The President's New Direction

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 21, 2006 7:02 AM

It's official: The Bush comeback has begun!

You can look it up.

Poll-addicted journalists measure these things by numbers, and the verdict is in.

The president is climbing out of a deep hole. He's on the rise. The L.A. Times says so. This completely changes the--

Huh?

What's that?

Oh. I see. The New York Times poll has Bush . . . standing still. Going nowhere. Stuck in neutral.

Wait, let me call my editor and kill that Bush bounceback story I was going to write.

The trend remains unclear. Or maybe there is no trend. Though I think they take away your press card if you admit that.

Here's the LAT good-for-Bush story:

"President Bush's approval rating has reached its highest level since January, helping to boost the Republican Party's image across a range of domestic and national security issues just seven weeks before this year's mid-term election, a new Times/Bloomberg poll has found. "While the survey spotlights a continuing array of Republican vulnerabilities, it also offers the first evidence in months that the GOP may be gaining momentum in November's battle for control of Congress.

"Democrats hold a lead in the poll, 49% to 39%, when registered voters are asked which party they intend to support for Congress this year . . . One of the key figures -- Bush's approval rating -- rose among registered voters from 41% in late June to 44% in the new poll, with 54% disapproving."

Now that I've calmed down, here's the NYT not-so-good-for-Bush story:

"With the midterm elections less than seven weeks away, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled Congress, with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve reelection, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

"The disregard for Congress is the most intense it has been since 1994, when Republicans captured 52 seats to end four decades of Democratic control of the House and retook the Senate as well. It underlines the challenge the Republican Party faces in trying to hold onto power in the face of a surge in anti-incumbent sentiment . . .

"Mr. Bush's job approval rating was 37 percent, virtually unchanged from the last Times/CBS News poll, which was conducted in August."

Well, there you have it.

"In one striking finding, 77 percent of respondents -- including 65 percent of Republicans -- said that most members of Congress had not done a good enough job to deserve re-election and that it was time to give new people a chance."

But that would include Democratic incumbents, no?

Meanwhile, it's open season for Jewish jokes.

For those who have been praying for a political campaign to turn into a thick, bubbling brew of chicken soup, mazel tov.

This is what the Virginia Senate race has become.

Iraq? Health care? Tax cuts? Don't be a schlemiel.

The rest, at least in the eyes of the press, is a bunch of macaca.

George Allen deserves some of the credit for transforming this election into a Borscht Belt routine. But let's face it, for journalists, Hanukkah has just come early.

Shelley Lewis writes:

"Does anybody really care whether Senator George Allen's mother came from a prominent Jewish family? Well, yeah. I do.

"Haven't we Jews suffered enough this year? Everywhere we turn there's another shonda (embarrassment), from Jack Abramoff to Joe Lieberman. We learn that Rep. Eric Cantor had a sandwich named after himself at a fundraiser at Abramoff's deli. We've got Kristol, Wolfowitz, Perle. Do we really need a Jewish George Allen?...

"He said 'as far as he knew,' his mother was raised as a Christian.

"As far as he knows? If you have a Jewish mother, you know it. A Jewish mother doesn't let you wear a Confederate flag lapel pin in your high school yearbook picture, or pimp your pickup truck with rebel flag bumper stickers. She might mention her religious heritage when you have your picture taken with white supremacist members of the Council of Concerned Citizens. And I don't think a Jewish mother visiting her son's law office would remain silent about the noose he kept hanging there, or that she'd fail to ask her daughter in law if hanging a Confederate flag in her son George's home was really the best interior decorating idea she could come up with."

The New Republic's Jason Zengerle :

"I now half-expect I'll be seeing Allen at Rosh Hashanah services on Saturday."

Extreme Mortman : "I would love to know where the Virginia Senate candidates stand on the Social Security lox box."

David Frum suggests a tilt in the coverage:

"It really is outrageous that people would suggest that George Allen has been the victim of media bias. Of course they would behave in an exactly similar way to a similarly situated Democrat. Remember how the press fiercely grilled Sen. John Forbes Kerry about his ancestry and background - how they demanded to know why he had presented himself as Irish all these years when in fact his paternal grandparents were Jews from Vienna who had changed their name from the original Kohn - and how the reporters insinuated that Kerry was either ashamed of himself or else secretly antisemitic when he implausibly denied that he had ever had any idea of his background until jourrnalists discovered it for him. Remember? Anybody?"

I detect a note of sarcasm.

Power Line's Paul Mirengoff objects to WUSA-TV reporter Peggy Fox asking the senator whether his mother was Jewish:

"Such a question is plainly out-of-bounds. Has any candidate in the modern era ever been asked by a respectable interviewer about the religion of his 'forbears?' Our Constitution, for good reason, bans religious tests for public office. It may nonetheless be legitimate under some circumstances to ask a candidate how his or her religious views might affect decisions (as Mitt Romney no doubt will be asked many times). But what legitimate basis can there be for injecting the religion of a candidate's grandfather into a campaign? And if that is legitimate, what's next -- a question about whether a candidate's forebears include African-Americans?

"The unprecedented and un-American nature of Fox's question, coupled with the reference to Allen's middle name of Felix which the Webb people had already been making something of, causes one to wonder whether Fox was acting in concert with the Webb campaign or at a minimum acting on her own to advance its interests. To Fox and to the campaign it might have seemed that asking the question was a win-win proposition. Allen could say that his grandfather was Jewish, which Fox and/or the campaign might view as hurting Allen with some religious conservative voters. Allen could refuse to answer, in which case Webb's people could accuse him of being a racist who is ashamed of his Jewish connection. And Allen might get angry and provide some unflattering video the Webb campaign could use.

"Allen did refuse to answer the question, and he did get angry. However, it's far from clear that, in the context of the highly offensive nature of the question, his anger will be held against him."

Josh Marshall blames the senator and his original macaca explanation:

"This whole brouhaha, including the question that set Allen off, got rolling because of Allen's preposterous claim and the reporter's question about whether he'd learned the word from his mother.

"It may not be pretty. But it's all the fruit of Allen's lies."

At Daily Kos, Lowell Feld at Daily Kos, the blogger for Democratic challenger Jim Webb, rips Allen for dumping on Peggy Fox:

"Why would he say that the reporter's question was 'making aspersions about people because of their religious beliefs?' What in the reporter's question did that? I'm Jewish myself, and very sensitive to anti-Semitism, and I heard NOTHING anti-Semitic in there.

"Also, getting back to Allen's almost violent reaction to the question, why would George Allen 'furiously' attack the female reporter, in front of hundreds of his supporters no less (encouraging them to jeer and boo her), for simply asking him about his heritage? What in that question would prompt George Allen to react in such a way as to leave the female reporter 'frightened' and 'shocked' that Allen would 'get so angry at the suggestion there might be something in [his] background that's Jewish?'

"In other words, as much as Allen supporters try to make this all about the oh-so-mean woman reporter and her horrible, crazy question, this isn't about her at all. Peggy Fox isn't running for U.S. Senate. George Allen is. So, whether you liked that question or not (personally, I didn't see it anything to get angry about; it's like asking Jim Webb about his Scots-Irish ancestry or any of us about our ancestors), this is all about George Allen -- why he gets so angry so often, why he is so prone to attacking those he sees as weak and/or threatening, etc.

"As another famous Jew, Sigmund Freud, might have said in this situation, George Allen appears to have some deep-seated 'issues' regarding his Jewish heritage -- and regarding many other things as well."

Now you see why candidates are hiring bloggers.

Captain Ed puts the onus squarely on Ms. Fox:

"Having this question posed at a political event is bad enough. Having it posed by a member of the media is an embarrassment. Fox's response that she just wanted some 'honesty' is a bad dodge for a monumental insult to our traditions of religious tolerance. What possible difference would it make if Allen's mother had Jewish ancestry or not? What difference would it make whether Webb had Irish ancestry? We don't elect leaders on the basis of their mother's faith, let alone their own."

Terry McAuliffe to chair Hillary's presidential campaign? Does this mean she's running?

How angry is the right at Senator McCain? Dick Polman has the goods:

"John McCain has spent a lot of time this year recalibrating his image in order to curry favor with the conservative Republican activists who have virtual veto power over the 2008 GOP presidential nomination. But apparently the guy is incapable of pandering to the Republican right 24/7 -- as evidenced by the fact that he refuses to support President Bush's current attempts to loosen the anti-torture language in the Geneva Conventions. And now his stance threatens to land him in hot water with conservatives, most of whom are diehard Bush loyalists who might look askance at any '08 candidate who has publicly defied the Decider.

"During the 2000 primary season, Bush loyalists spread word that McCain was mentally unstable, courtesy of his stint as a POW in Hanoi. But once McCain surrendered and endorsed his rival, talk about his alleged nuttiness ceased. Now, suddenly, it is back again. On Fox News Tuesday night, former New York senator Al D'Amato told Bill O'Reilly that McCain is still nutty from his POW experience: 'Bill, I give John McCain a pass on this (torture issue) only because I think he was so traumatized by the events that took place (in Hanoi), that he doesn't even really want to, or is in a position to, consider the impact' of how his Geneva defense would harm the war on terror . . .

"Rush Limbaugh, who is warning on the air that McCain's behavior 'is going to go down as the event that will result in us getting hit again, and if we do, and if McCain, et al., prevail, I can tell you where fingers are going to be pointed.'"

As we all watch the spectacle at the U.N., the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff provides a sobering reality check:

"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, has become an international celebrity, brandishing his nuclear program--and his yearning to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. He is visited by such personages as U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan and Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes. In their conversations with him, neither has asked the swashbuckling leader about 'honor killings' by the government of women charged with having committed 'adultery.'

"As human rights lawyer Lily Mazahery, president of the Legal Rights Institute reports, 'in 99 percent of these cases, the accused women have received no legal representation because, under the Shariah legal system, their testimony is at best worth only half the value of the testimony of men.'

"And there is no single executioner. These are mass murders by stone-throwing members of the community, having the kind of festive time common among American mass lynchers of blacks, when the murderers brought their children to join in the fun. In Iran too, kids are present to witness the sinners' redemption.

"The capital crime of adultery, Mazahery has explained to World Net Daily, 'includes [under Shariah law] any type of intimate relationship between a girl/woman and a man to whom she is not permanently or temporarily married. Such a relationship does not necessarily mean a sexual relationship.'"

That is shocking and appalling.

On a lighter note, I knew Facebook was incredibly popular, but check out this Wall Street Journal scoop: "People familiar with the matter say the company has held separate acquisition talks with Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Viacom Inc. over the past year. Now, say some of these people, the start-up is in serious discussions -- again -- to sell itself to Yahoo for an amount that could approach $1 billion."

The general consensus is that Meredith Vieira is off to a great start at "Today." But Salon's Rebecca Traister ruminates about whether Campbell Brown fell victim to demographics:

"A source involved in NBC's search for the 'Today' co-anchor told Radar that, in reporter Jeff Bercovici's words, Brown 'never really had a shot, on account of her youth, looks, and, especially, her lack of kids.' Apparently, the 'Today' show's female viewers, including a core of stay-at-home moms, 'would have trouble relating to a female host without rugrats of her own.' It didn't help that Brown is something of a looker, and that the network felt her less-foxy viewers might have been intimidated by her beauty. Adding to the intimidation factor is the fact that she's 37 years old. That's young enough to be nailed for her 'youth' -- even though it's just two years younger than Jane Pauley was when she was traded in for a newer Deborah Norville model in 1989 -- but really too old to be single, which Brown was until April, when she married GOP strategist Dan Senor.

"Ever heard the phrase 'a working girl can't win'? It seems to be amplified on morning television, where Couric -- widowed mother of two, closing in on 50, not threateningly hot -- was harangued for lacking the 'gravitas' to anchor the evening news. For what it's worth, Couric was not a mother when she became anchor of the 'Today' show, and in her years there wound up so hamstrung -- maintaining a balance between perky and profound, grave and cheerful, smart and silly, mommy and professional, pretty and unthreatening, widow and sexual being, grown-up and teenager, rich woman and every woman -- that it often felt as if she were trying to embody some kind of idealized American female who simply does not exist in nature.

"This isn't to say that Brown should have gotten the job. The woman who did, Meredith Vieira, is terrific. But she's also an example of exactly how twisted this nexus of news and maternity has become. Vieira, whose career as a young correspondent for über-serious (read: old and male) '60 Minutes' came off the tracks after she had kids and could not negotiate a suitable schedule with CBS brass, took a long detour through the far-flung fringes of journalism on 'The View' before she got rewarded (surely in part for her relatable, palatable commitment to motherhood) with the co-anchor's chair on 'Today.' If Vieira's path serves as an example, it's of the fact that motherhood is still deemed incompatible with the demands of a career in hard news, but that those women willing to forsake the power jobs to be good moms get the big-money, fluffy morning jobs in the end.

"And those like Brown, who have not had kids, let alone sacrificed anything meaningful for them, apparently have nothing to say to American women. This is perhaps an even more startling, and covertly dangerous, assumption: that a female audience can only take their news and decorating tips from a woman who is a mom."

This is drawing a lot of lessons from one personnel move. But something tells me Campbell will have another shot, kids or no kids.