Code Red Confession

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 21, 2009 9:29 AM

The cynics, it turns out, were right.

The Bush administration was trying to use terror alerts to boost the president's political fortunes, just as some skeptical journalists suggested.

Tom Ridge is now admitting it.

Which prompts two reactions on my part:

a) I'm not shocked.

b) Now he tells us?

Five years later, when he's pushing a new book, the former homeland security secretary says he was pressured by top Bush lieutenants to ratchet up the terror level -- to scare people -- in an effort to boost W.'s reelection chances.

Does it get any lower than that?

Just to remind you of the atmosphere of the time, three years removed from 9/11, here's a Ron Fournier AP story from the summer of 2004:

"The politics of terrorism has Democrats tied in knots. Each time President Bush raises fears of a possible attack, the political debate shifts from his most troublesome issue (Iraq) to one of his strongest (the war on terrorism) while Democrats fight their impulse to question the president's motives.

"The advantages of incumbency were in full display Sunday, when Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned of possible al-Qaida terrorist attacks to financial institutions in New York City, Washington and Newark, N.J."

So the weekend before the election, with Bush leading Sen. John F. Kerry by a couple of points, Osama bin Laden releases a videotape -- and, says Ridge, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft push him to raise the color-coded warning.

"But at this point there was nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm. And as the minutes passed at our videoconference we concluded that others in the administration were operating with the same threat information and didn't know any more than we did, and that the idea was still a bad one. It also seemed possible to me and to others around the table that something could be afoot other than simple concern about the country's safety. . . .

"I believe our strong interventions had pulled the 'go-up' advocates back from the brink. But I consider the episode to be not only a dramatic moment in Washington's recent history, but another illustration of the intersection of politics, fear, credibility and security."

Ridge quit three weeks after the election. He said he wanted to spend more time with his family. That now seems like a cover story.

A former Ashcroft spokesman denied Ridge's account. And the NYT reports: "Keith M. Urbahn, a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld, said the defense secretary supported letting the public know if intelligence agencies believed there was a greater threat, and pointed to a variety of chilling Qaeda warnings in those days, including one tape vowing that 'the streets of America will run red with blood.' "

It's the Process, Stupid

Just what you want to read about in the dog days of August: an exploration of the congressional process of reconciliation.

This is the problem with covering Congress: The maneuvering is endless, the procedures arcane, the pace like pouring molasses. There is always a Gang of Six or Eight or Twelve trying to cut a side deal, and even if both houses manage to pass a bill, the thing then moves into the black hole of a conference committee.

And yet this is what will determine whether President Obama can pass some version of health-care reform.

It's more fun chronicling the outside game -- presidential speeches, raucous town halls, attack ads, guns at rallies -- than how Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley are doing in their seemingly endless discussions about a 1,000-page bill that nobody fully understands.

More often than not, the press kills entire forests to report on titanic legislative battles that produce . . . nothing. Immigration reform, Social Security reform, anything that is hard and politically sensitive, often falls short in the end. Spending money: much easier. Granting prescription drug benefits to seniors: much easier. Cutting the deficit, raising taxes, taking on the health industry: a thousand times harder.

But the political reality is that the Democrats are in charge. The president got a taste of this when he responded to listeners Thursday on Michael Smerconish's radio show:

Joe: "I'm getting a little ticked off that it feels like the knees are buckling a little bit. You have an overwhelming majority in both the House and the Senate, and you own the whole shooting match. And I'm just not getting -- it's very frustrating to watch you try and compromise with a lot of these people who aren't willing to compromise with you."

Obama: "Well, look, I guarantee you, Joe, we are going to get health-care reform done. And I know that there are a lot of people out there who have been hand-wringing, and folks in the press are following every little twist and turn of the legislative process. You know, passing a big bill like this is always messy."

The real hand-wringing, though, is not over the stop-and-start nature of congressional (in)action. It's that Obama, as the White House now recognizes, has lost control of the debate. Every day spent defending this or that provision from exaggerated attacks is a day not devoted to convincing Americans that the health bill -- and, of course, there isn't even a single bill -- is a step forward. Liberal and moderate Democrats can't even agree among themselves whether there should be a public option, and the administration has been sending mixed signals at best.

So it qualified as news when the Wall Street Journal reported this bit of strategery:

"The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health-care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes.

"The idea is the latest effort by Democrats to escape the morass caused by delays in Congress, as well as voter discontent crystallized in angry town-hall meetings. Polls suggest the overhaul plans are losing public support, giving Republicans less incentive to go along."

Passing something "solely with Democratic votes" is reconciliation -- meaning the Senate short-circuits debate with 51 votes rather than requiring the usual 60 needed to stop a filibuster. Upside: It's more efficient. Downside: The minority party goes bonkers. And it shreds Obama's avowed approach of bipartisanship -- though in fairness, he can't be bipartisan if he has no one to play with.

Atlantic's Marc Ambinder concludes that "the threat of reconciliation is very likely just that -- a threat. In theory, if enough senators are convinced that Harry Reid, Max Baucus and Conrad (who MUST agree to it, given his Budget Committee chairman's status) will use reconciliation to push through the health care 'pay-fors,' they'll give up the threat of a filibuster. Problem is, if the bill is discredited and unpopular, reconciliation may increase its illegitimacy in the eyes of the public, even though a majority of senators will have voted for it. This is one of those fairly icky contraptions you find in our republican form of democracy; a majority isn't a majority, and isn't even perceived to be a majority, until a supermajority can be found.

"That said, Republicans who protest the reconciliation procedure ought to be ignored, especially if they happened to have voted for any number of reconciled bills over the years that have been somewhat extraneous to the process of getting a budget done. Judd Gregg protests too much. Reconciliation isn't 'controversial.' It's not a 'nuclear option.' It's another way of getting things done, one that still requires at least 50 votes (with the vice president breaking the tie, if necessary). . . .

"One reason why the White House is anxious about breaking the bills apart and/or reconciliation: keeping the good stuff in the bill makes it harder to vote against the tougher-to-swallow stuff."

Sure. Otherwise, the easy bill passes and the other gets deep-sixed.

The New Republic's Jason Zengerle says much of the hand-wringing "over Obama's bungling of health care" is "overwrought." But then he cites an unnamed White House adviser who told the WP he doesn't understand how the public option "has become the measure of whether what we achieve is health-care reform."

"I agree with this adviser that the public option is not the end-all be-all of health care legislation, but I'm shocked the White House didn't realize that, for a large segment of the left, it is. I mean, liberal health care advocates have been pushing the public plan as their number one priority ever since Obama took office. A few months ago I did some reporting for a story on how the left was falling out of love with Obama, but I never wrote the story--mainly because I discovered the left wasn't falling out of love with him. A big reason for their staying in love was, you guessed it, their belief that Obama would support the public plan.

"I'm just having a hard time understanding how, if I, as a reporter who doesn't spend a lot of time following health reform, knew about the left's infatuation with the public plan, the White House didn't."

An excellent question.

Some Obama supporters are blaming the president, the Boston Globe says:

"In recent weeks, Obama has delivered mixed messages that have bogged down the debate and sapped momentum from his top domestic priority.

"He distracted attention during his own prime-time press conference last month on health care when he stated that Cambridge police acted 'stupidly'' when they arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr., which dominated the news for a week. He took several days to directly rebut charges that the health plan included 'death panels'' that would determine end-of-life care. This week, he and his top aides appeared to waver on the importance of creating a government-run plan to compete with private insurers."

Time's Joe Klein has given up on the GOP:

"Given the heinous dust that's been raised, it seems likely that end-of-life counseling will be dropped from the health-reform legislation. But that's a small point, compared with the larger issue that has clouded this summer: How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? And another question: How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark? . . .

"To be sure, there are honorable conservatives, trying to do the right thing. There is a legitimate, if wildly improbable, fear that Obama's plan will start a process that will end with a health-care system entirely controlled by the government. . . .

"There is no Republican health-care alternative in 2009. The same people who rail against a government takeover of health care tried to enforce a government takeover of Terri Schiavo's end-of-life decisions. And when Palin floated the 'death panel' canard, the number of prominent Republicans who rose up to call her out could be counted on one hand."

At the Weekly Standard, John McCormack accuses Obama of a "new lie" for telling religious leaders:

"You've heard that this is all going to mean government funding of abortion. Not true. These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation -- and that is that we look out for one another, that I am my brother's keeper and I am my sister's keeper. And on the wealthiest nation on earth right now, we are neglecting to live up to that call.

"While the White House 'reality check' website was silent on the issue of abortion in Obamacare, his campaign website quotes a false factcheck.org statement that 'In fact, none of the health care overhaul measures that have made it through the committee level in Congress say that abortion will be covered'.

"In fact, the Capps Amendment passed by the House Energy and Commerce committee would require the establishment of at least one plan covering elective abortions in every federally-subsidized exchange, and it gives the HHS Secretary the authority to include abortion coverage in the public plan and requires that the public plan cover abortion if the Hyde amendment (which bans funding of abortions through Medicaid) is repealed."

CBN's David Brody jumps on other language Obama used in that conversation:

"When you come out on a FAITH conference call and use the words, 'bearing false witness' that is a direct slap down of conservative Evangelical groups. You can debate the intention behind his words but it really doesn't matter because it is really only how it is received that matters. In essence he was calling these Christian groups a bunch of liars. It's a serious charge. By ratcheting up the rhetoric, the president just amped up the fight against him and opened up a can of worms."

But Obama said there are "some folks out there" bearing false witness, not the evangelicals themselves.

The Beck Boycott

About 20 companies -- including Procter & Gamble, Geico and ConAgra -- have pulled their ads from Glenn Beck's show since the Fox News host called Obama a "racist." But Fox says this hasn't cost the network a dime as the companies have shifted their spots to other time periods.

Now Carl Cannon argues in Politics Daily that the group spearheading the drive, "ColorofChange.org, is an online membership organization that exists, according to its mission statement, 'to strengthen Black America's political voice.'

"The group was founded by Van Jones, who left in 2007 for another activist organization, Green for All, and who now works in the Obama administration as a top adviser on 'green' jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. . . .

"The problem here is that the outrage against playing the race card in politics is selective. Is it not also repulsive and divisive when Keith Olbermann invites an angry actress named Janeane Garafalo on his show to dismiss conservative protesters as 'a bunch of racists?' As Olbermann mumbles audible sounds of encouragement, Garafalo adds: 'Let's be very honest about what this is about. . . . This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. This is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks.'

"If you don't remember ColorofChange.org's boycott against Olbermann and NBC, that's because it never happened. . . .

"Let's contemplate for a moment the likely effects of this Glenn Beck boycott:

"(1) More attention, and thus, possibly more viewers for Glenn Beck.

"(2) A sympathy backlash (like this column) from people who normally wouldn't dream of defending Glenn Beck, but who will almost always defend free speech.

"(3) A backlash boycott against Olbermann, or whomever, on the part of angered conservatives.

"(4) The spreading perception that some liberals are often willing to employ tactics that are quite illiberal when it comes to those with whom they disagree.

"(5) More opportunity on Beck's show for him to spew goofy opinions, precisely because the advertisers have fled, leaving him with more time to fill."

I think the sympathy backlash is overstated, given the wildness of Beck's charge that Obama "has a deep-seated hatred for white people." But boycotts almost never work in forcing someone off the air.

Life After Fabrication

Six years after I discovered that he was making up stories for the New York Times, the AP reports on a disgraced journalist's new career in Virginia:

"Jayson Blair knows his new profession -- life coach -- smacks some people in the face like a bad punchline.

" 'People say, "Wait a minute. You're a life coach?' That makes no sense,'' ' says Blair, the ex-journalist best known for foisting plagiarism and fabrications into the pages of the New York Times. 'Then they think about my life experiences and what I've been through and they say "Wait a minute. It does make sense.'' ' "

What Blair did was reprehensible, but he certainly deserves a chance to rebuild his life.

Howard Kurtz is also a CNN contributor and hosts its media program, "Reliable Sources."