Month: July 2004

Product Liability

One of the secrets of conservative America is how often it has welcomed Republican defeats.

That’s no surprise. You have to be either a fool or a patriot to feel the duty to govern after a Republican has been in power. They come in to office, reward themselves and their rich friends, totally fuck up the country and then leave the mess for the Democrats to clean up. Then they use their time out of office assassinating the characters of the Democrats for fun and profit preparing the way for them to get back into office and fuck it all up again. These people are not interested in governing in a democratic system, which takes negotiation, compromise and patience. They are about power which requires far less complexity.

This merry-go-round reflects an aspect of the American character that works to its own disadvantage in more ways than one. We have no sense of the past except that which has been created by mythmakers and screenwriters. We simply do not remember what really happened even a few short years ago. Unlike the Europeans and the Chinese, for instance, who behave as if slights from the 14th century happened five minutes ago, we are oblivious to our own political past.

Think about this. The American people decisively repudiated George Bush Sr in 1992. He got only 37% of the vote. Seven years later the Republican party is actively courting his namesake for president without any sense whatsoever that his association with a man widely regarded as a failure just a few short years before could be a problem. It was actually seen as a strength. The marketing mavens of the GOP understood very well that the brand name was all that mattered. The product failure of a few short years before had long been forgotten.

I suppose that this would be expected in a country that prides itself on offering people the chance to reinvent themselves, but I think it might just be helpful to re-frame this as a matter of corporate liability. The GOP gets away with murder over and over again, leaving chaos in its wake and forcing the taxpayers to clean up mess after toxic mess — savings and loan bailouts, record deficits, crumbling infrastructure, foreign wars and international threats. Their product is defective. They need to be held accountable.

Sensible Cowards

Atrios (who it’s good to have back blogging in force) points out something that can’t be repeated enough. With regard to the new faux moderate pundits on the right he says:

…pretending to support Kerry while doing little but bashing him, or supporting Kerry with the caveat that “we may all die if he’s elected!!!” is mostly a way of preserving your street cred on both sides…

We know this because we’ve lived it. It’s not nearly as prevalent this year as it has been before, but for years there was a veritable cottage industry out there of “liberal” writers who made an excellent living disparaging Democrats and often voting (with crocodile tears in their eyes) for Bush Sr., Dole and Junior. And there were many more who found it very convenient to jump on the conservative bandwagon whenever the DC zeitgeist went in that direction.This, as much as anything else, is what legitimized the modern GOP’s scorched earth tactics. And, more than anything else it legitimized the presidency of George W. Bush. For instance, the liberal Richard Cohen, who saw where the wind was blowing back in November 2000 and wrote:

Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”

I believe that it is that type of “sensible” punditry on the left that has validated for many the Republican propaganda that Democrats are weak and easily led. Here you have one of the leading voices of the left who consistently gets rolled by Republicans and then comes up rubbing his head months or years later asking “whuh happened?”

One of the perverse advantages of tagging the media in general as liberal, when they are actually easily duped by right wing spin, is that people consequently lose more respect for liberals than conservatives when that right wing spin is exposed. People expect politicians to be slimy. Journalism is supposed to expose it and when it doesn’t people feel betrayed by the institution that let them down — the media. Which they subconsciously associate with the word “liberal.”

As Atrios pointed out in an earlier post, when Richard Cohen laments the lack of “leadership” that led him to agitate for the Iraq war, he seems to have no idea that he is one of the leaders. Indeed, to much of the country, with no single political voice to turn to, these writers became the most important voices of the left. It is another reason why it’s so frustrating to see people discounting the real courage that it takes to throw yourself into the right wing meat grinder as a Democratic politician when it’s the liberal pundits who ostensibly speak for them who are the cowards. They never had to face any angry, misinformed voters, they never had to have their lives laid open and picked over by the likes of David Bossie and Barbara Comstock. They didn’t have to deal with Tom DeLay and James Inhofe or smile for 14 hours a day trying to raise enough money to compete with some multi-million dollar corporation in a suit. The worst thing that happens to them is that somebody calls them “shrill.” And yet from their cushy perches atop the political hierarchy, they crumble like little old ladies at the first sign of GOP intimidation and eagerly adopt the “sensible” path that says these bullies should be given what they want.

Jon Stewart said it well in his show last night in which he admonished people not to listen to the pundits and the spinners (or even himself) but to make up their own minds. It’s difficult to do. And, in a better world we’d be able to employ these well-connected writers to demystify the process and help us get to the truth. But, the reality is that many of them are actually participants, either knowingly or as useful idiots, and there are many more who are simply performers in the Political Show.

It is good politics for Democrats to separate the media in the minds of average voters from the political process, because as long as people hear the words “liberal media” (and the GOP will never stop saying it) they will associate liberalism with an institution that can no longer be respected. We have enough to do without having to carry the burden of the media’s credibility problems on top of everything else.

Cognitive Dissidents

Buzzflash has a copy of the flyer urging Florida Republicans to cast an absentee ballot because:

The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount. Make sure your vote counts order your ansentee ballot today. Just sign the request form below and drop it in the mail. Don’t be fooled by imitations. This is the official Republican Party absentee ballot request form.

This is post modern politics at its best. Up is down, black is white. We will tell you what is real. This is an example of the Republicans using the Democrats’ own repetitive rallying cries against them. (“Political hate speech” is another good example.) It’s brilliant because many people are apparently so goddamned stupid that they don’t even have a second of cognitive dissonence when they see something like this. You can’t really blame the GOP. It works.

I’m very glad that the Democrats have begun to fight back using some of these same techniques. Kerry and Edwards did it using the “Hope/Help is on the way” riff which was stolen directly from Cheney’s convention speech in 2000. I thought it was weird. But, I’ve since realized that most people in the audience just felt a soothing sense of familiarily, kind of like when they hear old advertising jingles from their childhood. The jingle remains long after everybody’s forgotten what it was selling in the first place.

Damn, I’m starting to pray that somebody out there is keeping track of reality because this is getting mighty difficult to follow.

Oppo Nerds

Michael Crowley in TNR has an interesting look at the GOP spin operation in Boston:

Example A was the headquarters Republicans installed a few blocks from the FleetCenter to coordinate their response to the Democrats. At center was a so-called war room–a dozen or so computer terminals arranged around a pair of TV sets, at which a team of young GOP staffers pulled up research on Democrats and skimmed the Drudge Report as they watched the convention. For maximum partisan effect, the office’s walls had been festooned with blown-up quotes of Kerry saying various foolish or purportedly revealing things (“I’m a liberal and proud of it”), images of a recent Boston Herald front-page headline declaring John Kerry and John Edwards “left of ted,” and, by Tuesday morning, multiple images of Kerry in that absurd blue nasa space suit. (Republicans seemed to consider this a defining moment in the campaign. Several staffers promptly made this photo their computer desktop image, and the office distributed a flyer juxtaposing the Kerry photo with the infamously goofy image of a tank-riding Michael Dukakis.)

The decor made the office feel more like a movie set than a place where actual politics was practiced. Indeed, the war room’s main function seemed to be to attract reporters. During my two visits there, at least a half-dozen news organizations passed through, including a CNN team and a New York Times photographer. “Campbell Brown was over to shoot a package,” bragged Galen, who takes credit for setting up the first opposition party office at a convention, back in 1984.

[…]

In the end, though, it’s not clear just how much damage these GOP commandos managed to inflict. Yes, the GOP’s surrogates blanketed television and radio nationwide–Iverson bragged to me that they intended to reach every “targeted” swing-state media market in the country by the end of the convention–but Republicans can always get themselves on television and radio to provide a GOP response to the speeches. Few mainstream journalists, however, bought the premise that Democrats were conducting an “extreme makeover” in the FleetCenter or that John Kerry is a hateful divider in league with Michael Moore. Ultimately, the GOP “war room” amounted to a cheap gimmick. But, for some, that seemed like enough. After a standing-room-only press briefing at GOP headquarters Wednesday morning, I ran into an excited Galen, still wearing his old gray sneakers. “Downstairs, we’ve got a guy with a sign that says, kerry response this way,” he said gleefully. “So we’ve got them responding to our response!” He dashed back to his office to grab a camera. “I’ve got to get a picture of it,” he said. I suggested that this back-and-forth was starting to feel like a game. He smiled and said, “It is!”

It’s fascinating how they’ve put themselves on exhibit. I guess everybody’s a star these days. But, it makes me wonder if there isn’t another war room somewhere doing the actual oppo smear work.

Either way, this article somewhat misses the point about how this stuff works. Somethimes they can get lucky and get something into the media bloodstream right away that is irresistable and everybody can’t stop talking about. But, mostly this crap is done through mindless repetition and filtration through the right wing media until it becomes a sort of soothing conventional wisdom. Easy on the ears. “That’s what people think.” They didn’t need to make anything in particular “stick.” All they are trying to do is keep the drumbeat.

They don’t necessarily plan to take Kerry out with a one-two punch. It’s a long drawn out series of accumulated jabs. If they can get a mediawhore like Jeff Greenfield to parrot their talking points verbatim that’s just icing on the cake. Their real mission is to implant doubt.

Sacre Bleu!

The Carpetbagger Report brings to our attention the latest from our old friend Trent Lott as he cruises 90 miles an hour down the high road:

U.S. Sen. Trent Lott today told an enthusiastic Neshoba County Fair crowd that Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is “a French-speaking socialist from Boston, Massaschusetts, who is more liberal than Ted Kennedy.”

Well hell, that’s a little redundant. All French speakers are socialists and all socialists speak French, everybody knows that. One can understand why Monsieur DeLay finds it necessary to distance himself from his embarrassing socialist forebearers.

Carpetbagger comments:

This is what political discourse among experienced GOP officials has come to. Kerry is a “French-speaking socialist.” The only thing more disturbing about Lott’s attack is that it’s considered fairly normal in Republican circles and hasn’t generated any real attention.

I can’t help but wonder about yet another double standard. If a Democratic senator were to call Bush a “barely-literate fascist,” would conservatives and the mainstream media just yawn and dismiss it as politics-as-usual?

And just to add some context to Lott’s comment, it’s not as if he got caught up in a moment and just blurted it out accidentally.

It was a line that Lott said he’d been working on for a while, and it produced loud applause from hundreds of Mississippians gathered at Founders’ Square, the centerpiece of the historic fair.

We should have some pity. It’s tough for those good ole boys down there. Trent finally learned that he can’t use the N word anymore. And Bush won’t let him go after the Mexicans. How’s a fine son-o-the-south, CCC member supposed to fire up his base anymore?

He might want to think twice about saying some of this Frenchie stuff too far west, though. Next door in Louisiana they happen to have quite a few ‘o them French speakers who might not cotton to French bashing.

I tell you, political correctness is what’s killing this country.

Democrats are Cowards and Deviants

Notes on the Atrocities has the first news of the post speech right wing radio slime attack.

As one would expect, Limbaugh is obsessed with the hamster story. I have little doubt that he’s giving a full account of the “high heels and hamster” snuff flick he “accidentally” downloaded last week-end. He’s always got interesting information like that to share with his deeply religious audience.

Run For Your Lives!

Cheney said terrorists are as determined to destroy America as the “Axis powers” of Germany, Italy and Japan during World War II. Borrowing a quote from the 9-11 Commission’s report on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 2001, the vice president said the terrorists are “sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal.”

Jesus H. Christ. We really are one step away from proclaiming that terrorists are actually aliens from another planet replete with x-ray vision and the ability to fly.

As Juan Cole points out:

Although it may be true that al-Qaeda is as determined to destroy the US as the Axis Powers were in World War II, this observation is a Himalayan exaggeration if it is meant to suggest a parallel. Al-Qaeda is a few thousand fanatics mainly distributed in a handful of countries. If Zacharias Moussaoui and Richard Reid are any indication, a lot of them are one step away from from collecting old soda cans on the street in their grocery carts while mumbling about the radios the government implanted in their asses.

So while their determination may be impressive (or just creepy), they are not comparable to the might of three industrialized dictatorships with populations in the tens of millions. Some 13 million men served in the German army (Heer) alone between 1935 and 1945. (And WW II killed 55 million persons, not 3 thousand).

No shit. Islamic fundamentalism is a threat, but it is not an existential threat. And it is in no way comparable to World War II on any level.

You know, if these macho GOP pricks had really wanted to save the world from an existential threat you’d think they would have volunteered for the the hot war we fought in the midst of the cold war, wouldn’t you? It’s seems that only in their flaccid middle age that they got inspired to bloodlust and glory.

This theme is going to escalate through the fall and I would bet money that they will not hesitate to wag the dog. They have learned the valuable lesson that the media will jump on the jingo-wagon for at least a month after anything they do in the name of the GWOT. They also know that it doesn’t matter what anyone says after November. Once they win, they win.

Howard Dean said yesterday on CNN that he still believed that this campaign was going to be the dirtiest in history because Bush was going to find himself behind in september and that meant the gloves would come off. I think he’s right but I also think they are going to run on this fear track at the same time. They’ll attempt to trivialize Kerry to make him look insubstantial while simultaneously escalating the fear mongering to prop up Crusader Codpiece. It’s going to get ugly.

What VRWC?

So, it turns out that Sandy Berger didn’t actually, you know, commit treason after all. Not that this is news. Steve Buscemi had many important political things to say these last two days and everyone is sooo hungover. Still, it would be nice if some of the papers, wire services and TV networks just mentioned that the entire case constructed by the right wing against Sandy Berger was a complete crock of shit.

Here’s what Google news comes up with on the socks scandal:

Sandy Berger in trouble? Send in the media!

Town Hall, DC – Jul 28, 2004

… Consider the way the media treats the missing paper scandal involving former national security advisor Sandy Berger. In preparing …

Sandy Berger: Setting The Record Straight

American Daily, OH – Jul 27, 2004

… And now, Sandy Berger, former President Clinton’s national security advisor, is under investigation for stealing top secret documents from the National …

LETTING SANDY BERGER OFF

New York Post, NY – Jul 29, 2004

July 29, 2004 — We cannot afford to let the Sandy Berger affair be swept aside in the coming months (“Secrets in His Socks,” Editorial, July 21). …

Sandy Berger Has The Media On His Side

American Daily, OH – Jul 27, 2004

… you still believed the news media was fair and unbiased in their coverage of news-worthy events, the coverage (or lack thereof) that Sandy Berger has received …

Sandy Berger’s most likely explanation for ‘docs in his socks’

The Union Leader, NH – Jul 26, 2004

… explanation is the most likely one, particularly given the facts involved,” Bill Clinton said in defense of former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. …

Sandy Berger’s Smoking Gun Is Hidden in the 9/11 Report

Insight on the News, DC – Jul 27, 2004

The documents slipped out of the National Archives by Clinton National Security chief Sandy Berger included a draft in which Clinton antiterror chief Richard …

Sandy Berger: A Case for Accountability

Washington Post, DC – Jul 23, 2004

… Did Sandy Berger violate the rules regarding the protection of classified information entrusted to him, and if he did, will he be held accountable for his …

Sandy Berger, America’s Newest Hero

Useless-Knowledge.com – Jul 22, 2004

I’ma little surprised the media hasn’t picked up on this. Sandy Berger was performing a service in the nations interest, he was testing security. …

Who’s Behind the Timing of the Sandy Berger Investigation?

Aljazeerah.info – Jul 23, 2004

… I deal with classified documents every single day. We know better, and Sandy Berger knew better,” Saxby Chambliss, R-Georgia, told reporters. …

What was in Sandy Berger’s Underwear?

Men’s News Daily, CA – Jul 22, 2004

… with glee, as Democrats fall all over themselves, trying to diminish the fact that Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, was caught …

VRWC assholes and Aljazeerah.

Family In Need

Ridge tells colleagues he may retire:

Ridge, 58, has explained to colleagues that he needs to earn money to comfortably put his two children, Tommy Jr. and Lesley, through college, officials said. Both are now teenagers. Ridge earns $175,700 a year as a Cabinet secretary.

Maybe Mrs Ridge could get a job and clip some coupons or perhaps they could go on a budget.

I know it’s tough to get by in these terrible times and I do feel for the Ridge family. But, is it really difficult to send your kids through school on just 175K a year these days? Hey, maybe he should require them to, you know, take out a loan or something. Or they could do what the Governator says all those kids who can’t afford the state university in California anymore should do — do two years at community college to save money.

I know it’s class warfare to imply that the Republicans are out of touch with ordinary people’s problems, but when cabinet officials complain that $175,000 a year is chicken feed and campaign operatives are telling people that if they don’t like their jobs they should go on Prozac, you can see why people might get the wrong impression.

Nit Pickling The Times

In an otherwise good article about Kerry’s speech in the NY Times Adam Nagourney edits one quote in a very bizarre fashion:

“In this campaign, we welcome people of faith: America is not us and them,” he said. “I think of what Ron Reagan said of his father a few weeks ago, and I want to say this to you tonight: I don’t wear my religion on my sleeve.

“But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday,” he said. “I don’t want to claim that God is on our side.”

That’s it. He leaves out the next line, “As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side.”

Without the follow-up, the line “I don’t want to claim that God is on our side” sounds a little strange just hanging out there, don’t you think?