The 'Nation' at War

"-- and, one of the few positive trends in American political journalism is the vast curtailing of the practice of over-reading the results of off-off-year elections."

The week is still young.

LAT blogger Michael Hiltzik goes out on a limb after all four of the Terminator's initiatives get shot down:

"What of Arnold Schwarzenegger's political future?

"I've said it before and I'll say it again: I do not believe he will run for reelection. Sure, he declared his candidacy a few weeks ago, but he was boxed into a corner: The big donors being solicited for the initiative campaigns were sitting on their hands, pending reassurances that he'd be around to deliver the appropriate quid pro quos in the next term. The chief objection to my forecast was that his ego wouldn't let him bail out. To that I say, ego cuts both ways. Whatever his yes-men have been telling him, Tuesday's results are inescapable. Will he want to risk an even more personal repudiation next November?

"Watch out for signs of an exit strategy in the next few months. The creation of a Schwarzenegger Foundation for National Renewal, say. Another appearance by Maria on Oprah saying she wants her husband back home with the kids. A visit to the doctor for a 'routine checkup.'"

Is this the going rate for an Oval Office drop-by?

"The lobbyist Jack Abramoff asked for $9 million in 2003 from the president of a West African nation to arrange a meeting with President Bush and directed his fees to a Maryland company now under federal scrutiny, according to newly disclosed documents," says the New York Times.

"The African leader, President Omar Bongo of Gabon, met with President Bush in the Oval Office on May 26, 2004, 10 months after Mr. Abramoff made the offer. There has been no evidence in the public record that Mr. Abramoff had any role in organizing the meeting or that he received any money or had a signed contract with Gabon."

Seeing more sex on the tube? You're not imagining things:

"The amount of sexual content on national television has nearly doubled since 1998, with nearly 70% of all programs containing some sex scenes or related language, according to a study released today," says the Los Angeles Times. "Sexual context, including talk about sex and scenes of kissing and depictions of sexual behavior, was even more commonplace during evening prime time viewing hours, according to Sex on TV 4, a biennial study released today by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

"Nearly 8 in 10 prime time shows or 77% included sexual content, averaging 5.9 sexual scenes per hour."

Whew! I'm out of breath just reading about it.

HuffPost's Eric Boehlert isn't joining the praise for Koppel's "Nightline":

"Fact: In the 24 months between Jan. 1994 and Jan. 1996, long before Monica Lewinsky entered the picture and back when Whitewater was about an alleged crooked land deal, Nightline devoted 19 programs to the then-unfolding scandal and investigation, for which no Clinton White House official was ever indicted. But during the 24 months between Sept. 2003 and Sept. 2005, Nightline set aside just three programs to the unfolding CIA leak investigation, for which Libby, an assistant to the president, was indicted. On the night of the Libby indictmnets, Nightline devoted just five percent of its program to that topic...

"Am I stating the obvious by suggesting it's inconceivable that if an assistant to president Clinton had been charged with lying to a grand jury investigating Whitewater that Nightline would have shrugged off the development so effortlessly?"

Coming back to Judy Miller, Jon Friedman of MarketWatch chides Maureen Dowd:

"Act One: Dowd wrote the columnists' equivalent of a crackback block -- a cheap shot about her much-maligned Times colleague, reporter Judith Miller. While Dowd's supporters said the column intended to tell the truth, it seemed to me to be mostly a thinly veiled attempt to get revenge on a long-time nemesis. I hope I'm wrong but. . . .

"Act Two: Sounding, perhaps, a mite defensive, Dowd told the Washington Post that she wasn't acting like a 'management hit man.' She also noted that one of her bosses warned he that it would like she was piling on. Whatever. Dowd has lived in Washington long enough to understand the first rule of politics: perception = reality (Psssst, it's true in office politics, too).

"It doesn't take any courage to kick someone when she's down. If Dowd had really wanted to make a powerful point in her column, she could've criticized Miller's editors at the Times. They coddled Miller (not to mention serial fabricator Jayson Blair before her) and didn't grill her sufficiently about the credibility of her sources. They could've done a much, much better of vetting Miller's stories when she parroted the Bush party line that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.

"I don't enjoy seeing one of my favorite columnists use her platform like some sort of Fourth Estate bully pulpit. Dowd is the most graceful, clever columnist around.

"Look, I've criticized Miller plenty in print, too. But I'm not her teammate (plus, I had no score to settle with her). And that makes a difference."

I don't agree. Would Friedman like it better if Dowd wrote nothing because Miller happened to work for the same paper? Doesn't it require more guts to take on a colleague?