September 19, 2003 PERMALINK
Clark: Not a Target-Rich Environment
(posted Sept. 19 12 AM ET)
One thing to argue in favor of Wesley Clarkâs electability: it appears the Right has nothing on him.
Not that the conservative attack machine hasnât been up and running to greet Clarkâs entry.
This Scoobie Davis piece, and a series of posts from Counterspin Central, all have chronicled (and debunked) many of the attempts to smear Clark early.
But whatâs notable is how weak the attacks themselves are.
There are the hysterical conspiracies, that he was responsible for the deaths at Waco, and heâs ãHillaryâs sock puppet.ä
There is that heâs an hysterical conspiracy-monger, that he lied about the Bushies pressuring him to finger Iraq for 9/11, and also about them trying to fire him from CNN.
There is also the ãheâs no Ikeä line, which aims to minimize his achievements and trash his Supreme Commander aura.
For example, on 9/6, Fox Newsâ Mort Kondracke said:
·now he thinks he's Dwight D. Eisenhower. You know, Kosovo was not World War II.
And on 9/16, his colleague Fred Barnes offered:
We know what Eisenhower did, MacArthur did. We know what Tommy Franks has done...
·I mean he sends some bombers over. There wasn't a boot on the ground.
Is this some great military achievement? I think not.
On the same program, Brit Hume sarcastically remarked, ãdecisive figure, that one,ä following old footage of Clark politely refusing to take reportersâ questions after checking with an aide.
The Right is also amplifying blind quotes from a recent W. Post piece about his relationships in the Pentagon.
In it, former colleagues describe him as ãabrasive,ä ãmanipulativeä and ãwill tell anybody what they want to hear,ä -- a lack of support that led to a slightly early, forced retirement.
(Of course, there is also much praise from other former colleagues, with one saying his critics are fueled by ãjealousy and envy [and] misunderstandingä.)
And finally, his detractors (and some on the Left) are trying to hype an incident where he lost a fight with a subordinate over whether to block the Russians from securing an airport during Kosovo.
Thatâs a lot of random balls being thrown at the wall. And none of them are likely to stick.
As noted earlier, the more hysterical stuff is easily shot down by the facts.
And the other stuff is simply Bush league.
You can call a guy abrasive, manipulative, indecisive, conspiratorial, hot-headed, or thin-skinned all day long.
But if he doesnât show those qualities on the campaign trail, no one will care.
On TV, he has consistently come across as pleasant and mild-mannered. It will be very hard to attack his personality.
The Right is right that heâs not Eisenhower, but he never said he was (despite Kondrackeâs characterization).
That only means Clark needs to work harder than Ike to raise his profile.
But to demean a military achievement, any military achievement, is walking on thin ice -- as the Right loves to remind the Left.
And this Kosovo airport thing may be great chatter for insiders, but Powellâs 1991 fights with Cheney about the Gulf War didnât make it far beyond the Beltway. This wonât either.
Much of the Rightâs attacks on the other Dems are trumped up, and they can be countered. But you can see how they might work.
Howard Dean did oppose the war. Dick Gephardt is supporting an expensive health care plan. John Edwards was a trial lawyer. John ãFrenchä Kerry was partly raised in Europe.
But these Clark attacks are non-starters, unless Clark does something in front of the cameras to lend credence to them.
Clark needs to show a lot more substance before he earns Dem support.
But the fact that the GOP doesnât start with any real ammo on him is certainly a big plus.
QUICK HIT
Dean Adjusts on NAFTA
Earlier in the week, LiberalOasis argued Dean needed to admit his mistake of wrongly denying that he once was a ãvery strong supporterä of NAFTA.
Dean hasnât directly owned up to it, but he is now handling NAFTA questions in a more candid and appropriate manner.
Dean told Terry Neal of washingtonpost.com:
It's fair to say I switched my position on trade.
And then he gave a plausible reason for what prompted the change.
Also, after Gephardt began distributing a â99 letter from Dean to Bill Clinton, offering advice on getting China into the WTO over the complaints of the ãlabor movement,ä Dean told the Manchester Union Leader:
Itâs fair for Dick to pass around this letter, but itâs not honest for him to claim, to pretend, that I was against Medicare and Social Security.
(That slap did not go unanswered by Gephardt, who is pushing hard his attack site, Deanfacts.com, which is all about spinning Deanâs SS and Medicare views via selective quotation.)
LO would argue that Dean would score more points with the press if he did more of a mea culpa.
But this tack should stop the NAFTA bleeding that was caused from his Sunday ABC appearance.
It can no longer be said he is covering up his past views.
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September 18, 2003 PERMALINK
The General Is In
Does It Matter?
(posted Sept. 18 12:30 AM ET)
Itâs unquestionably a good thing that Wesley Clark has entered the race.
To have a voice as credible as his join the chorus of Bush critics only helps the Democratic Party and the cause of taking back the White House.
But is Clark going to ãshake upä the primary as many commentators are suggesting?
That remains to be seen. He is as likely to shake it up as he is likely to be a non-factor.
While it is highly unlikely heâs going to flat-out smoke the field.
His name ID is not high. Recent polls put him in the middle of the pack, at best. And his kick-off speech, while fine and inoffensive, was not the stuff of a dream candidate.
If he is to win, itâs more likely to be from a slow, steady rise than a big, initial splash.
Heâs getting a fair share of media attention now, but heâs not a celebrity candidate.
He will soon settle in and be treated like everyone else, which means heâll need to work for the nod, not coast to it.
Many political commentators are also speculating on who Clark hurts.
Does he trump Kerryâs war record, or Edwardsâ Southernness? Is he a fresher face than Dean?
But the only polling evidence we have ö last weekâs Gallup poll ö indicates that he doesnât hurt anybody.
He takes just a sliver out of everybody, ending up in 5th place with 10%. (A recent ABC poll has him at 6%).
That doesnât really shake anything up.
Of course, the polls may soon show something else now that heâs formally in.
And with so many people bunched up at the top, a small spike from the recent coverage could temporarily put him at or near first place.
But his announcement speech was so void of specifics, itâs hard to see at this point who really would get burned, assuming he is able to build on his early support.
Not that thereâs anything wrong with rolling out his policy positions steadily. Heâll get there soon enough.
(Some information on his views is at meetclark.com, and a couple of eyebrow raising comments are in this typically snarky W. Post editorial.)
But until he gets more specific, and until thereâs proof he can spark excitement with more than his just resume, the jury is out on how much this race has been shaken up.
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September 17, 2003 PERMALINK
Iraq-Qaeda Backtracking
(posted Sept. 17 12:15 AM ET)
The Bushies are learning that they canât say whatever they feel like anymore.
After Dick Cheney took some flak following his attempts to associate Iraq with Sept. 11 (see B. Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and W. Post), the Administration tried to take the heat off.
Yesterday, Rumsfeld, while not directly contradicting Cheneyâs words, sought to back away from the notion that Iraq had a role in Sept. 11. Condi did the same on ABCâs Nightline.
That looks pretty coordinated. That looks as if they realized there's now a political risk in taking the Orwelllian routine too far.
By making these statements, they may have nipped further editorializing in the bud -- for the time being.
But it does not mean they have given up on making general Iraq-Qaeda connections.
Defining Iraq as the ãcentral frontä for terror is still paramount to their political strategy.
Of note is this AP story that ran over the weekend, which appears to have been spoon-fed by ãU.S. officialsä (and also appears to include what Cheney based much of his Iraq-Qaeda comments on).
The AP said:
The Bush administration has evidence of some prewar Iraqi contacts and training with al-Qaida· but no proof of joint terror operations·
·Most of the administration's public assertions have focused on a supporter of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi·
·But U.S. officials familiar with intelligence say the administration has evidence of other contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida·
·Nearly a dozen current and former senior U.S. officials told the AP that the strongest account of collaboration between Iraqis and al-Qaida comes from the captured leader of one of al-Qaida's Afghan training camps.
He claimed that bin Laden turned to Iraq for technical help on chemical weapons because bin Laden was concerned that al-Qaida lacked the expertise.
The captive has told interrogators that an al-Qaida militant known as Abdallah al-Iraqi shuttled between Afghanistan and Iraq from 1997 and 2002 looking to acquire poisons, officials said.
This account makes it sound like the alleged al-Iraqi connection is news.
Itâs not.
Colin Powell already made this assertion when he gave his famous speech to the UN in February, laying out his case for war.
An address, mind you, which has since been trashed by the AP as wilting under scrutiny.
And which, according to The Nationâs Eric Alterman, was filled with ãweasel words·that should have set off alarm bells in any first-year journalism student.ä
So ãthe strongest account of collaborationä is simply recycled rumor, sourced from a single unnamed captive.
These paper-thin, self-serving arguments surely wonât go away.
But the backtracking that happened yesterday shows that the Bushies wonât be able to spray such arguments at will anymore.
And if the Bushies continue to be hemmed in by media pressure, the harder it will be for them to scare the public into a second Dubya term.
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September 16, 2003 PERMALINK
Can Dean Take The Heat?
(posted Sept. 16 3 AM ET)
Just last month, LiberalOasis asked if anyone can stop Howard Dean?
Maybe the question should be: Can everyone (including Dean) stop Dean?
Dean is facing his first rough patch (a minor one, arguably) since catching fire this summer, as his Establishment rivals are starting to pile on.
LO noted during the last debates that perhaps the other candidates were reluctant to attack Dean because they saw how Lieberman lost face each time he tried it.
But they must have taken a different lesson, that Lieberman snagged a healthy portion of next-day news coverage, which rarely mentioned the negative crowd responses.
And with time ticking away, theyâre firing away.
Howâs Dean handling it?
It depends on the issue. Letâs look at two of the big ones.
NAFTA
Dean blew this big. But itâs fixable, if heâs willing.
On ABCâs This Week on Sunday, he picked a worthless fight with George Stephanopoulos over whether he used to be a ãsupporterä of NAFTA (Deanâs claim) or a ãstrong supporterä (Georgeâs characterization).
To make matters worse, the Gephardt campaign did its oppo research, and quickly alerted the media of Deanâs '95 statement (also on This Week) that he was a ãvery strong supporterä of NAFTA.
(To any skeptics, check the transcript on Nexis. He said it, and itâs in context.)
This particular flub isnât getting major media attention, but the political press corps (led by The Note) is surely fully aware of it, and is flummoxed, maybe even peeved.
If this is not corrected, he will be open to charges as severe as lying.
Of course, it is far more likely the case that Dean was not actively lying, (that would just be too stupid) but simply had no recollection of his earlier statement.
(There is no Nexis evidence that he ever used the phrase again to describe his position).
But it doesnât matter.
Furthermore, if he lets this gaffe stand, he wonât be able to make his argument that we need international labor and enviro standards to minimize US job loss, without having others dredge all this up repeatedly.
Dean also said on This Week this past Sunday:
·when I make a mistake, I'm going to own up to it.
This is clearly a mistake. To not own up to it will invite more media skepticism and poison his future coverage on other matters.
The sooner Dean corrects this, the better.
Medicare
The NAFTA flap was largely self-inflicted. The Medicare flap was a broadside leveled by Gephardt.
And Dean handled this much much better, though heâs not out of the woods.
Among other things, Gephardt dug up Dean quotes from the early 90s, calling Medicare ãone of the worst things that ever happenedä and ãone of the worst federal programs ever.ä
On the day the charge was made, Stephanopoulos was riding around with Dean for the This Week segment.
And before Dean had any chance to prepare responses in advance, George hit him hard, throwing documents at him while the cameras were rolling.
Unlike the NAFTA bickering, Dean didnât complain at all (despite this being true ãgotcha politicsä).
He took the questions in stride and answered forthrightly:
DEAN: Of course I support Medicare. That's ridiculous. I certainly have been very angry at Medicare over their bureaucratic stuff.
They're really difficult bureaucratically to deal with.
(Note: This is backed up in what Gephardt quotes from.
In the 8/3/93 AP story with the ominous title ãLiberal Doctor Is Conservative on Health Care Reform,ä Dean followed his ãworst thingsä comment with:
ãMy father was in the hospital last year and he still can't get his bills straightened out because nobody who knows anything will talk to him at Medicare. It's just a pathetic bureaucracy.ä)
STEPHANOPOULOS: [Gephardt] also says that in 1995, you specifically supported the 270 billion dollars or so in tax cuts that were called for by Newt Gingrich --
DEAN: I think that's very unlikely.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Here's the document·And it's pretty clear that you said you would accept a seven- to ten-percent cut in the rate of growth of Medicare, which is --
DEAN: Oh, a cutting the rate of growth is much different --
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, except that the cut in growth rate in 1995 came to 270 billion dollars.
DEAN: I've got to find out·but I fully subscribe to the notion which is to reduce the Medicare growth rate to ten percent or less, I'm sure I said that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That's what Newt Gingrich was calling for in 1995.
MR. DEAN: Well, then, Newt Gingrich probably also called for a strong America and I believe in that, too.
Gephardt responded by sending an email to reporters highlighting these statements about cutting the growth rate.
Thatâs a legit and healthy debate: whether or not the Medicare growth rate should be slowed to keep the fund solvent, or if that would compromise benefits.
And now it looks like weâre going to have it.
So Dean successfully put Gephardtâs high-profile charge, regarding his dramatic quotes, into proper context.
But now Dean needs to get ready to lay out in more detail his plans for Medicare, and how he can strengthen the program while restraining growth.
If he doesnât spell that out, his strong health care record in Vermont probably wonât be enough to stop Gephardt and others from causing more damage.
To sum up:
Deanâs inconsistent handling of the attacks is not fatal, yet.
He still has deeper support than anyone else.
The spotlight is still on him more than anyone else.
The headlines, while not as positive in recent days as they have been, are not scathing either. And they wonât be unless Deanâs polls noticeably drop off.
But there are things to correct.
Dean seems reluctant to show weakness, getting bogged down in a tit-for-tat, preferring to be seen as a steely fighter than a wimp.
This is in line with what Sidney Blumenthal told LO in an earlier interview:
If you donât stand up for yourself, people wonât think that you will stand up for them.
So thereâs logic to what Dean is doing.
Still, when you screw up, you gotta Îfess up. Otherwise, you risk being dismissed as arrogant or worse.
And if you donât explain yourself enough, you wonât be inoculated when the last-minute attack pieces (Dean Wants To Abolish Medicare As We Know It!) hit the airwaves and the mailboxes.
Bottom line: Deanâs still in the middle of his biggest test so far. He hasnât passed it yet.
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September 15, 2003 PERMALINK
The Sunday Talkshow Breakdown
A weekly feature of LiberalOasis
(posted Sept. 15 1:30 AM ET)
Panic mode continues.
Last Sunday, Colin and Condi handled the morning and Bush himself the evening.
This Sunday, in an atypical move, four different Bushies went on five shows.
Both this week and last are attempts to stunt the rising criticism by taking up more oxygen.
But using more people means less control of message, very unlike this White House.
(Perhaps it was a small sop to Sunday show producers, who hate having to share guests because it diminishes their ability to make their own news.)
In turn, each show went in very different directions. Just take a look at how some of the interviews began.
On ABCâS This Week, George Stephanopoulos hit Joint Chiefs Chair Richard Myers with the most recent ugly story out of Iraq:
[In Fallujah,] 12 Iraqi police officers were killed by American officers on Friday. What more can you tell us about this incident?
On CBSâ Face The Nation, Bob Schieffer didnât waste any time in humiliating Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld:
·there must have been mornings when you have awakened to better news·
·here's the front page of the Washington Post·on one side of the page a report on a new poll that says six Americans in 10 do not support the president's request to spend $87 billion in Iraq.
Then, on the other side of the page, there is this: Iraq takes a toll on Rumsfeld, and criticism mounts.
It goes on to say that many on Capitol Hill and in the military establishment are now blaming you for some of the mounting casualties and the costs of the war.
But on the main attraction, NBCâs Meet The Press, where Dick Cheney faced Tim Russert for the full hour, what hard-hitting question did Tim start with?
Has this nation recovered from September 11, 2001?
That softest of softballs allowed Cheney to easily frame the entire interview, and all of Bush foreign policy, around 9/11
And Russert did nothing to challenge it, giving Cheney cover to politically exploit the tragedy (as is the general Bush-Rove strategy).
Time and time again, Russert allowed Cheney to make misleading or questionable statements without resistance. For example:
1. ã9/11 Changed Everythingä
Cheney responded to the opening question with this:
·in a sense, sort of the theme that comes through repeatedly for me is that 9/11 changed everything...
..I think there are a number of people out there who hope we can go back to pre-9/11 days and that somehow 9/11 was an aberration. It happened one time; itâll never happen again.
But the president and I donât have that luxury.
What Russert could have said:
ãBut none of your political opponents is ignoring the terrorist threat. They charge you are underfunding homeland security, not addressing port security and have diverted resources needed resources to Iraq.ä
What Russert did say: ãYou fully expect that there will be another attack on the United States?ä
2. Shrugging off a real threat: surface-to-air missiles
Russert asked Cheney about the threat of surface-to-air missiles taking out commercial airplanes:
Should we not outfit all U.S. commercial airliners with equipment to detect and avoid that?
Cheneyâs response:
There are technologies available. They are extremely expensive if youâre going to put them on every airliner.
Youâve got to make choices here about, you know, when youâre dealing with a risk.
There may be certain aircraft flying into certain locales that are especially vulnerable that you may want to deal with.
But I wouldnât automatically go to the assumption that we need to put the most sophisticated system on every single airplane.
Russert could have said in reposnse:
ãBut Bush contended last week: Îwe will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror.â Why does that apply to Iraq but not to America?ä
What Russert did say: nothing.
3. Letting Saudis flee
Russert also asked this seemingly tough question:
Vanity Fair magazine reports that about 140 Saudis were allowed to leave the United States the day after the 11th, allowed to leave our airspace and were never investigated by the FBI.
And that departure was approved by high-level administration figures.
Do you know anything about that?
(The NYT reported on that story here.)
Cheneyâs response:
I donât, but a lot of folks from that part of the world left in the aftermath of 9/11 because they were worried about public reaction here in the United States or that somehow they might be discriminated against.
He then went on a tangent, praising the Saudis for their help fighting Al-Qaeda.
Russert could have pressed the issue, by saying something like:
ãBut a former White House adviser confirms that the White House approved the departures. How could you not know about it?
"And doesnât it indicate that your Administration has let your relationship with the Saudis compromise our security?"
But again, Russert said nothing, and moved on to the next question.
4. Those Wacky WMDs
Russert took a couple of swings at the WMD question. Feeble ones.
He replayed the clip of Cheneyâs MTP appearance in March, where he infamously said:
We believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.
Then Russert gave him the out:
RUSSERT: Reconstituted nuclear weapons. You misspoke.
CHENEY: Yeah. I did misspeak.
I said repeatedly during the show weapons capability. We never had any evidence that he had acquired a nuclear weapon.
And that was that.
Russert should have then asked, if he had no interest in spreading false info, why did he wait six months to come back on the show to correct himself.
Further, he could have pointed out the pattern, that Rumsfeld also casually retracted on This Week his March statement that he knew exactly where the WMD are ö four months later.
Russert also asked the basic question, ãwhere are they?ä
Cheney gave what has been the standard stall tactic:
I think that the jury is still out in terms of trying to get everything pulled together with respect to what we know.
But weâve got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay.
Yet inexplicably, Russert failed to bring up his own network bureau's report (via Talking Points Memo) from earlier in the week that Kayâs report is ãcoming up short.ä
5. The Phony Iraq-Qaeda Link
Perhaps the most egregious thing Russert let Cheney get away with was his continuing of the Orwellian campaign to link Saddamâs Iraq to 9/11.
Russert asked if Cheney was ãsurprisedä by a W. Post poll saying 69% of Americans believe Saddam was involved with the attacks.
Cheney said he wasnât surprised, and while he didnât know for sure if there was a connection, he stated:
We learned more and more that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the â90s·
·We know, for example, in connection with the original World Trade Center bombing in â93 that one of the bombers was Iraqi, returned to Iraq after the attack of â93.
And weâve learned subsequent to that, since we went into Baghdad and got into the intelligence files, that this individual probably also received financing from the Iraqi government as well as safe haven.
The person Cheney is referring to Abdul Yasin, who actually is an American citizen by birth, but was raised in Iraq.
(Last year, Yasin admitted his role and expressed regret in an interview with 60 Minutes.)
Yasin is not considered to be the mastermind of the â93 attack. That was Ramzi Yousef, a Pakistani, who is now in American custody.
And the fact that Yasin went to Iraq afterwards doesnât mean that Iraq sent him in the first place.
As terror expert Daniel Benjamin wrote in Slate:
·the fact that Yasin was allowed to stay in Baghdad only means that the Iraqis found him useful÷a potential chip to be played later.
So whether or not Iraq gave him ãsafe haven,ä (and Saddamâs Iraq, for the record, insists it incarcerated him since â94, even offering to hand him over last year) it doesnât prove any working relationship with Al-Qaeda.
Additionally, itâs not even a certainty that the â93 bombing can be called an Al-Qaeda operaton.
Jason Burke, who LiberalOasis It should go without saying that Cheney went on to dredge up the discredited story about a 9/11 hijacker meeting an Iraqi agent in Prague.
But Russert let it all stand, without question.
But the one thing has been consistent about is his handling of Cheney.
Every time Cheney has graced Russert with his presence as VP, Russert has done nothing less than kiss his ring.
If Russert really wonders why 69% of Americans believe Saddam had something to do with 9/11, he should look in the mirror as much as he looks at the White House.
