Charles Krauthammer: Eventually The Public Will Agree With Me About The Clintons. You Just Wait.
(November 3, 2007 -- 12:10 PM EDT // link // )

Let's call them the Waiting-For-Godot pundits.

If you're a pundit who's trying to make the case that Bill Clinton is going to prove a liability for Hillary's Presidential campaign, life must get pretty vexing at times. After all, poll after poll shows that the American public simply isn't willing to play along with this pundit-approved version of Campaign 2008.

So what can pundits facing this little problem do about this? Simple: They can pretend the public hasn't weighed in on this question -- and keep on asserting that one day in the future, the public will finally reveal that in fact it does see the Clintons the way they say it should.

Case in point: Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post this morning. He writes:

Americans did not like the idea of a co-presidency when, at the 1980 Republican convention, Ronald Reagan briefly considered sharing the office with former president Gerald Ford. (Ford would have been vice president with independent powers.) And they won't like this co-presidency, particularly because the Clinton partnership involves two characters caught in the dynamic of a strained, strange marriage.

The cloud hovering over a Hillary presidency is not Bill padding around the White House in robe and slippers flipping thongs. It's President Clinton, in suit and tie, simply present in the White House when any decision is made. The degree of his involvement in that decision will inevitably become an issue. Do Americans really want a historically unique two-headed presidency constantly buffeted by the dynamics of a highly dysfunctional marriage?

Bill "will inevitably become an issue." This smacks of a recent column by Waiting-For-Godot pundit David Broder, who wrote that Bill would be playing a "central role" in a Hillary Presidency and that this was something "the country will have to ponder."

But again, the American public has already passed judgment on this many, many times. Again and again and again the electorate has confirmed that it simply doesn't see Bill as a political liability for Hillary -- and indeed sees him as an asset to her potential Presidency.

As for Krauthammer's assertion that the public will come to believe that a Hillary presidency would be merely an extension of Bill's -- an idea Krauthammer appears to think is an original one on his part -- well, it turns out that the silly public has been duped by those scheming Clintons into seeing Hillary as her own person. A poll last month in Krauthammer's own paper found that a full two-thirds of Americans think Hillary will take her Presidency in a different direction.

Of course, what the public actually thinks doesn't matter at all to the Waiting-For-Godot pundits. To them, the voters have never really focused on the Billary question and have never really reached their true conclusion on it. And when they finally do, they will reveal that they agree with Krauthammer and Broder, after all. We know this because the WFG pundits keep telling us this is so.

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Krugman Criticizes Editors Of His Own Paper For Being Soft On Rudy
(November 2, 2007 -- 12:45 PM EDT // link // )

Here's something else that's interesting about Paul Krugman's column today in The New York Times arguing that the media should be seeing Rudy Giuliani's chronic mendacity as a character issue. Take a look at this little nugget toward the end of the column:

To be fair, there has been some news coverage of the prostate affair. But it’s only a tiny fraction of the coverage received by Hillary’s laugh and John Edwards’s haircut.

And much of the coverage seems weirdly diffident. Memo to editors: If a candidate says something completely false, it’s not “in dispute.” It’s not the case that “Democrats say” they’re not advocating British-style socialized medicine; they aren’t.

Krugman doesn't say which "editors" he's referring to here with his "memo to editors." But I submit that he's clearly criticizing the editors of his own paper.

His demand that editors not describe something that's completely false as being "in dispute," and his demand that they not use the "Democrats say" dodge to call out something that's completely false, seems to be a reference to this New York Times piece from a few days ago on Rudy's prostate dissembling. It contained this:

Mr. Giuliani’s Democratic rivals would argue that they are not advocating government-run health care in their plans to extend coverage to the uninsured. But, beyond that, the 44 percent figure that Mr. Giuliani has been citing is in dispute.

Anyway, it seems noteworthy that things have gotten to the point where Krugman apparently feels the need to admonish his own paper's editors for not taking on Rudy's falsefoods forcefully enough. Shorter Krugman to Times editors: Tell your readers the truth. This is important.

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Krugman Asks The Key Question About Rudy's Dissembling, His Character, And The Media
(November 2, 2007 -- 8:34 AM EDT // link // )

As you loyal readers know, this blog firmly believes that Rudy Giuliani regards the truth as little more than a nettlesome obstacle between himself and the nuke button. And I've repeatedly asked the following question about Rudy in recent days:

When is Rudy's chronic mendacity going to become part of the official media narrative of Campaign 2008? When will the pundits start talking about this constant dissembling as an overarching character trait, in the same manner that we heard endlessly about alleged Dem flaws such as Al Gore's serial exaggerating, John Kerry's effeteness and obfuscation, John Edwards' phoniness, and Hillary's penchant for political calculation?

Well. today Paul Krugman has taken this question and blared it through his big megaphone. In his column today, which is about Rudy's constant dissembling about prostate cancer, he phrases this key question about Rudy -- and the attendant challenge to his media peers -- perfectly:

Why isn’t Mr. Giuliani’s behavior here considered not just a case of bad policy analysis but a character issue?

For better or (mostly) for worse, political reporting is dominated by the search for the supposedly revealing incident, in which the candidate says or does something that reveals his true character. And this incident surely seems to fit the bill...

By rights, then, Mr. Giuliani’s false claims about prostate cancer — which he has, by the way, continued to repeat, along with some fresh false claims about breast cancer — should be a major political scandal...

The fact is that the prostate affair is part of a pattern: Mr. Giuliani has a habit of saying things, on issues that range from health care to national security, that are demonstrably untrue. And the American people have a right to know that.

Indeed. As this blog has been noting regularly, in the case of Dem candidates, your pundits will cheerfully springboard off the most trivial of anecdotes -- and in some cases, things that never happened at all -- to reach sweeping judgments about Dems' character deficits. But when it comes to Republican candidates, there is, with a few exceptions, a deep-seated reluctance to doing something so crude and impolite. This enormous double standard has been plainly obvious for years and years now. Yet you'd be hard-pressed to get anyone in the media to admit this. The denial about it runs too deep.

Here we have the perfect opportunity for pundits to prove this wrong. It isn't just that Rudy's ongoing mendacity is plainly obvious on a bunch of fronts. More to the point, when you actually watch his mendacity in real time, it's very clear that there's a characterological, even pathological dimension to it, wherein Rudy is perfectly at ease as he casually spews one falsehood after another. Take a look at this video of Rudy talking about health care and tell me that's not the case:

Rudy's cheerfully audacious mendacity is very clearly a window into the man's character. Yet there's literally nothing that will get your pundits and commentators to start saying so en masse, the way they'd already be doing if a Dem were dissembling at even a fraction of the rate Rudy has been.

Prove us wrong, media. We dare you.

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There's A History Here: Russert Blindsided Hillary With Question About Bill's Affair Back In 2000; Hillary Camp Seethed
(November 1, 2007 -- 1:31 PM EDT // link // )

Since the Dem debate a few days ago a lot of people have understandably been taking shots at Tim Russert for his often small-minded "gotcha" questions and his constant references to Bill Clinton. Some Hillary backers are seething about Russert; indeed, in a conference call with big donors, Hillary pollster Mark Penn and other supporters repeatedly griped about Russert's approach, with one supporter saying that he "should be shot."

It's worth noting, however, that there's a long history here.

Russert has been trying to catch out Hillary with "gotcha" questions about Bill and other things for years now -- in fact, his efforts to do this date all the way back to Hillary's first Senate campaign in 2000. And then, as now, the Hillary folks were mighty pissed off with him. The bad blood goes way back.

Does anyone remember the then-notorious question about Bill's affair that Russert asked Hillary during a 2000 debate with GOP candidate Rick Lazio? The Hillary camp fumed about it afterwards and Bill even publicly went after Russert over it. It was the ultimate "gotcha" moment, really: Russert caught her off guard by playing some video of Hillary saying in a 1998 interview that she and her husband were totally shocked by the allegations of Bill's transgressions.

Then came the following exchange:

RUSSERT: Do you regret misleading the American people? And, secondly, in that same interview you said that those who were criticizing the president were part of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Amongst those eventually criticizing the president were Joe Lieberman. Would you now apologize for branding people as part of a vast right-wing conspiracy?

CLINTON: Well you know Tim, that was a very, a very painful time for me, for my family and for our country. It is something that I regret deeply that anyone had to go through. And I wish that we all could look at it from the perspective of history but we can't yet. We're going to have to wait until those books are written.

But from my perspective, you know, I'm very hopeful that we can go forward in a united way. That certainly is what I've tried to do. And I've tried to be as forthcoming as I could given the circumstances that I faced. Obviously I didn't mislead anyone. I didn't know the truth. And there's a great deal of pain associated with that and my husband has certainly acknowledged that and made it clear that he did mislead the country as well as his family.

The Hillary camp seethed afterwards about Russert's ambush, he took a pounding for it from the Columbia Journalism Review, and Bill even took a shot at Russert at a fundraiser, saying that the debate had been "2-on-1 half the time," meaning that Russert and Lazio had ganged up on Hillary. In other words, Russert played the "gotcha" game with Billary, the Hillary camp hit back at Russert, and then Hillary's advisers moved to spin his gotcha into a positive by arguing that the men had piled on victimized Hillary and that she'd valiantly fought back. Exactly what happened this time.

The point here is that Russert has been doing this for a long time now, and he's only been rewarded for it by his Beltway peers with more power and status. The networks live and die to create buzz; gotcha moments create that buzz; and hence those who create gotcha moments flourish. Sure, Creeping Russertism means the political process remains mired in inanity and self-parody and our discourse remains comfortably dumb. But who cares? People talk about Russert's gotchas at D.C. cocktail parties, and that's what really matters. It happened seven years ago; it happened again a few days ago; and it'll happen again in seven years.

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Is Hillary For Spitzer's Driver's License Plan? Still Unclear
(October 31, 2007 -- 6:49 PM EDT // link // )

"A Day Later, Clinton Embraces Spitzer’s License Effort."

That's the headline on a New York Times piece which just went up at the paper's Caucus blog. It seems to suggest that Hillary has firmed up her answer on the question of whether she supports Eliot Spitzer's plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. But what exactly does she support? It's still unclear.

As you've no doubt already heard, Hillary has been taking heat for answering a question at yesterday's debate by saying she generally supports Spitzer's efforts to solve the problem without saying whether she explicitly supports his proposed policies -- an answer that rivals denounced as woefully lacking in clarity.

So here's the statement that Camp Hillary gave to The Times today in response to questions about where she stands on the issue:

"Senator Clinton supports governors like Governor Spitzer who believe they need such a measure to deal with the crisis caused by this administration’s failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform," her campaign said.

It's almost too obvious to point out, but this just isn't an expression of support for Spitzer's proposed policies in any way. It even falls short of overt support for Spitzer in general -- it says she supports governors "like" Spitzer who are faced with policy conundrums of this sort. This is basically a clearer way of saying what she said yesterday -- Spitzer is trying to solve a problem that needs to be solved, and she supports the idea of trying to do something about it with policies similar to these.

The Times piece quotes unnamed Hillary aides saying that the above statement was "intended to offer her support" for a newer version of Spitzer's plan. But it's impossible to gauge what this actually means about her actual position.

I'm generally less sympathetic than other people to the constant complaints that Hillary won't say where she stands on key questions. But this one's puzzling to say the least. As Josh noted earlier today, Hillary had lots of stuff to say about the policy problem Spitzer's facing. It would be nice to know whether she supports his proposed solutions. And we still don't.

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Rudy Campaign To Media: We're Going To Keep Lying About Health Care -- And There's Nothing You Can Do About It
(October 31, 2007 -- 11:29 AM EDT // link // )

The other day, Paul Krugman asserted that Rudy's ongoing dissembling about health care presents a big challenge to our media. He's right -- and that challenge just got more pressing, because there's been a new development on this front.

First, a quick recap: As many have blogged about already, Rudy released an ad the other day saying that the survival rate from prostate cancer is much higher in America than in Britain, something which allegedly proves what a disaster socialized medicine has been. The only problem, of course, is that this claim has been thoroughly debunked by Ezra Klein and others. This quite naturally prompted Krugman to wonder whether Rudy's almost comic level of mendacity on this would attract anywhere near the attention given to Edwards' $400 haircut and other similar Dem tales.

But it gets better -- or, rather, it gets worse.

The Rudy campaign has now blithely confirmed that they are going to keep on telling this lie. The New York Times has a new article out today on the whole affair that debunks this claim even more thoroughly than it had been already, pointing out that the Rudy campaign's source for the claim, of all things, is the conservative mag City Journal. That's bad enough. But check out this little nugget at the end of the piece about Rudy spokesperson Maria Comella's response to all this:

Asked if Mr. Giuliani would continue to repeat the statistic, and if the advertisement would continue to run, Ms. Comella responded by e-mail: "Yes. We will."

Memo to media: Rudy and his campaign think you're a bunch of chumps. They have nothing but complete contempt for the truth and for everything that purportedly led you all to become journalists. Maybe it's time to get serious about what this guy is up to.

On this score, I'd like to broaden Krugman's challenge a bit and ask this again: When is Rudy's chronic and cheerfully audacious mendacity going to become part of the official media narrative of Campaign 2008? Reporters have done a good job debunking this latest Rudy lie. But when will the pundits start talking about this constant dissembling -- oh, heck, constant lying -- as an overarching Rudy character trait, in the same manner that we heard endlessly about alleged Dem flaws such as Al Gore's serial exaggerating, John Kerry's effeteness and obfuscation, John Edwards' phoniness, and Hillary's penchant for political calculation?

Rudy's chronic dishonesty -- on everything from health care to taxes to his own 9/11 performance -- just couldn't be more blatant. He's basically flaunting it in the face of the media at this point. He's all but saying to the press, "bring it on." So when will pundits start talking about Rudy in these terms?

When?

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House Republicans: We Opposed SCHIP Program Because Dems Were Mean To Us
(October 30, 2007 -- 1:09 PM EDT // link // )

This is pretty amusing. House Republicans have concocted a new explanation for why they voted against the SCHIP children's health care expansion despite the fact that it had bipartisan support in Congress and was backed by strong majorities of the American people.

The latest rationale: They voted against it because Democratic leaders were nasty to them. That's what angry House GOPers have now told Dem leaders in a private meeting on the Hill:

In a closed-door meeting before the last vote on the children’s health care bill, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer appealed for the support of about 30 wavering Republican lawmakers. What he got instead was a tongue-lashing, participants said.

The GOP lawmakers, all of whom had expressed interest in a bipartisan deal on the SCHIP legislation, were furious that the Democratic leader from Maryland had not reached out to them in a more serious way early on. They also criticized him and Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois for failing to stop his allies outside Congress from running attack ads in their districts, while they were discussing a bipartisan deal.

One GOPer who sniffled particularly loud about his maltreatment at the hands of House Dems was GOP Rep. Ric Keller of Florida, who complained: "They spent $1.5 million through their various shill outreach groups attacking me and a handful of my colleagues. But they did not spend five minutes to approach me to ask for my vote."

Hmmm. Those hyperpartisan and hypernasty House Dems wouldn't reach out to Republicans, despite the fact that they were interested in a compromise? And they even ran ads criticizing the GOP position? How awful! How dare they do such a thing!

If GOPers were really interested in reaching an understanding with Dems, they had a funny way of showing it. Over a month ago, for instance, Keller accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi of "playing politics" while risking the health of "6 million children." He blasted the Dems' SCHIP plan as "socialized medicine" funded by a "gigantic tax increase."

Another Republican who claimed to want to compromise with Dems on SCHIP, Rep. Tom Price, was similarly caustic in his hits on Dems early on, blasting the Dems' SCHIP plan a month ago as having "nothing to do with our nation’s neediest children and everything to do with political posturing."

And these gentle souls are now complaining that they didn't support SCHIP because Dems were mean to them?

Look, the larger story here is that Republicans have been working very hard to push a media narrative which has it that partisanship and obstinance on the part of Dems have prevented Congress from doing the people's business on a host of fronts, from children's health care to the Iraq War.

But here's the deal: There's such a thing as reality. And reality has it that on issues like these, House Dems represent the positions held by majorities of the American people, and House GOPers don't. Reality also has it that saying you want to compromise doesn't mean you're actually prepared to do something to compromise.

This is not to say that Dems have no role in pursuing compromises; of course they do. But let's not lose sight of what's going on here: Republicans are torpedoing one urgent legislative measure after another, even though the American public really, really wants them done. The reason SCHIP went down is because lots of Republicans voted against it. The reason various Iraq withdrawal measures have gone down is because lots of Republicans voted against them. A major test of our media will be whether they bite on the GOP version of events or whether they can keep their sights on what is actually happening.

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Wingnut Blogosphere Calls For Boycott Of New Republic's Advertisers Over Beauchamp Affair
(October 29, 2007 -- 7:46 PM EDT // link // )

You knew this was coming: The prominent winger blog Confederate Yankee is actually calling for a boycott of The New Republic's advertisers over the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair. The call to arms has been linked approvingly by Michelle Malkin, and is now being touted by the usual parade of whackjobs and misfits who tend to goose-step along behind this sort of stuff.

Confederate Yankee is very, very serious about this. He's got lists of advertisers and everything. There's a lot of heavy breathing about coverups and the like. And he's even caught the magazine in another lie: To wit, one of the companies listed says that it hasn't advertised with the mag in a long time, but the mag's media kit nonetheless says that it's a "recent advertiser"! Really, you can't get anything past this Confederate Yankee fellow. He's mighty quick.

At any rate, the call for a boycott, somewhat puzzlingly, also adds this:

I would ask advertisers to pull all of their advertising from the print edition of The New Republic and tnr.com until the senior editors responsible for this debacle are disciplined, with those at the top resigning.

The New Republic doesn't have an obligation to support the troops, or support the war in Iraq. It does have an obligation to retract stories for which they can provide no support.

Right, but the mag did support the war, remember?

Look, for all I know, the mag will ultimately admit that Beauchamp made up much of what was in his "Baghdad Diarist" columns. But really, this is deeply inane. Judging by how this has unfolded so far, the mag has tried to "provide support" for this, by re-interviewing other soldiers. It has also asked the Army to release the statement that Beauchamp signed about it. Based on what we've seen I see no reason to doubt that TNR would promptly post that statement if the Army gave it to the mag -- whatever it said.

The point is that TNR isn't being permitted by the wingnuts to resolve this honorably, because as the above makes clear, the desperation for another Rathergate is just palpable, and mass resignations at the top of TNR are the only thing that will do. If any of the mag's advertisers get spooked by the sound of jackboots hitting pavement and do pull out of the mag, this would represent a victory for those who don't genuinely want to see any kind of journalistically honorable conclusion to this, not for anyone who does.

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WaPo's Murray: Chris Dodd Is A Loser
(October 29, 2007 -- 1:07 PM EDT // link // )

What did Chris Dodd ever do to The Washington Post's Shailagh Murray? She just can't seem to stop dropping snide little asides about the Connecticut Senator. From her chat with readers today:

Silver Spring, Md.: I see that Rep. Duncan Hunter has vaulted from "asterisk" to "viable longshot" in the GOP nomination race (he's up to 2 or 3 percent in most of the latest polls). He's no Mike Huckabee perhaps, but it seems like more than noise. Is this fallout from the immigration debate heating up?

Shailagh Murray: Whew, this is news to me. Must make Chris Dodd feel GREAT.

I know, I know, this is a really boring and earnest thing to say, but this latest from Murray is basically indistinguishable from saying, "Nyah, nyah, Chris Dodd is a loser."

Note that Murray brought up Dodd completely out of nowhere here -- it's the first mention of him in the chat. It's also worth recalling that a couple of weeks ago Murray was similarly snide about Dodd's announcement that he would put a hold on the Senate FISA legislation containing telecom immunity, lampooning him for his phony concern about the rule of law. "Here's a first for a Senate presidential candidate: blocking a bill that doesn't exist yet," Murray wrote about Dodd's move, adding the impeccably objective observation that his press release was "breathless" and that his rhetoric "got hotter with every paragraph."

And now this. Really, if you're gonna be this hostile to a particular candidate, at a certain point you want to try to be a bit more subtle about it.

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LA Times Asks Some Tough Questions About Army's Conduct In Beauchamp-New Republic Affair
(October 29, 2007 -- 9:50 AM EDT // link // )

The other day I noted that the Army has promised to investigate an apparent leak to Matt Drudge of documents relating to its probe of Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the U.S. soldier accused of fabricating stories about fellow troops in a series of articles for The New Republic. The leak, which appears to be the work of an Army official intent on delivering payback to the mag, raises further questions about the Army's less-than-admirable handling of this whole affair.

I'd been wondering when we were going to see some aggressive reporting and/or opinion-making about this, when along comes this excellent piece in the Los Angeles Times by Tim Rutten. In it, Rutten doesn't engage in any namby-pamby "on the one hand, on the other hand" weaseldome. Instead, he comes right out and says that TNR editors Frank Foer and Peter Scoblic aren't the ones playing politics here; he points a finger squarely at the Army and concludes that its conduct stinks really badly. Rutten asks a number of tough questions about this whole affair:

* Who leaked the documents to Drudge and why, among all the documents the Army must have collected in this case, was one of them a transcript that could be used to put Foer and Scoblic in a bad light?

* Why did Drudge take the documents down and why hasn't he explained his reasons for doing so?

* Why no original link to the Memorandum [Beauchamp's signed statement about this], the only document that would have contained evidence?

* Why has the Army kept Beauchamp in Iraq where it can control access to him and he's beyond the reach of any other jurisdiction?

* Why hasn't the Army complied with the New Republic's FOI request?

All good questions that are still crying out for answers. There's a really good story out there for any reporter who wants to go out and get it, and the above questions offer a good road map on how to get there.

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