Johnny Be Good

by Morgan Dash

I'll tell you this TRUE story, even if one of my brothers (you know who you are, Theron) doesn't believe me. We'd more or less settled on Gephardt as Kerry's likely choice for vp, though in the days just before the announcement, we were wavering on whether it would be Gephardt or Edwards.

The night before the announcement was to be made, I happened to be up late, and I saw on the net the report attributed to the New York Post that it was going to definitely be Gephardt. My immediate reaction--which surprised me--was: oh, no. That choice is a mistake. It has to be Edwards.

Fortunately it turned out to be Rupert Murdoch's mistake and not John Kerry's. A few hours later Kerry announced that his choice was John Edwards. By the end of the week, it was just starting to become clear what an amazingly good choice it was. If this was (as Bill Clinton described it before it happened) Kerry's first "presidential" decision, it was an incredibly astute one.

It was first of all an immediately popular choice among voters polled, and among both media and non-Bushie politicians. The first rallys with the new duo were dynamic. The ad introducing the team was terrific. Two polls immediately showed Kerry ahead by more than the margin of error, and perhaps most surprisingly, they showed Edwards as the clear favorite over Cheney, even in response to the question of who is more ready to be president.

The week was very well orchestrated, from the announcement in Pittsburgh to the first rally in Cleveland, to the matched messages and the new vocabularly of strength at home, respect in the world. There was also a determined emphasis on reclaiming "values" as an issue--very perspicacious, given the Bush credibility problem. At last the Dems aren't bowing to the pernicious doublespeak of rabid rightist "family values" behind policies that ravage families and have nothing but contempt for values other than hypocrisy and cynicism. Neither are they ceding American values and patriotism to the Bushies, who cut soldiers' pay and benefits, and provide inadequate medical care to wounded veterans.

No wars for oil, they both said. No wars of choice, only of necessity. Then the music plays: Johnny B. Goode.

And Kerry and Edwards immediately seized another image---of optimism---that the Bushies thought they could claim for themselves.

John Edwards connects not only with southern voters---where so many military bases are--- but with midwestern workers and small town voters. He becomes the companion who gets John Kerry invited in. Edwards has young children, and young families are people Kerry must reach. The Bushies want to make Edwards' career as a personal injury lawyer into an issue but as Bill Clinton used to say, that dog won't hunt. People may not love lawyers, until they need one. Representing ordinary people against big corporations is more sympathetic and comprehensible than tort reform.

Two other bits of conventional wisdom may go down in flames. First, that the vice presidential nominee doesn't matter. Hey, turn on your TV. It's the synergy, the image of the two of them that matters. It's what choosing Edwards says about Kerry. Second, that only what happens now or what happens next matters to the voters, not the past. No, what has happened already matters---and voters are not happy about Iraq, about lies and misplaced arrogance. Reaction to the latest nonspecific terror non-alert shows an edgy distrust of anything the Bushies say.

So believe me or not about my reaction, but I have to say: even with my little flash of insight, I never would have bet that the selection of Edwards would get such an enthusiastic reception so quickly.

gaming the blame

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee report was significant in that 9 Republicans and 8 Democrats unanimously declared all the major reasons the Bush administration gave for taking America to war in Iraq were untrue. Officially this part of the report blamed the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Democrats added that the intel conclusions were clearly influenced by administration expectations, and outright pressure to come to those conclusions. Even though Republicans did not agree, the report included some damning correspondence from within the CIA that clearly leaves that impression: the Bushies were going to war anyway, so if the CIA knew what was good for it, they'd provide what the bosses wanted to hear.

Specific investigation into how the Bushies handled the faulty intelligence they got was put off until after the election, apparently as the price for getting this part of the report out now. But as several news reporters and pundits pointed out, it is simple enough work to compare the claims the Bushies made publicly with the intelligence they got as described in this report, to see that the Bushies exaggerated it (at best), and combined passing on bad information with additional misleading conclusions. A pretty good summary of all that can be found in a short piece appearing in the Nation:

Capital Games

The report's less than subtle purpose was congressional: now that a clear majority of American voters believe going to war was a mistake, the Congress that voted to give Bush the authority to start it now desperately wants to cover its institutional ass. The committee members emphasized that they, as Members of Congress, were misled by the bad intel. Senator Jay Rockerfeller, the ranking Dem, added that had he known then what he knows now, he would not have voted to authorize Bush's bash, nor in his opinion would the rest of Congress have done so.

This cuts no mustard with Bush, of course. After seizing on the report as proof he was led astray by that bad old CIA, he actually told a PA audience this same day that "we fought them in Iraq so we wouldn't have to fight them here."

The other institutional ass that needs covering is the media. But 'the CIA made me do it' won't quite work, not even if you throw in the Bushie rhetoric. The media--from the goofiest cable news to the most august newspapers---helped mightily in the march off the cliff to war. In his interview with Charlie Rose this week, Michael Moore placed the major blame squarely on the press. We expect politicians to lie, he said. But we expect the press to ask questions, to protect us from political lies. Without the press doing its job, we're vulnerable. And he added a bit ruefully, if the press had asked the kind of probing questions about Iraq that he's been getting about "my little movie," we never would have gone to war.

Those of us outside the power centers may not have realized how much the New York Times coverage aided and abetted the Bush march. With its longstanding reputation for probity and integrity, however tarnished it has gotten over recent years, the Times remains the most important newspaper in America. When the Times echoed the Bushwah coming out of Washington, it made a huge difference---if not directly with the American public, then powerfully with the rest of the media that generally takes its lead from the Times, and perhaps most powerfully, with Congress. The Times helped create a climate in which a vote against authorizing Bush could seem out of touch.

Though the Times recently issued something like an apology, it was nowhere near the full story, especially concerning Judith Miller, the reporter more responsible than any other for the Times and perhaps the media in general lending hysterical credibility to the Bushwar Bushwah.

Amy Goodman and David Goodman of Democracy Now! provide such an account, much of which you can read on the Sentient Times site:

Sentient Times June/July 2004

Don't miss the part about Judith Miller as embedded reporter during the war: "her role in the unit's operation became so central that it became known as the 'Judith Miller team.' In one instance she disageeed with a decision...When she took her protest to a two-star general, the decision was reversed....Later, she played a starrring role in a ceremony in which [the unit's] leader was promoted. Other officers were surprised to watch as Miller pinned a new rank" on this officer's uniform.

This is the most outrageous violation of a reporter's role we've ever heard of, yet as far as we know, she is still reporting for the New York Times. As Michael Moore said, (though not with exactly these words) the news media has blood on its hands. Gaming the blame won't help. There's plenty to go around.

to the point

This short essay in the Nation by educator and activist Deborah Meier is the best summary of issues and opportunities in the truly tragic plight of pre-college education in America we've seen this year:

No Politician Left Behind