I began this week by questioning whether Gen. David Petraeus can be entrusted to give us straight talk about the Surge, given his track record of toeing the Bush administration line on Iraq. In particular, I mentioned how he had sought to reassure Americans – on the eve of the ’04 election – that the U.S. program to equip the Iraqi army, and train Iraqis to defend themselves, was going just swimmingly. (I neglected to mention, by the way, that Petraeus was the supervisory officer of that program.)
I then received a number of emails from people who deemed it inappropriate to question the credibility of a man in uniform; they argued that a soldier of his stature was the perfect choice to tell us this autumn whether the Surge is working. Their actual language was unfit for a family blog, but you get the idea. Perhaps if I offered a fuller picture of Petraeus' training program, they might think differently.
It’s clear that the “progress” he touted back in 2004, with respect to the Iraqi training program, didn’t amount to a hill of beans. If the Iraqi troops had been effectively trained and equipped, chances are that the Bush war team wouldn’t have needed to launch its Surge. In other words (to borrow Bush’s terminology), if the Iraqi troops had indeed been able to stand up, we would be standing down – as opposed to ratcheting up.
So the big question is: What happened? Why did the Iraqi training program, supervised by Petraeus and touted in the press by Petreaus, turn out to be a flop?
The answers are available, to any American with an interest in factual reality. Pick up a copy of The Occupation of Iraq, authored by Ali Allawi, an Iraqi scholar and government insider. He lays out the details midway through his 544-page book:
In April 2004, Allawi writes, the U.S. decided to launch a program to train and expand the Iraqi army. The Iraqi Ministry of Defense was designated as the agency that would run the show, line up the weapons contractors, and disburse the money (primarily American money, naturally). Gen. Petraeus was brought in to supervise.
But here’s what was happening while Petraeus was (in Allawi’s words) “waxing lyrical” about the training program in the American press: The money earmarked for weapons procurement was disappearing. Or, as Allawi puts it, “the Ministry of Defense was being systematically looted.”
As a 2005 Iraqi investigation later discovered, the top Ministry of Defense officials – none of whom had any experience in procurement – awarded no-bid contracts to con men who never intended to provide quality equipment. Allawi writes that “in a series of astounding and brazen decisions that broke every contracting and procurement rule, the ministry started to award huge contracts without any bidding and with minimal documentation.”
For instance, Ziad Qattan, the head of the ministry’s procurement department, knew nothing about his new line of work. He later told the Los Angeles Times that weapons that before the war, “I sold water, flowers, shoes, cars – but not weapons.” At one point, he awarded $1 billion in contracts to a newly-formed company that had no background in the army equipment business.
Most of the American money for the program, as much as $2.3 billion, wound up in the foreign bank accounts of “unknown people,” writes Allawi. And, not surprisingly, the equipment supplied to Petraeus’ training program “was of poor quality, (worth) a fraction of the money that was paid out by the Ministry of Defense.”
Allawi writes about the helicopters, for instance. They were 30 years old, originally owned and operated by a nation that has ceased to exist, the Soviet Union. All told, “the litany of disastrous and outrageously overpriced equipment covered the entire spectrum of armaments, from machine guns that were copies of the ones actually contracted for, to armored vehicles that were so poorly armored that machine-gun bullets would easily pierce them.” Moreover, “the Iraqi army was saddled with vehicles equipped with right-hand drive steering,” which was a problem, because “Iraqis drove with left-hand steering.” Most of the culprits ultimately fled the country.
You might wonder, “Where was Petraeus while all this was happening?”
Allawi replies that Petraeus basically let it happen: “Petraeus was a firm believer in giving the new Iraqi government as wide a latitude as possible to make its own decisions, without intrusive involvement” from the Americans.
In the end, he writes, “the saga of the grand theft of the Ministry of Defense perfectly illustrated the huge gap between the harsh realities on the ground, and the Panglossian spin that permeated official pronouncements of the government, the U.S. embassy, and the Multinational Force. The optimistic assessments of Gen. Petreaus concerning the equipping and training of Iraqi forces clashed with the huge squandering of the MD’s resources and the abysmal and inappropriate equipment purchases for its rapid deployment forces….(Americans) simply watched, while the MD was being plundered in front of their very noses, hiding behind the excuse that the Iraqis were now responsible for their decisions.”
The obvious next step, for those who would prefer to deny this history, is to find a way to discredit the messenger, perhaps to impugn Allawi’s politics or to dismiss him as a terrorist, America-hater, whatever. But this is not easily done. Allawi spent his adult life in exile, as an opponent of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party regime. He returned only in 2003, after the U.S. toppled Saddam, and served as a senior government official in a variety of top jobs.
After witnessing the postwar era, he now writes: “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…But it is Iraq and the Iraqis who have paid most for the failed policies of their erstwhile liberators.”
Did he say “erstwhile” liberators? General Petraeus would beg to differ; he just put Dick Cheney’s favorite word back in circulation. During an interview Wednesday with The Times of London, he said: “The interesting dynamic here is that we have been here long enough to become liberators again for certain sectors of the population.”
Still "waxing lyrical," after all these years.
Friday, June 22, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
How Rudy went AWOL on Iraq
It’s odd that GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani is constantly described, in mainstream media shorthand, as a tough-on-terrorists/national security candidate – given the fact that he has zero experience in national security policy; that his credentials, such as they are, derive largely from the experience of being the mayor of New York City on 9/11; and that he has never once set foot in Iraq, the place now known as “the central front in the war on terror,” thanks to President Bush’s invasion.
Indeed, for many months, Giuliani has been trying to run for president without even mentioning the I-word. That’s a fairly audacious strategy, considering the fact that most Americans are hungry to know whether he and his ’08 rivals have any bright ideas about how to mop up the Bush administration’s mess. Nevertheless, it has been Rudy’s policy to treat Iraq as if it was the crazy aunt in the closet, as an insoluble embarrassment best kept from public view.
I recall, for instance, his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, back in March 1, when he skated past the I-word, instead issuing a feel-good clarion call to fight the bad guys worldwide: “The reality is, it’s the general thrust of what we’re doing with terrorism that is enormously important, not the fact that every single thing hasn’t worked.” One of those “things,” of course is Iraq, and it would have been instructive if the so-called 9/11 mayor had offered some suggestions on how to better handle Iraq and thus fight the global war on terror more effectively. But he had nothing to say about that.
Then came his “12 commitments” agenda, released June 12. As I noted here last week, the I-word didn’t appear anywhere on his platform. When he was later asked to explain the glaring omission, he replied: “Iraq may get better, Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq, we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people.”
And now it turns out, thanks to a Tuesday story broken by Newsday, that in 2006 Giuliani actually had a golden opportunity to work directly with some of those “other people” who were donating time and effort to chart a new American policy in Iraq. He had the chance to actually rack up some substantive credentials, and demonstrate that he had some real national security bona fides. He was, in fact, an original member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group – but, as we now learn, he never showed up for any of the ISG meetings; and after he was diplomatically urged to either show up or quit the group, he opted to quit the group.
In a May ’06 letter, he told the ISG that he was unable to give the project his “full and active participation.” But now we know why: he was focused on making money. That spring, he delivered series of speeches (on his "six principles of leadership"), for as much as $200,000 a pop, and he pocketed more than $1 million during a month when the rest of the ISG members were busy digging into the crucial details of Iraq policy.
His explanation, offered yesterday, is that he didn’t think it was a good idea for a prospective presidential candidate to be serving on an apolitical panel; in his words, it “didn’t seem that I would really be able to keep the thing focused on a bipartisan, nonpolitical resolution.”
I’ll attempt to translate: Giuliani is saying that he quit the ISG because he didn’t want to risk the temptation to skew the group’s work for his own political ends.
That all sounds very noble, but I don’t buy it.
For starters, Giuliani was merely one of 10 members, and the ISG’s strong-willed chairmen, Republican James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton, were hardly going to let any individual hijack the work and ride it as a political hobbyhorse. It’s presumptuous of Giuliani to now claim that he could have successfully done so. In other words, the rationale he is now offering does not ring true.
No, I suspect that he quit the ISG because – with the Republican primaries on the horizon – he didn’t want to risk being associated with any proposals that might not play well politically. He didn’t want to be in a position of having to put his signature on a document that might tick off the Bush loyalists in the GOP primary electorate, so he took the preventive step of severing his ties. And in the short term, it was probably a smart move, because the ISG has been urging a 2008 troop drawdown – a distasteful option to most GOP primary voters – and Giuliani would not have wanted to be locked into endorsing that.
But, from the perspective of a centrist independent voter – someone who wants a major change in war strategy, someone who is hungry for fresh ideas – Giuliani’s decision to quit the Iraq Study Group simply looks bad. If a Democratic candidate had ever served on the ISG and quit in the same fashion, you can bet that the GOP message mavens, with their traditional gift for the visceral, would be making hay, perhaps this way:
ANOTHER CUT AND RUN DEMOCRAT! Given the chance to serve his country, he surrendered to personal greed. Given the chance to show strength, he chose weakness. Can we trust our nation's security to a man with no credentials?
And maybe Giuliani outsmarted himself. Lately, there have been public hints that the Bush administration might wind up embracing some of the study groups’ ideas. And some Republican lawmakers, notably Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, have endorsed those ideas, including an ’08 drawdown. Giuliani might have been able to boast that he had been part of the vanguard for change. But he blew his chance.
Indeed, for many months, Giuliani has been trying to run for president without even mentioning the I-word. That’s a fairly audacious strategy, considering the fact that most Americans are hungry to know whether he and his ’08 rivals have any bright ideas about how to mop up the Bush administration’s mess. Nevertheless, it has been Rudy’s policy to treat Iraq as if it was the crazy aunt in the closet, as an insoluble embarrassment best kept from public view.
I recall, for instance, his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, back in March 1, when he skated past the I-word, instead issuing a feel-good clarion call to fight the bad guys worldwide: “The reality is, it’s the general thrust of what we’re doing with terrorism that is enormously important, not the fact that every single thing hasn’t worked.” One of those “things,” of course is Iraq, and it would have been instructive if the so-called 9/11 mayor had offered some suggestions on how to better handle Iraq and thus fight the global war on terror more effectively. But he had nothing to say about that.
Then came his “12 commitments” agenda, released June 12. As I noted here last week, the I-word didn’t appear anywhere on his platform. When he was later asked to explain the glaring omission, he replied: “Iraq may get better, Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq, we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people.”
And now it turns out, thanks to a Tuesday story broken by Newsday, that in 2006 Giuliani actually had a golden opportunity to work directly with some of those “other people” who were donating time and effort to chart a new American policy in Iraq. He had the chance to actually rack up some substantive credentials, and demonstrate that he had some real national security bona fides. He was, in fact, an original member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group – but, as we now learn, he never showed up for any of the ISG meetings; and after he was diplomatically urged to either show up or quit the group, he opted to quit the group.
In a May ’06 letter, he told the ISG that he was unable to give the project his “full and active participation.” But now we know why: he was focused on making money. That spring, he delivered series of speeches (on his "six principles of leadership"), for as much as $200,000 a pop, and he pocketed more than $1 million during a month when the rest of the ISG members were busy digging into the crucial details of Iraq policy.
His explanation, offered yesterday, is that he didn’t think it was a good idea for a prospective presidential candidate to be serving on an apolitical panel; in his words, it “didn’t seem that I would really be able to keep the thing focused on a bipartisan, nonpolitical resolution.”
I’ll attempt to translate: Giuliani is saying that he quit the ISG because he didn’t want to risk the temptation to skew the group’s work for his own political ends.
That all sounds very noble, but I don’t buy it.
For starters, Giuliani was merely one of 10 members, and the ISG’s strong-willed chairmen, Republican James Baker and Democrat Lee Hamilton, were hardly going to let any individual hijack the work and ride it as a political hobbyhorse. It’s presumptuous of Giuliani to now claim that he could have successfully done so. In other words, the rationale he is now offering does not ring true.
No, I suspect that he quit the ISG because – with the Republican primaries on the horizon – he didn’t want to risk being associated with any proposals that might not play well politically. He didn’t want to be in a position of having to put his signature on a document that might tick off the Bush loyalists in the GOP primary electorate, so he took the preventive step of severing his ties. And in the short term, it was probably a smart move, because the ISG has been urging a 2008 troop drawdown – a distasteful option to most GOP primary voters – and Giuliani would not have wanted to be locked into endorsing that.
But, from the perspective of a centrist independent voter – someone who wants a major change in war strategy, someone who is hungry for fresh ideas – Giuliani’s decision to quit the Iraq Study Group simply looks bad. If a Democratic candidate had ever served on the ISG and quit in the same fashion, you can bet that the GOP message mavens, with their traditional gift for the visceral, would be making hay, perhaps this way:
ANOTHER CUT AND RUN DEMOCRAT! Given the chance to serve his country, he surrendered to personal greed. Given the chance to show strength, he chose weakness. Can we trust our nation's security to a man with no credentials?
And maybe Giuliani outsmarted himself. Lately, there have been public hints that the Bush administration might wind up embracing some of the study groups’ ideas. And some Republican lawmakers, notably Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, have endorsed those ideas, including an ’08 drawdown. Giuliani might have been able to boast that he had been part of the vanguard for change. But he blew his chance.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Mike flirts, Hillary dodges
Let’s get real: What are the odds that the voters of America would choose, as their next president, a pint-sized, twice-divorced Jewish billionaire New Yorker who touts gay marriage and gun control, and who not only admits to having smoked weed, but says he liked it?
Paris Hilton would graduate from law school, magna cum laude, before that happens.
Michael Bloomberg, the newly-minted independent mayor of New York, is probably cognizant of these odds; nevertheless, right now, he loses nothing by distancing himself from both parties and leaving all options open. Today, in Manhattan, the ex-Republican and ex-Democrat played peekaboo again; referring to the White House race, he said, "The more people that run for office the better."
This is standard behavior during the season of the big tease.
The big tease is a cyclical thing. A year or two before every recent presidential election, as voters vent their requisite disgust with the partisan bickering of the two major parties, it seems like somebody is always out there flirting with an independent run. The roster of failed flirters includes such names as Bob Kerrey, Bill Bradley, Lowell Weicker, and Colin Powell (the latter said in 1995 that "the time may be at hand for a third major party to emerge from the sensible center of the American political spectrum").
What generally stops them, in the end, is the rational recognition that the financial and ballot obstacles to success are virtually insurmountable, and that Americans – cautious by nature – are ultimately most comfortable with the two established brands. Coke and Pepsi might not be very nutritious, but you know what you’re getting. Nobody really knows what they would be getting if an independent president had to do business with Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. Hence, Ross Perot spent $65 million during the ’92 campaign (a hefty sum at the time), and finished with zero electoral votes; his image as a borderline loony certainly didn’t help, but I think the branding issue was pivotal.
Theoretically, Bloomberg at least can tout his record as a successful mayor, he can further nurture his image as a sensible centrist (see the Time magazine cover this week), and he is theoretically prepared to dip into his own pocket for loose change – translation: half a billion dollars – and thus bankroll a national campaign. In other words, he would have the money (and the lawyers) to navigate the state ballot obstacles. In fact, he just took care of one potential hurdle, simply by re-registering as an independent; some states frown on independent candidates who are still registered as party members back home.
The beauty of this moment, for Bloomberg, is that he doesn’t have to decide anything. He can simply dip his toe in the water, and ponder at length whether there is a sufficient market niche for his goods. Right now, at least rhetorically, it would appear so. The polls report that most Americans are fed up with both parties – the Democratic Congress, as well as the Bush-burdened Republicans. The stalemate in Washington has yielded no progress on the issues that people care about most, everything from Iraq and health care to energy and immigration.
Hence, Bloomberg’s key remark the other day, while on the stump in California: “We do not have to settle for the same old politics. We do not have to accept the tired debate between the left and right, between Democrats and Republicans, between Congress and the White House.” Hence, his statement yesterday, about the advantages of being an independent: “Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles, and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology.”
He can run those lines for the rest of this year, and it’s a win-win. Potentially, he’ll boost his prospects as a would-be independent candidate; failing that, he’ll look like a national leader – as opposed to merely a lame-duck, term-limited New York mayor. And in the meantime, he’ll get all kinds of free publicity from the punditocracy, which can fill the slow periods with speculation about “who he would hurt, and who he would help” if indeed he took the plunge and made it a three-way race in autumn ’08.
I’m not going to bother; you can find those scenarios elsewhere (here, for example). I suspect that, 15 months from today, none of them will matter.
-------
Did you catch Hillary Clinton’s dodge yesterday, when she refused to say whether she believed it was appropriate to pardon Scooter Libby?
During a labor forum yesterday for Democratic candidates, host Chris Matthews posed the question. She replied: “Oh, I think there would be enough to be said about that without me adding to it.”
Matthews protested (“That is such a political answer!”), but the pro-Hillary audience shouted him down, demanding that he ask “a real question,” and he let it go.
Well, excuse him for asking, but it seems to me that it would valuable to hear Hillary’s thoughts on whether a Bush lieutenant, convicted of lying under oath and obstruction of justice in a national security investigation, should be jailed or not. She’s running for president, and she was asked her thoughts about the rule of law. That sounds like a “real question” to me.
But we know, of course, why Hillary took a powder on that one. If she had declared “Free Scooter,” liberals would have screamed. If she had declared “Jail Scooter,” Hillary-haters would have demanded to know why Scooter shouldn’t get the same deal that Marc Rich received. Rich, as you may remember, is the fugitive financier (58 counts of tax fraud, illegal oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis) who was pardoned by Bill Clinton in his final hours as president. It was widely suspected at the time (but never proven) that Rich’s socialite ex-wife had greased the pardon by donating $1 million to Democratic causes, $450,000 to the Clinton presidential library fund – and $70,000 to Hillary Clinton's first Senate campaign.
So her “non-answer” about Scooter yesterday, as Matthews correctly called it, is further evidence that the old Clinton baggage will on occasion weigh heavily – forcing her to play the inartful dodger.
Paris Hilton would graduate from law school, magna cum laude, before that happens.
Michael Bloomberg, the newly-minted independent mayor of New York, is probably cognizant of these odds; nevertheless, right now, he loses nothing by distancing himself from both parties and leaving all options open. Today, in Manhattan, the ex-Republican and ex-Democrat played peekaboo again; referring to the White House race, he said, "The more people that run for office the better."
This is standard behavior during the season of the big tease.
The big tease is a cyclical thing. A year or two before every recent presidential election, as voters vent their requisite disgust with the partisan bickering of the two major parties, it seems like somebody is always out there flirting with an independent run. The roster of failed flirters includes such names as Bob Kerrey, Bill Bradley, Lowell Weicker, and Colin Powell (the latter said in 1995 that "the time may be at hand for a third major party to emerge from the sensible center of the American political spectrum").
What generally stops them, in the end, is the rational recognition that the financial and ballot obstacles to success are virtually insurmountable, and that Americans – cautious by nature – are ultimately most comfortable with the two established brands. Coke and Pepsi might not be very nutritious, but you know what you’re getting. Nobody really knows what they would be getting if an independent president had to do business with Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. Hence, Ross Perot spent $65 million during the ’92 campaign (a hefty sum at the time), and finished with zero electoral votes; his image as a borderline loony certainly didn’t help, but I think the branding issue was pivotal.
Theoretically, Bloomberg at least can tout his record as a successful mayor, he can further nurture his image as a sensible centrist (see the Time magazine cover this week), and he is theoretically prepared to dip into his own pocket for loose change – translation: half a billion dollars – and thus bankroll a national campaign. In other words, he would have the money (and the lawyers) to navigate the state ballot obstacles. In fact, he just took care of one potential hurdle, simply by re-registering as an independent; some states frown on independent candidates who are still registered as party members back home.
The beauty of this moment, for Bloomberg, is that he doesn’t have to decide anything. He can simply dip his toe in the water, and ponder at length whether there is a sufficient market niche for his goods. Right now, at least rhetorically, it would appear so. The polls report that most Americans are fed up with both parties – the Democratic Congress, as well as the Bush-burdened Republicans. The stalemate in Washington has yielded no progress on the issues that people care about most, everything from Iraq and health care to energy and immigration.
Hence, Bloomberg’s key remark the other day, while on the stump in California: “We do not have to settle for the same old politics. We do not have to accept the tired debate between the left and right, between Democrats and Republicans, between Congress and the White House.” Hence, his statement yesterday, about the advantages of being an independent: “Any successful elected executive knows that real results are more important than partisan battles, and that good ideas should take precedence over rigid adherence to any particular political ideology.”
He can run those lines for the rest of this year, and it’s a win-win. Potentially, he’ll boost his prospects as a would-be independent candidate; failing that, he’ll look like a national leader – as opposed to merely a lame-duck, term-limited New York mayor. And in the meantime, he’ll get all kinds of free publicity from the punditocracy, which can fill the slow periods with speculation about “who he would hurt, and who he would help” if indeed he took the plunge and made it a three-way race in autumn ’08.
I’m not going to bother; you can find those scenarios elsewhere (here, for example). I suspect that, 15 months from today, none of them will matter.
-------
Did you catch Hillary Clinton’s dodge yesterday, when she refused to say whether she believed it was appropriate to pardon Scooter Libby?
During a labor forum yesterday for Democratic candidates, host Chris Matthews posed the question. She replied: “Oh, I think there would be enough to be said about that without me adding to it.”
Matthews protested (“That is such a political answer!”), but the pro-Hillary audience shouted him down, demanding that he ask “a real question,” and he let it go.
Well, excuse him for asking, but it seems to me that it would valuable to hear Hillary’s thoughts on whether a Bush lieutenant, convicted of lying under oath and obstruction of justice in a national security investigation, should be jailed or not. She’s running for president, and she was asked her thoughts about the rule of law. That sounds like a “real question” to me.
But we know, of course, why Hillary took a powder on that one. If she had declared “Free Scooter,” liberals would have screamed. If she had declared “Jail Scooter,” Hillary-haters would have demanded to know why Scooter shouldn’t get the same deal that Marc Rich received. Rich, as you may remember, is the fugitive financier (58 counts of tax fraud, illegal oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis) who was pardoned by Bill Clinton in his final hours as president. It was widely suspected at the time (but never proven) that Rich’s socialite ex-wife had greased the pardon by donating $1 million to Democratic causes, $450,000 to the Clinton presidential library fund – and $70,000 to Hillary Clinton's first Senate campaign.
So her “non-answer” about Scooter yesterday, as Matthews correctly called it, is further evidence that the old Clinton baggage will on occasion weigh heavily – forcing her to play the inartful dodger.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The radio beast bites back
Trent Lott uttered a revealing remark the other day. The Republican senator from Mississippi was venting to reporters about the stalled immigration reform bill, which has been under relentless attack from rank-and-file conservatives. Lott and other members of the GOP establishment have been pushing hard for the bill, at President Bush’s behest, and they’re clearly unhappy about all the grief they’ve been getting from the grassroots.
On talk radio, the foot soldiers of the increasing fragile GOP coalition – egged on by the talk show hosts – have been relentlessly assailing their own leaders as border wimps who are soft on illegal aliens; as Rush Limbaugh declared earlier this month, “The White House has split the Republican party on this…If this bill is killed, they’re going to have to go back to the drawing board.”
Anyway, Lott is ticked about taking all that heat. Here's his beef: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”
Oh, so now it’s a “problem?” Lott and the GOP establishment had no complaints about talk radio when Limbaugh and his minions were working to propel them into power.
As early as 1992, Limbaugh was invited to sit with Marilyn Quayle in the vice president’s box at the GOP national convention. And in 1994, at the dawn of the conservative revolution, talk radio was instrumental in stoking pro-Republican sentiment and spreading the word about Newt Gingrich’s Contract for America. The Republican National Committee lined up 300 radio talk show interviews for the politicians who signed the Contract. After the GOP captured the House, Republicans even held a ceremony in Limbaugh’s honor, naming him “an honorary member of Congress” and lauding him as “the majority maker.” Grateful GOP freshman cited polls showing that frequent talk-show listeners had voted Republican in ’94 by a margin of 3-1.
Back then, the Republicans had no problem with the notion that Limbaugh (joined later by Bill O’Reilly, Neal Boortz, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, and many more) was “running America,” because, most of the time, they behaved like national precinct captains for the GOP, acting as liaisons between leadership and the masses.
Still, there were early signs that talk radio – what the radio consultants call “non-guested confrontation” - might be a double-edged sword for the GOP. Even as Newt was settling into his job in 1995, a Dallas host named David Gold warned publicly, “If they don’t perform, we’re likely to put the heat on them. There’ll be a lot of angry folks out there, and the talk-show hosts will be leading the charge.”
And, by 2002, it was clear that the talk radio titans were not content to simply function as Bush team cheerleaders. An instructive incident occurred in the spring of that year. The Bush administration suggested in a report to the United Nations that global warming might actually be a real man-made phenomenon – and Limbaugh jumped all over it.
Limbaugh said on his Monday show that “these predictions are basically apocalyptic doom and gloom based on raw emotion.” Then he charged that Bush had become “George W. Algore.” Sure enough, within 24 hours, Bush made it clear that his own administration had been wrong; as a news report stated, “President Bush appeared to distance himself yesterday from a report by his administration that says human activities are mostly to blame for recent trends in global warming…”
But that skirmish was tame, compared to what’s happening now. Now we have radio host Michael Savage assailing Bush as the “culprit” who is coddling illegal immigrants, which is why, in Savage’s words, it’s up to the grassroots to “derail this train of treason.”
It’s clear today, in the wake of talk radio anger about immigration reform, that the GOP leadership has failed to recognize a fundamental truth about their ostensible allies: First and foremost, the hosts and their followers are instinctively anti-establishment. Talk radio is a forum for the aggrieved; stoking emotions and firing darts at the establishment (regardless of whether it is liberal or conservative) is considered good radio.
The GOP leaders have belatedly discovered that talk radio is a beast that must be incessantly fed. And now that they’re being chewed up and spit out, now that they’re griping about how the beast is “running America” at their expense, I feel it's appropriate to paraphrase the Bible and simply observe that, in politics as in life, you reap what you sow.
On talk radio, the foot soldiers of the increasing fragile GOP coalition – egged on by the talk show hosts – have been relentlessly assailing their own leaders as border wimps who are soft on illegal aliens; as Rush Limbaugh declared earlier this month, “The White House has split the Republican party on this…If this bill is killed, they’re going to have to go back to the drawing board.”
Anyway, Lott is ticked about taking all that heat. Here's his beef: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”
Oh, so now it’s a “problem?” Lott and the GOP establishment had no complaints about talk radio when Limbaugh and his minions were working to propel them into power.
As early as 1992, Limbaugh was invited to sit with Marilyn Quayle in the vice president’s box at the GOP national convention. And in 1994, at the dawn of the conservative revolution, talk radio was instrumental in stoking pro-Republican sentiment and spreading the word about Newt Gingrich’s Contract for America. The Republican National Committee lined up 300 radio talk show interviews for the politicians who signed the Contract. After the GOP captured the House, Republicans even held a ceremony in Limbaugh’s honor, naming him “an honorary member of Congress” and lauding him as “the majority maker.” Grateful GOP freshman cited polls showing that frequent talk-show listeners had voted Republican in ’94 by a margin of 3-1.
Back then, the Republicans had no problem with the notion that Limbaugh (joined later by Bill O’Reilly, Neal Boortz, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, and many more) was “running America,” because, most of the time, they behaved like national precinct captains for the GOP, acting as liaisons between leadership and the masses.
Still, there were early signs that talk radio – what the radio consultants call “non-guested confrontation” - might be a double-edged sword for the GOP. Even as Newt was settling into his job in 1995, a Dallas host named David Gold warned publicly, “If they don’t perform, we’re likely to put the heat on them. There’ll be a lot of angry folks out there, and the talk-show hosts will be leading the charge.”
And, by 2002, it was clear that the talk radio titans were not content to simply function as Bush team cheerleaders. An instructive incident occurred in the spring of that year. The Bush administration suggested in a report to the United Nations that global warming might actually be a real man-made phenomenon – and Limbaugh jumped all over it.
Limbaugh said on his Monday show that “these predictions are basically apocalyptic doom and gloom based on raw emotion.” Then he charged that Bush had become “George W. Algore.” Sure enough, within 24 hours, Bush made it clear that his own administration had been wrong; as a news report stated, “President Bush appeared to distance himself yesterday from a report by his administration that says human activities are mostly to blame for recent trends in global warming…”
But that skirmish was tame, compared to what’s happening now. Now we have radio host Michael Savage assailing Bush as the “culprit” who is coddling illegal immigrants, which is why, in Savage’s words, it’s up to the grassroots to “derail this train of treason.”
It’s clear today, in the wake of talk radio anger about immigration reform, that the GOP leadership has failed to recognize a fundamental truth about their ostensible allies: First and foremost, the hosts and their followers are instinctively anti-establishment. Talk radio is a forum for the aggrieved; stoking emotions and firing darts at the establishment (regardless of whether it is liberal or conservative) is considered good radio.
The GOP leaders have belatedly discovered that talk radio is a beast that must be incessantly fed. And now that they’re being chewed up and spit out, now that they’re griping about how the beast is “running America” at their expense, I feel it's appropriate to paraphrase the Bible and simply observe that, in politics as in life, you reap what you sow.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Bush's messenger, then and now
Let us briefly return to Sept. 26, 2004; on that date, President Bush was trying to convince voters to give him a second term. The election was just six weeks away. His number-one priority was to persuade people that he was making measurable progress in Iraq. Accordingly, a guest column appeared that day in The Washington Post, with the upbeat author playing the role of Bush’s Pollyana. Key excerpts:
I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up. The institutions that oversee them are being reestablished from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously…There are reasons for optimism…Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired…Progress has also been made in police training…Considerable progress is also being made in the reconstruction and refurbishing of infrastructure for Iraq’s security forces…Iraq’s security forces are developing steadily and they are in the fight. Momentum has gathered in recent months. With strong Iraqi leaders out front and with continued coalition – and now NATO – support, this trend will continue.
Pretty encouraging, right? Any swing voter who read that piece might well have concluded that it would be nuts to dump Bush and elect John Kerry, what with the Iraqis so poised to take responsibility for their own security. And since nobody could possibly question the author’s bona fides, it had to be true: the Iraqis were getting ready to stand up, thereby allowing our troops to stand down – just like the Decider had long promised us.
Well, as we now know, those reassurances turned out to be worthless; after all, there would be no need for a U. S. troop escalation today if Iraqi’s security forces had really stepped forward to secure their own country. And one would think that anyone who played Pollyana in 2004 would be automatically dismissed in 2007 as just another credibility-challenged Bush messenger.
But apparently not. The author of that ’04 column was an Army lieutenant general named David Petraeus – the same guy (now a full general) who is leading Bush’s Surge, and who has been entrusted with giving Americans a straight-talk assessment this September.
You see where I’m going with this. Given Petraeus’ rhetorical track record – and his apparent willingness, back in 2004, to inject himself into the middle of a domestic partisan campaign – why should we have confidence that in September he’ll say anything that would deviate from the White House line?
That ’04 column came to mind last week, while I was reading new remarks by Petraeus about some of the swell things that have been happening in the wake of the Surge. As proof of “normalcy,” he told USA Today about all the “professional soccer leagues with real grass field stadiums, several amusement parks – big ones, (and) markets that are very vibrant.” That’s nice about the soccer leagues. Maybe ESPN would be interested; on the other hand, ESPN might be more interested in the latest Pentagon report, which says that the endemic sectarian violence has not decreased since the Surge began in February; and that the last six months have been the deadliest for U.S. troops since the war began. Not to mention the fact that, despite the Surge and despite the supposed "tangible progress" among Iraq security forces, only 40 percent of Baghdad is currently considered secure - according to the U.S. military.
But the upbeat talking points are tough to give up. Yesterday, Petraeus made his first Sunday talk show appearance (on Fox News, naturally), and reaffirmed his praise for the Iraqi soccer leagues on real grass fields. Clearly, his September message will be: we’re making some tangible progress (soccer), but there are still tough challenges ahead, so therefore we need more time to make the Surge work, Americans should be patient, let’s look ahead to 2008 and beyond.
The key phase of the Fox interview began with this question by Chris Wallace: “There are reports that you…would like the Surge to continue until at least early 2008, that if it’s going to work, it needs to continue into early next year, is that true?”
Petraeus (bobbing and weaving like a seasoned pol): “We’ve got a number of different options that we have looked at, Chris, and it really is premature at this point in time to try to prejudge that. Again, I would suspect that late in the summer, early September, that we will provide some recommendations on the way ahead up our chain of command as well.”
Translation: “Yes.”
Wallace, to his credit, followed up: “But you surely don’t think the job would be done by the Surge by September, do you, sir?”
Petraeus (finally): “I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do.”
There it is: The troop hike continues, with Surge proponents in perpetual pursuit of “progress.” In Petraeus’ words, “counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years,” and perhaps this one should go longer, with “a long-term security arrangement over time,” like we have in South Korea (another idea being floated by Bush).
What’s noteworthy, however, is that Republicans on Capitol Hill aren’t buying any of this. While Petraeus was delivering the Bush line on Fox, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell was dissenting on CBS. McConnell, referring to his Republican colleagues, said: “I think everybody anticipates that there’s going to be a new strategy in the fall. I don’t think we’ll have the same level of troops, in all likelihood, that we have now. The Iraqis will have to step up, not only on the political side, but on the military side, to a greater extent. We’re not there forever.”
So there’s the disconnect: The GOP rank and file, anxious about the ’08 elections, wants a decisive September Surge report, and a drawdown of U.S. troops – while Bush and Petraeus want a Surge extension, with no drawdown. The key issue is whether McConnell and his colleagues, having already decided that Bush has no credibility on Iraq, are therefore prepared to question Petraeus’ credibility as well.
If they’re looking for ammo, they might want to start with his ’04 Pollyana pronouncements. Nothing that Petraeus said back then is as credible as what Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is saying now, in his attempt to explain why his Surge-supported government has failed to meet political benchmarks: “There are two mentalities in this region, conspiracy and mistrust.”
I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up. The institutions that oversee them are being reestablished from the top down. And Iraqi leaders are stepping forward, leading their country and their security forces courageously…There are reasons for optimism…Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired…Progress has also been made in police training…Considerable progress is also being made in the reconstruction and refurbishing of infrastructure for Iraq’s security forces…Iraq’s security forces are developing steadily and they are in the fight. Momentum has gathered in recent months. With strong Iraqi leaders out front and with continued coalition – and now NATO – support, this trend will continue.
Pretty encouraging, right? Any swing voter who read that piece might well have concluded that it would be nuts to dump Bush and elect John Kerry, what with the Iraqis so poised to take responsibility for their own security. And since nobody could possibly question the author’s bona fides, it had to be true: the Iraqis were getting ready to stand up, thereby allowing our troops to stand down – just like the Decider had long promised us.
Well, as we now know, those reassurances turned out to be worthless; after all, there would be no need for a U. S. troop escalation today if Iraqi’s security forces had really stepped forward to secure their own country. And one would think that anyone who played Pollyana in 2004 would be automatically dismissed in 2007 as just another credibility-challenged Bush messenger.
But apparently not. The author of that ’04 column was an Army lieutenant general named David Petraeus – the same guy (now a full general) who is leading Bush’s Surge, and who has been entrusted with giving Americans a straight-talk assessment this September.
You see where I’m going with this. Given Petraeus’ rhetorical track record – and his apparent willingness, back in 2004, to inject himself into the middle of a domestic partisan campaign – why should we have confidence that in September he’ll say anything that would deviate from the White House line?
That ’04 column came to mind last week, while I was reading new remarks by Petraeus about some of the swell things that have been happening in the wake of the Surge. As proof of “normalcy,” he told USA Today about all the “professional soccer leagues with real grass field stadiums, several amusement parks – big ones, (and) markets that are very vibrant.” That’s nice about the soccer leagues. Maybe ESPN would be interested; on the other hand, ESPN might be more interested in the latest Pentagon report, which says that the endemic sectarian violence has not decreased since the Surge began in February; and that the last six months have been the deadliest for U.S. troops since the war began. Not to mention the fact that, despite the Surge and despite the supposed "tangible progress" among Iraq security forces, only 40 percent of Baghdad is currently considered secure - according to the U.S. military.
But the upbeat talking points are tough to give up. Yesterday, Petraeus made his first Sunday talk show appearance (on Fox News, naturally), and reaffirmed his praise for the Iraqi soccer leagues on real grass fields. Clearly, his September message will be: we’re making some tangible progress (soccer), but there are still tough challenges ahead, so therefore we need more time to make the Surge work, Americans should be patient, let’s look ahead to 2008 and beyond.
The key phase of the Fox interview began with this question by Chris Wallace: “There are reports that you…would like the Surge to continue until at least early 2008, that if it’s going to work, it needs to continue into early next year, is that true?”
Petraeus (bobbing and weaving like a seasoned pol): “We’ve got a number of different options that we have looked at, Chris, and it really is premature at this point in time to try to prejudge that. Again, I would suspect that late in the summer, early September, that we will provide some recommendations on the way ahead up our chain of command as well.”
Translation: “Yes.”
Wallace, to his credit, followed up: “But you surely don’t think the job would be done by the Surge by September, do you, sir?”
Petraeus (finally): “I do not, no. I think that we have a lot of heavy lifting to do.”
There it is: The troop hike continues, with Surge proponents in perpetual pursuit of “progress.” In Petraeus’ words, “counterinsurgency operations have gone at least nine or 10 years,” and perhaps this one should go longer, with “a long-term security arrangement over time,” like we have in South Korea (another idea being floated by Bush).
What’s noteworthy, however, is that Republicans on Capitol Hill aren’t buying any of this. While Petraeus was delivering the Bush line on Fox, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell was dissenting on CBS. McConnell, referring to his Republican colleagues, said: “I think everybody anticipates that there’s going to be a new strategy in the fall. I don’t think we’ll have the same level of troops, in all likelihood, that we have now. The Iraqis will have to step up, not only on the political side, but on the military side, to a greater extent. We’re not there forever.”
So there’s the disconnect: The GOP rank and file, anxious about the ’08 elections, wants a decisive September Surge report, and a drawdown of U.S. troops – while Bush and Petraeus want a Surge extension, with no drawdown. The key issue is whether McConnell and his colleagues, having already decided that Bush has no credibility on Iraq, are therefore prepared to question Petraeus’ credibility as well.
If they’re looking for ammo, they might want to start with his ’04 Pollyana pronouncements. Nothing that Petraeus said back then is as credible as what Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is saying now, in his attempt to explain why his Surge-supported government has failed to meet political benchmarks: “There are two mentalities in this region, conspiracy and mistrust.”
Friday, June 15, 2007
The GOP seizes on Verbalgate
Everybody behaved badly. That’s my verdict on the Harry Reid imbroglio, which perhaps can be nicknamed Verbalgate.
Four days ago, in a phone conversation with liberal bloggers, the Senate Democratic leader referred to Peter Pace, the lame duck chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as “incompetent” – a fact that surfaced yesterday, when Politico posted a somewhat sketchy report. In the ensuing fallout, all interested parties played their predictable (and sometimes hypocritical) roles, thereby illustrating the stark ideological divisions that pervade wartime Washington.
Start with Reid. He spent much of yesterday trying to parry the Politico story, telling reporters “I’m not going to get into it, what I said or didn’t say.” Politico had reported the “incompetent” remark, but hadn’t provided any context. That came late in the day, when excerpts from a tape recording of the conversation were posted online. Here’s what Reid said to the liberal bloggers:
“…Well, I guess the president, he's gotten rid of Pace because he could not get confirmed here in the Senate. Pace is also a yes-man for the president. I told him to his face, I laid it out last time he came in to see me. I told him what an incompetent man I thought he was…”
Politically speaking, it’s easy to see why Reid felt compelled to beat up on a senior military officer in a phone call with the bloggers. He is well aware that the Democratic Congress has been plummeting in the polls, in large measure because his party base is furious that it has failed thus far to effectively confront President Bush on the Iraq war; as evidenced by the Washington Post’s surveys, support among liberal Democrats had dropped 22 percentage points since April.
This helps to explain why Reid felt the need to demonstrate that he’s on the case, that he’s still determined to block Bush on the war, that he’s still willing to play the tough guy (at least verbally) – and what better way to demonstrate toughness than to tell the liberal bloggers that he had dressed down a beribboned brass hat in private?
But assuming he really did call Pace incompetent to his face in private, I would suggest that it’s somewhat graceless to publicly share that news. Maybe I’m just an old-fashioned guy who is out of sync with the transparency culture, but it seems to me that there is something to be said for discretion, a trait that was widely embraced in pre-polarized Washington.
Is it fair to Pace – whatever his shortcomings, some of which we’ll discuss in a moment – that criticism directed at him in private is then repeated as red meat for the liberal base? Does that speak well of Reid’s leadership style? Reid himself may have sensed that he had erred by dishing with the bloggers; that may explain why he declined to repeat the “incompetent” characterization while under questioning yesterday.
But while Reid ran his mouth too freely, the Republicans did the same in response. The GOP was in a huff yesterday at the idea that a Democrat would dare say something bad about a man in uniform. At the White House, press secretary Tony Snow declared that “in a time of war, for a leader of a party that says it supports the military, it seems outrageous to be issuing slanders toward the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”
Isn’t this the same White House that dumped Pace only one week ago, having apparently decided that his stalwart defense of the Iraq war had tainted him politically, thus making him a poor candidate for a second term as Joint Chiefs chairman? On the issue of “outrageous” “slanders,” isn’t this the same White House that has repeatedly suggested that Democrats who oppose the Iraq war are aiding the terrorists?
And why didn’t the White House assail Sen. John McCain back in February, when he suggested in a hearing that another military luminary had botched his job in Iraq? (McCain to Gen. George Casey: "I question seriously the judgment that was employed in your execution of your responsibilities in Iraq. And we have paid a very, very heavy price in American blood and treasure because of what is now agreed to by literally everyone as a failed policy.")
While the GOP message machine will focus on Reid’s use of the word “incompetent,” it’s just as useful to note that Reid, in his chat with the bloggers, also described Pace as “a yes-man for the president.” That’s about as earth-shattering as the news that Britney Spears parties without underpants. Pace has been uttering the Bush-Cheney line on Iraq for a long time, seemingly impervious to the downward spiral. He was a faithful servant to Donald Rumsfeld, and he was so loyal to the White House that he took it upon himself to write a character reference for convicted felon Scooter Libby, and send it to the judge (“He impressed me as a team player…”).
But even Pace seemed to sense the pitfalls of being a yes man. During a conversation last July with Bob Woodward, the author asked Pace to characterize the latest spike in violence that was plaguing U.S. forces at the time. Pace replied that the insurgents were simply desperate to stop democracy from functioning.
Part of the reason for the violence, Pace said, “is the understanding of the enemy, that they’re on the ropes as far as if this parliament continues to function…” Woodward then asked whether Pace really wanted to suggest that the insurgents were “on the ropes.” Pace replied, “Wrong word.” Woodward then said, “Yeah, you’re going to sound like Dick Cheney. Do you want to retract that?” Pace said, “I would like to retract that, thank you.” All told, however, when asked to characterize the Iraq war, Pace replied: “I do not have doubt about what we’ve done.”
Bush and the GOP are desperate to find anything that might distract Americans from the havoc they have wrought in Iraq, and they seem to think that Reid’s indiscretion will suffice. In reality, however, Verbalgate will provide them with approximately 17 minutes of respite. The GOP seems to think there is political mileage in labeling Reid as “the Far Left’s front man on Iraq,” but, in truth, “the Far Left” and centrist America are in current agreement that this disastrous war is a GOP production, and that the GOP should be held to account. The 2008 election will not hinge on whether Harry Reid is too loose with his lips.
Four days ago, in a phone conversation with liberal bloggers, the Senate Democratic leader referred to Peter Pace, the lame duck chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as “incompetent” – a fact that surfaced yesterday, when Politico posted a somewhat sketchy report. In the ensuing fallout, all interested parties played their predictable (and sometimes hypocritical) roles, thereby illustrating the stark ideological divisions that pervade wartime Washington.
Start with Reid. He spent much of yesterday trying to parry the Politico story, telling reporters “I’m not going to get into it, what I said or didn’t say.” Politico had reported the “incompetent” remark, but hadn’t provided any context. That came late in the day, when excerpts from a tape recording of the conversation were posted online. Here’s what Reid said to the liberal bloggers:
“…Well, I guess the president, he's gotten rid of Pace because he could not get confirmed here in the Senate. Pace is also a yes-man for the president. I told him to his face, I laid it out last time he came in to see me. I told him what an incompetent man I thought he was…”
Politically speaking, it’s easy to see why Reid felt compelled to beat up on a senior military officer in a phone call with the bloggers. He is well aware that the Democratic Congress has been plummeting in the polls, in large measure because his party base is furious that it has failed thus far to effectively confront President Bush on the Iraq war; as evidenced by the Washington Post’s surveys, support among liberal Democrats had dropped 22 percentage points since April.
This helps to explain why Reid felt the need to demonstrate that he’s on the case, that he’s still determined to block Bush on the war, that he’s still willing to play the tough guy (at least verbally) – and what better way to demonstrate toughness than to tell the liberal bloggers that he had dressed down a beribboned brass hat in private?
But assuming he really did call Pace incompetent to his face in private, I would suggest that it’s somewhat graceless to publicly share that news. Maybe I’m just an old-fashioned guy who is out of sync with the transparency culture, but it seems to me that there is something to be said for discretion, a trait that was widely embraced in pre-polarized Washington.
Is it fair to Pace – whatever his shortcomings, some of which we’ll discuss in a moment – that criticism directed at him in private is then repeated as red meat for the liberal base? Does that speak well of Reid’s leadership style? Reid himself may have sensed that he had erred by dishing with the bloggers; that may explain why he declined to repeat the “incompetent” characterization while under questioning yesterday.
But while Reid ran his mouth too freely, the Republicans did the same in response. The GOP was in a huff yesterday at the idea that a Democrat would dare say something bad about a man in uniform. At the White House, press secretary Tony Snow declared that “in a time of war, for a leader of a party that says it supports the military, it seems outrageous to be issuing slanders toward the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.”
Isn’t this the same White House that dumped Pace only one week ago, having apparently decided that his stalwart defense of the Iraq war had tainted him politically, thus making him a poor candidate for a second term as Joint Chiefs chairman? On the issue of “outrageous” “slanders,” isn’t this the same White House that has repeatedly suggested that Democrats who oppose the Iraq war are aiding the terrorists?
And why didn’t the White House assail Sen. John McCain back in February, when he suggested in a hearing that another military luminary had botched his job in Iraq? (McCain to Gen. George Casey: "I question seriously the judgment that was employed in your execution of your responsibilities in Iraq. And we have paid a very, very heavy price in American blood and treasure because of what is now agreed to by literally everyone as a failed policy.")
While the GOP message machine will focus on Reid’s use of the word “incompetent,” it’s just as useful to note that Reid, in his chat with the bloggers, also described Pace as “a yes-man for the president.” That’s about as earth-shattering as the news that Britney Spears parties without underpants. Pace has been uttering the Bush-Cheney line on Iraq for a long time, seemingly impervious to the downward spiral. He was a faithful servant to Donald Rumsfeld, and he was so loyal to the White House that he took it upon himself to write a character reference for convicted felon Scooter Libby, and send it to the judge (“He impressed me as a team player…”).
But even Pace seemed to sense the pitfalls of being a yes man. During a conversation last July with Bob Woodward, the author asked Pace to characterize the latest spike in violence that was plaguing U.S. forces at the time. Pace replied that the insurgents were simply desperate to stop democracy from functioning.
Part of the reason for the violence, Pace said, “is the understanding of the enemy, that they’re on the ropes as far as if this parliament continues to function…” Woodward then asked whether Pace really wanted to suggest that the insurgents were “on the ropes.” Pace replied, “Wrong word.” Woodward then said, “Yeah, you’re going to sound like Dick Cheney. Do you want to retract that?” Pace said, “I would like to retract that, thank you.” All told, however, when asked to characterize the Iraq war, Pace replied: “I do not have doubt about what we’ve done.”
Bush and the GOP are desperate to find anything that might distract Americans from the havoc they have wrought in Iraq, and they seem to think that Reid’s indiscretion will suffice. In reality, however, Verbalgate will provide them with approximately 17 minutes of respite. The GOP seems to think there is political mileage in labeling Reid as “the Far Left’s front man on Iraq,” but, in truth, “the Far Left” and centrist America are in current agreement that this disastrous war is a GOP production, and that the GOP should be held to account. The 2008 election will not hinge on whether Harry Reid is too loose with his lips.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Tony lowballs Iraq, Rudy punts
Back on May 29, I mentioned that the Bush team, despite having originally indicated that September would be a key juncture for measuring the effectiveness of its so-called Surge, was suddenly trying to take a slide on September by dampening in advance any expectations of meaningful progress. Late last month, President Bush’s friends at Fox News and in the think tanks were dutifully spreading the word, in the hopes that perhaps restive congressional Republicans would sit tight and give Bush even more time to indulge his signature disaster.
Actually, from Bush’s perspective, weaseling out of the September deadline makes perfect sense, because the idea that the political and security conditions in Iraq would suddenly improve, just because the U.S. had commenced a troop escalation, seemed laughable from the start. And, sure enough, the Surge thus far hasn’t made any appreciable difference.
Iraq’s political leaders, divided by sectarian hostilities, have taken virtually no steps toward reconciliation, much less enacted the reform laws that the Bush team is demanding as a gauge of progress. And today we have a new Pentagon report, which says that the average daily casualties in Iraq have actually increased since the Surge strategy was first implemented on Feb. 10.
So it’s no surprise that Bush, now tagged with a 29 percent job approval rating, is backing off the statement he made in a Reuters interview on May 22. At the time, he characterized September “as an important moment, because (General) David Petraeus says that’s when he’ll have a pretty good assessment as to what the effect of the Surge has been.” But today, it’s a different story.
My dictionary defines the word important as “of much or great significance or consequence.” The Bush dictionary apparently has a looser definition.
Bush spokesman Tony Snow did his bit for the team yesterday, playing a game of lowball with the White House press corps (while insisting, naturally, that he wasn’t low-balling anything). When he was asked to characterize the impending September assessment, he called it “the first opportunity to have a little bit of metric…At that juncture, you’re going to be able to have a little more granularity, as they say.”
I’m having a little trouble squaring “a little bit of metric” and “a little more granularity” with the dictionary’s “of much or great significance and consequence.” It seems to me that something of great consequence translates, at the very least, into a large amount of granularity.
A reporter asked Snow whether his characterization of September was different from Bush’s May 22 characterization of September. He replied, “No, I will let the president do the characterizations…I think we’re parsing a little bit here.”
A reporter reminded Snow that Bush has said in other interviews that we would know in September whether the Surge was working. Snow was then asked, in reference to September, “is it the right time to judge whether the new way forward is working?”
Snow replied, “Again, let’s see. We’ll have to take a look. I just - ”
Reporter: “But that sounds like backpedaling.”
Snow: “No, it’s not backpedaling. It’s just - it seems to me to be such a vast, metaphysical question.”
And so on. I sympathize with Snow. It’s the thankless job of the White House flak to spin a disastrous war by talking about granularities and metaphysics, and hoping that nobody remembers what the administration has previously said about the Surge (in Senate testimony on Jan. 12, Defense secretary Robert Gates said that we would be able to measure the effectiveness of the Surge "fairly quickly," within "a couple of months").
So perhaps we should seek out substantive answers elsewhere, starting with the Republican frontrunner for the ’08 presidential nomination. What would Rudy Giuliani do in Iraq? How would he differ from the current lame duck? Let’s check out Giuliani’s policy agenda, which he released on Tuesday. He calls it his “12 commitments.” I’ve got it right here. Let’s see….
Wait…Iraq must be on this list somewhere….Still looking…
Nope, not a single word here about Iraq.
He does declare that “I will keep America on offense in the terrorists’ war on us,” but that’s hardly a profile in courage, since I doubt that any ’08 candidate will be promising to put America on defense. And one would think that, if he wants to “keep America on offense,” he might want to at least address what he would do about Iraq, which, at a price tag of $2 billion a week, is severely complicating America’s attempts to stay on offense worldwide.
But not a word about Iraq. And when asked Tuesday why he had stayed mum about the electorate’s number-one concern, he said this: “Iraq may get better, Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq, we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people.”
This, from the guy who wrote a book called Leadership. My dictionary defines leadership as the act of providing “guidance” and “direction.” But, apparently, Giuliani doesn’t want to take the lead and offer guidance and direction; he’d rather punt, by simply saying that the war is “in the hands of other people.” If a Democratic candidate had made such a statement, he and his fellow Republicans would be citing it as proof that the other party doesn’t have the guts and moxie to lead America in time of war.
His dilemma is obvious, however. If he had spelled out a commitment that essentially endorsed Bush’s strategy, he would have endeared himself to the Bush diehards who are expected to vote heavily in the GOP primaries – but he would have signaled his foolhardiness to the swing-voting independents who have long concluded that the war is Bush’s folly. On the other hand, if he had spelled out a commitment to radically change course in Iraq, he might endear himself to swing voters – but hurt himself with GOP primary voters.
This is the mess that Bush has created for his fellow Republicans, and it explains why people like Snow and Giuliani have to play games with the dictionary.
-------
If you're not sick of hearing about Hillary Clinton, you might want to download yesterday's "Radio Times" show on Philadelphia's NPR station. I discussed the Hillary-as-polarizer issue for an hour with author and foreign relations fellow Peter Beinart. It's available here, at 6/13, Hour One. Listen for the caller who insists that Hillary reminds many men of their first wives.
Actually, from Bush’s perspective, weaseling out of the September deadline makes perfect sense, because the idea that the political and security conditions in Iraq would suddenly improve, just because the U.S. had commenced a troop escalation, seemed laughable from the start. And, sure enough, the Surge thus far hasn’t made any appreciable difference.
Iraq’s political leaders, divided by sectarian hostilities, have taken virtually no steps toward reconciliation, much less enacted the reform laws that the Bush team is demanding as a gauge of progress. And today we have a new Pentagon report, which says that the average daily casualties in Iraq have actually increased since the Surge strategy was first implemented on Feb. 10.
So it’s no surprise that Bush, now tagged with a 29 percent job approval rating, is backing off the statement he made in a Reuters interview on May 22. At the time, he characterized September “as an important moment, because (General) David Petraeus says that’s when he’ll have a pretty good assessment as to what the effect of the Surge has been.” But today, it’s a different story.
My dictionary defines the word important as “of much or great significance or consequence.” The Bush dictionary apparently has a looser definition.
Bush spokesman Tony Snow did his bit for the team yesterday, playing a game of lowball with the White House press corps (while insisting, naturally, that he wasn’t low-balling anything). When he was asked to characterize the impending September assessment, he called it “the first opportunity to have a little bit of metric…At that juncture, you’re going to be able to have a little more granularity, as they say.”
I’m having a little trouble squaring “a little bit of metric” and “a little more granularity” with the dictionary’s “of much or great significance and consequence.” It seems to me that something of great consequence translates, at the very least, into a large amount of granularity.
A reporter asked Snow whether his characterization of September was different from Bush’s May 22 characterization of September. He replied, “No, I will let the president do the characterizations…I think we’re parsing a little bit here.”
A reporter reminded Snow that Bush has said in other interviews that we would know in September whether the Surge was working. Snow was then asked, in reference to September, “is it the right time to judge whether the new way forward is working?”
Snow replied, “Again, let’s see. We’ll have to take a look. I just - ”
Reporter: “But that sounds like backpedaling.”
Snow: “No, it’s not backpedaling. It’s just - it seems to me to be such a vast, metaphysical question.”
And so on. I sympathize with Snow. It’s the thankless job of the White House flak to spin a disastrous war by talking about granularities and metaphysics, and hoping that nobody remembers what the administration has previously said about the Surge (in Senate testimony on Jan. 12, Defense secretary Robert Gates said that we would be able to measure the effectiveness of the Surge "fairly quickly," within "a couple of months").
So perhaps we should seek out substantive answers elsewhere, starting with the Republican frontrunner for the ’08 presidential nomination. What would Rudy Giuliani do in Iraq? How would he differ from the current lame duck? Let’s check out Giuliani’s policy agenda, which he released on Tuesday. He calls it his “12 commitments.” I’ve got it right here. Let’s see….
Wait…Iraq must be on this list somewhere….Still looking…
Nope, not a single word here about Iraq.
He does declare that “I will keep America on offense in the terrorists’ war on us,” but that’s hardly a profile in courage, since I doubt that any ’08 candidate will be promising to put America on defense. And one would think that, if he wants to “keep America on offense,” he might want to at least address what he would do about Iraq, which, at a price tag of $2 billion a week, is severely complicating America’s attempts to stay on offense worldwide.
But not a word about Iraq. And when asked Tuesday why he had stayed mum about the electorate’s number-one concern, he said this: “Iraq may get better, Iraq may get worse. We may be successful in Iraq, we may not be. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s in the hands of other people.”
This, from the guy who wrote a book called Leadership. My dictionary defines leadership as the act of providing “guidance” and “direction.” But, apparently, Giuliani doesn’t want to take the lead and offer guidance and direction; he’d rather punt, by simply saying that the war is “in the hands of other people.” If a Democratic candidate had made such a statement, he and his fellow Republicans would be citing it as proof that the other party doesn’t have the guts and moxie to lead America in time of war.
His dilemma is obvious, however. If he had spelled out a commitment that essentially endorsed Bush’s strategy, he would have endeared himself to the Bush diehards who are expected to vote heavily in the GOP primaries – but he would have signaled his foolhardiness to the swing-voting independents who have long concluded that the war is Bush’s folly. On the other hand, if he had spelled out a commitment to radically change course in Iraq, he might endear himself to swing voters – but hurt himself with GOP primary voters.
This is the mess that Bush has created for his fellow Republicans, and it explains why people like Snow and Giuliani have to play games with the dictionary.
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If you're not sick of hearing about Hillary Clinton, you might want to download yesterday's "Radio Times" show on Philadelphia's NPR station. I discussed the Hillary-as-polarizer issue for an hour with author and foreign relations fellow Peter Beinart. It's available here, at 6/13, Hour One. Listen for the caller who insists that Hillary reminds many men of their first wives.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Is Bush plowing fallow soil?
Once again, there is fresh evidence that George W. Bush has severely damaged the Republican party and imperiled its ’08 presidential nominee. It turns out that even rural Americans – roughly 20 percent of the national electorate – are profoundly fed up.
And if those folks say they are disenchanted, it means the GOP is in serious trouble.
Republican presidential candidates generally depend on winning big in the rural environs, to help offset the usual Democratic urban margins. That was the Bush formula in 2000 (when he won 59 percent of rural voters, topping Al Gore by a whopping 22 points), and again in 2004 (when he won the same percentage, besting John Kerry by 19 points). Bush’s father won the rural vote by 11 points in 1988. Ronald Reagan won the rural vote by 16 points in 1980 and by 34 points in 1984.
Yet today, in a new survey sponsored by the non-partisan Center for Rural Strategies, and designed on a bipartisan basis by Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg and GOP consultant Bill Greener, rural voters are signaling something different. When asked whether they would favor a Democratic or Republican presidential candidate in 2008, they opted for the Democrat by two points.
Among swing-voting independents who live in rural areas, the unnamed Democratic candidate is favored by 11 points; among blue-collar rural voters, the Democrat is favored by 12 points; and, perhaps, most significantly, the Democrat is favored by three points among rural voters who have family members fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan.
For the Republicans, these numbers should be a wake-up call that’s roughly equivalent to being jabbed in the kidneys with a cattle prod. The Democratic game plan for recapturing the White House in 2008 does not require winning the rural vote at all. They merely need to be competitive. They merely need not to get wiped out. Indeed, in both 1992 and 1996 Bill Clinton fought the GOP to a virtual draw in rural areas. This new poll suggests that the Democrats are well poised to do that again.
As GOP consultant Greener put it the other day, obviously choosing his words carefully, “Republicans are vastly underperforming among rural Americans. And if we’re going to succeed in 2008, we’re going to have to do better.” Or, as he said in the polling analysis that he co-authored with Greenberg, “Bush’s problems directly impact the entire Republican brand in rural America and usher in a new era of political competition…Democrats in turn have a historic opportunity to strike deep into the Republican base.”
And what’s Bush’s biggest problem, the problem that has triggered a 26-point plunge in his rural job approval since 2004? Take a wild guess.
It’s arguably no surprise that Iraq was cited by rural voters as their top issue - why should they be any different? – but what’s most significant is their personal stake in the war. As the polling analysis points out, “this is the part of the country that, more than others, sends its sons and daughters to do the fighting.” Here’s a stat you won’t see in suburbia: 75 percent of those surveyed know somebody who is fighting in the war; and 27 percent have a family member in harm’s way.
And if elected Democrats in Washington need any more evidence that it is politically safe to confront Bush on the war, consider this: Even in Republican-voting rural America, 50 percent agree with the statement that “the current course cannot bring stability, and we need to start reducing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq,” while 45 percent agree with the argument that “we must stay the course to achieve stability and finish the job in Iraq.”
I assume that some reality-challenged Republicans will be tempted to dismiss these numbers with the usual mantra - that surveys are a mere snapshot in time and that the only relevant poll is the one conducted on election day. But that line won’t fly, because rural voters have already vented their frustrations on election day. I am referring to last November, when the Democrats captured both the House and Senate – with serious help from rural voters.
Republican House candidates topped their Democratic counterparts by only three points among rural voters nationwide (a nine-point drop from the GOP’s winning rural margin in the 2002 House elections). Indeed, the ’06 Democratic rural surge helped propel the party into power; 18 House Republican incumbents with large rural electorates lost their seats. And the same pattern was evident in key Senate races – notably in Virginia, where Democrat James Webb ousted George Allen in part by dueling Allen to a virtual draw among rural voters (Webb won 49 percent of them); and in Missouri, where Democrat Claire McCaskill ousted Jim Talent in part by winning 45 percent of the rural vote.
Some Democratic strategists have arguing for years, and largely in vain, that their party has needlessly ceded rural voters to the GOP. Steve Jarding, one of the most prominent complainers, said several years ago, “It’s a moral argument. How morally right is it for our Democratic nominee for president to sell 60 million people, ‘You don’t matter to me?’” Last year he co-authored a book on the topic with Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, another Democratic strategist who believes in rural outreach; in an interview last year, Saunders argued that a Democratic presidential candidate could score big gains in rural areas if he or she takes the time to show respect for those voters' values. As Saunders put it, "These people have been voting Republican, but they're not really Republican, and we need to show 'em why" they should switch in '08.
But the new survey stats don't foresee '08 Democratic gains as a slam dunk. As the polling analysis makes clear, rural voters instinctively favor the Republicans as the folks more in tune with their way of life. These voters are ticked off about the Iraq war, and that has shaken their allegience to the GOP, but they still don't necessarily trust the Democrats on the crucially important "family values." As the analysis warns Democrats, "What is happening is less about an ideological alignment than a reflection on the current governance." (This helps explain why GOP candidates such as Mitt Romney are stressing "values" and barely mentioning Bush or Iraq.)
And Democrats should also remember that this survey was merely asking rural voters to choose between generic Democratic and Republican presidential candidates; once the actual names are filled in, their sentiments might be somewhat different. For instance, Hillary Clinton scored poorly in the survey, ranking lower than all the other major candidates, although presumably she would seek to employ some of the same strategies that enabled her to win over skeptics in the rural communities of New York State.
But the bottom line for the GOP is not encouraging. If Republicans have to spend precious time and money next year just to shore up their rural base, that alone is a Democratic advantage. It's tough to win a presidential race by playing defense.
And if those folks say they are disenchanted, it means the GOP is in serious trouble.
Republican presidential candidates generally depend on winning big in the rural environs, to help offset the usual Democratic urban margins. That was the Bush formula in 2000 (when he won 59 percent of rural voters, topping Al Gore by a whopping 22 points), and again in 2004 (when he won the same percentage, besting John Kerry by 19 points). Bush’s father won the rural vote by 11 points in 1988. Ronald Reagan won the rural vote by 16 points in 1980 and by 34 points in 1984.
Yet today, in a new survey sponsored by the non-partisan Center for Rural Strategies, and designed on a bipartisan basis by Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg and GOP consultant Bill Greener, rural voters are signaling something different. When asked whether they would favor a Democratic or Republican presidential candidate in 2008, they opted for the Democrat by two points.
Among swing-voting independents who live in rural areas, the unnamed Democratic candidate is favored by 11 points; among blue-collar rural voters, the Democrat is favored by 12 points; and, perhaps, most significantly, the Democrat is favored by three points among rural voters who have family members fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan.
For the Republicans, these numbers should be a wake-up call that’s roughly equivalent to being jabbed in the kidneys with a cattle prod. The Democratic game plan for recapturing the White House in 2008 does not require winning the rural vote at all. They merely need to be competitive. They merely need not to get wiped out. Indeed, in both 1992 and 1996 Bill Clinton fought the GOP to a virtual draw in rural areas. This new poll suggests that the Democrats are well poised to do that again.
As GOP consultant Greener put it the other day, obviously choosing his words carefully, “Republicans are vastly underperforming among rural Americans. And if we’re going to succeed in 2008, we’re going to have to do better.” Or, as he said in the polling analysis that he co-authored with Greenberg, “Bush’s problems directly impact the entire Republican brand in rural America and usher in a new era of political competition…Democrats in turn have a historic opportunity to strike deep into the Republican base.”
And what’s Bush’s biggest problem, the problem that has triggered a 26-point plunge in his rural job approval since 2004? Take a wild guess.
It’s arguably no surprise that Iraq was cited by rural voters as their top issue - why should they be any different? – but what’s most significant is their personal stake in the war. As the polling analysis points out, “this is the part of the country that, more than others, sends its sons and daughters to do the fighting.” Here’s a stat you won’t see in suburbia: 75 percent of those surveyed know somebody who is fighting in the war; and 27 percent have a family member in harm’s way.
And if elected Democrats in Washington need any more evidence that it is politically safe to confront Bush on the war, consider this: Even in Republican-voting rural America, 50 percent agree with the statement that “the current course cannot bring stability, and we need to start reducing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq,” while 45 percent agree with the argument that “we must stay the course to achieve stability and finish the job in Iraq.”
I assume that some reality-challenged Republicans will be tempted to dismiss these numbers with the usual mantra - that surveys are a mere snapshot in time and that the only relevant poll is the one conducted on election day. But that line won’t fly, because rural voters have already vented their frustrations on election day. I am referring to last November, when the Democrats captured both the House and Senate – with serious help from rural voters.
Republican House candidates topped their Democratic counterparts by only three points among rural voters nationwide (a nine-point drop from the GOP’s winning rural margin in the 2002 House elections). Indeed, the ’06 Democratic rural surge helped propel the party into power; 18 House Republican incumbents with large rural electorates lost their seats. And the same pattern was evident in key Senate races – notably in Virginia, where Democrat James Webb ousted George Allen in part by dueling Allen to a virtual draw among rural voters (Webb won 49 percent of them); and in Missouri, where Democrat Claire McCaskill ousted Jim Talent in part by winning 45 percent of the rural vote.
Some Democratic strategists have arguing for years, and largely in vain, that their party has needlessly ceded rural voters to the GOP. Steve Jarding, one of the most prominent complainers, said several years ago, “It’s a moral argument. How morally right is it for our Democratic nominee for president to sell 60 million people, ‘You don’t matter to me?’” Last year he co-authored a book on the topic with Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, another Democratic strategist who believes in rural outreach; in an interview last year, Saunders argued that a Democratic presidential candidate could score big gains in rural areas if he or she takes the time to show respect for those voters' values. As Saunders put it, "These people have been voting Republican, but they're not really Republican, and we need to show 'em why" they should switch in '08.
But the new survey stats don't foresee '08 Democratic gains as a slam dunk. As the polling analysis makes clear, rural voters instinctively favor the Republicans as the folks more in tune with their way of life. These voters are ticked off about the Iraq war, and that has shaken their allegience to the GOP, but they still don't necessarily trust the Democrats on the crucially important "family values." As the analysis warns Democrats, "What is happening is less about an ideological alignment than a reflection on the current governance." (This helps explain why GOP candidates such as Mitt Romney are stressing "values" and barely mentioning Bush or Iraq.)
And Democrats should also remember that this survey was merely asking rural voters to choose between generic Democratic and Republican presidential candidates; once the actual names are filled in, their sentiments might be somewhat different. For instance, Hillary Clinton scored poorly in the survey, ranking lower than all the other major candidates, although presumably she would seek to employ some of the same strategies that enabled her to win over skeptics in the rural communities of New York State.
But the bottom line for the GOP is not encouraging. If Republicans have to spend precious time and money next year just to shore up their rural base, that alone is a Democratic advantage. It's tough to win a presidential race by playing defense.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Scooter and Gonzo and Pace, oh my
It’s difficult to catalogue all the latest conservative grievances against George W. Bush, but let’s give it a try:
Conservatives wanted Bush to retain Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but last Thursday Bush dumped him. Conservatives want Bush to pardon Scooter Libby (who, after all, merely lied under oath to impede a national security investigation), but Bush refuses to do it. Conservatives want Bush to dump attorney general Alberto Gonzales (whom they consider an incompetent toady), but Bush won’t do that either.
So here’s the right-wing recipe thus far: Keep Pace, free Scooter, ditch Gonzo. Whereas the Bush recipe is: ditch Pace, ditch Scooter, keep Gonzo.
Then add the immigration ingredient, and you’ve got a bubbling cauldron. Conservatives want Bush to ditch his reform bill, the compromise deal that would give 12 million illegals a path to citizenship. But Bush refuses to do that either.
Lately, the Bush-bashing on the right has become nearly as virulent as the Bush-bashing on the left - which I suppose is another way to gauge the political death throes of this administration. He might wish that he had stayed a bit longer in Albania.
For instance, Bill Kristol, the conservative activist and commentator, is furious today that Bush won’t wield his pen on Libby’s behalf; he thinks that Bush is “selfish,” fearful of the political backlash that a Libby pardon might trigger, and motivated by a “petty desire to avoid some additional criticism.”
The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial writers added their ire yesterday: “With Mr. Libby, what is Mr. Bush afraid of – jeopardizing his 33 percent approval rating? A pardon would be a two-day story…his supporters would cheer to see the president standing by the man who stood by him when others in his administration cut and ran.”
Washington attorney Victoria Toensing, a prominent conservative voice, linked two of the grievances and came up with this sound bite: “If the president can pardon 12 million illegal immigrants, he can pardon Scooter Libby.” This quote turned up yesterday in a column by Robert Novak, the conservative pundit who lately has become a conduit for aggrieved conservative Bush-bashers, most of whom are ranting behind the cloak of anonymity in the hopes that the Bush White House will notice their smoke signals.
These sources are linking the Gonzo and Scooter grievances. From Novak: “Prevailing opinion among Republican office holders, contributors and activists could not differ more from Bush’s posture. They regard Libby as a valuable public servant…Republican insiders are enraged by Bush’s retention of Gonzales, whom they consider a political and governmental disaster (presiding over) a crippled, leaderless Justice Department.”
Others suggest that Bush’s credibility on the immigration issue is shot, because he has so little credibility in general. Rich Lowry at the National Review, writing today, even manages to work Gonzo into the mix: “The backdrop to all this, of course, is the Iraq war. The government of the United States presented to the world intelligence that turned out to be wrong. It insisted we were making steady progress in the guerrilla war when, by the end of 2006, we were facing catastrophe. And it has still managed only fitful progress against an enemy whose main weapon is homemade bombs. This casts a pall over our public life, augmented by Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, corruption in Congress, paranoiac ranting on the Left, and incompetence in high places (see: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales).”
Still others are equally incensed about the ditching of Peter Pace. Last Friday, the Bush team announced it had decided not to re-nominate Gen. Pace for a new term as Joint Chiefs chairman, because it knew that Pace would be grilled about the Iraq war during his Senate confirmation hearings. That decision has really ticked off the conservative base, which is accusing Bush of timidity under fire.
More grievance linkage, this time from a blogger at redstate.com, the popular grassroots conservative website: “Pace is being ungraciously sacrificed at the altar of capitulation to the antiwar movement…Bush seems more interested in standing by a struggling attorney general…Why, after such a military career, does Gen. Pace find (himself) alone in an open field, with no cover fire? Because the political expediency of his superiors is of greater concern…Throwing yet another faithful servant under the bus for political expediency is NO WAY to honor and respect this Soldier, Warfighter, and American Patriot.”
The Wall Street Journal editorialists chimed in yesterday: “Is George W. Bush still president? We can’t help but wonder.” Dumping Pace “only makes Mr. Bush look weaker as a commander in chief who can’t even select his own war generals.” Dumping Pace is tantamount to “appeasement.”
An appeaser who won’t secure our borders? A “selfish” and “petty” president who’s afraid of political fallout? This is not the Bush image that his handlers sought to nurture back in ’03 when they dressed him in that flight suit. And history tells us that an incumbent party has a tough time staying in office when its own base is deeply disenchanted.
-------
By the way, here was Bush yesterday, complaining about all those U.S. senators who persist in going after Gonzo: "This process has been drug out a long time."
Drug out? It would appear that, in some long-ago grammar class, a certain child got left behind.
Conservatives wanted Bush to retain Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but last Thursday Bush dumped him. Conservatives want Bush to pardon Scooter Libby (who, after all, merely lied under oath to impede a national security investigation), but Bush refuses to do it. Conservatives want Bush to dump attorney general Alberto Gonzales (whom they consider an incompetent toady), but Bush won’t do that either.
So here’s the right-wing recipe thus far: Keep Pace, free Scooter, ditch Gonzo. Whereas the Bush recipe is: ditch Pace, ditch Scooter, keep Gonzo.
Then add the immigration ingredient, and you’ve got a bubbling cauldron. Conservatives want Bush to ditch his reform bill, the compromise deal that would give 12 million illegals a path to citizenship. But Bush refuses to do that either.
Lately, the Bush-bashing on the right has become nearly as virulent as the Bush-bashing on the left - which I suppose is another way to gauge the political death throes of this administration. He might wish that he had stayed a bit longer in Albania.
For instance, Bill Kristol, the conservative activist and commentator, is furious today that Bush won’t wield his pen on Libby’s behalf; he thinks that Bush is “selfish,” fearful of the political backlash that a Libby pardon might trigger, and motivated by a “petty desire to avoid some additional criticism.”
The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial writers added their ire yesterday: “With Mr. Libby, what is Mr. Bush afraid of – jeopardizing his 33 percent approval rating? A pardon would be a two-day story…his supporters would cheer to see the president standing by the man who stood by him when others in his administration cut and ran.”
Washington attorney Victoria Toensing, a prominent conservative voice, linked two of the grievances and came up with this sound bite: “If the president can pardon 12 million illegal immigrants, he can pardon Scooter Libby.” This quote turned up yesterday in a column by Robert Novak, the conservative pundit who lately has become a conduit for aggrieved conservative Bush-bashers, most of whom are ranting behind the cloak of anonymity in the hopes that the Bush White House will notice their smoke signals.
These sources are linking the Gonzo and Scooter grievances. From Novak: “Prevailing opinion among Republican office holders, contributors and activists could not differ more from Bush’s posture. They regard Libby as a valuable public servant…Republican insiders are enraged by Bush’s retention of Gonzales, whom they consider a political and governmental disaster (presiding over) a crippled, leaderless Justice Department.”
Others suggest that Bush’s credibility on the immigration issue is shot, because he has so little credibility in general. Rich Lowry at the National Review, writing today, even manages to work Gonzo into the mix: “The backdrop to all this, of course, is the Iraq war. The government of the United States presented to the world intelligence that turned out to be wrong. It insisted we were making steady progress in the guerrilla war when, by the end of 2006, we were facing catastrophe. And it has still managed only fitful progress against an enemy whose main weapon is homemade bombs. This casts a pall over our public life, augmented by Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, corruption in Congress, paranoiac ranting on the Left, and incompetence in high places (see: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales).”
Still others are equally incensed about the ditching of Peter Pace. Last Friday, the Bush team announced it had decided not to re-nominate Gen. Pace for a new term as Joint Chiefs chairman, because it knew that Pace would be grilled about the Iraq war during his Senate confirmation hearings. That decision has really ticked off the conservative base, which is accusing Bush of timidity under fire.
More grievance linkage, this time from a blogger at redstate.com, the popular grassroots conservative website: “Pace is being ungraciously sacrificed at the altar of capitulation to the antiwar movement…Bush seems more interested in standing by a struggling attorney general…Why, after such a military career, does Gen. Pace find (himself) alone in an open field, with no cover fire? Because the political expediency of his superiors is of greater concern…Throwing yet another faithful servant under the bus for political expediency is NO WAY to honor and respect this Soldier, Warfighter, and American Patriot.”
The Wall Street Journal editorialists chimed in yesterday: “Is George W. Bush still president? We can’t help but wonder.” Dumping Pace “only makes Mr. Bush look weaker as a commander in chief who can’t even select his own war generals.” Dumping Pace is tantamount to “appeasement.”
An appeaser who won’t secure our borders? A “selfish” and “petty” president who’s afraid of political fallout? This is not the Bush image that his handlers sought to nurture back in ’03 when they dressed him in that flight suit. And history tells us that an incumbent party has a tough time staying in office when its own base is deeply disenchanted.
-------
By the way, here was Bush yesterday, complaining about all those U.S. senators who persist in going after Gonzo: "This process has been drug out a long time."
Drug out? It would appear that, in some long-ago grammar class, a certain child got left behind.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Hillary, the director's cut
One of our most fascinating, polarizing public figures is forever destined to be embroiled in controversy, and open to interpretation. But enough about Tony Soprano. Let’s talk instead about Hillary Clinton. Two new interpretive biographies have just been dropped atop the Hillary heap, and I read them so that you don’t have to. I summarized my thoughts in a print column yesterday. A much longer version – the indulgent “director’s cut,” as it were – appears below:
Maybe somebody should just open a Hillary Clinton emporium, a 24/7 store dedicated to the sale of all things Hillary, featuring a book department stocked only with Hillary biographies. It could be the political junkie’s version of a Baskin Robins, a place where fans and foes can choose their favorite Hillary flavors, ranging from sweet to sour, from Hillary as heroic public servant to Hillary as a leftist Lady Macbeth.
There would be no consensus on what constitutes the most accurate Hillary, of course, but we’re long past the point of being capable of distinguishing between partisan spin and empirical substance. There is, it seems, no objective middle ground. The ’08 Democratic frontrunner is one of our most polarizing political figures; virtually all Americans made up their minds about her long ago, pro or con; and the book publishing industry is quite happy about that, because it keeps cranking out new volumes that fit every conceivable preconception.
I can’t imagine that she and her campaign aides are pleased by all this ceaseless attention; they would much prefer to conduct their methodical march to the nomination with minimal focus on her embattled personality, maximum focus on dry public policy, and with minimal references to the controversies that marred her husband’s tumultuous tenure. She can’t erase the ‘90s, but she’d like to be judged afresh. Her presidential bid gives her a second chance to make a first impression, a phenomenon that is quite rare in politics; the problem is, she has to compete with the wide variety of impressions on sale in the Hillary market.
Psychobabble devotees have long been able to consult the Hillary book by Gail Sheehy, conservatives who loathe Hillary’s politics can find comfort in the writings of Bay Buchanan or Dick Morris or Barbara Olson or Emmett Tyrrell, liberals who love Hillary’s politics can consult her memoir or buy the laudatory tome by Susan Estrich, lovers of salacious anti-Hillary gossip can pick up the book by Edward Klein (who claims that Hillary was “widely rumored” to be gay) or perhaps Christopher Anderson’s analysis of her marriage (he compares her to Evita)….it’s endless, really. She’s less a candidate than a mass culture commodity.
And now, naturally, we have two new biographies for the shelf – Her Way, by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Atta Jr. (Gerth was the New York Times reporter who “broke” the Whitewater scandal, or pseudo-scandal); and A Woman in Charge, by the famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein (who reportedly spent eight years on his project). Not surprisingly, the Clinton camp started dumping on both books long before they hit the bookstores.
While both books do have their strengths, discerning readers basically have two choices: They can either cherry-pick their favorite information, to reinforce how they felt about Hillary prior to purchase, or they can read the biographies from preface to index – and rightly decide that Hillary is a lot like most of her fellow humans. In other words, she is complicated. She has her strengths and weaknesses. She is passionate about her ideals and extremely competitive; she is warm to her friends, and uncompromisingly cool to her enemies; she is arrogant and she has a great belly laugh; she is (as Gerth and Van Atta assert) “tough, funny and brilliant,” but also “hardened, and unwilling to fully acknowledge her mistakes.” And of course she is “ambitious,” a word that is considered a compliment when applied to a male politician.
None of these observations are particularly new, but I’d argue that Bernstein’s account is richer. His writing is more lyrical (“the most essential and yet elusive dynamic of the Clinton presidency came to be the relationship between the two of them – the sand in the gears in bad times, the grease that moved the machinery in good ones…”). His depiction of Hillary’s domineering father is more anecdotal (“If Hillary or one of her brothers had left the cap off the toothpaste tube, he threw it out the bathroom window and told the offending child to fetch it from the front yard evergreens, even in snow”).
And he trumped his competitors by gaining access to some valuable Arkansas sources. He was able to sit down with Betsey Wright, a longtime family friend who ran Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial office; it turns out that, not only was Bill driving Hillary crazy (for the reasons we all know), he also made Wright so crazy that the two of them – governor and staffer – signed up to see a shrink together, in order to fix their office relationship. Wright also dished to Bernstein about yet another Bill paramour – Mary Jo Jenkins – who posed a serious threat to the Clinton marriage, just three years before he launched his presidential candidacy.
But Wright is not in the narrative to sling gossip; she is uncommonly insightful about the complexities of the Clinton partnership. She traces her friendship with Hillary back to the latter’s law school days, and she was convinced, even then, that Hillary was destined to be a trailblazer for women in national politics. Indeed, for that very reason, she urged Hillary not to marry Bill and thus take a subordinate role.
Bernstein also scored by gaining access to some private notebooks, compiled after the 1992 election by Hillary’s closest friend, Diane Blair. A political scientist, Blair interviewed virtually everyone who had worked on the Clinton campaign’s secret “defense team,” which had the onerous job of deflecting the relentless GOP attacks on the Clintons’ private lives. Blair never did anything with her thick files; she died in 2000, and the material was locked away. But Bernstein got permission to read them. Hillary is revealed in those pages as the toughest pugilist of all, in the service of saving her marriage and serving Bill’s career.
As one ’92 campaign aide revealingly explained in the Blair papers: “She doesn’t look at her life as a series of crises but rather a series of battles. I think of her viewing herself in more heroic terms, an epic character like in The Iliad, fighting battle after battle. Yes, she succumbs to victimization sometimes, in that when the truth becomes too painful, when she is faced with the repercussions of her own mistakes or flaws, she falls into victimhood. But that’s a last resort and when she does allow the wallowing it’s only in the warm glow of martyrdom – as a laudable victim – a martyr in the tradition of Joan of Arc, a martyr in the religious sense. She would much rather play the woman warrior…She’s happiest when she’s fighting, when she has identified the enemy and goes into attack mode.”
Typically, of course, that assessment can be read two ways. Hillary haters can claim it as proof that she is a dangerous polarizer who (like her husband) is prone to self-pity; but Hillary lovers can claim it as proof that she (unlike her less battle-tested Democratic rivals) has the requisite moxie to slug it out with the GOP in 2008.
Gerth and Van Atta have experienced the latter, first hand; their new book has already been attacked online by Hillary-friendly media watchdogs, not just because of Gerth’s old Whitewater coverage, but because it’s clear, from at least 30 footnote citations, that he and Van Atta were in close contact, during the late ‘90s, with the office of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Given Starr’s role as chief sleuth in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Hillary fans may well cite that as sufficient proof of authorial bias.
It’s a sign of the times that the watchdogs at Media Matters for America, a non-profit Washington group, have sought to undercut this book even before it hit the shelves, by noting the Starr office citations and questioning the quality of Gerth’s Whitewater reporting. It’s also a sign of the times that Gerth and Van Atta, clearly anticipating these rebuttals, chose to rebut the rebuttals in advance, by contending in their book that Media Matters has long been “an aggressive protector of Hillary’s reputation,” and thus, presumably, is biased in her favor.
It’s not surprising that Hillary’s allies have targeted those two authors; compared to Bernstein, they’re far tougher on Hillary. Gerth underscored his book’s theme by contending yesterday, on Meet the Press, that “she plays fast and loose with the facts, she won’t admit a mistake,” an assessment that, at least superficially, could be made about George W. Bush.
Whereas Bernstein calls her “principled” and “well-intentioned” and motivated by her Methodist faith to do good, Gerth and Van Atta see her as a cold customer who eschews introspection by defining herself through action; she has, in their words, “a forced, artificial demeanor, a reinforced tendency toward arrogance and a belief that she is immune to the rules, and a sense that anyone who disagrees must be an enemy. It is a great challenge to ask Americans to get to know the authentic self of a person who in some ways has deliberately not gotten to know it herself.” They persuasively demonstrate that her “inflexibility and I-know-what’s best mindset” helped to precipitate the health care reform debacle of 1993.
At times they cut her some slack, by suggesting that she and Bill did have real enemies who were determined to destroy them, thus making it necessary to fight from a bunker in order to survive. On occasion, they even dismiss the critics who think that every Hillary action is the product of calculation. For instance, three weeks before the Lewinsky scandal broke, Bill and Hillary were spotted, courtesy of a telephoto lens, laughing and semi-snuggling on a beach. Some critics insisted the Clintons had staged the whole thing, to dispel doubts about their marriage, but Gerth and Van Atta quote approvingly from Hillary’s 2003 memoir: “Hello? Just name me any 50-year-old woman who would knowingly pose in her bathing suit – with her back toward the camera.”
Nevertheless, regarding the intersection of policy and politics, they do see her as a calculating Machiavelli. They buttress this assessment with some diligent reporting, focusing particularly on Hillary’s Senate career, which gets short shrift in the Bernstein book. The money chapters are about Iraq.
They painstakingly track Hillary’s ongoing attempts to distance herself from the vote she cast in 2002, authorizing President Bush to exercise the Iraq invasion option. Clearly she didn’t read the classified intelligence report that vigorously questioned Bush’s case for war – a report that had been made available to all senators – and she has since insisted that, by voting Yes, she was merely expecting that Bush would take new diplomatic steps to avoid war. But the war resolution itself didn’t require Bush to do that; moreover, she had already voted against a Democratic amendment that would have compelled Bush to take such steps before going to war. All told, they conclude, “Hillary was stuck in her own Iraq quagmire,” and she has been trying to extricate herself ever since.
More debatable, however, is the authors’ assertion that Bill and Hillary hatched a plan, way back in ‘70s, to put Bill in the Oval Office within 20 years – and then updated the plan in 1993, mapping out a presidency for Hillary as well. The authors breathlessly write, “Their audacious pact has remained a secret until now.” But Bernstein, in his book, doesn’t mention any “his and hers” agreement, and the heresay source cited by Gerth and Van Atta – the historian Taylor Branch, a Clinton family friend – insists now that he has never said any such thing. Last month he told a reporter that “the story is preposterous….I never heard either Clinton talk about a ‘plan’ for them both to become president.”
Gerth struck back yesterday, on Meet the Press, by contending that Branch is merely trying to cover for his pals: “Taylor is a respected historian, but he himself has admitted that when it comes to Bill Clinton he can’t be objective.” In other words, we’re stuck once again in the spin zone. We’ll never know whether there really was such a pact, but it hardly matters. All that matters, at least to the publishing world, is that Hillary is generating heat, and heat is what sells.
More books are in the pipeline (prominent biographer Sally Bedell Smith takes a crack at Hillary this autumn), recent books are still being flacked (a right-wing publisher just emailed me: “Find out the real truth about Hillary’s pathological need to lie”), and the Hillary enigma will endure. No outsider can definitively pierce what Bernstein calls her “camouflage,” and that probably suits her biographers, and the 24/7 media, just fine. It means that all Hillary theories are possible. It also suggests, unfortunately for us, that little is truly knowable.
Maybe somebody should just open a Hillary Clinton emporium, a 24/7 store dedicated to the sale of all things Hillary, featuring a book department stocked only with Hillary biographies. It could be the political junkie’s version of a Baskin Robins, a place where fans and foes can choose their favorite Hillary flavors, ranging from sweet to sour, from Hillary as heroic public servant to Hillary as a leftist Lady Macbeth.
There would be no consensus on what constitutes the most accurate Hillary, of course, but we’re long past the point of being capable of distinguishing between partisan spin and empirical substance. There is, it seems, no objective middle ground. The ’08 Democratic frontrunner is one of our most polarizing political figures; virtually all Americans made up their minds about her long ago, pro or con; and the book publishing industry is quite happy about that, because it keeps cranking out new volumes that fit every conceivable preconception.
I can’t imagine that she and her campaign aides are pleased by all this ceaseless attention; they would much prefer to conduct their methodical march to the nomination with minimal focus on her embattled personality, maximum focus on dry public policy, and with minimal references to the controversies that marred her husband’s tumultuous tenure. She can’t erase the ‘90s, but she’d like to be judged afresh. Her presidential bid gives her a second chance to make a first impression, a phenomenon that is quite rare in politics; the problem is, she has to compete with the wide variety of impressions on sale in the Hillary market.
Psychobabble devotees have long been able to consult the Hillary book by Gail Sheehy, conservatives who loathe Hillary’s politics can find comfort in the writings of Bay Buchanan or Dick Morris or Barbara Olson or Emmett Tyrrell, liberals who love Hillary’s politics can consult her memoir or buy the laudatory tome by Susan Estrich, lovers of salacious anti-Hillary gossip can pick up the book by Edward Klein (who claims that Hillary was “widely rumored” to be gay) or perhaps Christopher Anderson’s analysis of her marriage (he compares her to Evita)….it’s endless, really. She’s less a candidate than a mass culture commodity.
And now, naturally, we have two new biographies for the shelf – Her Way, by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Atta Jr. (Gerth was the New York Times reporter who “broke” the Whitewater scandal, or pseudo-scandal); and A Woman in Charge, by the famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein (who reportedly spent eight years on his project). Not surprisingly, the Clinton camp started dumping on both books long before they hit the bookstores.
While both books do have their strengths, discerning readers basically have two choices: They can either cherry-pick their favorite information, to reinforce how they felt about Hillary prior to purchase, or they can read the biographies from preface to index – and rightly decide that Hillary is a lot like most of her fellow humans. In other words, she is complicated. She has her strengths and weaknesses. She is passionate about her ideals and extremely competitive; she is warm to her friends, and uncompromisingly cool to her enemies; she is arrogant and she has a great belly laugh; she is (as Gerth and Van Atta assert) “tough, funny and brilliant,” but also “hardened, and unwilling to fully acknowledge her mistakes.” And of course she is “ambitious,” a word that is considered a compliment when applied to a male politician.
None of these observations are particularly new, but I’d argue that Bernstein’s account is richer. His writing is more lyrical (“the most essential and yet elusive dynamic of the Clinton presidency came to be the relationship between the two of them – the sand in the gears in bad times, the grease that moved the machinery in good ones…”). His depiction of Hillary’s domineering father is more anecdotal (“If Hillary or one of her brothers had left the cap off the toothpaste tube, he threw it out the bathroom window and told the offending child to fetch it from the front yard evergreens, even in snow”).
And he trumped his competitors by gaining access to some valuable Arkansas sources. He was able to sit down with Betsey Wright, a longtime family friend who ran Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial office; it turns out that, not only was Bill driving Hillary crazy (for the reasons we all know), he also made Wright so crazy that the two of them – governor and staffer – signed up to see a shrink together, in order to fix their office relationship. Wright also dished to Bernstein about yet another Bill paramour – Mary Jo Jenkins – who posed a serious threat to the Clinton marriage, just three years before he launched his presidential candidacy.
But Wright is not in the narrative to sling gossip; she is uncommonly insightful about the complexities of the Clinton partnership. She traces her friendship with Hillary back to the latter’s law school days, and she was convinced, even then, that Hillary was destined to be a trailblazer for women in national politics. Indeed, for that very reason, she urged Hillary not to marry Bill and thus take a subordinate role.
Bernstein also scored by gaining access to some private notebooks, compiled after the 1992 election by Hillary’s closest friend, Diane Blair. A political scientist, Blair interviewed virtually everyone who had worked on the Clinton campaign’s secret “defense team,” which had the onerous job of deflecting the relentless GOP attacks on the Clintons’ private lives. Blair never did anything with her thick files; she died in 2000, and the material was locked away. But Bernstein got permission to read them. Hillary is revealed in those pages as the toughest pugilist of all, in the service of saving her marriage and serving Bill’s career.
As one ’92 campaign aide revealingly explained in the Blair papers: “She doesn’t look at her life as a series of crises but rather a series of battles. I think of her viewing herself in more heroic terms, an epic character like in The Iliad, fighting battle after battle. Yes, she succumbs to victimization sometimes, in that when the truth becomes too painful, when she is faced with the repercussions of her own mistakes or flaws, she falls into victimhood. But that’s a last resort and when she does allow the wallowing it’s only in the warm glow of martyrdom – as a laudable victim – a martyr in the tradition of Joan of Arc, a martyr in the religious sense. She would much rather play the woman warrior…She’s happiest when she’s fighting, when she has identified the enemy and goes into attack mode.”
Typically, of course, that assessment can be read two ways. Hillary haters can claim it as proof that she is a dangerous polarizer who (like her husband) is prone to self-pity; but Hillary lovers can claim it as proof that she (unlike her less battle-tested Democratic rivals) has the requisite moxie to slug it out with the GOP in 2008.
Gerth and Van Atta have experienced the latter, first hand; their new book has already been attacked online by Hillary-friendly media watchdogs, not just because of Gerth’s old Whitewater coverage, but because it’s clear, from at least 30 footnote citations, that he and Van Atta were in close contact, during the late ‘90s, with the office of special prosecutor Kenneth Starr. Given Starr’s role as chief sleuth in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Hillary fans may well cite that as sufficient proof of authorial bias.
It’s a sign of the times that the watchdogs at Media Matters for America, a non-profit Washington group, have sought to undercut this book even before it hit the shelves, by noting the Starr office citations and questioning the quality of Gerth’s Whitewater reporting. It’s also a sign of the times that Gerth and Van Atta, clearly anticipating these rebuttals, chose to rebut the rebuttals in advance, by contending in their book that Media Matters has long been “an aggressive protector of Hillary’s reputation,” and thus, presumably, is biased in her favor.
It’s not surprising that Hillary’s allies have targeted those two authors; compared to Bernstein, they’re far tougher on Hillary. Gerth underscored his book’s theme by contending yesterday, on Meet the Press, that “she plays fast and loose with the facts, she won’t admit a mistake,” an assessment that, at least superficially, could be made about George W. Bush.
Whereas Bernstein calls her “principled” and “well-intentioned” and motivated by her Methodist faith to do good, Gerth and Van Atta see her as a cold customer who eschews introspection by defining herself through action; she has, in their words, “a forced, artificial demeanor, a reinforced tendency toward arrogance and a belief that she is immune to the rules, and a sense that anyone who disagrees must be an enemy. It is a great challenge to ask Americans to get to know the authentic self of a person who in some ways has deliberately not gotten to know it herself.” They persuasively demonstrate that her “inflexibility and I-know-what’s best mindset” helped to precipitate the health care reform debacle of 1993.
At times they cut her some slack, by suggesting that she and Bill did have real enemies who were determined to destroy them, thus making it necessary to fight from a bunker in order to survive. On occasion, they even dismiss the critics who think that every Hillary action is the product of calculation. For instance, three weeks before the Lewinsky scandal broke, Bill and Hillary were spotted, courtesy of a telephoto lens, laughing and semi-snuggling on a beach. Some critics insisted the Clintons had staged the whole thing, to dispel doubts about their marriage, but Gerth and Van Atta quote approvingly from Hillary’s 2003 memoir: “Hello? Just name me any 50-year-old woman who would knowingly pose in her bathing suit – with her back toward the camera.”
Nevertheless, regarding the intersection of policy and politics, they do see her as a calculating Machiavelli. They buttress this assessment with some diligent reporting, focusing particularly on Hillary’s Senate career, which gets short shrift in the Bernstein book. The money chapters are about Iraq.
They painstakingly track Hillary’s ongoing attempts to distance herself from the vote she cast in 2002, authorizing President Bush to exercise the Iraq invasion option. Clearly she didn’t read the classified intelligence report that vigorously questioned Bush’s case for war – a report that had been made available to all senators – and she has since insisted that, by voting Yes, she was merely expecting that Bush would take new diplomatic steps to avoid war. But the war resolution itself didn’t require Bush to do that; moreover, she had already voted against a Democratic amendment that would have compelled Bush to take such steps before going to war. All told, they conclude, “Hillary was stuck in her own Iraq quagmire,” and she has been trying to extricate herself ever since.
More debatable, however, is the authors’ assertion that Bill and Hillary hatched a plan, way back in ‘70s, to put Bill in the Oval Office within 20 years – and then updated the plan in 1993, mapping out a presidency for Hillary as well. The authors breathlessly write, “Their audacious pact has remained a secret until now.” But Bernstein, in his book, doesn’t mention any “his and hers” agreement, and the heresay source cited by Gerth and Van Atta – the historian Taylor Branch, a Clinton family friend – insists now that he has never said any such thing. Last month he told a reporter that “the story is preposterous….I never heard either Clinton talk about a ‘plan’ for them both to become president.”
Gerth struck back yesterday, on Meet the Press, by contending that Branch is merely trying to cover for his pals: “Taylor is a respected historian, but he himself has admitted that when it comes to Bill Clinton he can’t be objective.” In other words, we’re stuck once again in the spin zone. We’ll never know whether there really was such a pact, but it hardly matters. All that matters, at least to the publishing world, is that Hillary is generating heat, and heat is what sells.
More books are in the pipeline (prominent biographer Sally Bedell Smith takes a crack at Hillary this autumn), recent books are still being flacked (a right-wing publisher just emailed me: “Find out the real truth about Hillary’s pathological need to lie”), and the Hillary enigma will endure. No outsider can definitively pierce what Bernstein calls her “camouflage,” and that probably suits her biographers, and the 24/7 media, just fine. It means that all Hillary theories are possible. It also suggests, unfortunately for us, that little is truly knowable.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Wilfully deceptive or fecklessly clueless?
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.
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.
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.
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