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Bush in a Snit
"I looked again at Karl. He seemed stunned at what I was saying. 'No, sir,' I told the President. 'In the past two years we've gotten less than $80 million in new grant dollars.' The number fell shockingly short of the $8 billion he had vowed to deliver in the first year alone. . . .
"I was also contradicting our office's own spin. In an effort to divert attention from all the money that wasn't being given to faith-based groups, we had come up with the idea of highlighting the amount of money now 'available' to faith-based organizations because of particular administrative reforms announced six months earlier. It was one of those wonderful Washington assertions that is simultaneously accurate and deceptive and just confusing enough to defy opposition. . . .
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"I finished the briefing. Yes, I told the President, because of new regulations there was technically about $8 billion in existing funding that was now more accessible to faith-based groups. But, I assured him, those organizations had been getting money from those programs for years and it wasn't that big a deal.
"'Eight billion in new dollars?' he asked.
"'No, sir. Eight billion in existing dollars where groups will find it technically easier to apply for grants. But faith-based groups have been getting that money for years.'
"'Eight billion,' he said. 'That's what we'll tell them. Eight billion in new funds for faith-based groups. O.K., let's go.'"
Lesley Stahl interviewed Kuo on 60 Minutes yesterday. Here's the video . Notes Stahl: "In his book, Kuo wrote that White House staffers would roll their eyes at evangelicals, calling them 'nuts' and 'goofy.'"
In his briefing on Friday, press secretary Tony Snow tried to knock down Kuo's allegations.
"Q Is it possible that Karl Rove called them nuts, the evangelicals?
"MR. SNOW: He says no.
"Q You've asked him about the quotes that are already out?
"MR. SNOW: The nuts quote he was asked about. I don't know if there are any additional ones, but I'll be happy to run all by Karl. But here's what your -- Karl made the same point I did, which is, 'these are my friends, I don't talk about them like that.'"
But Greg Sargent blogs for the American Prospect that Snow got off easy because the press corps "didn't seem to have any real command of the basic facts surrounding the book's potentially important allegations. . . .
"So Snow asked Rove about the 'nuts' quote. And Rove denied saying it. But guess what? Uttering that quote isn't what Rove is accused of in the new book. It's unnamed staffers who are accused of calling evangelicals 'nuts,' not Rove. Rather, Rove is accused by Kuo of a completely different quote -- one which is meant to illuminate Rove's cynical view of the political usefulness of evangelicals."
This from Keith Olbermann on MSNBC Thursday night:
"Kuo . . . says the faith-based office wasn't even set up during the 2001 transition after the end of the Clinton administration. It was not set up until Mr. Bush took office and Karl Rove gave a transition volunteer less than one week to roll out the entire faith-based initiative.
"The volunteer asked Rove how he should do that without a staff, without an office, without even a plan. According to Kuo, quote, 'Rove looked at him, took a deep breath, and said, "I don't know. Just get me a f-ing faith-based thing, got it?" unquote."
Abramoff Watch
Peter Wallsten writes in the Los Angeles Times: "For five years, Allen Stayman wondered who ordered his removal from a State Department job negotiating agreements with tiny Pacific island nations -- even when his own bosses wanted him to stay.
"Now he knows.
"Newly disclosed e-mails suggest that the ax fell after intervention by one of the highest officials at the White House: Ken Mehlman, on behalf of one of the most influential lobbyists in town, Jack Abramoff. . . .
"Mehlman said he did not recall the details of his contacts with the Abramoff team, including discussions about Stayman, the former State Department official. But he said such interactions were part of his job as White House political director.
"'I was a gateway,' Mehlman said in an interview. 'It was my job to talk to political supporters, to hear their requests, and hand them on to policymakers.'"
CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Mehlman about that yesterday.
Blitzer: "In the L.A. Times, it quotes an e-mail from one of Abramoff's associates, as saying, 'Mehlman said he would get him fired.'
"MEHLMAN: Yes, Mehlman didn't have that authority. Mehlman wouldn't say he had that authority. And remember, you're dealing with individuals who, as we know, have pled guilty to defrauding their clients by saying they did things they weren't able to get done."
Snow the Partisan
Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes in the New York Times: "In the six months since Mr. Bush enlisted him to resuscitate a White House press operation that was barely breathing, Mr. Snow, a former Fox News television and radio host and a conservative commentator, has reinvented the job with his snappy sound bites and knack for deflecting tough questions with a smile. Now, he is reinventing it yet again, by breaking away from the briefing room to raise money for Republicans, as he did here on Saturday night for Speaker J. Dennis Hastert. . . .
"Yet even as the Republican establishment revels in his celebrity -- 'It's like Mick Jagger at a rock concert,' Mr. Rove said -- Mr. Snow's extracurricular activities are making some veteran Washington hands, including those with strong Republican ties, deeply uneasy.
"'The principal job of the press secretary is to present information to reporters, not propaganda,' said David R. Gergen, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations and also advised President Bill Clinton. 'If he is seen as wearing two hats, reporters as well as the public will inevitably wonder: is he speaking to us now as the traditional press secretary, or is he speaking to us as a political partisan?'"
There's also the credibility question. As Stolberg writes, here's Snow on "the intellectual acumen of his boss: 'He reminds me of one of those guys at the gym who plays about 40 chessboards at once.'"
Larry Sandler writes in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "President Bush is smarter than his critics think, Bush's chief spokesman said Thursday. . . .
"Snow said Bush questioned aides closely to learn all sides of an issue because he knows 'you can't be living in a dream world' as president."
Poll Watch
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday: "President Bush's job-approval rating fell, with 34% of Americans voting him 'excellent' or 'good,' down from 38% in September, according to a new Harris Interactive poll.
"Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults now have a negative view of Mr. Bush's job performance, compared with 61% who ranked him 'only fair' or 'poor' in a similar poll last month. The drop follows a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that showed the president's job approval rating fell to 39% from 42% earlier in October."
Cynical, or Just Forgetful?
The White House issued a solemn statement Thursday commemorating the sixth anniversary of the al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole.
The White House has been citing the Cole a lot lately, as part of its narrative that President Clinton, who was in charge back then, was asleep at the switch when it came to terrorism.
I went back to see what the White House statement was like on the fifth anniversary of the attack on the Cole. But there wasn't one!
And there wasn't one on the fourth, the third, the second or the first, either.
Specter's Dive?
R. Jeffrey Smith writes in The Washington Post about whether Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter knuckled under to White House pressure yet again -- but this time, in a particularly sneaky fashion.
At issue: Proposed amendments to the recent detainee legislation that, among other things, stripped detainees of habeas corpus rights
Specter is accused of having put to a vote only the more assertive of two amendments restoring habeas rights -- knowing that it would be defeated, thereby giving the White House an important political victory before the mid-term elections.
Writes Smith: "Questions about Specter's role in the last-minute maneuvering arose in part because he had taken a maverick position before -- and then backed President Bush's policy on the floor or in his votes."
Bush is set to sign the legislation tomorrow morning in a Rose Garden ceremony.
The Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture will hold a simultaneous "vigil to mourn the attack this legislation wages on basic American and religious values." And a " People's Signing Statement will be presented to the White House, during which time some participants are prepared to commit acts of civil disobedience in order to deliver the People's Signing Statement to the president."
The Gift That Barked
Darlene Superville writes for the Associated Press: "When U.S. presidents receive gifts, the items are acknowledged, then packed away in a government warehouse to await the opening of his future library."
But Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov gave Bush a dog: "a living, barking, 2-month-old Bulgarian Goran shepherd pup named Balkan of Gorannadraganov. . . .
"Obviously, Balkan couldn't be sent to the National Archives with the rest of the presidential booty. The Bushes apparently considered taking him to their ranch in central Texas but realized he might not adapt well to the heat, said first lady spokeswoman Susan Whitson."
So Bush ended up giving the dog "to an unidentified friend who lives with her Bulgarian-American husband on a farm in Maryland, Whitson said."
The dog was one of more than 100 gifts worth nearly $75,000 Bush received from the leaders of some 50 countries last year.
Here's a partial list from the Associated Press. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah gave Bush an $8,000 clock; Russian President Vladimir Putin gave Bush a $5 photograph of the Bush's father.
Here's the full list from the Federal Register.
Answers From a Bush?
John M. Broder blogs for the New York Times about this new political ad , which "shows a variety of Americans standing in a park asking questions of a piece of shrubbery. 'So what's our exit strategy from Iraq?' the first person asks. 'Why did we let down Katrina victims?' asks an African-American man. 'Why are we losing so many jobs to overseas?' asks an elderly citizen. The narrator then says, 'Okay, it's kind of ridiculous to think you're ever going to get an answer from this (pause) bush. But it's also kind of ridiculous to think you're going to get an answer (cue a picture of President Bush) from this one.'"
