David Corn

Are Sarah Palin's true-believers crying, "Say it ain't so"? No, abiding by the spin-is-all rule of modern politics, they are praising Palin's decision to quit as yet more evidence of her leadership abilities.

Team Sarah, a group of conservatives who fancy the soon-to-be-ex Alaska governor, released this statement on Friday night:

WASHINGTON, July 3 -- Today Team Sarah commented on the announcement that Sarah Palin will step down as Governor of Alaska on July 25, 2009: "Sarah Palin has always been an intensely independent woman -- always true to her faith, her family and call to public service. She has taken vast numbers of Americans to a new place: politics without cynicism. And she has provided women with a new political role model," said Team Sarah Co-Founder Marjorie Dannenfelser. "Her entrance onto the public stage has had an immensely positive effect, drawing in massive numbers of Americans new to the political process. We have every confidence she will have an equal and profound impact in whatever projects she undertakes now."

"Team Sarah members anxiously await Palin's next decision on how she believes she can best serve our nation. Since the 2008 Election, the continual presence of personal attacks on both Governor Palin and her family indicate that she remains a threat to the liberal feminist political establishment," said Team Sarah Co-Founder Jane Abraham. "Despite criticism, Governor Palin's success will endure. Team Sarah's thousands of members remain as engaged as ever on TeamSarah.org. The Governor has inspired millions, and her audience of enthusiastic support will only grow in the future."

Team Sarah is a coalition of Americans dedicated to advancing the values that Sarah Palin represents in the political process. Its political networking website, www.teamsarah.org, has grown to over 70,000 activists. Co-Founders of Team Sarah include Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List, and Jane Abraham, the organization's General Chairman.

Perhaps once you've found your dream gal it's hard to let go.

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I'm traveling, but I got the news. For pithy observations and questions, please check out my Twitter feed. The Republican soap opera keeps getting better--more entertaining than an HBO series.

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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Good news and bad from Pakistan. A new poll shows that 81 percent of Pakistanis now believe that the Taliban and "Islamist militants" (what we call al Qaeda) pose a "critical threat" to Pakistan. This is up from only 34 percent in September 2007. And it means that the Pakistani government could have more leeway to deal with the Taliban and al Qaeda militants within its borders. But there's a but. A large majority of Pakistanis--69 percent--have an unfavorable view of the United States, even after the election of Barack Obama.

From WorldPublicOpinion.org, a project managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland:

"A sea change has occurred in Pakistani public opinion. The tactics and undemocratic bent of militant groups--in tribal areas as well as Swat--have brought widespread revulsion and turned Pakistanis against them," comments Clay Ramsay, research director. However, he adds: "It's crucial to understand that the US is resented just as much as before, despite the US having a new president."

So if the Pakistani government moves boldly against the Taliban and other militants, it could have the support of a majority of Pakistanis behind it. Yet if the Pakistani government is seen to be doing the bidding of the United States, those actions could upset many, if not most, Pakistanis:

Eighty-eight percent think it is a US goal to weaken and divide the Islamic world (78% definitely a goal). The US Predator drone attacks aimed at militant camps within the Pakistani border are rejected by 82 percent as unjustified. On the war in Afghanistan, 72 percent disapprove of the NATO mission and 79 percent want it ended now; 86 percent think most Afghans want the mission ended as well.

According to this poll, they still really don't like us, and there's been no "Obama effect." The bottom line is a pretty obvious one: getting Pakistan right is a tough task for the Obama administration. The same, of course, is true for Afghanistan--especially now that President Hamid Karzai's campaign reelection is based partly on his criticisms of the US presence in Afghanistan. (He recently accused US forces of protecting security guards who killed several Afghan security officers during a gun battle.)

But this poll does show that in Pakistan there is potential for developing pubic support for government actions that would be in sync with US aims for AfPak-land. Let's hope that Joe Biden, Richard Holbrooke and others are pondering how best to take advantage of this shift in public attitudes.

Vivek Kundra is a rock star.

At least at the annual  Personal Democracy Forum conference. On Tuesday morning, Kundra, the chief information officer of the Obama administration, opened the second day of this gathering of digital techies by unveiling a new dashboard that taxpayers can use to track the federal government's spending on information technology. The crowd went wild. They greeted his announcement with a standing ovation.

You can go to Data.gov to see this new tool, which will allow you to obtain and mash data about IT programs across the federal government. For example, as Kundra said, you could check out "how much the US Department of Agriculture spends on information technology projects and what is the health of those projects." You can see who's getting the IT contracts, assess the performance of those contracts, and provide feedback to the CIOs of these agencies.

Not your idea of a hot time? Okay. But as Kundra pointed out, the US government spends about $70 billion a year on IT, and much of this money gets wasted on lousy IT. He noted that a 1994 report found that billions of dollars in federal IT investments went down the drain. And he referred to a 2008 report that concluded that $30 billion in IT programs were in trouble. That report, Kundra griped, didn't even provide a list of the specific IT programs in jeopardy. And, he said, big federal IT programs often take 18 months to two years to get off the launching pad, but by then the technology has changed and outpaced the project's original specs. Remember those FBI computers?

So getting IT right in the federal government is a big deal. By putting all this data on line, Kundra is inviting outside-the-government experts to vet what is happening within the government. He's also applying principles of accountability and transparency to this uber-wonky aspect of governance. Kundra also noted that CIOs in federal agencies have been ordered to inspect every single IT investment. And when he declared that the IT dashboard has been released in beta form--signaling that the government would seek input from users on how to improve it--the PDF audience exploded in applause.

Kundra was introduced to the conference by Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. Newmark said he was enthusiastic about Washington these days, noting that the government was now in the hands of nerds, wonks, and hybrids he calls "nonks" Kundra may be the top nonk of the administration. When Kundra said, "This is a new approach to advancing technology in government," the hundreds of nonks in the room smiled and nodded approvingly. If this jazzes them so much, non-nonks should be heartened.

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For anyone who has been enthused or engaged by the opposition movement that emerged after the Iran elections, it's been frustrating trying to figure out what's going on in Iran--with that opposition and with the government. One Tehran filmmaker sent me an email on Sunday expressing his/her own frustration when it comes to understanding the recent moves of the various players.

One of the more interesting--though hardly uplifting-- interpretations of recent events in Iran comes from Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, and author Reza Aslan. In Foreign Policy, they write:

Iran's popular uprising, which began after the June 12 election, may be heading for a premature ending. In many ways, the Ahmadinejad government has succeeded in transforming what was a mass movement into dispersed pockets of unrest. Whatever is now left of this mass movement is now leaderless, unorganized -- and under the risk of being hijacked by groups outside Iran in pursuit of their own political agendas.

The pair explain:

Although successful at first, the discipline [of the opposition movement] has clearly broken down. This should be no surprise -- the movement is by now in effect leaderless. A source close to Mousavi says that the first and second circle of people around Mousavi have all been arrested or put under house arrest. Mousavi himself has limited ability to communicate with his team and his followers. The lack of leadership is visible on the streets, where demonstrators exhibit unparalleled will and courage, but lack direction and guidance.

Indeed, the lack of organization and execution is perhaps the most convincing evidence that the anti-Ahmadinejad movement is completely homegrown and void of any attempt to emulate the velvet revolutions of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. What is driving people to the streets is their sense of frustration and anger -- not a well-devised plan and training in clever nonviolent resistance techniques.

The leadership vacuum does not bode well for the movement's prospects of success, particularly when it comes to attracting those Iranian swing-voters to its side once more. And this creates openings for external meddling -- just not the kind you think.

The two are worried that outside groups--exile outfits or neocons--will try to fill this vacuum or attempt to influence the opposition, if only by tossing around rhetoric that will make it easier for the autocrats to depict the opposition as being whipped up by Iran's external enemies. If the opposition is going to keep going, they contend, it's going to have to continue to win over so-called "swing voters" in Iran. How an unorganized opposition manages to do that they don't say. But it seems to me that a regrouping is necessary and perhaps a long-term strategy has to be developed. Whether anyone is doing that is unknown--thanks to the (so far successful) crackdown of the tyrants of Tehran.

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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This was first posted at MotherJones.com....

I was feeling sort of sorry for Mark Sanford. His emails to Maria indicate he was deeply in love with her, and, thus, he was in a difficult situation. These things happen--even to conservatives. And, yes, he was a blazing hypocrite, voting for the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act and claiming that he knew the true meaning of marriage:

As Jenny and I are the parents of four little boys, we've always taught our kids that marriage was something between a man and a woman.

Still, I wondered how tough we should be on a fellow caught in these circumstances. Until I watched the video of Sanford's speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference last March.

His address was red meat for empathy-free conservatives. Sanford, taking a Palinesque view, proclaimed to the crowd of conservative activists that the United States has reached a historic moment in which the "battle line" is between "government on one side" and "liberty...on the other." In what now comes across as a poignant observation, Sanford noted that the toughest problems to contend with are "internal problems," such as "your personal life." His contention was that the United States now has a serious internal problem:

We literally do live at one of the most pivotal points in American history. Every one of our threats, or pretty much all of our threats, have been external in nature. I mean, what were the British going to do to us? Or what were the Germans going to do to? Or what were the Japanese going to do? It was always what was somebody going to do to us. But the real question of our times is, what are we going to do to us? I mean, it is a very different question, because as we all know external problems at times aren't all that difficult to deal with. Internal problems--whether in your personal life, whether in business, whether in government--are the real problems that are hard to get your arms around. And what we have right now is a problem of internal. [sic] And the question is, what do we do about it?

Sanford defined this internal problem as too many Americans depending on government for guidance and assistance. He pointed to the victims of the Hurricane Katrina tragedy and asked, "Did you see people who saw themselves as lions or gazelles?" His point: too many of the Louisianan residents clobbered by Katrina and the failure of the levies viewed themselves as needy gazelles, not strong and independent lions, and actually expected government to help them. For Sanford, this sums up the "internal problem": Americans have become weak and unable to assist themselves because government has become too big.

His ideology-driven lack of sympathy for these people was not charming. After viewing this video, I lost any empathy I might have had for Sanford. If he's going to judge others so harshly on the basis of what he considers to be their weaknesses, then he deserves similar treatment. Yes, "internal problems" in one's personal life are hard to handle, but try dealing with 20 feet of water on your block.

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Dana Milbank spanks President Obama and HuffPo's Nico Pitney for conspiring to provide the president a chance to answer a question from an Iranian at Tuesday's press conference. Milbank often is spot-on in his depictions of Washington's follies and foibles, but he may have misguided his outrage on this one.

Milbank accurately notes that the White House gave Pitney a strong indication that he would be called on at the press conference. That does sound as if the White House was planting a question. And here's how Milbank describes what happened:

Pitney asked his arranged question. Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel grinned at the surprised TV correspondents in the first row.

The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised. But yesterday wasn't so much a news conference as it was a taping of a new daytime drama, "The Obama Show."

A bad message to Iran? Oh my. But White House aides, having noticed that Pitney has been live-blogging the Iranian crisis, had asked him if he would solicit a question from Iranians for Obama. This was not exactly the same thing as arranging for a specific question--or even a sympathetic one. Obama didn't know what Pitney would ask, and Ptiney's query, as it turned out, was a tough one. Obama didn't really answer it:

PITNEY: We solicited questions last night from people who are still courageous enough to be communicating online, and one of them wanted to ask you this: Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad? And if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of what the demonstrators there are working towards?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, we didn't have international observers on the ground. We can't say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country. What we know is that a sizeable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It's not an isolated instance -- a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so ultimately the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States. And that's why I've been very clear: Ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.

Obama dodged. He did not state under what conditions he would accept an Ahmadinejad victory, and he did not say whether engaging with Ahmadinejad at some point would be a betrayal of the Iranian opposition. I bet that Iranian was disappointed--if he was able to learn of Obama's response.

Granted, there was something artificial about all this. The White House spurred Pitney to ask a specific sort of question and essentially told him he'd be called on. But, then, there is something artificial about the entire enterprise of presidential press conferences.

Before a press conference begins, the White House decides on the dozen or so reporters the president will call on. The rest of us need not be there at all. And while the White House does not tell journalists they are on this golden list, it's fair to assume that the wire service reporters and the major television network correspondents will be chosen. So about half of the reporters on the list, more or less, have advance notice every time the president holds a news conference. And this list isn't very long, given that Obama usually uses a question as an opportunity to recite, at length, his talking points (as eloquent as they are) on the matter at hand.

At presidential press conferences, there ought to be more spontaneity, more to and fro, and, more important, more questions from a wider range of questioners. (Spin a wheel?) That's the issue, not Nico-gate.
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By the way, I'm filling in for blogger Kevin Drum for a few days. Feel free to check out my postings on Jake Tapper and Mick Jagger and climate change.

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On a day when the politerati focused on President Barack Obama's press conference (Iran, health care, Iran, health care, the economy, smoking, Iran), Chris Matthews, Richard Wolffe, and I went off-topic to discuss whether Michelle Obama can help her husband sell the health care bill now under construction in Congress. We then moved on to the "disappearance" of GOP South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

 

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