I know it’s only Thursday, but the quote of the week already belongs to Dick Cheney.
This gem – dated April 15, 1994 – surfaced this week on YouTube, and deserves to be an instant classic. At the time, former Defense secretary Cheney was working at a conservative Washington think tank. Asked whether it would have been wise to march on Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf war of 1991, after having so easily ejected Hussein’s forces from Kuwait, Cheney replied:
“No. Because if we’d gone into Baghdad, we would’ve been all alone, there wouldn’t have been anyone with us, it would’ve been a U.S. occupation of Iraq, none of the Arab forces that were willing to fight with us in Kuwait were willing to invade Iraq. Once you got to Iraq, took it over, took down Saddam Hussein’s government, what were you going to put in its place? That’s a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government, you can easily see pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it Syria would like to have, to the west. Part of eastern Iraq, the Iranians would like to claim. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
“It’s a quagmire, if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.
“The other thing was casualties. Everyone was impressed that we were able to do our job (in Kuwait) with so few casualties that we had. But for the 146 Americans killed in action, and for their families, it wasn’t a cheap war. And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, and took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans Saddam was worth. Our judgment was, not very many. And I think we got it right.”
More than 3600 dead Americans later, I have a question: Why was he against a coup before he was for it? Future historians will surely try to determine why Cheney subsequently fell in with the neoconservatives, and wound up creating the quagmire that he had wisely warned against.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Blog lite
I’m literally heading for the hills today, and staying there for the next 12 days. As a result, this blog will downshift into low gear. New posts will be uncharacteristically short (at least by my standards), and they may well appear at odd intervals. I suppose this is what passes for a vacation in the wi-fi era, at least for those of us who are cognitively incapable of becoming totally unplugged. Hope your summer is going well. The normal routine around here will resume on August 28.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Rove's Orwellian retrospective
The deal is, I’ll stop writing about Karl Rove as soon as Karl Rove stops trying to rewrite the history of his own career.
In a press interview late yesterday, George W. Bush’s political guru said it was a “mistaken impression” to believe that his winning strategy was “all about playing to the base, that supposedly the success of the two (presidential) campaigns have been that the president played to the base of the Republican party. Completely inaccurate.”
Oh really? It’s “completely inaccurate” to suggest that Rove charted a campaign strategy that played to the base of the Republican party? It’s a “mistaken impression?”
We all know that Bush’s people have long been fact-challenged about policy matters, such as the alleged rationale for waging war in Iraq, but apparently this state of denial extends to their own behavior as well.
The problem is, they can't simply flush history down the Orwellian memory hole. Rove’s new spin about himself is flatly contradicted by his past actions. It’s true that he positioned Bush as a moderate during the 2000 campaign - selling Bush as “a new kind of Republican,” a “compassionate conservative” – but after Bush came up 660,000 votes short in the popular vote, and had to be installed in the White House by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, Rove began to chart a very different course.
I know this, because I heard him say so. During a public appearance at a conservative think tank not long after the election, he fretted about the fact that, by his calculations, more than four million Christian evangelicals had failed to show up at the polls in November 2000. Rove made it quite clear that he would motivate those evangelicals to show up for Bush in 2004 – and he made good on that promise by targeting their churches, even to the extent of asking the churches to fork over their membership directories for inclusion in the Bush campaign data base.
Nor was it sheer coincidence that, in 2004, anti-gay marriage referenda appeared on the ballots in 11 states. As numerous political science scholars have determined, those referenda helped attract an outsize number of Christian conservative voters – particularly in pivotal Ohio, where some analysts believe that the heftier base turnout was instrumental in putting Bush over the top.
Contrary to Rove’s denial yesterday, the ‘04 re-election strategy hinged heavily on motivating and expanding the Republican base – as his own lieutenants have long acknowledged. Rove’s pollster, Matthew Dowd, explained the base-motivation strategy in a post-election interview on PBS’ Frontline. When he and Rove were mapping the ’04 strategy, they decided it would be a waste of time to focus most of their efforts on persuading independent swing voters, because, in their calculations, those voters weren’t nearly as numerous as they used to be. “Swings” used to be 20 percent of the electorate, Dowd explained, but in this era of polarization, they are only six or seven percent of the electorate. Hence the decision to motivate and expand the Republican base.
Dowd said: “You obviously had to do fairly well among the six or seven [percent], but you could lose the six or seven percent and win the election, which was fairly revolutionary, because everybody up until that time had said, ‘Swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters.’….Nobody had ever approached an election that I've looked at over the last 50 years, where base motivation was important as swing, which is how we approached it…We didn't say, ‘Base motivation is what we're going to do, and that's all we're doing.’ We said, ‘Both are important, but we shouldn't be putting 80 percent of our resources into persuasion and 20 percent into base motivation.’
"And obviously," Dowd continued, "that decision influenced everything that we did. It influenced how we targeted mail, how we targeted phones, how we targeted media, how we traveled, the travel that the president and the vice president did to certain areas, how we did organization, where we had staff. All of that was based off of that, and ultimately, thank goodness, it was the right decision.”
Dowd was seconded in the PBS show by Bush media advisor Mark McKinnon, who called the base-motivation strategy "pretty radical...it struck me as a political consultant as something radical, because for years we had always talked about that persuadable middle electorate, and that's what it was all about. You ignored everything else. All your resources went into that persuadable vote."
And I also recall a sitdown with Rove at the 2004 Republican National Convention. He met with a few of us scribes, to spell out his strategy for winning Pennsylvania. He said nothing about the importance of wooing the moderate Republicans and independent swing voters who populate the Philadelphia suburbs – because, obviously, he did not see that as a priority. Rather, he stressed the importance of mobilizing and motivating the Christian conservatives who were increasingly populating the new exurban communities in places like Lancaster County.
He said at length that many of those people are apolitical and apathetic, and that it was his job to get their attention, because many of them don’t subscribe to “the newsletter from the Christian Coalition.” He said that his challenge “is to get them motivated to participate, to get them literally physically registered. And then getting them out to vote.”
So if Karl Rove insists, in his inevitable future memoir, that he did not deliberately play to the Republican base, booksellers might well be advised to place the tome on the fiction shelf, perhaps next to Orwell.
In a press interview late yesterday, George W. Bush’s political guru said it was a “mistaken impression” to believe that his winning strategy was “all about playing to the base, that supposedly the success of the two (presidential) campaigns have been that the president played to the base of the Republican party. Completely inaccurate.”
Oh really? It’s “completely inaccurate” to suggest that Rove charted a campaign strategy that played to the base of the Republican party? It’s a “mistaken impression?”
We all know that Bush’s people have long been fact-challenged about policy matters, such as the alleged rationale for waging war in Iraq, but apparently this state of denial extends to their own behavior as well.
The problem is, they can't simply flush history down the Orwellian memory hole. Rove’s new spin about himself is flatly contradicted by his past actions. It’s true that he positioned Bush as a moderate during the 2000 campaign - selling Bush as “a new kind of Republican,” a “compassionate conservative” – but after Bush came up 660,000 votes short in the popular vote, and had to be installed in the White House by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, Rove began to chart a very different course.
I know this, because I heard him say so. During a public appearance at a conservative think tank not long after the election, he fretted about the fact that, by his calculations, more than four million Christian evangelicals had failed to show up at the polls in November 2000. Rove made it quite clear that he would motivate those evangelicals to show up for Bush in 2004 – and he made good on that promise by targeting their churches, even to the extent of asking the churches to fork over their membership directories for inclusion in the Bush campaign data base.
Nor was it sheer coincidence that, in 2004, anti-gay marriage referenda appeared on the ballots in 11 states. As numerous political science scholars have determined, those referenda helped attract an outsize number of Christian conservative voters – particularly in pivotal Ohio, where some analysts believe that the heftier base turnout was instrumental in putting Bush over the top.
Contrary to Rove’s denial yesterday, the ‘04 re-election strategy hinged heavily on motivating and expanding the Republican base – as his own lieutenants have long acknowledged. Rove’s pollster, Matthew Dowd, explained the base-motivation strategy in a post-election interview on PBS’ Frontline. When he and Rove were mapping the ’04 strategy, they decided it would be a waste of time to focus most of their efforts on persuading independent swing voters, because, in their calculations, those voters weren’t nearly as numerous as they used to be. “Swings” used to be 20 percent of the electorate, Dowd explained, but in this era of polarization, they are only six or seven percent of the electorate. Hence the decision to motivate and expand the Republican base.
Dowd said: “You obviously had to do fairly well among the six or seven [percent], but you could lose the six or seven percent and win the election, which was fairly revolutionary, because everybody up until that time had said, ‘Swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters.’….Nobody had ever approached an election that I've looked at over the last 50 years, where base motivation was important as swing, which is how we approached it…We didn't say, ‘Base motivation is what we're going to do, and that's all we're doing.’ We said, ‘Both are important, but we shouldn't be putting 80 percent of our resources into persuasion and 20 percent into base motivation.’
"And obviously," Dowd continued, "that decision influenced everything that we did. It influenced how we targeted mail, how we targeted phones, how we targeted media, how we traveled, the travel that the president and the vice president did to certain areas, how we did organization, where we had staff. All of that was based off of that, and ultimately, thank goodness, it was the right decision.”
Dowd was seconded in the PBS show by Bush media advisor Mark McKinnon, who called the base-motivation strategy "pretty radical...it struck me as a political consultant as something radical, because for years we had always talked about that persuadable middle electorate, and that's what it was all about. You ignored everything else. All your resources went into that persuadable vote."
And I also recall a sitdown with Rove at the 2004 Republican National Convention. He met with a few of us scribes, to spell out his strategy for winning Pennsylvania. He said nothing about the importance of wooing the moderate Republicans and independent swing voters who populate the Philadelphia suburbs – because, obviously, he did not see that as a priority. Rather, he stressed the importance of mobilizing and motivating the Christian conservatives who were increasingly populating the new exurban communities in places like Lancaster County.
He said at length that many of those people are apolitical and apathetic, and that it was his job to get their attention, because many of them don’t subscribe to “the newsletter from the Christian Coalition.” He said that his challenge “is to get them motivated to participate, to get them literally physically registered. And then getting them out to vote.”
So if Karl Rove insists, in his inevitable future memoir, that he did not deliberately play to the Republican base, booksellers might well be advised to place the tome on the fiction shelf, perhaps next to Orwell.
Monday, August 13, 2007
The draining of "Bush's Brain"
Karl Rove is upbeat and unbowed as he heads for the exit with his head held high. He insists that “Iraq will be a better place” thanks to the Surge, that President Bush “will move back up in the polls,” that the ’06 Republican wipeout was “a really close election,” and that he did not screw up big time in 2005 when he drained Bush’s political capital by putting his boss on the road to stump in vain for the partial privatization of Social Security.
So says the political guru better known by the nickname “Bush’s Brain,” in his de facto resignation announcement, which appeared today in a predictably sycophantic column nestled within the friendly confines of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. Clearly, he will continue to dwell within the reality-challenged Bush bubble long after he departs at the end of this month, purportedly to spend more time with his family.
Much will be said in the days ahead about how Rove’s signature ambition – crafting permanent majority status for the GOP – turned to ashes in the second-term wreckage of the Bush administration, and about how his combative philosophy of polarized governance probably hastened his boss’ demise. Many observers will cite many different examples. I will cite only one: The aforementioned ’05 campaign to partially privatize Social Security, not only because it illustrates Rove’s arrogance and his fundamental misreading of the public mood, but also because (most importantly) it exposed one of the president’s most fundamental flaws.
Rove had this idea that Social Security “reform” would be good politics, that it would permanently draw into the Republican fold millions of voters who had more faith in the markets than in the federal government. So in the aftermath of Bush’s 2004 re-election victory, when the president’s political stock was at its apogee, he put Bush on the road – for months on end – to talk up the concept of a Social Security overhaul.
There were warning signs, all of which Rove ignored. Bush’s ’04 victory was actually the narrowest re-election win by any president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916. The ’04 election was fought over Iraq, with virtually no mention of a market-based Social Security program or any indication that the public was hungering to overhaul one of the most popular government programs of the 20th century. Nor was there any appetite, within the congressional GOP majority, to take on such a politically risky endeavor. But Rove (who treated Capitol Hill Republicans with high-handed disdain) figured that once Americans got the opportunity to hear Bush wax eloquent about the conservative vision for Social Security, their hearts and minds would follow, and then the GOP lawmakers would simply implement the Rove vision.
But a weird thing happened during that spring of 2005. The longer Bush stayed on the road talking up partial privatization, the more people got turned off to the idea. The more he tried to explain it, the more confused people became. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq kept getting worse (this was roughly $200 billion ago), and, consequently, the more Bush talked about Social Security, the less popular he became, and the more finite political capital he expended.
As GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio now tells The Atlantic magazine, thinking back to those first months of 2005, “We came out of the election and what was our agenda for the next term? Social Security. There was nothing else that we were doing. We allowed ourselves as a party to be defined by – in effect, to live and die by – the war in Iraq.”
Yet even when the failures of the privatization pitch were obvious, Rove reportedly opted to stay the course and keep Bush talking. In the fortuitously-timed Atlantic article, a former Bush official laments, "The great cost of the Social Security misadventure was lost support for the war. When you send the troops to war, you have no higher responsibility as president than to keep the American people engaged and maintain popular support. But for months and months after it became obvious that Social Security was not going to happen, nobody - because of Karl's stature in the White House - could be intellectually honest in a meeting and say, 'This is not going to happen, and we need an exit strategy to get back onto winning ground.' It was a catastrophic mistake."
And it was, in retrospect, the beginning of the end. The Katrina debacle soon followed, the war got even worse, and the historic Republican realignment long envisioned by Rove was rudely interrupted by the loss of the House and Senate in 2006, in what he still dismisses as “a very close election.” (That’s an old Rove delusion, which I refuted here.)
Still, it would be unfair to put all the blame on Rove. It is important to remember that he was merely the backstage guru to a guy who often seemed to have little more than a passing relationship with the English language. It is theoretically possible that Americans might have embraced partial privatization if the concept had been pitched by a president blessed with rhetorical coherence; instead, it was pitched by Bush.
What follows is verbatim, taken directly from a White House transcript. The place was Tampa, Florida. The date, Feb. 4, 2005. A woman has asked about the hefty transition costs of moving Social Security into the private realm. Bush replied:
“Because the - all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be - or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the - like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate - the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those - if that growth is affected, it will help on the red. Okay, better? I'll keep working on it.”
I know we’re all supposed to pay obeisance these days to the Cult of the Consultant, but perhaps we should remember that, in the end, a consultant is probably only as good as his client. In the end, Bush's Brain could not supply him with a silver tongue.
So says the political guru better known by the nickname “Bush’s Brain,” in his de facto resignation announcement, which appeared today in a predictably sycophantic column nestled within the friendly confines of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page. Clearly, he will continue to dwell within the reality-challenged Bush bubble long after he departs at the end of this month, purportedly to spend more time with his family.
Much will be said in the days ahead about how Rove’s signature ambition – crafting permanent majority status for the GOP – turned to ashes in the second-term wreckage of the Bush administration, and about how his combative philosophy of polarized governance probably hastened his boss’ demise. Many observers will cite many different examples. I will cite only one: The aforementioned ’05 campaign to partially privatize Social Security, not only because it illustrates Rove’s arrogance and his fundamental misreading of the public mood, but also because (most importantly) it exposed one of the president’s most fundamental flaws.
Rove had this idea that Social Security “reform” would be good politics, that it would permanently draw into the Republican fold millions of voters who had more faith in the markets than in the federal government. So in the aftermath of Bush’s 2004 re-election victory, when the president’s political stock was at its apogee, he put Bush on the road – for months on end – to talk up the concept of a Social Security overhaul.
There were warning signs, all of which Rove ignored. Bush’s ’04 victory was actually the narrowest re-election win by any president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916. The ’04 election was fought over Iraq, with virtually no mention of a market-based Social Security program or any indication that the public was hungering to overhaul one of the most popular government programs of the 20th century. Nor was there any appetite, within the congressional GOP majority, to take on such a politically risky endeavor. But Rove (who treated Capitol Hill Republicans with high-handed disdain) figured that once Americans got the opportunity to hear Bush wax eloquent about the conservative vision for Social Security, their hearts and minds would follow, and then the GOP lawmakers would simply implement the Rove vision.
But a weird thing happened during that spring of 2005. The longer Bush stayed on the road talking up partial privatization, the more people got turned off to the idea. The more he tried to explain it, the more confused people became. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq kept getting worse (this was roughly $200 billion ago), and, consequently, the more Bush talked about Social Security, the less popular he became, and the more finite political capital he expended.
As GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio now tells The Atlantic magazine, thinking back to those first months of 2005, “We came out of the election and what was our agenda for the next term? Social Security. There was nothing else that we were doing. We allowed ourselves as a party to be defined by – in effect, to live and die by – the war in Iraq.”
Yet even when the failures of the privatization pitch were obvious, Rove reportedly opted to stay the course and keep Bush talking. In the fortuitously-timed Atlantic article, a former Bush official laments, "The great cost of the Social Security misadventure was lost support for the war. When you send the troops to war, you have no higher responsibility as president than to keep the American people engaged and maintain popular support. But for months and months after it became obvious that Social Security was not going to happen, nobody - because of Karl's stature in the White House - could be intellectually honest in a meeting and say, 'This is not going to happen, and we need an exit strategy to get back onto winning ground.' It was a catastrophic mistake."
And it was, in retrospect, the beginning of the end. The Katrina debacle soon followed, the war got even worse, and the historic Republican realignment long envisioned by Rove was rudely interrupted by the loss of the House and Senate in 2006, in what he still dismisses as “a very close election.” (That’s an old Rove delusion, which I refuted here.)
Still, it would be unfair to put all the blame on Rove. It is important to remember that he was merely the backstage guru to a guy who often seemed to have little more than a passing relationship with the English language. It is theoretically possible that Americans might have embraced partial privatization if the concept had been pitched by a president blessed with rhetorical coherence; instead, it was pitched by Bush.
What follows is verbatim, taken directly from a White House transcript. The place was Tampa, Florida. The date, Feb. 4, 2005. A woman has asked about the hefty transition costs of moving Social Security into the private realm. Bush replied:
“Because the - all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be - or closer delivered to what has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the - like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate - the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those - if that growth is affected, it will help on the red. Okay, better? I'll keep working on it.”
I know we’re all supposed to pay obeisance these days to the Cult of the Consultant, but perhaps we should remember that, in the end, a consultant is probably only as good as his client. In the end, Bush's Brain could not supply him with a silver tongue.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Romney wins, sorta
It's not the win that counts, it's the spin. And, by that measure alone, Mitt Romney should be smiling this morning, because the Washington media establishment has decreed that his first-place finish in the Iowa Republican straw poll is an awesome achievement. The Washington Post trumpets it as "a convincing victory." The Politico website trumpets it as...yes..."a convincing victory."
Apparently, this is what passes for "convincing" these days:
1. Competing last night against a motley collection of second and third-tier candidates, none of whom had any money, Romney won 31.5 percent of the voters who showed up for the event. Put another way, Romney spent at least $2 million on the straw poll (that's the unofficial estimate, and it's probably low), whereas none of his rivals could afford to hire even a single bus to haul their followers to the event...and 68.5 percent of the attendees still voted against him.
2. Romney's bid to emerge as the clear favorite of "base voters" (the social and religious conservatives, who are numerous in Iowa) failed conspicuously. He received fewer votes (4516) than Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback, the two rivals who are also competing heavily for the base voters (they received a combined 4779). This suggests that the race for the base is still wide open, and that Romney's long track record of flip flops remains a sticking point for many conservatives.
3. Romney's aforementioned vote total (4516) is glaringly less than George W. Bush's first-place victory total at the 1999 straw poll (7418). In fact, Romney got fewer votes than even the second-place finisher in 1999, the self-funding millionaire Steve Forbes (4921). The reason for Romney's deficit? Horrendous turnout. Only 14,302 Iowa Republicans bothered to show up yesterday; that's two percent of all registered Republicans statewide. In 1999, the straw poll drew 23,685 attendees. It's possible that the absence of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and the ever-teasing Fred Thompson helped to depress the turnout, but Giuliani and McCain skipped the event in part because they were not likely to score well with the base voters anyway. All told, the poor straw poll turnout was yet another symptom of the national GOP malaise, the conservative electorate's general lack of enthusiasm about its '08 choices.
4. Regarding Romney's money: If we accept the very conservative estimate that he spent $2 million on the straw poll (his aides won't say how much he spent, but let us remember that he ponied up $2 million just on Iowa TV ads - and that doesn't include the buses he hired, the bands he hired to play music, etc.), this translates into $443 for each vote he received. Romney's real figure is probably much higher. By contrast, Mike Huckabee's campaign reportedly spent $150,000 on the straw poll, and never hired a single bus; Huckabee therefore spent $57 on each vote he received.
All these caveats notwithstanding, "Romney wins" will be the shorthand in the days ahead, and he has the money and organization to excel at this game of smoke and mirrors. The Iowa straw poll has been a crock in the past - the '95 event was a triumph for Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, who was later clobbered in the Iowa caucuses - but it will be up to Giuliani, in particular, to outflank Romney in the big states and thus demonstrate that Romney's "convincing" summer victory was truly ephemeral.
Apparently, this is what passes for "convincing" these days:
1. Competing last night against a motley collection of second and third-tier candidates, none of whom had any money, Romney won 31.5 percent of the voters who showed up for the event. Put another way, Romney spent at least $2 million on the straw poll (that's the unofficial estimate, and it's probably low), whereas none of his rivals could afford to hire even a single bus to haul their followers to the event...and 68.5 percent of the attendees still voted against him.
2. Romney's bid to emerge as the clear favorite of "base voters" (the social and religious conservatives, who are numerous in Iowa) failed conspicuously. He received fewer votes (4516) than Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback, the two rivals who are also competing heavily for the base voters (they received a combined 4779). This suggests that the race for the base is still wide open, and that Romney's long track record of flip flops remains a sticking point for many conservatives.
3. Romney's aforementioned vote total (4516) is glaringly less than George W. Bush's first-place victory total at the 1999 straw poll (7418). In fact, Romney got fewer votes than even the second-place finisher in 1999, the self-funding millionaire Steve Forbes (4921). The reason for Romney's deficit? Horrendous turnout. Only 14,302 Iowa Republicans bothered to show up yesterday; that's two percent of all registered Republicans statewide. In 1999, the straw poll drew 23,685 attendees. It's possible that the absence of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and the ever-teasing Fred Thompson helped to depress the turnout, but Giuliani and McCain skipped the event in part because they were not likely to score well with the base voters anyway. All told, the poor straw poll turnout was yet another symptom of the national GOP malaise, the conservative electorate's general lack of enthusiasm about its '08 choices.
4. Regarding Romney's money: If we accept the very conservative estimate that he spent $2 million on the straw poll (his aides won't say how much he spent, but let us remember that he ponied up $2 million just on Iowa TV ads - and that doesn't include the buses he hired, the bands he hired to play music, etc.), this translates into $443 for each vote he received. Romney's real figure is probably much higher. By contrast, Mike Huckabee's campaign reportedly spent $150,000 on the straw poll, and never hired a single bus; Huckabee therefore spent $57 on each vote he received.
All these caveats notwithstanding, "Romney wins" will be the shorthand in the days ahead, and he has the money and organization to excel at this game of smoke and mirrors. The Iowa straw poll has been a crock in the past - the '95 event was a triumph for Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, who was later clobbered in the Iowa caucuses - but it will be up to Giuliani, in particular, to outflank Romney in the big states and thus demonstrate that Romney's "convincing" summer victory was truly ephemeral.
Friday, August 10, 2007
A la carte at week's end
Action (and inaction) on a number of fronts:
The ’08 Democratic presidential candidates hemmed and hawed and wriggled and twisted last night, as they took questions at a gay forum in Los Angeles (video here). They dearly want gay votes and gay donations, but the gay marriage issue still scares them witless. A majority of Americans remain cool to the concept, and the Republicans (those exemplars of morality) are poised to pounce on the first major Democratic contender who warms to it.
So last night most of the candidates floated a variety of rationales for their continued opposition:
Hillary Clinton said it was a “personal decision,” although it sounded more like a political science decision when she suggested that all marriage laws should be determined by the state legislatures. (When a Washington Democrat invokes “state’s rights,” you know that it’s a dodge.)
Bill Richardson said it was a pragmatic decision, explaining that “the country isn’t there yet.” (Which means, in translation, that he has no appetite for leading on that issue.)
Barack Obama said, “We should try to disentangle what has historically been the issue of the word ‘marriage,’ which has religious connotation to some people, from the civil rights that are given to couples.” (Which suggests, in translation, that he doesn’t want to risk a backlash from people of faith who oppose the concept. That includes many people in the black community.)
And John Edwards, who has been tripping over his shoelaces on this issue since 2003, did it again. He has long suggested that he has personal religious reasons for opposing gay marriage, but last night he decided to dump that argument. He basically apologized for having previously said that his opposition was guided by his faith. In his words, “I shouldn’t have said that.” But if his faith is not the source of his opposition, then what is? He never explained.
But it was Richardson who had the worst moment. When asked whether he believed that being gay was a personal choice or inherent biology, he quickly replied: “It is a choice.”
Ouch. That’s the equivalent of a Republican candidate standing on stage at a Christian Coalition forum, and declaring that religion has no place in the public square.
Richardson knew he had goofed on that one. Shortly after his forum appearance, he emailed this statement: “Let me be clear -- I do not believe that sexual orientation or gender identity happen by choice. But I'm not a scientist, and the point I was trying to make is that no matter how it happens, we are all equal and should be treated that way under the law…”
You know how the Republican candidates would prefer not to talk about Iraq, because they fear that the issue will hurt them with independent swing voters? For Democrats, gay marriage is the same kind of headache.
-------
In his press conference yesterday, President Bush – always anxious to demonstrate his leadership – declared that he will stand in opposition to the notion that American motorists should pay a few extra cents per gallon of gas, as a way to finance much-needed road and bridge repairs. “That’s not the right way to prioritize the people’s money,” said the guy who is spending roughly $10 billion of the people’s money every month, just to keep U.S. troops entrapped in the midst of an Iraqi civil war.
He basically argued that Congress has had plenty of road and bridge money already, but that Congress has spent it badly. Referring to special-interest earmarks, he complained: “From my perspective, the way it seems to have worked is that each member on that (transportation) committee gets to set his or her priority first…” And he’s right, because that’s how we wound up with “the bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, and other wasteful junk.
But, as usual, Bush omitted a basic empirical fact: It was his free-spending Republican Congress that ran rampant with earmarks over a four-year period (including the bridge to nowhere in 2005), and Bush never said a word about it. Yet now he’s invoking the issue as an excuse for not supporting a hike in the gas tax, which would be the first in 14 years.
But elsewhere in the press conference, Bush gave us the quote of the week. The topic was Iraq: “If one were to look hard, they could find indications that – more than indications – facts that show the government is learning how to function.”
Just one week ago, the largest Sunni political faction walked out of the government, vacating five Cabinet positions. Bush apparently has a flexible definition of "learning."
-------
There might actually be a good reason to track the Iowa Republican straw poll results on Saturday night, despite the fact that you can probably think of 100 better things to do on a summer Saturday night. The wild card, potentially, is the antiwar libertarian, Ron Paul. He may not have the money to buy enough votes in the straw poll tradition, but it’s conceivable that some of his followers might gain entry by stealth - allowing other candidates to pay for their tickets, then declaring their allegiance to Paul.
The Mitt Romney camp is banking on a media boomlet for their man, who is expected to win handily against second-tier opposition. Sharing the Sunday story would Ron Paul would be their idea of a good time.
As for Romney, the sole first-tier candidate at the straw poll, he wins our Mitt Romney Flip Flop of the Week award (a category reserved for him).
Back in February, he said he opposed the crown jewel of the pro-life movement: a U.S. constitutional amendment that would ban abortions nationwide. This proposal, known as the Human Life Amendment, has long been a plank in the Republican party platform. But Romney told the National Journal magazine on Feb. 9: “My view is not to impose a single federal rule on the entire nation -- a one-size-fits all approach -- but instead allow states to make their own decisions in this regard.” A week later he repeated the argument on ABC News: “My view is that we should let each state have its own responsibility for guiding its laws relating to abortion.”
Well, apparently Romney was against it before he was for it. Asked again about the Human Life Amendment earlier this week, he told ABC News: "You know, I do support the Republican platform, and I support that being part of the Republican platform.”
-------
And speaking of hypocrisy, let’s update the extracurricular activities on the family-values front. Everything comes in threes:
First we had David Vitter, the family-values GOP senator from Louisiana, exposed as a longtime patron of prostitutes in Washington and Louisiana. Then we had Bob Allen, the anti-gay rights GOP Florida lawmaker, who got busted for offering to pay a cop $20 for the privilege of performing oral sex on the cop…and now we have Glenn Murphy Jr., (until recently) the GOP chairman in Clark County, Indiana, and (until recently) the chair of the Young Republican National Federation.
He’s reportedly under investigation for criminal deviate conduct, after a young associate filed a police complaint alleging that, while he and Murphy were bunking in the same room during a work trip, he awoke around dawn to discover that the GOP chairman was performing an X-rated act upon his person.
The police probe may well last a month or two. Murphy has quit both chairmanships, explaining that he has suddenly discovered some business opportunities worthy of his pursuit. The Young Republican National Federation has erased all traces of Murphy from its website. To paraphrase George Orwell in his book 1984, Murphy doesn’t exist; he never existed.
Back on Sunday.
The ’08 Democratic presidential candidates hemmed and hawed and wriggled and twisted last night, as they took questions at a gay forum in Los Angeles (video here). They dearly want gay votes and gay donations, but the gay marriage issue still scares them witless. A majority of Americans remain cool to the concept, and the Republicans (those exemplars of morality) are poised to pounce on the first major Democratic contender who warms to it.
So last night most of the candidates floated a variety of rationales for their continued opposition:
Hillary Clinton said it was a “personal decision,” although it sounded more like a political science decision when she suggested that all marriage laws should be determined by the state legislatures. (When a Washington Democrat invokes “state’s rights,” you know that it’s a dodge.)
Bill Richardson said it was a pragmatic decision, explaining that “the country isn’t there yet.” (Which means, in translation, that he has no appetite for leading on that issue.)
Barack Obama said, “We should try to disentangle what has historically been the issue of the word ‘marriage,’ which has religious connotation to some people, from the civil rights that are given to couples.” (Which suggests, in translation, that he doesn’t want to risk a backlash from people of faith who oppose the concept. That includes many people in the black community.)
And John Edwards, who has been tripping over his shoelaces on this issue since 2003, did it again. He has long suggested that he has personal religious reasons for opposing gay marriage, but last night he decided to dump that argument. He basically apologized for having previously said that his opposition was guided by his faith. In his words, “I shouldn’t have said that.” But if his faith is not the source of his opposition, then what is? He never explained.
But it was Richardson who had the worst moment. When asked whether he believed that being gay was a personal choice or inherent biology, he quickly replied: “It is a choice.”
Ouch. That’s the equivalent of a Republican candidate standing on stage at a Christian Coalition forum, and declaring that religion has no place in the public square.
Richardson knew he had goofed on that one. Shortly after his forum appearance, he emailed this statement: “Let me be clear -- I do not believe that sexual orientation or gender identity happen by choice. But I'm not a scientist, and the point I was trying to make is that no matter how it happens, we are all equal and should be treated that way under the law…”
You know how the Republican candidates would prefer not to talk about Iraq, because they fear that the issue will hurt them with independent swing voters? For Democrats, gay marriage is the same kind of headache.
-------
In his press conference yesterday, President Bush – always anxious to demonstrate his leadership – declared that he will stand in opposition to the notion that American motorists should pay a few extra cents per gallon of gas, as a way to finance much-needed road and bridge repairs. “That’s not the right way to prioritize the people’s money,” said the guy who is spending roughly $10 billion of the people’s money every month, just to keep U.S. troops entrapped in the midst of an Iraqi civil war.
He basically argued that Congress has had plenty of road and bridge money already, but that Congress has spent it badly. Referring to special-interest earmarks, he complained: “From my perspective, the way it seems to have worked is that each member on that (transportation) committee gets to set his or her priority first…” And he’s right, because that’s how we wound up with “the bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, and other wasteful junk.
But, as usual, Bush omitted a basic empirical fact: It was his free-spending Republican Congress that ran rampant with earmarks over a four-year period (including the bridge to nowhere in 2005), and Bush never said a word about it. Yet now he’s invoking the issue as an excuse for not supporting a hike in the gas tax, which would be the first in 14 years.
But elsewhere in the press conference, Bush gave us the quote of the week. The topic was Iraq: “If one were to look hard, they could find indications that – more than indications – facts that show the government is learning how to function.”
Just one week ago, the largest Sunni political faction walked out of the government, vacating five Cabinet positions. Bush apparently has a flexible definition of "learning."
-------
There might actually be a good reason to track the Iowa Republican straw poll results on Saturday night, despite the fact that you can probably think of 100 better things to do on a summer Saturday night. The wild card, potentially, is the antiwar libertarian, Ron Paul. He may not have the money to buy enough votes in the straw poll tradition, but it’s conceivable that some of his followers might gain entry by stealth - allowing other candidates to pay for their tickets, then declaring their allegiance to Paul.
The Mitt Romney camp is banking on a media boomlet for their man, who is expected to win handily against second-tier opposition. Sharing the Sunday story would Ron Paul would be their idea of a good time.
As for Romney, the sole first-tier candidate at the straw poll, he wins our Mitt Romney Flip Flop of the Week award (a category reserved for him).
Back in February, he said he opposed the crown jewel of the pro-life movement: a U.S. constitutional amendment that would ban abortions nationwide. This proposal, known as the Human Life Amendment, has long been a plank in the Republican party platform. But Romney told the National Journal magazine on Feb. 9: “My view is not to impose a single federal rule on the entire nation -- a one-size-fits all approach -- but instead allow states to make their own decisions in this regard.” A week later he repeated the argument on ABC News: “My view is that we should let each state have its own responsibility for guiding its laws relating to abortion.”
Well, apparently Romney was against it before he was for it. Asked again about the Human Life Amendment earlier this week, he told ABC News: "You know, I do support the Republican platform, and I support that being part of the Republican platform.”
-------
And speaking of hypocrisy, let’s update the extracurricular activities on the family-values front. Everything comes in threes:
First we had David Vitter, the family-values GOP senator from Louisiana, exposed as a longtime patron of prostitutes in Washington and Louisiana. Then we had Bob Allen, the anti-gay rights GOP Florida lawmaker, who got busted for offering to pay a cop $20 for the privilege of performing oral sex on the cop…and now we have Glenn Murphy Jr., (until recently) the GOP chairman in Clark County, Indiana, and (until recently) the chair of the Young Republican National Federation.
He’s reportedly under investigation for criminal deviate conduct, after a young associate filed a police complaint alleging that, while he and Murphy were bunking in the same room during a work trip, he awoke around dawn to discover that the GOP chairman was performing an X-rated act upon his person.
The police probe may well last a month or two. Murphy has quit both chairmanships, explaining that he has suddenly discovered some business opportunities worthy of his pursuit. The Young Republican National Federation has erased all traces of Murphy from its website. To paraphrase George Orwell in his book 1984, Murphy doesn’t exist; he never existed.
Back on Sunday.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Until tomorrow
I'm traveling today, back online tomorrow. I plan to compensate for today's absence by writing on Sunday about the results of the scintillating Iowa Republican straw poll, in which '08 contenders vie for supremacy by literally buying votes.
With Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Fred Thompson skipping the event, that should clear the way for a Mitt Romney "win." I'll write the most truthful news lead right now: "By busing in the most loyalists, and paying for their tickets, Mitt Romney defeated similar vote-buying strategies employed by his more modestly-financed rivals, including Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback. But it's doubtful that this Saturday night event was an accurate barometer of anything, given the fact that, as in the past, it attracted only two percent of Republican voters statewide..."
With Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Fred Thompson skipping the event, that should clear the way for a Mitt Romney "win." I'll write the most truthful news lead right now: "By busing in the most loyalists, and paying for their tickets, Mitt Romney defeated similar vote-buying strategies employed by his more modestly-financed rivals, including Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback. But it's doubtful that this Saturday night event was an accurate barometer of anything, given the fact that, as in the past, it attracted only two percent of Republican voters statewide..."
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
Pandermania and Hillary-hunting
The Democrats sure know how to stage a pander festival. Last night’s presidential candidate forum, sponsored by the AFL-CIO, was a veritable clinic. Any second, I was expecting everybody to shed their Washington threads and reveal their solidarity T-shirts, but they managed to confine themselves to bursts of competitive rhetoric. Hillary Clinton boasted that she is the New York AFL-CIO’s favorite “sister,” whereupon Barack Obama essentially said: Oh yeah, well, I happen to have done lots of great work with Illinois labor. Meanwhile, John Edwards boasted that he has walked on 200 picket lines during the past two years, whereupon Joe Biden essentially said: Oh yeah, well, I’ve been walking picket lines for the past 34 years.
And so on. Far more interesting was the insider-versus-outsider dynamic. Clearly, Obama and Edwards – both trailing badly in national Democratic polls – feel compelled to hammer the frontrunner as a status quo establishment toady. In the hopes of attracting the grassroots labor resources that might help them slow Hillary’s march through the early primaries (a greater imperative for the relatively cash-strapped Edwards), they’re willing to reopen the old party wounds of the early ‘90s, an era when labor and liberal activists widely perceived Hillary and Bill Clinton as sell-outs who were too close to Wall Street.
Edwards said, “We don’t want to exchange one group of insiders (the GOP regime) for another group of insiders (Hillary and the Democratic establishment).” He assailed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has hurt domestic working people, reminding the 15,000 labor people in the audience that “this deal was negotiated by Washington insiders, not by anybody in this stadium tonight” – which was a polite way of pointing out that Bill Clinton’s administration pushed for NAFTA and Bill signed it. (When Hillary had earlier acknowledged that “broad reform” was needed to fix NAFTA, she of course neglected to mention that her husband had signed it.) Edwards also assailed Hillary for making the July 9 cover of Fortune magazine, and told the labor folks that “the one thing you can count on is you will never see a picture of me on the front of Fortune Magazine saying, ‘I am the candidate that big corporate America is betting on.’”
Obama - whose aides like to point out that even when the Clintons had a Democratic Congress in 1993 and 1994, they failed to enact health care reform – went on repeated jags last night about “Washington insiders,” using that as a synonym for Democrats (like Hillary) who have failed to advance liberal/progressive issues and have fatally compromised with Republicans (especially on Iraq).
Obama played the card during yet another dustup over his recent speech calling for the possibility of U.S. military strikes against al Qaeda in Pakistan. After second-tier candidate Chris Dodd rebuked him for making an “irresponsible” proposal that would only serve to further destabilize Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, Obama – perhaps hoping that Hillary would not pile on – retaliated with a preemptive strike at the first tier:
“I find it amusing that those who helped authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster of our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war on terror.”
I got the feeling that he came to the forum armed with that line, and was poised to launch it at the first opportunity. But two can play that game. The ever-prepared frontrunner lashed back with a critique that was surely designed to suggest that outsider is a synonym for inexperienced and naive.
After elaborating on Dodd’s warning about destabilizing Musharraf, she sought to smack Obama across the mouth: “You can think big, but remember, you shouldn’t say everything you think if you’re running for president, because it has consequences across the world. And we don’t need that right now.” (At this point, the audience booed – perhaps because this was Chicago and Obama had home-field advantage. Or perhaps because, at that moment, she seemed to be echoing Bush administration warnings about how Democratic dissent aids the terrorists.)
I suspect it was the latter, given the way Obama was cheered when he replied, “We’re debating the most important foreign policy issues that we face, and the American people have a right to know. It is not just Washington insiders that are part of the debate that has to take place, with respect to how we’re going to shift our foreign policy.”
Edwards mostly stayed out of the Pakistan fight. He preferred to pick a new fight with Hillary over the lobbyist issue - perhaps to his own detriment.
Last weekend (as I mentioned yesterday), Hillary told an audience of liberal bloggers that she would continue to accept campaign contributions from Washington lobbyists, all of whom “represent real people,” everyone from nurses and social service workers to employes of big corporations. Edwards was again in high dudgeon last night, because he doesn’t take any campaign money from lobbyists (he does take money from employes of the hedge fund where he earned $479,000 in salary after leaving the Senate, but never mind). Again seeking to paint Hillary as an establishment sellout, he said that all candidates “should be saying no to lobbyist money in Washington, D.C.”
But he ran into trouble when he pushed his argument too far. It was pointed out to him that rich trial lawyers (aiding one of their own) contribute heavily to his campaign, and then he was asked why that’s any different from taking lobbyist contributions. He then sought to draw a distinction between the rules governing lawyer conduct and the rules governing lobbyist conduct: “When lawyers give money to the jury who are making the decisions, that’s called a bribe. When lobbyists go to members of Congress and give money to them, that’s called politics.”
Much audible grumbling in the audience. The labor activists didn’t like that line, not one bit. And here’s why:
Organized labor does a lot of lobbying.
When labor lobbyists ply their trade, they don’t consider that to be “politics” in any bad sense. They consider themselves to be engaged in buttonholing senators and congressmen for the betterment of mankind. Indeed, between 1998 and 2005, organized labor’s lobbying expenditures totaled $265,639,714. (Far less than the corporate tab, but still significant.) Last year alone, labor’s lobbying tab was $30 million. One of the jobs of a labor lobbyist is to ensure that they get satisfactory results from the Democrats who benefited, in the previous election, from labor’s campaign contributions.
Labor doesn’t mind a bit of demagoguery, but it also wants to win. Hillary’s reputation as a seasoned partisan may well be enough to at least thwart a labor stampede to the less seasoned “outsiders.” Hence, this Hillary remark last night, a line that was clearly well-crafted in advance:
“For 15 years I have stood up against the right-wing machine, and I’ve come out stronger. So if you want a winner who knows how to take them on, I’m your girl.”
Girl?...Clearly, we have entered the post-feminist era.
And so on. Far more interesting was the insider-versus-outsider dynamic. Clearly, Obama and Edwards – both trailing badly in national Democratic polls – feel compelled to hammer the frontrunner as a status quo establishment toady. In the hopes of attracting the grassroots labor resources that might help them slow Hillary’s march through the early primaries (a greater imperative for the relatively cash-strapped Edwards), they’re willing to reopen the old party wounds of the early ‘90s, an era when labor and liberal activists widely perceived Hillary and Bill Clinton as sell-outs who were too close to Wall Street.
Edwards said, “We don’t want to exchange one group of insiders (the GOP regime) for another group of insiders (Hillary and the Democratic establishment).” He assailed the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has hurt domestic working people, reminding the 15,000 labor people in the audience that “this deal was negotiated by Washington insiders, not by anybody in this stadium tonight” – which was a polite way of pointing out that Bill Clinton’s administration pushed for NAFTA and Bill signed it. (When Hillary had earlier acknowledged that “broad reform” was needed to fix NAFTA, she of course neglected to mention that her husband had signed it.) Edwards also assailed Hillary for making the July 9 cover of Fortune magazine, and told the labor folks that “the one thing you can count on is you will never see a picture of me on the front of Fortune Magazine saying, ‘I am the candidate that big corporate America is betting on.’”
Obama - whose aides like to point out that even when the Clintons had a Democratic Congress in 1993 and 1994, they failed to enact health care reform – went on repeated jags last night about “Washington insiders,” using that as a synonym for Democrats (like Hillary) who have failed to advance liberal/progressive issues and have fatally compromised with Republicans (especially on Iraq).
Obama played the card during yet another dustup over his recent speech calling for the possibility of U.S. military strikes against al Qaeda in Pakistan. After second-tier candidate Chris Dodd rebuked him for making an “irresponsible” proposal that would only serve to further destabilize Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, Obama – perhaps hoping that Hillary would not pile on – retaliated with a preemptive strike at the first tier:
“I find it amusing that those who helped authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster of our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war on terror.”
I got the feeling that he came to the forum armed with that line, and was poised to launch it at the first opportunity. But two can play that game. The ever-prepared frontrunner lashed back with a critique that was surely designed to suggest that outsider is a synonym for inexperienced and naive.
After elaborating on Dodd’s warning about destabilizing Musharraf, she sought to smack Obama across the mouth: “You can think big, but remember, you shouldn’t say everything you think if you’re running for president, because it has consequences across the world. And we don’t need that right now.” (At this point, the audience booed – perhaps because this was Chicago and Obama had home-field advantage. Or perhaps because, at that moment, she seemed to be echoing Bush administration warnings about how Democratic dissent aids the terrorists.)
I suspect it was the latter, given the way Obama was cheered when he replied, “We’re debating the most important foreign policy issues that we face, and the American people have a right to know. It is not just Washington insiders that are part of the debate that has to take place, with respect to how we’re going to shift our foreign policy.”
Edwards mostly stayed out of the Pakistan fight. He preferred to pick a new fight with Hillary over the lobbyist issue - perhaps to his own detriment.
Last weekend (as I mentioned yesterday), Hillary told an audience of liberal bloggers that she would continue to accept campaign contributions from Washington lobbyists, all of whom “represent real people,” everyone from nurses and social service workers to employes of big corporations. Edwards was again in high dudgeon last night, because he doesn’t take any campaign money from lobbyists (he does take money from employes of the hedge fund where he earned $479,000 in salary after leaving the Senate, but never mind). Again seeking to paint Hillary as an establishment sellout, he said that all candidates “should be saying no to lobbyist money in Washington, D.C.”
But he ran into trouble when he pushed his argument too far. It was pointed out to him that rich trial lawyers (aiding one of their own) contribute heavily to his campaign, and then he was asked why that’s any different from taking lobbyist contributions. He then sought to draw a distinction between the rules governing lawyer conduct and the rules governing lobbyist conduct: “When lawyers give money to the jury who are making the decisions, that’s called a bribe. When lobbyists go to members of Congress and give money to them, that’s called politics.”
Much audible grumbling in the audience. The labor activists didn’t like that line, not one bit. And here’s why:
Organized labor does a lot of lobbying.
When labor lobbyists ply their trade, they don’t consider that to be “politics” in any bad sense. They consider themselves to be engaged in buttonholing senators and congressmen for the betterment of mankind. Indeed, between 1998 and 2005, organized labor’s lobbying expenditures totaled $265,639,714. (Far less than the corporate tab, but still significant.) Last year alone, labor’s lobbying tab was $30 million. One of the jobs of a labor lobbyist is to ensure that they get satisfactory results from the Democrats who benefited, in the previous election, from labor’s campaign contributions.
Labor doesn’t mind a bit of demagoguery, but it also wants to win. Hillary’s reputation as a seasoned partisan may well be enough to at least thwart a labor stampede to the less seasoned “outsiders.” Hence, this Hillary remark last night, a line that was clearly well-crafted in advance:
“For 15 years I have stood up against the right-wing machine, and I’ve come out stronger. So if you want a winner who knows how to take them on, I’m your girl.”
Girl?...Clearly, we have entered the post-feminist era.
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
The heart versus the head
If all political factors were equal, organized labor would be endorsing John Edwards for president. More than any of his rivals, the rich trial lawyer with populist instincts has been effectively plucking labor’s heartstrings – coming out early for universal health care, wooing union leaders one by one, walking picket lines, assailing trade deals that appear to favor big corporations at the expense of working stiffs.
But while labor’s heart is with Edwards, its head may be elsewhere. Labor is concerned that Edwards might be another Dick Gephardt – in other words, a sentimental favorite who can’t win. Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader and labor darling, won support from several dozen unions during the runup to the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses…where he proceeded to flame out. Or the fear is that perhaps Edwards might be another Howard Dean. Back in the autumn of ’03, Dean picked up some big-ticket labor endorsements, including the blessing of AFSCME…yet he too flopped in Iowa, quitting the race in late February.
On the eve of tonight’s Democratic debate, sponsored by the AFL-CIO, it’s clear that labor is pondering the electability factor. Put bluntly, labor wants to back a winner. And with Hillary Clinton topping Barack Obama by 22 points and topping Edwards by a whopping 36 points in the latest poll of Democratic primary voters, sheer pragmatism suggests a head tilt toward Hillary.
But that can’t be a very comforting thought.
Organized labor was rarely happy with her husband’s White House tenure – as I mentioned here recently, Bill did little to address the gap between rich and poor, or the exodus of U.S. jobs thanks to globalization, or the wage stagnation that plagued the average worker – and suspicions linger that Hillary might be too close to corporate interests. Some labor activists have also been grumbling for weeks about the fact that Hillary's pollster, Mark Penn, is the head of a public relations firm that has provided union-busting advice to business clients.
And even though she has been talking like a populist lately – lamenting “rising inequality and rising pessimism in our work force,” and declaring that global free trade “is working only for a few of us” – she may well have stoked labor’s suspicions anew the other day, when she defended her decision to take campaign money from Washington lobbyists.
As she told an audience of liberal bloggers on Saturday, "A lot of those lobbyists whether you like it not, represent real Americans…and yes, they represent corporations and they employ a lot of people." She was booed for that remark. (She also pointed out, rightly, that lobbyists also represent nurses and social-service folks, but when a liberal or labor audience hears the word “lobbyist,” it thinks “corporate interests.”)
Tonight, Edwards or Obama may well invoke her defense of lobbyists, in the hopes of sowing fresh doubts among the union members in attendance. But here’s where pragmatism comes into play: Shrewd labor leaders might well conclude that Hillary’s willingness to tell a liberal audience something it didn’t want to hear is actually a testament to her potential electability in November 2008. Swing voters dislike Democrats who are perceived as pandering to their left-leaning interest groups. By braving the boos, on Saturday, Hillary was essentially “doing a Sister Souljah,” a tactic used by her husband in 1992, when he ticked off a black audience (and Jesse Jackson) by rebuking the black rapper for her song lyrics.
Hillary is hardly labor’s first choice, but her daunting Democratic lead, and her early willingness to stake out a general election strategy, should be enough to squelch any consensus labor stampede toward Edwards. And that’s precisely her short-term intention. He’ll probably pick up some endorsements from individual unions late this year, but the umbrella AFL-CIO will probably remain officially neutral. And that would serve her needs just fine; one of her priorities, between now and next winter, is to ensure that Edwards, already outmatched in fundraising, is also denied the grassroots labor resources that would allow him to threaten her in key early primaries - notably Iowa and Nevada.
And Hillary knows that if she does win the nomination, the labor ground game (which was crucial in helping both Al Gore and John Kerry win Pennsylvania and Michigan) would aid her general election candidacy, regardless of labor’s lingering qualms about her solidarity credentials.
-------
I didn’t have the time yesterday to highlight this priceless story out of Florida, forwarded to me by a resident of the Sunshine State, but it’s still worth a rueful laugh or two:
It’s always fascinating to look at the excuses that politicians invent, when entrapped by their own egregious screwups. This one surely ranks with Bill Clinton’s ’98 contention that oral sex is not really sex.
Our story is about a Florida Republican legislature named Bob Allen, who until recently was serving on John McCain’s statewide campaign committee. Allen has been having a few legal difficulties, stemming from the fact that in July he was arrested at a park restroom for offering to perform oral sex on an undercover cop, and for allegedly offering to pay the object of his affection $20 for the privilege.
According to a police report released last Thursday, officer Danny Kavanaugh said he was drying his hands in a stall when Allen twice peered over the stall door, then pushed open the door, joined Kavanaugh inside, and suggested that the two men go somewhere quiet. Kavanaugh wrote that Allen told him, “I was thinking you would want (oral sex).” The officer replied that it would cost Allen $20. Whereupon the lawmaker allegedly said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t argue with that.” Allen was arrested as he sought to lead Kavanaugh to his car.
Anyway, that’s not the priceless part. And the fact that Allen is rated by a Florida gay organization as the worst state House legislator on gay issues (naturally!), and the fact that last May he had introduced a bill outlawing "lewd and lascivious exhibition"…no, that’s all just standard hypocrisy, which doesn’t rise to the level of pricelessness.
What truly distinguishes this guy is his explanation for what happened. It starts with the fact that he’s a white guy, and Kavanaugh is a black guy…and you can probably guess the rest. As he told the police in a tape-recorded statement, "This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park.” Therefore, he felt he “was about to be a statistic," and therefore he needed to say whatever was necessary in order to escape the scene.
Hence Allen’s legal defense: Scary black people made me do it.
According to the police report, Allen did try to wriggle out of the arrest, by asking Kavanaugh whether “it would help” that he was a state lawmaker. He was told that it would not help. So perhaps he can introduce a bill that codifies a new crime, Relieving Oneself While Black.
But while labor’s heart is with Edwards, its head may be elsewhere. Labor is concerned that Edwards might be another Dick Gephardt – in other words, a sentimental favorite who can’t win. Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader and labor darling, won support from several dozen unions during the runup to the 2004 Iowa Democratic caucuses…where he proceeded to flame out. Or the fear is that perhaps Edwards might be another Howard Dean. Back in the autumn of ’03, Dean picked up some big-ticket labor endorsements, including the blessing of AFSCME…yet he too flopped in Iowa, quitting the race in late February.
On the eve of tonight’s Democratic debate, sponsored by the AFL-CIO, it’s clear that labor is pondering the electability factor. Put bluntly, labor wants to back a winner. And with Hillary Clinton topping Barack Obama by 22 points and topping Edwards by a whopping 36 points in the latest poll of Democratic primary voters, sheer pragmatism suggests a head tilt toward Hillary.
But that can’t be a very comforting thought.
Organized labor was rarely happy with her husband’s White House tenure – as I mentioned here recently, Bill did little to address the gap between rich and poor, or the exodus of U.S. jobs thanks to globalization, or the wage stagnation that plagued the average worker – and suspicions linger that Hillary might be too close to corporate interests. Some labor activists have also been grumbling for weeks about the fact that Hillary's pollster, Mark Penn, is the head of a public relations firm that has provided union-busting advice to business clients.
And even though she has been talking like a populist lately – lamenting “rising inequality and rising pessimism in our work force,” and declaring that global free trade “is working only for a few of us” – she may well have stoked labor’s suspicions anew the other day, when she defended her decision to take campaign money from Washington lobbyists.
As she told an audience of liberal bloggers on Saturday, "A lot of those lobbyists whether you like it not, represent real Americans…and yes, they represent corporations and they employ a lot of people." She was booed for that remark. (She also pointed out, rightly, that lobbyists also represent nurses and social-service folks, but when a liberal or labor audience hears the word “lobbyist,” it thinks “corporate interests.”)
Tonight, Edwards or Obama may well invoke her defense of lobbyists, in the hopes of sowing fresh doubts among the union members in attendance. But here’s where pragmatism comes into play: Shrewd labor leaders might well conclude that Hillary’s willingness to tell a liberal audience something it didn’t want to hear is actually a testament to her potential electability in November 2008. Swing voters dislike Democrats who are perceived as pandering to their left-leaning interest groups. By braving the boos, on Saturday, Hillary was essentially “doing a Sister Souljah,” a tactic used by her husband in 1992, when he ticked off a black audience (and Jesse Jackson) by rebuking the black rapper for her song lyrics.
Hillary is hardly labor’s first choice, but her daunting Democratic lead, and her early willingness to stake out a general election strategy, should be enough to squelch any consensus labor stampede toward Edwards. And that’s precisely her short-term intention. He’ll probably pick up some endorsements from individual unions late this year, but the umbrella AFL-CIO will probably remain officially neutral. And that would serve her needs just fine; one of her priorities, between now and next winter, is to ensure that Edwards, already outmatched in fundraising, is also denied the grassroots labor resources that would allow him to threaten her in key early primaries - notably Iowa and Nevada.
And Hillary knows that if she does win the nomination, the labor ground game (which was crucial in helping both Al Gore and John Kerry win Pennsylvania and Michigan) would aid her general election candidacy, regardless of labor’s lingering qualms about her solidarity credentials.
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I didn’t have the time yesterday to highlight this priceless story out of Florida, forwarded to me by a resident of the Sunshine State, but it’s still worth a rueful laugh or two:
It’s always fascinating to look at the excuses that politicians invent, when entrapped by their own egregious screwups. This one surely ranks with Bill Clinton’s ’98 contention that oral sex is not really sex.
Our story is about a Florida Republican legislature named Bob Allen, who until recently was serving on John McCain’s statewide campaign committee. Allen has been having a few legal difficulties, stemming from the fact that in July he was arrested at a park restroom for offering to perform oral sex on an undercover cop, and for allegedly offering to pay the object of his affection $20 for the privilege.
According to a police report released last Thursday, officer Danny Kavanaugh said he was drying his hands in a stall when Allen twice peered over the stall door, then pushed open the door, joined Kavanaugh inside, and suggested that the two men go somewhere quiet. Kavanaugh wrote that Allen told him, “I was thinking you would want (oral sex).” The officer replied that it would cost Allen $20. Whereupon the lawmaker allegedly said, “Yeah, I wouldn’t argue with that.” Allen was arrested as he sought to lead Kavanaugh to his car.
Anyway, that’s not the priceless part. And the fact that Allen is rated by a Florida gay organization as the worst state House legislator on gay issues (naturally!), and the fact that last May he had introduced a bill outlawing "lewd and lascivious exhibition"…no, that’s all just standard hypocrisy, which doesn’t rise to the level of pricelessness.
What truly distinguishes this guy is his explanation for what happened. It starts with the fact that he’s a white guy, and Kavanaugh is a black guy…and you can probably guess the rest. As he told the police in a tape-recorded statement, "This was a pretty stocky black guy, and there was nothing but other black guys around in the park.” Therefore, he felt he “was about to be a statistic," and therefore he needed to say whatever was necessary in order to escape the scene.
Hence Allen’s legal defense: Scary black people made me do it.
According to the police report, Allen did try to wriggle out of the arrest, by asking Kavanaugh whether “it would help” that he was a state lawmaker. He was told that it would not help. So perhaps he can introduce a bill that codifies a new crime, Relieving Oneself While Black.
Monday, August 06, 2007
Saying no to the neocons
It was fascinating yesterday to watch various Republican presidential candidates trying to distance themselves from the Bush administration’s neoconservative fantasies.
Much of the instant analysis of yesterday’s ABC News debate was about how the candidates focused their fire on Democrats and supposedly reaffirmed their loyalty to Bush by supporting his Surge strategy in Iraq. But I saw something else as well:
At the midway mark of the 90-minute Iowa event, the ’08 contenders said that Bush’s signature ambition – to nurture democracy in the Middle East at the point of a gun - has been a failure, that the Iraqi voters' purple fingers do not necessarily signify a democracy, and that the neocon credo should not be repeated in a new Republican administration.
By making this argument, the candidates demonstrated that a fundamental split within the GOP over foreign policy – generally papered over during the Bush era – has now resurfaced, and vividly so. During the late ‘80s and the ‘90s, there were ongoing tensions between neoconservatives who believed we should export democracy worldwide, even by military means; and less idealistic Republicans, believers in “realpolitik,” who basically sought to respect (and perhaps manipulate) the balance of power abroad, and felt that America should act militarily only to protect its own national interest.
Bush had basically announced his neoconservative dream during his second Inaugural address in January 2005. Yesterday, this dream was essentially repudiated. For instance, when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was asked whether the spread of democracy would be the core of his foreign policy, he replied: “I don’t think it’s the job of the United States to export our form of government. It’s the job of the United States to protect our citizens, to secure our own borders, which we have failed to do for over 20 years. It’s the job of our government to make us free and us safe…I don’t think we can force people to accept our way of life, our way of government. What we can to is to create the strongest America: change our tax system, make it so that people are healthier, create the enviable education system on this planet, make sure that jobs come back to this country rather than disappear from this country…That makes a whole lot more sense to me than spending billions and billions and billions of dollars to try to prop up some government we don’t even like when we get it.”
And this is a guy whose basic strategy, in Iowa and elsewhere, is to appeal to religious conservative voters. Clearly he has determined that not even those voters will buy Bush’s neoconservative credo any longer - and that tells us plenty about the mood of the general electorate.
A minute or two later, Rudy Giuliani weighed in. Whereas Huckabee and Texas congressman Ron Paul were saying that Bush’s credo was a crock, Rudy essentially signaled that, at the very least, Bush’s credo has been undone by sheer incompetence.
He said: “Democracy is not necessarily immediately going to elections…The way I look at it, democracy also requires the rule of law. It requires stability. It requires people not being afraid they’re going to be killed every day when they go out on the street. Democracy’s only a theory if you’re living in an unstable situation. So sometimes, democracy is the long-term goal, but in order to get there, you have to first build a rule of law, you have to first build respect for human rights…”
That was an interesting riff, because it sure sounded like Rudy was condemning the long litany of Bush administration screwups in Iraq. For years, the Bush war team has been congratulating itself for holding a series of elections in Iraq, yet here was Rudy, and some of his rivals saying that elections don’t mean squat without “the rule of law” and “stability” – factors that received tragically short shrift in the prewar Pentagon planning. (What a difference two years can make. Back in February 2005, Republican lawmakers were so besotted by the Iraqi elections that they showed up for Bush's State of the Union address wearing purple suits and purple ties, in solidarity with the Iraqi voters whose fingers had been dipped in purple ink.)
Even John McCain, whose slavish loyalty to Bush has helped precipitate his political plunge, felt compelled yesterday to echo Rudy and suggest that perhaps those purple fingers had been overrated: “We fail to appreciate that elections do not mean democracy, that it is rule of law.” (Then he segued to his standard rose-colored claim that, thanks to the Surge, rule of law “is beginning to take hold in Iraq…which will then allow true democracy to take place.”)
Then it was Mitt Romney’s turn to echo the others: “Just as these other two gentlemen have said, democracy is not defined by a vote. There have to be the underpinnings of democracy: education, health care, people recognizing they live in a place that has the rule of law…We need to reach out, not just with our military might - although that we have, and should keep it strong - but also reach out with our other great capabilities…I can tell you, I’m not a carbon copy of President Bush. And there are things I would do that would be done differently.”
If these guys are talking this way about Bush now, even while attempting to woo Republican primary voters, imagine what the putative nominee will sound like next spring, when it’s time to woo the independent swing voters who have already judged Bush to be an irreparable disaster.
-------
With reference to the '08 Republican argument that security and rule of law are precursers to true democratic elections:
Now we learn, thanks to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, that the Bush war team botched its own security program in Iraq during 2004 and 2005. The Pentagon lost track of roughly 30 percent of the weapons that were supposed to be distributed to Iraqi security forces. And because the record-keeping and accountability procedures were so shoddy (what the GAO calls "numerous mistakes due to incorrect manual entries"), it's impossible to know how many of the 190,000 missing assault rifles and pistols have fallen into the hands of the insurgents.
Reportedly, the Pentagon is not disputing the GAO report, and says it will try to find out what happened. Perhaps the Bush war team will begin its inquiry by quizzing the military leader who was in charge of that program back in 2004 and 2005.
That would be Gen. David Petraeus.
You may have heard of him. He's the guy, according to Bush, who will soon provide us with an objective assessment of how the war is going.
In Mitt Romney's words yesterday, "we’re going to get a report from General Petraeus on the success." (emphasis added)
-------
And speaking of neocons, it's worth noting that irrepressible war hawk Bill Kristol is now applying his trademark optimism to the domestic scene. Opining on Fox News yesterday about the Minneapolis bridge collapse, the perpetually sunny assessor of the Iraq war said this:
"I don't think this symbolizes any great failure of our infrastructure. Once every twenty five years some bridge falls down unexpectedly due to engineering problems and it is unfortunate obviously but the idea that the whole country is crumbling is not, I think, credible."
As Donald Rumsfeld used to say about the violence in Iraq, "stuff happens."
-------
In a Sunday print column yesterday, I suggested that some voter concerns about Romney’s Mormon faith might well be appropriate. Romney, however, is clearly sensitive about this issue. Last Thursday, he visited an Iowa radio talk show, and during a commercial break (when the mike was still on, and the camera was still on), he vented a bit, saying, “I’m not running as a Mormon…I’m not running to talk about Mormonism.”
He said, “My religion is for me and how I live my life…We also inherently believe other people should be allowed to make their own choices…I don’t impose all of my faith beliefs on you.” He said, for instance, that it’s a tenet of his faith that he doesn’t drink, but that, when he was governor of Massachusetts, he never imagined trying to tell the citizenry to abstain. Nor, apparently, would he seek as president to persuade the citizenry to agree with his belief (stated in the radio studio) that, 1000 years after the Second Coming, Jesus will reign simultaneously in two places: Jerusalem and Missouri (the latter being the site of the Garden of Eden).
Naturally, given the fact that nothing goes unobserved in our contemporary political culture, you can watch the entire off-the-air (and presumably off-the-record)conversation here. It was also posted Saturday on YouTube.
Much of the instant analysis of yesterday’s ABC News debate was about how the candidates focused their fire on Democrats and supposedly reaffirmed their loyalty to Bush by supporting his Surge strategy in Iraq. But I saw something else as well:
At the midway mark of the 90-minute Iowa event, the ’08 contenders said that Bush’s signature ambition – to nurture democracy in the Middle East at the point of a gun - has been a failure, that the Iraqi voters' purple fingers do not necessarily signify a democracy, and that the neocon credo should not be repeated in a new Republican administration.
By making this argument, the candidates demonstrated that a fundamental split within the GOP over foreign policy – generally papered over during the Bush era – has now resurfaced, and vividly so. During the late ‘80s and the ‘90s, there were ongoing tensions between neoconservatives who believed we should export democracy worldwide, even by military means; and less idealistic Republicans, believers in “realpolitik,” who basically sought to respect (and perhaps manipulate) the balance of power abroad, and felt that America should act militarily only to protect its own national interest.
Bush had basically announced his neoconservative dream during his second Inaugural address in January 2005. Yesterday, this dream was essentially repudiated. For instance, when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was asked whether the spread of democracy would be the core of his foreign policy, he replied: “I don’t think it’s the job of the United States to export our form of government. It’s the job of the United States to protect our citizens, to secure our own borders, which we have failed to do for over 20 years. It’s the job of our government to make us free and us safe…I don’t think we can force people to accept our way of life, our way of government. What we can to is to create the strongest America: change our tax system, make it so that people are healthier, create the enviable education system on this planet, make sure that jobs come back to this country rather than disappear from this country…That makes a whole lot more sense to me than spending billions and billions and billions of dollars to try to prop up some government we don’t even like when we get it.”
And this is a guy whose basic strategy, in Iowa and elsewhere, is to appeal to religious conservative voters. Clearly he has determined that not even those voters will buy Bush’s neoconservative credo any longer - and that tells us plenty about the mood of the general electorate.
A minute or two later, Rudy Giuliani weighed in. Whereas Huckabee and Texas congressman Ron Paul were saying that Bush’s credo was a crock, Rudy essentially signaled that, at the very least, Bush’s credo has been undone by sheer incompetence.
He said: “Democracy is not necessarily immediately going to elections…The way I look at it, democracy also requires the rule of law. It requires stability. It requires people not being afraid they’re going to be killed every day when they go out on the street. Democracy’s only a theory if you’re living in an unstable situation. So sometimes, democracy is the long-term goal, but in order to get there, you have to first build a rule of law, you have to first build respect for human rights…”
That was an interesting riff, because it sure sounded like Rudy was condemning the long litany of Bush administration screwups in Iraq. For years, the Bush war team has been congratulating itself for holding a series of elections in Iraq, yet here was Rudy, and some of his rivals saying that elections don’t mean squat without “the rule of law” and “stability” – factors that received tragically short shrift in the prewar Pentagon planning. (What a difference two years can make. Back in February 2005, Republican lawmakers were so besotted by the Iraqi elections that they showed up for Bush's State of the Union address wearing purple suits and purple ties, in solidarity with the Iraqi voters whose fingers had been dipped in purple ink.)
Even John McCain, whose slavish loyalty to Bush has helped precipitate his political plunge, felt compelled yesterday to echo Rudy and suggest that perhaps those purple fingers had been overrated: “We fail to appreciate that elections do not mean democracy, that it is rule of law.” (Then he segued to his standard rose-colored claim that, thanks to the Surge, rule of law “is beginning to take hold in Iraq…which will then allow true democracy to take place.”)
Then it was Mitt Romney’s turn to echo the others: “Just as these other two gentlemen have said, democracy is not defined by a vote. There have to be the underpinnings of democracy: education, health care, people recognizing they live in a place that has the rule of law…We need to reach out, not just with our military might - although that we have, and should keep it strong - but also reach out with our other great capabilities…I can tell you, I’m not a carbon copy of President Bush. And there are things I would do that would be done differently.”
If these guys are talking this way about Bush now, even while attempting to woo Republican primary voters, imagine what the putative nominee will sound like next spring, when it’s time to woo the independent swing voters who have already judged Bush to be an irreparable disaster.
-------
With reference to the '08 Republican argument that security and rule of law are precursers to true democratic elections:
Now we learn, thanks to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, that the Bush war team botched its own security program in Iraq during 2004 and 2005. The Pentagon lost track of roughly 30 percent of the weapons that were supposed to be distributed to Iraqi security forces. And because the record-keeping and accountability procedures were so shoddy (what the GAO calls "numerous mistakes due to incorrect manual entries"), it's impossible to know how many of the 190,000 missing assault rifles and pistols have fallen into the hands of the insurgents.
Reportedly, the Pentagon is not disputing the GAO report, and says it will try to find out what happened. Perhaps the Bush war team will begin its inquiry by quizzing the military leader who was in charge of that program back in 2004 and 2005.
That would be Gen. David Petraeus.
You may have heard of him. He's the guy, according to Bush, who will soon provide us with an objective assessment of how the war is going.
In Mitt Romney's words yesterday, "we’re going to get a report from General Petraeus on the success." (emphasis added)
-------
And speaking of neocons, it's worth noting that irrepressible war hawk Bill Kristol is now applying his trademark optimism to the domestic scene. Opining on Fox News yesterday about the Minneapolis bridge collapse, the perpetually sunny assessor of the Iraq war said this:
"I don't think this symbolizes any great failure of our infrastructure. Once every twenty five years some bridge falls down unexpectedly due to engineering problems and it is unfortunate obviously but the idea that the whole country is crumbling is not, I think, credible."
As Donald Rumsfeld used to say about the violence in Iraq, "stuff happens."
-------
In a Sunday print column yesterday, I suggested that some voter concerns about Romney’s Mormon faith might well be appropriate. Romney, however, is clearly sensitive about this issue. Last Thursday, he visited an Iowa radio talk show, and during a commercial break (when the mike was still on, and the camera was still on), he vented a bit, saying, “I’m not running as a Mormon…I’m not running to talk about Mormonism.”
He said, “My religion is for me and how I live my life…We also inherently believe other people should be allowed to make their own choices…I don’t impose all of my faith beliefs on you.” He said, for instance, that it’s a tenet of his faith that he doesn’t drink, but that, when he was governor of Massachusetts, he never imagined trying to tell the citizenry to abstain. Nor, apparently, would he seek as president to persuade the citizenry to agree with his belief (stated in the radio studio) that, 1000 years after the Second Coming, Jesus will reign simultaneously in two places: Jerusalem and Missouri (the latter being the site of the Garden of Eden).
Naturally, given the fact that nothing goes unobserved in our contemporary political culture, you can watch the entire off-the-air (and presumably off-the-record)conversation here. It was also posted Saturday on YouTube.
Friday, August 03, 2007
America's bridge to nowhere
The Minneapolis bridge collapse is a metaphor for our twisted national priorities.
While divers continue their search for the bodies of people who until the moment of death had assumed they were merely commuters, let’s consider these facts:
In 2005, the Minneapolis legislature enacted a hike in the gas tax, with the money earmarked for much-needed road and bridge repairs. But Tim Pawlenty - the Republican governor who has long been billed as a rising star in the conservative firmament, and who has sought to reign on a pledge of No New Taxes – decided that a gas tax hike would violate his principles. So he vetoed the bill. The lawmakers squawked, pointing out that the gas tax at the pump had last been raised in 1988, failed to override the veto.
Then, earlier this year, the lawmakers tried again. Mindful of the fact that Minnesota’s annual shortfall for road and bridge repairs had soared to $1.8 billion, they enacted another hike in the gas tax. But Pawlenty, deciding that the payment of an additional five cents per gallon constituted an undue tax burden, vetoed this bill as well. And again the lawmakers lacked the votes to override.
I’m not suggesting that this no-new-taxes governor is personally responsible for the I-35 bridge collapse; the span may well have fallen anyway, even if there had been new state money for repairs. (The states provide money for interstate repairs, but most of the tab is supposed to be paid by the feds.) But Pawlenty’s vetoes are symptomatic of a society that thinks it can survive on the cheap.
Americans have a general aversion to taxes of any kind – unlike their counterparts in the western European social democracies, where sacrificing for the common good is a given - and American politicians play to that sentiment. Few pay attention to the constant warnings about a deteriorating infrastructure. The 40-year-old Minneapolis bridge was rated as "structurally deficient" in a 2005 federal inventory, but it was hardly unique.
Not surprisingly, the 18.4-cent federal tax on a gallon of gas (a tax designed to raise money for interstate transportation repairs) hasn’t been raised in 14 years. It last happened in '93, during a Democratic Congress. But, in the years since, the drill has been that Republicans don’t want to raise taxes, and Democrats fear being tarred as tax-raisers. Indeed, John Kerry spoke up for a gas tax hike back in the early ‘90s, and the Republicans pounded him for that in TV ads during the 2004 presidential campaign.
In fairness, however, Congress in 2004 did propose to raise the federal gas tax by 4 cents a gallon…but the measure died when President Bush threatened to veto any highway spending bill that included a tax increase. On the campaign trail that year, he complained about the Democrats, saying "there are some in the other party in Washington who would like to raise gas taxes. I think it would be wrong. I think it would be damaging to the economy," while omitting the fact that many Republicans were also backing a gas tax hike.
Bush's stance was unfortunate, because the federal Highway Trust Fund, which depends on the federal gas tax for its revenue, is now projected to go into the red in 2009, for the very first time.
But now that bodies are floating somewhere in the Mississippi River, the mood in Washington has shifted. One Republican congressman, Tom Petri of Wisconsin, a longtime fiscal conservative who did back a gas tax hike in 2004, said yesterday: “People think they're saving money by not investing in infrastructure, and the result is you have catastrophes like this.” And Bush is suddenly talking about sending financial aid to Minnesota, along with his prayers.
Yet even though Bush is pledging to help the state by sending emergency money, his press secretary is suggesting that the state is to blame for the emergency. Tony Snow argued yesterday, "if an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions."
Expect in the days ahead to hear a surge of rhetoric about the need for long-term thinking (before the Minnesota incident is largely forgotten, at least outside of Minnesota). The American Society of Civil Engineers believes that we're spending only 60 percent of the money that would be required to safeguard our roads and bridges. Put another way, the ASCE says that we need to spend $9.4 billion a year over the next 20 years to make things right.
Sounds like a daunting annual tab. On the other hand, we’re currently spending around $9 billion in Iraq every month, just so the terrorists won’t follow us home and blow up our bridges during our evening commute.
Speaking of Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates gets the quote of the week. On his plane yesterday, he said he was disappointed that the dispatch of 30,000 additional U.S. troops has not inspired the Sunni and Shiite politicians to make nice to each other:
“I think the developments on the political side are somewhat discouraging on the national level…We probably all underestimated the depth of mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation, which, let’s face it, is not some kind of secondary issue.”
There it is, your bridge repair money at work.
While divers continue their search for the bodies of people who until the moment of death had assumed they were merely commuters, let’s consider these facts:
In 2005, the Minneapolis legislature enacted a hike in the gas tax, with the money earmarked for much-needed road and bridge repairs. But Tim Pawlenty - the Republican governor who has long been billed as a rising star in the conservative firmament, and who has sought to reign on a pledge of No New Taxes – decided that a gas tax hike would violate his principles. So he vetoed the bill. The lawmakers squawked, pointing out that the gas tax at the pump had last been raised in 1988, failed to override the veto.
Then, earlier this year, the lawmakers tried again. Mindful of the fact that Minnesota’s annual shortfall for road and bridge repairs had soared to $1.8 billion, they enacted another hike in the gas tax. But Pawlenty, deciding that the payment of an additional five cents per gallon constituted an undue tax burden, vetoed this bill as well. And again the lawmakers lacked the votes to override.
I’m not suggesting that this no-new-taxes governor is personally responsible for the I-35 bridge collapse; the span may well have fallen anyway, even if there had been new state money for repairs. (The states provide money for interstate repairs, but most of the tab is supposed to be paid by the feds.) But Pawlenty’s vetoes are symptomatic of a society that thinks it can survive on the cheap.
Americans have a general aversion to taxes of any kind – unlike their counterparts in the western European social democracies, where sacrificing for the common good is a given - and American politicians play to that sentiment. Few pay attention to the constant warnings about a deteriorating infrastructure. The 40-year-old Minneapolis bridge was rated as "structurally deficient" in a 2005 federal inventory, but it was hardly unique.
Not surprisingly, the 18.4-cent federal tax on a gallon of gas (a tax designed to raise money for interstate transportation repairs) hasn’t been raised in 14 years. It last happened in '93, during a Democratic Congress. But, in the years since, the drill has been that Republicans don’t want to raise taxes, and Democrats fear being tarred as tax-raisers. Indeed, John Kerry spoke up for a gas tax hike back in the early ‘90s, and the Republicans pounded him for that in TV ads during the 2004 presidential campaign.
In fairness, however, Congress in 2004 did propose to raise the federal gas tax by 4 cents a gallon…but the measure died when President Bush threatened to veto any highway spending bill that included a tax increase. On the campaign trail that year, he complained about the Democrats, saying "there are some in the other party in Washington who would like to raise gas taxes. I think it would be wrong. I think it would be damaging to the economy," while omitting the fact that many Republicans were also backing a gas tax hike.
Bush's stance was unfortunate, because the federal Highway Trust Fund, which depends on the federal gas tax for its revenue, is now projected to go into the red in 2009, for the very first time.
But now that bodies are floating somewhere in the Mississippi River, the mood in Washington has shifted. One Republican congressman, Tom Petri of Wisconsin, a longtime fiscal conservative who did back a gas tax hike in 2004, said yesterday: “People think they're saving money by not investing in infrastructure, and the result is you have catastrophes like this.” And Bush is suddenly talking about sending financial aid to Minnesota, along with his prayers.
Yet even though Bush is pledging to help the state by sending emergency money, his press secretary is suggesting that the state is to blame for the emergency. Tony Snow argued yesterday, "if an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions."
Expect in the days ahead to hear a surge of rhetoric about the need for long-term thinking (before the Minnesota incident is largely forgotten, at least outside of Minnesota). The American Society of Civil Engineers believes that we're spending only 60 percent of the money that would be required to safeguard our roads and bridges. Put another way, the ASCE says that we need to spend $9.4 billion a year over the next 20 years to make things right.
Sounds like a daunting annual tab. On the other hand, we’re currently spending around $9 billion in Iraq every month, just so the terrorists won’t follow us home and blow up our bridges during our evening commute.
Speaking of Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert Gates gets the quote of the week. On his plane yesterday, he said he was disappointed that the dispatch of 30,000 additional U.S. troops has not inspired the Sunni and Shiite politicians to make nice to each other:
“I think the developments on the political side are somewhat discouraging on the national level…We probably all underestimated the depth of mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation, which, let’s face it, is not some kind of secondary issue.”
There it is, your bridge repair money at work.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
From Bambi to Rambo
As a political document, Barack Obama’s war-on-terror policy speech was a shrewd repair job.
After being dogged for weeks by perception – nurtured in two Democratic debates - that he, as president, would shy away from the swift application of military force, Obama responded in his high-profile speech yesterday by essentially positioning himself to the right of President Bush. Goodbye Bambi, hello Rambo.
Whereas Bush has made little headway in combating the al Qaeda leaders and followers who are hiding in Pakistan, in part because he respects President Pervez Musharraf’s delicate political position, Obama is declaring that he’s fed up with the U.S.A. playing Mr. Nice Guy. The money quote in the speech:
“I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005 (a reference to a report that the Bush team pulled the plug on a planned raid). If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
That’s quite a dose of testosterone. He’s essentially saying that, in order to protect the homeland, he would dispatch U.S troops to breach the sovereignty of a shaky ally, even at the risk of destabilizing Musharraf and perhaps inflaming the Muslim world. Politically speaking, this is Obama saying, “No way you’re gonna paint ME as a wimp.” To underscore his machismo, he even borrowed from Bush’s 2000 convention acceptance speech; the cocksure GOP candidate’s constant refrain was “They have not led. We will.”
Clearly, he was aiming to demonstrate to future swing voters that he would be tough enough to lead America in the post-9/11 world – and that it’s not a contradiction to simultaneously sound hawkish on al Qaeda and dovish on the war in Iraq. His arguably best line was about “getting out of Iraq and onto the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Some of his Democratic rivals are carping at his speech – Chris Dodd says that Obama’s warning about Pakistan is “dangerous and irresponsible” – and there is ire among many on the left that their main guy seems so primed for battle. But Obama had a response for that as well, in the test of the speech, when he managed to sound both hawkish and anti-Bush: “Just because the president misrepresents our enemies does not mean that we don’t have them.”
If the wimp image was a hairline crack in his candidacy, Obama has sought to caulk it. Politically, he has probably done well. Substantively, however, it’s debatable whether his Pakistan remarks have any real merit. Candidates generally say a lot of things that are primarily designed to enhance their electoral prospects; then if they win, they often discover that what works on the soapbox is worthless on the job.
In 1960, candidate John F. Kennedy positioned himself to the right of opponent Richard Nixon, claiming that the GOP hadn’t been tough enough on the Soviets, that the Eisenhower-Nixon administration had allowed the Soviets to outpace America in the arms race (a false charge) , and that, as president, he’d be tougher at fighting the communists. Yet within months of being sworn in, he presided over the Bay of Pigs disaster and turned in a bad performance in his summit meeting with the Soviet premier. Kennedy later said, “he beat the hell out of me.”
And in 1992, candidate Bill Clinton sought to establish some rhetorical toughness by rebuking the senior President Bush for not launching air strikes against Serbia, which at the time was fomenting hostilities in the former Yugoslavia. Then when he got into office, he didn’t launch air strikes either, due largely to the complexities of the crisis.
So it would not be a surprise if Obama, if nominated and elected, felt compelled to heed advice that he refrain from sending troops into Pakistan. He may have done himself some good on the stump yesterday, but smart statecraft is another matter entirely.
After being dogged for weeks by perception – nurtured in two Democratic debates - that he, as president, would shy away from the swift application of military force, Obama responded in his high-profile speech yesterday by essentially positioning himself to the right of President Bush. Goodbye Bambi, hello Rambo.
Whereas Bush has made little headway in combating the al Qaeda leaders and followers who are hiding in Pakistan, in part because he respects President Pervez Musharraf’s delicate political position, Obama is declaring that he’s fed up with the U.S.A. playing Mr. Nice Guy. The money quote in the speech:
“I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005 (a reference to a report that the Bush team pulled the plug on a planned raid). If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”
That’s quite a dose of testosterone. He’s essentially saying that, in order to protect the homeland, he would dispatch U.S troops to breach the sovereignty of a shaky ally, even at the risk of destabilizing Musharraf and perhaps inflaming the Muslim world. Politically speaking, this is Obama saying, “No way you’re gonna paint ME as a wimp.” To underscore his machismo, he even borrowed from Bush’s 2000 convention acceptance speech; the cocksure GOP candidate’s constant refrain was “They have not led. We will.”
Clearly, he was aiming to demonstrate to future swing voters that he would be tough enough to lead America in the post-9/11 world – and that it’s not a contradiction to simultaneously sound hawkish on al Qaeda and dovish on the war in Iraq. His arguably best line was about “getting out of Iraq and onto the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Some of his Democratic rivals are carping at his speech – Chris Dodd says that Obama’s warning about Pakistan is “dangerous and irresponsible” – and there is ire among many on the left that their main guy seems so primed for battle. But Obama had a response for that as well, in the test of the speech, when he managed to sound both hawkish and anti-Bush: “Just because the president misrepresents our enemies does not mean that we don’t have them.”
If the wimp image was a hairline crack in his candidacy, Obama has sought to caulk it. Politically, he has probably done well. Substantively, however, it’s debatable whether his Pakistan remarks have any real merit. Candidates generally say a lot of things that are primarily designed to enhance their electoral prospects; then if they win, they often discover that what works on the soapbox is worthless on the job.
In 1960, candidate John F. Kennedy positioned himself to the right of opponent Richard Nixon, claiming that the GOP hadn’t been tough enough on the Soviets, that the Eisenhower-Nixon administration had allowed the Soviets to outpace America in the arms race (a false charge) , and that, as president, he’d be tougher at fighting the communists. Yet within months of being sworn in, he presided over the Bay of Pigs disaster and turned in a bad performance in his summit meeting with the Soviet premier. Kennedy later said, “he beat the hell out of me.”
And in 1992, candidate Bill Clinton sought to establish some rhetorical toughness by rebuking the senior President Bush for not launching air strikes against Serbia, which at the time was fomenting hostilities in the former Yugoslavia. Then when he got into office, he didn’t launch air strikes either, due largely to the complexities of the crisis.
So it would not be a surprise if Obama, if nominated and elected, felt compelled to heed advice that he refrain from sending troops into Pakistan. He may have done himself some good on the stump yesterday, but smart statecraft is another matter entirely.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Dick Cheney and his bunker doormat
Generally speaking, a vice president’s best job perk is that he gets the inside track to run for president when the boss steps down. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, Richard Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, George H.W. Bush, Al Gore…they all served as understudies before becoming presidential nominees.
But contemporary Republicans can breathe a collective sigh of relief that Dick Cheney has no interest in perpetuating that tradition in 2008.
His appearance last night on Larry King’s CNN show was characteristically cringe-worthy. It’s probably a given at this point that most Americans pay little attention to what he says, particularly when a doormat like Larry King is asking the questions, but I’ll recount the interview anyway, if only to assess the fact-challenged mentality, and willful state of denial, that persists inside the Bush administration bunker.
But first, here’s the abridged version: Cheney said we are making “significant progress” in Iraq, and called the war “a very significant achievement.” He lauded attorney general Alberto Gonzales as “a good man, a good friend,” and said repeatedly that he doesn’t “recall” whether in 2004 he had dispatched then-White House lawyer Gonzales to John Ashcroft’s hospital bed, in a bid to save the warrantless surveillance program that Justice had deemed illegal. And when asked whether he is pleased that the Iraqi parliament is taking August off, he replied, “It’s better than taking two months off.” (As for his claim of "significant progress" in Iraq, it should be noted that the largest Sunni Arab political bloc decided today to pull out of the "national unity" government. That translates into the imminent departure of six Cabinet ministers. Isn't the Surge supposed to be creating the conditions for political reconciliation?)
Now let’s go to the videotape, with italicized annotations.
KING: “How do you deal with it when public opinion polls are stridently against the policy we have?”
CHENEY: “The polls are notoriously unreliable, in the sense that they change all the time, they bounce around all over the place.”
Actually, the polls have been very reliable, as gauges of public sentiment; during the runup to the ’06 congressional elections, they registered growing anti-GOP sentiment, and that sentiment was borne out in November, when Cheney’s party was thrown out of power on Capitol Hill. And the polls don’t “bounce around all over the place.” Over the past three years, every poll, from Gallup to Fox News, has reported a consistent downward slide in the Bush regime’s popularity.
KING: Regarding Iraq, “don’t you ever say, ‘maybe I’m wrong’?”
CHENEY: "No, I think what we do is…weigh the evidence. And there’s a lot of debate and discussion. We went through the exercise at the beginning of the year. (Regarding the troop surge) we talked to a wide number of people with a variety of viewpoints, met with the Joint Chief of Staffs, talked to outside military experts…”
Actually, they limited the range of opinions by reshuffling the players. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, was eased into an earlier retirement last winter after he expressed insufficient enthusiasm about the wisdom of a troop hike (“whether more U.S. troops for a sustained period will get us where we're going faster is an open question”). Nor did Cheney and his people listen to Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, when he warned in testimony last November that “ It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.” Two months after stating that view, Abizaid was no longer in his job. As for Cheney’s reference to consulting “outside military experts,” it’s a matter of record that the Surge plans were drawn up by an “outside” experts housed at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
CHENEY: “There are always things in war that happen that nobody anticipated, surprises, things that don’t go exactly as planned. That’s the nature of warfare.”
Actually, the disasters that have befallen us in Iraq were widely anticipated. The problem was, Cheney and his neoconservative war team at the Pentagon simply chose to ignore those who were waving red flags. Larry King, naturally, failed to point this out. He could have cited the easy examples: Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army’s Chief of Staff, warned that a successful occupation would require “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers,” a remark that effectively cost him his job; or Bush economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, who said that the war and reconstruction could cost upwards of $200 billion, and lost his job shortly thereafter. (The price tag is already at $500 billion and climbing.) But this is perhaps the best example: In the runup to war, the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs spoke with Iraqi exiles and wrote thousands of pages about the potential problems in postwar Iraq, covering everything from electricity to sectarian violence – but Cheney and his people ignored it. As a disenchanted administration official told author George Packer in 2003, the war team’s mindset “isn’t pragmatism, it isn’t Realpolitik, it isn’t conservatism, it isn’t liberalism. It’s theology.”
CHENEY: “The real test is whether nor not the (Surge) strategy that was put in place for this year will in fact produce the desired results.”
KING: “Will those results be in place on that day in ’09 when you leave?”
CHENEY: “I believe so. I think we’re seeing already – from others, don’t take it from me, look at the (New York Times) piece that appeared yesterday…by Mr. O’Hanlon and Mr. Pollack on the situation in Iraq. They’re just back from visiting over there. They both have been strong critics of the war, both worked in the prior administration, but now saying that they think there’s a possibility, indeed, that we could be successful.”
Cheney was referring to Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack, scholars at the Brookings Institution. But the description of those guys as “strong critics of this war” is accurate only in the fabulist recesses of Cheney’s mind. I can’t fathom where he came up with that one. O’Hanlon was writing pro-war commentaries in the conservative Washington Times even before Bush invaded Iraq ("Saddam Hussein may be poised to bring the battle to American cities via terrorism,” he warned in December 2002; two months later, in the wake of a Bush speech, he wrote, “the president was still convincing on his central point that the time for war is near…It is now time for multilateralists to support the president”), and in October 2003 he even testified on Capitol Hill in support of Bush: “In my judgment the administration is basically correct that the overall effort in Iraq is succeeding.” As for Pollack, he is well known in foreign policy circles as a stalwart supporter of the decision to invade Iraq; in fact, he called for an invasion one year before it happened. Larry King didn’t mention these basic facts, either because he wasn’t suitably briefed, or because he was inattentive.
KING: “A member of the Department of Defense sent Hillary Clinton a letter, saying she should not criticize, because it helps the enemy. Do you agree with that letter?”
CHENEY: “Didn't say she should not criticize. She was demanding the plans for withdrawal from Iraq.”
KING: “Do you agree with that letter?”
CHENEY: “I agreed with the letter Eric Edelman wrote. I thought it was a good letter.”
KING: “So (she) should not call for the plans for withdrawal?”
CHENEY: “No, there's an important principle here, Larry, and that is -- and a debate over what our policy ought to be is perfectly legitimate. What we don't do is we don't get into the business of sharing operational plans -- we never have -- with the Congress…to respond to the political charges, such as those that Senator Clinton made, I think would be unwise.”
KING: “Two other things…”
Oops, Larry missed another great followup opportunity. He could have framed it this way: “How do you square your refusal to brief the Senate on war contingency plans with the fact that Defense Secretary Robert Gates considers it important to brief the Senate on war contingency plans? And isn’t that a mixed message by this administration?” Just last week, Gates told Clinton in a letter that “I have long been and continue to be an advocate of congressional oversight…I would be pleased to work with you and the Senate Armed Services Committee to establish a process to keep you apprised of the conceptual thinking, factors, considerations, questions, and objectives associated with drawdown planning.” But Larry had more pressing business, such as asking Cheney about his new heart deibrillator.
KING: “Does it pain you” that you are so often criticized?
CHENEY: “Not especially…When (Bush) is finished, I’m finished. We walk out of here on January 20th of ’09, and I think we’ll be able to hold our heads high…”
No annotation required.
But contemporary Republicans can breathe a collective sigh of relief that Dick Cheney has no interest in perpetuating that tradition in 2008.
His appearance last night on Larry King’s CNN show was characteristically cringe-worthy. It’s probably a given at this point that most Americans pay little attention to what he says, particularly when a doormat like Larry King is asking the questions, but I’ll recount the interview anyway, if only to assess the fact-challenged mentality, and willful state of denial, that persists inside the Bush administration bunker.
But first, here’s the abridged version: Cheney said we are making “significant progress” in Iraq, and called the war “a very significant achievement.” He lauded attorney general Alberto Gonzales as “a good man, a good friend,” and said repeatedly that he doesn’t “recall” whether in 2004 he had dispatched then-White House lawyer Gonzales to John Ashcroft’s hospital bed, in a bid to save the warrantless surveillance program that Justice had deemed illegal. And when asked whether he is pleased that the Iraqi parliament is taking August off, he replied, “It’s better than taking two months off.” (As for his claim of "significant progress" in Iraq, it should be noted that the largest Sunni Arab political bloc decided today to pull out of the "national unity" government. That translates into the imminent departure of six Cabinet ministers. Isn't the Surge supposed to be creating the conditions for political reconciliation?)
Now let’s go to the videotape, with italicized annotations.
KING: “How do you deal with it when public opinion polls are stridently against the policy we have?”
CHENEY: “The polls are notoriously unreliable, in the sense that they change all the time, they bounce around all over the place.”
Actually, the polls have been very reliable, as gauges of public sentiment; during the runup to the ’06 congressional elections, they registered growing anti-GOP sentiment, and that sentiment was borne out in November, when Cheney’s party was thrown out of power on Capitol Hill. And the polls don’t “bounce around all over the place.” Over the past three years, every poll, from Gallup to Fox News, has reported a consistent downward slide in the Bush regime’s popularity.
KING: Regarding Iraq, “don’t you ever say, ‘maybe I’m wrong’?”
CHENEY: "No, I think what we do is…weigh the evidence. And there’s a lot of debate and discussion. We went through the exercise at the beginning of the year. (Regarding the troop surge) we talked to a wide number of people with a variety of viewpoints, met with the Joint Chief of Staffs, talked to outside military experts…”
Actually, they limited the range of opinions by reshuffling the players. Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, was eased into an earlier retirement last winter after he expressed insufficient enthusiasm about the wisdom of a troop hike (“whether more U.S. troops for a sustained period will get us where we're going faster is an open question”). Nor did Cheney and his people listen to Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, when he warned in testimony last November that “ It is easy for the Iraqis to rely upon to us do this work. I believe that more American forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future.” Two months after stating that view, Abizaid was no longer in his job. As for Cheney’s reference to consulting “outside military experts,” it’s a matter of record that the Surge plans were drawn up by an “outside” experts housed at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
CHENEY: “There are always things in war that happen that nobody anticipated, surprises, things that don’t go exactly as planned. That’s the nature of warfare.”
Actually, the disasters that have befallen us in Iraq were widely anticipated. The problem was, Cheney and his neoconservative war team at the Pentagon simply chose to ignore those who were waving red flags. Larry King, naturally, failed to point this out. He could have cited the easy examples: Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army’s Chief of Staff, warned that a successful occupation would require “something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers,” a remark that effectively cost him his job; or Bush economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, who said that the war and reconstruction could cost upwards of $200 billion, and lost his job shortly thereafter. (The price tag is already at $500 billion and climbing.) But this is perhaps the best example: In the runup to war, the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs spoke with Iraqi exiles and wrote thousands of pages about the potential problems in postwar Iraq, covering everything from electricity to sectarian violence – but Cheney and his people ignored it. As a disenchanted administration official told author George Packer in 2003, the war team’s mindset “isn’t pragmatism, it isn’t Realpolitik, it isn’t conservatism, it isn’t liberalism. It’s theology.”
CHENEY: “The real test is whether nor not the (Surge) strategy that was put in place for this year will in fact produce the desired results.”
KING: “Will those results be in place on that day in ’09 when you leave?”
CHENEY: “I believe so. I think we’re seeing already – from others, don’t take it from me, look at the (New York Times) piece that appeared yesterday…by Mr. O’Hanlon and Mr. Pollack on the situation in Iraq. They’re just back from visiting over there. They both have been strong critics of the war, both worked in the prior administration, but now saying that they think there’s a possibility, indeed, that we could be successful.”
Cheney was referring to Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack, scholars at the Brookings Institution. But the description of those guys as “strong critics of this war” is accurate only in the fabulist recesses of Cheney’s mind. I can’t fathom where he came up with that one. O’Hanlon was writing pro-war commentaries in the conservative Washington Times even before Bush invaded Iraq ("Saddam Hussein may be poised to bring the battle to American cities via terrorism,” he warned in December 2002; two months later, in the wake of a Bush speech, he wrote, “the president was still convincing on his central point that the time for war is near…It is now time for multilateralists to support the president”), and in October 2003 he even testified on Capitol Hill in support of Bush: “In my judgment the administration is basically correct that the overall effort in Iraq is succeeding.” As for Pollack, he is well known in foreign policy circles as a stalwart supporter of the decision to invade Iraq; in fact, he called for an invasion one year before it happened. Larry King didn’t mention these basic facts, either because he wasn’t suitably briefed, or because he was inattentive.
KING: “A member of the Department of Defense sent Hillary Clinton a letter, saying she should not criticize, because it helps the enemy. Do you agree with that letter?”
CHENEY: “Didn't say she should not criticize. She was demanding the plans for withdrawal from Iraq.”
KING: “Do you agree with that letter?”
CHENEY: “I agreed with the letter Eric Edelman wrote. I thought it was a good letter.”
KING: “So (she) should not call for the plans for withdrawal?”
CHENEY: “No, there's an important principle here, Larry, and that is -- and a debate over what our policy ought to be is perfectly legitimate. What we don't do is we don't get into the business of sharing operational plans -- we never have -- with the Congress…to respond to the political charges, such as those that Senator Clinton made, I think would be unwise.”
KING: “Two other things…”
Oops, Larry missed another great followup opportunity. He could have framed it this way: “How do you square your refusal to brief the Senate on war contingency plans with the fact that Defense Secretary Robert Gates considers it important to brief the Senate on war contingency plans? And isn’t that a mixed message by this administration?” Just last week, Gates told Clinton in a letter that “I have long been and continue to be an advocate of congressional oversight…I would be pleased to work with you and the Senate Armed Services Committee to establish a process to keep you apprised of the conceptual thinking, factors, considerations, questions, and objectives associated with drawdown planning.” But Larry had more pressing business, such as asking Cheney about his new heart deibrillator.
KING: “Does it pain you” that you are so often criticized?
CHENEY: “Not especially…When (Bush) is finished, I’m finished. We walk out of here on January 20th of ’09, and I think we’ll be able to hold our heads high…”
No annotation required.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
The perils of being in charge
At the moment, the odds of the GOP taking back the House and Senate in 2008 are roughly equivalent to Lindsay Lohan's job prospects at a driver’s ed school.
Nevertheless, the Republicans in Washington will try their best to rally their base voters, and sway swing voters, by painting the majority Democrats as stewards of a “do-nothing Congress.” The Republicans are also testing the phrase “post office Congress,” which suggests that the ruling congressional party has done little except pass a dozen bills to rename various post offices. And loyal grassroots Republicans are heartened by the latest polls, which report that the Democratic Congress is nearly as unpopular as the GOP’s albatross in the White House; for instance, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that, on the eve of Congress’ August recess, only 37 percent of Americans applaud its job performance. Other polls have pegged that number lower.
The record certainly shows that the Democrats have failed to force President Bush to change course in Iraq; and, at this writing, the Democrats have only been able to enact two of the six priorities they announced last winter (a minimum wage hike, and 9/11 domestic security reforms), with the others stuck in the Senate machinery. Moreover, a Democratic survey firm having recently conducted focus groups in two swing congressional districts, announced yesterday in a report that voters there are disappointed with the Democrats on Capitol Hill: “Optimism for the new Congress is quickly waning. Many voters still express a wait-and-see attitude, but most have now returned to the same concerns we heard last year,” prior to the ’06 elections, when the Republicans were in charge.
The Democratic firm, led by pollster Stan Greenberg, sketched the voter complaints about the Democratic Congress: “accomplishing nothing, career politicians just trying to get re-elected, do nothing but argue with each other, lobbyists, wasteful, paid too much money, and, most of all, out of touch.”
All told, “Democrats in Congress are given credit for wanting change and most especially for ensuring that Bush no longer has a blank check from Congress. But in most voters’ minds, it boils down to results; good intentions and legitimate finger-pointing aside, things simply haven’t changed under Democratic control,” which explains “the rapid return of record low approval marks for Congress.”
So it would appear that, for the Democratic politicians who long yearned to be back in charge, this is a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” And it would seem to suggest that the congressional GOP is poised for an ’08 comeback.
But not so fast. Remember the Lindsay Lohan rule.
The public is ticked at the Democrats, but they’re more ticked at Bush and his supine Capitol Hill enablers. The polling evidence suggests that voters are disenchanted with the Democratic Congress primarily because it has not done enough to thwart a president who is widely perceived as a failure. Unlike in 1980 or 1994, when congressional Democrats were punished at the polls because the electorate was more in sync with the GOP, this time congressional Democrats have the electorate on their side. They are mainly being faulted for failing to take the fight to the party that was already rebuked in 2006 and seems poised to be rebuked again in 2008.
The “internals” of the Post-ABC poll sketch the prevailing mood. Congress’ overall approval rating is 37 percent, but the Republicans (who have been filibustering Senate bills at a record rate) seem to get more of the blame. When asked to assess the congressional GOP’s performance, 34 percent say thumbs up, and 64 percent say thumbs down. The Democrats’ numbers are 46 percent positive, and 51 percent negative.
In past decades, congressional Democrats have often suffered politically because, especially on foreign policy, they were widely viewed as “out of the mainstream,” a synonym for “too far to the left.” That’s not the case today. The mainstream position in America is antiwar, and the congressional Democrats are being faulted for not servicing that view. In the Post-ABC poll, 62 percent of Americans said that Congress should have the “final say” in deciding when to withdraw troops from Iraq; only 31 percent said that Bush should have final say. More broadly, 55 percent said they trusted the congressional Democrats to do a better job in Iraq; only 32 percent cited Bush. Lastly, a 49 percent plurality said that the Democrats had done “too little” to prod Bush on Iraq.
But perhaps the Democratic firm’s focus groups are most instructive. Greenberg chose two congressional districts - in upstate New York, and Illinois – where Republican moderates won close House elections in 2006. All the participants were swing voters; they aired their aforementioned gripes about the congressional Democrats. And when they were shown a positive TV ad that boasted about the Democrats’ success in passing a minimum wage hike, they were unimpressed, viewing that achievement as insufficient.
But then the Democratic firm tested a negative, anti-Bush message – and the participants loved it. This was the message: “President Bush has vetoed bills to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and to allow greater stem cell research. He has also promised to veto Democratic bills already passed by the House and Senate to lower student loan rates, implement homeland security recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, expand health coverage for uninsured children, and allow Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices.”
The reaction, according to the firm’s report: “This message fundamentally shifted the debate in the groups, with voters wondering why Democrats weren’t including those facts in their advertising, and expressing shock that (congressional) Republicans are continuing to support President Bush and to defend his vetoes. In their eyes, Bush is a failure whose term can’t end soon enough and there is no explanation for why Republicans in Congress would continue to support him and his failed policies, whether in Iraq or here at home. As one woman in Illinois asked rhetorically after hearing this message, ‘Are you going to stay with Bush, or are you going to get with the people?’”
Naturally, some GOP partisans will simply dismiss this report out of hand, citing Greenberg’s political leanings. But they ignore these warnings at their peril, because they are evident elsewhere as well.
For instance, it tells us plenty, about the current political mood, that incumbent Senate Republican Norm Coleman, who is up for re-election in Minnesota, raised less money in the second quarter of 2007 than his potential Democratic challenger…Al Franken. When a seasoned politician and Bush loyalist like Norm Coleman is leading an untested TV comedian by only seven points in a Survey USA poll (a drop from 22 points last winter), the GOP might want to interpret that as a general sign of trouble.
Nevertheless, the Republicans in Washington will try their best to rally their base voters, and sway swing voters, by painting the majority Democrats as stewards of a “do-nothing Congress.” The Republicans are also testing the phrase “post office Congress,” which suggests that the ruling congressional party has done little except pass a dozen bills to rename various post offices. And loyal grassroots Republicans are heartened by the latest polls, which report that the Democratic Congress is nearly as unpopular as the GOP’s albatross in the White House; for instance, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that, on the eve of Congress’ August recess, only 37 percent of Americans applaud its job performance. Other polls have pegged that number lower.
The record certainly shows that the Democrats have failed to force President Bush to change course in Iraq; and, at this writing, the Democrats have only been able to enact two of the six priorities they announced last winter (a minimum wage hike, and 9/11 domestic security reforms), with the others stuck in the Senate machinery. Moreover, a Democratic survey firm having recently conducted focus groups in two swing congressional districts, announced yesterday in a report that voters there are disappointed with the Democrats on Capitol Hill: “Optimism for the new Congress is quickly waning. Many voters still express a wait-and-see attitude, but most have now returned to the same concerns we heard last year,” prior to the ’06 elections, when the Republicans were in charge.
The Democratic firm, led by pollster Stan Greenberg, sketched the voter complaints about the Democratic Congress: “accomplishing nothing, career politicians just trying to get re-elected, do nothing but argue with each other, lobbyists, wasteful, paid too much money, and, most of all, out of touch.”
All told, “Democrats in Congress are given credit for wanting change and most especially for ensuring that Bush no longer has a blank check from Congress. But in most voters’ minds, it boils down to results; good intentions and legitimate finger-pointing aside, things simply haven’t changed under Democratic control,” which explains “the rapid return of record low approval marks for Congress.”
So it would appear that, for the Democratic politicians who long yearned to be back in charge, this is a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” And it would seem to suggest that the congressional GOP is poised for an ’08 comeback.
But not so fast. Remember the Lindsay Lohan rule.
The public is ticked at the Democrats, but they’re more ticked at Bush and his supine Capitol Hill enablers. The polling evidence suggests that voters are disenchanted with the Democratic Congress primarily because it has not done enough to thwart a president who is widely perceived as a failure. Unlike in 1980 or 1994, when congressional Democrats were punished at the polls because the electorate was more in sync with the GOP, this time congressional Democrats have the electorate on their side. They are mainly being faulted for failing to take the fight to the party that was already rebuked in 2006 and seems poised to be rebuked again in 2008.
The “internals” of the Post-ABC poll sketch the prevailing mood. Congress’ overall approval rating is 37 percent, but the Republicans (who have been filibustering Senate bills at a record rate) seem to get more of the blame. When asked to assess the congressional GOP’s performance, 34 percent say thumbs up, and 64 percent say thumbs down. The Democrats’ numbers are 46 percent positive, and 51 percent negative.
In past decades, congressional Democrats have often suffered politically because, especially on foreign policy, they were widely viewed as “out of the mainstream,” a synonym for “too far to the left.” That’s not the case today. The mainstream position in America is antiwar, and the congressional Democrats are being faulted for not servicing that view. In the Post-ABC poll, 62 percent of Americans said that Congress should have the “final say” in deciding when to withdraw troops from Iraq; only 31 percent said that Bush should have final say. More broadly, 55 percent said they trusted the congressional Democrats to do a better job in Iraq; only 32 percent cited Bush. Lastly, a 49 percent plurality said that the Democrats had done “too little” to prod Bush on Iraq.
But perhaps the Democratic firm’s focus groups are most instructive. Greenberg chose two congressional districts - in upstate New York, and Illinois – where Republican moderates won close House elections in 2006. All the participants were swing voters; they aired their aforementioned gripes about the congressional Democrats. And when they were shown a positive TV ad that boasted about the Democrats’ success in passing a minimum wage hike, they were unimpressed, viewing that achievement as insufficient.
But then the Democratic firm tested a negative, anti-Bush message – and the participants loved it. This was the message: “President Bush has vetoed bills to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq and to allow greater stem cell research. He has also promised to veto Democratic bills already passed by the House and Senate to lower student loan rates, implement homeland security recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, expand health coverage for uninsured children, and allow Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices.”
The reaction, according to the firm’s report: “This message fundamentally shifted the debate in the groups, with voters wondering why Democrats weren’t including those facts in their advertising, and expressing shock that (congressional) Republicans are continuing to support President Bush and to defend his vetoes. In their eyes, Bush is a failure whose term can’t end soon enough and there is no explanation for why Republicans in Congress would continue to support him and his failed policies, whether in Iraq or here at home. As one woman in Illinois asked rhetorically after hearing this message, ‘Are you going to stay with Bush, or are you going to get with the people?’”
Naturally, some GOP partisans will simply dismiss this report out of hand, citing Greenberg’s political leanings. But they ignore these warnings at their peril, because they are evident elsewhere as well.
For instance, it tells us plenty, about the current political mood, that incumbent Senate Republican Norm Coleman, who is up for re-election in Minnesota, raised less money in the second quarter of 2007 than his potential Democratic challenger…Al Franken. When a seasoned politician and Bush loyalist like Norm Coleman is leading an untested TV comedian by only seven points in a Survey USA poll (a drop from 22 points last winter), the GOP might want to interpret that as a general sign of trouble.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Cash for cleavage
Let us quickly stipulate that Cleavage-gate (in which Hillary Clinton is alleged to have worn a low-cut blouse on the Senate floor, thus prompting a fashion critique in The Washington Post) does not rank with Iraq or health care as an issue crucial to the future of the republic. But the fallout from this incident has been instructive – not just about the glass-house nature of contemporary politics, but about the way the Clinton campaign operates. Even an ephemeral fracas over cleavage can be tapped for its money-raising potential.
In a July 20 column, Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion writer at The Post, voiced mild astonishment that Hillary had decided to appear in the Senate chamber wearing a black top with a low V-shaped neckline. She wrote: “The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was undeniable. It was startling to see that small acknowledgement of sexuality and femininity peeking out of the conservative – aesthetically speaking – environment of Congress.”
Givhan, who frequently writes about how politicians choose to present themselves in public, and thus what images they choose to project, decided in this particular case that Hillary is feeling good about herself: “Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease…It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her own skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style.”
Maybe you consider this kind of stuff to be trivial, or maybe not. But candidate fashion, like every other facet of a candidate’s life, is fair game these days. A columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times recently asked Barack Obama where he buys his suits. Obviously, none of this stuff tells us anything about how a candidate might handle the crisis in Darfur. But many Americans - mindful of the fact that campaign promises come and go, that issues wax and wane – are constantly in the hunt for character clues, in the hopes of getting a bead on who these people really are.
Givhan has frequently critiqued men as well (Rudy Giuliani’s decision to stop combing over his baldness; Dick Cheney’s decision to wear a bulky parka to a memorial ceremony at Auschwitz, which prompted Givhan to write that the veep “was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower”). And, in the case of Hillary, Givhan was clearly intending to be complimentary.
But the Clinton campaign – adhering to its ethos that no perceived attack shall go unanswered – decided last week to conflate the Givhan column into a cause celebre for the allegedly aggrieved candidate. It quickly manufactured some outrage in the form of a fund-raising email, seeking to raise money by doing a little media-bashing.
Senior advisor Ann Lewis wrote: “Would you believe that The Washington Post wrote a 746-word article on Hillary’s cleavage? Apparently it was showing when she gave a speech in the Senate about the skyrocketing cost of higher education. Now, I’ve seen some off-topic press coverage – but talking about body parts? That is grossly inappropriate. Frankly, focusing on women’s bodies instead of their ideas is insulting. It’s insulting to every woman who has ever tried to be taken seriously in a business meeting. It’s insulting to our daughters…The media should know better. But they don’t…”
Up to a point, I sympathize. The Hillary camp is arguably right to be frustrated with all the contradictory gender assessments of the first serious female presidential candidate. One week, it’s Elizabeth Edwards claiming that Hillary is behaving too much like a man. Another week, it’s Robin Givhan saying that Hillary is dressing like a hot woman. Another week, it’s Tucker Carlson saying that Hillary is a castrating woman (July 16 on MSNBC: “When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs”). Another week – actually, last week – it’s conservative commenator Lisa Schifferen at National Review Online, saying that Hillary, as a woman, is not hot (“Hillary Clinton does not have cleavage to display. Period”).
But if the Clinton campaign was really interested in letting this episode die, it merely needed to ignore it. Instead, it decided to exploit it – and magnify it - by sending out the fundraising email, and voicing general outrage about “the media.” Perhaps it would have been appropriate to complain about “the media” victimizing the candidate if The Post had placed the fashion story on page one, or if the story had been written by one of their national political writers. But it ran in the Style section, the “C” section on July 20 – an implicit statement by the paper that this was to be considered a feature commentary, not news. It’s the Clinton team, not The Post, that has literally kept the column alive.
As result, it became grist for conversation yesterday on Meet the Press, and Hillary didn't necessarily fare well. John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal said that "for her to argue that she was not aware of what she was communicating by her dress, is like Barry Bonds saying he thought he was rubbing down with flaxseed oil, OK?"
Indeed, a lot of people became aware of the Post column only because of the Clinton team’s fundraising effort; as one woman emailed to The Post late last week, “I, too, was unaware of the article until I received the letter from Hillary’s campaign…Ms. Lewis made a mountain out of a valley. As a woman who has seen my fair share of discrimination in my 53 years, I found the article to be an interesting take on Mrs. Clinton and found nothing derogatory or demeaning. While this article should not be the lead news item on the front page of this paper, or on the nightly news, it was, as Ms. Givhan intended, a simple observation by a fashion writer of someone who is very much in the news. My advice to Ms. Lewis? When you find some really demeaning and very exploitative stories of women, then we can talk. Until then, give it a rest!”
Give it a rest says it best. But if the Clinton people can use this incident to further cement their bond with female voters, and raise enough money to keep pace with Barack Obama, then they will merely underscore their growing reputation as the canniest strategists in the race. As conservative commentator Rich Lowry now writes of Hillary, “she’s a talented politician who has a clear path to the Democratic presidential nomination and to the presidency.”
In a July 20 column, Robin Givhan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion writer at The Post, voiced mild astonishment that Hillary had decided to appear in the Senate chamber wearing a black top with a low V-shaped neckline. She wrote: “The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was undeniable. It was startling to see that small acknowledgement of sexuality and femininity peeking out of the conservative – aesthetically speaking – environment of Congress.”
Givhan, who frequently writes about how politicians choose to present themselves in public, and thus what images they choose to project, decided in this particular case that Hillary is feeling good about herself: “Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease…It requires that a woman be utterly at ease in her own skin, coolly confident about her appearance, unflinching about her sense of style.”
Maybe you consider this kind of stuff to be trivial, or maybe not. But candidate fashion, like every other facet of a candidate’s life, is fair game these days. A columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times recently asked Barack Obama where he buys his suits. Obviously, none of this stuff tells us anything about how a candidate might handle the crisis in Darfur. But many Americans - mindful of the fact that campaign promises come and go, that issues wax and wane – are constantly in the hunt for character clues, in the hopes of getting a bead on who these people really are.
Givhan has frequently critiqued men as well (Rudy Giuliani’s decision to stop combing over his baldness; Dick Cheney’s decision to wear a bulky parka to a memorial ceremony at Auschwitz, which prompted Givhan to write that the veep “was dressed in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower”). And, in the case of Hillary, Givhan was clearly intending to be complimentary.
But the Clinton campaign – adhering to its ethos that no perceived attack shall go unanswered – decided last week to conflate the Givhan column into a cause celebre for the allegedly aggrieved candidate. It quickly manufactured some outrage in the form of a fund-raising email, seeking to raise money by doing a little media-bashing.
Senior advisor Ann Lewis wrote: “Would you believe that The Washington Post wrote a 746-word article on Hillary’s cleavage? Apparently it was showing when she gave a speech in the Senate about the skyrocketing cost of higher education. Now, I’ve seen some off-topic press coverage – but talking about body parts? That is grossly inappropriate. Frankly, focusing on women’s bodies instead of their ideas is insulting. It’s insulting to every woman who has ever tried to be taken seriously in a business meeting. It’s insulting to our daughters…The media should know better. But they don’t…”
Up to a point, I sympathize. The Hillary camp is arguably right to be frustrated with all the contradictory gender assessments of the first serious female presidential candidate. One week, it’s Elizabeth Edwards claiming that Hillary is behaving too much like a man. Another week, it’s Robin Givhan saying that Hillary is dressing like a hot woman. Another week, it’s Tucker Carlson saying that Hillary is a castrating woman (July 16 on MSNBC: “When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs”). Another week – actually, last week – it’s conservative commenator Lisa Schifferen at National Review Online, saying that Hillary, as a woman, is not hot (“Hillary Clinton does not have cleavage to display. Period”).
But if the Clinton campaign was really interested in letting this episode die, it merely needed to ignore it. Instead, it decided to exploit it – and magnify it - by sending out the fundraising email, and voicing general outrage about “the media.” Perhaps it would have been appropriate to complain about “the media” victimizing the candidate if The Post had placed the fashion story on page one, or if the story had been written by one of their national political writers. But it ran in the Style section, the “C” section on July 20 – an implicit statement by the paper that this was to be considered a feature commentary, not news. It’s the Clinton team, not The Post, that has literally kept the column alive.
As result, it became grist for conversation yesterday on Meet the Press, and Hillary didn't necessarily fare well. John Harwood of the Wall Street Journal said that "for her to argue that she was not aware of what she was communicating by her dress, is like Barry Bonds saying he thought he was rubbing down with flaxseed oil, OK?"
Indeed, a lot of people became aware of the Post column only because of the Clinton team’s fundraising effort; as one woman emailed to The Post late last week, “I, too, was unaware of the article until I received the letter from Hillary’s campaign…Ms. Lewis made a mountain out of a valley. As a woman who has seen my fair share of discrimination in my 53 years, I found the article to be an interesting take on Mrs. Clinton and found nothing derogatory or demeaning. While this article should not be the lead news item on the front page of this paper, or on the nightly news, it was, as Ms. Givhan intended, a simple observation by a fashion writer of someone who is very much in the news. My advice to Ms. Lewis? When you find some really demeaning and very exploitative stories of women, then we can talk. Until then, give it a rest!”
Give it a rest says it best. But if the Clinton people can use this incident to further cement their bond with female voters, and raise enough money to keep pace with Barack Obama, then they will merely underscore their growing reputation as the canniest strategists in the race. As conservative commentator Rich Lowry now writes of Hillary, “she’s a talented politician who has a clear path to the Democratic presidential nomination and to the presidency.”
Friday, July 27, 2007
Gonzo, out of control
They’re going Gonzo again in Washington, and no wonder:
The Bush factotum who still holds the job of attorney general has been exposed yet again as, at worst, a serial deceiver who is incapable of telling the truth even while under oath, or, at best, a willfully oblivious nonentity, the kind of guy who plays the parlor piano in a house of ill repute.
The latest Alberto Gonzales episode is a window into the Bush administration mindset, as if we need any fresh evidence. But it’s still worth a quick look, because it’s not every day that an attorney general provides sworn testimony that is flatly contradicted by his own nominal subordinate, the director of the FBI.
On Tuesday of this week, Gonzales insisted it was no big deal that in 2004, acting as Bush’s White House lawyer, he had shown up at the hospital bedside of his predecessor, attorney general John Ashcroft. The problem is, Gonzales appears to be alone in thinking that this nocturnal foray was no big deal.
The record shows that Ashcroft’s Justice Department had serious legal qualms about Bush’s warrantless electronic eavesdropping program; in fact, the ailing Ashcroft had temporarily ceded authority to his chief deputy, James Comey, who thought the still-secret program was illegal and was thus refusing to reauthorize it. So Gonzales raced to the hospital in the hopes of persuading the heavily sedated Ashcroft to overrule Comey. Comey, learning of Gonzales’ intentions, had himself raced to the hospital in order to head off Gonzales. But Ashcroft refused to budge, siding with Comey.
We know all this, by the way, because Comey, a Republican in good standing, laid out the chronology earlier this year in sworn testimony that sounded like a lurid plot line on the Fox show 24.
Anyway, on Tuesday, Gonzales insisted that the hospital showdown “was not about the terrorist surveillance program,” using the White House’s preferred terminology for the program run by the National Security Agency. Actually, Gonzales was merely underscoring what he has said before; during testimony in February 2006, he had insisted there had been “no serious disagreement” among Bush officials about the warrantless program.
But yesterday, FBI director Robert Mueller was put under oath. He proceeded to back up ex-deputy attorney general Comey’s version of events, including the fact that he, Comey, and others had been prepared to resign unless the White House backed off. (To quell the resignation threat, Bush later agreed to modify the program, in ways we do not know.) Mueller had not been present at the hospital bedside, but he consulted with Ashcroft and Comey in the immediate aftermath of Gonzales’ appearance. He has kept his notes ever since, because, as he now puts it, the incident was “out of the ordinary.”
Mueller’s key remark yesterday came in response to series of questions about the bedside showdown. He was asked to describe what Gonzales wanted to talk about. He replied, a tad haltingly: “The discussion was on a national – an NSA program that has been much discussed, yes.”
But even though Gonzales has now been contradicted by both the director of the FBI and the former deputy attorney general, the White House still doesn’t think its ever-faithful AG has a credibility problem. Bush spokesman Tony Snow said yesterday that Mueller “didn’t contradict the attorney general,” and that the Democrats in Congress are simply out to get Gonzales: “they’re going to smear him up as good as they can” – somehow omitting the fact that virtually no congressional Republicans are lifting a finger to defend the attorney general. Republican Sen. Arlen Specter even went out of his way to trash Gonzales yesterday while traveling with Bush on Air Force One (“Our hearing two days ago was devastating. But so was the hearing before that, and so was the hearing before that”).
And here's an interesting assessment on Tony Snow, offered yesterday on MSNBC: "He's Ron Zeigler during Watergate," a reference to the White House press secretary who shredded his own credibility while serving in Richard Nixon's bunker. That take on Snow comes to us from Bruce Fein, a conservative Republican and attorney who served in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department.
It’s also a bit rich that another White House spokesman attempted yesterday to describe Alberto Gonzales as a victim of “an out of control Congress.” Any administration that launches a secret warrantless wiretapping program, in defiance of rules set down by a 1978 act of Congress, and then finds itself overruled by a conservative attorney general (Ashcroft) who essentially deems the program to be illegal, and then tries to pressure the attorney general while he’s under sedation in a hospital…well, I think that’s a fair description of “out of control.”
But perhaps Gonzales said it best in his latest testimony. When asked whether he thinks it was appropriate to importune Ashcroft, he replied: "There are no rules governing whether or not General Ashcroft can decide 'I'm feeling well enough to make this decision.’”
Question: Even when the guy is under sedation?
Gonzales: “There are no rules.”
There are no rules…That’s the Bush administration, in a nutshell. For once, Alberto Gonzales was telling the truth.
-------
Quote of the week, from a top military aide to David Petraeus, while discussing new attempts to measure whether the Surge is really working:
“We are going to try a dozen different things. Maybe one of them will flatline. One of them will do this much. One of them will do this much more. After a while, we believe there is chance you will head into success. I am not saying that we are absolutely headed for success.”
The Bush factotum who still holds the job of attorney general has been exposed yet again as, at worst, a serial deceiver who is incapable of telling the truth even while under oath, or, at best, a willfully oblivious nonentity, the kind of guy who plays the parlor piano in a house of ill repute.
The latest Alberto Gonzales episode is a window into the Bush administration mindset, as if we need any fresh evidence. But it’s still worth a quick look, because it’s not every day that an attorney general provides sworn testimony that is flatly contradicted by his own nominal subordinate, the director of the FBI.
On Tuesday of this week, Gonzales insisted it was no big deal that in 2004, acting as Bush’s White House lawyer, he had shown up at the hospital bedside of his predecessor, attorney general John Ashcroft. The problem is, Gonzales appears to be alone in thinking that this nocturnal foray was no big deal.
The record shows that Ashcroft’s Justice Department had serious legal qualms about Bush’s warrantless electronic eavesdropping program; in fact, the ailing Ashcroft had temporarily ceded authority to his chief deputy, James Comey, who thought the still-secret program was illegal and was thus refusing to reauthorize it. So Gonzales raced to the hospital in the hopes of persuading the heavily sedated Ashcroft to overrule Comey. Comey, learning of Gonzales’ intentions, had himself raced to the hospital in order to head off Gonzales. But Ashcroft refused to budge, siding with Comey.
We know all this, by the way, because Comey, a Republican in good standing, laid out the chronology earlier this year in sworn testimony that sounded like a lurid plot line on the Fox show 24.
Anyway, on Tuesday, Gonzales insisted that the hospital showdown “was not about the terrorist surveillance program,” using the White House’s preferred terminology for the program run by the National Security Agency. Actually, Gonzales was merely underscoring what he has said before; during testimony in February 2006, he had insisted there had been “no serious disagreement” among Bush officials about the warrantless program.
But yesterday, FBI director Robert Mueller was put under oath. He proceeded to back up ex-deputy attorney general Comey’s version of events, including the fact that he, Comey, and others had been prepared to resign unless the White House backed off. (To quell the resignation threat, Bush later agreed to modify the program, in ways we do not know.) Mueller had not been present at the hospital bedside, but he consulted with Ashcroft and Comey in the immediate aftermath of Gonzales’ appearance. He has kept his notes ever since, because, as he now puts it, the incident was “out of the ordinary.”
Mueller’s key remark yesterday came in response to series of questions about the bedside showdown. He was asked to describe what Gonzales wanted to talk about. He replied, a tad haltingly: “The discussion was on a national – an NSA program that has been much discussed, yes.”
But even though Gonzales has now been contradicted by both the director of the FBI and the former deputy attorney general, the White House still doesn’t think its ever-faithful AG has a credibility problem. Bush spokesman Tony Snow said yesterday that Mueller “didn’t contradict the attorney general,” and that the Democrats in Congress are simply out to get Gonzales: “they’re going to smear him up as good as they can” – somehow omitting the fact that virtually no congressional Republicans are lifting a finger to defend the attorney general. Republican Sen. Arlen Specter even went out of his way to trash Gonzales yesterday while traveling with Bush on Air Force One (“Our hearing two days ago was devastating. But so was the hearing before that, and so was the hearing before that”).
And here's an interesting assessment on Tony Snow, offered yesterday on MSNBC: "He's Ron Zeigler during Watergate," a reference to the White House press secretary who shredded his own credibility while serving in Richard Nixon's bunker. That take on Snow comes to us from Bruce Fein, a conservative Republican and attorney who served in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department.
It’s also a bit rich that another White House spokesman attempted yesterday to describe Alberto Gonzales as a victim of “an out of control Congress.” Any administration that launches a secret warrantless wiretapping program, in defiance of rules set down by a 1978 act of Congress, and then finds itself overruled by a conservative attorney general (Ashcroft) who essentially deems the program to be illegal, and then tries to pressure the attorney general while he’s under sedation in a hospital…well, I think that’s a fair description of “out of control.”
But perhaps Gonzales said it best in his latest testimony. When asked whether he thinks it was appropriate to importune Ashcroft, he replied: "There are no rules governing whether or not General Ashcroft can decide 'I'm feeling well enough to make this decision.’”
Question: Even when the guy is under sedation?
Gonzales: “There are no rules.”
There are no rules…That’s the Bush administration, in a nutshell. For once, Alberto Gonzales was telling the truth.
-------
Quote of the week, from a top military aide to David Petraeus, while discussing new attempts to measure whether the Surge is really working:
“We are going to try a dozen different things. Maybe one of them will flatline. One of them will do this much. One of them will do this much more. After a while, we believe there is chance you will head into success. I am not saying that we are absolutely headed for success.”
Thursday, July 26, 2007
"Troops out," and then what?
Further thoughts on the CNN-YouTube Democratic debate:
As I mentioned in passing several days ago, the '08 Democratic presidential hopefuls have generally failed thus far to tell Americans how they would responsibly manage the difficult logistics of a massive withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Perhaps, in the wooing of liberal primary voters, it's sufficient to simply say "troops out" by a date certain. (Bill Richardson, during the YouTube debate: "I believe we should bring all the troops home by the end of this year, in six months, with no residual forces -- no residual forces.") But ultimately, in the wooing of swing-voting independents, it will be necessary for Democrats to ensure that their national security credentials are in order - by making it clear that they're thinking long term about how to best secure the region in the wake of a major U.S. military drawdown.
The YouTube debate on Monday night was another missed opportunity. At one point, a citizen questioner asked the big question: "Don’t you think if we pulled out now, that would open it up for Iran and Syria, God knows who -- Russia -- how do we pull out now? And isn’t it our responsibility to get these people up on their feet? I mean, do you leave a newborn baby to take care of himself? How do we pull out now?"
Barack Obama responded not by talking about 2007 and beyond, but by harkening back to 2002 (when he opposed the war before it began). Then he offered a nice sound bite - "I think we can be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in" - without offering any details. Then he condemned the Iraqi parliament for going on vacation in August. Then he said that a troop pullout should be accompanied by a "diplomatic surge," but again offered no details.
Joe Biden, who at least has floated a post-withdrawal plan for Iraq's political future, riffed quickly on his main points about decentralizing the Iraqi government and setting up separate ethnic jurisdictions. (In that sense, he gave the best answer.) He was followed moments later by Hillary Clinton, who, rather than detailing any of her ideas for post-withdrawal Iraq, contented herself with assailing the President Bush's Pentagon for not adequately developing its own ideas ("there are a lot of questions that we’re asking, but we’re not getting answers"). Then, shortly thereafter, Chris Dodd offered a few general principles - redeploy the troops, "robustly" pursue diplomacy, develop a program "that allows us to become much more engaged in the region" - but nothing else.
In fairness to some of these candidates, it should be noted that the debate format continues to defeat them. The stage is way too crowded (thanks to the presence of people who haven't the remotest chance of getting elected), and therefore the available time to respond in detail is severely limited.
But maybe, even with more time, these Democrats would still be taking refuge in generalities. I sense that such a posture won't suffice in the long run. Many Americans who back troop withdrawal are nevertheless concerned about what would happen in Iraq and the region when we leave. Swing voters will want specifics on how the Democrats would minimize resulting bloodshed and, at the very least, how Democrats would protect our broader security interests.
Will Marshall, a moderate Democrat and prominent Washington policy wonk, has effectively framed the stakes in a new piece posted online. He writes:
"Democrats are right to argue that the United States should start moving its major combat forces out of the country. But since we don’t know how that will affect Iraq’s civil strife, we need to pull out gradually and keep the worst from happening.
Specifically, we should redefine our military mission in Iraq as enforcing three 'noes' that are essential to protecting America’s strategic interests — no safe havens for al Qaeda, no genocide, and no wider regional war. This happens to be the position of most Democratic Congressional leaders and presidential candidates. Given the central role national security will play in next year’s national elections, Democrats would be wise to start emphasizing the longer-range aspects of their Iraq plans."
Later in the piece, he writes: "Too hasty an American departure would likely leave behind a failed state that plunges deeper into sectarian violence and sucks neighboring countries into the maelstrom. All this would add immensely to the prestige of al Qaeda, which would claim credit for having driven the Americans out, just as it claims to have been instrumental in forcing Russia’s exit from Afghanistan in the early 1980s. So instead of promising glibly to stop the war, Democrats should spell out the next phase in what will likely be a prolonged endgame in Iraq."
Marshall basically likes the idea of trimming troops levels to 60,000 in 2008, with full withdrawal by 2012. He argues that this plan "meets the basic demand of war critics: get U.S. troops out of the business of mediating Iraq’s sectarian conflicts and focus those who remain on protecting essential American security interests battling al Qaeda, discouraging intervention by Iraq’s neighbors and preventing genocide."
That kind of timetable might be too slow for the liberal Democratic base. But the liberal Democratic base isn't big enough to deliver the '08 election. Swing voters in search of a credible commander-in-chief will want assurance that, beyond simply pulling out the troops, Democrats are also thinking seriously about the day after.
-------
By the way, there's a new twist in the Pentagon's tiff with Hillary Clinton. As I noted the other day, high-ranking apparatchik Eric Edelman sent her a snarky letter last week accusing her of emboldening the terrorists. She had asked, months ago, for information on the Pentagon's troop withdrawal contingency plans, and received no reply - until Edelman (one of Dick Cheney's former minions) finally told her that a request like hers "reinforces enemy propaganda."
Edleman's boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, assured Hillary late last week the congressional oversight was a good thing. And today, the Associated Press is reporting that Gates has now gone a step further. In a new letter, he tells Hillary that her credentials as a loyal American are still in order:
"I emphatically assure you that we do not claim, suggest, or otherwise believe that congressional oversight emboldens our enemies, nor do we question anyone's motives in this regard."
It wasn't exactly an apology, but no matter. Confessions of error by the Bush war planners are rare indeed. All they managed to do, in the Edelman episode, was to further embolden Hillary Clinton.
As I mentioned in passing several days ago, the '08 Democratic presidential hopefuls have generally failed thus far to tell Americans how they would responsibly manage the difficult logistics of a massive withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.
Perhaps, in the wooing of liberal primary voters, it's sufficient to simply say "troops out" by a date certain. (Bill Richardson, during the YouTube debate: "I believe we should bring all the troops home by the end of this year, in six months, with no residual forces -- no residual forces.") But ultimately, in the wooing of swing-voting independents, it will be necessary for Democrats to ensure that their national security credentials are in order - by making it clear that they're thinking long term about how to best secure the region in the wake of a major U.S. military drawdown.
The YouTube debate on Monday night was another missed opportunity. At one point, a citizen questioner asked the big question: "Don’t you think if we pulled out now, that would open it up for Iran and Syria, God knows who -- Russia -- how do we pull out now? And isn’t it our responsibility to get these people up on their feet? I mean, do you leave a newborn baby to take care of himself? How do we pull out now?"
Barack Obama responded not by talking about 2007 and beyond, but by harkening back to 2002 (when he opposed the war before it began). Then he offered a nice sound bite - "I think we can be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in" - without offering any details. Then he condemned the Iraqi parliament for going on vacation in August. Then he said that a troop pullout should be accompanied by a "diplomatic surge," but again offered no details.
Joe Biden, who at least has floated a post-withdrawal plan for Iraq's political future, riffed quickly on his main points about decentralizing the Iraqi government and setting up separate ethnic jurisdictions. (In that sense, he gave the best answer.) He was followed moments later by Hillary Clinton, who, rather than detailing any of her ideas for post-withdrawal Iraq, contented herself with assailing the President Bush's Pentagon for not adequately developing its own ideas ("there are a lot of questions that we’re asking, but we’re not getting answers"). Then, shortly thereafter, Chris Dodd offered a few general principles - redeploy the troops, "robustly" pursue diplomacy, develop a program "that allows us to become much more engaged in the region" - but nothing else.
In fairness to some of these candidates, it should be noted that the debate format continues to defeat them. The stage is way too crowded (thanks to the presence of people who haven't the remotest chance of getting elected), and therefore the available time to respond in detail is severely limited.
But maybe, even with more time, these Democrats would still be taking refuge in generalities. I sense that such a posture won't suffice in the long run. Many Americans who back troop withdrawal are nevertheless concerned about what would happen in Iraq and the region when we leave. Swing voters will want specifics on how the Democrats would minimize resulting bloodshed and, at the very least, how Democrats would protect our broader security interests.
Will Marshall, a moderate Democrat and prominent Washington policy wonk, has effectively framed the stakes in a new piece posted online. He writes:
"Democrats are right to argue that the United States should start moving its major combat forces out of the country. But since we don’t know how that will affect Iraq’s civil strife, we need to pull out gradually and keep the worst from happening.
Specifically, we should redefine our military mission in Iraq as enforcing three 'noes' that are essential to protecting America’s strategic interests — no safe havens for al Qaeda, no genocide, and no wider regional war. This happens to be the position of most Democratic Congressional leaders and presidential candidates. Given the central role national security will play in next year’s national elections, Democrats would be wise to start emphasizing the longer-range aspects of their Iraq plans."
Later in the piece, he writes: "Too hasty an American departure would likely leave behind a failed state that plunges deeper into sectarian violence and sucks neighboring countries into the maelstrom. All this would add immensely to the prestige of al Qaeda, which would claim credit for having driven the Americans out, just as it claims to have been instrumental in forcing Russia’s exit from Afghanistan in the early 1980s. So instead of promising glibly to stop the war, Democrats should spell out the next phase in what will likely be a prolonged endgame in Iraq."
Marshall basically likes the idea of trimming troops levels to 60,000 in 2008, with full withdrawal by 2012. He argues that this plan "meets the basic demand of war critics: get U.S. troops out of the business of mediating Iraq’s sectarian conflicts and focus those who remain on protecting essential American security interests battling al Qaeda, discouraging intervention by Iraq’s neighbors and preventing genocide."
That kind of timetable might be too slow for the liberal Democratic base. But the liberal Democratic base isn't big enough to deliver the '08 election. Swing voters in search of a credible commander-in-chief will want assurance that, beyond simply pulling out the troops, Democrats are also thinking seriously about the day after.
-------
By the way, there's a new twist in the Pentagon's tiff with Hillary Clinton. As I noted the other day, high-ranking apparatchik Eric Edelman sent her a snarky letter last week accusing her of emboldening the terrorists. She had asked, months ago, for information on the Pentagon's troop withdrawal contingency plans, and received no reply - until Edelman (one of Dick Cheney's former minions) finally told her that a request like hers "reinforces enemy propaganda."
Edleman's boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, assured Hillary late last week the congressional oversight was a good thing. And today, the Associated Press is reporting that Gates has now gone a step further. In a new letter, he tells Hillary that her credentials as a loyal American are still in order:
"I emphatically assure you that we do not claim, suggest, or otherwise believe that congressional oversight emboldens our enemies, nor do we question anyone's motives in this regard."
It wasn't exactly an apology, but no matter. Confessions of error by the Bush war planners are rare indeed. All they managed to do, in the Edelman episode, was to further embolden Hillary Clinton.
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