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Times Watch for
March 30, 2004
John Kerry, Free-Market Devotee?
Economics reporter Louis Uchitelle implausibly attempts to position big-government liberal John Kerry as a believer in an unfettered private sector in a Sunday story on Kerry's economic team, which includes Clinton administration figures Roger Altman and Gene Sperling.
In a November article for the liberal American Prospect magazine, Uchitelle lamented the Clinton administration's "failure to strengthen government's hand in a market economy." In Sunday's Times, he insists a Kerry administration would be fiscally conservative and place its faith in free markets: "...the fixes that Mr. Kerry and his core economic advisers are beginning to offer are clearly rooted in Clinton economics, which is resolutely centrist. Fiscal responsibility and deficit reduction, hallmarks of the Clinton years, are bedrock orthodoxy in the Kerry camp, too. So is faith in the private sector's powers to generate prosperity. Job creation will come from corporate America, not government, once the right incentives and subsidies are in place, the war room says. In fact, the Clinton-era god of deficit reduction and private-sector supremacy is also worshiped in the Kerry camp."
(In a perhaps unwitting bit of ideological outing, Uchitelle's piece admits to the liberalism of the magazine for which he freelanced: "Mr. Kerry may or may not respond to [Sen. Ted] Kennedy's pressure, says Robert Kuttner, co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, which often represents the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.")
John Kerry was recently named the most liberal senator of all by National Journal. Shouldn't that call into question whether a Kerry administration would truly worship the god of "private-sector supremacy?"
For the full Uchitelle, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Sen. John Kerry | Labeling Bias | Louis Uchitelle
Reporter David Sanger files a surprising take on new anti-Bush hero Richard Clarke. Sanger, who's usually most interested in
chipping at Bush's foreign policy credibility, has an unusual scooplet in Tuesday's edition, interviewing an intelligence official who calls Clarke's 9-11 memories into question: "A senior national security official who worked alongside Richard A. Clarke on Sept. 11, 2001, is disputing central elements of Mr. Clarke's account of events in the White House Situation Room that day, declaring that it 'is a much better screenplay than reality was.'" Sanger goes on to note that officer Franklin Miller disputes nearly all the conversations Clarke recounts in the first chapter of his book.
Among Miller's charges: "Mr. Miller disputes Mr. Clarke's recollection that the Secret Service asked for fighter escorts to protect Air Force One after it lifted off from Sarasota, Fla., where President Bush was visiting an elementary school….Mr. Clarke's book says Mr. Miller urged Mr. Rumsfeld to take a helicopter out of the Pentagon, part of which was still burning, and that Mr. Rumsfeld responded, 'I am too goddamn old to go to an alternate site.' But Mr. Miller said he never talked to Mr. Rumsfeld that day."
For the rest of Sanger's talk with Miller, click here.
• Richard Clarke | Franklin Miller | David Sanger | Terrorism
Richard Clarke a Must-Read, Raves Risen
National security reporter James Risen likes Richard Clarke's Bush-bashing book a lot: "…if President Bush and his advisers were hoping that their loud pre-emptive attacks on 'Against All Enemies' would make this book go away, they were sadly mistaken. Richard A. Clarke knows too much, and 'Against All Enemies' is too good to be ignored. The explosive details about President Bush's obsession with Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks captured the headlines in the days after the book's release, but 'Against All Enemies' offers more. It is a rarity among Washington-insider memoirs--it's a thumping good read."
For the rest of Risen's review, click here.
• Books | Richard Clarke | James Risen | Terrorism
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org