Month: December 2008

By Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

"Jon Stewart isn’t a great interviewer, but he got the better of Mike Huckabee last night."

I beg to differ. I think he’s the best in the business.  The guy has a unique ability to tell his guests that he thinks they’re slinging bullshit while still giving the impression that he’s being respectful. The guy isn’t a newsman; he’s an entertainer.  That being the case, he’s not going to go berserk on a guest, as he needs to make sure that he’ll still have guests tomorrow and next week. Still, he generally refuses to let a guest come on his show and utter bullshit talking points without being taken to task for it.

 

The interview with Huck isn’t unusual; he’s done this with numerous guests over the years.  And it’s one of the reasons I never miss his show.

Stewart has said in the past that asking hard-hitting questions isn’t his job, nor should it be, I suppose. But I still find his interviews painfully dull much of the time.

by Chris Bodenner
I was prepared to discount this endorsement by celebrity Alec Baldwin, but it’s actually quite compelling:

When Hillary Clinton ran for President, she ran as a woman, in my opinion, and I believe that is why she lost. She invoked her Glass Ceiling Sister Act whenever she found it useful while Obama made far less of his race during the campaign. … This country has been run for centuries by men only…. To break that mold, you almost had to avoid the subject of breaking any mold whatsoever.

But in a state like New York, teeming with talented, ambitious and dedicated women within its political circles, [Paterson must appoint a woman.] … There are names being tossed around now, but let’s spare New Yorker’s the Celebrity Senate Seat dynamic…. Most of the names thrown around now are smart, caring New Yorkers. But only one is both fair and makes real sense for our state. Nita Lowey doesn’t want it. Appoint Carolyn Maloney.

By Patrick Appel
Scott Horton proposes:

It seems obvious that Patrick Fitzgerald should be retained as U.S. attorney in Chicago and allowed to handle [the Blagojevich] case to its conclusion. But that’s not enough. Is there a prosecutor in the federal system who has done more to win the respect and admiration of the public than Patrick Fitzgerald? Eric Holder and Barack Obama should consider putting him in charge of the operations of the Department as Deputy Attorney General. It would send a simple, necessary message to the country: the days of politics in the administration of justice are over. The theme of the day will be professional integrity.

By Patrick Appel
Publius writes:

…the Levin-run Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee abuse is now out (pdf exec summary). And it deserves some press attention. It confirms that senior administration officials authorized torture. Specifically, they authorized the "SERE" techniques — which had been originally used decades ago to train American troops to withstand Communist torture — to be used on detainees. In other words, they used illegal medieval methods designed to obtain false confessions, and made them the centerpiece of our intelligence-gathering. In this respect, Abu Ghraib was the sick poisoned fruit of a very rotten tree.

By Patrick Appel
P.J. O’Rourke asks for a journalism bailout:

…rescuing print journalism is a twofer. Not only will America’s principal source of Sudoku puzzles and Doonesbury be preserved but so will an endangered species: the hard-bitten, cynical, heavy-drinking newshound with a press card in his hatband, a cigarette stub dangling from his lip, and free ringside prize-fight tickets tucked into his vest pocket. These guys don’t reproduce in captivity. And there are hardly any of them left in the wild. I checked the bar.

By Patrick Appel
A reader writes:

Opiate painkilling drugs are in critically short supply across the developing world. So why doesn’t the USA just buy the Afghan poppy harvest, process it into painkilling meds, and distribute them to poor countries?

1. This would cut off the Taliban’s chief source of funding.

2. It would put the average Afghan farmer on the side of the US-supported government instead of the Taliban.

3. It would play to our strength — money. The Taliban has more local knowledge, more time, more patience, more willingess to shed innocent blood. But we have more money. They might be able to outfight us, out-corrupt us, or out-terrorize us, but they can’t outbid us.

4. It would put the US on record as alleviating suffering all over the world.

5. By fighting the Taliban with dollars instead of (as many) soldiers, we’d suffer a lot fewer killed and maimed Americans.

6. It might even be cheaper. Soldiers, tanks, planes, humvees, night vision goggles, bullets, Predator drones, etc. are really, really, expensive.

By Patrick Appel
David Plouffe explains why Obama won:

We had three things that helped us run a very good campaign, and I think this wasn’t the case for Clinton or McCain. One, we had a consistent message. What was our slogan the entire primary? "Change we can believe in." We adjusted slightly for the general—"Change we need." That didn’t change. That was boring to the press, but that consistency, I think, wore well with voters. And we didn’t have meetings every day about how to change our message.

We had an electoral strategy, and the primary contest goal was to try to do well in the early states, and win delegates, in the general to play on the big map. We never adjusted that. And third is we didn’t have that internal tension and in-fighting, so we could just focus on doing our damn jobs every day, and executing at a high level. And you’re right. I’ve worked in a lot of campaigns and they’ve been great experiences, but this was by far the most collegial environment that I’ve worked in, and it was a real pleasure to go to work every day, and we just had a sense of mission. And that can’t be overstated. There weren’t a lot of closed doors where people were complaining and we were a unit. And once we made a decision, we had made a decision, and no one second-guessed it.

Simple.

(Hat tip: Noam Scheiber)

by Chris Bodenner
Ben Smith, reporting from the campaign itself, confirms:

John McCain’s top pollster, Bill McInturff, said this evening that attacking Barack Obama over his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright would not have helped McCain’s campaign and could have destroyed his presidency, had he been elected.

Some Republicans were angry during the campaign that McCain had — reportedly for reasons of principle, and out of concern that he’d be viewed as racist — refused to air ads with Wright’s inflammatory sermons…. "I said ‘Look, if we do win we’ll win with about 273 electoral votes and we’ll lose the popular vote by 3 million,’" recalled McInturff of the internal discussions about cutting attack ads with Wright. "If [McCain] had used that issue that way, you’d already be delegitimized as a president. You couldn’t function as government."

by Chris Bodenner
Supreme Court Overturns Bush v. Gore