WaxWorks
|
Friday, July 23, 2004
Why Won't Anyone Just Say It?
I'm with Josh Marshall and Atrios on this one: isn't another way of saying, as the AP has, that these newly-discovered military records "shed no new light on the future president's activities during that summer" is that they confirm the fact that he wasn't doing his military duty that summer?
Atrios is also right that maybe someone should address this untrue statement in Bush's 2000 autobiography, A Charge To Keep:
I continued flying with my unit for the next several years [after completing training in June 1970].
I guess whether or not Al Gore claimed to invent the Internet is more important than whether the President of the United States, an admitted "war president," lied about his military service and continues to lie about it today...
Clinton May Have Done It But He Never Talked About It
So much for restoring "honor and integrity to the Oval Office." Here's a direct quote from Bush today at the Urban League:
Do you remember a guy named Charlie Gaines? Somebody gave me a quote he said, which I think kind of describes the environment we're in today. I think he's a friend of Jesse's. He said, "Blacks are gagging on the donkey but not yet ready to swallow the elephant."
'Nuff Said.
Hey, Didn't One of Them Go to Yale?
Kudos to Wonkette for her coverage of the live on-line chat today with Jenna and Barbara Bush, the Prez's daughters:
We were highly entertained by the online chat just held over at GeorgeWBush.com; it's not every day you get people involved in politics to give you off-the-cuff, unscripted answers to serious questions about where the country is headed. So today really wasn't that different from other days. Oh sure, the chat with Jenna and Barbara Bush was hilarious, but only because we expected them to start responding with, "Affirmative, Dave, I read you." Their responses were an insult to Stepford Wives, but then again, the questions were an insult to our intelligence:
Susan Kildow from Holly Springs NC wrote:As young women who embody the future of our nation, how important do you believe character to be when choosing a candidate and how does your dad stack up?
Barbara and Jenna Bush answered:Well, Susan, to us character is the most vital part of being an excellent leader. While we may be a little biased because he is our dad, we think - well, we KNOW -- that our Dad is a man of strong and principled character. If he says he is going to do something, he will do it. When we were kids, if dad said he was going to come to one of our soccer games, he would be there! And now even his critics can't argue that he is a steadfast leader who means what he says and acts with resolve. At the same time, he always treats everyone he meets with dignity and respect.
It's not just that 22-year-olds don't talk like that, it's that no one talks like that. Jenna and Barb weren't answering these questions, these questions were being answered by Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove, who may have been dressed like Jenna and Barb.
Wonkette's concluson:
"This chat is a travesty. It's travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham."
Pretty much sums up this Presidency.
One Thing We Know: It's "Inadvertent"
First we're told that Bush's military records were "inadvertently destroyed." Now today we're told that they were found, and the claim that they were destroyed was an "inadvertent oversight."
Someone's really going out of their way to point out how "inadvertent" this whole episode is, huh?
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Howard Dean: The Goldwater of 2004?
Here's the retrospective I mentioned in the previous post on the state of play in the Prez race and the Democratic nomination on the eve of the convention.
I think the most important thing to remember is the incalculable impact of Howard Dean on this presidential race. People talk about how Goldwater lost in '64, badly, but he transformed the Republican Party as a result of his loss, leading to dominance from 1968-1992 on the Presidential level. Dean has had that kind of impact this year. Not on issues, the way Goldwater did, but on motivating Democrats (as arguably Goldwater did) and on changing the way things are done in the Democratic Party.
(I recommend this excellent article by former Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi, which is ostensibly about how well run the Edwards campaign was, but I think also tells a lot about the impact of Howard Dean.)
Let me make clear: I was never a Deaniac. I always liked Kerry and Edwards much better, and thought that Dean didn't offer enough substance. And I thought he was unelectable. But what he did was very rare in politics and very significant. Dean's impact is felt, and will be felt, in a number of ways:
1. One of the most significant things Dean did this year was to get Democrats to fight back again. After 9/11, Democrats were stuck. They didn't know how to oppose Bush without betraying our national unity. Bush, not giving a rat's ass about national unity despite supposedly being a "united not a divider" brilliantly exploited that and turned that weak support against the Democrats in the 2002 election, using the homeland security bill.
Bill Clinton, the master pol, has an interesting take on the 2002 election in this month's Rolling Stone. Clinton thinks what Bush did in 2002 hurt his changes in 2004:
What Clinton doesn't mention here is that it was Dean who was the first one to cut away the deferential veneer and start attacking Bush. The raw anger that came out of the 2002 campaign and the Cleland defeat, was effectively harnessed by Dean and used to great effect. Essentially, Dean taught Democrats how to fight again, and, as Al Franken says, that we didn't have to take it anymore. That galvanizing effort should not be understated.I'm interested that you expressed a cautious admiration for their political skill. Any other places where you looked and said, "Boy, that's good"?
Well, no. I would say, though -- you know, one of the great things in politics that you have to know is when not to play a card -- because you might win a hand and lose the match. And that's the mistake, I think, they made in 2002. President Bush would have been far better off in his reelection if he'd let the natural rhythm of 2002 unfold and let the Democrats pick up a few seats. We would have held the Senate and maybe increased our margin by one or two; the House would be very close. But it would have compelled him to take a more moderate position.
Instead, when they pulled that homeland-security deal, they thought they could get away with anything. They thought, "If people swallowed that, they'd swallow anything." And they convinced mostly white male voters, especially in the South, to turn out at presidential levels, foaming at the mouth, on the theory that we wouldn't stand up to terrorism -- which was not true. And in the end, when you win a campaign on a false premise, the people on the other side normally get mad, and you have to pay the price for it.
2. The second most important thing Dean did, which Trippi talks about in his article, is to opt out of matching funds. Dean's decision, born out of his ability to raise phenomenal sums of moolah on the Internet, transformed and modernized the Democratic party in a way that simply cannot be underestimated. Even Democrats who believed in the principle behind McCain-Feingold understood that, without raising the same vast sums of hard money from small donors that the Republicans did, Democrats would be in a serious money problem going forward and in 2004 in particular. Howard Dean's success taught Democrats how to achieve parity, or close to it, with the Republican fundraising machine, an achievement that simply cannot go unnoticed.
What Dean's fundraising success, copied by Kerry after he had sewn up the nomination, did was show that Democrats could collect vast sums of money from small donors, about as democratic a way to fundraise as there could be. But unlike Republicans, who can rely on a solid direct mail list year after year, the more mobile Democratic base could contribute via the Internet. This realization allowed Democrats to be competitive with the Bush fundraising machine.
Dean's decision to opt-out, after he had shown that he could raise money on the Internet, triggered Kerry to opt-out as well. That domino-effect was crucial -- imagine where Kerry would be today if he could only have spent $45 million during the primary campaign, instead of $145 million. It's scary to think about. I willing to bet, that after a couple of beers, Karl Rove would admit that the biggest wrench in his campaign strategy was the Democrats surprising ability to match him $ for $.
More later...
Hmmm...
As we approach the Democratic convention, I was about to do a retrospective posting about how we got here and where things stand, but I've been distracted by the Sandy Berger news and the 9/11 Commission report, as well as the Joe Wilson trashing.
First, on Sandy Berger, given the New York Times article today, isn't it clear that this was a well-timed leak by the Bush Administration to attempt to 1) overshadow the 9/11 Commission Report and 2) drown out the pre-Democratic convention press? Here's the applicable quote from the Times, after noting that the White House Counsel's office knew about the investigation:
The White House declined to say who beyond the counsel's office knew about the investigation, but some administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they believed that several top aides to Mr. Bush were informed of the investigation.
Now, the next question is, which "top aides" were informed of the investigation? It wouldn't happen to be the same "top aides" that have been called into the grand jury over leaking Valerie Plame's cover, would it? Any one see a pattern here?
And on Plame, the effort to vilify Wilson now by the Republicans and the White House is a bit puzzling. After all, didn't the White House and Condi Rice ADMIT earlier this year that in fact those 16 words did not belong in the State of the Union and that they were, if not inaccurate, suspect at best? That's sorta like trying to take back your guilty plea after evidence gets tossed under the exclusionary rule, isn't it?
Finally, the 9/11 Commission report -- I haven't read it, but I will read the executive summary. (A la the Martin Short character in The Big Picture: "I have read almost all of these scripts almost all of the way through"). Here's a big hunch though -- Richard Clarke will be vindicated.
Faith in Humanity Restored, Exhibit A
It's hard not to feel good about things when you see an article like this:
"The Al Franken Show," airing weekdays on WLIB-AM, more than doubled O'Reilly's "The Radio Factor" on WOR-AM among listeners aged 25 to 54 -- the group advertisers prize most -- during the only hour when the two go head to head in New York, Arbitron Inc. reported on Tuesday.
