*NOT FOOLED: A new Gallup Poll finds that 45% of Americans think the news media are too liberal. Only 14% say they are too conservative. "These perceptions of liberal inclination have not changed over the last three years," Gallup said in a press release.
*WAFFLE MAN: In 1995, then-Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said he supported a balanced budget amendment. Now, hoping he can get his own greedy hands on the U.S. Treasury, he's not so sure. "So you can put me down as waffling on the balanced budget amendment," he told the Associated Press. "I'm already down as waffling on that one. I've waffled before, I'll waffle again."
*AND AGAIN: In the same AP interview, Dean said, "I am determined to get rid of the deficit." Then he said, "I am willing to run a deficit longer than I'd like to in order to create jobs." "Dean," noted AP, "said he might have to keep the budget in the red beyond four years to fund his plan for mass transit, renewable energy, road construction, broadband telecommunications and school building. . . . He also would increase spending for health insurance, special education and grants for urban revitalization."
*AND ONE OTHER THING: "You do not have to make cuts to balance the budget," said Dean.
*GRAHAM GOES: "Dick Gephardt without the charisma"-that's how comedian Jay Leno described Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, who announced last Monday on CNN's "Larry King Live" that he was folding his presidential campaign. Graham declined to endorse any other Democrat and pointedly left open the possibility he would accept his party's vice presidential nomination. He said, however, he has not decided whether he will seek reelection to the Senate.
*NOT 'DETERMINATIVE VOTE': Graham entered the campaign with a reputation for candor, and was fortified by the perception he was a "moderate" with superior credentials on national security based on his former chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But he sullied that reputation as he campaigned primarily as an anti-war candidate, who accused President Bush of lying America into war.
Ironically, when Larry King asked Graham if he would endorse a pro-war Democrat for President, Graham said: "[G]ood people of good will could have reached different conclusions on that. I don't think that is a determinative vote in terms of who the Democrats should nominate as their next President." Graham's stock as a potential V.P. will plummet if the Democrats nominate another anti-war crusader such as Howard Dean.
*BAD UNDER FIRE: Graham could never defend his outrageous claim that Bush lied America into war. When MSBNC's Pat Buchanan, for example, challenged Graham to "Tell us exactly where you believe George W. Bush misled or lied to the American people," Graham responded with arguable examples of bad presidential forecasting.
"One, at a strategic point he did not explain to us what were going to be the consequences of the war in Iraq," said Graham. " . . . He also didn't tell us what were going to be the consequences of the occupation." Buchanan reminded Graham-to no apparent affect-that there is a difference between "faulty intelligence," "an honest mistake," and "a lie." Graham's skills as a human lie detector, of course, were honed in the Senate, where he voted that President Clinton was "not guilty" of perjury and obstruction of justice.
*BULL'S EYE: Maybe Jay Leno was wrong about the resemblance between Graham and Rep. Dick Gephardt (Mo.). On NBC's "Meet the Press" September 28, host Tim Russert confronted Gephardt with a statement Gephardt had made on October 2, 2002, less than two weeks before voting to authorize the war against Iraq. "In our view," Gephardt had said, "Iraq's use and continuing development of weapons of mass destruction, combined with efforts of terrorists to acquire such weapons pose a unique and dangerous threat to our national security."
*THREE TIMES TO CIA: Russert followed up by asking Gephardt the obvious question: "We have not found any such weapons. Were you wrong or misled?" Said Gephardt: "Tim, I didn't just take the President's word for it. I went out to the CIA three times. I talked to George Tenet personally. I talked to his top people. I talked to people that had been in the Clinton administration in their security effort. And I became convinced, from that, all of that, that he either had weapons of mass destruction or components of weapons or he had the ability to quickly make a lot of them and pass them to terrorists."
