Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (9118)	3/20/2004 8:30:24 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 81568

Wonks on the Run ________________________ By Paul Waldman gadflyer.com 3.16.04 As Bruce Reed, Bill Clinton's domestic policy chief, pointed out in the latest Washington Monthly, in every administration there is a conflct between the policy types - the wonks - and the political types - the hacks. Bill Clinton was both the ultimate wonk and the ultimate hack, while George W. Bush is all hack. The problem is, so is his administration. The wonks have been banished. We see it yet again with the controversy over the Medicare bill. Apparently, then-Medicare chief Thomas Scully (who was working to pass the Medicare bill while simultaneously negotiating to become a health care lobbyist - now that's public service) told chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster that if Foster told the truth about the bill's cost to members of Congress, Scully would fire him. The issue was that the line the administration was peddling to Congress was that the bill would cost $400 billion, the limit many conservative Republicans said they would accept. What Foster and others knew, however, was that the true cost is going to be over $550 billion. Was Scully's threat outrageous? Absolutely. But it was nothing new. Recall that when John DiIulio, Bush's first head of the Office of Faith-Based Intitiatives, left the administration, he told Ron Suskind, "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." DiIulio's comments bear repeating in light of Richard Foster's recent revelations (you can read the article from which these quotes are drawn on Ron Suskind's web site: "I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions," [DiIulio] writes. "There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical nonstop, twenty-hour-a-day White House staff. Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking: discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue." The day after Suskind's article was released, administration spokesman Ari Fleischer said DiIulio's charges were "baseless and groundless." A few hours later, DiIulio himself obediently apologized to the White House and recanted, saying his previous comments were "groundless and baseless." We may presume that at that point his children were set free. Later, Suskind got a similar story from former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: the political people were in charge, and the policy people were barely relevant. On one occasion early on, the political people wanted the President to claim that $1.2 trillion of the surplus could not be paid down even if the government wanted to, because it was in the form of bonds that would not mature for over ten years (meaning the money would be free to use for a tax cut). O'Neill and others in the Treasury Department realized the number was wrong - the true number was only $500 billion, not $1.2 trillion. But the White House included the false number anyway, as Suskind reported in The Price of Loyalty: O'Neill was incensed. How could the White House political staff "decide to do things like this and not even consult with people in the government who know what's true or not? Who the hell is in charge here?" he ranted. "This is complete bullshit!" That night, Bush stood before the nation, described the state of the Union in the most important speech a president gives, in any given year, and said something that knowledgeable people in the U.S. government knew to be false. As we move into the 2004 campaign, it becomes increasingly apparent that particularly on the domestic side, policy has become the emperor's clothes of this administration. They keep telling us how wonderful it is and how great it's working, but look closely and there isn't anything there. For instance, on what may be the most important question of the 2004 campaign - the state of the economy and jobs - the administration seems to have no policy at all. They have photo-ops, and arguments, and spin, but can anyone say exactly what they plan to do to improve the economy? Who knows - and what does it matter? It's all about winning.

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (9118)	3/21/2004 12:40:24 AM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

We've been lackeys for long enough By Julia Baird March 20, 2004 On january 22, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd poked fun at US President George Bush's State of the Union address, claiming it was a "steroid-infused performance", delivered with an in-your-face smirk. She wrote: "Can you believe President Bush is still pushing the cockamamie claim that we went to war in Iraq with a real coalition rather than a gaggle of poodles and lackeys? His State of the Union address took his swaggering sheriff routine to new heights." Poodles and lackeys, eh? Might be news to Britain - and Spain - this week. It was spooky that lackey - an obvious insult - was the word used in the statement attributed to al-Qaeda this week: "Learn your lesson, you lackeys of America, the brigades of death are at your gates ... Will it be the turn of Japan, America, Italy, Britain, the al-Sauds, Australia?" We are not just poodles. We are big, fat targets. But, as the outgoing Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar has discovered, a global dissonance between several "lackey" governments and their people has been made starkly evident by the war in Iraq. And it's payback time. Remember the millions of people who clustered in 600 towns and cities across the world a year ago, waving placards, burning effigies? The cities that drew the fattest crowds were in Britain, Italy and Spain - where the governments were supporting the US attack on Iraq. It was with a feeling of impotence that despite all the protests, uncertainty and questions, many watched their troops go to war. And with the failure of public protest, many shuttled into cyberspace for some fierce political debate. This week, as 11 million Spaniards returned to the streets - this time to mourn - and voted in a socialist government, pundits started wrestling over whether, by voting out the politicians who had led them to war, the Spanish were kowtowing to terrorists. Conservative American blogger Andrew Sullivan interpreted it as a victory for al-Qaeda, writing "the trend in Europe is now either appeasement of terror or active alliance with it". The New York Times' David Brooks also implied it was a gutless act of appeasement. On National Review Online, former Bush speechwriter David Frum wrote: "Sometimes [people] convince themselves that if only they give the Cyclops what he wants, they will be eaten last. And this is what seems to have happened in Spain." But wasn't democracy one of the things we were fighting for? And wasn't it what we wanted for Iraq? As the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland argued, it is wrong to conflate the war on Iraq with al-Qaeda. It is possible to oppose both bombing Iraq, and terrorism. As the more measured newspaper columnists have volleyed arguments and insults about the war across continents, bloggers have increasingly become the Statlers and Waldorfs of political debate - Jim Henson's Muppets who heckle from the balcony - unedited, uninhibited and often unbalanced. But usually entertaining. The internet has played a vital role as a site of dissent and anti-spin during a year when it seemed protests counted for little. Dowd's poodle column, for example, was not run in Australia but the internet crackled as bloggers went feral. The Alliance of Free Blogs called Dowd a "stupid skank". Marybeth yelled: "Maureen Dowd is a rabid poodle ... Think about it ... symptoms of rabies can include foaming at the mouth, erratic behaviour, extreme excitement, and aggression." An Australian blogger, Tim Blair, complained to The New York Times. Several bloggers posted a googlebomb, which is a mechanism by which people can jam the Google ranking system by linking items and forcing them to the top. Type in poodle and Dowd's biography is not too far from the top. (Type in miserable failure and George Bush comes up, closely followed by Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore. Type in weapons of mass destruction and you will find an error page saying: "These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed ... The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate.") Bloggers are anarchic. In their mad jumble of jarring opinions, they symbolise the growing cynicism towards journalists, politicians, one another and any symbols of authority known to warp the truth. In Dowd's case it was a lazy insult. In others, it has been a more corrupt distortion of intelligence. Going to Iraq was clearly a calculated risk. Today, a year on, as we face the consequences of war, Australians will be on the streets again (in Sydney, it is in Hyde Park at noon). We have a right to be angry. Iraq is a mess, the use of intelligence was dishonest (at best inept), many of the justifications for war have proved thin, and we need accountability. As Owen Harries has argued, it's time to take a less "compliant and ingratiating posture within the alliance" and focus on how to protect Australians from terrorism. What changes things now, of course, for Bush, Blair, Howard and leaders of other countries dismissed as poodles is the threat of repercussions at the polls, where protests can't be sniffed at as a terrorist tea party, and the power of democracy comes back to bite those who foolishly dismiss people as gullible and compliant. Just ask Statler and Waldorf, whose most famous quote was: "Get off the stage, you bum!" This story was found at: smh.com.au