The Note: One of Those Finger Things. . .

— -- WASHINGTON, June 2

NEWS SUMMARY

Even with President Bush's first comments on the Deep Throat story; even with tout le Gang (of 500) consumed with it; even with much (remarkably mature) discussion about history, sources, journalism, and the meaning of integrity — even with all this, we defy anyone to say anything the slightest bit sensible and resolute about what This All Means for the future of American politics (and/or political/Washington journalism).

The Note knows when to stand back and get out of the way of something that the two men who were the Woodward and Bernstein of the 1980s would have called "Bigger Than the Both of Us." LINK

So today's must-reads on Deep Throat:

1. The ultimate mustest read is Bob Woodward's own blockbuster Washington Post narrative about how he met Felt (proving, as if more proof were needed, that the best place to be in American journalism is outside the White House Situation Room — or outside the White House mess). The details of how they began to work together will chill your blood, curl your spine, and make your tummy tingle. LINK

2. The New York Times' Todd S. Purdum and Jim Rutenberg on the race to the history books and the bank between a certain West Coast family and a certain East Coast iconographic writer/reporter. LINK

3. The Washington Post's Howie Kurtz has his own version of what happened as Woodward got Felt up — with a haunting overlap in color with the (still jealous!!!) Paper of Record. LINK

4. The Wall Street Journal's Joe Hagan and Katherine Rosman have the Zelig/Gump story of John D. O'Connor, and you will need to read to the very end for a closing anecdote that will raise questions for some readers. LINK

5. Cindy Adams reminds readers she was on to Mark Felt four months ago. LINK

A senior administration official tells ABC News' Karen Travers that President Bush will announce his intention to nominate Rep. Christopher Cox as SEC Chairman in the Roosevelt Room at 10:15 am ET.

President Bush will escape the inside-the-Beltway-chattering-class chatter today (about which he says he is interested in reading) and travel to Hopkinsville, KY for another of his conversations on Social Security.

The President will continue to take the long way home to his Crawford, TX ranch via a St. Louis, MO fundraiser for Sen. Jim Talent's (R-MO) 2006 reelection campaign.

You can expect the DSCC to try and make some hay out of this stop (Actually: they already are … ) "Setting aside his own weak and out-of-touch record, Talent's decision to pin himself to Bush is fraught with risk for the first-term Senator given the sagging support in Missouri for the president and his agenda," says a DSCC release set to go out today.

DNC Chairman Howard Dean addresses the Campaign for America's Future Take Back America conference in Washington, D.C. at 9:15 am ET. Gov. Dean will talk about retirement security and what he sees as the GOP's failure to address the problem.

Interesting plenaries include a discussion on values with "What's The Matter With Kansas" author Thomas Frank; Nan Aron, Ralph Neas and others on the judicial confirmation battles; a panel on Wal-Mart with UFCW President Joe Hansen; and a 1:00 pm ET speech by Senator John Edwards, introduced by AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman hosts "Conversations with the Community" With Hispanic business leaders In Santa Ana, California at 3:00 pm ET.

Secretary of State Rice hosts an EU ministerial meeting today. Cameras will get to spray the top of the meeting at 10:30 am ET. The news conference will take place at 2:00 p.m. ET.

Secretary Rumsfeld departed Andrews Air Force Base this morning for his trip to the Far East.

The First Lady announces recipients of the Laura Bush Foundation for America's Libraries Grants in Chicago, IL at noon ET, and then participates in a Helping America's Youth roundtable discussion.

Just in case you thought that battle over judges was a thing of the past, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights will host a press conference at 1:00 pm ET at the National Press Club unveiling a television ad describing what the group sees as Janice Rogers Brown's "poor record."

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), fresh off trips to Houston and Dallas, is in Austin, TX today for a fundraiser at the home of Deborah and Larry Peel. He returns to Indiana Saturday night for the state party's annual Jefferson-Jackson day dinner.

Deep Throat revealed: traitor or hero?:

The New York Times' Seelye's take: LINK

The New York Post editorial board writes that the Watergate saga would have been revealed without Deep Throat and questions Felt's motivations. LINK

Joan Vennochi of The Boston Globe looks at the changed financial and personal motives Deep Throat had in revealing his identify today verses in the Watergate era. LINK

Deep Throat revealed: media:
The Wall Street Journal's lead editorial muses familiarly on investigative reporting, praises Woodstein, defends its own scrutiny of Clinton-era scandals, and manages to praise Jeff Gerth and Susan Schmidt.

Anne Kornblut of the New York Times looks at all those wrong guesses over the years. LINK

Liz Smith congratulates Vanity Fair on its scoop. LINK

Lloyd Grove went to the Palm for reaction to the revelation, and found Paul Begala having lunch with Tom Daschle. LINK

Donaldson departs:
The Wall Street Journal's Solomon and McKinnon wonder whether pressure from the business lobby helped Donaldson make up his mind about leaving.

"Mr. Donaldson clearly angered big business and some in the Republican Party with measures he pushed in his 28-month tenure. They included hefty fines for corporate wrongdoers, more independence for mutual-fund companies' boards, registration of many hedge funds' advisers and a requirement that stock marketplaces always give investors the best possible price."

"Provisions of the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform law, while enacted in 2002 before Mr. Donaldson's reign, fell to his SEC to implement. Some business leaders decried the law as a costly intrusion by the federal government, citing its requirements that companies review controls over their financial reporting to prevent fraud and that executives certify their financial statements."

Writes Steve Labaton in the New York Times, "At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Donaldson tried to play down the disagreements over policy matters, saying that they were not the reason for his departure." LINK

"'I have repeatedly said I serve at the pleasure of the president and at my own pleasure,' he said. 'I believe the time has come for me to drift off into the private sector.'"

"But Mr. Donaldson has told friends of his repeated frustrations with his Republican colleagues and some members of the administration, complaining that he was also growing weary of attacks from business groups outside the commission."

The Wall Street Journal's editorialists are glad he is gone, too. "As the Bush White House has learned, the government's many economic regulatory agencies can do great harm when poorly led. We hope it doesn't take strike three at the SEC."

Roddy Boyd of the New York Post writes about the incoming Christopher Cox, "Cox, however, is likely to become a lightening rod for Democrats concerned about the rollback of financial regulation that emerged after the market scandals in recent years." LINK

"The nomination of Cox could spark a bitter regulatory-policy referendum during the confirmation process."

The Washington Post's Carrie Johnson and Albert Crenshaw wrap the resignation. LINK

Bush agenda:
"President Bush said yesterday that the killings in Sudan's Darfur region constitute genocide, breaking with the United Nations and some administration officials who in recent months have carefully avoided using the term to describe the violence and death in Darfur," the Washington Post's Jim VandeHei reports. LINK

Elizabeth Becker and David Sanger of the Paper of Record Note the President's continued resistance to calls for doubling American financial aid to Africa. LINK

"The long-simmering dispute could culminate next week when Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who has advocated the plan, visits Washington in advance of the July session, a meeting of the Group of 8. As host of the meeting, Mr. Blair set the agenda, and he argued during his successful campaign for a third term in office that the world's richest nations had to make a $25 billion increase in support for Africa. But Mr. Bush has been cool to the idea from the start and has resisted making new aid commitments."

The Washington Post's Peter Baker traveled with Vice President Cheney to Colorado Springs for his commencement address to the U.S. Air Force Academy, where Cheney told the graduating cadets that the United States is winning the war on terror. Baker also Notes that Cheney, on CNN's "Larry King Live" on Monday, said the U.S. is far from capturing Osama bin Laden. LINK

Bob Novak devotes his column to a new book about American empire — Sands of Empire by Robert W. Merry — that conforms very nicely to a Novakian worldview: "This is no anti-Bush political screed seeking Democratic gain and Republican loss in Iraq's casualty lists. Merry over the years has been an objective journalist but considers himself a conservative and is said by friends to be a Republican who voted for Bush. What worries Merry is that Bush mixes the moralism of Woodrow Wilson and the exceptionalism of Theodore Roosevelt to produce fatal U.S. global ambitions." LINK

POTUS travels:
The Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville stoically previews the President's Social Security discussion and has the obligatory article about local highways shut down for his motorcade. LINK

In St. Louis, Jo Mannies writes the traffic story, says the president will raise more than $1 million for Sen. Talent, and gives ink to Americans United protestors. LINK

Stem cell politics:
The New York Times' Pam Belluck writes a comprehensive (if somewhat belated) take-out on embryo donation and how conservative Christians are embracing in vitro fertilization. LINK

Sen. Ted Kennedy will host a stem cell research round table in Massachusetts today hoping to create momentum of the issue on Capitol Hill, per the Boston Globe . LINK

The Clintons of Chappaqua:
Sen. Clinton's use of the averted nuclear option as a fundraising tactic catches the attention of Timesman Raymond Hernandez. And, again, we ask: Will every Clinton fundraising appeal garner New York Times ink? LINK

In case you missed 42 on CNN's "Larry King Live" last night, you shouldn't worry. He didn't make any real news and didn't offer up anything new on his wife's musings.

Clinton did show his cards a bit (and confirmed some November 2004 New York Times reporting in the process) on how Sen. Clinton should handle the "will you commit to serving a full senate term as you did in 2000" question.

"She ought to do pretty much what President Bush did when he was re-elected governor of Texas. He said he would serve — he didn't rule it out," Clinton told King.

And his assessment of Karl Rove is too delicious not too excerpt in some fashion here:

KING: Do you respect Karl Rove?

CLINTON: "Absolutely. Yes, I think old Karl's out there stirring trying to get Hillary an opponent now. You know, he's good at what he does."

"But, you know, he'll stir around on you. And he's smart. He's smart as a whip. And he'll think things through. And — but I think that, you know, we've made it a little easy for him on a couple of these elections. In 2002, I thought — that was maybe one of his most brilliant achievements, the 2002 congressional elections. Because I think he was largely responsible for the fact that, you know, the Americans were concerned about security."

"It was shortly after 9/11, but they also thought the White House was too far to the right, and they wanted a correction. And were inclined to vote for more Democrats for Congress. But they really supported the president on 9/11 and how he handled Afghanistan and terror. And so they said, well, what are we going to do? Two-thirds of the Democrats were for Iraq, 100 percent were for Afghanistan. How are we going to make them look weak on security? That's the only way because we don't agree with them on the domestic issues."

"So, they come up with this Homeland Security bill, which the president had opposed for eight and-a-half months. All of a sudden they decided they're for the bill, then the next day if you're not for it you're Saddam Hussein's ally."

Clinton then lamented (again) that James Carville did not join his White House staff.

And daughter Chelsea has been assigned (by her employer, McKinsey) to a British government project, reports London's Mail. LINK

The Nation's Newspaper (HEARTS) John Harris' "The Survivor." LINK

2008:

This is a fantastic idea: LINK

Patrick Ruffini, President Bush's former campaign webmaster, current political blogger and all-around 2008 fanatic, has created an engine that scours the Web for 2008-related stories and blog posts and puts them together on one page.

The execution is iffy; we'd like fewer PR News Releases and would prefer that the most interesting posts be highlighted in some way.

Still — props to Patrick for creating his second must-read site.

2008: Democrats:
Gov. Warner gets the Howard Fineman treatment and we're pretty sure it won't be the last time he does so. LINK

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe thinks that John Kerry's complaint about conservative voices in the media has less to do with their existence than the fact that now liberals have to get in there and mix it up and compete. LINK

The Boston Globe's Adrian Walker leads his story on Kerry's Massachusetts recess tour thusly: "It felt a little like a primary-season morning in Iowa or New Hampshire, except for the near-total absence of any political stakes." LINK

Jim Morrill of the Charlotte Observer Notes Sen. Edwards' busy schedule both domestically and internationally. LINK

Add to that list a photo-essay book on American values and dreams, to be published by HarperCollins in 2006, AP reports. LINK

2008: Republicans:
Who says Majority Leader Bill Frist doesn't make news on recess? Here's the end of a speech he delivered yesterday in New York City.

"I propose an unprecedented effort -- a 'Manhattan Project for the 21st Century' -- not with the goal of creating a destructive new weapon, but to defend against destruction wreaked by infectious disease and biological weapons. I speak of substantial increases in support for fundamental research, medical education, emergency capacity and public health infrastructure; I speak of an unleashing of the private sector and unprecedented collaboration between government and industry and academia; I speak of the creation of secure stores of treatments and vaccines and vast networks of distribution; I speak of action, without excuses, without exceptions; with the goal of protecting every American and the capability to help protect the people of the world."

"I call for the creation of the ability to detect, identify, and model any emerging or newly emerging infection, present or future, natural or otherwise; for the ability to engineer the immunization and cure, and to manufacture, distribute, and administer what we need to get it done and to get it done in time. For some years to come, this should be a chief work of the nation, for the good reason that failing to make it so could risk the life of the nation and other nations the world."

You can scoff at this — Note that it mimics what Joe Lieberman proposed in 2003 — call it a pre-2008 ploy — but the guy is the Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and if he wants to get this done, don't bet against it.

Frist's call for a new Manhattan Project gets an unbylined brief in the New York Times . LINK

A nitpicky Harvard Crimson reporter Notices that Frist confused North Korea with South Korea and writes that his visit to Harvard Medical School was met with some protests. LINK

"The speaking engagement yesterday at Harvard allowed Frist to play the role of doctor-statesman, bantering with students about infectious disease and his medical work as a missionary in rural Africa rather than managing the intense political pressures that have been building in the Senate in recent months, most prominently during debates over filibustering of judicial appointments, stem cell research, the nomination of John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations, and Congress's involvement in the Terri Schiavo case," writes Raja Mishra in the Boston Globe. LINK

Note the Sen./Leader/Dr.'s alleged refusal to take reporters' questions on other topics.

The New York Post follows up on some Toronto Star reporting that Rudy Giuliani is seeking seed money for a new professional hockey league. LINK

John Ashcroft made it clear to David Yepsen that he is not running for president despite his upcoming Iowa appearances. LINK

2005:
Writes John Fund in the Wall Street Journal, "In 2002, other Northeast states such as Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont elected GOP businessmen as their new governors in response to corruption and tax concerns. If anything, New Jersey may be even more ripe for a bold message of principled reform. The danger for Republicans may be if they mute that message and play it safe. Mr. Corzine will obviously have the money to get his vote out, his GOP opponent can only win if he convinces voters that his election would really matter."

Zounds! You'd think it'd be hard for Democrats to poo-poo higher test scores in New York City, but you'd be wrong. (Though you wouldn't be wrong to think it will be quite difficult to sell that 'poo-poo' to the electorate.) LINK

It's not clear how many votes Geraldine Ferraro's endorsement will bring to Freddy Ferrer, but Team Freddy certainly got a nice press hit out of the event: LINK, LINK, and LINK

The city council in New York City appears to be on the verge of allowing unions to spend more on elections. LINK

2006:
Nassau County executive Thomas R. Suozzi may run against Eliot Spitzer in the Democratic primary for governor, report Patrick Healy and Bruce Lambert of the New York Times. That pleases Republicans, who want Mr. Spitzer battered from a bruising primary battle.

Former Yonkers mayor John Spencer continues to chat about his interest in taking on Hillary Clinton in 2006. LINK

It seems to us that if enough Republicans throw their hats into the ring, Jeanine Pirro will have a very easy time looking elsewhere for her statewide ambitions.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports President Bush will travel to the Keystone State to headline a June 14 fundraiser for Senator Santorum (R-PA). LINK

The Schwarzenegger Era:
The Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin looks at Gov. Schwarzenegger's plan to reduce California's greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020, Noting that he offered few details as to how it would work. LINK

Schwarzenegger's proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions makes it into the New York Times. LINK

"The environmental plan appears to put Mr. Schwarzenegger, who has been a big supporter of hydrogen-fueled vehicles, somewhat at odds with the Bush administration, which has called for emissions reductions relative to the rate of economic growth."

Politics:
"One hundred days into his tenure as the high-energy, higher-decibel chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean is in trouble with party moneybags. The former Vermont governor seems to be doing a better job flaying the Republicans than bridging the cash chasm between the parties. Given Dean's 2004 run as a populist crusader, moderates were never wild about his takeover of the Democratic National Committee. So some big donors are sitting on their wallets," writes Business Week's Lee Walczak. LINK

Several current and former Ohio elected officials testified before a grand jury in the federal investigation into Tom Noe's activities and presidential campaign money, the Toledo Blade's Mike Wilkinson reports. LINK

Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe writes that Democrats over the past decade seem to gripe about the GOP's tight message machine, but what Dems need to realize is that as media outlets evolve political parties must work harder to get their message heard. LINK

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank sets the scene at the annual meeting of the Campaign for America's Future, a.k.a. the political Woodstock for liberals, which is bringing together a rather wide swath of Democrats in Washington this week to put aside their differences with one another and join hands against the president to try to make inroads in retaking Congress. LINK

Detroit's most interesting saga — Steve Wilson vs. Kwame Kilpatrick -- gets New York Times treatment today. LINK

The Los Angeles Times