After joking on Twitter that I was scheduled to appear on Hardball to discuss Michael Jackson's impact on politics--after having been booked to review the latest on embattled Governor Mark Sanford and new Senator Al Franken--I then went on Hardball and actually had to talk about Michael Jackson. That's because both President Barack Obama and ex-President Bill Clinton made statements about MJ today. So we shifted subjects. Jackson, in. Sanford, out. Franken, still in. (Sanford, who was censured by the South Carolina GOP on Monday night, has lucked out. His love life just can't compete with Sarah Palin's wackiness or Michael Jackson's demise.) Here's how it went:

 

Yesterday I posted an entry--or at least thought I did--and when I checked hours later, it wasn't there. Technical gremlins? Human error? Mongolian hackers? I don't know. Here's that item. 

After Mark Sanford (from MIA scandal to sex scandal), Michael Jackson (from comeback to drop dead), and Sarah Palin (from political Cover Girl to inexplicable cover story), it's refreshing to return to policy wonkery. After all, it seems like ages since the national discussion was dwelling on the details of a possible public health insurance option or the pros and cons of taxing employee health care benefits. In the past week or so, it's as if a genii had granted the editors of PEOPLE magazine three wishes. (Well, I suppose if that had really occurred one wish would surely have involved Brad and Angelina.)

So how refreshing to receive several policy-drenched fact sheets and handouts from the White House on arms control and US-Russian relations. For instance. One declared:

On April 1, Presidents Obama and Medvedev agreed in London that America and Russian negotiators would begin work on a new, comprehensive, legally binding agreement on reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms to replace the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which expires on December 5, 2009.

On July 6, Presidents Medvedev and Obama signed a Joint Understanding to guide the remainder of the negotiations. The Joint Understanding commits the United States and Russia to reduce their strategic warheads to a range of 1500-1675, and their strategic delivery vehicles to a range of 500-1100.  Under the expiring START and the Moscow treaties the maximum allowable levels of warheads is 2200 and the maximum allowable level of launch vehicles is 1600.

Good news: the United States and Russia are on the road to significant cuts in their nuclear arsenals, though each side will still retain enough nukes to cause a real mess should they be fired. Both governments also agreed to increase their joint efforts to prevent loose nukes from reaching the wrong hands and to work together on a number of issues related to Afghanistan. Moscow also gave Washington permission to transport weaponry destined for the war in Afghanistan through Russian airspace.

These were not total breakthroughs. But after George W. Bush bumbled US-Russian relations for eight years, this was not a bad start. And President Barack Obama (so far) has said nothing about seeing into the soul of Russian President Medvedev. A joint press conference held by Obama and Medvedev--only two questions a side--was televised live by MSNBC. So millions--make that, thousands--of Americans could hear the two leaders discussing strategic arms control issues and their still-unresolved differences on ballistic missile defense. What a change from mega-coverage of the latest on the MJ story. But look, there's live video of police chasing a car on Beltway 8 in Texas. Gotta go.

Today, of course, it's back to Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson--at least in TV land.  Fun fact of the day: "Michael respected artists like van Gogh" (c/o some expert on MSNBC whose name I didn't catch).

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Did Michael Jackson kill the Iranian revolution?

I don't mean that exactly. But the story of the Iranian crisis was subsumed by the mega-media coverage of the pop singer's tragic end. Iran now appears as barely a blip on our collective RSS feed. We've gone from the whole world is watching to much of the world has moved on.

A few data points. First, in recent days there have been few questions at the White House press briefings on Iran. On Wednesday, Fox News correspondent Major Garrett asked press secretary Robert Gibbs what the president thought about the Iranian police's conclusion that the Neda killing was staged y the opposition. Gibbs met that softball with the obvious swing: "shocking." I followed up with what I considered a more substantial query on Iran, asking Gibbs about Mir Hossein Mousavi's statement of that day. Mousavi had called for continuing protests, had declared the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "illegitimate," and had called for the release of detained opposition supporters. Did the president have any reaction, I asked, and has he called for the release of people who have been detained in Iran?

Gibbs said he was unaware if the White House had prepared any comment regarding Mousavi's statement, and he fell back on the usual talking points:

Obviously, David, you've heard the President speak on a number of occasions that the President strongly believes in the right for people to gather in protest without fear or harm or violence.  Obviously there are still a lot of questions that surround the most recent election.  And I think I'll leave it at that.

I've said for weeks that Obama, by and large, has struck the right tone in his remarks about events in Iran. But this response seemed a bit thin. Was it an indication that day to day events in Iran were not looming large within an already quite busy  White House?

On the other side of aisle, let's check in with John McCain's twitter feed, which is followed by over 915,000 people. When I looked at it on Thursday morning, I saw that McCain, who had been calling for more forceful US response on Iran, has not twittered on the subject for a week. But he has twittered about his various media appearances in Arizona during the past week. In twitter-terms, he has left the barricades.

I'll spare you the obvious chest-beating about the ADD of the American public and media. And, of course, the tyrants of Tehran have suppressed media reporting within Iran. No video or pictures--the story fades.

Many analysts who know Iran better than I do have been saying for weeks that given the weak leadership and poor organization of the anti-government movement, the opposition in Iran is in for a long slog. (The Islamic revolution of 1979 took two years to achieve victory.) So don't expect results in the flash of a tweet. Still, the autocrats of Tehran must be saying, "Thank you, Michael Jackson." (Ditto for Governor Mark Sanford.) Today, Americans know far more about the moondancer's will and Neverland  than what's happening--or not--in Iran. And, alas, they care more about it, too.
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To see a music video of a song by an Iranian pop singer who's been arrested for supporting the opposition, click here.
 
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The Democrats are planning something other than cook-outs for the Fourth of July. From Politico:

Democrats plan a July 4th ad campaign to punish House Republicans who voted against the $100-plus billion Iraq and Afghanistan war supplemental - emulating GOP attacks against John Kerry and other Dems who voted against Bush war bills.

A series of 60-second radio ads will run during drive time from July 1 through July 8, according to a script provided to POLITICO -- and they have the support-our-troops ring of GOP spots.

They'll target seven Republicans seen as vulnerable in '10, including Reps. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), Charlie Dent (R-Penn.), Jim Gerlach (R-Penn.), Dan Lungren (R-Calif.), Mike McCaul (R-TX), Lee Terry (R-Neb.) and Joe Wilson (R-SC).

This will be an interesting test case, for one important political question these days is, does anyone give a damn about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

At the presidential news conference earlier this week, not a single reporter asked President Barack Obama about either war. This week there's been a series of deadly bombings in Iraq, killing about 200 people--as US forces prepare to withdraw from Iraqi cities. This horrific violence has received little media attention in the United States. And when was the last time you saw a full report on the war in Afghanistan on television? There's an important presidential campaign under way in Afghanistan. Its outcome could have a big impact on the US war effort there. Yet, it registers barely a blip on the US media landscape. (At Mother Jones, we post a daily "We're Still at War Photo of the Day.")

So can Democrats score points by whacking Republicans in Rove-ian fashion for "not supporting the troops"? Unfortunately, I don't have much time to ponder this; a report on Michael Jackson's autopsy is coming up after the next commercial.

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