(February 3, 2007 -- 6:50 AM EDT // link // )

DAN GERSTEIN: MAJORITY OF CONNECTICUT VOTERS ARE "ANGRY."

This is a funny one. In the current issue of Blueprint magazine, Dan Gerstein, a top strategist for Joe Lieberman's victory over Ned Lamont last year, has offered up a piece that rewrites the history of that race in a way that's almost comically incoherent. Particularly noteworthy is the following priceless passage:

That, in the end, is how Lieberman was able to become Lazarus, despite the fact that a clear majority of the Connecticut electorate opposed the war. We ran a campaign for all voters and about all voters. They waged a vendetta on behalf of the angriest few.

There you have it in a nutshell: A "clear majority" opposed the war, but the candidate who represented that view somehow simultaneously was waging a campaign "on behalf of the angriest few." It just doesn't get any better than that.

What makes that passage a thing of beauty, however, is not just its witlessly self-contradictory nature, but also the fact that it unwittingly embodies, and hence reveals, the truth about how the Lieberman forces really were able to win the race, despite the fact that exit polls showed that many more Connecticut voters broadly agreed with Lamont than with Lieberman about Iraq. They did it largely by misrepresenting Ned Lamont's views as extreme -- as those of the "angriest few" -- when in fact Lamont's views were generally mainstream. Meanwhile, they duped people into believing that Lieberman's views were mainstream, when in fact his foreign policy views were and are the extreme ones.

Lieberman accomplished this remarkable goal the old-fashioned way: By unabashedly misleading the voters.

Continue reading ""

(February 2, 2007 -- 2:24 PM EDT // link // )

WASHINGTON POST REPORTER: MCCAIN ISN'T GETTING FREE PASS FROM MEDIA.

Today's John McCain day here at The Horse's Mouth, so I thought I'd share this amusing tidbit from today's Washington Post online political chat between readers and Post reporter Jonathan Weisman:

Washington: I am not sure why Senator McCain continues to get a pass from the media. His positions and statements about Iraq have been at least as contradictory as the President himself -- I could myself point out a few. Before the war began he claimed (and this is on a video recording) that it would be a cakewalk. Only in October he claimed Iraq just needed 20,000 more troops. Now he says Iraq needs 50,000 more troops. He continues shifting blame about Iraq -- one day he says its Vice President's fault and the next day claims it is Gen. Casey's fault. Seems to me he blames everybody except the President, himself and Joe for everything that is going wrong in the war. Indeed, compared to him John Kerry looks more like a straight-talker. Why does the media continue to potray him as a honorable moderate guy? He is anything but that.

Jonathan Weisman: I'm not sure why you think McCain is getting a pass. We did a big, front page story on McCain and the war that was anything but starry eyed.

Er...one front page story should be enough to make us doubt that McCain is getting a "pass" from the media? Really, how could any serious journalist avoid the conclusion that McCain constantly benefits from generous media treatment? I'm not sure why this is such a hard thing to admit. I'm also not sure why it wouldn't immediately be obvious to anyone that this reader's absolutely right.

Incidentally, the Post front page piece cited here as a tough one, I believe, is this article. It's got a few tough lines in it, but its title nonetheless is: "The War Within Sen. McCain." It contains nothing about McCain's frequent inconsistencies on Iraq, and it discusses the "anguish" McCain feels in calling for more troops to be sent there. That it should be held up as evidence that McCain isn't getting a pass is pretty revealing indeed.

(February 2, 2007 -- 12:21 PM EDT // link // )

CNN'S LOU DOBBS SHOW CALLS MCCAIN "MAVERICK," LETS MCCAIN SKATE ON DISSEMBLING ABOUT GENERAL CASEY.

Oh, man -- sometimes this stuff can really get under your skin if you let it. I'm talking about the dismal report last night on Lou Dobbs Tonight about Senator John McCain's questioning of General George Casey at yesterday's Senate hearing into whether Casey should be confirmed as Army Chief of Staff. First came Jaime McIntyre with the obligatory description of McCain as a "maverick":

MCINTYRE (voice over): The case against Casey was laid out in prosecutorial style by maverick Republican John McCain, who slammed the outgoing Iraq commander's past rosy predictions and his reluctance to call for reinforcements while Iraq descended into chaos.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: I question seriously the judgment was that was employed and your execution of your responsibilities in Iraq. And we have paid a very, very heavy price in American blood and treasure because of what is now agreed to by literally everyone as a failed policy.

McCain's alleged "maverick" status has nothing to do with the topic at hand -- it's almost as if it were added simply as a sop to McCain -- but there's more. The program also fails to tell its viewers that McCain himself has repeatedly offered up his own optimistic assessments of the Iraq situation during the time period in question, and has even previously suggested that the "failed policy" he's now criticizing was more or less working. While it's true that McCain has long said more troops would be needed, this is nonetheless context that's crucial to grasping McCain's game plan here.

Finally, here's how Dobbs deals with the question of whether Casey will be confirmed as Army Chief of Staff despite the Iraq debacle:

MCINTYRE: ...Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told CNN earlier today that he thinks Casey made mistakes but should not be held responsible of what he termed the major policy mistakes of the administration -- Lou.

DOBBS: And this is the same Democratic leadership in Congress that wants accountability but are not going to hold this general accountable?

So, because Democrats want blame to fall on the person who's actually responsible for the Iraq debacle -- the President -- Dobbs smacks them for not holding Casey "accountable." But McCain's little show of grilling Casey -- who bears less responsibility than the President -- makes him "prosecutorial" and a "maverick."

The important point here is that casual observers can watch a report like this and have no idea what actually happened at the hearing or why McCain did what he did. Viewers aren't told that McCain has a political reason for slagging Casey. They aren't reminded that McCain has hitched his Presidential campaign to escalation -- which could lead viewers to conclude that he just might be scapegoating Casey as the public face of pre-escalation troop levels in order to distance the GOP, the President he's supported, and himself from the Iraq failure. No context, no analysis of the politics, no nothing. All viewers are made to see is a heroic, "prosecutorial" Senator demanding accountability.

(February 2, 2007 -- 9:47 AM EDT // link // )

WHAT IS UP AT THE TIMES, ANYWAY? Here's the lede on a piece by Patrick Healy and Jeff Zeleny about Hillary Clinton's fundraising that ran in today's paper:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is establishing record-setting goals for presidential campaign fund-raising, her advisers say, asking donors to raise at least $1 million for the honor of being in her top echelon of supporters.

For the "honor" of being in her top echelon? Is that really how her advisers put it? No question, this is a tiny thing -- but all the little inanities are worth pointing out, because it does seem like more and more of these silly, snide throwaway lines are snaking their way into the paper's political writing of late. Put enough of them together, and before long you have a torrent of silliness. Is this sort of idiocy really going to be allowed to dumb down the Paper of Record's coverage of what may prove to be the most important Presidential election in decades?

(February 1, 2007 -- 2:18 PM EDT // link // )

MCCAIN: THINGS WERE GETTING BETTER IN IRAQ BEFORE THEY WERE GETTING WORSE.

Yep, more contradictions and more dissembling on escalation from John McCain. Today McCain grilled General George Casey at a Senate committee hearing, telling him that under his command things had gotten much worse in Iraq:

McCain, R-Ariz., criticized Casey for what he called misjudgments about the prospects for progress toward stabilizing Iraq during his tenure. McCain said he has "strong reservations" about Casey's nomination to become Army chief of staff.

"While I don't in any way question your honor, your patriotism or your service to our country, I do question some of the decisions, the judgments you've made over the past two and a half years," McCain, top Republican on the committee, told Casey. "During that time things have gotten markedly and progressively worse."

Let's review: In order to disparage and heap blame upon General Casey -- who's McCain's number one foil and scapegoat because Casey has questioned the wisdom of McCain's escalation plan -- the good Senator claimed that during the "past two and a half years" of Casey's tenure, "things have gotten markedly and progressively worse."

Wouldn't you know it, but during that same period -- that is, before the midterm elections, and before his Presidential campaign forced him get more serious about blaming the Iraq debacle on pre-escalation troop levels -- he repeatedly suggested something quite different:

CNN, March 30, 2006:

[WOLF] BLITZER: You just came back from Iraq, Senator. Glad you're back safe and sound from there. Your friend and colleague, Senator Chuck Hagel said the other day -- and he's always outspoken, Republican from Nebraska, "I don't think," he said, "Iraq's going to get better. I think it will get worse." You were just there. What do you think?

MCCAIN: May I say that I have great respect and appreciation for Chuck Hagel, who is one of the smartest men in the Senate. I think things are getting better. I think they are progressing. I think that the Iraqi military is improving. I think the Iraqi police training is improving, but much more slowly.

More examples after the jump.

Continue reading ""

(February 1, 2007 -- 10:10 AM EDT // link // )

HEAD-SPINNING INCOHERENCE FROM DAVID BROOKS.

Reading The New York Times's David Brooks can be awfully confusing sometimes. In today's column he argues that the failure of the Iraq war isn't turning the American people isolationist the way Vietnam did, assuring readers that the public's desire to use American "might" abroad will remain alive and well. To make this case, he argues that the Democrats who are "important" aren't doves, and have been hawkish on matters other than Iraq:

There hasn’t even been a broad political shift in favor of the doves. The most important war critics are military types like Jack Murtha, Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb, who hate this particular war but were superhawks in other circumstances.

Brooks points to Murtha and Webb as a sign that dovishness and isolation aren't driving opposition to the Iraq war, that America is "not a country looking to avoid entangling alliances, "not a country renouncing the threat of force," and "not a country looking to come home again."

But at other times, when Brooks has wanted to argue that opposition to the Iraq war is driven by isolationism and a reluctance to use force abroad, he's pointed to the very same Democrats to make his case.

Here's Brooks on Murtha in November 2005:

In his heartfelt cry of agony, Jack Murtha didn't stop to consider the consequences of an immediate U.S. withdrawal. But this is where his policy leads. If the Democrats become the party of withdrawal, this is what they will have to live with. Are they really going to become the Come Home America party of George McGovern once again?

And here's Brooks on Webb only four days ago:

The Democratic approach, as articulated by Senator Jim Webb -- simply get out of Iraq ''in short order'' -- is a howl of pain that takes no note of the long-term political and humanitarian consequences. Does the party that still talks piously about ending bloodshed in Darfur really want to walk away from a genocide the U.S. is partly responsible for?

So when Brooks wants to say that the Iraq war hasn't turned the American people against military action abroad, he points to Webb and Murtha, who, because they aren't reflexively opposed to the use of force, demonstrate that aversion to force isn't driving opposition to the Iraq war. But when Webb and Murtha call for withdrawal from Iraq, it reflects the fact that opposition to the war -- that is, Democratic opposition to it -- is driven by the party's wholesale and reflexive aversion to the use of force abroad. Dems are on their way to becoming the peacenik "party of George McGovern" again. The "Democratic approach" is born of nothing more than a "howl of pain," an instinctual desire to flee war.

So, do Webb and Murtha represent the American people's innate hawkishness, or the Democrats' instinctual dovishness? Which is it? Really, life gets so much simpler when you relieve yourself of the obligation to show even a semblance of coherence.

(January 31, 2007 -- 12:20 PM EDT // link // )

TOM FRIEDMAN: WHO CARES IF I WAS WRONG ABOUT IRAQ? JUST GET MY ASSETS RIGHT.

A couple weeks ago, Radar magazine published a well-read piece pointing out that the pundits who were wrong about the Iraq war are not suffering professionally for their mistake but rather are getting richer even as Iraq sinks ever deeper into disaster. The piece observed that while New York Times columnist Tom Friedman was commanding only $40,000 per speech before backing the invasion, he's now "on top of the world."

Now Friedman has responded to Radar's piece. Friedman sent the following email to the mag:

Thanks for your piece on Radar[Online]. You got all your facts right, but one. We don't have a second home in Aspen, or anywhere else. I will need to get more things wrong to achieve that status. I think you might be referring to my in-laws' home, where we stay when we visit them. You seem to be interested in facts, so I figured you would want to know. All best, Tom Friedman

Friedman probably thought he was being funny in a cutting sort of way, but his flip and dismissive response to the important point raised by Radar -- that there's no accountability for pundits who get it wrong, even if it helps lead the country to disaster -- got me wondering about something.

Tom Friedman is among the most important interpreters of the Middle East for American audiences. They rely on him to explain and exercise sound judgment on a fraught and confusing part of the world whose affairs have more of an impact on us right now than any other region. That is a position of immense consequence. And the decision to back the invasion of Iraq was -- and will be -- the single most important decision of his career. He blew it, and right now he should feel like Bill Buckner felt after he let the ground ball dribble between his legs -- only infinitely worse, because by dint of his role as one of America's principle interpreters of the Middle East, he helped create a catastrophe that has destroyed thousands of families and will have untold consequences for many decades.

Yet has anyone seen a single sign anywhere that Friedman has ever suffered a moment's anguish or even self-doubt about this catastrophic failing? I haven't. If you've seen any, please send along. Look, there are no easy answers to the question of how -- or whether -- pundits like Friedman should be held accountable for getting it wrong, however disastrously. But how about a little self-imposed accountability? What about a hint of remorse? Friedman's email makes you wonder whether to him all this is anything more than a big fat joke. Who cares if I was wrong about the most important foreign policy decision this country's made in decades? Just get my assets right, please.

(January 30, 2007 -- 12:35 PM EDT // link // )

BUSH CLAIMS THAT HIS SAYING "DEMOCRAT" MAJORITY WAS AN "OVERSIGHT" -- EVEN THOUGH HE'S DONE IT AGAIN AND AGAIN IN THE PAST.

This is kind of funny. Via Political Wire, President Bush claimed in an interview with National Public Radio's Juan Williams yesterday that his use of the term "Democrat majority" in the State of the Union speech was a mistake:

MR. WILLIAMS: By the way, in the speech, you spoke about the Democrats. You said, you congratulated the Democrat majority. And I notice your prepared text said Democratic majority. I surely think that you know that for the Democrats, they think when you say Democrat, it's like fingernails on the blackboard. They don't like it. They like you to say Democratic.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yeah. Well, that was an oversight then. I mean, I'm not trying to needle. Look, I went into the hall saying we can work together and I was very sincere about it. I didn't even know I did it.

Really? If so, it's an "oversight" that Bush has committed an awful lot of times in the past:

President Bush, November 8, 2006:

Yesterday, the people went to the polls and they cast their vote for a new direction in the House of Representatives. And while the ballots are still being counted in the Senate, it is clear the Democrat Party had a good night last night, and I congratulate them on their victories. This morning I spoke with Republican and Democrat leadership in the House and Senate.

President Bush, November 5, 2006:

On these issues, the Democrat party has adopted a clear strategy of opposition and obstruction. Recently the House Democrat leader explained the advice she's been following since I was reelected in 2004. She said, you must take him down. That him would be me.

President Bush, October 30, 2006:

As a matter of fact, the top Democrat leader in the House made an interesting declaration. She said, we love tax cuts. But given her record, she must be a secret admirer. (Laughter and applause.)...Time and time again, when she and the Democrat Party had an opportunity to show their love for tax cuts, they voted no. If that's the Democrats' idea of love, I sure wouldn't want to see what hate looks like. (Laughter and applause.)

President Bush, October 20, 2006:

There is a difference of opinion between what we ought to be doing with your money, see. There are people in the Democrat Party who think they can spend your money far better than you can.

President Bush, October 19, 2006:

It's interesting, if you look at the history of tax cuts, the Democrat Party always -- didn't always feel the way they feel today. Back in the '60s, the Democrats understood that our economy grows when Americans keep more of what they earn, when Americans make their own decisions about how to save, spend, or invest.

President Bush, November 7, 2005:

And one area that we need to make progress on is with the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party is a free -- for many sessions was a free trade party.

It wasn't hard to find these past Bush quotes. All it entailed was going to the White House's Web site and plugging the phrase "Democrat party" into the search box. If you do that, you get this rundown. Nothing to it. Yet the Washington Post, which devoted a stand-alone story to this latest explanation by the President, apparently didn't take this elementary step and didn't share this crucial information with its readers. Instead, the paper described the phrase as a "long-standing Republican formulation."

But why not share this kind of info with readers? I just don't get it. What's the problem? It's easy and fun. Readers are grateful, too. And the White House wouldn't mind -- after all, the info is right there on its Web site.

Incidentally, anyone who wants to know why "Democrat" as an adjective is taken as a slur should read Hendrik Hertzerg's useful primer in The New Yorker.

To visit the homepage of this blog, where you can see many more posts, click here.

(January 29, 2007 -- 3:13 PM EDT // link // )

KLEIN, MAN OF SUBSTANCE, DEFENDS BRODER'S SUBSTANCE-FREE ATTACK ON HILLARY.

Over at Swampland, Joe Klein responds to Atrios and Matthew Yglesias by defending David Broder's silly column attacking Hillary Clinton for not asking questions at the Senate hearing on General Petraeus. Klein writes:

I'm so pleased to have received the coveted wanker of the day award from Atrios, whose civility knows no bounds. But slightly disappointed in the Matt Yglesias post that Atrios links to, since Yglesias does have a reputation for substance over slime...

A Senate hearing is a place to ask questions, not make speeches. Since Senator Clinton has made herself one of the best-informed Democrats on military policy, especially counterinsurgency, I do believe her questions might have illuminated how difficult the belated use of these tactics will be. Finally, Matt avoids responding to the real point here--I'm really interested in the quality of questions Hillary, and all the other candidates, will ask as President. A Senate hearing is the perfect place to demonstrate she has perhaps the most essential skills a President can have--intellectual curiosity and the ability to ask the right questions.

Surely Klein has a far better grasp of what Yglesias actually wrote than he's letting on. The issue here is one of emphasis. At the hearing that Broder wrote about, lots and lots and lots of very important stuff was discussed. Different substantive points of view were offered about the single most important policy decision facing us right now. Clinton -- like many other Senators -- had lots of things to say about this very important decision.

Yet Broder -- who inhabits some of the most powerful opinion-making real estate on the planet right now -- devoted an entire column about this hearing to nothing but a minor question of theatrics. Even assuming that this criticism of Clinton's performance is valid, this failing on her part is dwarfed in importance, to put it mildly, by some of the other rather pressing and complex issues that were discussed.

What's more, Klein -- who likes to think of himself as a Man of Substance -- surely noticed that Broder didn't devote a single word of his column to analyzing what was actually being said about these issues by Hillary and others at the hearing. As I hope I showed below, it's pretty clear that Broder is far more in agreement with Hillary than he is with McCain. Surely Klein would have preferred to see Broder use all his expertise and industry to explain to his readers why he thinks Hillary is right or wrong on the substantive questions that were discussed. Instead, Broder used the occasion to get in a cheap hit and to push a facile comparison that was conjured up with the single goal of making McCain look good in comparison -- even though Broder, by all indications, disagrees with McCain on the key issue at hand.

Yes, a Senator's performance at a hearing such as this could conceivably contain a clue to what sort of President she would be, and perhaps deserves to be taken note of. But an entire column? And what about the dozens of other hearings Hillary has asked questions at? Come on, Broder's effort was just frivolous and petty nonsense -- it's not dissimilar to some of the other shallow obsessing over Hillary we're seeing even with nearly two years to go until Election Day 2008 -- and it's unsightly indeed to see a self-regarding Man of Substance like Klein defend it.

To visit the homepage of this blog, where you can see many more posts just like this one, click here.

(January 29, 2007 -- 12:40 PM EDT // link // )

DAVID BRODER: MCCAIN GOOD, HILLARY BAD. WHO CARES ABOUT THEIR ACTUAL POSITIONS?

Oh, man -- you couldn't ask for a more perfect demonstration of the Beltway press' addiction to theatrics over substance than this.

In his latest column, the Washington Post's David Broder hammers Hillary Clinton for her performance at last week's Senate hearing on the nomination of General Petraeus. He faults Hillary for not asking any questions, while McCain asked a grand total of 14 of them, writing:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York used her time to make a speech about Iraq policy and did not ask a single question of the man who will be leading the military campaign...

McCain asked Petraeus 14 questions, ranging from the political situation in Iraq to the morale of the troops to the timeline for the planned "surge." He ran out of time before he ran out of questions -- quite a contrast to Clinton....

This month Clinton began her presidential campaign, as she did her first race for the Senate in New York, by saying that she wanted to do a lot of listening. She sure wasn't listening to Gen. Petraeus. She wasn't even asking.

Broder goes on and on like this, slamming Clinton's performance as "posturing" and as (of course) "partisan." His point, obviously, was that Clinton was merely indulging in political grandstanding -- in contrast to McCain, who was so genuinely focused on policy issues that he asked more questions of Petraeus than he had time for. In other words, Hillary bad, McCain good.

But here's what's funny: There isn't a single word in Broder's column devoted to analyzing the actual content of the positions that Clinton and McCain articulated. Making this even more remarkable, it seems very clear from the available evidence -- that is, what Broder himself has written in the past -- that his own position on Iraq has much more in common with Clinton's views as expressed at the hearing than with McCain's. In other words, Broder basically agrees far more with Hillary.

Don't believe it? I went back and read another Broder column, this one from January 18, and compared it to Hillary's speech at the hearing (via Nexis). Broder agrees with Hillary that the rhetoric being directed by the White House and its allies at opponents of the "surge" is toxic. He agrees with Hillary that it's "fundamentally up to the government in Baghdad" to rein in the violence and come up with a political solution. He agrees with Hillary that the Bush administration's performance has been so bad that Congressional oversight is sorely needed. Yep, on Iraq Broder broadly agrees with Clinton on fundamentally key points.

Meanwhile, it's far from clear whether Broder agrees with McCain in any substantive way at all. As best as I can determine, Broder hasn't endorsed the "surge." And even if he has endorsed it in principle somewhere, he has labeled the current implementation of the increase, which McCain supports, as the "wrong approach."

Yet rather than offering his opinions of the actual substantive positions these two Senators expressed on the most important issue of our time, Broder instead devotes a whole column on the hearing to blasting Hillary -- and comparing her unfavorably with McCain, to boot -- based on nothing more than a few minutes of meaningless theatrics. Come on, now. Can't we do better than this?

Update: Matthew Yglesias adds more on another dimension to all this.