Month: April 2008

Ignorance Is Bliss

by dday

While the media obsess over bowling scores, the ability to understand and explain basic concepts of domestic and foreign policy is not up for question in the narrow political debate. If it were, then John McCain’s stark ignorance about what is happening in Iraq would be a major story.

“Maliki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans,” Mr. McCain said on his campaign bus as it rolled through downtown Meridian, saying that the move showed independence but that he had expected the military to focus on Mosul.

“I just am surprised that he would take it on himself to go down and take charge of a military offensive,” he said. “I had not anticipated that he would do that.”

“I think he felt – which many of us had talked about many times—that Basra was an important part of the country, it was not under the control of the government, we all know that varying mafia-like factions, Shiite militias, control different parts of it […] The police are corrupt. So he decided he wanted to address the issue. And whether he should have or not, I think we will see what the ultimate results are. But it certainly shows a degree of independence. […]

Asked if the Basra campaign had backfired, he said: “Apparently it was Sadr who asked for the ceasefire, declared a ceasefire. It wasn’t Maliki. Very rarely do I see the winning side declare a ceasefire. So we’ll see.”

That’s actually completely untrue. Maliki’s own lawmakers traveled to Qom, Iran to seek the cease-fire over the weekend, totally undermining the Prime Minister. Sadr gave up nothing and extracted several concessions from the Iraq government, including the release of political prisoners and an end to raids on the streets of Baghdad. Maliki said that there would be no negotiation one day and meekly agreed to it the next. There is scattered fighting still going on, and some raids and arrests. But nonetheless, it’s very clear who the victor was here. The Iraqis wasted little time figuring this one out.

The resilience of the Mahdi Army militia appears to have surprised Maliki, who said his offensive was meant to crush lawless elements in Basra. Top Iraqi commanders acknowledged Monday that they had been taken aback.

“The presence of the armed men [in the street] made this operation become bigger than it was,” said Maj. Gen. Abdul Aziz Mohammed Jassim, operations commander for Iraq’s Defense Ministry.

As did the experts in the region, who aren’t named McCain.

“The Iraqi government looks silly in the face of their ardent statements,” said Joost Hiltermann, the deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, a private group that studies international conflicts. He said the outcome shows “the Iraqi military doesn’t have the ability to do much of anything.”

Sadr, who was in Iran during the offensive, came out of the confrontation stronger, Hiltermann said.

“He remained undefeated and he looks like the moderate,” he said. “He was the one that called for his forces, who were attacked, to stand down.”

Not only that, but McCain is completely unclear on the political contours of the Basra offensive, which was almost certainly engaged to weaken the Mahdi Army ahead of October elections and strengthen the ISCI’s effort to hold onto power. And McCain’s advisors are even more confused:

McCain’s foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann [claimed] that “this demonstrates…that there are very powerful forces that still remain that do not want to see the success of the central government and that would relish the prospect of the American withdrawal so that they could try to fight or shoot their way into power.” Scheunemann then asked, “Would you rather have the Maliki government in control, or the Iranian-backed special groups in control, or Al Qaeda in control?”

Despite Scheunemann’s fear-mongering, no credible Middle East analyst has ever suggested that Al Qaeda would ever be “in control” of Iraq. Given how uninformed John McCain is on Iraq, it’s no surprise that his advisers are too.

Furthermore, the entire conception of the occupation at this point from McCain’s point of view is fatally flawed. It relies on a “we need war because we need more war” concept that is shortsighted and without perspective. Spencer Ackerman posted an email from a junior officer in Iraq that is as level-headed as you can get.

In my opinion, what everyone fails to realize is that this is not a counterinsurgency. If we wanted to stay in Iraq, then it would be a counterinsurgency. But it is clear that our goal is to turn over power and pull out. So, in building our strategic endstate, it’s pointless to set goals that relate to our presence in Iraq. If the “insurgency” is a function of our being there, then it is not an insurgency in terms of our endstate. For example, if one of our goals is to stop IED attacks on US forces, that is pointless. When we leave, there will be no more IED attacks on us forces. So our endstate needs to be different. We need to ask “if we left tomorrow, what would happen in Iraq?” and from there, we need to determine which of those anticipated results are unacceptable to us. Then we must aim our efforts on making sure those unacceptable results do not occur.

When I look at the problem that way, it becomes almost impossible to find a purpose in what we do. Regardless of what we do, the Shia are going to take control. They have completely infiltrated all the security forces. The only kind of leader who could keep them in check was a tyrant like Saddam. And when the Shia take control, as soon as we leave, they are going to be as brutal as they like against the Sunni and there will be little we can do about it. That is what will happen whether we leave tomorrow or in ten years. As far as the foreign fighters, they will leave Iraq when we do. So what are we trying to accomplish here? Train the Iraqi forces? History shows that training forces in the Middle East can backfire. Any training we offer these people will find its way to our terrorist enemies.

And yet we have a completely different debate here, hijacked by neocons who claim that Al Qaeda, with no base of support anywhere in the country, would suddenly take over Iraq if we left. And the ringleader of such a brain-dead mindset is McCain.

Seems to me that on the priority chart, it’s far more important to let the public in on the fact that one Presidential candidate doesn’t know what he’s talking about on foreign policy, his perceived strength, than which pins were knocked down at what bowling alley in Altoona on a Saturday night. But maybe I just don’t have a good appreciation of metaphor.

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Political Portraits

by digby

An artist friend of mine, turned me on to these prints of Obama and Clinton done by an artist named Jim O’Brien from New York Minnesota. His site discusses and shows the artistic evolution of the portraits, and also offers prints and Obama and Clinton buttons for sale.

I thought they were quite well done and that some of you might want to have a unique button or print commemorating this historic campaign.

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G Spot

by digby

A new voice has entered the blogosphere that I think you’re going to enjoy. Her name is Kathy G and she’s writing at her blog The G-Spot. It’s scary smart (in that University of Chicago awesome-smart kind of way) and also very funny and iconoclastic. In just a couple of weeks, she’s done a fascinating study of inequality in a series of of posts on the subject, a take down of Emily Yoffe over “slut-shaming” and a tribute to Joan Crawford, here. But my favorite so far is this thoroughly original observation of Hillary Clinton’s Nixonian qualities, which those of you on both sides of the Great Divide will find of interest.

Enjoy.

And if you’re a mind to support women in the blogosphere generally, go here and vote for one of us…

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Daddy’s Bad Boy

by digby

It’s a classic American story: In the prime of his life, a man who parties too much and lives in the shadow of his esteemed father turns his life around. He gives up alcohol, embraces religion and finds a new purpose in life. But will his desire to impress his dad and purge his personal demons put the world in danger? Coming soon to a movie theater near you: controversial director Oliver Stone’s “W,” the life story of President George W. Bush, a warts-and-all portrayal. […]
The film’s script captures purported notorious moments in Bush’s life: Rumors that his father pulled strings to get him into Harvard Business School. His arrest during college for tearing down the goalposts at a football game. Almost getting into a fistfight with his father when he comes home drunk one night in the 1970s. His vow to quit drinking when he wakes up with a wicked hangover soon after his 40th birthday. It also covers plenty of his administration’s lowlights — from Bush’s reported obsession with invading Iraq, which Stone will portray as a desire to avenge Saddam Hussein’s assassination attempt on Bush’s father and his frustration with the failed search for WMDs to his penchant for malapropisms and cheery optimism about the chances for civil war in Iraq. […]
Stone, who mined psychological motives in his previous presidential movies, from the conspiratorial “JFK” to the dark character study of “Nixon,” makes much of Bush’s competitive relationship with his father and how it fueled his desire to invade Iraq. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld purportedly confronts Bush in 2002 about his obsession with Saddam: “What’s the big deal about Saddam? Bin Laden’s the trained ape that wrought this hell on us,” Dubya’s response sounds like a line out of “The Godfather”: “You don’t go after the Bushes and get to talk about it. You got me?” After his born-again experience, Bush says that he doesn’t ask his dad for advice because “there’s a higher Father I appeal to.” When his father cries after losing to Bill Clinton in 1992, Bush sticks it to his dad by telling him that he would have won if he’d ousted Saddam at the end of the first Gulf War. When Bush’s parents tell him to hold off running for governor of Texas until after younger brother Jeb Bush has a chance to wins Florida’s top spot, Barbara tells him that he can’t win because “you’re loud and you have a short fuse.” Stone also portrays the president as stubborn and aggressive when it came to prosecuting the war in Iraq. Before the invasion, he tells a shocked British Prime Minister Tony Blair about alternative plans such as baiting Saddam by painting a U.S. spy plane in U.N. colors and assassinating the Iraqi leader. When he hears about French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac’s desire to give weapons inspectors 30 more days to work in Iraq, Bush explodes: “Thirty days! I’d like to stuff a plate of freedom fries down that slick piece of s–‘s throat!”

This is not an April Fool’s joke.

I don’t know about the freedom fries line, but I’ve heard all the rest. And say what you will about Stone (and Jane Hamsher has said plenty) he is one of the most cinematically gifted directors around, always creating an odd sense of “memory” about events you already know about. This should be quite interesting if only because we are all so familiar with this territoryand it’s so recent.

Ari Fleischer says the script is wrong because Bush didn’t cuss as president. Right, Mr towel slapper suddenly stopped using salty language when he became the most powerful man in the world. We know his VP swears like a sailor, on the floor of the senate, no less. And there is at least one report that I’ve never heard refuted: “Fuck Saddam, we’re takin’ him out,” which could be the tagline for the film.

They may move move up the release date to before the election. Let’s hope he includes the scene of John McCain on his knees in the oval office, kissing Bush’s ring, begging for forgiveness and promising to do everything he could to ensure his reelection in 2004. I can see Bush, sitting on the edge of the desk, looking down on the supplicant, saying, “will you even promise to help the Senate pass legislation enabling your president to torture at will, in much the same way you were tortured in North Vietnam while I was snorting lines in Alabama?”

McCain replies, “Yes Mr President, I promise.”

This is an Oliver Stone movie.

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Who Needs a 527?

by dday

I saw footage of Barack Obama’s trip to Altoona, PA the other day, bowling a gutterball and scoring a paltry 37 (for 7 frames, not a full game, by the way) about 10 times on cable news. I mentally checked off the points that could be made in an attack ad using that footage (“Obama’s plan for socialized medicine will throw your money right in the gutter”) but quickly realized that they would be superfluous when the media is already so conditioned to view political fights as personal battles among who is more manly, that they’re ready to do all the work for the Republicans:

SCARBOROUGH: You know, Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it’s a man, to be a real man. They — 1984, I remember Ronald Reagan goes to South Boston. He holds up that beer mug —

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

SCARBOROUGH: — in that South Boston pub, and everybody’s like, “He’s a real man,” and I guess Barack Obama’s trying to do the same thing, too.

BRZEZINSKI: Stop it. Oh, come on.

SCARBOROUGH: Awful. Good Lord.

GEIST: He’s going to have to try a little harder than he did in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night —

SCARBOROUGH: Oh my God —

BRZEZINSKI: Really?

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, this is awful.

GEIST: — at the Pleasant Valley Rec Center. He went bowling, and let’s just take a quick look at it here. I guess I’ll just give you the final numbers. Started out nicely, got the Velcro shoes.

BRZEZINSKI: Looking good, looking good.

GEIST: But then he started bowling. The score you’re really after in bowling is 300; that’s a perfect score.

BRZEZINSKI: Oh, OK.

SCARBOROUGH: That’s perfect score.

BRZEZINSKI: Good, good, good.

SCARBOROUGH: But, you know, if you get 200, you’re a good bowler.

GEIST: Sure. You know what?

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. Two-fifty —

SCARBOROUGH: You get 150, you’re a man —

BRZEZINSKI: OK.

SCARBOROUGH: — or a good woman.

BRZEZINSKI: Stop it.

GEIST: Out of my president, I want a 150, at least. Barack Obama bowled — well, you can see his form here —

SCARBOROUGH: Hee!

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

GEIST: A 37.

BRZEZINSKI: Oh.

GEIST: That’s a three, next to a seven.

SCARBOROUGH: Baby, if you go to Altoona, Pennsylvania, on a Saturday night and you’re going to try to bowl —

SCARBOROUGH: Oh, that’s so dainty. Ugh.

Chris Matthews (of course) joined in on this yesterday, and added a racial twist:

MATTHEWS: You know, Michelle — and this gets very ethnic, but the fact that he’s good at basketball doesn’t surprise anybody, but the fact that he’s that terrible at bowling does make you wonder —

FINEMAN: That doesn’t surprise anybody either.

BERNARD: Well, it certainly doesn’t surprise anybody black, I can tell you that.

MATTHEWS: Is black a bowling —

FINEMAN: This is just killing him.

MATTHEWS: I don’t know, I guess everybody bowls.

FINEMAN: This is just killing him.

MATTHEWS: I know.

FINEMAN: This is just killing him, Chris. Don’t show this over and over again.

MATTHEWS: No, no, we’re doing it again. This is a killer. Look at this killer. Because it isn’t the most macho form there, I must say, but who knows?

The fact that Republicans distinctly try to feminize Democratic Presidential candidates is nothing new. Neither is the fact that the media has internalized this narrative so completely that Republican feminization efforts become redundant. If Clinton somehow takes the nomination, Republicans will have to recalibrate, but I’m sure we’ll hear more “she’s a castrating rhymes-with-witch” in the media.

This isn’t about gender, of course, it’s about weakness, it’s about a B.S. macho worldview that you have to be tough and rugged to lead, that Democrats can never be tough or rugged, that Republicans are tough and rugged by default. The question is whether or not that works anymore, post-Bush. But it hasn’t exactly been disproven in Presidential politics, and the media is so lazy (and of course, heavily invested in this worldview) that they’ll continue to frame everything in this way. I’ll bet Tweety and Scarborough couldn’t stop giggling when they got that bowling footage. After all, it’s easier than looking at a health care white paper.

P.S. The question is, how can they square the fey elitist non-bowler Obama with the fact that he’s a scary black man responsible for all the nation’s crime?

P.P.S. If as a left-hander Obama was bowling with a right-handed bowling ball it wouldn’t matter how “macho” he was.

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Party Crashers

by digby

Apparently Jay Rosen was intrigued (and concerned) by Will Bunch’s characterization of the liberal bloggers at Eschacon “declaring war” on the press. I find that interesting since, as far as I’m concerned, liberal bloggers declared war on the press many years ago. I’m not sure that this is even controversial. Pushing back on biased, anti-Democrat and pro-Republican lies and editorial judgment is supposed to be one of our primary raison d’etres.

Jay seems to think this discussion was unusually provocative, but it actually wasn’t. What we said was that the press is in love with McCain, that it is very dangerous for Democrats and that we needed to work hard to combat that, starting now while the Democrats are still settling their primary. (As Bunch wrote in his piece, October is way too late to do it.) When I said that bloggers could get “personal and ugly” in ways that institutions like Media Matters couldn’t, I wasn’t suggesting that we “take the culture war to the next level and de-legitimate the media for as many people as we can reach.” That’s hyperbole that nobody even came close to saying.

By going personal and ugly, I meant that we could write about the press the way I did in the excerpt from this post which Jay positively quotes at length. In other words, we can write like bloggers, laying out the critique in edgy, irreverent, aggressive terms that an organization like Media Matters would not want to do. (And our new organizing tools may make it possible to drill our national critique down to the state and local level and mobilize readers to take it to the writers themselves.) The informality and shoot-from-the-hip style, along with our outsider status and freedom, is the essence of blogging.

A better case than my post, would be the ridicule the blogosphere as a whole dished out when the video of the McCain press bar-b-que in Sedona found its way on to Youtube. That was “personal and ugly” simply by showing the fawning media schmoozing with their favorite flyboy (and garnering two glowing accounts in the Washington Post on the same day.) After the 2000 campaign, when Bush bought off the press corps with Dove bars and Animal House nicknames, it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical of the media when they get friendly with their favored candidates like this. The history of the love affair between the McCain campaign and the press is legendary and there has been nothing so far in this campaign to reassure me that it has changed.

Jay wonders if by “declaring war on the media” we mean we will declare war on Bill Keller for either being a “loser” and not making the McCain/Iseman story stick or having the bad judgment to publish it in the first place. Neither actually. The derision emanating from blogosphere about the Iseman story was mostly about the run on smelling salts down at the Village drug store — The New York Times unethically published a front page story about McCain’s private life based on rumor and innuendo! The humanity!

After years of trivial tabloid coverage of Democrats, from discussions of Kerry’s
“butler” to Edwards’ haircuts, you’ll have to excuse us cynical bloggers for finding that reaction absurd, particularly in light of the lengthy, anonymously sourced front page story just six months earlier cataloging the number of nights the Clintons spent together. That story was relentlessly flogged by the cable gasbags, who justified their heavy breathing with the rationale that Bill had a habit of catting around, so his marital bed was newsworthy since his wife was running for president. Indeed, not only was it responsible to speculate how often the Clinton’s have sex, it would be irresponsible not to.

Unlike the Clinton Rules which say that if one tiny detail of the story is proven factual then the entire story is taken as gospel, the McCain Rules say the opposite. The fact that the alleged affair with Vicki Iseman was not proven means that his rank hypocrisy on campaign finance and ties to lobbyists can never be mentioned again. The Village hissy fit (and McCains own self-righteous performance) was sufficient to cow any news organization from going there again.

Jay brings up the fact that my colleague on the panel in question, NTodd, said that if people are asking Chelsea Clinton about Monica Lewinsky we should have people asking McCain about the circumstances of his marriage. Jay speculates that it would be risky because McCain’s response might be able to turn that into a positive viral Youtube ( that old McCain magic, I guess.) But even if that were so, according to Cokie’s Law, once it’s “out there,” it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not — people would be talking about it.

This is how the right wing gets these things into the ether. It would be nice if they didn’t, but they do and it does no good to stand on the sidelines clucking about how unfair it all is. Ironically, Jay reports that the person asking Chelsea that question was actually a Clinton supporter, but today it’s become a topic of conversation on the Chris Matthews show because she’s now being asked the question by others on college campuses. Howard Fineman sniffed that she was going to have to come up with a better answer than she has, spiritedly seconded by undercover right wing operative Michele Bernard. Only the reporter from Congressional Quarterly suggested that there might be some political coordination going on among these college students who are suddenly popping up and asking Chelsea Clinton how she feels about her father’s infidelity. Everybody else on the show played dumb. (In case anyone’s forgotten, College Republicans pretty much require ratfucking beatdowns as an initiation ritual.)

Most people don’t know about McCain’s marital history because the press has been hands off. It is why the gasbags and the village pearl clutchers were able to claim the Iseman story wasn’t newsworthy and chastise Bill Keller for doing to McCain what the New York Times does to Democrats with impunity and Chris Matthews and his ilk do every day on their repulsive sideshows. I don’t have any particular desire to know who politicians are sleeping with and the idea that this information is some sort of great window into the character or qualifications for the job (particularly when the criticism is coming from promiscuous celebrity playboys) is laughable. But if they are going to do it (and there is no sign that they aren’t) the least we can expect is that they will be equal opportunity busybodies and show the same hypocrisy toward politicians they personally like as well as the ones they loathe. “Fair and balanced” scandalmongering isn’t particularly edifying, but it’s better than yet another decade of open season on Democratic presidential candidates.

Jay believes there is a chance that the press has been chastened by their behavior in 2000 but I see absolutely no evidence that they have ever looked at the fundamental issues underlying their attachment to McCain — their simple-minded attraction to his macho warrior bonafides, the assumptions of political courage based upon his record of physical bravery 40 years ago and his famously bad tempered iconoclasm, his phony clubbiness. They give him a pass because they like him. And they like him because he pretends to like them. The fact that McCain’s “openness” results in the boys on the bus protecting him is not an improvement over Tim Russert’s mindless gotcha questions or the blatant hostility to politicians they find “boring” or “cold.”

Jay brings up one episode I find very revealing, from Howard Kurtz:

McCain said he couldn’t stop[talking to reporters], because “that destroys credibility.” And besides, he said, “I enjoy it a lot. It keeps me intellectually stimulated, it keeps me thinking about issues, and it keeps me associated with a lower level of human being than I otherwise would be.”

Can’t stop. Destroys credibility if I change now. Keeps me thinking. Reporters: lower level of human being. Kurtz was supposed to chuckle at the insult, which is the towel-snapping part of the affair

Is it really too much to ask that the relationship between the press and the powerful be based upon healthy mutual skepticism and (even begrudging) respect for each others’ jobs rather than boys locker room experiences? It seems to me we should have worked that through after this last round, but apparently the “Bush III” campaign (talk about dynasties) is going to reported in much the same way as Bush II — hijinx and bar-b-q and assorted useless stupidities substituting for journalism.

Jay thinks all that is possibly about to change because Obama may match McCain in “radical openness” with the press. It’s possible, of course, but Obama’s been more closed to the press than any of the other candidates of both parties (and considering his success so far, I would suggest that it’s worked.) But as stories like this ,this and this begin to surface, you can see a critical narrative building up around his failure to do it.

There are a number of reasons as to why he’s escaped the normal Democratic coverage so far, not the least of which is that the media have been obsessively diverted by their complicated, long standing relationships to the Clintons and John McCain, which play out as the soap opera or stirring warrior tales that were written long ago. That doesn’t take anything away from Senator Obama, who until FoxNews decided they needed to get in the game, had managed to finesse them quite successfully. (Managing the press corps is a skill that I wouldn’t ever take for granted. It’s a big selling point for Obama in my book.)

But history shows that these love affairs with Dems tend only to last as long as the press corps isn’t getting fed the kind of juicy, tabloid style GOP spin points they find irresistible, while at the same time being slammed mercilessly by the same operatives for being in the tank. The Reverend Wright brouhaha was an example of what we can expect — at some point Obama will start receiving an onslaught of tough press. But it will be much worse for him if John McCain is allowed to continue to get away with allowing the professional character assassins to get it “out there” while righteously declaring his moral superiority and opposition to such tactics.

Jay quotes Paul Waldman, one of the co-authors of “Free Ride” about McCain’s relationship with the media, saying that he’s hopeful the book will help persuade reporters to take a step back and ask themselves whether their coverage of McCain has been what it should be. The book is impressive and perhaps there will be some in the press who read it and have that epiphany. But as Jay points out, the rightwing babblers all hate McCain too. Under those circumstances, the press conventions dictate that because McCain is hated by both the too hot right and too cold left — he’s just right. McCain becomes the man in the middle, that most precious of political commodities. (And he loves them, he really loves them!)

Judging by what I’m seeing in the campaign so far, the press hasn’t spent even one minute reassessing their campaign coverage of the past couple of decades and are mindlessly running repetitious (and long ago discredited) plot lines. The younger ones don’t even know how much right wing cant they’ve internalized and the older ones are still trying to justify their previous bad behavior. When you look at the press coverage of Bill Clinton, Gore and Kerry, it’s more than obvious that Republican narratives dominate once they get going. (It’s why I have been of the opinion that having the primary go on for a while was actually a good thing — the Republicans can’t settle on a single story line.) We can assume that this time is different or we can try to get out in front and attack this stuff head on, right now.

Jay wants us to not declare war, but rather try to persuade. That seems a matter of semantics and tactics to me. I desperately want to persuade them to stop being ninnies and jackasses but the only way I’ve seen to do that is by relentlessly pointing out their foibles and mobilizing the public to hold them accountable for it. If they all wake up tomorrow and begin reporting the race in a way that doesn’t seem to come out of junior high slumber parties and boy scout camp, I couldn’t be happier. But I think it would be foolish to count on it.

Jay has some interesting ideas about how to go about making the coverage of McCain better at the end of the article that are worth considering. (But I would be very surprised if McCain would allow liberal bloggers on the back of the bus and I suspect the press corps wouldn’t like it much either. After all, we would very likely spoil the party.)

Update: I should make clear that I’m not criticizing Jay for his observations. I disagree with some of his assumptions about the possibility of change in the press corps’ behavior in this election, but he’s not wrong to ask these questions. I just believe that bloggers pointing out incorrect reporting isn’t enough. Media Matters does that better than any of us. the independent bloggers connect the dots with aggression and attitude. It’s what it takes to engage the public and break through.

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