October 21, 2003
Tuesday, October 21, 2003 1:00 p.m. EDT In today's Political Diary:
CBS Sharpens a Hatchet for Ronald
Florida Threatens to Break Out
Candidate Quote of the Day
Return of Snippy
We Wish This Was Howard's Campaign Song
Smoldering Health Care Politics
Arnold Conquers an Austrian
Occupational Hazard
CBS to 'BS' Viewers About Reagan
When CBS announced earlier this year it was producing a television movie on the life of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, warning flags shot up. The part of Mr. Reagan was given to none other than James Brolin, husband of Reagan-loathing Democratic diva Barbra Streisand. The producers, Neil Meron and Craig Zadon, freely acknowledged their liberal views but insisted the biography would be fair.
Now the New York Times has obtained a copy of the final script and, sure enough, the film includes several scenes that the Times calls "historically questionable."
Among the scenes depicted are a meeting in which Reagan more or less acknowledges that he was an informer for the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy era, a point that has never been documented. Another shows Mrs. Reagan begging her husband to help AIDS patients only to be told "They that live in sin shall die in sin."
Reagan biographer and no right-winger himself, Lou Cannon says such a portrayal is unfair: "Reagan is not intolerant."
Elizabeth Egloff, the playwright who wrote the script, admitted to the Times that there was no evidence such a conversation took place. Instead she claims "we know he ducked the issue over and over again, and we know (Nancy Reagan) was the one who got him to deal with it."
You'd think CBS would be a little more careful in its Reagan-bashing. The man who green-lighted the Reagan project, CBS Chairman Les Moonves, is already somewhat exposed on the issue of liberal bias.
He allowed himself to be seen sitting next to Hillary Clinton at the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles. Last year, he was ridiculed by David Letterman on his own network for a four-day junket to Cuba with other media moguls. During the trip he hobnobbed with Fidel Castro and he returned with the dictator's autograph on a cigar box.
Mr. Moonves' last project also did not end well. "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" created a stir earlier this year when it drew ominous parallels between a society that allowed a Hitler to rise to power and the reaction of the Bush administration after 9/11. "It basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who (sic) ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole nation into war. I can't think of a better time to examine this history than now," producer Ed Gernon told TV Guide before the biography aired.
"When an entire country becomes afraid for their sovereignty, for their safety," he added, "they will embrace ideas and strategies and positions that they might not embrace otherwise." Mr. Gernon was fired from the project for tipping the movie's hand so blatantly, but the controversial elements of the script were left in.
Now that CBS' anti-Reagan bias has been revealed, the network will understandably resist calls for last-minute editing and changes in the Reagan biography. That's appropriate. Let the audience see the movie's alternate conceptualization of reality and judge for itself.
Mr. Reagan courageously opposed a 1978 anti-gay ballot initiative in California. No one who knows could imagine him condemning AIDS sufferers in the way the movie portrays him doing. Airing projects that rewrite history is just one of many reasons that the flight of audiences from network television continues apace.
-- John Fund
Straw Man, Straw PollFlorida's official Democratic primary is not till March, after half the national delegates will have been assigned. That's why Florida Democrat boss Scott Maddox, in defiance of national party headquarters, is organizing an unofficial straw poll at the state party's annual convention in early December.
He wants the rest of the country to know how Democratic activists in Florida, the climactic battleground in 2000, stand on the candidates before partygoers elsewhere venture to the primary polls starting in January. In so doing he threatens to violate a delicate (and pointless) compact by which influence in the nominating process is divvied up among the state parties.
Naturally, the national Dems, led by party chief Terry McAuliffe, are livid. They've tried to clamp down on such freelance exercises to save candidates from having to scatter their forces and funds before Iowa and New Hampshire. Mr. McAuliffe has even vaguely threatened not to seat Florida's delegation at the national convention this summer.
So far, though, he's having a hard time organizing a boycott of the Florida pre-contest contest. No Democratic campaign wants to sign his boycott letter until the others do. Meanwhile, Howard Dean, dissing the party establishment once again, has been using email lists to bombard Floridians with his come-hithers, while the more obedient (or penurious) candidates are holding back
Maybe instead of fighting this battle, Mr. McAuliffe should see an opportunity here.
Florida's straw poll could be just the serendipitous opening needed by the non-Deans, especially Wesley Clark and Joe Lieberman, who are less threatening to the party establishment and (arguably) more electable in the general election. Remember what everybody keeps saying: The Democrat rank and file this year would nominate Elmer Fudd if he could "beat Bush."
A Florida straw-poll win might carry a lot of weight with voters elsewhere. It could also be the only way to slow the Dean Express before Iowa and New Hampshire.
-- Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
Plaintive Candidate Quote of the Day"I'm gonna win some primaries on February 3. I've gotta win some primaries on February 3" -- Joe Lieberman, pinning his hopes on several later big-state primaries, after deciding to drop out of the Iowa and New Hampshire events in January. (ABCNews.com)
What Is It About 'Snippy'?
Al Gore used the word with George Bush on election night in Florida, when he phoned to take back his concession. Evidently Mr. Bush didn't react well, requiring Mr. Gore to instruct him "you don't have to be snippy about it"
Now Howard Dean has introduced the snippiness issue back into the national debate, applying it to himself no less.
The revelation first arrived in an AP story last summer and has made the rounds again in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution piece this week about rival campaigns scouring the Vermont hillsides for evidence of the Good Doctor's allegedly out-of-control temper.
Dr. Dean is quoted admitting to a reporter, "I can get snippy, no doubt about it. I do have a mouth on me."
In fact, the candidate has been toning down his angry-man act lately in hopes of seeming more presidential. But he and his rivals are both misguided if he thinks the anger rap is about his demeanor; it's about his platform, fans and the movement behind him. That's his real problem. When have Americans ever elected a "protestor" and "dissident" president?
Yet murmuring Dems reportedly are wondering whether Dr. Dean, with his excitable fans and prodigious fund-raising, is permanently shaking up their party. He may be a "transformational" figure, some Democrats are telling the Washington Post.
Uh huh. There's another school that sees him as a case of the party making the same choice over and over and hoping it will come out differently this time.
The Democratic nominating process has by now proved itself constitutionally incapable of producing someone whom Americans will elect, except when it plucks a bubba candidate from the south, who won't come across like he looks down on the rest of the country. This is not Dr. Dean, though he lately has played up his supposedly rural (by way of New York City) Vermont roots.
He seems less a transformational figure than the second coming of Dukakis, who was the second coming of Mondale, who was the second coming of McGovern, who was the second coming of Humphrey, who was the second coming of Stevenson.
Too bad. Dick McCormack, an old sparring partner in the Vermont legislature, is quoted recalling a Dr. Dean we haven't seen much of in the campaign: "He said, 'I don't care what your liberal agenda is, you'll never accomplish anything if the people don't trust us with their money, and they don't trust us Democrats.' "
-- Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
Impertinent Song Lyric of the Day"I'd kinda like to be the President
so I can show you how your money's spent."
--From "Why Can't We Be Friends" by the band "War" (1975, Rhino Records)
Stealth Care
A ticket to ride in Democratic presidential sweepstakes is a health care plan, and the candidates have all got 'em. Yet there hasn't been a great demand from the media or public to hear about them, except during an AARP-sponsored gabfest in Iowa last week.
Al Gore and Bill Bradley got nasty early and often comparing their rival plans in the 2000 primaries. Health care was a pivotal issue in 1992, too. We know what happened then--the Hillarycare debacle put the subject off the agenda for the rest of the decade.
There's a good chance health care will be a stealth issue in this election too. Media reports and polling insist the public is alarmed about a so-called crisis, but if the economy heats up and jobs are more plentiful, premium hikes will become easier to swallow. The same polls indicate most Americans are happy with the coverage they've got, just worried about losing it. And that's the biggest hurdle facing any kind of "reform:" 240 million Americans already have coverage and fear that politicians will try to replace it with an inferior government-run alternative.
That's why only non-contenders like Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley Braun talk about a single-payer system, the holy grail of a lot more Democrats than those who say so openly. The so-called moderates like Messrs. Dean, Lieberman and Gephardt content themselves with plans that would simply throw more taxpayer dollars at various categories of uninsured or under-insured voters.
But the germ of an interesting idea actually exists in this campaign. It's John Kerry's proposal, launched in May, for universal catastrophic coverage. Private insurers would be able to lay off on the government any expenses over $50,000 incurred for a given patient.
Mr. Kerry tells visitors to his website that only 0.4% of claims submitted to private insurers are for more than $50,000, although this tiny portion of the patient population accounts for nearly 20% of medical expenses reimbursed by the private insurance industry.
The way Sen. Kerry positions his plan, it's just one more salami slice toward government takeover of health spending. But his idea could (ok, in our dreams) serve as the fulcrum of a grand bargain to fix what ails health care in this country.
First, combine it with a move to eliminate tax-free treatment of employer-provided health care. Secondly, use the universal catastrophic benefit to replace much of Medicare. Thirdly, deregulate the insurance market.
What do you end up with? A health-care sector in which consumers would again face price signals for routine and non-catastrophic health spending. Their decisions about how much to pay out-of-pocket, how much to cover with insurance (which would be far cheaper than it is today) would no longer be distorted by the tax code. More attention to value for money would be paid across the whole health-care economy, benefiting even the government when it contracts for services for the most serious cases, i.e. those covered by the catastrophic benefit.
Chances of this happening? Zero, now. But with tax cuts to make up to workers what they lose by eliminating the tax preference for employer-provided insurance, it could be a win-win-win in the right political environment.
-- Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
Arnie's Anschluss of Love Everyone knows that Arnold Schwarzenegger is an Austrian immigrant. What isn't well known is the extent of "Arnie mania" that has swept his native land in the last few months. Austrian television carried nightly reports on his campaign and local newspapers even ran maps highlighting where his bus tour was going.
The coverage in Austria, as well as in neighboring Germany and Switzerland, became so intense that the Terminator had to take on a foreign-language liaison for the duration of the campaign.
Gerald Neugschwandtner wasn't even born when Mr. Schwarzenegger emigrated to America in 1968. But the 26-year-old graduate student in political science knew that he wanted to be part of history. The day after the actor announced he would run for governor he was on a plane to Los Angeles.
He showed up at campaign headquarters to volunteer and was quickly snapped up. After all, he knew German and had experience dealing with long, impossible Teutonic names-including his own. "Arnold is right that America is the country of unlimited possibilities," he told me at a post-election conference last weekend. "I was welcomed and given the big job of evaluating media coverage from both American and foreign sources."
The Santa Monica campaign headquarters, which used to be occupied by Johnny Carson when he hosted the "Tonight Show," was so cramped that Mr. Neugschwandtner had his office in a corner of the spacious bathroom. It was a veritable hall of mirrors where Mr. Carson used to practice delivering his monologues. "I became dizzy sometimes looking at my own image," he says.
Mr. Neugschwandtner has now returned to Austria where he plans to finish his studies and continue his consulting work with the ruling conservative People's Party. He looks forward to working with Mr. Schwarzenegger when the governor returns to Austria for a homecoming trip. "It won't be a visit from a head of state, but I'm sure some in the media will treat it like one."
-- John Fund
Occupational Hazard (Quote of the Day)"The troops returning home are worried. 'We've lost the peace,' men tell you. 'We can't make it stick.' . . . Friend and foe alike look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as an American."
From "Americans Are Losing the Victory in Europe," by John Dos Passos, Life Magazine, January 7, 1946.
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