The Myth: The SBVT controversy seriously harmed the Kerry campaign. Bush comes into his convention in much better political shape than he has been for quite a while.
The Reality: The race has changed little since the start of the SBVT controversy. Bush enters his convention with basically the same political vulnerabilities he had previously.
Let’s go to the numbers. The poll that best provides a before-SBVT damage and after-SBVT damage picture of the horse race is the Gallup poll. That’s because Gallup polled both on August 9-11–about a week before media coverage of SBVT really heated up–and on August 23-25, right after the coverage peaked and just as the Kerry campaign began its push-back.
What do the Gallup numbers show? As Gallup’s release on their latest poll succinctly puts it: “No Change in Presidential Race Despite Attack Ads”. Just so.
I urge you to read the entire post because at this point the horse race really starts to matter and these are the numbers going out of the gate. It is a tie among “likely voters” and Kerry is slightly ahead among registered voters.
But remember we are not enemies, but comrades in a war against a real enemy, and take courage from the knowledge that our military superiority is matched only by the superiority of our ideals, and our unconquerable love for them.
Our adversaries are weaker than us in arms and men, but weaker still in causes. They fight to express a hatred for all that is good in humanity.
We fight for love of freedom and justice, a love that is invincible. Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong.
Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight.
We’re Americans.
We’re Americans, and we’ll never surrender.
They will.
“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them”. George Orwell
It was here in 2001 in lower Manhattan that President George W. Bush stood amid the fallen towers of the World Trade Center and said to the barbaric terrorists who attacked us, “They will hear from us.”
They have heard from us! They heard from us in Afghanistan and we removed the Taliban. They heard from us in Iraq and we ended Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror.
They heard from us in Libya and without firing a shot Gadhafi abandoned weapons of mass destruction.
They are hearing from us in nations that are now more reluctant to sponsor terrorists.
So long as George Bush is President, is there any doubt they will continue to hear from us until we defeat global terrorism.
[…]
And I say it again tonight, “Thank God George Bush is our President.”
On September 11, George W. Bush had been President less than eight months. This new president, vice president, and new administration were faced with the worst crisis in our history.
President Bush’s response in keeping us unified and in turning the ship of state around from being solely on defense against terrorism to being on offense as well and for his holding us together.
For that and then his determined effort to defeat global terrorism, no matter what happens in this election, President George W. Bush already has earned a place in our history as a great American president.
But let’s not wait for history to present the correct view of our president. Let us write our own history. We need George Bush now more than ever.
[…]
Before September 11, we were living with an unrealistic view of the world much like our observing Europe appease Hitler or trying to accommodate ourselves to peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union through mutually assured destruction.
President Bush decided that we could no longer be just on defense against global terrorism but we must also be on offense.
On September 20, 2001, President Bush stood before a joint session of Congress, a still grieving and shocked nation and a confused world and he did change the direction of our ship of state.
He dedicated America under his leadership to destroying global terrorism.
The president announced the Bush Doctrine when he said: “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaida, but it does not end there.
It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.
“Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”
[…]
When it catches hold there is nothing more powerful than freedom. Give it some hope, and it will overwhelm dictators, and even defeat terrorists. That is what we have done and must continue to do in Iraq.
That is what the Republican Party does best — when we are at our best, we extend freedom.
It’s our mission. And it’s the long-term answer to ending global terrorism. Governments that are free and accountable.
We have won many battles — at home and abroad — but as President Bush told us on September 20, 2001, it will take a long-term determined effort to prevail.
The war on terrorism will not be won in a single battle. There will be no dramatic surrender. There will be no crumbling of a massive wall.
But we will know it. We’ll know it as accountable governments continue to develop in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
We’ll know it as terrorist attacks throughout the world decrease and then end.
“How you can win the population for war: At first, the statesman will invent cheap lying, that impute the guilt of the attacked nation, and each person will be happy over this deceit, that calm the conscience. It will study it detailed and refuse to test arguments of the other opinion. So he will convince step for step even therefrom that the war is just and thank God, that he, after this process of grotesque even deceit, can sleep better.” Mark Twain
It will always be only a part of the Nation which will consist of really active fighters, and more of them will be asked than the millions of other citizens. For them, the mere pledge “I believe” is not enough; instead, they will swear to the oath “I will fight.”
The Party will for all time to come represent the elite of the political leadership of the people. It will be unchangeable in its doctrine, hard as steel in its organizational tactics, supple and adaptable; in its entity however, it will be like a Holy Order!
Eric Alterman has a tip for a story for those of you who are covering the convention with actual credentials:
Possible Actual News Alert: Is the Republican Party in violation of the US military’s rules on the participation in party politics by active duty military?
It sure looks that way. The RNC convention week is boasting that it has 144 active duty military delegates at the convention or three percent of the total. That information can be found here.
Meanwhile, according to DOD Directive 1344.10, which can be found here this is a violation of the code of military conduct. It explicitly says:
A member on active duty shall not
…
Participate in partisan political management, campaigns, or conventions (unless attending a convention as a spectator when not in uniform).
But the Republican Party itself is claiming that the active duty personnel are not spectators but delegates. What’s going on here? Why are the Republicans encouraging our soldiers to violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and its stated rules of political engagement? And why for goodness sakes, aren’t these rules being enforced? Hey MSNBC.com, can we put a reporter or two on this story please?
I doubt that MSNBC has time to follow up what with all the primping and the ass kissing they are having to do. But, perhaps one of those writers for liberal magazines who are wandering around aimlessly looking for internet access could just do the story and then file it from their hotel room. It sounds like a good one to me.
It looks as if the Kerry campaign and I are on the same wavelength regarding Bush’s statement that he “miscalculated” the conditions ensuring from the “catastrophic success” of the invasion of Iraq. I wrote a couple of days ago:
I think Junior just made a tactical error. Kerry and every other Democrat appearing in the media should wrap that statement around his neck. This is a trap if they want to spring it…he’s now simultaneously admitted that he screwed up big time on the single most important issue a president ever faces, while also saying that he has no intention of trying to figure out what went wrong. That is the worst of all possible worlds. It’s best not to have to admit screwing up something as important as war planning but if you do you simply have to make the case that learned from the experience and you won’t do it again. He didn’t do that. Iraq is a massive failure and the president has just opened the door to his own culpability on that.
From various press information I’ve received today, it looks like we can expect to hear the word “miscalulate” about 763,000 times in the next few weeks.
As I wrote in the earlier piece, one of the nice side effects of this particular claim is that somebody told Bush that he needed to admit to making a mistake — I think because they knew that his bumbling inability to think of anything he could have done better was going to be used against him. If Kerry succeeds in wrapping Bush’s admission that he screwed up the iraq war around his neck, then somebody in Junior’s inner circle is going to pay. I’m betting it was Karen.
Shhh. Don’t tell anybody, but apparently they weren’t serving kool-aid at Andrew Sullivan’s vacation spot this last month and he’s come back to work detoxed and rehabbed.
If you read all of his posts for today, you’ll see that he has had an epiphany on a range of issues surrounding George W. Bush and the ascendent fundamentalist wing in the GOP and he is saying some things that moderate Republicans might just listen to. Perhaps it just that Bush finally went too far with the FMA, but I think it’s more than that. I think he’s speaking for a number of Republicans who have awakened from their trauma after 9/11 and are seeing that their leader is a fraud. I don’t know if any of them will vote for Kerry, but I think there’s a chance that at least some of them will find that they “forgot” to vote this fall. To non Limbaugh cultists of all political stripes who have been paying attention, Bush’s leadership is alarmingly bad. So bad that even one who was previously dazzled by Bush’s warrior image have realized that he’s incompetent. Sullivan says:
Waging war requires both determination and effectiveness. Bush has a lot more of the former than the latter. And, if we want to avoid more Abu Ghraibs, that counts.
Well, that’s if you think we should avoid “catastrophic success” such as that which has unfolded in Iraq. It appears that Sullivan agrees. Regardless of his past political errors, he’s a wonderfully talented writer and as far as I’m concerned if he’s belatedly realized that the GOP is in the hands of incompetents and radical fundamentalist extremists, it’s better late than never. He’s one of the right’s sharpest tacks and they will have lost a valuable commodity if he finally rejects them. His posts today on everything from Rumsfeld to the Swift Boat Liars aren’t going to get him any love at the RNC, I can tell you that.
Aug 23-26th Poll by the Annenberg Center for Public Policy shows a plurality of Americans – 46% – believe President Bush was behind the ads attacking John Kerry’s military record while only 37% believe the Bush campaign’s denials.
Day by day tracking of the percentage of voters who were influenced by the accusations and came to doubt that Kerry deserved his medals showed that from August 10-15 the percentage of doubters hovered in the low 20’s, then rose between August 16-22 (reaching almost 30% on August 18th) and then returned back down to the low 20’s between August 20-25.
It appears that the smear itself didn’t take. But, of course, you have to take into account the time and effort spent refuting it was time and effort that could have been better spent elsewhere, so it’s not a simple case of no harm no foul.
The most important thing is that Kerry survived a near death experience and the old saying “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is more true than ever. This is what we will have to look forward to for the next four years after he’s elected. We might as well get used to it.
I guess I’m not really understanding one particular beef some have with the protests in New York. Both Yglesias and Klein are disturbed by the inchoate nature of the march yesterday, what with the different agendas being present and nobody looking quite alike and focused. And, they are right, of course. The different groups protesting have many different issues that motivate them. But, it seems to me that in this case particularly, there is one thing they they all agree upon and it is the reason they are protesting when and where they are protesting. They all agree that George W Bush should not be reelected, which I think is a pretty damned good common cause.
I realize that protests are to some degree an act of self-expression but it’s a big mistake to discount that as an important part of the political process. Human beings are not all motivated by wonkish intellectual policy discussion. For a lot of people politics is an emotional and social committment. Walking down the street with 100,000 other people who believe in the same goal (if not the reasons behind it) can provide a powerful and exciting feeling of shared purpose.
We liberals need more of that sort of thing. The right has its anger and its sense of victimization to motivate it on that emotional level. Protests like that in NYC signify for liberals a sense of shared belief and goals with people with whom you might never cross paths. For many of us, that’s the motivating passion behind our politics. Inclusion, equality, free speech etc. We need to demonstrate that once in a while in order to sustain our committment to the process. Otherwise it’s all dry, cerebral talk talk talk — which I may love and those of you who read this blog may love — but simply doesn’t animate the human social part of politics for many people.
Are they meaningful as policy statements or effective organizing tools? Probably not. But as a motivating tool for grassroots politics I think they are invaluable. For a lot of people around this country yesterday, seeing the streets lined with people protesting the presidency of George W. Bush on the eve of his convention at the site of 9/11 was an inspiring moment of solidarity. That’s a good thing.
Update: For a most thorough and enjoyable first person report on the protest check out Roy Edroso at Alicublog:
The participants provided lively footage. A ring of Philadelphians clad in black and pink led some anti-Bush cheers. One of them wore a shirt that read, “When I say Gender, you say Fuck.” That remains my favorite shirt of the day (though the plaintive “I Still Hate George W. Bush” is up there, too). Even a few of the park bums got in on the act; “Bush gotta go, Bush gotta go,” repeated a scrawny man shuffling around with a framed Saturday Evening Post cover under his arm.
[…]
The crowd was getting bunched up round 25th Street and some of the organizers sprang into action to regulate the flow — young, mostly female, red bandanas tied on their arms, they linked hands across the avenue and held the pace. Very neatly done. If you want to know why moderates march with fringe groups, it’s because the fringe groups know their shit.
Now, that’s interesting. For even more fun, read his rundown of the right wing blogospheric apoplexy at the protests. These brave, macho wingnuts sound suspiciously like my grandmother — “those ruffian protesters are so disheveled and unkempt!” The freepers do not disappoint, either. Read the whole thing.
Has anyone ever trashed his reputation as a journalist more thoroughly than Robert Novak? It turns out that his son is the publicist for Regnery, publisher of Unfit For Command, but that was information Novak didn’t find relevant enough to mention when he scored an exclusive interview with the ghostly Admiral Schachte — you know, the guy who nobody remembers being the fourth guy in a three man crew on the day Kerry got wounded?
Novak’s son is the publicist for the publisher of a controversial book and Novak writes a fawning and unskeptical interview with one of the prime sources and Novak relies on his sterling reputation as a journalist to cover himself. Except, of course, his reputation as a journalist is in tatters.
But, Al Hunt seemed to think that there was even more to the story. He pretty much called Novak an outright liar on CNN over the week-end and it’s pretty clear he is right. The two guys besides Kerry on that skimmer, Zaladonis and Runyan, have told everyone the exact same story. They don’t remember Schachte ever being on that boat and they remember being under fire. It is only to Bob Novak that they are supposed to have said that there was no fire.
NOVAK: I interviewed Admiral Schachte this week. He is a former deputy judge advocate general of the Navy, a very distinguished man. He said he was definitely in the boat that night. John Kerry says he wasn’t in the boat. I believe Admiral Schachte. I checked with a couple of other officers who were there at that time. They say it is inconceivable that on his maiden mission, Lieutenant Kerry would have been sent off in that boat alone, that this — using this Boston whaler or skimmer was Lieutenant Schachte’s own idea. He was in all the missions on the Boston whaler, and I — and he is — and the idea that Kerry said nobody who was ever on a boat on him was ever critical of him is wrong because I believe Schachte was there.
SHIELDS: Yet the enlisted man who was on the boat, and everybody agrees was on the boat, says he wasn’t on the boat.
Al Hunt?
HUNT: Well, Mark, let’s leave John Kerry and let’s leave Schachte aside for a minute. I talked to those two enlisted men today. I talked to Pat Runyon and Bill Zaladonis. They both were on that boat December 2, 1968. They say there is no way that the admiral could have been on that boat. And they describe in vivid detail that night. They say it was a small, 14-foot boat with an outboard motor, that, in fact, with their weapons and other material, that four people would have been a really, really tight fit. They took orders from John Kerry. They remember — Zaladonis remembers Kerry saying, Shoot over here, rather than over here, when they were in a firefight. And Runyon remembers him telling him to, Start the boat. Let’s get the hell out of here. Zaladonis remembers when Kerry was hit, and they just say it’s absolutely impossible to — you wouldn’t have had two officers on a little boat like that on that kind of a mission.
Moreover, Schachte has changed his story. A year ago, he talked to Michael Kranish of “The Boston Globe,” and he said that there was a firefight. He didn’t say he was in the boat. He said Kerry was hit — quote, “hit” — though it wasn’t very serious. Now he says there wasn’t a firefight and it was a self-inflicted wound. Moreover, he went and he said that he — when he saw Kerry 20 years later in Washington, he was with a top aide with — of Fritz (UNINTELLIGIBLE) Ashley Thripp (ph). Ashley Thripp I talked to today and said, No way. I wasn’t there.
So I think that — I think the admiral is either mistaken or he’s lying.
[…]
NOVAK: Let me stick to this — this Schachte thing for just — just a moment. In the first place, I also interviewed those two guys, Runyon and Zaladoris (SIC), and they both said they both doubted there was any enemy fire. I don’t know if you didn’t ask them that question. But they told me they didn’t believe there was any enemy fire. That — that’s just a factual thing.
No. 2, I really do believe that — I’ve talked to other officers, and they say that this Boston whaler, this skimmer, usually had — almost always had two officers in it. Only has room for three, right. They usually had two officers and an enlisted man in the back. So there was a — I think these two men are probably good men. I think they’re the ones that are confused.
[…]
HUNT: Bob invoked my name and said I — you know, didn’t know if I asked them — I did ask them the question. They both very clearly say there was a firefight. They describe it in detail. They describe firing at people that night. And Zaladonis — by the way, you have his name wrong. His name is Zaladonis, Bob. You know, if you called him, you ought to get his name right — describes when Kerry was hit. They both say that, Mark, and I challenge anyone to call them, and they’ll tell him.
NOVAK: They both — they both told me they didn’t believe there was any fire coming from the enemy on that boat.
HUNT: And they also told…
NOVAK: Now, maybe they’ve changed their story!
Novak, like so many Republicans in this era, has completely lost his honor both as a journalist and a citizen. This man is not a journalist, he is a GOP propagandist and should not be afforded the same kind of shield offered to real journalists in protecting their sources. The profession should shun this guy. By allowing him to evoke that shield in the Plame case, they are likely to lose it all together.