Best of the Web Today - December 20, 2004
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December 20, 2004
In today's Political Diary:
o Note to Readers
o From Chicago to Kiev
o Bloggers Declare Their Independence in 2004
o An Inventory of Iraq Blessings
o Pentagon Discovers the Spirit of 'Intelligence Reform'
o Osama's New Look (Quote of the Day I)
o Virginia Going Purple? (Quote of the Day II)
o Christmas Tree Sprouts a Few Executive Branches
o Gadhafi's Global Test
o Debugging California's Electoral Process
Note to Readers
With this Christmas double issue (patent pending), PD signs off until next week. Best holiday wishes to all our readers, their loved ones and all peace-loving folks everywhere.
--The Mgmt.
Long Road to First Ladyhood
A dozen years ago, as the Soviet Union broke up and Ukraine and other satellites of the Communist system became independent, I had frequent conversations with Kathy Chumachenko, a 30-year-old Ukrainian-American who was regularly returning to a country she barely knew in hopes of helping it out of dictatorship. She wound up staying and marrying a dashing central banker named Viktor Yushchenko. This coming Sunday, Mr. Yushchenko, who has recovered from an infamous episode of dioxin poisoning, is likely to be elected president of Ukraine. His wife, known in Ukraine as Kateryna, will become the new first lady of the country.
Ms. Chumachenko grew up in suburban Chicago as the daughter of an electrician and seamstress who had been taken to Germany during World War II as forced laborers. They came to the U.S. in 1956 at the invitation of a Ukrainian Orthodox church. She was raised in the traditions of her parent's homeland, speaking Ukrainian at home, learning the national dances and attending a Ukrainian school and Orthodox church. "My parents felt they had to keep alive the culture and traditions they thought were being suppressed by the Soviet Union," she says.
After graduating from Georgetown she got a master's degree from the University of Chicago and went to work as an adviser on Eastern European affairs in the Reagan White House. She moved to Kiev after Ukraine's independence as head of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, where she was active in helping American companies set up business as well as assisting Ukrainian orphans. She met Viktor Yushchenko when he was part of a delegation of central bankers she brought to Chicago. "He understood free markets, had a firm faith in God and knew what the right path for the country should be," she recalls. The two married in 1998, and they now have three children.
The children almost lost their father this fall, after Mr. Yushchenko fell ill with a mystery malady. His wife recalls him coming home one night during the presidential campaign and saying he felt sick. She noticed a strange metallic taste in his mouth when she kissed him. It turned to be a product of dioxin, a chemical compound used in Agent Orange.
Mr. Yushchenko has largely recovered from the poisoning, but the government continues to harass him. It has refused to process his wife's application for Ukrainian citizenship in part to keep alive rumors that she is an agent of the United States. Should her husband win next Sunday, as now appears likely, no doubt removing that bureaucratic obstacle will be one of the first orders of business.
--John Fund
Year of the Blogger
President George W. Bush had some real competition for Time's Person of the Year. He almost lost out to the Bloggers, who helped transform coverage of American politics and the media this year.
In the end, Time stuck with the safe choice but it did showcase the Blog of the Year in its latest issue. The editors chose Power Line, which was started in 2002 by two conservative Minneapolis lawyers who were later joined by a Washington D.C. based lawyer. Power Line achieved celebrity status when it became the first to shoot holes in Dan Rather's infamous "60 Minutes" report attacking President Bush's service record in the Air National Guard. "In 2004, blogs unexpectedly vaulted into the pantheon of major media, alongside TV, radio and, yes, magazines, and it was Power Line, more than any other blog, that got them there," concluded Time.
Scott Johnson, one of Power Line's three bloggers, recalls looking at the memos CBS posted on its web site to back up its National Guard story. He quickly questioned whether or not they were forgeries in a blog posting and linked his skeptical entry to another blog that was also raising the issue. The controversy spread through the "blogosphere" within hours and soon CBS was under a siege that will not lift until it releases its internal report on the story.
Power Line has since exploded in popularity and has started taking ads for the first time. But its annual profit is still only barely in five figures. Mr. Johnson says the blog is a labor of love and that he is thrilled to see how the Internet is empowering people and shaping political coverage. Some still point to the millions of amateur bloggers and dismiss them as nerdy faddists and their work as largely trivial. Most bloggers will burn out and move on to something else. But a handful are slowly building a shadow media infrastructure that will become a significant component of the media in the 21st century.
--John Fund
More on the War
Thirty-five years ago Don Rumsfeld served in Congress, but he obviously learned nothing about politics, as the autopen controversy shows. But notice that the White House was the source of the "constituency of one" line now repeated in the media. To wit, the president supports Rumsfeld -- the same president who a week ago incurred pundit disapproval by ordering up Medals of Freedom for George Tenet, Jerry Bremer and General Tommy Franks, which a clucking media attributed to "arrogance" and a refusal to acknowledge the mess in Iraq.
We doubt it. The president embarked on a politically thankless job with his Iraq war, and he's sticking by those who shared the risk on his behalf. And there's a message in those medals that will be better understood in the world's chancelleries than by most Americans: The president has every reason to be satisfied with how his war is going.
Mr. Bush has successfully turned the tables on Saudi Arabia. The Islamic militancy that the Saudis once diligently tried to deflect upon us is now coming home, in the civil war the royal family can no longer duck. Osama's latest video shows just how successful the Iraq gambit has been in reshaping the Al Qaeda threat (see the Peter Brookes quote below).
In Iraq, the most notable upshot of the weekend bombings was a call for restraint from across Iraq's Shiite leadership, from Grand Ayatollah Sistani to the punk cleric Al Sadr, all of whose eyes are now firmly fixed on the prize of next month's elections. This has produced some confused griping that the coming of majority rule in Iraq (a good thing) means the coming of Shiite rule (a bad thing: see the Friday Washington Post column by David Ignatius entitled "How Iran Is Winning the War").
Mr. Ignatius should calm down, or at least attempt coherence. Of course Iran has been keen to make sure Shiite leaders come out on top in Iraq's democratic power scramble, rather than seeing the creation of a Saddam redux. But so what? There's no need or interest on the part of Iraq's incipient Shiite leadership to become Iranian puppets. Au contraire: Iraq has the region's second biggest oil reserves, the strategic geography and the powerful middle class. Remarkably convenient, it also enjoys the advantages of a military alliance with the world's superpower, with enough U.S. muscle stationed in Iraq itself to do serious damage to any neighbor.
No, a Shiite condominium over the entire region controlled from Tehran is not in the cards. A far more realistic worry is that Tehran will play footsie with Iraq's Sunni insurgency as a way to keep the new government off balance and gain bargaining leverage with Baghdad and Washington while discouraging the export of any pesky democratic notions to Iran. That would be completely in character with how the cretinous, antisocial Iranian "revolutionary" regime has conducted itself for the past 25 years.
--Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
Intel Reform, DOD-Style
The president signed the intelligence bill on Friday and we're already starting to see how much the ground is shifting in our spy agencies. As the government moves to create a new national director of intelligence, the Pentagon is looking at ways to expand the military's role in collecting intelligence. One idea under consideration, as reported by the New York Times yesterday, is "fighting for intelligence" -- using special forces to carry out covert operations to capture vital information on weapons smuggling or terrorist networks.
What's not been reported is that one of the military issues that stalled intelligence reform in Congress was a battle over whether to block any such Pentagon end-run around legislation that might eclipse its ability to gather and exploit intelligence. That the Pentagon is now looking at ways of doing so is exactly what anti-Pentagon lawmakers feared -- and a good sign. It's easy to think of the military as a force that takes on other armed forces around the world. But as we can see in Iraq, fighting insurgency wars requires actionable intelligence that enables our soldiers to pick the enemy out of civilian populations. The CIA might not like the competition, but more American covert operatives on the ground around the world will help win the war on terror.
--Brendan Miniter
Quote of the Day I
"Sure, it's just the latest of 17 cameos by the terrorist thug since 9/11. But it may be his scariest yet. Why? Because Osama's latest appearance shows he's changing tactics, and he's onto something that just might work this time... The Iranian revolution caught us by surprise in 1979 and so could a Saudi Arabian uprising now. And Osama may be betting on it" -- Heritage Foundation's Peter Brookes, writing in the New York Post.
Quote of the Day II
"As the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington continue to grow and perhaps become more like Philadelphia's liberal-leaning suburbs, Virginia could become one of the states -- Arizona and Colorado are others -- that may soon be fully transformed from reliably Republican to more or less regularly competitive. In 1996 President Clinton narrowly lost Virginia, 47-45. Kerry lost it by nine points, but... [he] was still buying television time in Virginia in late August. Partly because Virginia has 780,000 veterans and their families, [Democratic Gov. Mark] Warner says Kerry had 'a chance -- until the Swift boat ads'" -- Washington Post columnist George Will.
Merry Christmas, Dammit!
The nation's chief executive and the governor of the largest state are both practicing a quiet form of political incorrectness this Christmas season.
President Bush mailed out a record two million Christmas cards. This year's card contains a verse from Psalms, 95:2: "Let us come before him with Thanksgiving and extol him with music and song." Presidents have been sending out cards to friends and supporters since Calvin Coolidge in 1927, but Mr. Bush is the first to send out Christmas cards with a message from Scripture. To avoid charges that he is using his office to build support for his political agenda, the cards and mailing costs are paid for by the Republican National Committee, a smart move since the cards would certainly be on the target list of the ACLU if they had been paid with taxpayer funds.
Meanwhile, in California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has ignited controversy by presiding over the lighting of what he has renamed the state's Christmas tree. Under previous governors, it was called the "holiday tree." At the ceremony, Mr. Schwarzenegger talked about how he celebrated Christmas growing up in his native Austria, adding, "We were taught to think about the spirit, the joy of Christmas and the celebration of the birth of Christ."
The governor was promptly attacked for injecting religion into a state ceremony and possibly offending people of other faiths or no faith. But his press secretary had a quick rejoinder: "He called it a Christmas tree because that is what it is." He didn't have to add that it would be unwise to tangle over the meaning of Christmas the man who played the Terminator.
--John Fund
Moammar Speaks for More than Moammar
John Kerry may have had French support, but it's now becoming clear that a few international leaders recognized a big stake in George W. Bush's success. Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi went so far as to tell an Italian TV station that his decision to give up his nuclear program helped Mr. Bush win re-election. "America was very worried that Libya might get a mass destruction weapon, so they were very happy about our decision," he said. "It was Mr. Bush who promised to reward Libya if we got rid of this program. The withdrawal of this program was pro-Mr. Bush."
There's a "global test" at work here, all right, but not the one Mr. Kerry spoke of during the campaign. Rather, Gadhafi applied his own version of the test: Is he better off standing with or against the American president in a post-Sept. 11 world? With Mr. Bush then planning to insert a major chunk of U.S. military power into the heart of the Mideast, the answer became obvious. Gadhafi quickly handed over his nuclear components and ratted out A.Q. Khan, father of the Pakistani bomb, as a nexus of proliferation.
Gadhafi isn't alone. Pakistani President Musharraf was caught between Al Qaeda and the U.S., and wisely chose the U.S. -- which is why several major Al Qaeda leaders are in custody, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, planner of the 9/11 attacks. Meanwhile, terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and elsewhere upped the pressure on reluctant leaders to join the war on terror, significantly advancing the U.S. cause. This may come as a surprise to liberal American politicians, but the president is succeeding in reorienting the world by forcing "frontline" states to abandon a tolerant or worse policy toward Islamic terrorists and get right with the U.S.
--Brendan Miniter
Democracy 2.0 (the Beta Version) in California
Washington State's chaotic recount for governor isn't the only place where voters should be worried about the integrity of their election officials. Elaine Howle, California's state auditor, has just released a damning report on how Democratic Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has misused and mishandled federal funds designed to implement the Help America Vote Act. The mess is so bad that California may not be able to implement a computerized statewide voter registration list by the January 2006 deadline imposed by HAVA.
California is notorious for its outdated voter registration lists that have long served as an open invitation to voter fraud. The auditor's report found that Secretary Shelley had avoided competitive bidding for most purchases paid for with HAVA funds. The reason is fairly clear: Large chunks of money went to political consultants and firms with ties to the Democratic Party or Mr. Shelley. At the same time, Mr. Shelley increased the number of political appointees in his office to ten, up from only two under the previous Secretary of State.
Political observers say the continuing cascade of scandals may force Mr. Shelley to resign or face removal through impeachment. In either case, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would have the power to name a replacement subject to legislative confirmation. You can also bet he will use Mr. Shelley's depredations as a talking point in pushing for a reform of California's gerrymandered congressional and legislative districts, most likely as a ballot initiative in a late 2005 special election.
--John Fund |
