I JUST GOT BACK FROM WATCHING THE DEBATE WITH JAMES FALLOWS, Deborah Fallows, Michael Lind, Peter Bergen, Jenny Buntman, Andrew Oros, Deborah Fallows, Ted Halstead and about 40 other people.

Josh Marshall has an interesting quick reaction to the debate, untainted by hearing the views of commentators. I just heard Sean Hannity say he had never seen Bush "more passionate, more articulate, more on top of his game." I can't listen to this -- and wonder if Hannity would clarify the criteria when he would say Bush was not at the top of his game.

But I have very complex things going on in my head about this race. I thought it was Bush's night to lose -- and I think he did lose it. But lots of others will see it differently.

But tomorrow morning, with a clear mind -- and with something more than instantaneous reactions -- I will post something worthy of the exchange between these two candidates tonight.

But let me just say that the depression I felt when I spoke to German Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger on the plane from New York tonight has evaporated.

I really think we have a race again.

More tomorrow morning.

-- Steve Clemons

THE PROJECTED ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTE HAS ACTUALLY NARROWED. I check out www.Electoral-Vote.com as often as possible as the proprietor of the site has excellent commentary on the latest polls as well as very informed commentary on the increasing unreliability of these polls.

Last time I checked, Bush had well more than 300 projected electoral votes -- but today, he's down to 280 according to this site. When you look at the state by state breakdown, there are a lot of states and electoral votes tied up in "barely Bush" states. A shift in these could make a huge difference for Kerry.

Of course, Kerry has a lot of "barely Kerry" states -- many more, in fact, than Bush -- and if he flubs the debate, Bush could zoom forward again.

I am just back to Washington, D.C. after several days in New York -- and flying back, I sat next to and talked the ear off German Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, a fascinating and capable diplomat who said that after the debates, he has to send a brief to the German Foreign Ministry by midnight or so (6 a.m. German time).

Like all of us here in the U.S., many in the world are going to be watching these debates and trying to assess if the winner on November 2nd will be clear after tonight's exchange.

More later....after I hear whether Kerry propose "Stock Options for Soldiers." I've had 300 plus emails that think it's a great idea..and about three against.

-- Steve Clemons

I HAVE A REAL PROBLEM WITH PEOPLE LIKE JAMES WOOLSEY who rake in the bucks from a war they helped promote while soldiers risk everything on behalf of their country.

I am working on a concept I am calling "Stock Options for Soldiers" in which patriotic corporations, particularly those whose stock keeps rising because of conflict, not only pay stock options to advisors like Richard Perle and James Woolsey but can contribute stock options to a pool divided and shared equally by all service men and women serving in combat.

At least, we'd be giving the people who have the most to lose some potential gain for their important sacrifice.

The American Prospect's Mark Goldberg writes a very enlightened piece,"Some Gratitude," that argues that the Bush administration has consistently opposed bipartisan efforts that would ensure that National Guard service members have health insurance.

According to Goldberg:

About 20% of all deactivated National Guardsmen and Women are uninsured. This is appalling anyway you look at it, but given the fact that the National Guard makes up more than 40% of our fighting force in Iraq and are deployed to a degree not seen since the Korean war, the least the Bush administration could do is let them buy into the military's low cost health care plan. But, alas, they will not. Though it would cost peanuts by the Pentagon's standards, the DoD has "other budgetary priorities."

With so much rampant war profiteering going on among defense intellectuals like Woolsey, it seems to me that in Thursday's foreign policy debate, Kerry should suggest something like "Stock Options for Soldiers" -- and health care too while we are at it.

And maybe a Harry Truman-like investigation of War Profiteering. Be imaginative, John Kerry.

-- Steve Clemons

IT HAS TAKEN A WHILE FOR JOHN KERRY TO ARTICULATE his strong opposition to the Iraq War, but he finally got there.

Tony Blair may be following his lead in an effort to win back the support of angry Labor Party members. From a Reuters report:

"The evidence about Saddam having actual biological and chemical weapons ... has turned out to be wrong," Blair told Labour's annual conference, his nearest yet to a "mea culpa."

"The problem is I can apologize for the information that turned out to be wrong but I can't, sincerely at least, apologize for removing Saddam," he said. "The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power."

Blair's not quite there yet....but getting closer. British elections will probably be in May 2005. Watch the evolution. . .

-- Steve Clemons

CHALMERS JOHNSON AND DANIEL ELLSBERG are roughly the same age of slightly more than 70 years. They both worked for America's military-industrial complex, Johnson as a CIA consultant and Ellsberg as a Marine and then an an intelligence analyst and strategist.

Ellsberg broke loose earlier than Johnson from his hawkishness and his belief in the mission and practice of American empire, and put his life and career in jeapordy by leaking secret files, known as the Pentagon Papers, from the RAND Corporation on the conduct of America's war with Vietnam.

Chalmers Johnson defected from his role as 'spear-carrier for American empire' in 1995 after the 1995 publication of the East Asia Strategy Report by the Pentagon's Office of International Security Affairs (known as the Nye Report, named after then DOD/ISA Director Joseph Nye). In this report, Johnson saw that America was committing itself to permanent global military engagement despite the fact that it's chief rival in global affairs, the Soviet Union, had collapsed.

Johnson's provocative Foreign Affairs article, "East Asian Security: The Pentagon's Ossified Strategy," argued that such places like Okinawa which then hosted more than 40 separate U.S. military installations on a small island were a crisis waiting to happen. He was prescient. In September of that year, a 12-year old girl was raped by three U.S. military servicemen which helped ignite the largest anti-American, anti-base protests in Japan in more than 40 years.

Chalmers Johnson, who was Chairman of UC Berkeley's Political Science Department during the Vietnam protests and who was not sympathetic with the students, followed this important essay with two best-selling treatments about the blindspots and hubris of American power in the world. The first was Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Power, whose publication preceded 9/11 by about 18 months but like the prescient Hart/Rudman Commission on National Security in the 21st Century, predicted some major shock or blowback to be hurled at America. The second was Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the Loss of the Republic which is still selling strong in bookstores around the world.

Chalmers Johnson and I have collaborated for a long time and have directed together, with his wife Sheila Johnson, the Japan Policy Research Institute -- and for more than a decade have wrestled with the issue of how to get American foreign policy back on track. Chalmers and Sheila are the conveners and cultivators of an alternative assortment of smart thinkers, writers and artists who make a modern foreign policy Bloomsbury Group -- but instead of Bloomsbury Square, the exchanges and debates occur at their home in Cardiff, California -- near San Diego.

As self indulgent as this may sound, visiting them each time I have has the feel of historical importance. I've engaged in discussions with the late Francis Crick in La Jolla -- because of my connections to the Johnsons; had dinner with the late Haru Matsukata Reischauer at their home; and not too long ago enjoyed a provocative evening and dinner with Daniel Ellsberg.

Ellsberg brought with him the very last RAND report he produced in early 1971 -- which was never published by RAND -- which analyzed Johnson's Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power: The Emergence of Revolutionary China.

These two now aged cold warriors had never met before that night and had provoked each other over the years -- and both felt that America was on a course that would harm liberal democracy and replace the republic with an empire committed to permanent global military engagement that would always seek new rationales to justify the high costs of military expenditures and deployments.

What struck me -- and I mean this as no slight to Ellsberg -- is that he seemed to be tired of the battle. He had just published an important and interesting new book, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers but was not seemingly ready to become a high octane policy activist engaged in similar battles raging today about the proper conduct of American foreign and defense policy abroad, but particulary in Iraq.

Johnson, on the other hand, seemed practically teenager like in his youthful zeal to take on the Bush administration and any one else, Democrat or Republican (or Independent), who shared Bush's illusion of American post-Cold War righteousness in global affairs.

My single contribution at that dinner was to suggest to Ellsberg, who had clearly suffered personally on many fronts because of the stigma associated with leaking national security documents, that he write an article that argued that America should treat as a hero any of the 300 or so personnel in government with a foot-thick set of super secret files that would expose some of the contradictions, fabrications, and lies about the so-called many fronted war on terror. I believed that Ellsberg could help inspire patriotic selflessness in some bureaucrat or analyst who would put career and reputation on the line to fill in the many blanks we have about our engagement in Iraq and about the entire buildup to the war, before and after 9/11.

He liked the idea, and about 18 months ago, I contacted the Washington Post and New York Times who both seemed cautiously interested. But the article never appeared -- mostly because Dan Ellsberg didn't get to writing the piece for some time. I know that the Washington Post Outlook Section did try and commission a piece.

But today, that article -- similar to the one that we discussed at the home of Chalmers and Sheila Johnson -- appears in the New York Times.

I thought that Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror was the best America could hope for in terms of a guy who let average Americans have a peek inside the realities of Oval Office politics. Ron Suskind's The Price of Loyalty also helped spill some of the insider thinking and behavior of the administration.

But we still haven't had the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.

I think it is time that we join Ellsberg's call for a national hero -- as yet unknown in the bowels of this administration -- to come forward with the truth of what has been going on.

Someone leaked Valerie Plame's identity over phone lines of the most intelligence-watched place on the face of the Earth, the White House, and has not yet had to pay a price.

Think about leaking something that would actually help get America back on track -- rather than to harm her interests as the divulgence of a covert agent's identity did.

Here is part of the note in today's article written almost as a letter of support to next Bush Administration "Ellsberg of this era":

Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.

I happen to be in New York again courtesy of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund at a conference organized by Leon Fuerth on the challenge of what he calls "Forward Engagement," or forecasting public policy challenges and choices. And one of the great problems of our world is the inability of complex systems, driven mostly by inertia and some sense that what they do tomorrow needs to look mostly like what they did yesterday, to adapt to new information or bugle calls to change course before a collision.

The fact is that American policy makers treat the Daniel Ellsberg's and Chalmers Johnson's of the country as oddities to be avoided -- stepped around -- when in fact they see much more than most of those I know in Washington and have been willing to bet their lives and reputations on their views.

Regrettably, such inspired risk-taking exists only in the smallest nooks and crannies of our government and usually earns expulsion rather than reward.

-- Steve Clemons

MICHAEL FROOMKIN HAS HELPED GET THE GUTS OF THE RNC MAILER posted. I couldn't get the images to load, probably because I left spaces in the file names -- according to Froomkin. Many thanks, Michael.

So, all in one place, here are the various parts of the mailer:

RNC Mailer Cover and Back Graphics

RNC Mailer Inside Section

RNC Mailer Voter Registration Card

-- Steve Clemons

THE BUZZ CONTINUES ABOUT THE RNC MAILER saying that the Dems would ban the Bible and that Arkansas and West Virginia would turn into bastions of sinful homosexual marriage -- or "selfish hedonism" as Alan Keyes called it when referring to Mary Cheney.

John Edwards spoke about the issue at a church yesterday -- something Amy Sullivan and Melissa Deckman write about a lot -- that is Dems need to get religion in their political tool box. I don't agree but appreciate the view. I have very mixed feelings about church pulpits being used for politicking. Bill Clinton engaged in bible-belting at the pulpit frequently -- even when he endorsed Gray Davis against Arnold Schwarzenegger. The argument goes that since the Republicans are doing it -- the Democrats need to, and vice versa.

The perverse side of this trend was the RNC attempting to acquire church directories so that it could mail literature and voter registration materials to church-goers, who it seem are overwhelmingly (but not all!) Republican.

I wrote about the legality of this last month, and it seems that the law smiles on those parishioners who volunteer such directories but frowns on those ministers and priests, or other official church representatives, who formally provide the directories -- even for voter registration efforts.

In the flood of commentary that followed my posting the RNC mailer, I heard from hundreds of people, including some who also received the flier.

One friend of mine who lives in Arkansas and teaches at Hendrix College found a thread between some of those who received the flier -- they belonged to the same church. One of these people apparently had never been involved with any political party or issues and was very surprised to get such mail.

I got on the phone and email to others who had told me that they had received the mailer in West Virginia and in Arkansas -- and asked if they belonged to churches, which they did -- and asked if they could call around to others at their church. Bingo. In three cases of follow up calls, I found that there were in fact church linkages between some recipients of these disgusting mailers.

This puts that issue of the RNC efforts to get the parish directories in a new light, or better yet, new darkness. This seems pretty high profile and risky for the RNC.

Despite the RNC's admitting ownership of this now, how was it that Ed Gillespie didn't know?

Ed, in church -- most of them anyway -- one of the most important lessons is not to lie.

Are you lying, Ed?

-- Steve Clemons

PHILADELPHIA HAS JUST ANNOUNCED FULL ACCESS, FREE WIFI in a two-year project covering 135 square miles of the city.

Connectivity is one of my pet issues -- broadband deployment, the rural/urban digital divide, the information commons, all of that.

As the U.S. government and Federal Communications Commission screw over AT&T, Sprint, and other long distance carriers who were providing innovative bundled communications services that depended on wholesale access to regional Bells' infrastructure, I think that the rate of investment in broadband will slow and prices for many types of access will rise, in contrast to the fall in prices we've seen over the last decade.

Michael Powell, a very dull bulb as Chairman of the FCC (and Colin Powell's son), seems intent on getting on some boards of directors of lucrative monopolies like Verizon, SBC, and Bell South in the future.

I will be writing more on this new age of corporate monopolies that is emerging as the government undoes the 1996 Telecommunications Act -- but in the meantime, I want to commend the City of Philadelphia for making it easier for its blogging moms, data dads, kids, and other citizens like me to get on line easily. I do not live in Philadelphia -- but from here on out I plan to visit frequently.

What is it with this Seattle city official who isn't sure that the tax dollars are worth it? (see New York Times article) And he can justify all of Seattle's tax revenue financed sports stadiums? Seattle may be losing some of its edge.

-- Steve Clemons

ALTHOUGH CBS SEEMS SCARED TO RILE THE WHITE HOUSE after the Killian memos fiasco and has subsequently decided to delay a much more important story on the potential perpetrators of the Niger uranium documents, they did use the RNC anti-gay mailer posted by The Washington Note as their 3rd story on CBS News Friday night.

Hundreds of sites have linked to my post of the RNC mailer -- but some skeptics wondered whether the Democrats actually produced these fliers to make the Republicans look bad. I have the inside of the flier and the voter registration information for any who would like them. I'm trying to post them but am having difficulty getting the files to load. Send an email to steve@thewashingtonnote.com, and I'll just email any interested parties the other parts of the RNC mailer.

After my post, which other bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, John Aravosis, Matthew Yglesias, and many others posted, CBS News ran a story, followed by a front page story by the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Now the RNC mailer issue in Arkansas (as well as West Virginia, which was first noted by the Associated Press) is being reported throughout the major media and blog world.

After all the clamor, the RNC finally admitted that it had indeed sent the mailer.

I have been deluged by calls and emails since I posted this RNC mailer -- thanks to a loyal reader of The Washington Note who sent it to me. And I was hoping to keep this issue going -- but the classic media world took hold of it pretty quickly, which I had hoped it would do.

I don't hold any grudges against CBS News or the Arkansas Democrat Gazette for using the images I posted without attribution -- which they both did -- but I do want to highlight that these two outlets and many of the other news outlets that covered this homophobic electionerring strategy in Arkansas got into this because of the readers and writers of blogs.

In Chicago at an American Political Science Association forum on the "Power and Politics of Blogs" organized by Henry Farrell and Daniel Drezner, the discussant -- Cass Sunstein -- asked whether there was empirical evidence on whether blogs influenced the major media. I think that there are many cases recently, including the flurry over the authenticity questions of the Killian memos.

But highlighting on blogs this disgusting RNC anti-gay, ban-the-bible mailer has clearly had an impact on major media reporting.

-- Steve Clemons

PERVEZ MUSHARRAF HAS MANAGED MUCH MORE CANDOR ABOUT IRAQ than anyone in the White House.

Check out this interview with Paula Zahn posted by John Aravosis.

The whole thing is worth reading, but here is just the first bit that says most of it:

ZAHN: Is the world a safer place because of the war in Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: Well, because it has aroused actions of the Muslims more. It's aroused certain sentiments of the Muslim world, and then the responses, the latest phenomena of explosives, more frequent for bombs and suicide bombings. This phenomenon is extremely dangerous.

-- Steve Clemons

GEORGE W. BUSH, AYAD ALLAWI, AND DON RUMSFELD are committed to elections in January in Iraq no matter how messy.

This New York Times piece today by my friend and colleague Noah Feldman argues that the mania over having the elections no matter how chaotic the environment is wrong-headed.

Jumping to Afghanistan, Mark Goldberg raises good points about paltry election monitoring in the upcoming elections that I haven't read anywhere else -- something that may be relevant in the Iraq elections as well.

Goldberg's piece will appear in the forthcoming October issue of American Prospect -- and I reprint in full here (with permission) as there is not yet a link to the article.

Minimal Monitors

As Andrew Wilder, head of the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit, a Kabul-based nongovernmental organization, told Agence France Presse in September, "If it is too dangerous for monitors to monitor, isn't it too dangerous for Afghans to vote?"
--Mark Goldberg, American Prospect, October 2004

Anyone know about the election monitoring plan in Iraq?

-- Steve Clemons

FROM FOUR UNTIL FIVE P.M. TODAY EASTERN TIME, I will be on the Ben Merens Show on Wisconsin Public Radio that covers about five states in the region.

WPR is launching a new series of shows called "Just the Facts," in which they try to talk policy reality rather than policy spin. I'm going to do my best with this "no-spin rule" over the next hour.

The primary topic will be Bush's and Kerry's respective approaches to foreign policy, anti-terrorism, and any topics raised by callers.

To join Ben's program live, call toll-free 1-800-486-8655 or 227-2050 if you're in the Milwaukee area.

The show is audiocast over the web if you go to WPR's site.

-- Steve Clemons

A LOYAL READER OF THE WASHINGTON NOTE HAS EMAILED ME a copy of the controversial RNC mailer that Associated Press reported had been mailed out in West Virginia. Talking Points Memo had a good post on this on the 17th of September.

The version I have posted was mailed out in Arkansas -- so this template, which Ed Gillespie said he knew nothing about, is being used in multiple states.

The front of the mailer has a picture of the bible with the letters 'BANNED' on top with the letters 'ALLOWED' over two attractive men looking at each other and holding hands -- a very nice picture by the way.

The scare line is: "This will be Arkansas. . .if you don't vote."

Here is the mailing.

This is the kind of right wing thing that has made centrists like myself look like lefists.

-- Steve Clemons

FINALLY. THREE OF TOM DELAY'S AIDES HAVE BEEN INDICTED in the fundraising probe related to the mid-term redistricting in Texas.

Josh Marshall probably wrote more on this story -- the legislators on the lam and Tom DeLay's shady deals -- than anyone. Just do a text search on his site to remind yourself of the details.

I don't see how Tom DeLay could not be next in the indictment list. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

With DeLay's inevitable fall, Congress may wake up to its responsibilites as a check on executive power. Let's hope.

-- Steve Clemons

I LOVE READING THE WHITE HOUSE POOL REPORTS, which are an art unto themselves.

Wonkette posts these from time to time, so you can get a more regular diet of the creative commentary of presidential pool reporter drudgery from her.

While Fox News has been absolutely gleeful about Dan Rather eating crow on the questionable origins of the Killian memos and arguing that Rather didn't really want to confess on TV, but was forced to -- I'd love to see what they are going to say about Bush toasting the United Nations and Kofi Annan's leadership.

Here is today's White House pool report:

Sept. 21, 2004
Pool Report #6
United Nations lunch

"Mr. Secretary-General, with admiration for your leadership and with confidence in this organization," the president said, "I offer a toast to you and your service, and to the United Nations."

The full transcript is posted.

Bob Hillman
Dallas Morning News

Toasting Kofi? Maybe Bush is going to give up on the neocons after all, withdraw from Iraq, and become a genuine multilateral sort of guy next term.

-- Steve Clemons

THIS OBIT FOR JAMES BEASLEY RAN TODAY IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.

It turns out that Woolsey was out marketing his services as an expert witness on the Saddam Hussein-al Qaeda connection and with Woolsey's help, Beasley won a $104 million suit on behalf of two families of men killed in the 9/11 attacks by al Qaeda.

The judgment has never been collected from either Saddam or bin Laden, but I wonder if Woolsey collected his fees for this case.

Here is the relevant text from the obituary:

Los Angeles Times -- PASSINGS
James Beasley, 78; Sued Bin Laden, Hussein on Behalf of 9/11 Victims

A federal judge agreed that Hussein's Iraq had provided "material support" to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, after Beasley presented testimony from former CIA director James Woolsey Jr. and a photograph by a satellite company showing an apparent terrorist training camp near Baghdad.

I knew Jim Woolsey had some financial conflicts of interest when he asserted the connection between Hussein and 9/11, but I didn't know that he made an industry this extensive out of it.

Wait, I take that back. . .I did.

-- Steve Clemons

NOW THAT THE BUSH-KERRY DEBATE SCHEDULE IS OUT, one of the irritating facts about these sessions is that they create false divides between policy challenges that need to be considered at a systemic level.

Jim Lehrer will moderate the foreign policy debate, and domestic policy will come as the last of the three scheduled exchanges. Are energy questions domestic or foreign policy? Do drugs and organized crime constitute a domestic or foreign policy challenge? Do the topics of alternative fuels and global warm remediation efforts fit on the domestic agenda or foreign policy agenda? And what about the jobs question we used to hear so much about but hardly seems part of political discourse right now.

I subscribe to Alan Tonelson's Globalization Factline -- and often get some very interesting factoids that are fun to probe and prod speakers with. The September 16th Factline fax reports:

JOBS OF THE FUTURE KEEP VANISHING

# of U.S. high tech jobs lost from end of last recession, November 2001 to April 2004: 206,300 jobs

I have been mired in some of these questions on trade adjustment, retraining, outsourcing, and the impact of productivity gains on the jobs base for quite a while and don't feel that there is a silver bullet policy fix that will solve America's job loss problem. What is clearly missing, however, is an honest discussion of these issues -- and the Bush team seems to be arguing that no strategy is the best strategy for this economy.

For a contrasting set of views from the U.S. Business and Industrial Council, where Alan Tonelson works, you can hear a roster of speakers at a Cato Institute/Economist forum who 'mostly' toe the manic neoliberal line.

This conference, titled "Trade and the Future of American Workers," takes place all day on 7 October and features Roger Ferguson, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Greg Mankiw (remember his debate with Laura Tyson recently?); Economist Economics correspondent Zanny Minton Beddoes; Cato VP for Research (and major thorn in the side to those who worry about dumping in American markets) Brink Linsey, McKinsey Global Institute Director Diana Farrell (oversaw McKinsey's controversial outsourcing study), and the Washington Post's Sebastian Mallaby (Zanny's husband and an important writer whom I've discussed on The Washington Note before and who used to be at the Economist).

I like these folks and intend to take part in the conference, but I think that the audience will have to be the generator of alternative policy notions. Sebastian and Zanny, married but not always in agreement on policy, both think neoliberalism -- while preferable generally -- can be taken too far, or at least be applied poorly in terms of policy. When one current and former Economist magazine correspondent represents the left flank of opinion at a forum like this, well....

But I give credit to Tonelson as well as to the Cato Institute and the Economist for organizing a forum that has nothing to do with Bush's National Guard service, Kerry's war medals, or the CBS memos.

We need to be debating the important things. I'm trying and hope others will as well.

I like giving informal advice to the Kerry campaign through this blog. I know that some of them are reading it -- and occasionally sneer at stuff I suggest.

But, wouldn't it be cool if John Kerry showed up on the steps of Cato and gave his own recipe of policy proposals to seriously address the question of "Trade and the Future of American Workers"?

George Bush hasn't done this -- and Kerry might appeal to some of the 1.2% of the electorate committed to a libertarian presidential candidate out there who might be impressed with such a move. Yes, in this race -- those small slivers of voters really matter.

If you haven't read it yet, do read Clay Risen's "Tanked: How Bush Lost the Libertarians," which ran in The New Republic.

The article is great because it argues that the Cato Institute is no longer dependably committed to Bush, mostly because of the war and big government realities that Bush has brought to his tenure. The truth, however, is far more complex and interesting. Cato is divided between many on its economic team who are vigorous supporters of Bush and the Iraq War -- and those on the defense/security side who are classically libertarian and thus opposed to the muddled over-reach of this administration.

Anyway, John Kerry could have some fun with this if he has any time in his schedule on October 7th.

-- Steve Clemons

AMB. IVOR ROBERTS, BRITAIN'S AMBASSADOR TO ITALY, thought he was off the record when he uttered a controversial truth -- and described George Bush as "the best recruiting sergeant ever for al-Qaida".

One excerpt from the article in The Guardian:

According to one of those present, Sir Ivor had been taking part in a discussion on which candidate Europeans would back if they had a vote in the US election. The ambassador said they would vote for Mr Kerry but some people would want Mr Bush, not least al-Qaida.

"If anyone is ready to celebrate the eventual re-election of Bush, it's al-Qaida. Whereas it is clear that the Palestinians hope that a Kerry victory will unblock the situation," he said.

Sir Ivor has no doubt stirred up reactions that will feel like those killer bees making their way up from Mexico into Oklahoma and Texas.

But he is right. Much of the world has a dim view of Bush, and Al Qaeda is trying to appeal to this antipathy about American global power and culture. Acording to previous Pew polling of global attitudes, many of the world's citizens pine for a return of Clinton-style globalization policies -- a real reversal from attitudes during the convulsive Seattle WTO ministerial years ago.

Sir Ivor's sentiments are nearly the same as those in this controversial ad that ran before the war and featured bin Laden in the style of Uncle Sam pointing to the reader and saying:

I WANT YOU TO INVADE IRAQ

Go ahead. Send me a new generation of recruits. Your bombs will fuel their hatred of America and their desire for revenge. Americans won't be safe anywhere. Please, attack Iraq. Distract yourself from fighting Al Qaeda. Divide the international community. Go ahead. Destabilize the region. Maybe Pakistan will fall -- we want its nuclear weapons. Give Saddam a reason to strike first. He might draw Israel into a fight. Perfect! So please -- invade Iraq. Make my day. Osama says: 'I Want You to Invade Iraq.'

On Sunday, I attended a reception for the new round of Marshall Scholars at the residence of the British Ambassador in Washington, Sir David Manning.

Manning seems like a smart, careful guy. Tom Friedman was there in his capacity as a Marshall Scholar alum. Jeffrey Gettleman, a New York Times correspondent -- who has been reporting from Baghdad also attended the Sunday soiree. I didn't speak to him -- but did to Manning and Friedman and neither mentioned a word I could hear about the presidential election or the Iraq War.

But simmering beneath the surface of discussion among and between these 42 new Marshall scholars and special guests was a true concern about Bush, the War, and about how these Americans were going to be seen in the UK and elsewhere in the world. But many felt like it was talking 'out of church' to say anything.

So, this morning, I just wanted to point to Sir Ivor Roberts' comments and applaud him for not being so cautious that truth and candid discussion about war, are not held hostage by the powerful and politically correct.

-- Steve Clemons

THADDEUS DUBOIS HAS BEEN NAMED WHITE HOUSE EXECUTIVE PASTRY CHEF. With only six weeks to go until the presidential election -- and not many state dinners planned between now and then -- and the Bush family on the road a lot -- Dubois either really wants this credential on his resume or Laura Bush has the "confidence thing" mastered.

Here's an idea for the Kerry Campaign. Call Dubois, who must be preparing to move to Washington -- and assure him that he can keep the White House job even if George W. Bush has to move out.

Or maybe Teresa should call. You need to match these ploys with equally gutsy moves.

-- Steve Clemons

"NO ADMINISTRATION HAS DONE MORE TO CONCEAL" the workings of government from the people -- this from a new report just released from the minority staff of the House Government Reform Committee.

In 1983, I worked as a staff assistant to Arnold Horelick at the RAND/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior, based at RAND Corporation in Santa Monica.

Horelick was one of those mesmerizing high priests of Soviet studies whose knowledge of the inner workings of the Politburo combined simultaneously with a sophisticated grasp of the throw-weight of Soviet nuclear warheads made him (among a few others) one of the nation's leading gatekeepers of national security policy-making.

Arnold Horelick co-wrote with Myron Rush the seminal Strategic Power and Soviet Foreign Policy which is the first major analytic study of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Harvard's Graham Allison used Horelick's work as the foundation bedrock of his best-selling Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, which nearly every political science student in the nation over two decades read in Political Science 101.

Horelick was a contemporary of all the foreign policy big guns then -- Kissinger, Brzezinski, Adam Ulam, Marshall Goldman, Paul Nitze, William Colby, many others. Strobe Talbott, then Time Magazine's top Soviet writer and interpreter, was in touch frequently with Arnold, stopping by regularly to give brown bag lunch talks.

But in 1983, Horelick stepped out of the "cleared world" of secrets and espionage and worried about the American public's right to know about its world, its rivals, and contemporary affairs in general.

Defying the culture of secrecy in which he had thrived, Horelick helped launch an effort that few people know about to convince CIA czar Bill Casey that "official secrecy" had expanded during the first couple of years of Reagan's tenure to unhealthy and potentially undemocratic levels. Horelick, from his base at the super-secretive RAND Corporation, led an unheralded but noble battle against Casey to try and preempt the administration from making virtually everything relating to national security analysis sensitive or classified information.

I don't know whether Arnold and his comrades in this effort succeeded to any great degree, but I do know that the problem of widening official secrecy is on us again. I know that more people need to blow whistles and try and stop this very bad trend.

Via FUGOP (see this excellent site), I received a valuable and thought-provoking report (released on September 14th) "Secrecy in the Bush Administration," prepared for Congressman Henry Waxman by the Special Investigations Division/Minority Staff of the House Committee on Government Reform. I have just spent the last hour and a half reading it, and the problem is worse than I thought.

This is a small selection from this excellent report that converges with my own frustrations trying to get important policy data from the government, current and historical:

Beginning in the 1960s, Congress enacted a series of landmark laws that promote "government in the sunshine." These include the Freedom of Information Act, the Presidential Records Act, and the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Each of these laws enables the public to view the internal workings of the executive branch. And each has been narrowed in scope and application under the Bush Administration.

Independent academic experts consulted for this report decried these trends. They stated that the Administration has "radically reduced the public right to know," that its policies "are not only sucking the spirit out of the FOIA, but shriveling its very heart," and that no Administration in modern times has "done more to conceal the
workings of government from the people."

Secrecy undermines the ecosystem of transparency that is vital for democracy's survival. When official secrecy dominates a political system, structural corruption thrives.

I have been giving a lot of thought to structural corruption in America -- and what the corruption of America's blue chip media organizations, political parties, religious institutions, and corporations means. I want to write an article soon that compares right-wing Republican kingpin and harrasser of moderate Republicans Tom DeLay to Japan's late kingmaker Shin Kanemaru.

RAND has sometimes placed self-interest above the public good, in my view, but Arnold Horelick was hitting exactly the right target, more than two decades ago.

It looks like Henry Waxman is carrying on this important effort -- much as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan did as well.

In any case, read this report.

-- Steve Clemons

STAY TUNED. I JUST RECEIVED A COPY OF CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER'S blistering, as yet unreleased counter-attack against Francis Fukuyama for his article, "The Neoconservative Moment," which appeared in the last issue of National Interest.

I profiled the outbreak of this battle inside the neocon nest some time ago -- and that piece triggered articles across the blogosphere and also in major media.

I hope to have my own op-ed out in the next few days and will post it (and whatever the editors remove from my piece) here at The Washington Note.

-- Steve Clemons

THIS ARTICLE APPEARED IN PAKISTAN TODAY and reports that 17,000 U.S. soldiers are not listed on the Pentagon's casualty list.

This piece is based on Mark Benjamin's UPI article. Benjamin also brought the lariam/suicidal behavior by some U.S. Special Forces to light.

Key points from Mark Benjamin's article:

-- Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports

-- Among veterans from Iraq seeking help from the VA, 5,375 have been diagnosed with a mental problem, making it the third-leading diagnosis after bone problems and digestive problems. Among the mental problems were 800 soldiers who became psychotic.

Benjamin quotes a number of veterans' advocates who complain that the Pentagon is too narrowly defining its reported casualties from the war.

I think they have a point. And this is only on the U.S. side of the equation.

There are some NGOs actively involved in trying to assess Iraqi casualties, but one site is here.

With such little oversight from Congress and most of the media, the Pentagon is getting away with making affairs in Iraq look far less horrible than they are.

-- Steve Clemons

ALL MORNING, I HAVE BEEN SEETHING AS FOX & FRIENDS has crowed about the Killian memos, which CBS is apparently about to acknowledge as fraudulent.

Bush's team has been engaged in duplicity, obfuscation, the expansion of official secrecy to anti-democratic levels -- and now the critics are undone by fraud on their side.

This is not good.

The targets are so easy, so evident -- it seems to me -- among Bush and his administration that contrived documents and memories will only backfire and undermine the credibility of Bush's critics.

I don't want to mention the individual's name, but I have had interaction with a New York Times writer and another prominent journalist over the credibility problems of an unnamed person who remembers George Bush's academic activities long ago. I can't say for sure, but this individual's memories seemed too vivid and too out of sync with many other voluminous recollections he had of rather minimal encounters with Bush to be deemed credible, in my view.

The demonstration of Bush's serious character and credibility flaws needs to be done honestly, and those of us commenting on those matters can't make the illegitimate credible.

-- Steve Clemons

A FLOOD OF EMAILS HAS COME IN REGARDING BILL CONDON'S KINSEY film, which depicts the life and times of Indiana University sex researcher Alfred Kinsey and stars Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, John Lithgow, Peter Sarsgaard, and others.

An enterprising reader of The Washington Note has reported that the email to write to to ask Fox Searchlight Productions to release Kinsey early is weekendread@foxsearchlight.com.

A.O. Scott, the chief film critic of the New York Times, has published today a terrific, balanced book review of T.C. Boyle's The Inner Circle, a fictional treatment of Kinsey, his research, his researchers, and the politics of sex in the 1940s. The book seems to track well with much of the film -- but is not identical. The review is worth a read, and perhaps the book too.

But the film is a must. It has a profoundly important political message and conveys the battle then between science and dogma that is unfolding again in this early part of America's next century.

Send Fox a note: weekendread@foxsearchlight.com

-- Steve Clemons

CLEARLY, THIS PRESIDENTIAL RACE IS NOT SHAPING UP to be about alternative policy choices. It is a race driven by various exogenous shocks.

Electoral-Vote.com does a nice job of plotting certain events against the likely electoral college performance of Bush and Kerry since May. Check out this website's thoughtful discussion on polling as well and the other great resources scattered throughout the site.

Reagan's death, Farenheit 9/11, John Edwards' selection as VP, the Democratic National Convention, the Swift Boat ads, and the Republican National Convention all correlate with various significant swings in the contest. After the Republican convention, I would imagine that hitting 1,000 American military deaths in Iraq or new concerns about Bush's national guard service may account for a clear, but temporary, drop of Bush on this graph. Now,however, Bush seems to be on a real upswing as far as this electoral college assessment.

I tried pretty hard to get some senior players in the Kerry political world to anticipate the impact of Reagan's death, about six months before Reagan passed away. It seemed to me that a set of unexpected but potential exogenous shocks needed to be considered and anticipated by Kerry's team. These included a potential economic shock -- a currency crisis or a hedge fund unwinding as happened with Long Term Capital Management; a mass casualty incident in Iraq or Afghanistan; a mass casualty incident in the U.S.; or Reagan's death.

Presidential death and memorial services create unrivaled theatre. I thought that Reagan dying after such a long battle with Alzheimer's would present an important staging opportunity for Bush and help him exploit the sentimentalism for Reagan's style of presidency, very attractive not just to Republicans but to many independent voters.

When I would mention this to groups, everyone would say that they agreed that Reagan's death might have an impact. Walter Shapiro was the one friend who told me that it would have no impact because most of the country already thought of Reagan as gone. When I was in Florence, Italy this summer at a forum organized by Georgetown University -- I gave the same line of reasoning to Rik Hertzberg of The New Yorker who was there -- and he got it and may have written this up I think. Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan died the very next morning.

The Kerry response should have been to try and exploit a divide among Republicans over what Reagan's legacy means today. To some degree, there is a battle between Reagan's foreign policy acolytes, but a far broader set of civil wars could have been cultivated by Kerry's team. Instead, Kerry's campaign went dark during Reagan's memorial week, and as Electoral-Vote.com shows, Bush's popularity stopped falling and he began climbing in the polls.

This election is far from over, but Kerry should have found a couple of good things to say about Reagan and then make those in Republican circles fight a bit over what Reagan really meant to the country. He should have embraced David Catania -- the rebellious gay Republican member of the Washington D.C. City Council who defected from Bush's side over the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment. He should be talking about stem cell politics in this country and how America cannot afford to point itself in a Dark Ages, anti-science direction.

If this election is going to be driven by shocks and events, then the only way Kerry can beat Bush is by creating some of his own "shock and awe." That is possible in six weeks.

-- Steve Clemons

LIAM NEESON AND LAURA LINNEY STAR IN KINSEY, a new movie by Director Bill Condon, scheduled to be released November 12th. This film is powerful, political, and needs to be out in October.

Fox Searchlight Productions, the independent film arm of Fox, is distributing the film -- and the folks there are into thoughtful social and political commentary. I hosted a film screening for Bill Condon -- Academy Award winning writer and director who wrote and directed Gods and Monsters and wrote Chicago -- with a bunch of policy wonk friends of mine at the Motion Picture Association of America theatre in Washington last week.

But Tuesday night, I saw the movie again courtesy of Gloria Steinem and Tina Brown who hosted a star-studded screening and dinner in New York. First, I want to tell you about the party -- because it was useful to hear what the movie set thinks of Bush and Kerry. Secondly, I want to chat about the film a bit.

Gloria Steinem loved the film as I did and handed me a copy of Lara Riscol's "Sex, Lies and Politics," which appeared in the August 30th issue of The Nation (which has it blocked to all except subscribers and those without the secret key). Riscol starts her piece:

Throwing a bone to its sex-obsessed religious base, the GOP has slipped an abstinence activist into its convention mix of mostly moderate speakers. Miss America 2003 will put a smiley face on President Bush's bulging chastity industry, for whcih he has allotted $273 million in his 2005 budget, plus a third of the $15 billion global AIDS-relief package.

The ascendancy of abstinence-only under Bush has not only altered funding priorities; it has sanctioned a climate of hostility toward sexual health professionals, who increasingly face harassment, intimidation, and marginalization if they stray from the abstinence-only-unless-married line.

Lara Riscol mentions Alfred Kinsey as one of the victims of a smear campaign by those allied with Bush's abstinence investments.

Steinem impressed me as someone who understands how global sensibilities and lifestyles will be badly shocked by four more years of the Bush administration. She talked to me about the deteriorating state of women in both Iraq and Afghanistan and said that the White House has done nothing -- either symbolic or real -- to highlight in both these places why a reversion to the subordination of women in theocratic, male-dominated societies would be not only horrible for those countries, but for the world.

I realize that Steinem is a lightning rod, but my personal encounter with her and her politics was only positive. I also spoke with Laura Linney, who won my affection for her role in Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, as well as Liam Neesen and Lynn Redgrave. All three seemed politically aware, had the sense that their film Kinsey was in fact a profound political commentary on our times (much more subtle than Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11), but not willing to go further in their comments. Linney felt like I did that she wished the movie was coming out before the election. I think that both Linney and Neesen will be nominated for Academy Awards for their performances.

Regarding the film itself, Bill Condon has told the story of Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey who took his study of variations among more than a million galwasps and applied his methods to human beings. The 1948 release of his book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, was one of the most deeply disruptive/constructive events of the last century. Condon tells this story brilliantly -- and makes people squirm in their seats just enough that one can get a sense of how challenging it is for a society to be "rewired" on matters like sex and social norms.

What Condon celebrates, I think, in this film is an episode where science and rationality, the Englightenment as it were, beat back unthinking norms based on a perverse politicization of religion and faith. I enjoyed learning that the Rockefeller Foundation was the first major funder of Kinsey's work. I stayed up at John D. Rockefeller's house, Kykuit, the other day courtesy of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (a different Rockefeller family foundation; check out their U.S. in the World project of which I was a task force member).

I don't want to give away all of the great material in this film, which also starred the brilliant Peter Sarsgaard (who played Chuck Lane in Shattered Glass for those outraged as I was by Stephen Glass's duplicity at the New Republic and saw the film), Timothy Hutton, John Lithgow, Chris O'Donnell, Tim Curry, and others.

This film made it ever clear to me that the stakes in the upcoming election are profound on many fronts, but are perhaps greatest in that the next president will appoint at least three Supreme Court justices. When it comes to issues like sexual freedom, womens' right to choose, and privacy -- the world as we shaped it, through the efforts of people like Alfred Kinsey (a hard core Republican as Bill Condon reported to me), could be dramatically changed.

So, see the film.

Note to my Fox Searchlight friends -- you really should get lots and lots of people to early, unofficial releases -- but don't tell Rupert Murdoch.

I was out way too late that night -- which is why it has taken me so long to recover to tell this story and conceptualize and articulate why I think Kinsey has so much political punch.

I think that the Bush administration is rewiring us to go back to a time where rationality and intelligence are choked and shrouded by unthinking faith politically applied.

That evening, I had the pleasure of meeting a guy whom I thought was just interesting and had no idea he was famous and had a cultish following until later that night when Japanese friends nearly passed out when I mentioned his name.

John Cameron Mitchell, writer and star of the stage show and movie, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, had the best political mind of the night -- well, next to Bill Condon's and Steinem's.

Mitchell is the son of an old Washington family, his dad a general, his grandfather the first head of Social Security. He is brilliant and informed on political issues, which is all we discussed because I didn't know much about his creative life.

He will be joining Sandra Bernhard at a political "Freedom to Marry" fundraiser the night of October 5th at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. So, catch him there and tell him I sent you.

I also spoke with Tina Brown, one of the divas of the night, but had no encounter worth reporting. She was busy making sure that the stars were talking to the stars (for camera purposes), but Dr. Ruth was there -- and she told me she supports Kerry too.

-- Steve Clemons

The PEW RESEARCH CENTER FOR PEOPLE AND THE PRESS ISSUED A SURVEY REPORT this evening titled "Kerry Support Rebounds, Race Again Even."

It seems that the controversy over Bush's National Guard service has taken its toll.

The report starts:

Voter opinion in the presidential race has seesawed dramatically in the first two weeks of September. Following a successful nominating convention, George W. Bush broke open a deadlocked contest and jumped out to a big lead over John Kerry.

However, polling this past week finds that Bush's edge over his Democratic rival has eroded. Reflecting this new volatility in the race, the size of the swing vote has increased slightly since the summer, rather than contracting as it typically does as the election approaches.

Other findings of the survey included:

-- Slightly more voters think that President Bush did not meet all of his service obligations while in the National Guard than say he did (43% vs. 33%). But only about a quarter (26%) say it bothers them.

-- John Edwards' favorable ratings have declined from 58% in August to 49% and he runs about even with Dick Cheney in a match-up of vice-presidential running mates (46% Edwards/44% Cheney).

-- The questions surrounding Bush and Kerry's service during the Vietnam war have drawn much more attention from committed voters than swing voters. Fewer than one-in-five swing voters are following either story very closely.

-- More than half of all voters and 64% of swing voters agree with the statement: "It's not clear what George W. Bush is going to do about Iraq if he is reelected."

-- This month's tragedy at a Russian school, during which scores of children were killed by Chechen separatists, has drawn wide attention in the U.S. About the same number followed the school tragedy very closely as followed the opening of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is the first good news I've seen for John Kerry's campaign for weeks. The report is worth reading in full.

-- Steve Clemons

AFTER 9-11 AND UP TO THE TIME OF THE IRAQ INVASION, Senator Chuck Hagel was one of the very few voices of sanity in senior Republican circles.

Although I don't have his earlier statements on hand to hyperlink to this post (I'll try and dig some up), I heard Chuck Hagel speak to a small group organized by Jack Janes and the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies where Hagel outlined a set of crucial "questions" that the Bush administration had failed to answer in its war against terror and the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Hagel supported his president in the end, particularly after the invastion started, but few know that his views were sensible and raised many of the questions Kerry is now posing. In fact, I think Hagel lodged more of an internal battle over foreign policy inside the Republican Party than the Democrats did in Congress before the Iraq War.

Around this same time, I had the opportunity to participate in a small lunch with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer at the German Ambassador's home -- and I was struck by how nearly identical Fischer's recited roster of unanswered questions about the war were to Hagel's.

In the room with Fischer that day were host German Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James Steinberg, Sandy Berger, Robert Kimmitt, Leon Fuerth, Ted Koppel, and others -- and many were pretty tough on Germany's and Fischer's resistance on the Iraq War. But Chuck Hagel at that time was pretty much hitting the same buttons inside the Republican Party.

Today, in an AP story on Kerry's statement that Bush is not being straight on Iraq, Chuck Hagel is again the hero and saying the right things.

In the AP report:

Bush also faced tough assessments of Iraq from quarters that typically would echo the commander in chief. The head of the Army Reserve said his force of part-time soldiers has yet to fully adapt to the demands of a global war on terrorism. And a Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, said the situation in Iraq is deteriorating.

"The worst thing we can do is hold ourselves hostage to some grand illusion that we're winning," said Hagel, a Vietnam War veteran. "Right now we're not winning. Things are getting worse."

John Kerry needs to point out that Bush's own team is deeply concerned about Iraq -- and he ought to go give Chuck Hagel the kind of bear hug Bush gave John McCain.

For $6.21 and a lot of real or assumed Nebraska state spirit, you can attend the famous six-decade old "Nebraska Breakfast" which Senator Hagel hosts in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. It's best to get there by 7:30 a.m., and the next breakfasts are on September 22nd and 29th.

Hagel deserves kudos and strong applause for giving serious thought to the health of America's national security circumstances and for raising the right questions despite the Bush team's attempts to squash them.

Suffice it to say, I don't expect to see Chuck Hagel signing any Committee on the Present Danger manifestos.

-- Steve Clemons

A FRIEND REMINDED ME OF BUSH'S POOR PERFORMANCE in November 1999 recalling names of political leaders in four of the world's leading hot spots.

The article, "Bush fails reporter's pop quiz on international leaders," reminds us that Bush had trouble recalling Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan and could not recall the leaders of India, Pakistan and Chechnya.

My guess is that Bush would get Taiwan and Pakistan today, but still would fail India and Chechnya. But what we need to remember is Bush's weak commitment to supporting democratic process abroad.

In preferring a general who can instill order over messy democracy, Bush said about the leader of Pakistan: "The new Pakistani general, he's just been elected -- not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent."

More from the clip:

Gore released a statement Friday taking Bush to task for his comments on Pakistan's recent coup.

The Clinton Administration has expressed disappointment that Musharraf has not offered a timetable for restoring democracy in Pakistan, but U.S. officials have not been alarmed at the military coup, describing Musharraf as reasonable.

I haven't written much yet on a related subject that really burns me -- American aid and support of Karimov in Uzbekistan. More on that later.

However, I think it is important to remember that Pakistan's roadmap to democracy is still largely unaddressed. And Bush seems to be fine with that, which makes the hypocrisy of Iraq even more disturbing.

-- Steve Clemons

THE COMMITTEE ON THE PRESENT DANGER is attempting to engage Americans in important foreign policy and security debates through fear tactics.

One good resource that seeks to engage Americans and those abroad who care about international affairs is a new guide, U.S. in the World: Talking Global Issues with Americans -- A Practical Guide. I served as a Task Force member on this project and am very impressed with the usefulness of this guide for folks who are not foreign policy addicts.

From the introduction of the report:

U.S. in the World supports the work of advocates of pragmatic, principled, effective, and collaborative U.S. engagement in the world. It draws on the latest communications research and the insights of experts to outline convincing facts and arguments, and offer effective ways to put them across to non-expert American audiences.

The Guide flows from a straightforward core vision: an informed, empowered citizenry is needed to encourage policymakers to support the sustained investment, involvement and leadership needed from the United States to tackle 21st-century challenges effectively. Advocates and experts alike need reliable, cutting-edge advice on how to communicate those ideas to citizens.

The guide can be downloaded at no expense over the web -- or CD and print versions can be ordered from the website. Take a look at these materials that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Aspen Institute have put together.

While I don't agree with every item in the guide, it's one of the few serious and constructive contributions to informed foreign policy debate out there right now.

Those of you who are writers, teachers, speakers, or involved in other community groups may find this a better resource than the "fear factor" approach of Jim Woolsey's various enterprises.

-- Steve Clemons

JAMES WOOLSEY & CO. WILL OUTLINE WORLD WAR IV STRATEGIES at a forum scheduled two weeks from now on Wednesday, 29 September, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The forum is disconcertingly titled: "World War IV: Why We Fight, Whom We Fight, How We Fight," and is sponsored by the Committee on the Present Danger and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

They won't let you in the door as the conference is being organized as a watering hole for like-minded supporters of the Iraq War and those committed to broadening America's military engagement with other "problem nations" (think Iran and Syria). It runs from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. in case you want to peek in the doors at the Mayflower; there are big open hallways there.

The intro blurb on the announcement reads:

The Cold War is now being called by some "World War III" because it was global, had an ideological basis, involved both military and non-military actions, required skill and the mobilization of extensive resources and lasted for years. Today's "war on terrorism" has the same elements, hence a broader name, "World War IV." Our speakers will explore its antecedents, its methods and its possible outcome.

Featured speakers in the program include Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (invited), Senator Jon Kyl (invited), Senator Joseph Lieberman (apparently confirmed -- Joe, what are you thinking?!), R. James Woolsey, Norman Podhoretz, Eliot Cohen, Rachel Ehrenfeld, and others.

I can just see Jim Woolsey soon releasing bumper stickers at these events and maybe tee-shirts, coffee mugs, and buttons that say "WORLD WAR IV: Test of Loyalty," or some other sticky absurdity.

I am going to try and attend this meeting, but if there are readers out there who make it through the "non-transferable invitation" guards at the door, inquire about how Woolsey can live with himself encouraging Americans to sacrifice lives and treasure on one hand while personally profiting off of their defense of our democracy on the other.

War profiteering is a disgusting trade. But someone of James Woolsey's credentials should either recuse himself from commenting on national security policy -- or forfeit his defense/war-related profit-making activities.

Another alternative might be for Woolsey to contribute all the profits he is making at Paladin, Fluor, Booz Allen and other firms to those servicemen and women (and their families) who have been killed, are missing or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

-- Steve Clemons

I AM IN POCANTICO, NEW YORK, AT KYKUIT, the former estate of John D. Rockefeller for an interesting conference organized by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Carnegie Council for Ethics and International Affairs. I have been extremely busy up here and only now able to find a way on line recently.

I have some longer, more thoughtful posts to get up soon, but I need to edit them and see if they can withstand the scrutiny of those who make it through this blog. But I wanted to post an interesting bit of local trivia that has nothing to do with the Bush-Kerry contest but perhaps something to do with the question of where the American economy is heading.

This is a nice place, obviously. I'm actually staying in Kykuit, John D. Rockefeller's house, as well as his first son's house when he died, and then Nelson's after that. And the topic of this conference is called "Reinventing Globalization." Gathered here are some extremely impressive funders, progressive NGO leaders from around the world, former journalists, and policy intellectuals who are thinking about ways to empower developing nations in a world where the cards are stacked against them. We also have a lot of people here who are keenly aware that the cards are stacked against working and lesser (or un-) employed Americans.

It's interesting to do this from the Rockefeller estate, symbollically the home of such monopolistic wealth at one time in history -- and I do applaud the philanthropy and vision that allows those that have such wealth to consider soberly what is not going right in the world. I think that the funders of this meeting are working through the right issues.

Andrew Carnegie -- you all know him. He probably funded the building and outfitting of a library near you (if you are in the U.S.). He is buried down the road at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Washington Irving, Ichabod Crane, and the Headless Horsemen were all from this little nook.

But buried just next to Andrew Carnegie is Samuel Gompers, the first president of the American Federation of Labor.

I find this a fun bit of trivia; ironic on many levels. Perhaps this will help someone unseat the reigning and seemingly unbeatable champion on Jeopardy.

But let me take cemetary placements a step further. At the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover is buried only three places away (same aisle) from his trusted aide and life long, live-in partner, Clyde Tolson. Just down two or three spots from Clyde is a moving burial sight for a gay Vietnam veteran that reports that he was awarded medals for killing people -- and then had them taken away for loving someone.

At Westminster Abbey, Elizabeth and Mary, the two daughters of Henry VIII, who each ruled England but from rival, competitive religious stances are buried in the same crypt.

Nothing more to report on this, but I am getting the sense that odd bedfellows are more important than any of us may think, particularly in politics.

More on Bush/Kerry and the election later.

-- Steve Clemons

THE PENTAGON HAS JUST UNLOADED A CLIP AT SEYMOUR HERSH for what it thinks may be in his book.

I have never seen a government bureaucracy issue a pre-reaction for something it was expecting but which had not occurred. Hersh must be cutting close to the bone in his soon-to-be-released book Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib.

Here is the full text of the Department of Defense news release:

No. 889-04
IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 10, 2004
Department of Defense Statement on Seymour Hersh Book

If any of Mr. Hersh's anonymous sources wish to come forward and offer evidence to the contrary, the department welcomes them to do so. There are several open investigations, and we would certainly investigate their allegations without prejudice or hesitation.

This morning, the Washington Post reports that U.S. Army Specialist Armin J. Cruz Jr. pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight months in prison for his role at Abu Ghraib.

But what about accountability at the top? Why does Rumsfeld still have his job, Mr. President?

A Washington Post editorial today, "A Failed Investigation," lambasts the Pentagon for ongoing questions about senior level accountability. In addition, the DoD press release above fails to answer the important questions about prisoners kept off of the official prison rolls. Part of this editorial reads:

Gen. Paul J. Kern, told the Senate Armed Services Committee of two major areas that remain unexplored. One is the Army's accommodation of dozens of "ghost prisoners" held by the CIA and deliberately hidden from the International Red Cross in violation of the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations.

Mr. Rumsfeld has acknowledged that at least one of those prisoners was held by his personal order -- an order that two former secretaries of defense, James R. Schlesinger and Harold Brown, testified was "not consistent" with international law.

How can America expect to do a export its values and brand of democracy when we Americans have created a culture that coddles and fails to hold accountable those in charge?

I can't wait to read Chain of Command, and here is a message to John Kerry's campaign -- make something of this. Get Senator Kerry to show up at Hersh's first book signing.

-- Steve Clemons

JAMES WOOLSEY OPENED THE TULSA TOWN HALL annual speakers program with a speech there this morning, and he spoke in Tulsa as well on Wednesday before the Downtown Rotary Club.

According to KOTV Channel 6, Woolsey "says we need to defeat three radical groups in the Middle East -- the Bathists, Shiites and al-Qaida -- before the war can be won" (the spelling is not mine).

Isn't defeating the Shiites a bit of an over-reach, Jim? Isn't that like taking on all Baptists, or Episcopelians? The last I heard, the Shiites, along with Sunnis and Kurds were among the key stakeholders in Iran's evolving civil society.

To be fair, Woolsey may have just meant the al Sadr-led Shiites, and the media blurred them all together, but the reference as retold by the tv station doesn't sound as if it left much room for qualified commentary about which group of Shiites had to be "defeated."

Woolsey is from Tulsa and went to high school there -- which I just learned today. My mother lives in Bartlesville, Oklahoma -- a great small town my great grandparents helped settle, just 30 miles north of Tulsa.

That part of the country is pretty conservative, but increasingly, after every trip I make out there, I hear Tulsa and Bartlesville conservatives realize that George Bush's big government/big-spending policies aren't really conservative at all.

That's another theme Kerry should be exploiting. It's too late to get some smart questioners out to the speaking engagements Woolsey had in Tulsa this week -- but I am going to launch WOOLSEY WATCH and recruit some of you to ask Woolsey about how it feels to rake in profits on this war.

WOOLSEY WATCH will appear in The Washington Note when I get advance word of Jim Woolsey's appearances around the country -- and we may add others from the roster of the Committee on the Present Danger as well. America needs to begin paying more attention to what these folks are doing and saying outside Washington.

-- Steve Clemons

BEFORE THE 2000 ELECTION, I MADE A SERIOUS MISTAKE. I told a number of people that I would be basically satisfied with either Al Gore or George W. Bush as president. I thought that Al Gore had a lot of the micromanagement tendencies that Jimmy Carter had and that his enthusiasm for addressing the big policy challenges of the day might be undone by his management weaknesses.

On the other hand, I thought that Bush was a centrist, and while I liked Gore better thematically, I hoped that if Bush was elected that he would exile the religious right and work at stealing the political center back from Clinton and the Democrats for the Republican Party.

We heard much about allegations of drunkenness, womanizing, and alleged drug use by Bush in his early years. It was clear to me that he was a young screw-up with a powerful dad and grandfather who met a straight-laced wife, gave up booze, and found god.

I just always figured that Bush's wandering years included his service in the National Guard. The fact that new information is emerging that shows Bush was in fact a screw-up doesn't surprise me. Whether the Killian documents are real or forged, the issue of Bush being a screw-up remains the same. He didn't serve his nation "robustly" in the National Guard; we know that. All that seems to be at stake is whether Bush violated a direct order or not. Some will jump on me and say that that is no small matter -- but I counter that it is a small matter when compared to the more serious duplicity, obuscation, and wrongheaded, ideologically driven foreign and fiscal policies pursued by this administration.

If Democrats and the Kerry Campaign allow their assault on Bush to be narrowed to the question of the legitimacy of these documents, then this race will soon be over. Some of my progressive friends argue that Killian's files matter because they help us gain insights into Bush's character.

He was a screw-up then. Bush is not a screw-up today. This president has turned out to be a real decision maker, and is revolutionary in many ways. The issue at hand is that his policies, particularly his foreign and economic policies, run hard against the best interests of this nation, at least in my view. That is the debate we should be having.

But the Bush team should be scorned and ridiculed for one enormous mistake. It abandoned the "Bush youthful screw-up, matured, found wife and god, dropped booze story." When the din finally died about rumors of cocaine use (which have now been resurrected by Kitty Kelley), Karl Rove & Co. began marketing "Bush the Infallible."

They have furiously worked at getting the public to see Bush as someone who sacrificed and did his service faithfully in the National Guard. If Bush did all he was supposed to do, he barely did so, opting for the bare minimum of sacrifice for his nation. And if he didn't fulfill his duties, we know he flew some hours -- got in a uniform now and then -- but was otherwise a screw-up.

I just don't see why this story matters so much to citizens (and to many of you) about to vote for one of these two guys (well, Nader too) in eight weeks.

But infallibility was a stupid course that the Bush campaign and administration adopted.

The Catholic Encyclopedia defines Infallibility thus:

In general, exemption or immunity from liability to error or failure; in particular in theological usage, the supernatural prerogative by which the Church of Christ is, by a special Divine assistance, preserved from liability to error in her definitive dogmatic teaching regarding matters of faith and morals.

Suffice it to say that despite George Bush's attempt to recruit the Catholic Church, the Pope, and some priests to his electoral cause, Bush is not the Pope and not infallible.

Rove made a mistake, in my view, drawing attention to Bush's service in the guard by dropping the screw-up story as an important part of Bush's public profile. On the other hand, the Democrats -- and Terry McAuliffe in particular -- made a mistake getting drawn into such a narrow set of issues that have nothing substantive to do with the great policy questions and battles of the day.

-- Steve Clemons

IN WASHINGTON POST LETTERS TODAY, PAUL S. FORBES of Fairfax, Virginia compellingly argues that Arnold Schwarzenegger painted a false picture of his youth in Austria. I happen to like Arnold, mostly -- but why the lies about this?

The letter reads:

Washington Post
Fuzzy Facts, the Cost of War and Chasing al Qaeda
Thursday, September 9, 2004; Page A26

PAUL S. FORBES
Fairfax, Virginia

-- Steve Clemons

. . .SO SAYETH DICK CHENEY. Remember when America was last punished?

On September 13, 2001, in a public discussion between television evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, both agreed that "God gave us what we deserve."

The Washington Post's John F. Harris wrote:

Television evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, two of the most prominent voices of the religious right, said liberal civil liberties groups, feminists, homosexuals and abortion rights supporters bear partial responsibility for Tuesday's terrorist attacks because their actions have turned God's anger against America.

Then Falwell broadened his blast to include the federal courts and others who he said were "throwing God out of the public square." He added: "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.'"

At least at that time, President Bush stated that he did not share the views of Falwell and Robertson -- but I guess that's pretty difficult to do with the guy you are sharing the Presidential ticket with.

THE TRAGIC END TO THE SCHOOL HOSTAGE CRISIS in Beslan, a village in the North Ossetia region of Russia, was 9/11 in slow motion for many Russians.

Chechen terrorists were allegedly aided by Uzkeks and Arabs in this assault -- and now many Russians are asking whether the costs of keeping Chechnya within Russia are worth it. Russian President Vladimir Putin is lashing out furiously at what he sees as Western sympathizers with the Chechen cause, and seems to be entrenching himself and planning a more resolved assault on Chechen insurgents.

Chechnya is one of those festering problems that people sort of hear about from time to time but really know very little about, unless one is a scholar on the region. Dimitri Simes, President of the Nixon Center, offered a very nice summation of Russia's Chechnya problem in a Lehrer News Hour interview five years ago. Simes supported Russian efforts to eliminate the Chechen leadership, whom he described even than as bandits, kidnappers, and terrorists. At the same time, Simes argued that Russia seemed not to have the stomach, will, and resources to really end the insurgency in Chechnya.

A few months after I saw this Lehrer News Hour show on Chechnya, I was invited by Moises Naim, Editor of Foreign Policy, to small breakfast with Strobe Talbott, one of our nation's leading Russia experts who is now President of Brookings and then Deputy Secretary of State. Talbott was then preparing an article for the Spring 2000 FP titled "Self Determination in an Interdependent World."

Talbott's article starts with the word Chechnya, and it is worth taking a look at how American officialdom then perceived the trend of self-determination insurgencies around the world. Talbott was both fascinated and deeply concerned about the explosion of culture and identities in the former Soviet Union.

Talbott was right that the world was involved in a sometimes convulsive and violent process of redrawing lines and boundaries and that the U.S. did not have a set of policy guidelines that helped it to deal with these sub-state and non-state efforts to secede from other states.

Writing in 1999/2000, Talbott offers:

U.S. policy on the status of Chechnya has been consistent. The United States supports the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation and does not question the right of the federation to combat terrorism and armed insurgencies on its own soil. But as President Clinton stressed at the Istanbul OSCE Summit, the United States believes that "the means Russia has chosen will undermine its ends."

Russia's military policy in the northern Caucasus may be confronting the people -- particularly the youth -- of Chechnya with an ugly choice: Either take up arms against the Russians or be interred by them. Neither option serves Moscow's stated long-term goal of a stable, prosperous northern Caucasus region as part of the Russian Federation.

Talbott's recommendations for U.S. foreign policy faced with such rampant self determination movements are wanting; mainly recommending that America remind warring parties of the trends toward regional integration and globalization in many parts of the world, which Talbott believed could help ameliorate some of the tensions.

I posed a question to Talbott whether he or the folks at State Department Policy Planning had thought much about tensions within the boundaries of American empire, since he had commented on the tensions unleashed after the fall of the Soviet system.

He seemed astonished by my question. I clarified that if one looked at places like East Asia that had been by a financial tsunami in the 1997-98 East Asia economic shocks, or looked at Okinawa which was culturally, linguistically, and historically distinct from Japan but which carried the heaviest burden for hosting U.S. troops while ranking the poorest of Japan's prefectures; or looked at the building tensions in Qatar, Djibouti, and Saudi Arabia where U.S. bases are fervently despised by local populations -- that one could easily see that the cost/benefit assessment of other nations' willingness to serve as subordinates of American interests was fluid and eroded over time.

Talbott's response was conventional and genuine, shared by most national security interested Democrats and Republicans, that he saw "U.S. bases as anchors of stability in unstable regions." As I have posted earlier, America has little sense that base arrangements that might make sense for both U.S. and local host nation interests at one point time may not be rational over long stretches of time.

While Iraq does not lie within U.S. borders and allegedly had its sovereignty restored, the major difference between America's Iraq problem and Russia's Chechnya problem is that America went out in search of this "monster," as John Quincy Adams would have said.

Chechnya and the Chechen insurgency are a festering wounds of the old Soviet order that strays from being considered a freedom-fighting movement to being perceived as a rogue region run by criminals and organized crime that will extort ransom from a world that it threatens with violence and terrorism.

What does America do about Chechnya other than what we have been officially doing, which is let the Chechens and Russians fight it out?

Some Americans want greater U.S. activism in the issue -- and serve as members of a somewhat influential American Committee for Peace in Chechnya.

It's an odd bedfellows alliance -- essentially lined up to advocate for Chechen interests. It may be this line-up of Americans that Vladimir Putin is spitting at.

Check out the list yourself -- but the neocon members include Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Richard Allen, Eliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Frank Gaffney, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Joshua Muravchik, Richard Pipes, Norman Podhoretz, Gary Schmitt, and the ever-present James Woolsey.

Some other surprising names on the list are movie star Richard Gere, former National Security czar Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Dem VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro, and former Congressman Stephen Solarz.

-- Steve Clemons

FUGOP HAS POSTED AN INTERESTING 1987 ARTICLE ABOUT GHORBANIFAR'S early encounters with Reagan's CIA Director, Bill Casey. The shadowy figure and friend of Michael Ledeen's now involved in the FBI's Pentagon/Israel spy investigation was dubbed "a fabricator" way back.

As I read more about Ghorbanifar, I feel an impulse just to scratch out his name and see how Chalabi's name fits these stories. Pretty close match.

-- Steve Clemons

REMEMBER THE COURT-MARTIALED ARMY RESERVIST WHO REFUSED to take the military's anthrax vaccine?

It looks like the Pentagon may have more drug controversies on the way after a special report released tonight by UPI and CNN on the anti-malaria drug Lariam.

According to the report:

Six Special Forces soldiers who took their lives are all believed to have taken the drug, according to the UPI-CNN investigation. . .

The UPI/CNN investigation found three more suicides by Special Forces soldiers -- all of them Green Berets believed to have taken Lariam. None appears to have had acute marital problems, combat stress or other personal issues that would help explain their sudden plunge into violence.

Lariam, also known as Mefloquine, can according to drug warning labels cause aggression, psychosis and suicidal tendencies. UPI's Mark Benjamin reported that none of the soldiers he interviewed recalled being informed of these potential side effects.

The report makes clear that there is still no scientifically proven connection between the aggressive, erratic, and suicidal behavior of these Special Forces units and Lariam, but there is a correlation thus far.

Although anthrax is not malaria, the court-martial of Pvt. Kamila K. Iwanowska looks like something the military courts should revisit.

If there are serious questions raised by civil society or by those actually taking these drugs and vaccines, the Pentagon should go to extraordinary lengths not to treat our armed forces like compelled and unsuspecting guinea pigs in a lab.

-- Steve Clemons

MICHAEL LEDEEN WROTE A PERSONAL ACCOUNT OF HIS ROLE in the Iran arms-for-hostages scandal in the Washington Post 17 years ago. I have posted the article here.

In a back-to-the-future passage, Ledeen writes:

The May (1985) discussions in Israel were with people ranging from high-level governmental officials to recent immigrants from Iran. The topic was improving our mutual understanding of Iran; the subject of American hostages in Lebanon was not discussed.

Two main points emerged from virtually every one of those conversations. The first was that even the best-informed Israelis were themselves dissatisfied with their own understanding of Iranian affairs; the second was that they, like us, believed that the matter was sufficiently important to warrant further investigation. They therefore promised to continue their own efforts and to share with us any worthwhile results.

So, starting with relationships he had in Israel, Ledeen built relations with and explored the contours of Iran's expatriot and exile communities. He then writes of the introduction to a major league Iranian businessman, Manucher Ghorbanifar:

In early July of 1985, a person I had not previously known -- Al Schwimmer, the retired chief of Israel Aircraft Industries and a personal friend of Prime Minister Peres -- came to Washington from Israel to inform me that the Israelis had been contacted by an apparently very well-informed Iranian named Manucher Ghorbanifar, who not only possessed a profound understanding of his country but -- apparently with the encouragement of leading members of the Iranian government -- was interested in discussing future relations between Iran and the United States.

Ghorbanifar had been introduced to the Israelis -- my impression was that the encounter had taken place quite recently -- by the celebrated Saudi Arabian businessman, Adnan Khashoggi. Schwimmer urged a meeting with the Iranian as soon as possible to listen to his story.

Ledeen's self-expressed admiration for Ghorbanifar seems so fervent that one can easily see this lasting two decades, just enough time to get a a replay of Iran-Contra. Ledeen writes:

At this meeting and during subsequent conversations, Ghorbanifar demonstrated an extraordinary ability to seek maximum gain for his own country while simultaneously finding ways to accommodate the interests of the parties with whom he was dealing.

A self-made businessman who had twice achieved considerable financial success, Ghorbanifar proved himself to be one of those rare individuals who understands not only the subtleties of his own culture, but our own as well. And his interests and energies were seemingly unlimited; for example, he managed to find the time to translate a lengthy book about Soviet espionage from English into Farsi -- writing in longhand in the small hours of the night.

This certainly looks a lot like history repeating itself to me.

-- Steve Clemons

"THEY HAVE NO CASE," SAID MICHAEL LEDEEN, a conservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a friend of Mr. Franklin. "If they have a case, why hasn't anybody been arrested or indicted?'" (New York Times, 6 September 2004, Ledeen comments on Pentagon/Israel spy case)

"Over the years, endless accusations have been made against him (Richard Perle)," said Michael A. Ledeen, a friend since the 1970's and colleague of Mr. Perle's at the American Enterprise Institute. "All have proven false, and I'm certain this one will be as well." (New York Times, 6 September 2004, Ledeen comments on ethics charges against Richard Perle)

Why is the New York Times giving Michael Ledeen legitimacy as a commentator on either the Israeli spy case or the ethics charges against Richard Perle for serving as part of the kleptocratic ring with Conrad Black at Hollinger International?

Michael Ledeen is potentially complicit and a person of interest in the FBI case involving staff in Pentagon Undersecretary Douglas Feith's office as he set up the meetings between Ghorbanifar, Harold Rhodes, and Larry Franklin -- which is a key part of the investigation.

Ledeen is also a major neocon fellow traveler of Richard Perle's who has helped advocate for Chalabi, and has long time personal and financial links to Perle.

DEAR NEW YORK TIMES:

STOP USING LEDEEN AS A SOURCE ON STORIES IN WHICH HE IS COMPLICIT -- OR MAKE THE CONFLICTS CLEAR.

-- Steve Clemons

HENRY FARRELL AND DANIEL DREZNER have posted their paper, "The Power and Politics of Blogs," online. This was one of the two papers that I mentioned in my post yesterday about the excellent forum on politics and blogs at the American Political Science Association.

Farrell warns the lay reader that this paper is packed with political science jargon but told me this morning that a popularized version would soon appear in a major unnamed DC-based, glossy magazine. They may even make the cover.

The abstract of the paper reads:

Weblogs occupy an increasingly important place in American politics. Their influence presents a puzzle: given the disparity in resources and organization vis-à-vis other actors, how can a collection of decentralized, nonprofit, contrarian, and discordant websites exercise any influence over political and policy outputs? This paper answers that question by focusing on two important aspects of the "blogosphere": the distribution of readers across the array of blogs, and the interactions between significant blogs and traditional media outlets. Under specific circumstances -- when key weblogs focus on a new or neglected issue -- blogs can socially construct an agenda or interpretive frame that acts as a focal point for mainstream media, shaping and constraining the larger political debate.

To me, this is interesting stuff.

-- Steve Clemons

ALEXANDER HAMILTON ARGUED PASSIONATELY about the importance of public credit but always partnered with fiscal responsibility.

Today, Daniel Gross, a former colleague of mine at the New America Foundation, writes in the New York Times:

From the beginning of 2001 to the end of 2003, the economy added $1.317 trillion in gross domestic product and $4.2 trillion in debt.

That means that each new dollar of economic output was accompanied by $3.19 in new debt. So now, for the first time, the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio stands at more than two to one.

Dan's article is well worth reading. The East Asian Economic Shocks of 1997-1998 that had negative viral effects in Latin America and Russia were, to some degree, a microcosm of the type of debt, investment, and currency shocks that Dan Gross writes about.

Martin Wolf of the Financial Times worries, like I do, about the quick build up of U.S. government liabilities as a percentage of GDP and that failing to correct this trend, which he argues is tough to do, will eventually drive the U.S. economy towards ruin.

I would not go as far as Wolf does, but I do think American living standards are going to decline dramatically because of the unsustainable mortgage payments Americans are paying to enjoy a lifestyle and a war that they cannot currently afford.

-- Steve Clemons

DANIEL DREZNER ORGANIZED A TERRIFIC FORUM, THE POWER AND POLITICS OF BLOGS, at the American Political Science Association meeting yesterday.

The Wonkette herself, Ana Marie Cox, stole the show by being the anti-blogger's blogger. She said that there is too much "blogger triumphalism" in the blogosphere and lamented Andrew Sullivan's absence because he was her favorite blogger triumphalist.

According to Wonkette, Andrew Sullivan says that "the revolution will be blogged." Her dry response, "to have a revolution, you have to leave the house." She also said that the blogging medium owes the most to AOL sex chat rooms since "both involve staying at home, pleasuring one's self."

To give her credit for being both frivolous yet solidly intellectual simultaneously -- a tough feat, she toughened up the theoretical findings of two very interesting papers with her real world insights.

These two papers on the evolution and impact of political blogging were presented by two pairs of speakers. The first was by the University of Chicago's Daniel Drezner and George Washington University's Henry Farrell. They focused on the ecosystem of big blogs and small blogs and the points of intersection with mainstream media.

The second team, who are clearly the Thelma & Louise of blogging research -- they really give a good show -- are CUNY's Antoinette Pole and Laura McKenna, whose blog is 11d. They have jumped into the challenge of survey research interviewing political bloggers on pre-blogging and post-blogging political behavior and engagement.

These were serious and interesting papers on whether political bloggers make a difference or not in the world. If enough folks are interested, I will ask the authors of papers to post their work on the web and provide the links.

Drezner & Company pulled nearly 150 people to their APSA forum, something not often seen here, unless the speaker is George Soros, who spoke here the night before.

I thought I was going to be disappointed by Andrew Sullivan's absence from the panel, but it turned out to be a substantively important discussion peppered with hilarious, but still strangely relevant, sexual innuendo by Ana Marie Cox.

Josh Marshall was also lauded as someone who had clearly impacted mainstream political media with his blog. However, Wonkette cautioned all the baby bloggers in the blogosphere that Josh Marshall and the "Big Blogs," as Henry Farrell called them, were "professional journalists and knowledge workers," who had insights into how to impact politics and the press that regular folk don't have.

It was a surprisingly great session.

-- Steve Clemons

THIS USA TODAY PIECE, "THE EBERT AND MCCAIN SHOW," BY MICHAEL MOORE IS WORTH A READ.

As those who read every detail of my often long entries on this blog will find, I admire John McCain and have been perplexed by what drove him from principled, lukewarm support of Bush to such effusive enthusiasm. I don't want to get into that maze of ambition and motivation again, but you can read what I wrote the other day. Many think it's not the VP slot McCain wants when Cheney steps down, but rather Rumsfeld's perch.

The thing I know about McCain is that he takes his job in the Senate seriously. He has worked hard for campaign finance reform and wants to go further. He worries a lot about Rupert Murdoch, Mickey Mouse, and the political harm of media concentration. I think he believes in the tug and pull of political competition, when the terms are fair for all parties. He believes in understanding what he is voting for; I know that he tries to read the legislation he votes on.

Then why would he use the prime time platform at the Republican National Convention to comment on Farenheit 9/11 if he hadn't even seen the movie?! Michael Moore spoofs all the legislators who didn't read the Patriot Act and has a great line by Congressman John Conyers saying that none of Congress's Members read any of the legislation they are voting on. Moore then gets in a van with a loudspeaker and reads the Patriot Act to Senators and Representatives as he drives around the U.S. Capitol -- something now impossible given all of the recently erected barricades and checkpoints.

McCain should have known better than to pontificate on a movie he hadn't seen; and I'm even one that thinks that Moore's documentary has serious flaws -- but I saw it!

One would think that the White House had actually read McCain's speech before he gave it -- and that the same White House knew Michael Moore would be in the press corps. So Moore is right; the Bush team doesn't treat John McCain very well.

John McCain has the capacity to turn this gaffe into something positive.

He should ask Jack Valenti, Director Emeritus of the Motion Picture Associaton of America (which has a fantastic theatre) at 16th & Eye Streets, to provide a screening of Farenheit 9/11 that the two can watch together.

I'd love to be invited too.

-- Steve Clemons

THREE DAYS AGO, CHRIS NELSON OF THE NELSON REPORT gave early warning of South Korea's now formally admitted nuclear activities. He wrote:

South Korean authorities have informed a visiting IAEA inspections team of a previously undisclosed nuclear fuel enrichment program using lasers. Since laser enrichment has no commercial viability, it is commonly assumed to be part of a nuclear weapons program, even though, if properly declared, it would be allowed under the Non Proliferation Treaty.

This ROK program was secret. Informed sources say the South Korean government has told the IAEA that it was a "rogue program" carried out in a government lab, but without government funding.

U.S. experts express surprise, admit consternation at the news, argue it is "inconceivable" that either the current South Korean president, Roh Moo-hyun, or his predecessor, Kim Dae-jung, knew or approved. In any event, the IAEA, and experts in and out of the Administration, concede serious potential ramifications for the on-going 6-Party nuclear talks with North Korea, and a peaceful resolution of the Iranian situation. (The Nelson Report; September 1, 2004)

Chris Nelson seems always on top of what is going on in the two Koreas. His newsletter is subscription based and not on line, but it is one of the best resources out there -- and he beat major news outlets by several days. I wish I had posted what he sent the moment I got it.

James Brooke in the New York Times today writes:

Officials in South Korea continued Friday to try to assure the world that the nation had no nuclear arms program, with its top nuclear researcher saying government scientists had enriched a speck of uranium "smaller than a sesame seed" merely "to satisfy their curiosity."

Acknowledging that his institute was not authorized to enrich uranium, he said the scientists performed the work using equipment that had been assembled for a different experiment.

My take on this is that no nation or researchers who have the capacity and competency to do nuclear systems fuel research just stumble into experiments of this consequence. South Korea may not be developing a full-fledged weapons program, but they are sending signals that they have the capacity to move towards such a program.

I had lunch several days ago with a knowledgeable person who knows well the global field of non-proliferation committed policies, programs and institutions. He agreed with me that we seem to be in a new era of proliferation, and there are few that are willing to acknowledge this and to organize strategically to deal with the realities of this emerging proliferation trend.

It seems that those worried about proliferation remain in old boxes, talking to the same people that they have always talked with, and that there is little new policy development or intellectual capital building directed at reconceptualizing a major new non-proliferation architecture.

On several fronts, America seems to be walking away as well from its own nuclear weapon systems governance. Last year, the Bush administration closed down the National Nuclear Security Administration Advisory Committee. Julian Borger, Washington Bureau Chief of The Guardian, wrote at the time: "Hawks in the Pentagon and the energy department are pushing for the development of tactical nuclear weapons with yields of less than 5 kilotons and hardened "bunker buster" nuclear bombs, designed to penetrate deeply buried targets, where enemy leaders or weapons may be hidden."

According to famed nuclear weapons expert Sidney Drell, the Bush administration decided that it just didn't want to listen to a board of experts about its nuclear weapons development programs or its stockpile stewardship policies anymore. Such experts were getting in the way of the administration's intentions.

When one considers Libya's rescinded efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons program; the revelations about North Korea's warheads and Iran's presumed intention to build a program; Hussein's unconsummated interest in nuclear weapons development; al Qaeda's clear efforts to acquire a warhead and/or nuclear fuel; South Korea's admission of nuclear play to the IAEA; Israel's undeclared but known program of 200 plus warheads; and Pakistan's role in providing nuclear weapons technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea -- one sees powerful proliferation forces eroding what used to be a fairly stable non-proliferation regime.

For those media out there paying attention to this, ask George Bush and John Kerry what they really think about efforts at the weapons laboratories and in the military to secure a new generation of bunker-busting "mini-nukes." American profligacy in producing a new generation of field-useable nukes can only enhance the proliferation forces we are seeing. Self restraint by the U.S. on this front might be turned into leverage at preempting what we are seeing around the world.

We need a lot more honesty about this important proliferation discussion as well.

When the revelations emerged about Pakistan Nuclear Program Director A.Q. Khan's role in supplying technology and counsel to Iran, Libya, and North Korea -- the New York Times and Washington Post played subordinate roles pretending that this was all new news. The U.S. government acted shocked, and a complex but fascinating charade took place between the U.S. and Pakistan on how to punish, but not punish, Khan.

The fact is that American intelligence had known for years that Khan was engaged in these activities. Why was nothing said? I happen to know that the intelligence community was well informed about Khan, well before the public revelations, through two instances.

The first came via a retired Indian general on a fellowship at the U.S. Institute of Peace. This general was unusual for his honest and somewhat critical self critique of India's national security policies at that time and was more positive about Pakistan's direction than I would have expected.

But he was quite forthcoming, concerned, and knowledgeable about Khan and the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology. I passed this information on to government friends and was informed that the government was well aware of Khan's activities.

The second occasion involved an email exchange with a friend then working in the Office of International Security Affairs in the Pentagon, which Peter Rodman now heads but which used to be Soft Power purveyor Joseph Nye's perch. After a meeting where this unnamed individual spoke about the roster of national security threats facing the United States, and in which Pakistan went unmentioned, I posed the question of whether or not Pakistan's proliferation activities -- privately known by many sources but still not officially acknowledged -- worried this person and the Pentagon.

The individual responded that the direction of my question was right and that in his mind "there was no more dangerous place in the world today, threatening American interests, than Pakistan."

I am not anti-Pakistan, just to get that on record for all of those who will email me after this post. But I do know that the American government and media have a problem dealing with substantive rather than contrived or politically opportune threats.

By failing to deal with the Khan/Pakistan problem long ago, when I know that the U.S. national intelligence and security apparatus had consciousness of it, that problem metastasized in several other nations.

We also need honesty about Israel's nuclear program. As long as Israel sits on a pile of warheads, other rival powers in the region will try to balance them. Either Israel needs to come into the global non-proliferation architecture -- or there needs to be some understanding of the costs of maintaining a preemption policy against would be rivals trying to balance Israel's nuclear capacity. Or alternatively, the world will witness the development of Iran's full fledged weapons program.

Recently, I asked Afshin Molavi, a very well informed thinker regarding Iran and the Middle East, whether deterrence would work between Iran and Israel if both had nukes. In other words, was it more stable, or less stable, for two powers in the Middle East to have nukes pointed at each other -- or for just one country (Israel) to have them? We discussed this for a while but didn't come to a conclusion.

Those opposed to any proliferation understandably believe that all proliferation is ultimately bad and destabilizing, but most fail to deal with the Israel part of this equation in the fluid dynamics of power and competition in the Middle East. Those who oppose proliferation and completely support Israel's monopoly of power in the region don't think that the costs are too high for America and Israel to keep swatting down the pretensions of other potential rival powers in the region. This is probably where American policy is now.

But if that strategy unwinds in an ambiguously directed Iran nuclear energy program, and America's military remains distracted and at near full capacity with our Iraq and Afghanistan activities, then Iran may compel a strategic reassessment. Eventually, we may have to opt towards some embrace of graduated rivalry with Israeli power in the region. While many will now accuse me of endorsing this, just know that I don't. I think it is important to be unsentimental and level-headed about trends that are happening as they are, not as we would like them to appear.

For those of you into proliferation questions, check out Jon Wolfsthal's article yesterday about the Russians dispatching troops to deepen the security around Russian nuclear arsenals. After the tragic end to the Russian school hostage crisis in which so many died, Wolfsthal speculates that the government is worried about Chechen terrorist attempts to acquire a nuclear weapon.

We need a serious discussion of these issues that includes an assessment that the old non-proliferation regime has failed. We need to understand what leverage America has globally if it either pursues or foregoes a new generation of new nuclear weapons systems. We need to look at regional balance of power trends elsewhere in the world and consider whether the nuclear club needs to be redefined to generate a modern membership that is committed to responsible nuclear weapons management and stewardship.

Basically, we need to develop a new strategy that gets us back towards credibly deterring the development and use of nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

This debate seems eerily quiet when so much is going on -- and the only WMD debate that is playing is one regarding a country that had no systems.

Another question that would be interesting to know -- and which I don't think anyone has publicly asked of Joe Wilson -- is whether while looking for Iraq's activitiy in Niger he ran into evidence of Iran's efforts to acquire materials from Niger's mines. Did he see A.Q. Khan's handiwork down there?

Joe Wilson could not respond to these questions publicly as the responses would be classified, but the Congressional intelligence committees could ask and decide to fill the public in on his findings, or the administration could share what it knows from his trips.

If the answers were positive -- that Wilson had run into evidence of A.Q. Khan's work and Iran's interests there -- then what is the administration doing?

So far, the administration seems to have an inconsistent start and go strategy with Iran, and we seem to be completely ad hoc on Pakistan. We need a strategy.

-- Steve Clemons

SINCE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY MANAGED TO HIDE at is convention the civil war in its ranks over the conduct of U.S. foreign policy, the next best place to glimpse the competing schools of grand strategy is in Chicago this weekend at the American Political Science Association. The meetings are taking place in Chicago's two big Hilton hotels: The Chicago Hilton & Towers at Balbo and Michigan Avenues and the Palmer House Hilton at Monroe and Wabash Avenues.

There are a lot of readers of The Washington Note in Chicago who emailed me last night telling me that they would keep an eye out for Alan Keyes if they see him at any local coffee shops. I did see two brave souls this morning carrying Alan Keyes signs down Michigan Avenue. But while attendance at the APSA meetings requires registration, it is not enforced on the whole -- and the various professors and graduate students offering tidbits of newly crafted papers seem eager for anyone to listen.

So I recommend that those interested in some of the great debates on foreign policy crash the meeting.

Regrettably, this blog post is too late for one interesting meeting chaired by well known realist scholar Michael Desch, who has just moved from the University of Kentucky to Texas A&M University (where Bob Gates, a much better former CIA Director than James Woolsey, serves as President). This meeting that I'm listening to now is titled "Debating the Neoconservative Approach to International Security." Desch, some of you may recall, helped spearhead an effort along with Harvard's Stephen Walt and the University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer to line up mostly Republican realist scholars to oppose the invasion of Iraq.

All three of these people, including a cast of liberal internationalists, realists, and others who oppose much of the neoconservative foreign policy agenda, helped launch the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy last year. The Cato Institute's Christopher Preble is the real driver of this -- but Chris convinced people like the World Policy Journal founding editor Sherle Schwenninger, former NSC staffer and Georgetown University professor Charles Kupchan, and the Carnegie Endowment's Anatol Lieven to join up. I followed along as well and am now an executive committee member of the Coalition. One of the things that I'm doing at APSA is looking for next generation smart-types who would be good allies in restoring a sensible foreign policy direction for the country.

This panel includes a lot of scholars of whom I've never heard of before. The roster includes Jonathan J. Monten from Georgetown University, Allan Craig Waggaman from Radford University, Hakan Tunc from McMaster University, Anthony Alexander Loh from Vanderbilt, Paul K. MacDonald from Harvard, and Fiona Adamson from the University of London.

Thus far, as I sit here, the panel has been mostly disappointing with surprisingly crude and fairly uninformed treatments of neoconservatism. One of the traditions at APSA is that scholars will send papers to those who request them -- so for those of you deeply interested in the currents of thought defining neoconservatism and its critics, you might want to pursue some of these scholars for their papers.

Monten made the useful but already known point that there are deep roots of Bush's modern neoconservative inspired foreign policy in the Progressive Era of American history. Actually, John Lewis Gaddis in his new mini-book -- Surprise, Security and the American Experince -- goes back farther and argues that John Quincy Adams was actually the innovator and cultivator of the doctrine of preemption and prevention.

Read the Gaddis book, which one of my favorite scholars (whom you will hear more about in this blog later today) -- G. John Ikenberry of Princeton -- turned me on to. Gaddis reminds us that while Bush's foreign policy fits to some degree in a historical context crafted by Adams, Adams believed that America could stumble and fail in its objectives if it "went searching for monsters." Gaddis seems to imply that Bush indeed made the mistake that John Quincy Adams warned about -- and that Saddam Hussein was the monster America sought out.

The discussion following the presentations -- moderated well by Desch -- went more to the point of what neoconservatism is and isn't; whether it mattered; would you know a neoconservative policy in Asia if you saw it; are there tensions between neocons and acolytes of Leo Strauss; and many more questions. The most nuanced and interesting paper seems to be Waggaman's who delved into Leo Strauss's view of the "modern project," arguing that in the end Strauss would be very disappointed in the direction neocons had gone. Although there was a lot of ephemeral stuff in Waggaman's talk -- "modernity as the joyless quest for joy" and Strauss's and Francis Fukuyama's confession that there is a "spiritual vacuity at the core of liberalism" -- his paper sounded worth the effort reading.

At 4:15 today, a more star-studded crowd including John Mearsheimer, Columbia's Michael Doyle and Jack Snyder, Brown University's Nita Crawford, and Johns Hopkins' Andrew Bacevich will discuss "Empire and International Security: Then and Now." This is taking place in the Grand Ballroom of the Chicago Hilton -- although I think that they should be hosting the discussion in the dramatically imperially decorated Empire Room of the Palmer House Hilton.

Sunday morning at 10:15, in the Chicago Hilton, Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose is set to speak in a session titled "Threat Perception, Threat Inflation, and Lying." His paper is titled "The Strong Do What They Can: A Neoclassical Realist Interpretation of the Iraq War. Gideon is a very interesting guy and succeeded Fareed Zakaria, now editor of Newsweek International, at the influential Foreign Affairs. It will be interesting to ask Gideon what he thinks of the unfolding debate between Francis Fukuyama and Charles Krauthammer.

John Mearsheimer -- a local here in Chicago -- is again appearing on this same Sunday morning panel offering a juicily titled paper, "Lying in International Politics." Don't jump to the conclusion that Mearsheimer things lying is a bad thing; in the dark, brutish world that the dean of realist studies in America sees, lying can be an effective survival strategy. But in the context of the neoconservative adventures the nation has been on, Mearsheimer will no doubt give his treatment of international duplicity an interesting twist.

This blog entry is already too long, but one other missed opportunity was to hear G. John Ikenberry speak on his paper "Liberal Hegemony or Empire? America and Europe in an Age of Unipolairty." I missed this talk but have already read a version of this absolutely terrific paper -- one that I think is a must read academic paper. I will offer more on this Ikenberry paper later today.

Why do all of these academics and talking sessions matter? Well, some of these folks are influencing those who actually manage policy -- but the key thing is that these are great workshops to hear theoreticians kick the tires of public policy currents in ways that rarely happen in policy circles. I have already learned a lot here.

One big disappointment is that there is a meeting scheduled today at 4:15 p.m. at the Palmer House Hilton, Wabash Room, on "The Power and Politics of Blogs." The Chair is Daniel Drezner of the University of Chicago with a paper by Laura McKenna of Columbia University. Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago is discussant. However, the listed discussion participants are Henry Farrell of George Washington University, Mark A.R. Kleiman of UCLA, Antoinette Pole, CUNY, Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette.com and Andrew Sullivan of andrewsullivan.com.

So, I emailed Andrew, and it seems that this is a bit of bait and switch by APSA. Andrew is back east and will not be here today.

I'll have to cover this blogs session anyway, although I think having low expectations is the best way to have fun at APSA meetings.

-- Steve Clemons

I AM ON MY WAY TO CHICAGO TO ATTEND THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE ASSOCIATION MEETING TOMORROW, and Alan Keyes just moved to town to run for the U.S. Senate here. I would love to run into him.

Apparently, while I have been traveling and in meetings, most of the world has heard that he accused Mary Cheney of being a selfish hedonist. To be fair to Keyes, he now says that the reporter added Mary Cheney's name to the discussion, not him. He said that he was just talking about all lesbians.

Here is the Chicago Sun-Times report on his comments. Perhaps Keyes isn't so bad. After all, he did say: "If my own daughter were a homosexual or lesbian, I would love my daughter, but I would tell her she was in sin."

Two thoughts. Please, let Alan Keyes speak at the convention tonight...there is still time.

Secondly, Senator Kerry, go meet with the Log Cabin Republicans. And go give a bear hug to Washington, D.C. City Council Member David Catania, a Republican who pulled a reverse Zell Miller and said he will support you over Bush because of Bush's support of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

If the Democrats aren't going to vigorously attack the record of this administration, then the next best thing is to cultivate a battle between reasonable, centrist Republicans and the right wing ideologues who are currently pulling Bush's strings.

Alan Keyes....Alan Keyes....Alan Keyes. Let him speak!!!

-- Steve Clemons

PERHAPS I SHOULD REFER INSTEAD TO THE ENRON-IZED BUSH ADMINISTRATION. I was impressed today with the "Progress Report" of the American Progress Action Fund that offers a roster of truth and fraud items about Bush economic policy claims.

The fraud list (the lower part of the roster) is the most compelling as the first part of the list is trying to assign blame to Bush for denying that the 2001 recession was his recession. I don't care that Bush is trying to duck recession responsibility. Gore would have had the same downturn in the economy. What you can fault Bush's team for is undermining confidence with fiscal recklessness which has helped make the current recovery so pathetic.

I wrote an article in August 2003 titled "The Enronization of the Bush Administration." Although I published it in the Japan Times, this piece got posted on hundreds of progressive and centrist websites, as well as on several Howard Dean campaign sites. I mention it now because the collective ethics of an administration that continues not only to deny the results of empirical study and reporting but to actively bury their own research ought to be one of the targets of the Kerry campaign.

Fortunately, the American Progress Action Fund is doing a decent job of raising some of these questions. Some tidbits from their list include:

THE FRAUD -- WHITE HOUSE CAUGHT REVISING RECESSION DATE. . .the CEA's Economic Report of the President "unilaterally changed the start date of the last recession to benefit Bush's reelection bid." Instead of using the accepted start date of March 2001, the CEA announced that the recession really started in the fourth quarter of 2000.

THE FRAUD -- WHITE HOUSE CAUGHT KILLING KEY JOBS REPORT. . .In 2003, AP reported, "The Bush administration has dropped the government's monthly report on mass layoffs, which also had been eliminated when President Bush's father was in office. The report by the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded layoffs of 50 or more workers regardless of duration." Fortunately, Congress refused to go along, and the mass layoff report still exists today.

THE FRAUD -- WHITE HOUSE CAUGHT HIDING POVERTY DATA: Recently compiled Census data shows that under Bush, poverty has increased for three straight years and the number of uninsured Americans has hit an all-time high. But instead of being forthcoming about these statistics, the administration did all it could to bury them.

My only friendly criticism of the Progress Report's fraud roster is that there were many bigger cases of duplicity by the Bush administration that could have been reported. Some I get into in my article -- including burying important Treasury Department reports on the economic impact of the growing fiscal deficits and an EPA study on climate change.

But for a book full of truth and fraud accounting from a one-time insider, you do need to go back and read Ron Suskind's Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill.

I only know Ron Suskind by phone and email rather than in person (he is apparently a reader of The Washington Note), but he called the other day. I asked if he happened to be disguised but lurking at the Republican National Convention. He said that he couldn't get away with any normal disguise since he was 4'3" tall and would be instantly found out. (I may have misheard.)

But that said, I know that next year my Halloween costume for the parties will be me, going as myself, but with a sign saying that I'm Ron Suskind disguised at the Republican National Convention. I know that some of you will not find this funny.

Now, back to serious issues. If I were running for President of the United States, it is hard for me to imagine a much easier target to beat than George W. Bush. Yeah, he has the benefit of family branding. But he has harmed the mystique of American power. His subordinates have blurred the lines separating American faith and American secularism -- at home and abroad. His administration has concealed important data and research that would have helped inform our policies. We are in a lousy fiscal condition that is retarding economic recovery. He won a contested presidency and then opted to swing to the far right rather than to heal the wounds opened during the presidential race of 2000. We are occupying a nation that doesn't want us after a war whose legitimacy is profoundly suspect.

And Bush can only speak in simple sentences -- no clauses -- sort of like a Hemingway novel, but without the genius.

Kerry and his team need to start attacking and focus not on Bush, but blasting way past him.

Senator Kerry, watch "The Matrix." "There is no spoon."

-- Steve Clemons

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER THOUGHT HE HIT A FUN CHORD WHEN HE CALLED the Democratic National Convention, "True Lies." Clearly though, the convention we have been watching this week is piling a mound of duplicity on a foundation of mistruths. Enough have made an issue of this Republican Party disingenuously leading with personalities like Giuliani, Schwarzenegger, McCain, and even Laura Bush. So, I'll leave that alone. But where is John Ashcroft? Jerry Falwell? Don Rumsfeld? Tom DeLay? Where is the real face of the party that Bush built?

Although Giuliani's and McCain's speeches were ones that I feel compromised their integrity, they are still part of the "as good as you are going to get" faction in the Republican Party -- and frankly, if I remove the low score for the McCain speech the other night -- I still admire his tenacious commitment to honest public debate, straight talk, big ideas, and an end to the structural corruption in Washington.

I happen to know, directly as well as indirectly through close associates of McCain's, that he despises George W. Bush and his advisors, or at least used to. Virtually none of McCain's senior campaign staff were offered positions after Bush won the presidency. They were persona non grata, and McCain's campaign finance reform tenaciousness widened the personal divide even more.

What did McCain get for this gushing enthusiasm for Bush who should be working as a ranch hand on McCain's ranch and not from the commanding heights of the White House? (No slight towards ranch hands intended.)

First of all, McCain believes in supporting the President of the United States in war, any war -- good or bad. I respect that actually, though I think it is the role of Congress to help shape good from bad, just from unjust wars. McCain and I just disagree on the Iraq War. In his speech, McCain blurred the laudable response of Bush against bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan -- but then made the mistake all others make which is blurring Iraq and the Saddam Hussein challenge into our angst about bin Laden. McCain is smarter than that and is not embarrassing or challenging the President on this point. But he didn't just abstain, McCain cheered for Bush -- even though I'm pretty sure McCain considers Bush's people pretty corrupt, pretty nasty and devious, and on some fronts, very unintelligent. And those are kinder words than McCain would use.

So, Maybe McCain is getting a promise that if Cheney doesn't finish his next term as VP and resigns mid-way, McCain will be selected as Bush's mid-term VP. I haven't seen anyone suggest this, but maybe Bush knows it was better to keep Cheney through the race, keep him on for a year, and then put him out to pasture allowing another major force to enter as a successor to Bush. This would converge with some of what David Broder just wrote in the Washington Post about the McCain phenomenon.

I don't think that McCain would have sold even part of his soul to Bush for more restrictions on 527s and a bigger commitment to genuine campaign finance reform. I know McCain wants to abolish the Federal Elections Commission or totally reform it -- but that too is something McCain could force without Bush's sponsorship. McCain wants to curb media consolidation in this country and get the FCC moved in some new directions -- but Bush will not undo Rupert Murdoch and McCain's other agenda items are also too small for McCain to have given the kind of speech he did the other day.

Some think that McCain is positioning for another run in 2008, but it only makes sense if he is the heir apparent and his age in 2008 is less of an issue. He will be 72 years old in 2008 -- and while I think he wears his seniority very well -- age could be an issue unless the Republicans stack that deck early. That is only possible if Cheney leaves his post in 2006 or 2007 and Bush gives McCain Cheney's job.

What I have suggested is entirely speculative, and there are guys out there like Rick Davis who ran McCain's last campaign who probably know the truth of McCain's motivations. I don't want to ask Rick because I don't want Rick to be compelled to tell me I'm wrong, which I think he would have to do whether true or not (out of respect to Cheney).

However, you heard it here first -- I think John McCain will succeed Dick Cheney as Vice President mid-term if Bush/Cheney wins.

It's all kind of like redistricting Texas mid-term, another subject we all need to look at again. Where is Tom DeLay?

-- Steve Clemons