Mark Steyn: Bush has nothing to fear from this hilarious work of fiction

The Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 03/28/04 | Mark Steyn

[Irish Eyes]

Thanks for posting another brilliant piece by Mark Steyn, he says it like no one else.

[lainde]

bttt

[WarrenC]

The net result of all this hubbub is a major victory for the Bush campaign, turning public interest toward terrorism.

Exactly so. And regarding the NY Times line...could that paper's free-fall from credibilty and respect be any more accelerated?

[Scenic Sounds]

I think this whole Clarke thing is pretty silly. Maybe some people think they would feel safer if they could just convince themselves that 9-11 could have been easily prevented. The alternative - accepting that it could not have been easily prevented - is perhaps too close to accepting that something similar could happen again.

Most people probably don't like thinking about any of this at all.

[hershey]

Well, Clarke is now employed by ABC News as an 'analyst'.

[LibertarianLiz]

another bump - great Steyn column.

[livius]

Yes, I think you're right. There were a lot of very funny Freeper comments, in addition, and I seem to have run them all together.

[Congressman Billybob]

I just hope yer Congresscritter Billybob, comes in a (distant) second to Mark Steyn in your rating of articles about Clarke. Mine is "Red Rover Come Over, and Quick." Up on FreeRepublic since early today.

Cheers,

John / Billybob

[Nita Nupress]

It leaves me to wonder who Richard Clarke is really working for, and why.

I've had the same thought. Wasn't it only last week that Bush was taking heat from the Dems & the media for using 9-11 in his terrorism ads? All by his lonesome and almost overnight, Richard Clarke took that issue off the front page and then made it legitimate for Bush.

Surely the guy isn't this clueless.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

"From now on, terrorism is a legitimate issue for Bush to discuss..."

OK. But what does the enable Administration do *differently*? Rove was already running a campaign based on highlighting exactly this issue, I don't see that addiotnal media attentoin to Clarke (and other critics) increases the Adminsitrations control over the agenda.

------------

As a political tactic, one thing I found especially worrisome was Bill First's announcement that Clarke has no right to apologize for the intelligence failures preceding 9/11.

This is a politically tone-deaf statement if I ever heard one - the problem is that in this case there clearly *were* serious mistakes, and a lot of them, made by two Administrations over a decade.

And it's pretty absurd to maintain - after a handful of men had spent months wandering around the country, getting flight training without bothering to learn how to land, and then hijacked four aircraft and flew them into buildings –that it's nobody's fault (or at least, it was all someone else's fault).

That's the nerve that Clarke clearly touched in a lot of people when he apologized for the fact that he had done his best – and it just wasn't good enough.

Now, this isn’t a problem unique to this Administration, it's a generic problem with US style governance; any admission of error is treaded as an admission of weakness, and given our political culture it's an act of political suicide.

Most other places with elected governments have ways of dealing with these situations; most typically the Ministers in charge of the organizations that have failed offer their resignations, the Prime Minister accepts, the voters (quite reasonable) desire that someone accept responsibility is at least partially satisfied, and political life goes on.

Here, though, the electoral calculus demands that the sitting government refuse to accept any responsibility (however apparent at least some responsibility may be) and it's reduced to attacking the veracity of anyone who says otherwise and shifting it's share of the blame elsewhere. (IMO, a Democratic administration would likely be pursuing the same basic strategy if the situation were reversed).

And if the mistake was something people feel strongly about, it's a strategy that eventually is likely to turn on its practitioners.

[Nita Nupress]

Please add me to your Steyn list. Thanks.

[prairiebreeze]

Let's see. So far, if we are counting books, we have O'Neil and Clarke. I understand that Joe Plame will have one coming out and a Freeper commented that Bob Woodward has one due that I assume is to be deragatory to the Bush WH. Hearsay perhaps, but we count 3 if not 4 in the pipeline that we've heard of or know about.

It's a coordinated effort to be certain, but it seems to me that all the publicity that Clark received from See BS, Viacom and the 9-11 duplicitous commission should have payed off more. Especially in view of the Newsweak poll.

Clarke's been discredited by Jim Angle's tape and other sources are surfacing that dispute his timing and his statements. Goss and Frist are talking investigations. Now Steyn's mentioned this: In October the previous year, Dr Rice gave an interview to WJR Radio in Detroit in which she discoursed authoritatively on al-Qa'eda and bin Laden - and without ever having met Richard Clarke!

While Clarke is by no means the last attack dog to be drug out by the RATS against the President, I tend to agree his 15 minutes are about up. Unless he goes to trial and then he'll have another 15 minutes that he will wish he didn't.

Prairie

[sultan88]

Thanks for the ping, j. Reading Steyn always makes me feel a little better.

[mylife]

Thanks Pokey

now the same people who claim Bush had no right to be "pre-emptive" about Iraq insist he should have been about September 11.

[quidnunc]

I'm afraid that I have to disagree with Steyn on this one.

The Dems have been constantly been hammering on Dubya in order to drive his negatives up.

They are currently above 40%, which is the danger zone for any politician seeking election, and significantly above Kerry's.

All this damage is cumulative, and the Dems aren't done — not by a long shot.

And the White House wouldn't be going to battle stations if they didn't consider the situation perilous.

[veronica]

[Western Phil]

"By the way, on tonight's FNC "News Watch" program Jane Whatsherface said that the Bush administration has had a copy of Clarke's book since NOVEMBER!"

I believe works by ex-civil servants employed in sensitive positions are required to be reviewed to make sure there is no classified information in them. Didn't seem to happen for the O'neil fellow.

[quidnunc]

Western Phil wrote: ("By the way, on tonight's FNC "News Watch" program Jane Whatsherface said that the Bush administration has had a copy of Clarke's book since NOVEMBER!") I believe works by ex-civil servants employed in sensitive positions are required to be reviewed to make sure there is no classified information in them. Didn't seem to happen for the O'neil fellow.

The only people in the administration who saw the book were the lawyers who vetted it for national-security issues.

Nobody else saw it.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

"See the poll in Newsweak"

That's what got me thinking about this in the first place:

"March 27 ... According to the latest NEWSWEEK poll, the percentage of voters who say they approve of the way the president has handled terrorism and homeland security has slid to 57 percent, down from a high of 70 percent two months ago."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4614818/

At least at this point this shift has not translated into a significant change in voter preference. But IMO it certainly does not seem like evidence of a successful counterattack.

[CyberAnt]

Ann Coulter's email said the book had some kind of rating - about readability or something .. and Clarke's book got a poltry 35. By her comments I suspect that's not very good.