Perhaps the mathematics of Republican primary politics help to explain why Mitt Romney told blatant untruths about Iraq the other night, making false assertions that contradict five long years of factual reality.
In other words, maybe he was just being pragmatic; after all, 70 percent of Republicans still back President Bush and, presumably, his war as well, and those loyalists are expected to dominate the voting in the early GOP presidential primaries next winter. So perhaps Romney has made a conscious decision to ply them with the kind of falsehoods they have apparently come to believe.
That’s one explanation. The other possibility is that Romney is simply delusional, and truly has no clue about the track record of this war – how it came to pass, how its salesmen hyped the so-called evidence, and how various panels and commissions have since exposed the willful deceptions.
Let us return to the GOP candidates’ debate, which was staged in New Hampshire on Tuesday night. Iraq was the first item on the agenda, which probably didn’t please any of the contestants, given the fact that most Americans (except the GOP base) now view Bush as a disastrous war leader, and as a failed president in general.
It can’t be fun to run for president and be saddled with a lame duck who is embraced by only 29 percent of his fellow citizens (according to the latest AP-Ipsos poll, released yesterday; meanwhile, the latest Fox News survey, also released yesterday, puts Bush at 34 percent). On the other hand, Romney may have compounded the problem by making statements that suggest he has no idea what he’s talking about.
On Tuesday night, Romney was asked, “Knowing everything you know right now, was it a mistake for us to invade Iraq?” Here’s the key passage in his reply:
“(If) Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors, and they’d come in and they’d found that there were no weapons of mass destruction - had Saddam Hussein, therefore, not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn’t be in the conflict we’re in. But he didn’t do those things.”
Moments later, Romney repeated himself, arguing that "if we knew then what we know now (i.e., the absence of mass weaponry), by virtue of inspectors having been let in and giving us that information, by virtue of if Saddam Hussein had followed the U.N. resolutions, we wouldn’t be having this — this discussion."
In other words, in Romney’s version of history, we were compelled to Iraq because Hussein had defied the United Nations by refusing to open his country to the inspectors who work for the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (“he didn’t do those things”).
Take your pick, either Romney lied or he is clueless - because Hussein in fact did do those things.
Hussein did open up his country to IAEA inspectors – on Sept. 17, 2002. The inspectors searched for many months, with a mandate to gauge Hussein’s nuclear capabilities, and they found nothing. We know all this, because the IAEA filed a public report on March 7, 2003, two weeks before Bush decided to wage war anyway.
There was Romney, claiming that because the IAEA inspectors were barred from Iraq, they were thus unable to determine whether Hussein had mass weaponry. By contrast, in the pages of reality-based history, the IAEA inspectors were not barred, and, after having gained access, they were able to determine that Hussein did not have mass weaponry.
It’s all right there in the report:
“After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq…Iraq has been forthcoming in its cooperation.”
The factual record also shows that Hussein allowed a separate team of inspectors into Iraq prior to the invasion. The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission later issued its own report, which stated: "In the period in which it performed inspection and monitoring in Iraq, UNMOVIC did not find evidence of the continuation or resumption of programmes of weapons of mass destruction."
But regarding the IAEA inspectors, maybe Romney simply misspoke when he got the facts exactly backward. Anybody can screw up once. The problem, however, is that this wasn’t the first time he has tried to rewrite this historical chapter.
In a May 7 appearance on Fox News, when he was asked by Sean Hannity whether in hindsight he viewed the Iraq invasion as a mistake, he gave virtually the same answer: “If we knew that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, and if he had complied with the United Nations resolutions to allow IAEA inspectors into his country, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
And he’s getting away with it. Hannity neglected to correct Romney on the facts. CNN debate host Wolf Blitzer didn’t protest (although, in that format, the attempt might have been awkward). The Washington Post covered the CNN debate, but didn’t even mention the remarks. Ditto the report in The New York Times. (So much for the so-called “liberal” media.) But corrections probably wouldn’t have mattered to the GOP primary voters whom Romney is seeking to woo; among many Bush loyalists, empirical facts about this war have long ceased to be a priority.
The big challenge for Romney would come later, if he wins the GOP nomination. Uttering falsehoods about why we went to war – particularly in an autumn debate - probably wouldn’t fly with swing-voting independents, most of whom now believe that the invasion was a mistake and that the ruling Republicans misled the nation. In 2008, no Republican can win if he leaves the impression that he will be as averse to factual reality as the man he seeks to replace.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Rudy disses the Iowa hustle
Rudy Giuliani has performed a valuable public service. He declared yesterday that he will skip the Iowa Straw Poll, a Republican summer ritual that has long deserved to be exposed for what it really is – a con job.
Iowa Republicans have been staging this event since 1979, and for some inexplicable reason it has become a fixture on the political calendar, even though it is little more than a fund-raising hustle for the state GOP, and even though the presidential candidates who have scored well in the straw poll generally don’t wind up in the White House unless they have a visitor’s pass.
But Giuliani isn’t skipping out because he thinks the August event is phony. It’s strictly a political decision. He knows that rival Mitt Romney is making a serious financial and organizational bid to “win” the non-binding skirmish, and that his own standing in Iowa is weak, in part because the conservatives who dominate the GOP caucuses might be wary of his liberal views on social issues. He figures that it’d be smart to just de-emphasize Iowa and focus on the big states that are voting early next year (Florida, New York, California). And that means skipping the straw poll – a ballyhooed prelude to the winter Iowa caucuses – and thus pre-spinning a Romney “victory” as meaningless. (John McCain decided yesterday that he would skip the straw poll, as well.)
Giuliani advisor Jim Nussle, an Iowan, told reporters yesterday, “It’s not a serious event in the grand scheme of picking a nominee.” Obviously, he was aiming at Romney, but he had the added advantage of being accurate. He said that the straw poll “is not a demographic cross-section of the state,” which sounds about right, given the fact that the event typically attracts two percent of all registered Republican Iowa voters.
By tradition, the winner is the candidate who can most effectively buy the most votes. That is literally how it works. Any Iowan who wants to show up and participate must first pay a $30 fee to the Iowa GOP, but that never happens – because the candidates always vie to pick up the tabs. The candidates also provide free bus service to the event, held in the town of Ames. The candidates also spend up to $3 million apiece to ply their “voters” with food and drink and all manner of apolitical allure – swing dancers, skeet shooters, barbecuers, celebrity crooners, you name it. As I recall about the ’99 event, candidate Orrin Hatch brought in Vic Damone to sing on his behalf.
But what I remember best about ’99 was that the Iowans were very happy with self-funding candidate Steve Forbes, because Forbes had installed air conditioning inside his hospitality tent. He was the only candidate who had AC. He also bankrolled the equivalent of a small amusement park for the kiddies. Sure enough, he finished a strong second in the straw poll – a fact that ultimately meant nothing, because he was virtually gone from the race once the real voting began six months later. In the competition to become the chief alternative to candidate George W. Bush, Forbes was quickly eclipsed that winter by John McCain…who didn’t bother to show up at the ’99 straw poll, dismissing it as a “sham” and a “financial arms race.”
Elizabeth Dole showed up for the ’99 straw poll. Remember her candidacy? It peaked on that hot summer day. She finished third in the tally (14 percent of the purchased votes), and everyone started buzzing about the possibility of a serious female contender. But she was gone by autumn, after it became obvious that Bush was vacuuming up most of the serious donor money.
The history of the Iowa straw poll is replete with stuff like that. The senior George Bush won the first event, in 1979, beating Ronald Reagan – but it was the latter who won the 1980 primaries, with Bush as the junior player on the ticket. Care to guess who won the 1987 straw poll? That would be Pat Robertson, the Christian conservative leader, who apparently had no clout with God when the real voting began in the winter of ’88. And the big news of the 1995 straw poll was that Phil Gramm, the Texas senator, finished in a tie for first place. Yet within six months, Gramm’s candidacy was history.
George W. Bush is the only GOP nominee to ever win the Iowa straw poll – he won 31 percent of the purchased votes in 1999 – but he was already viewed that summer as the prohibitive frontrunner. The ’08 race is far more competitive, unusually so for the GOP, and Romney would have been able to spin an August victory more convincingly if his two chief rivals had chosen to join the circus.
Romney is trying to spin it, nevertheless. The meaningless vote tally is still two months away, but a Romney spokesman offered this yesterday: “Campaigns that have decided to abandon Ames are likely doing so out of a recognition that their organizations are outmatched and their message falls flat with Republican voters in Iowa. It looks as if we just beat those campaigns in Iowa two months earlier than we had planned on beating them."
Whatever. As the New York columnist Jimmy Breslin once wrote, "All political power is primarily an illusion...Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors...The ability to create the illusion of power, to use mirrors and blue smoke, is one found in unusual people."
Iowa Republicans have been staging this event since 1979, and for some inexplicable reason it has become a fixture on the political calendar, even though it is little more than a fund-raising hustle for the state GOP, and even though the presidential candidates who have scored well in the straw poll generally don’t wind up in the White House unless they have a visitor’s pass.
But Giuliani isn’t skipping out because he thinks the August event is phony. It’s strictly a political decision. He knows that rival Mitt Romney is making a serious financial and organizational bid to “win” the non-binding skirmish, and that his own standing in Iowa is weak, in part because the conservatives who dominate the GOP caucuses might be wary of his liberal views on social issues. He figures that it’d be smart to just de-emphasize Iowa and focus on the big states that are voting early next year (Florida, New York, California). And that means skipping the straw poll – a ballyhooed prelude to the winter Iowa caucuses – and thus pre-spinning a Romney “victory” as meaningless. (John McCain decided yesterday that he would skip the straw poll, as well.)
Giuliani advisor Jim Nussle, an Iowan, told reporters yesterday, “It’s not a serious event in the grand scheme of picking a nominee.” Obviously, he was aiming at Romney, but he had the added advantage of being accurate. He said that the straw poll “is not a demographic cross-section of the state,” which sounds about right, given the fact that the event typically attracts two percent of all registered Republican Iowa voters.
By tradition, the winner is the candidate who can most effectively buy the most votes. That is literally how it works. Any Iowan who wants to show up and participate must first pay a $30 fee to the Iowa GOP, but that never happens – because the candidates always vie to pick up the tabs. The candidates also provide free bus service to the event, held in the town of Ames. The candidates also spend up to $3 million apiece to ply their “voters” with food and drink and all manner of apolitical allure – swing dancers, skeet shooters, barbecuers, celebrity crooners, you name it. As I recall about the ’99 event, candidate Orrin Hatch brought in Vic Damone to sing on his behalf.
But what I remember best about ’99 was that the Iowans were very happy with self-funding candidate Steve Forbes, because Forbes had installed air conditioning inside his hospitality tent. He was the only candidate who had AC. He also bankrolled the equivalent of a small amusement park for the kiddies. Sure enough, he finished a strong second in the straw poll – a fact that ultimately meant nothing, because he was virtually gone from the race once the real voting began six months later. In the competition to become the chief alternative to candidate George W. Bush, Forbes was quickly eclipsed that winter by John McCain…who didn’t bother to show up at the ’99 straw poll, dismissing it as a “sham” and a “financial arms race.”
Elizabeth Dole showed up for the ’99 straw poll. Remember her candidacy? It peaked on that hot summer day. She finished third in the tally (14 percent of the purchased votes), and everyone started buzzing about the possibility of a serious female contender. But she was gone by autumn, after it became obvious that Bush was vacuuming up most of the serious donor money.
The history of the Iowa straw poll is replete with stuff like that. The senior George Bush won the first event, in 1979, beating Ronald Reagan – but it was the latter who won the 1980 primaries, with Bush as the junior player on the ticket. Care to guess who won the 1987 straw poll? That would be Pat Robertson, the Christian conservative leader, who apparently had no clout with God when the real voting began in the winter of ’88. And the big news of the 1995 straw poll was that Phil Gramm, the Texas senator, finished in a tie for first place. Yet within six months, Gramm’s candidacy was history.
George W. Bush is the only GOP nominee to ever win the Iowa straw poll – he won 31 percent of the purchased votes in 1999 – but he was already viewed that summer as the prohibitive frontrunner. The ’08 race is far more competitive, unusually so for the GOP, and Romney would have been able to spin an August victory more convincingly if his two chief rivals had chosen to join the circus.
Romney is trying to spin it, nevertheless. The meaningless vote tally is still two months away, but a Romney spokesman offered this yesterday: “Campaigns that have decided to abandon Ames are likely doing so out of a recognition that their organizations are outmatched and their message falls flat with Republican voters in Iowa. It looks as if we just beat those campaigns in Iowa two months earlier than we had planned on beating them."
Whatever. As the New York columnist Jimmy Breslin once wrote, "All political power is primarily an illusion...Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors...The ability to create the illusion of power, to use mirrors and blue smoke, is one found in unusual people."
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The politics of selective piety
I believe that all of us in this room are the unique creations of a God who knows us and loves us and who created us for His own purpose.
I believe that we are created in the image of God for a particular purpose. And I believe that with all my heart….I am fully convinced there’s a God of the universe that loves us very much…
I believe in God, believe in the Bible, I believe Jesus Christ is my savior. I believe God created man in His image.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the hand of God was in what we are today. And I do believe that we are unique, and I believe that God loves us.
We have great gifts in this country that come to us from God.
Excerpts from a Sunday church sermon? Heck, no. Those are excerpts from last night’s 10-candidate Republican presidential debate.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with bringing religion into the public square, and, besides, those five white guys (Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani, respectively) are vying with the other five white guys for the primary season votes of conservative Christians. The problem is, many Americans take a dim view of politicians who wear their piety on their sleeves – especially when these politicians proceed to selectively apply their moral values in ways that are less than saintly.
Consider, for instance, the discussion last night about the role of gays in the military. We may all be God’s creatures, but apparently some creatures are less equal than others, even at a time when everyone is presumably needed to fight the terrorists. So sayeth Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani’s candidacy hinges on whether he can play the 9/11 card and convince Americans that he’s the strong man who can best protect them from the terrorists “who want to kill us all.” One might thus assume that, during this national emergency, he would welcome all Americans into the fight to save our civilization. But he does not.
Last night, host Wolf Blitzer asked: “Mayor Giuliani, recently we’ve learned that several talented, trained linguists — Arabic speakers, Farsi speakers, Urdu speakers, trained by the U.S. government to learn those languages to help us in the war on terrorism — were dismissed from the military because they announced they were gays or lesbians. Is that, in your mind, appropriate?"
And Giuliani replied that the dismissals were appropriate, and that he would not change the current rules. He said, “This is not the time to deal with disruptive issues like this…At a time of war, you don’t make fundamental changes like this.”
Hang on…Isn’t “a time of war” precisely the right time to allow all of God’s creatures to pitch in, especially (in Giuliani’s formulation) when western Christian values are being threatened by global jihadists? Reports indicate that as many as 10,000 service members, including hundreds of language specialists, have already been dismissed by the military because they were openly gay. Is it really Christian, or even pragmatically wise, to undercut the war on terror in this fashion?
Yes, everybody on stage said.
For instance, Mitt Romney heartily agreed with Giuliani, even though (big surprise!) Romney felt very differently when he was running for office in Massachusetts back in 1994. Back then, Romney said gays should be allowed to serve openly and honestly (apparently, at the time, he felt that his stance was totally consistent with his religious piety). But today, it’s a different story: “This is not the time to put in place a major change, a social experiment, in the middle of a war going on. I wouldn’t change it at this point. We can look at down the road. But it does seem to me that we have much bigger issues as a nation we ought to be talking about than that policy right now.”
There are “bigger issues” than rallying all hands to fight the war on terror? Never mind, let’s move on.
Other moral values include recognizing the difference between right and wrong; recognizing that lying is wrong; respecting the rule of law. But somehow, those values were in abeyance last night when then Republican candidates were asked their opinion about the convicted felon who was formerly employed as Dick Cheney’s top guy.
Scooter Libby was tagged with a 30-month stint in the slammer yesterday – the federal judge, who had been appointed to his job by President Bush, said there was “overwhelming evidence” of Libby’s guilt on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice – but somehow that didn’t mean much to the Republican candidates.
With the exception of fringe candidate Tom Tancredo, they didn’t recommend that Bush pardon Libby, but they were outraged nonetheless at the way Libby has been treated. Giuliani, in particular, complained that “there was no underlying crime involved,” because nobody had been prosecuted for any leak of classified information in the Valerie Plame case, and some of his rivals agreed (“The basic crime here didn’t happen,” said Brownback).
So here’s the Republican bible on selective morality: If a high official of a Republican administration lies under oath and obstructs justice in order to impede a national security investigation, and to prevent a prosecutor from even determining whether an “underlying crime” had been committed,” that’s perfectly fine. But if a Democratic president lies under oath to impede a sex investigation (even when there was no underlying crime, since the sex with Monica Lewinsky was consensual, no illegal), those are sufficient grounds for throwing the president out of office – because, after all, perjury for any reason is not only wrong, it is also a violation of “the rule of law.”
Indeed, the candidates lavished more Christian charity on Scooter Libby than on Bush. At one point last night, several (but, regrettably, not all of them) were asked: “How would you use George W. Bush in your administration?”
The replies were priceless. Tommy Thompson tried a quip: “I certainly would not send him to the United Nations.” This didn’t go over too well with the Republicans in the audience; some laughed awkwardly, while others gagged, sounding like the mob guy who Silvio strangled the other night on The Sopranos. Apparently it was bad form to acknowledge the damage that Bush has done to our international standing.
But Thompson wasn’t through yet. He said of Bush, “I would put him out on a lecture series, talking to the youth of America” about “honesty” and “integrity.” That seemed to calm the audience, but it probably triggered the gag reflex among those viewers (actually, the majority of Americans) who now believe that Bush deliberately mislead America into war.
Brownback treated the question as if it was a live grenade: “Well, I would talk with him about it first and I would ask him about it. I think he would probably take a position the way his dad did, saying, you know, I think ‘you need to have your time in the limelight.’” Then he suggested that Bush perhaps could help “if you have a tragedy overseas.” And then he employed the GOP’s all-purpose exit strategy: He attacked Bill Clinton. Apparently Clinton, as a former president, has inappropriately “injected himself a lot more on policy issues” than he should have, although Brownback didn’t bother to name any.
Later in the debate, when Brownback was asked to name Bush's biggest mistake, he uttered one word - "spending" - then he cut and ran by changing the subject, and talking about his interest in "ending deaths by cancer in 10 years." Romney answered the same question about Bush by smoothly seguing into - you guessed it - the GOP's other all-purpose exit strategy: "Ronald Reagan had a vision for where he was going to take America..."
We’ll have another eight or nine months of these kinds of debates, until the primary season is essentially over. But nobody would suggest that God decreed this extended calendar. No, this is entirely man’s handiwork.
I believe that we are created in the image of God for a particular purpose. And I believe that with all my heart….I am fully convinced there’s a God of the universe that loves us very much…
I believe in God, believe in the Bible, I believe Jesus Christ is my savior. I believe God created man in His image.
There’s no doubt in my mind that the hand of God was in what we are today. And I do believe that we are unique, and I believe that God loves us.
We have great gifts in this country that come to us from God.
Excerpts from a Sunday church sermon? Heck, no. Those are excerpts from last night’s 10-candidate Republican presidential debate.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with bringing religion into the public square, and, besides, those five white guys (Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Rudy Giuliani, respectively) are vying with the other five white guys for the primary season votes of conservative Christians. The problem is, many Americans take a dim view of politicians who wear their piety on their sleeves – especially when these politicians proceed to selectively apply their moral values in ways that are less than saintly.
Consider, for instance, the discussion last night about the role of gays in the military. We may all be God’s creatures, but apparently some creatures are less equal than others, even at a time when everyone is presumably needed to fight the terrorists. So sayeth Rudy Giuliani.
Giuliani’s candidacy hinges on whether he can play the 9/11 card and convince Americans that he’s the strong man who can best protect them from the terrorists “who want to kill us all.” One might thus assume that, during this national emergency, he would welcome all Americans into the fight to save our civilization. But he does not.
Last night, host Wolf Blitzer asked: “Mayor Giuliani, recently we’ve learned that several talented, trained linguists — Arabic speakers, Farsi speakers, Urdu speakers, trained by the U.S. government to learn those languages to help us in the war on terrorism — were dismissed from the military because they announced they were gays or lesbians. Is that, in your mind, appropriate?"
And Giuliani replied that the dismissals were appropriate, and that he would not change the current rules. He said, “This is not the time to deal with disruptive issues like this…At a time of war, you don’t make fundamental changes like this.”
Hang on…Isn’t “a time of war” precisely the right time to allow all of God’s creatures to pitch in, especially (in Giuliani’s formulation) when western Christian values are being threatened by global jihadists? Reports indicate that as many as 10,000 service members, including hundreds of language specialists, have already been dismissed by the military because they were openly gay. Is it really Christian, or even pragmatically wise, to undercut the war on terror in this fashion?
Yes, everybody on stage said.
For instance, Mitt Romney heartily agreed with Giuliani, even though (big surprise!) Romney felt very differently when he was running for office in Massachusetts back in 1994. Back then, Romney said gays should be allowed to serve openly and honestly (apparently, at the time, he felt that his stance was totally consistent with his religious piety). But today, it’s a different story: “This is not the time to put in place a major change, a social experiment, in the middle of a war going on. I wouldn’t change it at this point. We can look at down the road. But it does seem to me that we have much bigger issues as a nation we ought to be talking about than that policy right now.”
There are “bigger issues” than rallying all hands to fight the war on terror? Never mind, let’s move on.
Other moral values include recognizing the difference between right and wrong; recognizing that lying is wrong; respecting the rule of law. But somehow, those values were in abeyance last night when then Republican candidates were asked their opinion about the convicted felon who was formerly employed as Dick Cheney’s top guy.
Scooter Libby was tagged with a 30-month stint in the slammer yesterday – the federal judge, who had been appointed to his job by President Bush, said there was “overwhelming evidence” of Libby’s guilt on four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice – but somehow that didn’t mean much to the Republican candidates.
With the exception of fringe candidate Tom Tancredo, they didn’t recommend that Bush pardon Libby, but they were outraged nonetheless at the way Libby has been treated. Giuliani, in particular, complained that “there was no underlying crime involved,” because nobody had been prosecuted for any leak of classified information in the Valerie Plame case, and some of his rivals agreed (“The basic crime here didn’t happen,” said Brownback).
So here’s the Republican bible on selective morality: If a high official of a Republican administration lies under oath and obstructs justice in order to impede a national security investigation, and to prevent a prosecutor from even determining whether an “underlying crime” had been committed,” that’s perfectly fine. But if a Democratic president lies under oath to impede a sex investigation (even when there was no underlying crime, since the sex with Monica Lewinsky was consensual, no illegal), those are sufficient grounds for throwing the president out of office – because, after all, perjury for any reason is not only wrong, it is also a violation of “the rule of law.”
Indeed, the candidates lavished more Christian charity on Scooter Libby than on Bush. At one point last night, several (but, regrettably, not all of them) were asked: “How would you use George W. Bush in your administration?”
The replies were priceless. Tommy Thompson tried a quip: “I certainly would not send him to the United Nations.” This didn’t go over too well with the Republicans in the audience; some laughed awkwardly, while others gagged, sounding like the mob guy who Silvio strangled the other night on The Sopranos. Apparently it was bad form to acknowledge the damage that Bush has done to our international standing.
But Thompson wasn’t through yet. He said of Bush, “I would put him out on a lecture series, talking to the youth of America” about “honesty” and “integrity.” That seemed to calm the audience, but it probably triggered the gag reflex among those viewers (actually, the majority of Americans) who now believe that Bush deliberately mislead America into war.
Brownback treated the question as if it was a live grenade: “Well, I would talk with him about it first and I would ask him about it. I think he would probably take a position the way his dad did, saying, you know, I think ‘you need to have your time in the limelight.’” Then he suggested that Bush perhaps could help “if you have a tragedy overseas.” And then he employed the GOP’s all-purpose exit strategy: He attacked Bill Clinton. Apparently Clinton, as a former president, has inappropriately “injected himself a lot more on policy issues” than he should have, although Brownback didn’t bother to name any.
Later in the debate, when Brownback was asked to name Bush's biggest mistake, he uttered one word - "spending" - then he cut and ran by changing the subject, and talking about his interest in "ending deaths by cancer in 10 years." Romney answered the same question about Bush by smoothly seguing into - you guessed it - the GOP's other all-purpose exit strategy: "Ronald Reagan had a vision for where he was going to take America..."
We’ll have another eight or nine months of these kinds of debates, until the primary season is essentially over. But nobody would suggest that God decreed this extended calendar. No, this is entirely man’s handiwork.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
He who shall not be named
The Republican White House hopefuls are due back in the limelight tonight, debating this time in New Hampshire, and it’s a good bet that few of them will make even a passing reference to the lame-duck Republican president whose performance failures have become a drag on their 2008 political prospects.
Let’s set the stage by bringing in some outside voices. Start with this quote:
“What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom – a sense that they didn’t invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him…that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don’t need hacks.”
That’s the verdict on George W. Bush, courtesy of famed Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who worked for Ronald Reagan and the senior George Bush, and who worked for the son in 2004. She wrote at length last week about his “incompetence” and
“the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq,” but you get the idea.
Actually, Noonan is particularly incensed about President Bush’s shoddy treatment of his conservative critics. Many members of the increasingly fragile GOP coalition have strongly attacked Bush’s path-to-citizenship immigration bill, and, in response, he has impugned their patriotism. Last week, Bush said that opponents of his immigration bill “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” Bush surrogates have intimated the same thing.
Noonan is nonplused: “Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens? And often, though not exclusively, (of) concerned conservatives?” My response to that is: Welcome to the club, Peggy. For years, Bush and his surrogates have suggested that they alone have a monopoly on the national interest, and that those who disagree with them are ipso facto threats to the national interest. (Bush, referring to his Senate Democratic critics in 2002, said that they were “not interested in the security of the American people.”) It’s only now, apparently, that Noonan and other mainstream Republicans have fully come to appreciate the Bush team’s signature arrogance.
But enough about Noonan. Here’s another prominent voice, from this past weekend, addressing Bush’s record on competence:
“I don’t think that (Bush) drives implementation or looks at the reality (of what) he’s trying to implement…And I think that’s why you ended up with ‘Brownie, you’re doing a great job,’ when it was obvious to the entire country at Katrina that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had collapsed and was not capable of doing any job at that point.” And the same problems plague the Iraq war: “Now, you look at the ruthlessness, the aggressiveness, the energy that we put into that war, and here we are 5.5 years after 9/11, and the fact is I would argue we’re losing the war around the world with Islamist extremists and they are, in fact, gaining ground.”
That’s the verdict on Bush, courtesy of…Newt Gingrich, speaking on Fox News. He’s urging the ’08 candidates (and himself as well, perhaps) to “confront the reality” that Bush has become the GOP’s Jimmy Carter, in terms of national unpopularity. He thinks that the ’08 candidates should separate themselves from Bush by running against his record – not by dissing Bush personally, but by campaigning “in favor of radically changing Washington and radically changing government.”
(Incidentally, let’s repeat the last part of that Gingrich quote: “I would argue we’re losing the war around the world with Islamist extremists…” How come nobody at the Republican National Committee, or at the Bush White House, is assailing his comment about America “losing”? If Harry Reid or Michael Moore had said such a thing, one can only imagine what the GOP message machine would be saying today.)
But enough on Gingrich. Let’s bring in one final voice, somebody who wishes that the GOP candidates would stop already with their invocations of Reagan:
“We feel, If only we had another Ronald Reagan! If only we could find a consistent small-government tax-cutter who is also sincerely and consistently socially conservative! If only we could find a candidate who exudes both strength and good cheer, traditionalism and optimism! And so we demand from our candidates ever more fervent declarations of fealty to an ideology that interests an ever-dwindling proportion of the public. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but those hopes are delusions. In every way we can measure, the voting public is moving away from the kind of conservatism we know as Reaganism.” And unless GOP candidates recognize this, and instead offer something "fresh and compelling,” doom awaits them: “All the stars are lined up for a horrible Republican defeat in 2008.”
That’s the political forecast, courtesy of David Frum…the conservative commentator and ex-Bush speechwriter who helped coin the term “axis of evil.”
No wonder the ’08 GOP hopefuls are struggling to pluck the right chords. Can they somehow talk about a new Republican future, without implicitly dissing He Who Shall Not Be Named? That’s their task again tonight. They have no other option. As GOP analyst Rich Galen reportedly said the other day about Bush, “There is an exhaustion. People are tired of defending him.”
Let’s set the stage by bringing in some outside voices. Start with this quote:
“What I came in time to believe is that the great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom – a sense that they didn’t invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him…that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don’t need hacks.”
That’s the verdict on George W. Bush, courtesy of famed Republican speechwriter Peggy Noonan, who worked for Ronald Reagan and the senior George Bush, and who worked for the son in 2004. She wrote at length last week about his “incompetence” and
“the depth of the mishandling and misjudgments of Iraq,” but you get the idea.
Actually, Noonan is particularly incensed about President Bush’s shoddy treatment of his conservative critics. Many members of the increasingly fragile GOP coalition have strongly attacked Bush’s path-to-citizenship immigration bill, and, in response, he has impugned their patriotism. Last week, Bush said that opponents of his immigration bill “don’t want to do what’s right for America.” Bush surrogates have intimated the same thing.
Noonan is nonplused: “Why would they speak so insultingly, with such hostility, of opponents who are concerned citizens? And often, though not exclusively, (of) concerned conservatives?” My response to that is: Welcome to the club, Peggy. For years, Bush and his surrogates have suggested that they alone have a monopoly on the national interest, and that those who disagree with them are ipso facto threats to the national interest. (Bush, referring to his Senate Democratic critics in 2002, said that they were “not interested in the security of the American people.”) It’s only now, apparently, that Noonan and other mainstream Republicans have fully come to appreciate the Bush team’s signature arrogance.
But enough about Noonan. Here’s another prominent voice, from this past weekend, addressing Bush’s record on competence:
“I don’t think that (Bush) drives implementation or looks at the reality (of what) he’s trying to implement…And I think that’s why you ended up with ‘Brownie, you’re doing a great job,’ when it was obvious to the entire country at Katrina that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had collapsed and was not capable of doing any job at that point.” And the same problems plague the Iraq war: “Now, you look at the ruthlessness, the aggressiveness, the energy that we put into that war, and here we are 5.5 years after 9/11, and the fact is I would argue we’re losing the war around the world with Islamist extremists and they are, in fact, gaining ground.”
That’s the verdict on Bush, courtesy of…Newt Gingrich, speaking on Fox News. He’s urging the ’08 candidates (and himself as well, perhaps) to “confront the reality” that Bush has become the GOP’s Jimmy Carter, in terms of national unpopularity. He thinks that the ’08 candidates should separate themselves from Bush by running against his record – not by dissing Bush personally, but by campaigning “in favor of radically changing Washington and radically changing government.”
(Incidentally, let’s repeat the last part of that Gingrich quote: “I would argue we’re losing the war around the world with Islamist extremists…” How come nobody at the Republican National Committee, or at the Bush White House, is assailing his comment about America “losing”? If Harry Reid or Michael Moore had said such a thing, one can only imagine what the GOP message machine would be saying today.)
But enough on Gingrich. Let’s bring in one final voice, somebody who wishes that the GOP candidates would stop already with their invocations of Reagan:
“We feel, If only we had another Ronald Reagan! If only we could find a consistent small-government tax-cutter who is also sincerely and consistently socially conservative! If only we could find a candidate who exudes both strength and good cheer, traditionalism and optimism! And so we demand from our candidates ever more fervent declarations of fealty to an ideology that interests an ever-dwindling proportion of the public. It gives me no pleasure to say this, but those hopes are delusions. In every way we can measure, the voting public is moving away from the kind of conservatism we know as Reaganism.” And unless GOP candidates recognize this, and instead offer something "fresh and compelling,” doom awaits them: “All the stars are lined up for a horrible Republican defeat in 2008.”
That’s the political forecast, courtesy of David Frum…the conservative commentator and ex-Bush speechwriter who helped coin the term “axis of evil.”
No wonder the ’08 GOP hopefuls are struggling to pluck the right chords. Can they somehow talk about a new Republican future, without implicitly dissing He Who Shall Not Be Named? That’s their task again tonight. They have no other option. As GOP analyst Rich Galen reportedly said the other day about Bush, “There is an exhaustion. People are tired of defending him.”
Monday, June 04, 2007
Do Hillary's voters care about 2002?
Hillary Clinton probably “won” the second Democratic presidential debate last night. She uttered no damaging gaffes that might have imperiled her ’08 frontrunner status; she sounded crisp and concise (even while uttering semi-truths); she floated above the fray, refusing to accept underdog John Edwards’ invitation to duke it out; she even took charge of the debate itself, in the closing moments, when she told CNN host Wolf Blitzer that his questions about hypothetical future crises were essentially irresponsible.
But, on certain substantive matters, some of her remarks still didn’t pass the smell test.
As I mentioned here last Friday, she is vulnerable to the charge that she failed to perform due diligence before she voted in 2002 to give President Bush the option to invade Iraq. During that fateful autumn, she didn’t bother to read the latest National Intelligence Estimate, a classified document available to all senators, which clearly indicated that Bush’s case against Saddam Hussein was far from a slam dunk. According to the NIE, many dissenting experts in the intelligence community were strongly questioning the White House claims that Hussein was in close cahoots with al Qaeda, and that he was poised to attack America with mass weaponry.
During the debate last night, Clinton was asked whether she regrets her failure to read that 90-page document. She replied: “I was thoroughly briefed, I knew all the arguments. I knew all of what the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the State Department were all saying. I sought out dissenting opinions.” She then tried to pivot, blaming the war on Bush and on the Iraqis “who have failed to take advantage” of the “opportunity” to build a democracy.
Blitzer then asked again whether she regretted her failure to read the NIE document. Her second reply might sound familiar: “I feel like I was totally briefed. I knew all the arguments that were being made by everyone from all directions.”
But if she indeed “knew all the arguments,” even without bothering to read the NIE, then why did she endorse the drumbeat for war - at a time when there was abundant expert evidence that the White House was hyping its case? (Clinton, Oct. 10, 2002: “I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt.”)
Some antiwar liberal primary voters might well be asking themselves that question today. But she has an answer for that as well. Sort of.
She contended last night (reprising one of her old lines) that she actually didn’t endorse a war when she voted Yes back in 2002. Rather, she insisted that she voted Yes on the expectation that Bush would first pursue further diplomatic options – such as building more international support for the idea of sending U.N. inspectors back into Iraq. But she said that Bush snookered her by moving swiftly to the war option; as she argued last night, “What was wrong is the way this president misused the authority that some of us gave him, and that has been a tragedy.”
But her argument contained a key flaw. The ’02 war resolution did not contain any language that would have compelled Bush to pursue further diplomatic options; rather, it permitted the Decider to decide on his own whether “further diplomatic or other peaceful means…will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.”
So whatever Hillary might have thought she was endorsing (especially in hindsight) was not covered in the actual text. Indeed, when she had an opportunity, during the ’02 debate, to truly an endorse diplomatic language, she voted no. Some Democratic senators floated an amendment that would have specifically required Bush to pursue more diplomacy, and, if diplomacy failed, Bush then would have been required to ask Congress for a separate war resolution. Only 24 senators voted for this amendment. Clinton was not one of them.
Fortunately for Clinton, however, none of her top rivals last night pointed out these flaws in her arguments. Perhaps that would have been tough to do in a sound bite, anyway. Edwards, who badly needs to pry Democratic primary voters away from Clinton, might have been the guy to try it, but was not well positioned to zap her on the NIE report - because, as he acknowledged last night, he didn’t read it either before casting his own Yes vote.
Edwards did try to skewer Clinton for another war vote. Last month, she and Barack Obama decided - for the first time - to oppose an Iraq war funding bill, clearly in response to pressure from the liberal party base. Since Edwards couldn’t attack them for their actual votes (because he agrees with them), he opted to attack them for the way they cast their votes. They did so very quietly, at the eleventh hour. So, at the debate last night, Edwards complained, “(They) didn’t say anything about how they were going to vote until they appeared on the floor of the Senate…They were among the last people to vote.” In Edwards’ view, their behavior demonstrated that they don’t have the guts to lead; or, as he put it, “it’s the difference between leading and following.”
Edwards would have loved it if Clinton had risen to the bait and taken him on, but she smartly allowed Obama to do the job. And he did. Despite his early reputation as a guy who disdains traditional political pugilism, he can obviously box when necessary. In response to Edwards’ taunt on the funding vote, he quickly noted that, while Edwards as a senator was voting Yes on the war in 2002, he, Obama, was already speaking out against a U.S. invasion. Addressing Edwards directly, he said: “I opposed this war from the start. So you were about four and a half years late on this issue.”
(Edwards kept hitting the “leadership” theme all night, arguing that “it is the job of the president of the United States…to lead.” Yet when he was asked at one point whether he could support the concept of gay marriage, he chose not to lead. He punted by saying that it was up to the states to decide.)
Anyway, Clinton’s Iraq war record, and her fact-challenged responses last night, probably won’t hurt her much, except among the most dedicated antiwar liberal fact-checkers. I sensed this late in the debate, when regular folks in the audience were invited to pose questions. Here’s a sampling:
Why doesn’t my son, who’s serving Iraq, have the right to go to the VA hospital of his choosing? What’s the best way that I can save for my kids’ college education, as well as for my own retirement? What would be on your issue agenda for the first 100 days in office? How could we best handle the humanitarian crisis in Darfur?
In other words, most voters probably agree with Clinton’s argument that it’s a waste of time to “argue the past.” They’re far more focused on the future. If her rivals are going to take her down, they won’t do it by re-fighting the events, and miscalculations, of 2002.
But, on certain substantive matters, some of her remarks still didn’t pass the smell test.
As I mentioned here last Friday, she is vulnerable to the charge that she failed to perform due diligence before she voted in 2002 to give President Bush the option to invade Iraq. During that fateful autumn, she didn’t bother to read the latest National Intelligence Estimate, a classified document available to all senators, which clearly indicated that Bush’s case against Saddam Hussein was far from a slam dunk. According to the NIE, many dissenting experts in the intelligence community were strongly questioning the White House claims that Hussein was in close cahoots with al Qaeda, and that he was poised to attack America with mass weaponry.
During the debate last night, Clinton was asked whether she regrets her failure to read that 90-page document. She replied: “I was thoroughly briefed, I knew all the arguments. I knew all of what the Department of Defense, the CIA, and the State Department were all saying. I sought out dissenting opinions.” She then tried to pivot, blaming the war on Bush and on the Iraqis “who have failed to take advantage” of the “opportunity” to build a democracy.
Blitzer then asked again whether she regretted her failure to read the NIE document. Her second reply might sound familiar: “I feel like I was totally briefed. I knew all the arguments that were being made by everyone from all directions.”
But if she indeed “knew all the arguments,” even without bothering to read the NIE, then why did she endorse the drumbeat for war - at a time when there was abundant expert evidence that the White House was hyping its case? (Clinton, Oct. 10, 2002: “I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt.”)
Some antiwar liberal primary voters might well be asking themselves that question today. But she has an answer for that as well. Sort of.
She contended last night (reprising one of her old lines) that she actually didn’t endorse a war when she voted Yes back in 2002. Rather, she insisted that she voted Yes on the expectation that Bush would first pursue further diplomatic options – such as building more international support for the idea of sending U.N. inspectors back into Iraq. But she said that Bush snookered her by moving swiftly to the war option; as she argued last night, “What was wrong is the way this president misused the authority that some of us gave him, and that has been a tragedy.”
But her argument contained a key flaw. The ’02 war resolution did not contain any language that would have compelled Bush to pursue further diplomatic options; rather, it permitted the Decider to decide on his own whether “further diplomatic or other peaceful means…will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.”
So whatever Hillary might have thought she was endorsing (especially in hindsight) was not covered in the actual text. Indeed, when she had an opportunity, during the ’02 debate, to truly an endorse diplomatic language, she voted no. Some Democratic senators floated an amendment that would have specifically required Bush to pursue more diplomacy, and, if diplomacy failed, Bush then would have been required to ask Congress for a separate war resolution. Only 24 senators voted for this amendment. Clinton was not one of them.
Fortunately for Clinton, however, none of her top rivals last night pointed out these flaws in her arguments. Perhaps that would have been tough to do in a sound bite, anyway. Edwards, who badly needs to pry Democratic primary voters away from Clinton, might have been the guy to try it, but was not well positioned to zap her on the NIE report - because, as he acknowledged last night, he didn’t read it either before casting his own Yes vote.
Edwards did try to skewer Clinton for another war vote. Last month, she and Barack Obama decided - for the first time - to oppose an Iraq war funding bill, clearly in response to pressure from the liberal party base. Since Edwards couldn’t attack them for their actual votes (because he agrees with them), he opted to attack them for the way they cast their votes. They did so very quietly, at the eleventh hour. So, at the debate last night, Edwards complained, “(They) didn’t say anything about how they were going to vote until they appeared on the floor of the Senate…They were among the last people to vote.” In Edwards’ view, their behavior demonstrated that they don’t have the guts to lead; or, as he put it, “it’s the difference between leading and following.”
Edwards would have loved it if Clinton had risen to the bait and taken him on, but she smartly allowed Obama to do the job. And he did. Despite his early reputation as a guy who disdains traditional political pugilism, he can obviously box when necessary. In response to Edwards’ taunt on the funding vote, he quickly noted that, while Edwards as a senator was voting Yes on the war in 2002, he, Obama, was already speaking out against a U.S. invasion. Addressing Edwards directly, he said: “I opposed this war from the start. So you were about four and a half years late on this issue.”
(Edwards kept hitting the “leadership” theme all night, arguing that “it is the job of the president of the United States…to lead.” Yet when he was asked at one point whether he could support the concept of gay marriage, he chose not to lead. He punted by saying that it was up to the states to decide.)
Anyway, Clinton’s Iraq war record, and her fact-challenged responses last night, probably won’t hurt her much, except among the most dedicated antiwar liberal fact-checkers. I sensed this late in the debate, when regular folks in the audience were invited to pose questions. Here’s a sampling:
Why doesn’t my son, who’s serving Iraq, have the right to go to the VA hospital of his choosing? What’s the best way that I can save for my kids’ college education, as well as for my own retirement? What would be on your issue agenda for the first 100 days in office? How could we best handle the humanitarian crisis in Darfur?
In other words, most voters probably agree with Clinton’s argument that it’s a waste of time to “argue the past.” They’re far more focused on the future. If her rivals are going to take her down, they won’t do it by re-fighting the events, and miscalculations, of 2002.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Democrats who didn't do their homework
It should not be a surprise that the Democrats can’t agree on how best to extricate America from the war in Iraq; after all, a party whose leaders still can’t talk coherently about the past can hardly be expected to talk coherently about the future. And the fact is, some of the top Democratic presidential contenders are still having problems explaining how and why they enabled this war in the first place.
Case in point: John Edwards and Hillary Clinton.
But first, some background: As senators in the autumn of 2002, they both voted for the now-infamous resolution that authorized President Bush to exercise the war option. They have subsequently insisted that they were acting on the best intelligence available at the time. Clinton, while not renouncing her vote, has said that Bush essentially misled her. Edwards has renounced his vote, saying that he would have voted differently had he known then what he knows now.
But there’s a big flaw in their explanations. At the time of the historic vote, they could have easily consulted the latest National Intelligence Estimate – a classified document reflecting the views of the entire intelligence community, and readily available to any senator who wanted to see it. The full 90-page report repeatedly questioned Bush’s claims that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat.
But Edwards didn’t bother to read the report. Nor, apparently, did Clinton.
Such a reading would have been valuable. As Senator Bob Graham, the Senate intelligence committee chairman who had requested the report, explained in a 2005 newspaper column, the document “contained vigorous dissents on key parts of (Bush’s WMD claims), especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein’s will to use whatever weapons he might have, the (NIE) indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.” Moreover, the full document made it clear that “most of the alleged intelligence (about the presence of WMDs) came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States’ removing Hussein, by force if necessary.” And the full document strongly questioned the Bush claim that linked Hussein to al Qaeda.
I bring this up now, because the NIE issue is back in the news – thanks to Edwards’ inability to give a straight answer about whether he had read it.
At a forum on Wednesday, Edwards was asked this question about the prewar debate: “There was this National Intelligence Estimate that was confidential – that you had to have security clearance, or members of the Senate could read. Did you have a chance to read that, and was that part of the…”
Whereupon Edwards replied, “I read it. I read it.” He then gave a rambling explanation about how having more information was not necessarily helpful, and about how secrecy was a bad thing, but the gist of his response was in those first six words.
The problem was that an Edwards spokesman had told a reporter, one week ago, that Edwards in fact had not read the full, classified NIE document. When originally asked whether Edwards had read it, Mark Kornblau had replied that “the answer is no.” In lieu of reading the full document, he said, Edwards “was regularly briefed on the information that appeared in the (NIE).”
But even if Kornblau’s version of events is correct, it merely raises more questions. Did Edwards’ unnamed briefers give sufficient weight to the NIE’s “vigorous dissents,” or even mention them at all? And if they did brief Edwards about the flaws in the WMD intelligence, why did he decide to ignore them and vote Yes to authorize Bush?
But the Edwards story doesn’t end there. Yesterday, in the wake of Edwards’ fresh claim that he had read the full report, Kornblau had to come up with a reason why his boss would say such a thing. So he did. He insisted that Edwards had “simply misunderstood the question.”
This must be the season of incomprehension; a few weeks ago, GOP candidate Tommy Thompson said he flubbed an answer because his hearing aid wasn’t working and because he had to go to the bathroom. But Edwards doesn’t have a hearing aid, and, as a pretty sharp lawyer, it’s hard to imagine that he misunderstood such a detailed question, one that spelled out the procedure for reading the classified version of the NIE. More likely, the question hit Edwards in a vulnerable spot, and his response was a verbal wince.
Hillary Clinton has a similar problem. A new biography indicates that she didn’t read the full NIE, either. Indeed, she has never claimed to have read it. When asked recently whether she had done so, she merely replied that she had been briefed on it. But who did the briefing? As her biographers point out, none of her own Senate aides could have done the job, because they lacked the requisite security clearances to even see the report. So we’re basically left with two scenarios: Either she voted Yes for Bush without performing “due diligence” (a favorite Hillary phrase); or, somebody did manage to give her a comprehensive briefing, which means that she apparently voted Yes for Bush in defiance of the best intelligence available at the time.
Maybe this issue will be pursued at the next Democratic presidential debate, slated for Sunday night on CNN. It would be a natural for Barack Obama, who had the luxury of dwelling in the Illinois legislature at a time when his top ’08 rivals were clearly fearful that voicing skepticism, and voting No, would tag them as national security weaklings.
Case in point: John Edwards and Hillary Clinton.
But first, some background: As senators in the autumn of 2002, they both voted for the now-infamous resolution that authorized President Bush to exercise the war option. They have subsequently insisted that they were acting on the best intelligence available at the time. Clinton, while not renouncing her vote, has said that Bush essentially misled her. Edwards has renounced his vote, saying that he would have voted differently had he known then what he knows now.
But there’s a big flaw in their explanations. At the time of the historic vote, they could have easily consulted the latest National Intelligence Estimate – a classified document reflecting the views of the entire intelligence community, and readily available to any senator who wanted to see it. The full 90-page report repeatedly questioned Bush’s claims that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat.
But Edwards didn’t bother to read the report. Nor, apparently, did Clinton.
Such a reading would have been valuable. As Senator Bob Graham, the Senate intelligence committee chairman who had requested the report, explained in a 2005 newspaper column, the document “contained vigorous dissents on key parts of (Bush’s WMD claims), especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein’s will to use whatever weapons he might have, the (NIE) indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.” Moreover, the full document made it clear that “most of the alleged intelligence (about the presence of WMDs) came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States’ removing Hussein, by force if necessary.” And the full document strongly questioned the Bush claim that linked Hussein to al Qaeda.
I bring this up now, because the NIE issue is back in the news – thanks to Edwards’ inability to give a straight answer about whether he had read it.
At a forum on Wednesday, Edwards was asked this question about the prewar debate: “There was this National Intelligence Estimate that was confidential – that you had to have security clearance, or members of the Senate could read. Did you have a chance to read that, and was that part of the…”
Whereupon Edwards replied, “I read it. I read it.” He then gave a rambling explanation about how having more information was not necessarily helpful, and about how secrecy was a bad thing, but the gist of his response was in those first six words.
The problem was that an Edwards spokesman had told a reporter, one week ago, that Edwards in fact had not read the full, classified NIE document. When originally asked whether Edwards had read it, Mark Kornblau had replied that “the answer is no.” In lieu of reading the full document, he said, Edwards “was regularly briefed on the information that appeared in the (NIE).”
But even if Kornblau’s version of events is correct, it merely raises more questions. Did Edwards’ unnamed briefers give sufficient weight to the NIE’s “vigorous dissents,” or even mention them at all? And if they did brief Edwards about the flaws in the WMD intelligence, why did he decide to ignore them and vote Yes to authorize Bush?
But the Edwards story doesn’t end there. Yesterday, in the wake of Edwards’ fresh claim that he had read the full report, Kornblau had to come up with a reason why his boss would say such a thing. So he did. He insisted that Edwards had “simply misunderstood the question.”
This must be the season of incomprehension; a few weeks ago, GOP candidate Tommy Thompson said he flubbed an answer because his hearing aid wasn’t working and because he had to go to the bathroom. But Edwards doesn’t have a hearing aid, and, as a pretty sharp lawyer, it’s hard to imagine that he misunderstood such a detailed question, one that spelled out the procedure for reading the classified version of the NIE. More likely, the question hit Edwards in a vulnerable spot, and his response was a verbal wince.
Hillary Clinton has a similar problem. A new biography indicates that she didn’t read the full NIE, either. Indeed, she has never claimed to have read it. When asked recently whether she had done so, she merely replied that she had been briefed on it. But who did the briefing? As her biographers point out, none of her own Senate aides could have done the job, because they lacked the requisite security clearances to even see the report. So we’re basically left with two scenarios: Either she voted Yes for Bush without performing “due diligence” (a favorite Hillary phrase); or, somebody did manage to give her a comprehensive briefing, which means that she apparently voted Yes for Bush in defiance of the best intelligence available at the time.
Maybe this issue will be pursued at the next Democratic presidential debate, slated for Sunday night on CNN. It would be a natural for Barack Obama, who had the luxury of dwelling in the Illinois legislature at a time when his top ’08 rivals were clearly fearful that voicing skepticism, and voting No, would tag them as national security weaklings.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
All hail the aw-shucks savior
News flash: A dispirited organization, fearful of defeat and disenchanted with its current crop of competitors, eagerly awaits the arrival of its very own aw-shucks savior, its down-home hero who will presumably ride to the rescue and put the team back on top.
But enough about the Yankees and Roger Clemens.
Let’s talk instead about the Republican party and Fred Thompson, because the premise is similar.
Potentially, however, there’s one big difference: Clemens is a cinch Hall of Famer, whereas nobody yet knows whether Thompson has the grit and drive to mow down the opposition. In short, it’s hard to tell whether this guy is for real. It’s truly a sign of GOP desperation that he is being touted so ardently, given the fact that (a) his eight-year Senate career was, by all accounts, undistinguished, in part because he reputedly had an aversion to working hard, (b) he was assailed by conservatives during the ‘90s for failing, in their eyes, to energetically probe Bill Clinton’s campaign donations (c) he has never championed any of the social conservative causes that animate GOP primary voters, and (d) he has zero executive experience.
Regarding (b), here's what Washington Times political writer Donald Lambro wrote two weeks ago: "He led no great crusades (in the Senate), nor did he win any medals for leadership. In fact, when he was called to lead the investigation into illegal campaign contributions from China to President Clinton's 1996 campaign, Mr. Thompson was rolled by the Democrats. Instead of tenaciously digging into the Chinagate scandal, following the money trail wherever it led, Mr. Thompson caved into Democratic demands for a strict time limit on the probe, which ended prematurely, with little to show for it. So much for his leadership abilities."
Nevertheless, some conservative activists and commentators laud Thompson’s savior bona fides. Now that he has formally decided to dip his toe into the ’08 campaign, I offer this sampling of Thompson-mania:
He “looks like a president.” He has “a great voice.” He has “bearing.” He is “folksy.” He’s a “Reaganesque” communicator. He has “off-the-cuff homespun witticisms.” And he “wins the guy-I’d-want-to-get-a-beer-with primary.”
I’d suggest that the beer criterion is not necessarily the best way to pick a president; in 2000, George W. Bush was clearly favored over Al Gore as a drinking buddy, but now, thanks to the party dude, we’re saddled with what is arguably the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history. Nevertheless, imagery counts for a lot in this culture. Thompson has been playing folksy, avuncular authority figures for nearly 30 years in films and on TV, and many voters are comfortable with that kind of persona, because it seems so archetypically American. At this point, there’s not much difference between stagecraft from statecraft. And Thompson’s fans clearly believe that folksy and avuncular would play well against Hillary Clinton.
This is assuming he can win the nomination. But I wouldn’t rule that out, given the top contenders’ well-documented flaws (Rudy Giuliani is too liberal on social issues; Mitt Romney and John McCain are pandering flip-floppers). And Thompson has one other advantage: He’s great at playing the role of a just-folks, down-home, plainspoken country boy. Republican voters love that stuff.
Never mind the fact that, in reality, “Ole Fred” (as he calls himself) is a seasoned Washington hand who made a lot of money as a Beltway lobbyist (for General Electric, Westinghouse, the deposed Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, for the savings and loan industry, for a British company that was facing billions of bucks in asbestos claims). Republican voters wouldn’t hold any of that against him, not when his persona is so appealing. After all, they’ve endorsed phony populists in the past: in 1988, a very rich guy named George H. W. Bush donned blue work shirts, played horseshoes and ate pork rinds; in 2000, another Brahman from the same family stressed his plain-spoken Texas ways.
Maybe we’ll even see a reprise of Thompson’s best trick, the 1994 pickup truck. He was trailing badly that year in a race for an open Senate seat in Tennessee; then he ditched his Washington threads, donned blue jeans, rented a Chevy pickup truck, drove it around – and he soared in the polls, winning the race handily. Even Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard magazine, in a fawning article last month, referred to the pickup truck as “a Hollywood-style gimmick designed to make Thompson look down to earth.”
My favorite story, however, concerns an incident that reportedly took place at a Tennessee town meeting in 1995. An eyewitness described this sequence: When the event ended, Thompson waved goodbye to the crowd and exited in his famed pickup truck, with a staffer at the wheel. But it turned out to be a short truck ride. A silver luxury sedan was parked not far away. The staffer dropped him off. Whereupon he drove off in the silver luxury sedan.
A rigorous vetting process awaits Thompson; only then will Republicans learn whether he measures up to the hype, or whether he is merely a five-inning pitcher who runs out of gas. Also, they'll soon get a glimpse of his tactical decision-making. He has to decide whether he wants to ante up $15,000 to play in the GOP’s first beauty contest, the Iowa straw poll, which is staged in August. That event is all cornpone. Candidates set up hospitality tents, and local Republicans show up to eat their food. That would be a perfect venue for the red pickup truck.
What’s truly significant, however, is that the Thompson boomlet is happening at all. Republican nomination contests are usually quite predictable; the nod goes to the candidate who is generally viewed as the next guy in line (Bob Dole in 1996), the guy with the largest following (Reagan in 1980), or the guy with the most money and connections (Bush in 2000). Fluid races, lacking prohibitive frontrunners, are exceedingly rare. For the moment, in other words, Fred Thompson’s late ascendance says more about the unsettled state of the GOP than about the candidate himself.
But enough about the Yankees and Roger Clemens.
Let’s talk instead about the Republican party and Fred Thompson, because the premise is similar.
Potentially, however, there’s one big difference: Clemens is a cinch Hall of Famer, whereas nobody yet knows whether Thompson has the grit and drive to mow down the opposition. In short, it’s hard to tell whether this guy is for real. It’s truly a sign of GOP desperation that he is being touted so ardently, given the fact that (a) his eight-year Senate career was, by all accounts, undistinguished, in part because he reputedly had an aversion to working hard, (b) he was assailed by conservatives during the ‘90s for failing, in their eyes, to energetically probe Bill Clinton’s campaign donations (c) he has never championed any of the social conservative causes that animate GOP primary voters, and (d) he has zero executive experience.
Regarding (b), here's what Washington Times political writer Donald Lambro wrote two weeks ago: "He led no great crusades (in the Senate), nor did he win any medals for leadership. In fact, when he was called to lead the investigation into illegal campaign contributions from China to President Clinton's 1996 campaign, Mr. Thompson was rolled by the Democrats. Instead of tenaciously digging into the Chinagate scandal, following the money trail wherever it led, Mr. Thompson caved into Democratic demands for a strict time limit on the probe, which ended prematurely, with little to show for it. So much for his leadership abilities."
Nevertheless, some conservative activists and commentators laud Thompson’s savior bona fides. Now that he has formally decided to dip his toe into the ’08 campaign, I offer this sampling of Thompson-mania:
He “looks like a president.” He has “a great voice.” He has “bearing.” He is “folksy.” He’s a “Reaganesque” communicator. He has “off-the-cuff homespun witticisms.” And he “wins the guy-I’d-want-to-get-a-beer-with primary.”
I’d suggest that the beer criterion is not necessarily the best way to pick a president; in 2000, George W. Bush was clearly favored over Al Gore as a drinking buddy, but now, thanks to the party dude, we’re saddled with what is arguably the worst foreign policy disaster in U.S. history. Nevertheless, imagery counts for a lot in this culture. Thompson has been playing folksy, avuncular authority figures for nearly 30 years in films and on TV, and many voters are comfortable with that kind of persona, because it seems so archetypically American. At this point, there’s not much difference between stagecraft from statecraft. And Thompson’s fans clearly believe that folksy and avuncular would play well against Hillary Clinton.
This is assuming he can win the nomination. But I wouldn’t rule that out, given the top contenders’ well-documented flaws (Rudy Giuliani is too liberal on social issues; Mitt Romney and John McCain are pandering flip-floppers). And Thompson has one other advantage: He’s great at playing the role of a just-folks, down-home, plainspoken country boy. Republican voters love that stuff.
Never mind the fact that, in reality, “Ole Fred” (as he calls himself) is a seasoned Washington hand who made a lot of money as a Beltway lobbyist (for General Electric, Westinghouse, the deposed Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, for the savings and loan industry, for a British company that was facing billions of bucks in asbestos claims). Republican voters wouldn’t hold any of that against him, not when his persona is so appealing. After all, they’ve endorsed phony populists in the past: in 1988, a very rich guy named George H. W. Bush donned blue work shirts, played horseshoes and ate pork rinds; in 2000, another Brahman from the same family stressed his plain-spoken Texas ways.
Maybe we’ll even see a reprise of Thompson’s best trick, the 1994 pickup truck. He was trailing badly that year in a race for an open Senate seat in Tennessee; then he ditched his Washington threads, donned blue jeans, rented a Chevy pickup truck, drove it around – and he soared in the polls, winning the race handily. Even Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard magazine, in a fawning article last month, referred to the pickup truck as “a Hollywood-style gimmick designed to make Thompson look down to earth.”
My favorite story, however, concerns an incident that reportedly took place at a Tennessee town meeting in 1995. An eyewitness described this sequence: When the event ended, Thompson waved goodbye to the crowd and exited in his famed pickup truck, with a staffer at the wheel. But it turned out to be a short truck ride. A silver luxury sedan was parked not far away. The staffer dropped him off. Whereupon he drove off in the silver luxury sedan.
A rigorous vetting process awaits Thompson; only then will Republicans learn whether he measures up to the hype, or whether he is merely a five-inning pitcher who runs out of gas. Also, they'll soon get a glimpse of his tactical decision-making. He has to decide whether he wants to ante up $15,000 to play in the GOP’s first beauty contest, the Iowa straw poll, which is staged in August. That event is all cornpone. Candidates set up hospitality tents, and local Republicans show up to eat their food. That would be a perfect venue for the red pickup truck.
What’s truly significant, however, is that the Thompson boomlet is happening at all. Republican nomination contests are usually quite predictable; the nod goes to the candidate who is generally viewed as the next guy in line (Bob Dole in 1996), the guy with the largest following (Reagan in 1980), or the guy with the most money and connections (Bush in 2000). Fluid races, lacking prohibitive frontrunners, are exceedingly rare. For the moment, in other words, Fred Thompson’s late ascendance says more about the unsettled state of the GOP than about the candidate himself.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Hillary Clinton, populist poseur?
Hillary Clinton, heroine of the working stiff. Give me a break.
Her big economic speech yesterday, in which she assailed the “income inequality” of the Bush era, was really a bit much. There she was in New Hampshire, deploring the gap between rich and poor, the exodus of U.S. jobs thanks to globalization, the wage stagnation that plagues the average worker…yet she somehow omitted the fact that, for eight years during the 1990s, her own husband was repeatedly assailed – by liberals and labor activists in his own party – for his ongoing failure to tackle those very same issues.
This is a bit of recent political history that few people seem to remember. Notwithstanding Hillary Clinton’s efforts yesterday to paint the 1990s as a golden economic age, the truth is that liberal Democrats were generally frustrated by Bill’s refusal to address the gap between rich and poor, the exodus of U.S. jobs thanks to globalization, and the wage stagnation that plagued the average worker. They wanted him to run for re-election in 1996 as a populist who would address those problems. He did not. Nor is there any evidence that his influential spouse had urged him to do so.
So, for Hillary’s sake, maybe it’s just as well that yesterday’s populist speech didn’t get much coverage (only three paragraphs today in The New York Times). She was decisively trumped by Barack Obama’s health care speech in Iowa; actually, they were probably both trumped by the coverage of Lindsay Lohan’s latest rehab stint. If Hillary’s speech had dominated the news, attentive Americans who remember the ‘90s might have wondered, “If income inequality is such an important issue, why didn’t she and Bill make it a priority when they had the power?”
Yesterday, she voiced these complaints about the Bush era: “Companies also think nothing of shipping our jobs – even entire factories – overseas. Today, competition no longer stops at the water’s edge…Unfortunately, we’re not managing globalization properly. Instead of working for all of us, globalization is only working for some of us…(W)hile productivity and corporate profits are up, the fruits of that success just hasn’t reached many of our families. It’s like trickle-down economics without the trickle. As a result, the gap between those who are enjoying the fruits of the modern economy and those who aren’t is growing wider….Well, now we haven’t heard much from Washington in the past six years about how to solve this growing problem of inequality.”
I’m not contesting her economic assessment of the Bush era. But the fact is, liberals in her own party voiced the same complaints about the Clinton administration, in virtually the same language. I know this, because they told me all the time.
During the 1996 campaign, when Bill Clinton was cruising toward re-election and arguably had the luxury of picking and choosing his campaign issues, liberal economic think tanks were putting out statistics showing that (a) the typical family was making less than in 1989, the first year of the senior George Bush’s presidency, and (b) that the gap between rich and poor had widened since Clinton took office. Even a member of Clinton’s Cabinet, Labor secretary Robert Reich, had declared in a 1996 speech that “the paychecks of large segments of our population have gone nowhere” – but he never did that again, because, in Clinton White House parlance, he was subsequently “shut down.”
Liberals and labor activists complained that Clinton was governing as an “Eisenhower Republican,” (actually, that’s how Clinton once described himself); that he was stressing fiscal austerity and balanced budgets as a sop to Wall Street; that he favored unfettered free trade and globalization over protections for domestic workers; and that he was indifferent to the plight of unions, which were being marginalized in the private sector. Indeed, the U.S. Census Bureau in June 1996 reported that the share of national income earned by the top five percent of households grew faster in the first two years of the Clinton administration than during the Ronald Reagan years.
Jeff Faux, a liberal economist and occasional advisor to congressional Democrats, told me in September 1996 that the Clinton regime lacked political courage: “To pull up the wages of working people, you need solutions that are not ‘acceptable’ in politics today. You’d need a politician to say, ‘We need more unions,’ but that would mean going up against business. On free trade, you’d need some sort of protection for domestic workers who are threatened by low-wage foreign competitors, but that would mean going up against the multinational business community, for whom low wages are the point. It would mean big redistribution changes in the tax code. It would mean (laws) making corporations more accountable. All of these solutions require political conflict. But let’s not be naïve – politicians don’t want to tackle that, and disturb all their business money.”
That same month, I asked a Clinton campaign official why the president was not stumping as a populist. His reply: “We made a very conscious decision, early last spring, not to talk about the wage issue. Some people argued that our message should be, ‘We dug the country out of the (recessionary) hole, so now we’ll move on to tackling wage stagnation.’ But (Clinton pollster) Dick Morris said, ‘Let’s just talk about the good stuff, let’s not muddy our own positive message.’”
This decision didn’t sit well with the liberal/labor faction, and Robert Reich sounded off publicly after he quit as Labor secretary, In a 1998 interview with the online magazine Salon, he said: “(T)he assumed necessity of balancing the budget still has public policy in a straitjacket. President Clinton’s programs might look like a lot of new spending, but $100 billion out of a $1.7-trillion budget is rather small, relative to the challenges facing the country right now: Over 41 million people without health insurance, far more than were without it in 1992 (when Clinton won the presidency); over 20 percent of our children in poverty; the median wage, adjusted for inflation, below where it was in 1989; a growing gap between rich and poor; and so on.”
Hillary Clinton, in her speech yesterday, touted some ‘90s achievements (“22 million new jobs”), and the Census Bureau did report in 2000 that median household income had jumped for the fifth straight year, and that the poverty rate was the lowest since 1979. But the same census stats showed that the gap between rich and poor had actually increased during the Bill Clinton era: In 1999, the top five percent of households captured 21.5 percent of the total national income pie; seven years earlier, they had 18.6 percent. The lowest category of households (those with incomes below $17,196) actually lost ground; they had 3.8 percent of the national income pie in 1992, but only 3.6 percent in 1999. In fact, every household category up to $80,000 lost ground during the ‘90s.
But now Hillary is calling for “opportunity for all and special privileges for none,” for laws that would stop American companies from shipping jobs overseas, for laws that would “help more workers join unions,” for “a new vision of economic fairness.” Perhaps she is sincere; perhaps she is instinctively more “progressive” (her word) than Bill; perhaps she is privately frustrated that her husband’s administration did not sufficiently address the problems she now bemoans. On the other hand, lest we forget, the Clintons are master tacticians who know that populist rhetoric is red meat for liberal primary voters. Lest we forget, Bill campaigned as a populist in 1992, complaining about how “the rich get the gold mine” while everybody else “gets the shaft,” and about how average folks were “working harder for less,” only to trim his sails once in office.
So which is the real Hillary?
-------
Happy anniversary to Dick Cheney. Two years ago today, he said this: "The level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think we're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."
Her big economic speech yesterday, in which she assailed the “income inequality” of the Bush era, was really a bit much. There she was in New Hampshire, deploring the gap between rich and poor, the exodus of U.S. jobs thanks to globalization, the wage stagnation that plagues the average worker…yet she somehow omitted the fact that, for eight years during the 1990s, her own husband was repeatedly assailed – by liberals and labor activists in his own party – for his ongoing failure to tackle those very same issues.
This is a bit of recent political history that few people seem to remember. Notwithstanding Hillary Clinton’s efforts yesterday to paint the 1990s as a golden economic age, the truth is that liberal Democrats were generally frustrated by Bill’s refusal to address the gap between rich and poor, the exodus of U.S. jobs thanks to globalization, and the wage stagnation that plagued the average worker. They wanted him to run for re-election in 1996 as a populist who would address those problems. He did not. Nor is there any evidence that his influential spouse had urged him to do so.
So, for Hillary’s sake, maybe it’s just as well that yesterday’s populist speech didn’t get much coverage (only three paragraphs today in The New York Times). She was decisively trumped by Barack Obama’s health care speech in Iowa; actually, they were probably both trumped by the coverage of Lindsay Lohan’s latest rehab stint. If Hillary’s speech had dominated the news, attentive Americans who remember the ‘90s might have wondered, “If income inequality is such an important issue, why didn’t she and Bill make it a priority when they had the power?”
Yesterday, she voiced these complaints about the Bush era: “Companies also think nothing of shipping our jobs – even entire factories – overseas. Today, competition no longer stops at the water’s edge…Unfortunately, we’re not managing globalization properly. Instead of working for all of us, globalization is only working for some of us…(W)hile productivity and corporate profits are up, the fruits of that success just hasn’t reached many of our families. It’s like trickle-down economics without the trickle. As a result, the gap between those who are enjoying the fruits of the modern economy and those who aren’t is growing wider….Well, now we haven’t heard much from Washington in the past six years about how to solve this growing problem of inequality.”
I’m not contesting her economic assessment of the Bush era. But the fact is, liberals in her own party voiced the same complaints about the Clinton administration, in virtually the same language. I know this, because they told me all the time.
During the 1996 campaign, when Bill Clinton was cruising toward re-election and arguably had the luxury of picking and choosing his campaign issues, liberal economic think tanks were putting out statistics showing that (a) the typical family was making less than in 1989, the first year of the senior George Bush’s presidency, and (b) that the gap between rich and poor had widened since Clinton took office. Even a member of Clinton’s Cabinet, Labor secretary Robert Reich, had declared in a 1996 speech that “the paychecks of large segments of our population have gone nowhere” – but he never did that again, because, in Clinton White House parlance, he was subsequently “shut down.”
Liberals and labor activists complained that Clinton was governing as an “Eisenhower Republican,” (actually, that’s how Clinton once described himself); that he was stressing fiscal austerity and balanced budgets as a sop to Wall Street; that he favored unfettered free trade and globalization over protections for domestic workers; and that he was indifferent to the plight of unions, which were being marginalized in the private sector. Indeed, the U.S. Census Bureau in June 1996 reported that the share of national income earned by the top five percent of households grew faster in the first two years of the Clinton administration than during the Ronald Reagan years.
Jeff Faux, a liberal economist and occasional advisor to congressional Democrats, told me in September 1996 that the Clinton regime lacked political courage: “To pull up the wages of working people, you need solutions that are not ‘acceptable’ in politics today. You’d need a politician to say, ‘We need more unions,’ but that would mean going up against business. On free trade, you’d need some sort of protection for domestic workers who are threatened by low-wage foreign competitors, but that would mean going up against the multinational business community, for whom low wages are the point. It would mean big redistribution changes in the tax code. It would mean (laws) making corporations more accountable. All of these solutions require political conflict. But let’s not be naïve – politicians don’t want to tackle that, and disturb all their business money.”
That same month, I asked a Clinton campaign official why the president was not stumping as a populist. His reply: “We made a very conscious decision, early last spring, not to talk about the wage issue. Some people argued that our message should be, ‘We dug the country out of the (recessionary) hole, so now we’ll move on to tackling wage stagnation.’ But (Clinton pollster) Dick Morris said, ‘Let’s just talk about the good stuff, let’s not muddy our own positive message.’”
This decision didn’t sit well with the liberal/labor faction, and Robert Reich sounded off publicly after he quit as Labor secretary, In a 1998 interview with the online magazine Salon, he said: “(T)he assumed necessity of balancing the budget still has public policy in a straitjacket. President Clinton’s programs might look like a lot of new spending, but $100 billion out of a $1.7-trillion budget is rather small, relative to the challenges facing the country right now: Over 41 million people without health insurance, far more than were without it in 1992 (when Clinton won the presidency); over 20 percent of our children in poverty; the median wage, adjusted for inflation, below where it was in 1989; a growing gap between rich and poor; and so on.”
Hillary Clinton, in her speech yesterday, touted some ‘90s achievements (“22 million new jobs”), and the Census Bureau did report in 2000 that median household income had jumped for the fifth straight year, and that the poverty rate was the lowest since 1979. But the same census stats showed that the gap between rich and poor had actually increased during the Bill Clinton era: In 1999, the top five percent of households captured 21.5 percent of the total national income pie; seven years earlier, they had 18.6 percent. The lowest category of households (those with incomes below $17,196) actually lost ground; they had 3.8 percent of the national income pie in 1992, but only 3.6 percent in 1999. In fact, every household category up to $80,000 lost ground during the ‘90s.
But now Hillary is calling for “opportunity for all and special privileges for none,” for laws that would stop American companies from shipping jobs overseas, for laws that would “help more workers join unions,” for “a new vision of economic fairness.” Perhaps she is sincere; perhaps she is instinctively more “progressive” (her word) than Bill; perhaps she is privately frustrated that her husband’s administration did not sufficiently address the problems she now bemoans. On the other hand, lest we forget, the Clintons are master tacticians who know that populist rhetoric is red meat for liberal primary voters. Lest we forget, Bill campaigned as a populist in 1992, complaining about how “the rich get the gold mine” while everybody else “gets the shaft,” and about how average folks were “working harder for less,” only to trim his sails once in office.
So which is the real Hillary?
-------
Happy anniversary to Dick Cheney. Two years ago today, he said this: "The level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think we're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency."
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
"See You in September?" Not!
Just a few weeks ago, the Bush administration and its diehard defenders were essentially singing See You in September – contending, in essence, that the American majority should squelch its antiwar fervor until the leaves begin to turn, because, by September, we will supposedly know how well the Surge is working, and how effectively the Iraqis are pursuing national reconciliation. September will be the critical month, they said, because that’s when General David Petraeus, their Iraq commander, is slated to provide Congress with an extensive “progress” report.
The congressional Republicans, anxious as always to fall into line despite their growing restiveness, dutifully took up the chant. House Minority Leader John Boehner said on May 6, “By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this is working…” Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon said he and his colleagues hoped to get “a straight story” on the Surge “by September.” Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota (who, like Smith, is up for re-election next year) said ‘there is a sense that by September, you’ve got to see real action on the part of the Iraqis.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked September last week, declaring “the handwriting is on the wall.” Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, appearing on CBS two days ago, went even further, arguing that “by September, when Gen. Petraeus is to make a report, I think most of the people in Congress believe, unless something extraordinary occurs, that we should be on the move to draw those Surge numbers down.”
Well, guess what: The military brass, along with various think tank warriors and media enablers, are already trying to weasel out of the September deadline.
It’s clear they already know that this disastrous war will hardly look different in September; hence the need to start low-balling expectations as early as possible. The aim, of course, will be to pre-spin September’s undoubtedly mixed results as an argument for giving the Bush team even more time to chase its ever-elusive dreams. Which means that September could be a tough month for those Republicans who have already promised to hang tough with Bush until then, but not necessarily beyond. Right now, they seem to think that Petraeus is going to provide them with political cover in September, but that’s likely to be merely another Iraq war delusion.
The low-ballers are working hard at the moment. Over at Fox News (of course), Brit Hume harrumphed the other day, “It’s out there in the public parlance about how September is the big month. Not helpful to the president’s cause, or to Gen. Petraeus’ efforts. You know, you’re not going to have all the troops on the ground until (June). And basically, they get the balance of the summer to fix the situation. Not realistic.” He was seconded by a Fox News military analyst, Lt. Col. Bob Maginiss: “I talked to a general yesterday over in Iraq, in Baghdad. He said, look, after September, there’s a lot to be done. And if all the momentum is going to stop right after Dave Petraeus reports to the Congress and to the president about our progress, then we’re in trouble. It’s going to take awhile.”
Petraeus himself has already signaled that “I don’t think we’ll have anything definitive in September,” and some of the scholar-hawks concur. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on May 22 that the fractious Iraqis probably won’t make much headway this summer on key internal reforms: “(W)e shouldn’t kid ourselves that even in the unlikely event that all these bills are approved in September, they will mark a turning point in the war. At best, they will give (Petraeus) and President Bush some signs of progress they can point to in arguing for more patience from the American public to giver the ‘surge’ a chance to work.”
Another prominent think-tanker, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, is quoted today saying much the same thing. Having just returned from Iraq, where he conferred with U.S. military officials, Kagan says the September report by Petraeus will probably be a mixed bag, with scant evidence of any major political breakthroughs between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad: "I think the political progress will be mostly of (the) local variety."
And while the war’s enablers play lowball, the Bush team has made life even more difficult for its restive Republican allies, by refusing to spell out its criteria for progress. Ideally, if the White House would agree to provide some “metrics” (to borrow a Donald Rumsfeld word), the congressional GOP would then be able to determine in September whether Petraeus was succeeding or failing. But the White House won’t do that; as defense policy expert Stephen Biddle, an independent advisor to Petraeus, reportedly complained a few weeks ago, “By being unbelievably vague about everything, (Bush’s people) are making it very hard for congressmen and senators to go to their constituents and say, ‘Look, here’s why things are going better than you might imagine.’”
But it’s no mystery why the Bush team won’t establish any metrics: They don’t want to be held accountable in the event that the September report fails to meet those metrics. They figure that if they stick with vague criteria, they can most easily spin an ambiguous September report as proof that the Decider should be indulged even further.
Certainly, that would put the tentative Democrats squarely on the spot, but they don’t have the votes to force Bush to change course. They can only do that with the help of mass Republican defections. For those Republicans who are nervous about their ’08 re-election prospects, September will truly be decision time. The low-ballers have already made that abundantly clear.
The congressional Republicans, anxious as always to fall into line despite their growing restiveness, dutifully took up the chant. House Minority Leader John Boehner said on May 6, “By the time we get to September, October, members are going to want to know how well this is working…” Senator Gordon Smith of Oregon said he and his colleagues hoped to get “a straight story” on the Surge “by September.” Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota (who, like Smith, is up for re-election next year) said ‘there is a sense that by September, you’ve got to see real action on the part of the Iraqis.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked September last week, declaring “the handwriting is on the wall.” Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, appearing on CBS two days ago, went even further, arguing that “by September, when Gen. Petraeus is to make a report, I think most of the people in Congress believe, unless something extraordinary occurs, that we should be on the move to draw those Surge numbers down.”
Well, guess what: The military brass, along with various think tank warriors and media enablers, are already trying to weasel out of the September deadline.
It’s clear they already know that this disastrous war will hardly look different in September; hence the need to start low-balling expectations as early as possible. The aim, of course, will be to pre-spin September’s undoubtedly mixed results as an argument for giving the Bush team even more time to chase its ever-elusive dreams. Which means that September could be a tough month for those Republicans who have already promised to hang tough with Bush until then, but not necessarily beyond. Right now, they seem to think that Petraeus is going to provide them with political cover in September, but that’s likely to be merely another Iraq war delusion.
The low-ballers are working hard at the moment. Over at Fox News (of course), Brit Hume harrumphed the other day, “It’s out there in the public parlance about how September is the big month. Not helpful to the president’s cause, or to Gen. Petraeus’ efforts. You know, you’re not going to have all the troops on the ground until (June). And basically, they get the balance of the summer to fix the situation. Not realistic.” He was seconded by a Fox News military analyst, Lt. Col. Bob Maginiss: “I talked to a general yesterday over in Iraq, in Baghdad. He said, look, after September, there’s a lot to be done. And if all the momentum is going to stop right after Dave Petraeus reports to the Congress and to the president about our progress, then we’re in trouble. It’s going to take awhile.”
Petraeus himself has already signaled that “I don’t think we’ll have anything definitive in September,” and some of the scholar-hawks concur. Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on May 22 that the fractious Iraqis probably won’t make much headway this summer on key internal reforms: “(W)e shouldn’t kid ourselves that even in the unlikely event that all these bills are approved in September, they will mark a turning point in the war. At best, they will give (Petraeus) and President Bush some signs of progress they can point to in arguing for more patience from the American public to giver the ‘surge’ a chance to work.”
Another prominent think-tanker, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, is quoted today saying much the same thing. Having just returned from Iraq, where he conferred with U.S. military officials, Kagan says the September report by Petraeus will probably be a mixed bag, with scant evidence of any major political breakthroughs between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad: "I think the political progress will be mostly of (the) local variety."
And while the war’s enablers play lowball, the Bush team has made life even more difficult for its restive Republican allies, by refusing to spell out its criteria for progress. Ideally, if the White House would agree to provide some “metrics” (to borrow a Donald Rumsfeld word), the congressional GOP would then be able to determine in September whether Petraeus was succeeding or failing. But the White House won’t do that; as defense policy expert Stephen Biddle, an independent advisor to Petraeus, reportedly complained a few weeks ago, “By being unbelievably vague about everything, (Bush’s people) are making it very hard for congressmen and senators to go to their constituents and say, ‘Look, here’s why things are going better than you might imagine.’”
But it’s no mystery why the Bush team won’t establish any metrics: They don’t want to be held accountable in the event that the September report fails to meet those metrics. They figure that if they stick with vague criteria, they can most easily spin an ambiguous September report as proof that the Decider should be indulged even further.
Certainly, that would put the tentative Democrats squarely on the spot, but they don’t have the votes to force Bush to change course. They can only do that with the help of mass Republican defections. For those Republicans who are nervous about their ’08 re-election prospects, September will truly be decision time. The low-ballers have already made that abundantly clear.
Monday, May 28, 2007
The Decider's holiday greetings
President Bush, Memorial Day, 2004: “Through our history, America has gone to war reluctantly, because we have known the costs of war...Because of (our slain soldiers’) fierce courage, America is safer, two terror regimes (in Iraq and Afghanistan) are gone forever, and more than 50 million souls now live in freedom.”
Bush, Memorial Day, 2005: “Freedom is on the march and America is more secure.”
Bush, Memorial Day, 2006: "In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war."
Staff Sgt. David Safstrom, Delta Company, 82nd Airborne, currently on his third tour in Iraq, quoted today: “What are we doing here? Why are we still here?…We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described “conservative Texas Republican” who now supports troop withdrawal, quoted today: “In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war. Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.”
Sgt. Kevin O’Flarity, a squad leader, quoted today: “I don’t believe we should be here in the middle of a civil war. We’ve all lost friends over here. Most of us don’t know what we’re fighting for anymore. We’re serving our country and friends, but the only reason we go out every day is for each other. I don’t want any more of my guys to get hurt or die. If it was something I felt righteous about, maybe. But for this country and this conflict, no, it’s not worth it.”
U.S. intelligence assessment, written in January 2003 (two months before the war began), and finally released last Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Any attempt to establish democracy in Iraq would be “a long, difficult, and probably turbulent challenge,” because Iraq’s political culture did “not foster liberalism or democracy.” There was also “no concept of loyal opposition and no history of alternation of power.” As a result, there was “a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so.” Also, a U.S. invasion would allow al Qaeda “to establish the presence in Iraq and opportunity to strike at Americans it did not have prior to the invasion.”
Bush, at a press conference last Thursday: “I’m credible, because I read the intelligence.”
Senior Iraqi government official Ali Allawi, in his newly-released book The Occupation of Iraq, which documents the Bush team's ignorance of Iraqi sectarian tribalism: “Bush may well go down in history as presiding over one of America’s great strategic blunders. Thousands of servicemen have been the casualties of a failed policy.”
Bush, Memorial Day, 2007: “Our duty is to ensure that (the war's) outcome justifies the sacrifices made by those who fought and died in it. From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled, where our nation is more secure from attack, and where the gift of liberty is secured for millions who have never known it. This is our country's calling."
Bush, Memorial Day, 2005: “Freedom is on the march and America is more secure.”
Bush, Memorial Day, 2006: "In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war."
Staff Sgt. David Safstrom, Delta Company, 82nd Airborne, currently on his third tour in Iraq, quoted today: “What are we doing here? Why are we still here?…We’re helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.”
Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described “conservative Texas Republican” who now supports troop withdrawal, quoted today: “In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war. Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.”
Sgt. Kevin O’Flarity, a squad leader, quoted today: “I don’t believe we should be here in the middle of a civil war. We’ve all lost friends over here. Most of us don’t know what we’re fighting for anymore. We’re serving our country and friends, but the only reason we go out every day is for each other. I don’t want any more of my guys to get hurt or die. If it was something I felt righteous about, maybe. But for this country and this conflict, no, it’s not worth it.”
U.S. intelligence assessment, written in January 2003 (two months before the war began), and finally released last Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: Any attempt to establish democracy in Iraq would be “a long, difficult, and probably turbulent challenge,” because Iraq’s political culture did “not foster liberalism or democracy.” There was also “no concept of loyal opposition and no history of alternation of power.” As a result, there was “a significant chance that domestic groups would engage in violent conflict with each other unless an occupying force prevented them from doing so.” Also, a U.S. invasion would allow al Qaeda “to establish the presence in Iraq and opportunity to strike at Americans it did not have prior to the invasion.”
Bush, at a press conference last Thursday: “I’m credible, because I read the intelligence.”
Senior Iraqi government official Ali Allawi, in his newly-released book The Occupation of Iraq, which documents the Bush team's ignorance of Iraqi sectarian tribalism: “Bush may well go down in history as presiding over one of America’s great strategic blunders. Thousands of servicemen have been the casualties of a failed policy.”
Bush, Memorial Day, 2007: “Our duty is to ensure that (the war's) outcome justifies the sacrifices made by those who fought and died in it. From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled, where our nation is more secure from attack, and where the gift of liberty is secured for millions who have never known it. This is our country's calling."
Friday, May 25, 2007
War and the art of the possible
The party-base recriminations are flying. Just as Rush Limbaugh and the Republican right went ballistic last week when the Washington GOP worked with Ted Kennedy to craft a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, the antiwar Democratic left is incensed at the moment because its Washington leaders have caved to President Bush on Iraq, allowing him to get his war money without the caveat of a troop withdrawal timeline.
Some of the commentary is predictably scathing. Liberal organizer/activist Robert Borosage rebukes the congressional Democratic leaders in advance for what he calls their “consistent inanity,” and contends that, by backing down, they are “voting to enable a rogue president. They are sacrificing the nation’s security and the lives of many young soldiers to stand with George Bush. Elsewhere, liberal blogger John Nichols writes at The Nation that “this failure to abide by the will of the people who elected Democrats to end the war will haunt Pelosi, Reid, and their party – not to mention the United States and the battered shell that is Iraq.” Elsewhere, moveon.org is threatening to find and fund ’08 candidates who are willing to launch primary challenges against those Democrats who voted Yes on the money. Elsewhere, activist/author David Sirota accuses the Democrats of “behaving like cowards,” of cooking up a “manure sundae,” and declares that “we are watching the rise of the Dick Cheney Democrats.”
The Democratic party is at it again, employing its traditional talent for intramural invective. This old habit doesn’t necessarily serve its members well. Liberals have long complained – accurately – that Bush has been pursuing his war with scant regard for the facts on the ground, but their current anger at the Democratic Congress suggests that they, too, are prone to ignoring reality.
The facts on the ground, in Washington, are simple: The Democrats may have the gavel, but they don’t have the votes to impose their will on Bush and override his vetoes. The margins are way too thin. And a fair number of elected Democrats represent moderate swing districts, in places like Indiana and North Carolina, where constitutents have soured on the war, but nevertheless might view a war money cutoff as tantamount to abandoning the troops in harm’s way.
As Jonathan Alter points out in his latest column, “This (swing state factor) is not a figment of some spineless Democrat's imagination, but the reality of what he or she will face back in the district over Memorial Day. Democrats who vote to cut funding not only risk getting thrown in the briar patch by Republican hit men in Washington; they also might not be able to satisfy their otherwise antiwar constituents at home….Democrats who vote to cut off funding can be more easily blamed for the war's failures, especially in swing districts.” All told, “Bush and his war might be terribly unpopular, but under our system, he's still holding the high cards.”
Politics is not only about passion; it’s also about practicing the art of the possible. And I suspect that the anger in some liberal quarters will wane as long as the congressional Democrats treat this week’s action as merely a tactical retreat, as just a speed bump in the long-run campaign to ratchet up the pressure on Bush. There are funding fights slated for this summer; there will be a “progress” report on the Surge in September. Barring a miracle in Iraq, Bush’s political standing, even among Republicans, is likely to weaken further as the ’08 election season nears, thus presenting new opportunities. Even Bush seems to recognize the need to cede a little; it’s noteworthy that he is suddenly talking now about embracing some of the key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group – the same body that he spurned last winter - and that the White House is now launching media trial balloons about '08 troop drawdowns.
Time is on the Democrats’ side. The party that’s saddled with an unpopular war tends to be punished at election time, as the Democrats should well remember. They lost the ’52 race in part because of Korea, and lost the ’68 race because of Vietnam. And now that the GOP has been successfully tagged as the Iraq war party, the Democrats will have the wind at their backs in 2008 – if they can manage not to slice each other up along the way.
And have a great holiday.
Some of the commentary is predictably scathing. Liberal organizer/activist Robert Borosage rebukes the congressional Democratic leaders in advance for what he calls their “consistent inanity,” and contends that, by backing down, they are “voting to enable a rogue president. They are sacrificing the nation’s security and the lives of many young soldiers to stand with George Bush. Elsewhere, liberal blogger John Nichols writes at The Nation that “this failure to abide by the will of the people who elected Democrats to end the war will haunt Pelosi, Reid, and their party – not to mention the United States and the battered shell that is Iraq.” Elsewhere, moveon.org is threatening to find and fund ’08 candidates who are willing to launch primary challenges against those Democrats who voted Yes on the money. Elsewhere, activist/author David Sirota accuses the Democrats of “behaving like cowards,” of cooking up a “manure sundae,” and declares that “we are watching the rise of the Dick Cheney Democrats.”
The Democratic party is at it again, employing its traditional talent for intramural invective. This old habit doesn’t necessarily serve its members well. Liberals have long complained – accurately – that Bush has been pursuing his war with scant regard for the facts on the ground, but their current anger at the Democratic Congress suggests that they, too, are prone to ignoring reality.
The facts on the ground, in Washington, are simple: The Democrats may have the gavel, but they don’t have the votes to impose their will on Bush and override his vetoes. The margins are way too thin. And a fair number of elected Democrats represent moderate swing districts, in places like Indiana and North Carolina, where constitutents have soured on the war, but nevertheless might view a war money cutoff as tantamount to abandoning the troops in harm’s way.
As Jonathan Alter points out in his latest column, “This (swing state factor) is not a figment of some spineless Democrat's imagination, but the reality of what he or she will face back in the district over Memorial Day. Democrats who vote to cut funding not only risk getting thrown in the briar patch by Republican hit men in Washington; they also might not be able to satisfy their otherwise antiwar constituents at home….Democrats who vote to cut off funding can be more easily blamed for the war's failures, especially in swing districts.” All told, “Bush and his war might be terribly unpopular, but under our system, he's still holding the high cards.”
Politics is not only about passion; it’s also about practicing the art of the possible. And I suspect that the anger in some liberal quarters will wane as long as the congressional Democrats treat this week’s action as merely a tactical retreat, as just a speed bump in the long-run campaign to ratchet up the pressure on Bush. There are funding fights slated for this summer; there will be a “progress” report on the Surge in September. Barring a miracle in Iraq, Bush’s political standing, even among Republicans, is likely to weaken further as the ’08 election season nears, thus presenting new opportunities. Even Bush seems to recognize the need to cede a little; it’s noteworthy that he is suddenly talking now about embracing some of the key recommendations of the Iraq Study Group – the same body that he spurned last winter - and that the White House is now launching media trial balloons about '08 troop drawdowns.
Time is on the Democrats’ side. The party that’s saddled with an unpopular war tends to be punished at election time, as the Democrats should well remember. They lost the ’52 race in part because of Korea, and lost the ’68 race because of Vietnam. And now that the GOP has been successfully tagged as the Iraq war party, the Democrats will have the wind at their backs in 2008 – if they can manage not to slice each other up along the way.
And have a great holiday.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Confessions of a "quiet girl"
One of President Bush’s inexperienced ideological apparatchiks provided us yesterday with an illuminating tutorial on the rule of law.
Here’s the gist of Monica Goodling’s advice: Even if you think that maybe you might be breaking the law, you’re still blameless as long as you think you didn’t really “mean” to do it. And even if you essentially have to admit that you did break the law, you’re still OK as long as you think your motives were pure, and as long as you think of yourself as (in her words) “a fairly quiet girl who tries to do the right thing and tries to treat people kindly along the way.”
You kids watching at home, I would not advise following Monica’s legal advice. Granted, this advice comes from a former top official of the U.S. Justice Department, but it’s important to remember that you are living in the Bush era, when it is considered perfectly acceptable to entrust a top Justice post to somebody who has never prosecuted a case in court, somebody who earned her spurs at the Republican National Committee, somebody who earned her law degree from Pat Robertson’s Regent University, which, last we checked, was rated nationally as a fourth-tier law school. There is no fifth tier.
While testifying yesterday on the prosecutor purge scandal (and becoming the latest Justice bigwig to plead ignorance on the origins of the purge list), Goodling did something that is virtually unprecedented, at least for a loyal Bushie: She confessed error. No doubt she felt comfortable doing so because she was testifying under a grant of immunity from prosecution, but whatever. It was still bracing to see somebody from this administration dip a toe into the world of factual reality.
And the reality, of course, is that this administration has been laboring to politicize the once-independent Justice Department, seeking to make it the legal arm of the Republican party. The fired U.S. attorneys have been saying this for many months; the documentary evidence has been overwhelming; and a newly retired senior career Justice official, Daniel Metcalfe, spilled the beans just last month.
The civil service laws state quite clearly that job applicants for non-partisan positions should be quizzed only on their competence and professional qualifications, not on their political leanings. Any screener who stresses the latter should be considered in breach of the law.
Here’s Goodling yesterday, talking about her five years at Justice: “I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions. I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions. And I regret those mistakes.” Later, when asked how often this happened, she said: “I can’t think that I could have done it more than 50 times, but I don’t know.”
Goodling is currently the target of an internal Justice probe into whether she violated what the department calls “prohibited personnel practices.” (Translation: Even though she was basically doing what her superiors wanted, she’s being set up to take the fall.) Indeed, recent news reports have detailed her screening criteria for nonpartisan posts. She stalled the hiring of job applicants whom she suspected to be liberals (she copped to one specific case yesterday, confessing that she made a “snap judgment”); she ousted career prosecutors who failed her political litmus tests; she researched applicants’ campaign contributions; and, at one point, this law grad from a religious-right institution even came up with a personal morality pop quiz, asking one Justice applicant, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”
All told, Justice careerists and applicants who ran afoul of Goodling were sometimes warned that they had "a Monica problem." But yesterday, despite the fact that she was ‘fessing up, she did so with a caveat. She offered what I would essentially call the Nice Girl Defense. A nice girl doesn’t plot to do anything wrong, it just happens. Witness this exchange yesterday:
Q: “Do you believe that (it was) legal or illegal for you to take those political considerations in mind?”
Goodling: “I don’t believe I intended to commit a crime…I crossed the line of the civil service rules.”
Q: “Rules? Laws. You crossed the law on civil service laws. You crossed the line on civil service laws, is that right?”
Goodling: “I believe I crossed the lines. But I didn’t mean to.”
I don’t believe I intended to…I didn’t mean to…
Kids at home, I would advise you not to employ the Goodling defense if you ever get stopped by a cop for speeding. For instance, if a cop says that radar clocked you going 75 in a 55 zone, do not bother to say “I don’t believe I intended” to speed. Nor should you say “I didn’t mean to.” He’ll write that ticket anyway.
Goodling’s attempt to offer mitigating circumstances merely prompts more questions. Was she aware of the civil service bar on partisan screening? Did her Bush superiors indicate to her that she was expected to abide by those rules? After she breached them a few times, did anybody flag her behavior and tell her to stop? Can she credibly argue that she “didn’t mean to” cross the line - when in fact she was a repeat offender, doing so on roughly 50 occasions? (Best defense: She just couldn’t help it.)
Here’s the short answer to all of the above: Goodling was merely an instrument of the Bush administration strategy to politicize the nonpartisan institutions of government.
All we need do is connect the dots. Lest we forget, Lurita Doan, the chief of the General Services Administration, was recently summoned to Capitol Hill to explain why – in apparent violation of federal law – she allowed a Karl Rove political lieutenant to brief nonpartisan GSA workers on the GOP’s ’08 election prospects. At that Jan. 26 event, Doan also reportedly discussed ways that her agency might be able to help GOP candidates, whom she referred to as “our candidates.”
And now we have word that the independent Office of Special Counsel has found Doan to be in breach of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal officials from engaging partisan political activity in the federal workplace. Yet Doan is not an isolated example, either; reports have indicated that similar partisan briefings have occurred at virtually all federal agencies.
Doan, however, still maintains that she doesn’t remember that Jan. 26 meeting. By comparison, Monica Goodling is Jimmy Stewart, which might be enough to earn her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
-------
The liberal Democratic base is outraged today about the congressional cave-in on the Iraq war money. The Democrats are giving Bush what he wants, financing without a withdrawal timeline, and the Capitol Hill voting is expected today. But I don't see why anybody should be shocked, since this outcome has long been obvious. I'll return to the topic tomorrow; for now, I'll quote my own newspaper column of April 29:
In a British-style parliamentary system, (Bush) would be gone by now. But even a politically weakened American commander in chief can still play a strong hand - which is why, at least for now, the congressional Democrats are doomed to fail in their current bid to legislate an end to the war. Public sentiment (against the war) is irrelevant; all that matters, in this hardball political moment, is the stubborn stance of the Decider and the math on Capitol Hill. Bush will veto any spending bill that contains a pullout timetable, and the Democrats lack the votes to override him. Later this spring, they'll probably wind up giving him the war money he wants, absent any pullout timetable, in part because they don't want to be tarred as being "against the troops," particularly on the eve of an election year. (Indeed, a CBS News poll reported this month that only 9 percent of Americans favor cutting off all the war money.) So, looking down the road, it's a cinch bet that our soldiers will still be dying on the day Bush fobs off the disaster on his successor.
Here’s the gist of Monica Goodling’s advice: Even if you think that maybe you might be breaking the law, you’re still blameless as long as you think you didn’t really “mean” to do it. And even if you essentially have to admit that you did break the law, you’re still OK as long as you think your motives were pure, and as long as you think of yourself as (in her words) “a fairly quiet girl who tries to do the right thing and tries to treat people kindly along the way.”
You kids watching at home, I would not advise following Monica’s legal advice. Granted, this advice comes from a former top official of the U.S. Justice Department, but it’s important to remember that you are living in the Bush era, when it is considered perfectly acceptable to entrust a top Justice post to somebody who has never prosecuted a case in court, somebody who earned her spurs at the Republican National Committee, somebody who earned her law degree from Pat Robertson’s Regent University, which, last we checked, was rated nationally as a fourth-tier law school. There is no fifth tier.
While testifying yesterday on the prosecutor purge scandal (and becoming the latest Justice bigwig to plead ignorance on the origins of the purge list), Goodling did something that is virtually unprecedented, at least for a loyal Bushie: She confessed error. No doubt she felt comfortable doing so because she was testifying under a grant of immunity from prosecution, but whatever. It was still bracing to see somebody from this administration dip a toe into the world of factual reality.
And the reality, of course, is that this administration has been laboring to politicize the once-independent Justice Department, seeking to make it the legal arm of the Republican party. The fired U.S. attorneys have been saying this for many months; the documentary evidence has been overwhelming; and a newly retired senior career Justice official, Daniel Metcalfe, spilled the beans just last month.
The civil service laws state quite clearly that job applicants for non-partisan positions should be quizzed only on their competence and professional qualifications, not on their political leanings. Any screener who stresses the latter should be considered in breach of the law.
Here’s Goodling yesterday, talking about her five years at Justice: “I do acknowledge that I may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions. I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions. And I regret those mistakes.” Later, when asked how often this happened, she said: “I can’t think that I could have done it more than 50 times, but I don’t know.”
Goodling is currently the target of an internal Justice probe into whether she violated what the department calls “prohibited personnel practices.” (Translation: Even though she was basically doing what her superiors wanted, she’s being set up to take the fall.) Indeed, recent news reports have detailed her screening criteria for nonpartisan posts. She stalled the hiring of job applicants whom she suspected to be liberals (she copped to one specific case yesterday, confessing that she made a “snap judgment”); she ousted career prosecutors who failed her political litmus tests; she researched applicants’ campaign contributions; and, at one point, this law grad from a religious-right institution even came up with a personal morality pop quiz, asking one Justice applicant, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”
All told, Justice careerists and applicants who ran afoul of Goodling were sometimes warned that they had "a Monica problem." But yesterday, despite the fact that she was ‘fessing up, she did so with a caveat. She offered what I would essentially call the Nice Girl Defense. A nice girl doesn’t plot to do anything wrong, it just happens. Witness this exchange yesterday:
Q: “Do you believe that (it was) legal or illegal for you to take those political considerations in mind?”
Goodling: “I don’t believe I intended to commit a crime…I crossed the line of the civil service rules.”
Q: “Rules? Laws. You crossed the law on civil service laws. You crossed the line on civil service laws, is that right?”
Goodling: “I believe I crossed the lines. But I didn’t mean to.”
I don’t believe I intended to…I didn’t mean to…
Kids at home, I would advise you not to employ the Goodling defense if you ever get stopped by a cop for speeding. For instance, if a cop says that radar clocked you going 75 in a 55 zone, do not bother to say “I don’t believe I intended” to speed. Nor should you say “I didn’t mean to.” He’ll write that ticket anyway.
Goodling’s attempt to offer mitigating circumstances merely prompts more questions. Was she aware of the civil service bar on partisan screening? Did her Bush superiors indicate to her that she was expected to abide by those rules? After she breached them a few times, did anybody flag her behavior and tell her to stop? Can she credibly argue that she “didn’t mean to” cross the line - when in fact she was a repeat offender, doing so on roughly 50 occasions? (Best defense: She just couldn’t help it.)
Here’s the short answer to all of the above: Goodling was merely an instrument of the Bush administration strategy to politicize the nonpartisan institutions of government.
All we need do is connect the dots. Lest we forget, Lurita Doan, the chief of the General Services Administration, was recently summoned to Capitol Hill to explain why – in apparent violation of federal law – she allowed a Karl Rove political lieutenant to brief nonpartisan GSA workers on the GOP’s ’08 election prospects. At that Jan. 26 event, Doan also reportedly discussed ways that her agency might be able to help GOP candidates, whom she referred to as “our candidates.”
And now we have word that the independent Office of Special Counsel has found Doan to be in breach of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal officials from engaging partisan political activity in the federal workplace. Yet Doan is not an isolated example, either; reports have indicated that similar partisan briefings have occurred at virtually all federal agencies.
Doan, however, still maintains that she doesn’t remember that Jan. 26 meeting. By comparison, Monica Goodling is Jimmy Stewart, which might be enough to earn her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
-------
The liberal Democratic base is outraged today about the congressional cave-in on the Iraq war money. The Democrats are giving Bush what he wants, financing without a withdrawal timeline, and the Capitol Hill voting is expected today. But I don't see why anybody should be shocked, since this outcome has long been obvious. I'll return to the topic tomorrow; for now, I'll quote my own newspaper column of April 29:
In a British-style parliamentary system, (Bush) would be gone by now. But even a politically weakened American commander in chief can still play a strong hand - which is why, at least for now, the congressional Democrats are doomed to fail in their current bid to legislate an end to the war. Public sentiment (against the war) is irrelevant; all that matters, in this hardball political moment, is the stubborn stance of the Decider and the math on Capitol Hill. Bush will veto any spending bill that contains a pullout timetable, and the Democrats lack the votes to override him. Later this spring, they'll probably wind up giving him the war money he wants, absent any pullout timetable, in part because they don't want to be tarred as being "against the troops," particularly on the eve of an election year. (Indeed, a CBS News poll reported this month that only 9 percent of Americans favor cutting off all the war money.) So, looking down the road, it's a cinch bet that our soldiers will still be dying on the day Bush fobs off the disaster on his successor.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Life is good in Goreworld
Depending on how one keeps score, we’re currently enduring the third (or fourth, or fifth) Al Gore Boomlet.
Let’s see: There was a boffo guest stint on Saturday Night Live, right before he pulled the plug on a 2004 candidacy…a gush of Gore nostalgia, and four magazine covers, when the theatres were playing An Inconvenient Truth…an ‘07 victory lap at the Oscars, coupled with entreaties from the Hollywood crowd that he run again in ‘08….and now, this week, a national tour for his new book, The Assault on Reason, a broad brush indictment of the political-media industrial complex, coupled with a media blitz that allows him to play wink-wink with the TV anchors.
Message to Goreheads, and to all the other nostalgic Democrats who somehow forget that he was widely reviled in 2000 for failing to parlay years of peace and prosperity into victory:
He ain’t running next year. Get over it.
He performed last night on the friendly confines of Larry King’s CNN show, and it’s clear he is having a grand old time. He’s playing the media the way Herbie Hancock tickles the piano keys, with the deft touch of a seasoned pro. He knows that he can continue to stoke maximum attention for himself, and for his big-picture concepts, if he simply plays along with the will-he-or-won’t-he guessing game. He also knows that the some of the same media folks pining for his ’08 entry today would commence to tear him apart if he actually stepped into the ring. So it’s a win-win for Gore; he perpetuates the tease, by signaling that he really has no interest in running, while stopping just short of a Shermanesque refusal. (Gore to King: “I’m not thinking about being a candidate….I haven’t ruled it out for all time.”) Then it’s on to the next venue.
Why on earth would Gore want to revisit the indignities of 2000, and risk new ones? He’s clearly thriving inside Goreworld, an environment of his own design where he can frame a mega-message as he sees fit, circulate it through channels of his choosing, and show up at handpicked events where he is inevitably lionized. He was never a natural politician, and the street rules of politics have not become more high-minded during his seven-year absence. I believed Gore last night when he told King, in reference to politics, “I don’t have to play that game….I’m enjoying my life, I’m serving in other ways, I’ve been focused on a different kind of campaign.”
And nobody with a yen for traditional political combat would write a book like The Assault on Reason. The typical candidate tome, appearing on the eve of a presidential primary season, is filled with poll-tested swill and boilerplate passages such as “I believe that America’s best days are ahead of us” and “Together, we can forge a new tomorrow,” or whatever. Gore’s book, by contrast, is a scathing putdown of the prevailing American culture, everything from television’s obsession with celebrity trivia, the average citizen’s couch-potato propensities, and the average politician’s willingness to play on voters’ fears with the help of propaganda techniques perfected by “a new generation of media Machiavellis.”
Nor would a prospective candidate pepper his book with quotes from German philosophers, 17th-century British essayists and poets, or from academic neuroscientists who specialize in researching the pain-sensing neurons of the brain. That's just the kind of smarty-pants stuff that people didn't like about Gore in 2000, back when they seemed to think that Bush was better because he'd be more fun to drink brewskis with. But Gore is happy to invoke the heavy thinkers now, because he's free of his political restraints.
He elaborated on his big themes last night on CNN: “We have this huge onslaught of trivialities (on television)…So much of it is mind-deadening…The danger is that the volume of it excludes serious discussions of the choices we have to make as a free people.” These observations about TV aren’t exactly profound – Edward R. Murrow complained about the exact same tendencies in a 1958 speech that ultimately doomed him at CBS – so maybe Gore’s image as a seer is a tad overstated. I would argue, however, that anybody willing to say all this stuff out loud is clearly not thirsting to run for president.
Gore said last night that the ’08 Democratic candidates are “trapped in a bad system,” characterized by “the impressionistic approaches that come out of the daily news cycle, the tit for tat of what is a hot buzz-word issue of the day…the media’s obsession with the so-called horse race.” He said that the candidates are “all trapped in the spin cycle, ‘what is their motivation for doing this or doing that? What are they thinking about this or that?’ I think we ought to have a much greater focus on what the actual problems of the country are and how we can solve them.”
Somebody who is comfortable in the role of outsider can afford to talk that way. A prospective presidential candidate would never talk that way; any White House aspirant who implies that he is better or nobler than the political process probably wouldn’t get very far. And it’s not as if the Democrats desperately need Gore in order to win in 2008; the polls report broad rank-and-file satisfaction with the current Democratic field. And among Americans generally, Gore still has high negatives, competitive with Hillary Clinton.
So the odds are that this boomlet shall pass as well. Gore will hew to the high road, where the issues are loftier – and his prospects for success are just as daunting. Consider, for instance, this classic juxtaposition last night on CNN:
At one point, Gore went on a tear about the shallowness of cable TV coverage, complaining how “the line between entertainment and news is now very blurred, and a lot of news organizations feel the need to run polls and conduct focus groups the same as politicians now. And so we get a lot more of…Paris Hilton's legal battles on her jail term than we get about how we can solve the climate crisis.”
Several minutes later, as he was still talking, this is what appeared in the crawl at the bottom of the screen:
“Two weeks before Paris Hilton goes to jail, is she turning to religion to save her?”
Let’s see: There was a boffo guest stint on Saturday Night Live, right before he pulled the plug on a 2004 candidacy…a gush of Gore nostalgia, and four magazine covers, when the theatres were playing An Inconvenient Truth…an ‘07 victory lap at the Oscars, coupled with entreaties from the Hollywood crowd that he run again in ‘08….and now, this week, a national tour for his new book, The Assault on Reason, a broad brush indictment of the political-media industrial complex, coupled with a media blitz that allows him to play wink-wink with the TV anchors.
Message to Goreheads, and to all the other nostalgic Democrats who somehow forget that he was widely reviled in 2000 for failing to parlay years of peace and prosperity into victory:
He ain’t running next year. Get over it.
He performed last night on the friendly confines of Larry King’s CNN show, and it’s clear he is having a grand old time. He’s playing the media the way Herbie Hancock tickles the piano keys, with the deft touch of a seasoned pro. He knows that he can continue to stoke maximum attention for himself, and for his big-picture concepts, if he simply plays along with the will-he-or-won’t-he guessing game. He also knows that the some of the same media folks pining for his ’08 entry today would commence to tear him apart if he actually stepped into the ring. So it’s a win-win for Gore; he perpetuates the tease, by signaling that he really has no interest in running, while stopping just short of a Shermanesque refusal. (Gore to King: “I’m not thinking about being a candidate….I haven’t ruled it out for all time.”) Then it’s on to the next venue.
Why on earth would Gore want to revisit the indignities of 2000, and risk new ones? He’s clearly thriving inside Goreworld, an environment of his own design where he can frame a mega-message as he sees fit, circulate it through channels of his choosing, and show up at handpicked events where he is inevitably lionized. He was never a natural politician, and the street rules of politics have not become more high-minded during his seven-year absence. I believed Gore last night when he told King, in reference to politics, “I don’t have to play that game….I’m enjoying my life, I’m serving in other ways, I’ve been focused on a different kind of campaign.”
And nobody with a yen for traditional political combat would write a book like The Assault on Reason. The typical candidate tome, appearing on the eve of a presidential primary season, is filled with poll-tested swill and boilerplate passages such as “I believe that America’s best days are ahead of us” and “Together, we can forge a new tomorrow,” or whatever. Gore’s book, by contrast, is a scathing putdown of the prevailing American culture, everything from television’s obsession with celebrity trivia, the average citizen’s couch-potato propensities, and the average politician’s willingness to play on voters’ fears with the help of propaganda techniques perfected by “a new generation of media Machiavellis.”
Nor would a prospective candidate pepper his book with quotes from German philosophers, 17th-century British essayists and poets, or from academic neuroscientists who specialize in researching the pain-sensing neurons of the brain. That's just the kind of smarty-pants stuff that people didn't like about Gore in 2000, back when they seemed to think that Bush was better because he'd be more fun to drink brewskis with. But Gore is happy to invoke the heavy thinkers now, because he's free of his political restraints.
He elaborated on his big themes last night on CNN: “We have this huge onslaught of trivialities (on television)…So much of it is mind-deadening…The danger is that the volume of it excludes serious discussions of the choices we have to make as a free people.” These observations about TV aren’t exactly profound – Edward R. Murrow complained about the exact same tendencies in a 1958 speech that ultimately doomed him at CBS – so maybe Gore’s image as a seer is a tad overstated. I would argue, however, that anybody willing to say all this stuff out loud is clearly not thirsting to run for president.
Gore said last night that the ’08 Democratic candidates are “trapped in a bad system,” characterized by “the impressionistic approaches that come out of the daily news cycle, the tit for tat of what is a hot buzz-word issue of the day…the media’s obsession with the so-called horse race.” He said that the candidates are “all trapped in the spin cycle, ‘what is their motivation for doing this or doing that? What are they thinking about this or that?’ I think we ought to have a much greater focus on what the actual problems of the country are and how we can solve them.”
Somebody who is comfortable in the role of outsider can afford to talk that way. A prospective presidential candidate would never talk that way; any White House aspirant who implies that he is better or nobler than the political process probably wouldn’t get very far. And it’s not as if the Democrats desperately need Gore in order to win in 2008; the polls report broad rank-and-file satisfaction with the current Democratic field. And among Americans generally, Gore still has high negatives, competitive with Hillary Clinton.
So the odds are that this boomlet shall pass as well. Gore will hew to the high road, where the issues are loftier – and his prospects for success are just as daunting. Consider, for instance, this classic juxtaposition last night on CNN:
At one point, Gore went on a tear about the shallowness of cable TV coverage, complaining how “the line between entertainment and news is now very blurred, and a lot of news organizations feel the need to run polls and conduct focus groups the same as politicians now. And so we get a lot more of…Paris Hilton's legal battles on her jail term than we get about how we can solve the climate crisis.”
Several minutes later, as he was still talking, this is what appeared in the crawl at the bottom of the screen:
“Two weeks before Paris Hilton goes to jail, is she turning to religion to save her?”
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Straying beyond the factual
On paper, Bill Richardson would appear to be the perfect Democratic presidential candidate. He has serious executive experience at the federal level (Energy secretary, U.N. ambassador), a long stint on Capitol Hill (14 years as a congressman), and, perhaps most importantly, he is currently the popular governor of a swing state (New Mexico), where his track record as a tax cutter has earned plaudits from Forbes magazine and the libertarian conservatives at the Cato Institute think tank. Plus, he’s an Hispanic at a time when the Hispanic vote is becoming more pivotal to victory. Plus, he’s a four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Plus, he’s a back-slapping people person in the mold of his ex-boss, Bill Clinton.
But I suspect that even if Richardson was somehow able to outfight his two mega-celebrity rivals (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), and neutralize the charismatically gifted John Edwards, he might still be politically vulnerable to Republican attack.
I can see it now: “Bill Richardson, serial exaggerator.” In other words, a replay of 2000, when Al Gore wore the label.
I say this, because Richardson has been known on occasion to stray beyond the factual. Maybe that’s a key character flaw, maybe not. But the point is, the GOP has been masterful at converting trivialities into hyperbole. And yesterday, for instance, even as Richardson officially announced his ’08 candidacy, two seemingly minor matters caught my attention.
First, while launching his campaign in vote-rich and heavily Hispanic California, he hawked his credentials as a son of the Golden State: “It means so much to me to announce my candidacy in California, the state that I was born.” I was surprised to learn he was a native Californian…but, it turns out, that was only technically true. Within hours, he felt compelled to amend his story, by confessing that that his stint as a native Californian lasted “about eight hours,” because his father had wanted him to be born on American soil, as opposed to Mexican soil. So why did Richardson stress California roots in his announcement? Because, he replied yesterday, “now there’s the California primary, so I’m trying to improve those roots.” (Italics are mine.)
Second, Richardson was dogged yesterday by a complaint from a New Mexico woman who contends that her governor has been repeatedly misquoting her on the campaign trail. De’on Miller says that Richardson has been telling a “lie” about her, inventing an exchange that she says never took place, and she is demanding an apology.
In 2004, Richardson attended a memorial service for Miller’s son, Aaron Austin, a Marine lance corporal who was killed in Iraq. In campaign speeches, Richardson has often recalled having a conversation with Miller that day; according to Richardson, Miller said this to him: “I wanted you to know that my son was 17. He’s a Marine. That’s all he wanted to be. He was proud to serve his country. And I know he is happy today. What I also want to thank you for is this check I just got from the United States government. It’s $11,000.” Richardson says that this conversation inspired him to push successfully for state legislation that provides a much high death benefit to the survivors of National Guardsmen killed in Iraq.
But Miller says she never talked to Richardson about money. She told the Associated Press: “I didn’t exchange words at all with the governor there, except when he gave me the flag. And those few words – whatever was exchanged when he handed me the flag and the Spirit of New Mexico award – certainly had nothing to do with money….I don’t know a person rich or poor that would be told that their only living child has been killed, and you’re going to strike up a money conversation? I didn’t discuss money with my mom or anyone like that. Why would I discuss it with him at a memorial service for my son? I’m still in shock (at that moment)…if I had every bill in the world due and no money, I’m not caring about that…I got the feeling he’s trying to use us to make us sound like little podunks or something. My husband makes $60,000 a year. I’m a college graduate. You know, I find it all very insulting.”
The Richardson camp is sticking with the candidate’s version of the conversation, although it acknowledges that, in the retelling, Richardson has frequently gotten the son’s name wrong, misstated his age, and referred to him as the first New Mexico citizen killed in Iraq, when, in reality, he was the third.
Maybe this story, and the California conflation, strike you as trivial. (Miller also says she’s a Republican who generally likes Richardson, so maybe factor that in.) But the potential problem, this kind of stuff has come up before.
Richardson used to claim that, during a youthful stint on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he had served as the top foreign affairs aide to liberal legend Hubert Humphrey. But he dropped the claim when the press discovered it was untrue. Richardson didn’t go quietly, however, saying, “I was not the top aide, but I was a top aide, what the hell’s the difference?” To which a former Humphrey aide said that Richardson “was just a regular member of the subcommittee staff.”
Richardson also used to claim that, as a young amateur baseball player, he had been drafted in 1966 by the big-league Kansas City Athletics. He repeated this claim for nearly four decades; it turned up in his campaign biography when he ran for Congress, and again in a Clinton White House press release in 1997, on the eve of his stint as U.N. ambassador. Eighteen months ago, a New Mexico newspaper established that the claim was bogus. Richardson didn’t dispute finding: “After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter….I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A’s.”
Again, none of this necessarily means that the guy can’t be trusted to keep America safe; and we would be hard pressed to find a politician who doesn’t invent facts or stretch the truth on the campaign trail. But if Richardson winds up on the national ticket (arguably as running mate), his verbal expansiveness might be grist for GOP caricature.
Lest we forget, those are the same folks who successfully painted Al Gore as a compulsive liar, simply by listing the small fibs he had really uttered, and making up some bigger fibs that he had never uttered. (Gore never said that he had invented the Internet, merely that he had worked to set it up during his ‘80s Senate career.) Indeed, the guy who used the Gore/Internet lie in his stump speech sits in the White House today.
-------
Speaking of the guy in the White House, he uttered this gem yesterday: Any attempt by the Democratic Congress to conduct a vote of no-confidence in attorney general Alberto Gonzales would be mere “political theatre,” concocted by “actors on the political-theatre stage.”
This, from the same guy who perfected the flight suit strut on Mission Accomplished Day, with the event staged at twilight, or, as they call it in Hollywood, “magic hour.”
But I suspect that even if Richardson was somehow able to outfight his two mega-celebrity rivals (Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), and neutralize the charismatically gifted John Edwards, he might still be politically vulnerable to Republican attack.
I can see it now: “Bill Richardson, serial exaggerator.” In other words, a replay of 2000, when Al Gore wore the label.
I say this, because Richardson has been known on occasion to stray beyond the factual. Maybe that’s a key character flaw, maybe not. But the point is, the GOP has been masterful at converting trivialities into hyperbole. And yesterday, for instance, even as Richardson officially announced his ’08 candidacy, two seemingly minor matters caught my attention.
First, while launching his campaign in vote-rich and heavily Hispanic California, he hawked his credentials as a son of the Golden State: “It means so much to me to announce my candidacy in California, the state that I was born.” I was surprised to learn he was a native Californian…but, it turns out, that was only technically true. Within hours, he felt compelled to amend his story, by confessing that that his stint as a native Californian lasted “about eight hours,” because his father had wanted him to be born on American soil, as opposed to Mexican soil. So why did Richardson stress California roots in his announcement? Because, he replied yesterday, “now there’s the California primary, so I’m trying to improve those roots.” (Italics are mine.)
Second, Richardson was dogged yesterday by a complaint from a New Mexico woman who contends that her governor has been repeatedly misquoting her on the campaign trail. De’on Miller says that Richardson has been telling a “lie” about her, inventing an exchange that she says never took place, and she is demanding an apology.
In 2004, Richardson attended a memorial service for Miller’s son, Aaron Austin, a Marine lance corporal who was killed in Iraq. In campaign speeches, Richardson has often recalled having a conversation with Miller that day; according to Richardson, Miller said this to him: “I wanted you to know that my son was 17. He’s a Marine. That’s all he wanted to be. He was proud to serve his country. And I know he is happy today. What I also want to thank you for is this check I just got from the United States government. It’s $11,000.” Richardson says that this conversation inspired him to push successfully for state legislation that provides a much high death benefit to the survivors of National Guardsmen killed in Iraq.
But Miller says she never talked to Richardson about money. She told the Associated Press: “I didn’t exchange words at all with the governor there, except when he gave me the flag. And those few words – whatever was exchanged when he handed me the flag and the Spirit of New Mexico award – certainly had nothing to do with money….I don’t know a person rich or poor that would be told that their only living child has been killed, and you’re going to strike up a money conversation? I didn’t discuss money with my mom or anyone like that. Why would I discuss it with him at a memorial service for my son? I’m still in shock (at that moment)…if I had every bill in the world due and no money, I’m not caring about that…I got the feeling he’s trying to use us to make us sound like little podunks or something. My husband makes $60,000 a year. I’m a college graduate. You know, I find it all very insulting.”
The Richardson camp is sticking with the candidate’s version of the conversation, although it acknowledges that, in the retelling, Richardson has frequently gotten the son’s name wrong, misstated his age, and referred to him as the first New Mexico citizen killed in Iraq, when, in reality, he was the third.
Maybe this story, and the California conflation, strike you as trivial. (Miller also says she’s a Republican who generally likes Richardson, so maybe factor that in.) But the potential problem, this kind of stuff has come up before.
Richardson used to claim that, during a youthful stint on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he had served as the top foreign affairs aide to liberal legend Hubert Humphrey. But he dropped the claim when the press discovered it was untrue. Richardson didn’t go quietly, however, saying, “I was not the top aide, but I was a top aide, what the hell’s the difference?” To which a former Humphrey aide said that Richardson “was just a regular member of the subcommittee staff.”
Richardson also used to claim that, as a young amateur baseball player, he had been drafted in 1966 by the big-league Kansas City Athletics. He repeated this claim for nearly four decades; it turned up in his campaign biography when he ran for Congress, and again in a Clinton White House press release in 1997, on the eve of his stint as U.N. ambassador. Eighteen months ago, a New Mexico newspaper established that the claim was bogus. Richardson didn’t dispute finding: “After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter….I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A’s.”
Again, none of this necessarily means that the guy can’t be trusted to keep America safe; and we would be hard pressed to find a politician who doesn’t invent facts or stretch the truth on the campaign trail. But if Richardson winds up on the national ticket (arguably as running mate), his verbal expansiveness might be grist for GOP caricature.
Lest we forget, those are the same folks who successfully painted Al Gore as a compulsive liar, simply by listing the small fibs he had really uttered, and making up some bigger fibs that he had never uttered. (Gore never said that he had invented the Internet, merely that he had worked to set it up during his ‘80s Senate career.) Indeed, the guy who used the Gore/Internet lie in his stump speech sits in the White House today.
-------
Speaking of the guy in the White House, he uttered this gem yesterday: Any attempt by the Democratic Congress to conduct a vote of no-confidence in attorney general Alberto Gonzales would be mere “political theatre,” concocted by “actors on the political-theatre stage.”
This, from the same guy who perfected the flight suit strut on Mission Accomplished Day, with the event staged at twilight, or, as they call it in Hollywood, “magic hour.”
Monday, May 21, 2007
The GOP's immigration detonation
The ticking time bomb has finally detonated.
It has been clear, for some time now, that the immigration issue had the potential to wreak havoc within the increasingly fragile Republican coalition. Big business (and President Bush) want to let the 12 million illegals stay in America and earn their path to citizenship as guest workers; by contrast, the GOP’s conservative base assails anything that smacks of “amnesty,” and insists that the U.S. safeguard its borders in by kicking the illegals out of the country.
Now we have the Senate compromise bill, which does a little of both. But the noxious bottom line, in the eyes of infuriated GOP conservatives, is that the deal offers legal status to most of those 12 million people, and that provision alone is grist for outrage. The result is that Republicans now have yet another reason to fight among themselves, at a time of political weakness when they can ill afford further discord. Worse yet, this issue is a potential loser for many of the ’08 presidential contenders, as I will explain below.
Here’s a general take on the current GOP mood, in the wake of the immigration deal: “Republicans were already vulnerable due to Iraq, Scooter Libby’s indictment, corruption, Jack Abramoff, high gas prices, massive deficits, Homeland Security employes arrested on child porn charges, the loss of good jobs, and the generic Second Term Blues faced by most presidents. Did they really need to also fight amongst themselves with this? The more conservatives spend fighting each other, the less chance they have to do damage to (Democrats).” In other words, for Republicans, the proposed guest-worker law is a “textbook definition of a disaster.”
That assessment comes from the conservatives at the National Review.
Now let’s look at how the immigration issue puts the squeeze on most of the serious ’08 contenders. Two of them look like flip-flopping opportunists; another looks like a man of principle who will suffer as a result:
Rudy Giuliani. He’s stuck between his old support for illegal immigrants, and his current need to curry favor with those outraged Republican conservatives (many of whom will vote in the early ’08 primaries). As mayor of New York back in 1996, he sued in court to block new federal provisions that were designed to bar illegals from seeking public services; Giulani, who at the time styled himself as a prominent national defender of immigrants, contended that those provisions would merely “terrorize people.” Yet today, anxious not to incur conservative wrath, he has dumped his previous convictions. He is saying virtually nothing about the Senate immigration deal, aside from boilerplate about how his first priority is “to ensure our borders are secure.”
Mitt Romney. Unlike Giuliani, who has simply muzzled his old stance, Romney has seamlessly switched sides. A mere year ago, Romney told a reporter: “Those that are here paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process toward application for citizenship, as they would from their home country." In other words, he didn’t believe in simply kicking out the illegals. Moreover, when the Senate last year was weighing a reform measure that contained provisions more liberal than those in the current deal, Romney said publicly that the ’06 effort was “reasonable.” But that was then, and this is now. Spying an opportunity to toss red meat to the base, he now declares that “any legislation that allows illegal immigrants to stay in the country indefinitely…is a form of amnesty.”
John McCain. I have remarked frequently, in this space, about his frequent rightward pandering, much of which has undercut his “straight talk” reputation. But on the immigration issue, he has essentially stood firm. He has long been a key Senate player in favor of guest-worker reform, he risked conservative base wrath last week by sharing a Washington podium with fellow reformer Ted Kennedy, and he spoke favorably (albeit briefly) about a guest-worker program during last Tuesday’s GOP candidate debate. The result is that top conservative activists now say he is “toast.” In the words of Minneapolis attorney Scott Johnson, a prominent conservative blogger: “"It seems to me that for those of us who have kept an open mind on Senator McCain, hoping that he might pay us that minimal respect, the time has come to check out on his candidacy. Claiming paternity of the prospective immigration amnesty along with (Kennedy), Senator McCain has saved me the traditional buyer's remorse. Pending further developments, I've narrowed the field of acceptable Republican candidates. I'm opting for Anybody But McCain."
McCain is clearly bugged by Romney's repositioning on immigration. In a conference call with bloggers today, McCain said: "Maybe I should wait a couple weeks and see if (Romney's stance) changes. Maybe he can get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his yard." (McCain was going for a three-fer: swiping at Romney for flip-flopping, ridiculing Romney for his recent claim that he went hunting a few times, and resurrecting the recent story about how Romney once had illegal immigrants landscaping his suburban Boston home.)
Meanwhile, down in the second tier, Sam Brownback – renowned in some conservative circles as a conviction politician – is now telling people that he was for guest-worker reform before he was against it. In an earlier incarnation, he was one of the seven original sponsors of the liberal provisions floated by McCain and Kennedy. But now he’s insisting that the Senate deal is a menace to America. Could his new stance have anything to do with the need to woo conservative primary voters? His spokesman says no, of course not; the real reason, he claims, is that Brownback simply doesn’t trust “the Democrat Senate” to craft the best possible law.
Meanwhile, on the sidelines, Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson are condemning the deal in language echoing the conservative base. Perhaps that’s the smart politics at the moment, because, as National Review Online contends, “the top tier GOP candidate…who best channels the base’s seething outrage over this deal gets the nomination.” But the spectacle of pandering and flip-flopping candidates, competing for the favor of grassroots voters who are at odds with their own party establishment and White House, is hardly the prescription for Republican harmony.
As one noted observer put it the other day, “Even before the deal, Democrats entered the 2008 cycle unified and energized; Republicans, divided and demoralized. The president and the (GOP) senators have now managed to divide and demoralize their party even further…And triggering an internecine party conflict on the eve of a difficult and dangerous election is no way to re-elect a damaged incumbent party.”
So says conservative scholar David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush.
-------
Speaking of the GOP, who could have ever dreamed that the party would field so many candidates with so many divorces? Times have changed in the party of "family values." I dealt with this development in my latest Sunday print column.
It has been clear, for some time now, that the immigration issue had the potential to wreak havoc within the increasingly fragile Republican coalition. Big business (and President Bush) want to let the 12 million illegals stay in America and earn their path to citizenship as guest workers; by contrast, the GOP’s conservative base assails anything that smacks of “amnesty,” and insists that the U.S. safeguard its borders in by kicking the illegals out of the country.
Now we have the Senate compromise bill, which does a little of both. But the noxious bottom line, in the eyes of infuriated GOP conservatives, is that the deal offers legal status to most of those 12 million people, and that provision alone is grist for outrage. The result is that Republicans now have yet another reason to fight among themselves, at a time of political weakness when they can ill afford further discord. Worse yet, this issue is a potential loser for many of the ’08 presidential contenders, as I will explain below.
Here’s a general take on the current GOP mood, in the wake of the immigration deal: “Republicans were already vulnerable due to Iraq, Scooter Libby’s indictment, corruption, Jack Abramoff, high gas prices, massive deficits, Homeland Security employes arrested on child porn charges, the loss of good jobs, and the generic Second Term Blues faced by most presidents. Did they really need to also fight amongst themselves with this? The more conservatives spend fighting each other, the less chance they have to do damage to (Democrats).” In other words, for Republicans, the proposed guest-worker law is a “textbook definition of a disaster.”
That assessment comes from the conservatives at the National Review.
Now let’s look at how the immigration issue puts the squeeze on most of the serious ’08 contenders. Two of them look like flip-flopping opportunists; another looks like a man of principle who will suffer as a result:
Rudy Giuliani. He’s stuck between his old support for illegal immigrants, and his current need to curry favor with those outraged Republican conservatives (many of whom will vote in the early ’08 primaries). As mayor of New York back in 1996, he sued in court to block new federal provisions that were designed to bar illegals from seeking public services; Giulani, who at the time styled himself as a prominent national defender of immigrants, contended that those provisions would merely “terrorize people.” Yet today, anxious not to incur conservative wrath, he has dumped his previous convictions. He is saying virtually nothing about the Senate immigration deal, aside from boilerplate about how his first priority is “to ensure our borders are secure.”
Mitt Romney. Unlike Giuliani, who has simply muzzled his old stance, Romney has seamlessly switched sides. A mere year ago, Romney told a reporter: “Those that are here paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process toward application for citizenship, as they would from their home country." In other words, he didn’t believe in simply kicking out the illegals. Moreover, when the Senate last year was weighing a reform measure that contained provisions more liberal than those in the current deal, Romney said publicly that the ’06 effort was “reasonable.” But that was then, and this is now. Spying an opportunity to toss red meat to the base, he now declares that “any legislation that allows illegal immigrants to stay in the country indefinitely…is a form of amnesty.”
John McCain. I have remarked frequently, in this space, about his frequent rightward pandering, much of which has undercut his “straight talk” reputation. But on the immigration issue, he has essentially stood firm. He has long been a key Senate player in favor of guest-worker reform, he risked conservative base wrath last week by sharing a Washington podium with fellow reformer Ted Kennedy, and he spoke favorably (albeit briefly) about a guest-worker program during last Tuesday’s GOP candidate debate. The result is that top conservative activists now say he is “toast.” In the words of Minneapolis attorney Scott Johnson, a prominent conservative blogger: “"It seems to me that for those of us who have kept an open mind on Senator McCain, hoping that he might pay us that minimal respect, the time has come to check out on his candidacy. Claiming paternity of the prospective immigration amnesty along with (Kennedy), Senator McCain has saved me the traditional buyer's remorse. Pending further developments, I've narrowed the field of acceptable Republican candidates. I'm opting for Anybody But McCain."
McCain is clearly bugged by Romney's repositioning on immigration. In a conference call with bloggers today, McCain said: "Maybe I should wait a couple weeks and see if (Romney's stance) changes. Maybe he can get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his yard." (McCain was going for a three-fer: swiping at Romney for flip-flopping, ridiculing Romney for his recent claim that he went hunting a few times, and resurrecting the recent story about how Romney once had illegal immigrants landscaping his suburban Boston home.)
Meanwhile, down in the second tier, Sam Brownback – renowned in some conservative circles as a conviction politician – is now telling people that he was for guest-worker reform before he was against it. In an earlier incarnation, he was one of the seven original sponsors of the liberal provisions floated by McCain and Kennedy. But now he’s insisting that the Senate deal is a menace to America. Could his new stance have anything to do with the need to woo conservative primary voters? His spokesman says no, of course not; the real reason, he claims, is that Brownback simply doesn’t trust “the Democrat Senate” to craft the best possible law.
Meanwhile, on the sidelines, Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson are condemning the deal in language echoing the conservative base. Perhaps that’s the smart politics at the moment, because, as National Review Online contends, “the top tier GOP candidate…who best channels the base’s seething outrage over this deal gets the nomination.” But the spectacle of pandering and flip-flopping candidates, competing for the favor of grassroots voters who are at odds with their own party establishment and White House, is hardly the prescription for Republican harmony.
As one noted observer put it the other day, “Even before the deal, Democrats entered the 2008 cycle unified and energized; Republicans, divided and demoralized. The president and the (GOP) senators have now managed to divide and demoralize their party even further…And triggering an internecine party conflict on the eve of a difficult and dangerous election is no way to re-elect a damaged incumbent party.”
So says conservative scholar David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush.
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Speaking of the GOP, who could have ever dreamed that the party would field so many candidates with so many divorces? Times have changed in the party of "family values." I dealt with this development in my latest Sunday print column.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Hillary flips, Bush v. Brits
Just as the ’08 Republican contenders are running to the right, in competition for conservative primary voters (witness Rudy Giuliani’s embrace of water-boarding), we have the ’08 Democratic contenders running leftward, in pursuit of liberal primary voters. The latter was in evidence the other day, on the U.S. Senator floor, where Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama felt compelled to ratchet up their opposition to the war.
Which, in their case, required that they do a little flip flopping.
Both candidates had long insisted that withdrawal deadlines were generally a bad idea; just one month ago, Obama had argued that “nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground,” and Clinton was on record, as early as 2005, saying that any deadline “gives a green light to the insurgents.” But now, with the primary season drawing near, with liberal antiwar groups demanding more fealty, and with one of their own ’08 rivals goading them to support a war funding cutoff, they have decided that consistency would be bad politics.
So they, as well as candidate Joe Biden, voted for antiwar Sen. Russ Feingold’s doomed Senate bill that would have cut off the money for most U.S. combat operations in Iraq by next spring. Liberal activist groups, notably moveon.org, have been signaling that the two top Democratic contenders haven’t worked hard enough to stop the war – and their concerns were being amplified by long-shot candidate Chris Dodd, who put this ad on TV the other day:
“Half measures won’t stop this president from continuing our involvement in Iraq’s civil war. That’s why I’m fighting for the only responsible measure in Congress that would take away the president’s blank check and set a timetable to bring our troops home. Unfortunately, my colleagues running for president have not joined me…(W)e can’t simply wait for a new president. We should have the conviction to stand up to this one.”
Dodd essentially goaded his '08 rivals to move left - and now he's touting this achievement as a reason why liberal voters should take him seriously.
In some ways, Hillary Clinton’s decision to back the funding cutoff conjures memories of the war votes cast by John Kerry on the eve of the ’04 primary season. He had voted to authorize the war in 2002, but then, barely a year later, with antiwar rival Howard Dean on the rise, he felt compelled to vote against an $87-billion war funding bill in order to please the party base. He later paid dearly for that decision in the general election, when the GOP successfully painted him as a flip-flopper.
The big question is, would that work again for the GOP? Have Clinton and Obama handed the Republicans a campaign issue, enabling the next nominee to paint either one of them as “out of the mainstream” “flip-floppers” who voted “against the troops”? That "troops" line arguably might have credence, since even Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, who voted against the cutoff, invoked it yesterday: "I don't want to send a message that we are not going to provide funding for the troops." Indeed, while the polls do report that most Americans oppose the war and want a withdrawal timetable, there is still little appetite for a timetable that severs money to the troops; in the latest CNN-Opinion Research survey, 60 percent of Americans said they opposed the Feingold approach.
The answer is unknowable, of course, because none of us can predict the national mood one year from now. But it’s quite possible that Clinton and Obama have little to fear, for this reason: the war is much less popular today than it was in 2003-2004, and it doesn’t take a genius to predict that it could be even less popular in 2008. It’s also possible that support for a funding cutoff might become the centrist position in American politics.
In other words, perhaps Hillary Clinton didn’t need to suggest the other day (at least for a few hours) that she was attaching caveats to her flip flop. An aversion to being pinned down is a longstanding Clinton family habit.
Since the vote on the Feingold bill was actually just a procedural matter – the narrow issue was whether the Senate wanted to bring it up for full debate – Clinton at first said that she was voting merely to do just that (“I voted…to have a debate”), and that she was not actually signaling whether she backed a money cutoff on the merits (“I’m not going to speculate on what I’ll be voting on in the future"), but, hours later, perhaps after realizing that the restive liberal base would view her wordplay as too Clintonian, she then told reporters that, yes, she did back a money cutoff on the merits.
Her final clarification should be enough to keep moveon.org off her back.
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Speaking of Iraq, I noticed yesterday that President Bush walked his dog in the Rose Garden. I refer not to Barney, but to Tony Blair.
The British prime minister, whose staunch support for Bush’s war has wrecked his career (moderate Republicans, take notice), is down to his last 40 days. He and Bush staged a press conference. Let’s look at some of the reporters’ questions:
Exhibit A: “During the course of this visit, it has been confirmed that Gordon Brown is going to be the next British Prime Minister, taking over in 40 days' time. I wonder if I could have both your reactions to that. And, in particular, Mr. Blair, what do you say to those people who are saying now there is a new Prime Minister in place, you should go sooner? And to Mr. Bush, whether, however inadvertently, you once said that you would like Tony Blair to stay for the duration of your presidency. He's not doing that. Do you think you're partly to blame for that?”
Exhibit B: “Mr. Blair, you outlined some very big policy areas there -- in your discussions with the President. Is it really possible, do you think, to make significant progress on them in the time that you have left? And, Mr. President, if I could ask you, is this really still the right man to be talking to?”
Exhibit C: “It’s been five years since a leader of the British Conservative Party set foot in this city. Mr. President, does it surprise you that aides close to David Cameron say that he does not want to be seen with you? And can I ask you both what it means for the prospect of future relations between Britain and America when the leader of the opposition dare not set foot in Washington?”
Notice anything about those questions? They’re all tough, even cheeky. Clearly, the reporters who asked those questions were not awed by the men on stage, nor by the offices that the men occupy.
In other words, all three questions were asked by British reporters.
Bush is clearly not accustomed to that sort of thing. He didn’t like Exhibit A; the reporter was still talking when Bush interrupted by saying “that’s a lovely question,” leavening his sarcasm with his trademark chuckle. Nor did he like Exhibit B; after Blair gave a lengthy response, Bush rebuked the reporter by saying, “You know, it's interesting, like trying to do a tap dance on his political grave, aren't you?” Bush tried to stonewall Exhibit C, by talking at length without answering the question, whereupon the reporter came right back with “What about David Cameron?”
British reporters don’t treat their prime minister as a demigod. They don’t go to black-tie banquets and act faux-chummy with the guy they have to cover (unlike the Beltway reporters who in 2004 thought it was so funny when Bush videotaped a skit that showed him looking for the missing WMDs under his desk). They ask impertinent questions that put the top guy on the spot. They are no different, frankly, than the opposition party politicians who clash with the prime minister in Parliament, in lengthy, regularly scheduled sessions called “Question Time,” in which the prime minister is forced to match wits, think on his feet, and answer for his perceived flaws.
That’s how they do accountability in Britain. Judging by Bush’s reaction to those press questions, it makes we wonder how well he would have fared in the House of Commons.
Which, in their case, required that they do a little flip flopping.
Both candidates had long insisted that withdrawal deadlines were generally a bad idea; just one month ago, Obama had argued that “nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground,” and Clinton was on record, as early as 2005, saying that any deadline “gives a green light to the insurgents.” But now, with the primary season drawing near, with liberal antiwar groups demanding more fealty, and with one of their own ’08 rivals goading them to support a war funding cutoff, they have decided that consistency would be bad politics.
So they, as well as candidate Joe Biden, voted for antiwar Sen. Russ Feingold’s doomed Senate bill that would have cut off the money for most U.S. combat operations in Iraq by next spring. Liberal activist groups, notably moveon.org, have been signaling that the two top Democratic contenders haven’t worked hard enough to stop the war – and their concerns were being amplified by long-shot candidate Chris Dodd, who put this ad on TV the other day:
“Half measures won’t stop this president from continuing our involvement in Iraq’s civil war. That’s why I’m fighting for the only responsible measure in Congress that would take away the president’s blank check and set a timetable to bring our troops home. Unfortunately, my colleagues running for president have not joined me…(W)e can’t simply wait for a new president. We should have the conviction to stand up to this one.”
Dodd essentially goaded his '08 rivals to move left - and now he's touting this achievement as a reason why liberal voters should take him seriously.
In some ways, Hillary Clinton’s decision to back the funding cutoff conjures memories of the war votes cast by John Kerry on the eve of the ’04 primary season. He had voted to authorize the war in 2002, but then, barely a year later, with antiwar rival Howard Dean on the rise, he felt compelled to vote against an $87-billion war funding bill in order to please the party base. He later paid dearly for that decision in the general election, when the GOP successfully painted him as a flip-flopper.
The big question is, would that work again for the GOP? Have Clinton and Obama handed the Republicans a campaign issue, enabling the next nominee to paint either one of them as “out of the mainstream” “flip-floppers” who voted “against the troops”? That "troops" line arguably might have credence, since even Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, who voted against the cutoff, invoked it yesterday: "I don't want to send a message that we are not going to provide funding for the troops." Indeed, while the polls do report that most Americans oppose the war and want a withdrawal timetable, there is still little appetite for a timetable that severs money to the troops; in the latest CNN-Opinion Research survey, 60 percent of Americans said they opposed the Feingold approach.
The answer is unknowable, of course, because none of us can predict the national mood one year from now. But it’s quite possible that Clinton and Obama have little to fear, for this reason: the war is much less popular today than it was in 2003-2004, and it doesn’t take a genius to predict that it could be even less popular in 2008. It’s also possible that support for a funding cutoff might become the centrist position in American politics.
In other words, perhaps Hillary Clinton didn’t need to suggest the other day (at least for a few hours) that she was attaching caveats to her flip flop. An aversion to being pinned down is a longstanding Clinton family habit.
Since the vote on the Feingold bill was actually just a procedural matter – the narrow issue was whether the Senate wanted to bring it up for full debate – Clinton at first said that she was voting merely to do just that (“I voted…to have a debate”), and that she was not actually signaling whether she backed a money cutoff on the merits (“I’m not going to speculate on what I’ll be voting on in the future"), but, hours later, perhaps after realizing that the restive liberal base would view her wordplay as too Clintonian, she then told reporters that, yes, she did back a money cutoff on the merits.
Her final clarification should be enough to keep moveon.org off her back.
-------
Speaking of Iraq, I noticed yesterday that President Bush walked his dog in the Rose Garden. I refer not to Barney, but to Tony Blair.
The British prime minister, whose staunch support for Bush’s war has wrecked his career (moderate Republicans, take notice), is down to his last 40 days. He and Bush staged a press conference. Let’s look at some of the reporters’ questions:
Exhibit A: “During the course of this visit, it has been confirmed that Gordon Brown is going to be the next British Prime Minister, taking over in 40 days' time. I wonder if I could have both your reactions to that. And, in particular, Mr. Blair, what do you say to those people who are saying now there is a new Prime Minister in place, you should go sooner? And to Mr. Bush, whether, however inadvertently, you once said that you would like Tony Blair to stay for the duration of your presidency. He's not doing that. Do you think you're partly to blame for that?”
Exhibit B: “Mr. Blair, you outlined some very big policy areas there -- in your discussions with the President. Is it really possible, do you think, to make significant progress on them in the time that you have left? And, Mr. President, if I could ask you, is this really still the right man to be talking to?”
Exhibit C: “It’s been five years since a leader of the British Conservative Party set foot in this city. Mr. President, does it surprise you that aides close to David Cameron say that he does not want to be seen with you? And can I ask you both what it means for the prospect of future relations between Britain and America when the leader of the opposition dare not set foot in Washington?”
Notice anything about those questions? They’re all tough, even cheeky. Clearly, the reporters who asked those questions were not awed by the men on stage, nor by the offices that the men occupy.
In other words, all three questions were asked by British reporters.
Bush is clearly not accustomed to that sort of thing. He didn’t like Exhibit A; the reporter was still talking when Bush interrupted by saying “that’s a lovely question,” leavening his sarcasm with his trademark chuckle. Nor did he like Exhibit B; after Blair gave a lengthy response, Bush rebuked the reporter by saying, “You know, it's interesting, like trying to do a tap dance on his political grave, aren't you?” Bush tried to stonewall Exhibit C, by talking at length without answering the question, whereupon the reporter came right back with “What about David Cameron?”
British reporters don’t treat their prime minister as a demigod. They don’t go to black-tie banquets and act faux-chummy with the guy they have to cover (unlike the Beltway reporters who in 2004 thought it was so funny when Bush videotaped a skit that showed him looking for the missing WMDs under his desk). They ask impertinent questions that put the top guy on the spot. They are no different, frankly, than the opposition party politicians who clash with the prime minister in Parliament, in lengthy, regularly scheduled sessions called “Question Time,” in which the prime minister is forced to match wits, think on his feet, and answer for his perceived flaws.
That’s how they do accountability in Britain. Judging by Bush’s reaction to those press questions, it makes we wonder how well he would have fared in the House of Commons.
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