Enter Brauchli, Stage Right?

July 31, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under News media | 2 Comments 

At the Washington City Paper, Erik Wemple assesses the impact that the arrival of new Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli will have on the Washington Post. One major issue raised in Wemple’s article is whether Brauchli will scale down local coverage and focus completely on Beltway stuff, as was suggested in a conversation he was reported to have had at some time in the past. (Here, it should be noted that if the Post drops the ball where “metro” stuff goes, the City Paper and local publications like the Montgomery Gazette would have to pick it up; the Washington Times has minimal local coverage and the Post’s giveaway daily, the Express, has almost none.) Attached to the article is a comment from a reader convinced that the hiring of the Wall Street Journal’s former editor portends a major shift to the right on the Post’s part.  Well….before that call is made, let’s just see who will be taking Bob Novak’s place on the op-ed page.

He Has Done The State Some Service

July 31, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics | Leave a Comment 

Both in Alaska and on Capitol Hill there has been remarkably little gloating —much less rejoicing— over Ted Stevens’ current problems and apparently impending downfall. Even NPR’s reporting has been as much in sorrow as in anger.

Ted Stevens has been around this town and in the US Senate for a long time now, and over the years he has established a reputation as one of the more colorful characters — a hard-working Senator who knows how to take care of his constituents and bring home the federal bacon for his State. Like all Chairmen (and especially all Appropriations Chairmen) he was autocratic; but, unlike many, he wasn’t arrogant.

If he has become even more testy and acerbic with seniority and age, those are his traits as much as his temperament. His bark can be fearful but his bite is rarely felt. After the storm blows over he can sit down and work out compromise solutions that are usually fair to all sides.

He regretted the rise of partisanship during the 1990s and the ascendance of people who did “politics all the time”. He enjoys wearing neckties featuring the Incredible Hulk and the Tasmanian Devil, and he can occasionally laugh at himself as “a mean miserable sob”.

Before yesterday’s indictments were announced, he had mainly surfaced in the wider world and the lower 48 thanks to his battle for the bridge to nowhere, and for his description of the internet as a series of tubes.

In both cases there were better explanations —which is not to say that they were good explanations— than were made by reporters or comedians.

Ted Stevens was born in Indianapolis and grew up in Manhattan Beach. During World War Two, he was one of the Flying Tigers, bringing supplies “over the hump” of the Himalayas; he won the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He graduated from UCLA and Harvard Law School. In 1952 he drove up the the Alaska Highway to Fairbanks and began practicing law there. As a local lawyer and then US Attorney during Alaska’s “territorial days,” and later as a DOI official in Washington, he was active in the successful drive for statehood.

After serving in the Alaskan House of Representatives and running unsuccessfully for the US Senate nomination, he was appointed to fill a vacant seat by Governor Walter Hickel — who was himself about to become Richard Nixon’s first Secretary of the Interior.

The newly-minted Senator Stevens arrived in Washington a month before President Nixon was inaugurated. In 1970 he won the seat —which he has now held for forty years— for himself. Until the end he was one of RN’s staunchest supporters.

In 2000, he was named the Alaskan of the Century:

Throughout his Senate career he has been an unflinching advocate for a strong military posture. Steeped in the intricacies of national security and military preparedness, his expertise earns him a vital role in international negotiation, planning and deployment of national defense assets. Senator Ted Stevens is himself an asset to the United States and represents Alaska’s finest contribution to our national leadership.

Alaska is a state where certain levels of corruption are historic and endemic — sort of like Louisiana but with ice. Although it appears that Senator Stevens may have been less than rigorous in the scruples department, and that he may have taken a tad too good care of his kids, he hasn’t been one of the Senate’s many real rascals — much less one of the outright crooks.

He is charged with failing to report gifts, and if he did it he did it, and there should be no excuses and he should pay the price. If he has to serve time in Alaska it will probably be in a facility with his name on it. Guilty or not he has the misfortune of being a conservative Republican with a long record and a short temper and some serious opposition at a time when the tides are running strongly in the opposite direction.

Stephen Colbert could be depended on to cover the story from his own unique perspective.

RIP Anne L. Armstrong And Clay T. Whitehead

July 31, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Entertainment, In Memoriam, Internet, News media, Nixon Administration figures, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, Technology, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

The last week saw the passing of a man and a woman who were both not only important figures at the Nixon White House, but by any measure significant in twentieth-century American history.  On July 23, Clay T. Whitehead, director of the White House Office of Telecommunications Policy between 1970 and 1974, died in Washington at age 69.  During his time in that office, he gained fame among journalists for his vigorous defenses of Nixon Administration policy in his press briefings.  But it was what he did (with the help of his assistant Brian Lamb, later to found C-SPAN) to create and further the Open Skies policy that made history.  This policy permitted telecommunications companies to send up their own satellites and establish the networks that made both nationwide cable TV and competing, low-price long-distance phone services possible.  This in turn opened the way for the Internet and cellular technology as we know it.  (Indeed, had President Nixon been able to serve out his second term, Whitehead’s vision of a wired America could have brought something akin to the World Wide Web into being a decade before it happened.) In the 1980s, Whitehead played a central role in bringing cable TV and cellular communications to Europe.  Ironically, he does not have his own Wikipedia entry and is barely mentioned elsewhere at the site.

And yesterday Anne Legendre Armstrong died in Houston at age 80.  She was raised in an old Creole family in New Orleans and, after graduating from Vassar and briefly working in the New York magazine world, married a rancher and moved to Texas, where she switched from the Democratic to the Republican party and became active in GOP politics.  From 1970 until 1973, she was co-chair of the Republican National Committee and played an important role in generating support for Nixon’s re-election among women and Democrats.  In 1973 she became the first woman to serve as counselor to the President, and was one of the White House’s strongest defenders during the Watergate era.  During the Ford Administration she became the first female Ambassador to Great Britain, and in the Reagan era she headed the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1987.  Both of these far-sighted Americans of high achievement will be much missed.

The Barack Bubble

July 31, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, History, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Even in this age of high-tech toys, two of my young grandsons can still be entertained by the emission of little iridescent spheres from a plastic loop that has been dipped in soapy water. I am talking about bubbles – the kind that last for only a few seconds before bursting.

A bubble can also be a metaphor. Old King Solomon talked about emptiness in the ancient book of Ecclesiastes. One word the wise ruler used to describe the fleeting nature of life without meaning was vanity – and it can be loosely translated as “soap bubbles.”

Of course, most of us have heard about economic bubbles. They occur when factors such as speculation drive prices to a level far beyond actual intrinsic value. In the past few years we have seen a dot.com bubble, a Chinese stock bubble, and of course, most recently, the real estate bubble.

Charles Mackay, a nineteenth century Scottish journalist, wrote a fascinating treatise entitled, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. First published in 1841, the book chronicled “the most remarkable instances of those moral epidemics which have been excited, sometimes by one cause and sometimes by another, and to show how easily the masses have been led astray, and how imitative and gregarious men are, even in their infatuations and crimes.”

Mr. Mackay describes an assortment of nefarious financial schemes dating back to the early 1700s. He noted that they were then nicknamed Bubbles. To him, this term was

“the most appropriate that imagination could devise,” adding that, “the most absurd and preposterous of all, and which showed more completely than any other, the utter madness of the people, was one started by an unknown adventurer, entitled, ‘A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.’”

This could well describe American politics du jour.

When bubbles burst people who have been hypnotized by their splendor tend to be disappointed - like children who see something compelling one moment, only to witness sudden dissipation. And sometimes, when bubbles connected to intensely personal concerns burst, there is discouragement – even disillusionment.

It might be constructive, maybe even essential, to think of the whole Barack Obama phenomenon as a gigantic bubble. It has captured pan-cultural attention and transcends the humdrum of mere mortal politics. Expectations are inflated. Rational analysis has been muted. Look, up in the sky – it’s a bird, it’s a plane no, it’s Super Senator above the political fray soaring in his designer soap bubble.

The value of Barack Obama’s stock is sky high these days. His most devoted followers assume this upward trend will continue. Happy days are just around the corner. Can’t you just feel the love and unity? Not to mention the change?

And back on earth, those who should be watching more closely, and asking tough questions, seem to have temporarily (we can only hope) suspended their capacity for serious investigation while following the bubble-beacon here, there, and everywhere.

What does it say about legacy mainstream media outlets when it is left to the likes of Katie Couric to ask the man from Illinois an actual tough question with a measure of ferocity (at least for her)?

Here is the problem, though. No one, not even Barack “The Man Promising Personalized Pieces of Blue Sky” Obama, can possibly sustain the level of near universal affection and acclaim indefinitely. Human glory tends to be a fleeting thing - especially the political variety. In fact, the issue is not if Obama’s bubble will burst, but rather – when.

And when it does, there will be a lot of unhappy American campers.

There is a saying: “Motivation without implementation produces frustration.” In the political arena this means that when someone inspires people without eventually following through, the result is significant disenchantment. Barack Obama’s style over substance campaign is very much a bipolar candidacy. We are seeing the manic phase now.

Stay tuned for the depressive future.

Rarely has a political figure generated the kind of near-universal acclaim that the junior senator from Illinois seems to receive. His recent trip abroad drew enthusiastic crowds at every public event. People sought to touch the hem of his garment. Obama’s speech in Berlin was given before a crowd of more than 200,000. Take that Camelot.

One German publication actually referred to Barack Obama as “President of the World.” That’s heady stuff. For an American politician to get that kind of response in Europe is remarkable.

But it is not unprecedented.

Ninety years ago another American received the royal treatment on the continent. His name was Woodrow Wilson and he became an international hero, at least for a brief and shining moment. Within days of the signing of the Armistice ending The Great War, the man who led our country into a war to make the world safe for democracy crossed the Atlantic to become president of his world.

As Mr. Wilson’s train arrived at the Hoboken pier in New Jersey on the morning of December 4, 1918, a great crowd gathered to wish him a safe and prosperous voyage. A band played the national anthem as the George Washington set sail on the ten-day trans-Atlantic voyage. More than ten thousand people viewed the scene from a distance in lower Manhattan. They wanted to witness history. You see, not only was the chief executive going abroad to save the planet, he was, in fact, the first president up to that time to travel outside the country while in office. Zeppelins hovered overhead. Planes looped and swooped. It was the media event of the decade.

When the ship reached the Port of Brest in France, it was met with even greater enthusiasm. Margaret MacMillan, great-granddaughter of Wilson’s contemporary and collaborator at the Paris peace conference, David Lloyd-George, described the scene in her excellent book, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World:

“The streets were lined with laurel wreaths and flags. On the walls, posters paid tribute to Wilson, those from right-wingers for saving them from Germany and those from the left for the new world he promised. Huge numbers of people, many resplendent in their traditional Breton costumes, covered every inch of pavement, every roof, every tree. Even the lampposts were taken. The air filled with the skirl of Breton bagpipes and repeated shouts of ‘Vive l’Amérique! Vive Wilson!’”

Woodrow Wilson was the most popular man in the world.

But a year later it was different. Someone in Barack Obama’s camp should start searching used bookstores, or the Internet, to find a copy of a 1964 book by Gene Smith. It is directly on point. The title says it all: When the Cheering Stopped. President Wilson came to understand that the deafening sound of grand and glorious bombs bursting in air can, all too quickly, give way to the pathetic whimper of a bursting bubble.

By 1920, the man who had so recently been hailed as the greatest international statesman ever, watched in physical and emotional brokenness as his nation rejected what he hoped would be his lasting legacy. They voted Republican and would twice more in the decade. Mr. Wilson died in 1924 after another in a long line of strokes. But doubtless somewhere in the mix were complications due to a bubble that burst.

People are fickle and the bigger the bubble the bigger the mess when it inevitably bursts. Barack Obama is riding high now, and he carries the hopes and dreams of millions who have bought into the notion of nonspecific change. But he will sooner or later descend from the heights according to the political law of gravity. And when he falls to earth there may be weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

It would be infinitely better if the Barack bubble could somehow dissipate during the campaign, long before it threatens to leave soapy residue on the Oval Office floor – not to mention everywhere else.

Has McCain Completely Lost It? Can He Still Win It?

July 31, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

One hates to pile on……but……the shambles that is presently passing for the McCain campaign now appears to be picking up speed as it careens out of control.

In the Washington Post Juliet Eilperin and Robert Barnes present a disturbing picture (“As Aides Map Aggressive Race, McCain Often Steers Off Course”) of a drifting vessel with a highly erratic skipper at the helm; McCain as a more benign Queeg —- with the strawberries but without the balls.

And in his “Wonderland” column in today’s Wall Street Journal, the always thoughtful and usually measured Daniel Henninger just asks outright: “Is John McCain Stupid?”

Referring to the Senator’s confused and confusing statements regarding tax hikes, Mr. Henninger writes: “This isn’t a flip-flop. It’s a sex change operation.” And he dismisses the Senator’s odd embrace of Al Gore’s energy plan as “loopy”.

In this sports-crazed country, everyone has learned a lot about what it takes to win. They’ve heard and seen it proven repeatedly that to achieve greatness, to win the big one, an athlete has to be ready to “put in the work.”

John McCain isn’t doing that, yet. He’s competing as if he expects the other side to lose it for him. Sen. McCain is a famously undisciplined politician. Someone in the McCain circle had better do some straight talking to the candidate. He’s not some 19-year-old tennis player who’s going to win the U.S. presidential Open on raw talent and the other guy’s errors. He’s not that good.

There is a reason the American people the past 100 years elevated only two sitting senators into the White House — JFK and Warren Harding. It’s because they believe most senators, adept at compulsive compromise, have no political compass and will sell them out. Now voters have to do what they prefer not to. Yes, Sen. McCain has honor and country. Another month of illogical, impolitic remarks and Sen. McCain will erase even that. Absent a coherent message for voters, he will be one-on-one with Barack Obama in the fall. He will lose.

Where Is The Love Child?

July 31, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under News media | 1 Comment 

John Taylor recently —and rightly— lamented the decline of the great American newspapers and the role that the lack of support from people like me (who don’t get all the news we need from the weather report, but who do get it all online for free) is playing in it.

Now, printers ink happens to run through the Taylor veins; but his point is well taken nonetheless. And I’ve already made a 2009 resolution in advance to start considering the possibility of following the good Father’s example and buying a Kindle and paying to download my daily fixes of news.

But just as my resolve starts forming, the John Edwards story comes along.

The degrees to which the mainstream American media is handling this story with kid gloves - or, more precisely, not handling it at all — raises the most basic questions about what newspapers are really about today and whether, and why, we even need them any more.

What is, in every way, a sad and sordid personal tragedy is also a major national story as a result of the chilling degree of risk taking and arrogance that appear to have been evinced by Senator Edwards; by his unequivocal denial; by his peculiar conduct; and, basically, by the very fact that the story —whether it is true or not— is being suppressed by the keepers of the public prints.

As Gawker put it: “Save Your Newspaper: Cover The Edwards Scandal”

Throughout much of 1936, the American press was all-Mrs.-Simpson-all-the-time as the romance between the Baltimore seductress and the King of England unfolded across the Pond. And all the while, the British Isles were completely blacked out.

The British people were kept purposely in the dark about Mrs. Simpson almost until the moment Edward sat down in front of the microphone at Fort Belvedere and told them cheerio I’m abdicating.

For the last several days, the Old World has been redressing the imbalance in the New by covering the scandal that dare not raise its head in the mainstream of American journalism.

As The Times of London’s headline robustly put it: “Sleaze Scuppers Democrat Golden Boy”.

For several months the National Enquirer has been pursuing a story about John Edwards. According to the tabloid, the former Senator, vice-presidential candidate, erstwhile presidential candidate, and possible once and future Veep nominee, has kept a mistress and has fathered, and is supporting, a love child.

On 11 October 2007, Senator Edwards addressed the story and denied it in considerable detail:

“It’s completely untrue, ridiculous. I’ve been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years and, as anybody who’s been around us knows, she’s an extraordinary human being, warm, loving, beautiful, sexy and as good a person as I have ever known …. So the story’s just false.”

The national press has refused even to report that the story has become a story and that is being printed abroad and burning up the blogosphere at home — mainly on the grounds that no definitive proof has been adduced, and partly on the grounds that it comes from the Enquirer, and is therefore at best the fruit of a tainted tree.

The Washington Post’s gossip columnist Roxanne Roberts expressed such fastidious restraint in an online exchange on 23 July:

The Enquirer is not going to sell papers with nuance or sensitivity. I need more reporting from a credible source before i’m prepared to pass judgment. I’m not sure Edwards is a real candidate for the VP job, but if so will have to address this one way or another.

And Slate’s estimable Mickey Kaus got hold of an internal email that LA Times Editor Tony Pierce sent to his paper’s various bloggers:

Hey bloggers,

There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified.

If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don’t hesitate to ask

Keep rockin,

Tony

Conspiratorialists point out that the Enquirer is now owned by former Clinton aide and current Clinton crony Roger Altman, and therefore has a score to settle with the Obama-endorsing Edwards.

Fox News confirmed the details of the Enquirer’s story with a security guard who was on duty at the time and observed the former Senator’s early hours attempts to avoid reporters — a scene that combined equal elements of Feydeau and Clouseau.

So what would the the mainstream media require before deigning even to mention this story? Wouldn’t the Enquirer’s reporting and Fox News’ confirmation suffice? Yeah right.

But the mainstream media’s newly-espoused high-road approach to low-road stories doesn’t exactly ring true.

For starters, over the last several years, the Enquirer has developed a reputation for breaking major national stories that are carefully researched and documented.

And, to take only one recent and relevant example, The New York Times didn’t wait to rush into front-page print with a story that was based on nothing more than rumors and innuendos about John McCain’s allegedly improper relationship with a female lobbyist.

Things reached a truly ludicrous level earlier this week when Wikipedia removed some possibly tangential references to the Edwards story from its entry for one of author Jay McInerney’s books.

Radar magazine reported this remarkable turn of events:

Fox News’ confirmation via a security guard that former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards had a stand-off with reporters from the National Enquirer while (allegedly) meeting his mistress and love child at a Beverly Hills hotel still hasn’t made its way onto Edwards’ Wikipedia page. (At least of [sic] this writing!) Interestingly enough, that’s not the only Wiki page on which Edwards’ alleged affair has been scrubbed clean.

Yesterday evening, the entry for Jay McInerney’s book Story of My Life contained the tidbit that his inspiration for protagonist Alison Poole, whom he has described as “an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year-old,” is none other than his ex-girlfriend Rielle Hunter, who just happens to be the woman with whom Edwards is allegedly cheating on his cancer-stricken wife. Today, that little nugget has been deleted.

Yesterday the Enquirer moved things up a notch with its latest fillip on the original story. Following the famous dictum to “follow the money” the paper now reported that:

A National Enquirer investigation has uncovered John Edwards’ mistress, Rielle Hunter – the mother of his “love child” – has been secretly receiving $15,000 a month as part of an elaborate cover-up orchestrated by the former presidential contender.

The money is being funneled to Hunter by a wealthy colleague who was closely tied to the Edwards’ campaign. This same man is also shoveling cash to Edwards’ pal and former aide Andrew Young – who tried to take the heat off the ex-Senator by claiming he is the father of Rielle’s baby.

Blogger Ken Layne wrote good common sense when he pointed out that the story clearly isn’t going to go away, and that John Edwards has it in his power to settle it once and for all:

The Democratic convention is a month away, and while he wasn’t anybody’s top choice for Obama’s running mate, Edwards was expected to give a prime-time speech at the Denver rally. After all, he won more delegates than anyone but Obama and Hillary Clinton. The unmentionable scandal won’t fade after the conventions or even after the election, as Edwards has long been talked about as a potential “anti-poverty czar” in an Obama administration. One day, between now and January, this alleged scandal will have to be addressed — and if John Edwards did nothing more than pay a friendly late night Beverly Hills hotel visit to his former videographer who was impregnated by his married loyalist friend, so be it. He can explain himself and go back to helping the Two Americas or whatever.

But, for America’s newspapers, the story remains unspeakable and unspoken. Gawker, in its inimitable way, has summed up things to date:

So a trash rag crawls out of the dumpster and into the spotlight, and the outlets that should be reporting misbehavior by public figures are simply refusing to.

If the major newspapers —and the networks’ TV news bureaus— become the self-selected gatekeepers of what knowledge the public should and shouldn’t —need and needn’t— have, then what is the point of newspapers in the internet age? Can Tony Pierce expect to be more successful than King Canute? (And even Canute got a bad rap from the mainstream media of his day; he set up his throne on the strand precisely to demonstrate the limitations of his power).

UPDATE: On Slate this morning, Mickey Kaus notes the defection of some tributaries-of-the-mainstream papers (including the North Carolina News & Observer and the Newark Star-Ledger (”Rebellious nibbling from mid-rank players who are harder to coopt than the New York and Washington elites”) and concludes:

There are simply a lot of good questions. Edwards already squirmed out of one such query at a press conference, but his political career appears to be over unless he can talk his way out of this one.

So it’s time the major media picked up the story. It’s not merely the stench of liberal bias that bothers me but the unfortunate reality that we in the MSM are giving up a good story to the internet. And if we in the major media continue to cede such stories to the internet, we won’t be major much longer.

(A tip of the cap to Gawker’s Steve Dressler for the New York Times Magazine photoshop illustration up top.)

The Eastern White House

July 31, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Nixon family | Leave a Comment 

Hat tip to Maarja Krusten for pointing out this New York Times account of how the Nixons ended up living in Judge Learned Hand’s former house on East 65th Street in 1980.

Featured Articles — July 31, 2008

July 31, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes from Home and Abroad:

Obama’s Iraq Fumble By Karl Rove
In a race supposedly dominated by the economy, both Barack Obama and John McCain have spent a lot of time talking about Iraq. Why? Because both men have Iraq problems that are causing difficulties for their campaigns.

Can Paulson Save the Economy? By Justin Fox
It is late on a summer afternoon, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is sipping a Diet Coke in his giant corner office a patch away from the White House and doling out career advice. His secret to success? “You define your job expansively.”

Saint Batman? By Father Raymond J. De Souza
Heath Ledger is mesmerizing in The Dark Knight, the latest Batman film. Here in his Australian homeland, his posthumous appearance as the Joker has been a major news story for two weeks.

Why Obama Should Pick Hillary By Lanny J. Davis
Picking a vice president is obviously Barack Obama’s decision to make. He must be comfortable with who he picks. Comfort level between a president and vice president may be the most important factor of all.

New Premises in Iraq By Henry Kissinger
The U.S. presidential campaign has been so long and so intense that it seems to operate in a cocoon, oblivious to changes that should alter its premises. A striking example is the debate over withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

Obama’s “community organizer” phase was about political power, not soup kitchens by John Maki
If you’ve heard the term, you likely learned about it through Barack Obama’s memoir or one of his speeches where he talks about his time working in poor neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side in the 1980s. He refers to this time in his life a lot.  Obama leans on it, hard, while stumping. But what does it mean?

McCain’s Axis of Popularity: Britney, Paris, and Barack

July 30, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008 | 1 Comment 

Negative campaigning is as old as the Republic.

But usually it’s the other fellow’s policies and proposals that are being attacked —- rather than the fact that he’s just so, well, so very very very….popular.

The gravamen of this unfortunate commercial just released by the McCain campaign seems to be that everybody likes Senator Obama and that’s unfair and, dammit, downright wrong.

And the parting shot of a clearly tranquilized McCain doesn’t help things.

Department of Dog Bites Man

July 30, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, News media | Leave a Comment 

Here’s a headline just posted on The New York Times‘ website. (It says “published 31 July, 2008″ so it may even be a headline from the future — which would deserve a headline.)

The only problem is: assuming that Charlie Savage or anyone up there at Times Square has the remotest understanding of how Washington works, it’s hard to figure out exactly why this truism merits headline status:

For White House, Hiring Is Political

The accompanying story, alas, gives few clues and provides lots of contrary evidence.

OK, I know that we’re supposed to get upset over the notion that Republicans, when they actually manage to get elected to political office, will try to appoint people who agree with them.

And I know that Glenn Fine, who was appointed DOJ IG by President Clinton (whose Reno-Hubbell-Gorelick Justice was the paragon of nonpartisan excellence) is the latter day scourge of the spoils system.

And I grant that the Bush folks may have been a tad flatfooted and hamfisted in the way they went about trying to do it.

But I have a hard time buying the idea that they did it more egregiously (much less more effectively) than prior administrations. Based on the evidence to date, they didn’t have the basic competence to top that high bar.

Tomorrow’s story, by the way, doesn’t mention this afternoon’s testimony by Inspector General Fine before the Senate Judiciary Committee (which was, of course, loaded for bear) that the White House’s attempts at politicization were “serious, significant, and systematic” and but not criminal and that he doesn’t think any prosecutions are in order.

Charles Van Doren Article Now Online

July 30, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture, Entertainment, History, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

The New Yorker article by Charles Van Doren about his days of game-show fame, which I discussed last week, can now be read in its entirety at the magazine’s site.  It features a striking photo of Van Doren and his adversary Herb Stempel on the set of Twenty One, straining for the right answer in their respective “isolation” booths (if these look familiar, it’s because producer Al Burton borrowed the idea decades later for Win Ben Stein’s Money), while host Jack Barry and an elegantly dressed assistant await the result.

Deconstructing The Siegessaule Spiel

July 30, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

In the new Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson, a man who knows his way around words and speeches, deconstructs Senator Obama’s widely praised words at Berlin’s Siegessaule.

In a city that understands the literal and metaphorical meanings of walls, Senator Obama said: “The greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.” And Mr. Ferguson has some problems with their logic (if not with their delivery).

The sentence is the heart of the speech and an instance of Obama’s big weakness–his preference for the rhetorical flourish over a realistic account of things as they are. Most politicians share the weakness, and the preference has proved wildly attractive to Obama’s supporters. But think it through: “New walls to divide us” is just a metaphor, a trope. A trope can’t be the “greatest danger of all.” A terrorist setting off a nuclear bomb in London–that’s a danger. A revolution in Islamabad–that’s a danger. A figure of speech is just a figure of speech.

And what will Obama have us do to avoid those nonmetaphorical dangers? He declined to get specific, aside from urging us to “answer the call.” Floating along on a cloud of metaphor and generality allows Obama to do what he wants to do, in the Berlin speech and elsewhere. As a public figure he means to rise
above any hint of conflict, and to suggest that problems and dangers dissolve when we “come together.” And coming together, “standing as one,” is simply the logical outcome of every participant’s correctly understanding his best interest. What could be more reasonable?

It doesn’t matter that human affairs never work out this way, no more in domestic politics than in foreign policy. The assumption that they do is what lends so many of Obama’s utterances their greeting-card simplicity and appeal. The effect is almost soporific: “America cannot turn inward,” he says. Check. “Now is the time to build new bridges.” All set to go. “We must defeat terror.” True dat. “Every nation in Europe must have the chance to choose its own tomorrow free from the shadows of yesterday.” Roger. “We must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East.” Go ahead: Argue.

Withal, Mr. Ferguson acknowledges that the Obama phenomenon —the Obamanon?— depends on the easy display of copious charisma rather than the minimal exposures of intellectual rigor.

Ain’t No Flies on John McCain

July 30, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008, Entertainment, News media | Leave a Comment 

On last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart brought his viewers —still presumably bedazzled in the afterglow of the Obama Abroad extravaganza— up to date with the still there but still receding McCain campaign.

JFK: “I Wouldn’t Have Him Running A Cathouse”

July 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Presidents | Leave a Comment 

When the Washington Post reported in July 1963 that the Air Force had purchased an expensive bed for the pregnant First Lady’s use in an emergency, President Kennedy called his Air Force aide and colorfully enunciated his views. Via the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, listen to the secretly taped conversation.

Talking Sense To The American People

July 30, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

TNN readers can save themselves the time that would be spent (or choose another word here) reading Lois Romano’s long and surprisingly soft article about Patti Solis Doyle —the Chief of Staff Hillary Clinton fired who has emerged as Chief of Staff-in-waiting to the Obama Veep-to-be-decided— in today’s Washington Post.

If you want to find out what’s really going on here, all you have to do is deconstruct Wonkette’s concise summary: “David Axelrod Lies Hilariously About Patti Solis Doyle Hiring Blowback”.

By March or April or whenever it was that she got fired, everybody knew that Patti Solis Doyle was personally responsible for every single thing that went wrong with the Clinton campaign, except for the things Mark Penn and Bill Clinton and the candidate herself and even Harold Ickes were responsible for. Ms. Doyle was banished to her native Chicago uranium mines with only her public humiliation to keep her company, until the Obama campaign hired her, with predictable results: the Clinton people went insane with rage.

Now in a very looong article in the Washington Post, notable mainly for Solis Doyle’s marvelous Katharine-Hepburn-plays-intrepid-lady- journalist-in-North-Africa tab-sleeved shirt, David Axelrod professes wonderment that anyone would assume that Obama’s hiring Mistress Spendsalot would mean Hillary Clinton had no spot on the Democratic ticket.

“There was no message — absolutely not,” Obama senior strategist David Axelrod says. He said he never asked Solis Doyle, whom he’s known for 20 years, where she stood with Clinton, and he says he was not aware of issues associated with her management style.

“Honestly, we were not privy to the history of the campaign’s relationships,” he says.

David Axelrod will be here all week, and advises you to try the veal.

Comedy Is Hard

July 30, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Election 2008, Entertainment, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

In a laudable attempt to attract the young uns, the RNC has decided to take a walk on the wild side and dip its big toe into the murky pool of comedy. The chilly murky pool of comedy. The deep chilly murky pool of comedy.

We have the first two examples of this enterprise, and they aren’t, mirable dictu, half bad. Or, more precisely, they are exactly half bad.

First, there’s a weird and confusing video which is made no less weird or confusing by the upfront explanation which is heavy on capitals but short on sense:

What Might An Obama TV Ad In Berlin Look Like?
The Following Parody Is Our Best Guess.

Of course, there was no Obama Berlin ad, so any parody starts off at a serious disadvantage. The product is confused and confusing; at least some spark in the bowels of 1st Street SE remembered to include David Hasselhoff, so it’s not a complete write-off.

But there is also some good news. There is also a real parody with some real teeth and some real visual wit. BarackBook is a take off of facebook — in which all of Barack’s friends, with their conscientiously updated profiles, are folks the frontrunner would rather be thrown under the bus along with his grandparents and his erstwhile spiritual advisers. Attention has been paid to all the details, and any doubleclick will produce some amusing or interesting material.

So that’s the good news: the RNC’s comedy glass is half full. But the bad news of the good news is that it’s probably too clever by half. BarackBook presupposes more knowledge than it will impart, and is far more likely to appeal to geezer geeks like this blogger than to the young uns it is intended to attract.

What? No Wikipedia at the Olympics?

July 30, 2008 by Drew Thompson | Filed Under China | Leave a Comment 

Chinese authorities promised to relax internet controls as one of the conditions negotiated with the International Olympic Committee. However, over time, that commitment has been slowly eroded as the Olympics got closer. Chinese authorities later stated that internet access for the foreign press and within the Olympic Village would be unfiltered, implying that their commitment did not extend to the rest of the country. However, the visiting press will now see the internet just as ordinary Chinese do.

Reporters arriving in Beijing and touring the massive new media center were surprised when many sites could still not be accessed, even confronting Beijing Olympic authorities with their lap tops in hand at press conferences. Authorities later clarified the policy on internet access, stating that access to sites containing information about sports and the Olympics would not be blocked, but that other “sensitive sites” would remain inaccessible in Beijing.

Elsewhere, Chinese officials announced this week that China surpassed 253 million internet users by the end of June, topping the United States’ 230 million and becoming the nation with the most surfers in the world. That means that about 1 in 5 Chinese now have access to most of the internet.

Featured Articles — July 30, 2008

July 30, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes from Home and Abroad:

W-Hef-B: Bill Buckley, Playboy, and the Struggle for the Soul of America By James Rosen
William F. Buckley, Jr., who died February 27 at age eighty-two, was many things: graduate, and scourge, of Yale University; architect of the modern American conservative movement; founder of National Review; author of fifty books and 5,600 syndicated newspaper columns; host of TV’s “Firing Line” (1,054 episodes recorded between 1966 and 1999); peerless debater and lecturer; spy and bestselling spy novelist; millionaire yachtsman; harpsichordist and pianist; bon vivant and…Playboy contributor?

Muslim Men and the Roots of Anger By Salim Mansur
Before resting its recent case against Mohammed Momin Khawaja under Canada’s Anti-Terrorism Act, the prosecution presented Momin’s former fiancée, Zeba Khan, as the final witness via a video link from Dubai. Ms. Khan reportedly stated in her testimony: “You will not meet a young Muslim man in the world who is not angry about something. Anyone who watches the news, if he wasn’t mad then, a) there’s something wrong with him, or b) he’s ignorant.

Vice President Tim Kaine? By Larry Sabato
We have no earthly idea if Virginia Governor Tim Kaine is Obama’s choice for Vice President. All we know is that distinguished reporters who claim to have good sources are calling and saying that Kaine is on the short-short list.

How to Shake Off the Mortgage Mess By Holman Jenkins
Where are the hosannas for Congress’s handiwork on housing? Nobody expected it to solve anything, but it’s worth understanding why.

For GOP, Stevens Indictment Is Latest in a String of Setback By Chris Cillizza and Paul Kane
Ted Stevens’s indictment yesterday could not have occurred at a more politically inopportune time for the senator from Alaska or for his fellow Republicans.

Five Things the Audacity of Hope World Tour Taught Us About Obama By John Heilemann
With all the wailing and gnashing going on today in the political world over that incendiary Gallup poll — the one conducted for USA Today that shows John McCain ahead of Barack Obama by four points among likely voters — it would be easy to overlook another bit of research released this morning by the hardest-working numbers-crunchers in the business.

Stifling free speech — globally By Luiza Ch. Savage
A coalition of Islamic states is using the United Nations to enact international ‘anti-defamation’ rules.

From Gitmo to Miranda, With Love By Debra Burlingame
How the American left feted and freed a Guantanamo inmate who then killed in Iraq.

Can Senator Obama’s Skin Be That Thin?

July 30, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Election 2008, News media | 1 Comment 

In his already-cited article in this week’s New Republic, Leon Wieseltier makes the interesting assertion that the Obama camp’s real beef wasn’t with the New Yorker’s Barry Blitt Obamas-as-terrorists cover —which grabbed all the attention and attracted all the flak— but with Ryan Lizza’s exceedingly long and exceedingly well-reported article about the young Senator’s meteoric rise in Chicago politics.

When Mr. Lizza was 86ed from Obama One and not allowed to accompany the Senator on his triumphal sweep through the Middle East and Western Europe, the assumption was that this was payback for the cartoon cover. But maybe not.

As Mr. Wieseltier suggests: “The really fine transgression took place in Ryan Lizza’s disenchanted study of Obama’s cunning, which was smothered by the too-cool-for-school cover.”

For an article that is properly objective but net extremely positive, Mr. Lizza pounded the pavements and got the quotes and reached a not surprising conclusion about a phenomenally successful politician:

Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions rather than tear them down or replace them. When he was a community organizer, he channelled his work through Chicago’s churches, because they were the main bases of power on the South Side. He was an agnostic when he started, and the work led him to become a practicing Christian. At Harvard, he won the presidency of the Law Review by appealing to the conservatives on the selection panel. In Springfield, rather than challenge the Old Guard Democratic leaders, Obama built a mutually beneficial relationship with them. “You have the power to make a United States senator,” he told Emil Jones in 2003. In his downtime, he played poker with lobbyists and Republican lawmakers. In Washington, he has been a cautious senator and, when he arrived, made a point of not defining himself as an opponent of the Iraq war.

Like many politicians, Obama is paradoxical. He is by nature an incrementalist, yet he has laid out an ambitious first-term agenda (energy independence, universal health care, withdrawal from Iraq). He campaigns on reforming a broken political process, yet he has always played politics by the rules as they exist, not as he would like them to exist. He runs as an outsider, but he has succeeded by mastering the inside game. He is ideologically a man of the left, but at times he has been genuinely deferential to core philosophical insights of the right.

It would take a pretty thin skin to be offended by —or worried about— such a sophisticated judgment being rendered at such length in such a sophisticated venue. Can Senator Obama’s skin be that thin?

For those who haven’t had a chance to read it, here is the offending piece: “Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama”.

RIP Otto Fuerbringer

July 29, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under In Memoriam, News media | Leave a Comment 

Looking at a copy of Time today, and considering the utterly peripheral role the newsweeklies now play, it’s impossible to imagine how much clout that magazine had for so long until television took over as the purveyor and arbiter of news in the early 1970s.

But back in the day, Time and Newsweek did more than just report the news; they made news. (And Time was unquestionably the first among those equals.) Time’s annual selection of a Man of the Year was a major national event.

Time’s editor during the eventful period 1960-1968 was Otto Fuerbringer. His editorship coincided with the last years of Henry Luce’s life.

Mr. Fuerbringer died on Monday in his retirement home in Fullerton, California; he was 97. There is an obituary in today’s New York Times; there will undoubtedly be an appreciation in the next issue of Time.

He was born in 1910 in St. Louis into a family of Lutheran ministers. At Harvard (’32) he was President of the Crimson. He returned home and wrote for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for a decade before joining Time as a national affairs writer. He wrote more than thirty of the magazine’s famous cover stories; the Times quotes his description, in one of them, of Senator Harry S Truman, before he became Vice President, as “a man as neat and grey as his double-breasted suits who has none of the flowing pretensions that many senators wear like togas.”

One of Mr. Fuerbringer’s innovations was to liven up Time’s hitherto staid and formulaic covers. One of the magazine’s most famous and controversial covers appeared on his watch on 8 April 1966 — asking, in bold print, the stark question: “Is God Dead?”

He also introduced the work of outside artists. Among them, he commissioned Bernard Safran to paint a portrait of RN for the cover of the 31 October 1960 issue.

“I Have Become A Symbol”

July 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, Election 2008 | 2 Comments 

Dana Milbank in the Washington Post hammers Sen. Obama mercilessly:

Barack Obama has long been his party’s presumptive nominee. Now he’s becoming its presumptuous nominee….

[His late-afternoon event] turned out to be his adoration session with lawmakers in the Cannon Caucus Room, where even committee chairmen arrived early, as if for the State of the Union. Capitol Police cleared the halls — just as they do for the actual president. The Secret Service hustled him in through a side door — just as they do for the actual president.

Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, “This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for,” adding: “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions.”

As he marches toward Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path), Obama’s biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris.

Some say the supremely confident Obama — nearly 100 days from the election, he pronounces that “the odds of us winning are very good” — has become a president-in-waiting. But in truth, he doesn’t need to wait: He has already amassed the trappings of the office, without those pesky decisions.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reported last week that Obama has directed his staff to begin planning for his transition to the White House.

No, We’d Best Not

July 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Culture, Nixon Administration figures | Leave a Comment 

Everyone knows that pot leads to hard-core stuff — smoking crack, shooting horse, and jumping the shark. As its fourth season rolls, as it were, on, the dark, edgy Showtime series “Weeds” is getting darker and edgier. Maybe the producer’s handbook advises that elements such as 17-year-old-with-single-parent-neighbor sex, incestuous overtones, and pot dealer Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) enjoying getting spanked by the mayor of Tijuana while she tries to get him to put her back in business will keep the dread beast at bay as it circles in the deceptively inviting waters off the coast of “Ren Mar,” which looks a lot like real-life Del Mar, one town south of Solana Beach in San Diego county, site of a fatal great white attack earlier this year.

Edgier: The title of this week’s anything-goes episode, “Yes I Can,” is a riff on Sen. Obama’s slogan.

Even edgier still: “Weeds” actor Andy Milder plays TNN’s Frank Gannon, a former White House aide, in the upcoming film “Frost/Nixon.”

Nixon In Cuba

July 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under