Two profiles of campaign finance reformers' bete noire, Senator Mitch McConnell -- the first in Slate and the second in The American Prospect -- tell us as much about the publications as they do about the subject. One is a subtle analysis that traces the senator's evolution from a Republican apparatchik who only opposed reform proposals that could hurt his party to a First Amendment absolutist who now fights against reform that may well help the GOP. The other simply uses the senator's voting history to hang a "Hypocrite" sign around his neck. Care to guess which is which?
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ABCNEWS' The Note leads off today with a good question.

We considered leading today's Note with a couple of quotes: that one from Article II, Section 1 about the presidential oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States;" one from President Bush's McCain-Feingold statement yesterday, "Certain provisions present serious constitutional concerns;" and one from Justice Department spokesperson Barbara Comstock: "When Congress passes a law and the president signs it, the department will be involved in the defense of that legislation."

Instead, we'll lead with a serious, non-rhetorical question for our readers: does anyone know of any other time a president has signed a bill after saying he believed it to be largely unconstitutional?

I don't doubt that White House politico Karl Rove is a genius, but at some point the smart tactical game he's been playing of late (encouraging the president to embrace protectionism, amnesty for illegal immigrants and campaign finance reform) could well start to endanger the larger and much more important strategic objective of maintaining President Bush's image as the UnClinton.
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According to this morning's WP, "A pharmaceutical company has discovered 70 million to 90 million long-forgotten doses of smallpox vaccine in its freezers, instantly increasing the known U.S. inventory of the vaccine six-fold and ensuring the nation an adequate supply in the event of a bioterrorist attack, according to government sources familiar with the find." This is good news, of course. But how did we manage to lose 70 - 90 million doses of smallpox vaccine in the first place? And what else is missing?
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National Review Online's redesign is very good. It's smart, clean and intuitive. Check it out here. (Flashback: Click here for PPC's May 2001 review of the NRO site.)
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Seldom is it this easy for The O'Toole File to knock down a silly idea.

Yesterday, Walter Shapiro suggested in Slate that the big losers under CFR will be political consultants. Just read this story in Political Professional News, and ask yourself whether the market for political professionals is really likely to contract as businesses large and small -- which have a lot more money to spend than your average political candidate -- begin to get even more deeply and directly involved in the political process.
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E.J. Dionne's column this morning on why he thinks the Democrats should make repeal of President Bush's tax cut a major election issue this year is sober, smart, well-reasoned, politically responsible, and altogether wrong.

First, red state Dems just can't afford to have the national party go left right now, and, frankly, they wouldn't put up with it. (If Dionne really thinks this is such a good idea, he needs to start practicing saying the words "Republican Senator Zell Miller of Georgia.")

And second, sometimes discretion is the better part of valor in politics. Just as I suspect that Dionne is right -- most Democrats would like to rescind the tax cut -- I also suspect that most Republicans believe in their hearts that Social Security and Medicare are fundamentally socialist in nature, unwise and unwarranted encroachments on the free-wheeling magic of the marketplace. But I don't expect them to say that any more than I expect Democrats to talk about repealing tax cuts when they're running against a party whose president currently enjoys an 80% plus approval rating. As someone much smarter than The O'Toole File once pointed out, a party's platform isn't supposed to be a suicide pact.

Sometimes politics is about fighting for your principles; at others, it's about living to fight another day. This year, Democrats should focus on the latter.
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Thanks to Instapundit, The O'Toole File has found another very good blog, Patrick Ruffini's Rants. (I know, I should have found it long ago; there are just so many these days.)

One recent Ruffini post in particular caught my eye: a thoughtful disquisition on the practical benefits we might enjoy by continuing to allow Americans to maintain dual citizenship. (If you haven't clicked over yet to read the whole thing, you might want to do so now.) The post was written in response to Josh Marshall's recent suggestion that this practice is a bad idea, perhaps even a uniquely bad one here in the US. (O'Toole File commented favorably on Marshall's original post last week.)

While I think Patrick Ruffini's post was strong -- it may well be true that there are pragmatic benefits to this arrangement -- O'TF still has not seen anyone address the philosophical arguments that are at the heart of Marshall's thesis: "I'm very pro-globalization," Marshall writes, "very internationalist in foreign policy and outlook. But citizenship is inherently unitary. It implies not only membership but allegiance to a political community and a state. One can no sooner be a citizen of two countries than a husband to two wives or a wife to two husbands. The very idea is a solecism in civic thought.... One of the things that makes us all equal as citizens is the fundamental reality that makes us citizens: membership and allegiance to this political community, this country. That's what allows an immigrant citizen to be just as much an American as the guy whose ancestors came on the Mayflower."

That's a very powerful argument. And it needs to be addressed directly before many of us can dismiss our misgivings about the idea of dual citizenship.
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I thought I'd pass along this story from PPC's own Political Professional News.

A Tip for the Cuomo Campaign: Pay for Dinner
From Friday's Journal-News:

"Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo has yet to pay for the dinners he and dozens of his supporters enjoyed -- at an apparently discounted price -- during the Westchester Democratic Party's annual fund-raiser six weeks ago.

"Party officials confirmed yesterday that Cuomo, who has raised more than $6 million for his campaign, and his contingent left the Feb. 7 event in New Rochelle without paying and have recently been sent a bill for $9,000. Most of the others who attended paid for their tickets in advance or at the door.

"'Our treasurer is in the process of clearing the check,' said Cuomo campaign manager Josh Isay. 'We apologize for the delay.'"

The article goes on to quote various Democrats associated with Coumo primary opponent Carl McCall (though no staffers) alleging that Coumo actually owes considerably more -- something on the order of $20K. Read the rest of the story here.

And read the rest of Political Professional News here.
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The San Francisco Chronicle reported last week that CA gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon has sent out e-mails promising to "undo four years of liberalism, homosexuality and anti-family values in California at the hands of Governor Gray Davis."

He's actually going to undo four years of homosexuality? That'd be some trick.
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After spending the past several weeks trying to satisfy Political Professional News readers with a fortnightly newsletter, we've now gone back to the original daily weblog format.

Thanks for letting us hear (and hear, and hear) your opinions on this, and we hope you'll enjoy the new/old Political Professional News.
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Once again, Josh Marshall has beaten me to a post -- this time on the selection of Ken Starr to serve as co-counsel for Senator Mitch McConnell's challenge to McCain-Feingold.

I, too, think it's a strange choice; Starr's certainly not known as a First Amendment attorney. But, unlike JM, I think the reason is clear. The idea is to even further polarize the issue, driving every Republican who ever disliked Bill Clinton into the arms of the anti-reform crowd. (O'Toole File, of course, is already on record opposing this CFR for a variety of reasons; unfortunately, M-F has come to be synonymous with all CFR.) It's politics, plain and simple -- and probably pretty smart politics, at that.
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As is so often the case with Jonah Goldberg's best work, I came to scoff, and stayed to laugh. Check out the latest G-File here.
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Hotline Scoop has officially ceased publication, which is really a shame. How many of its loyal fans can afford to pay the $5500 a year it costs to subscribe to The Hotline itself? (About those subscription rates: Unless things have changed since O'Toole File was in the business, long-term subscribers, who signed up when the publication was little more than a gleam in Doug Bailey's eye, pay considerably less.)

Anyway, say goodbye to Scoop. And if you're looking for an alternative, try Taegan Goddard's indispensable Political Wire, a comprehensive and well-written roundup of the day's political news.
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O'Toole File has received a number of interesting letters in reference to its Monday post on the future of blogging. Here's one of the good ones, from Spinsanity editor Brendan Nyhan.

Liked the post on the blog economic model of getting picked up on other sites, which I found through Glenn Reynolds. Wanted to humbly offer the site I co-edit, Spinsanity, as an example of what you're talking about. Our analysis of manipulative political rhetoric is now featured 1-2 times per week (on average) on Salon.com in one of the first examples of this happening. We're especially proud/excited because we weren't prominent national journalists like Sullivan, Kaus, Postrel, etc.

Best-
Brendan

More letters, some not so kind, in coming days.
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Once again, Josh Marshall demonstrates why he's the best progressive journalist around these days, with this post on the truly terrible idea of allowing Mexican - Americans to maintain dual citizenship.

"I don't think the United States should allow dual-citizenship at all. Not ever. Not with Australia, not with Canada, not with Israel, not with Mexico. Not with anyone.

"Children present a unique case, of course. They should be allowed to maintain a dual nationality until they reach adulthood so they can make a mature decision about which country to adhere to. But why should any adult be allowed to be a citizen of two countries at once. And under what theory of citizenship does such a practice make sense?"

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"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."

"I don't want to see this country to go that way. You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates."

Yes, that voice you hear is none other than that of the Bard of Yorba Linda. Click here for more of the 37th President's recently released eloquence.
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Several readers have written in to say that, in the interest of fairness, I should have also linked to a March 19 article by Geoffrey Nunberg (which attempts to debunk many of Bernard Goldberg's central allegations) in yesterday's Bias post. As always, thanks for taking the time to write, and here it is.
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Jonathan Chait has a strong piece in TNR today arguing that Peggy Noonan's hero-worship of President Bush is the flip-side -- rather than the antithesis -- of the politics of personal destruction.
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If you're interested in the whole Bias brouhaha, don't miss this interview with the book's outspoken author, Bernard Goldberg. Here's a sample: "Don Imus is really the anti-Imus. Don Imus presents himself as the tough guy who takes no prisoners. But he�s a pansy. He�s a semi-senile pansy." And Goldberg's just getting warmed up... (Via Jim Romenesko.)
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In case you missed this kind of, well,... strange... story on the bugging of Senator Joe Biden in Roll Call, it's here.
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The always insightful Mickey Kaus does it again today, with an absolutely brilliant analysis of why the biggest beneficiary of campaign finance reform could well turn out to be... Bill Clinton!
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John Ellis has an interesting article on the blogging phenomenon in Fast Company (via JohnEllis). There have been several good articles on this subject recently, but I think the prevailing idea (which most of these pieces seem to accept) that the most successful bloggers will ultimately make a living as web entrepreneurs is probably mistaken. (Maybe I'm wrong, but I just can't see Andrew Sullivan or Glenn Reynolds or any of the rest really getting all that worked up about the idea of selling paid advertising or moving lots of Amazon.com weed-wackers.)

Rather, I suspect that the big bloggers will join Dan Pink's Free Agent Nation, moving their blogs to sites that are willing to pay for the audience, and the reader loyalty, they bring with them. (How much more often would you find yourself on TNR's website -- looking at their ads and reading their articles -- if that's where, say, Andrew Sullivan's blog were hosted? Or on the Reason site if that's where you had to go to read Virginia Postrel?)

This solution is such a win-win for everybody -- the websites get fresh, daily content that brings its own set of eyeballs, and the bloggers get an economic model that frees them up to concentrate on what they do best -- that I can't believe some version of it won't eventually take off.
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There'll be no posts today, while the entire O'Toole clan gathers to spend our time quietly contemplating the life of Saint Patrick and all his good works. [Uh huh. -- ed.] Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
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Instapundit Glenn Reynolds links today to this open letter from Ben Stein to NYT columnist Paul Krugman, attacking the latter for his column marking the death of economist James Tobin. In addition to the fact that the entire letter amounts to little more than a foul stew of gross distortion, ideological invective, and willful misrepresentation, I was particularly struck by the following sentence: "It really is shocking that someone of your limited background in economics presumes to judge a great man like Tobin or in eulogizing him to so pervert his opinions and work..."

Let me get this straight. Are we talking about the same Paul Krugman? The one who has been honored with the Eccles Prize for Excellence in Economic Writing, the John Bates Clark Medal, the Adam Smith Award, the Nikkei Prize (with M. Fujita and A. Venables), and the Alonso Prize? Is that the "limited" economic background to which Stein refers?

On the other hand, I suppose the columnist's CV would look much more impressive to Mr. Stein if Krugman had chosen to indulge his pedagogical impulse by hosting a game show on Comedy Central -- instead of actually teaching economics in less savory spots, like Yale, MIT, Stanford, and Princeton.
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As a confirmed DLC-style Democrat, it pains me to say anything good about The American Prospect. I truly believe that their well-meaning, but, ultimately, soft-headed, liberalism stands in the way of real change on the issues that many of us who call ourselves progressives care about -- health care, educational reform, etc. And, on a personal level, I get awfully tired of their fatuous contention that those of us who associate ourselves with the party and philosophy of FDR and JFK are somehow less "Democratic" than the LBJ/Jimmy Carter folks that they represent.

That said, TAP's website redesign is really very good. They've learned how to use the web -- and they're bound become a more important voice in the national discussion as a result.

UPDATE: I just received an e-mail from a TAP editor asking if it really pained me to compliment them on their website. I guess I'd say two things in response: One, I probably was guilty of a little, um, overstatement, when I used the word "pains." And two, any time an editor of a legitimately consequential (if often wrongheaded) publication like TAP takes a moment to send a charming e-mail responding to an O'Toole File post, my discomfort level at having said something nice about his website goes down considerably.
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On Thursday, I gently chided blogger-extraordinaire Andrew Sullivan for his often over-the-top denunciations of the "left-wingers" and "fifth columnists" who oppose the War on Terror. If, in contrast, you're looking for a truly devastating analysis of the American far-left's moral bankruptcy before and after September 11 that doesn't degenerate into silly name calling or self-indulgent moral preening, check out Michael Walzer's brilliant essay, Can There Be a Decent Left?. (Via The Corner.)
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I just got around to reading Jeffrey Rosen's well-reasoned TNR piece on why school choice is constitutional -- and a very good idea. One caveat, though: As long as conservatives continue to play into the hands of anti-choice libs by offering such small vouchers ($2250 per pupil, for example, in Cleveland), the idea will never really get off the ground.
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The AP is reporting that one member of Congress is, as President Bush would say, plenty steamed over the administration's unwillingness to send Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge up to the Hill to testify. "'Any effort to cut off Congress' normal interaction with agency heads and policy-makers ... is not only wrong, but it violates the United States Constitution's express grant to Congress' of the powers of defending the country and regulating the armed services, [he] said. He also said the lack of information 'jeopardizes the administration's request for additional homeland security funds.'"

And who was behind this left-wing rant? Tom Daschle? Dick Gephardt? Actually, it was deeply conservative Republican Rep. Ernest Istook of Oklahoma. Now I'm just waiting for Rep. Tom Davis to release a statement accusing Mr. Istook of making "divisive comments" that "have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies by allowing them to exploit divisions in our country."
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Charles Krauthammer gets it absolutely right today in his column on why he'd have voted to acquit Andrea Yates. "This is not a matter of sympathy. I have infinitely more sympathy for the five innocents who died so terribly. This is a matter of justice. Guilt presupposes free will. Did Andrea Yates really have it?" Well said.
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The conservatives who are complaining about today's rejection of Judge Charles Pickering on purely ideological grounds by certain Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee actually have it all bass ackwards. This kind of partisan decision-making isn't the problem, it's the solution. The only way we'll ever put an end to the character assassination that has attended judicial nominations for the last fifteen years is for one party or the other to stand up and tell a president that he has to have real coattails if he intends to appoint doctrinaire judges (i.e., he has to win firm control of the Senate). This position is intellectually honest, and it gives voters a clear choice in the next election.
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According to Roll Call, "With momentum now firmly behind the idea of holding a special session of Congress in New York City, Empire State lawmakers and members of leadership are wrestling with the thorny questions of where, when and how to convene the historic meeting. ... Members of both parties' leadership in each chamber are now backing the idea of meeting outside Washington for only the second time in the past two centuries."

Great idea. NYC and America (to coin a cliche) stand bloodied but unbowed.

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In her FrontPage Magazine column today, Ann Coulter asks, "Can anyone remember a single meaningful phrase Clinton ever uttered?"

Well, actually, ... yes.

Clinton managed to shift the center of the Democratic party and American politics generally in 1992 with a single phrase when he announced that he was on the side of people who "work hard and play by the rules." Many of us who consider ourselves at least DLC-type Democrats today probably wouldn't if it weren't for that simple statement of support for the folks who get up every morning, go to work, love their kids, worry about crime, and want to defend our nation against all foes, foreign and domestic. Clinton may well not have lived up to that ideal (you'll notice I didn't include "don't cheat on their wives" in the list above), but the phrase was important nonetheless. For all its sound-bite, market-tested simplicity, it signaled an end to a Democratic policy agenda that had grown increasingly out-of-touch with the concerns of the average American, and it will be remembered one day as an important milestone in the birth of a more centrist -- and relevant -- Democratic party.
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On his website today, Andrew Sullivan says of Roman Catholic dissenters on certain matters of faith and morals, "Bottom line: I don't think such debate is faithless or un-Catholic. In fact, I think we have a duty to question our faith in order to understand and fully believe it. Those of us who have stayed in the Church despite finding its teachings about our lives incoherent, cruel and unpersuasive are no less faithful than others."

Good point. Too bad Andrew can't find it in his heart to be as charitable to those "anti-war leftists" and "fifth columnists" who dissent from the reigning political theology here on the home front. Don't misunderstand me; I think those folks are about as wrong as they can be. I just find it hard to square the eloquent statement of principle above with the vituperative rhetoric he has consistently aimed at those who have the audacity to raise questions about American policies and practices in the War on Terror.
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As everyone must know by now, the Washington Times is reporting that an American pilot has been imprisoned in Iraq since the end of the Gulf War.

This may well be true. Saddam Hussein has proven that he's capable of anything. But if you're not concerned about the fact that this story leaked out from intelligence sources at the precise moment we're trying to rally world support to overthrow of the Iraqi dictator, you're just not paranoid enough.
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President Bush has been rightly lambasted by pundits left and right for his recent decision to slap tariffs on imported steel. I have just one small point to add before we all move on.

It seems clear from all the reporting that this decision came straight out of Karl Rove's political operation, and was made against the advice of the president's entire economic team. The interesting thing here, as we continue to marvel these days at the remarkable resilience of an American economy that seems to have produced the world's first recessionless recession, is that this kind of thing just never happened when Bill Clinton was in the White House. For all his faults (and they were legion), President Clinton made a firm decision to tie his entire political future to the long-term health of the economy, and even when his actions in this area were unpopular (jettisoning the middle class tax cut, bailing out Mexico), he stuck by that commitment. The current administration, on the other hand, made no such pledge, and has now shown itself willing to make bad economic decisions for short-term political gain.

I wonder if, after four or eight years of this sort of thinking, we'll still be marveling at the remarkable resilience of the American economy.
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The Bush Administration has been nothing less than masterful in its handling of the war on terrorism, and President Bush himself has been genuinely inspiring in his leadership of the American people.

That said, it's time for the Administration to begin to define success in this new war.

The daily demands of battle -- secrecy, obfuscation, the muting of dissent -- fundamentally conflict with our basic ideas of liberty, and if any war were to continue indefinitely, those principles would be directly threatened. The only way to constrain government in a time of morally just and seemingly endless war, such as the one we are currently living through, is to demand that our representatives tell us how we'll know when the war is actually over.

I'm not criticizing the President here. In the new kind of war we're fighting, this question is difficult to answer, and President Bush has earned and deserves our patience. Nonetheless, getting the answer is essential, and we need to hear from the President on this matter soon.
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Now that conservatives are arguing that the Bush administration's fiscal policy of cutting taxes and increasing spending (along with the Fed's action on interest rates) may well have averted a recession entirely -- possibly at the relatively small cost of creating budget deficits for the next year or two -- isn't it time for past supporters of the Balanced Budget Amendment (which made no provisions for prospective recessions) to acknowledge what a boneheaded idea that legislation really was?
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Because of PPC's recent posting problems, I wasn't able to link to Tony Adragna's bewitching comments on Senator James Inhofe's bothersome statement earlier this week. (And click here for Part II.)
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I've spent most of my adult life working for (and agreeing with) folks who make a simple point: incumbents who can't get over 50% in the polls as an election approaches are in deep trouble, and any candidate who is as well-known as Richard Riordan in California should be considered an incumbent. So what did I do, when faced with late polls showing that Riordan was at 31%? Well, of course, I argued just the opposite of everything I've always believed, and was rewarded appropriately when the Republican electorate overwhelmingly chose Bill Simon as their candidate for governor. Further evidence of an old truism: voters are very good at two things -- choosing their own leaders, and giving useful lessons in humility to political prognosticators.
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The O'Toole File (the entire PPC site, for that matter) has been unable to provide updates since last Saturday for reasons, well, just too numerous to mention. Sorry for the inconvenience, and we're glad to be back.
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Back in January, the O'Toole File included the following item.

Contr Ari ans: Josh Marshall thinks Ari Fleischer's handling of the Enron debacle has shown that he's "one of the more feckless and incapable press secretaries any White House has had in some time." Will Saletan, on the other hand, says Fleischer has "managed the spin duties expertly." Who's right? O'Toole File just nods sagely, and mumbles something about the fullness of time...

The O'Toole File's still not ready to make a final judgment, but Marshall's argument is looking better all the time.
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