Hewitt Blog

 

A lot of you have probably seen this John Barnes analysis of the “Scott Thomas” oeuvre. The Barnes piece uses a semiotics-based inquiry to deconstruct Thomas’ writings. (Don’t worry – I wouldn’t have understood that sentence before reading the Barnes piece, either.) In spite of the Greenwaldian length of Barnes’ effort, I found it fascinating but, as the author concedes, proof of nothing. What most leapt out at me was this passage of objective fact:

How did New Republic get so badly fooled? One might point out they have rather a record of being badly fooled – they were after all the home of Stephen Glass, and one of their editors was Michael Straight who belonged to the same Soviet spy ring as Kim Philby. But I think a more proximate explanation is simply to look at Franklin Foer's biography. He's only 31, and before becoming editor, he was at The New Republic for eight years. A bit of arithmetic tells you that he hasn't done much else.

Or look at this interview from when he took the job; you're not dealing with a guy with any broad experience of life here – he's essentially had one job in his life and he thinks about policy, not news. One of his major goals as the new editor seems to be to reverse Peter Beinart's pro-Iraq War stance, and to build up readership, which even a wonk such as himself can recognize will mean talking about the world we live in rather than the policies he plays with.

So here's our boy Foer. New on the job. Trying to move away from policy, which he understands (or at least does a credible job of manipulating the signs for) to reporting and attracting an audience, which he doesn't. Hasn't been outside the little world of big thoughts, but knows he's got to go there if the magazine that has been his whole working life is to survive.

To supplement this analysis, I did a little bit of Googling and found a New York Times article from February 28, 2006, that heralded Foer’s arrival at TNR’s pinnacle. Here’s Frank Foer modestly assessing his magazine:

"The New Republic deserves its self-seriousness, in part because it has a long, rich history of argument and a very keen moral sense. The challenge is to transcend that self-seriousness and produce journalism that people read… We live in the most politicized age since the 60's, and I don't think that political journalism has been up to the task. The good old-fashioned things that a political journal does — the explication of ideas and ideas — are not in great abundance right now."

Doesn’t it all make sense now? TNR isn’t in the business of actually producing journalism. Its main mission is “the explication of ideas.” The purpose in running the Scott Thomas pieces was to explicate ideas, namely the ideas that the troops in Iraq are sociopaths, and that the Bush administration turned them into sociopaths.

We still don’t know whether Scott Thomas’ biography conforms with what TNR has claimed or whether his tales are rank fiction, embellishments based on a kernel of fact or gospel truth. Regardless, seldom has the agenda of a media outlet been so thoroughly exposed. TNR and Franklin Foer wanted to explicate some ideas about the Iraq war. Even if the anecdotes they used to explicate those ideas were true, that fact would hardly mitigate the vileness of the Thomas pieces or TNR’s unconscionable decision to run them.

IN THE COMMENTS SECTION A FEW DAYS ago, someone demanded to know what my background was, and what gave me the right to foist my opinions on the public. It struck me as an unintentionally hilarious line of inquiry. Unfortunately, I’m unable to force anyone to read what I write, and I’m also unable to force any magazine or newspaper to publish and pay me for what I write.

But it got me thinking – I did two things of substance before becoming a self-proclaimed writer. And I’m not counting graduating Harvard or B.U. Law School as things of substance. Those are relics of childhood, and few adults look at their school days as serious business unless they attended one of the military academies.

The first of the two things was spending over a decade starting and running a business. There are a few things that you have to be able to do if you want to survive in business. One is you have to be aware of what you don’t know, and be willing to bring yourself up to speed in those areas. Another is you have to be able to adapt to changing circumstances. I started my business in 1993, before Al Gore had gotten around to commercially distributing the internet. The ‘net changed my industry. Those who didn’t adapt didn’t last.

The other thing I did of substance was I went through and survived a period of serious, life threatening illness. I’m still here because of luck – I can’t take credit for my good fortune. But going from a healthy young guy who worked 70 hour weeks to someone who today has the lung function of the typical 90 year old (seriously) gave me perspective that I otherwise wouldn’t have.

A couple of weeks ago, I was musing to my wife that I wish I had just been a writer all along. If I had been doing this for 18 years instead of three years, I’d be better at it. And who knows what level of success I might be enjoying? I could even be Andrew Sullivan!

My wife gave me that look that she gives the dogs when they pee on the rug and said, “If you didn’t have the life-experiences that you’ve had, you wouldn’t be the writer that you are.”

I’M NOT SAYING THAT SOMEONE who has only written for a living can’t produce important and brilliant work. But a professional writer who thinks he knows everything? That’s as useless a creature that has ever wandered the earth.

There are reasons that guys like Andy Ferguson and Malcolm Gladwell are writers that other writers look up to. Ferguson and Gladwell learn about their subjects inside and out. They look at things critically and skeptically. Each one of their projects looks like they’ve jammed 10 pounds of reporting into a 5 pound bag. They don’t go into a project assuming they know everything there is to know, and that their job is to merely “explicate” the obvious to the less mentally acute.

On the other hand, you have guys like Franklin Foer. To take one example of his ignorance, Foer clearly doesn’t understand military terminology or military equipment. There’s no great sin in that. Since I’ve been writing, I’ve learned obvious things like the words “former” and “Marine” should never be juxtaposed. Why, just in the past week, I’ve learned the difference between a Dining Facility (DFAC) and a “Chow hall.”

Foer’s problem is, since he thinks he knows everything, his job is merely to “explicate ideas” to less knowledgeable and insightful people. If he admitted to himself that he doesn’t know jack about military matters, he would have run Scott Thomas’ pieces by someone who did.

Alas, that brings us back to where we started. The reason Foer suspended the skeptical nature he probably deploys when reading a Defense Department press release is that the collected works of Scott Thomas did a wonderful job of “explicating ideas” that Franklin Foer found hospitable. Whether said explication was accurate or trustworthy were clearly matters beneath Franklin Foer’s pay grade.

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Most of the presidential candidates have pretty good press operations, but Mitt Romney's got Kevin Madden.

Madden had not joined the campaign when I completed A Mormon In The White House, so I didn't interview him for the book. I do admire his ability to handle even the ever-hostile Scott Helman, the Boston Globe's Luca Brasi when it comes to Mitt Romney. (Though not nearly as effective as Brasi, and certainly not bound for the fishes.) Today's Helman-hit on Romney argues that social conservatives are bolting to Thompson en masse, and then quotes my Salem colleague Richard land, who started down that road a few months ago. Deep in the article it is noted that James Dobson hasn't endorsed anyone. No where is it mentioned that Romney's long list of conservatives already on board includes many many high profile activists. In short, it is the latest in a long series of "Romney's in trouble" pieces from his hometown howler. (The WSJ reports, btw, that "[r]evenue at the [New York Times'] New England Media group, which includes the Boston Globe, decreased 6.4% in the second quarter, with ad revenue down 7.6%.")

Asked if Romney's worried about the non-mass migration of no one in particular to Thompson, Madden responds:

"A lot of people ask, they'll say, do you worry about a new candidate coming into the race?" said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. "My response automatically is, worrying is for people without a plan. Worrying is for campaigns without an organization. Right now we are comfortable that we have both and that we can go out and earn support from conservative voters."

The best line in Helman's breathless expose is "Not all conservative leaders have applauded Thompson," followed closely by "The precise level of that support for Thompson -- and what, in concrete terms, that support will mean -- is difficult to gauge at this point." Helman's really got a scoop here, doesn't he?

The reality is that each of the big three have a pretty good bench of social conservatives, though Romney's is, at this point, deeper and more committed. That doesn't make great copy, but it is the true assessment of the state of the campaign among "values voters." Perhaps if the Globe gave more space to reporting and less to agenda journalism, their bottom line wouldn't be pointed down quarter after quarter. 

Posted by Bill Roggio at the WeeklyStandard blog. The opening graphs:

The U.S. military and the Iraqi government continue to court the tribes in the provinces surrounding Baghdad. One day after the tribes in the city of Taji in Salahadin province pledged to fight al Qaeda in Iraq and the Mahdi Army, a tribal meeting was held in the city of Khalis in Diyala province. Seventy-five tribal leaders gathered and vowed to fight al Qaeda in Iraq, its Islamic State front, and other insurgent groups. “Here, right now, I am denouncing the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Qaeda,” said one sheik in attendance.

As the tribes turn on al Qaeda and its Islamic State of Iraq, the targeted raids against al Qaeda in Iraq's network of facilitators, bomb makes and leadership cells continue. Today's raids by Coalition forces resulted in the capture of 20 al Qaeda operatives. A series of raids near Taji in Salahadin province resulted in 16 al Qaeda captured, including "a foreign terrorist suspected of involvement in the May 2007 Samarra suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attack," while another four operatives were captured near Balad.

Read the whole thing. Then read Totten's report from Iraq. All of it. (HT: Blackfive.)

And for more facts about Iraq, visit VictoryCaucus.com.

 

I agree 100% with Trippi's assessment of the GOP candidates and competition on the net. (Notice how candid he is about his guy Edwards being behind Obama, so this is not just spin.) There is no underestimating the world of pain we will be in if we don't get the small donor and email list size thing right, and get it right by February 5th so that our nominee can go toe to toe with Hillary (1 million email addresses), Obama (258K donors), or Edwards (Joe Trippi's guy).

What are the GOP campaigns doing about this? Do they even view this as a problem, or are they too bogged down in winning short term tactical victories with high dollar donors and padding cash-on-hand figures? Do they care more about the next quarter, or building a sustainable 50-state, 3,141 county, $400 million-plus movement to take on Hillary or whomever is strong enough to beat her in the primary? Where is the synergy between short-term tactics and long-term strategy?

It's 2007, and the bottom is falling out on direct mail. (And none of the GOP candidates come to the table with a huge housefile anyway, so there shouldn't be a sense of cannibalizing your direct marketing infrastructure.) There's no better time to start prioritizing online over older, increasingly less effective forms of political contact. And yet the response to stuff like this seems to be... crickets.

This isn't a fringe Internets thing. We could lose because we don't correct this, in the same way that we almost lost in 2000 because we forgot door-to-door.

(H/T: TechRepublican.)

 

Posted by Generalissimo.

During the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate last night, moderator Anderson Cooper missed a golden opportunity to press one of the big two on a very important foreign policy discrepancy.

About 45 minutes into the debate, there was a video from some relief workers in Darfur, along with several displaced kids, asking what the candidates would do if they became president.

The strongest candidate on the stage on the issue of Darfur, hands down, is Barack Obama. He has a long history of saying the right things when it comes to the genocide that’s happening there. In fact, according to DarfurScores.org, a website which grades public officials for their voting record on how to deal with the genocide in the troubled region, Obama receives an A plus.

But last week, in an interview given to the Associated Press, Senator Obama made some comments about Iraq that should at best trouble anyone concerned with Sudan, and at worst, completely contradict his previous position.

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Politico's Jeanne Cummings has a story on the dollar gap that is opening between the Dems and Republicans. It is large and growing, and a complete turnaround from the ordinary situation. So, what is going on?

There are three answers.

First, the top tier GOP presidential candidates are equally matched and there's a lot of money on the sidelines waiting for the main event to begin. When a strong frontrunner emerges who begins to take the campaign to the Dems, especially on the war, the contributions will flow. If Romney is that nominee, expect some serious 527 efforts as well funded by his extraordinarily successful colleagues in the world of investment banking. Rudy Giuliani, too, will not lack for cash if he is the nominee.

The disparity in cash on hand between the campaign committees of Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate are much more significant, and harder for the GOP to fix. The Dems are enthusiastic about adding to their majority, and recognize that if they can keep if through this cycle it will be theirs for some time. Though pressed by the anti-war fringe into absurd ploys and defeatist rhetoric, the Dems can count on their foot soldiers in the unions and the groups to keep sending in the small contributions, whether by payroll deduction or on a voluntary basis.

The Republicans have a double disadvantage.

Quick, name one GOP House candidate challenging a Democratic freshman. That's the first problem. The House GOP has done almost nothing to present the face of the comeback, and until it does, don't expect a lot of enthusiasm or contributions from the base. Show me 20 Republican challengers, including a bunch of vets with service in Iraq and Afghanistan who are running on a platform of victory, and the House coffers will start to fill.

The problem in the Senate isn't a lack of candidates, it is that some of the candidates are not merely old and uninpsiring, some, like Orgeon's Gordon Smith, have gone over to the defeatist ranks. Others like Domenici of New Mexico and Warner of Virginia sit on the fence. There is simply no way that even the most committed Republican activists are going to give money to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and see it work for Smith's re-election, or the re-election of other Republicans not committed to victory in Iraq.

When the GOP's senate challengers to defeatist incumbent Democrats emerge in Montana, Louisiana, Iowa, and Arkansas to join Bob Schaeffer in Colorado, there will be some rallying to them if they run on a victory platform, but not until then, and then only into the campaigns of the individuals. I got another e-mail from Senator John Ensign today, a good conservative who chairs the NRSC, asking me to contribute to the Committee to help turn back Hillary Clinton's assault on talk radio. Now, you'd think I would respond to that, right? Not a chance, because I know that my contribution would end up helping Gordon Smith. Keeping the Fairness Doctrine at bay means almost nothing compared to a loss in Iraq that allows al Qaeda to establish a new home base, and trying to appeal to donors in any way that ignores the debate over the war will fail. When the GOP caucus in the Senate serves notice that it won't be sending money to the defeatist rump in its midst, then donations will pick up. Until then, save the stamp, or the e-mail.
 

Few people remember the Summer of Ollie North. The year was 1987. U2 ruled the pop charts, Boston was still recovering from the baseball catastrophe of the previous October, and a young John Lovitz was teaching America how to laugh. And a bunch of doughy Senators decided to pick a fight with a highly decorated and highly articulate Marine. They lost.

Lt. Col. Oliver North had been up to his eyeballs in Iran/Contra skullduggery and had previously lied to Congress. And yet when attacked by the Senate, he emerged clearly victorious. The high point of his extended testimony was when one Senator asked him why he didn’t balk at Ronald Reagan’s order to make overtures to the Iranians even though Reagan had promised he would not trade arms for hostages. North retorted, “When this Marine gets an order from his Commander-in-Chief, he doesn’t question it.”

If eager young politicians wanted to look at a case study in how not to tar and feather a faltering administration, they should look to the Summer of Ollie North. Disrespecting the uniform is a bad idea. Disrespecting the uniform when it’s worn by a man who can run rhetorical circles around his inquisitors is a positively terrible idea.

I HAVE TO ADMIT, the events of the past couple of weeks have surprised me. When I began working on “The 9/11 Generation” piece, the left claimed to love the troops. Then The Nation published a huge spread purportedly proving that “the troops” are a bunch of sociopaths. The New Republic soon followed suit, although TNR took things a bit further by reprinting a bunch of implausible accusations while granting their source anonymity. TNR showed so little interest in corroborating their source’s stories that their Editor-in-Chief is now hailing it as a major victory that he can say after a mere week of doggedly investigating the matter that he knows with “near certainty” that his source is actually a soldier. He was mute regarding the truthiness of his source’s tales.

But even more stunning is a nascent movement on the left to demonize General David Petraeus as a partisan tool of the right. I have to admit, this one surprises me, especially since I’m so close to the left’s Casus Belli. What drove the left over the edge regarding Petraeus was the General having the audacity to grant an interview to my partner in crime, Hugh Hewitt. The left could tolerate the surge and perhaps even the progress in Iraq, but granting an audience to their longtime bete noire, Hugh Hewitt? That was beyond the pale.

Naturally, Andrew Sullivan got the ball rolling with this line of attack. Glenn Greenwald soon joined in. Greenwald continued today by saying lnoevnevm;evce[ceco3rjrbdcwpcmwpcmwcmwpcwcw[ bdb3ibci3cbwxkwxwk - oops, feel asleep at the keyboard again. I’ll try to concentrate.

Greenwald continued the attack today by inviting Petraeus to be interviewed by Greenwald on the Alan Colmes show. (Alan Colmes has a radio show? Who knew?) A couple of minor points here may have eluded Greenwald’s steel-trap of a mind. Greenwald is a blogger. Hugh Hewitt is nationally broadcast radio host. In media terms, they are not parallel entities. That’s why the response of Petraeus’ aide, Colonel Steven Boylan – “If Alan Colmes is interested on having Gen Petraeus on his program, then I would ask that someone from his program or himself contact me to discuss ” – made perfect sense.

But it didn’t make sense to Greenwald. Greenwald then spent the next 172 paragraphs documenting precisely why General David Petraeus is a partisan tool. I’m not sure Greenwald understands what a dangerous game he’s playing. Demonizing the man who is leading 160,000 Americans in combat is not something that will play well with the vast middle of the American body politic. That’s why, to date, such attacks have been limited pretty much to Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan, two generally smart guys whose hatred for all things Republican and especially all things Hewitt tends to block their intellectual faculties. More politically savvy lefty blogs like the Daily Kos (seriously) haven’t touched this one with a ten foot pole.

SO WHAT’S THE STATE OF PLAY right now? The surge is showing results. It’s impossible to get a report from Iraq that says otherwise. That doesn’t mean that the road from here to a peaceful, responsible Iraq will be an easy one. But it is literally impossible to find a military person who thinks David Petraeus is doing a poor job. He has earned credibility throughout his career, and he has continued to earn it the last several months. Meanwhile, the left is turning on both Petraeus and the troops he leads.

In September, he will testify before the Senate. If the Senators don’t like what he says, they can dismiss him a) because of their superior knowledge on military affairs; or b) because they find him to be somehow an unsavory figure.

In reading Andrew’s and Glenn’s sites, I have never perceived a remotely sophisticated understanding of the military realities in Iraq. If they have tapped people with genuine expertise on military matters to serve as their guides, it doesn’t show in their work.

Personally, I think Glenn should heave a sigh of relief that he’s not going to have to discuss the intricacies of the surge with David Petraeus. And it wouldn’t surprise me if Alan Colmes declined the opportunity to do so. These guys can’t dismiss Petraeus over how he’s doing his job, because they neither understand his job nor what he’s doing. So they dismiss him over politics and petty grievances, terrain that they are much more familiar with.

The grown-ups in the Democratic Party will have their crack at Petraeus in September. If they go the same way that Greenwald and Andrew and The Nation and The New Republic have, the public won’t stand for it. It will be Ollie-mania redux.

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I know I haven’t written much about the presidential race lately. What can I say? It’s the Dog Days and nothing much is happening. The races on both sides are in a sort of stasis, with few people paying attention. On the side I really care about, the stasis is magnified by everyone waiting for Fred Thompson to finally get in the race and reveal whether or not he has game. Then again, stasis probably isn’t a bad place for the races to be six months prior to the Iowa caucuses.

That said, this Rasmussen poll of Florida provides a piece of horrendous news for Rudy Giuliani. The poll shows Rudy drawing 22%, Fred! pulling 21%, and Romney at McCain at 13%. As Rasmussen writes, Florida looks a lot like the national race.

This is problematic for Rudy. Florida is his firewall. He always planned on using Florida as his springboard to Mega-Tuesday. As you know, I never found this plan particularly compelling. I thought Rudy was kidding himself if he believed that he could spend three weeks losing in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and then somehow emerge victorious in the Sunshine State. Now that the polls are showing him holding only a 1% lead in Florida, that plan is looking even more ludicrous.

I’ll defer to our erstwhile Rudy insider on this, but I assume the Florida numbers are why Rudy has suddenly hit the airwaves in Iowa. He realizes that if he doesn’t win Iowa, he also doesn’t win New Hampshire and gets crushed in South Carolina. Those consecutive losses mean he’ll also lose in Florida, and officially be a dead-candidate-walking come Mega-Tuesday.

THE REAL QUESTION EVERYONE HAS going into this cycle is does the trampoline still exist? In other words, can a candidate win in the early states and make a leap in the national polls, or has the nation collectively decided to tune out Iowa and New Hampshire this time around?

There are two schools of thoughts: The first says that with what’s in essence a national primary this time around, no one will care about the exhibition season in Iowa and New Hampshire. The other says that with an accelerated campaign schedule, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina will mean more than ever.

For what it’s worth, I come down squarely in the latter camp. I don’t think most normal people begin paying attention to the presidential campaign until right before the Iowa caucuses. An obscure guy who emerges there will officially hit the big time. A candidate who can win both Iowa and New Hampshire will spend two weeks in the national media’s spotlight looking like a winner. No matter how much money you have on hand, you can’t buy publicity like that. (Something that Barack Obama and his fearsome fundraising machine should take note of.)

The only unique wrinkle this time around is that on the Republican side, the third state in the line-up, South Carolina, is a place where Fred Thompson looks very strong and Mitt Romney looks very weak. If Thompson turns out to actually have game and can survive the consecutive blows of losing Iowa and New Hampshire and still win in South Carolina, it will be a dogfight between him and Romney on mega-Tuesday.

Of course, this entire scenario depends on the early states still mattering, and mattering a lot. Like I said, I think the accelerated schedule will make them matter more than ever. But don’t take my word for it. Listen to the Giuliani campaign, which has just expressed its feelings on the matter with its wallet by purchasing airtime in Iowa.

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Mitt Romney talks with Pajamas Media about the battle for Iraq. (HT: N.Z. Bear.)

This is exactly what the GOP Big Three need to say, again and again. Campaign '08 should be a referendum on the necessity of victory victory in Iraq and the broader war, and stark contrast between the Republicans committed to victory and the defeatist Democrats. I hope Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson will make similar statements --in Rudy's case, again-- in the aftermath of the Dem candidates chorus of "Give Peace A Chance" last night.