ABC News' The Note: First Source for Political News
W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 9, 2004—<br> -- NOTED NOW
TODAY'S SCHEDULE (all times ET)
FUTURES CALENDAR
Morning Show Wrap
Evening Newscasts Wrap
54 days until Election Day21 days until the first proposed presidential debate
NEWS SUMMARY
Be aware — tonight, the first true post-convention, non-holiday-tainted, gold-plated national poll hits the street (courtesy of ABC News and the Washington Post ).
In the meantime, amidst the outbreak of high-intensity campaign hysteria of lawyers, guns, money, Vietnam, political threats about terror threats, and debates-about-debates, any pretext that this campaign would be about issues instead of caricatures is dead and buried.
Thus, George Bush as brought to you by the Democrats and the GOP version of John Kerry :
BUSH TIMELINE
Born (with a silver spoon in his mouth) to patrician New England family in New Haven on July 6, 1946.
Prep school cheerleader.
Young and irresponsible — and vaguely so.
"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."
AWOL, physical-dodging, hard-partying bogus flyboy.
Failed businessman with continuing young and irresponsible behavior (a/ka: the Kitty Kelley years).
Powerless, faux-bipartisan governor of Texas.
Over-promising, vague, McCain-savaging presidential candidate.
Supreme-Court-manipulating, illegitimate president-elect.
Right-wing, war-mongering, environment-destroying, special-interest-controlled, daddy-revenge-seeking, stem-cell-research-crushing, vacation-taking, tax-cutting, neo-con puppet POTUS.
KERRY TIMELINE
Privileged, French boy with ambiguous cultural heritage.
Preternaturally ambitious prepster.
Medal-seeking, exploit-filming, fabricating, wimpy-yet-overly-aggressive Swift Boat exploiter.
Medal-throwing, Fonda-consorting, Genghis-Khan-citing anti-war radical.
Money-marrying, rich-man's-sports-loving pretty boy.
District-shopping, Dukakis-hugging, hyper-ambitious pol.
Uber-liberal, do-nothing, anti-military, tax-raising senator.
Howard-Dean-aping, flip-flopping, Iraq-war-bobbing, Gore-like presidential candidate.
Today, President Bush travels to Pennsylvania where he will make two campaign stops. First at 12:35 pm ET the president will makes remarks in Colmar, followed by a second speaking engagement in Johnstown at 5:00 pm ET.
After one day off the trail, Vice President Dick Cheney returns to the stump in Cincinnati, OH where he will attend a town hall meeting at 2:00 pm ET. The Vice President then travels to Green Bay, WI, to attend a 6:30 pm ET fundraiser for the 2004 Joint State Victory Committee.
At 10:00 am ET Senator John Kerry holds his first event of the day, a roundtable discussion, in Des Moines, IA, followed by a 10:35 am ET town hall meeting. Kerry then flies south to New Orleans where he will address the 124th Annual Session of the National Baptist Convention at 5:00 pm ET.
Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards is in Nashua, NH this morning for a 11:15 am ET town hall meeting at Daniel Webster College. He then travels to Washington, DC for two receptions for the KE'04 Victory Fund at 7:00 pm ET and 7:45 pm ET, respectively.
First Lady Laura Bush and Jenna and Barbara are reaching out to voters at separate scheduled campaign events.
Over on Capitol Hill, James Schlesinger, chairman of the Independent Panel to Review Department of Defense Detention Operations, testifies before the House Armed Services Committee and Senate Armed Services Committee at 9:00 am ET and 2:30 pm ET to discuss his panel's findings most notably about prison abuse in Iraq.
Secretary of State Colin Powel also makes a visit to the hill and speaks to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the "current situation in Sudan and the prospects for peace" at 9:30 am ET.
You may have missed this, but the Kerry campaign announced that the candidate would speak at the National Guard Association of the United States convention in Las Vegas, Nevada on Sept. 16. And a source familiar with the convention tells ABC News that preparations are underway for President Bush to address the group before Kerry — possibly on Sept. 15. Could be a good venue for both men to discuss . . .
President Bush and the National Guard:
Politically, the White House bets that all this already is baked into the minds of voters, who will tolerate additional evidence and additional revelations without fundamentally changing their view of Mr. Bush.
Look for Kerry-Edwards to still hold their personal fire on this one, but plenty of congressional and state surrogates will be out in force, fanning flames.
Regarding the specific new documents that plopped into Dan Rather's hands, it's dead-men-tell-no-tales. The White House has not disputed their authenticity, hoping their "trash at the end of the campaign" line tracks with what voters expect. (Hey, it worked for Bill Clinton in '92 . . .)
Democrats clearly hope these questions have a substantive effect on their judgment of a commander in chief today. They also hope that talking about events 30 years ago doesn't boomerang and marinate them in their own negative broth.
It would be nice, a Kerry campaign aide told us yesterday, "to turn the campaign to questions about the incumbent's credibility, not ours."
At their core, the questions boil down to these:
Did Mr. Bush receive preferential treatment to get in to the Guard? Did he receive preferential treatment once he was there? Did he know he was receiving preferential treatment? Did he seek it? How much latitude were commanders given to allow certain soldiers to juggle the requirements of the guard to fit their life's present circumstances?
More specifically:
Did Lt. Col. Killian really backdate a report at the request or behest of superior officers? Was this not illegal? Did Bush himself talk "to someone upstairs" to grease his own path? Did Bush really ask to get out of the National Guard drill? Does he remember doing that today? Were such requests made regularly by members of the Guard?
Did General Walter Staudt, Bush's political patron in the Guard, decide on his own to persuade his commanders to be favorably disposed toward Bush? Or was he pressured by outside forces? Why was a flight review board not appointed in August of 1972 pursuant to Killian's orders? How, if Killian said that Bush lost his flight status because of performance, can one account for the glowing performance reviews Bush got that same month?
Why did Mr. Bush not attend his physical as ordered in May of 1972? Was it because he didn't have to as he already knew he wouldn't fly, or perhaps that he did attend — and something came up? Did he ever get a physical in Alabama? Houston? Why has the White House changed its spin on this?
Was Bush a good pilot? A bad pilot? (Or, as the White House asserts, a pilot who crossed the thresholds he needed to cross?)
With all these problems, why was Bush's transfer request to the 187th TAC Recon group approved in September of 1972? Was it the result of his conversations with Killian? Because of Staudt's influence? Or simply par the course for back then?
What other documents will come to light? (The Air Force acknowledges that the state of record-keeping back then ensures that new ones will be found on a regular basis in different boxes in different warehouses.)
Democrats need to be prepared to answer questions about this fact: Sure, the above may be true, but the military, which gets to decide these things, honorably discharged Mr. Bush. And that is of course the first line of defense (and often the last) of Bush defenders.
Bush's National Guard records played big on all the morning shows. Nothing new was reported, though we did enjoy the spirited exchange between titans James Carville and Tucker Eskew.
ABC's Terry Moran's wrap of Bush's military Guard records was the first stand alone package in GMA. Moran included sound from White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett claiming Ben Barnes was acting "on behalf of John Kerry" and reported in his live close that Lt. Col. Jerry Killian wrote in one memo that "I'll back-date, but won't rate," a statement that "raises the possibility that Bush's military records were falsified."
CBS' Bill Plante's wrap led the "Early Show." Plante reported that the White House says Bush did not have to take the annual physical exam he never showed up for because the Alabama National Guard did not have the kind of airplane Bush was flying. Plante also reported that the White House says they are trying to get all of his records released.
NBC's Carl Quintinilla wrapped both Kerry's and Bush's Wednesdays within the "Today" newsblock, focusing on Kerry first then reporting nothing new on Bush's Guard records. Quintinilla was the only one to include the new "Texans for Truth" ad featuring former Alabama Air National Guard Lieutenant Bob Mintz claiming he didn't remember Bush being there.
The New York Times and the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune and USA Today wrap the days' developments. LINK,LINK,LINK, and LINK
The Boston Globe 's Robinson and Latour ran the "60 Minutes" documents by military officers who said it "contain[ed] evidence that political influence may have come into play as he sidestepped his training requirements in his final two years of service, from May 1972 until May 1974." LINK
"Bush's service has been in dispute for years because of a six-month gap in 1972 that has not been fully explained by military records. Repeated news reports and document releases by the White House and Pentagon have not settled the question," writes James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times. LINK
Rainey's last graph calls the Globe's Wednesday "scoop" into question:
"Two retired officers interviewed by The Times on Wednesday and familiar with National Guard procedures differed as to whether Bush was still obligated, at that point, to check in with a unit in the Boston area."
The Washington Times looks at the Democrats' strategy. LINK
Rush Limbaugh calls it all a cheap media ploy. LINK
DeFrank, Meek, and Siemaszko of the New York Daily News report the Bush campaign was "rocked yesterday by allegations that the "Top Gun President was a substandard pilot who disobeyed a direct order while serving in the Texas Air National Guard." LINK
Thomas DeFrank's analysis in the New York Daily News tries to get above it all in what he calls the increasingly "slimy, petty sideshow" that comes with looking into military records and which consequently does little for either side. Truce? LINK
ABC News Vote 2004: Vice President Cheney on national security:
Day Two of Vice President Cheney's "we'll get hit again" remarks in Des Moines and the issue is how the campaign and Administration are standing firm and caveating his comments at the same time.
As New York Times poet/historian Adam Nagourney so eloquently puts it today: "If Mr. Cheney's aides were walking back his remark in the hours after he made it, they were only walking so far."
Both Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards spoke out on this issue yesterday with Kerry saying that the president and Vice President "say anything and do anything in order to get elected" and that making the war on terror political is "outrageous and shameful." Following up on his initial response on Tuesday, Edwards said yesterday President Bush should "renounce this statement."
Nagourney looks at whether or not Cheney crossed the line with his comments and concludes that "it seems safe to say that even if Mr. Cheney did not mean to say it the way he did, this was precisely the message he intended to convey." LINK
That message was also the "not-so-subliminal message" of the Republican convention — "As they did in New York, when they staged a convention that featured the symbols and sadness of the terrorist attacks there, the Republicans seem to be walking a tricky line in this campaign, which the White House has always wanted fought on the issue of terrorism."
Related Stories
ABC News Live