Category: Dick Morris Award Nominee

“Kerry Withdrawal Contest: In part for reasons described in the preceding item, Democratic Senator John Kerry, once proclaimed the frontrunner in the press, faces not just defeat but utter humiliation in the New Hampshire primary. Is he really going to soldier on to finish in the single digits and get clobbered by both Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, if not one or more other candidates? Shouldn’t he save his pride (and possible national political future, if only as a VP candidate) by withdrawing from the race before this harsh popular verdict is rendered? … But what can Kerry say that isn’t even more humiliating than seeing it through?” – Mickey Kaus, Slate, December 5, 2003. He was nominated in 2004 and so qualifies.

VON HOFFMAN AWARD RUNNER-UP 2004: “Joe Lieberman has gotten his campaign on track, finally, and is a serious candidate. Bob Graham is an outstanding public servant. Probably among those who are running, just from his experience, has the best experience to be President. He was governor of a big state for eight years and knows what executive power is, and he’s been a very thoughtful senator now for twelve to eighteen years. So I think that he is talented. John Kerry – well, let’s go on. Then you have the other candidates, Sharpton, Braun, Kucinich …” – Bill Bradley, SFPolitics.com interview.

VON HOFFMAN AWARD HONORABLE MENTION: “Blair and Bush ultimately build their case on their personal intuitions, provoked by the Sept. 11 attacks, that something new had appeared in the world. They both concluded, as Bush was to put it, that they had to “rid the world of evil.” But their argument that Islamic extremism is a “global threat” is indefensible. The Islamists can make spectacular attacks on Britain or the United States, but neither country, nor any of the other democracies, is in the slightest danger of being “engulfed” by terrorism, or shaken from its democratic foundations. The Islamists are a challenge to Islamic society itself, but a limited one. Their doctrine will run its course, and eventually be rejected by Muslims as a futile strategy for dealing with the modern world.” – William Pfaff, in an article called “Blair overstates the threat of terrorism,” in the International Herald Tribune, the day before the 3/11 Madrid massacre.

BEGALA AWARD WINNER 2004 (for left-wing hyperbole): “No U.S. president, I expect, will ever appoint a Secretary of the Imagination. But if such a cabinet post ever were created, and Richard Foreman weren’t immediately appointed to it, you’d know that the Republicans were in power. Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.” – Michael Feingold, in the Village Voice.

BEGALA AWARD RUNNER-UP 2004: “Their new health care plan will probably be a return to leeches.” – Maureen Dowd.

BEGALA AWARD HONORABLE MENTION I:“I hope we all realize that, as of November 2nd, gay rights are officially dead. And that from here on we are going to be led even closer to the guillotine.” – Larry Kramer, in a speech to the gay community in Manhattan Sunday night.

BEGALA AWARD HONORABLE MENTION II: “There are some subjects so depressing that we do whatever we can to avoid hearing about them. Along with the results of a certain recent election, the sexual enslavement of children is high on the list.” – Andrew Johnston, TV listings, Time Out New York.

MALKIN AWARD WINNER 2004 (for cliched boilerplate hackery): “Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, OK? And I’m not afraid to say it. That’s why they hate this movie. It’s about Jesus Christ, and it’s about truth. It’s about the messiah. Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common.” – Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, Scarborough Country.

MALKIN AWARD RUNNER-UP 2004: “A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey-workers and consumers.” – Jane Smiley, from the classic Slate piece.

MALKIN AWARD HONORABLE MENTION: “There are certain things you want to avoid like an aloof Beacon Hill windsurfer with a crazy gypsy wife, crazed lunatics like Michael Moore sitting in the seat of honor at the convention, shadowy billionaires like George Soros paying for everything — I mean, why that didn’t play in the heartland I’ll never understand.” – Mark Simone, WABC radio host.

“Kerry Withdrawal Contest: In part for reasons described in the preceding item, Democratic Senator John Kerry, once proclaimed the frontrunner in the press, faces not just defeat but utter humiliation in the New Hampshire primary. Is he really going to soldier on to finish in the single digits and get clobbered by both Howard Dean and Wesley Clark, if not one or more other candidates? Shouldn’t he save his pride (and possible national political future, if only as a VP candidate) by withdrawing from the race before this harsh popular verdict is rendered? … But what can Kerry say that isn’t even more humiliating than seeing it through?” – Mickey Kaus, Slate, December 5, 2003. Sorry, Mickey. You weren’t alone. Me included. But you were asking for it.

VON HOFFMAN AWARD NOMINEE II: “Joe Lieberman has gotten his campaign on track, finally, and is a serious candidate. Bob Graham is an outstanding public servant. Probably among those who are running, just from his experience, has the best experience to be President. He was governor of a big state for eight years and knows what executive power is, and he’s been a very thoughtful senator now for twelve to eighteen years. So I think that he is talented. John Kerry – well, let’s go on. Then you have the other candidates, Sharpton, Braun, Kucinich …” – Bill Bradley, SFPolitics.com interview.

“Every so often in life you have to go out on a limb. So here goes: Arnold Schwarzenegger will not be the next governor of California. What’s more, his loss will represent an important moment in a shift in American politics that has been in gestation for some time now — toward a politics in which voters make decisions more on the basis of their cultural affinities than in response to a candidate’s charisma or fame… And in the week he’s been a candidate, Schwarzenegger’s numbers sure haven’t gone up. His first round of morning talk-show appearances was judged pretty awful. More recently, as the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday, there’s been enough grumpiness in the Arnold camp that a fairly major shake-up has already taken place, with people like George Gorton, Schwarzenegger’s chief adviser over the last couple of years, relegated to the second tier. When campaigns do that, leaks to the press from the disgruntled faction are the inevitable byproduct. And once a campaign gets a reputation as disorganized or divided, that becomes the scent the media decide to track, and the reputation becomes a difficult one to shake.” – Michael Tomasky, August 13, relying on the L.A. Times for news, in the American Prospect (thanks to Mickey).

V-H AWARD I: “Gruesome days for the German foreign minister: Every morning at nine, his staff briefs him on the situation in Iraq in the ministry’s underground situation room. His worst fears are coming true: The US military appears to be stuck in its tracks in the desert, and civilian casualties are multiplying. It has never been so painful to have been in the right, murmurs the foreign minister, with a worried look on his face.” – der Spiegel, March 31.

V-H AWARD II: “I bet you in the Pentagon the military planning assumes 5,000 to 10,000 American casualties and at least 100,000 to 250,000 civilian casualties in downtown Baghdad. All on CNN.” – Gary Hart, Denver Post, March 30, 2001.

V-H AWARD III: “The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we cannot win. “We do not have the military means to take over Baghdad and for this reason I believe the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable. “Every time we confront Iraqi troops we may win some tactical battles, as we did for ten years in Vietnam, but we will not be able to win this war, which in my opinion is already lost.” – Scott Ritter, South African TV.

V-H AWARD IV: “Iraqis, very clearly, do not want to be ‘liberated,’ even many who had long opposed Saddam’s brutal regime. To the contrary, the US-British invasion appears to have ignited genuine national resistance among 17 million Arab Iraqis, just as the 1941 German invasion of the USSR rallied Russians and Ukrainians behind Stalin’s hated regime. … The nasty, bloody urban warfare the Americans and Brits sought to avoid at all costs is now confronting them.” – Eric Margolis, ForeignCorrespondent.com.

V-H AWARD V: “Though Operation Iraqi Freedom has been underway for only two weeks, Rumsfeld’s “shock and awe” strategy was a flop. Pentagon strategists expected to have taken Baghdad by Mar. 27. Best-laid plans and all that: U.S. generals, worried that they don’t have enough men on the front lines, are considering whether to lay siege to Baghdad, bomb it to ruins or take it one block at a time. Basra hasn’t fallen. Suicide bombers are on the loose, we’re offing civilians and the Iraqi army has gone guerilla. And we hold a mere 4,000 Iraqi POWs. Only 45 Americans and Britons have died so far–compared to 112 total combat deaths in 1991–but allied casualties will soar if and when ground troops are ordered to take Baghdad… In this respect, Iraqis are no different than we are. Millions of Americans consider Bush to be a hateful, extremist dimwit who seized power twice, once in an unconstitutional judicial coup d’état and again by using the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to expand his personal power and gut the Bill of Rights. They call him names, like the Resident and Commander-in-Thief. But even the most passionately anti-Bush Americans would eagerly join their W-loving compatriots to fight any army that invaded the United States in the name of some theoretical ‘liberation.’ I know I would.” – Ted Rall, April 2.

V-H AWARD VI: “Meanwhile, a German government report due to appear in a newspaper on Monday says that up to two million people could die in a war on Iraq. The report released by the Environment Ministry says many civilians would be unable to get food or clean drinking water. The paper quotes the report as saying that a quarter of the population in southern Iraq already has no access to drinking water.” – Deutsche Welle.

V-H AWARD VII: “These are the last days of relative calm before we start bombing and massacring hundreds of thousands of people and in so doing enter into what many believe will a very long, drawn-out, insanely expensive, volatile, destabilizing, completely unwinnable war against a cheap thug of an opponent who has negligible military might and zero capacity to actually harm the U.S. in any substantive way. U-S-A! U-S-A! This will not be Desert Storm. This will not be quick and painless. This will be 3,000 guided missiles launched on the first day of the war, 10 times that of Desert Storm, turning Iraq into an instant wasteland.” – Mark Morford, Sfgate, March 5.

V-H AWARD VIII: “Have you ever seen such amazing arrogance wedded to such awesome incompetence?” – Molly Ivins, March 16, 2003. No, Molly, I haven’t. The liberal media have had a terrible, terrible war.

Conventional Wisdom Watch, by Newsweek. A down-arrow for Dick Cheney: “Tells ‘Meet the Press’ just before war, ‘We will be greeted as liberators.’ An arrogant blunder for the ages.” Nope, Newsweek. Yours was the “arrogant blunder for the ages.” And on April 7!

VON HOFFMAN AWARD II: “In Baghdad the coalition forces confront a city apparently determined on resistance. They should remember Napoleon in Moscow, Hitler in Stalingrad, the Americans in Mogadishu and the Russians at Grozny. Hostile cities have ways of making life ghastly for aggressors. They are not like countryside. They seldom capitulate, least of all when their backs are to the wall. It took two years after the American withdrawal from Vietnam for Saigon to fall to the Vietcong. Kabul was ceded to the warlords only when the Taleban drove out of town. In the desert, armies fight armies. In cities, armies fight cities. The Iraqis were not stupid. They listened to Western strategists musing about how a desert battle would be a pushover. Things would get ‘difficult’ only if Saddam played the cad and drew the Americans into Baghdad. Why should he do otherwise?” – Simon Jenkins, the Times of London, in an article called – yes! – “Baghdad Will Be Near Impossible to Conquer,” March 28.

VON HOFFMAN AWARD III: “[Al-Jazeera has shown] the resistance and anger of the Iraqi population, dismissed by Western propaganda as a sullen bunch waiting to throw flowers at Clint Eastwood lookalikes … The idea that Iraq’s population would have welcomed American forces entering the country after a terrifying aerial bombardment was always utterly implausible … One can only wince at the way weak-minded policy hacks in the Pentagon and White House have spun out the ‘ideas’ of Lewis and Ajami into the scenario for a quick romp in a friendly Iraq … pity the Iraqi civilians who must still suffer a great deal more before they are finally ‘liberated’.” – Edward Said, London Review of Books, April 17.

VON HOFFMAN AWARD IV: “It looked grimly like that scene in A Bridge Too Far, Richard Attenborough’s epic on the Arnhem disaster, in which a British officer walks slowly up the great span with an umbrella in his hand to see if he can detect the Germans on the other side. But I knew the Americans were on the other side of this bridge and drove past it at great speed. Which provided a remarkable revelation. While American fighter-bombers criss-crossed the sky, while the ground shook to the sound of exploding ordnance, while the American tanks now stood above the Tigris, vast areas of Baghdad – astonishing when you consider the American claim to be “in the heart” of the city – remain under Saddam Hussein’s control.” – Robert Fisk, the Independent, April 9, i.e. the day of liberation.

VON HOFFMAN AWARD V: “The huge psychological victory for the coalition produced by the arrival of US tanks in front of the media centre in Baghdad has not finished off the regime, even though this coup came so soon after their shock arrival at the international airport. A compilation of the military detail in reports from journalists in Baghdad and an ear for the changing spin from Centcom gives a less victorious picture of the battle for the Iraqi capital than is shown in the media. For example, for three hours on Saturday Centcom said the US was in Baghdad to stay, not on a raid. Then, after some armoured vehicles had been damaged and some troops killed and injured, it became a raid as the troops withdrew. The selective and censored TV coverage obscures a military reality that has been neither as successful nor as difficult as it has seemed. Now, reports of total victory may be premature.” – Dan Plesch, the Guardian, April 9, the day of liberation.

VON HOFFMAN AWARD VI: “As the war drags on, any stifled sympathy for the American invasion will tend to evaporate. As more civilians die and more Iraqis see their “resistance” hailed across the Arab world as a watershed in the struggle against Western imperialism, the traditionally despised Saddam could gain appreciable support among his people. So, the Pentagon’s failure to send enough troops to take Baghdad fairly quickly could complicate the postwar occupation, to say nothing of the war itself.” – Robert Wright, Slate, April 1.

VON HOFFMAN AWARD VII: “Is Wolfowitz really so ignorant of history as to believe the Iraqis would welcome us as ‘their hoped-for liberators’?” – Eric Alterman, The Nation.

P.S.This award (for awful wartime predictions) is still wide open. Send me your late entries, with a URL address to verify. There’s more accounting to do.

“The main flaws are now plain. First, the strategy left very long supply lines exposed and vulnerable. Troops require water and tanks require gasoline. Without these, no force 250 miles from base will be useful for long. Second, Iraqi soldiers embedded in civilian populations – both those along supply lines and in Baghdad – can only be destroyed alongside those populations. Thus the Iraqis could force the transformation of the second strategy into the first. And, being military realists, they have done so. The dilemma is now acute. Retreat is unthinkable. George W. Bush’s neoconservatives (standing safely in the back) will figuratively execute any who quail. The level of violence will therefore be raised. Meanwhile, the prime stocks of precision munitions have been drawn down, and speculation about the future use of cluster bombs and napalm and other vile weapons is being heard. And so the political battle – the battle for hearts and minds – will be lost. If history is a guide, you cannot subdue a large and hostile city except by destroying it completely. Short of massacre, we will not inherit a pacified Iraq. For this reason, the project of reconstruction is impossible. No one should imagine that the civilians sent in to do this work can be made secure. To support “the groundwork” for this effort is to support a holocaust, quite soon, against Iraqi civilians and also against the troops on both sides. That is what victory means. You can watch the beginnings (if you have satellite television) even now, as injured children fill up the hospitals of Baghdad. The moral strategy would be to avoid the holocaust. To achieve that from the present disastrous position, the United States would have to accept a cease-fire, which would lead to the withdrawal of coalition forces under safe conduct. There would be no military dishonor in such a step. It would, however, entail the humiliation of the entire Bush administration, indeed its well-deserved political collapse. Too bad the moral strategy is not a practical one.” – James Galbraith, the American Prospect. How can a single person get so much so wrong?