The Nation

Have you noticed how sensitive some of these Republicans are? When did plain and simple opposition become political hate speech?

After former Vice-President Al Gore delivered a smart, sometimes humorous, and ultimately scathing critique of the Bush Administration's assault on the environment in a speech in New York City last Thursday, GOP Chairman Ed Gillespie characterized Gore's remarks as "political hate speech" and called on him to repudiate such "vile tactics." (Click here for the full text of Gore's speech.)

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay--who dishes it out but can' t take it--had the same overheated reaction to Senator Edward Kennedy's powerful talk last week in which he accused Bush and his advisers of capitalizing on fear from the September 11th attacks and putting "a spin on truth to justify a war that could well become one of the worst blunders in more than two centuries of American foreign policy." (Click hereto read Kennedy's remarks.)

Kennedy's speech, according to DeLay--the man aptly called the Hammer--was a "hateful attack" that "insulted the President's patriotism." Someone's gotta get these guys into a good Con-Law class fast before they brand the Bill of Rights a subversive document because it protects the right to dissent--or what Gillespie calls "political hate speech."

NOTE: Thanks to longtime Nation reader Adam Komisaruk from Morgantown, West Virginia for his help with drafting "Parallel O'Reilly Factor."

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Grover's World

Talking about political hate, did you see the Washington Post's January 12 profile of anti-tax guru Grover Norquist? Norquist, an intimate of Karl Rove is the head of Americans for Tax Reform and the architect of a rightwing infrastructure designed to implement his long-cherished plan to shrink government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

More recently, Norquist has made comments like "Bipartisanship is another name for date rape," or fantastically compared the estate tax to the Holocaust. (His reasoning: Referring to the supposedly specious argument that the estate tax was worth keeping because it really affected only "two percent of Americans," Norquist went on, "I mean that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know, I mean, it's not you. It's somebody else.")

Now, he's ready to crush and purge. According to the Post profile, Norquist says "Democrats used to anger him." But "he's past angry now. 'Do you get mad at cancer? We'll defeat and crush their institutions, and the trial lawyers will go sell pizza, We're not going to hang them. Most of the the people on the left will be happy in Grover's world. I feel about the left the way Rumsfeld felt about the Iraqis." Welcome to Grover's world. Talk about haters.

NOTE: Thanks to longtime Nation reader Adam Komisaruk from Morgantown, West Virginia for his help with drafting "Parallel O'Reilly Factor."

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet's name cannot be found on the list of candidates contending on Monday for votes at Iowa's first-in-the-nation Democratic presidential caucuses. But he is the star of this campaign season.

Everywhere Bartlet goes in Iowa, he draws the biggest crowds. When he steps onto a stage, people start chanting "Bartlet." Reporters hang on his every word. Children ask for his autograph. Adults want to know his thoughts about the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act and religion in politics.

Bartlet is, in every sense, the man of the moment.

Unfortunately, he is also a fiction.

"President Bartlet is a fantasy," explains actor Martin Sheen, who plays the character on the NBC political drama, "The West Wing." "Howard Dean is a reality."

Sheen is an enthusiastic supporter of the former Vermont governor, who is locked in a tight four-way contest going into Monday's caucuses with former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

The latest Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby Poll, released Saturday morning, has Kerry with 23 percent, Dean with 22 percent, Gephardt with 19 percent and Edwards with 18 percent. That represents a slight drop for Kerry from the previous day's polling, no movement for Gaphardt and last-minute surges for Dean and Edwards.

Dean will try to improve his position Sunday, with a quick trip to Plains, Georgia, where he is scheduled to attend church with former President Jimmy Carter. Getting a blessing from the man who put the Iowa caucuses on the map when he scored an upset win here in 1976 --and who remains popular in the first-caucus state--is seen by Dean strategists as an extension of their Iowa campaigning. They hope to get a bounce on Monday, when pictures of Dean and Carter will, undoubtedly, be splashed across the front pages of caucus-day newspapers.

But Dean may end up getting just as much of a bounce from another "president."

As the caucuses approached, "West Wing's" Sheen left sunny southern California for snowy Sioux Falls, Mason City and Davenport, where he campaigned almost as vigorously as the candidate himself.

In Iowa, where campaigns that could be made or broken by Monday's voting are pulling out all the stops, celebrity backers are turning up even in the smallest towns. The candidates hope that a little star power will sway wavering Democrats in their direction.

The fast-finishing campaign of John Kerry dispatched songwriter Carole King to make the pitch for him in a Dubuque coffeehouse and an Indianola living room, where she autographed albums, played "You've Got a Friend" on the host family's piano and exclaimed that, "The beauty of this, for me, is coming into a real American town meeting." Dennis Kucinich campaigned across the state last year with country singer Willie Nelson and will close his pre-caucus campaigning by taking the stage Sunday night with a singer half Nelson's age, Ani DiFranco, in Des Moines. Even Dick Gephardt has been appearing in the closing days of the campaign with a "star" suitable to the labor-backed candidate's union hall rallies, International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr., the son of legendary labor boss Jimmy Hoffa.

In New Hampshire, the first primary state, filmmaker Michael Moore is expected to hit the trail for retired Gen. Wesley Clark Saturday. And there is talk that Clark might yet get the biggest of his superstar backers, Madonna, stumping on his behalf.

But only one candidate for president has a "president" working the campaign-trail as his surrogate. And, even if he is a make-believe commander-in-chief, Bartlet, er, Sheen is making the most of his association with the White House.

This veteran star of stage and screen knows exactly how to deliver an applause line.

"As the acting president of the United States, I am here to announce that next Monday, Jan. 19, is Howard Dean Day in America!" Sheen declared in Council Bluffs. He said pretty much the same thing in Cedar Falls. And in Cedar Rapids. The response was absolutely consistent: Thunderous applause.

For Sheen, however, this is not just a theatrical performance.

A veteran campaigner for peace and economic justice, the actor got involved in politics long before writer Aaron Sorkin put him in charge of the West Wing. Sheen was an outspoken foe of former President Ronald Reagan's funding of military dictators and Contra rebels in Central America in the 1980s. He has been arrested more than once in protests against weapons systems and the arms race in general. He has marched with farmworkers, trade unionists and antiwar activists. And he is no stranger to the real world of electioneering. He campaigned across the country for Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore in 2000. And he was one of the first prominent players in Hollywood to endorse Dean for the Democratic party's 2004 nomination.

Sheen announced his support for Dean a year ago, when the Vermonter barely rated an asterick in most polls. Like the vast majority of Dean's early backers, Sheen was attracted by the candidate's outspoken opposition to President Bush's preparations for war with Iraq. Sheen, who appeared in a MoveOn.org-sponsored television commercial encouraging Americans to lobby Congress to block Bush's invasion plans, says, "Dean was against the war when we needed someone. That's why I'm with him now."

Sheen delights in Dean's angry denounciations of "Republican-lite" Washington Democrats who have compromised with the Bush administration and the GOP leadership in Congress. Pointing to the fist-pumping, ready-to-rumble crowds at a Dean rally in Des Moines. Sheen declared, "This is the Democratic party I was born into. The party was taken away from us, and now we're getting it back."

Counting himself in with the army of Dean volunteers that has swarmed over the first-caucus state, including large contingents from surrounding states that began arriving by the busload Saturday, Sheen echoes the just-short-of-messianic language of the former Vermont governor's most fervent backers. "We've awakened a movement," he says. "And we've made this election meaningful -- a real referendum on the direction of our country."

Sheen dismisses charges that Dean is too volatile, or too extreme in his style or his stands, to beat Bush next November. "These guys in the White House are in for a surprise if they think they're going to roll over this guy," says the actor, who has no problem with Dean's much-discussed anger. "Anger moves you to justice," says Sheen. "It's a great energy, and it allows you to do great good."

So, is Dean comparable to President Bartlet?

"There are a lot of similarities," Sheen says, noting that the president he plays on TV is, like Dean, a New Englander with a penchant for making bold, often controversial, statements. But, he adds, "President Bartlet is a fictional character. Howard Dean is a reality. And that makes all the difference in the world."

The tale of Conrad Black, the media magnate facing inquiries by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department for looting millions from Hollinger International, the newspaper company he controlled, is foremost a story of rotten greed and corporate abuse. But, it's also a tale about media corruption and the lack of journalistic ethics.

"My business is my business. Got it?" That was syndicated columnist George Will's reply when asked why he didn't tell his readers in a column--defending Black's political views on Iraq--that he had been a member of an advisory group set up by Black and had received $25,000 per diem for each meeting he attended.

You'd think that Will's arrogant reply would have elicited quick rebuke--hell, even outrage--from his editors at the Washington Post. Instead, after theNew York Times revealed Will's renumerative affiliation with Black in a front-page story, Alan Shearer, editorial director and general manager of the Washington Post Writers' Group, peeped up: "I think I would have liked to have known."

So, it was heartening to see the Post's Ombudsman Michael Getler finally weigh in last Sunday. After quoting Fred Hiatt, editor of the Post's editorial page--who argued lamely that Will's "lack of disclosure doesn't strike me as a major lapse"--Getler blasted the Post's influential and widely syndicated columnist for his arrogant failure to disclose his conflict of interest.

"My own view," Getler wrote, "is one that is troubled by this omission. It is important to be reminded, as Hiatt points out, that this financial relationship ended more than two years before the column reference. Yet it seems to me that all journalists and commentators need to be scrupulous in making known any possible conflict of interests, real or likely to perceived. Sometimes it needs to be done in print, but it certainly must be made known to editors, who can make their own decision before publication or distribution. It shouldn't be so easy to just say 'got it' when it comes to conditions for access to the columns of the country's newspapers and magazines."

Or as Gilbert Cranberg, the former Chair of the Professional Standards Committee of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, put it in a letter to theNew York Times two weeks earlier, "The code of ethics of the National Conference of Editorial Writers, the organization of editorial page editors and writers puts it plainly: 'The writer should be constantly alert to conflicts of interest, real or apparent, including those that may arise from financial holdings, secondary employment, holding public office or involvement in political, civic or other organizations. Timely public disclosure can minimize suspicion. Editors should seek to hold syndicates to these standards."

As Getler noted, Will is no novice when it comes to flouting journalistic ethics. In fact, as Nation columnist Eric Alterman makes clear in his valuable book, The Sound and the Fury:The Washington Punditocracy and The Collapse of AmericanPolitics, super-pundits like Will "never developed a recognizable code of ethics." Remember "Debategate"--when Will helped Ronald Reagan in his debate with President Jimmy Carter and then, appearing on "Nightline" as an impartial observer, credited his pupil with a "thoroughbred performance"? At the time, a Los Angeles Times media critic called Will "a political shill," Chicago columnist Mike Rokyo called him a "lapdog," and the New York Daily News kicked him off their editorial pages (though it reinstated him too soon after).

Even Ben Bradlee, Alterman reports, then the nation's most respected newspaperman, and editor of Will's flagship daily the Washington Post, later complained that if it had been up to him, "I would have canned him on the spot." The denunciations were so vehement that Will was forced to respond with some pap about how he had accepted the invitation to help prepare Reagan for his debate as a columnist, rather than as a journalist. "But, far from resulting in Will's losing his job," Alterman writes, "the controversy only added to Willian lore, further blurring the line between watchdogs and the watched."

These days, as that line has become ever more blurred--largely due to media conglomeratization, Murdochization and the media's political timidity--it's worth commending Ombudsman Getler for trying to hold lapdog Will to some standard of accountability.

DES MOINES -- When the Rev. Al Sharpton tore into Howard Dean's minority hiring record during Sunday's Iowa Black and Brown Forum debate here among the Democratic presidential contenders, Carol Moseley Braun moved immediately to defend Dean. As soon as Sharpton finished pressing Dean to explain why he had not appointed more people of color to top positions during his long tenure as governor of Vermont, Moseley Braun urged the other African-American candidate to tone down his criticisms. "The fact of the matter is, you can always blow up a racial debate and make people mad at each other," she said, in what amounted to a public rebuke for Sharpton. "People cannot afford a racial screaming match."

At the time, Moseley Braun's intervention sounded like nothing more than one of the grace notes she regularly added to the debates between the Democratic contenders. Though her campaign never had the money or the organization needed to be a serious competitor -- even her own campaign manager acknowledged that she would not win the nomination -- the former US Senator from Illinois and US Ambassador to New Zealand won consistently high marks for her command of the issues and for her determination to keep the contest focused on the task of beating George W. Bush.

While the defense of Dean last Sunday was in character for Moseley Braun, who has often played a peacemaker role during the campaign, it also provided an indication of Moseley Braun's regard for the man who once shared her low poll numbers but then took off to become the race's presumed frontrunner. Behind the scenes, that regard was flowering into a decision by Moseley Braun to fold her campaign and make a high-profile endorsement of Dean.

According to aides to Moseley Braun and Dean, the former senator took the former governor aside after Sunday's debate and indicated that she was thinking about dropping out and throwing her support to Dean. It was a good fit ideologically, as the two candidates have taken similar stands against the war in Iraq and the Bush Administration's economic agenda. And Moseley Braun has noted the success of Dean's efforts to attract support from leading political figures in the African-American community.

Conversations between the two candidates continued over the next several days, leading up to Moseley Braun's decision on Wednesday to leave the race. On Thursday, she flew to Iowa to appear with Dean at a rally on his last major swing through the state before Monday's first-in-the-nation caucuses. Asking her backers to instead stand with Dean supporters at the caucuses, Moseley Braun declared, "Governor Dean has the energy to inspire the American people, to break the cocoon of fear that envelopes us and empowers president Bush and his entourage from the extreme right wing, and he has a program to put our country back on track to tax fairness, job creation, balanced budgets and an economy that works for everyone regardless of sex or race. He has the experience to know that state and local and national government have to cooperate and collaborate, and end the destructive game of monetary musical chairs that creates unfunded mandates and failing schools. He understands that a real war on terrorism starts with putting the domestic security of the American people first. He can "work well with others" around the world and craft a foreign policy that is neither arrogant nor preemptive, but that begins with respect and builds on alliances. He takes seriously our stewardship of the planet and our environmental responsibilities."

For his part, Dean was full of praise for Moseley Braun. "She's a principled person. We just hit it off. I like her a lot," he told reporters as he finished the first leg of a statewide bus tour of Iowa that he hopes will help him prevail in the caucuses that kick off the process of selecting the delegates to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. Dean is locked in what looks to be an increasingly tight four-way race in Iowa, with a new Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby Poll showing him in a statistical tie with Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt and North Carolina Senator John Edwards – the poll has Kerry at 22 percent, Dean at 21 percent, Gephardt at 21 percent, and Edwards at 17 percent, with a 4.5 percent margin of error.

Dean declared that the Moseley Braun endorsement was "going to be a big help to us." On the face of it, that sounds like an empty boast. Moseley Braun has little organizational strength in Iowa, and has only been polling at around 1 percent there. However, in a race as close as the Iowa contest appears to be, it certainly will not hurt Dean to gain the support of the only woman and one of only two African-American contenders in the race. At a point when many Democrats in Iowa are trying to determine which candidate would be the strongest contender nationally, the Moseley Braun endorsement serves to highlight the significant support Dean has attracted from members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other prominent players in states where, unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, support from African-American voters is critical to winning not just the nomination but the presidency.

Beyond Iowa, Moseley Braun's endorsement could help Dean as he continues to line up support among core constituencies of the party. Moseley Braun, who promised to take the "Men Only" sign off the White House had the endorsements of the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus; her exit may free up support for Dean from some feminists who had held back from making a public endorsement while there was still a woman in the race. Additionally, Moseley Braun retains better name recognition in her home state of Illinois than a number of the Democratic contenders. While there were few predictions that she would win the March 16 Illinois primary, Moseley Braun could well have attracted her largest measure of support on her home turf, especially in the predominantly African-American precincts of Chicago where she has been politically active for three decades.

With the former senator now backing the Vermonter, and with endorsements of his campaign rolling in from prominent Illinois progressives like US Representatives Jan Schakowsky and Jesse Jackson Jr., Dean's prospects are looking better and better in Illinois, which will hold one of the last big contests on the road to the nomination. If the Democratic competition turns into a long haul, the late-in-the-game primary in Illinois--which will send one of the largest delegations to the Democratic National Convention in Boston--could prove to be a significant test. And it is there, as much or more than in Iowa, where Moseley Braun's endorsement could turn out to be the "big help" Dean declared it to be.