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Times Watch for
October 8, 2004
"Bush Pushes Limits on the Facts" on Trail
Only one side makes political exaggerations on the campaign trail, judging by Friday's Times report from Adam Nagourney and Richard Stevenson, "In His New Attacks, Bush Pushes Limits on the Facts." The cut-out line attempts to smear the Bush campaign with an old liberal bogeyman: "Taking a page out of the Lee Atwater campaign book."
The Times again cites the narrowing polls (something Nagourney was reluctant to do when they showed Bush with a large lead): "But the scathing indictment that Mr. Bush offered of Mr. Kerry over the past two days -- on the eve of the second presidential debate and with polls showing the race tightening -- took these attacks to a blistering new level. In the process, several analysts say, Mr. Bush pushed the limits of subjective interpretation and offered exaggerated or what some Democrats said were distorted accounts of Mr. Kerry's positions on health care, tax cuts, the Iraq war and foreign policy. To cheers in Michigan, Mr. Bush asserted that under Mr. Kerry, the nation would have to 'wait for a grade from other nations and leaders' before acting to protect itself. Mr. Kerry has repeatedly said that he would not give up the right to act pre-emptively 'in any way necessary to protect the United States,' but has suggested that any president would need to demonstrate legitimate reasons for such an action."
The Times also defends Kerry on health care: "To laughter, Mr. Bush said that Mr. Kerry would impose 'Hillary care' on America, a huge national health care program that would impose increased federal control over the health care decisions of citizens. Mr. Kerry's health care plan is significantly larger than the one Mr. Bush has offered, and it includes increased reliance on Medicaid and state health insurance programs for the poor. But unlike what Mrs. Clinton proposed in 1993, it would not create any big new federal bureaucracy and would retain the current employer-based system, and Mr. Kerry said he was averse to any kind of national health care plan."
And Iraq: "To boos, Mr. Bush said that Mr. Kerry had set 'artificial timetables' for pulling troops out of Iraq, which the president warned would embolden the enemy and endanger the troops. In fact, Mr. Kerry said that he could envision beginning to withdraw troops in as little as six months, but only if he succeeded in moving Iraq toward stability, and has decline repeatedly to set a timeline."
And in general: "But other analysts, including some Republicans, said Mr. Bush was repeatedly taking phrases and sentences out of context, or cherry-picking votes, to provide an unfavorable case against Mr. Kerry….The latest line of attacks by Mr. Bush comes during what has been a tumultuous week for him, amid signs that a once swaggering White House was getting worried."
Then Nagourney and Stevenson dredge up Atwater: "This muscular new speech was in many ways in keeping with what has been the tone of a campaign that has been unusually negative for an incumbent from the start and, some analysts said, reminiscent of the one Mr. Bush's father ran in 1988 against Michael S. Dukakis. The chief strategist in that campaign, the late Lee Atwater, worked over the years with key figures in this campaign, including Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief strategist, and Ralph Reed, a campaign adviser. 'Rove and Reed were schooled by Lee and he told them that what you do is you rip the bark off liberals.' said Marshall Wittman, a former senior aide to Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and is registered as an independent. 'Even if they're not liberals you rip the bark off them. That's what they are doing.'"
The Times seems bothered that politician Bush fails to portray his Democratic opponent in the best possible light, and offers these lame defenses on Kerry's behalf: "In his critique of Mr. Kerry's record, Mr. Bush has often left out facts that might make some of the Democrat's positions look different. In one speech, Mr. Bush said in quick succession that Mr. Kerry had voted for higher taxes on Social Security benefits and voted for a formula that 'helped cause the increase in Medicare premiums.' Mr. Bush's statements were technically correct. But the tax on Social Security benefits, adopted in 1993 over Republican opposition, helps to pay for Medicare, and without it the government would have to raise other taxes or add to the budget deficit. In voting for the Medicare formula in 1997, Mr. Kerry was joined by 43 Republicans."
The Times don't go after Kerry for blaming Bush for the increase in Medicare premiums, even though Kerry himself voted for the Medicare formula that raised those premiums, a point noted by the Times own editorial page.
Perhaps that point will be made when Nagourney and Stevenson run a follow-up article on Kerry's exaggerated claims about Bush? Times Watch will wait and see.
For the rest of Nagourney and Stevenson on Bush's "distortions," click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Medicare | Adam Nagourney | Richard Stevenson
A "Saintly" Abortionist
If you approve of abortion (and the Times seems to assume you do) you'll love the new movie "Vera Drake." Critic Manohla Dargis likes the movie, currently featured in the New York Film Festival: "In 'Vera Drake,' a new film from the English director Mike Leigh about a back-street abortionist, the moment invariably comes when the title character asks her client to bring her some boiling water. Vera's affect is so cozy, as nurturing as a maternal bosom, that it's always somewhat of a surprise when you remember that the water isn't for a warming cup of tea, but for the solution she dispenses….Set in London in 1950, when abortion in England still existed in a legal gray zone, 'Vera Drake,' which shows tonight and tomorrow at the New York Film Festival and opens commercially on Sunday, is Mr. Leigh's best work in a decade."
Dargis might be awarding Leigh points for his correct liberal politics, but it seems his grasp of the actual details of abortion (as opposed to his period details of 50's London) is purposely vague. Judging by Dargis' review, Leigh's idea of abortion doesn't involve such unpleasantries as dead fetuses -- only hot water and lye soap.
Dargis praises the "saintly" character of Vera the abortionist: "[Actress Imelda] Staunton's physical performance keeps this saintly figure grounded and expands the character, which is helpful as Mr. Leigh's resistance to psychological explanation means we really never get inside Vera's head. In the end, Vera performs abortions simply because, as she repeatedly says, she wants to help other women. With another director, such simplicity might seem like mere calculation or condescension, but here it comes as proof of Mr. Leigh's deep feeling for this character, who, after all, does not owe anyone (including us) a reason for why she does what she does."
For the full review of "Vera Drake," click here.
• Abortion | Arts | Manohla Dargis | Movies | "Vera Drake"
Bushonomics: Ambitious, Divisive, or a "Hoax"?
Richard Stevenson harkens back to Bush's days in Texas for his Friday analysis of the president's economic philosophy, "President Has Aggressively Pursued 'Pro-Growth' Ideas Nurtured in the Texas Oil Fields."
"Mr. Bush, though, has expressed no doubts that his is the right course. Should he win in November, he has laid the groundwork for a second-term agenda that is far more ambitious -- and, his critics say, divisive -- than his election-year packaging as, in his words, a 'pro-growth, pro-entrepreneur, pro-farmer, pro-small business' candidate might suggest. It includes his proposal to remake Social Security by creating personal investment accounts and the first steps toward overhauling the tax system in a way sure to ignite another debate about fairness."
He lets one of Bush's most vitriolic critics take on Bush's tax policy: "To critics of the administration's economic record, that small-business, ordinary-guy theme is a political artifice. For all his talk, they point out that this year he tried to slash the program that subsidizes small-business loans. His assertion that reducing the top income-tax rate is primarily an effort to help small businesses has been challenged by many economists, who say the White House has exaggerated how much tax reductions in the top bracket flow to small-business owners. 'You can fairly say this is a political hoax,' said Kevin Phillips, the author of 'American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush,' a critical look at the Bush family."
For the full Stevenson story on Bush's economic philosophy, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Economics | Richard Stevenson | Taxes
Bush's Main Rationale for War Has "Unraveled"
Friday's front-page story by David Sanger and Jodi Wilgoren on the just-released Duelfer Report on Iraq discusses its impact on the campaign and puts Bush on the defensive: "Mr. Kerry, emboldened by the report's unraveling of the administration's main rationale for going to war, shot back with his sharpest indictment yet, telling reporters that Mr. Bush and his vice president 'may well be the last two people on the planet who won't face the truth about Iraq.'"
As Jonah Goldberg points out, Bush had many rationales for war, including spreading democracy in the Middle East.
In the 17th paragraph, the Times cites Bush repeating Kerry's pre-war words which showed Kerry felt the same as Bush did about the threat of Hussein: "Then he quoted Mr. Kerry's statement in the Senate, where he asked, rhetorically, 'Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction, even greater, a nuclear weapon, then reinvade Kuwait or push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any number of scenarios to try to further his ambitions,' or 'allow those weapons to slide off to one group or another.'"
For more on the battle over the Iraq report, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Iraq War | David Sanger | Jodi Wilgoren
Taking the Shine off St. Ralph
With a zeal that would have been hard to picture pre-Election 2000,
the Times again sics an investigation on Ralph Nader, this time in Kate Zernike's tough story Friday on possible fraud in signature collecting by the Nader campaign in Pennsylvania, a swing state in which having the left-wing Nader on the ballot would pose vote-dilution problems for the Kerry campaign.
Zernike writes in "Nader Ballot Petitions Present a Phone Book Full of Woes that "The Democrats, however, accuse Mr. Nader of knowingly committing fraud. While it is not illegal to pay people to collect signatures, lawyers argue that the campaign submitted signatures despite knowing that the people who collected them had simply copied names, alphabetically, from the phone book. 'We think that signing papers to get someone on the ballot is a sacred process, and people ought to follow the law,' said Efrem Grail, a lawyer on the team that disputed signatures in Pittsburgh. 'Ralph Nader ought to know better. And you know what, he does know better.' Mr. Nader is now on the ballot in more than 30 states, and fighting in courts in 10 states. In Ohio, more than half the 5,000 signatures he needed to get on the ballot were ruled invalid, in several cases because of forged signatures, and in Oregon, about two dozen voters signed statements saying their names were on petitions they did not sign. But there has been nothing on the scale of the fraudulent signatures here."
For Zernike's full story on the Nader ballot access controversy, click here.
• Campaign 2004 | Ralph Nader | Kate Zernike
Miller's Time in Court Over Plame-Gate
Times reporter Judith Miller's refusal to name sources in the Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson imbroglio resulted in her being held in contempt by a federal judge yesterday. Adam Liptak reports for Friday's front page: "A federal judge held a reporter for The New York Times in contempt of court on Thursday for refusing to name her sources to prosecutors investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. agent. The reporter, Judith Miller, published no articles about the agent, Valerie Plame. Even so, the judge, Thomas F. Hogan, of United States District Court in Washington, ordered her jailed for as long as 18 months, noting that she had contemplated writing such an article and had conducted interviews for it. Judge Hogan suspended the sanction until a planned appeal is concluded, and he released Ms. Miller on her own recognizance….The investigation seeks to determine who told the syndicated columnist Robert Novak and other journalists that Ms. Plame was a C.I.A. official. A 1982 law makes it a crime to disclose the identities of undercover agents in some circumstances."
For the rest of Liptak on the travails of Judith Miller, click here.
• Adam Liptak | Judith Miller | Valerie Plame | Joe Wilson
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org