I'm going to inaugurate something new: the Saturday mailbag.
Every weekend, I'll try to respond to comments and queries that I receive in emails or in posts on this blog. I reserve the right to be highly selective, for two reasons: (1) My aim is only to advance the conversation, not engage in ripostes, and (2) I don't want to detract from the usual Saturday priorities, most of which involve doing as little as possible.
Having said that, let's talk some more about Robert A. Taft. A goodly number of emailers, and a University of Virginia professsor, have asked for more information about the Taft quote that I posted here a few days ago, on March 22, about the importance (and patriotism) of questioning a commander-in-chief in wartime.
His words matter, because there has always been an intrinsic tension in the American experiment: between minority rights and majority rule; between diversity and conformity; between respect for the straight-shooting loner and the desire for a shared identity. And these tensions are generally more acute in wartime.
So here's the full context:
At the time of Pearl Habor, Senator Taft of Ohio was the undisputed leader 0f the Republican right, the most anti-FDR faction in politics. He and his followers detested the New Deal and were concerned that the new war would stifle their right to dissent. So Taft decided to confront the issue.
His remarks, as previously quoted here, were delivered in a speech to the Executive Club of Chicago on Dec. 19, 1941 (full disclosure: I previously said that he spoke a week after Pearl Harbor; actually, it was 12 days).
As far as I can determine, a complete transcript is not available anywhere on the Internet. I first stumbled across an excerpt in the spring of 2003, when historian Arthur Schlesinger used it during a commencement address in Indiana. (Schlesinger repeated the excerpt here, last November.)
After my initial find in 2003, I spied other chunks of the Taft speech in other places. For instance: "The duties imposed by the Constitution on senators and congressmen certainly require that they exercise their own judgement on questions relating to war." And here's another, questioning FDR's Pearl Harbor preparedness - all this, at a time when bodies were still in the water: "Perhaps the fault in Hawaii was not entirely on the admirals and generals."
From what I can tell, from checking my own history books and FDR biographies, it doesn't appear that Taft was ever told by the governing party to "shut up" (as John McCain said to Jimmy Carter in March 2003, when the latter tried to question the new Iraq war) or that Taft was ever treated like the Dixie Chicks.
Indeed, Taft was behaving just like the backwoods freshman congressman who opposed the U.S.-Mexican war of 1846-8, who assailed the U.S. troops even as they fought, charging that the troops had "marched into peaceful Mexican settlements and frightened the inhabitants away from their homes." He charged that President Polk was waging war to win votes, and some critics did think he was being treasonous. But today the face of that backwoodsman, Abraham Lincoln, is on the coins in your pocket.
So that's the Taft story, though I doubt that every American would find his arguments persuasive. Pat Boone, for example, probably wouldn't.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Friday, March 24, 2006
Get ready for March madness
No better issue demonstrates the growing divide between President Bush and his erstwhile congressional Republican allies than immigration. Barring some unforeseen event, the fireworks will ignite next week, in the U.S. Senate.
This one has been building for a long time. Bush is actually to the left of his base on immigration; essentially, he wants a guest worker program that would allow the 11 million illegals to ease their way to legal status; the conservatives want those folks to go home and to prevent others from coming in. What's most striking - and I heard a lot of anger at a recent conservative conference in Washington - is the contention by so many conservatives that Bush, by refusing to stress border enforcement, has turned out to be soft on national security.
It's an issue destined to divide the GOP, because the business faction wants the guest workers (cheap labor) while the ideologically conservative faction views the illegals as a threat to the nation's cultural identity. Bush has straddled the factions for years, mostly with success. Those days appear to be over. He doesn't control the debate on this issue anymore, and that may well enhance his increasingly lame-duck status (which he inadventently confirmed the other day, when he said that the ultimate decisions about U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq will be made not by him, but by future presidents).
Speaking of being a lame duck, the '08 presidential race also needs to be factored into the immigration debate. Take Bill Frist, for example. The majority leader never inveiged about faulty border security back when his first priority was carrying Bush's water in the Senate. But now he's pushing something called the Securing America's Borders Act. Now that he needs to woo the conservatives who vote heavily in early Republican primaries, the good doctor is proverbially donning sunglasses, chambering a piece, and walking the border with the Minutemen.
The tone of this debate could also get nasty quickly. Yesterday, Bush had this to say about the impending immigration debate: "When we conduct this debate, it must be done in a civil way. It must be done in a way that doesn't pit one group of people against another."
Uh...hello?
This is the same president who said that the Republicans who opposed his Dubai ports deal were anti-Arab; who said (through his emissaries) that the Republicans who opposed high court nominee Harriet Miers were sexists; who said that the Minutemen - described by the conservative Washington Times as "good American citizens worried about the breaking of immigration law" - were, in fact, "vigilantes."
In other words, there's already bad blood between the White House and its allies on the Hill. Note this remark yesterday by Arizona GOP congressman J. D. Hayworth: "If I had any advice for my friends at the White House, I think it would be to really reconsider posturing every disagreement as some sort of new political (or) psychological malady."
(Regarding that remark, many Bush skeptics would say: Hey, J. D. , join the club. As I noted the other night on a cable TV panel show, Bush's defenders always seek to dismiss substantive criticism as "anti-Bush hysteria," as a psychological malady, rather than accept it for what it really is: The attempt by thinking Americans to hold this president accountable for his performance, using factual evidence. As they would any president.)
I plan to track the political aspects of the immigration debate next week, either here or in print.
ON ANOTHER MATTER:
I remember, back in my youth, editing a story about the travel foibles of rock bands, including the no-brown-M&Ms edict, all of which was later satirized in the film Spinal Tap, when Nigel Tufnel freaked out about the olives and sandwich bread.
Now we have Dick Cheney, with his edicts about decaf Sprite and entering a room only when all the lights have been turned on.
The liberal blogosphere is chuckling today about the revelation that when the vice president travels, he requires that all TVs in his hotel suite be pre-tuned to Fox News. Not to be a contrarian, but is that so surprising? No doubt he would want all the comforts of home, which presumably would include the ingestion of the friendliest news with a minimum of effort. No, the real surprise is that he also requires that The New York Times be waiting for him. Maybe it's just a way to keep up with what the perceived enemy is saying, or a way to find fresh fodder for his next friendly banquet audience, or a way to check on who on his staff might be leaking, but at least it's a sign that (unlike his boss) he is willing to read articles without them first being filtered by his aides.
Anyway, it's not as bemusing as the Jennifer Lopez travel document, which requires that hotel bed sheets be made of Egyptian cotton with a minimum thread count of 250.
This one has been building for a long time. Bush is actually to the left of his base on immigration; essentially, he wants a guest worker program that would allow the 11 million illegals to ease their way to legal status; the conservatives want those folks to go home and to prevent others from coming in. What's most striking - and I heard a lot of anger at a recent conservative conference in Washington - is the contention by so many conservatives that Bush, by refusing to stress border enforcement, has turned out to be soft on national security.
It's an issue destined to divide the GOP, because the business faction wants the guest workers (cheap labor) while the ideologically conservative faction views the illegals as a threat to the nation's cultural identity. Bush has straddled the factions for years, mostly with success. Those days appear to be over. He doesn't control the debate on this issue anymore, and that may well enhance his increasingly lame-duck status (which he inadventently confirmed the other day, when he said that the ultimate decisions about U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq will be made not by him, but by future presidents).
Speaking of being a lame duck, the '08 presidential race also needs to be factored into the immigration debate. Take Bill Frist, for example. The majority leader never inveiged about faulty border security back when his first priority was carrying Bush's water in the Senate. But now he's pushing something called the Securing America's Borders Act. Now that he needs to woo the conservatives who vote heavily in early Republican primaries, the good doctor is proverbially donning sunglasses, chambering a piece, and walking the border with the Minutemen.
The tone of this debate could also get nasty quickly. Yesterday, Bush had this to say about the impending immigration debate: "When we conduct this debate, it must be done in a civil way. It must be done in a way that doesn't pit one group of people against another."
Uh...hello?
This is the same president who said that the Republicans who opposed his Dubai ports deal were anti-Arab; who said (through his emissaries) that the Republicans who opposed high court nominee Harriet Miers were sexists; who said that the Minutemen - described by the conservative Washington Times as "good American citizens worried about the breaking of immigration law" - were, in fact, "vigilantes."
In other words, there's already bad blood between the White House and its allies on the Hill. Note this remark yesterday by Arizona GOP congressman J. D. Hayworth: "If I had any advice for my friends at the White House, I think it would be to really reconsider posturing every disagreement as some sort of new political (or) psychological malady."
(Regarding that remark, many Bush skeptics would say: Hey, J. D. , join the club. As I noted the other night on a cable TV panel show, Bush's defenders always seek to dismiss substantive criticism as "anti-Bush hysteria," as a psychological malady, rather than accept it for what it really is: The attempt by thinking Americans to hold this president accountable for his performance, using factual evidence. As they would any president.)
I plan to track the political aspects of the immigration debate next week, either here or in print.
ON ANOTHER MATTER:
I remember, back in my youth, editing a story about the travel foibles of rock bands, including the no-brown-M&Ms edict, all of which was later satirized in the film Spinal Tap, when Nigel Tufnel freaked out about the olives and sandwich bread.
Now we have Dick Cheney, with his edicts about decaf Sprite and entering a room only when all the lights have been turned on.
The liberal blogosphere is chuckling today about the revelation that when the vice president travels, he requires that all TVs in his hotel suite be pre-tuned to Fox News. Not to be a contrarian, but is that so surprising? No doubt he would want all the comforts of home, which presumably would include the ingestion of the friendliest news with a minimum of effort. No, the real surprise is that he also requires that The New York Times be waiting for him. Maybe it's just a way to keep up with what the perceived enemy is saying, or a way to find fresh fodder for his next friendly banquet audience, or a way to check on who on his staff might be leaking, but at least it's a sign that (unlike his boss) he is willing to read articles without them first being filtered by his aides.
Anyway, it's not as bemusing as the Jennifer Lopez travel document, which requires that hotel bed sheets be made of Egyptian cotton with a minimum thread count of 250.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Not so fast for the Fightin' Dems
As I indicated here last weekend, in a print column, it's by no means a slam dunk that the so-called "Fighting Dems" -- Iraq war vets running for Congress as Democrats -- will become a great '06 success story. The party's hope is that they'll win some races, help the Democrats take over the House, and, by their presence, help erase the national security softy image that has dogged the party ever since the '70s.
But now we have a few news developments that will make the skeptics nod knowingly.
Two nights ago, in suburban Chicago, Iraq vet Tammy Duckworth did win a Democratic primary, thereby earning the right to face off against a GOP foe in November. But it's the way she won that gives pause.
Despite strong backing from House Democrat Rahm Emmanuel (a fellow Illini who leads the '06 House Democratic campaign effort), and backing from John Kerry, and TV commercials, and huge free publicity because of her dramatic and heroic personal story (she lost both legs in Iraq to a rocket-propelled grenade), and three newspaper endorsements, and a big money advantage over serious Democratic rival Christine Cegelis -- despite all that, Duckworth won by only three percentage points. Her share in the 3-person race: 43.8 percent.
It's noteworthy that Cegelis - not Duckworth - attracted major support from liberal grassroots activists. They didn't believe that Duckworth's hero profile was sufficient qualification for office (especially since she didn't even live in the district). Instead they believed that Cegelis, who had run and lost in that congressional district two years ago, was the more worthy candidate, in part because her experience as a software engineer/businesswoman might translate into finding good jobs for the region.
And there was another complicating factor: the Iraq war vets don't want to be viewed as antiwar candidates, yet the Democratic liberal base is generally antiwar. Duckworth, therefore, had a problem. Political analyst Ken Rudin lays it out in his new online column:
"(Duckworth's) views on Iraq were...designed to appeal to the Republican majority of the district, or squishy, depending on your perspective. Cegelis, on the other hand, ran as an out-and-out peace candidate, winning the backing of Democracy for America (once run by Howard Dean and now run by his brother Jim) and other assorted liberal groups...It's nice to run as an Iraq war vet and be charismatic, but having something to say might not be a bad idea, either."
The grassroots Democrats certainly aren't impressed with the notion that a war vet is an automatic winner. One angry Illinois blogger calls Duckworth "a gimmick candidate," believes that "getting your legs blown off by an RPG does not a legislator make," and sneers, "I'm sure the DC Dems think that 'Oooo, wounded in the Iraq war! Trump card! Let's see the GOP out-patriot that' is a winning strategy across the board," whereas, in reality, "a carpetbagger with no (local) name recognition is just as vulnerable in the general election (to Republican attack) even if she is a veteran."
And yesterday, Cegelis' finance director, Amy Tauchman, didn't seem willing to join Duckworth beneath the Fighting Dems banner, either: "I'm not going to vote in (November). No way. A lot of the Dems are going to stay home." Disaffected people often tend to come around by election time, but the mood in suburban Chicago suggests that grassroots bitterness might hurt the party more than the war vet banner will help -- all this, in an open House seat that Democrats badly need, in their bid to recapture the House itself.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Democrats had been banking on war vet Tim Dunn to defeat a Republican incumbent down there. Dunn was endorsed last week by the Iraq and Afghanisatan Veterans of America Political Action Committee, a new Washington group. Dunn had been garnering major publicity, at one point telling the Boston Glove that he and other Iraq vets "will have a very strong voice and instant credibility. We bring to the table the experience and knowledge gained through our service...People will listen to us."
Apparently not enough people have been listening to Dunn. He quit the race on Tuesday night. He said he was dropping out because the financial obligations had become too strenuous. That's code for not being able to raise enough money. The incumbent Republican Robin Hayes, had raised over $700,000 by the start of this year; Dunn, $80,000. And, in another reminder that being a war vet is not enough, Hayes alienated many Democrats in his district by taking a conservative stance on abortion.
Maybe the Discovery Channel, which is reportedly readying a documentary on the Fightin' Dems, should hang loose on the idea for awhile -- at least until there's some evidence that they can actually win.
But now we have a few news developments that will make the skeptics nod knowingly.
Two nights ago, in suburban Chicago, Iraq vet Tammy Duckworth did win a Democratic primary, thereby earning the right to face off against a GOP foe in November. But it's the way she won that gives pause.
Despite strong backing from House Democrat Rahm Emmanuel (a fellow Illini who leads the '06 House Democratic campaign effort), and backing from John Kerry, and TV commercials, and huge free publicity because of her dramatic and heroic personal story (she lost both legs in Iraq to a rocket-propelled grenade), and three newspaper endorsements, and a big money advantage over serious Democratic rival Christine Cegelis -- despite all that, Duckworth won by only three percentage points. Her share in the 3-person race: 43.8 percent.
It's noteworthy that Cegelis - not Duckworth - attracted major support from liberal grassroots activists. They didn't believe that Duckworth's hero profile was sufficient qualification for office (especially since she didn't even live in the district). Instead they believed that Cegelis, who had run and lost in that congressional district two years ago, was the more worthy candidate, in part because her experience as a software engineer/businesswoman might translate into finding good jobs for the region.
And there was another complicating factor: the Iraq war vets don't want to be viewed as antiwar candidates, yet the Democratic liberal base is generally antiwar. Duckworth, therefore, had a problem. Political analyst Ken Rudin lays it out in his new online column:
"(Duckworth's) views on Iraq were...designed to appeal to the Republican majority of the district, or squishy, depending on your perspective. Cegelis, on the other hand, ran as an out-and-out peace candidate, winning the backing of Democracy for America (once run by Howard Dean and now run by his brother Jim) and other assorted liberal groups...It's nice to run as an Iraq war vet and be charismatic, but having something to say might not be a bad idea, either."
The grassroots Democrats certainly aren't impressed with the notion that a war vet is an automatic winner. One angry Illinois blogger calls Duckworth "a gimmick candidate," believes that "getting your legs blown off by an RPG does not a legislator make," and sneers, "I'm sure the DC Dems think that 'Oooo, wounded in the Iraq war! Trump card! Let's see the GOP out-patriot that' is a winning strategy across the board," whereas, in reality, "a carpetbagger with no (local) name recognition is just as vulnerable in the general election (to Republican attack) even if she is a veteran."
And yesterday, Cegelis' finance director, Amy Tauchman, didn't seem willing to join Duckworth beneath the Fighting Dems banner, either: "I'm not going to vote in (November). No way. A lot of the Dems are going to stay home." Disaffected people often tend to come around by election time, but the mood in suburban Chicago suggests that grassroots bitterness might hurt the party more than the war vet banner will help -- all this, in an open House seat that Democrats badly need, in their bid to recapture the House itself.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Democrats had been banking on war vet Tim Dunn to defeat a Republican incumbent down there. Dunn was endorsed last week by the Iraq and Afghanisatan Veterans of America Political Action Committee, a new Washington group. Dunn had been garnering major publicity, at one point telling the Boston Glove that he and other Iraq vets "will have a very strong voice and instant credibility. We bring to the table the experience and knowledge gained through our service...People will listen to us."
Apparently not enough people have been listening to Dunn. He quit the race on Tuesday night. He said he was dropping out because the financial obligations had become too strenuous. That's code for not being able to raise enough money. The incumbent Republican Robin Hayes, had raised over $700,000 by the start of this year; Dunn, $80,000. And, in another reminder that being a war vet is not enough, Hayes alienated many Democrats in his district by taking a conservative stance on abortion.
Maybe the Discovery Channel, which is reportedly readying a documentary on the Fightin' Dems, should hang loose on the idea for awhile -- at least until there's some evidence that they can actually win.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
An act of patriotism
Based on what I wrote here yesterday - about the gap between President Bush's past and present claims about Iraq - I have received some inevitable emails charging that such assessments of the commander-in-chief are either treasonous, or helpful to the enemy ("aid and comfort"). I have a response to that. Actually, it's not my response at all. I am merely quoting somebody else.
Here's the quote: "As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur."
The speaker was senator Robert A. Taft, leader of the conservative movement back in the '40s. His nickname was "Mr. Republican." And he made those remarks one week after Pearl Harbor.
Here's the quote: "As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government ... too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur."
The speaker was senator Robert A. Taft, leader of the conservative movement back in the '40s. His nickname was "Mr. Republican." And he made those remarks one week after Pearl Harbor.
Al Gore and the redemption scenario
Hey, remember Al Gore? Big guy maligned for his charisma-challenged demeanor who neverthless won 600,000 more votes than George W. Bush in 2000? Grew a beard and seemingly disappeared after the U.S. Supreme Court installed his opponent in the big chair? Flirted with the idea of an '04 Nixonesque comeback bid, and even yukked it up on Saturday Night Live, before opting for the life of a new-age entrepeneur?
Yeah, that Al Gore. Amazingly, however, there seems to be a bit of a boomlet about Gore these days. Who knows if it'll go anywhere, but there are serious folks in the political community who think that the newly unfettered Gore - with new lefty pedigree as moveon.org's favorite Bush antagonist - now has the best shot at becoming the left-leaning alternative to Hillary Clinton in the '08 Democratic primaries.
Far-fetched? In the end, maybe. But we're currently in the season when everybody goes around kicking the tires of every vehicle in the lot, and suddenly, in some circles, the souped-up Gore model doesn't look so bad. He's universally known, he has a staunchly consistent anti-Iraq war stance, and he can raise big money quickly (as much as $50 million, some claim) from grassroots liberals via the Internet.
Buzz abounds. Donna Brazille, the Democratic consultant, when asked by the NY Times magazine to name somebody who could best challenge Hillary, replied, "This sounds absolutely strange coming from me, because I never in life thought I would utter these words again, but Al Gore." Unnamed "Democratic insiders" and "party operatives" told columnist Bob Novak over the weekend that Gore could be a big threat to Hillary. Ex-Clinton pollster Dick Morris says that "Gore has three things going for him: A perception that he was robbed of the White House and Hillary’s possible stubbornness in continuing to back the war. The third thing? The weather. As the evidence of global climate change impresses everyone who doesn’t work at the White House, Gore looks more and more like a man whose time may have come."
The most thorough contribution to the Gore boomlet appears here, in a respected liberal magazine; the writer/blogger, Ezra Klein, suspects that the liberal wing and the online community might begin "calling for a Bigfoot of its own" to challenge Hillary, because of her hawkishness on Iraq and her moderate stances on other issues. His scenario is grist for considerable debate right now on his own blog, and I wouldn't care to drop a bet right now on Gore. Why would he want to give up the life of a free-wheeling enterpeneur (cable TV, a new documentary on global warming which will be released in May by Paramount) in order to again become the focus of conservative ire?
But Klein does bring up a compelling issue: the changing nature of media coverage in political campaigns. Gore was cuffed around in 2000 by the so-called mainstream media, and he didn't like it. In the years since, he has been talking up the possibilities of new information streams, and, as Klein points out, a new Gore candidacy might test the notion that a candidate, rather than speaking through the traditional press, could power a campaign by blasting out "speeches on email, post videos on the Internet, release statements on a blog, use online organizing tools to empower the grassroots." Maybe those tools will have matured by '08, maybe not. But Gore is the kind of guy who could test the concept by putting them in play...
...If he wants. The other day, he issued a statement that would suggest disinterest in 2008: "I'm not planning to be a candidate again." That's not exactly Shermanesque - at least by the traditional rules of parsing. But in the case of Gore, who is no longer under the sway of political consultants, perhaps the traditional rules don't apply.
Yeah, that Al Gore. Amazingly, however, there seems to be a bit of a boomlet about Gore these days. Who knows if it'll go anywhere, but there are serious folks in the political community who think that the newly unfettered Gore - with new lefty pedigree as moveon.org's favorite Bush antagonist - now has the best shot at becoming the left-leaning alternative to Hillary Clinton in the '08 Democratic primaries.
Far-fetched? In the end, maybe. But we're currently in the season when everybody goes around kicking the tires of every vehicle in the lot, and suddenly, in some circles, the souped-up Gore model doesn't look so bad. He's universally known, he has a staunchly consistent anti-Iraq war stance, and he can raise big money quickly (as much as $50 million, some claim) from grassroots liberals via the Internet.
Buzz abounds. Donna Brazille, the Democratic consultant, when asked by the NY Times magazine to name somebody who could best challenge Hillary, replied, "This sounds absolutely strange coming from me, because I never in life thought I would utter these words again, but Al Gore." Unnamed "Democratic insiders" and "party operatives" told columnist Bob Novak over the weekend that Gore could be a big threat to Hillary. Ex-Clinton pollster Dick Morris says that "Gore has three things going for him: A perception that he was robbed of the White House and Hillary’s possible stubbornness in continuing to back the war. The third thing? The weather. As the evidence of global climate change impresses everyone who doesn’t work at the White House, Gore looks more and more like a man whose time may have come."
The most thorough contribution to the Gore boomlet appears here, in a respected liberal magazine; the writer/blogger, Ezra Klein, suspects that the liberal wing and the online community might begin "calling for a Bigfoot of its own" to challenge Hillary, because of her hawkishness on Iraq and her moderate stances on other issues. His scenario is grist for considerable debate right now on his own blog, and I wouldn't care to drop a bet right now on Gore. Why would he want to give up the life of a free-wheeling enterpeneur (cable TV, a new documentary on global warming which will be released in May by Paramount) in order to again become the focus of conservative ire?
But Klein does bring up a compelling issue: the changing nature of media coverage in political campaigns. Gore was cuffed around in 2000 by the so-called mainstream media, and he didn't like it. In the years since, he has been talking up the possibilities of new information streams, and, as Klein points out, a new Gore candidacy might test the notion that a candidate, rather than speaking through the traditional press, could power a campaign by blasting out "speeches on email, post videos on the Internet, release statements on a blog, use online organizing tools to empower the grassroots." Maybe those tools will have matured by '08, maybe not. But Gore is the kind of guy who could test the concept by putting them in play...
...If he wants. The other day, he issued a statement that would suggest disinterest in 2008: "I'm not planning to be a candidate again." That's not exactly Shermanesque - at least by the traditional rules of parsing. But in the case of Gore, who is no longer under the sway of political consultants, perhaps the traditional rules don't apply.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Groundhog Day in America
In what way does President Bush resemble Sonny and Cher?
Read on for the answer.
The president held a press conference today on Iraq, and delivered yet another Iraq speech yesterday, this time in Cleveland, and arguably he gets points for leaving the White House bubble and taking impetinent questions from non-loyalists.
But the problem is, he keeps saying the same things over and over; worse yet, he keeps repeating things that are contradicted by factual reality. As a result, the average skeptical American is starting to feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, who awoke over and over to the same morning and the same radio rendition of "I Got You, Babe."
Consider, for instance, the lyrics in today's press conference: Troop levels will be determined by the commanders in the field...He wants to "spread liberty around the world"...Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will not be fired, because "he's done a fine job"..."This is a global war, and Iraq is part of that..."
Bush's poll numbers have slid to new lows because the majority of Americans, anxious to avoid Bill Murray's quandary, are tuning out the old song -- refusing to buy his optimism about a victory plan at a time when so many respected competing voices are openly contradicting him.
One of those voices is retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of Central Command (which includes the Middle East). He has a new book out. In that book, he writes that Rumsfeld ignored the pleas of military leaders who believed that the postwar occupation of Iraq would require far more troops than Rumsfeld was willing to supply. Zinni writes that "ignoring this reality, the United States and a handful of allies forcibly evicted (Hussein) with no plans for a new order to replace it. Today, U.S. military forces in Iraq are mired in an ever-worsening insurgency. Civil war is an ever-growing danger. Disorder and chaos grow ever more entrenched."
But perhaps one moment this week stands out above all. Bush was asked yesterday to explain his administration's frequent claims that Saddam Hussein and his Iraq regime had played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush said this in response: "I don't think we ever said -- at least I didn't say -- that there was a direct connection between Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein."
Oh really?
Bush defenders complain all the time that the mainstream media "bashes" the president too much. I would argue, however, that the media's role is to hold any president accountable for what he says, and when he says things that are contradicted by the record, it's our job to point it out.
So let's compare Bush's Monday claim to the factual record:
1. In Bush's March 21, 2003 letter to Congress, justifying the launching of the war against Hussein, he said it was important "to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001."
2. On May 1, 2003, standing in front of the Mission Accomplished banner, he stated: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th...With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
3. On June 17, 2004, Bush disputed the findings of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, which had just concluded there was no "collaborative relationship" between Hussein and al Qaeda. Bush begged to differ, saying, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."
4. On Sept. 14, 2003, Vice President Cheney told NBC, "If we're successful in Iraq, we will have struck a blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
5. On Dec. 9, 2001, Cheney told NBC that it was "pretty well confirmed" that Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta met in Prague with a senior Iraqi official 17 months before the attacks. (On June 17, 2004, after the 9/11 Commission concluded that no such meeting occurred, Cheney changed his story: "We have never been able to confirm that, not have we been able to knock it down, we just don't know.")
That's a sampling. Bush also said yesterday, "I don't want to be argumentative...I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on 9/11." True, as far is it goes; Bush never used the word "ordered." But there was a reason why 42 percent of Americans still believed, shortly before the '04 election, that Hussein had financed and planned the 9/11 attacks. It was because the administration implied and suggested it, by the artful phrasings it employed, and never dissuaded Americans from connecting those errant dots.
Bush also insisted today: "I didn't want war." That, too, is contradicted by the factual record.
Time magazine reported in March 2003 that one year before the war, Bush had poked his head into a White House room and told three senators, "(Expletive) Saddam, we're taking him out." And on July 23, 2002, long before Bush went to the United Nations, his British allies met with him and subsequently wrote, in the now-famous Downing Street memos, that Bush "had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided." Neither the Time anecdote, nor the British memos, have been disputed by the White House.
The hunger for competing voices is now endemic in Washington (a development that Bush dismisses out of hand; he said today that "Washington is a great town for advice"). How else to explain the news that Congress has now established a bipartisan group of prominent people to study the war with "fresh eyes" and propose new future policies?
Interestingly, it will be co-helmed by former Secretary of State James Baker, who worked for Bush's father; a number of senior Bush alumni (such as Brent Scowcroft) have long been critical of the Iraq war. Baker's partner will be Lee Hamilton, the intelligence expert and ex-Democratic congressman who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission.
Not everybody agrees that these voices are needed; as conservative blogger/radio host Hugh Hewitt contends here that "this is a terrible move," and that such panels "inevitably become show trials, and the new concentration of media will guarantee such a debacle unfolding quickly, with Bush's enemies in the (mainstream media) using every opportunity to bend every witness and every report into a political weapon." (In the interest of being fair and balanced, Hugh also lauded Bush's press conference performance today: "He was on fire.")
What all this means is that Bush no longer monopolizes the megaphone, as he did when the war began, and that complicates his efforts to rebuild credibility. When he was asked yesterday about whether he still has political capital, he replied: "I'm spending that capital on the war."
No argument there.
Read on for the answer.
The president held a press conference today on Iraq, and delivered yet another Iraq speech yesterday, this time in Cleveland, and arguably he gets points for leaving the White House bubble and taking impetinent questions from non-loyalists.
But the problem is, he keeps saying the same things over and over; worse yet, he keeps repeating things that are contradicted by factual reality. As a result, the average skeptical American is starting to feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, who awoke over and over to the same morning and the same radio rendition of "I Got You, Babe."
Consider, for instance, the lyrics in today's press conference: Troop levels will be determined by the commanders in the field...He wants to "spread liberty around the world"...Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will not be fired, because "he's done a fine job"..."This is a global war, and Iraq is part of that..."
Bush's poll numbers have slid to new lows because the majority of Americans, anxious to avoid Bill Murray's quandary, are tuning out the old song -- refusing to buy his optimism about a victory plan at a time when so many respected competing voices are openly contradicting him.
One of those voices is retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former head of Central Command (which includes the Middle East). He has a new book out. In that book, he writes that Rumsfeld ignored the pleas of military leaders who believed that the postwar occupation of Iraq would require far more troops than Rumsfeld was willing to supply. Zinni writes that "ignoring this reality, the United States and a handful of allies forcibly evicted (Hussein) with no plans for a new order to replace it. Today, U.S. military forces in Iraq are mired in an ever-worsening insurgency. Civil war is an ever-growing danger. Disorder and chaos grow ever more entrenched."
But perhaps one moment this week stands out above all. Bush was asked yesterday to explain his administration's frequent claims that Saddam Hussein and his Iraq regime had played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. Bush said this in response: "I don't think we ever said -- at least I didn't say -- that there was a direct connection between Sept. 11 and Saddam Hussein."
Oh really?
Bush defenders complain all the time that the mainstream media "bashes" the president too much. I would argue, however, that the media's role is to hold any president accountable for what he says, and when he says things that are contradicted by the record, it's our job to point it out.
So let's compare Bush's Monday claim to the factual record:
1. In Bush's March 21, 2003 letter to Congress, justifying the launching of the war against Hussein, he said it was important "to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001."
2. On May 1, 2003, standing in front of the Mission Accomplished banner, he stated: "The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th...With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
3. On June 17, 2004, Bush disputed the findings of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission, which had just concluded there was no "collaborative relationship" between Hussein and al Qaeda. Bush begged to differ, saying, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda."
4. On Sept. 14, 2003, Vice President Cheney told NBC, "If we're successful in Iraq, we will have struck a blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."
5. On Dec. 9, 2001, Cheney told NBC that it was "pretty well confirmed" that Sept. 11 mastermind Mohamed Atta met in Prague with a senior Iraqi official 17 months before the attacks. (On June 17, 2004, after the 9/11 Commission concluded that no such meeting occurred, Cheney changed his story: "We have never been able to confirm that, not have we been able to knock it down, we just don't know.")
That's a sampling. Bush also said yesterday, "I don't want to be argumentative...I was very careful never to say that Saddam Hussein ordered the attacks on 9/11." True, as far is it goes; Bush never used the word "ordered." But there was a reason why 42 percent of Americans still believed, shortly before the '04 election, that Hussein had financed and planned the 9/11 attacks. It was because the administration implied and suggested it, by the artful phrasings it employed, and never dissuaded Americans from connecting those errant dots.
Bush also insisted today: "I didn't want war." That, too, is contradicted by the factual record.
Time magazine reported in March 2003 that one year before the war, Bush had poked his head into a White House room and told three senators, "(Expletive) Saddam, we're taking him out." And on July 23, 2002, long before Bush went to the United Nations, his British allies met with him and subsequently wrote, in the now-famous Downing Street memos, that Bush "had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided." Neither the Time anecdote, nor the British memos, have been disputed by the White House.
The hunger for competing voices is now endemic in Washington (a development that Bush dismisses out of hand; he said today that "Washington is a great town for advice"). How else to explain the news that Congress has now established a bipartisan group of prominent people to study the war with "fresh eyes" and propose new future policies?
Interestingly, it will be co-helmed by former Secretary of State James Baker, who worked for Bush's father; a number of senior Bush alumni (such as Brent Scowcroft) have long been critical of the Iraq war. Baker's partner will be Lee Hamilton, the intelligence expert and ex-Democratic congressman who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission.
Not everybody agrees that these voices are needed; as conservative blogger/radio host Hugh Hewitt contends here that "this is a terrible move," and that such panels "inevitably become show trials, and the new concentration of media will guarantee such a debacle unfolding quickly, with Bush's enemies in the (mainstream media) using every opportunity to bend every witness and every report into a political weapon." (In the interest of being fair and balanced, Hugh also lauded Bush's press conference performance today: "He was on fire.")
What all this means is that Bush no longer monopolizes the megaphone, as he did when the war began, and that complicates his efforts to rebuild credibility. When he was asked yesterday about whether he still has political capital, he replied: "I'm spending that capital on the war."
No argument there.
Monday, March 20, 2006
My thoughts on political blogs
Howard Mortman - an ex-producer at the Hardball show and former editor/columnist at National Journal's The Hotline - invited me the other day to bloviate at length about the future of political blogs (my guesses are as good as anybody's!), and to choose some of my favorites.
Now I have done so. If you're interested, the discussion has been posted here today, at Howard's entertaining website, which is also a good tip sheet for political junkies, with lots of good links. You can also click on "Blogs the Famous Media Reads," to see the favorites cited by political journalists who are far more famous than I.
Now I have done so. If you're interested, the discussion has been posted here today, at Howard's entertaining website, which is also a good tip sheet for political junkies, with lots of good links. You can also click on "Blogs the Famous Media Reads," to see the favorites cited by political journalists who are far more famous than I.
An '06 mantra: Change that subject
As Republicans continue to fret about the possibility that they will be subsumed in a political tidal wave next November - swept from power in the House of Representatives, in a mirror image of the 1994 Democratic debacle - it's becoming increasingly clear how they plan to fight back in the months ahead.
Since they arguably can't run on their own agenda - not at a time when they are deeply divided on immigration, federal spending, the Dubai ports deal, and the Medicare drug plan; and deeply worried about President Bush's stay-the-course stance in Iraq - the game plan apparently boils down to this:
Change the subject. Persuade voters not to make the '06 elections a referendum on Bush. Instead, convince them that it's the Democrats who are the real threat to the nation.
As evidenced here in the conservative media, that plan is already in place; some congressional Republicans have reportedly adopted a line that Bush used in a recent meeting - that if the Democrats controlled Congress, they would "raise your taxes and raise the white flag" in Iraq. The GOP message-meisters also plan to warn that if the Democrats take over, the new committee chairmen will be seek to roll back the Bush tax cuts and gum up the government machinery by launching multiple probes of the administration, starting with Iraq.
It's not clear whether that fear message would persuade the independent swing voters, the majority of whom already harbor serious doubts about Bush's overall performance, and particularly his stewardship of the Iraq war (75 percent now believe the U.S. is losing ground in trying to prevent a civil war). And sentiment is strong for substantive troop withdrawals by the end of 2007.
But this message isn't really aimed at the independents - because they're not the dominant voters in midterm elections. The voters that tend to show up are disproportionately the more politically active partisans on the left and right. And the GOP, worried that its base voters will stay home, is mapping a message that will get these folks out of their homes on election day. (Which is also why in the months ahead we'll see a slew of bills on abortion, the gay marriage amendment proposal, the perennial flag-burning ban proposal, among other base-friendly themes.)
Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman, also hit the fear-those-Dems theme when he spoke last week at a convention of GOP activists in Memphis. I was there, and his comments wound up in my notes, so this is a perfect time to spring them:
He said that any Democrat who urges "strategic redeployment" of troops from Iraq is really "cutting and running." (Strategic redeployment, which refers to partial phased withdrawals, but only as far a Kuwait and other regional outposts, is a term that was coined last autumn in a policy proposal that was co-authored by Larry Korb, who served as an assistant Defense Secretary under Ronald Reagan.)
Mehlman also hit the flip-flop theme, implying that Democrats shouldn't have a hand in running the war because they lack the resolve: "Would you buy a used car from this party? They say one thing come election time, but their records show that they mean--and will do--another. They were for the Iraq war before they were against it." (That not strictly true, since a majority of the House Democrats voted against war authorization at the ouset. More importantly, Mehlman is actually questioning the American people, the majority of whom were for the war before they were against it.)
Mehlman did tout President Bush at one point, saying that "our nation is safer today" in part because Bush oversaw creation of the Department of Homeland Security. (Actually, the factual record shows that he was against it before he was for it. Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman proposed it first, and the administration resisted the idea for the better part of a year.)
Mehlman's other theme, bound to be heard this year, is that a Democratic majority would imperil the positive economic numbers that are now being posted (the Dow at near all-time highs, the jobless rate lower than five percent). What's striking right now, however, is that Bush is not getting credit in the polls for a good economy. And Pat Buchanan, a populist conservative, suggests the reason why:
"(W)hile the managerial class sees its portfolio growing smartly, the 80 percent of workers who manage no one and nothing is slipping behind. That average Americans are spending every dollar they earn, saving nothing and borrowing to buy consumer goods, more and more of which are imported, suggests we have arrived at the split-level economy. Thus, making the case that the Bush economy is a triumph may be a waste of time, if two-thirds of Americans start off in disbelief. "
So here's the big question: Can Republicans unite behind Bush and win with a fear-the-Dems message? Will that be enough to stoke a big base turnout in November? Or will some GOP incumbents feel compelled to distance themselves from Bush - in acts of stategic redeployment?
Since they arguably can't run on their own agenda - not at a time when they are deeply divided on immigration, federal spending, the Dubai ports deal, and the Medicare drug plan; and deeply worried about President Bush's stay-the-course stance in Iraq - the game plan apparently boils down to this:
Change the subject. Persuade voters not to make the '06 elections a referendum on Bush. Instead, convince them that it's the Democrats who are the real threat to the nation.
As evidenced here in the conservative media, that plan is already in place; some congressional Republicans have reportedly adopted a line that Bush used in a recent meeting - that if the Democrats controlled Congress, they would "raise your taxes and raise the white flag" in Iraq. The GOP message-meisters also plan to warn that if the Democrats take over, the new committee chairmen will be seek to roll back the Bush tax cuts and gum up the government machinery by launching multiple probes of the administration, starting with Iraq.
It's not clear whether that fear message would persuade the independent swing voters, the majority of whom already harbor serious doubts about Bush's overall performance, and particularly his stewardship of the Iraq war (75 percent now believe the U.S. is losing ground in trying to prevent a civil war). And sentiment is strong for substantive troop withdrawals by the end of 2007.
But this message isn't really aimed at the independents - because they're not the dominant voters in midterm elections. The voters that tend to show up are disproportionately the more politically active partisans on the left and right. And the GOP, worried that its base voters will stay home, is mapping a message that will get these folks out of their homes on election day. (Which is also why in the months ahead we'll see a slew of bills on abortion, the gay marriage amendment proposal, the perennial flag-burning ban proposal, among other base-friendly themes.)
Ken Mehlman, the Republican national chairman, also hit the fear-those-Dems theme when he spoke last week at a convention of GOP activists in Memphis. I was there, and his comments wound up in my notes, so this is a perfect time to spring them:
He said that any Democrat who urges "strategic redeployment" of troops from Iraq is really "cutting and running." (Strategic redeployment, which refers to partial phased withdrawals, but only as far a Kuwait and other regional outposts, is a term that was coined last autumn in a policy proposal that was co-authored by Larry Korb, who served as an assistant Defense Secretary under Ronald Reagan.)
Mehlman also hit the flip-flop theme, implying that Democrats shouldn't have a hand in running the war because they lack the resolve: "Would you buy a used car from this party? They say one thing come election time, but their records show that they mean--and will do--another. They were for the Iraq war before they were against it." (That not strictly true, since a majority of the House Democrats voted against war authorization at the ouset. More importantly, Mehlman is actually questioning the American people, the majority of whom were for the war before they were against it.)
Mehlman did tout President Bush at one point, saying that "our nation is safer today" in part because Bush oversaw creation of the Department of Homeland Security. (Actually, the factual record shows that he was against it before he was for it. Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman proposed it first, and the administration resisted the idea for the better part of a year.)
Mehlman's other theme, bound to be heard this year, is that a Democratic majority would imperil the positive economic numbers that are now being posted (the Dow at near all-time highs, the jobless rate lower than five percent). What's striking right now, however, is that Bush is not getting credit in the polls for a good economy. And Pat Buchanan, a populist conservative, suggests the reason why:
"(W)hile the managerial class sees its portfolio growing smartly, the 80 percent of workers who manage no one and nothing is slipping behind. That average Americans are spending every dollar they earn, saving nothing and borrowing to buy consumer goods, more and more of which are imported, suggests we have arrived at the split-level economy. Thus, making the case that the Bush economy is a triumph may be a waste of time, if two-thirds of Americans start off in disbelief. "
So here's the big question: Can Republicans unite behind Bush and win with a fear-the-Dems message? Will that be enough to stoke a big base turnout in November? Or will some GOP incumbents feel compelled to distance themselves from Bush - in acts of stategic redeployment?
Sunday, March 19, 2006
Happy (!?!) anniversary
I wrote a print column today about the Democrats signing up Iraq war vets to run for Congress this year. The jury is still out on whether the "fighting Dems" can succeed, particularly since most of them are challenging incumbents. But let us paint for a moment on the larger canvas:
As the war in Iraq enters its fourth year, the public mood is so sour that even Republicans are starting to believe that their congressional majorities, particularly in the House, might be in serious jeopardy in the November '06 elections. One new poll released today reports that only 29 percent of Americans support President Bush's handling of Iraq; another, released a few days ago, reports that 66 percent believe the U.S. is losing ground in preventing a civil war in Iraq. And before Bush defenders start complaining that all these polls are "biased" or creatures of the "MSM," I'll also point out that, in the latest Fox News poll, only 34 percent of Americans are optimistic that Iraq will ever have a "free, stable government."
And while checking out the Sunday shows, it's not hard to see why the domestic mood is so downbeat. Anyone hoping for straight-shooting candor was quickly disappointed.
Exhibit A: Dick Cheney. No surprise there. On CBS, he was asked to revisit his 2005 contention that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes" and his prewar contention that U.S. troops would be "greeted as liberators." He replied that statements such as his "were basically accurate and reflect reality."
Exhibit B: Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Casey is a military man, not a political leader, so he probably deserves a little slack. But there was something downright Clintonian about his repeated parsing of words.
At one point, on NBC, he was asked about Bush's May 1, 2003 declaration that "all major combat operations have ended." How does that statement square with what happened the other day, when Operation Swarmer, a joint U.S.-Iraqi assault against insurgents, supposedly the biggest U.S. air assault since 2003?
Casey's answer: "I wouldn't categorize Swarmer as a major combat operation."
Maybe it all depends on what the definition of "major" is. Swarmer was staged with American helicopters, planning, logistics, artillery, and medical evacuation teams, and today is Day Four of the operation. But since only 80 people have been reportedly arrested, and 20 of them released, Casey now says "it got a little more hype than it deserved." He omitted the fact that the hype was stoked by the military briefers in the first place.
And later in the NBC interview, Casey was asked about a remark he made last November, when he said Iraq would not be stabilized without "several more years of a major American presence." His answer: "It depends on how you define 'major American presence.'"
Casey didn't parse on one key point, however. He was asked whether he agreed with a weekend statement by ex-Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi, who declared that "we are in civil war...we are in a terrible civil conflict now."
Casey replied, "I don't think he's correct."
How ironic. On October 1, 2004, Allawi was being lauded as "a brave, brave man," whose "credibility" was not open to being "questioned." In fact, it was wrong to criticize "the brave leader of Iraq." The speaker was President Bush.
As the war in Iraq enters its fourth year, the public mood is so sour that even Republicans are starting to believe that their congressional majorities, particularly in the House, might be in serious jeopardy in the November '06 elections. One new poll released today reports that only 29 percent of Americans support President Bush's handling of Iraq; another, released a few days ago, reports that 66 percent believe the U.S. is losing ground in preventing a civil war in Iraq. And before Bush defenders start complaining that all these polls are "biased" or creatures of the "MSM," I'll also point out that, in the latest Fox News poll, only 34 percent of Americans are optimistic that Iraq will ever have a "free, stable government."
And while checking out the Sunday shows, it's not hard to see why the domestic mood is so downbeat. Anyone hoping for straight-shooting candor was quickly disappointed.
Exhibit A: Dick Cheney. No surprise there. On CBS, he was asked to revisit his 2005 contention that the Iraqi insurgency was in its "last throes" and his prewar contention that U.S. troops would be "greeted as liberators." He replied that statements such as his "were basically accurate and reflect reality."
Exhibit B: Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Casey is a military man, not a political leader, so he probably deserves a little slack. But there was something downright Clintonian about his repeated parsing of words.
At one point, on NBC, he was asked about Bush's May 1, 2003 declaration that "all major combat operations have ended." How does that statement square with what happened the other day, when Operation Swarmer, a joint U.S.-Iraqi assault against insurgents, supposedly the biggest U.S. air assault since 2003?
Casey's answer: "I wouldn't categorize Swarmer as a major combat operation."
Maybe it all depends on what the definition of "major" is. Swarmer was staged with American helicopters, planning, logistics, artillery, and medical evacuation teams, and today is Day Four of the operation. But since only 80 people have been reportedly arrested, and 20 of them released, Casey now says "it got a little more hype than it deserved." He omitted the fact that the hype was stoked by the military briefers in the first place.
And later in the NBC interview, Casey was asked about a remark he made last November, when he said Iraq would not be stabilized without "several more years of a major American presence." His answer: "It depends on how you define 'major American presence.'"
Casey didn't parse on one key point, however. He was asked whether he agreed with a weekend statement by ex-Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi, who declared that "we are in civil war...we are in a terrible civil conflict now."
Casey replied, "I don't think he's correct."
How ironic. On October 1, 2004, Allawi was being lauded as "a brave, brave man," whose "credibility" was not open to being "questioned." In fact, it was wrong to criticize "the brave leader of Iraq." The speaker was President Bush.
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Networking news
I want to thank Chris Cillizza, the Washington Post staffer who tracks politics in his online column "The Fix," for citing me as one of his favorite reporter-bloggers. As you can see here, Chris singled out five blogs written by mainstream political reporters, and what's most interesting is that four of those blogs are authored by teams of people who share the workload. On Chris' list, yours truly is the only one going it alone.
So if I post something really lousy in the future, allow me to chalk it up right now to fatigue.
So if I post something really lousy in the future, allow me to chalk it up right now to fatigue.
It's Jack's world, we just live in it
Caution: If you are not hooked on the TV show "24," and if you don't greet each of life's dilemmas with the thought, "What would Jack Bauer do?," then this post may not be of interest. However (as Jack might say), THERE'S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, but all viewers of "24" are required to read to the very end, NOW! RIGHT NOW!
As someone who believes that American politics and American popular culture are inextricably linked, I can't help but wonder about the apparent sea change in the subliminal ideological thematics of "24" this season.
As any fan of the show well knows, until recently the Fox entertainment division seemed intent on mirroring the rightward tilt of Fox News, by depicting our hero Jack as a one-man torture crew who viewed the Geneva Convention as a pact for wimps; last season, he even juiced his lover's estranged husband, using wires ripped from a lamp. (The guy turned out to be innocent, but, naturally, Jack's lover has forgiven him.) I also recall, from last season, that a thoroughly meddlesome human-rights attorney from an Amnesty International-type group showed up at an inopportune moment to argue for the rights of suspected terrorists (who apparently had him on speed dial). Then there was the Arab family next door that really did turn out to be a terrorist cell, thus giving the lie to all that liberal politically-correct concern about racial profiling.
It was no wonder that veteran conservative activist, and former presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan could write so glowlingly about "24," chortling a few months ago that Jack's liberties with torture are mirrored by President Bush's priorites in the war on terror:
"The left may be right on the law (governing torture), but the people seem to be standing by Bush. Believing the character of this war, where the enemy's preferred tactic is to slaughter civilians with terror bombings, people seem to agree that we have to follow Jack Bauer's rules, not ACLU rules...one wonders what liberal Democrats of the ACLU variety would do to a real-life Jack Bauer?"
But hang on -- something new seems to be happening this year.
The entire plot appears to hinge on a neoconservative plot gone awry. A cabal of super-patriots inside the administration - embodied by White House aide Walt Cummings, who hung himself (or so we think) a few "hours" ago - hatched a conspiracy to extend American hegemony into central Asia. The idea was to manufacture an actual terrorist incident, and sacrifice Chechen rebels in the bargain, in order to give the U.S. a pretext to step in, put freedom on the march, and seize the region's oil for the next generation. The whole thing backfired, and now the Chechens (we think they are Chechens, there's always the possibility of a new Mr. Big) are retaliating by aiming their nerve gas at American targets.
In other words, this plot is about the dangers of misplaced U.S. patriotic overzealousness. And the idea of using pretexts to seize a region's oil...that's an accusation about the Bush administration that you can find on any placard at an antiwar rally.
But there's more: now we have a new character, a vice president who wants to boss around the president and circumvent the Congress at the same time. The veep wants to unilaterally declare martial law in Los Angeles, and he argues forcefully - to the point where the new conscience of America, the First Lady (who is off her meds but thinking clearly), has to remind her husband that he should not allow himself to be bossed around by the number two guy.
No need to put a shotgun in this veep's hands. We get the reference.
So I am just wondering. Is "24" mirroring the new political zeitgeist - tilting a bit leftward at a time when Bush and Cheney are down, after years of tilting rightward when Bush and Cheney were up? The only clue comes from the executive producer, Joel Surnow, who recently told the Washington Times that the show has both liberal and conservative writers. I suspect that the long-suffering camp is now in ascendence. Maybe it's just all about expanding the audience, beyond what the WashTimes calls its "conservative cult following." Whatever the shift in theme, it would appear that the new season of "24" brings a new wrinkle to the Fox notion of being "fair and balanced."
As someone who believes that American politics and American popular culture are inextricably linked, I can't help but wonder about the apparent sea change in the subliminal ideological thematics of "24" this season.
As any fan of the show well knows, until recently the Fox entertainment division seemed intent on mirroring the rightward tilt of Fox News, by depicting our hero Jack as a one-man torture crew who viewed the Geneva Convention as a pact for wimps; last season, he even juiced his lover's estranged husband, using wires ripped from a lamp. (The guy turned out to be innocent, but, naturally, Jack's lover has forgiven him.) I also recall, from last season, that a thoroughly meddlesome human-rights attorney from an Amnesty International-type group showed up at an inopportune moment to argue for the rights of suspected terrorists (who apparently had him on speed dial). Then there was the Arab family next door that really did turn out to be a terrorist cell, thus giving the lie to all that liberal politically-correct concern about racial profiling.
It was no wonder that veteran conservative activist, and former presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan could write so glowlingly about "24," chortling a few months ago that Jack's liberties with torture are mirrored by President Bush's priorites in the war on terror:
"The left may be right on the law (governing torture), but the people seem to be standing by Bush. Believing the character of this war, where the enemy's preferred tactic is to slaughter civilians with terror bombings, people seem to agree that we have to follow Jack Bauer's rules, not ACLU rules...one wonders what liberal Democrats of the ACLU variety would do to a real-life Jack Bauer?"
But hang on -- something new seems to be happening this year.
The entire plot appears to hinge on a neoconservative plot gone awry. A cabal of super-patriots inside the administration - embodied by White House aide Walt Cummings, who hung himself (or so we think) a few "hours" ago - hatched a conspiracy to extend American hegemony into central Asia. The idea was to manufacture an actual terrorist incident, and sacrifice Chechen rebels in the bargain, in order to give the U.S. a pretext to step in, put freedom on the march, and seize the region's oil for the next generation. The whole thing backfired, and now the Chechens (we think they are Chechens, there's always the possibility of a new Mr. Big) are retaliating by aiming their nerve gas at American targets.
In other words, this plot is about the dangers of misplaced U.S. patriotic overzealousness. And the idea of using pretexts to seize a region's oil...that's an accusation about the Bush administration that you can find on any placard at an antiwar rally.
But there's more: now we have a new character, a vice president who wants to boss around the president and circumvent the Congress at the same time. The veep wants to unilaterally declare martial law in Los Angeles, and he argues forcefully - to the point where the new conscience of America, the First Lady (who is off her meds but thinking clearly), has to remind her husband that he should not allow himself to be bossed around by the number two guy.
No need to put a shotgun in this veep's hands. We get the reference.
So I am just wondering. Is "24" mirroring the new political zeitgeist - tilting a bit leftward at a time when Bush and Cheney are down, after years of tilting rightward when Bush and Cheney were up? The only clue comes from the executive producer, Joel Surnow, who recently told the Washington Times that the show has both liberal and conservative writers. I suspect that the long-suffering camp is now in ascendence. Maybe it's just all about expanding the audience, beyond what the WashTimes calls its "conservative cult following." Whatever the shift in theme, it would appear that the new season of "24" brings a new wrinkle to the Fox notion of being "fair and balanced."
Friday, March 17, 2006
The modified limited hangout route
For those of you who are not as old as I am (my congratulations), the title of this post is a phrase uttered back in the '70s, during the Watergate scandal. A Nixon aide coined it as a synonym for a partial mea culpa. It sprang to mind this morning when I read David Frum's latest observations of his old boss, President Bush.
Ex-White House speechwriter Frum wrote a book a few years ago extolling Bush as "The Right Man" for the era. But now he's wrestling with that judgement. He does take note of what he calls "doubts and disappointments in (Bush's) performance," and says that performance has demontrated "the president's sometimes over-hasty decision-making, his disinclination to ask sufficiently probing questions, his aversion to detail, the overcentralization of decision-making, his often surprisingly poor personnel decisions, his unwillingness or inability to explain himself as fully and convincingly as a president ought."
But, for Frum, there's still a silver lining: "we need to remember how many of the problems of today originate in the drift and weakness of the 1990s."
Let's see...who was president during the '90s...of course! Whatever Bush's failings might be, in then end, it's all Bill Clinton's fault.
But lest anyone think that I am a reflexive Clinton defender, allow me to dispel the notion. It's not my job to build up or knock down Hillary Clinton's '08 presidential candidacy, because a journalist's first priority is to follow the facts where they go. The fact is that many Democrats are privately nervous that Hillary's past baggage might be too heavy for a future White House bid -- and this story in Editor & Publisher, a journalism magazine, demonstrates the point.
H0llywood gumshoe Anthony Pellicano, fresh from prison, has cut quite a swath in Tinseltown's seamy underside, as reported here and elsewhere. But, as E&P points out, the major media have said virtually nothing about Pellicano's long ties to the Clintons, in whose employ he cleaned up various "bimbo eruptions" during the '90s, including spreading false information about Gennifer Flowers. As E&P says, "Did the current front-running Democratic Presidential contender Hillary Clinton hire or direct any or all of Anthony Pellicano’s activities in her particular known area of interest? You have to totally lack journalistic curiosity or be brain dead to miss an opportunity like this."
Bimbo eruptions...the '90s...maybe this is what Frum meant by "drift and weakness."
Ex-White House speechwriter Frum wrote a book a few years ago extolling Bush as "The Right Man" for the era. But now he's wrestling with that judgement. He does take note of what he calls "doubts and disappointments in (Bush's) performance," and says that performance has demontrated "the president's sometimes over-hasty decision-making, his disinclination to ask sufficiently probing questions, his aversion to detail, the overcentralization of decision-making, his often surprisingly poor personnel decisions, his unwillingness or inability to explain himself as fully and convincingly as a president ought."
But, for Frum, there's still a silver lining: "we need to remember how many of the problems of today originate in the drift and weakness of the 1990s."
Let's see...who was president during the '90s...of course! Whatever Bush's failings might be, in then end, it's all Bill Clinton's fault.
But lest anyone think that I am a reflexive Clinton defender, allow me to dispel the notion. It's not my job to build up or knock down Hillary Clinton's '08 presidential candidacy, because a journalist's first priority is to follow the facts where they go. The fact is that many Democrats are privately nervous that Hillary's past baggage might be too heavy for a future White House bid -- and this story in Editor & Publisher, a journalism magazine, demonstrates the point.
H0llywood gumshoe Anthony Pellicano, fresh from prison, has cut quite a swath in Tinseltown's seamy underside, as reported here and elsewhere. But, as E&P points out, the major media have said virtually nothing about Pellicano's long ties to the Clintons, in whose employ he cleaned up various "bimbo eruptions" during the '90s, including spreading false information about Gennifer Flowers. As E&P says, "Did the current front-running Democratic Presidential contender Hillary Clinton hire or direct any or all of Anthony Pellicano’s activities in her particular known area of interest? You have to totally lack journalistic curiosity or be brain dead to miss an opportunity like this."
Bimbo eruptions...the '90s...maybe this is what Frum meant by "drift and weakness."
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Unsullied by experience
This is no big surprise, coming from the leadership team that is averse to admitting error:
The Bush administration said today that the 2002 Bush Doctrine – which argued for the right to initiate wars against imminent foreign threats - is alive and well in 2006, and unsullied by the ongoing furor over whether Saddam Hussein was truly an imminent foreign threat.
As articulated in the new National Security Strategy (a government document required by law and updated every few years), the Bush Doctrine essentially "remains the same," despite the fact that the Iraq experience has arguably demonstrated the pitfalls of initiating war on the basis of flawed WMD intelligence. As chief weapons inspector David Kay admitted two years ago, "we were all wrong."
Some of the fine print in the new document appears less assertive than in the previous document, which was unveiled in September 2002. The old document said that America reserves the right to launch hostilities against "emerging threats before they are fully formed. " The new document says that if America is facing a potentially "devastating" WMD attack, "we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize."
It seems to me that the new wording establishes a stricter rationale for a preventive attack; in practice, however, these could be distinctions without a difference.
Moreover, the administration does not believe that its failed prewar WMD claims have undercut the Bush Doctrine. The new report does acknowledge that those prewar claims were a tad off base; nevertheless, it argues that we can never be 100 percent certain about the information that is used to justify a preventive war.
As the new report puts it, "there will always be some uncertainty about the status of hidden programs, since proliferators are often brutal regimes that go to great lengths to conceal their activities."
Here's the problem with that argument, as it applies to Iraq: it's highly misleading.
Paul Pillar, who until last year coordinated Middle East intelligence for the CIA, writes in a recent Foreign Affairs article that the Bush administration decided ahead of time that it wanted to invade Iraq, and that "intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made."
Secondly, even though the new Bush Doctrine report says that brutal regimes will always seek to hide their WMD activities, it doesn't mention what actually happened in the case of Hussein. As another new Foreign Affairs article points out - it's authored by three military analysts for the U.S. Joint Forces Command- Hussein actually went to great lengths to conceal the fact that he didn't have WMDs anymore, because admitting he was weapon-free would have looked like a sign of weakness. In the author's words, Hussein "found it impossible to abandon the illusion of having WMD, especially since it played so well in the Arab world."
It's conceivable that the Bush war planners didn't know that back in 2002, when they were assessing the Hussein threat. But it's striking that the updated Bush Doctrine does not acknowledge what Hussein actually did, nor acknowledge the possibility that brutal regimes might be bluffing rather than concealing.
By the way, here's a little light reading, an article contradicting the administration's view that the doctrine lives on. It argues that there's intramural GOP skirmishing over the doctrine's future. I saw no skirmishing last weekend when GOP bigwigs met in Memphis, but that means nothing. Substantive foreign policy issues are generally the province of the wonks who work behind the scenes; most Republicans at this point are standing with Bush on Iraq; and one doubts that "Amend the Bush doctrine!" would be a catchy political slogan on the stump.
The Bush administration said today that the 2002 Bush Doctrine – which argued for the right to initiate wars against imminent foreign threats - is alive and well in 2006, and unsullied by the ongoing furor over whether Saddam Hussein was truly an imminent foreign threat.
As articulated in the new National Security Strategy (a government document required by law and updated every few years), the Bush Doctrine essentially "remains the same," despite the fact that the Iraq experience has arguably demonstrated the pitfalls of initiating war on the basis of flawed WMD intelligence. As chief weapons inspector David Kay admitted two years ago, "we were all wrong."
Some of the fine print in the new document appears less assertive than in the previous document, which was unveiled in September 2002. The old document said that America reserves the right to launch hostilities against "emerging threats before they are fully formed. " The new document says that if America is facing a potentially "devastating" WMD attack, "we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize."
It seems to me that the new wording establishes a stricter rationale for a preventive attack; in practice, however, these could be distinctions without a difference.
Moreover, the administration does not believe that its failed prewar WMD claims have undercut the Bush Doctrine. The new report does acknowledge that those prewar claims were a tad off base; nevertheless, it argues that we can never be 100 percent certain about the information that is used to justify a preventive war.
As the new report puts it, "there will always be some uncertainty about the status of hidden programs, since proliferators are often brutal regimes that go to great lengths to conceal their activities."
Here's the problem with that argument, as it applies to Iraq: it's highly misleading.
Paul Pillar, who until last year coordinated Middle East intelligence for the CIA, writes in a recent Foreign Affairs article that the Bush administration decided ahead of time that it wanted to invade Iraq, and that "intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made."
Secondly, even though the new Bush Doctrine report says that brutal regimes will always seek to hide their WMD activities, it doesn't mention what actually happened in the case of Hussein. As another new Foreign Affairs article points out - it's authored by three military analysts for the U.S. Joint Forces Command- Hussein actually went to great lengths to conceal the fact that he didn't have WMDs anymore, because admitting he was weapon-free would have looked like a sign of weakness. In the author's words, Hussein "found it impossible to abandon the illusion of having WMD, especially since it played so well in the Arab world."
It's conceivable that the Bush war planners didn't know that back in 2002, when they were assessing the Hussein threat. But it's striking that the updated Bush Doctrine does not acknowledge what Hussein actually did, nor acknowledge the possibility that brutal regimes might be bluffing rather than concealing.
By the way, here's a little light reading, an article contradicting the administration's view that the doctrine lives on. It argues that there's intramural GOP skirmishing over the doctrine's future. I saw no skirmishing last weekend when GOP bigwigs met in Memphis, but that means nothing. Substantive foreign policy issues are generally the province of the wonks who work behind the scenes; most Republicans at this point are standing with Bush on Iraq; and one doubts that "Amend the Bush doctrine!" would be a catchy political slogan on the stump.
Latest dispatch from inside the Bush bubble
At the White House yesterday, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan was asked whether the Bush administration might consider it wise, at this point, to shake up the team a bit and bring in some new blood -- in other words, to do the kind of thing that presidents generally do, especially when they are winning plaudits from only 33 percent of the American people (see the latest Pew poll, which I linked yesterday).
McClellan took great umbrage at that such an impertinent suggestion: " There's a perception out there on the part of the American people that Washington tends to get caught up in a lot of this parlor game, and they tend to get caught up in all this babble, process-oriented stuff. I think the American people want us to stay focused on their priorities."
Well, the source of that impertinent suggestion, the source of that "babble," was none other than Norm Coleman, the Republican senator from Minnesota, who had been personally recruited by President Bush to run for the Senate seat in 2002. Coleman had told the Associated Press yesterday that the White House had a political "tin ear," and that a shakeup might be wise.
But still no changes are contemplated, even though one-time Bush titans continue to get dissed by people who normally defend the administration. Witness David Brooks, the conservative commentator, who this morning described Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld thusly: "a formerly intimidating figure who now just seems pathetic."
Rumsfeld, by the way, told Congress the other day that his war-gamers are now busy scenarioizing about the theoretical paremeters of a possibly future civil war in Iraq -- a war that does not now exist, he quickly added, because nothing is happening that mirrors the severity of the American civil war.
Just wondering: since Rumsfeld isn't going anywhere, will the American experience be his sole frame of reference for Iraq?
McClellan took great umbrage at that such an impertinent suggestion: " There's a perception out there on the part of the American people that Washington tends to get caught up in a lot of this parlor game, and they tend to get caught up in all this babble, process-oriented stuff. I think the American people want us to stay focused on their priorities."
Well, the source of that impertinent suggestion, the source of that "babble," was none other than Norm Coleman, the Republican senator from Minnesota, who had been personally recruited by President Bush to run for the Senate seat in 2002. Coleman had told the Associated Press yesterday that the White House had a political "tin ear," and that a shakeup might be wise.
But still no changes are contemplated, even though one-time Bush titans continue to get dissed by people who normally defend the administration. Witness David Brooks, the conservative commentator, who this morning described Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld thusly: "a formerly intimidating figure who now just seems pathetic."
Rumsfeld, by the way, told Congress the other day that his war-gamers are now busy scenarioizing about the theoretical paremeters of a possibly future civil war in Iraq -- a war that does not now exist, he quickly added, because nothing is happening that mirrors the severity of the American civil war.
Just wondering: since Rumsfeld isn't going anywhere, will the American experience be his sole frame of reference for Iraq?
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
The donkey kicks itself again
Watching the Democrats fight amongst themselves during the past few days, I am reminded of a line uttered by Michael Corleone in the third Godfather movie: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
Just when the Democrats thought they were out in the clear, hammering away at an increasingly unpopular president and his increasingly anxious Republican party, now comes an incident that has pulled them back to their more familiar turf, where disunity reigns.
Their senator from Wisconsin, antiwar liberal Russ Feingold, is pitching a bill to censure President Bush for his domestic spying plan - and his Senate Democratic colleagues have responded by running so far from Feingold that you'd swear had bird flu.
They're all saying the same thing - "I haven't read the bill" - which is Washingtonese for "Get this guy and his wacko ideas away from me, before the Republicans beat us up."
Then there are the grassroots liberals, who love what Feingold is doing and who basically think that the party's Washington leaders are risk-averse wimps with no instinct for the jugular. The liberal wing believes that the timing of a censure is perfect, because Americans, as evidenced in the polls, are generally more critical than ever before about Bush's stewardship of Iraq and the war on terror.
As one Daily Kos blogger wrote today, "The atmosphere is ripe for accountability" -- while lamenting the Democratic establishment's response to the censure idea: "It's like we're watching the Boston Tea Party, with Feingold struggling to toss case after case into the water, while Democrats calmly watch from afar as they sip on their Lipton." Another liberal analyst, Matt Yglesias at the American Prospect, said: "I don't really see why Democrats would feel the need to be walking on eggshells here. An opposition party, faced with an incumbent who's sunk so low, could use a little swagger in their step."
Indeed, the new non-partisan Pew poll released today, reports that only 33 percent of Americans are pleased with Bush's performance (the lowest Pew rating of his entire presidency) -- and he's supported by only 26 percent of independents, a stat that puts him in Dick Nixon territory. It's true that Bush has roughly half the country with him on the domestic spying program, but there are still strong concerns about whether it's legal. So, says the Feingold camp, why not take a stand on principle? (It's not purely a matter of principle, actually. Feingold is interested in running for president, and the censure move is one way to warm the hearts of the antiwar liberals who dominate the early Democratic primaries. On the other hand, every move made by anybody in Washington is a mix of belief and self-interest.)
The problem, however (at least as Feingold's critics see it), is that politics is also about timing and momentum. The Democrats had the momentum last week and over the weekend, thanks to Bush's myriad woes and the worries of his followers. Feingold broke the flow and allowed the Republicans to get off the mat and crank up the old arguments about Democrats playing fast and loose with national security. Moderate Democratic blogger Joe Gandelman says we should "look at the chronology of where the White House was, what polls were showing, how Republicans were scrambling to distance themselves from the White House, amid signs that the GOP base was starting to sour on Bush, and the not-good-news-for-Bush topics of news cycles. Feingold's proposal shifted all of that..."
True, some of the Republicans' retaliatory arguments are not accurate; Bush spokesman Scott McClellan, referring to the censure proposal on Monday, said "if Democrats want to argue that we shouldn't be listening to al Qaeda communications, it's their right" -- yet not a single Democrat is on record arguing any such thing.
But clearly the Democratic leaders don't want to give the GOP any opportunity to shift the focus away from Bush and onto them. The Feingold bill has scrambled the focus. Now the Democrats can either stand with Feingold, and be forced spend valuable time defending themselves (however effectively) - or they can stay away from him, and wind up incurring fresh wrath from the liberal netroots.
There is a ray of hope here for Democrats, though. The ongoing GOP strategy is to paint the Democrats as lefty extremists, and they're trying to do it again, by linking everyone to Feingold. By doing that, the GOP then seeks to size the center and paint itself as the party of the American mainstream. But it's the independent voters who define the mainstream, and since, as Pew reports, only 26 percent are happy with Bush, that ship may have already sailed.
Just when the Democrats thought they were out in the clear, hammering away at an increasingly unpopular president and his increasingly anxious Republican party, now comes an incident that has pulled them back to their more familiar turf, where disunity reigns.
Their senator from Wisconsin, antiwar liberal Russ Feingold, is pitching a bill to censure President Bush for his domestic spying plan - and his Senate Democratic colleagues have responded by running so far from Feingold that you'd swear had bird flu.
They're all saying the same thing - "I haven't read the bill" - which is Washingtonese for "Get this guy and his wacko ideas away from me, before the Republicans beat us up."
Then there are the grassroots liberals, who love what Feingold is doing and who basically think that the party's Washington leaders are risk-averse wimps with no instinct for the jugular. The liberal wing believes that the timing of a censure is perfect, because Americans, as evidenced in the polls, are generally more critical than ever before about Bush's stewardship of Iraq and the war on terror.
As one Daily Kos blogger wrote today, "The atmosphere is ripe for accountability" -- while lamenting the Democratic establishment's response to the censure idea: "It's like we're watching the Boston Tea Party, with Feingold struggling to toss case after case into the water, while Democrats calmly watch from afar as they sip on their Lipton." Another liberal analyst, Matt Yglesias at the American Prospect, said: "I don't really see why Democrats would feel the need to be walking on eggshells here. An opposition party, faced with an incumbent who's sunk so low, could use a little swagger in their step."
Indeed, the new non-partisan Pew poll released today, reports that only 33 percent of Americans are pleased with Bush's performance (the lowest Pew rating of his entire presidency) -- and he's supported by only 26 percent of independents, a stat that puts him in Dick Nixon territory. It's true that Bush has roughly half the country with him on the domestic spying program, but there are still strong concerns about whether it's legal. So, says the Feingold camp, why not take a stand on principle? (It's not purely a matter of principle, actually. Feingold is interested in running for president, and the censure move is one way to warm the hearts of the antiwar liberals who dominate the early Democratic primaries. On the other hand, every move made by anybody in Washington is a mix of belief and self-interest.)
The problem, however (at least as Feingold's critics see it), is that politics is also about timing and momentum. The Democrats had the momentum last week and over the weekend, thanks to Bush's myriad woes and the worries of his followers. Feingold broke the flow and allowed the Republicans to get off the mat and crank up the old arguments about Democrats playing fast and loose with national security. Moderate Democratic blogger Joe Gandelman says we should "look at the chronology of where the White House was, what polls were showing, how Republicans were scrambling to distance themselves from the White House, amid signs that the GOP base was starting to sour on Bush, and the not-good-news-for-Bush topics of news cycles. Feingold's proposal shifted all of that..."
True, some of the Republicans' retaliatory arguments are not accurate; Bush spokesman Scott McClellan, referring to the censure proposal on Monday, said "if Democrats want to argue that we shouldn't be listening to al Qaeda communications, it's their right" -- yet not a single Democrat is on record arguing any such thing.
But clearly the Democratic leaders don't want to give the GOP any opportunity to shift the focus away from Bush and onto them. The Feingold bill has scrambled the focus. Now the Democrats can either stand with Feingold, and be forced spend valuable time defending themselves (however effectively) - or they can stay away from him, and wind up incurring fresh wrath from the liberal netroots.
There is a ray of hope here for Democrats, though. The ongoing GOP strategy is to paint the Democrats as lefty extremists, and they're trying to do it again, by linking everyone to Feingold. By doing that, the GOP then seeks to size the center and paint itself as the party of the American mainstream. But it's the independent voters who define the mainstream, and since, as Pew reports, only 26 percent are happy with Bush, that ship may have already sailed.
Heckuva job, Claudie
The case of Claude Allen, the former Bush domestic policy advisor who has been arrested and charged with committing fraud at least 25 times at a Target store, is basically a personal tragedy with no political resonance. Just because a guy who helped craft the State of the Union speech allegedly spent his spare time conning money out of a retail chain, that shouldn't be held against President Bush, or cited as fresh evidence of administration incompetence.
But hang on a second. The Claude Allen affair has thrown a fresh spotlight on the personnel decisions of the administration, particularly the documented ways that it frequently tries to insert its people into critical jobs for which they are not qualified.
Katrina, of course, exposed the fact that Michael Brown's qualifications to helm FEMA consisted of his previous tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association. Last month, we also had the case of George Deutsch, the NASA official who was preventing the agency's top scientists from publicly discussing global warming; it turned out that 24-year-old Deutsch's qualifications consisted of working hard on Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, and graduating from Texas A & M (wait, no, it turns out that he never graduated, despite what his resume said).
This brings us to Claude Allen.
Tracing the arc of success that brought him to the West Wing, we find this little nugget: Bush in 2003 tried to make Allen a federal judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Guess how many times Allen, as an attorney, had acted as lead counsel in a case? The answer: One time. And guess how many years he had practiced as an attorney? Seven and a half -- not even close to what the American Bar Association considers to be the minimum number of years (12) for a qualified judicial nominee. On the other hand, Allen was a born-again Christian who favored a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and who had worked as a press secretary to Senator Jesse Helms and, in that capacity, had once charged a Helms opponent as being aligned with "the queers."
The Democrats ultimately scuttled the appeals court nomination, on the grounds that he wasn't qualified.
But hang on a second. The Claude Allen affair has thrown a fresh spotlight on the personnel decisions of the administration, particularly the documented ways that it frequently tries to insert its people into critical jobs for which they are not qualified.
Katrina, of course, exposed the fact that Michael Brown's qualifications to helm FEMA consisted of his previous tenure at the International Arabian Horse Association. Last month, we also had the case of George Deutsch, the NASA official who was preventing the agency's top scientists from publicly discussing global warming; it turned out that 24-year-old Deutsch's qualifications consisted of working hard on Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, and graduating from Texas A & M (wait, no, it turns out that he never graduated, despite what his resume said).
This brings us to Claude Allen.
Tracing the arc of success that brought him to the West Wing, we find this little nugget: Bush in 2003 tried to make Allen a federal judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Guess how many times Allen, as an attorney, had acted as lead counsel in a case? The answer: One time. And guess how many years he had practiced as an attorney? Seven and a half -- not even close to what the American Bar Association considers to be the minimum number of years (12) for a qualified judicial nominee. On the other hand, Allen was a born-again Christian who favored a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, and who had worked as a press secretary to Senator Jesse Helms and, in that capacity, had once charged a Helms opponent as being aligned with "the queers."
The Democrats ultimately scuttled the appeals court nomination, on the grounds that he wasn't qualified.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Quote of the day
Thank you, Jerry Falwell, for clearing that up:
"Earlier today, reports began circulating across the globe that I have recently stated that Jews can go to heaven without being converted to Jesus Christ. This is categorically untrue."
"Earlier today, reports began circulating across the globe that I have recently stated that Jews can go to heaven without being converted to Jesus Christ. This is categorically untrue."
The delusions of Deanworld
While immersed in Republican politics this past weekend, I missed another fascinating Howard Dean interview, which aired Sunday on CNN. At one point, the Democratic party chairman said this: "We are much more united than we appear in the newspapers. And I think -- as often happens -- small differences of opinion get blown up as newspaper articles."
This is the Dean equivalent of President Bush's claim that freedom is on the march in Iraq; in other words, it bears little resemblance to reality.
For instance:
1. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is on record supporting troop withdrawals from Iraq, yet her own top deputy, Stenny Hoyer, is on record opposing troop withdrawals from Iraq. I guess, under the Dean definition, that this qualifies as a "small" difference of opinion.
2. One of the top Democratic operatives, Harold Ickes, has launched his own national grassroots project - a computerized data base of rank and file Democrats nationwide - because he doesn't think that Dean's Democratic National Committee can pull it off. And he's in the process of raising $11 million or more to defy the DNC. As the Washington Post noted, in its report last week on this ambitious project, "Ickes and others involved in the effort acknowledge that their activities are in part a vote of no confidence" in the Dean operation. Asked about this by CNN, Dean replied, "I would disagree with Harold." But under the Dean definition, this too is a "small" difference of opinion.
3. The news today is that a rich antiwar liberal Democrat, cable television entrepeneur Ned Lamont, will challenge Democratic senator Joe Lieberman in a Connecticut primary this summer. Lamont will get fundraising help from the liberal netroots, which wants to purge the party of politicians it deems to be "Republican lite." The verdict on one prominent liberal blog yesterday: Lieberman is "a cruel, callow, weak little man. He needs to go." Lamont's main beef: Lieberman's support for the war in Iraq. Yesterday he called Lieberman "George Bush's favorite Democrat." He also said that, with the war issue front and center, "We're going to fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party."
I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war, and how it divided Democrats into hawk and dove camps. But under the Dean definition, this too is a "small" difference of opinion.
4. Check out the various Democratic reactions to antiwar Senator Russ Feingold's attempt yesterday to officially censure President Bush over the domestic spying program (Feingold: "The president has violated the law, and Congress must respond"). The liberal netroots community thinks the censure is a great idea, but the entire Washington Democratic establishment (which is loathed by the netroots) thinks that censure is a bad idea, because it might prompt moderate swing voters to think that the Democrats are acting like Bush-bashing extremists.
As Marshall Wittmann, an analyst who works at a centrist Democratic think tank, said on his blog today about the Feingold censure move, "At a time when the Democrats had seized a national security issue (the ports deal), a donkey came to the elephant's rescue with a dramatic over-reach....When will the lefties learn?"
Feingold fired back this afternoon with a swipe at all the fellow Democrats who left him high and dry: "I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide."
Under the Dean definition, this too is just another of those "small" differences of opinion.
This is the Dean equivalent of President Bush's claim that freedom is on the march in Iraq; in other words, it bears little resemblance to reality.
For instance:
1. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is on record supporting troop withdrawals from Iraq, yet her own top deputy, Stenny Hoyer, is on record opposing troop withdrawals from Iraq. I guess, under the Dean definition, that this qualifies as a "small" difference of opinion.
2. One of the top Democratic operatives, Harold Ickes, has launched his own national grassroots project - a computerized data base of rank and file Democrats nationwide - because he doesn't think that Dean's Democratic National Committee can pull it off. And he's in the process of raising $11 million or more to defy the DNC. As the Washington Post noted, in its report last week on this ambitious project, "Ickes and others involved in the effort acknowledge that their activities are in part a vote of no confidence" in the Dean operation. Asked about this by CNN, Dean replied, "I would disagree with Harold." But under the Dean definition, this too is a "small" difference of opinion.
3. The news today is that a rich antiwar liberal Democrat, cable television entrepeneur Ned Lamont, will challenge Democratic senator Joe Lieberman in a Connecticut primary this summer. Lamont will get fundraising help from the liberal netroots, which wants to purge the party of politicians it deems to be "Republican lite." The verdict on one prominent liberal blog yesterday: Lieberman is "a cruel, callow, weak little man. He needs to go." Lamont's main beef: Lieberman's support for the war in Iraq. Yesterday he called Lieberman "George Bush's favorite Democrat." He also said that, with the war issue front and center, "We're going to fight for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party."
I am old enough to remember the Vietnam war, and how it divided Democrats into hawk and dove camps. But under the Dean definition, this too is a "small" difference of opinion.
4. Check out the various Democratic reactions to antiwar Senator Russ Feingold's attempt yesterday to officially censure President Bush over the domestic spying program (Feingold: "The president has violated the law, and Congress must respond"). The liberal netroots community thinks the censure is a great idea, but the entire Washington Democratic establishment (which is loathed by the netroots) thinks that censure is a bad idea, because it might prompt moderate swing voters to think that the Democrats are acting like Bush-bashing extremists.
As Marshall Wittmann, an analyst who works at a centrist Democratic think tank, said on his blog today about the Feingold censure move, "At a time when the Democrats had seized a national security issue (the ports deal), a donkey came to the elephant's rescue with a dramatic over-reach....When will the lefties learn?"
Feingold fired back this afternoon with a swipe at all the fellow Democrats who left him high and dry: "I’m amazed at Democrats, cowering with this president’s numbers so low. The administration just has to raise the specter of the war and the Democrats run and hide."
Under the Dean definition, this too is just another of those "small" differences of opinion.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Fact versus nostalgia
On the way out of Memphis, I wrote a print column about John McCain and his embrace of old for George W. Bush, a necessary step in McCain's plan to woo the grassroots conservatives who have been hostile to him since the 2000 campaign. It's a bit of a mystery to me why those folks don't like McCain, given his overwhelmingly conservative voting record. Check out Paul Krugman's NYTimes column on that topic today. I'd link it, but he is behind the subscription wall.
Now, onto my other topic of the day:
Move, over Elvis. In Memphis this past weekend, there was another dead person who got the full hero worship treatment. Let's go right to the quotes.
Tennessee Republican party chairman Bob Davis: "Ronald Reagan once said..."
Tennessee congresswoman Marcia Blackburn: "Ronald Reagan was absolutely right..."
Ex-congressman J.C. Watts: "Ronald Reagan, in the decade of the '80s, he said..."
Virginia senator George Allen: "When Ronald Reagan was president..."
Kansas senator Sam Brownback: "I met Ronald Reagan once..."
House speaker Dennis Hastert: "What can you say about Ronald Reagan?"
You get the idea. Reagan seems more alive to these people than the guy who currently sits in the White House. It's not a good sign for the GOP, however, that they are wallowing in so much nostalgia; it means they are uncertain about the future, uncertain about how to close the gap between their convictions and their governing performance.
The problem, however, is that they spent three days worshipping the Reagan myth, not the Reagan record. They lauded Reagan as a small-government tax cutter, but there was nary a word about factual reality: Federal spending rose by 25 percent during Reagan's tenure, the size of the federal workforce actually grew, the only major agency that he managed to eliminate was the Civil Aeronautics Board, and he raised taxes in 1982.
Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, the size of the federal deficit (which Reagan denounced in his first unaugural as a threat to "our future and our children's future") actually doubled between 1980 and 1988.
The fact-challenged nostalgia encompassed a whole range of subjects. Brownback lauded Reagan as a pro-life icon (each person "is a sacred child of the living God...Reagan believed that as well"), yet nobody seemed to remember (or chose to remember) the actual truth, which is that Reagan as president never gave more than lip service to the anti-abortion movement. He never showed up at their annual rallies, preferring to phone in his greetings.
As conservatives at the time used to say, "It's not that Ronald Reagan lacks principles, it's just that he does not understand the ones he has."
Maybe the best evidence of GOP cognitive dissonance is the fact that Ronald Reagan's name adorns the Washington building that houses more federal bureaucrats (more than 5000) than any other place in town.
It's human nature to airbrush the flaws of a hero; the Democrats do this all the time with John F. Kennedy. But perhaps the Republicans could chart a more realistic future course if they adopt a more hardheaded view of their own past.
Now, onto my other topic of the day:
Move, over Elvis. In Memphis this past weekend, there was another dead person who got the full hero worship treatment. Let's go right to the quotes.
Tennessee Republican party chairman Bob Davis: "Ronald Reagan once said..."
Tennessee congresswoman Marcia Blackburn: "Ronald Reagan was absolutely right..."
Ex-congressman J.C. Watts: "Ronald Reagan, in the decade of the '80s, he said..."
Virginia senator George Allen: "When Ronald Reagan was president..."
Kansas senator Sam Brownback: "I met Ronald Reagan once..."
House speaker Dennis Hastert: "What can you say about Ronald Reagan?"
You get the idea. Reagan seems more alive to these people than the guy who currently sits in the White House. It's not a good sign for the GOP, however, that they are wallowing in so much nostalgia; it means they are uncertain about the future, uncertain about how to close the gap between their convictions and their governing performance.
The problem, however, is that they spent three days worshipping the Reagan myth, not the Reagan record. They lauded Reagan as a small-government tax cutter, but there was nary a word about factual reality: Federal spending rose by 25 percent during Reagan's tenure, the size of the federal workforce actually grew, the only major agency that he managed to eliminate was the Civil Aeronautics Board, and he raised taxes in 1982.
Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, the size of the federal deficit (which Reagan denounced in his first unaugural as a threat to "our future and our children's future") actually doubled between 1980 and 1988.
The fact-challenged nostalgia encompassed a whole range of subjects. Brownback lauded Reagan as a pro-life icon (each person "is a sacred child of the living God...Reagan believed that as well"), yet nobody seemed to remember (or chose to remember) the actual truth, which is that Reagan as president never gave more than lip service to the anti-abortion movement. He never showed up at their annual rallies, preferring to phone in his greetings.
As conservatives at the time used to say, "It's not that Ronald Reagan lacks principles, it's just that he does not understand the ones he has."
Maybe the best evidence of GOP cognitive dissonance is the fact that Ronald Reagan's name adorns the Washington building that houses more federal bureaucrats (more than 5000) than any other place in town.
It's human nature to airbrush the flaws of a hero; the Democrats do this all the time with John F. Kennedy. But perhaps the Republicans could chart a more realistic future course if they adopt a more hardheaded view of their own past.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
One of those worthless rituals
My Sunday column on the weekend's big Republican confab is here, featuring the '08 presidential hopefuls and their delicate dance with the current White House occupant.
But I didn't bother to discuss one sideshow aspect of this Memphis event (although I plan to mention it in print, and in passing, tomorrow). The Republicans held a "straw poll," supposedly designed to measure the level of sentiment for the early '08 prospects.
Oh please.
It's a nice way for grassroots activists to give a little feedback to the process; it's also inevitable fodder for the political journalists who breathe this stuff 24/7 and who are perpetually ravenous for any numbers that might measure anything. But history demonstrates that these exercises are basically a waste of time.
The term "straw poll" is apparently attributable to a 17th-century thinker named John Seldon, who wrote, "Take a straw and throw it up into the Air — you may see by that which way the Wind is." The problem is, the American straw polls seem to suggest that the wind always blows every which way.
For instance, if straw polls meant anything, we would have seen President Pat Robertson. The religious right leader won the Iowa straw poll of 1987, basically because he organized the most people to show up. (For easy identification purposes, they wore revolving lights on their heads.) Robertson wound up fading fast in the 1988 primaries.
And if straw polls meant anything, we would have seen President Alan Cranston. The charismatically-challenged Democratic senator won the Wisconsin straw poll of 1983, largely because he was a peace candidate at the height of the nuclear freeze movement. Cranston wound up as an early dropout in the 1984 primaries.
One could go on. George H. W. Bush won a Maine straw poll in 1979, and was beaten by Ronald Reagan a year later. Texas senator Phil Graham also won a Main straw poll, and never got anywhere close to the nomination.
It all comes down to who can pack the house or hand out the most goodies. Steve Forbes finished second in the 1999 Iowa straw poll (it was perhaps the high point of his '00 campaign), in part because he had the best food and the best hospitality tent. The tent, as I recall from being there, featured French doors.
So that brings us to the Tennessee straw poll last night. Maybe it's sheer unmitigated coincidence, but the first-place finisher in Tennessee was the senator from Tennessee, Bill Frist. His victory had little to do with his speech, which was easily the most tepid of all the '08 hopefuls. No, his victory can be attributed to the three busloads of loyalists who were brought in from nearby towns. So if you see the MSNBC website headline today that reads "Sen. Frist passes first test for 2008," you might want to ask, "What test? That he can pull 526 straw poll votes - 36.9 percent of the total - on his own home turf?"
But if I was compelled to annoint somebody who did well, it would be Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. He finished second (14.4 percent), in a region where he is arguably little known. That should give him bragging rights for a day or so.
But I didn't bother to discuss one sideshow aspect of this Memphis event (although I plan to mention it in print, and in passing, tomorrow). The Republicans held a "straw poll," supposedly designed to measure the level of sentiment for the early '08 prospects.
Oh please.
It's a nice way for grassroots activists to give a little feedback to the process; it's also inevitable fodder for the political journalists who breathe this stuff 24/7 and who are perpetually ravenous for any numbers that might measure anything. But history demonstrates that these exercises are basically a waste of time.
The term "straw poll" is apparently attributable to a 17th-century thinker named John Seldon, who wrote, "Take a straw and throw it up into the Air — you may see by that which way the Wind is." The problem is, the American straw polls seem to suggest that the wind always blows every which way.
For instance, if straw polls meant anything, we would have seen President Pat Robertson. The religious right leader won the Iowa straw poll of 1987, basically because he organized the most people to show up. (For easy identification purposes, they wore revolving lights on their heads.) Robertson wound up fading fast in the 1988 primaries.
And if straw polls meant anything, we would have seen President Alan Cranston. The charismatically-challenged Democratic senator won the Wisconsin straw poll of 1983, largely because he was a peace candidate at the height of the nuclear freeze movement. Cranston wound up as an early dropout in the 1984 primaries.
One could go on. George H. W. Bush won a Maine straw poll in 1979, and was beaten by Ronald Reagan a year later. Texas senator Phil Graham also won a Main straw poll, and never got anywhere close to the nomination.
It all comes down to who can pack the house or hand out the most goodies. Steve Forbes finished second in the 1999 Iowa straw poll (it was perhaps the high point of his '00 campaign), in part because he had the best food and the best hospitality tent. The tent, as I recall from being there, featured French doors.
So that brings us to the Tennessee straw poll last night. Maybe it's sheer unmitigated coincidence, but the first-place finisher in Tennessee was the senator from Tennessee, Bill Frist. His victory had little to do with his speech, which was easily the most tepid of all the '08 hopefuls. No, his victory can be attributed to the three busloads of loyalists who were brought in from nearby towns. So if you see the MSNBC website headline today that reads "Sen. Frist passes first test for 2008," you might want to ask, "What test? That he can pull 526 straw poll votes - 36.9 percent of the total - on his own home turf?"
But if I was compelled to annoint somebody who did well, it would be Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. He finished second (14.4 percent), in a region where he is arguably little known. That should give him bragging rights for a day or so.
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