TUESDAY,  JUNE 23,  2009

THE PRESIDENT AND IRAN - AT 9:30 P.M. ET:  The president was a bit stronger on the Iran revolt at his news conference today, then went out of his way, in answering questions, to insist that he's been entirely consistent all along.  He gave a poor performance.  Whenever Obama is cornered, he tends to break out in a kind of "nobody knows the trouble I've seen" rhetoric, suggesting that none of the reporters can understand that presidents must do things differently from mere mortals.  We can be tough on the press here, as you know, but asking a president why it took him so long to take a hard stand against the Iranian thugs is entirely appropriate, and the president might have conceded that his first statements may, in the absence of more detailed news reports, have been too cautious.  I guess a messiah can never admit error.

One of the amusing things about all this is that there's been a major-league gang-up on John McCain, who's been goading Obama all week to be firmer, stronger, more Reagan-like.  Even Joe Scarborough joined, this morning, in the criticism of McCain, making the wild, unsustainable charge that McCain was putting Iranian lives in jeopardy.  But now that Obama has come much closer in his public utterance to what McCain wanted, what do these same McCain bashers say?

Still, closer is not pitch-perfect, which should be the standard in a crisis like this.  Ronald Reagan understood.  Jack Kennedy, at the Cuban Missile Crisis, understood.  FDR, in responding to Pearl Harbor, understood.  Even George W. Bush, in his speech to Congress after 9-11, understood.  Barack Obama lacks that instinct, and it is damaging him.  The American people expect their president to behave in a certain manner, even if there are diplomatic risks.  We don't have royalty and he is our chief of state.  This week we had a little too much Carter, not enough Reagan.  Carter got the Nobel Peace Prize from some Norwegian legislators.  Reagan wound up in the top ranks of presidents.

June 23, 2009   Permalink   

UPDATE - AT 6:03 P.M. ET:  I'm writing this from a large conference room at the Writers Guild of America, right across the street, in New York, from CBS News.  I can feel the bias.

There's a seminar about to start on the new technology.  I'll be interested in how it's being used to get information out of Iran.  I'll be back later, and give you any details that seem important.

June 23, 2009   Permalink


ED - AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  Ed McMahon has died at 86, at UCLA Medical Center.  He was, of course, Johnny Carson's sidekick on The Tonight Show, and was with Carson for the entire 30-year run.

Some of you know that I was a talent coordinator (like an assistant producer) on The Tonight Show.  I knew Ed, and liked him immensely.  He was a warm, gregarious and totally accessible guy, a former Marine pilot, who seemed genuinely grateful for his luck.  When I was with the show it was based in New York.  We would go to Los Angeles every eight weeks for a three-week stand.  I recall my surprise, as we started out on my first trip, that Ed flew with the staff, hung around with us, and stayed in the same hotel.  (Carson always stayed elsewhere.)  There was not a false note about him.

On one of our trips we were staying at the Sheraton-Universal, or the Sheraton Impossible, as we called it.  At about 6 a.m. we were awakened by an earthquake.  Drawers were flying.  The ground was rumbling.  Lights in the San Fernando Valley started going out.   All of us on the staff ran from our rooms; some ran from rooms they shouldn't have been in.  And there, in the lobby was Ed, joking with the other guests, a comforting figure.

He didn't handle money well, which we found out some time ago when he ran into trouble.  But, aside from that, I can't think of too much on the negative side of the ledger.

He was one of the decent guys, in an industry not known for that trait.  He represented the last era of the "old" show business, which we sorely miss.

June 23, 2009   Permalink

QUOTE OF THE DAY - AT 8:13 A.M. ET:  From Wesley Pruden, in The Washington Times:

The rage in Tehran's streets suggests that time may be running out for a brutal regime, but that same clock is ticking for Barack Obama and what to do about the Iranian bomb. A reprise of the Cairo speech won't work; the Muslims are masters of endless, empty rhetoric themselves, and know how to figure the discount on words. The consequences of taking out the Iranian nuclear works, or enabling Israel to do it for him, would be awful, exceeded only by the consequences of allowing the mullahs in Tehran to get their bomb. Then everybody in Arabia would want one. The Saudis would buy one from Pakistan; certain intelligence sources say a deal is already in the works to deliver it once an Iranian bomb is in place. If the Shi'ites have a bomb, it's only logical, as logic is measured in that miserable corner of the world, for the Sunnis to get one. Every thuggish eighth-century theocracy must be fully armed.

COMMENT:  I suspect that the issue of time will soon come to dominate this White House.  The president is running into opposition, his poll numbers slipping, at least for now.  The 2010 congressional elections are shaping up to be very competitive, unless the Republicans, as is their tradition, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  The Iranian bomb is on its way, and North Korea is growing increasingly belligerent. 

Obama hits the six-month mark within weeks, with not a single success in foreign policy to show for it.  He and his political handlers must soon come to the conclusion that time isn't on the president's side.

June 23, 2009   Permalink

THE PALIN WATCH - AT 7:52 A.M. ET:  Like her or not, Sarah Palin is endlessly fascinating.  Now the big question is whether she will run for reelection in 2010, as The Politico reports:

Top Republicans and Democrats across Alaska are quietly lining up to run for governor amid growing speculation that Sarah Palin will not seek reelection in 2010.

No candidate, including Palin, has yet filed papers with the Alaska Public Offices Commission. Palin’s office declined an opportunity to explain her thinking on the 2010 race, and the Republican Governors Association said it would not comment on discussions it has had with the governor.

But a number of Democrats and Republicans in Alaska and Washington who spoke to POLITICO believe her silence is a sign she will not pursue a second term as governor so that she can play a larger role on the national political stage.

COMMENT:  Actually, there are several reasons for her not to run.  First, her national campaign last year took a toll on her local popularity.  If she wants a national future, she doesn't want to risk reelection by only a narrow margin, given her past popularity, or even risk defeat.  Also, she knows that the national Democratic Party will do anything it can to beat her or smear her.

Second, she's already been governor.  If she continues in the office, it's unlikely she'll get much done.  Again, the national Democrats will see her as their number one target. 

Third, geography.  Remaining as governor means spending too much time in Alaska, with long trips to the lower 48 to build a national reputation.  Freedom would help her move around.

We've said before that we think Sarah needs some polishing if she wants seriously to attempt a try for the top of the Republican ticket.  We haven't seen that polishing in recent interviews.  She's got to be able to discuss foreign policy as easily as she discusses energy.  That's not the case now, but no one should underestimate Sarah Palin.

June 23, 2009   Permalink 

WHAT WILL HAPPEN? - AT 7:42 A.M. ET:  Amir Taheri, often quoted here because of his expertise on Iran, gives his sense of what will happen next in the country:

So is Iran heading for a civil war? My answer is a cautious no.

In a history spanning more than 2,500 years, the nation has seen only three events that can be described as civil wars: in the 5th century BC, in the 6th century AD and in 1911.

The reason is that as a power struggle builds up, Iranians know how to distinguish the side that's going to win. Once they've identified the winner, they will all rally to his side. No one is left on the other side to provoke a civil war.

Call it opportunism, if you like, but this is a part of the template of Iranian politics.

One's only hope is that the side that realizes it's losing won't deny the evidence and will agree to bow out without provoking a prolonged and bloody conflict.

We might always wonder what stronger support from other nations could have meant.  We'll never know.

June 23, 2009   Permalink

FROM IRAN - AT 7:25 A.M. ET: Via Fox News:

CAIRO — Iran's top electoral body said Tuesday it found "no major fraud" and will not annul the results of the presidential election, closing the door to a do-over sought by angry opposition supporters alleging systematic vote-rigging.

Iranian government officials have repeatedly suggested that a revote is extremely unlikely. However, Tuesday's announcement by Iran's top electoral body, the Guardian Council, was the clearest yet in ruling out a new election.

The announcement on Iran's state-run English language Press TV is another sign the regime is determined to crush the post-election protests — the strongest challenge to its leadership in 30 years — rather than compromise..

There is no news yet on the general strike called for today, but it's apparent that the regime is successfully putting down the protests.  The sad reality is that, within a week, the revolt might be forgotten, much to the relief of the crowd currently running American foreign policy.  This democracy stuff is just too crude.

Russia and China are making it clear in public statements that they accept the official version of Iran's "elections." 

At the same time, Obama's reliable defenders in the press and elsewhere are publicly marveling at his handling of the Iran situation - sneering at those unsophisticated ruffians like John McCain and extolling the virtues of Obama's clearly superior intellect, strategic sense and cultural sensitivity.  Once again, the political left shows that indifference to human freedom is one of the major planks in its platform. 

June 23, 2009   Permalink

MONDAY,  JUNE 22,  2009

END OF AN ERA - AT 9:08 P.M. ET:  For photo buffs, the story is sad, and filled with nostalgia.  Eastman Kodak today announced the end of Kodachrome.  Story is here.  Treasure those old slides.

June 22, 2009   Permalink

TIMING IS EVERYTHING - AT 7:58 P.M. ET:  We've been lucky at different times in our history to have the right man in the White House during a crisis.  At other time, like the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80, we had exactly the wrong man.

Peggy Noonan once said of Ronald Reagan that he know how to be president, and we knew exactly what Noonan meant.  He had a style and a sense of timing that matched our expectations of what a president should do and say under difficult circumstances.  His "expert" advisers, including Colin Powell, opposed his declaring, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" when the president spoke in Berlin in 1987.  But Reagan sensed the moment, and, fortunately for us, seized it.

Now President Obama faces an international crisis over Iran.  Does he know how to be president?  If his meek performance over the last five days is any example, the answer is clear.

Many Republicans criticized John McCain during last year's election fight, and sometimes for good reason.  But the one thing we knew about McCain is that, in a crisis, he'd know how to be president.  That instinct of knowing what is called for has been on display in the Senate this week, where McCain has spoken out like a president, whereas Obama has spoken out like a senator.  Andrew Malcolm of the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket, links a McCain Senate statement here.  Well worth watching and listening.

June 22, 2009   Permalink 

IRAN UPDATE - AT 7:32 P.M. ET:  Here is what we know about events in Iran today.  As we're constantly told, it is very difficult to get accurate information out of the country, as journalistic channels are being blocked. 

We know there were some demonstrations, but much, much smaller than the ones over the weekend.  They were suppressed violently by the security forces.

We know that a call for a general strike for tomorrow is still on, but we have no way to measure how effective that call will be.

We know that the administration is still sticking to its restrained approach.  A presidential news conference is scheduled for tomorrow, and there's a chance that a tough question or two will be asked about the president's stance.

So tomorrow is a critical day.  If no general strike comes off, we might be able to say, tentatively, that the uprising has been contained through intimidation.  That doesn't mean it's over.  The uprising of 1979, which led, tragically, to the mullah regime, took months to develop.

June 22, 2009   Permalink

RASMUSSEN - AT 10:23 A.M. ET:  For the second day in a row, Rasmussen's presidential approval index - measuring the gap between those who strongly approve of Obama's performance and those who strongly disapprove, is in minus territory, with Obama down one point.  Again, a poll is a snapshot in time, but there's been a clear trend over the last ten days, and it hasn't been favorable to the president.  A resistance is building.

June 22, 2009   Permalink

BUT IF ONLY WE COULD NEGOTIATE WITH THEM - AT 9:40 A.M. ET:  Al Qaeda has a unique way of reminding us, when we need reminding, of what we're up against:

DUBAI (Reuters) - If it were in a position to do so, Al Qaeda would use Pakistan's nuclear weapons in its fight against the United States, a top leader of the group said in remarks aired on Sunday.

Pakistan has been battling al Qaeda's Taliban allies in the Swat Valley since April after their thrust into a district 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the capital raised fears the nuclear-armed country could slowly slip into militant hands.

"God willing, the nuclear weapons will not fall into the hands of the Americans and the mujahideen would take them and use them against the Americans," Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the leader of al Qaeda's in Afghanistan, said in an interview with Al Jazeera television.

COMMENT:  No one can say that they didn't warn us.  They warned us.  Of course, the usual suspects will now come out of the woodwork to say that this is all just bluster.  I hope it is.  But I'm not willing to stake my children's future on the audacity of hope. 

June 22, 2009   Permalink

AJAMI ON OBAMA - AT 8:52 A.M. ET:  The great Fouad Ajami, in another stellar piece in The Wall Street Journal, gets to the heart of the American response to the Iranian convulsion - the mentality and inexperience of the man who said "Yes we can," but is now saying, "Well, maybe we can."

President Barack Obama did not "lose" Iran. This is not a Jimmy Carter moment. But the foreign-policy education of America's 44th president has just begun. Hitherto, he had been cavalier about other lands, he had trusted in his own biography as a bridge to distant peoples, he had believed he could talk rogues and ideologues out of deeply held beliefs. His predecessor had drawn lines in the sand. He would look past them.

We see how far that's gotten us.

But in truth Iran had never wanted an opening to the U.S. For the length of three decades, the custodians of the theocracy have had precisely the level of enmity toward the U.S. they have wanted -- just enough to be an ideological glue for the regime but not enough to be a threat to their power.

The heart of it:

That ambivalence at the heart of the Obama diplomacy about freedom has not served American policy well in this crisis. We had tried to "cheat" -- an opening to the regime with an obligatory wink to those who took to the streets appalled by their rulers' cynicism and utter disregard for their people's intelligence and common sense -- and we were caught at it.

Ajami, unlike Obama, actually knows history, and doesn't depend on speechwriters to give him his facts.

Days into his presidency, it should be recalled, Mr. Obama had spoken of his desire to restore to America's relation with the Muslim world the respect and mutual interest that had existed 30 or 20 years earlier. It so happened that he was speaking, almost to the day, on the 30th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution -- and that the time span he was referring to, his golden age, covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the American standoff with Libya, the fall of Beirut to the forces of terror, and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Liberal opinion would have howled had this history been offered by George W. Bush, but Barack Obama was granted a waiver.

Ajami hits on something that's a sore point with many of us - the acceptance by the mainstream media of the notion that Obama is somehow this very deep intellectual sent to us by Heaven to enlighten our ignorant souls.  I concede that Obama is bright, but that's the extent of it.  He's not an intellectual man, nor is he a well-read man.  He knows little of the past, and it's clear that his ideas, to the extent he has any, are undeveloped and untested.  In many respects, he's a classic example of the notion that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  (Reader Bruce Goldman remarks, "Here in Richmond, there's a colorful expression for that:  He knows just enough to be dangerous.")  

Finally...

Little more than three decades ago, Jimmy Carter, another American president convinced that what had come before him could be annulled and wished away, called on the nation to shed its "inordinate fear of communism," and to put aside its concern with "traditional issues of war and peace" in favor of "new global issues of justice, equity and human rights." We had betrayed our principles in the course of the Cold War, he said, "fought fire with fire, never thinking that fire is quenched with water." The Soviet answer to that brave, new world was the invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979.

Mr. Carter would try an atonement in the last year of his presidency. He would pose as a born-again hawk. It was too late in the hour for such redemption. It would take another standard-bearer, Ronald Reagan, to see that great struggle to victory.

Iran's ordeal and its ways shattered the Carter presidency. President Obama's Persian tutorial has just begun.

COMMENT:  This is one of the best pieces on the Obama presidency that I've read.  Ajami is on the mark.  The tragedy here is that, while Obama's Persian tutorial has just began, this is not a man who learns easily, and he seems to have no great moral core. 

Say what you wish about George W. Bush, and there's good and bad, but the man had fundamental principles.  True, he wavered in those ideals during his second term, under the false tutelage of his father's advisers, but those principles guided his original foreign policy.  I suspect his stock will begin to rise, even over the objections of The New York Times and NBC News.

But now we have Obama, a man who has faced his initial crises in foreign policy with his usual self-confidence, and his usual narrowness.  Like Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s, he's a man of elegant words and shallow thoughts.  He must do better.  There will come a point where even Chris Matthews cannot save him.

June 22, 2009   Permalink

WORDS, BUT NO STRATEGY FOR IRANIAN DISSIDENTS - AT 7:33 A.M. ET:  We'll soon know whether this phase of Iranian resistance can be sustained, or will peter out.  From AP:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and a popular reformist former president are boldly defying the country's supreme leader by supporting continued protests of a disputed presidential election, but it was unclear Monday whether protesters would dare to continue massive demonstrations after a bloody crackdown.

"The country belongs to you ... protesting lies and fraud is your right," Mousavi, who claims hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won re-election through fraud, said in a statement on his Web site.

The statement flies in the face of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who holds ultimate power in Iran and who last week said the claimed landslide victory of Ahmadinejad was valid.

But...

But aside from the bold words, the opposition on Monday appeared to be scrambling for a strategy to continue the momentum of the protests that have riveted world attention without putting its supporters in peril. At least 10 people were killed in clashes Saturday between demonstrators and police and the feared Basij militia. Police said Monday that 457 people were arrested that day alone, without saying how many have been arrested throughout the week of turmoil.

COMMENT:  Most analysts I've read believe that the protests will falter.  The issue will involve the stability and character of the regime after that.  The irony is that the Obama administration's obsession - and that's what it is - with "engaging" Iran may give credibility to a dying, unstable regime, while getting nothing in return. 

President Obama has clearly disappointed many in this crisis, and even his supporters are lukewarm in their support for his lukewarminess.  He may be called "no drama Obama," but great leaders know the value of drama, and the value of the great moment.  The president, I fear, is still in the classroom.

And, by the way, speaking of the classroom, please note the enormity of support for the freedom fighters of Iran by the "intellectual" communities of the United States.  They show their true character once again. 

June 22, 2009   Permalink 

CHICAGO IN TEHRAN, TRA-LA, TRA-LA - AT 7:16 A.M.:  This should make President Obama feel right at home with the Iranian mullahs.  From The Times of London:

In 50 Iranian cities the number of votes cast in this month presidential election exceeded the number of eligible voters, the state's election watchdog admitted today.

The surprising admission by the Guardian Council was, however, designed to undermine the claims of the defeated candidates that the vote was rigged.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's main rival in the hotly-disputed election, and the other two losing candidates have claimed that the vote exceeded eligible voters in as many as 170 districts.

Abbasali Kadkhodai, a spokesman for the council of senior clerics, told the state television channel IRIB: "Our investigation shows that the number of districts they announced is not correct. Based on our preliminary report, 50 districts face this issue."

And these leading apostles of democracy argue that the corruption wasn't enough to swing the election.  It is heartening to see the degree that they've learned Chicago politics.  So some departed loved ones voted?  What's wrong with a little respect for the ancestors?

Of course, the so-called Supreme Leader has already announced that the election result would stand, so all this "investigation" is meaningless.  The real issue is how the Iranian people will continue to react, and how the "international community" will treat a clearly illegitimate government.

June 22, 2009   Permalink