Walter Russell Mead calls them Jacksonian Americans. Anatol Lieven calls them pugnacious nationalists. I call them "Fuck Yeah Americans."

If you missed Team America: World Police, you need to watch this music video.

BUT WAIT! This clip is very, very vulgar -- some full body nudity, erotic sex, but lots of apple pie, Mom, NASCAR, tanks, and patriotic images too.

You have been warned. Here, now, is the music video clip.

But anyone who didn't fully understand what I was talking about when I analyzed the outcome of the Presidential election in terms of a new breed of "Fuck Yeah Americans" will get my point after watching this.

Some of my friends and many of my second and third cousins are 'Fuck Yeah Americans' and proud of it. I don't quite fit the mold.

These could be the swing voters in 2008. Sobering.

-- Steve Clemons

(ed. note: Many thanks to WMS for forwarding this to me.)

Folks will have to bear with me today. I have a rotten head cold, and my temperament is set on the "difficult curmudgeon" setting this morning -- sort of like William Safire on most days.

There is so much that can be said about William Safire, and many in the progressive community are saying them. But let me venture into the mine fields for a moment to say some good things about this curmudgeon at the New York Times. And before folks jump on me, just know that I realize he has been irresponsible in his past commentary regarding Hillary Clinton, something which he mostly admits now; and he is far too much a flack for Ariel Sharon.

I'm an anecdote guy -- so I will share one. When I moved to Washington, I came here as the first executive director of what was then called the Nixon Center for Peace & Freedom, later just the Nixon Center. I spent a year out at the Nixon Library getting this project off the ground and then opened the offices here in D.C. before realizing that I was much less a Nixon-groupie than most of the people I was working with. I then went to work in the U.S. Senate for Jeff Bingaman.

I came into contact with Safire in my role at the Nixon Center and discovered that he had real problems with Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew's style of authoritarianism combined with a strong market economy. Lee and then-Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir popularized this brand of leadership and governance, "Asian Values."

Safire called them both thugs.

Because Lee Kuan Yew had just sued and run out of Singapore a friend of mine, Christopher Lingle, who had intimated in an International Herald Tribune article (and not actually written) that some Asian governments (read Singapore) did not have independent judiciaries, the Singapore government began hunting Chris Lingle down by trying to bankrupt and then incarcerate him.

Safire wrote something about Lingle, and then I decided to feed Safire more material, which he used for several follow-on articles.

Where this gets much more interesting though is that around the time I had decided to leave the Nixon Center, I had been planning on having a major conference that would debate the "Asian Values" theology promoted by Lee and Mahathir and was in the process of inviting the Singapore Senior Minister to come to a forum that would wrestle (in a fair and balanced way) with this question. I sent Safire the outline of my plan because I wanted Safire to moderate or chair the meeting.

Then one morning, I hear from our receptionist, "Steve, William Safire is on the phone for you" (and she whispered, "he doesn't sound happy.")

I picked up the phone, and after a nanosecond of courtesy, Safire said, "I have just one thing to say. If you provide a stage for Lee Kuan Yew, I will blast Lee, I will blast the Nixon Center, and I will blast YOU."

It's a strange feeling to know that Safire's canon was, in part, directly pointed at my head. He had misunderstood the material I had sent as my lauding Yew's "Asian Values" ideology, rather than critiquing it. After a long and disjointed explanation, I was able to convince Safire that paying tribute to Lee was not my intention, but what I did want to do was make him accountable in Washington for his views.

I told Safire that I was leaving the Nixon Center in any case and that I didn't expect the meeting to go forward.

A few months after I went to the Senate, however, I learned that the Nixon Center had kept the invitation to Lee Kuan Yew alive -- and had in fact turned a conference that was about policy and substance into a fundraising dinner at which Lee Kuan Yew would be presented the Nixon Center's first "Architect of the New Century Award."

I got early word of the dinner and decided that if Safire heard about this dinner -- even if I was no longer at the Center -- I ran the risk of that canon blast again.

So, I decided to be a bit Nixonian in my response. I was very irritated that this dinner which could have been about an important policy debate about models of political and economic development had morphed into yet another example of the kind of structural corruption of corporate America before powerful thugs like Indonesia's Suharto, Malaysia's Mahathir, and Singapore's Lee.

When I had been at the Nixon Center, I had encouraged Chalmers Johnson to serve as a member of the Center's Advisory Council. Knowing he would be as outraged as I was that the Asian Values conference had been retooled into an Asian Values kow-tow fundraiser, Chalmers Johnson resigned from the Nixon Center Advisory Council with a good fiery letter of protest.

This news, combined with the publication of a new important paper by Gary Rodan by the Japan Policy Research Institute (which I co-founded with Chalmers Johnson) titled "Information Technology and Political Control in Singapore," gave me the news hooks that I thought might entice Safire to write something.

He did. He actually wrote two article.

Here are the original articles, but note that in the second one, the URL for the Rodan paper and Chalmers Johnson's email address are no longer accurate:

The New York Times, October 21, 1996

By WILLIAM SAFIRE

I will now stop using Nixon postage stamps. That's because the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom is raising money by honoring Lee Kuan Yew, the dictator of Singapore.

That's why we must expose and root out the insidious networking of the Clintons and their billionaire Indonesian wheeler-dealers. And that's why all good Nixonites should absent themselves from a fund-raiser doing honor to a dictator who despises a free press and individual liberty.

Here is a follow-up piece, after the Nixon Center responded to his first blast at the Lee Kuan Yew dinner.

New York Times, November 14, 1996

If Lee blocks access, Singaporeans, try E-mail: cjohnson@ucsd.edu. But be careful, global business executives: the Architect of the New Century may be monitoring everything you download.

I have a very good relationship with the Nixon Center today, by the way. It was through the Center's good auspices that I was invited to the Francis Fukuyama dinner where I saw so clearly a brewing neocon civil war.

But I liked what Safire did. He was a former Nixon speech-writer and had loyalties to various players in Nixon legacydom, but he did not let those loyalties constrain his commentary about Lee and those who wanted to kow-tow to him and his brand of illiberal rule.

The other reason I like Safire is that he wrote a fun novel, Scandalmonger, which provides a fictional account of the early days in America of political pampleteers.

The main focus of his novel is James Callendar, who was in some ways a combination of Matt Drudge and Josh Marshall, and maybe Wonkette, combined. Callendar, of course, was the gossip writer who broke both the scandals of Alexander Hamilton's extramarital affair with Maria Reynolds as well as the allegations that Thomas Jefferson was having children with his slave-mistress Sally Hemings.

Safire's novel is really about America's first op-ed writers, and also its first would-be bloggers.

Safire deserves a lot of the criticism that has been directed his way, but he has also written some powerful and important commentary that deserves a salute.

Besides, I'm in a curmudeonish mood this morning, with a cold that won't stop, and Safire's outlook seems more understandable to me from my current miserable vantage point.

-- Steve Clemons

In the film, Guarding Tess, Secret Service Agent Doug Chesnic (played by Nicholas Cage) shoots the foot of the man who kidnapped the President's widow (Shirley MacLaine).

Chesnic makes the bad guy (Austin Pendleton) think that he won't hesitate to shoot him dead right there, and then the kidnapper confesses and reveals the place where the former first lady is hidden. The fans cheer Chesnic rushing over this moral and legal line and crushing the resistance of this evil-doer.

I remember feeling happy that Shirley MacLaine's character would live to see another day -- but also felt conflicted as obsessive policy junkies are prone to. As I saw this theatrical assault on due process and on the civil rights of a person who happened to be a criminal, I remembered a brilliant insight that a political science teacher of mine, Hans Baerwald, once taught me.

Hans Baerwald was (and still is) one of the titans of American academia in understanding the nuts and bolts of Japan's political process -- and one of the complicated realities of Nihon no seiji (Japanese politics) is that what one sees happening on the surface is rarely what is really driving things.

Baerwald taught me that the best time to understand the genuine norms of a political and social system is when it is under stress. When things are calm, all sorts of behaviors are possible -- but stress raises the cost of being committed to a core set of principles that may be less easy to adhere to when a political system feels threatened.

9/11 pushed America into a stressful period, and some of the norms that we have held sacrosanct as a nation, particularly the civil rights of individuals accused of crimes, have been undermined by those who are less committed to our ideals in both good times and bad.

Doug Chesnic shot the foot of the bad guy to save a former President's widow -- and apparently, allegedly, American intelligence has concocted an elaborate system designed to evade U.S. laws as it promotes the torture of some it does not trust.

Read this piece from the Boston Globe today.

Here are the first few grafs:

Most here know Hill & Plakias as a family law firm that handles real estate and civil squabbles for the residents of this Boston suburb.

Yet, "extraordinary rendition," one of the earliest tools employed in the war against terror, has outraged human rights activists and former CIA agents, who say it violates the international convention on torture and amounts to "outsourcing" torture.

America's intelligence services seem to be using this single aircraft (and maybe more) to ferry a vast cadre of bad guys around the world to places that will put the screws to them in ways that we won't (well at least not since Abu Ghraib).

Read on:

In recent weeks, the practice has become nearly synonymous with the white, 20-seat, private Gulfstream jet, numbered N379P and registered in Massachusetts.

Sightings of the plane at refueling stops in Ireland and in Karachi, where it reportedly picked up another suspect have been published in newspapers across the globe and on the Internet. Records at the US Army Aeronautical Services Agency show the civil aircraft has a permit to land at US military bases worldwide.

America should be able to charge and prosecute its enemies in the light of day, and we should not fear the ability of any of these criminals to marshall a defense -- in fact, their attempt to defend themselves is our chief protection of abuse of our own civil liberties by potentially reckless and abusive national government authority.

There are too many cowboys, Doug Chesnic-style, in the Pentagon -- probably working with or around Douglas Feith -- who don't realize that "Guarding Tess" was fiction, a silly movie and not the template for a new era of criminal acts by government hidden within the shadows and nooks of American law and norms and the absence of such standards abroad.

Congratulations to Farah Stockman at the Boston Globe and the others who helped dig out this story of more nefarious deeds by our government. At this point, if I were working in the White House, I would be worried about war crimes liabilities as well.

We don't need to abandon our laws and commitment to liberty to win this war -- and if we do abandon everything that makes us a great nation to save ourselves in these dark times, then we lose anyway.

-- Steve Clemons

Many of you who stop by to read The Washington Note are very familiar and may have even begun your journey to my site through Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.

His site turned four years old on November 12th, but he forgot until today to note his anniversary -- which we too want to salute.

My own foray into blogging would have been impossible without Josh Marshall's strong nudging and logistical help.

So, congrats Josh -- and thanks for getting me into this.

-- Steve Clemons

I gave a talk at the Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany a few days ago and was impressed with the city and the quality of thinking demonstrated by the students.

While my talk was billed as one in a series looking at transatlantic challenges and America's relationship with Europe, I focused on the foreign policy impacts of the election, blind spots of this administration -- particularly in the economic arena, and pondered whether this administration would be able to proactively avert some of the crises visible ahead -- or whether the U.S would be driven more by ad hoc responses to shocks. My comments about transatlantic relations were built around these three principle concerns.

I think that my talk was well-received, at least in the emails I have received from some as follow-ups. However, there was a yearning among some for greater commentary on the transatlantic relationship itself rather than on broader challenges that lie beyond the classic contours of EU-US relations.

I guess I'm one of those who is not overly sentimental about transatlantic relations and don't try to prop them up for the sake of doing so -- but think that strong EU-US relations make sense because of the myriad problems facing Americans and Europeans elsewhere in the world.

America's blindspot about the current account deficit and generally poor economic policy management will harm European interests; our ability or inability to proceed in a new direction in the Israeli-Palestinian standoff after Arafat's death is also of paramount European interest; Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapon systems is of major interest to both Europe and the U.S.; China's emergence as a responsible global power that works collaboratively with other nations is of consequence to Americans and Europeans. I could continue to draw a very long list of challenges that we each face -- but there is this demand frequently for navel-gazing at the health or lack thereof of transatlantic relations.

There are lots of folks out there who can provide better material on whether Europe will hold together or fragment, or whether it is in America's interests to encourage or discourage European cohesion. I'm one who believes that Charles Kupchan is probably right and that European and American interests are incrementally diverging -- and that Europe will ultimately spend time and political capital trying to constrain American power rather than to unite in common purpose with it to achieve noble ends.

This will take time though, and within the near to mid-term, Europe and the United States have far greater common problems to work on if they so choose -- but few lie within the dynamics of the transatlantic relationship itself and really lie in challenges in the Middle East, in Asia, in global financial and currency policy, with international development policy, and so on.

I refer folks back to Brzezinski's proposal on revitalizing the transatlantic relationship. He proposes three efforts that can give new purpose to the transatlantic relationship that involve establishing a Palestinian state, internationalizing (and de-Americanizing) troop presence in Iraq, and providing incentives to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This is the kind of thinking that will pump up the current pathetic stock value of the US-EU relationship. Brzezinski's plan is but one that does a worthy job of finding important tasks that American and European interests can become co-entangled and converge in common interest again. This kind of effort is probably the right kind of habit to re-learn.

Thanks to the students and faculty at Bucerius Law School, the only private law school in Germany, and particularly to the school CEO, Markus Baumanns and Transatlantic Forum advisor Michael Werz for inviting me.

Thanks also to Emily and Martin for the walking tour of Hamburg.

For those of you who can read German, if you scroll down a bit on this German web magazine, ChangeX, there is an article about think tanks in America and the New America Foundation written by Joerg Hackeschmidt.

-- Steve Clemons

Peter Bergen, my colleague who interviewed Osama bin Laden in 1997 and wrote the book Holy War Inc.; Karen Greenberg of the Center on Law and Security at New York University; and I have been working for some time on a conference that is pulling several of the world's leading experts on transnational terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism together for a conference taking place this next Thursday in the Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington.

It is open to the public, and those of you who are in town, or nearby, are welcome to attend. Just make sure that you RSVP to Jennifer Buntman at the New America Foundation as noted below, or send me an email at steve@thewashingtonnote.com.

Here is the announcement of the conference:

The New America Foundation
and
The New York University Center on Law & Security
present

6:00 p.m.
Conference Adjourned

The program is a marathon session, and I'll be there all day keeping the trains moving on time.

For those of you who have asked, we hope that C-Span will cover and broadcast the entire meeting, but that will not be confirmed to us until Wednesday.

-- Steve Clemons

In January 1998, Federal Reserve Board Deputy Governor Laurence Meyer gave a talk at the Economic Strategy Institute titled "The Economic Outlook and Challenges Facing Monetary Policy."

Commenting on the what some then called America's 'miracle economy,' Meyer said that the country's phenomenal economic strength over the last decade had been the result of "an era of positive shocks." He presciently warned that it was beyond the bounds of reason to expect a never ending spiral of positive circumstances and that negative events were probably on their way.

Today, with an unraveling dollar and other nations' central banks flirting with a reshuffle of their dollar-denominated holdings, America may be soon feeling the economic pain resulting from irresponsible economic policy management and the "dependence" part of global financial interdependence.

Stephen Roach in the New York Times welcomes the decline of the dollar as something that will discipline American overconsumption and compel other nations to loosen their labor markets and take measures to spur their own domestic demand. He may be right, but I see the declining dollar as more the manifestation of the absence of strategy and policy than the result of one.

If he sees the dollar's decline as a welcome shock that will compel better economic housekeeping in Washington, I'm not sure I feel the same sense of relief. Rather, I have the instinct that the plummeting dollar, China's positioning that it may be less interested in purchasing treasury bonds, and general global disdain for American foreign policy and President Bush are converging, gathering speed, and becoming economic forces beyond control.

Alan Greenspan's comments about the dollar recently are several years too late and appear to be more political, cover-his-ass moves than prognostications regarding wise policy.

I hope that Roach is right and that the decline in the dollar will order our accounts in such a way that there is not a destabilizing financial quake along some of the world's most seriously imbalanced economic fault lines. I fear, however, that this normal economic pessimist is far too optimistic.

Even if his scenario takes its best course, many in America and abroad will lose jobs and feel more poor tomorrow than they do today. To some degree, standards of living will fall as the dollar is less able to pay for the lifestyles Americans enjoy.

Major currency tsunamis may hit some developing economies, particularly in Southeast Asia, as American purchasing capacity dries up, and financial positions held by hedge funds and other global investors may rapidly unwind as the unexpected scenario of the collapse of American demand becomes a real nightmare.

And what is really scary is that this could all get much worse than even imagined.

-- Steve Clemons

I have just arrived back in the U.S. from a trip from Hamburg that took me through Frankfurt, then JFK Airport, then had an interesting taxi cab ride to La Guardia -- and then the bumpiest flight I've had in years from La Guardia to Reagan National. But, I'm back.

I have a lot to be thankful for, but I know that there are many folks having a tough time with this economy right now -- and many on the front lines of this Iraq mess to whom we owe a great deal of gratitude. We need to focus on bringing these people home.

We also need to focus on terminating Tom Delay's tenure in the House, and we need war-profiteering hearings in the Senate. There is much to do after this holiday.

Read Tom Friedman's New York Times piece today that I thought was utterly strange and showed that Tom's ego is getting in the way of his commentary on public policy and ethics. But that can happen to all of us.

I did sort of like the last graf:

. . .then I want to be just a simple blue-state red-state American. I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank God I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the public schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to voluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to spread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own. And I want to thank them for doing this, even though on so many days in so many ways we really don't deserve them.

I do think it is amazing that there are so many soldiers willing to sacrifice all for the nation when America has such self-dealing going on among members of Congress and some in the administration -- and I mean in both parties. Much to think about today.

To all out there, you and your friends and families -- have a great Thanksgiving.

-- Steve Clemons

Tom Engelhardt and Chalmers Johnson have a must-read double hitter on the CIA on the TomGram today. Chalmers Johnson's article, "HOW TO CREATE A WIA: A WORTHLESS INTELLIGENCE AGENCY," follows Engelhard's thougtfully provocative introduction.

After reporting what has been widely reported about Porter Goss's politicization of the intelligence staff and their objectives, Johnson reminds us that this is not in fact a new behavior for CIA chiefs.

Chalmers Johnson writes:

This approach is not new, even though former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman declares that "the current situation is the worst intelligence scandal in the nation's history."[2]

The same is likely to be true today and the outcome is likely to be similar. Just as thirty years ago, an administration refused to pay attention to its own internal intelligence assessments and lost the Vietnam War, so another administration has again wrapped itself in a fantasy bubble of wishful thinking and so is losing the war it started in Iraq.

Here are some other zinger lines that bring some historical context to the debate about The Agency:

Regardless of what it most enjoys doing, the CIA is still tasked with providing the president with accurate information to enable him to avoid a surprise attack and protect the national security.

Over the years the powers of the DCI to compel a president to read an intelligence estimate have been systematically diluted, and when information supplied to the president about a possible attack or any other matter under the CIA's imprimatur has been leaked to the public, both the Agency and the intelligence have become politically radioactive.

George Bush already has serious problems in receiving feedback about the consequences of his policy choices. He acknowledges that he doesn't read much, certainly not the major papers. He is purging the administration's civil service and political appointee ranks of those considered disloyal.

As Tom Engelhardt writes in his opening graf:

It's well known that Washington was originally built on a pestilential swamp. Right now, the Bush administration is in the process of draining its own "swamp" of potential critics and doubters of any sort and installing "family" members, many from George's (and Karl's) old Texas days, others "adoptees" like Condoleezza Rice, ever more firmly in positions of ever greater power.

I have had some luck in reaching some people from the intelligence sector who want to share their view on what is happening on the inside. So, stay tuned for that.

However, it is increasingly clear to me that if Bush's intel operations are no longer going to provide the kind if intelligence necessary to make the tough choices in America's security policy, others in the non-covert, non-cleared world are going to have to supplant this intelligence with sound thinking and good material in the public sphere.

The only way it seems to me to operate in this kind of environment is for private players -- public intellectuals, solutions oriented think tankers, NGOs, journalists, public policy intellectuals, and others -- to focus on embarrassing the idiotic assessments and decisions of a government that has made itself blind.

The second step, perhaps the most important one, is to put better ideas on the table.

-- Steve Clemons

If there is one gap between Americans and the rest of the world that I immediately notice whenever I travel and talk politics, it is that the rest of the world is often irritated by and envious of American self-confidence.

Others see Americans as walking boldly through the world without regard for constraints, whereas citizens and nations through the rest of the world are all too aware of the constraints on themselves, their hopes and actions.

To some degree, America has a domestic version of this tense battle brewing now -- between neoconservatives who believe that America should be about making sure that the right values are generated and pursued inside other countries that matter to us and that there are few costs too high to pay to achieve that goal vs. those who think that before venturing off on values-driven crusades abroad, core American interests need to be better off at the end of the effort than they were before.

There are some Americans, including myself, who see the Iraq War as already too costly in terms of casualties and financial costs but also in the damaging negative impact on the 'mystique of American power.' The Iraq escapade has shown the limits of American power, and that's not a good thing when most of the rest of the world is irritated with American behavior.

In my view, we are about to be taught a lesson by a world that wants America to be tethered down. And the world is going to hit America where it has a serious blindspot at the moment -- on the economic front. We are on our way to becoming a much poorer, on relative terms, superpower with the Chinese, Japanese and Europeans using currency management and debt dependency to constrain our options.

The International Herald Tribune today ran a piece by Eric Pfanner today about the Russians possibly juggling their reserve currency portfolio and offsetting the dollar-denominated parts of their reserves by adding more euros.

American economists and central bankers seem to scoff at the notion of the U.S. dollar losing its reserve currency status. But in revolutionary times, when everything seems to be changing, these sorts of anachronistic attitudes about permanence seem to be very wrong-headed. What is clear is that the Euro has become increasingly important in global transactions, and its vector is pointed up. The dollar's vector is pointed down. We need to take stock of what that means -- and what it may mean is that the bad behaviors America has been able to get away with for so long in terms of piling up debt and maintaining an irresponsibly high current account deficit may soon be impossible to maintain.

Yesterday, there was a piece in the Financial Times that I cannot link that argued that China was holding its own vs. the United States in the debate about currency revaluation. What is clear here is that China recognizes it has some latitude over U.S. actions now -- and seems willing to say this publicly. During the many years that America went through the charade of debate China's most favored nation status and trying to weigh human rights violation concerns with economic priorities, America never really came close to using any of the leverage it had over China through this annual MFN debate. But already, China has learned that it has leverage over U.S. actions.

Alan Greenspan is now saying that the current account rising as fast as it is is a bad thing and that the dropping dollar should concern us. Some of us are ticked off that Alan Greenspan is three years too late, and that this is Greenspan covering his ass -- not good public policy commentary.

This economic charade from the White House has been going on for some time and lots of commentators -- even manic neoliberals like Martin Wolf of the FT -- have been worried about the compounding effect a rapidly growing American current account deficit combined with some kind of currency shock.

America cannot afford what it is buying from the rest of the world -- it's as simple as that. That is why the dollar is falling -- but with the Chinese yuan falling at a rate equal to the falling dollar, we can't but help keep buying from them, and the Chinese help financing our ability to buy their products. This can't continue -- and when it ends, the reality will be that Americans broadly will see their living standards fall.

So, America is walking blindly into an economic morass of constraints that it has largely inflicted on itself, and other key nations will not be able to help themselves from helping to fasten a tether here and there to further tie down the America that it wants to walk less boldly through their world.

-- Steve Clemons

I am traveling right now and feel a bit disconnected from the major news -- particularly the latest from Fallujah and also Istook-gate (Congressman Istook's attempts to make any American citizen's tax returns easy prey for peeping Toms on Congressional Appropriations Committees).

But on the trivial but interesting, I wanted to report that while U.S. airlines no longer provide stainless steel knives but instead give travelers plastic, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa use good old sturdy knives with a good sharp edge. Maybe they aren't box-cutters, but it seems odd for folks to keep having their small Swiss army knives taken when something so much bigger is available on the airplane.

IMPRESSIVE THEFT: DAIMLERCHRYSLER CEO HAS CAR STOLEN

Some of you may not know the name Juergen Schrempp, but he is the feisty CEO of DaimlerChrysler. His million dollar armored limousine was just stolen in Stuttgart, the home base for the auto manufacturer.

This car has homing devices on it, and they still haven't been able to locate it. Perhaps they just have put an old-fashioned 'club' on the steering wheel.

I don't know if this says much about Schrempp or the questionable theft-protection systems of a fancy Mercedes-Benz, but it does tell us that Stuttgart thieves know what they are doing.

More to come after I get situated in Hamburg.

-- Steve Clemons

I have to admit to needing more information before I 'take sides' in the ongoing CIA wars. Changing the culture of any institution is a complicated and messy process, but it looks like I will have an opportunity to meet more than one agent/analyst from the inside who will share some views with me.

Such meetings only provide snapshots, not grand landscapes of understanding. Some of you have posted that meeting covert agents and analysts who work on classified material may leave me vulnerable to their spin, and that is true. I just need to absorb as much public and anecdotal material as possible to write further about what may be going on in America's intelligence bureaucracy.

David Kaplan and Kevin Whitelaw have more pieces of the puzzle, however, and provide some intriguing insights about the odd departure of super-spy Stephen Kappes. This just appeared in today's issue of U.S. News & World Report.

Here is the enticing opening to a very interesting article:

To those who worked with him, Stephen Kappes seemed the perfect choice to lead the covert side of the CIA in the midst of the war on terrorism. Appointed in June, Kappes, a former marine, is a veteran CIA case officer who served in dangerous and difficult postings in Moscow and Pakistan. More recently, he reported directly to President Bush as the CIA's point man in secret high-stakes negotiations with Libya that ended the rogue state's weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.

As the nation fights wars on multiple fronts, the episode has left many questioning Goss's weeks-old reign and his ability to manage the far-flung intelligence community on the front lines of the nation's defense.

I leave this evening for Hamburg, Germany where I am delivering one of the Transatlantic Lectures at the Bucerius Law School there. The meeting is at 7 p.m., Wednesday, 24 November, and is open to the public for those who are tripping through Hamburg this week. I will be giving a talk titled, ""New Transatlantic Visions or a New Round of Nightmares? Considering the Impact of November's U.S. Presidential Election."

-- Steve Clemons

I just read Jim Pinkerton's "Coalition of the . . ?" on TechCentralStation.com and liked the jump into the future and then look back approach to thinking about this war.

Pinkerton's back-looking comments on Fallujah:

Within hours of Bush's victory, many leading American hawks raised the issue of Fallujah, Iraq, which had come to symbolize American frustration over with the handling of Operation Iraqi Freedom in the previous 20 months. Retired Army Colonel Ralph Peters called the American failure to destroy the city in April 2004-in the wake of the orgiastic murder of four American contractors-a "fateful mistake"; but then, with the election done with, Peters declared that the time had come for bold action:

But while the kill ratio for al-Fajr proved to be highly favorable to American arms, the operation failed -- not only to catch Zarqawi, but also to engage the bulk of insurgent forces. Indeed, even the enemy "body count" proved difficult to ascertain, since women and children had joined in the anti-American fighting. Did a dead ten-year-old count as "collateral damage" or as a "dead terrorist"? So in the battle of world public opinion, the US lost. Once "Willing" allies faded away from the Coalition; meanwhile, across the rest of Iraq, guerilla attacks intensified.

The entire article is interesting and worth absorbing -- but mostly I think it is useful to think about how the future will look at us and the decisions we are collectively making.

-- Steve Clemons

Today's New York Times reports on Kevin Sites' blog commentary on what he filmed and saw when a U.S. Marine killed an unarmed and wounded Iraqi prisoner.

Sites, who is frustrated by the hostility from many quarters about his report, wrote "An Open Letter to Devil Dogs of 3.1".

It's sobering. How can Bush think that elections are just around the corner after these kinds of incidents -- which former troops tell me are far more prevalent than we know?

-- Steve Clemons

Josh Marshall has helped reveal that it was Oklahoma Congressman Ernest Istook who requested a provision in a huge omnibus spending bill that would allow Chairmen of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees review any taxpayer's income tax returns, without restriction.

CNN is now heading its news page with this imbroglio over this tax return scandal, but as Marshall notes on his website, the CNN piece leaves out Istook's name.

The actual language from the bill is:

Hereinafter, notwithstanding any other provision of law governing the disclosure of income tax returns or return information, upon written request of the Chairman of the House or Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service shall allow agents designated by such Chairman access to Internal Revenue Service facilities and any tax returns or return information contained therein.

Istook represents Oklahoma's 5th District -- and has offices in Shawnee, Seminole and Oklahoma City.

My family is from Bartlesville, in the First District, represented by conservative Congressmn John Sullivan -- whose banner headline running at the top of his site is that "Sullivan Stands Against Federal Courts' Abuse of Power."

Sullivan is proud of defending marriage against big government, privacy invading, power-mongering courts, but what about power-mongering members of his own party and Oklahoma state caucus who are enhancing the powers of government and confining the rights and privacy of this nation's citizens?

I know Oklahoma conservatives, and assisting big, powerful government is about as anti-conservative as one can get. Are Oklahomans going to wake up and realize that Istook is no longer one of them?

I imagine that Istook and his staffers are going to come up with an excuse for all of this that sounds accidental -- but seriously, we should have higher standards for legislators and legislating than tripping through the process with such privacy-killing errors.

We have a hard enough time with what the majority party wants to do legislatively -- when it's doing it on purpose.

-- Steve Clemons

Many of you wanted to know if C-Span Book TV was covering Noah Feldman's recent remarks at the New America Foundation.

Today at 5:45 p.m. EST (and probably repeatedly over the next several days).

Noah Feldman will be speaking about his new book, What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building. I moderate the session.

-- Steve Clemons

A while back, I wrote about Academy Award-winning writer and director Bill Condon who has produced a brilliant film on the life and work of sex-researcher Alfred Kinsey. Here are the first and second links to my posts about this important film and director.

I saw this film as one that depicted the ongoing battle in our society between rationality and science on one hand versus dogma and a strain of empirically-hostile religious extremism on the other.

Well, a cold current of censorship has now just hit even New York's flagship PBS station, WNET Channel 13.

You may recall that a league of ABC affiliations refused to air Saving Private Ryan last week. Now, WNET will not air ads about Kinsey not because of the content of the ads -- but because of the subject matter of the movie.

Seriously WNET -- do we need to live through the same anti-intellectualism and sexually repressed hyperventilation that Alfred Kinsey fought in the 1940s?! I can't believe that this important station is forfeiting its leadership role as an educational oasis for the public. Does WNET fear Michael Powell and the FCC also?

This is the note I received from a friend:

Kinsey ads were just rejected by WNET - Channel 13 - PBS.

Tom Conway, the CFO of WNET who oversees the underwriting department and views the spots for approval made the call NOT to take the ad. Tom was not comfortable with the content of this movie and because there has been controversial press re: groups speaking out against the movie/subject matter, they feel that they can't risk viewer complaints on this.

I think that this kind of subtle censorship is outrageous -- and those of you who feel so inclined should contact WNET and let them know what you think.

Here is WNET's contact page.

I prefer to live in a nation committed to the Enlightenment, to ideas, to progress, to the notion that science and technology can improve our world. I like culture and holidays, and churches, and mosques...but not at the expense of rational discourse.

Don't let those who want to make censorship the norm win in these cases. And remember, our watching Saving Private Ryan or being exposed to the issues raised by Bill Condon's Kinsey are not at all the same as Janet Jackson's breast airing at a football game.

But religious zealots are riding Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction as the best vehicle to shut down our tolerant and intellectually informed society.

-- Steve Clemons

In this statement, which I received from a friend on the Senate Republican Policy Committee, Porter Goss states:

As the flagship component , CIA has the vital role and the DCI has the direct responsibility and accountability to the President. I, and the DDCI on my behalf, perform that mission with your tremendous help.

Since 9/11 everything has changed. The IC and its people have been relentlessly scrutinized and criticized. Intelligence related issues have become the fodder of partisan food fights and turf-power skirmishes. All the while, the demand for our services and products against a ruthless and unconventional enemy has expanded geometrically and we are expected to deliver -- instantly. We have reason to be proud of our achievements and we need to be smarter about how we do our work in this "operational climate."

A couple of thoughts.

First, the fellow who sent this to me, while a very good guy, called this "DCI Porter Goss' 11/15 excellent speech to CIA employees." We all engage in spin to some degree -- but this was a staff memo written by the new Director of Central Intelligence to a wary and skeiptical staff. Excellent or not, Goss is sending signals to his people -- just as the RPC is sending signals to those Republican staffers on the hill who received and read this.

The Republican Policy Committee is sending a note to Republicans with statements by Goss that the job of The Agency is not a political one (something with which I agree.)

But seriously -- the RPC is using this statement in a partisan manner, and Goss meant for this memo to be read by those of us on the outside. It's all positioning for the external debate about the CIA's role and is not really designed to clarify anything internally.

I am going to start tracking Goss's public statements and doing my best to gather people who will track his internal actions. Then, I'll highlight the gaps -- though this may take the effort of many, rather than just a few.

One good bit of news -- I had my first bit of outreach from a CIA official yesterday. The way the official reached me was very unique -- and I shouldn't share how this person reached me in fear of foreclosing that route for this person or others. I also don't know what I will be able to recount after I meet this person -- but I have at least reached one person who may help me better understand the internal dynamics of the CIA.

I would be very interested in talking to others.

-- Steve Clemons

I am convinced that if Chris Nelson ever took his very-expensive-but-worth-every-penny Nelson Report on line as a blog, all of the rest of us -- including the biggies -- would be out of business.

I depend on his daily e-mail report, and I am about to potentially incur his friendly wrath by sharing his gaming on what is happening among those folks trying to sign up for spots in Bush's royal court. (Chris -- I owe you a sushi date.)

But let me give a quick Executive Summary of what Josh Marshall has called The Nelson Report's "uber-insider" reporting:

1. If Bolton becomes Deputy Secretary of State, it will be seen as a sign that Cheney still has lots of juice in driving foreign policy.

2. Bush likes Rich Armitage and doesn't apparently blame him personally for working for a guy whom many Bushite feel was disloyal to the President. Nelson says Armitage might be appoint National Intelligence Director.

3. Chris throws out some gossip that there may be a coup underway in North Korea -- maybe not, but portraits are missing.

4. Georgetown University's Victor Cha will get the National Security Council Korea desk job.

5. Michael Green, who has been doing Asia policy at the NSC and whom Georgetown really wants to come on staff, has his promotion as Senior Director for Asia on the NSC and is in a holding pattern to potentially succeed Jim Kelly as Asst. Secretary of State for Asia (Condi likes Michael -- I do too for that matter)

6. Democratic Representative Cal Dooley will not take Bob Zoellick's job at USTR. Gary Edson and Grant Aldonas are both in contention there.

My views -- leadership change is looking more Soviet-like all the time. All of this White House watching reminds me of what grad students would do when watching Brezhnev get succeeded by Andropov and then Chernenko.

Secondly, Georgetown is screwed. They are losing the prolific Victor Cha, not getting the esteemed Michael Green, and have just lost the truly brilliant John Ikenberry to Princeton. Georgetown needs a good Asia person this next year. Luckily, they still have Charles Kupchan who is one of the few genuine foreign policy thinkers in town brave enough to buck the conventional.

Third, Mr. President, please, please, please. . .give the USTR job to Grant Aldonas. He's smart and genuinely able to work across party lines. Maybe my post will kill his candidacy -- but given the multiple personality disorder problem of the Bush administration, people like Aldonas are the type of leaders who can generate and implement this administration's policy while not destroying the nation's collective faith in democracy.

Edson is a pretty snarly guy. He'll probably get the job.

Now here is how Chris Nelson laid it all out -- far better than I recounted:

TODAY'S JOBS GOSSIP...Rice/Bolton, Armitage, etc.

SUMMARY: since all Beltway Insiders really think people ARE policy, here's the latest gossip from sources joyfully playing the game.

USTR...last week's clever "dark horse" candidate, Rep. Cal Dooley (D-Ca.) today took himself rather forcefully out of play with a statement blasting current ag negotiations, and saying he had no interest in the job. Sources still say Bob Zoellick wants to stick around, but that if he doesn't, look to Commerce Undersecretary Grant Aldonas as a popular, effective choice. The "other" name is Gary Edson, a senior White House economic official who served the Bush 1 USTR, but who, it is safe to say, did not win the love and esteem of the professionals at that time.

Too bad we aren't talking about Tom DeLay being appointed to something. That would be sign of Congress returning to some sort of ethical balance after capsizing under the weight of his corrupt and thuggish management of the House.

-- Steve Clemons

Josh Marshall poses a question regarding Perle's comments to me last October 2002. Some have written to him saying that Perle's comments would not be inconsistent with what the neocons believed at the time -- that feckless arms inspectors would not find any WMDs, more because of their incompetence and Hussein's duplicity than because they were not there.

What I will add to this question is that Perle did not make it clear in our conversation that it was UN inspectors he was talking about. He said "we would not find weapons of mass destruction," according to my notes. When I asked him why he thought that, Perle's response was not that the weapons did not exist but that Hussein had hidden them so well or intimidated or permanently silenced those who might disclose their whereabouts that we would not find them.

He made this comment in a larger discussion about why he thought Colin Powell had badly served the president by taking us through the United Nations which Perle feared would preempt a just war against Iraq.

So, to be fair to Perle and those who have made queries on this point, his comments would not preclude the UN inspector rationale for his comments -- but I didn't feel that was what he meant given the tone and context of discussion. I do feel that Perle believed Iraq had WMDs somewhere but that we, meaning America, would not be able to find them or point to them in any way to justify the kind of war he was promoting.

Whether Perle believed Iraq had or didn't have WMDs then is not my main question. What I am interested in is why he was so certain that WE (either the UN inspectors or some other intelligence capacity) would not find WMDs. I just don't know the answer to that question --but it raised in my mind the possibility that some intel players believed that the WMDs were so 'not there' that a case using them as the excuse for invasion could not be made.

I don't know what intelligence Perle has access to at that time, but I had the feeling that he felt America was tripping the wrong way on the WMD obsessions we had then.

Although I have shared this anecdote with many in spoken comments, I have not written this up before because I wanted to see, over time, if intelligence gaps emerged between what the U.S. government was saying and presenting vs. what some serious intel analysts may have believed -- that there were no WMDs or the WMDs were so hidden that they would not be found.

Perle's comments in October 2002 have always left me with the feeling that Perle probably knew that Powell's testimony before the UN was trumped up.

Because I felt in October 2002 that we would find far more than we did find in Iraq -- though I opposed the invasion for other reasons -- I was quite in awe of Richard Perle's prescience in his WMD commentary or alternatively, his inside knowledge.

Remember, Scott Ritter was out making virtually the same claim though had regrettably allowed himself to become a stooge for Hussein.

Perle's comments were made during a conversation and are important in helping to broaden our understanding of what some key players were thinking before the build-up to this war.

-- Steve Clemons

A friend just forwarded me the lyrics to a Steve Earle song, called "Rich Man's War."

The question my friend poses is whether there is a backlash brewing in Red States. I'm not sure, but this song sounds like it's tapped into a genuine Jacksonian, Fuck-Yeah American current.

Could be just a bunch of Northeastern liberals or folks from Hollywood planting a good one in the South. Not sure.

But here are the lyrics:

Artist/Band: Earle Steve
Lyrics for Song: Rich Man's War
Lyrics for Album: Revolution Starts Now

Sarangel Music (ASCAP)

-- Steve Clemons

This just in from UPI's Intelligence Watch, authored by John C.K. Daly and Martin Sieff:

Turmoil rocks politicized Mossad

However, Dagan's neglecting of humint could have serious repercussions for the United States, too. Over the past 30 years, the CIA has greatly relied on the Mossad's traditional expertise in running deep cover moles throughout the Middle East to compensate for its own miserable lack of them in the region. Under Dagan's policies, Israel's loss may be America's, too.

The new reality is that our government -- here and in Israel it seems -- is bent on manufacturing its own reality, glossing over inconvenient feedback and data, and turning civil servants into political hacks.

Not good at all -- neither for Red Americans (and Israelis) nor Blue.

-- Steve Clemons

I have had an interesting exchange with some folks these last several days about the scramble of so many in town for new posts in G.W. Bush's second term.

Danielle Pletka has not been formally nominated to be a Department of State Assistant Secretary -- and a couple of well-informed observers, including Chris Nelson, are saying that it's not in the cards.

I have checked around town as well and find that the rumor of her appointment is still as strong as before, with people at State and AEI telling me that this job is at least Pletka's intention.

One friend who is a major news celebrity wrote to me that Pletka would be "an irritable, irritating and annoyingly ideological candidate for this position." If my posting her likely appointment early helps undo her campaign, then all the better. AEI still needs her.

That brings me to John Bolton, UnderSecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Rumors are rampant -- but I have from some very good sources who say that their sources are in fact very good, very well placed, very deep in the gossip circles at State and the White House personnel office -- that Bolton is likely to be our next Deputy Secretary of State, taking Dick Armitage's spot.

I admit that my own sources for this are not direct ones -- but let's consider this for a moment.

Condi is getting Powell's job. Laura and George consider Condi family, by their own accounts of her.

Armitage has been fighting for balance within the interagency process for some time -- and for that is probably considered disloyal to the President. When I met Richard Perle in France for a debate in October 2002, Perle recounted to Edward Luttwak and me that he couldn't stand Powell any longer.

He said that the French Ambassador to the U.S. Jean-David Levitte had had a dinner welcoming new French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin at his home -- which Perle attended, as did Colin Powell. Perle reported that Powell gave an interminably long and unbelievably obsequious and sycophantic toast in honor of Villepin.

Perle continued by saying that Powell had served his President poorly by getting the President to take what Perle then saw as a disastrous course through the United Nations to get at Saddam Hussein. Perle told us that he believed we would find no weapons of mass destruction. When I asked what he meant -- he said that Hussein had hidden the weapons so well or killed or scared those who knew to such an extent that we would never find the WMDs.

I admit to being haunted by Perle's words these last couple of years. What did he know?

Perle said definitively that we would not find weapons of mass destruction in October 2002.

On stage, we had a principled argument over the now stale issue of whether there was a real connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda -- and while walking off the stage, Perle told me that I needed to get off that line and go re-check things with my intelligence sources. He said "go back and check the intelligence."

I recount this now because Perle's comments are important -- but also because John Bolton and Richard Perle are ideologically identical. I know Perle better than Bolton, but we need other benchmarks to understand Bolton well.

When recently flying back from New York and sitting next to and conversing with German Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, I noticed Bolton sitting in the waiting lounge at Reagan National Airport outside the door we had both just exited. I suggested to Ischinger that he better say howdy to Bolton (maybe it will get me another trip to Germany. . .), and he did -- all pleasantries.

But as self-effacing and modest as Bolton presented himself at the airport, scratch beneath the surface and you have a guy pretty much ready to go to war with a lot of the world's thugs -- all at the same time. I've talked with guys in Bolton's office and suggested that he reminds me of Curtis LeMay and the "nuke them now and get it over with crowd" in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They didn't dissuade me from my take on Bolton.

I have one reasonably good acquaintance working for Bolton who happens to be an out, gay man -- a sometimes libertarian, but cheerful and smart guy. I won't mention his name out of respect for him because he apparently got furious when outed by one of the major gay magazines. The funny thing is that this chap has been "out" for years -- but perhaps it cost him political capital at the White House.

It does tell me that Bolton worries about national security issues more than he does religious right morality. That's a good thing. But I think that we need to be very careful moving Bolton up the ladder if he's going to be Condi's right hand person.

When it comes to loyalty oaths and tests, what Porter Goss is doing to the CIA will be nothing if Bolton gets the chance to rip apart the senior echelon at State.

He's been the neocon mole at the State Department for the last several years.

And as a close journalist friend of mine wrote to me yesterday:

Bolton will be dep sec of state. At least its clear now, no doubt and no denying it, that the neocons are in control.

-- Steve Clemons

ON THE ONGOING CONVULSIONS AT THE CIA, Douglas Jehl writes:

Porter J. Goss, the new intelligence chief, has told Central Intelligence Agency employees that their job is to "support the administration and its policies in our work," a copy of an internal memorandum shows.

While his words could be construed as urging analysts to conform with administration policies, Mr. Goss also wrote, "We provide the intelligence as we see it -- and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker."

This is clearly a war about loyalty to a White House that many agents feel exploited intelligence management protocols and process.

The danger for progressives in this debate is that they not automatically become CIA-huggers. The agency is a sprawling one, often positioning its institutional prerogatives in competition with other parts of the intel bureaucracy, often at the expense of important American security interests.

The public has so few real parameters for understanding this CIA mess that we need more Michael Scheuer's to step forward anonymously or publicly to lay out the corner of debate from the purview of analysts or operatives that we are not seeing.

There is considerable discussion in the public posts after my post on the CIA yesterday arguing that there is no safe and easy way for disaffected CIA personnel to be in touch with me electronically.

Seymour Hersh told me that he often talks to senior DoD officials and his other sources by phone -- but some feel it's not safe. He flies out of the country in some cases to meet his sources.

That is tough for me to do -- but I'm sure that smart agents, analysts, operatives who would like to anonymously discuss the state of war within the agency will find a way to get to me.

I'll post opportunities now and then, one being a major conference on the current state of al Qaeda that I am organizing with CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen and NYU Law School Center for Law and Security Executive Director Karen Greenberg.

I'll soon post more on this conference but it will run from 8 a.m. through 5:30 p.m. on December 2nd and will take place in the Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. I will be helping to M.C. the event.

In any case, agents -- find me, write to me, or give me a call from a pay phone.

-- Steve Clemons

THIS CIA STUFF REALLY DOES MATTER. Intelligence is by definition a complicated business, but applying a political litmus test to those engaged in intelligence estimates and operations is extremely dangerous for the country.

Newsday's Knut Royce writes about the purge underway:

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

A Chevy Chase pensioner friend who has phenomenal relations among those who thrive in clandestine operations shared this with me:

The core view of the clandestine service guys is that they DO need some reorganization and redirection, but that most of the effort needs to go into quality not quantity.

One guy told me that one of the best younger case officers in his section is a head-scarf-wearing Muslim Arab American woman with perfect Arabic fluency who has the courage, the grit and the tradecraft skills to do virtually anything, but whose potential is not well exploited because the prevailing cautious culture of the Agency keeps her (and others) largely out of harm's way.

From Walter Pincus & Dana Priest:

Within the past month, four former deputy directors of operations have tried to offer CIA Director Porter J. Goss advice about changing the clandestine service without setting off a rebellion, but Goss has declined to speak to any of them, said former CIA officials aware of the communications.

The four senior officials represent nearly two decades of experience leading the Directorate of Operations under both Republican and Democratic presidents. The officials were dismayed by the reaction and were concerned that Goss has isolated himself from the agency's senior staff, said former clandestine service officers aware of the offers.

My father worked in intelligence -- and back when he was alive, I learned from him and a bunch of great John LeCarre books that what we read in the papers or what we thought was going on was rarely, in fact, the case.

So, we have to use our intellect and open sources, as well as rumor and gossip, to understand what is happening in the world's most secret bureaucracy.

I don't have good answers, but if Goss is, in fact, purging the agency of those who did good work but were considered disloyal to Bush, then they will hire yes men who make Douglas Feith's crimes of intelligence-twisting and cherry-picking look trivial.

For any of those disaffected intel guys out there who are reading this, I would appreciate some time with you -- no names, no attribution. Contact me through email or show up at my office. Let's talk -- because I'd really like to know what is 'really' going on over there in The Agency.

-- Steve Clemons

CYNTHIA WEBB ASKS WHETHER TELECOM IS BACK? Well, maybe for the oligopolistic Baby Bells, but the innovative technology players are struggling hard to get us the infrastructure that America's so-called "information age" needs but doesn't yet have.

The news on broadband and high-speed, big information pipe connectivity is mixed.

But to know where America should be, we should be looking at where other nations are.

National Journal's Tech Daily reported on 19 October 2004 that a new report from the Int'l Telecommunications Union (ITU) showed the United States dropping from 11th to 13th in broadband penetration among 75 nations from 2002 to 2003.

In the year 2000, America was #3. Now we are #13.

The top three in broadband penetration today are South Korea, Hong Kong and Canada.

For frustrated broadband believers, here's an article that says it all (needs a subscription) regarding South Korea's broadband preeminence over America. The intro: "Nearly everyone in S. Korea has Internet access that puts Americans' to shame. Result: This little nation could have a giant influence on the digital future."

I hope Telecom (and Broadband) do come back. But so far, Michael Powell's reign at the Federal Communications Commission and Bush's poor broadband policy execution are making America's information age roadmap look pathetic.

-- Steve Clemons

THE NELSON REPORT, Chris Nelson's intriguing daily report on everything interesting in Washington, is worth reprinting in part today. He sent this before the news that Condi Rice gets Powell's perch, but the line-up that Chris has linked to this State Department decision is fascinating.

Chris Nelson writes:

When is everyone's expectation still a surprise? When Colin Powell resigns months before HE thought was going. Who will succeed Powell? Senate sources say National Security Advisor Condi Rice.

Other folks think this is delusional...stay tuned.

Chris Nelson has just about the best take on the possibilities.

-- Steve Clemons

DANIELLE PLETKA, AEI FOREIGN & DEFENSE POLICY PROGRAMS CHIEF, will be appointed Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs. This just hit in from a little birdie -- not on the wires yet.

That must have given Colin Powell and Dick Armitage some heartburn since Pletka has been part of the attack-Powell neocon squad for some time.

The realist crowd, what little of it existed in the administration, is thinning. Colin Powell and Richard Armitage have declared themselves out. Robert Blackwill resigned. Richard Haass left some time ago to head the Council on Foreign Relations.

CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin quit, as has the CIA's Osama bin Laden tracking chief Michael Scheuer, a.k.a. ANONYMOUS.

Former NSC staffers Richard Clarke and Rand Beers quit.

Have any neoconservatives quit? Don't mention John Ashcroft to me; he's not smart enough to be a neoconservative.

Even the neocon that George Bush thought he fired but survived -- Douglas Feith -- still has his job.

Now Danielle Pletka will help rein in a piece of the bureaucracy at State.

By my count, the realist-like crowd is down 8 people; and the neocons already up 1.

To all those who keep asking me whether the neoconservatives are going to be constrained in Bush's next term, what does the math tell you?

-- Steve Clemons

I AM ONE WHO BELIEVES THAT THINGS HAVE GONE SO WRONG IN IRAQ that the American "brand" is no longer seen as a legitimate deliverer of stability and democracy there.

My colleague and friend, Noah Feldman, a professor at New York University's School of Law, disagrees with me and has put his formidable intelligence and expertise on Islam to the test both in a new book and when he served as an advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority on how to meld Islam into a constitutional democracy.

On Feldman and his new book What We Owe Iraq, Robert Kagan writes:

In the spring of 2003, the Bush administration sent Noah Feldman to Iraq to advise American occupation authorities and the Iraqis on constitution making. The choice was remarkably apt, for Feldman possessed a rare blend of talents. A young and respected professor of constitutional law at New York University, he spoke and read Arabic fluently and held a doctorate in Islamic studies. Nor was his the normal Bush appointee's resume. A self-described liberal Democrat, Feldman had clerked for Associate Justice David Souter and litigated for Al Gore in the Florida ballot melee in 2000.

Readers unfamiliar with the style of academic discourse Feldman often employs in this book may wish to remain so. But the core of his thesis is powerful and important.

I think that an exchange between realist Robert Kaplan and the architect of a democratic Islam Noah Feldman would be the right ticket. Perhaps some day.

But in the mean time, I am moderating a meeting with Noah Feldman tomorrow, Tuesday, at the New America Foundation at 12:15 p.m. (his books will also be available)

The public is welcome, but you get to bring your own lunch. The address is 1630 Connecticut Ave, NW, 7th Floor.

RSVPS must go to Jennifer Buntman at buntman@newamerica.net.

-- Steve Clemons

SOME TIME AGO, I PRAISED PETE COORS AND BLASTED KEN SALAZAR because of their respective comments on the Iraq War resolution.

That said, I'm very happy that Ken Salazar won his race, which may in fact hold some very important lessons for Democrats as they try to chart a new course to become a party of the nation, rather than just the coasts.

A very thoughtful political economist sent the following to me this morning but asked that I keep him anonymous:

Steve -- To begin with, Colorado bucked the national trend by voting to reelect President Bush while at the same time choosing Democrat Ken Salazar to fill an open U.S. Senate seat and his brother John to fill an open U.S. House seat.

The lesson for national Republicans (if any of them are paying attention) should be clear: Allowing far-right social conservatives to dominate your legislative agenda may eventually result in a backlash.

Here is another piece about the lessons Colorado may hold for what hopefully will be many Democratic Party re-orientation retreats.

Just ignore that Bill Richardson is quoted a lot in the piece.

Remember, he says that he is not chasing higher office -- don't let him.

-- Steve Clemons

THIS SHORT PIECE (IN GERMAN) RAN IN BERLIN'S LARGEST DAILY, Der Tagesspiegel. The Washington Note got a nice plug.

Recently, the Heinrich Boell Foundation hosted a group of German journalists here in the U.S. -- and many of them seemed interested in doing more to encourage political blogging in Berlin and Brussels.

While some told me that there were a few good blogs in Europe, the field was still barely embryonic and not nearly as richly diverse as is the case in the U.S.

Thanks to Lars von Toerne at Der Tagesspiegel for writing this up.

-- Steve Clemons

THE MOST POPULAR MEMBER OF THIS BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S CABINET has tendered his resignation.

Powell's memoirs are going to fetch a mint for him, and Democrats ought to see if there is any way at all that this guy might switch parties.

Colin Powell does not have a string of acolytes following him and doesn't seem to have a coherent view on foreign policy -- but he is the guy in the room who always thinks cautiously, who focuses on the contingency at hand, who believes in speaking softly and carrying a very big stick. While realists and neoconservatives will probably continue to fight it out in the Bush administration, the one thing they really need is a Powell-type cautious general who had his own political muscle to beat back some of Bush's worst impulses.

Powell's record is not completely clean -- and I wish he had resigned as soon as he learned how profound and deep the administration's lies to Powell and the country had been.

But Colin Powell kept this administration out of what could have been an even worse mess.

On the one hand, I'm sorry he won't be in the situation room as a sane and steady voice.

On the other, I hope he shares what he knows about the nuts and bolts of this first term with Bush with the rest of us -- and I hope he runs for the presidency.

-- Steve Clemons

FRED PHELPS IS THAT NUT WHO SPENDS ALL HIS TIME HARRASSING GAY people. Finally, some folks on the far right said enough and sent Fred and his idiotic followers packing.

Phelps tried to invade the conservative, bible-belting town of Sand Springs, Oklahoma to harrass 17-year old Michael Shackelford and his fellow evangelical parishioners.

Shackelford was highlighted in a recent Washington Post article, one in a four part series by Anne Hull. Her follow up piece on Shackelford becoming a poster child for Fred Phelps' hate campaign is here.

I remembered one other high profile exchange between Fred Phelps and the wry-witted and brilliant former Republican Senator of Wyoming, Alan Simpson.

Here is the story as written up by the Washington Post's Al Kamen some time ago.

Former Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) has come under fire for supporting gay rights. The famously anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., recently picketed the Wyoming statehouse in Cheyenne, in part because Simpson is honorary chairman of the Republican Unity Coalition and signed the group's "Cody Statement" for tolerance.

We know that is surely not the case, because you are a God-fearing Christian person filled to the brim with forbearance, tolerance and love -- and this other goofy homophobe nut must be someone totally opposite."

"Quite Sincerely, Al Simpson."

Sand Springs, Oklahoma is just west of Tulsa, and Bartlesville where my family is from, is just north.

It's nice to see Oklahomans -- where they are pro-gay or have problems with it -- defending their own from disturbed people like Fred Phelps.

-- Steve Clemons

I HAD THE PRIVILEGE OF WORKING WITH ROBERT KAPLAN for a couple of years when he was a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. He finished three books -- The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War Era; Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus; and Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos at our think tank.

More than any other person, Kaplan is a modern-day Machiavelli and doing his best to advise the Prince how to secure outcomes that are in the best interest of the state. Kaplan, a realist, was one of the first to meet with President Bush (in March 2001) to help tutor him on what a realist president would do in the world that was unfolding. I wrote about this encounter here.

I guess the moment when I felt most fond of Kaplan and his work -- though we have some differences -- is when I mentioned his name to Richard Perle in the green room at CNN, just before we debated each other on Crossfire to discuss US-China relations after the EP-3 spy plane incident. Perle exploded when I mentioned Kaplan's name, calling him immoral and responsible for countless deaths because of his book, Balkan Ghosts.

This was the first time I came to understand what the "Wilsonian right-wing" was. Kaplan wasn't surprised at all when I shared the substance of this encounter with him.

Today, Robert Kaplan admits that pretense out ran capability in America's new Middle East war in an important New York Times article. In this graf, he readily admits that he supported the war but that he and others underestimated the distance from modernity that Iraq and much of the rest of the Middle East were:

Whether one views the war in Iraq as a noble effort in democratization or a brutal exercise in imperialism, there can be little doubt that it has proved the proverbial "bridge too far" for those who planned and, like myself, supported it. While much has been made of the strategic missteps the Bush administration has made since the Saddam Hussein regime was toppled, it seems likely that even the best-executed occupation would have been a daunting prospect.

Kaplan's article is important because it signals the end of the G.W. Bush intoxication that some key realists had about this president and his foreign policy. While the neoconservatives clearly outnumber the personnel of any other intellectual bent throughout the administration, support for the neocon agenda is becoming narrower and narrower. I, for one, am quite happy that Kaplan is back to hard-core realism in his observations and prescriptions.

The one friendly point that I would debate with Bob Kaplan over his article is his view that Afghanistan and Indonesia are surprising examples of democracy. Perhaps Indonesia -- but I think that the jury is still out (for a long time) on Afghanistan.

Kaplan was the one who taught me to be wary of ballot-box democracies. In comments he once gave about Mexico's democracy, he said that it was not such -- not as long as the courts and basic institutions of that society remained as thoroughly corrupt as they were. I agreed with him then that to measure a democracy, a relatively small actor needed to be able to beat or slay a large, empowered, often rich and corrupt political player.

While there are many encouraging signs in Afghanistan, sentimentalism should not taint our objectivity on whether that nation is or isn't yet a democracy. It has a long way to go and hopefully will.

In any case, Robert Kaplan's article gives a sober and important assessment of our Iraq circumstances.

-- Steve Clemons

JAMES K. "JAMIE" GALBRAITH HAS A LEVEL-HEADED REVIEW of the ongoing debate about voting machines, spoiled ballots, and provisional ballots.

He works through the numbers on voter turn-out and rejects most of the claims of those who believe that Kerry won the election after all. What he does focus on is exactly the right issue: getting the election system itself right before the next election.

Shocked by the several hours long wait that many elders had to stand in line to vote, Galbraith writes:

. . .it is an injustice, an outrage and a scandal -- a crime, really -- that American citizens should have to wait for hours in the November rain in order to exercise the simple right to vote.

Galbraith suggests that we do away with the election day machinery and long lines and transition to a vote-by-mail system. I agree with him that there must be a better way to engage the nation's voters in elections than the system we use.

We need to do something that works and which seeks to try to bring as many voters as possible into the system rather than spending so much time and effort -- from felon lists to poll challengers -- that seek to intimidate or stop a free and fair election.

-- Steve Clemons

ON 9 SEPTEMBER 2004, FOREIGN PURCHASERS OF U.S. TREASURY BONDS failed to show for a routine auction. And as reporte by Los Angeles Times' David Streitfeld: "Thoughts of panic flickered out there," said Sadakichi Robbins, head of global fixed-income trading at Bank Julius Baer.

Perhaps the Japanese and Chinese were showing some kind of deference to American observation of the anniversary of 9-11. Maybe they couldn't get past America's security barriers to get into the auction. Just kidding -- please tell me that these things are electronic now.)

Alternatively, the Japanese economy is being squeezed by the dropping dollar and the dropping Chinese yuan, which is linked to the dollar -- so while American exports may be more competitive vs. European exports, and even Japanese, we make no headway vs. China. The undervalued yuan is driving Japanese central bankers bonkers and both China and Japan are waiting for the U.S. to tilt one way or another. Their mutual absence at the auction may have been a signal to the Treasury Department and George Bush that there will be huge costs to the U.S. econonmy whether it sides with Japan or, alternatively, with China.

I believe that a missed auction, during these times, is not minor and is probably a signal to the White House that America needs to recognize the subtle leverage that Japanese and Chinese capital holds over the great American empire.

Japan and China wouldn't take this too far because they want Americans to keep buying their myriad products, and to do that, these countries need to keep us addicted to the narcotic of current account deficit financing.

America has more than 750 U.S. military installations external to its borders today and with just 5% of the entire world's population, America manages to spend just about the same amount on defense as the entire rest of the world combined.

With a cheap dollar, and one that most analysts see heading lower and lower, the empire is going to become ever more expensive in relative terms.

I once heard a wise person tell me that "Happiness is a function of relative deprivation." And if American pretensions regarding wealth are not only not realized, but people fall clearly backward, we are looking at very complicated and stressful times ahead.

While John Kerry never closed the deal with Americans that the middle class is indeed in trouble -- it remains one of the ripest political fruit to be had in the next election, but still -- America may be on the way to becoming a much more poor nation.

-- Steve Clemons

TODAY, I WAS CAUGHT OFF GUARD BY 126 NAMES AND FACES OF SOLDIERS who had died in Iraq from September 5th to November 4th that appeared in the Washington Post.

These soldiers are from all over the nation, mostly from small towns.

Of these 126, 3 are from outside the United States -- Puerto Rico, Guam, and Micronesia. 68 are from red states; 55 from blue. All are from America -- and we should appreciate the sacrifices of all these people for what they are doing on behalf of this nation.

The Post had a total of 1163 Iraq related deaths when this list was prepared; 3 more have been added to make a total of 1166.

I see that Josh Marshall caught the same page today, and it made him pause.

I agree with him that we should all reflect on the loss of so many. Was this invasion necessary? What cost is too great? Where are we on this so-called war on terror?

I have my own answers to these questions which are obvious to those who read this blog -- but for the moment, one of my preoccupations is exposing those who have been war-profiteers while also applauding and instigating this Iraq conflict.

These soldiers and their families deserve better than a picture, name, and home town in the paper -- and those who have unethically profited from this mess deserve to be highlighted with mug shots for their ignoble behavior.

-- Steve Clemons

WHEN I SPOKE AT THE LEADERSHIP RETREAT OF SANDIA NATIONAL LABS earlier this week, I stated that while I was a guy who gravitated towards the pragmatic rather than the ideological and towards the sensible rather than the extreme, I felt that it was best to do whatever I could to get both the Republican Party and Democratic Party back to solutions-oriented thinking and work.

But before we get back to work, there really are some very odd things going on with our democracy.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who keeps pretending really, really hard not to be interested in higher office, is so traumatized by the fact that he failed to deliver his state to the Dems that the running joke is that he is holed up in a room somewhere in Santa Fe personally counting one-by-one the provisional votes that might turn New Mexico back to blue from red. Whether one is a Democrat or Republican, one must simply be astonished by the ability of a single governor with off-the-chart political ambitions to distort an election process to promote their own ends.

I am not one who believes that members of Congress have very good chances of successful White House runs and think that Governors make better candidates than Senators. But Bill Richardson is off my list.

I know that many see Jeb Bush's and former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris's behavior during the last election in the same light -- and I agree. But it's all wrong -- on both sides of the aisle.

What is impressive to me is that surfer-activist Donna Frye is still leading in her write-in campaign to become the next Mayor of San Diego, one of the nation's largest cities. The motto on the home page of San Diego's official website reads: "The Most Efficiently Run Big City in California."

Well, they are still counting the ballots, perhaps efficiently, but what is clear is that in contrast to Bill Richardson making his vote counting about him and his future, the vote counting in San Diego is truly about democracy.

124 judges just got recused "from hearing a lawsuit attempting to block write-in candidate Councilwoman Donna Frye from becoming mayor" by the presiding judge of San Diego's Superior Court. It's a fascinating race, and will be good for democracy whether she ultimately wins or not if that determination is made by the number of votes counted rather than through legal challenges.

So far, she is leading in a three way race by 114 votes -- but there are approximately 180,000 ballots left to count.

Bill Richardson, stop counting New Mexico's ballots -- and go help in San Diego. That might help revive your presidential aspirations.

But on other fronts, I have been looking at the still bubbling question of bad voting machines and potential voter fraud. The most fair-minded and accurate website I have found this far (thanks to TK) is here.

I do not subscribe to the notion that the outcome of the presidential election is contestable -- though many others in the blogosphere want to make that case. What I do think is that there are some important discrepancies in voter turnout and recorded votes that don't make sense; some machines whose results are completely out of whack with the number of voters who showed and no paper trail to sort out; and other questions that deserve investigation.

These matters deserve investigation regardless of the issue of who won the election. Treating each vote as a precious one is the only way that this democracy is going to believe in itself. We have evolved into a "margin of error" democracy where the margin's band is irresponsibly wide.

Just consider these Florida vote count tallies:

Collier County
Voter Turnout was 127,409
128,352 votes were cast for president

Duval County
Voter Turnout was 379,257
379,614 votes were cast for president

Glades County
Voter Turnout was 3,446
4,188 votes were cast for president

Highlands County
Voter Turnout was 33,996
41,491 votes were cast for president

Lake County
Voter Turnout was 123,751
123,938 votes were cast for president

Miami Dade County
Voter Turnout was 716,574
768,553 votes were cast for president

Okaloosa County
Voter Turnout was 89,485
89,707 votes were cast for president

Orange County
Voter Turnout was 386,104
387,752 votes were cast for president

Osceola County
Voter Turnout was 63,589
82,178 votes were cast for president

Leon County
Voter Turnout was 136229
136,314 votes were cast for president

Palm Beach County
Voter Turnout was 452,061
542,835 votes were cast for president

Volusia County
Voter Turnout was 209,052
228,358 votes were cast for president

Yesterday, the Washington Post's Manuel Roig-Franzia and Dan Keating scorned those in the blogosphere for generating conspiracy theories about voter fraud. What disturbed me about their article is that these writers never even consider the question of whether such questions about fraud in some county and state outcomes might be valid.

While my own assessment leads me to believe that whatever fraud occurred out there is not great enough to unseat President Bush, the issue of fraud and machine malfuction remains vital and should be disconnected from the political agendas of people and journalists investigating.

The Post's Cynthia Webb does a nice job today of capturing the importance of blog commentary in a 'fair and balanced' discussion of election controversies.

But also today in the Post, Donna Britt, hits the ball out of the park in her outrage that America is apathetic about this debate. I agree with her.

Let's fix these problems well before the next presidential election.

-- Steve Clemons

MICHAEL POWELL'S FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION is becoming an engine of censorship; a destroyer of a dynamic, innovation-rich IT ecosystem; a supporter of new telecommunications monopolies; and an advocate of civil society-stifling media concentration.

Saving Private Ryan has just been pulled from airing on ABC affiliates. The president of one such affiliate, Raymond Cole, in Des Moines, Iowa stated:

Would the FCC conclude that the movie has sufficient social, artistic, literary, historical or other kinds of value that would protect us from breaking the law? With the current FCC, we just don't know.

The key issue in this case is ambiguity. Because of the erratic behavior and fines the FCC has imposed on entertainers such as Howard Stern, while essentially turning a blind eye to what Sinclair Broadcasting had intended to do with an anti-Kerry infomercial, very few broadcasters know what they can show and not.

Uncertainty is not good in broadcasting. Power can easily get abused when subjectivity becomes too much a part of a regulatory order. Michael Powell is creating a climate of fear in broadcasting and is doing the same in nearly all of the areas the FCC currently regulates.

Michael Powell needs to be retired, President Bush. America needs to be dynamic, innovative, concerned with public morality of course (nod to Senator Lieberman), but not at the expense of what is most important in our culture.

If Saving Private Ryan cannot air on television without fear of retribution while dozens of groteque Fox and other cable shows can air (and yes, I know about the single fine against a Fox show recently), then there is something rotten and wrong at the FCC.

-- Steve Clemons

I HAVE JUST BEEN GUT-PUNCHED BY THE NEWS that a dear friend and intellectual soul mate over the last several years, Iris Chang, was found dead in her car near Santa Clara, California.

Iris's book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, had immeasurable impact on a collective historical amnesia problem not only in Japan, but also in the United States and around the world. This brilliant and beautiful writer and thinker was, to me, a modern Joan of Arc riding into the nastiest of battles calling for honest and fair reconciliation with the past.

We met via email years ago. She joined a quest I was on some years ago to try and get people to look seriously at the contemporary legal consequences of back room deal-making by John Foster Dulles on the eve of signing the San Francisco Peace Treaty, formally ending Allied Occupation of Japan on September 8, 1951. I wrote a New York Times piece on this subject, which appeared on 4 September 2001.

Whereas I thought I had found an interesting historical tidbit that had been neglected by historians and lawyers, Iris Chang knew that I had just wandered unsuspecting into a raging battle between Chinese and Japanese warriors over memory and the historical record. She called me, and we had a two hour phone conversation where she helped prepare me for the onslaught of criticism that would fly my way from those who wanted to preclude any discussion of Japan's wartime responsibilities.

She followed up with her own New York Times articles on the debate about Japan, war memory, and what I called -- America's complicity in Japan's historical amnesia. Unfortunately, her articles are not available on the internet.

We met several times in person, once after a talk I gave at De Anza College in Cupertino, California where she sat anonymously in the back of a room of 500-600 people interested in Japan's war memory debate. This subject is one she owned -- and was one that I had just stumbled into -- but her brilliance and authority on this subject was tempered by intimidating modesty. She never let anyone know that she was there at De Anza.

We also shared a platform together at a conference organized in April 2002 by the University of San Francico Center for the Pacific Rim.

It would be irresponsible for me to suggest anything more than the authorities are suggesting about her death, but I would only add that I find it distressing and worrisome that two brilliant change-agents, Iris Chang and the late film-maker Juzo Itami, who made us see our worlds differently than we otherwise would -- each supposedly committed suicide, after bouts of depression. I have never bought the story about Juzo Itami, whom I also knew and who was at war in his films with Japan's national right wing crowd and yakuza.

I have no choice but to accept what has been reported about Iris's death -- but all I can say, and I can barely express anything sensible about this tragedy, is that the world has lost much in her passing.

Iris Chang wrestled with the tensions between conviction, faith, and communal lies. She was attacked from so many corners for her important work that she tried to untangle why truth was so frequently strangled by conviction, faith, and delusion.

We once discussed at length this passage from Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Anti-Christ." I don't believe that Iris was a Nietzche acolyte, but what follows below captures much of what we were both struggling with at the time:

One step further in the psychology of conviction, of "faith." It is now a good while since I first proposed for consideration the question whether convictions are not even more dangerous enemies to truth than lies. ("Human, All-Too-Human," I, aphorism 483.)

An anti-Semite surely does not become more respectable because he lies on principle ... The priests, who have more finesse in such matters, and who well understand the objection that lies against the notion of a conviction, which is to say, of a falsehood that becomes a matter of principle because it serves a purpose, have borrowed from the Jews the shrewd device of sneaking in the concepts, "God," "the will of God" and "the revelation of God" at this place.

I am too sad to write more about her now.

Arafat's passing has been grabbed by many as an opportunity to move the sorry state of Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a new direction.

Perhaps those in Japan who reviled Iris Chang's important work can step down from their strident defense of a white-washed history and find a course that leads to a more introspective and self-aware nationalism than is the case today.

-- Steve Clemons

POSTSCRIPT: COMMENT BY IRIS CHANG IN INTERVIEW WITH KINUE TOKUDOME

This important and interesting clip was just sent to me by journalist-activist Kinue Tokudome in an October 1998 Ronza magazine interview. I thought some of you might like to read her words about historical memory and Iris's support of those in Japan who want to reconcile the past and present.

From Kinue Tokudome's interview with Iris Chang:

Are you planning to go to Japan after The Rape of Nanking comes out there?

I don't know. All I do know is that I recognize that there are many sincere, wonderful and courageous people in Japan who want nothing more than to promote the truth, and these kinds of people - though in small numbers - can be found worldwide.

Iris Chang

-- Steve Clemons

THIS NOTE ON ATTORNEY GENERAL-NEXT AL GONZALEZ in from Chris Nelson, who writes the action-packed Nelson Report:

. . .the very first new nomination in the Second Bush Administration seems carefully calculated to send a message to everyone...we won, we can do anything we want.

Bottom line seems clear...Bush can divide and conquer, and Dems have to fear it signals the President has absolutely no intention to be bipartisan, or moderate in anything...so there!

The Center for American Progress has an extensive memo on our new Gonzalez Problem.

America: Fuck Yeah!

-- Steve Clemons

AT THE END OF THIS WEEK, GARANCE FRANKE-RUTA AND I will have an online discussion debating whether Howard Dean would have been a better Democratic presidential candidate than John Kerry. This will be posted on the American Prospect's website.

She's with Kerry, and I believe Dean could and would have beaten Bush. I'll post the link when the virtual debate is completed.

The last several days in the hills above Santa Fe have been useful in that the trip has given me some much needed distance from the post-election trauma of some and euphoria of others. I look forward to hearing from readers after I post some of my thoughts on what Democrats need to do to recover after this poor performance -- and why Democratic success is ultimately important to the Republicans, whom I believe are facing some interesting internal civil wars of their own.

I left Santa Fe this morning at 4 a.m. to make a 3 p.m. meeting in Washington to discuss with some other key foreign policy players in town what can be done differently by progressives these next four years. I have been in meetings the rest of the day and will have more time to post serious commentary tomorrow.

For what it's worth, I did seem to convince a few in the very interesting group of leaders from Sandia National Laboratories that Sandia can apply technology to both war-fighting needs of the country but also trust-building challenges between warring parties. In fact, Sandia has a very important set of competencies in "trust-building" that are not well-appreciated.

More on this later as I think it is a very important subject, and I was thrilled to discover that even among those who build, maintain, and develop nuclear weapons systems that there are rich and diverse political debates about war and peace, about strategy, and about what kind of leadership is best for the nation.

While Bush supporters aren't endangered at the nation's weapons laboratories, George Bush certaintly has no monopoly of support among nuclear engineers.

-- Steve Clemons

I HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO BE ON LINE OVER THE WEEKEND and today because of family obligations, travel, and a conference in the mountains outside of Santa Fe.

Tomorrow I'm speaking at a retreat sponsored by Sandia National Weapons Laboratories about the impact of the election on national security strategy. I will write up more tomorrow on some of my own thoughts but as this conference is almost entirely off the record, I won't be able to quote folks or relate much about the meeting.

I will be on a panel in the morning with my former boss, Senator Jeff Bingaman, as well as Republican House Member Heather Wilson. I haven't heard Jeff's reactions to the election so that should be very interesting given the fact that he is one of the most intellectually capable people in the U.S. Senate and has been elected four times to that chamber from a mostly red state.

New Mexico still has not declared the winner in the presidential race. Democrats and Republicans I have met here think that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is extending the process to absurd lengths to keep himself in the news -- and is trying to come up with enough Democrat votes here and there (just joking) that he will still be considered a viable presidential candidate in the future -- one who carried his state for the Democratic ticket.

More tomorrow -- and I have a lot to post on a wide variety of topics, including my thinking on what Democrats need to do to stop floundering after repeated election failures.

-- Steve Clemons

MATTHEW YGLESIAS JUST BROUGHT AN IMPORTANT WOOLSEY WATCH ITEM to my attention. Whether one supports this American war in Iraq or not, the perverse interests that find cover in this conflict need to be exposed.

Remember the World War IV Conference that James Woolsey, Norman Podhoretz, Clifford May and others pulled together at the end of September? Jaideep Singh, Associate Editor of Foreign Policy, attended and filed an illuminating report on the war-mongerers.

The first couple of grafs are hilarious. Woolsey rousted former Secretary of State George Shultz from his California slumber to declare he had joined the Committee on the Present Danger as a Co-Chairman:

James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is leaning over a speakerphone at the front of a small, ornate ballroom in Washington's Mayflower Hotel.

The disembodied voice of Schultz pipes in from California, where it's around 6 in the morning. "I welcome the reemergence of the CPD," says Schultz, sounding half-asleep. "In the early days, what the people [on the Committee] thought and said made a big difference." There is scattered applause.

Singh's last graf is the most disturbing.

The conference screened a short clip of a documentary on the lives of Iraqis as told by themselves, if you can believe that. Singh writes:

Later in the day -- perhaps for those wondering if the Iraqis themselves agree with Podhoretz's assessment -- the conference organizers screen a trailer for "Voices of Iraq," a forthcoming feature-length documentary for which two movie producers had handed out digital video cameras to ordinary Iraqis and asked them to film their daily lives.

A torture victim of Saddam says he wouldn't mind being tortured at Abu Ghraib. "You have a nice American woman undress you and play with your penis," he smirks. The audience laughs. (emphasis added)

The Committee on the Present Danger, by supporting perverse exercises like Voices of Iraq, just helped make the world just a bit more dangerous.

Note to Mr. Woolsey: Do you and your 'invite only' guests at this conference agree with Rush Limbaugh that Abu Ghraib was only frat house fun?

Senator Lieberman, isn't it time that you resigned from this group? It seems to me that the documentary film-makers encouraged by those who found the "woman playing with my penis" comment funny ought to at least trigger your personal alarms about films and public morality.

Senator, resign from this organization.

And George Shultz, you got hoodwinked. This new Committee on the Present Danger isn't what the old one used to be.

-- Steve Clemons

Previous WOOLSEY WATCH items:

WOOLSEY WATCH: TEN YEARS AGO TODAY. . .

WOOLSEY WATCH: THE AXIS OF WOOLSEY - ALAN KEYES - LARRY KLAYMAN

WOOLSEY WATCH: SPREADING PARANOIA AND FEAR ABROAD

WOOLSEY WATCH: SADDAM HUSSEIN & AL QAEDA

WOOLSEY WATCH: MONGERING FOR WORLD WAR IV?

WOOLSEY WATCH: BAATHISTS, SHIITES, AND AL QAEDA?

CLIFFORD MAY HAS BEEN LOBBYING HARD ON BEHALF OF DON RUMSFELD who seems not to want to leave his job as Secretary of Defense. I have no inside information on whether the Bush team wants Rumsfeld in or out.

Fox News is reporting that it hears that Rumsfeld will be out, but talking heads John Leo of U.S. News & World Report says he doesn't believe Rumsfeld will be out; and Eleanor Clift thinks Rumsfeld will stay at least through the Iraq elections.

If Rumsfeld stays put, then McCain cannot be Secretary of Defense, if that was what he was promised for suppressing his disdain for Bush & Co. and campaiging hard for the president.

So, with the Pentagon just out of reach, what McCain will no doubt immediately launch will be an assault on 527 organizations -- a gaping loophole in the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance reforms.

Today, I received this "527 Fact Sheet" from the Campaign Legal Center which former McCain Campaign Director Rick Davis and McCain acolyte and former Federal Elections Chairman Trevor Potter launched a few years ago.

To give some indication of the Bush-tilting and Kerry-tilting giants that McCain intends to fell, here is one graf from the attached report:

Who controls these 527 organizations and what are they doing?

Progress for America, which describes itself as a conservative issues group and is headed by one of President Bush's leading 'Pioneer' fundraisers, spent $29 million in the 2004 race by mid-October.

It will be interesting to see whether or not when McCain gets close to success in closing the 527 money loophole whether the Defense job will all of a sudden open up.

You have to admire Bush and Rove's facility with the politics of distraction.

-- Steve Clemons

SPREADING THROUGH MANY PROGRESSIVE BLOGS AND COMMENTARY are a number of articles, including one by Greg Palast, that the election was actually won by John Kerry.

It's very hard for me to get excited about these efforts to revise the electoral outcome by complaining about voting machine errors, spoiled ballot conspiracies, and other democratic vote-suppressing strategies when John Kerry has conceded the race. Kerry will never get to kick his feet up on the president's desk in the oval office. It's over for him as far as the White House goes.

However, this Associated Press article documents a serious and relative-to-the-votes-processed HUGE error of a single voting machine.

This sounds like the type of error that might occur in Afghanistan or Indonesia, but this is America. In fact, Afghanistan and Indonesia have paper trails for their votes, and probably spend a lot of time counting by hand and human calculation.

These doubts about computerized voting machines have to be resolved one way or another before any more major elections -- and the people who want paper trails are absolutely right. It is clear that some of the computers that are being employed to manage these votes are unable to handle with care and certainty each precious and important vote.

Note to both parties -- don't procrastinate. Fix these voting problems now.

-- Steve Clemons

(Thanks to TK for sending the AP story my way.)

ONE WOULD THINK THAT ARAFAT BEING ALIVE, BRAIN DEAD, OR FULLY DEAD would be a testable and verifiable condition.

I do not mean to make light of the Palestinian leader's condition at all, but seriously, there seems to be no end to the spin one way or another about issues that should be clear cut.

My friends at UPI have just sent two reports, one longer than the other. Maybe this will all become clear with the "official statement" from the family tonight. However, let me give the next generation of Palestinian leadership some advice. Transparency will help your cause -- whether it is about the health or lack thereof of your leaders or other matters. If Mr. Arafat is dead, or technically so, and it turns out that this was covered up -- you only perpetuate the image of the Palestinian leadership as a secretive, boss-driven, organized thugocracy.

If he is dead, declare it -- and help move the world forward into a more positive and constructive stance regarding Israel-Palestine possibilities.

The UPI pieces are here and here.

-- Steve Clemons

THE BUSH TEAM NOW HAS SOME VERY HARD DECISIONS TO MAKE. A transition in Palestinian leadership may be the best chance to set in place a credible path to a two-state solution in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The passing of leaders -- even ones we may detest -- are important staging opportunities. Americans may not have liked Arafat, but many U.S. presidents did deal with him, and he was the elected leader of his constituents.

America needs to constrain any covert attempts by Sharon to keep the Palestinian contenders for post-Arafat leadership off balance. And we need to send someone significant to Arafat's funeral.

Colin Powell would be good, and probably most appropriate, to send. Cheney would be better actually -- a sign that even the most hardened anti-Arafat forces in the U.S. government were ready to deal.

-- Steve Clemons

(ed. note: thanks to Bruce Stokes for forwarding)

THEO VAN GOGH WAS EXECUTED by a band of Muslim radicals who apparently decided to murder the filmmaker for his depiction of abused Muslim women in a recent film. Van Gogh was the great grand-nephew of Vincent.

There are gangs all around the world, most not Muslim, who also snub out innocent life and often kill people who do more than most to make humanity humane.

Tonight, I am having dinner with Cem Oezdemir, a Turkish-German politician and Muslim who was recently elected to the European Parliament. It may be unfair for me to ask him to help people like me understand what drives a group of young Muslims to commit a political assassination, which this was.

Such a question might be similar to my asking a Baptist politician to explain why young Christian thugs, who were in the U.S. military, killed Barry Winchell for being gay. That might be inappropriate as well.

But frankly, I would like to know what sort of righteousness we need to curtail that leads people to kill in the name of faith or values, perversely applied.

-- Steve Clemons

I WILL BE DISCUSSING THE ELECTION and what all this might mean on BBC's morning television show at 7 a.m. London time.

That's right, 2 a.m. Washington time.

If you are around and up, I'll say hello.

-- Steve Clemons

THAT IS THE FAVORITE LINE of the red-state styled crusaders for the American way in a fairly vulgar, crass, but culturally significant movie, Team America: World Police. "America, Fuck Yeah!" also seems to describe a kind of pugnacious nationalism that has taken hold of the American personality and just given George Bush a compelling mandate to take his political revolution further.

I know that my progressive, erudite acquaintances are going to give me grief for advocating that you all see Team America. . .but do. I think it gives us, via some puppets and special effects, a very good picture of what Walter Russell Mead has called the Jacksonian American. These Jacksonians believe in a core set of values -- apple pie, NASCAR, church, hard work, family values, gay and lesbian stuff hidden from sight. They believe in the country and aren't bent on notions of empire. In fact, they hate our involvement in Iraq or other global problems but believe that America is the only nation that can set the world straight.

According to them, we Americans don't want to be a global cop -- but if we have to, we will -- and we are going to do it our way, damn it.

Listen, the "Fuck Yeah!" crowd just told the rest of the world that Florida was not a mistake; America really wants this guy -- George W. Bush. So learn to live with it, work with us on our terms, or shut up.

I have a lot of reactions to yesterday's election that I would like to list here. I did this earlier today and tried to upload to my site, but there are so many hits on The Washington Note today and yesterday that my site keeps crashing. I lost everything I wrote. So, I have reconsidered some of my earlier reactions, but hopefully the tension I feel will be evident below.

In no particular order, among my thoughts are that exit polls are evil. These polls really misled Americans, blogs, commentators, everyone. This is the second major election where this has happened. Execute the pollsters. Kevin Drum tries to excuse the pollsters by arguing that late in the day, the eventual numbers looked pretty close -- well then, we shouldn't look at anything except late in the day numbers. But it manipulates voting outcomes and political process by sending inaccurate signals from these exit polls. I contributed to this -- although I qualified my commentary -- but I will never do it again. Exit polls are crap. Jonah Goldberg had that right when he said he wasn't buying them.

Life goes on -- but the political life of some in the inner core of the Democratic Kremlin should be snipped. Can we arrange for a special video session between Donald Trump and Bob Shrum?? Shrum needs to go. McAuliffe needs to go. Big Time failures. Some bloggers are advocating clemency for those inside the Democratic house. Howard Dean had it right -- he refused to hire a lot of these retread barnacles who thrive on risk-aversion in the Democratic Party. That is why they helped kill the Dean candidacy.

The Democratic Party is broken badly -- and this election proves it. There must be a thorough cleaning out of the party apparatus and a realignment of interests and objectives.

The next major headline-grabbing issue that Republicans and Democrats are going to wrestle over will probably be a successor to Chief Justice Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. We will be debating a new justice for the Court -- and will see the selection of a new Chief Justice, probably Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas. Does anyone think that the Democrats -- soon to be in complete and utter disarray -- are going to be prepared to fight an abortion-opposing justice appointment to the Court? Bush has his mandate. Daschle is out. Harry Reid, though a nice guy is not the most compelling example of bold, enlightened leadership in the Senate, is rumored to be in line to succeed Daschle.

Can we just immediately draft Obama into the Senate Minority Leader position? That would be bold, creative -- say something other than "business as usual." Dems will be rolled by the Republicans on the Supreme Court and other issues until they do some blood-letting, fire some folks, and come up with a new, compelling vision for the country. John Kerry never sold that vision. He tried in the end.

Other thoughts.

No universal health care in the next decade. Health care coverage rates in America get worse. We have a greater division of the ultra-wealthy from the rest of society. Winner takes all morality, balanced with a bit of Sunday charity is what will bring tears to the eyes of a faithful and penitent George W. Bush.

We will most likely have a new set of show-downs on abortion, gay civil rights, and advanced genetics/stem cell research. Faith and Secularism may have flirted with each other across a pretty well defined demarcation. But downright fuzziness and blurring of the lines of religion and state may be on the way.

Why didn't Kerry make the case? All along in this race, I thought Kerry missed opportunities. By the time he pulled his goose-hunting gig, which was some attempt I guess to connect with NASCAR aficionados, I just didn't think he had done much to connect with non-urban human beings. My family is from Bartlesville, Oklahoma -- a small town but a good place -- and John Kerry probably could not hang very long with the staff of the local credit union where my mom works. Howard Dean probably could have, and there are lots of Democrats frankly who could find common ground with the typical Bartlesville conservative. But Kerry never seemed to try.

The Cato Institute's Chuck Pena made a good point today. He said that Bush is a blue state guy underneath who sells well to red state types. John Kerry runs with another pack and just doesn't appeal well over the line.

No matter what Tom Friedman wrote in his New York Times column, this George Bush is now going to be considered by history to be the better Bush. He bested his dad. He won more votes than Gore did last time. He won two terms and has a mandate,

I am haunted by the energy and enthusiasm, the wacky internal fun, and the passion that Bill Clinton inspired from his core team including George Stephanopolous and James Carville as depicted in the movie, The War Room. Insiders tell me that Kerry's inner sanctum was icy, mechanical. Some of his closest aides had virtually no relationship with the guy.

This is a technique of Senate staff management where the Senator never wants to get too close to his own personal legislative staff. I saw it a lot when I worked in the Senate and know enough former Kerry staffers from the Hill that I am sure that he employed this approach. Some close aides to Kerry inside the campaign called him "whiney." Kind of an upper crust, rich guy who really did have to contemplate what made regular folks tick and didn't do it often enough.

Yesterday's result was an indictment of the Democratic Party machine that ran mechanically with a group of mostly risk-averse, Brezhnevized advisors from old Democratic party circles keeping Kerry from doing the bold, big things candidates need to do when destroying a powerful incumbent. Listen, I'll be politically correct. Kerry's "50% plus one" strategy nearly worked; but I hated it all along because he could have beaten Bush.

With all of the Bush administration's failings, economically and militarily -- from Abu Ghraib to whopping levels of national indebtedness -- Kerry failed to close the deal. The reason the Democratic Party needs to be cleaned out is that I have a hard time imagining a "type" of candidate easier to beat than one with the characteristics of the Bush administration.

Just think of this -- Kerry had Eminem, Bruce Springsteen, Move-On.org, Ron Suskind, Michael Moore, and many more people and incredibly innovative politically-loaded communications vehicles. All of these players and networks tried to infuse passion, vision, and a sense of consequence into Kerry's campaign, but they were not part of the core circle. Something is wrong with the machine when two similar types of candidates -- Al Gore and John Kerry -- get selected and both lose. They may be smart and have impressive records of duty and service to their country -- but Clinton and Bush do connect with people. That has to be part of the equation, and when the spirit and inspiration are missing in the core of Kerry's operation, when rumors get out that he is "whiney and a pain in the ass" from top staff people, there is something incredibly wrong.

I think that all of the great debates of the day are now going to be determined not through the collision of Democrats and Republicans but through battles among factions inside conservative circles. This could be a good thing -- at least until the Democratic Party realigns and gets back into fighting shape. But the debate tomorrow will be whether Bush Republicanism is really the kind of Republicanism most conservatives want.

If you want to beat back the right wing, progressives need to begin cultivating potential civil wars inside the Republican camp. Or better yet, Democrats need to redefine their center of gravity, toss out their flawed leadership, appoint strong visionaries who can compete and get back in the game -- nationally. Not just in the Northeast and West Coast.

I am riding hard on Kerry and perhaps I am going too hard. But the stakes for the nation were large in this race, and Democrats need to ask what is broken and why they can't seem to beat a Bible-belting president who uses faith more than empirical evidence to guide his decisions.

I will end what is somewhat of a rant, my own Dean-like scream today. But one more thing. . .What did Edwards bring to the ticket? Despite all of the smugness of recruiting a good-looking, fast-talking trial lawyer from the South, wasn't Gephardt a better choice? Would we not have won Missouri and most likely Ohio with Gephardt on the ticket?

I think we would have. Gephardt, while not the stem-winder that many people wanted, would have been the right choice for Kerry. Kerry hired so many of Gephardt's staff after Gephardt stepped down that I thought this would work. But as we all study what went right for Bush and wrong for Kerry -- one of the important but fatal errors was choosing a Vice Presidential candidate that brought no electoral college weight to the ticket.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

GEORGE BUSH IS WINNING BIG, LEADING IN THE POPULAR VOTE and also pulling in enough electoral votes. Congratulations to my Republican friends.

A huge number of people turned out and want this President. Tom Daschle seems to be going down to defeat. The South is even more consolidated around its fundamentalist friendly politicians, who just expanded in number in the Congress.

I am going to sleep. But a quick set of thoughts, all of which I might later regret. First, I think Gephardt would have at least pulled Missouri. What states -- if any -- did John Edwards bring in?

Second, Howard Dean avoided, for the most part, hiring the Democratic crowd of Brezhnevian-like advisors who clung like barnacles to previous Democratic administrations. Dean was different, wanted to be different -- but Kerry wanted to be the same.

Third, the country feels threatened, and the politics of George Bush sold better than those of John Kerry. i don't agree with their sentiments, but I understand them.

More tomorrow, but as of right now, George Bush and Laura get to keep their home -- and my neighbors who work for the President will probably stick around for a while, the only silver lining for me in the results tonight.

-- Steve Clemons

TONIGHT, I ATTENDED THE D.C. GATHERINGS OF BOTH the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee, as well as two other good parties.

When I left my house tonight, I thought Kerry had won -- based on exit polls, gossip, spin, Zogby, and others in the DNC and RNC with whom I have spoken. I think that the RNC is stunned that a huge turn-out is just as good for Bush in some parts of the country as Kerry. This is new.

Although Kerry's big party is in Boston tonight -- and Bush's is here in Washington -- the DNC party was pretty interesting, packed with lots of folks glued to CNN waiting for any news. The Republicans at the Reagan Building and International Trade Center were glued to country western music and Fox News during the break.

But seriously, I had this computed that Kerry was in pretty good shape and could forfeit a lot of ground to Bush as long as he won Ohio, or Florida. The latter is in Bush's corner, and Ohio is not looking good.

As I walked out of the DNC party of the Capital Hilton tonight, one guy outside said he was leaving because everyone else was -- Kerry had lost Florida, he said, and was about to lose Ohio. The RNC Party in contrast seemed to be just gathering a head of steam.

Without Ohio, I just don't believe that Kerry wins. Bush has done very well on the popular vote as well.

All I can say now is that I think we must all consider what a very large turnout validating George Bush's presidency means for the country and the world. I think it is a testament to democracy in action, but I also think that we may need to reconsider what our social compact between government and citizen is.

I'm going to watch this for a while on TV -- but more on the blog tomorrow.

The early pundits, pointing to Kerry, are wrong -- and I was wrong to get swept up in the euphoria.

Bush has not won -- but as James Carville intimated in some comments tonight -- Kerry is now climbing the hill and Bush is in the dominant position.

-- Steve Clemons

CHRIS NELSON OF THE NELSON REPORT IS ONE OF THE BEST INSIDER'S INSIDERS in Washington. I have been trying to reach him tonight to secure permission to reprint this excellent piece from his private newsletter but have thus far been unsuccessful.

So, hopefully I will be forgiven. If he hollers at me, then I'll have to take this down. . .but he shares some interesting insider gossip:

1. Pollster John Zogby, who has proven very accurate in recent years, has put his reputation on the line by already calling the election for Democratic nominee John Kerry. Zogby bases his call on his own models and the trends already reported.

5. There are private messages flying around the Internet, some allegedly from key White House staff, some quoting Vice President Cheney replicating his famous admonition to Sen. Leahy, only this time aimed at political director Karl Rove, and spin-meister Karen Hughes. While perhaps apocraphyl, the reported conversations seem symptomatic of a growing malaise at the top levels of the White House, as today's numbers blend into tonight.

Yes, it could be spin, but Chris Nelson is great at getting the very best stuff.

I'm off to my parties shortly. Stay tuned, and vote.

-- Steve Clemons

KERRY -- BUSH

PA 53 46
FL 51 49
NC 48 52
OH 51 49
MO 46 54
AK 47 53
MI 51 47
NM 50 49
LA 43 56
CO 48 51
AZ 45 55
MN 54 44
WI 52 47
IA 49 49

So far, it looks my earlier electoral college count of 304-227-7 is holding right on target.

Now, we have to count real votes.

-- Steve Clemons

THIS STORY ABOUT HISTORIC VOTER TURN-OUT IN NEW MEXICO is true of most states around the nation, not just the battle-ground states.

I used to work for Jeff Bingaman, Democratic Senator from New Mexico, and while I still believe, and believed then, that Jeff is one of the most intellectually talented members of Congress that we have, I was dismayed by general levels of apathy in New Mexico about politics and policy.

One could probably say the same about much of the country.

But no matter who wins tonight, the nation is taking this choice seriously -- and that is terrific news.

-- Steve Clemons

JOHN ZOGBY HAS LAID IT ON THE LINE SAYING BUSH WILL LOSE tonight, and decisively. . .sort of.

Every wise sage in the media whom I have heard from tonight has said to tread carefully on this exit poll stuff. Florida is real close they say.

Let me get the politically correct stuff out of the way. Every vote counts. Vote. Vote. Vote. Every state counts. Get out the Vote.

Ok, but given that we have this electoral college system that I'd love to dismantle, the fact is that if all states tilting Kerry's way now continue to do so, he can lose Florida and Iowa -- both of which Zogby gives to Kerry. In fact, the 14 votes in the 'tied' column above are Nevada and Colorado, which if they go Bush's way only give the incumbent President 261 votes.

Too few for the Bush clan to keep showing off the Lincoln bedroom.

What is surprising on Zogby's home page is the popular vote: Bush at 49.4%, Kerry at 49.1%.

Others have Kerry winning the popular vote thus far, but it always throws me off balance to see such a close popular vote prediction next to such a disparity in electoral college vote distribution.

I think it will still be a long night.

Think of this though. Imagine the tables turned; that Kerry was down by the same margin Bush is down now. I think that the Dems would be incredibly depressed, and worrying all night that Kerry had a long, steep hill to climb.

I think an incumbent like Bush has less a steep hill to climb given the magic of incumbency, but still he has to climb that hill tonight, not the other way around.

Bush may still do it -- but thus far, this election is proving to live up to the hype that preceded it.

-- Steve Clemons

My count has Kerry at 304 electoral college votes; Bush at 227; and Iowa still tied.

Obviously, there is a dangerous, slippery slope in putting too much faith in exit poll data. But there it is....so far.

-- Steve Clemons

HERE IS THE LATEST FROM SLATE'S JACK SHAFER:

Florida
Kerry 50
Bush 49

Ohio
Kerry 50
Bush 49

Pennsylvania
Kerry 54
Bush 45

Wisconsin
Kerry 51
Bush 46

Michigan
Kerry 51
Bush 47

Minnesota
Kerry 58
Bush 40

Nevada
Kerry 48
Bush 50

New Mexico
Kerry 50
Bush 48

North Carolina
Kerry 49
Bush 51

Colorado
Kerry 46
Bush 53

-- Steve Clemons

A LOT OF PLACES ARE POSTING THE LATEST EXIT POLL DATA. I will too. But this short note came in from a well-placed DNC source:

kerry slightly ahead in colorado, slightly behind in florida. scattered reports of voter intimidation, but overall dnc satisfied with how things are going.

big surprise -- slightly ahead in virginia. major voter mobilization efforts have gotten dems into the polls, and it appears kerry just may snag the state.

This note got to me at noon, but I was in meetings talking about the elections rather than watching the data. However, I think that these little snapshots are useful.

Here are the 2 p.m. exit polls (via Chris Nelson), but clearly something is going to tug the Pennsylvania numbers closer together:

Kerry totals are shown first.

Nationwide: 50-49

Ohio 52-48
Florida 52-48
Pennsylvania 60-40
New Hampshire 58-41
Arizona 44-55
Wisconsin 52-47
Minnesota 58-40
Michigan 51-48
New Mexico 50-49
Iowa 49-49
New Jersey 56-43
Virginia 49-50
Arizona 45-55
Colorado 41-58
Missouri 45-55
West Virginia 40-54
North Carolina 47-52
Louisiana 42-57

The well-placed DNC source seems to be in conflict with the Colorado exit poll data, and Virginia is still showing a point favor in Bush's corner. However, it is intriguing that Virginia is showing as tight a race as it is. And sure enough, the source who wrote the note above has Florida in Bush's favor, wheras it looks like Florida is tilting towards Kerry in the latest available exit polls.

More to come.

-- Steve Clemons

TONIGHT, I AM GOING TO THREE ELECTION PARTIES and then probably watching the post-4 a.m. segments on my bedroom TV.

The first will be a soiree thrown by Gloria Dittus, the next will be with Martin Walker's team at UPI, and the least will be with the hard-core Washington-based campaign staff of the Republican National Committee who are going to watch the returns, and drink, at the Reagan Building.

I won't be doing live-blogging from the RNC party floor, but I will be scribbling reactions to what I see unfold there. Many of my friends are shocked I would go, but the fact is, that is where the news will be tonight -- whether Bush wins, loses, or ties.

I ran into Andrew Sullivan last night outside my local gym and promised to call or "wing him" some good stuff from the RNC party. Josh Marshall will get anything good I find as well.

Josh Marshall and others are far more aware of the nuanced gossip and rumor-mongering going on, but I have small tidbits here and there.

One close friend of mine works inside the Rove machine and said that until the bin Laden video, things looked bleak from their perspective for President Bush. In the last several days, this person has said that there has been a reversal of fortunes, not that Bush is poised to definitively win, according to this person, but that the insiders thought Bush was going to definitively lose until bin Laden showed up. To preempt naysayers, the person to whom I have been speaking is not "feeding me spin," doesn't read this blog, and is not a poll junkie.

What interested me in this person's comments is that they gave an indication of the temperature of people working hard inside the Bush team's central core. The temperature there a few days was cold but is now warming up. That doesn't mean they will win tonight.

All of this has led me to think more deeply about what a tie would mean, or at minimum, another drawn-out, contested presidential outcome.

One good friend stopped me on the streets of Dupont Circle (in Washington) last night and offered that if this race did go into the courts or was drawn out with controversial vote recounts, there would be enormous pressure on the incumbent to step down. Frankly, I had never heard this view before and would not normally find it compelling. However, according to this centrist, well-connected attorney, if the incumbent -- with all the enormous powers that incumbency provides -- does not clearly win, then a tie is really a victory for Kerry. He thinks that the powers that be among senior Republican circles will encourage Bush to yield in such a case.

I responded that I doubted Bush's legal team would see it that way. I also made a mental note that I hadn't seen the Bush team act so magnanimously at other times. These seem to be winner-takes-all types of folks.

Stuff to chew on as you wait for those polls to close down today. Hope you all voted.

Another friend who works closely with one of George Herbert Walker Bush's closest aides sent me an interesting "2004 Election Guide" produced by Tom Gallagher and the consultancy firm, International Strategy & Investment.

The report seems to be coming out hourly today, reporting on various of the House, Senate, and Gubernatorial races. On the presidential race, the report I have has an interesting breakdown (just like the myriad of state by state breakdowns for Bush and Kerry on many contending reports).

Most analysts give Bush a solid, immovable 180 electoral votes that are his no matter what -- and give Kerry 149 rock solid electoral votes.

Then, of course, it gets interesting.

In the "Likely Kerry" and "Leaning Kerry" races, Gallagher and his comrades give Kerry Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington. These states plus Kerry's rock solid core would give him 232 electoral votes.

In the "Likely Bush" and "Leaning Bush" contests, the report gives Bush Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Nevada, Tennessee, and West Virginia. These states plus the rock solid core 254 electoral votes.

The toss-up states are Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, and Wisconsin. 52 electoral votes are tied up in these states.

I thought that this might interest some, because I've seen many polls, and even Electoral-Vote.com, distributing the states differently, including Florida which many now have going to Kerry.

Still seems incredibly close at every level to me.

Tradesports.com, for the betting types, has the chances of Bush being elected at 54% vs. Kerry 46%.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

CONSERVATIVE POLITICAL SCIENTIST HENRY NAU SAID IT ALL YESTERDAY. When asked what message a Bush loss would send terrorists and the rest of the world if this President were to lose the election, he responded that the message America would be sending is: "DEMOCRACY."

This comment came during an interesting exchange I moderated yesterday between Nau and former National Security Advisor to Vice President Al Gore, Leon Fuerth, who is now a Research Professor at the Elliott School at George Washington University.

They presented conservative and liberal dimensions of a grand stategy for American Policy, based in part on opening chapters each wrote in an interesting new book called Divided Diplomacy and the Next Administration: Conservative and Liberal Alternatives, which is a collection of interesting left vs. right policy essays by Elliott School faculty.

This debate between Nau and Fuerth, with my own editorial comments, will air on C-Span over the next few days.

Compare Henry Nau's advocacy for George Bush -- tempered with the maturity that a loss for his candidate means democracy is working -- to this paranoid article by Clifford May that asserts that if George Bush loses, it is because of United Nations manipulation.

I really hope that whether or not George Bush wins or loses in the election today, that the type of conservative Henry Nau typifies takes back his or her party from those who clearly do not trust democracy.

-- Steve Clemons

AS REPORTED BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS:

Ten years ago: The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report saying CIA Director R. James Woolsey's response to the Aldrich Ames spy case was "seriously inadequate," but that his predecessors were ultimately to blame for the scandal.

The original Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report is here. A news report issued ten years ago today is fascinating to read and full of bluster towards Woolsey:

CIA Director R. James Woolsey's reprimands of 11 senior managers for their handling of the Aldrich H. Ames spy case were "seriously inadequate" for a "disaster of unprecedented proportions," the Senate Intelligence Committee says.

By the fall of 1986, several months after Ames began working for the Kremlin, the CIA was aware that it was suffering a sudden and stunning loss of foreign agents that could not be explained by known espionage cases, the report says. "Within a matter of months, virtually its entire stable of Soviet agents had been imprisoned or executed," the report says.

I have often wondered if it was this wound that embittered Woolsey and sent him reeling towards the war-mongering faction of neocons. He seems to be waging a war not so much against Hussein and al Qaeda but against the Democratic Party infrastructure that stabbed him in the back on the Ames case.

I find some irony in the following. Aldrich Ames knowingly committed treason, using his access to secrets to pass them on to the Soviets in exchange for payment.

Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey has cloaked himself in patriotic language, of course, but has used his access to power and government to personally profit from firms investing in homeland security and defense -- while at the same time serving as a proponent of this war as a policy pundit.

During World War II Harry Truman referred to war profiteering as "treason."

In other WOOLSEY WATCH news, James Woolsey and Henry Kissinger appeared on October 29th on Fox's On the Record with Greta van Susteren.

Here are excerpts of Woolsey's comments, replying to a question about Osama bin Laden:

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Well, he's either in that very wild area along the Pakistani-Afghan border or, as Mansoor suggested, possibly -- I think less likely, but possibly along the Iranian-Afghan border. There's been some thought in the past that he might be back in his home area, a wild area of the Yemeni-Saudi border. But I think the Pakistan-Afghanistan area is the most likely. And it's very hard to find individuals. One...

WOOLSEY: Well, these are not open societies where people go off on their own to do things. These are clans. And they're very close knit. And if you are being protected by one of these clans, you can be, I think, held very much to their bosom, so to speak. I think $25 million, $50 million, it doesn't really mean in that part of the world anything because people, A, don't believe that they're going to get it if they turn him in, and, B, they're not ready to be taken out of their own structure, their own village, their own clan, their own family. I think it's likely he's in that rugged border area of Pakistan and Afghanistan, has been all along.

Woolsey sounds ridiculously speculative to me. I find the comment that $25 to $50 million has no meaning to those around bin Laden slightly bizarre, at least in saying that it has no meaning within a clan context. This would indicate a complete surrender by this CIA Director, if he had the job again, of getting human intelligence from circles in and around al Qaeda. Perhaps money is the wrong motivator, but there are probably other levers.

And his comments on where bin Laden might be seem to be as uninformed and speculative, but seemingly authoritative, as his comments on September 11, 2001 that Saddam Hussein was probably linked to al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks.

No matter who wins the White House tomorrow, people who have been pundits and proponents of costly ventures that have undermined American interests need to be held accountable.

-- Steve Clemons

I STILL HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO TO GET INTO JOSH MARSHALL'S league, but I just received my monthly web visits statistics for October, which are 250,683. Josh and Wonkette get more than this many visits by breakfast, but for a new site, I'm pleased. September visits were 140,386.

Other good news is that after nearly six years in my role as Executive Director of the New America Foundation, I am becoming as of today a Senior Fellow in order to develop more of my own thinking and writing in the realms of foreign policy and international economic policy questions. I loved my previous role, but as the organization has grown, I had less and less time to write and develop important policy inititiaves.

So, despite whatever happens tomorrow, today is my Freedom Day.

-- Steve Clemons