# Posted 9:09 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

JOURNALISTS LAUGH AT ROMNEY: Mitt Romney should be grateful that NBC includes nothing but words in its transcripts for Meet the Press. On MTP transcripts, there are no parenthetical remarks about relevant sounds such as (Applause) or (Laughter). Consider the following exchange:

MR. RUSSERT: Byron York, the one thing that Governor Romney has done, however, is talked about his positions on abortion, on gay rights, on stem cell research, and his positions have evolved on all of those.

MS. GOODWIN: “Evolved” is a nice word.

MR. RUSSERT: Doesn’t that complicate his problem? You heard Senator Kennedy talking about divorce and birth control.

MR. YORK: Right.

Pretty normal stuff. But if MTP transcripts included more than just words, here's how the exchange would've gone:

MR. RUSSERT: Byron York, the one thing that Governor Romney has done, however, is talked about his positions on abortion, on gay rights, on stem cell research, and his positions have evolved on all of those.

MS. GOODWIN: “Evolved” is a nice word.

[Spontaneous burst of raucous laughter from usually poker-faced journalists.]

MR. RUSSERT: Doesn’t that complicate his problem? You heard Senator Kennedy talking about divorce and birth control.

MR. YORK: Right.

When you say that something couldn't pass the laugh test, you usually aren't expecting to be taken literally. But Romney's changes of heart are so convenient, it seems hard even for journalists to feign objectivity.

Labels: Flip-flops, Media, Mitt Romney, Tim Russert

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# Posted 1:07 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

ANOTHER POST NOT ABOUT ISRAEL...but still about Meet the Press. Russert finished off the hour with a roundtable featuring David Broder, Gwen Ifill, Howard Kurtz and Roger Simon. (No, not that Roger Simon.)

It's amazing to watch how these veteran journalists talk about Obama and Hillary. They are all acutely aware of how the coverage favors of Obama, yet they can't stop themselves from praising Obama and criticising Hillary. I listen and I think to myself, I'm just about ready to put money on Obama winning the nomination.

First comes Obama's religion:

MR. RUSSERT: David Broder, my ear heard something that I had not heard from Democratic candidates in some time. Up front, Senator Obama began his speech with references to his faith, and then came back to that same issue in the speech. Let’s watch.

(Videotape, Saturday)


SEN. OBAMA: Giving all praise and honor to God for bringing us together here today.
It was in these neighborhoods that I received the best education that I ever had and where I learned the meaning of my Christian faith.

(End of videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: What’s that about?

Well, Tim, if your memory were a bit sharper, you might remember how just after the 2005 election everyone was talking about Tim Kaine broke the Democratic mold by focusing on his personal religion. Joe Lieberman also talks a lot about being a Buddhist or Hindu or whatever he is.

On a related note, Hillary must be quite mad, since she has also tried to advertise the importance of her faith (for example in her autobiography), but never gets any credit for it. For that matter, Russert ought to remember how Bill Clinton constantly invoked God as president.

What's going on here, in part, is that Obama simply comes off as more sincere. I think it's very important that he used the word "Christian". This is mostly a guess, but I think that voters who care about a pol's religion are suspicious of those who subscribe to some vague, unidentified faith that involves a pleasant God everyone can be friends with. Thus, the fact that Lieberman is specifically Jewish made his faith seem more real.

What I'm curious to know is whether Obama will talk the next step and explicitly refer not just to Christianity, but to Jesus.

The next question about Obama is how he can explain away his explicit commitments both after his election to the Senate and then in early 2006 not to run for President in 2008. Here's how Obama explained the change to Russert late last year:

SEN. OBAMA: Well, the—that is how I was thinking at that time, and, and—you know, I, I don’t want to be coy about this—given the responses that I’ve been getting over the last several months, I have thought about the possibility.

MR. RUSSERT: But it’s fair to say you’re thinking about running for president in 2008?

SEN. OBAMA: It’s fair, yes.

Insisting that he didn't want to be coy was the perfect move. Journalists love self-awareness. Did Obama provide any real explanation of why his solemn commitment to serve the voters of Illinois was no longer valid? No, but he won over Tim Russert anyhow:

MR. RUSSERT: Howard Kurtz, no parsing, no denial, saying in his own words, not being coy, that’s somewhat unusual for many politicians when they clearly change their mind.

And then this:

MR. RUSSERT: Is that how [Obama]’s going to run, as the outsider?

MR. SIMON: Yes. He is not the candidate of Washington. Hillary Clinton is the candidate of Washington. That’s his message.

None of the panelists disagreed. In contrast, here's what they said about Hillary:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to Hillary Clinton. She was in New Hampshire yesterday. Her first appearance there in 10 years. And it was quite striking how many times she was asked about her position on the war. Here she is being asked in Berlin, New Hampshire, by a voter, a very serious question. Let’s watch that exchange.

(Videotape)

Unidentified Man: And I want to know if right here, right now, once and for all, without nuance, you can say that that war authorization vote was a mistake. And the reason I want to ask is because a lot of other senators have already done so, including some Republicans and including one of your competitors, Senator Edwards. And the reason I ask personally is because I, and I think a lot of other Democratic primary voters, until we hear you say that, we’re not going to hear all these other great things you’re saying.

SEN: HILLARY CLINTON (D-NY): Well, I have said, and I will repeat it, that, knowing what I know now, I would never have voted for it. But I also—and, I mean, obviously you have to weigh everything as you make your decision. I have taken responsibility for my vote. The mistakes were made by this president, who misled this country and this Congress into a war that should not have been waged.

(End videotape)

If you listen to the MT podcast, you will hear a few tepid applause for Hillary. Being anti-Bush is not enough. The primary voters want an anti-war candidate.

Here's how the roundtable analyzed the situation:

MR. SIMON: It’s dead serious. The questions come because she refuses to make Iraq part of her stump speech. And I think, and many disagree with me, that her current position not to apologize, not to say it was a mistake, is an untenable position for her...

MR. BRODER: A reporter from The Post, Chris Cillizza, who was up there, reported that the man who asked Senator Clinton that question said afterwards, “I’m not satisfied with that answer, and I can’t vote for her until she gives me a better answer.”

MR. RUSSERT: Howie Kurtz:

MR. KURTZ: Tim, it also feeds the image that the many journalists have of Senator Clinton as being a kind of a cold and calculating and triangulating politician.

What has the poor woman done to deserve all this?

Labels: Hillary, Media, Obama, Tim Russert

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# Posted 12:32 AM by Ariel David Adesnik  

THIS POST IS NOT ABOUT ISRAEL: The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be heartbreaking and maddening, but it is also intellectually compelling. A Gordian knot is an irresistible challenge to all those who begin thinking about how to untie it.

Anyhow, other things have been going on in the world this past week. Apparently there is a still a war going on in Iraq, and we're fighting it. No matter how dark the tunnel gets without a light at the end, some refuse to even acknowledge that we have an option other than defeating our adversaries. Minority Leader John Boehner told Tim Russert last Sunday that:

I believe that victory in Iraq is the only option...who doesn’t believe that if we withdraw and leave that chaos in the Middle East that the terrorists won’t follow us here to the United States? Victory, victory is the only option.

Well, victory is certainly the preferable option. And there may be some hope that Gen. Petraeus can produce an outcome worthy of the name. If he doesn't, the only responsible approach will be to ask which of our objectives are dispensable. Instead, I expect politicians on both sides to avoid the question by insisting either that the war was the other guys' fault or that the other guys just want to cut and run.

Yeah, I'm feeling cynical right now.

Anyhow, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Tim Russert that we need right now is "a diplomatic surge, not a troop surge." Yes, politics are integral to counterinsurgency. But so is force, and Democrats seem determined to reinforce their image as soft by pretending that only diplomacy matters.

However, Rep. Hoyer did strike a slightly more hawkish note when he said that:

The fact of the matter is we didn’t send enough troops initially, and it now is clear that one of the reasons we didn’t is because we didn’t contemplate the challenge that was confronting us.

Now, there is one way to argue that we didn't send enough troops initially but that a surge is a bad idea now. All you have to day is say that victory is no longer possible. But it seems those words are ones that Democrats are afraid to say. As Rep. Hoyer puts it:

We’re going to make recommendations. And those recommendations will be focused on success. We don’t want to fail.

Nobody does, I guess.

Labels: Iraq, John Boehner, Steny Hoyer, Tim Russert

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# Posted 11:13 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

EDWARDS ON HEALTH CARE: Edwards has clearly read the playbook for second-tier primary candidates. Appeal to the base by swinging away from the center, since front-runner will hesitate to do anything that compromises her chances in the general election.

And what if the second-tier primary candidate gets the nomination on the basis of positions that are hard to defend in the general? No reason to worry about that now. Instead, shoot for the moon as Edwards did on Sunday morning.

In his interview with Edwards, Tim Russert brought up the subject of healthcare by playing this clip from Edwards' recent speech:

Can we finally say we stand now and forever for every single man, woman and child in America having health care, universal health care? We will leave no one behind. We will not allow a single family or a single child in America to not have health care coverage and to not have the health care that they need and deserve.

As Russert said,

Universal health care, noble goal, but that’s 47 million more men, women and children. How much would that cost and what kind of plan would you propose?

SEN. EDWARDS: It’d cost between 90 and 120 billion a year once it’s—once it’s fully implemented.

Per year. And where's the money going to come from?

MR. RUSSERT: Would you be willing to raise taxes in order to help pay for this?

SEN. EDWARDS: Yes, we’ll have to raise taxes. The, the only way you can pay for a health care plan, from 90--that costs anywhere from $90 billion to $120 billion is there has to be a revenue source. The revenue source for paying for the plan that I’m proposing is, is first we get rid of George Bush’s tax cuts for people who make over $200,000 a year.

Edwards has raised the ante. Will Hillary match it? How about Obama?

Labels: 2008, Healthcare, John Edwards, Tim Russert

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# Posted 10:33 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

RUSSERT DISMANTLES EDWARDS: Can a Democratic candidate who voted for the war now run against it? If Sunday morning was any indication, the answer is a definite 'no'. Edwards' strategy was to admit unequivocally that he was fundamentally wrong about "the most important vote [he] cast" during his six years in the Senate. But candor was not enough to rescue the former Senator from North Carolina.

The first question you have to answer once you admit you were wrong is "Why were you so wrong?" Edwards said WMD:

For the same reason a lot of people were wrong. You know, we—the intelligence information that we got was wrong. I mean, tragically wrong. On top of that I’d—beyond that, I went back to former Clinton administration officials who gave me sort of independent information about what they believed about what was happening with Saddam’s weapon—weapons programs. They were also wrong.

Edwards mentioned those same Clinton administraiton officials later on, as well. He made a clear decision not to insist that he was misled (passive voice) or that (active voice) the White House distorted the evidence.

Those are bad arguments for precisely the reasons Edwards pointed out: there was a bipartisan consensus on the (wrong) intelligence. But being misled is also the only way to shift blame from oneself to the White House. Instead, Edwards' position makes it seem like Bush himself read the intelligence correctly -- quite a liability if Edwards had to run, for example, against John McCain.

The next question a formerly pro-war candidate has to face is why certain Democrats, say Barack Obama, were making all the same arguments against the war back in 2002 that Edwards is now. Here is the quote from Obama, circa 2002, that Russert read aloud:

I know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military is a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda. I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

That's a quotation we're going to hear quite often between now and New Hampshire. And it really forces every anti-war primary voter to ask what Edwards can possibly offer that Obama doesn't.

But wait, it gets worse. Edwards wants us to believe that he supported the war because of WMD, but as Russert pointed out, Edwards explicitly refused to renounce his vote for the war as late as October 2004, when 1000 American soldiers were already dead. His explanation? None. He just dodged the question.

Personally, I would say that even this rather harsh summary hasn't done justice to Russert's cross-examination. It was probably the best perfomance I've seen him or anyone else give in well over a year. I say, watch the video or at least read the transcript.

But the real damage done on Sunday morning may not have been to John Edwards. It was to Hillary Clinton. She will find it even harder to answer all of the same questions Edwards was asked -- except for why she decided to repudiate her vote for the war. But once she does that, she'll have to explain why she waited more than four years to admit hear mistake, in comparison to Edwards' one and a half.

The real winner on Sunday morning was, of course, Barack Obama. As Russert demonstrated, it's not just the charisma Obama has. Just as importantly, he made the right call on the issue that has become most important to Democratic primary voters. And he can go into a general election without having to explain why he changed his mind about the most important issue of the day.

Labels: 2008, Iraq, John Edwards, Tim Russert

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# Posted 7:35 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

SUNDAY MORNING ROUND-UP HIGHLIGHTS: There's been no round-up for a couple of weeks because of the technical problems I was having. But taking that time off gave me a chance to rethink the whole idea. Grades were fun at the beginning, but now they don't seem to provide much value-added. And one-sentence summaries often take up space without providing content

Instead, I thought I'd post some of the highlights from each week's broadcasts. That way, anyone can engage the topic, rather than just those who saw the show or listened to the podcast. Will anyone be disappointed by this change? As far as I know, NJ from NYC is the only one who has ever expressed much affection for the round-up format. So with apologies to him, let's go to highlight #1. Here's Tim Russert talking to Arkansas governor and 2008 contender Mike Huckabee (photo above):

MR. RUSSERT: I want to ask you a couple things that you said earlier in your political career. “Huckabee ... explained why he left pastoring for politics. ‘I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.’” And then this: “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.” Would you, as president, consider America a Christian nation and try to lead it as—into a situation as being a more Christian nation?

GOV. HUCKABEE: I think it’s dangerous to say that we are a nation that ought to be pushed into a Christian faith by its leaders. However, I make no apology for my faith. My faith explains me. It means that I believe that we’re all frail, it means that we’re all fragile, that all of us have faults, none of us are perfect, that all of us need redemption. We are a nation of faith. It doesn’t necessarily have to be mine. But we are a nation that believes that faith is an important part of describing who we are, and our generosity, and our sense of optimism and hope. That does describe me.

MR. RUSSERT: But when you say...

GOV. HUCKABEE: I’m appalled, Tim, when someone says, “Tell me about your faith,” and they say, “Oh, my faith doesn’t influence my public policy.” Because when someone says that, it’s as if they’re saying, “My faith isn’t significant, it’s not authentic, it’s not so consequential that it affects me.” Well, truthfully my faith does affect me. But it doesn’t make me think I’m better than someone, it makes me know that I’m not as good as I really need to be.

MR. RUSSERT: But when you say “take this nation back for Christ,” what does that say to Jews, Muslims, agnostics, atheists? What...

GOV. HUCKABEE: Well, I think I—I’d probably phrase it a little differently today. But I don’t want to make people think that I’m going to replace the Capitol dome with a steeple or change the legislative sessions for prayer meetings. What it does mean is that people of faith do need to exercise their sense of responsibility toward education, toward health, toward the environment. All of those issues, for me, are driven by my sense that this is a wonderful world that God’s made, we’re responsible for taking care of it. We’re responsible for being responsible managers and stewards of it. I think that’s what faith ought to do in our lives if we’re in public service.

I'd say that Russert was doing his best to help Huckabee establish his credibility with Christian conservatives. With Romney hurting on that front, such help is especially valuable.

As a matter of substance, I think the quotation in boldface above perfectly captures the way that many Americans want their elected officials to talk about faith. We protect the separation of church and state by granting no special privileges to any faith, not by checking our values at the door.

This approach clearly raises the question of whether a religious majority might impose its will on a secular minority. However, the Bill of Rights provides all of us with strong protection on that front.

In contrast, advocates of separation faith from policy have to answer the question that conservatives love to ask: Was it wrong for Martin Luther King Jr. to draw on his Christian faith to inspire the civil rights movement?

Sometimes, religious values will have a polarizing effect on politics. Yet values are indispensable to democratic deliberation. If, as Huckabee says, we use our faith not to condemn others but to challenge ourselves, religious values can have a more positive influence on politics.

Labels: Martin Luther King, Mike Huckabee, Religion, Tim Russert

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