OxBlog

# Posted 3:43 PM by David Adesnik
THE MAKING OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE: Princella Smith is a tall, athletic, intelligent and well-spoken young woman. As the winner of MTV's "Stand Up and Holla" essay contest, she earned the right to address the Republican convnention.

Yesterday, OxBlog had the chance to sit down with Ms. Smith and talk to her about faith, politics and the future of the GOP. Also joining in were John Hinderaker, Kevin Aylward and Scott Sala.

The foremost quesiton on my mind at the beginning of the interview was why a young, intelligent black women chose to identify herself so fully and openly with the Republican party.

I am not suggesting that all African-Americans should vote Democratic. But when 90% of African-Americans support the same party, it is not just reasonable but important to ask what distinguishes those few who resist the dominant trend and support the GOP. And Ms. Smith was well-prepared to answer our questions:

OxBlog: Do people ever say that it�s remarkable that you�re both an
African-American and a Republican-American?

Ms. Smith: Every single interview I�ve had I�ve had to answer that
question�I think that you�d be surprised at the number of closeted
African-American Republicans there are...

OxBlog: What do you think the GOP could do to get more than 10 or 15 percent of the black vote, because it seems that election after election it�s going to the Democrats overwhelmingly. There�s a case to be made, but what it is it?

Princella's answer focused on the importance of communicating the Republican message more effectively to the African-American base. [Background noise on the tape made her precise words inaudible.] She said that Democrats "[ha]ve done a much better job of explaining their issues" but that Black Republicans do have powerful spokesman such as J.C. Watts who is

A very clear, very precise, very good speaker. He can speak to
anybody. White, black ,Asian, Puerto Rican, anybody.

I have to admit that I was skeptical of Ms. Smith's answer. Embattled but passionate minorities (in the political sense of the word) almost always prefer to explain their lack of success in terms of poor communication instead of accepting that there are valid reasons why the majority might ignore their message.

Even the Reagan administration held poor communication responsible for the enduring unpopularity of its Central American policy initiatives, despite the fact that the Great Communicator himself constantly made the case for those initiatives before massive audiences.

Instead of focusing on racial politics, I thought a better way to discover the well-spring of Ms. Smith's conservatism would be to ask her what issues she cares about, not what the media wants to ask her about:

OxBlog: Now we�ve been asking you a lot of questions about being Black and republican...but what do you want to talk about? Do you want to tell us about Iraq, do you want to tell us about free trade and outsourcing? What issue do you care most about?

Ms. Smith: Education has really been the one...[My parents,] they worked for everything they got�They always said to me "Education, education, education.�

...

OxBlog: An issue related to education is drug use among young people and also pregnancy. I was wondering how you feel, I guess, about the general Republican line on those issues. Do we need to move away from a �Just say no� legal enforcement approach to those issues and focus more on treatment?

PS: No! We need to just say no to drugs�It�s black and white.
It�s right or wrong.

I was becoming concerned about Ms. Smith's inflexibility. She seemd to have an almost disciplinary approach to politics:

Ms. Smith: There is an epidemic of unwed mothers...[their children] don�t have any kind of male role model at all. They either become very effeminate or they break out...

OxBlog: That leads into the issue of birth control. Republicans tend
to focus more on abstinence. Would it make sense to talk about abstinence to those who are willing to hear the message and for everyone else who doesn�t want to abstain, have them learn more about sex and about birth control?

Ms. Smith: I believe that job is the family�s...We have the same
problems as we did [in the 60 and 70s]...the only difference is that we�ve become so lax in raising our children.

I had to be impressed with Ms. Smith's consistency and commitment to principle. Individuals are responsible for their own behavior. Families, not governments, are resonsible for individuals. Compromising one's principles accomplishes nothing more than lowering standards.

But if that is Ms. Smith's message -- if that is Republicans' message for African-Americans -- no wonder 90% of them vote Democratic. As Ms. Smith said, there is an epidemic of single motherhood. And of drug use. And of gang warfare. And of crime. And yet in the midst of all this suffering, she has nothing to say except "Take responsibility for yourselves."

I admit that the instilling an ethic of personal responsibility is the most important challenge facing the African-American community today. Yet we can do more than condemn those who have alreayd succumbed to drug abuse or single motherhood. The government can facilitate the process of communal regeneration.

There is more, however, to Ms. Smith's conservatism. Thanks to Scott Sala thoughtful questions, Ms. Smith began to talk about her faith. She is the daugher of a minister and a very committed Christian. She noted that

They call the wife of the minister the First Lady. She has done an
excellent job of being a helpmate to my father.

Ms. Smith explained that "helpmate" is a very specific biblical term intended to designate the role of a woman vis-a-vis her husband. As the son of rabbi, I am also familiar with the verse to which Ms. Smith referred. It is Genesis 2:20, which the King James Bible renders as

And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found a help meet for him.

The Hebrew word for help meet is shifhah. It often refers to females servants. Unsuprisingly, the use of this word to describe Eve has become the basis (not unfairly) for theological justifications of male dominance. [CORRECTION: The phrase used in Genesis 2:20 is ezer k'negdo, which might be translated as a "fitting helper". The phrase most often used to justify male dominance is Genesis 3:16 (not to be confused with Austin 3:16) in which God informs Eve of her punishment:

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy
conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Many thanks to Rabbi JH for pointing out my unfortuate mistake, which could have been avoided with a minimum of effort.]

As Ms. Smith explained,

I really believe that the male is the leader of the family.

She said that women are leaders as well, but not in the same way. And so it became increasingly clear how Ms. Smith is different from the overwhelming majority of African-Americans who vote Republican.

She subscribes to a powerful faith whose interpretation of gender roles bears little resemblance to the lived experience of black America. She subscribes to a faith whose fidelity to the Biblical word rules out all those compromises of principle that Democrats identify as a path to healing the divisions of the black community.

The issue here is not communication.

# Posted 2:59 PM by Patrick Belton
NOT ONLY DO THEY MAKE GOOD COMPUTERS, THEY ALSO SUPPORT DEMOCRACY: If you have iTunes, you can go to the music store and search for either the DNC or the RNC, and recordings from all of the speeches from both conventions are available there for free.

# Posted 1:57 PM by David Adesnik
HAVE YOU GOOGLED YOURSELF LATELY? Rick Santorum has. OxBlog and the rest of the RNC crew had the chance to interview Sen. Santorum (R-PA) just a little while ago, so look forward to a transcript.

We also had a long talk with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and some us also spoke with George Allen, Republican of Virginia. My compliments to the GOP for going all out to give the blogosphere access to some of its leading figures -- and subjecting them to our rapid-fire interrogations.

# Posted 5:05 AM by Patrick Belton
OXBLOG ON CNN: The transcript is now up online from a debate I did on CNN in the run-up to the Democratic convention with the Kennedy School's Alex Jones. This was made considerably more difficult by the facts that he's a lovely guy, and that we didn't actually disagree on very much in the end. Alex and I appear toward the bottom of the transcript.

# Posted 12:04 AM by Josh Chafetz
JUST SAW AN EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT MOVIE: Maria Full of Grace. The film is beautifully written, compelling, heart-wrenching, and, in an odd way, uplifting, and Catalina Sandino Moreno acts exquisitely in the lead role. I can't recommend it highly enough.

# Posted 11:24 PM by David Adesnik
ZELLING OUT: Sen. Miller is pathetic and dishonest. During the Cold War, the phrase 'red-baiting' described the actions of those who recklessly accused their fellow Americans of supporting the other side. Whereas Communism marched under a banner of red, violent Islamic fundamentalism marches under a banner of green. And what Zell Miller did I can only describe as green-baiting.

Miller told the Republican convention that

No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.
But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.
They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy.

I often criticize the Democratic leadership for their lack of idealism and flagging commitment to promoting democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq. But they do not question our soldiers. They don't believe that America is the problem. They recognize the existence of evil and are willing to fight it with all their heart. They simply differ on the matter of how.

Zell Miller has no more integrity than the Swift Vets.

And the delegates at the Republican convention demonstrated that their total lack of judgment by cheering (and jeering) so loudly for the most despicable of Miller's attacks. Miller said that

Senator Kerry has made it clear that he would use military force only if approved by the United Nations.
Kerry would let Paris decide when America needs defending. I want Bush to decide.

That is a simply a lie, but it brought down the house.

Finally, when it comes to hypocrisy, Miller once again demonstrated that he is second to none. Miller asked the Convention,

Where is the bipartisanship in this country when we need it most?

Today, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.

Pathetic. Simply pathetic. Such vindictiveness and dishonesty should never masquearade as bipartisanship. This is going to get ugly.

# Posted 11:05 PM by David Adesnik
CHENEY IN COMMAND: There is only one word to describe Dick Cheney's performance tonight: presidential. I have little regard for the Vice-President, but must defer to a first-rate performance.

Cheney had the voice of a rock. Of all the prime-time speakers so far, only Cheney has come across as truly comfortable and confident. All of the others were performing and playing to the crowd. Cheney was delivering a message.

The Vice-President's bearing conveyed a profound understanding of the challenges facing a nation in peril. His voice neither rose in anger nor fell into condescension.

Cheney was solemn but not withdrawn. His bearing was the embodiment of mature resolve.

I want to emphasize that what I am describing in this post is not the man I believe Dick Cheney to be, but the man who he presented himself as. It was not the profoundity of his words but the silent strength of his bearing that was so powerful.

I have often described Dick Cheney as arrogant, reckless, and even amoral. But if tonight is any indicator of how he will present himself on the campaign trail, then he will be a perform an invaluable service for President Bush.

The President's greatest concern now may be that he cannot match his second-in-command when it comes to being presidential.

# Posted 9:53 PM by David Adesnik
BOOLA BOOLA! Our alma mater continues to distinguish itself.

# Posted 9:41 PM by David Adesnik
"DEMOCRACY" MISSING IN ACTION: Peter Beinart observes that both McCain and Giuliani may want to lower the American public's expectations of a democratic outcome in Iraq. Laura Bush was more optimistic, but still somewhat evasive. Only Governor Arnold was gung-ho about democracy promotion. But even he didn't connect it explicitly to Afghanistan and Iraq. So the question is, what are Cheney and Bush going to say?

# Posted 8:11 PM by David Adesnik
DO CONSERVATIVES TRUST THE SWIFT VETS? Two weeks ago, it seemed like the Weekly Standard was keeping its distance from the Swift Vets. If you read between the lines in the most recent issue of the Standard, I think you'll see that Kristol & Co. are still not willing to trust them.

Moreover, Byron York's cover story [no permalink] in the National Review's "special all-Kerry issue" comes dangerously close to writing the Swift Vets off as irresponsible and reckless.

The Standard opens up with an attack on Kerry's authorized biographer, Douglas Brinkley. Brinkley is a nice guy and a very good historian, but I think the Standard is right to describe his recent behavior as both partisan and inconsistent. Yet while attacking Brinkley, the Standard doesn't actually say that he's wrong to dismiss the Swift Vets' charges.

Next, Bill Kristol argues that if you just read Kerry's Senate testimony from 1971, you will know that the Senator from Massachusetts simply isn't fit to be President. But I'm not buying it.

Now, there's no question that the testimony is embarrassing. It perfectly embodies the "blameAmerica first" mentality that conservatives associate with post-Vietnam liberalism. But so what? Kerry said all that back in 1971. He has changed since then and so has Bush.

I am also disturbed by Bill Kristol apparent unwillingness to say anything about the substance of Kerry's accusations that were serious atrocities in Vietnam. Sean Hannity did the same thing in his interview with Tommy Franks; he said that Kerry betrayed his fellow soldiers by making the accusations -- full stop.

Next up is Fred Barnes' argument that Kerry should have known better than to run on his war record. He writes disingenuously that Kerry made a serious mistake by

elevating Vietnam and making it a front-page story by denouncing both the book and the ad as a "smear." But since Kerry labels almost all criticism of himself as a smear, this response had little effect. At this point, the Kerry campaign lost any chance of controlling the controversy and succeeded only at prolonging it.

Barnes' comments demonstrate that the Standard has a double standard. Kristol condemns Kerry's charges without addressing their substance while Barnes defends the Swift Vets' charges without addressing their substance. And yet Barnes still won't say straight out that the Swift Vets are right.

Neither will Jonathan Last. However, Last does an excellent job of demonstrating that the mainstream media's coverage of the Swift Vets has been highly irregular. First, they ignored the Vets. Then Kerry lashed out at them because the blogosphere and the talk shows kept the story alive. As soon as Kerry spoke out, the media starting attack the Swift Vets left and right.

But perhaps Last should be defending the media instead of criticizing them. If the Swift Vets' charges had no substance, they should've been ignored. If the story refused to die, perhaps the media was right to go on the offensive, even it often went too far.

The one accusation Last does endorse is the Cambodia charge. There is simply no way Kerry was there on Christmas Eve 1968. Perhaps that is why network journalists like Tim Russert have taken the Cambodia issue quite seriously.

NRO's Byron York also leads off his article on the Swift Vets with Cambodia. Bottom line: Kerry wasn't there on Christmas, or perhaps ever. York also suggests that Kerry didn't deserve his first Purple Heart, although York relies very heavily on the unsubstantiated testimony of Swift Vet Louis Letson.

On the Bronze Star, York cites the eyewitness testimony of a number of Swift Vets but still comes off as somewhat agnostic. But when it comes to the Silver Star, York exposes just how dishonest the Swift Vets' charges are. Their talk of Kerry killing a boy in a loincloth to get his medal is disgusting.

Last week, York tentatively suggested that the Swift Vets were beginning to cut in to Kerry's poll numbers. Liberals are making the same point in order to show that GOP lies are what's sinking their candidate, not his own inconsistency.

I disagree with both. My gut says that Cambodia is not enough to hurt Kerry and that running on his war record is still the best way to go.

# Posted 6:07 PM by Josh Chafetz
WHY APPLE KEEPS GETTING IT RIGHT: As I noted yesterday, the new G5 iMacs are out, and they look great. In this article in today's NYT, an Apple executive explains why Apple's designs are so good.

Apple's head of design, Jonathan Ive, described how the company had struggled to fit all of the components of the computer into the display case, while keeping fan noise minimal.

He said that the goal had been to redesign the system to make it appear extremely simple. The result is a display screen that balances on a thin metal stand and that can function with only a single power cord.

"You're left with a solution that is so essential and so inevitable that it seems like it wasn't designed," he said.

That's a damn good design philosophy, and it has served Apple really well since Jobs came back in 1997.

# Posted 5:44 PM by Patrick Belton
IN IRAN: Atefeh Rajabi, 16, hung for having sexual relations with an unmarried man. Ms Rajabi was an orphan, and is the tenth minor executed in the country since 1990. A man arrested at the same time as her was released after receiving 100 lashes.

# Posted 4:52 PM by David Adesnik
MY THOUGHTS EXACTLY: Josh Benson says that Schwarzenegger was

Charged with saluting a political ideology he doesn't share, praising a president he rarely campaigns with, and, most problematically, embracing a party his home state has abandoned, Schwarzenegger went with what we might call the "middle school civics class approach": He lauded American freedom. He celebrated our hospitality to immigrants. He expressed approval that we are not socialists. It was, in the end, a gauzy paean to American triumphalism--ready-made for delivery for most, if not all, political conventions congregating this summer.

As OxBlog said, the speech was shopworn and predictable. However, all of Arnold's talk about free enterprise made me ask, "Did Kerry or Edwards say anything good about free markets in their speeches?" Well, sort of. Kerry said:

Here at home, wages are falling, health care costs are rising, and our
great middle class is shrinking. People are working weekends; they're working two jobs, three jobs, and they're still not getting ahead.

We're told that outsourcing jobs is good for America. We're told that
new jobs that pay $9,000 less than the jobs that have been lost is the best we can do. They say this is the best economy we've ever had. And they say that anyone who thinks otherwise is a pessimist. Well, here is our answer: There is nothing more pessimistic than saying America can't do better.

Again and again, Kerry emphasizes the plight of the worker and the dangers of the marketplace, not the ingenuity of the entrepreneur and the opportunities inherent in a free market.

I don't think Kerry's emphasis is wrong. My natural sympathies lie with those whom the market has left behind. But is it any wonder that all those millions of Americans who are enchanted by the free markets and unprecendented opportunities vote Republican?

What does it mean in America today when Dave McCune, a steel worker I met in Canton, Ohio, saw his job sent overseas and the equipment in his factory literally unbolted, crated up, and shipped thousands of miles away along with that job? What does it mean when workers I've met had to train their foreign replacements?

America can do better. So tonight we say: help is on the way...

What does it mean when Deborah Kromins from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania works and saves all her life only to find out that her pension has disappeared into thin air � and the executive who looted it has bailed out on a golden parachute?

America can do better. And help is on the way...

What does it mean when people are huddled in blankets in the cold,
sleeping in Lafayette Park on the doorstep of the White House itself � and the number of families living in poverty has risen by three million in the last four years?
America can do better. And help is on the way...

Again and again, Kerry reinforces the image of the Democratic Party as the party of the victim. Is it any wonder that the optimism of the average American benefits the GOP? Even Kerry's insistence that "help is on the way" suggests that Americans ought to wait for help (from the government?) rather then depend on their own hard-work and ingenuity.

We value jobs that pay you more not less than you earned before. We
value jobs where, when you put in a week's work, you can actually pay your bills, provide for your children, and lift up the quality of your life. We value an America where the middle class is not being squeezed, but doing better...

So much promise stretches before us. Americans have always reached for the impossible, looked to the next horizon, and asked: What if?

Two young bicycle mechanics from Dayton asked what if this airplane could take off at Kitty Hawk? It did that and changed the world forever. A young president asked what if we could go to the moon in ten years? And now we're exploring the solar system and the stars themselves. A young generation of entrepreneurs asked, what if we could take all the information in a library and put it on a little chip the size of a fingernail? We did and that too changed the world forever.

Finally, a reference to entrepreneurs. It is interesting, though, that this lone reference is embedded within Kerry's paean to science. I think the optimism of the Democratic parties has always been more technological than that of the Republicans. What brings progress is science, not businessmen competing in the marketplace.

Now here's Edwards:

I grew up in a small town in rural North Carolina. My father worked in a mill all his life, and I will never forget the men and women who worked with him. They had lint in their hair and grease on their faces. They worked hard and tried to put a little something away every week so their kids and their grandkids could have a better life. They are just like the auto workers, office workers, teachers, and shop keepers on Main Streets all across America...

I have spent my life fighting for the kind of people I grew up with.
For two decades, I stood with families and children against big HMOs and big insurance companies. And as a Senator, I fought those same fights against the Washington lobbyists and for causes like the Patients� Bill of Rights...

Edwards derives his authenticity from the fact that his father was a mill worker. Instead of talking about his own success as a legal entrepreneur, he describes his career as one of representing victims in the struggle against the corporations that have harmed them.

We can create good paying jobs in America again. Our plan will stop
giving tax breaks to companies that outsource your jobs. Instead, we will give tax breaks to American companies that keep jobs here in America. And we will invest in the jobs of the future�in the technologies and innovation to ensure that America stays ahead of the competition...

Tonight, as we celebrate in this hall, somewhere in America, a mother sits at the kitchen table. She can�t sleep. She�s worried because she
can�t pay her bills. She�s working hard to pay the rent and feed her
kids. She�s doing everything right, but she still can�t get ahead.

It didn�t use to be that way in her house. Her husband was called up in the Guard and he�s been serving in Iraq for more than a year. She thought he�d be home last month, but now he�s got to stay longer.

She thinks she�s alone. But tonight in this hall and in your homes�you know what? She�s got a lot of friends. We want her to know that
we hear her. And it�s time to bring opportunity and an equal chance to her door.

We�re here to make America stronger at home so she can get ahead. And we�re here to make America respected in the world so that we can bring him home and American soldiers don�t have to fight the war in Iraq and the war on terror alone.

So when you return home, you might pass a mother on her way to work the late-shift�you tell her��hope is on the way.

When your brother calls and says that he�s working all the time at the
office and still can�t get ahead�you tell him��hope is on the way.

The similarity of Kerry and Edwards' speeches is remarkable. Once again, the main rhetorical devices is the description of numerous individuals personal suffering. Moreover, Edwards emphasizes that American can't get ahead inspite of their hard work and presumable ingenuity. Then, towards the close of his speech, Edwards says that

We are Americans and we choose to be inspired. We choose hope over despair; possibilities over problems, optimism over cynicism.

Edwards, like Kerry insists that he is the true optimist and that the Democratic party is the true party of optimism. Yes, but of a certain kind. It the optimism that comes from believing that a compassionate government can help this nation's many victims. It is not the optimism that comes from believing that the people themselves have the answers.

Again, I don't mean that as criticism. I do believe that even the fairest marketplace has its victims. I believe that government has an ethical obligation to help and that Republican administration's often don't. But if the Democrats can only talk about markets as places of fear, is it any surprise that so many Americans are drawn to the GOP?

# Posted 3:22 PM by Patrick Belton
HOW ABOUT ANOTHER SPY SCANDAL: Curious about the identities of clandestine operatives working for the intelligence services of Nato member states? Well, no need to be any longer - you can read all about them on the Nato website! The alliance which won the Cold War took from 9 July until 28 August to remove from its website a convenient English language translation of a Croatian news report naming four of MI6's clandestine officers in Bosnia...and their wives...and their girlfriends....

Thus OxBlog's correspondent Tom McNiff:

In fact, this was a rather humorous tale at least as reported in the European press...

First a Belgrade paper, Nedeljni Telegraf, names the purported MI6 [station] chief in Serbia. As if that were not enough, a tiny Zagreb magazine called Nacional, said by the British press to circulate just 35,000 copies, last July ran the names of not only four alleged MI6 officials in Bosnia and Herzogenovia, but also the wife and girlfriend of two of the officers. [According to a subsequent email, Nacional's editor Ivo Pukanic maintains broad contacts in the Croatian and international intelligence community in Croatia, as well as with former irregular Croat operatives; his newspaper has the reputation in the Balkans of frequently being used for strategic leaks by one side or another.]

One of the British spies allegedly worked in the office of [...] a high-ranking international official in Bosnia. Another Brit was said MI6 chief of information in Bosnia, yet another chief British intelligence officer for Bosnia and Herzogenovia.

The Daily Telegraph in London quoted one former Defence Ministry official as terming the episode a "cock-up". Perhaps worse than the Balkans media reports of likely MI6 personnel was NATO's treatment of the whole scenario.

A NATO website carried an English language translation of the Croatian news report, including the four spies' names. The Telegraph said NATO officials took a relaxed view, leaving the article on the website from July 9 until Aug. 28, when the Telegraph contacted NATO about the information.

NATO officials were "embarrassed" and quickly removed the MI6 story, whose appearance on the easily accessible NATO site sparked "intense anger in Britain", the Telegraph said.

Meanwhile... the Guardian, reported Aug. 27 that the Croatian government had allowed MI6 officers to wiretap and spy on Croat citizens. The paper hinted that the arrangement was due to Britain's recent opposition to Croatia's joining the European Community.

British sources said the "outing" of the MI6 officials was done by maverick intelligence officials in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. One aspect of the case relates to Gen. Ante Gotovina, a Croatian commander sought as a war crimes suspect.

All in all, MI6 has not fared well this summer in the old fashioned espionage game.

As a former DCI I'm acquainted with once mused in desperation, 'Can't anyone here play this game?'

# Posted 2:40 PM by David Adesnik
SALON'S CHEAPSHOT AT OXBLOG: This column just barely dignifies a response. Author Marc Follman cherry-picks a number of humorous posts from the RNC blogging corps and concludes we have no substance.

Turning his sights on OxBlog, Follman mocks my brief post on my still-briefer run-in with Miss America. Then he mocks the humorous opening to my post about Ari Fleischer without noting any of the substance that follows.

Nor Follman refer to any of my other posts, which I think are fairly substantial. But I'd prefer if you judge that for yourself.

# Posted 1:17 PM by David Adesnik
CAWFEE TAWK WITH LAWRA: Fortunately for the First Lady, the Bush Twins are not a hard act to follow. In fact, I think that even the Olsen Twins would've said something a lot more substantial. (After all, they are successful businesswomen who might be able to teach Ahnuld a thing or two about free enterprise.)

Anyhow, I had high hopes for the First Lady, especially after she promised that

Tonight, I want to try to answer the question that I believe many people would ask me if we sat down for a cup of coffee or ran into each other at the store: You know him better than anyone, you've seen things no one else has seen, why do you think we should re-elect your husband as President?

That's a damn good question because I want to know who George W. Bush really is. When he gives a prepared speech, you feel that you are listening to his speechwriters. When he does a Q&A with the press, you wonder what he really wants to stay instead of gently stumbling through his talking points.

Who is this man, George W. Bush? He demonstrates an almost fanatical commitment to a few select policies, such as tax cuts and the war in Iraq. But I still don't know what George Bush believes. He talks about his faith, but it doesn't seem to have much impact on his policies.

What is it like to be in the Situation Room with George Bush during a crisis? Do Cheney and Rumsfeld do all the talking? When he's off the record, does the President really let go and say what he feels? Or is he like Reagan, who never let anyone know what he was feeling, except perhaps Nancy?

When Ari Fleischer says that George Bush is a warm and caring individual, what does that really mean? Never trust what a subordinate says about the intimate character of a President running for re-election.

But I have faith in Laura. I have always thought of her as a woman reluctant to live in the spotlight, a woman who believed that marrying a good man, raising good children and being a good teacher is more than enough to make you happy. (I agree.)

Sadly, Laura failed to deliver. She gave a policy speech. She spoke competently but without much passion. She maintained her composure yet still seemed profoundly uncomfortable and out of place. She spoke as it it were her obligation, not her inspiration.

In the end, Laura only deepened the mystery of who her husband truly is.

# Posted 5:32 AM by Patrick Belton
FOR ALL THOSE WHO, LIKE US, have a heartbreaking love for Russia and her people while hating her authoritarian governments, today's events are particularly sad. Our thoughts are with the families of the two hundred schoolchildren held hostage in North Ossetia, along with the family members of the passengers on the two airplanes destroyed last week by Chechnyan terrorists - illiberal seccessionists fighting an illiberal Russian government. One weeps that Russia's people, heritors of one of Europe's most noble cultures, must be caught in the middle.

# Posted 5:05 AM by Patrick Belton
OXBLOG'S GOOD FRIEND ZAINAB AL-SUWAI addressed the Republican Convention yesterday during prime-time. Congratulations, Zainab! Her speech is here, and her organisation, the American Islamic Congress, has its website here. It began when her husband, Ahmed Al-Rahim, was studying at Yale, and deserves great support for its efforts to promote religious understanding at home while serving as an international focal point for a moderate and intellectually dynamic American vision of Islam.

# Posted 11:11 PM by David Adesnik
ON THE FLOOR WITH LAURA & ARNOLD: Along with Tom Bevan from RealClearPolitics, I had the opportunity to stand right behind the Kansas delegation, right on the convention floor during Arnold and Laura's speeches.

My first reaction is that both speeches fell somewhat flat. Arnold told the story of a young Austrian who came to America with nothing in his pockets but hope in his heart. He established a decent rapport with the crowd, but there was no real emotion in the story so it came off as shopworn and predictable.

Strangely, Arnold identified Richard Nixon as the man who inspired him to become a Republican, then left Nixon of off his list of great Republican presidents.

In the second half of his speech, Arnold talked about the importance of having faith in the American economy and not listening to the nay-saying "economic girlie-men." He got some compulsory laughs but not much more.

And what exactly does it mean that you should have faith in the economy? That you should ignore the statistics and the government's policies? That you should assume things will get better even if they aren't so great right now? That's hardly a ringing endorsement of the President.

After Arnold spoke, Jenna & Barbara came out to introduce their mother. They started out with bad jokes and stuck with their bad jokes all the way to the bitter end. Next to me, Tom was cringing and muttering under his breath.

It's not just that their jokes were inappropriate. Yes, it's embarrassing when the daughters of the family-values president remind their grandparents that Sex and the City is a television show and not just something your not supposed to talk about.

The bigger problem was that the twins came across as childish and totally lacking in substance. That is not what George Bush needs to help him overcame his reputation for being a lightweight.

These girls -- women, perhaps -- are graduates of some of America's best universities. Can't they talk about politics or ideas? Or at least talk about their father as a human being? Instead, they came across as self-involved, self-indulgent sorority girls.

Well, the clock is ticking and the bar is open so I'll share my thoughts about Laura a little bit later. Cheers!

# Posted 9:48 PM by David Adesnik
NOT A FLIP-FLOP, JUST A NUANCE: Michelle Malkin puts Bush's comments in context (full transcript here) and says it shows that he never contradicted himself. Ramesh Ponnuru agrees and says that Bush was clearly saying that the war on terror couldn't be won in the next four years.

I strongly disagree. When Bush denied saying that victory in four years was possible, Lauer responded as follows:

�So I�m just saying can we win it? Do you see that?�

In response to that question, Bush said

�I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world �- let's put it that way."

It's hard to disagree with that statement -- unless you're a President who has constantly promised nothing but victory.

# Posted 5:25 PM by David Adesnik
OXBLOG WELCOMES SAM DONALDSON, GUEST BLOGGER:

Question, from an old television show from yesteryear - "Will the REAL Republican party stand up!"

(Yes, Sam Donaldson typed that himself while sitting in front of my laptop and on my chair.)

# Posted 5:08 PM by David Adesnik
"CONSISTENCY, PERSISTENCY, CHARACTER...GEORGE W. BUSH": That's what Tommy Franks just wrote on Scott's laptop. It is the unofficial debut of his endorsement for the President. The official announcement will follow on Sean Hannity's radio show.

[UPDATE: Hannity just finished talking to the General. I haven't seen that many softballs since I went to summer camp as a kid.]

Here's a transcript of Gen. Franks Q&A with the RNC bloggers:

OxBlog: I have a question General Franks. First of all, it's an honor
to meet you. Second of all, with regard to consistency, do you think George Bush hurt himself a lot with his comments on Matt Lauer that maybe we can't win the war on terror?

Franks: Certainly not. We won the Cold War, didn't we? [Pause] And we didn't do it in 15 minutes.

OxBlog: Did Ronald Reagan show that kind of doubt in his efforts to win the Cold War?

Franks: Well I don't know that there was any doubt showing at all. I
think that we're talking about consistency and persistency and anyone who looks at the President over the last three and a half years is gonna have a heckuva hard time finding out [inaudible] when he was not consistent or persistent.

You know you get a lot of people who look at the other side, see, and they say "My goodness, you know he shouldn't've of been so consistent, actually, he should've changed his mind."

[Inaudible]

Scott: [Bush] did clarify himself on Rush Limbaugh.

Franks: I didn't see that. I didn't hear it.

Scott: He did clarify the Matt Lauer statement.

Franks: What'd he say?

Scott: He said he'd misstated it and he clarified his point that it is a
winnable war, it's not a traditional war in the sense that [inaudible].

Franks: And I think it's one of those kind of things where you had to look real hard to find a parade after the Cold War. You know when the wall came down, the greatest stand-off of our time, nuclear stand-off, crisis that went on for decades, and I believe if you'd asked any President during that time, "So what do you think, is it winnable?" You know, he might well have said, "I don't know". [Inaudible] The fact of the matter is that the war on terror is winnable, but you know it's not winnable in 15 minutes. Or in 12 months, you know this is going to go for a while.

To be continued...

# Posted 4:56 PM by David Adesnik
REPUBLICAN DIVERSITY AND COALITION-BUILDING:

A staffer from the Indian embassy remarked to an elderly Jewish woman in attendance "I saw Fiddler on the Roof last month so now I understand Jewish culture." "Well," the woman responded, "my husband and I just love Indian food" as a reply.

(Via Tapped)

# Posted 4:42 PM by David Adesnik
WHAT EXACTLY WAS THAT PROTEST ABOUT? Matt Yglesias unintentionally (or not?) punctures the NYT's sanitized anti-Bush narrative by writing that,

At root the issue is that large contemporary protests have become these carnival-like escapades. It is accepted -- and, indeed, encouraged -- for as many people as possible to show up, whether or not they agree with the United For Peace and Justice platform, know what the UFPJ platform is, or even know what UFPJ is. As a result, it's hard to know what protest attendance signifies. When thousands of people showed up for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington we understood that to mean that all those people were supporters of
the Civil Rights Act demanding congressional action. At the UFPJ event, by contrast, you had people with all manner of views on Iraq policy a lot of people whose problems with the Bush administration really have nothing to do with foreign affairs, and my favorite fringe group of all time, the Spartacist Youth League complaining that the US needs to stop interfering with North Korea's right to a nuclear bomb. Most of the people there seemed to be impassioned Kerry
supporters, but the best-organized elements were Nader's people. Obviously the message of a pro-Kerry anti-Bush protestor and that of a pro-Nader anti-Bush protestor are bound to be rather different.

# Posted 4:20 PM by David Adesnik
TRAGEDY IN ISRAEL: Hamas has claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings in Be'ersheba. We see once again that Israel's enemies cannot speak out with words and ideas, but only with hate and terror.

# Posted 3:52 PM by David Adesnik
ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY: Roger Simon lashes out at the GOP for its hypocrisy on gay marriage. He's a born-and-raised Democrat who still can't get comfortable with the domestic politics of the one party he believes can win the war on terror. And he doesn't like feeling that the bloggers at this convention have been set up to serve as GOP flaks.

UPDATE: On a related note, I've been meaning to post about the Family Research Council's fortune cookies, which say offensive things like "Real Men Marry Women."

That's just disgusting. What does the FRC have to say about all of the gay soldiers in our armed forces, risking their lives for the United States of America? Are those men (and women) not "real enough"?

Full disclosure: I ate two of the FRC fortune cookies at the NRO cocktail party yesterday. Yes, OxBlog is a hypocrite. A very hungry hypocrite.

# Posted 3:12 PM by David Adesnik
BUSH FLIP-FLOPS (AND FLIPS) AT THE WORST POSSIBLE MOMENT: And the NYT is eating him alive. In contrast to the Times' front page splash, the WaPo is running a page six story that begins

President Bush said in an interview broadcast Monday that the war on terrorism cannot be won in the traditional sense of victory.

But the WaPo seems to have recognized that it was underplaying and underspinning the story. Right now, it has a headline story up on its website that begins:

President Bush rushed Tuesday morning to reverse his assertion that the war on terror cannot be won, trying to deflect a planned barrage of Democratic attacks by telling the nation's largest veterans group that "we are winning, and we will win."

Tellingly, Mike Allen is the author of both WaPo articles. In an effort to emulate Bush and Kerry, he's flip-flopping too!

So, is there real substance to Bush's conflicting states about our chances of "winning" the war on terror? At a human level, it is entirely understandable for a confident and decisive leader (any leader, not specifically George Bush) to have moments of doubt. In fact, most of us want to know that our leaders are able to question their optimistic premises.

Moreover, Bush's flip-flop on the war doesn't have much detail to it. It's not like Kerry's support and opposition for a specific war or his claim to voted for a specific measure before voting against it.

But in the midst of hard-fought and divise campaign, Bush's comments represent a colossal failure. If Giuliani is going to bash Kerry's indecisiveness while praising Bush's decisive leadership, then George Bush needs to act the part.

Going further, Bush's comments make him look like a buffoon who is being handled by his subordinates. They feed into stereotypes of him as too stupid to be our chief-executive.

Now let me just state that I don't agree with any of these descriptions of Bush. But simply speaking from a strategic perspective, Republicans need to recognize how damaging such incidents are.

# Posted 3:09 PM by David Adesnik
THREE CHEERS FOR THE NO-NEWS CONVENTION: Drawing on his extensive knowledge of US political history, Joshua Spivak argues that conventions should be irrelevant because they take power away from the voters.

# Posted 2:53 PM by David Adesnik
McCAIN SELLS OUT: Jon Chait is pissed off. I'm just surprised to hear McCain seriously wants to run in 2008. John from Power Line agrees. [No link -- he's standing right next to me!]

UPDATE: In his review of McCain's speech, John writes that "I don't think I'm the only Republican partisan who doesn't quite trust McCain. Not as a soldier or as a man, but as a Republican."

Earlier, John wrote that

The list of Republican convention speakers for tonight and tomorrow is dominated by moderate and liberal Republicans. Although I'm eager to hear John McCain, I'm not thrilled with the moderate tenor of the proceedings because I'm a conservative. The MSM isn't thrilled either, but its leading lights offer a different reason -- they contend that the Republicans are concealing the true, conservative face of the party.

# Posted 2:44 PM by David Adesnik
THE EXPERT AGREES: Political science icon and fellow UVA scholar Larry Sabato agrees that media coverage of Sunday's protests was sanitized. Also, click here for a CBS interview with a woman whose son was killed fighting in Iraq. I interviewed the same woman and will try to put up a transcript later on.

# Posted 10:20 AM by Josh Chafetz
GOOD STUFF OVER AT THE WEEKLY STANDARD WEBSITE: Katherine Mangu-Ward on what happens on the convention floor when no one is watching (two words, Katherine, dear: hip flask. A bit of Scotch will make those mid-day roll calls just fly by ...). Matthew Continetti dismisses rumors of a Bush-Schwarzenegger rift and looks at what the California Governor is likely to say tonight. And Jonathan Last draws contrasts between the opening night of the DNC and the opening night of the RNC and considers what each of the speakers last night was trying to do. (As I noted last night, though, I don't think Giuliani's speech was nearly as good as Last thinks it was.)

# Posted 10:07 AM by Josh Chafetz
WAY COOL: Check out the new G5 iMac.

# Posted 2:40 AM by Patrick Belton
A PERSONAL NOTE: Happy anniversary, dear; I love you.

# Posted 2:29 AM by Patrick Belton
OXBLOG ON THE ROAD: I had a lovely time doing an interview last week with the Yale Free Press's delightful Diana Feygin, and am tickled pink that she called. The results are online, and touch mostly on blogging, journalism, and centrist politics.

# Posted 11:45 PM by Josh Chafetz
IMPRESSIONS OF A GUY WHO WATCHED THE SPEECHES ON TV WHILE PLAYING POOL:

(1) I disagree with David: I thought McCain's speech was actually pretty damn good. It didn't get much applause because it wasn't meant to be a typical political rabble-rousing speech. It was a low-key, fairly intellectual speech on the basic ideas behind the war on terror and how it all fit together. I thought it was fantastic, and I wish it had been on a night when more Americans would have seen it. (I tend to be fairly optimistic about Americans -- I think many of us would appreciate it if more politicians talked up to us instead of down.)

(2) The speeches by the 9-11 survivors were pretty good. Totally non-partisan, stirring without being weepy. The moment of silence and rendition of "Amazing Grace" were very good -- as Steve put it, there weren't really any moments during the DNC when people watching on TV would have felt compelled to stop their pool game out of respect.

(3) I thought Giuliani was pretty bad. He rambled; his speech was all over the place; it was way too long; and it was way too partisan. While McCain may have disappointed the convention-goers by not throwing them enough red meat, Giuliani made the much worse mistake of appealing to the people in Madison Square Garden at the expense of alienating the television audience. Mark Shields and David Brooks seem convinced this was a 2008 campaign speech for Giuliani. If it was, he has a long way to go, although, if someone had cut the speech from 40 minutes to 20, it might've been pretty good.

(4) McCain's speech ended with a very nice plea for civility. As OxBlog readers know, civility in political discourse is something of an obsession of mine, and I heartily welcome McCain's call for more of it. Still, it was only a very little part of his speech. So it was interesting to see that, in a longish interview with Lehrer et al. after his speech, civility was pretty much all his interlocutors wanted to talk about. Several times, Lehrer and Shields tried to get McCain to agree that the main point of his speech was about civility. McCain kept repeating that, no, the main point was about the war on terror, but civility was important too, and, yes, he had mentioned it. I think McCain's speech was good at demonstrating civility -- there were no attacks (except the one potshot at Michael Moore) and there was very little partisanship of any kind. But the speech did have a point other than civility, and it was interesting that the interviewers didn't want to address it.

(5) Steve and I decided that the Kelis song "Milkshake" would make an excellent campaign anthem -- for either candidate, really.

UPDATE: The text of the speeches can be found here, although it's worth noting that these are the prepared texts, and the speakers clearly deviated from them at points.

# Posted 10:48 PM by David Adesnik
JOHN McCAIN AND THE "DISINGENUOUS FILMMAKER": What does it say about George Bush and the GOP that the biggest applause John McCain got was for taunting Michael Moore?

What it might say is that John McCain simply isn't a very good speaker. And it actually works to McCain's advantage. The audience loves him so much that it is desperate for him to succeed. It senses him struggling, unable to build momentum for his applause lines, unable to establish any sort of rhythm.

McCain's strength isn't his eloquence, but his persona. He isn't exciting. He invokes bipartisanship time and again. He praises the Democrats' sincerity in fighting the War on Terror. But the audience wants red meat. They want Michael Moore.

And Rudy Giuliani is giving it to them.

# Posted 10:00 PM by David Adesnik
OXBLOG RADIO: I was on Hugh Hewitt's show earlier tonight. If I find a sound file or transcript, I'll put it up. If I can't, I'll put up a summary.

UPDATE: You can always listen to Hugh's most recent show on the KRLA website. DH informs me that the show plays in a loop, so it's hard to locate specific interviews.

# Posted 9:35 PM by David Adesnik
ARI FLEISCHER'S GUIDE TO RED-HOT G.O.P. LOVE: Washington icon Ari Fleischer gave Bloggers' Row ten minutes of his time this afternoon. Blogs for Bush has the audio. I recommend listening to whole thing, but since I'm such a nice guy I'll describe some of the highlights.

Fleischer began by talking about the website his brother started up while serving in Baghdad. It taught him the power of internet communication.

After Fleischer finishes talking, you'll hear some mumbling followed by a whole lot of laughter. That was when OxBlog asked, "How do you score hot Jewish chicks on J-date? I'm still single and Jewish."

Fleischer's answer: Don't touch my daughter.

Next, John from Power Line asked if Fleischer misses being in the spotlight. Answer: At big moments like this, yes he does. But it's also a relief to put that kind of high-pressure work behind him.

Captain Ed's question for Ari F. was what he thinks of how the media's has covered Kerry's war record compared to its investigating of the Bush-AWOL story. Fleischer's response was actually quite positive. The press loves controversy and on this kind of issue, a Republican in trouble is a much bigger story. But the press was also very, very tough on Clinton.

Skipping forward a bit, John asked what President Bush is like to work for. Ari said that he is one of the most uplifting and warm people he's ever met. He treats his staff incredibly well and has a great sense of humor.

Now it was time for OxBlog to play hardball with our esteemed guest. [I'll put up an exact transcript of the exchange as soon as I get a chance. Capt. Ed is working on one right now.]

I asked Fleischer to give some advice to Scott McClellan about the Swift Vets. There are three options:

1) Actually say something good about them, which the administration obviously doesn't want to do.
2) Stay with the status quo and dodge the question by
condemning all 527s.
3) Agree with John McCain and condemn the ads.

Fleischer said he thinks McClellan is doing exactly the right thing. When he says the President condemns all 527s he means all 527s.

Fleischer had me there for a moment and I stumbled, but I decided I had to follow up. I told him there was a difference between 527 ads and 527 ads that lie. His response was that Democrats have sent a lot of below-the-belt shots in Bush's direction and there wasn't much outrage.

There were a few more questions after that. Bobby wanted to know how 527s have changed campaign strategy. Tom from RealClear wanted to know what Fleischer's fondest memory was of working at the White House. Kevin asked what he thought of Michael Moore's take on the Florida recount. And then Ben really decided to play hardball: He asked whether the Yankees have enough pitching to win this year's World Series.

# Posted 9:13 PM by David Adesnik
OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! Miss America Erika Harold is visiting Bloggers Row!

UPDATE: The extremely lucky Matt Margolis of Blogs for Bush has put up a picture of himself with Miss Harold.

# Posted 8:41 PM by David Adesnik
OXBLOG STOLEN! As bloggers, we're used to making our (non-profit) living off of other journalists' hard work. But now, other sites are turning our hard work into cold hard cash.

The sites I'm talking about are the aggregators for the RNC Convention which post links to each and every post put up by the 15 official convention bloggers. I put up links to a few of the aggregators a short while ago, but didn't really "get" what they were doing.

Basically, they realize that it's a helluva lot easier to get all your links in one place rather than having to check 15 different blogs. And then they sell ads that will be seen by everyone who wants to check one site instead of fifteen.

As they say, all's fair in love and blog. I'm using an aggregator myself to keep up with all of my colleagues' work. The one I'm using is RNC Bloggers, created by Wizbang's own Kevin Aylward. Because he said 'thank you' to all of us by covering half of the tab at last night's all-you-can-eat Brazilian BBQ dinner.

# Posted 8:40 PM by David Adesnik
EVEN MORE DOWD! Matthew, not Maureen. In case my post about him wasn't enough, Brian at CWR has a very comprehensive account.

# Posted 3:28 PM by David Adesnik
MORE PROTEST FUN: A Prospect correspondent writes in TNR that the police got a little too aggressive in midtown yesterday. The article contains this memorable passage:

The day's most noteworthy street theater wasn't even the creation of leftists; it was the brainchild of a conservative group calling themselves Communists for Kerry (which TNR Online wrote about here on Friday). Dressed as Lenin, Castro, and Che Guevara, and
speaking in appropriate Russian and Spanish accents, they marched up Seventh Avenue waving red flags and calling for revolution. (The fact that their display was satire wasn't immediately obvious to some of their fellow marchers.)

Ouch!

# Posted 3:10 PM by David Adesnik
BLOG IT YOURSELF: Via e-mail, JM gently upbraids OxBlog for criticizing the NYT and WaPo coverage of the protests before the papers even went to print. Shouldn't I expect fuller coverage in the morning's paper rather than criticizing the first articles up on the web?

Well, by the time I read JM's e-mail I'd already what the NYT has to offer. It's even more slanted in the protesters' favor than the initial coverage. You can read about it here, here and here. I won't go into the details, but you can just follow the links and decide for yourself whether there is an inordinate emphasis on mainstream protesters and whether there is any attention paid to the organizers and their far-left politics.

On the bright side, the NYT has gotten rid of its excessive emphasis on disruptions and arrests.

The WaPo wasn't as enthusiastic about the protests. Instead of a four-column banner headline like the Times, the Post gave them a big photo and the second story. The Post's headline is "200,000 in N.Y. Protest Bush". I'm more inclined to believe the Post than the NYT, which projected the turn out at 500,000 on the basis of the organizers' tally and that of anonymous NYPD officials.

As for the content, the Post also does a pretty good job of sanitizing the protesters. It even attacks them from the left by focusing on the fact that 90% of the protesters were white and apparently middle-class (about which more later). But as they say, bloggers can't be choosers.

# Posted 2:51 PM by David Adesnik
CELEBRITY DRIVE-BYS: The convention are doing a pretty nice job of bringing some top-flight GOP operators in to talk with us. We just saw campaign manager Ken Mehlman and foreign policy adviser Tucker Eskew.

They both came at the same time, so I only got to talk to Eskew. I wanted to press him on the effectiveness of John Kerry's talk about building strong alliances. How effective is it? I said Kerry was short on specifics, but he was saying what a lot of people want to hear.

Eskew said he thought Kerry was playing more to the base. Moreover, Kerry's position falls apart when you look at the details. He's really talking about France and Germany, not "alliances". But what exactly is he going to do about France and Germany?

As a follow-up, I said that many people, including myself, have underestimated Americans' fondness for the United Nations. They really believe in it. That's why there was so much interest in getting the UN to authorize the invasion. Won't that help Kerry?

Eskew didn't think so. He said it's absolutely true that Americans want to liked. It's in our nature. (He's right) But at the end of the day they want to know that their President will stand up do what's necessary to protect the nation's security.

That wasn't enough for me, so I tried one more approach. I said that even if I agree on the merits that George Bush has made a lot of the right decisions about when to go with and when to go against our allies, it seems that the Bush campaign isn't confident enough to go out say that it has kept America's alliances strong.

In response, Eskew talked about Bush's success in coalition-building in both Afghanistan and Iraq. And that was where the discussion ended, because a staffer said it was time to go. I didn't buy the coalition-building and I don't think too many swing voters will. Eskew may be right that it won't matter. But I'd say it's a gamble, not a sure thing.

# Posted 2:24 PM by David Adesnik
BLOG CABIN REPUBLICANS: Yesterday afternoon after spending a couple hours at the big protest I headed up to The Grill in Bryant Park for an event with the Log Cabin Republicans.

It was very easy to pick me out as one of the few straight guys there. Amidst a sea of well-groomed, well-dressed men, there I was with my cargo pants and sweat-drenched plaid shirt.

I missed Mike Bloomberg's speech but got there in time for Pataki's. Actually, it was more of non-speech than a speech. First, he said 'Hi' and 'Hello' to a long list of New York State politicians who were at the event. Then he told us all what a great city New York was.

And then finally he made a brief comment about how diversity makes the Republican Party strong. He didn't use the word 'gay'. He didn't use the word 'homosexual'. Here was a man afraid to go on the record supporting a cause that he was nominally in favor of.

Perhaps I shouldn't blame Pataki. Perhaps I should blame all those in the party who are making him afraid. But when Arlen Specter and Bill Weld got up to speak, they were 100% clear about what they stood for. They don't believe in avoding the heart of the issue by saying that the states should decide for themselves about gay marriage. They believe that freedom really does mean freedom for everybody.

Of course, Specter and Weld aren't running for President in 2008. Maybe by that time the courts will have decided the issue and/or the majority of Americans will support gay marriage. That way, Pataki can just endorse the status quo.

Still, what he said just pissed me off. Talking about diversity is total bulls**t. I don't believe in gay marriage because I want affirmative action and political correctness in the bedroom. I believe in gay marriage because it is about equality before the law.

UPDATE: TNR was also at the event.

# Posted 1:52 PM by David Adesnik
HIZZONER STOPS BY: Ed Koch decided he wanted to meet the bloggers. He's a fun guy, so when he sat down at our table, we all crowded around.

Koch wants to know exactly what a blogger is. Captain Ed says it's a freelance writers who posts his thoughts on a webpage. Koch asks if he counts as a blogger because he sends out an e-mail commentary every week that goes to thousands of people. John from Power Line says 'No'.

The next question is about Koch's question to endorse Bush, early and unequivocally. Koch says he doesn�t agree with Bush on any of the domestic issues, but the Democrats just don�t have the stomach to fight the war on terror. Koch then says that he invented the phrase �The Bush Doctrine�. He defines it as a willingness to stand up to terrorists.

Koch then adds that most Democrats are moderates. He says that there are far more Democrats like him then there are like Howard Dean or Ted Kennedy.

Next, Koch complains about Kerry's flip-flop on the war. "Which John Kerry do you believe?" The one who voted to authorize the war and defends that decision now, or the one who apologized to the Deanics for his vote?

While talking about flip-flops, Koch also lashes out at Kerry's "hypocrsisy" on gay marriage.

Bobby Eberle asks what Koch thinks of Kerry's "sensitive" War on Terror? Koch says that Cheney was right, that the concept is ridiculous. Not all Muslims want to kill us, but hundreds of millions do.

Now, I wasn't going to interrupt everyone, but the fact is that Bush has often described his own efforts to have a sensitive foreign policy in the Middle East, so Cheney's attack, Koch's answer, and Bobby's question are all unfair.

Kevin wants to know whether Koch thinks voters will forget about terrorism and not vote for Bush because there hasn't been an attack since 9/11. Koch says no way, people are smart, they don't forget. I agree. But Roger says the amnesia set in three months after 9/11.

Finally, my question. I love to hear myself talk. I told Koch I wanted to give him a compliment and ask him an easy question. I said I'm writing my dissertation on US-Central American relations and I want to compliment him on all of the excellent work he did on behalf of human rights in Nicaragua in the 1970s.

That was a secret swipe at my colleagues here for being a little too uncritical. Koch's attacks on the Somoza dictatorship drove its supporters in Congress (including some prominent Democrats) completely mad.

Next, I asked Koch which bloggers he reads most often and why. He said he doesn't have a lot of time and doesn't read a lot of blogs. (I guessed as much. I was setting him up.) But when he does have time, Andrew Sullivan is his man, because he works so hard.

Except in August, I said.

# Posted 1:35 PM by David Adesnik
BLOGGERS' BREAKFAST, 8:00 AM, Southgate Hotel:

After five hours of sleep and a sweltering subway ride, I want coffee but won�t touch anything hot. I go for the ice water instead. The speaker at our breakfast is Matthew Dowd, a top strategist and spokesman for the Bush campaign. Even though his job is to spin, Dowd talks in an affable and friendly manner. That�s the first rule of good spin.

Dowd begins by describing what he calls the basic assumptions on which Bush�s strategy rests. First and foremost, there are very few swing voters left. More than ninety and close to ninety-five percent of voters are fully committed and evenly split between the parties. Thus, turning out the base is a high priority.

On the other hand, there are around 60 electoral votes that will be decided by a total of fewer than 50,000 ballots. It�s going be close, but Dowd says he�s optimistic. It sounds like spin. He said that Bush is even with Kerry or possibly a point or two ahead � but that�s where the campaign expected things to be after the convention. QED, whatever support Kerry got from his convention was temporary and superficial.

Perhaps. If the Bush campaign expected to be behind in the polls coming into the convention it�s because they expected a bigger Democratic bounce.

Next, the Q&A.; Can bloggers be as tough as professionals? If they can, do they want to be as tough, given that this meeting is Red-on-Red? My gut instinct is to ask the toughest question I can about the Swift Vets. But I decide to hold back and get a feel for the room before opening fire.

The first questioner observes that the Dean campaign had a problem staying on message even on its own website but that the Bush campaign seems to be doing better. It�s a softball, and Dowd softly concurs that his people are doing a better job.

Another questioner -- I can�t remember all of the questions or their exact order -- picks up on Dowd�s comment that the Bush campaign hasn�t had a lot of success with internet ad buys. Can Dowd be more specific about what wasn�t going right? His answer is that it�s hard to know exactly who your audience is on the net. Interestingly enough, that was the same point Jeff Jarvis made back at BloggerCon II when. According to Jeff, the biggest thing getting in the way of bloggers selling more ads is precise information about who exactly is reading out sites.

Now a question about polls. This morning�s Gallup shows even or ahead in Pennsylvania. How is the swing state forecast looking? Dowd makes an interesting point which I haven�t thought about much: most states have a fixed relationship to national polls, leaning Democratic or GOP by a stable percentage. But Pennsylvania used to lean Democratic by a handful of points but now tracks the national polls precisely. The bad news for the GOP is that Ohio has moved in the other direction. But the really interesting state may be Wisconsin, which could go Republican and would force Kerry to pick up Ohio or Florida if he wants to win.

At this point, I was beginning to feel that I had to ask Dowd something a lot tougher than he�d faced so far. Dammit, we�re David and they�re Goliath. But I didn�t just want to be a hardass just for the hellavit. �Real� journalists do that all the time and just come off as arrogant and condescending. So I wanted to ask a question whose answer I actually cared about and could learn something from.

Here�s what I came up with: You said that this convention is going to focus on the President's vision for the future. But given that most voters judge an incumbent based on his record, not his plans, might that indicate a lack of confidence in what Bush has accomplished? As Ronald Reagan memorably asked in both 1980 and 1984, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?

On a related note, voters' habit of judging a candidate based on his record explains why undecideds tend to break for the challenger at the last moment. Do you agree with the consensus and does that mean that Bush has to go into election day with a 2 or 3 point lead in order to win?

Here's what Dowd said: His research shows that voters do tend to be retrospective, but that they care about the state of the nation more than the state of their pocketbooks. Also, they tend to vote on the basis of the past year, not as Reagan suggested, the past four. Thus, the recent economic recovery may help the President. Finally, those who lean toward a candidate but aren't sure about supporting him do want to hear about the future.

When it comes to the undecideds, Dowd said that undecideds are traditionally those voters who haven't had access to a lot of information. But this year, both campaigns have already far outspent their counterparts in the last incumbent-challenger race in 1996. Thus, if people haven't made up their mind, it probably means that can't decide and aren't going to vote.

Is that right? I think Dowd is being too optimistic about the undecideds. But as one of my fellow bloggers pointed out, they may break for the incumbent in a wartime situation.

On a different note, I think Dowd is right that voters care more about the state of the nation than the state of their pocketbooks. I have no idea, however, how many years backward they look while forming their opinions.

Well, that was a long post for a breakfast that only lasted one hour. Let's move on...

# Posted 8:53 AM by Josh Chafetz
OVER AT THE WEEKLY STANDARD'S WEBSITE, Katherine Mangu-Ward reports on the Libertarian Party's unauthorized protest in Central Park, and Rachel DiCarlo looks at the Alaska Senate race. As always, Katherine and Rachel are well-worth reading. And if you subscribe to the Standard, Katherine's Casual in the current issue is great -- Douglas Adams quote, and all!

# Posted 6:45 AM by Patrick Belton
FEWER PEOPLE DYING IN WAR: Contrary to the prediction of pundits and political scientists that the end of the Cold War would unleash an age of burning worldwide ethnic conflict and regional war, with the superpowers no longer imposing order on their client states, research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the Canadian NGO Project Ploughshares indicates that the world has actually become a substantially safer place lately - at least measured in terms of major conflict. The number of people killed in battle has fallen to 20,000 per year, the lowest number in the post-Second World War period. According to the ngo, in 2003 there were furthermore a total of 33 conflicts accumulating 1,000 or more deaths since they began, compared with 44 such conflicts in 1995. Of these, 19 were 'major wars', down from 33 in 1991. Also in the previous year, long-standing wars ended in Angola, Rwanda, and Somalia, and a conflict in the Indian state of Assam was downgraded from the 'major' category.

# Posted 6:06 AM by Patrick Belton
IRELAND IS ABUZZ THIS MORNING after a drunken ex-priest from Kerry (who, in full disclosure, I am not related to) pushed lead marathon runner Vanderlei de Lima out of the race course, causing him to drop to third place after reentering the race. 56-year old Neil Horan, whose art of 'aggressing spectating' has been honed by lengthy residence in southern England, has an extensive career as a noted and successful race disruptor, with amongst his other resume lines a roundly-applauded disruption of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone last year. (Belfast Telegraph: 'Fr Horan, wearing a red kilt, green knee-high socks, green waistcoat and green tam-o-shanter dragged Vanderlei de Lima off the road during the final event of the Games.' Ireland Online: 'Horan told police he staged the disruption to �prepare for the second coming�', which the Bible, as interpreted in a sign on his back, says is imminent. F1 News: Horan 'pushed his way through the Silverstone crowd before dancing a jig within inches of the passing cars....Horan was carrying a religious placard and Israeli flag'. Irish Examiner: 'Eccentric is agent of peace in troubled world'.)

And of course, you can count on OxBlog to bring you the photograph:

Presumably the Bible also says something about 'wear a funny suit and have a go at Olympic runners'.

# Posted 5:40 AM by Patrick Belton
CARLOS BARRIOS ORTA HAS got the worst...job...in the...world.

# Posted 9:30 PM by Josh Chafetz
DAN RATHER IS REALLY GETTING INTO this whole blogging thing -- he misspells the Vice President's name in the first sentence of his current top item! ("A new tide of optimism inside the Bush-Chaney campaign, among delegates and with big-money contributors is evident inside the convention hall today and all around the town.") Way to liberate yourself from editorial standards, Mr. Rather!

# Posted 7:25 PM by David Adesnik
CHECK BACK LATER FOR MORE COVERAGE: Right now it's 7:25 and I have to run-out for a dinner at 8:00 with my fellow bloggers. If it hadn't taken two hours to get my press credential, I would've posted a lot more this afternoon. I don't think anything else will go up before midnight, but I assure you that I have a lot more to say about both today's protests as well as a great event sponsored by the Log Cabin Republicans.

# Posted 6:31 PM by David Adesnik
HOW NOT TO COVER A PROTEST: It is very hard to cover a massive protest. The action is spread out over miles and miles of asphalt baking in the afternoon sun. I only spent only two hours with the marchers, but did my best to interview as many different people with as many different perspectives as possible.

What I can say with a good amount of confidence is that the stories already up in the NYT and WaPo give a very superficial and often misleading impression of what it was what like to be at today's protests.

The first thing wrong with these stories is their focus on the few inconsequential arrests and mishaps that took place. Many of the journalists I saw just seemed to be waiting for something to go wrong. Because things going wrong is news, whereas the actual ideas and policies favored by the protesters are supposedly boring.

During my second hour at the protest I marched with the lead contingent from United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ). As the marchers advanced, a disorganized crowd of journalists, many of them with photo and video equipment, slowly retreated to make way for the protesters.

At one point, a small commotion broke out when the police escorted a protester away with his arms pinned behind his back. About a dozen officers moved in swiftly to make sure the commotion didn't spread. Then suddenly, dozens and dozens of journalists swarmed toward the knot of police officers like locusts from some biblical plague.

Shortly thereafter, a small group of rule-breaking protesters emerged around a block in front of the lead contingent and tried to march up 5th Avenue instead of down. Again, the police responded immediately and isolated the commotion. And again, journalists swarmed around the police, hoping to discover some news.

If I were a protester, I'd probably feel that the NYT and WaPo did the marchers a disservice by failing to recognize just how orderly and peaceful the protest was and how the organizers successfully defused the most important potential conflict of the day, i.e. the disappointed hope that the protest march would culminate with a massive rally in Central Park.

One important detail that I certainly would've included in a newspaper account was that the police came out in force to ensure that the protesters didn't wander off the official route and try to head for Central Park. At each intersection on 34th St. -- the northenmost point of the march -- dozens of police stood ready behind metal barriers to prevent the protesters from changing their route. Similar blockades were set up across 34th St. at the edges of the parade route to ensure that no one tried to pull an end run, get around the cops, and head for the Park (which begins on 59th).

Fortunately, no one that I saw tried to challenge the police and head for the Park. I think the absence of conflict reflects well on the organizers, who announced again and again that marchers must follow the official route.

Now, if I didn't like the protesters, I would tell you that the NYT and WaPo did them a tremendous favor by downplaying the degree to which they represented the leftmost edge of the American political spectrum. I've posted before about what UFPJ stands for, so I won't repeat myself. Suffice it to say that neither the Times nor the Post tells you anything about UFPJ's history or what it stands for.

The big papers also fail to convey how the protest resembled a carnival of the absurd, with every obscure leftist faction in attendance. For example, there were hundreds of big red signs provided by a coven of conspiracy theorists who insist that Bush had advance warning of 9-11. If I had bigger pockets, I could've collected at least half-a-dozen different socialist and communist newspapers and newsletters.

If you read the NYT or the WaPo, you get the impression that the protest was filled with reasonable people who just don't like George Bush. All of the (wo)man-in-the-street interviews in both papers are with soothingly moderate and even humorous people. "Bring the troops home now" is the most radical sentiment you'll find in the NYT.

So there you have it. The big papers managed to be unfair to both sides while failing to provide critical information. Let's hope things get better from here.

# Posted 1:57 AM by David Adesnik
WHAT THE PROTESTERS ARE SAYING: Here's a passage from the Unity Statement of United for Peace and Justice, the umbrella group organizing tomorrow's largest protest (which I'll be covering):

It is now clear the war on Iraq was the leading edge of a relentless drive for U.S. empire...This military strategy brutally reinforces the empire-building agenda of corporate globalization, which uses �free trade� policies to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few by attacking labor and environmental protections, reducing governments� control over their country�s economies, and slashing public services...

Emboldened by its military victory in Iraq, the Bush administration has warned Syria, Iran, Cuba, and North Korea that if they don�t comply with U.S. demands, they, too, could be subject to �pre-emptive war� and �regime change.�

No! Not North Korea!

Now's here an excerpt from a 2003 interview with Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator of UFPJ:

[Interviewer]: I heard one of the big three radio networks in their coverage of the Washington march to stop the war, and they described the message coming out of the Oct. 25 rally as a call "to abandon Iraq" -- very highly charged words and a description. How do you respond to those who say that pulling out U.S. forces now from Iraq, would be a recipe for disaster both for Iraq and the
United States?
Leslie Cagan: Well, you know that's been said before in other
situations. People said during the Vietnam era, "We can't leave because there would be a nightmare, there'd be a bloodbath." And in fact when the U.S. left Vietnam that's when the war ended and the bloodbath stopped.

It's true, it's true. North Vietnam did not invade South Vietnam after the United States left. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese 'boat people' didn't become refugees after the American withdrawal. And the Khmer Rouge certainly didn't commit genocide after the United States went home.

# Posted 1:43 AM by David Adesnik
THE LESSONS OF VIETNAM: Peter Beinart's column touches on the same issue I raised before, except he's deconstructing the Republican side of the debate. Hugh Hewitt responds to Beinart, but I'm not persuaded. (Hat tip: Power Line.)

# Posted 1:19 AM by David Adesnik
CONVENTION BLOGGERS' ROUND-UP: If I were Lewis Lapham, I might be able to tell you in advance what all the bloggers were going to write. Instead, I'm just going to inform you that mutliple website will be compiling posts from all 15 bloggers at the convention. Slant Point provides the links.

# Posted 12:50 AM by David Adesnik
I LOVE NEW YORK F****N' CITY: Tonight I knocked back a couple of mojitos with OxBlog legal correspondent EK. He didn't have much to report, although he said that he recently found himself at a urinal adjacent to the one being used by Justice Scalia.

It was a warm night and not too humid, so I decided to walk home from the bar at 34th & 3rd despite that the fact that it was a good two miles. I had half of a Cuban cigar to work with (thanks to the lovely Miss CH), so I figured I wouldn't be bored.

Bottom line, it was an incredible walk. New York is more alive than other city I've ever been to.

If you visit New York, no one will tell you that have you to see 3rd Avenue. It's not the Village, it's not Times Square, it's not Nolita. It's just another street. But it was full of Irish pubs and all night diners and beautiful women.

3rd Avenue isn't somewhere I ever spent much time before. I grew up in the Village and all my friends were either Upper East or Upper West. That's where respectable people lived twenty-five years ago. But now all of New York is New York. It will always suprise you.

# Posted 9:08 PM by David Adesnik
ANOTHER LIBERAL HACK? NO, JUST TACITUS: Bird Dog says it's no secret he's voting for George W. this November. But check out BD's impressive list of Bush's failures.

So Kudos to BD for honesty. I agree with just about everything on his list.

# Posted 8:39 PM by David Adesnik
ME IN A NUTSHELL: Roger Simon writes that

Most of my life I rarely talked to Republicans -- not seriously anyway. If I did it was without the full knowledge that they were Republicans. I didn't think they would have much to say that would interest me, that they were intellectually bankrupt and probably greedy, possibly even racists.

I grew up in Greenwich Village. What's Roger's excuse?

# Posted 6:45 PM by David Adesnik
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN VIETNAM: Small questions about where John Kerry was on Christmas Eve 1968 or whether there was enemy fire the day he won his Bronze Star have gotten in the way of a far more important debate about the war in Vietnam and its role in campaign 2004.

Does the heroism of a junior officer prepare him to become the leader of the free world? Is a campaign built around a candidate's war record just a diversion from substantive issues or does it emphasize important aspects of the candidate's character and personal values?

One place to start looking for answers to these questions is the op-ed page of yesterday's NYT, which had no fewer than four columns about Vietnam and campaign 2004. In one of them, prize-winning author Neil Sheehan asserts that the Swift Vets' attacks are not just getting in the way of serious discussions about Vietnam, but that they are symptomatic of inability to comprehend the lessons of that war:

The nation has yet to come to grips with what really happened in Vietnam, and Mr. Kerry's accusers are among those who simply cannot and never will.

The question, then, is what "really happened" in Vietnam? Sheehan writes that

The truth is that atrocities were committed in Vietnam. The worst and most horrendous atrocity was officially sanctioned...The wholesale killing cheapened the value of Vietnamese life in American eyes...

In Vietnam, America the exceptional joined the rest of the human race and demonstrated that it could do evil as easily as it could do good.

I agree with Sheehan to the extent that the United States lost the war in Vietnam by betraying its own ideals. But if Vietnam was the consummate evil that destroyed American virtue, how can Sheehan celebrate Kerry's service there? Sheehan writes that

It always galls me when I hear the generation of World War II referred to as the "greatest generation.'' They were a great generation, but so were the men who served in Vietnam. The soldiers and Marines, sailors and airmen who fought there did so with just as much courage as anyone who fought in World War II. The generation of Vietnam had the ill luck to draw a bad war, an unnecessary and unwinnable war, a tragic, terrible mistake. But valor has a worth of its own, and theirs deserves to be honored and remembered.

Yet just a few paragraphs earlier, Sheehan argues that the the American strategy in Vietnam was a strategy of murder, intentionally resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent peasants year after year after year. Who implemented this strategy of murder if not the "great generation" whose valor Sheehan wants to memorialize?

If Sheehan wants to defend John Kerry from the Swift Vets, why not just say that Kerry was a good man in a bad war? Why is it necessary to try and praise an entire generation of soldiers while at the same time insisting that their generation was responsible for murder?

Obviously, Sheehan doesn't believe that all American soldiers in Vietnam were criminals. But if you agree with him that the United States waged its war in an inherently immoral manner, then, at minimum, tens of thousands of American soldiers implemented and facilitated that immorality. Sheehan even suggests that the moral sensibilities of an entire generation were perverted by the war, since "the wholesale killing cheapened the value of Vietnamese life in American eyes."

The reason, I think, that Sheehan -- and more importantly, John Kerry -- can't just say that there were some (or even many) good soldiers in a bad war is that that such a distinction forces us to ask who was good and who was bad. If that question were foremost in our minds, Kerry's constant references to his war record would become dangerously divisive.

If the Kerry campaign didn't constantly provide a sanitized and uncritical account of the war, reporters would begin to ask what exactly about the war Kerry thought was wrong. Instead of a footnote that everyone (except the Swift Vets) ignores, Kerry's 1971 testimony before Congress would be back in the headlines. The whole debate about Vietnam would begin again and Kerry would suffer.

I have to admit that if I were John Kerry, I'd also run a campaign that focused on my personal heroism while side-stepping broader debates about the war in Vietnam. Democratic candidates always face an uphill battle to show that they are just as tough and patriotic as the other guy. This year, winning that battle matters even more.

It would be nice if John Kerry could offer thoughtful criticism of the war in Vietnam without reinforcing the stereotype that Democrats are soft and dovish and unpatriotic. It is ironic that Kerry's gung-ho account of his war record will only make it harder for America to confront the legacy of Vietnam. But this is politics, not a college seminar. For the moment, I'm willing to forgive Kerry for leaving history to the historians.