reflectivepundit

A New Theorem: Negative Campaigning in Primaries

by David Epstein   

I have a new theorem about negative campaigning in primaries (which is to say it is mine (Money Python reference)). Take a primary campaign in which one candidate is more extremist relative to the national distribution of voters (e.g., Obama), and the other more moderate (e.g., Clinton). Then negative attacks by the more extremist candidate are less damaging to the party in the national election than negative attacks by the moderate.

Why? Because the attacks by the extremist (taking the Obama-Clinton example) are of the form "Your positions are too far right." So Obama says that Clinton is too hawkish on the war. This is an attack that makes sense in a Democratic primary, but it's certainly not one that McCain will repeat in the general election; if anything, it helps her in November.

But Hillary attacks Obama by saying that he's too dovish, not experienced enough for the tough foreign policy challenges that he would face as president (this is the real message of the 3AM telephone call ad). This is an attack that McCain would certainly repeat and that damages Obama as a general election candidate.

I note this asymmetry not to make value judgments, but just because it's interesting and I hadn't heard it mentioned before. It does clarify a few elements of the current situation, though. To start with, it helps remind us that in a way Obama has been running a negative campaign from the very beginning, saying that Clinton was wrong on Iraq and he was right. In fact, I see his entire policy strategy as copying Clinton on every other major issue, so that these are a draw, and winning on Iraq. (There's also the old politics vs. Yes We Can dimension, but let's not go there now.) Obama hasn't received much flack for these attacks, partly because they bolster Hillary's image as a hawk, which she will certainly want to project in the national election once she's the nominee.

On the other hand, Hillary has to walk a finer line when she attacks Obama, because she's making many of the same points that any Republican opponent would. So she gets accused of disregarding the party's overall interests, sometimes fairly (she absolutely should not be saying that McCain is a better leader than Obama; that's heresy), sometimes not. But the rules are different for her, to some degree because she's Hillary and a Clinton, and to some degree because of the geometry of the situation.

Who Really Cares About Active Soldiers and Veterans?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Last night, I watched on C-SPAN a campaign stop by John McCain. At the outset, the  Senator thanked several prominent supporters for their military service. Nothing unusual.  Politicians and candidates for political offices pander to all kinds of constituencies and interests. They all do. Republicans and Democrats. President Bush is the leader of the cheer-leading crowd on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. These people do not miss any opportunity to publicly praise and thank members of the U.S.military and their families for the sacrifices they make for the good of their country. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all. Regardless of one’s position on the Iraq invasion, anti-war sentiments should never affect one’s support for the men and women who are sent to war. But trying to prove their own patriotic zeal by celebrating the patriotism of the military does not mean that these same people work hard in support of active soldiers and veterans. This became crystal clear a year ago, when the intolerable conditions for outpatients at Walter Reed Medical Center, considered the nation’s the top-military hospital, were revealed in the Washington Post. As Dana Priest and Anne Hull wrote at the time,
“[T]he outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.
On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.
Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.”

Last February, the nation was shocked by these and subsequent revelations about the conditions at Walter Reed and around the country. But since then, active soldiers and veterans have continued to receive more lip service from politicians than real attention to their problems and efforts to find solutions.

Rudy -- He Could'a Been a Contenda

by David Epstein

I was on the BBC World Service TV show last night, commenting on Rudy and the Republican primary. The show was very good, including some great comments my friend John Fortier chiming in from the DC studio. I was reasonably happy with my performance overall, but my answer to the last question was lame. When the commentator asked me whether Giuliani's speech was in fact a farewell speech, I blabbered on about how he didn't yet say he's going to get out, but probably will in a day or two, and kind of left it at that.

What I *should* have said was that Giuliani's speech was, indeed, clearly a signal that he's dropping out. There are those who have been saying that Giuliani has been acting like a character in a spy novel poisoned by Strontium 90 -- he's dead but doesn't know it yet. But in the past week he's been acting much more statesmanlike, not attacking his opponents and seemingly resigned to the inevitable. So I think he'll get out sooner rather than later, and McCain and Romney can start the "Rudy Primary," courting his endorsement.

Also, I thought the speech was rather good, hitting his main themes and sounding like someone who could'a been a real contender. It's as if, finally freed from the necessity of genuflecting to the right wing of the Republican Party, he's much lighter, much freer, giving us a glimpse of the candidate that might have been. Not my candidate, mind you, but listening to him talk you remember why there were many who thought he'd be the Republican standard bearer this time around, and a tough candidate to beat.

Blog Newspaper The Issue: A Jewel in the Blogosphere

By Brigitte L. Nacos
If you are tired of surfing the blogosphere and look for more than your favorite blogs, there is a wonderful option: The non-partisan blog newspaper The Issue . This site resembles a quality print newspaper in a welcome departure from the noisy tabloid look that seems on the rise in the vastly expanding blogosphere. While the sophisticated lay-out is a bonus, it is the content and its presentation that stand out here. Most importantly, the editors present in literally each issue a marketplace of ideas consisting of pertinent posts chosen from a multitude of blogs—most of them not among the most popular sites.

The selected posts address a wide array of important questions and issues of our time and are organized along the line of broadsheets. Under “Featured Stories,” each issue of the blog newspaper presents contributions addressing current and/or generally important events, developments, problems, and the like. Today, for example, there are four featured stories, among them, “How much fiscal stimulus? Dollar amounts versus Efficacy.” The showcase section is the “Issue of the Day” with important topics discussed in posts from various blogs. “The Future of NATO,” “The Science of Aging,” “The Media’s Political Influence,” and “The Future of the GOP” were among recent topics with typically three different contributions and a short introduction by the editors.

Finally, the “Best of the Blogosphere” selections are presented in six sections: U.S., World, Business, Science & Health, Art & Culture, and Musings. There are cartoons, a book review section, and several other interesting features.

I need to disclose here that the The Issue has featured several of my reflectivepundit posts in the “Issue of the Day” and “Best of the Blogosphere” sections, but this is certainly not the reason why I visit this exceptional site regularly and why I recommend it. 

Rudy Giuliani, Bernard Kerik and 9/11 “Heroism”

By Brigitte L. Nacos
After his indictment for multiple counts of corruption, Bernard Kerik told the press, “My life has been marked by challenge. Whether it was growing up, being a cop, Rikers Island, the New York City Police Department, or the worst challenge, until this time, my challenges during and after 9/11…”  Like his long-time benefactor Rudy Giuliani, New York’s former Correction and Police Commissioner invoked the terrorist attacks in an obvious effort to win the sympathies of people who can be fooled by these self-proclaimed heroes. Since tough cop Kerik drove Rudy Giuliani during his 1993 mayoral campaign, his career blossomed under Rudy’s tutelage. No wonder that they both used 9/11 as spring board to join forces in a lucrative consulting business that was built on their carefully cultivated 9/11 hero status. What was lost in all of this was, of course, that any mayor and any police commissioner of a large city would be expected to manage major crises competently. 

Like his patron Rudy, Kerik sells himself and is sold as a hero and distinguished public servant. On the Kerik Legal Defense Trust web site one of the pages lists all his accomplishments under the header “Heroism & Distinguished Service.” The defense trust was established to “allow Mr. Kerik’s friends and supporters to assist him in defending himself against possible charges that may be brought against him by the United States Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.” The site continues to show Kerik and Giuliani in one of the pictures (see below excerpt from web site).

                                         

The Bush Administration's Rich History of Fake News

By Brigitte L. Nacos
At the heights of the California wildfires last week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) staged a news conference with Vice Admiral Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, presiding. But instead of facing real reporters’ real questions, FEMA staged a fake news conference during which FEMA bureaucrats masqueraded as reporters and threw softball questions at Mr. Johnson so that he could praise the agency that failed so terribly before, during, and after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. FEMA invited news organizations just 15 minutes before the fake news briefing began and thus made sure that no real reporter was present during the bogus event. Some cable networks, among them MSNBC and Fox News carried part of “news conference” as breaking news live from FEMA. The visuals were of Mr. Johnson only, while the fake reporters were heard and not seen--for obvious reasons. Neither newsroom personnel at the all news networks nor their audiences had reason to suspect that this was a sham event staged in order to resurrect the agency’s damaged reputation.

When the truth came out, the White House seemed not at all disturbed. Press secretary Dana Perino assured in her mild response that "it is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House. We certainly don't condone it. We didn't know about it beforehand. . . . They, I'm sure, will not do it again."

Not do it again? Perhaps not in the same agency and in the same form. But this is not the first instance in which the Bush administration has done more than put its spin on the news. Indeed, as the New York Times reported in early 2005, 
“Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.”

Turkey, the PKK, Iraq, and President Bush’s War on Terrorism

By Brigitte L. Nacos
"The Turkish parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly authorized cross-border military attacks in northern Iraq against Kurdish separatist rebels, as world leaders pleaded for restraint. As the votes were tallied in Turkey's modernistic legislative chamber here, President Bush told reporters at a White House news conference that 'we are making it very clear to Turkey that we don't think it is in their interest to send troops into Iraq.' "
Washington Post, Oct. 18, 2007 

After 9/11, when President George W. Bush launched the “war on terrorism,” he pledged to fight and eradicate terrorism everywhere. But he obviously meant to go after terrorists and terrorism that affect the United States directly or indirectly. Otherwise, he could not tell the Turkish government to refrain from aggressively fighting an organization that has committed violence against Turks in Turkey and elsewhere for a long time. While the end of brutal oppression of the Kurds in Northern Iraq by Saddam Hussein’s regime is one of the good consequences of the Iraq War, the fact that the PKK has been able to operate freely in the jurisdiction of the Kurdish regional government and launch attacks from there on Turkey, is a very bad result. As the New York Times reports today, “More than two dozen Turks, some of them civilians, have been killed in cross-border rebel [emphasis added] attacks in the past several weeks…” (Note, that the term used in the above quote is “rebel” not “terrorist” with respect to PKK attacks in contrast to the common use of the terms “terrorist” and “terrorism” in the context of such strikes on U.S. and Iraqi targets inside Iraq). In view of the strengthened PKK and its violence, it seems disingenuous for this president to urge the Ankara government to exercise restraint although he and his administration have aggressively fought the war on terrorism abroad and on foreign soil without listening to appeals for moderation and more time for diplomacy to work things out.

Bush: Ready to Kill Health Insurance Expansion for Children

By Brigitte L. Nacos
It is shocking enough to learn of a delay in the cancer treatment of an insufficiently insured young woman, as I did this morning, but it is even more incomprehensible to hear the President of the United States threaten to veto a congressional initiative to expand a children’s health insurance program for families whose income is too high to qualify for Medicaid and too low to buy their own health insurance. Bush told the American people, "Members of Congress are risking health coverage for poor children purely to make a political point." To call his statement merely spin, would be an understatement. According to the Washington Post, “A bipartisan group of lawmakers announced a proposal Friday that would add $35 billion over five years to the program, adding 4 million people to the 6.6 million already participating. It would be financed by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.” In his response to Mr. Bush’s remarks, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, said that without the funding fifteen states would run out of money for this program by the end of September. So, who is risking health coverage for poor children? Democrats and Republicans in Congress who want to finance the program or the President who says he will veto such funds. 

President Bush and his supporters, including the viable contenders for his party’s presidential nomination, remain gung-ho when it comes to the Iraq War and the astronomical funds it requires. The National Priorities Project tracks the costs of the Iraq War and the ticker on the organization’s web site shows right now $453,8 billion since the beginning of the invasion—by the time you read this blog probably more than $454 billion. Take a look at the National Priorities Project’s web site to get an idea how many health insurances for children these hundreds of billions could buy!

The good news is that the Democratic contenders for their party’s presidential nomination agree to tackle the intolerable fact that more than 45 million Americans do not have health insurance, if they become president. Reason enough for opponents to once again play their propaganda game and throw around the nonsensical term “socialized medicine” to kill universal health insurance.

P.S. Tonight, the New York Times reports on its web site, "The Bush administration plans to increase its 2008 financing  request for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere by almost $50 billion, with about a quarter of the additional money going toward armored trucks built to withstand roadside bombs, Pentagon officials said Saturday. The increase would bring the amount the administration is seeking to finance the war effort through 2008 to almost $200 billion."

But $35 billion cannot be found to provide health insurance and adequate health care to American children for the next five years!? 

Manufacturing the News: Michael Deaver and Karl Rove

By Brigitte L. Nacos
The death of Michael Deaver, who was Ronald Reagan’s premier image maker, and the departure of Karl Rove from the Bush White House highlight the centrality of public relations, propaganda, and manufactured news in modern White Houses and administrations. Power-holders and power-seekers have always tried and often succeeded in manipulating public views about themselves, their politics, and policies, but Michael Deaver opened a new chapter of public relations stagecraft during the Reagan years. While major factors during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Karl Rove and his associates proved the most aggressive and ruthless yet in marketing a president, branding their party, and manufacturing news to sell their policies—most notably the Iraq War. Calling Deaver rightly “the media maestro who shaped President Ronald Reagan’s public image,” the Washington Post’s Patricia Sullivan writes. “As the White House deputy chief of staff during the first term of the Reagan presidency, Deaver orchestrated Reagan's every public appearance, staging announcements with an eye for television and news cameras. From a West Wing office adjacent to the Oval Office, Deaver did more than anyone before him to package and control the presidential image.”

Commenting on Karl Rove’s sudden retirement from his White House job, Frank Rich takes his readers back to the summer of 2002, when “Andrew Card, then the president’s chief of staff, told The New York Times why the much-anticipated push for war in Iraq hadn't yet arrived. ‘You don't introduce new products in August,’ he said sounding like the mouthpiece for the Big Three automakers he once was. Sure enough, with an efficiency Detroit can only envy, the manufactured aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds rolled off the White House assembly line after Labor Day like clockwork.” While Card offered a glimpse of the behind-the-scene marketing tricks in selling the war on terrorism--in Iraq, Karl Rove was, no doubt, the brain behind such political maneuvers.

Administration’s Terrorism Fear Tactics Worked Again to Whip Democrats in Line

By Brigitte L. Nacos
After months of showcasing Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales’ unwillingness to tell the truth when testifying before congressional committees or speaking in public, enough Democrats in both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House were unwilling to vote against “The Protect America Act of 2007” that expands the administration surveillance power far beyond the parameters of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and expands the surveillance authorization prerogatives of the attorney-general (in tandem with the director of national intelligence) who has serious truth-telling deficiencies. As Aziz Huq writes in The Nation,
The law's most important effect is arguably not its expansion of raw surveillance power but the sloughing away of judicial or Congressional oversight. In the words of former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, the law provides "unlimited access to currently protected personal information that is already accessible through an oversight procedure."
E.J. Dionne Jr. reveals in today’s Washington Post why the Democratic majority—especially in the House—did not stand up to the president but handed him and the Republican minority a victory. According to the Post columnist,
One anxiety hovered over the debate: If a terrorist attack happened and Congress had not given Bush what he wanted, the Democrats would get blamed for a lack of vigilance. "Could something happen over August?" Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) asked in an interview. "Sure it could. What bothered me is that too many Democrats allowed that fear to turn into a demand for some atrocious legislation."