This past spring, pollsters began to notice that a growing number of conservative Republicans were bailing out on President Bush -- I noted this trend in a May newspaper column -- and today we are witnessing its effects quite dramatically.
The House Republicans' decision to essentially deep-six Bush's "guest worker" immigration plan -- by scheduling summer "field hearings" that will undoubtedly attract lots of conservative voters who hate the Bush plan -- is a direct rebuke to the leader whom they have previously served so loyally. The House Republicans have basically decided that their best hope for survival, in a tough election year, is to curry favor with these anti-immigrant/enforcement-first voters, and not to bond with a politically weakened president who is not in sync with sentiment in his own base.
By dragging their feet -- by deciding to whip up conservatives and talk radio, instead of hunkering down with their Senate counterparts and crafting a compromise reform law that would at least clarify the status of illegals -- House Republicans have opted to go into campaign mode. Bush has long been pushing a long-term "guest worker" solution, with help from the Senate GOP, but it's clear that the base is taking a different road.
This is vivid evidence of Bush's waning political capital. Bush strategist Karl Rove was trying to sell some small business owners on the guest-worker plan yesterday -- even as a group of notable conservatives publicly called on Bush to drop the plan (which they assail as "amnesty")because it alienates, in their estimation, 85 percent of congressional Republicans.
Indeed, Brian Bilbray, the Republican victor in a special congressional election two weeks ago, apparently won because his pitch for tougher border security -- and his opposition to the Bush plan -- made him acceptable to conservative voters in his California district, not far from the Mexican border. Bilbray didn't exactly mince words; on election eve, he said on the radio: "To the Bush Administration, to the Senate flat out, (my message is) no amnesty. The message ought to be that....What don't you get about the word 'illegal?'"
John Gizzi, a political reporter for the conservative publication Human Events, sampled grassroots conservative opinion in California and detected hostility to the Bush White House on this issue. For instance: "Orange County's Jon Fleischman, editor of the widely-read, on-line political newsletter Flash Report, told me flatly that the Administration's stand on illegal immigration is 'horrible' for the GOP in California. In his words, 'Between its support of amnesty and its support of big government, the Bush Administration does an awful lot to demoralize Republicans out here.' When I asked former State GOP Chairman Shawn Steel if the administration was out of touch on the illegal immigration with party activists, he replied without hesitation: 'Badly. And you hear that phrase, out of touch, all the time at party meetings. That's the view of the vast majority of Republicans here and, if it continues, it will be very destructive to us."
Political survival trumps policy right now. Bush is not on the ballot this year; House Republicans are. They have noticed that the enforcement-first message is polling well among grassroots conservatives (it has become an emotional issue, on a par with Second Amendment gun rights) , and Speaker Dennis Hastert has reportedly conveyed that to the White House. At a time when these voters have become disillusioned with Bush for many reasons, House Republicans don't want to give them another excuse to stay home on election day.
In a sense, this stalemate may have been inevitable, given the fact that the issue splits the GOP coalition, dividing the big-business camp (pro-guest worker) from the conservative base. Nothing is likely to be worked out until after the election. And the stalemate is also a big reminder that it's not only the Democrats (on Iraq) who are divided among themselves; in this particular case, it's the Republicans who, when confronted with the challenge of enacting meaningful immigration reform, have opted to cut and run.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Goodbye to Journalism 101 stenography
I interrupt my usual format to bring you this brief riff on the journalism trade. It's my general policy never to respond to the comments posted on this blog, because my basic feeling is that, after I have my say, readers should have theirs without any blowback from me. But today I want to make a rare exception.
Yesterday, after I poked at the Associated Press for failing to fact-check Dick Cheney and thereby allow him to utter a demonstrably false remark, somebody named Anonymous complained that "the AP article was a straight news story. Straight news stories are supposed to report facts and what was said. Separate analysis or commentary articles would then debate the merits of what Cheney said. That's journalism 101."
I disagree. Anonymous tell us that "straight news are supposed to report facts and what was said," but, under that outmoded definition, journalists are mere stenographers, copying down whatever a politician wants to say, and passing it along to readers who often lack the time to determine whether the remarks were true. Under that so-called "objectivity" standard, a politician is free to dissemble without being challenged.
I don't feel that we should be content with passing along misinformation in "straight" stories. The reader deserves a full context, and that means politicians should be fact-checked -- a job that's relatively quick and easy to do, in the Google era. Providing accurate factual context is not "commentary." It's what "straight" reporting should be about.
It always helps to remember the lesson of Senator Joe McCarthy. The 1950s demagogue, whose inaccurate red-baiting wrecked careers and drove people to suicide, was enabled at every step of the way by journalists who believed their job was to only report "what was said." McCarthy was a senator, therefore, if he said something (true or not), it was deemed news. When he made wild charges about 60 or 80 or 100 communists in the State Department, it was reported as news. The "fact" that he was making such charges was considered sufficient; as the New York Times wrote back then, after reviewing their own McCarthy coverage, "It is difficult, if not impossible, to ignore charges by Senator McCarthy just because they are usually proved false. The remedy lies with the reader."
Washington reporter Richard Rovere, in a book he wrote two years after the senator's death, complained about "the system that required (reporters) to publish 'news' they knew to be fraudulent but prohibited them from reporting their knowledge of its fradulence."
In today's world, given the credibility problems that have plagued administrations of both parties, that "system" is not an adequate. Nor was it then.
Yesterday, Tom Ricks of The Washington Post demonstrated how fact-checking is crucial in a "straight" story. He dealt with Cheney this way, in three grafs:
"Despite Cheney's assertion that no one foresaw how difficult the post-invasion phase would be, defense and Middle East experts have said that administration officials during the run-up to the war ignored their warnings about potential obstacles ahead.
"For example, a group of specialists who met at the Army War College in December 2002, three months before the U.S. invaded Iraq, warned: 'The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace is real and serious.' Iraq had been strained by decades of misrule, wars and sanctions, they observed, noting that 'if the United States assumes control of Iraq, it will therefore assume control of a badly battered economy.' The writers of the Army report emphasized that Iraq was going to be tougher than the administration was acknowledging publicly. 'Successful occupation will not occur unless the special circumstances of this unusual country' are heeded, they warned.
"Likewise, 70 national security experts and Middle East scholars met about the same time for two days at the National Defense University and then issued a report concluding that occupying Iraq 'will be the most daunting and complex task the U.S. and the international community will have undertaken since the end of World War II.' One participant, Army Col. Paul Hughes, sent a copy of the conference report to the office of Douglas J. Feith, then the undersecretary of defense for policy, but 'never heard back from him or anyone else' over there, he said."
Well, I had the Army War College example, but not those 70 experts. Wish I had thought of that. All told, the Ricks piece was textbook Journalism 101, as it should be taught.
Yesterday, after I poked at the Associated Press for failing to fact-check Dick Cheney and thereby allow him to utter a demonstrably false remark, somebody named Anonymous complained that "the AP article was a straight news story. Straight news stories are supposed to report facts and what was said. Separate analysis or commentary articles would then debate the merits of what Cheney said. That's journalism 101."
I disagree. Anonymous tell us that "straight news are supposed to report facts and what was said," but, under that outmoded definition, journalists are mere stenographers, copying down whatever a politician wants to say, and passing it along to readers who often lack the time to determine whether the remarks were true. Under that so-called "objectivity" standard, a politician is free to dissemble without being challenged.
I don't feel that we should be content with passing along misinformation in "straight" stories. The reader deserves a full context, and that means politicians should be fact-checked -- a job that's relatively quick and easy to do, in the Google era. Providing accurate factual context is not "commentary." It's what "straight" reporting should be about.
It always helps to remember the lesson of Senator Joe McCarthy. The 1950s demagogue, whose inaccurate red-baiting wrecked careers and drove people to suicide, was enabled at every step of the way by journalists who believed their job was to only report "what was said." McCarthy was a senator, therefore, if he said something (true or not), it was deemed news. When he made wild charges about 60 or 80 or 100 communists in the State Department, it was reported as news. The "fact" that he was making such charges was considered sufficient; as the New York Times wrote back then, after reviewing their own McCarthy coverage, "It is difficult, if not impossible, to ignore charges by Senator McCarthy just because they are usually proved false. The remedy lies with the reader."
Washington reporter Richard Rovere, in a book he wrote two years after the senator's death, complained about "the system that required (reporters) to publish 'news' they knew to be fraudulent but prohibited them from reporting their knowledge of its fradulence."
In today's world, given the credibility problems that have plagued administrations of both parties, that "system" is not an adequate. Nor was it then.
Yesterday, Tom Ricks of The Washington Post demonstrated how fact-checking is crucial in a "straight" story. He dealt with Cheney this way, in three grafs:
"Despite Cheney's assertion that no one foresaw how difficult the post-invasion phase would be, defense and Middle East experts have said that administration officials during the run-up to the war ignored their warnings about potential obstacles ahead.
"For example, a group of specialists who met at the Army War College in December 2002, three months before the U.S. invaded Iraq, warned: 'The possibility of the United States winning the war and losing the peace is real and serious.' Iraq had been strained by decades of misrule, wars and sanctions, they observed, noting that 'if the United States assumes control of Iraq, it will therefore assume control of a badly battered economy.' The writers of the Army report emphasized that Iraq was going to be tougher than the administration was acknowledging publicly. 'Successful occupation will not occur unless the special circumstances of this unusual country' are heeded, they warned.
"Likewise, 70 national security experts and Middle East scholars met about the same time for two days at the National Defense University and then issued a report concluding that occupying Iraq 'will be the most daunting and complex task the U.S. and the international community will have undertaken since the end of World War II.' One participant, Army Col. Paul Hughes, sent a copy of the conference report to the office of Douglas J. Feith, then the undersecretary of defense for policy, but 'never heard back from him or anyone else' over there, he said."
Well, I had the Army War College example, but not those 70 experts. Wish I had thought of that. All told, the Ricks piece was textbook Journalism 101, as it should be taught.
How he spent his summer vacation
I neglected yesterday, while discussing Ron Suskind's new book, to cite perhaps the most noteworthy little tidbit. So here it is:
Remember the flap over the pre-9/11 document that President Bush was given on August 6, 2001? The PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) that was entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States"? We already know, from Condoleezza Rice's May 2004 testimony to the 9/11 Commission, that she didn't consider that PDB to be anything worth worrying about; as she said in her testimony, "It was not a particular threat report"; rather, it was merely "historical information."
Did her boss, who was in the midst of enjoying his summer sojourn in Texas, respond with any sense of urgency? Apparently not, according to Suskind's inside sources:
A CIA official briefed Bush on the PDB. Bush listened. Then Bush said, "All right. You've covered your ass now."
Remember the flap over the pre-9/11 document that President Bush was given on August 6, 2001? The PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) that was entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States"? We already know, from Condoleezza Rice's May 2004 testimony to the 9/11 Commission, that she didn't consider that PDB to be anything worth worrying about; as she said in her testimony, "It was not a particular threat report"; rather, it was merely "historical information."
Did her boss, who was in the midst of enjoying his summer sojourn in Texas, respond with any sense of urgency? Apparently not, according to Suskind's inside sources:
A CIA official briefed Bush on the PDB. Bush listened. Then Bush said, "All right. You've covered your ass now."
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
The doctrine of "plausible deniability"
It is an article of faith among President Bush's critics that he lied us into a war in Iraq (a charge that Bush's defenders categorically dismiss). But now comes author Ron Suskind, with a new book about the Bush administration, entitled The One Percent Doctrine, with a different take on that accusation:
He basically argues that Bush didn't literally lie (a liar is somebody who has true knowledge, then consciously falsifies it). Rather, Suskind says that Bush was allowed to tell the truth as he saw it, based only on the partial information with which he was provided.
In other words, Bush was kept in the dark about a lot of stuff that would have undercut his prewar spin about the allegedly dire and urgent threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Suskind is the writer who made a splash with magazine articles that depicted Bush as incurious and ill-informed, and featured a White House aide speaking disdainfully of "the reality-based community." He also wrote a book with former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who saw Bush as disengaged, "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people." Suskind's new book, released this week, is based on material gathered from sources at the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, State Department, and Treasury Department.
He basically makes the case that Bush on many prewar occasions was not fully briefed (thanks to Vice President Cheney and his people), and that at other times Bush failed to master the paperwork he was given. Suskind reports that, in the fall of 2002, Bush didn't read the full National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a document that buried its numerous caveats (Hussein hadn't shown much interest in attacking the U.S.; Hussein had no imminent WMD program; Hussein had few contacts with al Qaeda) back in the footnotes.
Here's a money quote from Suskind: "Keeping certain knowledge from Bush -- much of it shrouded, as well, by classification -- meant that the president, whose each word circles the globe, could advance various strategies by saying whatever was needed. He could essentially be 'deniable' about his own statements...Whether Cheney's innovations were tailored to match Bush's inclinations, or vice versa, is almost immaterial. It was a firm fit. Under this strategic model, reading the entire NIE would be problematic for Bush: it could hem in the president's rhetoric, a key weapon in the march to war. He would know too much."
All told, Suskind said this morning on NBC's Today Show, "Bush is an action-based man, but he operates within a framework that Cheney largely designed."
Then there were the instances, detailed by Suskind, when Bush went public with claims that were flatly contradicted by the briefings he already had received. These days, most Americans tell pollsters that Bush can't be trusted to tell the truth about Iraq; if this book is widely read, his credibility will take yet another hit, because Suskind cites fact-twistings that took place long before the Iraq war was launched.
Example: the case of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. Citing his inside sources, Suskind reports that Zubayah was dismissed by federal officials as mentally unstable, even insane, and that, rather than being a terrorist mastermind, he was actually assigned to minor tasks, such as arranging travel for wives and kids. The CIA relayed all this to Bush and Cheney in a briefing -- whereupon, two weeks later, Bush told the American people that Zubaydah was "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States."
Soon after, according to Suskind, Bush met with CIA chief George Tenent and essentially instructed Tenent to get evidence from Zubaydah that would confirm Bush's public misstatement. Bush reportedly said to Tenent, "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" No sir, said the subordinate. After that, Zubaydah was subjected to all the latest torture techniques: simulated drowning, death threats, sleep deprivation, earsplitting noise, denial of medication...and as a result, Zubaydah talked about all kinds of plots, against nuclear plants, monuments, apartment buildings, malls, banks. Security forces fanned out in panic, but none of his claims panned out. What it all meant, writes Suskind, is that American officials "would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."
...All of this, in order to help the president "save face."
Meanwhile, we also have Dick Cheney's doctrine of wilfull deniability. Yesterday, during an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, he insisted again that the insurgency is in its "last throes" (a view contradicted by the reality-based stats collected by the Brookings Institution; its latest index reports that the number of insurgents has risen by 25 percent since May 2005, and that the number of daily attacks by insurgents have risen by 28 percent since May 2005).
Cheney also stated yesterday: "I don’t think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we have encountered." The Associated Press dutifully quoted that remark without fact-checking it, thereby leaving the impression that Cheney was right.
But Cheney was wrong. Many prewar reports anticipated serious insurgent violence. Here's one, from the Army War College, February 2003: "A force intially viewed as liberators can rapidly be relegated to the status of invaders should an unwelcome occupation continue for a long time...The longer a U.S. occupation continues, the more danger exists that elements of the Iraqi population will become impatient and take violent measures to hasten the departure of U.S. forces....The impact of suicide bombing attacks in Israel goes beyond their numbers, and this fact will also capture the imagination of would-be Iraqi terrorists.”
That report did caution, however, that a "premature" U.S. withdrawal would aggravate instability and perhaps provoke civil war. Bush administration supporters could cite that line as justification for their current stay-the-course posture. However, a new CNN poll suggests that most Americans are fed up. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they want the Bush team to set a withdrawal timetable, preferably pulling out within a year; only 41 percent said no to a timetable. And that's a big shift from six months ago, when the same pollsters found the public evenly divided on that issue.
If this is indeed an accurate reading of the public mood -- if, in other words, a pullout timetable is now the "centrist" position -- it will be instructive to track the Democratic response. Senate Democrats are currently offering two Iraq amendments to a pending defense bill: "let's pull out by summer '07" (sponsored by John Kerry and Russ Feingold); and a "let's start a pull out, but not with a date certain" (championed by Carl Levin and Jack Reed). No doubt the latter will get a lot more Democratic votes. Despite the shifting polls, and the growing mountain of evidence gathered by sleuths such as Suskind, most Democrats remain fearful of feeling pain from Karl Rove's lash.
He basically argues that Bush didn't literally lie (a liar is somebody who has true knowledge, then consciously falsifies it). Rather, Suskind says that Bush was allowed to tell the truth as he saw it, based only on the partial information with which he was provided.
In other words, Bush was kept in the dark about a lot of stuff that would have undercut his prewar spin about the allegedly dire and urgent threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Suskind is the writer who made a splash with magazine articles that depicted Bush as incurious and ill-informed, and featured a White House aide speaking disdainfully of "the reality-based community." He also wrote a book with former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who saw Bush as disengaged, "like a blind man in a room full of deaf people." Suskind's new book, released this week, is based on material gathered from sources at the FBI, CIA, Defense Department, State Department, and Treasury Department.
He basically makes the case that Bush on many prewar occasions was not fully briefed (thanks to Vice President Cheney and his people), and that at other times Bush failed to master the paperwork he was given. Suskind reports that, in the fall of 2002, Bush didn't read the full National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a document that buried its numerous caveats (Hussein hadn't shown much interest in attacking the U.S.; Hussein had no imminent WMD program; Hussein had few contacts with al Qaeda) back in the footnotes.
Here's a money quote from Suskind: "Keeping certain knowledge from Bush -- much of it shrouded, as well, by classification -- meant that the president, whose each word circles the globe, could advance various strategies by saying whatever was needed. He could essentially be 'deniable' about his own statements...Whether Cheney's innovations were tailored to match Bush's inclinations, or vice versa, is almost immaterial. It was a firm fit. Under this strategic model, reading the entire NIE would be problematic for Bush: it could hem in the president's rhetoric, a key weapon in the march to war. He would know too much."
All told, Suskind said this morning on NBC's Today Show, "Bush is an action-based man, but he operates within a framework that Cheney largely designed."
Then there were the instances, detailed by Suskind, when Bush went public with claims that were flatly contradicted by the briefings he already had received. These days, most Americans tell pollsters that Bush can't be trusted to tell the truth about Iraq; if this book is widely read, his credibility will take yet another hit, because Suskind cites fact-twistings that took place long before the Iraq war was launched.
Example: the case of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. Citing his inside sources, Suskind reports that Zubayah was dismissed by federal officials as mentally unstable, even insane, and that, rather than being a terrorist mastermind, he was actually assigned to minor tasks, such as arranging travel for wives and kids. The CIA relayed all this to Bush and Cheney in a briefing -- whereupon, two weeks later, Bush told the American people that Zubaydah was "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States."
Soon after, according to Suskind, Bush met with CIA chief George Tenent and essentially instructed Tenent to get evidence from Zubaydah that would confirm Bush's public misstatement. Bush reportedly said to Tenent, "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" No sir, said the subordinate. After that, Zubaydah was subjected to all the latest torture techniques: simulated drowning, death threats, sleep deprivation, earsplitting noise, denial of medication...and as a result, Zubaydah talked about all kinds of plots, against nuclear plants, monuments, apartment buildings, malls, banks. Security forces fanned out in panic, but none of his claims panned out. What it all meant, writes Suskind, is that American officials "would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."
...All of this, in order to help the president "save face."
Meanwhile, we also have Dick Cheney's doctrine of wilfull deniability. Yesterday, during an appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, he insisted again that the insurgency is in its "last throes" (a view contradicted by the reality-based stats collected by the Brookings Institution; its latest index reports that the number of insurgents has risen by 25 percent since May 2005, and that the number of daily attacks by insurgents have risen by 28 percent since May 2005).
Cheney also stated yesterday: "I don’t think anybody anticipated the level of violence that we have encountered." The Associated Press dutifully quoted that remark without fact-checking it, thereby leaving the impression that Cheney was right.
But Cheney was wrong. Many prewar reports anticipated serious insurgent violence. Here's one, from the Army War College, February 2003: "A force intially viewed as liberators can rapidly be relegated to the status of invaders should an unwelcome occupation continue for a long time...The longer a U.S. occupation continues, the more danger exists that elements of the Iraqi population will become impatient and take violent measures to hasten the departure of U.S. forces....The impact of suicide bombing attacks in Israel goes beyond their numbers, and this fact will also capture the imagination of would-be Iraqi terrorists.”
That report did caution, however, that a "premature" U.S. withdrawal would aggravate instability and perhaps provoke civil war. Bush administration supporters could cite that line as justification for their current stay-the-course posture. However, a new CNN poll suggests that most Americans are fed up. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they want the Bush team to set a withdrawal timetable, preferably pulling out within a year; only 41 percent said no to a timetable. And that's a big shift from six months ago, when the same pollsters found the public evenly divided on that issue.
If this is indeed an accurate reading of the public mood -- if, in other words, a pullout timetable is now the "centrist" position -- it will be instructive to track the Democratic response. Senate Democrats are currently offering two Iraq amendments to a pending defense bill: "let's pull out by summer '07" (sponsored by John Kerry and Russ Feingold); and a "let's start a pull out, but not with a date certain" (championed by Carl Levin and Jack Reed). No doubt the latter will get a lot more Democratic votes. Despite the shifting polls, and the growing mountain of evidence gathered by sleuths such as Suskind, most Democrats remain fearful of feeling pain from Karl Rove's lash.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Sticking it to Joe, the sequel
Once again, Al Gore has tried to put the brakes on Joe-mentum.
Back in December 2003, Gore stuck it to his '00 running mate, Joe Lieberman, when the latter was trying to kick-start his own '04 presidential campaign. Without notifying Lieberman in advance, Gore endorsed Howard Dean. I saw Lieberman the day it happened, in Durham, New Hampshire, and the guy could not hide the fact that he was stunned and hurt. Lieberman's staunch support for the Iraq war clearly was a factor in Gore's decision.
Now it's happened again. Lieberman, as I mentioned again Friday, is fighting for his political life in Connecticut, where the senator faces a tough challenge from antiwar candidate Ned Lamont in an Aug. 8 Democratic primary. And when Gore was asked this weekend by Bloomberg who he supported, he replied:
"I am not involved. I typically do not get involved in Democratic primaries. Joe is my close friend, Joe and Hadassah are close to Tipper and me and it would be very difficult for me to ever oppose him. But I don't get involved in primaries typically. He's a great guy and he's right on a lot of other issues."
First of all, Gore did get involved in those '04 Democratic primaries. And as for the line about it being "very difficult for me ever to oppose him"...well, he did oppose him once already. But this rift probably goes beyond their fundamental disagreement over the war. Gore is also broadly in tune with the left-leaning blogosphere, which has been campaigning for Lieberman's scalp. I doubt that Joe and Hadassah will be supping with their "close friends" Al and Tipper any time soon.
-------
Meanwhile, regarding Gore, this is interesting: a new CNN poll finds that Gore, as a prospective '08 candidate, has the highest negative rating of any Democrat. The poll reports that 48 percent of Americans would not consider voting for him if he ran again. Perhaps that helps to explain why his name never appears in the movie ad for An Inconvenient Truth. In order to make money, the filmmakers need to attract the patrons who care about global warming but don't necessarily care for Gore.
Back in December 2003, Gore stuck it to his '00 running mate, Joe Lieberman, when the latter was trying to kick-start his own '04 presidential campaign. Without notifying Lieberman in advance, Gore endorsed Howard Dean. I saw Lieberman the day it happened, in Durham, New Hampshire, and the guy could not hide the fact that he was stunned and hurt. Lieberman's staunch support for the Iraq war clearly was a factor in Gore's decision.
Now it's happened again. Lieberman, as I mentioned again Friday, is fighting for his political life in Connecticut, where the senator faces a tough challenge from antiwar candidate Ned Lamont in an Aug. 8 Democratic primary. And when Gore was asked this weekend by Bloomberg who he supported, he replied:
"I am not involved. I typically do not get involved in Democratic primaries. Joe is my close friend, Joe and Hadassah are close to Tipper and me and it would be very difficult for me to ever oppose him. But I don't get involved in primaries typically. He's a great guy and he's right on a lot of other issues."
First of all, Gore did get involved in those '04 Democratic primaries. And as for the line about it being "very difficult for me ever to oppose him"...well, he did oppose him once already. But this rift probably goes beyond their fundamental disagreement over the war. Gore is also broadly in tune with the left-leaning blogosphere, which has been campaigning for Lieberman's scalp. I doubt that Joe and Hadassah will be supping with their "close friends" Al and Tipper any time soon.
-------
Meanwhile, regarding Gore, this is interesting: a new CNN poll finds that Gore, as a prospective '08 candidate, has the highest negative rating of any Democrat. The poll reports that 48 percent of Americans would not consider voting for him if he ran again. Perhaps that helps to explain why his name never appears in the movie ad for An Inconvenient Truth. In order to make money, the filmmakers need to attract the patrons who care about global warming but don't necessarily care for Gore.
Happy father's day from Fox: the delusionists versus the clueless
As I intimated in my latest newspaper column, '06 swing voters concerned about Iraq seem to have two imperfect choices: they can either support the united Republican party that wants to "stay the course" and compound its documented errors; or they can support the divided Democratic party that has been mulling this war for three years, yet still doesn't have a clue what to do.
So take your pick: the delusionists or the clueless. Both teams were vividly represented yesterday on Fox News Sunday.
First up was Tony Snow, the new White House flak, spinning lines that probably work best with an audience of amnesiacs. For instance, revisiting the bad old days of Saddam Hussein, he remarked that clearly the dictator "was determined to try, to the best of his ability, to have a robust program of weapons of mass destruction at the earliest opportunity...Saddam Hussein had ambitions of WMDs."
I know this is shocking, but those remarks went unchallenged by the Fox News anchor, Chris Wallace. Somehow it was not deemed to be fair and balanced to point out to Snow, the ex-Fox News commentator, that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney were on record numerous times in 2002, contending that Hussein had far more than "ambitions," and that Hussein was not merely "determined to try" -- but that, quite the contrary, he had already succeeded in amassing WMDs that were already poised to be launched at the U.S. and its allies.
None of those '02 remarks -- about "grave and gathering threats," about "reconsituted nuclear weapons," about "mushroom clouds" (that was from Condolleezza Rice) -- appeared on the big screen. Instead, we moved right along, as Snow made the argument that the terrorists in Iraq are trying to "chip away American support for engagement."
Chip away American support...that remark was too much even for Wallace, who then made the obvious point that American support for the war has not been "chipped away," it has already gone into the tank. He put up some new poll numbers on the screen, poll numbers gathered by Fox News: 37 percent of Americans support Bush's handling of the war; 50 percent say the Iraq war has made us less safe at home, with 43 percent saying otherwise; and 59 percent say that the killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi won't make any difference.
Snow tried to answer by changing the subject and arguing why a fixed withdrawal timetable would be bad, which wasn't the question. Wallace pinned him down by then asking, "don't you have to show measurable progress by November," or risk big losses in the '06 elections?
Snow replied by lauding Bush's "leadership," which he said is hampered by media coverage --
specificially, "from a video standpoint, somebody can blow up a car in a marketplace in Baghdad, and get headlines the world over."
We have been hearing this "media is undermining our president" rationale for many months, usually from the president himself. It is fatuous. In reality, "from a video standpoint," virtually none of the most horrific violence in Iraq is being shown on TV screens in America. I am referring to the many hundreds of headless corpses and mutilated bodies that turn up every day, courtesy of the sectarian militia violence that -- according to the best think tank metrics -- has increased by 1150 percent during the past 12 months.
Speaking of metrics, Snow said hopefully that "there are some metrics you can use, to measure progress," such as increases in electricity production. He didn't mention -- and Wallace didn't, either -- that residents of Baghdad now receive less daily electricity than they had under Saddam.
That was it for Snow (who moved on to the other talk shows, contending at one point on CNN that the current comeback of the Taliban in Afghanistan is "predictable" -- another of those remarks aimed at amnesiacs who may not recall that, in September 2004, Bush stated that the "Taliban no longer is in existence"). And Fox News viewers were then treated with a visit from two Democrats...who couldn't provide basic information about where their party stands on Iraq.
Strategist Simon Rosenberg began by saying "the Democrats are very unified." But a few minutes later, when Wallace pointed out that the new Democratic campaign agenda doesn't even mention Iraq, strategist John Podesta replied: "It'd be better if we Democrats were united around one plan."
Podesta, a former Clinton White House aide, tried to explain: "(Democrats) don't have agreement on all of what should be in that platform. Maybe they can try to get that by November. But, you know, seriously, unity isn't everything."
Unity isn't everything...
Never mind, let's keep going: Wallace then asked, how is a swing voter supposed to support the Democrats when they can't decide what to do about Iraq?
Rosenberg: "Democrats are talking about Iraq quite a bit over the last few years....We have fulfilled our patriotic role here, which is to make sure that we're...coming up with the right policy for the American people."
Wallace: But what is that policy?
Rosenberg: "I think we're having a debate about that."
My words fail. So I'll just turn this over to Frank Rich, who wrote yesterday in his Times column that "as long as the Democrats keep repeating their own mistakes, they will lose to the party whose mistakes are, if nothing else, packaged as one heckuva show. It's better to have the courage of bad convictions than no courage or convictions at all."
-------
UPDATE: The Senate Democrats say they're working on a policy. This afternoon, they plan to unveil a resolution calling on Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. troops this year, although they are reportedly skittish about positing a specific timeline. I doubt that will satisfy the liberal wing, which last week applauded Sen. John Kerry's date-certain stance, but at least the Senate Democratic approach might at least convey the intended impression that the party, or at least its Senate wing, has some kind of position on which most can agree.
So take your pick: the delusionists or the clueless. Both teams were vividly represented yesterday on Fox News Sunday.
First up was Tony Snow, the new White House flak, spinning lines that probably work best with an audience of amnesiacs. For instance, revisiting the bad old days of Saddam Hussein, he remarked that clearly the dictator "was determined to try, to the best of his ability, to have a robust program of weapons of mass destruction at the earliest opportunity...Saddam Hussein had ambitions of WMDs."
I know this is shocking, but those remarks went unchallenged by the Fox News anchor, Chris Wallace. Somehow it was not deemed to be fair and balanced to point out to Snow, the ex-Fox News commentator, that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney were on record numerous times in 2002, contending that Hussein had far more than "ambitions," and that Hussein was not merely "determined to try" -- but that, quite the contrary, he had already succeeded in amassing WMDs that were already poised to be launched at the U.S. and its allies.
None of those '02 remarks -- about "grave and gathering threats," about "reconsituted nuclear weapons," about "mushroom clouds" (that was from Condolleezza Rice) -- appeared on the big screen. Instead, we moved right along, as Snow made the argument that the terrorists in Iraq are trying to "chip away American support for engagement."
Chip away American support...that remark was too much even for Wallace, who then made the obvious point that American support for the war has not been "chipped away," it has already gone into the tank. He put up some new poll numbers on the screen, poll numbers gathered by Fox News: 37 percent of Americans support Bush's handling of the war; 50 percent say the Iraq war has made us less safe at home, with 43 percent saying otherwise; and 59 percent say that the killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi won't make any difference.
Snow tried to answer by changing the subject and arguing why a fixed withdrawal timetable would be bad, which wasn't the question. Wallace pinned him down by then asking, "don't you have to show measurable progress by November," or risk big losses in the '06 elections?
Snow replied by lauding Bush's "leadership," which he said is hampered by media coverage --
specificially, "from a video standpoint, somebody can blow up a car in a marketplace in Baghdad, and get headlines the world over."
We have been hearing this "media is undermining our president" rationale for many months, usually from the president himself. It is fatuous. In reality, "from a video standpoint," virtually none of the most horrific violence in Iraq is being shown on TV screens in America. I am referring to the many hundreds of headless corpses and mutilated bodies that turn up every day, courtesy of the sectarian militia violence that -- according to the best think tank metrics -- has increased by 1150 percent during the past 12 months.
Speaking of metrics, Snow said hopefully that "there are some metrics you can use, to measure progress," such as increases in electricity production. He didn't mention -- and Wallace didn't, either -- that residents of Baghdad now receive less daily electricity than they had under Saddam.
That was it for Snow (who moved on to the other talk shows, contending at one point on CNN that the current comeback of the Taliban in Afghanistan is "predictable" -- another of those remarks aimed at amnesiacs who may not recall that, in September 2004, Bush stated that the "Taliban no longer is in existence"). And Fox News viewers were then treated with a visit from two Democrats...who couldn't provide basic information about where their party stands on Iraq.
Strategist Simon Rosenberg began by saying "the Democrats are very unified." But a few minutes later, when Wallace pointed out that the new Democratic campaign agenda doesn't even mention Iraq, strategist John Podesta replied: "It'd be better if we Democrats were united around one plan."
Podesta, a former Clinton White House aide, tried to explain: "(Democrats) don't have agreement on all of what should be in that platform. Maybe they can try to get that by November. But, you know, seriously, unity isn't everything."
Unity isn't everything...
Never mind, let's keep going: Wallace then asked, how is a swing voter supposed to support the Democrats when they can't decide what to do about Iraq?
Rosenberg: "Democrats are talking about Iraq quite a bit over the last few years....We have fulfilled our patriotic role here, which is to make sure that we're...coming up with the right policy for the American people."
Wallace: But what is that policy?
Rosenberg: "I think we're having a debate about that."
My words fail. So I'll just turn this over to Frank Rich, who wrote yesterday in his Times column that "as long as the Democrats keep repeating their own mistakes, they will lose to the party whose mistakes are, if nothing else, packaged as one heckuva show. It's better to have the courage of bad convictions than no courage or convictions at all."
-------
UPDATE: The Senate Democrats say they're working on a policy. This afternoon, they plan to unveil a resolution calling on Bush to begin withdrawing U.S. troops this year, although they are reportedly skittish about positing a specific timeline. I doubt that will satisfy the liberal wing, which last week applauded Sen. John Kerry's date-certain stance, but at least the Senate Democratic approach might at least convey the intended impression that the party, or at least its Senate wing, has some kind of position on which most can agree.
Friday, June 16, 2006
Friday's passing fancies
Today I'm keeping most of my powder dry for a Sunday print column, but, in the meantime, here are some drive-by hits (the list could grow as the day lengthens):
This morning the congressional Democrats unveiled their election agenda, backed by their '06 slogan, "New Direction for America." The planks call for more stem-cell research, lower prescription drug prices, a minimum wage hike, elimination of taxpayer subsidies for the oil and gas industries, tighter security at our ports, and a lot more money for homeland security.
Take a guess what's missing. Iraq.
It's 2002 all over again; that was the year Democrats decided to tiptoe around Iraq (while President Bush was beating the war drums) and instead try to change the subject by stressing their pet domestic issues. The November election results demonstrated the futility of that idea.
Now, in 2006, Iraq is the issue that tops voter concerns. One might reasonably ask whether the Democrats can take back the House or Senate in November by changing the subject. Meanwhile, I'll have more on the Democrats and Iraq in the Sunday print column, which will be linked here.
-------
But the Republicans are hardly a cinch to win big by emphasizing Iraq this fall, given the majority disgust with the prosecution of the war. And some congressional Republicans clearly have concerns about that.
As I wrote here yesterday, the GOP has been pushing a pro-war House resolution that is designed to make the Democrats uncomfortable, yet the effort also put some imperiled Republican incumbents on the spot. These incumbents hail from northeastern districts where Bush and the war are very unpopular; as a result, they have felt the need to verbally distance themselves from their party's stay-the-course declaration.
Jim Gerlach, a vulnerable Republican from the Philadelphia suburbs said today, "The American people are looking to us to answer their questions on how much progress is being made, what are the Iraqis themselves willing to do to fight for their freedom, and when will our men and women come home" -- and none of those questions are addressed in the resolution.
And Rob Simmons, one of three Connecticut Republicans being threatened with defeat in a state where Bush's approval rating is below 30 percent, said on the floor: "This resolution fails to fully address a key question that most Americans are asking, 'When are our troops coming home?'"
But, in the end this morning, they fell into line and voted Yes on the Bush stance. Only three of 217 voting Republicans dissented. As practitioners of party unity, the Bush-era GOP remains unparalleled.
-------
Looking ahead to '08, you can bet the house that all presidential candidates will paint themselves as champions of the little guy, of the average voter who works hard to make ends meet. Just don't expect any of these candidates to be people who personally experience the problem of making ends meet.
Eight of the '08 hopefuls are currently U.S. Senators. That chamber requires that its members disclose a general range of their net worth (excluding the value of their primary residences, and certain other assets). Turns out, all eight are multimillionaires.
With a thank-you nod to the CNN Political Unit, here they are:
Evan Bayh (D-Indiana): $1,954,000 to $6,360,000
Hillary Clinton (D-New York): $10,045,000 to $50,235,000
John Kerry (D-Massachusetts): $158,691,000 to at least $241,590,000
George Allen (R-Virginia) $1,828,000 to at least $3,845,000
Sam Brownback (R-Kansas): $2,313,000 to $9,095,000
Bill Frist (R-Tennessee): $12,660,000 to at least $46,715,000
Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska): $2,183,000 to $7,495,000
John McCain (R-Arizona): $13,875,000 to at least $23,085,000
Plus, John Edwards (former D-NC), whose last statement was: $12.8 million to $60 million
In other words, that's nine people who are rich enough to bankroll some or all of their own campaigns, bypassing the public financing rules that provide taxpayer money in exchange for mandatory spending ceilings. On the other hand, maybe deep pockets are overrated. The richest man on that list discovered in '04 that irresolution on Iraq trumped money on election day.
-------
Sen. Joe Lieberman's political woes continue in Connecticut. It now seems quite possible that the three-term Democratic hawk and Bush ally on Iraq could be toppled in his August primary by antiwar challenger Ned Lamont. The polls keep narrowing, which means that Lieberman may soon have to decide whether he, as the losing candidate, would be a loyal Democrat and back Lamont in November -- or whether he would try to save his own skin at the expense of his party by filing and running as an independent. (Big pending question: would the Democrats' Senate campaign arm in DC ignore Lamont and side with Lieberman out of past loyalty?)
Clearly he's in big trouble with Democratic voters because of his pro-Bush stance on the war, and because of his other high-profile assistance to the GOP, but Lieberman seems to have a different take on all that. Just check out his new campaign ad, which was posted today. He is blaming his woes on....Lowell Weicker.
Who?
The guy that Lieberman defeated back in 1988.
What's he got to do with this?
Nothing, except for the fact that Weicker, long in retirement, now backs Lamont.
So what?
Exactly. It's rarely a good sign when an incumbent starts targeting a bystander, instead of his opponent. Imagine that you're a 30-year-old Connecticut Democratic preparing to choose between Lieberman and Lamont. That means you were 12 years old when Weicker was last in the Senate. And you were barely 19 when he left the governor's job. Yet the Lieberman campaign is trotting out Weicker as Connecticut's version of Tony Soprano, thirsting for payback against Joe (Narrator: "He's never gotten over losing his Senate race to Joe Lieberman. But instead of coming out of hibernation, he's sent his bear cub, instead. Ned Lamont").
At the end of the ad, Lieberman utters the required words, "I approved this message." He says that like it's a good thing.
This morning the congressional Democrats unveiled their election agenda, backed by their '06 slogan, "New Direction for America." The planks call for more stem-cell research, lower prescription drug prices, a minimum wage hike, elimination of taxpayer subsidies for the oil and gas industries, tighter security at our ports, and a lot more money for homeland security.
Take a guess what's missing. Iraq.
It's 2002 all over again; that was the year Democrats decided to tiptoe around Iraq (while President Bush was beating the war drums) and instead try to change the subject by stressing their pet domestic issues. The November election results demonstrated the futility of that idea.
Now, in 2006, Iraq is the issue that tops voter concerns. One might reasonably ask whether the Democrats can take back the House or Senate in November by changing the subject. Meanwhile, I'll have more on the Democrats and Iraq in the Sunday print column, which will be linked here.
-------
But the Republicans are hardly a cinch to win big by emphasizing Iraq this fall, given the majority disgust with the prosecution of the war. And some congressional Republicans clearly have concerns about that.
As I wrote here yesterday, the GOP has been pushing a pro-war House resolution that is designed to make the Democrats uncomfortable, yet the effort also put some imperiled Republican incumbents on the spot. These incumbents hail from northeastern districts where Bush and the war are very unpopular; as a result, they have felt the need to verbally distance themselves from their party's stay-the-course declaration.
Jim Gerlach, a vulnerable Republican from the Philadelphia suburbs said today, "The American people are looking to us to answer their questions on how much progress is being made, what are the Iraqis themselves willing to do to fight for their freedom, and when will our men and women come home" -- and none of those questions are addressed in the resolution.
And Rob Simmons, one of three Connecticut Republicans being threatened with defeat in a state where Bush's approval rating is below 30 percent, said on the floor: "This resolution fails to fully address a key question that most Americans are asking, 'When are our troops coming home?'"
But, in the end this morning, they fell into line and voted Yes on the Bush stance. Only three of 217 voting Republicans dissented. As practitioners of party unity, the Bush-era GOP remains unparalleled.
-------
Looking ahead to '08, you can bet the house that all presidential candidates will paint themselves as champions of the little guy, of the average voter who works hard to make ends meet. Just don't expect any of these candidates to be people who personally experience the problem of making ends meet.
Eight of the '08 hopefuls are currently U.S. Senators. That chamber requires that its members disclose a general range of their net worth (excluding the value of their primary residences, and certain other assets). Turns out, all eight are multimillionaires.
With a thank-you nod to the CNN Political Unit, here they are:
Evan Bayh (D-Indiana): $1,954,000 to $6,360,000
Hillary Clinton (D-New York): $10,045,000 to $50,235,000
John Kerry (D-Massachusetts): $158,691,000 to at least $241,590,000
George Allen (R-Virginia) $1,828,000 to at least $3,845,000
Sam Brownback (R-Kansas): $2,313,000 to $9,095,000
Bill Frist (R-Tennessee): $12,660,000 to at least $46,715,000
Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska): $2,183,000 to $7,495,000
John McCain (R-Arizona): $13,875,000 to at least $23,085,000
Plus, John Edwards (former D-NC), whose last statement was: $12.8 million to $60 million
In other words, that's nine people who are rich enough to bankroll some or all of their own campaigns, bypassing the public financing rules that provide taxpayer money in exchange for mandatory spending ceilings. On the other hand, maybe deep pockets are overrated. The richest man on that list discovered in '04 that irresolution on Iraq trumped money on election day.
-------
Sen. Joe Lieberman's political woes continue in Connecticut. It now seems quite possible that the three-term Democratic hawk and Bush ally on Iraq could be toppled in his August primary by antiwar challenger Ned Lamont. The polls keep narrowing, which means that Lieberman may soon have to decide whether he, as the losing candidate, would be a loyal Democrat and back Lamont in November -- or whether he would try to save his own skin at the expense of his party by filing and running as an independent. (Big pending question: would the Democrats' Senate campaign arm in DC ignore Lamont and side with Lieberman out of past loyalty?)
Clearly he's in big trouble with Democratic voters because of his pro-Bush stance on the war, and because of his other high-profile assistance to the GOP, but Lieberman seems to have a different take on all that. Just check out his new campaign ad, which was posted today. He is blaming his woes on....Lowell Weicker.
Who?
The guy that Lieberman defeated back in 1988.
What's he got to do with this?
Nothing, except for the fact that Weicker, long in retirement, now backs Lamont.
So what?
Exactly. It's rarely a good sign when an incumbent starts targeting a bystander, instead of his opponent. Imagine that you're a 30-year-old Connecticut Democratic preparing to choose between Lieberman and Lamont. That means you were 12 years old when Weicker was last in the Senate. And you were barely 19 when he left the governor's job. Yet the Lieberman campaign is trotting out Weicker as Connecticut's version of Tony Soprano, thirsting for payback against Joe (Narrator: "He's never gotten over losing his Senate race to Joe Lieberman. But instead of coming out of hibernation, he's sent his bear cub, instead. Ned Lamont").
At the end of the ad, Lieberman utters the required words, "I approved this message." He says that like it's a good thing.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
They're so wild about Harry
All of a sudden, it seems like everybody is fighting over Harry Truman. Fifty three years out of office and 34 years in his grave, the feisty Democratic president who was widely reviled in his own era is now the object of a tug of war between Bush Republicans and moderate Democrats.
Both camps seek to lay claim to his legacy. With terrorists seeking to destroy us, with Iraq continuing to defy the prewar cakewalk predictions, and with polarized Washington seemingly incapable of forging a foreign policy consensus, both camps are asking the question, WWHD? (what would Harry do?), and citing Truman words and deeds that support their arguments.
The selective pillaging of historical figures is a favorite American parlor game, anyway; one can find, in the prolific writings of Thomas Jefferson, for example, enough opinions to support virtually any position, in part because Jefferson (as well as many other designated Great Men) said and did so many things, often contradictory, often reacting to the exigencies of the moment. Truman was no exception.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seem to have launched the Truman show when she declared last December, in the Washington Post, that the Bush administration's efforts abroad are "consistent with the proud tradition of American foreign policy, especially such recent presidents as Harry Truman." President Bush followed up during a speech May 27 at West Point, by invoking Truman 17 times (I'm sure it was complete coincidence that he was citing a guy who was plagued during his tenure by low poll ratings), and contending that the Bush mission of spreading democracy is consistent with what Harry did back in 1947.
That was the year when Truman announced U.S. military aid for Greece and Turkey, both of which were under threat from communism; Bush cited this passage from a Truman speech: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure."
Amidst our skirmishings with the Soviet Union in those early Cold War days, said Bush, "fortunately we had a president named Harry Truman who recognized the threat, took bold action to confront it, and laid the foundation for freedom's victory in the Cold War."
And that's when the battle over Truman was joined. Within days of Bush's speech, he was challenged by Peter Beinart -- author of a new book, The Good Fight, which urges Democrats to get tough on national security by rediscovering their inner Truman. He argued on June 1 in the Washington Post that Bush was hijacking Truman for his own political purposes, by ignoring all the stuff that Truman said about the importance of American humility and the need to work with multinational organizations; hence, this Truman line: "We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please."
That in turn provoked conservatives. On June 14, foreign policy commentator Max Boot acknowledged in the Los Angeles Times that, yes, it's true that Truman did push for the 1949 creation of multinational NATO and, yes, he did preside over the founding of the United Nations, and, yes, he did work through the U.N. before sending troops to Korea in 1950...but Truman did tell his secretary of state, in a letter, that if the U.N. had balked on the latter, "we would have had to go into Korea alone." Boot was seconded by political analyst Michael Barone, who said last week in U.S. News and World Report that the Truman-backed Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe was a unilateral initiative (just like Bush's unilateral initiatives).
Anyway, this game can feature endless rebuttals and re-rebuttals. The Boot camp, for instance, seems to overlook the fact that conservatives in the late '40s actually attacked the Marshall Plan, because Truman allowed the Europeans to draft the details of that economic aid program, and because Truman was essentially giving our money (up to five percent of our national income, a share unthinkable today) to foreign governments that included high-ranking socialists, and with few strings attached. Not to mention the fact that this president, whom Bush is now lauding as a tough-minded hawk, was the same guy who, in his time, was mercilessly attacked by the right for allegedly being soft on communism.
Beinart, in his book, clearly wants to keep Truman for his fellow Democrats, hoping that they will resurrect Truman's hawkish liberalism and thereby win the confidence of '06 and '08 voters who still seem skeptical about the party's national security bona fides. But perhaps the final wrinkle is that the liberal wing of the party doesn't want to play the WWHD game; as liberal activist leader Robert Borosage complains, "the current rage in center-right Democratic circles is to resuscitate Harry Truman," and commit the party to a policy of policing the world.
What all this Truman-mania suggests is that today's politicians and thinkers seem bent on cherry-picking the past because they lack creative thoughts about the future. If Harry could hear these partisans skirmishing over his legacy, he might well say of them what he once said of the political reporters who covered him:
"Not one of them has enough sense to pound sand in a rathole.''
-------
Meanwhile, I wonder what Harry Truman would have thought of this:
Today, on the floor of the U.S. House, Republicans are pushing their politically conceived pro-war resolution that calls for all members of Congress to stay the course, support the troops, and accept the premise that Iraq is a central front in the global terror war. In the debate today, various congressional Republicans were dutifully finding ways to link the 9/11 attacks to Saddam's Iraq. The ultimate aim is to force Democrats to either vote yes (and thereby accept Bush's frame on the Iraq conflict), or vote no (and thereby presumably be exposed as a cut-and-running defeatist).
Caveat for the GOP: there is the inconvenient truth that the 9/11 Commission long ago cleared Saddam on the 9/11 charge; as the members concluded, Saddam had no "collaborative relationship" with al Qaeda. So the Republicans are clearly finessing factual reality.
I suppose that even plain-speakin' Harry Truman might also have fudged the facts once in awhile. But I do wonder what he would have said if his enemies in what he called "the do-nothing Republican Congress" had attempted to paint his fellow Democrats as potential cowards, the way that House Speaker Dennis Hastert did earlier today.
Credit Hastert with the most...creative...political use of the 9/11 tragedy: "America’s response started high above a corn field in rural Pennsylvania. Brave men and women armed with nothing more than boiling water and dinner forks and broken bottles stood up as Americans always do when our freedom is in peril and they struck back....We in this Congress must show the same steely resolve as those men and women on United flight 93."
The message from give-em-hell Denny was clear: Any Democrat who opposes the GOP Iraq resolution is not only denying the 9/11-Iraq connection, but is also clearly betraying the people who died on that plane.
Gee, these Republicans sure don't care about making nice. On some level, Harry Truman would probably understand that. After all, he's the guy who once said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."
Both camps seek to lay claim to his legacy. With terrorists seeking to destroy us, with Iraq continuing to defy the prewar cakewalk predictions, and with polarized Washington seemingly incapable of forging a foreign policy consensus, both camps are asking the question, WWHD? (what would Harry do?), and citing Truman words and deeds that support their arguments.
The selective pillaging of historical figures is a favorite American parlor game, anyway; one can find, in the prolific writings of Thomas Jefferson, for example, enough opinions to support virtually any position, in part because Jefferson (as well as many other designated Great Men) said and did so many things, often contradictory, often reacting to the exigencies of the moment. Truman was no exception.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice seem to have launched the Truman show when she declared last December, in the Washington Post, that the Bush administration's efforts abroad are "consistent with the proud tradition of American foreign policy, especially such recent presidents as Harry Truman." President Bush followed up during a speech May 27 at West Point, by invoking Truman 17 times (I'm sure it was complete coincidence that he was citing a guy who was plagued during his tenure by low poll ratings), and contending that the Bush mission of spreading democracy is consistent with what Harry did back in 1947.
That was the year when Truman announced U.S. military aid for Greece and Turkey, both of which were under threat from communism; Bush cited this passage from a Truman speech: "It must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure."
Amidst our skirmishings with the Soviet Union in those early Cold War days, said Bush, "fortunately we had a president named Harry Truman who recognized the threat, took bold action to confront it, and laid the foundation for freedom's victory in the Cold War."
And that's when the battle over Truman was joined. Within days of Bush's speech, he was challenged by Peter Beinart -- author of a new book, The Good Fight, which urges Democrats to get tough on national security by rediscovering their inner Truman. He argued on June 1 in the Washington Post that Bush was hijacking Truman for his own political purposes, by ignoring all the stuff that Truman said about the importance of American humility and the need to work with multinational organizations; hence, this Truman line: "We all have to recognize, no matter how great our strength, that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please."
That in turn provoked conservatives. On June 14, foreign policy commentator Max Boot acknowledged in the Los Angeles Times that, yes, it's true that Truman did push for the 1949 creation of multinational NATO and, yes, he did preside over the founding of the United Nations, and, yes, he did work through the U.N. before sending troops to Korea in 1950...but Truman did tell his secretary of state, in a letter, that if the U.N. had balked on the latter, "we would have had to go into Korea alone." Boot was seconded by political analyst Michael Barone, who said last week in U.S. News and World Report that the Truman-backed Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe was a unilateral initiative (just like Bush's unilateral initiatives).
Anyway, this game can feature endless rebuttals and re-rebuttals. The Boot camp, for instance, seems to overlook the fact that conservatives in the late '40s actually attacked the Marshall Plan, because Truman allowed the Europeans to draft the details of that economic aid program, and because Truman was essentially giving our money (up to five percent of our national income, a share unthinkable today) to foreign governments that included high-ranking socialists, and with few strings attached. Not to mention the fact that this president, whom Bush is now lauding as a tough-minded hawk, was the same guy who, in his time, was mercilessly attacked by the right for allegedly being soft on communism.
Beinart, in his book, clearly wants to keep Truman for his fellow Democrats, hoping that they will resurrect Truman's hawkish liberalism and thereby win the confidence of '06 and '08 voters who still seem skeptical about the party's national security bona fides. But perhaps the final wrinkle is that the liberal wing of the party doesn't want to play the WWHD game; as liberal activist leader Robert Borosage complains, "the current rage in center-right Democratic circles is to resuscitate Harry Truman," and commit the party to a policy of policing the world.
What all this Truman-mania suggests is that today's politicians and thinkers seem bent on cherry-picking the past because they lack creative thoughts about the future. If Harry could hear these partisans skirmishing over his legacy, he might well say of them what he once said of the political reporters who covered him:
"Not one of them has enough sense to pound sand in a rathole.''
-------
Meanwhile, I wonder what Harry Truman would have thought of this:
Today, on the floor of the U.S. House, Republicans are pushing their politically conceived pro-war resolution that calls for all members of Congress to stay the course, support the troops, and accept the premise that Iraq is a central front in the global terror war. In the debate today, various congressional Republicans were dutifully finding ways to link the 9/11 attacks to Saddam's Iraq. The ultimate aim is to force Democrats to either vote yes (and thereby accept Bush's frame on the Iraq conflict), or vote no (and thereby presumably be exposed as a cut-and-running defeatist).
Caveat for the GOP: there is the inconvenient truth that the 9/11 Commission long ago cleared Saddam on the 9/11 charge; as the members concluded, Saddam had no "collaborative relationship" with al Qaeda. So the Republicans are clearly finessing factual reality.
I suppose that even plain-speakin' Harry Truman might also have fudged the facts once in awhile. But I do wonder what he would have said if his enemies in what he called "the do-nothing Republican Congress" had attempted to paint his fellow Democrats as potential cowards, the way that House Speaker Dennis Hastert did earlier today.
Credit Hastert with the most...creative...political use of the 9/11 tragedy: "America’s response started high above a corn field in rural Pennsylvania. Brave men and women armed with nothing more than boiling water and dinner forks and broken bottles stood up as Americans always do when our freedom is in peril and they struck back....We in this Congress must show the same steely resolve as those men and women on United flight 93."
The message from give-em-hell Denny was clear: Any Democrat who opposes the GOP Iraq resolution is not only denying the 9/11-Iraq connection, but is also clearly betraying the people who died on that plane.
Gee, these Republicans sure don't care about making nice. On some level, Harry Truman would probably understand that. After all, he's the guy who once said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog."
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
The light at the beginning of the tunnel that, with more sacrifice and more patience, may some day lead to the light at the end of the tunnel
President Bush, seeking to capitalize on several rare shreds of good news in Iraq -- the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and the fact that the new "unity government" has finally filled its Cabinet -- summoned the White House press corps to the Rose Garden this morning. His purpose was to rally the skeptical citizenry, paint the Democrats as quitters, and to generally insist that the future in Iraq is potentially bright, in accordance with his own party's philosophy, which he described as "forward looking and optimistic."
But as Bush enumerated the tasks that await the new government helmed by prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, he was inadvertently sending a very different message:
Iraq is a terrible mess, it will take an unspecified period of time to clean it up, we have no measurements that would tell us the degree to which it is getting cleaned up, and we Americans will have to stay for an unspecified period of time to see whether it does get cleaned up.
The evidence:
1. Three years after Bush proclaimed liberation, the government is infested with corruption. Bush said it himself this morning: "We want to establish an internal affairs bureau, to root out corruption. No question this government has got to deal with corruption at all levels in order to earn the confidence of the people."
2. In what Bush calls "free Iraq," the Iraqi judges have little concept of democratic-style justice, they can't function because of the violence, and there isn't enough jail space to house the guilty anyway. Bush telegraphed all that: "Part of the prime minister's plan is to improve the Iraqi judicial system. And to assist him, I've directed the attorney general and the secretaries of State and Defense to work together on a new rule-of-law initiative. Under this initiative, we'll help train Iraqi judges, increase security so they can do their jobs, improve Iraqi prison capacity, and help the Iraqi government provide equal justice for all its citizens."
3. The average Baghad resident doesn't even have receive enough electricity to live decently (in fact, according to the Brookings Institution's ongoing infrastructure index, a Baghdad denizen had 16-24 hours of electricity on a daily basis under Saddam Hussein; the May figure was 8 hours). Bush spoke repeatedly today about the electricity problem, saying at one point, "The answer to electricity is, sooner the better. It's hot over there, and it would be helpful if people had the capacity to cool their homes. It would be a pretty good signal that the government is making a difference in somebody's life."
4. Key regions of Iraq are essentially lawless at this point, and government police are part of the problem; thanks to mass infiltration, many of the purported peace officers are actually sectarian militia members who torture and kill at will, unfettered by government command and control. Bush basically confirmed all that: "We've deployed advisory teams to assist Iraq's new...Ministers of Defense and Interior, both of whom I met. We want to help them build the command and control capacity of their ministries. In other words, you can't have an effective army unless you've got command and control coming out of government....This is a tough struggle, and the reason why is because the rules of warfare as we used to know them are out the window. I mean, there's no rule of warfare. It's just, if you can kill innocent life in order to shake somebody's will or create consternation in a society, just go ahead and do it."
From a communications standpoint, Bush's new approach -- acknowledging problems -- is arguably more effective than his previous habit of eschewing detail while simply insisting that "freedom is on the march." But he still omitted some important facts today; for instance, the new Interior minister - whose job is to weed death-squad militia killers out of the police -- was rportedly chosen as the result of a deal between Maliki and a powerful Shiite political party that runs one of the offending militias.
Given all these challenges (and many more, including the need to establish what Bush called "repair teams" to restore electricity and oil production when insurgents blow it up), one might ask how the Bush administration plans to measure Mailiki's progress or failure, and whether it has settled on a reasonable time period. In fact a White House reporter asked Bush that very question:
"I'm wondering if you can say how you're going to measure that in terms of time. In other words, are you going to put a six-month time frame on this, or a 12-month time frame on this?"
Bush's answer: "Look, I understand the pressures to put timetables out there on everything. And my answer to you is, is that we will work with the Iraqi government to do what's realistic. And the people on the ground will help me understand what is realistic. We will know whether or not the government is capable of following through because we're going to help them follow through....(W)e've got to be realistic with this government. There is a -- but, nevertheless, I do believe that it makes sense to develop with them benchmarks, so we can measure progress. And once those are in place, and to the extent they are, we'll be glad to share them with you."
In other words, Bush can't offer a time frame, and he can't say how progress will be measured, but if those criteria are established at some point, "we'll be glad to share them with you."
Hence, the paradox in Bush's message: On the one hand, he repeatedly contended today that, from now on, the proverbial ball is in the Iraqis' court, that it's their responsibility to sort out their own future: "If the Iraqis don't have the will to succeed, they're not going to succeed....(I)f they choose not to...make the hard decisions and to implement a plan, they're not going to make it....(I)t's up to them to succeed. It's really up to them to put a plan in place and execute it."
But on the other hand, he signaled that his administration is really not entrusting (or even expecting) the new regime to sort out its own future, because apparently the U.S. will be backstopping the Iraqis all the way, with an open-ended commitment. He stated: "The policy of the United States government is to stand with this new government and help them succeed, and we will do what it takes to help them succeed."
Are there opportunities for the Democrats to effectively counter the President's latest "be patient" message? To provide an alternative war path, for Americans who are hungering for something new? It would seem so. But, for the Bush White House, those ever-squabbling Democrats -- a roomful of liberals booed Hillary Clinton yesterday because she opposes a troop withdrawal timetable -- continue to be the gift that keeps on giving.
But as Bush enumerated the tasks that await the new government helmed by prime minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, he was inadvertently sending a very different message:
Iraq is a terrible mess, it will take an unspecified period of time to clean it up, we have no measurements that would tell us the degree to which it is getting cleaned up, and we Americans will have to stay for an unspecified period of time to see whether it does get cleaned up.
The evidence:
1. Three years after Bush proclaimed liberation, the government is infested with corruption. Bush said it himself this morning: "We want to establish an internal affairs bureau, to root out corruption. No question this government has got to deal with corruption at all levels in order to earn the confidence of the people."
2. In what Bush calls "free Iraq," the Iraqi judges have little concept of democratic-style justice, they can't function because of the violence, and there isn't enough jail space to house the guilty anyway. Bush telegraphed all that: "Part of the prime minister's plan is to improve the Iraqi judicial system. And to assist him, I've directed the attorney general and the secretaries of State and Defense to work together on a new rule-of-law initiative. Under this initiative, we'll help train Iraqi judges, increase security so they can do their jobs, improve Iraqi prison capacity, and help the Iraqi government provide equal justice for all its citizens."
3. The average Baghad resident doesn't even have receive enough electricity to live decently (in fact, according to the Brookings Institution's ongoing infrastructure index, a Baghdad denizen had 16-24 hours of electricity on a daily basis under Saddam Hussein; the May figure was 8 hours). Bush spoke repeatedly today about the electricity problem, saying at one point, "The answer to electricity is, sooner the better. It's hot over there, and it would be helpful if people had the capacity to cool their homes. It would be a pretty good signal that the government is making a difference in somebody's life."
4. Key regions of Iraq are essentially lawless at this point, and government police are part of the problem; thanks to mass infiltration, many of the purported peace officers are actually sectarian militia members who torture and kill at will, unfettered by government command and control. Bush basically confirmed all that: "We've deployed advisory teams to assist Iraq's new...Ministers of Defense and Interior, both of whom I met. We want to help them build the command and control capacity of their ministries. In other words, you can't have an effective army unless you've got command and control coming out of government....This is a tough struggle, and the reason why is because the rules of warfare as we used to know them are out the window. I mean, there's no rule of warfare. It's just, if you can kill innocent life in order to shake somebody's will or create consternation in a society, just go ahead and do it."
From a communications standpoint, Bush's new approach -- acknowledging problems -- is arguably more effective than his previous habit of eschewing detail while simply insisting that "freedom is on the march." But he still omitted some important facts today; for instance, the new Interior minister - whose job is to weed death-squad militia killers out of the police -- was rportedly chosen as the result of a deal between Maliki and a powerful Shiite political party that runs one of the offending militias.
Given all these challenges (and many more, including the need to establish what Bush called "repair teams" to restore electricity and oil production when insurgents blow it up), one might ask how the Bush administration plans to measure Mailiki's progress or failure, and whether it has settled on a reasonable time period. In fact a White House reporter asked Bush that very question:
"I'm wondering if you can say how you're going to measure that in terms of time. In other words, are you going to put a six-month time frame on this, or a 12-month time frame on this?"
Bush's answer: "Look, I understand the pressures to put timetables out there on everything. And my answer to you is, is that we will work with the Iraqi government to do what's realistic. And the people on the ground will help me understand what is realistic. We will know whether or not the government is capable of following through because we're going to help them follow through....(W)e've got to be realistic with this government. There is a -- but, nevertheless, I do believe that it makes sense to develop with them benchmarks, so we can measure progress. And once those are in place, and to the extent they are, we'll be glad to share them with you."
In other words, Bush can't offer a time frame, and he can't say how progress will be measured, but if those criteria are established at some point, "we'll be glad to share them with you."
Hence, the paradox in Bush's message: On the one hand, he repeatedly contended today that, from now on, the proverbial ball is in the Iraqis' court, that it's their responsibility to sort out their own future: "If the Iraqis don't have the will to succeed, they're not going to succeed....(I)f they choose not to...make the hard decisions and to implement a plan, they're not going to make it....(I)t's up to them to succeed. It's really up to them to put a plan in place and execute it."
But on the other hand, he signaled that his administration is really not entrusting (or even expecting) the new regime to sort out its own future, because apparently the U.S. will be backstopping the Iraqis all the way, with an open-ended commitment. He stated: "The policy of the United States government is to stand with this new government and help them succeed, and we will do what it takes to help them succeed."
Are there opportunities for the Democrats to effectively counter the President's latest "be patient" message? To provide an alternative war path, for Americans who are hungering for something new? It would seem so. But, for the Bush White House, those ever-squabbling Democrats -- a roomful of liberals booed Hillary Clinton yesterday because she opposes a troop withdrawal timetable -- continue to be the gift that keeps on giving.
The Democrats find a Marine (and this time it's not John Murtha)
Quick tip for you campaign junkies: Keep an eye on the '06 Senate race in Virginia.
It had long been assumed that incumbent Republican Senator George Allen -- a Reaganesque conservative; son of the late, lionized football coach; and likely '08 presidential candidate -- would cruise to an easy re-election victory in November, while barely needing to dip into his reported $7.6-million campaign kitty (the remainder of which could be used in a White House bid). But last night, in the Democratic primary to choose his challenger, voters came up with a potentially viable challenger -- somebody with a daunting portfolio who, at the very least, will make Allen work hard and spend a lot of that '08 money.
The Democratic winner is James Webb, an ex-Marine and best-selling author who served in Vietnam, who later served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, and who considered himself a lifelong Republican until very recently. He has become a strong critic of President Bush (whom he voted for in 2000), especially on the war in Iraq.
Webb's victory -- easily beating the more liberal Harris Miller, a longtime Democratic activist -- suggests that Democratic voters, at least in red states, are becoming more pragmatic, siding with the candidate they deem most electable. Certainly, that's the goal this year of national Democrats, who have been promoting "fighting Dems" (antiwar vets) with mixed results this year; indeed, their DC Senate campaign arm backed Webb over Miller. And it's noteworthy that Webb ran strongest last night in the populous northern Virginia suburbs near Washington, where hardcore primary voters tend to be liberal.
Conservatives like Webb. Editorial writer Brendan Conway, writing yesterday at the pro-Republican spectator.org website, lauded Webb as "an unimpeachable military man" who is "a demigod to several servicemen I know." (Theoretically, that profile could help Webb compete seriously with Allen for the votes of rural whites.) And a Virginia conservative at redstate.com says that Webb "comes with a formidable record of service for his country. Unlike many Senate challengers, he comes with polished foriegn policy credentials, a populist style that has had many uttering the words 'Andrew Jackson' about his candidacy. "
But can he win statewide against a popular Republican, thereby improving the Democrats' prospects for taking over the Senate? It'll take big money to do that, for starters. Webb begins his campaign against Allen with only around $200,000 reportedly in the bank. We'll soon see whether the Washington Democrats put sufficient money in Virginia.
And we really don't yet know whether Webb -- who, Iraq aside, has conservative views on many issues -- can galvanize Democratics en masse in November; last night's turnout amounted to only 3.4 percent of the state's registered voters, and a lot of liberals are annoyed that Harris Miller, who had toiled loyally for the party, was denied what they feel he deserved. And Webb did poorly in the black community, thanks in part to the perception that he is not a big fan of affirmative action programs.
Nevertheless, a third-tier Senate race has been moved up a notch, and will serve as a test of whether an antiwar Marine with a Reaganesque pedigree can pull red-state voters into the Democratic column. That factor alone will make Virginia worth watching.
It had long been assumed that incumbent Republican Senator George Allen -- a Reaganesque conservative; son of the late, lionized football coach; and likely '08 presidential candidate -- would cruise to an easy re-election victory in November, while barely needing to dip into his reported $7.6-million campaign kitty (the remainder of which could be used in a White House bid). But last night, in the Democratic primary to choose his challenger, voters came up with a potentially viable challenger -- somebody with a daunting portfolio who, at the very least, will make Allen work hard and spend a lot of that '08 money.
The Democratic winner is James Webb, an ex-Marine and best-selling author who served in Vietnam, who later served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan, and who considered himself a lifelong Republican until very recently. He has become a strong critic of President Bush (whom he voted for in 2000), especially on the war in Iraq.
Webb's victory -- easily beating the more liberal Harris Miller, a longtime Democratic activist -- suggests that Democratic voters, at least in red states, are becoming more pragmatic, siding with the candidate they deem most electable. Certainly, that's the goal this year of national Democrats, who have been promoting "fighting Dems" (antiwar vets) with mixed results this year; indeed, their DC Senate campaign arm backed Webb over Miller. And it's noteworthy that Webb ran strongest last night in the populous northern Virginia suburbs near Washington, where hardcore primary voters tend to be liberal.
Conservatives like Webb. Editorial writer Brendan Conway, writing yesterday at the pro-Republican spectator.org website, lauded Webb as "an unimpeachable military man" who is "a demigod to several servicemen I know." (Theoretically, that profile could help Webb compete seriously with Allen for the votes of rural whites.) And a Virginia conservative at redstate.com says that Webb "comes with a formidable record of service for his country. Unlike many Senate challengers, he comes with polished foriegn policy credentials, a populist style that has had many uttering the words 'Andrew Jackson' about his candidacy. "
But can he win statewide against a popular Republican, thereby improving the Democrats' prospects for taking over the Senate? It'll take big money to do that, for starters. Webb begins his campaign against Allen with only around $200,000 reportedly in the bank. We'll soon see whether the Washington Democrats put sufficient money in Virginia.
And we really don't yet know whether Webb -- who, Iraq aside, has conservative views on many issues -- can galvanize Democratics en masse in November; last night's turnout amounted to only 3.4 percent of the state's registered voters, and a lot of liberals are annoyed that Harris Miller, who had toiled loyally for the party, was denied what they feel he deserved. And Webb did poorly in the black community, thanks in part to the perception that he is not a big fan of affirmative action programs.
Nevertheless, a third-tier Senate race has been moved up a notch, and will serve as a test of whether an antiwar Marine with a Reaganesque pedigree can pull red-state voters into the Democratic column. That factor alone will make Virginia worth watching.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Dodging the silver bullet
This is what passes for great news at the beleaguered Bush White House: The president's chief political guru gets word from federal prosecutors that he is not an accused criminal.
Nevertheless, the news that Karl Rove will not be charged in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case is clearly a political victory for the Bush administration. (In the careful words of Rove's lawyer, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald sent word that he "does not anticipate seeking charges.") Disappointment in the opposition camp is undoubtedly palpable. After all, Bush critic Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, had publicly expressed his hope that Rove would be "frog-marched" out of his White House job; and liberal blogs have been giddy for months about a supposedly imminent "Fitzmas" present.
Yes, court documents have indicated that Rove and the indicted Scooter Libby were both involved in the leak of classified information about CIA employe Plame's identity -- notwithstanding the early White House claims that Rove played no role whatsoever. And yes, the record indicates that Rove discussed her with two reporters, Matt Cooper and Robert Novak. And yes, the White House did insist early on that such leaks were unacceptable ("That is not the way this President or this White House operates," said press secretary Scott McClellan), and yes, the White House did promise back in 2003 that anyone involved in such a leak would no longer be allowed to work there.
Nevertheless, as all the polls have long suggested, the Plame leak case has not been a burning concern for the average American. The chronology is complicated, and, for many people, the details just seem like typical inside-the-Beltway inside baseball. (At the liberal blogger convention that I covered over the weekend, a 90-minute session was devoted to the case, yet even one of the presenters told me that she had to spend many hours getting up to speed on all the intricate details of who supposedly said what to whom when.)
Only one element could have given the Bush critics a massive PR victory: a Rove indictment. That would have reduced the case to a widely resonant soundbite. Bush's political mastermind, dragged into the docket? That would have been devastating. Instead, the news that Rove is in the clear will allow the Republicans to rebuke the Rove-haters for cheering his demise in advance; indeed, GOP chairman Ken Mehlman is already on the prowl, demanding that Democrats apologize for "rushing to judgement."
Longtime Rove critics are taking the fallback position today, suggesting that just because Rove wasn't criminally indicted, it doesn't mean he didn't do something ethically sleazy. As Democratic chairman Howard Dean put it today, "The prosecutor's decision not to indict Karl Rove does not diminish the fact that (he) was involved in leaking the identity of an intelligence operative during a time of war." It's certainly true that, in Washington, there are many variations of vicious hardball (Rove being a reputedly master practitioner) that aren't necessarily criminal in nature; and it's still reasonable to wonder whether a top aide who may have used classified material to retaliate against a war critic (Wilson) still deserves to remain in the President's inner circle.
But that's thin gruel for the Bush critics who were anticipating a much bigger payoff -- particularly some of the liberal bloggers who might feel embarrassed today that their earlier "reporting" of an imminent indictment has turned to dust. I wrote last month about the problem of partisan misinformation on the blogosphere (here), and specifically about the supposedly slam dunk of a Rove indictment, which was widely circulated. As recently as yesterday, the most offending website was insisting that we had been denied the news of Rove's cinch indictment only because the court documents that detailed the official accusations had been sealed. Don't hold your breath for a full retraction.
I received an email yesterday from a blog fan who insisted, "When I want the full truth, I rely on the net." My response to that: Don't.
Meanwhile, the uber blogger himself, Markos Moulitsas, has similar advice this morning. he writes on DailyKos.com: "I hope this serves a lesson to all of you who link to crap Internet sources...merely because they write what you want to hear.....This is the reality based community, not the 'make up your own reality' community. Conservatives already own the trademark to that name. Be properly skeptical of everything you read. Even on this site. And if I use blind sources, which I'm apt to do every once in a while, be particularly skeptical. I won't be offended."
Still, it's critical to look beyond today's events and stay focused on the big picture. The key question is whether the Rove PR victory helps to fuel a sustainable Bush comeback, or whether it will prove to be merely ephemeral, a temporary reprieve along a downward slide.
Right now the White House is trying to take the offensive on many fronts -- seeking to parlay Rove-is-innocent/Zarqawi-is-dead/Bush-visits-Baghdad into positive political gold, coupled with the news that the newest Iraqi prime minister has finally filled out his Cabinet. There is even a new poll that shows a rise in Bush's job performance rating since Zarqawi died (OK, it's only two points). There is certainly no desire to cede any ground to the opposition; Rove, speaking in New Hampshire last night, threw down the gauntlet for the '06 elections by (again) accusing Democrats of "cutting and running" from Iraq.
But none of this will matter as long as the sectarian strife continues in Iraq; indeed, another new poll finds that only 16 percent of Americans anticipate less violence in the wake of Zarqawi's death, and that 82 percent now view the Iraq conflict as a civil war. The ultimate verdict on this administration will hinge on what happens abroad, not on whether Karl Rove is criminally accused.
-------
You know the smell that permeates not just your neighborhood every day, but millions of neighborhoods nationwide? That pungent stench from all that burning cloth? Surely you are aware of the hordes of anarchists who are burning American flags? Surely you have seen this runaway epidemic of treason highlighted regularly on, say, Fox News?
OK, so you haven't seen or smelled this? Not even once? Me, either. Wait, that's not entirely true; in recent years, there was a documented report of one drunken teenage who tried to burn Old Glory in 2005.
But just in case such havoc is wreaked in some future time, the U.S. Senate is ready to put a stop to it. As this report suggests, the chamber is now only one vote away from enacting a constitutional amendment (the Senate tally takes place late this month) -- with the help of many fearful Democratic senators, including Hillary Clinton, who have decided that their First Amendment concerns can't compete in the emotional marketplace with a tried and true salute to the red, white, and blue.
Nevertheless, the news that Karl Rove will not be charged in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case is clearly a political victory for the Bush administration. (In the careful words of Rove's lawyer, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald sent word that he "does not anticipate seeking charges.") Disappointment in the opposition camp is undoubtedly palpable. After all, Bush critic Joseph Wilson, Plame's husband, had publicly expressed his hope that Rove would be "frog-marched" out of his White House job; and liberal blogs have been giddy for months about a supposedly imminent "Fitzmas" present.
Yes, court documents have indicated that Rove and the indicted Scooter Libby were both involved in the leak of classified information about CIA employe Plame's identity -- notwithstanding the early White House claims that Rove played no role whatsoever. And yes, the record indicates that Rove discussed her with two reporters, Matt Cooper and Robert Novak. And yes, the White House did insist early on that such leaks were unacceptable ("That is not the way this President or this White House operates," said press secretary Scott McClellan), and yes, the White House did promise back in 2003 that anyone involved in such a leak would no longer be allowed to work there.
Nevertheless, as all the polls have long suggested, the Plame leak case has not been a burning concern for the average American. The chronology is complicated, and, for many people, the details just seem like typical inside-the-Beltway inside baseball. (At the liberal blogger convention that I covered over the weekend, a 90-minute session was devoted to the case, yet even one of the presenters told me that she had to spend many hours getting up to speed on all the intricate details of who supposedly said what to whom when.)
Only one element could have given the Bush critics a massive PR victory: a Rove indictment. That would have reduced the case to a widely resonant soundbite. Bush's political mastermind, dragged into the docket? That would have been devastating. Instead, the news that Rove is in the clear will allow the Republicans to rebuke the Rove-haters for cheering his demise in advance; indeed, GOP chairman Ken Mehlman is already on the prowl, demanding that Democrats apologize for "rushing to judgement."
Longtime Rove critics are taking the fallback position today, suggesting that just because Rove wasn't criminally indicted, it doesn't mean he didn't do something ethically sleazy. As Democratic chairman Howard Dean put it today, "The prosecutor's decision not to indict Karl Rove does not diminish the fact that (he) was involved in leaking the identity of an intelligence operative during a time of war." It's certainly true that, in Washington, there are many variations of vicious hardball (Rove being a reputedly master practitioner) that aren't necessarily criminal in nature; and it's still reasonable to wonder whether a top aide who may have used classified material to retaliate against a war critic (Wilson) still deserves to remain in the President's inner circle.
But that's thin gruel for the Bush critics who were anticipating a much bigger payoff -- particularly some of the liberal bloggers who might feel embarrassed today that their earlier "reporting" of an imminent indictment has turned to dust. I wrote last month about the problem of partisan misinformation on the blogosphere (here), and specifically about the supposedly slam dunk of a Rove indictment, which was widely circulated. As recently as yesterday, the most offending website was insisting that we had been denied the news of Rove's cinch indictment only because the court documents that detailed the official accusations had been sealed. Don't hold your breath for a full retraction.
I received an email yesterday from a blog fan who insisted, "When I want the full truth, I rely on the net." My response to that: Don't.
Meanwhile, the uber blogger himself, Markos Moulitsas, has similar advice this morning. he writes on DailyKos.com: "I hope this serves a lesson to all of you who link to crap Internet sources...merely because they write what you want to hear.....This is the reality based community, not the 'make up your own reality' community. Conservatives already own the trademark to that name. Be properly skeptical of everything you read. Even on this site. And if I use blind sources, which I'm apt to do every once in a while, be particularly skeptical. I won't be offended."
Still, it's critical to look beyond today's events and stay focused on the big picture. The key question is whether the Rove PR victory helps to fuel a sustainable Bush comeback, or whether it will prove to be merely ephemeral, a temporary reprieve along a downward slide.
Right now the White House is trying to take the offensive on many fronts -- seeking to parlay Rove-is-innocent/Zarqawi-is-dead/Bush-visits-Baghdad into positive political gold, coupled with the news that the newest Iraqi prime minister has finally filled out his Cabinet. There is even a new poll that shows a rise in Bush's job performance rating since Zarqawi died (OK, it's only two points). There is certainly no desire to cede any ground to the opposition; Rove, speaking in New Hampshire last night, threw down the gauntlet for the '06 elections by (again) accusing Democrats of "cutting and running" from Iraq.
But none of this will matter as long as the sectarian strife continues in Iraq; indeed, another new poll finds that only 16 percent of Americans anticipate less violence in the wake of Zarqawi's death, and that 82 percent now view the Iraq conflict as a civil war. The ultimate verdict on this administration will hinge on what happens abroad, not on whether Karl Rove is criminally accused.
-------
You know the smell that permeates not just your neighborhood every day, but millions of neighborhoods nationwide? That pungent stench from all that burning cloth? Surely you are aware of the hordes of anarchists who are burning American flags? Surely you have seen this runaway epidemic of treason highlighted regularly on, say, Fox News?
OK, so you haven't seen or smelled this? Not even once? Me, either. Wait, that's not entirely true; in recent years, there was a documented report of one drunken teenage who tried to burn Old Glory in 2005.
But just in case such havoc is wreaked in some future time, the U.S. Senate is ready to put a stop to it. As this report suggests, the chamber is now only one vote away from enacting a constitutional amendment (the Senate tally takes place late this month) -- with the help of many fearful Democratic senators, including Hillary Clinton, who have decided that their First Amendment concerns can't compete in the emotional marketplace with a tried and true salute to the red, white, and blue.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Emptying the blogger notebook
Well, that’s what I get for weighing in here the other day on Ann Coulter. The producers of It’s Your Call, the Comcast roundtable on CN8, phoned to ask whether I’d like to join the festivities in the studio tonight at 9. Topic: Ann Coulter. Normally I’m more of a C-Span kind of guy, but maybe this can be a chance to put Coulter in the, um, proper perspective. If you're a Comcast subscriber with nothing better to do, feel free to call in.
-------
My newspaper column on the liberal blogger convention is here. It's reasonably lengthy, by today's print standards. Nevertheless, there is much more to say. For instance:
The liberal blogosphere has grown so quickly that nobody has quite figured out whether they should come up with some sort of endorsement process for presidential candidates. And even if they did come up with a process, they’d have to figure out how to pick somebody -– no easy task, given the fact that, despite the presence of a few blogger-leaders (Markos Moulitsas, Jerome Armstrong, Chris Bowers, Duncan Black, to name a few), the blogs tout the notion of a freewheeling democracy in which everybody has a voice, anybody can be a leader.
The issue is surfacing now, because four possible 2008 candidates decided to show up in Vegas: ex-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (he threw a party at the Stratosphere Hotel & Casino), retired Gen. Wesley Clark (he hosted a schmooze session at the Hard Rock Café), New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (he hosted a breakfast), and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (he appeared on an education panel).
A fair number of bloggers at the Vegas confab were privately perturbed that Warner, a staunch centrist, seems to be getting so much attention from Moulitsas and Armstrong. The latter is working for Warner’s political action committee, as tekkie guru and de facto liaison to the bloggers. Moulitsas praises Warner regularly (even though Warner is hardly a two-fisted partisan brawler, the style that bloggers prefer), and, even though that isn’t tantamount to an endorsement, his warm words for Warner contrast sharply with his pithy dismissals of most everybody else.
In a May 8 online chat with the Washington Post website, for example, the scion of DailyKos.com dumped on Russ Feingold (“two divorces, no family to use as campaign props, and he’s short”), Joe Biden (“completely irrelevant”), John Kerry (“yesterday’s news”), and Hillary Clinton (“I can’t imagine a single state that HRC would’ve won that Kerry lost in 2004”). He said that Al Gore won’t run, out of fear of the “moronic media,” and, for good measure, he dumped on Bill Clinton, too (“he killed the party”).
Is Moulitsas trying to nudge blogworld toward Warner? He says no. That would not be a popular move among the bloggers, many of whom suspect that Warner is wooing the bloggers merrely to neutralize them and prevent a stampede toward the guy they love most, Wisconsin Senator Feingold (who voted no on the Iraq war, and authored the recent motion to censure President Bush).
Chris Bowers at MyDD.com, with the cooperation of moveon.org, recently conducted a survey of the latter group’s members, hoping to gauge intensity of support for various candidates. Feingold drew the most intense support; 38 percent viewed him very favorably. Warner was at the bottom; only eight percent saw him that way.
Many of the bloggers were also annoyed by Warner's Saturday luncheon address. Before he took the stage, he was featured in a lengthy laudatory video that trumpeted his economic record as Virginia governor -- the standard kind of campaign video, with all the tear-inducing artifice, that many in the audience have come to loathe over the years. One blogger from New Haven, Edward Anderson later said, "I can see his TV ads already, 'I created this many jobs, I created that many jobs.' I can see the whole checklist."
On one level, people were flattered by Warner's lavish attention; after all, this guy saw the future of cellphones back in the early '80s -- and invested his money accordingly -- when few others could even grasp the idea. So the bloggers figure that maybe he's also a seer about blogger power. But they sense that maybe the guy is pushing too hard for a quid pro quo.
So there are bound to be clashes between pro-Warner bloggers who see him as a futurist, and anti-Warner bloggers who dismiss him as a "corporatist" (a word I heard frequently). "So far," said Tim Tageris, a blogosphere guru who works for Ned Lamont’s insurgent Senate campaign in Connecticut, “we have all been generally pulling together. But (in the runup to '08)we’ll start to see a lot of different people pulling a lot of different ways.”
Moulitsas also senses that the normally disputatious blogosphere will soon become even worse, as the next election draws closer: “How are we going to enforce a code of civility on the (DailyKos) site when passions are going to be running very high? That’s what keeps me up at night.”
-------
Bloggers consider themselves to be political outsiders, but in truth they have already fashioned their own insider culture, with their own lingo and norms of online behavior. On the DailyKos website, for instance, trolls are jerky people who post highly disruptive comments. And the blogosphere has also spawned its own celebrities, people who are known only by their pseudonyms.
A lot of those folks "came out" at the blogger convention. They showed up in their actual physical state, and during Q&A sessions, they announced who they were -- and the audience would respond with audibly breathless delight.
"You might know me as Major Danby." Gasp...
"I am McJoan." Gasp...
"I blog as DDay." Gasp...
It quickly became a ritual that whenever a blogger stood at a mike and came out, he or she would pause for a long moment, waiting (or hoping) for that gasp of recognition, before proceeding. Some were met with silence, which perhaps should be viewed as the new equivalent of lousy Nielsen ratings.
-------
Some blogger stereotypes are clearly inaccurate. Surveys show that they are not overwhelmingly young. A Pew poll has found that the largest share (33 percent of all bloggers, at least in 2004) are actually between the ages of 45 and 64. And most are highly educated, at a markedly greater percentage than the general population.
Also contrary to the stereotype, most bloggers don't seem interested in forcing Democrats to pass ideological litmus tests. They love Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid (for his feisty anti-Bush style), even though he is an opponent of abortion. They seem flexible on Iraq; despite the Bush administration's claim that everyone on the left is a "cut and runner," the bloggers are not insisting that their favorite political candidates endorse a plan for immediate troop withdrawal.
Arianna Huffington, who hosts her own blog at HuffingtonPost.com, was greeted indifferently on Saturday when she insisted that all blogworthy presidential candidates should take that view, "strategically and morally."
At the same time, there are clearly limits to what the bloggers will accept. Joe Lieberman, the hawkish Connecticut Democratic senator, is in the crosshairs because of his strong support for the war, and his stronger support for Bush as commander in chief. One could even argue that this points up an important caveat in liberal blogosphere philosophy: the bloggers hunger for Democrats who will stand up for what they believe -- but, clearly, there are limits to what the bloggers define as acceptable beliefs worth standing up for.
-------
And lastly, despite the fact that many of these bloggers come off as cocky about their potential clout, Markos Moulitsas made it clear that he expects no overnight miracles. Late in the convention, he noted that it took the conservatives 30 years to turn the 1964 Barry Goldwater debacle into the 1994 Newt Gingrich congressional takeover. Then he said:
"It won't take us 30 years. But it may take us 10. People ask me, 'Which Republican scares you most in 2008?' Well, they all do. Whoever they nominate, that person will be pumped up (by the well-oiled, well-financed Republican message machine) , and ours will be dragged down. If we had Jesus as our nominee, he'd be dragged through the mud."
Oh oh...I can see it now, in the conservative media:
Liberal bloggers attack Jesus!
-------
My newspaper column on the liberal blogger convention is here. It's reasonably lengthy, by today's print standards. Nevertheless, there is much more to say. For instance:
The liberal blogosphere has grown so quickly that nobody has quite figured out whether they should come up with some sort of endorsement process for presidential candidates. And even if they did come up with a process, they’d have to figure out how to pick somebody -– no easy task, given the fact that, despite the presence of a few blogger-leaders (Markos Moulitsas, Jerome Armstrong, Chris Bowers, Duncan Black, to name a few), the blogs tout the notion of a freewheeling democracy in which everybody has a voice, anybody can be a leader.
The issue is surfacing now, because four possible 2008 candidates decided to show up in Vegas: ex-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (he threw a party at the Stratosphere Hotel & Casino), retired Gen. Wesley Clark (he hosted a schmooze session at the Hard Rock Café), New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (he hosted a breakfast), and Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (he appeared on an education panel).
A fair number of bloggers at the Vegas confab were privately perturbed that Warner, a staunch centrist, seems to be getting so much attention from Moulitsas and Armstrong. The latter is working for Warner’s political action committee, as tekkie guru and de facto liaison to the bloggers. Moulitsas praises Warner regularly (even though Warner is hardly a two-fisted partisan brawler, the style that bloggers prefer), and, even though that isn’t tantamount to an endorsement, his warm words for Warner contrast sharply with his pithy dismissals of most everybody else.
In a May 8 online chat with the Washington Post website, for example, the scion of DailyKos.com dumped on Russ Feingold (“two divorces, no family to use as campaign props, and he’s short”), Joe Biden (“completely irrelevant”), John Kerry (“yesterday’s news”), and Hillary Clinton (“I can’t imagine a single state that HRC would’ve won that Kerry lost in 2004”). He said that Al Gore won’t run, out of fear of the “moronic media,” and, for good measure, he dumped on Bill Clinton, too (“he killed the party”).
Is Moulitsas trying to nudge blogworld toward Warner? He says no. That would not be a popular move among the bloggers, many of whom suspect that Warner is wooing the bloggers merrely to neutralize them and prevent a stampede toward the guy they love most, Wisconsin Senator Feingold (who voted no on the Iraq war, and authored the recent motion to censure President Bush).
Chris Bowers at MyDD.com, with the cooperation of moveon.org, recently conducted a survey of the latter group’s members, hoping to gauge intensity of support for various candidates. Feingold drew the most intense support; 38 percent viewed him very favorably. Warner was at the bottom; only eight percent saw him that way.
Many of the bloggers were also annoyed by Warner's Saturday luncheon address. Before he took the stage, he was featured in a lengthy laudatory video that trumpeted his economic record as Virginia governor -- the standard kind of campaign video, with all the tear-inducing artifice, that many in the audience have come to loathe over the years. One blogger from New Haven, Edward Anderson later said, "I can see his TV ads already, 'I created this many jobs, I created that many jobs.' I can see the whole checklist."
On one level, people were flattered by Warner's lavish attention; after all, this guy saw the future of cellphones back in the early '80s -- and invested his money accordingly -- when few others could even grasp the idea. So the bloggers figure that maybe he's also a seer about blogger power. But they sense that maybe the guy is pushing too hard for a quid pro quo.
So there are bound to be clashes between pro-Warner bloggers who see him as a futurist, and anti-Warner bloggers who dismiss him as a "corporatist" (a word I heard frequently). "So far," said Tim Tageris, a blogosphere guru who works for Ned Lamont’s insurgent Senate campaign in Connecticut, “we have all been generally pulling together. But (in the runup to '08)we’ll start to see a lot of different people pulling a lot of different ways.”
Moulitsas also senses that the normally disputatious blogosphere will soon become even worse, as the next election draws closer: “How are we going to enforce a code of civility on the (DailyKos) site when passions are going to be running very high? That’s what keeps me up at night.”
-------
Bloggers consider themselves to be political outsiders, but in truth they have already fashioned their own insider culture, with their own lingo and norms of online behavior. On the DailyKos website, for instance, trolls are jerky people who post highly disruptive comments. And the blogosphere has also spawned its own celebrities, people who are known only by their pseudonyms.
A lot of those folks "came out" at the blogger convention. They showed up in their actual physical state, and during Q&A sessions, they announced who they were -- and the audience would respond with audibly breathless delight.
"You might know me as Major Danby." Gasp...
"I am McJoan." Gasp...
"I blog as DDay." Gasp...
It quickly became a ritual that whenever a blogger stood at a mike and came out, he or she would pause for a long moment, waiting (or hoping) for that gasp of recognition, before proceeding. Some were met with silence, which perhaps should be viewed as the new equivalent of lousy Nielsen ratings.
-------
Some blogger stereotypes are clearly inaccurate. Surveys show that they are not overwhelmingly young. A Pew poll has found that the largest share (33 percent of all bloggers, at least in 2004) are actually between the ages of 45 and 64. And most are highly educated, at a markedly greater percentage than the general population.
Also contrary to the stereotype, most bloggers don't seem interested in forcing Democrats to pass ideological litmus tests. They love Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid (for his feisty anti-Bush style), even though he is an opponent of abortion. They seem flexible on Iraq; despite the Bush administration's claim that everyone on the left is a "cut and runner," the bloggers are not insisting that their favorite political candidates endorse a plan for immediate troop withdrawal.
Arianna Huffington, who hosts her own blog at HuffingtonPost.com, was greeted indifferently on Saturday when she insisted that all blogworthy presidential candidates should take that view, "strategically and morally."
At the same time, there are clearly limits to what the bloggers will accept. Joe Lieberman, the hawkish Connecticut Democratic senator, is in the crosshairs because of his strong support for the war, and his stronger support for Bush as commander in chief. One could even argue that this points up an important caveat in liberal blogosphere philosophy: the bloggers hunger for Democrats who will stand up for what they believe -- but, clearly, there are limits to what the bloggers define as acceptable beliefs worth standing up for.
-------
And lastly, despite the fact that many of these bloggers come off as cocky about their potential clout, Markos Moulitsas made it clear that he expects no overnight miracles. Late in the convention, he noted that it took the conservatives 30 years to turn the 1964 Barry Goldwater debacle into the 1994 Newt Gingrich congressional takeover. Then he said:
"It won't take us 30 years. But it may take us 10. People ask me, 'Which Republican scares you most in 2008?' Well, they all do. Whoever they nominate, that person will be pumped up (by the well-oiled, well-financed Republican message machine) , and ours will be dragged down. If we had Jesus as our nominee, he'd be dragged through the mud."
Oh oh...I can see it now, in the conservative media:
Liberal bloggers attack Jesus!
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Have a nice day
It's a day of rest for you, a day of travel for me. I'll have a print column tomorrow assessing the clout (real or imagined) of the liberal bloggers in Democratic politics, along with a separate blog entry about the event, based on supplemental material that didn't make the cut for print.
Saturday, June 10, 2006
Quick hits from Sin City
It's a busy time out here in Vegas - talking to lots of bloggers who think they're the future kingpins of Democratic politics, commiserating with bloggers who were cleaned out at the blackjack table...but I do have a few drive-by observations on various and sundry matters:
As I noted here yesterday about the Zarqawi killing, there seem to be a fair number of Americans who can't easily be labeled by the right as "defeatist," just because they fail to view the event as a turning point in the war. Here's another, David Brannan, who worked for the Bush administration back in 2003 and 2004, directing security policy in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority.
An excerpt from his Los Angeles Times op-ed piece yesterday: "But what will the death of Zarqawi mean to the hopes for peace in Iraq? Probably very little. An Al Qaeda website has already declared him a martyr. New leadership has likely stepped into place and is probably planning the next attacks on Iraqi Shiites and coalition forces. Zarqawi was credited with recruiting fighters from Jordan, the Palestinian territories and other lands previously unconcerned with Iraq, but his 'glorious' martyrdom at American hands will probably prove a potent recruitment tool for the fighters he trained. The overarching problem is that death and martyrdom are all that any Al Qaeda leader expects, so Zarqawi may be as effective in death at inspiring terrorist acts as he was in life."
-------
Earlier this week, I analysed Democratic candidate Francine Busby's loss in a key congressional election in southern California, and, prior to the vote, I also wrote how a crucial verbal gaffe committed by Busby was quickly circulated by the well-oiled conservative communications empire. On that latter point, here's a piece that puts it all in a larger political perspective.
Robert Parry, the author, discusses the GOP apparatus that pounced on the Busby gaffe: "The conservatives keep building up their media infrastructure; the Republicans exploit this advantage with an instantaneous message machine that keeps them plugged into their backers and the broader electorate; the GOP then puts into play a powerful wedge issue in the weeks before the election; the missteps of the Democrats – no matter how minor – are blared out to voters."
But, as you see for yourself, he also contends that the Washington-based Democratic consultants are part of the problem. That's a widely-held view at the bloggers convention here in Vegas - there's major tension in the Democratic party between these outsiders and the DC insiders -- and I'll mention some of that Monday, in my print column on the blogosphere.
-------
The quote of the week comes from Republican congressman Chris Shays, who is fighting for his job in Connecticut largely because of his early support for the Iraq war. He now says that he should have demanded more pre-war accountability when the Pentagon said the price tag wouldn't be high: "I fault myself. I was hearing voices in my own head that this was going to cost more, and I accepted the Pentagon numbers that were too low."
When a politician talks favorably about hearing voices in his head, you know he must be in trouble.
-------
The New York Times ran a piece this morning on the bloggers convention, and flattered itself by mentioning that one of its visiting luminaries, Maureen Dowd, was getting mobbed by fans. So I'll balance that anecdote with this one:
At one point, the popular blog MyDD.com held a caucus meeting. The room was filled with bloggers, all toting their laptops. Since the room was wired for the Internet, they all went online, called up the MyDD website, and, as the meeting progressed, they blogged their reactions onto the website, in real time. A big screen was set up at the front of the room, beaming the website to one and all, presumably so that the bloggers could react to their blogged reactions in real time.
Anyway, Maureen Dowd came in and sat in the corner. Within seconds, this appeared on the big screen: "Oh (darn). New York Times in the corner." Rest assured that the scathing word was not darn.
As I noted here yesterday about the Zarqawi killing, there seem to be a fair number of Americans who can't easily be labeled by the right as "defeatist," just because they fail to view the event as a turning point in the war. Here's another, David Brannan, who worked for the Bush administration back in 2003 and 2004, directing security policy in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority.
An excerpt from his Los Angeles Times op-ed piece yesterday: "But what will the death of Zarqawi mean to the hopes for peace in Iraq? Probably very little. An Al Qaeda website has already declared him a martyr. New leadership has likely stepped into place and is probably planning the next attacks on Iraqi Shiites and coalition forces. Zarqawi was credited with recruiting fighters from Jordan, the Palestinian territories and other lands previously unconcerned with Iraq, but his 'glorious' martyrdom at American hands will probably prove a potent recruitment tool for the fighters he trained. The overarching problem is that death and martyrdom are all that any Al Qaeda leader expects, so Zarqawi may be as effective in death at inspiring terrorist acts as he was in life."
-------
Earlier this week, I analysed Democratic candidate Francine Busby's loss in a key congressional election in southern California, and, prior to the vote, I also wrote how a crucial verbal gaffe committed by Busby was quickly circulated by the well-oiled conservative communications empire. On that latter point, here's a piece that puts it all in a larger political perspective.
Robert Parry, the author, discusses the GOP apparatus that pounced on the Busby gaffe: "The conservatives keep building up their media infrastructure; the Republicans exploit this advantage with an instantaneous message machine that keeps them plugged into their backers and the broader electorate; the GOP then puts into play a powerful wedge issue in the weeks before the election; the missteps of the Democrats – no matter how minor – are blared out to voters."
But, as you see for yourself, he also contends that the Washington-based Democratic consultants are part of the problem. That's a widely-held view at the bloggers convention here in Vegas - there's major tension in the Democratic party between these outsiders and the DC insiders -- and I'll mention some of that Monday, in my print column on the blogosphere.
-------
The quote of the week comes from Republican congressman Chris Shays, who is fighting for his job in Connecticut largely because of his early support for the Iraq war. He now says that he should have demanded more pre-war accountability when the Pentagon said the price tag wouldn't be high: "I fault myself. I was hearing voices in my own head that this was going to cost more, and I accepted the Pentagon numbers that were too low."
When a politician talks favorably about hearing voices in his head, you know he must be in trouble.
-------
The New York Times ran a piece this morning on the bloggers convention, and flattered itself by mentioning that one of its visiting luminaries, Maureen Dowd, was getting mobbed by fans. So I'll balance that anecdote with this one:
At one point, the popular blog MyDD.com held a caucus meeting. The room was filled with bloggers, all toting their laptops. Since the room was wired for the Internet, they all went online, called up the MyDD website, and, as the meeting progressed, they blogged their reactions onto the website, in real time. A big screen was set up at the front of the room, beaming the website to one and all, presumably so that the bloggers could react to their blogged reactions in real time.
Anyway, Maureen Dowd came in and sat in the corner. Within seconds, this appeared on the big screen: "Oh (darn). New York Times in the corner." Rest assured that the scathing word was not darn.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Zarqawi bad, perspective good
Can a guy think straight and serious in Las Vegas, a place where it's 90 degrees at 8 in the morning and a hung-over Elvis impersonator with a tattered gauze bandage hanging loose off his ankle just staggered across the hotel parking lot? I'll try.
First, on the death of al-Qaeda reign-of-terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: Obviously, nobody in America will mourn the passing of a murderous thug who beheaded westerners and sought to foment and exploit sectarian strife. But it's predictably striking to note how the war's defenders are mocking any attempts by skeptical Americans to put his death in perspective and to suggest that perhaps his passing will not make much of a difference.
Call it the Dixie Chickification of skeptical thought.
Dare we recall that when Saddam Hussein was captured in December of 2003, during the ninth month of the war, President Bush's loyalists assailed anyone who had the temerity to suggest that this event might not be a watershed turning point in the conflict? Remember how Howard Dean was pilloried for saying that Hussein's capture would not necessarily make America safer? Dean had many flaws as a candidate, but that particular view is now shared by a majority of Americans, as the polls have long reported.
And dare we attempt to put Zarqawi's death into perspective? Sure, why not:
1. As Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Pentagon aide under Republican administrations, pointed out this morning in USA Today, the al-Qaeda operation in Iraq is a relatively small facet of a sprawling and decentralized Sunni insurgency. And, insurgency aside, many terror experts now say that the biggest threats to peace in Iraq are the sectarian militias, both Sunni and Shiite, that have infiltrated the government security forces.
2. Zarqawi, who was betrayed by somebody inside his organization, was already on the way to being sidelined as a leader of the al-Qaeda operation. This suggests that those bad guys were already in the process of retooling when he was taken out. Where have I heard that Zarqawi was being sidelined? From the conservative press, which reported this on April 4. Headline in the Washington Times: "Zarqawi replaced as al Qaeda chief."
3. With regards to Zarqawi, public amnesia plays to the Bush administration's advantage. Historical perspective does not. Apparently, they could have taken out Zarqawi four years ago, before the war. In March 2004, NBC reported that the White House in 2002 had thrice rejected a Pentagon request to target Zarqawi, who then was believed to be running a weapons lab in territory not controlled by Saddam Hussein's government. Jim Miklaszewski's sources told him that the administration balked at attacking Zarqawi and his terrorist camp, out of concern that "destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam." Terrorism expert and ex-National Security Council member Robert Cressey told NBC that "People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of preemption against terrorists."
Some war skeptics have sought to provide this kind of perspective over the past 24 hours, but that is what the Republican National Committee is now calling "a commitment to defeatism."
One of the RNC's targets is Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, a Democrat who actually voted for war authorization and has not renounced that vote. He was labeled a defeatist for saying this yesterday on CNN: "I predict to you that two weeks from now you're going to be showing people being ripped off of buses, and beheaded still. I think you're going to be seeing every morning 10 to 50 people with their arms chained behind their back and shot in the head."
But somehow, in its eagerness to append its label, the Republican party omitted the fact that Biden actually defended Bush yesterday on NBC: "We get one president at a time....This election in November is not for President of the United States....I hope it (Zarqawi's death) does improve his standing and emboldens him to take bolder moves in terms of his policy in Iraq."
And it would be interesting to know whether the Republican party would label as "defeatists" those Marines on the ground in Iraq who are telling the media that Zarqawi's demise won't change the situation. Here's Maj. Tom Hobbs, executive officer for 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Rregiment in Ramadi, speaking this morning in USA Today: "Things will remain the same, or get worse as insurgent leaders conduct attacks to make a name for themselves and become the next top dog." He was seconded by Marine Capt. Andrew Del Gaudio, who said, referring to Zarqawi's death, that the insurgents "will get over it quickly and move on."
Nevertheless, having said all this, I can't help but note that sometimes the anti-Bush Democratic activists make it easy for the other side to mock them. Last night, here in Las Vegas, at a reception dinner for 1000 liberal bloggers, a comedian made a passing reference to Zarqawi's death. Very tepid applause. Then he mentioned that the indicted Tom DeLay had delivered his farewell speech In Washington. Wild applause, whistles, and whooping. And there it was, another gift for Karl Rove.
-------
I want to finish with just a few words about Ann Coulter, and her attack this week on the 9/11 widows, who, in her view, are enjoying the fact that their husbands are dead. It's a waste of time to condemn Coulter, because she is merely the most extreme product of our increasingly uncivil era. Witness the fact that even Time magazine, that once venerable paragon of the eastern media establishment, has today given her yet another forum. The coarser the culture, the better for Coulter. She brings to mind a classic scene in the 1987 movie Broadcast News, when the news producer, played by Holly Hunter, rebukes the airheaded anchorman, played by William Hurt, for crossing an ethical line. And Hurt responds, "Well, they keep moving the little sucker, don't they?"
First, on the death of al-Qaeda reign-of-terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: Obviously, nobody in America will mourn the passing of a murderous thug who beheaded westerners and sought to foment and exploit sectarian strife. But it's predictably striking to note how the war's defenders are mocking any attempts by skeptical Americans to put his death in perspective and to suggest that perhaps his passing will not make much of a difference.
Call it the Dixie Chickification of skeptical thought.
Dare we recall that when Saddam Hussein was captured in December of 2003, during the ninth month of the war, President Bush's loyalists assailed anyone who had the temerity to suggest that this event might not be a watershed turning point in the conflict? Remember how Howard Dean was pilloried for saying that Hussein's capture would not necessarily make America safer? Dean had many flaws as a candidate, but that particular view is now shared by a majority of Americans, as the polls have long reported.
And dare we attempt to put Zarqawi's death into perspective? Sure, why not:
1. As Anthony Cordesman, an Iraq expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Pentagon aide under Republican administrations, pointed out this morning in USA Today, the al-Qaeda operation in Iraq is a relatively small facet of a sprawling and decentralized Sunni insurgency. And, insurgency aside, many terror experts now say that the biggest threats to peace in Iraq are the sectarian militias, both Sunni and Shiite, that have infiltrated the government security forces.
2. Zarqawi, who was betrayed by somebody inside his organization, was already on the way to being sidelined as a leader of the al-Qaeda operation. This suggests that those bad guys were already in the process of retooling when he was taken out. Where have I heard that Zarqawi was being sidelined? From the conservative press, which reported this on April 4. Headline in the Washington Times: "Zarqawi replaced as al Qaeda chief."
3. With regards to Zarqawi, public amnesia plays to the Bush administration's advantage. Historical perspective does not. Apparently, they could have taken out Zarqawi four years ago, before the war. In March 2004, NBC reported that the White House in 2002 had thrice rejected a Pentagon request to target Zarqawi, who then was believed to be running a weapons lab in territory not controlled by Saddam Hussein's government. Jim Miklaszewski's sources told him that the administration balked at attacking Zarqawi and his terrorist camp, out of concern that "destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam." Terrorism expert and ex-National Security Council member Robert Cressey told NBC that "People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president's policy of preemption against terrorists."
Some war skeptics have sought to provide this kind of perspective over the past 24 hours, but that is what the Republican National Committee is now calling "a commitment to defeatism."
One of the RNC's targets is Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, a Democrat who actually voted for war authorization and has not renounced that vote. He was labeled a defeatist for saying this yesterday on CNN: "I predict to you that two weeks from now you're going to be showing people being ripped off of buses, and beheaded still. I think you're going to be seeing every morning 10 to 50 people with their arms chained behind their back and shot in the head."
But somehow, in its eagerness to append its label, the Republican party omitted the fact that Biden actually defended Bush yesterday on NBC: "We get one president at a time....This election in November is not for President of the United States....I hope it (Zarqawi's death) does improve his standing and emboldens him to take bolder moves in terms of his policy in Iraq."
And it would be interesting to know whether the Republican party would label as "defeatists" those Marines on the ground in Iraq who are telling the media that Zarqawi's demise won't change the situation. Here's Maj. Tom Hobbs, executive officer for 3rd Battalion, 8th Marine Rregiment in Ramadi, speaking this morning in USA Today: "Things will remain the same, or get worse as insurgent leaders conduct attacks to make a name for themselves and become the next top dog." He was seconded by Marine Capt. Andrew Del Gaudio, who said, referring to Zarqawi's death, that the insurgents "will get over it quickly and move on."
Nevertheless, having said all this, I can't help but note that sometimes the anti-Bush Democratic activists make it easy for the other side to mock them. Last night, here in Las Vegas, at a reception dinner for 1000 liberal bloggers, a comedian made a passing reference to Zarqawi's death. Very tepid applause. Then he mentioned that the indicted Tom DeLay had delivered his farewell speech In Washington. Wild applause, whistles, and whooping. And there it was, another gift for Karl Rove.
-------
I want to finish with just a few words about Ann Coulter, and her attack this week on the 9/11 widows, who, in her view, are enjoying the fact that their husbands are dead. It's a waste of time to condemn Coulter, because she is merely the most extreme product of our increasingly uncivil era. Witness the fact that even Time magazine, that once venerable paragon of the eastern media establishment, has today given her yet another forum. The coarser the culture, the better for Coulter. She brings to mind a classic scene in the 1987 movie Broadcast News, when the news producer, played by Holly Hunter, rebukes the airheaded anchorman, played by William Hurt, for crossing an ethical line. And Hurt responds, "Well, they keep moving the little sucker, don't they?"
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Why the "ring bearers for gay marriage" acted the way they did
Greetings from the Philadelphia airport, where I am soon bound for Las Vegas, site of the first-ever national convention of liberal bloggers, and the numerous Democratic politicians who will trail in their wake. Bloggers and Vegas...now there's a combo: images of geeks in bathrobes bumping into one-armed bandits, with Sinatra singing "I got the world on a string." But seriously, folks. I anticipate there will be blogworthy items, and a long analysis about the blogosphere's potential impact on Democratic politics is planned for the Monday newspaper. Meanwhile, here's what came off the keyboard in the lounge this morning: Gay marriage.
Which is to say, so much for the gay marriage issue. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the Republican quest for a U.S. constitutional amendment banning the concept – a symbolic gesture aimed at pleasing the party’s social and religious conservatives – was shelved yesterday on the Senate floor. Perhaps the only surprise was how easy it was to defeat.
By their voting behavior, Senate Republicans demonstrated that gay marriage remains a highly divisive topic within the party; that it pits moderates against conservatives; that it divides Republicans along geographic lines; and that, bottom line, a notable number of senators in President Bush’s own party don’t want anything to do with the issue.
Some of those senators see the issue as a distraction from the stuff that is really important (witness John McCain’s remark in the New York Times yesterday about how he was anxious to get to the defense authorization bill). Some see the issue as a turnoff for the folks back home (more on that below). And some see the constitutional amendment route as a betrayal of conservative small-government principles (more on that below).
The vote yesterday was not even on the bill’s merits, or lack thereof. It never got that far. The showdown was only about whether to move toward a vote on the merits. Sixty votes were needed to go forward – presumably, all 55 Republicans and five helpful Democrats. But only 49 senators voted that way. Most importantly, seven Republicans broke with their party and said, in effect, let’s quit talking about this. And that meant the issue was DOA in 2006.
It’s worth noting that, with the exception of McCain of Arizona, the Republican dissidents all hailed from the Northeast: Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania), Judd Gregg and John Sununu (New Hampshire), Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (Maine), and Lincoln Chafee (Rhode Island). That is no accident. The northeastern brand of Republican does not share the religious right’s passion for using the federal government to regulate morality.
As I’ve twice noted recently in print columns (here and here), some GOP strategists are concerned that a crusade for a gay marriage amendment could further alienate moderate Republican and independent voters in the northeastern suburbs, where a number of moderate Republican congressmen are fighting for survival in November.
Among those increasingly disapproving voters, Bush, who voiced support this week for a gay marriage amendment, is already viewed as too close to the religious right. A new poll released yesterday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center reports that support for Bush among moderate/liberal Republicans has dropped by 25 points since December 2004, and by 19 points among independents. In the Northeast, among all voters, Bush’s approval rating now stands at 27 percent.
And while 58 percent of Americans believe gay marriage should be illegal – this, according to an ABC News poll on Tuesday – only 42 percent believe that the Constitution should be amended to ban it. The gap in those percentages is mainly attributable to moderates and independents who view such a move as too drastic. (The document hasn’t been amended since 1992, on an issue of compensation for members of Congress; the previous instance was back in 1971, when the voting age was lowered to 18.)
Some of the dissident Republicans had their own take on why a constitutional amendment was inappropriate; they saw that option as a betrayal of party principles – namely, the traditional GOP notion that the feds should never tread on policies best left to the states. McCain and Sununu have made this argument, which clashes with the religious right’s more new-fangled notion of using Washington to police morality (witness last year’s famed attempt by Congress to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case).
Perhaps the best articulation for the states’ rights argument was offered the other night on MSNBC by Joe Scarborough, the conservative ex-congressman from Florida: “You can be for or against gay marriage, (but) it just seems to me that Republicans are going to have to decide once and for all whether they believe in states’ rights or not, because…the same conservatives who are saying we need this national preemption…are some of the same Republicans that, when it comes to abortion, are saying ‘Let the states decide what to do on the issue on abortion.’ You can’t have it both ways…I believe that the federal government should mind its own business.”
All the factors cited above help to explain why the dissident Republican senators acted as they did yesterday, although that won’t assuage the anger of the religious right, which feels betrayed. Last night, religious right leader Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council circulated an email charging that the Dissident Seven should now consider themselves to be “ring bearers for gay marriage.” He also charged that the will of the people is being stymied by “48 United States senators.” (Memo to Perkins: That’s democracy, as decreed by the founding fathers. They intended the U.S. Senate to be the place where public passions are cooled. George Washington essentially said that to Thomas Jefferson.)
No matter. Ban supporters insist they are undeterred, despite their decisive loss. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana said that what happened yesterday was actually a step toward ultimate victory. He said, “We’re building votes,” which is actually a creative inversion of simple math, given the fact that, in 2004, when Senate Republicans last tried and failed to enact a ban, the supporters actually had one more vote (50) than they have now (49).
The Senate floor debate yesterday did have its theatrical moments – such as when Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma displayed a huge photo of his brood and proudly declared that “in the recorded history” of his family, they had never suffered “any kind of homosexual relationship” – but more value-based entertainment is still on tap:
Passage in Washington is already dead this year, but that won’t stop the House Republicans. In July, they plan to resurrect the issue anyway. Why would they bother? The answer was revealed on Joe Scarborough’s MSNBC program.
Scarborough, speaking to Republican strategist Jack Burkman: “Jack, it sure smells like political pandering to me. Is that what the president is doing?”
Burkman: “Sure, but there’s nothing wrong with pandering, if it’s the right thing to do, Joe.”
Which is to say, so much for the gay marriage issue. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the Republican quest for a U.S. constitutional amendment banning the concept – a symbolic gesture aimed at pleasing the party’s social and religious conservatives – was shelved yesterday on the Senate floor. Perhaps the only surprise was how easy it was to defeat.
By their voting behavior, Senate Republicans demonstrated that gay marriage remains a highly divisive topic within the party; that it pits moderates against conservatives; that it divides Republicans along geographic lines; and that, bottom line, a notable number of senators in President Bush’s own party don’t want anything to do with the issue.
Some of those senators see the issue as a distraction from the stuff that is really important (witness John McCain’s remark in the New York Times yesterday about how he was anxious to get to the defense authorization bill). Some see the issue as a turnoff for the folks back home (more on that below). And some see the constitutional amendment route as a betrayal of conservative small-government principles (more on that below).
The vote yesterday was not even on the bill’s merits, or lack thereof. It never got that far. The showdown was only about whether to move toward a vote on the merits. Sixty votes were needed to go forward – presumably, all 55 Republicans and five helpful Democrats. But only 49 senators voted that way. Most importantly, seven Republicans broke with their party and said, in effect, let’s quit talking about this. And that meant the issue was DOA in 2006.
It’s worth noting that, with the exception of McCain of Arizona, the Republican dissidents all hailed from the Northeast: Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania), Judd Gregg and John Sununu (New Hampshire), Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (Maine), and Lincoln Chafee (Rhode Island). That is no accident. The northeastern brand of Republican does not share the religious right’s passion for using the federal government to regulate morality.
As I’ve twice noted recently in print columns (here and here), some GOP strategists are concerned that a crusade for a gay marriage amendment could further alienate moderate Republican and independent voters in the northeastern suburbs, where a number of moderate Republican congressmen are fighting for survival in November.
Among those increasingly disapproving voters, Bush, who voiced support this week for a gay marriage amendment, is already viewed as too close to the religious right. A new poll released yesterday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center reports that support for Bush among moderate/liberal Republicans has dropped by 25 points since December 2004, and by 19 points among independents. In the Northeast, among all voters, Bush’s approval rating now stands at 27 percent.
And while 58 percent of Americans believe gay marriage should be illegal – this, according to an ABC News poll on Tuesday – only 42 percent believe that the Constitution should be amended to ban it. The gap in those percentages is mainly attributable to moderates and independents who view such a move as too drastic. (The document hasn’t been amended since 1992, on an issue of compensation for members of Congress; the previous instance was back in 1971, when the voting age was lowered to 18.)
Some of the dissident Republicans had their own take on why a constitutional amendment was inappropriate; they saw that option as a betrayal of party principles – namely, the traditional GOP notion that the feds should never tread on policies best left to the states. McCain and Sununu have made this argument, which clashes with the religious right’s more new-fangled notion of using Washington to police morality (witness last year’s famed attempt by Congress to intervene in the Terry Schiavo case).
Perhaps the best articulation for the states’ rights argument was offered the other night on MSNBC by Joe Scarborough, the conservative ex-congressman from Florida: “You can be for or against gay marriage, (but) it just seems to me that Republicans are going to have to decide once and for all whether they believe in states’ rights or not, because…the same conservatives who are saying we need this national preemption…are some of the same Republicans that, when it comes to abortion, are saying ‘Let the states decide what to do on the issue on abortion.’ You can’t have it both ways…I believe that the federal government should mind its own business.”
All the factors cited above help to explain why the dissident Republican senators acted as they did yesterday, although that won’t assuage the anger of the religious right, which feels betrayed. Last night, religious right leader Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council circulated an email charging that the Dissident Seven should now consider themselves to be “ring bearers for gay marriage.” He also charged that the will of the people is being stymied by “48 United States senators.” (Memo to Perkins: That’s democracy, as decreed by the founding fathers. They intended the U.S. Senate to be the place where public passions are cooled. George Washington essentially said that to Thomas Jefferson.)
No matter. Ban supporters insist they are undeterred, despite their decisive loss. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana said that what happened yesterday was actually a step toward ultimate victory. He said, “We’re building votes,” which is actually a creative inversion of simple math, given the fact that, in 2004, when Senate Republicans last tried and failed to enact a ban, the supporters actually had one more vote (50) than they have now (49).
The Senate floor debate yesterday did have its theatrical moments – such as when Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma displayed a huge photo of his brood and proudly declared that “in the recorded history” of his family, they had never suffered “any kind of homosexual relationship” – but more value-based entertainment is still on tap:
Passage in Washington is already dead this year, but that won’t stop the House Republicans. In July, they plan to resurrect the issue anyway. Why would they bother? The answer was revealed on Joe Scarborough’s MSNBC program.
Scarborough, speaking to Republican strategist Jack Burkman: “Jack, it sure smells like political pandering to me. Is that what the president is doing?”
Burkman: “Sure, but there’s nothing wrong with pandering, if it’s the right thing to do, Joe.”
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Spin ain't the same as a win
My dictionary defines victory as "defeat of an opponent," and, to the best of my knowledge and experience, an election victory occurs when one side gets more votes than the other side.
But those little details aren't hindering the Democrats this morning, nor their supporters, as they strive to spin yet another election loss into some kind of victory - moral, Pyrrhic, symbolic, or whatever.
The topic this time is the special congressional election that was staged last night in the suburban California district on the north side of San Diego (for details, see yesterday's post). In this Republican enclave, corrupt Republican congressman Duke Cunningham was recently dispatched to jail, thus necessitating a June 6 contest to replace him. Democrats were anticipating that if their candidate, Francine Busby, could pull off a win, the news would galvanize the political world, demoralize the GOP, and give the Democrats psychological momentum for their bid to topple the Republican majority in the November congressional elections.
Well, it didn't happen. Busby took 45.46 percent of the vote; the victor, Republican Brian Bilbray (who previously served in Congress, in a neighboring district), garnered 49.43 percent. And turnout, among supposedly energized Democratic voters, was reportedly tepid.
But that isn't deterring the losing side. Let the spin begin!
1. Here's Chris Bowers, at the grassroots website MyDD: "No matter what the media says, no Democrat should be mistaken about this result. First, this is a huge, seismic shift in our favor that bodes extremely well for November." In his view, Democrats made great gains because Busby, who lost by 22 percentage points against Duke Cunningham in 2004, lost by only 4.5 points this time around. He notes that the national Republicans pumped big money into this race, and "if Republicans want to spin losing 18 points after spending $4.5 million of committee money as a good thing, go for it. "
2. Here's John Kerry, who had weighed in for Busby during the campaign. He emailed his supporters: "This morning, Republicans are making laughable claims of momentum in the 2006 elections. They (spent big money) to hold onto a seat that they've held since it was created by the GOP, for the GOP 15 years ago. And they eked out a victory by 5,000 votes. Their claims of momentum are as phony as their claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
3. Here's Howard Dean's brother at the grassroots Democracy for America. He too lauded Busby for losing by less this time around, and declared: "If Democrats everywhere improve that much this November, we'll have a Democratic House and Senate!"
4. Here's House Democratic campaign spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg, on the CNN and MSNBC websites: “In an election cycle that is shaping up to be a change vs. the status quo contest, Francine Busby has shown that a strong change message can make even former members of Congress vulnerable in deeply red Republican districts."
Just wondering: Can you win the House by making the victors look "vulnerable?"
I know the drill: Divining silver linings is what spin is all about. After all, Democrats and liberal bloggers are still dining out on last year's special congressional election in Ohio, when Democrat and war vet Paul Hackett almost defeated Republican Jean Schmidt. (Sure enough, a liberal blogger today declared that Hackett would have won the California race.) But building a case for a moral victory requires a certain selectivity about facts: Even though the optimists today are billboarding the fact that the national GOP put big money into the California race, they fail to mention that the national Democrats also kicked in a couple million for Busby.
Ken Rudin, the political editor at National Public Radio, artfully doused the Democratic spin today, writing that "it would be wrong to paint the result as anything other than a victory for the Republicans. Given the national mood, given the fact that their previous incumbent is now spending eight-plus years in the slammer, given the split in the (GOP) over issues such as immigration, given the fact that the pre-election polls had the race dead even, a win is a win is a win."
And let's also remember that an anti-immigrant conservative, with backing from the Minutemen, was also on the ballot, and took four percent of the voters, most of whom otherwise would have probably gone to Bilbray.
The fact remains that these California results again fail to suggest that a great Democratic wave is building. Busby's share of the district vote (45 percent) is roughly the same as what she received in April, during an open primary for the seat. In 2004, while running for president, Kerry won roughly that same percentage inside the district. In 2000, Al Gore won roughly that same percentage. I pointed all this out in April, when I reported on that primary and voiced initial skepticism about forecasts for a big Democratic year.
Bottom line: Busby did not grow the Democratic vote. Yes, there was a high hurdle in a predominantly Republican district, but if a Democrat can't win on the corruption issue in a district where the corrupt Republican incumbent had to go to the pokey; and if the Democrat can't turn a tough district with the wind at her back (Iraq, gas prices, competence, etc.), then I still fail to see how anyone on the Democratic side can presume to have bragging rights today.
On this one, I cede to John McIntyre, a blogger at RealClearPolitics, who wrote, before the returns were counted, that "this is exactly the type of race Democrats are going to have to win at around a 75 percent clip if they hope to net the 15 seats they need to take over the House."
But those little details aren't hindering the Democrats this morning, nor their supporters, as they strive to spin yet another election loss into some kind of victory - moral, Pyrrhic, symbolic, or whatever.
The topic this time is the special congressional election that was staged last night in the suburban California district on the north side of San Diego (for details, see yesterday's post). In this Republican enclave, corrupt Republican congressman Duke Cunningham was recently dispatched to jail, thus necessitating a June 6 contest to replace him. Democrats were anticipating that if their candidate, Francine Busby, could pull off a win, the news would galvanize the political world, demoralize the GOP, and give the Democrats psychological momentum for their bid to topple the Republican majority in the November congressional elections.
Well, it didn't happen. Busby took 45.46 percent of the vote; the victor, Republican Brian Bilbray (who previously served in Congress, in a neighboring district), garnered 49.43 percent. And turnout, among supposedly energized Democratic voters, was reportedly tepid.
But that isn't deterring the losing side. Let the spin begin!
1. Here's Chris Bowers, at the grassroots website MyDD: "No matter what the media says, no Democrat should be mistaken about this result. First, this is a huge, seismic shift in our favor that bodes extremely well for November." In his view, Democrats made great gains because Busby, who lost by 22 percentage points against Duke Cunningham in 2004, lost by only 4.5 points this time around. He notes that the national Republicans pumped big money into this race, and "if Republicans want to spin losing 18 points after spending $4.5 million of committee money as a good thing, go for it. "
2. Here's John Kerry, who had weighed in for Busby during the campaign. He emailed his supporters: "This morning, Republicans are making laughable claims of momentum in the 2006 elections. They (spent big money) to hold onto a seat that they've held since it was created by the GOP, for the GOP 15 years ago. And they eked out a victory by 5,000 votes. Their claims of momentum are as phony as their claims of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."
3. Here's Howard Dean's brother at the grassroots Democracy for America. He too lauded Busby for losing by less this time around, and declared: "If Democrats everywhere improve that much this November, we'll have a Democratic House and Senate!"
4. Here's House Democratic campaign spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg, on the CNN and MSNBC websites: “In an election cycle that is shaping up to be a change vs. the status quo contest, Francine Busby has shown that a strong change message can make even former members of Congress vulnerable in deeply red Republican districts."
Just wondering: Can you win the House by making the victors look "vulnerable?"
I know the drill: Divining silver linings is what spin is all about. After all, Democrats and liberal bloggers are still dining out on last year's special congressional election in Ohio, when Democrat and war vet Paul Hackett almost defeated Republican Jean Schmidt. (Sure enough, a liberal blogger today declared that Hackett would have won the California race.) But building a case for a moral victory requires a certain selectivity about facts: Even though the optimists today are billboarding the fact that the national GOP put big money into the California race, they fail to mention that the national Democrats also kicked in a couple million for Busby.
Ken Rudin, the political editor at National Public Radio, artfully doused the Democratic spin today, writing that "it would be wrong to paint the result as anything other than a victory for the Republicans. Given the national mood, given the fact that their previous incumbent is now spending eight-plus years in the slammer, given the split in the (GOP) over issues such as immigration, given the fact that the pre-election polls had the race dead even, a win is a win is a win."
And let's also remember that an anti-immigrant conservative, with backing from the Minutemen, was also on the ballot, and took four percent of the voters, most of whom otherwise would have probably gone to Bilbray.
The fact remains that these California results again fail to suggest that a great Democratic wave is building. Busby's share of the district vote (45 percent) is roughly the same as what she received in April, during an open primary for the seat. In 2004, while running for president, Kerry won roughly that same percentage inside the district. In 2000, Al Gore won roughly that same percentage. I pointed all this out in April, when I reported on that primary and voiced initial skepticism about forecasts for a big Democratic year.
Bottom line: Busby did not grow the Democratic vote. Yes, there was a high hurdle in a predominantly Republican district, but if a Democrat can't win on the corruption issue in a district where the corrupt Republican incumbent had to go to the pokey; and if the Democrat can't turn a tough district with the wind at her back (Iraq, gas prices, competence, etc.), then I still fail to see how anyone on the Democratic side can presume to have bragging rights today.
On this one, I cede to John McIntyre, a blogger at RealClearPolitics, who wrote, before the returns were counted, that "this is exactly the type of race Democrats are going to have to win at around a 75 percent clip if they hope to net the 15 seats they need to take over the House."
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
As California goes, so goes the nation?
Busby versus Bilbray, check it out. By this time tomorrow morning, we may finally have some raw evidence of the national political mood, some insight into whether the Democrats really do have a realistic shot at taking over the U.S. House of Representatives in November.
Today, in the affluent, heavily-Republican congressional district that covers the north side of San Diego and neighboring La Jolla, a special election will be held to fill the seat vacated by convicted bribe-taker Duke Cunningham, a Republican who now wears prison garb. The Republican candidate today is Brian Bilbray; the Democratic candidate is Francine Busby. In a normal year, in this district, somebody like Bilbray (an ex-congressman himself, from a nearby district) would win in a walk. Yet the final polls are showing a statistical tie.
And that fact alone is worrisome for the national GOP, which has pumped more than $5 million into a race that should normally require very little outside money. This is a district where 44 percent of the registered voters are Republican, and only 30 percent are Democrats. The fact that Democrat Busby, a local school board member, is totally competitive on election eve would appear to confirm the warnings of Republican strategists that their party may be facing a tough political climate this year. As California political analyst Gary Jacobson put it the other day, "It's a district Republicans should never lose."
Stu Rothenberg, who runs the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington, put it best the other day. He wrote (in the subscription-only Roll Call newspaper) that the election tonight is "a test of Democratic efforts to ride a wave of voter dissatisfaction, and of Republican efforts to energize the party's conservative base."
If the GOP does lose tonight, the political impact would be felt nationwide. Democrats would claim bragging rights tomorrow, and declare that, as California-50 goes, so goes the nation in November. Whether that would be true, who knows. But, if Busby does win this district tonight, it would be a major story, for its rarity alone. Consider this statistic, courtesy of Jacobson: In California, since 1966, Democrats have lost every single congressional race in districts where registered Republicans have outnumbered registered Democrats by 3.7 percent or more; and as I noted above, the GOP advantage in this particular district is 14 percent.
But it's noteworthy that, even in this district, President Bush has not made an appearance on Bilbray's behalf. He has confined himself to leaving automated phone messages in the households of registered Republicans, praising Bilbray as "an ally in the war on terror." This is a testament to Bush's declining popularity, even in a district that he won in 2004 by 11 percentage points. Meanwhile, the national Democrats have countered with Al Gore, who has left his own phone messages on Busby's behalf, contending that "George Bush and the congressional Republicans have taken us in the wrong direction." (This is the same Al Gore who says that the political world is "toxic," and that he has no plans to get involved again.)
Both candidates have had their woes. Bilbray was embarrassed last week when John McCain abruptly canceled a fundraising appearance to boost the Bilbray candidacy, apparently because he and Bilbray strongly disagree on the immigration issue. McCain wants a "guest worker" program, while Bilbray is more outspoken about border enforcement. One might argue that maybe the McCain cancellation would help Bilbray with conservative voters in the district; the hitch is that another candidate on the ballot, independent William Griffith, is talking even tougher on immigration and boasts the endorsement of the San Diego branch of the border-patrolling Minutemen. Even if Griffith draws only a percent or two of the vote away from Bilbray, that could be crucial in a tight race.
Busby has been trying to tie Bilbray to the national anti-incumbent mood, and to the Democratic message about a GOP "culture of corruption." One Busby ad says: "Had enough? Corruption in Congress. High gas prices. No action on illegal immigration...It's time to fix our broken system, so Congress works for us again." On the other hand, Busby has been weathering her own problems. She has been targeted by the national conservative media for some ill-chosen words that she uttered last week at an Hispanic rally.
During this rally, an audience member told Busby, in Spanish: "I want to help (the campaign), but I don't have papers." The comment was translated. Busby gthen replied: "Everybody can help, yeah, absolutely, you can all help. You don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help."
You don't need papers for voting...Somebody had taped Busby's comments, and the recording of that particular line quickly made the rounds. Within the past few days, it turned up on Rush Limbaugh's program, on the home page of The Drudge Report, and in a Republican party ad which suggested that Busby was encouraging illegals to vote.
Busby, whose previous experience as a major league candidate was the 2004 congressional race, in which she garnered 36 percent of the vote against Duke Cunningham, has sought to explain what she meant. The other day she issued a statement: "I was clarifying the question that was being asked in Spanish and then stated that you do not have to be a registered voter to help the campaign because there were so many people who appeared to be under 18 in the group who wanted to volunteer....I want to make it very clear that anyone here illegally does not have the right to be here, does not have the right to vote, does not have any right to be a part of the electoral process, and illegal people shouldn't be working on a campaign."
Maybe this episode won't matter; maybe the Democratic voters will simply be more energized than the more numerous Republican voters, and maybe the swing independents (22 percent of the district's electorate) won't care. But if Busby does lose this race by a hair, that parsed remark -- "You don't need papers for voting" -- will be remembered as her equivalent of John Kerry's "I voted for it, before I voted against it."
It could also be argued that a Busby loss would put the Democrats back at square one in the battle of 2006. But Stu Rothenberg, the Washington analyst, doesn't necessarily think so; he says it's important to remember the overwhelmingly Republican makeup of this particular district. Perceptions matter in politics, and he believes that, even in defeat, Busby could still give Democrats a PR victory: "A strong Busby showing (say, near 50 percent) would be evidence that the Democratic Deluge of '06 has begun."
Today, in the affluent, heavily-Republican congressional district that covers the north side of San Diego and neighboring La Jolla, a special election will be held to fill the seat vacated by convicted bribe-taker Duke Cunningham, a Republican who now wears prison garb. The Republican candidate today is Brian Bilbray; the Democratic candidate is Francine Busby. In a normal year, in this district, somebody like Bilbray (an ex-congressman himself, from a nearby district) would win in a walk. Yet the final polls are showing a statistical tie.
And that fact alone is worrisome for the national GOP, which has pumped more than $5 million into a race that should normally require very little outside money. This is a district where 44 percent of the registered voters are Republican, and only 30 percent are Democrats. The fact that Democrat Busby, a local school board member, is totally competitive on election eve would appear to confirm the warnings of Republican strategists that their party may be facing a tough political climate this year. As California political analyst Gary Jacobson put it the other day, "It's a district Republicans should never lose."
Stu Rothenberg, who runs the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington, put it best the other day. He wrote (in the subscription-only Roll Call newspaper) that the election tonight is "a test of Democratic efforts to ride a wave of voter dissatisfaction, and of Republican efforts to energize the party's conservative base."
If the GOP does lose tonight, the political impact would be felt nationwide. Democrats would claim bragging rights tomorrow, and declare that, as California-50 goes, so goes the nation in November. Whether that would be true, who knows. But, if Busby does win this district tonight, it would be a major story, for its rarity alone. Consider this statistic, courtesy of Jacobson: In California, since 1966, Democrats have lost every single congressional race in districts where registered Republicans have outnumbered registered Democrats by 3.7 percent or more; and as I noted above, the GOP advantage in this particular district is 14 percent.
But it's noteworthy that, even in this district, President Bush has not made an appearance on Bilbray's behalf. He has confined himself to leaving automated phone messages in the households of registered Republicans, praising Bilbray as "an ally in the war on terror." This is a testament to Bush's declining popularity, even in a district that he won in 2004 by 11 percentage points. Meanwhile, the national Democrats have countered with Al Gore, who has left his own phone messages on Busby's behalf, contending that "George Bush and the congressional Republicans have taken us in the wrong direction." (This is the same Al Gore who says that the political world is "toxic," and that he has no plans to get involved again.)
Both candidates have had their woes. Bilbray was embarrassed last week when John McCain abruptly canceled a fundraising appearance to boost the Bilbray candidacy, apparently because he and Bilbray strongly disagree on the immigration issue. McCain wants a "guest worker" program, while Bilbray is more outspoken about border enforcement. One might argue that maybe the McCain cancellation would help Bilbray with conservative voters in the district; the hitch is that another candidate on the ballot, independent William Griffith, is talking even tougher on immigration and boasts the endorsement of the San Diego branch of the border-patrolling Minutemen. Even if Griffith draws only a percent or two of the vote away from Bilbray, that could be crucial in a tight race.
Busby has been trying to tie Bilbray to the national anti-incumbent mood, and to the Democratic message about a GOP "culture of corruption." One Busby ad says: "Had enough? Corruption in Congress. High gas prices. No action on illegal immigration...It's time to fix our broken system, so Congress works for us again." On the other hand, Busby has been weathering her own problems. She has been targeted by the national conservative media for some ill-chosen words that she uttered last week at an Hispanic rally.
During this rally, an audience member told Busby, in Spanish: "I want to help (the campaign), but I don't have papers." The comment was translated. Busby gthen replied: "Everybody can help, yeah, absolutely, you can all help. You don't need papers for voting, you don't need to be a registered voter to help."
You don't need papers for voting...Somebody had taped Busby's comments, and the recording of that particular line quickly made the rounds. Within the past few days, it turned up on Rush Limbaugh's program, on the home page of The Drudge Report, and in a Republican party ad which suggested that Busby was encouraging illegals to vote.
Busby, whose previous experience as a major league candidate was the 2004 congressional race, in which she garnered 36 percent of the vote against Duke Cunningham, has sought to explain what she meant. The other day she issued a statement: "I was clarifying the question that was being asked in Spanish and then stated that you do not have to be a registered voter to help the campaign because there were so many people who appeared to be under 18 in the group who wanted to volunteer....I want to make it very clear that anyone here illegally does not have the right to be here, does not have the right to vote, does not have any right to be a part of the electoral process, and illegal people shouldn't be working on a campaign."
Maybe this episode won't matter; maybe the Democratic voters will simply be more energized than the more numerous Republican voters, and maybe the swing independents (22 percent of the district's electorate) won't care. But if Busby does lose this race by a hair, that parsed remark -- "You don't need papers for voting" -- will be remembered as her equivalent of John Kerry's "I voted for it, before I voted against it."
It could also be argued that a Busby loss would put the Democrats back at square one in the battle of 2006. But Stu Rothenberg, the Washington analyst, doesn't necessarily think so; he says it's important to remember the overwhelmingly Republican makeup of this particular district. Perceptions matter in politics, and he believes that, even in defeat, Busby could still give Democrats a PR victory: "A strong Busby showing (say, near 50 percent) would be evidence that the Democratic Deluge of '06 has begun."
Monday, June 05, 2006
The "hazy" and "gauzy" Haditha story
Note: Technical problems all day prevented me from posting this much earlier. Apologies.
In Iraq, the Bush administration and its defenders have been dealing in recent days with yet another tricky public relations dilemma:
Last Thursday, the new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whom President Bush proudly calls his "ally and friend," uttered some decidely unfriendly comments about that alleged massacre by Marines of 24 innocent Iraqi civilians in Haditha -- and about what he views as a hostile American military attitude toward Iraqi civilians in general.
He charged that violence against civilians, perpetrated by the American-dominated coalition, is "a regular occurrence." He said that many troops in the coalition "do not respect the Iraqi people. They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion. This is completely unacceptable."
This was most embarrassing for the White House. Maliki is supposedly our pal, our new bulwark against the bad guys. Therefore he could not be simply dismissed as, say, a "Bush-bashing hysteric" or "liberal handwringer" or "cut and runner" or "Michael Moore clone."
So the decision was made to say that Maliki was simply misquoted. Last Friday, Bush flak Tony Snow told the White House press corps that our own ambassador to Iraq had consulted with Maliki, and that Maliki had told our ambassador, who then told the White House, that Maliki had never actually said what he was quoted as saying.
Got that?
Or maybe this is clearer. Here's Snow: "(I)t becomes a little convoluted, and so I don't want to make a real clear characterization, because it's a little hazy to me, too. All right? What I do know is that he was misquoted, he's looking into it. But that what he said, and when he said it, and in reaction to what is a little gauzy."
Which brings us to Condoleezza Rice's appearance yesterday on Fox News Sunday. When asked about Maliki's remark, she came up with a new defense. They're not claiming any longer that Maliki was misquoted; that spin is apparently inoperative. The new spin is that he was quoted accurately, but out of some larger and unspecified context.
She said that Maliki's charge about Americans killing civilians "was in a much longer set of comments." She didn't elaborate on what that "longer set of comments" was, or whether those comments somehow canceled out his provocative charge. But she needn't have worried about being pressured to explain, because Fox News was having none of that. Her helpful host, Chris Wallace, only asked one question about Maliki's charge, and here it is: "What do you think of his broad criticism of the role of U.S. troops who, after all, liberated his country?"
Translation: Hey Condi, can you believe the gall and ingratitude of that guy, daring to knock America?
Fox's hospitality notwithstanding, other crucial questions could have been asked. Such as:
Madame Secretary, on another touchy PR matter, can you explain why -- nearly seven months after Haditha, and long after the death certificates proved that the innocent civilians had been shot at close range -- the Marines' PR office still hasn't corrected its Nov. 20 press release which stated that the innocents "were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb"? And why, as late as January, was a Marine spokesman telling inquiring reporters that asking questions about Haditha was the same as swallowing al Qaeda propaganda? Was that appropriate?
But even as Time and Newsweek both give Haditha cover treatment this week (thereby, no doubt, sparking talk of treason among Fourth Estate-haters), some questions are being raised within media circles that perhaps the press was lax in uncovering the story. One such account appears here.
And this article provides a broader perspective on the Marines' thankless task in Iraq, and of how Haditha could have happened ("Like other Marine battles, from Tripoli to Iwo Jima to Khe Sanh, the story of their battles in Iraq will center on themes of extraordinary hardship, endurance and loss, as well as a remorselessness in combat, that offer a context, though hardly any exoneration, for what survivors allege happened that November day.").
In Iraq, the Bush administration and its defenders have been dealing in recent days with yet another tricky public relations dilemma:
Last Thursday, the new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, whom President Bush proudly calls his "ally and friend," uttered some decidely unfriendly comments about that alleged massacre by Marines of 24 innocent Iraqi civilians in Haditha -- and about what he views as a hostile American military attitude toward Iraqi civilians in general.
He charged that violence against civilians, perpetrated by the American-dominated coalition, is "a regular occurrence." He said that many troops in the coalition "do not respect the Iraqi people. They crush them with their vehicles and kill them just on suspicion. This is completely unacceptable."
This was most embarrassing for the White House. Maliki is supposedly our pal, our new bulwark against the bad guys. Therefore he could not be simply dismissed as, say, a "Bush-bashing hysteric" or "liberal handwringer" or "cut and runner" or "Michael Moore clone."
So the decision was made to say that Maliki was simply misquoted. Last Friday, Bush flak Tony Snow told the White House press corps that our own ambassador to Iraq had consulted with Maliki, and that Maliki had told our ambassador, who then told the White House, that Maliki had never actually said what he was quoted as saying.
Got that?
Or maybe this is clearer. Here's Snow: "(I)t becomes a little convoluted, and so I don't want to make a real clear characterization, because it's a little hazy to me, too. All right? What I do know is that he was misquoted, he's looking into it. But that what he said, and when he said it, and in reaction to what is a little gauzy."
Which brings us to Condoleezza Rice's appearance yesterday on Fox News Sunday. When asked about Maliki's remark, she came up with a new defense. They're not claiming any longer that Maliki was misquoted; that spin is apparently inoperative. The new spin is that he was quoted accurately, but out of some larger and unspecified context.
She said that Maliki's charge about Americans killing civilians "was in a much longer set of comments." She didn't elaborate on what that "longer set of comments" was, or whether those comments somehow canceled out his provocative charge. But she needn't have worried about being pressured to explain, because Fox News was having none of that. Her helpful host, Chris Wallace, only asked one question about Maliki's charge, and here it is: "What do you think of his broad criticism of the role of U.S. troops who, after all, liberated his country?"
Translation: Hey Condi, can you believe the gall and ingratitude of that guy, daring to knock America?
Fox's hospitality notwithstanding, other crucial questions could have been asked. Such as:
Madame Secretary, on another touchy PR matter, can you explain why -- nearly seven months after Haditha, and long after the death certificates proved that the innocent civilians had been shot at close range -- the Marines' PR office still hasn't corrected its Nov. 20 press release which stated that the innocents "were killed yesterday from the blast of a roadside bomb"? And why, as late as January, was a Marine spokesman telling inquiring reporters that asking questions about Haditha was the same as swallowing al Qaeda propaganda? Was that appropriate?
But even as Time and Newsweek both give Haditha cover treatment this week (thereby, no doubt, sparking talk of treason among Fourth Estate-haters), some questions are being raised within media circles that perhaps the press was lax in uncovering the story. One such account appears here.
And this article provides a broader perspective on the Marines' thankless task in Iraq, and of how Haditha could have happened ("Like other Marine battles, from Tripoli to Iwo Jima to Khe Sanh, the story of their battles in Iraq will center on themes of extraordinary hardship, endurance and loss, as well as a remorselessness in combat, that offer a context, though hardly any exoneration, for what survivors allege happened that November day.").
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