ABC News' The Note: First Source for Political News

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 10, 2004&#151;<br> -- NOTED NOW

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Morning Show Wrap

Evening Newscasts Wrap

53 days until Election Day20 days until the first proposed presidential debate

NEWS SUMMARY

At this precise time every four years, the most media-savvy members of the Gang of 500 begin to think about their roles in the premiere post-election forum that revisits the actions and players of the presidential race.

The quadrennial gabfest — hosted by Harvard's Institute of Politics in the winter after each presidential election — features a group of journalists who covered the campaign leading top political players from all camps through a chronological discussion of who-did-what-when-and-why behind the scenes during the course of the nomination and general election periods.

The goal is near-contemporaneous candor, although over the years, some participants have become no more forthcoming than they would be in, say, a "Good Housekeeping" interview.

Still, this cycle there will be a lot to look forward to — Joe Trippi's self-deprecation; Karl Rove's lavish praise of Michael Whouley and Steve Rosenthal; Steve Elmendorf's witty asides; Ben Ginsberg's whispered asides — to Bob Bauer; Kevin Zeese's adorable star-struck look; and Jack Oliver's nonchalance.

But if nothing changes in the race as it now stands — with President Bush winning a decent-sized victory — much of the talk will be about the greater technical proficiency of the Bush-Cheney effort.

In fact, even if Kerry wins, there will be much talk about the discipline, focus, success, and, yes, shamelessness of the BC04RNC team:

Avoiding a nomination challenge; merciless distribution of message of the day; deflection of any serious discussion of the war in Iraq, health care, jobs, or the tax burden; installing a White House press secretary willing to use the podium for political purposes but not respond directly to any hard questions; making the race not about the incumbent's record but the challenger's, all the while claiming to want to focus on "the future"; and the wielding of national security as the ultimate political trump card.

For the Democrats in Cambridge (under a Kerry loss scenario), the talk will be about August, reliving the Dukakis nightmare, and the press' inability to live up to the shared claim about the historic "importance" of the election.

For the journalists there, questions will be raised about the ease with which the establishment media was led around by the nose by the Internet, cable, and paid media that was just above the video-press-release level.

Some preliminary conclusions, sure to be part of the IOP discussion:

1. As long as political reporters — rather than reporters who cover health care, economics, and military affairs — dominate election coverage, there will always be more emphasis on narrative that implicitly celebrates tactical cleverness and bare-knuckles ruthlessness over narrative that celebrates ideas.

2. Serious scrutiny of four-year plans for deficit reduction, Iraq, homeland security, etc., were crowded out by coverage of polls, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bob Shrum.

3. Neither candidate was made to answer detailed questions about his plans (We particularly look forward to reporters who got pre-convention Bush interviews recounting how about a third of their allotted time was taken up by a presidential speech!).

So between now and the end of the weekend — counting down days 53, 52, and 51 until Nov. 2 — watch to see what dominates the airspace and the inkspace and imagine what will be said about it, in the cold of a New England winter.

See our National Guard sections for a taste of what has come before and what is to come now.

Today, President Bush hits the road for his fifth (!) bus tour through Ohio this year (and fourth visit in the last 16 days), traveling through three towns in West Virginia and Ohio that he won by 2,000 votes or fewer in 2000. He begins the day with a 10:45 am ET rally in Huntington, WV then drives to Southwest Ohio for a 1:25 ET "Ask President Bush" event in Portsmouth and a 4:20 pm ET rally in Chillicothe.

Elizabeth Edwards is also in West Virginia today, staying long enough for three events in Princeton, Fairmont, and Charleston.

Senator Kerry, for the second day in a row, will pick up on a Kaiser Foundation study that shows health care costs have risen sharply (but less sharply as in the past, BC04 points out . . .) to deliver the message that President Bush has "left the problem unaddressed."

The campaign promises that the Kerry-Edwards plan will lay out drug benefits, allow re-importation of drugs from Canada, and adjust the things that Medicaid can pay for. Kerry's focus on health care today takes him to a 9:45 am ET town hall in a St. Louis seniors' community center and a 5:30 pm ET rally in Allentown, PA.

Continuing to campaign with his wife, Vice President Cheney will deliver the "America sees two John Kerrys" message again today when he meets with community leaders for coffee in Green Bay at 9:30 am ET and hosts 12:55 pm ET and 5:00 pm ET town halls in Sheboygan Falls, WI and Milwaukee.

And in Washington, after observing a moment of silence in honor of Sept. 11, the Senate will debate but not vote on the Homeland Appropriations bill and its amendments.

This weekend, the candidates and the world observe the three-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Tomorrow, President Bush does so by attending a 7:30 am ET service of prayer and remembrance at St. John's Episcopal Church and hosting a moment of silence on the South Lawn of the White House at 8:46 am ET, the exact moment American Airlines Flight 11 hit the North tower of the World Trade Center. He will also do his weekly radio address live on the topic.

Senator Kerry will attend the Massachusetts 9/11 Fund Commemoration at the Opera House in Boston tomorrow at 9:30 am ET. Kerry resumes campaigning in the evening, speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 34th annual Legislative Conference at 8:00 pm ET — while his running mate Senator Edwards attends the conference's prayer breakfast tomorrow morning.

On Sunday, both Bush and Kerry are in Washington without public events while Edwards attends Laborfest Detroit 2004 and raises coin in Houston before overnighting in Santa Fe, NM.

President Bush and the National Guard: the politics of the documents:

Whether these documents are valid or not, the debate over them has certainly pushed questions about Bush's National Guard service to the background. (And other things — did the politico-media world really process how the House rebuked the White House on overtime rules yesterday? Or actually read the Kaiser report?)

Just ask any reporter you know who works in politics were they focused on the curlicues of apostrophes yesterday? Or on whether Bush knew that he was (allegedly) being coddled by superiors?

Democrats, who deny up and down that they had anything to do with the documents, tell ABC News that they plan to continue their push to question the president's Guard service, irrespective of the CBS situation.

Top Democrats vow to continue to lead the charge against Bush along these four lines

1. Bush allegedly got special treatment 2. Bush allegedly was suspended for missing his medical exam 3. Bush allegedly didn't fulfill his requirements 4. Bush allegedly didn't release all the documents he said he'd release

But they acknowledge that it might be more difficult to break through the clutter of questions surrounding the documents' authenticity.

In less guarded moments, some Democrats express a sense of utter loss at the seeming turn of events in this story.

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos said on "Good Morning America" that "a lot of Democrats think this might have been a set-up" by Republicans — a sentiment we are likely to hear more of in the days to come.

Meanwhile, Republicans can rightly ask about the confluence of all the DNC, outside group, and media focus on revisiting the Guard story.

And Democrats can rightly say that Fox News Channel seems to like the "forgery" story more than the original CBS version.

And, meanwhile, Bush Republicans manifestly want to stay out of the way of this one and let the media work its magic. The sense one gets is that the White House — having disseminated the documents — feels the prospect of forgeries is too good to be true — or is it?

They will watch their friends at CBS twist in the wind, and keep repeating that the president was honorably discharged and all these attacks (get ready to lump the Kitty Kelley book in there!!!) are political and desperate from the side that is behind in the polls.

IF — IF these end up being forgeries, one of the interesting subplots will be the timing and method by which they were exposed.

We always favor looking at the content and substance over WHO is offering up the information, but in the war that will ensue about WHO gave CBS the potentially phony documents, it is interesting to Note that the right (Drudge, Fox, right-leaning blogs, others) led the way in pointing out the questions we have all been asking — and they were onto the questions, with remarkable detail, relatively soon after the documents were made public.

Here's part of how this story got here . . . from a little Marc Ambinder back-lurking on the blogs . . .

At 8:00 pm ET Wednesday night, CBS News does the story . . .

at 11:50 pm ET (8:59 pm PT), the documents come into question via a poster named Buckhead on the Free Republic Web site: LINK

Buckhead seems well-read on his forensic document examination skills. "Howlin, every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old."

Well, this is bandied about by dozens of Freepers, as they're called and is picked up at 8:30 am ET and added to by www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/ — this little green football guy is a very popular conservative blogger . . .

It's expanded upon by www.powerlineblog.com/ in the early morning:

and also by www.spacetownusa.com/hmmm

and here, at 10:36 am ET: www.allahpundit.com/.

Around midday, the popular author Roger L. Simon praises the blogosphere for getting this story . . . LINK

Between this time and mid-day, reporters in the MSM — that's the Main Stream Media to these folks (that's us) — are alerted by some sources to the blogosphere's agita . . . others have read the blogs themselves.

At 2:41 pm ET, one blogger even consulted his own forensic expert and told anyone using the blog that, well, they must credit him: indcjournal.com/.

To Drudge, around 3:00 pm ET . . .

and the Weekly Standard . . . around 5:00 pm ET . . .

to Fox after 6:00 pm ET and then the AP and then ABC . . .

John Podhoretz credits the blogosphere, as he should: LINK

In other stories: The Washington Post 's VandeHei and Edsall report on the "multi-front attack on President Bush's National Guard service" by Democrats yesterday. Notably there is only one line about the controversy over the authenticity of the documents unearthed by CBS News, with the paper dealing with that separately in another story Noted below. LINK

The Boston Globe does not get into the debate about the documents, focusing instead on the full-throated DNC push on Bush's service. LINK

A New York Times editorial on the new documents and Bush's Guard service does include a reference to the documents' authenticity being challenged. LINK