An experienced plumber vs an inexperienced president.

He who hesitates. (See 1 below.)

Now the denial. (See 2 below.)

Olmert's demands for speaking or appearing are small compared to "Ole" Bill's who gets around $1/2 million. (See 3 below.)

Wm Tate suggests McClellan was manipulated by his publisher as well. Maybe McClellan can now write the history of the pretzel. (See 4 below.)

Jackie Mason on Obama. (See 5 below.)

David Frum writes GW got the servants he deserved but agrees he did not deserve Scott McClellan.

Without perhaps realizing it, Frum raises an interesting issue I have often thought about and discussed. Any president has the entire nation's collective talent to call upon but they generally build staff choosing among campaign loyalists or former cronies. Carter did it and looked what happened. How does/should a president go about hiring the best when he owes so much to those who helped him get there? (See 6 below.)

Democrats want to stop at the water's edge of victory and retreat to the defeat island? Lead Wall Street Journal Editorial regarding al Qaeda's dire and worsening position. (See 7 below.)

Lanny Davis demonstrates loyalty and fights the good fight for Hillary and the Clinton Mafia. (See 8 below.)

But then, Newsweek's pre-eminent whiner, Eleanor Clift, tells Hillary to stop whining and realize you lost. (See 8 below.)

Florida and Michigan will learn whether Democrats believe they are still part of the Union this weekend. Like we initially and despicably treated blacks in our Constitution it appears the issue will be resolved by considering citizens of these two states as half-citizens. (See 9 below.)

Have a great weekend.

Dick


1) Hamas threatens Gaza escalation while PM Olmert plans Washington trip


Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has scheduled a consultation on the lingering Gaza missile crisis with defense minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Livni for Sunday, June 1 before taking off Monday for a week of talks in Washington.

The prime minister is traveling in the face of rising pressure for him to step down over the corruption scandal hanging over his head. Both Barak and Livni have openly supported this demand.

The three leaders have been warned repeatedly by Israel’s military and intelligence chiefs that the longer effective action against Hamas and its allied terrorist groups is delayed, the harder and more costly in lives the operation will be.

Mahmoud A-Zahar, speaking for Hamas in an interview Saturday, May 31, threatened that if Israel rejects his group’s ceasefire terms in Gaza and refuses to end its blockade, “the Palestinians will resort to all means at their disposal including armed force.”

Saturday, the Egyptian police reported the discovery of 30 anti-air missiles in a large arms cache in Sinai 80 km. south of the Gaza Strip. It also contained rifles, 2,000 rifle rounds, sacks of hand grenades and RPGs. The weapons were to have been smuggled into Gaza through tunnels. Police are investigating their source.

Palestinians sources add: Hamas’ truce offer is a take-it-or-leave-it proposition through Cairo; it has no intention of halting the ongoing build-up of its Iran- and Syria-backed war machine or controlling fellow terrorist groups’ attacks on Israeli locations neighboring on the Gaza Strip.

Saturday morning, a Hamas activist blew himself up and injured 16 family members and passers-by while handling explosives at his home in Gaza City.

Five missiles were fired at civilian locations Friday causing damage but no injuries.

Seven Palestinians were injured Friday when Israeli soldiers broke up a second mass assault organized by Hamas to smash through the Gaza-Israel border – this one at the southern Sufa crossing.

2) Syria denies accord with Israel on core issues

Dr. Samir Taki, a close aide of Syrian president Bashar Assad, denied reports that Syrian-Israeli peace talks had reached the point of discussing core issues of water, borders, security and normal relations. In an interview with the Kuwait Al-Anba, Dr. Taki added that the talks were only just beginning and not yet matured.

3) Olmert's memo: If you want me, pay for 'first class' hotels, flights
By Gidi Weitz


There was a form in Ehud Olmert's bureau, which was sent out to the various organizations that financed his trips abroad and stipulated the conditions of his lodgings. The document, which was made available to Haaretz, states that the organization inviting Olmert must underwrite a suite in a 'first class' hotel, preferably one in which cigar smoking is permitted. The hotel has to be equipped with a gym.

Olmert's flights, too, always had to be first class. Indeed a flight that he took in February 2005, while serving as industry and trade minister, to a dinner in Palm Beach, Florida, to participate in an event organized by the March of the Living organization with his friend Avraham Hirchson, cost about $20,000. In September 2004, he flew to New York for two days at the expense of the mogul Edmundo Safdie, to attend a reception. The cost of the first-class ticket: $7,600.

On October 2, 2005, while serving as vice prime minister and finance minister, Olmert flew to Washington for a short trip with his wife, Aliza, who was exhibiting a collection of her art in the American capital under the title 'Tikkun' (which in Hebrew means 'repairing' or 'restoring'). Morris Talansky paid about $4,700 for the couple's three-night stay in a hotel.

This is not the first time Mrs. Olmert's paintings have been mentioned in a police investigation. In 1991, her husband was investigated on suspicion of having accepted illegal donations for the Likud's 1988 election campaign, when he was the party's treasurer. During the questioning, in a police facility, the interrogators surprised Olmert by asking, according to the files: "In November 1988, your wife, Aliza, and one of your children went to the United States. What was the purpose of their trip?"

Olmert: "A private trip."

Interrogator: "Who paid for the trip?"

Olmert: "Generally, I pay for my family's or my own private trips."

Interrogator: "Was that trip paid for by Likud funds?"

Olmert: "I am astounded by the question. I never dealt with the technical side of payment for my trips. That is always done by my assistant, Shula Zaken, who is in ongoing contact with the travel agency and debits my account according to need. I would imagine that if there was a problem regarding a payment, she would have told me, but I never heard anything like that from her, and I never asked for Likud funds to be used to pay for a private trip of mine or of anyone else in my family. I suggest you ask Mrs. Zaken."

Heeding Olmert's recommendation, the police summoned Zaken, then the bureau chief of health minister Ehud Olmert, for questioning on June 13, 1991, at the headquarters of the National Fraud Investigations Unit. They showed her evidence that the Olmert family's trip was paid for with funds suspected of passing through the Likud coffers. "I know about that trip, I handled the arrangements," the loyal bureau chief replied. "I remember it well, because the trip was intended for one of Mrs. Olmert's exhibitions abroad. It was a private trip to exhibit paintings in New York."

Zaken denied paying for the trip in cash. Her explanation of the trip being financed by Likud funds was that there had been confusion in the travel agency between payment for the private trip of the Olmerts and payment for trips abroad by senior Likud officials. This episode was part of the investigation of the alleged fictitious receipts affair, for which Olmert was tried in 1996, and acquitted.

A month ago, when Olmert was questioned by the police in the Talansky affair, he again suggested that the interrogators ask Zaken for answers concerning the money he received from the American businessman. This time Zaken preferred to invoke the right to remain silent.

In February 2006, a month before the elections in which Olmert became prime minister, Zaken celebrated her 49th birthday at an extravagant party held in an Eilat hotel. The event was organized by her good friend Simu Tubol, a Jerusalem businessman. Zaken also invited other close friends, such as attorney Uri Messer, cabinet secretary Oved Yehezkel, former Jerusalem city engineer Uri Sheetrit and others. The group went on a cruise, danced and enjoyed a festive meal.

Afterward they all gathered at the hotel. Zaken took a microphone and told her friends, as she wiped away a tear, "I thank you for viewing my job as a mission, as I myself view it. What I want most is to see Ehud sitting in the chair."

A few months after Olmert was elected prime minister, officers of the Fraud Investigations Unit came to Zaken's home in the early morning and interrogated her at the unit's headquarters. Zaken was suspected of having promoted the candidacy of Jacky Matza as head of the Israel Tax Authority, in return for which he would give her friends key jobs in the authority. Among other things, Zaken was questioned on suspicion that she had asked Matza to intervene in a criminal proceeding against Tubol, who had organized her birthday party in Eilat.


In his court deposition this week, Talansky said it was Zaken who called him in New York to ask him to prepare money for Olmert, and that it was she who received most of the envelopes of cash from him. She also documented in her computer the cash transfers on several occasions. Zaken is far from the grotesque caricature of her portrayed on the satirical television program 'A Wonderful Country.' She is both smart and politically savvy.

In 1999, Olmert effectively supported the election of Labor Party chairman Ehud Barak as prime minister by declaring publicly in a Jerusalem hotel that, "Barak will not divide Jerusalem." Zaken had been opposed to Olmert's support for Barak, so much that she tried to stop him physically from going to that event. Olmert's statement was prominent in all of Barak's television ads and was extremely harmful to the campaign of then prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the Likud. Zaken was, in fact, prescient: A few months later Olmert was trounced by Ariel Sharon in the battle for the Likud leadership; the party faithful accused Olmert of betraying both Netanyahu and the party.

Zaken accompanied Olmert for 30 years, handled his private accounts and was even able to tell him, at the beginning of 2005, that he had NIS 2 million in his bank account. She also reminded him every year to call Talansky on his birthday to wish him well.

One of Zaken's friends recently recalled that when she asked Zaken, a month after Olmert's election as prime minister, what she was up to, she replied without hesitation: "I am appointing cabinet ministers." Fraud unit personnel obtained printouts from Zaken's bank accounts in order to trace money transfers from Talansky. "I am ready to swear that Zaken did not get money from Talansky," one of her close friends said this week. "If she got into trouble, it was only because she did not understand the limits of power."

Since being questioned in the Talansky affair, she has hardly left the house. Her relations with Olmert have soured. Since the tax authority case she has complained frequently that the boss is not devoting enough time and attention to her.

In November 2005, the new finance minister, Ehud Olmert, flew to New York to attend the celebration of his grandson's circumcision. In the morning, a heavyset, white-haired man wearing a black skullcap arrived at the reception desk of the luxury Regency Hotel and asked the clerk where a "Mr. Risby" was staying. He then took the elevator up to the suite and knocked on the door.

The door opened and his old friend, Ehud Olmert, embraced the visitor, Talansky, warmly. "He asked for a loan of $15,000," Talansky recalled this week in his deposition to the Jerusalem District Court. Talansky said he went to a Citibank branch near the hotel, withdrew the money, put it in a bank envelope and gave it to Olmert. He said he told Olmert that he wanted the money back soon.

Olmert denied having received the money when he was questioned by the police. A police check revealed that the date of his stay in New York coincides with the date on which Talansky withdrew the amount of money he testified about.

On the eve of Olmert's trip, his bureau asked the Israeli consulate in New York to organize working meetings for him. Thanksgiving was imminent, and the consulate could only set up a few of them, in Olmert's hotel suite. The Finance Ministry told Haaretz this week that Olmert's flight on that occasion, costing some NIS 19,000, was paid for by the state. He also received expenses. Because of the meetings, Olmert's bureau turned a private trip into a working visit, paid by the state. In reply to a question from Haaretz, Olmert's bureau said this week, "The matter is under investigation and will be clarified in the future." Talansky was not invited to the circumcision ceremony, and in his deposition said he was deeply hurt by this.

In that same month, November 2005, in which Talansky allegedly handed the fat envelope to Olmert, Olmert sent a letter to billionaire Sheldon Adelson asking him to assist Talansky's mini-bar business. Olmert sent another letter to the defense minister of Chile, Jaime Ravinet de la Fuente, asking him to assist ImageSat, a company that markets satellite imagery, in which Talansky is an investor. In his letter, published here for the first time, Olmert wrote: "Dear Minister Ravinet, I was very pleased to learn from Mr. Shimon Eckhaus, CEO of ImageSat International, about your meeting and the possible joint space program with Chile. We in Israel have recognized that imaging satellite [sic] is a perfect subject for dual-use applications. The Israeli Ministry of Defense is one of ImageSat customers and I hope that Chile will join us as well and benefit from our vast experience in this field. If I can be of any further assistance in any way, please do not hesitate to contact me. With kind regards, Sincerely, Ehud Olmert." Talansky stated in court that he did not ask Olmert to write this letter.

One meeting appearing on the itineraries of Olmert's trips to New York, which were found by the police, is a get-together with Talansky in a fancy restaurant called Thalassa, in Tribeca on November 2, 2004, at 2:45 P.M. The restaurant specializes in lobster and organic food and has a 5,000-bottle wine cellar. The timetable shows that the Olmert-Talansky meeting lasted only 15 minutes: At 3 P.M., Olmert was to meet his son Shaul and another person for lunch in the same restaurant.

Talansky stated in court this week that 15 minutes was the time Olmert usually allotted him. But when interrogators asked him about the restaurant meeting, he denied it altogether. "Thalassa? How do you spell it?" he asked, adding that he does not frequent nonkosher restaurants. Olmert also denied the meeting took place.

A few days before the officers from the fraud squad showed up unexpectedly at his house at 6 A.M. and took Talansky for questioning, the American businessman met with attorney Uri Messer. Talansky told the police that Messer had tried to find out from him whether he had been questioned by the police about his relations with Olmert. Messer stated in his interrogation that it was in fact Talansky who told him he had been questioned in the United States about the matter, and tried to find out if he, Messer, knew anything. Messer said he asked Talansky to leave immediately.

In his deposition, Talansky related that he had met Messer in New York before and through him had twice delivered envelopes of cash to Olmert. Talansky said that when he sent money to finance Olmert's election campaigns, Messer recommended that he split the donation - which exceeded the limit allowed under Israeli law - into several checks, from members of Talansky's family. Messer denied having making such a suggestion.

In 1999, $300,000 was transferred from Talansky's private account, for which Messer had power of attorney, as a bond to cover the debt run up by United Jerusalem, the list under which Olmert ran for mayor. The bond was forfeited in 2002. The differences between the Talansky and Messer versions concerning this episode are reported here for the first time.

When Talansky was asked by interrogators if he knew that money from his private account had been transferred to the account of the United Jerusalem association through Messer, he reacted furiously: "He used my money? He will go to jail if he did that. He will be disbarred. I have to talk to my lawyer. I am in shock!" When Messer was asked by the police if he had informed Talansky before deciding on the forfeiture of the bond to cover the election debts, he replied, "Of course. The forfeit occurred only in 2002. I informed him both beforehand and afterward. To your question, he reacted with disappointment. He did not like that at all, and I did not like it, either, I did not want it to happen and I made many efforts to avoid it."

Can one reasonably assume that Talansky did not know that hundreds of thousands of dollars had been withdrawn from his account? Is it possible the money that was transferred belonged to someone else? If so, who is behind this very large sum? Was Talansky's account used as a straw account? And what is Olmert's involvement in this matter?

The Talansky affair emerged from a police investigation that dealt with the give-and-take relations between Olmert and attorney Uri Messer. In August 2006, Haaretz Magazine published a report that exposed for the first time Olmert's actions as industry and trade minister on behalf of Messer's clients. It was not until October 2007, more than a year later, after much vacillation and delay, that Attorney General Menachem Mazuz ordered an investigation into the suspicions raised by the Haaretz article and by the harsh report issued by the State Comptroller's Office on the same subject. The police seemed to be in no rush to thoroughly investigate the sensitive information it possessed from the beginning about the Olmert-Talansky ties.

In March 2008, the Fraud Investigations Unit was about to wrap up the Olmert-Messer affair and send the file to the State Prosecutor's Office for a final decision. Already then the police team had evidence that Olmert actively assisted Messer's clients and also promoted a grant of tens of millions of shekels to one of the companies Messer represented. Additional evidence showed that for years Messer supplied Olmert with political and legal services free of charge or for low fees.

One of the police officers who saw memos about the money transfers Zaken recorded in her computer, was certain that those involved would have explanations for them. "They will tell us that it's from the sale of a private property," he said. It is clear today that if Mazuz had not waited so long before deciding to launch an investigation into the suspicions against Olmert, the Talansky affair would have come to light already a year ago.

4)Soros Publisher 'Shaped' McClellan's Hit Job: Other publishers don't recognize it as the same book
By William Tate
An examination of published reports reveals that Scott McClellan's kiss-and-smell betrayal of George W. Bush is a far cry from the book McClellan started out to write and was shaped into an offensive tome by a publisher with close ties to George Soros.



To understand how McClellan's literary knife-in-the-back evolved, one has to know something about the book industry.



Unlike fiction, a non-fiction book usually hasn't been written before it's sold to a publisher. The author normally puts together an outline and/or synopsis detailing what the book will be about and how it will be structured, and writes 1-3 sample chapters to show the author's writing ability. The author's agent then shops the proposal around to prospective publishing houses.



The agent actually lands the deal, so the choice of agents is crucial. Any author normally starts at the top of the A list and works his or her way down until--or if--they find an agent with whom they can work. According to an Associated Press article,



"McClellan's book does not fit the pattern of Washington megadeals. He was not represented by Washington, D.C., attorney Bob Barnett, whose clients include Tenet and countless political leaders, but by the much less known Craig Wiley, whose most famous client is actor Ron Silver."



Not to slight Mr. Silver, a gifted talent, but that's hardly the reaction one would expect to a proposal promising the kind of sensational accusations which have created a media furor and catapulted McClellan's book to the top of Amazon's charts. Oh, and put quite a bit of coin in Messrs. McClellan and Wiley's pockets. Agents are paid on a percentage of sales basis. The more controversial and sellable they think the book will be, the more likely they are to take it on.



Nor did publishers see enough in the proposal to jump at the chance to publish it.



"It was shopped around but, like others who publish in the category, we didn't even take a meeting...." said Steve Ross, who was head of the Crown Publishing Group at Random House Inc. at the time McClellan was offering his manuscript. This in an industry that, just like newspapers, appears to be dying a slow death at the hands of new media, print-on-demand, and other modern technologies, and is desperate for books that can add substantial numbers to the bottom line.



Again, agents start at the tope of the food chain and work their way down. McClellan finally reached a deal with PublicAffairs, which according to the AP "specializes in policy books by billionaire George Soros" and others.



Further, the unwritten book wasn't published based upon McClellan's proposal. "(Public Affairs founder Peter) Osnos said he didn't even read the proposal" the article reports. Instead, Osnos "sought out people who knew McClellan and said they regarded him as an honest man unhappy in his job."



In other words, Osnos didn't look at the proposal of the book McClellan wanted to write; he was more interested in confirming that McClellan was disgruntled with the White House.



PublicAffairs editor Lisa Kaufman confirmed to the AP that the proposal McClellan shopped around was nothing like the book that plunges the knife into his benefactor's back. "The original proposal was somewhat general," Kaufman admits, "so before making an offer on the book we talked to Scott at some length."



It takes little imagination to gather how the conversation between George Soros's publisher and a disgruntled former Bush administration official hawking his unwritten memoirs, still unsold after having gone through the tope tier of publishers, went.



But imagination isn't needed.



A book's editor and its author work extremely closely--with the author sweating over every word, every detail, and the editor helping shape the pacing and overall tone of the manuscript. Kaufman told the AP that as McClellan wrote the book the "tone began to be directed toward issues and events that some people would rather he not be straightforward and candid about." (Emphasis added.)



PublicAffairs reportedly paid McClellan a $75,000 advance. An advance is the only part of an author's financial deal with a publisher that's guaranteed. It is literally an advance on the author's royalties. If the book sells enough copies that the author's royalties exceed the advance, the author will make more money.



Some have argued that McClellan's small advance negates the financial incentive as a reason for McClellan to bring forward these charges, when the opposite is true. When George Tenet or Bill Clinton are offered millions in advances, they've already made their money. The books will probably not "earn out" (pay the author more than the advance) no matter how many copies are sold. With a small advance, the author is under pressure to sell as many copies as possible.



With only a $75,000 advance, and working with a publisher and editor who were more interested in producing a book written by a disgruntled former Bush staffer than they were in the book McClellan had proposed, McClellan had every financial incentive to give them exactly the book they wanted.



And he apparently did.



According to the AP article, "Rival publishers say they had no sense that McClellan would make such explosive observations."



Could that be because the proposal McClellan presented them, the book he set out to write before financial pressures and a left-wing publisher took over, didn't contain them? And how is the public now expected to believe them?

5) Sometimes even paranoids have something to be paranoid about
By Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder




Did you hear the one about the Jew who says to his psychiatrist that he believes the psychiatrist is plotting his destruction? The psychiatrist tells him that he has a sick delusion and should not worry, since the psychiatrist is there to protect him. The poor jerk is happy until he looks up at the diplomas on the wall and sees the psychiatrist's middle name is Hussein, and a diploma from a Muslim school.


Forget Reverend Wright, Obama's twenty-year mentor who preached racial hate and America-hate. Forget that he was Obama's spiritual advisor, baptized his children, and counseled with him for twenty years. Forget that Obama says he sat there for twenty years and never heard any of it and never spoke to — for twenty years — the hundreds of thousands of people who sat in church with him and also never heard any of them mention the sermons to him, or heard any of them speak to each other about the sermons. Perhaps he has a hearing problem and, if you believe him, perhaps you would like to buy this bridge that we would like to sell you on eBay.


OK, also forget Obama's lack of experience, although any reasonable person must be just a little concerned by this. If we were to hire a plumber to fix our toilet, we would want to make sure he had experience fixing toilets. For a plumber — yes. For a president — not necessary.


While we are forgetting, also forget Michelle Obama, who says this is the first time in her life she has ever been proud of America. But even she would have to admit that we do some things well, like Broadway shows, making cornflakes, taking out gallbladders, and fixing teeth. The whole world would admit we do these things better than anybody else. The next time she needs a cavity filled, maybe she wants to look up a dentist in Czechoslovakia. Grab a piece of paper and make a list of the things we do better than any other country in the world — no, grab a whole notebook because you will soon run out of paper.


So now, we come to Jews. We would be the first to admit that there are plenty of Jews we don't like, but as a race, we would fight for their survival. And, admittedly, the principal enemy against their very survival is the militant Muslims.


Israel is just 60 years old, a drop in the bucket of historical time, but Jews have lived in Israel for over 3,300 years, 1,800 years before the Arabs ever showed up with their goats and soldiers. Jerusalem was the Jewish capital for all of these 3300 years and was never the capital of any Muslim or Arab state. In the Second World War the Jews fought both the Nazis and the Arabs. The Arabs fought the Jews and supported the Nazis.


In 1947 the United Nations created both Jewish and Arab states. The Jews abided by this mandate, five Arab armies attacked Israel. The Arabs told the Palestinians to leave Israel, and when they followed instructions, their fellow Arabs put them in camps where they still remain to this day. Many times since 1947, through multiple accords, the Palestinians have been offered a separate state next to Israel. They and the Arab leaders have always refused this. Instead — whether they be al Qaeda, Ahmadinejad, the Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah — they have consistently called for the destruction of Israel. Ahmadinejad threatens Israel with nuclear weapons and calls it a "stinking corpse," and supplies arms to terrorists, Kasam rockets rain down on Israel, Hamas threatens Israel's destruction, religious Fatwahs are issued.


All of this gives us at least the right to say that, as lawyers do, the burden of proof shifts to the man whose middle name is Hussein and who was educated in a Muslim school, to demonstrate that he is committed to the preservation of Israel. He has every right in our country — a country that his wife has never, until now, been proud of — not to be so committed. But Jews have every right not to support him or vote for him until he meets his burden of proof.


And, oh yeah, if you know any experienced plumbers, give us a call. There are still some jobs where experience counts.

6)David Frum on Scott McClellan's new book: George Bush got the team he deserved


Except maybe for MSNBC’s wild-eyed commentator Keith Olbermann, nobody in politics or media seems to have a good word to say for Scott McClellan, the former George W. Bush press secretary turned ferocious Bush critic.

The right complains of McClellan's disloyalty. The left complains that McClellan’s change of heart arrived too late. The old Washington hands shake their heads at a press secretary writing a book at all: FDR’s and Eisenhower’s men took their secrets to their graves — why cannot today’s whippersnappers do the same?

Yet there is something very sad and sympathetic about McClellan and the bitter, accusatory memoir that leaked out this week. (The book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, has hit number one on Amazon.com’s sales chart despite the fact that it won’t be officially released till next week.)

If you ever watched McClellan’s televised confrontations with the savage White House press corps, you probably thought: This is terrible! The man has no business being up there. He looks frightened, like a schoolboy trying to retrieve his mittens from a persecuting gang of bullies. His words stumble and clomber. When he has good news to announce, he cannot elicit any interest; when the news is bad, his clumsy efforts to evade questions only draw more attention than ever.

As the current press secretary Dana Perino daily reminds us, you don’t have to be a genius to succeed as press secretary. But you do need (1) composure under fire, (2) verbal fluency, (3) an understanding of the imperatives of the news business and (4) access to the interior workings of the administration. McClellan never possessed qualities (1) and (2), and his colleagues refused to grant him (4).

In these deficiencies, McClellan was not alone. George W. Bush brought most of his White House team with him from Texas. Except for Karl Rove, these Texans were a strikingly inadequate bunch. Harriet Miers, Alberto Gonzalez, Karen Hughes, Al Hawkins, Andy Card (the last not a Texan, but a lifelong Bush family retainer) — they were more like characters from The Office than the sort of people one would expect to find at the supreme height of government in the world’s most powerful nation. McClellan, too, started in Bush’s governor’s office, and if he never belonged to the innermost circle of power, he nonetheless gained closer proximity than would be available to almost anyone who did not first serve in Texas.

That early team was recruited with one paramount consideration in mind: loyalty. Theoretically, it should be possible to combine loyalty with talent. But that did not happen often with the Bush team.

Bush demanded a very personal kind of loyalty, a loyalty not to a cause or an idea, but to him and his own career. Perhaps unconsciously, he tested that loyalty with constant petty teasing, sometimes verging on the demeaning. (Robert Draper, whose book Dead Certain offers a vivid picture of the pre-presidential Bush, tells the story of a 1999 campaign-strategy meeting at which Bush shut Karl Rove up by ordering him to “hang up my jacket.” The room fell silent in shock — but Rove did it.)

These little abuses would often be followed by unexpected acts of thoughtfulness and generosity. Yet the combination of the demand for personal loyalty, the bullying and the ensuing compensatory love-bombing was to weed out strong personalities and to build an inner circle defined by a willingness to accept absolute subordination to the fluctuating needs of a tense, irascible and unpredictable chief.

Had Bush been a more active manager, these subordinated personalities might have done him less harm. But after choosing people he could dominate, he then delegated them enormous power. He created a closed loop in which the people entrusted with the most responsibility were precisely those who most dreaded responsibility — Condoleezza Rice being the most important and most damaging example.

Yet as the proverb warns us, even worms will turn.

For three years, Bush left Scott McClellan in a position for which he was unsuited and in which he must have suffered terrible anxiety and stress. Finally, McClellan was deputed to act as the administration’s shield and buffer in the Valerie Plame leak case. The administration had nothing to fear from the truth, but McClellan was assigned to say things that later proved untrue. Understandably, he feels terrible bitterness about the episode — and predictably, a book publisher offered him the opportunity to exact his revenge.

The lesson of this story is emphatically not that presidents should seek staffers even more fanatically loyal than Bush’s. The lesson is that weak personalities break under pressure. And since a White House is the world’s highest-pressure environment, a wise president will seek to staff it with strong personalities.

To recruit and hold strong personalities, a president must demand something more than personal loyalty. He must offer a compelling vision and ideal — a cause that people can serve without feeling servile. Otherwise a president will only get … what Bush has now got.

7) REVIEW & OUTLOOK: Al Qaeda on the Run


A year ago in July, a National Intelligence Estimate warned that al Qaeda had "protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability," meaning it could be poised to strike America again. The political reaction was instantaneous and damning. "This clearly says al Qaeda is not beaten," said Michael Scheuer, the former CIA spook turned antiterror scold.

What a difference 10 months – and a surge – make.

CIA Director Michael Hayden painted a far more optimistic picture in an interview yesterday in the Washington Post. "On balance, we are doing pretty well," he said. "Near strategic defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al Qaeda globally – and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' – as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam."

What happened? To certain sophisticates, this is all al Qaeda's doing: By launching suicide attacks on Shiite and even Sunni targets, and ruling barbarically wherever they took control, the group has worn out its welcome in the Muslim world.

There's some truth in this. The Sunni Awakening in Iraq was in part a reaction by local clan leaders against al Qaeda's efforts to subjugate and brutalize them. The Arab world took note when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ordered the November 2005 bombing of three hotels in Amman, Jordan, in which nearly all of the victims were Sunni Arabs. Extremist Islamic parties took an electoral drubbing in Pakistan's elections earlier this year following a wave of suicide bombings, one of which murdered Benazir Bhutto.

It's also true that al Qaeda finds itself on the ideological backfoot, even in radical circles. As our Bret Stephens reported in March, Sayyed Imam, a founder of Egyptian Islamic Jihad and once a mentor to Ayman al Zawahiri, has written an influential manifesto sternly denouncing his former comrades for their methods and theology. This was enough to prompt a 215-page rebuttal from Zawahiri, who seems to have time on his hands. Lawrence Wright in the New Yorker and Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank in the New Republic have recently written about similar jihadist defections.

But the U.S. offensives in Afghanistan and especially Iraq deserve most of the credit. The destruction of the Taliban denied al Qaeda one sanctuary, and the U.S. seems to have picked up the pace of Predator strikes in Pakistan – or at least their success rate. This has damaged al Qaeda's freedom of movement and command-and-control.

As for Iraq, Zawahiri himself last month repeated his claim that the country "is now the most important arena in which our Muslim nation is waging the battle against the forces of the Crusader-Zionist campaign." So it's all the more significant that on this crucial battleground, al Qaeda has been decimated by the surge of U.S. forces into Baghdad. The surge, in turn, gave confidence to the Sunni tribes that this was a fight they could win. For Zawahiri, losing the battles you say you need to win is not a way to collect new recruits.

General Hayden was careful to say the threat continues, and he warned specifically about those in Congress and the media who "[focus] less on the threat and more on the tactics the nation has chosen to deal with the threat." This refers to the political campaign to restrict wiretapping and aggressive interrogation, both of which the CIA director says have been crucial to gathering intelligence that has blocked further terrorist spectaculars that would have burnished al Qaeda's prestige.

One irony here is that Barack Obama is promising a rapid withdrawal from Iraq on grounds that we can't defeat al Qaeda unless we focus on Afghanistan. He opposed the Iraq surge on similar grounds. Yet it is the surge, and the destruction of al Qaeda in Iraq, that has helped to demoralize al Qaeda around the world. Nothing would more embolden Zawahiri now than a U.S. retreat from Iraq, which al Qaeda would see as the U.S. version of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan.

It is far too soon to declare victory over al Qaeda. Still, Mr. Hayden's upbeat assessment is encouraging, and it suggests that President Bush's strategy of taking the battle to the terrorists is making America safer.

8) The Argument for Nominating Hillary
By LANNY J. DAVIS

After the votes are in from Puerto Rico tomorrow and South Dakota and Montana on Tuesday, neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton will be able to make a facts-based case that they represent a significant majority of grass-roots Democrats.

Chances are Sens. Obama and Clinton will virtually split the more than 4,400 delegates – including Florida and Michigan – elected by more than 34 million people over the past five months.

Sen. Clinton has already won the most votes, but there is controversy over including the over 300,000 votes from Michigan, since Sen. Obama was not on the ballot (by his own choice). But if Sen. Clinton wins a substantial victory in Puerto Rico tomorrow – with an expected record turnout exceeding two million voters – she could well end up with more popular votes than Sen. Obama, even if Michigan's primary votes are excluded.

Worst case, she could come out with a 2% deficit in elected pledged delegates. But that gap can be made up, if most of the remaining 200 or so unpledged superdelegates decide to support Sen. Clinton as the strongest candidate against John McCain – or if others committed to Sen. Obama decide to change their minds for the same reason. A number of superdelegates previously committed to Sen. Clinton later announced support for Sen. Obama, so it's certainly possible that, when confronted with growing evidence that Sen. Clinton is stronger than Sen. McCain, they might switch back.

The final argument for Hillary comes down to three points – with points one and two leading to the third.

First, Sen. Clinton is more experienced and qualified to be president than is Sen. Obama. This is not to say Sen. Obama cannot be a good, even great, president. I believe he can. But Sen. Clinton spent eight years in the White House. She was not a traditional first lady. She was involved in policy and debate on virtually every major domestic and foreign policy decision of the Clinton presidency, both "in" and "outside" the room with her husband. She has been a U.S. senator for eight years and has a record of legislative accomplishments, including as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

With no disrespect or criticism intended, Sen. Obama has been an Illinois state senator for eight years and a U.S. senator for just four years. He has, understandably, fewer legislative accomplishments than Sen. Clinton. That's just a fact. Therefore, it is reasonable to argue that Sen. Clinton would be less vulnerable to criticism from Sen. McCain on the "experience" issue.

Second, Sen. Clinton's position on health care gives her an advantage over Sen. McCain. Her proposal for universally mandated health care based primarily on private insurance and individual choices is a stark contrast to Sen. McCain's total reliance on private market insurance, HMOs or emergency rooms for the 45 million or more uninsured. Sen. Obama's position, while laudable in its objective, does not mandate universal care and, arguably, won't challenge Sen. McCain as effectively as will Sen. Clinton's plan.

Despite the fact that Sen. Obama's campaign made the Iraq war a crucial issue in the Iowa caucuses and early primaries, there has never been a significant difference between his position and Sen. Clinton's. Sen. Obama deserves credit for opposing military intervention in Iraq while he was running for the state senate in early 2002.

But in 2004, Sen. Obama said he "did not know" how he would have voted on the war resolution had he been a senator at the time. That summer he told the Chicago Tribune: "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage" of the Iraq War. (This is a statement that Sen. Clinton would not have made.) While he served in the Senate, he voted 84 out of 85 times the same as Sen. Clinton on Iraq-war related votes. The only exception is when he supported President Bush's position on the promotion of a general that Sen. Clinton opposed.

Third and finally, there is recent hard data showing that, at least at the present time, Sen. Clinton is a significantly stronger candidate against Sen. McCain among the general electorate (as distinguished from the more liberal Democratic primary and caucus electorate).

According to Gallup's May 12-25 tracking polling of 11,000 registered voters in all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., Sen. Clinton is running stronger against Sen. McCain in the 20 states where she can claim popular-vote victory in the primaries and caucuses. In contrast, Sen. Obama runs no better against Sen. McCain than does Sen. Clinton in the 28 states plus D.C. where he has prevailed. "On this basis," Gallup concludes: "Clinton appears to have the stronger chance of capitalizing on her primary strengths in the general election."

The 20 states, Gallup points out, not only encompass more than 60% of the nation's voters, but "represent more than 300 Electoral College votes while Obama's 28 states and the District of Columbia represent only 224 Electoral College votes." Sen. Clinton leads Sen. McCain in these 20 states by seven points (50%-43%), while Sens. Obama and McCain are pretty much tied. But in the 26 states plus D.C. that Sen. Obama carried in the primaries/caucuses, he and Sen. Clinton are both statistically tied with Sen. McCain (Clinton 45%-McCain 47%; Obama 45%-McCain 46%).

Gallup's state-by-state polling in seven key battleground "purple" states also shows Sen. Clinton winning cumulatively in these states by a six-point margin (49%-43%) over Sen. McCain, while Sen. Obama loses to Sen. McCain by three points – a net advantage of 9% for Sen. Clinton. These key seven states – constituting 105 electoral votes – are Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, Arkansas, Florida and Michigan.

Meanwhile, Sen. Obama holds about an equal advantage over Sen. McCain in six important swing states that he carried in the primaries and caucuses – Colorado, Oregon, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri. But these constitute less than half – 54 – of the electoral votes of the larger states in which Sen. Clinton is leading.

The latest state-by-state battleground polls (published May 21-23) by other respected polling organizations verify Gallup's findings that Sen. Clinton is significantly stronger against Sen. McCain in the key states that a Democrat must win to gain the presidency. According to various poll data within the last 10 days:

- Pennsylvania: Sen. Clinton leads McCain 50%-39%; Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain are effectively tied.

- Ohio: Sen. Clinton leads Sen. McCain 48%-41%, Sen. Obama is down 44%-40%.

- Florida: Sen. Clinton leads Sen. McCain 47%-41%; Sen. McCain leads Sen. Obama 50%-40%. (Sen. Clinton has a net advantage of 16 points!)

- North Carolina: Despite a substantial primary victory, Sen. Obama is down 8% vs. Sen. McCain, (51%-43%), while Sen. Clinton leads by 6% (49%-43%).

- Nevada: Sen. Clinton up 5%, Sen. Obama down 6%.

Even the theory that Sen. Obama can open up significant numbers of "red" states has not been borne out by recent polling. For example: in Virginia, which Sen. Obama won substantially in the Feb. 12 Democratic primary, he is currently down in at least one recent, respected poll by a significant 9% margin – one point greater than the 8% margin Sen. Clinton is behind Sen. McCain.

Finally, one unfortunate argument is making the rounds lately to convince superdelegates to go for Sen. Obama. That is the prediction that if Sen. Obama is not the nominee, African-American and other passionate Obama supporters will conclude that the nomination had been "stolen" and will walk out of the convention or stay at home. On the other side are the many women and others strongly committed to Sen. Clinton promising that if she is denied the nomination, they will refuse to vote for Sen. Obama.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are progressive, pro-civil rights, pro-affirmative action, pro-choice Democrats. Neither Obama supporters nor Clinton supporters who care about the issues, the Supreme Court, and the need to begin withdrawing from Iraq can truly mean they will actively or passively help Sen. McCain get elected. Threats of walkouts or stay-at-homes by good Democrats are not the answer, nor should they be a factor in superdelegate decisions.

But there is one possible scenario that avoids disappointment and frustration by passionate supporters of both candidates, that combines the strengths of one with the strengths of the other, and that virtually guarantees the election of a Democratic president in 2008:

A Clinton-Obama or an Obama-Clinton ticket.

Stay tuned.

8) Hillary, You Didn’t Win. Now Don’t Whine
By Eleanor Clift

The sense of grievance that permeates the Clinton campaign hurts her and the Dems.

The key to the winner winning is how the loser loses. Those cautionary words were spoken some weeks ago by Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who is close to both the Clintons and Barack Obama and whose hardball style of politics helped win back the House for the Democrats. However the nomination fight is resolved, it must be seen as fair by supporters of the two candidates, who have run an excruciatingly close race.

If that's the goal, it doesn't help that a group of women plan on protesting outside the hotel Saturday where the Democratic Party's rules and bylaws committee is meeting. These women are mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. But their complaint, that Hillary Clinton may be denied the nomination because she's the victim of sexism, doesn't hold water.

Sexism by whom? By the press? By Barack Obama? To be sure, there have been sexist comments. Some women are still smarting over the time when Obama pulled out Clinton's chair after a debate, seeing it as chauvinist as opposed to gentlemanly. But highlighting sexism undercuts Clinton's argument that she is the more electable of the two candidates. How can she be more electable if sexism is this strong within the Democratic primaries? What would happen in November? If she's the candidate, would hordes of men see the light?

Clinton discovered her inner feminist late in the race, when mobilizing women was one of the last cards she had left to play. Women of her generation have experienced the indignities of an oppressed minority (even though women are more than half the population), and they rallied to her cause. A classmate of Hillary's from Wellesley told me she never considered herself a feminist: "I never marched … but this campaign turned me into one." She is furious about the Hillary nutcracker, which has stainless steel thighs and is available for purchase at the newsstand at many airports.

Younger women do not feel the lash of gender the way their elders wish they would. Professor Karen O'Connor teaches a weekend course on women and politics at American University. Her course this year coincided with the primary season, and to show how a caucus works she asked Hillary supporters to assemble on one side of the room, Obama supporters on the other, with undecided students in the middle. In the class of 25 there were only three men, and O'Connor assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that the pro-Hillary forces would dominate. Three female students stood up for Hillary, 17 students backed Obama, and five were undecided.

O'Connor founded the Institute of Women and Politics at AU. As a woman over 50 who has devoted her professional life to cultivating women leaders and looking ahead to the day when she might see a woman president, she learned a hard truth: that for these women, youth trumps gender. "I don't vote for a woman just because she's a woman," a former student told O'Connor. "I do," O'Connor responded, explaining that Clinton and Obama are "identical" on the issues. "This is gender versus race." O'Connor has been quoted saying it will be generations, plural, before another woman will be positioned as the heir apparent the way Clinton was at the outset of the race.

Blaming gender bias may help some women vent about an outcome they didn't want, but there are more mundane reasons for what looks like a failed nomination fight. If Clinton had not voted for the resolution that gave President Bush the authority to wage war, the door would not have swung open for Obama to enter the race. His antiwar stance gave him a moral claim on which to stake his candidacy. Secondly, the Clinton campaign's decision to not aggressively contest the caucus states allowed Obama to build up a lead in delegates that Clinton was never able to overcome. Now Clinton supporters are arguing that caucuses are undemocratic, and if only the Democrats had the same system as the Republicans, winner-take-all in the big primary states, Hillary would be the nominee.

The sense of grievance that permeates the Clinton campaign is out of proportion to reality. Women seethe at the way Hillary's cleavage became news when a Washington Post style writer, a woman, did a feature on a lower-cut-than usual top she wore on the Senate floor. Silly and sexist, yes, but what if Bill Clinton hadn't waded into the South Carolina primary with remarks that seemed to conjoin Obama with Jesse Jackson? Would that have made a difference? Life isn't fair, but don't cry for Hillary. She's proved herself more than worthy to win; now she's got to muster the grace to lose.

9) Democrats Meet Today To Hash Out Fla., Mich.
By Dan Balz

When Democratic Party leaders voted on Aug. 25, 2007, to sanction Florida Democrats for moving up the date of their presidential primary, no one anticipated that the decision would lead to a tense showdown that will help decide the outcome of the nomination battle between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.


Today, the 30 members of the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee will hear challenges to that decision and a later ruling, which together barred delegations from Florida and Michigan from the national convention in Denver because those states violated the party's rules governing the nomination process

Democrats on and off the committee said yesterday that a compromise appears likely that would restore half of the delegations from each state, although the precise terms remained under discussion. "It's clear something's going to be worked out," said Carol Fowler, the party chair in South Carolina and a member of the rules committee. Fowler is also an Obama supporter but was not speaking for the campaign.

Among the unresolved issues is how to allocate the delegates between the two candidates, particularly delegates from Michigan, where Clinton's name was on the ballot in the Jan. 15 primary but Obama's was not. There was growing talk yesterday that the committee could agree to split the state's delegates evenly between Clinton and Obama, a blow to Clinton.

In determining the allocation of delegates from Florida, the committee appears likely to use the results of the state's primary on Jan. 29.

Clinton will gain more delegates than Obama under almost any outcome, but there is widespread agreement that nothing the committee is likely to do will change the nomination battle's trajectory, which now has Obama moving steadily toward victory.

But after months of sparring and bad feelings between the two camps, the real question is whether both sides -- and the two states -- are prepared to accept what the committee decides, or will instead take their grievances to the party's credentials committee next month or possibly to the convention in August.

"What's at stake is whether this nominating process will come to a quick conclusion in a way that unifies the party, or whether it will drag on for weeks and perhaps months in a way that threatens party unity and potentially hurts the nominee and the party," said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist and veteran of rules battles.

Clinton will send her team to today's meeting with a demand that the full delegations from both states be seated in Denver, that each of those delegates be given a full vote and that the delegates be allocated strictly on the basis of the results of the two primaries. But while she has drawn a hard line in the pre-meeting maneuvering, her advisers stopped short yesterday of threatening to take the fight beyond today.

"We think it's not useful to cross streams before we come to them," said Harold Ickes, who oversees Clinton's delegate operations and is also a member of the DNC's rules committee.

The story of how the Democrats got to this moment is a tale of personal egos, state pride, institutional integrity and raw political maneuvering. Its beginning dates back many years, and is rooted in competition between political leaders in Michigan, led by Sen. Carl M. Levin, who think their state should have a larger role in the nominating process; and those in New Hampshire, who have zealously guarded their state's first-in-the-nation primary.

Levin, who will present Michigan's case today, said in an interview Thursday night that he is prepared to carry on the fight if his state's full delegation is not seated in Denver with full voting rights, arguing that any other outcome would be appealed to the credentials committee.

Levin has proved to be a skilled and relentless proponent of dislodging New Hampshire and Iowa from what he sees as their privileged position as the states that kick off the nominating calendar. He was the catalyst behind the creation of a commission, authorized at the 2004 Democratic convention, to study and reform the nominating calendar for 2008.

The commission met for a year and ended up reaffirming Iowa's and New Hampshire's traditional roles. It also proposed adding Nevada and South Carolina to the early round of voting to encourage regional and ethnic diversity. But the panel, in a decision blessed by the rules committee, stated its determination to keep other states from scheduling their contests before Feb. 5, 2008.

In Florida, however, Republicans in control of the governor's mansion and the legislature decided to move the state's primary from Feb. 5 to Jan. 29, to break away from what was becoming a virtual national primary of nearly two dozen states. How hard Democrats resisted remains in dispute. State Democratic Chair Karen L. Thurman said: "We didn't have the votes to [block] it. No matter what happened, this bill would have become law."

Florida's move triggered a reaction from Republicans in South Carolina, who were determined to preserve their tradition of holding the first Southern contest of significance. They announced they would shift their contest from Feb. 2 to Jan. 19.
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Katon Dawson, the sometimes flamboyant South Carolina GOP chair, made the announcement in New Hampshire. Standing with him at that Aug. 9 news conference was New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner, who said the decision would trigger his state's law requiring that its primary be held a week before any similar contest. That meant New Hampshire's primary would be, at a minimum, more than a week before the DNC had established in its original timetable.

Two weeks later, the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to bar Florida's delegation from the convention.

Levin marks the Dawson-Gardner news conference as the trigger for his state's decision to move its contest from Feb. 9 to Jan. 15. In his view, Michigan had agreed to abide by the DNC's calendar, provided all other states did, as well.

Once New Hampshire indicated it would move, Michigan indicated it would do the same -- and on Dec. 1, 2007, the DNC's rules committee barred Michigan's delegates from the convention. Levin contends that New Hampshire should have been sanctioned as well for moving its date, but party officials say New Hampshire had the authority to do what it did.

The Republican National Committee, dealing with a similar problem, cut violating states' delegations in half and moved on. The Democrats, determined to send a tough message to other states that might have been contemplating further moves up the calendar, inflicted the maximum penalty of a total ban.

Eager to please the early states, particularly Iowa and New Hampshire, the Democratic presidential candidates agreed in September to a request from party chairs in those two states, as well as in South Carolina and Nevada, that they not campaign in Michigan or Florida. A month later, Obama and several other Democrats removed their names from the Michigan ballot. Clinton did not.

Speaking to New Hampshire Public Radio, Clinton said: "It's clear, this election they're having [in Michigan] is not going to count for anything. But I just personally did not want to set up a situation where the Republicans are going to be campaigning between now and whenever, and then after the nomination, we have to go in and repair the damage to be ready to win Michigan in 2008."

Still, even at the end of last year, few Democrats, including the candidates, anticipated how much these decisions would come back to haunt them. They assumed that there would be an early resolution of the nomination battle and that the nominee, in a magnanimous act, would agree to seat the delegations.

Clinton won Michigan with 54 percent of the vote. The choice of "Uncommitted" was second, with 40 percent. In Florida, all names remained on the ballot, and Clinton won with 50 percent to Obama's 33 percent. About 1.7 million people voted in Florida's primary and about 600,000 in Michigan's, though the candidates did not campaign in either state.

Soon after it became clear that every contest could be crucial to the outcome of the Democratic race, Clinton seized on the two states, in part to bolster her contention that she won more popular votes, even though she trailed in the delegate count. Obama accused her of trying to change the rules.

Now it is left to the same committee that imposed the original sanctions to find a solution that preserves the DNC's power to police its nominating process, and one that still finds peace between the warring campaigns and with two key battleground states.