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.''

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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."

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.
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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.”

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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.

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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.

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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!

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.

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."

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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?"

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.”

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."

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."

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.").

"Ozone man" and the mainstreaming of green

Perhaps the most astonishing political moment of 2006 occurred back in January, during the State of the Union speech, when President Bush suddenly started talking like some kind of dreamy-eyed tree-hugger, as he extolled the virtues of hybrid cars, wind technologies, wood chips, and switchgrass.

All that green stuff sounded a tad odd rolling off the tongue of an ex-oilman -- he reminded me of Frank Sinatra back in the '60s, when Ol' Blue Eyes sought to stay hip by crooning a few Beatles tunes -- but Bush's rhetoric was significant. It was a recognition that the environment was gaining ground as a cutting-edge political issue, and that the administration knew it needed to get hip really fast -- in order to dispel the widely held perception that the White House, and the GOP, are allied with the global warmers.

Now comes Al Gore's global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, which I caught at a screening last night, and it's doubly clear what many Republicans (and their energy industry patrons) are worrying about. The film is not perfect -- it skirts a questionable episode in Gore's personal history; it is far stronger on dire predictions than on realistic political solutions -- but, as pure cinematic argument, it is powerfully effective. And, despite its largely non-partisan tone, it offers the perpetually wayward Democrats a campaign issue on a silver platter.

This explains why conservative critics have been working so hard to discredit the film. It has not been an easy task, particularly since global warming - and man's role in causing it - is now considered a settled issue by, among others, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences (in conjunction with its counterparts in Britain, China, Germany, and Japan), the American Geophysical Union, the American Meterological Society, the National Climactic Data Center, and 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers. Even the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Program concluded in May that it had found "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."

Faced with such sentiment in the reality-based science world, and realizing that many once-skeptical Americans might well conclude that Gore was actually a far-sighted guy with a prescient message, the opposition has sought to undercut the message by personally assailing the messenger. In recent days, I have been compiling a list. Some highlights:

1. Al Gore is "crazy," with his "long slide into insanity." (Patrick Hynes, at spectator.org)
2. "Wild-eyed" Al Gore is a "zealot" and a "nut." (Tucker Carlson, on MSNBC)
3. Al Gore is "clinically insane." (Ann Coulter)
4. Al Gore is "one slice short of a loaf." (Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker)
5. Al Gore, in so many words, is a fraud: "After all, some people do believe in the DiVinci Code, so some will believe the DiGore Code." (Steve Forbes, the ex-GOP presidential candidate, on Fox News.)

None of those putdowns can compete with the prizewinner, uttered in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush, who said of Gore, "Ozone Man, Ozone. He's crazy, way out, far out, man...(If Gore gets his way), we'll be up to our neck in owls and outta work for every American." But the sheer vehemence of the insult campaign suggests fear in certain quarters that the film -- and environmental issues more generally -- could resonate widely if left unchallenged.

The film is being inadvertently aided, however, by those who seek to dismiss it. A group called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is heavily financed by the oil industry, notably ExxonMobil, has crafted a pair of TV ads that appear to have been written by the parodists on Saturday Night Live. In one ad, seeking to preempt the film's evidence that rising levels of industry-generated carbon dioxide are trapping excessive amounts of heat in our atmosphere, CEI's narrator intones, "They call it pollution. We call it life."

A second CEI ad declares that ice in the Antarctic is actually getting thicker, not thinner as Gore suggests; for evidence, it cites a study by University of Missouri scientist Curt Davis. The problem with the ad is, Curt Davis has denounced it. He released a statement the other day saying that the ad distorts his findings, and that, overall, both ads "are a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public..."

These attacks are playing into Gore's hands, because he addressed his critics in the film, contending that "their objective is to reposition global warming as theory rather than fact," and noting the similarities between that strategy and the tobacco industry's long campaign to dispute the link between cigarettes and cancer. He cited an old line from a Brown & Williamson document: "Doubt is our product."

Because the attacks have been so crude, the film seems almost saintly, and impervious to criticism. Actually, it is not impervious. While drawing parallels between the tobacco industry and the oil industry, it also dwells on a painful episode in Gore's past, the 1984 death of his older sister Nancy from lung cancer. She had been a smoker, and Gore the narrator mentions that after she died, the Gore family farm stopped growing tobacco. (Cut to shot of abandoned tobacco shed.) The film fails to mention, however, that Gore didn't cut his ties to tobacco farming until 1991, seven years after Nancy's death; and that in 1988, while stumping for votes among tobacco farmers, he bragged about how he'd grown it, "shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it."

And on global warming itself, Gore skates past certain issues. He mentions that the U.S. is one of the few western nations not to sign the Kyoto Protocols, and we are left to assume that this is Bush's fault, since Bush opposes ratification. But he omits the fact that Kyoto was rejected in the Senate by a vote of 95-0 during the Clinton-Gore era. He's also short on specifics about what proposals to halt global warming might be realistically feasible in polarized Washington (a modest carbon tax, at least for starters? caps on greenhouse gas emissions?), and especially at the state level (as a safety measure, would he propose mandatory curbs on shorefront development-- which no doubt would be denounced as an attack on free enterprise?).

I am not a scientific expert, but I also got the feeling that Gore was loading his entertaining presentation with a lot of worst-case scenarios, just to ensure that public apathy is sufficiently dispelled; in fact, he has implied that he did so. In one recent interview, he stated:

"Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis."

But it's tough for his opponents to attack him, even for that, because of their own credibility problems. Gore occupies the high ground on the global warming issue in part because the Bush administration has done so little. It hired Philip Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, a guy who lacked scientific training, to run the White House environmental program; in that capacity, he watered down scientific reports on global warming, at one point writing in the margins that the conclusions were "speculative findings/musings." The White House has also sought to muzzle NASA's top climate scientist from speaking out against global warming (the scientist, James Hansen, complained publicly about the muzzling effort in January).

Hence, the political opportunity for Democrats. Dick Morris, the ex-Clinton pollster who has also worked for Republicans, wrote a column this week on the topic. He argues that voters are beginning to see the environment and national security as facets of the same issue -- that our oil dependence (a) harms the earth, (b) leaves us vulnerable to high gas prices, (c) and finances our enemies abroad. Morris says that Gore's movie "threatens the Republican grip on Washington" because climate change is now being linked "to a broader public anger..."

Goaded by the Gore movie, Democrats might arguably embrace the environmental issue, not just on its merits, but as way to draw clear contrasts with the GOP. There was a time, back in 2000, when candidate Gore's strategists didn't want him talking about the environment, figuring that only the lefty greens cared and that those folks were already in his camp. But today, with the scientific community now having reached consensus on global warming, the environment seems poised to be a swing voters' issue in the years ahead.

War defenders tap their inner Ovid

In the year 8 A.D., a lauded Roman poet named Ovid pondered the topic of warfare and famously asked, "Isn't the best defense always a good attack?"

Apparently so. Ovid's credo is alive and well today. The conservatives who defend the Iraq war are clearly rattled by the increasingly credible allegations that some U.S. Marines killed 24 innocent Iraqi civilians, including women and children, in the town of Haditha last November. A new report today lays out the imminent findings of the U.S. military's probe: the incident did occur; some officers lied in an effort to cover it up; and their superiors missed the clues that would have enabled them to detect the lies.

This incident obviously involves only a small handful of Marines, and is atypical of the manner in which the vast majority of U.S. troops have been conducting themselves, even under the most stressful circumstances. Nevertheless, during the months ahead (bad timing for the GOP, which doesn't want Iraq to dominate the '06 elections), Haditha will fuel more public discussion about the administration's well-documented failure to anticipate and plan for a long and bloody occupation.

Hence, the quandary for the pro-war right: Realizing that Haditha is impossible to defend on the merits, particularly at a time when the majority of Americans have turned against the war and against the president who launched it, conservative activists have tapped their inner Ovid and decided that the best defense is a good attack.

Thus far, here are the main elements:

1. Attack some of the officials who have called attention to the killings. Attack John Murtha, the ex-Marine Democratic congressman, in particular. Murtha has been out front on this incident, clearly utilizing his many contacts inside the Marine Corps. Dallas radio talk show host Mark Davis wrote yesterday, "Mr. Murtha has led the pack of baying critics casting negative light on our fighting forces...savoring every nugget...barely able to contain the spring in his step as he basks in the grisly particulars."

2. Attack the people who have long harbored concerns about this war, and brand them as traitors and loons. Michael Reagan, another radio guy and son of the late president, writes today that "these traitorous antiwar zealots are salivating over the possibility that they can exploit whatever happened in Haditha last November just as they exploited the My Lai massacre (in Vietnam)....The worst aspect of this treasonous activity is the motive behind much of the antiwar hysteria - an insane hatred of George W. Bush and the overwhelming lust of the Democratrs to regain control of Capitol Hill no matter what it costs the United States of America in blood and treasure."
Jeb Babbin, a former defense official in the senior George Bush administration, also writes today that "the left will try to use Haditha as it used My Lai 30 years ago: as a political tool to take apart America's support for the war." (His memory, however, is very shaky. The My Lai massacre was publicized in 1971, by which time the majority of Americans had already turned against the Vietnam war. In 1970, according to Gallup, 56 percent were opposed.)

3. Attack the messenger (big surprise!). Dismiss the Haditha story as "a media feeding frenzy" (Babbin's words). Contend that the story is simply being overplayed in the press; as blogger John McIntyre at RealClearPolitics wonders, "(C)an't the story just be mentioned in passing or relegated to page A19 where they put all of the good news about Iraq and the economy, until at least the military finishes its investigation? Why the urge to cover this story on the front page...? Who does that help?"
Lastly, if it looks like the culpable Marines lied to cover up what they did, blame their lying on the media; as Philadelphia talk show host Michael Smerconish suggests, "Isn't it conceivable that...fully understanding that the media would vilify them for their mistake, they compounded their error and lied...If so, I think the lie was a mistake, but an entirely understandable one."

These applications of the Ovid credo have flaws, however.
For instance, the "media feeding frenzy," otherwise known as a free and independent press trying to do its job, is being supported by military insiders who are working to get the truth out.

Today's Washington Post story, linked above, clearly owes its veracity to an Army official who supplied key information about the incident and the aftermath. And a Marine who helped load the slain Iraqis into body bags, Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones, has already spoken on the record, telling the Los Angeles Times in its May 29 edition that "they ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I'll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart."

And another thing: attacking the critics, messengers, et al does not erase the larger context in which Haditha occurred. Those Marines have been working in a hot zone heavily populated by insurgents, and the mounting evidence suggests that some of them may have snapped after having been hit with one too many roadside bombs. A key sentence in the Post story reads: "One of (the investigation's) conclusions is that the training of troops for Iraq has been flawed...with too much emphasis on traditional war-fighting skills and insufficient focus on how to wage a counterinsurgency campaign."

Connect the dots on that one. The evidence is overwhelming that the Bush war planners failed to adequately anticipate the prospects of a post-Hussein insurgency. Bush himself, several years ago, told the New York Times that he had "miscalculated" on that scenario. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld told Fox News that he has also failed to anticipate the strength of resistence, although he offered an excuse: "No one has a perfect view into the future."
When the Haditha incident is fully aired in public, this failure of policy execution will be the context in which it is widely debated.

I was going to end there. But maybe we should give the last word to Samir Sumaidaie, the new Iraqi ambassador to the United States. The other day, he was warmly welcomed by Bush. He hails from the new government that Bush lauds as the best hope for democracy in Iraq. Yet he too is upset about Haditha. Here's what he said on CNN the other day: Haditha was "a cold-blooded killing" -- and, worse yet, he claims that in a separate incident, a Marine also murdered one of his cousins ("killed intentionally...unnecessarily").

Memo to the conservative talking heads: Is Sumaidaie just another Murtha, "savoring every nugget?"

Apparently the Pentagon didn't get the memo

One year ago this week, Dick Cheney said the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes."
How's that assessment working out?

Well, this little nugget was buried deep in a New York Times story today, on page 12:
"In other news, Reuters quoted the Pentagon's quarterly report to Congress on Tuesday as saying that the strength of insurgents 'will likely remain steady throughout 2006'..."

The Pentagon obviously deemed that to be a wise prediction, given the fact that, between Feb. 11 and May 13, the average number of weekly attacks by insurgents (600) was up by 13 percent over the previous six-month period; and that Sunni insurgents have been joining forces with other anti-American bands, thereby "increasing the terrorists' attack options."

But the report wasn't all gloomy. It merely said that the light at the end of the tunnel has receded just a tad: "(The insurgents') appeal and motivation will begin to wane in early 2007."

So, as they used to say in Brooklyn, wait til next year.

By the way, the new Bush domestic policy advisor, Karl Zinsmeister, whom I have mentioned several times, weighed in three years ago with a conservative magazine article about the war correspondents who were working in Iraq: "Alas, many of the journalists observable in this war theater are bursting with knee-jerk suspicions and antagonisms for the warriors all around them. A significant number are whiny and appallingly soft....I almost wished there would be a very loud explosion very nearby just to shut up their rattling."

Karl: Be careful what you "almost" wish for. Those insurgents scheduled for '07 last throes might take out some of those whiners who venture into war zones without any weaponry....Wait, they already have. Get well, Kimberly.

Oh, those tremblin' Dems

We interrupt all the reports about a GOP meltdown in the 2006 elections to bring you this reality check about the loyal opposition:

Here we are on the cusp of June, and still we find that the Democrats (a) still haven't agreed on what they stand for, (b) still haven't decided whether to highlight those issues where they do agree on what they stand for, and (c) still haven't decided, if they do choose option B, whether they should act now, or in September, or maybe they're waiting for the end of the World Series.

As reported here today, the ongoing internal debate continues. One camp still thinks that everybody should shut up and wait for the Republicans to implode, so that the Democrats can essentially win by default. But another camp still thinks that it might be a smart idea for the party to tell the voters what it stands for, so that people can make an affirmative choice, and so that the Republicans won't be free to simply paint the Dems as the party of tax hikes, "cut and run," and impeachment (which the GOP is already trying to do, as evidenced by the emails I receive from party headquarters).

Here's the most revealing quote, from an anonymous Democratic aide who hails from the shut-up camp: "If you start to [discuss] big government programs … you open yourself up to criticism in all directions, and there's no reason for Democrats to do that now."

You open yourself up to criticism...There's the Democratic syndrome in a nutshell: a fear of taking hits, a lack of confidence in their ability to advocate and persuade.

Just asking: When was the last time Republican strategists voiced any concern that standing up for what they believed would expose them to criticism?

Maybe it all depends on what the definitions of "no" and "leaving" and "resignation" are

I devoted much of my thoughts yesterday to the topic of deceit. Let's continue in that vein for just awhile longer.

Some years ago, an editor at another newspaper called me and asked whether I had any interest in their latest job opening: White House correspondent. I replied that, aside from the fact that the job title would surely impress my mother, I nevertheless couldn't imagine a worse fate -- being penned up all day, and fed a steady diet of semi-truths, creative wordplay, outright evasions, and bald-faced whoppers. (As I recall, Bill Clinton was still president.)

The Bush administration's track record certainly confirms all this. And now we have yet another example, in the wake of the news that Hank Paulson has replaced John Snow as the Treasury secretary.

Last Thursday, May 25, a member of the press corps asked the President, "Has Treasury Secretary Snow given you any indication that he intends to leave his job any time soon?"

Addressing the reporter as "Stretch" (his Bush-designated nickname), the President replied: "No, he has not talked to me about resignation. I think he's doing a fine job."

Compare that remark with what the White House press secretary said yesterday. When asked to provide a timeline for Paulson, he replied this way: "The tick tock is that the two of them (Paulson and Bush) met on the 20th of May, and there was a conversation. And Hank Paulson accepted the job a day later."

OK, I'm consulting my reality-based calendar...let's see...yes, just as I thought: May 20 and May 21 come before May 25.
Now I'm looking at my reality-based dictionary...yes, the word resignation is defined as leaving a job.

The new press secretary, Tony Snow (no relation to John), was asked yesterday why Bush couldn't truthfully answer a straightforward question. He said that Bush's "carefully worded" response was necessary in order to prevent "chaos in the markets." (Nice try. After the Paulson announcement was made yesterday, the markets went down. Apparently the Treasury shuffle didn't matter one way or the other. Wall Street experts said that the drop was due to concerns about inflation and lagging consumer confidence.)

Maybe this should be the next question for Tony Snow: Are you having fun yet?

Holiday? What holiday?

So much for the holiday break. So much news, so much to say. For instance:

1. John Kerry announced over the weekend that he is tan, rested and ready to take on those Swift Boat guys who have been ridiculing his war record.
As the New York Times reported, Kerry "is now fighting back hard. 'They lied and lied and lied about everything,' Mr. Kerry says in an interview in his Senate office. 'How many lies do you get to tell before someone calls you a liar? How many times can you be exposed in America today?' His supporters are compiling a dossier that they say will expose every one of the Swift boat group's charges as a lie and put to rest any question about Mr. Kerry's valor in combat."

Well. Dare I state the obvious? Perhaps it would have been better for Kerry if he had responded this way in August of 2004, instead of ignoring the Swift Boaters and embarking on a windsurfing vacation.

No doubt Kerry's people are looking ahead to 2008, and figuring that if they fight back now, they will boost his prospects of winning another nomination. I think it's more likely that Democrats will conclude that the man missed his moment.

2. The email box was stuffed last night with the usual irate correspondents who were aggrieved for various reasons by the newspaper column I wrote yesterday about Al Gore. My friends on the right charged that I was shilling for Gore (by writing about him at all), while my friends on the left charged that I was maligning Gore.

I am more interested in commenting on the latter. Several liberal readers complained that I was perpetuating the stereotype of Gore as a dissembler, because I mentioned in passing "his occasional embellishments of the facts" without offering any examples. They challenged me to cite examples.

OK, here they are: Gore's insistence that his sister was the first Peace Corps volunteer (she was a salaried office employee); his claim that he was "under fire" in Vietnam (it didn't happen); that he had provided wording for Hubert Humphrey's 1968 acceptance speech (not true, as he admitted in 1999); that he had helped sponsor the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill (it was introduced after he left the Senate).

And here's a new one. In my column yesterday, I quoted from a recent Gore speech that assailed the broadcast media for being superficial. He said: "One morning not long ago, I flipped on one of the news programs in the hopes of seeing information about an important world event that had happened earlier in the day. But the lead story was about a young man who had been hiccupping for three years.... He had trouble getting dates."

I was curious about that hiccup story, so I searched for it in Nexis. I soon found it. The story, about a date-deprived hiccupper in Utah, ran on CNN on April 18, 2001.
But CNN said he had been suffering from his malady for eight months, not three years. How Gore came up with three years is anybody's guess.

I'm not suggesting that Gore's various embellishments should be equated, for example, with the documented, fact-challenged track record of an administration that took America to war. I'm just saying that journalists need to check out what everybody says. I am also suggesting that partisans for any candidate, on the left or right, would be wise to never assume that their hero of the moment is perfect. Nobody is.

Having said that, it is also interesting to observe the lengths to which Gore's enemies are still seeking to paint him as a master liar, in order to undercut his current comeback.

Take Jonah Goldberg, for example. (Jonah is a conservative commentator whose mother, Lucianne, was instrumental in ensaring Bill Clinton in the Lewinsky scandal.) Jonah got suspicious last week when Gore went to the Cannes Film Festival. Gore told the press that this was second trip to Cannes: "The first was when I was 15 years old and came here for the summer to study the existentialists."

Jonah went to work, to find out what Gore was doing during the summer when he was 15. He found a passage in a Gore biography which mentioned that Gore was working on the family farm when he was 15. Therefore: Gore's a serial dissembler!

But he never called Gore's people. However, Greg Sargent, at the American Prospect website, did check with Gore's people. And a flak told him, "Mr. Gore did indeed spend an educational week in Cannes during the summer when he was fifteen. That summer he also spent a great deal of time working on the family farm."

Confronted with this statement, Goldberg is now tempted to say that Gore's big lie was that he only went for a week, and not "for the summer" (which presumably is another reason why Gore should be disaqualified for high office).

Nevertheless, Goldberg did state yesterday: "(I)f I had found any evidence that Gore had been in Cannes for even a week that summer, I would not have written the column the way I did....I should take Gore at his word. I apologize for the imprecision and overly broad insinuations."

No wonder Gore says he has no overwhelming appetite to leap back into politics.

3. But enough about what Gore did or didn't do when he was 15 years old. More pressing today is what a squad of U.S. Marines did or didn't do in the heat of the moment, during the war in Iraq.

Follow the Haditha story (also here and here), because, politically speaking, it has all the earmarks of scaldingly hot potato. Credible allegations of Marines killing 24 innocent Iraqi civilians last Nov. 19 (including the shooting of a four-year-old in the chest) could further complicate President Bush's attempt to recoup his political standing at home.

His defenders, of course, are already assailing the press for focusing on the negative by tracking this story, and they are attacking Pennsylvania Congressman (and ex-Marine) John Murtha for publicizing the matter and for warning that Haditha could be "worse than Abu Ghraib." Murtha, they say, is just an antiwar partisan who is trying to convict Marines ahead of the evidence for his own political purposes. But now we also have a Republican congressman confirming what Murtha has been saying:

Minnesota Republican and ex-Marine John Kline, who has been briefed on the incident by Marine officials: "This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them. This is going to be an ugly story....There's no doubt that the Marines allegedly involved in doing this — they lied about it."

For President Bush, the political perils of this incident are obvious. More questions will be raised about whether young American soldiers are being overwhelmed by their mission, and stretched to the breaking point by inadequate resources and backup. In other words, more congressional hearings and another long hot summer.

4. Last Thursday, I posted some comments about Karl Zinsmeister, the new White House domestic policy adviser who declared in print last June that the U.S. military struggle in Iraq was essentially over. But now we have a new twist in his saga:

Over the weekend, a conservative newspaper unearthed evidence that Zinsmeister endeavored in 2004 to cover up the fact that he had uttered some comments that might be read as - gasp - critical of the President of the United States. By altering his quotes after the fact.

That year, Zinsmeister, in his capacity as a scholar at a conservative think tank, was interviewed by a newspaper, the Syracuse New Times. During that interview, he said that Bush was trying to do something truly historic in Iraq. Then Zinsmeister added his own little dig about Bush's handling of the war. Here's Zinsmeister speaking in the New Times article:

"[Bush] said, 'I'm gonna do something for history.' To say nothing of whether it was executed well or not, but it's brave and admirable."

Zinsmeister never objected to the quote as published, or anything else in the piece; in fact, he wrote to the newspaper's editor in August 2004: "I just read your story online, and wanted to thank you for an extremely fair and thoughtful treatment.... I really appreciate your professionalism and kindness. You wrote it straight up, which is the best and hardest kind of journalism."

Nevertheless, when he posted the article on the website of his think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, the quote was altered. A certain little phrase now was missing. The AEI version - which was still credited to the Syracuse New Times - read this way: "[Bush] said, 'I'm gonna do something for history.' It's a brave and admirable attempt to improve the world."

He made other alterations as well: excising a quote in which he implied that all Iraqis of his acquaintance are liars, for example.

Molly English, who edited that story, is justifiably perturbed that Zinsmeister decided on his own to cleanse the record: "It's reprehensible, frankly. Once this is published, it's not his property. From that point in time, he can't just pick and choose."

Why did Zinsmeister act as he did? Take a wild guess: To protect his career options. To ensure that a prospective future employer, the dissent-averse President Bush, did not discover that he had once uttered a phrase of dissent.

But the story doesn't end here. The Washington Post weighed in today, saying that Zinsmeister feels bad about what he did. But then he offered his rationale: the Syracuse reporter, Justin Park, had screwed up, by misquoting him four times. (Strange that Zinsmeister never complained that way two years ago.)

Retroactively impugning the competence of a reporter is standard stuff in the DC blame game. What's noteworthy, to me, is that the Post didn't offer Park a chance to tell his side of the story. Welcome to the clubby Beltway culture. This is why the Washington media's many critics (in this case, on the left) believe that the watchdogs are insufficiently vigilant.