Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Clarkism

Ray Teixeira analyses the gallup poll data and evaluates how Clark might appeal to some of the very people we need to win the election. (His site, btw, is invaluable and should be read with regularity by anybody interested in serious scholarly analysis.)

It tracks nicely with my instinctive feeling about the guy, so naturally I’m impressed.

The Demographics of Clarkism

In the latest Gallup poll, Wesley Clark once again is the top choice of Democratic registered voters around the nation. Clark garners 22 percent support, compared to Dean at 15 percent, Kerry and Lieberman at 12 percent and Gephardt at 10 percent.

These results are similar to an earlier Gallup poll of September 19-21, so Gallup was able to combine the data from the two polls and run demographic analyses of the different candidates’ bases of support. These analyses are quite revealing, especially when comparing Clark and Dean.

While Clark receives more support than Dean among both men and women, his margin over Dean among women is just 3 points (16 percent to 13 percent), but an impressive 12 points among men (29 percent to 17 percent). He also beats Dean in every region of the country, but especially in the south (25 percent to 8 percent). Also intriguing is how well he does among low income voters (less than $20,000), clobbering Dean by 26 percent to 5 percent. In fact, Clark bests Dean in every income group up to $75,000. Above $75,000, Dean edges Clark, 26 percent to 25 percent.

In terms of ideology, Dean beats Clark among liberals, 24 percent to 18 percent, but Clark wins moderates by 24 percent to 11 percent and conservatives by 23 percent to 7 percent. The general picture, then, is that Clark does especially well, relative to Dean, among the very groups where Democrats have been having the most problems. That suggests to DR that the emerging Clark candidacy deserves very serious consideration indeed.

And there are other reasons, too, of course. Like Clark’s ability to raise a large amount of money in a short time period. Or his increasing success in connecting with voters on the retail level. Or that he may be able to generate considerable support from blacks, the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituency. Or, counter-intuitively, the very thing that has led to so much criticism of Clark from his Democratic rivals: he’s not a “regular” Democrat. He says he voted for Nixon and Reagan. He only recently registered as a Democrat. He’s said nice things about Republicans in the past.

The fact of the matter is that in today’s anti-establishment, pro-outsider mood–witness the destruction of Gray Davis and election of Arnold Schwarzenegger–these are probably all good things to have on a Democratic candidate’s resume. Swing voters who are dissatisfied with Bush and therefore inclined to look closely at the Democratic candidate will not be put off by Clark’s partisan heterodoxy; on the contrary, it will make it easier for them to see the Democratic candidate as an agent of change, not of the Democratic party’s establishment (as, say, Gephardt or Kerry) or of the liberal faction of the party (Dean).

This last is big, particularly in the South. Clark being a “Manchurian Republican” is primary campaign hype. His narrative “journey” to the Democratic Party is a powerful invitation to many who have been brainwashed by the dittohead crapola but are feeling the cognitive dissonence of Republican triumphalism/failure. Combined with the natural affinity of the cavalier culture with a succesful military man, Clark is the best positioned to edge out Bush in a few critical southern swing states.

On a grander scale I think he can win because he’s got a look, a biography, a confidence and a story overall that serves as a metaphor for manly achievement and leadership — the current obsession of the entertainment zeitgeist. If we can’t get George Clooney or Michael Douglas to play the role, I’d say Wesley Clark has got the best chance of winning the hearts and minds of the giant studio audience we call the American public. And, as an extra added bonus, he can actually do the job.

Before everyone starts calling me a shallow-piece-of-shit-Clintonite-DLC-pig, please be advised that I’m a pissed off Democrat of the highest order, so Dean is da man for me as far as that’s concerned. I love what he’s saying and in a perfect world he’d be my guy. Indeed, according to the poll, he already is — he wins with liberals in Democratic states who make more than 75k a year (or used to …)

But, I am rather desperate that we keep these right wing zealots from doing any more harm and that means taking back the presidency in 2004 and immediately working on taking back the congress shortly thereafter. I believe that Clark has the best chance of doing that and these demographics illustrate why.

But, lest anyone think that I don’t care about substance, I do support Clark for one major substantive reason beyond what I think is his electability. He’s a rare foreign policy expert/intellectual with long military and diplomatic experience who’s willing to enter the public sphere and do it as a Democrat. His thinking on the subject is completely correct, in my view, and that is one area in which the president of the United States (as we are seeing) really wields power and must exert control. This guy has the goods on this subject over any candidate in the race. He could re-shape the relationsip of the US with the rest of the world during a very challenging period and finally put to rest the left-over GOP red-baiting about the Democrats at long last.

And, if people are worried about Clark being too inexperienced on domestic politics, they should take heart that this is his weak point. When it comes to domestic policy, I just have a feeling that the Democratic Party can provide more than enough expertise. As an institution, we’ve forgotten more about successful economics and social programs than the GOP has blond fascist pundettes. I don’t worry that he won’t get the right kind of advice.

And, unlike our current president, he’s actually smart enough to understand it and make a decision all by himself.

Inside Neocon Baseball

Pandagon’s Rules

Apparently, the proper way to have handled Zimmer lunging at Pedro Martinez would have been for the Red Sox to head into the Yankees bullpen at the beginning of the game before anyone had done anything and then throw Zimmer down. Even though they hadn’t threatened the Sox or Martinez to that point, their history with the Sox, as well as the clear and present danger Clemens had historically posed to hitters would have justified it. And if we find out that they weren’t actually planning to attack Martinez, well, it’s okay, because we’d have brought peace and prosperity to the New York Yankees.

Indeed

From The Great Minds Think Alike Files

Holy Codpiece, Batman

The Great Tom Tomorrow (who does it much better)

Via The Great Atrios

Can You Blame Me?

Matt thinks I’m a tad cynical. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

Maybe, but I’m not the only one. Read this by Todd Gitlin.

… with the respect Americans have long paid to the most efficient hucksters, since P. T. Barnum, they admire him [Schwarzenegger] for the style with which he pulls the wool over their eyes.

For all that his supporters may think they’ve outfoxed politics as usual, Schwarzenegger is “smart” the way any conventional politician is “smart”: About his positions, he’s said next to nothing. California has snookered itself, thinking it’s defeated politics as usual. What it’s done is ditch a blah celebrity in favor of a wow celebrity.

And so, once again, the Democrats reaped the bitter harvest of their own pallor and incompetence. As governor, Davis droned. As lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante droned. As campaigners, they droned. Neither shone. Neither made himself lovable. They gave lousy spectacle. In a world of stargazers, they were third-magnitude stars. And so they discredited politics.

Thus did the self-made demagogue spin implausibility into victory. Give him this: He struck a blow at dreariness. He pulverized doubt. He proved himself the king of demolition as self-help. Life’s a movie, after all. Don’t like the government? Go out and blow up some stuff. Nothing is real.

Just remember, it isn’t only a “California problem.” It’s a national problem. And, it ain’t going away.

[Schwarzenegger] campaign officials now concede, preparations for his candidacy and especially for the remarkably successful strategy he would follow — avoiding the traditional press and going straight to the entertainment media with vague messages and movie-style sound bites — were laid as early as June, when they conducted a series of highly revealing focus groups.

The groups, put together in San Francisco and the conservative San Fernando Valley, almost unanimously described Gov. Gray Davis as indecisive, remote and beholden to special interests. Schwarzenegger was seen in a much more positive light; the participants were generally aware of the actor’s involvement with the Special Olympics and after school programs in California. They also expressed less interest in policies and more in “leadership” when asked what it took to govern.

The focus group findings gave birth to one of the most audacious media campaigns ever waged, in which the candidate made an end run around the establishment media — newspapers and the more serious television news shows — and used talk radio, entertainment shows and televised daily events to sell himself to “viewers” (as voters became known to some inside the Schwarzenegger campaign). He presented himself as an outsider who, though light on detailed policies, was decisive, optimistic and forward-looking.

[…]

The most important element to me was striking the balance between policy Arnold and celebrity Arnold,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican consultant who worked on Peter Ueberroth’s short-lived campaign. “Schwarzenegger made people comfortable with the idea that he could govern. The lesson is that substance matters, or at least the appearance of substance.”

In fact, Schwarzenegger sat down for more lengthy interviews with print journalists than critics believe, said Walsh — 13 in 9 weeks.

But many of the articles that appeared seemed to have been influenced by the television coverage, a number of experts said, with much of the emphasis placed on Schwarzenegger’s appearance and manner, rather than his comments on policy matters.

“What we were witnessing was a highly evolved version of a tendency already in place,” said Schell. “The power of the entertainment media eclipsed the serious media. Nobody seemed to notice.”

How about this:

David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, noted: “We sometimes don’t like to admit it, but acting is part of political leadership. Franklin Roosevelt once told Orson Welles that they were the two best actors in the country.” He said that Mr. Schwarzenegger “has a window to do things that few others would have, but it’ll close fast.”

[…]

Mr. Reagan was a consummate pragmatist, but he was guided by fixed views. It is not yet clear whether Mr. Schwarzenegger is, too, but he has so far pursued his career goals single-mindedly, while reinventing himself periodically.

When asked, before he ran for office, what kind of governor he would be, Mr. Reagan famously answered: “I don’t know. I’ve never played a governor before.”

By the end of his presidency, he would confess there had been times when he “wondered how you could do the job if you hadn’t been an actor.”

Or (save me) how about this:

The 20-year-old voted for the first time because “this year it seems like your vote counts.”

She went with the recall and was leaning toward Schwarzenegger “because he wasn’t a politician,” she said. “And I also really liked his wife.”

But at the last moment, Richardson switched her vote to Green Party candidate Peter Camejo.

Now maybe we can completely change American politics in the next 12 months by running a sincere and earnest campaign based upon the issues and good old fashioned grassroots campaigning. But after last week, I am more convinced than ever that we will lose huge if we try that.

I admit that I’m cynical about how the process works these days. But, I also think I’m realistic. I’d like the Democrats to wise up and save this country from the radical right wing that holds all institutional pwoer in the federal government right now. And that will not happen by spending the next year deluding ourselves that the people in this country vote on the basis of 12 point plans and “Dingell-Norwood” bills.

Most people think that politics is an interactive reality TV show. We’d better be prepared to put on a good show.

Let’s Roll

I have, at long last, added the following links to the blogroll. I’m sure that most of them are already regular stops. I urge you to check out those that may be new to you. They’re all good.

My list is in no particular order, as you can see. This means absolutely nothing except that I dread alphabetizing the whole damned thing.

Smirking Chimp

The Hamster

corrente

Steve Gilliard

Whiskey Bar

Left Coaster

War Liberal

Suburban Guerrilla

Open Source Politics

Tristero

Mark Kleiman

Mad Kane

Not Geniuses

Sasha Undercover

Crisis Papers

Easter Lemming

Bohemian Mama

Nitpicker

Prometheus 6

Crooked Timber

Take Back The Media

Pen-Elayne

Brief Intelligence

Book Notes

Update: I knew this would happen. I forgot some of the links I intended to include.

I’ll add them for awhile as I think of them:

Prometheus Speaks

longstoryshortpier

discourse.net (a law professor for our side)

hellblazer

Political Spann

Atrios is featuring an interesting Novak note (Via Cosmic Iguana) about CIA disgruntlement over the leak of Johnny “Mike” Spann’s name in the media in November 2001.

You do have to wonder if Novak ran his Plame story past the same CIA contacts who expressed such outrage over Spann. Why would they have such completely differing views on what should have been the same issue — unless his CIA sources are not very well informed and didn’t know Plame’s status. (Then again, maybe Novak is a lying piece of garbage and never bothered to check it out with the CIA, always a possibility, considering his political bias and habit of believing traitors when they tell him what he wants to hear.)

There was a difference between the Spann case and Plame, though — and not just because Spann was dead.

The CIA itself made the early determination that revealing Spann’s name wouldn’t compromise anyone in the field because of the kind of operative he was. This is from the NewsHour November 29, 2001:

TED GUP: I think Jim Risen is right in his read on this. I would caution that we not read too much into this disclosure. I don’t think that it represents a sudden break with tradition or policy at the agency, a sudden rush towards revelation and openness. I think that the reason that his identity could be revealed was not only because it was somewhat compromised by the media, because in the past others have been outed, so to speak, by the media in life and in death. And the agency has not owned up to it. But in this case, I think he was purely paramilitary in his functions, as opposed to the sort of clandestine case officer working in an embassy who has a long-running relationship with foreign nationals, running them as agents, getting intelligence and documents and such.

So in this case, exposing his identity, I think, did not run the risk of endangering foreign nationals who are who were reporting to him. I think he was in country a brief time. He had only been at the agency for two years, and so I think they could afford to disclose his identity without those other ramifications.

Larry Johnson, angry Novak critic on the Plame affair, was also a big critic of the administration’s admitting Spann’s CIA affiliation. His fear in that case, was that Spann’s family would be in danger from terrorists.

Here is the CIA’s official response to critics about the Spann revelation.

It is very interesting, though, that somebody leaked Spann’s identity to the media and proceeded to turn him into the first military hero of the WOT, replete with Arlighton burial. Tenet was right out front in the beatification, most people believing at the time that he was desperately trying to salvage the CIA’s tattered reputation after having failed to predict 9/11. We must remember that the Spann revelation took place only about 6 weeks after that day. The country was in a frenzy.

But looking back it sure reeks of the administration using the CIA for self-serving politics and PR — much the same as the Plame scandal, if less dark and sinister.

Perhaps the best defense at this point for any leaker, if caught, is to say that since the administration had been leaking the names of CIA operatives since November, 2001 they just didn’t realize that there was anything wrong with it. It has been SOP from the very beginning.

And A Little Child Rode His First Pony, Too

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A powerful car bomb has killed at least 10 people outside a central Baghdad hotel used by U.S. officials, injuring many and filling the air with thick black smoke, police say.

Eyewitnesses said they saw a car crash through the security barrier at the Baghdad Hotel and explode. The hotel is widely thought to be used by members of the CIA, officials of the U.S. -led coalition, their Iraqi partners in the Governing Council as well as U.S. contractors.

A policeman at the scene said at least ten people had been killed. Hotel employees said five or six bodies lay in the hotel courtyard.

At a nearby hospital, a Reuters photographer saw more than a dozen wounded, many seriously. Several were Iraqi policemen.

Maybe we should all pitch in to sent the NBA refs to Washington and New York to teach the media how to avoid being manipulated by hectoring coaches into changing their calls. From what I’m seeing this morning, the kool-aid kidz are completely in the tank.

move along folks …

Look! A family eating dinner!

Arroz con Idiota

Rice Fails to Repair Rifts, Officials Say

Cabinet Rivalries Complicate Her Role

This is a potent issue for the Democrats.

The problem is not just Condi Rice. In fact, it isn’t really about her at all. It is about a president who doesn’t know what’s going on and who no one listens to or respects. His administration is awash in infighting and backstabbing and the result is, as the article says, a dysfunctional foreign policy that is incoherent and ineffectual.

The issue is leadership; the real deal, not the solid-gold dancer jumpsuit version. A puppet whose strings are being pulled in 5 different directions isn’t a pretty picture. But, that’s what’s happening, and it’s been clear that it’s been happening for quite some time.

[…]

In Rice, “you’ve never really had a national security adviser who’s ready to discipline the process, to drive decisions to conclusions and, once decisions are made, to enforce them,” said one former senior NSC staff member. In particular, he said, “she will never discipline Don Rumsfeld” when he undercuts decisions that have been made. “Never any sanctions. Never any discipline. He never paid a price.”

[…]

As the administration enters an election year, the situation has become worse, several officials said, because everyone understands that no one will be fired no matter how far they stray from policy.

These managerial questions have been especially acute on the administration’s policy toward the three countries identified by Bush as the “axis of evil”: Iraq, Iran and North Korea. In each case, officials said, the NSC has been unable to bridge gaps in ideology and establish a clear and consistent policy.

From the start, top administration officials have waged a bitter battle over policy toward North Korea. Powell has led a group seeking to engage with the secretive and isolated communist government; Rumsfeld and Cheney believe talk is useless and have sought to destabilize and ultimately topple the government. Neither side has gained the upper hand, resulting in a policy stalemate that has left allies and North Korea perplexed.

The two factions, convinced they had the backing of the president, have pursued contradictory policies, often scheming to undermine each other. Insiders said that Rice rarely kept on top of the intramural bickering, though she seemed to lean more toward the Rumsfeld/Cheney group, and at times recommended policies to the president that he later rejected.

The debate sharpened after North Korea acknowledged a year ago it has a secret nuclear program.

North Korea demanded talks with the United States, but the administration insisted that other nations be at the table. When China agreed in April to act as a host of the talks, some State Department officials quietly hatched a plan to have Powell give instructions directly to the head of the U.S. delegation, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, that would allow him to speak to the North Koreans.

When Kelly briefed members of the Rumsfeld/Cheney faction — which opposed the talks — they moved quickly to thwart him. Within four hours, State received instructions from Rice that specifically forbade Kelly from speaking directly to the North Koreans, officials said.

The North Koreans, stunned that they would not get a one-on-one meeting, refused to attend the planned second and third day of the meetings, held in Beijing, and the talks were generally viewed as a failure. To win a new round of talks, the administration reversed itself and agreed to bilateral discussions during a six-nation conference held in August.

Similarly, the administration has veered between talking to Iran on issues of mutual interest, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, and appearing to foster a revolt against the ruling clerics by street demonstrators. “Iran is an emblematic example of how this administration, when it is so deeply divided, just can’t produce a coherent policy,” said one NSC participant in interagency debates.

More than two years ago, the NSC began drafting a presidential directive on Iran that would officially set the policy. But the draft has gone through several competing versions and has yet to be approved by Bush’s senior advisers. Rice has scheduled a number of “final” meetings to approve the draft, but consensus was never reached and the president never signed the document.

Thus, as the administration faces a showdown with Iran over its nuclear programs and needs its help in Iraq, administration officials can point only to a brief statement issued by the president in July 2002 as defining the administration’s policy toward Iran.

“All too often what you’ve had in the last two years is diametrically opposed views between OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] and others, and then no decisions being made. A lot of stuff gets papered over,” said a State Department veteran.

Rice’s hands-off approach is most evident in the aftermath of the war with Iraq. Administration officials felt that the postwar effort in Afghanistan — a diverse collection of nations doing assigned tasks — had been inefficient and ineffectual. So the Pentagon was given the primary responsibility for rebuilding Iraq.

Yet, after former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his armies vanished in early April, signs quickly emerged that the Bush administration had not completely prepared for the aftermath. The early relief and reconstruction effort, assigned by Bush to the Pentagon in January, stumbled over such basics as staffing, transportation and communications. U.S. authorities sent inconsistent messages about Iraq’s political future and proved unable to provide a clear vision to Iraqis or Congress of what the Bush White House intended.

“The NSC is not performing its traditional role, as adjudicator between agencies,” said a State Department official, who described “a very scattershot approach to staffing and management. You never knew quite what you were supposed to be doing and with whom.”

A U.S. official who served in Iraq said the NSC failed to make decisions about Iraq’s postwar reconstruction and governance until long after the war ended. Decisions that some agencies thought had been settled were unexpectedly reopened or reinterpreted by the Pentagon, he said.

Even members of Rice’s staff expressed frustration. The NSC and State Department staffers were stunned to learn, for example, that the Pentagon, with the approval of the vice president, had flown controversial Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi into southern Iraq after Bush had opposed giving Chalabi special treatment.

Some of Powell’s key lieutenants, who had gone along with the president’s decision to give the Pentagon the principal postwar role, were frustrated first by the Defense Department’s refusal to include them — and then Rice’s unwillingness to intercede.

“Everything went back to Washington, where it became tangled up in the bureaucratic food fights,” said the official who served in Iraq. “Absolutely everything.”

Yet, the president responsible for this is mess is still seen as a strong leader, despite his falling poll numbers on individual issues:

Thirteen months before the 2004 election, a solid majority of Americans say the country is seriously on the wrong track, a classic danger sign for incumbents, and only about half of Americans approve of Mr. Bush’s overall job performance. That is roughly the same as when Mr. Bush took office after the razor-close 2000 election.

But more than 6 in 10 Americans still say the president has strong qualities of leadership, more than 5 in 10 say he has more honesty and integrity than most people in public life and a majority credit him with making the country safer from terrorist attack.

Something needs to be done about that because that’s a very large part of what people are going to be voting for. And once the Republicans get through with whoever the Democratic candidate is he’s going to be bloodied and damaged, no matter how perfect he starts out. The failures of this administration have to be laid directly at the feet of George W. Bush or he and his war chest will win.

If You Have To Ask You Can’t Afford It

Looking back over the last 6 months or so, I find that Rush, surprisingly, has a big problem with the government helping people with their prescription drug needs. Whoda thunk?

Back on March 17th, he had this to say:

Rosemarie Lowry, sixty-seven, of Braintree, who lives on less than 800 dollars a month, and takes medications for everything from high blood pressure to depression, said she was harassed by a Walgreen’s pharmacy in Quincy when she said she couldn’t afford her medicare copayments. She said the pharmacy gave her one pill from each of her ten prescriptions and told her she’d get her full thirty-day supply if she came back with the copayment.

The pill-a-day-approach continued for several days until the pharmacy just cut her off. At that point, Lowry said, she borrowed the twenty dollar copayment from a friend and got her medicine. “I need my prescription,” she said, “It’s not like I’m taking the kills– pills– because I like taking pills.”

So we got a little game going on here. The copayment was fifty cents. They raised it to two bucks, but there is an out because there is a federal law: pharmacies must fill prescription even if the patient says they can’t afford the copayment. My friends, can I just tell you the way this is too–

Copayment of two dollars means that these drugs are essentially free! Two bucks! Interesting that they — don’t ask this lady if she has any family members who could pay the two bucks. But — even apart from that, in addition to Medicaid, the major drug companies offer compassionate care programs for those who can demonstrate they can’t afford their medicines.

And these companies spend billion dollar — billions of dollars a year on, in – in disbursing free drugs in hardship cases like this. So you come up with a law that says “uh [mumbles] if somebody says they can’t afford a copayment, you’ve got to give them medicine anyway.” So, the copayment goes up from fifty cants to two bucks, and all the patients have to do is say they can’t afford it.

Can’t afford two bucks? I’m telling you — this — this is like, free drugs!

Two bucks. It’s just — you — you think the welfare system hasn’t gotten out of hand? You think the sense of entitlement in this country hasn’t gotten out of hand? What do you mean, I’m out of touch? Don’t give me this out of touch. You mean to tell me that I — because I can afford two bucks, I’m out of touch. Is that what out of touch means now? Because I can afford two bucks? Don’t tell me this. I hear this out of touch business all too often. And it’s a bogus charge.

And it’s — this is my point. This is how ridiculous this is getting. This is how serious the entitlement mentality in this country has gotten. People — [unintelligible] — two bucks copayment! That’s all it is. For a prescipt — two dollars. Well, can you buy a can of dog food for two dollars? You can’t even say that I am faced with the choice

here of dog food or my prescription copayment. Cause dog food’s more expensive than two bucks! We don’t have dog food copays yet, but I’ll bet ya to hell they’re coming.

Dog food copays, just so Democrats’ll have some hardship cases to demonstrate how it is the country doesn’t care anymore about the seasoned citizens of America. Two bucks! Out of touch, my sizeable derriere. You know, [taps papers on console] [sighs] unbelievable. I’m — I don’t know what John Kerry’s done. John Kerry’s trying to figure out whether he’s Irish or Jewish today. You know, it’s saint Patrick’s day today, and he’s got a big identity crisis he’s facing.

I don’t know what John Kerry’s doing about the two dollar copay, for crying out loud. [sighs] But, you see folks. This is — what I mean. This is where this stuff starts. People are not now even willing to fork up two measly — and don’t give me this fixed income — two bucks! Two bucks! It’s — it’s essentially — this is nothing!

You’d certainly never guess he was fucked up out of his mind on narcotics. Why, he makes just perfect sense…

And you can bet that right after this little koo-koo rant they cut to commercial and Rush immediately swallowed a fistfull of 20-dollar-a-piece little blue babies and washed them down with a frosty Pina Colada Slim Fast. No wonder he was pissed. Just the thought of $2.00 a pill drove him to madness.

See, Rush knows from prescription drug hardship. The National Enquirer published some of his alleged e-mails in which he was very, very afraid that he wasn’t going to be able to get his “medicine” either.

100=2.5 to 3 days of the little blues[oxycontin] You know how this stuff works…the more you get used to the more it takes. But, I will try and cut down to help out. But remember, this is only for a little over two more weeks. Just two weeks….I understand your challenge and will do all I can to help. But I kind of want to go out with a bang if you get my drift. Hee hee hee.

He was going into rehab in two weeks.

Poor Rush. See, he deserved his “medicine” because he had a 250 million dollar contract to spew bile all over the airwaves condemning old people for not being able to afford their life-saving blood pressure medication. And, sometimes even that wasn’t enough.

Damn. It’s a sad, sad day when a fucked-up, filthy rich, Republican junkie propagandist has to lower himself in front of the help by promising to cut back on his Oxy just to keep his monkey fed. What’s this world coming to?

Deep Thoughts

Just for the record, I would urge all 16 people who read this blog to read the testimony of Generals Clark, Hoar, Shalikashvili and McInerney before the Senate Armed Services Committee on September 29, 2002. (And pay close attention to the hostility of the Republican Senators toward all the generals except the kool-aid drunk McInerney. Dumb is much too kind a phrase to describe them.)

You will see that General Clark gives a highly nuanced view of the situation in Iraq and that he objects quite strenuously to some language in the newly drafted resolution — with which Senator John Warner sandbags the generals by asking them for an opinion without giving them the benefit of seeing it before that moment.

It is fair to criticize candidates, and Clark is going to have to find his way through this kind of minefield, so I am not accusing anyone of unfair tactics. Indeed, criticism of Clark’s approach to Iraq is similar to the item that Kerry’s staff distributed about Dean’s “threat” to seniors. Dean explained that he was bluffing his Republican legislature in order to stop them from passing some bad legislation and it worked. Clark’s view (and many others’) on Iraq was that the congress needed to give Bush the tools to get the UN to make a similar bluff to Saddam.

Part of politics, war and diplomacy is playing devils advocate or bluffing your opponents. If you take a literalist approach you will find many odd statements by politicians as they attempt to finesse certain issues publicly. Politicians have to be able to deal with those accusations and frankly, Dean did it a lot better than Clark did yesterday.

But, the issue is pretty much the same. If you read this testimony, you will see that Clark accepted that dealing with Iraq in the near future was a done deal. He expressed reservations about that, but moved quickly on to the importance of multilateral rather than unilateral action, and he spoke at great length about the political risks both in Iraq and around the world of a badly planned post-war and the pre-emption policy in general.

If Joe Lieberman took this testimony as proof that Clark was unreservedly supporting the resolution, he was mistaken.

As I have written before, Clark made the rookie mistake of musing aloud to the NY Times and others about his hypothetical thought processes if he had been a Senator who was required to cast a vote. He allowed them to see him turning over a complex issue in complex terms, something they are incapable of conveying properly. Due to his belief that a resolution of some sort was required to get the UN on board, a very important goal in order to prevent Bush from setting the precedent of pre-emption, like may others, he found the issue challenging.

This was a big mistake. He should have simply said then — and yesterday — “I took the president at his word when he said he needed the Senate resolution to get UN backing to force Saddam to allow inspections and disarm. If I had known then that he was misleading the congress and the nation about his true intentions to go to war no matter what, I would not have voted for it.”

Unfortunately, Clark’s going to have to learn how to dumb himself down like that if he wants to be a politician in 2003 America. He needs to smile a lot and tell people about what it was like to claw his way back from being seriously wounded in Vietnam. He needs to humbly admit that it was a privilege to personally command the mighty NATO forces to save the Muslims of Kosovo — all without losing a single American life in combat. That is what sets him apart from the others. That’s his narrative.

His intellectual depth and integrity are (sadly) irrelevant (if not downright liabilities) except as they advance his personal story — the up from the bootstraps, self-made man stuff. He needs to talk as little as possible about policy prescriptions and concentrate on his vision for America. He needs to get over any modesty he has about being a hero and a born leader. He’s a politician now, which means that bragging and whoring his story is the job description.

Wesley Clark is now in the entertainment industry, just like everybody else in politics.