The Museum of Miscellany

Monday, 24 July 2006

/New York Times/ Story on Connecticut Fundraising

Originally here:

July 20, 2006

Lieberman Finds Favor Among Donors That Usually Support G.O.P.

By MIKE McINTIRE and JENNIFER MEDINA

When it comes to supporting candidates for public office, the Associated General Contractors of America gives 90 percent of its campaign contributions to Republicans.

And then there is Senator Joseph I. Lieberman.

The group, which represents the construction industry, wrote a $4,000 check last month to Mr. Lieberman, the Connecticut Democrat who is facing a spirited challenge for his party’s nomination from a political novice, Ned Lamont. The money was just a sliver of the $260,000 he has collected from political action committees since March.

But that donation and others like it have fed a perception, stoked by the Lamont campaign and its supporters on the Internet, that Mr. Lieberman is too cozy with Republicans. It is a vexing assertion for Mr. Lieberman, whose centrist politics and pragmatic style, once a source of pride, are now being held against him by liberals and antiwar Democrats.

He is drawing financial support, not unexpectedly, from interest groups that typically gravitate to incumbents. Mr. Lamont has received no contributions from political action committees, something his campaign boasts about. Instead, Mr. Lamont’s largest contributor is himself: He has already spent $2.5 million of his own money, and yesterday announced that he would personally match every dollar donated to his campaign over the Internet.

Anyone looking for evidence of Mr. Lieberman’s bipartisan appeal can find it in his roster of recent contributors, which includes organizations that traditionally give more to Republicans. They include engineering and construction firms, some with contracts in Iraq. Those firms include Bechtel, Fluor International and Siemens, which support Republicans 64 to 70 percent of the time, according to data compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, which tracks campaign and lobbying activities.

Florida Power and Light, which supports Republicans 84 percent of the time, gave $5,000 to Mr. Lieberman. Areva Cogema, a builder of nuclear power plants that gives 70 percent of its contributions to Republicans, contributed $1,000.

An Ohio law firm that directs 80 percent of its donations to Republicans gave $1,000. SRA International, a technology consultant that favors Republicans 66 percent of the time, gave $1,000. America’s Health Insurance Plans, representing health insurers, gives to Republicans 71 percent of the time and donated $2,000 to Mr. Lieberman.

The reasons for their support differ, and are not always clear. Most of these contributors did not support Mr. Lieberman in 2000, and many have supported only Republican candidates in Connecticut; the only other Connecticut candidate to receive a contribution this year from Areva Cogema, for example, was Representative Nancy L. Johnson, a Republican.

Mr. Lieberman sits on the Armed Services Committee and so would be expected to draw contributions from defense firms. Also, his senior position on the Environment and Public Works Committee partly explains the donation from the contractors’ association, said Stephen E. Sandherr, the group’s chief executive, who added that other factors come into play when backing a candidate.

“We also look at where they are on tax policy, regulatory policy, being responsive to our members in our states,” Mr. Sandherr said. “He listens. He’s very responsive to our industry.”

The Ohio law firm, Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease, which supported both Mr. Lieberman, for re-election to his Senate seat, and George W. Bush in 2000, did not respond to a message yesterday. Neither did the Hardwood Federation, which represents the lumber industry and gives to Republicans about 80 percent of the time. That national group, whose president runs a hardwoods company in Connecticut, has contributed $7,500 to Mr. Lieberman.

“It doesn’t mean much to us,” said Sean Smith, Mr. Lieberman’s campaign manager. “If people give us money because they support us, that’s great. But Joe Lieberman is under no obligation to support them. We’re just trying to keep up with the money machine that Lamont is.”

Mr. Lieberman’s political action committee contributions were dwarfed by the donations he received from individuals, which accounted for just over $1 million between March and July.

He received $1,000 donations from former Clinton administration officials, including Samuel R. Berger, who was President Bill Clinton’s national security advisor, and Jamie S. Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general.

The most prominent names on Mr. Lamont’s donor list include several celebrities, including Rosie O’Donnell, Paul Newman (who lives in Westport, Conn.) and Norman Lear, the producer.

The campaigns of both Mr. Lamont and Mr. Lieberman have ballooned with donations from outside Connecticut, reflecting how the contest has become a national battleground for Democrats divided over Mr. Lieberman’s willingness to support the Bush administration on issues like the Iraq war.

With nearly 80 percent of his money coming from outside Connecticut, Mr. Lieberman had the highest rate of out-of-state money of any incumbent senator, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political contributions. That figure does not include donations in the most recent campaign finance filing.

Mr. Lamont, too, has an increasingly high number of out-of-state contributors, who made up roughly 70 percent of his donations in the most recent filings, according to a list of donors provided by the campaign. Donations made through the Internet have made up nearly 64 percent of the $1.4 million in individual contributions that Mr. Lamont has raised since entering the race in March, according to his campaign’s figures.

As of last evening, the campaign had collected about $33,000 through its Web site and various blogs. Mr. Lamont’s campaign manager, Tom Swan, said he was confident the candidate’s supporters would be attracted to Mr. Lamont’s promise to match their money.

“The fact that Ned could fund thousands of dollars allows this campaign to do what 90 percent of others can’t, which is challenge an incumbent,” Mr. Swan said.

End of Exhibit.

posted by: saintonge at 19:20 | link | comments |

Stamford Connecticut /Advocate/ Story on Lamont Donors

Originally here:

70% of donors to Lamont’s campaign are from out of state

By Brian Lockhart
Staff Writer

July 18, 2006

Ned Lamont’s primary campaign against U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman has rallied plenty of angry Connecticut Democrats eager to unseat the 18-year incumbent for his unwavering support of the Iraq War.

But a list of campaign donors shows there are hundreds of nonresidents seeking Lieberman’s ouster, from celebrities such as Barbra Streisand to an ex-“Baywatch”-lifeguard-turned-activist to a California strawberry farmer and craft-store owner in Illinois.

“It represents a real outpouring of energy, talent and small dollar contributions from Connecticut people and people nationally,” Lamont spokeswoman Liz Dupont-Diehl said of the 540-plus individuals whose names appeared on a list of campaign contributions the campaign released yesterday. “People really care about this race.”

Both campaigns released the amount of money raised in May and June late last week, per Federal Elections Commission guidelines. Yesterday Lamont’s, which is not accepting money from Washington lobbyists, provided a spreadsheet of the names, addresses and occupations of the people who contributed a total of $1.9 million to the Greenwich cable executive’s campaign. Seventy percent of them do not live in Connecticut.

Streisand is one of the celebrities who gave $1,000. The entertainer was joined by talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell, “All In the Family” producer Norman Lear, Rock n’ Roll Hall of Famer Jackson Browne and film director Richard Donner.

Actor Paul Newman, a Westport resident, topped those donations with a $2,100 contribution.

Former “Baywatch” actress Alexandra Paul, whose Web site features her career highlights and her social activism, including demonstrating against the Iraq war, gave Lamont $250.

The campaign has found appeal beyond liberal Hollywood in such places as Tucson, Ariz., and Fort Myers, Fla.

Thomas Driscoll, who grows strawberries in Mount Shasta, Calif., donated $250 to the effort to unseat Lieberman.

Driscoll could not be reached, but his wife, Nancy, said the couple often contribute to campaigns in other states. She often visits the Emily’s List women’s advocacy Web site.

“We see where it’s needed and put it there,” Driscoll said.

Driscoll said her husband, a registered Republican, is particularly concerned about the Iraq conflict.

“His feeling is, ‘Let’s get out of there,’ “ she said.

Lamont’s campaign was built on his opposition to the war. He wants to begin troop withdrawals. Lieberman opposed a recent effort by his fellow Senate Democrats to pass a pair of resolutions setting timetables for bringing soldiers home.

Jennifer Allen, who was born in Greenwich and moved to Shepherdstown, W.Va., more than 10 years ago, typically helps to raise money for her local elected officials, such as U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd.

But Allen cut Lamont a $250 check of her own.

“Certainly there are Democrats not exactly willing to have a strong opinion on withdrawal in Iraq,” Allen said. “But I think Joe Lieberman has gone a little too far in supporting the (Bush) administration.”

Stanley Parry, a retired health-care executive from Palo Alto, Calif., is an active Democrat who has been following the Connecticut primary through newspapers such as the New York Times, and on CNN and PBS.

“I disagree with Lieberman on the war strongly, but I really disagree with his undercutting the Democratic position,” Parry said. “I just don’t think he’s a loyal Democrat.”

Jill Meyer, who owns the Woodstock Gallery craft store in Highland Park, Ill., gave Lamont $250, although she acknowledges it is a bit “presumptuous” to be involved in another state’s politics.

“I can’t stand Bush. He’s ruining this country,” Meyer said. “I’m so mad at basically all of the incumbents. I’d like to see them all out — Democrat or Republican.”

Lamont’s donor list also includes several friends and family members.

His daughter, Emily Lamont of Greenwich, made one of the largest donations — $4,200. His wife, Ann, a venture capitalist, gave her husband $2,100 toward his campaign.

Former classmate James Townsend of Oyster Bay, N.Y., donated $700. Karl Essig, a friend and an investor living in Honolulu gave $500.

“We were in Yale management school together,” Essig said. “He’s a terrific guy. I wish him the best in his endeavor.”

Lamont’s uncle, Scott Buzby of Vero Beach, Fla., said he does not see eye to eye with his nephew but cut him a $500 check anyway.

“I’m for the war in Iraq, and he’s against it. I prefer to stay in there until the job’s done, he wants to get out earlier,” Buzby said. “I still think he’s a smart, intelligent fella and Washington could use him.”

End of Exhibit.

posted by: saintonge at 18:25 | link | comments |

Story from /The Hartford Courant/ on Lieberman and the Iraq Campaign

Originally here:

Published on Thursday, December 1, 2005 by the Hartford Courant (Connecticut)

Lieberman In Step With GOP On How To Run War

Joe Lieberman stood virtually alone among Democrats Wednesday, his unyielding support for the administration’s conduct of the Iraq war drawing warm praise from President Bush but no support from his own party.

In Bush’s address on the progress of the war, the president described those who have called for withdrawal timetables — including 38 of the Senate’s 44 Democrats — as “sincerely wrong.”

Then he cited Lieberman.

“As Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman said recently, setting an artificial timetable would ‘discourage our troops because it seems to be heading for the door. It will encourage the terrorists. It will confuse the Iraqi people.’

“Sen. Lieberman is right,” the president said at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

Not according to Democrats, who lined up at the Capitol and around the country to sharply criticize Bush’s approach — and, in some cases, Lieberman’s avid support.

“The war in Iraq has all the characteristics of Joe-momentum,” said Tom Matzzie, Washington director of MoveOn.org, a liberal, Democratic-leaning activist group, recalling a slogan the senator used unsuccessfully during his 2004 presidential campaign.

“Just like he didn’t realize his presidential ambitions were in trouble,” Matzzie said, “he doesn’t understand the war in Iraq isn’t going anywhere.”

Democratic Chairman Howard Dean, a 2004 Lieberman rival for the nomination, refused to discuss the senator, but he made it clear he found Bush’s remarks lacking.

“The president failed to give an honest assessment of what’s really happening on the ground in Iraq,” Dean saiD. “Instead he released 35 pages of rhetoric and gave a speech full of slogans, but no clear plan.”

In Connecticut, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd’s comments were similar to those of Dean.

“I’m glad that the president has finally admitted to some of the problems over there,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “But he continues, regretfully, to dodge, weave and evade all of the most important questions.”

Lieberman did not offer a reaction to Bush speech’s Wednesday. His spokeswoman, Casey Aden-Wansbury, said he would “let his editorial in [Tuesday’s] Wall Street Journal speak for itself.” In that op-ed piece, the senator explained that he saw concrete reasons for hope in Iraq during his two-day trip there last week.

Lieberman, who has supported action against Iraq for nearly 16 years, has been highly visible this week touting the country’s progress.

Republicans have given him a November to remember.

It began Nov. 2, when Lieberman was among the president’s guests at a White House dinner for Prince Charles and Camilla, duchess of Cornwall. Ten days later, the National Journal reported that its “insiders poll” of 89 influential Republicans found 35 percent named Lieberman as the Democratic member of Congress they most admireD. Runner-up was Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., at 6 percent.

Bush first invoked Lieberman’s name after a tumultuous week of bitter debate in Congress. Lieberman was one of five Senate Democrats to oppose a Democratic-authored plan to require Bush to set timetables for U.S. troop withdrawals.

In a meeting with reporters Nov. 20 in Beijing, the president had warm words for Lieberman, saying, “Fine Democrats like Sen. Joe Lieberman share the view that we must prevail in Iraq.”

On Tuesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan pointed out that Lieberman had cited “real progress that is being made on the ground in Iraq.”

The coda on these tributes to Lieberman came late Wednesday, after Democrats criticized Bush’s speech.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., again brought up Lieberman, saying, “Even Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, a Democrat, recently returned from Iraq and said, ‘Progress is visible and practical.’ ”

Lieberman’s isolation within his own party became evident quickly Wednesday. Shortly after the president’s address, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., told reporters the speech was “more generalities than specifics.” Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., charged that “the president’s not dealing with a certain kind of reality that’s important to the lives of our troops.”

In the House, Minority Leader Nancy D. Pelosi, D-Calif., called the speech “a commitment to the status quo — a status quo that is not working,” and Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., a war backer in 2002, called the speech too vague.

No elected official would criticize Lieberman; he is still a respected figure within his party, someone who is a reliable vote on most issues of importance to Democrats. But Matzzie, whose organization claims more than 50,000 Connecticut members, said Wednesday that if his members ask, his group would back a Democratic challenger to Lieberman.

Matzzie was in New Haven last month, and found “the No. 1 question people asked me was, ‘What are we going to do about Joe Lieberman?’ ”

Top Democratic officials in the state have not criticized the senator publicly, though many concede privately that they are concerned about how the senator’s views will muddle the party’s message.

Roy Occhiogrosso, a Democratic strategist whose firm is working on the senator’s 2006 campaign as well as others, said Lieberman remains “enormously popular.”

Occhiogrosso acknowledged that Iraq is a “sensitive issue,” but added, “I really do feel like if we don’t have room in the party for those who disagree, we’re exactly what we say the Republicans are — close-minded.”

Diane Farrell, the Democratic candidate challenging Rep. Christopher Shays in the 4th Congressional District, is another client of Occhiogrosso’s firm. She issued a statement Wednesday saying Bush’s speech “isn’t a plan, it’s a wish list.”

Asked if he would want Farrell to appear with Lieberman during the campaign, Occhiogrosso said, “Sure. They disagree on this, but on 95 percent of other issues, they agree.”

Though he seems to be suffering no serious consequences in the Senate, Lieberman does seem to be increasingly out of synch with his own party on the war.

“A consensus on the war is forming in the Democratic center, that it’s virtually impossible to set a withdrawal date, but there should be a change in our approach to the war,” said Norman Ornstein, political analyst at Washington’s American Enterprise Institute.

Many of the war’s Democratic backers, such as Dodd, Kerry, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.; Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., have adopted that position.

“Joe is not in that center,” said Ornstein, “and I don’t see anyone else in the party where he is.”

End of Exhibit.

posted by: saintonge at 17:32 | link | comments |

Two /New York Times/ Stories on Lamont

Originally here:

Lieberman Faces a Challenge from the Left

By C.J. Hughes, New York Times, Sunday February 19, 2006 (Connecticut section, which is not online)

From the outside, Ned Lamont’s office building looks like many others in downtown Greenwich: non-descript and very corporate.

Inside, there is a different story. Surrounding his desk is a lavish tribute to the baby boomer counterculture, with a gallery of photos of cultural heroes like Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, the Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley.

In many ways, the appearance-versus-reality paradox is an apt metaphor for Mr. Lamont, the founder and president of Lamont Digital Systems, a cable TV company, who has formed an exploratory committee as he considers challenging Senator Joseph I. Lieberman.

Mr. Lamont, 52, is the product of some of the nation’s most elite schools and a resident of one of the state’s most buttoned-down towns, a self-made business executive with a pedigree to make Miles Standish blush.

Yet he is also a mince-no-words, unreconstructed left-of-center liberal who said he strongly believed that Senator Lieberman had drifted far to the right and had become too cozy with the White House, and that when it come to the people who put the senator in office, fallen way of out touch.

With the Democratic primary in August just seven months away, Mr. Lamont may face an uphill battle against an incumbent, in a race in with he has little name recognition.

He announced the formation of the exploratory committee in January and hopes to officially declare his candidacy by the beginning of March.

Yet he has already made his main message unmistakably clear: It’s time to get out of Iraq.

“President Bush says we’ll step back when the Iraqis step forward,” Mr. Lamont said. “I would turn that on its head and say, ‘We start stepping back right now, and make the Iraqis step forward.’ It’s their war to win or lose.”

Senator Lieberman, in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal last November, argued for the president’s “staying the course” strategy, presenting the challenge as a stark, if oversimplified, calculus: securing he country for 27 million Iraqis, and or handing it to 10,000 terrorists.

Reading that article led to Mr. Lamont’s “eureka” moment about running for the Senate.

Instead of just slamming down the newspaper in disgust, he decided to be proactive, picking up the phone to vent to the “usual suspects.” That list, he said, included political activists, union leaders and town officials, though he declined to be more specific.

“Everybody was sympathetic, and the general message was, ‘If you feel so strongly about it, you do it,’” he said about running against Senator Lieberman.

For his part, Senator Lieberman, who has never faced a challenger for the Democratic nomination before, said he was not taking anything for granted. “The good people of Connecticut have elected me to represent them three times and I hope I have earned their support a fourth time," he wrote in an e-mail message.

“But I do not take anything for granted and I intend to continue to work hard to earn that support. I am accustomed to having opponents, and I am ready for any challenge.”

How much backing Mr. Lamont has from the state Democratic machine, however, is still unclear.

“There are many concerns about this being a distraction of resources and energy away from three competitive House races this year,” said Leslie O’Brien, executive director of the Connecticut Democratic Party. “It’s also a distraction from the gubernatorial race.”

Mr. Lamont said he had sought advice from Lowell Weicker, the former governor and senator, who, like Mr. Lamont, is a Greenwich scion of old money, and who cemented his statues as a political outsider by running for governor as an independent in 1990 and winning, after losing his United States Senate seat to Mr. Lieberman two years earlier.

Mr. Weicker, who serves as the board president for the Trust for America’s Health, a public-health advocacy group in Washington, signaled late last year that he, too, might want to take on Senator Lieberman for the party’s nomination, also running as an antiwar candidate.

And Mr. Weicker still won’t take that option off the table, even with Mr. Lamont’s entry into the field.

“He’s a great guy, and I have nothing but the highest praise for him,” he said of Mr. Lamont. “But I’m not a Democrat, so I don’t get involved in Democratic politics.”

More praise came from John Raben, who served on the Board of Estimate and Taxation as a Democrat with Mr. Lamont but is now on the other side of the aisle, serving as vice chairman of Greenwich’s Republican Town Committee.

“He’s very outspoken, has the courage of his convictions, is intelligent and perceptive,” he said. “Rather than just stand on the sidelines, he’s chosen to get involved, and that’s commendable.”

Yet despite their similarities, Mr. Lamont doesn’t have Mr. Weicker’s political experience.

Mr. Lamont got his start in politics in Greenwich, where he served as a selectman in the 1980’s – “I got elected not because I’m such a great vote-getter but because they have an affirmative-action policy for Democrats,” he said – then as a member of the town’s Estimate and Taxation Board before an unsuccessful run for the State Senate in 1990. That race did lead Mr. Weicker to take notice of him.

Later, as governor, Mr. Weicker would appoint him as chairman of the state’s Investment Advisory Council.

Mr. Lamont said his creation of a successful business from scratch – Lamont Digital has built cable TV systems for 150 colleges and eight gated communities in the last 22 years – has given him a keen entrepreneurial spirit.

Rebutting those who instinctively criticize business executives who can effectively buy their way into political races, Mr. Lamont said such candidates are in enviable positions.

“At the end of the day, they’re free of taint, coming in with a fresh perspective and trying to do good,” he said. “And I think they are making a difference.”

Making a difference was emphasized from an early age in the Lamont household, which despite its patrician leanings – his great-grandfather Thomas Lamont was chairman of J. P. Morgan, the Wall Street investment bank, and a benefactor of Harvard’s Lamont Library – had its fair share of those who subverted the status quo.

A grandfather, for example, spent his career working on a sailboat in Puerto Rico, eventually marrying a Catholic missionary stationed there. And great-uncle Corliss Lamont’s aren't [sic] Socialist beliefs prompted the ire of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

The confluence of so many careers and ideas meant that dinner-table banter at the family home I Syosset, N.Y., was often heated.

“When you have two bankers, one Socialist, and a couple of crazy kids at the table, it tended to be pretty energetic,” he said. “I like to think I got a little bit from all those folks.”

It impressed on him the importance of public service, and perhaps fueled a strong antiwar streak, which surfaced at Philips Exeter Academy, a boarding school that Mr. Lamont attended. In fact, an editorial that Mr. Lamont wrote for the school newspaper about the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War prompted the school to cancel classes for a day of special study, he said.

He went from there to Harvard, where he cultivated another interest that would prove integral to his career: mass media’s power to convey over [sic] the political messages.

His senior thesis focused on how both Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin, to further their careers, relied on the medium of radio.

After graduation, it was off to Ludlow, Vt., where Mr. Lamont worked as an editor of The Black River Tribune, a weekly newspaper.

Next, it was back to Connecticut to earn an M.B.A. at the Yale School of Management.

After that, Mr. Lamont worked for Cablevision /systems [sic] and started Cablevision of Connecticut before going off on his own, with a belief that cable news could help end the reign of the sound bite, though he admits now that that did not happen.

That spawned a lucrative international business for Mr. Lamont and his family, which includes his wife, Ann, a venture capitalist; an 18-year-old daughter, Emily, who just started at Harvard; a 14-year-old daughter, Lindsay, whom he call his “environmentalist”; and a 12-year-old son, Teddy.

When Mr. Lamont is not spending time with them, he plays tennis, runs, and roots for the Yankees.

“I cheer for the underdog in most facets of my life,” Mr. Lamont said. “But my one exception is the Yankees.”

But the multimillion-dollar question (because it will take at least that to mount a serious challenge, he admitted) is this: Does he stand a chance of winning?

In a state where incumbent senators essentially run unopposed in elections, Mr. Lamont could win the election by just capturing the primary, because Republicans have not seriously challenged Mr. Lieberman and would be hard-pressed to find a strong candidate if he loses a primary, though the chance of upsetting Mr. Lieberman is a long shot, those who handicap such races said.

“Lieberman is almost a household name and has brought a lot of stature her to our little state,” said Prof. Gary Rose, chairman of the government and politics department at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield.

What Mr. Lamont “does have going for him are his own private resources and he has an issue, and sometimes that’s enough to stage an upset” Mr. Rose said.

If Mr. Lamont’s upset does not materialize, he plans to continue his quest to light a fire under the Democratic party.

“For the last couple elections, it’s seemed that ‘anybody but Bush,’ would get us by, but it hasn’t gotten us by,” he said. “People want to know where you stand on the issues, what you think, and what you can do about it.”

End of Exhibit. [Note: spelling errors corrected]

Originally here:

July 19, 2006

Lieberman Rival Seeks Support Beyond Iraq Issue

By PATRICK HEALY

GREENWICH, Conn., July 16 — Ned Lamont has become a political sensation in Connecticut by being a multimillionaire who wants the troops out of Iraq. But he would love, love to get people talking about other things than his wealth or the war.

Mr. Lamont breezed past Iraq the other night at a fund-raiser in Stamford for his campaign against Senator Joseph I. Lieberman. Instead he delved into Israel, jobs, Terri Schiavo, and his beef with Don Imus, the radio talk show host, who recently called Mr. Lamont a “bug-eyed pencil neck geek.”

“Imus is incredibly popular here in Fairfield County, so I have to deal with that,” Mr. Lamont said in an interview afterward. “People need to know the real me, not just the war and the money, if I’m going to pull this off.”

In just four months Mr. Lamont has upended the Democratic status quo by coming from nowhere (well, the Greenwich Board of Selectmen) to mount an energetic bid to topple Mr. Lieberman, who was his party’s nominee for vice president in 2000. Having stoked voter anger over the senator’s support for the war in Iraq, Mr. Lamont is also trying to score points by portraying Mr. Lieberman as neglectful on local issues and overly friendly with the Bush White House.

In the process, Mr. Lamont has become a darling of the antiwar left, receiving donations from Barbra Streisand, the philanthropist and financier George Soros, and 20,000 other people, including untold numbers of liberal bloggers. Indeed, more than other insurgent candidates this year, he represents the soul-searching among Democrats over the way forward in Iraq.

“This is the campaign where prowar Democrats and antiwar Democrats may sort themselves out on Iraq,” said Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee for president in 1988. He is neutral in the race, but has supported Mr. Lieberman in the past and recently spoke to Mr. Lamont about regional rail policy.

“I don’t know what it is about Lamont,” Mr. Dukakis said, “but he seems to offer a straight choice that is causing a lot of Democrats to think through Iraq.”

In many ways, Mr. Lamont is an accidental politician, complete with the boyish facial reactions and sheer earnestness that helped draw Mr. Imus’s derision. (The host is a fan of Mr. Lieberman.)

Mr. Lamont wears moderately priced suits from Jos. A. Bank and, at 52, still uses words like heck and poppycock. He quit an exclusive country club in Greenwich this year, saying it was too white and too rich and he did not want it to become a campaign issue. He was not even his own first choice to challenge Mr. Lieberman; he tried to coax others — he will not name names — but they thought running against a three-term senator was foolhardy, he said.

So, finding no takers, Mr. Lamont entered the race in March.

With national reporters now traveling here to cover him, and his unlimited advertising budget giving Mr. Lieberman agita, Mr. Lamont has concluded that he might just beat the senator in the Democratic primary on Aug. 8 — as long as voters see him as credible, not just as a single-issue rich guy trying to buy an election.

Iraq, in other words, may not be enough, Mr. Lamont says. More and more he is trying to round out his profile, pressing his ideas for universal preschool and his work as a guest instructor at a public high school in Bridgeport.

He is also bringing up the other reasons he decided to run for Senate, sometimes out of the blue, such as the death of Ms. Schiavo.

When her health began deteriorating in Florida last year, Mr. Lieberman emerged as one of a few Democrats in Congress who supported government intervention to keep her alive, on a feeding tube, against her husband’s wishes.

“The last place I want my government is in my hospital room,” Mr. Lamont said.

He has been on a steep learning curve ever since he entered the race. Blogs, for instance, were news to him. He had not heard of the Daily Kos until a voter mentioned it, even though it is a widely read political blog that has cheered Mr. Lamont on as a David against Mr. Lieberman’s Goliath. “I was like, ‘Daily what?’ ” Mr. Lamont recalled.

Markos Moulitsas, the founder of the Daily Kos, said in an interview by e-mail message that he would have been more surprised if Mr. Lamont had heard of the Web site.

“For whatever reason, people think Lamont’s candidacy is 100 percent blog-driven, when the reality is much different,” Mr. Moulitsas wrote. “Blogs are merely feeding off the excitement Lamont is generating in the grass roots.”

Mr. Lamont has struck a chord with some voters by portraying Mr. Lieberman as out of touch, someone who is a national political figure instead of a leader in Connecticut, who appears on television more than he marches in local parades. It is a tactic common among underdog challengers, but there is a crucial difference in this race: Money.

The candidate can tap a personal fortune of between $90 million and $300 million, according to campaign financial disclosures; advisers estimate his wealth at some $200 million.

A scion of bankers at J. P. Morgan & Co., Mr. Lamont said that he grew up with a trust fund — he would not disclose its size — but that his inheritance accounted for less than 10 percent of his current wealth.

Mr. Lamont used a bank loan in 1984 to start Lamont Digital Systems, a Greenwich telecommunications company that wires college campuses. It is privately held and has shrunk to about 40 employees today from 100 in 2001. Mr. Lamont drew a salary of $546,044 in 2005, and is now a minority shareholder.

His wife, Annie Lamont, is a partner in Oak Investment Partners in Westport; according to the disclosure forms, one of her Oak holdings is valued at between $25 million and $50 million.

Mr. Lamont has declined to publicly disclose several years of tax returns, despite pressure from Mr. Lieberman, but said he planned to release his 2005 returns shortly.

He has already given his campaign $2.5 million, and said in an interview that he was willing to spend millions more. His ads have memorably painted Mr. Lieberman as out of touch and a Bush soul mate, including one in which the senator’s face morphs into the president’s.

The challenge has unnerved Mr. Lieberman, friends of the senator say, so much so that he has announced he will run as an independent in the fall general election if Democrats shun him next month.

Advisers to Mr. Lieberman try to paint Mr. Lamont as a power-hungry opportunist who voted with Republicans as a Greenwich selectman but is now posing as a liberal to woo the most strident voters, who are more likely to vote on a hot summer day. These advisers also accuse him of trying to buy the election.

“He was born into privilege and believes it’s his birthright to go right to the top as a U.S. senator,” said Sean Smith, Mr. Lieberman’s campaign manager.

Mr. Lamont grew up in Syosset, N.Y., in a family that had long been involved in business and usually voted Republican; a great-grandfather, Thomas Lamont, was a chairman of J. P. Morgan, though a great-uncle, Corliss Lamont, was a well-known socialist. Mr. Lamont attended Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard, and the Yale school of management before moving to Greenwich. He and his wife, Annie, have three teenage children, two girls and a boy.

For years the Lamonts were members of the Round Hill country club in Greenwich, but Mr. Lamont said he resigned his membership because he did not want it to become a distraction in his campaign. Mr. Lamont said the club excluded people because it was so expensive, and also said he was “a little bit” concerned that many of its members were white.

“It’s not as diverse as it should be,” Mr. Lamont said. “I didn’t pay as much attention to that before the race began, to tell you the truth.

“They don’t have any discriminatory policies,” he added.

He acknowledged that his only major stint in public service was born out of boredom, when he decided in 1987 to run for the Board of Selectmen. He served only one term, but continued to dabble in politics, supporting the presidential campaigns of Mr. Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Bill Bradley, and, in 2004, Bob Graham at first, and then Howard Dean and John Kerry.

His political donations have included a total of $1,500 to Mr. Lieberman since the fall of 2002, when the senator voted to support military action in Iraq; $1,000 of it went to the senator’s presidential campaign in 2003, before Mr. Lieberman quit the race.

Mr. Lamont said those donations did not suggest he once favored the war; he believes Mr. Lieberman, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and others were misled by the White House on Iraq. Rather, Mr. Lamont said he soured on Mr. Lieberman’s unremitting defense of the war and of President Bush.

“The president rushed us into this war based on false assumptions, like W.M.D., and Senator Lieberman has cheered him on all the way,” he said, indulging in a bit of hyperbole, since Mr. Lieberman votes like other Democrats most of the time.

Advisers to Mr. Lieberman say that Mr. Lamont has been callow on Iraq. At first the challenger was reluctant to endorse an immediate troop withdrawal; as liberals embraced him, he has became more full-throated. As the recent Senate debate on Iraq was unfolding, Mr. Lamont said he favored a plan by Senators John Kerry and Russ Feingold to set a firm exit date for troops — yet he also said he was comfortable with another Democratic plan that did not have a timetable.

The Lieberman campaign accused him of trying to have it both ways, but Mr. Lamont said he was being a pragmatist. “Deadline, time frame, whatever words you want — just get the troops out,” he said. “In business we have deadlines all the time, we operate well with deadlines.”

If he makes it to Washington, Mr. Lamont said, he hopes to become known as an advocate for preschool education, much as Al Gore became associated with global warming. Before hopping into his Ford Escape Hybrid recently, Mr. Lamont cited Mr. Gore as one of his heroes in politics — though not because he chose Mr. Lieberman as his running mate six years ago.

“Gore spoke about something bigger than himself — global warming and the environment,” Mr. Lamont said. “I’m trying to get Democrats to think in a bigger way about Iraq, if I can. And schools and jobs and health care, too.”

End of Exhibit.

posted by: saintonge at 15:12 | link | comments |

Tuesday, 18 July 2006

Robert Wright Op-Ed on “Progressive Realism”

Originally here:

July 16, 2006 Op-Ed Contributor

An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With

By ROBERT WRIGHT Princeton, N.J.

As liberals try to articulate a post-Bush foreign policy, some are feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance.

They have always thought of themselves as idealistic, concerned with the welfare of humankind. Not for them the ruthlessly narrow focus on national self-interest of the “realist” foreign policy school. That school’s most famous practitioner, Henry Kissinger, is for many liberals a reminder of how easily the ostensible amorality of classic realism slides into immorality.

Yet idealism has lost some of its luster. Neoconservatism, whose ascendancy has scared liberals into a new round of soul-searching, seems plenty idealistic, bent on spreading democracy and human rights. Indeed, a shared idealism is what led many liberals to join neocons in supporting the Iraq war, which hasn’t turned out ideally. In retrospect, realists who were skeptical of the invasion, like Brent Scowcroft and Samuel Huntington, are looking pretty wise.

It’s an unappealing choice: chillingly clinical self-interest or dangerously naïve altruism? Fortunately, it’s a false choice. During the post-cold-war era, the security landscape has changed a lot, in some ways for the worse; witness the role of “nonstate actors” last week in India, Israel and Iraq. But this changing environment has a rarely noted upside: It’s now possible to build a foreign policy paradigm that comes close to squaring the circle — reconciling the humanitarian aims of idealists with the powerful logic of realists. And adopting this paradigm could make the chaos of the last week less common in the future.

Every paradigm needs a name, and the best name for this one is progressive realism. The label has a nice ring (who is against progress?) and it aptly suggests bipartisan appeal. This is a realism that could attract many liberals and a progressivism that could attract some conservatives.

With such crossover potential, this paradigm might even help Democrats win a presidential election. But Democrats can embrace it only if they’re willing to annoy an interest group or two and also reject a premise common in Democratic policy circles lately: that the key to a winning foreign policy is to recalibrate the party’s manhood — just take boilerplate liberal foreign policy and add a testosterone patch. Even if that prescription did help win an election, it wouldn’t succeed in protecting America.

Progressive realism begins with a cardinal doctrine of traditional realism: the purpose of American foreign policy is to serve American interests.

But these days serving American interests means abandoning another traditional belief of realists — that so long as foreign governments don’t endanger American interests on the geopolitical chess board, their domestic affairs don’t concern us. In an age when Americans are threatened by overseas bioweapons labs and outbreaks of flu, by Chinese pollution that enters lungs in Oregon, by imploding African states that could turn into terrorist havens, by authoritarian Arab governments that push young men toward radicalism, the classic realist indifference to the interiors of nations is untenable.

In that sense progressive realists look a lot like neoconservatives and traditional liberals: concerned about the well-being of foreigners, albeit out of strict national interest. But progressive realism has two core themes that make it clearly distinctive, and they’re reflected in two different meanings of the word “progressive.”

First, the word signifies a belief in, well, progress. Free markets are spreading across the world on the strength of their productivity, and economic liberty tends to foster political liberty. Yes, the Chinese government could probably reverse the growth in popular expression of the past two decades, but only by severely restricting information technologies that are prerequisites for prosperity. Meanwhile, notwithstanding dogged efforts at repression, political pluralism in China is growing.

Oddly, this progressive realist faith in markets seems to be stronger than the vaunted neoconservative faith in markets. After all, if you believe that history is on the side of political freedom — and that this technological era is giving freedom an especially strong push — your approach to fostering democracy isn’t to invade countries and impose it. And if you believe that the tentacles of capitalism help spread freedom, you don’t threaten to disrupt economic engagement with China for such small gains as the release of a few political prisoners.

A strong Democratic emphasis on economic engagement always threatens to alienate liberal human rights activists, as well as union leaders concerned about cheap labor abroad. But the losses can be minimized, thanks to the second meaning of the word “progressive.”

II.

The American progressives of a century ago saw that as economic activity moved from a regional to a national level, some parts of governance needed to reside at the national level as well. Hence federal antitrust enforcement and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Analogously, problems that today accompany globalization call for institutionalized international responses.

In the economic realm, progressivism means continuing to support the World Trade Organization as a bulwark against protectionism — but also giving it the authority to address labor issues, as union leaders have long advocated. Environmental issues, too, should be addressed at the W.T.O. and through other bodies of regional and global governance.

Nowhere does this emphasis on international governance contrast more clearly with recent Republican ideology than in arms control. The default neoconservative approach to weapons of mass destruction seems to be that when you suspect a nation has them, you invade it. The Iraq experience suggests that repeated reliance on this policy could grow wearying. The president, to judge by his late-May overture toward Iran and his subdued tone toward North Korea, may be sensing as much.

Still, he is nowhere near embracing the necessary alternative: arms control accords that would impose highly intrusive inspections on all parties. Neoconservatives, along with the Buchananite nationalist right, see in this approach an unacceptable sacrifice of national sovereignty.

But such “sacrifices” can strengthen America. One reason international weapons inspectors haven’t gotten a good fix on Iran’s nuclear program is that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty gives them access only to “declared” sites. Wouldn’t Americans be willing to change that and let inspectors examine America more broadly — we have nothing to hide, after all — if that made it harder for other nations to cheat on the treaty?

There is a principle here that goes beyond arms control: the national interest can be served by constraints on America’s behavior when they constrain other nations as well. This logic covers the spectrum of international governance, from global warming (we’ll cut carbon dioxide emissions if you will) to war (we’ll refrain from it if you will).

This doesn’t mean joining the deepest devotees of international law and vowing never to fight a war that lacks backing by the United Nations Security Council. But it does mean that, in the case of Iraq, ignoring the Security Council and international opinion had excessive costs: (1) eroding the norm against invasions not justified by self-defense or imminent threat; (2) throwing away a golden post-9/11 opportunity to strengthen the United Nations’ power as a weapons inspector. The last message we needed to send is the one President Bush sent: countries that succumb to pressure to admit weapons inspectors will be invaded anyway. Peacefully blunting the threats posed by nuclear technologies in North Korea and Iran would be tricky in any event, but this message has made it trickier. (Ever wonder why Iran wants “security guarantees”?)

The administration’s misjudgment in Iraq highlights the distinction — sometimes glossed over by neoconservatives — between transparency and regime change. Had we held off on invasion, demanding in return that United Nations inspections be expanded and extended, we could have rendered Iraq transparent, confirming that it posed no near-term threat. Regime change wasn’t essential.

To be sure, authoritarianism’s demise is a key long-term goal. Authoritarian states never have the natural transparency of free-market democracies, and the evolution of biotechnology will make an increasingly fine-grained transparency vital to security. But this degree of transparency will only slowly become a strict prerequisite for national security, because the bioweapons most plausibly available to terrorists in the near term aren’t effective weapons of truly mass destruction. (Anthrax isn’t contagious, for example, and there is a vaccine for smallpox.) For now we can be patient and nurture regime change through economic engagement and other forms of peaceful, above-board influence.

The result will be more indigenous, more culturally authentic paths to democracy than flow from invasion or American-backed coups d’état — and more conducive to America’s security than, say, the current situation in Iraq. Democrats can join President Bush in proclaiming that “freedom is on the march” without buying his formula for assisting it.

III.

When expressing disdain for international governance, the Bush administration morphs from visionary neocon idealist into coolly rational realist. Foreign policy, we’re told, is not for naïve, “Kumbaya”-singing liberals who are seduced by illusions of international cooperation.

Yet the president, in his aversion to multilateralism, flunks Realism 101. He has let America fall prey to what economists call the “free rider” problem. Even if we grant the mistaken premise that the Iraq war would make the whole world safer from terrorism, why should America pay so much blood and treasure? Why let the rest of civilization be a free rider?

The high cost of free riders matters all the more in light of how many problems beyond America’s borders threaten America’s interests. The slaughter in Darfur, though a humanitarian crisis, is also a security issue, given how hospitable collapsed states can be to terrorists. But if addressing the Darfur problem will indeed help thwart terrorism internationally, then the costs of the mission should be shared.

President Bush’s belated diplomatic involvement in Darfur suggests growing enlightenment, but sluggish ad hoc multilateralism isn’t enough. We need multilateral structures capable of decisively forceful intervention and nation building — ideally under the auspices of the United Nations, which has more global legitimacy than other candidates. America should lead in building these structures and thereafter contribute its share, but only its share. To some extent, the nurturing of international institutions and solid international law is simple thrift.

And the accounting rules are subtle. As we’ve seen lately, the cost of military action can go not just beyond dollars and cents, but beyond the immediate toll of dead and wounded. In an age when cellphones can take pictures and videos of collateral damage and then e-mail them, and terrorists recruit via Web site imagery, intervention abroad can bring long-term blowback.

Further, when you consider the various ways information technology helps terrorists — not just to recruit more fighters to the cause, but to orchestrate attacks and spread recipes for munitions — and you throw in advances in munitions technology, an alarming principle suggests itself: In coming years, grass-roots hatred and resentment of America may be converted into the death of Americans with growing efficiency.

That domestic security depends increasingly on popular sentiment abroad makes it important for America to be seen as a good global citizen — respecting international laws and norms and sensing the needs of neighbors. One of President Bush’s most effective uses of power was the tsunami relief effort of 2004, which raised regard for Americans in the world’s largest Muslim country, Indonesia. Much of the war on terror isn’t military.

Of course, some of it is, and we’ll need the capacity to project force anywhere, anytime. Still, a full accounting of the costs of intervention makes it clear that we can’t afford to be the world’s army.

Fortunately, globalization has made the peaceful suppression of at least some forms of disorder easier. Economic interdependence makes war among nations less attractive, and never before has this interdependence brought so much transborder contact among businesspeople and politicians.

So it’s not shocking that India and China, which clashed repeatedly over disputed borders during the cold war, have kept things cool since becoming enmeshed in the global economy. Or that the most worrisome nation of the moment, North Korea, is about the most isolated from the global economy; or that its rival for worrisomeness, Iran, is far from full immersion.

Obviously, wars can happen even when they’re irrational. Still, their growing irrationality is a progressive force worth honoring. It strengthens the case for economic engagement and for regional and other international bodies that help cement commercial entanglement with political cooperation.

IV.

The excesses of neoconservative idealism have prompted various scholars to adapt realist principles to a changing world. The political scientists John Ikenberry and Charles Kupchan outlined a “liberal realism” two years ago, and Mr. Ikenberry’s book, “After Victory,” showed how international governance can serve the interests of hegemonic powers. This fall the historians Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman will publish a foreign policy manifesto called “Ethical Realism.”

Such works are true to the spirit of Hans Morgenthau, chief architect of realism. Writing in the mid-20th century, he emphasized that realism’s implications would change as the world changed. World peace could require radical constraints on national sovereignty, he said, and the nation-state might drop in significance as “larger units” rose.

Morgenthau seems to have sensed something that later political scientists dwelt on: technology has been making the world’s nations more interdependent — or, as game theorists put it, more non-zero-sum. That is, America’s fortunes are growing more closely correlated with the fortunes of people far away; fewer games have simple win-lose outcomes, and more have either win-win or lose-lose outcomes.

This principle lies at the heart of progressive realism. A correlation of fortunes — being in the same boat with other nations in matters of economics, environment, security — is what makes international governance serve national interest. It is also what makes enlightened self-interest de facto humanitarian. Progressive realists see that America can best flourish if others flourish — if African states cohere, if the world’s Muslims feel they benefit from the world order, if personal and environmental health are nurtured, if economic inequities abroad are muted so that young democracies can be stable and strong. More and more, doing well means doing good.

Of course, resources aren’t infinite, and the world has lots of problems. But focusing on national interest helps focus resources. Notwithstanding last week’s carnage in the Middle East, more people have been dying in Sri Lanka’s civil war than in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But given the threat of anti-American Islamist terrorism, forging a lasting two-state solution in the Middle East is a higher priority than bringing lasting peace to Sri Lanka.

This sounds harsh, but it is only acknowledgment of something often left unsaid: a nation’s foreign policy will always favor the interests of its citizens and so fall short of moral perfection. We can at least be thankful that history, by intertwining the fates of peoples, is bringing national interest closer to moral ideals.

Harnessing this benign dynamic isn’t the only redemptive feature of progressive realism. Morgenthau emphasized that sound strategy requires a “respectful understanding” of all players in the game. “The political actor,” he wrote, “must put himself into the other man’s shoes, look at the world and judge it as he does.”

This immersion in the perspective of the other is sometimes called “moral imagination,” and it is hard. Understanding why some people hate America, and why terrorists kill, is challenging not just intellectually but emotionally. Yet it is crucial and has been lacking in President Bush, who saves time by ascribing behavior that threatens America to the hatred of freedom or (and this is a real time saver) to evil. As Morgenthau saw, exploring the root causes of bad behavior, far from being a sentimentalist weakness, informs the deft use of power. Realpolitik is reality-based.

Is progressive realism salable? The administration’s post-9/11 message may be more viscerally appealing: Rid the world of evil, and do so with bravado and intimidating strength. But this approach has gotten some negative feedback from the real world, and there is a growing desire for America to regain the respect President Bush has squandered. Maybe Americans are ready to meet reality on its own terms.

Robert Wright, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of “The Moral Animal” and “Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.”

End of Exhibit.

posted by: saintonge at 05:53 | link | comments |

Friday, 14 July 2006

CNN/_Fortune_ Article on Common Culture

Originally here:

The extinction of mass culture
The advent of 300 channels and the Internet has fragmented audiences - and the explosion of choice has left us poorer
By Marc Gunther, Fortune senior writer
July 12 2006: 10:18 AM EDT

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Quick: Name the biggest star in prime-time television.

Now: Name a star created by the Internet.

Finally: Name a great advertising slogan written in this decade.

Those aren't easy questions, are they? TV's biggest stars are Oprah Winfrey and Katie Couric, but they don't appear in prime time and they've been around for years - before the 300-channel universe fragmented audiences and damaged broadcast TV's hit-making machinery.

The Internet is by nature a niche medium so it has not created any stars, and probably won't. (Please don't bring up Matt Drudge. People who don't follow politics have no clue who he is.)

As for advertising, there are no 21st century equivalents to “We Try Harder” or “Where's the Beef?” or “Just Do It.” (Sorry, Microsoft, but “Where Do You Want To Go Today” doesn't cut it.)

The point is, mass culture isn't so mass anymore. Instead, culture is evolving into a “mass of niches.” So, at least, says Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, in “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More” (Hyperion, $24.95).

His new book, based on a 2004 article in Wired, is generating a lot of buzz, climbing up the best-seller lists and raising provocative questions about the future of our culture.

“We're leaving the watercooler era, when most of us listened, watched and read from the same relatively small pool of mostly hit content,” Anderson writes. “And we're entering the microculture era, when we are all into different things.”

Mostly, Anderson's book is about business. He makes a persuasive case that the Internet is exploding the limits of bricks-and-mortar distribution channels, giving consumers vastly more choice and creating business opportunities that have been exploited by the likes of Amazon (Charts) , Netflix (Charts) , Apple's (Charts) iTunes and Google (Charts) .

Those online media businesses are all driven to a surprising degree, not by a handful of hits, but by the far larger number of books, DVDs, music and Web sites with narrow appeal.

“The Long Tail is nothing more than infinite choice,” Anderson writes. “Abundant, cheap distribution means abundant, cheap and unlimited variety.”

The book's title, by the way, refers to the long, stretched-out tail of the demand curve for most products. You can see what the long tail looks like and explore the thinking behind the book at Anderson's blog at www.thelongtail.com.

There's lots to debate here. Anderson downplays the fact that the explosion of consumer choice predates the Internet. Cable TV gave us hundreds of channels. Starbucks (Charts) forced coffee drinkers to learn a new vocabulary. Big box retailers like Barnes & Noble, Home Depot and Wal-Mart (Charts) drew customers away from mom-and-pop outlets, not just because their prices were lower, but because they offered more choice.

And it's hard to argue that hits are diminishing in impact a few days after Disney's “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men's Chest” set an all-time box-office record for an opening weekend. Fox's “American Idol” is a megahit, even if it isn't built around stars in the old-fashioned sense. And goodness knows that Anderson would not have bothered to write his book if he thought it was going to disappear quietly into that “mass of niches.”

Still, I think his analysis is mostly right. The interesting question is whether all this choice along The Long Tail is an unalloyed good. “I think it's a net positive, but there are definite tradeoffs,” Anderson told me, when I called to ask him. “Do we lose something as a society if we have less in common? How do we define ourselves as Americans if we are not sharing the same culture impacts?”

He said we may lose some superficial ties to one another as the culture fragments, but that we gain deeper ties to smaller, virtual communities made possible by the Internet as we pursue own passions.

I think the explosion of choice has left us poorer in at least two arenas. The first is journalism. (Yes, as a Fortune writer, I've got a stake in the health of the mainstream media, which bloggers call the MSM.) The network evening newscasts, big-city newspapers and the national news magazines once had the money, access, skills, commitment and power to deliver lots of original reporting and put important issues on the national agenda. Today, they are all diminished.

To pick a single, timely, example, The Tribune Co. announced just the other day that its newspapers would be closing foreign bureaus in Johannesburg, Moscow, Lebanon and Pakistan. This is happening all over newspaperdom and it happened years ago at the broadcast networks.

Yes, there is more information available to us than ever, but I don't think we are better informed. Niche media will, inevitably, continue to weaken mass media.

The second arena where we are worse off is politics. This is related to journalism, as the moderate and responsible (okay, bland) voices of the MSM get drowned out by partisan, opinionated cableheads and bloggers.

Politics in America has become polarized for many reasons, but a big one is the fact that people can now filter the news and opinion they get to avoid exposure to ideas with which they disagree. Anderson suggests that this could well be a temporary problem, and that if the major parties continue to move to the extremes and the quality of debate continues to deteriorate, the Internet could well enable a new party or parties, to arise.

Mass culture provides intangible benefits, too. Big stars, hit TV shows and even commercials help knit a society together. Think of the feeling that comes a few times a year - the morning after the Super Bowl or the Oscars - when tens of millions of Americans share a common experience.

Like Chris Anderson, I think we're better off with Amazon, Netflix, Google and the cacaphony of the blogosphere than we were with a neighborhood bookseller, Blockbuster video, Tom Brokaw and Life Magazine. But it's worth slowing down, now and then, to think about what we are losing as we retreat into that “mass of niches.”

End of Exhibit.

posted by: saintonge at 12:17 | link | comments |

Thursday, 13 July 2006

_Los Angeles Times_ Column on Terrorists and the Administration

Originally here:

Patt Morrison: Crying Terrorist

Yes, bad guys are out to get us -- but U.S. officials see them everywhere.
July 13, 2006

NOW WE KNOW why France's team captain lost his cool in the World Cup finals and France lost the trophy to Italy.

Terrorism.

Zinedine Zidane, who is of French and Algerian ancestry, head-butted an Italian player who insulted him. Although Zidane in an interview Wednesday would not say what words provoked him, a lip reader hired by the Times of London claims Marco Materazzi called Zidane "the son of a terrorist whore."

That's pure trickle-down politics. From the White House to the soccer pitch, "terrorist" has "cooties" and "your mother wears combat boots" flat beat as the top playground potty-mouth slur for the 21st century.

Who's surprised? The Bush administration has been scattering the word like ticker tape on a Manhattan parade. Old McDonald left the farm for the NSA, and now it's here a terrorist, there a terrorist, everywhere a terrorist.

Before the Fourth of July holiday, The Times reported that California's homeland security office had tracked garden-variety demonstrations. How dare people gather outside the Canadian Consulate and protest the vicious clubbing of baby harp seals? What is Democratic Rep. George Miller thinking, speaking out against the war to all those people in Walnut Creek? Who do those women in Santa Barbara think they are, rallying outside a courthouse to support an antiwar protester?

Personally, I think real, hard-core Al Qaeda-grade terrorists have nothing but contempt for touchy-feely "We Are the World" American do-gooder protesters; after all, didn't George Bush say terrorists hate our freedoms?

California's homeland security operation is an office of 53 people, running mostly on federal dollars, and 53 people have to keep finding something to do to justify their paychecks. Arnold Schwarzenegger's office hurried to put a lid on this. The governor believes that any inappropriate information gathering like this is unacceptable; it's a one-time-only occurrence that won't happen again; and come look at the 80 or so reports — after we take out the stuff we don't think you should see.

Which turned out to be a lot. There were hints that the state was keeping an eye on the Minutemen, and something about "suspicious conversations" at a San Diego mosque, but large passages on page after page had been blacked out. A TV cameraman wasn't allowed to shoot video of the whole lotta nothing. Can't take a chance that terrorists might have X-ray vision.

Terrorism is real, and it's virulent. And we are not paranoid — they are out to get us. But don't go overboard on who "they" are and start seeing terrorists everywhere. To start accusing every "other" of terrorism is a diversion and the best possible cover for the real terrorists. The Los Angeles Police Department went off the rails the same way a couple of decades ago. Its drift-net spying on "subversives" ended up hauling in data on Quakers and people who traded teddy bears for toy guns and an anti-Soviet Jewish group founded by a guy named Zev Yaroslavsky, who's now an L.A. County supervisor. Two million files in all — some of which a detective passed along to a right-wing group in Virginia.

Throwing around a potent word like "terrorism" only cheapens it. Perfect example: a New York Times report that the federal Homeland Security Department's list of juicy terrorist targets is so broad and flawed that it includes the Amish Country Popcorn Factory, a petting zoo and a Mule Day parade among the vulnerable sites. Indiana — not California, not New York — was the state with the most terrorist targets (8,591). Keep this kind of stuff coming out of Washington and Jay Leno and Jon Stewart can fire their writers. With the same lavishness, the administration is frenetically classifying documents as "secret," and even reclassifying information that had been public for years; "top secret" will cease to mean anything at all.

In the same spirit, the administration has been free and easy with the word "eco-terrorism" to describe the property destruction, chiefly arson, wrought by radical environmental groups — who point out, conversely, that the real "eco-terrorism" is what corporate America is doing to the nation's rivers, forests and wildlife.

Osama bin Laden has said that he fears mockery more than death. If eco-protesters want to do some real damage, they should give up arson and take up ridicule. Don't torch those SUVs; put a cardboard cutout of Bin Laden in the passenger seat of an H2, and one of Dubya in the driver's seat beside him, then alert the media.

In a Humor Deficit Disorder world, even tactics like this can backfire. Newsweek reported that a satirical protest outside Halliburton's offices — about 10 people handing out peanut butter sandwiches to Halliburton employees to mock the company's alleged overcharging on food contracts in Iraq — got written up as a potential threat to national security. Today, if guys dressed as Mohawk Indians dumped tea in Boston Harbor as a protest, guess which side the administration would be on?

When everything is terrorism, nothing is. A cynical leadership may not be at all reluctant to exploit a gullible and fearful public to cry "terrorist," but as any reader of Aesop can tell you, pretty soon, everyone realizes what's going on — even the wolf.

End of Exhibit.

posted by: saintonge at 08:08 | link | comments |

Story From _The Washington Post_ About Ambassador's Speech

Originally here:

Sectarian Fights Pose Risk to Iraq

Envoy Warns Against Troop Withdrawal
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 12, 2006; Page A10

America's top envoy in Baghdad yesterday denied that Iraq is now embroiled in a civil war but acknowledged growing concern that sectarian clashes could derail the new government if violence is not brought under control. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad also said the new security crackdown in Baghdad has been a disappointment and is being reviewed to make "adjustments."

"I do not believe that what's happening could be described . . . as a civil war. But there is significant sectarian violence, there's no question about that," he said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. ". . . There is a risk that the sectarian conflict will expand, state institutions will be overwhelmed. And that's what needs to be avoided.” For now, however, he said the government is holding together, and political parties are committed to trying to prevent a full war.

Khalilzad also warned that a "precipitous" U.S. withdrawal could ensure a sectarian war drawing in neighboring states, disrupting oil supplies and expanding current fighting into a regional conflagration. The next six months will be critical to the transition, he said.

"Given the risks of -- kind of an abandonment strategy for Iraqis, for the region and for the world, we need to do everything prudently we can to help them stand on their own feet, contain the violence," the envoy said.

Khalilzad, who is in Washington to give briefings and organize a visit by new Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, also said the United States and Iraq have set up a new commission to outline terms and conditions for the U.S. withdrawal of troops, bringing Iraq into the decision making process for the first time. Khalilzad and Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the U.S. commander in Iraq, will meet with Maliki and other top Iraqi officials when he returns to Baghdad to begin the process.

Khalilzad's comments came on the same day that two Democratic senators just back from Baghdad warned that Iraq is close to civil war. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), who is ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee and has visited Iraq seven times, described Baghdad as "a city in tatters."

In a broad-brush assessment on a day when at least 60 died in a dozen bombings, Khalilzad said Americans should be patient and "strategically optimistic" about Iraq.

Sunnis generally have undergone a "tectonic shift" in their views about the new government and are increasingly turning away from the insurgency. "Many are now considering the pursuit of their goals by means other than violence," he said. Meanwhile, the majority Shiites now understand that they cannot govern Iraq alone.

A new "chasm" also now splits Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda's foreign fighters, he added. Some insurgents have even asked the government to arm them to fight foreign terrorists.

Iraq's leadership increasingly understands that reconciliation with most elements of the armed opposition -- not including foreign fighters -- is both "possible and essential" to stabilize the country, Khalilzad said.

On the ground, security forces have grown over the past year from 168,000 to 265,000. By summer's end, about 75 percent of counterinsurgency operations will be led by Iraqi units, with U.S. forces acting only as mentors or in support roles, Khalilzad said. But he acknowledged that the Iraqi military and particularly the police need to achieve greater readiness. And he said the clampdown in Baghdad was not meeting goals of decreasing the violence there. "It has not produced the results I expected so far," he said.

Khalilzad also noted the significant challenge ahead in the deferred debate on the new constitution and provisions for a federal structure that many Sunnis believe will put them at a disadvantage -- particularly when it comes to revenue from oil resources that are largely in Shiite and Kurdish areas.

Khalilzad, an Afghan American and one of the few Muslims in U.S. diplomatic ranks, charged that Iran is increasingly meddling in ways that threaten to destabilize Iraq. If it persists, he warned, the United States, Iraq and other allies will need to consider unspecified but "necessary measures" to block Tehran's arms, funds and training to extremist groups.

There are improvements along the Syrian border, which has been the main pipeline for insurgents and supplies, but Khalilzad said Syria has not changed its basic policy.

On the controversial issue of eventual amnesty, Khalilzad said there will not be a double standard for those who killed U.S. forces and others who killed Iraqis, an issue on which there are still divisions within Iraqi society.

End of Exhibit.

posted by: saintonge at 06:35 | link | comments |

US Ambassador's Speech on Iraq

Originally here:

"IRAQ: A STATUS REPORT"

AMBASSADOR ZALMAY KHALILZAD
at
CSIS THE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES in Washington, D. C. JULY 11, 2006
As Delivered

Thank you, Zbig, for this very, very kind introduction. Many of you know that the Twelver Shia speak of certain individuals whom believers should seek to imitate, calling them the marjaiyya. To many of us who are playing policy roles but who have academic backgrounds, Zbig, you are a source for imitation. I also want to thank CSIS for giving me this opportunity to share my assessment of the situation in Iraq and my view on the way ahead, as well as to engage in some questions and answers.

I will give my bottom line up front. I believe Americans, while remaining tactically patient about Iraq, should be strategically optimistic. Most important, a major change - a tectonic shift - has taken place in the political orientation of the Sunni Arab community. A year ago, Sunni Arabs were outside of the political process and hostile to the United States. They boycotted the January 2005 election and were underrepresented in the transitional national assembly. Today, Sunni Arabs are full participants in the political process, with their representation in the national assembly now proportional to their share of the population. Also, they have largely come to see the United States as an honest broker in helping Iraq's communities come together around a process and a plan to stabilize the country.

Moreover, al Qaeda in Iraq has been significantly weakened during the past year. This resulted, not only from the recent killing of Zarqawi, but also from the capture or killing of a number of other senior leaders and the creation of an environment in which it is more difficult and dangerous for al Qaeda in Iraq.

These are fundamental and positive changes. Together, they have made possible the inauguration of Iraq's first ever government of national unity - with non-sectarian security ministers, agreements on rules for decision making on critical issues and on the structure of institutions of the executive branch, and a broadly agreed upon program. They have also enabled political progress that resulted in the recent announcement by Prime Minister Maliki of his government's National Reconciliation and Dialogue Project.

However, at the same time, the terrorists have adapted to this success by exploiting Iraq's sectarian fault line. A year ago, terrorism and the insurgency against the Coalition and the Iraqi security forces were the principal sources of instability. Particularly since the bombing of the Golden Mosque in February, violent sectarianism is now the main challenge. This sectarianism is the source of frequent tragedies on the streets of Baghdad. It is imperative for the new Iraqi government to make major progress in dealing with this challenge in the next six months. The Prime Minister understands this fact.

Today, I will discuss the status of these efforts, noting the achievements we have attained and the further steps we intend to take in partnership with the new Iraqi government.

Enhancing Iraqi Unity to Contain and Defuse Sectarian Violence

Containing sectarian violence will require political and security steps. On the political track, several steps are needed to enhance unity among Iraqis.

First of all, Iraqi leaders must build a consensus to address several issues that arise out of the new constitution. Because Sunni Arabs were underrepresented in the assembly that drafted the constitution, the document provided a fast-track amendment process under the new, fully representative national assembly. One of the central and difficult issues will be the constitutional provisions governing future federalization of Iraq - that is, the process, timing, and rules for creating federal regions beyond the Kurdish area.

The constitution also requires the assembly to enact the legislation to govern the development of the country's oil and gas resources, including the role of the national government in allocating revenues.

Another constitutionally mandated action involves the creation of a commission to review de-Baathification. There is agreement among most Iraqis that there have been excesses in this process. The right approach is to subject those who committed crimes under the previous regime to the judicial process and to achieve reconciliation with those who were Baathists but who did not commit crimes.

Second, beyond these constitutionally driven issues, the new government's efforts to enhance the unity of the Iraqi people will be channeled through Prime Minister Maliki's National Reconciliation and Dialogue Project. This is a bold initiative, which puts all of the toughest issues on the table for resolution.

The central goal of the national reconciliation project is to bring insurgent elements, who are currently in the armed opposition, into the political process. Many insurgents have fought the Coalition and the Iraqi government as a result of misplaced fears that the United States was seeking to occupy Iraq indefinitely or was motivated by a sectarian agenda. Now many are considering the pursuit of their goals by means of other than violence. Also, a greater sense of realism has set in among Iraqi political leaders. Sunni Arab leaders are realizing that nostalgia for their past dominance is not the basis for a realistic political strategy. Shia Arab leaders are coming to see that seeking vengeance against other groups for Saddam's crimes or attempting to exclude Sunni Arabs from playing a role in government is not a realistic option. Consequently, a growing understanding exists that reconciliation with most elements of the current armed opposition is both possible and essential for stabilizing Iraq, as evident from the fact that some insurgents have asked to be armed by the Iraqi government in order to fight the foreign terrorists.

As the Iraqi government and reconcilable insurgents come together, the question will arise of granting amnesty to those who have committed violent acts in the current conflict. Iraqi leaders understand that every war must end and that ending wars inevitably requires amnesties of some kind. A broad amnesty was issued at the end of the American Civil War. Many other recent internal conflicts have ended with broad pardons or amnesties. Recent examples include El Salvador, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Sout