JustOneMinute

I Used To Like Him When He Was Shrill And Partisan...

But now Paul Krugman is just writing about economics, and doesn't seem to have the nerve to say anything.

Paul Krugman's latest effort, "One Good Month", is sure to provide one good Friday for the Krugman Brute Squad. The Earnest Prof ponders the latest employment statistics (hence his title) and finds them wanting. He then describes the choice before us this November - Kerry is surrounded by Rubinomics veterans, and will almost surely walk that road; Bush is an unreconstructed Reaganomics guy, and will take us in that direction. Rather than quibble with the specifics of his characterization of either approach, we will, as a time management exercise, simply identify a few obvious attack lines.

(1) Hey, Dude, Where's My Conclusion?

If this is a choice between Rubinomics and Reaganomics, mightn't we expect a future Nobel-laureate in Economics to offer his informed opinion on the two approaches? Instead, we get economics as talk-therapy:

In short, this year's election will be a contest between a candidate who advocates a return to economic policies that were associated with eight years of very solid job growth, and one who advocates continuation of policies that have, after three years, yielded exactly one good monthly jobs report. I know: Mr. Clinton doesn't deserve all or even most of the credit for the good times on his watch, and Mr. Bush doesn't deserve all the blame for the bad times on his. Still, on the face of it there's nothing to recommend Mr. Bush's approach.

Didn't you feel good under Clinton? Don't you feel bad now? But take out the qualifiers in this paragraph and there is nothing left - Rubinomics is "associated" with eight good years, but Mr. Clinton doesn't deserve "even most of" the credit. "On the face of it" there's nothing to recommend Mr. Bush's approach? My mom knew that - perhaps a big time economist might get behind "the face" and give us his professional evaluation.

(2) Apocalypse When?

We have heard countless times from the earnest Prof (Banana Republic / Banana Republic / bits of sense on entitlements) that the looming deficits and the entitlements bubble must be addressed, or it will crater the US economy. Has that stopped being an issue? If not, why not tell us that Kerry, unlike Bush, will do the right thing - unless there is no evidence of him tackling those issues either, of course.

(3) Catch A Wave, And You're Sitting On Top Of The World

There are serious baseline problems with comparing job creation under Clinton with job uhh, non-creation under Bush (creationists play a different role in this Administration). Check the stats - non-farm payrolls languished around 109 million for three years (Jan 90 to Feb 93), so the US economy is perfectly capable of spending time in the wilderness. Secondly, payrolls bottomed out in May 91, and had regained their previous peak by the time Bill Clinton took office in Feb 93. Consequently, he inherited an economy that had felt the pain, (including that of the Bush I tax hike) and was already experiencing the gain.

George Bush, by gloomy contrast, inherited an economy that was about to hit a wall (based on the lagging employment indicator) - employment peaked in Mar 2001, and only bottomed out in Aug 2003. This makes Clinton-Bush comparisons tricky, and creates huge problems with statements like:

It also tells us that by past standards, March 2004 was nothing special.

And we should be seeing something special, because our economy should be on the rebound. Bad times are usually followed by big bouncebacks. .

One year after employment bottomed out in May 91, the economy had added roughly 400,000 jobs - some bounceback. And is Krugman now predicting a big bounceback for the US? Japan had weak recoveries followed by new recessions for a decade - is Krugman now saying it won't happen here?

Kerrey And Condi

From Glenn, we get the following exchange from the 9/11 Commission hearing today:

Rice's response to Bob Kerrey (transcript -- scroll down) is amusing:

KERREY: Why didn't we swat that fly?

RICE: I believe that there's a question of whether or not you respond in a tactical sense or whether you respond in a strategic sense; whether or not you decide that you're going to respond to every attack with minimal use of military force and go after every -- on a kind of tit-for-tat basis.

By the way, in that memo, Dick Clarke talks about not doing this tit-for-tat, doing this on the time of our choosing.

RICE: I'm aware, Mr. Kerrey, of a speech that you gave at that time that said that perhaps the best thing that we could do to respond to the Cole and to the memories was to do something about the threat of Saddam Hussein.

That's a strategic view...

(APPLAUSE)

And we took a strategic view. We didn't take a tactical view. I mean, it was really -- quite frankly, I was blown away when I read the speech, because it's a brilliant speech. It talks about really...

(LAUGHTER)

... an asymmetric...

KERREY: I presume you read it in the last few days?

RICE: Oh no, I read it quite a bit before that. It's an asymmetric approach.

We may be stumped. A lesser candidate for the speech in question would be Kerrey's prepared statement to a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Iraq in March 2001.

However, we lean towards this "Panel Discussion on Economic And National Security After September 11th" from the November 14, 2001 Concord Coalition Economic Patriots Dinner. The panelists were Warren B. Rudman, Sam Nunn, J. Robert Kerrey, Robert Rubin, and Paul Volcker, although reading the discussion quickly might leave one suspecting the presence of Glenn Reynolds, Steven Den Beste, and Andrew Sullivan. My only hesitation in saying "this is the speech!" is due to the fact that it is Mr. Rudman who refers to asymmetric threats in this discussion, rather than Mr. Kerrey. However, he is undeniably brilliant. We'll geta bit of flavor with his thoughts about how to improve airline security:

But in terms of hijacking the plane, they’d be better off simply saying: We’re going to lock the pilot up, and the new rules say you don’t turn the cockpit over under any circumstances at all. And then, you know, rather than taking away our metal knives and giving us a plastic knife, just ask the passengers to volunteer to put down anybody who wants to get up and hijack the plane. They’d be better off putting a hard rubber mallet in every “barf bag” in the plane -- (laughter) -- and let us take care of the damn problem.

(Applause.)

And on Iraq:

MR. PETERSON: Let’s move to another subject. (Laughter.)

There’s a lot of talk about how we ought to take on Iraq, and that we think they’ve got biological weapons, and we think that they have them weaponized, and they may have nuclear materials. But what’s less clear to me is what we mean exactly by “taking on Iraq,” particularly if they don't do anything overt; particularly if we don’t demonstrate that they were involved in September 11th.

So can you give me some scenarios that you think are sensible, that put some meat on the bones of how we’re going to take on Iraq? What do we mean by this?

MR. KERREY: Invade Iraq and liberate 24 million Iraqis. That’s what I’d do.

MR. RUDMAN: Well I tell you Pete -- (Laughter and applause.)

MR. PETERSON: Bob, you’re just filled with ambiguity tonight.

MR. KERREY: Well, I just --

(Laughter.)

-- look, I mean we spend at least $2 billion a year on a military strategy right now. We’ve got a no-fly zone in the north, a no-fly zone in the south, and guess what? bin Laden’s first attack on Khobar Towers in 1996 occurred because we had military forces in Saudi Arabia after Desert Storm.

So they’re there to contain Saddam Hussein. We have a containment policy in place, we’ve had it in place since 1991, and, you know, again, just sort of measured by the success -- it has reduced Iraq’s capability and it’s reduced the size of the threat but, as long as he’s organizing and loose in our backfield we’ve got problems.

He had thoughts about the Arab street and public opinion:

MR. PETERSON: ...The number that I found stunning -- this was a series of focus interviews that was allegedly done by a very respected organization -- they said 85 percent of the Saudi males, in answer to a series of questions, were supportive of bin Laden.

A stunning percentage of the women were supportive of bin Laden. Now, if you want to visualize a scenario that will entertain you to no end, imagine bin Laden moving in --

MR. KERREY: They said the same thing in Kabul three days ago and they’re all shaving their beards today. (Laughter.) I’m not sure you can count on that opinion poll being very reliable.

(Laughter.)

And his big finish:

MR. KERREY: I don’t disagree with that, Sam. I think sequencing it is right and God knows I would not volunteer to be a diplomat in that effort, obviously from the way I’ve talked, but --

(Laughter.)

-- I was there in 1996 and 1998 and the year 2000 when we were attacked at Khobar Towers and Dar Es Salaam, and Nairobi, Kenya, and the Cole. And we said we’ve got to have a military response, and their answer was: the Muslim world is going to get pissed. Well, tough. You declared war on us, for God sakes.

And so if there’s a threat against the United States I don’t disagree with the need to sequence. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said, but bottom line is, if we judge that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the people in the United States of America then I’d say all bets are off. Because we express this undying concern for the instability we would create; if we responded after we -- we knew who did Khobar Towers, we knew who did the East African embassy bombings, and we knew who did the Cole.

But we were worried about Muslim sensibilities and instability and blah-blah, blah-blah-blah, and then all of a sudden we get 5,000 of our people killed, and the world changes. And I’d say thank God it has and I say don’t forget it, because you’ll be in trouble if you don’t.

MR. NUNN: Bob if you have --

(Applause.)

That's my guess as to what Condi Rice called "brilliant". Here's my idea.

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias is very funny on Kerrey.

Mama Did NOT Say There Would Be Weeks Like This

Don Rumsfeld was quite upbeat a few posts ago; for anyone having a hard time getting worried about the situation in Iraq, Phil Carter and James Risen of the NY Times are helpful.

Not much from Bush or Kerry (Hugh Hewitt thinks the Times should depict Kerry as even sillier and less responsible, but I think they did a fine job of hanging an "Out For Lunch" sign on him). And although we have fun with the Kennedy bashing (and we eagerly await Jimmy Carter joining in with something daft [Thanks, Jimmy!]), neither Kennedy nor Kerry is the immediate issue.

The questions before the house are, do we have sensible goals in Iraq, do we have an achievable plan to reach those goals, and do we have the resources and leadership to execute that plan?

As a bonus, one might wonder whether we are even getting accurate information out of Iraq, either from the media or the Administration.

Folks who have supported the concept of the war with Iraq might view the current developments as an opportunity to refllect on their confidence in Team Bush. And of course, we are a bit stuck, since it is hard to keep the philosophical approach while dumping Bush for Kerry.

Kerry, in what seems to be a stable position on Iraq, insists that failure is not an option, but that we must internationalize the effort. We share Joe Biden's skepticism on the second point, and worry about Kerry's commitment on the first.

Kennedy, with his Vietnam quagmire talk, seems to suggest (as does Sen. Byrd) that our goal should be some sort of Retreat With Honor. These are chaps whose support would be important in a Kerry Administration, so one might wonder, where would Kerry really take us on Iraq? Kerry's political history indicates that he is more inclined to get with his Party than to oppose it.

John McCain gives the speech Bush ought to deliver. He would be such a lonely Democrat, I just can't see him as a Vice President for Kerry. Defeat means he loses his Chairmanship, and a shot at the Rep nomination in 2008; victory means he gets shoved to one side, and never, ever considered for the Presidency.

Send In The Memes

Ted Kennedy is grabbing the Vietnam era memes like it is last call. So far, after announcing that "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam", he has seized both "credibility gap" and "quagmire", and he encroached on "Peace with Honor" when he told Larry King that "we can bring Americans home with honor".

The "Tet offensive" was picked up last weekend by Chris Wallace at Fox News; Tom Friedman has claimed "silent majority". "Secret plan", the phrase appareently never uttered by Richard Nixon, may still be available, although the NY Times may apply it to Kerry, and soon.

But the Big Kahuna, still up for grabs (and waiting to be slapped onto Ted Kennedy) is "nattering nabobs of negativsm".

OK, let's talk about Ted Kennedy for a moment. Mark Kleiman attempts to defend Kennedy's use of the Vietnam analogy. Yes, and the crew tried to save the Titanic, too. Mark's thrust - Kennedy's opponents are twisting his metaphor and taking it out of context; Kennedy didn't mean "quagmire and defeat" when he said "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam; he meant, quoting Mark, "... that, like Vietnam, Iraq is a war which has been so dishonestly presented to the American people and the world community that the President leading it has lost all credibility and become damaged goods."

I am broadly sympathetic to this argument - quite often, especially in the presence of Red Sox fans, I allude to (" 'Effing") Bucky Dent's home run. Many of these often-disappointed fans think I am referring to decades of Red Sox futility and near-misses. But NO! To me, the Bucky Dent metaphor is about looking up into a blue sky on a beautiful fall afternoon, enjoying a moment with friends. I am SOOOO misunderstood.

Kennedy, however, is not misunderstood. Larry King asked him that night about his speech, giving us this:

KING: We're back with Senator Kennedy.

You said today that Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam, and this country needs a new president. Vietnam was started under a Democratic administration.

How do you compare the two?

KENNEDY: We're facing a quagmire in Iraq, just as we faced a quagmire in Vietnam. We didn't understand what we were getting ourselves into in Vietnam. We didn't understand what we were doing in -- in Iraq. We had misrepresentations about what we were able to do militarily in Vietnam. I think we are finding that out in Iraq, as well.

That is basically the -- the similarity. And we have to find new leadership in order to -- to be able to resolve this with a sense of dignity and with a sense of respect, which is going to make sure that we're going to see an independent Iraq, that Americans are brought home with dignity.

I think critics might very well characterize "quagmire" as defeatist.

My problem (which I am hiding down here until I get a real post up) - we clearly have a serious situation in Iraq. (Folks who don't think so can contemplate Phil Carter or James Risen). Now, Kennedy is making himself the issue, giving Administration supporters an easy target, and distracting us from what ought to be a serious debate about WTF do we do now.

Kennedy is closely associated with the Kerry campaign, since he picked John up and carried him on his back through Iowa and New Hampshire. And Kerry has not spoken clearly on this subject. So we drift towards a phony debate about the wrong questions - Dems whining that their patriotism is being attacked, Reps looking for signs of defeatism, and the serious questions sidestepped.

MORE: James Lileks tries to square the current Kenedy with the Kennedy from September 2002. Shorter Lileks - Kennedy lied, people died. (Oh, if you didn't like that, you are going to hate "Kennedy drank, the car sank"). And let's put this in the mix, for Kennedy fans.

MORE: "Kerry's The One" is still out there; and since Ted Kennedy is attempting to apply the Faster Failure Thesis and compress both Vietnam and Watergate into six months, we are racing towards "what did the President know, and when did he know it?" (And no, my lefty comrades, "not much" and "not lately" are not the answers we are looking for).

MORE: Mickey endorses this David Ignatius columns as a sensible way forward.

Robert Goes To The Movies

We laugh. Apparently, this is the pinnacle of debacle, or something - people are waxing nostalgic for "Gigli".

Keep Your Eyes On The Road, Your Hands Upon The Wheel

John "Steady As She Goes" Kerry reacts calmly to the bad news out of Iraq, reminding us of the benefit of electing an older, more wrinkly statesmen:

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry on Wednesday called the situation in Iraq "one of the greatest failures of diplomacy and failures of judgment that I have seen in all the time that I've been in public life."

"Where are the people with the flowers, throwing them in the streets, welcoming the American liberators the way Dick Cheney said they would be?" Kerry said in an interview with American Urban Radio Networks.

"Since I fought in Vietnam, I have not seen an arrogance in our foreign policy like this."

Take a breath, Craggy Guy. Dick Cheney did not mention flowers; perhaps the people with flowers are here.

Somewhat more seriously, what is the point of this question about the current deficit of flower-tossers? Is it really the position of the Kerry camp that this uprising reflects the will of the majority of Iraqis? Or, if Rumsfeld and the foreign press are correct in suggesting that the uprising lacks broad popular support, is it a surprise that the silent majority is staying out of the line of fire?

The LA Times covered Kerry's effort on Tuesday in Cinncinnati. Where was the L-U-V?

...when Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, was pressed about what he would do differently than President Bush to resolve the situation in Iraq, he fell back on his long-standing - and not very specific - response: Bring in other countries to help. [Joe Biden is a skeptic]

...Kerry has acknowledged that he will have to scale back some of the programs he proposed during his primary campaign, a change he said is necessary because of a ballooning deficit that he attributes to Bush administration spending.

Actually, they let him off easy on the "scale back because of the deficits" patter - did his team just notice these deficits last week, or was he lying all through primary season?

UPDATE: No soft spot for Kerry at the Times, either:

Battles in Iraq Bring Troubles for Bush and Kerry as Well / Nagourney, Hulse

WASHINGTON, April 7 — The surge of violence in Iraq has created vast political complications for Democrats and Republicans, as President Bush struggled on Wednesday to address doubts about his foreign policy and Senator John Kerry sought to challenge the conduct of a war he voted for two years ago.

They describe his attacks on Bush and follow with:

...Still, even as he attacked Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry was notably vague in saying how he would handle the matter as president. His advisers said he had no plans to offer a policy speech about a war that aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry alike said they now expected to provide a bloody backdrop for the campaign for months.

"Right now, what I would do differently is, I mean, look, I'm not the president, and I didn't create this mess so I don't want to acknowledge a mistake that I haven't made," Mr. Kerry said on Wednesday on CNN.

Mr. Kerry ignored two questions shouted to him by reporters at a meeting he held with economic advisers, about whether he would "take out" Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite clergyman, a pool report said.

And, later in the story (following news about Bush's many troubles):

Mr. Kerry's remarks on the deterioration in Iraq reflect the extent to which he has yet to come up with any proposals to distinguish himself from Mr. Bush about what might be done there now. His national security adviser, Rand Beers, said Mr. Kerry would support an increase in troop strength along the lines that the Pentagon is now advocating.

Calling it like they see it.

He's Thinking, I'm Linking

While I've spent my free time today learning about Trojan viruses and how to scrub them, Gregory Djerejian has been reviewing the foreign press and studying the situation in Iraq.

His appraisal of the politics behind the uprising is a must-read; with a bit of free time, check his thoughts on troops levels.

In between, he takes a swipe at Safire's call for 10,000 Turkish troops. This is an old see-saw for Safire. And since it combines my thoughts on Turkey (give 'em the bird) with a swipe at Kerry, we crack open the memory vault.

Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This

Donald Rumsfeld puts recent events in Iraq into his unique perspective:

...we're trying to explain how things are going, and they are going as they are going. And we're here pointing out what's taking place in the country. Some things are going well and some things obviously are not going well. And you have -- you're going to have good days and bad days, as we've said from the outset. And this is a moment in Iraq's path towards a democratic and a free system. And it is one moment, and there will be other moments. And there will be good moments and there will be less good moments.

The AFp summarizes the press conference, headlining with "Rumsfeld says US facing 'serious problem' in Iraq". And indeed we are. But let's put the headline in context:

Q - ...Mr. Secretary, despite what you and the general said about thugs and gangs, the facts appear to be that you are fighting pitched -- U.S. forces are fighting pitched battles with both Sunni and Shi'a in many cities in Iraq today... Are things out of control there now?

SEC. RUMSFELD: We've spent a good deal of time on the phone with General Abizaid and General Sanchez and with Paul Bremer, Ambassador Bremer, and the answer is no. We've -- you're correct, there are a number of lives that have been lost, U.S. and coalition. And needless to say, our heart goes out to the families and loved ones of those whose lives will not be lived fully.

On the other hand, the arrows that were up there are really relatively small numbers of people. You say "pitched battles"; these are -- the number of people that are involved in those battles are relatively small. And there's nothing like an army or a major -- large elements of hundreds of people trying to overthrow or to change the situation. You have a mixture of a small number of terrorists, a small number of militias, coupled with some demonstrations and some lawlessness. And it's a serious problem, and the problem's being worked, and General Abizaid and General Sanchez and his team have high confidence.

Belgravitas has the must-read assessment of the Iraqi politics behind this uprising.

John Kerry On MTV

Oh, man, they never asked him my question, and I am still reeling.

My question was short, too, and modeled after the past hits, "boxers or briefs?" and "PC or Mac?"

Senator Kerry - Louis Prima or David Lee Roth?

Dems Abandon "Bush AWOL" Theme

In fact, Bush is in the Navy now, if we are grasping the latest sophomoric cheap shot from the Kerry camp:

Kerry Camp Hits Bush for 'Drunken Sailor' Spending:

"It's as if Bush is a drunken sailor, spending recklessly," said Roger Altman, deputy treasury secretary in the Clinton administration and a Kerry adviser. "When it comes to spending, this administration's rhetoric does not match the reality."

Talk is cheap - they didn't have the guts to put that quote in the press release. Weasel it on!

Well, we deplore the negative, personal tone. But we look to the day when the Bush team describes some Kerry proposal (any Kerry proposal, actually) as a "tired, wrinkled, worn-out, John Kerry proposal badly in need of botox or a face-lift."

A Heretical View of File Sharing

One man's heresy is another man's orthodoxy, we suppose - our impression is that the Times has been strangely sympathetic to file-sharers for a while.

Anyway, this report will not soundbite well - a complicated statistical study of the behavior of German kids on vacation is supposed to provide the last word on the subject here in the U.S.A.?

But we support the conclusion, although it ought to mention that nasty spyware.

If Only

I have a grim suspicion that the subtle qualifier, "if", may be lost in commentary on the news that "Leaders of 9/11 Panel Say Attacks Were Probably Preventable". Here, for example, is the Times lede:

The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented.

Here is one of the quotes that launched a thousand blog posts:

Mr. Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Intelligence and International Relations committees, said, "There are a lot of ifs; you can string together a whole bunch of ifs, and if things had broken right in all kinds of different ways, as the governor has identified, and frankly if you'd had a little luck, it probably could have been prevented." He said the panel would "make a final judgment on that, I believe, when the commission reports."

And the assertive Mr. Kean:

The whole story might have been different," Mr. Kean said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," outlining a series of intelligence and law enforcement blunders in the months and years before the attacks.

"There are so many threads and so many things, individual things, that happened," he said. "If we had been able to put those people on the watch list of the airlines, the two who were in the country; again, if we'd stopped some of these people at the borders; if we had acted earlier on Al Qaeda when Al Qaeda was smaller and just getting started."

We appreciate the bipartisan spanking offered by Mr. Kean, but note (mostly with relief) that Bill Clinton is not a candidate this time around. As to the specifics he cites, such as FBI errors, it looks like old news. That said, everything old will be new again when the final report is released in July of the (now-endless) campaign.

MORE: From the transcript, a plea for perspective:

MR. RUSSERT: And it should be said, those of us in the media did not focus on al-Qaeda in the summer of 2001. In fact, in the 2000 presidential election, I believe terrorism was mentioned twice in the presidential debates. So everyone had a much different mind-set pre-September 11.

MR. HAMILTON: And it's very important that the commission keep that in mind. That is to say, we have to try to put ourselves into the place of the policy-maker back then facing not one, but dozens of threats at that time, and try to understand whether or not they acted reasonably under those circumstances; not the circumstances now, when we're looking back, and it's so very clear.

We switch from "If" to "As if!".

UPDATE: My nose for news - YES, I saw the bit about the White House vetting the 9/11 Commision final report. No, I did not expect a headline like "White House vetting could delay 9/11 report until after election". What the story steers clear of is this, from the transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: Well, you remember when the congressional joint inquiry report was submitted to the White House in December of 2002, it was not made public until July of '03. If you submit your report in July of 2002, can you guarantee the American people that they will see it and read it before the November election, 2004?

MR. KEAN: I have no guarantees, but everybody is planning on that, including the White House. They've set up a special team under Andy Card which is going to look at the report in an expedited manner and try to get it out just as fast as possible. Nobody has any interest in having the report sitting around Washington during the election period and pieces of it leaking out. Nobody has an interest in this thing coming out in September or October in the middle of the election. So I think it's in the White House's interest, our interest, everybody's interest, to get this out in July, and I believe they will.

No Higher Priority

Lacking ready access to a dead horse, I will have to resume beating Richard Clarke's impression that "fighting terrorism, in general, and fighting Al Qaida, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration -- certainly no higher priority".

Having paged through the well-regarded "War in a Time of Peace - Bush, Clinton, and the Generals" by the Pulitzer prize winning David Halberstam, I can say that the Get Osama lede is buried so deeply that it never emerges.

Not mentioned, in what the Times calls "a sprawling tapestry of exquisite bottom-up reporting and powerful vignettes": Osama, Usama, bin Laden, Richard Clarke, the Taliban, Afghanistan, al Qaeda, the embassy bombings, the 1998 cruise missile strikes, or the USS Cole.  Somehow, although I have little doubt that the Clinton aides desperately tried to re-focus Mr. Halberstam on the real story, he persisted in a book about Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo.

He provides an interesting note about Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:

"...no one associated her with any particular view or wing of the party.  No label seemed to stick to her.  But she was passionate about one issue and one man, the Balkans and Milosevic."

He also mentions the notion held by critics that Clinton was legacy hunting in 2000, with his highest priority being a peace settlement in the Middle East.  Lexis-Nexis jockeys might be able to rustle up "Clinton's Final Chapter: Single-Minded, Full-Steam Run at a Global Agenda," January 3, 2000, NY Times", which Mr. Halberstam mentions, to get some added flavor.

UPDATE:  Well, Tim Russert wonders about the Clinton priorities too.

Emerging Meme Watch - Iraqi Tet Offensive

Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday brought it up in an interesting chat with Joe Biden and Newt Gingrich.

But my favorite bit occurred when Sen. Biden delivered the standard spiel that in order to take the burden off of American troops, we need to make this an international effort, with the involvement of NATO troops. That led to the following exchange:

WALLACE: Let me bring Newt Gingrich into this.

Mr. Speaker, is that the answer, to have a U.N. high commissioner and to get a NATO military force there?

GINGRICH: Well, let me say, first of all, you're not going to get any NATO force there that doesn't have the Americans doing most of the heavy lifting. It's not possible for the other NATO countries to provide that kind of force.

...WALLACE: Senator Biden?

BIDEN: If I could comment on that very briefly. A U.N. high commissioner would not in any way have a U.S. commander responsible to the high commissioner -- not at all. It would be a NATO command, number one.

Number two, Newt is right, the most that we could get in there initially is 20,000 NATO forces in my discussions with our NATO commanders and with our European friends at the NAC.

Sen. Biden then explained that NATO could take over some relatively tranquil sectors, such as the border patrol or the Kurdish area. Which prompted:

GINGRICH: Now, my only comment about Senator Biden's proposal was, he just named all the primarily nonviolent parts of Iraq as the areas that the NATO forces would take over, which would put the Americans even more intensely in places like Fallujah.

No deus ex machina plot twists here, as we have noted before.

Good Job By Belgravia Dispatch

He plays "Twenty Questions" with Richard Clarke.

I will repeat question (6) here, with a folow-up:

6) On page 131 of your book, you write:

"The Secret Service and Customs had teamed up in Atlanta to provide some rudimentary air defense against an aircraft flying into the Olympic Stadium. They did so again during the subsequent National Security Special Events and they agreed to create a permanent air defense unit to protect Washington. Unfortunately, those two federal law enforcement agencies were housed in the Treasury Department and its leadership did not want to pay for such a mission or run the liability risks of shooting down the wrong aircraft. Treasury nixed the air defense unit, and my attempts within the White House to overrule them came to naught."

Can you please detail your efforts to gain approval, within the White House, for an air defense unit?

Was it "nixed" by someone there too? Or merely ignored?

Why, exactly, did your efforts come to "naught"?

My follow-up: Condoleeza Rice has been properly criticized for her assertion that no one had imagined a scheme to hijack planes and use them as missiles; Mr. Clarke imagined such a scheme in 1996.

What steps were taken from 1996 to January 2001, when, in your view, no subject had a higher priority than terrorism in the Clinton Administration, to prevent such hijackings?  For example, did the Clinton Administration implement requirements for stronger cockpit doors?  And for years, the standard advice to pilots had been to cooperate with hijackers - was this modified after 1996?  What procedures did the government adopt to address this new potential new tactic?

Finally, it has been reported in the Times that you, Richard Clarke, chaired the July 5, 2001 meeting intended to coordinate our domestic response to the enhanced terrorist "chatter".  At that meeting, which you chaired, did you advise the FAA of the possibility that hijacked planes might be used as missiles?  Is the Times in error when it reports that the FAA released a bulletin advising of an increased risk of hijackings intended to release prisoners?  Did the FAA have in place procedures and policies to deal with the hijack/missile scenario, and if not, why not?

MORE:  I'm cheating.  I have seen a bit of commentary on the question of what Clarke did after 1996, and the gist was, a few initiatives drifted into the bureaucratic wilderness and never returned.  For example, IIRC, the airline pilots opposed stronger, locked doors.  However, his role at the July 5, 2001 meeting now fascinates me.

Shorter Adam Nagourney

A groaner from the Times political correspondent, who distills some cocktail party chit-chat into "In Campaign 2004, the Crystal Ball Is Fuzzy". But not so fuzzy that he can't fill the space.

Let's see - we know (because he tells us) that Campaign 2004 will be roiled by jobs reports, gasoline prices, two conventions (one in NYC!), the handover in Iraq, the 9/11 Commission report, and a federal court ruling on the Dem-friendly 527's and their possibly coordinated advertising.

We may also be shaken, if not stirred, by the capture of Osama, a terror attack, WMD news, and the rumored summertime release of Bill Clinton's book (bound to energize Reps and embarrass Dems, BTW, but really - shouldn't this election be All About Bill, or even Kill Bill II?).

We marvel that the Times did not tear out the front page for this special insight - "Nothing, it seems, can be taken for granted."

Candidates for "Most Significant Story Not Mentioned By Mr. Nagourney" include:

- the excitement generated by the tapping of Bill Richardson as Kerry's VP! Hmm - having typed that, I see why he didn't mention it.

- Valerie Plame Wilson leak-related indictments.

- The truth about Botox.

- a bold court or mayor re-opening the gay marriage debate.

- the inevitable Red Sox collapse, which will reinforce the already deeply ingrained sense that Boston=Loser and swamp the Kerry campaign.

Hall of Fame To Hall of Shame

Jim Bunning is wrong to say these things about state Sen. Daniel Mongiardo, his likely fall opponent.

I associate myself with John Cole's denunciation, via the InstaPundit.

Time does not permit me to explain why I think the videotape will not be released, and this incident will blow over. Fortunately, I have a comments section.

Iraq Is Back!

This story, about a fellow who might be described as a mercenary merely in Iraq for the paycheck, ran on the front page of the NY Times.

Related links at InstaPundit; Belgravia Dispatch; Tacitus.

Are You In Or Out?

The Bush Administration plays Western Pacific Ocean's 11 with theater missile defense (much easier than ICBM defense).

...the network will eventually require the sharing of critical information and coordination among its members, which could split Asian nations into two camps: those inside and those outside the system. Those inside the system say the shield will be a defense against the missile buildup by nations like China and North Korea; those outside say it will destabilize the region and start an arms race.

Australia and Taiwan are falling in behind Japan; India is in talks. No mention of South Korea in this story.

Bold Prediction - this will be a major foreign policy issue over the next few years. I like several things about it, including:

- commitment of Japanese talent and cash;

- pressure on China to disarm North Korea. Right now, the Japanese point to North Korea as their motivation, and what can the Chinese say? But Australia and certainly Taiwan are looking elsewhere. But this is a defensive shield!

- the Russian wild-card.

But I can't have an informed opinion until Dan Drezner opines.

The Times Delivers A Partial Verdict

David Johnston and Eric Schmitt: "Uneven Response Seen on Terror in Summer of 2001".

I don't recall believing that Bush and Company were particularly focussed on terror in the summer of 2001; what set some of us off was the assertion by Richard Clarke that the focus on terror was greater under Clinton.

By that measure, the Times article falls short as a companion piece to the WaPo article from last week.

We Continue Our Research

We are still learning more about John Kerry's principled positions.

More here.

Academic Diversity

The NY Times covers David Horowitz's pot-stirring on the question of academic diversity. The article cites several web-sites, and presents a laughable Godwin's Law violation by Horowitz's critics:

...the American Association of University Professors, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that first codified principles of academic freedom in 1940, has posted a rebuttal to the bill on its Web site, www.aaup.org.

"The danger of such guidelines is that they invite diversity to be measured by political standards that diverge from the academic criteria of the scholarly profession," the statement says. It also argues, for example, that "no department of political theory ought to be obligated to establish `a plurality of methodologies and perspectives' by appointing a professor of Nazi political philosophy, if that philosophy is not deemed a reasonable scholarly option within the discipline of political theory."

Yes, the Times provides that link at their website; Dead Tree subscribers need to insert a wireless card up where it says "All The News That's Fit To Print". However, the Times does not provide a link to the actual rebuttal, or to David Horowitz's "Center for the Study of Popular Culture".

Stanley Fish gets mentioned, without a link to this classic spoof - physicist Alan Sokal wrote a description of post-modern physics as a social construct, and Stanley Fish published it. Sokal and Fish explain; Salon sound-bites it.

Back to the story at hand, Dr. Fish is quoted as saying "There is no room at all, in the hiring process, which is heavily scripted, for revealing political and religious orientation."

The Christian Science Monitor more or less laughed at that in their story on this subject last January:

"You see on someone's résumé that they had a job in Reagan's office, or at the NAACP, or the ACLU, or their activities included Intervarsity Christian Fellowship," says Thor Halvorssen, executive officer of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group that fights first-amendment violations at colleges. "It's tough to hide politics when getting hired. Anyone who says this isn't the case is being willfully deceitful or naive."

Hmm, then is a newspaper that fails to make that point also being willfully deceitful or naive?

My view - as legislation, this is silly, and Mr. Horowitz seems to think so too:

"We are only trying to get their attention," Mr. Horowitz said, referring to university administrations. He said he was turning to legislative lobbying only as a last resort, after having waited unsuccessfully for a year for the State University of New York to adopt his bill of rights. "I am using the legislative resolutions as an inducement to have universities look into this. I have no intention of going to Congress to impose a politically correct faculty on a university."

However, as gadflyism (no, we like that word!), Mr. Horowitz is on to something.

MORE: Reason grapples with some of the problems, and provides a link to the proposed Academic Bill of Rights.

Good Job By The Captain

We continue to keep our eye out for puff pieces about Bush in the Times. However, Jodi Wilgoren runs an unpaid ad for the Kerry folks today: "Kerry, on 'the Rope Line,' Seeks a Big Return on Small Talk":

Mr. Kerry, the all-but-nominated Democratic presidential candidate, has been criticized throughout his career for an aloof, inaccessible style on the stump, and his stemwinders are a constant worry for supporters of his White House bid. Yet he is proving adept at the more intimate political ritual of the rope line: the inevitable postspeech meet-and-greet over a rope placed as a security measure to keep the crowd from the candidate.

The Captain, brought to us via the All Seeing Eye of Glenn, points out that only a month ago, the story was, "give Kerry enough 'rope line" and he'll hang himself.

However, the Times closes with a realistic perspective:

Bill Bain, 45, who had met the senator on a rope line once before, grabbed his hand before he could pull away. "I've shaken the hand of every losing candidate in the last 20 years," Mr. Bain said. "But never twice. That's twice."

Yep, that's twice - first time for everything. Now go root for the Red Sox.

Weird And Wonderful

Matt Hoy laughs at the latest paranoid fantasy of Paul Krugman. Can we summarize? Paul Krugman will have his smears! Twice, CNN has attributed odd comments to the White House; twice they have admitted error. Rather than open his mind to the possibility that people make mistakes, or the possibility that CNN has a liberal bias that prompts it to repeat anything bad about Bush, Krugman is convinced that CNN has folded up like a cheap suitcase and is covering for the White House. Well, his Times photo shows a fetching beard, so he may be a stranger to Occam's Razor.

The Earnest Prof refers in his column to this Wolf Blitzer show and excerpts the transcript extensively, but still manages to drop a key bit of the killer quote just as we get to the good part:

BLITZER: Well, John, I get the sense not only what Dr. Rice just said to you and other reporters at the White House, but what administration officials have been saying since the weekend, basically that Richard Clarke from their vantage point was a disgruntled former government official, angry because he didn't get a certain promotion. He's got a hot new book out now that he wants to promote. He wants to make a few bucks, and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well, that they don't know what made this guy come forward and make these accusations against the president. [Note: Krugman ends the excerpt here, and criticizes Blitzer for claiming he was asking a question]

Is that the sense that you're getting, speaking to a wide range of officials?

KING: None of the senior officials I have spoken to here talked about Mr. Clarke's personal life in any way.

Several days later Wolf Blitzer offered a clarification - by "weird", he was referring to the X-files segment of the comments made by Deputy NSC Advisor James Wilkinson from a show on March 22.

The thrust of the Krugman column seems to be that some other White House officials have gotten to Wolf and have forced him to invent this goofy cover story.

Krugman also goes on about the Letterman tape of the fidgety boy. His theory - the White House, with no evidence except perhaps their TiVo, called CNN and said the tape was digitally edited. Later, when the White House backpedaled, CNN covered for them and claimed it was all an internal snafu.

Could be. I can't imagine CNN covering up like that - I am not sure Fox News would do that - but that may just be me. My theory is a lot less exciting: some WhiteHouse press office staffer sees the clip rolling on CNN. The press folks don't stay up watching Letterman, so he/she calls CNN, inquires about the tape, and asks, perfectly reasonably, are you sure it is not one of Letterman's spoofs?

Some deep thinker at CNN manages to communicate this question to the CNN production crew as "Do we know this tape is authentic? The White House is not so sure". That becomes "The White House says it's a fake", and away we go.

In my world, the White House is not going to call CNN with no evidence and claim, falsely, that a tape is fake - the truth is far too likely to emerge. Evidently, in Krugman's world, this happens all the time. Is thatbased on his journalistic experience at the Times?

MORE: Wolf Blitzer's clarification is available in a Google cache from April 1, and is clipped below.

I will grant that Blitzer sounds ridiculous and is unfair to Krugman, but that just makes this better - neither one's reputation will emerge unscathed, which is fine by me.

UPDATE: Hmm. The Man Sans Insinuendo argues that Krugman skated to the edge without actually accusing Wolf Blitzer, or anyone else, of anything. Fine, then where is Krugman's commitment?!?

MORE: The previous Krugman column, with the shorter Blitzer. And the subsequent K-column, with clarifications at the bottom, as per the new Times policy:

A Yawngate update: CNN called me to insist that despite what it first said, the administration really, truly wasn't responsible for the network's claim that David Letterman's embarrassing video of a Bush speech was a fake. I still don't understand why the network didn't deny White House involvement until it retracted the charge. But the main point of Friday's column was to highlight the way CNN facilitated crude administration smears of Richard Clarke.

Was that really the point? Then why lead with the Letterman non-event? And what are we to make of this segue to the Clarke saga:

In short, CNN passed along a smear that it attributed to the White House. When the smear backfired, it declared its previous statements inoperative and said the White House wasn't responsible. Sound familiar?

And what is the big finish all about?

And there's no excuse for disseminating unchecked rumors because they come from "the White House," then denying the White House connection when the rumors prove false. That's simply giving the administration a license to smear with impunity.

Google Trumps Pilger

As we bask in the glow of the jobs report, we take a moment to help out one of our main men, Tim Blair, who appears to be torn between disbelieving Richard Clarke or John Pilger:

In comments, blogger For Now uncovers a Richard Clarke-smiting article written by John Pilger in December 2001:

The twin towers attacks provided Bush's Washington with both a trigger and a remarkable coincidence. Pakistan's former foreign minister Niaz Naik has revealed that he was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was then travelling in central Asia, already gathering support for an anti-Afghanistan war "coalition".

Hey, follow his links!

Anyway, Google turns up some helpful tidbits - WhatDIDN'Treallyhappen.com, a poor man's Snopes, gives us links to the original Guardian and BBC stories.

The "senior officials" in the Pilger excerpt morph slightly in the Guardian version:

The three Americans at the Berlin meeting were Tom Simons, a former US ambassador to Pakistan, Karl "Rick" Inderfurth, a former assistant secretary of state for south Asian affairs, and Lee Coldren, who headed the office of Pakistan, Afghan and Bangladesh affairs in the state department until 1997.

The "military action by mid-October" changes a bit:

Mr Inderfurth said: "There was no suggestion for military force to be used. What we discussed was the need for a comprehensive political settlement to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan, that has been going on for two decades, and has been doing so much damage."

However, the notion that the Bush Administration was reviewing its options with Afghanistan survives:

The US was reassessing its Afghan policy under the new Bush administration at the time of the July meeting, according to Mr Simons. "It was clear that the trend of US government policy was widening. People should worry, Taliban, Bin Laden ought to worry - but the drift of US policy was to get away from single issue, from concentrating on Bin Laden as under Clinton, and get broader."

The policy was widening, not concentrating on Bin Laden. Sounds bad, BUT - Bush had asked whether killing Bin Laden would be decisive, and had been told (Pavett, CIA) no. So, we were looking for a more comprehensive roll-back. Works for me. The plan that was approved in September called for diplomatic initiatives and military action as a follow-up (IIRC), so this tid-bit is consistent with that.

Now Is The Winter Of Our Discontent...

Made glorious summer by this jobs report.

Employment growth surged ahead in March, surpassing economists' most optimistic expectations and providing the Bush administration with a shot of good news to counter Democratic attacks against the president's economic policies.

The Labor Department said today that the economy added 308,000 jobs last month, pulling ahead of the pattern of tepid employment growth it had recorded since the end of last year to clock the fastest rate of job creation since April 2000.

The Labor Department also revised its estimate of jobs added in January and February to 205,000, almost double its previous estimate of 118,000. The revisions pushed average job growth in the first quarter to 171,000 per month, the most vigorous rate since the second quarter of 2000, shortly after the Internet bubble burst.

President Bush was quick to take credit for the increase, long awaited by the White House.

"This economy is strong," he said in an appearance at Marshall Community and Technical College in Huntington, W.Va. "It is getting stronger."

"There will be growth in the spring", he added.

The economic news came as a blow to the Kerry campaign, prompting one of their ad agenices to quit. Oh, they will deny a connection, but I see right through them - the freight train's comin'!

MORE: From the front page of the Saturday (Dead Tree) Times - George Bush has those job figures, and he is ready to shake it like a Polaroid picture!

VPW - Say It With Me - The Cover-up Is Worse Than The Crime

The NY Times on the Valerie Plame Wilson leak investigation:

Prosecutors investigating whether someone in the Bush administration improperly disclosed the identity of a C.I.A. officer have expanded their inquiry to examine whether White House officials lied to investigators or mishandled classified information related to the case, lawyers involved in the case and government officials say.

OK, we are looking about for a favorable light in this story... here it comes - this is the beginning of the prosecutorial climb-down! Despite intense pressure from Democrats, he can't bring a prosecution on the leak, so he is preparing to toss them a bone.

After this bit of news is absorbed, we will eventually learn that even the bone is too complicated a prosecution.

Bloggus interruptus prevents me from offering more... developing.

MORE: Some grand jury names,and my free advice, are here. Remember, since we are discussing False Statements rather than (grand jury) perjury, the new net is much wider.

Some Gay Marriage News

The state amendment to ban gay marriage passes the George House, and goes to the voters this fall. The NY Times mentions some other states going through a similar process:

On Monday, the Massachusetts legislature decided to put a gay marriage ban on the ballot, although such an amendment could not take effect until 2006. Alabama, Mississippi and Michigan are among the other states most likely to put constitutional amendments on the ballot this year.

Michigan is the only swing state there, but one is enough, so look for more Presidential attention during the year.

Both the Times and the AJC have background on the role played by Democratic members of the Black Caucus. Ghastly quote du jour:

"We shouldn't have to explain to 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds why men are kissing each other," said Mangham, whose vote was critical in Wednesday's passage. "I don't like having to explain that to my kids. I will continue to support their [homosexuals'] right to do what they do, but they will not have the sanctity of marriage."

Uhh, PDA can occur outside of marriage, and I suspect that civil marriages don't really achieve "sanctity". I don't like having to explain to my kids why some legislators are, hmm, alternatively competent.

Noam Scheiber does some odd math, but I agree with his big finish.

And he makes a point about Social Security Survivor Benefits that I did not know. However, the Congressfolk discussing the Federal Amendment are paid to know these things, so the use of the word "lie" seems appropriate, at least in a "reckless disregard for the truth" way.

MORE: Carl Hulse of the NY Times on the national debate to which Noam Scheiber referred; the Times on Massachusetts.

Dream On

OK, some of those links are funny, in a "Help me, I can't wake up" sort of way.