John Kerry's playbook for 04

Or at least it should be. Sandy Berger has laid out a manifesto for a Democratic administration, mostly around security and defense issues--as it probably should be. It's a bit long, but well worth the time spent.

We are waging a war on terrorism that is as vital to Europe's security as to our own, yet increasing numbers of Europeans associate it with self-interested American power and therefore press their leaders to reject it.

Such negative feelings result in part from a natural resentment of U.S. military, economic, and cultural might, about which we can do little and for which we need not apologize. But they have been accentuated by the manner in which the Bush administration has pursued its goals. The administration's high-handed style and its gratuitous unilateralism have embittered even those most likely to embrace American values and invited opposition even from those with most to gain from American successes. All around the world, fewer and fewer people accept that any connection exists between their aspirations and the principles Washington preaches.

As a result, although the United States has never enjoyed greater power than it does today, it has rarely possessed so little influence. We can compel, but far too often we cannot persuade. Our most important global initiatives, from advancing reform in the Middle East to defeating terrorism, will likely fail, unless there is a change in approach -- or a change in leadership.

Centerpiece recommendations?

Get back to fixing Israel/Palestine. We are the only nation in the world with the power to reconcile that dispute, if any nation has that power.

On the flipside of peacekeeping, make North Korea the focus of stern confrontation and allied support, as the highest active threat priority. In general, refocus primary security attention on both military and diplomatic issues in the Far East, including India and the Pakistan/Afghan/Uzbek/Chechnyan areas.

Multilateralize Iraq, stick with it and do not leave the Iraqis by themselves right now.

In exchange for allowing consensus as a starting point in any action, international community partners (read: Europe and our friendliest Arabs) must take responsibility for increased attention on nation building in Afghanistan.

Reduce WMD supply in the world where it is loose. North Korea is the most obvious focus there, but Russia is a key source of poorly tended nuclear materials.

Restructure the military to adapt to multiple, smaller scale, destroy-and-remodel forces that are built and equipped for the long haul in both battle phase and postwar phase.

a laundry list of domestic concerns only briefly touched upon: global warming, epidemic medicine, clean water, free trade with worker's rights, etc.

Kerry will have to lay these themes out gradually, but they must very quickly now be wrapped into a unifying mantra that he can use like putty to fill the gaps in the voting public's brains about him. Right now as much as a third of the country still hasn't pegged John Kerry yet. The sooner he presents "who he is," the sooner all attempts to paint otherwise will be defensive rather than assertive moves. Bush's image is about locked in; the faster Kerry locks in his, the faster he can get to the wonkish details. Get out the broad brush now though, Senator--use the above to prove YOUR foreign policy strategy will keep us safer and return us to the days where we partnered with the world to repel evil. If you can't prove that to people, you might as well give up unless the economy dies like a dog. If gas prices kill the recovery by raising prices, it might, but I wouldn't bet on it. Kerry has to assert himself on defense and security NOW. What is the plan?

All the President's suckers

Bill Saletan describes the phenomenon of trusting the President and getting screwed, speaking up about it and getting disparaged as flip-flopping. I've been wondering for months why people like John Kerry (as opposed to John Edwards, who seems to generally support the effort as much now as then) don't simply admit that they were had by President Bush and his administration on Iraq. OK, it makes you look a little weak-minded and foolish. But it's a giant blame-the-victim scheme, like criticizing an elderly person for letting themselves be scammed by a dishonest telemarketer. Republicans and independents like Paul O'Neill, John Diulio, Richard Clarke and Foster from the Medicare scam, seem to have much less trouble swallowing their pride and declaring, "We wuz conned." Democrats (read: John Kerry) seem terrified to admit that Bush outsmarted and outflanked them in order to get what they want, and is counting on their embarassment to get away with it. Bill Clinton did the same sort of thing, but Clinton's rep was always one of cunning and smooth operating. George Bush's rep is as a bumbler and straight-talking guy, and no one wants to call him on it, lest the general public expose them as--per Saletan--suckers.

Newspaper shutdown still reverberating

AP runs this followup on the closure of Muqtada al-Sadr's mouthpiece newspaper. The bombings in Fallujah knocked the story off the pages for a couple of days, but here it is a week later and the issue has not died down, and in fact has strengthened:

Al-Hawza was closed March 28 for allegedly inciting violence against coalition troops. Al-Sadr's supporters then held huge demonstrations outside the Baghdad headquarters of the U.S.-led coalition Wednesday and Friday.

Movement leaders say if the decision is not rescinded soon, they will disrupt life in Baghdad with an indefinite citywide strike. On Saturday, thousands of black-clad militiamen loyal to al-Sadr marched in military step in Baghdad.

"It's not just a question of closing down Al-Hawza," said Abbas al-Robai, the paper's editor and a close aide to al-Sadr. "If we don't resist by all means now, they'll close our offices and ban our Friday prayers."

Man, the last thing the Bremer group needs is a strike. That's daily protests and pickets from a motivated group who has nowhere to go but the town squares each morning. And if it were a bunch of floral delivery guys, that's one thing. But while al-Sadr's movement is much smaller and much less influential than the band of clerics under al-Sistani, they are also more strident and less inclined to diplomacy, it appears. I caught the story before heading over to Juan Cole's place, and as is to be expected, he's right on top of it:

The night before, heavy fighting had broken out in Kufa, a town of about 120,000 near Najaf south of Baghdad, acorrding to The Washington Post. It involved rocket propelled grenade fire. It is murky who was fighting whom. Kufa is the headquarters of Muqtada al-Sadr...

Cole also links to a Miami Herald story regarding the size of the protests around Bremer's HQ, and compares it to earlier efforts by al-Sadr to rally his people, which had much tinier previous effect. Finally, he gets late update on the destruction of Kawli village by Sadrists known as the Army of the Mahdi. To return to my metaphor from previous Iraq reports, it seems that Sadr's Malcolm X is gaining parity if not yet ascendancy, with Sistani's MLK. That's not good for anybody.

Can you handle more Richard Clarke?

I know we've likely wrung about as much as possible out of what Richard Clarke has to say, but from his appearance on Hardball are two items I have not heard Clarke say anything about before, and that I've not seen reported elsewhere. The entire transcript is here. The first passage involves Clarke's speculations about why Condi Rice would claim nobody figured terrorists would fly planes into buildings. And that dirty dog, he goes right for the jugular and defends her:

MR. MATTHEWS: We’re back with Richard Clarke. Let’s take a look at what Condi Rice said about the possibility of what happened 9/11 beforehand.

[Videotape played.]

MR. MATTHEWS: What did you think when you heard her say that?

MR. CLARKE: Well, based on the information the CIA had provided the president in those morning briefings, I think that’s a logical conclusion. The CIA—

MR. MATTHEWS: But you didn’t conclude that. You had prepared as far back as the Atlanta Olympics for the use of airplanes as missiles.

MR. CLARKE: But what she’s saying is all of the information—

MR. MATTHEWS: She said “nobody.”

MR. CLARKE: Yeah, but she’s also saying all of the information she had seen was about traditional hijackings, and there was a report—I don’t think this has come out before—there was a report that the Blind Sheikh, Abdul Rahman, who was in prison here in the United States—

MR. MATTHEWS: Because of ‘93.

MR. CLARKE: Because of plots to blow up things in New York City.

MR. MATTHEWS: Right.

MR. CLARKE: --that his son had gone out and joined bin Laden and that his son was talking about the possibility of hijacking U.S. planes and trading the passengers to get his father’s freedom.

MR. MATTHEWS: That’s right. Different cause, different mission.

MR. CLARKE: And when Dr. Rice says, you know, we had heard about traditional hijackings, maybe that’s what al Qaeda was going to do, she may be referring to those kinds of reports that she had seen.

MR. MATTHEWS: But now she’s correcting her testimony, apparently. You’ve heard that.

MR. CLARKE: No.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, she is.

Clarke gives her a bailout of sorts--he suggests that when she thought of radical Muslims hijacking planes, she simply thought of the warning about Abdul Rahman's son, and then dismissed it because this clearly wasn't that. Even as a bailout, it's not a very good one. I find it very interesting that he does not know about her admission that she had previously misspoken about planes as missiles. Clarke has some very nice things to say about Rice in this interview, including that he thinks she'll be honest in testifying, and that she hasn't lied so far; she merely has a different opinion as to whether 1 meeting on terrorism in 8 months constituted a focus on terrorism.

The second snippet comes from my alert stringer in SoCal, who caught this briefest item:

MR. CLARKE: I—I had some things I could decide at my level. I had a lot of things that I referred to the vice president, and he referred to the president. And they very quickly turned—

MR. MATTHEWS: The president was out of town, wasn’t he?

MR. CLARKE: Yeah. The vice president had him on the phone, and the phone dropped off from time-to-time. But when we needed decisions to shoot down airplanes and to do similar things like that, the president made those decisions. [emphasis mine]

There were decisions made to shoot down airplanes? Come again? What, if any, resolution has been applied to the Pennsylvania crash? Was it shot down? "The president made those decisions," when we needed to shoot down airplanes. Is it a slip, a leak?

Overall, Clarke was far more deferential to the group of advisors (although he did refer to the lot of them as "The Vulcans"), and more pointed in his accusations against Bush. It's clear Clarke blames Bush for being uncurious before 9/11, and misguided afterwards. The ultimate responsibility is with the President, and Clarke does not view his decisions kindly:

It was clearly his decision, and he believed in it, and I think he probably still believes in it, and that’s the sad part.

Sweating the petty stuff

Over at Overspun (via Atrios), they've blown a bandwidth gasket, so unfortunately as of tonight's presstime the video link that is the background of this story is unavailable. Long story short: On March 20th, the President held a rally in Florida. It was attended by the usual supporters and local friendly politicians. Among those privileged to stand behind the President on the stage was a young teen, who apparently didn't think much of the privilege. He yawned, he checked his watch, he stretched, he cracked his neck, he bent over and touched his toes, and he even appeared to nod off briefly, standing up.

Letterman's merry minions picked up the video from somewhere, and ran it Monday as a gag entitled "George Bush, Invigorating Today's Youth." It's pretty funny; the kid is rather wildly demonstrative in his boredom. So by Tuesday, it has been picked up by CNN. On Tuesday night, Letterman showed CNN's brief comment after the clip, in which anchor Daryn Kagan claimed the White House had told the network that it was a doctored film. Letterman mentioned that this, in fact, was a lie. During the course of the day, the anchor shift changed, and a new woman--I believe Kyra Phillips--said after her airing of the clip, that "we were told" that the kid _was_ there, but not where the camera had him--again, that it was doctored tape. This, too, Letterman called an outright lie.

Then--and this seems to me the strangest part--according to the Late Night website, Dave later says that it turns out the White House had nothing to do with it. And just tonight, Atrios reports that Letterman's source confirms that the White House tried to influence the reportage of the clip.

Now, some would say this silly little video and the comedic incident built around it is just the kind of meaningless issue that liberals drool over while substance passes them by. I'm not drooling, I'm vomiting. This administration lies as part of daily business, over things that it simply makes NO sense to lie about. At least lying about your motivations for attacking a country has some rational basis--ie, if we told them the truth, they wouldn't go for it. At least they were smart enough to figure that out. But crazy stuff like claiming that Germany had all kinds of anti-US insurgency post WWII, and whether President Bush was in the situation room on 9/12 (As Jon Stewart says, if not then, when?)--WhyTF?

Why is the White House lying about this stupid, nothing, objectively funny but hardly damaging story? This is truly the thinnest-skinned administration since Nixon. Step out of line, say something off key, or make the President look bad, and you are dead to them. Like the horrible horrible crime of Kerry using Scripture to campaign on, this is just the kind of thing that seems to drive them crazy--stuff a normal PR team could make hay with..."Oh, that's just the part of the speech where I introduce the No Homework Left Behind Initiative, and the Clean Rooms Act, my new environmental measure." That's gold, Jerry, GOLD! No charge, I'll throw in "I'm sure Senator Kerry is doing extra prayer these days, hoping no one will see his voting record" absolutely free!

Hodgepodge

A bit of a lull in things, it feels like. There's a little break between Clarke's testimony and now Rice's, next week. The stock market is waiting breathlessly on Friday's jobs report for March. The main line of campaign attacks this week seems to revolve around the price of gas, which is neither an issue with a specific day's events you can really point to, nor is it one that any President can realistically do much about. Iraq appears to be in a holding pattern of random bombings, a vague worry that "Kee-rist, we've only got three months before we have to bug out and nobody knows who's going to run the country," and Sistani's attempts to put Paul Bremer on edge without causing any real trouble. Closer to home, Portland continues to give out same sex licenses, while Benton county continues not to give out any at all, as all parties await an April hearing. Plus I just have a nondescript sense of ennui and anomie lately--call it news-junkie withdrawl, or something.

So here's a relatively random smattering of the news. Obviously the biggest story is the White House capitulation on Rice's testimony. NYT gets in a dig or two noting how strongly the Bush team stands on principle...until it becomes inconvenient to do so. Sort of takes the starch out of the concept of "principle," doesn't it? The administration's "OK, but just this ONCE" rationale shows more straining than Gerber does in a day making babyfood. You might call it "commission appeasement," and while the 9/11 people may go away, everybody knows now that if you hammer hard enough and make them look bad enough, Bush and company will give. Over at WaPo, the commissioners seem eager to get Rice on the record. Money quote from Chairman Kean: "We want to understand what substantive differences there are, perhaps in testimony, between Dr. Rice and any other witnesses." Or maybe just ONE witness. Here's a primer on where the commission could start.

Also at The Paper of Record, a new Iraqi weapons report is out and the focus appears to have shifted from finding weapons to finding intent of weapons. Program-related activities, as they say. Despite this, the new head replacing Kay warns us all not to jump to conclusions about whether there are actually any weapons. Don't let two years' worth of fruitless inspections get you down--that's the spirit! In other news, two more US soldiers were killed in separate bombing incidents, but apparently that's not so newsworthy anymore. For the second time, democracy and freedom of the press took a hit in Iraq, as Bremer shut down the newspaper mouthpiece of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who it may be said plays Malcolm X to al-Sistani's King (if King had been the type to issue fatwahs, anyway). A coalition spokesman helpfully acknowledged that this kind of thing isn't done in the US, but Iraq is "sensitive" at the moment. I guess so--about 3,000 angry Shiites hit the streets, blocked a thoroughfare, and burned flags while the US military stood by and the Iraqi police were nowhere to be found. Although the standard for taking such an obviously bad PR step is supposedly incitement to violence, apparently the worst the paper had done was compare Bremer to Saddam.

Back at home, the White House threatened to veto the highway bill, a curious (but not unexpected) move to blunt House attempts to way overspend Bush's guidelines, but in a bill which typically has universal Congressional appeal, and provides plenty of home-state funding to take back to the district. In other fiscal oddities, a Democratic bill to force payment of additional tax cuts through budget savings failed, on a 209-209 vote that featured the same kind of roll-call extension as on the Medicare bill, allowing GOP whippers to snap the towel on recalcitrant Republican ass until sufficient numbers of snapped asses fell into line. In the Senate, a bill to triple White House proposals on low-income child care passed overwhelmingly, setting up another battle there. However, it may not even make it out of the Senate if Democrats get their way on minimum wage hikes. Speaking of Democrats getting their way, Minority Leader Daschle pledged to block all further judicial nominees unless some lower-functioning Democratic nominees get their pass and head to work. On this I must part company with the left; blanket refusal looks childish. At least by refusing votes on specific nominees, it can be said that the process is related to substance. But tit-for-tat obstruction just looks petulantly obstructionist. Speaking of, I must say I was impressed by Mike Wallace's 60 Minutes piece on Charles Pickering. The combination of healthy African-American support for Pickering in Mississippi, and the weakness of the "soft on cross burning" charge, have persuaded me that Daschle ought to have let this one go, and confirm him once the recess appointment is over. Any old white guy in Mississippi who has the means to send his kids to private academies, and yet specifically takes a stand by leaving them in the busing-integrated local public school, is going to be hard to pin as racist in my view.

In the enormous chutzpah category, both Bush and Treasury Secretary Snow were in the midwest, Bush in Wisconsin and Snow in Ohio. Bush told economy-whipped Wisconsinites that they've turned the corner, while Snow revived the argument that outsourcing is ultimately good for America--at least long term, while being not-so-great for Cheesehead Bob or Dawg Pound Joe in the near future. Kerry goes in for surgery on his scapula tomorrow--which by Kausfile's estimation means he's due for another bounce in the polls in his absence (check last Wednesday's items). Kerry was also in the news for his apparently scurrilous use of Scripture while speaking at a church. There's just not enough God in politics!--unless you're Democrat, in which case the GOP would prefer you let Lieberman carry the whole load so they can skewer everyone else for lack of faith. And as long as we're talking about God, here's Dalia Lithwick's analysis of the Pledge of Allegiance case before SCOTUS. God, I love that woman.

Finally, I would be entirely remiss if I did not mention the profile done in the Oregonian yesterday on The One True B!x, who runs Communique--Portland's answer to the AP wire done up in a blog. For everyone who is stopping by via B!x's site, welcome and thank you. To be on his short list of Oregon bloggers so soon after starting up Torrid's World, is a humbling privilege indeed. Please direct your discretionary income to him if you like what you see there, and think Portland needs a comprehensive look at the City.

Out!

Battle of the Sunday Network Show Stars

It was another Sunday of key interview shows, after a week full of interviews and testimony. It seems like everybody who wasn't already a journalist was looking for some studio time and polishing up their talking points.

Clearly Richard Clarke was the hottest ticket, but Condi Rice certainly covered plenty of ground as well. And today, Clarke took the seat across from Russert on Meet the Press, and Rice was given equal time on 60 Minutes. The battle for White House credibility seems to have come down to these two mid-high government functionaries, somewhat strangely I say, although they are obviously crucial links in the counter-terrorism chain. You'd think a discussion over which an election may hang in the balance, wouldn't be carried out as a spat between national security officials. Anyhow, the meme as it developed over the weekend was a big question for each: did Clarke's 2002 Congressional testimony differ from Tuesday's, and would Rice testify publicly for the 9/11 Commission and the country? If you saw or read about either, you probably know how each answered those questions, but the way each does it is instructive:

MR. RUSSERT: Is there any inconsistency between your sworn testimony before the September 11 Commission last week and two years ago before the congressional committee?

MR. CLARKE: No, there isn't. And I would welcome it being declassified, but not just a little line here or there. Let's declassify all six hours of my testimony.

MR. RUSSERT: You would request this morning that it all be declassified?

MR. CLARKE: And I want more declassified. I want Dr. Rice's testimony before the 9-11 Commission declassified, and I want the thing that the 9-11 Commission talked about in its staff report this week declassified, because there's been an issue about whether or not a strategy or a plan or something useful was given to Dr. Rice in early January. And she says it wasn't. So we now have the staff report of the 9-11 Commission, and it says, "On January 25th, Clarke forwarded his December strategy paper to the new national security adviser, and it proposed covert action to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, significantly increasing CIA funding, retaliating for the USS Cole, arming the Predator aircraft, going after terrorist fund raising."

Now, Dr. Rice has characterized this as not a plan, not a strategy, not a series of decisions which could be made right away, but warmed-over Clinton material. Let's declassify that memo I sent on January 25th and let's declassify the national security directive that Dr. Rice's committee approved nine months later on September 4th, and let's see if there's any difference between those two, because there isn't. And what we'll see when we declassify what they were given on January 25th and what they finally agreed to on September 4th, is that they're basically the same thing and they wasted months when we could have had some action.

MR. RUSSERT: But to be clear, Mr. Clarke, you would urge Congress, the intelligence committees, to declassify your sworn testimony before the congressional inquiry two years ago as well as your testimony before the September 11th Commission?

MR. CLARKE: Yes, and those documents I just referred to and Dr. Rice's testimony before the 9-11 Commission because the victims' families have no idea what Dr. Rice has said. There weren't in those closed hearings where she testified before the 9-11 Commission. They want to know. So let's take her testimony before the 9-11 Commission and make it part of the package of what gets declassified along with the national security decision directive of September 4 and along with my memo of January 25.

In fact, Tim, let's go further. The White House is selectively now finding my e-mails, which I would have assumed were covered by some privacy regulations, and selectively leaking them to the press. Let's take all of my e-mails and all of the memos that I've sent to the national security adviser and her deputy from January 20 to September 11 and let's declassify all of it.

MR. RUSSERT: As well as her responses?

MR. CLARKE: As well as her responses.

That doesn't really sound like a guy who's afraid of what they might find if they lift up the blanket. Or he's putting a king-hell bluff on the administration, betting they won't do it because of what the full testimony will show.

How did Rice do?

ED BRADLEY:
The secretary of state, defense, the director of the CIA, have all testified in public under oath before the commission. If - if you can talk to us and other news programs, why can't you talk to the commission in public and under oath?

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
Nothing would be better, from my point of view, than to be able to testify. I would really like to do that. But there is an important principle here... it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress.

ED BRADLEY:
But there are some people who look at this and say, "But this - this was an unprecedented event. Nothing like this ever happened to this country before. And this is an occasion where you can put that executive privilege aside. It's a big enough issue to talk in public."

CONDOLEEZZA RICE:
It is an unprecedented event. We've said that many, many times. But this commission is rightly not concentrating on what happened on the day of September 11... So, this is not a matter of what happened on that day, as extraordinary as it is - as it was. This is a matter of policy. And we have yet to find an example of a national security advisor, sitting national security advisor, who has - been willing to testify on matters of policy.

"I'd love to tell the full truth and rebut Mr. Clarke's claims as totally wrong, but I just can't, Ed. Sorry, America!"

Even the Bush-helping Chair of the comission, John Lehman, is slapping his forehead in disgust:

[Rice] has nothing to hide, and yet this is creating the impression for honest Americans all over the country and people all over the world that the White House has something to hide, that Condi Rice has something to hide. And if they do, we sure haven't found it. There are no smoking guns. That's what makes this so absurd. It's a political blunder of the first order...

Bush has survived the first week of this story without the bottom dropping out; although he lost all the gains against Kerry presumably created from a stiff ad campaign, he is still running even with the Senator. On the other hand, given how poorly he is tracking on economic issues, Bush can ill afford the slide in favorability on "terra issues" that seems to have occurred since the Clarke story broke. And if the media and public catch the diversion in approach between the principals--Clarke saying "show everything" and Rice saying "tell nothing"--those numbers are going to get worse.