Flush twice... it's a long way to Sally Quinn's place!

Pundit Pap
for September 21, 2003
Book TV?
New tomes dominate the Sunday political chat ghetto
by JJ Balzer

Sept. 21, 2003 -- NEW YORK (apj.us) -- Memo to the network news divisions and CNN: if we were interested in the hottest books on recent history and current events, we'd tune in BookTV on C-SPAN3.

NBC's Meet the Press and CNN's Late Edition both invited Madeleine Albright to plug her new book"Madame Secretary" -- giving both Wolf Blitzer and Tim Russert a chance to bash, from their not-so-thinly-veiled point of view, that dreadful, immoral Bill Clinton, who would dare to conceal a private matter from his family and staff!

One gets the feeling that both men are obviously addicted to beating on the Big Dog. Perhaps it's because they are quite jealous of Clinton the babe magnet. Perhaps it's because they are furious that their shilling for the worst Neo-fascist and hard-right-corporate interests utterly failed to stop President Clinton from drawing a higher favorability rating on the very day he was falsely impeached than Little War Boy McSmirkster has drawn for most of the "war on terror."

It's becoming almost comical -- these pundits attacking Clinton and looking as hapless as Lucille Ball in mid-pratfall.

Here's a little of a few other things we saw this Sunday.

This Week
Players: George Stephanopoulos, former First Lady Nancy Reagan, Ronald Reagan Jr., Hugh Hefner, the swollen mummy of William F. Buckley, Newsweek International editor Fareed Zakaria, ABC News correspondent Linda Douglass

The opening minutes of the new This Week now feature George Stephanopoulos walking around This Week's insanely silly high-tech set talking about the top stories as they display on little video monitors. Picture the worst possible marriage of the Meet the Press set with that of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Memo to ABC: it looks just silly. If you insist on keeping the set -- hell, you paid for it -- the least you can do is send Steph to see Regis Philbin's tailor.

The first segment was for all intents and purposes an infomercial plugging the forthcoming anthology of letters by Ronald Reagan. The segment centered on Steph's interview with Nancy Reagan, but we were also treated to brief appearances by the likes of a critical Hugh Hefner and the empathetic mummified remains of William Buckley. There was also an inside look at Ron Reagan Jr. -- whose voice has now taken on more than a hint of his father's intonation and cadence -- reading some of Reagan's letters for what is sure to be the "books-on-tape" edition.

The interview with Nancy was engineered to tug at the heartstrings -- yet no matter how one may feels about Mrs. Reagan's politics or views, one need not have seen the interview to imagine the private hell she has had to endure with patience and dignity as her husband slowly evaporated into nothing but an empty shell. Mrs. Reagan, for her part, did a great job talking about Reagan's long history of penning personal notes, talked about her years with Ron, and did a superb job of plugging the book.

Segment producers and marketers would be well-advised to get a video copy of the full half-hour -- it was interviewing and marketing at its best. And far be it from us to churlishly begrudge the effort to promote a book of Reagan's notes -- sure, we've been critical of Reagan on many occasions, but let's not forget that liberals have, thankfully, taken back the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list -- and if there is to be a conservative bestseller this fall, well, better Reagan's letters than another steaming heap of elephant dung by Peggy Noonan, Laura Ingraham, Mr. Ann Coulter, or John Fund pretending to be Rush Limbaugh.

The only real political fat-chewing occurred during the last segment, "The Briefing" (actually, a retread of the roundtable segment). Steph and Fareed Zakaria talked about Smirk's coming week of diplomatic damage control over the "qWagmire." Zakaria pointed out that UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will be nowhere to be found, and in one of the best summaries of both Blair's and Junior's shared Iraq debacle dilemma said that Blair "needs a photo op with President Bush like he needs a hole in the head." Zakaria thinks that Chimpy's only hope to save face will be to "isolate" the French.

Steph and Zakaria seemed for a moment to be blaming the French for Junior's failure to leverage the UN -- until Zakaria pointed out that it was Smirk's bungling that has led to the diplomatic meltdown. Zakaria thinks there will be a weak resolution -- the tough hurdle will be getting other nations to send troops to (and spend money on) what amounts to a US occupation, and most nations will point out that the US failed to get a big coalition the first time around and the present plea is inadequate.

In other words: you broke it, Blotchy, you bought it.

In the second half of the briefing, Steph and ABC political moll Linda Douglass spun the California fiasco. Douglass thinks the full California Supreme Court will overturn the postponement -- and tried to make a big deal of Davis changing tack from supporting a delay to supporting the election in three weeks. (Hey, Linda, that's politics -- got a problem with that?) Of course, Douglass had to admit that Californians are turning against the recall (poor gal sounded crestfallen). Steph and Douglass also made much of the suddenly-visible Austrian bodybuilder and unlicensed businessman Arnie "Gang Bang" Schwarzenegger, who is going to run "recall Gray Davis" ads. Douglass said that one reason is that the "recall" faction is out of money (translation: sore loserman Darrell Issa folded up his tent and went home after Republican players essentially ordered him to leave the race).

Judging from the tone of the segment alone, one might almost think that Douglass is upset that the media's flogging of the absolutely insane California recall effort has backfired on Arnie, the GOP and -- yep -- the media itself.

-- JJ Balzer

Face the Nation
Players: host John Roberts, Presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) and LA Times DC bureau chief Doyle McManus

It's been awhile, so we decided to take a peek at FTN.

Host John Roberts (we tuned in late to the audio feed only and, in our e-mail edition, assumed it was Bob Schieffer) started by asking Edwards about new front-runner (if you trust the polls) Wesley Clark: can he be beaten? Edwards smiled and pointed out that the presidential campaign has just begun and Clark has made just a few appearances -- so of course Clark "can be beaten," Naturally, Edwards claimed that voters are responding to his message when he meets them. Roberts claimed that Edwards' staffers were bad-mouthing Clark -- and Edwards said he wants to make sure that kids who want to go to college can do so, and he wants to see to it that every American has an opportunity.

Opportunity would turn out to be Edwards' mantra for this particular appearance. He has so far failed to get this particular meme across through corporate media.

McManus said that traditional Democratic issues such as health and jobs have taken a back seat to the Iraq mess. Edwards said that people are in fact worried about the economy -- interjecting that he has job creation ideas (without spelling one out -- not good, John!) -- and health issues. Edwards said that the Iraq mess is now dependent on getting international help. Will Edwards vote for Smirk's $87 million? Our troops under fire need to be covered, but the US needs to get international help. Edwards also blasted Halliburton's no-bid Iraq "qontraqts" (a good attack -- but not delivered with enough anger -- worse yet, it was one of the few opportunities capitalized on by Edwards to blast the Misadministration).

Knowing what you know now, asked Roberts, would you support the war resolution? Edwards said he's glad Saddam's gone (saying that it was good for the security of the American people), but the question remains: what happens six or seven years down the line? That, Edwards emphatically pointed out, is the big test of success (huh? does he actually mean that it's no fair to go after Chimpy's war policy? or does he think that it may boomerang on Democrats?). Roberts repeated the question: would you have voted for it? Edwards, in a less-that-impressive demonstration of staying a bit too on message, repeated his answer -- point for point -- no new ideas, spin points, or suggestions.

What should Blotchy ask the UN -- and what would you do? Edwards would give other nations "a seat at the table" to rebuild Iraq -- and although Edwards opposes putting US troops under another authority, but wants to open up the rebuilding. McManus said that Edwards sounds almost like Prince George -- then mentioned Kennedy's charge that the Pretend-a-dent committed fraud in selling the nation on Saddam being a "tairist. Edwards said there's never been an indication Saddam was tied to Al Qaeda and again said he's glad Saddam's gone -- but the Texas Doofus has said things that have "turned out" not to be true in a series of "missteps."

("Turned out"? "Missteps?" Good grief -- he makes the fact that Team Smirk used phonied-up intelligence and false claims were just peccadilloes. How many potential supporters has Edwards put off with this mealy-mouthed minimizing of Monkey-boy's moral morass? Or is he playing it safe with an eye toward Blotchy's approvals rebounding or other factors making it less palatable for Dems to attack the former Texas governor?)

Roberts asked if Dean is electable; Edwards said he himself could take the fight to Bush the Lesser by supporting "the very people [Smirk] is leaving behind day by day" and offer "solutions" to the nation's problems. Roberts asked about his "opportunity" theme, giving Edwards a wide-open forum to say he supports opportunity for all -- and "expanding opportunity." (Just what that "opportunity" is, he never quite explained.) Bush is "leaving these people behind" while handing out giveaways to his rich "friends." Roberts accused Edwards of "class warfare" --but Edwards turned the tables, saying that Little George is engaged in class warfare by only focusing on his rich allies while watching opportunities evaporate, specifically citing his theme of 'two public school systems" (one for the haves, another impoverished and disadvantaged system for the have-nots)

McManus said that lately Edwards has called for "radical reform" of the PATRIOT Act -- which he had voted for. Edwards said that the problem is that Ashcroft is abusing the wide discretion PATRIOT gives him -- including imprisoning American citizens without recourse to lawyers. How will he vote on PATRIOT II? Edwards said he would not be eager to give Ashcroft more power (guess that means "no").

Roberts then brought up that favorite RNC talking point about Hillary possibly entering the race (face it -- it's a great way to fool wingnuts into contributing to the nearest Republican). Edwards cast it as nonsense -- and fell back on his "opportunity" pitch. Roberts cited a spurious TIME article claiming that Bill is encouraging Hillary to enter. Edwards debunked the claim as "chatter" (we just about fell out of our chair laughing -- most of this "chatter" is coming from the loony right, and Edwards' use of this favored word to describe terrorist communications is a delightfully spiteful put-down of conservative activists). McManus said that Hillary is polling well; Edwards ignored the comment, saying that he's running a campaign about his ideas and vision, voters in primary states take the campaign seriously (translation: these constant injections of speculation about Senator Clinton are not serious), and he can best "take the fight" to Chimpy -- and he intends to take that fight to the early primary and caucus states "not for me but for what we need to change the direction of the country."

A good wrap-up for Edwards -- although he has to learn to riff on his mantra (he has a bad penchant for sounding repetitive) and shouldn't be afraid to turn on more of the down-to-earth side he's shown in other interview situations. He's getting too stiff too early -- and this only contributes to the impression that he's already lost steam.

After the interview, McManus claimed that the "defining" issue is "what was your Iraq position and what is it now?" (huh? McManus should ask people who are struggling to make ends meet if that is their defining issue. McManus is so buried in the Beltway he seems way out of touch with the pulse of what folks are really thinking.) Roberts prompted McManus to talk about Dean; McManus said that Dean can be nominated and shows great skill -- and the GOP claims that Smirk "can clean [Dean's] clock." (And that's just what they're trying to fool Democrats into thinking. Democrats know better than to take these Roveian memes seriously.) McManus said that Clark looks like a commander-in-chief to Dems but hasn't formed his positions, emphasizing "hesitance" and "uncertainty." (Right -- as if any candidate comes into any race 100% "formed" on issues.) What does he need to do for the debate this week? Prove he's ready for prime time. Will the debate "be about Clark?" The candidates, said McManus, will make it about Clark without saying it. (We all remembered all those predictions from the pundits before the last Democratic debate -- you remember, the claim that Dems were going to pile on Dean? Well, it didn't materialize -- instead, everyone remembers the nonstop assault on Bungler George and the repeated disruptions by supporters of paranoiac cult candidate Lyndon LaRouche).

McManus himself is a skeptic about Hillary entering the race -- then claimed that Dems "have not fallen in love" with any of the candidates.

Is this guy McManus for real? He strikes us as completely clueless. C'mon, CBS -- you can do a helluva a lot better than this.

-- Andy Kay