katerina, Author at Progress Pond

Who told Judy about Valerie PLAME?

After reading the two NYT articles about Judy Miller’s involvement in the Plame Leak investigation, I came away with one significant question:

Who was Judith Miller’s real source as to the identity of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative?

Miller’s putative source was Scooter Libby, but Miller claims Libby didn’t provide her with Valerie Plame’s name or undercover status. If Judy’s telling the truth about that (and while the article in the NYT indicates that wagering on Judy’s truthfulness may be a sucker bet), then who did?

After reading the two NYT articles about Judy Miller’s involvement in the Plame Leak investigation, I came away with one significant question:

Who was Judith Miller’s real source as to the identity of Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative?

I suspect the answer to that question might provide enlightenment as to many of the strange twists and turns in Judy’s Magical Mystery Tour. It might also might also lead us back to one of the earliest and most perplexing questions about Bob Novak’s original leak: why did he refer to Wilson’s wife as Valerie Plame?
So let’s look at the question of whether Judith Miller, despite her lawyer’s assurances to Patrick Fitzgerald that Judy had only one “meaningful source”, had a second source that outed Wilson’s wife and provided Miller with Wilson’s little known maiden name of Valerie Plame. If we take Judith Miller’s statements at face value, it seems like that could very well be the case. Let’s review the evidence:

1. “Valerie Flame”

In a notebook belonging to Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, amid notations about Iraq and nuclear weapons, appear two small words: “Valerie Flame.”

This is the lead paragraph in today’s Times article about Miller’s (and the NYT’s) involvement in the Plame leak investigation. It shows the importance that many — including Fitzgerald — give to Miller’s short, mispelled notation. However, though the notation was found in a notebook containing notes of her July 8, 2003 meeting with Scooter Libby, Miller claims the info did not come from Libby. From Judy’s own report:

On one page of my interview notes, for example, I wrote the name “Valerie Flame.” Yet, as I told Mr. Fitzgerald, I simply could not recall where that came from, when I wrote it or why the name was misspelled. I testified that I did not believe the name came from Mr. Libby, in part because the notation does not appear in the same part of my notebook as the interview notes from him.

Judy also claims Libby did not reveal that Plame was an undercover agent.

My notes do not show that Mr. Libby identified Mr. Wilson’s wife by name. Nor do they show that he described Valerie Wilson as a covert agent or “operative,” as the conservative columnist Robert D. Novak first described her in a syndicated column published on July 14, 2003.

A further indication that Libby is not likely to have been the source of Plame’s name is the fact that in the notes of Miller’s phone call with Libby on July 12th is the notation “Victoria Wilson.” Why so much confusion about Plame’s name if Libby knew it? The name did not appear in the now famous classified State Dept. memo, and no other journalist (except Novak) seems to have been graced with the information about Wilson’s maiden name.

We’ve already taken a risk by assuming that Judy is telling the truth on this point. Let’s go in even deeper and take Scooter Libby at his word when he sends this message via his lawyer to Floyd Abrams in September 2004 who was representing the NYT and Judy Miller.

Mr. Abrams told Ms. Miller and the group that Mr. Tate had said she was free to testify. Mr. Abrams said Mr. Tate also passed along some information about Mr. Libby’s grand jury testimony: that he had not told Ms. Miller the name or undercover status of Mr. Wilson’s wife.

2. A Plame by any other name . . .

Despite the fact that Judy seems to have such trouble remembering how she came to make that notation of “Valerie Flame” in her notebook, the name Valerie Plame as referring to Wilson’s wife obviously made a deep impression on her, because during questioning by Fitzgerald about the reference to Wilson as “Victoria Wilson” she states:

I told Mr. Fitzgerald I believed that before this call, I might have called others about Mr. Wilson’s wife. In my notebook I had written the words “Victoria Wilson” with a box around it, another apparent reference to Ms. Plame, who is also known as Valerie Wilson.

I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I was not sure whether Mr. Libby had used this name or whether I just made a mistake in writing it on my own. Another possibility, I said, is that I gave Mr. Libby the wrong name on purpose to see whether he would correct me and confirm her identity.

I also told the grand jury I thought it was odd that I had written “Wilson” because my memory is that I had heard her referred to only as Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether this suggested that Mr. Libby had given me the name Wilson. I told him I didn’t know and didn’t want to guess.

So Judy can’t remember whether Libby used the name Wilson or not during the phonecall on the 12th, but she remembers that she only heard Valerie Wilson referred to as Plame? Also, why would she have wanted Libby to confirm Plame’s identity as Wilson’s wife unless she had gotten that identity from somebody else?

3. The 2nd Source

In both Judy’s first-hand story and the NYT article, there are many and varied references that seem to point toward Judy having a 2nd source.

Judy actually seems to indicate as much here:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me about another entry in my notebook, where I had written the words “Valerie Flame,” clearly a reference to Ms. Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald wanted to know whether the entry was based on my conversations with Mr. Libby. I said I didn’t think so. I said I believed the information came from another source, whom I could not recall.

And here:

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

And here, while discussing her July 12th phone call with Libby:

I told Mr. Fitzgerald I believed that before this call, I might have called others about Mr. Wilson’s wife.

Interestingly, Judy’s faulty memory turned to no comment in the NYT’s version:

Ms. Miller returned to the subject on July 12 in a phone call with Mr. Libby. Another variant on Valerie Wilson’s name – “Victoria Wilson” – appears in the notes of that call. Ms. Miller had by then called other sources about Mr. Wilson’s wife. In an interview, she would not discuss her sources.

Finally, under questioning by Fitzgerald, Judy seemed to have a little too much familiarity with classified documents. If Scooter didn’t show it to her, maybe someone else did?

Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to examine a series of documents. Though I could not identify them with certainty, I said that some seemed familiar, and that they might be excerpts from the National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq’s weapons. Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether Mr. Libby had shown any of the documents to me. I said no, I didn’t think so. I thought I remembered him at one point reading from a piece of paper he pulled from his pocket.

Strange that after declaring that Libby didn’t show her the docs, she decides to pull a “is that a classified document in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” stunt and hint that maybe Libby read something to her after all. Considering how bad Judy’s auditory memory seems to be when it comes to remembering the names of sources it seems a bit of stretch as an explanation of her uncomfortable knowledge of the classified National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq’s weapons.

4. What was the relationship between Libby and Judy?

Reading the two NYT articles, one is left to wonder about the real relationsip between Judith Miller and Scooter Libby. Before June 2003, were Libby and Judy actually close? Again, it’s chancy to trust Judy’s honesty about the subject, but Judy’s description of her history with Libby and her attitude going into that June 23rd meeting is interesting:

Early in my grand jury testimony, Mr. Fitzgerald asked me to describe my history with Mr. Libby and explain how I came to interview him in 2003.

I said I had known Mr. Libby indirectly through my work as a co-author of “Germs,” a book on biological weapons published in September 2001. Mr. Libby had assisted one of my co-authors, and the first time I met Mr. Libby he asked for an inscribed copy of “Germs.”

In June 2003 I had just returned from Iraq, where I had been embedded with a special military unit charged with finding Saddam Hussein’s unconventional weapons. Now I was assigned to a team of reporters at The Times examining why no such weapons had been found.

On the afternoon of June 23, 2003, I arrived at the Old Executive Office Building to interview Mr. Libby, who was known to be an avid consumer of prewar intelligence assessments, which were already coming under fierce criticism. The first entry in my reporter’s notebook from this interview neatly captured the question foremost in my mind.

“Was the intell slanted?” I wrote, referring to the intelligence assessments of Iraq and underlining the word “slanted.”

While it is obviousthat that last bit is self-serving and that Judy would have every reason to play up her crusading journalistic fervor in pretending to be shocked, shocked, shocked that no WMDs were being found, her opening question does seem a bit pointed if Libby was really the close crony that so many of us assumed he was. The Times article says Judy described Libby as:

“a good-faith source who was usually straight with me,” Ms. Miller said in an interview.

Yet, for such a good-faith source that she claims she was willing to go to jail to protect, Judy seems like one of those friends from the old saying, “With friends like these…” Again and again, she seems to be quite ready to twist the knife when the occasion arises.

When she revealed Libby’s identity to her bosses in 2004, she apparently implied that Libby had something to hide:

“Judy believed Libby was afraid of her testimony,” Mr. Keller said, noting that he did not know the basis for the fear. “She thought Libby had reason to be afraid of her testimony.”

When trying to explain why she hadn’t accepted Libby’s earlier waiver, she again casts it in the worst light.

Ms. Miller said in an interview that she was waiting for Mr. Libby to call her, but he never did. “I interpreted the silence as, ‘Don’t testify,’ ” Ms. Miller said.

After telling Fitzgerald that Libby didn’t share classified documents with her, she hints at the end that maybe he did after all verbally. After telling Fitzgerald that Libby didn’t reveal Wilson’s name, she hints that maybe he did after all.

I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I was not sure whether Mr. Libby had used this name or whether I just made a mistake in writing it on my own. . . .Mr. Fitzgerald asked whether this suggested that Mr. Libby had given me the name Wilson. I told him I didn’t know and didn’t want to guess.

Finally, it is perhaps telling that she ends her first person narrative with the strange anectdote she tells Fitzgerald to explain Libby’s Aspen reference.

I told the grand jury about my last encounter with Mr. Libby. It came in August 2003, shortly after I attended a conference on national security issues held in Aspen, Colo. After the conference, I traveled to Jackson Hole, Wyo. At a rodeo one afternoon, a man in jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses approached me. He asked me how the Aspen conference had gone. I had no idea who he was.

“Judy,” he said. “It’s Scooter Libby.”

Is this Judy herself implying subtly that her relationship with Libby is a bit more complicated than commonly assumed?

5. Did Judy use Libby to hide her other source?

Did Judy go to jail to protect Libby or to protect somebody else? Reading through these two articles, I almost began to wonder if Judy used Libby as a shield for this other source.

First of all, while there is every indication that Judy had at least one other source about Valerie Plame, she indicated to her bosses that her source was Libby and only Libby. Apparently the question of another source didn’t arise.

At first she lied to Washington Bureau chief Philip Taubman about being one of the six journalists:

Philip Taubman, Ms. Abramson’s successor as Washington bureau chief, asked Ms. Miller and other Times reporters whether they were among the six. Ms. Miller denied it.

“The answer was generally no,” Mr. Taubman said. Ms. Miller said the subject of Mr. Wilson and his wife had come up in casual conversation with government officials.

It is interesting that at this point she describes government officials, in the plural. However, after she is subpoenaed in August of 2004, she suddenly is down to one source, one that she convinces her bosses to defend along with her.

The fact that Ms. Miller’s judgment had been questioned in the past did not affect its stance. “The default position in a case like that is you support the reporter,” Mr. Keller said.

It was in these early days that Mr. Keller and Mr. Sulzberger learned Mr. Libby’s identity. Neither man asked Ms. Miller detailed questions about her conversations with him.

Both said they viewed the case as a matter of principle, which made the particulars less important. “I didn’t interrogate her about the details of the interview,” Mr. Keller said. “I didn’t ask to see her notes. And I really didn’t feel the need to do that.

And so neither man had any reason to doubt that Judy had just one source to protect.

Mr. Sulzberger and the paper’s executive editor, Bill Keller, knew few details about Ms. Miller’s conversations with her confidential source other than his name. They did not review Ms. Miller’s notes. Mr. Keller said he learned about the “Valerie Flame” notation only this month. Mr. Sulzberger was told about it by Times reporters on Thursday.

But was Libby the man she was willing to go to jail for? After Judy convinced the paper that Libby didn’t want her to testify,

Ms. Miller and the paper decided at that point not to pursue additional negotiations with Mr. Tate.

The two sides did not talk for a year.

However, shortly after halting all communication with Libby’s lawyer, Judy asked Abrams to limit the scope of Fitzgerald’s inquiry:

Not long after breaking off communications with Mr. Tate, Mr. Abrams spoke to Mr. Fitzgerald twice in September 2004. Mr. Abrams wanted to narrow the scope of the questions Ms. Miller would be asked if she testified before the grand jury.

Mr. Abrams said he wanted Mr. Fitzgerald to question Ms. Miller only on her conversations with Mr. Libby about Ms. Wilson. And he wanted a promise that Mr. Fitzgerald would not call her back for further questioning after she testified once.

Mr. Fitzgerald said no.

Judy describes this as the deal-breaker that sent her to jail:

Equally central to my decision was Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor. He had declined to confine his questioning to the subject of Mr. Libby. This meant I would have been unable to protect other confidential sources who had provided information – unrelated to Mr. Wilson or his wife – for articles published in The Times. Last month, Mr. Fitzgerald agreed to limit his questioning.

Was she really worried about confidential sources who provided info unrelated to the Wilsons or one particular source who had provided the most explosive and dangerous info?

For answer it might be instructive to read Judy’s description of her telephone conversation with Scooter while in jail that convinced her she could finally hand Libby over to Fitzgerald on a platter.

When that could not be arranged, she settled for a 10-minute jailhouse conference call on Sept. 19 with Mr. Libby, while two of her lawyers and one of Mr. Libby’s listened in.

Ms. Miller said she was persuaded. “I mean, it’s like the tone of the voice,” she said. “When he talked to me about how unhappy he was that I was in jail, that he hadn’t fully understood that I might have been going to jail just to protect him. He had thought there were other people whom I had been protecting. And there was kind of like an expression of genuine concern and sorrow.”

When Scooter said that he thought there were other people Judy was protecting, was he just posturing and trying to justify letting Judy sit in jail for 85 days, or was he letting Judy know that he knew that she was protecting someone else?

And what does Fitzgerald think of Judy’s one source story? I suspect we won’t know the answer to that until indictments come down.

cross-posted at dKos

Plame Speculation: Bolton, Libby, and Silence on WMD’s

Now that Judith Miller has testified before the grand jury, you would think that many of the questions that have swirled around her martyr-like trip to the slammer would have been answered — especially by Judy herself. However, the NY Times and Judy remain mum.

Fortunately, though, for those of us held enthralled by this story, some interesting pieces of the Judy puzzle are beginning to become a little clearer, thanks in part to the acrimonious public battle between Libby’s lawyers and Miller’s lawyers over whether Judy ever really needed to go to jail in the first place.

And a couple of interesting snippets have left me speculating as to whether we finally know why Captain Mustache aka John Bolton visited our darling heroine in jail.

And a couple of interesting snippets have left me speculating as to whether we finally know why Captain Mustache aka John Bolton visited our darling heroine in jail.
Here is a rough timeline of events:

July 6, 2005 — Judith Miller is jailed for contempt for refusing to testify before the Grand Jury about her conversations with I. Lewis Libby.

Date Unknown — Patrick Fitzgerald signals to the jailed Judith Miller that he means business

…special Justice Department prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald signaled he intended to reimpanel a new grand jury–a move that could have kept Miller in jail for another year and a half, say two lawyers close to the case who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the talks.

August 15, 2005 — It is first reported that John Bolton has visited Judith Miller in jail

Bolton’s visit raised some eyebrows in Washington. A vocal defender of administration claims in 2003 that Iraq was seeking weapons of mass destruction, he could have had access to a State Department memo, parts of which were classified, that detailed Wilson’s trip to Niger to determine whether Iraq was seeking uranium there and identified his wife as a covert CIA operative. Who saw or discussed the memo has been a central question for Fitzgerald.

Bolton declined through a spokesman to discuss his visit to Miller or his reasons for going. “This has nothing to do with his job here,” the spokesman said. “He doesn’t want to talk about it.”

August 31, 2005 — Miller lawyer, Robert Bennett, contacts Libby’s lawyer Joseph Tate about a new waiver of confidentiality

Bennett told TIME that the Miller camp had received an indication from a third party that it might be a good time to approach Libby with a new request to personally waive the confidentiality agreement.

September 19, 2005 — Miller finally talks to Libby by phone

That finally came on Sept. 19, in what participants described as an “awkward” four-way conference call that included Libby, Miller (patched in on a jailhouse phone) and their lawyers. “I’m sorry you’re in jail, Judy,” Libby said, according to an account provided by his lawyer, Joseph Tate. “I am, too. The food is not very good,” Miller replied. Libby then told Miller he wanted to “encourage” her to testify to “help both of us… get this matter behind us.”

September 29, 2005 — Judith Miller is released from jail after her lawyers reach an agreement with Fitzgerald and Libby

Negotiations with Fitzgerald were complicated, involving not only Miller’s testimony but her notes as well. The legal source told TIME that the prosecutor did not give the final O.K. for Miller’s release until after he received and reviewed the notes from one of two conversations with Libby in July 2003.

In his deal with Miller, the prosecutor agreed to limit the scope of her testimony before the grand jury, focusing only on the reporter’s conversations with sources about Plame, according to her lawyer Bennett. Miller wanted to rule out of bounds any questions about her reporting on WMD, a lawyer involved in the case told TIME.

September 30, 2005 — Judith Miller testifies before the Grand Jury.

So this is how this whole thing adds up to me. Judy Miller went to jail. She was going to be a good girl and keep her mouth shut about her conversations with Libby. Then Fitzgerald threatened her with extending the probe an additional 18-months. I suspect he also threatened her with something else, perhaps an examination of her own role in the Plame outing?

Whatever the reason, Judy starts running scared. She sends out a message to the WH, perhaps through one of her many VIP visitors that she wants out. Libby will have to cough her up a “get out of jail free” card — or else.

Enter Bolton. He tries to shore Judy up, but she lets him know that Fitzgerald is also sniffing around the broader issue of her WMD reporting and perhaps the forged Niger documents. Bolton takes her ultimatum back to the WH. Libby will have to be sacrificed for the greater good.

Bolton, or an unknown thid party contacts Miller’s lawyers and tells them that they should contact Libby’s lawyer and begin negotiations on a new waiver.

Libby feigns surprise that Miller even needs a new waiver and that she has gone to jail to protect their conversation but he encourages Miller to testify. Part of the deal, however, is that Judy must keep her mouth shut on the WMD side of the story. Judy agrees and her lawyers negotiate a deal with Fitzgerald. She is released from jail and testifies about her conversation with Libby. She does not testify about anything else, however, including her reporting on WMDs.

cross-posted at dKos

Does FEMA WANT the death toll to go higher?

cross-posted at dKos

Sorry, I don’t usually do rant diaries, but I’m just boiling over and can’t take much more.

First there’s Military Tracy’s diary about how the head of the National Guard is turning down military assistance because he wants to prove the Guard can go it alone.

Then there’s the story of how the poor people waiting food and water at the convention center are being ignored and allowed to drop like flies.

Now there’s just been a report on the swift water rescue teams from my home state of California. They have the expertise and equipment to save lives. Today according to a report I just saw on Anderson Cooper they saved hundreds from flooded homes in neighborhoods that the Coast Guard hasn’t or can’t reach. The only drawback is that there aren’t enough rescuers to go around.
They need more. Why more aren’t on the way, I have no idea, because LA’s mayor Antonio Villairagosa has pledged to send as many teams as are needed and they certainly are needed in larger numbers than are currently there.

But that’s not the worst of it.

The worst is that apparently saving lives of victims who have already been waiting four days for rescue isn’t what FEMA is about.

At the end of the report the reporter announced that FEMA won’t be permitting the swift water teams to do any more rescues until they “are sure they are safe.”

The reporter considered that a questionable call since “they certainly are needed.” Which begs the question of exactly what FEMA is worried about. These are not neighborhoods bothered by looters. Everything’s just too flooded. The people are all too stranded. The reporter went out with the teams and didn’t seem to think the rescuers were in any danger except the obvious ones of hidden debris under the water and the dangers of the filthy flood water itself. Again, these are trained guys who are trying to help. Why the hell is FEMA becoming an obstacle to people surviving?

Time is already running out. There already are whole neighborhoods where no one has even been through to see if people are still alive, and FEMA is grounding teams that actually might save hundreds of lives?

Anderson Cooper’s reaction was that that was “just unbelievable.” Mine is that I am beginning to wonder if old Michael Brown thinks his mandate is to reduce the number of living refugees that have to be dealt with later by leaving as many of them as possible to die where they sit.

God, I’m angry.

Update [2005-9-1 23:36:21 by katerina]:

The transcript from Anderson Cooper 360 is now up. Here is the FEMA quote:

SANCHEZ: Those swift water recovery units we were talking about in our report are not going to be going in the water any time soon. FEMA is concerned for their safety. They want to make sure they have security for them before they go back out. It’s a tough call, because there’s a lot of people who could really use their help. Anderson, back to you.

COOPER: Unbelievable. It is simple unbelievable.

Update [2005-9-1 23:36:21 by katerina]:

On the network news (sorry, I think it was ABC, but I can’t remember for sure), they showed a group of New Orleans rescuees who were huddled on an interstate. “These are the lucky ones,” the reporter said, describing how all these people had been rescued in the last 24 hours and that they were actually going to be getting the buses promised everywhere but seemingly delivered nowhere and evacuated to Houston. Based on where the rescuees had been delivered to, I think a large number of them were the people rescued by the swift water team today. They stretched on and on and on. Thanks to FEMA there won’t be a similar crowd tomorrow. Is that why they’re stopping the rescues? Because they don’t know how to get them out once they’re rescued? Because lines of Katrina victims dying in the sun looks worse for them then hidden victims dying in the darkness of their attics? A dark and bitter thought, but the unbelievably incompetent and deadly actions of FEMA really make one wonder…

Depriving Bush of Bodies?

Last night I attended a vigil to support Cindy Sheehan. Towards the end, the vigil was shut down early by the police because they claimed we had exceeded our 200 person limit for attendance. After the announcement was made, I began talking with a fellow vigil member. We started discussing the war and exchanging stories how we both had loved ones safely back from Iraq due to minor but debilitating injuries (messed up knees, collarbones, etc.) that required being shipped back so they could have surgery. We talked a little more about Iraq and then this lady said something that kind of blew my mind.

She said that beginning about two years ago, her son (who is in the Air Force) told her that it seemed as if officers were starting to quietly encourage their men (and women) not to re-enlist. She said that this seemed strange to her, especially as over time stories began to surface about problems getting new recruits. What she began to suspect was that the military brass was not taking Bush’s disastrous policies quite as passively as most of us have been led to believe. Indeed, her belief came to be that the officers were trying to deprive Bush of more bodies.

More on the flip
This is, of course, just an anecdotal story. But it got me wondering. Are there others out there that have been quietly getting the same message? As Iraq has gone sour and the war drums have begun beating about Iran, have the military brass been fighting back the only way they can — depriving Bush of the larger army he needs to continue his disastrous policies?

Has anyone else heard stories like these? Do you know any soldiers who have been quietly counseled not to re-enlist? Do you know any that have been shipped home early for surgeries on knees, shoulders, collar-bones, etc. because some superior officer doesn’t want one more soldier ground up in the Iraq meat-grinder?

It could be this is just wishful thinking. It could also be that this is an important but untold protest story that is quietly simmering just below the surface. It would be ironic indeed if recruiters stateside were sweating to fill the ranks while officers in Iraq –caught in the middle of Bush’s nightmare — were doing what they could to deprive him of bodies.

Why we must focus on Roberts NOT Rove Today

(Cross-posted at dKos)
I have been following Traitorgate as avidly as anybody. Yesterday, while all the hoopla in the news was about the speculation about Bush’s SCOTUS pick, I was reading the Feb 2005 Fed Appeals Court decision that allowed Judy Miller to be sent to jail and compelled Matt Cooper to talk. However, this morning I woke up deeply concerned by the consensus being developed that the Roberts pick was moved up as a distraction from Rove.

I think it’s the other way around. I think the Roberts pick and its announcement in the thick of the continuing Traitorgate revelations is actually aimed at ensuring that Roberts gets through without a fight.

Lawrence O’Donnell, who originally broke the news that Rove was Cooper’s source and who has been following Traitorgate extremely closely argued pretty persuasively on Franken yesterday that the WH knows indictments are coming and that it is that event and not the dust-ups this week that are the big fight on the Rove front. If that is the case, then what was the point of moving up the Roberts announcement now?

I’ll present my theory of WWRD? (What Would Rove Do?) below the fold.
You are Karl Rove. You know something big, heavy, and ugly is headed your way from a Rottweiler named Fitzgerald, because for once in your nasty political career you miscalculated big time. However, being Karl, you figure you can deal with that battle when the time comes. In the mean time, you see a way to use initial skirmishes to your advantage.

You have a different battle you’re also trying to fight. You want to get Bush’s SCOTUS nominee confirmed and confirmed handily, but you’re replacing O’Connor instead of Rehnquist as you had expected. You’ve found a great stealth candidate who will be like Scalia, only younger, prettier, and with a picture-perfect family. However, you’re still wary, because the interest groups are organized and ready to fight you tooth and nail on whomever you pick.

Then you enter your own personal shitstorm, and you — in your usually Rovian way — see an opportunity. What if you use the frenzy around your own battle (that you realize is just a skirmish before the real war, even if your enemies do not) to provide the perfect cover for your candidate? Before the enemy (us) and the press (fickle allies of late) figure out what you’re up to, it will be too late, because public opinion about Roberts will have solidified into positive support and any attempts to challenge him will receive the following frame: “no Bush candidate, no matter how mainstream, will satisfy these left-wing extremists.” Roberts will be confirmed and any Dems who challenge him will risk backlash.

If you’re Rove, you’ve used your lemons to make some pretty damn good lemonade, especially since the lemons are unavoidable.

So what should our response be?

FOR THE NEXT 48-72 HOURS WE SHOULD BE ALL ROBERTS ALL THE TIME.

I don’t know enough about this guy at this point to form more than a sketchy impression of him. The rest of the country is in the same boat. A headline last night described it well: Republicans jubilant, Democrats wary.

It’s precisely in the next few days that people are going to form their EMOTIONAL reaction to Roberts. This window is finite but crucial, and we’d better make the most of it. Traitorgate isn’t going anywhere, so let’s put our focus where it’s most needed.

A couple more points:

The Rove story will ripen with or without us. While emotionally it’s more satisfying to pursue Rove right now, we have to be disciplined and keep our eye on the ball. Roberts will be around to screw up our lives (if he’s so inclined) long after Rove is led away in a lovely orange jumpsuit.
Emotion is the key. People are getting these first impressions of Roberts now. Trite but true, first impressions matter. Last night was a conservative photo op come true. If Roberts is really a Scalia clone (a more handsome, telegenic, and perhaps dangerous Scalia clone?) that some suspect he might be, we’d better figure it out fast and jump on his weaknesses. Once public opinion hardens, we won’t have a bat’s chance in hell to shift it.
Strategically, I see this very akin to the first Swifty attacks right after the Democratic Convention. If we’re going to fight Roberts, we have to make up our minds to do it soon, and then hit back hard and fast, or we might as well give up the fight.
Fitzgerald has plugged along fine on his own up to now. A few days without us enjoying daydreams about Rove in cuffs isn’t going to affect the case against the WH traitors one little bit.
Finally, lets show Rove and the Right that we have the discipline to go after the story that we need to go after instead of the one that gives us that warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Turdblossom isn’t going anywhere. Fitgerald isn’t either. We’ll have plenty of time to fight that battle later.

EMOTIONAL POLITICS

(cross-posted @ dKos)

Earlier this week I posted a diary discussing the different approaches men and women take to emotion when communicating about problems. I tried to make the case that getting emotion right is necessary not just for personal relationships but for political success. I also suggested that a feminine paradigm for exploring emotion could be helpful to Democrats in helping them get the emotional connection to voters right.

In recent elections, Republicans have become masters of manipulating voter emotion to win elections. Democrats, in turn, have sometimes responded to this manipulation by rejecting the role of emotion entirely in the process. This is a strategic mistake. Just as we had to take the battle over national security directly to Bush, we must also engage Republicans directly on other emotional issues.

To do this effectively, however, we have to start getting our emotional ducks in a row. To succeed against the Republican BS machine and to win the hearts as well as the minds of America, we have to learn to do a better job of emotional politics.
DISCOVERING THE FAULT LINES

Emotion can be utilized to determine the priorities of the electorate and where the most serious political fault lines lie within and outside of our party. Some rules to explore:

Passion matters.

One issue that voters feel passionately about is worth ten that they are lukewarm about. We can be right on all issues but one, and still that one can sink our campaign if voters feels passionately enough about it. So individual issues are important.

On the flip side, passion can also be felt for a vision that encompasses numerous issues — none of which individually rise to a passionate level of feeling. So a party’s core message is important.

Finally, passion can be felt for a candidate that supercedes the emotions elicited by the candidate’s issues. So the emotional reactions elicited by a candidate are also important.

To win, we need to understand and respond to passions in all three of these areas.

When people act unexpectedly, you’ve probably seriously misread or underestimated their emotion.

This was certainly true about women voters in the 2004 election. Bush was re-elected because he narrowed the gender gap from the 10 point margin Gore had in 2000 to the smaller 7 point margin Kerry attracted in 2004. Why was Bush able to close the gap when so many of his positions hurt women?

One word — or rather — one emotion: fear. Earlier in the summer of 2004, women voters favored Kerry over Bush by 10 points. However, after the Swift Boat Liars debacle, the Republican convention, and the attack on a Russian school by Chechen separatists, that 10 point lead evaporated. Kerry was eventually able to win most of those women back, but not that crucial 3%.

Negative emotions may win arguments, but positive emotions are necessary for consensus and solutions.

This is one reason Republicans are doing such a lousy job governing despite dominating all three branches of government. Our challenge as the opposition is to be clear and passionately engaged battling what they’re doing wrong, but also to be equally clear, passionate, and emotionally coherent about what we would do to give people hope, help, and opportunity.

People will sometimes hide behind facts when they are uncomfortable with the emotional source of their positions.

When Republicans hide behind facts, the facts are often false. In such cases, we should not only unmask the false positions, but also seek to determine what emotions are making them uncomfortable and why. On the Democratic side, we have to be careful when we are uncomfortable with the emotional source of our positions, because this discomfort can come across as insecurity, lack of confidence, or insincerity.

If people are embarassed by an emotion, they will often attempt to hide its source — ie. the thoughts, prejudices, and assumptions that led to the emotion.

A voter may be embarassed by their support for a given issue or candidate and still be difficult to persuade. Such support should never be dismissed; it can in fact be hazardous because it is hidden and extremely difficult to engage directly.

CHANGING MINDS

It is tempting in the face of what we may see as irrational feeling to attempt to change minds by arguing facts and figures. However, we are unlikely to succeed in changing minds if we do not handle emotion with knowledge and respect.

Emotions can’t be reasoned with, only acknowledged.

Because strong emotion can evoke equally strong opposite emotion, there is often a instinct to try to argue with someone who has opposing views you see as misguided and emotional rather than rational. Unfortunately, the emotion is the result, not the cause, of the thoughts, assumptions, and prejudices you seek to change. Arguing with the emotion, therefore, accomplishes nothing. Acknowledging an emotion, on the other hand, conveys respect and may encourage the person you disagree with to open up enough to give the reasons that they feel the emotion they do. This is valuable, because

The thoughts that create emotion can be reasoned with, but only if they are brought out into the open. This only occurs in an atmosphere of trust.

Until you know why someone believes what they do, you can do nothing about what they believe. Not until they feel comfortable enough to admit the thoughts and assumptions that led them to support or oppose a given position, will you be able to persuade them to question some of those thoughts and assumptions.

Emotions denied only become stronger and more disconnected from their original cause. This in turn makes them harder to change.

Ignoring, rejecting, or dismissing the emotions of people you disagree with has two negative results. One, they are more likely to dig in their heels and harden their position. Two, it will become harder to discern the true source of the negative emotion and thus will be harder to change minds and heal rifts.

It is far easier to dismiss a possible grievance than to acknowledge it.

It is human nature to assume we are right and others are wrong. Right now it is easy for Democrats to reflexively assume we are always in the right and Republicans are always in the wrong. Similarly, in our shared passionate desire to win, we sometimes ignore the grievances within our party, dismissing them as unimportant compared to the bigger fight. In both cases, we will achieve more with respect, calm, and humility, then we will by giving our natural defensiveness free reign.

DEALING WITH LIES

Finally, if we learn to deal with emotion more effectively, we may also grow better at dealing with lies.

An emotion will feel true even if its source is false.

One frustration for a lot of Democrats is that we can know that the source of an emotion is false and yet be unable to persuade the the person feeling the emotion of that falsity. What is important to remember in such a situation is that you cannot tackle the emotion directly. Instead, the false source of the emotion must be chipped away at until, with luck, the emotion begins to change organically. This can be a slow, frustrating process (like water on stone), and it requires information be provided to the person from trusted sources in small increments, but it can work.

The time to fight a lie is when it is still a thought.

Once lies have been accepted to such a point that they elicit emotion, they become much harder to counter. This is because the emotion is a construction by the individual based on a false foundation provided by others. There is more personal commitment to the emotion and there is an ego element to defending the falsehood as true.

This is why we have to attack lies quickly, get our leaders to speak out against them forcefully, and insist the press do their job and set the records straight as soon as possible.

Not all truth can be proven.

We have to be careful about being put into the situation of always having to prove what we say is true while the other side gets the assumption of truth without proof. Sometimes truth is difficult if not impossible to prove; it still can be true nevertheless.

Similarly, we should not be too quickly dismissive of those within our own ranks who see something we cannot see. While we want to remain in the “reality-based” community, we need to take a respectful, if skeptical, view of our “conspiracy theorists.” There are people who sense things by instinct if not by proof, and like the canaries in the mine, they may alert us to dangers and issues the rest of us are just not able to perceive.

EMOTION MATTERS

It is easy to lose track of the fact that much of politics is just personal relationships on a massive scale. If being respectful and knowledgeable about emotions matters in successful personal relationships, it matters even more so in doing successful politics. Many in politics know how to handle emotion well by instinct. Others need to learn what doesn’t come naturally.

Taking our country back is going to require the efforts of each and every one of us, so it behooves us all to consider how we can do emotion better to make us all more successful at Emotional Politics.

What Women Can Teach the Democratic Party

(cross-posted yesterday on Daily Kos)

Here’s a conundrum that has stumped more than a few of us: how can a party representing extremist views, destructive policies, and rampant incompetence win more votes than one possessing popular positions, capable leadership, and an array of answers to the problems that plague our country?

There are, of course, multiple answers to that question, but I want to focus on just one. The belligerent, macho, testosterone-driven Republican party has been beating us on a playing field where we Democrats should reign supreme.

They are doing a better job of connecting emotionally with voters.

Why is this? And, more importantly, what can we do about it? I think the answer lies in not trying to out-macho the GOP, but rather to shift paradigms and use a more feminine approach to interacting with voters — especially the ones who disagree with us. More on the flip.
Why Emotion Matters

While women make up the majority of Democratic voters and while the Democratic party’s policies are strongly influenced by women’s priorities and approaches to problems, Democratic leadership is still dominated by men. Confronting the simplistic and deceptive appeals of Republicans, those men are prone to dismiss emotion as less important than reason when trying to persuade voters to their side.

The problem with that is when ideas and emotions clash, emotion usually wins. The past five years have seen a number of occasions when failure to acknowledge emotion has left us wide open to plain old failure. Perhaps if we can learn to look emotion in the eye and not flinch from it, we can turn those failures around.

How women do things differently

Nearly fifteen years ago, linguistics professor Deborah Tannen wrote a book describing the differing communication styles of men and women. The thesis of the book was that women tend to use conversation to connect and persuade, so they emphasize emotion; men tend to use conversation to achieve or maintain status, so they emphasize knowledge. Both styles are valid, but understanding the differences in styles is important.

One place where these differences clearly manifest themselves is in the discussion of problems. When men and women talk about problems, women are often inclined to take time to explore the emotional impact of the problem, while men tend to either immediately offer solutions or explain why the problem doesn’t matter. Men’s first impulse is to fix things; women’s is to focus on the emotional impact before seeking solutions.

So what does this information about interpersonal relationships have to do with electoral politics? My guess is — quite a bit.

The three steps in discussing a problem

In interpersonal relationships, there are basically three steps in discussing a problem:

Step 1. Acknowledge a problem exists
Step 2. Describe the problem’s impact

Step 3. Offer a solution

Note that it is in Step 2 that emotion really enters the conversation, because it is at this stage that feelings about the problem get expressed. In the feminine paradigm, Step 2 gets emphasized before proceeding to Step 3; in the masculine paradigm, Step 3 is where the emphasis is put, and Step 2 is just something to be hurried through in the process of getting to Step 3.

Now let’s look at the parallel process in discussing issues in a campaign:

Step 1. Identify issues of importance
Step 2. Describe impact of the issues on voters lives

Step 3. Offer solutions

Again, emotions enter the picture at Step 2. In the last election, Democrats tried to control Step 1, did a great job of Step 3, but tended to skim over Step 2, make it too abstract, or skip it completely in our rush to start fixing the problem. Yet Step 2 is where voters become personally invested in an election. When people say “he just doesn’t get it,” they are usually referring to Step 2, not Steps 1 or 3.

In the last election, Bush used the powers of his office to dominate Step 1. Most of the rest of his campaign energy went into reiterating a monolithic focus in Step 2 on a single emotion — fear (about terrorism and national security). He hardly ever bothered with Step 3. This seemed like failed strategy at first, but in the last election, Step 2 was more crucial than 3, and the Republicans had either the luck or the insight to realize it.

Democrats, on the other hand, wasted a great deal of energy trying to wrest control — unsuccessfully — of Step 1 away from Bush. They also put a great deal of energy into persuading voters to accept their answers to Step 3. However, it was in Step 2 that they missed the boat, because that was where the battle was really fought and Democrats failed to realize just how crucial it was.

Why Step 2 is so important

Step 2 is where emotions enter the picture, so it is where personal investment occurs. Want to know why a single issue voter is a single issue voter? It is because of Step 2, where the individual make an emotional connection to that issue not just an intellectual one.

Understanding the emotional reaction of voters to the problems being addressed (or unaddressed) in a campaign is vital, because if we don’t “get” how voters feel about a problem, they will not trust us to provide them with a proper solution to that problem.

Why did people think Bush would protect them better than Kerry in the war on terror? Part of it was his being Commander in Chief, part was the propaganda war by Fox and Limbaugh and their ilk, but a large part was simply Bush seeming to understand their fear (which was whipped up to fever pitch by Rove and Co.) and accept it without equivocation or hesitation. Bush seemed to “get it”, to understand emotionally where they were coming from, when they mistakenly thought Kerry didn’t.

Whenever Kerry did manage to convey that he “got it” (eg. the effective strategy of the Democratic Convention to emphasize his own Commander in Chief credentials), Bush’s campaign went into overdrive to convince voters otherwise. It is no coincidence that that was when the Swift Boat Liars came to the forefront.

Unfortunately, Bush’s campaign and the “Kerry doesn’t get it” (ie. Kerry doesn’t understand your fear) message was much more sustained, intense, and focused than the responding campaign to show that Kerry did. “Flip flopper” wasn’t just a nasty tag; it went directly to the notion that Kerry’s emotions were not engaged in the issue of Iraq or the war on terrorism. He either understood the danger or he didn’t. Flip-flop implied he didn’t.

And in the end questions of competence, questions of strategy, questions of motive didn’t matter as much as the simple fact that many voters thought Bush understood their fear and Kerry did not. They wouldn’t follow Kerry to Step 3 to see how much better his solutions were, because he lost too many of them at Step 2 and never managed to get them back.

How Kerry got Step 2 Wrong

Looking back, it’s not difficult to see why the Kerry campaign had trouble with Step 2, especially when it came to fear. First of all, Kerry was in a bind in “affirming” the fear of the electorate, because:

a) political wisdom held that a fearful electorate was necessarily a Bush electorate (a damaging, and I suspect false, assumption that cost us a lot); most conventional wisdom proclaimed that the only way for Kerry to win the election was to shift the focus of the campaign from national security to economics;
b) Kerry was hamstrung initially in being clear about the Iraq war because of his vote for it; only when he began seriously to hammer away at the disconnect between Iraq and the war on terror in early September did his campaign gain emotional clarity on the fear issue;
c) Kerry was temperamentally unsuited to making emotional appeals to voters, and when personally attacked tended to respond with “report talk,” as Deborah Tannen dubs the masculine conversational style that seeks to enhance status by conveying information. In September and October Kerry finally seemed to find his emotional “voice,” but even then it ebbed and flowed, probably because it was not his natural mode.

Sadly, by then, serious harm had been done to the emotional power of his campaign by his seeming emotional ambiguity about Iraq and his unwillingness, at first, to bluntly and emotionally take on the Swift Boat Liars. This one-two punch made it difficult for voters to figure him out emotionally and therefore to connect with him emotionally. While his excellent performances in the debates helped him to intellectually connect with voters, the debates were not sufficient to overcome the “emotion gap” that Bush had already forged.

How Dean Got Step 2 Right

Thinking about emotion and Step 2 also provides insight into why Howard Dean was such a powerful candidate. Dean provided a revitalized grassroots movement and technological innovation with the internet, but he also used the feminine paradigm in his campaign to great effect and succeeded at Step 2 in a way that no other Democratic candidate did. This success allowed him to change, for a while at least, the focus of Step 1. Dean’s powerful use of the feminine paradigm is what allowed the Democrats to make Iraq an issue.

Dean’s grassroots efforts and successful use of meetups and the internet, allowed Dean to give voice to voter emotion in a way that was almost unprecedented. This expression of emotion not only allowed for very personal connections between Dean and his supporters, it also gave Dean the power to temporarily wrest control of Step 1 from the Commander-in-Chief and make Iraq — at least for a while — the dominant issue. Indeed, it could be argued that Dean provided the emotional shot-in-the-arm that made the campaign as close as it was. If Kerry’s team had been able to pick up the emotional mantle where Dean left it off (difficult to do for the reasons listed above), it is possible that the election might have been won.

This is because the relationship between Step 1 and Step 2 in not linear. Instead, just as synaptic connections are strengthened or weakened by the intensity of the electrical charge that passes between them, the emotional responses in Step 2 result in the strengthening or weakening of the issues in Step 1. Broad emotion strengthens, strong emotion strengthens even more. The issue of Iraq was the spear that could have pierced Bush’s shield.

The Masculine Paradigm and How it Hurt Us Strategically

Dean provided the emotional juice to raise Iraq to a top issue; Kerry’s nomination and his subsequent emotional vaccillation on Iraq (it can be argued that his position was intellectually consistent, but the real problem for Kerry was that voters didn’t find it emotionally consistent) robbed the issue of its power. This was a major strategic mistake, because Iraq was the only issue with enough emotional juice to serve as a counterweight to terrorism fears.

Similarly, all the energy that the Democrats put into trying to shift the focus of Step 1 from National Security to the Economy was pretty much wasted effort, because they could not achieve that shift without a powerful burst of energy generated in Step 2. Unfortunately, the Kerry campaign put too little energy into Step 2 and failed to understand that the strongest emotions on both sides (left and right) did not center on the economy but on issues of war and peace. That’s where the deepest emotions were and that’s where the battle had to be fought. Unfortunately, Democrats realized this fact too late.

Learning to use the Feminine Paradigm

It’s possible that if the Democratic Party had been more attuned to the feminine paradigm of communication and problem-solving, it might have recognized the importance of really listening to emotion instead of hurrying past it, declaring it misguided, or reviling it as unimportant because it seemed manufactured by the other side.

Emotions win and lose elections, and we might have hurled that spear successfully through that shield if we had not all buried our heads in the sand about the unwelcome power that fear had on the electorate.

In order to avoid such mistakes in the future, we need to understand the role of emotion in the political process better. In this diary I have tried to explain why that is important. In the next, I want to explain what it is we Democrats have to learn about emotion as it relates to politics.