mattgunn.com

The Vote

From The New York Times:

After a slow start, voters turned out in very large numbers in Baghdad today, packing polling places and creating a party atmosphere in the streets as Iraqis here and nationwide turned out to cast ballots in the country's first free elections in 50 years.

and...

Even in the so-called Sunni Triangle people voted, too. In Baquba, 60 miles north of Baghdad, all the polling stations that reported indicated a huge turnout.

Then this from Juan Cole:

On the other hand, if the turnout is as light in the Sunni Arab areas as it now appears, the parliament/ constitutional assembly is going to be extremely lopsided. It would be sort of like having an election in California where the white Protestants all stayed home and the legislature was mostly Latinos, African-Americans and Asians.

Who's right? Everybody expected high Shia turnout, but did Sunnis vote? I don't know.

Even if Iraqi leadership were eventually decided more by civil wars than anything else, though, the hopeful beauty of this image will endure:

voting beauty

Notes From Iraq

John Burns is a frequent guest on Charlie Rose, and every time he appears he dazzles me both with his command of the language and the precision of his reporting. He doesn't strike me as pretentious, but he seems to have invented his own inimitable genre, a kind of Journalistic Poetry.

Iraq was lost long ago – that's not really news – but Burns' New York Times article this morning puts a fine point on several realities:

1. Starkly put, Baghdad is not under control, either by the Iraqi interim government or the American military.

and...

"I would definitely say it's enemy territory," said Col. Stephen R. Lanza, the commander of the Fifth Brigade Combat Team, a unit of the First Cavalry Division that is responsible for patrolling a wide area of southern Baghdad with a population of 1.3 million people.

2. Voter turnout in Baghdad and other Sunni-dominated cities will suck:

In one Baghdad office, only one of 20 people who were asked said he intended to vote; the others, all citing the fear of being attacked by insurgents, either as they walk to the polls - all civilian vehicle traffic has been banned on election day - or after they return home. American commanders have included Baghdad among four Iraqi provinces where they say security issues pose a major threat to the voter turnout.

The other 14 provinces, all with heavy Sunni Muslim populations, are Anbar, which includes the cities of Ramadi and Falluja; Salahadin, with the troubled cities Samarra and Bakuba; and Nineveh, whose capital is Mosul.

But for the elections' credibility, Baghdad may matter most, because it is the nation's capital, and because, with its intermingled population of Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and other groups, it is Iraq's most cosmopolitan city and thus, American officials believe, the most promising place for the civic norms represented by the election to take root.

But there's a glimmer of hope... although I'm talking in the Bush sense, where "hope" means "irony":

One tentative success story for the Americans has been Sadr City, the Shiite slum district on the capital's northeastern edge that is home to more than two million people. If election turnout is high anywhere in Baghdad, it is likely to be among the slum's dwellers, mostly followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the fiery Shiite cleric who twice last year mounted uprisings against American troops.

3. Iraq's assymetrical warriors – terrorists, insurgents, citzens, whatever we call them – have successfully, completely forced would-be liberators to make difficult, tragic decisions that, in the end, make their presence counterproductive:

But the most dangerous place of all, perhaps the most threatening in all Iraq, is the airport expressway, 10 miles of roadway that runs southwest from the city's core to the international airport and the adjacent sprawl of Camp Victory, the American military headquarters. In three months beginning last fall, the American command counted 14 suicide car bomb attacks on American convoys traveling the expressway.

American commanders, acknowledging they have little chance of stopping the suicide bombers once the bomb-laden vehicles set out, have authorized the machine-gunners in the last vehicle of each convoy to open fire on any driver who ignores hand signals and warning shots to back off as he approaches a convoy from the rear.

This tactic has led to a growing number of incidents in which American gunners, in Humvees traveling at 50 miles an hour or less, have fired at suspected car bombers, only to discover afterward that the drivers who died were innocent civilians who had missed the warning signals, or perhaps never knew that overtaking American convoys was likely to be fatal.

These incidents have compounded a widespread impression among the people of Baghdad that the Americans are careless of Iraqi lives. Dr. Naqib, the dentist, fearful as he is of insurgent attacks, said he feared the Americans more. "The Americans, they are part of the terrorism," he said.

"They're so frightened, anything that happens to them, they start shooting right away."

George W. Bush uses a funny word to describe all this: "successful." At today's press conference, in his own words:

And if we'd have been having this discussion a couple of years ago and I just stood up in front of you and said the Iraqi people would be voting, you would look at me like some of you still look at me, with a, kind of, blank expression.

[LAUGHTER]

People are voting. And this is a part of a process to write a constitution and elect a permanent assembly. And it's exciting times for the Iraqi people.

QUESTION: What would be a credible turnout number?

BUSH: The fact that they're voting in itself is successful.

Again, this is a long process. It is a process that will begin to write a constitution and then elect a permanent assembly.

And this process will take place over this next year.

It is a grand moment for those who believe in freedom.

What if you happen to believe that freedom entails an ability to go to a polling place, vote, and be able to return home without wearing your ass as a hat?

And as for this idea that elections = freedom/democracy/liberty, as the President frequently uses the terms interchangeably, look no further than Saddam's last election, on October 15, 2002. From BBC News:

Iraqi officials say President Saddam Hussein has won 100% backing in a referendum on whether he should rule for another seven years.

There were 11,445,638 eligible voters - and every one of them voted for the president, according to Izzat Ibrahim, Vice-Chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council.

Turnout even Wally O'Dell could envy!

Meanwhile, I had to read this exchange from the press conference twice before I could believe it:

Q I seem to remember a time in Texas on another problem, taxes, where you tried to get out in front and tell people it's not a crisis now, it's going to be a crisis down the line -- you went down in flames on that one. Why --

THE PRESIDENT: Actually, I -- if I might. (Laughter.) I don't think a billion-dollar tax relief that permanently reduced property taxes on senior citizens was "flames," but since you weren't a senior citizen, perhaps that's your definition of "flames."

Q I never got my billion --

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Because you're not a senior citizen yet. Acting like one, however. Go ahead. (Laughter.)

Q What is there about government that makes it hard --

THE PRESIDENT: Faulty memory. (Laughter.) Go ahead. (Laughter.)

Then I had to watch the tape to confirm, because I still couldn't quite believe it.

Then I finally remembered – perhaps due to my relative youth – that our President is an incomparable jackass.

January 21, 2005

W's 2nd Inaugural: Faith Without Works Is Dead

You ever see a really well-written play performed by really bad actors? That's what I'm reminded of as I look at Bush's speech yesterday. I wish we had a President whose policies even remotely matched his speechwriter's (Michael Gerson, in this case) impressive rhetoric:

We have seen our vulnerability and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder, violence will gather and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government because no one is fit to be a master and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation's security, and the calling of our time.

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

God, how I wish that were true, a real goal with real initiatives attached. It is not.

Bush's definitions of "freedom" and "democracy" are so arbitrary that they're utterly meaningless. Russia has regressed back towards tyranny under Putin, of course, but Bush winks at Putin and says he's got a wonderful soul. Pervez Musharraf brushes elections aside and calls himself President, but Bush calls him "a courageous leader" and holds him up as a model of democracy. The Saudi Royal Family is among the most corrupt, undemocratic, anti-humanitarian regimes in the world, but Prince Bandar (nicknamed "Bandar Bush") got briefed on Iraq war plans before Colin Powell.

And then, I'm sure Bush wouldn't approve of many of the human rights abuses of several African leaders, if only he knew their names.

Few serious political observers would disagree that Bush has a consistency problem here, but I still hear journalists say all the time that Bush has a big, bold, focused vision. Without specific policy initiatives, though, nothing separates Bush's often stated idea to spread liberty around the globe from the naive hope of a child.

From the beginning, the international war on terror should have had two components: 1) a ferocious military dismantling of terror groups around the globe, starting with al Qaeda, and 2) a global war on poverty, ignorance, and intolerance. Bush short-shrifted the first goal, and completely ignored the second part.

This weekend [update: or, say, Thursday or Friday], I'll offer a few specific suggestions about how Democrats can successfully focus on that second component, outvision Bush, and begin to turn his shamefully empty Inaugural rhetoric into a something approaching reality.

January 20, 2005

Republican Bill Thomas: Put Granny Back to Work

From The Washington Post comes this brilliant idea from Bill Thomas, who as Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is one of the most powerful members of the Republican brain trust:

Perhaps most provocatively, Thomas said lawmakers should debate whether Social Security benefits should differ for men and women, because women live longer. "We never have debated gender-adjusting Social Security," he said.

Oh, how proud we could be as American men if at age 65 we could sit at home all day collecting checks while our 69 year-old wives worked themselves ragged.

Somewhere right now, FDR is dry-heaving.

January 18, 2005

Roidheads

From Marvin Miller, former executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, to The Boston Globe:

"If you tell me steroids help you hit major league pitching more often and farther, I see no evidence whatsoever. None...I think if you tell me that using steroids and bulking up like that will help the performance of a football linebacker, maybe. If you tell me it will help a professional wrestler, maybe. If you tell me it will help a beer hall bouncer, maybe. If you tell me it will help somebody become the governor of California, maybe."

January 17, 2005

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

"We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside: but that will be only an initial act. One day the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it understands that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring."

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, 1967

January 14, 2005

Greatest American Hero

Observe George Clooney do figuratively to Bill O'Reilly what he's done literally to scores of the world's most beautiful women:

January 10, 2005

Mr. O’Reilly,

In response to your lead story on January 6, where you attack the Sept. 11 telethon, it is incumbent upon me to help you get your facts straight.

First, to clarify, it was not the Red Cross but the United Way that sponsored that telethon... an easy mistake to make... if you're 3.

Second, contrary to what you claim, no one objected to you investigating where the funds were going, but we strenuously objected to you insinuating that it was a fraud (which is what you did) as we were still waiting for a list of names of the dead. 6,000 was the number when you broadcast your attack (some 3,000 was the real number), that is simply a fact... no spin. There's no question, sir, that you have become quite powerful. The panic that you started that week scared other charitable organizations into simply handing out money to anyone who walked into their office. I suppose the threat of a Senate investigation would scare most anybody. It was an interesting week though... you showed up on the Today Show to talk about the telethon, but when pressed by Matt Lauer, admitted that you would only talk about the scandal if they hawked your new book. Fact... no spin. You said your tactics weren’t about ratings, and that same week took out ads bragging about beating Larry King for the first time, all while Eliot Spitzer and Frank Thomas and Josh Gotbaum were weeding through the difficult task of who was dead and who was not.

I don't make as much money as you, Mr. O’Reilly (a fact that's easy to check), but I'm fascinated by your use of the word CELEBRITY as if you're not one... you put on make up, you do Leno, The Today Show, go on book tours, and do junkets, so let’s be clear... you are a well paid celebrity. Period. No spin. And, to quote you last week, "with power comes responsibility"... people canceled their pledges because YOU told them that the telethon was flawed... a lot of money that should have gone to a lot of needy families didn't, because you wanted a controversy... and controversy has made you a celebrity... remember, sir, that this is me you're talking to publicly. I was the one you called several times the day before the telethon to say that we “had to include ‘The Factor’” in the press interviews, and that it "wasn't fair to leave us out, we’re a news program”. Fact... no spin. I think people should know that.

Now, here's the only important fact: the 9/11 telethon was an unqualified success from the beginning to the present and we make sure of it. (I say WE because I'm on the board of directors of the United Way).

Your report last Thursday was a preemptive strike... NOT to protect the families affected by the tsunami, but to create more controversy for your own personal gain. Because of it, fewer people will donate money to help truly traumatized victims; they'll be afraid that their money will do no good.

So all right, Mr. Journalist... come on in. I'm booking the talent for the Tsunami event... and you, Mr. O’Reilly, are now officially invited to be a presenter... (at this point, not one of the people I’ve invited to donate their time has said “No”)... this way, You can personally follow up on our fundraising... this is your chance to put your considerable money where your considerable mouth is... show up... help raise money... and if we're doing something wrong, point it out. I believe firmly in the check and balance system... you'll get nothing but a handshake and a “Thanks for helping out” from all of the rest of us “celebrities”.

So what do you say, Mr. O’Reilly... either you ante up and help out AND be that watch dog that you feel we clearly need... or you simply stand on the sidelines and cast stones, proving that your January 6 TV show was nothing more than a “box of lights and wires” designed to make you wealthy.

We do the show this Saturday, it’s across the street from where you shoot “The Factor”.

I'll need a quick response.

Your fan,
George Clooney

Not only does Clooney take O'Reailly down in a manner reminiscent of Lennox Lewis's 2000 knockout of Michael Grant, but he successfully forced him to join the cause.

Another impressive thing about this letter is that Clooney clearly wrote it himself, as was also the case with his 2001 response to Phony Bill. It seems kind of silly to praise someone for actually writing something with their signature on it, but it strikes me as a pretty rare occurance for a celebrity to take the time and have the confidence to forgo the p.r. experts and ghostwriters and personally write something that will be widely read (and that's no knock on actors, who are constantly stereotyped as unknowledgeable – I'm talking celebrities of any type, be it artists, politicians, athletes, real estate moguls, whatever).

January 13, 2005

Absolutely Weaponless

From The Washington Post:

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

Which course do you think the SaysWhatHeMeansAndMeansWhatHeSaysMan will choose to address the American people and explain this unprecedented historical blunder?

A.   Call a major press conference, offer one word: "Oops," and leave the podium.
B.   Call a major press conference, offer two words: "My bad," and leave the podium.
C.   Recycle the talking point he used in May of 2003: "We found the weapons of mass destruction."
D.   Hold his breath as this passes through the news cycle more quickly and quietly than anyone possibly could have imagined years ago, talk about it as little as possible until he dies, and when biographers force him to discuss it, parrot the same goddamn platitudes and excuses over and over again.

I think D's a pretty good bet.

Once again, George W. Bush will choose the course that further separates his political image as a plainspoken hardass with the reality of his life as a coward.

January 12, 2005

"Outrage"

I think Randy Moss is an asshole. Everybody thinks Randy Moss is an asshole. But Joe Buck’s stridency in denouncing Moss’s mock moon of Green Bay Packers fans Sunday was ridiculous.

After Moss’s display of mutual affection for the faithful at Lambeau Field, Buck invoked a tone I wish I would have heard more last week when Democratic senators questioned Alberto Gonzales about his torture advocacy paper trail: “That is a disgusting act by Randy Moss,” Buck bristled. “I think it’s unfortunate that we had that on our air live. That is disgusting by Randy Moss.”

C’mon. Was it really that big a deal?

And then later, to my great surprise, SportsCenter chose not to show Moss’s act on its Sunday telecast. It’s almost as if our liberal media producers have decided that Moss’s clothed ass poses as imminent a threat to our nation’s moral fiber as… as Janet Jackson’s ornament-obscured nipple.

Yesterday, Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy added some context to Moss’s gesture:

It’s not the kind of thing you want to see on national TV, but I understand what it was all about. Anyone who has played in the NFC Central knows what that’s about. The fans in Green Bay have a tradition in the parking lot after the game where they moon the visiting team’s bus… I had seen it seven times because when I was with the Vikings, we lost to them seven times up there.

Now that’s pretty funny. I wonder if Buck would condemn those fans as “disgusting” just as stridently, or if he’d be okay with it because they’re neither Randy Moss nor on t.v..

I don't believe Buck was really offended in the first place, but he knows instinctively acting as if he were would be popular with some folks. Of course, I could be overlooking the possibility that Joe is just genuninely uncomfortable with buttocks altogether. Indeed, he wouldn’t want to consider the Green Bay fans group moon tradition at all, based on what he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

When somebody mocks mooning a crowd at a pro football stadium, then rubs his backside against a goal post, to me that’s obscene. I thought it was a disgusting act. The part nobody is talking about is rubbing his backside against the goal post — that looks like something I don’t even want to think about.

I don’t understand. It looks like what "something," exactly? Sex with Randy Moss? Sex with a goal post? Using a goal post as a toilet? Randy Moss using him as a toilet?

Very sick man, Joe Buck.

Actually, I like Joe Buck and revered his father Jack, who as St. Louis Cardinals broadcaster was the voice of my youth. I just can’t stand it when broadcasters use such dismissible hijinx from athletes as an opportunity to soapbox about, well, nothing. Moreover – and I mention this with an awareness that I risk crossing over into sanctimony myself – I think it contributes to this culture of mock outrage that sells constant, absurdly serious debates about athletes’ and entertainers’ on-stage morality and has a majority of Washington policy makers more eager to prevent the next Janet Jackson or Randy Moss-type incident than the next Abu Ghraib.

It’s a bunch of phony crap.

January 10, 2005

The Man With No Nickname

I found something hilarious about this little anecdote in The Los Angeles Times about Robert Zoellick, whom Condoleezza Rice has tapped as her number 2 at the State Department:

During Cabinet meetings, Bush often goes around the table calling on one secretary after another by the snappy nicknames he coins for them. "When he gets to Zoellick, he just says, 'Hello, Zoellick,' " one source said. "It was very clear he didn't have the Texas touch."

Zoellick escaped the requisite condescending nickname from Bush! Good for him. That's quite an accomplishment.

I find it baffling how so many in the press corps actually seem to crave a nickname from Bush the way a water boy does from the high school quarterback in a movie cliche. In addition to being condescending, Bush's nicknames are always lazy and obvious, too – I've heard him call a few different tall men "Stretch" and just add "er" to people's last names. Personally, if he didn't know me at all but called me "Slim" or some crap while shaking my hand for the first time, I'd be tempted to break his jaw.

And Starring Armstrong Williams as Government Waste...

I'm sure you're familiar with the Armstrong Williams situation by now, but if not here's how it broke in USA Today:

Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

The campaign, part of an effort to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB), required commentator Armstrong Williams "to regularly comment on NCLB during the course of his broadcasts," and to interview Education Secretary Rod Paige for TV and radio spots that aired during the show in 2004.

Most of the media attention has focused on Williams' lack of ethics. Okay, Williams is unethical – not that big a story. Less media attention has been given to the Department of Education's definitively propagandistic, surely unethical, likely illegal use of taxpayer dollars for blatantly political purposes. That's a much bigger story.

But the biggest story here, by far, is inexplicable DOE wastefulness. Paying Armstrong Williams to shill for the Bush administration is kind of like paying Tommy Lee to drink beer and have sex.

Williams has been happily and completely, from the beginning and in full public view, shilling for the Bush administration for anybody who'll listen. How in the world do they justify paying him $240,000 to do something already done?

Somebody better get to the bottom of this decision to dole out this money (don't be surprised if we discover a lot more Bush shills on the government payroll) before they decide to pay Bob Novak half a million dollars to publically condone tax cuts for the wealthy.

The Selfless Dr. Francis Ford Frist, In Deep Focus

Politicalwire highlights this from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who was quoted by an AP reporter who overheard him directing would be staff paparazzi to shoot one last still of himself before he left tsunami-torn Sri Lanka:

"Get some devastation in the back."

No worries, Bill. It'll be there. It'll look terrific in People magazine.

January 7, 2005

Giving

The long holiday silence on this blog is almost over, for better or worse. I'll be back blogging this weekend, but just one quick thing I'd like to share: if you haven't donated to any charities but intend to, give.org and guidestar.org can both be very helpful when you decide which group (or groups) to give to.

It's heartening to see so much private money going to the tsunami victims, at least in these first stages. I haven't confirmed, but have heard anecdotally that a residual tragedy of a tragedy like this one – one that calls for a singular media spotlight – is that other charities in emergency need suffer. I may specifically earmark my donation to help the millions of victims of famine and genocide in Sudan, Uganda, or western Congo.

December 22, 2004

Embarrassment

On a day that saw the tragic loss of more American lives than any since the war's outset, here's our president:

"Uh, any time of the year is a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose the loss of life. This time of year is particularly sorrowful for the families."

So this somehow would be less sorrowful for the families if it had happened in July?

And then there was this:

"What was a place of tyranny and hatred and destruction is... is, uh... it's such a hopeful moment in the history of the world."

"...was a place of hatred and tyranny and destruction"? Yeah, right, there's no tyranny, hatred, and destruction in Iraq today, of course not, but there's plenty of hope!

On a day like today, such speech sickens me. It isn't just the usual platitudinous gibberish, it's insensitive – any time he wants to speak to our national grief from now on, he should at least have the decency to ask a speechwriter to put a couple well-thought out sentences together and then spend the necessary time to memorize them and rehearse his delivery.

Nobody would pick Raymond Babbit to eulogize America, but that's pretty much what we've got. It hardly seems fair.

December 21, 2004

Puppet of the Year

This is Time managing editor Jim Kelly on This Week With George Stephanopoulos Sunday morning, commenting on his selection of George W. Bush as Time's Person of the Year:

Kelly: Some people thought we should do the president and Karl Rove together, as we've done before with presidents and their advisers.

Stephanopoulos: Why not do it?

Kelly: Well, ultimately I thought that it was somewhat demeaning to the president to share the stage with Karl Rove, as good as Karl Rove is. This victory is all George W. Bush's – Karl Rove could have worked for a lot of politicians who would not have prevailed at the polling places. And my guess is that the president might have had a different kind of adviser and still prevailed. So we thought that he deserved it alone.

Kelly's "guess" imagining Bush as politically successful without Rove is empty speculation, and I think it's absurd. Furthermore, Rove alone would have been a much better choice than Bush alone.

Why?

1.   I haven't read Time's article on Bush yet, but I think it's safe to say Bush wouldn't have been chosen as Person of the Year if he had lost the election.

2.   There's considerable debate about Bush's abilities as a presidential candidate, but there's no debate about the brilliance of Rove's campaign. In fact, there's little doubt that Rove's electoral strategy and its execution will go down as the greatest in modern American political history. Although Rove wisely shields Bush from unscripted moments, when he couldn't avoid it in 2004 and Bush had to stand on his own two feet – most notably in the 3 debates and in his press conferences (which are only partially scripted) – candidate Bush was widely viewed as, to put it kindly, unpresidential.

3.   You simply can't isolate any political success Bush has had in his career from Rove's stewardship. Rove was the architect of Bush's 3 electoral victories. The only time Bush ran for office (his 70s House run) without Rove, he lost. Before Rove took over his career, Bush was little more than a failed businessman.

Rove, of course, was a wildly successful political operator before he Svengalied Bush.

4.    This is the final paragraph of Nicholas Lemann's May 2003 New Yorker profile of Rove:

In our last interview, I tried out on Rove a scenario I called "the death of the Democratic Party." The Party has three key funding sources: trial lawyers, Jews, and labor unions. One could systematically disable all three, by passing tort-reform legislation that would cut off the trial lawyers' incomes, by tilting pro-Israel in Middle East policy and thus changing the loyalties of big Jewish contributors, and by trying to shrink the part of the labor force which belongs to the newer, and more Democratic, public-employee unions. And then there are three fundamental services that the Democratic Party is offering to voters: Social Security, Medicare, and public education. Each of these could be peeled away, too: Social Security and Medicare by giving people benefits in the form of individual accounts that they invested in the stock market, and public education by trumping the Democrats on the issue of standards. The Bush Administration has pursued every item on that list. Rove didn't offer any specific objection but, rather, a general caveat that the project might be too ambitious. "Well, I think it's a plausible explanation," he said. "I don't think you ever kill any political party. Political parties kill themselves, or are killed, not by the other political party but by their failure to adapt to new circumstances. But do you weaken a political party, either by turning what they see as assets into liabilities, and/or by taking issues they consider to be theirs, and raiding them?" The thought brought to his round, unlined, guileless face a boyish look of pure delight. "Absolutely!"

A year and a half later, the Bush administration has made considerable progress in actualizing the scenario Lemann spells out (which is pretty clearly a summary of aims Rove stated throughout the article, even if he's more coy about revealing a grand design). Who do you think is more responsible for that, Bush or Rove?

Without Karl Rove, George W. Bush is nothing.

December 17, 2004

The Revolving Door

Rearrange the paragraphs of this New York Times story about retiring House Republican Ruler Billy Tauzin, and you see exactly how it works.

Big Pharmaceuticals pay Tauzin's campaign bills, ensure that he'll have public service bonafides in his obituary:

In his last election campaign, Mr. Tauzin received $174,000 in contributions from health professionals and $119,750 from makers of drugs and other health products.

He copies their legislation and signs his name to it:

Mr. Tauzin wrote large parts of the new Medicare law as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and as a member of the conference committee that hashed out differences between the House and the Senate in four months of intense negotiations last year.

The law steers clear of price controls and price regulation, which are anathema to drug companies. The law forbids the government to negotiate with drug manufacturers to secure lower prices for Medicare beneficiaries.

They pay it forward... er, back:

Representative Billy Tauzin, a principal author of the new Medicare drug law, will become president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the chief lobby for brand-name drug companies, the trade group announced Wednesday.

With salary plus stock options, Tauzin's children's children may never have to sweat a day's work.

Billy Tauzin: embodiment of a distinctly Republican American dream.

December 15, 2004

Catastrophic Success

When the ultimate movie dramatizing the tragic behind-the-scenes Iraq debacles is made, the image of Bush bestowing the greatest public glad-hand imaginable – the Presidential Medal of Freedom – on Tenet, Franks, and Bremer might make for a fitting final, ironic frame.

December 13, 2004

Connor Dantzler

From Sports Illustrated's "Faces in the Crowd" section, which puts a spotlight on young athletes:

Connor Dantzler
DAMASCUS, MD. > Powerlifting
Connor, a fifth-grader at Woodfield Elementary, won six gold medals (kids' division at 105 pounds and men's open division at 114) in the squat, bench press and deadlift at the AAU world championships. He also won his fourth state championship and holds 12 world, American and state records.

There are powerlifting competitions for fifth-graders? Is that healthy? How much can your average fifth-grader at these competitions lift, and how much did Connor lift?

And most of all, wow.

December 10, 2004

Some Elements of a Shadow War on Terror

The main reason, by a longshot, Democrats lost last month is because too many voters don't trust us on war and defense issues. They think we're weak.

Peter Beinart has a noteworthy article, A Fighting Faith: An Argument for a New Liberalism, in last week's New Republic that diagnoses this Democratic problem and offers some general solutions. Armies of bloggers are out there fighting over Beinart's specific points, and I don't have much to add that hasn't already been written better. I do, however, have a few thoughts about how Democrats should rebuild our brand on war and defense issues:

1. Democrats like John Kerry and Wes Clark have outlined far more aggressive anti-terror and national defense policies than George W. Bush, but Bush's language is tougher and, frustrating as it is, language always trumps substance as a political virtue. Democrats must use language that conveys the fact that Republicans, despite all their boasting, aren't getting the job done when it comes to killing individual terrorists, particularly those with household names. This Republican-led war that's allowed bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and Zarqawi to continue their serial killing clearly isn't focused, ferocious, or relentless enough. They don't seem to understand that individual terrorists, not just malefactor states, are grave threats to our national security. Each terrorist still on the loose must be looked at as our government's failure to protect its citizens, and our leaders should look at it that way too and stop making excuses while guessing about their capabilities (Bush: "bin Laden is on the run"). If Republicans truly understood the threat, they would have instituted mass, innovative special forces operations to hunt these guys down. Democrats must press for such ambitious operations, long overdue, to be implemented. We must talk tough, plan tough, and be tough. Republicans are just talking tough – they may win an election or two with it, but they're not improving our security.

2. The Democratic vision for a war on terror must be broad, aggressive, and global in a way that the Republican vision is not. Until we plan, fund, and wage a p.r. war in Cairo, an education war in Saudi Arabia, a war on women's oppression in Yemen, and a war on poverty in Sudan, we're waging a war on terror that's too narrow.

If it all sounds too ambitious, that's part of the point. Americans want leaders with vision, and an overreaching strategy that tells a good story is preferable to incrementalism. George Bush is attractively ambitious, as Reagan and Kennedy were before him, when he talks about the importance of spreading liberty around the globe (of course he also tells us what great leaders anti-democrats like Putin and Musharaff are, so he's full of shit, but who can argue with the goal of spreading freedom?).

Moreover, progressives can naturally embrace a reality most Republicans are reluctant to recognize: gross economic and social disparities internationally threaten our national security. We've got a couple billion people making less than $2 a day, women treated as 3rd class citizens in a plurality of countries, an enormous digital divide, and 6000 children a day losing one or both parents to AIDS. Marginalized people find a voice in violence; it's the story of the world. Democrats must concentrate on these human tragedies, wake people up about them, outline a sustained strategy to deal with them, and ultimately force unprecedented use of U.S. power to change their course.

3. Democrats traditionally believe in nation-building, Republicans don't. We're good at it, they're not. War is worthless if its destination isn't a well thought out, solid, and lasting peace, a lesson I'm afraid we're learning in Iraq. If you don't have a military that's prepared to keep the peace, you don't have a military ready to go to war. It's similar to the Powell doctrine, and Democrats should make it a mantra. We must use it to advance modernizations in the military, though, not a pacifist agenda.

Phil Carter had a terrific article in a Summer issue of The Washington Monthly about how failures in Iraq are already changing the military for the better. Democrats must lead to expedite many of the changes he talks about.

4. Republicans are in bed with defense contractors, and this threatens our national security. Dick Cheney's worked most of his career to ensure that our tax dollars pays a Halliburton employee five times more to do the same job as an American soldier. The culmination of his life's work is the Iraq War.

December 7, 2004

The Unrestrained Power of the Moral Minority During Republican Rule

From MediaWeek.com:

In an appearance before Congress in February, when the controversy over Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl moment was at its height, Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators.

The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years. There was, Powell said, “a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage about what is being broadcast into their homes.”

What Powell did not reveal—apparently because he was unaware—was the source of the complaints. According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, nearly all indecency complaints in 2003—99.8 percent—were filed by the Parents Television Council, an activist group.

This year, the trend has continued, and perhaps intensified.

Through early October, 99.9 percent of indecency complaints—aside from those concerning the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” during the Super Bowl halftime show broadcast on CBS— were brought by the PTC, according to the FCC analysis dated Oct. 1. (The agency last week estimated it had received 1,068,767 complaints about broadcast indecency so far this year; the Super Bowl broadcast accounted for over 540,000, according to commissioners’ statements.)

Frightening. We've now got a system established where a few sanctimonious zealots basically order a government agency what broadcasters to fine for which shows, and they do it. These past few years, Michael Powell and the FCC have willingly degraded themselves to the point where they've become nothing more than the conveyor belt of an assembly line for coerced censorship. Case in point:

For example, the agency on Oct. 12, in proposing fines of nearly $1.2 million against Fox Broadcasting and its affiliates, said it received 159 complaints against Married by America, which featured strippers partly obscured by pixilation.

But when asked, the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau said it could find only 90 complaints from 23 individuals. (The smaller total was first reported by Internet-based TV writer Jeff Jarvis; Mediaweek independently obtained the Enforcement Bureau’s calculation.)

And Fox, in a filing last Friday, told the FCC that it should rescind the proposed fines, in part because the low number of complaints fell far short of indicating that community standards had been violated.

“All but four of the complaints were identical…and only one complainant professed even to have watched the program,” Fox said. It said the network and its stations had received 34 comments, “a miniscule total for a show that had a national audience of 5.1 million households.”

Such blatant dishonesty – what will we tell the children?

In a democratic society, it's indecent and immoral that groups like the "Parents Television Council" – a more apt name for them might be "Adult Children for the Forced Purification and Juvenilization of Nighttime TV" – should be given free reign to dictate what's suitable viewing for American adults.

December 4, 2004

Pictures Don't Lie

bushsubmerged

This is one of God's best jokes in awhile, a summation of Bush's first term and a preview of his second captured in one eloquent picture. From the AP:

A decades-old cargo plane went down in a lake in a Miami suburb Saturday, but the pilot and co-pilot climbed onto the fuselage and were plucked to safety by rescuers.

The Miami Air Lease plane — with the words “Eelect (sic) George W. Bush” running the length of the fuselage — had trouble with one of its two engines shortly after takeoff, said company office manager Alina Nodarse.

I think that lake would make an ideal spot for the George W. Bush Presidential Library. They should just leave the plane there, and it could be the entrance.

December 2, 2004

Old News

Drudge links to this AP story about Ken Starr:

Kenneth Starr says he never should have led the investigation that resulted in the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.

The former independent counsel, now dean of the Pepperdine University law school, says "the most fundamental thing that could have been done differently" was for somebody else to have investigated Clinton's statements under oath denying he had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

When my nephew was a little under two years old, I watched him throw a cookie on the floor before turning to ask his mother, dead serious, "Where did that come from?!." Well, Starr's words remind me of that moment. Guess who requested an expansion of powers to investigate the Lewinsky matter?

Good guess.

From the September 16, 1999 Salon:

As his digging into the Whitewater land deal in Arkansas turned up ever-multiplying questions about President Clinton's behavior, it was Starr himself who several times requested wider responsibilities from Attorney General Janet Reno. And when Tripp contacted his office with the Lewinsky tapes, Starr asked Reno to expand his jurisdiction to investigate the matter.

I suspect what Starr's trying to do with this revisionist history is somehow suggest that the reason his Whitewater probe yielded absolutely nothing on the Clintons is because he got sidetracked by an obligation to investigate the Lewinsky stuff. He seems to be saying that Janet Reno was the force driving the request for an expansion of his probe, which is just silly. For any historian to buy it, they'd have to be caught in the strongest of ideological straightjackets (don't be surprised if you read a staff writer for Human Events, The Weekly Standard, or The National Review shilling this version for Starr soon).

The new AP story surprised me, but it shouldn't have, because it's entirely old news. It was reported in 1999 elsewhere, including the Salon article just cited:

Speaking at a luncheon of about 550 people, including several of the city's corporate lawyers, judges and business executives, Starr said he ought never to have been handed the task of investigating Lewinsky's dalliances in the White House. The country could have been spared much of this agonizing chapter in Washington, he noted, had the now-lapsed Independent Counsel Act never existed.

This is probably one of the few issues on which I wholeheartedly agree with Ken Starr: the Independent Counsel Act as written never should have existed precisely because it left us vulnerable to overzealous, unethical, hypocritical monstrosities like Ken Starr.