The Note
W A S H I N G T O N, April 12—<br> -- TODAY SCHEDULE (all times ET)
FUTURES CALENDAR
NEWS SUMMARY
If you thought last week was busy, just get a look at what is coming up this week:
Today: President Bush holds Crawford presser with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; Kerry releases new economic critique of the Bush years, rallies students in New Hampshire; Vice President and Lynne Cheney are in Tokyo; the Energy Department releases its weekly gasoline price report.
Tuesday: Former FBI Directors Louis Freeh and Thomas Pickard and former Attorneys General Janet Reno and John Ashcroft testify before the 9/11 commission; Kerry holds a roundtable about college tuition and rallies students at the University of Rhode Island and raises money in Providence and Boston; President Bush is down at the White House; the Cheneys are in China; HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson attends a Bush-Cheney 04 event in Cliffside, N.J.; and March retail sale numbers are released.
Wednesday: CIA Director George Tenet and FBI Director Robert Mueller testify before the 9/11 commission; President Bush holds White House presser with Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon; Kerry breaks fundraising records in New York City and rallies students at CCNY; FEC hears 527 rule-making pleas; the March Consumer Price Index and the February trade deficit are released.
Thursday: President Bush speaks about the economy in the battleground state of Iowa; Kerry rallies students at the University of Pittsburgh and raises money in East Rutherford, N.J.; the Cheneys are in South Korea; RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie attends the Southern Leadership Conference in Miami.
Friday: President Bush holds White House presser with British Prime Minister Tony Blair; Kerry is in Philadelphia; RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie attends the Southern Leadership Conference in Miami; March housing starts and industrial production reports are released.
Sunday: Bob Woodward appears on "60 Minutes" to discuss his new book, "Plan of Attack."
For the White House, the balancing act between saying the president and his team were right on top of that subject matter LINK pre-9/11 and saying that they didn't get enough warning to do anything to stop the attacks will continue — maybe through election day.
As will Democrats' frustration that the press isn't declaring "game over" on that straddle alone.
And you can go all the way back to the long ago days of the Ari Fleischer briefings to hear the boilerplate rhetoric of if we had had SPECIFIC information about the 9/11 attacks, OF COURSE we would have done everything possible to prevent them.
And Democrats (and the press) are now saying in unison: well, that language construction is and has always been about the Aug. 6 PDB.
Ditto the White House effort to bring the ball down on Dick Clarke's head well before midnight.
But the BC04 high command agrees with (and takes gobs of solace from) what Ron Brownstein's source told him for his Los Angeles Times column today (and stand back, because this is going to pop right off the screen):
"One leading Democratic interest group recently asked a focus group in Florida to respond to a potential television ad accusing Bush of negligence in failing to stop the attacks. The result was volcanic — against the ad." LINK
"'They were so angry I thought they were going to turn the tables over,' said a Democratic operative who watched the session. 'It was a very polarizing ad, and it pushed people who were on the fence decidedly away from us.'"
Still, national security shall remain front and center in the free media this week, with less predictability (and more impact) than the script of a 30-second spot.
Within the insular world of the Sunday talk shows, the Bush and Kerry campaigns, and Note readers and writers, everyone knows that Robin Wright says mistakes were made LINK; that Thomas Ricks says that an Iraqi battalion refused to fight LINK; and that Dan Balz and Jim VandeHei say some Republicans think the president has been too absent from the public stage. LINK
But the clear-thinkers among us know that most Americans don't read the Washington Post over the weekend, so the question on all this Iraq/9/11 stuff is, is it filtering out to real Americans in a way that will affect what people think about President Bush and the direction of the nation?
Right now, we have just a few ways to find out — by looking at polling data or hearing about (mostly) second-hand focus groups.
Which makes the Newsweek numbers at least semi-frightening if you are a Bushie.
They show Kerry leading Bush, 50 percent to 43 percent (that's outside the +/- 3 percent margin of error). Putting Nader into the mix narrows the gap, with Kerry taking 46 percent, Bush taking 42 percent, and Nader garnering 4 percent. Fifty-nine percent of those surveyed said they're dissatisfied with the direction of the country, and Bush's approval rating fell from 52 percent to 48 percent. Kerry's approval rating held steady at 51 percent.
Here are the political dynamics we told you on Friday to watch through today, and what happened on 'em:
1. Violence, troop levels, civilian targets, and hostages in Iraq. Mostly status quo -- but leaning to worse.
2. Will Vice President Cheney on his Asian trip be drawn into the Japanese hostage situation? Pretty much.
3. When does that PDB get declassified and who wins the spin war over it for the general public? Saturday night, with everyone on deadline, and, so far, given the language of the public debate, the White House is mostly holding its own — if only because the Sunday-into-Monday news cycle has almost nothing about Dr. Rice's under-oath characterization.
4. Where does the White House stand on "organizing" the pro-Bush 9/11 families? Still very much a work in progress.
5. What will the weekend polls show about the effects of Iraq violence on the president's standing? See the Newsweek poll.
6. Will pressure mount on Sen. Kerry to be more specific about Iraq? Prime Minister Brownstein cut him a big break over the weekend.
7. When will the political community wake up to the staggering implications of Kerry's fish-in-a-barrel fundraising, and when will the campaign start to spend that money on TV spots big time? Our gal Deb Orin figures out the raising side, but the spending side remains a mystery. LINK
8. Will Kerry make it through Easter without any church controversy? He did indeed.
And since today is a time to plant, a time to reap, and, we think, a time for every purpose, under Heaven, let us look at who is turning on whom:
Rand Beers turns on Dr. Rice.
David Sanger turns on Dr. Rice (more ominous).
The FBI and the White House turn on each other. (Brutally so, for close readers of Saturday's papers, and with a threat to reignite and involve AG Ashcroft this week.)
Deborah Orin turns on the FBI. LINK
Ron Brownstein turns on the media.
David Broder turns on the president's work habits.
Newsweek's poll turns on the Kerry campaign (a different kind of turn on … ).
Politics and the 9/11 Commission:
Adam Nagourney and Philip Shenon team up to dramatically lead the New York Times with a look at President Bush's Easter Sunday comments regarding the August 6, 2001 PDB and his belief that no specific "indication of a terrorist attack" was included in the document. LINK
"His comments were part of a White House effort to quell the storm about the briefing he received on Aug. 6, 2001."
"Democrats and Republicans said on Sunday that the release of the document — combined with images of American bloodshed and the disorder in Iraq — was threatening the central pillar of the president's re-election campaign, his record on managing national security."
The duo go on to give Rand Beers' aggressive Sunday talk a lot of play before declaring this upcoming week a critical one for President Bush.
The New York Times provides a preview of questions to come for FBI and law enforcement officials this week. LINK
The New York Times editorial board writes, "No reasonable American blames Mr. Bush for the terrorist attacks, but that's a long way from thinking there was no other conceivable action he could have taken to prevent them." LINK
Looking ahead, "Failures of agencies within the U.S. intelligence community to process information that each had on Osama bin Laden's network before Sept. 11, 2001 — and particularly intelligence going back to 1999 dealing with two al Qaeda terrorists who were on the plane that hit the Pentagon — will be one focus of hearings this week by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks," reports the Washington Post 's Walter Pincus. LINK
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