|
|
March 26, 2008
Just How Did John McCain Obtain What He Has in the Bank with the Press?"Maybe Iran is training Al Qaeda is McCain's way of signaling that he intends to pick up where Bush and Cheney left off in discarding the whole reality-based approach to policy-making and public communication."NBC’s political director, Chuck Todd, said it this week: “Even if he gets dinged on the experience stuff, ‘Oh, he says he’s Mr. Experience. Doesn’t he know the difference between this stuff?’ He’s got enough of that in the bank, at least with the media, that he can get away with it.” He’s got enough of that in the bank. This phrase made people wonder what kind of depositary institution we were talking about. (The immediate occasion was McCain’s strange assertion on March 18 that Al Qaeda in Iraq was being trained by the Iranians.)
To understand Chuck Todd’s strange phrase, “in the bank,” we have to start at the source of McCain’s presumptive credibility with journalists. It’s not in any demonstrated mastery of subject matter—on the Middle East, foreign policy, military doctrine, or terrorism—but rather his ease and sense of command during question time with the press, especially as an underdog candidate aboard his bus, the Straight Talk Express. It was never that he was such a straight talker, although he was more willing to criticize his own party than other Republicans. Mostly, he was an open talker, unafraid of the risks, permitting reporters hours and hours of on-the-record Q & A, something that just didn’t happen with other candidates and their tightly controlled scripts. This is similar to what Lieutenant Colonel Bob Bateman and reporter Spencer Ackerman said last week (at TPM Cafe’s book club) about General David Patraeus and his own reputational capital with the press. “So why has most of the media apparently gone head-over-heels for Petraeus?” Bateman asked himself. His answer is simple: “General Petraeus is not afraid of the media.” Imagine yourself a reporter in Iraq, he said… The battalion commander is leery of you, the brigade commander is distant and borderline hostile, the division commander might not even deign to talk to you at all, and there is a Public Affairs Officer who you feel is constantly trying to “spin” everything you see. (That would be your perception anyway.) So there you are, lonely and alone. A journalist peer of yours sends you an e-mail saying, “Hey, write to General P, he’ll answer.” You doubt this could be true, but you give it a shot. About 30 minutes later you get an e-mail from Petraeus himself, with his aide on the cc line, setting up an interview. Petraeus, steeped in the counterinsurgency doctrine he helped create, understands that… to communicate with the public one must go through the media, and he is not afraid of the media. In the Army, that is pretty unique. And it earns you points with reporters. Here’s more testimony from Ackerman, a young journalist now working for the Washington Independent who has been to Iraq twice: Petraeus relishes the back-and-forth with the press, in my experience. Now, that has strategic value: winning over reporters is not something Petraeus does to be nice. But, unlike many, many generals — mid-career officers aren’t, I find, like this — Petraeus is willing to entertain points of view that don’t correspond to his own, even if it’s to offer pushback. In short, you can talk to Petraeus like a human being. For a lot of reporters used to getting canned answers, evasions or outright silence, that’s irresistible. Extreme spin and stonewalling are de-humanizing for the journalist on the note-taking end. They say, “I’m not going to recognize you as a thinking person.” Patraeus, with his more confident approach, actually humanizes reporters. Why wouldn’t they reward him with good coverage? The same pattern has held with John McCain. Because reporters felt they could talk to him like a human being, he humanized them and their work. McCain grasped that gotcha goes away when a reporter has asked everything he can think of asking— and they’re still talking! The harmony between the press corps and the candidate is not ideological. It is existential, involving a special quality of their experience in traveling with McCain. Howard Kurtz reported on this in January: As the Straight Talk Express rolled from Greenville to Spartanburg, McCain, sipping a Coke, was upbeat with a half-dozen reporters, even though he had lost Michigan the night before. After he fielded questions on strategy, the economy, abortion, Iraq, Romney and Huckabee, the assembled journalists seemed to run out of ammunition and the conversation grew more relaxed. I’m not saying McCain doesn’t spin, shade, cheat or obfuscate. I’m saying reporters have been in situations with him where they ran out of ammunition and the conversation grew more relaxed. The residue of those experiences is in the bank account Chuck Todd talked about. A good text for this is Michael Scherer’s dispatch for Salon. (March 18, 2007, on the road with McCain in Iowa.) By all appearances, the national press had somehow become one with the McCain campaign. We had been with him all day, nearly a dozen scribblers from the major papers, news Web sites, networks and wire services. We reclined on the motor coach’s two couches, set our papers on its tables and swiveled in its leather chairs… We all sank into our seats, guests of honor mingling with senior staff, munching potato chips and Butterfingers with the candidate, peppering him with questions, and waiting for him to stumble. It went on for hours, with the subjects breaking in waves: Iraq, his age, military contracting, Jack Abramoff, the Bush administration, immigration, gays in the military. Everything was on the record, and nothing was off limits. It was a reporter’s dream….McCain was playing a game he had mastered once before, with the original Straight Talk Express. Back in 2000 he had stunned the American people, and seduced its political press, by offering endless on-the-record access, as if he had nothing to hide. When you’re “waiting for him to stumble,” and he doesn’t after hours of questioning, then it’s easier to forgive it when he does. Whereas a gaffe from a candidate who is always on message, and rarely available to reporters, is a chance for the press to pounce. As the Daily Howler noted in a post from 2000: “It’s become a standard part of the tale: reporters get so much access to McCain, they simply run out of questions… Why shouldn’t McCain get good coverage, scribes say, if he’s willing to take all our queries?” Richard Cohen of the Washington Post explained how McCain’s apparent candor disarms, charms and co-opts reporters at the same time: Unlike most other candidates, he does not ration his time with the press. Reporters sit with him in the back of his campaign bus and ask him anything they want. We talked about the Vietnam War and Kosovo, Chechnya and gun control, abortion, homosexuality, campaign finance, Marlon Brando movies, great books, flying off a carrier, reciting movie plots to his fellow POWs, going over the wall at the Naval Academy lo those many years ago, and that dish from Rio, the fashion model he had such a crush on. For a while he wanted to find her but then someone told him, no—it’s best to remember her as she was. What a guy! This is William Greider, writing about McCain and the press for Rolling Stone back in 1999: Will somebody tell this guy to shut up before he self-destructs? No. “This is his campaign,” an aide mumbles as the candidate disembarks at Plymouth. “It’s not like we sit here and try to control him. Do you think he would listen if we did?”… If you’re a reporter, accustomed to getting manipulated and boxed out by campaign handlers, you’re bound to fall in love — and even feel a little protective toward this decent guy who is so incautious.. “A little protective toward this decent guy who is so incautious.” Every time a reporter feels that way it goes straight into the bank. On the Op-ed page of the New York Times today, the critic Neil Gabler identifies another source of those deposits: a shared sense of winking detachment at the absurdities of control-the-message politics. Though Mr. McCain can be the most self-deprecating of candidates (yet another reason the news media love him), his vision of the process also betrays an obvious superiority — one the mainstream political news media, a group of liberal cosmologists, have long shared. If in the past he flattered the press by posing as its friend, he is now flattering it by posing as its conspirator, a secret sharer of its cynicism. He is the guy who “gets it.” He sees what the press sees. Gabler is definitely onto something: McCain love is an aspect of self love. That Al Qaeda is being trained by the Iranians is not something McCain blurted out just once, either. He’s said it several times. As the Washington Post report noted there was friction here with McCain’s argument “that his decades of foreign policy experience make him the natural choice to lead a country at war with terrorists.” Howard Kurtz buys that experience argument, but was more emphatic, once he learned that McCain had made the “mistake” several times. “That’s serious business. It means either that McCain really believes the link exists and wants to spread it around — until he got called on it — or he is so forgetful that he keeps saying so even though he knows it is untrue.” The Weekly Standard blog had a different take: “McCain was right the first time. He shouldn’t have taken his statement back.” But there’s another way to look at it, which no one in the press seems to have considered. Maybe Iran is training Al Qaeda is a “last throes”-type statement, McCain’s way of signaling that he intends to pick up where Bush and Cheney left off in discarding the whole reality-based approach to policy-making. You plant dubious associations in the public mind, and then don’t care if you get called out on them because an image is left on the retina, so to speak. By demonstrating to the press that you can say false things, refuse to correct them, and pay no big price for it, you dishearten reporters and make their efforts appear futile to themselves. The press should be on the lookout for this from McCain. (And there’s this incident with Mitt Romney to remind us what “straight talk” sometimes means.) Finally, a major unanswered question about Barack Obama is whether he will have the confidence to take the Patraeus approach and try to bank the results. He recently did just that with the Chicago Tribune and Tony Rezko. “Obama offered a lengthy and, to us, plausible explanation for the presence of now-indicted businessman Tony Rezko in his personal and political lives,” the Tribune said. “The most remarkable facet of Obama’s 92-minute discussion was that, at the outset, he pledged to answer every question the three dozen Tribune journalists crammed into the room would put to him. And he did.” Obama ought to consider doing this more often. McCain, I think, is likely to move in the opposite direction. After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… This is a slightly revised and updated version from the one published 12:57 am, March 26. New post, related! The Love Affair Between McCain and the Press Sprains the Brain of the Liberal Blogosphere (March 31). Matt Bai, who follows political argument at the New York Times blog, The Caucus, asks himself, “Why do some political missteps haunt their candidates forever, while others are easily put to rest?” Here’s a political postulate for you: whether or not a bad moment sticks to the candidate depends on how closely related it is to the core rationale of that candidate or his opponent. In other words, if your gaffe goes directly to the main argument you are trying to make about yourself with the electorate, or if it substantiates the most relevant thing that your rival would have us believe about you, then it has the potential to become a serious problem. Therefore McCain’s odd and withdrawn statement on Al Qeada and Iran is a serious problem, right? Right. McCain managed to, as Bai put it, “undermine his own narrative as the one candidate who gets the world.” But isn’t the question: undermine it with whom and for how long? Jules Crittenden comments on this post: “He’s unpolished, doesn’t follow a script, and isn’t over-packaged or over-controlled. He takes the time to talk. So when he stumbles, people tend to be more forgiving. It’s not like a wannabe Olivier just flubbed Hamlet. The old guy isn’t acting. He’s not only been around the block, he’s been downtown and up some dark alleys, and it shows. The level of handling will go up in the general, and the level of forgiveness will go way down, but the sense of familiarity will go a long way with press and voters.” Michael Scherer at Time’s Swampland: “Irony, as used by both McCain and Mike Huckabee, is a powerful force, especially in a country where very few actually believe what any politician (or reporter) is telling them. By being ironic, the candidate says, “Hey, wink wink, I know this is all a hoax, you can trust me.” Exactly the kind of signal Mitt Romney never managed to send. Ryan Lizza in a lengthy New Yorker profile (Feb. 25, 2008), titled On The Bus: “It is bracing to drop in on the McCain campaign after covering the overly managed productions of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.” Right, and something like that goes right into the bank. On March 26, Lizza discussed McCain and the press on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews; they also talked about Neil Gabler’s article on irony and journalists. See the Daily Howler’s review: “It’s always amusing when Big Major Scribes pretend to discuss the press corps’ own conduct.” See also my comment on the Savvy Observer’s Exception. Hey, if you’re in New York City this Friday evening March 28, be sure to check out a panel I’m on called, “How New Media is Changing American Politics” at NYU. It’s featuring TechPresident’s Micah Sifry, Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, NewAssignment.Net’s and NYU’s Jay Rosen, and NYTimes.com’s Lisa Tozzi, moderated by Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine. Details here. The intensely entrepreneurial Rachel Sterne of Ground Report got this event together, and I think it’s going to be good. From the Huffington Post (improved, syndicated, front-paged) version of this piece… People who read Huff Post are accustomed to complaining about the treatment their candidate gets from the press. (Rather too accustomed, I think.) But each candidate interacts with the press in a different way. Each of these relationships has a bias, if you will. I wouldn’t say “good press” follows from “good treatment.” However, the premises of the coverage are greatly affected by what it’s like to cover a given candidate, and of course to ask questions. The currency in which reporters trade is questions actually answered, QAA. McCain simply realized that the QAA system allowed him to print money, as in: ask all the questions you want! Do we have Matt Welch Links! He’s the recent biographer of McCain, also editor in chief at Reason magazine, also PressThink pal. Wise on this subject. Matt Welch in a New York Times op ed today: “Mr. McCain’s exaltation of sacrifice over the private pursuit of happiness — ‘I did it out of patriotism, not for profit,’ he snarled to Mitt Romney during the final Republican presidential debate — reflects a worryingly militaristic view of citizenship.” It’s about McCain’s national enterprise psychology. Matt Welch reviews at Reason a new book about McCain and the press. Love story from a Media Matters point of view. Matt Welch in the comments: [McCain] is much more of the culture of Beltway journalists than he is of Arizona conservatives. He was breakfasting with senators and journalists and military officers at his Capitol Hill residence before reaching puberty. He was pals with Johnny Apple before getting shot down over Vietnam. He loves reading history books, jabbering with the smart set, and living in the D.C. area (where he’s spent the vast majority of his life).” Matt Welch recommends it. From New Times, the alt weekly in Phoenix. The Pampered Politician. (May 15, 1997: “Arizona Senator John McCain is ready for a presidential run—if the national press corps has anything to say about it.”) In general, you can learn a lot about the national press from the vantage point of the local press when their beats overlap and the locals can observe the big national brands in operation. It can be press think gold!
Posted by Jay Rosen at March 26, 2008 12:57 AM
Comments
Neal Gabler has an explanation today in the NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/26/opinion/26gabler.html Apparently it is because McCain is insincere, inauthentic, and cynical. And he lets the reporters in on the act he's using to fool the rubes. Posted by: jayackroyd at March 26, 2008 9:19 AM | Permalink Why the press likes McCain is a no brainer...access. Hillary has treated the press like a piece of s@#! and Obama has been so-so in the area of media access. McCain reminds me of another politician the media loved, former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. Willie pretty much was his own press secretary and urged reporters to call him at home. He would devote at least an hour a week to talk to the press and never had a press secretary at a press conference yelling "LAST QUESTION." Usually Willie would end press conferences with "you all don't have any more questions?" The Clinton blame the press for Bill's impeachment so they have little to do with the media and take every opportunity to dis the press, whereas the Straight Talk Express is about the best a reporter can hope for in regards to access to a national candidate. Posted by: harryo at March 26, 2008 9:22 AM | Permalink THANK YOU! As a voice outside the profession of journalism, I have to say that this inexplicable bank account McCain has with the press smacks of collusion when we outsiders have no other explanation. So that's the missing link. What an odd, odd world you political journalists live in. Riding around on a bus or plane with a candidate, being fed, fed, fed. Not that different from we who sit at home reading or watching the soundbites being fed, fed, fed. I wonder at the mutual disdain the press and the public have. We are all at the trough; who's pouring the slop? Posted by: Bonnie at March 26, 2008 11:01 AM | Permalink What an odd, odd world you political journalists live in. Odd, yes. But I don't live in it. I've never been on the bus. I study the press... and the consequences of being on the bus. McCain's popularity with the media who travel to cover the campaigns is no mystery to anybody with even a modest grasp of human nature. If other candidates treat you like something they scrape off the bottom of their shoes, and one candidate treats you like a decent, intelligent human being, who are you going to be more favourably disposed towards? As a rule, people don't feel positively helpful towards folks who they feel despise or hate them. Posted by: Graham Shevlin at March 26, 2008 11:27 AM | Permalink Even if he gets dinged on the experience stuff This thesis about McCain’s technique for accumulating a bank account of good will to forgive misstatements of fact is persuasive. You understate, however, the evidence of McCain’s “discarding the whole reality-based approach” -- and so did Chuck Todd. The problem with McCain’s statements about al-Qaeda being trained in Iran was not merely the Sunni-Shiite error. McCain is showing signs of an underlying al-Qaeda fixation, rendering him unable to make clear judgments about whatever it is that may be going on in Iraq. In February, after the MSNBC debate in which Barack Obama pledged a military response if al-Qaeda were to establish “a base” in Iraq, McCain ridiculed Obama: “I have some news. al-Qaeda is in Iraq.” McCain asserted that the group has constructed a base there. I have heard no credible reporting to support that. By all accounts, al-Qaeda in Iraq seems to be operating underground as an irregular militia. At the same time, McCain made this prediction of the consequences of a US military withdrawal from Iraq: “There is no doubt that al-Qaeda would then gain control in Iraq and pose a threat to the United States of America.” This is clearly not the case. There seems to be nothing but doubt about what sort of government or none might control a post-occupation Iraq but I know of no one -- except McCain -- who speculates that it would be an al-Qaeda administration. Everywhere he turns, McCain appears to have visions of al-Qaeda. How about dinging him on the fixation stuff? Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 26, 2008 12:04 PM | Permalink Well, let's see how this goes: One possibility that McCain is getting a break on the al Q/Iran question is this: Iran is clearly training somebody in Iraq. What difference does it make as a practical question of how to deal with Iran if they're training al Q or not training al Q but training somebody else? For those who don't see that it affects our next steps all that much, it's a minor error. I expect a number of folks will get all upset, pretending to be really, really concerned with the actual facts--picture concerned expression--to the extent of missing if not avoiding altogether the serious question of what do we do with Iran and what does al Q or not-al Q have to do with the answer. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at March 26, 2008 12:34 PM | Permalink Aubrey -- "What does al Q or not-al Q have to do with the answer?" The answer is everything, since John McCain's entire argument against a troop withdrawal from Iraq rests on his fear of an al-Qaeda government in Baghdad. McCain has never used the fear of a pro-Teheran government as an argument for continued US military occupation for the simple reason that "pro-Teheran" is an accurate description of the current al-Maliki regime that the US military is helping to remain in power. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 26, 2008 12:48 PM | Permalink Maliki may be pro-Teheran--I expect that's exaggerated for political effect--but that has nothing to do with what we do about Iran and training somebody in Iraq. It could be said that things will not settle down until Iran is induced to stop bothering with Iraq. That being a likely scenario, the question about Iran does not change by who, exactly, they are using in Iraq. Somehow, they will have to be induced. What difference in the inducing techniques is required by whether it's al Q or somebody else. Even if you're correct without exaggerating, you do not address the question of what is to be done with Iran's meddling. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at March 26, 2008 1:30 PM | Permalink Matt Welch, of Reason magazine, has been following McCain for a while (He wrote a McCain biography), and tho I haven't read the biography, I've found his posts and articles at Reason magazine instructive. (esp this: Be Afraid of President McCain) Welch's latest, Correcting Media Myths and erecting new ones delves into the book, Free Ride, and the media portrayal. The lede (remember Baghdad Bob?): For those of us who have been writing critically about John McCain over the years, keeping tabs on the 2008 presidential campaign through the media is a bit like getting your war news via Saddam Hussein's old information minister: The street names may be right, but the big picture looks funny. and, a bit further in, A lifetime Beltway insider and third-generation naval officer with an heiress wife and an heiress mother is still referred to, without irony, as a "Man of the People." And though his heavily interventionist governing philosophy, both at home and abroad, is spelled out in his five easy-to-find books, he continues to receive mash notes from newspapers like the Des Moines Register for being a man who, because "he knows war," would be "reluctant to start one." Posted by: Susan Kitchens at March 26, 2008 2:29 PM | Permalink Big Iraqi op in the Basra region. Maliki telling the bad guys to submit or die. Sadr still in Iran, last I hear, recovering from food poisoning. That's their story and they're sticking to it. Anyway, it would appear that Maliki is going after some Teheran-backed folks. From which I deduce that the concern about Iran and al Q is overblown, and not particularly useful to predict events. Some commenters, secure in having quickly swotted up Comparative Religion for Dummies, wax knowing about Sunni vs. Shia. While soldiers, embeds, and a few independent journos (Yon, Roggio, Totten) refer to a much less Manichean divide between the two when talking to ordinary people about their neighbors or in-laws. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at March 26, 2008 4:16 PM | Permalink Tell me, Dr. Rosen, what makes you so sure that the Iranians aren't training al Qaeda in Iraq? The fact that Maliki is Shia and al Qaeda is Sunni doesn't rule it out. So far as I can tell, a Western-style republic run by Shia with full rights for Kurds and Sunni is the most threatening government in Iraq to the Iranian regime's interests, for the same reason that West Germany was the biggest threat to East Germany's Communist regime. Shia governing themselves after the Western manner are a living refutation of Khomeini's revolutionary doctrine, to which the Iranian regime is inescapably committed. So, since al Qaeda in Iraq is working against a Western-style republic in Iraq, it is also working in Iran's interests, and the Iranians would be foolish not to give them aid. Nobody has ever charged Iran's rulers with foolishness. John McCain's entire argument against a troop withdrawal from Iraq rests on his fear of an al-Qaeda government in Baghdad. No; McCain's argument rests on fear of anarchy in Baghdad, leading to some anti-Western faction setting up a tyranny there. It doesn't matter whether the successful faction is al Qaeda, a Khomeinist militia, or a resurgent Ba'ath Party -- they're all bad for us, and bad for Iraq Posted by: Michael Brazier at March 26, 2008 6:29 PM | Permalink Brazier -- you may believe that what McCain means when he says "al-Qaeda" is "al Qaeda, a Khomeinist militia, or a resurgent Ba'ath Party" but just because you interpret it that way does not mean he says that. He was as clear as can be on February 27th when contemplating a US military pullout: “There is no doubt that al-Qaeda would then gain control in Iraq and pose a threat to the United States of America.” Surely "no doubt" does not mean "feel free to interpret my words for yourself." And if all three categories are identical in McCain's brain, why did he he admit to error in Jordan after repeatedly saying Iran was training al-Qaeda and correct himself to say that was not the case? The fact that you find it so easy to infer his precise sentiment from such imprecise speech is Exhibit A for the necessity for traveling journalists to scrutinize his words rigorously rather than simply allowing him the same leeway you grant him because of his copious deposits in Chuck Todd's bank. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 26, 2008 6:57 PM | Permalink Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda." If McCain took the notion seriously, he should not have backed off, and changed his statement to eliminate any specific reference to Al Qaeda. But he said he erred: "extremists, not al-Qaeda." 'K, so you ask me: how do I know he erred? Well, I don't know for certain that Iran isn't supporting Al Qeada, and I do not have first hand knowledge to lend, but I do consider it a bad sign for the thesis that a serious player like McCain wouldn't stand up for it in a public forum, but rather treated the claim as a slip, and corrected himself after being advised. Alternatively, if John McCain wishes to make the argument, or announcement, that in his view Iran is backing or in league with Al Qeada, then let him put the proposition forward without taking it back, too. Let him share what evidence there is in public view, and explain it as best he can to us, so we too can see the dangers, and share his sense of urgency. That kind of leadership is the McCain brand, right? I think there is a lot more than "how accessible the candidate is" to the favorable treatment that the press affords certain candidates. Huckabee was certainly accessible -- but that didn't stop the media from treated him as an afterthought (I mean, the guy won in Iowa, McCain came in fourth place there, and the press treated McCain like the "comeback kid" for a 4th place finish.) And Obama is no more accessible to the media than Clinton -- yet he consistently far more positive press than she does. Clinton misdescribes (which is the closest I can get to a non-judgental word) her experience in getting off a plane in Bosnia, and its as big, if not a bigger, story than Obama's relationship with Rezko, or his relationship with Wright. And all Obama has to do is say "mistake in judgement" and Rezko disappears, or "he's like family so I can't disavowel him" and Wright disappears. So while McCain's willingness to engage the press explains part of his "bank", it doesn't really explain why some candidates get better coverage than others. Posted by: p.lukasiak at March 26, 2008 11:31 PM | Permalink Tyndall: And if all three categories are identical in McCain's brain, why did he he admit to error in Jordan after repeatedly saying Iran was training al-Qaeda and correct himself to say that was not the case? I suspect that McCain was using "al Qaeda" as a synecdoche for terrorists in Iraq, and corrected himself because Lieberman reminded him that, though it is known that Iran is training and funding some terrorists in Iraq, we don't know Iran is training al Qaeda specifically. The point is, however, that since Iran is training and funding terrorists in Iraq, the predictable result of withdrawing US forces from that country would be Iran's proxies gaining control of it, putting US interests at risk. That is, apart from the identity of the immediate agents, McCain's argument is correct; the original decisions and the final results would be as McCain stated. Further, labelling the single statement "al Qaeda is Iran's proxy" as a gaffe, and using it to cast doubt on McCain's judgement in general, as if it has been conclusively refuted instead of merely being unproven, and ignoring its function in the argument McCain made -- all this is a substitution of verbal abstractions for concrete facts, a shutting of eyes to reality that makes a mockery of the proud name "reality-based community". p. lukasiak: And all Obama has to do is say "mistake in judgement" and Rezko disappears, or "he's like family so I can't disavow him" and Wright disappears. To reporters, yes; not to the voters. Wright is a dead albatross around Obama's neck; his sermons won't be forgotten while Obama remains in the public eye. And that pretty speech Obama gave ignored the real issue in the voters' minds, though pretending to address it, and thus added to the offense in the long run. Posted by: Michael Brazier at March 27, 2008 3:39 AM | Permalink This seems less a debate about reality in Iraq and more about a political contest. I agree with Paul that access doesn't explain Obama's depository of good will with the press. re: "McCain asserted that the group has constructed a base there." No. McCain to Obama: 'Al Qaeda Is In Iraq', McCain Hits Obama Again On AQI, some history: Ansar al-Islam (Iraq, Islamists/Kurdish Separatists) The Enemy of My Enemy: The odd link between Ansar al-Islam, Iraq and Iran Jamaat al-Tawhid wa'l-Jihad / Unity and Jihad Group Tim -- on a point of personal privilege,,, It is not an enlightening form of discussion to have one's words contradicted by the format "No" followed by a link -- especially when the content in the article being linked to is so weak. The Weekly Standard blog entry you use to contradict me -- and support McCain -- contained no information whatsoever about the dispute in question, namely Iranian training bases for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The post talked of Iranian links with Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan, of al-Qaeda-Iran ties before the 2001 as documented by the 9/11 Commission, of an al-Qaeda association with Hezbollah under the Clinton Administration. So what? As for the two ABC News links you offered to contradict my characterization of McCain's dispute with Obama as being about a hypothetical al-Qaeda "base" in Iraq, far from setting me straight, they characterize the dispute the way I did. Obama worried about a future possible base. McCain said it already exists. I know this is supposed to be a PressThink thread not a McCain and al-Qaeda in Iraq thread, so I am not saying these things to argue the merits of my case... ...merely to object to your misleading and tendentious method of purporting to contradict me. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 27, 2008 9:04 AM | Permalink Who said access explains Obama's or Huckabee's treatment by the press? I didn't. You're refuting a claim no one has made. I was trying to explain one thing in his post, what one of Greenwald’s readers asked: “What kind of bank is Mr. Todd talking about?” Paul's version: "And all Obama has to do is say 'mistake in judgement' and Rezko disappears." Chicago Tribune's version: "Obama offered a lengthy and, to us, plausible explanation for the presence of now-indicted businessman Tony Rezko in his personal and political lives... The most remarkable facet of Obama’s 92-minute discussion was that, at the outset, he pledged to answer every question the three dozen Tribune journalists crammed into the room would put to him. And he did.” However, it is true that on the whole Obama has not been any more accessible to the press than Clinton. Paul: "All Obama has to do is say 'he's like family so I can't disavow him' and Wright disappears." There we have a considerable gulf in perception. I would call that claim--that Rev. Wright has disapeared as an issue, story, theme in the news, question mark for Obama--"staggering." I don't think there is any sort of consistent story or set of principles that explains press treatment of the various candidates. If someone says there is (I don't know who that would be...) they're wrong. You have to take them one by one to understand them, and none is a simple story-- except when culture war is brought in to do the job, then everything is over in seconds. McCain's history with the press bears on his treatment today and explains the "bank" comment on Meet the Press. That is my point in this post. Clearly, the Clintons' history with the press bears on her treatment today, as many have noted. Lastly, here's the video of Chuck Todd of NBC making that observation about what McCain has in the bank. Some other sources worth checking out, via Nexis or otherwise: * David Daley's excellent Nov. 21, 1999 Hartford Courant piece "McCain Is the Media's Main Main." * David Grann's "The Hero Myth," May 24, 1999 in The New Republic. * Amy Silverman's "The Pampered Politician" in the Phoenix New Times, May of 1997 (Link). In addition to the whole valuable "bank" analogy, a couple of other factors to consider: * He's a gen-u-ine war hero. Reporters usually don't meet many of those. * He's a gen-u-ine charmer & likeable guy ... even though he's a Republican!! Reporters really don't meet many of those! (Read the late '90s mash notes from Michael Lewis and Charles Lane, for starters. * Lacking much of a stated or evinced political philosophy (aside from enhancing executive power on all things foreign policy), he shares with journalists & the editorial boards who love him a similar, Cookie Monster-style approach to public policy -- See Problem, Try Fix Problem! For this, of course, he is a "pragmatist." Lacking interest in policy detail and skepticism about the use of government, what becomes most important is not actually whether his "reforms" actually fix anything, or make the world a better place, but rather that they show that his heart is in the right place. And since his reform agenda from 1997-2003 closely matched their own (against Big Tobacco, Big Campaign Money, Big Tax Cuts, Bit Religion, Big Xenophobes, Big Steroids, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Polluters), that, too, is a "bank" he can continue withdrawing from. Give you two examples -- the other day I did a KQED radio show with Ryan Lizza, who when asked about McCain's flip-floppery & substantial ties with lobbyists, said that, well, one thing we can never take away from McCain is how he helped drive big money out of politics. Even though, you know, he didn't. (Not to mention the fact that McCain-Feingold was an assault on citizen political speech.) Example #2 -- in its endorsement of McCain, my alma mater editorial board at the L.A. Times praised him for sticking up for cap-and-trade against his Republican colleagues. Even though they themselves had editorialized against cap-and-trade just a few months before, on grounds that it didn't actually work. What mattered, in the end, was that his Heart Was In The Right Place. * He is, at the end, much more of the culture of Beltway journalists than he is of Arizona conservatives. He was breakfasting with senators and journalists and military officers at his Capitol Hill residence before reaching puberty. He was pals with Johnny Apple before getting shot down over Vietnam. He loves reading history books, jabbering with the smart set, and living in the D.C. area (where he's spent the vast majority of his life). As Michael Lewis said, when asked why it was that Arizona reporters had a much different take on their own senator than national journalists like him, "But why should the Arizona papers know McCain any better than the national media? He lives in Washington. He's never really lived in Arizona. We know who he really is." He's an elitist, for both good and ill. And for two decades he's played the national press like a flute. Posted by: Matt Welch at March 27, 2008 11:51 AM | Permalink Who said access explains Obama's or Huckabee's treatment by the press? I didn't. You're refuting a claim no one has made. I was trying to explain one thing in his post, what one of Greenwald’s readers asked: “What kind of bank is Mr. Todd talking about?” jay, I wasn't trying to "refute" anything, simply note that there are other aspects to getting good treatment from the press than "accessibility." That being said, I do think that the press uses the "accessibility" argument to avoid the kind of further self-examination required to explain differing treatment for candidates. Re: Rezko... what Obama's interview with the Trib reporters boiled down to was "I made mistakes in judgement." As for Wright, I agree with Michael B... he's still an issue for the voters. But since Obama gave the 'greatest speech ever given on race', the mainstream media has fallen all over itself to ignore or downplay the "controversial" aspects of the Wright "controversy" -- the right wing media is still at it, but as far as the MSM is concerned, its a dead letter -- other than fodder for horse race coverage based on speculation about poll numbers. Posted by: p.lukasiak at March 27, 2008 2:19 PM | Permalink Matt Welch: Thanks for dropping by, and for the list. Paul: Must be my ear is off. Looks like we agree: there is a lot more involved than "how accessible the candidate is" if we're trying to explain the treatment the press affords certain candidates. Chuck Todd was observing how his colleagues would handle it. Not that McCain deserved the amount he had in the bank. Todd would take the "savvy observer" exception to questions like that. It provides rules of interpretation for this clip. "I'm going to talk about what journalists do and pretend for the moment that I am not a doer like them, because this step back offers you, the viewers, a savvy take on our business and insight into how my tribe behaves. "So you will forgive me if do not address, or adjust my own behavior in accord with my recent observations about the media's customs and tendencies. I'll be taking the standard Savvy Observer's Exception if you try to question me about my coverage and my assumptions and what's in my bank for McCain." You get the idea. With SOE, He’s got enough of that in the bank, at least with the media, that he can get away with it.... raises no questions at all about what McCain is credited for or can get away with at NBC News, the political portion of which Chuck Todd allegedly "directs." Without SOE that's a sticky little wicket. With the standard exception, he knows that no one on Meet the Press is going to ask him about it. And life goes on.... Matt Bai, who's assigned to follow political argument at the New York Times blog, The Caucus, asks himself a press think question, "Why do some political missteps haunt their candidates forever, while others are easily put to rest?" His theory: Here’s a political postulate for you: whether or not a bad moment sticks to the candidate depends on how closely related it is to the core rationale of that candidate or his opponent. In other words, if your gaffe goes directly to the main argument you are trying to make about yourself with the electorate, or if it substantiates the most relevant thing that your rival would have us believe about you, then it has the potential to become a serious problem. Wouldn't that make McCain's statement on Al Qeada and Iran a serious problem? Bai says yes, it does. McCain managed to "undermine his own narrative as the one candidate who gets the [Jihadists] world." Problem with Bai's point -- McCain's core value proposition is his "straight talk." Yet he just does not talk particularly straight (blunt, yes, straight no). So you'd think the press would jump up and down on the ample evidence of him looking them in the eye and lying, let alone brazenly switching positions while saying all along he's never switched positions. But they don't. Why? Because his Heart Is In the Right Place. Because he's not really a conservative. Because "he seems uncomfortable doing it, or overcompensates by being too enthusiastic, and all in all looks like he is following a dance-step chart." Because it reflects "a conflict between his desire to resist the Republican powers that be and his need to appease those forces lest they block his last chance at the White House." So much of political discourse -- including/especially by an "apolitical" media -- is really about divining people's motivations, making sure they are not just creepy knuckle-draggers pretending to care about the First Amendment (Mitch McConnell), but rather that they're mavericks who hate politics as usual and share your genuine concern about the corrupting influence of money in politics. Once you know he's on your side, it doesn't matter that much when he strays -- that's just politics, and him having to cope with being in a Neanderthal political party. Posted by: Matt Welch at March 27, 2008 8:29 PM | Permalink Andrew Tyndall, re: It is not an enlightening form of discussion to have one's words contradicted by the format "No" followed by a link ... I agree. But since you provided NO links with your "quotes," I felt little obligation to do more than disagree and link. I think NOT linking is a "trust me" rhetorical statement on the web, bad form, and certainly not web savvy. re: -- especially when the content in the article being linked to is so weak. What a load of crap. Find me a quote with McCain saying AQI has a "base" in Iraq. Link to it. Each of the two ABC links have a video. Quote it, link to the video and tell us the time in the video where it occurs. re: AQI, Ansar al-Islam and So what? AQI is the direct successor of Jamaat al-Tawhid wa'l-Jihad which is the direct successor of Ansar al-Islam -- all lead by Zarqawi until his death in 2006. Same group, just changed names. But since you're the international security expert on the Middle East, I guess you knew that. re: Matt Welch's So much of political discourse -- including/especially by an "apolitical" media -- is really about divining people's motivations ... That rings true to me. That helps explain the bank of Obama and McCain. It also explains why access helps, because reports feel they "get to know" the real candidate. Even tho' I think McCain overstated Iran's support to Sunni extremists in Iraq (it was a gaffe and needed an immediate correction), I do think it's important not to oversimplify the situation in Iraq. As of mid-February 2007, Foruzandeh ordered his Iranian intelligence officers to continue targeting Shia and Sunnis to further sectarian violence within Iraq. Foruzandeh is also responsible for planning training courses in Iran for Iraqi militias, including Sayyid al-Shuhada and Iraqi Hizballah, to increase their ability to combat Coalition Forces. The training includes courses in guerilla warfare, light arms, marksmanship, planting improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and firing anti-aircraft missiles. Tim -- you reprimand me for failing to link to a quote I cited. I apologize. I did not think that was necessary since the soundbite was in the exact ABC story you linked to. I assumed, therefore, that the quote was stipulated. Per your link… Obama said: “If al-Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad.” To which McCain replied: “I am told that Senator Obama…would send military troops back if al-Qaeda established a base in Iraq. I have some news. al-Qaeda is in Iraq.” Obama was worried about a future base. McCain replied, sarcastically, that the base is already there. As for Ansar al-Islam, I returned one more time to your Weekly Standard link. It contained no mention of training for either al-Qaeda proper or Ansar al-Islam in Iran so guerrillas could return to non-Kurdish Iraq or Kurdistan to fight. The connection it mentioned was no more conclusive than a report of routine Kurdish complaints of “support” and “an apparent relationship” that “seeks to use” Ansar al-Islam as a proxy. That is not the same as “McCain was Right” -- the Weekly Standard’s headline. Nowhere in the subsequent blog posting was there any information to substantiate that assertion that it is “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That is well known and it is unfortunate.” Again, my apologies to PressThink for continuing a tangential discussion in this thread. I know you agree, Tim, that McCain misspoke. At root, our only disagreement is a snitty one about the protocols of linking. If you and I want to pursue this further, why not take it offline as an e-mail exchange? Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 28, 2008 7:39 AM | Permalink I kinda like No, and a link myself. I don't consider it an insult and I take it for granted that the link isn't an "answer," just another text, as we say in the university. Matt Welch, to pitch one right into your wheelhouse- In that mutual, you-reflect-us, we'll-reflect-you thing that we see between the press and McCain, what role does (the myth of) his "maverick-ness" play? To me, it's crucial, though I didn't mention so in this post. He's a genuine war hero. They're, uh, not in his league. They can't be fellow-anything with McCain, but they can admire him. He's a maverick. Well, they're mavericks, too. Obeying no party discipline, no party line. Independent thinkers, right? To me that's the basis for a real bond. Not only that. If McCain gets criticized, it's probably from the people who aren't mavericks, if you see what I mean. The same people who get upset when the press doesn't obey their party's "line" get mad at McCain. When you can have a blast trashing the same idiots over a rum and coke.... As an index of truthiness he pushes all their buttons. On the other hand they "know" it, and show critical self-awareness under the Savvy Observer's Exception. What a mess! Jay -- That's actually a good point that David Brock and Paul Waldman make in their Free Ride book, which I gave a lukewarm review of in the NY Post: Namely, journalists love people who hate (as they do) Politics As Usual, who hate Blind Partisanship, who hate The Way Things Are Normally Done. In his interpersonal activity (giving them copious unfiltered action), in his specific policies (particularly Campaign Finance Reform, which was a supposed attacks on Politics As Usual), and in his country-first, party-second vibe (which is actually the standard M.O. among warrior-politicians), McCain reinforces and flatters their worldview, and sends out a blinding signal that he is indeed One of Us. Posted by: Matt Welch at March 28, 2008 12:47 PM | Permalink Right. What's going to happen to this "bond" as the big event anticipated for 10-12 years is now upon them all? Go back to something Greider said: Will somebody tell this guy to shut up before he self-destructs? No. “This is his campaign,” an aide mumbles as the candidate disembarks at Plymouth. “It’s not like we sit here and try to control him. Do you think he would listen if we did?”… That aide who said, in 1999: "not like we sit here and try to control him." That's not the kind of aide who is being added to the McCain operation at the moment. That's not the kind of aide who is being added to the McCain operation at the moment. Don't be so sure. Back when he was still running as the presumptive GOP front-runnter -- in 2006 and early 2007 -- he surrounded himself with Bush media types who erected some protective layers around him: Barring rabble like me from having any sit-downs, and (more importantly) eschewing the cosy bus rides for incessant (and largely unsuccessful) fundraising events. In July of last year, when his campaign was on the verge of implosion, he fired a whole hell of a lot of those people, and got back to the basics of Access & New Hampshire townhalls. The architects of that story arc -- of Getting Back to What We Do Best -- are not likely to jump so quickly back into protective mode. Especially since he'll likely be going up against a candidate who the media also adore, and therefore will have to compete for their favors. Posted by: Matt Welch at March 28, 2008 3:21 PM | Permalink I submit that the banker for McCain's subprime credibility derivatives is Bear Stearns. But in this case the press, not the Fed, is structuring the bailout. Posted by: ralphbon at March 28, 2008 3:55 PM | Permalink Jay's offhanded and underinformed characterization of McCain's connecting Iran and Al Qaeda as "dubious information" is wrong. As the Weekly Standard pointed out, the 9/11 commission clearly found a number of links between Iran and Al Qaeda. Further, the wink-and-a-nod cooperation between Iran and Al Qaeda continues. A number of Al Qaeda operatives have taken up residence in Iran, and operate from there - including Seif el Adel, one of the military honchos of Al Qaeda. Despite Iran's pledges to arrest them, they have not done so, according to Cicero Magazine. The bottom line: These ties are not "dubious" at all, nor is it "dubious" to assert that Iran will be happy to support any entity they see as causing trouble for the United States in Iraq. Iran has demonstrated itself more than willing to play footsie with Al Qaeda ... and an analysis of weapons usage among the different insurgency regions - particularly the use of explosively-formed projectiles - will be very informative, I suspect. Iran and Al Qaeda will befriend any friend, and oppose any foe, in order to ensure the survival and success of tyrrany. McCain was right. Iran has its hands dirty all over the place. And the knowing tsk-tsking of the ignoramuses who think that Sunni and Shia extremists are hermetically sealed from one another is just sheer credulousness. More from the New York Sun: An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna. Professor Rosen, what specifics are you offering by way of rebuttal? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at March 28, 2008 7:35 PM | Permalink van Steenwyk -- You offer “a number of links” and a “wink and a nod” and “residence” and “lack of arrests” and “playing footsie” and suspicions about “analysis of weapons” and “dirty hands all over the place” and “working closely” -- all of which may or may not be true. Nowhere have you come close to an assertion that rises to the level of the one McCain retracted, namely that it is “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran. That is well known and it is unfortunate.” You criticize Rosen for accepting McCain’s own words that he was incorrect but offer no evidence of any “common knowledge” about “receiving training” to back up your criticism. Your comments seem to be the ones that are offhanded. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 29, 2008 10:52 AM | Permalink Complete transcript of MSNBC's Democratic Debate RUSSERT: I want to ask both of you this question, then. If this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in totality, and Al Qaida resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right in your mind as American president to reinvade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it? Also from the New York Sun, citing the classified draft version of the NIE: One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure. ...And to preclude the inevitable argument that this council is really just a tupperware party in which Jihadist fanatics meet to share cucumber sandwiches and ideas about how to get hummus to keep longer: In the estimate's chapter on Al Qaeda's replenished senior leadership, three American intelligence sources said, there is a discussion of the eastern Iran-based Shura Majlis, a kind of consensus-building organization of top Al Qaeda figures that meets regularly to make policy and plan attacks. Of course, the Iranian border with Iraq is hermetically sealed, right? When the moojies were chased out of Baqubah and Al Anbar, and violence in the sunni areas of Iraq dropped to near zero levels in some areas, it's because the moojies they were mysteriously taken up, subsumed into heaven, like the assumption of the virgin. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggggggggght. The late founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, had multiple meetings with Mr. Adel after 2001. In the past year, the multinational Iraq command force has intercepted at least 10 couriers with instructions from the Iran-based Shura Majlis. In addition, two senior leaders of Al Qaeda captured in 2006 have shared details of the Shura Majlis in Iran. I think mostly these ten couriers that we caught (out of how many that weren't caught?) were probably sharing schawarma recipes, don't you? I get all my schawarma recipes from Quds Force mess sergeants. They have the best date seasoning, after all. A senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Iran expert, Vali Nasr, said he did not know that the Shura Majlis had reconstituted in eastern Iran, but he did say his Iranian contacts had confirmed recent NATO intelligence that Iran had begun shipping arms to Al Qaeda's old Afghan hosts, the Taliban in Afghanistan. I think he really meant to say "garbanzo beans." Not "arms." I could be mistaken, though. Where you can be skeptical of everything except the good faith of Iran. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at March 29, 2008 11:55 AM | Permalink Andrew Tyndall, I'm going to stand by my assertion that your assertion earlier in this thread ("McCain asserted that the group has constructed a base there.") is wrong. I understand your interpretation of McCain's remarks, but it is not something McCain asserted. I think the debate between McCain, Clinton and Obama about our foreign policy in the Middle East is an important one that has been characterized more by pandering and gotcha comments between the candidates and between the press and the candidates. I consider the Clinton/Obama strategy that we can pull out of Iraq AND THEN go back in, or pull out of Iraq BUT maintain the "right" number and type of troops in Iraq, unrealistic and misleading. I also consider morphing al-Qaeda and Iran into a single entity, or that al-Qaeda is being sponsored by Iran in any significant way, misleading. That's the danger in McCain's gaffe. I also consider critics who, as Jason says, hermetically seal Sunni and Shia extremists from one another, uninformed and misleading. From my POV, all of the candidates have drawn from the bank of credulity on affairs in Iraq. I'm used to people coming in here to yell at the New York Times, and pretending to address "Rosen," but this is the first time someone has shown up at PressThink to holler at the Republican nominee for President about how weak-minded and misinformed he is. The chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq asserted Wednesday that Iranian-made arms, manufactured as recently as last year, have reached Sunni insurgents here, which if true would mark a new development in the four-year-old conflict. Citing testimony from detainees in U.S. custody, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell said Iranian intelligence operatives were backing the Sunni militants inside Iraq while at the same time training Shiite extremists in Iran. Nonsense. Those weren't artillery shells for IEDs. Those were just very large eggplants. We make babaganoush. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at March 29, 2008 12:06 PM | Permalink Professor Rosen finds it droll that we show up at PressThink “to holler at the Republican nominee for President about how weak-minded and misinformed he is.” Those questions are germane to the theme of this thread however. If McCain’s grasp of the geostrategic realities in the Islamic World is not merely misstated but turns out to be, worse -- “weak-minded and misinformed” -- then the free pass he is getting from Chuck Todd and the campaign press is not a mere foible born of skilled McCainian press management, if is outright journalistic negligence. That was the context in which I detected a dangerous and suspicious fixation about al-Qaeda in McCain’s rhetoric in an earlier comment. The Washington Post’s EJ Dionne reflects similar wariness when he challenges McCain’s frequently repeated stump slogan that "the transcendent challenge of the 21st century is radical Islamic extremism.” Dionne finds it “odd” that so many conservatives “take seriously Osama bin Laden's lunatic claims that he will build a new Caliphate.” Both van Steenwyk and Tim seem to believe that a healthier skepticism about McCain’s so-far largely unchallenged claims to national security expertise amounts to the same thing as credulity about the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran is a straw man in this discussion. McCain’s fixation with al-Qaeda as the overarching strategic problem facing the US military in Iraq -- and a potential government there, no less! -- falls into the same category of sloppy thinking that would link the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, with Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime. Whatever Teheran’s intentions may or may not be throws no light on the sophistication, or lack of it, of McCain’s analysis. PS: van Steenwyk -- I plow through your sarcasm about hummus recipes to get to the money quote from April of 2007 in which you vindicate the accusation that the Quds Force is training al-Qaeda guerrillas at its bases inside Iran and this is what it says: Gen William Caldwell “was aware of only Shiite extremists being trained inside Iran.” Emphasis added. Did you even read this before you posted it? PPS: Tim -- you are right. I should have characterized McCain’s point as an inference not an assertion. That conceded, nothing I argue here contradicts your insistence that a debate on Middle East policy is an important one, to be conducted without pandering, gotcha or credulity. We are in accord on that. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 29, 2008 1:41 PM | Permalink Andrew, You have two problems. First, you have a reading a paraphrasing problem. It's the only explanation I have for you writing this: Both van Steenwyk and Tim seem to believe that a healthier skepticism about McCain’s so-far largely unchallenged claims to national security expertise amounts to the same thing as credulity about the Islamic Republic of Iran.healthier skepticism = credulity? Where did I say that? There is something seriously wrong with your thought process to even attempt to attribute that to me. Second, you've established that you don't know how to link in a PressThink comment.
Andrew, You're falling into the trap of thinking that shia and sunni extremists can be hermetically sealed from one another. First of all, one of my links (I forgot which one) made mention of a number of Al Qaeda couriers who have been captured going between Iran and Iraq. Are you really foolish enough to think that there is no training going on? Another one refers to one of the senior members of the Iran-based Al Qaeda leadership council living on a military base in Iran. Did you miss that? Military bases contain more than a commissary and a bowling alley, you know. Ever heard of the "train the trainer" concept? Let's put aside the training point for a minute. We know that Al Qaeda is receiving support from across the Iranian border. We know that there is a senior leadership council in Iran that meets with a wink and a nod from the Iranian government. We know that the Iranian government has shipped arms to sunni extremist groups (though not necessarily to Al Qaeda, specifically, with the late Zarqawi's address on the shipping label.) Now that we've established that you cannot hermetically seal sunni extremists from shia, and sunni extremists from the Iraqi government, are you now credulous enough to believe that even though Iran is willing to support sunni moojies with arms and explosives, those sunni groups are somehow hermetically sealed from the sunni Al Qaeda? Are you crazy? Look, every extremist group in Iraq plays footsie with every other extremist group in Iraq. This notion that even though AQ draws financial and logistical support from Iran, it's ok, because we're not aware of "training" being specifically conducted is beyond stupid. To draw a rather elaborate example, That's like germany calling off the U-Boats from preying on Murmansk shipping in 1942, because even though Russia was drawing a huge amount of war materiel through Murmansk from the United States, it's ok because the US was not training large numbers of Russian soldiers. And besides, the US and USSR would NEVER EVER EVER EVAARRRRR!!111!!!!!11!!! cooperate against Nazi Germany, anyway. You cannot usefully discriminate between financial support, logistical support, training support and operational support. Support is support is support, and trying to split hairs between them, and saying that financial support and logistical support is less important than training support is simply stupid. Training is the easy part. Logistics is much harder, and logistics and finance is almost always the critical vulnerability of any armed opponent. This idea that you can give Iran a pass because even though logistical and financial support of sunni extremists is documented, training support is disputed is again, stupid. Given the choice between assuming the good faith of John McCain over the good faith of Iran, I've got to lean towards McCain. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at March 29, 2008 5:19 PM | Permalink Tim -- my profuse apologies. I lumped you in with van Steenwyk carelessly (as careless as I was when I screwed up those links). I am mortified. Thanks for digging out the Dionne link to cover my ass. As for van Steenwyk, you propose to "put aside the training point for a minute" -- but the entire discussion hinges on what to make of McCain's error regarding the training. What would be the point of putting that aside? You say: "You cannot usefully discriminate between financial support, logistical support, training support and operational support. Support is support is support, and trying to split hairs between them, and saying that financial support and logistical support is less important than training support is simply stupid." I was not the one doing the discriminating between these activities. It is McCain's statements that are at issue here. He misspoke when he singled out training as a discrete activity and the campaign press tended to give him a pass. Your response is to pose the false choice between "assuming the good faith of John McCain over the good faith of Iran." The choice we are discussing here is "assuming the good faith of John McCain over the possibility that his vaunted national security judgment is flawed." Iran is neither here nor there. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 29, 2008 6:02 PM | Permalink Andrew: McCain screwed up, and it's your fault. Don't you get that? Also did you not notice that there was no argument with what Tim said: "McCain overstated Iran's support to Sunni extremists in Iraq (it was a gaffe and needed an immediate correction)." Why is that? I am declaring the existence of a CWT zone in this thread. (Conversation with troll.) All further replies to the troll, and all posts from the troll will be killed, as will the usual manly complaints by the troll about my CWT decision. Andrew, No problem. Thanks for unlumping me. I'm not sure why your links don't work. Anyway, I'm more than happy to help you figure it out. The choice we are discussing here is "assuming the good faith of John McCain over the possibility that his vaunted national security judgment is flawed." Iran is neither here nor there. Um, Andrew, if you don't consider what Iran is really doing in Iraq, how can you possibly tell whether McCain's judgement of the question is sound or flawed? How does one judge an analysis, while ignoring the thing to be analyzed? Further, let's suppose that McCain is elected, and then al Qaeda is decisively broken everywhere, yet other armed guerrillas continue to disturb Iraq's peace. Is there any evidence whatever that McCain, in that situation, would declare victory and withdraw all US troops from Iraq? Doesn't all the evidence point the other way -- that while Iraq was in peril, McCain would have US troops remain? If so, where is the case that McCain is "fixated" on al Qaeda to the point of danger? Posted by: Michael Brazier at March 29, 2008 10:01 PM | Permalink other armed guerrillas continue to disturb Iraq's peace... Brazier -- I have no idea what McCain would do or should do. It is up to him to tell us and one of the tasks of journalists to ask him persistently until his answers become precise. From his speeches, I guess that McCain would only insist on maintaining the US military deployment in Iraq if those armed guerrillas happen to be radical Islamist, since that constitutes "the transcendent challenge of the 21st century." I hope he does not make the presence of "armed guerrillas" as the criterion for deciding about military occupations, in which case we would be gearing up for Sri Lanka, Colombia, Uganda you name it. Even the current President does not place the test for Iraqi success as strictly as you suggest. Bush just wants a government that can sustain itself and a reliable ally in the War on Terrorism. The point of this thread is that here we are guessing whatever it is that happens to be in McCain's head. I suggest he may be fixated. You say "all the evidence points" another way. What is going on here? We are like a pair of Kremlinologists parsing, splitting hairs, pondering whether mistakes are slips or serious errors...and Chuck Todd excuses a lack of serious scrutiny by citing deposits in the credibility bank! Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 30, 2008 10:08 AM | Permalink Wow! Things sure got boring here all of a sudden! Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at March 30, 2008 4:11 PM | Permalink Andrew -- Are you really that dense or is that just a journalistic pose? McCain has spoken endlessly -- in large public fora, as well as in smaller venues such as the Straight Talk Express -- about his views on Iraq. His Iraq policy is more well known than any American politician other than GW Bush. Your analogy to Kremlinology is so far off the mark as to be laughable. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at March 30, 2008 6:39 PM | Permalink Neuro -- It is my impression that most of the clarity concerning McCain’s Iraq platform has derived from his vociferous opposition to the policies of others -- Rumsfeld’s troop deployment was too small, the Democrats’ withdrawal timetables are too precipitous -- rather than spelling out his strategy for the future. His platform on Iraq going forward appers to amount to an endorsement of the counterinsurgency doctrine of Gen David Petraeus: -- an average of ten years of combat at current levels of US force commitment, culminating around 2013 So let me reiterate the origin of my confusion. Since perhaps 95% of the massive task facing the Petraeus Plan has nothing to do with al-Qaeda, why, in his campaign speeches, does McCain have such a seeming fixation about the fight against al-Qaeda? Why does he think al-Qaeda is likely to form the next government of Iraq if US troops withdraw forthwith? Why does he sarcastically suggest that al-Qaeda has a base established in Iraq? Why did he make his misstatement that al-Qaeda is being trained by Quds Force inside Iran? Why does he call the struggle against radical Islamist terrorism “"the transcendent challenge of the 21st century” when so much of the counterinsurgency concerns other, to him secondary, challenges? The Kremlinology is required to account for campaign rhetoric that is so unhinged from underlying policy. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at March 31, 2008 11:06 AM | Permalink New post, related... The Love Affair Between McCain and the Press Sprains the Brain of the Liberal Blogosphere (March 31). Thanks to all participants. This thread closed. |
|
Print
