The Torricelli bait-and-switch with Lautenberg is almost a leitmotif of the current Democratic Party. So what if we fully backed a guy we knew was a crook when we thought he could win? Now he can’t win! So …. The same heads-we-win tails-you-lose posture is evident on the budget (“the tax cut is the problem – but we won’t reverse it, in case the voters punish us”) and the war (“we’re against it in reality, but we’re for it formally, in case the voters punish us”). But tonight I heard the first enunciation of what’s in store if and when war erupts in Iraq. Any terrorist attack now or soon – by Saddam, his proxies or his allies – will be blamed by some Democrats on Bush. See, they’ll say. His war-talk provoked this. But if no attack happens in the next few months, they will use that in turn to argue that war is unnecessary, that Saddam is no real threat, and so on. Similarly, if the war goes well, they are busy setting things up so that they can claim they were in favor of it. But if it goes badly, or casualties mount, they will milk it for all it’s worth politically. On almost every issue, they’re doing all they can to ensure they can’t lose. The only thing they haven’t done is stand up for any principle, contribute much that’s constructive to the national dialogue, or show even a rote display of leadership or credibility. The fact that they behave this way at a time of war sickens. But, alas, it no longer surprises.
PLAYING THE RACE CARD AGAIN: Another sign of how low some current Democrats can sink. Here’s a sentence that just evoked a gag from yours truly, in a bed and breakfast in the dark night of Michigan:
But Mr. McGreevey and Democrats argue that the issue is a simple matter of giving voters the chance to choose.
Isn’t that exactly what Torricelli and the Democrats are trying to deny voters? It’s clearly a new line because Daschle reiterated it again today:
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said that by objecting to Torricelli’s request, Republicans were “denying the people of New Jersey a choice” in the election.
But the point is subtler, you see. If Daschle and McGreevey and Lautenberg can make this race about preventing voters from “having a choice,” and if they resurrect the same slogans they exploited in Florida, then they have a chance to increase the black vote, which was extremely ambivalent about Torricelli, and essential to winning. So watch the rhetoric. If they can’t break the law, they’re going to claim it’s a violation of civil rights. You just watch. And take some dramamine.
KRUGMAN WATCH: Salon had a pretty devastating but honest correction yesterday. They have removed a story written by one Jason Leopold about Enron and Army secretary Thomas White. A key passage from the correction:
We took this unusual step because we have come to the conclusion that we can no longer stand by the story in its entirety. Though we have corroborated most of the reporting in the article, some unanswered questions remain. Specifically, we have been unable to independently confirm the authenticity of an e-mail from former Enron executive and current Army Secretary Thomas White that was quoted in the article.
Hmmmm. That rings a bell. Could that be the same email that Paul “Enron Advisory Board” Krugman used in a recent column excoriating White? The same email that was exposed last Friday on Crossfire by Robert Novak? Here’s Krugman’s lead paragraph of September 17:
In February 2001 Enron presented an imposing facade, but insiders knew better: they were desperately struggling to keep their Ponzi scheme going. When one top executive learned of millions in further losses, his e-mailed response summed up the whole strategy: “Close a bigger deal. Hide the loss before the 1Q.” The strategy worked. Enron collapsed, but not before insiders made off with nearly $1 billion. The sender of that blunt e-mail sold $12 million in stocks just before they became worthless. And now he’s secretary of the Army.
White subsequently wrote to the New York Times claiming that he had no memory of such an email. Salon now supports White, and acknowledges that its freelance source also seems to have plagiarized a large chunk of the story from the Financial Times. Krugman graciously acknowledged that Leopold was his source for his smearing of White as well:
Jason Leopold, a reporter writing a book about California’s crisis, has acquired Enron documents that show Mr. White fully aware of what his division was up to. Mr. Leopold reported his findings in the online magazine Salon, and has graciously shared his evidence with me. It’s quite damning.
Not quite as damning as Salon’s apology, White’s denial and Krugman’s continuing silence.
UPDATE: Leopold responds on the Letters Page.
A READER WRITES: Another mini-classic:
If Pres. Bush delivered the kind of rhetorical mess that Mr. Torricelli did yesterday, the press would be all over him. Did you catch this beauty?: “I fought for everything I believed in, with all the fiber in my body.” I don’t know about you, but I love that – sounds like an ad for Metamucil.
BEGALA AWARD NOMINEE: “It is quite another [thing] to take on the infinitely more daunting challenge of saying warm and fuzzy things about a globally recognized lout – a through and through despicable human being about whom any effort at thoughtful compliment must strike the ear as either jarringly insincere (to the point of satire), or as some Koreshian echo of delusion. Such a man now takes his ease in the Oval Office or may be found squinting into the middle distance on his dude ranch, in the favored home state where so many of his domestic victims met their untimely end. Hitchens – much in the style of OJ’s defense team apparently figures – ‘if I can get THIS creep off the hook, my rhetorical skills are truly unlimited!” That he fails prodigiously at the task of absolving our vermin-in-chief, is hardly a surprise (though something of a disappointment to us – his once-devoted fans). Even the best high jumper can not leap over a building – let alone the moon, (a more appropriate metaphor in this case).” – Richard Harth, predictably sticking the leftist boot into Christopher Hitchens, at the venomous website, CounterPunch.
SELF-ESTEEM HOOEY: Interesting piece by Erica Goode in the Times yesterday on the waning fortunes of the concept of “self-esteem.” It does not appear, it seems, as if low self-esteem is a primary cause for anti-social behavior or failure in life in general. In fact, many criminals seem to have quite healthy self-esteem; and narcissism – excessive self-love combined with a sense of one’s own superiority – is a far bigger culprit for poor social conduct than its opposite. I’m glad the tide seems to be belatedly turning on this. Friends who teach undergraduates these days are constantly complaining that the problems of their students come not from low self-esteem, but from the reverse. The students object to any grades that seem beneath them; they fail to see why they need to work harder; when they don’t do well, their first recourse is to blame the teacher, not seek
the reasons in their own work. I also get tired of hearing that, for example, gay men’s willingness to have condom-free sex or multiple sex partners is also a function of “low self-esteem.” Is it not more credible that such behavior is due to the fact that sex without condoms or with more people is actually more pleasurable than the alternative? In fact, I think the crutch of “low self-esteem” may be the latest analytic tool to infantilize people and groups of people, by denying them full self-determination. It empowers the care-givers and social engineers, and disempowers those deemed to be low in self-love.
HOW SICK IS KING FAHD? “Ledeen claims that Fahd suffers from a “debilitating disease” and “suffered a stroke,” implying that he’s incapacitated. Newspapers routinely describe him as “ailing”. I was travelling through Turkey last spring and during part of my tour I shared a bus with a young Canadian woman who was King Fahd’s personal physical therapist. She regaled us with fascinating stories about life with him, but she also says, “He’s not sick. He’s fine. He’s just old. He does his exercises with me every morning.” And she would know.” – the debate continues in the Book Club.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “Every human calamity is different, so there is no point in trying to look for equivalence between one and the other. But it is certainly true that one universal truth about the Holocaust is not only that it should never again happen to Jews, but that as a cruel and tragic collective punishment, it should not happen to any people at all. But if there is no point in looking for equivalence, there is a value in seeing analogies and perhaps hidden similarities, even as we preserve a sense of proportion. Quite apart from his actual history of mistakes and misrule, Yasser Arafat is now being made to feel like a hunted Jew by the state of the Jews. There is no gainsaying the fact that the greatest irony of his siege by the Israeli army in his ruined Ramallah compound, is that his ordeal has been planned and carried out by a psychopathic leader who claims to represent the Jewish people. I do not want to press the analogy too far, but it is true to say that Palestinians under Israeli occupation today are as powerless as Jews were in the 1940s.” – Edward Said, once again comparing Israelis to Nazis.
The Dish 