I'm just the guy that can't stand cant. ___________

 
MORE GORE: Democratic critics of Al Gore who do not want the winner of the popular vote in 2000 to make another run for the presidency in 2004 should pause and just listen to what Gore has been saying lately. In his recent media forays plugging his new pair of books (as well as reintroducing himself to the voters) Gore has been uttering plain-spoken common sense like a latter day Harry Truman.

Under Bush and the Democratic opposition, political discourse in America has devolved into an unprecedented combination of mendacity and timidity. While previous presidents have lied, members of the opposition party have usually not been timid in responding to political duplicity by the president and his party. Fearing Bush’s popularity as a wartime president, however, today’s Democrats have largely failed to confront an unabashedly partisan leader who has not been timid in engaging in such reprehensible tactics as misleading the public about his economic policies titled toward the super rich and attacking the patriotism of Democrats.

As articles in today’s New York Times and Washington Post illustrate, however, Gore is now engaged in a flurry of truth-telling that should put the Bush administration to shame. As the Post reports:

Gore said in an interview here that Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist network pose a greater immediate danger than does Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Bush's decision to shift attention to possible war with Iraq, he said, represented "an historic mistake" that has left Afghanistan facing chaos and U.S. intelligence agencies without some of the resources needed to carry out the war against terrorism.

....

At the same time, he urged Democrats to speak more boldly than they have done in the past. Exhibit A, he said, is health care. He argued in favor of a politically risky single-payer national health insurance system, saying incremental approaches cannot solve the problems of rising costs, bewildering bureaucracy and a steady increase in the number of Americans without health insurance.

....

Gore had stern words for Bush's economic policies, calling the administration's tax cuts, energy policy and approach to regulation of corporate America "payback and greed" that reward wealthy Americans and big corporations at the expense of middle-income families and individual investors.

Instead of offering tough regulation of the accounting industry, he said, the administration caved to lobbyists for the industry who demanded of administration officials "that they kneel and kiss their ring -- and they do." The average investor "was essentially told to go to hell," he said.

These are far stronger words than any other leading Democrat has used to discuss the Bush administration. There is also more honesty in these words than this administration has expressed in its nearly two years of existence.

Gore should run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. The Democrats discovered in the midterm elections what happens when you’re shy about expressing your beliefs. Whatever else he is, Gore is not shy.
posted by Gary at 11:31 AM

 
DEPARTMENT OF THE TITANIC: It would be unfair to compare the rush to establish the Department of Homeland Security with rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

A better analogy would be rearranging the lifeboats after the Titanic hit that iceberg. It might have been a good idea at one point, but that was probably not the best time to engage in reorganizations.

The creation of the Homeland Security Department is being hailed as the greatest reorganization of the federal government since Congress approved President Truman’s proposal to create the Department of Defense more than 50 years ago. The creation of the Department of Defense is instructive, however. FDR and Congress did not rush to reorganize the federal bureaucracy while America was engaged in the dire struggle of World War II. Instead, the country wisely focused its energies on defeating an undeniable Axis of evil before turning to a reorganization of the nation’s defenses that had the potential of being disruptive. As The New York Times notes:

President Harry S. Truman announced his plan to combine the War and Navy Departments into a single Defense Department in December 1945, three months after the American victory in World War II, but the plan was not approved by Congress for another two years.

Even supporters of the new department acknowledge the danger that such a massive reorganization of the government could disrupt anti-terrorism efforts in the short run:

“This is going to be difficult and it's going to take longer than anyone thinks,” warned Senator Fred Thompson, the Republican of Tennessee who was a leading sponsor of the Senate bill creating the Department of Homeland Security.

Comptroller General David M. Walker, who directs the General Accounting Office, the Congressional watchdog agency, said today, “It's going to take years in order to get this department fully integrated – you're talking about bringing together 22 different entities, each with a longstanding tradition and its own culture.”

He said that if the initial organization was handled badly and if the agencies that are being brought together in the department resisted cooperation, the result could damage the government's counterterrorism program as it exists now.

“If this is not handled properly, we could be at increased risk,” Mr. Walker said. “That's why you have to focus on a short list of priorities, including making sure that key people are in contact with each other.”

He added, “That's as basic as trying to make sure that things like voice mail and e-mail are linked up.”

It is not at all clear that whatever increased efficiencies may result from this new bureaucracy could not have been achieved – without substantial disruption – by such measures as improving coordination of existing departments and agencies. Determining that, however, would have meant actually studying the issue – as the federal government did in creating the Department of Defense – instead of rushing to rubber stamp a bill laden with giveaways to corporate special interests. Even if the benefits outweigh the costs in the long term, it probably would have been wiser to adopt interim measures in the short term since any disruptions in our anti-terrorism efforts now could be deadly on a massive scale.

Senator Byrd has been one of the few voices to warn that it is wiser to remain focused on the main goal of combating terrorism than to rush ahead for the sake of being able to claim that you did something:

Mr. Byrd, of course, is not one of those timid souls, and his recent speeches have been extraordinary even for the maestro of senatorial rhetoric, who turns 85 on Wednesday. While his colleagues have debated the fine points of the domestic security bill, he has been virtually alone in asking the larger question: Why is this new department suddenly so necessary? What will the largest and hastiest reorganization of the federal government in half a century do besides allow politicians to claim instant credit for fighting terrorism?

....

“Osama bin Laden is still alive and plotting more attacks while we play bureaucratic shuffleboard,” Mr. Byrd told the Senate. “With a battle plan like the Bush administration is proposing, instead of crossing the Delaware River to capture the Hessian soldiers on Christmas Day, George Washington would have stayed on his side of the river and built a bureaucracy.” Mr. Byrd imagined Nathan Hale declaring, “I have but one life to lose for my bureaucracy,” and Commodore Oliver Perry hoisting a flag on his ship with the rallying cry, “Don't give up the bureaucracy!”

....

As he was waiting to speak on the floor yet again this afternoon, Mr. Byrd sat in his office and marveled at the rush to pass the bill.

“That Department of Homeland Security will not add one whit of security in the near future to the American people,” he said. “In the meantime, the terrorists are going to be very busy. I'm concerned that in our drive to focus on the war in Iraq and the Department of Homeland Security, we're going to be taking our eyes off what the terrorists may do to us.”

I fear that Senator Byrd may be right.

The establishment of the Homeland Security Department belongs in the same category as the Bush Administrations rush to invade Iraq. Perhaps such efforts will prove necessary in the long term. In the short term, however, America should be more focused on the greatest immediate threat to its security – Al Qaeda and the recently resurfaced Osama bin Laden.

I think it would be far wiser to remain focused on this immediate threat and devote more energy and resources to rooting out existing Al Qaeda adherents and cells in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries. Who knows, we might even find that fellow President Bush once said we would get dead or alive.
posted by Gary at 9:35 AM

 
GORE’S SUPPORT IS FALLING ... UP: Gore is in a far stronger position for the Democratic presidential nomination than some media reports indicate. A case in point is MSNBC’s misleading treatment of a newly released poll.

MSNBC’s headline for the AP report of this new poll is:

Little Support for Gore in 2004

No clear Democratic front-runner, poll shows

If you read only the headline, you would think that Gore’s support among all Democrats is slipping. You would be wrong. The reverse is true.

The AP article reports on the result of a presidential preference poll of Democratic Party insiders, specifically 312 Democratic National Committee members:

THE POLL of 312 Democratic National Committee members – roughly three-quarters of the committee’’s total membership – suggests the contest is wide open, with none of the top possible candidates standing out as having particularly broad support.

Only 35 percent of those polled said Gore should run again, while 48 percent said he should not and 17 percent were undecided.

Asked who they favor in the 2004 race, 46 percent of respondents said they had no preference. Out of a list of 10 prospective candidates, 19 percent of those polled named Gore as their pick, 18 percent backed Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and 13 percent named Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the outgoing Democratic leader in the House, was chosen by 10 percent. The other possible candidates were in single digits, including Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the 2000 vice presidential nominee, who garnered 4 percent.
“It looks like a party that’’s desperately seeking fresh faces,” said Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan campaign analyst in Washington.

The views of Democratic Party insiders, however, are not necessarily representative of the rank and file. In fact, recent polls indicate that Gore is actually gaining in support among all Democrats nationwide.

A CNN/Time poll conducted Nov. 13 to 14, shows that an overwhelming 53 percent of Democrats favor Gore as the 2004 nominee over his six most likely challengers (Joe Lieberman, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, John Edwards and Howard Dean). Polls of Democrats in October and early November had found Gore to be the front runner, but with support in the 32 to 36 percent range against such likely challengers.

Given the disastrous approach many Democratic leaders took in timidly avoiding conflict with Bush in the months leading up to midterm elections, their lukewarm feelings towards Gore might not be such a bad omen for the former vice president. As discussed in my Nov. 15 post on “GORE, THE REPUBLICAN PROPHET,” unlike many Democrats, Gore has not been afraid to constructively criticize the Bush administration’s foreign policy failings.

Gore has proven himself to be far superior to most Democratic insiders in discerning what is best for his country and his party. Don’t count Gore out yet.
posted by Gary at 10:45 AM