|
|
|
Click here to keep up with Galen's Speaking Schedule
Looking for a back issue of Mullings? They're in the
Archives
Click here
to join the Mullings Movement!
When Things Go Wrong
Wednesday June 25, 2003
There is a saying in politics - and possibly every other endeavor - that when things go wrong, they go really wrong.
Example Number One:
After all the carping of Howard Dean and the hand-wringing of Joe Lieberman; after all the finger-pointing by John Edwards and accusations by John Kerry; after all the questions by Bob Graham and innuendo by Dick Gephardt; after all of the baying at the moon by the NY Times' Paul Krugman, a new Washington Post/ABC News poll shows President Bush's job approval is stuck �
At 68 percent.
A touch over two-thirds; two-out-of-every-three Americans think he's doing a good job.
Imagine that.
Example Number Two: As if the Democrats didn't have enough problems, now they are openly feuding with the only icon they have left: Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts.
The Associated Press' David Espo writing about the Medicare prescription drug bill making its way through the Congress wrote since Senator Kennedy "expressed early enthusiasm for a bill that gives the private insurance industry an expanded role" in Medicare, "fellow Democrats have been seething."
According to Espo, "Kennedy's action sparked a stormy closed party caucus where, party sources say, hard feelings boiled over."
In the words of that noted observer of American culture, Curly Howard, "Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk."
Alexander Bolton, following on Espo's reporting, wrote in The Hill newspaper, "The chief complaint is that Kennedy � undermined their party's negotiating position by throwing his support behind the bill before Democrats could adopt a political strategy on the GOP-backed plan, potentially handing Republicans a significant legislative victory."
Whoa! Wait! Do you mean to tell me that Tom Daschle and the Senate Democrats would deny prescription drug benefits to needy seniors for political gain?
Nah. Can't be.
Nevertheless, "Kennedy's early support has paved the way for the Medicare proposal to pass the Senate with few of the changes they favor, Democrats say," according to The Hill.
The House will be taking the bill up today. Hill sources think it will go to conference shortly after the July 4th break and be on the President's desk before the August recess.
Just when the Democrats thought they had a major issue to use against President Bush, like Keyser Soz�: Poof. It was gone.
Don't think, however, that this is going to be easy. There are those in the press corps who will go to great lengths to make this an interesting race to cover. This was my adventure with CNN yesterday:
I got a call from a booker in Atlanta asking me if I wanted to do a segment on Paula Zahn's show about the fact that the Bush campaign was trying to decide whether to use footage of the President's landing on the Aircraft Carrier Abraham Lincoln in a commercial
I said that (1) There are not that many people at the campaign; (2) Those few people at the campaign would
not be discussing that kind of thing at this point, and; (3) If the few people at the campaign were to discuss something like that at this point, they certainly wouldn't do it around anyone who would tell CNN about it so, I suggested, the story was - bunk - is I think the word I used. Yes. Bunk.
I got a call back from an executive producer in New York to told me that the booker had misrepresented the segment. What they wanted to talk about was whether the speech the President made on the carrier would become "the read-my-lips" of this campaign "if things continued to go badly in Iraq."
I asked him if he thought the Iraqis were better off or worse off than they were 90 days ago. He said "some might say --" I just cut him off and said I would not participate in what he was obviously planning to be a hatchet job on the President.
Was I declining to appear? I didn't say, "Soitenly!" but I wish I had.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: I received my camera via FedEx this morning from the good folks at PacSat in Austin, so the Mullfoto of me buying the Harry Potter book is on today's Secret Decoder Ring page. It was not worth waiting for. What is worth looking at is a Mullfoto of me and the Chairman-designate of the Republican National Committee, Ed Gillespie - along with a story about him I think you'll enjoy.
--END --
Copyright © 2003 Richard A. Galen
Current Issue |
Secret Decoder
Ring | Past
Issues | Email
Rich | Rich
Who?
Copyright �2002 Richard
A. Galen | Site design by Campaign
Solutions. | |
|
� 
