Post Politics Hour

washingtonpost.com's Daily Politics Discussion

Don't want to miss out on the latest in politics? Start each day with The Post Politics Hour. Join in each weekday morning at 11 a.m. as a member of The Washington Post's team of White House and Congressional reporters answers questions about the latest in buzz in Washington and The Post's coverage of political news.

Chief Political Reporter Dan Balz was online Friday, Sept. 8, at 11 a.m. ET to discuss the latest in political news.

Political analysis from Post reporters and interviews with top newsmakers. Listen live on Washington Post Radio or subscribe to a podcast of the show.

The transcript follows.

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Dan Balz: Good morning to everyone. I've swapped days with Jonathan Weisman, who will be along on Monday, the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Much in the news this week with the president on the offensive on terrorism, Congress back and the midterm elections looming. Off we go.

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Indianapolis, Ind: From out here in the heartland the whole Bush Political P.R. blitz concerning security seems like a ho-humm. It isn't changing much and not creating a whole lot of buzz. What's going on in the nation's capital? Are his events working to save the GOP for the mid-terms???

Dan Balz: That's an interesting reaction to what has been a full-scale offensive by the White House to make the case in behalf of the president's policies. It's premature to say what effect it's having on public opinion and whether it will shift things away from concern over Iraq to terrorism, where the Republicans believe they still have an advantage over the Democrats.

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Atlanta, Ga: Dan,

We know who the Republican and Democrats are going to vote for in the midterms. Do you think the independents will be swayed at all by the, all too predictable, security votes Bush is asking for in the Congress? Is it possible Warner, McCain and Graham will stand up and say, "enough is enough, this is too important for the country to use it politically."?

Dan Balz: My conversations with Republican strategists shows they're very worried about the mood among independents. President Bush's approval rating among independents has sunk. Generally his approval among independents is a little lower than his overall approval rating, so if he's at about 38 or 40 percent now, his approval among independents is probably just below that. However, some of them could be affected by the focus on terrorism, although I suspect the administration will have a more difficult time making that argument work this year than in 2004 and certainly 2002. As for Warner, McCain and Graham, they may differ with details of the administration's proposals on warrantless wiretapping and military tribunals, but they're not going to become covert Democrats this fall.

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Cambridge, Mass.: Is the Dubai ports issue dead for purposes of the coming election? If the Republicans' strategy is to assert their qualifications for fighting terrorism, wouldn't it be a great idea for the Democrats to harp on the Dubai issue? As far as I can tell, this issue hasn't attracted any significant attention for quite a while.

Dan Balz: I don't think the Dubai ports issue is dead, but it's not front-and-center as it was when it was happening. We all have short attention spans -- we in the media, voters, everyone. But that is one element of the case Democrats will be using this fall to counter Republican arguments that Democrats can't be trusted on national security. We'll probably see some mention of it in TV ads.

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New Hampshire: Good morning Dan and thank you for taking my question.

I am bothered by ABC's plan to air the mockudrama "Path to 9/11" this weekend. This film blames President Clinton and lays nary a hand on President Bush. I think that this form of revisionism is thoroughly reprehensible and only serves to further damage our already sullied image. Doesn't there have to be truth when dealing with history or is it ok to dishonor the dead and the events of that day with lies?

Dan Balz: There's considerable controversy about this production and even we at the Post are upset that there is something attributed to our paper that was actually published by another paper. We'll see what ABC decides to do, but the controversy already has raised plenty of doubts about the accuracy of the program, which will taint it regardless of where and when it is aired, unless it's changed.

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Arlington, Va: At a time when the Democrats (Tom Daschel and Terry McAuliffe) stood beside Michael Moore and his Oscar-award winning movie "Farenheit 9-11", when interviews with military people who supported Bush or the war were edited to twist it as truth, how can those same Democrats push for "the truth must be told" on the ABC movie about 9-11? Interviews were done by people who created the movie, it has now been called a "docu-drama". Why is this movie being so attacked by Bill Clinton, his former White House members and the Democrats who are in charge of their party? Sounds hypocritical to me, would you agree?

Dan Balz: Democrats are protesting this; Republicans protested an earlier program about Ronald Reagan, which CBS eventually moved to cable rather than airing it on the main network.

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Baltimore, Md.: Why has there been so little attention paid to the fact that Pakistan has now decided not to pursue the pro-Taliban militias that are protecting Osama bin Ladin on its border with Afghanistan?

Dan Balz: I think it's gotten attention but there's been an awful lot of news recently. It's not as though news organizations haven't reported it.

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Chicago, Ill: At this point where do you see the bar being set for success or failure of the two parties in November (or the conventional wisdom or MSM setting the bar)? Do the Democrats have to win at least one chamber of Congress to be viewed has having won the election? If they win 13 House seats and 5 senate seats is that now a loss? If they win 25 and 7 is that considered a blow out victory? What is the conventional wisdom of how well the Democrats have to do for Bush's policy on Iraq to be reputiated by the voters?

Dan Balz: You're into the gray area of elections. Let's wait until the night of the elections to see what happened. There's no value at this point in analyzing what hasn't happened.

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Washington, D.C.: This week's Administration political blitzkrieg focusing the electorate's attention away from the disaster in Iraq seems to be assisted by our TV media that are reporting almost nothing else in their lead stories and by The Post which has nothing on its front page today about Iraq but a lot about Bush's efforts to shift attention away from Iraq. Is this the intentional, coordinated effort it appears to be or is it the result of the "invisible hand" of public opinion which cries out for less news about Iraq and more about detainees, military trials and wiretapping?

Dan Balz: Coordinated by whom? We've covered what President Bush has said because he's trying to argue in behalf of controversial policies he has put in place since 9/11. The acknowledgement of the secret CIA prisons was an important development. His pressure on Congress to give him the legal authority to do what he's been doing is noteworthy. That is the news of the past few days.

None of that detracts from the importance of Iraq and what is happening there and you'll see Iraq back on the front page of this paper at some point. But we make decisions day by day, based on what happened that day. You could argue that we should have had the news about Tony Blair on our front page this morning, given his significance the past several years, but we didn't. The suggestion that this is some coordinated effort is mistaken.

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Arlington, Va: Do you think it is the media's responsibility to more actively unveil the false choice framings that Bush creates? For example, this most recent PR campaign presents a false choice between either prosecuting the terrorists or letting them go. Previously, we also had the framing that if you were against the war, you were against the troops.

Dan Balz: I think there is a line between reporting/analysis and opinion writing/political advocacy. Certainly in our news pages, we try to keep from going over than line, although there are other voices in other places in the paper for that kind of journalism.

But with regard to your specific complaint, we did a piece just as Bush was starting this round of speeches laying out the arguments he would make and noting that Democrats said he was falsely accusing them of things they were not advocating.

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California: Why is opposition to the President automatically portrayed as a Democratic

talking point? Can't Lindsey Graham be supporting the Constitution by opposing Bush's illogical view of the law? I thought the GOP was a champion of Constitutional restraint? Is abhorrence of torture and a run amok President a democratic characteristic, or is it an AMERICAN characteristic? THANKS

Dan Balz: Senator Graham has often split with the administration on some of these issues, as as John McCain. It's not a Democratic talking point to do so, no.

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Homewood, Ill: "There's no value at this point in analyzing what hasn't happened."

Except isn't that what the whole "lowering expectations" (or raising them) game is all about? Are you immune to the pre-spin given out by candidates and their surrogates...We'll be lucky to get two seats...so when they get three it's painted as a big victory? This must work or the politicians wouldn't do it, yes?

Dan Balz: We get spin all the time and we listen to all the efforts to raise or lower expectations and that's part of the political give-and-take in advance of the election. It makes for good fodder for talk shows and blogs and other things. What I'm suggesting is that we will know on Election Night who won and who lost, both in absolute numbers and in terms of the expectations that both parties took into the elections. But trying to quantify this as x seats in the House and y in the Senate at this point can be fruitless. Which party do you think will be happier if, on Nov. 7, the Democrats pick up 14 House seats and 5 Senate seats?

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New York, NY: I'll go ahead and state what you (and your colleagues) cannot, due to your commitment to objectivity: The Democrats will take the House, and the Senate is a coin-toss right now.

I envy you (and your colleagues); 2007 is going to be a VERY interesting year in American politics!

Dan Balz: We said in a story last Sunday that Republicans are in clear danger of losing the House and that they are fighting to retain a slim majority in the Senate. And yes, 2007 (and 2008) will be very significant years in American politics.

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Wilmington, NC: "I think it's gotten attention but there's been an awful lot of news recently."

Is it just me, or have we had a very eventful last 4 years? I just can't recall such a sustained succession of truly significant news events all across the war to scandal spectrum.

Dan Balz: You could argue it's been non-stop since 1998, when we had a presidential impeachment. Then we had the disputed election of 2000, the terrorist attacks of 2001, war in Iraq, a 2004 presidential election that was one of the most fiercely fought in history, and now everything that's happened since President Bush's second inaugural. And we've got 2007-2008 coming at us.

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This Chat: Dan, you're way too balanced to be hosting this chat. You're even posting and treating fairly questions that don't begin with the assumption that Bush is an evil, lying dictator.

Didn't Froomkin go over the ground rules with you?

Dan Balz: Who's Froomkin?

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Greenville, SC: Dan - Why do some in the MSM, especially your own Howard Kurtz, refer to Sec. Rumsfeld as "Rummy"? Is it to be a term of derision? I read Kurtz's article yesterday about the controversial ABC docudrama and he referred to former Sec. Madeleine K. Albright and former NSA Berger, not "Maddy" and not Sandy "Burglar". Why the distinction?

Dan Balz: No, I don't believe it's a term of derision. Secretary Rumsfeld has been referred to as "Rummy" for many years, by Democrats and Republicans. You'll have to ask Howie Kurtz whether it's a term of endearment.

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Colorado: I see somebody asked my Pakistan question, so I'll try

again.

IN regards to the question about opinion/spin/horse race

coverage vs news: Do you think the electronic media

(cable TV and talk radio) hold themselves to the same

standards as print? I don't. And I think the reporters who

take questions here take a lot of heat for shouting heads

of cable. That said, I think since this is a "politics" forum,

it's high time someone from your editorial board

descended to Earth to explain some of the odder

viewpoints expressed as the Official Opinion of The

Washington Post.

Dan Balz: This daily chat is conducted by political reporters on the Post's National Staff. Our editorial page editors occasionally conduct their own chats. We call it the political chat because we try to keep the focus on political news and developments, not college football or cooking or Washington area traffic or the thousand other subjects that might attract readers. As such, those of us who do these chats don't speak for the editorial page of the Post.

Obviously, cable TV and talk radio have different standards than print reporters. And yes, we do take heat for things they do, but also for things we do. That goes with the territory. We just hope you'll keep reading both the newspaper and our website -- especially for political news!

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Baltimore, Md.: follow up on Pakistan question: There has been a lot of news, and I have seen some reporting that Pakistan will no longer be engaging pro-Taliban militias - but it has been buried inside the A section.

My question - presumably the Administration knew about this agreement between Pakistan and the pro-Taliban militias before this week's 9/11 media blitz. How likely is it that the Administration was hoping to bury the story that the hunt for bin Ladin is, for all practical purposes, over?

Dan Balz: It is no surprise that the White House is using the days before and after Sept. 11 to talk about terrorism, regardless of what other developments there are in the world. This is a White House famous for advance planning and famous for sticking to those plans -- sometimes to their regret. In this case, I'm sure they assumed that the week after Labor Day, with Congress returning and Americans getting back to work after summer vacations, was the time to relaunch their offensive to win congressional support for their policies on surveillance and military tribunals.

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Woodbridge Va: Has anyone noticed that the Republican House seats most in danger are clustered in the Northeast and will probably be lost in the 2010 redistricting anyway. The short term dynamics may favor the Democrats but unless they find a message that resonates in the Southern and Rocky mountain states, long term demographics still favor Republicans. And frankly, a Democratic victory in 2006 is likely to drive them deeper in to the hard core liberal camp whose base is in states with declining populations.

Dan Balz: Two good points in that posting. Yes, the Northeast is a real problem for the Republicans this fall. President Bush is particularly unpopular in the Northeast and as we scope out the battle for the House, there are three competitive seats in Connecticut, four in Pennsylvania and several in New York. There are also quite a few in the Midwest.

You're correct that the states where Republicans have been stronger will gain seats after the 2010 Census and some in the Northeast and Midwest will lose seats. One recent analysis of Census data said that five states are likely to lose districts after 2010: New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Ohio and Iowa. The five states that likely will gain are: Arizona, Florida, Texas, Utah and Nevada. This is from an analysis by Election Data Services that was published at the end of last year.

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Annandale, Va: So what's happened with the investigation into the Abramoff imbroglio? It's been awfully quiet the past several months, and now Ney and DeLay are basically out of the picture.

Dan Balz: DeLay and Ney are out of the picture but still have legal issues to deal with. The Abramoff investigation continues.

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Vienna, VA: Have you had a chance to see Jim Webb's new ad...it shows Reagan introducing him and then talks about his military record. No mention of him being a Democrat. Is this a wise move?

Dan Balz: Jim Webb needs Republicans votes to beat Sen. Allen in November, so the Reagan connection is an obvious card to play in the race. As for party identification, candidates use it when it's helpful and avoid using it when it's not. Senator Mike DeWine in Ohio, a Republican, is in a tough race. He's touted himself as an independent voice for Ohio. Many other Republicans, particularly in the Northeast, are not flaunting their party identification.

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Charlotte, NC: Bush has admitted that he has not done a good job in convincing the public that the war in Iraq is linked to the "global war on terrorism". Will his announcement of foiled anthrax and hijacking plots turn public opinion on this matter?

Dan Balz: We'll close where we began. We've seen in 2002 and 2004 that the president can be an effective advocate for his policies and he has been animated and energetic this week in his speeches. The context this year is quite different than it was in 2002 and 2004, which means he has a tougher sell to make.

Thanks to everyone for participating today. Have a good weekend.

Dan Balz

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