After Saddam, What?
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr After Saddam, What? Saddam Hussein's ambition to dominate the Middle East required weapons of mass destruction. His own survival may require for...
...A journalist can be a talk show host skilled at getting guests to yell at each other...
...Income inequality is not only a matter of crooked CEOs who go from perks to perps...
...The next day he held a news conference and brushed off an invitation to outline an aggressive legislative agenda...
...A man, John Allen Muhammad, and a boy, 17-year-old John Lee Malvo, managed to terrorize a region that includes the national capital, to change the daily routines of millions, and to create a pervasive sense of fear...
...Democrats should not mistake the magnitude of this loss...
...Gore says he hasn't decided yet about seeking a rematch with Bush in 2004...
...No one was comforted by being told the mathematical chance of getting shot was much less than that of being killed in a traffic accident...
...The Administration is not helping much with health care or child care for the poor...
...Then a triumphant, and triumphal, House Speaker Newt Gingrich promulgated a revolutionary Contract With America, including abalanced budget amendment, a line item veto, a shunning of United Nations ventures, and much more...
...Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld spoke of "poisoned relations...
...But having experienced journalism in its print, radio and television incarnations, I have come to mourn the way my beloved profession has become progressively oriented to entertainment, scandal and profit...
...Cable television went into its roundthe-clock mode...
...Average middle-class income fell for the first time in a decade...
...The inspectors have no illusion that they will be able to find what the Iraqi dictator does not want them to find...
...From O.J...
...The wealthiest 5 per cent, those earning over $150,000, accounted for almost a quarter of the national income...
...Putting quarreling exile factions in charge, which has been a problem in Afghanistan, does not seem like a promising start on democracy in Iraq...
...Poverty rose last year by 1.3 million, for a total of 32.9 million, or 11.7 per cent of the population...
...He spent the campaign basically doing two things...
...Simpson to Monica Lewinsky, the media have displayed an...
...Do you remember how the Clinton scandal that led to impeachment first got started...
...A new kind of government-press relationship seemed to be in the making as the beleaguered Montgomery County police chief, Charles Moose, summoned the media to aid the investigation while denying them most of its fruits...
...The public finds the media insensitive and exploitative, and is no longer willing to forgive us our press passes...
...He made the ritual demand that the $ 1.35 trillion tax cut be made permanent, but went easy on more immediate measures like a capital gains tax cut and repeal of the estate tax, to the disappointment of some of his conservative supporters...
...John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, in their new book entitled The Emerging Democratic Majority-a takeoff on Kevin Phillips' prescient 1969 volume, The Emerging Republican Majority-foresee an inevitable realignment aided by ethnic diversity that will sweep the Democrats to power by 2008, at the latest...
...The Democrats were the victims of their own timidity...
...Then came the questions about taking the bus to work, taking the child to school...
...The feeling was heightened when the alleged perpetrators began taunting their pursuers with phone calls, handwritten notes and demands for the electronic transfer of millions of dollars...
...Under the circumstances, Bush seemed inclined to tread carefully on his tax and spending proposals...
...A journalist can be a celebrity who came through the revolving door from government...
...Plunging into contests across the nation, he invested the popularity he had won, in large measure with an assist from Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein...
...But he did not press hard on other elements in his agenda, like individual Social Security accounts and deeper tax cuts...
...If any Democrat can be said to have benefited from the shambles, it is another former Vice President, Al Gore...
...Invasion and occupation could cost as much as $ 100 billion...
...It is, alas, a fact of political life that the United States has become very unpopular in Europe...
...It reached new heights on September 11, and on the anniversary of September 11.1 was impressed by television's willingness to cancel millions of dollars in commercials...
...King Leopold returned to Belgium only to be forced by a general strike to abdicate...
...At the recent NATO meeting in Prague, though, it appeared that relations might be on the mend...
...In the rubble of November 5, several leading Democrats saw their future ambitions shrink...
...For the rest, I am sad about the state of journalism, a profession I have loved not always wisely but well...
...This sounded to me like veiled criticism of fellow Democrats' reluctance to confront a popular wartime President...
...Chief Moose used the assembled live cameras to send messages to the snipers, but he also upbraided the media for using leaked information...
...The President twice pointedly shook the Chancellor's hand, but they did not hold a one-on-one session...
...Whether Iraq would at some point raise these reservations as a deal-breaker was not immediately clear...
...A Kaiser Commission study has found 41 states cutting their Medicaid programs for lack of adequate Federal aid at a time of sinking state revenues...
...Meanwhile, another question has begun to preoccupy the Bush Administration and Congress: After Saddam Hussein, what...
...President George W. Bush has promised to help create the institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq...
...Here is an excerpt from my remarks: "If I'm supposed to represent the world of journalism and communications, this honor may be a big mistake...
...It is a matter of a recession that hits hardest at the just-making-it working poor without much of a social safety net left...
...Bush's Restraint On November 6, the day after the stunning Republican victory at the polls, President Bush stayed out of the public eye...
...And as child care becomes increasingly difficult to find, the Administration continues to press for a new welfare law with more stringent work requirements...
...It did not matter that Germany has agreed to take command of the Afghanistan peacekeeping forces, and is vigorously pursuing the investigation of the AI Qaeda network...
...Invasion remains a live possibility...
...He emerged with a mandate he could not claim two years ago...
...Richard A. Gephardt gave up the leadership of the House...
...The White House, however, appears to think otherwise...
...The deficit was $159 billion in the last fiscal year...
...I remember post-World War II in Europe, where people who had suffered during the Nazi occupation did not warm to returning exiles, who had not shared their experience...
...Now that Iraq has officially said it has no weapons of mass destruction, the testing time has begun...
...He proclaimed that Germany would not participate in a war against Iraq...
...For a while, a concept circulating in the State Department envisioned a United Nations authority backed by an American military force, assisted by a council representing both exiles and Iraqis from within the country...
...Because of the apparent randomness of the shootings, nothing in recent history has enveloped ordinary people in such a sense of personal fear and doubt about the ability of constituted authority to cope with a miniature crime wave...
...A lot of the most important issues don't seem to be discussed very much," he said, "and I think that they need to be...
...The Pentagon was working on a plan for seizing a piece of territory before or during an invasion and installing exiled groups as an interim government...
...Me-tooism, like Gephardt's endorsement of the war powers resolution, did not help Democratic candidates...
...I mean taking a hard look at how we can talk about the real life concerns that families in this country are wrestling with every day and presenting a very forceful alternative...
...But the ground zero coverage is the exception...
...Thanks in part to the President's involvement, predictions of a record-low voter turnout proved to be wrong...
...Lately the White House seems to be settling on an occupation model, drawn from the precedents of Germany and Japan after World War II...
...There are a lot of things we can do and should do," he said, mentioning prescription drugs and terrorism insurance before trailing off with, "I can't remember the litany of things...
...Bush did succeed in presidentializing the election around himself as a wartime President...
...His modest demeanor, as he invoked again the virtues of bipartisanship, stood in vivid contrast to the atmosphere at the time of the Republican sweep in 1994...
...But the categoric statement from the Iraqi government about having no weapons of mass destruction is not being taken at face value...
...Compassion Suspended While the President talked about budgetary restraint, the Census Bureau was reporting an increase in the number of poor and a widening gap between the poor and the rich...
...Yet Federal funds to train people for employment have been cut in the hold-the-line Bush budget...
...After the election, Gore gave an interview to Barbara Walters of ABC television and was more explicit about a beefed up Democratic Paity...
...It looks as though compassionate conservatism has been suspended for the duration...
...inexorable attraction to scandal along with violence and the hot pursuit of celebrities...
...Minister of Justice Herta DäublerGmelin said that the President, like Hitler, was talking war to divert attention from domestic problems...
...There has to be a major regrouping...
...In fact, Newsweek was working on a story and holding it for further fact-checking...
...Senators Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Paul D. Wellstone of Minnesota did not suffer from their negative votes on the war powers resolution...
...President Bush refused to make the traditional call of congratulations to the winner, even after Schroder fired his two indiscreet aides...
...Any significant discovery of unreported weapons would constitute, in the language of the UN resolution, a "material breach...
...The Internet has introduced a new dimension of unedited irresponsibility in journalism...
...Until recently the Administration was divided about what a post-Saddam governing body should look like...
...The State of Journalism On October 5,1 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts...
...Too late they learned that voters admire conviction...
...That could trigger a military response...
...Uday Hussein's letter contained vague language about limits on certain points, something about Arab technicians on the inspection teams and an Arab umbrella over the whole process...
...In these times the definition of journalist has changed...
...Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has warned that continuous deficits could raise interest rates and slow growth...
...His endorsement of the resolution was orchestrated in theatrical fashion...
...Judging by the outcome of this election, they will have to find their soul and their convictions before they can hope to attain that goal...
...It would also, incidentally, put America in control of the world's second biggest oil reserves...
...After his October 2 economic speech at the Brookings Institution, denouncing Bush tax and spending policies, I asked him how he saw his current role in the Democratic Party...
...Postelection analysis indicates that Gore may have had a point...
...Then came a letter from his son, Uday, that he may have had some help in writing, which urged his father to do the unpopular thing -submit to the UN to save Iraqis from invasion...
...But in the White House his name was mud...
...It would grow to pay for prescription drugs and homeland defense...
...It is far from clear, however, that exiles returning from the diaspora would be welcomed by the long-repressed populace...
...Democratic Me-tooism Politically, the November 5 elections made history...
...And he delivered a couple of major thematic speeches, attacking Administration positions on Iraq and on the economy in stronger terms than most Congressional Democrats...
...He said he wanted-and he got-a Homeland Security Department...
...I have become aware of increasing public hostility to an institution that is supposed to monitor the establishment but is now itself a vast establishment...
...The ballooning budget deficit was apparently having its impact on Administration planning...
...Asymmetric Warfare Like the anthrax killer still at large, the metropolitan Washington area snipers represented a sort of ultimate in asymmetric warfare...
...Sometimes it seems to me that our whole profession is crowded into a small corner of a vast entertainment stage, obliged to borrow the tools and the values of entertainment and live by its standards...
...Self-styled gossip monger Matt Drudge posted on the Web the rumor that Newsweek was working on some story about the President and his relationship with an intern...
...The question is whether he has made his stark choice or whether his acceptance of the United Nations Security Council's inspection resolution is part of some new stalling exercise...
...At some future time, perhaps years afterward, an election would be organized and a democratic government created...
...They offered no direct challenge to the Administration on economic policies, and they conveyed an image of hesitant me-tooism on war with Iraq...
...The Children's Defense Fund, which originated the "Leave no child behind" slogan that Bush has borrowed, says that several states are losing Federal matching funds for child care because they lack enough money to pay their share...
...Bush, by contrast, suggested that he did not want to push his election advantage too far and too fast...
...Over the years I have developed serious reservations about an industry in which I have worked for more than six decades...
...Television displayed its capacity to bind Americans into a community at moments like the assassination of John and then Robert Kennedy...
...This, it is believed, would facilitate the search for weapons of mass destruction...
...His own survival may require for swearing them...
...Turnout was significantly higher in the states Bush visited...
...Fear turned to helplessness as citizens got the impression that a hastily assembled Federal/county law enforcement task force, rent with its own turf battles, was inadequate to the task of finding the serial killers...
...It seems clear that democracy cannot simply be imposed on a country that has never known democracy...
...The Democrats did not succeed in nationalizing the off-year balloting around the issues of a shaky economy and financial scandals...
...He asked for-and gotterrorism insurance...
...Veteran poll watcher Curtis Gans reported a turnout of 39.3 per cent, an improvement over 37.6 per cent four years ago...
...Presidential Petulance Petulance with a major ally is a luxury that even the sole superpower can ill afford in these times of trouble...
...Traffic reporters were asked not to tell where roadblocks and checkpoints had been set up...
...Indeed, Wellstone was enjoying rising poll ratings at the time of his death in a plane crash...
...For millions in and out of the area the mounting deaths managed to change the subject of conversation from the off-year election, from the slumping economy, from Iraq, even from the war on terrorism to the phenomenon of this terrorism without a known ideology...
...Prime Minister Pieter Gerbrandy returned to the Netherlands only to be voted out in the first postwar election...
...But the Iraqis, who have been ruled by a succession of tyrants since the British installed a king in 1921, don't know much about liberty...
...He also asked for a prescription drug bill, and for early Senate votes on confirmation of his judicial nominees...
...Walter F. Mondale, defeated in his Senate comeback bid, returned to political retirement...
...Looming over the budget, too, was the uncertain Iraq situation...
...Despite 10 per cent unemployment and a high budget deficit, Schröder came back from behind to win his election...
...Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer came to Washington to mend fences, met with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who called him "old friend," but got word to stay away from the White House...
...First, he had his rubber-stamp Parliament counsel defiance, thus establishing that this would be the popular thing to do...
...In other words, a straight-out American military government headed by an American generala Douglas MacArthur type...
...He said: "Democrats have to be the loyal opposition in fact and not just in name...
...Another Schroder aide, Ludwig Stiegler, said, "Bush is acting as if he is Caesar Augustus and Germany is the province of Germania...
...Tom Daschle was reduced from majority to minority leader of the Senate...
...He piled up political chits by stumping widely for Democratic candidates from Maine to Florida...
...In households, at least in Washington and its environs, residents would wake up and nervously turn on the radio or television to learn with the first cup of coffee whether there had been another killing...
...It will be checked against American and other intelligence reports, as well as information from defectors and from Iraqi scientists who are taken out of the country to give their testimony in safety...
...I do not include National Public Radio, where I have found contentment in my declining years...
...His bold gamble paid off...
...So last September, when his bid for re-election was lagging, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder found it expedient to run against President Bush...
...A couple of members of his Social Democratic team carried the Bush-bashing further...
...It will have to be developed from within, like a delicate hothouse plant...
...Occasionally our news media measure up to their responsibility at a time of national tragedy...
...President Bush said after a Cabinet meeting, "I understand we got a lot of work to do, and we will continue to work hard to make sure that people can find work...
...But why would he urge remaking the Democratic Party unless he wanted to be its candidate...
Vol. 85 • November 2002 • No. 6
