TPM draws blood

Josh Marshall's coverage of the frisky Thune campaign's cozy relationship with the local media is apparently scaring them not a little. Mr. Thune, of course, is the gentleman with whom Our Fearless Leader filmed the campaign photo ops that he agreed not to film when he went to Mount Rushmore.

Karl Rove in the Times magazine

Some people have to run, and some don't - a few more reasons you might want to skip the kool-aid at your next White House weenie roast

Rove is hardly the first person to mix politics with policy in the White House, but no adviser before him has denied so stridently that there is any connection between the two. When I asked White House aides about the conflict inherent in being both the party's lead strategist and an influential policy adviser to the president, they seemed genuinely offended, as if I'd just asked whether Rove might be secretly borrowing Apache helicopters on the weekend to strafe Democratic districts. ''Karl would never make recommendations to the president for political reasons if it did not make sound policy sense,'' Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, assured me. ''That's a threshold he would never compromise.''

This isn't especially convincing, given Rove's influence on a number of issues on which the White House made decisions over the last several months -- the imposition of tariffs on foreign steel, the signing of a bill to create $180 billion in new farm subsidies -- that were flatly at odds with Bush's own policy principles but were expected to benefit G.O.P. candidates. But aides to the president seem to have successfully convinced themselves that the White House pays no heed to polling or political advantage; not only do they believe this, they have sought to make it a central theme of Bush's presidency.

There is a kind of Wonderland dynamic at work here, in which the White House asserts its own curious reality, no matter how plain the contradictions. I recently got a closer look at this phenomenon in Karl Rove's office. It was Ice Cream Day in the West Wing, a tradition Rove started for his staff when he was running Bush's presidential campaign, and so the two of us munched on frozen Crunch bars as we talked. Rove is a jovial and gracious guy, and there is something classically dweeby about him; his face is bespectacled and doughy, and when he talks, he always sounds as if he has a cold.

A good president, Rove told me, will be remembered for making courageous decisions, no matter what the political impact may be, no matter what all the polls or critics or reporters may say about it at the time. ''You may be misjudged in the short term, but ultimately history forms a judgment about a president based on the policies and actions taken, and all the little stuff drops away,'' he said. ''You know, Sam Houston had a great line. 'Do right and damn the consequences.'''

But not 10 minutes later, when I raised the subject of corporate scandals and asked whether the White House appeared too close to big business, Rove rose and retrieved a stack of papers from his desk.

''Do you trust Bush to do the right thing when it comes to regulating business to prevent accounting abuses from taking place in business?''' he recited, reading from a CBS poll. ''Sixty-one to 34, 'trust' -- don't trust.' Forty-five percent of the people think Bush's proposals for reforming accounting go too far or are about right, versus 39 percent who say they do not go far enough.''

Rove was delving deeper into the minutiae of the data, getting more intense as he descended. ''Now that's compared to 39 percent who said they go too far or are about right a month ago, and 43 who said they do not go far enough. So over time Bush has gotten better on this with the American people. There's one other one here. . . . '' I was wondering what had happened to damning the consequences when Rove caught himself.

''Not that we spend a lot of time on these,'' he said quickly, as if reading my mind.

see, the problem I see here is

Our Fearless Leader wants to protect your 401k.

In his weekly radio address, Bush said the regulations to be issued by the Labor Department require that companies give their workers 30 days notice before any 401(k) "blackout" periods -- times when workers are restricted from trading stock.

Companies also must notify employees about the reasons for the "blackout" period, and the beginning and end dates, or face a civil penalty, a senior administration official said Friday.

"This important protection will help ensure that workers don't get stuck in a bad investment simply because their employers block them from accessing their own account, Bush said.

The president also supports a rule being drawn up by the Securities and Exchange Commission that would prevent corporate officers and directors from trading in company stock whenever workers are kept from doing so.

"If you can't sell on the shop floor, you should not be able to sell on the top floor," Bush said.

OK, so let me see if I understand this.

If the upper management of a company doesn't like the way things are going and they decide to sell lots of shares at the end of the day, and then the next day they lock out the workers before the markets open to help protect the value of their remaining shares, the company (and not the upper management) will pay a civil fine, which will further damage the future prospects of the workers whose 401ks are damaged but won't touch the upper management in any way.

Yeah, sounds like a deterrent to me.

Of course, the president knows all about the protection provided to workers by notification deadlines on stock sales by corporate officers.

and it quacks like a duck

from the White House insiders' newsletter, the Washington Post

N. Korea Issue Irks Congress (sic)
[irks? jeez, one so infrequently gets the opportunity to use Makes Peevish or Puts on the Rag. The editorial continence is staggering]
Key Democrats Kept in Dark On Admission Before Iraq Vote

The White House withheld North Korea's admission about a nuclear weapons program from key Democrats until after Congress had passed its resolution authorizing war with Iraq, prompting complaints on Capitol Hill that the administration has let politics influence its conduct of foreign affairs.

Several senators said through their aides that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld did not mention North Korea's covert nuclear weapons program during a classified briefing held in a secure chamber less than three hours before two senior administration officials revealed the news in a conference call with four reporters.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said he learned about the weapons program from newspaper articles the next morning, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said he was told about two hours ahead of the press. At least two Republican senators said they had earlier received individual briefings from Assistant Secretary of State James A. Kelly.

Democrats on Capitol Hill were critical yesterday of the 12-day gap between the admission by North Korea and the administration's disclosure. During that time, Congress passed the Iraq resolution, and President Bush signed it hours before the 7 p.m. disclosure about North Korea. Administration officials said they revealed the information because former Clinton administration officials had leaked the news after learning about it from State Department contacts. Democrats said the episode could further impair the administration's already fragile relations with Congress.

"Senators are concerned and troubled by it," a Democratic leadership aide said. "This cloud of secrecy raises questions about whether there are other pieces to this puzzle they don't know about."

Administration officials said they briefed some Democratic House staff members and offered to brief at least one House Democrat and one Senate Democrat, although those briefings did not occur. "We did this very methodically," a senior administration official said. "What's the first question the Hill is going to ask? 'What does South Korea think? What does Japan think?' That's what we were trying to figure out. There was a lot going on."

Bush remained silent on the North Korea developments yesterday for the second day in a row, although he continued to use speeches along the campaign trail to condemn Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as "a true and real threat." White House officials said the issue was best handled through diplomatic channels and said Bush would seek "a peaceful resolution."

Bush has not let the world turmoil deter him from his campaign schedule leading up to the Nov. 5 elections, which has fueled Democratic suspicions about his motives for trying to keep international attention on Iraq and its alleged ties to al Qaeda. He made stops in four states over the past two days and is scheduled to barnstorm five more next week. Bush also plans to go to McLean on Monday to meet with people who have donated at least $250,000 to the Republican Party.