Remembering Tim Russert

Posted by Harkavy at 6:19 PM, June 13, 2008

. . . as one who at a crucial time in '02 lobbed softballs to Dick Cheney.

It's tragic that Tim Russert unexpectedly died, leaving behind family and friends who loved him.

That said, let's try to keep this in perspective — and not the perspective offered up this afternoon by the Washington Post, which called him "the Democratic operative turned NBC commentator who revolutionized Sunday morning television and infused journalism with his passion for politics."

He did not revolutionize anything. He was a news reader, a media celebrity, not a soldier dying in a futile war.

As our body count in Iraq keeps right on climbing, I'll recall Russert's classic '02 interview of Dick Cheney on Meet the Press as a true exemplar of recent American journalism.

I don't mean that in a nice way.

The exact date was September 8, 2002, as Cheney and his frontman, George W. Bush, were lobbying Americans and members of Congress on the urgent necessity of invading Iraq. This was before the key Senate vote.

We now know they were lying, but many of us were thinking that back in '02. Drowning out the dissenters were most of the U.S. media outlets — not all, but most.

And media celebs such as Russert were playing their roles as wing men for schnooks such as Cheney.

In June 2005, I parsed Russert's '02 interview with Cheney in an item called "Shuck and Awe." So I'm just going to plagiarize myself and re-run that item here. See for yourself:

Shuck and Awe

Before the "shock and awe" of March '03, there was shuck and jive. But the Downing Street Memo and other British government documents revealing Blair-Bush skullduggery in 2002 are not old news.

In fact, the recently released documents offer fresh clues not only about (1) the contempt the Bush and Blair regimes had for the intelligence of the American public and press but also about (2) why the occupation of Iraq has turned into such a horror show.

On March 14, 2002, Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser, David Manning, reported to his boss after meetings with Condi Rice and a National Security Council "team" in D.C., according to a memo leaked three years later:

What do you suppose he meant by "different"? Well, the U.S. press, for one thing, is much more easily gulled—in general, that is.

Only three days before Manning sent that memo to Blair, Dick Cheney (on his way to the Middle East) was in Great Britain meeting with the prime minister. The two regimes' CEOs stood still for a press conference in London, where the reporters aren't afraid to ask tough questions, and the Bush regime can't put on its own dog-and-pony show. Here's an example from the March 11, 2002, press conference, courtesy of a White House transcript:

Cheney's reply? This is how he started it:

Yeah, that was really complex. But I guess compared with the "grilling" he gets from people like Tim Russert (left), it's complex. On September 8, 2002, Russert hosted Cheney on Meet the Press and played slow-pitch with him—open-ended questions, perfect for spinning. Here's one:

Yes, ask the vice president to define a buzz phrase that he and his handlers have spent a lot of time honing. Here's another softball:

Gee, what do you think Cheney will say when you let him off the hook with a stupid-ass "Is that accurate?" appended to an otherwise-promising line of questioning? Here's how Cheney belted that blooper pitch:

Keep in mind, now, that Cheney was making up this shit. The Bush and Blair regimes were "fixing" the intelligence, as the Downing Street Memo, revealed three years too late, put it.

A little later in the Russert interview, Cheney said:

Which provoked this question:

Big problem with this question, Tim. You're asking a question that Cheney cannot answer. He can't speak for others' actions. Instead of pinning him down, you're leaving him room to roam.

Russert could have asked this instead: "Our allies haven't come to that conclusion, and they would have no reason to cover for Saddam. You say 'we know.' Give me a specific example of what 'we know,' and how that is at odds with what our allies' intelligence tells them."

But Russert didn't ask that. Instead, he asked Cheney why our allies hadn't "come to the same conclusion." How in the world could Cheney know "why"? (Except for the fact that he and Blair were making up shit and the allies weren't—but he couldn't very well admit that.) This one was easy for Cheney to hit out of the park:

Oh, so our intelligence was good, eh?

Cheney was just giving himself a pat on the back, because the Bush regime was making it up as it went along, so it could justify an unjustified invasion of Iraq.

So, do you see a difference in the kinds of questions British and American politicians have to face? Democracy is more raucous in Great Britain, and the press—with exceptions—is more docile in America.

Now for the other part of the equation: the disastrous occupation that has followed the unjustified invasion. Go directly to the Downing Street memo itself for that. The memo from Matthew Rycroft to Manning of Manning's meeting with Blair on July 23, 2002, summarized MI6 chief Richard Dearlove's recent visit to D.C. (Dearlove is referred to as "C.") Here's a passage from the memo:

"Little discussion" of the "aftermath," huh? We'd better make sure there's plenty of discussion about that.

The Obama Vice-President Committee 'Controversy': Has the Press Forgotten About Cheney?

Posted by Harkavy at 9:13 AM, June 11, 2008

The new fuss over Barry Obama's choice as chair of his veep-selection committee shows that the U.S. media have already dropped Dick Cheney into the memory hole.

Sure, many people want to forget the two terms of our de facto president, but even the best reporters are ignoring history.

How can anyone forget Cheney? He has run the presidency — into the ground. Using 9/11 as an excuse, he has encased us in Iraq the way various mastodons got trapped in the La Brea tar pits. He has hastened the dismantling of New Deal protections for the common folk.

Cheney achieved this by his appointment eight years ago as the chair of George W. Bush's veep-selection committee. Who did Cheney, the ultimate D.C. insider, pick? Himself.

Yet the banner headlines this morning, especially in the Washington Post, are that Obama's choice of James A. Johnson as chair of his veep-selection committee is controversial because of insider status and his lucrative consulting deals.

Wasn't Cheney the CEO of Halliburton before he was vice president? Didn't Vice President Cheney wind up making billions for Halliburton — which continued to pay him after he moved into the White House? (See my October 2005 post "Over a Barrel.")

This morning's Washington Post story "Obama's Choice of Insider Draws Fire: Republicans Assail Head of VP Vetting" doesn't even mention Cheney. One sentence would have been enough to at least jog people's memories and put this relative non-fuss over Johnson into context.

But normally excellent reporter Jonathan Weisman's story (co-authored with David S. Hilzenrath) blew it.

They had space to quote a GOP flack but they didn't even mention how Cheney came to rule the White House?

Of course, to even mention Cheney would have made today's A1 splash a relatively non-story, because Johnson is a piker compared with pre-veep Cheney, the classic insider.

The Post's first four paragraphs this morning:

Obama has proven that he's different. Bush has been eminently quotable as a malaprop waiting to happen. Obama is quotable in a far different way. For example, the Post notes:

Juicy, eloquent, witty quote. John McCain, a skilled schmoozer with reporters, is the same way.

No matter who wins the presidency, he'll be a good quote, though not in the way Bush has been.

In the meantime, though, don't forget Cheney. He was a terrible quote most of the time because access to him was severely limited to staged events and he was too clever to accidentally put his foot in his mouth.

In his unguarded moments, however, Cheney was eminently quotable. Cheney's "fuck yourself" to Pat Leahy is particularly memorable — the Post itself wrote an unexpurgated story about that episode in June 2004:

More important — and more obscured by the passage of time — is Cheney's 1998 speech to a bunch of Amarillo oilmen. As I noted in August 2004:

Almost exactly 10 years later, Cheney's attempt to grab the Caspian oil has failed miserably, and he has piled up 4,000 bodies in a futile grab for Iraq's oil.

The job of "worrying about it" has fallen to others.

Crying 'Onkel Tom'

Posted by Harkavy at 2:39 PM, June 5, 2008

The German lefty paper Taz is stirring a P.C. fuss overseas with a satirical headline calling the White House "Onkel Baracks Hütte" — "Uncle Barack's Cabin."

Never mind that lots of people and papers around the world are thrilled that Obama is the Democratic presidential candidate. And never mind that Harriet Beecher Stowe's 19th century novel was anti-slavery. The moniker "Uncle Tom" has been widely applied to subservient, pliant black folk who knuckle under to the white establishment. It could be argued that it's apt when applied not to Obama but to people like Condoleezza Rice, but it is impolite.

The fact is that Die Tageszeitung (the paper's formal name) wasn't slamming Obama but was being satirical, and that's obvious to a lot of Germans. Stowe's novel isn't known only in America — I'd bet that more German schoolkids than American schoolkids are familiar with it — there's a Berlin subway stop that's long been named Onkel Toms Hütte. But the moniker as applied to Obama in a story that clearly wasn't calling him an Uncle Tom has pissed off the German establishment and disheartened some of the paper's P.C. supporters. As Der Spiegel's David Gordon Smith reports:

Yeah, so what? Taz's deputy editor-in-chief, Reiner Metzger, had this response:

When's the last time you heard an editor of a major U.S. daily say that?

Princess Non-Grace

Posted by Harkavy at 8:01 AM, June 5, 2008

The fizz gone from Hillary's campaign, she opens a can of kiss-ass on the public to try to get the veep slot.

Kicked off the national stage, Hillary Clinton is trying to clamber back on as putative nominee Barry Obama's running mate. She lacks the political chops to pull it off; she needs a miracle.

Like a spoiled heiress, Clinton is too ungracious to yield on anything. That's not a strength as a politician; that's a weakness.

Her strategy, as always, relies solely on public P.R.: Her aides are doing it for her, leaking to reporters that she's about to soon officially yield. In effect, the aides have started a conciliatory process leading up to that dreaded C-word: concession.

She's had a mostly non-record as a senator from New York. At least Obama has an excuse for his lack of major Senate action: He's a freshman senator. In that hidebound, tradition-bound body, freshmen don't usually play on the varsity.

Fellow senator Joe Biden said of fellow Democrat Hillary during his own futile presidential bid: "There's not a major bill I know with Hillary's name on it."

And now she's mounting a campaign to get the vice-presidential slot not because she has policy issues on which she wants to influence presidential candidate Obama. At least Dick Cheney had an agenda he wanted to pursue when he seized the vice-presidential nomination in 2000. Sure, it was a disastrous agenda, but at least he was sharp enough to do the maneuvering required to seize it.

As one of my colleagues shrewdly noted, Hillary has in one sense been an effective senator in the state she parachuted into with her carpetbag. She's been a dogged "Senator Pothole," the moniker slapped on one of her predecessors, Al D'Amato. That goniff instigated a blizzard of little actions and favors on his constituents while quietly practicing sleaze on national issues. Most national pols do that sort of "constituent" P.R. activity locally, but Hillary's staff has been most diligent at it. The result? She's been more like a county official than a senator.

Look hard to find major legislation in the Senate that she has drummed up through compromise and deal-making with Republicans — or even with fellow Democrats. Compromise and deal-making are not at all bad things — that's the way things get done in a democracy/republic; that's the way politics and governance are supposed to work.

John McCain did it, teaming with Democrat Russ Feingold on campaign reform. And McCain showed some crucial bipartisanship with his highly visible torment of Bush regime schnook — and diehard GOP operative — Jack Abramoff during the Wampumgate scandal, a major shakedown of Indian casino money. Abramoff was a much shrewder operative in the Congress hallways than Clinton. The Washington Post busted open that scandal, and McCain conducted major hearings on it. As I noted in November 2005:

McCain was adroit enough to lead an investigation of fellow Republicans — even one that ensnared GOP members of Congress and the White House — and then capture his party's nomination. He overcame his shameful performance in the '80s as a lackey for S&L scandal scumbag and GOP campaign moneybag Charles Keating and later built a reputation (thanks to his schmoozing of the press) as a campaign-finance "reformer." (See my February 2000 Voice story on McCain's presidential primary campaign that year.)

McCain was a spoiled son of an admiral, carpetbagged into Arizona, married into money, and was practically given a slot in the House. Nevertheless, he became skillful by the time he entered the Senate.

Hillary's performance in the Senate? feeble on national and international issues. Mostly, she merely launched dog-and-pony shows (which all senators do) instead of politicking across the aisle — or with her fellow Democrats — on meaningful and powerful legislation.

Here's an example: On February 16, 2007, she introduced S.B. 670: "A bill to set forth limitations on the United States military presence in Iraq and on United States aid to Iraq for security and reconstruction, and for other purposes."

Sounds great, right? Here are the facts: The co-sponsors? None. Supporters? None. Opponents? None. Hearings? None. The latest major action on that bill? Its introduction on February 16, 2007. In other words, there was no action on that high-sounding legislation other than its introduction.

That's a meaningless piece of P.R. designed only to try to counter her previous important vote in October 2002, when she endorsed the Bush regime's invasion of Iraq. Her new bill was something she could point to as an example of how she tried to make war against Bush's Folly, when in fact she never did.

On February 15, 2007, the day before that non-crucial, non-crafted-through-arm-twisting-and-deal-making piece of non-legislation on the Iraq War was introduced, Hillary introduced S.B. 649: "A bill to require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to conduct an independent safety assessment of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant."

That would make her fellow New Yorkers feel better: a tough stance toward her own state's nuclear plant. But it was just show, another P.R. move — a Senator Pothole type of non-maneuver that all senators try to do in their spare time. That bill had one co-sponsor (fellow New York senator Chuck Schumer) and it died a-borning. The latest action on that bill? Its introduction on February 15, 2007.

Now she's trying another P.R.-only move to get the veep nomination. To get it, she'll be relying on polls, not pols.

Next major action? Her upcoming official concession speech. After that? Non-action on her bid by Obama — if he's smart.

Newsday to Line Dolans' Bird Cage

Posted by Harkavy at 6:05 PM, May 12, 2008

Another paper falls to journalism know-nothings.

Jim Dolan makes Rupert Murdoch seem like Jesus H. Christ. And that's why Cablevision's apparently successful attempt to swallow up Newsday is making us gag.

Blessed with the huge cash flow of a monopoly cable company (thanks only to cities long ago giving up a public utility to private companies), the Dolan family has enough gelt to spend $650 million to buy the behemoth Long Island newspaper. For a while, it looked as though Murdoch was going to land the whale, but call me Ishmael if the Dolans didn't sink their hooks in deeper.

No matter that the Dolans (Jim's rich daddy is Chuck) have no experience in the news business — Cablevision's News 12 operation doesn't count. At least Murdoch knows the business. When he owned the Voice years ago, he was too smart to turn it into a right-wing rag. The Dolans will further blandify Newsday.

Wall Street's not exactly enthusiastic about the match, which makes about as much sense as the Dolan-owned New York Knicks spending a fortune to hire as coach Mike D'Antoni, who can't coach defense and inherits a roster ill-suited to his run-and-gun style.

Jim Dolan is the slack-jawed yokel who has screwed up the Knicks with his meddling into things he doesn't know about. His only experience with journalism is to squelch it. Colleagues have reminded me that the Knicks' policy toward reporters is unusually repressive and controlling.

When there's bad news brewing in the bowels of Madison Square Garden, Jim Dolan and crew make sure to clamp down hard to keep any of it from leaking out. Sure, every company does that, even newspaper companies, but the Knicks' operation is particularly harsh toward journalists.

Yes, these are the hard-hitting, courageous people we want running our newspapers.

You have to feel sorry for Newsday editor John Mancini (whom I used to work for at a now-defunct paper) and the other fine journalists who still have jobs there. That's because the Dolans' operations are relentlessly mediocre.

As a I said before, Wall Street's not particularly gung-ho. A story earlier this month in Newsday noted:

No matter. The newspaper business may be ailing, as its owners all over America keep moaning, but the New York Times pointed out yesterday that Newsday produced more than $80 million last year in profits on $500 million in revenue.

The Dolans will now have two cash cows, even if one of them is relatively sickly from eating too much newsprint.

The question is: What changed aging Chuck Dolan's mind? As Newsday's own Thomas Maier wrote Saturday:

Son Jim apparently isn't smart enough. But that's no surprise.

Polls Shoved Down Our Throats

Posted by Harkavy at 9:03 AM, January 24, 2008

Margin of error: The new L.A. Times survey on the presidential race

One key result from the L.A. Times/Bloomberg News presidential poll released this morning is not too close to call: The Times itself misinterpreted its own poll.

And because widely hyped polls from major papers are often self-fulfilling prophecies (who doesn't want to jump on the bandwagon?) that become "news" bits played and replayed by the electronic media and are marketed back to us by the candidates and their handlers and the news readers on TV, the best course is for you to ignore them.

Based on my independent survey of my own opinions — and what I learned long ago about polling from pollsters themselves and statistics professors — here's what you should ignore:

The headline on veteran L.A. Times reporter Doyle McManus's bannered story in his own paper:

Wrong. The poll's main finding is that Barack Obama has continued his rapid momentum upwards, slicing and dicing Hillary Clinton's previous lead.

McManus's lead paragraph is even worse:

The problem — see for yourself — is that the poll reveals that Clinton's lead may be as small as 1 percentage point. "Solid"? Her edge over Obama, according to the poll's own results, continues to erode even more rapidly than the ground under one of those cliff-top houses on the Southern California coast.

Let's not even get into the fact that the poll itself is questionable, claiming to be nationwide but consisting of telephone interviews of "1,312 registered voters, 532 Democratic-primary likely voters and 337 Republican-primary likely voters." The supposed 42-33 lead for Hillary is based on scripted phone conversations from a boiler room with 532 people across America.

And let's not even quibble about the highly questionable wording of the questions, which play on the vague notions of "experience" and "change." And let's not even get into the fact that the pollsters reveal the statistical margin of error but don't reveal the "confidence level." (Read this explanation of those terms, and of political polling in general, from the Portland Oregonian.)

Leaving all that aside, let's just say that the story blares the "news" that Clinton leads Obama 42 percent to 33 percent. Of course, the second paragraph from the end notes that the margin of error is plus-or-minus 4, meaning that Clinton could have 38 percent and Obama 37 percent. In other words, the results fall barely, just barely, within the margin of error. That's too close to call, unless you're Dick Cheney and you mobilize GOP officials and courts to steal the election.

The only thing these polls are good for is assessing movement, change, trends from previous polls taken the same way and from the same pollster. And in that case, Obama is actually the winner. He has the clear momentum the more exposure he gets. If the rate of his momentum had slipped, that would be news.

(Full disclosure: Obama disclosed the other day that his favorite TV show is The Wire and that he thinks that the show's Omar is a "fascinating character." I couldn't agree more. And who wouldn't support Obama after that disclosure?)

If you don't believe me about McManus's own fuckup on his paper's own poll, here is the headline on the formal, final press release and detailed results that the L.A. Times issued on its poll:

Yes, the pollsters' own story does not lead with Hillary's holding an edge. And the press release notes up high:

McManus doesn't even mention that earlier poll or Clinton's earlier 24-point advantage.

The fact that such a shift has occurred in less than two months' time is astounding, especially considering that Clinton outpolled Obama in New Hampshire.

The subhead on McManus's story does refer to a change in Obama's support. But it's wrong-headed. The subhead:

The poll actually shows that there is also no longer a "clear front-runner" on the Democratic side.

Unless you see 1 percentage point — which the margin between Clinton and Obama could be, according to statistics — as a "clear" lead.

Charlie Wilson's War Is Over. He Lost.

Posted by Harkavy at 10:33 AM, January 23, 2008

That's GM's former boss, "Engine Charlie" Wilson. And we're the victims.

"What's good for General Motors is good for the country." OK, so GM's big boss in the '50s, "Engine Charlie" Wilson, was quoted somewhat out of context when he said something like that during his confirmation hearings as Ike's Secretary of Defense in 1953.

As it turns out more than 50 years later, as GM goes down the tubes, so is the rest of the U.S. economy. So Wilson was actually right, whether or not he was misquoted.

Witness the Fed's panicky interest-rate reduction. Are we headed toward a recession? Probably not. It may well be a depression.

Only a few months ago, I would have given good odds that I would fall into another one of my major depressions before the country did. But my mental health seems to be stronger than the country's economic health. Believe me, that should cause great concern among all Americans.

Apparently, "Engine Charlie" Wilson was asked back in '53 whether he could make decisions as the war secretary that would be bad for GM, and he replied that such a situation was unthinkable "because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa." Reporters picked up on part of his quote, turned it around and mis-recorded it for posterity.

No matter, really. What was once unthinkable last century is now a 21st century reality: The long-ailing auto giant has taken another step toward oblivion.

Word is just out that GM has lost his long, long grip as the world's largest automaker. Agence France-Presse reports this morning:

For a comprehensive look at GM's woes, check out Carol Loomis's February 2006 Fortune piece "The Tragedy of General Motors."

She blames GM's bloated pension plans for helping drag down the company. Actually, it's the insane investment games played by the trustees of the pension fund that may be more to blame. But she's a damned good writer and is known for being prescient. As Loomis pointed out then, the company was on a seemingly inexorable path toward bankruptcy:

And two years later, it's higher than ever. Meanwhile, the Fed's interest-rate cut, prompted by a panic in the Asian markets, means that you'll be able to get even more credit cards at lower rates. You'd be crazy to assume more debt, of course. But going crazy is what descending into a major depression is all about.

Paper Trails in Iraq

Posted by Harkavy at 7:24 AM, September 5, 2007

The New York Times pulled out of Iraq coverage even before the war started when it sent in Judy Miller to beat the WMD war drums.

But five years later, it still hasn't re-entered the battle, judging by its inept handling of the Bush-Bremer dustup over who was responsible for disbanding the Iraq Army back in 2003.

Ignoring explosive material published a year ago in the British press and played up practically everywhere in the world but in the major American papers, the Times downplayed SecDef Donald Rumsfeld's role in the tragic blunder of dismantling the army and police, and the paper didn't even mention Dick Cheney.

Over the weekend, Robert Draper, peddling his book Dead Certain, said Bush had been taken aback by the tragic decision announced by Bush regime czar Jerry Bremer to disband Iraq's army in the spring of 2003.

That was in a September 2 Times story by Jim Rutenberg, who apparently hadn't talked to Bremer about Bush's comments. (Rutenberg's story was just a hack job titled "In Book, Bush Peeks Ahead to His Legacy.") Bremer rushed over to the Times and dropped off a bundle of letters that, he claims, show that Bush knew of the plan and liked what Bremer was doing.

Here's how Times reporter Edmund L. Andrews handled the gift from Bremer in the September 4 story:

The Andrews story makes it sound as if Bremer was briefing Rumsfeld about this plan, that the plan was something that Bush and Bremer were hammering out. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In October 2006, David Blunkett, Britain's Home Secretary during the crucial pre-invasion and immediate post-invasion period, told all in an interview with the Guardian (U.K.) and the serialization of his diaries from that time. Unlike Bremer's book published earlier this year, Blunkett was candid about his screw-ups and about what he did — and didn't do. More importantly, he reveals just who was making the big decisions for the U.S. Here's a hint: It wasn't Bremer and it wasn't Bush. From the Guardian story by Patrick Wintour and Julian Glover:

This 2006 story wasn't totally ignored in the U.S. press. The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum summed it up well on October 8, 2006:

Drum's right. It wasn't surprising in 2003 that the decision was being made by Rumsfeld and Cheney, not Bremer, and it certainly wasn't surprising in 2006. So why was the Times story so clueless?

This isn't the first time Times reporter Andrews has mishandled a big story. Back in 2004, Andrews blew a vital news angle about corporate tax breaks. Read my October 12, 2004, post, in which I wrote:

If you want something beyond my immature screed, read this October 2004 measured analysis of the corporate tax cuts, courtesy of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Joel Friedman.

Regarding the Bremer-Bush dustup and the blunder of dismantling the Iraq Army, the New Yorker's George Packer parses it and takes the long view. Packer also shrewdly notes that it's not wise to give the Bush regime too much credit for being orderly enough to make decisions. Bush's White House and Pentagon were, and are, a dysfunctional family. Writing about the blunder of dismantling the Iraq Army, Packer notes:

Taking Iraq's Temperature

Posted by Harkavy at 7:53 AM, August 30, 2007

This may hurt.

A new GAO report stops the White House spin on Iraq in its tracks. Golly, why couldn't the Washington Post wait until the White House massages General David Petraeus's info into a suitable "progress report" to be released on 9/11?

Iraq is still unreasonably hot, and the White House is still blustery. I know, you don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows, but getting your hands on a GAO report draft helps. Here's this morning's story by Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks:

And how's that "surge" working for you?

The best news is that the number of whistleblowers in D.C. is increasing. That may slow the Bush regime's spin enough that we can see what's actually going on in Iraq. The story notes:

Get ready for a mid-August rain of propaganda.

Puppet Show

Posted by Harkavy at 7:40 AM, August 27, 2007

Zelikow's role in anti-Maliki agitprop raises 9/11 Commission questions