Paddlin' Madeleine
Jay Bryant (archive)
December 20, 2003 | Print | Send
My conspiracy theory is that once again the Democratic establishment is playing Madeleine Albright for a sucker.
Remember back when then President Bill Clinton trotted her out in front of the press as spokesperson for his cabinet in saying that he had not had sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky? In an administration where the competition for Lowest Moment is vast, that has to rank right up there – the Secretary of State reduced to spreading the President's lies about his satyriasis. So we know she's willing to paddle the party canoe on command.
Now someone has provoked her to spread an even bigger lie. In case you missed the story, it goes something like this: while waiting in the "green room" for an appearance on Fox News, Madeleine was chatting with Mort Kondracke and suggested that Osama bin Laden has already been captured and President Bush is waiting for the right political moment to announce it.
Sure the incident makes her look stupid. You think Terry McAuliffe gives a fig about that? But here's what I'll bet the farm on: she didn't come up with the idea herself.
Her comment came on the heels of Congressman Jim McDermott's allegation that the U.S. could have picked up Saddam Hussein at any time but chose to make the nab when Bush needed a boost in his job approval ratings.
McDermott's statement was made shortly after Howard Dean opined on the radio that the "most interesting" theory about 9/11 was that the Saudis had tipped Bush off to it in advance. Anybody see a pattern here?
I've decided to get into the act, and am already spreading two totally unfounded rumors: first that McDermott's celebrated trip to Iraq in 2002 was for the purpose of helping Saddam plan the hiding of his WMD's. (What? You don't believe this? Are you aware that Congressman McDermott is from the state of Washington, site of the Hanford Nuclear plant, where they know all about disposing of deadly stuff?)
The other rumor is that George Steinbrenner paid off the major league baseball players union to kill the Red Sox deal to get Alex Rodriguez. I like that one a lot, and you've got to admit Steinbrenner had both motive and opportunity, being as how he and the union are both in New York and the principal beneficiary of the trade falling through would be the Yankees.
Rumors have long been a major form of political communications. "If I haven't heard a good rumor by ten o'clock," a veteran campaign manager once told me, "I start one."
I know another political operative who used to pay potato chip truck drivers to spread political rumors to every little country store in rural Georgia. Or at least that was the rumor. Think of Albright as a potato chip truck driver.
The thing about rumors is that no matter how ridiculous they are, someone will believe them. The other thing is that they're immortal.
The Democrats have many fears as they contemplate the 2004 election, led by the fact that their list of candidates for president is weaker than dime beer. One of their other fears grows out of the fact that President Bush has a real knack for the dramatic – like going to Baghdad for Thanksgiving, for example.
So they're using the rumor mill to discount any dramatic pro-Bush events that may happen between now and You Know When.
So what happens if the good guys in Afghanistan – maybe even some of the fine Canadian troops serving there – root Osama out of his spider hole sometime next year, heaven forbid at a key moment in the US political calendar?
In the minds of the Bush-haters, the ridiculous Albright rumor, by then shorn of its immediacy and just simply out there as part of the landscape, will become a straw to grasp. Count on Howard to sanctimoniously but very publicly deny that he believes it was all plotted as an October Surprise, no matter how many of his followers think otherwise, and no matter that it is an "interesting" theory.
Actually, I'd prefer a late July Surprise, say just about the time the Democratic National Convention kicks off in A-Rod-less Boston. But I'm not planning the political timing of the capture of Osama, and neither is anyone else.
The rumor, though, is now out there, courtesy of Paddlin' Madeleine, and in the minds of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, it will not die. In a way, I wish Kondracke had kept his mouth shut.
Veteran GOP media consultant Jay Bryant's regular columns are available at www.theoptimate.com, and his commentaries may be heard on NPR's 'All Things Considered.'
©2003 Jay Bryant |
