Clift Calls Dean “Mainstream,” Dionne Insists He’s “Centrist” --11/17/2003-- Media Research Center

1. Clift Calls Dean “Mainstream,” Dionne Insists He’s “Centrist” Howard Dean: A mainstream centrist? On the McLaughlin Group over the weekend, Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift rejected Pat Buchanan’s characterization of Dean’s “radicalism,” insisting: “What you call radical, Pat, the rest of us call mainstream.” Over on CNN’s Capital Gang on Saturday night, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne asserted that Dean “is a closet centrist” and the Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt echoed: “He's not really a liberal.”

2. Stephanopoulos Ignores Spending: “What Taxes Would You Raise?” George Stephanopoulos’ one-track mind: Reduce the deficit by raising taxes, not cutting spending. After gushing on This Week to former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, “'Rubinomics.’ How does it feel to have an economic doctrine named after you?”, Stephanopoulos asked him: “So what would you do about those deficits if you were Treasury Secretary today? What taxes would you raise?”

3. Schieffer: Comments from Officials Remind Him of Vietnam Era Vietnam Memories I. CBS’s Bob Schieffer contended on Face the Nation that “from the day the war turned bad in Iraq, you could take the words that were said back then,” during Vietnam, “and put them into the mouths of today's administration spokesmen and never notice the difference, 'Good things are happening, if only the reporters would report it.'” But, he saw light ahead since “last week, when the violence reached levels that could no longer be ignored, we finally began to get a story that was closer to reality.”

4. Reuters: “U.S. War Dead in Iraq Exceeds Early Vietnam Years” Vietnam Memories II. A Reuters story late last week began: “The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation.”

5. Barnes Challenges Journalists to Persue Hussein-al Qaeda Ties On Fox News Sunday, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard challenged his journalistic colleagues to pick up a story in this week’s issue which recounts a lengthy Department of Defense assessment of 13 years of connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. But so far the media aren’t paying much attention to the Weekly Standard disclosure. The broadcast networks have ignored it and, sitting on the panel with Barnes, NPR’s Juan Williams ridiculed it. On CBS’s Face the Nation, when Senator Ted Kennedy asserted that “the whole policy” toward Iraq “was based on the quicksand of false assumptions, that, one, that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which they weren't; secondly, that they were dominated by al-Qaeda, which they haven't been,” host Bob Schieffer failed to follow up by citing the Weekly Standard story.

6. CBS Skips Kerry Opting Out, Looks at DeLay Subverting Finance Law Friday’s CBS Evening News didn’t utter a syllable about Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry opting out of the federal campaign finance matching fund system for the primaries, a system much vaunted by the media and liberals, but devoted a full story to how Republicans Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, as Dan Rather put it, were “looking for loopholes to rake in donations” by subverting “the new campaign finance law designed to limit the power of special interests.”

7. Koppel Ridicules Cheney for Appearing Only on Meet the Press Ted Koppel dissed Tim Russert. In his “closing thought” on Thursday’s Nightline, which recounted the behind-the-scenes power of Vice President Dick Cheney in formulating the Bush administration’s foreign policy, Koppel lectured Cheney about refusing to come on the program and be quizzed by him, charging that “transparency and accountability” means “something more than giving an occasional speech to a conservative foundation and making a couple of appearances on Meet the Press."

Clift Calls Dean “Mainstream,” Dionne
Insists He’s “Centrist”

Howard Dean: A mainstream centrist? On the McLaughlin Group over the weekend, Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift rejected Pat Buchanan’s characterization of Dean’s “radicalism,” insisting: “What you call radical, Pat, the rest of us call mainstream.” Over on CNN’s Capital Gang on Saturday night, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne asserted that Dean “is a closet centrist” and the Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt agreed: “He's not really a liberal.”

On the McLaughlin Group, when asked by host John McLaughlin if Dean could win the presidency, columnist Pat Buchanan suggested that “his radicalism is fine for the nomination, he’ll move to the center.” But he predicted he’d lose: “He’s a Democratic Goldwater.”

     McLaughlin seemed flummoxed by Buchanan’s Goldwater comment, prompting Clift to explain: “He’s suggesting that he’s going to lose and I disagree.”
     Buchanan repeated himself: “He’s got to get to the center.”
     Clift argued: “He can move to the center. There’s plenty of time. What you call radical, Pat, the rest of us call mainstream.”

     On the November 15 Capital Gang, E.J. Dionne, a former political reporter for the New York Times and then Washington Post, who now writes a column syndicated by the Post, posited of Dean: “In fact, in some ways, he is a closet centrist. It's the weirdest thing to see a-”
     Bob Novak: “I don't think he's a closet anything.”
     Al Hunt, Executive Washington Editor of the Wall Street Journal: “I don't think he's got much positive. He's not -- he didn't govern as a liberal. He's not really a liberal.”

Stephanopoulos Ignores Spending: “What
Taxes Would You Raise?”

George Stephanopoulos’ one-track mind: Reduce the deficit by raising taxes, not cutting spending. After gushing on This Week to former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, “'Rubinomics.’ How does it feel to have an economic doctrine named after you?”, Stephanopoulos asked him: “So what would you do about those deficits if you were Treasury Secretary today? What taxes would you raise?”

Stephanopoulos introduced his pre-taped session with Rubin, timed to plug a new book, In an Uncertain World, written by the Treasury Secretary during most of the Clinton years: “For such a mild-mannered man, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin inspires some over-heated rhetoric. Comb through the Wall Street Journal and you’ll see his economic views derided as 'fiction’ on one page, with columnist Al Hunt calling him 'the most successful Treasury Secretary since Alexander Hamilton’ on another.”

     While Stephanopoulos did challenge him a bit on factors other than Clinton policy leading to the boom in the 1990s and how deficits have not always led to higher interest rates, after Rubin lamented the high deficits under Bush, Stephanopoulos inquired:
     “So what would you do about those deficits if you were Treasury Secretary today? What taxes would you raise?”
     Rubin replied: “I think, George, we have now dug a hole that is so dep, and that is so threatening to our long term well being -- and the politics of solving it are so difficult -- that I think he only way that this is going to get solved is that if you have a President who leads a process that is bi-partisan and you increase revenues, you maintain serious discipline over spending, and those hard choices be made...”

Soaring spending might have something to do with the rising deficit, but Stephanopoulos didn’t mention that. Last Wednesday, the Washington Post reported how “federal discretionary spending expanded by 12.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, capping a two-year bulge that saw the government grow by more than 27 percent, according to preliminary spending figures from congressional budget panels.”

The Heritage Foundation calculated that “defense and 9-11 related spending account for less than half of all spending increases since 2001," with 11 percent of it going to 9/11 response, 34 percent for defense, and a massive 55 percent for other spending.

For Heritage’s November 13 report by Brian Riedl, “Most New Spending Since 2001 Unrelated to the War on Terrorism,” see: www.heritage.org

Schieffer: Comments from Officials Remind
Him of Vietnam Era

Vietnam Memories I. CBS’s Bob Schieffer contended on Face the Nation that “from the day the war turned bad in Iraq, you could take the words that were said back then,” during Vietnam, “and put them into the mouths of today's administration spokesmen and never notice the difference, 'Good things are happening, if only the reporters would report it.'” But, he saw light ahead since “last week, when the violence reached levels that could no longer be ignored, we finally began to get a story that was closer to reality.”

     Schieffer ended the November 16 Face the Nation with this commentary:
     “Finally today, I never thought Iraq was another Vietnam. It was a totally different situation. But reading through some of the Face the Nation transcripts from the Vietnam era the other day, I was struck by how much what officials said then sounds like what the government has been saying lately. No matter how bad the news from Vietnam was, official after official came on Face the Nation to say progress was being made, the press just wasn't reporting it.
     “From the day the war turned bad in Iraq, you could take the words that were said back then and put them into the mouths of today's administration spokesmen and never notice the difference, 'Good things are happening, if only the reporters would report it.' And then last week, when the violence reached levels that could no longer be ignored, we finally began to get a story that was closer to reality. Major combat was not over, we learned, because despite previous denials, an organized, tightly controlled guerrilla force was coordinating the increasingly deadly attacks on Americans. One general said that thousands of Saddam's forces had not quit the war, as it had appeared when the Americans rolled into Baghdad, but had fallen back, and further, were using weapons pre-positioned for the kind of attacks we're now seeing.
     “All the talk this week has been about how the United States is speeding up giving political control over Iraq to the Iraqis. But just as important, I think, is the new candor about how the war is going militarily. During Vietnam, three administrations tried to build support for the war by hiding the bad news and emphasizing the happy news. It didn't work then; it hasn't worked now. Maybe this new candor means the administration has finally figured that out.”

Reuters: “U.S. War Dead in Iraq Exceeds
Early Vietnam Years”

Vietnam Memories II. “U.S. War Dead in Iraq Exceeds Early Vietnam Years,” declared a headline over a Thursday night, November 13, Reuters dispatch from Philadelphia, as posted by Yahoo, which James Taranto of the “Best of the Web” column dismissed as an “utterly meaningless comparison.”

An excerpt from the top of how Reuters reporter David Morgan ominously began his effort to link the dire impacts of the two wars:

The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation.

A Reuters analysis of Defense Department statistics showed on Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.

By comparison, a roadside bomb attack that killed a soldier in Baghdad on Wednesday brought to 397 the tally of American dead in Iraq, where U.S. forces number about 130,000 troops -- the same number reached in Vietnam by October 1965.

The casualty count for Iraq apparently surpassed the Vietnam figure last Sunday, when a U.S. soldier killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack south of Baghdad became the conflict's 393rd American casualty since Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20.

Larger still is the number of American casualties from the broader U.S. war on terrorism, which has produced 488 military deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Southwest Asia and other locations.

Statistics from battle zones outside Iraq show that 91 soldiers have died since Oct. 7, 2001, as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which President Bush launched against Afghanistan's former Taliban regime after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington killed 3,000 people.

The Bush administration has rejected comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, which traumatized Americans a generation ago with a sad procession of military body bags and television footage of grim wartime cruelty.

Recent opinion polls show public support for the president eroding as he heads toward the 2004 election, partly because of public concern over the deadly cycle of guerrilla attacks and suicide bombings in Iraq....

END of Excerpt

     For the story in full: story.news.yahoo.com

     James Taranto of OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” ( www.opinionjournal.com ), undermined the premise of the Reuters spin. In his Friday column, Taranto argued:
     “'The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War,’ Reuters reports. That would be the years 1961-64, 'when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000' -- roughly a tenth as many as are in Iraq now. Three years after the Vietnam War 'officially began,’ of course, LBJ was re-elected in a landslide; it wasn't for a few more years that it became clear Vietnam had become a quagmire. So this is an utterly meaningless comparison -- but no doubt that won't stop the Democrats from using it.”

Barnes Challenges Journalists to Persue
Hussein-al Qaeda Ties

On Fox News Sunday, Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard challenged his journalistic colleagues to pick up a story in this week’s issue which recounts a lengthy Department of Defense assessment of 13 years of connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. But so far, the mainstream media are ignoring it.

The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes led his November 24 edition cover story, which was released on Saturday, plugged by the DrudgeReport.com and reported by FNC: “Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq, and Iraqi financial support for al Qaeda -- perhaps even for Mohamed Atta -- according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.”

Barnes observed during the panel segment on Fox News Sunday: “I love the press's in particular selective use of intelligence, which they accuse the Bush administration of, the same people who will raise doubts about this intelligence are praising the CIA assessment of what's going on in Iraq right now.” That would be the CIA report saying that the situation is deteriorating rapidly.

But so far the media aren’t paying much attention to the Weekly Standard disclosure. None of the other broadcast network Sunday shows mentioned it and neither did the broadcast network evening newscasts on Sunday night.

And on Fox News Sunday, NPR’s Juan Williams ridiculed the Weekly Standard story while on Face the Nation, when Senator Ted Kennedy asserted that “the whole policy” toward Iraq “was based on the quicksand of false assumptions, that, one, that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which they weren't; secondly, that they were dominated by al-Qaeda, which they haven't been,” host Bob Schieffer failed to follow up by citing the Weekly Standard story. Instead, he summed up Kennedy’s claims for him: “Is what you're saying, Senator Kennedy, is that the administration decided it was going to war with Iraq and it didn't really care what the information was?”

(Schieffer also failed to ask Kennedy, his sole guest for the full program, about Kennedy’s underhanded slam at blocked Bush judicial nominees, which include a black woman re-elected by over 70 percent to the California Supreme Court, as “neanderthals.”)

     On the November 16 Fox News Sunday, Snow set up Barnes: “Fred, let me ask you about a series of memos that were first reported by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard which seemed to indicate that our intelligence agencies thought that there were some very strong connections, or at least some coincidences, that would link Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. Now, we haven't been able to get anybody to bite on this officially, but, looking at the memos, it does appear that the intelligence community thought there was pretty strong evidence that Saddam had been working with al Qaeda, and for a considerable period of time.”
     Barnes: “Yes, and your first word was right, 'connections.’ They're not just coincidences. The interesting thing about this report, in particular, is the detail that it has of meetings between officials of Saddam Hussein's government and top officials of al Qaeda -- had met repeatedly over 13 years, from 1990 to 2003, met in many different places, and developed really an operational relationship of providing sanctuary for terrorists and training of terrorists in explosives and weapons of mass destruction and so on. Look, they say this is raw intelligence, but this is raw intelligence with great details, much of it coming from the CIA. You know, the -- I love the press's in particular selective use of intelligence, which they accuse the Bush administration of, the same people who will raise doubts about this intelligence are praising the CIA assessment of what's going on in Iraq right now. Look, there are repeated meetings that went on between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government. It's clear that there was a strong connection.”
     Williams: “Well, I don't know about a strong connection. The President himself has said we haven't proven anything.”
     Brit Hume: “Whoa, whoa-”
     Barnes: “He says we haven't proven-”
     Hume: “9/11.”
     Barnes: “-that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11.”
     Williams: “Correct.”
     Hume: “That's different.”
     Williams: “And I don't think there's any proof that there's any -- that meetings may have occurred, but there's proof of any kind of connection that would say, here are funds, here are troops, here is effort to attack Americans, to create terror. We don't know that, Fred. But I think-”
     Barnes: “You're setting up a strawman.”
     Williams: “Well, no, but I think that's what this is. I think you're saying there's some connections here. I think there's a big difference-”
     Barnes: “Some? Strong!”
     Williams: “-between what the CIA memo that was released this week, the one that Bremer knew about, and that every White House official I know about says, yes, that's a legitimate memo, and this one, which is speculative.”
     Barnes: “No, no. No, no.”
     Williams: “But I think that there's a big argument here, because you're trying to make a case that somehow there's a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. I don't see it.”
     Barnes: “Juan, you cannot call that report 'speculative.’ It is filled with details. It doesn't speculate at all. There is no speculation in there. And, Juan, I wonder, why would your reaction be to try to knock it down, rather than say, hey, there really was a strong connection between Saddam and al Qaeda?”
     Williams: “I tell you what, because I think the American people realize that after 9/11 we had to do something about Afghanistan, we had to do something about al Qaeda. The whole issue about Iraq is separate, and you're trying to conflate them. Because what we did was, we took preemptive action against Iraq. Most people -- I think everyone sitting on this panel would say, OK, we did it, we're going to stand with this president. But you don't have to create this kind of, you know, all this cotton candy -- oh yeah, we knew there was a hard connection. It sounds a lot like what happened with Jessica Lynch. All of a sudden you realize this week, you know, Jessica Lynch was not what the Defense Department was building her up to be.”
     Barnes: “Juan, these are hard facts. You can call it 'speculative,’ you can call it 'cotton candy.’ These are hard facts, and I'd like to see you refute any one of them.”
     Williams: “Well, we'll see.”
     Barnes: “There's a hard connection there.”
     Williams: “I think the case is not to refute it. I think the case is to prove it, and it's yet to be proven.”

In the Weekly Standard, Hayes explained what is outlined in the memo he obtained. An excerpt:

The memo, dated October 27, 2003, was sent from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to Senators Pat Roberts and Jay Rockefeller, the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was written in response to a request from the committee as part of its investigation into prewar intelligence claims made by the administration. Intelligence reporting included in the 16-page memo comes from a variety of domestic and foreign agencies, including the FBI, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency. Much of the evidence is detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources. Some of it is new information obtained in custodial interviews with high-level al Qaeda terrorists and Iraqi officials, and some of it is more than a decade old. The picture that emerges is one of a history of collaboration between two of America's most determined and dangerous enemies.

According to the memo -- which lays out the intelligence in 50 numbered points -- Iraq-al Qaeda contacts began in 1990 and continued through mid-March 2003, days before the Iraq War began. Most of the numbered passages contain straight, fact-based intelligence reporting, which in some cases includes an evaluation of the credibility of the source. This reporting is often followed by commentary and analysis.

The relationship began shortly before the first Gulf War. According to reporting in the memo, bin Laden sent "emissaries to Jordan in 1990 to meet with Iraqi government officials." At some unspecified point in 1991, according to a CIA analysis, "Iraq sought Sudan's assistance to establish links to al Qaeda." The outreach went in both directions. According to 1993 CIA reporting cited in the memo, "bin Laden wanted to expand his organization's capabilities through ties with Iraq."

The primary go-between throughout these early stages was Sudanese strongman Hassan al-Turabi, a leader of the al Qaeda-affiliated National Islamic Front. Numerous sources have confirmed this. One defector reported that "al-Turabi was instrumental in arranging the Iraqi-al Qaeda relationship. The defector said Iraq sought al Qaeda influence through its connections with Afghanistan, to facilitate the transshipment of proscribed weapons and equipment to Iraq. In return, Iraq provided al Qaeda with training and instructors."...

END of Excerpt

For the complete article as published in the November 24 Weekly Standard magazine: weeklystandard.com

CBS Skips Kerry Opting Out, Looks at DeLay
Subverting Finance Law

Friday’s CBS Evening News didn’t utter a syllable about Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry opting out of the federal campaign finance matching fund system for the primaries, a system much vaunted by the media and liberals, but devoted a full story to how Republicans Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, as Dan Rather put it, were “looking for loopholes to rake in donations” by subverting “the new campaign finance law designed to limit the power of special interests.”

CBS’s Bob Orr concluded his story, which was prompted by a front page story in Friday’s New York Times, by lecturing the ethics of the conservatives on the very day Kerry announced that he would circumvent the campaign finance system so he can spend his wife’s fortune: “Even if the charity fund-raising activities don't violate the letter of the law, there's no doubt about what's being offered. For big contributions, high rollers can still buy access to the powerful. It's the same old political game with a slightly new wrinkle.”

“G.O.P. Leader Solicits Money for Charity Tied to Convention,” announced the headline over the November 14 New York Times article by Michael Slackman. An excerpt:

It is an unusual charity brochure: a 13-page document, complete with pictures of fireworks and a golf course, that invites potential donors to give as much as $500,000 to spend time with Tom DeLay during the Republican convention in New York City next summer — and to have part of the money go to help abused and neglected children.

Representative DeLay, who has both done work for troubled children and drawn criticism for his aggressive political fund-raising in his career in Congress, said through his staff that the entire effort was fundamentally intended to help children. But aides to Mr. DeLay, the House majority leader from Texas, acknowledged that part of the money would go to pay for late-night convention parties, a luxury suite during President Bush's speech at Madison Square Garden and yacht cruises.

And so campaign finance watchdogs say Mr. DeLay's effort can be seen as, above all, a creative maneuver around the recently enacted law meant to limit the ability of federal officials to raise large donations known as soft money.

"They are using the idea of helping children as a blatant cover for financing activities in connection with a convention with huge unlimited, undisclosed, unregulated contributions," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a Washington group that helped push through the recent overhaul of the campaign finance laws.

Other lawmakers may well follow Mr. DeLay's lead. Already Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, is planning to hold a concert and a reception in conjunction with the convention as a way of raising money for AIDS charities....

END of Excerpt

For the article in full: www.nytimes.com

CBS followed the New York Times script as Dan Rather set up the November 14 CBS Evening News story: “While the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to rule on the new campaign finance law designed to limit the power of special interests, politicians are already looking for loopholes to rake in donations. CBS' Bob Orr looks tonight at one case in point.”

     Orr began: “For $50,000 a donor will get luxury box seats at the 2004 Republican Convention, tickets to Broadway shows and spots in an upscale golf tournament. A half-million dollars will buy all of that, plus a New York cruise and two dinners with House Majority Leader Tom Delay. That's the pitch DeLay is making in a new charity brochure which is advertising donor packages for next summer's New York convention. DeLay's Celebrations for Children brochure says the money raised will go to charities. A spokesman for DeLay concedes part of the proceeds will be used to pay for the donors' entertainment, but in the end it's all about helping abused and neglected children. Campaign finance reformer Fred Wertheimer isn't buying it.
     Fred Wertheimer, Democracy 21: “It's a scam. It's a cynical scheme to evade the new law banning soft money and to pay for a week-long partying in New York during the convention by corporations, lobbyists and federal officeholders, including Representative DeLay.”
     Orr: “There is a question whether DeLay's plans actually violate the soft-money ban, since the millions raised will not go directly to a candidate or an issue, but to charity. And DeLay is not the only Republican with convention fundraising plans. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist plans to host a New York concert and reception to raise money for AIDS programs. Today he defended his plans as appropriate.”
     Senator Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader: “For a humanitarian cause amidst a lot of other political things going on, to focus on a non-political cause that'll save lives.”
     Orr concluded: “Even if the charity fundraising activities don't violate the letter of the law, there's no doubt about what's being offered. For big contributions, high rollers can still buy access to the powerful. It's the same old political game with a slightly new wrinkle. Bob Orr, CBS News, Washington.”

Koppel Ridicules Cheney for Appearing
Only on Meet the Press

Ted Koppel dissed Tim Russert. In his “closing thought” on Thursday’s Nightline, which recounted the behind-the-scenes power of Vice President Dick Cheney in formulating the Bush administration’s foreign policy, Koppel lectured Cheney about refusing to come on the program and be quizzed by him, charging that “transparency and accountability” means “something more than giving an occasional speech to a conservative foundation and making a couple of appearances on Meet the Press."

When Cheney is on Meet the Press, Russert, who certainly doesn’t toss softballs at him, has him on for the whole show, about 45 minutes after ad time, which is substantially longer than the half-hour Nightline could offer.

MRC analyst Jessica Anderson noticed how Koppel concluded the November 13 Nightline, titled “the Quiet American,” devoted to Cheney:
"In case you're wondering, of course we asked the Vice President's office if he'd sit down for an interview. Nobody ever said no, but after waiting a couple of weeks now, we decided to go ahead with what we showed you this evening. If the Vice President would like to chat anytime soon, his place or ours, we'd be only too delighted -- I'm not counting on it. Traditionally, Vice Presidents don't do a lot of interviews or press conferences and, to be blunt about it, in years past, nobody much cared. Al Gore was something of an exception, but for the most part, Vice Presidents went to state funerals and chaired committees on issues that bored the President. This, though, is anything but a traditional Vice Presidency. Dick Cheney is a mover and shaker of the first order. That is the President's prerogative, but when an elected official in this country is granted an extraordinary amount of power and influence, there ought to be some transparency and accountability, which means something more than giving an occasional speech to a conservative foundation and making a couple of appearances on Meet the Press."

Sounds like he’s as jealous of Russert as Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer are of each other.

-- Brent Baker

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