Backtrack Time

President Bush's comments on Iraq made headlines when his Washington Post interview was published Sunday: the election ratified his policy and no date for even a partial pullout.

But what jumped out at me is what Bush had to say about same-sex marriage.

During the campaign, you may recall, the president stoked his conservative religious base by embracing a constitutional amendment to bar even states from allowing gay marriage. Never mind that this was unlikely to pass Congress by the requisite two-thirds margin, not to mention three-quarters of the state legislatures. It was the perfect wedge issue, meant to paint John Kerry -- who was also against gay marriage, but not in favor of altering the Constitution -- as culturally out of step.

So now that 43 is safely reelected, guess what? He's not really going to push for an amendment after all. As he put it in another context: Mission accomplished.

There is no reason to press for the amendment, Bush told two Post reporters on Air Force One, because so many senators are convinced that the Defense of Marriage Act -- which says states that outlaw same-sex unions do not have to recognize such marriages conducted outside their borders -- is sufficient. "Senators have made it clear that so long as DOMA is deemed constitutional, nothing will happen. I'd take their admonition seriously . . . Until that changes, nothing will happen in the Senate."

Are we supposed to believe that this information was unavailable before Election Day? Or that Bush was simply exploiting passions on this hot-button issue without really intending to follow through? If I was an evangelical Christian who felt strongly about this issue, I'd be plenty mad. And liberals can be forgiven for concluding that Bush was just interesting in demonizing them on the issue.

Oh, and Scott McClellan called the next day to say the president really, truly was "willing to spend political capital" on an amendment but believes he can't get it through the Senate for now.

Bush scored two of the three newsmagazine covers (Newsweek and U.S. News) in this inauguration week. And I notice that he gave interviews to many of the big papers (Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Washington Times) but didn't get around to the New York Times. Could this have anything to do with the White House being mad about that late-October NYT report on missing Iraqi ammunition that dominated the tail end of the campaign?

(The White House is also miffed that CBS's "Face the Nation" was the only Sunday show that didn't accept an offer of either Andy Card or Dan Bartlett to talk about the president's second term. Face's guest: Ted Kennedy.) Whoops -- looks like Bush committed a gaffe by telling the truth on same-sex marriage:

"The White House sought on Sunday to reassure conservatives that President Bush would work hard on behalf of a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage," says the New York Times , "backtracking from remarks Mr. Bush made in an interview suggesting that he would not press the Senate to vote on the amendment this year. . . .

"In interviews on Sunday on television news programs, Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush's counselor, said Mr. Bush was referring in The Post interview only to the reality of legislative vote counting and was not suggesting that his support for the amendment had diminished."

Andrew Sullivan's reaction? "I'm extremely relieved. The FMA has gone unmentioned by Bush since the election - and it appears more and more like a pre-election ploy rather than a principled stand. (Of course, that's a relief but it's also an indication of how bald-faced a political maneuver this was in the first place)."

Mandate or no mandate? That's the question raised by this Washington Post poll:

"Fewer than half of those interviewed -- 45 percent -- said they preferred that the country to go in the direction that Bush wanted to lead it while 39 percent said Democrats should lead the way. . . .

"But the public also wants cooperation from the Democrats. At a time when Democratic leaders are preparing to challenge many of Bush's major initiatives, nearly seven in 10 Americans agree that Bush's victory means that congressional Democrats should compromise with him -- even if it means compromising on their party's principles."

Got that?

Newsweek begins its second-term piece, to demonstrate Bush's clout, by showing that the Cabinet turnover wasn't as seamless as it might have looked:

"The official story was that many of the cabinet officials were ready to move on; members would volunteer their own resignations. But as the election neared, several began to waver; it became clear they'd need to be shown the door. Other presidents might leave the tough stuff to subordinates, but Bush wanted to do the job himself. When it came time to say farewell, the exchanges in the Oval Office were surprisingly emotional. 'They were shocked and really hurt, and that hurt him,' says one confidant.

"Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson was one of the walking wounded. A former governor like Bush, he'd toiled on the president's first White House campaign and considered himself a friend. Thompson talked openly of moving to the private sector after 40 years in public life. Yet behind the scenes he also floated the idea of staying around as head of Homeland Security. Early in the new year, three weeks after Bernard Kerik's nomination had fallen apart, Thompson traveled to the Oval Office for one final chat as a cabinet member. Thompson grew tearful, saying he'd always be there for Bush, and hinted one more time that he would jump at the chance to stay on. But Bush stuck to his plan, and said goodbye."

The Los Angeles Times gives less than a rave review to Condi Rice's tenure as provost of Stanford University:

"Critics say Rice was harsh, even ruthless, during her administration, the one time in her gilded career she has overseen a large institution. Improbably, the youngest provost in Stanford history and the first black and woman to hold the post helped prompt a Labor Department probe into the treatment of women and minorities. . . .

"Rice laid off people, cut services, eliminated programs and consolidated others. To supporters, among them Stanford's current president, John Hennessey, Rice's moves were painfully necessary and even courageous. 'No one likes layoffs, especially universities, because there are so many interpersonal relationships,' Hennessey said in an interview in his office off Stanford's Main Quad. But her work on the budget 'was enormous,' he said. 'We could have had problems lingering for 10 years, easily, if it wasn't addressed in dramatic fashion.'

"But detractors say Rice's moves were made more brutal by the imperious way she carried them out. 'She was extremely autocratic in her style,' said Albert H. Hastorf, a psychology professor and former Stanford provost. 'She didn't brook anyone disagreeing with her.'

Looking for a reality check on Iraq? Many of the candidates are so afraid of violence that they won't reveal they are running for office, says the NYT. (Kind of crimps your get-out-the-vote operation, wouldn't you say?) And some Iraqis are leaving the country until the Jan. 30 elections are done, says the WP.

American Prospect's Matthew Yglesias has some SS advice for the Dems (via Kevin Drum):

"Right now, strictly speaking, the White House doesn't need any Democratic support to pass a bill and doesn't expect to give much up in order to get it. That means there's no basis for a genuine compromise. The only way to get a compromise is to convince the Republicans that a failure to achieve one is going to bring the rest of their agenda crashing down around them. That calls for demonstrating an eagerness not for compromising with the GOP but for using Social Security as a political bludgeon with which to destroy the Republican Party.

"After all, liberals have been moaning since forever that cultural politics prevent them from getting voters to focus on the left's popular economic ideas. Well, what better way to get the voters to focus on economics than to have a president whose top agenda items are gutting Social Security and enacting drastic budget cuts? This is a fight Democrats should be thrilled to have. And if they win -- not just blocking the carve-out, but humiliating everyone associated with it -- that, and only that, will lay the groundwork for a sensible compromise that adjusts the benefit structure, tax rates, and retirement age of Social Security while creating new ways to boost private savings."

If you missed my print column I yesterday on Tavis Smiley vs. NPR (that's okay, you're entitled to take the holiday off), here it is.

I offer the following, by Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam, because one of the hardest things in journalism is deciding not to go with a story that you've just-about, almost-kind-of got. This involves Boston's Metro newspaper, in which the NYT is about to buy a 49 percent stake:

"It is a cause of concern for me, and of some embarrassment, that I was aware of the sensational story involving the racist remarks made by Metro executives and chose not to report on them in my Globe column. Here is why.

"Early in 2004, a friend of mine who had been a top Metro USA executive sought me out to publish a sensational story about Metro. We met. The story, now widely known, was indeed sensational, and horrible. He said that two top Metro officials, Steve Nylund and Hans Holger-Albrecht, had used the "n-word" in front of large audiences at Metro functions overseas, one of which he had attended. My source refused to be identified in the story but promised to put me in touch with other Metro staffers who would confirm the events.

"Right off the bat, I called Nylund. In an aggrieved tone, Nylund repeatedly denied, on the record, that he had used the offensive language. (He has since issued an admission that he in fact did use racist language.) I called the then-head of the Boston Metro, who had attended one of the conferences, but she refused to talk to me.

"I did some more reporting. I spoke with a second Metro executive, who, like my friend, was planning to compete with his former employer in the free daily newspaper marketplace. He confirmed hearing the remarks, but, like my friend, refused to be identified. The two men urged me to call one of their former subordinates, John Wilpers, who had worked for Metro in Boston. He agreed to speak on the record about the incidents, and confirmed they had happened . . .

"Now I had to make a choice. I had one staffer confirming the racist remarks on the record, and a strong denial from Nylund. None of the parties involved could produce a tape or transcript of the meetings in question . . .

"There was also an issue of taste. The remarks were so objectionable, and I was so reluctant to reprint them in my column, that I again felt the standard of proof had to be close to absolute. It wasn't a legal issue; it was an ethical issue. That standard had not been met."

More on that CBS report, from

Jeff Jarvis: "Note that the blue-ribbon panel's report did not do what CBS hoped for; quite the opposite. The network hoped this would put this unpleasantness behind them and clear the pipes like an ethical enema. Instead, it only put a harsher light on CBS' problems and it highlighted the network's -- and the panel's -- refusal to deal with the hard issues:

"There continue to be calls for Rather's head and Rather hasn't helped his own cause with his response. Jay Rosen -- as the good professor he is -- asks Rather to tell us exactly what he has learned in all this. It's a test, Dan. You're not passing.

"There are also still calls for the head of CBS News head Andrew Heyward. As someone (sorry, I wish I could remember who) pointed out: If the people he fired needed to be fired, then why did he wait for a blue-ribbon panel to do it? What does that say about Heyward's -- and Moonves' -- management? Not much good.

"They appoint an insider, a Tiffany-era dino, to be their conscience and she sets off immediately saying stupid things. If they were going to appoint anyone to such a job, they should have followed the NY Times lead and (1) named an outsider with the spine of Dan Okrent and (2) given that outsider a means of criticizing CBS News on CBS air. Instead, they get someone safe who's say safe (if inane) things."

The quote he's referring to is something CBS executive Linda Mason told me: "We didn't come clean soon enough. . . . Dan does think he's constantly attacked. If we backed off every story that was criticized, we wouldn't be doing any stories."

It's rough out there is blog land. Here's Vanity Fair's James Wolcott ripping Howard Fineman for his thesis that the once-powerful American Mainstream Media Party is losing its political clout:

"Forget for a moment that Fineman, a mucky-mucky at Newsweek and MSNBC pundit who preens like a courtier, jeers at the 'Media Party' as if he weren't a fully paid-up club member with spa privileges. When he writes, 'It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the "media" has any credibility,' it doesn't penetrate his pancake makeup that few have less credibility than he, and not because he's tilted at too many windmills and missed.

"No, what's startling is Fineman's ignorance of the history and dynamics of his own profession. He now looks at journalism not through the eyes of a journalist but through the contemptuous eyes of those he covers, sharing their disdain . . .

"When you see how gullibly the media swallowed the lies and claims from the Bush administration and their neocon mouthpieces about WMDs in Iraq, it's pretty damned hard to accept the notion that the Media Party suffers from an excess of prosecutorial zeal, and that we're all better off with the ghost of Edward R. Murrow finally being sucked into the ventilator so that reporters can resume a more modest role shining Karl Rove's shoes."

I wonder what Wolcott is like when he gets mad.