United 93, which I saw yesterday, is a chillingly effective film, a real-time, real-world version of the TV show 24, except this time there is no Jack Bauer to take down the terrorists and pilot the plane to safety.
But I haven't reviewed a film since I took a stab at a Sam Peckinpaugh western back in 1973, so I won't start now. Rather, my focus is on the inevitable political debate about the film -- specifically, the attempts by conservatives to employ the film for their own ideological purposes, to use the film as a rhetorical weapon that can be aimed at (a) those who oppose President Bush, (b) those who have soured on the war in Iraq, or (c) liberals, elites, or "the media" in general.
It's probably inevitable that this is already happening, given our polarized climate. And the film itself is ripe for activist exploitation, because it has no political context of its own. It has no "agenda." It is a vivid rendering of what happened, with no speculations about why. As a result, people with an agenda are well positioned to spin the film their way.
Consider these random comments, just over the past few days:
1. A popular conservative website, redstate.org, believes that United 93 will make it "cool" to like Bush again, because the film will remind people that radical Islam is the enemy and that Bush has been fighting this enemy:
"Admit it, you're scared that the dirty, unwashed masses are going to get brainwashed into restoring a Democrat majority and locking the conservatives in a cellar for fifty years. Scary prospect, I know. But, I'm here to let you know it is totally unfounded....Hating Bush has become mainstream (but) I'm predicting that very soon the backlash will begin. It might be a movie star that starts it...
"There is a rapidly rising tide of anti-'radical Islam' that will soon sweep over mainstream media. People are getting real sick and tired of being told that terrorists are people, too. The movie United 93 is going to set off a fresh new debate about this among the general populace."
2. Commentator Rich Lowry, writing on the conservative National Review website, argues that United 93 is needed right now, as a morale booster: "We could be losing a major battle in the War on Terror in Iraq and seeing a flagging of resolve in the war generally." And he says that those Americans who are too squeamish to see the movie apparently also believe that "it's never too early to be defeated..."
3. Rush Limbaugh says that "liberalville" doesn't want to see this movie because "the left is not through trashing Bush and his culpability and his responsibility for 9/11." Liberals don't want to see the movie, he says, because "the movie doesn't blame Bush. The movie doesn't blame the United States government."
4. Religious right leader Gary Bauer emailed his supporters to say that "America's cultural elites are doing their best to 'pan' the film before the curtain goes up. They would prefer it if you stayed home and watched Brokeback Mountain on DVD instead. Don't listen to them - go and remind yourself of what happened on Sept. 11 and why it matters...At a time when some Washington politicians are still confused about that, this movie is a great reminder."
5. On the redstate website, someone posted a comment warning that "if the left tries to vilify this movie too much, it might bring out the same crowds who flocked to The Passion of the Christ."
6. On the conservative freerepublic.com website, one of the commenters says that liberals don 't want people to see the new movie because "liberals are offended by the remembrance of 9/11."
Well, let's quickly unpack some of those remarks. It would seem that the conservatives believe, or want to believe, that there is a burgeoning liberal war being waged against this movie, just like there's a war on Christmas.
Frankly, I don't see it. Bauer talks about "cultural elites" panning the movie, yet I pick up Friday's New York Times, the beating heart of the so-called cultural elite, and I find a rave review of the movie. My own newspaper, in blue-state Philadelphia, just gave the film its highest rating. I also seem to recall that the best book about that flight, Among the Heroes, was written by Jere Longman of the New York Times.
Meanwhile, at last check, I still haven't heard any "Washington politicians" dismissing the importance of 9/11. Although I have read that a North Carolina Republican congressman has been opposing federal funding for a United 93 memorial.
And contrary to Lowry's argument, it somehow seems possible that many Americans are fully capable of seeing this movie, recognizing the lethal threat of terrorism -- yet still believing that Iraq has been the wrong place to fight the war. That would include many of the people who live in Rush's "liberalville." I would bet that some of the people who died on that plane had voted Democratic in previous presidential races.
On precisely this point, today I found a posting from a resident of liberalville. He was airing his views on yet another conservative blog. He wrote:
"My wife and I are going to see United 93. I think it's a 'must see' film....What's puzzling me is why anyone thinks liberals do not or would not admire and respect the passengers and crew for their courage. I'd like to think that many, even most, Americans, in similar circumstances, would at least attempt to re-take control of the plane or would do what they could to stop the terrorists.
"Who are the liberals who ridicule or criticize the people on United 93? Have any of you conservatives found examples? Or are you making a purely ideological argument that goes like this: there are liberals who disagree with either the decision to attack Iraq or the conduct of the war--and such people are (supposedly) logically compelled to mock or despise the heroic actions of the Americans on the plane.
"Speaking for myself, I am both a liberal and an admirer of valor when I see it. To suggest that there is a contradiction here is to commit oneself to a vicious dogmatism that exploits the attack on America for a partisan cheap shot."
The urge to politicize art is strong in our culture today. But an argument can be made that there are times when drama works best in the absence of an imposed agenda, and without interference from those who would seek to claim the work for their cause.
There is a poignant moment in United 93, for example, that should be allowed to stand on its own. As the end draws near on the doomed plane, the film cross cuts between the terrorists and passengers, praying quietly and desperately to their respective Gods. The moment plays as a profoundly human tragedy that traverses all ideological boundaries. Just like the film itself.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Friday, April 28, 2006
The taint on the guru
Don't you love the way scandal-impaired Washingtonians always seem to be exuding such unmitigated joy when they pay a visit to the grand jury? Take Karl Rove, for instance. This week, the architect of President Bush's political career waltzed along to the courthouse door like a guy who was holding box-seat tickets for a big ballgame on the Fourth of July.
Such is the requisite pose for a power guru under constant threat of indictment. We're getting some reports that Rove's legal status will finally be resolved this spring -- he could be charged with perjury in the Valerie Plame leak case, or he could be absolved despite evidence that he did participate in the leak -- but, politically speaking, the damage has already been done. Rove's long battle to elude special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's dragnet has clearly contributed to the Bush administration's widening credibility gap.
In 2003, the story broke that somebody in the White House had leaked Plame's identity as an undercover CIA official, as an act of retaliation against her husband, retired ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the war in Iraq. When Rove's name was floated as a possible culprit, the White House quickly dismissed such talk as "totally ridiculous." Press flak Scott McClellan told the press that Rove had personally told him the same thing; as McClellan put it, Rove "didn't condone that kind of activity and was not involved in that kind of activity."
But the cover story blew up when Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper told the grand jury that Rove was involved in that kind of activity. Because he had discussed Plame's CIA status with Cooper, on the phone.
Which brings us to this week's Rove appearance before the grand jury, his fifth.
Maybe he was just helping Fitzgerald tie up a few loose ends, so that the prosecutor could concentrate on Scooter Libby, the ex-vice presidential aide, who faces trial on a perjury charge in the Plame case. But it's quite plausible that Rove could wind up with Libby in the docket as a criminal defendant, because, by all indications, Rove this week was still trying to explain why, during a 2004 grand jury appearance, he had somehow failed to mention his conversation with Cooper.
His lawyer last autumn told Fitzgerald's sleuths that Rove's amnesia was genuine, that his conversation with Cooper had simply slipped his mind. But now the word (from sources in the Rove camp) is that Rove has added a new explanation: it would have been a "suicide mission" to deliberately conceal his chat with Cooper, because he knows that as a rule such information always surfaces in the end.
Will Fitzgerald and the grand jurors buy that defense?
Here's the problem with it: Back in 2003, the general assumption at the White House was that such information would not surface in the end -- because reporters always stay mum and never name their leakers. How do I know this? Because Bush himself said so.
On Oct. 7, 2003, Bush said: "I have no idea whether we'll find out who the (Plame) leaker is -- partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers."
In other words, at the time Rove failed to mention his talk with Cooper, he had no reason to believe that Cooper would give him up. Cooper only did so -- much later, in July 2005 -- because Fitzgerald put the squeeze on him.
And the record shows that Rove began to revise his initial testimony only after it became clear that Fitzgerald was single-mindedly determined to get Cooper's side of the story.
Rove reminds me of a character in Bullitt, the famous Steve McQueen cop movie. Just a little, anyway. Steve is trying to interview a flophouse hotel manager who may know something about a crime that had been committed upstairs, but the manager isn't talking. Finally Steve says he's going to take the manager downtown because he's "not trying hard enough," and suddenly the manager's eyes light up and he says, hey, wait a sec, as a matter of fact, I do remember a few things...And he wriggles off the hook.
Maybe Rove wriggles off the hook; maybe Fitzgerald will conclude that Rove has seen the light. That may not help repair the political damage at the White House, but at least Rove would be freed up to address the GOP's number one priority: figuring out a way to minimize the electoral damage in November.
And who else believes in Bush more than Rove? As Rove said back in 2004, his client is "one of the most educated, thoughtful, brightest presidents we've ever had."
Such is the requisite pose for a power guru under constant threat of indictment. We're getting some reports that Rove's legal status will finally be resolved this spring -- he could be charged with perjury in the Valerie Plame leak case, or he could be absolved despite evidence that he did participate in the leak -- but, politically speaking, the damage has already been done. Rove's long battle to elude special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's dragnet has clearly contributed to the Bush administration's widening credibility gap.
In 2003, the story broke that somebody in the White House had leaked Plame's identity as an undercover CIA official, as an act of retaliation against her husband, retired ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the war in Iraq. When Rove's name was floated as a possible culprit, the White House quickly dismissed such talk as "totally ridiculous." Press flak Scott McClellan told the press that Rove had personally told him the same thing; as McClellan put it, Rove "didn't condone that kind of activity and was not involved in that kind of activity."
But the cover story blew up when Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper told the grand jury that Rove was involved in that kind of activity. Because he had discussed Plame's CIA status with Cooper, on the phone.
Which brings us to this week's Rove appearance before the grand jury, his fifth.
Maybe he was just helping Fitzgerald tie up a few loose ends, so that the prosecutor could concentrate on Scooter Libby, the ex-vice presidential aide, who faces trial on a perjury charge in the Plame case. But it's quite plausible that Rove could wind up with Libby in the docket as a criminal defendant, because, by all indications, Rove this week was still trying to explain why, during a 2004 grand jury appearance, he had somehow failed to mention his conversation with Cooper.
His lawyer last autumn told Fitzgerald's sleuths that Rove's amnesia was genuine, that his conversation with Cooper had simply slipped his mind. But now the word (from sources in the Rove camp) is that Rove has added a new explanation: it would have been a "suicide mission" to deliberately conceal his chat with Cooper, because he knows that as a rule such information always surfaces in the end.
Will Fitzgerald and the grand jurors buy that defense?
Here's the problem with it: Back in 2003, the general assumption at the White House was that such information would not surface in the end -- because reporters always stay mum and never name their leakers. How do I know this? Because Bush himself said so.
On Oct. 7, 2003, Bush said: "I have no idea whether we'll find out who the (Plame) leaker is -- partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers."
In other words, at the time Rove failed to mention his talk with Cooper, he had no reason to believe that Cooper would give him up. Cooper only did so -- much later, in July 2005 -- because Fitzgerald put the squeeze on him.
And the record shows that Rove began to revise his initial testimony only after it became clear that Fitzgerald was single-mindedly determined to get Cooper's side of the story.
Rove reminds me of a character in Bullitt, the famous Steve McQueen cop movie. Just a little, anyway. Steve is trying to interview a flophouse hotel manager who may know something about a crime that had been committed upstairs, but the manager isn't talking. Finally Steve says he's going to take the manager downtown because he's "not trying hard enough," and suddenly the manager's eyes light up and he says, hey, wait a sec, as a matter of fact, I do remember a few things...And he wriggles off the hook.
Maybe Rove wriggles off the hook; maybe Fitzgerald will conclude that Rove has seen the light. That may not help repair the political damage at the White House, but at least Rove would be freed up to address the GOP's number one priority: figuring out a way to minimize the electoral damage in November.
And who else believes in Bush more than Rove? As Rove said back in 2004, his client is "one of the most educated, thoughtful, brightest presidents we've ever had."
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Gaps in the rough draft of history
Today I am pondering the mystery of Tyler Drumheller.
If the name seems unfamiliar, it's because he has been widely ignored over the past week by the news outlets of America. That includes the newspaper which employs me.
First, the ill-reported information:
Drumheller, an ex-spook, is arguably at least as important as the dissenting retired military generals who have been calling for Donald Rumsfeld's scalp. He too is newly retired from his job -- as chief of the CIA's European operation -- and he has gone public (on CBS' Sixty Minutes and on MSNBC's Hardball) with first-hand evidence that the Bush administration hyped the prewar intelligence on WMDs and stonewalled the stuff it didn't like.
Basically, Drumheller helped recruit a high-ranking Iraqi source who had the inside skinny on Saddam Hussein's non-existent stockpile. The source was Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri. As Drumheller told MSNBC the other night, Sadri reported to the CIA -- and the CIA in turn told the White House -- that Hussein had no WMD capability, that "it was nowhere within years of completion, either nuclear or biological."
Drumheller said the White House at first was "enthusiastic" to learn about Sabri's "high-level penetration" of the Hussein regime, but that their enthusiasm waned as soon as they heard what Sabri had to say. This was in September 2002, at a time when President Bush and Vice President Cheney were beginning their series of speeches contending that Hussein had the capability to launch weaponry against the U.S. homeland.
But word got back to Drumheller that the White House was not interested in Sabri's evidence absolving Hussein. As Drumheller told CBS last Sunday, "We said, 'well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"
Looking back today, Drumheller's conclusion is that "the policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit the policy."
Drumheller's credibility is buttressed by the fact that two other key sources also shared his conclusion. Bush's British government allies, writing in what are now known as the Downing Street memos (none of which have been contested by the White House), concluded during the summer of 2002 that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." And another former CIA official, Paul Pillar, wrote in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine that "official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions (and) intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made..."
It gets more interesting. Drumheller says he was interviewed three times by the Bush-chartered Silberman-Robb Commission, but his testimony never made it into the final report. Perhaps this is why: I am quoting here from the report itself:
"(H)ow policymakers used the intelligence they were given" was an issue "not within our charter."
So...one can reasonably ask: why has the Drumheller story been largely ignored by the press?The New York Times did an advance of the CBS interview last Saturday, with no follow up. No major newspaper early this week ran anything. The Associated Press ran a brief summary on Sunday, but nothing else. The Washington Post hasn't done a piece. My own paper attributes its silence on the story to lack of space.
Dan Froomkin, an online political commentator at the Washington Post, has also tracked the story; when the topic came up yesterday during an online chat with readers, he admitted he was flummoxed by the lack of coverage ("I can't possibly explain why").
Is it because Drumheller (and Sabri) have been discredited? Nope. The White House hasn't attacked them, preferring instead to release only a rote sentence: "The President's convictions about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD were based on the collective judgement of the intelligence community at that time."
So here's my professional judgement on this: Bush's credibility on Iraq is at such a low ebb (check even the Fox News poll) that it's no longer considered "news" when his WMD stance is publicly contested by credible people who are adding new facts to the historical record. A majority of Americans have already concluded that Bush was selling a bill of goods, so much of the press reaction to Drumheller is basically, "Yeah, tell us something we don't know already."
Well, it was Ben Bradlee, the famed Post editor, who said that journalism was the first rough draft of history. Maybe we'll have to be rescued by the historians.
If the name seems unfamiliar, it's because he has been widely ignored over the past week by the news outlets of America. That includes the newspaper which employs me.
First, the ill-reported information:
Drumheller, an ex-spook, is arguably at least as important as the dissenting retired military generals who have been calling for Donald Rumsfeld's scalp. He too is newly retired from his job -- as chief of the CIA's European operation -- and he has gone public (on CBS' Sixty Minutes and on MSNBC's Hardball) with first-hand evidence that the Bush administration hyped the prewar intelligence on WMDs and stonewalled the stuff it didn't like.
Basically, Drumheller helped recruit a high-ranking Iraqi source who had the inside skinny on Saddam Hussein's non-existent stockpile. The source was Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri. As Drumheller told MSNBC the other night, Sadri reported to the CIA -- and the CIA in turn told the White House -- that Hussein had no WMD capability, that "it was nowhere within years of completion, either nuclear or biological."
Drumheller said the White House at first was "enthusiastic" to learn about Sabri's "high-level penetration" of the Hussein regime, but that their enthusiasm waned as soon as they heard what Sabri had to say. This was in September 2002, at a time when President Bush and Vice President Cheney were beginning their series of speeches contending that Hussein had the capability to launch weaponry against the U.S. homeland.
But word got back to Drumheller that the White House was not interested in Sabri's evidence absolving Hussein. As Drumheller told CBS last Sunday, "We said, 'well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"
Looking back today, Drumheller's conclusion is that "the policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit the policy."
Drumheller's credibility is buttressed by the fact that two other key sources also shared his conclusion. Bush's British government allies, writing in what are now known as the Downing Street memos (none of which have been contested by the White House), concluded during the summer of 2002 that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." And another former CIA official, Paul Pillar, wrote in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine that "official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions (and) intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made..."
It gets more interesting. Drumheller says he was interviewed three times by the Bush-chartered Silberman-Robb Commission, but his testimony never made it into the final report. Perhaps this is why: I am quoting here from the report itself:
"(H)ow policymakers used the intelligence they were given" was an issue "not within our charter."
So...one can reasonably ask: why has the Drumheller story been largely ignored by the press?The New York Times did an advance of the CBS interview last Saturday, with no follow up. No major newspaper early this week ran anything. The Associated Press ran a brief summary on Sunday, but nothing else. The Washington Post hasn't done a piece. My own paper attributes its silence on the story to lack of space.
Dan Froomkin, an online political commentator at the Washington Post, has also tracked the story; when the topic came up yesterday during an online chat with readers, he admitted he was flummoxed by the lack of coverage ("I can't possibly explain why").
Is it because Drumheller (and Sabri) have been discredited? Nope. The White House hasn't attacked them, preferring instead to release only a rote sentence: "The President's convictions about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD were based on the collective judgement of the intelligence community at that time."
So here's my professional judgement on this: Bush's credibility on Iraq is at such a low ebb (check even the Fox News poll) that it's no longer considered "news" when his WMD stance is publicly contested by credible people who are adding new facts to the historical record. A majority of Americans have already concluded that Bush was selling a bill of goods, so much of the press reaction to Drumheller is basically, "Yeah, tell us something we don't know already."
Well, it was Ben Bradlee, the famed Post editor, who said that journalism was the first rough draft of history. Maybe we'll have to be rescued by the historians.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
The Democrats get Snowed
Democrats this morning seem to be ecstatic about the transfer of Fox News host Tony Snow to the thankless job of White House press secretary. They have been busy circulating all the embarrassing things that Snow has said lately about President Bush, including his contention last November that Bush has become, well, "something of an embarrassment."
I've been getting peppered with emails on this topic: Snow in various commentaries has indeed called Bush "impotent," "listless," and "guilty" of mishandling Katrina and the Dubai ports deal. Snow once said that Bush talked "like a soul tortured with Tourette’s.” That's just a very small sampling. The Democrats, in other words, are excited at the prospect of watching an outspoken conservative broadcaster morph into a droning flak for the embarrassment-in-chief.
Maybe that will happen, who knows. And maybe Snow won't be able to handle it. There once was a press secretary, Jerry terHorst, who quit the Gerald Ford administration in 1974 because he couldn't square his integrity with the dictates of presidential flackery.
But, after 24 hours of reflection, my contrarian instincts now tell me that the Democrats are actually doing Bush a big favor at the moment.
Playing right into Bush's hands.
Making Bush look good.
Democrats are basically advertising today that Bush is not an insulated bubble boy, after all; that Bush is willing, in fact, to reach out and hire a guy who has repeatedly busted his chops on national radio and TV; that Bush is not terminally addicted to being surrounded by yes men. Those pithy Snow quotes - here's one early list, from a pro-Democratic group - appear to be proof of that.
Moreover, the Democrats, by openly advertising Snow's iconoclasm, have undercut their own longstanding contention that Fox News and all its hirelings are just lickspittles of the administration.
No doubt, if Bush had hired somebody with a track record of mindlessly echoing the Bush line, Democrats would be unified today in saying that Bush remains in a bubble, impervious to outside criticism.
But what we see, instead, are Democrats contradicting each other.
We have one party organ (the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) circulating Snow's anti-Bush remarks, yet we have another party organ (the Democratic National Committee) sticking with the bubble theme and painting Snow as a mouthpiece: "This is an interdepartmental move from one part of the conservative infrastructure to another that allows a darling of the right-wing to deliver the same misleading message, cherry-picked information and spin to the American people."
So it's another Democratic mixed message.
Score that a PR win for the White House.
I've been getting peppered with emails on this topic: Snow in various commentaries has indeed called Bush "impotent," "listless," and "guilty" of mishandling Katrina and the Dubai ports deal. Snow once said that Bush talked "like a soul tortured with Tourette’s.” That's just a very small sampling. The Democrats, in other words, are excited at the prospect of watching an outspoken conservative broadcaster morph into a droning flak for the embarrassment-in-chief.
Maybe that will happen, who knows. And maybe Snow won't be able to handle it. There once was a press secretary, Jerry terHorst, who quit the Gerald Ford administration in 1974 because he couldn't square his integrity with the dictates of presidential flackery.
But, after 24 hours of reflection, my contrarian instincts now tell me that the Democrats are actually doing Bush a big favor at the moment.
Playing right into Bush's hands.
Making Bush look good.
Democrats are basically advertising today that Bush is not an insulated bubble boy, after all; that Bush is willing, in fact, to reach out and hire a guy who has repeatedly busted his chops on national radio and TV; that Bush is not terminally addicted to being surrounded by yes men. Those pithy Snow quotes - here's one early list, from a pro-Democratic group - appear to be proof of that.
Moreover, the Democrats, by openly advertising Snow's iconoclasm, have undercut their own longstanding contention that Fox News and all its hirelings are just lickspittles of the administration.
No doubt, if Bush had hired somebody with a track record of mindlessly echoing the Bush line, Democrats would be unified today in saying that Bush remains in a bubble, impervious to outside criticism.
But what we see, instead, are Democrats contradicting each other.
We have one party organ (the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee) circulating Snow's anti-Bush remarks, yet we have another party organ (the Democratic National Committee) sticking with the bubble theme and painting Snow as a mouthpiece: "This is an interdepartmental move from one part of the conservative infrastructure to another that allows a darling of the right-wing to deliver the same misleading message, cherry-picked information and spin to the American people."
So it's another Democratic mixed message.
Score that a PR win for the White House.
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Short cuts
Since I have been drafted this morning to write a newspaper analysis for tomorrow's paper on the politics of rising gas prices (which is a somewhat phony political issue, as I mentioned here), permit me on the blog today to employ the Walter Winchell method.
Walter Winchell, for those of you too young to remember, was the radio columnist who always began his broadcast by saying "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North America, and all the ships at sea" -- and then proceeded to opine in quick bursts on a number of developments, and never at length.
(Stanley Tucci played him in an HBO movie, in case you're interested.)
So let's go to the news. Good morning, Blue State and Red State America:
1. I see that John McCain, in his ongoing quest to undercut his straight-shooter credentials as the price for winning the '08 GOP nomination, is now taking money from a pair of Texas brothers who had pumped $2 million into TV ads that had slimed him as a polluter during the 2000 campaign.
Back then, McCain had assailed the pro-Bush Wyly brothers as "coyotes" whose tactics epitomized "everything I have been fighting against." Back then, McCain said on the stump that the Wylys should "keep their dirty money in the state of Texas." But now he's happy to cash it.
McCain is also taking money from two businessmen who in 2004 contributed a total of $1.3 million to the folks who wrote Swift Boat ads attacking McCain's fellow vet John Kerry. Back then, McCain called those ads "dishonest and dishonorable." But today, McCain aide John Weaver says the senator is happy to welcome anybody who wants to advance McCain's "reformist agenda."
The question, of course, is whether there will still be any "reformist agenda" by the time all of McCain's new establishment friends climb aboard.
2. I see that Tony Snow, the Fox News anchor, is reportedly very close to becoming President Bush's new press secretary. A Fox news guy at the Bush podium...there's a stretch. As the jokesters are wondering: Is the White House going to give him back pay?
But seriously folks, David Gergen, a former White House aide who served a range of presidents, tells CNN that a Snow appointment would be good for America:
"Tony Snow does have the leverage that neither of his predecessors would have had. And that is, if he walks out on (the Bush aides) because they're not open enough, it would be hugely devastating to the administration, so, that he, unlike Scott McClellan, can go in and say, 'gentlemen, this isn't good. The press has a legitimate need here. We have got to give it to them.' And they know that the moment he walks out the door and disgusted, if they are really totally closed or they lie or whatever, that is a bleak, bleak day at the White House."
If Snow is in charge next winter during Scooter Libby's trial, that might be the test.
3. Speaking of Bush, a new poll in Connecticut puts his approval rating there at a sub-Nixonian 24 percent. One might assume that this could spell trouble for several GOP congressmen who are seeking re-election in that state. But maybe the Nutmeg mood might be a bigger burden for Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman - staunch defender of the Iraq war, and the 2005 recipient of a televised cheek smooch from the president himself.
Lieberman is being challenged in a primary by a liberal antiwar mogul named Ned Lamont, and he's already being forced to air TV ads for the first time in over a decade("I already know that some of you feel passionately against my position in Iraq. I respect your views, and while we probably won't change each others' minds, I hope we can still have a dialogue and find common ground on all the issues where we do agree,'' he says to the camera.)
Quite a comedown for a guy who fell just a few hanging chads short of being vice president of the United States.
4. I wrote the other day about Democratic congressman Allan Mollohan, and his apparent attempt to singlehandedly undercut his party's "culture of corruption" attack on the GOP. Now I see that today's Wall Street Journal has found a new tidbit:
Last year, Mollohan apparently bought a 300-acre farm, in partnership with the head of a defense firm that had collected a $2.1 million contract -- thanks to a little codicil that Mollohan slipped into a 2005 spending bill.
I think it was the late Spy Magazine that used to call this kind of behavior "Log Rolling in Our Time."
5. I was startled to open my email last night and discover a letter from two congressional leaders assailing "price-fixing, collusion, gouging, and other anti-competitive practices" and calling for a government investigation of the oil companies. It has to be Chuck Schumer, right? Or maybe the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee? Or maybe a grassroots group that was borrowing a phrase from Jimmy Carter's populist outbursts during the late '70s?
Nope. This was House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
It's interesting how election-year panic can make two avowed conservatives sound like liberals.
6. A clever political move by Hillary Clinton. She has requested that the Senate Armed Services Committee provide a forum for all those retired military brass who have been assailing the Iraq war and demanding the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. She thinks they should be allowed to "air their views" in a hearing.
As a tactic, it's a potential win-win for Clinton:
If a majority of the committee members agree to invite those guys to a hearing (all 11 Democrats would vote yes, and they'd only need two of the 13 Republicans), then the hearing itself would embarrass the Bush administration. Yet if the committee refuses to hold a hearing, or insists that such a hearing should be closed to the public, either of those scenarios would look like a coverup...and also embarrass the administration.
Either way, she'd be keeping the dissident generals front and center. She herself hasn't even joined their call for Rumsfeld's resignation.
Well, I guess I'm not much good at Winchellesque brevity. But here's one:
More entries later.
Walter Winchell, for those of you too young to remember, was the radio columnist who always began his broadcast by saying "Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. North America, and all the ships at sea" -- and then proceeded to opine in quick bursts on a number of developments, and never at length.
(Stanley Tucci played him in an HBO movie, in case you're interested.)
So let's go to the news. Good morning, Blue State and Red State America:
1. I see that John McCain, in his ongoing quest to undercut his straight-shooter credentials as the price for winning the '08 GOP nomination, is now taking money from a pair of Texas brothers who had pumped $2 million into TV ads that had slimed him as a polluter during the 2000 campaign.
Back then, McCain had assailed the pro-Bush Wyly brothers as "coyotes" whose tactics epitomized "everything I have been fighting against." Back then, McCain said on the stump that the Wylys should "keep their dirty money in the state of Texas." But now he's happy to cash it.
McCain is also taking money from two businessmen who in 2004 contributed a total of $1.3 million to the folks who wrote Swift Boat ads attacking McCain's fellow vet John Kerry. Back then, McCain called those ads "dishonest and dishonorable." But today, McCain aide John Weaver says the senator is happy to welcome anybody who wants to advance McCain's "reformist agenda."
The question, of course, is whether there will still be any "reformist agenda" by the time all of McCain's new establishment friends climb aboard.
2. I see that Tony Snow, the Fox News anchor, is reportedly very close to becoming President Bush's new press secretary. A Fox news guy at the Bush podium...there's a stretch. As the jokesters are wondering: Is the White House going to give him back pay?
But seriously folks, David Gergen, a former White House aide who served a range of presidents, tells CNN that a Snow appointment would be good for America:
"Tony Snow does have the leverage that neither of his predecessors would have had. And that is, if he walks out on (the Bush aides) because they're not open enough, it would be hugely devastating to the administration, so, that he, unlike Scott McClellan, can go in and say, 'gentlemen, this isn't good. The press has a legitimate need here. We have got to give it to them.' And they know that the moment he walks out the door and disgusted, if they are really totally closed or they lie or whatever, that is a bleak, bleak day at the White House."
If Snow is in charge next winter during Scooter Libby's trial, that might be the test.
3. Speaking of Bush, a new poll in Connecticut puts his approval rating there at a sub-Nixonian 24 percent. One might assume that this could spell trouble for several GOP congressmen who are seeking re-election in that state. But maybe the Nutmeg mood might be a bigger burden for Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman - staunch defender of the Iraq war, and the 2005 recipient of a televised cheek smooch from the president himself.
Lieberman is being challenged in a primary by a liberal antiwar mogul named Ned Lamont, and he's already being forced to air TV ads for the first time in over a decade("I already know that some of you feel passionately against my position in Iraq. I respect your views, and while we probably won't change each others' minds, I hope we can still have a dialogue and find common ground on all the issues where we do agree,'' he says to the camera.)
Quite a comedown for a guy who fell just a few hanging chads short of being vice president of the United States.
4. I wrote the other day about Democratic congressman Allan Mollohan, and his apparent attempt to singlehandedly undercut his party's "culture of corruption" attack on the GOP. Now I see that today's Wall Street Journal has found a new tidbit:
Last year, Mollohan apparently bought a 300-acre farm, in partnership with the head of a defense firm that had collected a $2.1 million contract -- thanks to a little codicil that Mollohan slipped into a 2005 spending bill.
I think it was the late Spy Magazine that used to call this kind of behavior "Log Rolling in Our Time."
5. I was startled to open my email last night and discover a letter from two congressional leaders assailing "price-fixing, collusion, gouging, and other anti-competitive practices" and calling for a government investigation of the oil companies. It has to be Chuck Schumer, right? Or maybe the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee? Or maybe a grassroots group that was borrowing a phrase from Jimmy Carter's populist outbursts during the late '70s?
Nope. This was House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.
It's interesting how election-year panic can make two avowed conservatives sound like liberals.
6. A clever political move by Hillary Clinton. She has requested that the Senate Armed Services Committee provide a forum for all those retired military brass who have been assailing the Iraq war and demanding the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. She thinks they should be allowed to "air their views" in a hearing.
As a tactic, it's a potential win-win for Clinton:
If a majority of the committee members agree to invite those guys to a hearing (all 11 Democrats would vote yes, and they'd only need two of the 13 Republicans), then the hearing itself would embarrass the Bush administration. Yet if the committee refuses to hold a hearing, or insists that such a hearing should be closed to the public, either of those scenarios would look like a coverup...and also embarrass the administration.
Either way, she'd be keeping the dissident generals front and center. She herself hasn't even joined their call for Rumsfeld's resignation.
Well, I guess I'm not much good at Winchellesque brevity. But here's one:
More entries later.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Whiffing on the I-word
(NOTE: This was actually posted on Monday afternoon. It was written Sunday night, hence the date in the title.)
I just caught Democratic congressman Rahm Emanuel's act on the latest episode of Bill Maher's HBO show, and I have to say, it was quite revealing - not about Emanuel, but about the current state of the Democratic party.
Emanuel, as most of you probably know, is the ex-Clinton aide who now chairs the Democratic campaign to retake the U. S. House in 2006. Maher, as most of you probably know, is the sardonic comedian who continues to demonstrate (along with Jon Stewart) that some of our most incisive political dialogue occurs not on the Sunday morning talk shows, but on their topical entertainment shows.
Anyway, Emanuel showed up to hawk a new book and talk up the Democrats' '06 election prospects, and Maher asked him, "How are the Democrats gonna blow it this time?" Emanuel responded by outlining what he views as his party's five-point blueprint for victory. In other words, an actual issue agenda:
1. "We have to balance the budget and put our fiscal house in order."
2. "Make college education as universal in the 21st century as a high school education was in the 20th century."
3. "If you work, you get health care."
4. "A hybrid-based economy, cut America's dependence on oil in half in 10 years."
5. "Create an institute for science and engineering," to develop jobs.
There you have it. But, wait...care to take a guess what issue is kind of important these days, yet is totally AWOL from this list? The issue that the Democrats' liberal base does seem to care a lot about?
I know, that's not a tough one at all:
Iraq.
Somewhat surprisingly, Bill Maher, who is generally a sharp questioner, failed to ask Emanuel about the absence of the I-word. So let's ask the question here: is it plausible that the Democrats can float their own version of a Contract with America, yet fail to state a position on the signature issue of the Bush administration?
This is not new for Emanuel. Last November, when he was asked about Iraq and the '06 election, he stated: "At the right time, we will have a position." So another question might be, "When is the right time, anyway?"
The problem, of course, is that the war divides the House Democrats (some want a withdrawal timetable, others don't), and the party remains petrified that if they assail the war too strongly, Karl Rove (now in charge as chief GOP strategist) will find a way to paint them all as Osama bin Laden's comrades in arms. Hence Emanuel's conspicuous avoidance of the I-word.
It's a political dilemma, however, because success in the '06 election hinges on an outsize turnout, and the liberal Democratic base is generally antiwar, and wants the party to at least engage on the issue.
David Sirota, one of the party's more vocal liberal activists, made the point last autumn, arguing that Democratic caution "has been the downfall of the party in recent years. People go to the polls to vote for political leaders with guts...not connivers, prevaricators, or cowering, weak-kneed wimps who are willing to make public political calculations while Americans die overseas. Until the party shuts up those in its midst who have no moral compass and who are willing to use their prominence to reinforce a soulless image, Democrats will always face a nagging credibility gap with the American people."
The same concerns persist today. The Democratic National Committee has just concluded a spring meeting in New Orleans, and, as this report indicates, the absence of an Iraq message has not gone unnoticed. Chairman Howard Dean gave a speech on Saturday that outlined a rudimentary '06 agenda, a la Emanuel, but again there was nothing substantive about Iraq. It was striking to see a former chairman, Don Fowler, contend that the party can do well in the '06 elections "if we find ourselves a message."
And here it is, late April. I've been hearing that line for over a year.
Perhaps the Democrats can win back a chamber on Capitol Hill by just hewing to the default position; certainly, this report today on GOP gloom, written by a conservative journalist close to Rove, might tempt Democrats to simply play rope-a-dope on Iraq.
But there's a big reason why the congressional Democrats are doing so poorly in the polls (70 percent say the Democrats are doing a fair or poor job), even while an unpopular war is being hung like a millstone around the President's neck. It's because most Americans, including a fair share of diehard Democrats, perceive that the party is still failing to articulate core convictions on the issues that matter most, even during this seemingly fortuitous election season.
And I question whether Emanuel's call for a science institute will send the party's stock soaring.
I just caught Democratic congressman Rahm Emanuel's act on the latest episode of Bill Maher's HBO show, and I have to say, it was quite revealing - not about Emanuel, but about the current state of the Democratic party.
Emanuel, as most of you probably know, is the ex-Clinton aide who now chairs the Democratic campaign to retake the U. S. House in 2006. Maher, as most of you probably know, is the sardonic comedian who continues to demonstrate (along with Jon Stewart) that some of our most incisive political dialogue occurs not on the Sunday morning talk shows, but on their topical entertainment shows.
Anyway, Emanuel showed up to hawk a new book and talk up the Democrats' '06 election prospects, and Maher asked him, "How are the Democrats gonna blow it this time?" Emanuel responded by outlining what he views as his party's five-point blueprint for victory. In other words, an actual issue agenda:
1. "We have to balance the budget and put our fiscal house in order."
2. "Make college education as universal in the 21st century as a high school education was in the 20th century."
3. "If you work, you get health care."
4. "A hybrid-based economy, cut America's dependence on oil in half in 10 years."
5. "Create an institute for science and engineering," to develop jobs.
There you have it. But, wait...care to take a guess what issue is kind of important these days, yet is totally AWOL from this list? The issue that the Democrats' liberal base does seem to care a lot about?
I know, that's not a tough one at all:
Iraq.
Somewhat surprisingly, Bill Maher, who is generally a sharp questioner, failed to ask Emanuel about the absence of the I-word. So let's ask the question here: is it plausible that the Democrats can float their own version of a Contract with America, yet fail to state a position on the signature issue of the Bush administration?
This is not new for Emanuel. Last November, when he was asked about Iraq and the '06 election, he stated: "At the right time, we will have a position." So another question might be, "When is the right time, anyway?"
The problem, of course, is that the war divides the House Democrats (some want a withdrawal timetable, others don't), and the party remains petrified that if they assail the war too strongly, Karl Rove (now in charge as chief GOP strategist) will find a way to paint them all as Osama bin Laden's comrades in arms. Hence Emanuel's conspicuous avoidance of the I-word.
It's a political dilemma, however, because success in the '06 election hinges on an outsize turnout, and the liberal Democratic base is generally antiwar, and wants the party to at least engage on the issue.
David Sirota, one of the party's more vocal liberal activists, made the point last autumn, arguing that Democratic caution "has been the downfall of the party in recent years. People go to the polls to vote for political leaders with guts...not connivers, prevaricators, or cowering, weak-kneed wimps who are willing to make public political calculations while Americans die overseas. Until the party shuts up those in its midst who have no moral compass and who are willing to use their prominence to reinforce a soulless image, Democrats will always face a nagging credibility gap with the American people."
The same concerns persist today. The Democratic National Committee has just concluded a spring meeting in New Orleans, and, as this report indicates, the absence of an Iraq message has not gone unnoticed. Chairman Howard Dean gave a speech on Saturday that outlined a rudimentary '06 agenda, a la Emanuel, but again there was nothing substantive about Iraq. It was striking to see a former chairman, Don Fowler, contend that the party can do well in the '06 elections "if we find ourselves a message."
And here it is, late April. I've been hearing that line for over a year.
Perhaps the Democrats can win back a chamber on Capitol Hill by just hewing to the default position; certainly, this report today on GOP gloom, written by a conservative journalist close to Rove, might tempt Democrats to simply play rope-a-dope on Iraq.
But there's a big reason why the congressional Democrats are doing so poorly in the polls (70 percent say the Democrats are doing a fair or poor job), even while an unpopular war is being hung like a millstone around the President's neck. It's because most Americans, including a fair share of diehard Democrats, perceive that the party is still failing to articulate core convictions on the issues that matter most, even during this seemingly fortuitous election season.
And I question whether Emanuel's call for a science institute will send the party's stock soaring.
Blaming the messenger
Those retired military generals who have risen up against the Bush administration (see my newspaper column today) find themselves under fresh attack this afternoon. It's getting nastier.
The brass-knuckled punch comes courtesy of a conservative website, which today is running a cartoon that depicts the dissident generals as puppets of the terrorists, thereby implying that, by speaking out against Donald Rumsfeld's prosecution of the war, they are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. (This charge used to be leveled mostly at liberals and antiwar activists. Now, apparently, it has been extended to include certifiably macho guys who have risked their lives and the lives of their troops on the ground in Iraq.)
The loftier attack today comes from Johns Hopkins University professor Eliot Cohen, a prominent neoconservative and member of one of the Washington think tanks that prepared the early rationales for going to war in Iraq. He writes on the Wall Street Journal website that military generals, as a group, are prone to "vanity and pique, institutional parochialism and thwarted ambition, limited introspection and all the other foibles of proud men." Having thus sought to dispel any impression that the dissidents might be admirable people, he moves to his core argument:
The dissidents' behavior is "destructive of good order and discipline in the armed forces, and prejudicial to functional civil-military relations...The retired generals have, in effect and perhaps unwittingly, made a case for disloyalty. Indeed, their most troubling belief is that an officer's civilian superiors--and the secretary of defense stands in the chain of command just below the president--do not merit the loyalty that they, as military superiors, would deserve and expect."
And Cohen says that the dissidents have invited these attacks on their motivations and character: "A general is equally a fool if he thinks he can engage in partisan polemic without becoming a political target, with all the miseries for himself, and degradation to his honor and profession, that that entails....Accustom the American people to the public sniping and bickering of generals, and generals will soon find that the respect on which they now count has evaporated."
These kinds of attacks (my story today cites many others) help explain why one of the dissidents, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, seemed a tad defensive this morning on CBS' Face the Nation. It seemed like he spent almost as much time establishing his bona fides to speak out, as he did actually speaking out.
He quickly volunteered that he fought on the ground in Iraq not once, but in two tours of duty. He said that his dad had fought in Korea and Vietnam. He said that his decision to go public against Rumsfeld was "gut-wrenching," and that he couldn't have gone public prior to retirement because he would have had to resign on the spot and thus abandon his troops. He also felt compelled to volunteer that he had no personal agenda, that he's not mad at Rumsfeld for trying to overhaul the Army. (Some attackers have charged that the dissidents are really alarmed at Rumsfeld's "transformation" reforms, not at the war itself.)
My point: If the administration and its supporters can succeed in focusing the discussion on the generals' right to speak out, rather than on the substance of what they are saying, the better it is for Rumsfeld and the President.
But I question whether they will ultimately succeed. The fact is, the dissident generals have surfaced at a time when most Americans are already seriously questioning the war. As retired Lt. Col Andrew Bacevich told me the other day, "Nearly two-thirds of the country already believes that the war is stupid and poorly run. These generals will only confirm and underscore the majority's preexisting viewpoint." (The latest Gallup: 65 percent dislike Bush's handling of the war, and 57 percent say the war was a mistake.)
And, regarding the substance of what Batiste and others are alleging -- that the war effort has been marred by a slew of strategic and tactical errors -- there are plenty of experts out of uniform, experts with strong national security credentials, who are saying the same thing.
I'm not talking here about the Democrats, of course. (They still seem to feel that speaking in unison against either the rationale or execution of the war will cost them votes.) I'm talking, rather, about people like Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon aide, John McCain national security aide, and winner of the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal.
Cordesman has just written a report, released a few days ago, entitled "American Strategic, Tactical, and Other Mistakes in Iraq: A Litany of Errors." The litany goes on for 10 pages.
It's available as a PDF. I suppose that he too belongs in that aforementioned cartoon.
The brass-knuckled punch comes courtesy of a conservative website, which today is running a cartoon that depicts the dissident generals as puppets of the terrorists, thereby implying that, by speaking out against Donald Rumsfeld's prosecution of the war, they are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. (This charge used to be leveled mostly at liberals and antiwar activists. Now, apparently, it has been extended to include certifiably macho guys who have risked their lives and the lives of their troops on the ground in Iraq.)
The loftier attack today comes from Johns Hopkins University professor Eliot Cohen, a prominent neoconservative and member of one of the Washington think tanks that prepared the early rationales for going to war in Iraq. He writes on the Wall Street Journal website that military generals, as a group, are prone to "vanity and pique, institutional parochialism and thwarted ambition, limited introspection and all the other foibles of proud men." Having thus sought to dispel any impression that the dissidents might be admirable people, he moves to his core argument:
The dissidents' behavior is "destructive of good order and discipline in the armed forces, and prejudicial to functional civil-military relations...The retired generals have, in effect and perhaps unwittingly, made a case for disloyalty. Indeed, their most troubling belief is that an officer's civilian superiors--and the secretary of defense stands in the chain of command just below the president--do not merit the loyalty that they, as military superiors, would deserve and expect."
And Cohen says that the dissidents have invited these attacks on their motivations and character: "A general is equally a fool if he thinks he can engage in partisan polemic without becoming a political target, with all the miseries for himself, and degradation to his honor and profession, that that entails....Accustom the American people to the public sniping and bickering of generals, and generals will soon find that the respect on which they now count has evaporated."
These kinds of attacks (my story today cites many others) help explain why one of the dissidents, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, seemed a tad defensive this morning on CBS' Face the Nation. It seemed like he spent almost as much time establishing his bona fides to speak out, as he did actually speaking out.
He quickly volunteered that he fought on the ground in Iraq not once, but in two tours of duty. He said that his dad had fought in Korea and Vietnam. He said that his decision to go public against Rumsfeld was "gut-wrenching," and that he couldn't have gone public prior to retirement because he would have had to resign on the spot and thus abandon his troops. He also felt compelled to volunteer that he had no personal agenda, that he's not mad at Rumsfeld for trying to overhaul the Army. (Some attackers have charged that the dissidents are really alarmed at Rumsfeld's "transformation" reforms, not at the war itself.)
My point: If the administration and its supporters can succeed in focusing the discussion on the generals' right to speak out, rather than on the substance of what they are saying, the better it is for Rumsfeld and the President.
But I question whether they will ultimately succeed. The fact is, the dissident generals have surfaced at a time when most Americans are already seriously questioning the war. As retired Lt. Col Andrew Bacevich told me the other day, "Nearly two-thirds of the country already believes that the war is stupid and poorly run. These generals will only confirm and underscore the majority's preexisting viewpoint." (The latest Gallup: 65 percent dislike Bush's handling of the war, and 57 percent say the war was a mistake.)
And, regarding the substance of what Batiste and others are alleging -- that the war effort has been marred by a slew of strategic and tactical errors -- there are plenty of experts out of uniform, experts with strong national security credentials, who are saying the same thing.
I'm not talking here about the Democrats, of course. (They still seem to feel that speaking in unison against either the rationale or execution of the war will cost them votes.) I'm talking, rather, about people like Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon aide, John McCain national security aide, and winner of the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal.
Cordesman has just written a report, released a few days ago, entitled "American Strategic, Tactical, and Other Mistakes in Iraq: A Litany of Errors." The litany goes on for 10 pages.
It's available as a PDF. I suppose that he too belongs in that aforementioned cartoon.
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Politics as usual in six easy steps
Whenever a politician find himself under fire, thanks to his own embarrassing behavior, this is usually what happens next:
1. The pol says he is as clean as a hound's tooth and insists that his enemies are merely out to get him.
2. People don't believe him, and pressure mounts for the pol to quit whatever prestigious post he occupies.
3. The pol vows not to leave the prestigious post he occupies. The leaders of the pol's party vow to help him fight the unfair attacks.
4. Pressure continues to mount, and finally the leaders tell the pol that he has to go. The pol still refuses, vows to fight to the bitter end.
5. The pol quickly gives up his fight vow, even though he still says the attacks on him are baseless. He announces his surrender late on a Friday or Saturday, hoping to minimize press coverage.
6. The party leaders put out a strong statement of support for the pol that they had just pressured to quit.
This is the usual Washington drill, and the Democrats completed all six steps last night, in the case of Allan Mollohan. (A Friday night, naturally, in order to minimize press coverage.) The capper, as you will soon see, was a statement by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi that falls several notches short of honesty.
For weeks, pressure had mounted on West Virginia congressman Mollohan, who apparently is quite ethics-challenged, to give up his seat on the House Ethics Committee. It was getting very embarrassing. The Democratic leaders want to paint the GOP as the party of corruption in 2006 -- yet, as I mentioned a few days ago, their top Ethics guy used special-interest loopholes to steer $250 million into five nonprofit organizations which then hired a number of ex-Mollohan aides for big salary jobs.
He has also worked some suspiciously lucrative real estate deals with an ex-aide who runs one of the nonprofits, and he initially failed to pay real estate taxes. All these acts have been reported in the press, and federal prosecutors in Washington are also scrutinizing his finances. This has all been known for weeks, yet House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (a leading critic of Republican "corruption"), kept insisting there was no reason for Mollohan to give up his Ethics seat.
Then, on Thursday night, she told him to give up his Ethics seat. He resisted, vowed to fight. Yesterday, he gave up the fight, still insisting the charges against him were "baseless." And sure enough, Pelosi said that the man she just booted off the Ethics panel is really just avictim of his enemies. An excerpt from Pelosi's statement:
"The allegations against Congressman Mollohan originate from the National Legal and Policy Center, which engages in highly partisan attacks on Democrats. The attacks are an attempt to deflect attention from the long list of Republican criminal investigations, indictments, plea agreements and resignations..."
If Pelosi's Republican counterpart had issued such a statement, defending an ethics-challenged GOP pol as a mere victim of "highly partisan attacks," she would have considered that to be further evidence of Republican turpitude.
Somehow Pelosi seems to have overlooked the fact that Mollohan's actions had been outed by the Wall Street Journal on April 7 (on the front page, where nonpartisan, professional reporters do their best work), that a U.S. attorney is scrutinizing the congressman, and that mainstream newspapers such as The Washington Post have been calling for Mollohan to step down since last weekend.
Meanwhile, it's true that the National Legal and Policy Center is conservative, but that doesn't mean its work should be automatically dismissed as dishonest -- any more than moveon.org's campaigns should be dismissed as dishonest just because the group is liberal.
This whole episode, and Pelosi's defensive reaction, is further proof that the Democrats may not have an easy time parlaying their anti-GOP "culture of corruption" message into votes next November. To a lot of Americans (or, at least those paying attention), the Six Steps outlined above might seem like just more bipartisan politics as usual.
1. The pol says he is as clean as a hound's tooth and insists that his enemies are merely out to get him.
2. People don't believe him, and pressure mounts for the pol to quit whatever prestigious post he occupies.
3. The pol vows not to leave the prestigious post he occupies. The leaders of the pol's party vow to help him fight the unfair attacks.
4. Pressure continues to mount, and finally the leaders tell the pol that he has to go. The pol still refuses, vows to fight to the bitter end.
5. The pol quickly gives up his fight vow, even though he still says the attacks on him are baseless. He announces his surrender late on a Friday or Saturday, hoping to minimize press coverage.
6. The party leaders put out a strong statement of support for the pol that they had just pressured to quit.
This is the usual Washington drill, and the Democrats completed all six steps last night, in the case of Allan Mollohan. (A Friday night, naturally, in order to minimize press coverage.) The capper, as you will soon see, was a statement by House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi that falls several notches short of honesty.
For weeks, pressure had mounted on West Virginia congressman Mollohan, who apparently is quite ethics-challenged, to give up his seat on the House Ethics Committee. It was getting very embarrassing. The Democratic leaders want to paint the GOP as the party of corruption in 2006 -- yet, as I mentioned a few days ago, their top Ethics guy used special-interest loopholes to steer $250 million into five nonprofit organizations which then hired a number of ex-Mollohan aides for big salary jobs.
He has also worked some suspiciously lucrative real estate deals with an ex-aide who runs one of the nonprofits, and he initially failed to pay real estate taxes. All these acts have been reported in the press, and federal prosecutors in Washington are also scrutinizing his finances. This has all been known for weeks, yet House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (a leading critic of Republican "corruption"), kept insisting there was no reason for Mollohan to give up his Ethics seat.
Then, on Thursday night, she told him to give up his Ethics seat. He resisted, vowed to fight. Yesterday, he gave up the fight, still insisting the charges against him were "baseless." And sure enough, Pelosi said that the man she just booted off the Ethics panel is really just avictim of his enemies. An excerpt from Pelosi's statement:
"The allegations against Congressman Mollohan originate from the National Legal and Policy Center, which engages in highly partisan attacks on Democrats. The attacks are an attempt to deflect attention from the long list of Republican criminal investigations, indictments, plea agreements and resignations..."
If Pelosi's Republican counterpart had issued such a statement, defending an ethics-challenged GOP pol as a mere victim of "highly partisan attacks," she would have considered that to be further evidence of Republican turpitude.
Somehow Pelosi seems to have overlooked the fact that Mollohan's actions had been outed by the Wall Street Journal on April 7 (on the front page, where nonpartisan, professional reporters do their best work), that a U.S. attorney is scrutinizing the congressman, and that mainstream newspapers such as The Washington Post have been calling for Mollohan to step down since last weekend.
Meanwhile, it's true that the National Legal and Policy Center is conservative, but that doesn't mean its work should be automatically dismissed as dishonest -- any more than moveon.org's campaigns should be dismissed as dishonest just because the group is liberal.
This whole episode, and Pelosi's defensive reaction, is further proof that the Democrats may not have an easy time parlaying their anti-GOP "culture of corruption" message into votes next November. To a lot of Americans (or, at least those paying attention), the Six Steps outlined above might seem like just more bipartisan politics as usual.
Friday, April 21, 2006
The perfect issue for gasbags
I awoke today to see this story, about how the Democrats are eager to exploit rising gasoline prices as a campaign '06 issue, and my reaction was:
Dream on.
This issue pops up in the spring and summer of every single election season -- gas prices inevitably spike as car-dependent Americans prepare to hit the road -- and politicians from the "out" party always convince themselves that they have been handed a gift. They love the gas issue because so many Americans love their cars. So they try to pin the blame for high prices on the incumbent party...and nothing happens.
Warm-weather anger never translates into autumn votes; the amnesiacs in the Democratic party don't seem to even recall the recent past.
Consider the spring of 2004, when John Kerry tried to hang the average $2.06 per gallon price around President Bush's neck, by lamenting Bush's refusal to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (a phony charge anyway, because such a move would have slashed prices by only a few pennies, as President Clinton discovered in 2000, when he released 30 million barrels). In 2004, other Democrats joined in by painting Bush as a do-nothing tool of the oil companies. Yet somehow I don't remember this issue playing much of a role in the November results.
No doubt, in the weeks ahead, the Republicans will retaliate by contending that the Democrats are to blame for high gas prices because the "obstructionists" barred oil drilling in the Arctic refuge. But that will be a phony charge as well, because Bush's own Energy Department concluded several years ago that any price drop triggered by new domestic oil would be "negligible." Meanwhile, today, the GOP decided that the best way to handle the gas price hike issue was to resurrect the fact that many Democrats voted to raise the federal gas tax. So they put out a press release. Those Democratic votes occurred...in 1993 and 1996.
The point is, presidents and political parties can't control the pump price of gas. Voters sense that there is no way to strictly assign partisan blame. Anyone who picks up a newspaper can see that the biggest global factor driving up gas prices is the burgeoning demand for oil in the fast-developing economies of China and India.
And as Democrats seek to exploit this issue at GOP expense, let's see whether they will point any of the blame at the gas-guzzling American consumer. Not likely, since gas-guzzling consumers vote. Checking a news website the other day, I saw two headlines: gas prices are going up...and Detroit is expecting a big sales year for SUVs.
Which reminds me of a story. This comes from John Zogby, the pollster. He told me a few years back, "My son and I just went to a book party for Arianna Huffington. She waxed eloquent about the pitfalls of SUVs, everybody listened -- and when we left, maybe 11 SUVs were parked outside, waiting to pick up guests. Point is, you can't call on Americans to sacrifice during a...campaign. That's a loser."
So is the gas issue itself.
Dream on.
This issue pops up in the spring and summer of every single election season -- gas prices inevitably spike as car-dependent Americans prepare to hit the road -- and politicians from the "out" party always convince themselves that they have been handed a gift. They love the gas issue because so many Americans love their cars. So they try to pin the blame for high prices on the incumbent party...and nothing happens.
Warm-weather anger never translates into autumn votes; the amnesiacs in the Democratic party don't seem to even recall the recent past.
Consider the spring of 2004, when John Kerry tried to hang the average $2.06 per gallon price around President Bush's neck, by lamenting Bush's refusal to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (a phony charge anyway, because such a move would have slashed prices by only a few pennies, as President Clinton discovered in 2000, when he released 30 million barrels). In 2004, other Democrats joined in by painting Bush as a do-nothing tool of the oil companies. Yet somehow I don't remember this issue playing much of a role in the November results.
No doubt, in the weeks ahead, the Republicans will retaliate by contending that the Democrats are to blame for high gas prices because the "obstructionists" barred oil drilling in the Arctic refuge. But that will be a phony charge as well, because Bush's own Energy Department concluded several years ago that any price drop triggered by new domestic oil would be "negligible." Meanwhile, today, the GOP decided that the best way to handle the gas price hike issue was to resurrect the fact that many Democrats voted to raise the federal gas tax. So they put out a press release. Those Democratic votes occurred...in 1993 and 1996.
The point is, presidents and political parties can't control the pump price of gas. Voters sense that there is no way to strictly assign partisan blame. Anyone who picks up a newspaper can see that the biggest global factor driving up gas prices is the burgeoning demand for oil in the fast-developing economies of China and India.
And as Democrats seek to exploit this issue at GOP expense, let's see whether they will point any of the blame at the gas-guzzling American consumer. Not likely, since gas-guzzling consumers vote. Checking a news website the other day, I saw two headlines: gas prices are going up...and Detroit is expecting a big sales year for SUVs.
Which reminds me of a story. This comes from John Zogby, the pollster. He told me a few years back, "My son and I just went to a book party for Arianna Huffington. She waxed eloquent about the pitfalls of SUVs, everybody listened -- and when we left, maybe 11 SUVs were parked outside, waiting to pick up guests. Point is, you can't call on Americans to sacrifice during a...campaign. That's a loser."
So is the gas issue itself.
Thursday, April 20, 2006
And this is a Republican talking
So how should we best assess all these staff changes at the White House? Will they make a big difference, and help President Bush find his mojo again?
Peggy Noonan says that won't happen - not unless the guy at the top engages in some cosmic soul-searching of his own.
Noonan, the famous Republican speechwriter who crafted key phrases for Ronald Reagan and the senior George Bush, makes that argument in a column today. Her reservations about the younger Bush are, shall we say, politely rendered. You don't have to be a genius to read between the lines. Key excerpts:
"Mr. Bush's feelings, assumptions and convictions set theme, direction and mood....When he won't budge, the White House won't budge. When it clings to an idea beyond evidence and history, it is Mr. Bush who is doing the clinging. When he stands firm, it stands firm...
"(H)e puts severe limits on the number and kind of people who can (advise) him. He picks them, receives their passionate and by definition limited recommendations, makes his decision, and sticks. All very Trumanesque, except Truman could tolerate argument and dissent. They didn't pass the buck to little Harry, they threw it at his head. Clark Clifford was in in the morning telling him he had to recognize Israel, and George Marshall was there in the afternoon telling him he'd step down as secretary of state if he did. It was a mess. Messes aren't all bad...
"George W. Bush, on the other hand, does not tolerate dissent, argument, bitter internal battles....Bruce Bartlett has written of how, as a conservative economist, he was treated with courtesy by the Clinton White House, which occasionally sought out his views. But once he'd offered mild criticisms of the Bush White House he was shut out, and rudely, by Bush staffers. Why would they be like that? Because they believe that as a conservative, Mr. Bartlett owes his loyalty to the president. He thought his loyalty was to principles.
"There are many stories like this, from many others. It leaves friends on the outside having to self-censor or accept designation as The Enemy. It leaves a distinguished former government official and prominent Republican saying, in conversation, 'Those people aren't drinking the Kool-Aid, they're sucking it from a spigot!'
"(S)ometimes the bravest thing is to question yourself, question the wisdom around you, reach out, tolerate a hellacious argument, or series of arguments. Yes there is a feeling of safety in decisiveness, but if it's the wrong decision, the safety doesn't last. And safety isn't the point in any case. Governing well is. That involves arguments. It means considering you may be wrong about some things. This isn't weak--it's humble. It's not breaking, it's bending, tacking, steadying yourself in a wind."
Noonan says a lot more in this vein. Her point, of course, is that major staff changes are "irrelevent" if The Decider proves incapable of changing himself.
----------
By the way, on a related front:
The pollsters at Fox News announced today that President Bush is now supported by only 33 percent of the American public. That's a record low in the Fox poll, which has measured Bush's appeal since 2001. The Fox low, in fact, is lower than the lows recorded lately by Gallup, ABC News-Washington Post, and the Pew Media Center.
I expect that this finding by Fox News will thoroughly confuse and disorient those Americans who assume that such a dire statistic could only be an "MSM" "lie."
Peggy Noonan says that won't happen - not unless the guy at the top engages in some cosmic soul-searching of his own.
Noonan, the famous Republican speechwriter who crafted key phrases for Ronald Reagan and the senior George Bush, makes that argument in a column today. Her reservations about the younger Bush are, shall we say, politely rendered. You don't have to be a genius to read between the lines. Key excerpts:
"Mr. Bush's feelings, assumptions and convictions set theme, direction and mood....When he won't budge, the White House won't budge. When it clings to an idea beyond evidence and history, it is Mr. Bush who is doing the clinging. When he stands firm, it stands firm...
"(H)e puts severe limits on the number and kind of people who can (advise) him. He picks them, receives their passionate and by definition limited recommendations, makes his decision, and sticks. All very Trumanesque, except Truman could tolerate argument and dissent. They didn't pass the buck to little Harry, they threw it at his head. Clark Clifford was in in the morning telling him he had to recognize Israel, and George Marshall was there in the afternoon telling him he'd step down as secretary of state if he did. It was a mess. Messes aren't all bad...
"George W. Bush, on the other hand, does not tolerate dissent, argument, bitter internal battles....Bruce Bartlett has written of how, as a conservative economist, he was treated with courtesy by the Clinton White House, which occasionally sought out his views. But once he'd offered mild criticisms of the Bush White House he was shut out, and rudely, by Bush staffers. Why would they be like that? Because they believe that as a conservative, Mr. Bartlett owes his loyalty to the president. He thought his loyalty was to principles.
"There are many stories like this, from many others. It leaves friends on the outside having to self-censor or accept designation as The Enemy. It leaves a distinguished former government official and prominent Republican saying, in conversation, 'Those people aren't drinking the Kool-Aid, they're sucking it from a spigot!'
"(S)ometimes the bravest thing is to question yourself, question the wisdom around you, reach out, tolerate a hellacious argument, or series of arguments. Yes there is a feeling of safety in decisiveness, but if it's the wrong decision, the safety doesn't last. And safety isn't the point in any case. Governing well is. That involves arguments. It means considering you may be wrong about some things. This isn't weak--it's humble. It's not breaking, it's bending, tacking, steadying yourself in a wind."
Noonan says a lot more in this vein. Her point, of course, is that major staff changes are "irrelevent" if The Decider proves incapable of changing himself.
----------
By the way, on a related front:
The pollsters at Fox News announced today that President Bush is now supported by only 33 percent of the American public. That's a record low in the Fox poll, which has measured Bush's appeal since 2001. The Fox low, in fact, is lower than the lows recorded lately by Gallup, ABC News-Washington Post, and the Pew Media Center.
I expect that this finding by Fox News will thoroughly confuse and disorient those Americans who assume that such a dire statistic could only be an "MSM" "lie."
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Beam up the next Scotty
On the occasion today of Scott McClellan's resignation as White House press secretary, let us briefly travel back in time to this classic exercise in stonewalling, as performed by the president's top flak:
"I'm not going to parse that (presidential) statement....I'm just not going to parse the statement for you, it speaks for itself...I'm not characterizing it beyond what the statement that I've already issued says...You can stand here and ask a lot of questions over and over again and will elicit the exact same answer...I'm not leaving any impression, David, and don't twist my words...I'm here to represent the thinking, the actions, the decisions of the president. That's what I get paid to do....I didn't write the statement..."
Sounds just like McClellan, right? It has to be McClellan, right?
Wrong.
That was Michael McCurry, press secretary for President Bill Clinton, on the afternoon of January 21, 1998. The news about Monica Lewinsky had just broken, and the president's lawyers had handed McCurry a statement contending that Clinton had never engaged in any "improper relationship" with the intern. Basically, McCurry was sent out there to lie (he didn't yet know it was a lie), to stand at the podium and let the press pound him as if he was a pinata.
In other words, that's often the nature of the job. Even McCurry, a longtime Democratic strategist who socializes with political reporters, knew that. All administrations, Democratic and Republican, lie or conceal, on rare occasions or with frequency, for good reasons or bad -- and the chief flak-catcher, whether he is in the know or out of the loop, has the thankless task of dancing at arm's length with the truth. On worldwide TV. In streaming video.
Ron Ziegler did this for Republican Richard Nixon during Watergate (he's the one who initially called it "a third-rate burglary attempt"). Bill Moyers did this for Democrat Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam, until he got bleeding ulcers and quit in 1966, telling his wife that "no man can serve two masters," referring to the president and the press corps.
So, in the institutional sense, it is not surprising that Scott McClellan's rocky ride has come to an end, and that his credibility is in tatters (notwithstanding President Bush's heckuva-job-Brownie statement today, praising McClellan for a "job well done"). The adversarial climate in the White House briefing room has been notoriously inhospitable, ever since the '60s. Even Bill Clinton, a Democrat trailed by a supposedly Democrat-friendly press corps, had three press secretaries during his eight years.
But this is not to suggest that all press secretaries are equally burdened by the job, or that their failings are equally distributed. They all operate (and most depart) under circumstances that are unique to their respective tenures. And, in McClellan's case, it was hard to imagine that he would ever go the distance, not with his particular marching orders.
Yes, McClellan did max out on his credibility in the traditional sense. He had insisted in 2003 that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were "not involved"in the outing of CIA employe Valerie Plame, then he was forced to stonewall in 2005 when it turned out they were indeed involved. Most recently, he was compelled to argue that if Bush leaks classified material (in this case, to defend his war in Iraq), then it's in the "public interest," but if anyone else leaks, it's a threat to national security. And earlier this month, when the Washington Post found fresh documentary evidence that some of Bush's WMD claims in Iraq were groundless, McClellan's response was to dismiss the evidence as "old news" and demand that the press apologize.
But McClellan's mission was not to merely evade or spin information in the traditional sense. His core purpose was to be the point man for an assertive, even revolutionary, White House effort to delegitimize the mainstream conveyers of the news. And whoever replaces McClellan will play the same role.
As indicated in numerous reports, particularly here and here, the Bush administration has sought to treat the mainstream press as just another troublesome special interest group, to reduce its role as a semi-official participant in the nation's governance.
Jay Rosen, a press watchdog and journalism professor at New York University, wrote last summer: "I believe the ultimate goal is to enhance executive power and maximize the president's freedom of maneuver - not only in policy-making and warfare, but on the terrain of fact itself." And writer Ron Suskind, after interviewing top Bush officials, said in an interview that they clearly want to create "a culture and public dialogue based on assertion rather than authenticity, on claim rather than fact."
That's the key to assessing McClellan. His job was to contest or deny the "terrain of fact," the empirical evidence, as traditionally defined. Examples:
1. In the face of evidence last September that the Bush administration had responded sluggishly to the Katrina crisis (behavior that was later assailed in a House Republican report), McClellan simply offered an assertion: "Flood control has been a priority of this administration from Day One."
2. In the face of evidence last June that the Iraqi insurgency was not in its "last throes" (as Vice President Cheney had insisted), McClellan simply asserted that it was: "We're making great progress to defeat the terrorist and regime elements...so this is a period when they (insurgents) are in a desperate mode."
3. Sometimes, when cornered, he used to catch a breather by calling on Jeff Gannon. Remember Jeff Gannon? He seems so 15 months ago. Jeff Gannon was the fake name used by the real James Guckert, who wrote for a fake news service that was, in reality, an offshoot of a conservative activist website called GOPUSA. McClellan would call on "Gannon," a friendly softball would be lobbed his way, and McClellan would say, "I'm glad you brought that up, Jeff." Gannon became Exhibit A of the administration's rather expansive view of how the press should be defined. (I wrote about the Gannon case in some detail last year.)
In all likelihood, the new Scott won't differ much from the old Scott, not as long as the basic mission remains unchanged. Perhaps the successor's personal style will be different. One prominent conservative blogger said today that he hopes the new flak will be a tougher customer ("it's probably wishful thinking to imagine that the President would appoint someone who would take a more combative attitude toward the White House press corps"), but somebody like Dan Senor, an ex-Bush spokesman in Iraq, would be seen as a great leap forward in articulation skills.
But no matter who gets the job, the adversarial dynamic will remain the same. It was Mike McCurry, back in his crisis days of 1998, who opened a press briefing with these words:
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the theatre of the absurd."
"I'm not going to parse that (presidential) statement....I'm just not going to parse the statement for you, it speaks for itself...I'm not characterizing it beyond what the statement that I've already issued says...You can stand here and ask a lot of questions over and over again and will elicit the exact same answer...I'm not leaving any impression, David, and don't twist my words...I'm here to represent the thinking, the actions, the decisions of the president. That's what I get paid to do....I didn't write the statement..."
Sounds just like McClellan, right? It has to be McClellan, right?
Wrong.
That was Michael McCurry, press secretary for President Bill Clinton, on the afternoon of January 21, 1998. The news about Monica Lewinsky had just broken, and the president's lawyers had handed McCurry a statement contending that Clinton had never engaged in any "improper relationship" with the intern. Basically, McCurry was sent out there to lie (he didn't yet know it was a lie), to stand at the podium and let the press pound him as if he was a pinata.
In other words, that's often the nature of the job. Even McCurry, a longtime Democratic strategist who socializes with political reporters, knew that. All administrations, Democratic and Republican, lie or conceal, on rare occasions or with frequency, for good reasons or bad -- and the chief flak-catcher, whether he is in the know or out of the loop, has the thankless task of dancing at arm's length with the truth. On worldwide TV. In streaming video.
Ron Ziegler did this for Republican Richard Nixon during Watergate (he's the one who initially called it "a third-rate burglary attempt"). Bill Moyers did this for Democrat Lyndon Johnson during Vietnam, until he got bleeding ulcers and quit in 1966, telling his wife that "no man can serve two masters," referring to the president and the press corps.
So, in the institutional sense, it is not surprising that Scott McClellan's rocky ride has come to an end, and that his credibility is in tatters (notwithstanding President Bush's heckuva-job-Brownie statement today, praising McClellan for a "job well done"). The adversarial climate in the White House briefing room has been notoriously inhospitable, ever since the '60s. Even Bill Clinton, a Democrat trailed by a supposedly Democrat-friendly press corps, had three press secretaries during his eight years.
But this is not to suggest that all press secretaries are equally burdened by the job, or that their failings are equally distributed. They all operate (and most depart) under circumstances that are unique to their respective tenures. And, in McClellan's case, it was hard to imagine that he would ever go the distance, not with his particular marching orders.
Yes, McClellan did max out on his credibility in the traditional sense. He had insisted in 2003 that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby were "not involved"in the outing of CIA employe Valerie Plame, then he was forced to stonewall in 2005 when it turned out they were indeed involved. Most recently, he was compelled to argue that if Bush leaks classified material (in this case, to defend his war in Iraq), then it's in the "public interest," but if anyone else leaks, it's a threat to national security. And earlier this month, when the Washington Post found fresh documentary evidence that some of Bush's WMD claims in Iraq were groundless, McClellan's response was to dismiss the evidence as "old news" and demand that the press apologize.
But McClellan's mission was not to merely evade or spin information in the traditional sense. His core purpose was to be the point man for an assertive, even revolutionary, White House effort to delegitimize the mainstream conveyers of the news. And whoever replaces McClellan will play the same role.
As indicated in numerous reports, particularly here and here, the Bush administration has sought to treat the mainstream press as just another troublesome special interest group, to reduce its role as a semi-official participant in the nation's governance.
Jay Rosen, a press watchdog and journalism professor at New York University, wrote last summer: "I believe the ultimate goal is to enhance executive power and maximize the president's freedom of maneuver - not only in policy-making and warfare, but on the terrain of fact itself." And writer Ron Suskind, after interviewing top Bush officials, said in an interview that they clearly want to create "a culture and public dialogue based on assertion rather than authenticity, on claim rather than fact."
That's the key to assessing McClellan. His job was to contest or deny the "terrain of fact," the empirical evidence, as traditionally defined. Examples:
1. In the face of evidence last September that the Bush administration had responded sluggishly to the Katrina crisis (behavior that was later assailed in a House Republican report), McClellan simply offered an assertion: "Flood control has been a priority of this administration from Day One."
2. In the face of evidence last June that the Iraqi insurgency was not in its "last throes" (as Vice President Cheney had insisted), McClellan simply asserted that it was: "We're making great progress to defeat the terrorist and regime elements...so this is a period when they (insurgents) are in a desperate mode."
3. Sometimes, when cornered, he used to catch a breather by calling on Jeff Gannon. Remember Jeff Gannon? He seems so 15 months ago. Jeff Gannon was the fake name used by the real James Guckert, who wrote for a fake news service that was, in reality, an offshoot of a conservative activist website called GOPUSA. McClellan would call on "Gannon," a friendly softball would be lobbed his way, and McClellan would say, "I'm glad you brought that up, Jeff." Gannon became Exhibit A of the administration's rather expansive view of how the press should be defined. (I wrote about the Gannon case in some detail last year.)
In all likelihood, the new Scott won't differ much from the old Scott, not as long as the basic mission remains unchanged. Perhaps the successor's personal style will be different. One prominent conservative blogger said today that he hopes the new flak will be a tougher customer ("it's probably wishful thinking to imagine that the President would appoint someone who would take a more combative attitude toward the White House press corps"), but somebody like Dan Senor, an ex-Bush spokesman in Iraq, would be seen as a great leap forward in articulation skills.
But no matter who gets the job, the adversarial dynamic will remain the same. It was Mike McCurry, back in his crisis days of 1998, who opened a press briefing with these words:
"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the theatre of the absurd."
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Why he stays
It's almost a waste of time to ask the question, "Will Rummy survive?"
Because it seems like a slam dunk that he will.
President Bush, in all likelihood, will stick with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for several fundamental political reasons:
1. If he dumped Rumsfeld, that would be tantamount to giving himself a devastating thumbs-down review. The war in Iraq is Bush's signature issue, the issue on which he will be judged by historians. If he removes the Pentagon chief who prosecuted that war, he would be telling the American people that the war itself was ill-conceived, or, at the very least, poorly executed. And, in terms of political damage, the buck would stop in the Oval Office.
All told, the firing would be a gift to the Democrats. (Conservative commentator John Podhoretz agrees, here.) Just imagine what the Senate confirmation hearings for Rumsfeld's successor would be like. Those hearings would become a stormy, high-profile examination of the Iraq war. In an election year, no less.
2. If he dumped Rumsfeld, those who are sympathetic to the dumpee would come forward to contend that the Defense secretary was being scapegoated. They would argue that, yes, Rumsfeld's longstanding crusade at the Pentagon (to develop a lighter, more mobile, more high-tech military) may have helped fuel his resistence to a larger ground game in Iraq and his relative lack of interest in postwar security issues....but they would point out -- rightly -- that Rumsfeld had only been trying to enforce the priorites established by the Bush team.
The fact is, candidate Bush gave a speech in 1999 calling for a lighter, more mobile, more high-tech military that would be focused on winning wars, not nation-building. That speech was drafted by a coterie of conservational national security think-tankers who had spent the Clinton era developing their ideas; by 1999, they had already attached themselves to Bush. Rumsfeld was not yet a member of the team. But he was ultimately tapped to carry out the team's vision.
So, again, Rumsfeld's removal would be widely perceived as a negative reflection on Bush.
3. If Bush dumped Rumsfeld, it would send a message that the Defense secretary's most credible critics were right. It's one thing to dismiss antiwar protestors like Cindy Sheehan, and to paint them as members of the so-called "loony left." It's a bit tougher to dismiss critics from within the ranks of the military, some of whom fought in Iraq.
The administration's most effective retort, thus far, is that these decorated dissenters are publicly imperiling the tradition of civilian control of the military. If Bush dumped Rumsfeld, he'd be giving up that argument. And there are plenty of conservatives -- defenders of tradition -- who would not be happy with Bush for doing that. The GOP needs their votes in November.
-----------
By the way, on a related topic:
It's not hard to see why top administration officials gravitate toward the conservative press when it's time to give interviews. Rumsfeld did a stint yesterday on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Never mind Rumsfeld's answers, they were predictable. Just sample some of Rush's questions, none of which seem to honor the old adage that the press should afflict the comfortable:
RUSH: "You were being hailed as a sex symbol in Washington (six years ago)...Today it's a far different circumstance, and it's a great illustration of just how things work inside the Beltway. What does it feel like to you to go through these ups and downs and to have practically the entire media jump on the case of these six generals demanding your ouster?"
RUSH: "...with the (Iraq war) news that you just gave us, it's much better there than it's being reported, and I assume that you're optimistic about the final outcome."
RUSH: "How would you describe the process and the progress there?"
RUSH: "I try to share with my audience as often as possible that people like you and the president know far more than the public knows about any number of events, simply because it's not possible for the information that you learn to be shared nor should most of it, and yet that would have to force you at some point to say, 'You know, we do have an anti-war crowd and they're loud and they're being affected by our enemy. But the American people, some of them, just don't know what we know,' and you have to stick with what you think is right, and that's where the whole democratic process I would think becomes challenging for you because you have to make a judgment: 'Do what's right or we listen to the people?'"
RUSH: "I met you a couple weeks ago in New York and I forgot to tell you something. I had so many people -- as I mentioned I was going to be at the Marine dinner, and I had so many people -- in my audience tell me to be sure to tell you how much they love and respect what you're doing. So let me do it now."
RUSH: "Mr. Secretary? Can I please follow you outside, and personally wash your limo?"
(OK, he didn't say that one. But he might as well have.)
Because it seems like a slam dunk that he will.
President Bush, in all likelihood, will stick with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for several fundamental political reasons:
1. If he dumped Rumsfeld, that would be tantamount to giving himself a devastating thumbs-down review. The war in Iraq is Bush's signature issue, the issue on which he will be judged by historians. If he removes the Pentagon chief who prosecuted that war, he would be telling the American people that the war itself was ill-conceived, or, at the very least, poorly executed. And, in terms of political damage, the buck would stop in the Oval Office.
All told, the firing would be a gift to the Democrats. (Conservative commentator John Podhoretz agrees, here.) Just imagine what the Senate confirmation hearings for Rumsfeld's successor would be like. Those hearings would become a stormy, high-profile examination of the Iraq war. In an election year, no less.
2. If he dumped Rumsfeld, those who are sympathetic to the dumpee would come forward to contend that the Defense secretary was being scapegoated. They would argue that, yes, Rumsfeld's longstanding crusade at the Pentagon (to develop a lighter, more mobile, more high-tech military) may have helped fuel his resistence to a larger ground game in Iraq and his relative lack of interest in postwar security issues....but they would point out -- rightly -- that Rumsfeld had only been trying to enforce the priorites established by the Bush team.
The fact is, candidate Bush gave a speech in 1999 calling for a lighter, more mobile, more high-tech military that would be focused on winning wars, not nation-building. That speech was drafted by a coterie of conservational national security think-tankers who had spent the Clinton era developing their ideas; by 1999, they had already attached themselves to Bush. Rumsfeld was not yet a member of the team. But he was ultimately tapped to carry out the team's vision.
So, again, Rumsfeld's removal would be widely perceived as a negative reflection on Bush.
3. If Bush dumped Rumsfeld, it would send a message that the Defense secretary's most credible critics were right. It's one thing to dismiss antiwar protestors like Cindy Sheehan, and to paint them as members of the so-called "loony left." It's a bit tougher to dismiss critics from within the ranks of the military, some of whom fought in Iraq.
The administration's most effective retort, thus far, is that these decorated dissenters are publicly imperiling the tradition of civilian control of the military. If Bush dumped Rumsfeld, he'd be giving up that argument. And there are plenty of conservatives -- defenders of tradition -- who would not be happy with Bush for doing that. The GOP needs their votes in November.
-----------
By the way, on a related topic:
It's not hard to see why top administration officials gravitate toward the conservative press when it's time to give interviews. Rumsfeld did a stint yesterday on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Never mind Rumsfeld's answers, they were predictable. Just sample some of Rush's questions, none of which seem to honor the old adage that the press should afflict the comfortable:
RUSH: "You were being hailed as a sex symbol in Washington (six years ago)...Today it's a far different circumstance, and it's a great illustration of just how things work inside the Beltway. What does it feel like to you to go through these ups and downs and to have practically the entire media jump on the case of these six generals demanding your ouster?"
RUSH: "...with the (Iraq war) news that you just gave us, it's much better there than it's being reported, and I assume that you're optimistic about the final outcome."
RUSH: "How would you describe the process and the progress there?"
RUSH: "I try to share with my audience as often as possible that people like you and the president know far more than the public knows about any number of events, simply because it's not possible for the information that you learn to be shared nor should most of it, and yet that would have to force you at some point to say, 'You know, we do have an anti-war crowd and they're loud and they're being affected by our enemy. But the American people, some of them, just don't know what we know,' and you have to stick with what you think is right, and that's where the whole democratic process I would think becomes challenging for you because you have to make a judgment: 'Do what's right or we listen to the people?'"
RUSH: "I met you a couple weeks ago in New York and I forgot to tell you something. I had so many people -- as I mentioned I was going to be at the Marine dinner, and I had so many people -- in my audience tell me to be sure to tell you how much they love and respect what you're doing. So let me do it now."
RUSH: "Mr. Secretary? Can I please follow you outside, and personally wash your limo?"
(OK, he didn't say that one. But he might as well have.)
Monday, April 17, 2006
Rewriting history for Rummy
Once again, it's fact-checking time.
A Bush administration defender tried yesterday to support the embattled Donald Rumsfeld by again denigrating Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff who had stated in prewar testimony that the occupation of Iraq would require several hundred thousand soldiers.
Shinseki is obviously a sore subject for Rumsfeld's defenders, given the fact that he was hustled into early retirement after stating his view (which contradicted Rumsfeld's smaller troop estimates) to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. So when former Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Richard Myers appeared on ABC yesterday, and the Shinseki testimony was brought up, he basically insisted that Shinseki had dreamed up his troop estimate on the spot.
Myers said: "I’m just saying that General Shinseki was forced to make that comment under pressure, pulled a number out.…He was forced to make — say a number. He said a number."
Myers was factually inaccurate. Shinseki had chosen that number because it was widely substantiated elsewhere.
For starters, here's Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq. He said on television the other day:
"You know, there’s a process within the Department of Defense, a very deliberate planning process which goes into each contingency and deliberately analytically develops war plans. It continues year to year. Our senior (Pentagon) leadership chose to radically modify 12 years of very deliberate planning with respect to Iraq. Previous planning identified the requirement for three times the level of forces that we committed into Iraq to take down a regime and then build the peace."
Another source: The bestselling book Cobra II, a detailed military history of the prewar planning. Pages 101-2, in particular.
Steve Hawkins, a brigadier general assigned to the Joint Staff and charged with postwar planning, briefed Shinseki during the same week that Shinseki visited the Senate committee. From the book: "Shinseki asked him how many troops he thought were needed to secure Iraq after Saddam was toppled. Hawkins said that no fewer than 350,000 coalition forces would do, and (possibly) half a million."
Most important, the authors concluded: "For all of the controversy, Shinseki's numbers were similar to those generated by CENTCOM," a reference to U.S. central command.
Fresh denigrations of Shinseki aren't likely to inspire the military dissenters to clam up.
A Bush administration defender tried yesterday to support the embattled Donald Rumsfeld by again denigrating Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff who had stated in prewar testimony that the occupation of Iraq would require several hundred thousand soldiers.
Shinseki is obviously a sore subject for Rumsfeld's defenders, given the fact that he was hustled into early retirement after stating his view (which contradicted Rumsfeld's smaller troop estimates) to the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. So when former Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Richard Myers appeared on ABC yesterday, and the Shinseki testimony was brought up, he basically insisted that Shinseki had dreamed up his troop estimate on the spot.
Myers said: "I’m just saying that General Shinseki was forced to make that comment under pressure, pulled a number out.…He was forced to make — say a number. He said a number."
Myers was factually inaccurate. Shinseki had chosen that number because it was widely substantiated elsewhere.
For starters, here's Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq. He said on television the other day:
"You know, there’s a process within the Department of Defense, a very deliberate planning process which goes into each contingency and deliberately analytically develops war plans. It continues year to year. Our senior (Pentagon) leadership chose to radically modify 12 years of very deliberate planning with respect to Iraq. Previous planning identified the requirement for three times the level of forces that we committed into Iraq to take down a regime and then build the peace."
Another source: The bestselling book Cobra II, a detailed military history of the prewar planning. Pages 101-2, in particular.
Steve Hawkins, a brigadier general assigned to the Joint Staff and charged with postwar planning, briefed Shinseki during the same week that Shinseki visited the Senate committee. From the book: "Shinseki asked him how many troops he thought were needed to secure Iraq after Saddam was toppled. Hawkins said that no fewer than 350,000 coalition forces would do, and (possibly) half a million."
Most important, the authors concluded: "For all of the controversy, Shinseki's numbers were similar to those generated by CENTCOM," a reference to U.S. central command.
Fresh denigrations of Shinseki aren't likely to inspire the military dissenters to clam up.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
The good reverend's seal of approval
A postscript or two about John McCain, whose rightward repositioning was analyzed today in a newspaper column by yours truly:
McCain's "electability" as a presidential candidate hinges on the assumption that he can still attract a large crossover vote from independents and Democrats. Certainly that was the case during the 2000 GOP primaries; non-Republicans flocked to McCain in both New Hampshire and Michigan, where the rules permit crossover voters. But it's not a cinch bet that he can attract a significant share of those voters as the GOP nominee in 2008 - especially if those voters view the erstwhile straight shooter as a spin doctor for the religious right.
One of his new best friends, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, appeared on CNN today, and it would not be surprising if Falwell's lavish praise for McCain winds up in a Democratic video somewhere down the road. In Falwell's words:
"You know, John McCain is a strong conservative. He's pro- life....His view on family is just where most conservative Christians' views are...And he and I are friends now. And he is speaking May 13."
The latter is a reference to McCain's upcoming appearance as a commencement speaker at Falwell's university in Virginia. The previous two speakers were Karl Rove and Sean Hannity.
It's too early to say whether McCain's popularity among independents and Democrats will be jeopardized by the fact that he is now "friends" with a guy who has declared that the 9/11 attacks were God's retribution for America's tolerance of gays, lesbians, and abortion doctors. Maybe McCain's many repositionings won't matter at all in the end; after all, he's taking all these steps two years away from the election, when the vast majority of Americans probably aren't paying atttention.
But I wonder what accounts for the slide in his popularity, vis a vis Hillary Clinton, over the past two months, as measured by a respected polling operation. Here's what nonpartisan analyst Charlie Cook, who runs the Cook Political Report, wrote yesterday:
"In two Cook Political Report/RT Strategies polls - one taken in late February and the other in early April - McCain received 18 percent of the self-identified 'liberal' vote when matched up against Clinton. But will one in five liberals still support McCain if he continues to assiduously court conservatives? In the latest Cook/RT Strategies poll, which was conducted April 6-9 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent, McCain's lead over Clinton among all adults dropped from 10 points (47 percent to 37 percent) to 5 points. Among registered voters, it dropped from 12 points (48 percent to 36 percent) to 9 points (46 percent to 37 percent). While these shifts aren't huge, the McCain-versus-Clinton spread should be watched closely in coming months..."
Cook seems to be suggesting that McCain's drop might be attributed to his rightward repositioning. I think it's way too early to state it with certainty. Perhaps Cook will find something more definitive later this spring, after McCain appears at Liberty University, sharing the stage May 13 with the man he once assailed as an "agent of intolerance."
McCain's "electability" as a presidential candidate hinges on the assumption that he can still attract a large crossover vote from independents and Democrats. Certainly that was the case during the 2000 GOP primaries; non-Republicans flocked to McCain in both New Hampshire and Michigan, where the rules permit crossover voters. But it's not a cinch bet that he can attract a significant share of those voters as the GOP nominee in 2008 - especially if those voters view the erstwhile straight shooter as a spin doctor for the religious right.
One of his new best friends, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, appeared on CNN today, and it would not be surprising if Falwell's lavish praise for McCain winds up in a Democratic video somewhere down the road. In Falwell's words:
"You know, John McCain is a strong conservative. He's pro- life....His view on family is just where most conservative Christians' views are...And he and I are friends now. And he is speaking May 13."
The latter is a reference to McCain's upcoming appearance as a commencement speaker at Falwell's university in Virginia. The previous two speakers were Karl Rove and Sean Hannity.
It's too early to say whether McCain's popularity among independents and Democrats will be jeopardized by the fact that he is now "friends" with a guy who has declared that the 9/11 attacks were God's retribution for America's tolerance of gays, lesbians, and abortion doctors. Maybe McCain's many repositionings won't matter at all in the end; after all, he's taking all these steps two years away from the election, when the vast majority of Americans probably aren't paying atttention.
But I wonder what accounts for the slide in his popularity, vis a vis Hillary Clinton, over the past two months, as measured by a respected polling operation. Here's what nonpartisan analyst Charlie Cook, who runs the Cook Political Report, wrote yesterday:
"In two Cook Political Report/RT Strategies polls - one taken in late February and the other in early April - McCain received 18 percent of the self-identified 'liberal' vote when matched up against Clinton. But will one in five liberals still support McCain if he continues to assiduously court conservatives? In the latest Cook/RT Strategies poll, which was conducted April 6-9 and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent, McCain's lead over Clinton among all adults dropped from 10 points (47 percent to 37 percent) to 5 points. Among registered voters, it dropped from 12 points (48 percent to 36 percent) to 9 points (46 percent to 37 percent). While these shifts aren't huge, the McCain-versus-Clinton spread should be watched closely in coming months..."
Cook seems to be suggesting that McCain's drop might be attributed to his rightward repositioning. I think it's way too early to state it with certainty. Perhaps Cook will find something more definitive later this spring, after McCain appears at Liberty University, sharing the stage May 13 with the man he once assailed as an "agent of intolerance."
Saturday, April 15, 2006
Saturday mailbag: the corruption issue, the anti-Rummy revolt
Two items today:
1. Some eagle-eyed blog readers detected a contradiction in several of my posts this week.
Previewing a special congressional election in California on Tuesday, I had written that the Democrats would be sending a potent national message if their candidate, Francine Busby, managed to pull at least 40 percent of the vote in California-50, the heavily Republican district on the north side of San Diego.
Yet, after the results were finally tabulated, I wrote on Wednesday that the Democrats had failed to send a potent national message because Busby had managed to pull only 44 percent of the vote.
You ask, Huh?
I reply, mea culpa.
After my first post, I received two calls from Democrats whom I have long respected for their honesty, even when it hurts their side. They persuaded me (it didn't take much persuading) that I had the race all wrong, that Busby's failure to clear 50 percent plus one will probably doom her bid for office. If she'd cleared the majority mark, in the crowded field of candidates, she would have won outright. But by failing to do so, she must now face Brian Bilbray, the second-place Republican, in a June runoff. And it's likely that most Republican voters in this Republican district will coalesce behind the GOP candidate; by contrast, they split their votes among 14 Republicans on this week's open ballot.
All this thinking, and more, was reflected in my Wednesday post. I would have been smarter, however, if I had mentioned the interim impact of those persuasive Democrats. Meanwhile, a non-partisan analyst in Washington, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report, underscored their point in remarks on Thursday: "Did voters send a message? The answer is no."
My thinking has further evolved this week, not to the Democrats' benefit. The Democrats want to push a "culture of corruption" theme during their '06 bid to retake the House, and certainly Duke Cunningham, the now-jailed Republican congressman who represented California-50, is Exhibit A. But there is also growing evidence that the corruption theme is hardly a clear winner for the Democrats -- because they apparently have knaves in their ranks, as well.
Case in point, West Virginia Congressman Alan Mollohan. Here's a mere sampling of his suspected sleaze: Using the special-interest loopholes known as "earmarks," he parlayed his stint on the House Appropriations Committee to steer $250 million to five nonprofits that he played a role in establishing. The groups in turn paid big salaries to various associates and ex-employes. He has also worked some suspiciously lucrative real estate deals with one of those ex-aides (who runs one of the nonprofits), and then initially failed to pay real estate taxes.
And this guy is the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee.
Today, the Washington Post editorialized that Mollohan should quit the committee until he is fully scrutinized. My point is that Mollohan is lucrative fodder for the Republicans, who can now demonstrate that they hardly have a monopoly on the "culture of corruption." Yes, it's true that the Republicans run everything on Capitol Hill, thus they are arguably more culpable - but the GOP now has ammo that can allow them to play to those many voters who simply say, "Both sides do it, they're all a bunch of crook."
And remember, in June Duke Cunningham won't be on the California-50 ballot.
2. Now, on the other matter: The revolt against Rummy by high-ranking retired military officers. I believe the latest number is seven.
This week I received some emails from thoughtful people who are troubled by the notion that military leaders are now so willing to speak out publicly against their civilian superiors. These emailers have no love for Donald Rumsfeld or President Bush. They just worry that a bad precedent is being established which -- down the road, and in other circumstances -- could imperil the important constitutional tradition of civilian control.
It's an interesting point, and it demonstrates why the anti-Rummy revolt may well become (as we say in the news business) a story with legs. And, sure enough, today I ran across a guest column that makes the same point. Authored by former military officer Andrew Bacevich, who's now a Boston University international relations professor (and an occasional source of mine), it posits the argument this way:
"...But in their eagerness to settle scores, Rumsfeld's pursuers are flirting with ideas that can only be regarded as subversive. (One military critic) has resurrected the notion that a senior officer's primary obligation lies not to those atop the chain of command but to the Constitution....To grant even the most narrowly drawn exceptions to the principle of civilian control is to open up a Pandora's box of complications.
In the short term, instigating Rumsfeld's ouster might secure him top billing in the list of bunglers who screwed up the Iraq war. In the long term, it would only exacerbate the underlying problem. Unless and until we can restore some semblance of civilian-military effectiveness, defective policies will be the norm rather than the exception. This — not the sins of Donald Rumsfeld — is the nub of the matter."
Bacevich, at least, is offering a high-road rebuttal to those dissenting military guys. By contrast, however, Rumsfeld's defenders seem to be trafficking the lower roads. The other day I cited an attack on the dissenters for being self-promoters in time of war. But now I find a new one; the same attack is here as well. And the gist is:
It's Bill Clinton's fault.
Or, in one attacker's words, "these generals appear to be mostly from the Clinton era."
No further comment is necessary.
1. Some eagle-eyed blog readers detected a contradiction in several of my posts this week.
Previewing a special congressional election in California on Tuesday, I had written that the Democrats would be sending a potent national message if their candidate, Francine Busby, managed to pull at least 40 percent of the vote in California-50, the heavily Republican district on the north side of San Diego.
Yet, after the results were finally tabulated, I wrote on Wednesday that the Democrats had failed to send a potent national message because Busby had managed to pull only 44 percent of the vote.
You ask, Huh?
I reply, mea culpa.
After my first post, I received two calls from Democrats whom I have long respected for their honesty, even when it hurts their side. They persuaded me (it didn't take much persuading) that I had the race all wrong, that Busby's failure to clear 50 percent plus one will probably doom her bid for office. If she'd cleared the majority mark, in the crowded field of candidates, she would have won outright. But by failing to do so, she must now face Brian Bilbray, the second-place Republican, in a June runoff. And it's likely that most Republican voters in this Republican district will coalesce behind the GOP candidate; by contrast, they split their votes among 14 Republicans on this week's open ballot.
All this thinking, and more, was reflected in my Wednesday post. I would have been smarter, however, if I had mentioned the interim impact of those persuasive Democrats. Meanwhile, a non-partisan analyst in Washington, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report, underscored their point in remarks on Thursday: "Did voters send a message? The answer is no."
My thinking has further evolved this week, not to the Democrats' benefit. The Democrats want to push a "culture of corruption" theme during their '06 bid to retake the House, and certainly Duke Cunningham, the now-jailed Republican congressman who represented California-50, is Exhibit A. But there is also growing evidence that the corruption theme is hardly a clear winner for the Democrats -- because they apparently have knaves in their ranks, as well.
Case in point, West Virginia Congressman Alan Mollohan. Here's a mere sampling of his suspected sleaze: Using the special-interest loopholes known as "earmarks," he parlayed his stint on the House Appropriations Committee to steer $250 million to five nonprofits that he played a role in establishing. The groups in turn paid big salaries to various associates and ex-employes. He has also worked some suspiciously lucrative real estate deals with one of those ex-aides (who runs one of the nonprofits), and then initially failed to pay real estate taxes.
And this guy is the top Democrat on the House Ethics Committee.
Today, the Washington Post editorialized that Mollohan should quit the committee until he is fully scrutinized. My point is that Mollohan is lucrative fodder for the Republicans, who can now demonstrate that they hardly have a monopoly on the "culture of corruption." Yes, it's true that the Republicans run everything on Capitol Hill, thus they are arguably more culpable - but the GOP now has ammo that can allow them to play to those many voters who simply say, "Both sides do it, they're all a bunch of crook."
And remember, in June Duke Cunningham won't be on the California-50 ballot.
2. Now, on the other matter: The revolt against Rummy by high-ranking retired military officers. I believe the latest number is seven.
This week I received some emails from thoughtful people who are troubled by the notion that military leaders are now so willing to speak out publicly against their civilian superiors. These emailers have no love for Donald Rumsfeld or President Bush. They just worry that a bad precedent is being established which -- down the road, and in other circumstances -- could imperil the important constitutional tradition of civilian control.
It's an interesting point, and it demonstrates why the anti-Rummy revolt may well become (as we say in the news business) a story with legs. And, sure enough, today I ran across a guest column that makes the same point. Authored by former military officer Andrew Bacevich, who's now a Boston University international relations professor (and an occasional source of mine), it posits the argument this way:
"...But in their eagerness to settle scores, Rumsfeld's pursuers are flirting with ideas that can only be regarded as subversive. (One military critic) has resurrected the notion that a senior officer's primary obligation lies not to those atop the chain of command but to the Constitution....To grant even the most narrowly drawn exceptions to the principle of civilian control is to open up a Pandora's box of complications.
In the short term, instigating Rumsfeld's ouster might secure him top billing in the list of bunglers who screwed up the Iraq war. In the long term, it would only exacerbate the underlying problem. Unless and until we can restore some semblance of civilian-military effectiveness, defective policies will be the norm rather than the exception. This — not the sins of Donald Rumsfeld — is the nub of the matter."
Bacevich, at least, is offering a high-road rebuttal to those dissenting military guys. By contrast, however, Rumsfeld's defenders seem to be trafficking the lower roads. The other day I cited an attack on the dissenters for being self-promoters in time of war. But now I find a new one; the same attack is here as well. And the gist is:
It's Bill Clinton's fault.
Or, in one attacker's words, "these generals appear to be mostly from the Clinton era."
No further comment is necessary.
Friday, April 14, 2006
Those failed Democratic courtiers
Due to the holidays, and the urgent need to write a weekend newspaper column (about John McCain) on an early deadline, I'll keep my blog observations brief today. I'll return tomorrow with lots to say from the Saturday mailbag. Anyway:
Joe Klein, the Time magazine columnist, has an interesting piece this week about the strong - and perhaps burdensome - influence of big-shot consultants inside the Democratic party. His basic argument, which he will apparently address as well in a forthcoming book, is that these Beltway strategists deserve considerable blame for the failures of Al Gore and John Kerry during the last two presidential elections.
Klein writes that these consultants "have become specialists in caution," captives of their focus groups, and that they drained whatever spontaneity Gore and Kerry might have otherwise displayed on the stump. (I have heard that Bob Shrum, a top consultant to both men, is disputing some of the details in Klein's account, but let us not give his complaints too much weight. Bob Shrum retired from politics last year with a record of 0-8 in presidential races.)
It's fair to say that Gore and Kerry share some of the blame as well; perhaps, if they had been more instinctive candidates, they would not have elevated the consultants to guru status. Gore and Kerry ended up paying big bucks for bad advice - notably, the traditional (and wrongheaded) Democratic argument that voters are looking at issues, rather than character.
Klein's key passage:
"'We're going to meet the voters where they are,' Shrum had told me early in the Kerry campaign, which sounded innocent enough—but what he really meant was, We're going to follow our polling numbers and focus groups. We're going to emphasize the things that voters think are important. In fact, Shrum had it completely wrong. Presidential campaigns are not about 'meeting the voters where they are.' They are about leadership and character. Mark Mellman, Kerry's lead pollster, figured that out too late. 'If you asked people what they were most interested in, they would say jobs, education and health care,' he later said. 'But they thought the President should be interested in national security'."
I concur with Klein.
I can't recount the number of meals I have shared with Democratic consultants who have told me, "We're right on the issues, the voters are exactly where we are on the issues." I would inevitably counter with, "Yeah, but you guys were saying that all through the '80s, when the voters were always with the Democrats on the issues - but Ronald Reagan got elected twice anyway." Their answer would be, "Yeah, but Reagan was Reagan, that was different."
They never learn. In 2004, most voters sided with the Democrats on federal spending for social programs, the environment, Social Security, on down the line. Yet they chose to re-elect Bush, because the Republicans had framed the campaign on character, and on their terms (Bush said at his convention that you'd always know where he stood, even if you disagreed; Kerry was painted as the flip-flopper).
And, to underscore what Klein writes, I have dredged up my notes from Sept. 2, 2004. That was the day when I knew Kerry would lose.
The scene was a New York City conference room, during the waning hours of the Republican national convention. The Kerry campaign had decided to fly all their top consultants into town, to reassure the national press that everything was going great for them. (If things had really been going great, they wouldn't have bothered to fly in.)
So we met at a breakfast, sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. The talk quickly turned to the anti-Kerry ads, sponsored by those famed Swift Boat veterans. As the Swift Boat attacks mounted during August, the Kerry people had said nothing. Days and even weeks had passed, with little or no response. We asked the consultants, why didn't you hit back right away?
Mary Beth Cahill, the campaign manager, replied that the Swift Boat attacks were "beside the point, in terms of what most voters want to hear."
And what was that?
Tad Devine said that voters wanted to hear about economic issues, not "an exchange of insults."
But why couldn't you do both?
Devine: "We could see that (the Swift Boat attack) was resonating immediately. But we (decided) to engage it in the serious media when the time was right...to engage it on our timetable, not theirs."
To me, that was the key remark. By "serious media," what he also called "the credible media," Devine was specifically referring to The New York Times. The Swift Boat attacks had circulated for many days, coursing through the conservative/cable/online media, before The Times finally took notice. Yet it was a testament to the elitism of the Democratic consultants that the story didn't count until it landed in the Times. It was the old way of thinking, baldly revealed.
So the question is, will the next Democratic candidate be weighed down by the consultant class? Or, at the very least, can the next round of consultants be as nimble as President Bush's tight-knit team?
A final question: Didn't I promise a brief posting? Sorry about that.
Joe Klein, the Time magazine columnist, has an interesting piece this week about the strong - and perhaps burdensome - influence of big-shot consultants inside the Democratic party. His basic argument, which he will apparently address as well in a forthcoming book, is that these Beltway strategists deserve considerable blame for the failures of Al Gore and John Kerry during the last two presidential elections.
Klein writes that these consultants "have become specialists in caution," captives of their focus groups, and that they drained whatever spontaneity Gore and Kerry might have otherwise displayed on the stump. (I have heard that Bob Shrum, a top consultant to both men, is disputing some of the details in Klein's account, but let us not give his complaints too much weight. Bob Shrum retired from politics last year with a record of 0-8 in presidential races.)
It's fair to say that Gore and Kerry share some of the blame as well; perhaps, if they had been more instinctive candidates, they would not have elevated the consultants to guru status. Gore and Kerry ended up paying big bucks for bad advice - notably, the traditional (and wrongheaded) Democratic argument that voters are looking at issues, rather than character.
Klein's key passage:
"'We're going to meet the voters where they are,' Shrum had told me early in the Kerry campaign, which sounded innocent enough—but what he really meant was, We're going to follow our polling numbers and focus groups. We're going to emphasize the things that voters think are important. In fact, Shrum had it completely wrong. Presidential campaigns are not about 'meeting the voters where they are.' They are about leadership and character. Mark Mellman, Kerry's lead pollster, figured that out too late. 'If you asked people what they were most interested in, they would say jobs, education and health care,' he later said. 'But they thought the President should be interested in national security'."
I concur with Klein.
I can't recount the number of meals I have shared with Democratic consultants who have told me, "We're right on the issues, the voters are exactly where we are on the issues." I would inevitably counter with, "Yeah, but you guys were saying that all through the '80s, when the voters were always with the Democrats on the issues - but Ronald Reagan got elected twice anyway." Their answer would be, "Yeah, but Reagan was Reagan, that was different."
They never learn. In 2004, most voters sided with the Democrats on federal spending for social programs, the environment, Social Security, on down the line. Yet they chose to re-elect Bush, because the Republicans had framed the campaign on character, and on their terms (Bush said at his convention that you'd always know where he stood, even if you disagreed; Kerry was painted as the flip-flopper).
And, to underscore what Klein writes, I have dredged up my notes from Sept. 2, 2004. That was the day when I knew Kerry would lose.
The scene was a New York City conference room, during the waning hours of the Republican national convention. The Kerry campaign had decided to fly all their top consultants into town, to reassure the national press that everything was going great for them. (If things had really been going great, they wouldn't have bothered to fly in.)
So we met at a breakfast, sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. The talk quickly turned to the anti-Kerry ads, sponsored by those famed Swift Boat veterans. As the Swift Boat attacks mounted during August, the Kerry people had said nothing. Days and even weeks had passed, with little or no response. We asked the consultants, why didn't you hit back right away?
Mary Beth Cahill, the campaign manager, replied that the Swift Boat attacks were "beside the point, in terms of what most voters want to hear."
And what was that?
Tad Devine said that voters wanted to hear about economic issues, not "an exchange of insults."
But why couldn't you do both?
Devine: "We could see that (the Swift Boat attack) was resonating immediately. But we (decided) to engage it in the serious media when the time was right...to engage it on our timetable, not theirs."
To me, that was the key remark. By "serious media," what he also called "the credible media," Devine was specifically referring to The New York Times. The Swift Boat attacks had circulated for many days, coursing through the conservative/cable/online media, before The Times finally took notice. Yet it was a testament to the elitism of the Democratic consultants that the story didn't count until it landed in the Times. It was the old way of thinking, baldly revealed.
So the question is, will the next Democratic candidate be weighed down by the consultant class? Or, at the very least, can the next round of consultants be as nimble as President Bush's tight-knit team?
A final question: Didn't I promise a brief posting? Sorry about that.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Those unethical self-promoting blatherers
Four days ago, I wrote this: "Three retired and highly decorated military leaders, including a three-star Marine Corps general yesterday, have publicly assailed the administration's handling of the Iraq war, and have publicly called for the removal of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. I await the inevitable attacks on their motivations and characters."
Well, that didn't take long. The wait is over.
In the wake of the news today that a fourth military leader -- retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-05 -- has now gone public to assail the administration's war strategy and to demand Rumsfeld's ouster, a prominent conservative commentator has stepped forward to attack their motivations and characters.
Victor Davis Hanson argues today that nobody should listen to these "frenetic" guys, because they are "self-appointed ethicists" and "talking heads" who "blather" on television, and because they may be trying to "hype" a book.
The hype remark is a jab at retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who has authored a new book on Iraq (the other three are not book authors). Hanson basically argues that the act of authorship should be considered a character flaw -- and possibly unpatriotic as well.
In Hanson's words, there are "ethical questions involved in promoting a book or showcasing a media appearance during a time of war."
Unethical, unpatriotic, self-promoting...let's see... what else is wrong with these guys?
Oh, yes: They are "pensioned."
I was always under the impression that it's appropriate for retired officers to collect government pay after serving their country. I never realized that the word was a pejorative, or that it was meant to suggest that such officers should keep their mouths shut in exchange for their stipends.
Assailing the officer corps might not be the greatest strategy, if only because, as this article reports, the ranks of the dissenters may well continue to swell:
"(W)e are witnessing the rumblings of an officers' revolt, and things could get ugly if it were to take hold and roar....It is startling to hear, in private conversations, how widely and deeply the U.S. officer corps despises this secretary of defense. The joke in some Pentagon circles is that if Rumsfeld were meeting with the service chiefs and commanders and a group of terrorists barged into the room and kidnapped him, not a single general would lift a finger to help him."
There is one conservative voice, George Conway, who is sticking up today for those four officers, here. But Hanson's putdown prompts me to wonder:
Since even military guys are apparently grist for attack, is it possible for any American to ask hard questions about this war and this administration without having one's character impugned?
Well, that didn't take long. The wait is over.
In the wake of the news today that a fourth military leader -- retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who led the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-05 -- has now gone public to assail the administration's war strategy and to demand Rumsfeld's ouster, a prominent conservative commentator has stepped forward to attack their motivations and characters.
Victor Davis Hanson argues today that nobody should listen to these "frenetic" guys, because they are "self-appointed ethicists" and "talking heads" who "blather" on television, and because they may be trying to "hype" a book.
The hype remark is a jab at retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, who has authored a new book on Iraq (the other three are not book authors). Hanson basically argues that the act of authorship should be considered a character flaw -- and possibly unpatriotic as well.
In Hanson's words, there are "ethical questions involved in promoting a book or showcasing a media appearance during a time of war."
Unethical, unpatriotic, self-promoting...let's see... what else is wrong with these guys?
Oh, yes: They are "pensioned."
I was always under the impression that it's appropriate for retired officers to collect government pay after serving their country. I never realized that the word was a pejorative, or that it was meant to suggest that such officers should keep their mouths shut in exchange for their stipends.
Assailing the officer corps might not be the greatest strategy, if only because, as this article reports, the ranks of the dissenters may well continue to swell:
"(W)e are witnessing the rumblings of an officers' revolt, and things could get ugly if it were to take hold and roar....It is startling to hear, in private conversations, how widely and deeply the U.S. officer corps despises this secretary of defense. The joke in some Pentagon circles is that if Rumsfeld were meeting with the service chiefs and commanders and a group of terrorists barged into the room and kidnapped him, not a single general would lift a finger to help him."
There is one conservative voice, George Conway, who is sticking up today for those four officers, here. But Hanson's putdown prompts me to wonder:
Since even military guys are apparently grist for attack, is it possible for any American to ask hard questions about this war and this administration without having one's character impugned?
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Here we go again
It's another day of damage control for the Bush administration, as it seeks yet again to shore up its shaky credibility. And the issue, as usual, is Iraq.
Let's start with something the president said back on May 29, 2003: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." He made this statement two months into the war, when skeptical Americans were already asking questions about those elusive WMDs. On this particular day, Bush was discussing the discovery of some suspicious mobile trailers.
We've known ever since that Bush's claim didn't pan out. But, in the wake of a new report today, we have now learned something new: That on the day when Bush made his WMD claim, the administration already had strong reason to believe that such a claim was factually incorrect.
I'll let the Post story speak for itself: "A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded (at the time Bush spoke) that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement. The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped 'secret' and shelved."
So while the fact-finders, dispatched to Iraq by the Defense Intelligence Agency, were privately referring to those trailers as "the biggest sand toilets in the world," a parade of administration officials, led by Bush, continued to describe those trailers in dire terms. I found a few such statements. A sampling:
Secretary of State Colin Powell, on June 2, 2003, said, "We have already discovered mobile biological factories of the kind that I described to the Security Council on the 5th of February. We have now found them. There is no question in our mind that that’s what their purpose was."
National security advisor Condolleezza Rice, a day later, said, "This is a weapons laboratory trailer capable of making a lot of...dry agent, dry biological agent, that can kill a lot of people."
Bush again, on June 5: "We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents."
Vice President Cheney, on Sept. 14: "They’re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack."
Questions abound, as usual:
Did nobody in power read that field report? Or did they read it and opt to ignore it, because (as the Post also reported) there were other field teams that suspected that those trailers might have been nefarious? If the latter is the case, however, why did the administration pretend in public that the WMD finding was beyond dispute (Powell: "There's no question in our mind") ?
And none of those administration officials offered to subsequently retract the WMD claim, even though weapons inspector David Kay told Congress, in the autumn of 2003, that he had found nothing that tied those trailers to WMDs.
Which brings us to White House press secretary Scott McClellan. His defense today was to take the offensive.
In a press briefing, he said that the media should apologize for reporting the trailer story: "You know, I saw some reporting talking about how this latest revelation — which is not something that is new; this is all old information that’s being rehashed — was an embarrassment for the White House. No, it’s an embarrassment for the media that is out there reporting this...I hope they will go and publicly apologize..."
What's most interesting here is not the demand for an apology (that's just a predictable attempt to blame the messenger), but, rather, his contention that the trailer story is old news, "old information that's being rehashed."
Word for word, that's exactly what Bill Clinton's spin doctors used to say whenever he was hit with scandal allegations. Republicans used to laugh when the Clinton flaks tried that dodge.
And that behavior was one reason why Bush ran for president on a pledge to "restore honor and integrity to the White House."
Let's start with something the president said back on May 29, 2003: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." He made this statement two months into the war, when skeptical Americans were already asking questions about those elusive WMDs. On this particular day, Bush was discussing the discovery of some suspicious mobile trailers.
We've known ever since that Bush's claim didn't pan out. But, in the wake of a new report today, we have now learned something new: That on the day when Bush made his WMD claim, the administration already had strong reason to believe that such a claim was factually incorrect.
I'll let the Post story speak for itself: "A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded (at the time Bush spoke) that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement. The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped 'secret' and shelved."
So while the fact-finders, dispatched to Iraq by the Defense Intelligence Agency, were privately referring to those trailers as "the biggest sand toilets in the world," a parade of administration officials, led by Bush, continued to describe those trailers in dire terms. I found a few such statements. A sampling:
Secretary of State Colin Powell, on June 2, 2003, said, "We have already discovered mobile biological factories of the kind that I described to the Security Council on the 5th of February. We have now found them. There is no question in our mind that that’s what their purpose was."
National security advisor Condolleezza Rice, a day later, said, "This is a weapons laboratory trailer capable of making a lot of...dry agent, dry biological agent, that can kill a lot of people."
Bush again, on June 5: "We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents."
Vice President Cheney, on Sept. 14: "They’re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack."
Questions abound, as usual:
Did nobody in power read that field report? Or did they read it and opt to ignore it, because (as the Post also reported) there were other field teams that suspected that those trailers might have been nefarious? If the latter is the case, however, why did the administration pretend in public that the WMD finding was beyond dispute (Powell: "There's no question in our mind") ?
And none of those administration officials offered to subsequently retract the WMD claim, even though weapons inspector David Kay told Congress, in the autumn of 2003, that he had found nothing that tied those trailers to WMDs.
Which brings us to White House press secretary Scott McClellan. His defense today was to take the offensive.
In a press briefing, he said that the media should apologize for reporting the trailer story: "You know, I saw some reporting talking about how this latest revelation — which is not something that is new; this is all old information that’s being rehashed — was an embarrassment for the White House. No, it’s an embarrassment for the media that is out there reporting this...I hope they will go and publicly apologize..."
What's most interesting here is not the demand for an apology (that's just a predictable attempt to blame the messenger), but, rather, his contention that the trailer story is old news, "old information that's being rehashed."
Word for word, that's exactly what Bill Clinton's spin doctors used to say whenever he was hit with scandal allegations. Republicans used to laugh when the Clinton flaks tried that dodge.
And that behavior was one reason why Bush ran for president on a pledge to "restore honor and integrity to the White House."
Swing and a miss
The Democrats are beginning to resemble the Philadelphia Phillies. They're always retooling, always in search of a winning formula, and when they finally take the field, they always seem to wind up a tad short on the scoreboard.
It happened again last night, in an affluent congressional district on the north side of San Diego.
All the elements of a stunning victory seemed to be in place: A special election was being conducted, to fill the seat vacated by a Republican congressman, Duke Cunningham, who had just been hauled to the slammer for taking $2 million in bribes. Cunningham seemed like the ideal poster child for the Democrats' national "culture of corruption" message - the argument that the ruling Republicans on Capitol Hill deserve to be ousted from power because they have been egregiously abusing it.
The Democrats seemed primed to exploit Republican voter disenchantment, not just toward Cunningham, but toward the Bush administration and the GOP Congress in general (for the missteps in Iraq, and the failure to hold the line on federal spending). Moreover, in this special election, the Democrats were unifying around one well-financed candidate, Francine Busby - while the Republicans were fielding 14 candidates, most of whom were busy beating each other up.
In short, Busby seemed poised to win more than 50 percent of the vote - in a heavily Republican district, no less - and thereby send a national message that the GOP was indeed facing big trouble in the November elections.
It didn't happen. And until the Democrats actually win something big some place, their promises of a big Democratic year amounts to nothing but hype.
Busby got 44 percent of the vote. She finished first, but, under California rules, she now has to face the number-two finisher, former Republican congressman Brian Bilbray, in a June runoff. When that happens, Bilbray won't have to share the Republican voters with the 13 GOP rivals who crowded the special election "open" ballot.
Clearly, the Democrats best shot at swiping a Republican seat was last night. So what went wrong for the Democrats, this time?
Above all, they needed a big turnout in that district from their own voters, and they didn't get it. The Democrats can't claim that 2006 will be a "change election" until it can demonstrate that angry voters are rising up in large numbers to demand change.
Supposedly, grassroots Democrats are outraged at Bush, and anxious to send a message by punishing his party. Yet they didn't show up en masse in the 50th congressional district. Granted, it's springtime in southern California, a place where voting takes a back seat to surfing, and this week is spring break for many California families, but wasn't this election billed as a big chance to bloody the Republicans, right after the district's congressman was sent to jail?
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga is in despair today. The proprietor of Daily Kos, the popular liberal website, assails the party leadership for failing to whip up those supposedly outraged voters. The party's leaders, he complains, "do nothing to motivate the Democratic base to turn out and vote. My sense of pessimism for November's elections only gets deeper the more elections show lower and lower turnout. Our supporters have stopped giving a (darn)."
Here's one way to measure the underwhelming result: In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore won 43 percent of the district's voters. In 2004, John Kerry won 44 percent of the district's voters. Last night, Busby hit the same ceiling - and this is with 14 Republicans divvying up the GOP vote on the open ballot.
A sunnier interpretation for Democrats can be found here, but even the author, grassroots Democratic activist Chris Bowers, adds this proviso:
"We still haven't put together the pieces for a landslide election in the House....Our basic problem seems to be that turnout is low....It is entirely possible that running on Republican corruption could be a double-edged sword that depresses Republican turnout, but also depresses all turnout, as people grow disgusted with politicians in general. There probably needs to be more work from good field people to really determine if we are facing a turnout problem, but there also needs to be more work done to motivate Democratic voters."
The official Democratic line, naturally, is that everything is great. Consider this statement today from Democratic congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who heads the '06 effort to retake the House: "In a Republican district, Busby showed that Democratic candidates for change can and will make status quo, politics-as-usual Republicans fight for their political lives in every corner of this country.”
But until the Democrats actually win something, words are mere bluster.
It happened again last night, in an affluent congressional district on the north side of San Diego.
All the elements of a stunning victory seemed to be in place: A special election was being conducted, to fill the seat vacated by a Republican congressman, Duke Cunningham, who had just been hauled to the slammer for taking $2 million in bribes. Cunningham seemed like the ideal poster child for the Democrats' national "culture of corruption" message - the argument that the ruling Republicans on Capitol Hill deserve to be ousted from power because they have been egregiously abusing it.
The Democrats seemed primed to exploit Republican voter disenchantment, not just toward Cunningham, but toward the Bush administration and the GOP Congress in general (for the missteps in Iraq, and the failure to hold the line on federal spending). Moreover, in this special election, the Democrats were unifying around one well-financed candidate, Francine Busby - while the Republicans were fielding 14 candidates, most of whom were busy beating each other up.
In short, Busby seemed poised to win more than 50 percent of the vote - in a heavily Republican district, no less - and thereby send a national message that the GOP was indeed facing big trouble in the November elections.
It didn't happen. And until the Democrats actually win something big some place, their promises of a big Democratic year amounts to nothing but hype.
Busby got 44 percent of the vote. She finished first, but, under California rules, she now has to face the number-two finisher, former Republican congressman Brian Bilbray, in a June runoff. When that happens, Bilbray won't have to share the Republican voters with the 13 GOP rivals who crowded the special election "open" ballot.
Clearly, the Democrats best shot at swiping a Republican seat was last night. So what went wrong for the Democrats, this time?
Above all, they needed a big turnout in that district from their own voters, and they didn't get it. The Democrats can't claim that 2006 will be a "change election" until it can demonstrate that angry voters are rising up in large numbers to demand change.
Supposedly, grassroots Democrats are outraged at Bush, and anxious to send a message by punishing his party. Yet they didn't show up en masse in the 50th congressional district. Granted, it's springtime in southern California, a place where voting takes a back seat to surfing, and this week is spring break for many California families, but wasn't this election billed as a big chance to bloody the Republicans, right after the district's congressman was sent to jail?
Markos Moulitsas Zuniga is in despair today. The proprietor of Daily Kos, the popular liberal website, assails the party leadership for failing to whip up those supposedly outraged voters. The party's leaders, he complains, "do nothing to motivate the Democratic base to turn out and vote. My sense of pessimism for November's elections only gets deeper the more elections show lower and lower turnout. Our supporters have stopped giving a (darn)."
Here's one way to measure the underwhelming result: In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore won 43 percent of the district's voters. In 2004, John Kerry won 44 percent of the district's voters. Last night, Busby hit the same ceiling - and this is with 14 Republicans divvying up the GOP vote on the open ballot.
A sunnier interpretation for Democrats can be found here, but even the author, grassroots Democratic activist Chris Bowers, adds this proviso:
"We still haven't put together the pieces for a landslide election in the House....Our basic problem seems to be that turnout is low....It is entirely possible that running on Republican corruption could be a double-edged sword that depresses Republican turnout, but also depresses all turnout, as people grow disgusted with politicians in general. There probably needs to be more work from good field people to really determine if we are facing a turnout problem, but there also needs to be more work done to motivate Democratic voters."
The official Democratic line, naturally, is that everything is great. Consider this statement today from Democratic congressman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who heads the '06 effort to retake the House: "In a Republican district, Busby showed that Democratic candidates for change can and will make status quo, politics-as-usual Republicans fight for their political lives in every corner of this country.”
But until the Democrats actually win something, words are mere bluster.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
The GOP's immigration inertia
It's no surprise that the Republican Senate failed last week to figure out a way to deal with illegal immigrants. The whole issue is a political nightmare for the governing party.
If the Republicans had cracked down too much on the illegals - as suggested by the House GOP - then they would have risked alienating the fastest-growing electorate in American politics, one that Karl Rove has been coveting for years. Illegals can't vote, of course, but legal Hispanic voters have already demonstrated, most notably in California, that they view GOP attacks on illegals as a blanket insult on their ethnicity.
Yet if the Senate Republicans had managed to pass a program that would've paved a road to citizenship, they would have risked infuriating their core conservative followers - who have been agitating for the GOP to show some guts on border enforcement. In terms of short-term politics, it's probably just as well that the Senate's compromise bill collapsed last Friday, because any plan that looks remotely like "amnesty" would be an invitation for the GOP conservative base to boycott the 2006 congressional elections.
In other words, Republicans risked alienating either the voters they want to have in the future, or the voters they have right now. Hence their paralysis.
But the problem now is that, by doing nothing, they risk alienating both groups. This is why Matt Lewis, a grassroots Republican strategist, wrote yesterday: "There is no doubt (that immigration) is a wedge issue that puts Republicans in a very unfavorable position." And political analyst John McIntyre, co-founder of realclearpolitics.com, warns that Republicans face "a growing disaster" on this issue.
McIntyre, who is often tough on Democrats, is blunt about the pending House GOP bill (which would essentially reclassify illegals as criminals). McIntyre says this bill "is killing Republicans in the Hispanic community." Yet he says that an illegal-friendly law is also perilous:
"For a conservative base already demoralized by a Republican-led Congress incapable of cutting spending and frustrated by a war that is either portrayed as floundering (or actually is floundering), abdication of responsibility on the illegal immigration mess may be the last straw that compels many conservatives to sit on their hands this November."
By the way, the congressional Democrats aren't totally unified on the issue. Most favor some kind of path to citizenship, which puts them in bed with the big business interests that want labor at the lowest possible wages. That doesn't necessarily sit well with working-class Democrats who worry about wage depression - or with the party's African-Americans, many of whom are low-skill workers.
But the Democratic schisms aren't nearly as wide, and, more importantly, they're not running Washington. They don't have majority at stake. And nd, unlike the GOP, they don't have a president who seems "rudderless" (in McIntyre's word) on this issue.
Bush has long prided himself as a leader on immigration, somebody who wanted to ease the way for illegals to become "guest workers." Now he's rather see the lawmakers take the lead and take the hits. His current laxity is a testament to his waning political capital.
If the Republicans had cracked down too much on the illegals - as suggested by the House GOP - then they would have risked alienating the fastest-growing electorate in American politics, one that Karl Rove has been coveting for years. Illegals can't vote, of course, but legal Hispanic voters have already demonstrated, most notably in California, that they view GOP attacks on illegals as a blanket insult on their ethnicity.
Yet if the Senate Republicans had managed to pass a program that would've paved a road to citizenship, they would have risked infuriating their core conservative followers - who have been agitating for the GOP to show some guts on border enforcement. In terms of short-term politics, it's probably just as well that the Senate's compromise bill collapsed last Friday, because any plan that looks remotely like "amnesty" would be an invitation for the GOP conservative base to boycott the 2006 congressional elections.
In other words, Republicans risked alienating either the voters they want to have in the future, or the voters they have right now. Hence their paralysis.
But the problem now is that, by doing nothing, they risk alienating both groups. This is why Matt Lewis, a grassroots Republican strategist, wrote yesterday: "There is no doubt (that immigration) is a wedge issue that puts Republicans in a very unfavorable position." And political analyst John McIntyre, co-founder of realclearpolitics.com, warns that Republicans face "a growing disaster" on this issue.
McIntyre, who is often tough on Democrats, is blunt about the pending House GOP bill (which would essentially reclassify illegals as criminals). McIntyre says this bill "is killing Republicans in the Hispanic community." Yet he says that an illegal-friendly law is also perilous:
"For a conservative base already demoralized by a Republican-led Congress incapable of cutting spending and frustrated by a war that is either portrayed as floundering (or actually is floundering), abdication of responsibility on the illegal immigration mess may be the last straw that compels many conservatives to sit on their hands this November."
By the way, the congressional Democrats aren't totally unified on the issue. Most favor some kind of path to citizenship, which puts them in bed with the big business interests that want labor at the lowest possible wages. That doesn't necessarily sit well with working-class Democrats who worry about wage depression - or with the party's African-Americans, many of whom are low-skill workers.
But the Democratic schisms aren't nearly as wide, and, more importantly, they're not running Washington. They don't have majority at stake. And nd, unlike the GOP, they don't have a president who seems "rudderless" (in McIntyre's word) on this issue.
Bush has long prided himself as a leader on immigration, somebody who wanted to ease the way for illegals to become "guest workers." Now he's rather see the lawmakers take the lead and take the hits. His current laxity is a testament to his waning political capital.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
