Carville's Complaint

NEW YORK--James Carville is off the reservation.

With the Republicans having taken over this city for a week, you'd think the Ragin' Cajun, one of the masterminds of Bill Clinton's nomination at Madison Square Garden 12 years ago, would be sticking to the Democratic script. A hardy band of Dems, like the Republicans in Boston, is here to stick some pins in the Bush balloon.

As the cohost of CNN's "Crossfire," Carville is no longer a party hack. But he raises money for the Democrats, gives high-level advice and is a certified insider.

So it was surprising to hear him declare at a Time Warner party last night that the Kerry-Edwards message is muddled. That there's no bark, no bite to what the candidates are saying. That the Democratic campaign is too timid when it comes to attacking the Bush-Cheney team. That too many people are in charge, so no one's in charge.

"They're a perpetual committee listening to a perpetual focus group, and it's got to change," he says.

The campaign was particularly derelict, says Carville, when it comes to deploying John Edwards. "He's a racehorse, and you've got to get him on the track."

On the day the Census Bureau announced an increase in poverty and millions more Americans lacking health insurance, "the event they did was credit card debt," he says derisively. "Because someone in a focus group must have said something."

What the Kerry operation sorely lacks, Carville says, "is someone who can drive a communications message." This has created a "vacuum" at the heart of the campaign.

Carville has made this argument to the Kerry leadership and believes a change will take place by the time the senator hits the trail again on Thursday. "I know that what they're doing now ain't gonna stand."

The Louisianan has his own candidate for message meister--could it be Joe Lockhart, who gave up a CNBC gig to join the Kerry team?--but wouldn't tip his hand. He says he's talking about someone to win the news cycle, not a high-level shakeup. We'll see if he's right.

My print column today is about Laura Ingraham and the role that conservative talk radio is playing in the Bush campaign. Some other juicy items too.

In the None Too Subtle department:

"Republican leaders said yesterday that they would repeatedly remind the nation of the Sept. 11 attacks as their convention opens in New York City today, beginning a week in which the party seeks to pivot to the center and seize on street demonstrations to portray Democrats as extremist," says the New York Times.

Oh, like anyone had forgotten?.

"Party aides said the convention would begin with an elaborate tribute to Sept. 11 victims, with speeches by Senator John McCain and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, reminding voters of Mr. Bush's role in leading the nation after the attacks, which took place less than two miles from Madison Square Garden."

Oh, and there's this attempt to tie the demonstrators to the Kerry camp: "The Republican Party chairman, Ed Gillespie, noted to reporters that the legion of protesters included Peggy Kerry, Mr. Kerry's sister, who lives in New York and attended an abortion rights rally."

Peggy Kerry, a woman with Known Ties to the nominee.

The Chicago Tribune also picks up on the 9/11 theme:

"In the city where the attacks marked a new era of national fear, the Republican Party opens its convention Monday, leaning heavily on the episode that transformed Bush into a wartime president and protector, a mantle he hopes will secure his re-election.

"If the convention of Bush's Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry, could be distilled into a single word--Vietnam--the president's might be reduced to a word and a number--Sept. 11. It is the first time in 30 years that a president has sought re-election in wartime, and the Republicans will provide a showcase for what they believe is the greatest single strength that Bush possesses: resolve in the face of terrorism."

For the New York Post, the big story is Rudy:

"As he revved up for his speech to the Republican convention tonight, Rudy Giuliani said Democrat John Kerry shifts with the wind -- and that's 'very bad' for a leader when America faces the war on terror. . . .

"Tonight's speech -- which Giuliani wrote himself longhand on legal pads -- casts Bush as a leader who faces up to threats, just as Winston Churchill saw the dangers of Hitler, and Ronald Reagan saw that the Soviet Union was an 'evil empire.'"

Why did the campaign release portions of Rudy's and McCain's speeches a full day in advance? Could it have anything to do with the fact that there's no coverage on the Big Three networks tonight?

The Christian Science Monitor sees a potential downside to the September 11 theme:

"As the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks approaches, the legacy of 9/11 has become more complicated for the president, presenting political risks along with opportunity. References to such a searing emotional event could come across as exploiting a tragedy -- something critics accused the Bush campaign of doing when it ran its first advertisements using 9/11 footage, months ago.

"More problematic, the president's handling of the terrorist threat has lately generated pointed criticism as well as praise -- both from neutral sources such as the bipartisan 9/11 commission, as well as partisan opponents such as filmmaker Michael Moore, whose movie 'Fahrenheit 9/11' highlighted the seven minutes Bush continued to sit with schoolchildren he'd been visiting after learning that the second tower had been hit.

"Notably, the campaign has declared that Bush will not visit the actual site of the attacks, where already one group of activists has held an anti-Bush protest. But the president is planning to visit a firehouse and attend a prayer breakfast while in the city. And the campaign is showcasing the former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, who has become all but synonymous with 9/11."

The campaign must be going all out--Karl Rove is doing interviews. Here's one with the Boston Globe.

The Los Angeles Times offers a psycho-profile of the candidate:

"Yale and military service, the Texas oil business and politics: George W. Bush has traveled a route similar to that of his accomplished father, sometimes seeming diminished by his father's long shadow. Even when he became president, the son's lack of foreign policy experience was shrugged off by many who thought his father's expertise and former aides would guide him.

"But this week, as he accepts the Republican nomination for a second term, President Bush is clearly more than his father's son. The man who will stand before the nation on Thursday is a product of his father's example, his high expectations and expansive advantages, but he is also someone who has bristled at them enough to establish his own style: openly religious, politically combative and aggressive in his approach to foreign policy and tax cuts.

"The path Bush has chosen also has put him in one more competition with his formidable father. If he wins in November, he will have surpassed the career of the first President Bush, who was defeated after a single term. If he loses, Bush will end up repeating his father's fate as a one-term president in part because he worked so hard in the White House to cut a different path."

Newsweek also does the father-and-son thing:

"It is an article of faith with the president and his advisers, repeated like a mantra, that George W. Bush is 'comfortable in his own skin.' President Bush himself thinks so: 'I know who I am,' he told a pair of NEWSWEEK reporters recently. 'If you're the president, you don't have time to figure out who you are. I think it's unfair to the American people to sit in that Oval Office and try to find your inner soul'. . . .

"And yet, at other times, he can seem not so self-assured. There is the deer-in-the-headlights look that still pops up at press conferences, and that annoying smirk, possibly meant to convey an air of disdain or superiority, but showing the defensiveness of a teenager.

"The country is evenly -- and hotly -- divided over the real George Bush. Some, predominantly those who live in the conservative Red States, proudly see a confident, self-knowing Bush, the steady commander in chief. Others, mostly liberal Blue Staters, cringe at a cocksure (but insecure) bully boy who seems to strut about the world. How to reconcile the two? One way is to examine how George Bush has dealt with an old curse."

U.S. News wonders where the policy beef is:

"As the president prepares to accept renomination at the Republican National Convention this week, voters are sharply divided over whether Bush's sunny and determined outlook is what the nation needs and whether they want a continuation of Bush's controversial policies for another four years. Bush's challenge is complicated by the fact that it's not exactly 'morning in America,' the phrase Ronald Reagan used to such good effect in winning re-election 20 years ago.

"The country is at war, the economy is shaky, and large numbers of Americans have real doubts about the future. So far, Bush has served up a pretty thin gruel in outlining his menu of priorities for a second term. But he says that will change when he gives his acceptance speech at the convention Thursday night, and he believes strongly that the voters will give him a second term."

The Note says the election boils down to a few points:

"1. President Bush is going to have to win over a disproportionate share of wrong-track voters to take this race, and the way to do that is to disqualify John Kerry.

"2. John Kerry is failing to take full advantage of the wrong-track dynamic, and has yet to clear the national security, likeability, and credibility bars.

"3. No matter how much the President fills in his second-term agenda, his case amounts to "I will keep you safer."

"4. If John Kerry has a health care plan, an education plan, and a jobs plan (and we are pretty sure he does/might . . . he hasn't figured out how to explain them yet."

What, exactly, do those 100,000 or more protesters want? New York Daily News columnist Zev Chafets takes a look.

"The vast army that marched past Madison Square Garden yesterday afternoon yelling, 'Bring the Troops Home!' and 'Fox News Sucks!' and 'Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!' were united by one great emotion: Contempt for George W. Bush.

"They denounced the President and all his works in blunt generic slogans and in distinctive New York-ese (my favorite: 'Bush is a Tush'), and sang out 'No more years!' . . .

"They hate Bush but they didn't show any love for his opponent, either. They didn't even mention him. If there was a single 'Kerry for President' banner in the crowd, I missed it."

The New Republic scolds the press, including The Post, for its swift boat coverage:

"Just how dishonest must a smear campaign be for American journalists to say so plainly or, better yet, to ignore altogether? That's the only real question still unanswered in the controversy sparked by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth over John Kerry's service in Vietnam--although even to use the word 'controversy' affords the issue's protagonists too much dignity.

"The veterans featured in the organization's TV ad claim to have 'served with Kerry,' but none actually served on the same boat. (Yes, we've been reduced to arguing over what the definition of 'with' is.) Several of the charges are based on recollections by veterans who, years earlier, had praised Kerry for the very same actions. The accusation that Kerry faked one of his injuries turns out to come from a third hand account.

"Most important of all, the surviving crew members from Kerry's boat--as well as Navy records--back Kerry's version of events. As the Los Angeles Times editorialized this week, citing one of its own reporter's fine work debunking the Swift Boat Veterans, 'no informed person can seriously believe that Kerry fabricated evidence to win his military medals.'

"Unfortunately, even as reporters eviscerated the Swift Boat Veterans' essential claims, the conventions of evenhandedness (at least on news, as opposed to editorial, pages) prevented them from stating their findings in bald, unvarnished terms. And so writers for papers like The Washington Post repeatedly played the dispute as a he-said, she-said campaign argument, seizing on the relatively minor discrepancies in Kerry's story (chiefly Kerry's questionable claim that his boat had gone into Cambodia on Christmas Eve, 1968) and then balancing those against the far more egregious distortions they had found in the swift boat ads.

"'Both sides have withheld information from the public record and provided an incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, picture of what took place,' read the key passage from a lengthy front-page story in last Sunday's Post. 'But although Kerry's accusers have succeeded in raising doubts about his war record, they have failed to come up with sufficient evidence to prove him a liar.' And, while careful readers could parse the truth, more casual readers were left to take their cues from headlines like 'Veterans Battle Over the Truth' or 'Swift Boat Accounts Incomplete,' which compounded the misimpression that there was something ambiguous, if not downright suspicious, about Kerry's military record.

"But it wasn't primarily the print media that kept this story alive. It was television, particularly cable news, with all of its now-familiar pathologies. Predictably, Fox News hyped the story, weaving it seamlessly into a larger narrative about Kerry's character flaws."

National Review's Byron York seizes on a number in the latest Gallup survey:

"The poll shows Kerry's unfavorable rating at its highest point since Gallup began measuring Kerry's performance in February 1999. Forty percent of those surveyed have an unfavorable opinion of Kerry, compared to 52 percent who have a favorable opinion. Kerry's favorable rating is lower than the 54 percent of those surveyed who have a favorable opinion of President George W. Bush.

"From late March until early August, Kerry's unfavorable rating hovered in the mid-30s. It was 37 percent in a poll taken July 30-August 1. In a survey taken July 8-11, it was 34 percent. Before that, it was even lower. In mid-February, when Kerry locked up the Democratic nomination, his unfavorable rating was 26 percent.

"Part of the increase is the natural result of Kerry's becoming well known. Candidates with little national recognition normally have very low favorable and unfavorable ratings. In February 1999, for example, Kerry's unfavorable rating was nine percent.

"But the recent increase in Kerry's unfavorable rating is likely the result of something else -- a combination of ads aired by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, negative ads by the Bush campaign, and the simple fact that the public has had more chances to see Kerry, leading some to decide they dislike him."

In every incumbent's campaign, some intrepid journalist comes along and says, Hey, the guy's actually running the thing!

"President Bush will accept his party's nomination in New York this week on the crest of a campaign that aides say reflects an unusual level of involvement from the president himself, particularly in driving attacks on Senator John Kerry that have characterized his re-election effort since the spring," the New York Times says.

"Several aides said Mr. Bush views this as the campaign of his life, and has intervened on matters as large as the themes it should strike and as small as camera angles on his television advertisements.

"While making sure Mr. Kerry is challenged at every opening, they said, the single most consuming concern for Mr. Bush is that there is an elaborate get-out-the-vote operation in November in anticipation of a contest as tight as the one in 2000.

"Mr. Bush, in an interview in New Mexico last week, was careful to present himself as above the rough and tumble of a campaign, saying he was busy dealing with the problems of the country. . . .

"Beyond the involvement of the president himself, aides say the strategy that has brought Mr. Bush to this point is quietly being directed not from the Oval Office but by what his inner circle privately calls the Breakfast Club - a small group of advisers who gather on weekends at Mr. Rove's home in northwest Washington, where, over eggs and bacon cooked by Mr. Rove, they measure the campaign's progress against a detailed plan devised 18 months ago."

Don't these guys worry about cholesterol? Wait, it gets worse: Rove serves "eggies," "concoctions of eggs, butter, cream and bacon fat . . . with slabs of bacon." What better way to get the campaign to sizzle?

Oh, and what happened to Bush the guy who doesn't bother reading newspapers because his staff knows what's going on? "By 7 a.m., when he is in the Oval Office, aides say, Mr. Bush will frequently tell them about an article they have not seen and tell them to call the reporter and complain."

Hmmm. I got one such call. I wonder if . . .