Ok, so we all remember the line from All the President’s Men where Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) tells Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) to “Follow the money” in order to get to the root of the Watergate cover-up. In case you don’t, here’s the dialogue.
Deep Throat: No, heh, but it’s touching. Forget the myths the media’s created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand. Bob Woodward: Hunt’s come in from the cold. Supposedly he’s got a lawyer with $25,000 in a brown paper bag. Deep Throat: Follow the money. Bob Woodward: What do you mean? Where? Deep Throat: Oh, I can’t tell you that.
Woodward must of been thinking, “How’d you like a brown paper bag over your head Mr. Almighty Deep Throat?”
Though Woodward eventually traced all those brown paper bags back to Tricky Dick, this clip shows his initial, cumbersome, but unbelievably lucky, attempts to piece together the tangled web that was CREEP (the Committee to Re-elect the President).
Unfortunately, the “brown paper bag”-esque relationships that these days come in the form of speaking fees, PAC contributions, and close lobbyist ties, can still be a tough puzzle to snap together. Yes, the immediate post-Watergate period led to the creation of the FEC and there now exists a plethora of disclosure documents that detail these relationships Many of these documents have been aggregated and re-aggregated on mirror sites for years.
Who could have predicted that this news would break when I wrote the Palin v. Nixon piece two weeks ago, but hey it looks as if the two have even more in common than I thought. Wouldn’t it be great political theater to see Sarah give one of these?
Why is it that some of the more annoying figures in American politics seem to always come from South Carolina? Many of the country’s most notable contrarians have come from the Palmetto State: John C. Calhoun, Strom Thurmond, and in more recent memory, Lindsey Graham and Mark Sanford. Oh yeah, and let’s not forget a few notably adverse events as the Siege of Fort Sumter and that bizarre Confederate flag thing a couple of years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I too have enjoyed the state’s white sand beaches, spicy barbecue, and the beauty of the City of Charleston, one of the best preserved spots in the US despite having to endure both a massive earthquake and a devastating hurricane over the last 150 years.
Perhaps they just make buildings and people more stubborn down there.
Alas, I digress. Let’s get back to that tart South Carolina political stew I was discussing earlier. You can add to it yet another ardent dissuader, the state’s junior Senator, Jim DeMint, who on Sunday referred to the current push for health care reform as “Obama’s Waterloo” during a conference call with conservative political activists.
I’m not sure exactly what he means by “those freedom solutions that work in every area of our society”. Perhaps he means increased deregulation and a continued laissez-fairre approach to health care that has served us oh so well over the last fifty years.
Since I’ve sort of become the Tomato’s resident obituary writer, how could I pass up the chance to post on yesterday’s passing of legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite? Below is perhaps his most famous broadcast, the one covering the assassination of President Kennedy.
Though I never saw one of his newscasts live (his last one was just over 18 months before I was born), the power he wielded over the American news media is undeniable.
In a video statement, President Obama perhaps encapsulated Cronkite’s impact best. He remarked, “In an era before blogs and email, cellphones and cable, he was the news”.
It is difficult for those of us in Generation Y to imagine that such a world existed, and that one newsman could be called “the news”. The clutter of Tweets, SMS alerts, and yes blog posts, can seem overwhelming, and it’s impossible to imagine a Brian Williams, a Katie Couric, or any future news anchor ever being able to attract the number of viewers that Cronkite’s broadcast reached every evening.
I know this probably seems blatantly anti-American since we didn’t post anything on July 4th, but hey it’s our blog and these colors don’t run! Besides, there’s never been a scene of such cinematic greatness involving the Star Spangled Banner (except for maybe that Naked Gun clip). The La Marseillaise scene from Casablanca always gets me. Let’s face it, national anthems always sound better when coming from a group of people that are being invaded.
The best anthems are, after all, just elongated rallying cries. If everyone’s standing still, like at the beginning of a baseball game or during one of those overly dramatic Olympic medal ceremonies (those flags move like turtles, don’t they?), the original meaning of the words can get a tad lost. Perhaps if we sang them less often, the words would carry more weight – just an idea.
Regardless, in the spirit of transatlantic harmony – Vive la France! Vive l’Amérique! Vive l’Allies!
In a just released Newsweek article by Daniel Klaidman, four knowledgeable sources presumably close to the Attorney General have confirmed that prosecutor could be appointed within a matter of weeks to investigate brutal CIA interrogation techniques undertaken under the previous administration.
From the article:
Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. “I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,” he says. “But that can’t be a part of my decision.”
While we’ve certainly had some major issues with Holder over the fumbled release of the DOMA legal brief last month, I’m glad that he seems to be bucking the White House and acting independently on this one. The Bush interrogation techniques were perhaps the most controversial elements of perhaps the most non-independent DoJ in US history. To not investigate these techniques while the evidence is still raw would be a travesty to history.
My hunch (and hope) here is that this move could open the floodgates for more independent prosecutor appointments to investigate the multitude other questionable techniques of the Bush, et al. Klainan definitely seems to focus heavily on Holder’s seemingly wrenching process of deciding to go against the White House’s agenda of “moving forward”.
Most of the headlines read some paraphrase of: What will Palin do next? After all, she gave no clear reason for her resignation and ended her lakeside speech (she never forgets to add that rural homespun background) with a mysterious sounding quote of General Douglas MacArthur’s, “We are not retreating, we are just changing directions”. Although, we must assume that MacArthur had some vague idea of the new direction he was going in when he made that quote, otherwise they’d probably be speaking a tad more Japanese in the Philippines.
As part of the hypothetical onslaught, some of Palin’s remarks against the press have led many pundits to compare Palin’s dropout to that of Richard Nixon when he gave a quite embittered speech in November of 1962 after losing the California Governor’s race to Pat Brown. Even Nixon’s former aide, Pat Buchanan, made the comparison.
Jonathan Allen (more proof that Jonathans are a mental force to be reckoned with) published a piece chastising Buchanan for the comparison and arguing that Palin could never hold a candle to Nixon as a foreign policy expert or a political strategist. While I agree completely, I don’t think that just because she doesn’t get up to Nixon’s talent level means that she could not make a similar political comeback. She will probably spend the time off earning a significant amount of money through book deals, etc., perhaps even more than Nixon was able to earn during his interim gig as a Manhattan attorney. This could give her an ample purse (hopefully, one she buys for herslf this time) come 2016 or 2020, or if she decides to challenge Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski next year.
I came across this map via The Map Scroll, a geography/cartography blog that never leaves me disappointed. The map charts over 600 of the most influential policy blogs and charts them from left to right across the political spectrum. You can click on the image below to go to the PoliticoSphere site and embark on a more interactive experience.
Each node represents a separate blog and is colored as follows (thanks again Map Scroll):
Green - Environment and Energy Pink - Feminism Brown - Defense Orange - Education Light blue – Health Policy Peach - International Affairs Gray - Law Red - Conservative Blue - Liberal Yellow - Infopros (Huffington Post, TPM, and MSM news sites)
Interesting how all of the subject-specific blogs, aside from defense, seem to drift left. So often, the MSM seems to blame the lack of a larger conservative blogosphere on the fact that those on the right tend to be older and thereby less tech-savvy. I think this generalization is less of a reality than it is an excuse. You can see on this map that there is a seemingly malignant bulge of red nodes on the right side representing the conservative blogosphere. At first look, the blog nodes seem to be relatively proportional to their liberal/progressive counterparts. The subject-specific blogs drift disproportionately to the left, but at varying angles.
Conservatives have not been slow to the plate regarding blog development, they have just been slow to develop blogs on specific policy portfolios. This map in many ways is reflective of the current national political climate where those on the right seem less able to provide alternatives on specific policy issues (the environment, education, etc.) than their left leaning counterparts.
Perhaps somewhat lost in the latest boom of celebrity deaths, was that of Robert S. McNamara, one of the principal architects of the Vietnam War, who died yesterday morning at age 93. McNamara was the Secretary of Defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and in many ways could be considered the Donald Rumsfeld of his day. Over the past twenty years, he has embarked on a mea culpa tour of sorts by agreeing with many of his former detractors that the war was not winnable and should probably never have been undertaken.
In 1995, McNamara wrote a memoir, “In Retrospect: the Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam”. One of the key lessons learned that McNamara details in the book (see clip below), was that Vietnam was at its core a civil war between North and South Vietnam and that “you can not win a civil war with outside troops”.
Perhaps he became such an advocate in the hope that American public officials would never make that mistake again. Point, set, match neocons, I guess.
Still, McNamara was a fascinating figure, and despite my disgust with his actions as Secretary of Defense, it was humbling to see a man, perhaps one of the most intelligent of his generation, come to grips with his own extreme failings. I can remember seeing the 2003 documentary, The Fog of War, as a college sophomore. It came out around the same time as the “shock and awe” phase of the Iraq War was beginning. Although I had heard many of McNamara’s Vietnam epiphanies before, they had never hit home in quite the same way. The transparent format of the interview segments also left an indelible impact on me that forever changed my view of the man.
This film included many segments where the viewer is forced to focus on McNamara’s face at a camera angle that makes the former Pentagon chief look small and solemn in his thoughts. He had realized the error of his ways, and this documentary was his best shot at asking the world for forgiveness as he approached his own inevitable demise.
McNamara is now gone, but his lessons must live on. Perhaps I see him in a kinder light because I did not live through Vietnam myself. My internal bitterness towards his lies and misjudgments when he had power is naturally less than that of my parents’ generation.
Will I be able to feel this same sense of contemplative pity if Mr. Rumsfeld ever goes through a similar process? Perhaps not, though I hope he does, and I will just have to cross that bridge when I come to it.
The greatest lesson I can glean from McNamara’s life is that we are all to some degree prisoners of the times in which we live in, and that it was only once he stepped away from public life and sought a better understanding of what went wrong with Vietnam, that he was actually able to fairly analyze the situation. All too often our public officials seem stuck in the moment and unwilling to see that there is a gray area to so much in life, including international politics.
Robert McNamara’s life and times prove that an absolutist view of the world can cause immense, unecessary destruction. If our leaders could only learn from his legacy, perhaps McNamara’s decades long quest was not in vain.
Ok, so we all remember the line from All the President’s Men where Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) tells Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) to “Follow the money” in order to get to the root of the Watergate cover-up. In case you don’t, here’s the dialogue.
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