Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

They had blinkers on, and had no interest on anything but Mr Suddein.

On Clarke's side: Facts and history as displayed in the public record.

On Bush's side: Innuendo.

But rumor has it the innuendos are true.

So why does the censor let 'apeshit' go through but cancels the last four letters of 'bull****'?! Not that there's anything wrong with strong language when discussing an administration that's got a record of being weak on terror.

!

Brad, why don't you tell us how you *really* feel?

...in the midst, of course, of remembering that we are all writing for the historians of the 22d and 23d Centuries.

...Clark is F**** A*****. Welcome to the party, Mr. Clark.

Those of us in the anti Iraqi war "focus group" are happy to accept you in our little, millions of people group. We are angry as well. I wonder what other stuff Mr. Clark knows about this administration that he would like to share :-)

As Kos says, "He [Clark] has said little that we didn't already know around these parts." I really don't understand why the heads of the neocons don't just blow up spontanously.

Mr. Clarke is in a position to do a lot of damage, and one may be sure he will. He came across on 60 minutes as one tough customer. Plus, he has friends on the Republican side of the aisle. Short of Cheney having a sex change, this has got to be the administration's worst nightmare. Let's not forget that Clarke has the CIA and FBI behind him. It's going to get rough. This is Roman politics.

There had to be a reason why the Bushies tried to prevent the creation of the 9-11 commission, and later tried to head it by Kissinger, underfund it, close it before it could hold hearings etc. Now we know what we knew all along... The great plus is that we now know that we were not being paranoid. :-)

It's curious a little detail hasn't popped back up yet. A few days prior to the attacks, something like 4 or 5 major governments had warned the government about imminent attacks. If memory serves, these included France, Germany, Italy and Israel. And again, if memory serves, the leads were quite specific: they were about plane hijacking to hit major targets...

What did they do in reaction to that information? Discuss their plan to wage war in Iraq?

Beautifully written , Brad.

The facts are out there if you wanted to be convinced but for people who are not willing to be convinced, Clarke's account will do little to change their mind.

I have a feeling that Clarke will testify tomorrow that Tenet briefed Shrub on OBL hijacking plan but it was ignored. Thats why the WH gas refused to release those PDFs. Clarke said it many times that the warnings were explicit and dont doubt that he refs those PDFs prepared by Tenet. We might see fireworks tomorrow. hopefully.

Brian: "Clarke has no credibility."

Can't comment on the border thing, but this is an oversimplification. No human being tells the absolute truth 100% of the time. You have to measure credibility in degrees.

What Bush has said about WMDs and Medicare (let alone his shifting of his rationale for his tax cut) says a lot more about his credibility.

Plus I don't buy the partisan thing. Kay, O'Neill, and Clarke weren't exactly Democrats here.

And no, I didn't vote for Gore, I voted for Harry Browne.

"At one point a border guard shook a vile of liquid he thought was a drug which turned out to be a form of nitroglycerin"

Brian, I think you've been sniffin that nitroglycerin...

Now, I got to figure out this new ALL CAPS device... what sort of internet fungi uses it, I wonder?

And we got Patrick (who used to be at least not over the top idiotically reactionary), and this weird bot Adrian Spittle, and the innumerate "tbrosz"; sheez, what happened to the (literate&numerate) opposition? Jim Glass, call your office.

Hmmm. Brad, I know this is your space, but I don't think Brian's post was worth deleting.

Brian, I'm sorry your intemperate manner got you deleted, but I want to say that I think you missed the main point, which is that Clarke's book very effectively puts Bush on the grill for anti-terror efforts prior to 9/11, and any attempts to discredit his character by refuting, or attempting to refute, his statements about service in the Clinton administration are bound to fail, except to unthoughtful partisans: Clinton can clearly be faulted sometimes, and other times there were extenuating circumstances, and so what!

So what are Bush's extenuating circumstances? That Clinton screwed it up, so he didn't feel like trying? Again, the main point is that Bush now has to explain just what the heck he was doing for 8 months, something we actually haven't heard, yet. And that's going to look feckless at best, imbecilic at worst. Rumsfeld's testimony today before the 9/11 commission suggested a holding pattern, so we can go for feckless. We could also go for imbecilic, but that would only be my testimony, and I was definitely out of the loop, being a blue-collar worker in Los Angeles.

I think the real story here is that Clarke is merely the latest in a line of solid Establishment types who are raising clear and embarassing questions for Bush. BUSH IS GOING TO BE THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB for the foreign policy establishment, so they can try to get the world back on our side as Iraq rockets into the toilet, Al Qaeda steps up bombing, and the Israelis can't figure out how to arrest and charge somebody in a wheelchair. We need those darned foreigners, more than ever!

Clinton's gone. Now Bush is being thrown to the wolves, and good riddance.

"Clarke had thought he was leading a successful counterterrorism effort against al Qaeda, and then at the start of 2001 these idiot neocon Cold Warriors came in and messed everything up with bureaucratic bull****."

I won't argue that the Bushies gave Qaeda the amount of attention it deserved, but the idea that the Clinton administration had some sort of clear, functioning policy that the Bushies came in and fouled up is ridiculous. Go look at Steven Coll's Ghost Wars series in the Washington Post, or better yet read the book. There's a record of bureaucratic floundering there that equals anything Clarke describes under Bush, except it went on for years, not months.

That would be embarrassing with two r's.

That would be sniffing with a g on the end.

"BUSH IS GOING TO BE THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB"

Sorry Lee A. possibly we have similar views but if we're going to be shouting at each other here my original query stands:

"Now, I got to figure out this new ALL CAPS device... what sort of internet fungi uses it, I wonder?"

I see Patrick and Adrian haven't made it to this thread yet.

Anyone notice how the blogsphere is full of people like Patrick and Adrian who all make the same arguments everywhere, and use the same standard debate techniques (i.e. blame-clinton, deflect-the-answer, attack-the-source, etc.)? These past two days all these rightwing blog posters have been very busy, what with all the cut-and-pasting arguments from right wing websites onto these comment pages.

I wonder what sort of jobs they hold? I read in the first week of the Iraq war that the Pentagon employs a staff of people who monitor the internet and comment on web pages. I don't think they meant for the reporter to pass that info on ... I haven't seen it mentioned again. But I do have to wonder ....

Good post!

Wasn't Clarke close friends with John O'Neill, the head of security at the WTC, who died on 9/11?
I think that might have something to do with why he's apeshit.

I want to take a moment to sing the praises of Chuck Hagel. There is an honest man. He has praised Kerry's effectiveness as a Senator, despite the fact they are from different parties, and today he said that the White House needs to address the substance of Clarke's charges.

Also, did you notice that David Kay is nearly insane with anger now? The guy was 100% behind Bush last year, but now he's saying that if Bush doesn't acknowledge mistakes in Iraq the U.S. will suffer irreparable damage to its credibility.

Has anyone here actually been watching the hearings? This isn't turning out to be the exclusive Bush Barbecue the Democrats were hoping for, and the spotlight is getting a bit hot for them as well. If Kerry (remember him?) has any brains at all, he's going to switch to the economy as an issue.

I'm "innumerate?" Geez, the guys I do aerospace design work for aren't going to be happy about that.

You know, it was the Clinton administration that let in the terrorists. Because you worked for the Clinton administration, Brad, then you are responsible for 3000 Americans dying. Let's face it, it was on your watch that NOTHING happened to make it harder for terrorists to operate against us.

Perhaps in his 8 months in office Bush was no better, but get a grip on reality. Clinton had 7 years to do something about terrorism against us and he did nothing.

This leads to my final point: why should any of us have held out hope for Clarke's "plan"? He and his crew had a long time to do something. And they didn't.

Knut Wicksell -- what do you mean by "Roman" politics?

Oh come on, what is with these trolls! I guess Clarke must be important if the trolls are sinking so low in their slime campaign that they have moved beyond blaming 9-11 on Clinton and now anyone in the Clinton administration is also directly to blame for 9-11. What next, trolls blaming everyone who voted for Clinton for 9-11?

Anything to avoid admitting their choice for president in 2000 didn't do enough, and kept making mistakes, and puts politics over national security.

I can only hope that the worsening of the trolls and their absurd comments will drive the blogto a registration / moderation system.

You only shake a vial of NG once in your life.

Great post. All of these insights into the sausage making that is national security policy are extremely worthwhile, and in this case damning.

But one irony: we could have nailed Osama with Predator-launched missiles or special forces in early 2001 and still suffered 9-11 months later. The hijackers were already here and already trained. What is missing from the public debate so far is a discussion about homeland security and data sharing among homeland security related agencies--and if anything, this is the most notable cause of our failure to prevent 9-11. The focus on "eliminating" Al Qaeda is a bit misplaced. It would have been nice if Richard Clarke had illuminated this more effectively.

Excellent post as always.

I was a little bit puzzled that "the road to surfdom" got ahead of you on reading Clarke's book so we don't have to, but I see you have caught up and passed him (pp 230-238).

Fellow posters, don't imagine that Brad hasn't read pp 1-230 too. Brad is smart, writes well, knows how the gov't works and reads faster than anyone else I have ever met.

In defence of kevin, the claim that Brad at treasury for 2 years should have stopped Al Qaeda was clearly ironic.

In response to kevin, you can't hide the fact that the Bush administration was presented with a plan to destroy Al Qaeda by talking about things that happened before 2001. You can't make Clarke's plan into a non plan "plan" with snear quotes. You shouldn't contradict Rice's claim that his plan was implemented after 9/11.

More response to kevin (I think I hit a word limit).
The claim that Clinton "did nothing" about terrorism is plainly false (by the way those are quote quotes not snear quotes). Remember the cruise missile strike on Al Qaeda bases ? They didn't get Bin Laden but they tried.

Clinton had submarines armed with cruise missiles ready to fire (Bush cancelled that). The unarmed predator spotted Bin Laden but couldn't kill them. The Clinton admin launched a crash program to arm the predator with hellfire missiles. The program stalled in 2001 with DOD and CIA arguing about who should pay for it.

Admittedly killing Bin Laden after Jan 20 2001 wouldn't have prevented 9/11. That would have requried more homeland security co-ordination.

Please let me roll the tape of Clarke on 60 minutes Sunday (from sadly no's rush transcript more at the link begging http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com)

"STAHL: Why would having a meeting make a difference?

CLARKE: If you compare December 1999 to June and July of 2001, in December '99, every day or every other day, the head of the FBI, the head of the CIA, the Attorney General had to go to the White House and sit in a meeting and report on all the things that they personally had done to stop the al Qaeda attack, so they were going back every night to their departments and shaking the trees personally and finding out all the information. If that had happened in July of 2001, we might have found out in the White House, the Attorney General might have found out that there were al Qaeda operatives in the United States. FBI, at lower levels, knew -- never told me, never told the highest levels in the FBI."

Clarke said it could have been done and he says he knows this because it was done in 1999. He claims the Clinton administration did something to stop the milenium attack and that it worked. he might be wrong but he was there and you weren't.

"Knut Wicksell -- what do you mean by "Roman" politics?"

I believe that's a reference to "getting the knives out" "et tu Brute?" etc.

tbrosz, projection is not your strong suit.

Any sentient being knew that clinton could have, by definition, done more about terrorism. It's always been obvious than an honest 9/11 commission would point to mistakes in judgement on the part of the clinton administration.

but the salient point is that whatever more clinton could have done, bush came in and did less than clinton was doing. What Clarke has to say merely reiterates what we already knew from a variety of sources, including the Woodward book. The resistance to a 9/11 commission, in the face of virtual certainty that the commission would say critical things about the clinton administration, has always been the clear indicator that this administration wants to hide something.

And now we've got an idea of what that something is: they were warned and warned and warned, but the warnings had to make their way through the backbone adminstration "process," because perish the thought that the clinton adminstration might have had a clue. it's a sad story, but had they been honest about it on about, say, 9/18/01, it would have been easy to let it go by. Having since then played a game in which stout-hearted bushies react heroically to an unforseeable disaster, there's no longer any chance of letting it go by.

The specific comments yesterday by bush and rice, roughly paraphrased as "had someone told us that hijakcers were planning to fly planes into the wtc and the pentagon on 9/11, we would have done something" make it quite clear that they know this too.

BTW, Kevin, if you're going to comment on this stuff, do your homework: a.) Clarke's "plan" was what the bush administration did; b.) the idea that we did "nothing" during the clinton years is simply ill-informed and based on resolutely ignoring facts; c.) both powell and rumsfeld essentially acknowledged as much yesterday.

Kevin,
Your last post suggests that culpability should be widely shared...(Clinton did bad too). I'm going to share a little insight into the funciton of government for you. Civil Servants have a HELL of a time creating policy, whether it's foreign policy, national security policy, or domestic policy BECAUSE their ideas must be filtered through a bottleneck of Appointed staff. In either administration, Clarke would have had to convice political appointees that his ideas needed action. At least within the Clinton Administration, they took the AQ threat seriously enough to meet on it weekly.

Jim Harris hit the nail on the head. From what I've seen and heard of the commission interviews, they're far too fixated on why bin Laden wasn't eliminated, which says to me that these folks are putting on a show rather than getting to the root of the matter.

I've been saying this in various places, but it bears repeating. The FBI had at least two good leads concerning the 9/11 plot, but they weren't directed by mid-level authorities to act on them. I think it's reasonable to believe that if word was sent down the chain from the White House to all levels and branches of law enforcement, agents would have been instructed to pursue those leads. Had they done that, had they merely questioned some of the folks who took flight training, it may have spooked the terrorists enough to either delay or even cancel their attack. And if everything broke right, the FBI may have even gotten information on the attack.

Kevin wrote: "Perhaps in his 8 months in office Bush was no better, but get a grip on reality. Clinton had 7 years to do something about terrorism against us and he did nothing."

A fair point, and it leads to this question: how can Bush run on the platform that his administration is strong on national security? Prior to 9/11 Bush and company weren't interested in the biggest threat to the US even though he was being briefed daily about it. After 9/11 they invaded Afghanistan, which was the right thing to do, but they didn't stay the course there. Instead, the majority of the resources were diverted to the Iraq situation.

Now, we can debate the merits of trying to establish democracy in the ME, but the claim at the time was that Iraq was a threat to the US because of WMD, especially nukes. It's become fairly apparent that this claim had no basis in reality. Worse, the fact that their real reasons for invading Iraq, ME democracy, were hidden behind the phony WMD threat claims suggests cynical manipulation on their part. Do we really want a president and administration that feels it has to resort to manipulation in order to protect the country?

Finally, the Department of Homeland Security is a farce. By all accounts nobody wants to work for it, and the consolidation or clearing house it's supposed to accomplish isn't happening. Neither do the various intelligence/law enforcement agencies consider it to have any authority over what they do. Which says that the homeland really isn't protected. Of all the things I've mentioned, this is the most important and by all accounts most neglected.

There is a difference between not doing everything you could possibly do and actively attemtpting to thwart what you should be doing. That's what Wolfowitz did repeatedly. What Wolofowitz has never seemed to grasp is that 3,000 people are dead because of Al Quaeda. Zero Americans are dead because of Saddam. Even if it could be demonstrated that there was a connection, it is still bizaare that he was so against dealing with AQ and OBL. Talk about apeshit!!! Could someone out there in blogovia please explain his motivation.

I'll probably get skewered for suggesting this, but I'll throw it out here anyhow. By most accounts Clarke is a very tenacious and blunt person. Sometimes people like this, by their very manner, hurt their own efforts to get the ears of key decision makers. People get tired of them and tune them out. It's possible that Clarke's manner, coupled with ambivalence on the part of the decision makers, combined to prevent key folks from hearing the message that Clarke was trying to send.

Former close Clinton adviser predicts:

A BLOWOUT IN THE MAKING

March 24, 2004 -- THE Bush ads are working: Two weeks ago, the Washington Post poll showed Sen. John Kerry ahead of President Bush by 11 points, and the Gallup Poll had him up by 8, while more recent polls reflect a dead heat between the two.
Zogby (March 21) has Kerry up by only 48-46, and Rasmussen (March 20) has it Bush 46, Kerry 45.

Interestingly, the new surveys don't show Bush gain ing so much as they show Kerry dropping. In the odd configurations of political strategy, that is good news for the Republicans.

If Bush were simply gaining because of good news or a bump from the recent focus on terrorism, he could go down as easily as he went up. Let the news turn bad, and Bush would go back to the low ratings of a few weeks ago.

But with the gap closing because of Kerry's drop, the impact is likely to last a lot longer. The fact is that 6 to 9 percent of Americans were voting for the Democrat two weeks ago and now are undecided. The doubts that Bush's ads are raising about Kerry are not going to go away; they will grow as the ads continue and the facts pile up.

The polls are starting to reflect the effectiveness of Bush's ads, which depict Kerry explaining his ultra-liberal record to the voters. This Democrat, who escaped scrutiny by posing as the un-Dean in the primary, is now being revealed as the leftist he is.

Having defeated the three candidates of his party who might have beaten Bush - Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman and John Edwards - Kerry is finding out that America is a centrist nation.

I have doubted the conventional wisdom that this election would be close. If Bush continues to stay on the offensive and Kerry's responses remain as inept as they've been, the Massachusetts Democrat will go downhill faster than he is now doing on his skiing vacation.

Bush's attacks have focused on the issues of terrorism and taxes. Kerry has not even answered the first charge and has given only a ritualistic denial of the second. Instead of answering Bush's charges in detail, he piously asks, in his ads, if the president has anything more to offer America than negative ads. But Americans don't see the Bush ads as below the belt, but as welcome information about a man they don't know who is running for president.

Indeed, the latest New York Times/CBS survey indicates that 60 percent of the voters feel Kerry is telling them what they want to hear, not what he really believes. Bush is opening a credibility gap which is only widened by Kerry's ridiculous statement that he voted for the $87 billion appropriation for the war effort before he voted against it.

In the next round of attack ads, Bush should focus on Kerry's previous support for a 50 cent increase in the gasoline tax. Remember, it was the gas tax, more than any other issue, that cost the Democrats control of Congress in 1994. With pump prices closing in on $2 a gallon, Americans will not look kindly on someone who proposes to add another half-dollar per gallon.

Kerry's two gaffes - on foreign leaders with whom he allegedly spoke and on his flip-flop on the money for the war - were not unforced errors: They were fumbles caused by the aggressive pressure of the Bush campaign.

This Democrat is not ready to run for president, and the more the Republicans press him, the more he will self-destruct. His campaign advisers are hoping that a few hours extra sleep on his ski trip will restore his political judgment, but they ignore the fact that he never had a lot to begin with.

The fact is that Massachusetts liberal Democrats don't spend a lot of time learning how to appeal to middle America.

Kerry only won the nomination because Dean lost it and Edwards was hobbled by Clark so he could not get the momentum he needed to mount a real challenge. With the front-loaded process, decreed by financial-wizard-but-political-amateur Terry McAuliffe, the party is united but saddled with a nominee who can't handle prime time.

Bush needs to keep up the pressure and watch Kerry's ratings drop. In a few months, we may be wondering why the conventional wisdom ever thought this race would be so close.

Well, Adrian, that's all very interesting.
I just have one question for you:
after reading all of Clarke's charges---the latest in a string of indictments of Bush by former advisers (all REPUBLICAN)---why on earth would you want him to win? Do you want another 9/11? If so, then vote for Bush.

"Well, Adrian, that's all very interesting.
I just have one question for you:
after reading all of Clarke's charges---the latest in a string of indictments of Bush by former advisers (all REPUBLICAN)---why on earth would you want him to win? Do you want another 9/11? If so, then vote for Bush.

Posted by marky"

Thank you Marky. That's a wonderful question. It all comes down to the nature of human understanding, you see. Did you, by chance, ever see the classic Kurasawa film ROSHOMON?

The point is that YOU CAN ONLY SEE WHAT YOU'RE LOOKING AT.

You and I are looking at different parameters in our evaluation of the incumbent and the challenger.

You and I are looking at different motivations when we evaluate the opinions of partisans you brought up.

I realize that expectations and prejudices have a significant effect on our analyses and decisions. So much so that I've decided that academic economics can never be considered a real science because there is no recognition in that profession of this simple fact.

For example, medical science uses the scientific method bolstered by double blind studies. There is very little partisan politics in choosing appropriate medical treatments.

Therefore, based on the criteria important to me, I think Bush is a far more competent leader of the free world than Kerry could ever be.

Adrian

"Adrian and Brian, what a pair of ill-informed nitwits..."

Posted by howard at March 24, 2004 07:56 AM "

Howard, you should seriously consider refraining from insulting your betters.

Dick Morris is the citation.

Adrian

Howard

Your argument is quite convincing. Got any evidence? Adrian and I are wrong because well Howard says so. We all know how smart Howard is. Who would question his intelligence. He's so smart he does not even need material to refute our arguments.

Its a common liberal argument to attack the intelligence of conservatives. Yet when we look at the demographics of Dem voters we see Dem's win by large margins in the high shcool drop out catagory, minorities and phd's(who says the professors are liberal). Republicans win by large margins those with some college or bachelor degrees.

Please Howard you sound foolish. Disagree with some humility.

Brian,

You are the greatest. We need to get more conservatives on this blog to straighten these guys out.

Adrian

LOL--
You didn't need to tell us the citation was from Dick Morris, idiot. Morris was a Republican before he worked for Clinton, and he's a Republican now. Besides being an amoral slime,
his track record in political analysis is terrible He STILL is saying that Hillary will be V.P.

Re: "I'll probably get skewered for suggesting this, but I'll throw it out here anyhow. By most accounts Clarke is a very tenacious and blunt person. Sometimes people like this, by their very manner, hurt their own efforts to get the ears of key decision makers. People get tired of them and tune them out. It's possible that Clarke's manner, coupled with ambivalence on the part of the decision makers, combined to prevent key folks from hearing the message that Clarke was trying to send."

Say, rather, that Clinton had confidence in Clarke and elevated him to a position within the White House that his nominal new boss, Condi Rice, thought was highly anomalous. If I had been Rice in Rice's shoes, I would have looked at this guy and thought, "Maybe he's right, but remember Ollie North. Remember the Bay of Pigs. We don't want to get stampeded into anything by holdovers. Let me have Hadley and Wolfowitz and Armitage scrutinize this guy very carefully..."

Of course, that's not what Rice and Cheney are saying. They're saying, "Clarke was incompetent and out of the loop, so we chose him to be our NSC Director for Counterterrorism."

"LOL--
You didn't need to tell us the citation was from Dick Morris, idiot. Morris was a Republican before he worked for Clinton, and he's a Republican now. Besides being an amoral slime,
his track record in political analysis is terrible He STILL is saying that Hillary will be V.P.

Posted by marky"

GEE MARKY, I didn't realize you were such a highly erudite and classy guy.

I guess you're right, I must be an idiot for not realizing that having once been a Republican is ipso facto reason to disparage and ignore another intelligent being.

This blog is really teaching me to admire the social maturity and "wisdom" of you lefties.

Adrian

Adrian, you were offering that quote as expert opinion from a Democrat. It was nothing of the sort. Of course a Republican would be predicting that Bush will win. Idiot.

"Adrian, you were offering that quote as expert opinion from a Democrat. It was nothing of the sort. Of course a Republican would be predicting that Bush will win. Idiot.

Posted by marky"

My Goodness, Marky, there you go again. Just repeating your disdain for anyone who is or was ever at one time a Republican.

You also continue to display your abundant social skills while I'm afraid, at the same time showing a rather limited vocabulary.

Pity the fool,

Adrian

I keep wondering what it would take for some on the partisan right to come to their senses about Bush and the road to ruin he is leading us down. For Adrian, Kevin and Brian, the answer would appear to be nothing that happens makes any difference at all.

Bush a good leader? How? Your Rashomon angle is interesting, but please do tell us all of Bush's great accomplishments. Because from my character's POV, I see incompetence, bad judgement and corruption.

"Bush a good leader? How? Your Rashomon angle is interesting, but please do tell us all of Bush's great accomplishments. Because from my character's POV, I see incompetence, bad judgement and corruption

Posted by Chibi

MORE ON ROSHOMON TO FOLLOW, BUT HERE'S A START:

Why Bush is still the man to beat
November 29, 2003

Graham Barrett

Much of the world hates him, but many Americans think their President is the man for the age, writes Graham Barrett.

Get used to the thought of another five years of George Bush as the most powerful person on earth. Astonishing as it may seem, he is moving into re-election mode with just about everything going for him.

This appears counter-intuitive. Just look at the laundry list that will be making the papers between now and next November. The Middle East is an expensive shambles, the case for invading Iraq is still shifting from one confection to another, the rise of terrorism has exposed the most dramatic intelligence failure since Pearl Harbour, the US deficit is the biggest in history, several million American jobs have been lost, environmental pollution is worsening, American diplomacy is in tatters and American global popularity is to be found in a compost bin.

Bush would seem to possess no chance of staying on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until early 2009. Why, then, are the US Democrats so worried?

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They know that American presidents are not elected by sophisticated European or Australian critics or by Arab adolescents throwing stones in the streets of the Gaza Strip, but by a small number of swinging voters in places called Sarasota or Louisville, who are starting to resent the antipathy of the outside world. They vote for the individual, not the party or policy platform.

Abroad seems an increasingly dangerous and threatening scene to the average American.

Body bags containing GIs have been the big fear of every American president since Johnson and the Vietnam War. But what appears to be emerging in post-September 11 America is a new mood among many Americans who feel much more threatened by international terrorism and assorted tyrants such as Saddam Hussein than other cultures are able to acknowledge or understand.

A hint of steel has entered the heart of many American voters in what remains one of the most patriotic countries in the world, persuading them - for now - that those body bags from Baghdad are a tragic but necessary price to pay for preserving their nation and its values.

There is a countervailing resentment among the American people, who are learning what a former British foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, said about another great power in history: "When we ran the world in the 19th century, which I think we did rather well, we were cordially disliked. Jealousy and hostility, not gratitude, was our experience."

As a former US national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, puts it: "American power worldwide is at its zenith. American global political standing is at its nadir." It is a combination that compels many American voters to rally behind an incumbent who, however flawed he may appear, possesses one big advantage.

Unlike his predecessor, Bush appears strong, decisive, focused, moral and relentless. These are characteristics to which Americans, or indeed most people, warm in a time of national stress. Another terrorist atrocity on American soil any time before the election would strengthen this bond as voters rally to the leader they know.

The American electorate, freaked by national security issues, is edging to the right.

Bush is an obsessive individual in some ways, not least in learning from the errors his father made in failing to win re-election after the first Gulf War.

George Bush jnr and his acclaimed political guru Karl Rove have concocted a countering tactic for every aspect of the 1992 defeat of Bush snr, from courting rather than alienating the conservative wing of the Republican Party to holidaying on the Texas ranch instead of at the patrician family compound at Kennebunkport.

Backing the Bush campaign is a wall of money. More than $A200 million is already pledged with a year to go, the kind of funding that can easily tip the balance in marginal areas. The Democrats are unable to raise such a sum or accrue the media profile of a serving chief executive.

Just as disadvantageous is Rove's diligence in bringing the registration of Republican voters up to scratch at a time when Democratic allegiance is not only falling but straying.

Coupled with this trend is the way in which Republicans are consolidating their hold on state and national political offices.

Meanwhile, African Americans, overwhelmingly Democrat, are starting to like what they see of the Republicans. In presidential contests that are usually close, often painfully so, such shifts can be critical.

But it is the Middle East, one way or another, that will decide the outcome of the election. It will also define Bush's place in history. It has already reconfigured America's attitude towards, and relationships with, the rest of the world.

If Bush has indeed refashioned the American psyche after September 11, he is the man to beat.

"Get used to the thought of another five years of George Bush as the most powerful person on earth."

That's where the Bullshit Alert System (TM) should have gone off.

"Meanwhile, African Americans, overwhelmingly Democrat, are starting to like what they see of the Republicans. In presidential contests that are usually close, often painfully so, such shifts can be critical."

Really? I have yet to see a single poll that doesn't show Bush and the GOP to continue to be staggeringly unpopular among blacks. Consider today's Quinnipiac poll, which shows Bush beating Kerry by 3 points (without Nader in the race) -- but shows blacks voting against him 67-16. And that's by far the MOST favorable one I have ever seen for Bush among American blacks -- Gallup consisttly shows him getting about 10% of the black vote.

Bush may very well win reelection -- especially if the Democrats retain their alarming reluctance to think about national security issues (which Howard Dean, for example, is still encouraging them to ignore) -- but, if so, it won't be because of the black vote.

Adrian, I asked for accomplishments and you gave me an analysis on the 2004 presidential race, which included these bits of wisdom:

Just look at the laundry list that will be making the papers between now and next November. The Middle East is an expensive shambles, the case for invading Iraq is still shifting from one confection to another, the rise of terrorism has exposed the most dramatic intelligence failure since Pearl Harbour, the US deficit is the biggest in history, several million American jobs have been lost, environmental pollution is worsening, American diplomacy is in tatters and American global popularity is to be found in a compost bin.

They know that American presidents are not elected by sophisticated European or Australian critics or by Arab adolescents throwing stones in the streets of the Gaza Strip, but by a small number of swinging voters in places called Sarasota or Louisville, who are starting to resent the antipathy of the outside world. They vote for the individual, not the party or policy platform.

Unlike his predecessor, Bush appears strong, decisive, focused, moral and relentless. These are characteristics to which Americans, or indeed most people, warm in a time of national stress. Another terrorist atrocity on American soil any time before the election would strengthen this bond as voters rally to the leader they know.

The American electorate, freaked by national security issues, is edging to the right.

The thesis of this article would appear to me that even though Bush has made a huge mess, he just might still get re-elected because he's good at exploiting fear and resentment towards the rest of the world. I don't disagree with that. But is fear and resentment what we want? There is nothing in the article citing any successes for Bush to run on or any accomplishments which would demonstrate that he deserves to be re-elected.

Bush deserves to be reelected because;

1 - He understands economics the way you lefties don't. His tax cuts have goosed our economy out of the Clinton recession that was exasperated by 911.

2 - He is effectively defending our country from a very dangerous enemy in a way that Clinton didn't and the way no pacifist like Kerry could.

3 - He has a fine moral character.

I don't like Bush's:

1 - Medicare drug plan,

2 - Opening our borders,

3 - Not pressing Saudi Arabia.

I don't like Kerry because:

1 - As a Vietnam era veteran I consider him a traiter.

2 - He wants to raise taxes so he can buy more voters.

3 - As a Massachusetts citizen I've met him and I know him well. He is a complete phony who can speak sonorously but can't handle intelligent cross examination.

4 - I truly believe that Kerry would seriously damage our nation.

Adrian

"Bush has a fine moral character."

And this is because?

1 - He launched a full scale assault on the environment

2 - He lies all the time

3 - He conducts his government in secrecy

4 - He has worked to limit civil liberties

5 - He's petty and vindictive and goes after anyone who opposes him

6 - He hides his past

"I don't like Kerry because: As a Vietnam era veteran I consider him a traiter."

So opposing war (not the people who fought in it), having been through it, makes him a traitor? The national guard is really in need of tough guys like you who aren't afraid of war. What are you doing sitting on your ass pontificating when you could be in Iraq right now killing somebody? Kinda makes you a traitor just sitting around don't it, I mean a man of your experience and the military being short handed and all? Where's your sense of patriotic duty?

Humbly, i approach my better adrian, as marky already has, fully aware of my unworthiness, to note, in passing, at a level well below that of my better, adrian, that citing dick morris on the election as a clintonite is truly unbelievable. Morris is a lying SOB who had one really interesting political idea in his life: triangulation. It's a complete waste of valuable electrons for you to clutter up these comments with the thoughts of dick morris, for crissake.

(And of course Marky isn't saying that all GOP members, once and future, are lying SOBs or whatever, that's merely your typically snide but pointless remark, but i digress.)

As for your analysis of the brilliance of george bush, let's see: 1.) his "knowledge" of the economy is nonexistent; he merely has a formulaic response to all problems, namely, "cut taxes." It is a demonstration of ignorance to call the recession a "Clinton" recession, on the one hand because recessions are a necessary part of the ecology of market economics and on the other because the only source whose opinion matters, the NBER, still shows the recession beginning in 2/01. The idea that 9/11 exacerbated the recession is equally foolish - in fact, the recession ended in november, consumers merely shifted spending (from airplane tickets to digital cameras and DVD players in particular that Xmas), and the massive ramp-up in defense spending that followed 9/11 helped provide rapid stimulus to offset the very temporary "pall" that 9/11 cast on business; 2.) The idea that John Kerry is a pacifist is beyond ill-informed nitwittery; it is delusional in an extreme way. The idea that George Bush is effectively defending our country is, at a minimum, deeply arguable, since the George Bush balance sheet also shows that our economy is now literally at the mercy of the japanese and chinese central banks, that it is now clear that pakistan has created the preconditions that will, someday, enable a terrorist to make a nuclear weapon and yet we are treating them as really good buddies, that North Korea very likely has been increasing its number of nuclear weapons (and has shown a willingness in the past to sell anything to any buyer), that our military is tied down in an extreme way in iraq, that the national reserve is losing any degree of attractiveness to young americans, that he has saddled us with an unaffordable poorly written medicare drug benefit, that the department of homeland security appears to be failing on many levels, and that bush has done next to nothing to harden domestic targets or strengthen the abilities of first responders; 3.) the idea that a liar like george bush has a fine moral character does take some getting used to....

Brian, my memory (since your comments appear to have been excised by our host) is that there was nothing concrete in your posting that deserved any more than the most general dismissal on the basis of faulty research, poor sourcing, and similar problems.

Adrian/Brian: the political philosophy of "conservatism" is a very fine thing. I have learned a great deal about politics and society from true conservatives, honest people with a concern for facts, nuance, and the limits of human ability.

Neither of you deserves the term. You are right-wingers, spewing the same sort of bile that has so poisoned our discourse for lo, these many years since the modern conservative movement was overtaken by right-wingers of limited knowledge, limited understanding, and a well-developed vocabulary of bile, hatred, and invective.

Perhaps, when you grow up, you'll become honest conservatives; you'll be better people for it.

Just a couple of points. For starters, any poll that says African American support for Mr. Bush is over 12% is clearly an outlier. Polling data shows his support in the AA community to hover in the 10% range. Given that the Administration has pursued policies that uniformly screw over AAs - think affirmative action, the recess appointment of that Klansman Pickering, the sheer number of black unemployed (50% of AA men in NYC are unemployed) - any African American who votes for the incumbent and is not named Powell, Rice, or Roseboro is in dire need of pyschotherapy in conjunction with electric shock therapy.

Second point, which is really a question: does Bush's "fine moral character" refer to ducking service in Vietnam or to sucking up to corporate criminals like Ken Lay?

Bush has a huge credibility gap.
First he promised to be fiscally responsible, yet in just four years as President, George Bush has overseen the largest spending increase since World War II. Adjusted for inflation, total spending has increased by $354 billion annually – that’s the largest four-year spending increase since World War II. Of this total, $98 billion annually is in non-defense discretionary programs – the largest four-year spending increase on record.
As has been widely reported, the Bush Administration hid from Congress and the American people the true cost of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit. That extra $136 billion only exacerbates the fiscal challenges facing Medicare. Despite the fact that the Administration’s acknowledgement that we are not leaving Iraq or Afghanistan any time soon, the President’s budget does not have any money to pay for the war on Iraq. This could cost $280 billion over ten years, based on analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. Look through the fine print of the Bush budget, and you’ll find 455 explicit spending increases for programs, not even including defense or homeland security.The President promised to sign the Congressional energy bill, costing $31 billion. But he only included $7 billion for energy in his budget. Thus another $24 billion is missing. Acoording to FactCheck, Bush lied about Kerry's votes on taxes, On close examination, the Bush campaign’s list of Kerry’s votes for “higher taxes” is padded. It includes votes Kerry cast to leave taxes unchanged (when Republicans proposed cuts), and even votes in favor of alternative Democratic tax cuts that Bush aides characterized as “watered down.” The "350" claim is part of a pattern of deceptive statistics used by the Bush team to paint John Kerry as a tax-raiser. It's a transparent tactic: make a false or misleading allegation and force your opponent to spend time and resources rebutting it.
This is not the first time that Republicans have used phony tax numbers to attack Democrats.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION MISLED THE AMERICAN PEOPLE SAYING COST OF WAR WOULD BE MINIMAL:
Wolfowitz Told Congress That Iraq Was A Country That Could “Really Finance Its Own Reconstruction.” In testimony to Congress at the start of the war, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said Iraq could pay for rebuilding itself: “We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” [House Appropriations Committee, 3/27/03]
Bush's Sneak TAX: G. W. Bush likes to talk about tax cuts. But the truth is, Americans are paying higher college tuition, higher health care costs, and higher prices for gasoline – and they are receiving lower incomes. They are also paying more in state, local, and property taxes. Under President Clinton, family income increased $7,202 from 1992 to 2000. Under President Bush family income has declined $1,462 from 2000 to 2002. [Source: U.S. Census Bureau] Health care costs have increased by an average of $793 since Bush took office, a stunning 49 percent increase.Since the beginning of the Bush administration 32 states have been forced to raise taxes and fees by a total of $16.2 billion. At the local level, county and city governments have been raising taxes as well. In 2002, property tax collections were rising more than 10 percent. [Source: Blueprint Magazine, “Bush’s Tax Shakedown,” June 30, 2003]Nationally, 406,313 people have declared bankruptcy in 2003, up 32% since 2000. [Source: The National Priorities Project, “The President’s Budget Impact on the States,” February 2004]
Bush Administration Provided Windfall for Halliburton at Taxpayer’s Expense. After awarding a no-bid contract to Halliburton (Vice President’s former employer who gave him a $20 million retirement package in 2000), the military found that the company overcharged for gas it imported into Iraq from Kuwait. US taxpayers and the United Nations oil-for-food program are paying Halliburton an average price of $2.64 per gallon, which is more than twice what others pay for Kuwait fuel.
Kerry is supposedly weak on defense, the same tired old lies and distortions. The RNC Kerry issues hit list says " Kerry Would Cut F-16s",
Yet Dick Cheney: Proposed Cuts to F-16 Aircraft. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney said, “If you're going to have a smaller air force, you don't need as many F-16s…The F-16D we basically continue to buy and close it out because we're not going to have as big a force structure and we won't need as many F-16s.” According to the Boston Globe, Bush’s 1991 defense budget “kill[ed] 81 programs for potential savings of $ 11.9 billion…Major weapons killed include[d]….the Air Force's F-16 airplane.” [Cheney testimony, House Armed Services Committee, 2/7/91; Boston Globe, 2/5/91] Cheney Also Cut F-14 Tomcats. In 1991, Cheney was successful in scrapping plans for new F-14 Tomcat fighters. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney said, “What I recommended to the Committee was that we shut down the new F-14D production line, which will save almost $2-1/2 billion…” [Cheney testimony, House Armed Services Committee, 7/13/89] “Defense Secretary Richard Cheney announced a cutback… of nearly 45 percent in the administration's B-2 Stealth bomber program, from 132 airplanes to 75…” [Boston Globe, 4/27/90]So here we have it folks, if liberals have a beer, we're all immoral. If conservatives have a beer they're just red blooded down to earth folks. If liberals even question defense spending we're weak on defense,. If a conservative cuts defense, they're being prudent with our tax dollars. So what you have is the conservative spin machine, composed of smoke and mirrors, based on lies, distortions, and hypocriscy.
John McCain Comes to Kerry's Defense on National Security. "Mr. McCain also defended Mr. Kerry in an appearance on NBC's "Today," saying in response to a question that he did not believe Mr. Kerry was "weak on defense." [New York Times, 3/18/04]
Another Bush lies: In 1995, John Kerry proposed "deeply irresponsible" cuts in intelligence spending that "gutted" intelligence funding. THE Truth: The so-called "deeply irresponsible cuts" mentioned by Bush "represented about the same amount Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Senate that same day he wanted cut from the intelligence spending bill based on an unspent, secret fund that had been accumulated by one intelligence agency "without informing the Pentagon, CIA or Congress,". Republicans don't want you to know is that John Kerry has supported $200 billion in intelligence funding over the past seven years - a 50 percent increase since 1996.

Hey people, just provide links if you think someone else's entire article is useful to the debate, will ya?? Also, what is this 2000 lines without a paragraph break stuff??

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