A Night of Touch Football

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 8, 2007 11:02 AM

Keith Olbermann, a former sportscaster, looked comfortable at Soldier Field last night. And he faced only a seven-person squad, since MSNBC was the first network with the intestinal fortitude to dump Mike Gravel.

The result: The seven remaining Democratic candidates all shouted in an effort to reach the 15,000 assembled fans, making the session seem even more of a collection of stump speeches than usual. Hillary Clinton showed she can compete even with Chris Dodd in the lung-power department. And, competing on Barack Obama's home turf, she played her Chicago card, saying her father had been a diehard Bears fan.

Since the debate was sponsored by the AFL-CIO, there was a lot of talk about labor issues and a lot of pandering to labor. Most of the candidates finessed a question about repealing NAFTA (pushed and signed by Hillary's husband), but Dennis Kucinich was ready to void it five minutes after taking office.

How did Olbermann do? He asked substantive questions, kept things moving crisply and followed up. But I have to say that he seemed less aggressive than he does when picking apart President Bush's record on "Countdown." He mostly threw straight policy pitches that the candidates hit easily, with no curveballs about contradictions in their records. (Olbermann did come alive in the "lightning round," pressing Obama on accepting bundled contributions while boasting about turning down lobbyists' cash and asking John Edwards why it's any different taking money from trial lawyers.)

The candidates mixed it up on only two real points: reprising their argument over who originally supported the war and who didn't (Hillary called it "George Bush's war," but voted to authorize it) and sparring over Obama's let's-chase-terrorists-in-Pakistan stance. Otherwise, it was touch football at best.

The best part of the debate: We got to hear from steelworkers and nurses who have lost their jobs and pensions and health insurance, putting a human face on the usual political rhetoric.

The newspaper scribes either saw a much rougher debate than I did, or seized on a handful of exchanges to make it sound that way:

LAT: "Hoping to cut into her widening lead, top-tier Democratic presidential candidates used a testy debate here Tuesday to cast New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as beholden to powerful Washington lobbyists and too compromised to revamp healthcare and make changes the party wants to see once George W. Bush leaves office.

"The repeated swipes at Clinton came amid new polling that shows her consolidating her advantage to the point that, in an eight-person field, she is drawing support from nearly a majority of voters. Again and again, whether the question concerned bridge safety or free trade, Clinton's main rivals tried to drive home a message that she is part of a Washington culture that is delivering results only for the most influential Americans."

Chicago Trib: "It can be rough being a front-runner, especially on a hot night on the gridiron. Two of the leading Democratic presidential candidates found themselves repeatedly under attack Tuesday evening at Soldier Field, one for recent foreign policy statements and the other for taking money from lobbyists.

"With their ties to the Chicago area, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York both had something of a home-field advantage. Still, they repeatedly found themselves back on their heels facing oncoming tackles from competitors on a stage near one end zone."

NYT: "The Democratic presidential candidates tangled over foreign policy Tuesday night, criticizing Senator Barack Obama for proposing an attack against Al Qaeda in Pakistan. He struck back at his rivals who had supported the Iraq war, saying they had 'engineered the biggest foreign policy disaster of our time.' "

For Roger Simon, it was a total panderfest:

"If you were wondering if there is ever going to be a "Sister Souljah" moment in this presidential race, in which a Democrat actually stands up to a major special interest group, I think you can forget it.

"At what was the third organized labor forum since February, all the major Democratic candidates gathered in the withering heat of Soldier Field and . . . withered.

"They promised everything and demanded nothing. Except votes, of course.

"With an estimated 17,000 union members in attendance here Tuesday, the moment was tailor-made for a candidate who wanted to stand up and stand out, by saying: 'Union demands for their members, while understandable, can make American goods more expensive and can drive American jobs overseas. Are you, as union members, willing to give up anything to keep American jobs at home?'

"That never happened."

On the family front, Fred Thompson is responding to all the media chatter about Jeri in an interview with National Review's Byron York:

"The former senator said his wife's actions, however they have been interpreted in the press, have been at his behest . . . 'Now, some people don't like that, especially some people who have their own issue with regard to the campaign, shall we say, and they take advantage of putting out anonymous comments and so forth.'

"A few moments later, Thompson addressed reports, like the one in the Washington Post and another in Newsweek, that looked into his wife's life before meeting Thompson. 'I think the problem is that Jeri refuses to go out in public and behave like a candidate's wife before I'm a candidate,' Thompson said. 'The fact that she's not out there promoting herself seems to greatly concern some people in the media, so they have gone back to old boyfriends, the families of old boyfriends, high-school classmates, basically anything that can be dredged up to fill this void that they perceive has been created.' "

That's a shrewd observation. But Thompson's been around long enough to know that he's the one who created the void by keeping his wife offstage while she's playing a significant role in his campaign.

"Some of the reports, Thompson said, have contained substantial factual errors. 'Things that you would think could have been checked fairly readily,' he told me, 'but things that are clearly erroneous -- like she's not a lawyer and she's never been married before. I listened to a news show with an expert commentator about a week ago talking about Jeri, and in a short segment he had four totally erroneous factual errors about her.' Thompson did not suggest that stories about his wife should be off limits. He understands the ways of politics. But he believes that now is not the right time for Jeri Thompson or the Thompson pre-campaign to address them in detail. 'She's not going to become a public commentator and personality as a candidate's wife until there's a candidate,' he said."

Fair enough. And the lawyer mistake, which appeared in The Post and other outlets, should not have been made.

Yesterday it was 17-year-old Caroline Giuliani proclaiming her allegiance to Obama on Facebook. Now comes 21-year-old Andrew Giuliani, talking to ABC's Jake Tapper:

" 'I love my sister very much and I respect her opinions,' Andrew Giuliani told ABC News. 'One of the great things about our parents is they've always encouraged us to see the world for ourselves.'

"If the kind words about his father are surprising after news in March that the former New York mayor was estranged from his children -- following a very public divorce from their mother, Donna Hanover -- aspiring golf pro and Duke University junior Andrew says they shouldn't be.

"He says he's spoken to his father since media reports about tensions between the two of them and says that relations were never all that bad. 'That story was overdone,' he says. 'It was nowhere near as bad as the story made it sound.'

"Andrew . . . says his dad would be a 'great president. He's my father. He's my blood. Whatever differences we might go through -- that any family might go through -- I still support him and want him to be the best he can be. Just as I want my sister to be the best she can be, and just as I want my mother to be the best she can be.' "

For the record, it was Andrew himself who told the New York Times in March that he and his father had recently tried to reconcile after not speaking "for a decent amount of time. There's obviously a little problem that exists between me and his wife. And we're trying to figure that out. But as of right now it's not working as well as we would like.''

Also, Joannie C. Danielides, a spokeswoman for Caroline, said: "Before the presidential campaign got under way, Caroline added herself to a list on Facebook as an expression of interest in certain principles. It was not intended as an indication of support in a presidential campaign and she has removed it."

"Certain principles"? As opposed to the principles espoused by her dad?

Caroline isn't the only disaffected person in Rudy's orbit. London's Sunday Telegraph has an interview with Jerome Hauer, New York's former emergency services chief:

"Mr Hauer, who now runs a consultancy firm, said that the former mayor vetoed his proposal to site the emergency command centre in Brooklyn as he wanted it to be within walking distance of his City Hall offices in Manhattan.

" 'Rudy would make a terrible president and that is why I am speaking now,' Mr Hauer told The Sunday Telegraph. 'He's a control freak who micro-manages decision, he has a confrontational character trait and picks fights just to score points. He is the last thing this country needs as president right now.' "

And the inevitable third-wife question: "Rudy told me to find a role for Judy. She came along to some meetings and her heart was in the right place, but it's baloney to suggest she ran the centre. And now he says he would take her advice on chemical and biological terrorism? Give me a break."

Obama is now blaming the media, according to Politico:

"When Obama's big terrorism speech last week made headlines for its threat of military action in Pakistan, and won plaudits for its meatiness and detail, I wondered whether the main impression America would get from it would be that he's a fresh voice on foreign policy; or that he wants to invade Pakistan.

"Judging from two appearances in Western Iowa yesterday, the latter seems to have come across pretty clearly. Obama responded with criticism of the media, and an extended restatement of his five-part plan, after the second question, in Sioux City 'in regards to the invasion of Afghanistan and Pakistan.'

" 'The misreporting that was done needs to be cleared up,' Obama said. 'I never called for an invasion of Pakistan.' "

I sure didn't see anyone reporting that Obama wanted to invade Pakistan. I read that he would be willing to conduct raids against al-Qaeda without necessarily getting permission from Pakistan's sovereign government. Mitt Romney did say, with great hyperbole, at Sunday's Republican debate that Obama was going to "bomb our allies," but I don't think you can blame that on the press.

If you are at all curious about the Washington reporter who worked with Larry Flynt to expose David Vitter on the D.C. madam story, check out my profile of Dan Moldea.

Think the media went overboard on Hillary's cleavage? Colleen Werthmann critiques Hillary's outfit--from 1969. (Hint: She calls Hill a "young dork.")

In the same vein, the Chicago Sun-Times asks: How dare Michelle Obama not wear much makeup?

" 'I love girly makeup and stuff, but my view is that's a lot of work,' she said, explaining her decision to routinely skip the makeup chair. 'I want people to get used to my face more naturally so that I don't have to do that every day. Who's got time to put eyelashes on and all that?' "

The controversy over the New Republic's Baghdad diarist is far from over. Here's my report:

Army investigators have concluded that the private whose dispatches for the New Republic accused his fellow soldiers of petty cruelties in Iraq was not telling the truth.

The finding, disclosed yesterday, came days after the Washington-based magazine announced that it had corroborated the claims of the private, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, except for one significant error.

"An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by Pvt. Beauchamp were found to be false," an Army statement said. "His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."

But New Republic Editor Franklin Foer is standing his ground. "We've talked to military personnel directly involved in the events that Scott Thomas Beauchamp described, and they corroborated his account," Foer said. The magazine granted anonymity to the other soldiers it cited.

A military official, who asked not to be identified because the probe is confidential, said no charges were filed against Beauchamp. Instead, the official said, the matter is being handled administratively, with Beauchamp punished by having his cellphone and laptop confiscated for an undetermined period.

The Army probe provides ammunition to conservative critics who have accused the liberal magazine of publishing Beauchamp's "Baghdad Diarist" essays without adequate checking and being too quick to believe that American soldiers would engage in questionable conduct. It also revives fading memories of the magazine's 1998 fabrication scandal involving writer Stephen Glass.

Beauchamp, 23, who is married to New Republic reporter Elspeth Reeve, wrote last month that a soldier had used a Bradley Fighting Vehicle to run over stray dogs, and that others had found and played with the skulls of Iraqi children. Beauchamp also wrote that he and other soldiers had openly mocked a woman whose face had been disfigured by an injury -- but later acknowledged the incident had taken place in Kuwait before his unit was deployed, not at a Baghdad base as he originally maintained.

Foer said last week that the Army investigation was "short-circuiting" the magazine's efforts, in part because it had become impossible to reach Beauchamp.

The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine that has led the charge against Beauchamp, cited an unnamed military source yesterday as saying that Beauchamp had signed an affidavit acknowledging that his three articles were filled with exaggerations and falsehoods. That could not be independently confirmed, but it is common practice for the subject of an investigation to sign a statement confirming or denying the conduct in question.

Foer said the New Republic had asked Maj. Steven Lamb, an Army spokesman, about the allegation that Beauchamp had recanted his articles in a sworn statement, and that Lamb had replied: "I have no knowledge of that." Before going incommunicado, Beauchamp "told us that he signed a statement that did not contradict his writings for the New Republic," Foer said.

"Thus far," he added, "we've been provided no evidence that contradicts our original statement, despite directly asking the military for any such evidence it might have."

But Weekly Standard writer Michael Goldfarb said: "We have full confidence in our reporting that Private Beauchamp recanted under oath."

It is not clear whether investigators might have pressured Beauchamp into disavowing the articles by indicating that charges might otherwise be filed against him under the military justice code. A military official said Beauchamp had committed two violations, making false statements and not obtaining permission to publish the articles, which were written under the name Scott Thomas.

The Army statement did not specify what were described as Beauchamp's falsehoods and does not plan to make its report public. "The matter is considered to be closed," said Lt. Col. Joe Yoswa, an Army spokesman in Baghdad.

When Beauchamp went public last month, he said in a statement that it was "maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq." He said he had provided "one soldier's view of events in Iraq" that were "never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. military."

Mark Feldstein, a journalism professor at George Washington University, called the Army's refusal to release its report "suspect," adding: "There is a cloud over the New Republic, but there's one hanging over the Army, as well. Each investigated this and cleared themselves, but they both have vested interests."