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I'm surprised the author of Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France hasn't commented on latest French carping about the American tsunami response.

The always-interesting Belgravia Dispatch has the scoop:

The execrable cartoonist of Le Monde, Plantu, hitting yet another low. Over 155,000 people have died in this massive tsunami disaster. The U.S. is spearheading critical aid efforts in the region. Little matter, of course. Better to make snide commentary along the lines that, hey they destroyed Iraq--and so are well suited to handling such calamities. Sick thought process, no? ...

Rather than commend the U.S., if just for a moment in the midst of this immense tragedy, Le Monde's journalists and cartoonists prefer to insinuate that the U.S. has nefarious motives in Indonesia, or make crude fun of the difficulties in Iraq having 'prepared' us for Indonesia's blight. Such sad fare isn't just wrong, tasteless, petty and rancidly provincial. It speaks of a society, like contemporary Germany, that is ailing and so needs scapegoats. It's not politically correct to look internally for them anymore. So everyone loves to beat up that favorite bogeyman--the U.S.--out of a mixture of incomprehension, envy, fascination, stupidity and crude stereotyping. It's sad really.

The French are rapidly finding ways to exceed the ugliest portrayals of their worst critics.

[Posted 01/05 03:38 PM]

Michelle Malkin points to some impressive news:

Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher is to donate $10 million (5.3 million pounds) to help the victims of the South Asian tsunami, his manager Willi Weber says.

Okay. It's irritating to hear it from the U.N., but this guy has earned the right to call the rest of us 'stingy.' He's probably one of the few in the world who can say it to Sandra Bullock.

[Posted 01/05 03:19 PM]

I hesitate to spend any more topic on this than I have to, because I’ve said what I wanted to say, and that’s it. But there is an update from the guys at Powerline regarding their complaint to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about multiple factual errors about them in a column by… a certain columnist.

The gentlemen at Powerline are less than fully impressed with the response of the Star-Tribune “reader representative.”

[Posted 01/05 03:13 PM]

Patrick Hynes of CrushKerry.com has written a warm tribute to National Review. I hope it's the first of many of its kind in this fiftieth anniversary year.

(I also note that the guys at CrushKerry.com are about as timely on their new name ("Ankle Biting Pundits") we are at Kerry Spot World Headquarters. The new name has been picked, and the new look is being put together by the "caged child laborers working on pneumatic tubes" as Jonah calls them, the Internet-and-design-savvy folks who handle the web-publishing stuff that my technically-challenged mind can barely grasp. ("What do you mean, 'press any key'? I don't see an 'ANY' key! Where's the 'ANY' key?")

So anyway, the new name and new look will be ready... when they're ready.

[Posted 01/05 02:59 PM]

I think Instapundit’s assessment is correct: If the Democrats try to start a high-profile debate on torture, “coercive interrogation” and related issues, the discussion will quickly devolve into partisan name-calling, and voters who were already skeptical about whether the Democrats are “tough enough” in the war on terror will consider them “soft.”

I would hope that as the public debates torture, they consider two seemingly contradictory, gut-level ideas:

1) Only a fool would get up on a high horse and declare, “Well, I would never endorse or support torture.” It recalls Michael Dukakis’ antiseptic reaction and jargon-heavy answer to Bernard Shaw’s question about whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife. If you or I found ourselves in a room with Zarqawi, Zawahiri, or bin Laden, and that person had refused to divulge information that could save lives, can anyone rule out with 100 percent certainty what they would be willing to do to get that information? What if one of the lives at stake was a loved one?

2) Lest that emotional response to the “ticking bomb scenario” sounds too much like a full-throated hurrah for torture, let us also stipulate that deliberately inflicting pain in a captive individual is a wearying, soul-searing, if not soul-destroying effort. And as the torture opponents eloquently argue, it’s not what we want to be as a nation. And, of course, the reliability of information extracted during torture can be wrong.

All of this gets muddled in a related debate, about whether the Geneva Convention applies to al-Qaeda. One can oppose the use of torture to extract information, and still contend that the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply to captured terrorists. See Jonah and Rich .

[Posted 01/05 12:12 PM]

Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman wrote to NRO yesterday, objecting to this post from over Christmas break.
 
Here is Coleman‘s letter in full:
 

I was angered to find that in Jim Geraghty's 12/29 column "Kerry Spot," the National Review has published a slander about me: In addition to calling me "a nasty little man," Geraghty's piece maliciously and recklessly states:

"Coleman's) step mother, Deborah Howell, worked at the Minneapolis Star from 1965 to 1979, rising to the post of City Editor. In 1973, Nick was given a job as city hall reporter, for the Minneapolis Star. In 1979, Deborah Howell moved to the Pioneer Press serving as Managing Editor, then Executive Editor, until 1990. In 1986, stepson Nick was given a columnist position, at, guess what, the St. Paul Pioneer Press."

This passage is recklessly cut-and-pasted, verbatim, from a scurrilous blog published by anonymous character assassins. The facts are these:

1) My "stepmother", Deborah Howell, worked at the Minneapolis Star when I worked at the Minneapolis Tribune. I never worked for the Minneapolis Star. The papers were completely separate until their merger in 1982.
 
2) I was hired by the Tribune in 1973 by editor Charles W. Bailey and Managing Editor Wally Allen. Howell had nothing to do with my hiring.
 
3) My move to my hometown newspaper, the St Paul Pioneer Press, which occurred in 1986, was not decided by Howell but by a team of senior newsroom editors, supervised by Howell's boss, Editor John Finnegan. All parties were in agreement that the nepotism issue was slight, defused by the fact that my father had been dead for as long as he and Howell had been married and that I was already an award-winning columnist of standing at the Star Tribune.
 
4) Howell re-married in 1988 and left the Twin Cities in 1990 to become chief of the Newhouse News Bureau in Washington, D.C., where she remains. In late 2003, I moved back to the StarTribune to become a general news columnist at my old newspaper.
 
5) Geraghty's vile slander from the sewers of the Internet is a ripe example of how bloggers conduct a smear campaign against Mainstream journalists. The insinuation that I owe my 32-year-career as a journalist and 22-year career as a columnist to a "stepmother" who married my father after I had begun my professional career is intentional defamation and an injury to my professional reputation.

I hereby demand a full retraction and apology from the National Review.

Yours,

Nick Coleman

My response:
 
1. “Nasty little man” is, clearly, a subjective opinion. I based it on my read of this column (subscription required). Readers are free to draw their own conclusions.
 
2. I do need to make a correction. As Coleman points out in his letter, the blog “Frateras Libertas,” linked to in my original post, was erroneous in stating that Coleman was hired by the Star in 1973; according to his biography Coleman was hired by the Tribune.
 
That’s something I should have fact-checked. I goofed there. I apologize.
 
3. That his father was State Senate Majority Leader in 1973, the year he was hired by the Tribune is true (Coleman does not refute it). That the Minneapolis Tribune gave the City Hall beat to the young Coleman seems a fact relevant to a media discussion. That said, he may very well have been hired based solely on merit.
 
4. Coleman said that my original post “insinuates that he owes his career to his stepmother,” then writes that in his move to the Tribune in 1986, the nepotism issue was “slight.” “Slight” is not the same as “nonexistent.” Coleman may reasonably conclude that his hiring was spurred almost entirely by his awards and his previous work, but others may reasonably suggest that the nepotism issue appears more than “slight.”
 
5. The relevance of Howell’s move in 1988 and Coleman’s move in 2003 is unclear, since the original post on “Frateras Libertas” did not say anything about Coleman’s career after 1986. I suppose Coleman is attempting to prove that his columnist position did not leave the publication when his stepmother did.
 
This is correct. This is also not disputed or referred to anywhere in my original post.
 
6. Coleman would have a stronger argument if he had objected to my comment, “No wonder he's so enraged by a bunch of no-name bankers building an audience comparable to or surpassing his and stepping onto his turf. He was born and bred for this role of Media Prince, and these peasants are acting like his equals!” That comment speculates on Coleman’s thinking, and as I am not telepathic, represents an unprovable-one-way-or-another opinion of what Coleman’s reaction is to bloggers.
 
Oddly, he did not object to that. And, of course, he does the same “mind reading” to me, concluding that my comments constitute “intentional defamation” and represent an intent to damage his professional reputation.
 
My intent was to object to his attack on the Powerline bloggers, not to damage his professional reputation.
 
In conclusion, I retract the statement that Coleman was hired by the Minneapolis Star in 1973—it was wrong--and have printed the correction that he was hired by the Minneapolis Tribune that year, here, in the same place where I posted the original mention of all this. I’m sorry for the inaccuracy.
 
Meanwhile, readers are welcome to draw their own conclusions—including about my opinion of him as a “nasty little man.” But, again, I direct you to his original column—where he suggests that the male bloggers he’s criticizing have small reproductive organs—to decide for yourself what you think of the whole matter.

[Posted 01/05 11:30 AM]

My little bird that is familiar with discussions within CBS News tells me that the long, long, long-awaited report on the infamous CBS memo by former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh and retired A.P. president Louis Boccardi may be coming out Friday.

Hmmm... would this be a Friday at 5 pm release?

Also, you'll recall this little birdie told me that CBS was considering naming Rather's replacement the same day they release the report.

UPDATE: Scylla & Charybdis adds speculation that also points to Friday:

The MSM has geared up to run Abu Ghraib-type headlines over the Alberto R. Gonzales nomination hearings. See, e.g., today's LA Times and NY Times. The hearings begin Thursday.

Not a stretch to smell this coming: CBS will "release" the Thornburgh report this Friday, right into the cacophony of MSM "news" about the nefarious Alberto Gonzales. The MSM "Gonzales story" will detract attention on Friday, from the paucity of details in the release of the Thornburgh Report.

Note: As previously explained at this blog, the "release" will be not much more than a press release stating that CBS management has taken "internal measures deemed appropriate to ensure.... blah blah blah," with perhaps one example being made public.

We're a cynical bunch, aren't we?

[Posted 01/05 10:55 AM]

According to this report, CNN is reporting that Harold Ickes has dropped out of the race for DNC Chair. Take this with a bit of caution, as there isn't anything on CNN's site or any of the other usual DNC-news-heavy sites.

If this report is accurate, it would be pretty surprising, and good news for Howard Dean. Ickes was widely regarded as the Clintons' favorite choice in this contest.

UPDATE: Here's the story -- both Ickes and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk dropped out of the race. Kirk endorsed former Congressman and fellow Texan Martin Frost.

[Posted 01/04 05:41 PM]

Kerry Spot reader Kevin reacts to Al Gore’s INdTV:

While I’m probably not the target demographic, either, it sounds like a pretty good idea. And sounds like some pretty good cable television.

However, will it influence voters? No—at least, not in a positive way for Democrats. Will it attract serious people looking for information in making their political decisions? No. Is it the “liberal answer” to talk radio and conservative think tanks? Not hardly. Another venue to explore the same tired ideas, but with cool graphics? There ya go! Well-run with a tight budget (not normally the case when a bunch of liberals get together, who normally pay themselves first and handsomely, then if there’s anything left over they run the business) it could succeed. Will there be cooking shows and extreme makeover shows in a few years? If it stays on the air, probably.

The thing the left doesn’t understand is that, in terms of communication with the public, they’ve long surpassed saturation level. Their ideas are widely available and often taught as incontrovertible fact. Their cultural sensibilities infuse television and movies and music. Adding liberal radio stations and television networks will not make any difference—if the current level of liberal-thought hasn’t turned a person into a lefty, adding a few more talk shows isn’t going to do it. Fox and talk radio have made a difference because conservative thinking and sensibilities were no where near saturation levels in the public square.

And the always-awesome Noemie Emery writes in, “That piece was serious? I read it this morning, and was sure that it was a spoof.”

Well, when reading the New York Times or watching CBS News, you often have to play a fun round of “Guess Which Story Is a Hoax.” But the Washington Post hasn’t run something like this since the Janet Cooke days, so I think the Gore programming list the real deal.

[Posted 01/04 05:23 PM]

When the Democrats' new Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said on Meet the Press a little while ago, "[Clarence Thomas] has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written," I figured this was just Reid shooting his mouth off.

I had my doubts that Reid actually read many of Thomas’ opinions, and was merely echoing the conventional wisdom among Beltway liberals. Of course Thomas’ opinions are poorly written - everyone on the left thinks this is the case, so it must be true. Call it the hard bigotry of impossible expectations.

But Reid was asked for specifics on a CNN program. (Hurrah for CNN! Let conservatives give a few ‘attaboys’ when the network asks tough questions of Democrats.)

And Reid gave a more detailed answer than one might expect:

HENRY: Let's take a look at what you said. When you were asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether or not you could support Justice Thomas to be chief justice you said quote, "I think that he has been an embarrassment to the Supreme Court. I think that his opinions are poorly written."

Could you name one of those opinions that you think is poorly written?

REID: Oh sure, that's easy to do. You take the Hillside Diary case. In that case you had a descent written by Scalia and a descent written by Thomas. There -- it's like looking at an 8th grade dissertation compared to somebody who just graduated from Harvard.

Scalia's is well reasoned. He doesn't want to turn stari decisive precedent on its head. That's what Thomas wants to do. So yes, I think he has written a very poor opinion there and he's written other opinions that are not very good.

Too bad for Reid that Eugene Volokh actually went back and checked.

Except that Justice Scalia didn't write an opinion in the Hillside Dairy case, and the entirety of Justice Thomas's opinion was this:

Justice Thomas, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

I join Parts I and III of the Court's opinion and respectfully dissent from Part II, which holds that §144 of the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996, 7 U. S. C. §7254, "does not clearly express an intent to insulate California's pricing and pooling laws from a Commerce Clause challenge." Ante, at 6-7. Although I agree that the Court of Appeals erred in its statutory analysis, I nevertheless would affirm its judgment on this claim because "[t]he negative Commerce Clause has no basis in the text of the Constitution, makes little sense, and has proved virtually unworkable in application," Camps Newfound/Owatonna, Inc. v. Town of Harrison, 520 U. S. 564, 610 (1997) (Thomas, J., dissenting), and, consequently, cannot serve as a basis for striking down a state statute.

I have no idea what's supposedly badly written about this paragraph. What's more, as James Taranto points out:

Reid's substantive criticism of Thomas--if it can be dignified with such a description--turns out to be equally empty. According to Reid, Scalia "doesn't want to turn stare decisis precedent on its head," while Thomas does. Presumably this refers to Thomas's rejection of the court's "negative Commerce Clause" jurisprudence. In his Hillside Dairy opinion, as we've seen, Thomas does not elaborate on this, instead pointing the reader to his lengthy dissent in the earlier Newfound/Owatonna case--a dissent Scalia joined. In other words, Thomas and Scalia both would overturn Supreme Court precedent in this area; the only point of disagreement in Hillside Dairy was whether to address the question in this particular case.

I've called the Senator's press office to see if they have much of an explanation for what seems like a pretty significant error.

Hat tip to Instapundit.

UPDATE: Numerous sharp-eyed readers observe that the transcription has the word "descent" instead of "dissent."

[Posted 01/04 04:37 PM]

I'm not sure I entirely agree with Michael Lind of the American Prospect, but I think he's on to something:

Today, outside of big cities with large black and immigrant populations, the Democratic Party is slowly being confined to Greater New England. The political heirs of the Federalists, the Whigs, and the Progressives, today’s Democrats are in danger of following those parties into oblivion.

It would be a mistake for the Democrats to think that they can regain a national majority by changing their policies or their style to appeal to more red-state voters. A new majority cannot be built on bland compromises between blue-state liberalism and red-state conservatism. Nor can northeastern or West Coast politicians successfully reinvent themselves as heartland types.

What is necessary is to recast the Democrats as, in effect, a loose federation of regional parties. All successful majority parties have had regional wings. This is true even in today’s Republican Party, which, though heavily dominated by right-wing southerners, includes socially liberal governors like Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and George Pataki of New York, pragmatic internationalists like Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, and moderate New England senators such as Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chaffee.

Today’s Democratic minority is defined in the public mind by identity-politics groups -- blacks, Latinos, feminists, gays and lesbians -- and economic-interest groups, like unions. A majority Democratic Party would be defined, in contrast, by its regional wings: northeastern Democrats, West Coast Democrats, Great Plains Democrats, midwestern Democrats, and even some southern Democrats. The regional factions would agree on a brief national platform that is chiefly economic. But they would be free to express their regional differences in the areas of values and foreign policy.

At present, the Democratic Party is a socially liberal party that welcomes both economic conservatives and economic liberals. But in a country with a center-right majority on social issues and a center-left majority on economic issues of interest to the broad middle class and working class, this is exactly backward: Defining liberalism in terms of social liberalism is a formula for minority status. According to various polls, the number of self-described liberals in the United States is no more than 18 percent or 20 percent. Public attitudes on race, gay rights, and other subjects have been getting more liberal with each generation, but widespread opposition to unqualified abortion rights and gay marriage shows the limits to this trend. The religious right cannot and should not be courted. But in the foreseeable future, the Democrats have no chance of regaining a majority without the votes of many moderate traditionalists.

The Democrats should retain their bedrock commitment to fighting laws that discriminate against individuals on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation. On other issues, which might include affirmative action, abortion rights, and gay marriage, the Democratic Party as a whole should take no stand. The litmus tests should be economic, not social: Do their candidates support policies that improve the lives of working Americans? Do they support a more progressive system of taxation and spending? If so, they should be welcome, even if they oppose abortion or gay marriage (indeed, the new Democratic Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, opposes abortion rights). Conversely, economic conservatives with liberal social attitudes should be invited to leave the Democratic Party and join the libertarian wing of the Republican Party. If this means that the Democrats lose some wealthy coastal donors who are motivated by social liberalism, so be it.

I suppose one could argue that the party is already doing this to a degree. The real problem is that every four years, the Democratic party has to nominate a presidential candidate, and the factions of Northeastern, Midwestern, Southern and West Coast Democrats would have to unite behind some candidate who would have to take a stand on affirmative action, abortion rights, and gay marriage.

There's a big difference between nominating Evan Bayh or Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton -- and either way, some big chunk of Democrats would be left with a nominee that they have some big differences with.

[Posted 01/04 04:17 PM]

In the wake of the tsunami and the outpouring of aid, The London Independent newspaper asked "politicians and commentators if 2005 might see a new determination to tackle global poverty."

Some commentators feared that the new year might see more horrors like... what the U.S. did to Afghanistan. Which, as you know, led to the end of the Taliban, the elimination of al-Qaeda training camps, actual rights for women, economic growth, international aid, trade and development, actual free elections, and the removal of warlords from the government.

The two Afghan-related comments:

RORY BREMNER, Comedian

On an individual level, it is not just about what we are prepared to give, but what we are prepared to give up. Having left Afghanistan and Iraq in their wake, can our leaders be trusted to fight a war on poverty?

BILL BAILEY, Comedian

It was the same after 11 September. Everyone said it was a great opportunity to try to understand the world but it was used by the US as a reason to go on a rampaging adventure in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I realize these two are comedians, not foreign policy analysts, but still... is the British left so heartless and mean-spirited that they see the elections in Afghanistan as an unfortunate development?

[Posted 01/04 01:28 PM]

Noticed and featured by Drudge, from the BBC:

An Indian helicopter dropping food and water over the remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands has been attacked by tribesmen using bows and arrows.

There were fears that the endangered tribal groups had been wiped out when massive waves struck their islands.

But the authorities say the attack is a sign that they have survived.

More than 6,000 people there are confirmed as either dead or missing, but thousands of others are still unaccounted for.

The Indian coastguard helicopter was flying low over Sentinel Island to drop aid when it came under attack.

A senior police officer said the crew were not hurt and the authorities are taking it as a sign that the tribes have not been wiped out by the earthquake and sea surges as many had feared.

"Hey, I think I see the tribesmen! Good news, they're alive! Thank goodness they -- Hey! OW! Stop! Cut it out!"

[Posted 01/04 01:15 PM]

Since Election Day, there have been no shortage of folks offering the Democratic Party advice on how it can get out of its current mess.

Anna Quindlen of Newsweek begins her latest column with what sounds like good advice -- emulate the late Paul Wellstone. Clearly, there are many Republicans and independents who disagreed with Wellstone but still appreciated his steadfast and consistent dedication to liberal principles.

But Quindlen’s prescription quickly devolves down into a vague call for “unconditional authenticity” and “authentic leadership“... The specifics deteriorate as she berates those obsessed with “image, tactics, communication,” without naming names. From her praise of Wellstone’s vote against the authorization for the Iraq war, we can assume she’s angry at the votes of Kerry and Edwards in support of the Iraq war. But telling the party what it should have done in late 2002 doesn’t really help it figure out what it should do now.

She calls Mario Cuomo’s 1995 post-defeat book, “Reason to Believe,” “an apt playbook for the Democratic Party in the years to come.” The money quote that she selects:

“In those instances where interests collide, the flash points where those who have a little feel threatened by those who have less, we Democrats have not worked hard enough at finding ways to harmonize the competing interests.”

Okay… but what does that mean? Democrats should have embraced welfare reform earlier? They should have embraced a tougher approach to crime? They should have listened to low-income whites who felt threatened by affirmative action, instead of dismissing their concerns as racism? “Harmonizing competing interests” is a terrific buzz phrase that one could see cropping up in one of Office Space’s TPS reports.

But then Quindlen writes that Cuomo “skillfully dissects the opposition” with this assessment:

When they shift from propaganda to policy their proposals are inadequate and in some cases demonstrably harmful. For the most part, they seek to evade the nation’s problems rather than to solve them.

Translation: “Those who disagree with me seek to harm others and aren’t interested in solving the nation’s problems.” This kind of attack on the intangible motives, rather than the tangible and quantifiable effects of GOP policies, is what constitutes a “skillful dissection” of Republican thinking?

Every Democrat is going to offer his or her take on how the party can start winning again, especially as the race for DNC Chair heats up. But can we leave one bad argument behind? Can we toss aside the feel-good argument that Kerry would have won and the Dems would have picked up seats in Congress if they had just attacked Bush and the Republicans more?

As the Washington Post recently calculated, Kerry and his Democratic supporters spent $1.08 billion during the campaign. (Republicans outspent them by only $60 million.) This does not include Michael Moore‘s films, Air America, or the New York Times editorial page. The Democrats had their best communications effort ever, and there was no shortage of attacks on the president.

“We didn’t win because the other guys are nastier” is a cop-out, and a false one at that. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be surprised to see some on the losing side embracing an excuse that reinforces their sense or moral superiority.

[Posted 01/04 11:01 AM]

Mickey Kaus reports that a "smoking gun indicting the official Mitofsky/Lenski exit poll appears to have surfaced."

Mitofsky and Lenski were apparently telling their clients (NBC, CBS, CNN, AP, etc.) that after "weighting" Kerry was beating Bush by 9 points among women and losing by only 4 among men. By 1:24 P.M. the next day (see this file) revised results revealed that, in fact, Kerry won women by only 3 points while Bush won men by 11 points. Whoops! ... It wasn't the dumb bloggers who didn't understand on Nov. 2 that they were being leaked "complex displays intended for trained statisticians," as Mitofsky would have it--or the dumb Kerry aides and dumb Bush aides who believed the same numbers. It was that the weighted results Mitofsky's statisticians put out were full of it!

I'll bet a lot of readers of this site now want to know more -- like why were they so wrong, and so uniformly wrong in favor of Kerry. The Mystery Pollster offers a few theories. But he misses the one that a lot of folks on the right are wondering about - that a combination of subconscious and conscious biases on the part of the exit pollers was designed to put out word that Kerry was doing well early in the day, encouraging Democrats and depressing Republicans.

[Posted 01/04 10:17 AM]

Words fail me. From the Washington Post:

Little is publicly known about the cable news network planned by almost-president Al Gore except that it will be called INdTV (say it like "indie"), aims to wow the youth market, has set up shop in San Francisco and is supposed to launch this year. But what kind of shows will it carry?

We've received a glimpse of some of the programming envisioned by INdTV execs, who just sent out an e-mail to prospective "digital correspondents," seeking edgy video submissions to serve as pilots. Gore's programming gurus say they hope to "democratize television" by relying on Generation Y contributors and "real-life video." An insider cautioned us yesterday that the e-mail represents just a sliver of the conceptual pie, but the potential must-see lineup includes:

• "That's F*&#ed Up: Is there something unfathomable going on around the corner or down the street? Some state of affairs that just doesn't make sense? You can rant all you want -- it just better be good TV."

• "INdTV Paparazzi: Get someone famous to opine on something substantive. ('Hey Paris -- what did you think of Rumsfeld's quote on the armored Humvee shortage in Iraq?') Or, ask a serious figure about something not-so-substantive. Note: Don't be a stalker."

• "Citizen Reporter: Pick a news story and tell it the way it should be told. No teleprompter, no static stand-ups, no local-news hair. Honesty and humor will go a long way. This is our chance to unwind the spin."

• "All-Nighter: What goes on in your town between 2 and 5 a.m.? We're looking for truly unique stuff, anywhere from the local late-night diner to the woods down by the creek."

• "State of the Union: Give us your wisest, most irreverent State of the Union address. We're talking improvised podium, pomp, politics, personality and, of course, most importantly: sound bites."

• "Addicted: What's your addiction? Food? A fetish? A relationship? Do you lead a double life? This is first-person: time to confess."

(But the e-mail warns elsewhere, "No X-rated content." Drat.)

• "INdTV Is The New Black: Are you a trend-spotter? A cool-hunter? Take off your trucker cap (or put it back on) and show us the next big thing in clothes, culture, style or slang."

(Dare we ask: Are earth tones hip again?)

The cable channel, which Gore and his investors reportedly acquired last year for $70 million, isn't paying contributors unless it accepts their one-to-five-minute segments for use in an industry preview. In that case, INdTV will pony up $200, which grants it the right to use the video "in all markets and media . . . throughout the universe, in perpetuity," according to a contract sent to contributors.

I wonder if the new channel will actually garner good ratings in the first days, as the world tunes in for the bizarre programming choices that Al Gore felt the world needed to see.

Then again, maybe I'm not the target demographic.

UPDATE: Reader Hastings asks, "Some of the hypothetical shows seem to be counter to what Tipper would like to be promoting. Remember her explicit lyrics labels? Does she know what Al is up to when he's not accusing the President of betraying the country and playing on our fears?"

[Posted 01/04 10:06 AM]

Your humble correspondent, on December 30:

I suspect we will be hearing more Democrats echoing Dean's line, "Since when is fifty-one percent of the votes a mandate by anyone’s definition? It’s ridiculous." Particularly if he becomes head of the DNC.

And arguments left unchallenged tend to take hold in the public mind, no matter how silly they are... After the 2000 election, the media embraced the conventional wisdom that America was a "50-50 nation." The results of the 2002 midterms suggested that the scales had begun to tip a bit, as a resurgent GOP retook the Senate after the Jeffords switch, added four House seats, and won a slew of highly contested races - senate seats in Missouri, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, governor's races in Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Hawaii, etc.

But throughout 2004, the media stuck with the line, "We're an evenly-divided, 50-50 nation," even though the mid-terms and 2003 governor's races suggested we were starting to tip to a 51-49 or 52-48 nation.

When a bad idea is out there, you have to argue against it, no matter how silly it initially sounds... because otherwise, people start buying into it.

Christie Whitman, in her new book:

Whitman charges on Page 3 that Bush's three-percentage-point margin in the popular vote is the lowest of any incumbent president ever to win reelection.

"The numbers show that while the president certainly did energize his political base, the red state/blue state map changed barely at all -- suggesting that he had missed an opportunity to significantly broaden his support in the most populous areas of the country," Whitman writes. "The Karl Rove strategy to focus so rigorously on the narrow conservative base won the day, but we must ask at what price to governing and at what risk to the future of the party."

Shannen Coffin, writing in the Corner, today:

This is the second time this week I've heard the observation that Bush's margin of victory is the lowest of any incumbent president ever to win reelection. It fails to take into account the fact that a number of incumbent presidents have lost reelection, including Bush's father. How much of a criticism is it that the President's (non-plurality) election was closer than any that came before? This seems to be a particularly weak criticism and an ineffective attempt to undermine the President's mandate.

Some other mainstream media blog critic, today:

The Cornerites are taking a whack at Christie Todd Whitman's assertion that "Bush's three-percentage-point margin in the popular vote is the lowest of any incumbent president ever to win reelection." Does this mean much? Well, it's better than being beaten, as some have remarked. But it is also indicative of the fact that the voters didn't weigh up the incumbent this time around and come to the conclusion that he fully deserved re-election. Most of the time, that's what they do with incumbents up for a second term. Remember Eisenhower's, Nixon's, Reagan's and Clinton's re-election margins? Bush didn't win a big majority; he remains much less popular than most re-elected presidents; if he's smart, he'll understand this.

See? See? You leave a bad idea out there, and before you know it, every mainstream-media voice who compares bloggers to Zarqawi is echoing it...

UPDATE: A few folks interpreted this post as some sort of shot at or criticism of Shannen Coffin. Uh, no. I included his comment to illustrate that he, too, senses that the "Bush's win is small potatoes" meme is spreading...

[Posted 01/03 05:37 PM]

Instapundit noted this... Dan Rather will be anchoring the CBS Evening News from Indonesia tonight. In a Navy-released photo, he is seen returning to the USS Abraham Lincoln in a flight suit.

If the goal was to achieve maximum irony by placing one of Bush's most high-profile critics in the garb and location that his critics found most objectionable... "Mission Accomplished!"

[Posted 01/03 05:18 PM]

The perfect irony of this story leaves me green with envy that the guys at Powerline noticed it first:

Reader Patrick Charles makes a great point: "One of the ships helping is the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault vessel carrying U.S. Marines. This is the same ship that [critical phrase deleted] Navy Petty Officer Third Class and darling of the anti-war left, Pablo Paredes, refused to board back in Decemeber because his ship was aiding in the "illegal" war in Irag. This sailor went AWOL back in December and staged a little media party in San Diego back in December. This is a wonderful irony."

Yes it is. The Bonhomme Richard joined the effort in Sumatra today, and will depart for Sri Lanka later this week.

Boy, doesn't Pablo feel proud today? His protest against the "illegal" war ensured he would contribute absolutely nothing to the U.S. Navy's tsunami relief efforts. Way to go!

[Posted 01/03 02:35 PM]

William Raspberry, in the Washington Post, today:

We can argue all day that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant whose defeat and humiliation should evoke no sympathy from us. But he did have a functioning country. There was a government in place. People went to work and to the market and to school in relative safety. Can anyone really believe that the U.S.-spawned anarchy has left the Iraqi people better off? We broke it. Do we have the moral right to walk away with the shards scattered across the floor?

A ‘functioning country’?

You know what functioned really well in Hussein’s regime? The secret police.

“People went to work…” …when they weren’t going to mass graves.

“And to the market…” Unless you were a Kurd, and you happened to be in Halabja, when Saddam murdered you and about 5,000 of your neighbors with VX, sarin, and mustard gas. Shopping was kind of tough when you were vomiting, your eyes were bleeding, and you were choking to death.

“And to school in relative safety…” unless you were a woman, and Uday or Qusay felt like raping you.

Or if you were a Madan, or Marsh Arab, where Saddam purged you.
Or if you weren’t killed in Saddam’s wars with the Iranians, or the invasion of Kuwait, or the first Gulf War.

An end to the rape rooms, to the paper shredders, to the nation of fear dominated by the relentless sociopathic sadism of Saddam and his sons. Instead, Iraqis have a shot at democracy -- and a tough fight against Abu Zarqawi and his cowardly band of suicide bombers. And Raspberry asks, has that left the Iraqi people better off?

We actually have to debate this?

What kind of American says, "give me the 'functioning government' of the dictator over a chance to live in freedom"? This is "Braveheart" in reverse -- preferring to live on one's knees than to die on one's feet.

[Posted 01/03 01:28 PM]

News from Broadcasting and Cable, via Scylla & Charybdis:

According to a Broadcasting & Cable source in Washington, D.C., CBS News president Andrew Heyward, along with Washington bureau chief Janet Leissner, recently met with White House communications director Dan Bartlett, in part to repair chilly relations with the Bush administration.

CBS News’ popularity at the White House—never high to begin with—plunged further in the wake of Dan Rather’s discredited 60 Minutes story on George Bush’s National Guard service.

An incentive for making nice is the impending report from the two-member panel investigating CBS's use of now-infamous documents for the 60 Minutes piece. Heyward was “working overtime to convince Bartlett that neither CBS News nor Rather had a vendetta against the White House,” our source says, “and from here on out would do everything it could to be fair and balanced.” CBS declined to comment.

Scylla & Charybdis writes, "My guess is that the Thornburgh report has been completed."

If this report is accurate, we can conclude:

* Andrew Heyward is not stepping down or getting the axe.
* The report does not conclude he was responsible for CBS' refusal to issue a prompt correction.
* CBS feels the need to reach out to the White House. Is this because the report paints a picture of relentless anti-Bush hostility in the news offices, and Heyward feels the need to demonstrate that era is over?

Or is this because the report is mild in its criticism, reads like a whitewash, and Heyward feels the need to head off an angry response from the White House?

We will know eventually, hopefully before 2006. "Weeks, not months," etc.

UPDATE: Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, but left-of-center blogger Atrios cites this meeting as evidence that the media isn't liberal, but is conservative. He points out that CBS has "been wonderfully 'fair and balanced' recently, with John Roberts reading Bush adminstration press releases about Social Security and calling it 'news.'"

To paraphrase Sean Connery in Rising Sun, "But of course they are."

[Posted 01/03 10:07 AM]

Everything you need to know about the Democrats interested in becoming chair of the Democratic National Committee is a few posts down, or click here.

But there's more one piece of data - the New Republic has made Wellington Webb's reaction to Beinart's "A Fighting Faith" available online.

[Posted 01/03 08:53 AM]

Highlights from a big article in this week's Newsweek, catching up with former Democratic nominee John Kerry:

Kerry has not given any formal interviews since his defeat. But on Nov. 11, nine days after the election, Kerry summoned a NEWSWEEK reporter to his house on Boston's fashionable Louisberg Square. He wanted to complain about NEWSWEEK's election issue, which he said was unduly harsh and gossipy about him, his staff and his wife. (The 45,000-word article, the product of a yearlong reporting project, is being published next week as a book, "Election 2004," by PublicAffairs.)

Despite, or because of, a somewhat stoical and severe New England upbringing, Kerry has a tendency to natter at his subordinates, to blame everyone but himself. ("Did he whine?" was the first question one senior Kerry aide asked of the NEWSWEEK reporter who had recently been to see Kerry.) On this damp November evening, he appeared alone in the house; he answered the door and showed his visitor into a cozy, book-lined drawing room. His face was deeply lined, his eyes drooped, he looked like he hadn't slept in about two years. But his manner was resolute, his mood seemed calm, even chipper.

He never quite came out and said it, but Kerry sounded very much like a man who was running for president again...

In conversation with NEWSWEEK, Kerry seemed particularly interested in trying to find a way to speak to ordinary voters that didn't sound too grandiose or "political." Though Kerry did not directly criticize his friend Shrum, it's clear he did not feel well served by his message makers and speechwriters.

The deeper problem may be Kerry's personality, which may be too distant or reserved to win mass affection. As this reporter left his house in November, Kerry called out and followed him down the street. He wanted to show a letter from a schoolgirl that had been left on his stoop. The letter read, in part, "John Kerry, you're the greatest!" Kerry looked into the reporter's eye. "The pundits have never liked me," he said. "Is it the way I look? The way I sound?" He seemed vulnerable for a moment, then caught himself, smiled and walked home to his empty house.

Something about this article comes across as a bit mean. Maybe it's that I don't care to know how Kerry is coping emotionally with the rejection, or that I need to hear another round of anonymous quotes from his aides pointing fingers and listing his faults as a candidate.

Maybe it's getting tiresome to have heard folks talk about how great a candidate Kerry was for nine months, and then suddenly hear every Democrat lament that he was a terrible campaigner after Nov. 2. What, they only figured this out on Election Day?

[Posted 01/03 08:02 AM]

Via the Belmont Club, which has some typically insightful analysis, they note:

UN inadequacy at meeting any serious crisis was indirectly admitted by French President Jacques Chirac, who suggested that the UN and the EU set up a "'humanitarian rapid reaction force' to help deal with similar catastrophes in future." But Chirac's suggestion makes no sense unless that rapid reaction force is provided with a standing capability and ready stockpiles. Under present arrangements, the UN must go to its principal supporters to muster national contingents and contributions to march under its flag. Because that process takes time it negates the 'rapid' in Chirac's proposed "humanitarian rapid reaction force".

Via Bloomberg: United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today that an international donors conference is tentatively being scheduled for Jan. 11 in Geneva.

Finally there is the tactic of denying 'legitimacy' to any unsanctioned effort. The UN has criticized the United States, Australia, Japan and India for going ahead with tsunami relief efforts without waiting to course it through the UN. Since the UN effort will consist of national contributions to be determined at a conference in Geneva anyway, one would have thought the issue inconsequential. But grabbing political credit is never unimportant. Former British International Development Secretary Clare Short upbraided the US for daring to spend American taxpayer money without UN approval.

Some of these quotes and statements are beginning to resemble a Scrappleface parody.

[Posted 01/02 10:09 PM]

Perusing this week's BusinessWeek, they had two short stories regarding Ousted Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines. Here is one:

Ousted Fannie Mae CEO Franklin D. Raines has quite the gilded parachute to soften his landing. In addition to $19 million in severance payments, Raines, 55, gets a lifetime salary of $1.37 million. If he lives until 75, that's $27.4 million. Add: $21 million in stock already awarded, $23.8 million in future stock payouts, a life insurance policy, and an additional $23.8 million in performance-based options. That's on top of more than $17.5 million paid to Raines since 1999. The grand total is worth $140 million -- not bad for just six years on the job.

$140 million for six years? You could get a whole outfield for that. Or two disappointing quarterbacks.

Another profile of Raines, listed as one of the mag's "Worst Managers of the Year", reminds us:

On Labor Day, he was a favorite to be Treasury Secretary should John Kerry win the White House. At yearend, he had left under a cloud...

The Securities & Exchange Commission's top accountant declared that mortgage giant Fannie misstated earnings for 3 1/2 years, leading to an estimated $9 billion restatement that will wipe out 40% of profits from 2001 to mid-2004.

Supporters of Raines, 55, insisted that he wasn't culpable for Fannie's misuse of obscure accounting standards. But that argument didn't wash. Raines was in charge in 2001, when Fannie chose to create what the SEC dryly called "its own unique methodology" to calculate the earnings impact of its trillion-dollar portfolio of derivatives. Raines gave Chief Financial Officer J. Timothy Howard free rein and tolerated "weak or nonexistent" financial controls, according to a scathing report issued in September by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, Fannie's regulator.

It's probably asking too much, but as we consider this Clinton White House budget director and almost-Kerry-Treasury-Secretary, could we see a little less righteousness among Democrats the next time they thunder about outrageous pay for CEOs? Could they remember him next time they rage about irresponsible executives and companies that ignore accounting rules? Could we get the media to avoid the easy shorthand that GOP lawmakers are soft on corporate crime, and that the Democrats are the white-hatted sheriffs who will crack down on boardroom misbehavior?

[Posted 01/02 09:49 PM]

This entry from The Diplomad, a blog run by career US Foreign Service officers. is disturbing...

Check out this interview (on the UN's official website) with SecGen Annan and Under SecGen Egeland shows,

Mr. Egeland: Our main problems now are in northern Sumatra and Aceh. <...> In Aceh, today 50 trucks of relief supplies are arriving. <...> Tomorrow, we will have eight full airplanes arriving. I discussed today with Washington whether we can draw on some assets on their side, after consultations with the Indonesian Government, to set up what we call an “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh.

Tomorrow, we will have to set up a camp for relief workers – 90 of them – which is fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything, because they have nowhere to stay and we don't want them to be an additional burden on the people there.

I provided this to some USAID colleagues working in Indonesia and their heads nearly exploded. The first paragraph is quite simply a lie. The UN is taking credit for things that hard-working, street savvy USAID folks have done. It was USAID working with their amazing network of local contacts who scrounged up trucks, drivers, and fuel; organized the convoy and sent it off to deliver critical supplies. A UN “air-freight handling centre” in Aceh? Bull! It's the Aussies and the Yanks who are running the air ops into Aceh. We have people working and sleeping on the tarmac in Aceh, surrounded by bugs, mud, stench and death, who every day bring in the US and Aussie C-130s and the US choppers; unload, load, send them off. We have no fancy aid workers' retreat -- notice the priorities of the UN? People are dying and what's the first thing the UN wants to do? Set up "a camp for relief workers" one that would be "fully self-contained, with kitchen, food, lodging, everything."

Are these leaders of the U.N. describing "we" when they mean U.S. Agency for International Development and Australian military actions?

If this is the case, one can expect UN-friendly voices in the mainstream media to ignore it. The blogs will not be so - pardon the pun in these grim circumstances - charitable.

[Posted 01/01 06:29 PM]

Another resolution for this year - to flesh out my prediction of an emerging "pragmacon" movement.

Deacon at Powerline suggests:

most conservatives are already Pragmacons. Indeed, it seems self-evident that there are significant limits to the ability of the U.S. to spread democracy, pluralism, free markets, free speech and religious freedom throughout the world. The tough question is where those limits are located (e.g., are they located in Iraq). A distinct Pragmacon "wing" will emerge to the extent that conservatives conclude that the neoconservatives are radically wrong on that question. And, yes, 2005 could well be the year in which this occurs.

Meanwhile, blogger Es-Ist applauds the coming debate among conservatives:

In that The Liberal Party has lost and continues to lose credibility, conservatives need to keep an active debate going. Especially in matters of sending people over in war.

The Liberal Party is no longer a reliable opposition party. The more active the debate inside The Conservative Party, the better.

[Posted 01/01 06:17 PM]

Mickey Kaus quotes Harold Ickes, one of the candidates for chairman of the Democratic National Committee:

P.P.P.S.: Dem operative Harold Ickes apparently didn't share the respectable-press CW that the Swift Boat attacks on Kerry were 100% discredited. It was, Ickes says, "a matter so personal to Senator Kerry, so much within his knowledge. Who knew what the facts were?"

Folks who were not such big fans of Kerry figured this out a while ago. If the candidate had had the facts, why didn't he come out swinging and pointing to them?

If I were some rival of Ickes (COUGHhowarddeanCOUGH) I would be circulating this quote, and charging, "Harold Ickes believes the Swift Boat Vets for Truth."

[Posted 01/01 02:27 PM]

One of my New Year's resolutions: Shorter, more focused posts.

Apparently some readers felt the recent posts debating what makes a mandate were about as long-winded as some of Kerry's speeches.

[Posted 01/01 02:21 PM]

Kevin McCullough revises and extends his remarks, and adjusts what I had thought was an unfair criticism of Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall, Wonkette, and the Daily Kos.

McCullough's follow-up does illustrate a clear, and noteworthy point: If there is an anti-Bush angle to a particular story, then many in the media and on the left side of the blogosphere will pick it up and discuss it at length.

If there is a huge story, like the tsunami, that does not have a clear anti-Bush angle... well, it just won't attract the same attention as the "Did Bush wear a radio to the debate" or "Who is the infamous Washingtonienne?"

Of course, as John Podhoretz noted, just because there isn't a clear anti-Bush angle to the tsunami story doesn't mean lots of reporters aren't looking for one.

UPDATE: By the way, Josh Marshall e-mailed me to point out his site is about exposing that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is "corruption incarnate," not "evil incarnate." I regret the error. ;)

[Posted 01/01 02:14 PM]

Wow. I'm celebrating the New Year with my in-laws for about 24 hours, and a new, big all-out brawl breaks out regarding blogs, the mainstream media, and left and right bias.

It began with Crooked Timber reacting to the Nick Coleman column and arguing that blogs will never replace mainstream media. Instapundit and others responded by saying that they've never argued or predicted that would happen - only that blogs would serve as a counterweight to errors and bias in the mainstream media.

(By the way, calling those who you're arguing with "characteristically evasive," like Henry at Crooked Timber does, is generally a bad way to keep a debate or discussion going. Also, once somebody calls you a "slavering right-wing hack", it's a safe bet that the productive or persuasive part of the conversation has ended.)

A short take: Radio didn't destroy print, television didn't destroy radio, the Internet didn't destroy television, and the blogs will not "destroy" other media. They will, however, take slice of the pie and that slice is likely to get larger, while the television and "mainstream" print slice will gradually get smaller. (The pie itself might get larger, however, which is good for everyone.)

[Posted 01/01 02:06 PM]

Sorry for the lack of updates... links and resolutions coming.

[Posted 01/01 01:53 PM]

Heading up to Philadelphia today... more postings coming this afternoon.

[Posted 12/31 10:40 AM]

Bruce sends me the quote I should have started this discussion with:

“The margin is narrow, but the responsibility is clear. There may be difficulties with the Congress, but a margin of only one vote would still be a mandate.”

President-elect John F. Kennedy, press conference, November 10, 1963

(I note that there must be some error in Bartleby, as this is either President-Elect Kennedy speaking on November 10, 1960, or President Kennedy speaking after the mid-term elections on Nov. 10, 1962.)

UPDATE: Kerry Spot reader David writes in, point out that indicates that Ted Sorensen’s book titled “Let the Word Go Forth: The Speeches, Statements, and Writings of John F. Kennedy 1947 to 1963” states that President Kennedy spoke those words at a press conference held in Hyannis Port, Mass., on November 9, 1960. Thanks to him for the confirmation.

[Posted 12/30 04:26 PM]

Mike, a reader of this site, asks, "Isn't it at least 30 days too early to be giving up on the original mission in Iraq? Where are your Pragmacons if we seem to be winning in six months?"

The short answer to his first question is, "Yes." However, just because it isn't too early to give up on Iraq doesn't mean that people will begin to look past it, or begin to look for "lessons" to take away from it. (Obviously, people give up on causes too early all the time. Iraq was a quagmire to the New York Times by... what, day three or four?)

I think you will see a distinction between what I am calling a "pragmacon" and a fair-weather-hawk.

One can support the mission in Iraq and still be:

A) pretty darn frustrated that the CIA is capable of botching a call as big and important as the status of Iraq's WMD program, and wary of taking further action regarding other countries' programs until we know our intelligence-gathering systems are up to the task,

B) frustrated by how slowly the Iraqis are coming to understand that it's their country now, and their reluctance to take action to defend it, and

C) something of a skeptic - or perhaps a worrier - about preemptive action against Iran.

If Iraq is going well in six months, the Pragmacon response will be, "great... but we still have the same problems. We have an intelligence-gathering system that doesn't meet our needs. Getting democracy to take root in among the societies ruled by hostile regime is a slow, difficult, and complicated process that sounds suspiciously like "nation-building," a task the U.S. military isn't really built to do. And taking the "pre-emptive regime change" option against Iran still includes a whole bunch of big risks and questionable benefits.

Secondly, I think - or perhaps hope - that much of this discussion will be held with a tone of "we want the same goals as the neocons, but we think there has to be a better route to get there." It would be disappointing if it descended to the whining, carping, and fairly unserious second-guessing that Tim Cavanaugh diagnosed.

UPDATE: Scylla & Charybdis offers another take: "If we’re going to get all practical, let’s be practical. A unified Iraq is a four-run homer, accelerating the Mideast peace process by years. But a one-run homer is all we need, and perhaps all we can afford. To wit: A balkanized Iraq with working democratic zones, territories or countries (Kurdistan; Shia’stan) satisfies the basic strategic objectives of the Plan (establishing and supporting an Islamic democratic zone in the region)."

My one immediate problem with that: I like having Turkey as an ally, and the Turks would be livid at the creation of an independent Kurdistan.

[Posted 12/30 03:52 PM]

Matt, a reader of this site, has a question or two about what I've written about what makes a mandate:

I regret that I don't find your defense of the mandate to be persuasive. I think you would do better to state objectively what a mandate consists of. I think a mandate must be more than just winning an election. It should be about winning by a large margin. You say we can quibble over what the percentage might be - I say surely 51% isn't the threshold regardless of other lackluster performances in recent elections...

Ultimately your defense seems to fall back to "The Democrats declared a mandate under worse circumstances, so Bush clearly has a mandate now." The Democrats were wrong then and you haven't demonstrated why you are right now.

I'm coming around to Ramesh's idea that a mandate is too inherently subjective to nail down to an exact percentage.

Ordinarily I would say something like a four to six point margin represents a decisive win. But then again, different elections are held under different circumstances.

Football metaphor: I would have danced a jig if the Jets had managed to beat the Patriots or Steelers this year by one point. Beating the Dolphins or 49ers by one point is, however, a sign of trouble against a lousy team.

Does a three percent victory over intense, vocal, unified and strong opposition, like Bush did this year, qualify as more of a mandate than an eight point victory over a weak, uninspired and divided opposition like Clinton achieved in 1996? I think one could make that case.

But at some point, an operational mandate is created by widespread perception that voters decisively backed one candidate's agenda over the other... (I realize this is kind of going in circles, but in short, you have a mandate when other people think you have a mandate.)

Of course, this line of thinking helps explain why the Democrats are insisting Bush doesn't have a mandate. If the members of each party closest to the center - the Liebermans, Snowes, Ben Nelsons, etc. - act like Bush has a mandate, well then, he has a mandate.

If Howard Dean and his cohorts can persuade people that Bush's 51 percent is no big deal, the political equivalent of a missed extra point, then the lawmakers in the middle will be more likely to oppose the president's agenda.

I wonder if much of this "mandate" debate is an effort by a losing side to raise the bar on the official who won the election. "Well, yeah, your guy got more votes, but he didn't win a mandate!"

"Sure, Bush won the Electoral College by 35 electoral votes and three percent in the popular vote, but the point spread was 45 electoral votes and five and a half percentage points, you losers!"

[Posted 12/30 03:01 PM]

I didn’t send Kathryn any predictions earlier this year, mostly because I didn’t have any and didn’t think much about it until I read the NRO gang’s thoughts today. But after reading them, it spurred me to solidify a couple of gut thoughts.

I think one of the hottest political debates of 2005 will center around conservative supporters in the Iraq war who begin to reexamine the justification and risk/benefit analysis of the war. This discussion’s tone and intellectual rigor will be light years apart from the shrill anti-war shrieking on the left.

One central argument will come from pro-war-on-terror conservatives who conclude, “Okay, bringing democracy to Iraq hasn’t worked as well as we hoped or expected. What do we learn from this?”

A key point will be that if intelligence about threats is wrong, few policy decisions based on that intelligence will turn out as well as lawmakers hope. Porter Goss’ efforts to overhaul and improve the CIA will be seen as the most important effort in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War, because it is the effort upon which so many other endeavors rest.

The use of preemptive action to achieve “regime change” against an entire nation like Iraq will be seen as a rare, once-per-generation step in American national security. A consensus will emerge that preemptive action is best used not against entire nations or governments but against regions, particularly lawless border provinces where no government has a firm grip - the Lebanese Bekaa Valley, or the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

A preferred method will be, for example, for local tribal heads who are sympathetic to al-Qaeda to simply be found dead one morning, with no clear “fingerprints” of U.S. military action. By comparison, tribal leaders who help authorities find al-Qaeda members will keep finding piles of cash on their doorstep.

I predict we will see the emergence of “Pragmacons” - a new self-proclaimed “middle group” of conservatives. These thinkers will share the ideals of the “neocons” - spreading democracy, pluralism, free markets, free speech and religious freedom throughout the world, and relentlessly crushing Islamist terror networks and the rogue states that snuggle with them. But the Pragmatic Cons will also conclude that American options and resources in this effort are limited by a faulty U.S. intelligence system and the Herculean difficulties of turning “subjects” into “citizens.”

Despite the “pragma” prefix, these conservatives will dismiss Nixonian and Paleocon Realpolitik as a lame artifact useless in a post-9/11 world.

The left, still opposed to just about any exercise of American military power under a Republican president, will say this is all just the same conquer-the-world-for-Israel-and-Halliburton stuff under a new name, and dismiss the new folks as “Decepticons.” The editors of the New York Times will gleefully relish the new phrase as much as they currently love (and overuse, and misuse) “neocon,” while having no idea where the name came from or who Megatron and Soundwave are.

By the way, I’m not endorsing “pragmaconservatism” here, just predicting that this line of thinking is going to emerge in the coming months and pick up steam. Of course, I also predict that the most vocal and passionate foe of this line of thinking will be Michael Ledeen.

UPDATE: One of my favorite liberal readers rewords it:

"The neocons/conservatives/Republicans will back track dramatically from their current posture on world Democratization and 1) assume no blame, and in fact blame the CIA for the whole mess, 2) downplay the whole mess as an error in judgment - never mind the tens of thousands of dead Iraqi citizens and thousands of dead US soldiers, 3) try to save face at home, but still ignore the rest of the world, 4) continue to bash Democrats for being against the Iraq War for "the wrong reason", and lastly 5) invent a new name and mission for our foreign/military policy in hopes that we forget about the incredible fiasco they created by the time 2008 rolls around."

Well, um, no, that's not really the way I would put it...

[Posted 12/30 12:47 PM]

Several readers object to the argument from lefties that "More people voted against Bush in 2004 that any other President in history," asking how 1992 compares.

It is close, but the anti-Bush vote this year was a smidgen higher than the anti-Clinton vote in 1992.

The 1992 totals:

Clinton: 44,909,806
Bush: 39,104,550
Perot: 19,743,821
Libertarian, etc.: 665,746

Total against Clinton in 1992: 59,514,117.

This year, from Dave Leip's Election Atlas:

Kerry: 59,027,612
Nader: 461,243
Badnarik: 396,888
Other: 367,813

This year's votes against Bush: 60,253,556.

By the way, total Bush votes from Leip's site: 62,040,287.

[Posted 12/30 12:07 PM]

The great Peggy Noonan, today:

The biggest story of the year happened just as big-thinking journalists went on vacation after filing their "Ten Biggest Stories of 2004" pieces. Life has a way of surprising us.

The AP is putting the death toll at 114,000. Each time it gets higher, it seems to get even harder to comprehend or imagine.

[Posted 12/30 10:19 AM]

Hugh Hewitt, author of the most important paper-based work on the blogging phenomenon to date, could not have imagined how badly the Minneapolis Star Tribune would react to Nick Coleman's column.

Coleman's column, as you'll recall, alleged that the bloggers at Powerline are "only interested in being a megaphone without oversight, disclosure of conflicts of interest, or professional standards." That was right after he suggested they were size-deficient in their reproductive organs.

The guys at Powerline had a chat with Coleman's editor, objecting to some factual errors in the piece (please, no reproductive organ jokes). They learned:

Among other things, the editor advised me that Coleman's attack on us involved no reporting, and that the column's factual misrepresentations were to be read in that light. Moreover, certain of the misrepresentations were to be construed as sarcasm rather than taken at face value.

Finally, according to the editor, Coleman's false assertion that he didn't know and we didn't say whether we might be on the take from some campaign, political party or anonymous benefactor, appeared to violate no Star Tribune standard. In his meeting with Coleman after my discussion with the editor yesterday morning, Coleman had told the editor that he "assumed" we received a stipend from the Claremont Institute. (Wrong. As we expressly stated here in response to Coleman's slander earlier this month, "we are not paid by anyone" for our work on the site. What part of "not" doesn't Coleman understand?)

I asked the editor what standards Coleman's column was subject to at the Star Tribune. He said he didn't know; he would have to research the answer to that question and get back to me. But they do have standards, which is of course a relief!

Brent Bozell or other media critics could not have written a scenario that makes the mainstream media look worse.

Imagine that you are writing a novel. You write a scene in which a newspaper columnist wrote that his Internet-based critics had no "professional standards" and then got one of his central arguments wrong because he didn't bother to check what he assumed about his critics. After the errors are revealed, neither he nor his editor can say what "professional standards" his column is held to.

Most book editors and readers would shake their heads at that scene -- it's not believable, stacking the deck too much. Newspaper columnists aren't that sloppy or reckless with the facts. Editors don't just let them write whatever they feel like - they edit.

Like the story of the CBS memo, this is turning stranger than fiction.

[Posted 12/30 10:14 AM]

Leave it to Ramesh to put the entire "Bush mandate" debate into perspective.

A couple of regular readers wrote in asking, "Why are you bothering with this? These folks aren't ever going to be persuaded Bush won a mandate. They will always believe that any Democrat who wins has a big mandate, and that any Republican doesn't have one. Why waste all those words?"

Well, for starters, I suspect we will be hearing more Democrats echoing Dean's line, "Since when is fifty-one percent of the votes a mandate by anyone’s definition? It’s ridiculous." Particularly if he becomes head of the DNC.

And arguments left unchallenged tend to take hold in the public mind, no matter how silly they are. The observation that Bush did in 2004 what no Democrat has been able to do since 1964 ought to demonstrate that belittling the concept of Bush's mandate is a silly exercise.

After the 2000 election, the media embraced the conventional wisdom that America was a "50-50 nation." The results of the 2002 midterms suggested that the scales had begun to tip a bit, as a resurgent GOP retook the Senate after the Jeffords switch, added four House seats, and won a slew of highly contested races - senate seats in Missouri, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, governor's races in Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Hawaii, etc.

But throughout 2004, the media stuck with the line, "We're an evenly-divided, 50-50 nation," even though the mid-terms and 2003 governor's races suggested we were starting to tip to a 51-49 or 52-48 nation.

When a bad idea is out there, you have to argue against it, no matter how silly it initially sounds... because otherwise, people start buying into it.

UPDATE: Joseph, a reader of this site, found a New York Times editorial from November 7, 1996:

the American people actually seem to have sent a pretty clear message. They think the country is going in the right direction, toward a leaner but still active Federal Government. The challenge now is whether the President and Congress can build on that rough consensus and move the country forward.

President Clinton must take the lead. For the last two years he has been an artful defensive strategist, allowing the Republican Congress to expose its worst excesses and offering himself as a safer, more moderate alternative. But 1997 cannot be a replay of 1995. For all their errors, the Republicans seized intellectual leadership in Washington over the last two years, capturing the nation's attention and dictating the policy debate's terms. Now Mr. Clinton must set the agenda and force Congress to respond to his legislative initiatives.

There can be no question about his mandate. The American people express their clearest opinion about what they want government to do through their choice of chief executive. In his campaign Mr. Clinton described a Government that is efficient and cost-conscious but nonetheless uses its powers to improve schools, preserve our natural resources and protect the weak and the ostracized. It is his duty to follow through.

Recall this came after an election where Clinton won 49 percent of the vote. Dole and Perot split the other 51 percent.

[Posted 12/30 09:54 AM]

Blogger Scott Clayton doesn't think much of my reaction of Howard Dean's dismissal of Bush's mandate. To review, in Rolling Stone, Dean said:

Since when is fifty-one percent of the votes a mandate by anyone’s definition? It’s ridiculous.

I thought Dean’s assessment was wrongheaded in a multitude of ways.

Clayton’s reaction to Bush having the highest percentage of the vote of any presidential candidate since 1988: “K, great, but so what? I guess Bush should be proud of his ability to unite the nation against John Kerry on a scale not seen since 1988. But this point is akin to saying that Freddy v. Jason was the best Freddy movie in years because he hadn't appeared in a slasher flick since 1994. While technically it’s true, both the movie and Bush's mandate arguments are both weak and full of crap.” Let’s refer to this argument as Objection One.

I suggested that Dean ought to not scoff at 51 percent of the vote nationwide, since he has yet to win anything outside of Vermont. Clayton’s response:

Okay, if I guy who actually ran in a primary has no place to comment on a "mandate" because he never won, then where does Jim Geraghty get off claiming he knows more since, as far as I know, Geraghty has yet to even run for President in the first place?

Let’s call that one Objection Two.

I wrote “That if 51 percent isn't a mandate, then no Democrat since Lyndon Johnson has had a mandate?”

Clayton contends, “I’m not sure where there are arguments that any Democrat since Johnson has had a mandate at this point.” Objection Three.

I continued: “That Bush's 59.1 million votes was the highest total for a presidential candidate in American history? That Bush was the first president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to win re-election while adding to his party's majorities in the House and Senate?”

Clayton was not persuaded by these arguments, concluding, “That more people voted against Bush that any other President in history? That due to some Constitutionally questionable shenanigans in Texas the Republicans won House seats?” Objections Four and Five.

He concludes, “If a Democrat wins the White House with 51% of the vote, does that mean Republicans and those at the National Review like Geraghty will fall in line with that Democratic President's view that he has a mandate?”

Response to Objection One: If one doesn’t think four presidential races since 1988 represent enough opportunities for the Democrats to meet the 51 percent threshold, we can go back further. As I stated in the original post, one has to go back to 1964 to find a presidential campaign in which the Democratic candidate received a higher percentage than Bush’s 51 percent this year. Since LBJ beat Goldwater, the Democrats have gone 0-for-10 in aiming to beat that threshold, even while winning the presidency in 1976, 1992 and 1996. One can say that the Bush majority of this year compares to the quality of a low-grade horror sequel. But the Clinton and Carter majorities would be, under this metaphor, some lower-grade film work, perhaps “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” Dean and Clayton dismiss an achievement that their party (presuming Clayton’s a Dem) have not achieved in my lifetime.

Response to Objection Two: Again, it is not merely that Howard Dean, winner of the 2004 Vermont presidential primary (and that’s about it), has chosen to dismiss Bush’s percentage win as small potatoes. It is that no one on the Democratic side has demonstrated an ability to do this in four decades, even the man widely regarded as one of, if not the, greatest political communicator of his generation, Bill Clinton.

To turn around his question to me, if 51 percent is no big deal, must a President Hillary Clinton (or some other Democrat) win by at least 52 percent in 2008 before her party will argue she has a “mandate”?

Response to Objection Three: Ahem. How about these guys? Time magazine, Nov. 16, 1992, Clinton‘s mug with “MANDATE FOR CHANGE” in big letters across the cover? (Recall this is regarding a victory in which Clinton won 43 percent of the popular vote while winning by substantially more in the Electoral College.)

Response to Objection Four: “More people voted against Bush that any other President in history.” And for that, Americans Coming Together, the Media Fund, and the Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts deserve some attaboys. But that’s not the measuring stick for winning. The metric for victory is 270 in the Electoral College.

Gaining more votes than ever before while coming in second is like a football team gaining more yards than their opponent while scoring fewer points. Yardage is nice to have, but at the end of the day, it's about who's got the bigger number on the scoreboard.

Response to Objection Five: “Republican House seat gains can be attributed entirely to constitutionally-questionable shenanigans.” I don’t buy this argument, but even if one conceded it, the Democrats failed to gain House seats against a reelected incumbent president, which is usually poison for the party’s congressional delegation.

In 1996, Bill Clinton returned to office with 51 fewer House Democrats than 1992. In 1984, Reagan returned to office with 10 fewer House Republicans than 1980. In 1972, Nixon had the exact same number of House Republicans as 1968. In 1956, Eisenhower returned to office with 20 fewer House Republicans than 1952. By historical standards, 2004 should have been a good year for House Democrats, and yet they return to the Hill in January with a smaller caucus. And this is with “more people voting against Bush than any other president in history.”

While I’m not moved by many of these responses, let’s recognize that perhaps the term “mandate” could use a clearer definition. He wonders if Republicans, National Review, or I would concede that Democratic president who won with 51 percent has a mandate.

Let’s think back to 1998. Republicans head into the mid-term elections after a good nine months of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and were convinced they were going to roll up some big wins against the Democrats, weighed down by the president’s appalling behavior.

Didn’t turn out that way, obviously. The GOP expected big gains but lost five House seats, lost a net of one governorship and broke even in the Senate. There was no way to interpret those results as an endorsement of impeachment proceedings against the president. While the House voted to impeach Clinton, and the Senate went through the motions of the proceedings, the possibility of Clinton being removed from office ended on Election Night.

Like it or not, the anti-impeachment forces scored a mandate, and more than a few Republicans noticed. Olympia Snowe of Maine, John Chafee of Rhode Island, Jim Jeffords of Vermont voted against both counts, and, of course, Arlen “Angus” MacSpecter cited Scottish law and voted “not proven.” Several other GOP senators like John McCain voted against one of the impeachment articles.

When does the other guy have a mandate? We can quibble over just what percentage marks the threshold, but ultimately, he’s got one when you don’t have the votes to beat him.

I may not like the agenda of a future President Hillary or President Dean who wins 51 percent, but if they’ve won the electoral college, it’s tough for me to deny that they’ve won a mandate. (Or at least more of a mandate than the opposition did.) As we saw, in 1992 Clinton claimed a mandate with 43 percent and few objected.

Also note we often hear Dean bragging that “our campaign brought hundreds of thousands of new people, not all of them were Democrats, into the fold… especially young people… We raised more money than any other candidate because we taught people how to run grassroots. Since that time, we've had an organization, Democracy for America, which has raised even more grassroots money and pumped into the local races and we've had some successes in so-called red states.”

Dean seems to be suggested he’s earned a mandate through his fundraising and grassroots activism, while dismissing Bush’s accomplishment of merely winning more votes.

One other observation - in the race for DNC chair, we see many Democrats saying again and again, “We know the American people agree with us on the issues.” They conclude this, one presumes, from poll numbers. But when Americans actually go into the voting booth, for some reason they keep giving the Republicans more votes.

To listen to some Democrats, their party wins mandates all the time - just not at the ballot box.

[Posted 12/29 05:49 PM]

I read this this and was surprised by... how small Minnesota Star Tribune columnist Nick Coleman is. What a nasty little man.

Powerline, as readers of this site know, is one of the hottest right-of-center blogs, declared "Blog of the Year" by Time magazine. Apparently the Powerline guys have, in the past, dismissed Coleman's column as the work of a "partisan hack."

Coleman's volcanic response? The Powerline guys "pretend to be family watchdogs but they are Rottweilers in sheep's clothing... pursuing a right-wing agenda cooked up in conservative think tanks funded by millionaire power brokers... They should call themselves "Powertool." They don't speak truth to power. They just speak for power... They go by "fantasy names" that are apparently "compensating for" something.

(I'm sorry, did a mainstream media columnist just allege that his blogger critics are... deficient in their reproductive organs? This guy makes Dan Rather and Bill O'Reilly look like the epitome of class and cool.)

Coleman is just warming up when he gets to his "compensating" comment. He beats his chest and brags that he "covers the news fairly" while the Powerline guys are “extreme media” who are the real “partisan hacks.” You see, back in 1990, he wrote something critical about a Democratic candidate and his supporter, the publisher of the paper. (Ooooh. Non-partisan bonafides, from a fresh example a mere fourteen years ago! That Coleman, he keeps it real!) Anyway, the Powerline guys “know nothing that happened before last Tuesday.” They “have no commitment to serving the public” like Coleman has. They “are only interested in being a megaphone without oversight, disclosure of conflicts of interest, or professional standards.” They are (gasp) fellows at the Claremont Institute, which “seems to be obsessed with gays and guns” and (double gasp) likes Rush Limbaugh.

Readers are probably tiring of Coleman’s “attack, attack, attack” column, but he continues: The Powerline guys are “the spear of a campaign aimed at making Minnesota into a state most of us won't recognize,” unless you’re from Alabama. (As we all know, Alabamans are inherently evil.)

The Powerline guys are “trying to tear down” what Coleman’s ancestors, Irish sod busters built in the 1850s. Coleman has had poorly-paying jobs in the past, which nullifies any Powerline criticism that he could be a “limousine liberal.”

Then Coleman broadens his attack to include, “a daisy chain of right-wing blogs that is assaulting the Mainstream Media.” This daisy chain - which, I presume, would include the site you’re reading right now - “are so hip and cool they can make fun of the poor and the disadvantaged while working out of paneled bank offices.”

Coleman also writes that Powerline “campaigned shamelessly for awards, winning an online "Best Blog of 2004" a week before the Time honor” and “shilled for votes.” They “posted from work” (how Coleman knows this, I have no idea) and “slimed Sen. Mark Dayton.” (No specifics on which post “slimed” the senator - maybe this one?) Coleman also writes, ominously, that Powerline “sells thousands of dollars in ads” including t-shirts with Republican slogans. (Just how does the Minnesota Star Tribune make its money? Advertising has nothing to do with Coleman’s salary?) Coleman concludes by writing, for the seventh time in the column including the headline, that they are… “extreme.”

Whew.

Just how bad a column can you turn in at this paper before some editor there says, “Eh, not your best work, go back to the drawing board”? Was there not one editor at the Star Tribune who was willing to say, “You know, Nick, an entire column alleging that your critics have small reproductive organs could come across as a bit on the petty side. Could you put in a paragraph or two about some blogs you like?”

Every writer has his critics, and every blogger has his issues and targets that get under their skin and stir up the passions. I’m as guilty of it as anybody. (COUGHratherCOUGHwonkette- COUGHoreillyCOUGH.) But if I ever turned in a piece as packed-to-the-gills with nasty “I hate my critics” name-calling as this one, I hope Kathryn would utilize her in-case-of-emergency tranquilizer dart gun. (To say nothing of the heck Mrs. Kerry Spot would raise.)

Does anybody at the Star-Tribune think this column came across as petty, small, nasty, immature, snide, arrogant, and/or all-of-the-above? (Besides, one suspects, Lileks?) Is Coleman’s column space really attracting and interesting readers of that paper, or is it turning into his personal platform to mock and deride his critics in a manner that they can’t respond accordingly? It's not like either Powerline guy gets a column running opposite Coleman's.

I'm not a huge fan of boxing, but I remember when Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear. It was the moment that Tyson’s days as a serious boxer were over, and he was revealed as more of a wild animal than a professional athlete -- he couldn’t compete with Holyfield under the rules of the game, so he turned to a nastier, darker, more brutal route.

Coleman has taken on the Powerline guys in the past, and apparently come up short. So he’s going for their ear instead.

UPDATE: Wow. A reader reminds us, "Nick Coleman's father was among the most powerful men in the state, including four terms as Senate Majority Leader, from 1973 to 1981. His step mother, Deborah Howell, worked at the Minneapolis Star from 1965 to 1979, rising to the post of City Editor. In 1973, Nick was given a job as city hall reporter, for the Minneapolis Star. In 1979, Deborah Howell moved to the Pioneer Press serving as Managing Editor, then Executive Editor, until 1990. In 1986, stepson Nick was given a columnist position, at, guess what, the St. Paul Pioneer Press."

Talk about your political-media aristocracy. No wonder he's so enraged by a bunch of no-name bankers building an audience comparable to or surpassing his and stepping onto his turf. He was born and bred for this role of Media Prince, and these peasants are acting like his equals!

Of course, it could be worse. The targets of his rage could be just a bunch of guys wearing pajamas.

[Posted 12/29 11:50 AM]

Michael Gecan’s advice to the Democrats reminds me a bit of Peggy Noonan’s advice to Terry McAuliffe. In today’s Washington Post, Gecan writes:

Scores of thousands of people, many of them paid (how else do you squander $200 million?), knocked on millions of doors during this campaign. The Democratic-leaning canvassers left information, repeated a canned sales pitch and moved along. They did not engage the people in real conversation. They did not listen to their concerns. They did not recruit real volunteers to work on their own blocks. They did not take the time to find out which pastor or rabbi was a leader in an area and which congregations people attended. They were progressive salespeople with a high quota of contacts and no time to relate, who disappeared from people's towns and lives the very moment, on election night, that they learned the sale had not been made.

It was as if they had never been there. And in a way, they never were. These two tendencies -- celebrity worship and quick-hit canvassing -- betray the central problem at the heart of the Democratic Party's political culture. The party has no time or patience for the complex work needed to listen to Americans, to understand their range of views and positions, and to engage them on their deepest interests. Even worse, many in the hierarchy of the Democratic Party have contempt for ordinary Americans -- for their red faces and moderate churches and mixed, often moderate, views.

No amount of money can solve this problem. No think tank has the answers. No rising senatorial star can save the day. And no Hollywood hero can substitute for the fundamental changes the Democrats need to make to contend for the large, pivotal middle of the American electorate.

Noonan, as you’ll recall, thought the DNC could make a big step to reaching out to religious Americans by standing up for Americans’ right to express their religious beliefs in public - and speaking out against the generic, bland, offend-no-one “Happy Holidays” philosophy.

I reacted with skepticism:

Look, if there’s anything we’ve learned in the post-election period, it’s that there is a sizable chunk of the Democratic party that isn’t the slightest bit interested in reaching out to the voters who voted against their candidates in the last election. And the religious faith of many of the opposition’s supporters is perhaps what these bluest of the blue find most repugnant.

They write off the red states as “Jesusland.” They conclude “Totalitarian Christianity” to be as great a threat to America, if not a greater threat, than militant Islam. They declare the “exurbs” to be “the breeding ground for hatred and intolerance of anything foreign.” …

There are plenty of faithful Democrats out there, who see their progressive political values as a direct result of, or intertwined and inseparable from, their religious faith. But a significant chunk of the Democratic party is anti-faith elitists, sees their party as the primary anti-religion political force in this country, and they like it that way.

There are probably a good number of Democrats out there who want to win over the middle, who don’t want to be left holding a smattering of densely-packed blue urban counties and conceding large swaths of red across the American map. But right now, they’re in the minority.

Gecan diagnoses the problem well, that “many in the hierarchy of the Democratic Party have contempt for ordinary Americans -- for their red faces and moderate churches and mixed, often moderate, views.” But that hierarchy, at least at this point, is in no interest in changing. They like their party the way it is, and would rather continue losing races than concede ideological ground.

Gecan is an interesting guy, highly critical of both parties’ elites. But one suspects that the leaders of the Democratic party - the lawmakers, the state and local party heads and DNC members, the think-tank scholars, the New York Times columnists and other media allies of the party - are in no mood to listen to a mere Brooklyn community activist when there is always another Hollywood star or musician with a louder megaphone.

Besides, there’s no glamour in talking to mere citizens.

[Posted 12/29 10:44 AM]

Credit the editors of the New York Sun for putting the comment of Jan Egeland in context:

Mr. Egeland struck the wrong tone at a time of tragedy. But his ideological assumptions deserve examination. As with Kofi Annan's denunciation of the Iraq war as illegal, his remarks throw into sharp relief the growing tendency of unelected international civil servants to criticize member states - even though they are supposed to be working for them. This arrogance now extends to unsolicited commentary on domestic tax and spending priorities. And it tends to be targeted at the free and democratic member states most exuberantly of all. Inevitably, they assume that greater expenditure by the First World on the Third World is good, no matter what has been proven by economists such as the late, great Peter Bauer.

But why is the U.N. the funnel through which all of this must be coordinated? Claudia Rosett, sifting the horribly leached bones of the oil-for-food program in Iraq in the pages of this newspaper, has shown beyond peradventure that the U.N. is neither competent nor the fount of humanitarianism. By comparison, the much-maligned Halliburton looks like a model of corporate rectitude. A truly radical policy for the second Bush term would be to subcontract disaster relief to the Texas conglomerate. At least its senior management would be refreshingly free of the kind of cant we get from the U.N.

[Posted 12/29 09:23 AM]

As I look over yesterday's posts about U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland's inane comment that the U.S. is "stingy," and see similar responses from around the blogosphere, I begin to sense that this comment hit a nerve.

We're watching 68,000 people die on the other side of the world. Other than giving to relief organizations, there's not much we can do - the damage is done, and those who were lost are gone.

But some fool using this terrible event as an excuse to bash America, ignoring the facts? He is somebody we can do something about.

Now Egeland has a few friends, on the front page of the Washington Post:

The Bush administration more than doubled its financial commitment yesterday to provide relief to nations suffering from the Indian Ocean tsunami, amid complaints that the vacationing President Bush has been insensitive to a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions...

Although U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday withdrew his earlier comment, domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums -- as well as Bush's decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy -- showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia...

Some foreign policy specialists said Bush's actions and words both communicated a lack of urgency about an event that will loom as large in the collective memories of several countries as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks do in the United States. "When that many human beings die -- at the hands of terrorists or nature -- you've got to show that this matters to you, that you care," said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

There was an international outpouring of support after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even some administration officials familiar with relief efforts said they were surprised that Bush had not appeared personally to comment on the tsunami tragedy. "It's kind of freaky," a senior career official said...

Gelb said what appears to be a grudging increase in effort sends the wrong message, at a time when dollar totals matter less than a clear statement about U.S. intentions. Noting that the disaster occurred at a time when large numbers of people in many nations -- especially Muslim ones such as Indonesia -- object to U.S. policies in Iraq, he said Bush was missing an opportunity to demonstrate American benevolence...

"My initial reaction is that it does not seem to be very aggressive," said Morton Abramowitz, a former ambassador to Thailand who has been active in humanitarian relief efforts, of the administration's response to the tsunami.

What a lame story. The only on-the-record anti-Bush quotes come from Gelb, Abramowitz, who uses very careful words; and Wes Clark, who is not even quoted directly in his criticism of Bush. Instead, we are told Clark "urged Bush to take a higher profile."

There is also a "senior career official" quoted anonymously. Anybody want to guess this senior career official was hoping to be working under a President Kerry come January?

To judge from the early paragraphs of this front page story create the impression Bush is being slammed by unnamed, but presumably numerous, "skeptics" and "foreign policy specialists." Instead we get Gelb, the careful words of Abramowitz, Clark and Anonymous Boy.

Why does one suspect that this story was spurred by a reporter or editor who believed Bush was wrong for not rushing out and "feeling the victims' pain" the way Bill Clinton did (who is favorably compared in the story) and who simply kept calling as many former ambassadors and international affairs gurus until he or she had collected enough quotes for a Bush-bashing story?

Notice all the dogs who didn't bark - no Harry Reid, no Pelosi, Biden, Kerry, Albright, Kennedy. No one who actually has to face the voters is taking this moment to criticize the president. And the argument is pretty lame - "Never mind all these concrete actions to help the victims, the president hasn't cried in front of the cameras to show he cares."

[Posted 12/29 09:16 AM]

Boy, this is a weird way to start your morning. A nice note from Markos, creator of Daily Kos, regarding yesterday's post. Short version: Markos is on vacation, has spotty web access, and the two guys he has blogging in his absence discussed the tsunami and linked to aid organizations.

[Posted 12/29 08:45 AM]

Rev. Nelson Quiñones, an assistant pastor at St. John's Lutheran Church in Allentown, Pa., writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer that "For valid reasons, President Bush has secured the loyalty of the growing Latino constituency. Certainly, the Bush legacy is intertwined with the Latino community."

According to a White House curriculum vitae, [Alberto] Gonzales' qualifications including having been a Texas Supreme Court judge, secretary of state for Texas, Bush's chief adviser and liaison on Mexico and border issues, an adjunct law professor, and a graduate of Rice University and Harvard Law School. He attended the Air Force Academy and served in the Air Force.

Such a man is an ideal role model, not only for Latinos but also for all Americans. Gonzales' visibility touches many U.S. Hispanics who can identify with his luchas, struggles from poverty to "a shared hope for an opportunity to succeed. 'Just give me a chance to prove myself' - that is a common prayer for those in my community."

Gonzales is not a perfect fit. The Senate will question memos he has written regarding the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan, the Abu Ghraib prisoners, and the trials at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Still, it's hard to question Gonzales' proven loyalty and service to this country. And in the eyes of the American people, a Latino as the country's chief law enforcement officer would establish a comfort zone of acceptance.

Bush was supported by an estimated 40 percent of Latino voters, and he is repaying that support. But he may al