Friday, October 10, 2003

 
BOMBSHELL: POLITICALSTRATEGY.ORG SHUT DOWN BY SECRET SERVICE!!!!!

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posted by Politica 9:50 PM

 
Novak Revealed A Source in July of 2001: According to Novak, "Disclosing confidential sources is unthinkable for a reporter seeking to probe behind the scenes in official Washington, but the circumstances here are obviously extraordinary" - Circumstances Don't Get Much More 'Extraordinary' than those surrounding 'Plame-Gate', Bob!

[Article by Bob Novak, from TownHall.com, July 12, 2001]

Three and half-years ago, I reported that a veteran FBI agent resigned and retired after refusing a demand by Attorney General Janet Reno to give the Justice Department the names of top secret sources in China. My primary source was FBI agent Robert Hanssen.

Disclosing confidential sources is unthinkable for a reporter seeking to probe behind the scenes in official Washington, but the circumstances here are obviously extraordinary. The same traitor who delivered American spies into the Kremlin's hands was expressing concern about the fate of intelligence assets in China.

When my source was revealed as a spy, my first fear was that I had been the victim of disinformation by a truly evil man. I wrote my column of Nov. 24, 1997 only after other officials confirmed Hanssen's account. Nevertheless, I now wanted to make doubly sure and rechecked my report's validity. I did so, and several sources -- including one FBI agent who would not speak to me in 1997 -- totally confirmed what I had written. I am absolutely convinced that Hanssen told me the truth.

Then, why break a reporter's responsibility to keep his sources secret? I wrestled with this question for months and finally decided that my experience with Hanssen contributes to the portrait of this most contradictory of all spies. Furthermore, to be honest to my readers, I must reveal it.

In mid-November 1997, critics were accusing the Justice Department of covering up 1996 campaign scandals. I was informed by Hanssen that Ray Wickman, head of the FBI's intelligence unit monitoring Chinese operations, was ordered in Reno's name to turn over secret sources in his Chinese account. Wickman refused to surrender this information, resigned from the FBI and retired from the government in September 1997. Wickman declined to discuss this with me then and more recently, when I again approached him.

I never met Hanssen but talked to him three times over the telephone, the first at length and twice more briefly to check out information I received from other officials. He seemed to be well organized and deeply concerned about the possible compromise of secret assets in a Communist-ruled country.

Hanssen told me Wickman's sources were of the highest caliber and among the FBI's most sensitive. All unattributed quotes in my column came from Hanssen.

"It was an insult," I quoted Hanssen in describing the demand made of Wickman. He added: "The purpose of the FBI is to safeguard sources. The whole idea is to keep sources secret from the Justice Department. If Justice is going to have full access to our files, we have no purpose." I now have rechecked these quotes with another FBI source familiar with the Wickman situation. He agreed completely with these sentiments and attested to their accuracy.

My encounter with Hanssen came during what the government alleges was his sabbatical from spying for over eight years from the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 until 1999, when KGB alumnus Vladimir Putin became Russia's prime minister en route to the presidency.

Unanswerable questions are pondered. During the lengthy interim when he was not betraying his country, could Hanssen have felt some genuine concern about the security of U.S. assets in China if they fell into the hands of the attorney general? Could he have experienced a sudden change of heart after disclosing the identity of U.S. assets in Russia?

Or, was he merely using me to undermine Reno -- and his boss, FBI Director Louis Freeh, as well? When I informed Hanssen that Freeh had told a member of Congress that he had heard nothing about Wickman's resignation, he replied disdainfully: "Of course, he heard about it." The accuracy of that assertion also has been newly verified to me by an additional source.

Robert Hanssen is an enigma and will remain so at least until he reveals himself. The speculation that he is purely the embodiment of evil tends to be undermined by the validity of his report about Ray Wickman. He really may have been living a double-life, one as a patriotic, religious American and the other as spy of the century. That sounds fanciful, but any other explanation fails. - Source

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posted by Politica 10:09 AM

 
Terrorist Hopeful Pat Robertson Said Someone Should Blow Up the State Department with a Nuclear Bomb

The State Department has protested to televangelist Pat Robertson about his "despicable" suggestion that someone blow up the department with a nuclear bomb, an official said on Thursday.

Robertson, a former presidential candidate, made the remark in an interview with Joel Mowbray, author of a new book entitled "Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Endangers America's Security."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, asked to comment, said on Thursday: "I lack sufficient capabilities to express my disdain. ... I think the very idea is despicable."

The department has made its views clear to Robertson, added a State Department official, who asked not to be named.

Introducing Mowbray on his Christian Broadcasting Network, Robertson said that a person who read Mowbray's book would reach the conclusion that a nuclear explosion at the State Department was the best solution.

"I read your book. When you get through, you say (to yourself): 'If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom (the State Department's main building), I think that's the answer' and you say: 'We've got to blow that thing up.' I mean, is it as bad as you say?" he said.

"It is," Mowbray replied. Mowbray himself did not make the suggestion, either in his book or in the interview.

According to the network's Web site, Mowbray's book "exposes the mixed allegiances, hidden agendas, and outright anti-Americanism found in the State Department."

A group of conservatives, including former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, accuses the State Department of undermining U.S. interests by protecting dictatorial governments abroad.

Mowbray was prominent in a media campaign against the way the State Department handled visas for Saudi citizens after the attacks of September 2001. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudi citizens.

Robertson ran unsuccessfully to be the Republican candidate in the presidential elections of 1988. - Source

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posted by Politica 10:05 AM

 
John Dean: "If Newsweek is correct that Karl Rove declared Valerie Plame Wilson "fair game," then he should make sure he's got a good criminal lawyer, for he may need one. I've only suggested the most obvious criminal statute that might come into play for those who exploit the leak of a CIA asset's identity. There are others."

Slowly, and steadily, more information about the unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Plame's CIA identity, and the reasons for it, have become available. As it has, I've been examining, assimilating, and trying to understand it. I've also realized that the apparent criminal activity may be more widespread than it initially appeared. (In an earlier column, I offered a preliminary discussion of this issue.)

News accounts, principally from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, ABC News and NBC News have amplified on original reports. Information available from the White House has also added to the story. In light of this additional information, it is obvious that the Bush presidency has what might be politically diagnosed as a nasty subcutaneous problem - an ugly little sore that is festering and spreading.

It is too soon to know if this mess is malignant. Or terminal. Yet, this I do know: If mistreated, or untreated, this growing problem is going to become lethal for the Bush presidency. This is the Administration's first serious political scandal, and it is replete with legal problems and criminal implications.

To get a better understanding of this scandal, I've parsed the evidence publicly available as of now, in an effort to determine what is really going on - who did what, and why - and to look closer at the potential criminality involved.

The Apparent Honorable Motives Of Ambassador Wilson

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson is a man with extensive knowledge of Iraq. He served as charge d'affaires at the US Embassy in Baghdad during Desert Shield, and has spent two decades in public service relating to foreign affairs.

Based on his experience and judgment, Wilson began to warn others about the dangers of going to war with Iraq. Starting around April 2002, Wilson became a regular on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS, urging that caution should be used, and alternatives to a war on Iraq considered.

Some have charged that Wilson is a political partisan - a stalking horse for Democrats. But the charges don't ring true. The Washington Times reported that Wilson said, "Neoconservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both." But so what? I know hordes of Republicans who would support such as effort to take their party back from neocons and religious right - probably starting with George H.W. Bush, and his former advisers. This view hardly makes Wilson a pawn of the Democratic Party.

In my view, Wilson seems, instead, to be a supporter of the greater good. By March 3, 2003, when he wrote an essay for The Nation, he was mincing no words. He said that the Bush Administration's imminent war with Iraq was not about weapons of mass destruction, nor terrorism (since it would only result in more terrorism), nor about liberating oppressed people. Rather, he argued, the true objective of the war was an effort to impose a Pax Americana on the region. He concluded that because we had no business building empires, we had no business going to war.

Wilson was (and is) sincere, articulate, and knowledgeable, with a pleasing personality and manner. No doubt, his commentary was getting under the skin of the Bush White House. His refusal to embrace preemptive war with Iraq must have given pause to those who listened to him. Here was a man who had supported George H.W. Bush in the first Gulf war, and had heroically confronted Saddam's efforts at intimidation. And he was telling the world that we should not march to Baghdad, particularly alone and preemptively.

As The Weekly Standard, the voice of neoconservatism, which is regular reading at the Bush White House, notes, "Bush administration officials would have been well advised" to better understand Joe Wilson, "before getting drawn into a fight with him in July." And they argue that Wilson "loves the spotlight." So what? Who in public life - other than Dick Cheney - does not enjoy the spotlight?

The Tipping Point For The Administration: The Niger Hoax Revealed

The evidence is clear that the White House picked a fight with Wilson after he undercut the president's case for war.

On July 6, 2003 - in an OpEd column for The New York Times, and an extensive interview with The Washington Post - Wilson said that he had found no evidence that Iraq was purchasing uranium from Niger. (Wilson had been sent by the CIA to make such a determination seventeen months earlier, in February 2002.)

That put part of Bush's State of the Union in doubt (as I discussed in an earlier column) and forced the White House to retract at least sixteen words of it. The Administration said that the CIA was to blame. (Later, Bush also claimed that his sixteen words really were technically correct, because he said in his State of the Union that he was relying on British intelligence, not his own, but that point hardly quieted the scandal.).

To counter the revelation of bogus information in the State of the Union address, the Bush Administration also went after Wilson's credibility - claiming he was a partisan, that he had been sent by low level CIA officials, even suggesting that Wilson's report actually supported the President.

A Closer Look At The Plame Leak

Soon columnist Bob Novak entered the fray. Among other questions, he wondered why the Bush Administration had sent a former member of Clinton's National Security Council (head of the African section) to Niger in the first place.

A leak gave Novak his answer: Wilson's wife, a CIA weapons of mass destruction operative, asked for him to be sent there. This answer suggested nepotism; in fact, Wilson was paid only for his travel expenses - undertaking the assignment because he was qualified, and a willing public servant. It may have even suggested, to some, a sinister plot to make sure the Niger uranium claim was discredited.

In a July 14, 2003 column, Novak printed the leak, and named Valerie Plame Wilson - thus blowing her cover, and putting her and her husband in jeopardy. Novak confirmed that Wilson's mission to Niger was authorized at a low level in the CIA. He also reported that "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate [the report that Iraq was purchasing uranium from Niger]." Novak says, "CIA officials did not regard Wilson's intelligence as definitive."

The same day, Time's July 21 issue hit the newsstands. It offered a far more detailed account of the preparation of the State of the Union - including an account of who was, and was not, aware of the problems with it. It also offered a more detailed story of Wilson's trip to Niger: "Wilson seemed like a wise choice for the mission. He had been a U.S. ambassador to Gabon and had actually been the last American to speak with Saddam before the first Gulf War. Wilson spent eight days sleuthing in Niger, meeting with current and former government officials and businessmen; he came away convinced that the allegations were untrue."

It appears that Time may have talked with Wilson off the record. It also spoke on the record with Lewis Libby in the vice president's office, and a member of the NSC staff. Time did not report anything about Valerie Plame Wilson - and certainly did not blow her cover.

Later, on July 17, 2003, in an online article entitled "War on Wilson?" Time did, however, mention that "some government officials have noted to Time in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." This article included an on-the-record interview with Wilson. He said that his wife was not the person who suggested he take the trip; rather, she merely asked if he would talk to her colleagues. The article discusses the White House attack machinery that is currently targeting Wilson.

The Leak Itself Becomes News, and the Administration Is Implicated

Other magazines and newspapers also were curious about how the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity had occurred, and whether the Bush Administration had caused it, or at least was capitalizing on it.

On September 28, The Washington Post reported that according "a senior administration official," that "two top White House officials" who had been Novak's source had called at least "six journalists" to reveal the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. The Post story notes, "It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another" - suggesting the Post's source was disgusted with the leaker.

In the October 13 Newsweek, Andrea Mitchell is quoted as saying, "I heard in the White House that people were touting the Novak column and that was the real story." Newsweek also reported that Wilson had received a call from Chris Matthews, of MSNBC's "Hardball," who told him, "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game."

In short, after the leak it certainly appears that the White House spread the word, further exploiting the leak.

The White House Need Not Have Leaked to Have Committed a Crime

Bush's press secretary Scott McClellan has chosen his words carefully in denying that anyone at the White House was involved with the leak. To remain credible, a press secretary cannot be caught in either a lie, or a serious misstatement based on ignorance.

McClellan's response reminded me of the Nixon Administration. Nixon's press secretary, Ron Zeigler, took the line that no one presently employed in his administration was involved in the Watergate break-in. That was technically correct, but only technically.

It is entirely possible that no one at the Bush "White House" or on the President's personal staff, was involved in the initial leak to Novak. It could have been someone at the National Security Council, which is related to the Bush White House but not part of it.

In fact, Novak wrote in one of his later columns, that the leak came from a person who was "no partisan gunslinger." That sounds like an NSC staffer to me. And as Newsweek also reported (you can count on Michael Isikoff to dig this stuff out), Valerie Plame's CIA identity was likely known to senior intelligence people on the NSC staff, for apparently one of them had worked with Ms. Plame at the CIA.

But even if the White House was not initially involved with the leak, it has exploited it. As a result, it may have opened itself to additional criminal charges under the federal conspiracy statute.

Why the Federal Conspiracy and Fraud Statutes May Apply Here

This elegantly simple law has snared countless people working for, or with, the federal government. Suppose a conspiracy is in progress. Even those who come in later, and who share in the purpose of the conspiracy, can become responsible for all that has gone on before they joined. They need not realize they are breaking the law; they need only have joined the conspiracy.

Most likely, in this instance the conspiracy would be a conspiracy to defraud - for the broad federal fraud statute, too, may apply here. If two federal government employees agree to undertake actions that are not within the scope of their employment, they can be found guilty of defrauding the U.S. by depriving it of the "faithful and honest services of its employee." It is difficult to imagine that President Bush is going to say he hired anyone to call reporters to wreak more havoc on Valerie Plame. Thus, anyone who did so - or helped another to do so - was acting outside the scope of his or her employment, and may be open to a fraud prosecution.

What counts as "fraud" under the statute? Simply put, "any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing, or defeating the lawful function of any department of government." (Emphasis added.) If telephoning reporters to further destroy a CIA asset whose identity has been revealed, and whose safety is now in jeopardy, does not fit this description, I would be quite surprised.

If Newsweek is correct that Karl Rove declared Valerie Plame Wilson "fair game," then he should make sure he's got a good criminal lawyer, for he made need one. I've only suggested the most obvious criminal statute that might come into play for those who exploit the leak of a CIA asset's identity. There are others. - Source

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posted by Politica 10:01 AM

 
Bush Officials Bend Iraq Facts Till They Break

Did Bush officials exaggerate and distort prewar evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Or were they, like the rest of us, simply the victims of poor intelligence work by the CIA and other agencies?

The answer is important. Incompetence is one thing; a conscious decision by our top leaders to deceive us into war would be far more troubling. And getting to the truth will be difficult as long as Republican leaders in Congress refuse to conduct a full-scale investigation into the question.

Fortunately, there are other ways to gauge the decision-making process in the Bush administration. The most obvious proof that Bush officials hyped and distorted evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in the past is that they continue to hype and distort that evidence today, with a shamelessness that is stunning.

Let's review briefly:

Before the war, the American people heard repeated warnings from prominent members of the administration -- President Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, etc. -- about the dire threat posed by Iraq. We heard warnings of Iraqi nuclear bombs and mushroom clouds drifting over American cities. We heard talk of Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles that could fly over the continental United States, spreading chemical and biological weapons. We heard ominous reports of growing Iraqi stockpiles of the most vicious weapons devised by mankind, weapons that could be slipped easily to Saddam Hussein's bosom buddies in al-Qaida.


Now, almost six months after the war ended, we know that none of those fears was grounded in reality. David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, grudgingly reported to Congress last week that so far he has found no chemical or biological weapons, not even a program to produce chemical or biological weapons. He found no Iraqi program to develop nuclear weapons. He found no evidence of unmanned aerial vehicles capable of spreading biological or chemical weapons. The list goes on and on.

However, rather than admit the undeniable truth, Bush and others have tried to magically transform it. If you believe their version of the story, the fact that we have found no WMD in Iraq -- and no WMD programs -- is of little or no importance. In fact, they argue that the Kay report actually vindicates their claim that Saddam posed an imminent danger to the region and the world. It seems they were right all along.

Uh huh. And the Braves are going to win the World Series this year.

This is precisely how a discredited forgery about enriched uranium is transformed into proof that Iraq is building a nuclear weapon. This is how CIA dismissals of a link between Saddam and Osama bin Laden -- dismissals backed by investigation and expert analysis -- are made to disappear because they inconveniently contradict policy. This is how hype, exaggeration and distortion can be used to alter reality, right out where everyone can see it.

To justify their bizarre claim, Bush officials have pounced upon a handful of minor finds by Kay's group, in particular the discovery of a biological agent in the possession of an Iraqi scientist. What they found, of course, was not the tons of weaponry that Powell so famously promised in his speech to the United Nations. It was not pounds or even ounces of the material. It was one small vial.

That vial contained the B strain of botulinum, not the more deadly A strain. It did not contain botulinum toxin, the actual nerve agent known in this country as Botox, only the fairly common botulinum bacteria that can produce the toxin.

Most tellingly, the vial was given to the Iraqi scientist for safekeeping back in 1993, and it has sat untouched in his home refrigerator ever since. For the next 10 years, nobody in the Iraqi government showed the slightest interest in reclaiming that vial, not even after U.N. inspectors left the country in 1998.

The vial, in other words, is not evidence of a living, fire-breathing dragon that had to be slain before it could threaten our homes. It's a dinosaur bone, an ancient relic of a long-departed beast. All the spinning and hyping in the world can't change that. - Source

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posted by Politica 9:55 AM

 
Latecomer Clark has Unusual Strategy

Wesley K. Clark, trying to portray himself as the Democrats’ best hope of defeating President Bush, is taking an unorthodox approach to winning his party’s presidential nomination.

Clark, the newest presidential candidate, is calculating that it is too late to focus the bulk of his resources in Iowa and in New Hampshire, the two key early testing grounds where his rivals have been camped out for nearly a year, according to a top strategist. Historically, the Democratic nominee usually wins by chalking up a big victory or strong showings in one of both of those states, feeding off the momentum and rolling through the stack of primaries from there.

Instead, Clark has adopted a more national campaign for the nomination, focusing on a variety of other states, including Oklahoma and New Mexico, that will vote in February. Clark’s advisers think it would be hard, if not impossible, to win in Iowa or New Hampshire, but they predict he will fare better in the South and other states, such as Florida, that remain wide open.

While his rivals fight over who is the real Democrat in the race, Clark is playing to the party’s palpable desire to pick a candidate who can oust Bush — even if the nominee does not share their views or Democratic roots. Clark’s plan is to position himself as the alternative to former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who has locked up the most money and support from party liberals, according to a top adviser.


UNORTHODOX STRATEGY FOR UNORTHODOX CANDIDATE

This unorthodox strategy reflects an unorthodox candidate. Clark, in his first run for political office, registered as a Democrat just this week and announced a campaign staff yesterday.

After early stumbles, Clark is growing as a national candidate, sharpening his stump speech, slowly filling in the details of his political views and showing a natural ability to connect with voters one-on-one and in town hall settings. In two stops here this week, Clark talked in much greater depth than he did a few weeks ago about the health system, energy problems and education. He frequently grabs shoulders, holds hands and focuses intently on voters he is courting.

Clark continues to talk more about problems than how he would solve them, but his understanding of the issues has impressed audiences that he is a quick study. Clark, first in his class at West Point, said he recently read the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, the Americans with Disabilities Act and tried several times to plow through the 1,200-page USA Patriot Act. His advisers know the trick is to translate this book knowledge into a winning campaign playbook.


DEMOCRATS WANT A WINNER

Clark won mixed reviews this week, but several Democratic activists sounded as if they were willing to buy into the Clark way — if he can prove it works. These voters stressed their desire to pick a winner, not an ideological soul mate, and many said the retired Army general could emerge as the strongest national candidate in the field.

“I am about as far left as they come,” said Kim Jones, 49, Iowa political director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “But this isn’t about ideology this year, it’s about beating Bush.” Jones said that “there a depth that needs to be developed” with Clark, but thinks he might have the best profile to knock off Bush: retired general, southerner and able to attract independents and some Republicans. Jones had just finished listening to Clark field questions here Monday night at a forum hosted by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa).

AFSCME, one of the nation’s most powerful labor unions, is basing its endorsement on electability, and Clark is in the running for the union’s backing.

After the forum, Mickey Shaker, a local resident who voted for Bush but feels the president has “failed us,” said Clark was the kind of Democrat who could appeal to him and other Republicans or independent-minded voters. “He does have vision, and he is a leader,” Shaker said.

On Tuesday, at Coneys ‘N’ More diner, Clark leaned toward a self-identified proud Republican and told him: “I like Republicans, too.”

Troy Brandt, 41, an independent, said after talking to Clark about family issues, he was “impressed” with him and would consider his candidacy.


REPUBLICAN PAST

Indeed, in a national campaign, Clark’s Republican past could be a big asset. He supported GOP presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon and, in 2001, headlined a GOP fundraiser and praised the Bush administration. Clark, who says being in the military kept him out of a political party, could potentially peel away some support from Bush in a head-to-head matchup, strategists said.

But this is causing tension for Clark on the campaign trail, serving as constant distraction when he is meeting with voters. Clark opens many his speeches with a testimonial to his Democratic feelings. He tells crowds that after much thought he came to the conclusion that his views on education, abortion, affirmative action and other issues were incompatible with today’s Republican Party. “I was either going to be the loneliest Republican in America, or I was going to be a happy Democrat,” he said Monday night.

Some don’t buy it. Neven Mulholland, 50, an attorney here, said the “timing” of Clark’s conversion seems politically motivated. “All of a sudden he had an epiphany?”


NATIONAL FOCUS

Clark’s focus on winning nationally is causing tension, too, within his campaign. Donnie Fowler, the campaign manager, resigned Tuesday after telling friends the candidate is repeating the same mistakes he felt Al Gore made in 2000, including focusing too much on Washington and policy experts there.

Fowler wanted Clark to focus more on key early voting states and grass-roots activism, his friends said. They would be better off doing two or three states well instead of all 50 “half-heartedly,” said Democratic strategist Jeff Link, who ran Gore’s campaign in Iowa in 2000.

In Iowa, voters are accustomed to seeing a candidate several times in person and expect their nominee to build a strong political operation. Dean, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) and Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) are leading in Iowa polls after spending weeks and hundreds of thousands of dollars wooing voters.

Yet, in more than a dozen interviews here this week, most voters said they were open to backing Clark, even if they were leaning toward one of his opponents. Link, a top political organizer here, said nearly three-quarters of caucus-goers remain uncommitted.

Republicans, who privately thought Clark could seriously challenge Bush when he jumped in, said the Arkansas Democrat is no longer seen as much of a national threat because they do not think he can win the nomination. “A lot of [Republicans] were concerned about Clark after he announced,” said Scott Reed, a GOP strategist. But his failure to register as a Democrat and his focus on running nationally “shows a lack of understanding of the process and priorities.” - Source

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posted by Politica 9:50 AM

 
Krugman: "In the months after 9/11, a shocked nation wanted to believe the best of its leader, and Mr. Bush was treated with reverence. But he abused the trust placed in him, pushing a partisan agenda that has left the nation weakened and divided."

It's the season of the angry liberal. Books like Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them," Joe Conason's "Big Lies" and Molly Ivins's "Bushwhacked" have become best sellers. (Yes, I've got one out there, too.) But conservatives are distressed because those liberals are so angry and rude. O.K., they admit, they themselves were a bit rude during the Clinton years — that seven-year, $70 million investigation of a tiny money-losing land deal, all that fuss about the president's private life — but they're sorry, and now it's time for everyone to be civil.

Indeed, angry liberals can take some lessons in civility from today's right.

Consider, for example, Fox News's genteel response to Christiane Amanpour, the CNN correspondent. Ms. Amanpour recently expressed some regret over CNN's prewar reporting: "Perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News." A Fox spokeswoman replied, "It's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than as a spokeswoman for Al Qaeda."

And liberal pundits who may be tempted to cast personal aspersions can take lessons in courtesy from conservatives like Charles Krauthammer, who last December reminded TV viewers of his previous career as a psychiatrist, then said of Al Gore, "He could use a little help."

What's really important, of course, is that political figures stick to the issues, like the Bush adviser who told The New York Times that the problem with Senator John Kerry is that "he looks French."

Some say that the right, having engaged in name-calling and smear tactics when Bill Clinton was president, now wants to change the rules so such behavior is no longer allowed. In fact, the right is still calling names and smearing; it wants to prohibit rude behavior only by liberals.

But there's more going on than a simple attempt to impose a double standard. All this fuss about the rudeness of the Bush administration's critics is an attempt to preclude serious discussion of that administration's policies. For there is no way to be both honest and polite about what has happened in these past three years.

On the fiscal front, this administration has used deceptive accounting to ram through repeated long-run tax cuts in the face of mounting deficits. And it continues to push for more tax cuts, when even the most sober observers now talk starkly about the risk to our solvency. It's impolite to say that George W. Bush is the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history, but it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

On the foreign policy front, this administration hyped the threat from Iraq, ignoring warnings from military professionals that a prolonged postwar occupation would tie down much of our Army and undermine our military readiness. (Joseph Galloway, co-author of "We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young," says that "we have perhaps the finest Army in history," but that "Donald H. Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have done just about everything they could to destroy that Army.") It's impolite to say that Mr. Bush has damaged our national security with his military adventurism, but it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise.

Still, some would say that criticism should focus only on Mr. Bush's policies, not on his person. But no administration in memory has made paeans to the president's character — his "honor and integrity" — so central to its political strategy. Nor has any previous administration been so determined to portray the president as a hero, going so far as to pose him in line with the heads on Mount Rushmore, or arrange that landing on the aircraft carrier. Surely, then, Mr. Bush's critics have the right to point out that the life story of the man inside the flight suit isn't particularly heroic — that he has never taken a risk or made a sacrifice for the sake of his country, and that his business career is a story of murky deals and insider privilege.

In the months after 9/11, a shocked nation wanted to believe the best of its leader, and Mr. Bush was treated with reverence. But he abused the trust placed in him, pushing a partisan agenda that has left the nation weakened and divided. Yes, I know that's a rude thing to say. But it's also the truth. - Source

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posted by Politica 9:45 AM

 
Governor Schwarzenegger?: "He has no political experience, no policies and a cupboard full of skeletons. So what does the rise of the Terminator tell us about the state of American politics? And should we be worried?"

To borrow the format of those old doctor jokes, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that we are unlikely to have to sit through Terminator 4 for quite some years now. The bad news is that the biggest state in America has just chosen to entrust a $3bn deficit to a man who has no experience of politics and no discernible policies.

One of the tricks of history is the speed with which the impossible comes to seem inevitable. And, barely two months after the prospect of Governor Schwarzenegger seemed the biggest joke in politics since Hartlepool elected a man in a monkey-suit, the result coming from the radio yesterday morning felt almost boringly pre-ordained. Opinion polls and cynicism about the American electorate had long ago convinced most of us that it would happen.

It is important, though, to keep alive in our minds the unlikeliness of this event. Twentieth-century American democracy created something called a "machine politician": a candidate who owed office to long party service and the backroom machinations of the precinct bosses.

Now 21st-century American democracy has given us a candidate, Governor Schwarzenegger, who is in one sense the opposite of a machine politician - he has lost almost no shoe leather along the traditional routes of the future leader - but who, conversely, is the first major American politician not only to look and sound like a machine but to have spent much of his adult life playing one on celluloid.

And it is the Terminator franchise that touches on another remarkable aspect of the rise of the machine governor. Schwarzenegger's candidacy deliberately invoked the precedent of Ronald Reagan, the last Hollywood ham to reach the California governor's mansion. Arnie presented himself as a movie-leader sequel to the extent of holding his victory party in the same hotel as the star of Bedtime For Bonzo hosted his.

Yet there is a crucial difference between the two men's preparation for election. By the time Reagan reclaimed California for the Republicans in 1966, his film career was deep in recession. He had been active in union politics since as early as 1947, had put in years on the "rubber chicken" circuit of political dinners and had campaigned heavily in the presidential election of 1964.

For playing the role of leader, Reagan had spent at least a decade in makeup. What's startling about Arnie is that he parlayed himself from movie star to politician in so short a time that his most recent No1 box-office hit - Terminator 3 - isn't out on DVD yet.

The easy response to this plot twist in American democracy is to argue that Arnie, a physical freak, is also a political one. Machine politicians of the previous kind can console themselves with the fact that the unusual circumstances of Governor Gray Davis's departure - an almost unprecedented mid-term removal of a governor through the "recall" process - were especially favourable to a leftfield candidacy such as Schwarzenegger's. In a short race without primaries - and one predicated on showing dissent with conventional legislators - an instantly recognisable non-politician was always going to have the advantage over unknowns who knew their way round a debating chamber.

But, while the outcome can certainly be rationalised in this way, the odds should still have been against the election of a man who, in a political system biased towards soundbites, produced something more akin to a sound-chew and delivered even these in what was audibly a second language to him.

Incomprehensible in the present, he was then faced with the charge of having been unpalatable in the past: accused of both a wandering mouth - allegedly praising Hitler when a young man - and wandering hands: a queue of women lined up to describe nipple-tweaking, skirt-lifting and a general assumption, not uncommon among Hollywood alpha males, that the female of the species is a sort of snack tray for powerful men.

By all known psephological textbooks, a man presented - caricatured, he insists - as a Nazi-sympathising sexual harasser should have no chance of winning in the most liberal and feminist state in America. The importance of what happened in California on Tuesday is that two questions were tested which may have some relevance to the future of American politics. Is the sheer power of celebrity enough to take a person from nothing to government? And can a candidate win despite the discovery of horrors in their biography? The Schwarzenegger victory suggests that the answer to both is yes.

Neither response is entirely surprising. In a culture obsessed with speed - in which even relative connection times to the internet become the focus of advertising battles between corporations - an already-famous face starts a campaign with a vast advantage. And - as Bill Clinton first showed - scandal has become survivable because the cynicism that the public feels towards politicians is also extended to political journalists who expose the candidates' weaknesses.

But the key to the election of Governor Arnie is a phenomenon which might be called narrative politics. American electoral campaigns have tended to be driven by the theory of "retail politics": the candidate made as many speeches, shook the maximum number of hands, accrued the largest air-mile account as possible. Races were won by imprinting a face and a few simple policies through ceaseless repetition.

But, in recent American elections, the centrality of chapped hands and battered soles to a candidate's chances has been balanced against the quicker, simpler power of narrative politics. The victor was likely to be not the man who put in most hours but the one who told the most extraordinary story about himself.

Hence George W Bush - a notoriously indolent campaigner - was able to match the more assiduous Gore because his candidacy was a better yarn: a son following his dad into the Oval Office, a drunk sorting himself out, a child taking revenge on the administration that beat his father.

Previously, the election of the wrestler Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota was an extreme example of narrative politics - voters bored with the process waking themselves up with an unlikely plot twist - but even Clinton can be seen as a beneficiary of this electoral mentality. In 1992, the entry into the White House of a womanising, draft-dodging poor Southern boy whose father had died before he was born was simply a better story to tell history than the re-election of the patrician George Bush senior.

A rough rule of narrative politics is that the candidate whose life story makes the best Hollywood movie will win the race. Which is why Schwarzenegger represents the greatest triumph of the theory to date. In the past, narrative politics has had to be combined with retail politics: Clinton, like Reagan before him, had spent years shaking hands and practising legislation.

Schwarzenegger, who had done the retail part unknowingly in multiplexes over decades, relied during his campaign entirely on his narrative: his pitch. Beginning with the neatness that a man who had made a film called Total Recall should be competing in a recall election, his run for governor was such a bold and ridiculous tale that you kept thinking it needed a script editor.

Even apart from his own compelling back story - body-building to nation-building - there was also the B-plot that his marriage to Maria Shriver (niece of JFK and Bobby) also made the race a strange and wonderful pay-off to one of America's greatest political storylines: the Kennedys. The advantage of narrative politics is that weaknesses are reclassified as strengths. A politician who knows nothing about politics? What a premise. A leader who can barely speak an American sentence aloud? Such a gripping yarn. A candidate whose answer to the bankruptcy of California is to propose tax cuts? We sure want to stay and see how this turns out.

The paradox of narrative politics is that it is the very improbability of the campaign that gives it plausibility. In voting booths now - as always in cinemas - audiences will sacrifice coherence for surprise. This is democracy played by the rules of a Hollywood script conference and so, in this context, the coming of the machine governor ceases to be a surprise. Arnie may know nothing much about politics but he's a proven genius at the business of getting Americans to swallow preposterous propositions and outcomes.

The sequel to Schwarzenegger's victory is harder to script. No major American political office can ever have been filled by someone so devoid of ideas. Even the sleepy Reagan had Reaganomics; Arnie goes in to tackle the budget deficit armed with just a few puns on his most popular movie titles. Reagan made up for his lack of interest in position papers by his brilliance at reading speeches. But, in Governor Arnie, we are faced with a politician who can't do either. He is rapidly going to have to find some kind of stand-in - an ideological stunt-man - to do the stuff beyond the photo-opportunities.

The governor also needs to worry that, even in the new politics, a ruthless rule of the old politics may still apply: what goes around comes around. The impeachment of Clinton was the Republicans' revenge for the Democrats forcing Nixon's resignation. If Davis can be tipped out of office in mid-term by the Republicans, then the Democrats - unless the Californian situation rapidly improves - can, and will, use the same constitutional device against the new guy. Whatever his contribution to politics, Arnie is a gift to political journalism because he has already provided the headlines for the coverage of a crisis. True Lies would be followed rapidly by Recall II.

But, as the new governor of California knows from the movie business, what seems to be the biggest twist should always be followed by another one. Cut to the presidential race in 2004 or 2008. Don't worry: restart your heart. There is no risk of Arnie being in it. Although his admirers speak of supreme court challenges, his Austrian birthplace constitutionally prevents him from imitating Reagan a second time.

Yet - if the age of narrative politics has dawned - then the potential leader with the best pitch is Hillary Clinton. After the first father-and-son presidential double-act and the first muscle-building movie-star governor of California, the best way of keeping American voters buying popcorn would be the first First Lady to become the first female president. In that sense, at least, one Democrat may have smiled at the Californian result. - Source

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posted by Politica 9:43 AM