Politics 2002-03 Archives

Good to see that Ashcroft has recused himself and put a professional prosecutor at the head of the Valerie Plame leak investigation. I don't personally know Patrick Fitzgerald, the US Attorney for Chicago, but I know him by reputation and know people who know him; he's a career prosecutor who made his name with the first World Trade Center bombing cases (among other things, I believe he was the lead prosecutor on the trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman); I'm sure he'll be thorough and dogged, but unlike outside prosecutors (i.e., Independent Counsels), he has other things to do and won't spin this into an endless investigation if more pressing matters need the resources. A good call.

I still maintain that the best way to handle politically charged investigations would be to create a separate department of an Inspector General. Such a department could be built around the current Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice, which has a perenially full caseload with corruption in state and local governments, contracting, police corruption, etc., and thus would not be like an Independent Counsel, tempted to blow one investigation out of proportion. But the head of the department could be someone less political than the Attorney General (whose role in law enforcement, Supreme Court litigation and sometimes judicial selection makes him or her an inevitably controversial figure) and selected specifically for the trait of bipartisan respect. Once selected and nominated, an IG would be nearly impossible to fire over a single investigation in the absence of obvious abuse. And you could also consolidate the civil IG offices of various executive departments, which can be prone to the same problems as IC offices, thus avoiding the usual trap of new departments that duplicate existing ones.

And pay for the savings by abolishing the Commerce Department. Everyone wins!

Another one you might have missed, that I noticed I never got around to blogging: in August, the D.C. Circuit rejected most of Bill and Hillary Clinton's request for reimbursement for their attorneys' fees incurred in the course of the Whitewater and related investigations (although President Clinton did not seek reimbursement for the Lewinsky investigation, as per his agreement with Robert Ray resolving the charges arising from that case). The Clintons argued that they were statutorily entitled to reimbursement on the theory that the fees "would not have been incurred but for the requirements of" the Independent Counsel statute (the Ethics in Goverment Act) -- i.e., that "1) if not for the Act, the case could have been disposed of at an early stage of the investigation; and 2) they were investigated under the Act where private citizens would not have been investigated."

These arguments, of course, echoed the defense of the Clintons from the beginning: nothing to see here, old news, we were cleared by Arkansas regulators, nobody but Ken Starr would have investigated this stuff, yada yada yada.

The key passage:

Two years before the appointment of Independent Counsel Starr, a criminal referral was submitted by the Resolution Trust Corporation to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas alleging illegal activities involving Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association, and naming the McDougals as suspects and the Clintons as witnesses. When in early 1994 the Attorney General appointed Robert Fiske as regulatory independent counsel, she gave him broad authority to investigate the Clintons' relationship with, inter alia, Madison Guaranty and the Whitewater Development Corporation. And when we appointed Kenneth Starr as statutory independent counsel in the summer of 1994, at the request of the Attorney General we granted him investigatory authority almost identical to Fiske's. The IC's final report on the Whitewater matter states that "[t]he breadth of the criminality already uncovered by the Fiske investigation in part contributed to the length of time necessary for the statutory Independent Counsel to complete his work." See Robert W. Ray, Final Report of the Independent Counsel, In Re: Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Association, Vol. I, 21 (2001). Taking all of the above into consideration, we harbor no doubt that in the absence of the independent counsel statute the allegations surrounding the Clintons, Madison Guaranty, and Whitewater would have been similarly investigated and prosecuted by the Department of Justice.

The Clintons nevertheless argue that the DOJ would have conducted a substantially lesser investigation than that of the IC. The facts would not appear to substantiate this argument. Another independent counsel, albeit regulatory, had been appointed to investigate the matter, and in the short period he was in office he conducted an extensive investigation spending several hundred thousand dollars.

Indeed.

From a friend, who asks: why is there so much overlap between (a) those Americans who criticize our foreign policy for being too "unilateral" and (b) those Americans who feel that American branches of world religions need to ignore, if necessary, criticisms from their overseas branches when pressing for changes in doctrine (e.g., relating to abortion, ordination of women, homosexuality, etc.)?

But then, "unilateral" means "in opposition to Continental Europe," whereas criticism from Third World Christians generally gets discounted; they apparently are supposed to be seen, not heard.

The Weekly Standard had an interesting and sympathetic profile of Dick Gephardt some weeks ago, including some good Dean-bashing. I tend to like Gephardt when I'm just reading about him - on paper, you can make him sound like Harry Truman - but every time I see the guy he's just so full to the brim with idiotic cliched soundbites that lack even a semblance of logic or coherent thought that I have to turn off the TV. He probably is a decent guy, but listening to him drives me up the wall. The problem is one that's endemic to many Democratic politicians (Howard Dean is actually a rare exception): he talks down to his audience like he's speaking to a bunch of grade school students.

Barring a catastrophe in the war on terror or a major economic reversal, I still can't see Gephardt going anywhere, or the Democrats winning in November, unless something happens that forces the candidates to change the subject from war and taxes. Dean is Bush's ideal matchup -- and the one the true believers on the Left want -- because they both want to run on war & taxes, and the two are diametrically opposed on both questions. Other than Gephard't's trade-war talk, none of the other Dems have been able to change that definition of the agenda. And as we know, he who sets the agenda usually wins.

One thing I've been kicking around is whether the cultural issues will matter. A friend suggested that culture issues are bigger now than they were in 1992, but I don't really buy it; if anything, the cultural fissures were more pronounced that election year. 1992 saw Buchanan's "culture war" speech - the battles of that era seem tame only because we've gone so much further down the slippery slope. 1992 was "the year of the woman." Dan Quayle v. Murphy Brown. It was 1992 that the Supreme Court upheld Roe v Wade (or, as Scalia pointed out, completely rewrote Roe under the guise of being bound by precedent). The LA riots were in April 1992. And, of course, Bill Clinton was one big walking cultural issue.

Culture is a big subtext, particularly if Dean wins. But the main topics will still be taxes and war.

This NY Times article on programs to keep African-American men enrolled in college has an interesting sidebar on the Times' site: the "Times News Tracker" says you would receive an email about the article if you had chosen one of the following four topics as one of your alerts:

Teachers and School Employees
Blacks
Equal Educational Opportunities
Education and Schools

Now, I'm really no expert on political correctness, so maybe this is just me, but isn't it considered bad form these days to use the term "Blacks" as opposed to "African-Americans" or, failing that, "black people"? Just has a ring of Strom Thurmond about it, as in, "I'd like to get the news about the Blacks."

For a little perspective on the Democratic primaries -- or, perhaps, perspective on how they've changed in 12 short years -- check out at least one national poll for the Democrats in December 1991 (source: Daily Kos), which in theory should be the same point in the process as we're at today:

Mario Cuomo - 33%

Jerry Brown - 15

Douglas Wilder - 9

Bob Kerrey - 8

Tom Harkin - 7

Bill Clinton - 6

Paul Tsongas - 4

Undecided/Others - 18

Of course, #1 never entered the race, which is much like the current polls would look if they were still listing Hillary! in every poll. It may be harder for anyone today to roar from the back of the pack this late in the game, especially where Howard Dean has already pulled the same trick.

Saddam Hussein, on the American GI: "Why didn't you fight?" one Governing Council member asked Hussein as their meeting ended. Hussein gestured toward the U.S. soldiers guarding him and asked his own question: "Would you fight them?"

A US official, on Saddam's capture: "We can now determine," he said, "if he is the mastermind of everything or not." The official elaborated: "Have we actually cut the head of the snake or is he just an idiot hiding in a hole?"

And two from last week:

Tom Maguire, on Howard Dean: "[W]ill centrists peer in confusion at their television screens and wonder, who is this little man yelling at me, and why is his face so red?"

Tom Burka, with a little humor: "Gore To Claim He Invented Dean, Says GOP"

(Read the whole thing; link via Plum Crazy)

Howard Dean's major foreign policy address on Monday was probably a mixed bag politically; while Dean's anti-war crusade was yet again upstaged by reality, he once again succeeded in framing the public debate as Dean vs. Bush, and in the primaries, that's what you need.

On the substance? Well, Dean argued that he wouldn't abandon the idea of pre-emption, but (1) would stage a preemptive attack only where an "imminent" threat existed and (2) doesn't think Iraq met that test. It's a politically clever tactic, since it wouldn't necessarily tie down his own freedom of action as President in another case as dramatically as if he rejected preemption entirely, although it does call into question his judgment and does indicate a return to pre-September 11 policy (i.e., Operation Desert Fox vs. Gulf War II as the logical response to Saddam). Of course, I disagree completely with Dean on this.

Kevin Drum linked last Friday to a page on the White House site about India, the Bushes' cat. I, too, had been unaware that the Bush family had a cat, but more amusing is this tidbit:

Named for former Texas Ranger baseball player, Ruben Sierra, who was called "El Indio"

Just cracked me up that the President of the United States has a cat named after Ruben Sierra.

So I took this online quiz to see who I support for president (duh!), and here's what I got:

Your Results:

1. Your ideal theoretical candidate. (100%)
2. Bush, President George W. - Republican (81%)
3. Kerry, Senator John, MA - Democrat (51%)
4. Edwards, Senator John, NC - Democrat (48%)
5. Lieberman, Senator Joe, CT - Democrat (46%)
6. Gephardt, Rep. Dick, MO - Democrat (45%)
7. Libertarian Candidate (42%)
8. Kucinich, Rep. Dennis, OH - Democrat (35%)
9. Dean, Gov. Howard, VT - Democrat (29%)
10. Clark, Retired General Wesley K., AR - Democrat (24%)
11. Phillips, Howard - Constitution (24%)
12. LaRouche, Lyndon H. Jr. - Democrat (17%)
13. Socialist Candidate (16%)
14. Green Party Candidate (14%)
15. Sharpton, Reverend Al - Democrat (14%)
16. Moseley-Braun, Former Senator Carol, IL - Democrat (9%)

(Link via Tung Yin)

No surprise at the top, although I'd have thought it was closer to 90%. Can it really be that I agree with John Kerry more often than not? I mean, I know Kerry's been all over the map on a number of issues, but I've been listening to Kerry for years (particularly when I was in school in Massachusetts for seven years), and I can't ever remember him saying anything I agreed with, whereas I can think of several issues on which I've agreed with Lieberman, from war to capital gains tax cuts. It's also interesting to note that for all his "electability" talk, Clark is even further away from my side of the political spectrum than Dean is, which I take as a sign that unlike Dean, Clark hasn't been thinking seriously about politics long enough to dissent from his party's line on anything.

Atrios and a bunch of other far-out Lefty bloggers accuse John Kerry of "the Willie Horton campaign tactic of linking Howard Dean to Osama Bin Laden" for an ad (follow the link) that does nothing but show bin Laden's picture while (1) stating that America has evil enemies who plot against it (incontestibly true, no?) and (2) questioning Dean's inexperience in foreign affairs (a legitimate issue in any campaign, if a sometimes overstated one).

This is batty. Nothing in the ad accuses Dean of being soft on Al Qaeda, or even mentions any of Dean's policies. This is awfully tame stuff, in fact. By arguing that you shouldn't be able to raise the issue of whether a presidential candidate is equipped to deal with international terrorists like bin Laden, isn't Atrios effectively arguing for taking the issue of terrorism off the table entirely? Leaving aside the tactical insanity here -- the prison furlough issue worked precisely because the Democrats had spent years arguing that crime was a subject beneath discussion -- how can anyone believe that a candidate's ability to deal with the leading national security issue of the day shouldn't be an issue?

Or are Atrios and friends just saying that you can say that argument, but you can't dramatize it by referring directly to bin Laden?

Watching the Kerry, Lieberman, Edwards, Graham and Mosely-Braun campaigns dissolve in various levels of disarray and ignominy, I'm reminded yet again: Senators are the presidential primary equivalents of the guys in red shirts on Star Trek. You know how, when they'd beam Kirk, Spock, McCoy and two unnamed guys in red shirts down to a planet -- you could always tell which ones were there just to get frozen in mid-air or fed to brain-eating plants or whatever. Somebody has to bite the dust to show what peril the named characters were in.

Consider the campaigns by US Senators since the early 70s or so (many of whom flirted with running more than once): besides the five named above, we've got McCain (2000), Hart (1984, 1988), Glenn (1984), Bradley (2000), Dole (1980, 1988, 1996), Muskie (1972), McGovern (1972, 1976, 1984), Gore (1988), Tsongas (1992), Harkin (1992), Kerrey (1992), Hollings (1984), Hatch (2000), Bob Smith (2000), Cranston (1984), Simon (1988), Kennedy (1980), Gramm (1996), Lugar (1996), Biden (1988), Howard Baker (1980), Birch Bayh (1976), Byrd (yes, Robert Byrd ran in 1976), Bentsen (1976), Scoop Jackson (1976), Church (1976), . . . and I'm probably missing a few. Add in sitting or former Senators who'd also been Vice President and you can toss in Quayle (2000) and Humphrey (1972 and 1976).

Lotta red shirts. We'd better be more careful here, Bones.

Way back some years ago -- all right, in August of 2002 -- Lileks predicted that

Once vulgar words are commonplace in the papers and the television, there’s no going back - and public life just gets cruder and cruder. I know it’s a losing battle. Fifty years down the road a presidential candidate will say “My opponent says I’m soft on the military, and to him and all his advisors, I can honestly say: f**k you.” He’ll be celebrated in some corners for connecting with the genuine people, with those not bound by musty conventions. The authentic people! The ones who really f**kin’ live!

(Expletives deleted). As with most dire predictions about society going to Hell in a handbasket, this one was inaccurate only because he overestimated how long it would take us to land at the bottom of that slippery slope; we're there now.

I'm sure by now you've seen the "Turkeygate" story (see here for the essentials of the story, and see here for some perspective from someone who was there), but this post from Democrats.org . . . well, the P.S. just says it all about the depth of the obsessions of the president's critics, doesn't it?

You can tell that Michael Isikoff is going hard on Howard Dean when he leads with this photo:

The underlying story - Dean's decision to keep his records as Vermont governor sealed - isn't something I get hugely exercised over, but Dean won't be able to hold the line on this if he gets the nomination (just ask any candidate who's ever tried to avoid releasing his tax returns; Bill Simon comes prominently to mind). It's also another example of how Dean's own record and biography contains so many of the things liberals love to attack Bush over (in this case, secrecy).

I had the same general reaction to stories about Dean's draft record; it may be fun for his critics to call Dean a "Draft Dodger" or get quotes where even his own mother admits of his medical deferment for a bad back -- that didn't keep him from skiing or working at odd jobs like pouring concrete -- "Yeah, that looks bad." Again, if Dean is the nominee, his vulnerabilities on this point may help immunize Bush against (idiotic) attacks on Bush's military service record, but the fact is that the military has some physical specifications for soldiers that are different from other demands of everyday life. Don't forget that in the 1950s, when Mickey Mantle was the best athlete on earth, he failed his draft physical due to bad knees. Just because Mickey could hit a ball a mile, run 90 feet like the wind and show up ready to play everyday no matter what he'd been out doing the night before didn't mean he had the stamina to march 5 miles with a heavy pack on his back, and so he didn't have to serve.

Peter Beinart (in a column that's now web-accessible only to subscribers of The New Republic) suggested some weeks back that, given the GOP's skepticism about nation-building during the Clinton years and the hesitance of some Republicans to support the Clinton Administration's policy on the war in Kosovo, one might assume that if the Democrats still held the White House, the Republicans would be playing the same role of petulant anti-warriors currently filled by the Democrats. Beinart's a reasonable enough guy, and he understands national security issues well, but he clearly doesn't understand much about Republicans if he thinks we would have been calling for a President Gore to restrain his response after September 11. Did Republicans castigate Harry Truman for being too much of a hard-line anti-Communist? I think it far more likely that if Gore were in the White House on September 11, Republicans would have been calling for a much more belligerent response, full of Old Testament-style smiting and wrath.

Kevin Drum, October 19, 2003:

[I]t has become obvious since he took office that, far from being a "uniter not a divider," George Bush is in fact (a) radically conservative and (b) does everything he can to hide the fact.

Kevin Drum, November 25, 2003:

I think that both liberals and conservatives have made the mistake of convincing themselves that Bush is a hard right ideologue . . . But if you look a bit more closely you'll see that he's not.

Speaking of strange news articles, this item from last Wednesday on Albany's reaction to the Massachusetts decision contains this head-scratcher:

In New York, which has a strong leader form of government, it is almost unheard of for legislation to be approved in the Senate without the majority leader’s backing or in the Assembly without the support of the speaker.

(Emphasis added). Now, I suppose the meaning is clear enough -- the state legislature is run by the leaders -- but this conjured up images of downtrodden New Yorkers walking to work under the shadow of massive graven images of George Pataki.

Instapundit linked on Thursday to an article about a handful of AARP members burning their membership cards to protest the group's support for the Republican-backed Medicare prescription drug bill, which contains some tepid reform provisions but is objectionable to the Left mostly because it's supported by President Bush and might help him get re-elected.

Now, if you read his blog, you know that Josh Marshall is perennially outraged -- shocked, shocked -- about what he calls "Astroturf" -- events designed by professional political activists and calculated to look like genuine grass-roots uprisings. Now, my first instinct was that the AARP protest by 'ordinary senior citizens' -- coming on the very day that Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton were tearing into the AARP in a coordinated attack -- smelled to me an awful lot like the same thing. Turns out, in fact, that MSNBC reported that "[t]he protest was organized by two liberal advocacy groups." Hmmmm.

Anyway, I checked Marshall's blog just to see if he was suitably shocked, but assuming (given the increasingly partisan tone of his writings lately) that he would just be silent on the issue, and be shocked and outraged only when he sees such tactics used by Republicans. Ah, how naive I was. On Thursday -- the very day of the Democrats' publicity offensive -- Talking Points Memo had this item:

Money talks, and AARP walks.

To find out more about the ugly truth and what you can do to make your voice heard, go to this page at the Campaign for America's Future website.

The page being one that carries a picture of an AARP member burning his membership card, under a blaring headline Attention AARP members, and directs AARP members to take the following actions:

:: Organize your own protests in your community.
:: Email Bill Novelli and tell him what you think.
:: Go to AARP website and give them a piece of your mind: http://community.aarp.org/rp-health/start
:: Go to www.oufuture.org for more infomation and action ideas.
:: Go to www.retiredamericans.org/ for a retiree organization that stands up for seniors.

It's Josh Marshall's turf. Don't you try to play on it.

Wesley Clark is drawing some fire from his fans on the left for his support for amending the constitution to prohibit flag-burning. Personally, I'm all in favor of keeping flag burning legal. Why stop the enemy from identifying himself? Every time some nitwit college student burns a flag on camera, that's one less idiot who can ever run for public office.