The Note
W A S H I N G T O N September 15—<br> -- Today's Schedule (all times Eastern):
—9:30 am: Senator Joe Lieberman tours Costa Manufacturing Corporation, Claremont, N.H.—10:00 am: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver tape today's appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Chicago—11:00 am: Senator John Kerry holds a press conference on corporate responsibility, Cedar Rapids, Iowa —12:30 pm: Commerce Secretary Don Evans speaks to the Detroit Economic Club, Detroit—12:30 pm: Vice President Cheney makes remarks at a fundraiser for Representative Shelley Moore Capito, Charleston, W.Va. —12:45 pm: President Bush makes remarks at the Detroit Edison Monroe Plant, Monroe, Mich. —12:00 pm: Governor Howard Dean holds two town hall meetings at Alabama A&M University, Huntsville, Ala. —12:00 pm: House convenes for a pro forma session—1:00 pm: Senate convenes for morning business—1:00 pm: Senator Kerry speaks to students at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa —2:30 pm: Governor Gray Davis joins former President Bill Clinton at the opening of William Jefferson Clinton Elementary School, Compton, CA —2:30 pm: Senator Lieberman participates in a roundtable discussion with small business owners, Nashua, N.H. —3:30 pm: Governor Dean launches "Generation Dean" at a town hall meeting, Atlanta —5:00 pm: Senator Lieberman attends the N.H. AFL-CIO's Conversation with the Candidates session, Hookset, N.H. —6:35 pm: President Bush attends a Bush-Cheney 2004 fundraiser, Drexel Hill, Pa. —7:00 pm: Senator Bob Graham holds a media availability, Phoenix —11:00 pm: Senator John Edwards appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
NEWS SUMMARY
To paraphrase Potter Stewart, at the ABC News Political Unit, we Note it when we see it.
Which is to say, with so much going on in politics, we try to bring you the stuff we think you need to know that is going on in politics on any given day.
There are thousands of barriers to getting this done, but two stand out.
First is the whole tip-of-the-iceberg thing. Even when we think we know what is going on (say, with a campaign in disarray), we generally only have in our ken at most 10% of what is ACTUALLY going on.
So what we end up telling you is woefully incomplete.
Second, so much happens so fast in the inside game of political people and political reporters that things are changing even as we type, and we can't possibly capture it all.
Compounding things today is that since we did Friday's Note, so very, very much has happened.
For our lead, we had been intending to sit down and chronicle the last 80 hours in the life of Howard Dean, but we looked at the Googling monkey output when we came in (not to mention at our in boxes) and we made a decisive judgment that to do justice to the tale would take 15,000 words.
The president's political health — seen through the prism of the must-read ABC News/ Washington Post poll, some sweeping takes on the Bush budget, the efforts to feel the nation's manufacturing job pain, and the Iraq puzzle — is also quite politically hot, as is the recall (Clinton/Davis/Schwarzenegger/Oprah/Bustamante/McClintock), and there was a Boston Globe story about John Kerry yesterday that was like the Rosetta Stone.
But we think the events with the most lasting impact involve the whirlwind that was DeanforAmerica from Friday through today.
Suffice to say, this weekend was (potentially) a major turning point in Howard Dean's hold on the frontrunner status, or, at least, in his relationship to the media.
Over the weekend, we saw perfectly reasonable, non-gotcha questions raised in general about whether Dean has what we call a "Patty Loveless problem" — a trouble with the truth.
The particulars involve Israel, race, Medicare, Social Security, NAFTA, and one of the strangest truth-meets-fiction debate flaps ever.
The venues include K Street, a quintessential Des Moines living room, George Stephanopoulos' crackling "This Week," and cyberspace.
The point is not that the press should be nitpicking Howard Dean's every statement.
And Dean is right that his opponents are going hard at him because they are really concerned that he is pulling away and they sense he just might be vulnerable to being roughed up now.
And, most ominously for the other campaigns, Dean's current supporters are likely to react to all these particular challenges and the general indictment by fighting for him harder and giving him more money. Joe Trippi's "typical Washington attacks" mantra is catnip for these folks.
But there ARE two dangers for Dean: big-feet and beat reporters might begin holding him to a standard of truth that will drown his message out, and Dean's ability to grow and appeal to new voters might be stopped dead in the tracks.
Some of the attacks (about Hamas, for instance) are fairly seen as ludicrous. Others, like challenging Dean's claim about being the only Democrat who talks about race before white audiences (even accepting Dean's bizarre caveats about what he means by that) are quite solid.
But the media and Dean's opponents agree: if this latest wave of controversies don't slow Dean down, it is unlikely that anything can or will between now and January.
Now, in the swirl of everything else (and we aren't even getting yet into NAFTA, or Dean's statements on his faith from "This Week," or the two K Street controversies over the Carville line and the rehearsed race line), the fact that Dean repeated to a roomful of reporters on Saturday that he agrees with the Republican Party that restraining the rate of previously planned growth of a program like Medicare is NOT a cut hasn't really gotten much play. But it will.
As for Dean angrily rejecting to both George Stephanopoulos and (unbidden!!!) to that roomful of reporters in Iowa the characterization of him as a "strong supporter of NAFTA" (which turns out to have been WEAKER than language Dean once used on "This Week" himself!!!), the Dean campaign's attitude seems to be "who cares?"
See our "Dean vs. the world" section below for more on all this.
Weekend must-reads:
1. In what is practically a daily ritual of insanity, John Kerry did yet another interview with the Boston Globe , and the Sunday Mike Kranish story that it yielded is one of the richest anyone has produced on any of the candidates this election cycle — in the inside baseball category. LINK
If you are interested in this race and/or the Kerry campaign and you don't read it in full, you are basically saying you have no respect for The Note's judgment.
But since we know that description fits many of you, here are the highlights:
A. Kerry trashes his staff for not implementing his visionary lead on the Internet.
B. Kerry seems to go back on the notion that he won't make staff changes.
C. Kerry trashes (implicitly) Chris Lehane, for issuing an announcement-day press release in Kerry's name, which, the candidate now says contained words that "weren't precisely my words. They were the words of the press release sent out."
D. Kerry seems to blame Dean's rise and his fall on Dean's advertising jump (not on, say, not having a message).
E. Kerry promises to let the Boston kitchen cabinet have more of a say in things (a recipe for … … ..).
F. Kerry says Dean will raise twice what he himself raises this quarter (We think he might live to regret that expectation setting … ).
G. Kerry has to suffer the indignity of long-time supporter Jerome Grossman panning his Iraq position (We admit we failed to notice that Kerry unveiled yet another new justification of his pro-war votes in Baltimore … .), with Grossman saying wild and crazy things.
H. Kerry, sitting with campaign manager Jim Jordan during the interview, doesn't really deal with his having repudiated Jordan's attacks on Dean, while Kerry makes tougher ones himself.
I. Kranish reports that some of Jordan's troops threatened to quit if Jordan was sacked.
J. Kranish reports on the remarkable history of the Kerry blog.
2. Frank Rich on the right-leaning punditocracy and Arnold Schwarzenegger. LINK
3. The New York Times ' David Firestone front-pager on why the deficit is so bad and what the administration's options are (with points subtracting for his quoting someone saying "perfect storm"). LINK
President Bush tours and makes remarks at the Detroit Edison Monroe Plant in Monroe, Michigan, today. He also attends a Bush-Cheney 2004 fundraiser just outside of Philadelphia tonight in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.
While he does that, Commerce Secretary Don Evans is in Detroit today to promote the administration's jobs plan.
The president is in D.C. for the rest of the week and goes to Camp David with the King of Jordan on Saturday.
Vice President Cheney is in West Virginia today for a fundraiser for Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito.
Wes Clark goes to Iowa on Friday, and is widely expected to say something about any presidential bid before then, perhaps in Little Rock, where he is today with no public events scheduled.
Governor Dean holds town hall meetings in Huntsville, Alabama, and Atlanta today. He campaigns in New Hampshire Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Senator Edwards has no public events scheduled for today. He makes his formal campaign announcement Tuesday in Robbins, North Carolina, and Columbia, South Carolina. He holds a town hall meeting Wednesday in Concord, New Hampshire.
He must also pray that Wes Clark and a gal named Isabel doesn't ruin his announcement tomorrow.
Senator Kerry campaigns in Iowa today, where he'll meet with students and holds a press conference on corporate responsibility. He'll also receive an endorsement in Chicago tonight, though the campaign won't say who it is yet. He campaigns with Governor Davis in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Senator Lieberman campaigns in New Hampshire today. He has fundraisers this week in Boston, Chicago, and Columbus, Ohio.
Senator Graham has fundraisers in Denver and Phoenix today. He will campaign with Governor Davis Tuesday in Los Angeles. He has another fundraiser back home in Florida on Thursday — this one's at SkyBar in Miami.
Congressman Kucinich campaigns in Oakland, California, today. He'll do an interview, attend a rally on Proposition 54, and attend a fundraiser luncheon. He's in Arlington, Virginia, on Tuesday. He holds a conference call with overseas Democrats on Wednesday. He attends a rally with Ralph Nader on Thursday. He campaigns in Maine and Boston on Friday.
Reverend Sharpton has no public events scheduled for today.
Ambassador Moseley Braun and Congressman Gephardt have no public events announced for the week yet.
In the recall:
Governor Davis attends the opening of William Jefferson Clinton Elementary School with the school's namesake in Compton today — and Cruz Bustamante will be there too. Clinton later attends a fundraiser for Davis at the home of Ron Burkle in Los Angeles.
The governor's week of big meetings continues: with separate meetings with Bob Graham and Jesse Jackson on Tuesday, a meeting with John Kerry on Wednesday, another meeting with Jackson on Thursday, campaign stops with Al Gore on Friday, and a meeting with John Edwards on Saturday.
Lieutenant Governor Bustamante may attend the California State Firefighters Association's annual conference today, but no confirmation of this has been put out by his campaign since the group announced yesterday it was endorsing Arnold Schwarzenegger.
State Senator Tom McClintock has no public events today.
Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver will appear on Oprah today.
Dean vs. the world:
The Gephardt, Kerry, and Edwards campaigns are in such high dungeon, gloves-off mode that they have been sending out e-mails going after Dean for all of this stuff without the usual "background use only" caveats.
Related Stories
ABC News Live