Yes sir, you're absolutely right.

But, I would argue in this case, we need something to get the American sheeple out of the stupor. Perhaps something as blatantly hypocritical, something which they might even perceive to be an attack on their own safety (seemingly the only spectre that motivates the vast herd of Americans), perhaps it is then that the general population will see the danger in this administration.

Do I care about everything you mentioned? Of course I do.

However, I think I can do that and use this issue to, hopefully, make some positive change.

What other choices do we have? Do you really see compassion and care for your fellow citizens as "hot button" issues? They don't seem to be.

I wish I weren't so cynical. I wish I didn't feel the need to be this way.

But there it is anyway. Maybe it's just me.

Thanks.

Sue me- I bet on the intelligence of the American people; and was doing it last summer when most people were assuming Bush was a shoo-in. See here and here from last year for my policy reasons for why Bush would sink in the polls

And I said then that Harken was a dead end.

"As for the Plame affair, I've already said that outing CIA operatives is not exactly the most horrific crime in my mind. What CIA agents do a lot of the time is a far bigger scandal than anyone "outing them","

You know, this bothers me. Career employees of the CIA are public servants like teachers, cops, firefighters and nurses and tax auditors. If you substitute any other sort of public employee for CIA agent in that sentence and you sound just like someone from the right. The far right. You might not like the policies they are carrying out. You might not like the bureaucratic role that individuals have played, but this is stereotyping. You don't know all the facts about Ms Plame (neither do I). But this smacks of presumption of collective guilt.

By the way, there is an excellent post on
Daily Kos 10/5, following up on your Dept. of Labor union regulations post.

I am about as far from the political elites as Alaska is from Florida, but I have spent my entire adult life- (I'm being charitable to myself, of course)- watching the deliberate organization and rise of the right-wing/corporate hegemony. I still remember those Mobil advertisements that began appearing on op-ed pages in newspapers and the Committee For the Present Danger. Right now it is beginning to dimly appear that the Bush administration is starting to implode, the Iraqis and the economy they have so badly screwed over willing. (Though I think if had not been for 9/11, the process would have begun a lot sooner.) But we still have now an entire generation of experience conditioned by this hegemony-( and I don't think the Clinton administration was much of an exception to this thesis, except to prove the rule)- and I would question whether "we" have the people on "our" side. (Part of the problem is that the left, the genuine pluralist left, has a pluralist sense of identity, internally as well as externally, whereas the right depends upon forging a fictitiously unitary sense of identity.)
And the difficulty of communicating with "the people" is compounded by the implicitly authoritarian aura of facticious verisimilitude of the corporate media, which surrounds and envelops the established centers of power, especially the presidency. My biggest fear, if indeed, Bush is on the way out, is for Gen. Clark to come riding on his white horse to take advantage of the situation without altering fundamentally in any way the workings and orientations of establishment power. If the rightwing/corporate hegemony is indeed cracking up with the Bushies, through their combination of overreaching greed and rank incompetence, the question is what is to come to replace it in the coming, probably very difficult times and whether a counter-hegemony can be organized to steer through them to a better, "happier" outcome as far as the lot and interests of ordinary people are concerned. People come to your website in particular, (though judging by the number of comments, it is not well subscribed to), for the precise bits of information and analysis about what is actually going on, with the Bushies and out in the land (e.g. explaining block grants). But outing the depredations of the Bushies, legion as they are, is necessary, but insufficient to the task at hand, (should you decide to accept this mission, Mr. Phelps.) Perhaps you and others similarly endowed and inclined could start to turn your attentions and efforts towards scoping out alternative policies, ideas, and connections for various constituencies in forming and weaving together a broad popular coalition to reverse these depradations and enact and enforce a real alternative to the organization, workings and goals of public power. Relying on Howard Dean for this will only get you Howard Dean.

Thank you Nathan.

I'm with the other Seth from Brooklyn (why are we both up so damned late?)

Just... thank you, for that, succinct, to the point statement. In the end, while we all love the horseracing angle, scandals aren't the race itself-- they are, at best, comparable to bumps of horses or jockeys falling off (or NASCAR crashes) and are spectacular, but in the end, ain't usually gonna substitute for being the fastest horse.

The thing with this particular scandal is how badly timed it is for poor old Bush: it comes just at the precise moment when people are getting most sick and tired of his POLICIES: the deficits are piling up, dead soldiers are piling up, the coffers of our richer neighbors are piling up, more jobless are piling up (until my daughter just started school and we see how many parents seem to be around-- because they can't jobs-- I had no idea how bad things were IN MY OWN NEIGHBORHOOD), the uninsured are piling up, and now... instead of the President addressing these problems, he's asking for $87 billion (of MORE borrowed money no less, from the congressional printing press!) and otherwise barricading himself against... THIS scandal (when he's not... fat cat fundraising!)

Clinton devoted his presidency (until he devoted it to deflecting scandal!) largely to the people's business-- policies that most people favored. I think that's what ultimately bought him a pass from his particular scandal. This President has NOT done anything like that-- he's relied on popularity he didn't deserve following HIS OWN SECURITY LAPSE, taken a lot of vacations, and pretty much (like dear old Dad) let the country muddle along economically-- with no real intervention save more and more irresponsible tax cuts for upper income brackets. SO... because of the dearth of... good old policy, like our 100,000 neighbors in the park in Queens screamed for, I'm not so sure this SCANDAL will not hit old Dubya that much harder. Well, we'll just see, I suppose.

Still, a nice statement Nathan. I'm glad you made it.

Well, yeah, I agree. One of the reasons I link to people like you and Lisa and Jeanne is that you keep focussed and don't allow yourselves to be sidetracked by the shiny jackday bait in the newspapers.

Sadly, though, most people MEGO when the bread and butter issues come up, and it does seem to me that the only chance we have of stopping these people and pressing for progressive change when the power changes hands (paradigm shift!) is to get the attention of the somewhat overwhelmed and more than somewhat ill-informed public with a shiny bauble of an issue like "Oh look! Mean bad Karl Rove outed Antonio Banderas and Carla Cugino, you know, from the movie"

I would love to believe that the real issues make the real difference, but at this point I'll hold my nose and accept a fan dance if that's what it takes.

jackdaw, that is.

I love all of it, the scandals and policies alike, and now that my baseball season is over, I have enough time to follow the whole thing, more or less. I am ambivalent (as I am about most things) about this whole Plame business. I do think that, as a story, it makes clear the ruthlessness of this administration. Simply as a story, it makes a point about the character and priorities about people in this administration, which is borne out by more of their actions in spheres that affect more people more directly. On the other hand, it is just a story, one among many, and the effort being put into convincing people that it's a true story (or that it's the One True Story, depending on which blogs you read) seems to me misplaced.

But is there a good story about how this team is deliberately driving wages down to increase the wealth of their buddies? I mean a good specific story, with good names and faces and a little bit of intrigue to keep everybody awake? Point me that story, and I'll post it everwhere I can. I'm serious; I know it exists, and I could find it myself if I wasn't so lazy.

Scandals, after all, are just stories that people like, and we could have scandals about policy matters too, if we could get at the stories and tell them well.

Thank you,
-Vardibidian.

I find it really odd how quickly everyone forgets that Al Capone - master criminal mind that walked openly amongst the very people he was ripping off, killing and generally undermining their lives - was ultimately convicted of tax evasion, not the vast number of horrible things he did.

Strange how quickly one forgets that it's the little foxes that get the grapes.

>Who cares if Nixon knew about a third-rate burglary at the Watergate hotel? He bombed neutral Cambodia and killed an estimated 300-800,000 people with twice as many bombs as we used on Japan in World War II. That was a crime.

Yes, but . . . this sort of distinction is often lost on many people. I'm hesitatant to start talking about , say, stages of moral development a la Kohlberg, but perhaps an simple law&order crime is more understandable than the larger legal and accepted obscenities, at least when the crime fits into a larger, convincing narrative frame as in the talking dog and Vardibidian's comments?

I used the "Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion" analogy in the comments section of Body and Soul a few days ago. So basically I agree with Nathan, but I think we should strive for nuance when talking about this. I'm all in favor of revealing classified information in cases like Daniel Ellsberg and when a CIA agent is supporting torturers or other unsavory types, I'd have no problem if his cover is blown. But this Plame case is nothing like that. This was a case of a CIA agent doing something they really should be doing, possibly risking her life (I emphasize "possibly", because I don't know) and being exposed for nasty small-minded reasons. It deserves to be a scandal, though I agree with Jeanne and Nathan that it's one of the less important despicable acts that one can blame on the Bush Administration.

Still, I found myself using the term "treason" in referring to the Plame case yesterday and decided later I shouldn't have. The rightwingers will leap at the chance to denounce future Daniel Ellsbergs with this epithet, and the sheeplike press will dutifully go along with them.

Bush to Plame

I will agree with you that the ‘gotcha politics’ of D.C. are not the politics that we ‘should’ be fighting on. The Plame issue, however, is not the equivalent of the Lewinsky scandal (sex), or even Watergate (break-in), or even Iran Contra (arms deals, covert operations & the CIA). The Plame issue is far greater and goes to the very heart of the future of war and geopolitical discourse in the United States from this day forward.

The Plame questions is really this question: To what length can the United States of America go to protect itself in a world of black market WMD and global nuclear proliferation post 9/11?

Can an Administration ignore the UN charter? Can an Administration violate international law? Can an Administration take us into a war against enemies that did not and were not capable of attacking us? Can an Administration continue to arm the world to the tilt? Can a political operative be canned because their spouse blew the whistle on fictitious documentation?

What I fear most about the left is not whether or not it is correct in its assessments of foreign policy, the CIA, et all, but whether the impact of 9/11 is viewed outside of ideology and longing.

The coming election, as demonstrated in the current internal Democratic Presidential primary race will be about how we: navigate, execute and advocate foreign policy. Parsing this issue, or not (as in Dean’s case), is the dilemma for Democrats, Independents and Progressives. The opposition is not and does not have to parse. Strategically, (not morally) I would equate their tactics with Clinton’s triangulation: cut off all exits for the opposition to run to. If they tack left they are weak, if they tack right they loose their base and look as if they are carping. Bush has taken the center and we must take it back.

Political relevancy is not always “high art” if you will (witness the latest election results in California). Political relevancy, however, is oftentimes THE fight. That is why I do not want us to back away from the Plame issue. Scandalous yes; scandal no. The Administration violated the law. Period. Bush is to B/Plame for this war and how and why he got us there, and by what means, IS the issue.

There are times, as you suggested in your comments, that we do need to get in the fight and get tough, without reservation. Lord knows the coming round of the Bush PR war at home has already started. The local television interviews the administration is planning to give will swing public opinion Bush’s way. How far is a matter of how hard we fight this round and how soon we recognize this.

When the Republicans did their hatchet job on Max Cleland, the decorated Vietnam vet who lost three limbs, I was not shocked. In a strange way, quite honestly, I was relieved. I know that sounds cynical but it is not. These people have shown they will ruin, lie, steal, cheat and literally kill--if need be--ANY opposition to their ideological agenda. In the case of Cleland, I was sorry that he lost his fight, but I was happy that the world saw how low and personal the fight for 2004 is going to be. I am NOT advocating that we use their tactics, but it does mean that we cannot ignore them.

What has happened, as we all know, is that political payback was initiated by one of the most ideological Administrations of the modern era. The payback was illegal, the payback was immoral, the payback was not about sex, the payback was not about a break-in, the payback was not about selling arms, covert operations or the roll of the CIA. The payback was a, raw in the face, contemptuous reaction to any dissent--within or outside the system of governance--over their geopolitical agenda.

As Shrub would say: the fight came to us. I think we should recognize it, seize on it, not let go, and WIN it. Plame should be the straw that breaks the Administration’s back. As I have said before: there is no justice in this world but poetic justice.