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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (58087)	2/14/2006 1:35:56 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361538

IMO, the Democratic leadership needs to BE VERY CAREFUL about how it "pressures" (or encourages) some of their most promising candidates...I don't like to see this at all... _________________________________________________ Popular Ohio Democrat Drops Out of Race, and Perhaps Politics By IAN URBINA The New York Times February 14, 2006 Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran and popular Democratic candidate in Ohio's closely watched Senate contest, said yesterday that he was dropping out of the race and leaving politics altogether as a result of pressure from party leaders. Mr. Hackett said Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada, the same party leaders who he said persuaded him last August to enter the Senate race, had pushed him to step aside so that Representative Sherrod Brown, a longtime member of Congress, could take on Senator Mike DeWine, the Republican incumbent. Mr. Hackett staged a surprisingly strong Congressional run last year in an overwhelmingly Republican district and gained national prominence for his scathing criticism of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq War. It was his performance in the Congressional race that led party leaders to recruit him for the Senate race. But for the last two weeks, he said, state and national Democratic Party leaders have urged him to drop his Senate campaign and again run for Congress. "This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me," said Mr. Hackett, whose announcement comes two days before the state's filing deadline for candidates. He said he was outraged to learn that party leaders were calling his donors and asking them to stop giving and said he would not enter the Second District Congressional race. "For me, this is a second betrayal," Mr. Hackett said. "First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me." Mr. Hackett was the first Iraq war veteran to seek national office, and the decision to steer him away from the Senate race has surprised those who see him as a symbol for Democrats who oppose the war but want to appear strong on national security. "Alienating Hackett is not just a bad idea for the party, but it also sends a chill through the rest of the 56 or so veterans that we've worked to run for Congress," said Mike Lyon, executive director for the Band of Brothers, a group dedicated to electing Democratic veterans to national office. "Now is a time for Democrats to be courting, not blocking, veterans who want to run." But Democratic leaders say Representative Brown, a seven-term incumbent from Avon, has a far better chance of toppling Senator DeWine. "It boils down to who we think can pull the most votes in November against DeWine," said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. "And in Ohio, Brown's name is golden. It's just that simple." Mr. Fern added that Mr. Brown's fund-raising abilities made him the better Senate candidate. By the end of last year, Mr. Brown had already amassed $2.37 million, 10 times what Mr. Hackett had raised. Senator Reid did not reply to repeated requests for comment. Asked about Mr. Hackett's contention that he had been pressed to leave the Senate race, a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, Phil Singer, said, "We've told both Sherrod Brown and Paul Hackett that avoiding a primary will make it easier to win the Ohio Senate seat, " but he added, "Obviously, the decision to run is Mr. Hackett's and Mr. Hackett's alone." Mr. Brown declined to comment on Mr. Hackett's candidacy, saying that he was strictly focused on building his own campaign. Democrats wanted to avoid a drawn-out primary, especially one that could get bruising with a tough-talking outsider like Mr. Hackett. The Ohio Senate race is regarded as critical to Democratic aspirations to take back Congress in the fall. Aside from focusing on Senator DeWine, the Democrats also hope to win as many as eight House seats in Ohio and the governorship from the Republicans. Ohio Democrats are hoping to exploit the larger problems plaguing the Republicans. State Republicans have struggled to distance themselves from Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican who cannot run again because of term limits and who was found guilty last summer of four misdemeanor ethics violations. Representative Bob Ney's still-unfolding role in the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff also looms over the state's Republicans. Mr. Hackett said he was unwilling to run for the Congressional seat because he had given his word to three Democratic candidates that he would not enter that race. "The party keeps saying for me not to worry about those promises because in politics they are broken all the time," said Mr. Hackett, who plans to return to his practice as a lawyer in the Cincinnati area. "I don't work that way. My word is my bond." Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate races for the Cook Political Report, said that part of what made Democratic leaders nervous about Mr. Hackett was what had also made him so popular with voters. "Hackett is seen by many as a straight talker, and he became an icon to the liberal bloggers because he says exactly what they have wished they would hear from a politician," Ms. Duffy said. "On the other hand, the Senate is still an exclusive club, and the party expects a certain level of decorum that Hackett has not always shown." Mr. Hackett was widely criticized last year for using indecent language to describe President Bush. Last month, state Republicans attacked Mr. Hackett for saying their party had been hijacked by religious extremists who he said "aren't a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden." Though Republicans called for an apology, Mr. Hackett repeated the mantra of his early campaign: "I said it. I meant it. I stand behind it."

To: American Spirit who wrote (58087)	2/14/2006 8:06:27 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361538

Cheney's missteps turned accident into p.r. disaster, experts say BY STEVEN THOMMA Knight Ridder Newspapers Posted on Tue, Feb. 14, 2006 WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney turned a tragic hunting accident into a public relations disaster by maintaining his business-as-usual approach to his life: that it's nobody's business. His refusal to announce his involvement in the shooting irritated an already suspicious press corps and even prompted some Republicans to complain. And his failure to make a more public show of his regret over his friend's injury might have enhanced his image among many as an aloof and remote man, according to experts in political public relations and corporate crisis management. To weather the political storm now, some experts said Cheney should show more candor, perhaps by taking questions at a press conference. Yet at least one expert said that wouldn't help. Others advised patience, saying that the story and the uproar would fade if and when the victim, Texas attorney Harry Whittington, recovers. "The temptation is to say there is a textbook way to handle this sort of thing. There isn't," said Peter Mirijanian, a corporate public relations consultant who specializes in crisis management and has worked for several Democrats in the past. Most experts agreed, however, that Cheney should have announced the shooting Saturday evening when it occurred and that he should have issued a public statement of his concern for his friend's well-being. "I am appalled by the whole handling of this," Marlin Fitzwater, who served the elder President Bush as White House press secretary, told Editor and Publisher magazine Tuesday. He recalled that when the elder Bush once collapsed at the Camp David presidential retreat, "the statement was on the wires before the helicopter had left to take him to the hospital. I can't believe they didn't have a similar plan here. It is all Cheney; he is the key that has to start this." Cheney is secretive to the point of defiance about his public and private life. He refused to say, for example, which energy industry representatives he met with when drafting the administration's proposed energy policy. He often doesn't release his schedule. His trip to Texas for the hunting trip wasn't announced. "Their bunker mentality hurts them at a time like this," said Dan Gerstein, a Democratic public relations consultant. "Cheney should go out publicly and take responsibility. He should say, `There was no wrongdoing, but I made a mistake and I will do everything I can to help Whittington.' I haven't seen any expression directly from the vice president." Cheney hasn't appeared publicly since the shooting. His office issued a statement Tuesday that didn't quote Cheney directly but said, "The vice president said that his thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Whittington and his family." Mirijanian said he didn't expect Cheney to hold a press conference. " I don't think he'd be a great asset," he said. "It wouldn't help the situation." He said Cheney had already decided that it's not necessary to "feed the media beast every day." If that makes the news media angry, so be it. "The fact that the White House press corps is very hungry for information isn't necessarily a negative to the supporters of the president and vice president," Mirijanian said. "This White House is very good at triangulating the press. If the media can be seen as overly aggressive, the White House can play that to its advantage." This White House has shown it can wait out a political storm. Mirijanian recalled the pressure last year for President Bush to meet with anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan outside his Texas ranch. "They took a beating," he said. "And after a while, it subsided." A veteran Republican public relations consultant, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House, said Cheney erred first by not announcing the shooting, then by allowing it to be announced to a local Texas newspaper rather than to the national press. "That fed a lot of mistrust that was already there. It raised the story to a level it might not otherwise have reached," the consultant said. Then the White House erred by trying to ease the tension with humor early Tuesday. That was a mistake even before it was announced that Whittington had suffered a minor heart attack, the Republican said. Now that the damage has been done, the consultant said, it's best for Cheney and the White House to ride it out. "They're almost over it now. I don't know that they need to say much more about it now." mercurynews.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (58087)	2/15/2006 4:47:23 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 361538

An Arrogance of Power _________________________________________________________ By David Ignatius Columnist The Washington Post Wednesday, February 15, 2006 washingtonpost.com There is a temptation that seeps into the souls of even the most righteous politicians and leads them to bend the rules, and eventually the truth, to suit the political needs of the moment. That arrogance of power is on display with the Bush administration. The most vivid example is the long delay in informing the country that Vice President Cheney had accidentally shot a man last Saturday while hunting in Texas. For a White House that informs us about the smallest bumps and scrapes suffered by the president and vice president, the lag is inexplicable. But let us assume the obvious: It was an attempt to delay and perhaps suppress embarrassing news. We will never know whether the vice president's office would have announced the incident at all if the host of the hunting party, Katharine Armstrong, hadn't made her own decision Sunday morning to inform her local paper. Nobody died at Armstrong Ranch, but this incident reminds me a bit of Sen. Edward Kennedy's delay in informing Massachusetts authorities about his role in the fatal automobile accident at Chappaquiddick in 1969. That story, and dozens of others about the Kennedy family, illustrates how wealthy, powerful people can behave as if they are above the law. For my generation, the fall of Richard Nixon is the ultimate allegory about how power can corrupt and destroy. It begins not with venality but with a sense of God-given mission. I would be inclined to leave Cheney to the mercy of Jon Stewart and Jay Leno if it weren't for other signs that this administration has jumped the tracks. What worries me most is the administration's misuse of intelligence information to advance its political agenda. For a country at war, this is truly dangerous. The most recent example of politicized intelligence was President Bush's statement on Feb. 9 that the United States had "derailed" a 2002 plot to fly a plane into the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles. Bush spoke about four al Qaeda plotters who had planned to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door. But a foreign official with detailed knowledge of the intelligence scoffed at Bush's account, saying that the information obtained from Khalid Sheik Mohammed and an Indonesian operative known as Hambali was not an operational plan so much as an aspiration to destroy the tallest building on the West Coast. When I asked a former high-level U.S. intelligence official about Bush's comment, he agreed that Bush had overstated the intelligence. Perhaps the most outrageous example of misusing intelligence has been the administration's attempt to undercut Paul Pillar and other former CIA officials who tried to warn about the dangers ahead in Iraq. I'm not talking about the agency's botched job on weapons of mass destruction but about its warnings that postwar Iraq would be chaotic and dangerous. Pillar said so privately before the war, and he helped draft an August 2004 national intelligence estimate warning, correctly, that the situation in Iraq was deteriorating and heading for "tenuous stability" at best. Bush was unhappy at this naysaying, just as he has grumbled about pessimistic reports from the CIA station in Baghdad. When Pillar made similar warnings about Iraq at a private dinner in September 2004, the White House went ballistic -- seeing Pillar as part of a CIA conspiracy to undermine the president's policies. Soon after, Bush installed a former Republican congressman, Porter Goss, who began a purge at the agency that has driven out a generation of senior managers. Pillar and many, many others have retired, leaving the nation without some of its best intelligence officers when we need them most. Bush and Cheney are in the bunker. That's the only way I can make sense of their actions. They are steaming in a broth of daily intelligence reports that highlight the grim terrorist threats facing America. They have sworn blood oaths that they will defend the United States from its adversaries -- no matter what . They have blown past the usual rules and restraints into territory where few presidents have ventured -- a region where the president conducts warrantless wiretaps against Americans in violation of a federal statute, where he authorizes harsh interrogation methods that amount to torture. When critics question the legality of the administration's actions, Bush and Cheney assert the commander in chief's power under Article II of the Constitution. When Congress passes a law forbidding torture, the White House appends a signing statement insisting that Article II -- the power of the commander in chief -- trumps everything else. When the administration's Republican friends suggest amending the wiretapping law to make its program legal, the administration refuses. Let's say it plainly: This is the arrogance of power, and it has gone too far in the Bush White House.