Smear Without Fear (NY Slimes/Krugman Hit Piece on President Bush)

NY Times ^ | 4/2/04 | Paul Krugman

[Pukin Dog]

Spot on.

It is insane for Krugman not to be talking about the jobs report today. It must be driving him crazy.

[kcvl]

I take it, he dosen't like our president...



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[Roscoe Karns]

Hey, Krugman

308,000

Eat it.

[Lancey Howard]

The New York Times, The Weekly World Review, The Star, the National Enquirer and the rest of that ilk can run with this kind of drivel all they want. As long as the legitimate press maintains a modicum of integrity and stays away, it will never get legs.

[kcvl]

Tuesday, April 08, 2003


KRUGMAN LOSES THE WAR

Paul Krugman is about to face the sum of all his and the Democrats' fears -- a President Bush who has gambled and won, who withstood every sling and arrow the opposition could throw at him, and still emerges victorious from the war in Iraq with enough political capital and personal credibility to achieve anything he wishes. So now all Krugman can do is try to think of something -- anything! -- about which he can say, to quote the last sentence of his New York Times column today,

"If that happens, we will have lost the war, whatever happens on the battlefield."

Ah, but Krugman came up with such a poor "that" today. The best he could do was to criticize the Republicans for criticizing John Kerry for criticizing George Bush.

[Spotsy]

How does Krugman conclude that the X-Files comment from the WH official refers to Clarke's "personal life?" (is the tv show more popular among people of a certain persuasion?)

Did I miss something?

Clarke is weird enough without getting personal.

Or are the Dems and their media handmaidens disappointed that the White House hasn't touched Clarke's "personal life?" So Krugman is trying to do it for the WH.

[Lancey Howard]

In his bitter attempts to try to smear Dubya, this guy Krugman has taken to beating up Wolf Blitzer and citing confusion over a David Letterman joke?? How utterly pathetic. I am more convinced than ever that Dubya is invincible.

[Lancey Howard]

Apparently, "lifelong bachelor" Dick Clarke is as weird in his "personal life" as he looks and sounds on TV. I don't know anything about it, though.

[clintonh8r]

I wonder what the "weird aspects to Clarke's personal life" could be? Any rumors or ideas?

[Southack]

You have to go all the way back to March 12th to even find an article on "economics" by Krugman, the NY Times' economic columnist.

The new jobs report comes out, flatly disproves everything that Krugman has uttered about economics, and Krugman writes a column about a boy yawning and Richard Clarke's secret (presumed gay) life.

But hey, it's Saturday and people in NYC need fresh liners for their bird cages. What else could be the point of Krugman's and Dowd's space fillers today?!

[Mo1]

Sounds like a grade school fight

[Saints fan]

I do my best to avoid reading any of the four regular Bush-bashing columnists in The New York Times, but my impression is that Krugman is the most extremely fanatical of the four.

Even more so then Maureen Dowdy Doody?

[Tamzee]

Krugman is PennyStupid the Clown

[kcvl]

Clarke has never married, and little is known about his personal life. An only child, Clarke's father died of a heart attack just seventeen days before the boy's 15th birthday. From seventh grade until graduation, Clarke attended the prestigious Boston Latin School and did well there. He wrote for the school newspaper, attended forums on world politics and spent many hours preparing for debates in which he argued the conservative point of view. One of his high school chums said that Clarke read the Congressional Record and followed foreign affairs on his way to school. "He was obsessed with politics, fascinated with foreign affairs, and deeply interested in history." When President Kennedy called young Americans to serve the country, Clarke made his career choice to enter public service. As a senior, he won a scholarship to attend the University of Pennsylvania and graduated four years later in 1972 with a bachelor of arts. In 1978, he earned his M.S. degree in defense policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2000 he and Anthony Lake wrote an e-book entitled "Six Nightmares" Real Threats in a Dangerous World and How America Can Meet Them."

During his three decades in Washington under four different presidents, Clarke was widely respected and widely disliked. Former colleagues remember him as a determined pit bull who often alienated his superiors but who was always loyal to those who worked for him. One person called him a "hands-on bureaucratic guerrilla" with a "gung-ho approach." Another colleague said, "Dick would just get into a foul mood sometimes and say things that made enemies of people forever, because he belittled them publicly." About his reasons for writing "Against All Enemies," Clarke insists that he just wants the American people to know the truth.


Quotes:
In his high school yearbook, he quoted Dante, "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in a time of great crisis maintain their neutrality."


He lives, according to his book, in an "old Sears-catalog house."

"When you get him one-on-one in a room, he's very personable and has a great sense of humor," said Keith Schwalm, a former Secret Service agent who worked with Clarke at the White House and now is vice president of his consulting company . "He likes to drop little hidden jokes all the time. If you don't have his sense of humor, you won't get 'em, and he'll laugh under his breath."
Clarke, who is single, is known as a voracious reader, from science fiction to history to the latest tutorial on al-Qaida, and as someone who enjoys relaxing with friends over dinner. The native New Englander loves seafood, follows the Boston Red Sox and the Washington Capitals, enjoys jazz and has a room in his Sears catalogue home packed with duck decoys and prints. He describes himself as a political independent registered as a Republican.

Despite Clarke's bulldog reputation, "he is a normal person," Simon said. "He likes to go on nice vacations. He likes good wine. He is your fairly typical cultivated upper-middle-class Washingtonian with cultivated upper-middle-class tastes."

*****


“Downing, a retired Army general, had replaced Richard Clarke, a Clinton administration holdover, in October 2001. “

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58934-2003Mar20

“In the role of counter-terrorism czar, he will be replaced by retired four-star Gen. Wayne A. Downing. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge will serve above Clarke and Downing in the new role as the president’s Homeland Security adviser.”

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/bush_advisors_clarke.html

[Lancey Howard]

Fairly impressive resume. It makes you wonder how he could have been caught in so many lies, and been involved in so much subterfuge and disloyalty toward Bush. He doesn't seem like the kind of guy (if you believe the profile above) who would do these things just to sell a book.

I mean, he generally laid off Clinton, who saw several serious terrorist attacks and had eight years to engage the enemy, but went after Bush who was in office barely eight months when 9/11 struck. This finger-pointing was so obviously irrational that it is hard to concieve that the guy praised in the above bio would do it. I suppose some people simply have no shame, no moral compass.

You think the Clintons got to him? Some dirt, maybe?

[kcvl]

He is a Democrat. He has always been a Democrat. He only voted for John McCain in the primary (like so many other Democrats did) to defeat George Bush. He voted in the general election for Al Gore (that is what he said).

He is a partisan Democrat, who has been in government (aka public service) for 30 YEARS. He worked EIGHT YEARS for CRIMINALS. Don't ask me how these people think, I don't want to know.

I don't mean to scream at you, it is just that the so-called media is not going to tell the truth, even if they were threatened with their lives.

When you have a revolving door from "government service" to "reporters" to "news" anchors to talk show hosts, back to "government service", etc., it seems they become inbreeds. Don't take ANYTHING they say as truth, unless you check out where they have "worked" before and with whom they associate. That will give you a good idea about their credibility. Working for CRIMINALS doesn't leave him with much credibility. George Bush didn't want to change "public servants" after the Florida fiasco because he wanted a continuity in our government so that other countries wouldn't think we were weak, while he got his people in place. We can all thank Al Gore for that.

[Edit35]

What about Clarke's mother?? I didn't notice any mention of her. She might hold some clue as to his bizarre behavior.

Also, and I hate to sound mean, but an only child whose father dies when he is a teen (while he is at a private high school no less) seems to me to possibly be someone prone to carrying heavy emotional baggage, possibly guilt or anger or something.

I also consider a person who never married to be very self centered, likely egotistical.

[Lancey Howard]

We are most definitely on the same page.

Regards,
LH

[Lancey Howard]

Nobody in the press talks about it much (except the gutsy and beautiful Ann Coulter, of course) but there seems to be a strong case that Clarke is a misogynist and possibly a racist. I think he simply couldn't stand that his boss was a black woman.

[Utah Girl]

From the Corner at National Review Online:

PAUL KRUGMAN SURPASSES HIMSELF [Rich Lowry]
As readers of NRO know, Paul Krugman has established himself as perhaps the single most partisan voice on the New York Times Op-Ed page, no mean accomplishment. Krugman the other day wrote a column criticizing Wolf Blitzer for allegedly passing along a White House smear of Richard Clarke. Krugman wrote, “On CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr. Clarke ‘wants to make a few bucks, and that [in] his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well.'"

Blitzer on the air Tuesday corrected Krugman, pointing out that he said those words in the course of asking a question of White House correspondent John King. As Blitzer put it Tuesday, “Finally, this clarification. Last Wednesday, while I was debriefing our senior White House correspondent, John King, I asked him if White House officials were suggesting there were some weird aspects to Richard Clarke's life. Clarke, of course, is the former counterterrorism adviser who has sharply criticized the president's handling of the war on terror. I was not referring to anything charged by so-called unnamed White House officials as alleged today by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. I was simply seeking to flesh out what Bush National Security Council spokesman Jim Wilkinson had said on this program two days earlier” [when he pointed out what he thought was a weird passage in Clarke’s book].

Krugman today takes Blitzer to task for this clarification: “Silly me: I ‘alleged’ that Mr. Blitzer said something because he actually said it, and described ‘so-called unnamed’ officials as unnamed because he didn't name them.”

But Krugman clearly distorted the original Blitzer statement. Blitzer was asking John King a question, and right after the bit that Krugman quoted he said, “Is that the sense that you’re getting, speaking to a wide range of officials?” King responded, “None of the senior officials I have spoken to here talked about Mr. Clarke’s personal life in any way.” Let’s repeat: “None of the senior officials I have spoken to here talked about Mr. Clarke’s personal life in any way.” If Krugman really wanted to know the truth about whether the White House was smearing Clarke or not, he should have considered King’s reporting more important than a passage in Blitzer’s question to him. But since King’s definitive factual statement didn’t fit Krugman’s agenda, he left it out. Where’s Daniel Okrent when you need him?

Here is the Blitzer-King passage in its entirety:

BLITZER: Well, John, I get the sense not only what Dr. Rice just said to you and other reporters at the White House, but what administration officials have been saying since the weekend, basically that Richard Clarke from their vantage point was a disgruntled former government official, angry because he didn't get a certain promotion. He's got a hot new book out now that he wants to promote. He wants to make a few bucks, and that his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well, that they don't know what made this guy come forward and make these accusations against the president. Is that the sense that you're getting, speaking to a wide range of officials?

KING: None of the senior officials I have spoken to here talked about Mr. Clarke's personal life in any way. But they offer a very mixed picture. They say that he was a very dedicated, a very smart member of the senior White House staff, that he was held over because of his expertise in the Clinton administration on terrorism issues and the Bush administration, these officials say, wanted a smooth transition. They also say, and many top Clinton administration officials support this, that Richard Clarke could be irritable. He could sometimes get angry at those who did not agree with him. That is an opinion shared in both administrations. And, in the end, of course, he did not get the No. 2 job at the Department of Homeland Security and he decided to move on.