Go to http://forwardamerica2.blogspot.com
for a piece on the likely political prosecution of former Alabama Democratic Governor
Don Siegelman
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
HAVA Opens the Door to Potential Abuses
HAVA Opens the Door to Potential Abuses
The 2002 “reform” bill was called the Helping America Vote Act. It was a measure that was to give the Republican Party a great advantage in future elections. Designed to eliminate hanging chads and other threats to the nation’s election system, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 may have unleashed even greater threats to the integrity of the ballot. It mandates that all states improve their training of election workers and balloting procedures by 2006. Congress promised to provide the states with $3.9 in aid over three years to carry out the provisions of the bill, but later proved slow in appropriating the money. States often used the money to implement “paperless ballots,” or touch-screen voting.
Machines that make possible paper validation audit trails in the event of malfunctions were unavailable when the 2002 act was passed. However such machines eventually were produced. They printed what the voter did, but the voter did not get a receipt. Often, there was a way for the voter to see the record of what he had done. Regardless of the type of device, they were far more error prone than any other method of voting. Sometimes the printers jammed. Sometimes the printed record did not match the electronic record of votes cast. The central programs for tabulating votes frequently broke down. By 2008, some jurisdictions were scrapping their touch screen voting machines.
Legislation to require audit trails died in the House Administration Democrat sponsors but has attracted only 8 from the nation’s governing party. For some reason, the Republican Congress has been unable to consider this legislation. It is impossible to prove beyond all doubt that electronic vote tampering has changed the results of major elections, but there is a plethora of evidence to suggest that control of the firms that service the voting machines and calculation programs has given the GOP a great advantage. Republicans added provisions that encourage scrubbing the rolls of ineligible voters and requires first-time voters to show identification of various sorts. These provisions make it difficult to challenge the purging of voters. This HAVA requirement has led to the introduction of state legislation to mandate such identification materials as would likely dampen participation in elections, particularly among minority people. In Florida, additional purging of voters was carried out under legislation that forbade the reproduction of the list of suspected felons.
When the secrecy provision was struck down in 2004, it was learned that a new list of purged voters contained nearly 50,000 names. Beginning, January 1, 2006, HAVA gives the 50 state secretaries of state the power to purge voters whose ID cards and Social Security numbers do not correspond with information found on state verification lists. This provision has spawned a great deal of state voter ID legislation, which can easily be used to purge black and Hispanic voters when they show up to vote. In Georgia, the Secretary of State purged 80,000 voters in June 2006, even though to falsely register was already a crime.
A number of states have used HAVA to justify hiring Choice Point, a Republican-operated company to purge the voting rolls of “ineligible voters.” The danger here is that the voter rolls will be scrubbed as they were in Florida in 2000, where between 40,000 and 97,000 people were deprived of the right to vote under the cover of scrubbing the rolls in order to remove felons. Unfair scrubbing was an object of considerable interest in the United Kingdom, where a television investigative report explored the Florida situation in detail. A Choice Point spokesman observed, “Given the outcome of our work in Florida and with the new president in place, we think our services will expand across the country.” An estimated one million voters are expected to be unfairly disqualified from voting as a result of HAVA’s scrubbing provision. They will be disproportionately minority people. In 2006, a provision of HAVA takes effect that makes it possible to improve upon the scrubbing by giving many minority voters provisional ballots that will never be counted.
The 2002 “reform” bill was called the Helping America Vote Act. It was a measure that was to give the Republican Party a great advantage in future elections. Designed to eliminate hanging chads and other threats to the nation’s election system, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 may have unleashed even greater threats to the integrity of the ballot. It mandates that all states improve their training of election workers and balloting procedures by 2006. Congress promised to provide the states with $3.9 in aid over three years to carry out the provisions of the bill, but later proved slow in appropriating the money. States often used the money to implement “paperless ballots,” or touch-screen voting.
Machines that make possible paper validation audit trails in the event of malfunctions were unavailable when the 2002 act was passed. However such machines eventually were produced. They printed what the voter did, but the voter did not get a receipt. Often, there was a way for the voter to see the record of what he had done. Regardless of the type of device, they were far more error prone than any other method of voting. Sometimes the printers jammed. Sometimes the printed record did not match the electronic record of votes cast. The central programs for tabulating votes frequently broke down. By 2008, some jurisdictions were scrapping their touch screen voting machines.
Legislation to require audit trails died in the House Administration Democrat sponsors but has attracted only 8 from the nation’s governing party. For some reason, the Republican Congress has been unable to consider this legislation. It is impossible to prove beyond all doubt that electronic vote tampering has changed the results of major elections, but there is a plethora of evidence to suggest that control of the firms that service the voting machines and calculation programs has given the GOP a great advantage. Republicans added provisions that encourage scrubbing the rolls of ineligible voters and requires first-time voters to show identification of various sorts. These provisions make it difficult to challenge the purging of voters. This HAVA requirement has led to the introduction of state legislation to mandate such identification materials as would likely dampen participation in elections, particularly among minority people. In Florida, additional purging of voters was carried out under legislation that forbade the reproduction of the list of suspected felons.
When the secrecy provision was struck down in 2004, it was learned that a new list of purged voters contained nearly 50,000 names. Beginning, January 1, 2006, HAVA gives the 50 state secretaries of state the power to purge voters whose ID cards and Social Security numbers do not correspond with information found on state verification lists. This provision has spawned a great deal of state voter ID legislation, which can easily be used to purge black and Hispanic voters when they show up to vote. In Georgia, the Secretary of State purged 80,000 voters in June 2006, even though to falsely register was already a crime.
A number of states have used HAVA to justify hiring Choice Point, a Republican-operated company to purge the voting rolls of “ineligible voters.” The danger here is that the voter rolls will be scrubbed as they were in Florida in 2000, where between 40,000 and 97,000 people were deprived of the right to vote under the cover of scrubbing the rolls in order to remove felons. Unfair scrubbing was an object of considerable interest in the United Kingdom, where a television investigative report explored the Florida situation in detail. A Choice Point spokesman observed, “Given the outcome of our work in Florida and with the new president in place, we think our services will expand across the country.” An estimated one million voters are expected to be unfairly disqualified from voting as a result of HAVA’s scrubbing provision. They will be disproportionately minority people. In 2006, a provision of HAVA takes effect that makes it possible to improve upon the scrubbing by giving many minority voters provisional ballots that will never be counted.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The 2002 “reform” bill was called the Helping America Vote Act. It was a measure that was to give the Republican Party a great advantage in future elections. Designed to eliminate hanging chads and other threats to the nation’s election system, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 may have unleashed even greater threats to the integrity of the ballot. It mandates that all states improve their training of election workers and balloting procedures by 2006. Congress promised to provide the states with $3.9 in aid over three years to carry out the provisions of the bill, but later proved slow in appropriating the money. States often used the money to implement “paperless ballots,” or touch-screen voting.
Machines that make possible paper validation audit trails in the event of malfunctions were unavailable when the 2002 act was passed. However such machines eventually were produced. They printed what the voter did, but the voter did not get a receipt. Often, there was a way for the voter to see the record of what he had done. Regardless of the type of device, they were far more error prone than any other method of voting. Sometimes the printers jammed. Sometimes the printed record did not match the electronic record of votes cast. The central programs for tabulating votes frequently broke down. By 2008, some jurisdictions were scrapping their touch screen voting machines.
Legislation to require audit trails died in the House Administration Democrat sponsors but has attracted only 8 from the nation’s governing party. For some reason, the Republican Congress has been unable to consider this legislation. It is impossible to prove beyond all doubt that electronic vote tampering has changed the results of major elections, but there is a plethora of evidence to suggest that control of the firms that service the voting machines and calculation programs has given the GOP a great advantage. Republicans added provisions that encourage scrubbing the rolls of ineligible voters and requires first-time voters to show identification of various sorts. These provisions make it difficult to challenge the purging of voters. This HAVA requirement has led to the introduction of state legislation to mandate such identification materials as would likely dampen participation in elections, particularly among minority people. In Florida, additional purging of voters was carried out under legislation that forbade the reproduction of the list of suspected felons.
When the secrecy provision was struck down in 2004, it was learned that a new list of purged voters contained nearly 50,000 names. Beginning, January 1, 2006, HAVA gives the 50 state secretaries of state the power to purge voters whose ID cards and Social Security numbers do not correspond with information found on state verification lists. This provision has spawned a great deal of state voter ID legislation, which can easily be used to purge black and Hispanic voters when they show up to vote. In Georgia, the Secretary of State purged 80,000 voters in June 2006, even though to falsely register was already a crime.
A number of states have used HAVA to justify hiring Choice Point, a Republican-operated company to purge the voting rolls of “ineligible voters.” The danger here is that the voter rolls will be scrubbed as they were in Florida in 2000, where between 40,000 and 97,000 people were deprived of the right to vote under the cover of scrubbing the rolls in order to remove felons. Unfair scrubbing was an object of considerable interest in the United Kingdom, where a television investigative report explored the Florida situation in detail. A Choice Point spokesman observed, “Given the outcome of our work in Florida and with the new president in place, we think our services will expand across the country.” An estimated one million voters are expected to be unfairly disqualified from voting as a result of HAVA’s scrubbing provision. They will be disproportionately minority people. In 2006, a provision of HAVA takes effect that makes it possible to improve upon the scrubbing by giving many minority voters provisional ballots that will never be counted.
The 2002 “reform” bill was called the Helping America Vote Act. It was a measure that was to give the Republican Party a great advantage in future elections. Designed to eliminate hanging chads and other threats to the nation’s election system, the Help America Vote Act of 2002 may have unleashed even greater threats to the integrity of the ballot. It mandates that all states improve their training of election workers and balloting procedures by 2006. Congress promised to provide the states with $3.9 in aid over three years to carry out the provisions of the bill, but later proved slow in appropriating the money. States often used the money to implement “paperless ballots,” or touch-screen voting.
Machines that make possible paper validation audit trails in the event of malfunctions were unavailable when the 2002 act was passed. However such machines eventually were produced. They printed what the voter did, but the voter did not get a receipt. Often, there was a way for the voter to see the record of what he had done. Regardless of the type of device, they were far more error prone than any other method of voting. Sometimes the printers jammed. Sometimes the printed record did not match the electronic record of votes cast. The central programs for tabulating votes frequently broke down. By 2008, some jurisdictions were scrapping their touch screen voting machines.
Legislation to require audit trails died in the House Administration Democrat sponsors but has attracted only 8 from the nation’s governing party. For some reason, the Republican Congress has been unable to consider this legislation. It is impossible to prove beyond all doubt that electronic vote tampering has changed the results of major elections, but there is a plethora of evidence to suggest that control of the firms that service the voting machines and calculation programs has given the GOP a great advantage. Republicans added provisions that encourage scrubbing the rolls of ineligible voters and requires first-time voters to show identification of various sorts. These provisions make it difficult to challenge the purging of voters. This HAVA requirement has led to the introduction of state legislation to mandate such identification materials as would likely dampen participation in elections, particularly among minority people. In Florida, additional purging of voters was carried out under legislation that forbade the reproduction of the list of suspected felons.
When the secrecy provision was struck down in 2004, it was learned that a new list of purged voters contained nearly 50,000 names. Beginning, January 1, 2006, HAVA gives the 50 state secretaries of state the power to purge voters whose ID cards and Social Security numbers do not correspond with information found on state verification lists. This provision has spawned a great deal of state voter ID legislation, which can easily be used to purge black and Hispanic voters when they show up to vote. In Georgia, the Secretary of State purged 80,000 voters in June 2006, even though to falsely register was already a crime.
A number of states have used HAVA to justify hiring Choice Point, a Republican-operated company to purge the voting rolls of “ineligible voters.” The danger here is that the voter rolls will be scrubbed as they were in Florida in 2000, where between 40,000 and 97,000 people were deprived of the right to vote under the cover of scrubbing the rolls in order to remove felons. Unfair scrubbing was an object of considerable interest in the United Kingdom, where a television investigative report explored the Florida situation in detail. A Choice Point spokesman observed, “Given the outcome of our work in Florida and with the new president in place, we think our services will expand across the country.” An estimated one million voters are expected to be unfairly disqualified from voting as a result of HAVA’s scrubbing provision. They will be disproportionately minority people. In 2006, a provision of HAVA takes effect that makes it possible to improve upon the scrubbing by giving many minority voters provisional ballots that will never be counted.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The Disputed Election of 2000 in Florida: Part III, Loose Ends
More than a year after the election, President George W. Bush’s justice department hired Hans A. von Spakovsky, an official of the Voting Integrity Project, to see that federal elections are conducted fairly. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris hired the firm ostensibly to purge Florida voting rolls of felons. Their activities resulted in unjustly depriving thousands of blacks of their voting rights. At the same time, the Justice Department hired another lawyer to also work in the voting rights division, Hugh Joseph Beard. He had been a senior official for an anti-affirmative action organization known as the Center for Equal Opportunity. Bush’s Justice Department never released a report on its investigation into the complaints of the NAACP and others about irregularities associated with the 2000 election in Florida.
On April 19, 2002, Juan Williams of NPR discovered that 27,000 votes in Duval County (Jacksonville area) were not counted. Of that number, 16,000 were the votes of African Americans. In black precincts there, one in five votes were discarded, compared to one in fourteen in white areas. John Stafford, Republican supervisor of elections, had not disclosed at the time of the election how many uncounted ballots there were until the time had passed when the Gore people could file a challenge. A newspaper consortium arranged for a thorough study the Florida vote count. After the Al-Qaeda attack on America on September 11, 2001, The Wall Street Journal, a consortium member, said the study was no longer relevant and was not worth releasing. It had been scheduled for release on September 14, but this event was delayed. The study would not have named who should have won the presidential election in Florida and was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The NORC, under Andrew Greeley, is known for very careful work and guarded conclusions. One wonders why it was necessary to suppress the report. It might have been useful in promoting election procedure reform. The September 11 attack convinced the sponsors of the study that it should be cut short so that a nation threatened by terrorism could unite in support of its “Commander in Chief.”
In mid-October when the Commander-in-Chief’s popularity was sky high, the results of the truncated study were released. An analysis of 175,010 rejected ballots showed that Bush would have won if there were a thorough recount in only the four counties where Gore filed for a recount. The Gore people should have asked for a recount in Duval Country because there were 22,000 uncounted votes in Jacksonville. The Duval official in charge of counting votes told the Democrats that only a few hundred votes were discarded. Gore had consistently called for a statewide recount, and he publicly asked Bush to join in this demand Florida law required a full recount in these circumstances, but there were political and practical reasons that led him to formally file in only four counties.
If there were a complete recount in the entire state, including under-votes as well as over-votes, Gore would have won. There were 66,000 over-voters; 40,000 of them had a marking for Gore and 15,000 had a mark for Bush. Of the over-votes that people clearly tried to correct, 2,100 should have gone to Gore and 1,300 should have gone to Bush. Richard Winger of Ballot Access News found that 7,000 voters wrote “Gore” on the ballot as well as punched ballots for him. Florida law held that the intent of voters must be honored, but these ballots were not counted. Not long after the consortium results were reported, it was discovered that Judge Terry Lewis, who supervised the recount, had ordered the counties to turn in all over-voters for analysis. Even if a copy of the Lewis letter were available, the national press spun the story as though the evidence showed Bush would have won in a recount. However, if over0votes were excluded in a full recount, Bush would have won, even with hanging-chads and other under-votes were counted. The St. Petersburg Times concluded, “more Floridians went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than Bush.” The tragic events of September 11 lent enormous legitimacy to Bush, and the information on the disputed election no longer mattered. Gore did not comment on the study, only stating that he completely supported Bush in his war on terrorism.
Eighteen months after the election, George W. Bush’s Justice Department found that voting rights had been violated in only three Florida counties. No one was to be punished, but people were expected to admit their mistakes and procedures were expected to be put in place so that these offenses would not occur again. The offenses involved failures to provide language assistance to Haitian and Hispanics in three counties. No other problems at the polls in Florida were considered worth addressing. The Bush campaign never responded positively to requests that it explain how it spent $8 million during the recount battle.
In 2002, the IRS, for some reason, was unable to report on-line the soft money contributions of some 527c entities in 2000, so-called non-partisan PACs not controlled by federal office holders. There were no reports for ten of the largest. Some reports appeared and then vanished. Four blank pages appeared for the so-called American Values and Democracy Project, a PAC controlled by Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State who did so much to assure that the vote count there favored George W. Bush. She was running for Congress when the blank pages appeared. The reporting of this kind of soft money is important because this channel for soft-money was left open by the McCain-Feingold Campaign Contribution Act of 2002.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
On April 19, 2002, Juan Williams of NPR discovered that 27,000 votes in Duval County (Jacksonville area) were not counted. Of that number, 16,000 were the votes of African Americans. In black precincts there, one in five votes were discarded, compared to one in fourteen in white areas. John Stafford, Republican supervisor of elections, had not disclosed at the time of the election how many uncounted ballots there were until the time had passed when the Gore people could file a challenge. A newspaper consortium arranged for a thorough study the Florida vote count. After the Al-Qaeda attack on America on September 11, 2001, The Wall Street Journal, a consortium member, said the study was no longer relevant and was not worth releasing. It had been scheduled for release on September 14, but this event was delayed. The study would not have named who should have won the presidential election in Florida and was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. The NORC, under Andrew Greeley, is known for very careful work and guarded conclusions. One wonders why it was necessary to suppress the report. It might have been useful in promoting election procedure reform. The September 11 attack convinced the sponsors of the study that it should be cut short so that a nation threatened by terrorism could unite in support of its “Commander in Chief.”
In mid-October when the Commander-in-Chief’s popularity was sky high, the results of the truncated study were released. An analysis of 175,010 rejected ballots showed that Bush would have won if there were a thorough recount in only the four counties where Gore filed for a recount. The Gore people should have asked for a recount in Duval Country because there were 22,000 uncounted votes in Jacksonville. The Duval official in charge of counting votes told the Democrats that only a few hundred votes were discarded. Gore had consistently called for a statewide recount, and he publicly asked Bush to join in this demand Florida law required a full recount in these circumstances, but there were political and practical reasons that led him to formally file in only four counties.
If there were a complete recount in the entire state, including under-votes as well as over-votes, Gore would have won. There were 66,000 over-voters; 40,000 of them had a marking for Gore and 15,000 had a mark for Bush. Of the over-votes that people clearly tried to correct, 2,100 should have gone to Gore and 1,300 should have gone to Bush. Richard Winger of Ballot Access News found that 7,000 voters wrote “Gore” on the ballot as well as punched ballots for him. Florida law held that the intent of voters must be honored, but these ballots were not counted. Not long after the consortium results were reported, it was discovered that Judge Terry Lewis, who supervised the recount, had ordered the counties to turn in all over-voters for analysis. Even if a copy of the Lewis letter were available, the national press spun the story as though the evidence showed Bush would have won in a recount. However, if over0votes were excluded in a full recount, Bush would have won, even with hanging-chads and other under-votes were counted. The St. Petersburg Times concluded, “more Floridians went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than Bush.” The tragic events of September 11 lent enormous legitimacy to Bush, and the information on the disputed election no longer mattered. Gore did not comment on the study, only stating that he completely supported Bush in his war on terrorism.
Eighteen months after the election, George W. Bush’s Justice Department found that voting rights had been violated in only three Florida counties. No one was to be punished, but people were expected to admit their mistakes and procedures were expected to be put in place so that these offenses would not occur again. The offenses involved failures to provide language assistance to Haitian and Hispanics in three counties. No other problems at the polls in Florida were considered worth addressing. The Bush campaign never responded positively to requests that it explain how it spent $8 million during the recount battle.
In 2002, the IRS, for some reason, was unable to report on-line the soft money contributions of some 527c entities in 2000, so-called non-partisan PACs not controlled by federal office holders. There were no reports for ten of the largest. Some reports appeared and then vanished. Four blank pages appeared for the so-called American Values and Democracy Project, a PAC controlled by Katherine Harris, the Florida Secretary of State who did so much to assure that the vote count there favored George W. Bush. She was running for Congress when the blank pages appeared. The reporting of this kind of soft money is important because this channel for soft-money was left open by the McCain-Feingold Campaign Contribution Act of 2002.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The Disputed Election of 2000 in Florida: Part II, The Supremes Settle a Disputed Election
The disputed election was resolved by a partisan vote in the United States Supreme Court. A divided Florida Supreme Court ordered a full recount in which every effort would be made to honor the “clear intent” of the voters. The Supreme Court issued a stay order. A superior court can only stay the decision of another court when execution of the decision would do irreparable harm to the plaintiff. The counting could have continued without doing irreparable harm to Bush. It could have been halted later or its results could have been set aside when the Supreme Court invalidated the Florida decision. The majority decision setting aside the Florida decision came when time ran out for recounts. There was no time for the Florida court to remedy its decision in accordance with the decision of the five conservative Supreme Court justices.
Two of the five Republican justices had ample reasons to either recuse themselves or at least make public potential conflict of interest matters. Anton Scalia, who probably masterminded the judicial enthronement of George W. Bush, had two sons working for firms that represented Bush in the dispute. One worked for Ted Olson, Bush’s lead lawyer and brilliant right-wing legal activist. The other was in Barry Richard’s firm in Tallahassee. Federal law (28 USC 455) states explicitly that if the magistrate knows that one of his children “could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceedings” he is required to recuse himself. Scalia had also been a driving force behind the Federalist Society. The Federalists opposed the New Deal and affirmative action, and some were against any form of corporate regulation. At their 2002 conference, Lino Graglia of the University of Texas called upon the Federalists to be bold and work to “repeal all the laws” regulating business. This occurred in a year marked by many corporate scandals that demonstrated that existing regulatory machinery was too weak.
The election to Bush would reward Scalia’s hard work for the Federalist Society with the appointment of hundreds of right-wing judges. Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife was working for the Heritage Foundation, where she was already busy vetting the resumes of people who would be appointed by the Bush administration. This justice also had a conflict of interest problem. Sandra Day O’Connor had responded to the premature news of Gore’s election with great dismay because she would not retire from the Court while a Democrat was in the White House. When the case was being heard, O’Connor refused to accept the claim that Florida had an 80-year tradition of giving primacy to voter intent in recounts. She questioned the claim that any of the Florida ballots were confusing, saying the instructions for voting could not have been clearer.
Critics of the five conservative justices were easily able to demonstrate that the Court’s action was filled with legal errors and demonstrated incompetence as well as being morally wrong. Unfortunately, many like Alan Dershowitz eagerly took the next step in insisting that it demonstrated a failure of the court to carry out its duties “because of malice aforethought,” which simply canno4 be proven. The night Al Gore made his concession, Republican lawyers and visiting Republican congressional staffers gathered in a Tallahassee club, where they taunted, hooted, and jeered as Gore spoke. The staffers happily took the name “the Republican thugs.” These whites did not notice and would not have cared that the black staff who were serving the drinks were quietly crying.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Two of the five Republican justices had ample reasons to either recuse themselves or at least make public potential conflict of interest matters. Anton Scalia, who probably masterminded the judicial enthronement of George W. Bush, had two sons working for firms that represented Bush in the dispute. One worked for Ted Olson, Bush’s lead lawyer and brilliant right-wing legal activist. The other was in Barry Richard’s firm in Tallahassee. Federal law (28 USC 455) states explicitly that if the magistrate knows that one of his children “could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceedings” he is required to recuse himself. Scalia had also been a driving force behind the Federalist Society. The Federalists opposed the New Deal and affirmative action, and some were against any form of corporate regulation. At their 2002 conference, Lino Graglia of the University of Texas called upon the Federalists to be bold and work to “repeal all the laws” regulating business. This occurred in a year marked by many corporate scandals that demonstrated that existing regulatory machinery was too weak.
The election to Bush would reward Scalia’s hard work for the Federalist Society with the appointment of hundreds of right-wing judges. Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife was working for the Heritage Foundation, where she was already busy vetting the resumes of people who would be appointed by the Bush administration. This justice also had a conflict of interest problem. Sandra Day O’Connor had responded to the premature news of Gore’s election with great dismay because she would not retire from the Court while a Democrat was in the White House. When the case was being heard, O’Connor refused to accept the claim that Florida had an 80-year tradition of giving primacy to voter intent in recounts. She questioned the claim that any of the Florida ballots were confusing, saying the instructions for voting could not have been clearer.
Critics of the five conservative justices were easily able to demonstrate that the Court’s action was filled with legal errors and demonstrated incompetence as well as being morally wrong. Unfortunately, many like Alan Dershowitz eagerly took the next step in insisting that it demonstrated a failure of the court to carry out its duties “because of malice aforethought,” which simply canno4 be proven. The night Al Gore made his concession, Republican lawyers and visiting Republican congressional staffers gathered in a Tallahassee club, where they taunted, hooted, and jeered as Gore spoke. The staffers happily took the name “the Republican thugs.” These whites did not notice and would not have cared that the black staff who were serving the drinks were quietly crying.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
The Disputed Election of 2000 in Florida, Part I
The 2000 election came down to Florida’s disputed electoral votes. The son of former President George Bush lost the popular vote by 550,000 vote but secured the electoral vote by holding on to a slim lead throughout in Florida despite a protracted dispute about how votes there should be counted. In the end, Gore was to lose Florida by 537 votes. Ralph Nader, a candidate to the left of Gore, won 97,488 votes in Florida.
A confusing “butterfly” ballot in Palm Beach County led senior citizens to select Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Albert Gore. Buchanan received 3,407 votes. Even Buchanan admitted that he was entitled to only 300 or 400 of them, as Jewish liberals inhabit the area. The Republican line, repeated endlessly by Rush Limbaugh, was that there and insisted there was absolutely nothing wrong with the layout of the ballot. An unusually large number of ballots were invalidated for various reasons. At first it appeared that this had occurred mainly in areas where large numbers of retirees lived and there were many jokes about aged Democrats not being smart enough to vote properly. It soon occurred that proportionately, the largest number of disqualified ballots were those of African Americans in large urban areas. A scholarly analysis of voided ballots in 1996 revealed that minority voters have much higher levels of voided ballots. Educational level was positively correlated with lower levels of voided ballots. It was also found that large urban counties had smaller levels of invalidated ballots. Fully 10% of African-American ballots in Florida were invalidated; in some counties that number approached 25%. If black votes had only been invalidated at the same rate as the votes of whites, there would have been more than 50,000 valid black votes in the final count.
There was speculation about rigged voting machines and hacking into vote counting programs. In the 2000 Florida elections, the confused results from Volusia County, Florida demonstrated how hackable electronic vote processing systems are systems are. At 10 PM on election night, Al Gore was leading George W. Bush by roughly 83,000 to 62,000 votes. Half an hour later, Gore’s total had fallen by 16,000 votes and James Harris, the Socialist Labor candidate, had picked up 10,000 votes in Volusia County. In that and parts of several other counties, Gore was showing a minus or negative 16,022. Based partly on this inaccurate information, Gore conceded the election and changed his mind after carefully reviewing the data. The press reported that a “faulty memory card” was responsible for the dramatic change. However the best evidence suggests that there were two different uploads using two different memory cards. Unsuccessful efforts were made to find the second card.
Bush had many advantages in Florida from the outset. On election night, Bush cousin John Ellis manned the Fox election desk and spoke with his cousin six times that night. Ellis prematurely called the election for Bush. NBC, possibly prodded by GE CEO Jack Welch, quickly followed, which began the chain reaction of declaring George W. Bush the next president of the United States. His brother JEB was governor of the Sunshine State and his state campaign chairman Katherine Harris was responsible for seeing that the votes were counted fairly. The decision to purge illegal voters from the voter rolls were made before Katherine Harris became Secretary of State. Her predecessor, another Republican, hired a firm to do the job for $5,700. That operator was later fired, and an initial contract was given to a Georgia firm for a fee of $2,317,800.
The successful contractor, Choice Point, has strong ties to the Republican Party. The work was to be done by its DBT (Data Base Technologies) subsidiary, even though the FBI had cancelled its data-handling contract with it due to an officer of the firm’s criminal contacts. In 1998, Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris set in motion the program to scrub the voter rolls of fraudulent votes, particularly felons and the dead. The program was unique in that they hired a private firm in Georgia with strong Republican Party ties to do the work. Eventually costing over $4,000,000 the program was carried out in haste, with few efforts to correct obvious errors. It resulted in unjustly disenfranchising thousands. The computer program used by Database Technologies, Incorporated, eliminated people whose vital statistics were the same as those of known felons. In fact, the program sought possible felons rather than real felons. Five years after the election, an analysis of the Choice Point data suggests that 91,000 innocent Democrats and blacks were stripped of their vote in 2000. Choice Point claimed that it always looked at Social Security numbers, but their work sheets showed that only race was always referenced.
In 95% of the cases, the Social Security number was not checked. Of those purged from the rolls, at least 44% were African Americans. In that election, Blacks voted more than 90% for Gore, and Bush only won by 537 votes. The DBT contract specified that there would be “manual verification using telephone calls and statistical sampling.” Sampling to verify the lists of name to be purged did not occur. The firm may been partly at fault, but the evidence is clear that the State of Florida repeatedly pressed it to produce larger and larger lists by suspending various safeguards. DBT, concerned about acquiring a reputation for sloppy work, protested some of these instructions but ultimately complied. Former felons from other states were stripped of their right to vote even if their former states had restored to them the right to vote. There were two court rulings ordering the Jeb Bush to give the vote to people whose full civil rights had been restored in other states. Bush refused to obey the orders and insisted that these people pursue a cumbersome process to obtain Florida pardons. A letter from the governor’s office verified that this was the case, but the original copy later turned up missing, and an altered version of the original was found in the files. ABC reporter Dave Ruppe discovered the document switch, but the network refused to air the story.
There is no way to prove that program was designed for partisan purposes or to reduce the Black vote. Former convicts who came from states that restored voting rights to them were prevented from voting despite federal law on this point and a decision of the Florida Court of Appeals. They were told it was necessary to obtain clemency in Florida. When the legislature passed ballot reform in 2001, it left the door open for the same abuses in the future. The pre-election purging of the registration rolls provided Bush with his margin of victory. James Baker III, who managed the Republican side of the recount dispute, later told Russian oil moguls that he had “fixed” the Florida vote. It is difficult to determine what he meant, but preventing the full recount and steering the matter to the Supreme Court did loc k in the Bush victory.
In some counties, Blacks and Hispanics were required to produce two forms of identification in order to vote. The law required only one form. Laptop computers were used in some white precincts to facilitate correction of registration problems; they were not used in black precincts. In some areas, police road checks slowed traffic in black precincts, preventing many from voting. In Gadsden County, where 52 % of the residents were black, voting machines were used that had mechanisms that would reject incorrect ballots. Improperly marked ballots could be rejected so that the voter could try again. In this county, however, the reject mechanisms were disabled. In all, Florida did not count 179,855 ballots, and African Americans cast a disproportionately large number of them. The Gore campaign demanded a manual recount in four counties while the Republicans insisted mechanized recounts alone were legal. Political scientist Gerald Fitzpatrick got to the heart of the matter in writing, “During the campaign Republicans claimed to trust the people, but in the post-election battle they placed their trust in machines.” Gore briefly considered calling for a full state recount, but he soon learned that Florida law did not provide for a full state recount. , as it turned out, a Florida judge finally did order a full state recount, which would have been to Gore’s advantage had the U.S. Supreme Court been willing to let a recount take place.
Al Gore never challenged the modification of thousands of absentee ballots by Republicans in Seminole and Martin Counties. Massive voting irregularities in Jacksonville were not challenged and he was unable to do anything about Secretary of State Katherine Harris’s refusal to recount more than a million votes on mark sense cards and sheets even though Florida law required that all votes be recounted in very close elections.
The GOP electoral count campaign in Florida included importing demonstrators to Miami in order to frighten the election judges into discontinuing a hand recount of ballots. In addition, the GOP used members of a Miami Cuban operation to bring a recount to a halt. Many of the imported demonstrators were aides to Republican Congressmen and Senators, and one was a top lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee. Violation of nuisance laws as well as lies and exaggerations might be considered barely legitimate means to obstruct the recount, but the employment of physical intimidation is another sad reflection of the authoritarian tendencies of many of these people. Republican House whip Tom De Lay quickly orchestrated an effort to send 200 to 250 Congressional staffers and Republican operatives to Florida to act as rioters and demonstrators. The Bush campaign spent $1.2 million to take these Republican staffers from Washington to demonstrate and attempt to stop voting recounts in Florida.
Former New York Congressman John Sweeney went to Florida to direct these shock troops, who found their daily marching orders slid under hotel room doors early each morning. The GOP commandos appeared in many places, often with signs telling national Democratic spokespersons to go home. The most serious instance of thuggery occurred in Miami, but another occurred in a Tallahassee library, where Republican operatives broke into a library to prevent a recount. John Bolton, a Republican Congressional staffer was among these operatives, and was later rewarded for his efforts with appointment as Assistant Secretary of Defense for arms Control. Later he became Ambassador to the UN. Matt Schlapp, another of these operatives, became special assistant to President bush for political affairs. The Miami Herald reported more than fifty of these people who rewarded with federal offices for these disgraceful activities. Their greatest success was in staging a near riot in the Miami Dade Court House that helped intimidate the election judges to stop the recount. The other factor influencing the judges was fear of threatened attacks by pro-Bush Cubans. Candidate Bush rewarded these zealots with a big party at the posh Hyatt in Fort Lauderdale and flew Wayne Newton in to entertain the troops. Bush and Cheney spoke to many of their loyalists via telephone during the blowout, joking about their antics.
Secretary of State Harris and her assistants said a “fire wall” had been built between her office and that of Governor Jeb Bush. The governor publicly recused himself from the matter. Harris brought in Dan Schnut, an out-of-state Republican operative, to help her manage the vote count. However, telephone records revealed constant contact between Bush and Harris. Frank Jiminez, quickly resigned as the governor’s acting counsel, so he could be in constant touch with Harris and direct the partisan operations of her office. Five other top Bush operatives temporarily resigned so they could assist Jimenes.
Bush surrogates continually insisted that hand examination of the ballots was illegal under Florida law; that Gore’s request was unprecedented; that recounts in which different counties use different standards was unprecedented, and that the Democrats were systematically determined to prevent military absentee ballots from being counted. The first three charges were completely false but repeated so often that a majority of Americans came around to the view that Gore should give up. With regard to the matter of military ballots; the truth was that the Republicans were systematically and successfully preventing them from being counted in Democratic counties while assuring that they be counted in Republican counties. Secretary Harris ruled that the military ballots need not be postmarked on or before Election Day, which made it possible to round up votes cast after Election Day and send them to Florida. Republicans were able to spin this issue to their benefit by always calling the absentee ballots “military absentee” or “military ballots.” This won elite and press opinion to their side and greatly limited interest in the fact that many of the ballots were illegal for various reasons, including the fact that more than a few were cast days after the election was over.
When New York Times reporters uncovered both inappropriate and illegal activities on the part of Republican congressmen in respect to the disputed presidential election in Florida, the editors all but dismissed the stories, saying that the Republicans had simply “out hustled” the Democrats. In what was at least very inappropriate conduct; one Congressman used military officers to distribute propaganda among military personnel who were Florida residents. Representative Stephen Buyer of Indiana used his position on the Armed Services Committee to obtain from the military the telephone numbers of mail and email addresses of men and women in the services. This was clearly a case of asking military personnel to become involved in electoral politics. The Congressman’s willingness to politicize the military to garner votes provides another illustration of a Republican tendency to resort to authoritarian conduct. The military’s tradition of remaining aloof from partisan politics seemed less important than defeating a liberal. Buyer requested immediate action on his request because he and his allies were going to use it to contact people whose absentee ballots had been rejected because they had not met the requirements of Florida law. The strategy was to defend those who most likely cast Republican ballots while preventing the counting of the same kind of ballots in counties that were heavily Democratic. It worked well, as only 20% of overseas ballots in strongly Gore counties were counted.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
A confusing “butterfly” ballot in Palm Beach County led senior citizens to select Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Albert Gore. Buchanan received 3,407 votes. Even Buchanan admitted that he was entitled to only 300 or 400 of them, as Jewish liberals inhabit the area. The Republican line, repeated endlessly by Rush Limbaugh, was that there and insisted there was absolutely nothing wrong with the layout of the ballot. An unusually large number of ballots were invalidated for various reasons. At first it appeared that this had occurred mainly in areas where large numbers of retirees lived and there were many jokes about aged Democrats not being smart enough to vote properly. It soon occurred that proportionately, the largest number of disqualified ballots were those of African Americans in large urban areas. A scholarly analysis of voided ballots in 1996 revealed that minority voters have much higher levels of voided ballots. Educational level was positively correlated with lower levels of voided ballots. It was also found that large urban counties had smaller levels of invalidated ballots. Fully 10% of African-American ballots in Florida were invalidated; in some counties that number approached 25%. If black votes had only been invalidated at the same rate as the votes of whites, there would have been more than 50,000 valid black votes in the final count.
There was speculation about rigged voting machines and hacking into vote counting programs. In the 2000 Florida elections, the confused results from Volusia County, Florida demonstrated how hackable electronic vote processing systems are systems are. At 10 PM on election night, Al Gore was leading George W. Bush by roughly 83,000 to 62,000 votes. Half an hour later, Gore’s total had fallen by 16,000 votes and James Harris, the Socialist Labor candidate, had picked up 10,000 votes in Volusia County. In that and parts of several other counties, Gore was showing a minus or negative 16,022. Based partly on this inaccurate information, Gore conceded the election and changed his mind after carefully reviewing the data. The press reported that a “faulty memory card” was responsible for the dramatic change. However the best evidence suggests that there were two different uploads using two different memory cards. Unsuccessful efforts were made to find the second card.
Bush had many advantages in Florida from the outset. On election night, Bush cousin John Ellis manned the Fox election desk and spoke with his cousin six times that night. Ellis prematurely called the election for Bush. NBC, possibly prodded by GE CEO Jack Welch, quickly followed, which began the chain reaction of declaring George W. Bush the next president of the United States. His brother JEB was governor of the Sunshine State and his state campaign chairman Katherine Harris was responsible for seeing that the votes were counted fairly. The decision to purge illegal voters from the voter rolls were made before Katherine Harris became Secretary of State. Her predecessor, another Republican, hired a firm to do the job for $5,700. That operator was later fired, and an initial contract was given to a Georgia firm for a fee of $2,317,800.
The successful contractor, Choice Point, has strong ties to the Republican Party. The work was to be done by its DBT (Data Base Technologies) subsidiary, even though the FBI had cancelled its data-handling contract with it due to an officer of the firm’s criminal contacts. In 1998, Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris set in motion the program to scrub the voter rolls of fraudulent votes, particularly felons and the dead. The program was unique in that they hired a private firm in Georgia with strong Republican Party ties to do the work. Eventually costing over $4,000,000 the program was carried out in haste, with few efforts to correct obvious errors. It resulted in unjustly disenfranchising thousands. The computer program used by Database Technologies, Incorporated, eliminated people whose vital statistics were the same as those of known felons. In fact, the program sought possible felons rather than real felons. Five years after the election, an analysis of the Choice Point data suggests that 91,000 innocent Democrats and blacks were stripped of their vote in 2000. Choice Point claimed that it always looked at Social Security numbers, but their work sheets showed that only race was always referenced.
In 95% of the cases, the Social Security number was not checked. Of those purged from the rolls, at least 44% were African Americans. In that election, Blacks voted more than 90% for Gore, and Bush only won by 537 votes. The DBT contract specified that there would be “manual verification using telephone calls and statistical sampling.” Sampling to verify the lists of name to be purged did not occur. The firm may been partly at fault, but the evidence is clear that the State of Florida repeatedly pressed it to produce larger and larger lists by suspending various safeguards. DBT, concerned about acquiring a reputation for sloppy work, protested some of these instructions but ultimately complied. Former felons from other states were stripped of their right to vote even if their former states had restored to them the right to vote. There were two court rulings ordering the Jeb Bush to give the vote to people whose full civil rights had been restored in other states. Bush refused to obey the orders and insisted that these people pursue a cumbersome process to obtain Florida pardons. A letter from the governor’s office verified that this was the case, but the original copy later turned up missing, and an altered version of the original was found in the files. ABC reporter Dave Ruppe discovered the document switch, but the network refused to air the story.
There is no way to prove that program was designed for partisan purposes or to reduce the Black vote. Former convicts who came from states that restored voting rights to them were prevented from voting despite federal law on this point and a decision of the Florida Court of Appeals. They were told it was necessary to obtain clemency in Florida. When the legislature passed ballot reform in 2001, it left the door open for the same abuses in the future. The pre-election purging of the registration rolls provided Bush with his margin of victory. James Baker III, who managed the Republican side of the recount dispute, later told Russian oil moguls that he had “fixed” the Florida vote. It is difficult to determine what he meant, but preventing the full recount and steering the matter to the Supreme Court did loc k in the Bush victory.
In some counties, Blacks and Hispanics were required to produce two forms of identification in order to vote. The law required only one form. Laptop computers were used in some white precincts to facilitate correction of registration problems; they were not used in black precincts. In some areas, police road checks slowed traffic in black precincts, preventing many from voting. In Gadsden County, where 52 % of the residents were black, voting machines were used that had mechanisms that would reject incorrect ballots. Improperly marked ballots could be rejected so that the voter could try again. In this county, however, the reject mechanisms were disabled. In all, Florida did not count 179,855 ballots, and African Americans cast a disproportionately large number of them. The Gore campaign demanded a manual recount in four counties while the Republicans insisted mechanized recounts alone were legal. Political scientist Gerald Fitzpatrick got to the heart of the matter in writing, “During the campaign Republicans claimed to trust the people, but in the post-election battle they placed their trust in machines.” Gore briefly considered calling for a full state recount, but he soon learned that Florida law did not provide for a full state recount. , as it turned out, a Florida judge finally did order a full state recount, which would have been to Gore’s advantage had the U.S. Supreme Court been willing to let a recount take place.
Al Gore never challenged the modification of thousands of absentee ballots by Republicans in Seminole and Martin Counties. Massive voting irregularities in Jacksonville were not challenged and he was unable to do anything about Secretary of State Katherine Harris’s refusal to recount more than a million votes on mark sense cards and sheets even though Florida law required that all votes be recounted in very close elections.
The GOP electoral count campaign in Florida included importing demonstrators to Miami in order to frighten the election judges into discontinuing a hand recount of ballots. In addition, the GOP used members of a Miami Cuban operation to bring a recount to a halt. Many of the imported demonstrators were aides to Republican Congressmen and Senators, and one was a top lawyer for the House Judiciary Committee. Violation of nuisance laws as well as lies and exaggerations might be considered barely legitimate means to obstruct the recount, but the employment of physical intimidation is another sad reflection of the authoritarian tendencies of many of these people. Republican House whip Tom De Lay quickly orchestrated an effort to send 200 to 250 Congressional staffers and Republican operatives to Florida to act as rioters and demonstrators. The Bush campaign spent $1.2 million to take these Republican staffers from Washington to demonstrate and attempt to stop voting recounts in Florida.
Former New York Congressman John Sweeney went to Florida to direct these shock troops, who found their daily marching orders slid under hotel room doors early each morning. The GOP commandos appeared in many places, often with signs telling national Democratic spokespersons to go home. The most serious instance of thuggery occurred in Miami, but another occurred in a Tallahassee library, where Republican operatives broke into a library to prevent a recount. John Bolton, a Republican Congressional staffer was among these operatives, and was later rewarded for his efforts with appointment as Assistant Secretary of Defense for arms Control. Later he became Ambassador to the UN. Matt Schlapp, another of these operatives, became special assistant to President bush for political affairs. The Miami Herald reported more than fifty of these people who rewarded with federal offices for these disgraceful activities. Their greatest success was in staging a near riot in the Miami Dade Court House that helped intimidate the election judges to stop the recount. The other factor influencing the judges was fear of threatened attacks by pro-Bush Cubans. Candidate Bush rewarded these zealots with a big party at the posh Hyatt in Fort Lauderdale and flew Wayne Newton in to entertain the troops. Bush and Cheney spoke to many of their loyalists via telephone during the blowout, joking about their antics.
Secretary of State Harris and her assistants said a “fire wall” had been built between her office and that of Governor Jeb Bush. The governor publicly recused himself from the matter. Harris brought in Dan Schnut, an out-of-state Republican operative, to help her manage the vote count. However, telephone records revealed constant contact between Bush and Harris. Frank Jiminez, quickly resigned as the governor’s acting counsel, so he could be in constant touch with Harris and direct the partisan operations of her office. Five other top Bush operatives temporarily resigned so they could assist Jimenes.
Bush surrogates continually insisted that hand examination of the ballots was illegal under Florida law; that Gore’s request was unprecedented; that recounts in which different counties use different standards was unprecedented, and that the Democrats were systematically determined to prevent military absentee ballots from being counted. The first three charges were completely false but repeated so often that a majority of Americans came around to the view that Gore should give up. With regard to the matter of military ballots; the truth was that the Republicans were systematically and successfully preventing them from being counted in Democratic counties while assuring that they be counted in Republican counties. Secretary Harris ruled that the military ballots need not be postmarked on or before Election Day, which made it possible to round up votes cast after Election Day and send them to Florida. Republicans were able to spin this issue to their benefit by always calling the absentee ballots “military absentee” or “military ballots.” This won elite and press opinion to their side and greatly limited interest in the fact that many of the ballots were illegal for various reasons, including the fact that more than a few were cast days after the election was over.
When New York Times reporters uncovered both inappropriate and illegal activities on the part of Republican congressmen in respect to the disputed presidential election in Florida, the editors all but dismissed the stories, saying that the Republicans had simply “out hustled” the Democrats. In what was at least very inappropriate conduct; one Congressman used military officers to distribute propaganda among military personnel who were Florida residents. Representative Stephen Buyer of Indiana used his position on the Armed Services Committee to obtain from the military the telephone numbers of mail and email addresses of men and women in the services. This was clearly a case of asking military personnel to become involved in electoral politics. The Congressman’s willingness to politicize the military to garner votes provides another illustration of a Republican tendency to resort to authoritarian conduct. The military’s tradition of remaining aloof from partisan politics seemed less important than defeating a liberal. Buyer requested immediate action on his request because he and his allies were going to use it to contact people whose absentee ballots had been rejected because they had not met the requirements of Florida law. The strategy was to defend those who most likely cast Republican ballots while preventing the counting of the same kind of ballots in counties that were heavily Democratic. It worked well, as only 20% of overseas ballots in strongly Gore counties were counted.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Bare Knuckle Politics: Karl Rove
Karl Rove, an Atwater protégé, had a reputation for “dirty tricks” and was considered a political genius. He had worked for George H.W. Bush and became advisor to George W. Bush, who called him “Boy Genius” and: “Turd Blossom.” Rove recommended that Bush readNeo Conservative authors in preparation for the primaries. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, Rove was to prove his effectiveness when that state was flooded with rumors that John McCain was gay, his wife Cindy was a drug addict, and McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh was really the product of a liaison with a black prostitute. Mc Cain learned his lesson, and hired Terry Nelson, an effective trickster, to run his 2008 presidential campaign. Nelson ran the 2002 New Hampshire campaign in which operative James Tobin was sent to prison phone jamming. Nelson had also headed opposition research for the RNC and was responsible for the advertisement that kept Harold Ford from becoming a US Senator in the 2006 Tennessee election. It showed a white bimbo indicating she had partied with Ford, a Black man.
Rove has been called the most influential presidential advisor since James Baker, who served Bush’s father and managed the battle against a recount in the 2000 Florida presidential election. Few policies are approved in the Bush White House unless they first pass through Rove’s office. Unlike his close friend and mentor Lee Atwater, he is a policy wonk who offers advice on all sorts of policy questions. Although he studies polls very carefully, he is careful to never frame suggestions for policy in terms of what he has learned from the polls. This is because the Bushies repeatedly expressed disdain for Clinton because he was often guided by polling data.
Rove made no secret of his intention of making the Republicans the nation’s permanent governing party. As the president’s chief domestic advisor, he constantly shaped policy to fulfill this goal. In the process, he sometimes appeared to have been “subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch.” Without getting indicted, he was instrumental in outing a covert CIA agent whose husband had criticized Bush policies. He was also involved in firing US attorneys who did not use their offices for political purposes or had made the mistake of investigated Republicans. The staff to the General Services Administration to instruct personnel on how to use government contracts to elect Republicans to Congress. Mississippi’s Republican governor was permitted to spend all but $167,000,000 of its $1.7 billion on helping business and the affluent even though the law required that half the federal aid most be spent on the poor.
Rove aides even showed charts that indicated who was vulnerable in the 2008 races. The New York Times blamed Rove for the Bush policy of ignoring the needs of Louisiana, which had a Democrat governor, after Hurricane Katrina while doing much more for Republican Mississippi, which had suffered less. That judgment might be a bit harsh, but the Times was on target in saying that Rovian policy led “the Bush administration’s far more menacing failure to distinguish the Republican Party from the government, or the state itself.” The great majority of Bush supporters shared this outlook, that anything the administration did to injure liberals and promote the Republican Party was acceptable in the great battle between good and evil. Rove left the Bush White House on September 1, 2007.
One technique for creating a permanent majority was to reduce the turnout of groups that were likely to vote Democratic. Funding purges of registration rolls that mistakenly removed legitimate voters in an effort to remove felons accomplished this. States were encouraged to enact measures calling for special Ids and other procedures that could be used to hold down the number of poor and minority voters.
To justify these steps, the Bush administration would continually complain about widespread voter fraud, and its US attorneys were expected to develop many cases of fraud. But by 2006, only 86 people –mostly Democrats—were convicted of voting crimes, “many on trivial, trumped up charges.” There was a cutback in prosecutions of officials who kept people from having access to the polls. Some of the US Attorneys purged in 2007 were removed for insufficient zeal in creating voter fraud cases. A report commissioned by the government noted that “there is little polling place fraud,” but the White House edited it to suggest the opposite
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Rove has been called the most influential presidential advisor since James Baker, who served Bush’s father and managed the battle against a recount in the 2000 Florida presidential election. Few policies are approved in the Bush White House unless they first pass through Rove’s office. Unlike his close friend and mentor Lee Atwater, he is a policy wonk who offers advice on all sorts of policy questions. Although he studies polls very carefully, he is careful to never frame suggestions for policy in terms of what he has learned from the polls. This is because the Bushies repeatedly expressed disdain for Clinton because he was often guided by polling data.
Rove made no secret of his intention of making the Republicans the nation’s permanent governing party. As the president’s chief domestic advisor, he constantly shaped policy to fulfill this goal. In the process, he sometimes appeared to have been “subverting the governmental functions of the executive branch.” Without getting indicted, he was instrumental in outing a covert CIA agent whose husband had criticized Bush policies. He was also involved in firing US attorneys who did not use their offices for political purposes or had made the mistake of investigated Republicans. The staff to the General Services Administration to instruct personnel on how to use government contracts to elect Republicans to Congress. Mississippi’s Republican governor was permitted to spend all but $167,000,000 of its $1.7 billion on helping business and the affluent even though the law required that half the federal aid most be spent on the poor.
Rove aides even showed charts that indicated who was vulnerable in the 2008 races. The New York Times blamed Rove for the Bush policy of ignoring the needs of Louisiana, which had a Democrat governor, after Hurricane Katrina while doing much more for Republican Mississippi, which had suffered less. That judgment might be a bit harsh, but the Times was on target in saying that Rovian policy led “the Bush administration’s far more menacing failure to distinguish the Republican Party from the government, or the state itself.” The great majority of Bush supporters shared this outlook, that anything the administration did to injure liberals and promote the Republican Party was acceptable in the great battle between good and evil. Rove left the Bush White House on September 1, 2007.
One technique for creating a permanent majority was to reduce the turnout of groups that were likely to vote Democratic. Funding purges of registration rolls that mistakenly removed legitimate voters in an effort to remove felons accomplished this. States were encouraged to enact measures calling for special Ids and other procedures that could be used to hold down the number of poor and minority voters.
To justify these steps, the Bush administration would continually complain about widespread voter fraud, and its US attorneys were expected to develop many cases of fraud. But by 2006, only 86 people –mostly Democrats—were convicted of voting crimes, “many on trivial, trumped up charges.” There was a cutback in prosecutions of officials who kept people from having access to the polls. Some of the US Attorneys purged in 2007 were removed for insufficient zeal in creating voter fraud cases. A report commissioned by the government noted that “there is little polling place fraud,” but the White House edited it to suggest the opposite
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Richard M. Scaife’s Wars on Liberals and Feminists
Mr. Scaife played an important role in securing the confirmation of Clarence Thomas, whom George Bush, Sr. had nominated to the Supreme Court. Anita Hill accused Thomas, a right-winger, of sexual harassment.. Scaife was active in the GOP effort to discredit her through his funding of The American Spectator and his Center for Human Rights. The American Spectator was edited by Bob Tyrell, a gifted writer given to drink and women, one of whom did time for smuggling cocaine into Great Britain. Tom Bethell, a Spectator columnist reflected the periodical’s tone when he denounced the Maryknoll nuns who were raped and murdered in El Salvador, claiming that as “bull-dyke socialists” they deserved this treatment. The Spectator made much of “troopergate”, claims about Bill Clinton’s sex life based on stories Scaife’s Arkansas Project purchased from Governor Clinton’s bodyguards.
The coordinated effort to discredit Hill was led by David Brock, a Sepectator writer, who was employed to crank out anti-Hill material. Aides to Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee gave him access to unreleased depositions of dubious value, and the Bush White House provided him with psychiatric profiles that suggested that Hill suffered from “erotomania” and was a lesbian “acting out.” Brock claimed that Terry Wooten, who was GOP chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, provided some of the documents. Wooten later denied under oath that he did so when being confirmed as a federal judge. When Thomas critics charged that Judge Thomas liked to rent pornographic videos, Brock discredited the charges even though he had evidence they were true. Rush Limbaugh, the Republican radio publicist, read verbatim the stuff Brock cranked out. Brock later published an apology; long after the damage was done. Mr. Justice Thomas later rewarded Limbaugh by presiding at his second marriage.
On March 9, 1998 conservative journalist David Brock, who had written for the Scaife-financed American Spectator, released a letter of apology that he had written to President Clinton. He admitted being part of a well-financed effort to slander Clinton and said that two Arkansas state troopers had been paid to exaggerate and lie in telling stories. The Washington Post and New York Times gave the story little play, consigning it to the back pages. On the next day, Brock said on CNN’s “Crossfire” that Mrs. Clinton was correct in saying her husband was the target of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Journalists across the political spectrum had ridiculed Mrs. Clinton for imagining that there was some sort of vast right wing conspiracy against she and her beleaguered husband.
Brock added that New Gingrich’s ally Cliff Johnson, a Clinton enemy, had done much to orchestrate press coverage of Clinton’s philandering and had brought Brock into the picture. It is difficult to determine how “vast” the conspiracy was. After David Brock published a book in 2002 detailing his experiences within the conservative scandal machine, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “that the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ is not an overheated metaphor but a straightforward reality, and that it works a lot like a special-interest lobby. A It also involved Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s office, which was illegally giving grand jury testimony to the press. Citizens for Honest Government, a right wing advocacy organization that is tied to Reverend Jerry Falwell, played a role in the attacks on the Clintons by paying four state troopers and others over $200,000 to provide the mainstream press information about Clinton. The organization signed a contract with the troopers, who agreed to challenge the official finding that White House Counsel Vincent Foster committed suicide in a Washington, D.C. park. They were to claim that a White House aid made a telephone call about Foster’s death hours before it was reported. A check of White House telephone records proved the troopers were mistaken.
Richard Mellon Scaife’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Scaife-financed Western Journalism Center, and British right-wing journalist Ambrose-Evans Pritchard pushed the story that Foster was allegedly murdered. The latter had a doctored photograph of Foster’s body that he thought proved suicide was impossible. Chris Ruddy of the Tribune-Review pursued the story and the Western Journalism Center gave him an award for courageous journalism., an award which was presented by Columnist Robert Novak, sometimes called the “Prince of Darkness” Far-Right radio host Rush Limbaugh improved upon the story by claiming to have evidence that Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton and later moved to Fort Marcy Park. His evidence was a non-existent newsletter supposedly issued by a respected D.C. consulting firm. Rush Limbaugh repeatedly aired them on his broadcast. It also alluded to 56 untimely deaths, 35 of which were in the crash of a plane carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in Croatia in 1996.
A CNN-Time poll found in August 1995, that 20% of the public thought Foster had been murdered. Ruddy had appeared on many talk shows and a great deal of money had been raised to spread the story through videos. Rev. Falwell sold 150,000 copies of a popular videotape entitled the “Clinton Chronicles,” which focused on the alleged murder of Foster and other accusations against the Clintons. A firm that had cranked out angry anti-gay videos produced the tape. Based on charges made by Larry Nichols, the “Clinton Chronicles” claimed that the president was a murderer, a drug runner, and a cocaine addict. Clinton was also blamed for a burglary and the murder of a trooper’s ex-wife. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette looked into the charges and found them baseless.
In Unlimited Access, Gary Aldrich claimed that Foster killed himself because he feared that his affair with Hillary Clinton would be revealed. Aldrich, an ex-FBI agent who worked on security clearances in the White House, also claimed that the White House Christmas tree had many pornographic ornaments and that Clinton regularly disappeared to a DC Marriott for extended trysts. His photographs of the tree could have been of anyone’s tree and showed nothing, and the details of the Marriott story were quickly disproved. Nevertheless the book sold half a million copies. He was even featured on the Wall Street Journal’s op ed page as an “investigative writer.” Aldrich said he had no interest in politics, but a Republican operative took him to the television studio when he appeared on “This Week with David Brinkley” on ABC. George Will picked Aldrich apart on that broadcast, but other conservative pundits closed ranks behind him.
Aldrich had gotten the Marriott tryst tales from right-wing propagandist David Brock. George Will is a conservative but not a New Right Conservative. Other like him were William F. Buckley, William Safire, and James J. Kilpatrick. They are remnants of an older conservative movement that is gradually losing influence within the GOP.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The coordinated effort to discredit Hill was led by David Brock, a Sepectator writer, who was employed to crank out anti-Hill material. Aides to Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee gave him access to unreleased depositions of dubious value, and the Bush White House provided him with psychiatric profiles that suggested that Hill suffered from “erotomania” and was a lesbian “acting out.” Brock claimed that Terry Wooten, who was GOP chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, provided some of the documents. Wooten later denied under oath that he did so when being confirmed as a federal judge. When Thomas critics charged that Judge Thomas liked to rent pornographic videos, Brock discredited the charges even though he had evidence they were true. Rush Limbaugh, the Republican radio publicist, read verbatim the stuff Brock cranked out. Brock later published an apology; long after the damage was done. Mr. Justice Thomas later rewarded Limbaugh by presiding at his second marriage.
On March 9, 1998 conservative journalist David Brock, who had written for the Scaife-financed American Spectator, released a letter of apology that he had written to President Clinton. He admitted being part of a well-financed effort to slander Clinton and said that two Arkansas state troopers had been paid to exaggerate and lie in telling stories. The Washington Post and New York Times gave the story little play, consigning it to the back pages. On the next day, Brock said on CNN’s “Crossfire” that Mrs. Clinton was correct in saying her husband was the target of a vast right-wing conspiracy. Journalists across the political spectrum had ridiculed Mrs. Clinton for imagining that there was some sort of vast right wing conspiracy against she and her beleaguered husband.
Brock added that New Gingrich’s ally Cliff Johnson, a Clinton enemy, had done much to orchestrate press coverage of Clinton’s philandering and had brought Brock into the picture. It is difficult to determine how “vast” the conspiracy was. After David Brock published a book in 2002 detailing his experiences within the conservative scandal machine, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “that the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ is not an overheated metaphor but a straightforward reality, and that it works a lot like a special-interest lobby. A It also involved Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr’s office, which was illegally giving grand jury testimony to the press. Citizens for Honest Government, a right wing advocacy organization that is tied to Reverend Jerry Falwell, played a role in the attacks on the Clintons by paying four state troopers and others over $200,000 to provide the mainstream press information about Clinton. The organization signed a contract with the troopers, who agreed to challenge the official finding that White House Counsel Vincent Foster committed suicide in a Washington, D.C. park. They were to claim that a White House aid made a telephone call about Foster’s death hours before it was reported. A check of White House telephone records proved the troopers were mistaken.
Richard Mellon Scaife’s Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the Scaife-financed Western Journalism Center, and British right-wing journalist Ambrose-Evans Pritchard pushed the story that Foster was allegedly murdered. The latter had a doctored photograph of Foster’s body that he thought proved suicide was impossible. Chris Ruddy of the Tribune-Review pursued the story and the Western Journalism Center gave him an award for courageous journalism., an award which was presented by Columnist Robert Novak, sometimes called the “Prince of Darkness” Far-Right radio host Rush Limbaugh improved upon the story by claiming to have evidence that Foster was murdered in an apartment owned by Hillary Clinton and later moved to Fort Marcy Park. His evidence was a non-existent newsletter supposedly issued by a respected D.C. consulting firm. Rush Limbaugh repeatedly aired them on his broadcast. It also alluded to 56 untimely deaths, 35 of which were in the crash of a plane carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in Croatia in 1996.
A CNN-Time poll found in August 1995, that 20% of the public thought Foster had been murdered. Ruddy had appeared on many talk shows and a great deal of money had been raised to spread the story through videos. Rev. Falwell sold 150,000 copies of a popular videotape entitled the “Clinton Chronicles,” which focused on the alleged murder of Foster and other accusations against the Clintons. A firm that had cranked out angry anti-gay videos produced the tape. Based on charges made by Larry Nichols, the “Clinton Chronicles” claimed that the president was a murderer, a drug runner, and a cocaine addict. Clinton was also blamed for a burglary and the murder of a trooper’s ex-wife. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette looked into the charges and found them baseless.
In Unlimited Access, Gary Aldrich claimed that Foster killed himself because he feared that his affair with Hillary Clinton would be revealed. Aldrich, an ex-FBI agent who worked on security clearances in the White House, also claimed that the White House Christmas tree had many pornographic ornaments and that Clinton regularly disappeared to a DC Marriott for extended trysts. His photographs of the tree could have been of anyone’s tree and showed nothing, and the details of the Marriott story were quickly disproved. Nevertheless the book sold half a million copies. He was even featured on the Wall Street Journal’s op ed page as an “investigative writer.” Aldrich said he had no interest in politics, but a Republican operative took him to the television studio when he appeared on “This Week with David Brinkley” on ABC. George Will picked Aldrich apart on that broadcast, but other conservative pundits closed ranks behind him.
Aldrich had gotten the Marriott tryst tales from right-wing propagandist David Brock. George Will is a conservative but not a New Right Conservative. Other like him were William F. Buckley, William Safire, and James J. Kilpatrick. They are remnants of an older conservative movement that is gradually losing influence within the GOP.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The Battle to Remove Bill Clinton
The effort to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency was essentially a political operation. At the very least, it would serve the conservative goal of establishing the illegitimacy of his regime and associating Democrats with shabby morality. The White Water affair, the pretext for the long investigation, had been quickly investigated and resolved in a report of impartial auditors. The Republicans carried their vendetta too far and lost some seats in 1998, but the persecution of Clinton paid dividends in the 2000 election when some voters punished Albert Gore for standing by Clinton.
At a summer, 1994 luncheon in Nantucket, millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife bragged that he was launching a effort to “get” Clinton; and he proved to be good as his word. Through investigations and litigation, he sought to nullify the 1992 election results. Conservative groups, including Judicial Watch, which he partially funded, launched numerous law suites that helped derail Clinton policies and drain the funds of the president’s aids. These initiatives were quickly followed by a frenzy of congressional investigations. Scaife poured $2,400,000 into the Arkansas Project, an effort financed by Richard Mellon Scaife to discredit Clinton. It began as an effort to help the sleazy Municipal Judge David Hale to tie Bill Clinton to illegal activity. Despite testifying to the satisfaction of independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr, Hale was checked into a federal prison in 1996. Future Solicitor General Ted Olsen represented Hale at one point and secretly wrote some Arkansas Project articles for the American Spectator. Over three years, $2.4 million dollars were spent exploring Clinton’s private life and encouraging witnesses to speak against the president. Much attention was devoted to finding criminal conduct in the Whitewater venture, a failed 1978 Arkansas land deal in which the Clinton’s had an interest and lost money.
Some of that money found its way, through a third party, to David Hale, who became Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s chief witness in the investigation of Clinton’s business dealings. Later Starr stated that a 168-page report by the Justice Department’s career employee Michael Shaheen revealed that Hale had received no money for testifying against Clinton. Starr refused to make any part of the report public, and the press did not question his decision. Indeed, without seeing it, The Washington Post asserted that the report proved that there was no vast, right-wing conspiracy and that Starr was correct in relying upon Hale’s testimony. The Post did not look into Shaheen’s background or why Starr selected him to do the secret report. Four years earlier, In These Times claimed that Shaheen was using the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibilities to cover" up the wrongdoing of the Reagan and Bush administrations and Y exploiting its investigative powers to smear potential enemies." Starr’s office was in the habit of leaking information from the Whitewater probe to Insight Magazine and The Washington Times, both owned by South Korea’s mysterious Rev. Moon. Insight was advertised as providing balanced journalism, but it was a partisan sheet edited by Neo Conservative John Podhoretz. Peter Smith, the Chicago financier-insurance magnate provided the money that was used to circulate the story that Clinton fathered a “love child” by a black prostitute. Smith was a major contributor to Gingrich’s GOPAC, the Republican National Committee, and the Heritage Foundation, and he was one of the first to invest large amounts to dredge up rumors about Clinton’s sex life.
A much longer version could be posted later.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
At a summer, 1994 luncheon in Nantucket, millionaire Richard Mellon Scaife bragged that he was launching a effort to “get” Clinton; and he proved to be good as his word. Through investigations and litigation, he sought to nullify the 1992 election results. Conservative groups, including Judicial Watch, which he partially funded, launched numerous law suites that helped derail Clinton policies and drain the funds of the president’s aids. These initiatives were quickly followed by a frenzy of congressional investigations. Scaife poured $2,400,000 into the Arkansas Project, an effort financed by Richard Mellon Scaife to discredit Clinton. It began as an effort to help the sleazy Municipal Judge David Hale to tie Bill Clinton to illegal activity. Despite testifying to the satisfaction of independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr, Hale was checked into a federal prison in 1996. Future Solicitor General Ted Olsen represented Hale at one point and secretly wrote some Arkansas Project articles for the American Spectator. Over three years, $2.4 million dollars were spent exploring Clinton’s private life and encouraging witnesses to speak against the president. Much attention was devoted to finding criminal conduct in the Whitewater venture, a failed 1978 Arkansas land deal in which the Clinton’s had an interest and lost money.
Some of that money found its way, through a third party, to David Hale, who became Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr’s chief witness in the investigation of Clinton’s business dealings. Later Starr stated that a 168-page report by the Justice Department’s career employee Michael Shaheen revealed that Hale had received no money for testifying against Clinton. Starr refused to make any part of the report public, and the press did not question his decision. Indeed, without seeing it, The Washington Post asserted that the report proved that there was no vast, right-wing conspiracy and that Starr was correct in relying upon Hale’s testimony. The Post did not look into Shaheen’s background or why Starr selected him to do the secret report. Four years earlier, In These Times claimed that Shaheen was using the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibilities to cover" up the wrongdoing of the Reagan and Bush administrations and Y exploiting its investigative powers to smear potential enemies." Starr’s office was in the habit of leaking information from the Whitewater probe to Insight Magazine and The Washington Times, both owned by South Korea’s mysterious Rev. Moon. Insight was advertised as providing balanced journalism, but it was a partisan sheet edited by Neo Conservative John Podhoretz. Peter Smith, the Chicago financier-insurance magnate provided the money that was used to circulate the story that Clinton fathered a “love child” by a black prostitute. Smith was a major contributor to Gingrich’s GOPAC, the Republican National Committee, and the Heritage Foundation, and he was one of the first to invest large amounts to dredge up rumors about Clinton’s sex life.
A much longer version could be posted later.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Bare Knuckle Politics: Lee Atwater
American political history has been characterized by a great deal of political chicanery on the part of almost all political parties. Everyone has heard the debate about who stole the most presidential votes in Illinois in 1960. Was it the Democratic machine in Chicago or the Republican bosses in Little Egypt in southern Illinois? In recent decades, the Democrats have not always behaved as Boy Scouts, but the Republicans have far outpaced them in the black arts of the political craft, beginning in the election of 1988.
Lee Atwater
Political strategist Lee Atwater brought all the instincts and energies of an attack dog to the political arena. He proved to be a worthy successor to Republican dirty-trickster Donald Segretti, who proved that ugly tactics and dirty tricks were the ingredients of political success. In 1972, Segretti planted false stories about Mrs. Edmund Muskie and also planted the claim that Senator Muskie disparaged French Canadians, by manufacturing the infamous “Canuck” letter. He created false stories about the sex lives of other Democrats, and eventually served six months in federal prison for breaking campaign laws. In 1980, Atwater was one of the first strategists to use push polling, telephone calls purporting to be part of a poll that fed listeners damaging information about an opponent. He was ruthless and manipulative, not much of a strategist but a brilliant tactician who produced victories. He managed the campaign of Floyd Spence against incumbent Democratic Congressman Tom Turnipseed, who was favored to be reelected. Atwater learned that Turnipseed underwent shock therapy as a teenager, and the strategist spread the word that the Congressman had been hooked up to jumper cables one time too many. That was enough to elect Spence in South Carolina, where ugly campaigns and dirty tricks were a tradition.
After working for Senator Strom Thurmond, Atwater joined the Reagan campaign organization in 1980 and quickly became one of its senior operatives. His sometime friend, Ed Rollins, described Atwater as “Oliver North in civilian clothes;” “and he’d do anything to win. There were no rules or standards in Lee’s operating manual....” He made no secret of his conviction that negative campaigning almost guaranteed success. He was Rollin’s deputy in running the 1984 Reagan campaign. Unbeknownst to Rollins, Atwater and several others were running a dirty tricks operation that publicized the fact that vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s parents had been arrested but not convicted of rum running. In that campaign, a $10 million illegal contribution from Ferdinand Marcos was used, but Rollins said he had only learned about it after the fact. He was an effective strategist and pretty much a straight arrow. Marcos gave Reagan $4 million in 1980 and $10 million in 1984, but perhaps only $8 of the former payment went to the campaign. When Rollins and Senator Paul Laxault discussed the matter, the Nevada solon said, “When I was over there cutting off Marcos’s nuts, he gave me a hard time. ‘How can you do this?’ he kept saying to me. ‘I gave Reagan ten million dollars.’” To be fair to Reagan, it seems that Marcos and the Philippine courier thought the $10 was a personal gift, but the President channeled most of it into the campaign.
In 1993 he ran the successful Christy Whiteman gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey and foolishly admitted distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to African-American ministers to hold down the black vote. This tactic has become so common, and necessary for Republicans, that he may not have even realized it was unethical.
Lee Atwater ran George H.W. Bush’s successful campaign in 1988. He also served as chairman of the Republican National Committee. He came to be called the “Darth Vader of the Republican Party.” Atwater skillfully chipped away Massachusetts Governor Dukakis’s seventeen point lead and helped put George H.W. Bush in the White House. During the campaign he became a good friend of George H. W. Bush, son of the Vice President. The turning point came when Atwater made murderer Willie Horton a household name. While on a weekend Massachusetts prison furlough, Horton, a Black, raped a white woman. The most powerful TV advertisement using Horton’s mug shot, and blaming Governor Dukakis for the rape, was aired by an “independent” committee for deniability’s sake, but “Lee Atwater was Willie Horton’s godfather....” Atwater said, “The Horton case is one of those gut issues that are value issues, particularly in the South…And if we hammer at these over and over, we are going to win.” There were also claims that Kitty Dukakis had burned an American flag in protesting the Vietnam War and that she had mental health problems.
Atwater and media consultant Roger Ailes then defined Dukakis as a card-carrying ACLU member who also opposed the death penalty and flag burning. Ailes also produced a commercial that used a photograph of Dukakis riding a tank in a helmet that made the Democratic standard bearer look like a perfect hypocrite. Of course, that fair was game and very adept politics.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Lee Atwater
Political strategist Lee Atwater brought all the instincts and energies of an attack dog to the political arena. He proved to be a worthy successor to Republican dirty-trickster Donald Segretti, who proved that ugly tactics and dirty tricks were the ingredients of political success. In 1972, Segretti planted false stories about Mrs. Edmund Muskie and also planted the claim that Senator Muskie disparaged French Canadians, by manufacturing the infamous “Canuck” letter. He created false stories about the sex lives of other Democrats, and eventually served six months in federal prison for breaking campaign laws. In 1980, Atwater was one of the first strategists to use push polling, telephone calls purporting to be part of a poll that fed listeners damaging information about an opponent. He was ruthless and manipulative, not much of a strategist but a brilliant tactician who produced victories. He managed the campaign of Floyd Spence against incumbent Democratic Congressman Tom Turnipseed, who was favored to be reelected. Atwater learned that Turnipseed underwent shock therapy as a teenager, and the strategist spread the word that the Congressman had been hooked up to jumper cables one time too many. That was enough to elect Spence in South Carolina, where ugly campaigns and dirty tricks were a tradition.
After working for Senator Strom Thurmond, Atwater joined the Reagan campaign organization in 1980 and quickly became one of its senior operatives. His sometime friend, Ed Rollins, described Atwater as “Oliver North in civilian clothes;” “and he’d do anything to win. There were no rules or standards in Lee’s operating manual....” He made no secret of his conviction that negative campaigning almost guaranteed success. He was Rollin’s deputy in running the 1984 Reagan campaign. Unbeknownst to Rollins, Atwater and several others were running a dirty tricks operation that publicized the fact that vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s parents had been arrested but not convicted of rum running. In that campaign, a $10 million illegal contribution from Ferdinand Marcos was used, but Rollins said he had only learned about it after the fact. He was an effective strategist and pretty much a straight arrow. Marcos gave Reagan $4 million in 1980 and $10 million in 1984, but perhaps only $8 of the former payment went to the campaign. When Rollins and Senator Paul Laxault discussed the matter, the Nevada solon said, “When I was over there cutting off Marcos’s nuts, he gave me a hard time. ‘How can you do this?’ he kept saying to me. ‘I gave Reagan ten million dollars.’” To be fair to Reagan, it seems that Marcos and the Philippine courier thought the $10 was a personal gift, but the President channeled most of it into the campaign.
In 1993 he ran the successful Christy Whiteman gubernatorial campaign in New Jersey and foolishly admitted distributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to African-American ministers to hold down the black vote. This tactic has become so common, and necessary for Republicans, that he may not have even realized it was unethical.
Lee Atwater ran George H.W. Bush’s successful campaign in 1988. He also served as chairman of the Republican National Committee. He came to be called the “Darth Vader of the Republican Party.” Atwater skillfully chipped away Massachusetts Governor Dukakis’s seventeen point lead and helped put George H.W. Bush in the White House. During the campaign he became a good friend of George H. W. Bush, son of the Vice President. The turning point came when Atwater made murderer Willie Horton a household name. While on a weekend Massachusetts prison furlough, Horton, a Black, raped a white woman. The most powerful TV advertisement using Horton’s mug shot, and blaming Governor Dukakis for the rape, was aired by an “independent” committee for deniability’s sake, but “Lee Atwater was Willie Horton’s godfather....” Atwater said, “The Horton case is one of those gut issues that are value issues, particularly in the South…And if we hammer at these over and over, we are going to win.” There were also claims that Kitty Dukakis had burned an American flag in protesting the Vietnam War and that she had mental health problems.
Atwater and media consultant Roger Ailes then defined Dukakis as a card-carrying ACLU member who also opposed the death penalty and flag burning. Ailes also produced a commercial that used a photograph of Dukakis riding a tank in a helmet that made the Democratic standard bearer look like a perfect hypocrite. Of course, that fair was game and very adept politics.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Bare Knuckle Politics:
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Bare Knuckle Politics:
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Election of 2004
In September 2003, the Washington Post reported that 69% of Americans still believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. A key to Republican political strategy has been claiming and implying that Iraq was involved in 9/11. That claim makes the war on Iraq central to the war on terrorism and boosts Bush’s claims to defending Americans against terrorism. As late as June 17, 2004, Bush said he possessed “overwhelming” evidence that ”there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.” Early in the addresses of the speakers at the Republican National Convention, some version or other of this claim was made to conflate the war on terrorism with the war in Iraq. After mentioning 9/11 Rudolph Giuliani said, “Well, they heard from [them] in Afghanistan ....They heard from us in Iraq.”
British observer Francine Stock noted that 9/11 made it possible for revenge to return to the morality of movies because Hollywood, reflecting the nation, thinks its just fine, even holy, to be angry”. She noted that in Man on Fire, Denzel Washington read his Bible before embarking on a killing mission. Given the national mood, it was not difficult to demonize anyone who criticized the purity of Americans. Kerry had won a number of medals for his service in Vietnam, but he came home a sharp of that war, and this would prove to be a great liability in 2004. The president’s surrogates, in 2003, were able to transform Kerry’s heroism into a liability by criticizing his accounts of how he had tossed his ribbons in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration and parsing the different accounts he had offered of this action. They claimed that he had allied with Jane Fonda and even offered pictures of the together, which later turned out to have been cleverly manufactured. By calling him “Hanoi Jack,” they also diverted attention from the fact that Bush and Cheney had stayed home during the war. Bush won support by “suggesting that criticism [ of the U.S. course in Iraq] is dangerous, even treasonous.” These tactics would prove to be very effective when the campaign began in earnest in 2004.
The claim that only Bush could combat terrorism at home and abroad was the Republican trump card. It had been carefully nurtured since September 11, 2001, and it proved an argument the Democrats could not counter without angering many who had developed an intense emotional attachment to the president. They could not point out the fact that 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch or reference multiple facts that demonstrated that counter -terrorism was not a Bush priority before 9/11. A war in its first years historically accords a sitting president a great advantage in the election, even if things are going badly on the battlefield. The Bush administration maximized this advantage by repeatedly insisting that the war in Iraq was an indispensable element in the war on terrorism. By repeatedly mentioning Iraq in the context of the 9/11 outrages, the impression was created among most Americana that Iraqis were somehow involved in those attacks in September 2003, the Washington Post reported that 69% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Of those who voted for Bush, fully one third were certain that the US forces had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
As late as June 17, 2004, Bush said he had “overwhelming” evidence that “there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.” This employment of contiguity created a deep belief that the invasion of Iraq was necessary and that Bush was to be praised for doing so. The fact that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction simply did not matter to most voters. When casualties continued to mount and the invasion turned sour, most voters stayed with Bush. Even Bush’s uncharacteristic admission that the invasion of Iraq had been ”a miscalculation” and remark that the war on terrorism was unwinable had no impact on the voters. They were convinced he was necessary to protect America. The capture of Saddam Hussein, the turn over of power to an interim regime, and the presence of the interim prime minister in the US were enough to shore up the belief that the war in Iraq would end well. A more open exploitation of the politics of fear was the suggestion that Al Qaeda would be much more successful in the US if John Kerry were president. Vice President Cheney was repeatedly to predict a massive attack in the US if Kerry became president. Senator Orin Hatch said Al Qaeda terrorists would do everything possible “to try and elect Kerry.” Hatch also claimed, “Democrats are consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there.” Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert claimed that the terrorist network would be more effective within the US if Kerry were president. Political commentator Bill Schneider soon made the same point while discussing poll data, noting that the Al Qaeda would certainly welcome a Kerry victory. The New York Times express surprise and dismay that “those on the Bush team would dare to argue that a vote for John Kerry would be a vote for Al Qaeda.” The paper said Bush’s claim that criticism of his war policies endangered American troops and offered aid and comfort to the enemy “despicable politics.” The editors thought it “reflects badly on the president’s character that in this instance, he’s putting his own ambition ahead of the national good.” However, there could be no question that these tactics were very effective.
Kerry and Edwards denounced the “politics of terror” but did not couple their comments with a critique of Bush’s homeland security policies. The full exploitation of people’s fears began at the Republican convention, and within weeks Bush developed a large lead. According to analyst Bill Schneider, many of the voters who switched to Bush were women who were won over by the fear tactics. The New York Times poll showed that 48% of women supported Bush and 43% backed Kerry, a sharp reversal of the standings in July. Only 26% of all respondents believed Kerry could do a better job of protecting the United States from terrorists.
Early in the primaries, candidate Howard Dean said Bush used terrorism as a trump card, and the statement shocked even many liberals. Later it became clear he was all too correct. In early August Tom Ridge, Homeland Security czar, raised the terrorism alert on the basis of information that was several years old. The Wall Street Journal’s headline was accurate: “Security Becomes Top Campaign Issue: Bush Seizes Spotlight.” Only days after the Democratic Convention adjourned, the GOP seized the national spotlight with t he most specific terrorism alert since 9/11. Tom Ridge announced that information had been acquired that justified placing the financial districts in New York, New Jersey, and Washington on high security alert. Secretary Ridge raised the alert status to Orange, and left the impression that the financial institutions were still being surveiled and were targeted. Homeland Security people at first did not seem to have their story straight as they claimed that Al Qaeda was doing test runs in Newark at the Prudential tower and that they may be keeping other buildings under regular surveillance. Their lack of accuracy would prompt an observer to think the warnings were more about politics than about alerting the public. Later a press release revealed that the surveillance occurred three of four years before September ,11.
The Pakistanis had arrested several Al Qaeda operatives in the previous month, and on July 13 they arrested a computer expert whose computer contained files that various financial institutions had been carefully cased, with a view to finding security weaknesses. The seized material also suggested that up to six Al Qaeda operatives were in place in the US. Most of the information had been acquired before 9/11, but several items were updated in January 2004. There was no information indicating when or if attacks would occur. Ridge included in his announcement fulsome praise of President George W. Bush and his leadership of the nation in the war against terrorism. With the Bush campaign accusing opponents of being in league with the enemy and terror warnings that seemed to be politically timed, the New York Times observed, “The people running the government clearly regard keeping Mr. Bush in office as more important than maintaining a united front on the most important threat to the nation.”
It was eventually known that the computer expert was Mohammed Naeem Noor, who was immediately turned by the Pakistani authorities and used to entrap other terrorists. The biggest catch was Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who had a $25,000,000 bounty on his head because of his involvement in the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. By revealing that the first captive was a computer expert, the administration probably endangered the Pakistani sting operation. It later revealed his name, destroying any possibility of netting other terrorists. His name and unnecessary detail about his role in Al Qaeda were probably revealed to show how effective the administration was in ferreting out terrorists. Someone on the National Security Advisor’s staff on “background leaked the man’s name” and Dr. Rice scolded Wolf Blitzer on television because the leak was revealed to have come from her office.
One law enforcement official said the new findings were nothing new and asked “Why did we go to this level?” A Homeland Security official muttered, “There’s no greater threat today than there was six months ago.” Washington Police Chief Charles Ramsey complained that the alert has made security officers “tax-payer supported campaign workers for the Bush re-election campaign.” The arrests in Pakistan led to the arrest of two important terrorists in Great Britain. In an unrelated development, two men were arrested in Albany for attempting to purchase a hand held missile they wanted to fire at the Pakistani ambassador to the United States. The cable television channels played on terrorism themes hour after hour, and on August 7, President Bush used his radio address to focus on terrorism, hoping to draw national attention to the one area where public opinion gave him an great advantage over any opponent.
Beginning in Spring, 2004, the Bush administration started sending high level visitors to Pakistan demanding that the Musharraf government round up Osama bin Laden and other high value targets before the American election on November 2. According to sources in the Interior ministry and Pakistani government, these demands were passed on to Pakistani security officials with instructions that they must produce before the election. An ISI officer revealed that a White House aide said that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July “the first days of the Democratic convention. Howard Dean suggested that the timing of the warning was suspicious, but Kerry refused to criticize the timing of the warning. Going into the election of 2004, the Democrats were very much the underdogs in attempting to regain control of the House and Senate. Few seats were in play in the House and the Democrats were certain to lose between 3 and 6 in Texas due to redistricting. In the Senate, they were losing five southern seats due to resignations, and it was very unlikely these seats could be held in an increasingly Republican South.
The electoral vote was settled in Ohio, where both parties turned out record numbers. The Bush forces surprised the Democrats by demonstrating that they could “make more Republicans” by registering new voters and drawing infrequent voters from the condos and rural areas of the Buckeye state. Commentators saw Ohio as an important swing state. It was also important because it was a microcosm of the nation with its mix of metropolitan areas, agriculture, pluralistic population, and strong presence of Evangelicals. By July Kerry and the various independent organizations had outspent Bush in Ohio, $13 million to $9,000,000 but the president held a 6 point lead. In 2000, he carried the Buckeye State by almost 4 points. There was great concern about the economy there because more than 200,000 jobs had disappeared since 2001. Citizens voiced dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war in Iraq, but many believed it would be dangerous to change leaders in the middle of a war. Bush’s negative advertising campaign was effective in giving most voters reason to doubt Kerry’s reliability and they saw him as a northeastern liberal. Many Ohioans appeared to be strongly attached to Bush and were unwilling to turn against him despite their doubts about his economic and war policies.
Bush won reelection against Kerry 51-48 and carried 41 states. The results made it clear that West Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee had clearly entered the ranks of the safe Republican “red” states.. In addition, his party picked up 4 Senate seats and an equal number in the House, giving the GOP comfortable control of Congress. The election was not as close as prior polling data had suggested, and the Democrats suffered more defections than Republicans. Exit polls had shown Kerry three points ahead, but this information did not match reported results. While Kerry outdistanced him among Independents, Bush picked up Black evangelical votes and made some progress among Hispanics. The initial reports were that he gained 44% of the Hispanic vote, but that number was later reduced to 40%, still a great gain. By 2004, the press rarely discussed the effect of race upon voting, but it is difficult to disagree with Web Bryant that the Democratic Party continued to suffer for doing “the right thing on the race question.” similarly, It had also alienated white males by championing women’s rights, its limited assistance to gays must have been costly. Paul Starr observed that “A party can make only so many enemies until it can no longer do any good for people who need it.”
The politics of fear also gave Bush such an enormous advantage, that it is surprising that the race became close.. By an eighteen percent margin, the voters trusted Bush more than Kerry to deal with terrorism. The fear factor enabled Bush to dramatically increase his strength among married women, winning 49% of their votes. A Program for International Policy Attitudes study, released less than two weeks before Election Day, demonstrated that 75% of Bush backers were sure Iraq had been a major backer of Al Qaeda, and 55% also were sure this was the conclusion of the 9/11 commission. Most believed Iraq had or was ready to launch a major WMD program, and 72% thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion that somehow were not found. These figures provide breathtaking proof of the effectiveness of the GOP political information campaign and call to mind a German Air Marshal’s statement in the 1930s, that if you tell people they are under attack, t hey will accept whatever else you say or do
According to exit polls, moral values were the most important issue, with 22% of voters ranking it above all other concerns. Of those who attended church weekly, 61% voted for Bush. Including moral values in such an election night poll was like asking them, “What do you like best--red, green, blue, or breathing?” Eighty percent of those who selected moral values were Bush voters. It is doubtful that these voters were only concerned about specific moral questions like stem cell research, abortion, or gay marriage. If that were the case, these people would have reacted adversely to the moral transgressions of a number of Republican leaders such as Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, or Arnold Schwartzenegger. However, there was no noticeable reaction from the Right to their misbehavior.
It was the blanket charge that liberals supported a broad assault on traditional norms that counted. The so-called “Bush waiverers,” people who supported the president but doubted many of his policies, stayed with him because of this concern. What the response on the values meant was that many believed that liberals scorned ordinary citizens of Middle America and were disinclined to defend attack traditional American culture. William A. Galston has observed that not all who took this view were regular church attendees. He found that “in the 2004 election, [the] Democrats’ largest losses came among less fervent believers-- the broad mainstream of families worried about the erosion of moral standards and the corrosion of our culture.” There were many comments by conservative spokesmen after the election that the election was about culture. They reminded their constituents that the liberals were still plotting to undermine American culture. Evangelist and former major league pitcher Frank Pastore wrote that liberalism was still an “evil ideology” and that Christians were never to “compromise with the vanquished.”
Despite the exit polls, Karl Rove ranked the issues (1) war, (2) economy, and (3) moral values. In terms of what won for Bush, the combination was more likely war and the culture. Bill Clinton underscored the cultural factor by noting that gay marriage was “an overwhelming factor in the defeat of John Kerry.” It was the key to the maximum mobilization of the Republican base. On the other hand, it was the politics of terrorism that attracted people who were in the middle in 2002 and 2004. It was the key to self-identification of the party and the president in 2002 and 2004. also gave Bush a an enormous advantage. By an eighteen percent margin, the voters trusted Bush more than Kerry to deal with terrorism. The fear factor enabled Bush to dramatically increase his strength among married women, winning 49% of their votes. A Program for International Policy Attitudes study, released less than two weeks before Election Day, demonstrated that 75% of Bush backers were sure Iraq had been a major backer of Al Qaeda, and 55% also were sure this was the conclusion of the 9/11 commission. Most believed Iraq had or was ready to launch a major WMD program, and 72% thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion that somehow were not found.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
British observer Francine Stock noted that 9/11 made it possible for revenge to return to the morality of movies because Hollywood, reflecting the nation, thinks its just fine, even holy, to be angry”. She noted that in Man on Fire, Denzel Washington read his Bible before embarking on a killing mission. Given the national mood, it was not difficult to demonize anyone who criticized the purity of Americans. Kerry had won a number of medals for his service in Vietnam, but he came home a sharp of that war, and this would prove to be a great liability in 2004. The president’s surrogates, in 2003, were able to transform Kerry’s heroism into a liability by criticizing his accounts of how he had tossed his ribbons in an anti-Vietnam War demonstration and parsing the different accounts he had offered of this action. They claimed that he had allied with Jane Fonda and even offered pictures of the together, which later turned out to have been cleverly manufactured. By calling him “Hanoi Jack,” they also diverted attention from the fact that Bush and Cheney had stayed home during the war. Bush won support by “suggesting that criticism [ of the U.S. course in Iraq] is dangerous, even treasonous.” These tactics would prove to be very effective when the campaign began in earnest in 2004.
The claim that only Bush could combat terrorism at home and abroad was the Republican trump card. It had been carefully nurtured since September 11, 2001, and it proved an argument the Democrats could not counter without angering many who had developed an intense emotional attachment to the president. They could not point out the fact that 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch or reference multiple facts that demonstrated that counter -terrorism was not a Bush priority before 9/11. A war in its first years historically accords a sitting president a great advantage in the election, even if things are going badly on the battlefield. The Bush administration maximized this advantage by repeatedly insisting that the war in Iraq was an indispensable element in the war on terrorism. By repeatedly mentioning Iraq in the context of the 9/11 outrages, the impression was created among most Americana that Iraqis were somehow involved in those attacks in September 2003, the Washington Post reported that 69% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Of those who voted for Bush, fully one third were certain that the US forces had found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
As late as June 17, 2004, Bush said he had “overwhelming” evidence that “there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.” This employment of contiguity created a deep belief that the invasion of Iraq was necessary and that Bush was to be praised for doing so. The fact that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction simply did not matter to most voters. When casualties continued to mount and the invasion turned sour, most voters stayed with Bush. Even Bush’s uncharacteristic admission that the invasion of Iraq had been ”a miscalculation” and remark that the war on terrorism was unwinable had no impact on the voters. They were convinced he was necessary to protect America. The capture of Saddam Hussein, the turn over of power to an interim regime, and the presence of the interim prime minister in the US were enough to shore up the belief that the war in Iraq would end well. A more open exploitation of the politics of fear was the suggestion that Al Qaeda would be much more successful in the US if John Kerry were president. Vice President Cheney was repeatedly to predict a massive attack in the US if Kerry became president. Senator Orin Hatch said Al Qaeda terrorists would do everything possible “to try and elect Kerry.” Hatch also claimed, “Democrats are consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there.” Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert claimed that the terrorist network would be more effective within the US if Kerry were president. Political commentator Bill Schneider soon made the same point while discussing poll data, noting that the Al Qaeda would certainly welcome a Kerry victory. The New York Times express surprise and dismay that “those on the Bush team would dare to argue that a vote for John Kerry would be a vote for Al Qaeda.” The paper said Bush’s claim that criticism of his war policies endangered American troops and offered aid and comfort to the enemy “despicable politics.” The editors thought it “reflects badly on the president’s character that in this instance, he’s putting his own ambition ahead of the national good.” However, there could be no question that these tactics were very effective.
Kerry and Edwards denounced the “politics of terror” but did not couple their comments with a critique of Bush’s homeland security policies. The full exploitation of people’s fears began at the Republican convention, and within weeks Bush developed a large lead. According to analyst Bill Schneider, many of the voters who switched to Bush were women who were won over by the fear tactics. The New York Times poll showed that 48% of women supported Bush and 43% backed Kerry, a sharp reversal of the standings in July. Only 26% of all respondents believed Kerry could do a better job of protecting the United States from terrorists.
Early in the primaries, candidate Howard Dean said Bush used terrorism as a trump card, and the statement shocked even many liberals. Later it became clear he was all too correct. In early August Tom Ridge, Homeland Security czar, raised the terrorism alert on the basis of information that was several years old. The Wall Street Journal’s headline was accurate: “Security Becomes Top Campaign Issue: Bush Seizes Spotlight.” Only days after the Democratic Convention adjourned, the GOP seized the national spotlight with t he most specific terrorism alert since 9/11. Tom Ridge announced that information had been acquired that justified placing the financial districts in New York, New Jersey, and Washington on high security alert. Secretary Ridge raised the alert status to Orange, and left the impression that the financial institutions were still being surveiled and were targeted. Homeland Security people at first did not seem to have their story straight as they claimed that Al Qaeda was doing test runs in Newark at the Prudential tower and that they may be keeping other buildings under regular surveillance. Their lack of accuracy would prompt an observer to think the warnings were more about politics than about alerting the public. Later a press release revealed that the surveillance occurred three of four years before September ,11.
The Pakistanis had arrested several Al Qaeda operatives in the previous month, and on July 13 they arrested a computer expert whose computer contained files that various financial institutions had been carefully cased, with a view to finding security weaknesses. The seized material also suggested that up to six Al Qaeda operatives were in place in the US. Most of the information had been acquired before 9/11, but several items were updated in January 2004. There was no information indicating when or if attacks would occur. Ridge included in his announcement fulsome praise of President George W. Bush and his leadership of the nation in the war against terrorism. With the Bush campaign accusing opponents of being in league with the enemy and terror warnings that seemed to be politically timed, the New York Times observed, “The people running the government clearly regard keeping Mr. Bush in office as more important than maintaining a united front on the most important threat to the nation.”
It was eventually known that the computer expert was Mohammed Naeem Noor, who was immediately turned by the Pakistani authorities and used to entrap other terrorists. The biggest catch was Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who had a $25,000,000 bounty on his head because of his involvement in the bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. By revealing that the first captive was a computer expert, the administration probably endangered the Pakistani sting operation. It later revealed his name, destroying any possibility of netting other terrorists. His name and unnecessary detail about his role in Al Qaeda were probably revealed to show how effective the administration was in ferreting out terrorists. Someone on the National Security Advisor’s staff on “background leaked the man’s name” and Dr. Rice scolded Wolf Blitzer on television because the leak was revealed to have come from her office.
One law enforcement official said the new findings were nothing new and asked “Why did we go to this level?” A Homeland Security official muttered, “There’s no greater threat today than there was six months ago.” Washington Police Chief Charles Ramsey complained that the alert has made security officers “tax-payer supported campaign workers for the Bush re-election campaign.” The arrests in Pakistan led to the arrest of two important terrorists in Great Britain. In an unrelated development, two men were arrested in Albany for attempting to purchase a hand held missile they wanted to fire at the Pakistani ambassador to the United States. The cable television channels played on terrorism themes hour after hour, and on August 7, President Bush used his radio address to focus on terrorism, hoping to draw national attention to the one area where public opinion gave him an great advantage over any opponent.
Beginning in Spring, 2004, the Bush administration started sending high level visitors to Pakistan demanding that the Musharraf government round up Osama bin Laden and other high value targets before the American election on November 2. According to sources in the Interior ministry and Pakistani government, these demands were passed on to Pakistani security officials with instructions that they must produce before the election. An ISI officer revealed that a White House aide said that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July “the first days of the Democratic convention. Howard Dean suggested that the timing of the warning was suspicious, but Kerry refused to criticize the timing of the warning. Going into the election of 2004, the Democrats were very much the underdogs in attempting to regain control of the House and Senate. Few seats were in play in the House and the Democrats were certain to lose between 3 and 6 in Texas due to redistricting. In the Senate, they were losing five southern seats due to resignations, and it was very unlikely these seats could be held in an increasingly Republican South.
The electoral vote was settled in Ohio, where both parties turned out record numbers. The Bush forces surprised the Democrats by demonstrating that they could “make more Republicans” by registering new voters and drawing infrequent voters from the condos and rural areas of the Buckeye state. Commentators saw Ohio as an important swing state. It was also important because it was a microcosm of the nation with its mix of metropolitan areas, agriculture, pluralistic population, and strong presence of Evangelicals. By July Kerry and the various independent organizations had outspent Bush in Ohio, $13 million to $9,000,000 but the president held a 6 point lead. In 2000, he carried the Buckeye State by almost 4 points. There was great concern about the economy there because more than 200,000 jobs had disappeared since 2001. Citizens voiced dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war in Iraq, but many believed it would be dangerous to change leaders in the middle of a war. Bush’s negative advertising campaign was effective in giving most voters reason to doubt Kerry’s reliability and they saw him as a northeastern liberal. Many Ohioans appeared to be strongly attached to Bush and were unwilling to turn against him despite their doubts about his economic and war policies.
Bush won reelection against Kerry 51-48 and carried 41 states. The results made it clear that West Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee had clearly entered the ranks of the safe Republican “red” states.. In addition, his party picked up 4 Senate seats and an equal number in the House, giving the GOP comfortable control of Congress. The election was not as close as prior polling data had suggested, and the Democrats suffered more defections than Republicans. Exit polls had shown Kerry three points ahead, but this information did not match reported results. While Kerry outdistanced him among Independents, Bush picked up Black evangelical votes and made some progress among Hispanics. The initial reports were that he gained 44% of the Hispanic vote, but that number was later reduced to 40%, still a great gain. By 2004, the press rarely discussed the effect of race upon voting, but it is difficult to disagree with Web Bryant that the Democratic Party continued to suffer for doing “the right thing on the race question.” similarly, It had also alienated white males by championing women’s rights, its limited assistance to gays must have been costly. Paul Starr observed that “A party can make only so many enemies until it can no longer do any good for people who need it.”
The politics of fear also gave Bush such an enormous advantage, that it is surprising that the race became close.. By an eighteen percent margin, the voters trusted Bush more than Kerry to deal with terrorism. The fear factor enabled Bush to dramatically increase his strength among married women, winning 49% of their votes. A Program for International Policy Attitudes study, released less than two weeks before Election Day, demonstrated that 75% of Bush backers were sure Iraq had been a major backer of Al Qaeda, and 55% also were sure this was the conclusion of the 9/11 commission. Most believed Iraq had or was ready to launch a major WMD program, and 72% thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion that somehow were not found. These figures provide breathtaking proof of the effectiveness of the GOP political information campaign and call to mind a German Air Marshal’s statement in the 1930s, that if you tell people they are under attack, t hey will accept whatever else you say or do
According to exit polls, moral values were the most important issue, with 22% of voters ranking it above all other concerns. Of those who attended church weekly, 61% voted for Bush. Including moral values in such an election night poll was like asking them, “What do you like best--red, green, blue, or breathing?” Eighty percent of those who selected moral values were Bush voters. It is doubtful that these voters were only concerned about specific moral questions like stem cell research, abortion, or gay marriage. If that were the case, these people would have reacted adversely to the moral transgressions of a number of Republican leaders such as Newt Gingrich, Bob Barr, or Arnold Schwartzenegger. However, there was no noticeable reaction from the Right to their misbehavior.
It was the blanket charge that liberals supported a broad assault on traditional norms that counted. The so-called “Bush waiverers,” people who supported the president but doubted many of his policies, stayed with him because of this concern. What the response on the values meant was that many believed that liberals scorned ordinary citizens of Middle America and were disinclined to defend attack traditional American culture. William A. Galston has observed that not all who took this view were regular church attendees. He found that “in the 2004 election, [the] Democrats’ largest losses came among less fervent believers-- the broad mainstream of families worried about the erosion of moral standards and the corrosion of our culture.” There were many comments by conservative spokesmen after the election that the election was about culture. They reminded their constituents that the liberals were still plotting to undermine American culture. Evangelist and former major league pitcher Frank Pastore wrote that liberalism was still an “evil ideology” and that Christians were never to “compromise with the vanquished.”
Despite the exit polls, Karl Rove ranked the issues (1) war, (2) economy, and (3) moral values. In terms of what won for Bush, the combination was more likely war and the culture. Bill Clinton underscored the cultural factor by noting that gay marriage was “an overwhelming factor in the defeat of John Kerry.” It was the key to the maximum mobilization of the Republican base. On the other hand, it was the politics of terrorism that attracted people who were in the middle in 2002 and 2004. It was the key to self-identification of the party and the president in 2002 and 2004. also gave Bush a an enormous advantage. By an eighteen percent margin, the voters trusted Bush more than Kerry to deal with terrorism. The fear factor enabled Bush to dramatically increase his strength among married women, winning 49% of their votes. A Program for International Policy Attitudes study, released less than two weeks before Election Day, demonstrated that 75% of Bush backers were sure Iraq had been a major backer of Al Qaeda, and 55% also were sure this was the conclusion of the 9/11 commission. Most believed Iraq had or was ready to launch a major WMD program, and 72% thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the invasion that somehow were not found.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
The Quest for War and the 2002 Election
Karl Rove, the president’s chief political advisor, realized soon after 9-11 that constant emphasis upon the war on terrorism could give Bush control of Congress in the 2002 elections and insure a big win in the 2004 presidential elections. The president focused his rhetoric on the new war and skillfully used it to build popularity and collect unprecedented sums for the Republican Party. It also insured continuation of a moratorium on serious criticism and highly favorable press coverage. The campaign for war with Iraq also became a useful strategy for increasing Republican power in the elections of 2002. Anthony Lewis noted that the Bush administration managed to move the American people toward war with Iraq without “a clear casus belli” and “with so little public protest.” Lewis asked if 9/11 made us a different people, one “so frightened by September 11 that for the moment we want leadership without qualms Soon after 9/11 Rove effectively began to demonize the Democrats, implying that they were somehow helping the terrorists. This strategy became more evident as the elections of 2002 approached and produced a great victory for the Republicans.
Early on, Rove told the National Federation of Independent business that the administration was fighting a two front war, one against the Taliban and another against the Democrats on the matter of estate tax repeal. He apparently saw little difference between Democrats and terrorists. Evidence soon surfaced that Rove spent twenty-one hours preparing the presentation on a computer in the Executive Office of the President. The same computer disk that fell into Congressional hands contained confidential assessment of where the White House stood in June 2002, called “Summary of Recent Data,” and it seemed very accurate. He noted that nothing the president (POTUS) did hurt him with the voters and that Democrat complaints about Enron and economy had no effect. His priorities were maintaining the right-wing GOP base and milking the war against terrorism for all it was worth.
The war on terrorism gave the GOP a opportunity to energize its base by accusing Democrats of lacking patriotism. When John Walker Lindh, an American, turned up among Al Qaeda fighters, some Republicans used him to project an unfavorable profile on people who vote for Democrats. The Weekly Standard traced the boy’s misbehavior to the rumor that his father is a homosexual. More common was the approach of Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution. Steele saw Lindh’s behavior as growing out of “a certain cultural liberalism” characteristic of northern California. He did not reconcile this view with the fact that the contemptible young man had embraced a worldview that was anti-gay and anti-woman. In March 2001, William Bennett and other conservatives formed Americans for Victory over Terrorism. The organization claimed it was needed to oppose those who opposed the war on terrorism even though it would have been difficult to name more than a few prominent people who opposed it. When asked who opposed the war, Bennett attacked former-President Jimmy Carter who criticized Bush for using the term “axis of evil.” Carter, of course, supported the war but feared that Bush’s rhetoric did more harm than good. The effort looked like an effort to tar as a traitor anyone who was mildly critical of Bush and to identify Democrats as being against the war.
Bush’s quest to make war with Iraq was also a strong inducement for conservative Jews to continue their migration into the Republican Party that began in the Reagan years. The increasing number of conservative and Republican Jews may be related to the fact that all but one of the major Jewish organizations (the Religious Action Center) have come to refrain from being engaged in discussions of universal health insurance, workers rights, corporate crime, and affordable housing. Taking a progressive position on these questions would anger their conservative Christian allies and possibly diminish support for Israel. These organizations have become closely identified with Ariel Sharon’s policy of hanging on to all of Israel’s West Bank colonies, and they find the strongest support for them in right-wing Christian ranks and on the political right. In order to court the Christian Right, Karl Rove took the unprecedented step in 2002 of asking Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to speak at a pro-Israel rally.
In House and Senate races, Republicans questioned the patriotism of Democrats if they were at all critical of Bush’s rush to war or had ever voted against military appropriations. This approach, carried out through a high-powered advertising campaign ended the career of Senator Tim Johnson in South Dakota. Some Republicans mistakenly worried that using the proposed war for political purposes and questioning Democrats’ patriotism could backfire. One Republican senator said, “ There are some high-level people in the White House, Karl Rove being the main driver, who are using this for politics. Don’t be baited. Don’t let Rove hook you.” These comments reflected dissatisfaction within Republican ranks with what were considered Rove’s “high-handed tactics.” They blamed him for Driving Senator Jim Jeffords out of the party in 2001 and questioned his tactics a year later.
The central strategy for Congressional races in 2002 was developed by Rove. He directed where resources went, and he even intervened in primaries to get his candidates nominated. In New Hampshire, he helped John Sonunu, Jr. take the nomination from Senator Bob Smith. Smith’s supporters mounted a write-in-campaign that threatened what otherwise would been a certain Republican seat. Rove and Sonunu responded to the threat by making Sonunu’s opponent, Governor Jeanne Shaheen appear to be “a corporate flunky,” in a well-financed effort to somehow make the Democrat partly responsible for the corporate scandals that shook the stock market. Sonunu won the seat handily. The strategy of blaming Democrats for corporate scandals was also used in the Massachusetts governor’s race where Shannon O’Brien was linked to corporate fraud and greed because her husband was a lobbyist. A TV advertisement blamed her for the Enron scandal because as State Treasurer she invested state retirement funds in Enron. The handsome Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, was featured in a TV advertisement in a bathing suite, and won.
The main thrust of the campaign, of course, was to convince voters that Democrats were not to be trusted in defense and national security matters because some of them raised questions about President’s Bush’s talk of war with Iraq. The very hawkish New Republic observed that the Bush administration “maneuvered brilliantly” in this respect. The New Republic is still called liberal, but it has been very Neo Conservative for some years. Two recent editors were Michael Kelly and Andrew Sullivan.
There was no evidence to suggest that Rove’s strategy would not be successful. In Minnesota, South Dakota, and New Mexico, Republicans campaigned to unseat Democratic incumbents by claiming they were soft on Saddam, which simply meant they may have shown some reluctance to issue a blank check to the president to pursue a preemptive war or that they had opposed Bush’s anti-labor version of the Homestead Security bill. On September 20, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle delivered a blistering indictment of Bush’s economic policies. It was intended to begin the Democratic effort to focus attention on Bush’s domestic record. The speech was barely noticed as discussion of the impending war almost completely diverted national attention from domestic issues. Only days later, the Bureau of the census had released data indicating that the income gap between the rich and the rest of society had grown since Bush took office. For the first time since 1991 the income of the middle class fell.
The number of poor Americans increased 1.3 million, representing the first increase in that number in eight years. Median household income fell 2.2% from the previous year. The implications of this date were not to become a major subject of public discussion in the 2002 campaigns. The Democrats were so divided on economic matters that they offered no alternative economic plan, and the Democrat-controlled Senate did not even pass a budget for fiscal 2003. Yet their complaints about the economy would have weighed heavily with the voters had not talk of war completely dominated the political debate? President Bush campaigned vigorously to elect more people to support his war agenda and was able to transfer some of his enormous popularity to GOP candidates. Bush effectively milked the issue to raise record amount of money for Republican candidates. As a result the Republicans had more than twice as much money as Democrats to elect candidates. Bush raised between $141 and 180 million for the cause, and this did not include enormous amounts of soft money spent by drug companies and other corporate interests. There is no way of knowing how much of this constituted illegal contributions. It later developed that in Ohio. GOP politicians violated campaign finance laws by channeling through their names illegal contributions to the Bush campaign. By June 2006, fourteen were charged. Many Republican candidates thought Bush’s great popularity was even more valuable than monetary assistance. They called themselves “Bush babies” and repeated his soothing but empty rhetoric about compassionate conservatism.”
Bush’s success in this election underscored how popular he was. For whatever reason, his body language or apparent decisiveness in national security matters, he wastrusted by the American people. Indeed he enjoyed the kind of popularity once enjoyed by World War II hero Dwight David Eisenhower. There was a caricature of each as bumblers and fools, but they were extraordinarily popular. Blame for nothing stuck to them. Bush, at this point in his reign, may have been more popular than Eisenhower. In 1954, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon claimed that they needed more Republicans in Congress to fight Communism. Vice President Nixon raced around the country questioning the patriotism of Democrats, and the GOP lost seats in both Houses. In 2002,however, this kind of vitriolic campaign paid handsome dividends. The usual exit polls were not available, but there was evidence that some people who usually voted Democratic backed Republicans as a means of supporting the war on terrorism and the proposed war against Iraq.
The 2002 elections were the largest victory for a sitting president in by-elections since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. The Republicans not only increased their majority in the House of Representatives, but they seized control of the Senate. In addition, the Republicans continued to gain seats in state legislatures, picking up at least 200 additional seats. The GOP regained many of the votes it had been losing to Democrats among middle class, white suburbanites. White women, too, voted less strongly for Democrats than in previous elections. Even a majority of voters over 55 voted for Republicans. There was an intensive Republican effort to get out their votes, while Democrats were not as effective at this. In some states, like Maryland, the GOP surpassed the unions in getting people to the polls, which led an AFL-CIO official to note, “They put together a real butt-kicking campaign.” There was a poor turn out among Blacks, and Maryland blacks were discouraged from voting by leaflets that said they could not vote if their rent was unpaid or if they had outstanding traffic tickets. In the last days of the election, pharmaceutical companies and other corporate interests made enormous expenditures on so-called “issue ads” attacking Democrats with numerous phony charges. The soft money expenditures by Republican-allied groups (A527 groups” according to the Tax Code) could not be reported during the election due to late reporting and a hard-to-use government web site.
Jonathan Chait of The New Republic wrote that the Democrats were likely to continue to lose elections unless they are rescued by a deep recession of great Republican excesses. Their difficulties in getting their message across were, he thought, likely only to grow.
The fact of the matter is the Republican Party enjoys certain basic advantages when it comes to getting its message across. One is that it has substantially more money for TV advertising .The GOP also enjoyed allied media outlets like FOX News and talk radio, which disseminate its message to its base in a way that the Democrats can’t duplicate.” Across the board in 2002, the Republicans raised more than $200 million more than the Democrats.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Early on, Rove told the National Federation of Independent business that the administration was fighting a two front war, one against the Taliban and another against the Democrats on the matter of estate tax repeal. He apparently saw little difference between Democrats and terrorists. Evidence soon surfaced that Rove spent twenty-one hours preparing the presentation on a computer in the Executive Office of the President. The same computer disk that fell into Congressional hands contained confidential assessment of where the White House stood in June 2002, called “Summary of Recent Data,” and it seemed very accurate. He noted that nothing the president (POTUS) did hurt him with the voters and that Democrat complaints about Enron and economy had no effect. His priorities were maintaining the right-wing GOP base and milking the war against terrorism for all it was worth.
The war on terrorism gave the GOP a opportunity to energize its base by accusing Democrats of lacking patriotism. When John Walker Lindh, an American, turned up among Al Qaeda fighters, some Republicans used him to project an unfavorable profile on people who vote for Democrats. The Weekly Standard traced the boy’s misbehavior to the rumor that his father is a homosexual. More common was the approach of Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institution. Steele saw Lindh’s behavior as growing out of “a certain cultural liberalism” characteristic of northern California. He did not reconcile this view with the fact that the contemptible young man had embraced a worldview that was anti-gay and anti-woman. In March 2001, William Bennett and other conservatives formed Americans for Victory over Terrorism. The organization claimed it was needed to oppose those who opposed the war on terrorism even though it would have been difficult to name more than a few prominent people who opposed it. When asked who opposed the war, Bennett attacked former-President Jimmy Carter who criticized Bush for using the term “axis of evil.” Carter, of course, supported the war but feared that Bush’s rhetoric did more harm than good. The effort looked like an effort to tar as a traitor anyone who was mildly critical of Bush and to identify Democrats as being against the war.
Bush’s quest to make war with Iraq was also a strong inducement for conservative Jews to continue their migration into the Republican Party that began in the Reagan years. The increasing number of conservative and Republican Jews may be related to the fact that all but one of the major Jewish organizations (the Religious Action Center) have come to refrain from being engaged in discussions of universal health insurance, workers rights, corporate crime, and affordable housing. Taking a progressive position on these questions would anger their conservative Christian allies and possibly diminish support for Israel. These organizations have become closely identified with Ariel Sharon’s policy of hanging on to all of Israel’s West Bank colonies, and they find the strongest support for them in right-wing Christian ranks and on the political right. In order to court the Christian Right, Karl Rove took the unprecedented step in 2002 of asking Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to speak at a pro-Israel rally.
In House and Senate races, Republicans questioned the patriotism of Democrats if they were at all critical of Bush’s rush to war or had ever voted against military appropriations. This approach, carried out through a high-powered advertising campaign ended the career of Senator Tim Johnson in South Dakota. Some Republicans mistakenly worried that using the proposed war for political purposes and questioning Democrats’ patriotism could backfire. One Republican senator said, “ There are some high-level people in the White House, Karl Rove being the main driver, who are using this for politics. Don’t be baited. Don’t let Rove hook you.” These comments reflected dissatisfaction within Republican ranks with what were considered Rove’s “high-handed tactics.” They blamed him for Driving Senator Jim Jeffords out of the party in 2001 and questioned his tactics a year later.
The central strategy for Congressional races in 2002 was developed by Rove. He directed where resources went, and he even intervened in primaries to get his candidates nominated. In New Hampshire, he helped John Sonunu, Jr. take the nomination from Senator Bob Smith. Smith’s supporters mounted a write-in-campaign that threatened what otherwise would been a certain Republican seat. Rove and Sonunu responded to the threat by making Sonunu’s opponent, Governor Jeanne Shaheen appear to be “a corporate flunky,” in a well-financed effort to somehow make the Democrat partly responsible for the corporate scandals that shook the stock market. Sonunu won the seat handily. The strategy of blaming Democrats for corporate scandals was also used in the Massachusetts governor’s race where Shannon O’Brien was linked to corporate fraud and greed because her husband was a lobbyist. A TV advertisement blamed her for the Enron scandal because as State Treasurer she invested state retirement funds in Enron. The handsome Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, was featured in a TV advertisement in a bathing suite, and won.
The main thrust of the campaign, of course, was to convince voters that Democrats were not to be trusted in defense and national security matters because some of them raised questions about President’s Bush’s talk of war with Iraq. The very hawkish New Republic observed that the Bush administration “maneuvered brilliantly” in this respect. The New Republic is still called liberal, but it has been very Neo Conservative for some years. Two recent editors were Michael Kelly and Andrew Sullivan.
There was no evidence to suggest that Rove’s strategy would not be successful. In Minnesota, South Dakota, and New Mexico, Republicans campaigned to unseat Democratic incumbents by claiming they were soft on Saddam, which simply meant they may have shown some reluctance to issue a blank check to the president to pursue a preemptive war or that they had opposed Bush’s anti-labor version of the Homestead Security bill. On September 20, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle delivered a blistering indictment of Bush’s economic policies. It was intended to begin the Democratic effort to focus attention on Bush’s domestic record. The speech was barely noticed as discussion of the impending war almost completely diverted national attention from domestic issues. Only days later, the Bureau of the census had released data indicating that the income gap between the rich and the rest of society had grown since Bush took office. For the first time since 1991 the income of the middle class fell.
The number of poor Americans increased 1.3 million, representing the first increase in that number in eight years. Median household income fell 2.2% from the previous year. The implications of this date were not to become a major subject of public discussion in the 2002 campaigns. The Democrats were so divided on economic matters that they offered no alternative economic plan, and the Democrat-controlled Senate did not even pass a budget for fiscal 2003. Yet their complaints about the economy would have weighed heavily with the voters had not talk of war completely dominated the political debate? President Bush campaigned vigorously to elect more people to support his war agenda and was able to transfer some of his enormous popularity to GOP candidates. Bush effectively milked the issue to raise record amount of money for Republican candidates. As a result the Republicans had more than twice as much money as Democrats to elect candidates. Bush raised between $141 and 180 million for the cause, and this did not include enormous amounts of soft money spent by drug companies and other corporate interests. There is no way of knowing how much of this constituted illegal contributions. It later developed that in Ohio. GOP politicians violated campaign finance laws by channeling through their names illegal contributions to the Bush campaign. By June 2006, fourteen were charged. Many Republican candidates thought Bush’s great popularity was even more valuable than monetary assistance. They called themselves “Bush babies” and repeated his soothing but empty rhetoric about compassionate conservatism.”
Bush’s success in this election underscored how popular he was. For whatever reason, his body language or apparent decisiveness in national security matters, he wastrusted by the American people. Indeed he enjoyed the kind of popularity once enjoyed by World War II hero Dwight David Eisenhower. There was a caricature of each as bumblers and fools, but they were extraordinarily popular. Blame for nothing stuck to them. Bush, at this point in his reign, may have been more popular than Eisenhower. In 1954, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon claimed that they needed more Republicans in Congress to fight Communism. Vice President Nixon raced around the country questioning the patriotism of Democrats, and the GOP lost seats in both Houses. In 2002,however, this kind of vitriolic campaign paid handsome dividends. The usual exit polls were not available, but there was evidence that some people who usually voted Democratic backed Republicans as a means of supporting the war on terrorism and the proposed war against Iraq.
The 2002 elections were the largest victory for a sitting president in by-elections since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. The Republicans not only increased their majority in the House of Representatives, but they seized control of the Senate. In addition, the Republicans continued to gain seats in state legislatures, picking up at least 200 additional seats. The GOP regained many of the votes it had been losing to Democrats among middle class, white suburbanites. White women, too, voted less strongly for Democrats than in previous elections. Even a majority of voters over 55 voted for Republicans. There was an intensive Republican effort to get out their votes, while Democrats were not as effective at this. In some states, like Maryland, the GOP surpassed the unions in getting people to the polls, which led an AFL-CIO official to note, “They put together a real butt-kicking campaign.” There was a poor turn out among Blacks, and Maryland blacks were discouraged from voting by leaflets that said they could not vote if their rent was unpaid or if they had outstanding traffic tickets. In the last days of the election, pharmaceutical companies and other corporate interests made enormous expenditures on so-called “issue ads” attacking Democrats with numerous phony charges. The soft money expenditures by Republican-allied groups (A527 groups” according to the Tax Code) could not be reported during the election due to late reporting and a hard-to-use government web site.
Jonathan Chait of The New Republic wrote that the Democrats were likely to continue to lose elections unless they are rescued by a deep recession of great Republican excesses. Their difficulties in getting their message across were, he thought, likely only to grow.
The fact of the matter is the Republican Party enjoys certain basic advantages when it comes to getting its message across. One is that it has substantially more money for TV advertising .The GOP also enjoyed allied media outlets like FOX News and talk radio, which disseminate its message to its base in a way that the Democrats can’t duplicate.” Across the board in 2002, the Republicans raised more than $200 million more than the Democrats.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
Saturday, March 22, 2008
George W. Bush: Warrior President
George W. Bush became a war president after 9/11, and he clearly relished his new war. His image as warrior president created such a strong bond with the public that it provided attack-proof cover for any actions he took on the domestic scene. In the words of columnist Robert Reno, George W. Bush’s “approval ratings soar like turkey buzzards on a shaft of hot air.” He was almost politically invincible. Bush decided to use his popularity to “drive a narrow, right-wing agenda,” and seasoned observers thought, “It won’t work. It sells the country short and it will ultimately sell the Bush presidency short.” Many noted that the younger Bush was the political son of Ronald Reagan. Yet, as analyst David Gergen has noted, George W. Bush was “much farther to the right of Reagan.” He found a “radical conservatism that runs through much of the Bush policy.” Unlike Reagan, however, Bush avoided right-wing rhetoric. He talked like a moderate but governed as a radical conservative. The war and his status as warrior president helped his standing with his religious supporters. They were inclined to support war because it offered “expression of two primal aspirations... the embrace of radical good, and the urge to become part of something...larger...but also sacred and eternal.” It seemed that the war was part of God’s master plan and that Bush had to be God’s chosen instrument. The president was aware of this sentiment and played to it with “There is a reason why I’m here.” For many Americans, 9/11 brought enormous humiliation and vulnerability shock, which released an enormous amount of aggressive energy and produced a great deal of “with us or against us” collective identification with the Bush presidency.
For more than two decades, Republican rhetoric in the culture wars had portrayed the nation as under attack from within by liberals bent on destroying traditional culture and values. Now the nation was also under attack from terrorists bent on killing Americans. It was the perfect “ moral panic,” a term social scientists use for scares based “upon fear of threats to society from moral deviants of the worst kind. In general, sociologist Jeffrey Victor wrote, Amoral panics begin when events occur that cause a great many people to feel threatened by an internal enemy, hidden deep within their society. Secret groups of foreign terrorists [ sleeper cells], believed to be fanatics who kill without guilt, fit the bill perfectly.” Moral panics can provide a political party with an enormous advantage, and they can also be used to justify abuses of government power. They are sometimes accompanied by loud demands that people with “wrong” opinions be silenced and watched.
September 11, 2001 was the decisive date in the Second Bush presidency. After a somewhat shaky start, President Bush convinced almost all Americans that he was up to leading the nation through a long-term war against terrorism. He spoke the words of anger and revenge that bespoke the nation’s word, and consistently spoke of his determination to combat terrorism. The Bush administration soon learned how to politicize “counter-terrorism as a way of insuring electoral victories....” Thomas Friedman observed, “In fighting this kind of war, President Bush and his advisers would do themselves a huge favor by not talking too much. They are already starting to contradict themselves.” His talk about an “axis of evil” may have done more harm than good in our dealings with others, particularly North Korea. On the other hand, his words gave his fellow citizens emotional strength in very difficult times, and the public rewarded him with great popularity. Through its excessive rhetoric and desire to cash in politically from the crisis, the administration fed something approaching a collective psychosis among many, perhaps most Americans. Carl G. Jung had written that the gigantic catastrophes that threatened his time came not from physical or biological events but from “psychic epidemics,” wherein several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness...” in which “modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. Many citizens, and the president himself, seemed to let the daemonic or darker side of their nature, in the words of Rollo May “take over the whole person [or even much of the nation] ....violence is the daemonic gone awry.” At the same time, there was a tendency to view their actions as above reproach and even believe they were involved in a Messianic mission and that their leader, George W. Bush was God’s instrument, doing God’s will. Jung thought it was necessary to pretend “to be seekers after God in order not to face the truth that they were ordinary egoists.”
The war lifted Bush to the status of a warrior hero. There was a newfound sense of national unity that all but guaranteed Bush a second term and dampened chances of Democratic gains in Congress, despite a serious recession. Almost everyone recognized the simple fact that a well financed group of terrorists had the ability to deprive Americans of their customary security by horrendous attacks on our home ground and that they had every intention of doing so at times of their own choosing. The nation was wounded and intensely aware of its vulnerability. It had taken casualties and there was no safe place to go to recover and lick its wounds because murderous terrorists could easily penetrate the homeland. Worse still, hundreds of them possibly live here already, waiting to strike. People were numbed with shock. The President saw the need to keep the nation focused on this long-term problem and repeatedly spoke about the threats facing the nation. By continually focusing on external threats, the administration helped a large part of society take on some of the features of a cult. People became dependent upon their leader and inclined to follow him and the administration in lockstep. Rash and untrue statements made by their leader about his opponents were seen as “just politics” or as factual, while criticisms of Bush, even if entirely factual, were seen as “Bush bashing.”
The war-inspired popularity of the president so intimidates his normal critics that they lost the courage to fully voice their criticism. The verbal war on dissent of any kind had the effect of damaging the political process, disrupting thought, and debilitating candor. In effect, President George W. Bush declared a very long-term war on terrorism. As Paul Starr noted, he made a dangerously unlimited bid for the extraordinary authority and heightened deference that presidents enjoy only in wartime.” Opting to place the nation on a long-term war setting had no dangerous consequences for the president. He remained extraordinarily popular even 14 months later when only 32% of the American people thought the US was winning the war against terrorism. New failures and disasters in Iraq seemed to deepen the commitment of many to the president. Growing out of 9/11 was what could be called the politics of fear. It created “a broader self-censorship apparent in the United States that has made public and media discussions of the politics of terrorism very difficult.” George W. Bush continually referred to himself as a “war president” and said he had “war on my mind.” Opponents abroad were reduced to “evildoers,” a term endlessly employed. His discussions of aspects of the war were simple and endlessly repetitive, which encouraged people to reduce the terrible problem to the simplest terms. Many simply said “they hit us, and well hit them.” Continual talk about the horrors of terrorism and the president’s role as a war president determined to protect America planted in the mass consciousness the image of him as unmatched protector of t he fatherland. Moreover, the rhetoric of continual war against terror fanned an emotional excitement that made heightened suggestibility. Hence, a majority of Americans believed Iraqis were involved in 9/11 three years after this had been proven not to be the case. Because successful political exploitation of the crisis required continual demonization of Muslims who disliked the United States, there could be no thorough discussion of ways to dissuade young Muslims from joining the terrorists because this would entail admission of the fact that the terrorists claim they are reacting to what they think are unjust policies.
The crisis invited political exploitation. The administration continuously pointed to the threats the American people faced. Many were frightened, overwhelmed, and despondent and saw Bush as a beacon of strength, action and control. They concluded the nation’s situation was bordering on desperate and that only Bush could provide the answers. Bush’s role in attacking terrorism after the September 11 attack on America gave him the stature of a world leader and practically ended criticism of his foreign policy. Traumatized by the horrible events of that day, Americans decided that matters of national security were truly questions of their personal security. The attacks had been launched on American soil, and it appeared that others would be very difficult to deter. Fearful people are inclined to vote conservative, and 9-11 created millions of very frightened people who came to depend upon George W. Bush for their personal protection.
Concerned for the security of their families, many women became more hawkish than men. Once, women whose voting pattern led them to be called “soccer mom’s because they were concerned about the environment and compassionate policies. The soccer mom was no longer the best term for describing the largest identifiable group of female voters; it was the “security mom,” who saw Bush as the defender of her family. Erica Walter, a writer and security mom, exclaimed, “In George W. Bush people see a contained, channeled virility. They see a man who does what he says, whose every speech and act is not calculated” Kate O’Beirne, another writer all but swooned over Bush in his flight suit ”look at George Bush in that flight suit.” G. Gordon Liddy noted that the landing motif emphasized Bush’s “manly qualities” and Chris Matthews called that photo op “this guy’s greatest moment.” Bush’s carrier landing with the sign “Mission Accomplished” seemed contrived and foolish to sophisticates, but it projected a macho image to many very fearful people who needed a protector or big daddy. Similarly, his subsequent “Bring Em On” comments were criticized as provocative, but they very reassuring to a majority of Americans. Bush’s handlers worked hard to present him as an effective dispenser of justice and as a blunt natural leader reared on the tough values of the Old West. Critics complained that his what they thought policies were those of a reckless cowboy, but a majority of voters found this exactly what they sought.
Many people in a wartime situation have a great need to believe that their leader is capable of protecting them under any circumstances. No matter how many mistakes Bush made in this effort, they would stick with him. The psychology of war confers far greater significance on mythic reality than upon sensory reality. Many people have a powerful need to find meaning in life, and the war on terrorism confers this. Americas become of representatives of the GOOD and the terrorists are Absolute EVIL. These simple good-bad dichotomies erase any other concerns people might have. This outlook has a way of silencing people’s “authentic culture and humane culture.” They lose the ability to understand that their opponents might have some legitimate grievances. Declaration of a universal war on terror guarantees that a large number of people will bestow a heroic image on themselves and their leader, George. W. Bush.
In similar crises in the past, the Right has used fear of external enemies to attempt to limit political dissent and ignite a populist nationalism that would be beneficial to them politically, and sharply restrict the flow of information in the name of national security. Patriotic symbols were appropriated by the Right and proved to be a powerful means of consolidating support which “not only generates solidarity, unity, and remembrance, but also mistrust, divisions, and amnesia.” The government promoted the slogan “United We Stand,” which soon appeared on bumper stickers and in the windows of stores, offices, and homes. Susan Sontag suggested it equated “dissent with lack of patriotism.” White House press secretary pointedly warned, “People have to watch what they say and do.” After the attack the very conservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni published a list of professors it accused of being “short on patriotism,” and Daniel Pipes, working for Campus Watch, posted a list of professors whose views on Middle East affairs lead to “left-leaning groupthink.” Right-wing groups launched efforts to put entertainers and celebrities on a tight leash if they were critical of Bush’s war on Iraq. Advertisers were encouraged to drop sponsorship of television programs that featured theses people. An organization called “Right March” sold a recording called “Hey Hollywood!’, in which a singer urged critics of Bush to leave the United States.
The “Attack on America” was a searing experience for all Americans and Bush because it focused on a shocked but reinvigorated nation’s unity. It also showered great political benefits upon the president. As war leader, he immediately acquired more legitimacy than men who had been elected to that office without burdens like the dispute over Florida’s electoral votes. Once seen as an inarticulate bumbler by many, he was now viewed as an articulate, highly effective leader. In what appeared to be an unspoken agreement, the nation generally accepted a moratorium of serious criticism of his policies, particularly those dealing with foreign policy and fighting terrorism. The moratorium was slightly breached a year later when some very gently raised questions about proposed preemptive strike against Iraq. By early March 2006, 69% of Republicans still believed that the Iraq War had been a success. However only 37% of Independents and 30% of Democrats agreed with them. The quick victory in the Iraq war in 2003 had been followed by the deaths of more than 2300 American soldiers, and civil strife had escalated to the point where civil war seemed a possibility. President Bush’s popularity had fallen well below 40% . However, disillusionment with the situation in Iraq did not seem to diminish by much the potency of the war on terror as a potent Republican issue.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
For more than two decades, Republican rhetoric in the culture wars had portrayed the nation as under attack from within by liberals bent on destroying traditional culture and values. Now the nation was also under attack from terrorists bent on killing Americans. It was the perfect “ moral panic,” a term social scientists use for scares based “upon fear of threats to society from moral deviants of the worst kind. In general, sociologist Jeffrey Victor wrote, Amoral panics begin when events occur that cause a great many people to feel threatened by an internal enemy, hidden deep within their society. Secret groups of foreign terrorists [ sleeper cells], believed to be fanatics who kill without guilt, fit the bill perfectly.” Moral panics can provide a political party with an enormous advantage, and they can also be used to justify abuses of government power. They are sometimes accompanied by loud demands that people with “wrong” opinions be silenced and watched.
September 11, 2001 was the decisive date in the Second Bush presidency. After a somewhat shaky start, President Bush convinced almost all Americans that he was up to leading the nation through a long-term war against terrorism. He spoke the words of anger and revenge that bespoke the nation’s word, and consistently spoke of his determination to combat terrorism. The Bush administration soon learned how to politicize “counter-terrorism as a way of insuring electoral victories....” Thomas Friedman observed, “In fighting this kind of war, President Bush and his advisers would do themselves a huge favor by not talking too much. They are already starting to contradict themselves.” His talk about an “axis of evil” may have done more harm than good in our dealings with others, particularly North Korea. On the other hand, his words gave his fellow citizens emotional strength in very difficult times, and the public rewarded him with great popularity. Through its excessive rhetoric and desire to cash in politically from the crisis, the administration fed something approaching a collective psychosis among many, perhaps most Americans. Carl G. Jung had written that the gigantic catastrophes that threatened his time came not from physical or biological events but from “psychic epidemics,” wherein several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness...” in which “modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. Many citizens, and the president himself, seemed to let the daemonic or darker side of their nature, in the words of Rollo May “take over the whole person [or even much of the nation] ....violence is the daemonic gone awry.” At the same time, there was a tendency to view their actions as above reproach and even believe they were involved in a Messianic mission and that their leader, George W. Bush was God’s instrument, doing God’s will. Jung thought it was necessary to pretend “to be seekers after God in order not to face the truth that they were ordinary egoists.”
The war lifted Bush to the status of a warrior hero. There was a newfound sense of national unity that all but guaranteed Bush a second term and dampened chances of Democratic gains in Congress, despite a serious recession. Almost everyone recognized the simple fact that a well financed group of terrorists had the ability to deprive Americans of their customary security by horrendous attacks on our home ground and that they had every intention of doing so at times of their own choosing. The nation was wounded and intensely aware of its vulnerability. It had taken casualties and there was no safe place to go to recover and lick its wounds because murderous terrorists could easily penetrate the homeland. Worse still, hundreds of them possibly live here already, waiting to strike. People were numbed with shock. The President saw the need to keep the nation focused on this long-term problem and repeatedly spoke about the threats facing the nation. By continually focusing on external threats, the administration helped a large part of society take on some of the features of a cult. People became dependent upon their leader and inclined to follow him and the administration in lockstep. Rash and untrue statements made by their leader about his opponents were seen as “just politics” or as factual, while criticisms of Bush, even if entirely factual, were seen as “Bush bashing.”
The war-inspired popularity of the president so intimidates his normal critics that they lost the courage to fully voice their criticism. The verbal war on dissent of any kind had the effect of damaging the political process, disrupting thought, and debilitating candor. In effect, President George W. Bush declared a very long-term war on terrorism. As Paul Starr noted, he made a dangerously unlimited bid for the extraordinary authority and heightened deference that presidents enjoy only in wartime.” Opting to place the nation on a long-term war setting had no dangerous consequences for the president. He remained extraordinarily popular even 14 months later when only 32% of the American people thought the US was winning the war against terrorism. New failures and disasters in Iraq seemed to deepen the commitment of many to the president. Growing out of 9/11 was what could be called the politics of fear. It created “a broader self-censorship apparent in the United States that has made public and media discussions of the politics of terrorism very difficult.” George W. Bush continually referred to himself as a “war president” and said he had “war on my mind.” Opponents abroad were reduced to “evildoers,” a term endlessly employed. His discussions of aspects of the war were simple and endlessly repetitive, which encouraged people to reduce the terrible problem to the simplest terms. Many simply said “they hit us, and well hit them.” Continual talk about the horrors of terrorism and the president’s role as a war president determined to protect America planted in the mass consciousness the image of him as unmatched protector of t he fatherland. Moreover, the rhetoric of continual war against terror fanned an emotional excitement that made heightened suggestibility. Hence, a majority of Americans believed Iraqis were involved in 9/11 three years after this had been proven not to be the case. Because successful political exploitation of the crisis required continual demonization of Muslims who disliked the United States, there could be no thorough discussion of ways to dissuade young Muslims from joining the terrorists because this would entail admission of the fact that the terrorists claim they are reacting to what they think are unjust policies.
The crisis invited political exploitation. The administration continuously pointed to the threats the American people faced. Many were frightened, overwhelmed, and despondent and saw Bush as a beacon of strength, action and control. They concluded the nation’s situation was bordering on desperate and that only Bush could provide the answers. Bush’s role in attacking terrorism after the September 11 attack on America gave him the stature of a world leader and practically ended criticism of his foreign policy. Traumatized by the horrible events of that day, Americans decided that matters of national security were truly questions of their personal security. The attacks had been launched on American soil, and it appeared that others would be very difficult to deter. Fearful people are inclined to vote conservative, and 9-11 created millions of very frightened people who came to depend upon George W. Bush for their personal protection.
Concerned for the security of their families, many women became more hawkish than men. Once, women whose voting pattern led them to be called “soccer mom’s because they were concerned about the environment and compassionate policies. The soccer mom was no longer the best term for describing the largest identifiable group of female voters; it was the “security mom,” who saw Bush as the defender of her family. Erica Walter, a writer and security mom, exclaimed, “In George W. Bush people see a contained, channeled virility. They see a man who does what he says, whose every speech and act is not calculated” Kate O’Beirne, another writer all but swooned over Bush in his flight suit ”look at George Bush in that flight suit.” G. Gordon Liddy noted that the landing motif emphasized Bush’s “manly qualities” and Chris Matthews called that photo op “this guy’s greatest moment.” Bush’s carrier landing with the sign “Mission Accomplished” seemed contrived and foolish to sophisticates, but it projected a macho image to many very fearful people who needed a protector or big daddy. Similarly, his subsequent “Bring Em On” comments were criticized as provocative, but they very reassuring to a majority of Americans. Bush’s handlers worked hard to present him as an effective dispenser of justice and as a blunt natural leader reared on the tough values of the Old West. Critics complained that his what they thought policies were those of a reckless cowboy, but a majority of voters found this exactly what they sought.
Many people in a wartime situation have a great need to believe that their leader is capable of protecting them under any circumstances. No matter how many mistakes Bush made in this effort, they would stick with him. The psychology of war confers far greater significance on mythic reality than upon sensory reality. Many people have a powerful need to find meaning in life, and the war on terrorism confers this. Americas become of representatives of the GOOD and the terrorists are Absolute EVIL. These simple good-bad dichotomies erase any other concerns people might have. This outlook has a way of silencing people’s “authentic culture and humane culture.” They lose the ability to understand that their opponents might have some legitimate grievances. Declaration of a universal war on terror guarantees that a large number of people will bestow a heroic image on themselves and their leader, George. W. Bush.
In similar crises in the past, the Right has used fear of external enemies to attempt to limit political dissent and ignite a populist nationalism that would be beneficial to them politically, and sharply restrict the flow of information in the name of national security. Patriotic symbols were appropriated by the Right and proved to be a powerful means of consolidating support which “not only generates solidarity, unity, and remembrance, but also mistrust, divisions, and amnesia.” The government promoted the slogan “United We Stand,” which soon appeared on bumper stickers and in the windows of stores, offices, and homes. Susan Sontag suggested it equated “dissent with lack of patriotism.” White House press secretary pointedly warned, “People have to watch what they say and do.” After the attack the very conservative American Council of Trustees and Alumni published a list of professors it accused of being “short on patriotism,” and Daniel Pipes, working for Campus Watch, posted a list of professors whose views on Middle East affairs lead to “left-leaning groupthink.” Right-wing groups launched efforts to put entertainers and celebrities on a tight leash if they were critical of Bush’s war on Iraq. Advertisers were encouraged to drop sponsorship of television programs that featured theses people. An organization called “Right March” sold a recording called “Hey Hollywood!’, in which a singer urged critics of Bush to leave the United States.
The “Attack on America” was a searing experience for all Americans and Bush because it focused on a shocked but reinvigorated nation’s unity. It also showered great political benefits upon the president. As war leader, he immediately acquired more legitimacy than men who had been elected to that office without burdens like the dispute over Florida’s electoral votes. Once seen as an inarticulate bumbler by many, he was now viewed as an articulate, highly effective leader. In what appeared to be an unspoken agreement, the nation generally accepted a moratorium of serious criticism of his policies, particularly those dealing with foreign policy and fighting terrorism. The moratorium was slightly breached a year later when some very gently raised questions about proposed preemptive strike against Iraq. By early March 2006, 69% of Republicans still believed that the Iraq War had been a success. However only 37% of Independents and 30% of Democrats agreed with them. The quick victory in the Iraq war in 2003 had been followed by the deaths of more than 2300 American soldiers, and civil strife had escalated to the point where civil war seemed a possibility. President Bush’s popularity had fallen well below 40% . However, disillusionment with the situation in Iraq did not seem to diminish by much the potency of the war on terror as a potent Republican issue.
Sherman has written African American Baseball: A Brief History, which can be acquired from LuLu Publishing on line.http://www.lulu.com/browse/search.php?search_forum
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