The Note
W A S H I N G T O N, Feb. 12—<br> -- TODAY SCHEDULE AS OF 9:00 am (all times ET):
—8:30 am: Sen. John Edwards appears on MSNBC's "Imus in the Morning"—8:30 am: The Commerce Department announces January retail sales—10:00 am: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan testifies before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee—10:00 am: Elizabeth Edwards has coffee with campaign supporters at Bentley's American Grille, Racine, Wis. —10:05 am: Gov. Dean tours the Living Healthy Community Center, Oshkosh, Wis. —10:55 am: President Bush participates in a conversation on Education and the 21st Century Jobs Initiative, Harrisburg, Pa. —11:15 am: Sen. John Edwards meets with voters at the Bray Center, Racine, Wis. —11:15 am: Gov. Howard Dean attends a town hall at the Grand Opera House, Oshkosh, Wis. —11:30 am: Rev. Al Sharpton speaks at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C. —12:00 pm: Massachusetts legislature reconvenes its constitutional convention, Boston, Mass. —12:45 pm: Rev. Sharpton visits the Greenleaf Senior Citizens Home, Washington, D.C. —12:55 pm: President Bush returns to the White House—1:15 pm: Mrs. Edwards meets with supporters at Bombay Louie's, Kenosha, Wis. —2:20 pm: Gov. Dean tours Northeast Family Medical Center, Madison, Wis. —4:00 pm: Gov. Dean attends a town hall at the Wisconsin Union Hall Theater, Madison, Wis. —5:00 pm: Mrs. Edwards attends a house party in Sheboygan, Wis. —7:15 pm: Mrs. Edwards attends the Brown County Democrats' "Bye-Bye Bush Bash" at the Riverside Ballroom, Green Bay, Wis. —7:30 pm: Sen. Edwards meets with voters at Culver City Senior Center, Los Angeles, Calif. —8:15 pm: Gov. Dean attends a grassroots fundraiser at the Minneapolis Convention Center, Minneapolis, Minn. —11:00 pm: Gen. Wesley Clark appears on PBS' "The Charlie Rose Show" —11:35 pm: Rep. Dennis Kucinich appears on NBC's "Tonight Show," Los Angeles, Calif.
NEWS SUMMARY
We WERE going to have today's Note summary anchored by "Political dynamics to watch," a regular feature here, but there's actually only ONE dynamic to watch in the presidential race right now.
Political dynamic to watch:
1. How is the Kerry communications team (and the candidate himself) dealing with the stepped-up dredging/Drudging of his past?
Did the campaign know in advance about the Jane Fonda picture? How about the old Harvard Crimson interview? How about the gay marriage letter?
Leaving aside the merits of these matters (like the merits of a flag factory . . . .), there are the basic questions of knowing what's out there and being ready to respond to kill these things before they take on a life of their own and define John Kerry for a public that still mostly doesn't know him.
Everything else -- the Mankiw flap; Bob Novak's mindset; Howard Dean's mindset; John Edwards' mind; House special elections; the President's dental records; Joe Allbaugh's memory; the Massachusetts legislature; Fred Hochberg's lunch -- all these things are at most secondary, and, in many cases, tertiary.
President Bush stops in Harrisburg, Pa., to participate in a conversation on education and the 21st Century Jobs Initiative before returning to Washington, D.C. No gaggle or briefing at the White House today, so if you want to hear someone say the word "gutter," you'll have to look elsewhere.
Sen. Kerry is down in Washington, D.C.
Sen. Edwards is in Wisconsin and California.
Gov. Dean is in Wisconsin.
Rep. Kucinich is in Los Angeles, California.
ABC News Vote 2004: Bush-Cheney re-elect:
Bob Novak goes atomic and must-read, writing that that this whole past week, "worried Republicans buzzed about George W. Bush's Sunday interview on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' " LINK
Novak is buzzing himself as he writes that what "flabbergasted" Bush's supporters "was the absence of any plan to use this event to stop being the target as the 2004 campaign began."
Novak calls the interview "Strike Two" -- Strike One being the President's State of the Union address.
Check out this Novackian sentence: "The suspicion is that his 2004 campaign organization, a fund-raising juggernaut, is otherwise inadequate."
Novak also doesn't like that Bush didn't try to "capitalize" on the gay marriage issue, writing the President "was informed in advance that Russert had no plans to bring it up but that the president, of course, could raise this important social issue. He did not."
We bet lots of folks at 1600 will be buzzing unhappily at the last sentence of this one.
President Bush heads to the Keystone State today -- his 25th trip to Pennsylvania since taking office. Bush is set to talk about education policies and jobs at a high school in the state capital of Harrisburg, AP's Reichman reports. LINK
The Wall Street Journal's Gregg Hitt reports that President Bush is revving up his re-election campaign to peak "in early March, when officials plan to tap into the campaign's unprecedentedly large war chest -- which may be $200 million by then -- and let loose a salvo of television ads in battleground states."
The attacks by Kerry and the Democrats have forces the Bush Administration to change its plan to stay above the political fray, fighting back "after passively enduring political shots for weeks," the Washington Times reports. LINK
Speaker Hastert says he's not too keen on what Mr. Mankiw had to say on the benefits of American jobs' movement overseas. LINK
The Washington Post's Mike Allen writes up Hastert's scolding as well. LINK
The New York Times' Stevenson and Johnston look at life in the White House, as the leak investigation gets more intense and Administration officials are called before a grand jury. "At a White House that has largely avoided scandal -- and one that has been distinguished by remarkable internal cohesion -- the escalating investigation has brought unusual personal stress and the uncertainties that afflict anyone caught up in a full-scale criminal inquiry." LINK
RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie speaks at the Washoe County Lincoln Day Dinner in Reno, Nev., today and the gloves come off again, with regards to Sen. Kerry.
The Note has a preview:
"One of Senator Kerry's campaign consultants was recently quoted in the New York Times saying, 'Everything is on the table…Everything.'
"We know that 'everything' means taking slanderous charges against the President of the United States, funneling money to shadow organizations in voter suppression tactics, and spreading lies on the Internet."
"It's only February and they have made it clear they intend to run the direct the dirtiest campaign in modern presidential politics. This is because they don't want a debate on the issues, and they don't want to run on Sen. Kerry's record. I guess I can't blame them for that."
"We as a party can not sink to their level. We must stick to the truth in this race."
Reminds us of the Bush campaign's interest in those Donna Brazile "kitchen" remarks from 2000 . . .
President Bush "proposed revoking the long-standing bargain in the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty that allows countries to develop peaceful atomic energy in return for a verifiable pledge not to build nuclear weapons. Calling that agreement a "loophole" exploited by North Korea and Iran, Bush instead proposed that nuclear fuel be provided only to countries that renounce nuclear enrichment and reprocessing," reports the Washington Post's Dana Milbank and Peter Slevin.LINK
USA Today's Keen reports that the President was eager to highlight intelligence successes in his speech. LINK
New York Times' Sanger Notes that the President "stopped well short of calling for an end to all trade in fissionable material - enriched uranium or reprocessed plutonium . . . Those carefully chosen words would make Iran's current activities illegal, as well as North Korea's -- provided the administration can persuade the country to dismantle its two nuclear weapons projects."LINK
President Bush has picked up an interesting and unsurprising endorsement from former New York City mayor Ed Koch, the Palm Beach Post reports. In a television interview from Boca Raton, Koch said he thinks he is going to vote for Bush and said that the President did the right thing going to war in Iraq. LINK
President Bush and the National Guard:
"The White House last night released a document showing that President Bush was at a military base in Alabama during the last year of his National Guard service, but aides backed away from his weekend pledge to release all his military records," writes the Washington Post's Mike Allen and Lois Romano. LINK
The Boston Globe's Robinson and Latour look at Bush's suspension from flight status and Note that Air Force regulations should have required "an investigation by his commander, a written acknowledgement by Bush, and perhaps a written report to senior Air Force officials."LINK
A former officer in the Texas National Guard told USA Today's Moniz and Drinkard that top-ranking officers in the Guard and Bush advisers "discussed ways to limit the release of potentially embarrassing details from Bush's military records," as he was preparing to run for president in the late 1990s. A second officer said that they "were particularly worried about mentions in the records of arrests of Bush before he joined the National Guard in 1968. LINK
And the New York Times has a copy of a letter that the same former officer wrote in 1998 that said Bush aides had "improperly screened" the President's Guard files for potentially embarrassing information. The officer claims in a book that is to be published this month"that Mr. Bush's aides ordered Guard officials to remove damaging information from Mr. Bush's military personnel files."LINK
USA Today features a timeline of President Bush's service: LINK
The Washington Post editorial board argues that there's plenty of hypocrisy to go around on both the Democratic and Republican sides of the recycled debate -- and posturing -- over Bush's National Guard service. LINK
The politics of gay marriage:
The White House did not commit to anything further yesterday, but conservative leaders said they had assurances that the President would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the AP reports. LINK
The Boston Globe's Healy reports on some criticism Kerry is getting from gay media outlets for not speaking up on what's happening in Boston. LINK
