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William Saletan at Slate.com almost seems to get it in regard to the culpability of the media in ruining good candidates with unfair coverage. In his Iowa Caucus blog he writes:

3. Dean was Gored. Want to know how Al Gore lost the presidency in October 2000? You just saw it: a relentless focus on one candidate’s record and comments. That’s understandable (and I participated in it), because Dean seemed to be on his way to the nomination, just as Gore seemed to be on his way to the presidency in October 2000. You always scrutinize most carefully the person who, barring intervention, is likely to win. The catch is that you’re the intervention. Some of the criticism of Dean was way over the line. (The next pundit who scolds Dean’s wife for not campaigning should have to sleep on the couch for a year.)

If he’d stopped right there, it would have been the indictment that the media deserve. Unfortunately, he draws entirely the wrong moral:

But some of it was well-earned by Dean. Moral: When the camera’s on you, shape up

In other words, it’s not the media’s fault for intervening in the political process, it’s the candidate’s fault for making the mistakes that give the media the opening.

I am reminded of a meeting the officers of the Oberlin College Lesbian and Gay Union had with then-new college president, S. Frederick Starr, in 1984. Among other items on our agenda, we expressed our concern at some recent anti-gay incidents in the Oberlin community (a recent off-campus gay bashing of a student, an effigy burning, complaints about the Gay Union’s annual conference occuring on the same dates as a parents’ weekend) and asked what Starr felt should be done in the future. His response was to say that if we didn’t want public attention we shouldn’t be so visible. In other words, it was our fault when we were attacked, since we made ourselves vulnerable through visibility. And he had nothing to say about the culpability of the attackers.

It was morally bankrupt in 1984, and it’s just as odious 20 years later.

Bush’s space initiative is a huge fabrication of lies, since it can’t possibly be done for the amount budgeted. The facts are considered by Gregg Easterbrook, absolutely destroying the slim credibility of Bush’s Moon/Mars space plan, on the simple basis of cost alone. And, of course, the first casualty of the redirection of $12 billion of NASA’s budget, is the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Black & Brown debate in Iowa on Sunday evening was the worst ever. I simply couldn’t get through it. The questioners were sub-sub-standard, the questions themselves, far worse. Is the political process served by such amateur-night forums?

Well, I’ve been saying it for a long time, but now it’s being said by others: the media are doing to Dean what they did to Gore in 2000, reporting their canned story instead of facts. Salon has an article by Eric Boehlert today on The Media vs. Howard Dean, and it’s a stemwinder.

I’m actually troubled by a number of things about Dean’s responses to accusations of inconsistency. I am not entirely satisfied with the way he has handled any of the quibbles over his record (and they are quibbles — the same consistency is not being required of the other candidates).

For instance, I don’t think he handled the Confederate flag controversy as well as he should, though in that case, he was stabbed in the back by those who should have supported him. As has been widely reported, he originally delivered the remark to a minority audience in early 2003, who applauded him. When he delivered it again, and the media pit bulls grabbed hold of it, his original audience did not defend him, instead choosing to get all bent out of shape about Confederate flags. Free clue: he wasn’t supporting the Confederate flag — he was talking about people who do so and making an important point about how much those with whom we disagree might very well share economic interests. But Dean has not made this point and instead of showing that he could turn the flap into an opportunity to explore the whole issue, he caved and apologized. Perhaps he was just cutting his losses. In any event, he did do a better job explaining the issue in later debates without referring to the Confederate flag, so perhaps this was OK, after all.

The other main issue that bothers me is the middle-class tax cut. Dean proposes rolling back the entire Bush tax plan, which when it came to a vote actually included a number of middle-class tax cuts incorporated into the bill by Democrats. Other candidates want to retain these tax cuts (which average $300 or $1400 per year, depending on which candidate is talking). I can see an argument for both. Dean’s case is that retaining the tax cut won’t come close to restoring the net loss in services and benefits to middle class taxpayers that were necessary to pay for the huge tax cuts. Dean’s point is that the net gain to the middle class of rolling back the entire Bush tax plan as passed will be far greater than the meager benefits of the Democratic-sponsored middle-class tax cut. But he’s not making this case as forcefully as necessary. Yes, he’s making the argument, but he’s not closing the deal, he’s not drawing out the implications of the details — he seems to think that sticking with a rundown of all the things that cost more because of Bush’s global budget is sufficient, without closing the circle and making the point that it’s all connected, that you can’t look at one without the other.

It seems to me that currently the momentum is with John Edwards, who is not a terrible candidate (he’ll be a great candidate in 2008, I think). Edwards’ best talking point is the idea the Bush economic program is shifting the burden of financing government from capital to labor. By this, Edwards really means that the tax system is being made less progressive, shifting much of the tax burden from the wealthy (capital) to the worker (labor), as well as shifting the benefits the government provides more and more to the wealthy. It’s an excellent point, exactly correct.

And it’s the point Dean should be making when asked about his plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts in their entirety.

NPR reports that the ACLU is going to bat for Rush Limbaugh, filing an amicus brief in the case against the unsealing of Rush’s medical records for the purpose of determining if Rush went “doctor shopping” to get OxyContin.

I hear on Mike Malloy’s Friday night program (MikeMalloy.net, with archives at WhiteRoseSociety.org) that some in the media are calling George Bush’s space initiative a “Kennedy moment.”

What will really happen is, of course, that the whole proposal will be abandoned after the election (should he, unfortunately, win), and never funded, just as was the case with “No Child Left Behind.” If it isn’t, it’s because, as Malloy suggests, the real agenda is military: to create the first military outpost on the moon.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate these people in the Bush administration (or the “Bush crime family,” as Malloy likes to call them)?

In Fixed Opinions, or The Hinge of History, Joan Didion makes a chilling comparison between the mood of the country she encountered on a recent book tour with the mood of August 1914. The article is well worth reading. It is both even-handed and humble in its posing of questions. Predictably, the ever-moronic Andrew Sullivan casts this subtle and telling meditation on the mood of the country towards war in the post-9/11 period as evidence of “a certain type of decay in thinking on the intellectual left.” Sullivan has always had a knack for writing lines that have no real meaning, no external logic, outside of his own restricted and massively contradictory worldview. For instance: “Their argument about where we should go from here is essentially, ‘We shouldn’t be here in the first place.’” Er, what is self-evidently wrong with declaring that US policy has been partly responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place?

I have always been bothered by the manner in which the US government, the government of my country, tends to claim to adhere to very high ideals, but then repeatedly acts in ways that are completely antithetical to those ideals. Individual responsibility is one of the basic tenets of all of American political and civil society, yet, we do nothing in our foreign policy to try to foster responsibility on the part of other governments. Nor do we respect the sovereignty of those nations. It’s not our business to be enacting “regime change” in Iraq, at least not through direct means. The world hates us precisely because of the arrogance and hubris of a nation that claims to know what is best for everyone else, while our own house is in such an incredible mess.

Sullivan, naturally, goes off on a tangent, criticising Didion’s article for not proposing how to get out of the current situation. Well, guess what, Andrew? Your reading comprehension is about zero, since that wasn’t the purpose of the article. Sullivan is, as always, peculiarly selective in his reading of the text he criticizes. He picks and chooses the parts out of context and then mixes and matches them to create messages that were not present in what Didion wrote, only so he can then have something to hold up to ridicule.

And the criticism that Didion is in a “liberal cocoon” is ludicrous itself, as Didion is largely reporting reactions from people she has met around the country during tours promoting her books. Yes, perhaps she is likely to encounter only people who are inclined to share her part of the political continuum, but since when are the opinions of those in that part of the continuum irrelevant? Sullivan may not want to hear it, but, in fact, public opinion polls, pointedly not limited only to one end of the political spectrum, have repeatedly shown huge doubts about the President’s war plans. The sentiments Didion relates are right in line with the positions held by the majority of Americans as demonstrated in those polls. Sullivan may very well think the polls are incorrect, but he doesn’t address them. He also chooses to ignore Didion’s distinction between what the American public thinks and what the administration in Washington and the media in Washington and New York are presenting as the spectrum of debate. It is Sullivan who is in the cocoon, because he is completely wrapped up in the Washington/New York political-media cocoon and can’t see that what Didion reports does, in fact, matter — that the American people are not really satisfied with the move to war.

But, it gets worse. Sullivan says the core of Didon’s argument is that Israel is the source of all problems. Well, that’s not at all what Didion said. Instead, she takes the situation of the US relationship to Israel and the history of it as one example of the kind of political subject that has become impossible to discuss rationally. Sullivan’s reaction demonstrates that Didion is spot on in her analysis, since he can only demonstrate exactly how far his knee jerks when anyone merely raises the question of whether or not the historical US policy on Isreal has been good or bad for the US as a whole.

I don’t know why I bother reading Sullivan. He is so clearly out to lunch and unable to think clearly on any issue that I should just do myself a favor and not read his articles. My blood pressure would be lower if I did, I think.

What a weekend politically. Lott has now realized he can’t apologize away his braindead racist remarks and Al Gore is out. I have admired Al Gore for a long time. I voted for him in 2000, and glady. He is a smart man but not a brilliant one. He realized, it seems, with the savaging the media gave him on his book tour this past month, that he was going to be treated just as unfairly by the “liberal” media this time around as he was the last time. And he decided not to play the game. Good for him. He shows his integrity in avoiding the ugliness that would have ensued.

The contrast with Lott is remarkable. Gore was a man who never let slip the kind of Neanderthal stupidities that came from Lott’s mouth, because Gore is both master of his own thoughts and of his utterances.

Why is it that this country’s media will not tolerate Democrats who are intelligent, educated, well-spoken and in the dead center of national political beliefs while those same so-called “liberal” media let the Republicans get away with murdering logic, the English language and political integrity? I can’t help but think it’s overcompensation for some kind of feared “liberal” bias. The result is that anyone to the left of Richard Nixon gets slaughtered. Everyone on the weird radical right gets treated with kid gloves, as though their ignorance and hostility to government and the good it can do were somehow a handicap protected by the ADA. Good men like Gore are out of the running while complete morons like Bush run the country.

The worst thing that could happen to the Democrats would be to nominate Joseph Lieberman, who is more beholden to big business, especially the insurance industry, than many a Republican. Lieberman, Lott-like, also once apologized for laughably stupid remarks (the bogus assertion that all morality derives from religion), but once a political figure says something in public, he can’t really take it back. If such public figures can make such questionable remarks in public, it is hard to accept the sincerity of the apologies, that they really didn’t believe what they said. If they didn’t believe it, what business did they have saying it in public? And if they worded the statements so poorly, what business do they have seeking our votes? If they can’t speak off-the-cuff in public, they are unlikely to be very good at governing, which requires, more than anything, thoughtful improvisation in the face of pragmatic realities.

If Lieberman is the Democratic candidate (or VP candidate) in 2004, I’ll vote non-Democratic in a Presidential election for the first time in my life. Anyone but Lieberman (well, except for Bush)!

Well, thank heavens it’s finally happening, but people are now getting bent out of shape about Trent Lott’s idiocies (see Lott: It gets worse). Prominent Republicans like William Bennett are rightly calling for Lott to step down as a party leader. All I can say is: What took them so long? And I don’t even mean his remarks from last week — I mean his completely reactionary right-wing views on every issue there has ever been. The Republican leadership of Congress is a disgrace to the country and to the Republican party. It’s why no thinking person should ever vote for a Republican, regardless of an individual candidate’s views on the issues — Republicans elected to Congress will have to toe the party line, will be forced to vote against their own stated positions simply because of party discipline. And those moderate Republicans who are elected because they have moderate views will be the enablers of the Republican leadership’s goal of pushing through the President’s agenda to undo the progress made in the days since the Reagan/Bush debacle came to an end. Lott is finally apologizing fully, claiming that he really didn’t mean to refer to Thurmond’s party’s platform (which consisted entirely of segregation). Well, perhaps it’s true that he wasn’t thinking about that, but that just goes to show that the man doesn’t belong in public life. If he is so thoughtless as to say “accidentally” such inflammatory things, then he isn’t qualified to be given the kind of responsibility he has had in the past. But he’s not stepping down, as he should. This is a great thing for the Democrats, since it proves that Republicans really do not at heart represent tolerance.