The New York Times went hard last week at the character of
Vietnam War hero-turned-Republican presidential candidate John
McCain. The attempt backfired in spectacular fashion.
** OBAMA OPENS (16-POINT?!) LEAD NATIONALLY AS CLINTON CAMPAIGN PLOTS “AIR BURST BARRAGE.” Clearly, the Clinton campaign is exhibiting some signs of emotional and political implosion. (There are some things I’m not reporting, out of present deference to some figures from California and elsewhere.) The brand new CBS News/New York Times poll shows Obama with what to me seems an incredible lead nationally, 54% to 38% over Hillary Clinton.
I think that’s way too high, though I am sure Obama is in the lead. But what do I know? There is no NWN poll, at least not yet.
What I do know is that deeply worried Clinton campaign advisors are plotting a witches’ brew of attacks to stop Obama. One described it to me as the “air burst barrage.”
He’s referring to an old doctrine of the Cold War. A Soviet doctrine, as it happens, which is why he knew the name would perversely appeal to me. If US bombers were ever to be closing in on Moscow to nuke the Russian capital into oblivion, the plan was to launch an “air burst barrage” to stop the planes, even stealth aircraft. In other words, to create a devastating cordon of conventional and nuclear explosions to prevent any aircraft from getting through to the target. You can draw your own conclusions as to the effect of that last ditch strategy on the countryside.
** AMERICAN LEADERSHIP PROJECT: NO TV BUY YET. That long-rumored pro-Clinton/anti-0bama so-called 527 independent expenditure committee reported here last Wednesday morning is not off to a flying start.
The group, dominated by California Democrats, has according to contact person and president Roger Salazar in an e-mail exchange this afternoon with NWN, yet to make an appreciable media buy in the March 4th primaries.
** CNN TEXAS POLL: SLIGHT EDGE TO OBAMA. CNN’s new poll of the Texas Democratic presidential primary has Barack Obama moving into a very slight lead over Hillary Clinton. It’s Obama 50%, Clinton 46%. A week ago in Texas, CNN had Hillary holding a narrow lead over Obama, 50% to 48%.
Among the one-third of Texas Democratic primary voters who watched all or most of last Thursday night’s Texas debate, Obama has a 20-point lead over Clinton.
** CLINTON ADVISOR BLOWS UP WITH PRESS. Here is Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson going ballistic today on one of those interminable conference calls, blaming the press for being very unfair to the former Democratic presidential frontrunner. In his view, as expressed here, Barack Obama’s campaign is “entirely negative,” while the Clinton effort has done nothing more than compare and contrast.
“I think it is true,” Wolfson complained, “that every time the Obama campaign in this campaign has attacked Senator Clinton in the worst kind of personal ways, attacked her veracity, attacked her credibility, said that she would say or do anything to get elected, the press has largely applauded him.”
Wolfson, of course, is not engaged for his ability to charm or to articulate a compelling vision of the future. He’s a sort of enforcer type.
** NEW PODCAST. I talk about the road ahead after Wisconsin and Hawaii.
** IF A TREE FALLS … If a major presidential candidate gives a major address, and no one pays attention, did it really happen?
Hillary Clinton delivered a speech billed as a major foreign policy and national security address this morning in Washington. I was told this speech was intended to set the table for the eight days of campaigning left until Texas, Ohio et al. But none of the cable networks carried it, aside from showing brief snippets in a split screen, and C-SPAN did not carry it, either.
Perhaps that’s because it committed no news. I scanned the speech text, and noticed nothing new. And there was no direct, or even particularly juicy indirect, attack on rival Barack Obama. All I can recall offhand is talk of how dangerous it would be try to try someone untried in the Oval Office, having just gone down that road with George W. Bush.
Which may be a good argument for John McCain.
Next up in Hillary’s day, a big fundraiser in Washington.
** LATEST DRUDGE FLASHPOINT: OBAMA IN “TERRORIST” GARB. Here’s the latest campaign flashpoint courtesy of the Drudge Report. Drudge published a photo he says was circulated by frustrated Clinton campaign staffers of Barack Obama wearing traditional Somali garb, which the staffers complained would have been all over the news media if Hillary had done something similar.
The Obama campaign slammed the Clintons for this. New Hillary campaign manager Maggie Williams hit back, wondering how Obama viewed in the garb could be a negative, and didn’t deny the charge.
There has been a consistent wave of anonymized e-mails carrying sub rosa, false charges about Obama, centering on his different-ness, prior to each round of major primaries and caucuses. You know the stories, secret Muslim, educated in a madrasa, sworn in to the Senate on a Koran, etc.
** CALIFORNIA REPUBLICANS MOVE RIGHT. With talk of carrying California for presumptive presidential nominee John McCain — who few of them actually supported in the primary — hard right conservatives won internal party fights at this weekend’s California Republican Party convention in San Francisco. Former state Republican chairman Shawn Steel, an amiable yet flamboyant far right conservative, trounced incumbent Republican National Committeeman Tim Morgan with 60% of the vote. Morgan is more moderate, treasurer of the Republican National Committee, who criticized the party’s hiring of non-citizens for top party posts. It turns out both had been in the country illegally for years.
The convention also adopted a hardline conservative platform.
Meanwhile, the party’s only proven statewide votegetter, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, was on the other side of the country for the National Governors Association meeting. But he was highly unlikely to be at the convention in any event.
McCain himself was very tepidly received when he was the only presidential candidate who bothered to appear at the party’s convention last fall outside Palm Springs. The rightward move of the party, which raises little money, does little for what polls show to be a very uphill struggle to carry California against either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.
** WHERE THEY ARE TODAY.
Hillary Clinton is in Washington, DC for a campaign reboot. She delivers what is billed as a major address on foreign policy and national security at George Washington University. She will also hold a big private Washington fundraiser.
Bill Clinton campaigns across Ohio with rallies in Chillicothe, Portsmouth, Athens, and Lancaster.
Barack Obama has roundtables and rallies in Cincinnati and Dayton, Ohio.
Michelle Obama campaigns across Texas with rallies in Beaumont, Galveston Island, and Houston.
John McCain has events in Rocky River and Parma, Ohio.
Mike Huckabee has events in Providence and Warwick, Rhode Island.
THE MORNING COLUMN
** THE MCCAIN AND SCHWARZENEGGER “SCANDALS” LINK.
The week ahead in presidential politics, amazingly free of any primaries or caucuses, nonetheless has major events coming up, mostly centering around what may be Hillary Clinton’s last full week to rally against Barack Obama.
But first let’s focus in on that backfiring New York Times expose on John McCain, which is similar to the Los Angeles Times’ backfiring expose on Arnold Schwarzenegger. Both hits had the same editor at the center of the action.
I’m referring, of course, to this past Thursday’s New York Times story on John McCain and lobbyists. And one lobbyist in particular, a very attractive young blonde who in 2000 supposedly had an affair with the maverick Western senator, as the paper’s sensational yet largely fact free lead very strongly implied.
It reminded me of the eleventh hour assault on Arnold Schwarzenegger leveled by the Los Angeles Times during the 2003 California recall campaign. The timing in both instances was suspicious. The Schwarzenegger expose happened five days before the election, just as the former action superstar was beginning a statewide bus tour to cement his front-running status. The McCain expose happened after the Vietnam War hero effectively won the Republican nomination with a California primary victory that knocked Mitt Romney out of the race, leaving his party with no good options.
As it happens, one editor was at the center of both sensational stories.
Some say the publication of this New Republic story — planned originally for today — prompted the New York Times to publish a few days ago.
The New Republic reports that the Washington bureau chief of the Times, Dean Baquet, played the key managerial role in pushing the story forward, against the skepticism of Times chief editor Bill Keller.
What the New Republic piece doesn’t say, since it’s written by an Easterner, is that, prior to becoming the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, Dean Baquet was with the Los Angeles Times. Most recently, he was its editor, and won widespread praise in the journalism profession for getting fired rather than carry out yet another round of cuts. But prior to that hero-making stance, he was the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. And in that role at the LA Times, Baquet was deeply involved with and a key internal advocate of the late-breaking LA Times story during the 2003 California recall slamming Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That story proved to be a major backfire, as Schwarzenegger not only survived but went on to a landslide victory, with most not buying the convenient late timing of the story. Nor its prior awareness by top Democrats, who were primed to go on the attack against Schwarzenegger. The LA Times and its influence has been on a steep downslope ever since.
I wonder if the McCain story will have a similar effect on the New York Times.
The LA Times, under then editor John Carroll, whose animus for Schwarzenegger was evident, threw a team of investigative reporters working with Carroll and Baquet at every aspect of the former Mr. Universe’s life. Schwarzenegger realized this early on. Coupled with the paper’s obviously biased coverage against his candidacy (Times headlines referred to him as “Actor”) — replete with polls which were consistently out of phase with all other credible polls, including the private polls of then Democratic Governor Gray Davis, the very subject of the recall — this made Schwarzenegger notably wary of the Times, as one might suppose.
When all was said and done, Baquet, Carroll, and their crack team of investigators didn’t come up with much. Other than a set of sensational charges that Schwarzenegger had behaved disrespectfully and abusively toward several women. This became the basis of what was dubbed “Gropergate.”
The trouble was that what the Times had was essentially a rehash of a 2001 Premiere magazine article on the same topic. Some of the same women were in both stories. After months of investigation, the LA Times came up with refried beans. Which Schwarzenegger had had ample time to consider since Premiere magazine did it first.
Some of the story sounded like amplified rumor, with questionable details. If one were so inclined, at least half of the story could be knocked down. But some would remain, and getting into any of it would further obscure the campaign’s close.
And some of it was undoubtedly true. Schwarzenegger had misbehaved. Probably not in all the particulars alleged in the LA Times, where volume matched anonymity and vagueness, but enough. And so Schwarzenegger — “Where there is smoke, there is fire” — acknowledged that he had acted like a macho jerk at times, issued a general apology, and set about the task of running against the LA Times amongst his other partisan enemies.
Under Baquet’s guidance, the Times rushed more stories about specific instances of Schwarzenegger misbehavior with women into print. But the Times team was grasping at straws now, with motivation and detail clearly not accounted for in the hurried scramble to validate a backfiring story. One brand new story was promoted to the paper by a longtime Democratic operative. Which the Times neglected to mention. Others seemed at variance with established fact. The purportedly painstaking fact checking, which supposedly accounted for the story appearing so late in the campaign, simply was not. The paper looked worse.
Rushing to defend a backfiring story with more innuendo and hearsay is not what the New York Times did with the McCain controversy, though once again, the editors and reporters had months to flesh out the story. (The Drudge Report revealed the story’s existence in December.) Baquet presumably learned from that mistake with Schwarzenegger.
Of course, one big difference is that the head editor of the New York Times, Bill Keller, was not avidly pushing the story, unlike his 2003 counterpart at the LA Times, John Carroll.
Keller was a skeptic about the McCain story. But Baquet, whose title of Washington bureau chief if anything underplayed his clout at the paper, pushed hard internally on behalf of his reporters. In the end, his position prevailed.
Ironically, to borrow Schwarzenegger’s line, there is some fire beneath all the smoke of the McCain story. While the New York Times utterly failed to demonstrate a McCain affair with the lobbyist in question — no sensational trading of sexual favors for official favors, which is what the story centered on — it did demonstrate that the famous reformer has been pretty chummy with a number of lobbyists and has backed their play on occasion as a powerful senator. (Though the piece did leave out instances of McCain going against lobbyists’ interests.)
But that’s a much more standard political story. Not a knockout blow against a front-running candidate.
And make no mistake, the two Timeses were going for knockout blows against Schwarzenegger in 2003 and McCain in 2008.
They both failed.
The public editor, or ombudsman, of the New York Times, whose charge it is to render judgments on controversies involving the paper, sharply criticized his newspaper for its sensational story strongly implying a past affair between the Western senator and the pretty lobbyist.
Wrote Clark Hoyt: “The newspaper found itself in the uncomfortable position of being the story as much as publishing the story, in large part because, although it raised one of the most toxic subjects in politics — sex — it offered readers no proof that McCain and Iseman had a romance.”
The paper did raise some interesting questions about the relationship between McCain, former chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and Washington lobbyists, suggesting that he’s not beyond their blandishments. But the story led in sensational fashion with the imputation of an affair. Absent that, it was a bit of a snorer.
Of course, it was not absent that. And the upshot is that the nation’s most powerful newspaper, the so-called “Paper of Record,” was rocked to its foundations by the McCain campaign.
“Personally, I was surprised by the volume of the reaction (including more than 2,400 reader comments posted on our Web site). I was surprised by how lopsided the opinion was against our decision, with readers who described themselves as independents and Democrats joining Republicans in defending Mr. McCain from what they saw as a cheap shot.
“And, frankly, I was a little surprised by how few readers saw what was, to us, the larger point of the story. Perhaps here, at the outset of this conversation, is a good point to state as clearly as possible our purpose in publishing. … Clearly, many of you did not agree.”
Clearly.
The political upshot?
The talk show wing of the Republican far right rallied to John McCain against the dread liberal MSM. The lefty/liberal blogoshphere mostly expressed major qualms about the story, or ignored it. With the notable exception of our friends at the Huffington Post, whose proprietor, my old friend Arianna Huffington, was once a huge fan/friend of the Western senator. They played it up big time.
And, contrary to Rush Limbaugh’s ramblings about how this shows the MSM is out to get any Republican no matter what, much, if not most, of the conventional media are openly expressing doubt and dismay about the New York Times story and its methods.
Team McCain’s take at the end of a Thursday filled with furious spin: “We feel good.”
The repercussions of the story will continue to echo this week, as McCain and company continue their task of consolidating the Republican Party. Mike Huckabee is still running, but not seriously, though he wants to get a big vote next week in Texas. Huck hosted Saturday Night Live over the weekend, and winningly went along with the running gag about not knowing when to exit the stage.
Huckabee likes McCain, and vice versa. His continued presence in the race on balance helps McCain, as it gives the far right a way to safely bleed off their resentment of McCain’s moderate apostasies, and distracts from how big a job McCain still has to create a truly national campaign apparatus.
Hillary Clinton, in non-valedictory mode, mocks Barack
Obama yesterday in Rhode Island.
Two people who definitely have national campaign apparatuses, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, continue their duel this week with a Tuesday night debate in Ohio and campaigning in the four primary states voting on March 4th: Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont. These are states that Clinton, now trailing by some 150 delegates won in primaries and caucuses, on the wrong end of an 11-contest losing streak, has to win big to start catching up to the freshman Illinois senator. But it’s not shaping up that way.
A new ABC News poll has Obama in a dead heat with Hillary in Texas and closing in Ohio. Here are the numbers. Texas: Clinton 48%, Obama 47%. Ohio: Clinton 50%, Obama 43%. Clinton, who trails by about 150 pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses to date, needs big wins in both states to climb back into a closely competitive position in the race.
In both states, Obama is now seen by primary voters as the more electable of the two in the fall. Hillary is seen as the stronger leader.
Obama and Hillary had a mostly sedate debate last Thursday night in Austin, Texas. But since then, Hillary has been on the attack, on multiple fronts. So their debate Tuesday night in Cleveland, carried by MSNBC, is likely to be more contentious.
The problem for the reeling Clinton team is that they can’t settle on a consistent line of attack. Or, I should say, line, period. So Hillary alternately, over the course of just a few days, presents a positive, even valedictory front, saying what an “honor” it is for her to even be on the stage with Obama, then goes on to say he’s unqualified to be commander-in-chief, has wronged her by attacking the Clintons for pushing through NAFTA, is lying about her record, is against national health insurance, is a false messiah, etc.
One thing she’s no longer attacking him on is “plagiarism.” After her borrowing of lines from her husband and John Edwards for her much-praised Texas debate close has become evident.
It’s another week in presidential politics, folks. The fun never sets. …
You can always read the full Monday Morning Quarterback on PJ Media.
** 24/7 LIVE TV NEWS FEED FROM RUSSIA TODAY. Russia has re-emerged as one of the world’s great powers. Click here for a live TV news feed on your computer, bringing you English-language, jargon-free, fast-paced coverage of global and Russian news from the new Russia Today channel.
You probably already know about CNN International, BBC World, and Al Jazeera. Russia Today, which also features culture, entertainment, and sports, is based in Moscow and is owned and operated by the TV Novosti division of Russia’s state news agency, RIA Novosti.
While it’s quite foolish to expect to see, say, criticism of Vladimir Putin on Russia Today, the channel is very interesting nonetheless. The NWN live link to RT does not constitute an endorsement of the channel’s views. It’s presented as an otherwise unavailable new media window.
** TRACK GLOBAL AND U.S. ENERGY PRICES IN NEAR REAL TIME VIA BLOOMBERG ENERGY MARKET WATCH. Crude oil is trading around $99 per barrel, after hitting a record $101-plus per barrel on Wednesday.
Your posts are welcome in the Forum.
Read 
| Comments (105) |
Indeed.
>Brasky :
November 15, 2007:
CLINTON: Well, you know, I respect all of my colleagues on this stage.
CLINTON: And, you know, we’re Democrats and we’re trying to nominate the very best person we can to win.
And I don’t mind taking hits on my record on issues, but when somebody starts throwing mud, at least we can hope that it’s both accurate and not right out of the Republican playbook.
(APPLAUSE)
Because what I believe is important is that we put forth what we stand for. I have been active for 35 years. The American people know where I stand.
You know, Senator Edwards raised health care again — when Senator Edwards ran in 2004, he wasn’t for universal health care. I’m glad he is now.
CLINTON: But for him to be throwing this mud and making these charges I think really detracts from what we’re trying to do here tonight. We need to put forth a positive agenda for America…
sorry, where does the “AIRBURST BARAGE” come in?
Feb 25, 2008 06:11 PM
A Freudian slip.
>Hap Hazard :
Just saw Bill Clinton on ABC addressing a rally for Hillary, saying “if you elect me”
Feb 25, 2008 06:08 PM
A Freudian slip.
>Hap Hazard :
Just saw Bill Clinton on ABC addressing a rally for Hillary, saying “if you elect me”
Feb 25, 2008 06:08 PM
The DC speech was billed to me as a conceptual reboot.
The Soviet strategy was real — because of the nukes.
>Brasky :
“Hillary Clinton delivered a speech…in Washington(DC).”
Which is neither Texas or Ohio…she’s so out of touch, she thinks she can win the nomination from D.C.
“air burst barrage” was a non-strategy by the Russians to LOOK as though they had an answer in the bomber gap. Iraq actually tried a similar defense (barring the nuclear warheads) in Desert Storm. Did more damage to themselves than than American bombs.
I shall now call the Clinton Campaign “Crazy Ivan.”
Feb 25, 2008 06:07 PM
Overcoming Personal Challenges Faced by Men After Divorce…
[...] Let’s get the cards all out on the table and flip them face side up, here: The biggest hurt you’re going to suffer after a divorce is likely going to be the enormous blow to your sense of self-worth. It’s not just about ego and male pride, it…