Newt's Zipper Issue

"Ever since mid-term elections signaled deepening public unhappiness with the war, Republicans have urged a push toward victory while Democrats have complained about the administration's course but not gathered around a single alternative.

"Now, the Democratic mainstream has made its decision and offered the public a choice: Follow the president's plan to use U.S. combat troops indefinitely, or shift American soldiers to a secondary role and begin withdrawing them."

But does the public really get to choose? The November elections, after all, were followed by the surge.

Meanwhile, spent yesterday reporting on the network news wars, and here is my report:

No one at CBS News was more intimately involved in helping Katie Couric shape her evening newscast and get it on the air each night than her executive producer, Rome Hartman.

But as the ratings languished and the "CBS Evening News" seemed to drift, the network decided this week to dump Hartman and replace him with hard-charging, high-profile producer Rick Kaplan -- the first public acknowledgment that the newscast and its $15-million-a-year anchor have not lived up to expectations. The deal was sealed Wednesday night when Kaplan had coffee and a two-hour talk at Couric's Manhattan apartment.

"I love Katie. She is a superb journalist," Kaplan, a former president of CNN and MSNBC and onetime executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight" and "Nightline," said yesterday. "For me, this whole deal is a no-brainer."

While "Katie could have stopped this from happening if she wanted to," Kaplan said, they have an "extraordinary comfort level" with each other. "I came here because I believe in my soul that Katie is the best" of the anchors, he added.

CBS News President Sean McManus, who made the decision after broaching the possibility with Kaplan over lunch last week, said that "listening to his ideas and his confidence in taking this show, and Katie, to the next level convinced me he was absolutely the best person to do this job. . . . Katie was not involved in the decision [to drop Hartman]. She was certainly consulted with respect to Rick."

Hartman's ouster, six months after Couric's debut, comes days after NBC replaced John Reiss as executive producer of "Nightly News." Although Reiss had asked earlier for a reassignment, the shake-ups reflect the growing intensity of a ratings war in which millions of dollars in advertising revenue are at stake. ABC's "World News" with Charlie Gibson has seized the ratings lead from Brian Williams's NBC broadcast in three of the past four weeks. Gibson drew 9.56 million viewers last week, Williams 9.39 million, and Couric 7.51 million.

The abrupt CBS move -- those involved say Hartman had no inkling he was being replaced until McManus told him after Wednesday's broadcast -- buttresses critics who say he and Couric erred in the way they revamped the "CBS Evening News." They initially added a number of features, including a commentary segment called "Free Speech," but began emphasizing more hard news as internal dissent grew and ratings sagged. Executives now concede they made too many changes too quickly.

There is also an X factor. "Having a woman in the anchor chair is something the audience needs to get used to," Kaplan said. "They will."