Tag Archives: Osama bin Laden

Where was this foreign-policy Romney in the GOP primaries?

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Etch-a-Sketching Middle East policy

In pre-debate discussion on CurrentTV last night, former Vice President Al Gore speculated that Mitt Romney would need to avoid the pitfall of “too much endless war.” I wrote in my notes that “R will prob know how to avoid that one.”

Did he ever.

Whether Romney knew how best to avoid the pitfall of recommending endless war might be questioned.  But he knew enough to sidestep it over and over. I lost count of the number of times Romney endorsed President Obama’s actions and policies, particularly in regard to the Middle East.

 

Romney, President Obama on split screen

A plug:

Once again, C-Span came through for the public. Watching the debate on C-Span gave viewers something no other channel offered–a split-screen view of both candidates while each was speaking. Thus one could see, for example, Romney looking sick when moderator Bob Schieffer asked the president about Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. The question was whether the president had any regrets about calling for Mubarak to step down. The answer was a firm no. Apparently Romney thought the answer was a good one; he responded to the Mubarak question by quickly saying that he had supported the president on Egypt.

 

Former dictator Gaddafi

Romney didn’t look a whole lot more robust when Obama discussed American policy in regard to previous conflict in Libya–including the fact that Libya was previously governed by long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Does any GOP candidate even remember Gaddafi? Do any of the chicken-hawks eager to inflame tensions around the world–particularly in dangerous situations–even recall that Gaddafi was removed on the president’s watch, to U.S. advantage as well as to the advantage of his own people, without American boots on the ground?

For that matter, do any of the Republicans running for national office remember that a series of dictators has fallen in the last four years? Where was the mention of a string of collapsed dictators, when Romney attempted to rattle off a stump-speech litany of administration failures?

To his credit, Romney began on a conciliatory note by saying, “I congratulate him” [Obama] on getting Osama bin Laden.

Romney, Schieffer, Obama

Romney also did not mistakenly mix up Osama bin Laden’s name with President Obama’s. Every little bit helps. Romney even went on to say, “but we can’t kill our way out of this mess”–making two people on his ticket (as of this writing) going for non-military-intervention in hot spots, for a total of four on the two national tickets. No saying how the rabid right wing of his party will receive the message, but at least he stuck with it through the course of the debate.

As mentioned, Romney’s statements often paralleled the president’s or paralleled administration policy. Romney voluntarily brought up the U.N. (Those words should probably be highlighted and bold-faced in red.) He expressed a desire to “help the Muslim world.” He spoke favorably of policy recommendations from a group of scholars. He referred to “economic development.” He voluntarily brought up “foreign aid.”

Where was this Romney during the Republican debates of the campaign season?

When the president said firmly, in response to Schieffer’s question about Syria, that Syrians have to determine their own future but that the administration is organizing the international community, working to isolate the dictator and to support the opposition–without military intervention and without providing arms that might later be turned against the U.S.–Romney had no rebuttal. No counter-offer. No specifics. But he, too, to do him justice, said clearly that “we don’t want to get drawn into a military conflict” in Syria.

Romney, in short, agreed with Obama on Egypt, on Syria, on the Muslim world and its youth, on engaging in commerce, on supporting education around the world, on supporting women’s rights around the world–and on Pakistan and Afghanistan.

That last might be the big item. After repeatedly criticizing the White House for even wishing to get out of Afghanistan, the Republican presidential nominee came through with a key policy endorsement in the clutch: “we’re gonna be finished [in Afghanistan] by 2014,” Romney said. He said it more than once, too: the troops will be “out by 2014.”

More bold red highlighting needed. In response to questions from Schieffer about Pakistan, Romney even went so far as to say, “I don’t blame the administration” for going into Pakistan (without permission). “We had to go in there,” Romney said, if we were going to get bin Laden.

Even in regard to China, Romney’s policy suggestions parallel those of the administration. With a lot of tough talk about Chinese piracy, hacking, and currency manipulation, Romney still had this to offer: “China can be our partner.” Since no Republican candidate wants a ‘trade war’, he pretty much had to say it. It still left him in a vulnerable position, politically; as Obama mentioned–speaking of trade–“You ship jobs overseas.”

More on some of the domestic-policy talk that derailed the foreign policy debate, later. For now a slight plug for Current TV. Current TV made the mistake of the decade firing Keith Olbermann. It made itself look petty and feeble. It lost ratings. It may tank financially. But it did offer an entertaining gimmick with the candidate debates: Viewers can read tweets on the debate scrolling below the screen while watching the debate. This has its downside, of course. One gets a microscopic up-close-and-personal look at some right-wing ignorance.

Furthermore, the tweets are selected by someone behind the scenes at CurrentTV. When I helpfully tweeted Current, during the second presidential debate, that sound problems were distorting the president’s voice, the tweet did not appear. The sound problems seem to have been corrected, though by that time I had switched to C-Span.

Back to the tweets last night–they were helpful on Romney’s oral mistakes; for example, Romney mixed up ‘Iraq’ and ‘Iran’ more than once, etc. Although I don’t recall anyone picking up on Romney’s remarkable claim that “The economy is not stronger” (than four years ago), tweets were alive with Romney misstatements. Even with GOP spinsters horning in, Obama won the tweets column.

Farther down and later on, one could sense big guns getting alarmed at President Obama’s strong performance in contrast to Romney’s feeble one. Karl Rove and Ann Coulter took a valuable minute out of their busy schedules to tweet a diss of the president. The cavalry appears over the top of the hill.

They got some help from an odd source: For some reason the otherwise astute Eliot Spitzer, Olbermann’s replacement, keeps preaching from the text that ‘the economy’ is ‘Romney’s issue’. ‘The economy’? Romney’s issue? After the mortgage-derivatives crisis? With Romney’s background? This from a man who as New York’s Attorney General went after the bad guys on Wall Street?

Politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say. It also makes strange theory-weddings.

Weird.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Benghazi , binders and birthers

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Benghazi , binders and birthers

With any luck, last night’s town-hall presidential debate will quell some unseemly attempts to exploit the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya. It will not end the topic, since the perpetrators have not been caught yet. When they are caught, that will be the point at which right-wingers of the Koch-brothers persuasion quit mentioning Benghazi. We will then hear no more from them about ‘Benghazi’ than we now hear from them about Osama bin Laden. Almost the only times the right/GOP mention bin Laden are to tongue-twist his name with that of President Obama.

A dead bin Laden generates no contracts.

Meanwhile, GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s worst (regarding Benghazi) has been caught on videotape.

 

Romney corrected by Crowley

Here is the White House transcript of the president’s address in the Rose Garden, the day after the attacks. Here is the president’s explicit reference to terrorism:

“As Americans, let us never, ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because there are people who are willing to fight for it, to stand up for it, and in some cases, lay down their lives for it. Our country is only as strong as the character of our people and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe.

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”

It should be noted that the entire address comprised a tribute to the heroic American victims, a pledge to fight back, and repeated characterization of the attacks as what they were–attacks. Obama referred to “attack” and “attackers” throughout the Rose Garden address.

Obama’s entire address was dignified. The right can’t stand that. The segment of the right that jokes about turning the Rose Garden into a watermelon patch especially can’t stand it. Furthermore, every tumult in the Middle East occurs in the global context of an improved image for America, because of the switch from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. The right really can’t stand that.

Thus the spiteful glee with which some congressional Republicans have pounced on the Benghazi attacks. It’s we’ll-show-you-where-your-peace-gets-you. Falsely, Romney’s smarmy comments in last night’s debate suggest that the Obama administration has been characterizing the killing of four Americans as some kind of ‘spontaneous demonstration’. Basically, this kind of accusation is the petty revenge of worse against better, Romney behaving like a petty character in an old Brian de Palma movie instead of boosting the dignity and unity of the U.S. for global viewers.

But wait; there’s more. The gold-selling anti-Obama crowd is trying to refute even the fact that the president did indeed refer to the attacks as terror. How? By drawing an artificial distinction between the words terror and terrorism. An example:

“In tonight’s presidential debate President Obama maintains that he called the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi a “act of terror”, which turns out to be accurate.  However, the President is using a play on words.  The full transcript below supports that assertion, which the moderator, Candy Crowley vehemently confirmed the President did do.  However, the legal term of “act of terrorism” is never used.”

These are the people who claim that President Obama’s birth certificate is phony because it is titled (by the state of Hawaii) CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH rather than “Birth Certificate.”

 

[Update]

Daily Kos presents the video moment on Benghazi here.

Talking Points Memo does it here.

Think Progress treats it here.

2004 Election revisited, part 5: DC games versus democratizing the vote

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2004 Election revisited, part 5: DC games versus the grassroots

Dean

The presidential election cycle suffered an odd interlude in winter 2004. Few people remember now, and this kind of topic is not usually revived on cable or network talk shows, but what happened derailed or destroyed the most promising grassroots activity on the Democratic side.

Most politicos remember in some fashion the swift turn downward for Howard Dean’s campaign when CNN jumped on the so-called ‘Dean scream’ nonstop. Few to no politicos mention that the Dean campaign was also on the receiving end of attack by a particularly shadowy 527 organization.

This particular org seems to have been roused to action by some mention of health care in a campaign year. (Danger afoot; the public might like health.) A weird little one-or-two-man ‘group’ called “Americans for Jobs, Healthcare [sic], and Progressive Values” sprang suddenly into action, not to mention into existence.

Any investigation is, of course, history now. However, the trajectory of events looks to be uncomfortably relevant in election 2012, when those 527s are dwarfed by current super-PACs.

Midnight, February 2, 2004, was the deadline for filing IRS form 8872, the comprehensive financial disclosure required of political organizations called 527s.  Form 8872 is another of those ‘regulations’ so hated by GOP presidential candidates. It is important because it reveals who has contributed money to the organizations, which, unlike individual candidates and political parties, do not have to file disclosure statements with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) but only with the Internal Revenue Service.  Federal law requires that the forms be filed electronically, by any 527 organizations that took in or spent more than $50,000 in 2003.

Early the next morning, I checked the IRS web site to see the financial contributors for the elusive group called “Americans for Jobs, Healthcare [sic], and Progressive Values.”  (Slight warning sign:  politicians genuinely concerned about health care can usually spell it.)

The group officially began in November 2003, ran three anti-Howard Dean ads including an especially noxious one picturing Osama bin Laden, and almost immediately went inactive.  Its web site went down or “under construction,” and it listed few contacts. Its second president in two months was insurance executive and former Ohio congressman Edward F. Feighan, but his insurance office in Columbus said that Feighan was no longer connected to “Americans for Jobs etc.” Feighan’s office could provide no current information about the group, its current officers, or whether it had a head. Spokesman Robert Gibbs, a former staffer of John Kerry’s in DC, did not return numerous calls and voice messages.*

There was no form 8872 or other quarterly filing for the group, and no filing beyond the initial form 8871 dated Nov. 14, 2003.

After more attempts, I was able to talk to the group’s treasurer, David W. Jones, a Democratic fundraiser in DC, who informed me that the organization was not dissolving but also stated that he was the group’s sole officer listed at this point. Jones referred me to Kenneth A. Gross, a partner in the large law firm Skadden, Arps, for information regarding Americans for Jobs’ financial filing.

Many attorneys do not even take Election Law in law school. Gross, in Bethesda, Md., has extensive credentials as an election law attorney and served in the FEC for six years under Reagan (1980-1986). Maryland public records show that Gross was a registered Republican but switched to the Democratic party in March 1993. “I’m a man of all trades,” he said affably. “I represent both Democrats and Republicans; I’m one of the few who do.”

Gross’s GOP credentials, however, were substantially more weighty, surprisingly for someone hired by Democrats. Gross’s resume:

Past candidates for whom Ken Gross had worked were either Republicans or, when Democrats, only in the Democrats in primary elections. All in all, an odd choice for any Democratic candidate, or at least for any candidate who wanted Democrats to win in November 2004. You’re running for office and have a hard-fought campaign in a tight election ahead. You hire Bob Dole’s legal counselor?

Ken Gross explained that Americans for Jobs etc had filed the required form with the IRS, the Friday before the deadline, but it had filed by fax, and the IRS did not immediately post the filing online. “It was filed,” he said. “The IRS failed to give us a [sort of] PIN number,” so the group could not file electronically. “They’re not very well equipped,” Gross commented. “It’s totally their fault.  It’s not our fault at all.”

When all else fails, blame the IRS. So, Gross continued, “we worked it out with Ogden, Utah [an IRS office],” and sent it in by fax. “I guess they haven’t scanned it into the system yet.” When I asked to see the filing, or have it faxed to me, Gross turned me back over to Jones, who corroborated the filing by fax.

An IRS spokesman explained that 527s were required to file electronically, but if some glitch prevented their doing so in a timely manner, they could file by fax or on paper to show good faith. Electronic filing was still required when they received their PIN number. Form 8872 is required to disclose all financial information.

Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2004, was the day Democrats held primaries in seven states including South Carolina and Oklahoma. As of that date, Americans for Jobs, Healthcare etc still had a single filing online, its initial electronic filing dated Nov. 14, 2003, posted with its Employer Identification Number (EIN). On Tuesday, Jones offered to fax me the filing.  I returned his call, leaving phone numbers and a fax number. No form arrived. Gross said that the filing was handled in his office, by Mark Ward. I called Ward on Wednesday to request a copy of the form, leaving my mailing address and a fax number with him.  Ward explained nicely that he did not have a copy of the filing, and that he could not get into either the fax machine or the copier without a client number–“This is such a dumb thing to be held up by, you’ll think, what planet did I drop from”–but would try to see what he could do, and suggested that I call Jones again to request a copy.

Later that day I got a call from Melissa Miles, a SkadArps attorney representing Jones.  She explained that “Dave knows he’s legally required to make a copy available” for viewing, within regular business hours, and recommended that I stop by Jones’ office, giving his address at Corporate Visions, Inc., on M Street. I said I could certainly stop by the next day, Thursday, Feb. 5.

Thursday morning I called Corporate Visions, where I happened to get a voice twin of Jones. When I asked whether I was speaking to Mr. Jones, however, the voice said “No, this is Corporate Visions.” Thursday afternoon, after repeated messages, Jones called me, saying that he had just gotten back from New York. When I offered to go to his office to see the filing, he offered instead to overnight it to me, saying at least twice that he had to show me “an original.” He assured me that he would UPS it to my home on Friday. The news that evening was full of a bad weather forecast for Friday, with possible icing; UPS headquarters confirmed that they do hold up deliveries in dangerous weather, but on Friday I received the filing.

The political calendar was loaded. Caucuses were held on Saturday, Feb. 6. Some large-state primaries were held on Tuesday, Feb. 10. On the phone, Jones offered to go over the form with me. He explained at length and repeatedly that the group had purchased three [anti-Dean] ads, totaling about $500,000. Of the total, the two ads referring to Dean’s gun and trade positions cost $485,000. Only $15,000, Jones emphasized, was spent on what he called the “foreign policy ad,” i.e. the one featuring Osama bin Laden. Jones reiterated that that one ad ran only sixteen times in South Carolina and New Hampshire, and never ran in Iowa.

Sounding somewhat harried, Jones also said that the Osama ad (“foreign policy”) got “hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of free media attention,” with several major network news programs giving it national air play. As he remarked, that one ad, on which the group spent only $15K, got the most coverage, “national coverage for four or five straight days.” Jones: “You can blame your colleagues in the media for that.”

Numerous news reports linked the Osama ad to the Gephardt campaign. While the ad did not verbally compare Dean to bin Laden, visually it connected bin Laden’s face with Dean’s name, with a dark-aura image hard to shake off. By all accounts, the attack threw the Dean campaign off-message, away from his successful critique of Bush policies.  Negative ads work.

Tthey also boomerang. The smarmy, dark, negative ad ended Gephardt’s candidacy. Jones, formerly a fundraiser for Gephardt among others, reiterated emphatically that the ads were not coordinated in any way with the Kerry campaign or with the Gephardt campaign, describing them as intended to make issues of Dean’s positions.

“His campaign is over.”

Jones took exception to my saying foreign policy experience as an issue usually benefits an incumbent president or vice president, or in the rare case of Richard Nixon, a former vice president. Most people do not connect governors or Congress with foreign policy, regardless of the campaign year. This is an advantage of presidential incumbency. In any case, there can be little doubt about the damage wrought by the Osama bin Laden ad: of the two previously strongest Democratic candidates for president, one (Gephardt) was out of the race, and the other (Dean) dropped behind.

Gephardt

At that point, Howard Dean was still second to John Kerry in delegates won (121 to Kerry’s 260), and the race was still early. Dave Jones, however, vehemently and angrily insisted that Dean was “out”: “His campaign is over.”

Be it noted that Dean’s campaign had sidestepped professional fundraisers, getting its money through a successful Internet drive. This fundraising strategy employed by Dean, and by Ron Paul, was carried forward with even greater success by Obama in 2008 and is going forward for 2012 as well.

A more wide-open race generates more voter interest, by allowing voters more choice and more participation.** The best chance Democrats have to air issues of concern to the public is their primary season, in Democratic primaries and caucuses. Corporate media outlets are often less than eager to devote air time and print space to topics that they have failed embarrassingly to report.

Too bad they knocked Dean out.

Meanwhile, the filing belatedly reviewed showed that Americans for Jobs etc received $663,000 from 26 donors. The “Progressive Values” fell out of the basket. The donors had a strikingly not-progressive profile. Two-thirds of the donations were corporate, with two executives donating $100,000 each and another retired executive donating $50,000. Another $80,000 came from attorneys. The Torricelli for Senate Committee kicked in $50,000. Six labor unions donated $200,000; thus the laborers’ union and Loral corporation gave to the same folks. Expenditures, besides the half-million for television, included $40,000 to Jones’ firm, DWJ Consultants, and $15,000 to Skadden, Arps for legal expenses.

It would be odd if the highly experienced Kenneth Gross, with Americans etc from the beginning, did not foresee the dysfunctional impact of the Osama ad. The GOP, after all, had already used images of bin Laden and Saddam with great effect against Tom Daschle in South Dakota and even against decorated Vietnam veteran Max Cleland in Georgia.

Also, more expeditious filing would have been becoming from such experts. Referring to campaign finance in the Clinton White House, Gross said that all contributions to a party have to be reported and the contributors identified, and that the system falls apart when the parties try to find loopholes in disclosure (MSNBC interview, Oct. 30, 1996). In the same interview, Gross also said the amount of soft money in the system needs to be cut down.

Gross was a go-to speaker on campaign finance reform. Time quoted him as saying that the campaign finance law “doesn’t mean a whole lot,” and that “It’ll affect the process only at the margins.” The New York host committee for the Republican national convention stated an aim of raising $20M for the 2004 convention (which it exceeded handsomely); Gross earlier expressed an opinion that the new law does not limit fundraising for conventions.

When I asked Jones whether he was aware that Gross was representing the GOP convention, he said coldly that he did not get into his attorney’s other clients.

And there, gentlemen and ladies, you have one difference between Republicans and Democrats, in the horse race, in a nutshell: There is very little chance that any GOP candidate or group would naively hire a Democrat.

It must be agreed that the immediate beneficiary of the fall of Gephardt and Dean was John Kerry, whose biggest contributor was coincidentally SkadArps. Even Gross, who donated to Bob Dole in the 1990s, donated (modestly) to Kerry in 2004. Bush, after all, scared a lot of people. But Kerry was not the ultimate beneficiary. Corporatist commentators George F. Will, Charles Krauthammer, and Bill Kristol were openly gleeful over what they called Dean’s “implosion,” although previously they insisted fervently, not looking happy, that the White House was eager to have Dean as an opponent. (Krauthammer, Kristol and Will did not discuss the Osama bin Laden ad.)

As I wrote back then, “If corporate shills for the Bush team in the media were gleeful, it’s a safe bet that the Bush team was, also.”

I should have put money on it. With the twenty-twenty of hindsight, we now know that Kerry was not the most electable, the strongest, the best qualified candidate to oppose the Bush White House and Team Bush. Kerry ran a stronger campaign in 2004 than did Gore in 2000, but Howard Dean could have run an even better one.

The entire series of events drew less press coverage in 2004 than it should have drawn—like the efforts at vote suppression and intimidation. The New York Times reported the story only as an intramural fight among Dems. The Washington Post barely touched it. (The Post fought against Dean like a wounded wolverine, running a front-page story about a younger female aide in Dean’s inner circle. The Post facilitated GWBush’s reelection as it had facilitated his election, again with the corporate incentive of Bush education policies—standardized testing front and center)

*Gibbs went on to become press secretary for the Obama White House. Howard Dean, who should have been appointed head of Health and Human Services, was not. This is not to knock Kathleen Sebelius. The new Obama administration wisely took on board its former competitors, making a good choice in Hillary Clinton for State among others. But the White House went overboard in taking in Rahm Emanuel and leaving out Howard Dean.

Speaking of public health and public safety issues, it will be little short of a miracle if Emanuel as mayor of Chicago does anything to make the Chicago region less of a safe haven for rapists. Remember which archdiocese has had little to no successful prosecution of clergy abuse?

**I took this view in both 2004 and 2008. More commentators now discuss the same point.