Today Scott McClellan went on the offensive against Ben Barnes for describing the "shame" he feels over helping President Bush duck service in Vietnam.

"It is not surprising coming from a longtime partisan Democrat," he said. "The allegation was discredited by the commanding officer. This was fully covered and addressed five years ago. It is nothing new."

It turns out that Barnes is such a down-the-line partisan that he supported Texas's Republican State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn for reelection in 2002.

Strayhorn is Scott's mom.

A bit more on the Ben Barnes thing.

After the tape of Ben Barnes saying he was ashamed of helping President Bush duck Vietnam came out a couple days ago, Bush spokeswoman Claire Buchan said

It's a funny attitude considering how appreciative the Bush clan has always been for his being discreet about the issue. But Buchan's right, as far as it goes, Barnes is a "partisan Democrat." He is in the sense that he's a Democrat; he's an ex-pol who remains heavily involved in politics; and he's actually a major fundraiser for John Kerry.

He just happens to be a major fundraiser for Kerry who is also the guy who helped Bush bend the rules to get out of Vietnam, which is inconvenient -- to some degree for both sides.

You'll notice that President Bush just had this exchange with NBC's Matt Lauer ...

Lauer: Did John Kerry serve heroically in Vietnam, in your opinion?

President GEORGE W. BUSH: I think his service is heroic, yes. I think he's--and should be proud of it. And I think that we ought to move beyond the past. I mean, he's proud of his service, I'm proud of mine. And the real question is, who best to lead us forward.

Nice try. After that the president's people have been softening Kerry up for three or four weeks, now he wants to look to the future. That's a pretty nice little scam, isn't it? Lauer might have done better to ask the president why he's only saying that now a day before the convention, as opposed to in early August. (Actually, why didn't you ask that, Matt?) This is right out of the Bush family playbook: have your people savage your opponent and once the damage is done try to take the high road.

But it's too late. As Max Cleland said a few days ago, President Bush's "moment of truth came and went."

And as for the Barnes thing, I think we can be pretty confident we'll be seeing something a good deal more public in the next several days.

George W. Bush: "They just had an opening for a pilot and I was there at the right time."

Bob Novak would be a much better reporter if he weren't so dishonest. Until recently, I hadn't observed his reporting that closely. So I hadn't noticed it. But I don't think there's any way around that conclusion.

Let me illustrate with an example from last night.

Last night on Capital Gang this was Novak's 'outrage of the week' ...

NOVAK: Ben Barnes was one of my favorite Democrats more than 30 years ago. The boy wonder of Texas politics until he was defeated for governor at the age of 34 in 1972. He reappeared this week, when a Texas Bush basher distributed a 45-second video for the Kerry campaign by Barnes, claiming that he, as lieutenant governor of Texas got Bush into the Air National Guard.

But, Ben was not yet lieutenant governor when Bush joined the Guard. This sleazy politics is not the way for my old friend Ben Barnes to get back on the front page.

So, Novak's point is that Barnes

The only problem is that Novak knows this is not true. He knows it's not true; but he's trying to fool his listeners into thinking that it is because many aren't familiar with the details of the story, as he is. Again, a dishonest reporter.

Allow me to explain.

The Barnes story isn't a new one. And the relevant dates of it and the office Barnes was serving in at the time have never been questioned. It happened during the time Barnes was Speaker of the House in Texas. In the past, he went to great lengths to avoid discussing. But after being forced to discuss it in a civil suit deposition in 1999, he made a brief public announcement. See this clip from the Houston Chronicle from September 28th 1999 ...

Austin lobbyist Ben Barnes said Monday that as speaker of the Texas House more than 30 years ago, he recommended George W. Bush for a pilot's position in the Texas Air National Guard at the request of a Bush family friend.

But Barnes, in a statement issued by his lawyer, said he was not contacted by a member of the Bush family and had "no knowledge" that either the future governor or his father, former President Bush, who was then a congressman from Houston, knew of his intervention.

In fact, not only has Barnes been consistent and his account not been questioned, even Bush himself and his campaign have accepted Barnes account. All they have insisted on -- though it is quite improbable -- is that they did not know at the time about his actions and were not involved in any way in requesting it.

The president even went so far as to thank Barnes in a personal note for being clear that he had no direct, personal knowledge that the Bush family had contacted the intermediary who contacted him. Consider this clip from a September 27th, 1999 Associated Press story ...

Barnes testified for several hours Monday in a deposition in the case. Afterwards, his lawyer issued a written statement saying Barnes had been contacted by the now-deceased Sidney Adger, a Houston oilman and friend of the elder Bush.

''Mr. Barnes was contacted by Sid Adger and asked to recommend George W. Bush for a pilot position with the Air National Guard. Barnes called Gen. (James) Rose (Texas Air Guard commander) and did so,'' the statement said.

''Neither Congressman Bush nor any other member of the Bush family asked Barnes' help. Barnes has no knowledge that Governor Bush or President Bush knew of Barnes' recommendation,'' the statement said.

Barnes also said he met in September 1998 with Donald L. Evans, a longtime friend and chief fund-raiser for Governor Bush. Barnes told Evans about Adger's request, and ''Governor Bush wrote Barnes a note thanking him for his candor in acknowledging that Barnes received no call from any member of the Bush family.''

In an interview with The Associated Press, Evans said he met with Barnes on his own initiative, without informing the governor in advance. At the time, he was Bush's gubernatorial campaign chairman and was concerned only about that contest, Evans said.

There's a rich backstory to why the subject came up in that civil suit. But as you can see Barnes went to some lengths not to make trouble for Bush; and they were, well ... thankful on many levels.

In the tape someone took of Barnes at a recent Kerry political event he clearly just misspoke. And it's not hard to understand why since Barnes in fact became Lt. Governor of the state a few months after the events in question. Remember, the guy wasn't giving an official statement. He was talking at a pro-Kerry gathering and didn't even know he was being taped. When I first posted the video a couple days ago, I spoke to several Texas politicos who pointed out to me -- what I hadn't noticed -- that Barnes had misspoken, that he meant when he was Speaker of the House.

Sometimes when someone 'misspeaks' there's something sinister about it. In other cases, it's obvious that the person just misspoke. This is clearly a case of the latter. And Novak knew that in advance.

Like I said, a dishonest reporter.

Atrios is so right about this.

Here is the article on the Franklin investigation that I discussed earlier. This is a piece my colleagues and I at the Washington Monthly wrote. It discusses how the Franklin investigation relates to the Ghorbanifar back-channel run out of Doug Feith's office from 2001 to 2003.

I haven't yet been able to comment on the breaking news last night that the FBI is investigating whether an employee at the OSD, Larry Franklin, passed classified US

A few thoughts though about this story.

I'm told the evidence the FBI has on Franklin -- at least on the narrow facts of the case -- is quite strong and involves wire tap information, though why a career DIA analyst like Franklin would allow himself to get tripped up on a phone call mystifies me.

The main focus thus far has been on the highly sensitive and troubling allegation that an ally, Israel, was spying on the United States or the recipient of classified information from a US government official.

However, I strongly suspect that as this story develops the bigger deal will be less the alleged recipient of the information, Israel, than the country that is the subject of the information, Iran.

I don't mean to imply that it's an either/or. It can very much be both. But the reportage thus far has understated the degree to which this is an Iran story -- it grows out of the simmering and unresolved administration battle over policy toward Iran.

Now Knight Ridder has picked up the Barnes tape.

There's also a helpful compare and contrast with what Ben Barnes says on the tape noted below.

Jim Moore, the co-author of Bush's Brain, whom I also mention below, describes this exchange he had in the 1994 gubernatorial debate with Anne Richards. Moore was on the panel of journalists posing questions. This is from Moore's article in Salon back in July ...

The irony in all of this is that I am largely responsible for reducing access to those records. During the 1994 Texas gubernatorial race between Ann Richards and George W. Bush, I was a panelist on the only televised debate between the two candidates. The question I chose to ask Bush first was about the National Guard. I had lost friends in Vietnam, and many of them had tried to get into the Guard. We were all told that there was a waiting list of up to five years. The Guard was the best method for getting out of combat in Vietnam. You needed connections. George W. Bush had them.

"Mr. Bush," I said. "How did you get into the Guard so easily? One hundred thousand guys our age were on the waiting list, and you say you walked in and signed up to become a pilot. Did your congressman father exercise any influence on your behalf?"

"Not that I know of, Jim," the future president told me. "I certainly didn't ask for any. And I'm sure my father didn't either. They just had an opening for a pilot and I was there at the right time."

More soon ...

You'll want to link through to this one -- it's a video clip of Ben Barnes, the former Speaker of the House in Texas, the guy who got President Bush into the Texas Air National Guard.

I'm told the tape is from a recent Kerry rally and in it Barnes says the following ...

Let’s talk a minute about John Kerry and George Bush and I know them both. And I’m not name dropping to say I know ‘em both. I got a young man named George W. Bush in the National Guard when I was Lt. Gov. of Texas and I’m not necessarily proud of that. But I did it. And I got a lot of other people into the National Guard because I thought that was what people should do, when you're in office you helped a lot of rich people. And I walked through the Vietnam Memorial the other day and I looked at the names of the people that died in Vietnam and I became more ashamed of myself than I have ever been because it was the worst thing that I did was that I helped a lot of wealthy supporters and a lot of people who had family names of importance get into the National Guard and I’m very sorry about that and I’m very ashamed and I apologize to you as voters of Texas.

Now, I don't know what Ben Barnes looks like. And I do not independently know the provenance of the tape. But I've spoken to two sources who know Barnes. And they tell me that that is Barnes on the tape.

One of those two men is Jim Moore -- co-author of Bush's Brain. Moore told me this afternoon that the clip is from June 8th of this year, at a Kerry rally in Austin. Moore assures me that the tape is legitimate.

I placed a call to Barnes' office and left a message with one of his assistants; but the request for comment has not yet been returned.

Here's another question that occurs to me about Olasky's column. Is he saying that John Kerry fibs about his war record because he's a Catholic?

Here's a passage from later in the column ...

My point, having lived through the 1960s-1970s confusion, is that the era was not one of uncommon resolution, at least not of the patriotic variety. I relished my high draft lottery number. George W. Bush played it smart like John Kerry and found a soft gig. He and I took different rotten paths -- he drank heavily, I became a communist -- but both of us could say the same thing: "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible."

The other thing both of us can and do say is that we did not save ourselves: God alone saves sinners (and I can surely add, of whom I was the worst). Being born again, we don't have to justify ourselves. Being saved, we don't have to be saviors.

John Kerry, once-born, has no such spiritual support, nor do most of his top admirers in the heavily secularized Democratic Party. It would be great if he could say: "I was young and vainglorious and often self-absorbed. I exaggerated and lied at times, and since then have thought it necessary not to disavow the fantasies I wove. But I do deserve credit for being there and serving my country in a mixed-up era in which I at times was also mixed-up."

Kerry can't say that because he evidently does not believe that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. He and his handlers portray him as virtually perfect in the past and omniscient in the present. In and of itself, that's also not unusual: it's so hard for a presidential candidate not to get puffed up when laudatory remarks follow him as closely as Secret Service agents. But do we want a president who pretends that he can do no wrong and never has?

So George W. Bush and Olasky are "born again" and John Kerry is "once-born."

Now, what precisely does he mean

I'm no theologian. But I do know a bit about these things. The phrase 'born again' has a variety of meanings in Christianity -- but two principal ones that I think are in play here.

One is the very general meaning referred to in the New Testament. For instance, in John 3:1-4 when Jesus says (in the King James Version) "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." All Christians embrace this meaning, though they own it in very different ways -- the Reformation being a key dividing point in contrary interpretations.

Then there's a second, more restrictive meaning of the phrase -- one specifically associated with post-Calvinist evangelical Protestantism. (Calvinists believe in something like this too. But if you read Olasky's words, there's little evidence of a belief in limited atonement there.) That's much more what we mean in colloquial American English when we refer to someone as a "born again", i.e., an evangelical.

Let's also note that Olasky's discussion of salvation by faith alone tracks heavily with evangelical polemics against non-evangelical Christianity.

So which is it? Is Olasky referring to meaning A or B?

Clearly, Kerry is a Christian in the outward sense. He was born a Catholic and continues to receive communion. That doesn't tell us anything about the state of Kerry's soul. But then Olasky doesn't know anything about the state of Kerry's soul either. Nor am I familiar with any place where Kerry has stated that he "does not believe that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

So, if Olasky is talking about possibility A, he's either making stuff up or he's gained some insight into the state of Kerry's soul. The only part of what Olasky says that points in this direction is the part where he refers to Kerry's spiritual fate is shared "most of his top admirers in the heavily secularized Democratic Party."

The other possibility is that he's not looking into Kerry's soul but at his denominational status and noting that while he and President Bush have both had evengelical born-again experiences, Kerry is Catholic, and by this more restricted reasoning 'once-born.'

I don't think either of these possibilities puts him in a good light.

I have and will continue to defend Bob Novak's right to refuse to divulge the names of the sources who leaked to him the identity of Valerie Plame. But there's no defending Novak against the charge of being a first class hack.

Today he's got an

And at the end of the piece he writes: "Schachte said he never has been contacted by or talked to anybody in the Bush-Cheney campaign or any Republican organization. He said he has been a political independent who votes for candidates of both parties."

Apparently, he's the kind of independent who gave George W. Bush a thousand bucks in 2000 and in 2004. He's also the new law partner of one of the guys running the Republican National Convention.

This week I was talking to one of the few Republicans who hasn't lost his honor over this Swift Boat business and we were discussing with amazement and amusement all the middle-aged conservatives who ducked Vietnam who are now writing editorials and

But now I think I've found the best one so far.

Marvin Olasky coined the term 'compassionate conservatism' for the president and is one of his house intellectuals. And now he's got an OpEd out explaining that John Kerry joined the Navy to stay out of Vietnam. The premise of the piece is that Olasky (1971), Bush (1968) and Kerry (1966) each graduated from Yale ...

Neither Kerry nor Bush nor I wanted to fight in Vietnam, and we all did what we could in our situations: Naval Reserves (Kerry), Texas Air National Guard (Bush), draft lottery No. 278 (me), which meant immunity from having to serve. In his circumstances, Kerry's choice was smart: Navy or Coast Guard folks were much less likely to see combat service than their counterparts in the Army or Air Force, and the safest Navy spot may have been that of a Naval Reserve officer.

A combination of unlikely circumstances placed Kerry, despite his plans, in a combat situation for three months during 1968 and 1969. How he performed during that period is now a matter of intense dispute. I've gone through the claims and counter-claims, and suspect he was valiant in one incident and a whiner or exaggerator in others.

I spoke to two Navy officials today who told me Olasky's got the US Navy Reserve issue all wrong. (My understanding from them is that it was standard that you'd end up with a USNR designation at first if you went in through NROTC.) But his analysis also seems a bit belied by the fact that Kerry specifically requested service in-country (i.e., on a Swift Boat) rather than simply in-theater (on a blue water naval vessel).

Not only is Olasky's piece shameful. He's also seriously off-message. Doesn't he know Kerry made sure he could get into 'Nam to string together a few bogus injuries so he could head back to the states and crank up the political career?

I mean, doesn't he read the papers?

I dropped Olasky a line to ask him about the ducking service in Vietnam bit. I'll let you know if we hear back.

Late Update: Olasky responds ...

Josh,

In 1986, in The Vietnam Experience: A War Remembered, Kerry wrote about his Swift Boat request: "At the time, the boats had very little to do with the war. They were engaged in coastal patrolling and that's what I thought I was going to be doing. Although I wanted to see for myself what was going on, I didn't really want to get involved in the war."

On the Navy Reserves, I'll see if I can find out more, but let me quote from a note I received from a 1960s naval recruiting officer: Kerr was in "the navy's cache or delayed entry program. The cache program was and is nothing more than an official, legally binding, informal holding pool for volunteers to delay entry into active duty for the mutual convenience of both the member and the service branch... For Kerry it allowed him to continue & finish college while holding the draft wolf at bay once he had lost his student deferment, and it allowed him to choose to a large degree how & for whom he would serve."

The key question, to me, is John Kerry's insistence upon being right in every situation. He's said that his language about atrocities was a little exaggerated, but let me know if he's said he was wrong about content. I messed up enormously in the early 70s, and George Bush has acknowledged his own difficulties. As I wrote, Kerry deserves credit for serving, but his emphasis on his own moral perfection is troubling. We're having lively debates on this at www.worldmagblog.com.

Cordially,
Marvin Olasky

Here's something else to look into. As we've noted in recent posts, Republicans are arguing that they've been the victim of 527s (i.e., "shadowy groups") just as much as Sen. Kerry has been the victim of SBVT.

Now, my guiding assumption in this

If you look at the talking points out of the Bush campaign in the last few days one of the key slanders that Democratic 527s have made against the president is the claim that he has been "poisoning pregnant women"

On August 20th Bush campaign spokesman Taylor Griffin said that Democratic 527s had been "accusing President Bush of poisoning pregnant women."

The same day on Wolf Blitzer's show Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Joe Repya, a Bush surrogate debating Kerry surrogate Retired U.S. Air Force General Tony McPeak, said that Democratic "527 groups [had been] alleging that the president is poisoning pregnant women."

And to top it all off, the same night on Lou Dobbs show, Jill Dougherty decided simply to cut to the chase and repeat the claim on the Republicans' behalf, telling Dobbs: Republicans "say that groups funded by the Democrats have accused President Bush of everything from 'poisoning pregnant women' to complicity to with what happened at the Abu Ghraib prison."

(When you get to the end of this post you might consider contacting Dougherty at CNN and asking whether she made any effort to find out what was behind the charge she repeated.)

Now, I won't force upon you every time this has been said by a Bush campaign surrogate or employee in the last week. But I should add that Chairman Marc Racicot has been saying this repeatedly on shows across the dial all week.

So what's the story?

As nearly as I can figure the culprit here is an ad run in March by Moveon.org and the Environmental Working Group Action Fund. Here's a segment from CNN from March 26th, 2004 in which Karenna Gore Schiff -- Al Gore's daughter -- discusses the ad with CNN anchor Heidi Collins (it also includes the text of the ad) ...

Turning now to an important health issue. There's an ongoing debate about how safe it is to eat fish, especially for children and pregnant women. Karenna Gore Schiff, daughter of the former vice president says the Bush administration isn't doing enough to lower the level of dangerous pollutants. I spoke to Karenna Gore about her latest efforts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Karenna, you paired up with Moveon.org in a campaign that includes an ad that's very critical about pollution and mercury and I want to go ahead and take a listen, for just a minute, to that ad.

AD ANNOUNCER: Mercury is a dangerous poison still be produced by coal-burning power plants. It gets into the air, the water, and then into the fish we eat, causing brain damage in children. President Bush has taken a lot of money from the people who own those power plants and now he wants the EPA to change the law to say that mercury isn't so dangerous. That means our children will go on eating mercury in their tuna, risking brain damage. Tell the EPA not to let this happen.

COLLINS: Are you really suggesting that the Bush administration is putting babies at risk?

KARENNA GORE SCHIFF, AL GORE'S DAUGHTER: I think that this policy does put babies at risk, because mercury is a very potent neuro toxin. We know that it comes from coal-burning power plants and we know that the emissions can be reduced dramatically with available technology. But the Bush administration is preventing the plan that was in place from going forward which would make our children safer.

(Here's some more information from a press conference held in conjunction with the launch of the commercial. Also, for what it's worth, it's not clear to me that the ad was funded by Moveon's 527 arm -- Moveon Voter Fund -- or its PAC. But frankly I'd just as soon not buy into the Bush campaign's argument that the legal structure of these different groups is the point at issue rather than the content of the ads.)

Now from there we have to make our way to a blurb put out by Senator Inhofe's staff on the Environment & Public Works Committee ...

The financially loaded liberal special interest group Moveon.org, the Sierra Club and many other liberal special interest groups well known for their “Anyone but Bush” smear campaign are reaching deep into their bag of dirty tricks to defeat President Bush this fall.

Their claim this time? President Bush is poisoning pregnant women and their unborn child with mercury found in fish.

The reference to the Sierra Club would appear to be a reference to ads they ran on the Mercury issue in April 2004, one of which refers to "birth defects and learning disabilities" which can be caused by mercury. You can find links to the text of those ads along with pro-mercury counter-points from the scientists at the Journal editorial page and the Washington Times on this RNC Adwatch site (scroll down to April).

So here we're from the ad about the mercury levels debate to the claim that "President Bush is poisoning pregnant women and their unborn child." Presumably this charge was going to get mixed in with similar charges that President Bush was cutting off the head's of the poor and sticking them on pikes surrounding the White House grounds.

(In any case, I put in a query to the folks at the Bush campaign and asked whether this was indeed the ad they were talking about. I received back word from Alison Harden at the Bush campaign who told me: "I believe that is the ad he is referring to - the ridiculous move on ad that has the pregnant woman drinking water w mercury.")

I'll let you be the judge of what this amounts to. But it seems pretty clear to me that the Bush camp is lying almost as much about the Democratic independent expenditure ads as they're lying in the smears they're running about John Kerry's military service. (For another like example see this.)

And, again, was it that Republicans seem to have such a hard time distinguishing between ads with a factual basis and ones that include malicious falsehoods. It's such a mystery. I have to assume it's another example of the GOP's embrace of epistemological relativism -- all truths are equal, there is no truth, only opinion masquerading as truth, etc.

From the AP: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Friday that the country will face 'abrupt and painful' choices if Congress does not move quickly to trim the Social Security and Medicare benefits that have been promised to the baby boom generation."

This could use some elaboration.

To the degree there's urgency here, it is because of the mammoth deficits the president has run up. The president runs up a big deficit and now you've got to pay for it with cuts to your Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Where are the president's priorities?

Shouldn't the Kerry campaign be banging this drum? Especially since it's true (only an added benefit these days, I grant you.)

Following up on the last post, let's put some of the hate-mailers and falangists to work. Let's hear some entries for the worst, most offensive, least true -- whatever measure of badosity suits your fancy -- 527 TV spots that have been run against President Bush.

Have at it ...

Speaking of moral cowardice, the prize line from Bush's interview with the Times: "I understand how Senator Kerry feels - I've been attacked

Here's what the reporters should have asked as a follow-up, and what someone still should ask: Can Bush or McClellan point out a specific ad they thought was so bad?

I doubt they'll never rise to that bait since the 'attack' ads they're whining about -- those from Moveon and so forth -- are so terribly soft-soap it would make them look like idiots.

Of course, it's understood as a given in Washington -- among Republicans as much as among Democrats -- that Karl Rove is behind these ads. But publicly we have to go with the ludicrous notion that he has no connection with them -- a willing suspension of disbelief that allows the president some room to express mock sympathy over the results of his own acts.

A friend of mine has a magazine article coming out in a few weeks which I'm told gets some of the goods on Rove's history of political bad acts. So we'll see if that moves the bar for him at all.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Friday editorial, reproduced in full ...

The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign is taking on water. Hole after hole has been blown in the group's credibility. We hope the damage is sufficient to finally sink 30-year-old anguish over the Vietnam War as a campaign issue.

The campaign to smear Sen. John Kerry took three more direct hits this week.

Despite repeated assertions that the Bush campaign had no connection to the anti-Kerry group, the campaign's counsel, Benjamin Ginsberg, resigned, conceding that he'd provided legal advice to the swift boat bunch. One of the group's founders was commander at the time of a task force whose report confirmed that on March 13, 1969, Kerry's boat was involved in "an enemy-initiated firefight." And an Oregon lawyer who appeared in a Kerry-bashing ad faces a state bar association complaint that he was misleading in a sworn affidavit alleging that Kerry had not earned his Purple Heart medals.

One man who can -- and should -- blow this nasty campaign out of the water is President Bush. His recent call to ban all campaign advertising by all such outside groups -- known as 527 committees -- is not only insufficiently critical of the swift boat campaign but also restraint of free speech.

The answer, Mr. President, is not to restrict the use of political free speech, but to condemn its abuse.

Exactly right.

Later we will discuss the unfortunate fact that the Executive Editor of the Washington Post doesn't seem to understand what his job is.

Lede from an AP article ...

President Bush and Sen. John Kerry bowed to the wishes of popular maverick John McCain on Thursday, as the president embraced the Republican senator's legal fight against big-money special interest groups airing negative ads and the Democratic nominee scrapped a commercial that featured McCain.

Another blog to recommend: NewDonkey.com.

It's housed at the Democratic Leadership Council. But it's not their 'official blog' in the sense of enunciating party-lines.

Given the stresses the Democratic party went through in 2003, many readers probably have a rather manichean sense of the DLC's role within the Democratic party. That's not a view I share, even though I can think of a certain someone who's done a lot to give weight to that view. And I think the NDN has much the better part of the recent intramural squabble between the two groups.

But that's all insider mumbo-jumbo which is really neither here nor there. This guy's as sharp as a tack and I respect his opinions immensely. So check him out.

More of the continuing decline of CNN.

Daryn Kagan from Tuesday morning ...

KAGAN: And so here comes a new ad by the Swift Boat Veterans and they're not just attacking the medals that John Kerry might have won but they are attacking what he did after he came back from the war. Is that going to be effective?

Pitiful ...

The continuing decline of CNN. Miles O'Brien from yesterday afternoon ...

O'BRIEN: All right, we are listening to Max Cleland, former senator from Georgia and former Lieutenant Jim Rassmann, a former Green Beret whose life was saved by John Kerry in the Mekong Delta in 1969. Although, that is a point of dispute, given what has all transpired here with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Flagged by TPM reader AR.

Can somebody tell me where John Edwards is?

Late Update: Okay, okay. It was something of a rhetorical question. No more Edwards itinerary emails. But thanks for those who sent them.

A simple strategy note to the Kerry campaign:

If President Bush is going to try to pose as an advocate of campaign finance reform to dodge the Swift Boat issue, there's a really, really, really easy rejoinder to this one: mockery.

Don't get bogged down on the details. Just mockery. Full stop.

George W. Bush, Mr. Campaign Finance Reform? Please ... A laugh and a smile. Simple as that.

His credibility on the issue is zero. Voters know it.

Let's try being smart on this one, okay? Just once?

"Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's top political aide, recently said through a spokeswoman that he and Mr. Perry were longtime friends, though he said they had not spoken for at least a year. Mr. Rove and Mr. Perry have been associates since at least 1986, when

The New York Times, August 20th, 2004

HUME: Bob Perry, the Texas businessman who gave them the seed money, is a noted Republican, has been a contributor to President Bush, is someone you know. What about that connection, if there is a connection?

ROVE: Well, look, I know Bob Perry. I've known him for 25 years. When I moved to Texas, you can count the wealthy Republicans who are willing to write checks to support Republican candidates on the hand -- on the fingers of one hand. It would be unusual if I didn't know him, having been active for 25 years in Texas.

HUME: When's the last time you talked to him?

ROVE: Sometime in the last year. I can't remember exactly when. I saw him in the last year, and I remember seeing him someplace along the campaign trail and exchanging a few pleasantries.

Fox News, August 25th, 2004

"Any student of Bush family campaigns could have seen the swift boat shiv shining a mile away. This old family has traditions – horseshoes, fishing, bad syntax and having the help do the dirty work in campaigns as well as the kitchen. And they are very good at getting jobs done without leaving fingerprints, without compromising their patrician image and their alleged character."

A definite must-read piece by Dick Meyer over at CBSNews.com: "Dirty Tricks, Patrician Style."

The must-read of the day, a former special assistant to President Nixon and later a Reagan Pentagon appointee, Noel Koch on Dole on the Post oped page.

I quote the first and last grafs ...

"They want me to head Veterans," Bob Dole said. "They" meant the Bush White House. His tone said there were things he would rather do.

I asked him whether he was going to do it -- take on the campaign role of going after the veterans' vote. "Probably have to," he said, although he added that he knew the Bush campaign would want him to attack John Kerry, and he didn't intend to do that. He didn't have anything against Kerry, he said.

...

Bob Dole knows as well as any person how capricious is the gleaning of medals. Some men deserve what they don't get; some get what they don't deserve. And who should know better than he that it is craven to belittle a man's service because it didn't extend over some arbitrary stretch of time?

Bob Dole spent little time in combat. But as a result of the time he did spend, he lay on his back for years, recovering, and helping others to recover.

I spent a year in Vietnam and came home without a scratch. My brother served two tours in Vietnam, earned three Purple Hearts (and was hospitalized, and does draw disability -- weird yardsticks used to measure John Kerry's alleged shortfall), and yet spent far less time than I did in-country. Indeed, his first "tour" lasted about 15 minutes, ending on the beach near Danang in the midst of the U.S. Marines' first amphibious assault in Vietnam.

Time in-country, how often a man was wounded, how much blood he shed when he was wounded -- it is hurtful that those who served in Vietnam are being split in so vile a fashion, and that the wounds of that war are reopened at the instigation of people who avoided serving at all. It is hurtful that a man of Bob Dole's stature should lend himself to the effort to dishonor a fellow American veteran in the service of politics at its cheapest.

There was a time when he would have refused. I know. I was there.

Bush sullies everyone around him.

This might be the most telling testimony about

Robert E. Lambert, was on Larry Thurlow's boat -- Thurlow's Kerry's chief accuser about this particular incident. He himself got a Bronze Star for, among other things, pulling Thurlow out of the water that day.

Lambert says he found Kerry's post-war anti-war activism "reprehensible."

"That was absolutely reprehensible but, there again, I’m career military" he told the local paper.

But on the key point ...

Lambert, now 64, was a crew member on swift boat PCF-51 that day. The boat was commanded by Navy Lt. Larry Thurlow, a now-retired officer who questions why Kerry was awarded a Bronze star for bravery and a third Purple Heart for the March 13 incident.

"He and another officer now say we weren’t under fire at that time," Lambert said Wednesday afternoon. "Well, I sure was under the impression we were."

Lambert’s Bronze Star medal citation for the incident praises his courage under fire in the aftermath of a mine explosion that rocked another swift boat on that day 35 years ago.

"Anytime you are blown out of the water like that, they always follow that up with small arms fire," he said.

Lambert also sheds some light on the idea that Kerry somehow doctored the after-action report. Read this one.

Okay, now here's a headline I can live with.

Associated Press: "Swift Boat Writer Lied on Cambodia Claim."

Taegan D. Goddard at politicalwire.com says he got an advance look at the new LA Times poll and that it shows Bush 49% - Kerry 46% among registered

Not a huge difference from recent polls -- and of course still in the margin of error. But it does provide some more evidence for at least a small move in the president's direction.

I do think this Swift Boat garbage has hurt.

We'll see how much or for how long.

By point of comparison the last LA Times poll (July 17-21) had Kerry 48% - Bush 46% (46-44 with Nader). To a statistician the difference between that poll and today's is meaningless. They're both deep in the margin of error. But as much as I'd like to believe that the difference is insignificant, my read of the few other recent national polls tells me that at least the direction of the movement, if not the extent of it, is real.

I love this.

The Times has a piece today onthe Republican convention and Southern Rock bands or Country-ish acts they're having as entertainment in New York: Lynyrd Skynyrd, ZZ Top, Charlie Daniels Band, 38 Special, et al. ( Or maybe et y'al.?)

In any case, down in the piece they have this graf ...

Throwbacks, maybe, but that does not mean they are uncontroversial: Charlie Daniels recently angered some Arab-Americans with a song that included the lyrics "This ain't no rag, it's a flag, and we don't wear it on our heads." And Lynyrd Skynyrd is known for waving a giant Confederate flag during their rendition of "Sweet Home Alabama."

A confederate flag for "Sweet Home Alabama"?

Imagine that ...

Do we need some remedial rock hermeneutics here? Look, "Sweet Home Alabama" is an amazingly good song. I'm listening to it right now. I have it on one of the top playlists on my Ipod. So I can have it at the ready when I'm jogging.

But let's face facts: it is a paean to Southern defiance of civil rights revolution.

If you don't know that, have you listened to the lyrics?

In Birmingham they love the governor
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth

...

Sweet home Alabama
Oh sweet home baby
Where the skies are so blue
And the governor’s true [i.e., then-segregationist Governor George Wallace]
Sweet home Alabama
Lordy
Lord, I’m coming home to you
Yeah, yeah [Alabama state capital] Montgomery’s got the answer

Now, if you'll pardon me, I've gotta go rock out to some Skynyrd.

[Late Update: I should note, as several readers have now reminded me, that several of the more deep-reading Skynyrdologists argue that the "Boo Boo Boo" which comes after "In Birmingham they love the guv'nah" is actually the band's winking effort to signal their ... well, disapprobation, shall we say, of Wallacite stand-pat segregationism. But I've never found that reading wholly convincing -- given the rest of the lyrics in the song. It always seemed to me more likely that that shadow lyric is a mocking allusion to anti-Wallace protestors. But who knows? And of course there's also the song's back-n-forth with Neil Young's 'Southern Man'.]

Okay, "He's very mobile" is out as quote of the day.

Now we're on to former Bush-Cheney 2004 lawyer Ben Ginsberg's quote to Reuters: "I was at the nexus of making sure (coordination) didn't happen. To suggest otherwise is flat wrong."

So BC04 is so hardcore against coordination that they had Ginsberg work for the Swift Boat guys to prevent coordination. Or something like that. Anyway, he was at the heart of the battle against coordination.

Also, if you thought I was kidding about the 'bitch slap' stuff, watch the GOP embrace the meme.

Just out from the febrile GOPUSA.com: "If Kerry Can't Handle the 'Swiftees,' How's He Going to Handle the Terrorists?"

It seems Mr. O'Neill wouldn't talk to CNN, but he did show up in the friendlier waters of Hannity and Colmes last night. And here's how he tried to spin the exchange with President Nixon about his making forays into Cambodia ...

ALAN COLMES, CO-HOST: Mr. O'Neill, just in the interest of time, look, there are so many inconsistencies here, in my view, in the swiftboat story.

I thank you for being on the show, and again, as you know, I admire your service, as I do all those who served their country, although we may disagree on this issue.

Look, this issue of Cambodia, you said, on George Stephanopoulos' show over the weekend that you knew that Kerry was not in Cambodia, that you could not have been in Cambodia on a swift boat, that he didn't go north of Sadak (ph). They just didn't go that far. You were 15 miles away.

There's a tape of you, as you now know, in the Oval Office, saying you were in Cambodia, you said to Richard Nixon. You worked along the border, or you were in Cambodia.

That seems very different than being 15 miles away and saying the swift boats didn't go to Cambodia. So they can't both be true.

O'NEILL: Alan, yes, they are, Alan. It's two different places, Alan. One place is along the Mekong River, right in the heart of the delta. The second place is on the west coast of Cambodia at a place called Hatien (ph), where the boundary is right along that border.

Where Kerry was in Christmas of 1968 was on this river, the Mekong River. We got about 40 or 50 miles from the border. That's as close as we ran.

Later, Kerry went, and I went to a place called Bernique's (ph) Creek -- that was our nickname for it -- at Hatien (ph). That was a canal system that ran close to the border, but that wasn't at Christmas for Kerry. That was later for him.

So it's two separate places, Alan, and the story is correct.

COLMES: All right. Well, either you were in Cambodia or Kerry was in Cambodia and you claim he wasn't in Cambodia. You claimed at one point you weren't and then you claimed you were. This is very confusing to people.

O'NEILL: Well, it shouldn't be confused. I was never in Cambodia, and Kerry lied when he said he was in Cambodia.

COLMES: You said to Richard Nixon you were in Cambodia.

O'NEILL: And it was the turning point of his life.

COLMES: You said to Richard Nixon, "I was in Cambodia, sir."

HANNITY: On the border.

COLMES: There's a tape of you saying that to Richard Nixon.

O'NEILL: What's the next sentence? I was along the Cambodian border. That's exactly right. What I told Nixon and was trying to tell him in this meeting was I was along the Cambodian border. As Sean clearly read...

COLMES: "I was in Cambodia," Those are your words.

O'NEILL: Yes, but you missed the next sentence. You're not reading the next sentence, Alan.

COLMES: Yes, along the border. But you're in Cambodia or you're not in Cambodia.

O'NEILL: Well, I'm sorry, Alan. I wasn't -- I was talking in a conversation. And the first thing, by the way, I told him in the conversation, as you know, was that I was a Democrat and I voted for Hubert Humphrey.

Hey, did I mention I voted for Hubert

Anyway, the deck is stacked on that show and Hannity's there barking in the background. But, that notwithstanding, O'Neill's line is that sentence number two is a correction of sentence number one.

In other words, "Hey, I was in Cambodia. No, scratch that. I was on the Vietnamese side of the Cambodian border."

That's sorta like all the fellas who've patrolled the DMZ in Korea who say, "Yeah, I was in North Korea. I worked along the DMZ."

Again, let's review what he actually said ...

O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

As the reader who alerted me to the transcript said in his email, the pretty clear meaning of O'Neill's words is that he worked along the border and made occasional forays across the border into Cambodia.

How far into Cambodia? Who knows? But then O'Neill's the guy running around saying John Kerry is a liar for saying he was in Cambodia.

Of course, we know how assiduous young Mr. Kerry was in covering up his misdeeds. So we should hold open the possibility that after returning from his measly four month tour in Vietnam he edited the Nixon tapes to render them more in line with his self-serving version of what happened.

This really is 'Saving Private W.'

The president gets called on to step up to the plate and say one way or another way he supports his friends' (rapidly

And he just won't do it.

First, he sends out his chief spokesman to dodge the question.

Then he dodges the question.

And now, politically on the defensive, he calls another veteran and asks him to rush over to the ranch to face Max Cleland.

(It turns out that Patterson, the guy who got the 911 call from the president, has received $150,000 in campaign contributions from Bob Perry, the funder of the Swift Boat ads.)

Needless to say, the president doesn't have to play into the Kerry photo op by showing up to take Cleland's letter; a straight answer about the Swift Boat smears would do nicely.

But he just can't do it -- a classic bully.

Perfect ...

As we wrote earlier, Max Cleland and Jim Rassman went to the president's "ranch" today to present him with a letter

Cleland got stopped at the first roadblock.

He tried to give the letter to secret service officials guarding (giving the word rather a new meaning) the president. But the president got a political ally from Texas, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson -- who is also a vet -- to show up and offer to take the letter, if Cleland would take a letter from him in exchange.

(The press accounts I've seen thus far don't mention what the Bush campaign letter said.)

Cleland told him never mind; he'd rather stick it in the mail.

That prompted Patterson to utter this pricelessly unlovely retort ...

"I tried to accept that letter and he would not give it to me," said Patterson. "He would not face me. He kept rolling away from me. He's quite mobile."

Yes, quite mobile. Classic.

Did I mention that President Bush is addicted to having others do his dirty work for him?

Am I honor-bound to thank him for giving me this priceless example?

I don't want to be accused of not doing my duty.

(Late Update: Here's the letter from Patterson, from the Bush campaign website. Without naming them directly, it turns out to be a letter claiming that Kerry is pursuing a double-standard by giving such a rough-shake to the Swift Boat group.

I guess the campaign has had a change of mind about whether it wants to stick up for the Swift Boat group. Or perhaps being afraid to name them specifically -- as per President Bush's comments a couple days ago -- means it doesn't count?)

"Bush operatives constantly whine about the media, but Bush is benefiting from the mock sophistication of journalists who, striking a world-weary stance, say of his campaign dishonesty, 'It was ever thus in American politics.' Even if that were true,

Those are the words, it may surprise you to learn, of George Will, writing on August 26th, 1992, writing of course about the campaign of the president's father.

The whole column merits reading in full -- and not simply because of the irony that Will was saying of that Bush campaign what many Democrats are now saying about his son's campaign. It's more than that. You have the same tactics, the same people, even the same criticisms in many cases -- ones which the campaign makes no effort to defend as being accurate but nonetheless insists it will keep repeating.

Read this passage from Will's piece and then stop by the Bush Jr. website and see that that's the message of the day in late August this year too ...

Soon Bill Clinton will have to say to Bush what Dole publicly said to Bush in 1988: "Stop lying about my record." Bush says Clinton has raised taxes 128 times. Bush says this even though columnist Michael Kinsley has demonstrated that the list of "tax increases" is a tissue of falsehoods. (Some taxes are counted several times; components of a tax are counted as separate taxes; minor fees, such as the $ 1 court cost imposed on convicted criminals, are counted as taxes.) By the tendentious criteria used by the Bush campaign, Bush has raised taxes more often in four years than Clinton has in 12.

So, what does Teeter say of the 128 number? "We're not going to quit saying it about Mr. Clinton."

Here's the new version, for Senator Kerry.

John Kerry promises not to raise taxes, but the reality is that he has cast 98 votes for tax increases, including voting ten times to raise gas taxes on the middle class. Kerry points to the largest tax increase in American history as the blueprint for his economic plan, which advisor Bob Rubin says Kerry won't reveal until elected. Kerry's credibility problem is only expanding as more and more Americans see the gap between what Kerry says and what Kerry does.

Same stuff. Same indifference to saying things that are even remotely true. And at least till now, the same playing most of the press for chumps.

Of course, twelve years ago it took till August 26th for George Will to lower the boom. But perhaps the tide is starting to turn. Here, from Dana Milbank in yesterday's Washington Post, is a list of half a dozen quotes from Kerry and how either President Bush or Vice President Cheney have distorted them out of all recognition on the campaign trail recently.

Here's a sample ...

"Every performer tonight in their own way, either verbally or through their music, through their lyrics, have conveyed to you the heart and soul of our country." -- Kerry, July 8

"The other day, my opponent said he thought you could find the heart and soul of America in Hollywood." -- Bush, Aug. 18

And of course, there are several more examples for your reading pleasure ...

Yet more Navy records support Kerry, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, John O'Neill -- Mr. uber-Swift, he wrote the book, etc. -- has been going on all the shows for weeks saying

Now CNN has come up with tapes of O'Neill telling Richard Nixon in 1971 that he himself had been on missions inside Cambodia. From last night's Aaron Brown show ...

O'Neill said no one could cross the border by river and he claimed in an audio tape that his publicist played to CNN that he, himself, had never been to Cambodia either. But in 1971, O'Neill said precisely the opposite to then President Richard Nixon.

O'NEILL: I was in Cambodia, sir. I worked along the border on the water.

NIXON: In a swift boat?

O'NEILL: Yes, sir.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Now, O'Neill may have an explanation for this but he has not returned CNN's calls. What does seem clear is that a top member of the swift boat group is now being held to the same standard of literal accuracy they've tried to impose on John Kerry -- Aaron.

So there you go. It really seems like O'Neill has been going on all these shows lying right through his teeth. Not misremembering some date, not having a conflicting recollection of some battle action, but telling everyone that none of the Swift Boats crossed into Cambodia when, in fact, he himself appears to have done so routinely.

Of course, the underyling facts here aren't in dispute. As Fred Kaplan points out here and many others have as well, it is well known that the US military -- and Swift Boats in particular -- made covert ventures into Cambodia.

But, again, right from O'Neill's own mouth -- Mr. Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth.

And all of this raises the question, though it's not precisely the right analogy, what exactly is the statute of limitations on these guys? How many times do they have to get caught making false claims, unsubstantiated assertions or putting forward witnesses who weren't there, before they cease to have any credibility and get treated as such in the media?

At the moment the standard seems to be, "Okay, on your first nineteen claims, it seems like you were lying to us, but send along number twenty and we'll run that one up the flag pole too."

How long?

Just in case you don't think TPM is going to extra lengths to keep you informed, please note that we beat the news wires by at least twenty minutes (!) in bringing you the news that Ben Ginsberg had checked out of the Bush-Cheney campaign over the Swift Boat matter.

But if you look at the New York Times bit on Ginsberg's resignation you'll see that who else is working for these Swift dudes, Chris LaCivita, who works for push-poll and astroturf king Tom Synhorst.

From the Times ...

An occasional collaborator with Mr. Ginsberg, Chris LaCivita, is also working for the group, advising on media strategy. Mr. LaCivita was political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2002 and now works for the DCI Group, a Washington political strategy firm whose partners include Charles Francis, a longtime friend of President Bush from Texas and Tom Synhorst, an adviser to the Bush campaign in 2000, who was an architect of the campaign's effort in the Iowa caucuses.

Mr. LaCivita said yesterday that he worked as a private contractor for DCI and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and that there was no coordination between the firm and the group.

"Obviously, I don't work for the Bush campaign," he said.

Mr. LaCivita described his role as providing advice on the news media and placing advertisements. Asked to describe how close his involvement was or how Mr. Ginsberg was involved, Mr. LaCivita referred calls to a spokesman for Swift Boat Veterans, which declined to comment.

Birds of a feather ...

Oh, this is good stuff.

The Kerry campaign is sending Max Cleland and Jim Rassman down to the president's 'ranch' to hand deliver a letter signed by seven veterans serving in the United States Senate asking Bush to "recognize this blatant attempt at character assassination, and publicly condemn it."

Nice political theater and it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

Maybe it's time for Bush to bug out?

Or maybe put in for a transfer to Alabama ...

Ginsberg out at Bush/Cheney '04?

Keyes to the Kingdom ...

Declaring "the front line of the war against terror once again involves the citizens," Republican Alan Keyes said Tuesday he believes the U.S. Constitution grants properly trained private individuals the right to own and carry machine guns.

"You're not talking about giving citizens access to atom bombs and other things," the former presidential candidate said. "That's ridiculous."

But the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate argued the founding fathers intended the Second Amendment to allow people to carry the types of weapons "customarily carried in those days by ordinary infantry soldiers."

"And, yes, does that mean that in this day and age people would have the right to have access to the kind of the weapons our ordinary infantry people have access to? With proper training and so forth to make sure that they could handle them successfully, that's exactly what was meant."

Keyes made the remarks at a news conference he called to attack the "ideological extremism" of his Democratic opponent, state Sen. Barack Obama.

See the rest in the Chicago Sun-Times ...

By the way, you know Keyes is in good form here since he has to note that allowing citizens to bear atomic weapons would be an excessively literalist reading of the 2nd Amendment.

Oh, that's beautiful.

The Bush campaign and Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have so little in common that they share an election lawyer -- Florida recount veteran, Benjamin Ginsberg.

He must be over there to enforce President Bush's well-known opposition to 527s.

Earlier today we noted that in an NPR story on the Swift Boat wars, Senior Correspondent John McChesney reported that the Bush campaign had "denounced" the claims of William Rood, the Chicago Tribune editor who has supported Kerry's account of one of the Swift Boat episodes, saying his comments were "politically motivated".

McChesney told me via email this afternoon that he misspoke. It was the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, not the Bush campaign, that denounced Rood's story.

Ahhh, Alessandra Stanley inthe Times, music to the ears ...

CNN showed less relish over the Swift boat clash, but it was not much more helpful in separating fact from friction. Wolf Blitzer's interview with the tart-tongued Mr. Dole made a lot of news on Sunday, but CNN allowed him to make misleading assertions without pointing out where he was in error. Mr. Dole suggested that Mr. Kerry was in a rush to obtain his Purple Hearts to meet a regulation that allowed soldiers to leave the war zone after winning three. "I mean, the first one, whether he ought to have a Purple Heart - he got two in one day, I think. And he was out of there in less than four months, because three Purple Hearts and you're out." ( Mr. Kerry did not receive two Purple Hearts for events of the same day. He received them for the events of Dec. 2, 1968; Feb. 20, 1969; and March 13, 1969.)

Finally, yesterday afternoon, Mr. Blitzer spoke to Mr. Dole by telephone and asked him if he regretted any of his statements. Mr. Dole said he did not.

"I wasn't trying to be mean-spirited," Mr. Dole said. "I was just trying to say all these guys on the other side just can't be Republican liars."

That kind of air-kiss coverage is typical of cable news, where the premium is on speed and spirited banter rather than painstaking accuracy. But it has grown into a lazy habit: anchors do not referee - they act as if their reportage is fair and accurate as long as they have two opposing spokesmen on any issue.

Ain't it the truth ...

Okay, I think we've got the winner for the most inane Bush-Swift Boat headline.

From the Bloomington, Indiana Herald Times: "Bush calls anti-Kerry ad 'false and libelous."

Great work, guys.

Tomorrow in the Winfield Crier: "Bush: I Hate the Swift Boat Guys. End Ads Now!"

Thursday in the Podunk Sentinel: "Bush: I Was on The Boat with Kerry."

Friday in the Lumpville Courier: "Bush Breaks Silence: Kerry Saved My Life in 'Nam."

I just listened to this NPR report by John McChesney on the Swift Boat controversy. It's a good report, but it doesn't raise any points that would surprise you if you've been following

Did McChesney get that right? If so, why is the Bush camp attacking Rood? Why are they running interference for and defending the Swift Boat group? Is this a case where McChesney stated publicly what the Bush crew is trying to do off the record?

If President Bush really wants to tell the Swift Boat group's funder, Bob Perry, that he doesn't like the ads he's paying for, maybe he can have Rove bring it up with him at the fundraiser

Former President Bush, Karl Rove, and Tom DeLay are all scheduled to be there.

The Dallas Morning News got the story. But when they asked Perry's spokesman what the deal was, he suddenly hadn't heard a thing about it.

Perry's spokesman Bill Miller says he was surprised to see his boss's name on the list.

"He told me, 'I never approved the use of my name. I'm not going to be there,' " Mr. Miller told the News.

Note: The original version of this post wrongly implied that the current president was attending the fundraiser, not his father. TPM regrets the error, though it's a common one in this era of family dynasticism.

With the president descending to the most shameless sort of attack politics to save his presidency, there's an understandable desire on the part of Democrats to reopen every political vulnerability he has that has yet to be fully explored or dissected:

I have no argument with any of this. I think it makes perfect sense. To pick up on the military language that is now so ubiquitous, I think Democrats need to open up on all fronts.

But fighting fire with fire isn't a compelling message. Nor will getting into a tit-for-tat about what each of these guys was doing in 1969 or 1970 or 1971 win this race for the Democrats.

Look at the wrong direction/right direction poll numbers and you see pretty clearly that the country is looking to fire George W. Bush. The president's only hope is to get the debate on to issues like these, shift the dynamic of the race, and convince voters that, whatever their dissatisfactions with his administration, John Kerry isn't an acceptable alternative.

When this stuff comes down the pike, Kerry has to fight back mercilessly. And he can win those fights. But, fundamentally, every day of this campaign that isn't spent talking about the sluggish economy and the president's debacle in Iraq is a day wasted, a strategic failure for the Kerry campaign.

But Democrats don't have to choose between hard-hitting lines of attack on the president himself and focusing on the main issues that are facing the country today. The most damning attacks turn out to be the most compelling, the most relevant for what the country faces, and the most difficult for the president to combat.

I've said several times over recent days that it is an example of the president's moral cowardice that he has such a long record of having others savage his opponents -- for sins of which he is usually more guilty than they -- and then denying any responsibility for what's happening. It's like the moment captured in that recent Kerry campaign spot where John McCain tells Bush to stand by his attacks or apologize, and the now-president is painfully caught off guard, bereft of the protective phalanx of retainers.

He's not used to having to stand behind what he's done. And when McCain comes at him one on one he's jelly. His life has always been a matter of others doing his dirty work for him, others bailing him out. And in that moment it shows.

The current debate about these two men's military service has put the spotlight on physical courage. But that really is a side issue in this campaign, if we're talking substance. The real issue isn't physical bravery but moral cowardice.

President Bush is an examplar of that quality in spades. And it cuts directly to his failures as president. Forget about thirty years ago, just think about the last three years.

Before proceeding on to that, one other point about the two men's service. On the balance sheet of moral bravery, as opposed to physical bravery, the two men are about as far apart as you can be on Vietnam. On the one hand you have Kerry, who already had doubts about whether we should be fighting in Vietnam before he went, and put his life on the line anyway. On the other hand, you have George W. Bush who supported the war, which means he believed the goal was worth the cost in American lives. Only, not his life. He believed others should go; just not him. It's the story of his life.

That is almost the definition of moral cowardice.

We have a more immediate sense of what physical bravery and cowardice are. In fact, when we speak of bravery and cowardice, the physical variety is almost always what we're talking about. It's whether or not you can charge an enemy position while you're be fired at. It's whether you're immobilized by the fear of death.

Moral cowardice is more complex. A moral coward is someone who lacks the courage to tell the truth, to accept responsibility, to demand accountability, to do what's right when it's not the easy thing to do, to clean up his or her own messes. Perhaps we could say that moral bravery is having both the courage of your convictions as well as the courage of your misdeeds.

As I've been saying here for the last couple days, the issue isn't that Bush ducked service in Vietnam. It's that he tries to smear other people's meritorious service without taking responsibility for what he's doing. He gets other people to do his dirty work for him. Again, that image of McCain calling him on his shameless antics and his look of fear, his look of feeling trapped.

The key for the Kerry campaign to make is that the president's moral cowardice is why we're now bogged down in Iraq. It's a key reason why almost a thousand Americans have died there. President Bush has set the tone for this administration and his moral cowardice permeates it.

Consider only the most obvious examples.

The president didn't think he could convince the public of the merits of his reasons for going to war. So he lied to them. He greatly exaggerated what was thought to be the evidence of weapons of mass destruction and completely manufactured a connection between Iraq and al Qaida. He couldn't get the country behind him on the up-and-up. So he took the easy way out; he took a shortcut; he deceived them. And now the country is paying a terrible price for it.

He and his advisors knew that if they levelled with the public about the costs of war -- in dollars, years, soldiers -- he'd have a very hard time convincing them. So he didn't level with them. He took the easy way out.

The sort of forward planning that would have made a big difference in post-war Iraq was scuttled or attacked because it would make the job of selling the war harder. Those who sounded the alarm had their careers cut short.

Once we were in Iraq and it was clear that we had been wrong about the weapons of mass destruction -- a judgement that's been clear for more than a year -- he wouldn't admit it. And he still hasn't. A year and a half after we invaded Iraq and he still can't level with the American people about this. He still relies on his vice president to try to fool people into thinking Hussein was tied to al Qaida and the 9/11 attacks.

More importantly, once it became clear that the president's plans for post-war Iraq were producing poor results, he refused to shift policy or to reshuffle his team. He refused to demand accountability from his own team because of how it would have reflected on him. He's preferred to continue on with demonstrably failed policies because to do otherwise would be to admit he'd made a mistake and open himself to all the political fall-out that entails. And that's not something he's willing to do.

The stubborn refusal ever to change course, which the president tries to pass off as a sign of leadership or devotion to principle, is actually an example of his cowardice.

For the same reasons, he runs from soldiers' funerals like they were burying victims of the plague -- because it's the easy way out. If there's a problem, he denies it or finds someone else to take the fall for him.

Everyone has these tendencies in their measure. No one is perfect. But they define George W. Bush.

The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face, those are the same qualities that led the president to lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when the bill started to come due.

That's the argument John Kerry needs to be making. And he needs to make it right now.

Leave it to Knight Ridder to actually get this one right ...

Headline: Bush criticizes ads by outside groups

Washington - President Bush sought Monday to distance himself from ads attacking Sen. John Kerry's war record and suggested that voters "should be looking forward, not backward."

But he didn't directly condemn the ads, and the controversy over Kerry's service in Vietnam showed no signs of abating.

See the rest of the piece here.

Indeed, it's not just the headlines. Look at the lede on David Espo's piece running on the AP wire, the piece that will define the coverage in daily papers across the country.

President Bush on Monday criticized a commercial that accused John Kerry of inflating his own Vietnam War record, more than a week after the ad stopped running, and said broadcast attacks by outside groups have no place in the race for the White House.

'And'?

'and said broadcast attacks by outside groups have no place in the race for the White House'?

That's all he said.

Okay, okay, I'll give it a rest ...

Reporters are endlessly getting upset with editors since editors invariably write the headlines that characterize their pieces. But clearly something has changed since I've been out of town because now apparently the sitting administration gets to

The Post and the Times actually do reasonably well on this with "Bush Condemns All Ads By Independent Groups" and "Bush Urges End to Attack Ads by Outside Groups on All Sides", respectively.

But check these out ...

MSNBC: "Bush: Vets should halt anti-Kerry ads."

Yahoo News: "Bush Criticizes Anti-Kerry Television Ad."

Reuters: "Bush says Kerry ad should stop"

He said no such thing. As we noted earlier, he ducked the question, saying it's only a matter of independent expenditure ads -- a 'position' which happens not even to be his, which is a bit of a hat-trick in itself.

As we noted earlier, if someone asks me to denounce Joseph Stalin and I say, "I'm against all politicians who support the death penalty" then I haven't denounced Joseph Stalin. Or perhaps the better analogy is to pro-life zealots who refuse to denounce the murder of abortion providers directly, preferring instead to equate abortion with the shooting of those who administer them.

Great moments in headlines written with a straight face ... or, the never ending decline of CNN. Right now -- 5:59 PM -- CNN headline: "Bush urges Kerry to condemn attack ads."

From The Financial Times, left-wing rag, December 9th, 2003 ...

The Bush campaign machine, well oiled and already rolling, should not be underestimated. The current president's father gained a formidable reputation as a nasty campaigner, though the presidential fingerprints were carefully wiped off negative blueprints administered by Lee Atwater, the first Mr Bush's ruthless chief strategist.

Karl Rove, a disciple of Mr Atwater, is similarly meticulous about keeping the president publicly above the fray. Yet it is an open secret in Washington that White House-blessed campaign strategists have been working quietly for months to compile potentially damaging background on all the Democratic candidates. In the early going, when it appeared Mr Kerry would emerge as the frontrunner, one senior Republican commented wryly: "By the time the White House finishes with Kerry, no one will know what side of the (Vietnam) war he fought on."

And from Bush campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, yesterday on Meet the Press ...

The fact is this campaign is unprecedented in our praise of our opponent's service during Vietnam.

There was a brief hubbub over the web earlier this afternoon when it seemed that President Bush had denounced the Swift Boat ads. Needless to say, of course, he had done no such thing. He simply repeated the line Scott McClellan has been peddling for days -- that he denounces all independent expenditure ads.

Here's the exchange ....

QUESTION: But why won't you denounce the charges that your supporters are making against Kerry?

BUSH: I'm denouncing all the stuff being on TV, all the 527s. That's what I've said.

I said this kind of unregulated soft money is wrong for the process. And I asked Senator Kerry to join me in getting rid of all that kind of soft money, not only on TV, but to use for other purposes as well.

I, frankly, thought we'd gotten rid of that when I signed the McCain-Feingold bill. I thought we were going to once and for all get rid of a system where people could just pour tons of money in and not be held to account for the advertising.

And so, I'm disappointed with all those kinds of ads.

QUESTION: This doesn't have anything to do with other 527 ads. You've been accused of mounting a smear campaign.

Do you think Senator Kerry lied about his war record?

BUSH: I think Senator Kerry served admirably and he ought to be proud of his record.

But the question is who best to lead the country in the war on terror? Who can handle the responsibilities of the commander in chief? Who's got a clear vision of the risks that the country faces?

QUESTION: Some Republicans such as Bob Dole and some Republican donors such as Bob Perry have contributed and endorsed the message of those 527 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads.

QUESTION: When you say that you want to stop all...

BUSH: All of them.

QUESTION: So, I mean...

BUSH: That means that ad, every other ad.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

BUSH: Absolutely. I don't think we ought to have 527s.

I can't be more plain about it. And I wish -- I hope my opponent joins me in saying -- condemning these activities of the 527s. It's -- I think they're bad for the system. That's why I signed the bill, McCain-Feingold.

I've been disappointed that for the first, you know, six months of this year, 527s were just pouring tons of money -- billionaires writing checks. And, you know, I spoke out against them early. I tried to get others to speak out against them as well. And I just don't -- I think they're bad for the system.

He won't say it. He won't embrace it. He won't denounce it. He won't say he doesn't have an opinion. He won't say he won't get drawn into the debate. Nothing. He hides behind words and behind his friends.

As it happens, as

But of course the bigger point is that President Bush won't denounce the ads. If someone asks me to denounce Joseph Stalin and I say, "Well, yes, I'm against all politicians who support the death penalty" then I haven't denounced Joseph Stalin, right? This is the same thing.

(MSNBC, of course, fell for it. Their headline -- as of 4:57 PM -- is "Bush: Vets Should Halt anti-Kerry Ads".)

Now, let's step back and consider where we are. Everyone in the country seems to have an opinion on this -- just go see the chat shows, the opinion columns and talk radio. Everybody has an opinion but George W. Bush, the man at the center of it all.

The reason, as we said earlier, is that the president is a coward -- a fact for which this dust-up constitutes merely an example. And as we'll discuss in a post later this evening, President Bush's moral cowardice -- not his physical cowardice or bravery, of which we know little and which is simply a side issue -- is the essence of this campaign.

Before we proceed to other matters, just a brief note on how the Republicans don't get tripped up over fastidious details.

Right at the top of Adam Nagourney's piece in yesterday's Times (in the second graf) is this ...

Mr. Bush's advisers said they were girding for the most extensive street demonstrations at any political convention since the Democrats nominated Hubert H. Humphrey in Chicago in 1968. But in contrast to that convention, which was severely undermined by televised displays of street rioting, Republicans said they would seek to turn any disruptions to their advantage, by portraying protests by even independent activists as Democratic-sanctioned displays of disrespect for a sitting president.

Now, let's pause with this for a moment.

No one believes that any of the protests scheduled for the Republican

It is probably true that most of the more vitriolic protestors don't even support Senator Kerry, let alone operate with his or his party's sanction. And I think I can guarentee you that the Democratic party and the Kerry campaign would vastly prefer that Kerry supporters among the demonstrators keep their heads down and their voices low or simply not show up at all -- again, for the simply reason I noted above.

There's no use in belaboring the point since everyone knows this is true. Yet here we have Nagourney's sources telling him they plan to make the case for a demonstrably false proposition.

Think about that ...

Yesterday, you'll recall, we noted that a guy named Jim Russell had written a letter to the editor of his local paper in Telluride, Colorado, saying he'd witnessed the Rassman episode and vouched for Kerry's version of events. It seems he was where he said he was. The Post mentions his account in this story today. And he was on a conference call today arranged by the Kerry campaign.

I've been pleasantly surprised that I've only received one email taking me to task over the use of the phrase 'bitch slap' to describe the meta-message behind the sort of attack politics Republicans are practicing today against John Kerry. I'm not indifferent to the coarse connotations of the phrase. But I believe that in such trying times as these precision of meaning trumps political correctness or delicacy of phrasing.

And I raise this again to draw your attention to what I believe is another example of it in Bob Dole's appearance today on Wolf Blitzer's show on CNN.

As the AP put it this afternoon ...

Dole told CNN's ''Late Edition'' that he warned Kerry months ago about going ''too far'' and that the Democrat may have himself to blame for the current situation, in which polls show him losing support among veterans.

So he went "too far" and now he has only himself to blame for the pounding he's taking.

I trust the parallels of language and

Now, before leaving this subject, let me touch on one other point.

In the last few days I've gotten various emails from critics (gleefully) and supporters (frettingly) of Kerry either wondering or simply asserting that Kerry brought this on himself by highlighting his service in combat in Vietnam. The point is echoed by reporters who sheepishly hang the attention they've given to the Swift Boat group on Kerry's having 'made his service an issue.'

For Kerry supporters or Democrats who think this may be true, I can only ask you, please, please do not be such chumps. And for his critics, please allow your punches to the groin the purity of their cynicism, without sullying them with any claims that Kerry forced your hand.

This was always in the cards. Always. Thus the need to get out early making the case in Kerry's favor. Since it was coming anyway, far better to hit it with the wind at your back than sitting still. The Kerry campaign's only mistake -- and it was no small one -- was not getting out ahead of it sooner.