A note of sanity

The Grand Poobah of poll watchers, Ruy Teixeira is back with a detailed analysis of the much talked about LA Times poll that "appeared" to show that the Swifty attacks were working against Kerry. You should read it all, but I would like to hilight two points:

If August had been a slow news month, this trend would almost certainly have been ascribed to an inevitable "coming back down to earth" following the run of positive news coverage Kerry had enjoyed for several months during the spring (the remarkable fundraising success, the popular choice of Edwards, the united, energized Democratic convention). Instead, because the attacks on Kerry�s medals and military service were intensely dramatic and widely covered, many commentators simply assumed that any changes in the opinion polls had to be due to their influence.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth that we heard from Democrats after the release of this poll frankly pissed me off. Anyone who has watched the polls closely for the last few months has seen swings like those shown in the LA Times poll. Yet, because people were looking for some kind of negative effect on Kerry, a perfectly ordinary fluctuation in the LA Times poll was widely interpreted to be that negative effect.

From the Bush campaign's point of view, the magnitude of the swift-boat fiasco becomes clear when it is recognized that a major goal of the August campaign was to put John Kerry on the defensive - to have him stumbling over his words, being pilloried in the press and firing his advisors. Instead (although the issue will now be muted by the theatrics of the Republican convention) it was Bush who was forced onto the defensive by the end of last week while Kerry weathered the attacks with an extraordinarily small decline in the level of his popular support.

The small fluctuation in the LA Times poll is not an indication that the Swifty attacks are working against Kerry. The failure to show a more substantial swing is an indication that the campaign failed in its main objective. Kerry has now demonstrated that he can take the heat of the most scurillous of smears and that he can hit back as hard as he is hit. He has buried the notion that he is just another Dukakis or Gore. And it is because of the Swifty attacks that he was able to do it.

We should all send a note of thanks to John O'Neil and Karl Rove.

Whoa!

Someone has managed to dig up a video of former Texas Lt. Gov. Ben Barnes telling people that he got Bush into the National Guard in the 60s and that he isn't proud of it.

Go here for a discussion thread on it on the DailyKos. Here's the video in QuickTime or Windows format.

An alternative to Bush

An interesting suggestion from last night's Kerry meetup: if you know of any Republicans who dislike Bush because of his handling of the economy and/or Iraq, but are unwilling to vote for a pro-choice candidate like Kerry (as they would consider that a sin), then maybe you should suggest they look into Michael Peroutka, the Constitution Party candidate for President. Maybe they might find him an acceptable alternative.

How We Got Here

Jackson Diehl gives us an excellent summary of how the actions of Bush and Rumsfeld to set aside the Geneva Convention's on the treatment of prisoners of war led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

The causal chain is all there: from Bush's February 2002 decision to Rumsfeld's December 2002 authorization of nudity, stress positions and dogs; to the adoption of those methods in Afghanistan and their sanction in Iraq by a commander looking back to Bush's decision; and finally, to their use on detainees by soldiers who reasonably believed they were executing official policy.

So why do the reports' authors deny the role of policy, or its makers? Partly because of the Army's inbred inability to indict its own; partly because of the desire of Rumsfeld's old colleagues, such as Schlesinger, to protect him. But there's another motive, too: a lingering will to defend and preserve the groundbreaking decisions -- those that set aside the Geneva Conventions and allowed harsh interrogation techniques. Schlesinger argues they are needed for the war on terrorism; he and senior Army commanders say they are worried about a "chilling effect" on interrogations and a slackening in intelligence collection.

The buried message of their reports, though, is that the new system is unworkable. Once the rules are bent for one class of prisoner, or one detention facility, or one agency, exceptional practices cannot be easily returned to their bottle -- and the chaos of Abu Ghraib is a predictable result. Just as the Army professionals foresaw, Bush's 2002 decision undermined "U.S. military culture" and its "strict adherence to the law of war." That is the headline the investigators ducked.

The treatment of the prisoner's at Guantanamo is the elephant in the living room of this whole scandal. It is where the problems all began, but no one wants to confront it. The Republicans won't because it would cast them in a bad light. The Democrats won't because they don't want to be accused of being "soft" on terrorism. The establishment media won't because, in their "objective" approach to news coverage, since no one else is talking about it there isn't any "hook" upon which to hang the discussion.

And, since any serious discussion of Abu Ghraib leads inevitably back to the treatment at Guantanamo, and no one wants to talk about the latter, then that creates a strong incentive not to talk about the former.

And thus do we slide down that slippery razor blade to hell.

Given the way this is going ...

... how long before we start hearing suggestions that the Swifties were actually a scam set up by the Kerry campaign in order to make the Bush campaign look bad?

Top Discarded Bush Campaign Slogans

Shamelessly stolen from this DailyKOS diary by jazzmaniac:

• We've Turned The Corner
• We've Turned Another Corner
• Still One More Corner
• We're Driving Around In Circles
• No, I Don't Need To Ask For Directions!

The LA Times has had enough

In an unsigned editorial (meaning it represents the opinion of the editorial staff of the newspaper itself), the LA Times does what no other establishment news organization has been unwilling, call a lie a lie:

In both cases, the candidates are the reason the groups are in business. There is an important difference, though, between the side campaign being run for Kerry and the one for Bush. The pro-Kerry campaign is nasty and personal. The pro-Bush campaign is nasty, personal and false.

No informed person can seriously believe that Kerry fabricated evidence to win his military medals in Vietnam. His main accuser has been exposed as having said the opposite at the time, 35 years ago. Kerry is backed by almost all those who witnessed the events in question, as well as by documentation. His accusers have no evidence except their own dubious word.

Not limited by the conventions of our colleagues in the newsroom, we can say it outright: These charges against John Kerry are false. Or at least, there is no good evidence that they are true. George Bush, if he were a man of principle, would say the same thing.

The editorial is not 100% perfect (MoveOn has been around a lot longer than the Kerry campaign, so saying he is the reason for their existence is wrong), but the LA Times deserves a lot of credit for breaking the taboo against calling a lie a lie.

Bravo!