A Rational Animal

Here’s that picture I promised.  It’s a thumb; click to see the larger view.

Now, is that stunning or what?

Okay, aside from the unfortunate hed ("Bill Richardson Seeks Clinton Scraps"), the latest NYO also has a halfway-decent piece on Bill.  I give it only a "halfway-decent" because, in addition to that stupid phrasing, it also includes a bit of the MSM focus on how far he supposedly lags behind Clinton and Obama.

On the other hand, reporter Jason horowitz has actually done a good job of packing the piece with résumé snippets and campaign anecdotes that demonstrate Richardson’s qualifications.  The third graf notes Richardson’s whirlwind appearance schedule on his trip this week to New York City:

The stocky, voluble governor of New Mexico had just finished a grueling day of stump speeches and political pitches to donors in six separate private fund-raisers around town. He capped that off with a speech, and then an hour-long question-and-answer session in a packed West Side bar full of young Democratic professionals. The next day, he had six more fund-raisers. On Wednesday, he was booked to appear on The Daily Show.

Ah, yes, The Daily Show.  The Daily Show, which I couldn’t watch tonight, because I’m stuck in fundyrepublicanville tonight, and absent a sat dish, no John Stewart, no Stephen Colbert.  No, the local cable company doesn’t make it a part of the cable package - unless, that is, you want to pay the premium rates that approach $100/month.  I don’t know about you, but there are many vastly more important things on which I could drop that hundred bucks a month than frigging television.  But I digress . . . .

Back to Horowitz’s coverage of Bill:  Grafs four, five, and six are devoted to Richardson’s experience and expertise.  One thing about Bill - he’s got a healthy ego, which he’s gonna need to overcome the MSM’s chosen narrative.  Fortunately, he ain’t shy about flogging his cred:

Mr. Richardson, whose long and impressive résumé in government and foreign affairs has earned him enough attention to gain him thinking-man’s-dark-horse status in the crowded field of Democratic nominees, is working hard to break into the elite club of front-runners, which includes Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.

 

He served 15 years in Congress before acting as Energy Secretary in the Clinton administration and turning in a generally admired stint as U.N. ambassador. He is the first major Hispanic Presidential candidate, and his two terms as governor of traditionally Republican New Mexico are another asset—especially because, as he informed the young crowd sipping pints of ale Monday night, “We elect governors in this country.”

 

At the crammed event organized by Democratic Leadership for the 21st Century, a group of politically active professionals, Mr. Richardson reminded his audience several times that, as a foreign-policy envoy in Iraq and the Sudan, and as a governor, he had participated in the major events of the day while his rivals were onlookers, busy obsessing about the nuances of their Senate votes on Iraq. “A lot of candidates talk about voting a certain way, and ‘This is my position,’” he said. “I’ve done it. I’ve brought countries together.”

"The thinking man’s dark horse."  I like it, except for the obvious - um, Jason?  More than half of all voters are women.  And plenty of us are ‘thinking women" - women who intend to vote for Richardson precisely because we vote with our brains.

And thank God for Larry Sabato (now there’s a phrase that, a couple of years ago, I never thought I’d write).  He flogs Bill’s credentials, too:

“You look at those four”—Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Richardson—“and it’s almost embarrassing, because he is clearly the most qualified to be President,” said Larry Sabato, a political-science professor at the University of Virginia. “It has got to bother him that people with far less experience seem to be dominating the landscape. Richardson hasn’t made an impression on people.”

Except, of course, for that last line.  Sweet jumping Jeebus, people, could we remember that the election is twenty months away?!  But he’s right - it is embarrassing.  And I guarantee you that it bothers Bill, but ego notwithstanding, he’s also a very shrewd and seasoned pol.  He’s not going to let his game face slip this early, and certainly not over the issue of fundraising.  Why?  because the MSM are all wet when it comes to thise:

Mr. Richardson’s most pressing task, for now, is to post a respectable enough March 31 financial filing to keep things looking at least plausible.

Bullshit.  First of all, this March 31 (2007, mind you) is an utterly arbitrary deadline created by a lethal combo of the MSM, the Beltway elite, and their own personal frontrunner creations.  Second, Bill has no problem raising money.  In the 2006 gubernatorial race, he pulled in more than 70% of the vote.  His opponent (John Dendahl, about whom I’ll have more later) ran such a shitty campaign that Richardson really didn’t even need to lift a finger.  And yet he raked in the campaign contributions hand over a fist:  In a race that could hardly be called contested, in a small-population state known for campaigns on the cheap, Bill raised just shy of $14 million - for a campaign that could’ve been run for under $1 mil.  Yeah, he’s up against the Clinton Money Machine.  But a few months down the road, people are going to be very surprised at their relative stats.

The whole piece is interesting, but I really like one of the closing grafs:

On Monday night, as the wait staff of Zanzibar looked on in tight black clothes from behind a fluorescent-lit bar, Mr. Richardson stood on the stage and somewhat deliberately offered meaty policy answers to questions ranging from health care, taxes and civil unions to the war in Iraq and relations with Iran and North Korea.

And the hell of it is, alone among the candidates, he’s got hard experience in every single one of those areas.  Those who are ready to write him off now need to sit on their hands for a couple of months.  If there’s any justice to the universe at all, the Democratic primary landscape will change drastically over the months to come - and the Richardson campaign will be one of its most prominent new landmarks.

Hack Extraordinaire Rick Stengel 

Okay, so much has been made in the blogosphere today of Time Managing Editor Rick Stengel’s essential hackery.  On the off-chance that you missed it, the nutshell version is this:  Stengel went on tweety’s show and regurgitated the MSM-Pelosi/Emanuel-BeltwayElite line that Dems should shut up.  To wit:

I think it’s unfortunate and perhaps short-sighted for Democrats to be perceived as focusing on the past rather than the future. If people see the Democrats as obsessively concerned with settling scores, that’s not good for the Democrats or the country.

Which, of course, is precisely the opposite of what Democrats should be doing. Which is where my hero comes in:  "If D.C. Pundits Say ‘Stop,’ Go."

I love Joe Conason.  When I lived in New York, I read him religiously; I was overjoyed when Salon showed enough foresight to pick up his column.  He’s a down-to-earth kind of guy, one who (unlike the endless parade of concern troll hacks Stengel employs; yeah, JokeLine, I’m lookin’ at you) has never been threatened by the blogosphere.  In fact, Joe was an early supporter:  About four years ago, liberal bloggers set aside a day to piss off bigoted wingnut Michael Savage, who was trying to shut down a blog that had had the temerity to make him look bad by, um, quoting him directly.  Joe even got in on the act, writing about our campaign.  I shot him an e-mail to thank him for plugging our collective efforts (no, he didn’t plug my blog or anything), because I thought it was important to let a "real" journalist know that his recognition was appreciated.  And he replied.  Not a big deal in the scheme of things, but when most of the media spend their time wailing about the "vitriol" of the liberal blogosphere, it’s nice to know that some reporters are willing to recognize bloggers’ efforts, and even to respond to the e-mail of a lowly and unknown blogger.

Anyway, Joe makes short work of the notion that anyone should heed the advice of the Beltway pundit class about anything.  Here’s his lede:

Someday the Democrats may learn an important lesson about the collective wisdom of the media in the nation’s capital: On important questions of policy and politics, the Washington press corps is almost always wrong. They are always full of opinions about everything from clothing, haircuts and marital problems to political tactics, but the safest course is always to ignore their advice.

Yeah, baby!  But wait - there’s more: 

But Joe’s not done yet; he takes on Broder and Harwood and Nagourney, too.  And I laughed out loud at his description of Broder:  "the ‘dean’ of the Washington press corps, whose magnificently consistent wrongness dates back to the Nixon era."  And yes, the quotes around "dean" are Joe’s own.

In fact, he slams the whole Beltway press corps for their hacktacular insistence on ignoring the real story here - i.e., the illegitimate purging of prosecutors and other corrupt behavior.  He concludes:

The Washington press corps is just as remote from American views and values as when it was howling for President Clinton’s head. By now, the Democrats should know that when these soothsayers warn against your present course, it is best to keep going straight ahead. And when they complain that you’re barking up the wrong tree, it is time to bark louder.

Go read the whole thing.  And then send Joe a thank-you. 

You know how your mother always told you if you keep making that face, it’ll get stuck that way?

Or maybe I mean "Misses?"

Today’s New York Observer has a piece comparing and contrasting Evil Incarnate’s pronouncements during the course of TWAT ("The War Against Terra," and y!mctp!).  among the highlights lowlights:

“It comes from the most sensitive sources and methods that we have as a government. It’s the family jewels.”—May 19, 2002, explaining why the Aug. 6, 2001, Daily Presidential Brief, titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” should not be made public.

 

 “There wasn’t anything really new in it. It was one more sort of rehash, if you will, of the material that was out there.”

—May 19, 2002, same interview.

You know, sorta like Bush not being "truly [] not that concerned about" where Osama bin Forgotten might be in 2002. 

Then there’s this:

“The press, with all due respect, [is] oftentimes lazy, oftentimes simply reports what somebody else in the press said without doing their homework.”—June 17, 2004, explaining why reporters didn’t write articles supporting claims of a relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda..

Um, you almost had it there, Dick.  Your description of the MSM is dead-on (okay, maybe a poor choice of words for the guy who shot his hunting buddy in the face and then went and had a drink, but whatever).  Only problem is, you got the wrong dynamic:  Our MSM are at the stenographic best when they’re transcribing your talking points. 

Or maybe this:

“I don’t think there was a serious misjudgment here.”—Sept. 14, 2003, denying any underestimation of the number of troops required to secure Iraq.

Hence the need for the "surge," right, Dick?

Or this:

“Once we have victory in Baghdad, all the critics will look like fools.”  —Summer 2002, to a senior British official. 

Ed. note: Can’t you just hear the canned diabolical laughter at the end of that statement?  "They’re fools!  Fools, I tell you!  BWAHAHAHAHA!!!"  Shee-it.

How about:

“What The New York Times did today was outrageous.”—June 14, 2004, attacking the newspaper’s “irresponsible … possibly malicious” report that the 9/11 Commission found no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Yeah, Dick.  Telling the truth is soooo malicious. 

And on into the realm of pure fantasy:

“[Saddam] also had an established relationship with Al Qaeda, providing training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons, gases, making conventional bombs.”—Oct. 10, 2003, citing information extracted from a captured Al Qaeda operative after torture.

Riiiiiiiight.  Two people who couldn’t have detested each other more, and they’re working together to create bombs to use on righteous Americans.  Red meat to the bedwetting crowd, but no resemblence to the truth:

“It’s clearly established in terms of training, provision of bomb-making experts, training of people with respect to chemical and biological warfare capabilities, that Al Qaeda sent personnel to Iraq for training and so forth.”—June 4, 2004, six months after a special C.I.A. assessment ordered by Cheney finds no truth to the charge, the tortured Al Qaeda operative recants his claims, and the C.I.A. withdraws 153 intelligence reports based on his information.

And:

“There was a relationship. It’s been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming. It goes back to the early 90’s …. There’s clearly been a relationship.”—June 17, 2004, two and a half years after the C.I.A. reports that there wasn’t.

Good ol’ Dick; he never lets a little thing like a fact get in the way of the story he wants.

“[Iraq is] the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.”—September 14, 2003.

 

“We never said that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. We never said that. You can’t find any place where I said it.”—June 17, 2004.

Um, Dick?  That pretzel routine tends to be hard on a guy your age; not so great for the ticker, either. 

In the understatement of the decade:

“Well, you can’t anticipate everything.”—Feb. 7, 2006, accounting for the Bush administration’s failure to plan for the insurgency.

But I think this is my favorite, especially in light of what Scooter Libby and the prosecutor purge have demonstrated about this administration’s thuggish tactics:

“We will not hesitate to discredit you.” —Fall 2002, to UNMOVIC head Hans Blix and International Atomic Energy Agency director Mohamed ElBaradei, before the start of U.N. arms inspections. 

No shit.  But let’s close with Dick’s Philosophy of Life:

“Go fuck yourself.”

—June 24, 2004, to Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy

on the floor of the U.S. Senate. 

That’s our Dick.

[Ed. note:  The NYO’s compilation takes up five Web pages.  Your intrepid blogger here read them all.  Now I need to go take a shower.  And maybe bleach my eyeballs.]