I like Tim Roemer, the former Congressman from Indiana who now is President of the Center for National Policy as well as his staff -- but I have to give him some push back on his New York Times op-ed this morning.

Roemer is proposing that Dems stop getting lost in the quagmire of developing better policy proposals and trying to sell them to Americans and just make the next elections about how bad the Republicans are. He wants to take a page out of Karl Frost's 1946 Republican strategy posing the question to Americans, "Had Enough? Vote Democratic."

Roemer writes:

Sixty years later, Democrats would be smart to turn Karl Frost's slogan on Karl Rove's strategy.

"Had Enough? Vote Democratic!" is a slogan that spotlights the many mistakes in Iraq, the mismanagement of Hurricane Katrina and the mangling of fiscal responsibility with "bridges to nowhere." Indeed, you can see and hear Democratic candidates rallying their voters at Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinners with a passionate and rhythmic chorus:

"The administration said Iraqis would greet us with roses as liberators, yet our soldiers are attacked with homemade bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. Had Enough? Vote Democratic.

"The administration said it was prepared for a hurricane in New Orleans, yet our government's feeble response prompted Bangladesh to offer us $1 million in aid. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!

"The administration said it would bring competency to our federal budget, yet our nation faces catastrophic deficits. Had Enough? Vote Democratic!"

And if you want to fire up the base, you can string together references to Jack Abramoff, Abu Ghraib and the Dubai ports deal. "Had Enough?" works well on classic campaign materials like buttons and bumper stickers while its simplicity makes it a cinch to "go viral" on the Internet.

"Had enough?" will speak to both Democrats and disillusioned Republicans. Liberals can use "Had Enough?" to reach out to voters enraged over the incompetent management of Iraq. Moderates might use "Had Enough?" to persuade swing voters on fiscal issues. And the implicit rejection of neoconservative politics will appeal to all voters who seek to spurn tainted Republican candidates.

"Had Enough?" also pre-empts Democrats' worst habits. Too often we've made campaigns complicated and policy-heavy. We love to unveil 40-page position papers and wonky diagrams. "Had Enough?" clears a broad path through such minutiae. "Public sentiment is everything," Abraham Lincoln said 150 years ago. "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."

Karl Frost's simple words can serve as the cavalry charge to help win the coming electoral battles — something Democrats are in an incredibly strong position to do. But make no mistake: new ideas matter. Democrats will also need the artillery of a disciplined, focused set of core proposals to complement their criticism of Republican excesses.

As we head into the midterm elections, Democrats should finally understand, as Lincoln and Frost did before, that you must win the majority before you can make public policy.

There is some logic to what Roemer proposes. There's a lot Americans are angry about.

But trying to sell the notion that no party can be as bad as what is in office now would assure that Dems stay a minority party.

What Roemer neglects is, that unlike 1946, there are more declared Independents than either Republicans or Democrats today -- and more independent-leaning and independent-minded Republicans and Democrats than the American political scene has witnessed in a century.

These Independents can't be wooed by celebrations of how bad the Bush administration has been. They want to see better ideas and proposals put on the table.

But what Roemer proposes doesn't square for declared Democrats either.

Democrats have been avoiding some of the battles they need to have inside their party to help develop a more compelling set of proposals they can stand behind -- but Dems are afraid of those debates in fear of fracturing a tired party. They have to work through some policy civil wars and then BE ABOUT SOMETHING.

Roemer wants to skip that process and be about nothing now, and something later -- after winning a "How Bad The Other Guys Are" campaign.

"Had Enough?" is not enough, and the President of the Center for National Policy is well-positioned to help get some of those ideas we need on the table.

-- Steve Clemons

Oil barons are inappropriately lining their coffers with mountains of dollars from American citizens by generating oligopolistic cartel conditions on the price of refined oil and gasoline. Yesterday, Exxon posted a first-quarter profit of $8.4 billion and is on track to outpace the most profitable year in its history.

Dems and other outraged Americans should beat on the oil and gas industry and immediately suspend all tax giveaways that we have arranged for an industry that is sucking away a greater share of the meager resources of America's struggling middle class and less well off families.

The combination of Katrina damage in the Gulf and the increased drumbeat for a hot strike against Iran have given oil firms the camouflage they need to drive prices higher in an implicitly organized cartel. The government -- even with competent investigations -- will be unable to do much in this environment.

But no one seems to be going back and pounding on Dick Cheney again to demand once more -- Supreme Court decision or not -- that he disclose what America's energy firms sought from him, what they advised him, what was bartered between his office and the energy firms in secret meetings when assembling a "national energy policy."

If there is blame to be assigned for today's situation, it rests with Cheney and the utter failure of the Bush energy policy that was crafted cooperatively with a secret oil and energy industry cabal -- whose proceedings of key meetings Cheney will not disclose.

Why are Dems not resurrecting this Cheney/Oil Industry controversy?

I will be writing more on this as I don't think that "cheap gas" should be the goal of Dems and oppose a race to the bottom with the President on figuring out all the tax suspensions and rebates that would generate only minor offsets for American consumers against the obscene profits of ravenous oil CEOs.

Even at current prices, gas in this country is cheap compared to virtually any other place in the world. The problem is that the rise in prices is lining the pockets of price-gougers rather than going into serious R&D and the establishment of credible alternatives. Our goal should not be cheap gas -- it should be a Manhattan Projet of a new and different energy future.

It's hard for Americans to hear about this sort of serious energy plan when they see their household funds seriously diminished by rapidly rising gas prices -- but that makes the Bush administration's energy sector performance doubly failed. But Dems need to go to this battle not only with criticism but with a BETTER PLAN in hand.

The only way to compel Americans to give Dems a chance at the helm again is for Bush's opposition to embarrass the failures of leadership, vision and good policy -- and to then put a better plan on the table. Right now, Dems are criticizing but not offering the key piece of how to get America's energy and environmental future on track.

Incumbent oil firms are addicted to the narcotic of irresponsibly high profits while Bush and his team, as well as much of the country, are addicted to the narcotic of highly subsidized gas -- which a massive defense budget and tens of thousands of lives are being deployed to secure.

America needs oil access, but it must move now to diminish that dependence and do so in a way that moves us into a more environmentally sound position.

However, the oil industry is in the way of progress -- and in these conditions, they are behaving like war-profiteers, benefiting inappropriately when American men and women are dying in Iraq and perhaps next in Iran in part to preserve America's stakes in strategic oil assets.

Senators and Congressmen calling hearings and launching investigations shouldn't just have weak, unfocused sessions trying to find evidence of cartel coordination behind rising gas prices, they should focus on the war, on Katrina, and on the oil industry's cynical use of these events to force Americans to sacrifice more from their pocketbooks.

It's the war, oil profits, Vice President Cheney, and that secret meeting he had with oil industry leaders. . .

-- Steve Clemons

(CIA Director Goss Swearing Oath We Think He Has Forgotten)

Dear CIA Director Goss:

You were once a member of the U.S. Congress. You represented constituents and swore an oath to defend and protect our system of government, our Constitution.

A secrecy-obsessed national security bureacracy may be a necessity on some fronts, but democracy requires that it be limited. Attempting to squelch retired CIA personnel from speaking to the public or media is absolutely outrageous and inconsistent with our form of democracy.

You are completely out of line and have forgotten what your oath to this nation was all about.

You are fast becoming a caricature of a person so obsessed with leaks that you break the system in order to save it. Your harrassment of former CIA staff is unacceptable and your attempts to stifle the civil society of this country is antithetical to what democracy is about.

Turn this harrassment policy you have launched against former staff around.

Don't become the Dr. Strangelove of national intelligence and the CIA.

Sincerely,

Steven Clemons

The Washington Note

This is what I had to send to the CIA Director this morning after reading Demetri Sevastopulo's important piece that ex-CIA agents are being harrassed and threatened by Goss for any "unauthorized" meetings with the press or media.

Sevatopulo writes:

The Central Intelligence Agency has warned former employees not to have unapproved contacts with reporters, as part of a mounting campaign by the administration to crack down on officials who leak information on national security issues.

A former official said the CIA recently warned several retired employees who have consulting contracts with the agency that they could lose their pensions by talking to reporters without permission. He added that while the threats might be legally "hollow," they were having a chilling effect on former employees.

The CIA called the allegations "rubbish". Jennifer Millerwise Dyke, spokeswoman for CIA director Porter Goss, said former employees with consulting deals could lose their contracts for violating the CIA secrecy agreement by having unauthorised conversations with reporters. But she stressed that under current law, "termination of a contract does not affect pensions".

The clampdown represents the latest move in what observers describe as the most aggressive government campaign against leaks in years. The Justice Department is investigating the disclosure to the media of secret overseas CIA prisons and a highly classified National Security Agency domestic spying programme authorised by President George W. Bush. Last week, the CIA fired Mary McCarthy, an intelligence officer, for allegedly leaking classified information and having undisclosed contacts with reporters.

Mr Goss has increased the number of "single issue" polygraphs -- lie detector tests aimed at ferreting out leaking employees. A second former official said Mr Goss was trying to "scare everybody" by using polygraphs aggressively.

Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former CIA general counsel, said Mr Goss was "obviously taking a much more forward-leaning stance than any of us have seen for years". But another former intelligence official said the agency was simply returning to a "more conservative regimen" to remind employees that they work for a secret organisation.

The bottom line that Porter Goss needs to know is that former agents and CIA officials go into journalism, think tanks, work on the Hill, work for corporations, or go into numerous NGOs. They are part of a vast, networked group of former CIA staffers who try to meld back into society after working "on the inside".

Certainly, some material they know is classified and should not be disclosed unless those in power are engaged in serial abuses of power -- which I think parts of this administration are, particularly when it comes to policies dealing with torture, rendition, and the secret detention and disappearing of prisoners.

But to try and shut down all "unauthorized" meetings and discussions with the media is like putting them in a silo for the rest of their lives. This is outrageous and assures that if he doesn't change course -- which I hope he does -- when Goss finally leaves the CIA, he will leave as one of the single most detested directors there.

And everything he is doing now will be reversed. This "police state" stuff has gone far too far.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: More on the CIA's "political appropriateness" squeeze by National Journal's Shane Harris.

Karl Rove is back before the Valerie Plame case grand jury this morning -- being reported everywhere.

What would a Rove indictment be worth in terms of Bush approval rating points -- now at 32%.

Lots of folks have already jumped out of the Bush Kool-Aid ring (Tony Snow actually said that he would work for Bush but wouldn't "drink the kool-aid"), so the hard core Bush advocates are getting condensed.

My bet is that if a Rove indictment comes down, we'll see Bush lose 4 points, down to 28%, all other things remaining equal.

-- Steve Clemons

ABC News is reporting that the Pentagon hopes to pull 30,000 troops out of Iraq if conditions are right on the ground.

The condition that most matters most to the White House and our President, "the decider," is the proximity to election day on November 7, 2006.

-- Steve Clemons

(European Parliament Member Cem Oezdemir)

Cem Oezdemir, a former German Bundestag Member and now a Member of the European Parliament, will be coming to Washington soon to press the matter of the CIA's kidnappings, rendition program, and secret prisons in Europe -- which may still be operating there.

A European Union report has been released that states that "European governments condoned the abduction, transport and detention of terrorist suspects by the United States on European territory."

Regrettably, the European Parliament's Temporary Committee on the Alleged Use of European Countries by the CIA for the Secret Transport and Illegal Detention of Prisoners has not posted the report on its website.

(The Committee's IT guy must have the day off -- but seriously, this is a marketing mistake. . .UPDATE: here is the report in French; not translated yet.)

I am hoping to have Cem Oezdemir lead a discussion about these issues at the New America Foundation but that's not a done deal. I'll be sure to post details if he agrees to speak.

Here is what Oezdemir and fellow Green European Parliament Member Kathalijne Buitenweg had to say when the Parliament report was released today:

We welcome the strong line taken by the interim report in denouncing the violations of fundamental rights that have occurred on EU territory as a result of furtive and illegal CIA activities. It is a major shortcoming, however, that the report goes soft on Member States, which were either actively or tacitly complicit in these abuses.

It is important to openly condemn those Member States, which were unwilling or failed to exert control over the illegal activities of the CIA in their jurisdiction. It is unacceptable that certain Member States are resisting calls to investigate the legitimate allegations of illegal flights on their territory.

The refusal of some Member States to cooperate with the EP inquiry is repugnant and highlights the limits of the temporary status of the committee. If the Parliament is to ensure that the violations are properly investigated and complicit authorities are outed, the temporary committee must be transformed into a genuine Committee of Inquiry.

I'm glad that while many in America are distracted by the fact that Fox News has just merged the White House more closely into its media empire, that someone is thinking about the fact that America is running a global network of secret prisons.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: This is in from a staff member in the European Parliament who did a quick and dirty review of the European Parliament report:

Summary of the Report

Apart from the fact that it is odd to present the draft report to the press before discussing it in the committee, the report itself is very good and very strong.

In the "whereas", it refers to art 6 of the EC Treaty (fundamental rights), to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, to the interdiction of torture, non-refoulement principle.

More concretely it fully supports the work of the Council of Europe and it also refers to the conclusions of the Swedish ombudsman as well as to the judicial and parliamentary inquiries in some member States.

It states that the work made so far by the temporary committee confirms the 'bien-fonde' of the decision to set it up, it asks for continuing the work.

The report states that a member state is responsible even in case of passive cooperation (see conclusion of the Venice Commission) or if it fails to prevent secret arrest and/or detention.

It asks for a better control on activities of foreign secret services in EU.

It states that the information gathered by the temporary committee is already sufficient to establish that "serious and inadmissible violation of fundamental rights" have been taken place in the EU.

The CIA is clearly responsible for abduction, detention and extraordinary rendition (in some cases of EU citizens). The behaviour of some member States is not appropriate.

It states that some EU governments were unlikely unaware of extraordinary rendition In Sweden, there are evidences that renditions were made by Swedish officials, the same in Bosnia.

The report considers that the Chicago convention has been violated: no sufficient checks and legislation in Member States to prevent such use of EU airspace and airports for illegal actions.

In conclusion, we can say that the report is very good in denouncing the facts that have been taken place in the EU territory, it provides for evidences. It states that there is clearly a violation of National, EU and international law.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Natan Sharansky must be sad that April has rolled along and Dubya has not invited him over to the Oval Office for lunch and a chat.

So, Sharansky has written as obseqious a letter to the President as one can imagine via the Wall Street Journal.

It turns out, however, that the way Sharansky describes Bush in his opener is pretty accurate:

There are two distinct marks of a dissident. First, dissidents are fired by ideas and stay true to them no matter the consequences. Second, they generally believe that betraying those ideas would constitute the greatest of moral failures. Give up, they say to themselves, and evil will triumph. Stand firm, and they can give hope to others and help change the world.

Political leaders make the rarest of dissidents. In a democracy, a leader's lifeline is the electorate's pulse. Failure to be in tune with public sentiment can cripple any administration and undermine any political agenda. Moreover, democratic leaders, for whom compromise is critical to effective governance, hardly ever see any issue in Manichaean terms. In their world, nearly everything is colored in shades of gray.

That is why President George W. Bush is such an exception. He is a man fired by a deep belief in the universal appeal of freedom, its transformative power, and its critical connection to international peace and stability. Even the fiercest critics of these ideas would surely admit that Mr. Bush has championed them both before and after his re-election, both when he was riding high in the polls and now that his popularity has plummeted, when criticism has come from longstanding opponents and from erstwhile supporters.

With a dogged determination that any dissident can appreciate, Mr. Bush, faced with overwhelming opposition, stands his ideological ground, motivated in large measure by what appears to be a refusal to countenance moral failure.

Yes, the President is such a dissident that he is on the basis of principle seemingly willing to try and permanently change the system of checks and balances that has helped make this nation a great democracy.

Mr. Sharansky -- this is for you -- please note that a dissident President as you have described is not a President but presumes to be a monarch.

You are not celebrating democracy in your article -- you are calling for the type of zealotry that breeds chaos and which, if Bush were to succeed in the kind of plan you call for, would cause this nation's collapse.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed. Note: Thanks to BB for the WSJ link.

(Joseph Cirincione)

Wow. I've just confirmed that nuclear non-proliferation giant Joseph Cirincione is moving out of his long-time nest at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is moving to the Center for American Progress.

Cirincione is easily the country's leading progressive voice on nuclear non-proliferation and is widely respected on defense policy issues. He was one of the key personalities in the recent film, "Why We Fight", directed by Eugene Jarecki.

(Jon Wolfsthal)

Recently, Cirincione's brilliant deputy, Jon Wolfsthal left Carnegie to become a Fellow in CSIS's International Security Program.

That leaves the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace without a leading personality -- for the moment -- in the nuclear non-proliferation field. Perhaps Jessica Mathews has someone lined up, or maybe Wolfsthal will be getting a phone call soon.

(Robert O. Boorstin)

The next big news is that it is rumored -- though confirmed by two sources to me -- that Robert "Bob" Boorstin, who is currently Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy, is joining the senior public policy staff in the corporate communications division of Google. This is a fascinating move, and Bob is a 'framing' genius -- so it will be interesting to see what he does to Google and they to him.

Losing Boorstin in the national security "re-framing" arena at this time does not thrill me as his voice is very important -- and now doubt he'll have to mute it while piling up Google options.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Senior CIA official Mary McCarthy has denied leaking information to Dana Priest about the CIA's secret Eastern European prisons. She has argued that she did not have access to intelligence about these prisons, though seems to be admitting to unauthorized discussions with journalists.

A couple of comments. First, just for the record, many CIA officials and analysts have contacts with journalists. Heck, many journalists during the Cold War were doing the bidding of the CIA. But more importantly, the CIA frequently learns as much from journalists covering a story if they develop good mutually useful communications as analysts do on their own.

Any decent analyst or official who did not have contact with journalists, academics, trade association reps, and others would be lousy at their job in my book.

I will be attending the American Political Science Association annual conference over Labor Day weekend in Philadelphia this year -- and I always meet several CIA officials trolling the conference there. Perhaps these officials have "authorization" to be doing what they are doing -- but I have had some serious discussions about terrorist-tracking with them that could not have fallen into the "authorized bin."

One other thing. I was surprised when the news of Mary McCarthy's firing happened that so many immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was Dana Priest's source on the secret CIA prisons.

I kept my powder dry on that one and did not post or link to any of these stories because they conflicted with something I had written about Priest's work and sources some time ago:

But Dana Priest has had other major scoops as well -- perhaps the greatest recent one being the revelations about secret detention centers abroad where American authorities and/or their proxies are detaining prisoners in an "off the books" manner.

Immediately, after Priest's story, Senate Republicans began attacking each other -- thinking that one or more of them had spilled classified information to Dana Priest as the revelation of such detention centers was allegedly made by Vice President Cheney at a Republican caucus meeting in the Senate. Bill Frist and Dennis Hastert actually called for an investigation of who leaked the information to Priest rather than calling for an investigation of the secret detention facilities.

TWN has spent the last several days groveling, promising baby-sitting sessions, trading information I had from some research in areas others were interested in for information on Dana Priest's work -- and it has been tough. Dana Priest is an astoundingly good investigative journalist and does not leave a large footprint.

But TWN has confirmed from multiple sources that the Senate Republican blame-fest after the Dana Priest article was even more theatrically absurd because Priest had no single source on that story. She had many, many sources in the U.S. and in Europe.

We have reached such a level of obsession with information and sources -- and have personalized and celebritized some of these sources and commentators -- that we incorrectly assume that a single person walks out with information that a reporter like Dana Priest might use. Her work deserves a Pulitzer because it is based on old-fashioned, disciplined investigative journalism that involved interviews with literally hundreds of people.

The detention center story is ripe for others to write more. There is evidence out there on these centers -- and more work can be done. But don't look for a single source; look for the dozens who will convey what has been happening and confirm.

There was no single U.S. Senator and no single CIA official who gave Priest her Pulitzer-prize winning scoop, which I thought she deserved the day the story broke.

My hunches are that her source(s), are in Europe -- not the United States. Dana Priest made two long trips through Europe and Eastern Europe these last couple of years and developed much of her material on the secret prisons there.

But fascinating that President Bush wants to polygraph for those who leaked on the CIA prisons, and those who exposed the warrantless wiretap program, but not a single member of his staff for exposing Valerie Plame Wilson's secret CIA identity.

According to some inside the intel arena, Valerie Wilson's work had a lot to do with monitoring Iran's nuclear weapons appetite and capabilities and possibly helped feed Iran nuclear technology junk that could distract and complicate Iran's weapons program efforts. If true, this is quite consistent with the Iran Chapter in Jim Risen's new book, State of War.

I'm not going to say anything more here than say that Wilson was "possibly" doing this.

But if this account of Plame-Wilson's activities is true, those who exposed Valerie Plame Wilson helped undermine American national security in much more major ways that haven't yet been disclosed.

Where are the polygraph tests for your staff, Mr. President?

-- Steve Clemons

Yesterday, former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson offered another installment in his own "straight talk express" in an article that appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

He opens with a powerful blast that articulates what true nationalists in this country are feeling:

In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great -- as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.

From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.

Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration.

Moreover, fiscal profligacy of an order never seen before has brought America trade deficits that boggle the mind and a federal deficit that, when stripped of the gimmickry used to make it appear more tolerable, will leave every child and grandchild in this nation a debt that will weigh upon their generations like a ball and chain around every neck. Imagine owing $150,000 from the cradle. That is radical irresponsibility.

This administration has expanded government -- creation of the Homeland Security Department alone puts it in the record books -- and government intrusiveness. It has brought a new level of sleaze and corruption to Washington (difficult to do, to be sure). And it has done the impossible in war-waging: put in motion a conflict in Iraq that in terms of colossal incompetence, civilian and military, and unbridled arrogance portends to top the Vietnam era, a truly radical feat.

This is important truth-telling, served straight up.

-- Steve Clemons

Another new tape.

Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda were always the ball George W. Bush, the Congress, and the Pentagon should have had their eye on.

Saddam Hussein -- though a thug who needed serious supervision -- was a contrived, self-damaging distraction for this country.

By failing to compete against bin Laden who is trying to appeal to the grievances many Muslims hold -- particularly over the Palestinian/Israeli divide -- we have allowed bin Laden to claim "legitimacy" in the eyes of many in the global audience he is performing for.

While America has focused on military means to kill bad guys and terrorists, we have neglected the fact that we, as Americans, must compete for legitimacy against him and reconnect with the aspirations of the "silent majority" in the Muslim world.

If this tape proves to be a record of bin Laden comments, it shows that he is getting bolder because the timing of current events he refers to on these tapes and their release is growing shorter.

If this tape is verified as bin Laden, the fact that another tape has appeared so close to the last is also a sign of impressive boldness on his part -- and hopefully, recklessness.

If America does, in fact, capture or kill bin Laden in the next few months, I suspect that it will produce somewhat of a surge of support for Republicans in the election.

If these tapes keep appearing, there is increasing likelihood of a bin Laden factor in November 2006.

-- Steve Clemons

Last night, in a speech before a Washington power crowd, Hu Jintao mentioned democracy nine times. Nine times -- and his security team and intelligence/police forces did nothing about it.

Jiang Lijun, however, mentions democracy in a draft, unsent email and is sentenced to four years in prison. But China's willingness to talk about the fate of its imprisoned dissidents in this internet/information age is certainly working at a faster rate -- as it was just as recent as November 2003 when Jiang was jailed.

At the rate Hu is going in building a pro-democracy drumbeat, I only hope that he somehow manages to avoid the fate of so many other of his countrymen.

On a less sarcastic note, let me discuss other parts of the dinner I attended last night, a strange, only can happen in Hollywood or D.C. kind of night.

Colin Powell was there, and I did say hello and felt I had to tell him that I was the person who had hosted his former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson's famous October 19th speech. Powell was an extraordinary gentlemen and only spoke well of Larry and what he did in the 20 seconds we had together. He even consented to my taking a picture of him with my table partner, the Deputy Director General of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Policy Planning Staff. When it came to a pic with me, Powell was a gentleman about it -- but was sending signals that I ought to do my schmoozing in other corners of the room.

But I'm not going to leave Colin Powell alone yet. He was the star of the evening in that massive Marriott Wardman ballroom. Hu Jintao was there, and everyone stood for him at the beginning and stood for him when he left -- but it was Colin Powell everyone wanted to see.

But Powell's power table was not the head table of the evening that must have had fifty people at it.

Powell was at a simple table of ten, close to the fake power table where Hu Jintao sat -- but modestly located in the room, no frills -- and accessible to people like me who wanted to meet him. And despite the photo thing, he was extraordinarly gracious.

Those Powell was unintentionally overshadowing at his table were Utah Governor and Mrs. Jon Huntsman -- a great guy in my view who used to be American Ambassador to Singapore and then was Deputy U.S. Trade Representative under Robert Zoellick. General Alexander Haig was there -- and the Chinese love him; even more than Bill Clinton. Speaking of Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger was at the table as was Assistant Secretary for East Asian Affairs Christopher Hill, who was kind enough (like Jon Huntsman) to say that he knew my blog. Bill Clinton's first chief of staff, Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty and his wife were also at the table.

But again, Powell was the highlight of the evening because he handled himself so modestly. While many outside the Beltway may be unimpressed with the dinner, the attendees, and dislike Powell as someone who has not gone as far as the Brent Scowcrofts and Lawrence Wilkersons of the world to resolve some of the major questions about the Bush administration's national security and war decisions -- I have to say that it was impressive to watch Powell in action.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the next thirty days or so Colin Powell comes out with an op-ed, done in a sort of Scowcroftian way, that does not blast the Bush team for its past mistakes -- but rather gives a hard-headed roster of options and potential consequences regarding Iran. We need more voices articulating potentially effective strategies that lie between appeasement of and war with Iran. I think Powell sees such a public comment as his duty -- so be on the watch for such a piece.

Labor Secretary Elaine Chao was one of the opening speakers. She wore pants, which was cool -- but gave the most obsequious and sycophantic comments of the night about Hu. She mentioned that America and China were "old friends" five times. She said that the thousands of people standing outside the White House yesterday at lunch to greet Hu Jintao were evidence of the overwhelming friendship in America for China. Guess no one told her that the crowds were Falun Gong.

Others will report the micro-details of Hu's speech -- and it may already be on the web but I'm not in a place where I can check right now -- but suffice it to say that he injected all of the politically correct comments about working together on common challenges, etc., etc. etc.

What was really interesting about Hu Jintao's speech is that, unlike Jiang Zemin, a few years ago, Hu -- who speaks English -- did not break into English during any part of his speech to deliver an "unambiguous statement" about Taiwan to Americans. In Jiang's speech, he gave most of it in a high-pitched, bird-song sounding Chinese language -- then breaking into tough-sounding, gutteral, heavy-thudding English on Taiwan saying that he wanted no Americans to misunderstand the seriousness of Taiwan to the Chinese people.

In contrast, Hu Jintao spoke zero English on the stage and made Taiwan his 3rd priority out of six that he discussed. And regarding Taiwan, Hu sounded practically dovish with the exception of boiler-plate comments that China wouldn't accept a change in one-China status or any declaration of independence by Taiwan.

One interesting part of his talk was that he focused a lot on getting balanced economic growth inside China. He commented that per capita incomes in Shangai are $6200; Beijing $5000; Eastern China $1000; and China as a whole $700. This clearly worries him.

Hu also spent a lot of his 25 minute speech on the subject of democracy and human rights. And it wasn't gloss; perhaps just self-deception. One wonders if he knows what country he is President of because the China we know exists has few of the freedoms, even in aspiration, that Hu seemed to be highlighting.

Hu also said, quite forthrightly, that China was cooperating strongly with the U.S. on attempting to check the further spread of nuclear weapons and of dealing with both North Korea and Iran through diplomatic means.

As an aside, I spoke with a number of top Chinese foreign ministry officials last night -- and one of the biggies whose name I can't mention lest I get arrested in China for draft, unsent emails about Hu's speech -- said that he has no doubt that Iran's intention is to acquire a nuclear weapon -- but he thinks that a full, fuel-cycle capability modeled somewhat on Japan's system may be where carrots and sticks lead Iran to. Japan is practically an undeclared nuclear weapons state now -- meaning it has the capacity to build nuclear weapons but chooses not to. I don't want to comment on whether this view of Iran's program is a constructive view or not -- I just wanted to log it for future reference.

But what did NOT appear in Hu Jintao's speech?

First, he mentioned nothing about China's energy needs or its global energy grab. And he mentioned nothing about its undervalued currency, which is an extremely hot topic.

This tells me that China looks at Iran, North Korea, even Taiwan problems, and environmental and developing nation problems as manageable in some way -- but it has a different stance on oil and the cheap yuan.

Oil and the yuan are today's untouchable topics in China -- at least going by Hu Jintao's speech at the not-quite state dinner.

After the Washington Post blasted Hu for not taking questions during his trip (and I then blasted the Post), the US-China Business Council, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the National Committee on US-China Relations created a fake Q&A session.

It was hilarious. At the beginning of the evening, we were told that there were cards on our table to submit questions for Hu Jintao and that these should be handed to people who would collect them from around the room during dinner.

There were no cards. I want on a hunt for them. Table after table had no cards. No one seemed to mind. No one really wanted to ask questions. So, I ripped a page out of my pocket note book and scribbled a question for the Chinese President.

My question was:

President Hu, thank you for your fascinating speech. You mentioned democracy and the importance of supporting and spreading democracy inside China. Could you define the kind of democracy you mean?

I think it was a polite enough question -- but serious -- considering he had mentioned the word democracy NINE TIMES.

So, I went to find a staff member of one of the organizations sponsoring to get my question added to the pile. I kept finding security guards and American and Chinese Secret Service guys (and they were all guys) who looked like they wanted me to shut up and sit down with my unanswered question, but I persevered. I eventually found some organizational staffers who looked shocked that anyone had actually written a question down.

I compelled one of them to take my question and actually get it to the head table. Somehow the staffer got the courage to take my question up to the giant head table -- and rather than giving my paper and scribbles to Carla Hills who moderated the Q & A, someone gave my piece of paper to Hu himself, who just stuffed it in his pocket.

So, we didn't get a public airing of my question. What we got were two questions -- probably previously contrived -- despite Ambassador Hills saying that they had received "so many" questions from people around the room that night.

The Chinese must love us for these kinds of theatrics.

The two questions posed were:

(1) What were the key parts of Hu's plan to generate balanced economic growth in China and boost domestic consumption? (that was a sizzler -- and took Hu 15 minutes to respond); and

(2) What were the key outcomes of meetings with President Bush and how will they affect the future of US-China relations? (softer than the softest softball that Jeff Gannon might have tossed to Scott McClellan; and Hu gave a considerably shorter response than the first question)

It was a power night, room packed with everyone who was anyone except John Sweeney of the AFL/CIO and any other American labor leaders, and I worked hard to try and get a real question asked. And technically, just maybe, Hu is going to read that piece of paper with my scribbled question on it and ponder it a bit.

More later. I'm off to New York for a foreign policy conference over the weekend.

-- Steve Clemons

THE DECIDER IS DOWN TO 33% APPROVAL, and in a Fox News poll no less.

Rumsfeld is down. Condi Rice is up.

The good thing about new Bush Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten is that I'm sure he can count.

-- Steve Clemons

The last time I invested some serious time in what was percolating in the Fitzgerald investigation of the White House leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA role, the best I was able to get was to confirm that Karl Rove was "enthusiastically" cooperating with Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation and to confirm that Rove had helped lead Fitzgerald's team to a trove of electronic correspondence inside the VP's office.

But Jason Leopold has not allowed himself to get distracted by other items on the news front and is stalking Fitzgerald's moves. His report today is intriguing and important.

I have not tried to run the traps on this piece as it takes enormous time, which I don't have at the moment, but the fact that the grand jury is meeting now and has been meeting is quite important.

Read the Leopold piece because it seems to me, if this is all nailed down and not just one side of the battle line sending signals and negotiating terms to the other through Leopold, that Rove may be the next real big bump in this story.

-- Steve Clemons

I've not been real high on Washington Post editorials lately, but this one on Hu Jintao's visit gets half-way to some important issues.

The editorial opens:

FOR HU JINTAO, the substance of his summit meeting with President Bush today will occur before it ever begins -- with the 21-gun salute the Chinese president will receive on the White House lawn. Broadcast back to China, the reception will be offered by the communist regime as proof that Mr. Bush regards Mr. Hu as a strategic partner in managing global affairs. But there's another signal moment of the day's events, which will occur just after the Bush-Hu talks. Contrary to the standard protocol for visiting heads of state, there will be no news conference at which American and Chinese journalists can ask unscripted questions.

The White House's acquiescence to a Chinese demand that Mr. Hu not be subjected to possibly embarrassing queries about political prisoners, religious freedom or censorship of the Internet symbolizes a major element of Mr. Bush's policy -- his willingness to relegate China's worsening performance on political freedom and human rights to a back burner.

I agree with the editorialist that there should always be questions posed -- always. It's kind of ironic that when this editorial link appears on the screen, one can do a "Google Search" from the press page -- something that the Chinese cannot do unless using a filtered Google.

But a couple of points of national self-reflection.

We live in a political age now where the unscripted question asked of a president or cabinet secretary is so unique that it makes headline news in the rare moments one occurs. We live in a time when during the last campaign, Cheney and Bush would attend meetings where only card-carrying "good" Republicans were allowed in the door. We live in a time when the RNC in the last election sent out election literature asserting that Democrats would ban the bible and turn their states into bastions of homosexual sin and the media, for the most part, did little to challenge the leadership of the Republican Party for that outrage. We live in a time when we have quietly watched the largest expansion of "official secrecy" in American history -- under a secrecy-obsessed President, Vice President, and Secretary of Defense -- except at the moment, of course, when the President wants to tilt an argument his way in a major paper by dumping secrets into the lap of Judith Miller-type journalists.

Hu Jintao should have been compelled to face questions, but the Washington Post's lead should have been:

Why should American reporters expect Hu Jintao to respond to questions when our own government mocks the public's right to know?"

I will be attending the Hu Jintao dinner tonight -- sponsored by the US-China Business Council, National Committee on US-China Relations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

True to the spirit of the Post editorial, the organizers -- probably at Chinese government request -- are blocking entry of any 'electronic' recording devices. So, I'll be there with pen and paper and will do my best to convey anything worth telling from the dinner.

I wonder if they'll be able to Google this TWN post from China.

-- Steve Clemons