The Invisible Ceremony
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Write
Thursday, March 28, 2002; 8:14 AM
Was it really all about John McCain?
If so, the maneuver clearly backfired.
Everyone knows George Bush was, to put it mildly, unenthusiastic about signing the campaign finance reform bill.
His body language, and his words, made that clear.
Politically – let's face it – it would have been very hard for him to veto the measure in this post-Enron environment.
Never mind that he had vowed to veto a soft-money ban back when he was dueling McCain for the GOP nomination.
The president is perfectly within his rights to say he's signing the McCain-Feingold bill with reservations. The courts could find part of it unconstitutional. And he knows the right – especially the Republicans who fought the measure on the Hill – aren't happy with what Rush Limbaugh calls "this capitulation to the left."
But at the same time, the "reformer with results" of the 2000 campaign wants some credit for helping to improve the scandal-scarred system.
So what does Bush do? He quietly signs the bill in the solitude of his office. No ceremony. No pens handed out. No preening congressmen. No McCain.
And what does this accomplish? It makes certain that most news reports lead off with Bush snubbing McCain, rather than the substance of the bill. There was McCain's picture, all over television.
How brilliant was that? How better to put your rival back in the spotlight?
"He never promised me a Rose Garden," McCain cracked.
Sometimes spin control just backfires.
"President Bush yesterday signed into law the most sweeping campaign finance reform in 30 years. The moment was wholly devoid of pomp, circumstance, and Senator John McCain," the Boston Globe says.
"Bush put his signature on the bill in the early morning before leaving on a swing through South Carolina and Georgia – Southern states where he was scheduled to attend big-money fund-raisers for Republican Senate candidates.
"The 'stealth signing ceremony,' as one McCain supporter described it, was notable not just for the ambivalence it suggested on Bush's part, but for the messages it sent to both his supporters who despise the legislation and to McCain, the Arizona Republican whom Bush defeated in the GOP presidential primaries."
The Washington Post checks in with the McCainiacs: "The measure's longtime champions, including Bush's main opponent from the primaries, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), were traveling in their home states during a congressional recess and were informed afterward.
"McCain, who had championed the bill for seven years, offered a tepid, one-sentence statement of approval. His advisers were livid at what they considered a snub and said the White House's handling of McCain's long-awaited moment of triumph would set back a gradual warming in relations between the two men."
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The New York Times reports from Beirut – where Arafat couldn't even get on a television screen – on the remnants of the peace process after a Passover suicide bombing:
"In an emotional and obviously heartfelt speech, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia today proposed normal relations and security for Israel in exchange for the return of the Israelis to their 1967 borders, recognition of a Palestinian state and the right of refugees to return.
"'Allow me at this point to direct myself to the Israeli people,' Prince Abdullah declared, 'to say to them that the use of violence, for more than 50 years, has only resulted in more violence and destruction, and that the Israeli people are as far as they have been from security and peace, notwithstanding military superiority and despite efforts to subdue and suppress.' . . .
"The Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, welcomed the Saudi proposal, even as the Palestinian delegation to the meeting walked out in protest at what a Palestinian official called the blocking by Lebanon of a planned speech to the meeting by Mr. Arafat over satellite television."
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Could the Enron mess be claiming its first administration victim? "Army Secretary Thomas White said his dozens of conversations with Enron Corp. executives since he took office didn't involve aiding his former company or getting inside information about Enron's pending collapse before he sold stock," the Wall Street Journal (subscription required says.
"Speaking to reporters for the first time on the Enron debacle, Mr. White also said he has turned over all requested documents on his Enron dealings to Defense Department officials, who would hand them over to Justice Department officials investigating the company's collapse. Mr. White said that he had no knowledge of Enron's off-the-books partnerships whose losses helped sink the company, and he said he was outraged when he learned of them.
"The former vice chairman of Enron Energy Services, Mr. White has drawn increasing criticism for not promptly disclosing all of his meetings and phone conversations with senior executives at the energy trader. . . .
"Mr. White said he has had several conversations with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld about whether he should stay in the job, most recently on Tuesday. Mr. Rumsfeld has continued to express confidence in him, but Mr. White said he has offered to resign if his Enron connection became a liability."
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Author Joe Klein, writing in Slate, breaks with conventional wisdom and says Al Gore should try it again:
"The Democrats' Gore problem is a simple one: Despite winning a bare majority of the popular vote, he was a dreadful candidate in 2000, who somehow managed to turn eight years of peace and prosperity into an electoral burden. He is a smug, stubborn, and aloof human being. He will clutter the race in 2004, suck money from other candidates, force some interesting possibilities from the field, run another awkward, tired faux-populist campaign and, if nominated, he will lose, more decisively this time, to George W. Bush.
"This critique seems reasonable enough in many of its particulars, but not in its conclusion – that life would be a lot simpler if Gore would just go away. Quite the contrary, Democrats should nurture his ambition and cherish his ineptitude. . . .
"A good scrap can toughen a nominee, as the McCain challenge helped prepare George W. Bush for the general election in 2000. Any Democrat who defeats Gore in the 2004 primaries will gain stature and notoriety as a result (and he or she will need all the stature he or she can get, facing an incumbent president in November).
"Given Gore's performance last time, he certainly looms as a convenient straw man. His candidacy ranks with Dukakis' in 1988 as the worst in modern memory – in fact, the two campaigns had identical themes and flaws: Competence was promised by incompetent candidates. . . .
"It is possible, of course, that yet another new Gore will materialize – a looser, more gracious Gore, one with the courage of his intelligence. If so, the Democrats can only benefit from it. If not, the rest of us will have the pleasure of watching some other candidate become a hero in the primaries. Either way, it sounds great to me. Run, Al, run."
Not exactly bumper-sticker material.
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We missed this yesterday, but if you want to know why many brokerage recommendations are utterly worthless, check out this New York Times account:
"Enron executives pressed UBS PaineWebber to take action against a broker who advised some Enron employees to sell their shares in August and was fired by the brokerage firm within hours of the complaint, according to e-mail messages released by Congressional investigators.
"The broker, Chung Wu, of PaineWebber's Houston office, sent a message to clients early on Aug. 21 warning that Enron's 'financial situation is deteriorating' and that they should 'take some money off the table.' That afternoon, an Enron executive in charge of its stock option program sent a stern message to PaineWebber executives, including the Houston branch office manager. 'Please handle this situation,' the newly released message stated. 'This is extremely disturbing to me.'
"PaineWebber fired Mr. Wu less than three hours later.
"That evening, the firm retracted Mr. Wu's assessment of Enron's stock – then about $36 – by sending his clients an optimistic report that Enron was 'likely heading higher than lower from here on out.' A few months later, the stock was worthless, and the company was in bankruptcy court."
Thank you, Paine Webber.
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National Review's Byron York says Joe Lieberman is getting tougher:
"Lieberman, who is weighing a run for president in 2004, has decided to greatly expand the Enron investigation and issue what amounts to a direct challenge to the Bush White House – a move that has caused a partisan split inside the committee that could ultimately threaten the future of the investigation.
"Last Thursday, Lieberman announced the committee would issue new subpoenas to Enron and Andersen – along with members of Enron's board of directors – demanding information about contacts 'with the White House or other federal agencies regarding the National Energy Policy.' In addition, Lieberman plans to send a letter . . . asking the White House to hand over information about its contacts with Enron.
"According to Republican sources, the letter will likely be sent without the signature of Fred Thompson, the ranking Republican on the committee, who is said to object to the broadening scope of the inquiry. 'It will be the first thing that Senator Thompson has not gone along with publicly,' says a GOP aide. Should Thompson refuse to sign the Lieberman letter, the effect could be to transform the committee's Enron investigation from a bipartisan initiative into an essentially partisan one – precisely what Lieberman has said he wanted to avoid.
"The dispute, which is on the verge of becoming public, is the latest in a series of disagreements that have been going on behind the scenes for months. According to GOP sources, Lieberman wanted to issue subpoenas for contacts between Enron and the White House in the committee's first round of subpoenas, sent out in February. But Republicans strongly objected, and Lieberman, trying to maintain a semblance of bipartisanship, backed down."
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Columnist Walter Shapiro, writing in Slate, says the James Carvilles of the world may have to take a pay cut:
"There's another factor driving all the Beltway cynicism about McCain-Feingold: the likelihood that it will cost campaign consultants a bundle. Every political reporter's Blackberry is ripe with the names of a bipartisan roster of ad makers, strategists, and pollsters. These hired guns are our treasured sources – colorful talkers, adroit theorists, and plugged-in gossip mongers who know that their credibility depends on not telling too many the-Democrats-will-carry-Idaho whoppers. Normally, Democratic and Republican consultants disagree. But when it comes to McCain-Feingold, an overwhelmingly bipartisan majority scorns reform.
"The reason for this chorus of ridicule is simple: naked self-interest. During the long legislative battle over soft money, the campaign industry behaved like any aggrieved interest group, spreading exaggerated horror stories about how reform would destroy the pristine purity of modern politics. What they really feared was a drop in income from the likely reduction in political spending. But such mercenary motives were totally ignored by political reporters who avidly charted similar machinations by the auto industry to derail fuel-efficiency standards.
"Part of the problem is ignorance. While Washington is one vast methadone clinic for political junkies eager to handicap the South Dakota Senate race, few of these addicts grasp the basic economics of the campaign industry. The naive assumption is that consultants simply bill campaigns for services rendered. Pollsters do tend to follow this fee-for-service model, which is why some of them take on upwards of 50 clients in a single election cycle. But the big bucks in politics have nothing to do with monthly retainers.
"Now for the dirty little secret of the campaign industry: Media consultants take as vigorish a percentage of the overall TV buy. This ad-placement fee, a billing gimmick borrowed from Madison Avenue, was traditionally 15 percent; these days in big-ticket races, it can be negotiated down to about 7 percent. What this means is that consultants have a vested economic interest in fostering expensive campaigns built around dueling TV ad wars. As political spending has soared thanks to the soft-money loophole, media consultants have made out like . . . well . . . selfless professionals devoted to the common good."
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Osama still has a laptop? "Osama bin Laden may have re-emerged after months in hiding yesterday, sending an e-mail message to a newspaper praising the Palestinian suicide bombers and denouncing Saudi Arabia's Middle East peace plan," says the New York Post. "A message titled 'Statement from Sheikh Osama bin Laden' was sent to the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper. The paper has received other statements from al Qaeda, and an editor said that it appeared to be genuine.
"Written in the flowery Arabic style for which bin Laden is noted, it said that the 'battle of New York' – an apparent reference to the Sept. 11 atrocities – was 'the beginning of the end, God willing,' of what he called the 'god of pagans,' and called for Muslims throughout the Middle East to rise up against U.S.-backed regimes.
"The message also denounced Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's initiative to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict as a 'Zionist-American one in Saudi clothes,' and called for continuation of Palestinian suicide attacks on Israel."
Need more of an Osama fix? Check out his personal Web site.
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And on the Condi Watch: In light of the recent chatter about Condoleezza Rice joining the Bush ticket in '04, we dug up Jay Nordlinger's National Review interview with her from 1999:
"Rice characterizes herself as an 'all-over-the-map Republican,' whose views are 'hard to typecast': 'very conservative' in foreign policy, 'ultra-conservative' in other areas, 'almost shockingly libertarian' on some issues, 'moderate' on others, 'liberal' on probably nothing. (She calls herself 'mildly pro-choice' on abortion.)
"Here is a prediction about her: If she becomes secretary of state or even something lesser, she will be big. Rock-star big. A major cultural figure, adorning the bedroom walls of innumerable kids and the covers of innumerable magazines. She is, all agree, an immensely appealing person: poised, gracious, humbly smart, still markedly southern after all these years in other parts. Her television appearances have prompted marriage proposals ('I haven't had many lately – maybe I'm getting old'). And she is very much a jock: a tennis player, an untiring follower of college and professional sports."
Not a bad prediction, though Condi's not quite a "major cultural figure" – yet.
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Finally, Fox News discovers the latest victim of political correctness:
"Speedy Gonzales easily bested Sylvester the Cat, Daffy Duck and other assorted banditos in his nearly 50-year career. But the Fastest Mouse in Mexico can't seem to escape the clutches of the Cartoon Network.
"The rapid rodent has been deemed an offensive ethnic stereotype of Mexicans, and has been off the air since the cable network became the sole U.S. broadcaster of old Warner Brothers cartoons in late 1999.
"But that has animated fans of the spunky character who want Speedy cartoon shorts – and the famous 'Arriba! Arriba! Arriba!' cry – back on the airwaves.
"Hundreds of fans have engaged in an e-mail campaign to resurrect Speedy, gathering on animation-fan Web sites to debate and organize, according to Virginia Cueto, an associate editor at HispanicOnline who wrote an article about the cartoon controversy.
"'Speedy Gonzales has always been a very popular cartoon character, and cartoon fans are among the most diehard loyal fans around. They just want him back,' she said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. 'And these aren't just non-Mexicans; a lot of these are Mexicans themselves.'
"In his adventures, the sombrero-wearing mouse sports an over-the-top Mexican accent and uses his super speed to foil foes like the 'Greengo Pussygato' Sylvester. Speedy is sometimes aided by a coterie of drunken Mexican mice who lounge around the village, or by his lazy cousin Slowpoke Rodriguez, who seems as slow-witted as he is slow-footed."
Ay carumba!
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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