Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

KERRY'S NEW WOE

By JOHN PODHORETZ

May 7, 2004 -- YOU might think the Abu Ghraib prison scandal would be helpful for John Kerry's presidential hopes. But the early indications - from the Gallup polling organization - suggest yet again that President Bush's problems are not doing much to boost Kerry's standing.
Indeed, it's possible that the images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib might push more than a few hundred thousand potential Kerry voters in a direction that would be disastrous for the Democratic nominee - toward Ralph Nader.

I'm not talking here about mainstream Democrats or holders of conventional liberal opinion. I'm talking about genuine, unapologetic leftists - the sort that see the United States as the key source of the world's woes and view capitalism as a dangerous and noxious force.

The Abu Ghraib photos offer these American leftists the perfect psychological opportunity they need to fly off the political rails. They've been hungering for it ever since the run-up to the war in Iraq.

To the extent that these people vote Democratic, they do so grudgingly and with some measure of unhappiness, because they do not think that the Democratic Party is a true party of the Left. They think both parties are in the pocket of corporate interests.

Who are these people? They are the folks who demonstrated across the country before the Iraq war. They show up to riot whenever the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund hold meetings. Their idea of an American Idol is Michael Moore.

They make up a tiny share of the American population, maybe 1 or 2 percent, but they potentially make up 6 or 7 percent of the electorate. Three million of them voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, and others probably stayed home.

Democrats have been presuming that such people will vote for their party's candidate because they hate George W. Bush with such a passion that ousting him from the presidency will cause them to make common cause with the Democrats.

I think this analysis is wrong. Yes, they hate Bush with a consuming passion. But the truth is that they hate the United States of America more. They find the war in Iraq loathsome not because they are pacifists, but because the idea that America is a liberator nation sickens and enrages them.

And that's why Abu Ghraib might be John Kerry's worst nightmare: The anti-American Left is already seizing on these photos and the behavior of .001 percent of the Americans present in Iraq as evidence that the entire U.S. effort in Iraq is a moral catastrophe from stem to stern.

The issue will no longer be the supposed "lies" of George W. Bush, but the supposedly "criminal" conduct of the American occupiers. In other words, they will openly turn from blaming Bush to blaming American troops, American soldiers, American contractors - and America herself.

Such people will not be mollified by the stance of the Kerry campaign, which is that the stated goal of the United States in Iraq will remain in force in a Kerry administration. Kerry also says he wants to stay until the job is done - to achieve a stable, functioning representative government. He wants to use other means and other strategies, but he still wants the same outcome.

The anti-war Left wants Americans out of Iraq. Not because it fears for their safety, but because it hungers to see an American defeat - no, more than a defeat, a humiliation.

Ralph Nader is the one candidate in the race who is calling for total American withdrawal from Iraq - and he does so on the grounds that what we are doing there is wrong and bad.

Abu Ghraib ensures that the anti-American passions will remain stoked throughout the year. Every vote Nader gets in November is a vote Kerry needs. This has been a good week for Nader, and that makes it a bad week for Kerry.

E

Perhaps Powell is vying for some starring roles in Japanese and German scat films.

Powell won't/won't be allowed to jump ship before the election, in order to preserve some semblance of the appearance of order in the Bush cabinet. I know that sounds laughable to those that watch their doings and analyze accordingly, but approximately half the nation gets their cue from Fox: "all is well, all is well," like that guy trying to control the sabotaged parade at the end of the movie "animal house."

But I can't wait to read his memoirs in a year or two, whomever wins the election. We know powell won't be returning; he's already said as much.

And I wonder, does adrian spidle really think Podhoretz is some kind of astute analyst? "The idea that America as a liberator nation sickens and enrages them." That's pretty funny. God forbid some Americans expect their country to walk the walk when it comes to democracy.

It's just sad. And I don't buy this business
about him being a "good soldier" who never
critizes those above him. A disaster of a war
is too important not to blow the whistle, either by resigning or some other means.

Powell has put out the word that he is staying out of loyalty only and has serious disagreements with Bush policy. This is a bad state of affairs. He plans to be gone in January after he is no longer needed for the Bush re-election.

http://us.gq.com/plus/content/?040429plco_01

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=518622

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1210391,00.html

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/05/05/friend_powell_uneasy_with_bush_vision/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5643-2004May5.html

Personally I can't wait for Colin's Kiss&Tell tome that should be hitting the stands in about 12 months or so. Perhaps it will finally drive a stake through the heart of this worthless excuse for an administration. I can only hope it is moot and after the fact...

Powell has put out the word that he is staying out of loyalty only and has serious disagreements with Bush policy. This is a bad state of affairs. He plans to be gone in January after he is no longer needed for the Bush re-election.

http://us.gq.com/plus/content/?040429plco_01

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=518622

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1210391,00.html

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2004/05/05/friend_powell_uneasy_with_bush_vision/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5643-2004May5.html

I think that we give too much credit to Powell. His performance for this administration has really showed in clear releif what his values are and what he is willing to do for his superiors. Everyone seems to expect so much more from him for some reason and pity him because he seems to just press on. Maybe he's just like Cheney and Rumsfeld and just doesnt care and its the left that has the mistaken notion that for some reason he is more to the center than he really is.

Take this curent example for instance. Powell duped the Congressional Black Caucus. Now instead of the outrage that he justly deserves for fibbing, the story is about how poor Colin is out of the loop.

I think that we give too much credit to Powell. His performance for this administration has really showed in clear releif what his values are and what he is willing to do for his superiors. Everyone seems to expect so much more from him for some reason and pity him because he seems to just press on. Maybe he's just like Cheney and Rumsfeld and just doesnt care and its the left that has the mistaken notion that for some reason he is more to the center than he really is.

Take this curent example for instance. Powell duped the Congressional Black Caucus. Now instead of the outrage that he justly deserves for fibbing, the story is about how poor Colin is out of the loop.

I think that we give too much credit to Powell. His performance for this administration has really showed in clear releif what his values are and what he is willing to do for his superiors. Everyone seems to expect so much more from him for some reason and pity him because he seems to just press on. Maybe he's just like Cheney and Rumsfeld and just doesnt care and its the left that has the mistaken notion that for some reason he is more to the center than he really is.

Take this curent example for instance. Powell duped the Congressional Black Caucus. Now instead of the outrage that he justly deserves for fibbing, the story is about how poor Colin is out of the loop.

I think that we give too much credit to Powell. His performance for this administration has really showed in clear releif what his values are and what he is willing to do for his superiors. Everyone seems to expect so much more from him for some reason and pity him because he seems to just press on. Maybe he's just like Cheney and Rumsfeld and just doesnt care and its the left that has the mistaken notion that for some reason he is more to the center than he really is.

Take this curent example for instance. Powell duped the Congressional Black Caucus. Now instead of the outrage that he justly deserves for fibbing, the story is about how poor Colin is out of the loop.

I think that we give too much credit to Powell. His performance for this administration has really showed in clear releif what his values are and what he is willing to do for his superiors. Everyone seems to expect so much more from him for some reason and pity him because he seems to just press on. Maybe he's just like Cheney and Rumsfeld and just doesnt care and its the left that has the mistaken notion that for some reason he is more to the center than he really is.

Take this curent example for instance. Powell duped the Congressional Black Caucus. Now instead of the outrage that he justly deserves for fibbing, the story is about how poor Colin is out of the loop.

Two things:

Adrian, posting the long article, as opposed to a link ans synopsis tends to disrupt the discussion.

Powell never had any honor. He just conveyed the impression that he did.

He was in on the My Lai coverup at the beginning, he lied to support the Iran Contra coverup, he was insubordinate with regards to gays in the military.

His life story is that of a slimy political opportunist, and I'm happy that it is catching up to him.

I have always been impressed by the "Powell is a good soldier" shtick. The guy aided and abetted Iraqi War justification lies...something not usually associated with officers and gentlemen. A "good soldier" might not deliver up the lies to the media for the American Public to see (a la Clarke or O'Neil,) but could surely step down quietly as a response, if in fact honor was a primary motivator.

James Woolsey was on Lehrer last night blaming the Iraq debacle on the State Department and the CIA. If only those wimps had let Chalabi's exiles run the whole show, everything would have turned out all right.

Doesnt' Powell realize he is being set up to be the fall guy on Iraq. He takes over on July 1 and after that it's his baby.

James Woolsey was on Lehrer last night blaming the Iraq debacle on the State Department and the CIA. If only those wimps had let Chalabi's exiles run the whole show, everything would have turned out all right.

Doesnt' Powell realize he is being set up to be the fall guy on Iraq. He takes over on July 1 and after that it's his baby.

If he was kept out of the loop was he really lying? He had to be lying though. How could they keep him this out of the loop? $25 more for Iraq when State will be in charge after the "turnover?" They held it together for 3 years, and now the internal pressure seems ready to blow.

Fuck you, Spidle. Your idiocy is matched only by your irrelevancy.

"Fuck you, Spidle. Your idiocy is matched only by your irrelevancy.

Posted by krusin"

BRAD - please delete

Two things-

1. Harry Belafonte was right.

2. Ignore Spidle- he's just your garden variety rightwing troll.

As has been said repeatedly by astute observers,
both Condi Rice and Colin Powell occupy a unique
niche in American history, that of Afro-American
house servants in a full-on Jim Crow White House.

Hey, getting into politics is easy for black and
hispanic minorities, because the real minority
is white males. But cracking the Good Old Boys
club, especially Condi breaking through the DAR
Glass Ceiling, Jesus, you don't EVER let your
people down over a wedge opportunity like that!

EVER!!!!

It would be like Mohammed Ali or Joe Frazier
publicly tattling about all the sleeze behind
professional fighting. If you are the champion
of a minority, you put your head down, you eat
Crow, and you finish your term of servitude.
That's how it's done! That's what the Hispanic word "macho" means. Be a MAN, take your licks.

Powell or Rice will never write a Kiss&Tell,
and anyone who thinks they will is in full
disconnect with political reality. The real
story here is how deliberately the Bircher's
in the Bush Administration have lynched Powell,
hanging him out to dry, while coddling Condi.

As Mumia Abdul Jamal predicted, the Whitehouse
Whitewash is in full battle-rattle, going loud.

Woolsey is a neocon and an idiot. State hasn't been allowed to be a player in Iraq, it's an E-Ring show. Powell is of the reservation, but it is too little, too late, for his "legacy."

In the future "to powell" and "to be powelled" will be a verb. As in:

"The press secretary reviewed the days talking points with dismay. How much longer, she thought to herself, will she let her boss keep powelling her into telling the press such lies?"

He was once a presidential hopeful, in my mind this shows what a lacking candidate he is, and therefore was and will be. Obviously he's still too much of an obeying soldier and not enough of a leader. Anyone who would not consider for office is looking for stale politics. As to the comment on his reputation, i dont think any more succinct set of words more aptly described the situation.

Brad -- please delete everything Adrian ever posts. He's got a track record.

Adrian -- you're a whiny, annoying bitch.

Powell has long been overrated; his performance under the Bush Administration should be his finale to public life, and his final reputation will be as that of a wimp. (Just to show my age, i have long believed that, had Hubert Humphrey resigned the Vice Presidency in December, 1967, and run against LBJ, he'd have been elected in November, '68, and we'd have been spared much. And that's how I remember Humphrey, even though his career-long track record is far superior to that of Colin Powell.)

About Adrian Spindle, who cares, but John Podhoretz, whom he quoted at excessive length, poor fellow, is a complete and total idiot. Having just written a spectacularly ill-timed book about bush's brilliance, podhoretz is rather desperate, and he will say anything to try and make his fantasy vision of george bush be true.

Meanwhile, the public, of course, increasingly rejects george bush; all that's left is for john kerry to make the sell. He may, and he may not, but polling makes it clear that the public is starting to get bush clearly figured out.

And that's not good for bush.

"Meanwhile, the public, of course, increasingly rejects george bush; all that's left is for john kerry to make the sell. He may, and he may not, but polling makes it clear that the public is starting to get bush clearly figured out.

And that's not good for bush.

Posted by howard"

hownerd, are you dreaming or drinking?

The rassmussen daily polls show Bush and Kerry dead even, within the error tolerence, since forever.

Kerry will break up after the Dem Convention and Bush will slaughter him after the Republican Convention and win his well deserved second term.

Adrian

Colin Powell has been such a good soldier that when the Bushies had him gelded, he took it like a...well, you get the idea.

To respond to the Podhoretz hijack, there are more important things about Abu Ghraib than gaming the U.S. election. We'll be living with the consequences of this for a long time to come. When it comes to our goal of isolating Muslim terrorists from the support of Muslims generally, the past several weeks have been an absolute disaster, and Abu Ghraib has been the worst so far.

Adrian, try thinking a little harder.

When i say the public increasingly rejects Bush, i'm pointing to his approval ratings, and the specific approvals on specific policies. There is only one place where Bush is over 50%, and that's on terrorism, and even there, his numbers are falling.

I signalled this by saying it remains to be seen if kerry will make the sell, which he may or may not.

So by definition (if you'll pardon my using a state college term), i wasn't saying that Kerry is beating Bush right now.

As for Rasmussen, better go look up his track record for 2000; he was way, way off.

Colin had been through this routine many times before. "Everything's normal, act calm, say a few words, pause...". And almost intentionally he would trip on a word, then backtrack on his sentence, raise his head, and look pointedly at one and then another point in his audience.. Yeah, one would think it's so normal even the ebb and flow of banal conversation is unchanged. He could be talking about what bottles of wine to pick up for dinner tomorrow; or no the day after.

But poor Colin now was beginning to feel that his routine was becoming like the last acts of a failed stand-up comic. A comic that senses that the laughter is forced, the silences longer. Yeah Colin you're finished. You'll end up in some cheap bar downtown, drinking, demoralized, no dignity left. It's all over for you.

Adrian: "Kerry will break up after the Dem Convention and Bush will slaughter him after the Republican Convention and win his well deserved second term."

No doubt Adrian is confident of this because God has told him so. Gallup, however, indicates something else, as pointed out by Ryan Lizza in the New Republic yesterday:

"But the most interesting finding in [yesterday's Gallup] poll is that while Bush and Kerry are essentially tied nationally (Kerry 49%, Bush 48%), in the purple battleground states--where voters are seeing and hearing more from the two candidates than anywhere else--Kerry leads Bush 48% to 44%. And this is after Bush has taken his best shot at Kerry with his $60 million ad campaign in those states, and before Kerry's own ad campaign has really even started."

I, however, DON'T agree with Zizka that everything that Adrian says should be deleted. First of all, I've always taken a dim view of DeLong's censorship tendencies -- I happen to think that the First Amendment assures every American the right to make himself publicly look like a fool. And, second, Adrian has undeniable entertainment value, rather like the geek at one of the old-time carnivals.

To pick up one bit further on what Bruce Moomaw has to say here, polling data increasingly suggests two things: a.) that Bush currently only preaches to the choir; b.) the choir is getting smaller.

The percentage of Bush supporters who characterize themselves as "enthusiastic" is about 20% or so lower than it was 2 months ago....

Adrian and his kind hijack threads too often. Ignoring him doesn't really work. He's very diligent.

I also take a view of DeLong's censorship tendencies, which I think are too lenient. But it's not censorship, but editing.

bakho
thanks (again) for the links. Powell is not going to win any popularity contests here unfortunately. I do not understand his affiliation with the Republican party and I agree with the line in the H. link that he spent the bulk of his time apologizing for his superior's mistakes. Is there nothing that would make him tender his resignation? His stature seems to be deliberately debased by BushCo. Perhaps he is waiting for the right moment with his resignation.

1. I disagree with Adrian and all poll watchers. let me remind you that Bill Clinton's approval ratings (Gallup) maxxed out in December, 1998 during the week when the House voted to pass his case to the Senate for trial. They fell a great deal starting in march, when stocks were high and unemployment low, the two things which traditionally predict Presidential approval ratings. It takes months for these things to be felt, and there may be other shocks in the meantime- like oil and grain price shocks.
2. I see Powell as an intelligent but shallow man like Bill Clinton, wanting everyone to love him, ending up disappointing everyone. Flush him and forget him.
3. If Kerry makes a good VP choice and stops sounding like Bush lite, he will win. Problem is that that he may or may not deal with the fundamental problems that we face, which are many. If we claim the right to interfere in other countries, whether in the name of freedom, oil rights, or what have you, we will continue to see American soldiers mistreating prisoners and bin laden will continue to gain.
4. Here's my score card:
Bush goals
achieved 2: got Saddam out & showed that we can push the UN around
failed 4: no oil increases for the US, did not create a city on a hill in the middle east, enraged the Muslim world, made our own economic situation much worse

Bin Laden's objectives:
- Frighten Americans -yes
- Get Americans out of sacred Saudi Arabia. -yes
- Dump Saddam's secular government -si
- Unite the Muslim world against the US-yes
4 success, 2 partial success
-turn the Europeans & Asians against the US
-bring down the house of Saud and shut down the oil spigot

- Drive israel into the sea. (failure).

Maybe Bush and Ridge are working for OBL, they sure as hell aren't working for you and me

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