Month: October 2005

by hilzoy

Billmon has an interesting post about his encounters with Andy Card, President Bush’s unlikely chief of staff, over the years. It’s the sort of thing I have always wished journalists wrote in the course of doing their jobs: what, exactly, did they think of the various people they dealt with, as persons? Billmon was underwhelmed by Card:

“When I interviewed him, I could tell fairly quickly that a.) he definitely wasn’t the sharpest chisel in the White House toolbox (and this wasn’t exactly the Leonardo da Vinci administration) and b.) he had only the vaguest understanding of what Rollins and company had been up to. Card, in other words, was the patsy in the deal — something he complained about quite openly when we spoke.(…) He struck me as a sad sack, a minor league patronage player who had already reached the level of his own incompetence. A future FEMA administrator, in other words.”

I’m writing this post, despite the fact that it will be almost as content-free as my last one, for two reasons. First, to recommend Billmon’s post to anyone who wants to know who is likely to be Bush’s right-hand man if Rove and Cheney go down. Second, because having read Billmon for quite a while, I am certain that this is the only time when I will be able to say, about anything he writes: well, I can top that.

Specifically: Billmon writes: “I first encountered Card when he was a special assistant in the Reagan White House — having arrived there as a Bush loyalist in 1983.” Well, I first encountered Card when he was a Massachusetts State Representative in 1976. (Not that I made nearly as much of my encounters as Billmon did.)

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by hilzoy

I can’t wait until the Plame story is over. Not only will I be able to stop wondering what will happen next, but Patrick Fitzgerald might actually tell his story to someone, and then I can learn the answer to the question: what, exactly, accounts for everyone so helpfully remembering conversations, emails, notes, and other things that had mysteriously slipped their minds until now? It’s all very interesting — and not just to me, but, apparently, to Fitzgerald. The WSJ reports that he is widening his investigation:

“There are signs that prosecutors now are looking into contacts between administration officials and journalists that took place much earlier than previously thought. Earlier conversations are potentially significant, because that suggests the special prosecutor leading the investigation is exploring whether there was an effort within the administration at an early stage to develop and disseminate confidential information to the press that could undercut former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Central Intelligence Agency official Valerie Plame. (…)

Mr. Fitzgerald’s pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent’s name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy.

Mr. Wilson’s initial complaints were made privately to reporters. He went public in a July 6 op-ed in the New York Times and in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” After that, White House officials, who were attempting to discredit Mr. Wilson’s claims, confirmed to some reporters that Mr. Wilson was married to a CIA official. Columnist Robert Novak published Mr. Wilson’s wife’s name and association with the agency in a column that suggested she had played a role in having him sent on a mission to Niger to investigate the administration’s claims.

Until now, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to be focusing on conversations between White House officials such as Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior political adviser, after Mr. Wilson wrote his op-ed. The defense by Republican operatives has been that White House officials didn’t name Ms. Plame, and that any discussion of her was in response to reporters’ questions about Mr. Wilson, the kind of casual banter that occurs between sources and reporters. (…)

Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. Rove and Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion. The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to Mr. Wilson’s claims.”

And what, you might ask, was the White House Iraq Group?

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by Charles

But I’m leaning more toward the Rebel Alliance than the Loyalists.  Ed Morrissey describes the three camps of conservatives regarding the nomination of Harriet Miers, putting himself in the Trench-Dwelling Dogface category:

Despite our normal support for the president, we Dogfaces fail to recognize George Bush’s supposed brilliance in naming his personal lawyer to the bench, whatever Hugh Hewitt says. Even if Miers obviously has earned Bush’s trust, she just as obviously has done nothing remarkable to earn the trust of conservatives; being a mover and shaker in the American Bar Association doesn’t lend her much credibility among those who have watched that group get more and more politically activist in what we view as the wrong direction. Most of us have tired of the "trust me" approach. In short, we find ourselves with some sympathy for the Rebel Alliance.

However, we also see the realistic outcome of the bloody civil war that threatens to split the GOP over what clearly is a White House blunder — one compounded by White House adviser Ed Gillespie’s charging the Rebel Alliance with "sexism" at last week’s meeting. With important mid-term elections next year and at least one more Supreme Court opening likely during Bush’s term, we want to avoid a party schism that could make him a prematurely lame duck and hand the Democrats an opportunity to seize control of one or both houses of Congress.

It is undeniable that the undocumented and undistinguished Miers is a Bush crony, as Bill Kristol called her, and Bush’s pleas of "trust me" fall on deaf ears because he signed the campaign finance reform bill even though he proclaimed that he thought it was unconstitutional.  This is defending and upholding the constitution?  George Will is right.  Far as I’m concerned, because he violated his oath of office (among other multiple missteps large and small), he has lost the trust of many conservatives, myself included.  Bush should have nominated a notable conservative jurist, not a Mystery Date.  Bill Kristol is also right that Miers should fall on her sword.  Supporting her may not give Hugh Hewitt indigestion, but it sure makes me queasy.

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by hilzoy

I tried to hold out against TimesSelect. It annoys me, especially since there are only a few commentators I actually want to read, and yet if I sign up, I have to pay for the whole lot of them. (David Brooks? You must be kidding. The thought that it will be impossible for me to read him has always seemed to me one of the few upsides of TimesSelect.)

Nonetheless, a little over two weeks ago I signed up for their two week free trial. I cleverly marked down exactly when I had signed up, and in a moment of uncharacteristic organization, I actually cancelled it after about 45 minutes shy of two weeks. And yet I can still access their pages. This seems ominous to me. Are they going to try to pretend that I didn’t cancel after all? Having resisted the temptation to annoy myself by reading David Brooks for two weeks, am I not at least going to regain my cherished inability to read him? I don’t like the looks of this at all.

It did allow me to read Krugman today, though. It’s a good column, and it raises a good question. So that you can all benefit from my misfortune, excerpts below the fold.

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by Charles

Plenty of blame has been placed at the feet of the Bush administration for its slow and bureaucratic responses to Hurricane Katrina, and rightly so.  But what I don’t see is how the response was racist, and the comments alleging such by African American leaders, elected and otherwise, is both galling and dishonest. This is not to deny that racism still exists in the American south. I saw it personally, on numerous occasions in numerous homes over twenty years ago, and an ugly thing like racial bigotry takes a long time to go away. Generations. Yes, progress has been made, but there’s a long way to go.

The hurricane revealed quite a few things, one of them being that society can break down easily and quickly under the right (or wrong) circumstances. Another revelation was how quickly and reflexively race inciters got on the case and injected their vitriol into the situation. A few examples:

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