The Note
W A S H I N G T O N July 15—<br> -- Today's Schedule (all times Eastern):
—9:00 am: House convenes for legislative business—9:30 am: Senate convenes for legislative business—9:45 am: Off-camera White House press gaggle—10:00 am: Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan testifies to House Financial Services Committee, Capitol Hill—10:20 am: President Bush meets with Czech Republic Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla, White House—10:30 am: Inaugural White House press briefing with Scott McClellan—11:00 am: Representative Dennis Kucinich leads a press conference on Iraq intelligence, Capitol Hill—12:30 pm: Human Rights Campaign presidential candidates forum, D.C.—1:00 pm: Governor Bill Richardson addresses the National Council of La Raza luncheon, Austin, Texas—1:00 pm: Senator Ted Kennedy delivers speech on problems in Iraq, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, D.C.—2:30 pm: OMB Director Josh Bolten delivers briefing on FY 2003 Mid-Session Review, D.C.—4:15 pm: Senator Joe Lieberman holds press availability, Capitol grounds, Richmond, Virginia—6:30 pm: Senator John Edwards holds town hall meeting, Portsmouth, New Hampshire
NEWS SUMMARY
So many gurgling summer political stories, so few Googling monkeys to deploy to cover them.
As Bill Keller is about to (re-)learn, in the Bush-Cheney-Evans economy, so much of news management involves trying to cover more and more with less and less.
You do the math: start with 1,000 monkeys.
250 are in the Hamptons through September 1.
250 are the bare minimum required to get The Note published.
That leaves 500 to deploy on various assignments.
We've sent 200 to the White House to try to get one into the senior staff and communications meetings throughout the day to try to get glimpses into the reaction to the amazing Dana Priest (GE/WP) and Dana Milbank (adorable/WP) Washington Post story deconstructing all the inconsistencies in the administration's stories over the months about yellowcake.
It's a must-read. LINK
We've dispatched 50 to Capitol Hill to stand in line to hold us seats for the George Tenet hearing tomorrow.
We've sent 75 to stakeout the Lieberman campaign headquarters, to find out the deal with his finance staff quitting, and 25 to chase his kids around, to find out how their salary levels were determined.
That leaves 175 to go to the FEC and wait for second-quarter reports and keep hitting "refresh" on their WiFi-equipped laptops.
And we still have to figure out how many to send to California.
To engage in the kind of zero-sum, who's-up-who's-down analysis that Ari Fleischer so detests, we have to ask: whose hand would you rather hold today? (And we mean in the poker sense, not the Beatles sense … .):
The Democrats, with a David Broder must-read (about the POTUS re-election prospects and "Black Thursday") leading the way on a brutal day of op-eds in the major papers; the Washington Post 's twin devastating stories about how big the federal budget deficit is and how it is hurting people at the local level; Senator Alexander! defecting on the environment; the families of American troops worried about when (and how) their loved ones are coming home; a bit of disarray on Medicare; and, of course, the drumdrumdruming of Iraq intelligence, with the word "impeachment" now being thrown around?
Or, the Republicans, with an immensely popular, well-funded chief executive, whose children aren't on the campaign payroll (far from it), whose core interest groups aren't booing him (quite the contrary), whose campaign advisers can't even make up an answer to the question of which possible general election opponent they fear most (and don't in their hearts think that will change), and whose relentless commitment to lower taxes, faith, family, and freedom is in sync with the American spirit (and could be re-building a Republican electoral college lock)?
Even before you got a look at those eye-popping deficit numbers fronted in his own paper, David Broder wrote for today suggesting the president still has the upper hand, but it ain't as fully upper as it once was.
Bush's reelection may be far from in the bag, says Dean Broder. LINK
Despite strong approval ratings (around 60%) and the fact that two-thirds of those asked in a recent CBS News poll couldn't name the Democrats vying to challenge him next fall, "we may look back on last Thursday, July 10, 2003, as the day the shadow of defeat first crossed his political horizon," Broder writes.
The "credibility gap" of the Bush Administration on Iraq, weapons of mass destruction and claims about them could wind up being its Achilles' heel. Broder describes the slippery slope of public opinion on whether the president and his men (and women) exaggerated evidence of WMD and whether the mission is truly accomplished in Iraq.
"Ominously, the poll found a dramatic reversal in public tolerance of continuing," Broder writes of last week's ABC News- Washington Post poll. Combined with persistent economic issues, Broder sees darkening clouds.
Tucker, Christine, and Trent: you can talk to Mr. Broder about all of this today at 11 am ET: LINK
Also today, President Bush meets with Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla this morning.
Josh Bolten gets to do his first big OMB briefing on the budget on a big day of digits.
Speaking of digits, as we await the final, real FEC second-quarter numbers, the Human Rights Campaign holds its presidential forum today.
The Democratic candidates will appear one-by-one before the lone questioner, ABC News' Sam Donaldson. As of Monday night, Senator Graham had not yet officially confirmed his attendance. Senator Edwards does not plan to attend. The other seven are expected to be there.
The National Council of La Raza annual conference wraps up in Austin, Texas today, featuring a luncheon with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.
The Green Party's meetings in D.C. continue.
Senator Edwards will be in Portsmouth, New Hampshire tonight for the latest of his Granite State town hall meetings.
Senator Lieberman campaigns in Richmond, Virginia today, with a press availability later in the afternoon.
Governor Dean is campaigning in D.C. today.
Congressman Kucinich leads a press conference on Iraq intelligence with a former CIA analyst and a former Australian intelligence official this morning on the Hill.
Congressman Gephardt, Senator Kerry, Ambassador Braun, and Reverend Sharpton have no public events scheduled for today besides the HRC forum.
Senator Graham has no public events scheduled for today, although he was on Fox and Friends (We didn't have a chance to turn the audio up to hear what he had to say.).
Today's California recall headlines:
The main organization leading the fight against the recall is set to unveil its legal strategy today. Several California citizens are filing a class action lawsuit claiming all sorts of illegalities in the signature gathering process.
Recall organizers have all but completed their petition work and submitted more than $1.6 million signatures to county election officials yesterday, two days prior to the reporting period deadline.
While promoting Terminator 3 in Berlin, Arnold Schwarzenegger said he is still a month away from deciding whether or not to enter the potential race for governor
Politics of national security:
The New York Times ' Nagourney Notes a "rapid counterattack" by the president's political advisers.LINK
He gets Ron Kaufman to say that "[this] is a legitimate news story today. But it won't be a legitimate political story tomorrow," but while he alludes to GOP worry, there isn't any on the record.
And Ed Gillespie goes with the "the Democrats have nothing to say" defense.
The New York Post 's Deborah Orin took the president's "darn good" comment as a sign of defiance. LINK
"Democrats have escalated their attacks and all but accused Bush of lying, and his poll numbers have dipped. But the president said he's still sure the United States made 'the right decision' in toppling Saddam Hussein because he threatened the world."
On the op-ed page of the New York Post , John Podhoretz concedes that Democrats have found an issue that appears to be sticking and causing some worry at the White House. However, he warns that the attacks on President Bush's credibility should not be overdone. LINK
"The lib/Dem/media folk have managed to plant a seed of doubt in the minds of many American swing voters. If they want to cultivate that seed, they really shouldn't overwater it. That's how they could translate this short-term gain into long-term pain for Bush."
"If they want to use this to their strategic advantage, they will stop calling Bush a liar on the matter of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. You really have to be a little crazy to think Bush didn't genuinely believe Saddam was a threat to world peace because of his WMD. Maybe his conviction led him to believe things that turned out to be fraudulent, but that would mean he misled himself. And if he misled himself, then by definition he wasn't lying."
See ya 'round, Ari.
The Washington Post 's Dana Milbank writes of White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer's last day: "Instead of a soft and affectionate farewell from the White House press corps, he received an extended hammering yesterday afternoon on why President Bush's State of the Union address contained an allegation against Iraq based on bogus intelligence." LINK
Senator Bob Graham mused about the prospect of an impeachment inquiry if Democrats controlled Congress.LINK
Senator Kennedy plans to hit the president's Iraq policy hard today for his allegedly "go-it-alone" foreign policy, while the North Korea story keeps building.
Three subjects for Bill O'Reilly's "Memo":
Paul Krugman calls the whole thing a "pattern of corruption." LINK
"[T]hose who politicized intelligence in order to lead us into war, at the expense of national security, hope to cover their tracks by corrupting the system even further."
The Times ' Nick Kristof says a "senior White House official chided me gently and explained that there was more to the story that I didn't know" after he wrote about uranium and Niger a month ago. LINK
"Based on conversations with people in the intelligence community, this picture is emerging: the White House, eager to spice up the State of the Union address, recklessly resurrected the discredited Niger tidbit. The Central Intelligence Agency objected, and then it and the National Security Council negotiated a new wording, attributing it all to the Brits. It felt less dishonest pinning the falsehood on the cousins."
"What troubles me is not that single episode, but the broader pattern of dishonesty and delusion that helped get us into the Iraq mess — and that created the false expectations undermining our occupation today. Some in the administration are trying to make George Tenet the scapegoat for the affair. But Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, issued an open letter to President Bush yesterday reflecting the view of many in the intel community that the central culprit is Vice President Dick Cheney. The open letter called for Mr. Cheney's resignation."
And on the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times, Robert Scheer writes the administration's use of questionable evidence to bolster its case to go to war is grounds for impeachment. LINK
Big Casino budget politics:"It's shock and awe," a senior Republican Senate aide with no sense of originality told the Washington Post 's Jonathan Weisman about the projected federal budget deficit — a staggering $450 billion this fiscal year. LINK
The projection expected today is $50 billion higher than economists expected. "That represents a fiscal reversal exceeding $680 billion," Weisman writes, and also Notes that the deficit — larger than the entire military budget — is the largest in terms of dollars on record, beating the $290 billion deficit recorded in 1992.
