washingtonpost.com
Pander Bears
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 17, 2003; 8:36 AM
On June 13, 1992, candidate Bill Clinton went before Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition and said:
"You had a rap singer here last night named Sister Souljah. . . . Her comments before and after Los Angeles [meaning the riots] were filled with a kind of hatred that you do not honor today and tonight. Just listen to this, what she said: She told The Washington Post about a month ago, and I quote, 'If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? . . . So if you're a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person?' . . .
"If you took the words 'white' and 'black' and reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech."
That encounter -- what journalists have dubbed "pulling a Sister Souljah" -- showed that Clinton was willing to stand up to one of his party's interest groups. It is the sort of moment that has conspicuously been missing this year as the Democratic candidates have moved from one conference to another (abortion rights advocates, blacks, gays) pledging their support.
We've been thinking about this in light of the public scolding that the head of the NAACP delivered this week to three Democratic no-shows -- sort of a reverse Sister Souljah. Kweisi Mfume said that Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt and Dennis Kucinich were now "persona non-grata" for not showing up at Monday's gathering. "Your political capital is the equivalent of Confederate dollars."
Which raises some intriguing questions. Is showing up at a convention and saying the right things more important than what kind of civil rights record a lawmaker has compiled over several decades? Lieberman, for example, marched with Martin Luther King in the '60s. Is that record now erased in the eyes of the NAACP because he blew off the meeting?
By what standard does the NAACP presume to speak for all black people? Aren't there people of color who disagree with the leadership on some issues? Mfume said the no-shows have no right to go seeking African-American votes in the community, so great was the disrespect they showed. Really?
And just on the realpolitik level, don't NAACP officials realize that it doesn't help any Democratic candidate to be seen as the captive of an interest group?
The next day, seven members of the nine-pack showed up at a Human Rights Campaign event. Kerry and Lieberman drew hisses from the audience when they said they do not support gay marriage; Dean and Gephardt were greeted by silence. (Kucinich and Sharpton gave the crowd what it wanted on the marriage question.)
Hisses? Even for candidates who generally support gay rights? Again, some activists seem to think it's more important for candidates to kneel and pander on their issues -- which, understandably, they feel passionate about -- than to steer the kind of middle course that might actually get them elected.
Lieberman may have added insult to injury, says the New Haven Register:
"NAACP officials still smarting from Lieberman's no-show at an NAACP candidates' forum Monday were angered further to learn that his schedule that day included an interview taping with conservative television talk show host Bill O'Reilly."
Horrors.
O'Reilly went ballistic on his Fox show with a commentary titled "NAACP Hurts Blacks," saying the group has been "hijacked by radical fanatics."
Hey, whaddya know? The missing-in-action Dems are crawling back on their knees:
"Three days after each was labeled 'persona non grata' by the president of the NAACP," says this AP report, "three Democratic White House candidates will address the group in an effort to make amends for missing its presidential forum.
"The candidates, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Representatives Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, will speak to the convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Miami Beach today."
Profiles in courage.
Here's an interesting little mini-pander from The Washington Post's coverage of the NAACP meeting:
"During a discussion about restoring the voting rights of felons who have served their time, Sharpton said he was the only candidate who had been in jail, saying he served a 'redemptive' sentence. But Kerry interjected, saying that he too had been to jail. A spokesman later said Kerry spent a night in jail after a Vietnam War protest."
Well, I was in jail longer than you were!
The Note deconstructs the Human Rights Campaign maneuvering:
"For many gay people, the distinction between civil unions and marriage is a big one. Civil unions has a state's rights connotation . . . a cop-out feel to it . . . what if state 'x' passes it and state 'y' doesn't . . . while marriage is marriage . . . fully equal under the law. (Marriage is, after all, a contract between a state and a man and a woman).
"Ordinarily, that'd be the end of it. What we'll indelicately and for short-hand reasons call 'gay money' would flow toward Kucinich, Moseley Braun, or Sharpton.
"But ah, not to stereotype . . . the gay political community is organized and smart . . . has won its legislative victories in steps, not leaps, and doesn't believe any of the above candidates can win. So the positions, tones, and histories of the other six candidates will come in for extra scrutiny."
The New Republic takes a broader view of the pandering dilemma:
"Ron Brownstein is right when he suggests that candidates (read: Howard Dean) who satisfy 'the visceral longing among Democrats for denunciation of Bush . . . will frighten away centrist voters--the way conservatives did with their overheated attacks on Bill Clinton throughout his presidency.' But in some sense that's not really the relevant question. After all, given the way the Democratic Party is configured--with the far left exerting considerable influence over the nominating process--there's no way to win the Democratic nomination without alienating centrist voters. The relevant question is therefore how you minimize the number of centrist voters you alienate en route to winning the nomination.
"Once you realize that's the question, then Howard Dean's 'visceral longing' strategy doesn't look like such a disaster. There are, after all, only two ways to satisfy the party's left-leaning base. The first is on the level of policy--that is, taking liberal positions. The second is on the level of tone--that is, angrily denouncing the president with overheated rhetoric. The beauty of the latter is that it's essentially contentless: It satisfies the base without locking you into any particular policy positions, meaning you're free to fill in the details of those positions as you see fit. And in Dean's case, those details happen to be pretty centrist (with the exception of his opposition to the war): He's a relative moderate on gun control, the death penalty, trade, and fiscal matters.
"Now you could certainly argue, as Brownstein does, that Dean's anger will scare away some swing voters. But, again, the question isn't whether it scares away swing voters. The question is, how many? And, any way you slice it, you probably scare away fewer swing voters by moving to the left of them tonally than you do by moving to the left of them ideologically."
Lieberman is getting slapped around by the press, most recently by the Los Angeles Times:
"A staff shake-up and slap from the NAACP this week are just the latest signs of the problems facing presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman, whose strategy for winning the nomination faces deep skepticism from many fellow Democrats.
"Although he sits atop most national polls as the party's preferred candidate -- thanks in large measure to his status as the 2000 vice presidential nominee -- Lieberman is lagging in the crucial leadoff states of Iowa and New Hampshire.Moreover, in a year when angry partisans are hungry for red-meat rhetoric from the Democratic candidates, the affable senator from Connecticut is taking a more subdued approach. . . .
"Lieberman's middling performance so far has been one of the surprises of this campaign, given the expectations that followed his exuberant and history-making performance as the first Jewish candidate to run for national office on a major party ticket."
Andrew Sullivan is appalled by the exploding deficit:
"The debt that we will hand over to the next generation is now growing at a fantastic rate. Even the Bush administration's own rosy estimates predict that this president will have landed the country with almost $2 trillion of accumulated new debt in the next five years.
" I think you can forgive some extra spending to avoid a depression and to pay for two vital wars and homeland defense. But the sheer scale of damage the administration is doing to our future economic and military strength is still deeply worrying. . . . He is now adding a huge new entitlement to Medicare, tied to one of the commodities with the fastest rate of price increases in the economy: prescription drugs. The defenses of Bush highlight how much of the new spending was vital of our security (a good point), how much more profligate the Democrats would be (not a good enough point) and how the tax cuts will eventually increase revenues (but enough to counterbalance all that spending?). All I'd say is that no conservative can be happy to observe the phenomenal growth of government under this president. . . . Right now, the president doesn't seem even to acknowledge that there's a problem. But it's a far bigger one than some phony hysteria about a minor CIA goof."
Some Bush defenders are stepping up the rhetoric against the critics, such as Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, writing in Canada's National Post:
"Somewhere, probably in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is gloating. He can only be gratified by the feeding frenzy of recriminations, second-guessing and political power-plays that are currently assailing his nemeses: President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"The hysteria surrounding charges that faulty British intelligence about one aspect of Saddam's nuclear weapons program -- and a Bush 2003 State of the Union allusion thereto -- may even be emboldening Saddam to believe the unimaginable: He might yet survive (physically and perhaps politically) the current pair of U.S. and British leaders, just as he did their predecessors in the wake of Operation Desert Storm.
"It is hard to believe that Americans of any political persuasion would actually want to gladden the heart of so vile a tyrant as Saddam Hussein, let alone to encourage those who seek his return to power. This is particularly true in light of the evidence of his regime's odious predations that have come to light since Iraq's liberation."
Now questioning the evidence is being pro-Saddam?
Uraniumgate may be ringing the opposition cash register, reports the Wall Street Journal:
"Democrats are trying to cash in, politically and financially, on the fallout from President Bush's discredited State of the Union claim that Iraq tried to buy African uranium to restart its nuclear-weapons program.
"The Democratic National Committee recently sent one million grass-roots activists an e-mail urging them to donate money to run an advertisement that shows Mr. Bush uttering the now-disputed, 16-word sentence. The commercial borrows a motif from the Watergate movie, 'All the President's Men,' with black-and-white images of typed print accusing the White House of knowingly misleading the American public. The party won't say how much has been raised. But it is enough for the commercial to begin airing soon, though not nationwide, says DNC spokesman Tony Welch."
Talk about tough rhetoric from Howard Dean's campaign! Check out this New York Post piece on John Kerry's latest speech:
"'President Bush should tell the truth -- and get out of the way and let us find the truth -- about the intelligence gap,' fumed Kerry, claiming Bush is stalling probes into 9/11 and fudging the facts on Iraq.
"Speaking in The Bronx, Kerry sounded as if he was trying to sound just like Dean. In fact, it sounded as if Kerry was kicking himself -- hard -- for having ever voted for the Iraq war last fall and wishing he'd been a naysayer from the start, like Dean.
"'You get the feeling they're hiring Jayson Blair to write their speeches,' said Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi, referring to the New York Times reporter who had to quit because of plagiarism."
The man is a quote machine.
American Prospect's Mary Lynn Jones sniffs a double standard on Iraq:
"Remember in the good old days of the 2000 campaign how Republicans -- and the media, which was more than willing to go along with them -- kept bringing up Al Gore's inability to tell the truth? It wasn't necessary for Gore to embellish the facts of his life, but reporters called him on it because they said it was a character issue. Good thing we didn't elect Gore to the White House -- he might have lied about his dog's prescription-drug prices, not the reason for going to war and risking American lives.
"The Iraq War never made much sense to me. Why, if we are fighting a war against terrorism, did we suddenly veer left and attack Iraq? I know there was bad blood between Saddam Hussein and Bush's dad, but that's not a satisfactory reason to send young Americans overseas, increase our already burgeoning debt and divert resources we need to track down al-Qaeda leaders before they launch their next attack on American soil. Was Iraq an imminent threat to Americans? No. Did it have weapons of mass destruction? Not that we know of so far. Was Iraq closely tied to al-Qaeda? Nothing suggests that.
"The Democratic candidates still have a lot of work to do in developing their own messages and getting them to voters -- it's much easier to win an election, after all, if you have your own agenda to promote rather than just talking about how bad the other guy is. But the half-truths about the Iraq War may provide them with an opening to debate Bush on a more level playing field. No longer should the candidates be afraid to debate him on foreign policy. No longer should the media deify him because of his response to September 11."
Slate's Mike Kinsley says we're dancing around the "who lied?" issue:
"You would think that on the question of who told a lie in a speech, evidence seen on television by millions of people around the world might count for something. Apparently not. The Bush administration borrows from Groucho: 'Who are you going to believe -- us or your own two eyes?
"The case for the defense is a classic illustration of what lawyers call 'arguing in the alternative.' The Bushies say: 1) It wasn't really a lie; 2) someone else told the lie; and 3) the lie doesn't matter. All these defenses are invalid.
"1) Bushies fanned out to the weekend talk shows to note, as if with one voice, that what Bush said was technically accurate. But it was not accurate, even technically. The words in question were: 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.' Bush didn't say it was true, you see -- he just said the Brits said it. This is a contemptible argument. . . .
"2) The Bush argument blaming the CIA for failing to remove this falsehood from the president's speech is based on the logic of 'stop me before I lie again.' . . .
"3) The final argument: It was only 16 words! What's the big deal? . . . Perhaps the president will tell us which particular points among those he and his administration have made are the ones we are supposed to take seriously. Or how many gimmes he feels entitled to take in the course of this game. Is it a matter of word count? When he hits 100 words, say, are we entitled to assume that he cares whether the words are true?" |
