Tom Watson

Slaughter in Coral Gables

Strange position for me - missed the debate itself, watching nothing but spin and talking heads analysis (which, sad to say, usually matters more). And guess what, Kerry slaughtered the President. It was almost unanimous - and even the GOPers defending Bush said, basically, that both men made good points. Jon Stewart buried the President, and even Joe Scarborough called it for Kerry. Morton Kondracke saying Kerry looked Presidential. Tim Russert and Tom Brokaw: Kerry clear victor. Now, let's watch the polls. (Will provide links to cogent analysis as we move on - and I'll actually watch the debate on tape).

UPDATE: Atrios says it simply: "Kerry presidential. Bush smirked." Says Kos: " Bush was defensive and angry; Kerry was calm and collected." Fred has an interesting take: "The media probably wants to see a horse race and so will be tempted to say that Kerry did great and he's back in it. If that's not the spin, I'll be surprised."

UPDATE II: Frequent commentor here, Tom K., certainly no Democrat, says this: "I think Kerry has made by far the better impression, which is no easy task given the topic and his record on the war. He's missed a few opportunities and the format precludes anything profound or comprehensive, but most of his answers have been better than average and most of Bush's below average."

UPDATE III: MSNBC's lead is all Kerry: "Sen. John Kerry assailed President Bush’s prosecution of the war in Iraq in the first presidential debate Thursday night, accusing the president of “a colossal error of judgment” as the candidates finally faced each other after a torrent of speeches and hostile television advertisements." John McCain on Larry King: "I thought that John Kerry did a good job style-wise. I think that the president was very convincing in his conviction that what he has done is right, what he will do is correct." Advantage Kerry there. MSNBC.com debate poll of 475K online users: 71% Kerry, 29% Bush.

UPDATE IV: Fox lead is close to neutral (ie, a huge Kerry win): "John Kerry slammed President Bush Thursday for taking the United States into war in Iraq without enough global support, while the commander in chief said he doesn't need a permission slip from the rest of the world to protect America and its interests." CNN's John King just said: "It's clear President Bush didn't give his best performance tonight." Mikie Barnicle: People are going to say around the watercooler "yeah I think that guy could be President."

UPDATE V: Howard Fineman: "Kerry looked every inch a President." Joe Scarborough: "I'll say it as a Republican, John Kerry was more Presidential than President Bush tonight." Hard-right blogger Glenn Reynolds gives Kerry some pretty decent props, along with a swipe: "Kerry was tougher than I had expected, which is good -- except that you never know what he'll say next time. If I hadn't been paying attention to the campaign, though, I'd be fairly impressed -- and Kerry has to hope that most people who watched the debate fall into that category." Wow, conservative blog QandO (one of the best conservative blogs, quite a good read) says this: "Kerry, I think, did very well tonight. He was much clearer and more focused than he usually is. He did a good job of hitting on what he perceives to be the weak points of the Bush Administration’s conduct of foreign policy." That is GOP blogosphere equivalent of a grand slam.

Wag the Dog

Breaking news from CNN: U.S. military begins operation to regain control of the Iraqi town of Samarra, an insurgency stronghold. Details soon.

A strange coincidence, on this night of the foreign policy debate. Would this President send troops into battle as a political ploy to gain an advantage over his opponent in the election? Let's see if he mentions it tonight....then we'll know.

Muni-ficence

"Scott-so here with ya." That sawdust-scraping voice, the world-weary lilt of experience, the "I partied with Grace Slick" insider riffs. For a skinny kid in the 1970s, Scott Muni's voice was the sound of rock and roll, all first-person, Les Paul Custom, and backstage pass. Muni died yesterday at age 74, a few months after suffering a stroke. Known for beginning every show with a Beatles song, a habit begun after John Lennon's murder in 1980, Muni interviewed all the greats. Here's a great story from his obit:

In one of his more memorable encounters, Muni was speaking with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page when the musician suddenly collapsed to the floor in mid-sentence, wiped out by days of partying. The unflappable Muni simply put on a record, woke Page up, and conducted the rest of the interview with the guitarist lying on the studio floor.

Muni's glory days were in the pre-punk arena rock haze of the mid-70s in New York, when Clapton and Page were gods and the blow fueled private jets filled with groupies and bassists. Later, he was a hip nostalgia act, a DJ who was actually a decade older than Dylan, the Stones, and the Who. His interviews were inevitably punctuated with his standard question, delivered in a graveled, nasal growl: "when are you going to tour?" To Scott-so, the music - live in front of Marshall stacks before thousands of stoned kids - was the thing. Rock on.

Mukhtaran Bibi, Hero

A deeply moving story of human courage comes to life in Nick Kristoff's Op-Ed column in The Times today. For anyone wondering just what kinds of culture and society we're facing in our on-again, off-again fight against the likes of al Quaeda, this article provides a searing reminder. These are cruel tribes that despise modernity and treat women like property to be discarded when somehow devalued by rape and desecration. Writes Kristoff:

The plight of women in developing countries isn't addressed much in the West, and it certainly isn't a hot topic in the presidential campaign. But it's a life-and-death matter in villages like Meerwala, a 12-hour drive southeast from Islamabad.

While many women choose suicide after so-called courts of justice "sentence" them to ritual gang-rape, Mukhtaran Bibi is fighting back, opening schools for boys and girls to try and affect social change. Her venture is under-funded, and her life is in constant danger.

We in the West could help chip away at that oppression, with health and literacy programs and by simply speaking out against it, just as we once stood up against slavery and totalitarianism. But instead of standing beside fighters like Ms. Mukhtaran, we're still sitting on the fence.

We wring our hands over the election, over the stock market, and we talk proudly about freedom from the safety of our abundant shores. But Mukhtaran Bibi is fighting the real battle. She is a real hero for our times. Read the story. Think about what we can do to help.

UPDATE: I've updated Ms. Bibi's story in a new post here. It's worth a read.

Bloggers Under Attack

Courtesy of JD, I was reading Mark Glaser's account of American soldiers blogging from the war zone in Iraq. (For those of you with realy long memories for details of online media criticism ephemera, Mark teamed with Chervokas and me to create the MediaGrok - a protoblog- at Battelle's Industry Standard back in the day). In any case, Mark convenes a virtual roundtable of GI bloggers, and it's well worth a read - as are the soldiers' blogs. The "miliblogs," as Glaser cleverly coins, are three:

My War

A Candle in the Dark

American Soldier

Glaser also includes two Iraqi bloggers in the exchange, and it's terrific. I'll be following these blogs. Particularly telling to me was this comment by American Soldier:

I agree that having the elections in "safe" areas is a joke. I am sure the media will say that the Iraqi interim government will decide on those elections but this will be heavily influenced by U.S. intelligence. I think the elections in Iraq are not valid. I will even go as far and say that the elections should be considered invalid. If the entire country can't vote then it will not be a 100% supported government. Will we blame the Iraqi government if Iraq erupts into a civil war because half the country didn't get a chance to vote? It's ugly and very very politically motivated!

Winning the Debate

Modern Presidential debates are won in the misinformation trenches, the spin zones, the clip morgue, the cafeterias of bullshit where puffy-haired cable commentators pontificate on "expectations" and manhood. It doesn't matter what is said over the course of each debate, who makes the most trenchant case, or scribes the best policy. What matters are the clips, the phony analysis, the slightest tilt from the moral relativism in the name of "holy journalism" that has allowed an incompetent like George W. Bush to hold power.

Sad as it is, Krugman has it right:

Let's face it: whatever happens in Thursday's debate, cable news will proclaim President Bush the winner. This will reflect the political bias so evident during the party conventions. It will also reflect the undoubted fact that Mr. Bush does a pretty good Clint Eastwood imitation.

I'm watching MSNBC as I sip a rather disappointing little cabernet (Kerry-like, I imagine) and of course, they're banging the hell out of the "latest poll" - unsurprisingly, the MSNBC/Washington Post/Gallup poll. It is presented as fact, and the ginger-haired doll in front of me wonders can John Kerry make a comeback on Thursday night, or as she puts it sexily: "can he score?" Ah, and there's the pathetic Howard Fineman - using his network's poll as the basis for "reporting" - telling me that Kerry has one last chance "to connect" with voters, to "somehow turn this around."

This is a Gallup poll that is weighted 40-33, by the discredited and disgraced organization's own admission, in favor of Republicans. Despite this weighting, Bush's phantom "lead" in this bogus poll shrank by 5 percent in the last week, as the debate turned to Iraq. So what does MSNBC.com headline its report? "New poll shows solid lead for Bush." I kid you not. Liberal media, indeed. (I note here that the half-owners of MSNBC, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, have publicly endorsed George Bush, according to today's Wall Street Journal.)

There is an indeed an "alternative realtiy" at work in the television news media, one that clearly favors the incumbency, as Atrios points out:

I've noticed watching Wolf Blitzer over the past few days that the reality as presented by the Bush administration is the reality that he, and much of the rest of the TV news media, convey to the public. It isn't simply a disagreement over certain issues, it's the digestion and regurgitation of an entire alternative reality world which has been served up by the Bush administration and eagerly spit back out by those in the media. It isn't simply about successful framing of the issues, they've managed to provide an entire canvas, a brilliant oil painting of bullshit. It's impossible for Democrats and other people who are actually living in this world and not the one which the Bush administration has erected around the CNN studios to break through this. It's one thing to challenge errors, or provide a different spin, or reframe an issue. It's another thing to have to tear down the very fabric of this alternate reality.

As JD points out, today's expectations-tracking, navel-gazing media plays into Bush's hands. MediaMatters has a fabulous amalgam of lazy, putrified journalism - "analysis" that is really an excuse for intellectual decripitude, gussied up as "expertise" from "veterans on the campaign trail." Read it and stifle a sniffle for American journalism.

Jason has an excellent post today on the incredible buck-passing that the Bush Administration succeeds in getting away with:

Earlier this month the Vice President suggested that if we voted for John Kerry "the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States." But I'll tell you what really creates the danger that we will get hit again--allowing 120,000 hours of Al Qaeda intercepts to go untranslated, and even worse, allowing some of those untranslated intercepts to be deleted from the FBI's system! Let's not forget that on Sept. 10, 2001 the NSA had in its possession similar intercepts saying "Tomorrow is zero hour," intercepts that went untranslated until days after the towers came down. I'm furious that something like this could happen. And I'm even more furious that the President will certainly again duck responsibility for it.

Can Kerry win the battle of the free press, the campaign of the 30-second sound bite, or the maneuver of the analysis/expectations game? I'm doubtful. Were I advising the Senator (and he could do far worse), I'd recommend that he entirely ignore the tortured and over-negotiated rules of the debate (curse you, Jim Baker!) and go directly at Bush, attempt to throw him off his game, and ask the piercing question that the ghosts of more than a thousand American soldiers are surely whispering across the universe: why?

UPDATE: Courtesy of PoliticalWire, bloggers Chris Bowers and Ruy Teixeira have some devastating posts on the Gallup disaster.

GWB's O'Reilly Factor

Wow - Just caught a clip of Bill O'Reilly's upcoming interview with President Bush, during a profile of the sometimes nasty Fox talking head on 60 Minutes. This could be a big one, a take-down from the right. The interview was taped last week to be presented pre-debate this week and in what I saw, O'Reilly slams a clearly angry President into silence on WMDs and Iraq. Kos already has a post on it. Bush really doesn't do defense very well; remember when McCain slammed him on the attack ads in South Carolina? And Kerry is already responding to the clips that have been released thus far - including Bush's incredible (almost crazy) defense of his flight suit mission accomplished stunt. I'm frankly surprised the Rove machine let the President sit down with the bull terrier - didn't they know he turned on the Iraq policy (like Pat Buchanan and many other conservatives) months ago? The blogs are already lighting up on this. This is a serious opening.

Senate's Offensive Line

Many pundits are crediting a strong, punchy speech at NYU on Iraq this past week by John Kerry for opening some real differences with the Bush Administration and stirring the beginnings of a serious comeback. That may be true, but if Kerry finally hits daylight, he should thank his Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle for opening the gaping hole he walked through. Just get a look at these tough blocks thrown on Bush's Iraq policy last week:

"The fact is, we're in trouble. We need more help from our allies. We need the Iraqi people to come around in a more supportive way ... [U.S. policy in Iraq needs] a crisp, sharp analysis. We didn't do that in Vietnam, and we saw 11 years of casualties mount to the point where we finally lost."
- Republican Senator Chuck Hagel

[The latest intelligence report] ''throws a large bucket of cold water on the rosy scenario'' that President Bush has presented on Iraq."
- Democratic Senator Bob Graham

"We made serious mistakes right after the initial successes by not having enough troops there on the ground, by allowing the looting, by not securing the borders ... The consequences of failure are enormous."
- Republican Senator John McCain

"When it comes to laying out longer-term plans for Iraq, there is a deafening silence from the administration."
- Democratic Senator Joseph Biden

Interesting dynamic for Senators, and it doesn't play in Bush's favor at this particular juncture. The Senate, of course, holds hearings to hold executive branches' feet to the fire on things like budgets and policy. The neo-cons don't have many true believers in the Senate, which tends to be dominated by statewide consensus builders. And they all can't stand Donald Rumsfeld, the combative and seemingly confused Defense secretary.

Quite naturally, committee chairs and prominent members feel the need to assert their territorial rights over guys like Rumsfeld; it's not so much partisan (well, a bit), it's human nature. The Democrats did it to Clinton all the time. But because the policy in Iraq is so damned ugly - the rising military death toll, the beheadings, the no-go zones in major cities - this particular Congressional phenomenon is dragging Bush down. And Kerry (finally!) has come around to Iraq as the major thumbs up/thumbs down issue on the future of President Bush.

So listen to the Senators. They're throwing some crashing blocks on the offensive line for the Kerry camp these days.

Writing, All the Time

This Weblog hasn't captured as much of my attention the last few days. As highly-trafficked and lucrative as this blog is, I haven't found too much time to write. But I've been writing just the same, pretty much around the clock. It's what I do - but not like I used to. In the old days, as a slightly-employed journalist, I wrote articles - a one way street, for thousands of people to read. Nowadays, as a consultant, the writing is different. In the last 48 hours or so, I've written or worked on several business development proposals, some highly-manipulative letters, a book chapter, a few memos, a proposal for a seven-figure foundation grant, an email newsletter, a case for fundraising for a large nonprofit organization, and a speech. The consultative writing is very different, but I must admit - despite the journalistic, byline-loving snob that I am - that this kind of writing has stretched my chops. Le mot juste: I'm better than I was. And this blog's been part of it. Filing quick thought pieces and responding to comments has sharpened my writing for business, and has led me to consider some larger, long-term projects. So when this blog is quiet for a day or two, I'm still writing - and this program will resume after a few brief messages.

My Brilliant Artist

The purpose of this post is simple: to promote the incredible talent of my partner in life, Beryl Watson. My wife is having a showing of her paintings next week at a shop in Bronxville, Savanna at Home. You can find the details here, and a newspaper article on it here. If you're in the area, please feel free to come and see the work. It's fantastic.