By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 9, 2007; 9:56 AM
Does this mean Newt is running?
Will he be asked about this during his Fox News gigs?
We all sort of knew that Gingrich was having an affair back in the late '90s--and not just with anyone, but with a woman on the House payroll. After all, he ended up marrying the woman after breaking up with his second wife, Marianne.
Since he was leading the impeachment charge against Bill over Monica at the time, this might be seen as an example of . . . how shall I put it? . . . a flexible morality? But Newt kind of got a pass because he was out of office when this came out and yesterday's news. Unlike today, when he is contemplating a run for president. (Possible slogans: I'll return fun to the Oval Office? My mistress was better looking than Clinton's?)
Well, I report, you decide. Here's the story:
"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich acknowledged he was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair, he acknowledged in an interview with a conservative Christian group.
" 'The honest answer is yes,' Gingrich, a potential 2008 Republican presidential candidate, said in an interview with Focus on the Family founder James Dobson to be aired Friday, according to a transcript provided to The Associated Press. 'There are times that I have fallen short of my own standards. There's certainly times when I've fallen short of God's standards.'
"Gingrich argued in the interview, however, that he should not be viewed as a hypocrite for pursuing Clinton's infidelity. 'The president of the United States got in trouble for committing a felony in front of a sitting federal judge,' the former Georgia congressman said of Clinton's 1998 House impeachment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. 'I drew a line in my mind that said, 'Even though I run the risk of being deeply embarrassed, and even though at a purely personal level I am not rendering judgment on another human being, as a leader of the government trying to uphold the rule of law, I have no choice except to move forward and say that you cannot accept . . . perjury in your highest officials.' "
Right, it wasn't about the sex, it was about the perjury. Whereas Gingrich's affair was only about the sex.
At first, I thought this New York Times piece on Barack Obama was pretty intriguing.
NEW QUESTIONS raised about his FINANCES. Boy, I figured, the investigative reporters are really on his trail now.
Consider the lead: "Less than two months after ascending to the United States Senate, Barack Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in two speculative companies whose major investors included some of his biggest political donors."
Hmmm . . .
"One of the companies was a biotech concern that was starting to develop a drug to treat avian flu. In March 2005, two weeks after buying about $5,000 of its shares, Mr. Obama took the lead in a legislative push for more federal spending to battle the disease."
Hey, that doesn't sound good.
"The most recent financial disclosure form for Mr. Obama, an Illinois Democrat, also shows that he bought more than $50,000 in stock in a satellite communications business whose principal backers include four friends and donors who had raised more than $150,000 for his political committees."
I'm thinking, is this the next Hillary-and-the-cattle-futures?
But then I read that Obama's spokesman says the senator didn't know about the investments until the fall of 2005, and then sold them for a $13,000 loss.
And then, the coup de grace: "The spokesman, Bill Burton, said Mr. Obama's broker bought the stocks without consulting the senator, under the terms of a blind trust that was being set up for the senator at that time but was not finalized until several months after the investments were made."
A blind trust?
How can it be a conflict if it's a blind trust? Sounds like a swing and a miss to me.
The Times remains suspicious. But liberal bloggers are highly critical.
Matthew Yglesias calls the story "bogus" with its formulation that "some of Barack Obama's investments that 'raise questions' about this and that. In fact, once you read through the whole article then go back and read it again to try to make sense of it, you'll see that no questions are, in fact, raised. Instead, Barack Obama made some financial transactions that the Times has no evidence were improper and for which there does not appear to be any realistic motive for improper action (nobody, for example, profited financially from the transaction) and for which there are perfectly plausible explanations.
"The Times reporter, in short, saw something that did arguably raise questions. He looked into it. He found nothing. Then rather than printing nothing -- since, after all, that's what he found -- he instead went to press with a story that 'raises questions' -- a formulation that simply amounts to a presumption of guilt."
Well, sometimes stories raise questions that turn out to be a big deal, like this fired U.S. attorneys scandal. Journalism is about pulling on threads. But this quilt seems pretty bare.
Says Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum:
"Reporters just hate the idea of spending a bunch of time on a story and then not having anything to show for it. This is actually an even bigger problem in the field of 'trend analysis,' where the actual evidence often turns out to suggest that nothing much is going on but the juicy anecdotal stories are nonetheless too good to pass up.
"Reporters often toss out half-formed stories like the Obama one (or the Edwards house story) in hopes that beating the bushes will dislodge some additional information. What better way of letting people know that they should call you with tips than by printing an accusatory story on the front page?"
I wonder, then, what the bloggers will think of this Boston Globe expose:
"Barack Obama is no longer a scofflaw, at least in Cambridge and Somerville.
"Two weeks before the US senator from Illinois launched his presidential campaign, he paid parking tickets he received while attending Harvard Law School, officials said yesterday.
"Obama received 17 parking tickets in Cambridge between 1988 and 1991, according to the city's Traffic, Parking & Transportation Department."
What's next? Overdue library books in sixth grade?
Well, so much for debating non-binding resolutions. House Democrats want out of Iraq, and soon. I see zero chance that they can force President Bush to go along, but at least we're now having a real argument about the most important issue in the country, and not mere symbolism.
"The new Democratic proposals for Iraq may eventually be weakened or killed," says the LAT, "but in one stroke they have transformed a many-sided debate about the conflict into a sharp-edged argument about the endgame.
"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."
Two CBS executives, who asked not to be identified because they were discussing personnel matters, said the network concluded that Kaplan could give Couric more direction and bring a sharper vision to a program that the brass had come to regard as inconsistent. Couric, in a statement, called the 6-foot-7 Kaplan "a big personality with big ideas."
Couric made a huge publicity splash when she left NBC's top-rated "Today" show after 15 years and, in September, assumed the chair that had been held by Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Bob Schieffer.
McManus, the CBS Sports president who also took over the news division last year, has repeatedly said it would take a long time for the "Evening News" to climb out of the cellar. But, he said yesterday, "I'm a little less patient in wanting to see some improvement in the ratings."
Kaplan said the deal was cobbled together in 48 hours without the involvement of his agent. He said he sat down with CBS chief executive Les Moonves before meeting with Couric.
It is a homecoming for Kaplan, who began his career at CBS from 1969 to 1979, including a stint as an "Evening News" producer under Cronkite. While Kaplan was fired by CNN in 2000 and by MSNBC in June, he is widely regarded as one of the most creative -- and demanding -- executives in television.
"He's very inventive, very dynamic, got a million ideas a day, or 10. Three are brilliant, three are terrible, and he needed someone to figure out which are which," said ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson. "He sometimes goes on rampages -- thunders and screams and hollers. He's a big guy, and he intimidates people. I've seen him terrorize people, and later he comes back and apologizes, and he means it."
Tucker Carlson, an MSNBC host who worked for Kaplan at that network and CNN, said that "he thought big. He is a natural showman. He's a guy who understands drama. If he wasn't in television, he'd be a great Broadway producer."
Kaplan, 59, has been lecturing at Harvard and the University of Illinois since fall. A personal friend of Bill Clinton, he drew some criticism for twice sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom during the Clinton presidency but said it did not affect his journalism.
As Peter Jennings's executive producer at "World News" in the mid-1990s, Kaplan understands the nightly news game. But he said the three network newscasts, which have been losing audience share for a generation, face much tougher competition now from cable news, the Internet and other new media.
"It was easy then to make your program compelling because people had no information until Walter said, 'Good evening,' " Kaplan said. "Today they come armed with an extraordinary amount of information. We all have a responsibility to push these stories ahead."
Couric was quite popular as a morning personality but has been constricted by the limits of a half-hour format. When she has done longer interviews or reported longer pieces, some colleagues have complained that important stories were being dropped or shortchanged.
Hartman spent months planning the "Evening News" launch with Couric and ran the show while commuting to New York from Washington. "This is one of the great jobs in journalism, and it's been an honor and a pleasure to do it every day, although, in all candor, I'd have loved the chance to do it longer," he said yesterday. "But I completely respect Sean's decision."
Hartman said the broadcast "has been improving and will continue to." CBS said he will be given another assignment.
While Hartman, a former "60 Minutes" producer, was loyal to Couric, he occasionally disagreed with her on, for example, her desire to travel to breaking-news stories. Some CBS correspondents grew frustrated as their roles were reduced and said the broadcast lacked a clear identity. Hartman, for his part, had to cope with numerous executives who had conflicting views of what the program needed.
"He has impeccable credentials from a been there/done that perspective, but he's also just an incredibly decent human being," CBS White House correspondent Jim Axelrod said of Hartman. "Everyone feels a bit of sadness that it didn't work out. But everyone knows the business can be brutal at times."
Okay, back to politics: The Washington Times says Chuck Hagel is expected to run.
I've been puzzled as to why Bill Richardson is seen as a second-tier candidate--though he's up from 2 to 5 percent in a new NBC poll!--and have tried to stay away from any whispering campaign. But The Politico takes it on:
"New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's 2008 presidential campaign has been burdened by unusually public discussion about his behavior with women.
"The lieutenant governor of New Mexico, Diane Denish was quoted in the Albuquerque Journal saying she avoids standing or sitting near Richardson because of his physical manner, which she said was not improper but was 'annoying.' The governor, she said, 'pinches my neck. He touches my hip, my thigh, sort of the side of my leg.'
"On repeated occasions, Richardson has been pressed by reporters or Democratic activists on whether his personal conduct can withstand public scrutiny.
"Richardson, in an interview with The Politico, denied behaving inappropriately, calling the talk 'mean-spirited.' Still, the concerns have become enough of a headwind for Richardson's campaign that the candidate has a more substantive response -- that his personal conduct was vetted, and effectively given a seal of approval, when he was considered for the vice presidential nomination by John F. Kerry in 2004. 'The Kerry people vetted me for vice president,' he told The Politico last week. He knew this, he said, because Jim Johnson, the veteran Washington lawyer and Democratic insider, 'has said so.' "
Does this CQ piece tell you all you need to know about Republican congressional oversight?
"Senior Republicans who knew about problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center while their party controlled Congress insist they did all they could to prod the Pentagon to fix them.
"But C.W. Bill Young, R-Fla., former chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, said he stopped short of going public with the hospital's problems to avoid embarrassing the Army while it was fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Oh noooo. Wouldn't want to do that. Better to let soldiers with brain injuries and missing limbs suffer.
All right, time for the obligatory porn item, courtesy of Michelle Malkin:
"Hate-filled liberals on MSNBC attemped to smear Marine Corporal Matt Sanchez and conservatives who honored him at CPAC for his support of the military at Columbia University. They gleefully showed photos of Cpl. Sanchez at the event--including ones I took--in mockery after his gay porn past was outed by left-wing blogs. They cackled 'Semper Fi.'
"I said the other day I thought CPAC organizers would be justified in being embarrassed if the rumors about Sanchez's porn star past 15 years ago turned out to be true. Well, the rumors are true. But it is neither CPAC nor Cpl. Sanchez who should feel embarrassed.
"It's the nasty, gloating liberals who claim to stand for tolerance, privacy, human rights, and compassion. I predicted the other day that left-wing bigotry would rear its ugly head. I was right. The e-mail I've received is more disgusting than anything Ann Coulter stupidly said at CPAC. And I can imagine the vitriol Cpl. Sanchez is enduring.
"We are all fallible people."
Including Newt.
