ALAN BISBORT

January 31, 2002

Apparently the Democrats just don't know how to play dirty.

Soon after Bill Clinton took office, his friend and counsel Vince Foster committed suicide. This tragedy was quickly turned to political use by the Republicans, who, though they proclaimed themselves arbiters of "moral values," have shown themselves to really be masters at "politics of personal destruction." Foster, they insisted, held dark secrets about the Clintons and, thus, was rubbed out by the First Couple. Soon after Bill Clinton left office, these same Republicans insisted, with no substantiating evidence, that Clinton staffers were guilty of rampant vandalism. In both cases, the vicious slanders were reported nationwide as if legitimate news. Of course, when these slanders were discovered to be baseless, the retractions, if reported at all, were buried deep in most of America's cookie-cutter newspapers.

The same nasty process, were Democrats made of the same sternly Machiavellian stuff, could be set into motion with the bodies that seem to be falling around George W. Bush's feet of late. The most recent is J. Clifford Baxter, Enron's vice chairman before he resigned last May. Baxter, a vocal critic of the way Enron did business and due to be a witness this week in a Congressional probe was found shot to death in a car on Friday, Jan. 25 in a Houston suburb, "an apparent suicide." Or the "apparent suicide" last month of Peter Hartmann, director of Menorah Gardens in Florida, a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI). His company, under investigation for dumping bodies rather than burying them, was part of a Houston-based mortuary giant whose CEO, Robert Waltrip, is a Bush family friend and financier. When Bush was Texas governor, he even risked perjury charges by making statements that denied knowledge of Waltrip's business under oath when Waltrip's company was investigated for similar violations. Or James Hatfield, author of Fortunate Son, an unauthorized biography of George W. Bush that purported, among many other things, to detail the president's former cocaine problems. Hatfield was found dead in a motel room early last year, an apparent suicide.

While all of these probably were tragic suicides, none of the cottage industry theorizing that rose from the Vince Foster suicide has bloomed in their garden.

Let's face it. The Democrats do not do as well at fighting dirty as the Republicans, who seem to have bottomless funds and an insatiable appetite for "dirty tricks," thanks in part to billionaire benefactors like Richard Scaife and Rupert Murdoch. If they did have the means and the meanness to do so, the Democrats could have a field day among George W. Bush's dark shadows : perjury, cocaine, duplicitous legal and financial behavior, drunkenness, profligacy with money, lousy grades, AWOL from the military, and God knows what else.

Time magazine is typical. Take the Enron story. On the week when the feces hit the fan for the White House, Time ran a cover story on "The Science of Staying Healthy," featuring a lipstick-spackled model holding a glass apple. "Want to keep the doctor away?"

Or take the pretzel affair. How does a grown man fall off a sofa while eating a pretzel and nearly die? What really happened? We'll never know because Time and every other news outlet treated this as a health oddity. No hard follow-up questions were asked, even simple and obvious ones like, "Was the President drinking at the time?" Take the Jan. 10th issue of Time. They ran a photo of W. with current pariah Ken Lay at a baseball game at the euphoniously named Enron Field. Only Time cropped the photo so that you can't see Bush is holding a cup that bears suspicious resemblance to a receptacle in which beer is sold at stadiums. The uncropped photo, by AP's Eric Gay, clearly shows the cup in Bush's hand. Even if it wasn't beer, it looked like it was, and Time chose to blot out any chance that this question would be raised and the president would be held accountable.

So where does Bush's free ride end? When the budget deficit reaches 10 trillion? When will he and Dick Cheney be made to answer follow-up questions? This past week, for instance, the White House said they'd had no contact with Enron officials in the past year. Someone finally asked a follow-up question and it was learned that White House officials had actually had four contacts with Enron. No, make that six contacts. No, four. The story seemed to change every hour. Maybe this is politics as usual, but Bush promised to restore honesty to the White House, and his scorecard for lying, not to mention the growing body count, has already begun to move into Clinton territory.

As for Bush's vow to restore dignity, what gives with his weird revelation that his mother-in-law lost $8,100 when Enron collapsed? Does he think this somehow makes him a "victim" too? Putting aside the psychological indignity of hiding behind two skirts (his wife's and his wife's mother), the cluelessness of such an obvious attempt to curry favor is an insult to the thousands of Americans who've had their savings wiped out by the malfeasance of Bush's best friends.

The state of the union is really quite abysmal right now. But don't expect the press to put anything but a Smiley Face upon it. Bush's free ride continues. Finally, it's clear now that Bush & Co. have designated Lay and Dave Duncan at Arthur Andersen as their fall guys. Thus, the only question of any importance left to be answered is: Will Lay and Duncan be G. Gordon Liddy, and take the rap for the boss, or will they be John Dean and say, "Hell no, I won't go to jail for these guys!"

MICHAEL KINSLEY

January 10, 2002

Goldberg Variations
Evil genius or useful idiot? We report, you decide.

As a liberal, I had long suspected that we might have a secret coven over at CBS News. It's hard to say why, exactly. Maybe it's that little smirk of Dan Rather's whenever he gets to report something bad happening to America. Or maybe it was the famous episode when Walter Cronkite ended his broadcast by denouncing capitalism as "a system of class oppression that must be destroyed root and branch." But it was only a suspicion.

So I was happy to get confirmation from the current best seller (categorized as nonfiction) Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News, by former CBS newsman Bernard Goldberg. The book is rich with anecdotes about the horrors—ideological and otherwise—of working for CBS, culled from Mr. Goldberg's three decades of working for CBS. He must have been chained to his TelePrompTer or something, because a man who "was once rated by TV Guide as one of the ten most interesting people on television," as his author ID brags, surely didn't need to spend all those years at a corrupt and dishonest institution.

One story has gotten the most attention. It involves a conversation with CBS News President Andrew Heyward : "'Look, Bernie,' he said, 'of course there's a liberal bias in the news. All the networks tilt left.' But, 'If you repeat any of this, I'll deny it.'"

Bingo! This was the confirmation that I and every right-wing radio talk show host in America had been waiting for. But then I made the classic journalist's error: I checked it out. First I talked to Mr. Goldberg himself. "Look, Mike, of course I made that story up," he said. "It's brilliant, don't you think? If Heyward denies the story, that just confirms it in people's minds. The whole vast right-wing conspiracy has fallen for it. Fox News is so grateful that Roger Ailes is sending me suitcases full of cash. And if you repeat any of this, I'll deny it."

"Of course we haven't fallen for it," Ailes growled. "We just put it out there as prole meat. This Goldberg is what my Communist pals used to call a useful idiot. And what an idiot! They really don't build them like that anymore." Ailes' humor started to improve. Soon tears of happiness were streaming down his cheeks. "I mean, that stuff about CBS execs taking it up the keister from Dan Rather in prison?" He chortled, "I love it, I really do. And who cares if it's all true or not?" He winked. "We report, you decide. By the way, if you repeat any of this, I'll break your legs. And I'll deny it."

Finally, I checked with the chairman of the Vast Conspiracy, Wall Street Journal Editor Robert Bartley, who confirmed every detail. "Ailes is a bit of a train wreck himself," Bartley added with a thoughtful wave of his hookah. "Of course if you repeat any of this ..."

Mr. Goldberg's original act of apostasy was in 1996. After managing to hold his tongue for a quarter of a century, he let loose with an op-ed in the Journal. To his astonishment, people he thought were his friends turned inexplicably hostile, merely because he had publicly denounced them as betrayers of their profession. Conservative commentary on Bias shares Mr. Goldberg's indignation, if not his surprise. Conservatives know the depths of ruthlessness to which the liberal establishment can sink when its supremacy is threatened.

At the Wall Street Journal editorial page, presumably , if a colleague announces to the world that he holds the institution and those who work there in contempt, he takes a bit of joshing around the water cooler, then everybody gathers for a group hug and returns to denouncing Tom Daschle. Bernard Goldberg was not so lucky. Trapped in an enraged mob of overpaid, middle-aged white men in suits, he was … taken out and tortured? Well, no. Tickled until he begged them to stop? No. Fired? Not at all. Given a cushy job until a bigger pension kicked in at age 55, when he left of his own accord? Yup. Those liberal swine! No wonder Goldberg is regarded (by himself, among others) as a martyr.

OK, OK, Bernard Goldberg may be so dim, or so drunk on self-righteousness, that he can't see the comic futility of trying to insulate a quote from denial by adding a second quote promising to lie about the first one—all in the name of high journalistic standards. (Who is going to doubt the first quote but believe the second?) But he's obviously right about liberal bias, isn't he? Maybe. The point is that this dumb book adds nothing to the argument, and it is the accusers who are offering it as evidence.

Like a stopped clock, Goldberg isn't always wrong. He's probably sincere. But he's remarkably dense. And you have to wonder whether his glorifiers are just as dense, or deeply cynical, or living on a different planet. Do they really think it is devastating evidence of bias that a TV producer would decide to label a full-time ideologue like Phyllis Schlafly as "conservative" but not feel obliged to label avocational activist Rosie O'Donnell as "liberal"?

I don't doubt that Goldberg heard a colleague disparage Gary Bauer as "the little nut from the Christian group." Did he never hear casual disparagement of liberal politicians? "I can't tell you how many times I heard the term 'white trash' thrown around," Goldberg told Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post. Was it ever, perchance, applied to Bill Clinton? Goldberg said he "resents" the term white trash because of his own lower-middle-class background. His resentment is truly omnivorous. Bernard Goldberg may carry many burdens, but the danger of being considered white trash is not one of them.

Other epithets are available.

For what I really think about liberal media bias, if you care :

Liberal Bias

Warning : What follows is assertion more than argument. Argument seems to be almost pointless on this subject. If you actually believe that CBS News is biased but Fox News tells it straight, our common ground of perceived reality is too small to rumble in. There are all sorts of possible standards for and definitions of bias. There is even a respectable view that Fox News is a terrific innovation in open bias. In fact, that's close to what I believe, though I can also appreciate the view that Fox and CBS are both unacceptably biased, or that CBS is acceptable—B-plus for effort—but Fox is not. What I can't conceive is a serious test of bias that Fox would pass but CBS would flunk. Anyway, for what it's worth, here's what I believe—undefended, but sincere.

1. Are most journalists—on balance, with many exceptions both within and among individuals—inclined to be politically liberal? Sure. Just as most major corporate executives tend to be Republican. In both cases the reasons are fairly easy to speculate about, mostly involving the psychology of people who are attracted to and do well in these different careers, though in the case of top businesspeople the nexus between political views and self-interest is more obvious.

2. Which has more impact on the shape of society and even the direction of politics : the liberal tendency of journalists or the conservative tendency of business executives? Probably the business folks (through lobbying … campaign contributions … advertising and PR … the general allure of large piles of money), possibly it's a tie. Unlikely that it is the journalists. Furthermore, even within journalism, the influence of reporters, producers, even anchors is diluted by that of the pundits, the owners, the editorial pages, all of which tend, on average, to be conservative.

3. There is a difference between having an opinion and having a bias. Polls revealing the political preferences of journalists are beside the point. An intelligent and patriotic citizen ought to have informed opinions on the issues of the day, and those opinions—with occasional exceptions—ought to be consistent with one another and with some underlying set of values. Journalists are, by and large, intelligent and patriotic and not exempt from the obligations of citizenship. They also—on average, with exceptions, etc.—tend to be more engaged, both professionally and by disposition, in the issues of the day. So, it is neither practical nor desirable to expect journalists to be ideological eunuchs.

4. The definition of bias depends on the particular institution and the journalist's particular duties. What is bias at a newspaper like the Washington Post might not be bias at a magazine like Time or Newsweek—or a whatever we are at Slate. What would be bias at Slate might not be at an overtly political journal like The Nation or the National Review. What is bias for a White House correspondent is proper or even obligatory behavior for an editorial writer. "Liberal bias" obsessives often overlook these distinctions as well as other practical realities of journalism. (The main piece offers some examples.)

5. Most journalists of all political stripes do a pretty good job of preventing their opinions from leading to bias. But no one is perfect and some folks are far from perfect. Since journalists are disproportionately liberal, the bias that creeps in is probably disproportionately liberal as well.

6. Whatcha gonna do about it? If it is wrong for journalists to be disproportionately liberal, what is the proper situation? There are three possible answers, all inadequate. a) Journalists should be ideologically neuter—neither realistic nor desirable, as explained above. b) Journalists should be disproportionately conservative. Many conservative press critics might like this situation, but I cannot imagine a persuasive justification for it. c) The politics of journalists should roughly reflect those of the general population. There is actually an interesting case to be made for this, which I've never seen made. If journalists tend to be disproportionately liberal, achieving ideological balance would require giving hiring preference to conservatives—allowing politics to trump individual merit, if merit is defined as the best possible assessment of a person's potential as a journalist. Actually, I believe that a lot of this goes on already. The constant drumbeat of "liberal bias" has mau-maued many media institutions into actively hiring conservatives. But it's not surprising that conservatives have hesitated to make this argument explicitly, as it inevitably raises the question why they oppose affirmative-action-style favoritism for other underrepresented groups. Somewhat less inevitably, it also raises the question why there shouldn't be favoritism for underrepresented liberals in corporate executive suites.

7. Bottom line : Yes, as a gross generalization, there is some liberal bias in the media. But not nearly enough to explain or justify the obsession with it. Given all the mitigating and complicating and countervailing factors—and assuming that they don't have the stomach for 6 c—liberal-bias obsessives should calm down and learn to live with it. It's really no big deal.

So, that's what I think.

PAUL GLASTRIS

March 2002

On Nov. 22, 2000, it looked as if the presidency of the United States was about to be decided in Miami, Fla. That morning, a three-judge canvassing board in Miami-Dade County resolved to recount 10,750 "undervotes"---ballots which machines had read as showing no vote for president, but which, examined by hand, might reveal such evidence of voter intent as the now-famous "dangling chads." Outraged operatives for George W. Bush, fearing that Al Gore might pick up enough votes to win, labored to convince the judges to stop the recount. When their legal arguments failed, they turned to a different form of persuasion.

As the judges repaired to a room to examine the votes, dozens of GOP "protesters" (mostly young Republican congressional aides flown in from Washington) gathered in the vestibule outside. Though two Republican observers were inside the room, and the "protesters" could watch the proceedings from afar through a window, they nevertheless convinced themselves that something nefarious was going on. The crowd started chanting "They're stealing the election," and "No justice, no peace!" They banged on the door of the tabulation room and physically harassed people coming in and out. After several hours of chaos, the judges relented. Citing a lack of time, they announced that they were stopping the Miami-Dade recount for good.

Right-wing pundits weren't troubled by the GOP's thuggishness. They were psyched. Wall Street Journal columnist (now editorial page editor) Paul Gigot praised the "bourgeois riot" as a sign that Republicans had finally learned to "fight like Democrats."

Problem was, Democrats weren't fighting like Democrats. They staged no counter-demonstrations that day in Miami. Why? Because the vice president himself, fearing bad press, expressly ordered that unionists, civil rights activists, and other liberal ground troops should stay out of Florida.

The recount was a study in the starkly different political styles that characterize the two parties. To lead his recount effort , Gore chose Warren Christopher, widely admired for his rectitude and judiciousness. Bush chose James Baker, widely feared for his cold-blooded effectiveness. Christopher sent lawyers to Florida. Baker sent lawyers---and press people, and political surrogates, and operatives to stir up Cuban street protests. The Gore team called high-mindedly for an indeterminate process: We don't know who won, so count every vote. The Bush team sternly demanded a concrete result: We know who won, so stop the recount. When lawyers for Gore suggested slapping a subpoena on Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris to prove she was taking orders from the Bush campaign (which she was) and therefore abusing her discretion, top Gore officials in Nashville overruled the plan as too incendiary. A month later, the Bush legal team publicly accused chief Gore aide Ron Klain of violating court orders by announcing the results of a partial recount --- a charge the court summarily dismissed.

Why did Gore's side so consistently fail to act as ruthlessly as Bush's team in Florida? A big part of the reason, argues Jeffrey Toobin in his chronicle of the recount, Too Close to Call, was Gore's obsessive concern with how official Washington would respond. Gore "agonized about the views of the columnists, newspaper editorialists, and other elite opinion makers among whom he had lived so long," Toobin writes. "Gore cared as much about their approval as he did about winning, and he ran his recount effort accordingly." Bush, on the other hand, cared not a whit about what the "liberal media" had to say. Indeed, he knew, as the Gigot column showed, that the conservative media would support almost any tactic that put a Republican back in the White House. And so, while Gore kept his team on a leash, Bush gave his own carte blanche to do whatever it took to win.

The lessons of the recount might not matter much if Gore's hesitancy were a self-destructive trait peculiar to him. But it's not. It's a tendency widely shared among Democrats today. The Bush team can attack Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), lose $4 trillion of the surplus, and meet with campaign contributors whose company stock they own, and Democrats just watch. Sure, it's tough to fight a president wrapped in the glory of a so-far-successful war. But the Democrats' passivity long predates September 11. And then there's Enron. Is there any doubt that if the situation were reversed, Republicans would be exploiting the scandal more aggressively? Would they have hesitated, as Democrats have, to frame Enron as a political scandal, or to bombard the White House with subpoenas? Democrats can't afford to go all wobbly, especially now. Elections which could determine control of Congress are seven months away. Yet when it comes to playing political hardball, Republicans are hitting to all fields. Democrats are trembling at the plate.

Ruthless People

The Democrats have not always been so sensitive. John F. Kennedy exploited a non-existent "missile gap" to defeat Richard Nixon in 1960. Lyndon Johnson vaporized Barry Goldwater's presidential bid in 1964 with the help of an infamous TV commercial featuring a little girl and a nuclear mushroom cloud. Of course, these acts of ruthlessness paled in comparison to what Nixon would do to win --- sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks to beat Hubert Humphrey in 1968, for instance. But back then no one thought Democrats were pushovers. Indeed, Nixon railed during Watergate at the injustice of being prosecuted for acts that he felt his predecessors had gotten away with.

Watergate spurred a new generation of Democratic lawmakers to craft various safeguards against abuses of power, from ethics and campaign finance laws to the independent counsel statute. These measures did clean up many of Washington's grossest abuses. But they also provided handy instruments for political vendettas which the Republicans seized first. (Remember the fruitless independent counsel investigation of Carter chief of staff Hamilton Jordan's alleged cocaine use?) But Democrats quickly followed, siccing independent counsels on a host of Reagan appointees, including Labor Secretary Ray Donovan, who, upon being cleared, famously asked, "Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?"

Throughout the 1980s, the old Nixonian sense of persecution grew among conservatives. Though they controlled the White House, took over the Senate, were making inroads in the judiciary, and held sway over the military and corporate America, conservatives nevertheless felt they were at sword's point with liberal forces far bigger and more venal than themselves---in the media, Hollywood, academia, and Congress. Newt Gingrich, then a congressional backbencher, gave voice to these feelings in late-hour harangues against "corrupt" House Democratic leaders, broadcast live over C-SPAN. House Democrats occasionally lived up to the stereotypes. In 1985, after a race for Indiana's eighth congressional district ended in a virtual tie, House Speaker Tip O'Neill engineered a party-line vote that handed the seat to Democrat Richard McIntyre. That brazen act helped convince Republicans that Gingrich was right: Democrats really would "stop at nothing" to win. Further confirmation came from liberal interest groups, which unearthed and publicized embarrassing private details about Supreme Court nominees such as Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

By the time the Clinton administration came along, GOP conservatives were in full jihad mode. They seized on the same mechanisms of scandal Democrats had used --- ethics laws, congressional subpoenas, independent counsels networks of legal activists, partisan think tanks, and an eager mainstream press corps. But they brought far more money and ferocity to the task, as well as an openly partisan conservative media. Like Nixon, the anti-Clinton right acted with more thoroughgoing viciousness than Democrats ever mustered.

And like Nixon, they justified their own ruthlessness by presuming that the opposition was boundlessly corrupt --- a presumption their own inquisitions disproved. Seven Clinton-era independent counsel investigations yielded only one conviction of an administration official (the Secretary of Agriculture's chief of staff) for conduct while in office, and only two (Webster Hubbell and Henry Cisneros) for acts committed prior to joining the administration. By contrast, 11 Reagan administration officials were convicted of crimes committed while in office, plus two others for conduct before or after their government service. Still, the conservatives' gut sense of Clinton wasn't altogether wrong. Bill Clinton might not "do anything" to win, but he was willing to fight harder and brush up closer to the edge of legality than any prominent Democrat in years. His almost maniacal fundraising in 1996, for instance, infuriated the right, scandalized the press, and sickened the more sensitive members of his own party. But the president was unapologetic. He understood that his party's noble principles weren't of much use without the power of office to implement them.

In the end, the jihad went badly for the GOP. By the time impeachment proceedings were over, Clinton was still president, his job-approval numbers still high. The GOP actually lost House seats in the 1998 elections --- the first time a president's party gained seats in the House in the sixth year of a presidency since 1822. And Newt Gingrich was back teaching college.

The two parties drew quite different lessons from the Clinton years. Democrats concluded that the Republicans' scorched-earth, win-at-all-costs strategy was not only reprehensible, but deeply unpopular with voters and determined not to stoop to that level. Republicans decided that next time, they'd be smarter about it.

The Silence of the Dems

A few days after Thanksgiving, President Bush decided to change the tone in Washington --- by directing his staff to publicly attack Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. It was a curious order. Relations between Bush and Daschle had been cordial. Like virtually all Democrats, Daschle had rallied around the president after September 11, and was himself a target of terrorism, having received an anthrax-laden letter. But in recent weeks Daschle had also succeeded in blocking White-House-supported airport security and economic stimulus bills (the latter would have, among other things, given a quarter billion dollar tax cut to Enron, which paid no federal income taxes in four of the last five years).

So Bush decided to go personal, and soon everyone from Ari Fleischer to The Washington Times editorial page was parroting the same line : that Tom Daschle was an "obstructionist." Rush Limbaugh stepped up his own petty rhetoric, calling the senate leader "Puff Daschle" and "El Diablo." Newspaper and broadcast ads trashing Daschle appeared in his home state of South Dakota. One, by the Family Research Council, blasted Daschle's opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a threat to energy security. It featured a picture of Daschle next to Saddam Hussein.

It was a classic Republican smear campaign. And it was met, on the Democratic side, with silence. On the Dec. 9 broadcast of "Meet the Press," Tim Russert confronted Vice President Dick Cheney about the Saddam ad : "That's a little over the line, isn't it?" Cheney not only refused to condemn the ad but repeated the charge that Daschle was an "obstructionist." For more than two months after the Russert broadcast, not one leading Democrat publicly defended Daschle.

Finally, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) struck back, decrying the administration's "gutter attacks." But the moment had passed. Imagine what might have happened, however, if a group of prominent senators like Lieberman had immediately responded to the attacks. The soundbite writes itself: "Tom Daschle is a military veteran, a strong supporter of our war on terrorism, and a target of terrorists himself. Yet Vice President Cheney goes on national TV and suggests it's OK to compare Tom Daschle to Saddam Hussein. Well, it's not OK. It's wrong. The vice president should apologize to Tom Daschle and to the American people." Such a response might have dominated the news cycle for days, knocked a point or two off Bush's approval ratings, and sent the White House a message not to try a stunt like that again.

Alas, the Democrats' passivity in the face of White House aggression is part of a pattern. Soon after becoming president, Bush, ignoring establishment Washington's hoary advice about the importance of bipartisanship, offered up a slew of right-wing nominees : John Ashcroft for attorney general, Gail Norton for Interior secretary, Ted Olson for solicitor general. These nominees were far more controversial than any Clinton appointments Republicans had killed. But Senate Democrats barely fought their confirmation. Bush went on to push for the largest income-tax cut in a generation, tilted heavily towards the wealthy. These tax cuts had little public support. But Senate Democrats were unable to muster enough votes even for a filibuster. They had to settle for a marginal compromise with moderate Republicans.

Then, in the spring, news spread that political advisor Karl Rove had been holding policy meetings with executives of corporations, such as Intel , whose stock he owned. Washington hadn't seen a clearer example of conflict of interest in years. Yet virtually the only Democratic lawmaker to raise hell about it was Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), and as a minority member of the House Government Affairs Committee, the most he could do was send a letter to the General Accounting Office (GAO) requesting information. The GAO complied, and Rove had a few weeks of bad press. But Senate Democrats, who chair committees and have the power to hold hearings and issue subpoenas, sat on the sidelines. Had the Senate gotten involved, "they could have taken Rove out of commission for six months," notes an angry veteran of the Clinton White House and the Hill. "Rove is a huge talent. It would have been like taking a bishop off the board. Believe me, Rove will not fucking return the favor."

Waxman, along with Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), also had the gumption to ask the GAO last spring to investigate whether Bush campaign contributors, including Enron, influenced the findings of the Cheney energy task force. The White House's point-blank refusal to provide the GAO with details about Cheney's meetings with Enron is the surest sign yet that a full-blown political scandal lurks in the Enron mess. But had it been up to Senate Democrats, Cheney would not have been asked for the records.

On June 7, the president signed a $1.35 trillion 10-year tax cut into law, claiming the tax cut as both necessary and affordable because of the $5.6 trillion projected federal surplus. On Aug. 22, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OBM) reported that, oops, the projected surplus had shrunk 40 percent, to $3.1 trillion. By Jan. 6, it was down to $1.79 trillion. "How could they lose $4 trillion in eight months!?" complains a former top Clinton aide. "I'll tell you. Because the White House knew in the spring the economy was in recession. They knew the numbers were going to have to be revised down. They misled Congress and the American people to get their tax cut. Our side should have torn them apart. They should have subpoenaed the OBM, hauled Mitch Daniels in front of a committee. He was either grossly incompetent or purposely misleading."

Of course, the Democrats did no such thing. Instead, only one senator, Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), bothered to hold hearings on the matter. In January, Tom Daschle, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), and Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) finally criticized Bush's fiscal stewardship. But the White House and the press made mincemeat out of those speeches as each leader seemed to say something different about whether the Democrats favored rescinding the tax cuts (no, yes, maybe).

Hardcore Relationships

What is it with the Democrats? Why do they seem to have so little fight in them? I asked a couple dozen academics, Hill staffers, political consultants, pollsters and assorted operatives from both sides of the aisle.

Here are some of their answers :

One reason is philosophical. Democrats believe in government, so they have a natural tendency to cooperate and compromise. Republicans, especially movement conservatives, are deeply suspicious of government, and see implacable opposition as their role in life.

Another reason is structural. Without the White House, Democrats lack a focal point of power, a place where policies and rhetoric can be crafted and disseminated to the rank and file, and where attacks by the opposition can be analyzed and responded to quickly, with guaranteed press attention. Now these responsibilities are split up among different, competing power centers --- the Democratic National Committee, Daschle's office, Senate committee chairmen.

It doesn't help matters that many of the most prominent Democrats---Lieberman, Daschle, Gephardt, Edwards --- are considering runs for the White House in 2004. It takes courage to publicly attack a president who has 85 percent approval ratings. But it's especially tricky if you're trying to maintain the sunny bipartisan image needed to attract swing voters.

Yet another reason is ideological. Bill Clinton succeeded as president by taking on the liberal wing of his party --- on welfare reform, trade, crime, and deficit reduction. Today, most high-profile Democrats present themselves as centrists. But while centrist ideas attract the non-partisan swing voters who decide elections, they don't necessarily fire up the party's labor/black/environmentalist base. The Democratic Party today is more competitive politically, but less energized internally.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, is a wholly owned subsidiary of its conservative/Christian/corporate base. Though Bush has carved out some moderate positions, on education for instance, he is personally rooted in, and obsessed with pleasing, his party's right wing. Over time, this may be his undoing. But for the moment, it infuses the GOP with true-believerness and emboldens the administration to think big and act with daring.

The differences in partisan fury seem to reach all the way to the grass roots. In 1999, the Pew Center for The People & The Press surveyed the political views of 5,000 Americans nationwide and found a curious difference between the ideological wings of the two parties. Forty-one percent of liberal Democrats identified themselves as political independents. Only 24 percent of staunch conservatives did likewise. Seventy-eight percent of staunch conservatives said they cared "a good deal" about which party controls Congress. Only 64 percent of liberal Democrats matched them. It seems hardcore conservative voters are more conventionally partisan than their liberal counterparts. At some level, GOP politicians probably know that they will be rewarded by their core constituents for doing what it takes to win---a faith that Democratic pols lack.

The difference in partisan intensity also reflects the different media outlets to which the parties play. Democrats in Washington focus incessantly on the establishment press : The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, CBS, CNN, NPR. That is where their worldview is shaped, and where they look for validation of their ideas and status. Republican leaders are hardly indifferent to the establishment outlets. But they increasingly take their cue from the expanding alternative universe of conservative media : The Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal editorial page, talk radio, Fox News Channel.

Needless to say, these two media worlds are governed by radically different rules. Yes, there is a certain amount of liberal bias in the mainstream press. But on balance, the big national papers and broadcast networks take seriously the traditional journalistic strictures of fairness, accuracy, and independence of judgement.

The conservative press, by and large, does not labor under these constraints. It does not pretend to be in the business of presenting all sides fairly, but of promoting its side successfully. "The conservative press is self-consciously conservative and self-consciously part of the team," observes conservative strategist Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform (who, like most conservatives I spoke with, doesn't buy the idea that Republicans fight more ruthlessly than Democrats). "The liberal press is much larger, but at the same time it sees itself as the establishment press. So it's conflicted. Sometimes it thinks it needs to be critical of both sides, to be nonpartisan."

You see this all the time. The editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times supported or kept silent about the Republican Senate's strategy of blocking votes on Clinton judicial nominees. Now these papers cry foul when Democrat senators try to do the same to Bush. The New York Times and Washington Post editorials, on the other hand, have been consistent in their condemnation. But to the conservative press, intellectual consistency is for, well, intellectuals. What's more important is to stiffen the resolve of GOP lawmakers to fight the Manichaean battle against liberalism. If the mainstream papers want to undermine the will of Democrats with a lot of high-minded consistency, that's their business. Let 'em get medals for fair play. We'll get the federal judiciary.

The same dynamic plays out among TV pundits. Conservatives such as Robert Novak, Kate O'Beirne, and Jonah Goldberg are ideological warriors who attempt with every utterance to advance their cause. Their center-left counterparts, people such as Juan Williams, Margaret Carlson, and E.J. Dionne, simply don't have the same killer instinct. While their sympathies are obvious, liberal pundits are at heart political reporters, not polemicists, who seem far more at ease on journalistic neutral ground, analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of both sides, rather than in vigorously defending Democrats. That role falls to Democratic operatives like Paul Begala, but even here there are exceptions. Former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos is supposed to be the liberal counterweight to George Will on ABC's "This Week." He performs the role well when he chooses to, often puncturing Will's sophisms with the sharp edge of a well-chosen fact. Just as often, however, Stephanopoulos's palpable desire to be accepted as a journalist leads him to value-neutral how-the-game-is-played analysis, or to gestures of unreciprocated fair-mindedness ("You know, I have to agree with George Will on this one").

Playing Hardball

There is a certain logic to the Democrats' nonconfrontational strategy : Until September 11, the strategy appeared to be working. The Bush administration's ideological hardball drove Sen. James Jeffords (I-Vt.) to leave the party, handing the Democrats control of the Senate . The president's poll numbers dropped with each Clinton administration measure he overturned, from arsenic standards for drinking water to workplace ergonomic rules.

But September 11 really did change everything. The wind is with Bush now, and congressional elections are seven months away. It's true that on domestic issues, the Democrats have the more sound and popular positions. But it's going to take more than sweet reason to make that case to the American voter.

The good news is that to beat the Republicans, the Democrats don't have to fight like them. They simply need to remember how to fight like Democrats. The first step is to stop worrying about how their words and actions will play in the establishment media. Bad press is frequently the sign that you're doing something right. If they're serious about beating back Bush, Democrats need to start pulling on all the levers of power available to them, and to stop shrinking away from sounding partisan when the cause is just. Standing up for your Senate leader when he has been attacked is a form of partisanship that the average American can admire. Voters can grasp the moral difference between investigating a politician's private life and investigating how an administration managed to lose $4 trillion of surplus. American voters understand that Enron is no Whitewater.

Of course, it may simply be too much to expect the fractured Democratic congressional delegations to do this sort of thing on their own. So perhaps they should bring in a ringer, just for the next seven months. Someone who can help coordinate a smart set of policies and a winning message. Someone whose words Democratic-leaning voters will listen to and be excited about. Someone who can go on the talk shows and, in the midst of a bipartisan embrace, deliver the partisan stiletto. Someone who understands that the principles of the Democratic party --- freedom, tolerance, a fair shake for the average person --- are not worth much if you aren't in a position to put those principles into action. Someone who's not running for president and isn't afraid to mix it up with the Republicans. Someone who will drive the Republicans crazy. Someone like Bill Clinton.

Paul Glastris is editor in chief of The Washington Monthly.

---