Breaking: Rudy Spent 29 Hours At Ground Zero In Three Months
(August 17, 2007 -- 8:24 AM EDT // link // )

Twenty-nine hours.

That's the total amount of time Rudy Giuliani actually spent at Ground Zero in three months following the attacks, according to a report in this morning's New York Times.

Rudy, you'll recall, recently caused a huge controversy by saying he'd spent as much or more time at Ground Zero than "most" of the 9/11 recovery workers. These new revelations about his time at the site are almost certain to raise yet more questions about his efforts to run for President partly on his performance after 9/11 -- and to further enrage the firefighters, cops and rescue workers who despise him for those efforts and accuse him of falsely lionizing his own 9/11 performance.

Can we call Rudy's recovery-worker insult a gaffe now? Note to pundits who've largely ignored this, despite it being Rudy's worst political misstep to date -- any interest in this story yet?

The news is kind of buried in the Times piece, but it's big:

A complete record of Mr. Giuliani’s exposure to the site is not available for the chaotic six days after the attack, when he was a frequent visitor. But an exhaustively detailed account from his mayoral archive, revised after the events to account for last-minute changes on scheduled stops, does exist for the period of Sept. 17 to Dec. 16, 2001. It shows he was there for a total of 29 hours in those three months, often for short periods or to visit locations adjacent to the rubble. In that same period, many rescue and recovery workers put in daily 12-hour shifts.

That's roughly an average of 10 hours a month. Ahhh -- the sweet sound of real reporting.

Meanwhile, Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association, tells The Times that most of his members averaged more than 400 hours at the site (though it's unclear what time period he's referring to). And John McDonnell, president of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association in New York, tells the paper that many of his members worked consecutive 12-hour shifts at the site for weeks.

The revelations about Rudy's 29 hours at the site would also appear to be directly at odds with these Rudy quotes from September of 2006:

“I spent as much time here as anyone...I was here five, six times a day for four months. I kind of thought of it as living here.”

Surely the pundits will all be talking about Rudy's tendency to be a "serial exaggerator" now, right?

The Times piece also sheds light on the type of work Rudy was doing at the site: "The 29 hours Mr. Giuliani spent at ground zero involved 41 appearances, mostly to give tours to other officials and foreign dignitaries. Many entries include meetings away from the site before the tour."

Those 29 hours at the site also include on-site interviews Rudy did with Oprah and Barbara Walters, according to a chart accompanying the Times piece.

Not exactly digging through the rubble.

Interestingly, when the Giuliani campaign was asked to respond to these revelations, the campaign supplied the following statement from former Giuliani deputy Mayor and Rudy loyalist Joe Lhota:

“Hundreds of thousands of people around the country and the world saw Rudy Giuliani’s steadfast and determined leadership firsthand at a time when we needed it most,” the statement said. “In the days surrounding September 11th, the safety and health of all those involved in the search and recovery efforts was Mayor Giuliani’s No. 1 one priority. Make no mistake, it is the very same concern Mayor Giuliani continues to express today when it comes to all those who have made tremendous sacrifices at ground zero.”

No denial.

Meanwhile, here's the video of Rudy saying he'd spent as much or more time at the site than "most" of the workers, adding that he's "one of them":

As we noted recently, Rudy's recovery worker insult has attracted nowhere near the attention from political pundits that John Edwards' haircut has. This, despite the fact that Rudy's slip-up is his worst to date, and indeed should cut much deeper at the rationale for Rudy's candidacy, since it involves his actual performance and his efforts to capitalize on it, while Edwards' gaffe involved, you know, a haircut. So will the pundits start talking about this now?

Update: To comment on this post, go here.

Perfect. Fred Hiatt's WaPo Edit Page Still Pushing Bogus "Petraeus Report" Line
(August 16, 2007 -- 11:39 AM EDT // link // )

Wow, that didn't take long.

Yesterday I wondered whether the big news orgs would continue describing the imminent September Iraq progress report as representing solely the word of General Petraeus -- as the Gospel According To Petraeus -- now that we know that the report is being written by the White House. As Atrios put it, "a major test of our media right now is whether this bait and switch enters the basic narrative or not."

Well, we now have our first major failure of that test, and fittingly, it's The Washington Post's editorial page, which at this point is devoting its powerful opinion-shaping real estate to little more than a rearguard effort to salvage what's left of the reputations of Beltway war supporters. And not only does WaPo's editorial page today not acknowledge that "bait and switch," it actually continues to try and maintain the fiction that the September report will represent the sole word of Petraeus.

From its lead editorial:

The bombings came as Gen. Petraeus and others claimed to be making progress in their campaign against al-Qaeda in Iraq. The general is expected to elaborate on that progress in a report to Congress in September and to ask for more time for his strategy to work, while acknowledging -- as he also said yesterday -- that the U.S. military presence in Iraq will have to be "a good bit smaller" by next summer.

So perfect.

It's hard to overstate the amount of contempt you need to have for your readers in order to pull nonsense like this. A more charitable explanation here is that the people responsible for this editorial are clueless, and missed the big news about the report yesterday. Neither is all that admirable. After all, WaPo's own news pages did get it right, describing the report as "the Bush administration's progress report," adding that it "would not be written by the Army general but would come from the White House, with input from Petraeus, Crocker and other administration officials." Um, exactly.

Look, the larger story here is that this report is basically the last thing the war supporters have left. They're desperately trying in advance to do the maximum to ensure that it's granted a modicum of credibility by an electorate that's sick of being lied to about Iraq. Thus the extensive campaign by the White House to dupe the public into believing that the report would represent the Gospel According To Petraeus, lest people realize that this report is actually being produced by the same crew who has been lying to them for years and years now.

You really couldn't ask for a more perfect example of this than today's perpetration of the Gospel According To Petraeus myth by WaPo's edit page. That they're still hanging onto this is perhaps inevitable, of course, since it's the last piece of driftwood left.

Again and Again, White House Falsely Described Coming Iraq Report As Solely The Work Of Petraeus
(August 15, 2007 -- 5:37 PM EDT // link // )

By now you've probably heard the news that the report on Iraqi progress we've been expecting in September from General Petraeus is actually going to be written by the White House, with "input" from "officials throughout government."

As the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story today, suggests, this revelation is at odds with "Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker." In other words, the White House has repeatedly said that this report will represent the Gospel According To Petraeus -- except, of course, that it won't. At the White House gaggle today, deputy press secretary Dana Perino was asked to confirm or deny this -- and she dodged the question.

In light of this news, we thought it would be interesting to go back and look at just how comprehensive, thorough, and coordinated the White House effort to convince the American people that this report will represent Petraeus' exclusive word has been until now.

So TPM's Eric Kleefeld and I went back to see just how many times White House officials said the report would be the work of Petraeus, or of Petraeus and Crocker. It wasn't hard to find examples. In fact, we stopped at ten. If you look at them all together, it really becomes clear just how premeditated -- and how audacious -- the White House's deception campaign here really has been.

This isn't just some academic exercise, by the way. It goes directly to the heart of the credibility of the report itself -- something which a tremendous amount is being staked on in advance of the showdowns between the White House and Congress on Iraq that are coming this fall. Anyway, here goes:

Dana Perino, yesterday:

Obviously, there is going to be a report from Ambassador Crocker and General David Petraeus in September. We'll have to take a look at those.

Tony Snow, August 1:

MR. SNOW: Now, let us keep in mind that the full burden of this report does not fall on his shoulders. A lot of the key judgments, especially about politics, will fall on Ambassador Crocker. So this is — although I know a lot of people talk about "the Petraeus report," in fact, you have a report that is a joint report by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. And so we trust him.

Dick Cheney, July 30:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to make those judgments. I think those really turn more on the kind of advice we get from the military. We're all waiting to see what General Petraeus produces by way of his report back, in September. But in terms of achieving our objectives, I think it's very important that the United States not withdraw from Iraq, not adopt a posture of some of our friends on the other side of the aisle who are calling, in effect, for accepting retreat as the outcome.

Tony Snow, July 24:

MR. SNOW: The fact is that Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus will be putting together a plan — not really a plan, but a report — that will assess the success to date of the surge, militarily, economically, diplomatically, politically, and so on. And that's really what you've got to look for.

Tony Snow, July 23:

Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus will be issuing a report, again pursuant to that legislation, that's due September 15th. I think the first thing to do is to figure out, when you have a brand new operation underway, how's it doing. I think the American people want to know that, as we

Tony Snow, July 20:

MR. SNOW: You know what, I'm not going to try to prejudge. It is the business of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker to provide a full report to Congress. It is — those are their — it is their call to make in terms of trying to measure against the metrics that are outlined in the benchmarks, as well as providing other supporting data. I do not — I don't think it's their business to prejudge; what they're supposed to do is to provide a full and factual report.

Tony Snow, July 18:

It's important for members of Congress to get a fuller sense of how the surge is working, or also where they think it's not working. They're going to get a report — they want a report on September 15th from Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus; they'll get that. And at that point, people will be able to make further assessments.

Stephen Hadley, July 13:

There is a process for doing an orderly consideration in September about where we are in Iraq. It starts with a report from General Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, but it's, as the President said, it will be a process that will be an inclusive one, and will include Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Tony Snow, July 13:

What happens is, is that the report you're going to get is going to be a joint production between the two, so it will reflect their combined judgment.

President Bush, July 12:

And you asked, how long does one wait? I will repeat, as the Commander-in-Chief of a great military who has supported this military and will continue to support this military, not only with my — with insisting that we get resources to them, but with — by respecting the command structure, I'm going to wait for David to come back — David Petraeus to come back and give us the report on what he sees. And then we'll use that data, that — his report to work with the rest of the military chain of command, and members of Congress, to make another decision, if need be.

There's an amusing irony here worth noting. The effort to pump up this Petraeus report was all about putting a new public face on the war, in order to separate it from all the people who lied us into it in the first place. But as it turns out, this effort was itself just a continuation of the same old mendacity. In a sane world, this would, you know, cast just a bit of doubt on the credibility of the report itself.

Relatedly, here's a question. Will the big news orgs keep referring to this as the Petraeus report even though we now know that it's a misnomer? Seems worth keeping an eye on.

Pundits Uniformly Ignore Rudy's Hideous Recovery-Worker Gaffe
(August 14, 2007 -- 1:41 PM EDT // link // )

Okay, readers, we've got a challenge for you: See if you can help us find pundits who have weighed in on Rudy's awful 9/11 recovery worker gaffe since he first uttered it last week.

As you know, Rudy caused a bunch of controversy last Thursday by saying that he'd spent as much or more time at Ground Zero than "most" of the recovery workers. The comments prompted an outcry and Rudy later said he'd misspoke.

Before taking a look at the pundit reaction to this, it's necessary to point out that this was an enormous misstep on Rudy's part, his worst yet. It perfectly captured the cynicism and opportunism at the core of his candidacy. It laid bare the extent to which Rudy is concocting his Churchill of 9/11 persona, as well as just how much people who had their lives directly altered by the disaster and by his performance in its aftermath loathe him for doing this. In a sane world this misstep should cut much deeper than John Edwards' haircut, since it concerned his actual performance -- and his efforts to capitalize on it -- whereas Edwards' gaffe concerned, well, a haircut.

So -- which pundits have talked about this? With the help of crack TPM intern Benjy Sarlin, here is the full list, according to Nexis and Google:

1) Margaret Carlson criticized it in passing on MSNBC,

2) Paul Krugman addressed it in a Times column

3) Local Daily News columnist Mike Lupica wrote a column about it

4) Chris Matthews made passing mention of it on Hardball, without criticizing it as a misstep

...and that's it. A grand total of two pundits mentioned this on the networks, one critically, and one national columnist. We're perfectly happy to acknowledge that we may have missed other examples; if you find any, email us at talk@talkingpointsmemo.com.

Rudy's misstep did get a good deal of traditional news coverage, some critical. But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the extent to which the shapers of insider conventional wisdom declared Rudy's comments a mistake that risked hurting his campaign. Such things matter -- they have an impact on fundraising and on mainstream news coverage of the candidate, for instance. And in this case, virtually no one in the punditocracy has yet bothered to say word boo about what is clearly his worst political misstep yet.

Just for the fun of it, we put together a list of some of the national pundits and columnists who laid into Edwards in the aftermath of his haircut -- and this list doesn't do justice to the extraordinary outpouring of contempt and scathing criticism directed towards him:

Pundits:

Chris Matthews

Jack Cafferty

Tucker Carlson (repeatedly)

Glenn Beck

Bill O'Reilly

Neil Cavuto

Brit Hume

David Gregory

Norah O'Donnell

Columnists:

Maureen Dowd

Richard Cohen

Derrick Z. Jackson (The Boston Globe)

It's only been a week since Rudy's misstep, so the punditry still has time to catch up. But guess what -- it won't. As Eric Boehlert writes, when it comes to describing political missteps by Democratic and Republican candidates, there's simply no denying that there's an enormous double-standard at play. Yes, there are exceptions. Think Macaca, for example, or think of some of the rather tame denunciations of Mitt Romney's ideological gyrations.

Still, there's no way around it: The basic dynamic at play here is that Dems are guilty of hypocrisy and political calculation until proven innocent -- indeed, that any campaign trail misstep that suggests Dem hypocrisy or calculation is something to be, in a sense, celebrated by the punditry. At the same time, it's almost as if mainstream pundits feel as if there's something untoward about calling out a Republican for flip-flopping, for hypocrisy, for self-aggrandizement.

How often, for instance, have we heard from pundits that John McCain is only flip-flopping because he has to in order to appeal to GOP primary voters -- and that this isn't something he wants to do, so it's no big deal? Just try taking a deep pull on your bong and imagining pundits frequently offering such an excuse for Edwards or Hillary. You can't, can you.

This has been the basic state of play at least since Bush versus Gore, and nearly seven years and two Presidential elections later, it's happening again. Punditry: Prove us wrong. We dare you.

Update: Check out this interesting look at the extent to which bloggers, in addition to traditional journalists, kept the Edwards haircut story alive.

Newsweek: Criticism Of Rudy's 9/11 Performance Is "Swift-Boating"
(August 13, 2007 -- 11:35 AM EDT // link // )

This article in Newsweek about Rudy -- which seems timed to coincide with his assertion that he spent as much or more time at Ground Zero than "most" recovery workers -- raises some key questions about the big news orgs' coverage of the Giuliani campaign:

Uh, Newsweek editors, substantive criticism of Rudy's 9/11 performance is not "swift-boating." This is precisely the line that the Rudy campaign wants you to take. Its argument has been that critics of Rudy's Masterfully Churchillian Performance, in particular the International Association of Firefighters, are thoroughly political and even "partisan." This is amusing, since IAFF's New York locals repeatedly endorsed...Rudy Giuliani for Mayor. To describe this as "swift-boating" -- with its implication that the criticism is political and partisan, not to mention an unfair attack on his actual record -- tells the story exactly the way Rudy wants you to.

Newsweek also says:

Giuliani may well prove a tougher target than John Kerry. Before the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched their attack on Kerry's Vietnam record in August 2004, most Americans had only a vague sense of his bio, leaving him susceptible to a counternarrative. But the image of Giuliani as 9/11 hero, as the voice of resolve when all other authority was absent, is deeply ingrained in the American consciousness. The real danger for Giuliani may well be not a campaign focused around his role on his 9/11 performance, but a campaign focused on anything else.

But, look, the role of journalists isn't simply to decide whether criticism will be politically effective; it's also about determining whether the criticism is true. After all, these charges being directed at Rudy are, you know, kinda serious. If it weren't for the fact that Rudy had been deified from here to Pluto for his 9/11 performance, he wouldn't be running for President at all. His campaign is already claiming that he is better prepared than the other candidates to handle terrorism. So how about taking a look at the substance of the charges against him?

After all, if big news organizations do what Newsweek did here -- describe the charges as "swift-boating" and say that they're unlikely to work, rather than evaluating the seriousness and substantive significance of the charges themselves -- it's very likely that the criticism won't have an impact. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. This blog frequently complains that the big news orgs simply refuse to acknowledge their own role in shaping public perceptions of our politicians. This is just more of that same old nonsense.

Relatedly, aside from these failings it's a very good thing that Newsweek ran something on this, and I submit that we'll all look back at Rudy's recovery-worker gaffe and see it as a very significant moment. It was covered by many of the big news orgs, making this the first time that the criticism of his Sacred and Inviolable Performance has punched through to a national audience in any serious way.

Indeed, there are other signs that the pundit establishment is beginning to awaken to the fact that there's actually a narrative out there, a body of facts, that counter-programs Rudy's carefully cultivated 9/11 mythology. That Rudy has aggressively exploited 9/11 -- in ways that are at odds with reality -- is at least starting to sink in with some of the opinion-makers.

Of course, if the big news orgs don't end up reporting seriously on the actual charges against him, it won't end up mattering all that much in the long run, now will it.