Supporters Get Incentive Plans at Bush Rallies

The New York Times
September 28, 2004

Supporters Get Incentive Plans at Bush Rallies
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

Want to see the president when he comes to your town? Get in line - to make phone calls for his campaign.

President Bush's campaign aides say they have hit on a novel way to recruit volunteers for his get-out-the-vote army. Anyone wanting to attend one of Mr. Bush's campaign rallies, anywhere in the country, has to get a ticket first. And anyone wanting a ticket, or a coveted spot up front, can improve his chances by putting in a few hours at a phone bank, canvassing Republican homes or putting up lawn signs.

Campaign rallies may be as old as politics itself, but in this year of earliests, firsts and most-expensive-evers, the Bush campaign has taken this most basic form of communication to a new state of the art, by pressing audiences to work as foot soldiers, before, during and immediately after Bush events.

The tactic points up a stark difference between the presidential campaigns: while Senator John Kerry is using his rallies and forums to try to reach undecided voters and to close the deal with standoffish Democrats, Mr. Bush is packing his audiences with supporters who must identify themselves as such in questionnaires and whipping them into brigades ready to blitz crucial districts to get every last voter to the polls.

Kerry aides scoff at the invitation-only audiences and what they say is the shanghai-ing of volunteers. "We don't require oaths of allegiance, and we don't take people captive," said Tom Shea, director of the Kerry campaign in Florida, after turning out close to 10,000 people for a rally in Orlando last Tuesday where, he said, 700 people signed up to help.

But Donald P. Green, a professor of political science at Yale and the author of "Get Out the Vote! How to Increase Voter Turnout," said Mr. Bush's strategy was inspired. "There's a basic principle in experimental psychology, that the hand teaches the heart," Professor Green said. "You've now made phone calls for George Bush; that helps solidify your commitment to the campaign. If you weren't enthusiastic and committed already, you might be now."

At a rally in Bangor, Me., last Thursday, Katrina Waite had driven nearly two hours and then waited seven more under a sweltering sun to see the president. The reward for her early arrival? A spot way in back, atop a flatbed truck, where she downed cups of water fetched by her two children to stave off the heat.

Ms. Waite said her mother had earned a spot up front. "She did three hours of phone calling to get it," she said, peering to try to pick her mother out in the crowd.

If Mr. Bush likes to call his retail politicking "fertilizing the grass roots," the volunteer recruitment can create a kind of hothouse effect.

When Laura Bush came to Maine a few weeks ago, for example, scores of people were persuaded to stick around and make calls from a phone bank in the basement of the building where she spoke.

And when Mr. Bush concluded an hourlong "Ask President Bush" event in Hudson, Wis., not long ago, the 1,500 people who attended were directed toward a giant tent set up with tables, chairs and telephones, and encouraged to make calls for a few hours.

"In this campaign, we've taken advantage of every opportunity to engage people," said Randy Bumps, the campaign's Maine director.

The campaign began engaging potential recruits as soon as the Bangor rally was scheduled, a week earlier. Those who wanted tickets were required to apply for them, filling out forms stating their home and e-mail addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, willingness to volunteer and whether they supported the president.

And in the days before the rally, supporters were enticed to make calls for the campaign with promises of a spot closer to the president, according to many in the crowd.

Mr. Bumps said the "excitement" generated by the president's visit meant that the campaign for the first time met its weekly goal of 20,000 phone calls to Mainers.

Asked whether opponents of Mr. Bush's were welcome, Reed Dickens, a national campaign spokesman, said the policy was to reward Mr. Bush's most eager supporters first when allocating the "limited number" of tickets.

Even so, space is rarely scarce at rallies for Mr. Bush. Only about 4,000 of the 9,400 people given tickets to the Bangor event showed. (Mr. Bumps insisted that undecided voters were welcome, but if there were any at the rally, they did a good job of faking their enthusiasm for Mr. Bush.)

The invitation-only policy - and its application by what Bush campaign officials call overzealous organizers at the local level - has given rise to repeated instances across the country where rallygoers were asked to sign affidavits of support to get tickets.

And Mr. Kerry, at his own events, has taken to mocking Mr. Bush's policy. "No one here had to sign a loyalty oath to get in, right?" he said last Tuesday in Jacksonville, Fla.

Another result is a recurring cat-and-mouse game with those who want to taunt Mr. Bush. With rare exceptions, including the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who heckled Mrs. Bush in New Jersey, few have made it past the screening process. But in Bangor at least a dozen hecklers got in, which Mr. Bumps chalked up to the fact that it was Mr. Bush's first stop in Maine of the campaign.

One protester, Michael Thorne, 51, said he had come partly out of anger that Mr. Bush closed his rallies to the public. "He's my president, too," he said.

This was after Mr. Thorne had yelled "No more lies!" during Mr. Bush's speech, been quickly surrounded by half a dozen campaign aides heatedly yelling "Four more years!" and been hustled out of the rally with several others wearing anti-Bush T-shirts by security guards and police officers.

The Kerry campaign, mindful that Mr. Kerry still has Democrats to convince and swing voters to reach, has opened his rallies to the public. At the Orlando rally, for example, thousands of tickets were given away to constituents like labor unions and environmental groups, but tickets were not required, and thousands more people showed up after the rally was advertised on local radio stations the day before.

Kerry aides expressed surprise at the Bush campaign's focus on core Republican voters apparently at the expense of undecided or swing voters, and they said that the Kerry campaign was courting both dedicated Democrats and middle-of-the-road voters.

"It's like going to Disney World, only instead of the cartoon character saying you have to be this tall to ride, they have a picture of Rush Limbaugh saying you have to be this right-wing to get in," Mr. Shea said.

But Bush aides say that chasing swing voters may be a waste of time. "We believe that the number of undecideds or independent voters is smaller this election than ever before," said Mr. Dickens, the campaign spokesman.

The Bush campaign may be packing its audiences with die-hard supporters, he said, but it is holding its events in swing districts where every extra enthusiastic volunteer can make a difference.

Even those loyal audience members have their limits, however. Christian Morris, 23, a member of the Bush campaign staff, was rebuffed several times as she mingled in the Bangor crowd trying to sign up volunteers before Janelle Vigue, 17, accosted her and offered to enlist.

Ms. Vigue said she had her own reasons for wanting a glimpse of the political process. "I want to run for president some day," she said.

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F.B.I. Said to Lag on Translations of Terror Tapes

The New York Times
September 28, 2004

F.B.I. Said to Lag on Translations of Terror Tapes
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 - Three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, more than 120,000 hours of potentially valuable terrorism-related recordings have not yet been translated by linguists at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and computer problems may have led the bureau to systematically erase some Qaeda recordings, according to a declassified summary of a Justice Department investigation that was released on Monday.

The report, released in edited form by Glenn A. Fine, the department's inspector general, found that the F.B.I. still lacked the capacity to translate all the terrorism-related material from wiretaps and other intelligence sources and that the influx of new material has outpaced the bureau's resources.

Overhauling the government's translation capabilities has been a top priority for the Bush administration in its campaign against terrorism. Qaeda messages, saying "Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match is about to begin," were intercepted by the National Security Agency on Sept. 10, 2001, but not translated until days later, underscoring the urgency of the problem.

The inspector general's report on the F.B.I., the lead agency for combating domestic terrorism, said the bureau faced "significant management challenges" in providing quick and accurate translations.

The report offered the most comprehensive assessment to date of the F.B.I.'s problems in deciphering hundreds of thousands of intercepted phone calls, conversations, e-mail messages, documents and other material that could include information about terrorist plots and foreign intelligence matters. It revealed problems not only in translating material quickly, but also in ranking the work and in ensuring that hundreds of newly hired linguists were providing accurate translations. While linguists are supposed to undergo periodic proficiency exams under F.B.I. policy, that requirement was often ignored last year, the inspector general found in the publicly released summary of its investigation. Most of the report remains classified.

Congressional officials who have been briefed recently by the F.B.I. on the translation issue said the report offered a much bleaker assessment than the bureau has acknowledged, and leading senators from both parties denounced what they described as foot-dragging in fixing the problem.

"What good is taping thousands of hours of conversations of intelligence targets in foreign languages if we cannot translate promptly, securely, accurately and efficiently?" asked Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. "The Justice Department's translation mess has become a chronic problem that has obvious implications for our national security."

In its response to the report, the F.B.I. said it had taken "substantial steps to strengthen our language capabilities," but it acknowledged that a shortage of qualified linguists and problems in the bureau's computer systems had led to a backlog in translating terrorism material. Robert S. Mueller III, director of the F.B.I., said he agreed "that more remains to be done in our language services program, and we are giving this effort the highest priority."

With $48 million in additional financing since the Sept. 11 attacks, the number of linguists at the F.B.I. rose to 1,214 as of April 2004 from 883 in 2001, with sharp increases in the number of translators of Arabic, Farsi and other languages considered critical to counterterrorism investigations. But Mr. Fine's report made clear that the expansion had not eliminated the management and efficiency problems that dogged the bureau even before Sept. 11.

The investigation blamed in part the F.B.I.'s computer systems, long derided by Congressional critics as antiquated and unwieldy. The investigation found that limited storage capacities in the system meant that older audio recordings had sometimes been deleted automatically to make room for newer material, even if the recordings had not yet been translated.

In field tests conducted by the inspector general at eight F.B.I. offices, three offices had "Qaeda sessions that potentially were deleted by the system before linguists had reviewed them," the report said.

An F.B.I. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that officials have had to go back to original Qaeda recordings on some occasions to restore them after realizing that the copies had been inadvertently deleted because of capacity problems.

But the inspector general's report said that linguists might not have realized that material was deleted unless a case officer happened to notice it missing from the final translations. Moreover, the report found that the F.B.I. had failed to institute necessary controls "to prevent critical audio material from being automatically deleted."

Audio recordings that relate to Qaeda investigations are supposed to be reviewed within 12 hours of interception under F.B.I. policy. But the report found that deadline was missed in 36 percent of nearly 900 cases that the inspector general reviewed. In 50 Qaeda cases, it took at least a month for the F.B.I. to translate material.

The F.B.I. "has not prioritized its workload nationwide to ensure a zero backlog in the F.B.I.'s highest priority cases - counterterrorism cases and, in particular, Al Qaeda cases," the report found.

Computer problems and the shortage of qualified linguists have worsened the backlog in translating material, the report found.

In counterterrorism cases, more than 123,000 hours of audio recordings in languages commonly associated with terrorism have not been translated since the Sept. 11 attacks, amounting to 20 percent of the total material, the report found. For all languages, nearly half a million hours of audio tapes, or 30 percent of the material collected, was not reviewed, it said. The data reflected material gathered under foreign intelligence surveillance warrants in operations within the United States.

Several lawmakers who have pressed for improvements in the F.B.I.'s translation abilities said the report reinforced their concerns that the bureau was headed in the wrong direction.

"Since terrorists attacked the United States on 9/11, the F.B.I. has been trying to assure the Congress and the public that its translation program is on the right track," said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. "Unfortunately, this report shows that the F.B.I. is still drowning in information about terrorism activities with hundreds of thousands of hours of audio yet to be translated."

Mr. Grassley also urged the inspector general to release a public version of an internal report about the case of a former F.B.I. linguist, Sibel Edmonds, who complained of ineptitude and possible espionage in the translation program. A still-classified version of the report found that Ms. Edmonds's complaints played a part in the F.B.I.'s decision to dismiss her in 2002, officials said.

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A Leak Probe Gone Awry

The New York Times
September 27, 2004
A Leak Probe Gone Awry

When the Justice Department opened an investigation a year ago into the question of how Robert Novak obtained the name of a covert Central Intelligence Agency operative for publication in his syndicated column, we expressed two basic concerns. The first was the need for an independent inquiry led by someone without Attorney General John Ashcroft's ultra-close ties to the White House. That was addressed belatedly with the naming of a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, to pursue the accusations that unnamed Bush administration officials illegally leaked the woman's undercover role in an effort to stifle criticism of Iraq policy by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV.

Unfortunately, our second, overriding fear has become a reality. The focus of the leak inquiry has lately shifted from the Bush White House, where it properly belongs, to an attempt to compel journalists to testify and reveal their sources. In an ominous development for freedom of the press and government accountability that hits particularly close to home, a federal judge in Washington has ordered a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, to testify before a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the covert operative's identity and to describe any conversations she had with "a specified executive branch official."

The subpoena was upheld even though neither Ms. Miller nor this newspaper had any involvement in the matter at hand - the public naming of an undercover agent. Making matters worse, the newly released decision by Judge Thomas Hogan takes the absolutist position that there is no protection whatsoever for journalists who are called to appear before grand juries.

This chilling rejection of both First Amendment principles and evolving common law notions of a privilege protecting a reporter's confidential sources cries out for rejection on appeal, as does the undue secrecy surrounding the special prosecutor's filings in the case.

Mr. Novak has refused to say whether he received a subpoena. But other journalists have acknowledged getting subpoenas and some have testified about their contacts with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. They say they did so based on his consent, but consent granted by government employees under a threat of dismissal hardly seems voluntary. Once again, none of these journalists were involved in the central issue: the initial public identification of Mr. Wilson's wife.

If an official at the White House intentionally triggered publication of the name of a C.I.A. operative to undermine Mr. Wilson's credibility and silence criticism of Iraq policy, it was a serious abuse of power. The legacy of the investigation should not be a perverse legal precedent that makes it easy for prosecutors to undo a reporter's pledge of confidentiality, thereby discouraging people with knowledge of real abuses to blow the whistle to the press.

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Look for Substance, Not Sizzle

The New York Times
September 27, 2004

Look for Substance, Not Sizzle
By ADAM CLYMER

With President Bush and John Kerry set to debate on Thursday, American political journalism is proclaiming that the occasion is a crucial "test" for Mr. Kerry, and perhaps for Mr. Bush.

Indeed. But it's also a test for journalists. Phony documents and dishonest advertising have captured more attention than the facts of the candidates' competing claims about health care, or whether either has a plan - a plausible plan - for Iraq. And neither candidate's acceptance speech got widespread scrutiny.

But the debates provide critical moments when the public pays attention, when voters can measure one candidate against the other. And the press will, as it has for years, do a creditable job of summarizing what is said, broadcasting the encounters live and even printing transcripts.

That will not be enough. For just as the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey showed that voters learned what candidates stood for by watching debates, other research has shown that the public's views are influenced by what the news media emphasize.

The immediate judgments of television watchers can be changed by analysts citing a moment as a blunder or an overall presentation as strong or weak, commanding or uninformed, human or condescending. Often that impression has not even been conveyed by a seriously developed journalistic case, but by the trivia of television sound bites or reports in newspapers, like Al Gore's sighs or his flawed recollection of just who accompanied him on a trip to a disaster in Texas. Or when George H. W. Bush glanced at his watch, a movement interpreted to prove that he was uncomfortable debating Bill Clinton and Ross Perot.

The test for journalists is whether they can appreciate the importance of the event and help voters make sense of what is said, checking the accuracy of claims about the past and the present and the plausibility of what is claimed for the future. It won't do to say, "We covered that in August."

So if Mr. Kerry says he will solve the situation in Iraq by getting other countries to send more troops, the press needs to examine whether this could happen if he should win. And if Mr. Bush says he is going to solve the health insurance crisis with more community health care centers and fewer lawsuits, then journalists have to help voters determine whether Mr. Bush is offering cures or Band-aids.

The press in recent years has spilled a lot more important ink over debate style than substance, with dutiful fact-checking relegated to inside pages, and descriptions of candidates' manners and costumes - and above all, strategy accompanying the front-page accounts of what was actually said. It was not always that way. The accounts of the Kennedy-Nixon debates relied on accounts of what was said. So did the reporting of the 1976 debates. In that year and in 1980, articles pointing out major inaccuracies (like Gerald Ford's assertion that Eastern Europe was not under Soviet domination or Ronald Reagan's denial that he had ever said nuclear proliferation was not the United States's business) made the front pages.

Sometime in the 1980's political coverage began to confuse itself with drama criticism. The word "performance" started showing up frequently in debate analyses, and reporters started citing Samuel Beckett in their front-page articles.

By 2000, front-page articles were saying the language that mattered was "body language," and that the candidates offered "the distilled ether of two very different personalities," while reporters' efforts to correct the debaters' claims on tax plans and patients' rights were buried inside the newspaper. And even those fact-checking efforts were constrained by an effort to balance one candidate's big mistakes against the other's minor errors. Strategy and color do belong in the report, but only after telling how Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry propose to govern, and how much of what they say makes sense.

This is ultimately a challenge for newspapers because television isn't interested, not even the cable networks with their longer political broadcasts. Indeed after watching the coverage of the Swift Boat story, it is easy to imagine an evenhanded cable exchange revolving around a political ad saying one candidate thought the earth was round. Its sponsor would be challenged on cable by someone who said the earth was flat. In an effort to seem fair to both sides, journalists can forget to be fair to the public.

Adam Clymer, the former Washington correspondent for The Times, is the political director of the National Annenberg Election Survey.

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Powell, Then and Now

The New York Times
September 27, 2004

Powell, Then and Now
By BOB HERBERT

Secretary of State Colin Powell, discussing the Iraq war during an appearance at The Times on Friday, did not have the crisp certitude of the general who assured us in 1991 that the first gulf war was going almost precisely as planned.

Thirteen years ago Mr. Powell was the supremely confident, almost cocky, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At press briefings he would describe the plan for defeating Saddam Hussein's army, which had invaded and occupied Kuwait, as follows: "First we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it."

He would detail the air, land and naval forces closing in on the Iraqis and say: "I'm not telegraphing anything. I just want everybody to know that we have a tool box that's full of tools, and I brought them all to the party."

He had every reason to be brash. The U.S.-led coalition went into the first gulf war with a coherent plan, extensive international support and overwhelming military superiority, including more than half a million American troops.

Last Friday, surrounded by reporters and editors, Secretary Powell had a decidedly different message. He refused to paint a rosy picture of the current war's progress. "We've got a tough road ahead of us," he said. He acknowledged that the resistance encountered by American troops was stronger than the administration had anticipated, and he added, "I'm not going to underestimate or understate the seriousness of the insurgency."

The resistance, he said, is a "black cloud" over U.S. efforts in Iraq.

Mr. Powell's candor was refreshing. But what we're not getting from the Bush administration is any sense of where we go from here with this war that never made sense, has cost more than 1,000 American lives, has further destabilized the Middle East and has energized the forces of terror that are the real threat to the U.S.

Bush administration officials are busy lowering expectations about the elections scheduled for January. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld now tells us it's fine if elections reach just three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. Secretary Powell, in an interview on CNN yesterday, said: "There will be polling stations that are shot at. There will be insurgents who will be out there who will try to keep people from voting."

No earthly amount of spin can make a credible case that Iraq is on the road to freedom and democracy.

Meanwhile, in yet another echo of Vietnam, American commanders in Iraq are begging for more troops. It was ever thus. Commanders thrust into these unwinnable wars against foreign insurgencies always believe that just a few thousand more troops will turn the tide. Americans were told again and again that there was light at the end of the tunnel in Vietnam. The troops sent into that nightmare would dryly remark that the light was coming from an onrushing train.

Rather than destroying an enemy army, which was the goal of the first gulf war, the U.S. military is now spinning its wheels in the Iraqi sand. No one is sure who or where the enemy is, or even what the U.S. mission is. And it is in that horrendous, senseless environment that American troops are getting shot to death or blown up or horribly maimed every single day.

At home, Americans seem to have forgotten what an ill-advised war can do to the United States. More than three decades after it was published, David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" should still be required reading. Lyndon Johnson had hoped Vietnam would be a short war, Mr. Halberstam wrote, and he was afraid of the political consequences if the true economic costs became visible:

"The result was that his economic planning was a living lie, and his administration took us into economic chaos: the Great Society programs were passed but never funded on any large scale; the war itself ran into severe budgetary problems (the decision in 1968 to put a ceiling on the American troops was as much economic as political); and the most important, the failure to finance the war honestly would inspire a virulent inflationary spiral which helped defeat Johnson himself. Seven years after the commitment of combat troops, that inflation was still very much alive and was forcing a successor Administration into radical, desperate economic measures in order to restore some financial balance."

We've been there, done that, and now we're doing it again.

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The Kidnap Weapon

The New York Times
September 27, 2004

The Kidnap Weapon
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

Washington

The Zarqawi terrorist network in Iraq has developed a powerful new weapon. It requires no munitions and no suicide zealots, runs no risk to terrorists of death or capture and provides cash to finance other operations.

The weapon is publicized kidnapping. Pictures of helpless captives begging for their lives trigger worldwide coverage of tearful families begging for mercy. Films sometimes conclude with a sadistic Zarqawi slowly sawing off the heads of his victims.

For the psychological warriors, it is a win-win tactic. If the ransom is paid by a private contractor, the extorted cash buys rockets and mortars. If the ransom is paid by a government withdrawing its troops, the terrorist diplomatic victory dispirits the rest of the coalition. If the ransom is not paid, then the film of the hostages' beheading strikes fear into the heart of the morbidly fascinated viewer.

The kidnap weapon does not always produce the propaganda results the killers want. John Burns of The Times noted from Baghdad on PBS's "NewsHour" that the grisly murders fill civilized Iraqis with a deep disgust. They remind many of the hand-chopping and tongue-cutting methods used by Saddam's goons to suppress resistance.

But this also frightens many Iraqis, and manipulates the media to intimidate millions abroad whose support is needed to defeat the terrorists.

Nobody should order reporters and editors to "downplay" a gut-wrenching human interest story involving cruelty, violence and death. Nor should the media flinch from covering casualty counts or honoring the fallen. War involves sacrifice.

But responsible journalists should consider the wisdom of allowing media-savvy terrorists to play them like a violin.

Sensationalism sells; on TV, "if it bleeds, it leads." Audiences are surely drawn to tearful interviews with worried spouses and children. Bloggers get "hits" from posting the most gruesome pictures. Cable ratings rise by milking the pathos in the drama created by the Zarqawi network: first comes the kidnapping report; then televised pleas from the kneeling, doomed innocents; then coverage of marches and vigils to plead for the payment of ransom; finally, in one case out of four, the delivery of dismembered bodies and gleeful claim of blame.

Do we have to become conduits for this grisly, real-death kidnap choreography? We are obliged to report it, but we need not go along with the terrorist propagandists in milking the most horror out of it.

We know that the primary purpose of the kidnap weapon is to drive the coalition forces out of Iraq and to prevent a free election there.

We know, too, that the kidnap weapon is aimed at the U.S. election. What we do not know is how its heavily publicized use will cut. Will Americans react to all-kidnap-all-the-time by being revolted at the savagery and turn to the candidate determined to wipe out the barbarians? Or will we be so revolted as to think Iraqis are hopelessly uncivilized or beaten down, and turn to the candidate who will get us out of there the fastest?

John Kerry, who has evidently decided to replace Howard Dean as the antiwar candidate, last weekend helped to magnify the terrorists' kidnap weapon. In a scheduled commercial Kerry personally approved, just before charging that George Bush had no plan to get us out of Iraq, the Democratic campaign underscored the message Zarqawi has been sending: "Americans," said Kerry's announcer, "are being kidnapped, held hostage, even beheaded."

Though undoubtedly accurate, that paid evocation of horror by a political candidate is a terrible blunder. That's the sort of emotional appeal you would expect from President Gloria Arroyo of the Philippines who pulled 51 troops out of Iraq, caving to the demand of kidnappers, emboldening them to grab fresh victims.

It's bad enough for some thoughtless media outlets to become an echo chamber for scare propaganda; it's worse when the nominee of a major party approves its use to press his antiwar candidacy.

We are dealing with the most brutal propaganda weapon yet devised. Strong governments counter it by refusing to pay money or policy ransom to the kidnap-killers. Nonpartisan media's response should be to report the events conscious of manipulation and not to overlook the reaction of Iraqi and worldwide Muslim disgust.

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Avoiding Distractions

The New York Times
September 27, 2004
Avoiding Distractions

The outlines are barely set for Congress's landmark attempt to overhaul the failed American intelligence system, yet House Republicans are already trying to turn this week's debate into a pre-election brawl aimed more at scoring phony patriotic points than at passing meaningful laws. The House bill relegates intelligence reform to a bit part in a partisan hodgepodge of seamy proposals to crimp civil liberties in the name of preventing terrorism. Fortunately, in the Senate, a commendably bipartisan effort has produced a clean bill to empower a national intelligence director and counterterrorism center and straighten out the 15 intelligence agencies now stumbling at cross-purposes.

It will take a real effort by President Bush, a late convert to the warnings of the independent 9/11 commission, to save the more substantive approach of the Senate bill and end any suspicion that the White House might privately prefer the House's attempt to turn this overriding issue into a political cudgel. What is needed is a thorough overhaul as recommended by the 9/11 panel, with a new intelligence director endowed with the fullest possible budgetary and personnel powers.

House Republicans would muddle this priority by attaching a raft of controversial proposals that have nothing to do with the issue at hand, but instead amount to a needless reaffirmation and expansion of the Patriot Act. These measures - which would make it far easier for police to investigate, detain and deport noncitizens on the basis of ill-defined suspicions - are detritus from earlier attempts to bulk up the worst parts of that law. Speaker Dennis Hastert hailed the move as a weapon for the "prevention and prosecution" of terrorists. But the House proposals seem more like a poison pill aimed at scuttling the chances for intelligence reform. Leaders of the Democratic minority as well as alarmed Republican moderates should stand against this distraction and give the nation what it needs, a real debate over an uncluttered law.

The basic ingredients are clear: to supercede existing agencies with an intelligence director and counterterrorism center able to organize and manage the nation's overall needs, down to allocating funds and shifting personnel. This means hands-on authority over the mission and the means, and it means the director of central intelligence must stay in place and not be elevated to the new job.

The Senate bill is fiercely resisted by miffed Defense officials and turf-jealous committee lions. Sponsored by Susan Collins of Maine and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, it would end the Pentagon's chokehold on most of the $40 billion intelligence budget - and declassify at least its broad outlines. Contrary to claims by the bill's opponents, the Pentagon would suffer no loss of tactical intelligence on the battlefield.

The House also has brushed aside the 9/11 panel's warning that "dysfunctional'' oversight by Congress was integral to the intelligence failures. The Senate is studying whether to change its ossified committee structure in which the flow of intelligence funds means power.

The House's attempt to force more "crackdown" measures into the debate does serve one useful purpose. It makes emphatically clear that the antiterrorism effort needs an independent civil liberties watchdog like the one included in the Senate bill. Passing clean legislation in the shadow of Election Day is a daunting task. But Congress cannot escape its duty to finally repair the institutional failures that left the country so vulnerable before 9/11 and so wrong before the invasion of Iraq.

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Agencies Postpone Issuing New Rules Until After Election

The New York Times
September 27, 2004
Agencies Postpone Issuing New Rules Until After Election
By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 - After a case of mad cow disease surfaced in Washington State late last year, federal regulators vowed to move swiftly to adopt rules to reduce the risks of further problems and restore confidence in the nation's meat industry.

Some rules were adopted this year. But a few weeks ago, the Food and Drug Administration, after heavy lobbying from the beef and feed industries, took steps to delay - and to the concern of food safety groups, possibly kill - completion of the most controversial and perhaps most expensive proposal for cattle companies.

That proposal would sharply restrict what could be included in animal feed. Shortly after the administration slowed its consideration of the rule, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association broke its nonpartisan tradition and endorsed President Bush for re-election.

The F.D.A. decision was part of a broader pattern.

In recent weeks, federal agencies across the vast Washington bureaucracy have delayed completion of a range of proposed regulations from food safety and the environment to corporate governance and telecommunications policy until after Election Day, when regulatory action may be more politically palatable.

The delays come after heavy lobbying by industry organizations, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the cattle and feed industries, the four regional Bell operating telephone companies, big health care providers and timber and mining interests.

Some groups have been making their case for regulations that would make it easier for miners and timber companies to develop forests, while others have been advocating wholesale telephone rate rules that could significantly increase prices to consumers. Many corporate executives, meanwhile, have been arguing against a proposal that would give shareholders the ability to remove directors of troubled companies.

Officials have decided to wait until after Election Day to respond to an appeals court decision that struck down rules that would make it easier for the largest media conglomerates to grow larger. And they are not expected to issue rules that will determine prescription rates and coverage under the new Medicare law until after the presidential election.

Both industry lobbyists and their critics say that the re-election of President Bush would probably lead to the adoption of some regulations favorable to industry and the rejection or watering down of others that industry considers objectionable. Consumer groups, environmental organizations and food safety experts, meanwhile, say that delays could lead to significantly weaker rules that could increase prices on some products, reduce safety and relax environmental protections.

While the delay of completing rules, known to lobbyists and policy makers as "slow rolling,'' is common in a campaign season, some environmental groups and consumer advocates say this year is different.

"Generally, regulatory submissions often get pushed off in election years,'' said Gene Kimmelman, a senior director of public policy at Consumers Union.

"What is unusual this time,'' he added, "is the clear pattern of holding back regulatory decisions that will benefit the largest industry players and will drive up prices and market place risks for consumers, ranging from telephones to drugs to the risks of contaminants of food. The pattern of slow rolling will ultimately benefit the largest players and hit consumers in the pocketbook.''

Administration officials have denied such consequences, although they acknowledge that they are generally inclined in each instance to take the least restrictive approach and that they have been sympathetic to the concerns of business interests. They also say that reducing regulations reduces costs to industry and, thus, leads to lower prices for consumers. The administration's critics say that although John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for president, has taken a different position on some of the regulations, electing him might not affect the outcome of some proposals because the Bush administration would have almost three months after Election Day to complete the rules.

"There could be a fire sale such as we've never seen post-election,'' said Marty Hayden, legislative director for Earthjustice, one of several environmental groups that is opposing a proposal to make it easier to build roads in millions of acres of forests. Last week, the administration announced that it was extending the comment period for the proposal so that the final regulation could not be adopted before Election Day.

Slow rolling takes place before a presidential election because it is an axiom of political life that agencies take no action that could give an issue to the opponents of the incumbent administration.

After an election, by contrast, agency work often accelerates, particularly in anticipation of a change in administration. Indeed, nearly four years ago, the Bush administration - in its first two hours in office - imposed a brief regulatory moratorium to take stock of the proposals that had been rushed through agencies in the final days of the Clinton administration.

While that rhythm to rule making is inevitable, some experts say that this year there are an unusually large number of controversial proposals, and that they reflect both the tightness in the polls and the strong industry ties to the White House. Those groups and others have prevailed upon policy makers to delay some decisions in the hopes of killing some proposals and relaxing some other rules after the election.

Blair Levin, a telecommunications analyst at Legg Mason who was a senior official at the Federal Communications Commission in the Clinton administration, said that in telecommunications policy, he "cannot recall a time when there were these many important things waiting to be acted on.''

He said he expected that final rules on wholesale telephone rates, which will be completed after the election, would result in price increases in the range of 15 percent for existing customers, as well as price increases for new customers.

Officials at several agencies said they had moved to reduce the profile of controversial rule makings as the presidential campaign moves into the home stretch.

"The president sets the focus right now,'' said Michael D. Gallagher, an assistant commerce secretary who heads the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. "That's the way it should be, and it's not for us to get into old battles. The president should drive the message and we should be reinforcing that. Hopefully we'll be able to do that for the next 60 days. After that, there's a very full plate of issues to be addressed.''

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Debate Preparation Began With a Professor at Yale

NY Times
Debate Preparation Began With a Professor at Yale
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON

People may think they have heard enough about the things that President Bush and Senator John Kerry have in common - Yankee ancestry, distant relatives, Skull and Bones. But there is one more shared experience, if readers can bear another ramble down the byways of Yale, which is of no small relevance in a week when the two presidential candidates face off in their first debate.

It turns out that Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry, two years apart in New Haven, shared the same oratory teacher and debate coach, Rollin G. Osterweis. Their training in speaking and thinking under Professor Osterweis influenced the kind of candidates they became, and will be part of their performances in Coral Gables, Fla., on Thursday.

Professor Osterweis, who died in 1982, was a courtly Yale professor who taught a popular and easy class, History of American Oratory, for a quarter-century. Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry took the course, which consisted of studying famous addresses by William Jennings Bryan, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, among others, as well as delivering a speech to Professor Osterweis and the class. Mr. Kerry, as is well known, went one step further and became a star on the Yale debate team, with Professor Osterweis as coach.

Aides say that Mr. Bush, who never tried out for the team, nonetheless took from the class lessons that he uses today: the importance of direct language, organized speeches and connecting with crowds.

"He actually gave me a lecture once," Karen P. Hughes, Mr. Bush's close adviser, said at the White House last week. Ms. Hughes was referring to the president's demands on his speechwriters, who get drafts of major addresses sent back with heavy markings from the president's Sharpie marker. Mr. Bush is not known for his elocution on the stump, but he has clear ideas about how his speeches should sound.

As Ms. Hughes recounts in her book, "Ten Minutes From Normal," Mr. Bush calls at all hours with small-bore speech instructions: "Paragraph five on page two says the same thing as paragraph four on the page before." "This whole page is too repetitive." "That section is way too passive; I'm not bobbing along like some cork; I want active verbs."

Ms. Hughes writes that she was once so frustrated that she asked Mr. Bush how a speech should be written. He scrawled out for her, she recounts, that it should have "an introduction, three major points, then a peroration - a call to arms, tugs on the heartstrings," then a conclusion, which "is different from a peroration." When Ms. Hughes asked how he knew all that, Mr. Bush replied, "The History of American Oratory, at Yale."

David Boren, a former United States senator and a 1960's Yale debater who is now the president of the University of Oklahoma, said that Professor Osterweis, his mentor, taught students two main lessons. "First, you have to have substance - values and principles that are worth conserving," Mr. Boren said. "Then you have to communicate them in a way that makes the audience feel that they have ownership of the ideas. It's almost like you have to become part of the crowd, and have them go away adopting the ideas as their own."

Mr. Boren, a Democrat who knows both Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry, said that the president, with his colloquialisms and regular-guy style, had clearly learned the second lesson. "Bush puts himself inside the head of the person listening to him," he said.

In contrast, Mr. Boren said, Mr. Kerry is all policy and expertise. "I think Kerry obviously uses his speeches to be a teacher and to go into the nuances and complexities," he said. Professor Osterweis, he added, "saw the role of the president in part as being a teacher."

So far, no record has surfaced of the speeches Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush delivered in the Osterweis course, and neither campaign was forthcoming over the weekend.

But Professor Osterweis's daughter Ruth Osterweis Selig said her father had often talked of Mr. Kerry, whose most well-known Yale debate was in February 1966, when he defeated a previously unbeaten traveling British team with a topic he may well have to revisit Thursday: a defense of the United Nations. Mr. Kerry's argument 38 years ago was that the organization had "supplied a meeting place for harmonizing differences."

Not incidentally, Mr. Kerry's accent in those days was far more upper-class than it is now, at least according to Aaron Zelinsky, a current Yale debater who has spent the past month studying the campus oratorical history of both candidates.

"He ditched the Brahmin lilt a while back," said Mr. Zelinsky, a Kerry supporter. "Now he just has to stop speaking in semicolons."

So what will happen Thursday? As James Fallows wrote in a recent article in The Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Bush will get high marks for personality and Mr. Kerry for substance, but the spectacle will amount to "asymmetric warfare" between two wildly dissimilar candidates, neither of whom has ever lost a debate.

One thing is certain: Professor Osterweis, had he lived, would be watching.

"He would be so proud," said Ms. Selig, his daughter. "He would be like a father of newborn twins."

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Strong Charges Set New Tone Before Debate

The New York Times
September 27, 2004

Strong Charges Set New Tone Before Debate
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and ROBIN TONER

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 - The presidential campaign is entering a pivotal two-week period at a boil, with Senator John Kerry and President Bush battling over the Iraq war and the threat of another domestic terrorist attack, making emotion-charged arguments to set the groundwork for their first debate, on Thursday.

The intensity of television advertisements broadcast this weekend - a blur of images of Osama bin Laden, Mohamed Atta and explosions on the streets of Iraq - signaled the campaigns' new phase and the importance that both sides attach to the debates, aides to the campaigns said.

Mr. Kerry, arriving in Wisconsin on Sunday for four days of debate preparation, declared that Mr. Bush had misled the nation about the severity of the situation in Iraq. "He owes the American people the truth and he owes the troops the truth," he said.

A senior Kerry adviser, Joe Lockhart, laid out what Democrats said would most likely be another major theme for Mr. Kerry leading up to the debate, as he accused Mr. Bush of "using the war on terror as a political tool and a political weapon" in seeking to silence dissent.

Mr. Bush's communications director, Nicolle Devenish, responded by accusing Mr. Kerry of playing politics with terror in his attacks on Mr. Bush's Iraq policy. And she offered her own sharply worded preview of the message that Mr. Bush will try to present at the debate on Thursday night in Coral Gables, Fla.

"Someone who blinks when things get hard is not the right person to win the war on terror," Ms. Devenish said, adding: "They are preaching retreat and defeat in the face of real challenges from an enemy bent on our destruction. I think that's bad for the troops, it's bad for our allies and it's bad for our country."

These tough exchanges came on the eve of what aides to both men described as a critical period in the campaign - two weeks in which the presidential candidates will debate three times and the vice-presidential candidates will debate once.

A series of polls since the Republican convention in New York have offered often sharply different portrayals of the race, although the consensus in both campaigns is that Mr. Bush enjoys a lead of about five points over Mr. Kerry. More significantly, Mr. Bush appears to be cementing his lead in states he won in 2000, freeing him up to move on to Democratic turf.

Aides to Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush both said the debates had the potential of upending and perhaps even deciding the race. But both sides agreed that of the two candidates, Mr. Kerry had the most riding on its outcome.

"The first debate is really in my opinion about Kerry," said James Carville, a Democratic consultant and informal adviser to the Kerry campaign. "People know what they think of Bush: they don't want to re-elect him."

Matthew Dowd, a senior strategist for Mr. Bush, said: "They have some pressure on them. If the election were held today, we would win. The only way for Kerry to readjust it back to even is with these debates."

With statements by the candidates, their aides, and with television advertisements, both sides have begun to set the table for a debate that is going to be devoted to terrorism and foreign policy.

Mr. Kerry has escalated his attacks on Mr. Bush's Iraq policy, while Republicans have responded with a pattern of attacks seeking to portray Mr. Kerry as undermining troops, demoralizing allies and being weak in the face of terrorist attacks, a line of attack that has enraged Democrats.

On Capitol Hill, where many Democrats feel vulnerable to similar attacks, lawmakers said it was essential for the party to fight back.

"There used to be a time when aiding and abetting the enemy was a treasonous offense," Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in an interview. "Now it's become a routine political charge."

Mr. Durbin urged the Kerry campaign and his fellow Democrats in a closed party caucus meeting last week to confront the Republicans over that line of attack.

Mr. Bush, at an appearance in the Rose Garden last week with Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq, suggested that terrorists could be emboldened by what he has repeatedly described as Mr. Kerry's changing positions on Iraq. Before that, Representative J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois and speaker of the House, said he believed that Al Qaeda would be more successful under a Kerry presidency.

"It's a fairly common occurrence in wartime that people who dissent are accused of being unpatriotic," said Alan Brinkley, a historian who is the provost of Columbia University. "But to have it come from high levels of this kind is somewhat unusual."

And over the weekend in an advertisement financed by the Progress for America Voter Fund, a Republican advocacy group, which includes images of the ruins of the World Trade Center, as well as Mr. bin Laden, Mr. Hussein and Mr. Atta, the announcer asks, "Would you trust Kerry up against these fanatic killers?"

It was Mr. Bush's aides who originally pressed to have the first debate fought out on what should be the president's strongest ground, terrorism and foreign affairs. Typically, the first debate draws the most viewers and has the most influence on voters.

But Mr. Kerry's advisers, pointing to continued evidence of turmoil in Iraq and the threat of a terrorist attack at home, have increasingly warmed to the subject, saying voters seemed eager for a debate on the issue. Mr. Kerry has over the past two weeks confronted Mr. Bush head-on over Iraq, in a shift of strategy that his aides said Sunday was showing signs of success.

In Wisconsin on Sunday, Mr. Kerry seized on reports of an interview the president gave to Bill O'Reilly on Fox News in which he said he had no regrets about donning a flight suit to give his "Mission Accomplished" speech on Iraq in May 2003 and that he would do it all over again if given the chance, according to a partial transcript of the interview released to the Reuters news service. (Fox News and the White House declined to provide the excerpts to The New York Times).

"It is unbelievable that just this morning we learned that the president has said he would do it all over again and dress up in a flight suit, and land on an aircraft carrier, and say 'mission accomplished' again," Mr. Kerry said. "Well, my friends, when the president landed on that aircraft carrier, 150 of our young sons and daughters had given their lives. Since then, tragically, since he said mission accomplished, tragically over 900 have now died.''

Mr. Bush never actually said "mission accomplished," but stood in front of a banner that contained those words.

Mr. Bush held two practice debates over the weekend at his ranch in Texas, with Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire playing the role of Mr. Kerry, said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Mr. Bartlett continued what has been a concerted effort to play down expectations about how Mr. Bush would do in a debate with Mr. Kerry.

"Will President Bush step on his own line and maybe not pronounce a word right?" Mr. Bartlett said. "I bet he will. But I think after the 90 minutes there won't be ambiguity on his positions, and that's a difference."

As Mr. Bush prepared in Texas, Mr. Kerry studied up at a resort in Spring Green, Wis., where aides were focused not only on Mr. Kerry's debate performance, but in managing the perceptions afterward. They were keenly aware of how perceptions of Al Gore steadily worsened in the aftermath of the first debate as Bush advisers highlighted what they said were examples of exaggeration by Mr. Gore.

"What everybody learned out of 2000 was that the Bush people went in with a theory of that debate, and no matter what happened they stuck to that theory and they won the spin war," said Stephanie Cutter, Mr. Kerry's press secretary.

Ms. Cutter said Mr. Kerry had his own theory on the coming debate. She would not disclose it.

Adam Nagourney reported from Washington for this article, and Robin Toner from Madison, Wis.

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Election May Hinge On Debates

washingtonpost.com
Election May Hinge On Debates
Bush, Kerry Bring Different Strengths

By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 26, 2004; Page A01

For Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), stuck in second place with just five weeks left in the presidential campaign, the debates that begin this week may be the best chance remaining to close the sale with voters and beat President Bush.

Widespread polling, stubbornly consistent for months, finds Bush vulnerable. Voters report that they are unhappy with the war in Iraq, the state of the economy and the general direction of the country. Yet the same polls indicate that more voters do not like his Democratic challenger than do.

Beating Bush in these debates -- the first on Thursday at the University of Miami -- will be no easy matter, judging from the extensive record Bush and Kerry have compiled in televised face-offs. The president is an unorthodox debater but an effective one, especially against candidates schooled in the traditional rules of debate, such as Kerry.

"Both of them are good. Bush has never lost a debate that I know of," said Democratic campaign strategist Chuck Dolan. "He's very cool; he stays on message. He approaches debates in a very different way than most other politicians."

Against that, Kerry brings an aggressive style and a command of the minute details of policy -- qualities, it must be said, that were not enough to win when Texas Gov. Ann Richards and Vice President Al Gore took them into battle against Bush in 1994 and 2000.

The first encounter will focus on foreign policy. Bush's debate history shows one thing above all: His themes in debate are the same ones he preaches on the trail. By that yardstick, Bush will defend the war as a tough decision with no acceptable alternative. "Do I trust Saddam Hussein? Do I forget the lessons of September the 11th or take action to defend this country?" Bush repeats in speeches across the country. "Given that choice, I will defend America every time."

Kerry's tone on the campaign trail in recent days suggests that he will go after the president aggressively on Iraq. "The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy: al Qaeda," Kerry said last week. "George Bush made Saddam Hussein the priority. I would have made Osama bin Laden the priority."

But while civics teachers, activists and other concerned citizens might not like to hear it, presidential debates are at least as much about style as substance, veterans of the process agree.

"They call them debates, but they're not debates," said Republican debate coach Sheila Tate. "They're platforms for the two candidates to position themselves" for an audience of undecided voters who, research shows, tend to rely on their gut, Tate said.

Elaborate rules, negotiated by the rival campaigns, guarantee that the sessions are more side by side than head to head; direct engagement is limited. What matters most is not which candidate dominates the room but which one comes across most powerfully, in planned and unplanned stylistic ways, on television. And as the late, legendary BBC interviewer Robin Day once explained, television "strikes at the emotions rather than the intellect."

Dolan learned this lesson the hard way in 1988. He was in the room when the Democratic nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, fielded a question about his opposition to the death penalty for murderers: Would he feel the same way if it were his own wife who was slain?

"We could see in the hall that it didn't go well," Dolan said of his candidate's coldly detached answer. "Then I saw it later replayed on television, and you could see it was devastating."

Many Democrats who watched an often stumble-tongued Bush go from inexperienced candidate for Texas governor to incumbent president battling for reelection have wondered where he gets his ability to win debates against candidates with more seasoning, more verbal dexterity, and a greater supply of names and numbers at their mental fingertips.

Part of it, Tate argues, is that Bush "knows his mind" and thus projects himself clearly. But it is also true that, for a man who is not a trained actor, Bush has a highly expressive face on television, and he uses it to good effect in underlining his points while undermining his opponent.

True, many people recoil at his famous smirk. But Bush knows how to signal incredulity with a slightly cocked head and a flicker of eyebrow-arch. His more emphatic brows-raised, lips-puckered look says: "Get a load of that blowhard." He has a half-wink that signals he is about to land a punch and a half-squint that says, "I really, really mean what I'm saying now."

Among the most effective moments in Bush's debate career came in his third and last encounter with Gore in 2000, and it stemmed not from verbal prowess but from acting skills.

The format that night allowed the candidates to roam about the stage. Gore was trying to bear down on a mushy answer that Bush was giving on a controversial topic. As if to underline his strength and Bush's weakness, Gore edged closer and closer to his opponent until he was looming behind him like the monster on the late, late show. Bush turned slightly, did a quick double take, and reduced the audience to laughter.

Deflated, Gore returned to his stool.

Bush matches these signals to a speaking style no professional debate coach would ever approve. Judging from the evidence, it works for him. According to friends and advisers, Bush has a West Texas conviction that people who talk fancy are not to be trusted. So, they say, he tries to project steadfastness and sincerity by using short, simple declarative sentences and a lot of one- and two-syllable words.

In his first televised debate, in which Bush challenged the well-spoken Richards, the novice was cool as a creek while dodging her attacks on his inexperience. But his strongest moment may have come when he was asked about casino gambling.

"I'm opposed to casino gambling," he answered. And shut up.

Richards spoke next. She said she, too, was against casinos, but then went on at length to explain all the exigencies of law and policy that might someday force her to change her mind. When she finally finished, the moderators asked Bush if he wanted to expand his answer.

Flashing his "what a blowhard" look, Bush declined. "I oppose casino gambling," he repeated.

It so happens that one thing Kerry and Bush have in common is the classic comedy "Animal House." Kerry has said it is his favorite movie, while Bush was president of the fraternity that has been called Yale's nearest approximation of the mythical miscreants of Faber College.

The film holds a clue both to Bush's debate skills and to his likely strategy for engaging Kerry on the unspoken, emotional level of television. A toga-clad John Belushi enters the frame. The audience already knows that he's a fairly inarticulate character with a loose grip on the facts. Halfway down a flight of stairs he encounters a long-faced, very earnest fellow strumming a guitar and singing to a group of young women who might well be Romance language majors.

The camera homes in, devastatingly, on Belushi's contemptuously arched eyebrow.

You don't have to guess which candidate is which here. The guitar-playing Kerry, who once bragged to Vogue magazine that his chocolate chip cookies are special because he uses imported Swiss chocolate, and the frat house wiseguy Bush.

But that's not the persona Kerry displayed in 1996, during his marathon of televised debates against Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts. That Kerry was a puncher, not a poseur. Kerry is a classically trained debater, having learned the ropes on debate teams at prep school and at Yale. Kerry is quick on his feet, he pushes hard and he can be ruthless.

All this was on display in the knock-down, drag-out sessions with Weld, a serial drama of shouted statistics, rapier gibes and cheap shots landed so quickly no referee could flag them. Here's the flavor of it, from a debate in which Weld was trying to defend his record on education while Kerry kept butting in.

Weld: We are funding K-12 education . . .

Kerry: Forty-nine states . . .

Weld: A billion dollars more than we were in 1993. I don't know how the priorities could be any clearer than that. . . .

Kerry: . . . That's the problem, Governor. You don't understand how they could be greater. And if you did understand, you'd have a different set of priorities!

A wave of applause ended the exchange before Weld could point out that he said "clearer," not "greater."

Like Bush, Kerry is disciplined about returning to his key themes over and over again. Against Weld he was relentless about tying the moderate governor to the far more conservative Republican leaders in Washington. This, plus President Bill Clinton's landslide victory in Massachusetts, allowed Kerry to stave off Weld's challenge.

The lesson that Richards and Gore both learned, however, is that debate skills alone are not enough to shake Bush. Kerry must latch on to something more. And he may find clues in the two debates in which Bush has not done well. They have something in common: Bush was not playing the role of challenger.

In 1998, as the incumbent governor of Texas, Bush met Democrat Garry Mauro in a single debate. He was uncharacteristically "nervous and defensive," in the view of Austin political reporter Dave McNeely. In 2000, Bush's weakest performance came in a primary season face-off against surging underdog Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

"Bush seems to be more comfortable portraying himself as the outsider, but he can't do that anymore," said Bill Benoit, a professor of communication at the University of Missouri who has extensively studied presidential debates. As the outsider, Bush has freedom to stay on the broad, thematic level, above the thicket of details.

"He used the idea that he was on the outside to say, 'Don't pigeonhole me,' " said Benoit. As the outsider, Bush has been able to strike appealing chords -- a promise to be "different" from other leaders, a promise to be "a compassionate conservative," a promise to be "a uniter, not a divider" -- while allowing viewers to convert those chords into music of their own liking.

That won't be so easy this time. "Who is more insider than the president of the United States?" Benoit asked.

Some critics charge that presidential debates, as structured, aren't much good for determining anything beyond who best survives the strange test of 90 minutes under a relentless gaze. A gesture as small as President George H.W. Bush's glance at his watch in 1992 can be enormously damaging. Many of the most important issues a president will face never come up for discussion -- Kosovo came in for far more discussion in 2000 than al Qaeda -- and other issues, such as Social Security, are eternally talked about but never resolved.

Nor are the debates necessarily a good barometer of brains or character.

When he appeared in the 1992 vice-presidential debate, retired Adm. James B. Stockdale was: a former college president, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, an authority on the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (whose work he read in the original Greek), the holder of 11 honorary doctorates and the only man in naval history to wear three stars, aviator's wings and the Medal of Honor.

All that evaporated under the harsh stare of the camera when, with earnestly wide eyes, Stockdale introduced himself by posing two rhetorical questions: "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" The hero-scholar came across like an addled old man.

Imperfect, even misleading, the debates are nonetheless the crucial final act of this close-fought and momentous campaign. Kerry must do what he has not been able to do so far: make himself a more plausible president for the last few undecided voters than the one they already have.

"In the final analysis, there's a very small percentage of people who haven't made up their minds by now," Tate said. "And they make their decision based on who they like, who they think they can trust -- and it's a very amorphous, very emotional decision."

Political researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.

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A New Tax Cut

washingtonpost.com
A New Tax Cut

Sunday, September 26, 2004; Page B06

PRESIDENT BUSH is getting ready to sign his fourth tax bill in four years. Mr. Bush came into office at a time of budget surpluses proposing an audacious $1.6 trillion tax cut over 10 years. The surplus long since evaporated, the country is at war -- but with this latest bill Mr. Bush and his enabling Congress will have cut taxes by $1.9 trillion, and that doesn't include the added costs of interest on the mounting government debt. Quite an achievement, really, unless you worry about the impact -- which hardly anyone seems to be doing.

This latest cut, which ended up with a price tag of $146 billion, most of it to be paid in the next five years, is the outgrowth of lawmakers' bogus bid to look as if they had a modicum of fiscal responsibility on the last go-round. Then, they insisted that the tax package couldn't cost more than $350 billion over 10 years. They achieved that illusion by jury-rigging the bill to have its most popular tax breaks expire this year -- limiting the ostensible cost while knowing full well that their weak-kneed colleagues wouldn't dare risk looking like tax-hikers with an election looming.

The inevitable extension came about in a particularly cynical and anti-democratic way. Leaders dispensed with bothersome rituals such as hearings, committee markups, floor debate and amendments. They hijacked a tax bill that was supposed to help the working poor and that therefore had been languishing in conference for months. They recalibrated it so that the working poor got the tiniest slice of the benefits, and then they took it directly to the floor, where it could not be amended -- no requirement, for example, that the cuts be paid for. In the Senate, just three brave souls dared withstand the pressure: retiring Democrat and deficit hawk Ernest F. Hollings (S.C.) and two moderate Republicans, Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.). John F. Kerry wasn't so courageous; he supported the tax-cut extensions.

And was it, as advertised, a middle-class tax bill? Certainly, middle-class families get help. According to an analysis by the Brookings-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center, taxpayers earning between $50,000 and $75,000 will receive an average tax benefit of $353 next year as a result of the bill. Taxpayers earning between $200,000 and $500,000 will see their average tax burden fall by nearly $2,400. More than half of the bill's benefits go to taxpayers earning more than $100,000 a year, although they account for fewer than 13 percent of all taxpayers. If all of this were without cost, it wouldn't much matter. But the tab will come due down the road. And those who will end up having to pay are, more likely than not, the children of the middle class that is the supposed beneficiary of this election-year pandering.

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Osama's Candidate

washingtonpost.com
Osama's Candidate

By Michael Kinsley

Sunday, September 26, 2004; Page B07

Where does Osama bin Laden stand on gay marriage? What are his views on privatization of Social Security and stem cell research? Is he concerned about judges who place their personal opinions ahead of the Constitution? Or does he care more about corporations that outsource good American jobs to foreign countries?

It seems we're going to have a national debate about whom bin Laden and al Qaeda support for president. Fair enough. Bin Laden's opinion, if only we could know it, would probably affect the judgment of voters more than that of any other independent thinker except, of course, John McCain. So far, the bin Laden debate has been pretty one-sided, with a string of Republican public officials claiming that terrorists are rooting for John Kerry and some bloggers and a columnist or two suggesting that he may prefer Bush.

My favorite among the Republican mind readers is House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who said last week, "I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another," which is an assertion that no one will disagree with. But he continued that al Qaeda "would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops."

Like many Americans, Hastert seems to be confusing bin Laden with Saddam Hussein. This is a confusion the Bush administration and campaign wish to encourage, and the president himself may even share. To describe Kerry's position on Hussein as "file a lawsuit" is merely witless and unfair. To describe his position on bin Laden that way is mystifying.

In fact the Bush administration's focus on Iraq after Sept. 11 -- a country that had nothing to do with the terrible events of that day -- might be a point in the president's favor for bin Laden, as he sits in his cave studying materials from the League of Women Voters and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

If there is one thing we know about bin Laden before the start of the Iraq war, it is that he wasn't in Iraq. With the invasion of Iraq, bin Laden got all the benefits of being America's public enemy No. 1 but none of the disadvantages. He got an explosion of anti-Americanism around the world, potential recruits lined up out the cave door and around the block for future suicide missions, swell new opportunities for terrorism in the chaos of Iraq itself, and the forced retirement of Saddam Hussein, whom he never cared for. He got a thousand Americans dead and hundreds of billions of capitalist dollars gone -- results that would make any terrorist episode a huge success -- without his having to lift a finger. And meanwhile, every bomb dropped on Iraq was a bomb not dropped on him. What's not to like?

True, bin Laden probably does hold it against Bush that, when not distracted by Iraq, the president has been trying to kill him. That kind of thing can't help but cloud a fellow's judgment. It is all very well for civics textbooks to tell us that, when voting, we should put selfish interests aside and think of the greater good. But it may well be difficult to concentrate on those frightening Congressional Budget Office projections of the structural deficit in 10 years when there is an even more frightening din of bombs exploding and a direct hit on a cave three caves down and one to the right.

But bin Laden cannot help noticing that so far Bush has failed to kill him. And he has no reason to suppose that a President Kerry would enjoy announcing his death or capture to the world any less than Bush would. So for bin Laden -- just as for many voters in this election -- the choice comes down to the lesser of two evils.

The difference between Osama bin Laden's endorsement and John McCain's (well, one of many differences) is that McCain's presumably has a positive effect and bin Laden's has a negative one. If bin Laden wants to help his candidate, he must hide, or even disguise, his preference. This makes any argument or evidence about that preference inherently self-defeating. If he is honorary chairman of the annual "Kabul Salutes W" dinner and gala, does that mean he supports Bush or does it mean he wants people to think he supports Bush, which then must mean that he does not support Bush?

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said recently that terrorists in Iraq "are trying to influence the election against President Bush." In saying so, Armitage is trying to influence the election in favor of President Bush. But he has no evidence other than these actions. And if their very actions send a clear message that they are trying to defeat President Bush, then the effect of those actions will be to help President Bush. So even if Armitage is right, he's wrong.

At least Osama bin Laden is probably concentrating on what really matters in this election. He is not spending a lot of time comparing ancient typewriter fonts, or reviewing the circumstances of Kerry's third Purple Heart. In that sense -- and only in that sense -- he may be a good influence.

The writer is editorial and opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times.

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The Media, Losing Their Way

washingtonpost.com
The Media, Losing Their Way

By David S. Broder

Sunday, September 26, 2004; Page B07

We don't yet know who will win the 2004 election, but we know who has lost it. The American news media have been clobbered.

In a year when war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism and looming problems with the federal budget and the nation's health care system cry out for serious debate, the news organizations on which people should be able to depend have been diverted into chasing sham events: a scurrilous and largely inaccurate attack on the Vietnam service of John Kerry and a forged document charging President Bush with disobeying an order for an Air National Guard physical.

With these events coming after the editors of two respected national newspapers, the New York Times and USA Today, were forced to resign because their organizations were duped by lying staff reporters, it is hard to overcome the sense that the professional practices and code of responsibility in journalism have suffered a body blow.

After almost a half-century in this business, I certainly feel a sense of shame and embarrassment at our performance. The feeling is not relieved by the awareness that others in journalism not only did fine work on other stories but took the lead in exposing these instances of gross malpractice.

The common feature -- and the disturbing fact -- is that none of these damaging failures would have occurred had senior journalists not been blind to the fact that the standards in their organizations were being fatally compromised.

We need to be asking why this collapse has taken place.

My suspicion is that it stems from a widespread loss of confidence in both the values of journalism and the economic viability of the news business.

The first symptom of wavering confidence that I spotted came when news organizations -- television particularly, but print as well -- began offering their most prestigious and visible jobs not to people deeply imbued with the culture and values of newsrooms, but to stars imported from the political world. Journalists learn to be skeptical -- of sources and of their own biases as well. If they are any good, they are tough on themselves. Politicians learn something very different -- how to please the public. They try to satisfy others, not themselves.

As the path from the White House and political campaigns to the slots as TV anchor or interviewer or op-ed columnist or editor was trod by more and more people, the message to aspiring young journalists was clear.

The way to the top of journalism was no longer to test yourself on police beats and city hall assignments, under the skeptical gaze of editors who demanded precision in writing and careful weighing of evidence. It was to make a reputation as a clever wordsmith, a feisty advocate, a belligerent or beguiling political personality, and then market yourself to the media.

These hires were made by executives who themselves had little commitment to the solid and steady journalistic values that come from working a beat for a sustained period of time. They were looking for quick fixes for their circulation or ratings -- and they thought the star system or the "big story" would save them.

But to their dismay, TV news show ratings continued to decline, newspaper circulations slumped and the fickle public -- whose wishes editors now took as their command -- switched to even more sensational outlets: the cable talk shows and infotainment formats that put argument, gossip and amusement at the top.

When the Internet opened the door to scores of "journalists" who had no allegiance at all to the skeptical and self-disciplined ethic of professional news gathering, the bars were already down in many old-line media organizations. That is how it happened that old pros such as Dan Rather and former New York Times editor Howell Raines got caught up in this fevered atmosphere and let their standards slip.

Time was when any outfit such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that came around peddling an ad with implausible charges would have run into a hard-nosed reporter whose first questions -- before he or she ran with the story -- would have been, "Who the hell are you guys? What's your angle? What's your proof?"

Any Texan with a grudge against George Bush and the National Guard who suddenly produced a purported photocopy of an explosive 30-year-old order signed by a dead man would have been treated with the deep distrust he deserved by the reporters to whom he offered his wares. And no professional journalist would have made a call to the Kerry campaign encouraging a flack to contact this dubious source.

We've wandered a long way from safe ground in the news business. Sometimes I wonder if we can find our way back.

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Saddam, the Bomb and Me

The New York Times
September 26, 2004

Saddam, the Bomb and Me
By MAHDI OBEIDI

While the final report from Charles A. Duelfer, the top American inspector of Iraq's covert weapons programs, won't be released for a few weeks, the portions that have already been made public touch on many of the experiences I had while working as the head of Saddam Hussein's nuclear centrifuge program. Now that I am living in the United States, I hope to answer some of the most important questions that remain.

What was really going in Iraq before the American invasion last year? Iraq's nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait - there is no doubt in my mind that we could have produced dozens of nuclear weapons within a few years - but was stopped in its tracks by United Nations weapons inspectors after the Persian Gulf war and was never restarted. During the 1990's, the inspectors discovered all of the laboratories, machines and materials we had used in the nuclear program, and all were destroyed or otherwise incapacitated.

By 1998, when Saddam Hussein evicted the weapons inspectors from Iraq, all that was left was the dangerous knowledge of hundreds of scientists and the blueprints and prototype parts for the centrifuge, which I had buried under a tree in my garden.

In addition to the inspections, the sanctions that were put in place by the United Nations after the gulf war made reconstituting the program impossible. During the 1980's, we had relied heavily on the international black market for equipment and technology; the sanctions closed that avenue.

Another factor in the mothballing of the program was that Saddam Hussein was profiting handsomely from the United Nations oil-for-food program, building palaces around the country with the money he skimmed. I think he didn't want to risk losing this revenue stream by trying to restart a secret weapons program.

Over the course of the 1990's, most of the scientists from the nuclear program switched to working on civilian projects or in conventional-weapons production, and the idea of building a nuclear bomb became a vague dream from another era.

So, how could the West have made such a mistaken assessment of the nuclear program before the invasion last year? Even to those of us who knew better, it's fairly easy to see how observers got the wrong impression. First, there was Saddam Hussein's history. He had demonstrated his desire for nuclear weapons since the late 1970's, when Iraqi scientists began making progress on a nuclear reactor. He had used chemical weapons against his own people and against Iran during the 1980's. After the 1991 war, he had tried to hide his programs in weapons of mass destruction for as long as possible (he even kept my identity secret from weapons inspectors until 1995). It would have been hard not to suspect him of trying to develop such weapons again.

The Western intelligence services and policy makers, however, overlooked some obvious clues. One was the defection and death of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who was in charge of the unconventional weapons programs in the 1980's.

As my boss, Mr. Kamel was a brutal taskmaster who forced us to work under impossible deadlines and was the motivating force for our nuclear effort. The drive for nuclear weapons began in earnest when he rose to a position of power in 1987. He placed a detail of 20 fearsome security men on the premises of our centrifuge lab, and my staff and I worked wonders just to stay out of his dungeons. But after he defected to Jordan in 1995, and then returned months later only to be assassinated by his father-in-law's henchmen, the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs lost their top promoter.

In addition, the West never understood the delusional nature of Saddam Hussein's mind. By 2002, when the United States and Britain were threatening war, he had lost touch with the reality of his diminished military might. By that time I had been promoted to director of projects for the country's entire military-industrial complex, and I witnessed firsthand the fantasy world in which he was living. He backed mythic but hopeless projects like one for a long-range missile that was completely unrealistic considering the constraints of international sanctions. The director of another struggling missile project, when called upon to give a progress report, recited a poem in the dictator's honor instead. Not only did he not go to prison, Saddam Hussein applauded him.

By 2003, as the American invasion loomed, the tyrant was alternately working on his next trashy novel and giving lunatic orders like burning oil around Baghdad to "hide" the city from bombing attacks. Unbelievably, one of my final assignments was to prepare a 10-year plan for military-industrial works, even as tens of thousands of troops were gathering for invasion.

To the end, Saddam Hussein kept alive the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, staffed by junior scientists involved in research completely unrelated to nuclear weapons, just so he could maintain the illusion in his mind that he had a nuclear program. Sort of like the emperor with no clothes, he fooled himself into believing he was armed and dangerous. But unlike that fairy-tale ruler, Saddam Hussein fooled the rest of the world as well.

Was Iraq a potential threat to the United States and the world? Threat is always a matter of perception, but our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers. The sanctions and the lucrative oil-for-food program had served as powerful deterrents, but world events - like Iran's current efforts to step up its nuclear ambitions - might well have changed the situation.

Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the program if necessary. And there is no question that we could have done so very quickly. In the late 1980's, we put together the most efficient covert nuclear program the world has ever seen. In about three years, we gained the ability to enrich uranium and nearly become a nuclear threat; we built an effective centrifuge from scratch, even though we started with no knowledge of centrifuge technology. Had Saddam Hussein ordered it and the world looked the other way, we might have shaved months if not years off our previous efforts.

So what now? The dictator may be gone, but that doesn't mean the nuclear problem is behind us. Even under the watchful eyes of Saddam Hussein's security services, there were worries that our scientists might escape to other countries or sell their knowledge to the highest bidder. This expertise is even more valuable today, with nuclear technology ever more available on the black market and a proliferation of peaceful energy programs around the globe that use equipment easily converted to military use.

Hundreds of my former staff members and fellow scientists possess knowledge that could be useful to a rogue nation eager for a covert nuclear weapons program. The vast majority are technicians who, like the rest of us, care first about their families and their livelihoods. It is vital that the United States ensure they get good and constructive jobs in postwar Iraq. The most accomplished of my former colleagues could be brought, at least temporarily, to the West and placed at universities, research labs and private companies.

The United States invaded Iraq in part to end what it saw as a nuclear danger. It is now vital to reduce the chance of Iraq's dangerous knowledge spilling outside of its borders. The nuclear dangers facing the world are growing, not decreasing. My hope is that the Iraqi example can help people understand how best to deal with this threat.

Mahdi Obeidi is the author of "The Bomb in My Garden: The Secrets of Saddam's Nuclear Mastermind." Kurt Pitzer, who collaborated on the book, assisted with this article.

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Welcome to the Campaign That Makes 'Selling' a President Look Good

September 26, 2004

Welcome to the Campaign That Makes 'Selling' a President Look Good
By ADAM COHEN

Richard Nixon sat on a New York soundstage in October 1968 and pondered how to avoid looking shifty-eyed on television. The answer, he concluded, was removing everyone from his line of sight who did not have to be there. Once the room was cleared, he shot targeted commercials: one for upstate New York that included the latest Buffalo crime statistics; another for the South that argued against wasting a vote on George Wallace, the third-party candidate.

Nixon's ad-making session is the opening scene in "The Selling of the President 1968," the best-selling campaign diary in which a young journalist named Joe McGinniss pulled back the curtain on modern presidential campaigns and revealed that, as he would later write, candidates were being packaged and sold to the American public "like so much toothpaste or detergent."

When it was published in 1969, "The Selling of the President" caused a scandal. Its title was a sardonic riff on Theodore White's revered "Making of the President" series, and its jacket image was an irreverent image of President Nixon superimposed on a package of cigarettes. A review in this paper deemed the book enough to "make us fear for the future of the Republic." The Saturday Review called for a renewed commitment to high school civics education to stop "the hidden persuaders from running off with politics."

Nine election cycles later, however, as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth troll across the nation's airwaves, "The Selling of the President" has undergone a strange transformation. In an era when campaigns are increasingly based on unselling the opponent through vicious negative advertising, the idea of actually trying to sell the president seems almost refreshing.

Mr. McGinniss was a 26-year-old columnist and former sportswriter for The Philadelphia Inquirer when he stumbled on his subject. He happened to hear a New York advertising executive boast that his agency had landed the Hubert Humphrey campaign account. Sensing a story, Mr. McGinniss tried to get access to the advertising campaign. When Humphrey's agency refused, Mr. McGinniss located the counterpart on Nixon's side and called from a pay phone to make the same request. The creative director on the Nixon account, Harry Treleaven, said yes.

Mr. McGinniss's account focuses on the machinations of a small team of image makers who included Mr. Treleaven; Leonard Garment, who worked in the same law firm as Nixon; and a 28-year-old producer for the "Mike Douglas Show," Roger Ailes, decades before he and the Fox network discovered each other. The action centers on the filming of commercials, and the production of a series of one-hour panel shows in different cities that featured Nixon facing questions from purportedly representative Americans. The book's theme is spelled out by a team member: "It's not what's there that counts, it's what's projected."

The media manipulations that Mr. McGinniss recounts all come off, from the vantage of 2004, as remarkably innocuous. There is much discussion of camera angles and staging, and how to ensure that the audience applauds raucously. Mr. Ailes becomes irate when the set designers install turquoise curtains in the background, fuming that "Nixon wouldn't look right unless he was carrying a pocketbook." And Mr. McGinniss recounts their attempts to ensure that the panels are diverse, but not too diverse.

The book's diabolical image-crafters now seem almost touchingly naïve. The Nixon team dispatches an all-white camera crew to Harlem, and then seems perplexed when it cannot get the locals to participate in a commercial for its candidate. "Gee, isn't that strange," Mr. Treleaven says. "I can't understand an attitude like that." The narrative is interlaced with once-provocative commentary from Mr. McGinniss that is now, in many places, simply yawn-inducing. "Politics, in a sense, has always been a con game," he observes, and "advertising, in many ways, is a con game, too."

It is startling to realize what passed for an attack ad. The Nixon team assembles a commercial in which a photograph of Humphrey is juxtaposed against some video of soldiers in Vietnam in a way that could suggest that their opponent was laughing at the soldiers. The attack was subtle enough that many viewers missed it completely, but the newspapers immediately denounced it, NBC's switchboard was flooded with protest calls, and the commercial was pulled.

Mr. McGinniss was shocked by how much the Nixon campaign was driven by the image makers, but by today's standards they were curiously marginal. Mr. Treleaven notes, in frustration, that there was a "total split" between the political people in the campaign and his advertising team. Throughout the book, Nixon consistently resists being packaged. "He refused to use a teleprompter, no matter how long the speech," Mr. McGinniss writes. "Television was just one more slick Eastern trick and he was a poor boy from the West."

Today, the focus has shifted from selling the candidate to turning the opponent into an unacceptable alternative. This year in Florida, Mel Martinez won the Republican Senate primary after branding his archconservative opponent as a supporter of "granting homosexuals special rights" - for backing anti-hate-crime legislation. In West Virginia and Arkansas, the Republican Party is trying to prop up President Bush by sending out mailings saying that "liberals" want to ban the Bible.

Attack ads are often criticized for driving discussion of the issues out of politics. But just as important, they free the parties of the obligation to find candidates with widespread support - all that's necessary is to make the other side look even less acceptable. For all its evils, the idea of "selling" a president was based on the appealing, and increasingly quaint, notion that there might be a candidate the voters want to buy.

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Dance of the Marionettes

NY Times
September 26, 2004

Dance of the Marionettes
By MAUREEN DOWD

It's heartwarming, really.

President Bush has his own Mini-Me now, someone to echo his every word and mimic his every action.

For so long, Mr. Bush has put up with caricatures of a wee W. sitting in the vice president's lap, Charlie McCarthy style, as big Dick Cheney calls the shots. But now the president has his own puppet to play with.

All last week in New York and Washington, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq parroted Mr. Bush's absurd claims that the fighting in Iraq was an essential part of the U.S. battle against terrorists that started on 9/11, that the neocons' utopian dream of turning Iraq into a modern democracy was going swimmingly, and that the worse things got over there, the better they really were.

It's the media's fault, the two men warble in a duet so perfectly harmonized you wonder if Karen Hughes wrote Mr. Allawi's speech, for not showing the millions of people in Iraq who are not being beheaded, kidnapped, suicide-bombed or caught in the cross-fire every day; and it's John Kerry's fault for abetting the Iraqi insurgents by expressing his doubts about our plan there, as he once did about Vietnam.

"These doubters risk underestimating our country and they risk fueling the hopes of the terrorists," Mr. Allawi told Congress in a rousing anti-Kerry stump speech for Bush/Cheney, a follow-up punch to Mr. Cheney's claim that a vote for John Kerry is a vote for another terrorist attack on America.

First the Swift boat guys; now the swift dhow prime minister.

Just as Mr. Cheney, Rummy and the neocons turned W. into a host body for their old schemes to knock off Saddam, transform the military and set up a pre-emption doctrine to strike at allies and foes that threatened American hyperpower supremacy, so now W. has turned Mr. Allawi into a host body for the Panglossian palaver that he believes will get him re-elected. Every time the administration takes a step it says will reduce the violence, the violence increases.

Mr. Bush doesn't seem to care that by using Mr. Allawi as a puppet in his campaign, he decreases the prime minister's chances of debunking the belief in Iraq that he is a Bush puppet - which is the only way he can gain any credibility to stabilize his devastated country and be elected himself.

Actually, being the president's marionette is a step up from Mr. Allawi's old jobs as henchman for Saddam Hussein and stoolie for the C.I.A.

It's hilarious that the Republicans have trotted out Mr. Allawi as an objective analyst of the state of conditions in Iraq when he's the administration's handpicked guy and has as much riding on putting the chaos in a sunny light as they do. Though Mr. Allawi presents himself as representing all Iraqis, his actions have been devised to put more of the country in the grip of this latest strongman - giving himself the power to declare martial law, bringing back the death penalty and kicking out Al Jazeera.

Bush officials, who proclaim themselves so altruistic about bringing liberty to Iraq, really see Iraq in a creepy narcissistic way: It's all about Mr. Bush's re-election.

As The Chicago Tribune reported, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage alleged that Iraqi insurgents have stepped up their bloody attacks because they want to "influence the election against President Bush."

At a recent G.O.P. fund-raiser, House Speaker Dennis Hastert claimed that terrorists would be happier with a Kerry presidency. "I don't have data or intelligence to tell me one thing or another," he said, but "I would think they would be more apt to go" for "somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops."

Faced with their dystopia, the utopians are scaling back their grand visions for Iraq's glorious future.

Rummy suggested last week that a fractional democracy might be good enough. "Let's say you tried to have an election, and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country, but some places you couldn't because the violence was too great," he said at a hearing on Capitol Hill, adding: "Nothing's perfect in life."

At a Pentagon briefing on Friday, Rummy also blew off Colin Powell's so-called Pottery Barn rule that if we broke Iraq, we own it. "Any implication that that place has to be peaceful and perfect before we can reduce coalition and U.S. forces, I think, would obviously be unwise, because it's never been peaceful and perfect," he said. "It's a tough part of the world."

As he said after the early looting in Iraq: "Stuff happens."

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