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Welcome to On Politics, I’m your host Andrew Chiappazzi. If you didn’t catch the show two weeks ago, then I really, really do pity you. After a week off, we are back to the three topic schedule with so much going on. In the two weeks since the last show, a lot has happened, including the establishment of two political websites by the show’s technical director Ken Vedder. First, the show site is http://onpolitics.3x.ro . While the goodies on the site are still being hashed out, there is a transcript of the show with the Gay Marriage Debate on it, as well as some other information. The other site is growing quickly, and is located at http://teenpundit.emeri.org . This site is dedicated to the opinions of teenagers, and already has several columnists, including yours truly.
Now that the shameless plugging is done, on with this week’s show. On tap for today:
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The Presidential election is 8 months away, but the President Bush and Senator John Kerry are already getting nasty towards each other. However, it’s not just the candidates behind the personal attacks. We’ll take an in-depth look at Bush Campaign Strategist Karl Rove and how the Kerry campaign looks to combat the most skilled – and most dangerous – campaign manager in recent history.
Then, we’ll sneak overseas to Russia, where Vladimir Putin recently won the presidential election. President Bush has called Russia a burdgeoning democracy…which, unfortunately, is the farthest from the truth. We’ll look at the Putin Factor in Russia, and see how close the country is to returning to its authoritarianism past.
Finally, we’ll crawl back into the United States and look at the emergence of yet another book criticizing the Bush Administration on the War on Terror and the Iraqi Invasion. Is Richard Clarke, the former Clinton advisor, trying to save face with the book, or is he telling the truth? And why is the Bush Administration so quick to deny the allegations? All this and more, later in the show.
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Let’s begin, with the man documentary filmmakers called “Bush’s Brain:” Karl Rove. Who in the name of George Stephonopolous is Karl Rove? He’s President Bush’s political advisor, credited with getting Bush elected as governor of Texas in 1994 and 1998, and elected to the presidency in 2000. The Texan is also behind the campaigns of multiple other right-wing politicians, all with one thing in common: their campaigns were highly negative and sought to bury the competition. That, not the biography of Karl Rove, is the focus of this segment.
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The attack ads started in early March, accusing Kerry of being for the terrorists and higher taxes. Normally, the negativity level rises in July and August, to coincide with the heat of summer. So why are the ads turning so negative this soon? Because Rove took a gamble, and the Kerry campaign bit. Rove is well-documented in running so called “attack” campaigns, and he and the rest of the Bush campaign ran an early ad that not only took a semi-subtle shot at Kerry, but tried to establish President Bush as a leader in difficult times after September 11 th.
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Kerry has since countered with his own ad, asking viewers, “Doesn't America deserve more from its president than misleading negative ads?” Which makes me wonder…why would you counter a negative ad with a negative ad? That response was the one Karl Rove and company were looking for, and now the Kerry Campaign will have 8 months of negative ads to deal with.
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Why was the Kerry response the one the Rove machine was looking for? Because President Bush’s campaign has a serious monetary advantage. President Bush has about $104 million at his disposal right now, while Kerry has considerably less, with the latest numbers from CNN reporting just $2+ million on hand.
This is turning into 2000 all over again, with more negativity. The voting populace is going to be so saturated by November that it would not surprise me to see the lowest voting turnout in decades come election time. It’s a shame, because it’s your government, but it’s understandable.
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The world is negative enough as it is; we don’t need to be saturated with two politicians arguing and throwing money around that can be used to benefit other needs.
Also of interest in the past two weeks involving the ads: The Republican National Committee has told news stations not to run ads made by moveon.org, a website and organization dedicated to defeating President Bush in the 2004 election. The RNC said that the organization paid for the production of the ads with money raised in violation of the new campaign finance laws. Wes Boyd, founder of the organization, responded, saying:
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“"It's not surprising that [RNC Chairman] Ed Gillespie continues to make false claims about the legality of our campaign in order to silence us. Our lawyers continue to assure us that our advertising, and the small contributions from tens of thousands of our members that pay for it, conform in every way to existing campaign-finance laws."
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Spin, spin, spin. Question is, will voters get tired of an election stuck on spin cycle? My guess is yes, and come November, they’ll respond by not showing up to the polls.
We’ll be back with a look at Vladimir Putin and Russia right after this. You’re watching On Politics on KING-TV.
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Welcome back to On Politics, I’m your host Andrew Chiappazzi. Because of the St. Patrick’s day holiday, the show didn’t air last week, so we’re going to backtrack to an event that we normally would have covered. Russian President Vladimir Putin won seventy percent of the vote in Russia ’s Presidential Elections on March 14 th, as roughly 50 million of the 109 million eligible voters turned out on election day. Putin has pledged to focus on boosting the economy, reforming the military, raising standards of living and strengthening press freedoms. In a statement to the press, Putin said:
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"I want to assure you and I promise that, in the next four years, I will work just as hard, do everything in my power to have the entire government work just as intensively. I promise you that all the democratic achievements of our people will unconditionally be provided for and guaranteed."
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This election is significant because Putin was heavily criticized by multiple countries for human rights abuses in Chechnya and other parts of the Caucasus region, as well as using the state dominated media to push his campaign. Most striking is the slow push towards authoritarianism that the country seems to be taking. Several international political watchdog groups have questioned the lack of debate or discourse prior to the election, and said that the campaigns were dominated too much by Putin. The Russian President is a significant symbol throughout all of Russia , and has acquired much support in the Russian Parliament, the Duma.
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Also of note, one of the competitors to Putin, Ivan Rybkin, mysteriously vanished back in February for 5 days, after which he said: “I don't know who did it but I know who benefited from this. After what happened in Kiev , I'm convinced that this election is a game without rules and it can end for me without ever beginning. That is why I will continue my campaign from abroad and then we shall see.”
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Rybkin dropped out of the election campaign on March 5 th, calling the election a farce.
It’s not just in the election campaign that Putin has shown questionable tactics. Putin is often the focus of the state run news broadcasts, and has appeared in more PR shots in one week than Bush has his entire presidency. He also revamped his entire cabinet two weeks before the election, removing anyone with ties to former president Boris Yeltsin. The new members are accused of having ties to Putin, but it appears they just agree with his plan of reformation throughout the next several years. Critics say that Putin has used his former KGB status to create a sense of fear in the country, as he has taken over all forms of mass media in the country. Under Yeltsin, those outlets had experienced freedom unknown for decades. But under Putin, the freedoms are censored.
This all occurs 5 months after President Bush met with Putin in Crawford , Texas , and called Russia a symbol for democracy, which Russia is anything but. No matter what the view of Putin may be, he has a huge following in Russia , and it’s not just because of mass exposure. He’s continuing to reform the economy – Russia is gunning to join the World Trade Organization sometime this year – and has stabilized a characteristically unstable country.
His successes withstanding, Russia is not the symbol of democracy that Bush has claimed. It is very much returning to its authoritarian roots, albeit with a market economy. Time will tell if that works.
We’ll be back right after this. You’re watching On Politics on KINGTV.
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Welcome back to On Politics, I’m your host Andrew Chiappazzi. Finally this morning, former Clinton terrorism advisor Richard Clarke – a counterterrorism expert who has worked in several positions under Presidents Carter, Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, and for just over a year under the current President Bush – has released a new book detailing what happened behind the scenes in the Bush administration from inauguration day through 9/11. The book, “Against All Enemies,” was released Monday, and says that the Bush Administration did nothing to pursue Al Qaida before 9/11, and attempted to tie Iraq to Al Qaida to the terrorist attacks even when evidence pointed against it. He says:
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“They're trying to divert attention from the truth here. They're trying to get me involved in personal vendettas around all sorts of attacks on my personality and they've got all sorts of people on the taxpayers' rolls going around attacking me and attacking the book and writing talking points and distributing them to radio talk shows and what not around the country. Now, let's just look at the facts. The administration had done nothing about al Qaeda prior to 9/11, despite the fact that the CIA director was telling them virtually every day that there was a major threat.”
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He went on to say, “This is not the president saying do everything, look at everybody, look at Iran, look at Hezbollah. This is the president in a very intimidating way, finger in my face saying, I want a paper on Iraq and this attack. Everyone in the room got the same impression and everyone in the room recalls it vividly. So I'm not making it up. I don't have to make it up. It's part of a pattern that this administration -- even before they came into office -- was out to get Iraq even though Iraq was not threatening the United States.”
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This all follows on the heals of former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s book that also said the Bush Administration had plans to go after Saddam Hussein before 9/11, even beginning an indepth look at a possible invasion on the first day of office. O’Neill took quite a bit of heat from the Bush Administration for his book, and the same response has been generated by the Clarke Book.
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Vice President Dick Cheney has said that Clarke “wasn’t in the loop” when it came to major decisions, and may even have a personal vendetta against members of the administration, implying that Clarke wanted a more prominent position on the Bush Team. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice has called the book ridiculous, especially the notion that she knew nothing about Al Qaida until Clarke briefed her on the terrorists. She accused Clarke of a “retrospective rewriting of history” and commented that meetings couldn’t have prevented 9/11.
Clarke has also claimed that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pushed for a retaliatory attack on Iraq the day after the terrorist attacks even though Clarke said all evidenced pointed to Al Qaida being in Afghanistan, with Rumsfeld reportedly saying “There are not enough targets in Afghanistan. There are plenty of good targets in Iraq.”
He went on to say that despite his advice, the President urged him to do another detailed look to see if Iraq was involved. He said:
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“It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'”
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The problem with all of this is not only the timing – releasing it in an election year is a little questionable – but also the fact that we don’t know what really went on behind those doors. Richard Clarke is a man with an incredible resume and a very sharp public record, and his book seems to just add on to what Paul O’Neill has said in the past as well. For an already skeptical public, with no weapons of mass destruction or previous Al Qaida ties to Iraq – the two main reasons for going to war – and now the questioning of motives by high ranking officials who worked in the Bush Administration, this sets up another obstacle for President Bush. And just to clarify on the terrorism ties to Iraq…before the war, there was zero evidence that Al Qaida or similar organizations were connected to the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. The terrorism that has existed since the invasion has been created by porous borders and the presence of terrorists who have infiltrated the country since the removal of Saddam Hussein.
One cannot help but raise an eyebrow in light of these recent developments. Clarke could hold a vendetta against Rice and the rest of the Bush Administration, and you definitely have to question the motives behind releasing the book in an election year. At the same time, these are similar comments to what Paul O’Neill said in January after releasing his book, and you cannot ignore Clarke’s credibility. This isn’t some low-brow peon we’re talking about here; he was a significant player in several administrations and is a counterterrorism expert. Unfortunately, it’s an individual decision on who to believe…I tend to lean towards Clarke. If enough people cry wolf, and cry wolf about the same thing, maybe they’re not crying wolf anymore. Suddenly, they’re just trying to expose the truth.
That’s it for this week, I’ll be back next Friday with several special guests and a variety of topics. Until then, go educate yourselves.
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