FOX, FINEMAN, ISIKOFF AND DEAN

I remember a while back, watching Bill O'Reilly complain about Sam Donaldson, accusing the veteran ABC newsman as being a "gotcha" journalist.

Something Bill should know: You'd probably be well-served to clean up your own FoxNews closet. It seems like every time the network has a Democrat on, particularly a Prez candidate, the format goes something like this:

"Hey, good to have you with us. I'm going to take a quote from some speech and completely misrepresent its meaning or distort it to question your patriotism. Gotcha! What say you?"

(wait through completely rational response)

"But you're not answering my question. Do you really want to bathe in the spilt blood of the gentials of our fighting men and women overseas?"

(wait through another completely rational response)

"Hey, I'm just quoting your words. Now, moving on, some questions about the budget..."

(repeat about 8 times, then cut to an ad featuring Michael Reagan wearing a cheap hat, plugging NewsMax and his dad)

The trouble for Fox is, the Dem candidates are now on to them. Wes Clark picked up on the strategy pretty quickly. His response was to give the interviewer a Grade-A tongue lashing. ("Don't you DARE...") I liked this tactic, but I think Howard Dean improved on it yesterday: Speak in paragraphs, hit hard, and make a lot of sense, not to mention call out the interviewer quickly to reveal the strategy.

Like I said, this interview was a string of gotcha's, some more honest than others. Interviewer Chris Wallace spewed gotcha after gotcha:

Gotcha #1: You said Bush's foreign policy lacks moral purpose!
Gotcha #2: You're a conspiracy theorist!
Gotcha #3: Hey, I took a joke you made and misrepresented it as serious, you're a secretive calculating politician! Dean hits back with lightning speed:

WALLACE: I want to take you through this because -- and I know that you're somewhat frustrated that people keep asking about it. But just as you talked about President Bush, people are concerned when public officials decide not to make records public. In January, you gave Vermont Public Radio a very different reason. Here is what you said: "There are future political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the
papers at a critical time in any future endeavors." Governor, was it politics?

DEAN: If you actually listen to the tape, which CNN played this week, you will find that I was laughing about that and teasing the press about it. No, it's not politics. Every governor has done this. Some governors have sealed their records for their lifetime.

Gotcha #4: You're not being reckless, thus, you're a secretive calculating politician!
Gotcha #5: A conservative rag said something! (in this case, the Boston Herald)
Gotcha #6: I'm willfully ignorant enough to draw false dichotomies. You don't care about civil rights and abortion issues!

Going back to gotcha #3, I knew that quote sounded familiar. Ah yes, because Newsweek hack and world-class Bush-fellater Howard Fineman brought it up as evidence that Dean is secretive and dishonest! Says he:

Dean is no babe in the woods: Everyone knew what he was up to. He was burying what he could of his papers to keep them from the prying eyes and hands of the “oppo men”—opposition researchers for other Democratic contenders and, of course, the Republican National Committee. The proudly combative Dean admitted as much last January, telling Vermont Public Radio in teasing fashion, “Well, there are political considerations. We didn’t want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a crucial time in any future endeavor.”

Apparently Fineman doesn't know what the definition of the word "joke" is.

To be fair, I'm sure that lowering the chances of a replay of the incredibly dishonest 1988 Willie Horton smear is on the mind of Dean and all of the other candidates, so I'm sure it factored in there somewhere. The problem is, this is exactly what Dean will be dealing with in the future. It's a subtle form of Gore-ing. Bring up something that, in and of itself, is just trivial enough that it doesn't require a press conference, repeat it enough so that the Bush-friendly media whores will run with it, and somewhere down the line someone will say something about Howard Dean's "character". That's how the game is played. Al Gore invented the internet. Al and Tipper were the basis for the lead characters in "Love Story". Al Gore didn't go to that one disaster site with James Lee Witt. And so on...

The difference is, Al Gore didn't have an online defense force of thousands in 2000. The rapid response strategy Clinton employed in 1992 is now the rapid-rapid-friggin'-rapid response team, thanks to Dean's online legions, as Newsweek's Michael Isikoffnotes:

Dean’s aides say they can also count on their own electronic firepower to fight back against late hits. More than just a machine for generating cash and supporters, the Internet has vastly expanded Dean’s research team beyond its Burlington, Vt., headquarters. Like a virtual version of the Clinton war room, Dean’s supporters (some styling themselves as Dean Defense Forces) monitor the Web to pounce on the latest attack at warp speed. Last week the conservative Club for Growth ran its first ads against Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire, casting the governor as a tax-hiking Democrat in the mold of McGovern, Mondale and Dukakis. Within minutes of the club’s press release, a software executive in Naperville, Ill., was deploying his own instant rebuttal on behalf of the Dean campaign. In the time it took to drink his morning coffee, Rick Klau spotted the ad and tracked down a September article by the club’s CEO, Stephen Moore, hailing Dean as “a Democrat we could work with.” Klau pinged an instant message to the Dean camp, which began citing the article to reporters. “Twenty people sitting in a war room can’t possibly do what 2,000 or 20,000 people can,” says Joe Trippi, Dean’s campaign manager.

By the way, what are Isikoff's big scoops in his attempts to sling mud at Dean?

1. An innocent misunderstanding about a private jet that Dean doesn't even use anymore.
2. Dean did something Bush/Cheney are simply in no position to criticize him about. But I'll feel free to compare it to Cheney's energy task force!

Either way, if any of this came up for real, Dean's legions would make short work of it.

I think I know why Gore is endorsing Dean. Remember maybe a year and a half ago? Al Gore was talking about the 2000 campaign, and was quoted as saying if he had to do it over again, he would have "let 'er rip". Well, he found the candidate that's doing just that.