HOW SHOULD DEMS HANDLE IRAN? As depressing as this is, it's never too early for liberals and Dem thinkers to start figuring out how to prevent Dems from dividing if Bush orders, say, limited strikes on Iran. Al Gore and Howard Dean might oppose them, as perhaps will the new and improved John Edwards. But what about other presidential contenders -- Mark Warner, Evan Bayh and Hillary Clinton? (Then there's always Joe Lieberman, who will probably volunteer to sit astride the first falling bomb, Dr. Strangelove style.)

Seriously, this is a real question: What are the prospects (assuming they exist at all) for anything approaching Democratic unity on Iran? And how might it be achieved? On Social Security, Dems stayed in line -- partly because defeat would have been catastrophic, and partly because they were persuaded that they could win. And it worked. Can Dems be persuaded that a debate over Iran can be won, too? Matt smartly suggests a broad, longer-term approach to winning this and other future arguments -- attack the "network of ideas" that brought us Iraq and threaten to bring us war with Iran. In a shorter-term, more tactical sense, it's never too early to come up with a core message on Iran that Dems might see as a winner -- and hence might be willing to unify around.

So: Is there such a message? My first nomination would be one of John Avarosis's suggestions: "George Bush is the wrong man to be launching yet another war." His whole list is worth a read, but that one seems particularly potent. It dovetails with the incompetence argument, reminds voters of the Iraq fiasco and Bush's central role in creating it and promising easy victory, and raises the specter of Bush as reflexive warmonger, which could make voters less willing to listen to the White House's pro-war rationale. And recent polls -- including this eye-opening one -- suggest the electorate may be ready to question the wisdom of GOP militarism and the arguments undergirding it. Yes, yes, I know, Dems can't possibly win an argument about national security, right? But things change -- sometimes even for the better. Maybe GOP hegemony on these issues is coming to an end. And not a moment too soon.

--Greg Sargent

MR. DONKEY SIR. Commenting on Noam Scheiber's story on Howard Dean, MyDD's Matt Stoller writes:

While Reid and Pelosi and Rahm and Chuck might bitch about Dean 'not playing the traditional party chairman's role', where were they in February of 2005 when the elections were held? Why did they let uber-local pol Donnie Fowler become a near kingmaker? Why didn't they endorse or get involved in a serious way? There was an election for this position, a position that was clearly going to control hundreds of millions of dollars and party resources in the next few years. Was this election below them? Apparently. Well Dean was elected and he is doing what he promised.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't Pelosi, Reid, et al backing Indiana's Tim Roemer? I mention it only because I remember learning it from, well, MyDD (and here). Can't win for losing, I guess.

As for Scheiber's article on Dean, the piece's thesis, once you cut through the weird overuse of messianic language, is that Dean is hostile to big donors, overly-focused on a 50-state strategy, and certain portions of the party are nervous about this. No real surprise. I'd work up some concern, but given that the Democratic Party easily survived the constraints of McCain-Feingold, if Dean ends up raising a bit less than Terry McAuliffe did, I've trouble believing that the difference won't be made up elsewhere. Add in that online and small-donor fundraising will likely be far more advanced come 2008 Democrats should have little trouble reaching the relatively low saturation point (above which additional cash hardly matters). Folks will remember that John Kerry, now whining about how little he had to spend, finished the election with $15 million in the bank.

Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see Dean do a bit better with the large donors -- his 50-state strategy could only benefit from more money -- but Scheiber's article strikes me as a frustrated bellow from sources put out by Dean's new methods. Had McAuliffe's tenure gone better, I might give them more credence, but given the fortunes of the Democrats under his direction, I'm more than willing to give Dean's new ideas a chance. Indeed, the interesting article here would be the inverse of Scheber's: what does the 50-state strategy look like? How's it progressing? And what sort of chance does it stand at success? I've already heard that Dean's doing the old things wrong, now I'm interested in knowing if he's doing the new ones right.

--Ezra Klein

OFF INTO THE SUNSET. Budget negotiations within the House GOP conference stalled last week over disputes between moderates, who wanted some boosts in spending, and the Republican Study Committee (RSC) folks, who were pushing for some of their usual litany of draconian caps and budget process changes. John Boehner and Dennis Hastert have pledged to keep working on the budget following the end of the recess, and there is indication that the RSC might win from the House leadership (as well as the White House) a provision setting up a so-called "sunset commission." That's an appointed body to which every single discretionary program would need to appeal for renewed funding every ten years; Congress would then have to vote affirmatively to keep the program, or it would be eliminated. (The president proposed such a commission in his budget this year, as he had last year.) Given the collapse of the GOP's unity and legislative capabilities this year, as the midterms approach and the party's popularity sinks, it seems unlikely that such a provision could pass -- but evil conservative budget process gambits are always kicking around, and are always worth keeping an eye on. See more on sunset commissions from OMBWatch here.

--Sam Rosenfeld

BABY BOOMERS NEED TO CHILL. If you want to know why TAPPED is so awesome, you should check out this Frank Magrid Associates survey of generational attitudes (PDF) for the New Politics Institutes, which explains that "millenials," like most of us here on this blog, are the most left-wing generation in America, full of people who do things like support "governmental intervention to lessen economic disparities among Americans." (I tend to leave the "al" off my "government" but whatever; we also say "whatever" a lot.)

Conversely, despite their reputation, Baby Boomers turn out to be uptight, crazy, and reactionary, featuring rightwing views on "lifestyle issues and crime" and, generally speaking, "are often characterized by taking strong, relatively extreme positions on issues." Similarly, they like to panic: "large majorities of Baby Boomers express greater concern than any other generational grouping with virtually every specific issue examined in the survey." But, equipped with extremist opinions and high level of concern, they're convinced nothing can be done: "Baby Boomers have substantially more negative and pessimistic perceptions of the political process than any other generational grouping."

--Matthew Yglesias

DRAWING KNIVES? The Washington Post surveys veteran congressional handicappers and concludes that the Democrats' chances of taking back the House in November remain very slim. I'll let the Midterm Madness folks judge whether the piece is trustworthy or persuasive on the merits; needless to say, it remains the case that structural barriers still do render a takeover a long-shot proposition, even with Democrats enjoying such a politically favorable climate nationwide. One thing I've been hearing more recently from Hill people is the prospect of the following dynamic happening: momentum and expectations for a Democratic takeover build up so much that, when, as is still likely, in November the Democrats fall short of the 15-seat gain they need, the disappointment will serve as a pretext for caucus members to attempt to push Nancy Pelosi from her leadership position. This I hear from Democrats who, like many bloggers and activists, are dissatisfied with Pelosi for various reasons that, from my perspective, range from the reasonable but small-bore to the inexplicable to the very wrongheaded.

Liberals are going to want to have a sober assessment of what the real odds are for various outcomes in November and not get seduced into false expectations; moreover, I'd suggest people think a bit harder about the Democrats' leadership in the House and what the alternatives are. At the risk of repeating myself regarding the whole Dems-aren't-so-lame discussion, let me bear down on Pelosi's performance specifically. Recall that this week saw the fruits of a deft parliamentary jujitsu move administered by Pelosi regarding the House immigration bill. Also recall that the Republicans left for recess last week having failed, under the new leadership of John Boehner, to pass a budget bill for this year; the context for that failure was set by Pelosi ensuring a unanimous and united Democratic front of opposition, just as she had in 2003, 2004, and 2005. (Yes, budget bills have always been major party-line votes, but the minority under Pelosi has also held ranks for other budget and appropriations bills that were scuttled due to GOP divisions.)

If liberals would rather cast their lot with a Minority Leader Hoyer, that's their prerogative, though I'd love to have the rationale for such thinking spelled out for me sometime.

--Sam Rosenfeld

DEMS ARE EITHER PHONIES OR THEY'RE RADICALS. One of the more devious verbal tricks commentators use on Democrats is to rhetorically box them in: Either Dems are too cautious and scripted, or they're too radical and hate America. Atrios is right when he says of Joe Klein's new book:

I've got nothing against insiders dishing on the Kerry campaign, but the idea that they would dish to Klein to support whatever pernicious and destructive narrative he'll be concocting about how we all hate America demonstrates a tremendous lack of judgment.

We've glimpsed the narrative Klein has created. In the Time magazine excerpt of his book, Klein says Kerry was "smothered" by his consultants. Whatever one thinks of the Kerry campaign, or of consultants in general, I think it's clear that Klein's assault is really a back-door way of launching a familiar attack on Dems: That Democrats will say or do anything to get elected -- including abandon their core moral principles. That is the tale that the press used to destroy Al Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004, and now Klein has hauled it out again and is waving it as he dances his jig on the grave of Kerry's presidential aspirations.

How eager was Klein to tell the story this way? One Kerry campaign insider who refused to talk to Klein -- chief strategist Robert Shrum -- claims Klein was so eager that he cooked the facts to do it. Klein's chief piece of evidence for Kerry's inauthenticity in the excerpt is that Kerry didn't talk about the Abu Gharib torture scandal because his consultants told him not to. As I reported below, Shrum insisted in an interview with me that Klein's account was "misleading" and "inaccurate." Klein vigorously rejects the claim. Maybe once the book hits other Kerry insiders will come forward and say whether they think Klein's depiction is accurate.

Either way, Klein's new attack begs a question: If Kerry had made Abu Gharib a big issue, how would Klein have reacted? Klein routinely blasts liberal Dems who fault Bush on national security issues. He reportedly said that the message of the party's liberals is that they "hate America." Now he's hammering a Dem who didn't fault Bush sufficiently on torture as craven and inauthentic. If Kerry had taken up torture, would Klein have hailed Kerry's principled stand -- or hammered him as a weak-kneed liberal? We'll never know. Maybe Klein would have played against type and praised Kerry. Or maybe not. The point is, in a broad sense commentators like Klein routinely box Dems in: Either they're phonies who paper over their true beliefs or they're wild-eyed radicals who hate America. It's a pretty neat trick, really.

--Greg Sargent

THE IDEOLOGY'S THE THING. I'm not so high on this "Bush wants to bomb Iran to secure his legacy" concept. As we enter into the twighlight years of Bushism, it's important to avoid ascribing problematic elements of the past five years of American governance to Bush's personal idiosyncrasies when, in fact, the real source of the problems are deeper and wider ideological movements. Mark Steyn didn't publish this crazy article on Iran because Bush is looking for a legacy. Nor did Mark Helprin write this crazy op-ed on Iran because Bush is looking for a legacy. Nor did Fred Hiatt publish Helprin's op-ed because he's looking for a legacy. Nor are Frank Gaffney and Jon Kyl pushing crazy Iran policy ideas because Bush is looking for a legacy.

Rather, there's a widespread view on the American right that it's always a mistake to reach diplomatic agreements with "evil" regimes. There's also a widespread view on the American right that, contra the examples of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, nuclear deterrence won't work against "crazy" leaders. At the intersection of those two opinions is the conclusion that we ought to be very, very, very, very willing to use unilateral preventative military force against countries that have nuclear weapons programs or that we merely vaguely suspect of having nuclear weapons programs. Both of those ideas are foolish and dangerously wrong, but they're also widespread -- not private oddball notions of Bush's. If liberals want to push this country's foreign policy in a better direction over the next five-to-ten years, we need to attack the whole network of ideas (including a non-trivial number of ideas whose origins are inside the Democratic coalition) that gave us the Iraq War and that threaten to give us the Iran War.

Bush's poor leadership skills have made and continue to make things worse than they might otherwise be, but the basic problems here are much bigger than the man himself.

--Matthew Yglesias

IS WAL-MART THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS? I think I'll throw my lot in with Michelle Cottle and Wal-Mart (sigh) on this one. There aren't very many industries I'd wish the Beast of Bentonville on. I'd have preferred they kept out of the unionized, value-oriented grocery sector, for instance. But insofar as I would like to unleash Sam Walton's creation on anyone, the banking industry, which Cottle correctly characterized as operating off a "screw-the-consumer business model," is pretty high up there.

Not only are the current banking behemoths grossly ripping consumers off through transaction and ATM fees, but geographical inequities abound, with large swaths of the (poor) populace lacking access to any sort of accredited, serious financial institution, and turning instead to sharkish corner stores and money order merchants. Were Wal-Mart to enter the game, many of those inequities would instantly vanish, millions of poorer folks would have access to a serious banking alternative, and some of the more useless charges and inefficiencies retained by the sclerotic banking industry would rapidly prove unsustainable. Reflexively mistrustful of Wal-Mart though I am, I've a tough time opposing that.

--Ezra Klein

FRED HIATT REFUSES ACCOUNTABILITY; BILL KELLER ACCEPTS IT. The big news organizations need to come to terms with their role in spreading White House misinformation -- and their failure to dig out the truth -- in the run-up to the Iraq war. Because if they don't, they risk making the same catastrophic mistakes again in the run-up to the possible conflict with Iran -- and those mistakes could have even graver consequences. Bill Keller understands this. Fred Hiatt doesn't.

The fact that some powerful media figures still won't accept accountability for their pre-war blunders is awfully discouraging -- it suggests that they're fully prepared to commit those blunders all over again. Case in point: Today's Washington City Paper has an extraordinary interview with Hiatt, in which reporter Eric Wemple notes that the Post editorial board hasn't yet apologized for its role in spreading the Bush administration's pre-war deceptions, and asks Hiatt if they'll ever issue a mea culpa. Says the piece:

The Post's editorialists bought the White House line in full, yet they haven't gone the mea culpa route. They flirted with accountability in an October 2003 editorial, which reads in part: "Were we wrong? The honest answer is: We don't yet know."

Well, that was two and a half years ago. Do we know enough now to admit the mistake? When asked that question, Hiatt responded, "I'm not getting into that subject...I guess what we have to say about that I would say in an editorial."

In other words, take your demand for accountability and shove it deep into your posterior.

Over at The Times, meanwhile, Keller has shown himself to be far more responsible and professional than Hiatt. He's taking questions at nytimes.com this week, and this is part of what Keller said in response to queries about Judith Miller (scroll down):

[T]he best answer to bad reporting is good reporting...the experience last year has certainly raised our editorial vigilance and underscored the importance of the checks and balances that operate to assure fair and accurate news coverage, especially in sensitive areas such as national security, where reporters rely on sources who cannot speak for attribution. Newsrooms necessarily operate with a large degree of trust...But the operative principle is Ronald Reagan's: trust but verify.

Keller's answers are encouraging. As I noted below, he was far more churlish about the blogosphere than necessary, and The Times's handling of the Miller saga was anything but perfect. Still, the key point is that Keller appears prepared to learn from past mistakes, a refreshing trait which is oddly absent among his media establishment colleagues.

Keller, I'm sure, is well aware that his legacy may rest largely on how he handles the run-up to Iran -- just as his predecessor Howell Raines's legacy was tainted partly by the paper's handling of the run-up to Iraq. What's more, given America's degraded international relationships and all the talk about nukes, this time the stakes are arguably higher -- The Times and other big news orgs simply have to get it right, or the consequences could be dire. In a way, the lead-up to a possible war with Iran is really a big opportunity for the media -- a chance for the big news organizations to redeem themselves for their disastrous failings last time around.

Bill Keller seems to understand this. Fred Hiatt, sadly, doesn't -- or if he does, he couldn't care less.

--Greg Sargent

OF LEGACIES AND LEADERS. Mike Crowley notices Sy Hersh's ascribing Bush's enthusiasm for an attack on Iran to the "legacy thing": Bush wants to be remembered for saving Iran, not merely wrecking Iraq. Which reminds me, anybody else remember the press's obsession with Bill Clinton's second-term legacy-building? I can't recall Clinton ever mentioning it, but the media's spin on every single one of his late initiatives, no matter how innocuous or broadly supportable, was that that self-interested ego-hound was deploying American capital, treasure, and spirit to ensure himself some piece of political immortality. Meanwhile, Bush tried to restructure Social Security, is hinting at a grand bargain to fully rebuild our country's Big Three entitlement programs, and now seems to be hungrily eyeing Iran, and not a moment of consideration is ever given to the guy's motives.

--Ezra Klein

IRAN REALITY. One thing that makes the Iran issue difficult is that one side is led by a religious fanatic suffering delusions of grandeur with a taste for demagogic posturing and the other country has, well, about the same. Thus, it seems that American and Iranian officials alike are exaggerating the successes of the Iranian nuclear program, each for their own reasons, needlessly boiling the pot. The good news, as Andrew Sabl points out is that the American people are now -- rightfully -- disinclined to trust Bush on the question of war with Iran. That means effective political leadership from the opposition party ought to be able to put real constraints on the White House's freedom to mess things up.

But as TAP founder Bob Kuttner pointed out in his speech on "American Foreign Policy as Political Failure" earlier this weak, effective leadership from the opposition has been sadly lacking in recent years. With the surprising (but heartening) exception of Jane Harman, I haven't seen any congressional Democrats engaging with what's going on at the moment.

--Matthew Yglesias

BILL KELLER AND THE BLOGS. Bill Keller is answering questions at The New York Times's site this week, and at one point he offered a somewhat testy view of the blogosphere in responding to a couple of readers who wrote in asking about the Judith Miller affair. Keller responded:

Sigh. I can't imagine that there is anything to say about the Judy Miller episode that I have not already said, publicly and to The Times staff, over and over. At The Times, as in most of the media-watching world, we have registered the Miller saga as an important cautionary tale, and moved on. But the story has an afterlife in the impending trial of Scooter Libby, and, as our Q&A mailbag demonstrates, the subject has settled into some quarters of the blogosphere as a partisan obsession and an object of grassy-knoll conspiracy theories. The hard-core enthusiasts feed on blogs that have little to offer but harebrained speculation. (And they think Judy Miller was credulous!)...

[T]he experience last year has certainly raised our editorial vigilance and underscored the importance of the checks and balances that operate to assure fair and accurate news coverage, especially in sensitive areas such as national security, where reporters rely on sources who cannot speak for attribution. [emphasis added]

I can understand Keller's frustration both with the blogs and with the fact that the Judy Miller saga just won't die, and I know the fact that this is being published on a blog may, in his and others' eyes, diminish its worth in some intangible way. Still, I think I can offer Keller some clarification that might nonetheless have some value. In the runup to the Iraq war, the Bush administration practiced an extraordinary amount of deception, the depths of which we are only just learning now; every passing day brings yet another example of pre-war duplicity, each more startling than the last. Yes, The Times is partly responsible for digging up what we're learning now. But let's face it -- it's too late. Because of this war, over 2,300 Americans are dead and over 50,000 (the most recent count I've seen) are severely wounded. With Congress in GOP hands, the public's last line of defense against an administration as mendacious as this one is the media. Without a tough, vigilant media the public -- not to say the young men and women losing eyes, arms, legs, everything -- are helpless.

Now the administration is making agressive noises yet again, this time towards Iran -- and the grunts and chest-thumping sound startlingly similar to the ones we heard in 2002 and 2003. There's every reason to fear that the administration will fall back on the same tactic of spreading intelligence it knows to be false while suppressing intelligence that undercuts its case for war. Given the media's dreadful complicity with the administration's propagandizing last time around, there's simply no reason to assume that it will do a better job this time around. And this time -- because of all the talk about nukes, plus the tattered state of America's relations with the rest of the world -- the stakes are arguably greater. In other words, this is damn serious business.

So if people are obsessing about the Miller affair, maybe it's because they're thinking about the future, not the past. They're hoping -- praying, pleading -- that this time reporters will be far less willing to spread White House lies in exchange for the passing pleasure of getting a scoop, and that the press this time will be far more aggressive and skeptical when it counts, i.e., before the war, not after. It's good to hear Keller say that the Miller fiasco has raised the paper's "editorial vigilance," but come on -- the burden going forward is on The Times and other media to prove that this is so. In fact, one might see the leadup to a possible war with Iran as a chance for The Times and the other big news organizations to redeem themselves for their performance on Iraq. It's an opportunity, really. Let's hope the media will seize it.

Are blogs frustratingly awash in misinformation at times? Are they imperfect in many other ways? Yes, and yes. But I think Keller's irritability towards bloggers is misplaced. Blogs hammered The Times for Miller, yes, but not because the majority of left-liberal bloggers want to embarrass The Times for the fun of it or otherwise tear down big news organizations. Rather, they want The Times and the other big news orgs to be better than they've been. And they need to be better when it counts -- in other words, Bill, right now.

--Greg Sargent

SOME RECOVERY. Brad Plumer, wielding a fearsome EPI study, does a nice job debunking the claim that stagnating wages are merely the inevitable effect of rising health costs. As he notes, between 2004 and 2005 the bottom 20 percent saw their wages drop nearly 2%, but only 24% of this quintile receives employer-based health care. Had health costs leapt up 39%, they might be the explanation. Instead, they went up 9.2%, and likely less for these folks, who tend to receive substandard benefits.

So while my sympathies go out to all those Gilded Age apologists out there, you just can't explain away the central economic problem of our time -- accelerating, unchecked inequality so pervasive that we're seeing an economic "recovery" with continuing wage slippage and poverty increases -- by claiming that the poor receive too much health care.

--Ezra Klein

NOW THAT'S BRAND LOYALTY. Imagine if Coca-Cola, tired of seeing "New Coke" used as a universal signifier of a remarkably bad idea, blasted out a press release demanding that folks cease smearing the trademark of what was merely a sugared up soft drink concocted in accordance with a national survey of soda taste preferences. Oh the internets would laugh, and laugh, and laugh. So prepare to emit a chuckle in Grover Norquist's direction. Because Grover, finally fed up with all the unfair smears aimed at his innocuous project to browbeat lobbying firms into hiring more conservatives and fewer Democrats, is seeking to patent the name "K Street Project," rescue it from its association with Jack Abramoff, and make a quick buck along the way:

“Some people say Kleenex when they mean tissue,” Norquist said. “We will jealously guard the real phrasing the way Kleenex and Coca-Cola do. We will sue anyone who says it wrong and make lots of money.”

Ah Grover, what would we do without you?

--Ezra Klein

HARDBALL. It's a bit Machiavellian, but what a move. Turns out that a hefty chunk of congressional Republicans wanted to delete James Sensenbrenner's provision turning all illegal immigrants into felons. Too explosive, they thought, to unite behind a bill that would render 1.6 million children serious criminals hiding on the lam. The Bush administration asked Sensenbrenner to soften the offense of lacking a visa to a misdemeanor and so he did, offering an amendment to that effect. The amendment failed, 164-257, with 191 Democrats voting to retain the harsh penalties:

"From a strategic point of view, Democrats were not going to help Republicans pass the bad Sensenbrenner bill," said Jennifer Crider, spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). "With the felony provision in there, it is a poison pill, as we've seen from all the rallies around the country."

Crider said that Republicans were the majority party in the House, and if they truly wanted to change the House bill, they could have.

"The bottom line is that 65 Republicans voted for that provision, and the rest voted for that provision when they voted for the final bill," she said.

Quite so. In the end, the creation of a new felon class wasn't nearly enough to sour congressional Republicans on Sensenbrenner's legislation, revealing exactly the cold, cavalier attitude towards immigrants that Democrats wanted to highlight. There's a contrast being drawn here, and for once, congressional Democrats are refusing to blur it.

--Ezra Klein

PROFILES IN COURAGE. This is pretty disappointing stuff. A Senate bill, cosponsored by a variety of leading Democrats, to force call centers to identify their country of origin at the beginning of the call. Exactly why the United States Senate has to force the dude handling your tech support to mention that he's in New Delhi isn't really explained, but I assume it's just such a nice merging of protectionism and Clintonian incrementalism that opportunistic senators simply couldn't resist.

In the end, though, a bill like this doesn't penalize outsourcing, it doesn't help the unexpectedly unemployed, and it doesn't do anything about globalization -- it just whips up some resentment again foreigners. If Democrats want to seriously address the downsides of free trade, they should (it'd be damn well about time). Instead, they want to look like they're addressing the downsides of free trade, while not actually making any of the hard decisions or substantive trade offs a coherent policy response would require.

--Ezra Klein

WHERE DO YOU COME FROM, WHERE DO YA GO? After Monday's immigration marches, The National Review's Cliff May crept forth with a dark, ominous post wondering about the shadowy groups organizing these demonstrations and the nature of their true "agenda." Well May can take that extra layer of tin foil off his hat, because the answers are out, and they're pretty innocuous.

According to the AP, the story goes something like this: After James Sensenbrenner brought his endearingly medieval outlook to the issue, a hastily called confab of unions, civil rights groups, and religious organizations met in California. The consortium decided to sponsor some rallies with a simple purpose: against Sensenbrenner's legislation, for some undefined path to citizenship. Outreach was conducted primarily through Hispanic radio, e-mail, and churches, with the Service Employees International Union and the Catholic Church eventually taking the lead, particularly on funding. The rallies tapped into the Hispanic community's unexpectedly deep desire to find their voice, and so the protests became rallies, and the rallies emerged a movement. For May and others of his ilk, that authenticity and spontaneity may be the scariest explanation of all.

--Ezra Klein

DEAN CALLS FOR DECLASSIFICATION RE WASHPOST PIECE. DNC Chairman Howard Dean this morning called on the Bush administration to declassify a 2003 Defense Intelligence Agency-sponsored report that undercuts a key administration claim about Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi weapons. As reported in this morning’s Washington Post, the DIA sent a team of experts to Iraq in May 2003 to examine trailers that were suspected of carrying equipment needed to make biological weapons. The team determined that the trailers did not contain such material, and reported that finding to Washington on May 27, 2003. Two days later, President Bush said, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”

Dean, at this morning’s Prospect breakfast meeting with roughly two dozen journalists, said, "We are going to call, probably today, for the declassification of the report.” He wouldn’t say whether he had already spoken to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi about this strategy, but one source said that such conversations would commence today, and that Dean would likely appear on television this afternoon to press the claim. “If the [Post] story is accurate,” Dean said, “…then the onus is on the president to prove that he did not mislead the country.” He sharpened this point later, saying that if the Post was correct, then Bush did mislead the country, and it was either a case of “incompetence, or it was deliberate. And those are both very, very serious.”

The trailers, and their alleged ability to produce biological weapons, comprised a central administration claim on the urgency of the need to attack Iraq. The Post story does not make it explicitly clear that Bush would have known on May 29, when he claimed that the weapons of mass destruction had been found, that the DIA analysts had reached the conclusion that the trailers weren’t a threat. Dean wants to find out if Bush knew of their May 27 findings.

More breakfast tidbits throughout the day.

--Michael Tomasky

PSA. For the past few months, spammers have bombarded our comments section. It came to a point where, for a brief period yesterday morning, they had brought down all of TAP Online. We had to temporarily deactivate the comments section to look into this problem more carefully, but it should all be resolved later today. Sorry for the inconvenience.

--Alec Oveis

ABOUT THAT SCLEROSIS. The economic performance of the large continental European economies -- France, Italy, and Germany -- really does leave a great deal to be desired. That said, the American press seems dogmatically determined to vastly overstate the extent of the problems. This editorial in my morning paper argues that "European governments seem unable to summon the strength even to address the economic sclerosis eating away their prosperity -- much less challenge American power." Mixed metaphor aside, Europe isn't becoming less prosperous. Rather, it's becoming more prosperous at a slow rate. If Europeans were actually getting poorer, then I think you'd see much more electoral support for dramatic changes.

As things stand, it's always worth noting that European economic growth could be boosted rather easily if the European Central Bank would loosen monetary policy. My understanding is that they've been maintaining a tighter-than-necessary monetary policy in order to deliberately provoke economic pain in the hopes that this will inspire voters to agree to adopt additional labor market flexibility and cuts in social welfare expenditures. Europeans probably should make their labor market more flexible (I'm radically less convinced that Europe's big welfare states are a problem) but European elites should consider the possibility that this would be easier to accomplish under conditions of prosperity. Obviously, nobody's going to want to make it easier to fire people under conditions where nobody has a reasonable expectation of getting a new job after they're laid off.

--Matthew Yglesias

BOOING CHENEY. This is bizarre. Dick Cheney was selected to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals home opener yesterday and got booed as he took the mound because he's ridiculously unpopular. This, as Jane Hamsher notes, was reported by The Washington Post thusly:

The first pitch of the Washington Nationals’ second season at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium was low and away, bouncing in the dirt before being scooped up by catcher Brian Schneider. For that, Vice President Cheney received a round of boos from the home crowd this afternoon.

By all other accounts in the press and rather plainly on the Post's video, Cheney was getting booed from the beginning just as you would expect.

--Matthew Yglesias

ITALY'S STABLE INSTABILITY. Earlier today, Ezra linked to an article suggesting that Italy's history of unstable governments is a contributor to the difficulty of introducing economic reforms. A National Review editorial makes a similar claim:

Prodi's coalition is a gamut of nine parties — running from two Communist parties at one extreme to liberals and Catholics at another — all of them unable to agree either on political ends or on means. It should be child's play for Berlusconi or any opposition to bring down such a government and return to the routine of the last 50 years, in which Italian prime ministers have come and gone in rapid succession as though through revolving doors.

The famous fact is that during the immediate post-WWII era, Italy had something like fifty governments in fifty years (The Donnas beat that pace by a wide margin) which seems excessive. This "instability," however, masked a great deal of underlying sameness. A single political party was the dominant force in all the governing coalitions during that period. What you had was personnel turnover -- a lot of cabinet shuffles due to personal or factional in-fighting or the machinations of minor parties. But new cabinets tended to include many of the same people as the previous one (possibly in a new job) and someone who got booted out of cabinet stood an excellent chance of coming back during the new shuffle.

The main upshot of this wasn't a lot of chaos and back-and-forth policy churn. Rather, practical authority was concentrated to a large degree in the permanent bureacracy which made policy just beneath the high-level personnel turnover (the US, it's worth remembering, has an absurdly large number of political appointees in our cabinet agencies by European standards) and much of the country was basically run by very stable networks of bribery and extortion. Genuine instability is a phenomenon of the post-Tangentopoli era in which a huge wave of scandals destroyed all of the old system's major political parties and created the current dynamic where power alternates between a corrupt rightwing coalition and a hopelessly divided leftwing one.

--Matthew Yglesias

KNOW WHEN TO FOLD 'EM. One idea I've seen kicking around the past couple of days is that talk of military strikes against Iran may be part of some kind of clever gamesmanship designed to achieve a diplomatic resolution. I think people need to think harder about that. Airstrikes would, at best, delay Iranian acquisition of nukes. Giving in to the United States would, of course, entail abandoning the quest for them entirely. So the structure of Bush's offer, under this theory, would be "either give up your nukes or else I'll slightly delay the point at which you can get them." That, I think, isn't quite in "offer they can't refuse" territory. Indeed, they'd have no reason whatsoever to accept that offer. It's a pointless threat.

The only way to make this work would be to put carrots on the table. "Give up your nukes and we'll lift our sanctions and grant you diplomatic recognition, or else I'll use force to slightly delay the point at which you can go nuclear." This will work, of course, only if Iran would prefer diplomatic and trade relations with the US to having a nuclear bomb. But if that is their preference, then the threat of airstrikes adds nothing to the equation -- you could just put the straight-up nukes for sanctions trade on the table and you'd get the same result one way or another. Airstrikes would be pointless in any case, and precisely because they're pointless there's no point in threatening to use them.

Now, conservatives will say we shouldn't offer carrots because Teheran can't be trusted. Bush thinks it's wrong to offer concessions to "evil" regimes (it's appeasement, see) and that's why he won't put any on the table. If that's your mindset, there are only two options -- let the evildoers go nuclear (see North Korea) or launch a disastrous war (see Iraq). It'd be nice to find a middle ground, but there's really nothing there.

--Matthew Yglesias

ROBERT SHRUM DISPUTES JOE KLEIN'S ACCOUNT OF KERRY CAMPAIGN. Robert Shrum, the chief strategist for John Kerry's presidential campaign, is disputing some aspects of a forthcoming account by Joe Klein of the 2004 campaign, saying Klein's version is "inaccurate" and "misleading." In his latest Time magazine column, Klein published an excerpt of the book, one which offers a scathing look at the inner dynamics of Kerry's campaign.

In the piece, Klein asserts that Kerry allowed himself "to be smothered by his consultants," and cites as a key example the campaign's handling of the Abu Gharib scandal:

Perhaps the worst moment came with the Bush Administration torture scandal: How to respond to Abu Ghraib? Hold a focus group. But the civilians who volunteered for an Arkansas focus group were conflicted; ultimately, they believed the Bush Administration should do whatever was necessary to extract information from the "terrorists." The consultants were unanimous in their recommendation to the candidate: Don't talk about it. Kerry had entered American politics in the early 1970s, protesting the Vietnam War, including the atrocities committed by his fellow soldiers in Vietnam. But he followed his consultants' advice, never once mentioning Abu Ghraib -- or the Justice Department memo that "broadened" accepted interrogation techniques -- in his acceptance speech or, remarkably, in his three debates with Bush.

But now Shrum is disputing Klein's version of events. When I contacted Shrum, he said that Klein's characterization of the campaign's response to Abu Gharib is "inaccurate." "It is misleading to say that the campaign reaction to Abu Gharib was to hold a focus group," Shrum told me, adding that while the torture scandal may have come up from time to time, there was never a session devoted to it: "We held focus groups all the time. In those focus groups I have no doubt that Abu Gharib was mentioned. But coming out of that there was no recommendation to the candidate that he should never talk about it. I would have known if this recommendation was going to be made."

Shrum added: "[Kerry] never received any advice not to talk about Abu Gharib. I certainly never gave him that advice."

The dispute is noteworthy, because Klein's version of Kerry's focus-grouping appears to be a key piece of his indictment of the campaign, at least in the excerpt. The book, a broad indictment of the "pollster-consultant industrial complex," is called Politics Lost.

When we contacted Klein about Shrum's comments, he dismissed the accusation, saying that Shrum refused to speak to him for the book. Klein emailed us the following statement:

Everything in the Kerry section of the book was double and triple-sourced. I spoke directly to the person who conducted the focus groups. A Kerry pollster told me that the consultants' view of Abu Ghraib was unanimous, which was confirmed by Kerry staff members and other Kerry consultants. And, of course, the proof is on the record: Kerry did not mention Abu Ghraib -- or, equally important, the Bush Justice Department Torture Memo -- in either his acceptance speech or the three debates. I like and respect Bob, but I find it odd that he was willing to talk to you and not to me, despite repeated requests during the writing of this book.

It's worth noting that Kerry himself has said that he called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld based partly on Abu Gharib. Either way, this fight is only going to get worse in coming days, when Klein's book comes out and those indicted in the book blast back.

--Greg Sargent

A SQUEAKER IN ITALY. It looks like Romani Prodi's center-left coalition will eke out a very narrow victory against hilarious crook-turned-politician Silvio Berlusconi. If so, Italian society may soon prove less divided than it seems. Even the narrowest of margins for Prodi's coalition would allow him to remedy the current situation where some television stations are owned by Berlusconi, and the other television stations are owned by Berlusconi's government. Everyone likes to complain about media bias, but the situation the Italian left's been dealing with is truly off the charts.

--Matthew Yglesias

OVERTHROW ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU... Over at The Times, Floyd Norris makes an interesting point on France's surprisingly rapid abandonment of their proposed economic reforms:

One reason for the reluctance of the French and the Italians to stick by what the politicians see as needed changes is the longtime insecurity of governments, in contrast to relatively stable political situations in countries like the United States and Britain.

In Italy, there has been a history of short-lived governments in much of the time since the end of World War II, albeit many of these governments were populated by the same politicians. Mr. Berlusconi has been an exception, managing to last a full parliamentary term.

In France, change has been much slower in one way — Mr. Chirac has been in office for more than a decade — but French governments seem to be less confident in their mandate. French history is full of violent changes in government, not least the French Revolution, and current politicians can remember 1968, when some thought that student protests in Paris and other cities were about to force President Charles de Gaulle to resign.

Doesn't seem like a very good state of affairs to me, but then I, unlike the conservative chorus gleefully criticizing the French, believe in a strong centralized government...

--Ezra Klein

K STREET GIVETH... Two amusing K Street-related notes regarding Tom DeLay's imminent retirement: First, see Jesse Lee for the latest on lobbyists getting a wee bit testy about DeLay converting the re-election campaign contributions they raised for him into funds for his legal expenses. “If I wanted to give to a legal fund, I would’ve done it directly,” Roll Call quotes one lobbyist; says another, "That all this money will go to the legal defense fund, it sickens me."

Meanwhile, former DeLay (and Dennis Hastert) aide John Feehery's Sunday Washington Post op-ed is worth a read for the dirt it dishes on DeLay's rogue minions, Ed Buckham, Mike Scanlon, and Tony Rudy. Do be wary of the good-man-wronged-by-perfidious-underlings narrative Feehery is aiming for, however.

Given the prominence of the K Street Project in discussions of DeLay's legacy (see Michael Barone's delightfully forthright defense of the gambit from last week), it's worth noting that Feehery himself is a direct and emblematic beneficiary of the Project. When, in 2004, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) hired a Democrat as its new president, furious congressional Republicans retaliated by excising tax credits to movie studios from an international tax bill. The MPAA got the message and promised to hire several Republicans for top positions. One of those hires: John Feehery, now the MPAA’s executive vice-president.

--Sam Rosenfeld

JUST POSTED ON TAP: A MASSACHUSETTS MIRACLE. Robert Kuttner explains how advocates of universal health care should respond to the new legislation out of Massachusetts.

Now onto a different matter: Does anyone else miss those desperate pleas for more subscribers? I certainly do.

--Alec Oveis

MEANWHILE IN CRAZY LAND. I have no idea what the provenance of the documents Bill Kristol is quoting here is exactly supposed to be, but they definitely don't show what he seems to think they show. What's going on here, plainly, is that Saddam Hussein was making plans for irregular warfare, possibly including terrorism, as contingency plans to be used in response to an American invasion, not that Saddam was plotting unprovoked terrorist attacks on the United States.

--Matthew Yglesias

THE VIRTUES OF OBSTRUCTION. Over e-mail, Midterm Madness contributor Ben Adler has a smart response to my earlier post on Sebastian Mallaby:

In addition to Ezra’s sharp fact-check on the A-Pox-on-Both-Their-Houses section of Sebastian Mallaby’s column, it’s worth noting the common, but silly, assumption underlying Mallaby’s analysis. He accuses the congressional Democratic leadership of “hav[ing] mastered the art of obstructionism but [being] light on policy proposals.” That assumes that Democrats and Republicans share broad agreement about what problems the nation faces in most areas. But, on many issues, the parties disagree not merely about means but about ends. Republicans think the tax code is too progressive, Democrats think it’s too regressive. So yes, Democrats attempt to “obstruct” efforts to make the estate tax repeal permanent and offer no “alternative.” But what’s wrong with that? The Dems are simply holding their principles.

Anyway, obstructionism or lack of ideas is not a fair accusation to throw at a minority party particularly under this ruthless brand of majority leadership. It is not as if the Republicans, particularly in the House, will give the Democrats’ bills a fair vote. So, even if Mallaby’s assertion, were factually solid (it is not), it would be an illogical point anyway.

Indeed. When a merciless majority is pushing destructive legislation and impeding all minority proposals, effective obstruction may be the best idea of all...

--Ezra Klein

SO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. There's little more annoying in modern punditry than on-the-other-handism, that irksome little quirk that causes professional pundits to sully perfectly sound columns by ending their focused critiques with indiscriminate, incoherent sprays of blame. Today's example? Sebastian Mallaby, who concisely dismantles the modern GOP's contempt for governance and then, out of nowhere, ruins it with a meaningless, inaccurate shot at the Democrats.

The Republicans' dismal performance could shake their grip on power -- much as the gold-ingot episode upset Japan's politics. But the top congressional Democrats seem barely more attractive than the Republicans; they have mastered the art of obstructionism but are light on policy proposals. In Japan in the 1990s, the collapse of the cronyistic ruling party was expected to usher in economic change that would pull the country out of its financial swamp. Instead, reform proceeded at a glacial pace, and it took a full decade for the economy to get going again.

The paradox of politics is that government is at once essential and dysfunctional. Globalization, demographic change, the sheer fact of economic growth: All these shifts create demands for government to step in, as a provider of safety nets for workers; retirement security for seniors; and public goods such as environmental quality and food safety, which become priorities as societies grow richer.

Sigh. It's not clear why Mallaby thinks Democrats lack a sufficient number of ten-point plans, but the sectors he cites -- safety nets, retirement security, environmental regulations, and food inspection -- are pretty much covered. I've made it part of my beat to remain relatively atop the constantly advancing horde of health care, pension, and entitlement expansion proposals, and if Mallaby wants, I'd be happy to dump some of the white papers weighing down my desk onto his. But maybe Mallaby just shares the weird pundit obsession with the new, rendering perfectly good but slightly aged ideas invalid for his purposes. In which case he could check out the superteam of Robert Rubin, Roger Altman, Jason Bordoff, and Peter Orszag who've put their magical econwonk rings together to form The Hamilton Project, which even distributes their ideas in pleasing and convenient PDF format.

As for environmental regulations, thanks, but I don't think they require new thinking so much as the application of old thinking. Same with the underfunded FDA, which is perfectly capable of inspecting food, if only they had the bank account to hire enough employees. Mallaby may be frustrated with the country's worrying direction and its sclerotic policy discourse, but he's proving himself the problem, not the solution. As someone who regularly wades through the work of progressive wonks, I assure him that the Democratic Party wouldn't look nearly so intellectually bereft if Washington Post columnists like Mallaby would use their megaphones to broadcast some of the fresh, resonant ideas swirling quietly about rather than simply sniffing at an intellectual landscape that seems barren because smug, lazy pundits refuse to populate it.

--Ezra Klein

SILVIO, HE GOTTA GO. If these exit polls prove correct, it looks like Romano Prodi’s center-left coalition has defeated Silvio Berlusconi in Italy’s general election. On the one hand, this election could be considered a setback for the xenophobic right to whom Berlusconi pandered in the campaign’s waning days. But as far as I can tell, the biggest loser of this election might well be the editors of The Economist, who look like they are about to lose their favo(u)rite whipping boy of the last decade or so. To be sure, Berlusconi is an easy target, but Bill Emmett and co. elevated their Berlusconi coverage to an art form. For the sake of sarcasm and wit in political reporting, here’s hoping Berlusconi doesn’t fade from the political scene. Sure, he might be a pernicious influence on Italian democracy, but he is just so irrepressibly entertaining for foreign observers like me, that it would be sad to see him go.

Well, almost.

--Mark Leon Goldberg

LIFE DECLINES TO IMITATE ART. Reading the West Wing piece Mike linked to, I stumbled across this tidbit I'd not known:

On that score, Mr. Sheen was offered an opportunity to see how his character's appeal would play in a real-life campaign. Not long ago, he said, he was approached by Democratic Party representatives from his native state, Ohio, to see if he would be interested in running for the United States Senate after he left the show. Though he would have had little trouble drafting a campaign platform — he is a fierce opponent of nuclear power and the war in Iraq, and a champion of human rights — he turned them down.

So Paul Hackett wouldn't have been the only telegenic neophyte punching his way through the primary. Intuitively appealing as a Bartlett candidacy might be, though, Sheen made the right decision turning them down. It's one thing for a party to court celebrity when they've a dearth of good candidates -- see California's decimated Republican Party and Arnold Schwarzenegger. But in a state with Sherrod Brown and Paul Hackett, among others, leapfrogging qualified, hungry applicants in favor of an ultraliberal television actor is both bad precedent and, probably, poor politics.

--Ezra Klein

THE EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION RACKET. Direct compensation for top CEO's went up by "only" 16 percent in 2005 after a more robust 41 percent in 2004. By comparison, median wages increased 3.2 percent in 2005 and somewhat less than that in 2004. Obviously, this is due to a dramatic acceleration in CEO productivity, catapulting the value of the top suits to ever-higher multiples of the value of the rest of us. Maybe. Well, actually, definitely not. Check out Gretchen Morgensen's fantastic New York Times article on the executive compensation racket and the not-so-independent independent consultants and compensation boards who make it happen.

--Matthew Yglesias

HALFWAY HOME. As I had predicted, Matt Santos won the presidency last night on The West Wing, eking out a surprise win in Nevada. Now the stage is set for the completion of my prediction, the more interesting second part: Santos, in the wake of Leo McGarry’s death, names Arnold Vinick as his national unity vice-president.

Is there any question about this now? Indeed, the only question is that it seems so ludicrously obvious that they might not do it just to throw us a curve. Incredibly, Jacques Steinberg’s piece in today’s Times about how the writers flipped from a Vinick win to a Santos victory after the real-life John Spencer died didn’t even go into the veepstakes scenarios.

The episode, by the way, was great. And even though Santos won South Carolina and Vinick Vermont, it otherwise was rich in verisimilitude, with no hint that the fate of the nation was hanging on the results from Berkshire County.

--Michael Tomasky