A Tree in AG Contender's Past Could Needle Democrats

By Al Kamen
Friday, September 14, 2007

Usually, senators and their staffs pore over the past legal writings and scholarly pronouncements of nominees for attorney general to glean clues as to the person's abilities and inclinations. But one possible nominee might give the lawmakers a whole new body of work to explore.

Seems that back in 1999, a columnist for the right-wing magazine American Spectator ran the Clinton Legacy contest, "designed to identify the words or phrases" that "will best recall and sum up the . . . Clinton presidency."

The entries included the usual suspects -- "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," and "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

But "there was one alert reader," our columnist wrote, " Jerome Hanson, who near his home in Winston, Oregon, discovered the rare Clinton fir tree, Abies clintonus erecti, a botanical depiction of the president's perennially alert condition. It's reproduced above for your delectation." There's a picture of a large tree with a huge branch protruding out from one side.

The columnist? Former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, a leading contender for the AG job.

He certainly gets the Loop vote, but it's most unclear how the junior senator from New York will see it.

Ups and Downs in Crocker's Iraq

A lot of people -- including some on the Hill -- ended up in a collective daze after the endless hearings on Iraq this week.

But for some who had been confused about the administration's policy in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker synthesized it so clearly that the logic became impeccable, and open-minded people certainly were relieved to find that these guys really have a coherent plan for victory.

The epiphany came Tuesday afternoon when Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) questioned Crocker.

"The bottom line in all this," Bayh said, "is that the American people, particularly our servicemen and -women, but also our taxpayers, will be required to continue to sacrifice in Iraq for an indefinite period of time to allow Iraqi politicians to get their act together . . . to hopefully begin the process of reconciliation.

"What's your reaction to that?"

Crocker was ready: "There is a process underway that we've talked about in the course of the afternoon. It's bottom-up, to some degree. It's top-down, to some degree. And it's linkages between them."

Of course! The linkages!

A Tough New Standard for Nominees

Speaking of unusual moments on the Hill, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ignoring precedent and, frankly, common sense, appears to have injected a new confirmation hurdle for nominees to top federal jobs.

The committee on Tuesday took up the nomination of the undersecretary of state for management, Henrietta H. Fore, to be administrator of the Agency for International Development.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) told his colleagues that he opposed her as a result of his investigation into the recent "passport fiasco," a mess for which State's consular affairs chief, Maura Harty, took "full responsibility." Fore was Harty's boss.

When Fore's nomination came up, Nelson said, he asked her privately if she accepted any responsibility for the huge delays in issuing passports. "She would not answer the question." Did the same at her confirmation hearing, Nelson said.

"Well, I don't like that," he said, adding that he was going to put a hold on the nomination but that he was going to give her a chance to "put into writing what I had requested."

This apparently caused a mini-panic at State.

"No less than" Deputy Secretary John Negroponte called Nelson Friday night "while I was in an airboat with Barbara [Boxer] in the Everglades," Nelson said.

Secretary Condoleezza Rice called him Monday.

Nelson got his letter from Fore, but he wasn't satisfied. "She says, 'yes,' period," he said. "Then . . . she goes on with a lot of the language, 'Well, we all share responsibility.' "

Wasn't enough for Nelson, who said Harty had been "instructed . . . to take the fall." He lifted his hold but said he would vote "no."

Then Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said he would "support Nelson's comments. . . . If we're seen as promoting incompetence, I think it looks bad on all of us. So, in the spirit of bipartisanship, Bill, I support you."

Competence? A requirement? After all these years? Then how would all these jobs get filled?

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed; the committee put off a vote on Fore until the next business meeting.

Wet Blanket Sends His Regrets

Former ambassador to Russia James F. Collins, now at the Carnegie Endowment, invited folks to a Sept. 20 cocktail reception and discussion of "Getting Russia Right," a new book by Dmitri Trenin, deputy director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Trenin "sheds new light on our understanding of contemporary Russia," Collins said, and explains "how the United States and Europe can deal with it more productively." The book "looks beyond Russia's famous leaders to the economic and cultural spaces outside the Kremlin where promising changes are taking place."

Collins has long been chided by critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin's government for going too easy on the former KGB thug. Trenin, a former GRU military intelligence officer, has been more skeptical, but also not a hard-line opponent of the new kleptocracy.

"Insightful and optimistic, Trenin's innovative and objective analysis provides an understanding that is crucial," Collins wrote.

One person Collins invited, Andrei Piontkovsky, who writes very cynical, satirical op-eds about Putin and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which succeeded the KGB -- and whose last little book provoked the Russian government to try him for extremism -- e-mailed his regrets.

"Thank you for your kind invitation," he wrote. "Unfortunately, the day when insightful and optimistic Mr. Trenin presents his objective analysis, I have another obligation.

"I'll be in Moscow on my own Moscow 2007 trial facing FSB charges of 'extremism.' Please pass Mr. Trenin my fascination with his sense of historical optimism and his intellectual flexibility."

Well, more canapes for everyone else.