I’m sitting here killing time in an aiport and thought I’d jot down a few thoughts on the revival of the big religion in politics discussion.
Religious practice in the United States is a complex, fascinating subject that, oddly, had never received the kind of attention it deserved until very recently. But religion isn’t the real topic here. Only the role of religion in American politics is of concern, not how Americans practice their faith, or don’t. And unlike the subject of religion itself, the place of religion in political discourse is so straightforward, I’m surprised at the length and prolixity of the discussion:
By conscious decision, the Founders of the United States intended that there be NO place for religious privilege or argumentation in the decision-making process of government. None. As in zero, zip, nada.
No exceptions. Ever.
That’s it. Rhetoric like Lincoln’s? No big deal. Office of Faith-Based Initiatives? That’s an assault on America’s most basic values.
I am an absolutist about this. Your identity as a Baptist, a Jew, or atheist is, according the documents penned by the (very) intelligent designers who wrote the Constitution, utterly meaningless in the American political community in its decision-making. Put another way:
The essential principle of American politics is that it insists upon the exercise of cold reason in governance; revelation can play no part, nor can any religion have any kind of privileged status. Period. The End.
It is an indication of how bizarre public discourse on politics has become that my all-American, apple-pie position is dismissed as “radical,” “secularist,” “anti-religious” and even “fundamentalist.” Those who make such idiotic accusations, among them self-styled spokesmen for the “religious Left,*” apparently are unaware that many Americans like me have a long public record demonstrating the deepest respect for, and interest in, serious religious practice. Digby is right: this is pure counter-Enlightenment trash. But Digby is more polite than I am. It is also deeply anti-American.
*Funny, I always thought the religious Left meant people like genuine heroes like the Berrigans or perhaps Archbishop Romero, not wannabe powerbrokers within an establishment political party. Wallis as the next Berrigan? I really don’t think so.
For those intrigued by my little Paineish scribblings yesterday, do yourself a favor and read this excellent post by Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action about the long march of the counter-enlightenment. He takes particular aim at Jim Wallis because he claims to be the primary leader of the religious left. But it’s also a matter of received wisdom on the right, most recently espoused by Dinesh DiSouza, who would rather throw in with Islamic terrorists than American liberals.
Frederick Clarkson has more on Wallis here. Clarkson and Wilson are both strong, passionate and intelligent writers of the religious left. They are not part of this insider cabal that’s advising the Democratic Party today, but they should be.
I just love it when billionaires say things like this, don’t you?
I think that America was better served when the candidates were chosen in smoke-filled rooms.
That’s the back-biting David Geffen in the Queen of Mean’s op-ed column today talking about the calculating Clinton while defending his chosen candidate, the man the QueenBee calls Obambi. What a Freudian field day we have at work on this one.
If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money.
Oh Jesus, are we denouncing and disavowing already???
Not to be outdone, Obama fires back with one of the best old wingnut chestnuts around:
It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom.
Bam! Right in the kisser.
I don’t blame Clinton for defending herself but demanding that Obama “denounce” his supporter is stupid. Furthermore, since she’s been running around doing a perfect George W. Bush impression this week, saying repeatedly that “some people don’t think terrorism is a threat” she’s not in a position to be too self-righteous.
And Obama should know better than to use that old Lincoln bedroom trope. Does he think the right wing won’t use the exact same made-up nonsense against him?
Perhaps someone should tell him about how the Washington Post helped gin up that controversy on behalf of the GOP congressional scumbags, even going so far as to count Chelsea Clinton’s slumber party guests in the Lincoln Bedroom controversy.
Jesus. Sometimes I don’t think we deserve to win. We can’t seem to stop helping the other side, even when they are down and out.
Meanwhile, the gentlemen in the press room are simply appalled at the rank incivility among their lessers. Here they are with the Duke of Snow, pledging fealty to the House of Bush:
David Gregory: …I think that politics and political coverage has become so polarized in this country and in part because everybody- McCurry worried about cable news, with the cameras- that was- that seems like a hundred years ago. Because it- it’s the Internet, and the blogs, that have really used this White House press conference to somehow support positions out in America- political views- and they- and they- uh- they will clip, and digitize portions of these briefings to fit into their particular argument and I think people try to divine motives of the questioners and- and certainly draw conclusions about, uh, the answers, or- or non-answers, uh, based on their, their, their own political views.
Tony Snow: You know you raise uh, I’m glad you raised the blog issue, because, uh, I think they’ll be kind of a generational divide, uh, do either of you guys look at blogs much?
Panel Member: I write a few, but I don’t look at them much.
(laughter)
Tony Snow: And my guess is this side of the room is- looks more at blogs. Um, you look at blogs, right?
Panel Member: I look at blogs. I’m all for blogs, I’m all for the First Amendment, I think people oughta be empowered to write what they want.
Tony Snow: Yeah. Well, I think what’s happened is we, we’ve got this new Democratic age of the media but you’re right, it actually- I’ll- I’ll occasionally punch it up and it’s amazing, you get this wonderful imaginative hateful stuff that comes flying out, and, I think one of the, the, the, maybe one of the, the most important takeaways is, it’s the classic old line “not only should you not believe your own press you probably shouldn’t believe your opposition blogs either”. What do you think, Richard?
Richard Wolffe: Yeah, uh, well, uh yeah, I totally agree. I, I, uh- David hit on a good point here that a lot of the blogs are trying to divine motive and bias. There seems to be this sort of- the witch hunt that’s out there. A lot of the blogs are, are, are unduly devoted to media criticism which is itself kind of interesting given all the things you could comment on…And, it, uh, in my humble view, I think the press here does a fantastic job of adhering to journalistic standards in covering politics in general. And the, um, the interesting thing in, in looking at the political coverage as people try to guess what we do is, is that they want us to play a role that really isn’t our role.
Our- our role is to ask questions and get information. But it- the press briefing isn’t Prime Minister’s question time. It’s not a chance for the opposition to take on the government and grill them to a point where they hand- throw their hands up and surrender. Now, obviously there’s a contentious spirit there- we’re trying to get information, but, it’s not a political exercise, it’s a journalistic exercise, and I think often the blogs are looking for us to be political advocates, more than journalistic ones.
Perhaps someone should get these young knights of realm an AM radio so they can see what their Kings followers have been saying for the past 15 years. Dear me.
Gird yourselves, people. It’s going to be a looong campaign.
Update: Here’s a freebie link to the Modo column so that you can all assess whether I’m being “truthy” about Geffen. I chose that quote because it stuck out to me as being quintessential, big donor, privileged elitism, which is basically what the whole stupid column reeked of. I frankly do not give a damn what Geffen thinks of either Hillary or Obama.
I thought my post was quite clear that the whole shrieking lot of them were acting like a bunch of asshats, but if it wasn’t: the whole shrieking lot of them, including the press, are acting like a bunch of asshats.
Blogpac has an action going today that I think is worthwhile. If you have a spare minute or two, click this link and sign up to send an email to various democratic officials to protest their agreement with Roger Ailes to have Fox News host a presidential primary debate.
The last time they did it, they cut away early to let Bill “boxcars” Bennett spin the debate before it was even finished and displayed banners calling it the “Democrat” party debate. Everyone knows that Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Republican party and there is no reason that Democrats should lend them any credibility by pretending they aren’t actively hostile to everything they stand for. I’m not crazy about the fact that so many Dems appear on the network but there is at least some rationale for that — if they don’t then nobody will even try to rebut their partisan spin.
These debates are something else. They are expressly for Democratic primary voters and we should not have to give that network our business in order to watch our presidential candidates debate one another.
Take a couple of minutes to register your complaint, here.
In addition to the many insightful and interesting posts Atrios has written with respect to religion this past week or so, he links today to a tour de force on the subject by Mithras that I highly recommend. He hits on one of the most infuriating aspects of this debate which is the apparent childlike naivete with which so many people of these new strategists of the religious left view the anti-abortion movement. Mithras brings up the case of Eric Rudolph and reminds us that the longest ongoing terrorist actions in the United States are the killing and maiming of doctors who perform abortions. These are not the actions of people who “just want a seat at the table.” Read this post if you have further questions about whether it is politically smart to capitulate to these people. (And make no mistake, as long as this “outreach” remains fixated on abortion, which it is, it is heading toward capitulation on the issue.)
But this topic touches on something that is even bigger than a person’s right to own her own body and decide her own future, as unbelievable as that may sound. And it’s not really about the vaguely insulting language that says people like me don’t have a basis for morality. It’s just a fact that most people think that religion is their moral foundation and they can’t imagine how someone else could arrive at similar positions without it. Fine. We can agree to disagree on that as long as the constitution continues to protect me from theocracy. The real problem is that by focusing on religion as being the source of positive values, these new religious left professional strategists are making the Democratic Party as dismissive of reason as the Republicans. That’s as bad a long term political strategy as outright hostility to religion would be.
In order to be effective, our politics cannot be faith-based or our enlightenment inspired constitution and its fundamental rationality becomes dangerously superfluous. After all, it is not based upon faith, it is based upon some very simple observations about human nature, power and fundamental human rights which formed a system of government that is designed to allow its citizens a maximum amount of freedom and a maximum amount of equality, two “values” which are constantly in tension and are constantly evolving. Those two basic values have always formed the heart of the political debate in this country and they cannot be reconciled solely by faith. Conscience and morality certainly play the most vital role in our society and for every individual. They inform our beliefs about liberty and equality, but the state itself,made up as it is of flawed human beings, is simply not capable of organizing or acting on that basis, which is why power is divided and deliberation and debate are so highly valued in our constitution. Religious belief is not subject to compromise and faith is not subject to reason, nor should it be. It is something else entirely.
These last few years have shown just how authoritarian the right wing has become and we can see the outlines of much worse down the line. The only thing holding them back is that ancient piece of paper and the common belief we all still hold that it is the guiding document of our government. That belief is being eroded daily with these challenges to the idea of deliberation and debate based on knowledge, reason and persuasion. It’s not much of a leap to see where its going.
I have no problem with politicians using religious rhetoric to inform voters of their own personal views, but when appeals to positive virtues become exclusively associated with religious values we end up aiding and abetting a whole host of conservative appeals to authority in the process. We must value reason itself, and employ it liberally and respectfully or we are going to find that the epistemic relativism that the right’s been so successful with in recent years will have some very unpleasant consequences.
This nation is not going to be prosperous and successful in the future if we fail to properly emphasize the idea that reason is intrinsic to democracy. And we certainly are not going to be able to deal with the complicated challenges we face, like the rise of militant fundamentalism, nuclear proliferation or global warming unless we agree that people who do not subscribe to religion can be trustworthy and that science, analysis and knowledge form as much of a legitimate basis for human progress as religion. The right demagogues these things for the express purpose of advancing their authoritarian agenda and I don’t think it’s wise for Democrats to allow a new class of “religious strategists” to further empower them in some ill-conceived crusade to gain votes from the least likely people in the nation to vote for them.
If the Democratic party doesn’t stand for freedom and equality and the basic rational premise of the constitution then nobody does. The Republicans sold that out when they made their bed with Jerry Falwell, even though they pretended for years that they were the keepers of the flame. I’d hate to see the Democrats capitulate to the same socially regressive forces and empower the opposition in the process.
The religious and secular left have the chance together to make both reasoned and moral arguments for social justice, civil liberties and civil rights based upon our shared liberal values. Our rational and idealistic worldviews are not in tension. There is no purpose to all this pandering to the right except perhap to give a few new strategists an opportunity create a divide where none exists so they might exploit their positions as professional mediators.
Beware the insider religio-political industrial complex. It dishonestly foments this fight with bogus statistics and bad advice. Democrats are making a big mistake if they listen to them. Their political ambition is tragically weakening the one thing that keeps the nation together and keeps the right from hurtling completely out of control — the US Constitution and a respect for the clear-eyed reason that inspired it. Democracy is not faith based and religion isn’t democratic. People need to be reminded of the difference not encouraged to see them as the same thing.
I’ve gotcher populism for yah right here. Don’t tell me it isn’t salient to working Americans:
If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family — the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune — would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.
The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.
Or how about this: if the Estate Tax goes, the heirs to the Mars candy corporation — some of the world’s evilest scumbags, incidentally, routinely ripped by human rights organizations for trafficking in child labor to work cocoa farms in places like Cote D’Ivoire — if the estate tax goes, those assholes will receive about $11.7 billion in tax breaks. That’s more than three times the amount Bush wants to cut from the VA budget ($3.4 billion) over the same time period.
Some other notable estimate estate tax breaks, versus corresponding cuts:
* Cox family (Cox cable TV) receives $9.7 billion tax break while education would get $1.5 billion in cuts
* Nordstrom family (Nordstrom dept. stores) receives $826.5 million tax break while Community Service Block Grants would be eliminated, a $630 million cut
* Ernest Gallo family (shitty wines) receives a $468.4 million cut while LIHEAP (heating oil to poor) would get a $420 million cut
And so on and so on. Sanders additionally pointed out that the family of former Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, who received a $400 million retirement package, would receive about $164 million in tax breaks.
Compare that to the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which Bush proposes be completely eliminated, at a savings of $108 million over ten years. The program sent one bag of groceries per month to 480,000 seniors, mothers and newborn children.
And the argument isn’t complete until you point out:
The 10-year effort to repeal the estate tax (aka the Paris Hilton Tax) on heirs of the super wealthy has been financed and coordinated by just 18 families, according to a new report by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy.
It appears that Barack Obama’s strategic web initiatives, including the launch of the private-label social network My.BarackObama.com are paying off. As reported in the Chicago Tribune, more than 4,000 individuals have set up blogs, and an additional 3,000 individuals have set up private fundraising pages on Obama’s social network. The article, written last week, also points to the 2,400 groups formed on the site. This morning, however, I counted 3,229 groups on Obama’s SNS, a 35% increase in just a few days.
Illinois junior Senator Barack Obama has a huge lead in the presidential campaign — in MySpace friends. Obama supporters could get excited about his more than 43,000 close buddies, and how that puts him well ahead of Hillary Clinton’s 23,000 friends. (No Republican candidate tops 2,600.)
And from the front page of TechPresident — (my daughter can beat the bottom two Republicans.)
… my greatest wish for this campaign season is for Democrats to back off from the trifles now and again and instead spend some time getting back to basics and outlining a broad perspective on both American and global security that competes with the puerile bluster that currently passes for intelligent discussion among Republicans.
It’s actually quite important that they do so and soon. Here’s a rundown from the German papers on the Iraq escalation votes:
The Financial Times Deutschland writes:
“For four years any criticism of the war was seen as a betrayal of the troops. This taboo has now been broken … the vote marks a decisive change in American politics.
“The Bush Administration has not only forfeited its credibility internationally — now it is also fighting a losing battle on the home front.
“One could be tempted to feel Schadenfreude about the spectacular failure of this president. But a US government that has suffered such a loss of authority is a weakness for the whole West. Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Iran and North Korea are the big conflicts in international politics. Bush — morally disavowed and increasingly abandoned by his own party colleagues — will not be able to do much to solve them. So who will?”
It is a huge problem and one that will not be solved by Joe Lieberman admonishing Democrats to start goose stepping behind the president. Nobody believes anything either he or Bush say. In fact, our greatest hope for getting through this unstable historical juncture is for Democratic presidential candidates to start letting the world know what they will do to change course. We are in a very dangerous time in which people both in our own government and in the outside world are likely to make terrible misjudgments. The world needs to know not only that the US Congress is engaged in oversight, but that the most likely subsequent presidential leadership understands the stakes.
If Libby is found guilty, investigators are likely to probe further to determine if Libby devised what they consider a cover story in an effort to shield Cheney.
Here’s the skinny:
In the fall of 2003, when it was disclosed that the Justice Department had begun a criminal probe as to who leaked Plame’s identity to reporters, Libby sought out Cheney to complain that while then-White House spokesperson McClellan was making public statements that Rove had not been a source of the leak, McClellan refused to do the same on Libby’s behalf. Asked by Fitzgerald whether during that conversation Libby might have in fact told Cheney that he had spoken to reporters about Plame, Libby answered: “I think I did. Let me bring you back to that period. I think I did in that there was a conversation I had with the vice president when all this started coming out and it was this issue as to, you now, who spoke to Novak. “I told the vice- you know, there was- the president said anybody who knows anything should come forward or something like that… I went to the vice president and said, you know, I was not the person who talked to Novak. “And he [said] something like, ‘I know that.’ And I said, you know, ‘I learned this from Tim Russert.’ And he sort of tilted his head to the side a little bit and then I may have in that conversation said, I talked to other — I talked to people about it on the weekend,” Libby said in apparent reference to his conversations with Cooper and Miller. Fitzgerald then pressed Libby: “What did you understand from his gesture or reaction in tilting his head?” Libby responded: “That the Tim Russert part caught his attention. You know, that he- he reacted as if he didn’t know about the Tim Russert thing or he was rehearing it, or reconsidering it or something like that… New, new sort of information. Not something he had been thinking about.” Fitzgerald asked: “And did he at any time tell you, ‘Well, you didn’t learn it from Tim Russert, you learned it from me? Back in June you and I talked about the wife working at the CIA?'” “No,” Libby responded. “Did he indicate any concern that you had done anything wrong by telling reporters what you had learned?” Fitzgerald asked. “No,” Libby responded. Later, Fitzgerald asked Libby: “Did you tell the vice president that you had actually spoken to Time magazine and Mr. Cooper and had discussed Wilson’s wife’s work with Mr. Cooper? Libby answered: “I think this conversation was about whether — the leak to Novak. I don’t know that I discussed that with the vice president. I did tell him, of course, that we had spoken to the people who he had told us to speak to on the weekend. I think at some point I told him that.” Libby had been frustrated that in recent days that McClellan had made statements saying that Rove had nothing to do with the leak of Plame’s identity, but refused to do so for Libby as well. Libby then pressed his case to then-White House chief of staff Andy Card, but to no avail himself until Cheney intervened. An agitated Cheney wrote in a note to himself: “Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy who was asked to stick his neck in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others.” Cheney also scribbled: “Must happen today.” Some time later — Libby wasn’t able to provide the grand jury with the exact date — he went back to Cheney to tell him that he discovered a note indicating that he had first learned from Cheney, not Russert, that Plame was a CIA officer. Libby told the grand jury: “In the course of the document production, the FBI sent us a request for documents, or Justice Department, I’m not sure technically. In the course of that document production I came across the note that is dated on or about June 12, and the note… shows that I hadn’t first learned it from Russert, although that was my memory, I had first learned it when he said it to me. “And so I went back to see him and said, you know, I told you something wrong before. It turns out that I have a note that I had heard, heard about this earlier from you and I just — you know, I didn’t want to leave you with the wrong… the wrong statement that I heard about it from Tim Russert. In fact, I had heard about it earlier, but I had forgotten it.” Asked by Fitzgerald what Cheney’s reaction was, Libby responded by saying that Cheney hardly had anything at all: “He didn’t say much. You know, he said something about, ‘From me?’ something like that, and tilted his head, something he does commonly, and that was that.”
Read the whole article for a very nice, succinct rundown of the evidence Fitzgerald presented against Libby as well as this very interesting speculation.
I have no idea if Libby will turn on Cheney or if Fitzgerald will follow through with an obstruction investigation. I do not believe he will bring charges against Cheney unless he has a solid case.
I’ve heard some wags say recently that some former special prosecutors believe Cheney was lucky to have a “conservative” running this case because they would have named Cheney as an unindicted co-conspirator. I don’t know if that’s true, but it brings up something important about Patrick Fitzgerald that’s sometimes missed. He’s conservative but not in a discernably political sense. It’s because he uses his office with prudence and circumspection. That’s not to say he isn’t tough or that he doesn’t play hardball — his cases in Chicago are almost frightening in their methodical thoroughness. But he isn’t a partisan either left or right (or if he is, it doesn’t seem to show itself in his work.)
I would love nothing more than to see Dick Cheney indicted on an obstruction charge, but I’m glad to know that Fitzgerald is not the type of prosecutor who would bring flimsy charges, even against that dark eminence. The typical right wing partisan prosecutor has been a blight on our system for a long time, railroading innocent people and using racist “tough on crime” platforms to launch political careers. (Can you hear me Rudy?) Fitzgerald is a true conservative in the literal sense and that’s a very good thing when it comes to police powers. I wish there were more real conservatives in law enforcement and judicial system. We’d have a safer and more just society if we did.
The NY Times has apparently had some kind of revelation about the fact that the Whitewater and subsequent scandals were ginned up by rich rightwing character assassins.
Mr. Scaife, reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, spent more than $2 million investigating and publicizing accusations about the supposed involvement of Mrs. Clinton and former President Bill Clinton in corrupt land deals, sexual affairs, drug running and murder.
But now, as Mrs. Clinton is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Scaife’s checkbook is staying in his pocket.
Christopher Ruddy, who once worked full-time for Mr. Scaife investigating the Clintons and now runs a conservative online publication he co-owns with Mr. Scaife, said, “Both of us have had a rethinking.”
How nice. Let’s all sing kumbaaya, shall we? And let’s not examine the new Swiftboat hitmen who have emerged to take their places. That would be uncivil, I’m sure — and all that rich, delicious, GOP nastiness would be denied them.
And let’s not forget how all the kewl kidz made fun of Clinton as if she were some sort of paranoid freak for saying there was a vast right wing conspiracy. The press, for reasons that remain obscure, decided it was good fun to pretend that wasn’t happening and to report all this drivel in the first place. And that is the problem.
How odd it is that that fail to mention their own complicity in that ongoing effort. It’s been well over a decade now; you’d think they could have found a paragraph or two to explain why they reported these hoaxes and smear jobs with all the incredulity of a three year old sitting on a mall Santa’s lap.
The New York Times still has failed to answer for its deplorable coverage over the course of eight long years. Here’s a case in point from a few years back — Joe Conasan on NY Times editor Joseph Lelyvend’s embarrassing defense of his paper’s rpeposterous coverage in his review of Sidney Blumenthal’s book “The Clinton Wars:
Thanks to Joseph Lelyveld’s long, sloppy, rather mean-spirited review of Sidney Blumenthal’s “The Clinton Wars” in the current New York Review of Books, the Whitewater mystery is finally resolved, at least in part. That mystery was never much about Whitewater itself — a mundane, money-losing land deal. What always defied understanding was why the editors of the New York Times tolerated their paper’s persistent hyping of the phony “scandal.”
The answer, as Lelyveld reveals inadvertently, was a remarkable degree of carelessness at the very top. Although he has defended the paper’s coverage publicly for several years — and continues to do so as if he knows what he’s talking about — the former Times executive editor clearly never mastered the basic facts.
They never wanted to. They were breathlessly creating a “narrative”, not doing journalism and they evidently don’t understand that even today. Because of that of that they missed the real story, which they belatedly and perfunctorily report today as if its old news. Here’s Blumenthal responding to Lelyveld’s error ridden review:
Lelyveld writes now that Gerth’s article “had multiple sources.” But a single source had given Gerth the tip on the story and arranged for him to meet Jim McDougal, who was at the time suffering from manic depression, drug addiction, alcoholism, and bankruptcy. That source was Sheffield Nelson, an embittered partisan Republican rival of Bill Clinton, who had run against him for governor in 1990. Nelson’s pertinence to Madison Guaranty was that he’d contributed to breaking it. As I write in my book: “McDougal and Nelson had been business partners in a deal to buy Campobello Island, FDR’s famous summer place, and turn it into resort lots. More than any other scheme, that failed one had helped pull the Madison bank under. But the Campobello deal went unmentioned in Gerth’s account.”
At first, Gerth’s Times article had little impact. As I write, “McDougal retracted his charges, saying Clinton had done nothing illegal or unethical. A forensic accountant scratched through the confused records and issued a report showing no wrongdoing by the Clintons, while they lost about $65,000.” However, a Republican activist, L. Jean Lewis, who worked as an investigator at the Resolution Trust Corporation, the federal agency dealing with failed savings and loans associations, read the article and became the prime mover in turning its allegations into a criminal referral.
Then, many months later, during the presidential campaign in October 1992, Bush White House legal counsel C. Boyden Gray asked the chief executive of the RTC to look into this referral. The US Attorney in Arkansas, Charles Banks (a Republican appointee), looked into it, and on October 7, 1992, the following telex, which I cite in The Clinton Wars, was sent to Washington: “It is the opinion of Little Rock FBI and the United States Attorney…that there is indeed insufficient evidence to suggest the Clintons had knowledge of the check-kiting activity conducted by McDougal…. It was also the opinion of [Banks that] the alleged involvement of the Clintons in wrong-doing was implausible….” When Attorney General William Barr nonetheless tried to revive Lewis’s referral, Banks rebuked his boss: “I must opine that after such a lapse of time the insistence of urgency in this case appears to suggest an intentional or unintentional attempt to intervene into the political process of the upcoming presidential election.”
Then, prophetically, he added: “You and I know in investigations of this type, the first steps, such as issuance of grand jury subpoenas for records, will lead to media and public inquiries [about] matters that are subject to absolute privacy. Even media questions about such an investigation in today’s modern political climate all too often publicly purport to ‘legitimize what can’t be proven.'” He suggested that participating in such an investigation “amounts to prosecutorial misconduct and violates the most basic fundamental rule of Department of Justice policy.”
In another telex the Little Rock FBI office added that there was “absolutely no factual basis to suggest criminal activity on the part of any of the individuals listed as witnesses in the referral”—that is, the Clintons.
Although the Los Angeles Times reported these memos and telexes on August 9, 1995, the Nexis database reveals no mention in The New York Times. Was Lelyveld ever made aware of these documents at the time?
The NY Times treated this story like it was The Pentagon Papers. They legitimized its obfuscatory style of reporting and the confusion that resulted led to the naming of an independent counsel and finally to the partisan impeachment of a popular and successful president. Yet, it was obvious to observers that they were being led around by a cabal of rightwing hit men from very early on. They simply refused to see the story for what it was and instead validated their erroneous reporting with a continuous narrative stream of unproven implications that fed the toxic political environment — and that fed them in return.
I know this is all boring, arcane history now, but it’s important to note that we are seeing similar stuff happening already with respect to various “deals” that are being reported in the press about Harry Reid and John Edwards. So far they are thin, nonsensical “exposes” written by one man, John Soloman, formerly of the AP and now of the Washington Post. Soloman is known to be a lazy reporter who happily takes “tips” from the wingnut noise machine and faithfully regurgitates them. He holds a very important position at the paper that was second only to the Times in its eagerness to swallow Ken Starr’s spin whole.
We are also seeing some similar reporting begin to emerge on Obama, much of it generated by hometown political rivals, just as we saw in the Clinton years. Today the LA Times implies that Obama is exaggerating his activist past. A couple of weeks ago we saw a truly egregiously misleading report on a deal he made to buy some land from a supporter.
These are patented Whitewater-style “smell test” stories. They are based on complicated details that make the casual reader’s eyes glaze over and about which the subject has to issue long confusing explanations in return. They feature colorful and unsavory political characters in some way. They often happened in the past and they tend to be written in such a way as to say that even if they aren’t illegal they “look bad.” The underlying theme is hypocrisy because the subjects are portrayed as making a dishonest buck while pretending to represent the average working man. Oh, and they always feature a Democrat. Republicans are not subject to such scrutiny because a craven, opportunistic Republican isn’t “news.” (Neat trick huh?)
No single story will bring down a candidate because they have no substance to them. It’s the combined effect they are looking for to build a sense overall sleaziness. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire” right?
The major media has never copped to their role in the tabloid sideshow that politics in the 90’s became. They have never copped to their part in elevating Bush to the status of demigod and running beside him like a bunch of eunuchs waving palm fronds during the lead-up to the war. Even today we see them pooh-poohing the significance of a federal trial that exposes them for whores to Republican power.
But it happened and it will happen again. They have learned nothing and feel they have nothing to answer for. Clinton’s spokesman is right when he says “I think that history demonstrates that whoever the nominee is is going to engender opposition from the right, and we will certainly be prepared” but it is only part of the story. All Democrats will also engender reporting from a press corps that persists in seeing politics through the lens of the rightwing narrative that was set forth by Scaife and his various hitmen back in the 1990’s.
that they were being led around by a cabal of rightwing hit men from very early on. They simply refused to see the story for what it was and instead validated their erroneous reporting with a continuous narrative stream of unproven implications that fed the toxic political environment — and that fed them in return.