Joe Slime.
DEMS ARE EITHER PHONIES OR THEY'RE RADICALS. One of the more devious verbal tricks commentators use on Democrats is to rhetorically box them in: Either Dems are too cautious and scripted, or they're too radical and hate America. Atrios is right when he says of Joe Klein's new book:
Snip...
We've glimpsed the narrative Klein has created. In the Time magazine excerpt of his book, Klein says Kerry was "smothered" by his consultants. Whatever one thinks of the Kerry campaign, or of consultants in general, I think it's clear that Klein's assault is really a back-door way of launching a familiar attack on Dems: That Democrats will say or do anything to get elected -- including abandon their core moral principles. That is the tale that the press used to destroy Al Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004, and now Klein has hauled it out again and is waving it as he dances his jig on the grave of Kerry's presidential aspirations.
How eager was Klein to tell the story this way?
One Kerry campaign insider who refused to talk to Klein -- chief strategist Robert Shrum -- claims Klein was so eager that he cooked the facts to do it. Klein's chief piece of evidence for Kerry's inauthenticity in the excerpt is that Kerry didn't talk about the Abu Gharib torture scandal because his consultants told him not to. As I reported below, Shrum insisted in an
interview with me that Klein's account was "misleading" and "inaccurate." Klein vigorously rejects the claim. Maybe once the book hits other Kerry insiders will come forward and say whether they think Klein's depiction is accurate.
Either way, Klein's new attack begs a question: If Kerry had made Abu Gharib a big issue, how would Klein have reacted? Klein routinely blasts liberal Dems who fault Bush on national security issues. He reportedly
said that the message of the party's liberals is that they "hate America." Now he's hammering a Dem who didn't fault Bush sufficiently on torture as craven and inauthentic. If Kerry had taken up torture, would Klein have hailed Kerry's principled stand -- or hammered him as a weak-kneed liberal? We'll never know. Maybe Klein would have played against type and praised Kerry. Or maybe not. The point is, in a broad sense commentators like Klein routinely box Dems in: Either they're phonies who paper over their true beliefs or they're wild-eyed radicals who hate America. It's a pretty neat trick, really.
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2006/04/index.html#009821 ROBERT SHRUM DISPUTES JOE KLEIN'S ACCOUNT OF KERRY CAMPAIGN. Robert Shrum, the chief strategist for John Kerry's presidential campaign, is disputing some aspects of a forthcoming account by Joe Klein of the 2004 campaign, saying Klein's version is "inaccurate" and "misleading." In his latest Time magazine column, Klein published an excerpt of the book, one which offers a scathing look at the inner dynamics of Kerry's campaign.
Snip...
But now Shrum is disputing Klein's version of events. When I contacted Shrum, he said that Klein's characterization of the campaign's response to Abu Gharib is "inaccurate." "It is misleading to say that the campaign reaction to Abu Gharib was to hold a focus group," Shrum told me, adding that while the torture scandal may have come up from time to time, there was never a session devoted to it: "We held focus groups all the time. In those focus groups I have no doubt that Abu Gharib was mentioned. But coming out of that there was no recommendation to the candidate that he should never talk about it. I would have known if this recommendation was going to be made."
Shrum added: "
never received any advice not to talk about Abu Gharib. I certainly never gave him that advice."
The dispute is noteworthy, because Klein's version of Kerry's focus-grouping appears to be a key piece of his indictment of the campaign, at least in the excerpt. The book, a broad indictment of the "pollster-consultant industrial complex," is called Politics Lost.
When we contacted Klein about Shrum's comments, he dismissed the accusation, saying that Shrum refused to speak to him for the book. Klein emailed us the following statement:
Snip…
It's worth noting that Kerry himself has said that he called for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld based partly on Abu Gharib. Either way, this fight is only going to get worse in coming days, when Klein's book comes out and those indicted in the book blast back.
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2006/04/index.html#009795 
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
