claire shimpan and jay carney

Chatology: Fitzgeraldianly Awry

This week’s Sunday shows were best viewed with 20/20 hindsight.

Top topics: Dubai ports deal (dead) and the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll (meaningless). This was leavened with some talk of Iraq and a single, lonely reference to Saturday’s Gridiron show.

Quotes to live by:
• Chris Wallaces curses us out: “Do the Democrats have — pardon the expression — a Newt Gingrich?”
• Bill Kristol also has the first Arctic Monkeys seven-inch: “I liked McCain before it was cool for conservatives to like McCain.”
• Everyone (except surprise mystery guest Joe Biden) avoids saying they’re running for President, though Huckabee does announce for 2016.
• Hospice-bound Art Buchwald stays wry: “I believe in God, but I’m not too certain that the people who are telling me that ‘it’s God’s will’ are the people I want to be listening to.”

Full rundown after the jump.

Fox News Sunday
Hunter, Pence interview, Chris Dodd interview

Rep. Duncan Hunter and Mike Pence. Hunter: President was let down by his advisers, “having all the information, he would have stopped this deal.” Pence “wakes up every day thanking God” that President Bush is defending this country. Just not the ports. Pence blames the “process.” “The Royal family of Dubai knows that though this particular deal was not possible,” we appreciate their new role in our war on terror. Which is apparently to help get Democrats elected. Hunter going on about need for ports to be American-owned, points out that UAE has similar prohibitions: “You couldn’t open a hamburger stand in Dubai!” So much for Mama Wallace’s Infidel Burger Barn.

Much talk about how none of this is Bush’s fault, “let down by a rubber stamp,” in Hunter’s words. Almost as bad as when he was broken up with by a stapler. Mike Pence totally grown in a vat with other white-haired Ken-doll Republicans like Bill Sammon.

Now, Chris Dodd quizzed about level of “demagoguery” and anti-Arab bashing in port deal criticism. “Not everyone choose words I would use;” he’d go with “towel head.” Jake Weisberg’s “Three Stooges” Slate piece being thrown at Dodd: “Doesn’t he have a point?” Dodd: “For what you get these days, that’s mild.” Ouch. Wallace: “Do the Democrats have — pardon the expression — a Newt Gingrich?” Well, he is a four-letter word.

Panel time! Brit Hume’s pocket square is on a different panel than he is. Or is it a flag for one of those countries I can’t pronounce? And now we talk 2008 and Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll: Hume says political junkies may care but, “You have to be an actual junkie to think any important has happened here.” Snap! OMG WHAT IS MARA LIASSON WEARING!?!?!? HOT PINK BLINDING ME MY EYES MY EYES!!!!!! Something about McCain being “tactically agile,” hubba hubba. Wallace asks Hume if that answer makes Mara a junkie. Says Hume: “We need some heroin for that one.” Well, shit: it’s never available when I’m in the Fox green room.

Bill Kristol is hipper than you: “I liked McCain before it was cool for conservatives to like McCain.” And now that Bush is in the crapper I can say that in public again. Hume critiques Condi-cize: “Who knows what’s that’s about,” if she’s really running for president, “I’m not sure if being photographed wearing sweats in a gym is the way to get there.” Consensus is that Rudy not really much of factor right now and probably doesn’t appeal to GOP base. Kristol has interesting McCain spin, saying that he’s the “most resolute and eloquent defender of the President’s public policy,” and the President is pretty eloquent about McCain’s black baby.

And you didn’t think we’d get out of this without another ten minutes on the Dubai Ports deal did you? “It was so bad it was almost hilarious,” Hume observes. Kristol huffs about demagoguery but says “the President gave up too early,” and that they made a mistake in branding port critics “xenophobes,” when really the President could have “made a case.” Juan Williams says that critics weren’t demagogues, just reacting to public concern — Kristol actually quotes definition of demagoguery. A Jew educated by Jesuits is an awesome force to be reckoned with. Juan whines: “Don’t think everyone’s a dummy up here!” Prove us wrong, Juan, prove us wrong.

Power player of the week: Placido Domingo.

This Week
Podcast, Feingold (video), Art Buchwald (video)

Russ Feingold wants to censure W. for illegal wiretapping. Says Stephanopoulos: “Why now?” Feingold says something other than “I’m running for president,” which means he’s lying. Love him, however, for running down the clown car-like list of justifications that keep pouring out of the White House. How do they get all those excuses in there? And a baseball metaphor goes Fitzgeraldianly awry: “This is right in the strike zone [of Constitutional high crimes and misdemeanors]… though of course, the Founding Fathers didn’t have strike zones.” Helpfully reminds us that “we did not enact marshal law after September 11.” Love him some more for saying of Clinton’s “high crimes” versus those of Bush: “This conduct here is so much more serious than anything Bill Clinton ever did, it can’t even be compared.” Swoon. He’s got my doomed primary vote!

Btw, Russ says he’s too “busy dealing with the problems this administration is causing in mishandling the war on terror” to decide if he’s running for president.

BREAKING NEWS: BILL FRIST NOT GOING TO SUPPORT CENSURE MOTION! Frist slams Feingold for only mentioning “protecting the American people” once, which is a bigger lie than Feingold not running for president. All but calls his “good friend Russ” a terrorist collaborator and says he hopes the leaders of Iran weren’t listening. Ironically, his later comments about the Dubai port deal — lack of oversight, outdated law, lack of information — all directly apply to Feingold’s concerns about wiretapping. George presses on South Dakota abortion ban, would Frist vote for it? Weaves, dodges, is pro-life but “I’m not going to put myself in that situation,” which defeats whole point of question. Blah blah guest worker program blah.

Panel: George Will, Donna Brazile and “power couple” pundits Claire Shipman and Jay Carney, who are so low key about the whole thing it doesn’t even work as a gimmick. Perhaps ABC is just cutting back on the town car budget. Brazile says that Feingold’s censure bill will give Dems “another bite at the apple” re: position on national security but Will points out that “not one Democrat, including Feingold, wants to stop the program” and encourages Frist to let it come to a vote so that Dems are forced to vote against it embarrassing themselves, etc. Carney is of the opinion that, you know, perhaps the President breaking the law is something the Democrats could in fact get some mileage out of. Ya think?Shipman starts to disagree — “I’m confused as to how this is going to help them [Democrats]” — and there is a tantalizing moment of possible junior varsity Carville-Matalin fake fireworks but it passes.

I think I have the same sweater as Claire.

Shipman: “Who knows what they’ll [the admin] will do.” Carney: “I don’t think Karl Rove will shake things up.” I feel bad for these people. They are all trapped in a force field of pundit vacuity. Indeed, Will predicts that the President stop giving “happy speeches.” And we have now come to the portion of today’s program where everyone sheepishly admits that early straw polls don’t matter but then go on to talk about them for ten more minutes. Carney calls bullshit on McCain’s bear hug of Bush: “Those of us who remember the depth of the loathing” between the two in 2000 and after find such chumminess unconvincing; he gets all Nell Carter on us: “give me a break.” Politics of abortion. The end.

Traditional show biz segment is actually with Art Buchwald, from a Washington hospice, epitomizing dignity and dark humor: “I believe in God, but I’m not too certain that the people who are telling me that ‘it’s God’s will’ are the people I want to be listening to.”

Meet the Press
Transcript, Video, Podcast

How predictable has this Sunday’s chat show line up been? Biden is on MTP. Aaaannyyyyway… George Allen is the other guest and he looks doughy and pink, like he’s been scrubbed really hard. This would include rubbing out any original thoughts: Apparently it is important for Iraq to form a unified government. Tim asks Biden if voting for the war was a mistake: “The mistake I made that I never thought they’d be this incompetent in pursuit of the war.” It’s not me, it’s you. Points out that the important audience for Bush’s messages of optimism about Iraq isn’t Americans, it’s Iraqis: “He needs to be on a plane.”

Good news, George Allen does not think the “the terrorists are winning the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq.” Yes, they’re blowing up their hearts and minds. Cheaper than having to win them. Tim asks the tough questions: Is leaving chaos behind in Iraq a “foreign policy disaster”? You will be surprised to learn that Biden believes it would be. Whole thing would be more entertaining if we were playing Joe Biden self-reference bingo: “Remember on your show, I called for more troops?”

From Iraq to Iran. What did Cheney mean by “meaningful consequences” for Iran developing nuclear weapons? Who the fuck knows but it’s bad. George Allen is a genius: “we don’t want a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.” Biden has a senior moment confusing impact of sanctions on “Iraq… Iran.” Bush administration has trouble telling them apart as well.

Allen defends his not-spectacular showing in SRLC straw poll: “It’s kinda like a pick-up game. Intrasquad scrimmages matter… this was just a pick up game.” Biden pats him on the shoulder and says it’ll be okay. Tim asks Biden why he hasn’t been down to New Orleans: “It didn’t feel right.” Joe Biden: too noble to grandstand. I have just lost my breakfast.

Allen backed into a corner on South Dakota abortion law: Repeatedly says he wants states to be able to decide abortion law. But REFUSES to say if Roe should be overturned: “People should have the right to make these distinctions, and to the extent Roe prevents that, it would be overturned.” Once people start running for president, they lose the ability to only talk out of one side of their mouth. Also: He’s not a Bush Republican, he’s a “common sense Jeffersonian Republican.” Biden says he’ll run for President unless “it turns out that I can’t get the support or I can’t get the money,” or if he can’t write his own speeches.

Michael Gordan and Gen. Bernard Trainor on to talk about Cobra II, a new book about the Iraq war and what went wrong. This is one of those things that might actually turn out to be relevant and insightful, and what do you know? First example of USA fuckups, is that NIC, the name of the new Iraq army, turns out to sound like “fuck” in Arabic. Little-known fact: “greet as liberators” also sounds like “blow up with improvised devices.” Other mistakes are less hilarious. Not enough troops (despite numerous studies and lots of advice to bring in more), bad intelligence in initial first strike at Saddam, homogenous thinking inside the military, inability to foresee power of insurgency. Okay, that last one is kinda funny. Trainor talks like a football dad: “Donald Rumsfeld is a tough hombre to deal with… he just wears you down.” Asked how it ends, Trainor says “it doesn’t necessarily have to end in civil war.” Whee.

Tim’s closing sports pander: “Go Boston College Eagles.”

Face the Nation
Transcript (.pdf), Obama (video)

Barack Obama praised as “absolute star” of Saturday’s Gridiron show, where apparently people made many jokes about Cheney having shot someone in the face. (Wait: The Vice President shot someone in the face?!?) Genial chatter as Bob Schieffer gives Barack a big sloppy kiss for being such a hilarious and handsome guy…. then, suddenly: “So what are we going to do in Iraq?” Ah. Barack: “We can’t try to hold the country together by sheer force.” Dodges the “do you agree with Murtha?” question, though sets up a kind of ultimatum: “if they don’t form a government, our role will be necessarily limited.”

He has a succinct answer for why the Democrats are having a hard time getting their message across: “It’s always difficult when you don’t control any branch of government.” On health care and port security, “if we are willing to repeat ourselves — sometimes we’re worse than Republicans at keeping our message simple — we can succeed.” Thinks Democrats have made a mistake in avoiding even discussing abortion, and that they should “engage in debate about moral values” in Red States. Not just abortion, but “how we treat our poor and the Sermon on the Mount.”

On Hillary: “Half my colleagues are running for president. I’m not going to take the bait on that one.” There should be a check on executive power, and he’s not going to let lobbying reform “slide off the table.”

Former fatty Mike Huckabee drops by fresh from SRLC, “Do you want to announce right now that you’re running for president?” He would rather announce for 2016, he says, which suggests he needs a new campaign adviser. Schieffer asks about the fat thing there’s some communications foul up during which Huckabee says he lost 110 pounds and Schieffer says 120. All this talk of anti-obesity programs and Huckabee’s own personal journal really makes him sound more like an Oprah guest than politician. (which means he’s already running for president).

From junk food to junk politics: So what about Iraq? He thinks the information he’s getting from people “with their boots on the ground” is better than “some people who have yet to go” (journalists? Rumsfeld?). He really believes they’re making progress — “When I pulled the soldiers from Arkansas aside” and asked if they got what they needed and if they believed that what they were doing was worthwhile, the answers were “yes.” Can’t argue with that, though one would hope soldiers believed in what they were doing or else I’m not sure if they’d be doing it very well. Besides, what the soldiers think isn’t really the issue. That’s why they’re soldiers.

He is wearing an unfortunate tie. Egyptianish? Schieffer’s is Cheney pink.

He loves Bush. Bush believes in what he’s doing, much like the soldiers in Iraq, though I am not sure Bush is getting what he needs.

Schieffer’s final word: The President needs to tell the American people why we’re in Iraq, but even more important than that, he needs to explain it to Iraqis.