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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KonKilo who wrote (9361)	9/25/2003 6:48:26 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793757

Who cares about the Sunday talk shows except for junkies like us? Good question. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Meet the Press By Brian Morton - Baltimore City Paper online Well, it didn't take long for the "let's all gang up on Wesley Clark" bandwagon to start up. Clark is an interesting political creature in the modern era: Rhodes Scholar, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, war hero, and now presidential candidate. And, of course, since we can't leave it out, he's never been elected to anything before. We think it was Mark Twain who once opined that politics is the only career in which it is considered an advantage to have no experience whatsoever. At least, that's the way all those freshmen Republicans played it when they first ran for Congress as part of Newt Gingrich's "revolution." Even now, Ah-nold is out in California disparaging the "professional politicians" who supposedly ran the state into the ground, even as he hides his prescriptions for saving the state's budget like Richard Nixon hid his "secret plan" to end the war in Vietnam. So the same hacks in the national press who are letting the Austrian wunderkind off the hook regarding his résumé and qualifications to run one of the world's largest economies are climbing over one another to tear into the man trying to succeed Dwight Eisenhower as the next general to sit in the Oval Office. Why? Because unlike a man who sat in the relatively powerless chief executive seat of the state of Texas, the man whose whereabouts in the last year of his Alabama National Guard stint are still unaccounted for, Clark is a threat to the conservative cabal. After a less-than-spectacular media performance by Clark on the weekend political talk shows, Howard Kurtz, the stealth-conservative media columnist for The Washington Post, started Monday by declaring Clark's honeymoon over. At the same time, Clark ("incredibly," according to Kurtz) led the Democratic candidates in a Newsweek poll in the first week after he announced his candidacy. The only people who care about the Sunday-morning political talk shows are political reporters and Washington's chattering class (I can barely stand watching the things myself, after seeing Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly let off the hook by supposed bulldog Tim Russert). But Kurtz says the general is toast because of Clark's supposedly shifting positions on the Iraq war. (Not to mention the Newsweek survey was conducted Sept. 18 and 19, and Kurtz's postmortem came out Monday morning. So it's "incredible" that Clark is the front-runner when the poll results are released after the weekend talk shows are over? What does it take to get the media columnist's slot at the nation's pre-eminent political daily these days?) We recall the administration's shifting rationales for the war in Iraq, but we don't really see any of the Washington Media Heavy Hitters making any hay about it. What we are seeing is an extension of the smear-by-interpretation tactic used against Al Gore during the ramp-up to the 2000 campaign. This is where bored traveling reporters use the Gail Sheehy method of taking the smallest things and making them "indicative of larger problems," just to liven up their horse-race stories. When John Kerry picked the wrong cheese for his cheese steak in Philly, the nation's political reporters seized on it like it was some sort of deep-seated psychological problem. When they found out his relatives were more Jewish than Irish, the chorus began, "Does John Kerry know who he is?" Think back to the whole "earth tones" kerfuffle when Gore ran in 2000--this is the stuff that keeps the nation's political reporters busy in the off-years in between the four-year September/November cycle when regular Americans really pay attention to presidential politics. Unfortunately, this stuff also demeans and trivializes the important process of picking a president. On the basis of a weekend chat with four reporters, Kurtz says, "All this, of course, followed an 11-minute announcement speech that contained no specifics and even fewer rhetorical flourishes. Now, the underlying journalistic question is, does he have the right stuff for a presidential campaign?" Let's see--the most memorable line uttered by the current president was really penned by his former speechwriter David Frum, who promptly quit and spent no amount of time telling the world he was the originator of the term "axis of evil." And we didn't really get a whole lot of specifics about what we were going to do after Saddam Hussein was ousted from Iraq, either. So as it stands, Clark is standing even with the bar set by the current inhabitant of the White House--but that, of course, will never do. When a politician is a great orator, like Mario Cuomo, the D.C. pundits rip him for being "an unelectable East Coast liberal." When he's no great orator but has a spectacular military record and a solid legislative career like Kerry, suddenly he is "stiff and unlikable" (see press accounts under "Gore, Albert"). If he is folksy and handsome, like John Edwards, he's a "lightweight." If he has a centrist record as an executive, like Howard Dean, he is tarred as a hopeless liberal and derided as "prickly." Clark is a former general with a lot of serious former Clinton players behind him. He may be the front-runner for now--but this race is hardly over. The bar is set by the current president, no matter who in the press tries to interpret it differently. On the house: politicalanimal@citypaper.com.

To: KonKilo who wrote (9361)	9/25/2003 8:00:34 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793757

I posted about this yesterday. A real potential problem. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The presidential race By Charles G. Kels - Op-Ed THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published September 25, 2003 Facing an election year, a weary but determined president was blamed by Democrats for the human and financial costs of war. They accused him of violating civil libertiesandrunning roughshod over the Constitution. They said the military was inequitably composed of poor, urban Americans. They demanded an end to the war and a pullback of U.S. troops. The governments of Europe flirted with the enemy. Advancing into the center of the hornet's nest, the U.S. military was exposed to the risk of an insurgent resistance. A war that conventional wisdom predicted would be short and sweet had become long and bitter. Former presidents had ignored the warning signs and left it to this president to confront the problem once and for all. Seeking legitimacy, the Democrats looked longingly to a disgruntled former four-star general as the best chance to unseat the sitting administration. The coming election was a referendum on national resolve. The year was 1864. The incumbent president was Abraham Lincoln. When the votes were tallied and the opposition defeated, the re-elected president had a mandate to see the war through to victory. As he demonstrated in his speech to the nation on Sept. 7, President Bush is determined to confront the enemy with a "sustained and serious response," which terrorists long presumed free nations were too "decadent and weak" to maintain. He understands that "the use of strength" deters aggression, whereas "the perception of weakness" invites it. Like the antiwar Democrats of 1864, whom Lincoln labeled "Copperheads" due to their poisonous effect on morale, Mr. Bush's political adversaries believe they can woo voters with the message that we should placate the enemy by leaving Iraq "before our work is done." Yet, as the electorate showed 140 years ago, American resolve is sturdier than either the enemy or the political opposition presumes. The Union followed and bled for Lincoln, because, as Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote about his boss, "The policy of the President and the course of [his] administration were based on substantial principles and convictions to which he firmly adhered." Lincoln's example explains why Mr. Bush can be so sure that the America he leads will not shirk "the duties of our generation," nor "run from a challenge." The Union troops whom Gen. Ulysses S. Grant sent into the teeth of the enemy fortifications at Cold Harbor were so convinced of their morbid fate that they pinned pieces of paper with their names and addresses to the back of their uniforms. Yet amazingly, Grant's men cheered him as he rode by, because they knew he would accept nothing short of victory. The cost of ending slavery was more than 600,000 American lives. We hope and pray that eradicating terrorism will cost far less. Mr. Bush, like Lincoln, perceives the gruesome reality that there can be no real peace without victory. After the voters elected him to a second term, Lincoln delivered an inaugural speech that is best known for its magnanimous spirit of reconciliation. However, a closer reading shows that Lincoln's message was not mere forgiveness: It was military conquest, followed by forgiveness. Lincoln emphasized the duty "to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace," a duty that entailed his insistence on total triumph and complete surrender. Then, and only then, would his generous vision of "malice toward none" and "charity for all" have a real chance of success. Mr. Bush, too, is resigned to unflinchingly prosecute a war which he did not start, but is determined to finish. Once American resolve has defeated terrorism, American compassion will ensure it stays in the dustbin of history. Thankfully Mr. Bush, unlike Lincoln, will achieve his vision without exiling the chief antiwar Democrat to the enemy. Sleep comfortably, Howard Dean. Charles G. Kels is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

To: KonKilo who wrote (9361)	9/25/2003 10:12:27 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793757

Interesting comparison on the "Vokokh" Blog. Man, are we litigatious! ---------------------------------------------------------------- Both numbers are stunning "Tyler Cowen of the Volokh Conspiracy writes : The number stunned me. Last year trial lawyers pulled in $40 billion from lawsuits, or twice as much as the revenues of the Coca-Cola company. So here's my question: Is he stunned that the American Lawyer's list of the top 100 law firms (who do mostly corporate defense work) grossed more than $47 billion last year? Why is only one of these numbers stunning?" volokh.com