Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday March 18, 2008 19:51 EDT
Obama's faith in the reasoning abilities of the American public
(updated below)
I haven't written about the Obama speech yet (video here) because I spent much of the day reading the instantaneous reactions of virtually everyone else, and because the issues raised by the speech are complex and my views about it are somewhat ambiguous. Personally, I found the speech riveting, provocative, insightful, thoughtful and courageous -- courageous because it eschewed almost completely all cliches, pandering and condescension, the first time I can recall a political figure of any significance doing so when addressing a controversial matter.
There were numerous manipulative tactics which the average cynical political strategist would have urged him to employ, and none of those were found in his speech. It was as candid and sophisticated a discussion of the complexities of race in America as any individual could possibly manage in a 45-minute speech, particularly one delivered in the middle of a heated presidential campaign and a shrill political controversy. Then again, I found the whole Wright "controversy" manufactured and relatively petty from the start, and worse, the by-product of a glaring double standard, so the speech obviously wasn't aimed at people who had the beliefs about this whole matter that I had.
The speech will be adored by Obama fans, the political and media elite, and high-information, politically engaged voters other than those firmly entrenched on the Right. But politically speaking, that isn't the target audience either. Barbara O'Brien describes perfectly the real question with regard to the speech's political impact:
I think the question about the speech, articulated by Rachel Maddow on David Gregory’s new MSNBC program, is whether white America will step up and receive the speech in the same spirit in which it was given. Obama's speech was challenging. He assumed that his audience could hear his words and and think about them. He assumed people could get beyond simple narratives, sound bytes, and jerking knees.
Steve M. reluctantly makes the case as to why the speech won't work despite (or, more accurately, because of) its high-minded, steadfast refusal to pander:
The premises [the speech] lays out require you to be an adult, and I'm not convinced that most Americans are adults, at least when looking for a candidate to support. . . .
This isn't what Americans like to hear in political speeches. They like to hear: Good people = us (America, our party). Bad people = them (communists, terrorists, criminals, drug dealers, our ideological opposites, the other party, or some group we identify in code rather than explicitly).
That wasn't the tone of this speech. I hope I'm wrong, but Obama may pay a price for not giving people what they like to hear.
The entire premise of Barack Obama's candidacy is built upon the opposite assumption -- that Americans are not only able, but eager, to participate in a more elevated and reasoned political discourse, one that moves beyond the boisterous, screeching, simple-minded, ugly, vapid attack-based distractions and patronizing manipulation -- the Drudgian Freak Show -- that has dominated our political debates for the last two decades at least.
Nobody actually knows which of these views are right because there hasn't been a serious national campaign in a very long time that has attempted to elevate itself above the Drudgian muck by relying (not entirely, but mostly) upon reasoned discourse and substantive discussions -- at least not with the potency that Obama generates. Will George Bush's ranch hats and Willie Horton's scary face and Al Gore's earth tones and John Kerry's windsurfing tights inevitably overwhelm sober, substantive discussions of the fundamental political crises plaguing the country? Obama's insistence that Americans are hungry for that sort of elevated debate and are able to engage it -- and his willingness to stake his campaign on his being right about that -- has been, in my view, one of the most admirable aspects of his candidacy.
But in Obama's faith in the average American voter lies one of the greatest weaknesses of his campaign. His faith in the ability and willingness of Americans to rise above manipulative political tactics seems drastically to understate both the efficacy of such tactics and the deafening amplification they receive from our establishment press. Even Americans who authentically believe that they want a "new, better politics" may be swayed by the same old Drudgian sewerage because it is powerful and ubiquitous.
Petty, personality-based demonization works, and the belief that it won't work any longer in the absence of a major war against it may be more a by-product of faith and desire than reality. Obama's calm reason and rational (though inspiring) discourse are matched against very visceral images and psychologically gripping strategies. As Pam Spaulding said in commenting on the Jeremiah Wright videos:
That said, people have to acknowledge part of the reason for the discomfort lies in Wright's delivery of the message. It's so black, isn't it? It sounds militant to tender ears outside the traditional black church. . . .
I want to turn the discussion back to race, because I think this episode with Rev. Wright exposed the whole "scary black revolution" primal fear here. . . .
When I heard Wright, I heard a delivery not unlike the unhinged gay-bashing Rev. Willie Wilson . . . . The delivery sounds so angry, so harsh to many. You get the feeling, based on the reaction out there, that people are afraid Barack Obama by association, is some sort of Trojan Horse of Black Anger waiting to be unleashed, prepared to exact revenge on white society by pulling their wool over their eyes by appearing friendly, "articulate" and non-threatening. In other words -- not that [Wright] kind of black guy.
In 1988, those deep-seated, lurking fears were stirred up perfectly by Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes in order to defeat the Willie-Horton-loving Michael Dukakis. The entire Obama campaign is predicated on the belief that it is no longer 1988. As David Axelrod put it when asked if there was debate within the Obama campaign about whether he should give this speech:
It wasn't even a discussion. He was going to do it. I know this sounds perhaps corny, but he actually believes in the fairness and good sense of the American people, and the importance of this issue. His candidacy is predicated on the fact that we can talk to each other in an honest and forthright way on this and other issues.
The New Republic's Michael Crowley, with one of the better discussions of the Obama speech, similarly reported:
The information era being what it is, I was already debating my thesis via email with an Obama aide as I wrote this reaction. He warned me against assuming that Reagan Democrats are defined by the same racial prejudices that defined them in the 1980s, back when crime and welfare were primary political issues, when one Willie Horton could turn an election. He may be right. I hope he is. Unfortunately, I fear that America hasn't come nearly as far as he hopes. But it is the answer to that question that will determine the fate of Barack Obama.
I think that's a perfect summation of the overarching question, one that nobody is really able to answer. The truly distinctive and "change"-oriented aspect of Obama's campaign lies not in any new or exotic policy positions -- his views on the Middle East, for instance, are often as conventional as it gets. What is distinctive is the far more consequential assumption that Americans want and are able to engage an elevated and more noble type of politics than the depressingly familiar garbage spewed from the Rush Limbaugh Show, The Drudge Report, Fox News, the cable news media stars, and all of their cooperating media and political appendages. We'll know soon enough if Obama is right.
UPDATE: In comments, DCLaw1 makes as compelling a case as can be made as to why Obama's speech will succeed politically, with an emphasis on the importance of how well-received it was by the media and political elite. It's well worth reading.
-- Glenn Greenwald
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Monday March 17, 2008 15:45 EDT
The difference between Jeremiah Wright and radical, white evangelical ministers
(updated below - Update II)
Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein are arguing about whether Jeremiah Wright's statements are comparable to those of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and John Hagee's. To argue that they're not comparable, Douthat -- like most people commenting on this raging controversy -- conflates two entirely separate analytical issues:
(1) Given their close and long-standing personal relationship, does Wright merit more scrutiny vis-a-vis Obama than white, radical evangelical ministers merit vis-a-vis Republican politicians? and,
(2) Are the statements of white evangelical ministers subjected to the same standards of judgment as those being applied to Wright's statements?
Even if the answer to (1) is "yes," that doesn't change the fact that the answer to (2) is a resounding "no."
The statement of Wright's which seems to be causing the most upset -- and it's one of two singled out by Douthat -- is his suggestion that there is a causal link between (a) America's constant bombings of and other interference with Middle Eastern countries and (b) the willingness of some Middle Eastern fanatics to attack the U.S. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, we've been told that positing any such causal connection is a sign of vicious anti-Americanism and that all decent people find such questions despicable. This week we learned that no respectable person would subject his children to a pastor who espouses such hateful ideas.
But the idea that America deserves terrorist attacks and other horrendous disasters has long been a frequently expressed view among the faction of white evangelical ministers to whom the Republican Party is most inextricably linked. Neither Jerry Falwell nor Pat Robertson ever retracted or denounced their view that America provoked the 9/11 attacks by doing things to anger God. John Hagee continues to believe that the City of New Orleans got what it deserved when Katrina drowned its residents and devastated the lives of thousands of Americans. And James Inhofe -- who happens to still be a Republican U.S. Senator -- blamed America for the 9/11 attacks by arguing in a 2002 Senate floor speech that "the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America" because we pressured Israel to give away parts of the West Bank.
The phrases "anti-American" and "America-haters" are among the most barren and manipulative in our entire political lexicon, but whatever they happen to mean on any given day, they easily encompass people who believe that the U.S. deserved the 9/11 attacks, devastating hurricanes and the like. Yet when are people like Falwell, Robertson, Hagee, Inhofe and other white Christian radicals ever described as anti-American or America-hating extremists? Never -- because white Christian evangelicals who tie themselves to the political Right are intrinsically patriotic. Does Douthat believe that those individuals are anti-American radicals and that people who allow their children to belong to their churches are exercising grave errors of judgment?
Those advancing the argument of Douthat's are also wildly understating the magnitude of the association between "anti-American" white evangelicals and Republican leaders. By all accounts, George Bush had private conversations with Pat Robertson about matters as weighty as whether to invade Iraq. Isn't that a big scandal -- that the President is consulting with an American-hating minister -- someone who believes God allowed the 9/11 attacks as punishment for our evil country -- about vital foreign policy decisions? No, it wasn't controversial at all.
John Hagee privately visits with the highest level Middle East officials in the White House and afterwards pronounces that they're in agreement. John McCain shares a stage with Hagee and lavishes him with praise, as Rudy Giuliani did with Pat Robertson. James Inhofe remains a member in good standing in the GOP Senate Caucus. The Republican Party has tied itself at the hip to a whole slew of "anti-American extremists" -- people who believe that the U.S. provoked the 9/11 attacks because God wants to punish us for the evil, wicked nation we've become -- and yet there is virtual silence about these associations.
Nor have the views of televangelist Rod Parsley, one of McCain's self-proclaimed "spiritual advisers," received a fraction of the attention generated by Wright. As both David Corn and Alan Colmes, among others, have documented, Parsley espouses views at least as extreme and radical as Wright, including his proclamation that "America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion [Islam] destroyed." Unlike Wright and Obama -- for whom the former's controversial views are found nowhere near the latter's public or private conduct -- both George Bush and John McCain's Middle Eastern militarism are perfectly consonant with the most maniacal and crazed views of Christian Rapture enthusiasts such as Hagee, Parsley, Inhofe, and Robertson. Yet the controversy created over their close ties is virtually non-existent.
The Republican Party long ago adopted as a central strategy aligning itself with, and granting great influence to, the most radical, "America-hating" white evangelical Christian ministers in the country. They're given a complete pass on that because political orthodoxy mandates that white evangelical Christian ministers are inherently worthy of respect, no matter how extreme and noxious are their views. That orthodoxy stands in stark contrast to the universally enraged reaction to a few selected snippets from the angry rantings of a black Christian Minister. What accounts for that glaring disparity?
UPDATE: Steve M. notes that the Bush White House, in addition to consulting with Robertson, also consulted with the anti-American Jerry Falwell, including on the question of whom the administration should nominate to the Supreme Court. It even appointed a White House liaison for Falwell. When Falwell died, President Bush "said he was deeply saddened by Falwell's death, calling him 'a man who cherished faith, family and freedom.'"
Shouldn't we be very concerned about American children hearing our President praise an American-hating radical who believes that our country is a sick and wicked land that God wanted to be victimized by the 9/11 attacks? Again, the issue here is number (2) above, not number (1).
UPDATE II: Frank Schaeffer, son of highly influential Religious Right figure Francis Schaeffer, writes (h/t FPL-Dan):
When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.
He goes on to chronicle his father's long history of extreme "America-hating" statements, ones which never caused Republicans to repudiate him, and says: "Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits."
Yet Schaeffer, like hordes of similar, America-hating white Christian ministers, are celebrated as cherished figures among the very same right-wing faction feigning such outrage and offense over Wright's far more mild statements. White, right-wing Christian evangelical rage against America is understandable, respectable, and noble. Liberal black Christian anger towards America is scary, subversive, and despicable.
-- Glenn Greenwald
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Monday March 17, 2008 08:27 EDT
Time magazine invents facts to claim that Americans support Bush's domestic spying abuses
(updated below)
No matter how corrupt and sloppy the establishment press becomes, they always find a way to go lower. Time Magazine has just published what it purports to be a news article by Massimo Calabresi claiming that "nobody cares" about the countless abuses of spying powers by the Bush administration; that "Americans are ready to trade diminished privacy, and protection from search and seizure, in exchange for the promise of increased protection of their physical security"; and that the case against unchecked government surveillance powers "hasn't convinced the people." Not a single fact -- not one -- is cited to support these sweeping, false opinions.
Worse still -- way worse -- this "news article" decrees the Bush administration to be completely innocent, even well-motivated, even in those instances where technical, irrelevant lawbreaking has been found, as it proclaims:
In all the examples of diminished civil liberties, there are few, if any, where the motivating factor was something other than law and order or national security.
Does Calabresi or his Time editors have the slightest idea how secret, illegal spying powers have been used, towards what ends they've been employed and with what motives? No, they have absolutely no idea. Not even members of Congressional Intelligence Committees know because the Bush administration has kept all of that concealed. So Time just makes up facts to defend the Bush administration with wholly baseless statements that one would expect to come pouring out of the mouths only of Dana Perino and Bill Kristol -- the "motivating factor" for secret, illegal spying was nothing "other than law and order or national security."
This article literally has more factual errors -- pure, retraction-level falsehoods -- than it has paragraphs. It makes Joe Klein look like a knowledgable and conscientious surveillance expert. It's one of the most falsehood-plagued articles I've seen in quite some time. Let's just count the ways this article includes demonstrably false assertions, purely based on facts:
(1) Time claims that "nobody cares" about the Government's increased spying powers and that "polling consistently supports that conclusion." They don't cite a single poll because that assertion is blatantly false.
Just this weekend, a new poll released by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University proves that exactly the opposite is true. That poll shows that the percentage of Americans who believe the Federal Government is "very secretive" has doubled in the last two years alone (to 44%) and that "nearly nine in 10 say it's important to know presidential and congressional candidates' positions on open government when deciding who to vote for."
The same poll also found that 77% of Americans believe that "the federal government opened mail and monitored phone calls of people in the U.S. without first getting permission from a federal judge," and 64% believe "that the federal government has opened mail or monitored telephone conversations involving members of the news media." Only a small minority (20%) believe that the Federal Government is "Very Open" or "Somewhat Open." Exactly as was true for The Politico's very untimely article last week falsely claiming that Americans are increasingly supporting the Iraq War again -- on the very day that a new USA Today poll showed that Americans overwhelmingly favor unconditional timetables for withdrawal -- Time today asserts a falsehood that is squarely negated by a poll released the day before.
The proposition that "polls consistently" find that Americans don't mind incursions into their civil liberties is a rank falsehood. From a December, 2005 CNN poll, days after the NSA scandal was first disclosed:
Nearly two-thirds said they are not willing to sacrifice civil liberties to prevent terrorism, as compared to 49 percent saying so in 2002.
More importantly, ever since it was revealed that the Bush administration has been spying on Americans without the warrants required by law, polls have consistently shown that huge numbers of Americans -- usually majorities -- oppose warrantless spying, exactly the opposite of what Time just claimed.
Much of the polling on warrantless eavesdropping occurred throughout 2006 when the NSA scandal was being debated. Here's what a Quinnipiac poll concluded:
By a 76-19 percent margin, American voters say the government should continue monitoring phone calls or e-mail between suspected terrorists in other countries and people in the U.S., according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released today. But voters say 55-42 percent that the government should get court orders for this surveillance.
Voters in "purple states," 12 states in which there was a popular vote margin of 5 percentage points or less in the 2004 Presidential election, plus Missouri, considered the most accurate barometer of Presidential voting, want wiretap warrants 57 - 39 percent.
Red states, where President George W. Bush's margin was more than 5 percent in 2004, disagree 51 - 46 percent with the President that the government does not need warrants. Blue state voters who backed John Kerry by more than 5 percent want warrants 57 - 40 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
A total of 57 percent of voters are "extremely" or "quite" worried that phone and e-mail taps without warrants could be misused to violate people's privacy. But 54 percent believe these taps have prevented some acts of terror.
"Don't turn off the wiretaps, most Americans say, but the White House ought to tell a judge first. Even red state voters, who backed President Bush in 2004, want to see a court okay for wiretaps," said Maurice Carroll, Director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
From the beginning, pluralities in the vast majority of states -- 37 out of 50 -- believed the President "clearly" broke the law with his NSA spying. A CBS poll (.pdf) found that Americans believe (51-43%) that "the President does not have the legal authority to authorize wiretapes without a warrant to fight terrorism." And back when Russ Feingold introduced his resolution to censure the President for breaking the law in spying on Americans, a plurality of Americans supported censure of Bush despite the fact that Feingold was virtually alone among political figures in advocating it. And most Americans opposed immunity for telecoms accused of breaking the law in how they spied on Americans:
Opposition to immunity is widespread, cutting across ideology and geography. Majorities of liberals, moderates, and conservatives agree that courts should decide the outcomes of these legal actions (liberals: 64% let courts decide, 26% give immunity; moderates: 58% let courts decide, 34% give immunity; conservatives: 50% let courts decide, 38% give immunity).
As is so often true, the facts are exactly the opposite of what Time, in defending the Bush administration, tells its readers. Can one find polls in which pluralites of Americans support warrantless eavesdropping and other secret spying programs? If one looks hard enough for polls emphasizing "spying on terrorists," perhaps one can, but Time's assertion that "polling consistently supports the conclusion" that Americans want to give up civil liberties for security is patently false.
(2) This is Time's next claim:
Even when the White House, the FBI or the intelligence agencies have acted outside of laws protecting those rights -- such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act -- the public has by and large shrugged and, through their elected representatives, suggested changing the laws to accommodate activities that may be in breach of them.
Have Calabresi and his editors been on vacation for the last four months? During that time, there has been a protracted, bitter debate in Congress over the President's demands for permanent, warrantless eavesdropping powers and amnesty for telecoms which broke the law in spying on Americans. It provoked filibusters and all sorts of obstructionism in the Senate, and House Democrats -- including virtually every conservative "Blue Dog" -- just chose warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty as the issue on which to defy, for the first time ever, the President's national security orders.
Additionally, while it is true that the GOP-led Congress largely endorsed every one of the President's policies, including his lawbreaking, the American voting public threw the Republicans out of power in 2006. When Democrats, once in power, began copying their behavior in endorsing even the President's illegal behavior, their approval ratings plummeted. Just last week, they refused to give legal sanction to the President's illegal spying; demanded that the lawsuits arising from that spying proceed; and even passed a bill requiring a full-scale investigation into what the President did when spying on Americans for all those years. These events were bizarrely ignored by Time because they negate the narrative they want to push.
(3) Time's defense of the Bush administration -- that "law and order or national security" has motivated even the illegal spying -- is perhaps most indefensible of all. The administration has blocked every Congressional and judicial attempt to investigate how it has used these spying powers. Thus, nobody has any idea what has motivated the spying or what the level of abuse is.
As Julian Sanchez wrote in a superb Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times this weekend, the Federal Government abused its warrantless spying power for decades -- to spy on political opponents and other dissidents -- but nobody had any idea that was going on until the Church Committee conducted a full-fledged investigation. As Sanchez wrote:
If you think an executive branch unchecked by courts won't turn its "national security" surveillance powers to political ends -- well, it would be a first.
We have had no investigation into how the Bush administration has used these spying powers. There has been no Church Committee, no intensive media investigation, no judicial process. The only "investigations" into any of these surveillance activities has come from the executive branch itself. All we have are slothful, government-worshiping reporters like Calabresi and Time editors who sit back content in their own ignorance, having no idea how the Bush administration used its spying powers, citing their own total ignorance as proof that the Government did nothing wrong -- they did everything for our own Good, for our Protection.
Time's vouching for the Good Motives of the Bush administration is completely false for a separate reason. Even with as little as we know about what they've done, there most certainly are examples of politically-motivated spying, even though Calabresi and his editors are apparently unaware of them. From Democracy Now in 2006:
Earlier this week, the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network released documents showing that the Pentagon conducted surveillance on a more extensive level than first reported late last year. De-classified documents show that the agency spied on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell' protests and anti-war protests at several universities around the country. They also show that the government monitored student e-mails and planted undercover agents at least one protest.
But the Pentagon has not released all information on its surveillance activities. The American Civil Liberties Union recently filed a federal lawsuit to force the agency to turn over additional records. The lawsuit charges that the Pentagon is refusing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records on the ACLU, the American Friends Service Committee, Greenpeace, Veterans for Peace and United for Peace and Justice, as well as 26 local groups and activists.
Even NBC reported previously:
A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.
A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a "threat" and one of more than 1,500 "suspicious incidents" across the country over a recent 10-month period. . . .
The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.
Are Time reporters and editors just blissfully ignorant of these incidents or do they conceal them because they negate their clean, crisp storyline?
(4) The whole Time article is based upon one of the most pervasive journalistic fallacies: namely, that the choices the establishment press makes as to what they will cover and not cover is reflective of what "Americans" generally care about. Thus, Calabresi begins the article by listing a whole series of recent revelations about the Bush administration's ever-increasing Surveillance State powers and abuses and concludes: "to judge from the reaction in the country, nobody cares."
But the only ones who "don't care" are establishment media outlets like Time, not the "ordinary Americans" on whose behalf they always fantasize that they speak. It's the media that has ignored those stories.
Here is a Nexus count of how much media coverage certain stories have received over the last 30 days, including the Surveillance State stories which Calabresi cites as proof that Americans don't care about their constitutional liberties:
* "Spitzer and prostitutes" -- 2,323 results
* "Spitzer and Kristen" -- 1,087 results
* "Obama and Rezko" -- 1,263 results
* "Obama and Jeremiah Wright" -- 466 results
* "Wall Street Journal and data mining" -- 9 results
* "FBI and National security letters" -- 149 results
* "Intelligence Oversight Board" -- 21 results
This is what establishment journalists like Calabresi always do. Their industry obsesses on the most vapid, inconsequential chatter. They ignore the stories that actually matter. And then they claim that Americans only care about vapid gossip and not substantive issues -- and point to their own shallow coverage decisions as "proof" of what Americans care about. That thought process was vividly evident with their obsession with the Edwards hair "story," when they all chattered about it endlessly, promoted it in headlines, and then, when criticized for that, claimed that it was obviously something Americans were interested in, pointing to their own media fixation as proof that Americans cared.
The Time Magazines of the world ignore stories about Bush's abuses of spying powers. Therefore, Americans don't care about such abuses. That's the self-referential, self-loving rationale on which this entire article is based. And the whole article is filled with demonstrable falsehoods, all in service of arguing that the Bush administration has done nothing wrong, and even if they did, Americans don't mind at all.
UPDATE: Yet another serious factual error in Calabresi's article that I neglected to mention:
There are no scandalous examples of the White House using the Patriot Act powers for political purposes or of individual agents using them for personal gain.
Has Time ever heard of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, which just resulted in the filing of a Congressional lawsuit to compel recalcitrant Bush aides to comply with Subpoenas? From Harper's Scott Horton on Saturday:
This was largely part of an effort to disguise the obvious fact that the dismissals were the implementation of a political plan which had been formulated in the White House, largely under the guidance of Karl Rove. They were also designed to disguise the fact that an elaborate scheme had been concocted to circumvent the process through which candidates are reviewed and confirmed by the Senate using a secret amendment to the USA PATRIOT Act.
It's not surprising that this scandal would be whitewashed from the pages of Time, in light of what its Managing Editor, Rick Stengel, decreed last year while on The Chris Matthews Show:
Mr. STENGEL: I am so uninterested in the Democrats wanting Karl Rove, because it is so bad for them. Because it shows business as usual, tit for tat, vengeance. That's not what voters want to see.
Ms. BORGER: Mm-hmm.
MATTHEWS: So instead of like an issue like the war where you can say it's bigger than all of us, its more important than politics, this is politics.
Mr. STENGEL: Yes, and it's much less. It's small bore politics.
The principal theme of Time Magazine appears to be that corruption and even blatant lawbreaking by the Bush administration is a total non-story, something that nobody cares about and therefore shouldn't be investigated or reported (Joe Klein's first reaction in Time following disclosure of the NSA scandal was to defend the lawbreaking and sternly warn Nancy Pelosi and Democrats generally that they had better not object to the warrantless spying program or else they would be (justifiably) out of power forever).
Identically, Calabresi's declaration that the FBI's unquestionably illegal use of NSL powers under the Patriot Act was harmless and benign because the Bush DOJ said so is equally gullible and dishonest. As Patrick Meighan pointed out in comments:
In other words, we know that the Justice Department has not intentionally abused its unchecked investigative powers because the Justice Department looked at the Justice Department and decided that the Justice Department did not intentionally abuse its unchecked investigative powers.
In 2008, that's what's supposed to pass for checks and balances.
It is not surprising that this is the view of Bush followers, but it's also the predominant view of our ornery watchdog journalists as well. The Founders envisioned that the media would be the watchdog over government deceit and corruption, but nobody is more aggressive in dismissing concerns of government lawbreaking and deceit than the Time Magazines of our country. That's their primary function.
-- Glenn Greenwald
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Friday March 14, 2008 13:59 EDT
House Democrats reject telecom amnesty, warrantless surveillance
(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI)
The House just now approved a new FISA bill that denies retroactive immunity to lawbreaking telecoms and which refuses to grant most of the new powers for the President to spy on Americans without warrants. It passed comfortably, by a 213-197 margin.
Notably, many of the 21 "Blue Dogs" who previously signed a letter indicating their support for telecom immunity and the Rockefeller bill -- including several of the six whom the highly successful blog fund-raising campaign earlier this week targeted -- voted (and spoke) in support of the House bill (only 10 Democrats voted against the bill, including at least a couple of progressives who think the bill doesn't go far enough). Many of those Blue Dogs were persuaded to support the bill by the protections which the bill offers to telecoms (i.e., authorizing them to introduce even classified evidence in the lawsuits to prove they complied with the law, if they actually did).
As impressive as the House vote itself was, more impressive still was the floor debate which preceded it. I can't recall ever watching a debate on the floor of either House of Congress that I found even remotely impressive -- until today. One Democrat after the next -- of all stripes -- delivered impassioned, defiant speeches in defense of the rule of law, oversight on presidential eavesdropping, and safeguards on government spying. They swatted away the GOP's fear-mongering claims with the dismissive contempt such tactics deserve, rejecting the principle that has predominated political debate in this country since 9/11: that the threat of the Terrorists means we must live under the rule of an omnipotent President and a dismantled constitutional framework.
It is possible that the House will ultimately end up capitulating to the President, but I have real doubts about whether that will happen. They have defied the standard GOP Terrorism-exploitation attacks for weeks, allowed the Protect America Act to expire (once the President refused to extend it), and now passed a very good bill even in the midst of intense GOP/media attacks. They did so as a result of a shrewd strategy and a willingness to frame and engage the debate aggressively. My views on the bill, and the unexpectedly commendable behavior of House Democrats, are here, from earlier in the week.
It's hard not to believe that there's at least some significant sea change reflected by this. They have seen that they can defy the President even on matters of Terrorism, and the sky doesn't fall in on them. Quite the opposite: an outspoken opponent of telecom amnesty, warrantless eavesdropping and the Iraq War was just elected to the House from Denny Hastert's bright red district, and before that, Donna Edwards ousted long-time incumbent Al Wynn by accusing him of being excessively complicit with the Bush agenda.
Virtually every one I know who has expended lots of efforts and energy on these FISA and telecom issues has assumed from the start -- for reasons that are all too well-known -- that we would lose. And we still might. But it's hard to deny that the behavior we're seeing from House Democrats is substantially improved, quite commendably so, as compared to the last year and even before that. It's very rare when there are meaningful victories and I think it's important to acknowledge when they happen.
UPDATE: The roll call vote is here. Four of the six Democrats named as fundraising targets voted for the bill (Space, Boswell, Ellsworth and Barrow), while only two voted against (Shuler and Carney). The funds that were raised will be able to be used quite constructively. All Republicans marched in lockstep, as always, voting unanimously against the bill. Only 5 Blue Dogs voted against the Bill; the vast majority voted in favor (5 progressive Democrats voted against as a protest).
One of the 21 Blue Dogs previously expressing support for telecom amnesty -- and who was also one of the six targeted by our fundraising campaign -- was Leonard Boswell of Iowa. Here is what he said when explaining why he voted for the House bill:
Those who feel their civil rights have been violated can seek justice and telecoms who feel they have complied with the law can have a judge review the classified evidence and decide. This means to me that the Constitution and civil rights are protected and telecoms who are asked under pressure to assist in an emergency can know that classified evidence will be seen by a judge . . . . The bill provides telecom companies a way to present their defense in secure proceedings in a district court without the administration using state secrets to block the defense.
As McJoan notes, a primary challenge he is facing undoubtedly helped move him to the right position.
The statements of EFF and the ACLU, both of which support today's vote, are here and here, respectively. And here is what one of the House's most superb members, House Intelligence Committee Member Rush Holt, said today:
UPDATE II: It is, of course, true that this bill will have a hard time passing the Senate (though if even most House Blue Dogs were persuaded to support this bill, why can't most Democratic Senators who previously voted for the Rockefeller bill be persuaded?). It's also true that even if it did pass the Senate, the President will veto it, and there won't be enough votes to override the veto. So this bill won't become law, but that doesn't matter.
The reality is that the best possible outcome here is nothing -- we lived quite well for 30 years under FISA and if no new bill is passed, we will continue to live under FISA. FISA grants extremely broad eavesdropping powers to the President and the FISA court virtually never interferes with any eavesdropping activities. And the only "fix" to FISA that is even arguably necessary -- allowing eavesdropping on foreign-to-foreign calls without warrants -- has the support of virtually everyone in Congress and could be easily passed as a stand-alone measure.
What matters is not that this bill becomes law, but that the Rockefeller/Cheney bill does not. And House Democrats, including Blue Dogs, are obviously comfortable with defending the bill they just passed as more than sufficient to protect the nation, extend fairness to telecoms, and safeguard basic liberties. So there should never be any reason why they feel compelled to vote for the Rockefeller/Cheney bill, or any bill granting amnesty, given that they have just done their jobs. That is the real benefit of today's vote.
UPDATE III: I just spoke with Rep. Rush Holt regarding today's vote, and the discussion can be heard here. Holt is one of the most knowledgeable members of Congress on surveillance and intelligence issues and was instrumental, from the beginning, in working to ensure that the House would pass a good bill. And he articulates quite well why this bill is far superior to the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill.
After a year's worth of headlines proclaiming that Democrats have "surrendered," and "bowed" and "capitulated" to one of the most unpopular Presidents of all time -- complicity which, in turn, made the Congress itself increasingly unpopular -- these are the types of headlines they will generate today, from CNN:
They were given control of Congress to do exactly that -- "challenge" the President. If Americans wanted a Congress that bowed to him, they would have left the Republicans in control.
UPDATE IV: The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman did a good job of describing the significance of today's events, and included a very important new fact:
The House's action ensures that Bush will not receive surveillance legislation for several weeks. But some lawmakers from both parties said the impasse is now so deep that the issue may not be resolved until a new president takes office next year.
Bush and Republican lawmakers have shown no desire to move further toward the House Democratic leaders' position, and the Democrats are showing no sign of buckling under the mounting political pressure.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, such showdowns have followed a predictable path: After some protest, Democrats have given in to White House demands, fearing the political fallout as Bush hammered them for allegedly jeopardizing American lives. . . .
Bush appeared on the White House's South Lawn yesterday to demand House passage of the Senate legislation, warning lawmakers that "voting for this bill would make our country less safe. . . . The American people understand the stakes in this struggle. They want their children to be safe from terror" . . . .
Then the House went off script. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) responded to Bush's appeal, all but calling the president a liar.
That pretty much sums up the unexpected though astoundingly good series of events this week. And I just need to repeat this because it's symphonic in its beauty: "the impasse is now so deep that the issue may not be resolved until a new president takes office next year." That sentence should be set to music.
UPDATE V: As I wrote earlier this week, and several commenters today noted, the press coverage of this fight has been substantially better because House Democrats have been much more assertive about making their case. Thus, as Scientician notes, the New York Times's Eric Lichtblau today fact-checked one of the White House's principal (and most deceitful) claims:
Even before the first vote was cast in the House, Mr. Bush assailed the Democrats proposal in remarks at the White House on Thursday . . . .
"Companies that may have helped us save lives should be thanked for their patriotic service, not subjected to billion-dollar lawsuits that will make them less willing to help in the future," the president said. "“The House bill may be good for class action trial lawyers, but it would be terrible for the United States."
In fact, while some private lawyers are assisting in the litigation, the groups leading the efforts, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union, are nonprofit advocacy groups.
When you make yourself heard, you will be heard. The NYT article added that this "is one of the few times when Democrats have been willing to buck up against the White House on a national security issue."
UPDATE VI: Two weeks ago, after Chairman Reyes went on CNN and suggested Democrats might be open to compromising on telecom immunity, The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb gloated as follows:
Victory on Telecom Immunity, Greenwald Hardest Hit
The government shows up at your office just days after the 9/11 attack and asks for your help in the war on terror. What are you going to do? According to Glenn Greenwald, you should call a lawyer (isn't that always what the lawyers say). But telecom executives did the only thing they could do -- assist the government in whatever way possible. . . .
After months of demagoguing the issue, the Dems in Congress are finally going to cave and grant the firms immunity from lawsuits that are not only frivolous, but a threat to national security.
Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald, who's devoted the last three months of his life to this issue, is despondent . . . . And to think of all the other things Glenn Greenwald could have not achieved over the last few months were his energy and resources devoted to other hopeless crusades!
Does The Weekly Standard ever publish anything at all -- on any topic -- that doesn't turn out to be humiliatingly false?
-- Glenn Greenwald
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Friday March 14, 2008 09:45 EDT
High-level right-wing discourse
(updated below - Update II)
Just within the last 24 hours, here is what one learned from National Review, the most respectable venue for "conservative thought" in the country:
Former Dan Qualye aide Lisa Schiffren:
Public sex in Amsterdam's city parks will now be legal. But only for gays. And henceforth dogs will no longer be allowed off their leashes. Read about it here. But I am wondering why the government won't let the poor dogs run free while the gays are "having uncomplicated relations." What are they afraid of?
Conservative columnist Mona Charen:
My own theory, FWIW, is that Obama acquired his far left views at least in part to make himself as authentically black as he could to compensate for having a white mother. His mother, of course, was very left herself. But looking the way he does, and having been raised among only white people (mother and maternal grandparents) he felt the need to better identify with his black heritage. That struggle is what the book is all about.
One can have sympathy for his psychological predicament . But that sympathy certainly does not extend to electing him president of a country that I sincerely believe he does not love.
John Derbyshire:
Here is a 2005 poll showing that: "Almost half of all African-Americans believe that HIV, the virus that causes Aids, is man-made, more than a quarter believe it was produced in a government laboratory and one in eight think it was created and spread by the CIA, according to a study released by Rand Corporation and the University of Oregon" . . . .
Does [] Senator [Obama] believe, as his revered pastor does (and as that pastor's congregation apparently does too) that HIV was made in a government lab? Perhaps someone should ask him. Perhaps someone should have been asking this stuff six months ago.
Lisa Schiffren:
It's funny about those Muslims. Some days I think they need a good dose of sexual liberation. Other days I think their revulsion at current mores makes sense.
So, to recap: Dogs have to be kept on leashes where gays have sex otherwise the gays will molest the dogs. Barack Obama suffers from serious psychological maladies as a result of being black and having a white mother. While Obama's mental illness deserves our collective sympathy, he can't be President because he hates America.
A lot of black people think that HIV was created by whites to infect blacks, so Barack Obama very well might think so, too, and should be asked if he believes that. Islamic radicals pose a grave threat to the U.S. and to all of Our Cherished Freedoms and we must wage War on them forever, but they are right about how depraved, sickly, and excessively liberalized our culture is (and anyone who criticizes America, as Michelle Obama did, is guilty of hating it).
And these are the high-minded, deeply Serious observations one finds in just one 24 hour period in the most respectable right-wing outlet in America. This is to say nothing of what one finds peddled by the lower levels of the right-wing noise machine: Rush Limbaugh, Instapundit, Bill O'Reilly, Drudge, right-wing blogs and the like. But this really is exactly the political faction that has exerted dominant political power in this country for the last 15 years, and has exclusively shaped America's behavior for the last eight years. And, as a result, we have exactly the country one would expect would be produced when people who have these beliefs are empowered.
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan notes one other sterling example. Here is what Jonah Goldberg wrote about Obama yesterday:
I don't see any problem with Barack Obama admitting that part of his appeal is the hope that he might help mend the racial divide and turn a new page. But he could also say that he's not running for the President of Black America but of all America and that his qualifications involve more than his skin color. He's more than eloquent enough to make that case.
That's a great observation. How come Barack Obama won't ever say that "he's not running for the President of Black America but of all America"? That's the same Barack Obama who came to fame as a result of a 2004 Convention speech with this defining line: "There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America. There's the United States of America," and who inserts lines like this into almost every stump speech, from his victory speech after the South Carolina primary:
I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina. . . .
The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It's not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white.
It's about the past versus the future.
How ignorant or deceitful does someone have to be to claim that Barack Obama refuses to say that "he's not running for the President of Black America but of all America"? I don't think you can listen to a Barack Obama speech or interview without hearing that point. It's like saying: "How come George Bush refuses to say that we have to fight against the Terrorists"?
Then again, the only thing one really needs to say to make the same point is that the book they're all buying and finding so riveting is one that has a picture of a yellow happy face with a Hitler moustache on the cover, and which argues that Nazis thought about how to eat healthy and keep the environment clean -- just like liberals do! -- and therefore liberals are fascists. That's what they read to convince themselves they're being intellectual, historical and thoughtful.
UPDATE II: One can't help but ponder what must be going on in Lisa Schriffen's psyche that would actually lead her to make the connection she made between the law decriminalizing sex in a public park and the law prohibiting dogs from being off-leash in the park. Would that thought occur to any remotely healthy person?
Then again, here was another Family Values Hero, Rick Santorum, revealing the same mental process:
AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?
SANTORUM: . . . That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality —
AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.
SANTORUM: And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately.
As we learned this week -- when the desire to express public disgust over Eliot Spitzer's sex life was exceeded only by the intense interest in learning every titillating detail about it (and just by the way, here are two worthwhile Spitzer commentaries by women actually in that line of work) -- the places where a person's mind takes them reveals much about who they are.
-- Glenn Greenwald
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Thursday March 13, 2008 15:10 EDT
The principled, honest House Republicans
(updated below)
Back in February, when the House was preparing to vote on whether to extend the Protect America Act, House Intelligence Committee Member Rep. Rush Holt and several other House Democrats proposed that the House enter into a secret session to have a real debate about the merits of the legislation. This is how House Republicans reacted to that proposal, from The Hill, February 26, 2008:
Liberal House Democrats are pushing for a closed session to discuss the legal underpinnings of President Bush’s intelligence surveillance program.
They believe that the more members know about it, the less likely they will be to support Bush's wish to make it permanent.
“I haven't heard anything in closed session that makes me think we need the Protect America Act,” said Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), an Intelligence Committee member, referring to a White House-backed interim wiretapping bill that lapsed this month. . . .
[House Minority Leader John] Boehner's spokesman, Kevin Smith, derided the secret session proposal as a stalling tactic.
"There are clear rules and procedures for how Congress handles classified information," Smith said. "This nonsense is nothing more than another stalling tactic from a bunch of liberals who don't want to give our intelligence officials all the tools they need to keep America safe."
Fast forward to today, a mere three weeks later. The House Democratic leadership has scheduled a vote on the rather decent FISA bill they unveiled earlier this week, and House Republicans are eager to block the vote because they fear it will pass. This is what House Republicans are doing today to prevent a vote, from CQ:
House Republicans planned to seek a rare closed session Thursday to debate a Democratic leadership-backed rewrite of electronic surveillance law. . . .
Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said the House needs to have an "open and honest debate about some of the important details about this program, that don't need to be heard in public."
Boehner today used almost exactly the same language used by Holt three weeks ago to justify a closed debate session -- a session which, just three weeks ago, Boehner's own spokesman said was "nothing more than another stalling tactic from a bunch of liberals who don't want to give our intelligence officials all the tools they need to keep America safe." House Republicans hate it when people play politics with national security.
I'll add updates to this post as the House vote on the FISA bill proceeds. The CQ article reports that the House Democratic leadership is "whipping pretty aggressively" on this bill and that it now appears to have the support of a substantial number of "Blue Dogs" (McJoan has some more details on that). And preliminary reports I have, thus far unconfirmed, suggest that the Speaker's office will first agree to Boehner's request to hold a secret session to enable full and open debate, and then proceed to a vote.
This morning, the President gave his latest "pass-the-bill-I-want- or-be-slaughtered-by-the-Terrorists" speech and, although he recited his standard false, fear-mongering points, he included this particularly creepy and Orwellian formulation to justify his demands for telecom amnesty:
And this litigation would be unfair, because any companies that assisted us after 9/11 were assured by our government that their cooperation was legal and necessary.
Companies that may have helped us save lives should be thanked for their patriotic service, not subjected to billion-dollar lawsuits that will make them less willing to help in the future.
George Bush really believes -- and is outright telling us -- that when he orders private citizens to do something, and they obey, then it means that -- even if what they're doing is illegal -- they are acting "patriotically" and should be protected from all consequences. Are there any monarchs left anywhere in the Western World who even claim such a power -- to be able to order citizens to break the law? That's been a discredited "principle" since at least the Nuremberg Trials, yet this warped assertion of monarchical powers really is the central premise of the case for telecom amnesty.
Continuing with their uncharacteristic though (for now) commendable defiance of the Leader, Nancy Pelosi gave a news conference this morning and made clear that the President was spewing falsehoods when he accused the House Democrats of making us vulnerable to the Terrorists with their latest FISA bill. Here was one representative exchange:
Even after seven years of justifying every corrupt and radical policy imaginable via blatantly false invocations of "national security" and "Terrorism," the President can still utter those words and cause members of the media and others to quiver in fear, as though he has credibility on those matters ("but the President says this is necessary to be safe!"). Pelosi ought to issue many more clear statements like this reminding Americans that the President is the last person whose word on such matters ought to be trusted. A solid majority of Americans have reached that conclusion largely on their own, even though the Beltway media hasn't and won't.
UPDATE: The House accepted Boehner's request to debate for one hour in a secret session. Nothing of any significance will happen there. It's just a delaying tactic by the Republicans because they fear they will lose the vote and the House will pass the good bill. The vote will occur tomorrow morning.
-- Glenn Greenwald
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Thursday March 13, 2008 09:44 EDT
The Politico claims the Iraq war will help McCain
(updated below - Update II - Update III)
The Politico today published one of the most blatantly one-sided, journalistically flawed "news" articles on the Iraq War in quite some time and promoted it as its featured story, filled with dramatic proclamations certain to attract (by design) significant attention. The central theme is one which the political establishment is most desperate to believe -- that Americans are now supporting the Iraq War again and this will drastically re-shape the presidential race in favor of the pro-war McCain. Here is the first paragraph:
American public support for the military effort in Iraq has reached a high point unseen since the summer of 2006, a development that promises to reshape the political landscape.
It repeats this pro-GOP assertion over and over. "The repercussions will be most acutely felt in the presidential contest." And: "Democrats' resolute support for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces may soon position them at odds with independent voters, in particular, a constituency they need to retake the White House." And: "The uptick in public support is a promising sign for Republican candidates who have been bludgeoned over the Bush administration's war policies. But no candidate stands to gain more than McCain."
The whole article cites only one on-the-record source: the media's favorite all-purpose war cheerleader Michael O'Hanlon, who warns -- yet again -- that the public will soon come to see McCain's pro-war views as the "correct narrative." O'Hanlon: "How could Democrats possibly hand McCain a better issue than to let him run on his record of advocating a robust U.S. presence in Iraq with all the positive battlefield news that is filtering out of that country?" So according to the Politico/O'Hanlon, Iraq isn't just a good issue for the Republicans; it's the best issue Democrats could possibly hand them.
With very bad timing for The Politico, a new USA Today/Gallup poll was released today and here are the results for the key question:
Which would be better for the United States?
Keep a significant number of troops in Iraq until the situation there gets better: 35%
Set a timetable for removing troops and stick to it regardless of what is going on in Iraq: 60%
That comes as close as possible to tracking the Iraq positions of McCain and the two Democratic candidates -- stay for as long as necessary until stability is achieved (McCain) or effectuate a timetable for withdrawal regardless of events in Iraq (Obama/Clinton). The Democratic position on Iraq has a 25-point lead. But the Politico and O'Hanlon screech today that the Iraq debate will be a major asset for McCain's campaign and is a serious threat to Democrats, because Americans are now supporting the war again.
The entire Politico article -- every assertion -- is based on a single, cherry-picked outlier Pew poll from February which found that a "slim majority" now believe "the U.S. will ultimately succeed in achieving its goals" in Iraq. The "trend" on which The Politico exclusively relies is, in fact, negligible, within the poll's margin of error, and, more importantly, is contradicted by virtually every other poll, which they steadfastly and inexcusably ignore.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted after the Politico's poll found that Americans believe we are "not making significant progress" in Iraq, by a 51-43 margin. And a Newsweek poll from last week found that 43% believe things are the same in Iraq while 25% believe they are getting worse. Only 29% believe things are improving. Why would The Politico just ignore all of that to create its "Americans-love-the-war-again" narrative?
But what matters even more is that perceptions of "progress" do not mean that Americans support McCain's position and want to remain in Iraq indefinitely or even until stability is achieved. Polls -- all ignored by The Politico -- have continuously shown that even when American perceive that the "surge" has decreased violence, they still are against the war as much as ever before and support withdrawal. USA Today's poll from today shows a 25-point gap with Americans overwhelmingly wanting a timed withdrawal regardless of conditions there.
Moreover, Americans still believe by huge margins that the war -- which McCain cheered on and continues to cheer on -- was a mistake and, regardless of perceived progress, don't believe that the "benefits" were worth the costs. The Post poll asked:
All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?
The Democratic position has a 29 point lead, with 63% answering "no" and only 34% answering "yes." Also, there are no discernible pro-war trends at all. Quite the opposite: those numbers from two weeks ago show record highs for war opposition. How could a war that is so deeply unpopular -- and that remains so regardless of claims of "progress" -- possibly benefit the candidate and party perceived as being responsible for that war?
Worse still for the Politico, the very same Pew poll on which the whole Politico article is based found that Americans trust Democrats over Republicans by a 47-37% margin to "do a better job making wise decisions about Iraq." It also found that Americans, unlike McCain, overwhelmingly think the invasion was the wrong decision (54-36%), with the 36% who believe it was the right decision a record low for the Pew poll.
What is the point of writing a big feature article claiming that Americans are moving towards support for the Iraq War again and this is dramatically re-shaping the political landscape in McCain's favor while purposely ignoring the mountain of extremely recent empirical data completely negating that claim? One could justify such blatantly dishonest presentations from pro-war propagandists like Bill Kristol and Michael O'Hanlon, but shouldn't a newspaper with pretenses to being a news organization do a better job of pretending?
UPDATE: From today's Wall St. Journal:
At the five-year anniversary of the Iraq war, the conflict remains as unpopular as ever, despite the military progress of Mr. Bush's troop buildup of the past year -- of which Sen. McCain was the chief promoter. A majority still wants to start withdrawing troops in 2009 rather than stay indefinitely until Iraq is stable, as Sen. McCain suggests.
There's no better, more natural pairing than The Politico and Michael O'Hanlon. They both propagandize without shame and without even minimal regard for facts.
UPDATE II: The Politico reporter who wrote the article in question, David Paul Kuhn, sent me a lengthy email just now responding to the criticism here. I will address the bulk of his points a little bit later this afternoon, but he did point out two errors in what I wrote that, in fairness, I wanted to acknowledge right away.
In addition to the Pew poll on which he primarily relied, Kuhn also referenced a CBS poll in his piece (so that's two polls he cited). And he did acknowledge, towards the end of the article, that "Democrats remain in step with the public mood on the question of the decision to go to war," as "Pew and CBS have found that a majority of Americans, including independents, continue to believe that the choice to wage war with Iraq was 'wrong.'" Those facts don't meaningfully alter the central problems with the journalism that produced his article, but I appreciate his bringing those corrections to my attention.
UPDATE III: Less than a week ago, Democrat Bill Foster was elected to Congress in Denny Hastert's long-time, bright red district in Illinois. The centerpiece of his campaign was opposition to the Iraq war, and he defeated a pro-war candidate whose policies mirrored those of John McCain. Might that development have merited a mention by The Politico in this piece? Public opinion on the Iraq War is "re-shaping the political landscape" alright -- just in exactly the opposition direction as Kuhn claimed here.
-- Glenn Greenwald
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I was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. I am the author of two New York Times Bestselling books: "How Would a Patriot Act?" (May, 2006), a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, and "A Tragic Legacy" (June, 2007), which examines the Bush legacy. My third book, "Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics", examines the manipulative electoral tactics used by the GOP and propagated by the establishment press, and will be released April 15, 2008, by Random House/Crown.
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I ask Democrates, are we going to stand for the Left wing doing what the are doing?Glenn Greenwald?
Nobody's going to read this, including me. If there's a question in there, just ask it.
Reply:Why in God's name is that so long? There's no way I'm going to read all that.
Reply:I am certainly not going to read all of it ..it is one man's opinion not a news story.
Reply:Typical neocon.
Reply:Do you really expect us to read ALL of that?
Reply:Ok! You just took the record for the longest question I've ever read. And I voted for Obama and hope to vote for him again.
Please? Ask questions and give sites.
Reply:no
Reply:Quit wasting bandwidth!
Reply:Assuming the question is " Are we going to stand for the Left Wing doing what they are doing - re this example by Glenn Greenwald?"
My answer is I agree with and often read Glenn Greenwald and am a Democrat.
"What is distinctive is the far more consequential assumption that Americans want and are able to engage an elevated and more noble type of politics than the depressingly familiar garbage spewed from the Rush Limbaugh Show, The Drudge Report, Fox News, the cable news media stars, and all of their cooperating media and political appendages. We'll know soon enough if Obama is right."
c++
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