The Pundit War, Three Years Later

What's the state of Bush's domestic agenda? "A growing Republican chorus is calling for a staff overhaul inside President Bush's beleaguered White House," says the Los Angeles Times , but some conservatives say such a change would stop far short of fixing what they view as a serious flaw: an unfocused domestic agenda.

"The war in Iraq is dominating the attention of Bush and his top aides, these critics say, while the recent departure of the president's top domestic policy advisor after just one year has left the White House without an obvious conductor to direct the sometimes disparate policy-making machine. 'You mean they have a domestic policy?' quipped Michael Tanner, director of health and welfare studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. . . .

"Although Bush first campaigned on a largely domestic agenda, experts either said he had achieved much of what he had set out to accomplish or said he had put aside priorities at home to devote time, energy and government resources to the war on terrorism."

Remember, he wasted 2005 by pushing a Social Security plan that hit a brick wall on the Hill, unable even to get a committee vote.

Josh Marshall isn't scared off by the Feingold censure resolution:

"It's really not that surprising that not every Democratic senator would want to jump on the bandwagon with this. But I also don't think there's any particular reason to run from it like it's Dem kryptonite or the plague. I've said this before. But I think the bigger problem for Dems is not the things they do but the very public hand-wringing and navel-gazing about how people might react to the things they do.

"That doesn't look good. And it doesn't look good because it really isn't good.

"President Bush really does deserve to be held accountable for breaking the law and then even more for claiming after the fact that the law actually doesn't apply to him. In constitutional terms, that bogus claim is a very big deal. So 'censure' him. Or don't censure him. But most of all don't get all bent out of shape or whiny about whether it might make some Bush supporter unhappy or might prompt some scold on the WaPo oped page to say tut-tut."

But David Frum calls the censure move "astoundingly reckless":

"It's as if some uncontrollable nervous impulse has seized the Democratic party. They know they should not allow themselves to be dragged to the far left. They know they should position themselves as strong on national security and supportive of the war on terror. They know that measures like Feingold's portend only damage and danger for them. And yet. . . . they cannot help succumbing.

"I am beginning to think that the real issue in 2006 may be the need to stage an intervention to save the Democratic party from itself. The successive jolts they suffered in 2002 and 2004 drove them away toward the fringe - maybe one more in 2006 would recall them to their senses.

"As for the censure motion itself, well it is not unprecedented. A Whig majority in the House of Representatives censured President Polk in 1848, claiming that the war with Mexico was 'unconstitutionally and unnecessarily begun.' Bet you didn't know that obscure detail of history. Neither did I, half an hour ago. President Polk shook it off, as have the millions of future citizens of California, Texas, Arizona and the southwest who owe their homes and security to him."

In the New Republic, Ryan Lizza maps the internal division over the Russ Fuss:

"The nature of the split is obvious. Feingold is thinking about 2008. Harry Reid, Charles Schumer, and other Democrats are thinking about 2006. Feingold cares about wooing the anti-Bush donor base on the web and putting some of his '08 rivals--Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Evan Bayh--in uncomfortable positions. Reid and Schumer care about winning the six seats it will take for Democrats to win control of the Senate. Feingold cares about making a political point with a measure that has no chance of succeeding and which, even if it did, would have no actual consequences. His colleagues want something with a little more bite: subpoena power, control of committees, and the rest of the perks that go along with a Senate majority, which would make Bush's last two years hell."

On the other hand, a Newsweek poll finds that 42 percent support the censure motion. Bush's approval: 36 percent.

On the Huffington Post, Norman Solomon recounts the media optimism after the 2003 war, including from WashPost editorialists and columnists, and digs out these lines from Chris Matthews:

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple."

This one hits close to home: Former NBC correspondent David Hazinski, writing in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, proposes a ratings system for TV news (via Public Eye):

"T-N ('Tease News'): What we call a 'tease' in the broadcast news business means about the same thing as it did in high school: a sample of what is to come, but with no real substance. They now make up a large portion of many newscasts.

"P-D-N ('Promotion Disguised as News'): This can range from a CNN anchor suggesting you can get a lot more information about a story on the network's paid Pipeline Web service to 'Good Morning America' airing a three-minute excerpt from a Michael Jackson interview to try to persuade you to tune in to '20/20' that night.

"S-D-N ('Scolding Disguised as News'): This could be applied to everything from Grace to O'Reilly --even to portions of '60 Minutes,' where reporting is replaced with attacking people.

"R-C ('Repetitive Coverage'): This would apply to stories that have already been told 15 different ways with the same information in the past two hours with no more new reporting or additional facts.

"F-L ('Fake Live'): Or what some call 'Live For The Sake of Live.' This one would be used constantly by local news and occasionally by networks where some poor reporter is stuck 'reporting from the scene' when the event either has been over for five hours or won't start until next week."

Ouch.