A federal judge ruled that warrantless surveillance is unconstitutional. But the administration has a defense.
The government argued that the program is well within the president’s authority, but said proving that would require revealing state secrets.
Joseph Heller, somewhere, is smirking.
A reporter writes a story with a slant that you, the PR guy, don’t like. It’s not factually wrong but leaves an unfavorable impression of your client. Maybe it suggests your client is not well positioned or has an ineffective message to the market. What do you do? The same thing the GOP does.
It fires off electronic rebuttals when it has a beef with news stories, broadcasts or statements by its critics, shooting its retorts directly into reporters’ e-mail inboxes and posting them on the Internet.
… Nearly half of the 32 issued so far were released in November 2005 and May of this year, two months when Bush’s job approval numbers plummeted. Ten of the 32 were leveled against Democrats on Capitol Hill. Twenty took issue with newspaper, magazine or broadcast reports on subjects ranging from climate change to tax cuts to prewar intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.
…Democrats dismiss the aggressive tactic, and say it suggests the Bush White House is on the defense, fighting an uphill battle over ratings.
“They’re attacking everybody — the media, the Democrats, government auditors, nonpartisan interest groups,” said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the person who provided the party’s rapid response to the GOP during the 2004 presidential race.
“It’s as though they are the sole arbitrators of the truth. This is yet another step of the politicization of the White House. It’s less a bastion of policymaking and more of a traditional permanent campaign,” Singer said.
… Democratic strategist Stephanie Cutter [said], “Unfortunately, facts are troublesome things, and refuting things on paper is not going to go very far,” she said. “People are living through the reality of this administration, and a piece of paper is not going to clear it up.”
It’s bad enough that local and state Democrats might not have any coordinated ongoing plan to shape the stories, but that national Dems “dismiss” this type of media relations is sad. Developing a message and a strategy to deliver is an approach to media relations that seems incapable of incubating in the Democratic Petri dish.
The news here isn’t how the Bush administration gets its story out, without regards to the facts. The news is that the Dems dismiss such aggressive media relations. They should be emulating it. If anything, I’m shocked that the GOP has issued only 32 of these rebuttals.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, disagrees that the “Setting the Record Straight” memos are just part of a Republican attempt to spin public opinion in their favor. This is increasingly going to be the way that presidential administrations — both Republican and Democrat — communicate, she said.
“The Internet facilitates it,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you post your side of things?”
She said the memos run parallel to Rush Limbaugh’s conservative talk radio show. “Limbaugh will systematically take on a reporter he thinks is unfair to George Bush, or unfair to Bush’s perspective,” Jamieson said.
The administration is hoping the targeted reporter will feel scolded and adapt in a way that pleases the White House and get other reporters to self-censor their stories and broadcasts to avoid being singled out.
“If it accomplishes that, and nothing else, that’s a very powerful effect,” Jamieson said.
Certainly, the Clinton campaign machine understood this, and the Democrats apparently were aggressive in responding during the ’04 campaign. Why not now?
“The primary purpose is that un-rebutted charges on important issues sometimes become viewed as fact,” said Dan Bartlett, who is counselor to the president and oversees the White House communications operation.
Even if attempts are made to fix mistakes, corrections published in newspapers or broadcast on TV aren’t always seen, Bartlett said. It’s essential, especially in today’s era of Internet chat rooms and 24-hour news, that the White House issue its rebuttal as soon as possible, he said.
“If it’s a day late, it’s not very useful,” he said.
Reporters aren’t hard-bitten and chain-smoking with a rakishly worn fedora. They’re not really outside the social milieu of politicians anymore but are regular guests at social events that attract top politicians. That doesn’t mean they tow the administration’s line. Rather, they don’t want to be wrong or even necessarily right if they’re right out on a limb. There’s a reason for the term “pack journalism.” But unless they’ve got a solid scoop, they’ll opt for balance, which usually means regurgitating each side’s line. So all the administration is doing is getting out their side of the story and not letting the other’s side’s spin or the pack’s interpretation become fact.
More important, how many times do we hear the Dem trying to react rather than getting their own line out? Not until the past week. The Lamont victory gave the Dems a little courage. But even after that victory, Dems seemed overwhelmed by the GOP message machine. In comments on a My DD blog entry a few days back,
Progressives aren’t getting booking calls. When the media search for Democrats to talk, they grab a Lieberman or a Biden on the one hand to make Dems look like Republicans minus conviction, or they get someone like Rangel who they know will get riled up and be a character but probably (and unfairly) get judged on personality, not substance.
Can it be changed? Maybe. But are these news outlets, who apparently have a vested interest in resisting grassroots progressivism, really inclined to give a legitimate soapbox to an eloquent progressive voice?
And on the party blog
[T]he hateful right owns the airs waves right now. We will never gain strength if we don’t control talk radio (for one example). I have been in contact with several of the station managers in northern Indiana for over a year and they all tell me the same thing – we have nothing to say that the people of this area want to hear.
We need to put Democrats in power again and the first – the very first thing they need to do is bring back the “Fairness Act” – if a station runs a right winger program like Limpbaugh (sic) for 3 hours, then they have to run a liberal show for the same amount of time… same way with any religious programing (sic) like 700 Club – if it’s on a TV station for 3 hours, then they have to put on a liberal show for the same amount of time.
We need this so much right now becasue (sic) you’re right – we’re not being heard…
I think that is why I am frustrated as well.
Clear messages are not coming out of the DNC..these issues are complicated and we all know deserve more than a 30 second sound byte…. We need reasonable, measured arguments to support the passion we all feel but unfortunately with the limited attention span Americans have, we need those one-liner sound bytes to rebut the Bush machine.
We have to have an organized fight to get our voices heard. Let me give you more information about how our markets in northern Indiana are simplfied (sic) by our right leaning radio station managers. When I asked one, who by the way is a regular on the local WNDU channel 16 tv station, connected with Notre Dame, he told me that in most cases, they have a “gut” feeling as to who they have on their programing (sic). When I pressed him if he or the station used any of the pro-active rating services he said – “sometimes”. My question then is very simple.. how can you have a gut feeling for what the market will bear if you don’t offer another view point? If you don’t give the other side a chance in voicing an opposing view – how do you know what the public will want to listen to?
This is just a lot of whining and the all too typical call for government regulation. Some will argue that what the White House does is easier because of the tighter control it can exercise over communications. For the Democratic Party, it might be more difficult, but only because the party hasn’t developed and institutionalized such a practice, probably because you’d see the kind of infighting we’re not witnessing between Howard Dean and Rahm Emanuel.
And is there that kind of coordination and planning of message in Virginia, where a Democrat is the chief executive?
I listened to Dana Milbank tonight on “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” tonight say that the Bush/Cheney message of “vote for us or die” may be simplistic, but it would resonate with voters better than the Dems trying to draw a distinction between the “war on terror” and Iraq. If he’s right, read no further because I suggest that the Dems actually start talking about ideas like this. If we want to get peace in the Middle East, a prelude to any semblance of victory against terror, then we need this kind of thinking vis-à-vis Syria.
Working in tandem, the Bush administration and the French should try to change the Syrian calculus. Syria sees Hezbollah as a card — something to be exploited to make Syria a factor in the region or to be traded in the right circumstances. We should create a one-two punch with the French to make clear that Syria has something significant to lose by not cutting off Hezbollah, and that it has something meaningful to gain from changing course.
Surely, if the international force is seen as credible and determined, it can convince Assad that Hezbollah is going to be contained and that its value to Syria could diminish. But Assad must also see that Syria will pay an unmistakable price if it tries to block implementation of Resolution 1701. That price could be a joint French-E.U. and American effort to isolate Syria economically if it is unwilling to end its material support for Hezbollah.
The Europeans currently provide a critical economic lifeline to the Syrians. French President Jacques Chirac could credibly warn Assad that if arms flow to Hezbollah and threaten French troops, then Europe will cut all economic ties to Syria. Conversely, if Syria ended its military relationship with Hezbollah and accepted the Lebanese government’s effort to reestablish its authority, the European Union could promise new and meaningful economic benefits to Damascus.
In such a scenario, the European Union would be Act 1. Act 2 would involve the United States. The Bush administration, which has expressed an interest in weaning Syria away from Iran, won’t be able to do that without talking to the Syrians. And it won’t be able to do it by continuing to make threats that have no consequences. It will not be enough to continue saying, “The Syrians know what they need to do.”
The United States must reinforce a tough E.U. message with one of its own to Assad, namely this: We are prepared to implement a range of sanctions, including the Syrian Accountability Act and executive orders that would make it difficult for companies and financial institutions that do business in Syria to conduct business in the United States.
This would have the potential of choking off European, Asian (and even Arab) countries and businesses from having any commercial or investment relations with Syria — and it could be devastating for an already weak economy. That’s a lever that should be deployed to build the Syrian interest in cooperating.
No doubt the Syrians would want to know what they’d get from such cooperation. They should be told that the page can be turned in our relations, that economic benefits could be forthcoming, and that even a resumption of the peace process between Syria and Israel on the Golan Heights could be in the offing. None of these things can be available if Syria is not prepared to cut off Hezbollah and Hamas. Why, after all, would we invest anything in a peace process when those two organizations retain the means — with Syrian support — of subverting that process at a time of their choosing?
No, it won’t fit on a bumper sticker. But maybe “Vote Democratic … for a Reality-Based World” can. Who says the Dems don’t have ideas – and at least a preliminary knowledge of foreign affairs?
Sometimes one gets the feeling that the Dems, in an effort to prove they can be just as tough as the GOP, do some really stupid things.
That’s not to say that the Dems shouldn’t make some demands of immigrants. By all means, we can neither encourage illegal acts nor accept all who want to migrate here. But to conflate Hispanic immigrants with Osama bin Laden is political suicide.
For those who may have missed it, The Post had a “Dispatch from the ‘New’ Mideast” in Sunday’s Outlook. These are the people we are losing and why we’re losing the “war on terror.”
“Our generation could have been different,” [Lubna] told [the article’s author] with exasperation recently, clutching a Diet Pepsi in one hand and a mentholated cigarette in the other. We had taken refuge from the Damascus heat in an air-conditioned room at a friend’s art gallery. “We really could have made peace. But now,” she shook her head, “it’s over. That possibility is gone.”
And, she says, it’s the United States’s fault, because it didn’t demand an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon. As the estimated death toll there rises to nearly 1,000, she and other secular Syrians of the art-gallery-and-democracy crowd are turning their sympathies toward the Islamic militant movement Hezbollah.
…But they’re just as wary of the United States’s failing democracy experiment in Iraq. The sectarian violence tearing that country apart is a potent vision of what they could one day face themselves. And so they feel forced into a corner, made to choose between a U.S. plan for a “new Middle East” that seems to show little respect for Arab lives and Arab ways and an Islamic-led resistance that could eventually turn against them at home.
And they are reluctantly choosing. “The issue of Hezbollah and the war is no longer rational,” one Syrian opposition figure told me. “It is emotional.”
E. J. Dionne observes the irony of our political parties.
Republicans, who defend individualism in theory, act like communitarians where their party is concerned. Democrats claim to be more community-minded but act like radical individualists in their penchant for candidate-centered, one-cause-at-a-time politics.
“Fraid I’ll have to miss this as vacation starts in the morning. I’ll be on the beach by the time it winds up.
A big protest is planned later today. I guess it’s in support of the Lebanese, or Arabs in general, or perhaps all Muslims, or, as I’m sure Dick Cheney would say, people who hate America. But Misha Galperin, executive vice president and chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, is not happy about its timing.
[His] group is not planning a counter-protest tomorrow, and Galperin said he believes the event was purposely scheduled on the Jewish Sabbath to thwart any response on its part.
Oh, I see. Were they supposed to hold it on Friday, so Muslims coulndn’t attend? Or perhaps on Sunday when Christians would be in church? Or maybe during the week, when no one could attend?
I swear, you couldn’t make thius stuff up.
On that note, I’m outta here.
The Connecticut Senate race may become more competitive. And Joe Lieberman won’t be one of the top competitors.
Charles Krauthammer’s piece in today’s Washington Post nicely sums up the arguements to be made against Democrats in the wake of Ned Lamont’s victory. It is the perfect bait: We are “anti-war.” He uses the term or “anti-Vietnam War” nine times in the short piece. The arguments, as neat as they are, are easily refuted. But I won’t go there. And neither should any Democrat. The last thing we need to be is defensive. Rather, it’s time to tell our own story, have confidence in it, and retell it as often as possible. That’s a little tougher challenge that refuting Mr. Krauthammer, but with much greater returns. And after all, when our opponents only narrative is “stay the course,” they’ve got both hands tied behind their backs.
As I mentioned in yesterday’s short post about the AP story outlining how both parties used yesterday’s terrorist scare to score political points, at least Lamont’s victory seems to have stiffen a few blue spines. That’s a good first step.
There’s a pretty good post at a blog I wasn’t aware of until yesterday. It lays out the Iraq challenge for Dems pretty well.
One, people are troubled by the war and that anxiety leads them to oppose the war in general…essentially they want to remove the anxiety and the easiest way is to oppose, or in other words, end the troubled war effort. Two, despite opposition to the war, a majority of people realize it is impractical to withdraw immediately, or in other words, while they don’t like the war, they realize it may have to continue for some period of time. Three, they still hold to the notion of winning the war regardless of their opposition and their desire to end the conflict.
… In the interest of achieving Democratic control of the House or the Senate, I am convinced that the Democratic Party and Ned Lamont must take the lead in proposing alternate and specific plans for a successful exit from Iraq. Should we allow Republicans to frame the topic, I fear Democrats may suffer the same fate that we encountered in 2004 when Rove and the RNC were able to portray the Democratic position as one inclined to concede defeat in Iraq and therefore a weakened position on national security and the war on terror…a position I’m convinced the American public is not yet willing to embrace and that I believe has been supported by polling data as well as the Connecticut outcome.
But this approach limits us to telling the public how we’ll fix George Bush’s mess. That’s too narrow a focus.
To negate Krauthammer’s “anti-war” frame, we need to explain how we would strengthen our military and how we would employ it. I have long argued that Iraq may have been the perfect country to invade and Saddam Hussein the perfect maniac to overthrow. But it was the wrong time because Iraqi Muslims weren’t ready for a revolution and certainly didn’t trust the U.S. to be their patron saint. (Besides, we were not done in Afghanistan.) Iraqis may well have accepted our military help, if we first had proven to them our appreciation of the core issues to Muslims throughout the Middle East. That would require our brokering a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and then our strong stance for democracies in those countries where the monarchies and dictators are still “our friends.” We need to make the case of why that approach is not “anti-war” but rather a practical approach that ensures our long-term security and our children’s freedom from fear.
Bush has already done most of the heavy lifting for us. His judgement in foreign affairs is so widely discredited, not by pundits and intellectuals but by Main Street Americans, that they are primed for an alternative. And to those who say that no amount of negotiation or diplomacy will stem the flow of arms from Iran to Syria to Lebanon or Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it should be clear to most that they would not have been so emboldened had the Iraq War proven our incapacity to stop them. The carrot and stick approach won’t work only because we no longer have a stick to wave. It’s proved flaccid.
I believe it’s Tom Friedman whose suggested that we need to go to Iran and Syria and ask, “What will it take?” They have a price. And for the right price, they will be willing to make some concessions that we want.
Whatever we offer, it will not be enough for the Islamic radicals. But right now our foreign policy is causing their number to multiply geometrically on an almost daily basis. Once we address their frustrated followers core issues, that number will shrink, making the employment of our military more effective. Right now, we’re just playing whack a mole and now we’re prohibiting water bottles on planes.
It’s a fundamental precept that in a political argument you never repeat your opponent’s charge. Let’s not say why we’re not anti-war, but what we are. In the three months to election day, we should be able to craft a narrative that resonates with voters. It will be defeatist nor anti-war. It should be a strong statement of our responsibilities in the world and our willingness to fight for them.
UPDATE: Fortunately, Democratic voices are not taking the bait, including Kevin Drum.
Republicans and Democrats clashed over the war on terror on Thursday within hours of the disclosure of a thwarted terrorist plot in Britain, each side accusing the other of doing too little to deter the threat of attack.
“We must implement the strong recommendations of the independent 9/11 commission to improve airport security screening at checkpoints,” said House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, stressing one of the party’s principal campaign-year promises in its drive to gain control of Congress.
Ohio Republicans said the Democratic candidate for the Senate, Rep. Sherrod Brown (news, bio, voting record), had voted against money “for the very types of programs that helped the British thwart these vicious attacks.”
“I don’t question his patriotism, but the fact is if Sherrod Brown had his way, America would be less safe,” said Bob Bennett, chairman of the Ohio Republican Party.
Brown, who is challenging Republican Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), mentioned the billions on the Iraq war and said the thwarted attacks “underscore the need to refocus our resources on fighting the war on terror.”
Bless them. The Dems on the offensive, not holding back for fear of politicizing the terror alert, as they surely would have been accused were it not for the GOP using it as well. And the AP gives them pretty much equal billing. What a difference a win makes.