DEBATE 1 POSTGAME

So! Did heads roll? Did the gloves come off? Oh, I don't know. This feels like a draw -- Bush sloganeered too much, Kerry talked too much Vietnam. These things always take a few days to shake out, so I'll wait on the sweeping generalizations for at least a few hours. In the meantime, here's what's shaking right now:

1. The debate was best in the last 20 minutes or so, when Lehrer had them discuss North Korea and Iran. Both took clear stands on either side of missile defense, which hasn't had much press lately, but is still in development. "I will cancel that program!" or something like that -- it's the clearest statement from Kerry since "I served in Vietnam." Clearler, actually.


2. The Saddam/Osama mix-up. It'll get pushed hard and you'll hear it plenty again soon, but I wouldn't say the rest of the debate left me thinking Bush had them confused, whether factually or ideologically. It sure didn't help, but I think its impact will be minimal. Remember, we all know and laugh at "Bushisms." Stay tuned.


3. On TV: Fred Barnes says Kerry did better than expected. Ceci Connolly says Bush seemed to run out of material. Click. Mike McCurry doesn't shout down Chris Matthews -- he's not that kind of guy. Click. Bill Schneider is guessing what he thinks the conventional wisdom is, right at this very minute. That must be exhausting. Click. Ralph Nader is on John McEnroe. I hope I didn't stay long enough to improve its ratings. Click. Bill Kristol doesn't think Bush talked enough about 9/11.


4. Did Kerry just announce the endorsement of one of the Eisenhower sons tonight? If so, he didn't give it more than half a breath. Don't you want to know that? Meanwhile, Bush should have used the "Sept. 10 mentality" line more than once.


5. I click back to Andrea Mitchell finds Kerry's willingness to give Iran nuclear materials. It's already out. Whoops!


6. Did you know the rainy season in Darfur is almost over? I didn't!


7. My younger sister, 19 years old and admittedly clueless on politics, was "very excited" to tune into the debate tonight. She came away without any great impression other than a lot of "back and forth." Saddam/Osama barely registered.

Tonight, I don't think the debate went as well as the Bush camp wanted it to, but Kerry can't claim outright victory either. He made his mistakes, too. We'll have to let it shake out.

DRUNK DEBATE LIVEBLOGGING

None here tonight, I'm afraid, but plenty of it over here..

NUCLEAR WAR, KIND OF

Did John Kerry just say he'd give nuclear material to North Korea or Iran and help them test it out? I think so. Will most viewers -- that's a lot of people, tonight -- realize he meant for fuel purposes? Do those who did know that believe North Korea wouldn't still walk all over the agreement? How many realize the Kims walked all over Clinton's foreign policy team, not to mention Jimmy Carter? I wonder...

MID-DEBATE NOTES

Lehrer disallowed opening statements, but then Bush and Kerry each gave opening statements anyway.

Did you notice it seems the television networks have decided to go ahead and show both candidates on the screen at the same time? Every general fights the last battle, and so does every journalist cover the last debate.

Both candidates need some new language; tonight Bush conceded the disagreement and doubts over his policies, and Kerry admitted that he can't talk well about the war. But still plenty of sloganeering.

P.S. -- Are you really watching those lights? I'm not.

TOMORROW'S JUICY QUOTE -- RIGHT NOW!

Bush just mixed up "Saddam Hussein" and "Osama bin Laden." Is that possibly the one misstatement that might hurt him?

P.S. -- "Daily Show" is going live at 11:00 p.m. tonight. You'll see it again there, I would expect, featured prominently.

Update -- Blog got to it moments before I did. I think Bush has otherwise been pretty good tonight, but watch for this clip in TV ads starting as early as next week.

BLOG, LIVE!

One of the privileged few to have attended both high school and college with this blogger, who pseudonymously blogs under the Zen-like moniker "Blog," is planning to blog the debate live. Blog really, really, really doesn't like George Bush, but neither is he gung ho for John Kerry. He'll surely mark his ballot for the Massachusetts senator, but I don't think enjoy doing it. Check in with him, starting about 6:00 p.m. PST. That way you'll be fair and balanced.

DEBATE 1 PRE-GAME

At 9:00 p.m. tonight, live from the electoral and meteorological ground zero of southern Florida, comes the first of three presidential debates. Everyone seems to think this will be the most-watched; it's all supposed to be about foreign policy and national security. Finally. Perhaps. Here's what I'm watching for:

1. The debate has been scripted out of the debate. This is basically a forum. The forum setup, where candidates may not directly address each other, was popular during the Democratic primaries where everyone was just worried about getting equal camera time. I think I speak for every television viewer, here: we want a classic moment! I know I speak for no campaign advisers on either team.


2. Two questions that will not be asked, but the answers to which I would like to hear: For Bush -- Will the United States seek a firm commitment from the next new Iraqi government to allow a number of standing bases to remain in Iraq indefinitely? For Kerry-- If China moved to invade Taiwan, would the United States send American servicemen to defend its ally, a democracy on the South China Sea?


3. Both candidates have big questions to answer on foreign policy questions. The impression exists, but is not yet dominant, that Bush is not giving honest assessments of where Iraq is at right now. He could derail those comments, or he could accelerate them. Kerry has so many problems: a split on Iraq policy among supporters, no known policy ideas, no consistent approach to foreign affairs, and nary a compelling sound bite all year.


4. Advice at least one Democrat has probably already given to Kerry: Ixnay on the Ietnamvay.


5. This plan to get rid of the timed lights, a Bush campaign demand, could actually sharpen Kerry. Faced with mandatory pithiness, he can prepare to give short, succinct answers. Imagine that! So why, just today, did his advisers make a ham-handed threat to remove the lights themselves? Perhaps they know something about Kerry's preparations that we don't.


6. Anybody really concerned about what happens if Bush mispronounces a word, jumbles a common saying or otherwise puts his oral skills on shuffle? Not that I can tell.


7. Bush does have one memorable line that he surely will not be the first to mention: "Mission accomplished."


8. Much as I would like to deny it, having lived well inside the Beltway for a few years now, my perception is rooted in the same media environment in which the lazy, liberalish established media thrives. I'll be talking to friends and family around the country for a day or so before I'm sure of the victor.


9. "Saturday Night Live" might be worth checking out. Seth "Kerry" Myers is neither a jocular cut-up like Will Ferrell nor an accomplished caricaturist like Darrell Hammond. Who even plays Bush anymore, I forget. Chris Parnell (less illustrious among the "ell" cast members) got booted from the role, as I recall. As I said, "might."


10. Roughly speaking, if Bush wins, the election may effectively be over. But if Kerry wins, it's like the groundhog's shadow -- we'll still have a few weeks to go.

I'll be watching. Later tonight I'll say what I can say about it.

BILLIONS AND BILLIONS

A Bush campaign ad up this week argues, more specifically than in the past, that Kerry proposed to cut the intelligence budget. To that claim, they add a price tag of $6 billion. While that may be far less than the $87 billion Kerry voted for-and-against, any time you put the word "billion" in a TV spot, voters will notice. The AP's Liz Sidoti went looking into the figure cited, and reports back:

To reach $6 billion, Bush aides reference a 1994 comment by Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., in which the committee's then-chairman says "the Kerry amendment includes a $1 billion cut in fiscal year 1994 and $5 billion over the next five years from intelligence activities." Kerry's campaign argues that the proposal was part of "a broad-based attempt to reduce the deficit" and was not aimed solely at intelligence funding.

Yeah. So in other words, there's no arguing about the facts, and Kerry pleads ignorant. Lest we forget, this was one year after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Can we hold him accountable for this oversight? Yes, of course, but only to a point. Past mistakes are past mistakes, and 9/11 changed both national parties (in different ways). But it does show what is instincts are; hasty calls to withdraw the troops and/or spend less money there, and his continued inability to say something original about Iraq or the war on terrorism only reinforce that perception.

P.S. -- The ad is playing in sixteen battleground states; Bush is competing in those states and maybe more, while the Kerry forces (527s included) have contracted their ad spending and get-out-the-vote efforts.

EXPECTATOR SPORT

Kerry was on "Good Morning America" today, where he did at least one thing right by talking up Bush's debating skills, but he also said something else that might not help much at all:

"He's a very clever debater. He's won all his debates -- he beat Ann Richards, he beat Al Gore. Look, he's president. Anybody who doubts that somebody isn't smart as president doesn't know what it's all about."

Did John Kerry just say anyone who question the president's intelligence can't be very smart themselves? Is it wise to call his own base voters stupid?

GOING NATIVE

While I'm inclined to agree with what Tim Noah has to say about the National Museum of the American Indian (I haven't visited), two things about this column greatly annoyed me: One, his but-of-course disapproval of the Washington Redskins mascot, less than a week after the highly respected Annenberg poll found actual American Indians overwhelmingly approve of the team's name and imagery -- by a debate-settling 90% to 9%. Two, even though the museum itself is called the National Museum of the American Indian, Noah insists on referring to "Native Americans," a U.S. government coinage, though Noah's own Slate pointed out, less than a week earlier, that more prefer to be called "American Indian" by a not-insubstantial 50% to 37%. I don't know if the phrase "enlightened ignorance" gets any use, but I'd like to point up this as prime example.

HEADS UP

There was no blogging to be found in this space yesterday, as you can surely infer from the date stamp on the post just below this one. Tonight, however, is the first of three scheduled forums with, er ... debates between, the two presidential candidates, so I'll be actively posting prior to the 9:00 p.m. (EST) start time and past the end an hour-and-a-half later. I'll return this afternoon. In the meantime, I've got to make some money.

THE RETIREE, THE REBOUNDER, THE RE-ELECTEE AND THE REPLACEMENT

Dan Rather has now been featured in an issue ad [Quicktime], now playing in the New York and Philadelphia TV markets, i.e. southern and northern New Jersey. This can't only be about Rather -- as Richard Nixon established thirty years ago, "Kenneth" isn't running for political office. So what is this about, some local race or the White House? Actually, both!

First, it "stars" hardly-electric former New Jersey senatorial candidate Doug Forrester. He lost his race after The Torch, aka Bob Toricelli, was forced to abandon his re-election campaign (to his old nemesis, the recently retired senior senator). Now that another statewide Democratic politician is having to give up office, it looks like he's running again. And why not? Bret Schundler can't put up much of a fight.

Second, Bush has closed the gap in New Jersey since the convention. Laura was there last week, but the campaign hasn't committed to spend any money there. Nor have the Republican 527s. Edwards was there today. New Jersey's supposed to be a Democratic stronghold; you don't see the campaign visiting California, do you? Keeping "Rathergate" in the news is only a plus for Bush-Cheney 2004, otherwise referred to in New York media as "Karl Rove."

But it is about Rather, as well. The New York Times says he might go by spring, though CBS disputes that. Ultimately, it was a problem of character first, and only one of politics second. More than that, it's the sign of more change to come. He and producer Mary Mapes let their better judgment get ahead of them, and their political judgments were surely a factor. But that he still hasn't conceded that the documents were fake says as much about his stubbornness as it does of other venerable figures, who once were acceptably called "newsmen," who do not understand what's happened to the media universe in the last ten years.

Me? I'm more interested in what Conan O'Brien has to say about his five-year wait.

MEMO TO A TELEPHONE ACQUAINTANCE

How you won your congressional primary is beyond me. Sure, your opponent was trounced -- trounced! -- in the general election two years ago, but perhaps that speaks to how little I thought of your chances. And that's my mistake all right, because now I wish I'd agreed to write a story about your campaign and your lawsuit. So, congratulations. I'll keep an eye out for you through at least November. The incumbent you're facing isn't exactly safe, but you're no powerhouse either. Sorry. And don't take this the wrong way, because I mean no disrespect. But. If you're calling up an infrequently published freelance journalist asking for advice on how much to pay your campaign manager, well, buddy, you need help I can't provide.

GETTIN' TO KNOW YOU

I don't want to spend much time on something that won't surprise you much, but I was amused to find a page at the Los Angeles Times (reg. req.) devoted to blogs. Like other major newspapers, the LAT knows little about the blogosphere, let alone what a blogger is. Then again, they probably do know more about the blogosphere than most of their readers. Why else would they include this warning:

These links take you away from latimes.com.

Thanks, that helps. I've never managed to locate the "back" button on my browser.

Moreover -- and here's the part that is unlikely to elicit more than a roll of the eyes: the bloggers listed lean in one ideological direction, four to seven. Actually, that's not so bad for a newspaper that employs the leftest leftist in the mainstream press, Robert Scheer, but not a single regular conservative columnist (Michael Ramirez is great, but as one editorial cartoonist, he's a voice in the wilderness). Even the San Francisco Chronicle has one; the New York Times now has two.

What's worse, apart from Kevin Drum, the list is devoid of Californians. Where's Calblog? Or Boi from Troi? Or Xrlq (to name just a few right-leaning blogs I check in with; I'm sure there's plenty of quality leftish blogs written from the world's fifth- sixth-largest economy)?

For several understandable (but not "good") reasons, the media doesn't "get" the blogosphere yet (to be fair, nor does much of the blogosphere understand what happens in a newsroom). Perhaps this is a start. If so, I'm afraid it's not a good one.

SHOW YOUR HAND

A former CBS correspondent (who is not named Bernard Goldberg) has a worthwhile op-ed in the Boston Globe today, pointing out that most television news watchers don't realize it's the producer (whose name may or may not appear before a given segment) that does nearly all of the reporting, not the star correspondent that everyone watches ask the tough questions. Certainly, the CBS memo scandal has changed this some; anyone who's followed the developments even casually knows that producer Mary Mapes, not Rather, was primarily responsible for the botched story on Bush's Guard service.

But one single-sentence paragraph gives the print side of the media far too much credit:

Television is the only medium of journalism in which there is a hidden hand behind some of the journalism that reaches the screen.

Really? Tell that to Jack Shafer, who's been waging a fairly effective battle against the "anonymice" -- i.e. the overuse of background sources. Tell that to Wes Yoder, the stringer who all but wrote several articles by former New York Times star reporter Rick Bragg. Tell that to any writer who actually did get their name on the byline, but who also had their story rewritten by the editors.

And now that I think about it, mightn't radio broadcasters such as NPR have the same issues as their higher-profile, televised counterparts?

Television news is going through a period of self-searching, just as the press did during the aforementioned Bragg affair, Jayson Blair kerfuffle, Stephen Glass contretemps, ad nauseum. Don't think for a moment that the print side is operating totally above-board.

SOFTBALL WITH DAN FROOMKIN

If you don't know who Dan Froomkin is, well, you're not missing too much. Froomkin is a columnist for washingtonpost.com (i.e. not the print edition). His job is pretty much to round up items about Bush from around the web and quote them at length. It's not a difficult job, but apparently he thinks enough of his position to be condescending at every turn. Well, he certainly is when it comes to the President. And considering his mandate, that's pretty often. Take yesterday's installment:

Don't expect hardballs. President Bush sat down with Bill O'Reilly yesterday for what Fox News is billing as an interview. But even President Bush said it was "just a visit."

O'Reilly made this his "Most Ridiculous Item of the Day" on last night's broadcast. Say what you will about the cable news ratings champ, but I'm inclined to believe O'Reilly did ask Bush a lot of tough questions and even followed up. Why? Because O'Reilly's whole shtick is giving people a hard time. (This doesn't mean he can't be tamed, as Slate's Jack Shafer points out, but to do so one must play hardball with him.) I seriously doubt Froomkin watches much of the "Factor". I certainly don't hold the not-watching-O'Reilly part against him, but I do hold the know-nothing know-it-all-ism part against him.

Anyway, this isn't the first time Froomkin has dismissively -- and incorrectly -- assumed the president and his advisers were getting the kid glove treatment. Here's an item from Taranto's column earlier this year:

This morning the Washington Post's Web site featured an online chat with Dan Froomkin, who writes the "White House Briefing" column for the site. Here's how he opened the chat:

Good morning everyone! Against my self-interest, I should tell you that I'm up against Karen Hughes, who is taking (I'll bet softball) questions over on the White House Web site.

Here's one of the "softball" questions Hughes fielded, from "Jim in Utah" (seventh question):

Did you approve of the President's gay-bashing? Is it really appropriate to use the state of the union address to bash minorities and propose constitutional amendments to take away the rights of minorities? Bush seems so small, petty, and certainly unpresidential when he stoops to such hate-mongering. When I see your face on TV I am reminded of the president's bigotry and intolerance. Shame on both of you.

I think it's about time Dan Froomkin found a new sport.

OUR BRILLIANT OPPONENT

Bush strategist Karl Rove, to the Washington Times:

"He will be the best debater the president's ever faced. We underestimate Kerry at our peril. He's very good at this; he thinks about it; he's an aggressor; he goes in there flailing."

Kerry adviser Tad Devine, on "Hardball":

"Let's face it. George Bush won the election four years ago in the debates. So people know Bush is a good debater. And I think John Kerry has got to show he has a different vision for where he wants to take America and the world."

It's called the expectations game. You were expecting something different?

But once again, the Bush campaign is proving the better players. Here's what else Rove said in the same interview: "Go get the tape of the eight debates with Weld. I like Weld a lot. He has a very sharp mind -- quick on his feet, nimble. And Kerry just undresses him eight times in a row." And here's Devine, in his same interview: "The president wanted the first debate to be on foreign policy. That's something they insisted on. That's because the president knows foreign policy is his strong suit."

Isn't he supposed to be talking the president's debating skills up, not down? Hmmm... he wouldn't be flip-flopping by any chance, would he?

GENUINE DRAFT?

Yesterday John Kerry solemnly warned a crowd of beleaguered Floridians that Bush would bring back the draft. Never mind that the Department of Defense has emphatically and repeatedly said the draft would be a bad idea. Never mind that the "shared burden" argument is extremely flawed at best and completely wrong at worst. Never mind that the only halfway serious attempt to bring back conscription in recent memory was made by a Democrat. No, John Kerry warns, Bush has a secret plan to reinstate the draft. As the Democrats accuse the Republicans of fearmongering, Democrats themselves are mongering plenty of fearful notions of their own.

And this was no voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it Kerryism; this is a Kerry campaign talking point, albeit one mostly directed at a constituency that doesn't vote (i.e. young people). Howard Dean, who has morphed into something like Kerry's left-wing college student outreach director, posted a bullet-pointed argument to this effect at his website, Democracy for America. Dean says our Armed Forces are "stretched thin" and "chronically understaffed" and recruiting isn't going so well. There's some truth to this, of course. So why do I find this such a kick in the pants? It's because Dean is himself making the case for a draft. He neither explains why imposing a draft would be wrong, nor does he say what Kerry would do instead. This reminds me of the Kerry campaign press release that highlighted the "lies, mischaracterizations, distortions and half-truths" from the Republican convention but didn't rebut a single one -- thereby voluntarily distributing a list of Republican talking points. (Wiser political minds prevailed and the release was eventually removed, but not before Captain's Quarters
saved it for posterity.)

Do we need a draft? I tend to think not, although the case for it is a fair and debatable one. I would rather pull troops back from places such as Japan and South Korea, or significantly raise military salaries so valuable servicemembers aren't lured away to the private sector. I still find the libertarian case against the draft very compelling -- especially when Milton Friedman is the one making it -- but on account of the war of civilizations that so far is still in the opening moves, I'll keep my mind open.

But let's end this where we began, with John Kerry talking out of his ass:

A question from the audience about whether Bush might bring back the draft gave Kerry a chance to vow that he will not bring back the draft unless there is some "global conflict."

Pardon? What kind of global conflict is he waiting on? China invading Taiwan? India invading Pakistan? Everybody invading everybody else, willy-nilly?

Here's one thing I don't get -- if John Kerry is supposed to be so damn smart, why is he always saying such stupid things?

°  °  °  °  °
P.S. -- For his part, John Edwards doesn't seem to recognize the implicit anti-American sentiment in his ignorant comments about "internationalizing" the effort in Iraq. Here's what he said on "Larry King" last night:

"For our troops to be safer, for us to relieve some of the burden on our troops, it's necessary for the Iraqis to no longer see this as an American occupation, that's one of the reasons we're seeing so much hostility there.

I'm all for bringing in more peacekeeping troops, sure. But why would Zarqawi and his fellow terrorists would accept the United Nations as a legitimate force in Iraq, but not the United States? Edwards doesn't say. Why would average Iraqis would trust the U.N. -- which fattened its wallets via the corrupt Oil-for-Food program -- but not the U.S. -- which led a coalition to overthrow the hated tyrant? He hasn't got a clue. John Edwards Dan Quayle with a better grin, nothing more.

Update, 9:45 p.m. -- The best news I've heard in awhile: NATO has finally agreed to send military trainers to Iraq. Can you guess which member nations objected? Here's a hint: Their names rhyme with "Tammany" (sort of) and "prance."

WHICHEVER WAY THE WIND BLOWS...

The Bush campaign's new anti-Kerry spot, "Windsurfing," is both to-the-point and pretty funny (Strauss' "Blue Danube" can be either profound or frivolous, depending on the context). Can the same be said for a single Kerry ad?

Update, 8:23 p.m., Thursday -- The Kerry campaign didn't like this one bit, responding almost immediately with a humorless, tsk-tsking spot decrying such a mocking attitude while troops are dying overseas. Ever skilled in rhetorical jujitsu, Taranto throws this charge back at them:

To be sure, there is a war on, but the scolding tone of this ad strikes us as a bit much. After all, if we're not supposed to be doing anything frivolous while men are dying in Iraq, what the hell was John Kerry doing windsurfing?

Taranto goes on to observe, "if we stop mocking John Kerry, the terrorists will have won."

KERRY GIVING UP WATCH

Fournier writes, via Hewitt:

Bowing to political realities, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has canceled plans to begin broadcasting television commercials in Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana and the perennial battleground of Missouri.

Of course these are all states Bush won in 2000, but Kerry needs at least one red state to fall his way if he's going to oust Bush -- especially Missouri. Even if Iraq takes a significant turn for the worse in coming weeks -- probably Kerry's best hope -- will he be organized well enough to take advantage of Bush's weakness? I won't give an unequivocal "no," but it seems unlikely. Kerry hasn't been organized much since, say, February.

NO FEAR?

In a speech today in Cleveland, John Edwards pulled out an old line or argument he used during his (unsuccessful) primary run, and gave it another go:

"Bush's tax agenda is the most radical and dangerous economic agenda to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy and shrink the winners circle."

I guess I'm a little surprised to see the return of the socialism/winners circle speech, but in general this makes more strategic sense than whatever the campaign thought it was doing before -- Kerry will hammer away on foreign policy, Edwards gets to talk about the home front. And if it marks a return to the "two Americas" theme, at least his rhetoric will be recognizable to voters. (Funny how "two Americas" seemed to be dropped altogether after Obama's "one America" speech...)

Anyway, does anybody really buy this? That the goal -- not the effect, the goal -- of the Bush-Cheney economic plan is to create a few wealthy oligarchs at the top with a vast serf class at the bottom? Does anybody really believe even John Edwards believes this? If so, speak up and prepare to defend yourself.

As I wrote in the immediate post below, on another subject entirely, it's generally a bad idea pin evil motives on your opponent (without really, really persuasive evidence to back it up). Yet that is clearly what Edwards is trying to do. It's not just that Republican policies will prove ruinous, but that the right is purposely trying to ruin this country. I recognize there are coherent arguments that Bush's tax cuts will have a deleterious if not disastrous effect on the country; I don't agree with them, but the complaint is valid. But has anyone claimed with any serious argumentation that the Republican party means harm to the vast majority of the American population?

Moreover, aren't Democrats and liberal commentators always saying that the Dick Cheney and Denny Hastert's are selling fear when they remind voters that terrorism remains a very real threat? How is it any different to suggest, in so many words, that the Republican Party will wage economic terrorism against you -- yes, YOU! -- if only they could? Even Cheney and Hastert don't say that a Kerry-Edwards administration would consciously choose not to protect this country. All they're saying is that the Democratic Party is incompetent. There's no active malice.

Unlike many intelligent people, I've never liked John Edwards. It's not that he's a lightweight (he is) or cloying (he's that, too) but that he's managed to persuade a great number of intelligent people that he's selling a form of economic populism that's somehow different from the class-warring populism of Democratic tickets past. It's not.

What he does have is that sunny disposition that every Democratic partisan has been looking for since 1980. Clinton had it, sort of. Many see it in Edwards. When John Edwards comes up with a catchy phrase -- which I am told "two Americas" is -- it'll be quite popular. When he says something so oppressively stupid and mean that it doesn't jibe, well, it's like he never said it at all.

P.S. Okay, so William Saletan sure heard it, back in the early summer when it first debuted. Curiously, he neglects the "winners circle" statement. The "socialism" bit is disingenuous but ingenious; "winners circle" is sugarcoated bile.

P.P.S. Shouldn't that be "winners' circle"?

OKAY, FINE -- BIASED IT IS!

I consider it bad form to ascribe the worst motives to one's opponents, which is why I am not too quick to jump up and down about the liberal media at every slight I perceive (and I perceive plenty more than I mention). Throughout the whole Memogate/Rathergate story, I've tried to focus on things besides Dan Rather's well known leftward tilt. Regardless of his political leanings, a good reporter can put those aside and hold both political parties to the same standards. I know there's past incidents where it appears he hasn't, but I've been trying to focus on this situation.

Well, today James Taranto highlights a very recent interview with Broadcasting & Cable magazine in which Rather decried the very Vietnam obsession his "60 Minutes" report is guilty of:

In the end, what difference does it make what one candidate or the other did or didn't do during the Vietnam War? In some ways, that war is as distant as the Napoleonic campaigns. What's far more import is this: Do they have an exit strategy for Iraq? If so, what is it? How will they address the national deficit? And what are the chances their plans will work?

Only, as you might guess, he was being asked about John Kerry and the Swift Boat ads. Barely a week after this interview's publication date (August 30), Rather was on the air with the now largely discredited story about Bush's TANG duty.

Would Dan Rather have run a similar story about John Kerry? My first response would be to give him the benefit of the doubt, and to not ascribe his journalistic decisions to rank partisanship. But he's making it very difficult.

Update, literally moments later -- Here is an Associated Press dispatch wherein CBS producer Mary Mapes tells senior Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart that Burkett was someone who could help them. I'm trying, really, really, really hard to believe that a very influential circle of people at CBS News are not using their access to help one presidential campaign against the other.

All right, I'm done trying.

(Hat tip: Wizbang.)

THE FRIEND OF MY ENEMY...

So, who's more condescending toward their political opponents' swing-state small-town die-hards? Democrats or Republicans? You be the judge!

MILBANK WATCH

Sheesh. File this one under "Dana Milbank is a lame-o" and roll your eyes while you're at it:

"[A] spoof group calling itself 'Football Fans for Truth' has formed with a game plan 'to raise awareness about John Kerry's eminent failures in the area of sports knowledge.'" [Details here.] ... But if Kerry has been sacked for [referring to Green Bay's Lambeau Field as] Lambert Field, it was Democrats' turn to chortle Thursday when Bush gave a speech at Dick Putz Field in St. Cloud, Minn."

Dick Putz? What a faux paux! I can't believe he agreed to speak there -- the Kerry camp have a blast with that one! Har! Har ... har?

TEASE STRIPPED

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is filling in as a guest columnist at the New York Times this weekend, and the op-ed teaser is a contentious one:

What the big-tent rhetoric ignores is that a more "black friendly" G.O.P. might pay a price in white support.

The column itself is not a bad one, except that it isn't really about what the headline writers had me thinking. That isn't really Gates' fault, though. Finally this topic comes up in the penultimate paragraph:

What the big-tent rhetoric ignores is that a more "black friendly" G.O.P. might pay a price in white support. "The Republicans would lose more white votes than they would gain black votes," Dawson says. And so blacks, as a one-party constituency in a two-party system, get sidelined.

And that's it. The sagacity of that statement is one most Times readers would never question. No further explanation needed, no further commentary offered.

But this leaves numerous questions unanswered, let alone asked. How can they say for certain? I don't doubt that there is some racism on the right, but I do question how much. And I question this inverse-proportional relationship.

• Let's say the GOP doubles its black vote in 2004 (highly unlikely) and takes 20%. Does this mean 10% of Republicans will go on strike this year, or will they wait until 2008 to flee the interlopers?


• Either way, where would these conservatives go? Home? In years like 1992 when a GOP candidate has disappointed them, they will. But are they prepared to stay home every four years for all perpetuity?


• To the Constitution Party? In 2000, Constitution nominee Howard Phillips took .09% of the popular vote. Independent Pat Buchanan, who isn't running this time, drew .42%. Meanwhile, Bush took a full ten percent of the black vote.


• What did these racist Republicans think of the convention this year, where minority representation was up across the board but most notably among African Americans?


• Check out this Free Republic thread -- do these right-wing crazies sound alarmed at the prospect of more blacks in the party?

Gates does make one very sound observation, however, and it is this:

Dawson ... agrees with [Karl] Rove that black people are socially conservative. But the issues they vote on are racial and, especially, economic.

Once the Republicans locate an economic issue that appeals African-Americans -- and school choice (just now stretching its legs here in DC) is one possibility -- they will start voting Republican. Even if it's no more than 5%, that could keep the Democrats out of power for a generation. And white conservatives will keep on voting pretty much as they have for the last 20 years.

P.S. This essay from Doublethink nails a fundamental truth about the balance between the two parties: Republicans are winning the war of ideas, Democrats gain from demographic changes. So long as this changes, party parity will continue. What will happen first -- Republicans finding an idea that catches on with minorities, or Democrats finding any ideas at all? The race is on.

THE OTHER FORGERY SCANDAL

Long after Joe Wilson's name has faded from the headlines, the Telegraph reports that a man who was the original source for those infamous "yellowcake" papers was in the pay of France:

Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.

Are you really surprised?

Hat tip: CQ.

INSIDER EDITION

A reader of the erratically-updated blog by John Ellis (who is all but responsible for his cousin's election, according to Michael Moore) writes:

The business cost to CBS of acknowledging forgery could ultimately be much larger than mere damage to the brand. Think Arthur Andersen.

I've been thinking along the same lines. The events of the past few weeks, and especially those of the past few days, have reminded me of "The Insider," Michael Mann's terrific (if likely fake and inaccurate) film version of the 1995 "60 Minutes" (Sunday only then) Big Tobacco whistleblower kerfuffle, which at the time threatened to derail CBS' merger with Westinghouse.

Here's the always great Christopher Plummer as "Mike Wallace," screaming at CBS brass in a way he (or perhaps Bob Schieffer or Andy Rooney) may have done this week:

"I've been in this profession fifty fucking years. You and the people you work for are destroying the most-respected, the highest-rated, the most-profitable show on this network!"

And here's "Wallace," storming about in a way I can picture Dan Rather bellowing:

"I don't plan to spend the end of my days wandering in the wilderness of National Public Radio!"

Plummer's "Wallace" again, in a quote that applies to any number of individuals this time:

"Fame has a fifteen minute half-life, infamy lasts a little longer."

Actually, the only relevant quotes I could find at the IMDb are from "Wallace," which makes sense as long as the possibility exists that Rather's story could lead to a crippling lawsuit. As usual, Al Pacino -- starring as now-former "60 Minutes" producer Lowell Bergman -- has all the best lines and shouts them like no one else can shout, but none of them really lend themselves to the events of 2004. When I find out more about Mary Mapes, perhaps that will change.

P.S. Hey, Mr. Mann. "Collateral" was pretty weak. You need to direct something with gravitas, quick. Why not make a movie about "Dan Rather"?

SCORING POINTS

I won't say this race is over. Then again, even making such a statement implies that I've considered that possibility. But just a few months ago, I considered the same thing -- with a different man being inaugurated next January, of course. I probably follow the polls too closely. On that note...

To expand on something I wrote in a comment below, that Gallup poll showing Bush up 13 might well be a high-end outlier, but a few things stand out about his lead at this time:

1. That's a really high high end.


2. At no point this summer did Kerry ever lead Bush by 13 points; the widest margin was probably five points.


3. The other polls, including robos Rasmussen and Harris plus the presumably more reliable CBS/NYT and Zogby, all show Bush at worst statistically tied but nevertheless ahead.


4. If you're superstitious (and we political junkies can give baseball fans a run for their money) an incumbent who: leads in Gallup on Labor Day, a Republican who: wins Ohio (where Bush is now solidly ahead), and a candidate who: takes those psychic Missourians, always wins. Almost always.

And I can't think of anything comparable to say on behalf of Kerry. If -- and don't get me wrong, those italics are appropriate -- Bush wins in a landslide, the non-partisan analysts will look back to data like the above and declare: "It was obvious!"

YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY. WELL, I DO

Los Angeles Times' Peter Wallsten did some digging and managed to find out the identity of "Buckhead," the Free Republic user to first notice problems with CBS' documents. What he finds is truly shocking:

"Blogger Who Faulted CBS Documents Is Conservative Activist"

I don't know about you, but I was not aware that conservative activists visited the Free Republic website. Apparently Buckhead is an attorney whose law firm that works with right-leaning groups. Now that's interesting! Nor was I aware that Freepers were called "bloggers," even if they do not actually write for blogs. (Because I first read this article on the web, I am assuming this means Mr. Wallsten is a blogger, too.) Thanks, Peter!

More indispensible factoids from this groundbreaking article:

The identity of "Buckhead" ... is likely to fuel speculation among Democrats that the efforts to discredit the CBS memos were engineered by Republicans eager to undermine reports that Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard more than 30 years ago.

This is true. I hope Wallsten saw the same Hotline clip I did (see post below) and writes a story about that. Perhaps if he visits Ra^thergate he'll follow this link back to the Free Republic and speculate that this all might have been engineered by Democrats. Up with hope, I say.

Update, 12:53 a.m. -- Turns out the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs just did!

P.S. -- Many thanks to Heminator at Ra^therate for the shout-out -- hello, readers ... uh, I mean bloggers!

RETURN TO OS

Today's Hotline [sub. req., warning: institutional prices] has an intriguing scoop regarding the lawyer for retired, irate, anti-Bush Guardsman Bill Burkett, who looks more and more like the source for CBS' phony documents with each passing news cycle:

Burkett atty [David] Van Os is currently running for TX Supreme Court -- here's his campaign website -- and has been, according to his bio, a Dem activist since '72 and served as Travis Co. Dem chair from '96-'98. A Hotline source notes, "This is the same county Democratic Party for which Dan Rather gave a speech in 2001, causing a blowup questioning his impartiality. He claimed at the time that he only agreed to give the speech as a favor to his daughter ... Maybe it's just a coincidence" (e-mail, 9/17).

What does this all mean? I have no idea, except it's possible that Rather is so convinced that his source is "unimpeachable" (to be honest, when I first heard this I wondered if it could be Bill Clinton) because he knows him personally. So the vast left-wing conspiracy grows? Who's to say? If anything, it should throw some water on the theory that Karl Rove is behind it all.

KERRY GIVING UP WATCH

John Kerry might be a fop, but he's no friend of the FOP. From The Hill:

The nation's biggest police union has voted to endorse President Bush, after Sen. John Kerry failed to respond to its candidate questionnaire.

The 318,000-member Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) made its decision at its national board meeting in Albuquerque on Sept. 10. This is the first time in the group's history that it has made a unanimous endorsement, FOP Executive Director Jim Pasco said.

He said the Kerry campaign declined to return the group's lengthy and detailed questionnaire despite repeated reminders, angering union members.

"Not only are we strongly supporting Bush," Pasco said, "we're mad at Kerry. Our members feel he treated them without respect -- 318,000 cops. He's galvanized our base against him. It's just stupid."

The article goes on to explain why the union might have been unlikely to endorse him, but the Kerry camp didn't even try. Damning. But it gets worse. Their excuse:

"We would have to shut down the whole campaign if we answered every questionnaire we got," [Kerry deputy campaign manager Steve Elmendorf] said. "We don't have time to answer every questionnaire. We're happy to ask for people's support and talk to them."

Who's running this campaign? Susan Estrich?

KILLIAN IN THE NAME OF

Yesterday the secretary for the late Lt. Col. Jerry Killian -- putative author of the CBS documents -- came forward to say that a) the documents are forgeries, but b) sounds like what she remembers from Bush's tenure with the TANG. CBS spokeswoman Sandy Genelius replied:

As far as we can tell, this individual is not a documents expert. We believe the documents, which were one part of the 60 Minutes story, to be genuine. It is notable that she confirms the content of the documents, which was the primary focus of our story in the first place.

Talk about having it both ways. CBS is happy to accept the half of her story that supports their argument, but not the one that contradicts them? Please. Moreover, why does it matter that the woman is not a "documents expert"? Neither was Gen. Bobby Hodges, whom CBS initially pointed to as a corroborating source, but upon actually seeing them decided they were fake. Not to mention, the actual experts CBS consulted told the network they were highly suspicious even before the segment aired.

Who's running CBS News these days? The Nixon administration?

I WILL DEFEND TO THE DEATH YOUR RIGHT TO ... WELL, AT LEAST I'LL WRITE THIS BLOG POST

Far be it from me to defend Robert Novak, but one minor dust-up from this Saturday's "Capital Gang" has attracted some attention -- none of it favorable, and someone's got to stand up for him. I guess it'll be me.

For those who may have forgotten, a Novak column from 2003 mentioned the name of one Valerie Plame, wife of a former diplomat and current John Kerry supporter, and apparently a CIA agent in her own right. Though it seems likely that whomever told Novak this committed no actual crime, a special counsel investigation continues. Novak and a few other journalists were threatened with jail time if they didn't reveal their sources; so far nothing has come of it. Novak is almost always in a sour mood, but I've been told by those in a position to know that he loved every moment of attention that came his way.

Now that it appears more and more likely that CBS got taken for a ride with fraudulent Texas Air National Guard (aka TANG, which I can't type often enough) documents, some are calling on the network to reveal its sources. On CNN this Saturday, Novak joined them. Co-panelist Al Hunt took him on for what apparently looks to many like hypocrisy. Here's the relevant passage.

HUNT: Robert Novak, you're saying CBS should reveal its source?
NOVAK: Yes.
HUNT: You do? You think reporters ought to reveal sources?
NOVAK: No, no. Wait a minute.
HUNT: I'm just asking.
NOVAK: I'm just saying in that case.
HUNT: Oh.
NOVAK: I think -- I think it's very important. If this is a phony document, the American -- the people should know about it.
HUNT: So in some cases, reporters ought to reveal sources.
NOVAK: Yes.
HUNT: But not in all cases.
NOVAK: That's right.
HUNT: OK.

What a pointless exercise in news talk point-scoring. This conversation should have gone:

HUNT: Robert Novak, you're saying CBS should reveal its source?
NOVAK: Yes.
HUNT: You do? But aren't you keeping your source secret in the Valerie Plame case?
NOVAK: Yes. My source told the truth. CBS' did not. End of story.

If CBS is a responsible news organization (and I really have my doubts right about now) then their confidentiality agreement, whether on paper or verbal, should be revocable if the information supplied proves false. Otherwise I could peddle documents purporting to show that Al Hunt had been arrested for exposing himself to a kindergarten class, and if someone bit, I'd still be free to push a story about how Hunt likes to dress up in Nazi regalia and goose-step around his home office. I bet he wouldn't like that much, either.

ORDINAL SINS

Have I really said nothing about the CBS memos yet? I haven't, which is odd considering that in my capacity as a professional writer I've been working almost nothing but. Perhaps I'm tired of it. At the very least I do hope Dan Rather throws in the towel before much longer. Expert analysis seems to be running 5 to 1 or more against the documents' authenticity, and considering not only that all but a few who knew the supposed author think they are false, but that some of them even warned CBS about exactly that.

Then we have some rather basic errors on CBS' part, which have me further convinced that Rather and his producers are in way over their heads. I need not run down all the old ones, because I'm a week late to the story and you can find out pretty much everything else, plus links to the other bloggers leading the charge at RatherGate.

Instead I'll point out a few things I haven't seen anyone else mention.

First: When Dan Rather made his first defense of the story on Friday's Evening News, he referred to the typeface Times New Roman as "New Times Roman." It's a little hard to take seriously a "debunking" of the charges of negligent reporting against you when the follow-up reporting is slipshod as well.

Second: Much of the debate is over fairly arcane issues of proportional fonts, superscript and kerning (the space between lines characters). Having once edited a magazine, all of these things are pretty elementary for me, but I find it strange that everyone keeps talking about how the superscript is an unavoidable fact of using Word. To their credit, CBS notes this in their latest version of the story:

Katz, the software expert, pointed out that the documents have both the so-called "superscript" th (where the letters are slightly higher than the rest of the sentence, such as 6^th) and a regular-sized "th". That would be common on a typewriter, not a computer.

"There's one document from May 1972 that contains a normal "th" on the top. To produce that in Microsoft Word, you would have to go out of your way to type the letters and then turn the "th" setting off, or back up and then type it again," said Katz.

Or type out "111th" and when the superscript happens automatically, immediately hit Ctrl-Z (PC) or Option-Z (Mac). But in general, this is rarely mentioned. If you ask me, it's further evidence of the likelihood of these being forgeries. Why a typist would switch back and forth I'm not sure; especially in light of news that the late (alleged) author's secretary came forward to say she typed everything he wrote, but she never typed such a thing. But when both superscripts and "111 th" show up in the document? That sounds to me like someone who was mindful of incurring unwanted superscript, but also careless -- or possibly so incompetent with Word as to get frustrated and leave it as is. I suppose this is pretty weak argumentation, but it's not as weak as CBS' lame excuses.

HURRICAMPAIGNING?

There's a reason no such word exists. Today's Tampa Tribune has a damned interesting article on Florida, politics and the weather:

Those people include campaign staff and the candidates themselves, many of whom have families to care for and homes to board up.

Mail has been slow as well, with different fliers for the same candidate arriving the same day, limiting their effectiveness.

About the only candidate who may get some benefit from the situation is President Bush, who has been photographed inspecting storm damage and distributing water or ice to victims as his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, oversees statewide operations.

The president's challenger, Sen. John Kerry, has stayed away to avoid appearing insensitive enough to attempt business as usual.

"There's going to be a tremendous advantage to incumbents," said Darryl Paulson, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. "It shortens the campaign cycle. Any challenger who is trying to connect with the voters can't get name recognition."

There's a close presidential race and a close Senate race (with no incumbent, actually) yet no one's done a lick of campaigning since late last month. It could be weeks before there's another statewide opinion poll worth taking seriously.

This makes me wonder about what will happen if the hurricanes actually do end up helping Bush in Florida. Will the Michael Moore paranoiacs start raving that the Bush family controls the weather? Or that the Saudi royal family controls the weather?

MISSOURI, REVISITED

With all the passion of an auto factory assembly line robot, the Washington Post notes the wider trend hinted at below in my post asking why Kerry has all but given up on Missouri. About all they have to say on that bellwether state is:

Democratic hopes for victory in Missouri have diminished sharply, as well.

Is that what the Kerry campaign told the Post? Surely not. Well, probably not. As I noted before, Missouri is one of several states to turn toward Bush in recent weeks, and not the only contested purple state -- Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota -- to have done so. Unfortunately, the Post explains little. Perhaps the Kerry campaign wasn't of a mind to offer its thoughts on this right now.

LATE NIGHT VS. KERRY

David Letterman, last night:

"John Kerry says the 'W' in George W. Bush stands for 'Wrong.' But he still can't explain what John Kerry stands for."

Oh sure, Letterman gets Bush pretty good often enough, but those jokes rarely cut as deep. Jon Stewart may be in Kerry's corner, but he can't count on the others for a thing.

P.S. -- Lifted straight from today's Hotline, originally from last night's football game:

"You're in the right state for that" -- Al Michaels, after John Madden said "this is what you call a flip-flop" during the Pats game in [Massachusetts] (ABC).

Zing! As with Letterman, it may be a small thing in itself, but it does underscore just how successfully the Republicans have defined Kerry's public persona.

P.P.S. -- And I may as well add: I approve, for tactical reasons of course, but also because that definition is, on balance, correct.

CAMPAIGN CONSULTANT PRETEND

Am I missing something or is John Kerry crazy to keep advertising in Washington state while pulling back from Missouri? The facts:

• Al Gore won Washington by nearly 140,000 votes, or about 53% of the vote. While not as easy as California, it's a rout compared to Oregon, where Gore squeaked by with a 6,700-vote margin.


• The latest survey shows Kerry leading Bush there by 8 points.


• George W. Bush won Missouri by a healthy but not robust 79,000 votes. Not as purple as Oregon, but definitely not a solid red.


• Bush currently leads in Missouri by 11 points, thanks to his post-convention bounce. But as of two weeks ago, he led by just 4, according to the Hotline's (unlinkable) Scoreboard.


• Washington and Missouri have the same number of votes in the electoral college: 11.

So, let's say you're entering the home stretch of a presidential campaign, as Mr. Kerry is right now. You cannot hope to win by winning again the same states your predecessor won the last time and expect to be president -- in fact, electoral reapportioning due to the Census has already subtracted a few votes from the Gore states.

Pop quiz: Do you spend good money in the expensive Seattle market, which you are not going to lose unless the whole thing goes down the tubes in a Bush landslide? Or do you put that money into a state Bill Clinton won twice and which was still losing jobs as of July?

Perhaps not crazy. Just incompetent. Or I'm missing something. But seasoned presidential contest-watchers also know that the road to the White House goes through Missouri. The state has gone to the losing candidate only once in 100 years, when they chose one of the Adlai Stevensons over Ike. Oops. Add in the fact that Missouri is the most demographically representative state in the union, is home to the (theoretical) population center of the U.S. and is but half a state away from the geographic center of the U.S., and you have the ultimate bellwether state.

What does this mean in real campaign terms? Easy: A strategy geared toward winning Missouri necessarily must appeal broadly. A strategy geared toward winning bleeding-heart Washington state is more likely to alienate swing voters who tilt at least somewhat rightward.

It's this simple: Win Missouri, win the presidency. Give up trying to win Missouri and consign yourself to being the sixth Democrat to lose the White House in eight tries.

DINO HUNTER

Ed Koch is one of a few prominent Democrats to support Bush this year -- entirely because of Bush's foreign policy -- and he makes a point of highlighting his many, many disagreements with this administration on domestic policy. Likewise, if I found myself supporting a Democrat in a future election, I believe I would have a lot of explaining to do. Even before an audience ready to receive my apostasy, I'd have to add a litany of caveats, if only to assuage my own conscience. Zell Miller by all rights should be a Republican today, but he's ornery after watching his party lurch left over the past twenty years. His convention speech was an act of conscience.

Now consider this: Late last year I ran across a Wall Street Journal essay by the science fiction writer Orson Scott Card taking his fellow Democrats to task for failing to support Bush in the Iraq war and more. Because Card included not even the slightest hint of dissent from the Republican or conservative line, I had to ask: what makes him a Democrat?

Flash forward to this past week, when I run across Card next, reviewing Hugh Hewitt's ambitiously-titled book about Democrats, "If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends On It." He writes:

Now, as a Democrat, what can I say to that except that, because my party has been taken over by an astonishingly self-destructive bunch of lunatics who are so dazzled by Hollywood that they think their ideas make sense, I have to agree that right now, any President but Bush and any Congress but a Republican-dominated one would be disastrous.

I love it! But it's not just Bush he wants to win -- he supports any and every Republican running for Congress this year. What gives?

He makes fun of Al Franken -- I approve! He calls the Clinton years an "empty presidency" -- true! He says the Democrats stole the 1960 election -- possibly! So why is he a Democrat? As if to display something resembling at least bipartisan bona fides, he points out that he's voting against the local sheriff, a Republican, and his "cabal" (hmmm, that word is pretty much only used by the Left these days...). But from the way he tells it, he's simply voting against a corrupt political machine; a practice that's hardly the sole province of Democrats. And he does speak approvingly of Joe Lieberman ... but the way I do.

I don't know much about Card. I've never seen his fiction, I rarely read his essays, and I can't be bothered to dig too deep. But if he wants me to buy him as a serious-minded dissenter, he has a lot of explaining to do.

Update, 5:43 a.m., Saturday -- Post now amended to include last clause of last paragraph. Fairly important, that.

REMEMBER: I'M A "SMALL-L"

I've blogged before about the depressing absurdity of anti-war libertarians (while tipping my hat to the Postrels and Instapundits, i.e. those who get it) but today Taranto finds something even more disturbing: a 9/11-disrespecting Libertarian presidential nominee. I recall Harry Browne being a bit of a goofball, but this Badnarik fellow reminds me why I cut off my ties to the Libertarians when I did (early 2000) and then some.

P.S. -- That story about me and the Libertarians is a good one, but the insiders here know I should wait to see if Jerome ever returns from China before finding out what's safe to share and what's not.

A QUADRENNIAL REALITY MINI-SERIES

A few days ago, I noted that the Republican convention seemed at times like a TV awards ceremony. Today Joe Hagan of the New York Observer reports that it was no accident. Best tidbit: the guy who designed the "island" stage for Bush's speech also designed the set of "The Man Show." And I'm pretty sure I forgot to mention the "RNC-Js," which were a little disorienting. Naturally for the Observer, the piece is somewhat hostile to the right, but it's still worth reading.

P.S. -- Unrelated, but also in today's edition is a review of Graydon Carter's anti-Bush book by notorious VF-firee Toby Young, who may not be a liberal but is no one's idea of a Fox News talking head, pointing out the slipshod arguments his former boss passes off as insight:

In What We’ve Lost, he writes: "Prime Minister Tony Blair’s credibility as well as his political reputation and aspirations have been severely diminished by his support of Bush’s unilateral invasion." (Given that British forces participated in the invasion, that’s an idiosyncratic use of the word "unilateral.")

Tell that to Michael Moore/Jimmy Carter/Howard Dean/Al Gore/John Kerry! Or the Observer editors, for that matter (though they hardly come off as activists). History won't be kind to the "unilateral" argument, because a cursory review of the facts reveals that "unilateral" means "without France, Russia and China."

FREE ADVICE

Memo to conservative commentators: If you find yourself writing that the president is "reliable, focused, disciplined, plain-speaking, and trustworthy," or if you positively reference his "moral stature," don't be surprised if Andrew Sullivan likens you to Communists supporting Kim Jong-Il.

Memo to Sullivan: This is no way to repent for any over-praise of the president you may have made (many times) in the past.

Update, 4:17 p.m. -- The Ombudsgod has noticed the same thing w/r/t Sullivan overall.

CURRENT EVENTS

If you ask me, Andrew Sullivan's been losing it lately. I say that partly because his inevitable renunciation of support for Bush apparently came down to the fact that Mary Cheney wasn't on the stage at Madison Square Garden last Thursday night. I say it also because he smeared Zell Miller as a Dixiecrat, which is especially bizarre when you consider Miller's appearance at a New York event with Herman Cain, an African-American. It's that kind of carelessness -- not merely his recent zeal for attacking conservatives -- that annoys me. Here's an example from today:

[T]his war, vital as it is, has been exploited by the Bushies for political purposes since it began. How else to explain the "Mission Accomplished" photo-op or the bare-knuckled 2002 Congressional campaign?

Sullivan doesn't explain why '02 was tougher than other years, so I see no need to address that point. But I'll definitely explain why the banner is about more than domestic politics. That's easy. Tommy Franks explained this last month:

"I wanted to get the phase of military operation over as quickly as I could, because a lot of countries on this planet had said as soon as that major stuff is over, we'll come in and help with all of the peacekeeping," Franks said.

This is hardly trivia ... right? I'm quoting a CNN story that's less than a month old. Surely Sullivan, a man informed enough to write regularly for Time and the Times of London and a blog about current events, should know such a thing.

LEFTOVER CONVENTION THOUGHTS

Two stories the media covered to excess at the Boston convention weren't repeated this time around. The whats and probable whys:

1. The bloggers: The DNC bloggers didn't get out and report, but mostly wrote about being interviewees. From what I saw this past week the RNC bloggers either kept doing what they always did or went out and were the interviewers. But this time, "big media"'s interest had subsided, which is probably for the better anyway.

2. The parties' response teams: The GOP spin room got a lot of newspaper coverage in Boston, and while a bit of it was condescending, Ed Gillespie, Rudy Giuliani and others got their sound bites out. But in New York, no one paid much attention to the Dems, in part because they botched a few events (and the mainstream media finds little sociological intrigue to report about liberals). Plus, any focus on Kerry or the Democrats last week was all about falling in the polls and rumors of a "shakeup" -- they just couldn't get on offense.

A LOW-RES VIEW OF THE NEW YORK CONVENTION, ON THURSDAY AND FRIDAY

Let's get the most important part out of the way now: Yes, I saw the president's speech. No, I didn't get any pictures. Why? Because when I got kicked out of the guest section (great seats but not general admission, as I thought) back to the general admission press stands (behind the stage, though I could see him from the back) I accidentally left my cell phone wedged between two seats on that side. Only after the balloons fell could I get back up there to retrieve it and take more pictures. So I did get a few after the speech, too. But nothing historic, nor in focus. Just pretend I ill-advisedly ran these all through a Photoshop filter.

(Note: I've piled more than a few posts atop my far better Wednesday round-up, so check it out if you've missed it.)

Here's them purty pitchers:

Thanks to the lighting here, this is about as good a view of the stage as you'll get from me.

And no thanks to my camera, I might add.

I do believe this gives the best look at the arena overall. On the left is the stage, now reconfigured to add a walkway and circular island so Bush can give his speech from the center of the crowd. Either that or it's a "giant phallus thrusting him into the nation's lap," according to what must be a sexually frustrated Frank Rich.

Those lights most of the way up are the media-occupied skyboxes, including Al Jazeera. That dim spot may be the NHK toybox I mentioned in the "Wednesday" wrap-up. Just above them and to the left (directly above the stage) you can see the red, white and blue balloons, ready to fall in a matter of hours.

Speaking of those hours, I promised a recap of the night's events in an earlier post, so here goes:

• Rep. Henry Bonilla of Texas got convention business off to a start with the color guard, invocation and pledge of allegiance delivered by celebrated former Olympians and ostensible non-midgets Mary Lou Retton and Kerri Strug.


• Watching ex-Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann and (yet another onetime) Olympic darling Dorothy Hamill, I could be forgiven for thinking I was at an awards ceremony instead of a political convention. From their scripted banter and lame jokes to the lines unbearably delievered in unison, I expected they would say at any moment: "And the winner is..."


• Up next was the Michael Williams, former Texas railroad commissioner, whose first campaign was managed by none other than George W. Bush. They lost. Funny guy, though.


• Then Donnie McClurkin, a Christian recording artist and repentant sodomite who has allegedly compared homosexuals to child murderers (he disputes the comparison). Inclusive!


• Afterward came Mel Martinez, Bush's former HUD secretary. I hear Martinez was guaranteed this slot only if he won his Senate primary just two days earlier. He did, and he spoke. I noticed he said nothing about Hurricane Frances, even though about 20 members of the Florida delegation have flown back to board up their homes. Assuming nobody makes much of that, I'd bet on a GOP pickup in Florida this year.


• Then came the first "surprise" of the convention -- General Tommy Franks walked out to announce himself as a registered independent endorsing Bush for another four years. I say "surprise" because Franks may not have been on the official schedule, but he had all but given away he imminence of his endorsement on "This Week" a few Sundays back. Interestingly, Franks was the first Caucasian male on the dais this evening. But don't hate the white man! Franks was awesome, and just maybe he'll change his registration in time to join the Giuliani-Franks ticket in 2008. (Fingers crossed.)


• Then: Michael W. Smith. He goes back to the 1980s as a recording artist. Say what you will about him, unlike other Christian pop/rock stars he's not trying to ape the latest sound. No, Smith unapologetically stands there and pounds out his minor key power chords on a keyboard. And here's the more amazing part: it actually sounds like a keyboard! Now this is conservative.


• And: Governor Pataki, a pleasant man (and another moderate) who is said to like his chances in 2008. (Against Rudy or McCain? Unlikely.) Some said he was chosen because he could be sure not to upstage the president, but a) nobody upstages the president, and b) he is the governor of the state. He rattles off this line: "This fall we're going to win one for the Gipper. But our opponents -- they're going lose one with the Flipper." I don't know about you, but I recall at least a few liberal-left commentators whining that the GOP should face a backlash if someone used this Reagan line this year (I can't find it right now). Spinning it around to be a joke on Kerry might have put these people on their heels.


• Finally: I can't say it was a masterful speech. But I can say it was masterfully delivered. On domestic policy I give him a C -- some of it I agree with, some I don't; there was almost nothing new. On foreign policy, a B -- his philosophy for deterring and eventually eliminating the radical Islamists is my own, but I wish he'd have used the words "Iran" and "North Korea." Delivery: An easy A. Can he speak extemporaneously? No. But when George Bush really works on it, he can deliver a speech about as gracefully as comes naturally to Bill Clinton. You'd be surprised to know that the entire press section didn't sit through the speech, sullen. No, only about 70% did. Those of us who actually cared to see him on stage, not just watch the large screen affixed to the stage's reverse side, all hugged one corner of our section. I sat in the aisle. After turning my press credentials around, I stood up and clapped with the parts I agreed with, but only sat there and clapped if there was a big applause line for a policy or program I wasn't so hot about. No need to be hostile. I followed the speech over the shoulder of one (sullen) reporter, who had the prepared remarks with him. When he turned to the last page, I walked back around to the front of the auditorium. All in all, it was pretty cool.

Anyway, back to those pictures:

Believe it or not, three generations of Bush family members were standing down there waving at the crowd just a few minutes before this was taken.

Believe it.

I ran into these characters near MSNBC's Herald Park studios (two blocks from my hotel). The women were dressed like Strawberry Shortcake and the men were wearing rubber Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Bush masks. I don't get it either, but would that all protesters were just like this. (Note: Swamp city has more.)

Friday morning. The Farley Building had been almost completely dismantled overnight.

Seven days after I arrived, it was really all over. No more middle of the night wake up calls, no more doughnuts for breakfast, and no more massages or manicures (which I never got around to myself). Kaput.

One last look out my hotel window down to Broadway below.

Let's do this again in four years.

ONE REASON

Why John Kerry may never have had a chance at winning in the first place. First, consider that the Swift Boat ads have revealed something Kerry himself has known for years -- his anti-war activities in the early 1970s are very, very unpopular with veterans of Vietnam and other wars.

Now, ask yourself: Isn't it likely that a substantial percentage of the hottest of hotly contested swing voters -- that is, the NASCAR Dads -- are themselves veterans?

Update, 12:00 a.m. -- William Safire has a good point about veterans in general against Kerry:

That flailing-out was done more in anger than in calculation. Millions of Americans of draft age in the 1960's who are voters today were deferred from service by virtue of student status or fatherhood. They do not appreciate having their deferment attributed to lack of patriotism. Now Kerry has unnecessarily upset a lot of non-veteran swing voters.

I would imagine the NASCAR Dads don't like that much at all.

EQUAL TIME WITH GLENN KESSLER

Last week Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler turned out two news analysis stories, fact-checking Republican convention speakers. The first, "Giuliani's Criticisms of Kerry Lack Context," disputed portions of Giuliani's speech that quoted Kerry. For the second he teamed up with fellow reporter Dan Morgan to produce "GOP Prism Distorts Some Kerry Positions." Without getting into specifics, I thought some criticisms in these articles were fair but most gave Kerry far too much latitude and the Republicans too little. Especially the Giuliani one, I wish I could elaborate ... damned commitment to brevity.

What was Kessler doing during the Boston convention? His regular State Dept. duties, filing the couldn't-be-less-related (and no longer linkable) "U.S. Envoy To Meet With China On N. Korea." Where was the rest of the staff? Not writing news analysis with fact-checking, that's for sure. I searched every Washington Post Nexis article between the convention dates. Survey says: nada.

Rather than simply going on a tear, I put on my reporter cap (Oregon Ducks hat) and credentials and asked Kessler via email what he thought about it. His reply came pretty quickly, and it was a reasonable one: he agreed that it should have been done, but their thinking was that the Dems had said they'd be on their "best behavior."

As a critic, I have at least two options here. One is to shrug and say: sure, I see where they were coming from. The other is to say: wait a minute, why couldn't have someone written about Carter or Sharpton? Both of those Boston speeches were as partisan as Giuliani's. And Carter may not shout like Zell, his fellow Georgian, but he's more bitter -- Zell thinks the country overall is on the right track, at least.

Kessler told me he'd like to do more fact-checking like this during the debates, where the it'll be an "even playing field as both guys hurl charges at each other." I'll be looking for them.

P.S. -- I didn't bother to ask Kessler about my disagreements with him on the content of the speeches. As I said, contemptible brevity...

P.P.S. -- Yes, I misspelled his name at first. It's now fixed.

WE GOT THE OTHER ONE

If Iraqi forces are correct, they've captured Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri near Tikrit. Al-Douri was almost totally forgotten now that Abu Zarqawi and then Moqtada al-Sadr have made names forthemselves, but he's remained a top U.S. target for his suspected organizing of the dead-enders into a "resistance."

At the time of Saddam's capture, conspiracy theories about the details and timing of the capture flew around the place, coming even from elected members of the U.S. House of Representatives. With the al-Douri capture coming over the Labor Day Weekend, where it is sure to be lost on vacationers, will anyone bother to stir up wild ideas about this one?

Assuming the report is correct, congratulations to Iraq and their evolving security forces. Maybe they're further along than we think.

Update, Monday 12:19 p.m. -- Or not, as it seems that caution was warranted.

ARNOLD ON A ROLL

He'll get a lot of thumbs up from the chattering classes for describing his vision for the Republican Party like this:

"Let's be inclusive," he said. "We're going to try to bring it a little bit to the center. Because the action is toward the center. It's not all the way to the right, even though we have to respect the people to the right and we have to listen to them.

"We have to listen to everyone. But let's push it a little bit to the center because it seems to me that that's where the future is."

But the reporter, Martin Wicksol of the Orange County Register, was maybe a bit too enthusiastic, writing:

Among Schwarzenegger's goals is encouraging the party to become more open to those who support gun control, stem-cell research, abortion rights and gay rights, and who oppose the death penalty and school prayer.

Way to put words in his mouth there, guy. Let's not forget Schwarzenegger is pro-death penalty, supports school prayer, and opposes both late-term abortion and gay marriage. (Details here). It's nice that the Register thinks of him as a good liberal, but sooner or later they'll be disappointed -- as were many liberals with John McCain this week.

Meanwhile, Jerry Falwell has already bitten his tongue, telling a television interviewer this week that the moderate emphasis was a good idea. Yesterday Pat Buchanan, who by the way just published the anti-Bush "Where the Right Went Wrong," gave Bush and the campaign an A+ during a segment on MSNBC last night. After much talk that the liberals fell into line in Boston, so did the presumably intractable conservatives this week.

One more note on Schwarzenegger -- It's harder to satirize him than most public figures, because so much of his own persona is about satirizing and trading on himself (see: "girlie men," "hasta la vista," etc) that he doesn't leave his detractors much to effectively ridicule. For example, from the same article -- Arnold's relation of his life story almost seemed to be channeling "Twins" when he said this:

"I am so enthusiastic about this country," he said. "What (you can see) is only like, a small percentage of what is bottled up inside me, as far as enthusiasm is concerned."

I do believe he'll be back.

HERE COMES THE LEFT-WING HATE MACHINE?

Susan Estrich must be tired of getting tagged a "Fox News liberal." Ctrl-F "drunken driving arrests" and "Dead Texans for Truth" and "Bush's Former Female Friends." Yikes.

Update, Sunday 6:50 p.m. -- It's shaping up like a big -- if not good -- weekend for Estrich.

A LOW-RES VIEW OF THE NEW YORK CONVENTION, IN AND OUT OF DOORS (AND CHECKPOINTS)

Several of them, actually. And I've arranged them more or less in chronological order, from walking over to the Farley media center, then crossing up and back over to Madison Square Garden for Wednesday's afternoon program.

Past the first security check, in mid to late afternoon. The delegates are all inside, the press is working or, like me, done for the day. It's just me and the police. And you think this is empty? Check out this:

Midtown Manhattan ... empty. A block away from the entrance, it's desolate. It was, as they say, like the Omega Man.

That's not a UFO up there; it's an airship, a dirigible, a zeppelin. (Fujifilm, not Goodyear.) To quote Rodney Dangerfield as Mr. Burns long-lost son Larry: "Oh, and once I saw a blimp!"

A view from the back (?) of Madison Square Garden.

A view back on MSG.

A view back, looking more toward the street.

A view toward the street and Farley.

I should have just done a panorama series and Photoshopped it together.

Now, there's a pretty big gap here where I was disallowed from taking a picture of the media center entrance. I decided to put the camera away until I got in. So we pick up with me getting across the bridge pictured above, from the interior:

A few of those pixels in the middle are Brit Hume at the end of the hallway.

Inside MSG, looking back on the bridge and the same area as the views above.

The place reminds me of nothing so much as the inside of a community college building, but with a popular sports team.

Left to right, back row: Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, just doing their job. Left to right, front row: Host committee security temps, doing the same.

Skyboxes above, divided about evenly between broadcast media and VIP boxes. I have no idea who was in each of the VIP boxes (as the VIPs among VIPs (e.g. the VP) were seated on the floor). But the media wouldn't let you forget. Fox News, NBC/MSNBC and and about half the VIPs got the best view.

NHK, ever Japanese, enclosed their box in a plastic box that should be out in toy stores by Christmas.

Pop quiz: Guess who had the worst-positioned skybox -- Al Jazeera, or Bloomberg TV? Answer: Bloomberg! Only by one box, though. I presume the Mayor is just trying to play down his personal financial interest in the convention, but someone tell me if there's more to it. (And if anybody knows where I could get NHK's TV coverage, let me know that too.)

The floor, afternoon program. Sports stars and actresses are saying great things about America, troops, the Republican Party, George Bush, New York City, sports and acting. This may have been Angie Harmon and Jason Sehorn, but I wasn't paying attention. When I went on Thursday (about which more later) I saw Lynn Swann and Dorothy Hamill.

It's really small in here, by the way, and stadium-like. It's old, of course, but still a surprise that New York hasn't built anything bigger in Manhattan. If I was the Beatles, I'd have chosen Shea as well.

The console on the side of the arena opposite and facing the stage. Up top is the "orchestra pit," if we can still call it that. Just below is the mixing booth, where all the traders doubtless stand by to get the best recording. And then down a couple more steps are the cameras, still and television. I counted five TV cameras: I'm guessing ABC, CBS, NBC/MSNBC, Fox, CNN and everyone else made a deal for one of those feeds. Below that, though you can't see it, is a large screen TV scrolling speech text, not a proper teleprompter though those things are up on the stage.

The balloon guys are on a short leash with us, but but no one doubts the lights crew will be on its game.

The lobby out is everything the actual arena is not: large in scale, majestic in decoration and backlit scenes from New York sports history at Madison Square Garden. But the temporary walls detracted considerably.

The electronic signboard out front isn't bad, either.

This stands just outside the front (?) of Madison Square Garden (and Penn Station). The urge to compare it to the monolith in "2001" is tempting all right, but with all the primary colors I saw the cover of Super Mario Bros. 3.

This and the signboard photo were taken precisely where so-called Black Bloc anarchists had just hours before set a dragon on fire, as I've noted elsewhere. Matt Labash explains all and provides a photo in another Murdoch-owned news outlet.

Now, miscellaneous:

A view of the tallest building in New York, outside Penn Station. It actually does stand out a lot more than it seems to here, but I liked the street scene as well.

A view from my hotel room window, 9th floor overlooking Broadway and 32nd. That's an iPod billboard on the left. Not pictured: A Sean John billboard on the building above it.

So there you have it. I still have a set of Thursday pictures as well, and you'll have those, too, shortly.