sign of weakness. Witness Vice President Cheney's speech yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nevada, as well as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's speech yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Reno, Nevada.
In the other camp, the Democrats will argue that we are indeed engaged in a global struggle, but that the war in Iraq is a wasteful diversion that weakens our ability to effectively wage that global struggle. And it would appear -- for the moment anyway -- that the Democratic argument is winning.
For the first time, a majority of Americans are telling the pollsters that they do not view the global war on terror as a seamless, one-size-fits-all crusade; rather, they now view Iraq as a distinctly separate issue. That's a renunciation of what the Bush administration has been arguing since 2002. It's hard to see how Cheney and Rumsfeld can advance the administration's argument by preaching to the choir in Reno, as opposed to making the case in crucial swing congressional districts.
Nor is it clear how they can regain lost ground by recycling old lines. (For instance: Cheney said yesterday, “We were not in Iraq on September 11, 2001, and the terrorists hit us anyway.” Can’t that line be interpreted in the opposite way that Cheney intends? In other words, that since we weren’t in Iraq when 9/11 happened, we need not have responded to 9/11 by going into Iraq?)
Nevertheless, despite new forecasts that the Democrats are well positioned to retake the House in November, and despite a new Pew poll which reports that most likely voters don't consider terrorism to be a top priority matter, I am skeptical. I can’t help noticing that Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is now making the Bush argument about a global war against “Islamic fascism,” and that he’s tightening the race against Bob Casey. Perhaps there is no direct connection, and that the fascism line is not a turn-on for Santorum's conservative base. But I have also been reading a New Republic piece by law professor Cass Sunstein (no friend of conservatives), who cites some interesting research in a new behaviorial field known as “mortality science.”
The upshot of the study was that when Americans, even self-identified liberals, are reminded of their own mortality in connection with terrorism fears, they tend to view the current commander-in-chief more favorably. Granted, this research took place in 2004, during the Bush-Kerry election, but, Sunstein argues, “Unless circumstances have relevantly changed since 2004, Bush--and almost certainly Republican candidates more generally--are likely to benefit from any reference to terrorism or the September 11 attacks. So Karl Rove knows exactly what he is doing.”
Sunstein says the Democrats basically have two choices: "show the same firmness and resolve -- and capacity for aggression -- that people have associated with Bush," or "try to keep terrorism out of the news." The latter is a loser, and impossible anyway. And the former will be a real challenge for Democrats, especially when the Republicans orchestrate autumn congressional hearings on domestic surveillance (a GOP strength, since most Americans say they favor security over civil liberties), and especially if Bush springs an October surprise by jaw-boning Iran over nuclear weapons.
On the other hand (we mainstream media types are always adept at saying on the other hand), I should acknowledge that even one of Bush's most slavish conservative pundits, Fred Barnes, seems somewhat downbeat about GOP prospects this fall:
"As favorable as recent trends have been (for Bush), they are not nearly enough to spare Republicans a nasty defeat, including the loss of the House and perhaps the Senate. The country is in a disagreeable mood and ready for a change. The Republican base is grumpy and apathetic. Bush may be America's choice to fight terrorism, but he falters on other issues. His boost in the polls doesn't mean he's now popular. He's merely less unpopular. And the August bounce may prove to be ephemeral, as earlier upticks have. There's much to do. Standing pat and expecting terrorism to dominate the campaign would be foolhardy. Grim reminders of the threat on the fifth anniversary of September 11 won't make terror the paramount issue. Nor will presidential speeches or lacerating Republican TV ads. Neither Democrats nor the media will play along. It's Bush's actions, not his words, that will matter."
-------
On another matter: A few weeks ago, I got knocked around in the usual fashion by the usual partisan readers when, in a print column about Bush's political difficulties in the Middle East, I invoked a famous line coined by a famous writer. (My lead paragraph: "In the midst of a 19th-century crisis, American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson declared that 'events are in the saddle, and ride mankind.' It's hard to imagine he would think any differently about today's bloodshed in the Middle East, or about the seeming inability of the world's most powerful leader to seize the reins.") The basic charge among Bush fans was that I used the great Emerson to dress up my obvious "Bush-hating."
Well, on this very day, here comes a noted conservative pundit, riding to my rescue. Thank you, Rich Lowry:
"The Gulf Coast disaster exists against the backdrop of the Iraq War, where America has been seemingly powerless to impose order on the country's warring factions or rebuild a country devastated by 30 years of tyranny and now a budding civil war. If there were a theme to the past two years it would be Ralph Waldo Emerson's 'events are in the saddle, and ride mankind.' Nothing is so damaging to a political leader. Bush's presidency will remain diminished until he finds a way to vindicate human ingenuity's power over events, and show that he again is in the saddle."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
