Partisan Punching Bag

Was the RNC attack on Harry Reid unfair?

Let's take a look. The 13-page missive is titled "Senate Minority Leader Determined to Obstruct President Bush's Agenda."

"In 1999, Reid declared, 'Most of us have no problem with taking a small amount of the Social Security proceeds and putting it into the private sector.'" Yes, but it all depends on the details.

And: "Reid's Social Security Record: Voted for higher taxes on Social Security benefits at least eight times."

And: "Reid has promised to 'screw things up' for Senate Republicans." (From a WashPost interview.)

And: "As Daschle's whip, Reid helped orchestrate an unprecedented filibuster of some of President Bush's more conservative judicial nominee." I seem to remember Republicans blocking some Clinton nominees back in the 1990s; was that "obstructionism" too?

And, quoting Washingtonian magazine: "Son of a hard-rock miner and raised in a cabin without running water, the new Senate minority leader is soaking up city life in a DC Ritz-Carlton condo that he and his wife, Landra, bought in 2001 for $750,000." So? Have they checked Washington real estate prices lately?

Still, it's all quotes, transcripts and public record stuff--standard fare in any campaign.

And that's precisely the point.

We're living in the era of the Permanent Campaign. The old notion that the parties would beat each other's brains in during the election and then try to do the people's business, at least in odd-numbered years, is now considered quaint. The brain-bashing, and fundraising based on brain-bashing, now takes place all year, every year.

Just when the White House might need the Nevada senator to work out a deal on Social Security or budget cuts, the RNC is trying to demonize him. And if you think politicians don't remember these things, guess again.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee countered by sending out a petition to Bush, "calling on you to honor your promises of bipartisanship and to immediately renounce the ugly and unnecessary personal attacks against Senator Harry Reid leveled by your hand-picked boss at the RNC."

But the Republicans hardly have a monopoly on this sort of attack politics. Just look what the DNC put out after Karl Rove was bumped up to deputy chief of staff:

"A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROVEIAN DIRTY TRICKS AND SKULDUGGERY."

To wit: "ROVE AND THE SMEARING SWIFT BOAT VETERANS: OLD FRIENDS/ Karl Rove Is Old Friends With Top Donor for Swift Boat Veterans." So says the New York Times. But that doesn't mean Rove was involved.

"Rove Forges Party Invites On Opponents Stolen Stationary." When is this said to have happened? 1970.

"Rove Sent Out Phony Newspaper Article During 1982 Campaign."

"Karl Rove Led An Onslaught Of Political Mud Slinging To Crumble John McCain's Lead During The Republican Primary."

You get the idea. In Washington, it's always campaign time.

The Bush agenda is starting to move, as the New York Times reports:

"Handing President Bush a significant victory, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure on Thursday that would sharply limit the ability of people to file class-action lawsuits against companies.

"The measure, adopted 72 to 26, now heads to the House of Representatives, where Republican leaders say it will be approved next week and sent to the White House for Mr. Bush's signature.

"The measure would prohibit state courts from hearing many kinds of cases they now consider, transferring them to federal courts. Experts say many cases will wind up not being brought because federal judges have been constrained by a series of legal precedents from considering large class actions that involve varying laws of different states."

But that doesn't mean the Dems are rolling over, says the

Los Angeles Times: In both style and substance, Democrats are mounting a much more aggressive and unified opposition to President Bush than they did following his election in 2000.From the expected selection Saturday of firebrand Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic National Committee to Sen. John F. Kerry's rapid re-emergence as a Bush critic and the sharp Congressional challenges to Cabinet nominees Alberto Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice, Democrats are consistently choosing confrontation over conciliation in their early responses to Bush's second term.

"That approach contrasts sharply with the opening months of Bush's first term, when even some leading party liberals worked with him on education reform and several centrists supported his tax cuts...

"Republicans believe the shift opens Democrats to charges of obstructionism. The Republican National Committee is already branding the Democrats as 'the party of no.' "

Hence, the attack on Harry Reid. Though I can remember when Clinton depicted Gingrich and Dole as Dr. No types. What a difference a couple of elections make.

Two politicians are suddenly enjoying second acts. Howard Dean picked himself off the mat and will claim a big prize tomorrow, and the Boston Globe says he drew inspiration from an unlikely source:

"Fourteen years after the Rev. Pat Robertson's failed Republican presidential bid morphed into the Christian Coalition, Dean copied the TV evangelist by launching a political action committee to field and financially support scores of like-minded candidates across the country, for offices from town clerk to Congress. The network helped convince Democratic state-party representatives to back Dean for his party's most prominent job: chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

"Now, as DNC delegates gather in Washington for an election tomorrow that will almost certainly make Dean the next party chairman, the Dean team hopes the candidates he backed in 2004 can seed a movement to tug his party away from the center, as evangelicals succeeded in doing inside the GOP in the early 1990s.

"When Dean formally pulled out of the presidential race last February, 'we were at the Pat Robertson's-candidacy-has-fallen-apart moment,' recalled Zephyr Teachout, Internet outreach director for the Dean campaign. 'We were doing extensive research on the Christian Coalition.'"

The other phoenix-like figure, as the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, is Newt:

"The same puckish grin, the same silver hair helmet, the same wonky loquacity.

"Newt Gingrich, widely seen as political roadkill back in 1998, is enjoying his quintessentially American comeback - which means that, in his chosen role of conservative contrarian, he minces no words when he declares with his usual passion that President Bush and the GOP might yet fail to achieve their dream of a durable governing majority."

After citing some controversial Gingrich remarks--including his prediction that Bush's Social Security push could cost the GOP its Hill majorities--the Inquirer says: "This is the gist of Newt II, author and think-tank spawner, fulminator and Fox News commentator, just six years after his ruin. He soared in '94, leading the conservatives to congressional power, breaking 40 years of Democratic hegemony on Capitol Hill, and he sank a mere four years later, when he tried to exploit the Monica Lewinsky scandal for GOP gain, only to have voters rebuke the party in the '98 congressional elections. For several years thereafter, he was a virtual persona non grata in House conservative circles.

"But memories are short, people forgive, and Gingrich at 61 is still what he was before, a big-picture guy who yearns to fill the frame."

It's official: The administration is upbeat again about Iraq, with Rummy making a surprise trip there:

"Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, observing Iraqi security forces in action Friday, declared 'there's no question progress has been made' in securing the wartorn nation for building a new government,"

the AP reports. Don Wycliff has had enough of background briefings by top officials:

"Why do the media go along with this absurd practice, which leaves only the last and most important link in the information chain, the reader or viewer, ignorant?

"Well, in fairness, not all of the media do go along--at least not without protest. Sandy Johnson, Washington bureau chief of The Associated Press, has been a prominent and persistent resister.

"But as a practical matter, the media do go along, and the reason isn't hard to figure out: SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL and his ilk hold all the cards; they have the information reporters need to report stories, to inform the American people on what their government is doing or proposes to do.

"For journalists, says Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski, the choice is to either 'play or be out of the loop.'"

National Review's Myrna Blyth gives Hillary a suggestion I haven't seen anyone make in public before:

"Let's admit it. Hillary is scary. And not only because she is extremely smart, totally driven, and a formidable fundraiser. Hillary's most impressive and most worrisome quality is that she is a self-improver. That girl can learn and change constantly even if it means contradicting herself. "That's not flip-flopping," I bet she'd say, nodding her head, which she always does when she's agreeing, "it's evolving.. . . .

"But, of course, her greatest problem remains, not merely moderating her current views, but distancing herself her Hill-and-Bill past. Women -- who she would have to win decisively -- might find the historic opportunity to help elect the first woman president quite appealing. But not if that means having Bill back in the White House, even if he's merely hanging out in an office in the East Wing.

"So what is our girl going to do? A Hillary on her own just might make her a much stronger candidate. Yes, she can change her views, but will she change her husband? Handling that challenge would be the greatest test yet of Senator Clinton's presidential ambitions."

Isn't that an anti-family values proposal?

Hotline has some juicy excerpts from a Texas Monthly interview with Bush pollster Matthew Dowd, talking about John Kerry"

"He didn't make himself out to be a plausible alternative. I don't think he connected. I mean, there's a big part of these races are connecting with people. Not only in their head. I think he connected well in people's heads. He did very well in the debates, in a sort of academic perspective. But I don't think he ever connected well in their guts." On who they wanted to run against: "My feeling all along -- and everyone had different -- is that John Kerry would be the one I'd want to run against, for a couple of reasons. One, I'd met him years ago -- he wouldn't know it -- when I worked for [ex-Sen.] Lloyd Bentsen. I met him, and I noted at the time, I thought, an inability to sort of connect with people at a gut level. And that's very important in a Presidential race, as Al Gore found out."

How would Dowd have used Vietnam for Kerry?

"I would have done a more McCain-like strategy. Which is, this is part of his story that would always be mentioned without him ever having to bring it up, or bring it up in a TV spot, or bring it up in a speech. It would always be mentioned, and people would learn it, because you would talk about it. People would mention it in the newspaper, won three medals, you know, served in Vietnam, two tours of duty, all of that sort of stuff. Suffered injuries. That would become part of his story the American public would learn. What happens is, especially if you talk about a war record, especially if you try to make yourself into a hero, the public discounts it."

Finally, our obligatory Deep Throat item. Editor & Publisher has its new poll:

"Here comes the judge! The results in the world's first (that we know of) poll/contest on guessing the identity of Watergate legend 'Deep Throat' are in. Hundreds of entries poured in from journalists and casual readers, each offering a name and sometimes a reason why their man or woman will eventually go down in history as the most famous source ever.

"And, in a surprise, the winner is: Chief Justice William Rehnquist.No doubt some voters were influenced by recent (and unconfirmed) reports that Deep Throat is ailing. Rehnquist was a smoker -- a key, if minor, Deep Throat clue -- and had worked for Watergate-implicated Attorney General John Mitchell before ascending to the Supreme Court in January 1972. Barry Sussman of The Washington Post has suggested that Throat seemed anti-Nixon but very protective of Mitchell."

Of course, John Dean wrote in the LAT that he'd just learned Throat was ill, and everyone knew the chief justice has been ill.

"Rehnquist: 15%. Mark Felt: 8%. Fred Fielding: 6%. Henry Kissinger: 6%. L. Patrick Gray: 5%. George H. W. Bush: 4%. Gerald R. Ford: 3%. Pat Buchanan: 2%. Alexander Butterfield: 2%. Bob Dole: 2%. Leonard Garment: 2%. Alexander Haig: 2%. Diane Sawyer: 2%. Ben Stein: 2%. Pope John Paul II: 2%."

If it's Diane, will ABC get the scoop? A "PrimeTime Live" special?

Finally, how is the British press treating the Charles & Camilla news? First of all, says the Guardian, it leaked:

"Royal aides conceded that the announcement, intended for next week, was brought forward once it was known that the London Evening Standard was going to splash on the news. . . .

"Camilla will be known as Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cornwall - although she will also be Princess of Wales that title is too sensitive to use, given its last holder. Queen Camilla - whatever tomorrow's tabloids may say - is not likely to come to pass. There is huge sensitivity about this issue in royal circles. When Charles is king one day, she will be known as HRH Princess Consort, just like Prince Albert was Prince Consort to Queen Victoria."

Quite so.

"You'd have to be stony-hearted indeed," says the Independent, "to begrudge Charles Windsor and Camilla Parker Bowles their happy ending. If marriage is what the two of them want, then why shouldn't they have it? The rules of church-and-state matrimony may have to be bent to accommodate the happy event. But rules were adhered to last time, and were proved to be rather bigger on money, power and position than they were on joy, love and family."

But the Sun bloody well doesn't forget:

"The depth of their intimacy became clear in 1992 when a tape recording surfaced of a telephone conversation between the two in which Charles said 'I love you' to Camilla.

"When the Prince admitted he had committed adultery after his marriage to Diana had broken down, Camilla was widely assumed, but never confirmed, to be the other woman.

Diana later went on television to say there had been three people in the marriage."