Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Live Long And Prosper

When did Mary Matalin decide to reveal herself as a Vulcan?

Slow Learner

James Wolcott gets to the nub of Bush’s problem:

Now that the three debates belong to history, furnishing boring anecdotes from Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin for years to come, I’m struck by a single defining element that permeated each encounter: Bush’s cavalier lack of preparation. Forget the cosmetics for a moment: the menagerie of mannerisms Bush displayed. He simply didn’t come loaded with ammo. I assumed that he’d have some killer line at the ready, some surprise dug up from Kerry’s record to spring, a practiced bit of eloquence that would lift the debate at a dramatic moment out of the recitation of facts and figures. He not only didn’t have the eloquence, he barely had the facts and figures. For some bizarre reason best left to future psychologists, Bush doesn’t seem to have approached these debates seriously. He refused to acknowledge he couldn’t get by with simply rehashing his stump speech. When I saw on the news that Bush has prepared for this final debate by rehearsing during his spare moments on the campaign trail in Air Force One and the limo drives, I thought: that’s now true preparation, that’s lazy last-minute cramming.

Read the rest here.

And what’s really galling is that he was not any better prepared in the debates in 2000, it’s just that the giggling schoolgirls in the media were so delighted with the political wedgie they were collectively administering to Al Gore that they overwhelmed the coverage and created an alternate reality (that Gore unfortunately acted upon instead of ignored.)

The problem for Bush is that he’s never really studied and in order to learn it is said that he prefers that concepts and ideas be presented to him because he doesn’t like to read. On top of that he’s an egomaniac who doesn’t LIKE to be told what to do:

There is to be no scowling this time, George Bush’s counselors told him, even if John Kerry attacks your mom. Campaign officials say it took Karen Hughes a good while to convince the Commander in Chief after the first presidential debate that he had looked irritated. “I was not irritated,” he told her, irritated. “Sir, you were,” she said. Hughes is one of the few who can tell the President what he might not want to hear and show him what he might not be able to see for himself.

If there is any further question as to why we are in a mess in Iraq, I think that should put it to rest. He doesn’t study on his own, he learns by listening but refuses to hear bad news.

Memorizing Their Lines

The indispensible Eric Boehlert writes in Salon:

The media reaction: Ho-hum, just a Kerry sweep

For Kerry, it’s a rather startling and completely unforeseen achievement, considering Bush entered the final stretch season with an unblemished career debate record and had been given high marks by the press for his debate message discipline and ability to connect with voters. Yet he went O for 3.

Despite the consistent polling results, most of the assembled television pundits Wednesday night considered the debate to be a draw and suggested it would, in the end, have little impact on Election Day. Again, it’s hard to imagine that the media response would have been so reserved if it were Bush completing a debate sweep.

Ain’t it the truth. When you think about it, it’s an amazing achievement that Kerry has been able to sidestep the simpleminded media narrative that had the triumphant King Junior astride his destrier riding to a devastating victory over the weak and silly Democrat. Kerry refused to play along and the American people haven’t been foolish enough to swallow it, thank Gawd.

But, the punditocrisy and the press corpse have not been willing to shake their preferred storyline, even in the face of an obvious digression to a totally new plot. Sadly, I don’t think that even a Kerry victory is going to change this derisive, condescending attitude toward Democrats until we confront the media with it head on and force them to see us differently.

This campaign, with the emergence of a rugged indefatigable candidate and a large, active grassroots with a mighty fundraising arm may just be the first step in proving to these insular elites that Democrats are fed up with this phony characterization of us and we’re going to be fighting it from now on. The media are going to have to face themselves, at least in part, because their audience is no longer a shouting mob on one side and an incredulous group of onlookers on the other. We are now engaged. And while we may believe in the virtues of tolerance and diversity and cooperation, it is a grave mistake to assume that makes us weak or passive.

We’re schooling them in this election about that and we’ll keep on doing it until they wake up to the fact that they’ve been duped by the Mighty Wurlitzer into writing a work of fiction that fewer and fewer people are willing to accept as fact.

Losin’ It

As I’m watching the mini frenzy over the trumped up “Mary Cheney” controversy, I am struck by how much the GOP is off its game.

Think about it. The morning after the final debate, they trotted out the wife of the vice president to attack John Kerry for being too mean —- about their gay daughter. What’s the plan? Are they trying to make a mad dash to the middle by portraying the “most liberal member of the senate” as being intolerant toward gays? Or is this supposed to enrage and energize the base — all of whom think that we should actually change the constitution to permanently discriminate against gay people. It’s weird and unfocused. It’s very hard for me to believe that they want to spend the day with the words “vice president’s gay daughter” being repeated over and over again on television.

Meanwhile, while Lynn Cheney is performing the role of rabid attack dog, the only sight we’ve seen of Commander Codpiece the Warrior King (looking even more dazed and confused than ever) was a brief uncomfortable interview on Air Force One where John McCain gave his best streetwalker impression and some woman (didn’t catch who she is) brought up Bush’s worst moment in the debate in which he said that the answer to those who had lost their jobs was to improve elementary school standards. “That’s just common sense” she said.

These guys are way off message.

Right Wing Victimization Watch

Lynn Cheney is all over the TV saying “as a mom” that Kerry used a “cheap and tawdry political trick” by mentioning her gay daughter. “He’s not a good man,” she says.

Suburban Guerilla reminds us of another politician using Cheney’s daughter as a — cheap and tawdry political trick:

“Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it’s an issue that our family is very familiar with. … With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is that freedom means freedom for everyone. People ought to be able to free — ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to.”

Remember Schieffer’s question?

Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?

Shocking for Kerry to bring up Cheney’s daughter in that context, eh? As Andrew Sullivan says this morning:

I keep getting emails asserting that Kerry’s mentioning of Mary Cheney is somehow offensive or gratuitous or a “low blow”. Huh? Mary Cheney is out of the closet and a member, with her partner, of the vice-president’s family. That’s a public fact. No one’s privacy is being invaded by mentioning this. When Kerry cites Bush’s wife or daughters, no one says it’s a “low blow.” The double standards are entirely a function of people’s lingering prejudice against gay people. And by mentioning it, Kerry showed something important. This issue is not an abstract one. It’s a concrete, human and real one. It affects many families, and Bush has decided to use this cynically as a divisive weapon in an election campaign. He deserves to be held to account for this – and how much more effective than showing a real person whose relationship and dignity he has attacked and minimized? Does this makes Bush’s base uncomfortable? Well, good. It’s about time they were made uncomfortable in their acquiescence to discrimination. Does it make Bush uncomfortable? Even better. His decision to bar gay couples from having any protections for their relationships in the constitution is not just a direct attack on the family member of the vice-president. It’s an attack on all families with gay members – and on the family as an institution. That’s a central issue in this campaign, a key indictment of Bush’s record and more than relevant to any debate. For four years, this president has tried to make gay people invisible, to avoid any mention of us, to pretend we don’t exist. Well, we do. Right in front of him.

The General And The Sissy

I don’t know if anyone saw Wes Clark “interviewed” by Sean Hannity just now, but it almost came to blows. Riveting exchange as Clark called Bush a cheerleader and Hannity said Kerry was a war criminal.

Hannity tried to say that Kerry voted against all the weapons systems and that Saddam would still be a threat if he had been president and all the usual blather and Clark was having none of it. Hannity was all red faced and stomping his tiny feet and on the verge of tears.

The control room had to step in and cut it off. Brilliant. I love Wes Clark.

Zen Master

Kos called Kerry that tonight and I think it’s true. The guy just has a sense of inner confidence and centeredness that is very reassuring. He is a mature, fully realized human being. I think that peopole had forgotten that this is something we can expect in our leaders. It’s with a strong sense of relief that I watch him in action and see him prevail.

I would bet that by Friday the conventional wisdom will be that Kerry won all three debates. And the CW, for once, will be right.

The next two weeks are going to be a wild ride, but the wind is at our backs.

I think it’s time for Democrats to start giving our man Kerry a little bit of credit. He’s a very impressive politician and a very impressive man. Cool under fire, smart as a whip and hard as nails. Some months back I wrote that Kerry has been fighting the right since he was a very young man and may be the best qualified man in America for these times. I think I was right. He’s the right man at the right time to set this country back on course. I’m proud to be voting for him.

For the first time since 9/11, I am feeling a little bit zenlike myself. We’re going to win.

Update: The soundbite and clip is Bush saying he doesn’t care about catching bin Laden. It couldn’t be better for us.

He was, I think, on the side, maybe with his pompoms?

No, he had a great big megaphone:

And cheerleading was serious business for Junior. It’s the one thing he is trained for and the only thing he’s ever been good at:

Paging William Bennett. Outrage Is Dyin’ Over Here

We stand for a culture of responsibility in America. This culture of our country is changing from one that has said, if it feels good do it, and if you’ve got a problem blame somebody else, to a culture in which each of understands we’re responsible for the decisions we make in life. George W. Bush August 10, 2004

A middle aged Democrat had a consensual affair with a young female employee.

A middle aged Republican crudely groped and humiliated numerous women for over twenty years on movie sets.

A middle aged radio superstar Republican bought hard drugs on the black market and threatened his housekeeper if she fails to help him score.

A middle aged TV gasbag Republican grossly sexually harrassed an employee and theatened her with terrible retaliation if she spoke up.

Which of these middle aged men was vilified, derided and degraded as an immoral misogynist who had soiled the very fabric of America?

Man, is this a great country to be a Republican or what? Par-tay down, Dough Boyz! Anything Goes!!! IOKYAR, baby!!!

Accidental Radical

Nicolas Lemann’s article about Bush in this week’s New Yorker is a must read for any number of reasons. (No More Mister Nice Blog highlights perfect illustrations of his adolescent bloodlust and his perfidious backstabbing, just to name two.)

I thought what was most interesting, however, is that Lemann seems to have concluded that Bush himself was a radical who persuaded Cheney and the other “grown-ups” that he was serious about governing in the most ideological way possible:

Clay Johnson … [said] Bush had begun the Vice-Presidential selection process by offering the nomination to Cheney. “The now Vice-President declined the option, but did agree to head up the search committee,” Johnson said. “And then came back some months later and said that in fact he’d changed his mind and he would be willing to run — to be the President’s running mate.” Johnson said he had a hunch about what had changed: “Lynne Cheney told some mutual friends of ours that she and Dick decided that in fact they did want to join the Bush ticket, because they came to really like George and Laura, and the Vice-President came to realize that the President wanted to come up here to really make a difference. He was not going to try to play it safe. Not try to extend an easy, moderately successful four years into an easy, moderately successful eight years. He was going to try to come up here and make dramatic changes to the issues he thought needed to be addressed. And the Vice-President got very, very energized and excited about doing that. And so now we have Dick Cheney as Vice-President.”

In other words, the team that most people thought of as being made up of a moderate, conciliatory, relatively unambitious Presidential candidate and his bland, self-effacing, government technician of a running mate had thrown in together on the basis of a mutual decision to govern in pursuit of radical change. And they have done that.

Lemann goes on to predict that if Bush wins there is absolutely no reason to believe that he will be cowed by his failures or the impending disasters that await at every turn, but rather will use his power to enact the most sweeping revolutionary agenda in modern history — including the privatization of social security. He shows that in this way, Bush is predictable. When it comes to the most radical elements of the conservative agenda — creating a permanent GOP powerbase, foreign policy neoconservatism, tax cuts for the wealthy and starving the entitlement programs out of existence, he is perfectly serious. Bush has moved to the middle only as a feint to either buy time, appease certain constituencies or to placate a powerful insider like Powell (or maybe his father’s inner circle.) But, at heart, he is as rigidly ideological as a Norquist or Gingrich and even more determined to follow through.

Lemann knows all these people and has met Bush, so it’s probably wrong to second guess his interpretation. However, I find it very hard to believe that anecdote Clay Johnson tells about Lynn and Dick joining up to aid the cause, at least with respect to one important detail. I don’t doubt that Cheney didn’t particularly want to be involved in Bush II. Bush I was an ignominious failure for the true believers and he had no reason to believe that the sequel would be any better. But, I can’t help but be a little bit skeptical that the Cheneys were so impressed by Junior’s grand strategic vision and ideological committment to the cause that they couldn’t help but sign on.

What they realized was that Junior was easily manipulated with flattery and appeals to his manly prowess in contrast to his father and they could successfully push him to enact their grand strategic vision. Seriously, George W. Bush was barely a fully formed adult in 2000 — it is simply not believable that he was merely pretending to be this amiable doofus while hiding his secret plans to change American politics and the world.

None of that makes any difference in the results, however. They were able to persuade Bush to adopt their radical agenda without missing even a beat. Their most difficult challenge was dealing with institutional resistence from much of the governement (and even the GOP establishment) which was weak and ineffectual but still managed to muddy Bush’s image as a CEO manager over time. And, of course, the abject failure of policies that have Bush in a perilous re-election fight that should have been easy after the gift (a trifecta!) of 9/11.

Like Atrios, I believe that there is absolutely no reason to buy the nonsense that the “good” Republicans are going to step up in the next term and make sure that Junior’s little cabal is stripped of its power. They couldn’t if they wanted to and I’m not sure they do. Junior has never shown even the slightest indication that he’s displeased with his radical “achievments.” Indeed, if he wins, he will perceive it as a sweeping mandate and validation of all he’s done. That’s how he thinks.

Let’s hope that John Kerry will be able to penetrate Bush’s folksy facade one more time tonight and reveal the abstruse radicalism of his powerful advisory cabal’s true agenda. On these domestic issues, if people knew what they were truly planning, Bush would drop in the polls like a stone.