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

To: steve harris who wrote (11300)	4/1/2004 11:55:47 AM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81568

Famous Republican Says Bush-Cheney Creepier than Nixon John Dean says Bush and "co-president" Cheney are an even greater threat to the country. - - - - - - - - - - - - By David Talbot March 31, 2004 \| As Richard Nixon's White House counsel during the Watergate scandal, John Dean famously warned his boss that there was "a cancer on the presidency" that would bring down the administration unless Nixon came clean. In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush," Dean warns the country that the Bush administration is even more secretive and authoritarian than Nixon's -- in fact, he writes, it's "the most secretive presidency of my lifetime." "To say that the [Bush-Cheney] secret presidency is undemocratic is an understatement," he adds. "I'm anything but skittish about government, but I must say this administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous." Dean's new book is being published, appropriately, as the country is being treated to another spectacle of Nixonian smearing and stonewalling by the Bush White House. Rather than come clean about its pre-9/11 security policies, the administration has engaged in a frenzied counterattack on its whistle-blowing former terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, while refusing to let National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testify before the bipartisan panel investigating the terror attack until the political pressure became overwhelming. Dean conversed with Salon by e-mail from his Los Angeles home. Premium Benefits One year subscription to Granta, Wired, National Geographic Adventure and U.S. News and World Report magazines. Plus a six month subscription to the New York Review of Books Salon's latest music mix Listen to 16 tracks from artists like June Carter Cash, Warren Zevon and Steve Earle. Get Premium on your PDA or Wireless device Free one month audio subscription to the New York Times or Wall Street Journal Get a free month of Premium when you refer a friend Get Salon's headlines delivered to your e-mail address Download Salon as plain text or PDF -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush by John W. Dean Little Brown 192 pages Nonfiction Buy this book -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How is the Bush-Cheney administration more secretive than Nixon's? A few examples make the point. Nixon became a secretive president, as his presidency proceeded, while Bush and Cheney were secretive from the outset. Nixon actually tried to reduce the excessive national security classification of documents (through a panel headed by the man who is now chief justice of the United States), while Bush and Cheney have tried to increase classification (and 9/11 does not hold up as the reason for much of it). Nixon only abused executive privilege (the power of a president to withhold information from his constitutional co-equals) after Watergate, while Bush and Cheney have sought to abuse the privilege from the outset. Nixon was never taken to court by the General Accounting Office for refusing to provide information about executive activities, while Bush and Cheney forced GAO to go to court (where GAO lost under a recently appointed Bush judge). Nixon believed presidential papers should be available for historians, but Bush has undermined the laws to make such records available to the public. While Nixon's presidency gave currency to the term "stonewalling," Bush and Cheney have made stonewalling their standard procedure, far in excess of Nixon. In short, in every area one looks, Bush and Cheney are more secretive than Nixon ever imagined being. I have mentioned but a few. Why have Congress and the press allowed Dick Cheney to get away with his stonewalling tactics on the energy task force, Halliburton, duck hunting with Justice Scalia, and other questionable aspects of his vice presidency? I would add to the list Cheney's outrageous stonewalling about his health, which we know is bad, notwithstanding his effort to keep the details secret. The Congress lets Cheney do anything he wants because Republicans control it, and Cheney is their heavy in the White House for getting things done. Cheney, so long as Republicans control, will not have to answer, but should we return to divided government in 2004 or 2006 and Cheney is still in the White House, that will end. There has never been a vice president -- ever (and even including Spiro Agnew who was Nixon's) -- who needed to be investigated more than Cheney. Nor has there ever been such a secretive vice president. Dick Cheney is the power behind the Bush throne. Frankly, I am baffled why the mainstream news media has given Cheney (not to mention Bush) a free ride. I don't know if it is generational, or corporate ownership, or political bias, but it is clear that Cheney has been given a pass by the major news organizations. Do you feel the vice president has, after more than three years of secretive governing from an undisclosed location, become a political liability to the president? How likely is it that Bush will drop him from the ticket this year? Dick Cheney is a political disaster awaiting recognition. In the book, I set forth a relatively long list of inchoate scandals, not to mention problems worse than scandals. They all involve Cheney in varying degrees. Bush can't dump Cheney, for it is Cheney, not Rove, who is Bush's backroom brain. He is actually a co-president. Bush doesn't enjoy studying and devising policy. Cheney does. While Cheney has tutored Bush for almost four years, and Bush is better prepared today than when he entered the job, Cheney is quietly guiding this administration. Cheney knows how to play Bush so that Cheney is absolutely no threat to him, makes him feel he is president, but Bush can't function without a script, or without Cheney. Bush is head of state; Cheney is head of government. If, say, the Securities and Exchange Commission's current investigation of Halliburton's accounting also discovers that Cheney engaged in insider trading when he left Halliburton (which the facts suggest is highly likely), and this matter erupts before the Republican convention, then Cheney might be forced to step aside. Cheney always has his bad-health excuse anytime he wants to take it -- because it is a fact. He has a certain immunity as vice president, but if he were to be dropped from the ticket (or he and Bush lose), I believe Cheney would have serious problems which he would no longer be able to deflect. Thus, he will stay and fight like hell to win. I quote Cheney from his time in the Ford White House when he said, "Principle is okay up to a certain point, but principle doesn't do any good if you lose." I think this statement sums up Cheney's thinking nicely.

To: steve harris who wrote (11300)	4/1/2004 11:59:30 AM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

John Dean (cont) Describes Bush-Cheney Secret Agenda" You write that Bush and Cheney have not leveled with America about their true agenda. What is it? Dean: Because of their secrecy, it takes a lot of work to connect the dots. I've not connected them all, but enough of them to know that the only agenda they had during the first term was to get a second term -- which meant secretly taking care of their major contributors. Should they get a second term, we know their secret agenda, for they have quietly stated it: They intend to make sure the Republicans control the federal government (all three branches) indefinitely, if possible. In short, the Bush-Cheney agenda is about perpetuating Republican rule by taking particularly good care of major contributors who share their views of the world. Karl Rove also plays a unique role in the Bush administration. One close observer says in your book that he's "Haldeman and Ehrlichman all in one." Explain. Rove's unique role is that he is a political guy making policy decisions for political reasons. Decisions in the Bush White House are made not based on what is best for the public interest, rather what will get the president the most mileage with his base, and best political advantage. Not since Nixon's so-called responsiveness program -- which was uncovered during the Watergate investigation -- have we had such overt political decision-making. The reference to Haldeman and Ehrlichman as explaining Rove was a quip from a friend of mine from the Nixon White House who has had dealings with Rove. Since Rove is a revengeful fellow, my friend will remain nameless. But my friend was telegraphing a lot of information about Rove with this bit of shorthand -- for anyone who has any knowledge of the Nixon White House and Watergate, they know Haldeman and Ehrlichman were the heavies. First, it is a compliment in that both Haldeman and Ehrlichman were very smart, and highly efficient. But what it tells us is that Rove is ruthless, for both Haldeman and Ehrlichman were that too. Both Haldeman and Ehrlichman saw the world through a political lens, and what was most likely to help Richard Nixon get reelected. So does Rove. Haldeman was involved with procedure (broadly speaking, I mean who was doing what at the White House, arranging the presidential travel and appearances for maximum political benefit, and constantly mindful of the president's image and making him look good), and Ehrlichman was the substance guy (who developed domestic policies, but accounting for the political impact). Rove controls both. Had Haldeman and Ehrlichman not received the longest sentences of any of those involved in Watergate, Rove would probably be pleased by the comparison. Karl Rove first came to your attention during Watergate. In what ways is he the reincarnation of Nixon dirty tricksters like Charles Colson and Donald Segretti? He is way beyond anything Nixon had at his disposal. He is closer to a behind-the-scenes Nixon operator named Murray Chotiner, who could cut off an opponent at the knees so quickly the person did not immediately realize he had been crippled. As I note in the book, the first time I heard the name Karl Rove was when I was asked if I knew anything about him by one of the Watergate special prosecutors who was investigating campaign dirty tricks. I didn't have any knowledge. But I recalled that question when working on this book, and located a memorandum in the files of the Watergate prosecutor's office that indicates they were asking others as well about Rove. Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him. Colson was brutal, cruel and vicious before he found God (during Watergate). While he once famously said he would run over his grandmother to get Nixon reelected, today I suspect he'd run over his grandmother to convert a few heathens to Christ. Segretti did not engage in the kind of dirty politics that Colson liked to play. Segretti was a political prankster, who only by accident got associated with Watergate. Nothing that Segretti did, that I know of, could be called sinister. Colson, on the other hand, was as nasty a political operative as could be found. Indeed, to this day we don't know the full extent of Colson's activities. He even refused to tell Nixon some of the things he had done (while boasting to Nixon he had done things he didn't want to tell the president). Colson walked out of the White House with any of his papers and records that might cause him a problem. Karl Rove, from what I've seen, makes Colson look like a novice. Bush has managed to stay above the ugly tactics used against opponents like John McCain and now John Kerry. Does he privately give them his blessing? Of course. All candidates control their campaigns, and if they don't want such activity, it doesn't occur. As I discovered in talking to people about Bush, he is a highly sophisticated political operator. I've noted in the book that Rove gets the credit for being Bush's political brain. It's an arrangement both men like, because it raises Rove's importance as a political operator, and lowers Bush's exposure. In truth, Bush is probably more politically savvy than Rove. Both men learned their politics from Lee Atwater, who ran Bush senior's 1988 campaign. Atwater made dirty politics into an art form, by which I mean he provided those for whom dirty deeds were done deniability while Atwater's people tore up an opponent's pea-patch and everything else. I expect the 2004 presidential campaign to make Richard Nixon look like a high-road campaigner. At least until recently, the Bush administration has successfully used the public's fear of terrorism to advance its agenda. You go so far as to agree with Gen. Tommy Franks' dark prediction that another major terror attack on U.S. citizens will drive the country to suspend the Constitution. Why do you fear that? As I state in the book, I agree for reasons that probably differ from those of Gen. Franks. The short summary of what is really a thread that runs through the book is that when you have a presidency that has no regard for human life, that develops and implements all (not just national security) policy in secrecy, and is driven by political motives and a radical philosophy, it is impossible not to conclude that they will overreact -- and at the expense of our constitutional safeguards. Bush and Cheney enjoy using power to make and wield swords, not ploughs. They prefer to rule by fear. We've had three years to take the measure of these men. I've done so and reported what I found in a book I never planned to write, but because others were not talking about these issues, I believed they needed to be placed on the table. Bush and Cheney have exploited terrorism ever since 9/11. Now they are exploiting it to get reelected. Should there be an even more serious threat, they have found that when Americans are frightened they can be governed like sheep, which suits Bush and Cheney perfectly. Rather than taking the terror out of terrorism by educating and informing Americans, they have sought to make terrorism as frightening as possible -- using terrorism to launch a war of aggression that is breeding a new generation of terrorists and getting the Congress to pass the most repressive new laws imaginable and calling it an act of patriotism. Do you think Bush has an enemies list? Are you on it? I don't believe that Bush, Cheney or Rove are foolish enough to actually maintain such a list -- as was foolishly done in the Nixon White House. But I believe they have long memories. As to how they feel about me, I could care less. As I explain in the book, I used many of my sources on background because this is a White House that takes revenge, and its supporters and surrogates play as dirty as they can get away with. The truth for this White House is not very pleasant, and my writing about it will not be appreciated. I didn't write this book for those who believe that Bush and Cheney have got it right, and don't want to hear otherwise. Rather I wrote it because a lot of people suspect that they've gotten it wrong, and needed someone who knows the workings of the White House to explain what is going on and why. If the Bush-Cheney scandals are "worse than Watergate," why hasn't this administration produced a whistle-blowing John Dean? First, I make very clear in the book that while the underlying conduct is worse than Watergate, it has not -- yet -- erupted into a scandal like Watergate. Like anyone at the White House, yours truly included, you first try to work within the system -- to right things you know are wrong. Take former terrorism czar Richard Clarke. He certainly tried to get the Bush administration to address the problems of terrorism sooner rather than later, but failed. After leaving government he remained troubled about the Bush administration's failures to deal with terrorism, for he knows better than most that the war in Iraq only added to the problems. So he testified truthfully before the 9/11 commission -- which is all I did. Or take former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. He tried to work within the system. However, he was fired for telling the truth and expressing his well-founded concern about Bush's excessive tax cuts for the upper incomes. This is a presidency that does not like the truth told about their activities. If, as I believe to be the case, things are going to get rough for Bush and Cheney given the potential scandals they face, others like Clarke and O'Neill may fill the role I found myself having to fulfill. But the stakes are higher now. No one died because of the abuses of power known as Watergate. Too many have died (and more in the future may) because of the abuses of power by this presidency. That's why their abuses are worse than Watergate.

To: steve harris who wrote (11300)	4/1/2004 12:02:24 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

Republicans for Kerry? After enduring a sustained offensive from conservatives, Republican moderates are quietly mounting a counterattack against Bush, DeLay & Co. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Michelle Goldberg and Paul J. Caffera March 26, 2004 \| Victor Fasciani, a 40-year-old asset manager, pays membership dues to the Republican National Committee, the only party he's ever belonged to. He was at the 2000 Republican Convention in Philadelphia, where he was a New York delegate for John McCain. He's no fan of John Kerry, but come November, he says, "I'm probably not voting for Bush, and I'm not voting for Ralph Nader, so that leaves me with a quandary." It's a quandary afflicting many moderate Republicans, who feel alienated by their party's rightward lurch and economic irresponsibility, and who fear that another four years of Bush will consolidate the power of the party's most hard-line conservative elements. Even as moderate Republicans make gains in liberal states like New York and California, they're feeling squeezed by their own party. Elements of the Republican right have declared jihad on the values party moderates hold dear, and though the White House claims to embrace all Republican factions, for most moderates there's little doubt where its loyalties lie. Few politicians want to admit the split, but it's getting almost impossible to ignore. Former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, a Republican who has served four administrations -- three of them Republican -- slammed Bush this week for a weak response to the threat of terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks. Now he's being savaged by fellow Republicans who have, in essence, accused him of working to aid the Democrats. McCain, the Arizona senator, along with Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, have made headlines by openly defending Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a fellow Vietnam vet, against Bush campaign charges that Kerry is weak on national defense. The White House is incensed. McCain and Hagel insist they still support Bush for reelection. The same holds for the Republican Main Street Partnership, a group of GOP moderates that includes Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, Gov. George Pataki of New York, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California; all of them claim to avidly support the president's reelection. But there's little doubt that behind the scenes, some moderate Republicans are rooting for the other side. If Bush wins, one aide to a moderate Republican says privately, "that would be the worst possible situation." That's because some Republicans say that a Bush loss may be their last chance to take their party back. "If Bush were defeated by Kerry, it would certainly call into question the Republican leadership, people like Tom DeLay and Dennis Hastert," says Fasciani. "That axis of the party may lose its weight and its power. The Powell and Giuliani wing of the party would certainly gain some prominence and may, during the next four years of a Kerry administration, perhaps even gain control of the party and increase the tent." Such hopes have even led some Republicans to found a grass-roots group called Republicans for Kerry. It's no wonder moderates are feeling desperate. After all, a faction within their own party is fighting to purge them -- and that faction includes some of the nation's most powerful Republicans. In 1999, right-wing operative Steve Moore founded the Club for Growth, an anti-tax lobbying group that targets moderate Republicans, which it calls RINOs, "Republicans In Name Only." Since then, the group, which funds right-wing primary challenges against centrist incumbents as well as general election campaigns, has become one of the most powerful financial engines of the right. Its Web site boasts: "We are now #1 in funds for Republican candidates outside the Republican Party itself!" So far, the Club has failed to defeat any of the moderates it's set its sights on. But it plans to raise $15 million for conservative candidates this year, and it's going after one of the pillars of GOP centrism, veteran Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, by bankrolling U.S. Rep. Patrick Toomey's primary challenge. Specter's defeat, Moore has said, would be a "major scalp on the wall." The right smells victory. On March 23, the National Review ran a story titled "The Specter of Defeat -- Pennsylvania polls look promising for Toomey." Specter is still ahead, but polls show that his once commanding lead has shrunk -- a recent poll by KDKA-TV Pittsburgh/WNEP-TV Scranton/Survey USA had him only nine points ahead of his challenger. The primary contest is shaping up to be a referendum on the party's future. According to a March 1 Wall Street Journal article, "Rep. Toomey is testing the strength of what appears to be a growing fault line in the Republican Party this year, between ideologically pure but increasingly disgruntled conservatives and established, but more moderate, figures such as Sen. Specter. The April 27 Senate primary here will see the only major intraparty fight this election year, and is being closely watched as an indication of how deep conservative sentiment is running. 'It's the best battle for the soul of the GOP this year,' says Toomey consultant Keith Appell, referring to the name Grand Old Party." It's hard to tell whose side the president is on. Karl Rove has reportedly repudiated the club for sowing discord in the party during the primaries, but Bush has undercut Specter on issues like overtime rules, an important one in an industrial state like Pennsylvania. "U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has denied a public request from Pennsylvania's senior senator to delay loosening the nation's overtime rules," said a Jan. 21 story in the Washington Times. Several paragraphs later, it continued: "Specter, facing a re-election fight against conservative Rep. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., scheduled the hearing so the topic could get a 'full airing.' Besides asking Chao for the delay, Specter also asked her to remain in the hearing room for subsequent discussions." She refused. Even as Bush holds himself somewhat aloof, other members of the Republican leadership have actively embraced the Club for Growth. In 2002, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, then House Majority Whip, gave $50,000 to the club through his political action committee, enraging party moderates.

To: steve harris who wrote (11300)	4/1/2004 12:03:59 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 81568

GOP Moderates Feel Betrayed by Bush/Delay (cont) More than anyone else, DeLay is a symbol of what moderates hate about the direction their party is going in, and he revels in displaying his power over his less zealous colleagues. As Nick Thompson wrote in Salon in September, DeLay has used the allocation of committee chairs to punish those who swerve even a little bit from his party line. "This is why moderate Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., who generally supports DeLay, was blocked from becoming chair of the Government Reform Committee, a move even he says he knew would be a consequence of his support for campaign-finance reform," Thompson wrote. "Rep. Marge Roukema, R-N.J., simply left Congress after DeLay boxed her out of several positions. In several primaries, DeLay has also worked against several moderate Republicans in favor of less electable conservatives, showing that the Texan would sometimes rather lose with a conservative than win with a moderate." It's not surprising that some moderates are starting to feel similarly uncompromising. After all, old-fashion establishment Republicans have made a tactical alliance with fundamentalist right-wing revolutionaries like DeLay, but few want to see his vision of America realized. Moderate Republicans are often fiscal conservatives but social liberals -- in many ways, the exact opposite of this administration. They believe in balanced budgets, environmental conservation and a foreign policy that's strong without being needlessly belligerent. They see themselves as the heirs of former President Teddy Roosevelt, the avid conservationist and trustbuster, and former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, the philanthropist, statesman and governor of New York. The party they joined was staid and dignified. It was the other party that seemed shrill and radical. When George Bush was elected in 2000, moderate Republicans thought he was on their side. But that illusion was dispelled in his first few months of office. "When the president was elected, everyone was looking for a breath of fresh air -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- for the good of the country we wanted a bipartisan effort," Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., tells Salon. "We were all so weary of partisan trench warfare, and now it is deeper than ever." "The president's agenda has been so different from his campaign rhetoric," Chafee says. "He is pushing an extreme agenda, from the abandonment of Kyoto, to banning access to abortions for service members overseas." For a while, Bush's extremism was overshadowed by Sept. 11, and some moderates continue to support Bush because of the war on terror, despite being appalled by his domestic policies. Roger White, an associate professor of political science at Loyola University and self-described Rockefeller Republican, actually gave up his party membership four or five years ago out of disgust with the dominance of cultural conservatives like DeLay. Yet he supports Bush's foreign policy, and says, "I don't see the main danger as coming from cultural conservatives. I see the main danger coming from international terrorists." But Bush has squandered much of his post-9/11 popularity by using it as cover to pass a right-wing domestic agenda. "After 9/11, Republicans could have become the majority party for the next 50 years," says professor Alan Wolfe, the founding director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. "But for whatever reason, Bush kept up the same polarizing approach. Everyone wanted to rally behind Bush. This is the biggest act of political stupidity in my lifetime." Moderates, says Chafee, "could have made a huge difference to the president," had he not abandoned them and tried to "bludgeon them into compliance." Now, those on the receiving end of that bludgeoning must decide whether they can support an administration that doesn't support them. Leaving the party can be a wrenching act of personal redefinition, but if Bush wins another term, there may be no hope of changing things from within. "My decision to leave the Republican Party was deeply personal and one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made," former Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords told Salon. The Vermont independent famously quit the party in 2001, incurring the White House's wrath and briefly handing control of the Senate to the Democrats. "I left the Republican Party because I feared the Bush administration and the GOP-controlled Congress was moving too far to the right, and not listening to moderate Republicans such as myself," he says. "Much of what we have seen since then has only confirmed those fears. We are in a war that we shouldn't be in; the wealthy get tax cuts while our schools get shortchanged; the deficit grows by the day while millions of jobs are lost here at home. Meanwhile, the White House tries to placate the far right by supporting a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, diverting the nation's attention from where it should be focused. We are headed on the wrong course, and it troubles me deeply." Despite the fervent hopes of many Democrats, it's unlikely that waves of Republican officials and voters are likely to follow Jeffords. Most Republicans continue to back their president. The moderates are a small group within the party, and it remains to be seen whether their unhappiness with Bush is a harbinger of electoral trouble for the administration in November. "If I am talking anecdotally to moderate Republicans, it's very hard to find one who is going to vote for Bush, very difficult," says John Zogby, president and CEO of the polling firm Zogby International. "On the other hand, strangely enough it's not showing up in our polling." In fact, Zogby's latest polls show 87 percent of Republicans backing Bush. "I'm just watching and waiting and saying to myself maybe there's something going on here, because I'm hearing it," he says. So if moderates are disenchanted, why isn't that showing up in the polls? In part, it's because moderate Republicans as a whole are a rapidly diminishing species in most of the country. According to Zogby, 80 percent of Republicans self-identify as conservative. Asked about the role of moderates in the party, Rick Shaftan, a conservative Republican pollster in New Jersey, says: "It's not that many individuals you're talking about in terms of votes." Moderate Republicans, he says, are traditionally "mainline protestant WASPs like [former New Jersey Gov.] Christie Whitman. There aren't that many WASPs. I don't know where they're a significant share of the vote."