Posts by Steve Benen

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.

We'll "Never" See McCain's Tax Returns?
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on May 9, 2008 at 3:16 AM.

The Obamas released tax returns for both Barack and Michelle. The Clintons released returns for both Bill and Hillary. But when John McCain released his tax returns a few weeks ago, Cindy McCain’s tax documents will remain private.

It’s not too hard to understand why. The McCains are extraordinarily wealthy — one might even be tempted to call them “elites” — and Cindy McCain’s assets are estimated to be about $100 million, including a private jet, which her husband has been borrowing at a reduced rate.

Given the other candidates’ disclosures, and McCain’s own alleged commitment to transparency, will we ever see Cindy McCain’s returns? She was asked on the “Today” show this morning, and said, politely, “Never.”

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Unfortunate Racial Talk Creeps Back into the Democratic Campaign
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on May 8, 2008 at 1:32 PM.

Hillary Clinton still clearly hopes to make a case to the Democratic Party that she’d be the strongest candidate in a general election, but I have a hunch she’d like to take this one back.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.

USA Today described these as “blunt remarks about race.” When a candidate equates “hard-working Americans” with “white Americans,” I can’t help but wonder if “blunt” is a strong enough adjective. (The Obama campaign called Clinton’s remarks “not true and frankly disappointing.”)

Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Clinton’s comment was a “poorly worded” variation on the way analysts have been “slicing and dicing the vote in racial terms.”

The remark came the same day chief Clinton strategist Geoff Garin also made a similar case for her electability in rather explicit race-based terms.

Atrios noted that there’s nothing especially wrong with a campaign talking about targeting specific groups of voters, but added, “What the Clinton campaign is doing is saying that Obama has electability problems, and using their support from white voters as evidence of that. That’s a wee bit problematic, and not just because it doesn’t follow logically any more than the other electability arguments such as Obama can’t win the election because he can’t win the primary in big states.”

Quite right.

Let’s put aside the unfortunate wording of Clinton’s statement in which she equated “hard-working” with “white,” and consider the merits of her broader point.

Clinton has done well with white “hard-working” Americans, especially in states like Pennsylvania. But her argument is premised on the notion that White Joe Six Pack who votes in a Democratic primary would rather support a Republican than Obama. Where’s the proof to bolster this claim? There isn’t any.

By the logic of Clinton’s argument, we should also note that her support among African Americans is quite poor, and the “pattern” is pretty clear. Are we to assume that if she were the nominee, those same voters would back McCain over her? That Clinton couldn’t possibly win because she’d never get the support of African-American Dems? Of course not.

Why, then, characterize the race in this illogical, race-based way?

For that matter, Steve M. raises a very important point.

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FBI Raids Office of Special Counsel
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on May 6, 2008 at 12:42 PM.

It’s been weeks since a corruption scandal humiliated the Bush administration, so I suppose we were overdue for news like this.

Federal Bureau of Investigation agents raided the Office of Special Counsel here, seizing computers and documents belonging to the agency chief Scott Bloch and staff.

More than a dozen FBI agents served grand jury subpoenas shortly after 10 a.m., shutting down the agency’s computer network and searching its offices, as well as Mr. Bloch’s home. Employees said the searches appeared focused on alleged obstruction of justice by Mr. Bloch during the course of an 2006 inquiry into his conduct in office.

The independent agency, created by Congress in the wake of the Watergate scandal, is charged with protecting federal employees and deciding whether their complaints merit full-scale investigation — a first line of defense against fraud and mismanagement in government. It also enforces a ban on U.S. employees engaging in partisan political activity.

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Iran Takes Center Stage on the Trail
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on May 5, 2008 at 8:36 AM.

I have to admit, watching the race for the Democratic presidential nomination the past several days has been slightly less annoying. It’s been far from perfect, of course, but Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been talking more about actual policy differences, and less about nonsense (take your pick: flag pins, Wright, Ayers, bitter, etc.) and process (electability, polls, etc.).

We’ve certainly seen that with the debate over gas-tax policy, and over the weekend, we saw it again with a debate over Iran and deterrence.

This began in earnest a couple of weeks ago, with a question in ABC’s notorious debate, when, in response to a hypothetical question from George Stephanopoulos, Clinton said, “I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States.” Because “massive retaliation” is a Truman-era phrase relating to a nuclear strike, Clinton’s remarks raised a few eyebrows.

She expanded a bit on her remarks a week later, adding, “In the next ten years, during which [Iranians] might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” (Observers weren’t quite sure what to think when Clinton’s chief spokesperson said neither talk of total obliteration nor her talk about “massive retaliation” should be considered a threat to use nuclear weapons.)

Yesterday, Obama pushed back against the perceived “saber rattling.”

Barack Obama scolded Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday for saying that U.S. would “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacks Israel, and likened her to President Bush. Ms. Clinton stood by her comment. […]

On Wednesday, Iran strongly condemned Mrs. Clinton for her remarks. Iran’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Mehdi Danesh-Yazdi, called her comment “provocative, unwarranted and irresponsible” and “a flagrant violation” of the U.N. Charter.

On “Meet the Press,” Mr. Obama said: “It’s not the language we need right now, and I think it’s language reflective of George Bush. We have had a foreign policy of bluster and saber rattling and tough talk and in the meantime have made a series strategic decisions that have actually strengthened Iran.”

For her part, Clinton did not back down at all.

On ABC’s “This Week,” Clinton asked rhetorically, “Why would I have any regrets?”

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Straight Talk? Not on Health Care
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on May 4, 2008 at 8:10 AM.

For the past several weeks, John McCain and his campaign have been enraged by the emphasis on his willingness to leave U.S. troops in Iraq for up to 100 years, and the audacity of Democrats to tell voters about his views on the issue. To hear them tell it, misrepresenting a rival’s stated policy position — which Dems really aren’t doing — is completely beyond the pale.

Which is odd, given McCain’s habit of wildly misrepresenting the Dems on healthcare policy.

Senator John McCain has been repeatedly suggesting that his Democratic rivals are proposing a single-payer, or even a nationalized health care system along the lines of those in countries like Canada and Britain.

The suggestion is incorrect. While both Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York are calling for universal health care and an expanded role for government, they stop well short of calling for a single-payer plan.

Mr. McCain has made the assertion several times in recent days, even as he and the Republicans have made repeated calls for accuracy on the campaign trail…. Yet on repeated occasions, Mr. McCain, of Arizona, has inaccurately described the Democrats’ health care proposals, using language that evokes the specter of socialized medicine.

On a campaign stop on Thursday, for example, McCain said Clinton and Obama “want a massive government takeover of the health care system in America.” A few months ago, McCain said the Dems offer a “single-payer big government solution.” A few months before that, he insisted that the Dems are offering a “government-run, single-payer system like they have in Canada and like they have in England.”

Now, it’s worth noting that John McCain doesn’t know the first thing about healthcare, other than the fact that he’s enjoyed generous, quality, taxpayer-financed medical care for his entire life. Given his almost humiliating confusion on most policy details, McCain might actually believe his own bogus talking points. He’s not necessarily lying; it’s just as likely that he’s clueless.

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Administration Still Purging Those Who Are Not "Loyal Bushies"
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on May 2, 2008 at 11:33 AM.

The U.S. Attorney Purge scandal may be over, but the Bush administration hasn’t changed its habit of ridding itself of those guilty of independent thinking.

The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region [of Michigan] had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.

On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade’s interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Midwest office, based in Chicago.

Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.

We’ve learned quite a bit in recent days about the White House interfering with EPA regulations on dioxin contamination, but it’s especially bold, even for the Bush gang, to fire the one career official who was looking out for the public’s interests.

For the past year, Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. […]

Though regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, Gade drew fire from officials in Washington last month after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels.

She said top lieutenants to Stephen Johnson, the national EPA administrator, repeatedly questioned her aggressive action against Dow, which long ago acknowledged it is responsible for the dioxin contamination but has resisted federal and state involvement in cleanup plans.

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McCain Blames Minnesota Bridge Collapse on Earmarks
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on May 1, 2008 at 3:07 PM.

Joe Klein recently predicted that John McCain would avoid a cheap and pathetic style of campaigning. McCain, Klein said, “sees the tawdry ceremonies of politics — the spin and hucksterism — as unworthy.” If he doesn’t, “McCain will have to live with the knowledge that in the most important business of his life, he chose expediency over honor.”

At this point, if McCain is experiencing any kind of internal dilemma, I’m pretty sure hucksterism is winning.

Republican John McCain said Wednesday that the bridge collapse in Minnesota that killed 13 people last year would not have happened if Congress had not wasted so much money on pork-barrel spending.

Federal investigators cite undersize steel plates as the “critical factor” in the collapse of the bridge. Heavy loads of construction materials on the bridge also contributed to the disaster that injured 145 people on Aug. 1, according to preliminary findings by the National Transportation Safety Board.

“The bridge in Minneapolis didn’t collapse because there wasn’t enough money,” McCain told reporters while campaigning in Pennsylvania. “The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects.”

This is so cheap and crass, I’m almost surprised his remarks didn’t spark some kind of controversy. If McCain is willing to aim this low in the spring, what can we expect from in the fall?

As Wolfrum put it, “Using the death of 13, the misery of their families and the 145 people that were injured in the bridge collapse in order to push his pandering, unrealistic and stupid ‘Earmarks, never again’ platform?”

This one was so shameless, even some of his supporters in Minnesota are keeping their distance.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R), a close McCain ally and rumored VP possibility, seemed to find his buddy’s comments a little awkward.

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When Bush’s intentional deception comes back to haunt him
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on April 30, 2008 at 5:27 AM.

We don’t hear nearly as much about ongoing events in Afghanistan as we should, so it was encouraging to hear a question from ABC News’ Martha Raddatz about the other war at this morning’s White House press conference. Specifically, she asked, “Are we winning in Afghanistan?”

“I think we’re making progress in Afghanistan, but there’s a very resilient enemy that obviously wants to kill people that stand in the way of their re-imposition of a state that is — which vision is incredibly dark…. And it’s difficult in Afghanistan. If you know the history of the country, you understand it’s hard to go from the kind of society in which they had been living to one in which people are now responsible for their own behavior. But I am pleased with a lot of things. One, I’m pleased with the number of roads that have been built. I’m pleased with the number of schools that have opened up. I’m pleased a lot of girls, young girls are going to school. I’m pleased health clinics are now being distributed around the country. I’m pleased with the Afghan army, that when they’re in the fight they’re good.”

When Raddatz pressed him a little further, asking, “But do you think we’re winning?” Bush responded, “I do, I think we’re making good progress. I do, yes.”

To her credit, Raddatz had a point to all of this, beyond just inquiring about the status of the war.

She asked Bush recently the exact same questions regarding the war in Iraq, and the president conceded that he misstated the truth about progress, on purpose, in order to help troop “morale.”

From a recent ABC report:

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Reporters Get a Closer Look at the Wright Stuff
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on April 28, 2008 at 1:52 PM.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been steadily increasing his public profile of late, and it’s not hard to understand why. The pastor has become Public Enemy #1 in some circles, and some of his more notorious sermons from his Trinity United Church of Christ pulpit in Chicago have become such a fixture of the media’s coverage of the campaign, Wright was bound to want to mount some kind of public defense.

So, when Wright stopped by the NAACP and National Press Club this morning, the interest was so high, you’d think Wright was himself a presidential hopeful, instead of the former pastor of a leading candidate.

Did he help his case? It’s hard to say for sure, but he probably didn’t do the Obama campaign any favors.

Sen. Barack Obama’s former pastor today defended the fiery sermons that have become a political liability for the Democratic presidential contender, charging that a furor over his remarks represents an “attack on the black church.” […]

Asked whether he believes that “America is still damned in the eyes of God,” Wright was unapologetic about his sermon. He recalled that he told Obama last year, “If you get elected, November the 5th I’m coming after you, because you’ll be representing a government whose policies grind under people.”

Wright continued: “It’s about policy, not the American people. . . . God doesn’t bless everything. God condemns something. . . . God damns some practices. And there is no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done. That doesn’t make me not like America, or unpatriotic.”

At this point, I suspect Obama almost wishes Wright wouldn’t wait to “come after” him — if Wright attacked Obama, it might help his campaign.

Noting Wright’s comments this morning, Joe Klein noted, “Wright’s purpose now seems quite clear: to aggrandize himself — the guy is going to be a go-to mainstream media source for racial extremist spew, the next iteration of Al Sharpton — and destroy Barack Obama.”

Maybe, but that may not be the whole story, either.

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What is Left is the Cliffs Notes of News
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on April 28, 2008 at 3:08 AM.

Time for a quick quiz. Question #1: when Barack Obama campaigned in Altoona, Pa., a few weeks ago, what was his bowling score? And question #2: name one thing — anything — about Joe Biden’s healthcare plan.

Elizabeth Edwards makes the point today that, thanks to media coverage, we can all immediately answer the first, and struggle to answer the second.

For the last month, news media attention was focused on Pennsylvania and its Democratic primary. Given the gargantuan effort, what did we learn?

Well, the rancor of the campaign was covered. The amount of money spent was covered. But in Pennsylvania, as in the rest of the country this political season, the information about the candidates’ priorities, policies and principles — information that voters will need to choose the next president — too often did not make the cut. After having spent more than a year on the campaign trail with my husband, John Edwards, I’m not surprised.

Why? Here’s my guess: The vigorous press that was deemed an essential part of democracy at our country’s inception is now consigned to smaller venues, to the Internet and, in the mainstream media, to occasional articles. I am not suggesting that every journalist for a mainstream media outlet is neglecting his or her duties to the public. And I know that serious newspapers and magazines run analytical articles, and public television broadcasts longer, more probing segments.

But I am saying that every analysis that is shortened, every corner that is cut, moves us further away from the truth until what is left is the Cliffs Notes of the news, or what I call strobe-light journalism, in which the outlines are accurate enough but we cannot really see the whole picture.

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ABC Debate Backlash: It Wasn't About Clinton V. Obama
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on April 20, 2008 at 10:11 AM.

I had thought there was something of a consensus in Democratic circles about Wednesday night’s ABC-sponsored debate in Philadelphia. Dems hated it because Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos spent most of the debate obsessing over trivia and process, and when they got around to substance, they framed the questions in conservative ways. Republicans loved the debate, because it played out exactly as they wanted. Journalists and media critics hated it because it was a train-wreck.

Somehow, over the last few days, this consensus has been replaced by a new Clinton-Obama dynamic that doesn’t make any sense to me.

The Politico’s John Harris and Jim VandeHei argued the negative reaction to the debate has been driven by “Obama partisans … who are doing the whining.”

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Worst. Debate. Ever.
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on April 17, 2008 at 5:34 AM.

Over the last year or so, we've seen debates that were pretty bad. We've seen a few that were embarrassingly bad. But at least in this cycle, I'm not sure if we've seen anything quite as train-wreck, cover-your-eyes bad as the spectacle on ABC last night.

What may prove to be the last Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama wasn't just awful on its face, it was hard not to watch wondering if moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were actually undermining the public discourse with their inanity. It marked a new low for the media freak-show. I was conflicted emotionally between anger at ABC for this travesty and pity for the network for having sunk so low.

It was evident very early on that we were in for a long night. The candidates, for some inexplicable reason, were given an opportunity to make opening statements -- in previous debates, hosts generally want to get right into questions, not hear mini-speeches -- which was followed by an immediate commercial break. Four minutes after getting started, it was time to hear a word from our sponsors.

When the returned, the first question pressed Clinton and Obama on whether they'd commit to taking the other as a running mate. The second was about the "bitter" flap. The third was about whether Clinton thought Obama was electable, and vice versa.

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Deja Vu: When Have We Heard of this 'Significant Progress in Iraq' Before?
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on April 11, 2008 at 7:21 AM.

Note from PEEK Guest Editor Joshua H: I wrote a very similar post about "milestones" and "turning points" when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in 2006. Brilliant minds and all that ...

This morning, speaking from the White House, the president boasted, "American and Iraqi forces have made significant progress" in Iraq. It got me thinking, haven't we heard that phrase before in relation to Iraq?

* White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan on October 27, 2003: "In the north and south [of Iraq], we have made significant progress."

* President Bush on November 13, 2004: "Fighting together, our forces have made significant progress in the last several days."

* President Bush on June 28, 2005: "In the past year, we have made significant progress."

* Vice President Cheney on October 19, 2006: "[W]e've made significant progress."

* President Bush on February 23, 2007: " I think we have made significant progress in Iraq."

Indeed, it's a phrase the White House has used to describe events in Iraq several hundred times over the last five years. I can't imagine why anyone would be skeptical about the claim now.

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Election-Year Fun: Socially Conservative GOPer May Be Forced to Testify in Prostitution Case
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on April 8, 2008 at 2:26 PM.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) probably thought, or at least hoped, that his sex scandal was largely behind him. We learned last year, of course, that Vitter had used the services of the "D.C. Madam" -- including making arrangements while casting votes in Congress -- despite being married and running on a conservative "family-values" platform. Vitter's story reemerged a bit a month ago, in light of Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal, and the various similarities between the two controversies.

However, with the statute of limitations having expired, Vitter probably thought this humiliation was behind him