Fake News

Here's a Fox News Story.

Rallying supporters in Tampa Friday, Kerry played up his performance in Thursday night's debate, in which many observers agreed the Massachusetts senator outperformed the president.

"Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!" Kerry said Friday.

. . . Kerry still trails in actual horse-race polls, but aides say his performance was strong enough to rally his base and further appeal to voters ready for a change.

"I'm metrosexual ? he's a cowboy," the Democratic candidate said of himself and his opponent.

Surprise Surprise, it turns out this story, posted at the Fox News website is not entirely accurate. I know this will come as a surprise to you, but John Kerry didn't actually say "Didn't my nails and cuticles look great?"

Nope that story was apparently an accident. Fox news printed a story that wasn't ready or something. Obviously this raises about a million questions, but, fortunately, Talking Points Memo is all over it. That's not the only post on the subject, you can scroll down and see others. It's a very odd story.

More Debate Stuff

Sidney Blumenthal provided an interesting analysis of the debate, at Salon, based on the old conflict between faith and reason (guess which one is which and win a gold star).

The more Bush pleaded the case of his own decisiveness, the more he appeared reactive. Time and again, as he attempted to halt Kerry, he accused him of "mixed signals" and "mixed messages" and "inconsistency." For Bush, certainty equals strength. His facial expressions exposed his exasperation at having to hear an opposing view. As he accused Kerry of being contradictory, it was obvious that he was peeved at being contradicted.

Kerry responded with a devastating deconstruction of Bush's epistemology. Nothing like this critique of pure reason has ever been heard in a presidential debate. "It's one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong," said Kerry. "It's another to be certain and be right, or to be certain and be moving in the right direction, or be certain about a principle and then learn new facts and take those new facts and put them to use in order to change and get your policy right. What I worry about with the president is that he's not acknowledging what's on the ground, he's not acknowledging the realities of North Korea, he's not acknowledging the truth of the science of stem cell research or of global warming and other issues. And certainty sometimes can get you in trouble."

The problem with resoluteness is that it is only a positive if the policy you are pursuing is a positive policy.

Tap Dancing

Drove around at lunch listening to Rush Limbaugh tap dance around the debates, when something struck me. Rush Limbaugh really thinks that he is fair and balanced, compared to the other networks. If you want to know how Rush Limbaugh thinks that the news organizations of America should be reporting the news, listen to his show for a while.

And, really, doesn't that tell you all you need to know about his complaints of media bias?

Inspiring Words

Reactions to the debate so far have been pretty positive for Senator Kerry, somewhat less for President Bush, more or less across the board. I particularly liked what John Podhoretz had to say about the debates. I went to Newsmax (which I hate) to see what Extremist Conservatives were saying about the debate and they linked to his article, which is just inspiring.

What was important last night was the high tedium factor. It hurts Kerry. Boredom isn't going to do anything to change the dynamics of the race in Kerry's favor. As for the president, because he's leading and because he has the enthusiastic support of his Republican base, Bush needs only to reassure people between now and Nov. 2.

So tedium actually works for him in this context.

Bush wanted to make clear that he intends to win the war in Iraq and that people think of him as a strong leader. He did so by contrasting his own consistency with John Kerry's vacillations — and he did it over and over again, until even his eyes seemed to glaze over from the repetitiveness.

"So what did you think of the debate, Martha?"

"Well I really liked it when President Bush's eyes glazed over. That's the mark of a real leader, someone who gets bored repeating the same thing over and over again."

"You know you are right, the debate was so mind-numbingly boring, it really motivated me to run right out and vote for President Bush."

I don't know, it just feels like Mr. Podhoretz protests too much.

Round the Horn (1+1)*1 This is the Time, This is the Place

OK, here's how it's going to go down. I'm going to provide the links. You are going to click on the links and read the interesting words of my fellow Liberal Coalition members. I'd hate for anything to upset the delicate balance we've achieved.

archy has a piece on questionable rhetoric and the intersection of humor and hatred.

The Yellow Doggeral Democrat has a pretty solid analysis of the debates, looking at the format of the debates as well as the content.

bloggg responds to the debates, and suggests an behindus firectomy for Senator Kerry.

Gamer's Nook reviews the debate and has some pointed questions on who looked more Pesidential.

Happy Furry Puppy Story Time make a comparison between President Bush and a certain Saturday Night Life character (probably not the one you are thinking of, but an extremely apt one).

Ricks Cafe Americaine also has a reaction to the debates, as well as a look at Senator John McCain.

Echidne of the Snakes picked up on a throwaway line from the debate that should spark a minor scandal.

For something non-debate related, The Invisible Library has a very interesting article on the Brautigan Virtual Library and Meta-Fiction.

And that's it for this week, because I have to go to a meeting. I will be back in a bit with my own scintillating commentary on the debates (maybe), but I will say that so far several people have commented how well they thought Senator Kerry did.

Ugly Rhetoric

There is a very good article at Salon about the depths the Republican Party has stooped too in order to scare voters, and comparing it to the red scare era.

Historian Alan Brinkley, the provost of Columbia University, agrees that even during the height of the Cold War, scathing rhetoric that called into question the loyalty or patriotism of a presidential candidate was deemed too extreme. "This kind of rhetoric never would have come into a presidential campaign during the '50s or '60s. It would come from people widely dismissed as extremists -- people on the margin of the party who were tolerated or perhaps quietly encouraged -- but never from anyone identified as the party. Now it has migrated to the very center of the campaign."

The article also competently notes that many of the claims coming out of main stream Republican Party officials, such as the Vice President or House Speaker Dennis Hastert first appeared on the Rush Limbaugh program. This has to come as a bit of a shock to those who think that Rush Limbaugh's effect on the Republican Party is minimal.

The article also discusses the reaction of our "liberal media" to these attacks.

. . . mainly the press has treated this Republican rhetoric as just another development on the campaign trail. A CNN report this week, noting that Kerry had criticized Bush for bungling the war on terror, concluded it was fair to say "both sides can now be described as trying to politically exploit the issue," as if Republicans charging that terrorists would prefer a Kerry victory were the same as Democrats critiquing Bush's foreign policy.

The Washington Post's Sept. 24 article also stretched when trying to show balance by pointing to "questionable rhetoric" on the Democratic side equivalent to Sen. Hatch's suggestion that terrorists are working hard to elect Kerry. The Post's example? The crude sexual pun comedian Whoopi Goldberg had made at Bush's expense at a celebrity fundraiser for Kerry this summer.

It's a good article and well worth checking out.

The Winter Soldier

Suzanne Fields writes another column on the women vote today. That part isn't too exciting, other than that she doesn't spend any time wondering why nobody wants to analyze the "White Male" vote.

But she does include this history rewriting section.

Women, it seems to me, were turned off more by the replays of his slurs against the soldiers he left behind in Vietnam. It was one thing to attack the war, but quite another to attack the men fighting it.

When he described the American soldiers he left behind as guilty of raping, beheading and burning villages, the tales of his own heroism became suspect. Would he similarly mock the service and sacrifice of soldiers fighting in Iraq in what he calls "the wrong war"? Ask any wife, mother or daughter of a fighting man if that influences the way she weighs the candidates this fall.

Here are the questions before us. Were the accusations John Kerry read, and had entered into the congressional record, accurate (or as accurate as possible for the time)? And did John Kerry place the blame for such accusations squarely on the feet of the American Soldier?

The answer to the first one, as much as you might not want to believe it, soldiers in Vietnam did terrible, terrible things. I wish they hadn't, but they did. Senator Kerry's testimony was largely accurate by any serious historical standard. My Quiet Life has dedicated some time to reviewing this issue. But, of course, we are being asked not to judge his testimony by history, but by ideology.

Secondly, was John Kerry's mission to tear down and humiliate the American soldier? No, it was to decry the decisions that had led to a break down in military discipline. Somewhere along the way, these sort of actions became acceptable, from an institutional standpoint. Soldiers knew they could burn villages, or rape Vietnamese girls, and there would be little to no personal consequences to their actions. Once you put soldiers in a position where they know they can give into their darker impulses without consequences, than some will.

Of course, many, if not most, soldiers had an internalized moral code that kept them from doing such awful things. But some didn't. And the natural consequences followed. This is also what is so wrong with Abu Ghraib. Not what the individual soldiers did, which is bad enough, but that somewhere along the way the sort of brutality committed there became acceptable.

In fact it is a betrayal of our Soldiers that such lawlessness was allowed to exist, and fortunately, for the most part, it is not allowed today.

So to return to Suzanne Field's question, John Kerry told the truth in his testimony. Let me quote from My Quiet life.

John Kerry did his duty as a soldier, and he did it honorably. He then came home, and did his duty as a responsible citizen of this country. He spoke out. I think Dwight D. Eisenhower put it best:

Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels -- men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, we may never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Dead on, in my opinion.

Coulter

Here is a sane and reasonable analysis of the importance of your vote in the Presidential election, from an interview Ann gave to Amazon.Com.

"Insofar as the survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry, I'd say 2004 is as big as it gets."

Just in case you missed it, Ann Repeated it a moment later, in answer to what she thought the big issue of the campaign should be.

"I repeat: The survival of the Republic is threatened by the election of John Kerry. I'd say that's the big one."

When asked what the five most important books one could read in order to understand the upcoming election she listed High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Slander, Treason, How to Talk to a Liberal (If you Must), and the Bible. Only one of those books was not written by Ann Coulter. Kind of supports my theory that she's only in it for the money.

And to wrap things up, she had this to say about what a Kerry Presidency might lead to.

"Quite possibly the destruction of the Republic."

Nice to see Ann has it all in perspective.

An Interesting Question

Rich Lowry, in his latest piece, poses a really interesting question.

The Bush/Kerry tie among women has engendered much commentary about how "the gender gap has disappeared." Actually, the gap is as yawning as ever. Bush still leads Kerry among white men by double digits, a considerable "gap" among a certain "gender." But the media has never dubbed the GOP lead among men a "gender gap" quite worthy of endless commentary and dozens of Kennedy School panels.

Yeah, if we are going to focus endlessly on why women (or Blacks, or Hispanics, or Muslims) are going to vote a certain way, why don't we devote an equal amount of time to analyzing the White Male and why he votes a certain way.

Well one reason is that we White Males (in the interest of full disclosure I am in fact a White Male) are allowed to be individuals. As a White Male I am allowed to vote based on my analysis of the candidates and which one of them will do a better job. All the other genders (and races and ethnicities) have to vote based on their allegiance to their category. That doesn't mean like they can't influence their decision and vote against what the majority of their category want, but in general they are influenced by their race or gender to vote a certain way.

Let me give you a visual metaphor. Imagine two pie charts one for the White Male, and one for Women. The charts measure ideas and influences that push a person to vote a certain way. The White Male chart is empty, he is free to be pushed or to push himself any direction he likes. On the other hand the Woman chart has a big slice of pie, maybe 35%, already taken out (which says, apparently, "Women Vote Democratic"). So she only gets to fill 65% of her pie with other influences and decisions.

White Males, as we see, are just not influenced at all by their societal position or their race. Frankly it's just coincidence that many White Males (but not me) are going to end up voting for President Bush. It's almost like we were influenced by our societal position to vote Republican. But clearly that's not the case.

I'm going to turn the glib sarcasm off for a moment and state the obvious. Everybody feels some pressure based on their skin color or their gender (not to mention region and religion) to look at issues a certain way, and that includes White Males. Due to centuries of being at the top of the heap, however, White Males are pretty well conditioned not to think about those pressures, but to assume whatever decisions they make are based purely on reason (unlike the more emotional women or ethnicities). This is crap. White Men are just as irrational as everyone else and in some cases more so.

The reason we look at why Black voters or Women voters act a certain way, but don't care why White Men vote a certain way, is because that's the way we've set up the Game. White Men are rational, nobody else is. The other side to the issue is that Republicans obviously don't want to be known as the "White Male" party. It makes them look like jerks.

Buying In

Karl Rove and President Bush are taking something of a gamble in how they conduct and hold rallies. They assume that this race will not be settled by the undecided voters but by the base. This is an assertion we've discussed here before, but now that we are down to the wire it's hard to say who's right and who's wrong.

At any rate the Bush Campaign's specific tactics were covered in a New York Times story by David M. Halbfinger.

The tactic points up a stark difference between the presidential campaigns: while Senator John Kerry is using his rallies and forums to try to reach undecided voters and to close the deal with standoffish Democrats, Mr. Bush is packing his audiences with supporters who must identify themselves as such in questionnaires and whipping them into brigades ready to blitz crucial districts to get every last voter to the polls.

Kerry aides scoff at the invitation-only audiences and what they say is the shanghai-ing of volunteers. "We don't require oaths of allegiance, and we don't take people captive," said Tom Shea, director of the Kerry campaign in Florida, after turning out close to 10,000 people for a rally in Orlando last Tuesday where, he said, 700 people signed up to help.

But Donald P. Green, a professor of political science at Yale and the author of "Get Out the Vote! How to Increase Voter Turnout," said Mr. Bush's strategy was inspired. "There's a basic principle in experimental psychology, that the hand teaches the heart," Professor Green said. "You've now made phone calls for George Bush; that helps solidify your commitment to the campaign. If you weren't enthusiastic and committed already, you might be now."

It's a truism that if you contribute to a candidate, whether it's dollars or sweat, you are definitely going to vote for him. It's also hard to calculate how much some of these Bush Supporters might be able to influence their neighbors, families or friends.

On the other hand, I have to say I agree with the Kerry Campaign; by forcing loyalty pledges and work on the campaign to just see the President, it just shows how weak the President's message really is. He's the President of the United States of America. That makes him my President and yours. So why should he be so cowardly as to forbid me listening to his speech (it goes without saying that I'm not going to sign a loyalty pledge).

There is another interesting paragraph on how President Bush looks at these sorts of gatherings. ". . . Mr. Bush likes to call his retail politicking "fertilizing the grass roots,. . . " Too many jokes that can be made with that statement.

The Good Old Days

Bruce Bartlett's article today is on how presidential politics have changed since the good old days. Back in the good old days, before focus groups and the "science" of polling, it was hard for politicians to know just want voters wanted. But nowadays its easy.

Politicians are too busy raising money and journalists are too busy faking documents to bother with talking to real people. Instead, they rely on public opinion polls and focus groups arranged by professional pollsters to tell them what people are thinking. Gone are the days when a politician would figure out for himself how to vote. Today, all he wants to know is which way the is wind blowing.

John Kerry is a perfect example of the danger of this approach. On the day he had to cast a vote for the Iraq invasion, the wind was blowing in a pro-war direction, so he voted "yea." Then later, when the wind had reversed course, he voted to deny funding for the troops in Iraq. Thus, he was simultaneously pro-war and antiwar.

Well actually I'm not sure this plays out. Had the polls really changed by the time he voted against the $87 Billion? Let's see.

The vote for the approval of the $87 Billion was on October 17, 2003 (my birthday). At that time according to the Pew Charitable Trust, support for the war (or, those who thought going to war was the right decision) was still around 60%. Down from previous highs, but still greater than 50%.

But underlying this "critique" is the idea that Senator Kerry made his decision strictly based on poll numbers. I assume they are taking this tack because they want to claim that President Bush, no matter how boneheaded some of his decisions may be, at least he's not listening to the polls. No, President Bush is a man who governs from the heart, and even if his plans totally fail, at least he's a man for all of that.

Unfortunately we have another example of proof by assertion. Bartlett doesn't have any proof or even evidence that Senator Kerry voted based on polls; but he's comfortable making that the center of his argument anyway. Assuming this works, remember "Sending Me Money is More Fun than Ten Trips to Disneyland."

Debates and Popularity

The election in 2000 was about personality. George W. Bush was more likeable than Al Gore, so Bush won. It was a lot like a High School Election. Al Gore was the annoying loser who promised that we could all work together to build a great homecoming float and that he'd see that Study Hall was kept quiet. George W. Bush was the guy who said nothing about boring issues like that, made some vague promises and seemed to suggest a party might happen after the election that we'd all be invited to. And frankly, Candidate Bush wasn't boring and seemed like an OK guy (and it's not like it matters all that much).

This time we aren't under any illusions about the Presidency being unimportant. So the question is how are we to judge the debates? Well there's a certain faction of the media that will whole heartedly support President Bush, no matter how he does. There is a much much smaller group who will support Senator Kerry.

The majority of the media, worried about cries of "Liberal Bias" will go out of their way to be nice to President Bush, unless he totally screws up. But they won't want it to be a blow out either; the media wants ratings, and a close race means more ratings. So barring any real screw up or melt down, the media will play the debates down the middle, I think.

Adam Clymer, writing an op-ed at the Times today, talks about the debates, and puts front and center the role the media plays in how people see them.

. . . the debates provide critical moments when the public pays attention, when voters can measure one candidate against the other. And the press will, as it has for years, do a creditable job of summarizing what is said, broadcasting the encounters live and even printing transcripts.

That will not be enough. For just as the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey showed that voters learned what candidates stood for by watching debates, other research has shown that the public's views are influenced by what the news media emphasize.

The immediate judgments of television watchers can be changed by analysts citing a moment as a blunder or an overall presentation as strong or weak, commanding or uninformed, human or condescending. Often that impression has not even been conveyed by a seriously developed journalistic case, but by the trivia of television sound bites or reports in newspapers, like Al Gore's sighs or his flawed recollection of just who accompanied him on a trip to a disaster in Texas. Or when George H. W. Bush glanced at his watch, a movement interpreted to prove that he was uncomfortable debating Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

My biggest concern is Conservatives saying, "Look, the Democrats said that President Bush was too dumb to read scripted responses provided by Karl Rove, and it turns out they were wrong. Clearly President Bush is the right guy." Which is kind of what happened in 2000.

Willful Stupidity

Here's my plan. I'm going to say something really stupid, and hope that you believe it too. I'm going to trust that you aren't going to subject my statement to any scrutiny whatsoever. No attempts to independently verify my statement, and no attempts to subject my statement to the rigors of common sense. I'm hoping you will just accept it at face value.

Here's my statement.

Sending Make me a Commentator!!! Money is more fun the ten trips to Disneyland.

Yes I know that this statement seems stupid, and you could probably disprove it in a moment (by say, sending me money and finding out that while it's fun for me, it's not as much fun for you). But I'm hoping you won't.

It's this kind of willful stupidity that animates much conservative discourse these days, it strikes me. Take this statement from an article by Michael Barone.

At New York University on Sept. 20, Kerry said, "We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure." There is an obvious tension between this and Kerry's statement on Aug. 9 that, knowing what he knows today, he would have voted again to authorize military action in Iraq and his statement last Dec. 17 that "those who doubt that we are safer with (Saddam Hussein's) capture don't have the judgment to be president."

Barone just hopes that his audience will be too stupid (or too filled with hatred for Kerry) to go and verify what Kerry might have meant. More and more it seems like the Conservative plan is to portray Kerry as a kind of schizophrenic, whose flip-flips are less the work of a political hack, but more the delusional fits and starts of a mental patient.

But of course, applying a little knowledge and common sense to this statement soon clears it up. I don't know that there are very many serious Conservative or Liberal politicians who didn't see Saddam Hussein as a dangerous man and a problem to be dealt with. Senator Kerry thought it was (and thinks it is) his duty to authorize the President to deal with situations like this. That said, the course President Bush took with that authorization is, in Senator Kerry's mind (and my own) a terrible, terrible mistake.

Is that hard to understand? No. But, for Mr. Barone's sake, please don't think about it too hard, and just accept it at face value. And also remember, sending me money is more fun than ten trips to Disneyland.

New Quote

And a new format. And a new Quotes page. And yes, I'm up at 5:23 AM on a Sunday to see this gets done. That's how dedicated I am.