The Perfect Political Storm: The Crime at the Eye

You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.

- Generally attributed to Abraham Lincoln (undocumented). Also attributed to P.T. Barnum.

…here comes a raging rush of people with torches, and an awful whooping and yelling, and banging tin pans and blowing horns; and we jumped to one side to let them go by; and as they went by I see they had the king and the duke astraddle of a rail -- that is, I knowed it WAS the king and the duke, though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like nothing in the world that was human -- just looked like a couple of monstrous big soldier-plumes.

…We asked some stragglers about it, and they said everybody went to the show looking very innocent; and laid low and kept dark till the poor old king was in the middle of his cavortings on the stage; then somebody give a signal, and the house rose up and went for them.

- Mark Twain

There are times when one senses a moment of historical importance is at hand. Such a moment is upon the American political narrative.

The perfect storm has been raging at sea and is headed directly for the American political landscape. It roils with crime, espionage, intrigue, propaganda, patsies, corruption, revenge, conspiracy and deceit. It threatens a direct hit that would bring a revolutionary type of upheaval, a death to the status quo. It fuels endless speculation about when and where it may hit. It may even just spin furiously, but harmlessly, at sea.

But there is no doubt that it is there.

At the eye of the storm is the central crime or crimes committed when Valerie Plame’s CIA status was leaked to the media; the seriousness of the crime(s) fuels the entire storm.

While the grand jury investigation into the outing of a CIA officer has been admirably prosecuted without leaks, we do know the legal opinions of the judges who refused to lift contempt of court charges against Time’s Matthew Cooper and The New York Times’ Judith Miller, thereby ordering the reporters to testify to the grand jury:

In February, Circuit Judge David Tatel joined his colleagues’ order to Cooper and Miller despite his own, very lonely finding that indeed there is a federal privilege for reporters that can shield them from being compelled to testify to grand juries and give up sources. He based his finding on Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which authorizes federal courts to develop new privileges “in the light of reason and experience.” Tatel actually found that reason and experience “support recognition of a privilege for reporters’ confidential sources.” But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to “the gravity of the suspected crime.”

Judge Tatel’s opinion has eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages. Later, Tatel refers to “[h]aving carefully scrutinized [the prosecutor’s] voluminous classified filings.”

Some of us have theorized that the prosecutor may have given up the leak case in favor of a perjury case, but Tatel still refers to it simply as a case “which involves the alleged exposure of a covert agent.” Tatel wrote a 41-page opinion in which he seemed eager to make new law -- a federal reporters’ shield law -- but in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to do it in this particular case. In his final paragraph, he says he “might have” let Cooper and Miller off the hook “[w]ere the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security.”

Tatel’s colleagues are at least as impressed with the prosecutor’s secret filings as he is. One simply said “Special Counsel’s showing decides the case.”

All the judges who have seen the prosecutor’s secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment.

Once the CIA had conducted an internal investigation into the crime(s) and referred the case to the Department of Justice, it was seriousness of said crime(s) that prompted Attorney General John Ashcroft to recuse himself (though not before notifying the White House first) and empower a special counsel with full prosecutorial leverage to investigate any other crimes or circumstances. As Deputy Attorney General James Comey said at the Department of Justice press conference announcing Mr. Fitzgerald’s appointment as special counsel:

I have today delegated to Mr. Fitzgerald all the approval authorities that will be necessary to ensure that he has the tools to conduct a completely independent investigation; that is, that he has the power and authority to make whatever prosecutive judgments he believes are appropriate, without having to come back to me or anybody else at the Justice Department for approvals. Mr. Fitzgerald alone will decide how to staff this matter, how to continue the investigation and what prosecutive decisions to make.

If the narrative of history were like a novel (and we know it is often that and more; why else would truth be stranger than fiction?) there would be no better foreshadowing of this climactic chapter than Hurricane Katrina, in which floodwaters horribly drowned New Orleans and cleansed American eyes of the false image of its leadership.

The levee of public trust has been breached, and Republican halls of power are taking on water. What impact will a direct hit from this grand jury investigation, and subsequent prosecutions, have? The question may significantly -- perhaps even historically -- alter no less than the president’s administration, the Republican leadership, the intelligence communities and the media.

Like coastal residents, key players in the unfolding drama are even hunkering into defensive positions, preparing for impact. “Former White House aids” are leaking stories selling vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby up the river. The Washington Post reports that the administration is considering staff changes and that, ever mindful of image over substance, Republicans are bracing for the real danger:

Senior GOP officials are developing a public relations strategy to defend those accused of crimes and, more importantly, shield Bush from further damage, according to Republicans familiar with the plans.

Meanwhile, the thunder rolls and the tide swells. Who and what will be washed away? Who and what will be washed clean?

Houseguests

No posts until Thursday as I show some international houseguests around my city.

Welcome AMERICAblog readers!

Thank you for stopping by, fellow fans of John Aravosis. And a big thank you to John for allowing us to promote our "small " blogs.

Rats! The End of the Myth of Rove

The item that I think will carry the most impact when it comes to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the Valerie Plame leak is the CIA damage assessment report, which will detail the damage done to any CIA assets as a result of the leak. It was this report that, I believe, carried the heft to force then-Attorney General John Ashcroft -- a client of Senior Presidential Advisor Karl Rove’s political consultancy -- to recuse himself from the case.

Of course, we know nothing about the report. Not a word of it has leaked. We know that Valerie Plame worked for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a CIA front organization that was used to infiltrate organizations attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Not only did Chicago Tribune columnist Robert Novak “out” Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, he also exposed the front organization in an interview with CNN, in which he stated, “Wilson's wife, the CIA employee, gave $1,000 to (Vice President Al) Gore and she listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates. There is no such firm, I'm convinced."

All of Mr. Rove’s lawyer’s public tap dancing, any smearing of the special prosecutor and any other damage control methods will be unable to counter the potential damage done to CIA assets. We should all hope no one was hurt or killed as a result of the leak but someone, perhaps more than one, may have suffered such a fate as a consequence.

If Mr. Rove’s career isn’t similarly damaged, at least one result will be the death of the Myth of Rove.

Karl Rove isn’t the political genius the right thinks he is, nor is he the strategic mastermind the left fears (and craves). The secret to his success is a desire for absolute power, a weakness for strength that could be a Shakespearean character’s tragic flaw. His downfall will repeat one of history’s oldest lessons: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Mr. Rove may or may not be the pillar upon which much of today’s Republican Party rests. Yet when one examines his hold on power, it appears that a mighty vacuum will need filling. Many have believed that Vice President Dick Cheney is the real force behind the throne. As the shepherd of the neo-cons, Mr. Cheney has influenced -- and severely damaged -- American foreign policy. Meanwhile, Mr. Rove’s acolytes populate congress, the Supreme Court and the media.

They aren’t hard to identify. The most common traits are a lack of intellectual curiosity, a fierce loyalty to the White House and an ego that craves positions of power and prominence. Combine these three traits and you have an easily manipulated pawn.

Intellectual curiosity begets a tendency to debate thoughtfully; this is unacceptable when the White House has legislation it wishes to push through without public knowledge (Mr. Cheney’s energy policy, the PATRIOT Act, the Medicare bill and FCC deregulation, to name a few). A fierce loyalty to the White House is required to stifle dissent within the ranks. People who aren’t fiercely loyal tend to squawk (Senator John McCain and the recent military appropriation bill’s torture amendment), publish books (former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill) or testify before independent panels (former security czar Richard Clarke). They cause problems.

Better to have someone who owes his position to Mr. Rove. Often, these positions were attained using another valued Rovian tactic, character assassination. Anyone who remembers the Swift Boat slanders need look no further for an example (but just in case, there’s the Max Cleland and the John McCain smears, plus more here).

This isn’t genius. These are the lessons in dirty tricks – affectionately termed “rat-fucking” by Richard Nixon’s operatives – that Mr. Rove learned from Donald Segretti. His way is to dive deeper into the dumpster than anyone else.

Mr. Rove reached his zenith of power after the 2002 elections, which ushered many of his loyal troops into positions of leadership in congress. At the moment, his hold on power is tenuous -- as is the structure upon which it rests. If Mr. Rove is indicted, he faces the delicious irony of having rat-fucked himself.

UPDATE: I couldn't resist adding this eloquent comment from Billmon, writing about the Harriett Miers and conservative movementarians squabble:

The Rovian game plan is, in all its essentials, the same sleazy blend of double speak, half-truths, non sequiturs, demagogic appeals and knees-to-the-groin smears that were used to sell the invasion of Iraq.

The Silence Of The New York Times Is Deafening

One of the difficulties inherent with being a journalist is that frequently, one must write on a subject from a largely uninformed view as though one were an expert. That is, often journalists are required to be “an inch deep and a mile wide.”

It is rare enough when journalists are able to report on a subject about which they are the undisputed experts; namely, journalism itself. It is rarer still when a newspaper finds itself as an actor in the landmark political events of our time.

So why won’t The New York Times report on itself?

By journalistic obligation -- indeed, because of the newspaper’s status, for the integrity of the profession itself -- the Times must reveal what it knew and when regarding its and its reporter Judith Miller’s role in the Valerie Plame leak that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating.

The Times has made many statements about this, ranging from the promise of a full disclosure to essentially stating the paper would publish an account when it felt good and ready. Perhaps there are justifiable legal reasons for the Times’ reticence. If so, why not tell us?

One senses something much larger is going on here, perhaps something bigger than even the Times itself. Bigger even than the Times’ role in disseminating weapons of mass destruction propaganda which it knew to be, at best, questionable. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Ms. Miller’s dubious reporting created a self-perpetuating echo that rang throughout the American media: “The New York Times reported that…”

It was an echo the Bush administration used as part of its masterful but dastardly manipulation of the Iraq debate. The administration’s war hawks would leak a story to Ms. Miller regarding aluminum tubes, for example, to be published on a Sunday morning. Administration officials -- Vice President Dick Cheney, to name one -- would then fan out to the Sunday chat shows using the Times story as corroboration: “Just this morning, the New York Times reported on aluminum tubes…”

It is embarrassing enough for a media outlet to be duped into advancing a partisan agenda. Perhaps in the rush not to be scooped, the Times may have let slip their usual standards of fact-checking. The paper itself admitted as much, apologizing for six stories -- four of which were written by Ms. Miller, but oddly, not singling out the reporter herself (as it had done in the Jayson Blair fiasco).

In so doing, the Times is protecting itself in a way that would make any senate whitewash committee proud. Journalists should certainly know that the cover-up is almost always worse than the crime. If the Times won’t publicly investigate itself -- committing the unpardonable journalistic sin of letting other papers scoop it on its own story -- others certainly will.

The larger question we deserve to see answered from all of this is: Was there a quid pro quo between “big media” and the administration?

In referring to the Iraq campaign in September of 2002, White House Chief of staff Andrew Card told the Times, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." The Bush administration knew full well that the most critical battle for Iraq was the battle of public opinion.

Members of the administration -- led most notably by Mr. Cheney -- had envisioned a war with Iraq as far back as 1997. Had this been made public knowledge in a full and open debate on Iraq in 2002 and early 2003, the battle of public opinion may well have been lost; investigative journalists for the major media outlets could use this stated objective as a premise, investigating each of the administration’s claims about Iraq in this context.

It was absolutely critical to throw the media off the scent.

Which brings us to the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) deregulation hearings. Under cover of the successfully launched Iraq war, the FCC, led by Michael Powell, attempted to push through deregulation laws that would allow further media consolidation. As Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) put it at the time:

A majority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) intends to ratify a sweeping plan to weaken or eliminate rules that limit the size and power of media companies. Among other things, the FCC's three Republican commissioners hope to revoke the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rule, which prevents a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same market, and to significantly increase the number of TV stations one company can own.

With virtually no one paying attention, it was thought that Mr. Powell would be able to enact the law with no debate:

Before the FCC voted to lift the media ownership limits in June 2003, Powell refused to make public the 250-page FCC document that justified the move, convening only one hastily assembled public hearing on the media rules change. The Center for Public Integrity notes that during the months leading up to the vote, Powell and his commissioners held 71 off-the-record meetings with broadcast industry executives, while only meeting five times with public advocates.

Fortunately, in a triumph of democracy, this abominable act was exposed and opposed to by interest groups on the left and the right (one of the rare moments when groups such as the National Rifle Association and the American Civil Liberties Union agreed and joined forces). While it passed in committee, congress defeated the measure and in January of this year, the FCC at long last quietly gave up on the campaign.

But note the timing: June 2003, less than three months after the invasion of Iraq began. What was discussed in those “71 off-the-record meetings”? How many of these meetings were with, say, executives of the New York Times?

So: Was there a quid pro quo, positive war coverage in exchange for increased profits? The public has the right to know. But don’t bet on reading about it in the Times.

The Deadliest Game of Chicken

There is an old story about Stalin. As it goes, he was illustrating his approach to governance with a young chicken. He plucked all the chick’s feathers – after which, trembling from cold and fright, the bird huddled closely to the dictator’s leg.

“That’s how you rule the people,” Stalin said.

Make people feel vulnerable and they will cling to you for protection. It’s an old political formula the Bush administration has exploited to its advantage since September 11. It may have even been the primary reason Mr. Bush was elected in 2004.

Fear was the centerpiece of the administration’s misguided and illegal war in Iraq. Our brave soldiers are dying in Iraq because of a manufactured, artificial fear. Even today the president gave a speech that simply attempts to remind Americans how afraid we should all be of another September 11 (and of an Islamic empire from Spain to Indonesia).

The president needs fear more now than ever before. Rumors are flying that Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will hand down indictments in the Valerie Plame leak investigation and that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s senior advisor, will be on the receiving end of a felony count. The president’s approval ratings are in a post-Katrina tailspin (37 percent, according to this CBS News poll). Speaker of the House Tom DeLay has been indicted. The Jack Abramoff investigation inches closer and closer to the White House. The administration desperately needs something to knock all of this bad news off the front page.

So – how to pluck the chick?

How about a terrorist threat in New York City? It worked so well after the Democrats’ national convention. How about a nuclear threat from Iran? It worked to get us into Iraq.

Or how about the avian flu?

In his recent press conference, Mr. Bush elaborated on a response to a potential H5N1 outbreak. Certainly, there is potential for a pandemic. National Geographic felt it important enough to merit front-page coverage. It could be a threat – if it evolves to the point that it can jump from birds to humans, perhaps through an intermediary host (such as pigs). At the moment, the virus isn’t effective enough to make that jump – yet.

Heightening awareness about such a possibility is certainly the duty of public officials. Was this Mr. Bush’s objective – or is just more cynical fear mongering?

H5N1 has been a potential threat since before Mr. Bush became president. Yet a quick visit to the United States Department of Health and Human Services website reveals not one word about the avian flu. Likewise, the Surgeon General’s website is mum on the issue (we are in the beginning of flu season, but as of today, the site’s last update was September 10). That would seem to discount the notion that Mr. Bush’s administration is preparing the public; the government doesn’t even seem prepared.

In fact, the only proposed response to such an outbreak was Mr. Bush’s mini-speech on the subject, in which he implied that martial law would be required to enforce a quarantine. There are even questions regarding the qualifications of the government’s point-man, Stewart Simonson, should the avian flu break out here. Mr. Simonson is a lawyer, with no medical experience. He’s yet another example of Mr. Bush’s cronyism.

All signs seem to indicate that the federal government is at least as prepared to respond to a deadly influenza outbreak as it was to hurricane Katrina. And that should strike fear into the heart of every American.

UPDATE: Plutonium Page over at Daily Kos has more on the subject from the National Center for Disaster Preparedness -- and even from the Cato Institute.

A Lockstep Head Fake

In relation to my last essay, I’d like to speculate on the recent “rebellion” within the Republican media’s ranks. Many commenters on the left are taking some delight in watching this mini-revolt over Mr. Bush’s choice of Harriett Miers for the Supreme Court. And, indeed, it does appear on the surface as if there is some break within the conservative media’s unending sycophancy for Mr. Bush. Kevin Drum provides a roundup of quotes:

BUSH BASHING....We already know that lots of conservative are skeptical about Harriet Miers, but what's more interesting is the number of conservatives who are turning their guns on George Bush himself. Here's a sampler:

• Steve Dillard: I am done with President Bush.
• John Podhoretz: I think this was a pick made out of droit de seigneur — an "I am the president and this is what I want" arrogance.
• Peter Robinson: What people see in this is the Bush of the first debate, the Bad Bush, the peevish rich boy who expects to get his way because it's his way.
• Andrew Sullivan: Boy, does this pick remind us of who GWB is: about as arrogant a person as anyone who has ever held his office. Now the base knows how the rest of us have felt for close to five years.
• Stephen Bainbridge: I got a lot of criticism for saying that George Bush was pissing away the conservative moment via his Iraq policies....With this appointment, I'd echo Andrew's sentiment with something a tad more off color: Bush is now peeing on the movement.
• Rod Dreher: As for me, I am really, really disappointed in the president.
• Bill Kristol: It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy.
• Pat Buchanan: What is depressing here is not what the nomination tells us of her, but what it tells us of the president who appointed her....In picking her, Bush ran from a fight. The conservative movement has been had — and not for the first time by a president by the name of Bush.
• David Frum: The record shows I fear that the president's judgment has always been at its worst on personnel matters.
• Michelle Malkin: Message to the White House: Don't get stuck on stupid.
• Jonah Goldberg: Bush's instincts about where his principles should be are often right. But in this case the principle seems to be that Bush's instincts are principle enough.

Appearing to lend the revolt some kind of intellectual legitimacy is George Will’s column, in which he takes Mr. Bush to task for his failure as a “custodian of the Constitution.” To be sure, it’s an awful lot of bluster and some of it may even be genuine outrage.

However, the single most important objective for movement conservatives over the last 20 years has been the takeover of the Supreme Court. This may be one of the most important and under-reported issues in modern political history. It is because of this that many conservatives swallowed all doubts about Mr. Bush’s experience, intelligence and competence over the last five years; a two-term Republican president would have a historic chance to tilt the court to the right and undo all the perceived injustices of 1960s liberalism (which, personified by the Clintons and the Kennedys, tops the list of conservatives’ irrational hatreds).

But the Republicans’ most powerful weapon – masterfully wielded by the president’s handlers – is, as I wrote yesterday, the ideology of the lockstep. Viewing the Miers reaction through this prism, it seems less likely that this is an appointment from weakness; rather, I think we are all in the midst of a massive deception.

For the conservative media, the message filters down from on high (the RNC, the White House, etc.) and is rapidly circulated among all conservative media outlets. As an example, one only needs to look back at the coordinated and shameful attack on Louisiana’s local politicians. Once the president’s staff returned from vacation and realized the political disaster they had wrought, the response was a coordinated attack. Literally overnight, conservative media opinion shifted from uncomfortably questioning the president’s leadership (as every other American was doing) to their more accustomed mode of attacking others to protect the president.

Unlike the aftermath of Katrina, in which no one from the president’s strategic circle was minding the helm of the monolithic messaging mechanism, the Miers appointment began with a carefully coordinated media campaign – Vice President Cheney was on Rush Limbaugh’s almost immediately after the nomination was announced.

Did the administration miscalculate the conservative base’s reaction? Did they underestimate the importance of the Supreme Court to the right wing of the last 20 years? Hardly.

As per usual, the Bush administration’s modus operandi is to protect its own hold on power. Right now, the gravest threat to that power is its own legal troubles – troubles that could potentially lead to indictments and even impeachment proceedings as the Valerie Plame grand jury winds down.

Subsequently, there is nothing the president needs more right now than to have a few friends on the Supreme Court who are fiercely loyal to him and who owe him favors. Perhaps Ms. Miers would recuse herself from any such cases; however, given how reluctantly former Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the Plame investigation in the first place, it seems unlikely that she would recuse herself without strong public and political pressure.

So, how would one ensure such a friendly appointment? Given the potential ideological confirmation battles that go with a Supreme Court nomination – and the ever-looming threat of a Democrat filibuster – it makes strategic sense to nominate someone who would appear to infuriate the right. Why in the world would Democrats filibuster someone who seems to divide the opposition?

It even helps the president’s cause to have a nominee who in past donated the maximum amount to Al Gore’s presidential bid, sought support from gay rights groups and even appears iffy on abortion. This seems to provide just enough ideological cover to make Democrats appear hypocritical for opposing her nomination.

Ideology has never been a serious concern for this administration – if it were, why would Mr. Bush have run as a “moderate” in 2000? – but the hold on power is. And that is why this entire exercise is another example of the deployment of the ideology of the lockstep. Perhaps this is why James Dobson, he of the Focus on the Family fringe group, told the New York Times, "Some of what I know I am not at liberty to talk about."

In his egotistical attempt to boast of his connections to power, he has tipped the administration’s hand: This is all just so much political theatre. The lockstep march continues.

The Ideology of the Lockstep

Here in Atlanta, there’s a conservative talk radio station promoting itself with billboards boasting, “Liberals hate it!” Speaking as a liberal myself, I don’t hate it; I am indifferent to it.

But that isn’t the point. Granted, conservative talk radio poses as “entertainment” so it makes little difference how they promote themselves. Only it isn’t simply entertainment. And these garish billboards represent the hollowness of the modern conservative movement. They have nothing to promote about conservatism itself, so they simply attack the opposition.

To some degree, perhaps conservatism is less about ideas per se than it is about regressing to some perceived version of an idyllic America that neither existed nor is sustainable. As a result, modern conservatism is bereft of any ideas at all. Where it once had visionaries like Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater, conservatism has now degenerated into a snipe hunt for conservative bogeymen.

In so doing, conservatives are becoming a parody of themselves. The general disdain for anything smacking of intellectualism (in favor of the simpleton equation of “guts” over “brains”) has effectively quashed any real critical analysis in conservatism.

There are reasons why so many conservative commentators do not invite guests with opposing viewpoints. It is much easier to attack straw men and cartoonish images of the opposition than to confront someone who can viably debate your viewpoint. As a former conservative (up until about ten years ago), I frequently listened to AM conservative talk show hosts and punched the air in agreement. I stayed in a permanent state of anger, even hate. Arguments with liberals frequently ended with me name-calling in frustration (“feminazis” is not an argument).

Conservative hosts feed the ego; they tell their listeners exactly what they want to hear. The world is black and white, our side versus their side. While they don’t do subtlety or nuance in modern conservatism, there is nonetheless one subtle idea behind it all: You, dear conservative media consumer, should never question your beliefs. Instead, you should believe that you (and we conservatives) are always right. Anyone who threatens to open the door for debate is openly ridiculed and assailed with names.

They tell you that you should be angry. They share with the conservative listener an anger and hatred. And the fact that there are millions of other listeners just like you legitimizes your anger and hatred and, as voters, even institutionalizes it.

Conservatives, it seems, are always angry.

With no debate, no ideas to enlarge their movement and no room for critical thought, conservatism today depends on a coordinated messaging mechanism. Truth only gets in the way because you know in your gut you are always right. There is no need for any kind of self-examination.

And when the truth does makes the brain question the gut, then it is time to attack. That’s why conservatives love to keep trotting out that tired trope of the “liberal media.” This is, of course, a logical fallacy that does not hold up to a simple critical analysis. Ask a conservative to prove the media is liberal. It is simply astonishing how simple-minded the responses are. “The New York Times is owned by a liberal” is one of my favorite actual facile responses; however, more often they cite a sentence or two out of the vast amount of media information to prove their assertion.

But it does make a nice bogeyman for the conservative media types to blast. To belong to the movement, one must accept certain things as a given. No need to attempt to prove it for yourself – no, the conservative media is here to tell you that your baser instincts have always been correct.

And your anger and hatred are correct. After all, the billboard’s message is clear: Liberals hate you, so you must hate back.

Politicizing The Political

It is hard for me to see how Americans in general and anyone from the Gulf Coast in particular could not be outraged over this president and his failed policies. I cannot help but return to post on this subject because it is so much on my mind at the moment, as it is with everyone in the rest of the country.

Before I proceed, let me first anticipate the most likely objection. Many seem to think that criticizing the federal preparedness and response – of which the president is the head – is politicizing a horrific disaster. The problem with this argument is, if the federal government does not exist to protect and assist its very citizenry in such a disaster (or military strike), then what is it for? I think even the most devout of the disingenuous libertarians would agree that this should be the bare-bones reason for the existence of any government – even one drowned in the bathtub by Grover Norquist.

Sadly for the country and most unfortunately for the good folks of the region, the preparation for and response to this disaster epitomizes this president’s misplaced priorities, cronyism, arrogance and incompetence. Furthermore, it is ironic that Republicans would descry this kind of writing as a politicization of something that shouldn’t be politicized, while it serves as a perfect illustration of this administration’s complete merger of politics with policy.

Put simply, with the Bush administration, everything is already politicized.

FEMA is an example. As Josh Marshall tells us, the president dismissed James Lee Witt, a Clinton appointee, as is his executive right. The problem was that Witt had 25 years of disaster and emergency management experience. The president replaced Witt with Joe Allbaugh, a political operative with no relevant disaster or emergency management experience at all. Allbaugh went on to – surprise! – an Iraq post. He in turn appointed his own successor, Mike Brown, an overwhelmed old college buddy lawyer who we all see on TV now.

None of that mattered anyway, since the administration has been getting rid of FEMA. (The cynic in me will say that, just as social security and Medicare are Democratic programs and, in the Republican ascension to absolute power must therefore be destroyed, so then should FEMA follow, since it’s a Carter legacy program.) FEMA is to be replaced by the Department of Homeland Security, which has largely been MIA until Bush returned from vacation and stood next to the Secretary of Homeland Security at the rostrum.

Not that they have the infrastructure to help anyway. The Homeland Security department that will take over FEMA’s disaster management responsibilities has not even been created – while, mind you, FEMA is being actively “downgraded”.

Of course, even if FEMA had not been underfunded and neglected, the levee problem would have been disastrous anyway. In the aftermath of Katrina, how can we not question federal funding of flood protection programs in New Orleans? This excerpt from the New Orleans Times Picayune story (read the full story here) from June 8, 2004 sure raises a whole lot of questions about the president’s misplaced priorities:Shifting federal budget erodes protection from levees; Because of cuts, hurricane risk grows

For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area's east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms that won't be finished for at least another decade.

"I guess people look around and think there's a complete system in place, that we're just out here trying to put icing on the cake," said Mervin Morehiser, who manages the "Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity" levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers. "And we aren't saying that the sky is falling, but people should know that this is a work in progress, and there's more important work yet to do before there is a complete system in place."

In reality, levee building is a long-term undertaking. Section by section, earth is piled into walls as high as 20 feet to protect land on the east bank of the Mississippi River from water that a slow-moving Category 3 hurricane could shove out of Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne. But the levees gradually settle into southeast Louisiana's mucky subsoil, and every few years, the corps comes back, section by section, to pile on more dirt in what insiders call a "lift."

"It has always been part of our long-range plan to raise each section of the levee four or even five times," said Al Naomi, the corps' senior project manager. "After that, we think the levee might have stabilized and not need further raisings."

Time for next lift

It's time now for the next lifts in a number of places that have sunk 2 to 4 feet from their design elevations. These include in Kenner west of the Pontchartrain Center, Metairie between Causeway Boulevard and Clearview Parkway, Norco and St. Rose in St. Charles Parish, the Bayou Sauvage area of eastern New Orleans, and remote marshland areas of eastern St. Bernard Parish.

– snip –

Bush budget falls short

The Bush administration's proposed fiscal 2005 budget includes only $3.9 million for the east bank hurricane project. Congress likely will increase that amount, although last year it bumped up the administration's $3 million proposal only to $5.5 million.

"I needed $11 million this year, and I got $5.5 million," Naomi said. "I need $22.5 million next year to do everything that needs doing, and the first $4.5 million of that will go to pay four contractors who couldn't get paid this year."

Naomi said the corps already owes four contractors more than $2 million for hurricane protection work they've done this year without pay, and he expects the figure to climb to about $4.5 million by Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year.

The challenge now, said emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri in Jefferson Parish and Terry Tullier in New Orleans, is for southeast Louisiana somehow to persuade those who control federal spending that protection from major storms and flooding are matters of homeland security.

"It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's he price we pay," Maestri said. "Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Incidentally, this also puts to lie Bush’s claim that “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breech of the levees.” (Here’s more evidence that lots of people anticipated the breech of the levees.)

And while New Orleans flood funding was being re-appropriated to Iraq, we’ve had numerous tax cuts for our country’s increasingly more powerful aristocratic class.

The Best Damn Thing That Ever Could’ve Happened

Lately I am coming to the conclusion that losing the election in 2004 will be the best thing that ever happened to the Democrats. There was actually little consolation in hoping for a Kerry win; we all knew the reality on the ground, which was that the Republican congress would handcuff him and box him in out of shear spite, smearing and meanness (wonder how fast they would resurrect the independent special prosecutor rule?). We’d seen this movie before, with a Democratic president and a Republican House. It would have been much worse with the Senate against him, too – but at least we could have accomplished something.

I think all of the post-election Democrat soul-searching has been more productive than therapeutic. It was a truly interesting process, the likes of which have not been seen on the American political front. Yes, parties have re-grouped and re-focused after losses, but never before has the soul-searching of a party been so public, so communal. Or so productive.

There has been a seismic shift in the power structure for the Democrats, which will have a significant impact on Democratic policies and politicians. But there are other dynamics, serendipitously working in concert to the Democrats’ advantage, as follows:

Richard Gephart's retirement. Gephart's retirement to pursue a failed bid for the Democratic nomination holds significance as a changing-of-the-guard, as he was the last of the old, big-government-era Democratic leaders. His leadership was tied to his own obsolescence in today’s political reality. Gephart came from the days when holding together the Democratic coalition was the primary concern of its leaders. It will always be an important job for any party leader to appease divergent interest groups (the GOP has similar concerns, for example, keeping the libertarians and social conservatives in the camp). But while no Democrat can afford to take interest groups for granted – indeed, Karl Rove proved that you can win by motivating those groups – in today’s political climate, none of the groups are going to vote outside the party.

Gephart also rose to prominence in the days when Democrats held a safe majority. Democrats could afford for representatives to return home and campaign however they felt necessary – as conservatives, moderates, liberals or radicals – to the detriment of a unified party message.

Nancy Pelosi has brought a level of public feistiness the Democrats have been sorely lacking. Her response to the Republicans’ blatantly unscrupulous and shameful neutering of the House Ethics Committee has been encouraging. But she has long needed help – exactly the kind of help Senator Harry Reid is bringing.

The defeat of Tom Daschle. Republicans actually helped facilitate what is turning out to be a major addition by subtraction for the Democrats. Daschle, inexplicably a demon of the right, was the leader Republicans should have enabled, not defeated. While the GOP labeled him an obstructionist – with the arrogant presumption that the minority party should never dissent – he had to consistently pander to conservatives in his home state because his seat was always hanging by a thread.

The main reason Republicans targeted Daschle was that they wanted his seat and thus, a larger Republican majority. As collateral damage, perhaps they’d hoped to intimidate the Democratic leadership into appeasement. While many Democrats regretted the loss of Daschle’s seat, many, many Democrats celebrated and welcomed a change of leadership – and anyone was better than Daschle, who had to sacrifice principled Democratic stands for his own political survival.

Perhaps the new “Give ‘Em Hell, Harry!” Democrat, Reid has brilliantly united the party in its opposition to the president’s dishonest social security privatization scam. He has responded forcefully to the GOP’s attempts to Daschle-ize him. He has also adopted the GOP method of threatening senate dissenters with the loss of their committee seats (as DeLay has done recently in the House with the Ethics Committee, whose Republican members were punished for reprimanding him). And he has gotten the caucus squarely behind him.

Howard Dean’s ascension to DNC Chair. Dean has been very impressive, from the moment he declared himself for DNC chair. Democrats rejected him in the primaries because few knew who he was before this campaign season and because Democrats wanted an established name, preferably with military credentials. But during his candidacy for DNC chair, he has marvelously channeled the grassroots and understands the netroots. He also responds forcefully and passionately to GOP attacks. (I will comment on Dean in a subsequent post outside of this series.) John Kerry failed to understand any of this, because the army of consultants he hired to run his campaign was comprised of Washington insiders who had no idea. Nor did they care.

The "Manchurian Beefcake" And Other Scandals

I have been watching the Jeff Gannon/Guckert controversy with a keen interest.

Indulge me in some speculation. I am trying to draw the line between developing my own conspiracy theory and examining some odd facts that, when examined in their totality, comprise circumstantial evidence pointing in a strange direction.

Let me first present the facts – followed, on occasion, by my own speculation – as we know them.

Fact: Jeff Guckert, a.k.a Jeff Gannon, has been exposed as a faux-journalist who obtained White House press credentials under a pseudonym just five days after the websites for which he worked, Talon News and GOPUSA, were founded.

Fact: The Talon News and GOPUSA websites are owned and operated by Republican Party activist Robert Eberle of Texas.

Fact: Gannon/Guckert was subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury investigation into the Plame leak.

Inference: Of course, the testimony is sealed, so we are not yet certain if he was testifying as someone to whom the White House source leaked the outing of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA asset (but we may know something soon). Since he, in an interview with Ambassador Joseph Wilson, mentions an intelligence document that had at that time not been made public, it is logical to infer that this is what his grand jury testimony was about.

Fact: Talon News and GOPUSA have scrubbed all mention of Gannon/Guckert (excepting his resignation statement), including all the articles he had written for the site.

Question: Why? One would think that, in the wake of this controversy, they would present him as a martyr, Example Number One of a conservative unfairly pilloried by the left and the So-Called “liberal media,” a la Oliver North. Since his articles were often little more than RNC press releases and never failed to parrot the party line, one would think the site owners would want to attract attention to his previous posts. Unless it had to do with:

Fact: Gannon/Gucket registered URLs that explicitly stated gay prostitution. Records show the websites were last updated in November of 2004.

Inference: The update indicates the sites may have been active until recently. Of course, we do not know who updated the records or what the updates were. They may not have been content-related; they may have been technical.

Fact: GOPUSA and TalonNews quietly changed ownership on Monday, just as the Gannon story was breaking on the liberal blogs, to a corporation that was founded on the same day.

Inference: Combined with the previously mentioned site scrubbings, someone is whitewashing, reason unknown. When people act as roaches scurrying when the lights come on, it naturally implies someone is hiding something.

I expect we’ll hear much more about the Manchurian Beefcake scandal, as James Wolcott so appropriately dubbed it, in the coming days. It certainly feels like something is unraveling.

However, none of this crosses yet into conspiracy theory territory. These are facts and logical – but not necessarily accurate – suppositions one could make based on the facts. There isn’t yet a smoking gun that could potentially tie all of this together.

Radical Speculation: It’s when I read this, via Wolcott, that I was reminded of a little-known gay pedophilia ring that was run in the Bush I White House. I realized as I researched that this speculation could lead to a criticism that I have strayed too far from the boundaries of reasonable inquiry – and perhaps even, some may say, sanity itself.

But is this radical speculation? Bush I was the former head of the CIA. He would thus be expert at covert operations, blackmail, and all of the spy vs. spy elements of Cold War espionage. When he served as Reagan’s VP, the administration was discovered to have engaged in nasty forms of espionage, including arms-for-hostages, clandestine operations in Central America and support of right-wing death squads.

All of this seemed too hard for Americans to accept or believe; this cold realpolitik belied Reagan’s perceived sunny optimism. In retrospect, if one considers the current administration model, it makes more sense. That is, a vice president who operates under the radar, but has considerably more power and influence than is typically ascribed to the position.

As Reagan descended further into Alzheimer’s during his presidency, is it not conceivable that the second-most powerful person would seize the reins of control? The considerable tension between Nancy and Michael Reagan and the Bush family, I would submit, is rooted in more than just stem-cell research; it smacks of a power struggle.

I certainly haven’t seen any hard evidence to implicate Bush I (I am discounting the eyewitness accounts and testimony) in prostitution or blackmail. We do know that Lawrence King and Craig Spence had very high-level GOP ties.

Now we have proof of Jeff Gannon/Guckert’s own high-level GOP connections, and his sudden disappearance in the midst of other Bush II propaganda scandals (bloggers are following the money -- also here). The fact that he received White House press credentials under a pseudonym just days after his media organ was founded clearly indicates preferential treatment, as no other journalist would be credentialed under similar circumstances. To receive such preferential treatment, you have to know some powerful people. I am sure we’ll see some connections as the story develops.

Again, I realize I am speculating. But in the aftermath of fervent connect-the-dot attempts regarding Vince Foster’s suicide, a failed real estate venture and a blue dress, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider this as historical background potentially relevant to this scandal.

I'm Back

I'd like to apologize for my long absence from these parts. The past couple months, my personal life descended into some chaos -- including a couple of illnesses (of which walking pneumonia was the worst) that took some time to shake and the busiest time of year at my real job -- but I am feeling chipper now and ready to begin posting again. My postings may be in fits and starts, but I will do my best to post with some regularity. But only if I can contribute to the national discourse with a unique perspective or original thoughts.

I would also like to apologize for the tease in the previous post. At the time, I was working on a couple of essays that remain unfinished. I became sick as I was working on them and had to adandon posting in favor of rest.

With all that behind me now, I am putting the finishing touches on a post that I will have up shortly.

Apologies and Keep Watching This Space

To those of you who've been checking in, I promise you something new. I am working on an essay that I hope to post soon. As I mentioned earlier, I knew this would be a difficult time for posting. But I have a lot of subjects incubating and a lot of things to get off my chest!

Just to let you know, I'm still here, and I've neither given up nor quit. I am just going through one of those extremely busy times that life occasionally throws at you. It's all good, just busy.

Deconstructing The Structure

Perhaps my running theme has either not been very well expressed or is too abstract. Either way, I hope to change that. I’d like to see this seriously considered as the way Democrats think, talk and act. Perhaps it requires a kind of effort to view the structure of the debate and see how it naturally shapes the content of the debate.

My argument is that Democrats cannot win the debate in its existing structure. It was, in fact, designed specifically for them to fail – as a Republican in the early 90s (subject for a later post), I observed with glee its beginnings. It was revolutionary.

To change this and win, we must first examine the structure and learn everything about it. Then we can start the task of changing the structure to more fairly allow our collective voice to be heard.

Think of it as a house. The structure of the house – foundation, walls, roof, etc. – is the structure of the public debate. The interior of the house – floor covering, paint, furniture, pictures, etc. – is the content of the debate. In both cases, the shape of the structure has bearing on its content.

Presidential debates are a perfect example. Rather than engaging in a formal debate, the two sides negotiate the format to best suit the candidate. The Bush and Clinton teams favored less formal debate settings and structure because they wanted to show their candidates as being more casual and conversational, like the average voter. They negotiated to change the structure, the better to control the content.

The only way I can think to grasp the existing structure is to take it apart and examine it brick-by-brick. I necessarily must use examples to illustrate my points. Interestingly, the examples I used were controversial enough to spark a spirited yet civil discussion in the commentary following the post. Which, in a sideways sort of way, advanced my thesis.

(Please note that I am not referring to all of the comments – or even complete comments – posted. There was also a more important and genuine exchange of ideas, which I hope to get to later.)

The commentary continued the discussion within the frame of the current debate structure. That structure, in blog format, is to constantly one-up one another with a series of rat-a-tat postings. It’s natural – it’s been the debate structure for most of the last ten years. I even saw some “Gotchas!” and “Everybody Does It” in the commentary.

Happily, some comments added to my thesis. Thinkindependent (sorry Think, but I have to type and read acronyms all day long in my professional life. As a result, I cannot bear all caps and must type you out as a proper noun) adds this:

… you have to reframe the Democratic message. Make it more concise, more articulate, and package it in a way that the public will buy it. Then you have to get the right salesman, as Ronald Reagan was on the Republican side.

I hadn’t figured the right salesman in the mix. What I wanted was to divorce the Democratic Party from the dominating influence that one person – a president or a presidential candidate – can have on the party’s ideology. The way to accomplish this is to create a bold Democratic message that articulates our ideas independent of any one person. But we certainly will need a standard bearer.

As it is now, the American public already knows what the Republican candidate for 2008 will stand for. We’ll be waiting to hear from the Democrat until after the primaries.

How To Bang A Drum

I find it interesting that much of the feedback I get from my posts – intentional or otherwise – bolsters a primary thematic argument I have been attempting to advance on this site.

One of the most commonly heard responses is that I am tinkering with cosmetics, while the Democrats need a whole idea overhaul. The argument here is certainly not that the Party should move further left to find new ideas (although I am certain many on the far left would argue they should).

The clear implication is that because Republicans hold the majority, their ideas have been successful. Democrats, therefore, must acknowledge that their own ideas are failures and then develop ideas more like the Republicans’.

To some degree, Democrats do need to effectively articulate ideas that address current political reality; for example, the Republicans have become an institutionally corrupt machine and Democrats are the reformers (to steal a Republican idea from the 80s).

Having said that, I do believe Democrats’ core ideas are sound. But Republicans have worked long and hard to pull the debate onto their own ground, and in so doing, have effectively neutralized an already disorganized Democratic message.

As RBMan has written in the comments:

...the problem is related to Wordcruncher's theme of message discipline. As far as I can see there is no real message to exercise discipline around as opposed to the conservative side which consistently bangs the drum over and over again about "faith", "taxes", "regulatory burden", "defense", "abortion", and "family values".

What drum do the Democrats bang?

This may be a semantic argument, but I do believe it is significant: Rather than banging the ideas we already have, we are responding to Republican drum-banging, which puts Democrats consistently one beat behind the Republicans.

The first step in seizing the idea offensive is to evaluate the debate and understand how it is being conducted before developing a strategy. Following are some of the methods the Republicans successfully deploy to neutralize the Democratic ideas (which are not effectively articulated).

Everybody Does It: I will use as an example a comment I’ve heard and received more than once. It goes like this: One cannot denounce the rhetoric of the right without also condemning the left. In other words, this argument goes, my point is ineffective because Everybody Does It.

However, please note that I am pointing out specific rhetoric emanating from the right. I do not wish to censor, but a reasonable person would acknowledge the difference between calling the president a deserter or saying he betrayed his country, versus stating that an entire group of Americans are traitors or must be eliminated (except for one, which apparently would be placed in a museum).

These very clear differences in rhetoric turn the Everybody Does It dismissal into an excuse – and a justification – for further extremist attacks. As noted in my "This Is War, Dammit" post, Democrats need to recognize and counter this attitude on a national level.

The Republicans have used this strategy to neutralize the Democratic message by neutering the media. At one time the public watchdog with investigative powers that threatened any crooked politician, the press has been defanged. Instead of true reportage and journalism, we now have stenography, as I described in an earlier post:

The current method of reporting goes something like this: "The Republicans say this. The Democrats say that. We don’t know who’s right, but one thing’s certain: It sure is complicated."

Here’s an example of how Republicans have used this tactic. Sen. Kerry’s war hero status and Mr. Bush’s spotty National Guard duty had to be neutralized. So they trotted out the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, who demonstrably and profusely lied and misrepresented Sen. Kerry’s war record.

With the waters muddied, the mainstream press offered little in the way of investigative journalism into either sides’ charges. They simply resigned themselves to the stenography described above: "Everybody Does It, and we can’t sort it out."

Gotcha!: The Gotcha! strategy goes like this: "You say A now. But sometime in the past, you said B. Gotcha!" Note that either A or B could be taken entirely out of context.

Both sides are certainly guilty of applying this tiresome strategy. While it doesn’t seem particularly effective at advancing a point, it is effective at muddying the waters. Consider these two examples, one from each side:

"Sen. Kerry says the U.S. should always defend itself. But in the 70s, he made the statement that we should not go to war without U.N. authority. Gotcha!"

"Mr. Bush says the objective of going into Iraq is to remove a brutal government and build democracy in its place. But during the 2000 campaign, Gov. Bush said he was against nation-building. Gotcha!"

A tactic used media-wide, Gotcha! is the life force of the cable talking head holler-thons. Their very omnipresence has distracted the public from more substantial discourse. Republicans understood this, and it became a primary strategy when they began promoting "character" as a crucial issue.

The ultimate game of Gotcha! was Mr. Clinton’s oval office peccadilloes. I am not justifying Mr. Clinton’s actions, but clearly the special prosecutor was assigned with a well-financed fishing expedition for a Gotcha!

And how better to explain Republican success with Gotcha! than the example of Rep. Bob Barr, the House Manager in the impeachment trial, who had peccadilloes of his own that received relatively little attention? Granted, Rep. Barr’s peccadilloes are not as significant as the president’s, but wouldn’t that have been a good story? Both the House prosecutor and the accused president are adulterers! Think of the ratings!

Perhaps the Democratic response should have been to sigh, shrug, and say, "Everybody does it."

Windham Studios

I have thus far not strayed far from the overarching theme of my blog. But I do want to take a moment and thank Windham Studios (a commenter here) for giving me a shout-out.

Please visit his blog, EcLECTIC RAMBLINGS. Not because we’re having a lovefest here, but because he’s doing some very interesting things with the blog as medium. This is what happens when blogging falls into the hands of a talented artist. Not only is he writing fine posts (all-original essays, lists and poetry), he also posts his own art. He’s plenty creative and he’s just getting started, so it will be fun to watch how it evolves as he continues to master the medium.

I wonder if we could ever get him to post Egbert and Dolie?*

(* – a critically-acclaimed newspaper comic from Windham Studios in the 70’s.)

The Image Game

For non-sports fans, please bear with me through this. Forgive me for sounding patronizing, but you, perhaps more substantially than most, could benefit from understanding a certain phenomenon in American life that is critical to many people’s worldview. In pursuit of this, I am not making a gratuitous sports analogy; rather, I am illustrating a prism through which many rank-and-file, red-state Republicans filter their view of politics.

I will dare to venture a guess that most red-state males are football fans – much more so than NASCAR fans. Football in the South and Midwest is a kind of rite of passage for males. It is presumed to create the Ideal American Man: tough, strong, disciplined, determined. Only watching his son play could warm the heart of a red-state Dad more than watching his daughter date a football player. It’s an instant resume for life.

It is what the draft once meant to red-state Dads (send ‘em to the military, that’ll straighten ‘em out). And indeed, it’d be no coincidence that high numbers of men in the military played football. Most, but not all, of the friends I can recall joining the military had played football (I grew up and reside in a red state).

And if football becomes a standard right of passage for red-state males, it stands to follow that this right of passage is preparing the male to succeed in larger struggles in courtrooms, on executive boards, at war, in politics – and in the very struggle of good vs. evil. In other words, football prepares men to succeed in larger games that will require the same skills and leadership lessons developed in football. Larger games played like football.

I don’t see indications that blue-state urbanites understand this. Democrats in general, I believe, take politics much more literally than Republicans, failing to realize how the Republicans are playing defense, creating turnovers, advancing their field position and driving for touchdowns.

This is the way Republicans control the tempo of politics.

Allow me to interpose a more specific analogy into my argument. In the South, the kind of football to consider is the poke-you-in-the-eye college football of the pre-integration period variety. In those days, college football coaches wielded political power through (if nothing else) sheer community influence. Many were encouraged to run for office after retiring. Many were closely affiliated with state government officials, both fair and corrupt.

As a whole, southern head college football coaches were untouchable. Slipping players money under the table was not only encouraged, it was considered the cost of doing business. This kind of wink-wink rule breaking became a symbol of virtue. Coaches did whatever they could to advance the cause. And as long as the refs don’t catch you, it ain’t cheating.

Even if they do, it’s considered a minor setback. In football, if a player intentionally hurts the opposition’s star player, causing him to miss a few plays, the offending player gets a 15-yard penalty, but he benefited the team and thus becomes a de facto hero.

Even though the attack was unfair. Even if it was, to us, flagrantly brutal and personal.

The Republicans understand this, and so one of the images they would use to cast Mr. Bush is that of a football coach (and don’t forget, House Speaker Denny Hastert was also a coach). From years of covering high school sports, I have a pretty good ear for recognizing coachspeak, and there’s plenty of coded coachspeak in Mr. Bush’s rhetoric.

His campaign speeches had the ring of locker-room speeches. They didn’t need Democrats or “neutral” ralliers present; these were pep-rally speeches for players and coaches only, not an opportunity to “see the president” or make one’s voice heard.

When he spoke of questioning his generals before the invasion of Iraq, he mentioned that he looked in their eyes and asked if they had the right plan. Exactly what a head football coach would be expected to do; call a timeout, ask the assistant coaches for play suggestions, then as the time-out expired, look his coaches in the eye and make the call. I’ve heard many a coach describe this scenario after a tight game.

The “steady leadership” and Iraq issue didn’t hurt the president as much as we Democrats thought it would. That’s partly because a coach who doesn’t stick to his game plan (you make the players adapt to it), especially late in the game, will be seen as indecisive and quickly terminated. If, for example, your team is designed to run the ball and play defense, you never stop running and playing defense. Period.

How do we neutralize or counter this image? In the beginning of the Democratic primaries, I supported Gen. Wesley Clark in part because I thought he fit that rock-jawed, general/coach archetype.

For a while during the presidential campaign, Sen. Kerry would be photographed tossing a football. While it hardly meant anything substantive, I would have liked to see more of that. It may have connected symbolically with some red-staters, however insignificantly. And it may have helped us to create a quarterback archetype that could have advanced the cause in the red states without compromising our message and ideas.

Apology

I’d like to apologize for the recent dearth of posts. Life interferes with hobbies far too often, and so my postings will be somewhat sporadic until after the holiday season. I’ll still post infrequently until then, so please check back periodically.

Voting: Fix The Glitches

One thing continues to sadden me in the aftermath of the election. Considering that there are three sides to every issue– Democratic, Republican and the media (if only by determining issues that merit coverage) – why does only one side clearly care about voting irregularities (potential, actual or otherwise)? I’ve heard many conspiracy theories, and even cooked up one or two myself.

It is a shame that caring about voting irregularities and fraud, voter rights and vote counting are shunted aside as the rantings of losers from the left’s lunatic fringe. Or they’re dismissed with shrugs of the “elections have always been unfair” variety.

But given that the Republican candidate won almost four million more votes than the Democratic challenger, one would think protecting their own successful Get-Out-The-Vote operations would cause the Republicans to at least give it lip service. The media still likes to occasionally consider itself a public watchdog (though sadly, less and less these days). This concerns justice and fairness, which are definitely American values but which do not merit national consideration.

Only the Democrats – those with the least amount of power in our democracy – seem even a little concerned about the integrity of our democracy. And it is no less than our democracy's integrity at risk.

Why is it that no one appears able to hold e-voting machine vendors to security audits or to some other kind of publicly-held standards? If the opposition to this is based on too much federal regulation, then make it a corporate self-regulating process by putting the auditing contracts out to competitive bid. Bill the voting machine vendors for the audit. Why should they not be expected to pay the price of protecting the public interest, since they're profiting on this trust?

Consult with top security and programming executives and experts while constructing the requirements a bidding auditor should be expected to pursue. The rules and standards should be strict. Benchmark results should be made public.

The names of the programmers who wrote the codes should be a matter of public record (I’m willing to realize this may be harsh, but I am looking for some form of public accountability). I’m not suggesting that any company’s programmers are necessarily crooked; rather, I am suggesting that precautionary measures be taken because it is not difficult for a programmer to, for example, code “if” statements into a program that can compromise the system unnoticed. (Thanks, Rik.)

A whip will be required; make one out of the very reason the vendors do business with the government in the first place. Withhold the percentage of money the vendor would be counting on for its profit if it does not pass audits and meet specific security requirements. Hit ‘em in the checkbook, the mightiest regulator there is.

Please note that my thesis is not about whether the election was stolen or whether intentional, systemic fraud was committed to secure a specific result. For two election cycles now, we’ve seen evidence of electronic voting system failures. Why do so few care whether anything gets done? Why won't we fix the glitches?

There may be hope for forcing reform onto the congressional agenda. Stories seem to be drip, drip, dripping out there in various precincts. It’ll take at least one story to make a splash before anyone notices.

Response to Comments

A couple of commenters have raised questions concerning whether “greed and materialism” could be a winning issue for the Democrats. I realize I wasn’t being very clear. I was intending to use this as more a hypothetical example, one suggesting how we may begin the search for the key issues to frame a constant and consistent message.

In the grand scheme, it appears that the Democrats’ message consists largely of defensive reactions to Republican wedge issues, which the Republicans use very effectively to dominate the national debate. The overarching objective should be to bring the debate to our turf.

And that’s what I meant about changing the subject. If the debate is about values, then we shift it to a debate about Democratic values, rather than craft responses to their issue frames (frankly, I think this gives them an edge when voters begin considering an issue). Do as they do: knock down the opponent’s message quickly and succinctly, then hammer home yours.

As you can no doubt tell from my ramblings, I am not at all clever with packaging complex ideas into two- or three-word, soundbite-ready phrases. If I were, I could no doubt present a more effective argument. I am hoping that out of this debate -- and there's no shortage of debate -- will come some phrases we can use as weapons, rather than shields, in the rhetorical war.

That said, I do think greed and materialism could be effective as a populist message of reform. Think corporate welfare, job outsourcing, tax loopholes. Mr. Bush even handed the Democrats an example when he dismissed Sen. Kerry’s tax plan by claiming that those making $200,000 and up will always figure out how cheat on their taxes. That’s greed and materialism. Environmental destruction can be woven into this theme, with a message that unites environmentally-minded urbanites as well as hunters and fishermen.

I’ve said I think the Democratic National Committee chair must be responsible for distributing the party’s message by arming candidates with the Democratic message and forcing the narrative into the media. I do realize the party chair’s most critical role may be fundraising.

But there needs to be a transitional “bridge” to advance the Democratic message when we are between candidates and to keep the party’s message from being hijacked by the latest presidential candidate's image. Why shouldn't that be the DNC chair's role? Shift some of the fundraising burden, perhaps with co-chairs.

I’m seeing a lot of discussion about Democratic identity and messaging. Once I’ve been able to sort through it all, I’ll lend my thoughts.