Recently in Where was Dubya? Category

Monica who? On the eve of Dubya II, Salon's Peter Dizikes offers a short but comprehensive list of this administration's scandals thus far. Thirty-four and counting...not that you'd know it from watching the evening news.

Hope is on the...wait, what's this? Oops, sorry about that. Turns out Hope took a wrong turn and got lost somewhere back there in Idiotville. Welcome to Despairtown, baby.

So, that's that, then...the Idiot Wind blows anew. The American electorate has spoken and -- despite all the shadiness and incompetence of the past four years -- has given Dubya and his cronies the imprimatur to go hog-wild. 51-48%...this is pretty much a mandate, folks. (Big of those Red Staters to ensure that we will be woefully unprepared for the next terrorist attack on a Blue State.) Y'know, H.L. Mencken's whole Tyranny of the Booboisie schtick has always grated on my lefty sensibilities, but at this point I have to admit he may have been on to something.

Ugh. I'm too young to remember 1984 very well, but I'm curious as to how last night and this morning compared for America's Left. (I've since been reminded by several people I trust that 1968 and 1972 were much more grievous blows.) Thing is, 2004 started out with such promise over here. But, right around the time I ended up on crutches in May, events personal and political took a nasty turn, and the past few months have been some of the most dismal I can remember. Now, it seems, I may just look back on this time as relatively calm and worry-free.

But, ok, enough wallowing...let's start taking it frame-by-frame. Given the war, the economy, and Dubya's obvious incompetence, how on Earth did we lose this election? Well, give credit where credit is due...all this exit-talk of "moral values" proves that Karl Rove pulled off his gambit: He got the extra 4 million evangelical votes he was targeting, partly, it seems, by judiciously invoking rampant anti-gay hysteria. Yet, for some reason or another -- a lousy ground game, perhaps? -- the Dems inexplicably didn't counter with extra votes of our own.

Where do we go from here? The Dems are facing an ugly Rule of Four...We lost four seats in the Senate, at least four seats in the House, and likely four seats in the Supreme Court. Whatsmore, we now appear officially dead in the water in the South and Midwest. And, with Kerry and Daschle gone, our standard-bearers now appear to be Hillary Clinton (about whom the country has already made up its mind), John Edwards (whom I still admire, but he couldn't carry his home state), and Barrack Obama (who's probably too inexperienced to make much headway in 2008.)

Obviously, it's now well past time for the serious party overhaul we should've began last cycle, when Al Gore had an election stolen from him that he should have won hands down. Daschle & Gephardt are already in the dustbin of history, and Terry McAuliffe should probably follow them there. I for one don't think Howard Dean was or is the answer, but he's one of the only people injecting new blood and enthusiasm into the party right now, so he should have a seat at the table. Right now, I think Edwardsian populism is our strongest ideological card, but as I said, it didn't seem to make much headway last night.

Silver lining? Yeah, right. Well, as this Washington Monthly forum noted in September, second terms are notoriously scandal-prone (Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica), partly out of press boredom, and Dubya's ilk seem particularly scandal-worthy...perhaps we'll finally hear a little more about Halliburton. I'm sure there'll be no shortage of horrifying policy decisions emanating from this administration that'll keep lefty blogs like this one in business. And, on a purely selfish note, my likely dissertation topic on the fortunes of progressivism in the twenties is now seeming much more sexy in the wake of last night's 1928-like cultural divide. Of course, none of these are really any consolation at all.

At any rate, I generally believe that America tends to get the president it deserves. So, God help us, we've brought this upon ourselves. And now, for we 48%, the hard work begins...we have to lick our wounds, get our act together, and figure out how we can best combat the rightward drift that's afflicting our nation. Alas, I fear Dubya will do much of the heavy lifting for us, by running the nation further into the ground over the next four years. Still, we gotta keep on keeping on, y'all. I do not believe this darkness will endure.

Seven months after the White House declared it had released all documents surrounding Dubya's desertion, Bush's resignation letter shows up. "White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the resignation was found in connection with a lawsuit brought by The Associated Press." Yeah, I'll bet it was.

With CBS giving up on the Killian memos, both the NY Times and Salon try to refocus the story on the facts of Dubya's disappearance. Still an excellent question...

Well, even Dan Rather is backing away from the Killian memos at this point, which obviously does not bode well for their authenticity. And as for the larger questions about where Dubya spent all those post-drug-test AWOL months in 1972...well, I'm sure the mainstream press will get to those in due time, aren't you?

"He showed pathological lying habits and was in denial when challenged on his prejudices and biases. He would even deny saying something he just said 30 seconds ago. He was famous for that." Harvard Business School professor Yoshi Tsurumi remembers young Dubya, and, yes, even back then he was a profile in character and courage. "[H]e was such a bad student that I asked him once how he got in. He said, 'My dad has good friends.'"

The dispute over the CBS memos rages on, with both sides digging in. I must say, the additional information offered by the Post does seem to suggest that the controversial Killian memos may in fact be bogus (although USA Today did independently obtain them "from a person with knowledge of Texas Air National Guard operations," for what that's worth.) Which, if so, leads one to wonder who out there could have been so base and stupid as to falsify these documents, when there's already so much legitimate evidence of Dubya's desertion. That's the GOP's racket, not ours. Still, I'm not yet 100% convinced.

Despite what Sharon Bush is saying now, the NY Daily News declares it has spoken to "an unimpeachable source" who can confirm her earlier declaration of Dubya coking up at Camp David. As Drudge might say, developing...

"Now, would the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron have extravagantly purchased typewriters that contained the th superscript key? Would the military want or require typewriters with the 'th', 'nd', and 'rd' characters? Hmm. Ponder, Ponder. What would the 111th need with a th character... I'll leave that to the enterprising among you to deduce." So, as expected, the Bushies are pushing back hard on the 60 Minutes memos, and seem to have successfully managed shifting this news cycle from Dubya's whereabouts to questions of possible forgery. Well, first off, The Daily Kos (quoted above) has written up a pretty good blow-by-blow explaining how all this new wrangling over font-technology adds up to less than its seems.

Regarding the documents' authenticity, I think it's entirely possible that somebody tried to "frame a guilty man" here, particularly given the depths to which we've already seen the Swift Boaters stoop. But, for now, I'm still thinking the docs are legitimate, as (a) CBS is strongly standing by them, and have a corroborative witness in Maj. Gen Bobby Hodges, Col. Killian's (Republican) commanding officer, (b) unlike the Swift Boat allegations, they conform to what we already knew and to other information in the public record, and (c) Dubya's White House, who knows the full story, certainly didn't act like these could be fake documents when the story broke. At any rate, remove these Killian memos from the picture and the original question still stands: Where was Dubya, and why did he skip out on a required medical exam? Update: Experts in today's Boston Globe back up the authenticity of the documents, including one examiner, Philip Bouffard, who had earlier suggested doubts to the NY Times.

Based on new information unveiled during last night's 60 Minutes II, the big papers delve further into Dubya's AWOL shenanigans. Apparently, not only was Dubya suspended from flying due to his missed physical (which we already knew), but he blatantly ignored a direct order from his commanding officer (Col. Jerry Killian, now deceased) to report for a medical examination. (Killian complained in a private letter, heretofore unreleased, that Dubya was "talking to someone upstairs" to get out of it.) Nor, as the Boston Globe noted yesterday, was Dubya -- pictured at right wearing a ribbon he apparently never earned -- ever called to active duty or otherwise punished for this insubordination, or for any of his later lapses (such as not showing up for reserve duty in either Alabama or Massachusetts, as ordered.) "'It appears that no one wanted to hold him accountable,' said retired Major General Paul A. Weaver Jr., who retired in 2002 as the Pentagon's director of the Air National Guard." Yeah, what else is new?

Meanwhile, on the drug front, Sharon Bush is now trying to back away from her comments to Kitty Kelley on Dubya's alleged cocaine binging at Camp David. But, Doubleday is standing by the charge - in fact, they've got written notes and two witnesses (Kelley and her publisher) to verify Bush's original statement. Good for them...I would think Doubleday has planned very carefully for exactly this sort of thing prior to going public with any allegations from The Family.

Now, with the further details about Dubya's disappearance and the extent of his alleged coke habit each gaining notoriety in separate news channels, how much longer will it take before the major media outlets are forced to comment on the obvious drug test angle connecting the two threads? One has to wonder if the GOP strategy gurus are starting to rethink their not-so-Swift-Boat decision to put Vietnam in play.

It's official...Dubya is trying to AWOL his way out of one of the debates. What a hero. If he can't face down John Kerry, how will he ever face down the (gasp) terrorists?

(No Bill Frist jokes, please.) With the GOP in full attack mode, the press weighs how to handle Kitty Kelley's book. Newsweek, for one, has already passed on publishing excerpts from The Family. Yes, the same Newsweek who just published this ridiculous Evan Thomas puff piece about Dubya's personal "transformation." C'mon, now.

Play with matches, Mr. President, and you're gonna get burned. With the Kitty Kelley cocaine allegations making the unofficial rounds (I've heard the book promotion begins in earnest on 9/14) and the Ben Barnes 60 Minutes interview coming up in short order, journalists start taking a harder look at Dubya's missing years. Adding fuel to the fire, a group called Texans for Truth has created this ad that will apparently begin airing on Friday.

The fallout from the forthcoming and much-awaited Kitty Kelley book on the Bushes breaks on Drudge today, with Kelley exposing a new twist on what has basically amounted to an open secret: In the book, Kelley "quotes...former sister-in-law Sharon Bush who claims: 'Bush did coke at Camp David when his father was President, and not just once either.' Other acquaintances allege that as a 26-year-old National Guard, Bush 'liked to sneak out back for a joint or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine.'" Again, not surprising, given other stories, previous rumors, and Dubya's nervous habit of incessant sniffling, but it's nice to see heroic Bush's wastrel years finally get some play. Perhaps the media will manage to put two and two together.

"'The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing,'" A widow of a Texas political operative remembers young Dubya. "Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he'd yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he'd rented in Montgomery trashed -- the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. 'He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people's possessions,' Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid." Yep, he's presidential caliber.

Hmm. So the military records that would theoretically prove that Dubya was not AWOL and hiding from a drug test in 1973 have been "inadvertently destroyed" by the Pentagon. Funny, that. (Via Princess Diana/Medley.)

As Kerry readies for the big fight ahead, the GOP starts getting real ugly, with doctored Hanoi Jane photos and Drudge-inspired, Murdoch-driven tales of a possible extra-marital dalliance. Yep, the GOP sure loves them the adultery card, but I don't think that dog will hunt this time around...not after the impeachment fiasco. Update: The accused woman says drop it, already, and Drudge -- without apologizing for slandering her or Kerry -- changes his tune about the alleged affair.

On the flip side of the card, Dubya's Document Dump answers few questions about his guard duty, and reports are now surfacing of National Guard documents destroyed by Governor Bush's people in 1997. And then, of course, there's the matter of that skipped drug test...

Via Genehack, Calpundit delves into the documents of Dubya's desertion.

The Dems held one more for the road last night in New Hampshire and, given that a rather bland Kerry didn't stumble, it's starting to look dire for Dean, who was subdued and chagrined most of the evening and only now seems to be turning the corner on his Muskie Moment. Edwards did reasonably well despite invoking states' rights (which never sounds good with a southern accent) to support his convoluted gay marriage position. And I actually liked Clark better than usual, and thought he handled his recent party switch as well as he could.

But, I have to say, I was extraordinarily irritated by the way the whole Dubya Deserter thing played out last night. First Peter Jennings tells Wesley Clark that Michael Moore's deserter comment was "a reckless charge not supported by the facts" and asks him if it'd have been "a better example of ethical behavior" to contradict him. Clark doesn't go either way on it, claiming not to know all the facts. (Which is lame -- What's the point of having a General in the running if he's not going to call out Bush on exactly this question?) Then, once the show's over, Fox News pulls out Team Bespectacled White Guys (Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes), who both immediately argue that Clark irreparably damaged his candidacy by not refuting this baseless charge, yadda yadda yadda.

Um, am I missing something? It's been substantiated quite well that Bush seems to have gone AWOL by the Boston Globe and others, and I'm not talking about the six or seven critical hours on September 11 when he was toodling around above the Heartland. While absence of evidence isn't necessarily evidence of absence, Dubya seems to have disappeared from the Air National Guard for almost a year between 1972-73, conveniently right before a drug test (an offense for which he was grounded), and, to this day, he has never satisfactorily explained where he was. (In fact, as the Straight Dope notes, later reports in The New Republic (by Ryan Lizza, if I remember correctly) even cast doubt on the half-hearted "some recollection" explanation Dubya gave during the 2000 campaign. (By the way, this all happened several years after Bush scored in the underwhelming 25th percentile on the pilot's aptitude portion of the entrance exam, thus having to rely on his congressman-daddy's connections to jump the year-long waiting list for the Air National Guard in the first place.)

Does all of this prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that Dubya pulled a Cold Mountain? Well, no, but it's definitely enough to suggest that Bush has some serious explaining to do. (And he revoked any "youthful indiscretion" type-defense when he began parading around in flight gear on the USS Lincoln.) So, I mean, c'mon, now, a baseless charge about Bush? At this point it seems more correct to say that the bases were "Bush-less." Next thing you'll know Fox News will be screaming at John Kerry for perpetuating the "vicious rumor" of Dubya's DUI.



At any rate, regarding other matters, I didn't see Diane Sawyer or Letterman last night so can't ascertain how Dean damage control went there, but I did catch the Dallas-Laker game on TNT, and during Inside the NBA EJ, Kenny and Charles must have played the Dean Scream about thirty times...in fact Ernie had it connected to his desk button. "Nash kicks to Dirk, Dirk from the corner...YEEEEEAAAAGH! Sacramento's up big in the third...YEEEEEAAAGH!" And so on, so on. Pretty much the first political content I've ever seen on the show, and, yeah, it was funny every time. Poor Dean.

While General Clark comes out for national service, fellow candidates Dean and Kerry bicker over Vietnam. Hmm...while I'm very sympathetic to the idea that a war record should not be a prerequisite for political office, Kerry's military service is obviously one of his main selling points, particularly when placed in contrast to Dubya's AWOL year. So I'd say it's a dumb call for Dean to begrudge Kerry's mentioning of Vietnam, and especially given Dean's own tour in Aspen during that time. For the Deanies, I'd think the less said about 'Nam, the better.

The Boston Globe sheds a little light into the dark corridors of oppo research. Of course we already know Dubya was a alcoholic cokehead who went AWOL for a year to escape a drug test and had so little sense that he'd drive around drunk...and we still elected him for four years. So skeletons in the closet just ain't what they used to be.