The Bush Plan
The Bush Plan
The clearest analysis of George W. Bush's midterm election victory is a Nov. 25 editorial by The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes. Although the scope of the GOP's gains two weeks ago can't be denied?regaining control of the Senate has profound implications; to a lesser degree, denying Democrats a majority of statehouses was surprising as well?Barnes argues that giddy Republicans ought to sober up.
The President has two enormous tasks: aggressively prosecuting the war on terrorism and restoring the economy. If he's successful on those fronts, not even the combined reincarnation of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr. and Winston Churchill would stand a chance of defeating the Bush-Cheney ticket in 2004. Barnes writes: "Simplicity is a virtue in White House (and congressional) agenda-setting. An uncomplicated program is easy to manage, easy to promote, and easy for the public to understand. We know this from the successful presidency of Ronald Reagan and the failures of Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and Jimmy Carter. Reagan stressed two goals similar to Bush's. One was to defeat communism and win the Cold War, the other to revive a stagnant economy. For Reagan, the rest of the agenda, while not unimportant, was details, to be left for senior administration officials and congressional leaders to work out."
Which means that Bush must take action on Iraq?and ignore what you read in the newspapers; this war is imminent, no later than January?and lay down the law to Congress on revamping the tax code. Although capital gains reductions might have to wait, the next phase of his 2001 tax legislation must be pushed up to 2003, as opposed to a year later; in addition, the tax cuts have to be made permanent. And the double-taxing of dividends has to be repealed. If Bush can realize progress on the economy by next year's third quarter, he'll have the clout to deflect Democratic opposition to the partial privatization of Social Security, an issue that didn't hurt North Carolina's Elizabeth Dole and South Carolina's Lindsey Graham in their winning Senate races. And the vital school voucher program can be revisited.
It'll be up to Karl Rove and other Bush administration officials to squash divisive legislation that socially conservative Republicans are itching to propose early next year. Any protracted battles over the environment, say, or abortion, will only serve the Democrats' and media's purposes by obscuring the President's chief concerns. Obviously, now that Sen. Patrick Leahy's wearing a dunce cap in a dusty corner, Bush's judicial nominees (and probable Supreme Court choices) will be given a fair up-or-down vote in the Senate instead of being bottled up in the Judiciary Committee.
As it is, the Democrats are still stuck in a pre-9/11 mindset. They convey no recognition of the country being under attack by Islamic fascists and that the only way to combat that threat is to kill every last Al Qaeda member and recruit. Sen. Tom Daschle, still whining about the election results, typifies his party's myopia. Last week he said: "We haven't found bin Laden, we haven't made real progress in finding key elements of al Qaeda. They continue to be as great a threat today as they were one and a half years ago. So by what measure can we claim to be successful so far?"
Why Daschle and his colleagues don't understand that this war will continue for the next decade is beyond me; it's not a predictable, on-our-schedule conflict. In addition, there has been progress: Al Qaeda's Afghan nest has been blown up, scattering combatants across the globe; thousands of fanatics are in custody; and to date there hasn't been another massacre in the United States or Great Britain.
Should the "new" Al Gore make a similar claim in the coming months?same goes for John Edwards, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt and (one can only hope) Al Sharpton?Democratic fundraisers will be searching for an alternative by next summer.
Time for the Gold Watch
U nlike Garrison Keillor, the repulsive Midwesterner who augments his considerable income by drawing a paycheck from the national embarrassment known as public radio, I'm inclined to give The Washington Post's Mary McGrory, who's not quite as senile as Sen. Robert Byrd, some slack. The op-ed columnist isn't in the same league as peer Helen Thomas, the witchy Hearst correspondent who's inexplicably still accorded "first question privileges" at presidential press conferences; poor Mary just doesn't understand why American politics can't forever remain in the time warp known as Camelot.
Since the midterm elections McGrory's been among the last of elite pundits to accept the verdict of the nation's voters. It befuddles her why Walter Mondale lost his belated Senate bid to a more energetic and idea-fueled Norm Coleman. After all, as she wrote on Nov. 7, on their election-eve debate?in which poor Fritz looked and sounded older than his 74 years?the former vice president was "spirited" and represented "a voice desperately needed in the councils of Washington." She oozed about his "gravitas" and wondered why "the pride of Minnesota" lost to Coleman. Maybe it didn't occur to McGrory that Mondale's a dinosaur who lost 49 states in his disastrous presidential run against Ronald Reagan in 1984?carrying his own state by only a small margin?and was a reminder to that state's voters that he was chosen, in old-fashioned backroom politics, to replace the late Paul Wellstone just hours after the Senator was killed in a plane crash.
A week later, McGrory exulted in the elevation of Nancy Pelosi to House Minority Leader, an election that Republicans ought to zip their lips on instead of issuing slaphappy huzzahs about the "San Francisco Democrat" taking over for the washed-up Dick Gephardt. I still believe that Rep. Harold Ford Jr. was a far better choice, but Pelosi, who was reared in Baltimore, the daughter of the popular machine-pol Tommy D'Alesandro, won't necessarily turn out to be a soulmate of Baghdad Jim McDermott.
The GOP and the media make too much of Pelosi's adopted city. And her fellow San Franciscans are far too defensive, as evidenced by the Chronicle's Marc Sandalow's Nov. 13 article in that woeful newspaper. He wrote, presumably not under the influence: "For San Franciscans accustomed to ridicule for their embrace of such 'radical' notions as grape boycotts, domestic partnerships and smoking bans, Pelosi hardly registers as being on the liberal fringe. She routinely wins elections with 80 percent of the vote, or more, and is condemned by papers like the Bay Guardian [an awful "alternative" weekly that promotes a "progressive" agenda while ignoring its own history of busting its employee union] for being too much a part of the mainstream.
"'San Francisco voted for Al Gore?who won the election...voted twice for Gray Davis, voted twice for Bill Clinton. Dianne Feinstein is from San Francisco. Leo McCarthy is from San Francisco. Who are we out of touch with, Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay?' said state Sen. John Burton."
Quite an endorsement: voting twice for Bill Clinton and Gray Davis. And let's not forget the city's well-dressed and crooked mayor, Willie Brown. Pelosi's smarter than that: although she could use a speech coach for tv interviews, the attractive grandmother isn't going to blow her leadership by mimicking the claptrap of the moronic Sen. Barbara Boxer.
Still, Pelosi's elevation certainly isn't a sign that Democrats possess a strong bench. McGrory writes: "[Pelosi] sets out with a united caucus [says who?]. She bound the members to her by her crisp organizational skills and her hospitality. Right and left mingled happily with guards and secretaries at her buffet suppers in the whip suite on nights of late debates, partaking of Mexican soul food, or Italian dishes. It helped them to realize that having as your leader a bright woman who understands the importance of eating well isn't the worst thing that could happen to a wounded party."
So Pelosi is the human equivalent of "comfort food." Esquire's sure to follow with a feature story that cribs from that daft idea.
Poor Aunt Mary is so desperately clinging to memories of the 40-year-old Kennedy administration that she finds hope in Boston's selection as the site for the 2004 Democratic Convention. She defends her hometown as a bastion of progressive thought, conveniently omitting Boston's reputation as one of the most racist northern cities.
On Nov. 17, she writes: "Boston is right for the Dems. At a time when they have lost sight of what it's all about, they will benefit from being where it all began. They do not have a candidate, it is true, or a philosophy. They are outgunned and outfunded. But so were the colonists who started the Revolution with their fiery speeches in Faneuil Hall, which is not too far from the Convention Hall. The Old North Church, in all its spare splendor, still stands, the pewter candelabra made by Paul Revere still shedding light. Just next door, you can buy cannolis in Boston's Little Italy."
I don't particularly care where the donkeys hold their 2004 proceedings, although for commercial reasons Manhattan would suit me better. But Boston's a mistake. Aside from the not inconsiderable delight in having Teddy Kennedy trump the Clintons for party bragging rights, what advantage does the city hold? Nostalgia, perhaps, but that's not a hopeful sign for the party. The most audacious choice for a convention?leaving aside Florida, for practical political reasons?would've been Washington, DC. Having the four-day media story and rounds of parties in the President's backyard, with the none-too-subtle subtext of "We're taking back this city!" would do more to energize the party than a trip to the JFK Library, Fenway Park and Mike Dukakis' home.
Andrew Sullivan is a hard-working and prolific journalist whose eponymous website is a valuable research tool, once you become immune to his loathsome Beltway shorthand and constant namedropping. But Sullivan's habit of self-congratulation grates on the nerves.
Last Saturday, for example, he posted a sentence from a New York Times article, under the headline "Is the Times Getting Fairer?" He credits fellow blogger Tacitus for discovering a phrase in Richard W. Stevenson's Nov. 15 story, in which the Brookings Institution was correctly identified as a "liberal-leaning research group." Sullivan's conclusion: "Credit where it's due. Is the blogosphere making a difference?"
Translated: "Am I making a difference in my campaign against the paper that once printed my stories but stopped when I criticized their daily ream of Democratic propaganda?" No, Andrew, it's not the "blogosphere," but rather an increasing awareness on the part of the entire media?print, broadcast and Internet?that the Times is no longer the "paper of record," but rather a mouthpiece for the DNC.
And let's be clear: The acknowledgement that Brookings is "liberal" was a minuscule example of the Times "getting fairer."
Stevenson's article was hardly a departure from the one-sided information-gathering the Times employs in nearly all its stories. The reporter wrote about the Bush administration's plan to place as many as 850,000 government jobs in competition with the private sector. In the second and third paragraphs, Stevenson explained that union leaders are incensed at the announcement, writing: "They attacked the move as part of a broader effort by the White House to wipe out government jobs, take back Civil Service protections and advance an ideological agenda of cutting the bureaucracy."
It's not until the 11th paragraph that an administration official, Trent Duffy, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, is given a one-line quote. The rest of the story is turned over to a union official and the Brookings Institution's Paul C. Light, "an expert on the federal bureaucracy at New York University."
On the subject of blogs, isn't it time that Slate editor Jacob Weisberg realized that his running the "Bushism of the Day" feature has petered out? I understand that Weisberg has a financial interest in continuing the feature?he's published two books of collected "Bushisms"?but the joke is over. Last Friday's "Bushism" was taken from a statement the President made about terrorists in Portsmouth, NH, on Nov. 1. He said: "These people don't have tanks. They don't have ships. They hide in caves. They send suiciders out."
As Fritz Mondale famously said about 100 years ago in a debate with Gary Hart, "Where's the beef?" Linguists and smart-aleck pundits can ridicule Bush for using a word like "suiciders" but most Americans don't really care. They understand that while Bush doesn't speak, off-the-cuff, in perfect prose, the message of his remarks is more important. I think it's refreshing (and smart politics) when Bush refers to a Democratic proposal as "lousy," as compared to "ill-conceived," since that's how most of the nation's citizens speak themselves.
It bears repeating that in the late summer of 2000 when Al Gore was ahead in the polls, and reporters believed Bush was in freefall, the Texan's campaign was revived when he called, not realizing a microphone was still on, The New York Times' Adam Clymer an "asshole." The public indignation of the media after that Labor Day aside was astonishingly hypocritical, as if the men and women at the Times or Washington Post don't pepper their casual conversation with words like "shit," "fuck," "scumbag" and, yes, "asshole."
Scout's Honor
He writes: "I knew from my Scout training that I must not run like the scared kid I was, because no boy has a hope of outrunning a bear. I knew that even if the animal were to crash into our tent and take a bite out of me, I must lie perfectly still?and I believed I could do so, at least for the first bite or two... I considered the sudden possible relevance of the first aid I'd learned as a Scout: how to stop arterial bleeding, splint a fracture, treat for shock.
"One thing I did not think about was God. And when that bear finally wandered off, leaving me and the rest of the my troop free to creep out and find the telltale paw prints that our leader had taught us to identify, it was thanks to preparedness, not prayer, that the animal got neither our provisions nor our lives...
"Last week, after reading about Lambert's plight, I went deep into my closet, unzipped an old plastic hanging bag, and removed from the left breast pocket of my old Scout uniform a crisp red, white and blue ribbon adorned with a large silver eagle?my Eagle badge. I placed it in a box with some leaves, twigs and pebbles?pieces of this spectacular universe that I first began to revere as a Boy Scout?and mailed it to Scout headquarters in Irving, Tex., with a note.
"I had not realized, I wrote, what a small God I had aligned myself with when I took the Boy Scout Oath."
Perfect.
The Boy Scouts is a valuable institution?I still remember how to tie knots, identify trees and spot various birds as a result of my years in Huntington's Troop 12?but it's marginalized by petty issues such as strict adherence to the belief in God. Just as a couple of years ago the private group's flap over expelling homosexual members caused such a ruckus, this latest publicity damages the Scouts. So what if Lambert, who by all accounts was a model Scout, is an atheist? In an era when the lure of Scouting has vastly diminished?even in the mid-60s I took ribbing from buddies for belonging to such an "uncool" group?you'd think the leaders would want to be more inclusive.
Moyers-Keillor-Ivins Brigade
It's a hard-knuckled fact that 10 percent of Americans will never accept George W. Bush as president, still ranting about the 2000 "coup" in Florida, his administration's "shredding" of the Constitution and claiming the real motive for overthrowing Saddam Hussein is to corner the oil market. Fine: that number is far smaller than the percentage of citizens who reviled Bill Clinton during his rapidly forgettable regime in the White House.
So back to Garrison Keillor, who's been reduced to writing for the website Salon, a graveyard for likeminded malcontents like Arianna Huffington, Robert Scheer, Greil Marcus and Joe Conason. Give credit to Jake Tapper, the onetime political correspondent for David Talbot's barely breathing organ of hate that's just one civility-notch above the anonymous crazies at Media Whores Online. Tapper, despite being in the tank for John McCain in 2000, was too smart, and talented, to remain the regular contributor he was with Salon.
Not so for the aging Keillor, whose Norman Rockwell portraits of Lake Wobegon once charmed media elites for their evocation of the "real people" who would find New York or Los Angeles as odd as Bombay.
Keillor, a fan of Clinton who wrote in an August 1998 Time essay that the country ought to move on from Monica and the president's obstruction of justice, applies a different standard to Minnesota's Sen.-Elect Norm Coleman.
In a Nov. 7 brief, Keillor wrote this strange passage: "Norm got a free ride from the press. St. Paul is a small town and anybody who hangs around the St. Paul Grill knows about Norm's habits. Everyone knows that his family situation is, shall we say, very interesting, but nobody bothered to ask about it, least of all the religious people in the Republican Party. They made their peace with hypocrisy long ago. So this false knight made his way as an all-purpose feel-good candidate, standing for vaguely Republican values, supporting the president."
Nothing like a blind item to titillate Salon readers. What's Keillor's game? Is he saying Coleman's a "fag," a "philanderer," a pedophile or maybe a guy who likes to hang out in transgender threesomes? Beats me, but in the absence of any reported stories, which according to Pioneer Press columnist Brian Lambert were investigated by the state's media (who came up with nothing concrete), Keillor's warm-hearth tales have morphed into a bad imitation of the Voice's Michael Musto. And Musto, who virtually invented the "blind item" in New York, is up-front and humorous about his material. And doesn't name names.
NOVEMBER 18