Tag: Politics

Megadittos on Leibovich

Just a brief note on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s denial that one of his goons — uh, aides — tried to intimidate New York Times reporter Mark Leibovich as Leibovich trailed the Mittmobile in his car.

Like Jon Keller, who provides the relevant links, I worked with Leibovich at the Boston Phoenix in the early 1990s. And I endorse this Keller observation: “If Mark Leibovich says it happened that way, it happened exactly that way.”

This isn’t a big deal. Why can’t Romney tell the truth?

About face for Hillary and the Herald

OK, see if you can follow this.

(1) Herald columnist Margery Eagan seems to say that Hillary Clinton has had “work” done, only she (2) takes it back toward the end; (3) the Herald runs some pretty stunning before and after pictures, except that (4) they turn out to be after and before; (5) Drudge (right) picks it up; (6) Herald spokeswoman Gwen Gage says it was all a mistake or something.

Whew. Greg Sargent explains all at TPM Cafe.

Wouldn’t it all be so much easier if we’d just stop obsessing over Hillary’s looks? I know, I know. It makes too much sense.

Multiple choice on evolution

When it comes to evolution, Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback‘s not going to say one thing to one audience and a different thing to another audience. No, sir. He’s going to say many different things to the same audience, as he does today in his New York Times op-ed. Brownback doesn’t believe in evolution. Except that he does. Sort of. I guess.

Will Kerry save Edwards?

Only John Kerry can save John Edwards now. Will he? It depends on who is telling the truth.

I am not an Edwards fan. However, I admire the way he has resolutely refused to exploit the death of his son Wade. Now a new book by Democratic political operative Bob Shrum tells an ugly, ugly tale. My former Phoenix colleague Michael Crowley of The New Republic finds (sub. req.) the relevant excerpt, involving the period when Kerry was considering Edwards as his running mate:

Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he’d never told anyone else — that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before — and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn’t pick Edwards unless he met with him again.

Crowley does point out that there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest Shrum’s devastating tale may not be true, writing, “When I asked one person close to Edwards about it, he argued that Shrum’s account makes no sense because Edwards had publicly recounted similar versions of the funeral home story before — and thus wouldn’t possibly have claimed on either occasion that he was telling it for the first time.”

Fair enough. But what gives this legs is that Kerry — who, after all, isn’t running for anything — now has the power to make or break Edwards. If Kerry denies it in firm, straightforward language, then the Edwards campaign survives, and Shrum will henceforth be known not just as a loser, but as a liar as well. But if Kerry confirms it, or refuses to discuss it, then Edwards might as well pull out.

By the way, if Kerry does confirm it, why on earth did he go ahead and put Edwards on the ticket?

Oh, and another thing — Edwards may not be all that big on gays and lesbians, either.

Doing our homework

Normally I don’t get all that excited about protests against the awarding of honorary degrees to those thought by some to be unworthy. Nor does it matter to me much one way or the other whether UMass Amherst goes ahead and hands such a degree to former White House chief of staff Andrew Card this Friday.

But I was struck by an op-ed piece in today’s Globe by Vijay Prashad, director of the International Studies Program at Trinity College. What caught my eye was that, according to Prashad, Card has actually been lobbying for the degree, initiating an hour-long conversation with at least one UMass trustee and defending himself in an interview with the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Card’s message to his critics: I’m not the guy you think I am. Media Nation diverted $1.99 from its capital-projects budget in order to buy the Gazette article, which is hidden behind a pay wall. Some highlights:

“I am greatly flattered and grateful to UMass for this degree,” Card said in a telephone interview. “I defend that right to speak out, but they [the protesters] might want to do some homework.”…

Protesters are critical of what they see as Card’s role in orchestrating the lead-up to America’s invasion of Iraq and the ongoing war. Some have accused him of lying.

Card, who served as President Bush’s chief of staff from 2001 to 2006, said he has done no such thing.

“I don’t know what lie they say I have perpetrated,” Card said. “I have not lied and the people who know me know that I would not do that.”…

“In my experience, protesters have taken quotes in newspapers out of context and the things they say don’t always reflect the reality of the burden of the decisions we have to make,” Card said.

I’ll stop there. I’m up against the limits of fair use here, but I do want to get my two bucks’ worth.

Now, I’m not sure whether Card has ever actually lied about anything important, but he did amass quite a record in serving George W. Bush. (He was a top aide to Bush’s father, too.) The most notorious example — which Prashad mentions in his op-ed — was Card’s statement about the build-up to the Iraq war in 2002, when he said that “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Were Card’s words “taken out of context,” as he suggests in his interview with the Gazette? Without a transcript, we can’t know for sure. But we can at least look at the context in which that particular quote was used — in a Sept. 7, 2002, page-one New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller headlined “Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq.” Her 1,000-word story describes a coordinated effort by the White House. Here’s how it begins:

White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.

The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before President Bush’s vacation in Texas last month. It was not hastily concocted, they insisted, after some prominent Republicans began to raise doubts about moving against Mr. Hussein and administration officials made contradictory statements about the need for weapons inspectors in Iraq.

The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.

“From a marketing point of view,” said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, “you don’t introduce new products in August.”

Toward the end of Bumiller’s story, Karl Rove says pretty much the same thing:

White House officials said they began planning more intensively for the Iraq rollout in July. Advisers consulted the Congressional calendar to figure out the best time for Iraq hearings while Ms. [Karen] Hughes [a former top Bush aide], even as she was driving back to Texas, discussed with Mr. Bush the outlines of his Sept. 11 speech.

By August, with Congress out of town and the United Nations not convening until September, White House officials decided to wait out the month, even as final planning continued by phone between advisers in Washington and at Mr. Bush’s ranch in Texas.

“There was a deliberate sense that this was not the time to engage in his [sic?] process,” Mr. Rove said. “The thought was in August the president is sort of on vacation.

Based on the context in which Bumiller quotes Card, and on Rove’s similar remarks, I’d say Card’s infamous “new products” remark is every bit as cynical as his critics charge. I hope Card reflects every day on the consequences of that sales job.

Also, though Prashad doesn’t mention it, just last week we learned something new, important and disturbing about Card’s conduct in the White House. Former deputy attorney general James Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that, in 2004, he had to rush to the hospital in order to intercept Card and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, who were trying to pressure the gravely ill attorney general, John Ashcroft, to reauthorize a no-warrant spying program that Ashcroft had already ruled was illegal.

The Globe’s Charlie Savage reports that Ashcroft refused, and that Card was furious with Comey for attempting to intervene on behalf of the ailing A.G.

Time was when Andy Card’s reputation was that of a moderate Republican state legislator from the South Shore, a good guy who probably would have made a pretty good governor. But it was his choice to cast his lot with George W. Bush.

You almost wonder whether the old man asked Card to keep an eye on his impetuous son. If that was the case, it didn’t work out.

Give Richardson a hand

Bill Richardson announced today that he’s running for president. He may or may not have what it takes, but give him credit for having made his peace with bacteria.

My former Phoenix colleague Mark Leibovich explained how in a New York Times story on hand sanitizer last fall. It turned out that Richardson refuses to use the stuff. Why? Leibovich wrote:

“It’s condescending to the voters,” said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, a Democrat.

A fervent nonuser of hand sanitizer, Richardson holds the Guinness Book of World Records mark for shaking the most hands over an eight-hour period (13,392, at the New Mexico State Fair in 2002).

Indeed, what message does it send when politicians, the putative leaders in a government by the people, for the people, feel compelled to wipe the residues of said people immediately after meeting them?

“The great part about politics is that you’re touching humanity,” Richardson said. “You’re going to collect bacteria just by existing.”

I’m sorry, but that’s just strange. I hope Richardson has a strong immune system.

Jeff Greenfield on the “liberal” media

Jeff Greenfield on liberal media bias:

[I]n my view the danger of bias does not lie in political coverage. I mean, ask Al Gore and John Kerry if they were the beneficiary of a poodle press. They were treated very critically — appropriately.

“Appropriately”? As has been well-documented (start here and here), Gore in 2000 was subjected to the most viciously false media pounding of any modern presidential candidate. From the media-created lie that Gore had claimed to have “invented” the Internet to the hue and cry that he give up on a race that he’d actually won, the 2000 presidential campaign amounted to a shocking eruption of media irresponsibility. The media’s shoddy performance was just as responsible for Gore’s loss as the five Supreme Court justices who handed George W. Bush a victory he hadn’t earned.

No, it wasn’t as bad with Kerry. The swift-boat lies never really broke out of the cable and radio talk ghetto (although Eric Boehlert shows the mainstream media deserve at least some blame), and by 2004 the media were finally starting to catch on to Bush. But Greenfield really needs to bone up on what happened in 2000.

Then again, I remember Greenfield’s popping up on the radio some years ago — on Imus, naturally — to say that he wasn’t all that troubled by the outcome in Florida, because whatever went wrong was balanced off by the fact that the media had mistakenly called the state for Gore before folks in the Panhandle had finished voting. Good grief. (Via Romenesko.)

The Obama difference

To quote Alex Beam, I write this with my head, not my heart. I don’t have a dog in the 2008 presidential hunt. But I’m mystified by Beam’s assertion in today’s Globe that Barack Obama is this year’s version of Howard Dean, Paul Tsongas, Bill Bradley and Bruce Babbitt.

Dean, Tsongas, Bradley and Babbitt were all utterly without charisma; Dean and Bradley came across as rather unpleasant fellows to boot. Tsongas, Bradley and Babbitt got a big boost from media types who were suckers for their cerebral, moderate politics. (Yes, Bradley ran as a liberal in 2000, but that wasn’t his reputation as a senator.) Dean was the darling of the netroots, but actual voters never warmed up to him.

By contrast, Obama oozes charisma. His campaign’s biggest asset, by far, is himself. Members of the Beam Quartet were small-timers trying to break into the the big time. Obama is a big-timer who may not quite be ready.

Obama may or may not be chosen as the Democratic presidential nominee. But if he’s not, it certainly won’t be because he’s suffering from Howard Dean syndrome. And unlike the Beam Quartet, if Obama falls short, I suspect he’ll get another chance somewhere down the line.

Pelosi’s helpful visit

Did you catch this, from the New York Times coverage of Condoleezza Rice’s meeting with Syria’s foreign minister?

… Ms. Rice took the time to telephone [Nancy] Pelosi before heading to Egypt this week, though Bush administration officials did not say whether Ms. Rice told Ms. Pelosi beforehand that she planned to follow her footsteps.

“She wanted to hear from Speaker Pelosi about her discussions with the Syrian president,” a senior State Department official said, adding that that the call centered on gathering information about Ms. Pelosi’s trip, not further condemnation for making it. Ms. Rice, he said, “didn’t want to poke her finger in her eye or anything.”

No, indeed. And in a rational world, Dick Cheney would now apologize for trashing Pelosi, whose visit may turn out to be very useful to the White House. Then again, we don’t live in a rational world, do we?