We Report... You Deride

2005-06-07T01:16:00.000-04:00

Terminated For Cause

There are issues where nothing is black and white. There are decisions where there is no clear-cut right or wrong. And then there's the issue of "Was Tricky Dick Nixon a fucking crook?" and the decision "Should that lying sack of shit have been thrown out of office?"

It's very simple: You either answer "yes" to both those questions or you aren't an American. Peggy Noonan, Ben Stein, Chuck Colson, Gordon Liddy, Pat Buchanan-- they've all shown, in the last few days, that they understand nothing about this country, that they are ignorant of the principles it was founded on and therefore were and are unfit for government service.

Stein's brief explains their position articulately: "Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible?... Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable. He lied to protect his subordinates who were covering up a ridiculous burglary that no one to this date has any clue about its purpose. He lied so he could stay in office and keep his agenda of peace going."

That's it. That's exactly why he was being fired; it's exactly why he deserved to be fired. It's called "termination for cause", and the cause was that Tricky Dick violated his employment agreement with the American People. Anyone who doesn't understand that fact is intellectually bankrupt on the subject of American Democracy.

Even if the laundry list that Stein and Nooner spit out weren't bullshit, it wouldn't matter in the slightest. Tricky Dick wasn't hired to save the jews or prop up the dominos. Article II of the U.S. Constitution, explains the powers of the Presidency. Section 1, Clause 8 clearly states what Tricky Dick's sole responsibility was:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Those six words: "Preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." That was his job. Let's try a little strict constructionism on for size: The Constitution of the United States comes before everything else. That includes political objectives. And every other cause except for the Constitution.

And I hate to break it to all the 9/11 assholes, but the Constitution even comes before human life. The founders-- who'd been occupied, tyrannized, jailed, tortured and killed for opposing the government-- knew that liberty took priority over everything else. And you control the amount of liberty you have by the laws you define and enforce.

So, no, even if Tricky Dick could have waved his magic wand and saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Cambodians (which he wouldn't have-- he would have had them barbecued and served on the White House lawn if it would have advanced his political career one iota), it wasn't worth the damage that his continued presence in office would have caused to the Constitution.

The President of the United States isn't empowered to selectively enforce the Constitution-- to make value judgments about when and where and in what circumstances to enforce its provisions. He's there to make sure it's followed.

And Tricky Dick Nixon didn't just fail to ensure that the provisions of the Constitution were enforced-- he actively tried to subvert them. The crooked motherfucker approved the breakin at Democratic Headquarters in the Watergate. He approved the burglary of the office of the psychiatrist who was treating Daniel Ellsberg. He approved the founding of the "Dirty Tricks" unit (some working out of the White House and others paid with illegally diverted campaign funds) that:

1. Started a rumor that Senator Henry Jackson (one of his prospective opponents in 1972) fathered a child out of wedlock.

2. Forged a letter claiming that the wife of Senator Edmund Muskie (another prospective opponent) was an alcoholic who referred to Canadians as "Canucks."

3. Performed opposition research on Ted Kennedy's career.

4. Sabotaged political rallies for Senators Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern.

He had White House staff compile a list of poltiical enemies who were to be targeted for retribution by the FBI and IRS.

He attempted to take over the CIA, FBI and IRS and use them for political purposes.

He advocated terrorism-- ordering associates to firebomb the Brooking Institution. (According to Henry "Dr. Strangelove" Kissinger, just another example of his madcap sense of humor.)

And when some of his cheap thugs got caught, the thieving cocksucker tried to order the investigation shut down. He decided to have Vernon Walters-- the CIA's Deputy Director of Intelligence-- call acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray and tell him not to investigate the Watergate burglary-- that it was a CIA covert operation that was critical to national security.

"When you get in these people when you...get these people in, say: "Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that" ah, without going into the details... don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, "the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case", period!"

Any President who makes such a statement in the Oval Office immediately forfeits his right to continue to occupy it. I don't give a shit how many box tops and green stamps and brownie points the guy has collected or what anyone thinks he might do.

Trying to balance Tricky Dick Nixon's involvement in Watergate by citing his accomplishments as President is like reminding us that Mary Kay Latourneau was universally regarded as a wonderful art teacher, or citing the many hours that Dr. Jayant Patel's spent volunteering at the free clinic.

There are some cases where there isn't any "on the other hand", and this is one of them. And the guy who knew that best was Tricky Dick. He couldn't obey the law, but the evil bastard knew exactly what it required:

"Iin all of my years in public life I have never obstructed justice. People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."

Yes, he fucking was. And that's why Mark Felt ratted him out. And it's why everyone alive in the 1970's who wasn't an ultraconservative ideologue fuck wanted him thrown out of office.

And it's a sickening comment on the quality of liberty available today that these retromingent cocksuckers can get a podium to preach their perverted brand of drizzly bullshit.

2005-04-14T02:24:00.000-04:00

Raggedy Amy

Could someone answer a question for me? I'm being completely serious here.

Just who the fuck is Amy Sullivan?

I find it astonishing that anyone pays her opinions more mind than Hind Tit. There is no reason that she should command more rintellectual espect than Mann Coulter.

And this has nothin to do with her positions on issues. I have read over a dozen books written by Tricky Dick Nixon. I've done this because Nixon, who lacked almost all of the attributes usually needed for political success (good looks, charm, family connections, wealth) became Congressman, Senator, Vice-President and President. His success-- based solely on judgment and cunning-- suggest that anyone can benefit from reading his ideas about politics.

20 odd-years ago, Newt Gingrich analyzed the levers of power in Washington and proposed a strategy by which the wingnuts could gain control of Congress. It worked. When Mr. Gingrich tries to analyze Congress-- rather than spin for his buddies-- his predictions are almost always right.

In 1969, a young writer named Kevin Phillips wrote a book pompously titled The Emerging Republican Majority. In the book, he predicted that shifts in population (away from urban areas and toward the south and west) would enable his party to retain the Presidency almost indefinitely-- and eventually break the Democratic strangehold on Congress.

In the late 80's-- at the end of the Reagan years and beginning of Bush I's presidency-- Phillips wrote The Politics of Rich and Poor, which said that the economic excesses of the Republic Party would create a political climate which would permit a Democratic candidate to win. So you'd better believe that I pay attention to Phillips.

And I listen to what Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh say, because those guys have made a hell of a lot of money by saying things that resonate with an ungudly number of people. I've studied Roger Ailes's book on communications, because he made incredibly successful political ads-- and then reshaped the media with Faux News. I pored over Frank Luntz's wingnut playbook, because he's been right more often than not.

All of which is my way of saying that I can't fucking stand some people's politics but I'll pay attention to what they say when there's some reason to believe, based on their track record, that they aren't talking through their asses.

Can someone show me empirical proof, based on either her career or her past writings, that she's ever managed a politician who had to (a) respond to an electoral problem and (b) did so successfully? If she hasn't won a campaign (as she hasn't), what reason is there to believe that she knows anything about how to do it?

Failing that, can someone point me to ones of her articles that (a) analyzed a political landscape, (b) listed the strengths and weaknesses of various responses, (c) identified the probable consequences of each response and (d) had her analysis proved by the events that followed? There ain't any of those, either.

Sullivan's stock in trade is the "We're in a mess, here's how the liberals got us here and now we'll have to tack to the right to fix it" broadside. There's never any data-- tracking polls, election results, opinion surveys-- to document the truth of her claims. As Scott correctly notes, "she just projects her preferences onto some poorly defined demographic... You're not allowed to bring evidence of the actual effects of cultural products into the discussion; people believe what they believe, and one has to pander to that."

It's rather crass to call her "David Brooks with boobs". But it's also accurate-- the M.O.'s are the same.

When she does try to provide contemporaneous analysis, she's often astonishingly wrong. In the October 8 debate, John Kerry, was asked the following question: "Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?"

Kerry answer-- taken from the official transcript-- follows:

"I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now.

"First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

"But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that.

"But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that we ought to do as a responsible society.

"But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation. And I have to make that judgment.

"Now, I believe that you can take that position and not be pro- abortion, but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life, and making certain that you don't deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the constitution affords them if they can't afford it otherwise.

"That's why I think it's important. That's why I think it's important for the United States, for instance, not to have this rigid ideological restriction on helping families around the world to be able to make a smart decision about family planning.

"You'll help prevent AIDS.

"You'll help prevent unwanted children, unwanted pregnancies.

"You'll actually do a better job, I think, of passing on the moral responsibility that is expressed in your question. And I truly respect it."

Typical John Kerry response-- he was asked a direct question and never gave a "yes" or "no" answer. As both James Carville and Roger Ailes say in their books, when you're asked a question in a debate, you must answer it immediately. Voters won't pay any attention to anything you say until they hear your answer-- the longer you take to say "yes" or "no", the more they believe that you're bullshitting them.

I remember listening to Kerry's nonsense and looking at the faces of the audience and thinking "Jesus, he just completely blew that. I'm not 100% sure I even know what his answer means. In fact, I think what he said boils down to I have very strong beliefs that abortion is murder, and if elected, I have no intention of acting on them.

Which, of course, is almost exactly what W. replied: "I'm trying to decipher that. (pause to allow for laughter) My answer is, we're not going to spend taxpayers' money on abortion... I signed the partial-birth -- the ban on partial-birth abortion. It's a brutal practice. It's one way to help reduce abortions. My opponent voted against the ban. I think there ought to be parental notification laws. He's against them."

The next day, I got a look at the dials and the overnights. They indicated that my initial judgment was accurate. Religious voters hated that answer-- they thought it was insincere and disingenuous-- and Kerry's support among them cratered.

Five days after the debate-- given half a week's review time and the hindsight provided by polls-- Sullivan's assessment of Kerry's answer was: "John Kerry's answer... struck me as almost perfect... What was more important in terms of picking up those moderate Catholics who are still not in the Democratic camp yet is that for the first time in recent memory, the Democratic candidate expressed respect for pro-life views and acknowledged them as legitimate in a political forum.
"

And I'm sure it did. seem perfect to her It was exactly like a typical Sullivan article. It stammered and rambled. It offered sanctimony without substance. There was nary a tangible proposal in that morass of verbiage.

And the bottom line is that it didn't work. In fact, it backfired. Kerry did what Sullivan wanted him to do and he lost voters.

I'm not going to go all Somerby on you and ask why people pay attention to her. Amy Sullivan is a pretty girl with an earnest manner and the habit of framing fundamentally conservative views in the form of helpful suggestions to beleaguered Democrats. She's got a pundit boyfriend with almost identical views (Noam Schieber, of The New Republic) and I'm sure they make a dynamite impression on the Georgetown Cocktail Party Scene.

But if you assess the merit of her ideas, she has no more intellectual credibility that Daryn Kagan. Show me a documented case where Amy Sullivan's advice actually helped a candidate and maybe I'll pay listen. Until then, she's no more reliable than her brother-in-arms Andrew.

2005-04-09T01:53:00.000-04:00

Hail to Thee, O Bloggers of Gossip

Since I wasted 90 minutes of my life on the National Press Club's debate on Who is a Journalist (choose the 9:30 event), I might as well try to get some value out of it:

1. Unless chosen carefully, panels are almost always annoying. This was no exception. On a six member panel, two people will be godawfully stupid (Jim Gueckert and Julie Davis) and two will be intellectually capable but boring (John Stanton, Matt Yglesias, the moderator). Since they try to make sure everyone gets the same amount of time, the two who are either bright or insightful (in this case, Garrett Graff and Ana Marie Cox) get slighted.

If you download the "Good Parts" version from Crooks and Liars, you'll get all the fireworks and miss only a few minutes of insight.

2. You can sometimes get more flies with vinegar than you can with honey. I thought the amount of abuse directed at Garrett and Cox (who received invitations even though they deal in gossip and rarely put any serious thoughts in print) was richly deserved. But they responded to the criticism by rising to the challenge. Their opening statements were carefully prepared and their responses to questions showed that they had both thought very hard about what they might be asked and what they wanted to say.

The other people were more or less winging it. Jim "Lady Marmalade" Gueckert had prepared a few setpieces; Yglesias had worked out a couple of bloggy ideas. The lack of preparation and/or presentation skill showed. Davis (who sounded like a giddy high school girl) was especially annoying.

3. I agree with the consensus: Cox stole the show. She did it the old-fashioned way-- by knowing what the hell she was talking about. When Lady Marmalade began whining about how mean the liberals had been to him after he asked his question at W's press conference, Graff called him on it-- pointing out that the objections were to the quality of his journalism.

When he started caviling about that, Cox barbecued him by asking "Do you think you would have served your readers better--that mass of red and green (don't ask) if your question had been factually incorrect?"

From the looks on the faces of the other panelists, they seemed to have trouble remembering that Gueckert's question cited a falsified quote from Harry Reid.

She also ridiculed his claim that he couldn't remember-- even to a remote degree-- how long it had taken him to get into the press room ("Was it days? Weeks? Months?"). Very impressive performance, and it's a shame you never get that level of skill on her site.

4. Graff, on the other hand, gets the Lloyd Bentsen commemorative award for prodding his target into humiliating himself. In pointing out that the level of professionalism-- not political views-- was the issue, he said "I mean, there are no widespread calls to kick Fox News out of the White House Pressroom--"

"Well, you can hardly call Fox News conservative," Lady Marmalade replied, earning the biggest laugh of the night.

5. I love Digby dearly, but his analysis is just dead wrong about Lady Marmalade's chances at a career. Wingnutry is welcomed at Faux News. Hostility and abusiveness is an asset. Ignorance and anti-intellectual behavior is de rigeur. But they won't tolerate people who produce bad TV.

And, honey, this woman was just sad. There were half a dozen instances where a well-timed riposte left Gueckert stammering out a response. If they gave him a show at Faux, he'd get wiped by even the strawmen they book to espose the liberal views. Alan Colmes might be able to make him his bitch.

Could he surface at MSNBC? Sure, but only because they have no clue about how to win viewers. Nobody will watch.

6. Digby is also out to lunch about Yglesias. He has no chance at a career as a talking head. If you watch the show, you'll notice that his face is flushed and his voice keeps cracking as he's trying to respond.

Them's the telltale signs of someone who's trying his best to score points, realizes that he isn't succeeding and is getting frustrated by his failure. You can almost see the words "God, I wish I had time to write out what I want to say.

You never know-- he could develop the skills when he gets older-- but at this point he's a writer, not a speaker. And that's not necessarily a knock on the guy.

I could say more. Maybe tomorrow I will.

a press members, that no one else remembered that the asked him if -- and I'm calling her that because this time she didn't behave like a Wonkette--

They both thought quite had very hard justifed. bother to display any serious thought in prionon their sites) document and demonstrate an ability to think in print) haven't documented their don't have documented credentials as

2. 1/3 , and 1/3 will either offer insight or sound bites. This was no or dull, 1/3 will be interesting dreadfully stupid This was no

2005-04-01T03:23:00.000-05:00

How the Other Half Lives

"I hope you and all your communist friends are proud of yourselves!" The voice of my friend (conservative with patches of wingnutry) was so choked with bitterness, frustration and rage that it took me a second to identify him and put the pieces together.

"I take it she's dead?"

"And I'm sure you're thrilled to hear it!"

"Actually yes. I've been concerned about a suicide bombing, a kidnapping or some act of coup d'etat, and this reduces the probability of it. She died in 1990, my man-- get over it."

"You and your friends killed that poor woman! Her blood is on your hands. I don't know how you can live with yourselves!"

"I'm remembering exactly what you told me, dude. There's a higher principle at stake here, and that takes priority over the smaller human tragedies. And I'll bet hearing that really stings like a bitch, huh?"

"You fucking sunovabitch--"

"Well, fuck you too, you wingnut hypocrite! Fuck you and all your Abu Ghraib loving friends! Now you know what I felt like last May! Bite the pillow and deal with it!"

In the 48 to 72 hours. the usual suspects-- that unholy coalition of talking heads, wingnuts and Whiptioncrats-- will gear up the Mighty Wurlitzer to focus our attention on the "crisis that threatens to tear the moral and political fabric of America apart." And I absolutely do not want to hear a word about it-- particularly the need for us to work together to heal the wounds.

I know exactly how the religious right feels. I felt the same way when I saw my country wage a preemptive war against Iraq-- and again when I learned that we'd tortured people to death and weren't going to do anything about it.

It makes you sick and angry to realize that your fellow citizens can support actions that you find morally repugnant-- that offend you to the core of your being. It feels like a vitally-important part of what your country stands is gone-- that something you believed fervently in has been thrown away, and that you will never, ever get it back.

But I don't remember WIlliam Bennett, Madame Nhu-nan or Holy Joe Lieberman being worried about how I felt. I don't remember hearing them say it was important for the wingunuts to reach out to me. I can't recall any expressions of sympathy for my deep beliefs, or acknowledgement of my principles.

What I did encounter was a great deal of concern about how my beliefs could damage the foundation that our government was built on. The best I got told was that the events were regrettable, but there were issues far more important than my personal feelings--and that I couldn't allow my anger to destroy our country's ability to function.

And since my feelings about preemptive war and torture are based on considerably higher moral ground than the Ellen Jamesians, I see even less need to extend an emotional tampon to the other side.

Terri Schiavo had fifteen years of legal proceedings-- thousands of hours of experts doing their best to identify (a) the facts of the situation, (b) the motivations and morality of the perticipants and (c) the most equitable solution, given the circumstances.

One may question the motives of Judge Greer, Dr. Cranford and Michael Schiavo (though you must make scads of unsupportable assumptions to do that). But there's absolutely no doubt that they showed more deliberation and thoughtfulness-- with far greater consideration for human life-- than Lynndie England, Janis Karpinski, Albert Gonzales or Donald Rumsfeld.

And the stakes are higher here. It will be impossible to regain what Dwight Eisenhower once called "the standing of the United States as the most powerful of the anticolonial powers"-- people will always remember that we went crazy at the beginning of the 21st century and didn't correct our excesses when we had the chance. They'll never trust us completely again, because they'll always be on guard for a repeat performance. But we can at least make sure that it doesn't happen again.

But if we cannibalize our system of laws-- if we destroy one of the three branches of government-- we'll never get our country back. We'll be condemned to live as a fundamentalist republic.

So I don't want to hear any Dr. Phil horseshit from the Peter Beinarts and Harold Fords of the world. I expect David Broder and Joe Biden to condemn the fundamentalists and the wingnuts as starchily as they did with the human rights movement. If I remember my Andrew Sullivan right, it's outrageous to show any sympathy to or try to draw any moral equivalency with people who constitute a fifth column

It sucks to read the polls and discover that your moral beliefs are at odds with a large majority of your fellow citizens. But, in the immortal words of Hind Tit, these people aren't just misguided or misinformed-- they're on the other side. So they-- not we-- need to get with the program.

2005-03-17T01:47:00.000-05:00

Reality Check

I'm accustomed to the dual standard that the media shows the two parties. They insist that the Democrats must to propose an alternative to W.'s "Kill Social Security Plan"-- when they never required the wingnuts to do so-- in order to be taken seriously. They repeat wingnut bullshit about Social Security teetering on the brink of collapse-- but when someone prepares a detailed rebuttal, they call it a claim that can't be verified, because it would be too hard to check the math.

There's the false equivalence. W. can lie like a fucking rug, but that's excusable because Democrats sometimes oversimplify complex issues. It's OK for Tom Delay to turn Congress into the Politburo and purge anyone who didn't vote to acquit him. But it's the scandal of the century when someone suggests that Holy Joe Lieberman has no party loyalty-- or if Bob Casey doesn't get a prime time spot to make an in-kind contribution to the Republic Party.

And, of course, Lady Marmalade-- a tax-dodging gay hooker-- is a fully qualified journalist who deserves a lifetime pass to the West Wing and the full support of everyone in his chosen profession. But someone with an advanced professional degree--who uses the Internet to share his professional judgment--is some kind of dangerous crank whose ideas can't be trusted.

Irritating, to be sure. But this story just galls me beyond belief, because of what it doesn't say. It's quite true that Constantliar Rice has absolutely no chance to be elected in 2008-- but it has absolutely nothing with her position on abortion.

It's as simple as this: Wingnuts will never, ever elect either a "colored" or a "broad". They're rascists and they're miscogynists. They display confederate flags--which aren't any damned different than swastikas. They belong to religions which state flatly that women are inferior to men and that whites are superior to all other races.

I will not entertain dissenting opinions on this subject, for the same reason I don't debate the existence of Easter Bunny. It is unlikely, I submit, that a state that has never elected a black or a woman to the U.S. Senate will put someone who is both in the White House. And most states haven't done either.

There have been exactly five black Senators in the history of the United States. Three belonged to the Republic Party. Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce got to represent Mississippi shortly after the Civil War ended-- when state legislators elected U.S. Senators and Carpetbaggers controlled the legislature. Black senator #3 was Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, who was a peer of Ted Kennedy's. Does this suggest that the wingnuts are ready to give the keys to the country to a minority?

(The last two are Barack Obama and Carol Mosely Braun--both from Illinois. You knew that, right?)

Only 33 U.S. Senators have had vaginas. 20 of them have been Democrats. Of the 13 Republic women, three have hailed from Maine, two from South Dakota, two from Nebraska, two from Kansas and one from Alaska. Not exactly the bible belt.

Of the three who hailed from wingnut country, Paula Hawkins of Florida was a one-term senator. She won 52-48 in the Reagan landslide of 1980 and lost 55-45 in 1986. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas got into office by winning a special election to replace Lloyd Bentsen. She won the primary with a whopping 29% in a primary with 24 candidates. She has been re-elected, but she wouldn't have been there if two guys hadn't split the wingnut male vote 50-50.

Then there's Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina. She was running to replace Jesse Helms, who'd won 53-46 the last time he ran. Helms worked for her. Her exceptionally well-known husband Bob actively campaigned for her. Her opponent was Erskine Bowles, who was Bill Clinton's former Chief of Staff. Her campaign outraised and outspent Bowles--even though he contributed $6.8 million to his kitty and she kicked in only $30,000.

Given all those advantages, she won 54-46.

I am just sick up and fed listening to horseshit about how Democratic interest groups use litmus tests to hold moderate candidates hostage. To have to endure speculation that a black women might have trouble getting support because she is perceived as being pro-choice. It's slightly more credible than suggesting that she can't win because she's snaggletoothed, and southern voters place a high value on proper dental care.

I think Mudflap is correct, when he says that he "don't know how many northern Democrats who have tolerance for my kind." The reason we don't is that we don't know many Southerners who have tolerance for anyone but their kind.

2004-11-23T03:38:00.000-05:00

How Not to Run a Pop Stand

Damn, it's going to be a long time in the wilderness. Unless the wingnuts go completely over the top-- lose touch with reality so grossly and heinously that even the sheep in the media and the crypto-wingnuts abandon them-- the "D"s will end up living in cardboard boxes, hoping not to be hunted down and killed by the attack squads of the radical right.

What makes me think so? Stuff like this, for examples. And this. And also this. And let's not forget this. And let's not forget the decision to raise the national debt limit, and the "make Tom Delay immune" and a few other things.

When you're out of power-- when the other side can do whatever it feels like without having to cater to you one bit, you have exactly two options. One is to waste your time trying to devise moderate policies in a vain attempt to recruit allies. You waste weeks of time and burn what little political capital you have trying to produce alternative solutions that might be acceptable-- only to get slapped aside by the majority.

That's what the House Republicans did in the late 50's, in the 60's, in the 70's and the early part of the 80's under leaders wike Charlie Halleck, Jerry Ford and Bob Michel. And they were rewarded by being systematically punked by the majority.

Option #2 is to do what the wingnuts began to do in the late 80's, under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Trent Lott and several other scumbags. You can recognize that you will never be allowed to govern-- that you won't get anything through-- and realize that you don't have to worry about the consequences of any or your ideas becoming law, so you can be as irresponsible as you like.

You don't need to make sure your proposed laws are constitutional-- much less if they can be reasonably implemented or easily enforced. able be responsible. In fact, you don't need to offer alternatives at all. All you need to do-- in fact, all you should do-- is stage public events designed to make your opponents look bad and make you seem reasonable and principled.

One of the ten best books ever written about American politics is John M. Barry's The Ambition and the Power. His chronicle of Jim Wright's speakership-- and Newt Gingrich's successful campaign to destroy Wright-- is brilliant. You'll never find a better book about the inner workings of Congress and the mindset inside the beltway.

The depth of the access that Barry got is mind-boggling. Wright gave him senior staff status. Gingrich didn't go that far, but he gave several long interviews and answered scads of questions at every milestone.

When he isn't bloviating about his wingnut beliefs, Gingrich is an astonishingly astute observer and historian. Given a chance to explain his vision, his strategies and his tactics to an intelligent observer, he laid out the whole plan and the reasons behind it.

And, boy, did it work. Came off almost exactly the way Gingrich plotted it, with only a few topical variations and missteps.

It's all there-- how to get the allies, how to work the media, how to dragoon non-profits and "good government" groups into carrying yiour water. The book tells you the blend of policy and political expedience you need to make it work, and how you sieze upon events to bolster your ideas.

You can argue that it's merely empty gestures-- the worst kind of divisive partisan politics and class warfare. But the problem is that it works-- it broke the Democratic stranglehold on the House, after decades of control. And given the mood of this electorate, it seems to be the only thing that will work.

By sitting on their hands-- by failing to start taking the fight to the opponents even after they've been given scads of ammunition-- the Democrats are off to a terrible start. The failure to put the gifts to their best use is disturbing-- it shows that the tactical skills just aren't there.

The failure to do anything suggests that they either don't understand how the strategy works, or they can't get into the right frame of mind to execute it. Neither is a terrib ly promising sign, given that they have a ten-year journey ahead of them.

Maybe they're just getting organized. Or maybe they just suck. Until I see something that demonnstrates the abiulity to be clever and forceful, I'm not going to ascribe one iota of intelligence or cunning to our side.

2004-11-23T02:45:00.000-05:00

How to Run a Pop Stand, Part II

The most interesting part of NBA Commissioner David Stern's press conference was what he didn't say. After suspending the players, he stated emphatically that the fans have the right not to be molested by the players-- no matter what they might have done to provoke them.

But Stern also indicated that he wasn't done addressing the problem-- that the NBA Office intended to do other things. I'm pretty sure the other shoe will be "The players have the absolute right to play without being molested by the fans. No matter how horribly the players behave on the court, the fans have no right to physically abuse them." Here's what he's probably going to doto enforce that:

1. Announce that the NBA will insist that every fan involved-- anyone who threw things or went onto the court-- be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. No alibis, exceptions or mitigating circumstances allowed.

2. Starting today, any fan who throws anything at a player will be ejected and prosecuted, whether the object landed or not.

3. If the fan has season tickets-- or the seats are part of a season ticket package-- these seats and/or seats licenses will be immediately revoked without compensation.

4. The NBA will be drafting a set of laws-- the Fan Conduct and Behavior Act-- that makes unruly behavior at games (including shouting obscenities and public drunkenness) a crime. No need for "which local laws of did these guys break?" huddles with the local D.A.-- it'll all be spelled out with penalties attached.

5. All cities where NBA arenas are located will be required to pass the FCBA before the local team will renew its lease with the arena.

Nasty and vile as many of them are, the players are entitled to play without worrying about getting hit by flying objects. And yes, that includes fighting with each other. Which leads us to the last issue on the list:

6: Beginning next seasonm all tickets will contain a clause stating that "(a) any fan who leaves the seating area and enters the court does so at his own risk and without right to sue for any losses or injuries that occur after entering the playing area and (b) players on the playing area have the right to protect their physical safety-- including, if it appears necessary, force." In other words, if you leave your seat, it's your ass.

Probably going to take a while for that to come down-- the league's lawyers will have to look at a bunch of local and states codes to make sure they write something that can't be overturned. But it's got to be done-- it's only fair to the players.

2004-11-23T02:16:00.000-05:00

How to Run a Pop Stand, Part I

. A long, long time ago, I talked with several senior people about violence and pro sports. It didn't take much effort for us to solve the problem-- it's a simple logic problem.

David Stern gets it. If you are running a professional sports league, there are two thoughts that you absolutely cannot allow fans to think-- two ideas that will kill your league in an instant:

1. "There's no reason to go-- the games are fixed."

2. "It's not safe to go to the games."

The NBA can't let fans think-- even for a second-- that the league will allow psycho players to go flying into the stands, punching the lights out of anyone they set eyes on. If people are afraid to buy tickets, you're screwed.

(At this point, it looks like the guy Ron Artest grabbed didn't throw anything-- though he might have been screaming obsecnities for all I know.)

And the suspension absolutely must be for the rest of the year (or a full year, if this happens 30 games in). And the sentences absolutely must run concurrently-- even though it turns Indiana (which was a championship contender) into a lottery team. And the sentences absolutely must not take provocation into account-- or remorse or pity or anything else.

Why? Very simply-- it's the only thing that works. 90 years ago (in the 1910's) gambling and game-fixing were fairly common in major league baseball. Once baseball's first commissioner-- Kennesaw Mountain Landis-- instituted a "no excuses, zero-tolerance death penalty", the problem ended.

If players (or their teams) think they can get around the punishment by pleading or bargaining or suing or making their case to the public, they'll keep doing it. If they know they're going to miss a full year, they won't.

The National Hockey League is always talking about how terrible it is to have fights in every game-- how much they want to make it stop. The day they announce that fighting will result in a mandatory 10-game suspension-- and that anyone who injures a player will lose ten games plus the amount of time the other guy is unable to play-- the problem will stop.

Actually, I think the other two guys-- who got 30 and 25 games-- got off lightly. Anyone who goes into the stands for any reason really deserves a year off without pay.

Stern's statement couldn't have made it any clearer: "Our players must not enter the stands whatever the provocation or poisonous behavior of people attending the games." That's how you keep the fans safe.

2004-11-12T23:06:00.000-05:00

Three Simple Rules For Beating a President

Yes, I think John Kerry lost the election. And, yes, we do need to talk about why. It's good that everyone has been talking about pulling together in the wake of the defeat. And a nasty public bloodletting only gives the wingnuts the joy of schadefreude.

But if you don't understand what went wrong, you're likely to make the same mistakes again. And I'd just as soon not lose again, thank you. And this doesn't have to be vicious.

In 32 years of work on campaigns, I have learned three simple rules:

1. A re-election campaign is always a referendum on the incumbent. The candidates aren't on an even footing-- the choice isn't "Who do we want to pick?" but "Do we want to keep this guy?"

2. Incumbents rarely lose. Voters dislike uncertainty and they hate to admit they made a mistake. The urge to maintain the status quo-- to say "things really aren't that bad"-- is why most incumbents ger re-elected.

You can't win by hoping that an incumbent's gaffes will wipe them out. Unless it is glaringly obvious that an elected official is entirely to blame for something-- and the issue is an open-and-shut case-- he or she will be reelected.

3. Point two being the case, if a challenger loses, it means he or she didn't make a compelling case for change to enough voters.

That can happen because people felt things were going well and didn't see any reason to change. It can happen because the challenger got outspent and the message for change wasn't heard.

Since neither of those things were true about Bush-Kerry, it leaves only one other option: the challenger didn't do the job right.

I have seen challengers try dozens of different strategies to take out an incumbent, I have only seen one that has ever worked consistently. It has three very simple components:

1. This is what the incumbent is doing wrong.. You can't win without being negative-- voters won't make a change without it-- and it must be easy to understand and agree with. Negative is about 25% of the battle.

2. This is what I can do right. This is the positive message. The challenger has some new ideas or different skills (which the incumbent lacks) that will make things better. The positive message also has to be easy to digest; it's also 25% of the package.

I don't think Kerry per se did well on either count. But he wasn't out there alone, either. The combination of Kerry-Edwards, the DNC and the 527s did a great job on the negatives. He won that battle.

The positive ads, frankly, stunk. But since W. didn't have anything positive to say, I'd call that one pretty even.

So why'd he lose? Because he completely blew the third leg of the tripod-- the part of the message that's the most important one:

3. There is a fundamental difference between me and the incumbent and this difference is why you must elect me.

The ability to draw a sharp, clear contrast-- what some people call the "change message"-- is the thing that wins elections. If you can sum up the difference between the two of you in ten words or less-- and people agree-- you win.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter boiled the differences between himself and Gerald Ford to one proposition: "I think Washington has become corrupt and out of touch with our values and I want to change it. My opponent does not."

Four years later, he lost because Ronald Reagan turned the election into a referendum on a clear vision for the country and strong leadership. In 1984, thanks to the suicidal decision to nominate Carter's vice-president, Reagan was able to say "Re-elect me unless you want to go back to the way things used to be."

And you'll never get a better example of how this strategy works than those legendary 13 words from the 1992 campaign:

Negative: The economy, stupid.

Contrast: Change v. more of the same.

Positive: Don't forget health care.

You'd have to go back to "Give 'em Hell, Harry" or Lenin's "Bread, Peace, Land" to do better.

Kerry lost because he couldn't or wouldn't come up with a tough, clear contrast between himself and W. The closest he came-- at least, the one he repeated most often-- was "George W. Bush won't work with other governments to fix Iraq-- I will."

Not a terribly whelming message in and of itself. The Bush message-- "I have conservative moral values and he doesn't" was simpler, it covered a lot more ground and it was exactly what at least some people wanted to hear.

In his relentless quest to sound reasonable and presidential-- to not polarize the contest and risk offending people who weren't going to vote for him anyway, the two winning themes he had:

1. "This president conceals facts, tells lies and threatens people who tries to tell the American people the truth. Elect me if you want honest government."

2. "The president never admits mistakes and refuses to change course no matter how bad things get. Elect me if you thing things are going wrong and you want to change."

I know he said both things at times. He didn't say them often enough or loudly enough or clearly enough and he didn't make them the rock on which he built his campaign.

Which was better? They both would have worked, but option #2 was much, much better because it also addressed Kerry's biggest weakness-- his perceived tendency to flip-flop.

Most contrast themes are vague and hackneyed. The thing that makes them work are the issues and feelings you can tie them to. The ability to say one simple thing-- which voters can interpret in many different ways-- is what wins.

Take Clinton's "change v. more of the same." They're not original. If you take them literally, they don't mean anything. And they're potentially naive. Going from the frying pan to the fire isn't making things better.

What made them a genious strategy was they hit on so many levels:

* People thought the economy was getting worse and that George Bush hadn't done anything to fix the problems.

* Congress was struggling to get meaningful legislation passed and Bush was vetoing the stuff that did come out, like extensions of the Clean Air and Voting Rights acts.

* Bush had continued-- in fact, enhanced-- some of the most noxious social policies of the Reagan administration. (Specifically, the court appointments.)

* Bush won the 1988 election by relentlessly sliming his opponent.

So every time Bill Clinton said "change v. more of the same", people heard the words "jobs and inflation", "gridlock", "Clarence Thomas" and "Willie Horton."

When you can say one thing and mean four, you've got a killer message.

But it got even better than that, because every time Bush used one of his attacks, he simultaneously made Clinton's case. Every time he used the words "tax and spend", "big government", "liberal" and "character", he just drilled home the "this guy just isn't going to change" message.

Had Kerry hammered W. for being arrogant and stubborn and continuing to dig holes, the flip-flop charge starts to boomerang because it reminds voters that W. believes he's never made a mistake.

Better yet, it gives Kerry the chance to gut Bush on experience, judgment, being trapped in the politics of the past:

"Folks, I've been working for change since the 70's and the things we've seen in that time have been incredible. We've seen nations rise and fall, some movements end and others begin. We've all had to adapt to meet these new challenges and question a lot of our old assumptions about people and policies.

"So, yeah, I've changed my mind about some things in the last 30 years. Sometimes I've changed the way I voted because times have changed. I'm not ashamed of that because it's important to change when you need to. The safety of our country and the future of our children depend on it.

"Maybe the problem is that the president hasn't been in politics that long, so he isn't aware of all the changes. And because he wasn't involved, he hasn't seen what can happen to nations and leaders who aren't ready to change."

Which gives you the opening you need to hammer people who don't change, even when the facts show that they're wrong. And that opens up theme two: how the only person worse than someone who won't admit he's wrong is someone who lies and covers up and bullies and threatens the people who try to speak up, so they can make sure no one finds out the truth.

You get to hit the "dumb" issue without actually saying it. You can talk about how W. spent 2001 focusing on missile defense instead of terrorism because he was trapped in the policies of the past, and he's in Iraq because he hasn't realized that, in the decade since the Gulf War. Osama bin Laden has become a greater danger than Saddam Hussein.

You get to say that the tax cuts were a good idea when we thought we had a huge surplus (so I'm lying-- bite me, I'm trying to get elected) but they stopped being a good idea when we started running deficits and we had a recession.

When you need to go positive, you talk about how some things haven't changed. Things like truth, justice, the American way and the NATO alliance. You can bloviate at length about how containment tied up the Soviet Union and brought them down ("a threat far more imminent and far more deadly than Osama bin Laden"). It's all good.

Then if you're dead-set on talking about fxing Iraq by becoming butt-buddies with the cheese-eating surrender monkeys, then you can do that.

Problem is that you can't do any of that unless you have people a lot smarter and more in touch with the country than "Massachusetts Bob" Shrum running your campaign.

I'm going to enjoy only two things in the next four years. One is watch W's house of cards implode. The other is sneering at the people who told me that I'd cruelly and foolishly misjudged a brilliant political mind. Cold comfort, really-- but it's all we got at the moment.

2004-11-12T02:58:00.000-05:00

More Rewarding Than a Rectal Probe

It's a humbling occasion when you realize just how flawed you really are. In a stunning display of my lack of character, I went dark months ago because people connected to the Kerry campaign were beginning to suspect me.

I should have let myself get fired. But I drank the Atrios/Kos Kool-Aid: "This election is so important that we all must all doodily-doo, doodily-doo what we must, muddily-must, muddily-must."

As a result, I actually followed instructions given to me by people who reported to Bob Shrum. Worse than that, I kept telling myself that my judgment of events and issues might be totally wrong-- that these people might possibly know more than I did.

It's humbling to realize that you're really that gullible. But at least I know I'm not driven by a blind ambition. Because I didn't for a moment believe that John Kerry would win.

More on that later. Right now, let me just show you this really neat T-shirt I got on the trip:

I'm tired of eating a bullet so you can eat your cake.

2004-07-12T23:28:00.000-04:00

Letting Both Sets of Terrorists Win

Is it better to be paranoid or naive? It's amusing and disgusting to watch a bunch of people who have absolutely no idea what they're talking about blather about the possiibility that the 2004 elections might be delayed or cancelled-- and what (if anything) the Democrats need to do to make sure we don't end up living in a right-wing police state.

I appreciate the logic of what Billmon is saying about this Newsweek story, although I think he underestimates the degree of concern. But Kevin Drum's haughty nonsense on the subject irriattes the hell out of me.

Is it unlikely that there will be a terrorist attack close enough to the election--if not on election day--to prompt calls to delay or cancel the election? Well, duh. Of course it's unlikely-- welcome to the world of Risk Management and Contingency Planning, folks.

It is the first commandment of the profession: 99.9% of your work will be wasted. Doing the job means spend the overwhelming majority of your life-- and a staggering amount of someone else's money and staff time--devising contingency plans for scenarios that will not happen.

Here's the most professionally satisfying possibility: If you're really good at your job--and your client is really unlucky--exactly one of your 5, 50 or 500 disaster scenarios (depending on what you're trying to protect)-- each with a probability of occurrence somewhere between "one in one thousand" and "one in one million"-- will happen to some degree, and your effort will reduce or eliminate the negative consequences. You walk away feeling good about saving the client some pain and bad because they had to suffer at all.

The "best" scenario-- though no one involved ever thinks of it that way-- is that nothing happens. The client doesn't suffer at all-- but they do wonder why you bullied them into spending between $250,000 (the development cost of a high-level plan for one critical business function--implementation not included) and $250 million (the price some companies paid for Year 2000 compliance) on something that "didn't happen."

The worst-case scenario is that something you didn't plan for-- or discarded as being too unlikely-- happens. Even if you begged the client to consider the risk and they told you flat-out to shut up, you still stay up nights thinking that you cost them a lot of money and you didn't prevent them from getting hosed.

The bottom line is that disasters are always unexpected. If you could be fairly sure--or even have a justifiable suspicion that something could happen-- there is no excuse for not taking precautions to the degree that you can be injured. If you buy a vacation home on the Eastern seaboard or the Gulf Coast and your financial stability could be wiped out if it were destroyed, you shouldn't even think about the purchase. You don't have kids without life insurance, you don't drink and drive. If you want to live a safe, happy life, you consider two propositions before you make any decision:

1. What is the likelihood that a negative event can happen?
2. What do you stand to lose if it does and you're not ready?

There are a lot of unknowns in both questions, but you'd have to be blind not to see a substantial level of risk. To answer question one, we have to ask two questions. First, What's the possibility of someone pulling off a strike with a huge body count sometime in late October or November?

Unless you have an extraordinary amount of confidence in the performance of the FBI, CIA, NSC, Justice Department and Homeland Security, it would seem that there's at least a decent chance of that happening. Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft,still can't manage to keep people with contraband off airlines, and that's the one scenario that's in the back of everyone's mind. The chance of someone releasing poison gas or nerve agents in a crowded place-- or blowing up one of the thousands of strategic targets that still aren't properly protected--or doing something that these nitwits haven't considered-- would seem to be higher.

The whackos, by the way, don't have to be al-Qaeda. In fact, the odds of a wild-eyed ultra-right group staging an attack in order to try to rally people around W. is probably higher. My views on this are somewhat biased-- I'm convinced the culprits for the anthrax business were right-wingers (pertinent questions being "What do terrorists gain from attacking members of the minority?" and "Isn't it odd that Pay Leahy and Tom Daschle-- two guys atop Rush Limbaugh's Hate List--were targeted, instead of the most virulent anti-arab members?").

But even if you think that's completely insane, who out there seriously believes that the Aryan Nation is getting less surveillance than the Sierra Club-- and isn't in a better position to stage something and get away with it?

Having asked that question, let's move onto question 1-B: What is the probability that W's regime would attempt to use an attack for political purposes?" If you assess the probability of that at less than 100%, you need to ask the Easter Bunny or the Great Pumpkin to review the events of the last four years.

What's the cost of not having an exceptionally detailed plan to deal with an attack--meaning that W. announced (after Karl Rove does some polling) that we have to call off the elections until Dick Cheney thinks it's safe? Oh, just control of the government.

Is any of this going to happen? Probably not-- most contingency plans don't. Is it going to hurt anyone to get a group together to hammer out a detailed plan to address everything that might happen and how to respond? Would it kill what's left of that whimpering, shapeless mass of ectoplasmic suckfaces known as the Democratic Party to insist that this get thought out publicly-- with everyone being clear on the elements of the decision tree?

For example, what's the time window when we call it off or delay it?

How much disruption needs to be caused to trigger a response? If one guy shoots up a precinct in Utah, we keep going, right? What if they blow up the Niagara Mohawk substation in Buffalo-- or Lower Colorado in Texas or one of the other major transmission points on the grid--and we have another huge blackout?

Suppose the attack doesn't actually have a direct impact on voting-- a mega-worm that brings down major computer networks 72 hours before Election Day?

Suppose there's a nerve gas attack in Houston in late October-- and we've cleaned up the chaos by election day, but we don't know who's to blame?

You want to just wing any of those? You don't do that-- you assume that it just can't happen-- and you wind up open for... Well, say there's an attack on Election Day, in Manhattan, and that it's got 9/11-style consequences. You've got a bunch of people dead, fifteen million people unable to get to the polls-- many of whom live in Connecticut and New Jersey (and a large number who commute from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island). Let's say the perverted wits who chose to attack on "911" do this one at "High Noon", so the rest of the country has 7-10 hours to stew and rage.

You ready to hear W. announce that the elections in six key blue states have to be postponed for a week or two-- but the rest of the county can keep voting and counting because "it's important to show the terrorists that they can't win." That's why you want a contingency plan for dealing with a terrorist attack during election season.

2004-07-07T03:02:00.001-04:00

John Edwards: Manning or Leaf?

Thank God it's over. The vice-presidential selection process has become-- like the NFL and NBA Drafts--a process where the guy who's in charge has lost the right to make the choice.

It's an ugly process that begins when someone locks up the nomination. The media and the pundits start to speculate on who the best option would be. And unless there's a complete dearth of obvious candidates, they set up a feedback loop that ends with a fixation on one person.

The question shifts from "Who will be chosen?" to "Will (he/they) pick the right person?" And woe to the sap who presumes to buck the wisdom-- the "surprise choice" gets nitpicked to pieces and the guy who made the choice loses weeks of positive stories. And any time the choice has a problem, the media loses no chance to rehash the decision. (The blogosphere has only intensified this atmosphere.)

The Republic Party gets a pass, because they usually have scorched-earth primaries, where it's obvious that the loser (John McCain in 2000, Bob Dole in 1988) can't stand the winner, and there's no possibility of a "unity ticket." (When Reagan picked George Bush--who'd blasted his "voodoo economics", there were visible waves of shock.) Bill Clinton got to pick his own guy for the same reason-- after what had happened in the primary, no one could suggest pairing him up with Jerry Brown or Paul Tsongas with a straight face.

But Al Gore cost himself a solid bounce in the polls by shunning consensus pick Bill Bradley; at least some of the scrutiny Geraldine Ferraro got in 1984 was prompted by irritation that he' passed over Gary Hart or John Glenn.

I actually like Tom Vilsack, and I think Bob Graham--whose record on Iraq was impeccable-- could have spent the next four months tearing the neocons apart. But since everyone had decided that John Edwards was the only possible choice, he saved himself endless headaches.

Of course, if Edwards turns out to be a disaster, it'll be Kerry's fault for exercising such poor judgment. In 1998, everyone agreed that two college quarterbacks-- Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf-- stood way ahead of the pack. When San Diego, picking second, chose Leaf, not one pundit raised an objection. After Leaf busted out in historic proportion, the people who knew he was a horrendous choice came out of the woodwork.

Since Kerry only got the nomination because everyone decided that he was the candidate most likely to win, I suppose it's only fair of him to pick Edwards. Turnabout is fair play.

2004-07-07T03:02:00.000-04:00

Familiarity and Dick Gephardt

Another component of the modern presidential race-- nearly as pronounced as the "to the runner-up goes the vice-presidency" mindset-- is the "one and one" perception. Until about 1980, it was perfectly acceptable for a candidate to make a run for the presidency, lose either the nomination or the race, and then gear up for another shot.

The conventional wisdom started to turn in the 60's. There was some skepticism about Dick Nixon in 1968, but nobody thought it was odd that Hubert Humphrey ran again in 1972. But there was a lot of reluctance to believe (at first) that Ronald Reagan (who'd lost to Gerald Ford in 1976) was being stubborn and ill-mannered in 1980. And even though he'd barely lost the presidency in 1976, people actually suggested that it would be inappropriate for Ford to run again.

Does it make sense? Not really-- but you don't win elections by arguing against the mood of the voters and the pundits. The feeling is that if you've lost a race, you're damaged forever.

Dick Gephardt tried to win the nomination in 1988 and 2004. He got a good hearing and failed to connect with people both times. There's no reason to think third time would have been the charm. So, no, I wouldn't have picked Dick Gephardt. And I wouldn't have been happy if John Kerry had.

Another reason not to pick Gephardt: he's too known a commodity. One of the requirements of the VP's jobs is to agree with everything that the guy at the top of the ticket says--and to propose them so forcefully that nobody ever remembers that he held different positions.

Edwards was basically unknown before he got into the race. Also, his speaking style is so diffuse that you have difficulty remembering what he said two hours after he got you to rise to your feet to give him a standing ovation.

Can anyone imagine Dick Gephardt vocally endorsing free trade or the WTO? Supporting Kerry's position on Iraq? This would have been the worst mismatch since Dole/Kemp-- which came off as an uneasy confederation of nations united only by their dislike for a common enemy.

Gephradt is a good guy and it's easy to see him as a good secretary of Labor, HHS or Commerce. And if Kerry has the sense to send him out to get the constituencies he can get, he'll do more for the ticket off it than he would have on it.

2004-07-01T14:40:00.000-04:00

The Iraqi Morbidity & Mortality Conference

What's the correct response to a repentent hawk? Kevin Drum wants to welcome everyone into the tent. Digby thinks they need to appear before the rush committee and explain themselves before anyone gets in. And Brad DeLong wants to haze them a little.

Digby is right. He's trying to impose professional standards on a group of people that operate without any restraints. In any professional field, taking the wrong position on an issue has consequences; people act on your recommendations. When you make a mistake, you get reviewed--the very least that happens is that your employer, your peers and/or your customers expect you to explain how and where you went wrong, and how you propose to avoid the same mistake in the future.

Hospitals-- who have lives at stake-- go through the roughest process. They have periodic "Morbidity and Mortality" conferences. Any case where a patient suffered unexpected consequences gets reviewed. The doctors review every step of the treatment, discussing whether the decisions were proper, given the facts that were known at the time. Every judgement call has to be justified, based on currently-accepted practices.

At the best places, the findings are written up and distributed, so everyone knows what decisions are acceptable and what isn't.

Only in journalism is this considered unheard-of or unacceptable. It's the only place where the newspapers of record can get away with a 'correction' that says "The unemployment statistics for last quarter were 5.7%, rather than 5.2% as reported", without explaining how an error of that magnitude was presented. In the shadier circles, it's even acceptable to excuse gross errors with the words "My bad."

Kevin's contention-- "They are excellent candidates to become opinion leaders who will help persuade other people to see things our way"--is true, if the writer sincerely regrets the error, has considered how they came to make it, and discusses some ways that they intend to avoid it in the future.

Writers who say "I was mistaken"-- in the same way that a six-year-old says he's sorry he ate all the cookies-- becase they just want a free pass to move ahead with the same mindset deserve to be critiqued. And since nothing stings quite like ridicule, why not use it?

2004-06-30T23:31:00.000-04:00

How to Succeed in Big Media Without Really Thinking

Brad DeLong's analysis of why reporters do such a dreadful job nails about 40% of the reason. His first two job skills-- can write in a hurry; can snow sources into talking to you--are correct. (The third one applies to TV people, but not to print.) He misses several other items:

3. A desperate need to be noticed and admired. Calling this trait 'ambition' is oversimplifying. Money, power, TV gigs and awards aren't the goals-- they're the rewards that being widely-read brings. A top reporter lives to be read and quoted. Filing a brilliant, insightful, well-written piece that nobody notices is a waste of energy.

4. Confidence in your ability to explain subjects without fully understanding them. Brad does a fine job of describing what reporters are up against:

"You find yourself, day after day... running up against people who know much much more than you do about... topics. Moreover, many of [them] are trying to snow you: either that is what their corporate or ideological masters pay them for, or they are themselves driven toward some political goal and regard fooling you as not a cost worth considering."

And in his areas of interest--economics and policy-- his solution (schooling yourself in the facts) does work. That's why the good examples he cites (The Wall Strret Journal, the Economist and Financial Times) can do a good job.

That doesn't work for most topics. Schools don't teach "How to spot misrepresentations of meetings that you didn't witness" or "Assessing the degree to which someone else's motivations flavor their accuracy" or "Differentiating pragmatic analysts from true believers or polemicists".

To work in daily journalism, you must believe that you can spot the people who are telling the truth just by listening to them. You must convince yourself that you have the knowledge and reasoning skills needed to reduce a complex issue to simple ideas.

People who aren't fairly good at guessing right pretty often wash out before they get to top-tier newspapers. People who aren't comfortable with that process quit writing for newspapers. Writers of magazine articles or books are the ones who aren't willing to make judgments without more time to research or think.

The ones who really want to spend the time required to acquire expertise before they speak typically go into academia or work at think tanks, which don't have daily deadlines. (Those institutions do have people willing to go off half-cocked, but it isn't a job requirement, like it is on the New York Times.)

Some reporters actually are educated enough--or shrewd enough observers of human behavior-- to pull this gig off. And some are able to stay in a job long enough to develop extraordinary knowledge of the beat.

Most are just out there, as Arthur Miller once said about Willy Loman, on a smile and a shoeshine. And that's why we get the kind of reporting we do.

2004-06-30T20:57:00.000-04:00

Wendy, I'm Home...

Well, those were two months I'd just as soon forget. Started with laptop problems... then there was the "How are you spending your time?" issue at work. That ended when I went down with a respiratory infection that didn't respond to the first three prescriptions. During all this, I got named in a lawsuit.

And no matter how many times I said "Go fuck yourself", I didn't feel any better.

Didn't have as bad a time as W. but I'll hit fast-forward when this segment of my life passes before my eyes.

2004-04-21T11:30:00.000-04:00

Spam the Consumers-- Full Speed Ahead

At last-- an hour in an unobserved office... Some time ago, I did a long post about the evils of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) advertising for pharmaceutical drugs. In it, I quoted a study about the impact: People were more likely to ask for drugs that they really didn't need, and doctors would prescribe them because they were too wimpy to argue.

Here's a story about another study on the subject. The authors reviewed the 2001 records of the state of Philadelphia's prescription drug assistance program for the elderly in the year 2001. The study, which looked only at high blood pressure treatment, found:

* 133,624 patients filed 2.05 million prescriptions for hypertension, costing the state about $48.5 million in 2001
* About 40% of the time, the doctors prescribed drugs that didn't follow standard clinical guidelines
* If the guidelines had always been followed, the state would have saved about $11.6 million

Obviously there are cases where the standard treatment isn't working, and you wouldn't want to pass laws mandating treatment. But there's no way that 40% of the cases in a state are atypical. The doctor who commented on the findings in the story noted that patients often believe the best care is the costliest and push for more expensive treatments and that is an issue too.

But all that noted, drug companies wouldn't spend fortunes on ads if they didn't work. According to this white paper (Warning: it's an 11-page PDF), research shows that "direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising is not only effective in generating
initial sales of advertised prescription (Rx) medicine brands, but also in boosting patient compliance" and and a study of the industry found that:

* 88% expect their 2004 DTC spending to increase or stay the same-- 33% expect spending to rise by more than 5%
* Over 30% expect to spend more for non-specific DTC marketing (that is, not related to a specific product)-- specifically for e-mail, direct mail and branded web sites.
* 33% want to spend less on broadcast/mass media advertising-- 98 % want to commit more for direct communications (e-mail and mailings).
* The two biggest complaints from DTC marketers are government regulations and the lack of measurement tools to measure their success.

Translation: The drug companies want to get your confidential information and then spam you to death. And they're going to put intense pressure on the wingnut congress to roll back privacy laws and block anti-spam efforts. Another reason we need to win back Congress.

Oh, if you want more details about the study, here's the abstract (sorry, but you have to be a subscriber to get the full text).

2004-04-20T23:22:00.000-04:00

While I'm Away...

Major laptop troubles-- and it's damned difficult to blog about topics that your employer prohibits you from discussing if you don't have your own computer.

Should be back in a day or two more. They haven't gotten rid of me just yet.

2004-04-15T12:26:00.000-04:00

And the Hits Just Keep on Coming...

I'm getting a phenomenal number of visits from people doing searches on "Hybrid engines" or "Hybred engines." I'm writing about the issue because it interests me-- but since most of what I write about is politics, I'm sure it must be a little disconcerting for some visitors. So if you're just looking for some basic information, here are a few links to help you out:

1. How Hybrid Cars Work is a very detailed primer on the technology and the cars. The purchase info and pricing is out of date (It lists the Ford Escape as coming out next year), but it'll tell you all kinds of fun stuff.

2. This review of the hybrid Honda Civic is the only thing I've seen that actually provides a good feeling of what it's like to drive one of these things. The guy is in love with his car, but he isn't blind to how different it is than other vehicles, and he talks about what the issues are in detail. It helps that the site isn't devoted to cars (they review new computers), because the "autospeak" vocabulary just isn't there.

3. The Toyota Prius gets a really detailed workup in the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Most of the "related links" at the end of the piece are worth clicking. (Don't waste your time looking for entries on the other cars; virtually nothing is there. Wikipedia is an "open-source" document written by volunteers, which means you get really detailed pieces on some picayune topics and nothing at all on others.)

4. This CNN/Money article on marketing hybrids lists some of the features and frills from the automakers, though it gets a lot of details wrong.

The story is probably right about how the cars need to be marketed, by the way. Except for Hondas (which everyone knows are well-made) buyers assume the words "high mileage" mean 'it's made out of plastic, is incredibly cramped and your old college roomie's Fiat went from 0-60 faster."

That's because nobody but Honda has ever tried to make high-mileage cars by making the engine work better. The Honda folks won their market share in the 70's by creating a "stratified charge" engine that used better technology to meet mileage and emissions standards without dumping weight or performance. This article gets the timeline wrong, but its explanation of the technology is good. And this is an absolutely super introduction to the model that made Honda what it is.

OK, done with the public service message. We now resume our regular programming.

2004-04-14T13:17:00.000-04:00

Thinking the Unthinkable

Thanks to the Boston Herald, we have another smoking gun.

One of the cornerstones of the "Sergeant Schultz" defense that W.'s regime has been making is the claim that no one could have imagined that terrorists would hijack planes and fly them into buildings.

Well, in April of 2001, officials at the North American Air Defense Command did just that. NORAD, which is responsible for defending U.S. airspace with fighter jets, actually requested authorization to train for the possibility that "a terrorist group [would] hijack a commercial airliner and fly it into the Pentagon.''

It got turned down, of course. Unnamed White House officials rejected it as "too unrealistic."

It doesn't surprise me. Anyone who's ever spent time with a risk management or disaster recovery team knew that Constantliar Rice didn't know what she was talking about. When they're not handling crises, they sit around imagining potential catastrophes-- and trying to think of how to prevent or resolve them.

(A friend in the FAA swears that someone worked out a strategy on how to get the commercial airfleet on the ground if a UFO appears in U.S. airspace and demands that every plane get out of the sky. Before you get your hackles up, he did mention that it borrowed a lot from their 'what to do if there was a huge tornado resulting from a nuclear explosion" plan.)

I am not a conspiracy theorist; I just know how bureaucracies work. Somewhere in a file somewhere is a detailed plan about terrorists could disrupt the U.S. economy by flying a few planes into some carefully-chosen buildings.

It was probably written in the Clinton administration (which gave people freedom to brainstorm). When it got handed in, people said "Oh, that's great", filed it away and forgot about it. The author either doesn't remember it (it was one of about 70 plans that he or she drafted), or doesn't feel like totally disrupting his or her life (since there's nothing to be gained from it) by coming forward.

As the story says, "the proposed training was one of many with 'fictitious scenarios'' that was rejected." Somewhere, someone wrote a 9/11 plan. And if W.'s regime had, in the words of Richard Clarke, "shaken the trees", it would have been dug up.

2004-04-14T09:21:00.001-04:00

Wonders Haven't Ceased

Well, I've never seen anything like that before. I have no idea how the "hold a speech and press conference to explain what happened and then deny that you made any errors" strategy will play in Peoria, because I've never seen anyone try it.

This analysis says it about as well as I would:

"In the end, the press conference is not likely to change the minds of diehard Bush supporters or passionate Bush foes. And there was little new to sway that hardy band of American voters who remain in the middle."

Actually, as Time points out, there was something unusual: he didn't use the word "democracy" to describe what he intends to leave in Iraq. The implication is that the government will be a lot more Islamic than the neocons want. I'll believe that happens when I see it.

One other thing. Was this section of the speech just a typical W. gaffe or a Freudian slip:

"Secretary of State Powell and Secretary of State Rumsfeld and a number of NATO defense and foreign ministers are exploring a more formal role for NATO such as turning the Polish-led division into a NATO operation and giving NATO specific responsibilities for border control."

Since he followed it with the announcement that he was "sending Deputy Secretary of State Armitage to the Middle East to discuss with these nations our common interest in a free and independent Iraq and how they can help achieve this goal"-- a task that you'd expect to be given to Colin Powell-- I'm voting for the latter.

2004-04-14T09:21:00.000-04:00

2004-04-13T20:34:00.000-04:00

Endgame

There are times when the correct strategy is tactically suicidal. Unless the "press conference" portion of the event consists of about four questions, and Elizabeth Bumiller gets to ask three of them, this might become the most notorious event since Tricky Dick walked out during a particularly heated Watergate grilling.

Holding a speech and press conference is the textbook solution to a problem like this. When a catastrophe happens, and the evidence suggests you screwed up-- when the media is starting to fry you-- when the people are losing confidence in your judgment and your trustworthyness-- an elected official absolutely must try to repair the damage by speaking directly to voters.

It's important to go out and tell people why you did what you did-- to explain what you were thinking. It's important to show that you took strong, decisive action-- to walk people through the decision-making process and show that every decision you made was logical. You have to look people in the eye and show them that you did your best-- that anyone in your position would have done the same thing.

The problem is that it only works if the guy has the skills to do it. You need someone who can speak, who can handle details, who can respond engagingly and emotionally to questions. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were brilliant at this. So were John F. Kennedy and both Roosevelts. Even Lyndon Johnson and Tricky Dick were able to do it for a while.

But this jackass doesn't have a chance in hell of pulling this off. He's a mean, ignorant thug who gets pissed off if someone questions his judgment. His stock means of persuasion is "Do this because I'm telling you to." The veneer of humility is about a sixteenth of an inch deep, and he really doesn't give a rat's ass about anyone but himself.

He's got no ability to remember details. He stumbles over very simple words when he gets flustered. He has trouble pronouncing even simple words, and he doesn't look people in the eye.

I know a lot of people who thought Martha Stewart should have taken the stand in her defense. To the ones who couldn't understand why I kept saying "Some people are better off not trying to defend themselves", what's going to happen tonight is a case study in the point I was trying to make for you.

2004-04-09T14:24:00.000-04:00

This One Goes Out to the Ones I Love

I don't worry too much about terminology, but Andrew Sullivan does, e.g.:

DIDN'T TAKE LONG: "I'm waiting for the first moron to start calling this violence an Iraqi intifada." - yours truly, yesterday.

"Shi'ite Intifada Pushes Allies to the Front Lines" - al Jazeera.net, today.

I hate to break this to you, big fella, but these guys (registration required, but it's free) think it's an intifada. And I think they might know just a teeny bit more about what constitutes an intifada than you do:

"Now it's a fair question whether the US will have to face down a popular uprising-- a real Iraqi intifada-- or be defeated by it...

"Sadr's calculation is that as violence spreads-- and as the Coalition resorts to increasingly aggressive measures, with all the "collateral damage" that entails-- Iraqis will cast their lot with him, not the occupiers or their designated successors.

'"As of this writing, the Coalition has obliged the sheikh. The US has promised a 'deliberate and precise' reaction; in Fallujah, Marines fired rockets at a mosque, killing more than two dozen Iraqis."

These are not the bleatings of horrified peaceniks. The Jerusalem Post is a hardline outlet; their conclusion is that the U.S. needs to "wipe out Mahdi's army and the Sunni resisters quickly and decisively, [or] it will have a real intifada on its hands."

Point simply is that "The Blogger Sometimes Known As Milky Loads" is talking... well, the FCC might be reading, so you better finish the joke.

PS: This post is brought to you on behalf of the staff of Sullywatch, who do a thankless and depressing job very dilligently and very well.

It is very, very hard to run a "watchdog" site. Doing it forces you to immerse yourself in the viewpoints of people that you intensely dislike-- often despise. You have to do an ungodly amount of work to track down the facts (which places you at a disadvantage, because your subject is free to make up his or her 'research').

Since your focus is on corrections, you're always putting out negative energy, and that isn't real easy to do. Also, if you're good at it, you feel guilty every time you skip an item that you should nail (or post something on a topic that has nothing to do with your target).

And since people who disregard facts rarely pay much attention to corrections, you rarely get the pleasure of watching your target stammer and squirm. Which is why, if you look at the "watch" blogroll on the Sullywatch site, you'll find that most of them are defunct.

I have a lot of respect for Josh Marshall and Atrios (and I acknowledge the work ethic of Kevin Drum), but, in many ways, their blogs aren't nearly as difficult to write. If you don't agree, I'll give you the same suggestion that Harlan Ellison once made to people who belittled the amount of craft involved in Kurt Vonnegut's writing: Try imitating it and then get back to me.

2004-04-08T10:53:00.000-04:00

Jefferson Was Right

Tom Friedman, The Times's idiot savant, has done it again. The typical Friedman column is an exercise in unfulfilled potential-- he'll get an interesting idea, an inkling of a really insightful position, and then piss the good stuff away, by not processing it rigorously, through a firmly-grounded understanding of history and foreign affairs.

The point at which a typical Friedman column jumps the shark is usually the spot when he lets his metaphor (sometimes it's a parable) breaks down. His best trait is that he loves to instruct by example-- to frame events in the context of something else that is easy to understand. It's an excellent way to get a point across, and it is what I like most about him.

But Friedman's flaw is that he comes to every column with an agenda-- and he'll bend his parallels to support his agenda, even if it doesn't support his conclusion. There's always a point when you're brought up short-- when the stream of approving mumbles ("Hmmmm... wow, that's pretty clever.... yes, I see how that fits... uh-huh, uh-huh...") gets brought up short with a "What???!!?? No, you s#&$^@% idiot-- what the hell are you thinking?" (It's usually, although not always, the spot where he mixes the metaphor.)

This column starts out promisingly (though the mixed metaphor in paragraph one lets you know this is coming to a bad end). Friedman spends paragraphs two and three correctly (albeit fuzzily and clumsily) stating that the insurgents (unlike the Viet Cong, who were nationalists) don't have an agenda that reflects the best interests of most Iraqis.

In paragraphs four or five, he gets pretty close to truth. Most Iraqis might want a decent government, but they haven't shown they're willing to die to achieve it. Governments have to be won, and the price is paid in blood. (I'm cleaning him up a lot, but it's what he's trying to say.) "We cannot want a decent Iraq more than Iraq's silent majority."

And there he goes-- not just a bad metaphor, but a Freudian slip. The term "silent majority" comes from Tricky Dick Nixon's 1969 policy address on Vietnam, where he told the country that the U.S. wouldn't leave Vietnam, because they couldn't leave the people of South Vietnam to be overrun on moral grounds. Furthermore, despite the antiwar protests, he didn't believe most Americans wanted the U.S. to leave-- that a vocal minority wouldn't overrule the will of "the great silent majority of my fellow Americans".

The reality was that most Americans didn't know the facts-- because Tricky Dick and Lyin' B. Johnson hadn't told them the truth-- and when they understood what was going on, they wanted the troops out.

It's not surprising that Friedman bailed here. Because if he really looked hard at the parallels, he'd see that the insurgents do resemble the North in one way-- they're willing to die to achieve their goal. And the people he calls "Iraq's silent majority" are behaving exactly like the South Vietnamese.

There's another parallel-- the would-be rulers. The differences between Ahmed Chalabi and Ngo Dinh Diem aren't, to be kind, real apparent. If anything, comparing Chalabi's conduct to Diem's behavior from 1946-54, Diem (who hasn't been convicted of fraud and hasn't ripped off the U.S. for millions) actually grades out much higher.

But Friedman isn't going to make these connections-- if he does, he'd had to arrive at the conclusion that, given the situation, the U.S. needs to do what it eventually did in Vietnam: get the hell out. And so he piddles and jabbers about how everything is W's fault because his regime didn't plan things carefully enough and the piece ends in a confused muddle.

For years, I've thought about starting a "smarter Tom Friedman" page, where I'd rework the germs of sense in all his pieces into something intelligent three times a week. But as Marlon Brando said to Al Pacino, "There was never enough time."

2004-04-07T10:05:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the Bad Guys Lose

Here's something that's even harder to find than an honest politician: a technology company that people hate more than Microsoft.

Because I worry about lack of competition, I use non-Microsoft products whenever possible. The problem is that the competition is often wretched. My browser of choice is Mozilla Firefox, but I have to use IE for some sites (like Daily Kos), because the browser won't load them properly. I used Quicken, Quickbooks and TurboTax , but I went over to Money after TurboTax added copy protection and Quickbooks began forcing users to upgrade.

And, much as I hate Windows Media Player (dog slow to load, buggy, insecure), anything is better than the Real Media Player. The article mentions that RealNetworks makes it ungodly difficult to find the free version, and that it'll fill your desktop with icons (some of which flash).

Unless you check the correct options, it'll sign you up for all kinds of spam (my solution: register with the contact info for RealNetworks, including their e-mail address). But here's another issue: unless you configure it just right, it will transmit a lot of personal information back to the company:

* Your IP address and other technical information go back every time you use the product.
* If you're using it to play content from a web page, the site address and any information about the file go back.
* If you're playing a CD and you have a live connection, it'll send information about the songs you're playing-- even if you burned them yourself

Since RealNetworks assigns your player a unique ID during the registration process-- and that GUID is transmitted every time you use the thing, unless you disable it-- they can find out one hell of a lot of information about what you like to watch and listen to.

Since that article was written in 1999, there have been scads of complaints about this policy. RealNetworks has finally disabled the feature in the default installation of the new release of RealPlayer and put information about how to shut it off on their site. But if you downloaded an earlier version, RealNetworks is watching you. (Depending on your version, the instructions on the page might work for you.)

The privacy page also contains other information on how to shut stuff off. My recommendation, though, is just don't use it unless they're no other player option. Appalling as it sounds, Microsoft is better about how they treat you.

My preference is the QuickTime player-- Apple is genuinely consumer-friendly. The problem is that most sites don't offer streaming media in their formats. (The real solution would be an open source player, but there's nothing even close yet.)

2004-04-06T09:46:00.000-04:00

The Smoking Gun

It comes as no surprise to anyone with a functioning brain stem, that Constantliar Rice is a fool or a thug. But the 9/11 committee, if it has been doing its job, should be able to wave proof of her deceit in her face when she testifies.

The Toronto Star is reporting that the 9/11 committee has heard testimony from a former FBI employee who says she saw intelligence documents that pointed to the use of aircraft against skyscrapers in major U.S. cities.

The source's story comes across as even more reliable than Richard Clarke. The woman, who was hired by the FBI as a translator nine days after the attack, says she saw reports dating from April and May of 2001 while she was reviewing documents and familiarizing herself with events. She told Great Britain's The Independent that she didn't ask the commitee to take her word for it:

"I gave [the commission] details of specific investigation files, the specific dates, specific target information, specific managers in charge of the investigation. I gave them everything so that they could go back and follow up. This is not hearsay. These are things that are documented. These things can be established very easily."

And her reason for going public is so precisely stated that it is beautiful:

"[Had Rice indicated that she did not know] then I would say maybe the FBI did not take the information to her, maybe she didn't know. But she's is saying `we' did not know, including herself, her advisers and the FBI. That statement is not accurate. I've never really been diplomatic in life. It's a lie and a lie is a lie."

How could aircraft be used against skyscrapers in major cities-- other than as suicide vessels? Can't wait to hear Constantliar try to explain this one.

2004-04-06T02:14:00.000-04:00

Choose Your Poison

Well, it's finally happened. We've now reached the worst nightmare stage of our adventure in Iraq. We're rapidly approaching a choice between four equally nauseating alternatives:

1. Take out every extremist who's causing trouble until the chaos stops. This will provoke a ripple effect-- that is, it will cause the people who were really p.o.ed, but not actively killing anyone-- to buy, rent, scavenge or borrow some guns and start shooting the running dog imperialist murdering gringos.

When those folks start getting rousted and whacked, other people-- who were just totally irritated, but not really p.o.ed-- go postal. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, in the words of Yul Brynner. When this scenario plays out, we're staring at an Iraqi death toll in the high six or low seven figures, putting the U.S. on the same page with Stalin, Mao and the guy with the moustache.

2. Build an occupation force large enough to sit on the population of Iraq and keep it there until things die down. According to the Census Department, the population of Atlanta is about 415,000. If they were all soldiers, that'd just about do it. And if they're all willing to put in about 10 tours of duty, we should have things pretty much straightened out by the time they muster out.

I know that's double what General Shinseki was saying. That estimate was made back people believed that the rebuilding team wouldn't screw the pooch. That was made back when we figured we could get the power on and the water running and food and medicine into the hands of the people who needed it. 200,000 would have done it back when people didn't hate us and want us all out of there or dead.

3. Split Iraq into three extremist states that will war on each other, when they're not destabilizing the region. As I once wrote, Iraq never was a country, and there's never been too much in the way of shared experience, values or opinions holding them together, Well, maybe one thing-- let's kill all those other guys who don't think like us.

We could just do it like we did with Yugoslavia-- split them off, let them take a shot at behaving responsibly and then go in to separate them when they don't. At least it would give the military a chance to get out for a while and recharge their batteries.

4. We can declare victory, cut and run, leave the place in a shambles and return as needed. This has two advantages over option 3. One, the countries who would be infuriated if we set up Sunni, Shia and Kurd republics, would merely be angry with us.

Two, we could stick Ahmed Chalabi in charge, as retribution for all his lies and abuse of trust. Chalabi would try to set up a brutal dictatorship that favors his cronies-- I'm envisioning something along the lines of the Diem/Nhu regime in Vietnam-- and flames out spectacularly, ending roughly the same way.

If I sound hostile and bitter and cynical, that'd be because I am. There isn't a good solution, and we're not going to get out of this with anything even remotely close to a good outcome. There always was a clock ticking-- a limited amount of time before the Shiites decided that they were sick of waiting for us to give them power and it was time for them to take it.

Granted it's just an extremist now, but it won't be just extremists for long. If I were a Merc-- someone who could just quit-- I'd be running, not walking, to the exits.

2004-04-02T00:40:00.000-05:00

The Great Escape?

This afternoon, I actually got a chance to analyze my web stats for the first time. To my surprise, two of the pieces that got the most traffic were about hybred engines and direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads.

Well, never let it be said that I didn't give my public what they want. CBS had a nice story on the first hybred SUV: the Ford Escape. Probably the most impressive thing about the piece is the performance of CEO Bill Ford. Asked if he really believes there is a market for the car (it's going to sell for $4,000 more than a comparable SUV), Ford replies "We absolutely do, and we think the issue's going to be how many we can make-- it's not how many we can sell."

Smart guy-- the only thing that might get in the way of that prediction is W's economy. If you've got cash to spare, I'd buy some Ford stock. Having a smart boss doesn't guarantee anything. But it sure don't hurt-- and since the automotive industry is dominated by morons, they have a pretty good chance to beat up on the competition.

A good example of the morons who've infested Detroit for the last 50-odd years, the piece included some sentiments from a joker named John McElroy-- an exemplar of the type of thinking David Halberstam called "Old Detroit." McElroy, whose background suggests that he's made a career of smooching the Big Three's buttocks-- is sture fuel-efficient cars won't sell.

One comment on the car: If your connection will permit it, watch the video , because it shows something the transcript can't. The piece has a segment where the correspendent is driving the Escape. He starts on electric power. When he mashes the accelerator, the lurch as the gas engine kicks in says much of what you need to know about the technology.

Courtesy of the Washington Monthly's web site, we have a companion piece to the DTCA situation-- how stipends and rewards are corrupting the studies published in even the best medical journals.

In my earlier piece, I mentioned that Cox-2 inhibitors are much more expensive than Ibuprofen-- though no more effective-- with fewer side effects. Turns out my statement was false-- Cox-2 inhibitors present some pretty significant health risks, but the doctors who conducted the study jiggered the evidence to make the drugs created by their funders look good.

It's not fun reading-- it shows you just how morally bankrupt most physicians are. But it's better to know than not.

2004-03-30T23:17:00.000-05:00

End of The Line

Well, the charade is finally over. W's regime has announced that Iraq has absolutely nothing worth going to war over.

Well, in their own sweet way, of course. When these guys announce that they're changing the scope of their mission-- 'expanding' it to include evidence that Saddam Hussein intended to build WMD and nukes, it means they've completely crapped out.

I can save them a hell of a lot of money: Of course he intended to. Just as I intend to have a wild fling with Elizabeth Hurley and then move onto Halle Berry and Shakira. I admit I might have some logistical problems making this happen. But I wanted to let John Ashcroft know.

Remember, to W.'s regime, intention is nine-tenths of the law.

2004-03-29T14:24:00.000-05:00

Emergency Cheese Donations Required

The wingnuts are whining that Dick Clarke misled him. Clarke implied he voted for Bush on Wednesday (search for "Virginia" to get to the relevant info) and then told Tim Russert that he voted for Gore.

The reality: When he was accused of being a Democratic partisan-- specifically, of working to get John Kerry elected-- Clarke pointed out that (a) he had worked for three Republic presidents and (b) said he last declared his party preference in the 2000 presidential primary, when he asked for a Republic ballot, (c) he was not working for Kerry and (d) he vowed he would not accept a position in the Kerry administration.

How could any rational person conclude, based on that, that Clarke voted for W.? Based on Clarke's singleminded focus on terrorism, he probably uses the issue as a litmus test. Given the candidates' foreign policy positions in Primary Season 2000, Clarke's candidate of choice would almost certainly have been John McCain-- and that's why he pulled the Republic primary ballot.

With McCain out, Gore's position (stay the course) must certainly have sounded better than W.'s (ignore the rest of the world and build Star Wars so we can stamp out communism). Of course he voted for the guy whose worldview on that issue more closely matched his own-- why would you expect him to do anything else?

I wouldn't vote for a candidate based solely on that issue, but if Clarke wanted to, that's his right. And anyone who was misled by his statement needs to develop their critical thinking skills and stop jumping to conclusions.

2004-03-28T04:14:00.000-05:00

Where's the Beef?

Can the wingnuts indict Richard Clarke for perjury? Yeah, right. I took a good look at the text of the 2002 backgrounder where they claim he praised the anti-terrorist efforts of W.'s regime. I came to two conclusions:

1. Richard Clarke isn't just good-- he's very good.
2. The media people are really, really stupid.

Clarke was completely accurate about how little had been done by 9/11. But by phrasing his statements very carefully-- including some buzzwords that enabled the media to jump to conclusions--he made it sound a lot more impressive than it was.

If you want to learn something about communications strategy, you should study the first eight paragraphs of his briefing. In discussing what had been done to fight terrorism and when, Clarke says he has seven points to make. Let's analyze what he actually said:

1. The Clinton administration did not pass a "plan on Al Qaeda" to the Bush administration. In order to understand what's going on here, you need to remember that Clarke works in intelligence. Peoeple in intelligence speak in very precise terms; they have to, because they need to make extremely fine distinctions.

(Constantliar Rice isn't in intelligence. Nor is Rummy, nor Cheney. They're political appointees who have an interest in the field. That's a big difference.)

It's also clear from his use of language (both here and in point six) that Clarke has some formal training in project management. To someone with a PM background, a 'plan' has a very precise definition: a list of specific activities, each with clearly-defined success and failure conditions. Plans are concrete-- they are tactical instructions.

So what he is saying here is that the Clinton Administration hadn't passed on a list of projects designed to wipe out al-Qaeda, because they hadn't gone so far as to create one.

2. "The Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998" and "the incoming Bush administration was briefed" on it. The word "strategy" also has a precise meaning in PM terminology. It is a set of high-level objectives, which does not have activities attached to it.

For example, a strategy for dealing with terrorists might say "limit their ability to act by denying them access to resources." A plan would put it into effect, by proposing to "freeze bank accounts" or "bomb arms stockpiles" or "raid madrass sites and arrest instructors."

What Clark is saying, in other words, is "the Clinton administration knew where it wanted to go, but hadn't decided exactly how it was going to get there." Which is pretty consistent with how they did everything-- they ususually had good ideas, but typically had problems executing them.

3. "In late January"-- shortly after they took office-- the Bush administration decided to "vigorously pursue the existing policy." This point introduces the first bit of spin, and it's a fairly amusing one-- the use of the adverb "vigorously".

Now Clarke has just told you that the Clinton Administration wasn't actually doing anything, but they did know what they wanted to do. He now says the Bushies decided to do that vigorously. Now if you're not performing any activities, what difference does it make if you're acting it vigorously or not? That's like saying "my brother only hoped for a pony, but I really wished for one."

4. The Clinton administration left "a number of issues on the table since 1998." W's regime "decided to initiate a process to look at those issues... and get them decided." They decided to start to decide-- what more needs to be said? It's more substantive than deciding to postpone the decision to decide. More than that, deponent sayeth not.

5. W's fearless leaders "uh, decided in principle, uh in the spring to add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, five-fold, to go after Al Qaeda." The two 'uh's should be a dead giveaway that something slanted is being transmitted. And they frame a real piece of work. Doing something "in principle" means that you've agreed that you're going to do it but you haven't actually done it.

Second, as I said in point two, a strategy has no impact until it is implemented. "Adding to" it simply means that you're making changes. The changes might make it better-- but since a strategy isn't doing anything, the changes have no practical effect.

The translation: In the spring, we decided that we were going to increase funding for the CIA's covert operations against Al Qaeda. We didn't do it, but we decided we would.

6. Once the deputies were appointed, they began "task[ing] the development of the implementation details" and "sending them out to the principals." This ia also artful. Clark makes it sound like tremendous progress has been made. But by avoiding the dates, he doesn't indicate how slowly the process actually moved along.

I've worked with governmental progress-- let me step out the timeline. The new deputies are appointed in "late March, early April". First they get briefed on the objectives and decide what they want to implement. Let's assume that this ramp-up takes about two to four weeks, because these people are pretty focused. (Consultants would take 4-6 weeks to create a plan if it were a rush job, and they'd ask for 8-12 weeks.)

Once the deputies make their decisions, they call in their assistants and tell them to figure out how to get it done. Again, let's assume they need 2-4 weeks to work up the details.

Then the deputies have to approve the plan. That takes another 2-4 weeks (assuming there are no revisions.)

At that point it goes to the other deputies-- Clarke and his peers. And then the principals-- the CIA director, the cabinet secretaries, the VP and the President--who have final call on the decisions. Let's add 2-4 weeks for the first group and 4-8 for the second,.

(Very little of this time, by the way, is spent deciding. These people are extraordinarily busy and it's hard to find a date and time when they can all be in the same room at the same time. 50-75% of the delay is the time lag before the meeting takes place.)

In the best-case scenario, this process takes 8-16 weeks-- between two and four months, Factoring in the start data (late March, early April) the low-end estimate means this process ends in late May to early June. The high-end estimates take you into late July or early August. (Since the plan was approved September 4, there were obviously several delays-- probably caused by revisions requested along the way.)

Doesn't sound like such a smooth process anymore, does it? Sounds like a bogged-down bureaucracy, wasting ungodly amounts of time when you plug in the times.

Maybe a reporter shouldn't be expected to know how the planning process works. But Clarke's narrative gives anyone a clear picture of how many layers of management there are: the principals, Clarke and his peers, the new deputies and their assistants.

That's four layers of management to move through. That's a ton of bureaucratic weight. And if you know how large organizations work--and Washington correspondents should-- it's an indication of how low-priority the project is. Priorities get handled by senior people-- they don't get tasked down three levels.

7. "The principals met at the end of the summer [and] approved them in their first meeting." This approval changed the policy toward al-Qaeda from "rollback... over the course of five years" to "the rapid elimination of Al Qaeda." Clarke mentions how long the process took, but he obscures the exact date. But by saying the policy changed from "roolback" to "elimination", he implies that it was all worthwhile.

From points two and seven, we learn that the changes "authoriz[ed] the increase in funding five-fold, chang[ed] the policy on Pakistan, chang[ed] the policy on Uzbekistan [and] chang[ed] the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance." During the follow-up questions, we learn that the changes in policy consist of urging the governments to do something about the local al-Qaeda .

In other words, they took eight months to decide to throw some money at one problem area (by funding the Afghan rebels), and offer incentives to two governments, to induce them to crack down.

To paraphrase Bob Dole, where's the praise? Clarke makes exactly two positive statements:

1. W's regime approved three proposals that the Clinton Administration hadn't acted on.
2. They decided to increase funding for CIA covert operations by 500%.

But even these are qualified by omission. Clarke doesn't say that the Bushies approved every item that the Clintons left on the table. He mentions three items at the beginning and later says all three items were approved. He never says there were only three open items.

And while a fivefold increase isounds pretty large, there's no amount mentioned. Mentioning a percentage without an amount is one of the oldest spin techniques in the book.

Looking both at the questions that were asked and the stories written about it, there's no question that the reporters were convinced that Clarke delivered a roaring endorsement of everything W.'s regime had done. But that's their fault. Reporters don't have Miranda rights-- as long as the person doing the briefing is being honest, he or she isn't required to point out how or where their statements could be misinterpreted.

Clarke didn't bend over backwards to say what he really thought. But he didn't say anything in the backgrounder that contradicts his interviews and public statements. And, according to Bob Graham--who heard the classified testimony and is as punctillious an observer as you can find (he's the one who keeps the obsessive-compulsive diary), he didn't say anything bogus to congress.

And if the wingnuts have the guts to declassify his testimony before Congress, I'll bet you find exactly what you see here: Clarke constructed his testimony artfully and picked and chose his words very carefully when he was asked questions. But if you look at what Clarke actually said--not what you think he said or what it seems like what he said-- he didn't say anything false.

Unless it has become a crime to be smarter than the people trying to get you, the wingnuts won't get anything on Clarke.

2004-03-26T22:39:00.000-05:00

Trial by Perjury

Let's begin talking about whether Richard Clarke is a perjurer roughly at the point where Josh Marshall washes his hands of the question -- with Bill Frist's disingenuous suggestion that he does not know whether Clarke's motives are "partisan gain, personal profit, self promotion, or animus because of his failure to win a promotion in the Bush Administration."

Frist obviously isn't a lawyer. And while I'm not either, I can tell you what one would say in a summation.

Is it likely that Richard Clarke would deliberately perjure himself-- about the most controversial issue in the history of the United States-- for any of those motives? (And, yes, this is probably a more polarized topic than slavery or whether to enter World War One, now.)

Is it likely that he would perjure himself in front of (a) first a congressional subcomittee and then a group of reporters (both times, when he knew his words were being transcribed) or (b) television shows that reached the entire country last week?

Better yet, let's ask the question why would be lie? There are typically four motives for perjury. One is that the person is a sociopath, a zealot or mentally ill-- in each case, someone for whom truth has no meaning.

Another is to avoid a greater danger. For example, you're being investigated for embezzling and you tell the auditors that your boss ordered you to do it.

A third reason is unwillingness to admit a mistake. Martha Stewart or Lyndon Johnson probably didnt intend to tell outrageous lies, but they could never find a convenient time to come clean and the level of dishonesty kept rising.

The last reason is if the reward for the risk is high enough. You're paying me to say I was with you on the night that your wife was killed.

Do any of those motivations apply? Reason one is possible. One never knows what's in someone's heart.

Reason two isn't-- there was nothing bearing down on Clark, compelling him to start falsely accusing W.'s regime. Reason three doesn't apply-- in that scenario, the lie has to be the first thing the person does. Here, the early acts (the briefing saying Bush was doing well) is supposed to be the truth.

Reason four? Doesn't work, if we assume Clarke is rational. If he did it for money, the probable returns of royalties from a book are offset by the likelihood of paying huge legal fees to defend himself against perjury. Also, if he wants to write a book called "I WAS BILL CLINTON'S TOP TERRORIST AIDE AND I SAY 9/11 WAS ALL SLICK WILLIE'S FAULT!", he's got a guaranteed fortune in book sales.

He couldn't have done it for power-- Democrats are such wusses that no one would hire him for any position of power after this uproar.

If the reward was revenge--being the guy who blows W. out of office for not promoting him-- the timing is wrong. Going public in March of 2004 gives W. plenty of time to recover--and, remember, the book was written even earlier (it's been held for clearance for months by the White House.)

Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh demonstrated the correct way to time an event. The Friday before the 1992 presidential election, he released a notes written by Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger, which stated that Bush I approved of the deal.

In short, the only way Clarke does this for personal gain is if he is too naive or foolish or arrogant to calculate risks and rewards properly. In other words, reason one again-- he's lost his grip on reality.

Again, it's possible-- he's reported to be brilliant but arrogant-- and those guys can go bad.

But let's consider the other possibility-- that W.'s regime is deliberately lying-- and examine their motives.

Consider reason one. Are they zealots-- people with no understanding of-- or regard for-- the truth? They've proven that, time and again.

Reason two-- the alternative to lying is worse. That certainly fits-- if they don't discredit Clarke, they're going to be forced to accept culpability for 9/11.

Does reason three-- committing egregious acts to disguise minor failings-- apply? It would seem so. My opinion of these people is incredibly low, but I don't believe they deliberately intended to put the country in danger by not pursuing al-Qaeda.

But is it likely that they childishly refused to admit that any of Bill Clinton's ideas made sense, got bit in the ass by it and started covering up? Damned straight it is.

Finally, is sliming Clarke a high-reward, low-risk strategy? Absolutely, because there is no risk. The only way W.'s regime can be shown to be lying is if they release information that is currently classified-- and which they can argue is still essential to national security.

If the Democrats insist on releasing the information, it's partisan politics. And what are the odds that members of the Republic Party will hold their nominee for president accountable?

The bottom line is that of the four most common motivations for perjury, only one corresponds with Dick Clarke's behavior: he has lost control of his ability to reason cogently.

But all four motivations could explain the behavior of W.'s regime. Each reason benefits them in some way.

Having a motive to act doesn't prove that action was taken. But it makes it easier to believe that it occurred. We live in a cause-and-effect world, where rational people try to do things that benefit them and avoid things that will hurt them.

If we ask the question "What could he (or they) possibly have been thinking?", it is much easier to answer the question for W.'s regime than it is for Clarke. And if you look at the evidence-- well, I'll do that tomorrow.

2004-03-26T03:22:00.000-05:00

Don't Screw With The Eagles

Damn, is Richard Clarke good. This is about as masterful a performance as it gets.

Granted that Larry King is lobbing softballs at him. But getting softballs hasn't prevented Constantliar Rice or John Kerry from imploding their credibility or saying stupid things, has it?

[Rice is the Beltway's answer to Bull Durham's Nuke LaLoosh: a million-dollar mouth and a ten-cent brain. Her comments in the story-- which attempt to explain how Dick Cheney's "Clarke was out of the loop" and her own "He was in every meeting and never disagreed with our plans'" statements can be simultaneously true-- are priceless. By saying that (a) Clarke was in every meeting W's regime held on the subject of terrorism and (b) he didn't meet with Rummy, Powell, Tenet or herself regularly, she leaves only two possibilities: (1) either she or Cheney is lying through their teeth or (2) Rice, Rummy, Tenet and Powell didn't regularly attend meetings on terrorism.

Had the writer been a qualified Washington correspondent-- or merely someone with a functioning brain stem-- he or she would have torn the statement to shreds with sarcasm and forensic analysis. Luckily, she was speaking to Elizabeth "Light in the Loafers" Bumiller, who felt it was her duty to present it uncritically.]

But I digress. Clarke has completely blindsided W's regime because-- well, part of it is that they just aren't real bright. But Americans have an inbred disregard for anything having to do with structure, precedent or stability. (Only in this country could books with titles like Thriving on Chaos or Riding the Tornado become bestsellers.) In any other country, a government official with a 30-year career under seven different presidents would be considered a "brahmin", "mandarin", "elder statesman" or "sage" and treated with respect and deference-- if not obsequiousness and fear.

In this one, we call guys like Clarke "bureaucrats" and presume their intelligence to be limited, their initiative to be lacking (because they're not out in the corporate sector , making money), their personality to be bland and conclude that their organizational, managerial and communication skills are stunted.

My experience is that anyone who keeps their job when the leadership changes-- much less gets promoted-- must be both gifted and skillful. And when people use words like brilliant, arrogant and difficult to describe the person, it means they know how to defend themselves against attacks (and usually have a slew of confirmed kills, and bodies left lying by the roadside).

When W's thugs tried to pin the blame for Nigerian uranium getting into the State of the Union address on George Tenet, he unloaded half a dozen well-aimed warning shots and a passel of ninja throwing stars in short order. They ended up backing away. Clarke-- whose reputation as a streetfighter makes Tenet and Sonny Chiba look like Doris Day and Rock Hudson-- isn't anyone I'd want to get into a slanging match with.

2004-03-25T13:36:00.000-05:00

A League of Her Own

Here's the reason (scroll down) why The Newspaper of Record shouldn't be sending a former Woman's Page reporter to do a White House Correspondent's job:

"I think we were very deferential because ... it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time."-- Elizabeth Bumiller, The New York Times

Yes, it is tough. It requires a person who has proven that he or she has the experience to stand up and question the chief executive of a city or state publicly-- taking the exposure and ridicule that politicians hand out when you ask them something they don't really want to answer.

Send someone who doesn't have the experience or the strength of personality to do the job and you get precisely what The Times has gotten from Bumiller-- nothing whatsoever of value.

2004-03-24T23:48:00.000-05:00

The Ugly Americans, Part MMCCLXII

I'm a little short on time, but if you wonder why W's regime is so universally despised, look no further than these five words:

King Carlos and Queen Sofia went row by row on Wednesday, clasping the hands of the bereaved or kissing them on the cheeks at an emotional state funeral for the 190 people killed in Spain's worst terrorist attack.

The Spanish monarch and his family joined Secretary of State Colin Powell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Prince Charles, French President Jacques Chirac and more than a dozen other heads of state or government in the 19th-century Almudena Cathedral.

France sends their president. Endland sends both their Prime Minister and their next king. America sends... a cabinet secretary who has absolutely no authority to say anything without permission from the wingnuts, and has been punked so many times there are tread marks on his butt.

What, guys, was the Lieutenant Governor of Iowa busy?

2004-03-17T01:33:00.000-05:00

Creeping Revisionism

Program note: The post immediately below this one was extensively revised. When I originally wrote it, I couldn't find the web site of the pollsters, and had never heard of them before (hey, sue me-- I don't read the Moonie Times), so I wrote as much as I knew. When I got better info, I wrote that.

I'll do an update if there are one or two small points I want to add. I'll write a new post if things change. But if I just did a cruddy job of saying what I think, I'll just change it. I wouldn't use hindsight to change pieces to make me look smarter than I am. But I don't believe anyone should have to wade through endless drafts where I'm trying to figure out what I want to say.

2004-03-16T15:26:00.000-05:00

Eureka!

Thanks to Taegan Goddard, I now have some statistics to support my belief that another terrorist attack would cost W. support, not add to it/ When people were asked that question in the last week of February:

* 45% said they'd be either somewhat or much less likely to vote for W.
* 29% said more likely to vote for him
* 22% said it would have no effect
* 4% aren't sure

Andres McKenna Research (Goddard's piece has the name wrong) is a conservative outfit, and they publish findings in the Moonie Times, so these numbers aren't jiggered or the product of wishful thinking.

I'm skeptical about the findings in two respects. First, the more hypothetical a question is, the less reliable a poll is likely to be. Second, even if the results are correct, being "much less likely" to vote for something doesn't necessarily mean "I'll change my vote"; it can mean you just go from "committed supporter" to "lesser of two evils." Current polls show that 75% of the voters say they won't change their minds about their candidate for any reason.

But even with all those qualifiers, the poll still supports what I keep saying: Americans will tolerate inconvenience and suffering only to the degree that it produces results. W. has been able to avoid nasty questions like "Why haven't you found Osama?" only because he hasn't inflicted any new damage on U.S. soil, and out of sight, for us, is out of mind.

And that is more or less what their writeup of an October, 2003 poll says:

"We believe that the ability to reduce the threat posed by terrorism and to confront radicals with force and firmness will be a threshold issue in 2004. The public will not let someone become (or continue as) president unless they believe that he is doing everything possible to reduce the risk of another attack and minimize the damage from an attack should it come. This particular intersection of attitudes and expectations could prove challenging for the Democrats to navigate in 2004."

It certainly could-- especially if Kerry handles the issue as badly as the "foreign leaders like me" issue. But if al-Qaeda provides tangible evidence that W's regime hasn't met those standards, voters will hold it to account.

2004-03-15T10:15:00.000-05:00

The Weekly Bumillerality

Every Monday, the New York Times publishes a column entitled "Why George W. Bush Is Great." The column, written by the hopelessly unqualified Elisabeth Bumiller, dedicates itself to telling us something good about W. that the Evil Liberal Media does its best to cover up.

In this week's episode, she explains that (a) John Kerry is mean, because he thinks W. should work 24 hours a day, and (b) W. is a much better President than Bill Clinton because he's more punctual.

It wouldn't be a Bumiller column without at least one statement that is carefully qualified to mislead, and this week's entry is "Out of any given 24 hours in Washington, Mr. Bush will generally spend 11 hours working, 7 hours sleeping and 6 other hours in the White House residence."

The statement doesn't mention that W. spends fewer hours in Washington than any president since Eisenhower, because he takes frequent, long vacations. In August, 2001, he scheduled a 31-day vacation, which would have broken the record set by Richard Nixon. (When the media reported this, his people cut it back into the mid-20's.)

And, of course, W. spends an obscene amount of time campaigning for himself and other wingnuts, which cuts down the time he spends on the job even more.

Actually, I think I speak for the entire civilized world when I say that we all wish W. would spend less time governing, not more, miz B. But don't worry-- we're working on giving your idol a real long vacation starting ten months from now.

2004-03-14T06:21:00.000-05:00

Unfair Use

Kevin Drum has apparently found a problem he can't solve. The smart fellow who worked out the proper way to get Social Security in balance and rooted through 30-year-old records (and spin) to determine whether W. dodged military service has been stumped by this question: Did Robert Cox violate copyright laws when he created a page that:

* Used the New York Times's logo.
* Used their web feeds to embed live content
* Used their footers, ads, graphics and layout

All this was done in order to simulate a 'corrections' page for the Times's columnists. "Whether Cox exceeded fair use or not is something I can't judge," he confesses. But he does know enough to think that "they should be ashamed of themselves."

It's a simple question; it took me about three hours of research to learn everything I needed to know to keep me out of trouble when I was editing newsletters in my college days. But that was long before the Internet; now all anyone needs to do is start here. This page is just one of many on that site, which is devoted to explaining copyright, fair use, parody and other topics to librarians, webmasters and researchers.

The answer is that it isn't protected, because the original page wasn't a parody. A parody is exempt from normal standards of fair use because courts realize that a parody must appear to be as similiar to the original as possible in order to be effective. To to do that, it must borrow a more substantial amount.

The test is that it needs to be funny-- to at least try to make the reader laugh. The parody can celebrate the original's quirks or mock its flaws. In can appreciate, exaggerate or denigate the original. It doesn't even need to be clever-- hey, Larry Flynt's parody of Jerry Falwell's Campari ad was downright crass.

Cox's page is deadly serious (there's no way I'm linking to it), and its intention was to take whacks at the liberal columnists. When I looked at the site, it contained five 'corrections'. Three were addressed to statements in Paul Krugman's column; a fourth was for Maureen Dowd.

The page also included a link to the source of the 'correction'-- which takes you to such fabled humor sites as the National Review and the Nation.

Was this selection an accurate representation of the errors? Of course not. There was only one item from conservative William Safire, even though Spinsanity has six separate examples of errors in his columns (there's duplication on the page) and a couple from David Brooks. Nothing from Frank Rich or Bob Herbert or Nick Kristof .

(In the few days since I saw this, he's added another Safire, a Brooks and a Krugman, bringing the count to 5-3. I'm sure that's on the advice of counsel and it still won't help because nothing on the page is funny)

If this case gets to court-- and Cox would be really stupid to let it--the judge will rule that the use of the trademarks is not protected, because there is no intent to parody. The use of the material is intended to create confusion in the mind of the reader-- to falsely suggest that the Times has acknowledged that these criticisms are valid.

To suggest that this is a First Amendment case or a matter of Free Speech... it 's ignorant of the law and the constitution. This is theft and disinformation. And if someone were to put up a site that claimed that what Kevin wrote was wrong-- and stuck his picture and his logo on it-- I think he'd have a lot less trouble figuring that out.

Update: I don't disagree with Kevin's comments about the use of the DMCA. There isn't anything about the law that I like. But it;s on the books and the wingnuts employ it. I can't see any reason the good guys shouldn't use it.

2004-03-14T00:53:00.000-05:00

Why Emerson Would Have Loved Pundits

Atrios has correctly stated how the "conventional wisdom" has assessed the political impact of the terrorist attack in Spain and is right about how it would assess another 9/11.

(Aside to all the people giving him a hard time for saying that: Shut up. He isn't saying that either view is logical or just-- he's just pointing out that the inconsistency exists. It does.)

Atrios isn't saying the conventional wisdom is wrong about another 9/11. I am.

2004-03-13T16:10:00.000-05:00

Measure Your Military Intelligence Quotient

Do you think you have the intelligence, reasoning ability and temperament to work for the CIA? Do you have what it takes to find WMD without involving your country in unnecessary conflicts?

You can find out by taking this test, which was given to me many years ago by someone who had retired from an intelligence job at the Department of Defense. It's the sort of thing, he said, they used to weed the wanna-be's out.

Since we're about to get some reports that reflect on this topic, this test is the best tool I can think of to frame the discussion. I got the scenario told to me-- he said it was better to do it that way-- but he said it'll work in written form.

Read the story carefully. At the end of it, you'll have four different summaries of events. It's your job to select the one correct summary-- and I'll tell you right now that there is only one that is entirely accurate.

Good luck with this-- let's see if you can succeed at a challenge that I failed at:

1. It is Saturday night. You have just returned home from a badly-needed vacation in New England. For the last 14 days, you and your spouse have been hiking, camping, fishing and climbing mountains. To make sure you "got away from it all", you have not read a newspaper, watched TV, listened to the radio, talked on the phone, responded to pages or checked e-mail.

2. You return home feeling more refreshed and relaxed than you have in years. You feel so energetic, in fact, that your spouse suggests stopping at a country-western club before you return home. Since the club used to be a favorite nightspot-- but you have not had the time or energy to visit it for years-- you agree with delight. When you enter, you find that the club is still as busy as it ever was.

3. While you are waiting for a table, you see a familiar face sitting at the far corner of the bar. A woman who is good friends with you both--and agreed to marry a close friend several years ago-- is having an animated conversation with the man sitting next to her.

4. Before you can make yourself known, the woman throws her arms around the man and kisses him on the cheek. He puts his arms around her and kisses her on the mouth.

5. The bar is on halfway down the side of the club, on the right side. It is similar in construction to the ones in most clubs. It is rectangular, with one long side and two short ones. The top and sides are covered with a reflective material, making it appear as if the bar is mirrored, though there are some image distortions.

6. The long side-- the main serving area-- is at a 45-degree angle to you. It has a counter, with stools positioned at it. It is lit by spotlights positioned over every fifth stool, about six to nine feet overhead. This configuration means that some seats are fully lit, others are mostly lit, some are partially lit and some are virtually unlit. Every seat is taken and there are people standing by the stools.

7. The short side closest to you is the ordering area for the servers. The top counter is hinged, so it can be swung up to admit people. There is no vertical side. Servers place their orders here and receive the drinks. There are only a few seats on this side, although many customers are standing here to place orders.

8. The other short side is similar to the long side, but from the angle where you are standing, it is difficult to see many of the patrons clearly-- some cannot be seen at all.

[NOTE: By the way, if you're annoyed by all this description and wish I would get to the point, you've already failed. You're assuming you know what the club looks like, because you've seen many like it before.

A personality like this, the analyst giving me the problem said, means that you can't do the job properly. While your assumptions might be correct, the issue is that you're making them at all. Your job isn't to make assumptions-- it is to review evidence and interpret known facts.

If you can't even wait to finish reading a description, you're going to miss too many things. A lot of your work consists of finding small changes and tiny details-- and not getting carried away by what they mean.

If it's any consolation to you, this is where I failed the test (in my defense, he was speaking ungodly slow and I was 15). But if you want a mulligan, keep reading and see how well you can do now that you've been warned.]

9. Since the club is long and fairly narrow and the entrance is on the left side, you have different views of the man and woman. The woman is sitting at the precise corner of the long and short ends of the bar, so your view is unobstructed; since the seat to her right is under a light, she is lit about 66%, making her clearly visible.

10. The man is sitting at the short side of the bar. He is lit by only about 33% of the light-- not enough to see clearly. Also, the people sitting along the long end of the bar are blocking your view. He is wearing tinted sunglasses and a cowboy hat.

11. Your instinct tells you that something about the situation is not right; your concern prompts you to tell your spouse what you have seen. Even after prolonged inspection--from several different spots in the waiting area, the two of you cannot be sure who the woman is with. Since both of you would be recognized, you cannot walk too closely.

12. As you continue to wait for a table, you discuss the situation. You say your friend has been asking the woman to schedule a wedding date, and is upset that she has not responded. Your spouse says the woman is concerned about the number of hours your friend works, and the fact that his job does not pay well.

13. Your spouse says the woman is obviously not with her fiancee, because he does not own that sort of a hat. You correct her, saying that he owned several hats when he was younger, but acknowledge that you cannot remember him wearing one for many years.

14, Your spouse wonders if your friend might be trying to recapture some of his youthful feelings, much as the two of you are doing. You agree that is possible, but say that your friend has always disliked sitting at the bar-- that he preferred to get a table.

15. As you watch them, the couple at the bar grows more physically intimate. In time, they leave the bar, walking toward a hallway at the back of the club, with their arms around each other. You cannot see the man clearly.

16. After half an hour, you wonder if they have left. Your spouse reminds you that the club has private rooms which can be rented for the evening, and that they have closed circuit TV of the stage, couches and tables for seating groups.

17. As your concern grows, your spouse tells that the woman once worked for an escort service; the man might be a client. You did not know this, you reply. Your friend told you only that the woman "had a past" but said she had been born-again and would never consider doing anything that he would object to again.

18. After nearly half an hour, you see the man return. He moves quietly along the perimeter, regaining his his seat at the end of the bar. His hat is pulled down over his eyes so you cannot see his face clearly.

19. Ten minutes later, the woman returns, smoothing her clothing and touching her hair. When she rejoins the man, she embraces him and gives him a long, aggressive kiss on the mouth. He kisses her back, running his hands over her hair, back, and buttocks.

20. You and your spouse are so disconcerted by this scene that you leave the club. On the way home, you say that your friend has always been extraordinarily uncomfortable with public displays of affection. Your spouse agrees, saying that it is not possible that the man at the bar could have been your friend.

Based on what you have read in the preceding 20 paragraphs, read one of the following four statements and select the one that most accurately represents those facts that you know to be true.

1. You have seen the fiance of your close friend be physically intimate at the bar with a man, and (in all probability) have some form of sex with him in the back of the club.

Since you and your spouse know your friend's character intimately and you agree that he would never have behaved in the way the man at the bar did, is impossible that the man could be your friend, Therefore the woman has been unfaithful to him to some extent and has most probably committed adultery.

2. You have seen the fiance of your close friend be physically intimate at the bar with a man, and (in all probability) have some form of sex with him in the back of the club. Based on everything you know about his character, you cannot believe that your friend could have been the man at the bar.

It is more likely that the woman is being unfaithful, but you know she once worked as an escort and you know she has expressed financial concerns. While this distinction would not make her conduct more acceptable to your friend, but in fairness to her, she might be seeing the man simply to earn money.

3. You and your spouse identified a woman who is, to the best of your knowledge, engaged to a close friend. She kissed and hugged an unknown man at the bar; you saw the woman and man leave the bar together and head toward the back of the club.

The man and woman returned after an extended absence, at different times. Their behavior suggested they had been sexually intimate during their absence. You were unable to identify the man, but since his behavior would be out of character for your friend, you believe he was not your friend. You cannot be certain what happened in the back room or why it did, but yu belive she has behaved in a way that a prospective groom with strong religious beliefs would object to.

4. You have seen a woman you believe to be the fiance of your close friend be physically intimate at the bar with a man. Based on the events that transpired afterward, you believe they went to the back of the club and had some form of sex.

You were unable to positively identify the man, but your knowledge of your friend's character makes it extremely improbable that he would have behaved the way the man at the bar did. It seems much more likely that the women is either being unfaithful or resuming her former career as a paid escort. You cannot, however, be sure which of the two possibilities is more likely to have occurred.

They might seem similar, but these are four different statements. Since this isn't Cosmopolitan, they're arranged in no particular order. Stare at them closely and make a decision. You have the luxury-- which I didn't have-- of rereading the account of events again. I'll put up a link to a page with the correct answer in a day or so.

2004-03-09T23:30:00.000-05:00

Men at Work

I'm going to have some more time on my hands over the next few months, which means that I get time to add other features I've been thinking about. There will be links (maybe something more elaborate) and other tricks. It's all complicated by a need for deniability, but I'll figure it all out. I hope. If someone sees something grotesque, let me know.

Aside from the slight redesign, I've also discovered that I can generate an RSS feed from within Blogger. It can be found here.

2004-03-09T01:57:00.000-05:00

Holy Joe Lieberman Strikes Again

I despise "Holy Joe" Lieberman. I find him as contemptable as Tom DeLay and Ralph Nader, for precisely the same reason-- the smug, sanctimonious, idiotic nonsense that he spews at every opportunity.

Even Zell Miller, whose views are more noxious, at least has the courtesy to acknowledge that his views are only his opinions. Miller can't stand his opponents, but he can at least admit they (a) represent the views of many people and (b) many of those people are as sincere and well-intentioned as he is.

For Holy Joe, there is himself and his opinions-- and then somewhere far beneath him lies everyone else.

This speech is nothing more than an in-kind contribution to W. It's a tool to take away some of the best wedge issues the Democrats have. It argues, as Holy Joe always does, that anyone who disagrees is evil-- that they are damaging the country by holding a different opinion. I don't know anyone who has taken more of these shots at the party over the years-- and because they come from inside the party, they're always ten times harder to beat back.

If I lived in Connecticut, I would spend a substantial percentage of my time finding a Republican to challenge him. Views wouldn't be important-- liberal or conservative I'd be working against the winner six years later. All that would matter is that he be able to raise money, run effectively and help me blow this worthless sack of shit back to obscurity that he so richly deserves.

2004-03-09T01:37:00.000-05:00

How to Beat Nader

I'm not as worried about Ralph Nader's numbers as Josh Marshall is. In an early poll, a 'name' candidate always gets numbers-- remember the polls showing that "Holy Joe" Lieberman had 10%, and where he ended up?

The poll spoke to 1,202 voters, which means about 35 people said they liked Nader. I guarantee you that half of them didn't remember that Nader ran in 2000, or what impact he had on the race when they answered. (I am not making that up.) Trust me, they'll get reminded and they will remember.

Others won't be able to vote for Nader, because he won't make the ballot. Still others didn't vote for Nader last time-- they voted for the nominee of the Green Party because they were seriously commtted to a liberal alternative party.

Bottom line-- he got 2.7% last time and I'd be stunned if he gets 1% this time.

That said, I see no reason to leave any votes unturned. And I'm pissed enough about the 2000 election to want to crater him-- to embarass and humiliate him, reducing him to a puddle of impotent fury.

And it's easy to do. Nader is a sophistic, meglomaniacal prig. I've run into candidates like him before. They're not just convinced that they're superior to the opponent-- they think they're better and smarter than all the voters. Theyir contempt for the electoral process-- their anger at having to agree to be judged by people they believe to be completely beneath them-- is barely concealed. It takes virtually no effort-- just a little baiting-- to bring that rage boiling to the surface. All the Kerry campaign has to do is make the following speeches:

1. In the wake of 9/11, we needs leaders who have experience in foreign policy, and have thought carefully about the ussues facing us. We've seen the cost of having an inexperienced, ignorant governor running thr country. Ralph Nader, who has never worked in foreign policy and knows nothing about the subject, would be even less suitable than Bush.

2. After 10 years of the Contract With America-- a decade of ultra-right fanatics-- we need a president who can work with Congress to reverse those noxious policies. Ralph Nader, who foolishly believes that there is no difference between the parties, would be unable to work with anyone to build coalitions.

3. During his 40 years as a millionare Washington Lobbyist (he is, you know), Ralph Nader has opposed almost every important piece of social legislation passed (Insert the list). Had Nader been President, his own statements show he would have vetoed these bills, leavung the people of this country with no protection whatsoever. Can he now name even one bill in the last 40 years where he now feels that his opposition was a mistake?

4. Ralph Nader has never been married. He has no children. He does not attend church. He has, he admits, no hobbies or pastimes and knows nothing about popular culture. He is a millionaire. How can he say that he has any understanding of what the people of this country want or need if he shares none of their experiences or values?

I'm not, by the way, suggesting that Kerry do all the heavy lifting. His role is to put out the general theme-- say that it's important to have a President who has thought long and hard about security for the decades-- in an attack on W. You let the surrogates point out that Nader has even less experience than W, who has at least been concerned about how best to exploit 9/11 for the last few years..

I could go on, but this is more than enough. Belittle a candidate who sincerely believes that he is better than everyone and he'll explode in a volcanic, self-righteous rage, spewing clouds of arrogance at everyone. Just one of those meltdowns--just ten seconds of 'unpresidential' behavior is enough to fry a candidate-- just ask Howard Dean.

2004-03-08T23:34:00.000-05:00

Return of the Son of Wesley Clark

Help!John Fund is on crack, and desperately in need of an intervention. Granted he works for the Wingnut Daily News, and couldnt's care less about the Democratic ticket,. But let me put this on the record anyway.

Two words for anyone who thinks Tom Brokaw would be anything but an anchor around John Kerry's neck: Wesley Clark. What happened to him happens to every amateur who tries to play at this level.

People like to compare a first-time candidate running for president as "using a rookie to pitch Game 7 of the World Series." Actually, it's more like "using someone who can throw a strike 95 MPH but has never actually pitched to a batter in a pro game."

I wish I could respond to this stuff as calmly as James Joyner is able to.

2004-03-07T16:34:00.000-05:00

From Martha's Cell

I'm speculating, obviously, but I've had clients like Martha Stewart before. This assessment of how poorly her defense was conducted is correct. But its conclusion is totally wrong, because it mistakenly (stupidly, really) assumes her lawyers had control of her defense.

They didn't. Martha Stewart controlled it. Lawyers never admit this-- their egos don't want it to be known-- but they're no difference than PR guys, accountants, stockbrokers and political handlers. We're all consultants; we're hired to give people advice on how to solve a problem.

If your client doesn't take your advice-- if they tell you to do something and say "Do it or else" when you argue, you have three choices:

1. Quit them so you don't go down with the ship and take a hit because everyone thinks you abandoned your client.

2. Ignore them and hope they don't fire you (not really an option, since Stewart is legendary for firing people).

3. Do what they say and hope you get a break somewhere down the line.

Let's look at the three gambles the story says the lawyers took:

1. They didn't negotiate a plea bargain. The client adamantly insists she did nothing wrong. Not only did she not commit a crime, she didn't even do anything unethical. In fact, at one point, she said she didn't even know her stock had been sold. She is totally and completely innocent.

We know the prosecution had (a) the testimony of one eyewitness who says she got insider info, (b) a mountain of circumstantial evidence to support this belief, (c) no documents to support Stewart's defense (which should exist), (d) an account from one person who saw her falsify evidence, (e) inconsistencies in her testimony to investigators.

This leaves us with two possibilities-- that Stewart's lawyers (as the story suggests) are stupid or overconfident, or that she absolutely refused to consider any deal that admitted any wrongdoing.

2. They didn't let her testify. of course they didn't. The first commandment of making an argument-- to an audience, to the media, to an arbitrator or in a courtroom is Never present evidence that you know can be proven wrong.

Any error, no matter how small, lets the opponent suggest that your whole argument is filled with errors. It gives the people you're trying to convince reason to wonder if maybe there are other errors.

Now let's consider the facts. Stewart spoke to investigators several times; changing some of the details of her story during interviews. At the very least, there is a risk she will change her story again on the stand.

The government can bring up every change and ask her to explain why she changed.

Douglas Faneuil (the broker's assistant) has given a completely different version of events. The government can ask her to explain every variation between his story and hers.

Her assistant has said Stewart told her to alter phone logs to support her contention-- and then told her to change it back. The government can ask her to explain why she did that.

Finally, she is known to have a temper and to use foul language and the risk of an attorney getting her to re-enact the courtroom scene in A FEW GOOD MEN certainly exists.

(And there's always the possibility that the attorneys tried rehearsing her-- tried to bait her-- and she blew her stack.)

There's no way you call a witness like that. I know a defendant who refuses to testify always looks suspicious. But some defendants remove any doubt in the jury's mind when they testify.

3. They didn't offer a defense. I know it looks bad to only call one witness, but when the prosecutor calls everyone you were planning to call, what else can you do?

The only other person Stewart might have called was her broker, Peter Bacanovic. And since he was a defendant too, he doesn't have to testify.

They could have split the trial, but then one of two bad things happens. If Stewart's trial comes first, the broker can plead the fifth if he's called (because his case is still pending). And Stewart's team can't beat him up too badly, because if he thinks they're damaging his chances, he can just give her up (with or without getting a deal).

It's no better if her trial goes after his ends. Because then he can't be tried again, so he has no fifth amendment protection and he has to answer the questions and he might decide to give her up.

No, the lawyers did what they could. They had a bad client. I know-- it's always the first thing PR guys say to a client who's been charged with a crime-- that she had to have been told not to speak publicly about the case ("on the advice of my attorneys, etc..."). She did it anyway-- even did a web site.

Clients like Martha Stewart are the reason consultants charge such high fees. One of our services is being the scapegoat when bad things happen to clients who ignore our advice.

2004-03-06T22:12:00.000-05:00

Babbling Brooks

Kevin Drum is much more generous than I am. My chain of thought about David Brooks's column was:

1. What a total waste of space. A Times column is a precious thing-- it can be used to educate or persaude or enrage-- and this jackoff just wastes it.

2. What a slanted presentation. Kerry tries to come off like a regular guy, but he doesn't try to pretend he isn't a blueblood. It's W. who wants to claim he's a man of the people.

3. If you write the column evenhandedly, you stupid bastard-- referring to both W. and Kerry-- you've got a fairly clever, insightful column.

4. Your s second paragraph-- that rich people don't become prime minister of England-- is 100% right. And if you'd think about why that is, you'd have a really clever piece.

Under the parliamentary system, the Prime Minister is the majority leader of the party with the most seats in the lower house of the legislature. It's like putting the Speaker of the House of Representatives in charge of the country and the minority leader as the opponent.

I have issues with the parliamentary system of government. The big ones are the lack of checks and balance (the upper house can't really overrule, and there's no executive branch). Since the leader of the party rarely changes, the ooprtunity for sweeping change doesn't really exist... imagine if the only candidates for president for about 20 years were Tip O'Neill or Bob Michel.

But the nice thing about the system: Since any member of parliament can become Prime Minister if their party is in power and if they can get enough support from other members, all MPs are (in theory) equal, and you only need to raise enough money to win one seat.

In 2002, a winning congressional candidate raised an average of $966,670 and spent $898,164. And that is a lot of money. But it's peanuts compared to a Senate seat. Getting one of those required you to raise $5,029,904 and spend $4,812,159.

And the presidency? Bob Graham raised $5 million. Dennis Kucinich had $7 million. Dick Gephardt raised $20 million. John Edwards spent $22 million. So did Wesley Clark. John Kerry raised $32 million. Howard Dean spent $47 million.

And good old W. has raised $145 million.

It costs a lot of money to run a national campaign in England, too. But that money is being raised on behalf of the party and anyone who can become leader of the party has access to it. If you can just get the money to become an MP, you're on your way.

And that's the real reason you don't need to be a blueblood to become Prime Minister of Great Britain, but you do need to be super-rich to become President of the United States, Mr. Brooks-- you lamebrained, sophomoric, lamebrained wingnut dipshit.

2004-03-06T18:31:00.000-05:00

There He Goes Again....

Well, folks, we blew it: The Democrats lost Michal J. Totten again. Totten-- lauded as one of the most important populist voices in the country--intends to support W. in the election.

His announcement continues the losing streak. Totten believed that it was essential to beat W. in 2000, but was so disturbed by Gore's campaign that he voted for Nader in protest. His disgust at Bill Clinton's lack of character forced him to vote for Dole in 1996 and Perot in 1992. Dukakis's stance on defense drove him asay in 1988; Mondale's intention to support a tax increase did it in 1984. And Carter's handling of Irad in 1980 and his lack of experience in foreign policy in 1976, and of course McGovern...

Totten is, as you might guess, one of those clinical cases who guys who consistently voices the opinions of the Republic party, but insists that he's a Democrat, an independent or someone who doesn't consistently follow anyone's political norms. To support his contention, Totten's home page includes critical raves from liberal icons like Andrew Sullivan, James Lileks and Roger L. Simon .

Sadly, he took down the one from his employer, David Horowitz, because it would be too much of a tipoff. Totten is a writer for Front Page Magazine , where he serves as the "Fox Democrat".

A friend of mine--a licensed psychotherapist too, just like Charles Krauthammer-- has termed these folks "Closeted Republicans Avowing Progressivism". Not sure if it's clinically accurate, but I do like the acronym.

Totten's stands on issues evolve, using storylines akin to the WWF plots where the good wrestler goes bad. He'll kick an issue off by taking a centrist position, but his essay will admit that he has "misgivings" or "concerns" that might force him to change his view. Veteran readers know these words mean a flip-flop is on the horizon, and then you can debate on which thing is going to do it and what rationale he'll use.

Here, for example, is the start of his primary storyline. Totten is one of those guys that Robert Ringer's Winning Through Intimidation described as a "Type Two": "I didn't want to screw you", he'll tell you, "but what happened made it unavoidable." And unlike some of the other C.R.A.P. I read, he's really longwinded--and he feels the need to create different excuses to exclude different candidates:

Joe Lieberman? Too moralizing. Kerry? Hasn't explained his foreign policy.. He doesn't think Wesley Clark is really a democrat, so he's out. Howard Dean and Al Sharpton are beneath him. Dennis Kucinich is "the Pat Buchanan of the Democrats".

So if he wins and "as long as he doesn't backpedal" on his 2002 op-ed in the Washington Post, Totten supports Edwards.

And, of course, if Edwards had somehow pulled it off, he would have backpedaled to the point where he couldn't be supported. Or maybe Totten would have explained that you don't change commanders in a war.

Or maybe he would have explained that since he liked both Edwards and Bush on foreign policy (his #1 issue) that he felt free to look to their stands on his #2 concern-- and there, regrettably, he found Edwards wanting.

It's almost a shame that Edwards didn't win-- the rationalization probably would have been masterful.

I know I'm sandblasting a cracker, but I'm going to try to focus on more C.R.A.P.-- maybe Instaposter and certainly MickeyMaus-- because it's important that we begin to distinguish these folks, so that we're not taken in by them.

What we say and do-- not what we claim, or what other people think--is going to be the theme of the 2004 election. So its important to get the currency straight.

2004-03-03T11:08:00.000-05:00

The Race is Dead-- Long Live the New Race

Here's a quick "heads-up" for the Kerry campaign: pick your VP candidate fast, folks.

The media loves to fixate on style, sizzle, process and gossip (because it's easy to write)-- and they need to have something to write about every day. That's why their absolutely most favorite thing in the whole wide world is a horse race.

Horse races give them an easy story-- one they can do almost every day-- for months. Better yet, the "who's ahead, who's behind, who's making a move, who's thrown a shoe" angle gives them a frame--a built-in justification-- for airing all the garbage that Matt Sludge, MickeyMaus and the other wingnut sleazebags dig up.

If you write about what John Kerry did in grade school, you look infantile. But writing "Peggy Nooner says the Pope told her that John Kerry's third-grade classmate says he used to dip her paigtails in the inkwell-- 'Dick' Morris says this may cost him the womens' vote" almost sounds like a legitimate story, doesn't it?

By winning the nomination months before they wanted it to end, Kerry took candy from a baby. They're going to want to replace it with something--and what they'll choose (because they always do) is the VP Selection Derby. Until Kerry fills the #2 slot, not one word about substance will get mentioned-- it'll all be about who was seen with who and what this campaign functionary said at a lunch.

Meanwhile, W. will be spending half a jillion to run ads accusing Kerry of holding Vince Foster's arms while Hillary put the gun to his head.

So do it fast, guys, and do it right. Drag it out and you'll give the media time to convince itself (via its internal feedback loop) that the only life-form in the universe who can help you beat W. is John Edwards.

So when you don't pick the guy (because he's a lightweight and he goes bland when he's in front of an audience larger than 250 and his people are idiots) theyll get really mad at you for not doing what they told you to do-- and tear your choice to shreds, no matter how good he or she is.

My suggestion-- because he's geographically balanced, gives you more gravitas on foreign issues and would cause nightmares for W. in Florida (he's been governor and senator)-- would be Bob Graham.

But anyone will do, as long as you minimize the leaks, don't pick anyone with baggage and get me a name before April 1, OK?

2004-03-01T22:35:00.000-05:00

Nature of the Beast

Atrios is rightly p.o.ed about Elizabeth Bumiller's behavior at the debate and the Times's employment standards. And the more I looked at her background, the more pissed I get.

Why on earth was this woman at the debate? Why was she given the title of "White House Correspondent"? What experience or qualifications does she have to justify her position-- which is, after all, to report on the seat of government in the most powerful nation in the world for the newspaper of record? Let's walk through it, shall we?

Her bachelors and masters are both in journalism, which tells us she has no grounding in any intellectual discipline. Given how skullcrackingly dull journalism classes are, we can infer that she probably isn't too bright, as well. Obviously ambitious, though-- the Northwestern-Columbia pedigree is about as distinguished as it gets.

She took her two degrees and went to the "Style" section of Washington Post--which, in the sexist era, was called the "Women's Page". After six years there, she went to India for a few years, where she wrote a book about what it's like to be a woman in India.

When she left India, she went to Japan-- where she wrote a book about what it's like to be a woman in Japan. Took a few years off (let's guess, to raise a family) and then got back in the profession as a correspondent in NYC.

Soon afterward, she built on the resume by moving to the country's other nationally-known paper. After a few years on the Metro desk, she got to run the City Hall Bureau for two years. Admittedly it's a big unfair to characterize someone's tenure from looking at results from a search engine, but the stories seem to be mostly about art museums and decency panels and Donna Hanover.

In 2000, the Times put her on the campaign trail, covering Laura Bush. After Long Dong Silver and Renchburg issued their little ruling, Elizabeth Bumiller became a White House correspondent.

Meaning no disrespect to feminism, gender issues or equal opportunities, but what the hell kind of preparation is this? No degree in history or economics or history-- or even philosophy or art history? No assignments to cover a legislature, or the chief executive of a state? No "beat" assignments--where you have to cover the subject every day, develop sources, analyze events and adjust your perspective? No stint in the Washington Bureau for a second-tier newspaper-- or a supporting cast role in the Times bureau? Just a background in feature writing--and mostly about women and womens' issues-- and off you go to the White House?

Makes you wonder if everyone in the Times lineup is so underqualified for their task. It's almost enough to make you develop a higher appreciation for the media criticism of Andrew Sullivan.

2004-02-28T23:47:00.000-05:00

Tilting at Windmills?

One of the authors of the above-mentioned blog to the North has asked a fair question: How do we know that W.'s attention span on this issue will last any better than his concern about Mars, Afghanistan or other things?

Certainly W. has the attention span of a Valley Girl on many issues, but this poll indicates how different this issue is. Over 2/3 oppose Gay Marriage and 40% say they won't vote for a candidate whose views are different than theirs.

Another difference: On the other issues Kevin cites, it was either difficult to define an objective or measure progress. It's going to be pretty easy to keep tabs on what's happening with a bill. (And the wingnut lobby will be happy to keep their members informed.)

Might Bush have proposed something that he knew Congress wouldn't want to vote on? Perhaps-- his Dad did that with term limits (among other things). But gay marriage is so hot that there'd be a backlash (probably closer to a Passion of Christ-style flogging) against anyone seen to be playing politics with it.

No, my nickel says this issue is coming to the floor.

Update: I hate having to explain jokes, but since it is a sensitive issue, (a) I'm referring to the way the flogging is depicted on film, not the way Mel Gibson has (justifiably) been treated and (b) I haven't given him my money, but most of my Catholic friends have. They report that the scene is highly gory; one (who enjoys S&M) is already trying to download a copy from the Internet.

2004-02-28T17:08:00.000-05:00

The Road Ahead

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar; perhaps this story just means that W.'s regime is slow. That's one explanation why they took two months to replace members of the committee (who are unfit to serve as his advisors because they let scientifc principles, not ideology, guide their thinking).

Another is that W.'s regime is gearing up for another announcement, and they want all dissenters cast overboard first. Then it's just a question of what would juice the wingnut base the best?

Banning all cloning (not just federal funding) is a possibility, but it's also dull. In the minds of most people, W. already did that.

Here's an idea that would add some spice: The panel will announce that, in their view, human life begins at conception. Which leaves W. free to propose another law-- or maybe even an amendment-- based on their 'scientific determination'.

Am I nuts? Probably. But if these guys are going to win the election, they'll need to create all manner of distractions and sideshows. And you couldn't ask for a better way to get wingnuts totally wired for an all-out holy war in November than announcing plans to criminalize abortion.

2004-02-28T15:39:00.000-05:00

Wonders Must Be Ceasing

William Saletan actually wrote something intelligent about Thursday's debate. If he'd had the will power to not use the Friedmanesque format, it would have been exceptional.

2004-02-28T15:32:00.000-05:00

Another One Jumps the Shark

Good news for the 947 people who watch CNBC: Dennis Miller's show will be canceled April 19.

They haven't announced it yet-- what they've said is his show is taking a two-week break so they can try to fix the flaws in it, and that they'll take another two weeks to examine it on 4/19.

What they haven't said is that the show will continue to suck rocks and spit gravel and that when it goes off next time, they'll probably cut their losses. Let's do some math:

1. The story says they've averaged 303,000 viewers over the first four weeks. 303 * 4 is 1,212 total viewers.

2. This story says that 801,000 came in the first two weeks.

3. Subtract 801 first two weeks audience from 1,212 total and you get 411,000 viewers in weeks 3 and 4. Divide by two and we have an average of 205,500 viewers for those two weeks.

4. According to the producer's remarks, Miller's average audience (303,000) was 131% more than the total number of viewers for the show that used to be in the slot. 303,000 divded by 1.31 equals 229,000.

Which means that, two weeks after its premiere, Miller's show is averaging 10% less viewers than its predecessor.

Not surprising, of course. Comedy is hostile-- you have to make fun of things to get people to laugh. Right-wing comedy isn't funny to most people. You can do a certain amount of stuff on foreigners and world affairs.

But the minute you go domestic, you're required to make fun of minorities, society's less fortunate, the people trying to help them and the people who want to make laws to help them.

Doesn't work, never has. Every great comedian who really dug into politics has always expressed a mix of libertarian, populist and anarchist ideas. The message is that the only thing worse than big government is big business-- and vice-versa. (Cases in point are two movies made during the depression: The Marx Brothers' Duck Soup and Million Dollar Legs with W.C. Fields.)

Miller's had his 15 minutes. So has Drew Carey. You want to fawn over a wingnut, you'd better do it before his economic policies start screwing up the country. Because once people los their jobs, they stop laughing at you in a hurry.

2004-02-27T00:08:00.000-05:00

The Hard Count

Add Kevin Drum to the list of the overly credulous.

Working from my list of lessons learned in legislative head counts, I've just spent the better part of an hour working through the Oxblog list of senators.

As of this moment, there are eight U.S. Senators who have put themselves officially on record-as being against the bill: Barbara Boxer, (D-CA); Maria Cantwell, (D-WA); Jon Corzine, (D-NJ); John Edwards, (D-NC); Russ Feingold, (D-WI); John Kerry, (D-MA); Patrick Leahy, (D-VT); and Patty Murray, (D-WA).

I'll say it again: Until a politician says "I oppose this bill" or "I will vote against this bill"-- making an unambiguous promise that someone can attack them for breaking if they change their mind-- an experienced head-counter considers them as "undecided" at best.

And before you tell me I'm paranoid, I suggest you take a good, long look at the senators who voted for the Defense of Marriage act. I heard the "He/she won't really vote for this" argument eight years ago, and that bill passed 85-14.

I'm willing to believe that Dan Akaka (D-HI), Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Dan Inouye (D-HI), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), and Ron Wyden (D-OR) will climb off the fence, because they voted against the DMA in 1996. I'm sure some of the 1996 "yea"s decide they can't stomach an amendment--and some people who weren't there eight years ago climb on board.

But do I trust a U.S. Senator's willingness to take a politically courageous stand? I was born at night, but I wasn't born last night.

2004-02-26T13:04:00.000-05:00

Politics 101: "Yes" or "No"

Reports of the death of the FMA are greatly exaggerated. The tally that Democratic Underground has is wrong. So is the Oxblog tally.

Even John Marshall is right on the edge-- though he's had the good sense to qualify what he's saying.

The problem, in each case, is failure to understand one very simple fact: Until a politician says "I have made up my mind--I will vote "No" on this bill", he or she is undecided. And if you want to be safe, you keep that person in the "Yes" column.

This is a lesson I learned a long, long time ago. The classroom was the private office of a guy I was working for, and the curriculum consisted of (a) shouting, (b) verbal abuse, (c) profanity and (d) threats. For 15 of the most unpleasant minutes of my life, my boss-- who'd nearly lost a vote because I hadn't counted properly-- explained the following facts to me at great length.

1. Politicians get asked to do a lot of things.
2. The people who ask want to hear the word "yes."
3. People get pissed off when they hear the word "no."
4. Saying "Yes" to one person means you must say "No" to someone else.
5. Politicians don't like it when people are pissed at them.
6. Politicians want to piss off as few people as possible.
7. Unless the question is a no-brainer, they'll avoid saying "yes" or "no" until they know who they're pissing off.
8. But since people get pissed off if they don't get an answer, politicians have learned how to say things that sound like "yes" but aren't.
9. Politicians can always construct a rationale for changing their mind, as long as they haven't said a firm "yes" or "no."
10. A firm "yes" or "no" is bad because that's a promise.
11. Voters don't like it when politicians break promises.
12. Voters vote against politicians who break promises.
13. Voters will remember that a politician broke a promise long after they forget what the promise was.
14. So until you hear a firm "yes" or "no"-- preferably in front of witnesses--you haven't heard a promise.
15. So don't --

Well, let's skip 15-- it mostly involved procreation and either my mother or my butt. Use your imagination, and don't skimp on the procreation.

Here's what McCain said:

"Marriage should be limited to a man and a woman," Sen. John McCain said after President Bush's announcement Tuesday that he backs such an amendment.

But McCain, a Republican, said, "My preference is for the states to resolve the issue," and "I will reserve judgment on a constitutional amendment until I am able to carefully review the language."

Folks, that's an unconditional "maybe", as practiced by a master. Notice how he came firmly out in favor of the substance of the bill, opposed the idea of a bill but then said it would depend on how it was drawn.

That gives him the space to say (when he jumps on board) that he wanted to leave it to states, but the damned activist judges in other states were making legislation by whim, taking the decision out of the hands of the people of Arizona and he has reluctantly concluded that we need an amendment.

Now if W. gets fragged and it's clear this thing is a loser-- and if his voters seem ticked at him for even talking about this-- then you'll see McCain switch into full libertarian mode and claim that the language was too sweeping and no matter how much he agrees with the concept, he just can't vote for an amendment that would do all that.

"I will say that I'm not supportive of amending the Constitution on this issue," said Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee and a co-chairman of Bush's campaign in California in 2000. "I believe that this should go through the courts, and I think that we're at a point where it's not necessary."

And when he decides to vote for it... hey, we've reached that point where it is necessary. Notice how he says it should go through the courts, but doesn't say which ones (Federal or State) or what level (initial, Appellate or Supreme). Kinda gives him room to grab onto any decision as the straw that broke the camel's back, don't it?

A commitment is the words "I support the president's proposal and I will vote for the proposed Federal Marriage Act." Here, I'll show you an example of what a commitment sounds like... Well damn... now this is impressive. I just looked at the 10-15 senators I thought would be most likely to support the sucker, and this was about the best I got:

"I support the President's proposal. I want to look at it carefully and there will be hearings in the judiciary committee in the Senate to make sure that the language is just the right language," [Trent] Lott said. "I think it's best to keep it simple and short, particularly if you're talking about amending the constitution. Basically, I do think marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman."

Geez, when even Trent Lott says he wants to look at the language, you know you've got a wedge issue. Obviously he's going to vote for it (he'd get lynched if he didn't), but he still didn't say "I'll vote for it" and that is always coin of the realm in this sort of thing.

2004-02-25T08:32:00.000-05:00

Edwards the Unelectable

One analysis of these election returns that you absolutely will not read--even though it's quite valid-- is that the results in Utah, Hawaii and Idaho show why John Kerry is more electable than Edwards.

Conventional pundit wisdom right now is that the voters are ignorant rubes who haven't quite grasped that one huy is from Dukakisville and the other is a Good Ol' Boy, e.g., "Edwards appeals to voters who won't even consider Kerry. Any Democrat can win New York or California-- but Edwards can win the southern states that would otherwise go for Bush."

Which is true enough, I suppose. What it overlooks is that Kerry has proven that he can win states with wholesale politics. Edwards hasn't shown that he can win them with anything except retail.

If that term doesn't mean anything to you, I did a long explanation of wholesale and retail politics that you can read. Here's what it boils down to:

The only way Edwards has been able to compete in a state is to declare it a priority and spend most of his time and money there. If he holds lots and lots of town halls and shakes hands and passes out leaflets, he can pretty much run neck and neck with anyone anywhere.

And if the United States of America held the general election over a six month period, where we voted a couple states at a time--and once you voted, the results were locked in-- then, yeah, Edwards's charm and appeal to southern voters might really mean a lot more than Kerry.

But since we have all 50 states vote at once, the ability to come in for a day here and there-- do this event, run that commercial build up a lead without too much muss and fuss-- does strike me as being kinda important.

John Edwards doesn't seem to be able to be in two places at once and win both spots. In the one election in his career, he had trouble covering the entire state of North Carolina and holding on. As Josh Marshall wrote, a while back, an Edwards speech is like Chinese food-- an hour later, your stomach is empty again.

You really want a candidate like that in a national race against a guy with a huge warchest?

I'm not sold on Kerry's ability to keep his energy level up for the next nine months-- I'm not sure he won't lapse back into RoboCandidate if no one is around to nip at his heels. But at least I know he can take his act on the road. I'm still non convinced that Edwards can play anywhere at this point.

2004-02-25T08:03:00.000-05:00

Adrift Between the Moons of Homos and Phobos?

Sometimes your instrinctive response to a question or problem is is the right one. And Atrios probably has the best take on what the Gay Marriage Amendment means to the Democrats. We need a sound bite-- a position that can be expressed in one sentence. in language anyone can understand.

My suggestion: This doesn't belong in the constitution. It's short, it's clear, it resonates with what most people think, and it doesn't get you bogged down in details.

Gay marriage is only a wedge issue for Democrats if they let it pull them into one of those Gorelike dithers where they try to address every ramification at once while simultaneously pandering to six mutually exclusive interest groups.

You want a statement that kisses up to the gay vote and the South and independents and the religious vote all at the same time? Hell, yes, then you're gonna tear yourself to pieces on the particulars.

Repeat after me: "This amendment doesn't belong in the constitution." The constitution is for things like freedom of speech or the right to bear arms or the right to trial by jury. This is the most inappropriate amendment to come down the pike since prohibition.

And, without taking a breath, "This is just the latest in a series of attempt by George W. Bush to try to deflect attention away from his handling of the economy and the war or terror." You hit back with precisely the same shots that Clinton-Gore fired in 1992-- this joker wants to talk about everything but his record; don't let him con you.

If we do this right, gay marriage is actually a wedge issue for Republicans. Aside from Gay Republicans (talk about an oxymoron), a constitutional amendment is an affront to everything that Libertarians stand for.

Hammer at that--and follow it with talk about what he's done to the deficit (another hot-button issue)-- and you can make the "No matter what you normally think of Democrats, you've got to realize that W. is a Republican who needs to be removed from office. In this election, we're closer to what you believe than he is."

Will that play? I dunno. It'll definitely play better than some waffling, mealymouthed crap that makes everything think you support gay marriage, but just don't have the balls to admit it.

2004-02-25T07:05:00.000-05:00

Postrel on Sheep's Bladders and Earthquakes

"''It's an explosive trend,'' says Michael Reis, editor of the industry magazine Stone World. In 2002 alone, the magazine added 2,000 fabricators to its 20,000 subscribers. Reis estimates that there are 8,000 to 10,000 fabrication shops in the country. "

If you have any doubt as to whether Virginia Postrel is a ditz (most likely because you've never been able to read her blathering all the way through), try this article. It's short enough that it won't waste too much of your time, and illustrates the level at which she reasons.

My opinion of her thesis--that there are scads of new jobs out there that the government isn't counting--is that I've seen those sorts of arguments about other topics, and they've all been wrong:

1. As Isaac Asimov once wrote (when talking about why he ignored most articles pseudoscientists), in any specialized field, there is some possibility of the accepted wisdom being wrong. The chance that an outside observer with a casual understanding of the subject will be able to identify any error is slight.

The chance of a diletante being able to knock all the conventional wisdom into a cocked hat is... well, you have a better chance of hearing W. say the word "nu-cle-ar" (as opposed to "nuke-u-ler"). It's far more likely that the person is making an error of thought that many people with an inadequate knowledge of the subject make before they learn more.

I run into people who think like Postrel every time I advise someone who has never worked with a pollster. If she wants to write a piece that documents her understanding of the three methods of calculating unemployment and explain where and why each method fails to document the occupations she believes are undercounted, you might want to look at her ideas. When you see the kind of fluffy stuff she uses to underpin her fescis, you know you're not dealing with a credible case.

2. As Bill James once said (about the impact of stolen bases, bunting and clutch hitting on offense), some effects might be difficult to document. But in any ecosystem, all actions have consequences-- and some of those consequences would be so large that they would be easy to document.

Let's pretend that what she's suggesting is true. If so, it wouldn't just mean that the jobs and unemployment figures were wrong. It would mean that every figure based on that data would be wrong. It would mean that income estimates (which are drawn from employment figures) would be wrong, that consumption figures (which make assumptions based on income) would be off.

It's like suggesting (to use James's example) that there's a Bigfoot running around in the snow. It's possible that no one with a camera might ever have seen it in time to get a good photograph. It's even possible that no one might have seen it. But is it really possible that no one would ever have seen its tracks in the snow?

3. Postrel bases part of her argument on increases in memberships in trade associations and sales of specialized magazines. Right.

To use one example I know cold, Writer's Digest is a magazine for people who want to earn all or part of their income selling creative writing or non-fiction to publishers. It has a paid circulation of 148,000. There are, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 41,990 people making their living as writers and authors. (as opposed to "technical writers", "editors", "public relations specialists" or "news analysts, reporters and correspondents")

As I see it, we have one of four possibilities:

A. The government has shamefully undercounted writers.
B. Many Writers Digest readers are part time writers.
C. Many of their readers belong to one of the other classifications.
D. There are lots of wanna-be writers out there.

Anyone who believes "A" is more likely than "D" needs to spend a few minutes learning about Ockham's Razor.Thankfully, Postrel has no interest in geology, otherwise me might learn about her theories on using sheep's bladders to prevent earthgquakes.

4. And if none of that grabs you, then I suggest you try subscribing to Stone World. The magazine is free to anyone willing to claim that they're an architect, interior designer or home improvement contractor, so the magazine can use the circulation figures to inflate their ad prices and sell you re-mail address to marketers.

But I'm sure they audit their subscription requests more carefully than the government prepares their employment data, Virginia.

2004-02-19T01:01:00.000-05:00

Death To Kerry! (Or Wounds At Least...)

John Kerry is in big trouble. I've had a good look at the breakdowns last night. Kerry has alienated a critical constituency-- one that he absolutely has to have in order to keep his coalition together:

The media.

It was brutal last night. A reasonable analysis of the Wisconsin primary would go something like this:

1. John Kerry won his 15th primary in 17 tries.

2. Kerry won even though 40% of the voters weren't Democrats. Wisconsin lets people cross lines in a primary. 30% of the voters were registered independents; 10% were Republicans.

3. Kerry won even though Howard Dean-- who made Wisconsin his last stand-- shot his wad and took what looks like two Kerry voters for every one of Edwards.

4. Kerry won 56 of Wisconsin's 72 counties-- four of the state's five largest counties and eight of the nine counties with more than 15,000 voters. The larger counties appear to be the ones where the greatest degree of crossovers won.

5. If you take Wisconsin and South Carolina-- the two most impressive outings Edwards has had-- the two candidates are roughly even in both voters (416,100- 414,300 Kerry) and delegates (51-47).

There is only way anyone could read these results and come away saying "Wow, really great showing for Edwards"-- if you really, really wanted to keep Edwards in the race. I understand why Edwards wants to do that. But it really annoys me that the media wants to do it.

And, boy, do they ever. Last night's coverage was a prime example why I lose my temper at morons who talk about the liberal media. If the media were liberal-- if they were as agenda-driven as Faux News-- last night would have been Kerry's coronation. The lead would have been "John Kerry won the state that both Howard Dean and John Edwards described as a 'must-win'. But Edwards finished strongly enough to cement his claim for the VP slot."

But, as Newt Gingrich once said, the media are like wrestling promoters-- they love fights. On last night's 'coverage', CNN's Jeff Greenfield actually ran a piece-- and it was taped, so this wasn't just a momentary brain cramp during a slow news night-- talking about how boring it would be if Kerry locked up the nomination, and saying that his dream was to have the Democratic Primary turn into a neck-and-neck race, ending in a brokered convention and a floor fight.

And I find that infinitely more exasperating than anything Mann Coulter can dish out. At least she has a goal. Hacks like Greenfield really don't care what happens as long as it's entertaining for viewers to watch and gives them some opportunity to make clever comments. If Jeff Greenfield thought his network could show it, he would have wished for Bill Clinton to jump out of a birthday cake at the next debate and start cornholing the delegates on air.

Which means we're going to have a stupid, bloody mess until March 3. Dean is no longer an active member of the "Stop Kerry" coalition, but every idiot with a camera, mic or printing press just signed on. They're going to make the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy look like a church choir-- . I wouldn't be surprised if someone gives MickeyMouse a temporary hosting gig on a cable news show.

Everything you heard about Kerry's inevitability and his skills? Whoops, their bad. Actually he sucks rocks and spits gravel, while John Edwards is in sole posession of God's Revealed Truth. Only he can beat Bush, and if there is any hope for Western Civilization as we know it, we must all reject the lame Leno wanna-be in favor of the 21st Centiury Clinton.

If they can cripple Kerry-- if Edwards picks up a majority of states on March 2-- well, then they'll start rehabilitating him. We'll hear about how callow and inexperienced Edwards is, and how such a limited background--and one of those lame-ass lawyers to boot-- won't carry any weight with the voters.

They'll try to milk this sucker for the next four months. And at this point, all I care about is that it doesn't happen-- that these bloodsucking weasels don't get to play games with our lives until the convention.

2004-02-18T15:31:00.000-05:00

Wofford Alert?

I'm thrilled any time a Democrat wins a congressional seat. But I'm not nearly as pumped about Ben Chandler winning as some people are:

1. He was a statewide elected official.
2. He'd just run statewide three months ago.
3. He's from a family that is, in Kentucky, as well-known as "Kennedy" in Massachusetts or "Taft" in Ohio.
4. I'm told that he outspent his opponent (we won't know for a while yet).
5. It's a majority-D district.

On the other hand, W. did a campaign commercial for her, Mitch McConnell gave her $10,000 and campaign staff and Dennis Hastert tried to blackmail people into voting for her, so he did have to work to get it.

The issue that has everyone twitching is whether this race is 2004's answer to the Wofford election or not. Which refers to a 1991 special election for the U.S. Senate, which was held to fill the unexpired portion of Pennsylvania's John Heinz's term.

In that race, Dick Thornburgh (Bush I's Attorney General) had plenty of money and help from his boss and other DC heavyweights. But Harris Wofford whipped him. The race was the first inkling that Bush I was vulnerable. And Wofford's campaign platform was almost identical to the ideas Bill Clinton used to beat Bush.

(By the way, these "David v Goliath" stories rarely mention that Wofford's campaign managers were James Carville and Paul Begala, that they knew the state inside and out--they'd gotten Bob Casey elected governor in 1986 and 1990-- and Thornburgh ran a sloppy campaign. It was a good win, but it didn't happen by accident and it wasn't entirely a referendum on Bush.)

Anyway, here's the burning question on everyone's mind: "Is what Ben Chandler said to Kentucky's voters the secret recipe for beating W?" If you want to see what he told them-- and whether Edwards or Kerry can repeat it plausibly-- here's the link.

I'll have something on Edwards and Kerry later.

2004-02-17T20:37:00.000-05:00

Laura Bush: Bill Janklow's Dream Date

You've probably seen an outraged link to Robin Toner's dysfunctional review of a biography of Laura Bush.

The sentence "just as Hillary Rodham Clinton was more complicated than her feminazi image, surely Laura Bush has a few currents, a little tension, in her inner life." is infuriating. But the mind-boggling part of the review comes five paragraphs later:

"The central drama of Mrs. Bush's youth, and the one that perhaps more than anything else accounts for her extraordinary reserve, came when she was 17. She drove her parents' car through a stop sign and collided with another car. The boy in that other car, who was killed in the accident, was a good friend and a popular high school athlete."

Excuse me? She killed someone? I mean, I'll freely admit that my scholarship on the lives of wingnut wives is deficient. But I don't live under a rock. And I get the impression that if Hillary Clinton had committed vehicular homicide, I'd sure as hell have found out about it a lot sooner than three years into her husband's first term.

So Mrs. W. killed someone with her car-- which, in most states, is a felony. And her husband has a slew of traffic offenses and drunk driving pickups-- in many states, multiple DWI busts can be charged as felonies. Dick Cheney has a couple of DUIs. So I guess the next question is "How many times has Lynn Cheney been arrested?" Or could she be the token non-felon on the ticket?

Inquiring minds want to know.

2004-02-17T14:59:00.000-05:00

Don't Change Horse's Asses in Mid-Regime?

What happens if Al-Qaeda attacks again? Or, more precisely (since people in this country care about events only when they intrude on our lives), what happens if they (a) attack U.S. Citizens, (b) do it on U.S. soil and (c) do so in a manner that permanently disrupts the fabric of our daily lives?

"Then W. wins" everyone seems to think. As they did on 9/11, the people rally around the commander in chief-- and you don't change presidents during a war.

Well, I say it's spinach (or maybe broccoli) and I say the hell with it:

1. We changed presidents during both Vietnam and Korea, and the hot-button issue both times was voter displeasure with how the war was being run. Granted, Johnson and Truman bailed out of the primaries-- but they knew they couldn't win the general if they were facing so much opposition in their own party.

W. won't have a primary challenge, but I hardly think that means he's a lock.

2. Americans are suckers for a patriotic appeal, but there's a limit to how often and how hard you can yank their chains. And they expect a lot from their government.

The main reason W. got a pass on 9/11-- even though his approval ratings were as low as they are now-- is that no one expected it to happen.

No, strike that. No one imagined that anything like that could possibly happen.

And because Americans are wonderfully self-absorbed, we assumed that if we couldn't imagine it happening, no one else should be expected to anticipate it, either. So in the explosion of rage and pain, no one asked "How could this happen?" or "Who was to blame?" very forcefully. Nobody vetted the answers too forcefully.

But if it happens again? The government is on the clock now. More importantly, Tom Ridge and John Ashcroft have made themselves so obtrusive and obnoxious in our lives that they won't get a pass.

It's a general rule of human behavior-- the more of a pain in the butt you are to me, the more I expect from you. If the doctor asks you to stick out your tongue and takes your blood pressure, you're not going to expect him to find a rare form of liver cancer. If you undergo six hours of testing, you'll sue him for malpractice.

It's been almost three years; there have been huge budgets and we've all seen the deficits. Anyone who's flown or tried to buy something from an international vendor or had identity theft or any experience with the law has seen how much these folks stick their noses into our lives.

If some joker wearing a turban walks into a McDonalds and pulls the pin on a grenade, that won't cause a major hassle for W. (unless it turns out that he's here on an expired visa).

But a major event-- with a body count of three figures or more? Hey, how would you think FDR would have fared if the Japanese had pulled off another surprise attack on the U.S. Fleet? People would have been furious-- they would have screamed "How could you let this happen again?"

And that'd be only part of it-- because no one doubted that the US needed to fight World War Two. Another successful attack detonates the national rage about the war in Iraq.

There's no doubt about it: People are angry. They think the government either lied to them about Iraq or royally screwd it up. They think it's very, very wrong (I'll try to explain why pretty soon), but we seem to have a gentleman's agreement not to waste energy on recrimninations.

"We bought a lemon, we can't do anything about it," people seem to feel. "What's done is done-- we've just got to fix it. So why talk about the past?"

But another event-- which everyone will think we could have prevented-- then all of this nonsense in Iraq isn't just a silly waste of time, money and the steady stream of casualties. Then it's an inexcuable lapse-- a complete waste of time that allowed Osama bin Laden to regrup and hit us again.

If that happens, Al Gore and Wesley Clark instantly become prophets, and then there isn't anything that W. can do to stem the bleeding.

I could be wrong-- and I hope I don't find out. But if you're concerned about Al-Qaeda having an effect on the election, don't worry. If we read their names in November any time between now and November, it's bad news for th wingnuts.

2004-02-17T04:18:00.000-05:00

The Plame Game

I'm a contrarian by nature-- whenever there is consensus on an issue, I usually find myself disagreeing with it. It's something in the wiring, I guess... the more unanimous the opinion, the less likely I am to agree, and the more my opinion diverges form the norm.

I'm not always right (it's about 60-40). But when I am, the results are spectacular. (It's pretty humbling when I'm wrong, as well.)

After several days of huddling with other people, talking about all the potential issues in the upcoming campaign, I find myself on the opposite side of the herd on two subjects: I think Al-Qaeda will help the Democrats and I think the Valerie Plame issue will hurt them.

Well, maybe not hurt. But I don't see the Plame affair hurting W., and it might give him an excuse to help himself, by dumoing Dick Cheney from the ticket.

Cheney has gone from being an asset in 2000 (a steadying influence on a callow playboy governor) to an albatross. A guy who seemed like a capable, albeit conservative, governmental mechanic-- probably winning at least a few swing voters for his ticket-- has governed like Sean Hannity's psychotic twin.

As Josh Marshall has pointed out, Cheney has quarterbacked every fiasco that W.'s regime has had. And he's made every foulup worse by adamantly insisting-- at every opportunity he's been given to speak-- that those decisions were absolutely correct and that the world is better off for having made them.

Cheney hasn't had much opportunity to speak in the last year, because the politically savvy wingnuts have chained him in the basement, locked away from cameras and microphones. But when the campaign gets going, he'll be out on the stump every day, defendinhg Halliburton, extolling the virtues of Ahmed Chalabi, denying that W's regime ever claimed Iraq had nukes and insisting that David Kay is delusional and the U.S. found WMDs.

Cheney will be a tremendous help to the Dems-- if John Edwards takes the #2 spot, he'll chew Cheney to pieces in their debate.

Cheney is a long-term liability to his party as well. Unless the ticket gets clobbered, the vice-presidential nominee is ideally positioned to get the top slot. Since 1960, six VP nominees (Bob Dole, Bush I, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale and Al Gore) have moved up, Cheney would be 66 in 2008; with his history of heart trouble, there's no way anyone would consider him a viable candidate.

(To save you the trouble of looking them up, Bill Miller, Jack Kemp, Sergeant Shriver, Geraldine Ferraro and Lloyd Bentsen all served as execs on the Titanic. Spiro Agnew got into legal trouble; Henry Cabot Lodge chose not to run. Dan Quayle, Ed Muskie and Joe Lieberman demonstrated that a bad candidate can blow even a significant head start.)

That makes two good reasons to want Cheney gone. Put in a strong campaigner with geographic appeal and a clean past and you've improved the ticket measurably. But since the death of Franklin Roosevelt (who changed VPs like socks), voters have penalized candidates who've taken someone off the ticket (e.g., Eagleton in 1972 and Rockefeller in 1976). The feeling now is that if you had to remove him, he shouldn't have gone on in the first place and you screwed up for picking him.

The ideal situation would be if Cheney had a heart attck. W. could remove Cheney-- jettisoning his liabilities and adding someone with strengths-- without being forced to acknowledge a mistake. But if the Plame investigation turns out to finger people in Cheney's office, that'd be nearly as good:

1. Cheney could fall on his sword, claiming responsibility for the people who reported to him. This would leave absolutely no way to tie the Plame affir to W. or anyone connected directly to him.

2. Wingnuts would see Cheney as a martyr, which would fire up the base.

3. You'd lose all Cheney's negatives and add a new guy who could (if they pick the right person) come in with a clean slate.

4. W. could claim to be "shocked to discover that there was gambling in the casino" and make a few starchy speeches about how he runs a clean administration and how he isn't a typical politician.

It's not an ideal situation-- you'd have someone removed from the ticket due to a major scandal-- but it's impossible to prove that Scooter Libby and John Hannah weren't acting on their own and that Cheney and W. weren't "rising above partisan politics" (or some Noonanesque bushwah like that).

But it'd beat the hell out of hearing Cheney hollering about how we could balance the budget in six weeks if our GDP just had the income that drilling in ANWR would provide. If I were a wingnut operative, I'd gladly make that trade.

Update: Please note that I am not suggesting that Karl Rove has orchestrated the delays to take Cheney out at the right moment or that this is all part of a plan or a conspiracy. It's way too hard to plan and time that stuff. And I don't know who a good replacement would be, either.

2004-02-16T21:27:00.000-05:00

A Modest Proposal

You know, I'm opposed to changing the dime or national landmarks.

But I agree that we ought to immortalize him in some way. How about changing "Alzheimer's Disease" to "Reagan's Syndrome"?

2004-02-08T00:43:00.000-05:00

Triangulation, W. Style

Josh Marshall's assessment of the probability of success of W's new commission is correct. But he's making an assumption-- unwarranted, in my mind-- that his regime will be able to make the limitations on the committee stick. They won't.

I know they've gotten away with it before-- the probe of the 'energy plan'. They can still throw a huge wrench in an investigative process (l'affaire Plame). And, yes, the electorate is awfully gullible-- they have a long history of believing even the most transparent wingnut nonsense during a campaign. (The Terminator's promise not to cut education being the latest in a line that includes "compassionate conservative", "read my lips", "trickle-down economics" and "Vietnamization".)

But allowing W. and his henchmen to tie the hands of a probe of why the prewar intelligence of Iraqi weapons was 'mistaken'? We're talking about an orchestrated campaign to pressure the country to go to war, based on non-existent evidence. This is a war that now has a U.S. body count of over 500 Americans. And since we're stuck in Iraq-- if we pull out, the best-case scenario is an extremist Islamic Republic-- there's little doubt that the final tally will be well past that.

I don't think they're going to get away with whitewashing that. Especially not when the evidence of lying and misdirection is growing every day. The AWOL story is going to grow legs. And submitting a budget that contains half-trillion dollar deficits and doesn't include a cent for Afghanistan and Iraq is... well, it's ballsy, to say the very least.

As I wrote a while ago, W's regime is founded on tactics and expediency, not principle or morality. They don't act based on what they feel in right-- they take positions based on what they feel they can get away with-- or what they need to do to contain the damage.

They can be blasted out of their foxholes by sufficient applications of pressure. And that'll come. I mean, Kerry hasn't even started hammering on this topic yet. No, I don't expect this stance to last for very long.

2004-02-04T13:24:00.000-05:00

Reality Check

Here's a simple test for whether a story about a set of primary results is intelligent: do a CTRL-F and compare the number of times the article uses the word "delegates" (or "supporters" or "voters") to mentions of "money" (or "funds" or "contributions").

This article fails the test. So does this one

A primary is all about the benjamins. Winning delegates is nice. But if you blow through your treasury to do it-- if you have nothing left for the next races-- you're screwed.

And if your victories aren't plentiful enough (or dramatic enough) to get the media (who give you free publicity) or your contributors (who give you money) excited, you're screwed.

By that standard, John Kerry won huge, John Edwards is walking wounded and everyone else got stomped. (Unless a lot of people with money believe the population of Oklahoma is in some way representative of the rest of the country.)

Don't believe me? OK, here's a more graphic way of looking at it. Get four maps of the country (one for each candidate) and four colored pencils. Check these totals and color in every state where a candidate got more than 25% of the vote. Then draw lines that connect each state and color anything within those line in, too. The result is a map of the guy's "appeal" or "electability".

John Kerry's territory covers a huge chunk of land-- from New Hampshire to Arizona. His good finishes go as far south as Oklahoma and South Carolina and as far north as North Dakota.

John Edwards has a much narrower territory-- South Carolina to Oklahoma up to Iowa. Wesley Clark appeals to voters ranging from Oklahoma to Arizona. Howard Dean has locked up the area from New Hampshire to Washington DC.

Right now, we can speculate on whether those boundaries are valid, because some key states haven't voted. It's not clear, for example, who really is the most electable candidate in the Great Lakes/Rust Belt region... But we'll have a good clue on February 7, when the Michigan results come in.

The Times says Edwards "vowed last night to fight in Michigan, [but] is pinning his real hopes on Tennessee and Virginia next Tuesday." If so, he is either positioning himself to be the consensus VP or or really, really stupid. Even if he wins both races, he isn't adding any territory to the map.

We all know that Edwards can win the South-- there's nothing he can do there to impress anyone. The question is whether he can (as Kerry put it, in talking about himself) "win on the road." Focusing on the South actually can hurt him-- if Kerry is able to come close in one of those races, the perception that only Edwards can win back the South is gone.

(Not that I think this issue matters anyway.)

The big story is really that voter perception of Kerry's electability is still there. So far, nothing I said last week seems to have evaporated yet. It's still Kerry's race to lose.

2004-02-03T00:21:00.000-05:00

MTV's Freak Show

I hope Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake end up in jail for this.

They could, you know. All it takes is an ambitious Assistant DA in a bucolic county (or parish, which might be more likely) in a crimson-red state. Add an angry judge and an outraged jury-- to the point where they're willing to endorse broad interpretations of a few legal terms-- and you have convictions for public indecency or lewd and lascivious conduct or conspiracy to put on an obscene exhibition.

At the very least, two immature, untalented idiots could be compelled to spend weeks in Utah, Indiana or Central Louisiana, where they would be required to endure extensive discovery, abusive cross-examination, stifling media scrutiny and withering contempt from the locals. And the cost of the legal defense (counting the civil suits for deliberate attempts to corrupt all the minors watching) could easily run into millions.

Viacom, which enabled the conduct, could be looking at a fine of $27,500 per affiliate. And even if we generously assume they didn't know exactly what would happen, they did approve the broadcast of an interracial couple singing a sexually suggestive song, with erotic dancing and groping, which isn't exactly family entertainment. It'd be hard to find the smoking gun that would allow the maximum penalty. But the legal bills should be a pretty good punishment. And deservedly so.

Why is a first amendment absolutist doing his best impression of a Baptist? Because I'm pissed, that's why. One of the exasperating things about being a Democrat is having to take bullets for the people who contribute absolutely nothing positive to our lives, but saddle the party with negatives that are virtually impossible to defend without seeming like a wild-eyed extremist.

We'll be seeing that clip for the next ten months. It'll be the cornerstone of a "values" campaign that's used to energize the wingnut base and deflect attention away from the critical issues that our country faces. It'll be a handicap that every candidate will have to address or endure-- we support people who endorse drugs, promiscuity, criminal (or at least immature and deviate) lifestyles and abdication of fiscal and family responsibility.

All so the has-been sister of a child molester and a brain-dead boytoy can pick up some easy money by using nudity to promote their albums. And these will be the jokers who don't contribute a cent to any cause other than themslves Frightening.

2004-01-29T10:59:00.000-05:00

There She Goes Again

Before Karl Rove goes to bed every night, he must pray for a new National Security Advisor. Condoleeza E. Neuman, in her latest attempt to do damage control, has just shot W.'s regime in the head again:

"But the world "will never know fully" the extent of Iraq's weapons programs because documents and evidence were lost during the looting that took place when Saddam's regime collapsed, she said in an interview on ABC's morning news program."

Really? So the looters didn't just get artifacts from the museums and ammunition from the unguarded stockpiles? What kind of evidence did they get, Condi? Maybe the kind that blows up or poisons people?

If the Democrats do this right, they can inflict a black eye that goes on for days. They can immediately call for an investigation to determine whether WMD were carried off by looters and might be in the hands of the terrorists.

Tomorrow, she'll have to try to dig herself out by saying "We'll never know what evidence was lost, but we are absolutely certain that no one took any nuclear weapons or poison gas."

And when she does, you ask "Well how on earth could you possibly know if the evidence is gone?"

Aside from her utter incompetence in the field of national security, the woman is a public relations nightmare. I almost feel sorry for Rove.

2004-01-28T00:05:00.000-05:00

Bush-Hating At Its Finest

I expected to need to write a lot of words about what happened tonight. Turns out that I need exactly seven-- a paraphrase of Sally Field:

People hate W. They really, really hate him.

The people who are voting right now want W. out of the White House. And, right now, they're willing to do the unthinkable to achieve it.

Kerry's victory isn't so much about what he said (though he was good). Or what his campaign did (though they did it pretty well). It's simply this-- right now, voters think he's the candidate most likely to win in November. For the second time in a week, people came out in droves to endorse the guy with the best resume and (at the moment) the best posture and the fewest skeletons.

They came out in droves, in miserable weather. People hopped off the fence and onto the bandwagon in nearly historic numbers.

The data I've seen doesn't say that people prefer Kerry's positions on issues to Howard Dean, John Edwards or Wesley Clark. The harder I look at it, the more splits I see, actually. But right now Kerry is everyone's second choice.

The hot-button issue for Dean voters is aggressiveness. They want someone who's going to hammer W. night and day. They want him hammered on Iraq, bashed on the tax cuts and clobbered on every single stinking wingnut stand he's taken. Kerry can't measure up to Dean on that score. But they think he's good enough to tolerate, and he hasn't shown Dean's potential for freakishness. Kerry looks like he stole about 10% of Dean's base by being that.

Edwards voters want likability. They want to vote for someone who doesn't take the ugly political positions of a doctrinarian liberal-- a guy who will stay on the high road as much as humanly possible. But what Edwards doesn't have is the resume. Can someone be ready to be president with no executive experience and only five years in the Senate? I'd guess 8% of his likely voters didn't think so, and they went for the guy with the substance. They're willing to live with Kerry's similarities to Ted Kennedy and his occasional streetfighting.

Clark voters are concerned about strength. They're terrified about the party being perceived as weak on defense and foreign affairs. They don't want a guy who can be painted as soft on those issues. Kerry isn't a general-- in fact, he's a Vietnam War protester, and he's waffled all over the place on Iraq and that seems to bug them. But, by God, he served in the military and he was wounded in battle and he won medals and he was a hero when he was fighting. And that was good enough for 5% of voters who were leaning to Clark, but concerned about the amount of baggage he seems to be carrying.

If the voters continue to show this sort of singleness of purpose-- do what it takes to get that lying, far-right spendthrift scumbag out of our White House-- John Kerry will have a commanding lead the day after "Little Tuesday" next week. He'll beat Edwards by a slim margin in South Carolina, win Missouri in a walk (looks like he's swallowed the Gephardt vote whole) and beat Dean decisively in Arizona and New Mexico.

What you'll also see-- and it'll happen before those elections-- is intense pressure to clean the pond scum out of the pool of candidates. You'll see a flood of defections from the Lieberman, Kucinich and Sharpton camps. Obviously, that won't be easy to detect. But what you will see and hear-- and this will show up in even the most haphazard polling-- is a storm of abuse directed at anyone who dares to muddy the waters by staying in the race.

Remember the backlash against Ralph Nader after the Florida results because known? Increase it in volume and breadth by geometric proportions. The normal eye-rolling and snarking directed at people who keep going through the motions will be absent. It'll be replaced by venomous expressions of outraged and furious hate.

And you could see a small-scale display of that in a hurry if one of the other guys tries to go negative on Kerry. If the attacks don't take hold immediately-- if people feel like one of the supporting players is trying to screw up the script-- their support could vaporize. Attacking John Kerry right now could be an unbelievable gamble-- if it backfires, it would destroy the candidate's political future in an instant.

If this scenario plays out, the wingnuts are in deep, deep trouble. The 2004 election will turn into a vengeful reclamation of the White House. No matter how hard W's regime works to retain control, the electorate won't bite. And there will be snarls of hatred at every cheapjack political hustle they try to pull off.

You think the ocean of contempt and disgust that Pete Rose walked into was something? If this trend holds, you ain't seen nothing yet. 2004 could become the most uplifting and heartwarming campaign in my lifetime. This could dwarf even the tremendous swell of jubilation that occurred the last time a Bush ran for re-election.

2004-01-27T23:58:00.000-05:00

Castles Made of Sand?

The other likely possibility is that the Kerry tide will break, leaving the Democratic party in a quagmire deep enough to swallow the Vietnam War whole. The post above ascribes a combined 23%-- almost 60% of Kerry's 39%-- to people who liked someone else better than Kerry, but swallowed their preferences and went with the guy they thought had the best chance to win.

The perception of inevitability-- invulnerability, if you prefer-- can be a huge asset to a campaign. But it's an incredibly unstable foundation on which to build. I've seen campaigns that looked unstoppable turn into a replay of the last half-hour of The Man Who Would Be King. As long as everyone thinks you're unstoppable, they'll lay down their arms. But the minute people realize that you're human, the people who were for you because you looked like the chosen one bail. And when they split, they go back to their original favorite with a vengeance.

All it takes is one bite on the cheek-- one attack that lands, one small-scale stumble or seemingly-minor gaffe.

After Kerry's performance, the keys, as I see it, are the tactics of the opponents, the mood of the voters and the available resources of the campaigns. If the opponents play safe-- if Kerry doesn't have to defend himself because they don't go after him-- he wins.

If someone tries something and it plays with the voters in some state-- if there's not an immediate voter backlash-- he's going to have to work. And if he's short of money or support-- if his canmpaign looks like it blew everything on Iowa and New Hampshire and has nothing left-- there'll be trouble.

If Kerry can keep his feet for two weeks, the primary season will be over. If he doesn't, this could go all the way through the season-- maybe even to the convention.

I don't think it'll happen-- but, trust me, it is very possible. And it really looks ugly when it does happen.

2004-01-19T23:41:00.000-05:00

In Memoriam

To honor a good guy-- one who would have been Speaker, if he'd just understood his strengths better and been a little patient-- here are some passages from pages 965 and 966 of Richard Ben Cramer's memoir of the 1988 campaign, What it Takes:

"Dick went around the room shaking hands with each. He knew every name. Then he stood with his back to a wall and held up a hand. He started to tell them they had to go on... this was more than about him... more than what they'd done for him.

"Dick's voice was steady and brave. He wanted them to see this as a start-- the only way this made sense--as a cause... this loss, his loss, did not matter.

"Then a noise... Dick stopped. The door opened... and it was filled with Jesse Jackson...

"'Jesseee!" Dick came across the room, South St. Louis polite... he held his hand out in front of him.

"But Jackson spread his arms. And he gathered Dick in a bear hug that disappeared him. All they could see was the reddish top of Gephardt's head.

"Jesse Jackson knew loss. He knew what was going on in that room. And there was, in his embrace, not just his triumph of that night, but his understanding of Dick's effort, the years ... the hopes, the exhaustion, the loss.

"He would not let go. Gephardt's head wiggled briefly. Then it settled against Jackson's suit...

"And just for a short while, half a minute, perhaps... the only time that night... on the breast of the only man in that room who could really understand, Dick Gephardt wept."

2004-01-19T23:27:00.000-05:00

Labor's Debt to Dean

An interesting sidebar ro tonight's results is the body blow that organized labor just absorbed. When Howard Dean picked up the endorsements of the two most powerful unions in the AFL-CIO, he made it impossible for labor to give their endorsement (as most of the people in the movement wanted) to Dick Gephardt.

A lot of people were furious at Dean for that. But that decision actually saved their butts. Had labor committed itself to Gephardt, they would be in the embarassing position of endorsing a candidate who's already out of the race. Now they can at least try to regroup and pick the guy who seems to be stronger-- either Edwards or Kerry.

They're still damaged. But the humiliation isn't complete.

2004-01-19T23:16:00.000-05:00

It's Deja Vu All Over Again

Well, we're back to square one-- more precisely, the conventional wisdom as it was propounded in October. Thanks to either a revitalized field operation or two solid months of negative campaigning, John Kerry is once again the consensus frontrunner and Howard Dean is the straggler.

The biggest beneficiary of tonight's caucuses, however, will be John Edwards. There are still scads of people who insist that you can't win the presidency without the south and only a southerner can control the bleeding down there.

The people who like to compare Edwards to Bill Clinton will be able to talk up the "comeback kid" parallels to 1992, pointing out that Edwards shouldn't have been able to do anything in Iowa, and that his 'amazing show of strength in a region that he should not have been expected to do well in' (or something to that effect) means that he might be the only candidate able to appeal to a national audience.

Since Dean and Kerry are both from new England, Edwards can finish as low as a weak third in New Hampshire and still carry that aura around with him until the South Carolina primary. Unless Kerry can make it very close in the South, Edwards has the leg up on him.

Wesley Clark has to be dying a thousand deaths. The motivating factor in Iowa turned out to electability-- "Can this guy beat W?" If Clark hadn't pulled out, a lot of the votes that went to Kerry and Edwards would have fallen to him.

Dean, meanwhile, is now in the same position Dick Gephardt was a week ago. If he doesn't win his neighboring state, he'll be perceived as having no base. Even if he does, he's in danger of being seen as a 'regional candidate'. I doubt he's going to make it past the Granite State as a viable candidate.

2004-01-18T05:09:00.000-05:00

Why Politics Sucks

I'm posting this at 5 AM body clock time-- 4 AM local-- because I can't sleep. I'm too sick to sleep, is more like it.

There are days when I really hate what I do. For the last two weeks, I've hated it. I haven't posted much in the last two weeks, because the people who pay me expect me to do work. And the work I've been doing is negative campaigning-- thinking of ways to tear other people in the race down.

When people ask me "What's wrong with politics?" some days I answer "money." It costs so much money to get a message out that it's impossible for someone new to step into a race and make a difference. If you can't get people to give you money, you can't win.

Other days I think it's the media. It's not enough to be a good person or to have good ideas. They're more interested in what you wear or what you said ten years ago. Or, most often, what someone else in the media thinks. If one person writes something, everyone else scrambles to write it too. Whether the original story was true or not doesn't matter in the slightest.

Some days, I blame the strategists. With each passing election, turnout continues to drop. In other words, fewer and fewer people want the products we try to sell.

In any other industry, people would look at those numbers and ask themselves "How can we broaden our audience? How can we appeal to people who don't want the stuff we're selling now?" That's why the soft drink manufacturers started selling bottled water, why McDonalds is seling white meat chicken products and why Subway and Burger King are offering low-carb sandwiches.

In politics, we write off the people who don't buy and ask how we can shift market share in the continually-dwindling pool. 50 years from now, at this pace, the primary electorate might consist of three farmers, eight guys who chew maple bark and say "Ay-yah" and seven life members of the Jeff Foxworthy fan club. And we'll all still be trying to target them.

But, more and more, I think the problem is "the voters". People say they're tired of business as usual. But, time and again, what wins votes is the same old crap that people say they're tired of. And that's why nothing changes.

Three weeks ago, if you'd wanted to bet that Howard Dean or Dick Gephardt would win Iowa, you'd have had trouble finding anyone to take your money. But thanks to weeks of sliming other candidates-- with a lot of help from slimebags like Joe Lieberman and Al Sharpton-- John Kerry is back in the race.

Kerry hasn't actually persuaded anyone to vote for him-- he's just managed to convince people that Dean is a psychotic nut who can't possibly beat Bush. They're going to Kerry not because they like him, but because he seems less creepy than Dean has sounded.

That's not much of an achievement. And it's not likely to last. If Kerry cripples Dean and Gephradt by winning, then the question in new Hampshire becomes "Who's better-- Kerry, Clark or Edwards?" And that's not a comparsion that John Kerry is likely to win.

If Dick Gephardt were able to connect with voters and draw them to him, he'd be at 45% right now. But he's the politcal equivalent of the supporting actor in those old John Hughes teen movies. He's a nice enough guy and he really wants you to like him. But there's nothing about him that makes you think "I've got to be with him."

There's a rule of thumb in my business. If you've been in the public eye for more than a decade-- that is, a Senator, Governor or senior member of the House-- and people still haven't flocked to you, you're just not going to get over the hump.

Gephardt's campaign knows Iowa better than anyone else and it has spent almost all his money and time in Iowa-- to the point where he doesn't have anything left for any other state. But he still doesn't have a firm lead-- and whatever he wins here won't carry over.

Dean's decision not to respond-- to try to run the ball and kill the clock-- has been a dreadful mistake. He assembled a huge lead by shooting off his mouth and hoping that people would like what they heard-- or at least get turned on by the energy.

Yeah, his delivery and message turned off a lot of people, but he connected often enough to pick up chunks of support. The "smile while people knife you in the gut and make peevish, snippy remarks when they really draw blood" has ruined him. He'll escape the midwest with a top three finish-- maybe even win-- but when he gets to New Hampshire, he'll find Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman waiting with WMD and he'll bleed even more.

If John Edwards were leading, I might be able to say something positive about this whole mess. Edwards has, by and large, declined to go negative on anyone. And it's working to some degree-- people who are truly appalled by the sliming are looking for the candidate who's trying to build his own base-- not tear everyone else's down.

But his message is so bland that he can't pick up the converts. For every committed voter who shifts to Edwards, two more (I think) are throwing up their hands and deciding not to bother with these jokers.

Everyone seems to think turnout in Iowa will be really high. I'll be surprised if that happens. I think you'll be seeing a lot of stories about how bad weather kept people away from the caucuses.

For my money, the reason will be the candidates and their message.

2004-01-09T00:03:00.000-05:00

James Cameron Said it Best

"Listen. Understand. Pete Rose is out there. He can't be reasoned with, it can't be bargained with...He doesn't feel pity of remorse or fear... and he absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until he's elected to the Hall of Fame."

2004-01-01T20:59:00.000-05:00

Nation Building 101

My new year's resolution for the blog was to say more about substance and less about process. The idea behind doing this is to give people who read it something they can use to decode what goes on in elections and policy-making (and to occasionally vent my spleen at stupidity or evil). Since I've never done a post on Iraq, let me give you my two cents about countries.

1. You can't create a country by drawing lines on a map. Countries created by political decisions never last. The only time-tested way to get a cohesive state--where everyone agrees on basic domestic and foreign issues and thinks of themselves as being one people is with a revolution. People have to fight for a set of ideas and win-- it's as simple as that. That's why America is so strong-- we've paid for our ideas in blood.

If there are very strong geographic boundaries, there's a chance of the country staying together until everyone agrees on common ground. But the odds of that are more remote.

Yugoslavia, East Germany, South Vietnam-- they didn't work. You could see the Soviet Union falling to pieces from a long way off. Ultimately North Korea and Northern Ireland aren't going to last. I don't know how long it'll take, but someday we'll see one Korea and one Ireland.

2. It's impossible for someone else to build a country. You can foment revolution and provide significant assistance to the mutineers. In fact, that's often necessary. It would have been awfully hard for the colonies to beat back the English without France's help. The Soviets played a major role in Southeast Asia; we've been supporting Taiwan for decades.

But if the the people you're trying to help don't want to be a country more than you want it, it ain't gonna happen. Countries require an extraordinary amount of cooperation in order to function-- if people don't want to work together, you have to have a huge army and police force to make it work.

3. All countries require time to learn how to govern themselves. If you read the history of about 20 countries, one at a time, you'll find striking similarities in the way they develop. Countries tend to make the same mistakes over and over and over again until they finally figure out what works and what doesn't.

You can try to shorten the learning process by making suggestions and offering advice, but you can't open someone's mouth and pour wisdom and experience down their throats. Either they figure it out themselves or you're just wasting time.

Nuclear weapons have limited the amount of indulgence one can have, obviously. You don't let your child play with guns and you can't let countries have fun with nuclear weapons. But the interesting thing about that issue is that, so far, everyone gets it. If India and Pakistan-- two undisciplined countries that live next to each other and have nukes-- haven't killed themselves yet, it appears that the only nations you have to worry about are the ones run by people who really believe that it's better to die for a cause than live.

The last point, in my mind, is the most critical. If you compare the timelines of countries, you'll see a lot of similarities, with the only differences being in (a) how they were founded, (b) what the geography was and (c) who their neighbors were. To give you a crude example, let's compare China and the US-- two large, populous countries founded by revolution and with immense natural resources, a large, sparsely populated power to the North, less-developed countries to the South.

For the sake of round numbers, let's say the current China has been up and running since 1949, making their government 55 years old. Let's start the clock running on the U.S. in 1787, so we were at the same spot on the timeline in 1842. At that point, we were a human rights nightmare: slaughtering the Indians, slavery, women have no rights--and aren't supposed to do anything but make babies.

Social programs? People working 12-hour days six or seven days a week, no education for children, primitive provisions for health care and seniors, no laws guaranteeing the purity of food, water or medicine.

Foreign policy? We haven't been conquered, but we're separated from everyone else by two oceans and we have the two coolest neighbors on Earth. We'd picked a fight with England and been routed (they burned the Capitol and then said "Stop bugging us"). We'd gone to war with Canada and were about to go to war with Mexico, we were going to fight a Civil War and there are several other military actions coming up.

(Imagine the bloodshed if you have neighbors who like to fight-- say if Canada and France trade places and we have Japan to the south instead of Mexico.)

If you look at all that and say "How do the Chinese compare?", the answer is "pretty well." Yes, they've had 150 more years of history and some good role models to emulate (or bad examples to learn from),. But other countries had abolished slavery and we could have decided to treat the Indians like the British threated the Scots or Irish.

Successful countries eventually notice that incessant border wars and picking fights in regions that you have no reason (other than ego) to fight with are counterproductive. Eventually they notice that the quality of life gets a lot better when they send every child to school. Educating women is still the single best way to solve population issues, infant mortality and economic production-- sooner or later, that penny drops.

So here's where I stand on Iraq. First of all, it isn't a country-- it'a partition created by Great Britan in 1918. Second, it's made up of three distinct regions-- Sunniville, Shiia Acres and Kurdopolis--whose only common beliefs are that (a) they all hate each other and (b) they hate being ruled as one unit by someone else even more. Third, two of the three factions seem to be comfortable with having an appallingly low standard of living and lacking most of the benefits that being a country provides.

Would it be desirable if they would all play nice with each other and concentrate on making Lexuses and growing Olive Trees? Yes. Does it appear that they have any interest in doing that? No. Are they going to rally round even the best attempts at nation-building (not that we've seen any of that)? No.

There are problems in this world that can't be solved by reason or force or bribing. As long as some Palestinians think the best thing they can do with their lives is to strap on bombs and try to blow Israelis up-- and the others think the best course of action is to let it happen, instead of stopping them-- there's not a lot than you can do. Everything we know about human history suggests that they'll figure out that this isn't improving matters, but our knowledge doesn't do a lot of good until it's in their heads.

Similarly, if the Israelis really believe that rebuilding the Berlin Wall is going to solve their problems-- or the Russians think the best thing they can do with their GDP is to rule Chechnya with an iron fist-- or the Chinese continue to fixate on Taiwan and East Timor-- your hands are pretty much tied. You can try to demand good behavior in return for goodies, but if that doesn't work, you don't have a lot of workable options.

This isn't an argument for ignoring human rights or accepting genocide or tyranny. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to stop the bloodshed and suffering; you never know which effort will finally succeed, so it's vital to keep trying. It's not a partisan issue (I don't think any Democrat could succeed here, though they could do a lot less worse).

It's just a recommendation that we apply the lessons of history and basic principles of human development to this issue, and to remember that every developing countries was built on the dead bodies of innocents.

2004-01-01T03:15:00.000-05:00

Who Are The Gang of Five?

Just came back from a New Years Party where l'affaire Plame was the big topic on the agenda. A lot of people were asking the same question that Billmon did: Is it possible that one of the five people who got the tip before Bob Novak has blabbed?

That I don't know. But the investigators would have to be brain-dead not to have gotten at least one of the five. It's not difficult to figure out who to interview, at least. Let me ask you a question:

1. Assume that the facts as stated in this Washington Post story are correct: "two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife."

2. Assume the White House officials followed the etiquette of DC leaking-- You don't offer an exclusive scoop to more than one writer simultaneously. You call the person you want to write it most and don't call your second choice until the first person passes.

Given those assumptions, the White House officials called five people-- each of whom passed on the leak-- before Novak bit. Now here's the question: On what type of list would Robert Novak be the sixth entry?

The answer: A list of ultra-conservative journalists with the ability to reach a national audience.

I mean, you're talking about committing an illegal act-- something that can get you investigated, ostracized and huge legal fees. You're not going to do that to get a piece in the Carbondale, Illinois Gazette, right?

And because it's illegal, the people you call must be on your side. The worst-case scenario isn't being turned down-- it's having the writer pass on the story and then blow the whistle on you. You need someone who won't blab, because they don't want to hurt you.

And we can add one final assumption to the mix: The five people they approached before Novak were savvy enough to pass on the story. Either they weren't willing to out Plame or they realized what sort of hell they'd be in for if they ran the leak.

(That's another reason Novak would be sixth-- he has a reputation for being willing to print anything.)

So who fits that profile? I submit, based on my knowledge of the DC press corps (and seven Grey Goose and tonics) that the following gentlemen (none of whom I've met, by the way) would be the ones I'd go to first:

1. William Safire, The New York Times. The house conservative at the newspaper of record would be the ideal choice. And since he lived through Watergate, he'd know better than to touch the item.

2. George Will, The Washington Post. Another no-brainer, based on prestige and position. And also a guy who'd know better than to touch a bag of snakes like this. Also, he rarely runs leaks.

3. Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post. Also has the great platform; he's always willing to slam enemies of a Republican White House. But, again, he's seen what happens to people who get caught up in scandals. And he usually doesn't run news items.

(In both of the above, there's another piece of circumstantial evidence. The Post is an expose-driven paper-- they love breaking stories that name names. I can only think of one other case where their reporters didn't run a "who dat?" story to death-- the identity of the author of Primary Colors, who turned out to be working for an entity in the Post's media octopus.)

4. Tony Blankley, The Washington Times. It's a big step down in prestige, but he could provide a level of deniability, because he could throw the story to one of his attack dogs. Also, he gets plenty of time on Faux News. But the former press secretary to Newt Gingrich would probably be too smart to go near this.

5. Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard. Another step down in prestige. But he's got a TV show and he's a true believer.

Could be I've gotten only some of them. Could be none of them. Another way to go about this would be to pick the most probable leakers and say "Which writers have been the mouthpieces for Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the past?"

If I ran a journalism class, I'd make it a class project. Wouldn't be hard to dig this out-- if for no other reason than most DC press people drink like fishes and gossip like old ladies.

In any event, we'll eventually find out. Have a happy 2004.

2003-12-31T20:15:00.000-05:00

The Nature of the Beast

Josh Marshall's assessment of what's behind John Ashcroft's decision to recuse himself is spot-on. Of the three possible reasons he gives for the movement, my money is on option three: Ashcroft just got a progress report telling him that high-ranking officials appear to be involved.

I've had some dealings with Ashcroft in the past and he reminds me a lot of his predecessor, John Danforth: an extremely bright and principled man whose religious beliefs and personal convictions make me cringe.

I wouldn't live in Ashcroft's America, but he isn't a venal, hypocritical thug like many of the people in W's regime. I don't doubt, for example, that he sincerely believes that it's better to trample civil liberties than lose the war on terror. (Of course, he's probably felt that many of them should never have existed.) Both papers of record (look here and here) imply that he blindsided the White House-- presented his decision as a fait accompli.

Why'd they permit it? Because they had to, I suspect-- the alternative was accepting the Attorney General's resignation. And those four words, I think, explain almost everything about how W's regime works.

All decisions made by elected officials are political to some degree, but the balance varies from person to person. I always draw a triangle for my clients, the each side represents a different force. Conviction is the stuff you do because you sincerely believe it is best is for the people you govern-- it's the stuff you'll do even if the polls show that it's not popular. Logistics represents the moves you make to keep the wheels of government turning. They're not things you want to do-- they're things you do to convince others to do things for you. Last, but not least, tactics are the things you do to advance your career-- to get re-elected, or position yourself for a move to higher office.

For example, suppose you're the mayor of a large city. The finance department reports that tax receipts are down; logistics require you to cut the budget. Studies show your city has 20% more policemen than other cities its size; your convictions tell you to make cutbacks there. But the police union will go ballistic if you cut them, and that will provoke the media to review your crime statistics-- meaning you'll have a tactical problem if you do.

Also, the officers who are left might punish you by increased absenteeism-- taking every single day off they're allowed under their contract. To make sure you're properly staffed (conviction), you'll need to pay the officers who will come to work overtime (logistics). But the overtime will cost you millions, so you won't really save money (tactical). But if you don't staff fully, you're risking a scandal if the media finds out (tactical). And you think it's wrong to let the union get away with blackmail.

To get things resolved properly, you have to announce the shortfall and cut more low-profile employees than you'd like to (because nobody protests when you cut the law department). You propose police layoffs that aren't nearly as high as you think they ought to be and offer the union a chance to make concessions to save most of them. If they turn it down, you can tell the media that you had to make cuts and you offered a deal. As a pre-emptive strike, you release figures showing that police absenteeism and overtime are high, and that's played a big role in the shortfall.

In a perfect world, you'd just make the cuts you think proper. But in the world of American politics, you have to play these games so you can stay in office and do the stuff you want to do.

In the typical mix of policy decisions made by the executive branch (Mayor, Governor, President), I'd guess conviction drives between 25% and 40%. Tactics (re-election or moving up) constitutes 20-40%; logistics (what you do to manage the government) makes up the other 20-40%.

(The numbers are different for legislators, because it's easy to get re-elected and you can't get anything done by yourself. Conviction and tactics probably make up 10-20%, with the rest being logistics-- trading with the leadership or colleagues. This assumes, of course, that you want to get bills passed. If you know you're in the minority and don't care, you can speak your mind on everything, but you'll never get anything done.)

Most presidencies fluctuate between conviction and logistics, because they only have one more election. Two-term presidents are usually 40% conviction, 40% logistics and 20% reelection. Both Reagan, Clinton and Nixon pushed an agenda, worked hard at getting things through and figured they'd get re-elected if their ideas worked. It's a little risky (they were both struggling at the three-year mark), but if your ideas are what people want, it will work.

Except for logistics, I haven't noticed a minimum threshold for any factor; Carter, Ford, Bush I and Truman all put 10% of their energies into seeing that things got done and they all ended up losing. Eisenhower, on the other hand, was 70% logistics, 20% conviction and 10% reelection and people loved him.

(Johnson is a special case. Since he had the luxury of knowing he was going to face weak opposition, he put most of his energy toward convictions and logistics and got scads of things done. But you can't lie to voters about something like a war and get away with it. Nixon isn't a special case; he got re-elected and would have served out his term if he hadn't been a crook.)

W's regime is the first tactical presidency since Warren Harding. His conviction/logistics/tactics ratio is absurdly skewed-- something like 10-30-60. With the possible exception of faith-based initiatives, these people simply don't think about anything except getting re-elected. Everything is geared toward energizing the base. Since the base has an extreme ideology, they're polarizing the country. But that's being done to cement political power--they're acting based on where they think they need to be to stay in charge.

Tax cuts? They get you contributions from the rich folks, support from the ideologies who want to kill the New Deal and approval ratings from blue-collar white men (whom they control 84-16).

Faith-based initiatives and wingnut judges? This regime is built upon evangelicals and of the swing voters, 75% want the president to be a man of strong religious conviction.

Iraq? The neocons had agendas-- and W. seems to have hated Saddam Hussein from Day 1. But they were pursuing an isolationist agenda until 9/11. They needed to show progress in the war on terror-- when they couldn't find Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, they needed a high-profile win. There were three widely-known Arab leaders left, and they never would have been able to get Congressional permission to wipe out Yasser Arafat or Hosni Mubarak.

The focus on re-election has even controlled the ebb and flow of personalities. Originally, they made efforts to put Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice out front, so they could serve as tools for courting the black vote. When they realized that Powell was too moderate to appeal to wingnuts and Rice got them into trouble with her lack of attention to detail and frequent gaffes in public, they've vanished from view.

The neocons, I think, rose because they were the only people insisting that they knew how to provide the decisive political victory the re-election effort needed. When that blew up, they've lost the reins.

The best picture of how these guys work has been presented by two pieces in Esquire. I present, for your enlightenment, the following links:

1. Ron Suskind's brilliant profile of Karl Rove. The backbone of the piece is the unhappy tenure of John DiIulio as head of the faith-based initiative program. For some stupid reason, Esquire has this piece offline, but the article is available on Susskind's site.

2. The text of the DiIulio letter. After DiIulio was interviewed, he sent Suskind a seven-page letter that presented additional insights. The 'money grafs' are in the piece, but the framing is equally valuable. It's available on the Esquire site.

3. Suskind's profile of Karen Hughes. Hughes, W's longtime aide, is said to be the one person who can humanize his tendency to veer far to the right to court the worst elements of his base. Esquire has this piece online too.

I keep having arguments with people who say "I don't understand why they're doing this." DiIulio's soundbite-- "Mayfair Machiavellis" tells you everything you need to know.

The only saving grace is that there is a way to beat people like this-- and, if you pay attention, they'll help you beat them. You have to hit them where they're weak-- and you can see where they're weak by watching where they move.

People who deal entirely in tactics are vulnerable because they respond to every problem in the same way. When it comes up, their first instinct is to "stay strong"--refuse to give any ground until it's absolutely necessary to do so. When they begin taking losses, they'll retreat to whatever position they think they need to hold on.

W. and Karl Rove aren't Reagan and Ed Meese-- I don't see a single issue that they'll dig in on, regardless of what it does to them in the polls. If they take a step back, it's not because they've changed their minds-- it's because they're trying to put out a fire. And because the need to seem strong is always paramount, they're always going to concede the absolute minimum they feel is required.

You can assume that there is a fallback position, a position behind that and maybe one or two more until you hit the spot where you either strike a conviction or reach a point where they can't retreat any more without getting the true believers angry with them. If you look at the original position, the new one and calculate the angle of retreat, you can guess where they're heading and why.

So, yeah, Josh Marshall is right-- something's out there with the Plame affair. It isn't bad enough to convince them to bite the bullet and announce Ashcroft is tired and returning to private life. But it's got to be something that conveys an overwhelming impression of guilt. My guess would be phone logs-- the White House switchboard or cell phone records show a pattern of calls to a series of right-wing columnists that end with conversations with Robert Novak.

Halliburton is out of the gasoline business because there's something even worse. And it's quite possible that the shift from "Read my lips-- no meat inspections" to "no downer cows" is only the first step in a chain.

The challenge to the Democrats is to stop trying to nuke Howard Dean keep pushing Bush, and to say things that compel the media to follow. Trust me on this, there's more there there, and it can be brought out. The question is merely-- are the good guys up to the job?

2003-12-31T16:57:00.000-05:00

W's Spring Cleaning

It's been an interesting couple of days, hasn't it? After months of claiming that a political appointee of the President could so investigate goings-on inside the White House, John Ashcroft bowed out of the investigation of the leak about Valerie Plame's identity.

Meanwhile, after a week of doggedly insisting that the current level of inspections and safeguards on meat were sufficient, the Department of Agriculture has banned the slaughter of "downer" cows.

Last, but not least, the U.S. Army has decided that $2.64 is a tad much to pay for a gallon of gasoline. Dick Cheney's bubbies at Halliburton are out; competitive bidding is in.

Wassup? In a word, re-election. When politicians gear up to run again, the first step is a self-inventory. Every position that you think can hurt you (and if you have the money, you test this stuff through polling) has to be neutralized.

Elected officials can get away with murder during most of their tenure. Unless the media continually reminds the voters, they forget the various bad decisions, sleazy deals and idiotic statements you make. (How many of you, for example, remember whether W's EPA did finally roll back the standards on arsenic in drinking water?)

In a campaign-- with an opponent stirring the pot every day and a media that will report any juicy charge-- you can't get away with it. So you have to shed what liabilities you can. You tell the beef industry, "Guys, there are only 195,000 downer cows and 35,000,000 healthy ones-- we can't take the bullet for you on this."

This bodes well for the country-- if not the Demcrats-- for the next 10 months. The chances of Roy Moore being nominated to the federal bench are nil. We can expect to see a very moderate State of the Union address-- with a lot of talk about funding social programs. Maybe there will even be a few positive developments.

We'll also learn exactly where the balance of power lies between the White House and Congress. Most of the wonks I talk to think that the wingnuts in Congress are forces of nature, pretty much operating without restraints-- that they're capable of waking up one morning and enacting a law mandating the replacement of Thomas Jefferson (the only Democrat on Mount Rushmore) with Ronald Reagan.

I'm of the opinion that W's regime has a much stronger hand in the bills than people think. It's in their interest to let people think Congress does its thing unchecked (bad cop to W's good cop). My best is that they will visibly chafe under a heavy hand this year. But we'll see.

The thing to remember is that most of what we'll see and hear until November isn't real. W's regime is going to shave and get a nice haircut, trim off some extra pounds and make an effort to play nice with others. But what they say they'll do and what they'll actually do if they get the chance are completely different things.

Now, more than ever, it's important for everyone to not let up on these guys-- don't let them breathe.

2003-12-30T03:14:00.000-05:00

Can You Hear Me Now?

Just a couple of comments about today's Mad Cow story. The more I think about it, the more I believe that this issue is the one that brings all the chickens home to roost:

1. W's guys are showing their usual knack for diplomacy. From the guys that brought you the "Invade Iraq with us because we want you to, dickheads!" coalition-building initiative, comes the "Buy our tainted meat because we need your money, buttwipes!" trade negotiations.

This approach is having no more success than the first one. And there's no reason it should. In fact, it ought to have much less. People base decisions-- at least to some degree-- on their own self-interest. The trick to getting people to help you is to persuade them that doing what you want will benefit them in some way. That, plus a sense of past obligation, future incentives and personal or professional rapport, is what gets people to stick their necks out for you.

Iraq, at least, had one viable argument. Even if you stipulate that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 or al-Quaeda or the war on terror, you could at least say "Removing Saddam Hussein will benefit the people of Iraq in the short run, make the country (at some point) a more stable place and eventually improve the climate in the Middle East."

Maybe that's not convincing enough to get a country to send troops, but it is at least something worthy of discussion. But what's the incentive to buy meat that you have reason to think is tainted? How do you benefit from that decision? Especially since you know (because you saw it with the WMD issue) that this regime lies to suit its own ends.

How do you know that the Agriculture Department's version of Paul Wolfowitz (and you know such a creature exists wthin the department, right?) won't say, several years later, "We knew there was a possibility that we had more bad meat in the system, but we felt the threat to our economy outweighed the risks of concealing this information"? What's the reward for taking that risk with your citizens?

I have no idea if that scenario is likely, mind you. But if you're running another country, why would you want to place yourself in a position to be hurt?

2. Another issue that affects the decision is the White House's refusal to provide any political cover for its partners. One of the underlying principles of politics is that you never force someone to do things that can jeopardize their career. If supporting a bill will get you in trouble with your constituents, no one expects your vote. In fact, it's considered to be in bad taste even to ask for support.

W's regime has shown total contempt for that principle-- both with Congress, with Governors and foreign heads of state. Tony Blair held onto his majority by the skin of his teeth (and immense ineptitude on the opposition). Germany, Korea-- there have been a bunch of leaders that have been put in play by W's policies. In each case, the administration did nothing to make their lives easier.

If this had happened on Bill Clinton's watch, the reponse would have been predictable: an immediate ban on the slaughter of "downed" cows (animals tooo sick to be able to stand), a ban on any animal-based feed or supplement (the disease was believed to have been caused by a supplment that used animal blood) and the announcement of stringent testing on every aninmal whose meat was designated for sale overseas.

I can almost hear the Big Dawg soundbite: "The U.S. Government will do everything in its power to guarantee that none of the meat we export is in any way harmful to the citizens of other nations." That's all it takes to stop the panic-- the announcement that you're going to take the blame and you're going to fix the problem.

W's response-- blame Canada and insist that the regulations in place are already sufficient (even though you've just had one case)-- isn't going to do it. Especially since he spit out the same "We know what we're doing" pitch when Enron and the WMD scandals hit. Maybe it's not bluster-- maybe they do sincerely believe they've got everything under control... But with that track record, why trust them?

3. Today marks the first day that I wished Joe Biden were running for President. Because what this issue really needs is one of his patented, "aw shucks" disingenuous solliloquoys of the sort he used on Robert Bork:

"Mr. President, I wish you could explain your Agriculture Department's policies to me. According to your estimates, over 195,000 "downer" cows are butchered every years. A "downer" cow is an animal that arrives at the processing plant to sick or too injured to walk.

"Wouldn't you be curious about why an animal couldn't walk? Wouldn't simple common sense make you want to test that animal before you allowed it to be butchered and sold for meat?

"But, Mr. President, your Department of Agriculture only tested 20,000 animals last year. That's only 10% of the animals that couldn't walk, for heavens sake. And there are 35 million more animals that can walk butchered in the United States every year. 20,000 cows is only one-half of one percent of all the cattle.

"According to the news reports, meat from that one infected cow went to eight different states and the territory of Guam. How many states would be affected if there were two cows? Or five-- or ten?

"Mr. President, I realize that we might not be able to test every single cow. But not testing 99.5% of them? Mr. President, how can you tell us that our meat is truly safe?

And if you really want to ratchet the rhetoric up-- if you want to generate panic-- there's even ammunition for that. One of the arguments for no new regulation is that the diseased cow was infected in 1997-- over a year before the current regulations on feed were imposed.

Sounds imposing, right? Let's give it a spin. If the animal was infected in 1997, that means the disease wasn't noticed for six years. Can you think of any other diseases that can show no symptons for six years?

If the penny still isn't dropping, let me channel a little Dennis Kucinich for you:

"Ladies and Gentlemen, almost 25 years ago, another Republican president was faced with the emergence of a new and horrifying disease with an acronym for a name. As is true with BSE, someone could be infected for years without showing any signs of illness. Like the BSE outbreak, the victims would appear completely normal-- signs would only appear when the disease was in its advanced stages, long after the victims had had the opportunity to infect others.

"Responsible scientists and doctors warned that we were on the verge of an outbreak of terrifying proportions-- that unless the government committed itself to extensive research, education and strict controls on our blood supply, millions of innocent people would suffer.

"But the Reagan administration's responded to the challenge of the epidemic by ignoring it and belittling the people who tried to warn them. There was no possibility, they assured us, of this doomsday scenario occurring.

"But Ladies and Gentlemen, time has shown us that the researchers were right. Tens of millions of people currently suffer from the deadly disease of AIDS. Current studies show that we can expect tens of millions more to suffer.

"We cannot allow this Republican administration to perpetrate another epidemic on the citizens of this country by denying that a problem exists and folding its arms and sitting on its hands again."

Yes, I know the syntax is a little garbled and the prose is purple. That's Dennis's rhetorical signature (as long as I'm imitating, I might as well do it right) and I'm caricaturing a little for emphasis. It's a nuclear attack targeted directly at a theme that resonates with voters: You can't trust the Republic Party to regulate business. They put profits first and you'll end up sick, injured or dead if you give them free reign.

I'm sure Matt Yglesias would sneer at this pandering and Kevin Drum would be appalled by the soaring demagoguery. But, hey, we're in a war and the other side is throwing terms like coward, treason and hatred around. You wanna have an ettiquette contest or you wanna win?

2003-12-29T01:58:00.000-05:00

The Voice of Sagacity

Memo to the eight dwarves: Stories like this one are the reason that Howard Dean is whomping your sorry butts.

One of the reasons that Democrats continue to get whipped is that they don't have a clue about how they're perceived-- and, as a result, what issues resonate with voters.

Defense, for example, is an issue where it's simply not possible to make progress. No matter how much we bluster, we're going to be thought of as overintellectual commie-loving wimps who lack the testicular matter needed to do things right. Unless the opponent is card-carrying peacenik, voters will perceive you as softer and weaker.

(Sam Nunn spent decades as a vocal, unregenerated hawk-- advocating just about every weapons system ever proposed. When he thought about running for President in 1988, polls showed he was losing big on defense and foreign policy to Bush I.)

It's important not to punt the issue-- you don't want to lose 80-20 on defense questions. But the best you can do is shave points-- get the numbers to 55-45 and make people think "He's a lib'ral, but he's pretty smart and he's got good generals and they can probably talk sense into him."

Same deal on crime, social programs and taxes. If you try to stake out the high ground, you're beating your head against the wall unless the opponent is perceived as a complete whacko.

But there are issues where Democrats have the home-field advantage, and Mad Cow disease is one of them.

It is universally understood by the voters that the platform of the Republic Party is unalterably opposed to pure food, clean water, unpolluted air and medication that performs as advertised without side effects. Given a choice between a .02% difference in dividends on the stock and killing 50,000,000 people, anyone of voting age knows that 9 out of 10 wingnuts will take the money and deal with the class-action suits when and if they get into a court.

Over the last 30 years, every time a wingnut has tried to mess with a protection that affects food, water or air, it blows up. When Bush I tried to stall renewals of existing programs, his negatives mushroomed and he backed away..

I know it happened the day before the day of Christmas Eve... But four days? Jeez, guys-- you just have to do better than that. Had this been a case of a gay soldier diagnosed with AIDS, the wingnut corps would have been blasting the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy all over their airwaves.

Well, at least Dean's blast frames the issue perfectly:

1. After the Mad Cow Disease outbreak in England, their government passed laws to make sure it could never happen again. The US Government didn't make the same changes, because the wingnuts in the House and Senate blocked them.

2. The panic caused by this outbreak will cost U.S. farmers jillions of dollars.

3. The panic could have been prevented by enacting stronger laws. W's regime didn't push for them.

4. If the cost of testing every cow would add only three cents to the cost of a pound of beef, we should do it.

The last point is the truly beautiful piece of work. If you're opposed to inspecting every cow, you're arguing that human life is worth less than 3c a pound.

Dick Gephardt didn't do too bad a job, by the way. Dean's presentation was much more effective, because he related them to another country's solution to an outbreak. Gephardt's proposals just sound like more regulations (also a bad issue for Democrats) that were proposed after the fact (monday morning quarterbacking).

John Kerry's proposal-- federal aid to farmers who suffer losses from the scare-- is a "Greatest Hits" of bad policy construction. He's going to:

1. Distribute government money (always a popular idea).
2. Target a group of people who already get subsidies.
3. Compensate them for losses that can't be verified (how do you know how much beef someone might have sold?).
4. Offer sums that are probably inadequate to cover the losses.
5. Require absolutely no quid pro quo (audits or stronger standards).

Well, I suppose we should applaud Kerry for taking only four days to decide that "Mad Cow Disease is Bad". Wonder if he'll be able to stick to it.

By the way, here's a nifty article on the subject of prevention.

2003-12-10T02:25:00.000-05:00

You Know Me, Al

Dear God, please forgive me for the four words I am about to utter: Andrew Sullivan is right. Sort of.

Obviously Al Gore's endorsement is a big media event. And Gore phrased his endorsement for maximum impact. He didn't merely say that he endorsed Dean because he agrees with Dean's stands-- he said Dean was the candidate most likely get the grassroots support that Democrats need. In other words, Dean was the candidate most likely to win.

Let me do a real quick point-counterpoint on the significance:

Pro: Gore's endorsement will have a huge impact, because he's the first major politician to say what everyone else already knows. Dean is the only candidate who has run anything more than a mediocre campaign. Dick Gephardt is running adequately but unoriginally. Wesley Clark has performed like a talented amateur. The others have just flat-out stunk.

Maybe Howard Dean isn't capable of reigning in his ego and appealing to swing voters. Maybe he can't beat W. But the rest of these jokers couldn't beat any Republic Party ticket from the last 44 years the way they're running now. Maybe Clark or Gephardt or John Edwards could develop enough skills to whip the Dole-Kemp (1996), Ford-Dole (1976) or Goldwater-Miller (1964) slates.

Unless the war and the economy completely crater, there's no possibility that they can beat a well-financed, professional opponent like W. They've had months to get their acts together-- they can't raise money, they can't craft a coherent message and they can't deliver ideas convincingly. Only Clark is making any progress.

By announcing that the other emperors have no clothes and saying that he's getting behind Dean because he's the only one with a shot, Al Gore is going to take out a lot of the pretenders in this campaign. It's now possible for everyone to discuss how inept Dean's opponents are, because Gore made it a legitimate news story.

Anti: Al Gore's endorsement is a one-day story because nobody outside the beltway and the media cares what he thinks. Al Gore is as qualified to judge someone's electability as he is to pick the best dancer, or the guy with the best sense of humor. His ineptness as a campaigner is legendary.

20 years ago, when Gore tried to run for president on his own, he couldn't make any headway against Walter Mondale, Gary Hart and John Glenn. He thought about running in 1988 and decided he couldn't beat Michael Dukakis, Jesse Jackson and Gephardt.

Even after Bill Clinton picked Gore out of obscurity and handed him the nomination, Gore struggled to beat Bill Bradley to keep the nomination. Once he got it, he decided that the best thing he could do with Clinton was to tell him not to campaign for him-- and he spent a good part of the 2000 campaign distancing himself from Clinton or attacking him.

Gore was one of the few Democratic nominees to fail to carry his home state in November. Had he been able to achieve a feat the Jimmy Carter, Mondale or Dukakis achieved, he would have won the presidency. Granted that a majority of the people who voted picked Gore-- but only because there wasn't any other credible alternative to Bush. And a lot of people were so turned off that they didn't vote.

I don't think people hate Al Gore-- or if they would (as some people claim) would shun a candidate that Gore endorsed. But there's no way they're going to react to this news by saying "Hey, if Al says Dean, than's all I need to know."

Gore doesn't have legions of supporters who have been sitting on their hands. He can't deliver any region in the country. The states he won last time were Democratic strongholds-- they'll support anyone who gets the nomination. He sure as hell doesn't have a staff of political pros who can sign onto Dean's campaign and kick things up a few notches (they're the guys dragging Clark and Kerry down).

An endorsement from Gore will create a big stir in the media for a couple of days, and it'll spark lots of gossip from the people who do nothing but gossip about politics. Other than that, it's a non-story.

Now if Bill Clinton endorses Dean-- if he says "Al's absolutely right; we need to get behind Dean"-- that's a big deal. People do respect the Big Dawg's judgement about politics and his opinion would carry a lot of weight.

But my nickel says the majority of Democratic voters would sooner take dating tips from Al Gore than listen to him about who to run against W.

2003-12-07T22:13:00.000-05:00

Enter Clark Clifford

Josh Marshall has the correct take on W's decision to send James Baker III to Iraq to straighten out the foreign debt:

"Let's remember what Baker's specialty is. Yes, he was White House Chief of Staff, Treasury Secretary, Secretary of State and various other things. But his real specialty is coming in to save the day when men named George Bush look like they're about to lose their presidencies. He's the family fixer. He did that in 1992 when he gave up State to run Bush's campaign. And he did it eight years later in 2000 when he went to Florida to run the recount battle. The phone just rang again ..."

A couple of sentences--taken from the transcript of the 1992 presidential debates-- indicate just how highly the Bush family thinks of Baker. When asked "How would you specifically use the powers of the presidency to get more people back into good jobs immediately?", here's what Dad replied:

" What I'm going to do is say to Jim Baker when this campaign is over, all right, let's sit down now, you do in domestic affairs what you've done in foreign affairs, be kind of the economic coordinator of all the domestic side of the House, and that includes all the economic side, all the training side, and bring this program together."

Think about that for a minute. The President of the United States-- asked how he's going to personally fix the economy when he's fighting for his political life-- says he's going to solve the economic problems by delegating them to Jim Baker.

(Bush's promise, by the way, inspired one of the most stinging rejoinders I've ever heard (I've still never seen dials leap that fast): "The person responsible for domestic economic policy in my administration will be Bill Clinton.")

Baker's cool, genteel image is one of the great facades of our time. People who know him or have worked with him all say he's a whip-smart, viciousm no-nonsense SOB who plays the hardest brand of ball there is. After the Gulf War, people connected to British intelligence told a story about a very brief meeting he had with Taraq Aziz just before the invasion began. The message: If you use chemical weapons on our troops, we'll nuke Baghdad.

Baker won't go on the ground to hold a few meetings. He's going there to get W. out of trouble. His presence on the ground makes three scenarios-- none of which are mutually exclusive-- possible:

1. Saudi Arabia will pony up billions at once. Osama bin Laden hates the U.S., but he despises the Saudi royal family. He's made more threats against the Saudis than he has against the U.S., and the Saudis are terrified of him.

If the U.S. leaves Iraq-- either because the cost of peacekeeping is killing the economy or because the war makes W. unelectable-- Al-Qaeda can move in. And being next door makes it much easier to stage operations.

Baker is the kind of guy who will be more than happy to point that out. And he doesn't make empty threats.

2. The UN will get a substantial role in Irag. Baker isn't an ideologue-- he's a mechanic. He has no respect for the neocons and he's not interested in remaking the world to match their fantasies.

He's there to keep W. in office-- and to make sure the backlash from Iraq doesn't poison the well for Jeb's run. He won't want to make W. look stupid by publicly backing down, so he'll negotiate hard. But if he needs to hand off power to get concessions from France, Germany and Russia, he'll do it.

3. The U.S. could pull out. When you're old, rich, powerful and really, really good at what you do, you have a wonderful luxury-- the ability to tell people in power exactly what you think.

They can't hurt you, because youve already got all the goodies that you'll ever have, want or need. And since they need you more than you need them, you're free to speak your mind.

Baker was chief of staff in the Reagan White House. He was Secretary of State and Treasury for Dad. He's too old to be president, and that's the only step up he could take. So he doesn't have to mince words with Sonny.

Which means there's a chance that we get a replay of another episode from Vietnam.

In 1967, Lyndon Johnson asked his version of Jim Baker-- legendary Washington lawyer Clark Clifford-- to step in for Bob McNamara as Secretary of Defense. Clifford's mission: find a way to win the Vietnam War, or at least get the issue under enough control to let Johnson run for re-election and win in 1968.

Clifford analyzed the situation, decided the war was unwinnable and told Johnson what no one else in the government dared to say: This situation is a losing proposition-- get out.

There's no possibility that W. won't run again. Johnson was a bully, who preferred to run, rather than fight and lose. W. is a bulldog, who'll slug it out until his last breath.

But if Baker tells W. "Get out of this thing or you're going to lose", the only person who'll be able to talk W. out of that is Karl Rove. And my reading of Rove is that he's a thuggish opportunist who doesn't want to lose the White House. I can't see him standing up to Baker.

(As a matter of fact, I don't think he'd disagree with Baker. I think Rove signed onto Iraq because the war on terror needed an easy win and he believed the neocons when they said Iraq would be it.)

Some of this could happen. All of it could happen. But there's no denying that a huge proxy fight is already beginning. One snarky quote from Mark Matthews's article shows that:

"Heads of state don't deal with mechanics," a senior administration [official] said yesterday. "Where those conversations go, I don't know. He doesn't know."

But it'll sure be interesting to find out.

2003-12-06T23:09:00.000-05:00

Go Ahead, Make Rush Limbaugh's Day

The good thing about blogging is that it lets anyone argue a position to a mass audience. It also allows a people with a staggering lack of background knowledge to sound off. The recent cry to "Make Hillary Clinton the Senate Majority Leader" is a really good example.

Part of this argument can be traced back to the understandable frustration with Tom Daschle. Calling him the 'worst majority leader ever' is hyperbole-- given the obstacles he faces (an irresponsible, jingoistic House, a fragmenting coalition, highly-organized lobbying, and a "Take No Prisoners" WHite House), I think he's performed fairly well. George Mitchell, who had fewer problems, actually accomplished a lot less.

That said, Daschle frequently misjudges the mood of both his coalition and the mood of the country. When an issue arise, it's the majority leader's job to stake out his party's basic position. Daschle's first public response to an issue often gets blasted by both wings of the party. The liberals and conservatives have to publicly drag him to the spot that he should have been standing in the first place.In an era when the Senate Majority Leader is the last line of defense, that's not acceptable. He'd be doing the party a favor if he stepped down.

But it ain't likely to happen. I studied the history of congressional party leadership in college; only one Senate party leader (Robert Byrd, who gave up the job to take Appropriations, so he could funnel more pork to his district) has ever vacated the positon without leaving the Senate or dying. Assuming Daschle doesn't want to set that historic precedent, the only option is to support the vomitous John Thune.

But let's say he goes. Who should replace him? Dan of Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics has posted twice about this. I agree with his first first response (it's not enough to get rid of him unless you have someone better) in principle. And his secondassessment of the alternatives is about 85% right (I think he's too hard on several good choices).

What's wrong with Hillary? Frankly, everything. There are three traits that have traditionally produced a successful congressional leader (majority leader or speaker-- whips are special cases):

1. Someone in absolutely safe seat. The man or woman has to be able to take a position with absolutely no worries about being re-elected. You can't have someone who has to constantly worry about raising money or how their actions might hurt them in a re-election campaign-- you want someone who rolls up 60-70% majorities, and often has token opposition.

Hillary Clinton will never, ever have a safe seat. She's a polarizing figure who will always face well-funded challengers. She got only 54% of the vote in her first run-- and her opponent, Rick Lazio, was an incredibly inept challenger. If Rudy Giuliani decides that his health problems are a thing of the past, he's got a great shot to beat her next time out. Putting Hillary in a role where she has to espouse consensus positions that she might not agree with ties an anchor around her neck.

(Daschle, by the way, doesn't score as badly on this as some people think-- his vote totals were in the 60's his last two runs (in 1986, he was facing a popular moderate. Tim Johnson's slim majorities create the impression that Daschle is in danger of losing his seat. While you can't be 100% sure what will happen if the wingnuts go after him, I think he''s safe.)

2. Someone perceived to be as non-ideological as possible. If a senator stays with the coalition on a touchy issue, the opponent will always say "How could you possibly vote with this person?" the next time around. You're looking for someone who comes across as centrist, or you lose people at both fringes. And if that happens, the leadership has to hope they can court someone across the aisle-- if they can't, they lose.

You put Hillary in charge, you make it ungodly difficult for anyone in a moderate state to stay onboard in a hot issue. There will be people who are people who'll argue that Daschle is a wild-eyed liberal, but that doesn't fly in most swing states. But it Hillary is running Senate Dems, some of the folks who filibustered W's wingnut judges would have had to bail.

3. Someone who doesn't want to be President. In order to be a good party leader, you have to agree to serve. Hillary won't.

The party leader in both the House and Senate has one job: pass legislation. The good ones have to focus on getting bills through--even if they're not exactly what they personally want to see enacted. Leaders who don't pass bills are seen as weak-- and weak leaders don't get elected.

And if you do pass legislation, what you pass gets held against you in the party primaries. Every compromise shows that you're not a true believer in the principles that made the party great. Rather, you're an opportunist who can't be trusted to lead.

Since the party leader positions were established in 1913, only one (Lyndon Johnson) has ever become president--and that was thanks to an assassin's bullet and the quixotic nomination of Barry Goldwater. Only two other leaders (Alben Barkley and Charles Curtis) ever became Vice-President. Joe Robinson and Charles McNary were VP nominees when their party got smoked.

Meanwhile, a slew of leaders who did their jobs well--Bob Taft, Howard Baker, Everett Dirksen, Mike Mansfield and Hugh Scott--never could get anyone excited enough to want to vote for them when they tried to run. Hey, Bob Dole only got the nomination due to a dearth or alternatives.

The senators who won-- Truman, Kennedy, Nixon--are always the backbenchers. When a nasty issue arose-- the ones that make enemies no matter where you stand-- they were almost always missing in action. Being able to duck let them run with a clean slate.

I don't think Hillary would be much of a presidential candidate. But I know if she gets a leadership role, she wouldn't make any kind of a candidate. And I'm sure someone close to her understands that fact-- which is why she'll never accept a job if anyone were crazy enough to sound her out.

So who should? That's the problem. Dan's post basically sets the following standards: (a) to increase the odds of them spending at least 10 years in the post, under 60; (b) has spent at least one full term in the Senate; (c) is in a safe seat; (d) isn't too liberal; (e) since Nancy Pelosi is leader in the House, male; (f) has done something to distinguish himself or herself.

Those rules eliminate everyone but Rhode Island's Jack Reed. And he's actually a superb choice-- aged 54, in his second termMasters in Public Policy from Harvard and a Harvard Law Degree, former Army Ranger who taught at West Point, serves on Armed Services and is already a deputy whip. Rolled up a 63% majority in his first term and won almost 3-1 in 2002.

Barring that--- hey, I'd like to be married to a swimsuit model who is a life member of Mensa, an accomplish jazz pianist and a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. You takes what life offers. Chuck Schumer is an awfully gifted candidate--and since he's been in Congress for years, he didn't just fall off the turnip truck. Nevada's Harry Reid and New Mexico's Jeff Bingaman would make good bridges to the Rocky Mountain states, they're already in the leadership and they aren't as undistinguished as Dan makes them sound. Pelosi has done such a nifty job that you might want to tap Dianne Feinstein and see if history repeats. And both Jon Corzine of New Jersey and Mark Dayton of Minnesota have real interesting long-term potential.

Finally, I don't want to start a whole big thing about this-- which is why I don't have comments-- but why is it wrong to say that women shouldn't control both slots? We don't have a problem putting two men in charge, do we? White men are opting out of the Democratic Party in droves-- it might be time to say "Hey, if you're gonna go, go."

2003-12-06T20:41:00.000-05:00

When Did We Start Playing Jeopardy?

I see Raggedy Andy has his panties in a bunch again. Howard Dean made the type of mistake that a lot of of smart people make, and Sully decides that he's unfit to be president as a result.

I believe the last word on this issue-- at least it was when a wingnut got caught in this type of crossfire-- is ''The person who is running for president is seeking to be the leader of the free world, not a Jeopardy contestant."

My guess is that-- in the four years since he failed to name the leaders of Chechnya, Taiwan, India and Pakistan-- W. has probably learned the name of Pervaiz Musharraf (he has met the guy) and the first name of the Taiwanese leader. But I'd lay even money he still misses the other two.

Did Howard Dean say something unconscionably stupid when he kept saying "Soviet Union" for "Russia" when asked how we could keep nuclear equipment out of Iran? Only in a political sense. Any governor who runs for president is presumed to know nothing about foreign affairs until he proves otherwise. Dean made a mistake that every opponent will throw in his face.

But why he did it? And how could he do it? According to recent studies, there is a perfectly sensible reason. Bright people tend to store information conceptually-- the specific term used to refer to the item is secondary.

If the name for the item or concept changes, it's much harder for those people to remember it. For example, I am aware that the NFL's "Houston Oilers" moved to Tennessee, but I still forget in casual conversation. (I have the same problem with "African American" for 'black" just like my parents used to sometimes call blacks "negroes".)

There are differences between the Soviet Union and Russia. Russia isn't run by Communists, they don't have colonies, they're not spending immense amounts of money funneling arms and foreign aid to totalitarian regimes and I don't continually worry about them trying to take over the world or getting into a war with them.

That said, it's still a regime with immense resources that aren't being harvested, an inept and brutal government, a standard of living much, much lower than it should be, staggering levels of corruption, lack of respect for the rule of law and a foreign policy driven in part by a chip on the shoulder about the west's opinion of itself.

In other words, I've modified my opinion of the place, but I wouldn't say it's changed that much. The China of 30 years ago is actually a much more different place than the Soviet Union.

Update: I found a copy of the introduction to The Seven Sins of Memory (the best introduction to the subject) online. This page introduces the concept that Dr. Schacter calls "blocking", in which the author mentions "Proper names of people and places are especially vulnerable to blocking... we can’t come up with a proper name or a common name, yet often can provide a great deal of information about it, including the initial letter and number of syllables."

2003-11-30T23:22:00.000-05:00

A Foolish Consistency

Well, at least Glenn Reynolds's credulity isn't confined to politics. He just touted the biotechnology version of the Douglas Feith memo.

The company in this New Scientist article claims it can recreate anyone's stem cells from one pint of their blood. If they can, the process would reshape medicine as we know it. There would be no need to harvest stem cells (a costly process) or mess around with embryos (also costly and it also gets the fetal rights wingnuts upset). It might let doctors eliminate "everything from heart disease to Parkinson's disease" simply by implanting healthy cells at afflicted spots.

It would also mean that every other molecular and cellular biologist in the world has been barking up the wrong tree, and that most of what science believes to be true about cell development in the human body is wrong.

The article notes this, and also points out that the claim is published in Current Medical Research and Opinion, a publication whose insights are in such high demand that its web page admits it is "distributed free of charge to medical schools, medical libraries, selected hospitals and research institutes and practitioners throughout the world."

After stating that none of the recognized experts in the field believe these claims, the article adds:

"For many researchers, alarm bells ring loudest over the failure of TriStem to get such groundbreaking results published in a leading journal. They also ask why Abuljadayel has had no permanent academic position."

Hmmm.... why can't the inventor get a teaching position at a prestigious university, which would pay her salary and give her access to topnotch lab facilities and plenty of bright grad students to use as slave labor?

I blame liberals. Why do these people hate America?

2003-11-29T02:45:00.000-05:00

The New Tobacco Ads

I've spent much of the last two days enjoying Bravo's West Wing Marathon (a definite improvement over Detroit-Green Bay or Miami-Dallas). The good news is that I got something out of it.

(My relationship to TWW, by the way, parallels my internist's opinion of E.R.: Enjoyable, but unrealistic. Only three characters in the original cast resemble any White House staff I know, and Leo is the only one still with the show.)

The commercials provided an object lesson in how much you lose when your party loses power. The newly-elected president gets to bring in his cronies. Those guys bring in their cronies. Their hot-button issues become the new administration's agenda. Because these issues get covered (to some degree, at least), you get to measure the costs and benefits of the policies.

But the invisible cost-- the opportunity costs, if you will-- are the ones that really sting. There's a finite amount of column inches and airtime; unless someone with clout pushes a topic, it'll probably go unnoticed. One of the government's job is to raise issues that no one currently worries about-- stuff like East Timor, bovine growth hormone or the DMCA's impact on consumer rights-- to the level of national concerns.

When stuff doesn't get talked about for four years-- or more-- it can go from an issue to a problem to a crisis. Here's an issue-- which is rapidly reaching crisis status-- that the FCC or FDA needs to address. And if different undersecretaries were calling the shots it might be: Television advertising for prescription drugs needs to be banned.

Until 1997, it was illegal to advertise prescription medications without including detailed information on its potential side-effects. Ever wondered why drug ads in magazines always run at least two pages--one of which is filled with fine print? It's the law.

Actually, it wasn't illegal to advertise prescription drugs on TV-- the law just made it impractical. You could run a commercial, but you had to display (or have an announcer read) all the fine print.

In 1997-- after extended prodding from the drug lobby and (probably) more than a little dotcom-inspired idiocy-- Bill Clinton's FDA relaxed limitations. All the ads have to do now is list an 800 number or web address where you can request the information.

So the amount spent on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising has risen from $859 million in 1997 to $2.49 billion last year. And that's had exactly the result you might expect.

According to this article (taken from that notoriously-leftist publication, The Wall Street Journal), the most frequently-advertised drugs in 2002 were Vioxx and Celebrex-- two pain medications for arthritis that represent a gigantic boondoggle for consumers.

Vioxx and Celebrex are valuable drugs-- but only if you meet certain criteria. WHich most people don't. Arthritis pain, which is caused by inflammation of the joints, has been treated with drugs that reduce the body's ability to produce an enzyme (cyclooxygenase, aka "COX-1") that causes inflammation.

"COX-1 inhibitors" (the best known is ibuprofen, aka Motrin) are effective, reliable and cheap. But they have one catch. The COX enzyme causes joint paint, but a very similar enzyme protects your stomach lining from inflammation. COX-1 drugs inhibit the production of both enzymes; the longer yiou take them, the greater your chances of ulcers and digestive trouble become.

Unless you're unusually sensitive, it takes months for your lining to erode. So if you only have occasional flareups-- if you only need to take a dose for a week a couple of times a year--COX-1 inhibitors work just fine. And, According to the Christian Science Monitor, a year's supply of ibuprofen costs $24 .

Vioxx or Celebrexx are COX-2 inhibitors-- an improved version that reduces inflammation without affecting yoyur stomach lining. To people who have chronic pain--who need to take medication every single day--"COX-2 inhibitors" are a godsend.

About 6% of the people who suffer from arthritis suffer from chronic pain. A year's supply of Celebrex costs $900-- 3,800% more than the cost of ibuprofen.

Another popular technique is to tout a brand-name drug when a generic is available. Until it became an over-the-counter drug, Prilosec got this sort of push. Glucophage (generic name metfornin) is currently getting it.

Other ads skip merrily along the border between marketing and disingenuousness. Viagra ads suggest that one prescription can give you the sex appeal of a haircut, new suit and workout program combined. Other ads insist that you can eat right and exercise dilligently and still have high cholesterol--but you can eliminate the problem with their product. (Leaving the impression that you can eat bacon at every meal as long as you take their pills, of course.)

The two stories I've linked to were based on insurance company reports of skyrocketing spending on DTC-advertised drugs. We now have a study of 78 physicians and 1,431 adult patients-- half located in the US and half in Canada (which still restricts DTC ads) which documents the impact. U.S. patients requested the 50 most adrvertised drugs by name more than twice as often as Canadians.

Doctors reported that they felt 50% of the requests were inapprorpiate-- that the medication either wouldn't address the patient's complaint, or felt that a cheaper drug (or a generic) would be a better choice. But they didn't feel comfortable telling the patient "No":

"Patients who requested DTCA drugs were nearly 17 times as likely to receive 1 or more new prescriptions as patients who did not request medicines. Nearly 9 of 10 such patients received prescriptions, either for the drug they had requested or an alternative."

So we have higher insurance costs. And increased reliance on medicine, rather than preventikon through diet and exercise. And the possibility of long-term side effects which we don't know yet. And the more often you use a drug, the greater your resistance to it becomes.

In fairness, this started on Bill Clinton's watch. But the Congress was solidly Republic at the time. It's impossible to imagine W's regime opposing the idea. And it hasn't lifted a finger to stop the bleeding-- in facxt, it's arguing that DTC ads are helpful.

And the drug lobby wants to loosen restrictions even further--arguing that, as long as consumers can get information about side-effects on the Internet (only 8% do now), they shouldn't have to hear it in the ads.

DTC ads won't last-- the insurance industry is already enacting programs to discourage use of the drugs, Eventually they'll start lobbying-- but since they're not exactly trustworthy (if it were up to the industry, they'd probably still encourage the use of bleeding and leeches), they'll need a lot of time to get traction.

Actually, this whole mess plays right into one candidate's hands. And-- if my schedule permits-- I'll try to get to that topic this week.

2003-11-27T00:11:00.000-05:00

The Only "Mann" Coulter Item You'll Ever See Here

One question about an item in her jihad (emphasis mine):

"In addition to having a number of family deaths among them, the Democrats' other big idea – too nuanced for a bumper sticker – is that many of them have Jewish ancestry. There's Joe Lieberman: Always Jewish. Wesley Clark: Found Out His Father Was Jewish in College. John Kerry: Jewish Since He Began Presidential Fund-Raising. Howard Dean: Married to a Jew. Al Sharpton: Circumcised. Even Hillary Clinton claimed to have unearthed some evidence that she was a Jew – along with the long lost evidence that she was a Yankees fan. And that, boys and girls, is how the Jews survived thousands of years of persecution: by being susceptible to pandering."

And (s)he came by that piece of information how?

(Credit to The Hamster for the lead.)

2003-11-22T18:34:00.000-05:00

James Lileks Plays Lady MacBeth

You've probably read about how Tsetse's pop lost it the other day:

"Hey, Salam? Fuck you. I know you're the famous giggly blogger who gave us all a riveting view of the inner circle before the war, and thus know more about the situation than I do. Granted. But there's a picture on the front page of my local paper today: third Minnesotan killed in Iraq. He died doing what you never had the stones to do: pick up a rifle and face the Baathists. You owe him."

No, James-- you owe him. The bill for the life of Army Staff Sergeant Dale Panchot belongs to you. The amount of your debt includes the grief of his parents, the anguish of his sister and younger brother and the sorrow of his friends and neighbors in Northome, Minnesota.

The blood of that murdered boy is on your hands. You and every other chickenhawking,warbloggingg jingoisticwingnutt who sent him to Iraq.

Dale Panchot might well have died an untimely death on foreign sands. The people who knew him best say he grew up listening to the soldier stories that his father and grandfather used to tell. He put on his first pair ofcamouflagee pants at the age of three. His friends say he wore military pants to school every day

Dale Panchot joined the Minnesota National Guard when he was a junior in high school. He studied Russian in the hopes it would help him fight the enemy more effectively. He enlisted in the military after one semester of college. And even though he told his father "Dad, I'm tired of getting shot at", he re-enlisted two weeks before he died.

Dale Panchot wanted to fight for his country. And since we are fighting a war on terror, he might have given his life in Afghanistan. Possibly, if the war had been conducted properly, he would have died in Pakistan. Maybe it would have been next week or next week, on a mission to another country whose name we don't know yet, because the fighting has yet to break out there.

Or, since we live in a world where terror exists, he might have died in a cafe filled with noncombatants in a country that we had no reason to believe would be under attack.

But he wouldn't have died on November 19th, 2003, just north of Baghdad, because he wouldn't be there if you hadn't sent him there.

Hi-- my name is Woody. I'm one of those effete,psuedointellectuall, cowardly, treason-preaching, tree-hugging, bleeding-heart, pussified, commie pinko hippie nigger-loving faggot traitors that you've been fulminating about. (Aside to Ann Coulter, Kim du Toit and Mischa: if I missed anything, remind me, willya?)

For eight months, millions of intelligent, patriotic principled people have had to endure your abuse. You've jeered at our understanding of history, terrorism and the Middle East. You've belittled the principles that we live by. The very best sentiments you have been able to muster is that we're naive fools who are endangering civilization because we don't understand the world as well as you and George W. Bush.

Remember that rhetorical question you've been asking for months, Jimbo? Doesn't it go something like "Who among us doesn't think we're better off because we invaded Iraq?"

I suggest you go put that question to the people who knew and loved Dale Panchot. Then drive out to Freeport,Minnesotaa and ask the family and friends of Staff Sgt. Brian R. Hellermann. Ask the citizens of Shakopee-- the ones wearing black because 20-year-old PFC Edward J. "Jim" Herrgot got shot by a sniper while he was on patrol outside a Baghdad museum-- if they don't think they're better off.

I notice, in all the flood of hate and venom you spewed because you claimed to be upset about Dale Panchot's death, that you couldn't be bothered to mention his name. How long would it have taken you-- fifteen seconds to find a web page that mentioned his name and ten to type it in?

But you couldn't be bothered to do that, could you? Couldn't pay him the respect of mentioning his name. Couldn't point out that his family is going to have to fly to Colorado, because that's where the military services are being held. Couldn't have mentioned that he used to send letters home asking for oatmealraisinn cookies with butterscotch chips

Could that be because you really couldn't give a damn about anyone who dies over there-- except to the extent that they can be used as fuel for the fires of the sensibilities of a warped, frustrated, immature man?

I supported the Gulf War, because I don't believe it's right for anyone to try to take over another country that hasn't done anything to it. I supported going to Afghanistan because I don't like it when residents of a country kill thousands of my fellow citizens and their government refuses to hand them over to me for trial.

But, no, if I have a rogue state penned up so thoroughly that it can't wage war on anyone, I don't feel a burning need to invade it and put in a puppet government run by a white-collar criminal. I don't feel that way because I know that kids like Dale Panchot are gonna get sent to do the dirty work after the chickenhawks book the engagement.

See, I haven't been to war. But unlike W.-- who has consumed no works of literature other than The Very Hungry Caterpillar since he let his subscription to High Times lapse-- I've read books about what it's like to be in one. I've learned how soldiers--even the ones who aren't wounded-- feel. I've found out about what it does to civilians-- both at home and on the battlefield.

Since you've been reading about Dale Panchot, Jimbo, I guess you've started to figure out that war kinda sucks. It ain't all John Wayne movies and bad country music. Sometimes good guys die.

Now here's lesson two: War is the most dreadful invention that man has ever brought forth on this world. That's why I don't ever want to fight them-- or ask anyone who shares this country with me to fight them-- unless I absolutely have to. And it's why I despise people who are willing to see blood shed before they've gone from A to Z and back again to avoid it.

It's why the candidate I'm supporting-- who, unlike your butt-buddy, can speak from firsthand experience about the horrors of war--didn't want to send people over there either.

You remember him, don't you? He'd the guy who's losing because he's so patriotic that he was worried about a "No" vote on a resolution might do to the president's ability to negotiate. So even though he thought this mess was a terrible idea, he voted for a resolution to allow war to be declared if it became necessary-- stupidly figuring that the simple SOB the Supremes put in charge would come back to rally the Congress and get another signoff before he began dropping bombs.

My guy is the one that you called a traitor. You heard he was saying the mission was being conducted badly-- because he was concerned that W.'s regime was screwing things up and getting kids killed. And you raved about how disgusting and evil he was and how you didn't want to know him and would never never never trust him.

So he's not to blame for Dale Panchot's death. And I'm not to blame. And, no, you brainless 'shoot the messenger and blame the victim' asswipe, neither are the Iraqis. Who are you to berate them for not having an armed revolution and placing the lives of themselves, their families and anyone else Saddam felt like killing at risk? Ever heard the saying "better the devil you know than the devil you don't"? That's usually the mindset of countries in the grip of tyranny. Even assuming they could have overthrown Saddam, what reason did they have to think that the successor would be any better?

For that matter, what reason do you have for assuming that the successor would have been an improvement? Enlighten us, O creator of that prescient intellectual tome known as The Gallery of Regrettable Food. Tell us, Based on your great understanding of the history of human rights: How often does the successor to a repressive ruler turn out to be less murderous? (Case in point: Shah of Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini.)

No, Jimbo, the people responsible for the 181 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq are the ones who wanted to send them over there. And that would be you. You also have the lives of 7,893 (or maybe 9,729) civilians killed bymilitaryy action, and the 94 Iraqis killed by the Army in post-war Iraq in what Human Rights Watch calls "legally questionable circumstances to answer for.

You are accountable for the full amount of the good feeling that Dale Panchot would have brought to this world during the course of his natural life. You prevented his soulmate-- the love that he never got to meet-- from receiving the warmth of his affections and devotions. You robbed the world of the contributions of his children-- the ones he might have had and the ones he wanted to teach. In the words of screenwriter David Webb Peoples, you took everything he had and everything he was gonna have. Dale Panchot's blood-- and the blood of 180 other soldiers-- are on your hands.

Sorry you're getting squeamish at the sight of blood. But as you and your fellow travelers liked to say before the death toll struck home, you can't make an omelet unless you break a few eggs.

Oh, and, in your own immortal words... Hey, James? Fuck you.

Update: Amazing as it seems, the first message I get about this post complains about my joke about the nickname of his kid. What-- you're upset that I picked the wrong insect?

Number one, the rugrat is a public figure. Number two, I didn't make her a public figure-- her dad did. Number three, have you really thought about what kind of a nickname the word "Gnat" is? A gnat is an insect that hovers around you constantly, annoying the hell out of you and refusing to go away, no matter how much you swat at it.

OK, the kid's given name is "Natalie." Maybe "Gnat" is just a diminutive and it has nothing to do with her constantly pestering dad while he's trying to write his sophomoric drivel. Based on the limited sampling I've taken of his columns, she seems to be a high risk for ADD and hyperactivity and I still wouldn't write anything about my daughter that could be taken the wrong way.

2003-11-22T03:32:00.000-05:00

Life in Howiewood

There's a second "La-La Land" inside the Beltway. Here's an item from Mr. Kurtz's Tuesday chat:

Q: Have you noticed how the Republican Party for the last several years has managed to change the name of the Democratic Party to the Democrat Party. This has been a less than subtle coordinated effort and the "media" has been complicit. I don't think I've ever heard a reporter or correspondent correct a speaker on this and the other day CNN's senior political correspondent Candy Crowley at the Iowa Democratic function referred to the Party in her on camera spiel as the "Democrat" Party. Are the Democrats at fault for not protecting their "trademark" or does the media have some responsibility?

Howard Kurtz: Republicans definitely use "Democrat Party" as a perjorative, and the media shouldn't play along. I can't remember a time when I've heard an anchor or correspondent use the shortened term.

Which shows you how good his memory is-- or how carefully he pays attention. Here's a Google with 17 results at Faux News. 10 of the items were articles that directly quoted wingnuts, which can't ethically be changed. And no member of Faux News used the pejorative.

But seven items were transcripts of talk shows where guests used it seven times-- each time, without being called on it. The hosts who let the guests get away with it: Tony Snow; Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke (twice); Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes (four times),

Here are nine results for MessNBC. And here, six of those quotes were from their employees: Chris Matthews (twice), Joe Scarborough, Michael Weiner, Howard Mortman and Tom Curry.

And a whopping 375 results for CNN. Many of them were references to Thailand's 'Democrat Party' and the UK's 'Liberal Democrat Party' (which are their correct names), but a lot aren't.

Among the on-air staff, the award for using the pejorative most often is split between Judy Woodruff and snitch Robert Novak (three times). Tucker Carlson and Frank Sesno (twice) share the runner-up spot and the bronze is split between Wolf Blitzer, Jeff Greenfield, John King, Larry King, Arthel Neville, Candy Crowley and (amazingly) both James Carville and Paul Begala.

In the running dog category-- people who let the slur go unchallenged-- Begala (nine times) takes the honors. Every instance occurred during Crossfire, which is why Carlson (six) is second. They're followed by Woodruff , Blitzer and Mark Shields (three times); Larry King, Novak, Greta Van Susteren, Jesse Jackson and Neville (twice); and Bernard Shaw, Bill Press, Carville, Al Hunt; Janeane Garofolo and Kate Snow (once).

Dishonorable mention goes to two of the guests who used the term: Ralph Nader (three times) and Joe Lieberman (once). Oh, and (surprise, surprise) some jackass named Howard Kurtz allowed someone to get away with the term twice.

Explain it to me again: Why isn't this considered bashing and hating?

2003-11-22T00:48:00.000-05:00

That 70's Shortage

Know what the real problem with having idiots and ideologues running the government is? Aside from the unnecessary wars and the loss of civil liberties, I mean. People who know nothing about history or economics or science or sociology--and are arrogant enough to think they have nothing to learn--are always the ones who get caught flatfooted by changes that a better mind would have seen coming.

This article is very, very bad news for the United States. China's decision to set fuel efficiency standards higher than ours-- at the same moment W. and Congress are punting the issue-- will detonate on the American economy. Unless they're removed, people will look back on this era with amazement and rage.

1. China's auto market is about one-third the size of the US and Japan. But annual sales are doubling and tripling; experts predict it will become the #1 or #2 market within ten years.

DaimlerChrysler and General Motors are currently selling boatloads of cars in China. But they're selling the wrong kind of cars. GM's top models in 2003 are Buicks and Blazers-- and they're gearing up to introduce Cadillacs. D-C's hot products are Jeeps, SUVs and Mercedes. There's no way on earth-- short of alchemy-- to make those cars energy-efficient

But Volkswagen-- the #1 automaker in China--already sells models that meet the standards; their engineers think it should be easy to get the whole fleet compliant. Honda's entire Chinese fleet already is compliant. Nissan is entering the market by buying into China's #2 carmaker. Hyundai already has factories-- they're doing the building for GM--and they can shift production as they redesign, Only Toyota-- which is churning out SUVs--isn't well-positioned to build the cars that can meet the new mileage standards yet.

U.S. firms should be concerned about how they can retool-- how they can compete in China. And if the U.S. were proposing similar standards, they'd probably say "OK, this is a global thing-- let's move into the 21st century". But because they don't have to modernize at home, they're responding to the Chinese government exactly the same way they always have-- insisting that it is impossible to manufacture price-competitive cars that can comply. (Ford, by the way, isn't upset because they still don't have significant production capacity in China.)

So the U.S. auto industry will get gradually get thrown out of China. What will become the world's #2 market for cars in 2020 might be gone for good.

2. If the #2 market goes, the #1 market will follow. China will be an ideal market for companies to test new high-performance, energy-efficient engines before bringing them to America. The people who claim gas-electric hybred engines are U.S.-ready drink the same Kool-Aid as the people who claim Linux is user-friendly. They've improved from 'yuck...' to 'not half bad...' But you're still very conscious that it's an ecologically-friendly vehicle.

But the more the cars get driven in China, the faster manufacturers can see the results and make changes. That will slash the time it takes to get the technology U.S.-ready. Those cars will grab market share in California inmmediately and move east. If you're old enough to have lived in the 70's-- not just watched them on TV--you know what'll happen next.

3. But those glum scenarios aren't the really scary scenarios. Americans have always benefited from the level of embedded snobbery in Asian culture. Historically the Chinese have thought of the Japanese as mildly retarded; Japan thinks Koreans are subhuman. They've never been able to form the same sort of trade alliances that the U.S. has with Mexico and Canada-- meaning they don't compete as effectively as they could. And U.S. companies have always been able to find opportunities as go-betweens and integrators.

If they all start making cars together-- and they see what happens if they cooperate-- and they get into the habit of working together in other industries-- we're in big trouble.

4. The mileage standards suggest that the Chinese government understands something that W.'s regime doesn't-- that conservation is an essential part of an intelligent energy policy. China is terrified about its energy usage. China, which used to export oil, now imports 30% of its consumption. If nothing changes, they'll be importing over 50% of their consumption (roughly the same as the U.S.) in less than 25 years.

This could just be the latest example of Chinese xenophobia-- they have never liked to feel dependent on foreigners for anything. But if this isn't a knee-jerk decision-- if they understand that unnecessary consumption puts their economy at risk-- it means they're figuring out this capitalism business pretty quickly.

5. When the Chinese are more worried about cutting consumption-- and dependence on Saudi Arabia and Iraq-- than the U.S Government... man, that is scary. Contrary to what Gregg EasterSmog would have you believe, fuel efficiency of U.S. vehicles has dropped like a rock since the 80's. The emergence of minivans and SUVs-- and the decision to 'temporarily' exempt them from mileage standards-- means that a sizab;e percentage of the population is putting the country at considerable risk.

And I've been there and done that, thank you. In the 70's, the U.S. public's desire to drive obese automotive monstrosities was growing at geometric proportions. Landmasses that were loaded with luxury options--and got slightly better mileage than armored personnel carriers-- sold as quickly as Detroit could make them.

But then the political situation in the Middle East combusted. The OPEC countries were pissed-- and they also needed cash to calm the unruly populace. They rolled back their production levels and oil prices shot through the roof. Assuming that you could even get oil.

Actually, there is one difference between the 70's and now: 30 years ago, terrorists tried to avoid getting the U.S. mad. Now we have people dedicated to that end. And since most of them despise the Sauidi royal family too, many people think some of them will try to strike at both, by bombing Saudi production or distribution assets. (The article in the same issue is even better, but it's offline.)

And thats what really has me furious at the W. Regime. All the jackasses who spout jingoistic bluster about defense spending and homeland security and the war on terror forget that the most important protection the government offers is planning. It's the government's job to figure out where the rest of the world is heading, plot a course that takes those issues into account, and moves the country to to the best place to be, given that course.

This group of idiots thinks they can actually move the entire world-- overcome geology, geography, science, laws of nature, cultural heritage and the impact of a thousand years of history-- with ideology and force of will.

The Earth doesn't manufacture oil as quickly as our cars currently consume it-- that is a fact. You can get around that by building cars that run on some other source of energy. You can get around it by reducing their current rate of consumption. You can get around that by finding oil in someplace that hasn't already been identified (and, sorry, rational experts agree that tthe quantity in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge is known and limited).

But what you can't do-- not if you want to solve the problem-- is to bluster that you're going to do whatever you damned well want to, because this is the way you think things should work out and you're used to getting your own way.

But that'w what the wingnuts and W are doing. And if they're not stopped, we're all going to pay the price for it.

2003-11-16T23:43:00.000-05:00

Diary of a Madman?

Compare and contrast the following:

1. The third letter in Dan Savage's sexual advice column. (NB: Subject matter not for the faint of heart.)

2. MarkThis entry in Mark "If I Had a Hammer, I'd Kill Me a Secular Humanist Commie Senator" Bryon's blog.

As my ex used to say, you could fit the difference between inside Clarence Thomas's heart. (And, to revise and extend the joke, still have enough roonm left for Donald Rumsfeld's charm and W.'s intellect.) The denial drips from almost every word.

My father (a fine Freudian doctor) has a standard reply for patients who share things like Byron's post during sessions and then say things like "But I would never actually (dress like a woman/have an affair/pay someone for sex/commit murder/molest a child/etc..) . I've never done anything like this, ever. I'm not the kind of person who would do this-- as a matter of fact, I do just the opposite. I did think about this, but I didn't do anything!" The reply is "I'm sorry to disagree with you, but it seems like you've put more effort into this than idle thought:

"First of all, I see that you set a specific date for the attack, and that the date of the attack is the precise date (the first Monday in 2004) that the Democratic Senate caucus will be meeting and everyone is expected to attend. That suggests you've thought very carefully about what would be the right date to attack the Senate.

"A fantasy that just pops into your head isn't that detailed. For example, you chose a date that the Supreme Court will not be in session, which means it is unlikely that many of the justices would be in the building. That suggests that you really haven't thought very much about attacking them.

"I see another issue. In this fantasy, you know exactly how many attackers there are, and how many people were killed. You know the exact number of political and non-political casualties. Someone just having a passing fantasy would probably not have thought about that. On the other hand, it does seem that you have put less effort into visualizing this part of your fantasy, because your news story doesn't list the number of wounded. Apparently your attackers are able to shoot only the people who need to be killed. I take it that the others who died were mostly security guards.

"The part that concerns me the most is the list of senators who were killed. You haven't listed the names of any of the Supreme Court justices who needed to die. But you've listed the name of every senator who was killed. You even went to the trouble of alphabetizing the list.

"It is very disturbing that you chose to kill only Democratic senators who represent states with Republican governors. Therapeuitcally, it would have been healthier for you to have imagined that these missionaries had shot every Democrat-- or placed some kind of a bomb that would have killed everyone. In a fantasy, the more detailed your recollection is, the more important it is for you to imagine that it has happened.

"For example, if you came to me and said 'I keep having a dream about raping a woman', I would ask you to tell me something about the woman. If you said she was white and had big breasts... well, that certainly isn't the type of dream I want my patients to have. But I would be much more worried if you could tell me her height and weight, said she was in her late 20's, had shoulder length hair, knew the color of her hair and eyes and could describe how she dressed and where she lived.

"Also, your original opinion of the morality of this fantasy was 'I'm also assuming that such bloodshed would be a good idea; I don't think it would. Would five extra conservatives on the Supreme Court and a filibuster-free Senate be worth the bloodshed?... It might be a short-term victory for judicial conservatism, but a long term loss for our society and the cause of Christ.' You seemed to be more concerned that these killings would cause a backlash against religious conservatives than you are about the legality or morality of these actions."

Added to all the above is that Mr. Byron wrote all this down and published it. Contrary to what he suggests in his defense of his essay, 12-step programs don't encourage members to think about acting out. The goal is that you don't think about drinking or gambling-- that even thinking that you've mastered your flaws is a form of pride (scroll to the paragraph that begins "And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol.")

Is he serious? Probably not. Most people who think about doing something don't actually do it. But, no, normal people don't think this way.

Update: Just called Dad and read this to him. He said it is unethical for a therapist to comment on the behavior of anyone he isn't seeing prefessionally. When I pointed out that it wouldn;t be ethical of him to comment on the behavior of someone he was seeing, he replied "Well, I can't stop you and you're not a therapist, so what you say is up to you." That's what you would call a 'non-denial denial'.

He did say that the piece didn't sound like an essay on the dangers of demonizing opponents. "This is a person who seems to be very controlled and cautious about his opinions, based on his other essays. If his goal had been to condemn Operation Rescues and that assassin, I think he would have written that as a preface to the fantasy. Instead, he introduced his fantasy murders by saying 'I'm not advising anyone to do this, but I admit it would please me if this happened.'

"Also, when he really feels something strongly, he inserts quotes from the bible. The stronger his feelungs are, the more he quotes There are many quotes he could have used in both pieces, but he didn't use any."

He also suggested that I read an essay on fantasy and its relationship to violent behavior. The paragraph that seemed most relevant to me was:

"Studies have shown that 96% of adults report that they daydream several times a day, noting that fantasy may either substitute or prepare for action. For example, if you anticipate a confrontation with a specific individual, and the idea of this is anxiety provoking, you may go through several ways in which to handle the situation. You visualize where it would take place, and the details of your surroundings. Then, in your mind you may go through a series of role plays, hypothesizing what you would say in possible situations and the reactions and outcomes of your dialogue. This process helps you feel more at ease with the forthcoming encounter, so that when it actually does happen, you will feel more relaxed and prepared for any situation. However, for certain people, fantasies may be sadistic. It is not known how many people activate their sadistic fantasies and in what context this may occur, but once a fantasy builds to a point where inner stress is unbearable, a person's fantasy may turn to reality. "

Which means, I think, that we should give Mr. Byron a break this time. But another post of this type would suggest that the FBI should pay him a visit to chat with him. My father fully expects that we will see someone commit one or more murders in the next 2-3 years. And when the police investigate, we will discover that the killer published a web site where he explained exactly what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. He expects the furor to be similar to the debate about whether the New York Times and Washington Post should publish the Unabomber's manifesto. "I'll bet you the victim's family will sue the web site publisher for negligence--claiming they should have monitored what he was writing and notified the authorities. And the way these juries are going, they might win too."

By the way, Mr. Byron: to these ears saying "If someone suceeded in bringing the FBI out to investigate the "terrorist threat" of yesterday, they would see a mild-mannered college professor with no expertise in weaponry and no significant history of violence" sounds very like this memorable saying.

2003-11-16T19:27:00.000-05:00

How to Beat W. (Part 1)

Finally, an intelligent article about the 2004 campaign landscape. This terrific op-ed in today's Post explains how the Democrats can write off the South and win-- and why they should.

The writer argues a point that many people (including me) have noticed: The South is going wingnut, and these people have absolutely no intention of voting for candidates who are moderate or independent-- much less liberals.

It's another reason I'm so skeptical about Wesley Clark's chances-- John McCain, Ralph Nader and Ross Perot all expected to find support in the South, too. But to quote the article, "of the 10 states where Perot fared worst in 1992, all were Southern. Of the 47 states where Nader was on the ballot in 2000, nine of his 10 worst showings came in the South."

If the south had scads of electoral votes to give, there would be a pressing need to solve this problem. They don't. The 12 states in the South have a total of 159 electoral votes. 91 come from four states: Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia.

The other eight states have a total of 68 votes-- about eight votes per state. You never want to write off any states if you don't have to... But there are other states that offer the same number of votes and no one ever talks about strategies to court or keep them.

1. Oregon (7) and Washington (11) have virtually identical numbers of votes as Kentucky (8 votes) and Tenneessee (11). And those two states (which have gone blue in two of the last three elections), have something the southern states don't: high-tech companies (Intel, Microsoft) that have employees who are rich donors.

2. Missouri (13) and Nebraska (5) were part of the solidly Democratic farm belt at one time. They're both red now, but they have each voted Democratic at least once since 1980. Why are they less important than Mississippi (9) and Alabama (6), which haven't voted blue once in that time?

3. Both Ohio (20) and Pennsylvania (21) have voted Republic in four of the last six elections; Michigan has crossed three times. Ever heard anyone suggest that the party needs to do something to recover the Rust Belt?

The preaching about the need to recapture the South stems from three sources: (a) southern politicos, who want to continue to be courted, (b) fossilized media types and political scientists, who can't accept the concept of realignment and (c) wingnuts pundits, who have no interest in seeing the Democrats rebuild.

The author (to get back to what he is saying, not what I think) correctly notes that the flood of Republican-sponsored anti-hispanic initiatives are driving Latinos-- the largest-growing group of voters-- into the arms of Democrats:

"Between 1988 and 2000, the Democratic margin of defeat plunged from more than 21 percentage points to less than 6 points in Arizona and just 3 points in Nevada. Combine Nader's votes with Gore's and these states have gone from GOP blowouts to tossups in just three election cycles. "

If the Democrats can pick up the Southwest, keep the Northeast and Northwest and solidify either the Grain Belt or the Rust Belt, they can blow off the south and win. To quote one of the many "money grafs" from the article:

"If Democrats solve their solvable Ohio problem, they can win the presidency without carrying any states south of Maryland and east of the Mississippi River. Non-Southern coalitions worked for the GOP for decades: William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge all coasted to victory without the South."

I'd still like to try to pick up the guys who have the conferedate flag decals on their trucks. I'm not convinced that they're seriously embracing all the Confederacy's social policies; there's no substantive, policy-based reason that these guys should be supporting people like Bush.

But I'll be damned if I see the reason to prostrate the party before people who actively preach intolerance and violence. And if I find that I have to reach out to people who endorse people like Roy Moore and Bob Jones to get into power, then I guess I'll have to buy a gun and start shooting wingnuts instead.

(Kudos to Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, which is always there when I forget to surf.)

2003-11-16T03:56:00.000-05:00

Bigmouth Strikes Again

If anyone has ever been skeptical about the moral fiber of Andrew "Bareback City" Sullivan, we now have documented proof of exactly how strong it is. On October 10, the man who is to political analysis what Leni Riefenstahl was to documentary filmmaking wrote "I really need to avoid all math questions. I keep screwing them up."

His will power lasted exactly 33 days. On November 14th, The Artist Formerly Known as RawMuslGlutes referred his readers to a site that measured (using his words) "how generous people are in various parts of the nation. Not absolute generosity - but charitable donations as a percentage of income" (emphasis mine). His analysis of the rankings:

"Bottom line: states which voted for Bush - you know, all those callous, selfish rich Republicans who don't give a damn about anyone else - dominate the rankings."

This item might not be the most untrue thing that Sully ever written (he's so prolific that it's impossible to be sure) But it stands out because:

A. His description of what the rankings measure is completely false.
B. He fails to notice (or just ignores) that the data he claims to want present is on the site.
C. If you actually look at contributions as percentage of income, states that voted for Gore dominate the rankings.

Last but not least, he's endorsing a methodology that appears to have been designed by John Lott on ecstasy. The errors are so obvious that a child could see that the results Sully is crowing about couldn't possibly be meaningful.

Lets's start by looking at the ranking page. If you have any experience working with data, it should take you seconds to spot three huge problems with its construction. The rankings have five columns of data for each state:

1. The name of the state.
2. Something called a "Having Index", which ranks each state from 1-50. If you look at the raw data, you find this is based on the state's average Adjusted Gross Income for 2001, using data supplied by the IRS's Spring, 2003 Statistics of Income Bulletin .
3. Something called a "Giving Index" rank. This is based on average size of charitable contribution for returns from that state that (a) itemized deductions and (b) listed charitable contributions.
4. A "Rank Relation", which is calculated by subtracting the "Giving" rank from the "Having" rank. (Seriously.) The state with the highest total was Mississippi, which ranks 50th in 'Having' and 6th in 'Giving' (+44). Rhode Island (8th in Having; 48th in giving, -40 total) has the lowest number.
5. The "Generosity Index", which merely sorts the "Rank Relation" by descending number

If you believe the results of this 'system', the ten most generous states are Mississippi, Arkansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, Utah, South Carolina and Idaho. And if you do believe that, you should seriously consider a brain implant.

Before we go any further, let's note one item for the record: Andrew Sullivan's description of what this system measures is completely false. It should be obvious to even a backward child that a system that ranks states 1-50 and subtracts one ranking from another is not measuring "charitable donations as a percentage of income." In order to measure percentages, Milky Loads, old boy, you need to actually calculate percentages somewhere along the way.

But wait-- there's more. No Andrew Sullivan post about statistics is complete without at least one blind eye turned toward contradictory evidence, and this post is no exception. The site provides a download link to an Excel spreadsheet with the raw data. Buried inside that sheet is a column that lists exactly what Sullivan was all hopped up about: charitable contributions as a percentage of adjusted growth income.

In that column-- the one that actually measures what Sullivan said the 'Generosity Index' did-- six of the top ten states gave their electoral votes to Al Gore. Listed in order (blue states in bold), they are: Montana, Arizona, Washington, North Carolina, Illinois, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Maine, New York and Kentucky.

Not one of the states in the top ten in the "Generosity Index" finish in the top ten in percentage of income given to charity. Only four even make the top twenty-- five make the bottom twenty. Here's the top ten with the real rankings listed in parentheses: Mississippi (25), Arkansas (14), South Dakota (17), Oklahoma (39), Alabama (35), Tennessee (46), Louisiana (15).

If I were compiling a "Generosity Index" for the blogosphere, I'd put people who read Andrew Sullivan-- for anything other than comic relief -- at the top of it. Given a choice between letting a panhandler borrow my credit cards and trusting Sully to present data accurately, I'd put my trust in the bum-- the homeless one-- every time.

2003-11-15T19:10:00.000-05:00

The Two Towers

LA and DC. The residents of both are acutely aware of each other. Mutually attracted and repulsed; they are alternately fascinated by and condescending toward each other. And they're both so much alike.

It's difficult to live in either city. You can't travel to do business there-- or even visit for pleasure-- without getting sucked into the pervasive thrum of the living hive-mind. Even the air seems to pulsate and draw at your body as you pass through it.

How best to describe time spent there? For all their smartness and pretense at being cosmopolitan, they're both old-fashioned company towns. Every person you meet in the course of your day isn't in the business, of course. But they have at least one friend, relative, schoolmate or business partner who is or was or wants to be.

And the currencies, in both cities, are relationships and information. What you know-- and who you know-- determines what you can accomplish. The bit of knowledge contained in an offhand remark, if it is overheard and then transmitted to the right person at the right time, can provide a material advantage in the process of constructing a deal.

Most of the effort expended during the making of a movie is politicking-- conferences, relationship-building, negotiating and intrigues. Much of what we see happening in politics today is theatrics-- playing to national audiences to try to win them.

Neither city has benefitted from adopting the other's techniques.

2003-11-14T00:22:00.000-05:00

Shrum Illustrated?

Insightful profiles of political pros are rare. To write it, you need enough technical knowledge to understand how the processes work, and enough good judgement to assess the issues. And if you have those skills, you can make a lot more money running campaigns-- or dealing out sound bites as a talking head on TV.

So enjoy this profile of the man behind John Kerry's throne-- Bob Shrum. David Halbfinger does a little bit of tiptoeing around the nitty-gritty, but he nails almost every topic he addresses. Let me fill in the one he ducked: Shrum is a second-tier stratregist. Maybe third tier.

There's an immense difference in ability between someone who can win Senate seats and one who can win a presidential nomination and one who can witn the presidency. If you're a football fan, it's like the difference between a quarterback coach, an offensive coordinator and a head coach.

Winning a senate race requires a narrow focus. You need in-depth knowledge of the voters, media and key issues in your state. You've got to be able to relate to the candidate and family effectively and schedule their travel plans. You also need enough managerial ability to oversee the candidate's ongoing politcal operation,

To win a presidential nomination, you have to be able to play well on a much broader canvas. You have to be able to craft a message that plays well in 10-15 states and build an organization (from scratch) that can run that many races well. Managing the candidate's time-- knowing which state he needs to be in at any given moment and not buring him out--is much more diffiicult.

To win the presidency, you need to be able to play well in 25-35 states. And that's mostly resource management-- time, money and staff:

1. You have to win your base (the states that favor anyone from your party) you while spending as little as possible.

2. You need to win at least some of the battlefield states (the ones where you're evenly matched), without committing too much of your resources.

3. You must mount cost-effective challenges in your opponent's base. You're not hoping to win-- you're just trying to force him to spend additional resources to hold a state that he expected to win handily.

To win a senate seat, you have to fight one all-or-nothing battle. And since you can run for re-election more than once, there's a good reason to win by a landslide-- you can scare potential competitors off.

In a presidential race, it doesn't matter if you win a state by one vote or one million. In fact, your goal is to win while spending as little as possible, so you have more money to spend in other races.

In a primary campaign, you don't have to fight as many battles-- and since most states vote at different times, you get to shuffle resources from spot to spot and go back to raise more money. In the general, your timing and your spending has to be perfect.

The difference between the guy who wins senate seats and the guy who wins the primaries and the one who wins it all: The one who can win senate seats will spend 9% of his budget and 20 days campaigning in his home state. The one who'll win the primaries will spend 7% and 15 days. The one who wins it all spends 3% and 9 days.

Bob Shrum has never managed a winning presidential campaign. He's never even managed a successful primary campaign (Kennedy in 1980, Gephardt in 1988, Bob Kerry in 1992).

Shrum was senior staff on Gore 2000--arguably the worst-run campaign in modern history. (Envision George H.W. Bush trying to distance himself from Ronald Reagan out of concern that Reagan's problems with Iran-Contra would rub off on him.) When he joined the staff of one of the best-run campaigns in modern history-- Jimmy Carter in 1976-- he quit after 1o days, blasting both the candidate and his staff.

Shrum does have, the profile notes, a solid record getting senators elected. To date, it notes, he has played critical roles in the successful campaigns of Robert Torricelli, Jon Corzine, Ted Kennedy and John Kerry.

That record would be a lot more impressive if those four guys didn't hail from exactly two states (New Jersey and Massachusetts) that are both strongly Democratic and both located in the Northeastern United States.

Shrum does have some other credits (John Edwards, 1998), but they're always in races where it's not clear exactly how big his role was. He's got a number of big-ticket losses to offset them.

My impression? In the business Shrum is in, you are your record. His record isn't impressive. And the personality of all his campaigns-- the infighting and lack of organization-- make you wonder if the similarities are accidental.

Shrum is a pretty good speechwriter (if you want to sound Kennedyesque, he's terrific) but I wouldn't let him anywhere near one of my candidates. And I'll get to what he does to candidates tomorrow.

2003-11-13T09:52:00.000-05:00

Don't Do As I Say

Josh Marshall is one of the brightest Washington-based reporters around. What he understands about policy is considerable. What he doesn't know about campaigns is a lot.

Two weeks ago, he suggested that Wesley Clark could revive his campaign by cleaning house. I sent him a fairly shirty e-mail telling him that (a) if you fire one person, their buddies often quit and (b) a firing openly acknowledges that something is wrong.

The press loves to pick at a dying campaign-- to write analyses that ask "what's wrong with these jokers?" But due to concerns about bias, editors at non-wingnut papers refuse to allow reporters to write those stories unless the piece writer can be based on an event that is public record. Like a firing.

So when John Kerry takes Josh's advice-- and people walk in protest-- Josh asks "What's wrong with this campaign?"