SEP. 10, 2004: BLOWBACK
Bush Haters Sink ... Kerry
David Frum - NRO
Is Bush-hating costing the Democrats an otherwise winnable election? This week’s news has been dominated by two huge anti-Bush attacks, one by CBS on the president’s National Guard service record, the other by NBC, which announced three back-to-back interviews on the “Today” program with Kitty Kelly--in which she would broadcast to the nation her pre-publicized stories about George W. Bush’s alleged cocaine use.
These devastating charges set the Bush-haters into a spasm of anticipatory delight--for about 24 hours. That’s how long it took for both of them to be exposed as utter hoaxes.
By now every reader of NRO knows that the documents on which CBS relied were almost certainly forgeries--and crude forgeries at that.
Meanwhile, a word about Kitty Kelly. According to her, the current President Bush snorted coke at Camp David during his father’s presidency. Now if somebody produced a claim that Bush experimented with cocaine in 1974 or 1975, before his 30th birthday and his marriage, before his break with alcohol and his religious conversion, I’d say that the charge was very unlikely, but maybe not absolutely impossible. But to say that he did it at Camp David between 1989 and 1993, when he was in his mid-40s, married, in the midst of his greatest business success, and on the verge of running for the governorship of Texas--a time when all his friends attest that he had quit drinking and was engaged in regular and intense Bible study--well that’s kind of nuts isn’t it?
Add to this that Kelly’s putative source is Sharon Bush, ex-wife of his brother Neil, whom Kelly interviewed over a single lunch--at which it seems Kelly did not take notes. (They seem to have been reconstructed later.)
Sharon Bush now says that Kelly misquoted her, which is easy enough to believe. But even if Kelly quoted her accurately, how would Sharon Bush know? Are we supposed to believe that the president was such a reckless drug addict that this ambitious, successful, middle-aged, married, churchgoing man would snort coke...within sight of his sister-in-law? Isn’t that kind of super-nuts?
Even the producers at NBC will have to think so. I have a hunch that we are soon going to hear that the Kelly interviews have been cancelled. Meanwhile, to go back to my very first question--the week that the Bush-haters have used on these two rapidly discredited stories happened to be the week that the thousandth American soldier died in Iraq. Any White House would have to dread a milestone like that. It could have been a big and dangerous news story for the incumbent president--that is, if his enemies had not buried it by deluging the country with two lurid and immediately retracted hoaxes.
International Politics 101
Earlier in the week, I cited Winston Churchill in 1951 and Harold Wilson in 1974 as two democratic leaders who took office with fewer popular votes than their principal opponents. A reader from Melbourne, Australia, offers a more recent third example:
“In the 1998 [Australian] federal election, after distribution of preferences from the minor parties, the governing Liberal/National coalition of John Howard garnered 49% of the valid votes to Labor's 51% under Kim Beazley. Because Beazley’s gains were concentrated in safe Labor and Liberal electorates, while Howard's vote was spread better through marginal electorates, the Coalition won more seats in parliament and Howard retained government. In 2001, Howard went on to win by a majority of both seats and after-preference votes, actually improving his vote while in office. Here's hoping he hangs on for a fourth term!”
Canada for Bush
And here’s an invitation for Bush supporters in Toronto: The Canadian chapter of Republicans Abroad will host a party in honor of President Bush on Sept. 15 at the Lone Star Grill on 200 Front Street. If you wish to attend, please email republicansabroadcanada@hotmail.com to rsvp.
Answers Please
Finally, a footnote to yesterday’s thought experiment. I underscored the absurdity of the canard about an Israeli spy ring in the Pentagon by restating the same facts as they would appear if the allegations involved any other allied country: Japan, for example. Without the anti-Israel animus of some in the bureaucracy--abetted by the anti-Bush animus of many in the press--this whole story shrivels to nothing: just one official sharing his personal thinking in ways that may have broken rules about the handling of classified documents but that created no national-security risks and that involved nobody other than himself.
It’s now beginning to appear that many in law-enforcement are coming to see the so-called spy case in exactly the same way. There seems to be some reason to think that over the past week the whole demented investigation has fizzled out--and is about to be quietly shelved.
That should not be allowed to happen. In violation of federal law about the secrecy of ongoing investigations--the same federal law that liberals regarded as a fundament of the Republic when it was violated during the Ken Starr investigation--some law-enforcement officials have leaked to the press allegations naming a number of senior national-security figures, all of them Jewish, as covertly working for Israel against American interests.
This is a serious charge. Investigators should not be permitted to air it in the press and then say “Oh never mind” when they can produce no credible evidence to support the charge. The government oversight committees of the House and Senate have been considering holding hearings into the alleged spy ring. Yes please, let’s start right now. What is the evidence? And if--as the FBI now seems to be concluding--there is no evidence, who were the agents who leaked groundless accusations? What will happen to them?
And let’s not forget the underlying issue in this case. All of these espionage charges surfaced because of a bureaucratic battle over whether the U.S. should accept an Iranian nuclear bomb. The people who want the U.S. to accept that bomb tried to dirty up their stronger-minded opponents by contending that those opponents were not doing their job of protecting the United States, but were working instead for Israel. Isn’t it interesting that the appease-Iran faction is willing to use such tactics? Shouldn’t we all want to know who these people are and why they think as they do? Shouldn’t Congress maybe ask about that subject too?
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