Bush 'Friend' Caves

Nobody turns down the chance to be on television, right?

Why, then, would serial taper Doug Wead blow off "Hardball"?

Was he quaking with fear over being grilled by Chris Matthews?

Apparently he has come to realize what was stunningly obvious to everyone else: that secretly recording a friend, and then using the tapes to peddle a book, is a betrayal of the first order.

This guy is the Linda Tripp of 2005. She befriended Monica Lewinsky, then made Lewinsky's life a living hell for the purely personal reason that Tripp didn't like Bill Clinton. Bubba gave his enemies the ammunition, but without the machinations of Tripp, we likely would have been spared the whole sordid episode.

Wead, however, went Tripp one better, insisting that George W. is his pal and that he was doing this for history. Right.

So now Wead is in damage-control mode, telling the Hardballers in a letter: "It seems the better part of wisdom for me to forgo television for a time. It would only add to the distraction I have caused to the president's important and historic work.

"Contrary to a statement that I made to the New York Times, I have come to realize that personal relationships are more important than history. I am asking my attorney to direct any future proceeds from the book to charity and to find the best way to vet these tapes and get them back to the president to whom they belong."

At least Wead won't profit from his underhanded ways--although, as I noted yesterday, the tapes didn't really hurt Bush and may have helped him.

On-and-off GOP strategist Frank Luntz has come up with a semantically clever strategy memo, and after Daily Kos posted the playbook, there's been lots of reaction on the left.

The liberal blog Think Progress offers this analysis:

"Never mind that President Bush's budget is the largest in American history, or that his first-term tax cuts are responsible for a much larger portion of the federal deficit than any spending increases.

"Luntz's message on the budget? Our earlier lies worked -- why fix what's not broken?

"'Americans still believe the primary cause of the deficit is wasteful Washington spending, not the tax cuts,' Luntz says. 'So tell them: "Americans aren't taxed too little. Washington spends too much."' Problem solved!"

Blog Synbod has more:

"Oh, yes, he advises preying on the emotions tied to the terrorist attacks to distract Americans from the truth about the economy, writing, 'Much of the public anger can be immediately pacified if they are reminded that we would not be in this situation today if 9/11 had not happened.' It's also an easy way to get President Bush off the hook: Luntz points out that convincing people that the struggling economy is a consequence of 9/11 (as opposed to, say, Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy) will convince people 'it is unfair to blame the current political leadership'

"Finally, Luntz advises, 9/11 is the perfect way to dodge responsibility for sinking the country in red ink. In a section headed 'Without the context of 9-11, you will be blamed for the deficit,' he points out 'supporters are inherently turned off to the idea of fiscal irresponsibility.' The best way to counter that fact? 'The trick then is to contextualize the deficit inside of 9/11.'"

Interesting "trick."

Salon's Eric Boehlert has more on the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert melodrama. The issue, he writes, is "not how an openly Republican partisan got inside the White House press room, because partisans have been there for years. Joe Lockhart recalls having been confronted with a similar question of White House access regarding veteran Baltimore, Md., radio host Lester Kinsolving, who for decades has pitched eccentric, long-winded and usually conservative-leaning questions inside the briefing room. (Kinsolving is currently recuperating from triple-bypass surgery.)

"Lockhart thought it was inequitable that Kinsolving was virtually the only local radio show host with daily access. 'The issue got kicked up to my level. I thought it was fundamentally unfair, and it was clear that he was an annoyance to everyone in the room. And frankly we should have shut him down. But I knew if we kicked him out it would be a big story with the right-wing press, and I didn't need that . . . '

"So the mystery remains: How did Guckert, with absolutely no journalism background and working for a phony news organization, manage to adopt the day-pass system as his own while sidestepping a thorough background check that might have detected his sordid past? That's the central question the White House refuses to address. And like its initial explanation that Guckert received his press pass the same way other journalists do, the notion first put out by White House officials that they knew little or nothing about GOPUSA/Talon News, its correspondent Guckert or its founder Bobby Eberle has also melted away.

"Instead, we now know, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer personally spoke with Eberle about GOPUSA, so concerned was Fleischer that it was not an independent organization. (Eberle convinced Fleischer that it was.) Additionally, Guckert attended the invitation-only White House press Christmas parties in 2003 and 2004, and last holiday season, in a personal posting on GOPUSA, Eberle thanked Karl Rove for his 'assistance, guidance, and friendship.'"

Gannon told me, by the way, that GOPUSA created Talon as "a marketing consideration to separate the news division from something that could be viewed as partisan." What makes that especially transparent is that when you click on a Talon story, you're automatically transported to that article on the GOPUSA site.

Here's an interesting tidbit from the LAT piece on Michael Jackson's jury selection:

"One of the jurors said he did not follow the news much, but another is an aspiring journalist. One juror said she liked Bill O'Reilly, the controversial television host on Fox News." Hmm...Does that make her more or less likely to convict Jackson?

Bill Keller has even more to say about the blogosphere as the New York Times editor continues his correspondence with Jeff Jarvis at the Buzz Machine:

"I regard the blogosphere as both a treasury from which we draw ideas and information, and a stimulating bull session where our work lives on. It's only natural that in the blogosphere, a medium with a very low threshold, you find a lot of self-indulgent nonsense, misinformation, propaganda and paranoia. But I have an equally long and more unforgiving list of complaints about the more traditional media.

"My quarrel with the blog world, to the extent I have one, is really with the zealots -- the people whose pose is revolutionary, whose articles of faith are that All Information Must Be Free (as if we should stop paying Dexter Filkins to risk his life in Iraq) and that Editing Is Evil (abolish those fact-checking departments and copy desks and let the Truth emerge organically from the collision of blogs) and so on. My anxiety about the blog world is not that it will put us out of business but that it contributes to an erosion of middle ground, that it accelerates a general polarization of the nation into people, right and left, who are ardently convinced and not very interested in exposing themselves to facts or ideas that contradict their prejudices."

Jarvis replies that it's Big Media that have been playing up the notion of a divided nation.

"Journalistic malpractice" is a pretty heavy phrase, and Newsweek/WashPost columnist Robert Samuelson

hurls it at the NYT and WP:

"Many reporters detest math. This math phobia partly explains why the media did such an abysmal job covering the debate over the Medicare drug benefit -- ignoring the program's long-term costs -- and why they're committing a similar blunder with President Bush's Social Security plan. They're missing the obvious: The plan doesn't address baby boomers' retirement costs . . . Judged by this arithmetic, Bush's Social Security program is a hoax. . . .

"The public is understandably confused, and the media feed the confusion. Tackling Social Security's long-run sustainability sounds like dealing with the baby boom -- but it isn't. Generally, the media overlook the distinction. Most stories dwell on Social Security's politics and on the advantages and disadvantages of personal accounts. Journalists echo Democratic criticisms, but that's not balanced or clarifying, because the Democrats, like Bush, aren't acknowledging the unpopular choices posed by an aging baby boom generation. Reporters have to reach independent judgments, but this founders on math phobia."

Samuelson turns to the Medicare prescription-drug benefit: "I wrote some columns reporting that the huge costs were probably underestimated. But the mainstream media mainly ignored the long-term costs. To confirm that, I reviewed stories in The Post and the New York Times, because these papers influence other media. Their emphasis was on (a) congressional politics, (b) whether Bush's benefit was too stingy and (c) whether the benefit would unduly enrich the drug companies (these last two themes reflected Democratic criticisms).

"Call this journalistic malpractice. Recently both the Times and Post ran front-page stories reporting -- in tones of shock -- that the costs of the Medicare drug benefit were rising rapidly. The stories were misleading; all that had changed about the estimates is that two early years (with little spending) had been dropped and two later years (with lots of spending) had been added. If the media had reported accurately two years ago, there would be no shock today."

Although the Bush administration has admitted that it underestimated the cost in the first place.

As if to underscore Samuelson's point--Social Security is only part of the problem--check out this USA Today piece:

"The nation's tab for health care -- already the highest per person in the industrialized world -- could hit $3.6 trillion by 2014, or nearly 19% of the entire U.S. economy, up from 15.4% now, a sobering government projection says.

"Growth in health care spending will outpace economic growth through the next decade, and the government will pick up an increasing share of the tab."

Translation: Plenty of pain ahead.

The Wall Street Journaleditorial page has further thoughts on Bob Novak, Valerie Plame, Matt Cooper, Judith Miller and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald:

"It's far-fetched to believe that Mr. Novak's sources were culpable under any of these terms. Ms. Plame was safely ensconced at CIA's Langley headquarters, and if anything her husband was the one who first compromised her when he went public with accusations about the CIA consulting job that she had recommended him for. Once Mr. Wilson made himself part of a political campaign against the Bush Administration and the Iraq War, his wife's role was bound to become public.

"A wiser prosecutor than Mr. Fitzgerald might well have come to this same conclusion and shut down the probe. But like so many 'special' counsels who have only one case to prosecute, Mr. Fitzgerald seems to believe he'll be a failure if he doesn't charge someone with something. Thus his overzealous pursuit of reporters and their sources . . .

"We sympathize with Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper, two fine and honorable journalists, but there is no easy way out of their predicament. Unless their lawyers can negotiate some compromise with Mr. Fitzgerald, they may be headed for jail. The prosecutor bears some blame for letting this showdown run out of control, but no more than the editors who let their partisanship trump their principles by inciting this pointless investigation."

The Chicago Tribune's Charlie Madigan offers this cartooning conundrum following the death of Hunter Thompson:

"Get this straight, no one appreciated Hunter Thompson's shenanigans on paper and in real life more than I did. Now that he has taken himself out of the game, so to speak, a question emerges.

"Should Gary Trudeau find some way to kill Uncle Duke as soon as he can? And if so, how should he do it? I know. I know. What a dark thought. But the Doonesbury cartoon strip has dined off of Thompson's reputation ever since Uncle Duke first showed up in the strip many, many years ago. There was no doubt about which ranting, doped up, alcohol besotted journalist he represented."

Now for a delicious blogosphere debate. You may recall my column the other day about Susan Estrich whacking LAT editorial page editor Michael Kinsley for not running more pieces by women. That prompted the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drumto wonder why women don't play a more prominent role in the blogosphere. And that nearly led to his eyes being clawed out, as Drum reports here:

"Meryl Yourish: 'A (female) blogger sent me this link to Kevin Drum being an idiot (yes, I know, he is often an idiot, but this time, it's personal -- he mentioned women bloggers).' And this one, where she doesn't call me an idiot: 'The scholarship behind Drum's thesis simply boggles the mind. Why, it's as if he took all of five minutes to think about the issue before he wrote his post.'

"Trish Wilson: 'I get so tired of this same stupid question coming up every three months. The guys don't read or link to political women who blog, and then have the audacity to feign innocence every two months (from three, previously). They wonder where we are. As we have said the last three or four times this discussion has come up, we're out there. You just have to take the time and energy you take to link to and read the primarily middle- and upper-class, white, male bloggers and find us. Guys, you have no excuse.'

"Random Thoughts: 'I'm tired of this discussion. I'm tired of the comments that say women aren't as analytical, competitive, interested, bloviating, or motivated. I'm tired of reading about the boys network at the top, even though it does exist.'

"Pinko Feminist Hellcat: 'Having the gall to point out that yes, we exist, is apparently unforgivable. The attacks women go for this--women who stated this quite civilly were called hysterical and accused of attacking people. They were also called dykes, ugly, manhaters, moonbats, and had their looks derided and their appeal to the opposite sex questioned. Because, you know, that's civil.'"

There's plenty more.

"Hmmm, should I defend myself? Only to this extent: the reason I suggested that women are turned off by the 'fundamental viciousness' of blogging and opinion writing is because many women have told me this (and have told me the same thing in non-blogging contexts as well). Men are so routinely dismissive of women and so fundamentally dedicated to playground dominance games that many women decide they just don't want to play.

"But hey -- click the links and decide for yourself. My critics certainly make a spirited -- if anecdotal -- case for the proposition that women have no problem being as nasty as men."

At last--true equality!