A Bush Aide’s Blunt Words By Peter Baker, Washington Post Staff Writer

Bill Clinton is a “virtuoso deceiver” and Hillary Rodham Clinton a “true chameleon” guilty of “self-serving behavior, comparative radicalism, and dubious personal morality.”

Al Gore is a “mad dog” known to “foam at the mouth.” John McCain is given to “showboating.” And Jacques Chirac, Nelson Mandela, Gerhard Schroeder and Kofi Annan are all “feckless fools.”

Says who? President Bush’s new chief domestic policy adviser, … Karl Zinsmeister, who started his new job yesterday.

For a dozen years until his appointment, Zinsmeister held forth on all manner of issues and personalities as editor in chief of the American Enterprise Institute’s magazine. With a sharp pen, he skewered the left, taking special aim at environmentalists, anti-globalists, feminists, contemporary artists, university faculties, Hollywood, Broadway and particularly the media, composed mainly of “left-wing, cynical, wiseguy Ivy League types, with a high prima donna quotient.” …

For Zinsmeister, provocation has been his stock in trade. “That’s kind of my M.O., for better or worse,” he said by phone last week. “My main beef with much of the Washington discussion is you’re forced to be so mealy-mouthed. I had the luxury as an outsider of being as blunt as I wanted. When you’re outside trying to push the elephant even an inch, you have to be very crisp and uncouched.”

But Zinsmeister said he understands that must change now that he advises the president. “When you’re inside the tent, you have to shift gears. That’s a double standard, but it’s an appropriate one.” …

In fact, his antipathy for Washington got him in trouble when he was appointed. In a 2004 profile by the Syracuse New Times, Zinsmeister was quoted as saying, “People in Washington are morally repugnant, cheating, shifty human beings.” But the New York Sun discovered last month that he doctored that and other quotes when he posted the profile on the AEI Web site. The edited quote said, “I learned in Washington that there is an ‘overclass’ in this country stocked with cheating, shifty human beings that’s just as morally repugnant as our ‘underclass.’ ”

Zinsmeister later said he was “foolish” to change the quotes and did so only because he had been misquoted. …

[In 2005,] he declared victory. “The War is Over, and We Won,” announced a June 2005 piece. “With the exception of periodic flare-ups in isolated corners, our struggle in Iraq as warfare is over,” he wrote. Although there will still be “egregious acts of terror,” he said, “contrary to the impression given by most newspaper headlines, the United States has won the day in Iraq.” …

At a time when Bush has lost support among some conservatives, Zinsmeister’s appointment may reassure some of the disaffected in the party that a strong voice will be heard in the White House. Snow said Zinsmeister will be useful for his challenging viewpoints.

“You want interesting people who are smart, who have serious policy credentials and who are able to make other people think,” Snow said.

It is nauseating that the official response to suicide at Guantanamo is to call it “PR.” Granted, this is an administration run by talentless PR flacks for whom everything is marketing and spin. mjh

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | ‘Killing themselves was unnecessary. But it certainly is a good PR move’ by Suzanne Goldenberg and Hugh Muir, The Guardian

The Bush administration stared down a new wave of international condemnation of Guantánamo yesterday, dismissing the suicides by three inmates of the prison camp as a “good PR move” on their part and an “act of asymmetrical warfare”.

The deaths of two Saudis and a Yemeni, who used knotted bedsheets to hang themselves in their solitary cells, brought renewed calls from European governments and human rights organisations to bring the 460 inmates to trial, or close down the camp. But Bush administration officials rejected suggestions that the three had killed themselves in despair over their indefinite confinement.

“It does sound like this is part of a strategy – in that they don’t value their own lives, and they certainly don’t value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic,” Colleen Graffy, the deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told BBC’s Newshour yesterday. “Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move.”

On Saturday, the camp’s commander, Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris, said the suicides were an al-Qaida tactic. “They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us,” he said. …

Lawyers for the detainees called the comments by administration officials deeply offensive. Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer for the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which represents most of the detainees, said: “It’s very clear that any human being who is kept in indefinite detention over four years, not given any kind of hearing, and whose life and fate is subject to such uncertainty, inevitably will contemplate suicide, and the fact that three of them finally succeeded comes as no surprise. This is not an act of warfare, it is a consequence of inhumane and immoral treatment of human beings by the United States.” …

In Britain, Massoud Shadjareh, of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, said of the US officials’ remarks: “This is the sort of statement that SS officers in Nazi Germany would have been envious of.” Inayat Bunglawala, of the Muslim Council of Britain, deplored the “incredibly insensitive and callous” comments. “The deaths of these three people was not an act of war, it was an act of desperation.”

President George Bush at the weekend expressed “serious concern” about the suicides.

It is a great and glorious to see Tom “The Hammer” DeLay go away. DeLay once declared “I AM the Federal Government” at precisely the moment he was violating countless rules, customs and laws. Even Republicans hate Tom DeLay, with good reason, given he is a self-serving dictator.

But, while we dance on his political grave, note that he has moved to
Virginia to pursue a career as a lobbyist. With Jack Abramoff as his model, he will no doubt be in the news again — and in jail before long — but not before he’s screwed the country again. mjh

DeLay Exits, Stage (Hard) Right By Ruth Marcus

No one who’s seen Tom DeLay operate over the years could have expected the Texas Republican to go gently: The Hammer always comes down hard. But DeLay’s farewell address on the House floor last week was nonetheless stunning for its sneering, belligerent partisanship.

This was not the case of a politician who happened to hit a jarring note at just the wrong time. DeLay made clear that he wanted to leave the way he behaved throughout his 22 years in Washington — contemptuous of the opposition and unrepentant about his cutthroat tactics. …

In DeLay’s world, “It is not the principled partisan, however obnoxious he may seem to his opponents, who degrades our public debate, but the preening, self-styled statesman who elevates compromise to a first principle.”

This is a man who — now that he’s had time to take in the monuments — sees Lincoln’s statue and fixates on the one hand clenched in a “perpetual fist.” …

As he addressed his colleagues for the final time, DeLay betrayed no doubt that his tactics had ever edged even slightly across the line, no hint of recognition of the poisonous consequences of GOP authoritarianism under his sway.

There is a place for partisanship, and an honor in hewing to principles that divide the parties. But DeLay’s zero-sum politics diminishes the capacity of government to solve difficult problems. Compromise isn’t just an occasionally necessary evil, as DeLay sees it. Practiced well, it can be a mechanism for distilling the best public policy, or at least a better one than either faction would achieve on its own.

“If given the chance to do it all again, there’s only one thing I would change,” DeLay said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. “I would fight even harder.”

Think Progress » VIDEO: In Goodbye Speech, DeLay Bitterly Attacks Liberals

DeLay: “In any place or any time on any issue, what does liberalism ever seek, Mr. Speaker? More. More government, more taxation, more control over people’s lives and decisions and wallets.

“If conservatives don’t stand up to liberalism, no one will.”

Texas Democrats Revel in DeLay’s Departure — Newsday.com By ANGELA K. BROWN, Associated Press Writer

“If the sun seems a little brighter today; if our step seems a little bouncier; if life seems a little better today, there’s a good reason for it. For the first day in 22 years, Tom DeLay is not a member of Congress,” U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, said as the crowd cheered wildly.

Lest anyone feel the need to defend the nobility of DeLay’s principles, here’s just the latest info on how he royally enriched himself. mjh

Retirement Account of DeLay’s Wife Traced By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer

A registered lobbyist opened a retirement account in the late 1990s for the wife of then-House Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and contributed thousands of dollars to it while also paying her a salary to work for him from her home in Texas, according to sources, documents and DeLay’s attorney, Richard Cullen.

The account represents a small portion of the income that DeLay’s family received from entities at least partly controlled by lobbyist Edwin A. Buckham. But the disclosure of its origin adds to what was previously known about the benefits DeLay’s family received from its association with Buckham, and it brings the total over the past seven years to about half a million dollars. …

From 1998 until recently, Buckham, an evangelical minister, met regularly with DeLay, occasionally attended staff meetings in his office, made scheduling recommendations or decisions for the office, and served as DeLay’s chief political and spiritual adviser, even though he was not formally employed by him. At the time, Buckham’s clients included a host of companies with regulatory and legislative business before Congress, and whose interests DeLay supported. …

Besides financing the retirement account, Buckham played a role in two other streams of income that indirectly benefited DeLay.

One involved payments to DeLay’s family by his principal political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), which drew its largest donations from corporations. Three former DeLay staffers with firsthand knowledge of Buckham’s activities have described him as a decision maker for the group, even though it was formally run by its executive director. …

[F]rom 2001 to Jan. 31, 2006, ARMPAC paid Christine DeLay; DeLay’s daughter, Dani DeLay Ferro; and Ferro’s Texas firm a total of $350,304 in political consulting fees and expenses, according to public records. [mjh: nice work if you’re sleazy enough to take it] …

Together with the retirement account worth about $25,000, this means the [DeLay] family’s total financial benefits from entities at least partly controlled by Buckham exceeded $490,300.

Newty Gingrich set the stage and the tone for the rise of the Radical Religious Right. Tom DeLay is his offspring — perhaps The Hammer will be the VP candidate? Now, Gingrich has been gone long enough to return as a noble elder statesman. I’d rather they dig up Nixon. mjh

Gingrich May Run in 2008 If No Front-Runner Emerges By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) expects to run for president in 2008 if the contest for the Republican nomination still seems wide open late next year, he said yesterday. …

Gingrich’s entry would shake up a Republican presidential field that now includes Sens. George Allen (Va.), Bill Frist (Tenn.) and John McCain (Ariz.). Many Republicans still revere Gingrich for engineering the GOP’s takeover of Congress in 1994, though members of his own party pushed him to resign in 1998 after his drive to impeach President Bill Clinton cost them seats in that year’s election.