Advocacy For Universal Medicare

Dana Milbank is not a shill for the Democratic National Committee nor even parial to the corporatist bent of the mainstream of the Party, which has nominated the likes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the office of the presidency. We know this in part because he refers not to "Bernie Bros" but to "Bernie Bros and sisters," choosing not to join in the criticism of  the bros for allegedly being racist and sexist.

Yet, Milbank argues

to force Democrats to take some kind of single-payer purity oath would set back the cause. Democrats need to pick up 24 seats to take control of the House, yet there are only 23 Republicans in districts won by Clinton — and only eight of those were won by President Barack Obama in 2012. There are a dozen Democrats in districts Trump won. In such swing districts, it would be suicidal to pledge support for something Republicans will brand as socialism.

It is debatable that Republicans would characterize the "Medicare for All" Democrats would advocate, as "socialism," even within those swing districts. However, the Democratic National Committee need not enforce a "purity test" on Democratic candidates there. It might be enough for the Party simply not to take an active role in quashing single-payer advocates, and let nature (or Democratic primary voters) take its course.

Fearing voters would in a general election turn against a Democrat advocating single-payer, Milbank writes

A Pew Research Center survey in June found that while a majority of Democrats (52 percent) favor single-payer health care, only 33 percent of the public does overall. A Kaiser Health Tracking poll in June had better results: 53 percent of the public favored single-payer coverage. But Kaiser found that opinions were “malleable,” and that if, for example, respondents heard single-payer coverage would increase taxes, a majority opposed it. 

The  first claim, though technically accurate, is a serious distortion of the poll results, as this reveals. Admittedly, Kaiser found supporters of single-payer malleable. But it observed also "when the plan is defined as one in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan, support is similar when the plan was referred to as “Medicare-for-all” (57 percent in favor) as when it was referred to as “single payer” (53 percent)."

A Democratic supporter of Medicare for All would be wise to frame the issue "would you prefer your health care needs worked out between you and  your doctor or decided by the insurance company?" of do you want your doctor, as I support, or the insurance company to tell you what you need?"

But the tell in Milbank's argument concerns his misunderstanding of the tea party movement as he contends

It’s not just about breakfast confections. The Bernie crowd has begun accusing freshman Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.), a rising Democratic star, of being beholden to corporate money. Also in California, Kimberly Ellis, who ran for state Democratic chairman with the support of Sanders and lost in a close race to a former Hillary Clinton delegate, is refusing to concede and threatening to sue. Ellis told Adam Nagourney of the New York Times that the “Democratic Party is in many ways right now where the Republican Party was when the tea party took over.”

And that’s a good thing? Republican fratricide, instigated by tea- party purity police, made Trump possible and left the GOP unable to govern. This is what Sanders’s people would emulate.

Yes, it is a good thing. The tea party legacy has left the Republican Party in control of 36 governships, 66 of 99 state legislative bodies, the United States House of Representatives, the United States Senate, the Presidency, and a fifth or sixth reliable vote on the Supreme Court.

And one other thing it has done- left the GOP one Joe Manchin to Energy Secretary vote short of overturning the Affordable Care Act.

The Democratic Party didn't get here by advocating single-payer or even Medicare for All, which presumably would be a public-private mix approximating the current system for the elderly of Medicare plus the private Medicare Advantage. Insofar as health care has been an issue, Democrats have been routed by supporting an Affordable Care Act, whichis based on a proposal with a genesis in the conservative Heritage Foundation, later enacted in Massachusetts by GOP governor Mitt Romney.

It is a plan which was dubbed by Republicans- aware that President Obama was far less popular than polls indicated- as "Obamacare."  A program marginally better than the status quo empowered insurance companies to announce in October 2016- weeks before state and national elections- that their premiums would increase an average of 25% nationally.  (Happy Birthday, Hillary!)

The Republican "fraticide" cited by Milbank put the GOP within one vote of repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a health care program deeply unpopular with the American people. It would, further, be a mistake ever to count Mitch McConnell out, especially with speculation about Joe Manchin, whose seat would be filled by the Republican governor if Manchin leaves the Senate for the Department of Energy.

This "fraticide" has resulted in approval for the US Supreme Court of a far-right nominee. And were the same calamity to befall the Democratic Party, it would not yield as President a Democrat who has championed greed, racism, and sexual assault, publicly debated the size of his penis, claimed he was smarter than "the generals," boasted about his extreme wealth and intelligence, threatened to date his own daughter, and denied hero status to a prisoner of war because he was captured. Recall, too, that Donald Trump became president not by campaigning against left-wing Democrats but by running against a conventional, cautious, centrist Democrat, scourge of the "Bernie Bros,"  and  supporterof Barack Obama.

Significantly, Democrats now routinely acknowledge "we're not saingy Obamacare is perfect- it needs changes" because they realize the public realizes it is deeply flawed.  Reforming Obamacare is a marginal improvement upon the marginal improvement provided by the ACA.  Socialist Bernie Sanders isn't even advocating a pure single-payer system but instead "Medicare for All." With the popularity and proven effectiveness of our health services for the elderly, the least the Democratic Party should be able to do is to get behind a program calling for strengthening and extending Medicare.

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Not Much Enthusiasm For That

Charles Pierce isn't all right (although he's alright).  Slamming a column by The Washington Post's Dana Milbank criticizing what the latter believes has been President Obama's passive approach to Ferguson, Pierce argues "We should make him do things, not the other way around. That's been the fundamental challenge of him from the outset. He's left the hard and necessary work of self-government to a country that simply is no longer up to the job."

That's giving Obama a free pass, given that he is, after all, the President.  During a presidential nominating campaign characterized by little ideological difference, candidate of hope and change Barack Obama emphasized the importance of progressive effort from individuals such as Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., to which Senator Clinton responded "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights  Act. It took a president to get it done." Barack Obama had foreshadowed his "make me do  the right thing" approach to the presidency.

Milbank writes

The grand-jury decision not to charge the white police officer who killed an unarmed black teenager in Missouri has given Obama another opportunity to show strong and decisive presidential leadership. And, once again, Obama is using the bully pulpit like a 98-pound weakling. If any more chin-stroking goes on at this White House, the president’s advisers are going to have chafe marks on their jawbones....

Democratic lawmakers have privately expressed their wish that Obama go to Ferguson. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, preaching in Portland, Ore., on Sunday, said Obama should go to Ferguson, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Obama ally Deval Patrick, the Massachusetts governor, said on NBC that Obama “wants to go” to Ferguson but faces a “quandary” because of an ongoing Justice Department investigation.

Pierce responds

Jesus H. Christ On Human Growth Hormones, can we stop already with the wimp business? Thoughtfulness is not weakness. Prudence is not cowardice. The way I know this is that, for eight years, we were subject to the Leadership (!)tm of an ignoramus whose gut told him what to do, and his gut was even dumber than he was, and the whole country nearly fell apart. Given the choice between that and chin-stroking, I know which way I'm leaning....

Let those "Democratic lawmakers" show themselves or shut up. Let them go march in Ferguson. Nothing's stopping them. And would anyone like to guess what the reaction would be if the president went to Ferguson on the advice of Jesse Jackson? The president -- who did, as we have been endlessly reminded by the people who worked the hardest to sabotage his entire administration, promise to make us one country again -- doing the bidding of the Mayor of Hymietown? Marty Peretz would have a stroke.

And Marty Peretz, former neo-con publisher of The New Republic, is a Democrat.  By the time Republicans got through with Obama for taking Jesse Jackson up on his suggestion, they'd have half the country convinced Henry Louis Gates Jr. (he of the "beer summit," which photo is below)) and Reverend Jeremiah Wright are Barack Obama's gay parents. (O.K.; only Pierce can write like Pierce.)

Admit it. You knew it was coming- the national conversation on race thing. Milbank adds

They’re not going well, and Obama, by going to Ferguson and talking about Ferguson elsewhere around the country, could start the conversation about race we always talk about but never seem to have. The nation’s first black president is in a unique position to quell protests, but also to give voice to legitimate grievances about the justice system.

The only thing most conservatives want less than a conversation about race is an opinion about why we don't want a conversation on race.  It was that way when in the year after Senator Obama was elected President, Attorney General Holder noted "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been, and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”  

Five years later the sentiment remains, and Pierce responds to Milbank's reality-starved suggestion by commenting

In which Dana Milbank proves that the weather's lovely on the moons of Neptune, where he apparently has spent the past six years. Here's the simple truth. The country doesn't want a conversation on race, especially one led by the blah president whose simple legitimacy has been under assault since the moment his hand came off the Bible. The country doesn't want a conversation on race unless it is sure from the outset that white people will "win" it. The idea that the president could jump-start this conversation, let alone "give voice" to black people's complaints about (largely) white policemen who are killing them, and not be greeted with the shitstorm sharknado of all time, is so fantastical that it makes me wonder whether I even read Milbank correctly. Jon Stewart put together a helpful survey of the shitstorm already raging on the right, and that's while the president is only stroking his chin on the topic. If the president actually did what Milbank is suggesting, any conversation on race that might begin would quickly be drowned out by the din of the thousands of tiny hammers that fashion the ideas in Sean Hannity's skull. We're not having a serious conversation about race because, as a nation, we're a bunch of chickenshits who aren't interested in being citizens ourselves, let alone extending that title to people whom we consider less than we are.

The less honest conservatives argue we proved we have no race problem by electing a black president whom they didn't vote for and now want impeached. 

The more honest  conservatives are afraid of being called "racist" if  there is a discussion about race per se, and so speak around it, as in the push to suppress the votes of the people they have proven they have no bias against.  They play the victim enthusiastically but to be fair (and accurate), it is analogous to "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me." 

Recall that Milbank himself  maintains "The nation’s first black president is in a unique position to quell protests, but also to give voice to legitimate grievances about the justice system." The outcome is already decided.  The response of the black community of Ferguson constitutes "legitimate grievances about the justice system."  If Dana Milbank genuinely longed for a fair and open conversation about race, "legitimate grievances about the justice system and the dangers of policing in communities in which relationships with law enforcement are strained" would suggest at least a modicum of objectivity.  (Of course, most conservatives still would want no part of that discussion.)

As it happens- and whatever Obama's real views are about the controversy- that was largely the tone of the President's remarks after announcement that the grand jury had decided not to indict Officer Wilson.  Focused on the need to "make more progress," the President stated "there's never an excuse for violence.... but those who are only interested in focusing on the violence and just want the problem to go away need to recognize that we do have work to do here, and we shouldn't try to paper it over."    That is genuinely fair and balanced.

Attempting to stay positive, President Obama emphasized both preventing crime and "working to train officials so that law enforcement conducts itself in a way that is fair to everybody. "  He did not mention a need for an honest, national conversation on race. Alas, the constituency for that is distressingly small.

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When Sensitivities And Ego Collide

In a clash of egos and hurt feelings, the O'Reilly team and the Obama team went after each other on the interview GOP TV host and cable TV giant (literally) conducted with the President preceding Sunday's Super Bowl.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote

Along the way, he interrupted the president 42 times, by my count — although, given the amount O’Reilly spoke, it may be more accurate to say Obama was interrupting him. Sometimes he argued with Obama as though the president were a guest on “The O’Reilly Factor.” Of the 2,500 words uttered during the interview, O’Reilly spoke nearly 1,000 of them.

O'Reilly dutifully labeled Milbank "a weasel (who is) beneath contempt," although he added, so sincerely, "Whatever he says, doesn't bother me because I know where it's coming from."

Confronted by a Fox News reporter about her own reluctance to go head-to-head with O'Reilly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated "One of these days maybe I will. I was not pleased with the disrespect that he showed to the president, so that wasn’t a warmer upper."  The exquisitely sensitive Pelosi, who demands to be treated with respect, didn't explain what a "warmer upper" would be, other than to claim the disrespect "speaks for itself."   Bill O'Reilly is not sufficiently warm and fuzzy.

But the Speaker merely was following the script written by the President, which increasingly has been her role during the presidency of the man the California feminist chose over Hillary Clinton.  (She now is for Hillary Clinton. African-American president elected. Box checked.)  In the unedited interview (aired by Fox News the following evening), O'Reilly asked whether the President "thinks(s) I'm being unfair to you," to which Obama responded "Absolutely. Of course you have, Bill. But, I like you anyway."

But he is not likable, nor is he unfair, although  Bill O'Reilly certainly likes Bill O'Reilly and has extraordinary respect for him. Four days after the interview, the Fox News host revealed to Geraldo Rivera "I'm going to predict that that interview that I did is going to go down in journalistic history as what should be done.  It takes a certain skill to pose questions in a factual way and be persistent without being disrespectful."

Oh, please.  On Sunday, we heard the guy ask the President about the now-fixed healthcare.gov, the trumped-up scandal of Benghazi, and the phony scandal of the IRS (video, below, debunking the right's fantasies),  and the Super Bowl.  There was nothing about the minimum wage, the capture during the Obama administration by the top 1% of virtually all income gain, the outsourcing and offshoring of high-tech jobs, the role of fast-track trade authority (including the Trans-Pacific Partnership) in the economy, inequality at home and abroad,  Secretary of State Kerry's effort at securing a stable peace in the Mideast, nor any substantive issues.  Instead, O'Reilly lobbed softballs, albeit ones intended to roil the anger of his base.  And the Obama team whined.

It was telling that before O'Reilly's quick concluding question (about the upcoming game), the host muttered "They're cutting me off." Journalistic history? Jon Stewart said it best: "it's the Super Bow pre-show.  You've got to play the hits."











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The Texas Way



Karl Rove claims "If the President continues to make this outrageous charge- that his campaign had that Romney is guilty of felonious activity (and) committed a felony, that's a big mistake."    Dana Milbank writes 

We know the attack is working because Karl Rove says it isn’t. He called it a “big mistake” to suggest, as Obama aide Stephanie Cutter did, that Romney may have committed a felony in misleading the Securities and Exchange Commission. This, Turd Blossom told Fox News, is “gutter politics of the worst Chicago sort.”

Rove is well-qualified to weigh in on such matters, having presided over Bush’s 2004 campaign, during which opponent John Kerry was accused of lying about his war record — a rather more outrageous allegation than Cutter’s. Some of those who funded the attacks on Kerry are now bankrolling Rove’s assaults on Obama.

Whatever "Chicago politics" are (is?), Karl Rove knows how to do politics.    In an interview with PBS' Frontline shortly after the selection of George W. Bush as president, "The Architect" author Wayne Slater summarized the way of Rove:

What they really show is the beginning of a long pattern of behavior by Karl Rove. In every campaign after that, what you see with Rove is the same kind of thing: You see some series of events that attack an opponent, really not simply on the merits of issues, but in some dirty trick way. This was an opening. This was the first salvo. This was the beginning of the Rove approach. "The mark of Rove" is what some people call it. When Rove gets involved in a campaign, the opponent is going to get smeared in a bad way, and most likely, Rove's candidate will win.

Painting a war hero as a near-traitor in 2004 was only one instance.     In George W. Bush's successful effort to replace Ann Richards as governor of Texas

Karl Rove understood that and strategically, as part of his memos and his arrangements and his campaign strategy, tried to win support [for Bush] from East Texans on conservative values that they felt were important. At the same time that the campaign was very publicly involved in trying to woo these historically Democrat voters from traditionally conservative East Texas, there emerged a whisper campaign, a virulent and obviously orchestrated whisper campaign in East Texas. I would go from place to place in East Texas, I would go from business to business, and I can remember talking to people about the race, Ann Richards, George Bush, and invariably someone would say: "But what about the lesbians? What about the lesbians?"

It was a message that swept East Texas, a message that many people in that community, a largely Baptist community, felt that Ann Richards had embraced lesbians and homosexuals in a way that they did not accept; that she had appointed them to boards and commissions, as she had, in the governor's office; that she had, in fact, had them around on her campaign staff, and the intimation was that she herself, even though she was a divorced woman with four children, might be a lesbian. Very effective campaign.

Rove himself was extraordinarily careful, in all my conversations with him and in conversations with others in the media, to make sure that he was not directly tied to that orchestrated campaign. What we know is that the campaign was orchestrated and very, very effective. Everywhere you went people were talking about it. Phone calls were made. Bush supporters and Bush surrogates were talking about it in a very effective way. In no case could I ever find anyone who said, "Karl Rove told me to do this." But in every case, what I found was a duplication of the exact pattern of every Rove race: that Rove's opponent is attacked, often by a surrogate or anonymous group, whisper campaigns, direct mail pieces or other kinds of personal attacks, in a way that Rove can't be directly seen with his fingerprints, but that Rove's candidate benefits from. It's a pattern not just once or twice, but I've seen it throughout the last two decades. …

And few can- or at least should- forget the compassionate conservatism of the Bush-Rove campaign for the GOP presidential nomination four years earlier, in which

What happened was, you begin first to see the emergence of a so-called military group on the stairs of an event where Bush attended that [would] attack John McCain on the issue of Vietnam. In fact, what they did was suggest that John McCain was not good on the issues of prisoners of war, that he was not really the war hero that he seemed to be. It was sort of the beginning chink in the armor of John McCain among these very conservative, patriotic, Republican South Carolinians. The other message of this early surrogate group was that John McCain might be crazy, that the experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam might actually work against McCain because it had left him psychologically with a short fuse and maybe not the kind of person that we want to have in office.

It was followed up by … some surrogates sending virulent telephone calls against John McCain and his wife, leaving messages that suggested that John McCain's wife had a drug problem -- she had battled it [Editor's Note: a dependency on prescriptive drugs] and was fighting that -- and also that he and his wife had a black child, which was a dynamite message, especially among some racist voters in this conservative state. In fact, what McCain and his wife had was an adopted child from a Mother Theresa orphanage. But it didn't make any difference, because the surrogates were out there turning the screws on John McCain as a person whose personal life made him unacceptable as a candidate, at the same time that the candidate George Bush was attacking McCain on the perfectly appropriate policy issues that you would see in the campaign.

McCain believed that Bush was behind it. The model was exactly the same that you saw again and again and again in a campaign run by Karl Rove. And although Rove denied any involvement, the outcome was the same: surrogates and groups who supported Bush attacking the opponent in his personal life. Bush was successful and ultimately won that campaign. [But] the relationship between John McCain and George Bush was not very good for months, even years afterwards.

There are other examples of sleazy campaign tactics utilized by Karl Rove, once of Utah but a resident and operative in Texas for many years since he relocated.    My personal favorite is one involving more speculation, wherein the tie to Rove is, admittedly, more questionable.   In 1986, incumbent governor Mark White was leading Republican challenger Bill Clements in a rematch of the gubernatorial race won by the Democrat four years earlier.     The Clements campaign then hired a security firm, Knight Diversified Services Inc., to perform an electronic sweep of the Austin offices of one Karl Rove, an aide to the challenger.    On October 5, two of the company's private detectives found a bug hidden behind a needlepoint of a framed elephant, the symbol of the Gas and Oil Party.

In the resulting outcry, the campaign turned around and Rove's client, Bill Clements, turned White out of office.The FBI initially cleared the campaign operatives of both candidates and eventually focused attention on the two individuals who found the device.     No charges ever ensued and speculation in the following years properly has focused on the individual in whose office the device was found, and whose employer's fortunes dramatically improved after the incident.

Rove knows that Cutter never contended "that Romney is guilty of felonious activity" or "committed a felony," rather that if he was "misrepresenting his position" in filings with the SEC he would have been committing a felony.    But the history of the GOP's most accomplished operative history suggests he knows also that as a major campaign official, Cutter should not have raised the issue, at least as directly.   It is simply not Rovian:  gossip and innuendo are more effective because no one can charge definitively that a candidate, or his spokesman, was responsible.    There are no fingerprints.    It may not be how they do it in Chicago, but it's the way Karl Rove did it in Texas and the way he knows it should be done.





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Twisted Thinking

Washington Post syndicated columnist Dana Milbank believes President Obama should heed the draft proposal of the co-chairmen of The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. He cites vague statements of Republican Representatives Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Jeb Hensarling of Texas and Dave Camp of Michigan, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and concludes "In those statements are the contours of a deal Obama could strike with Republican lawmakers such as Ryan, the incoming House budget chairman."

What would that bold, joint statement of Ryan, Camp, and Hensarling be?

This is a provocative proposal, and while we have concerns with some of their specifics, we commend the co-chairs for advancing the debate. We will continue to work toward solutions that help spur economic growth and restrain the explosive growth of government spending.

That means nothing. But for a Republican Party which has argued, incomprehensibly, that only tax cuts are consistent with economic growth, it might mean: No tax increases. On anyone. For any reason. Ever.

Courageously, Coburn remarked "If we do the cuts, I'll go for it. We may have to go for some revenues at some point."

We may have to. At some point. Perhaps when hell freezes over. Maybe then.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce commented "any solution will require commitment and sacrifice on both the spending and revenue fronts." Presumably, the Chamber would support the proposed cuts in Social Security and Medicare, student loans, and the Veterans Administration medical system, as well as revenue increases by raising fees for entering national parks and eliminating the mortgage interest tax deduction. Coupled with its aggressive promotion of the offshoring of American jobs, it is an effective program to squash the middle class.

But for Milbank, "the possible results" of cooperation with the Chamber and other political enemies "must be tempting: a balanced budget, a shrinking federal debt, a long-overdue rewrite of the tax code, improving Medicare and Social Security solvency in the long run, and easing health-care costs." First, however, Obama might want to clear that with the Chamber's chief lobbyist, who has vowed to block the agenda of the President, who "is going to have to operate differently." Or with its President, who confidently warns the White House "they are in the second inning" of their battles with its organization.

But if Milbank is right, "The political benefits could be equally enormous: taking over the main issue of the Tea Party and building a good relationship with business." Still, Bloomberg News reports, "the Standard & Poor's Index has risen more than 43 percent since Obama was inaugurated in January 2009 and corporate profits have rebounded almost to the pre-recession peak reached in 2006." And the response from the sector he "could build a good relationship with" if he were just a little more centrist?

Investors are evenly split over their overall impression of the president, though 62 percent of those in the U.S. view him negatively. Worldwide, 63 percent of all respondents say his policies are detrimental to the U.S. investment climate.....

The president gets little credit from investors for measures he oversaw to rescue the economy, including the continuation of a bailout of the financial industry begun under President George W. Bush, an expansion of the help for U.S. auto companies and the enactment of an $814 billion stimulus package. Only 1 of 6 investors says the Obama administration’s policies have been primarily responsible for the performance of the stock market or economy.

Milbank also criticizes congressional leaders because

Democrats in the House are set to keep the same three leaders - Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn - who led them to their historic wipeout. This is the preschool-soccer theory of accountability: Nobody keeps score and everybody gets a trophy. The fallen House speaker seems to speak for a number of her colleagues when she says she has "no regrets" about the past two years.

It is easy to criticize the leadership of Congress, traditionally a very unpopular branch of government. But if the Democratic Party really were to effect the removal from his position their leader most responsible for this "historic wipeout," Joseph Biden soon would be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States.

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And Now, For The Question Actually Posed

Call it bad blood between Dana Milbank and Nico Pitney, jealous rivalry between traditional media and the blogosphere, a fight between old media and new media, or the male equivalent of a "cat fight." Or call it just good, clean fun between two credible and accomplished journalists. Either way, the dustup between Milbank and Pitney on Sunday's Reliable Sources on CNN can now be brought to your living room, bedroom, family room, or office (or anywhere you have a laptop) via the miracle of youtube (video below).

Here is the transcript of the discussion, which, for some odd reason, tangentially included townhall.com's Amanda Carpenter:

KURTZ: A presidential news conference usually proceeds from the AP reporter, to the network correspondents, to the major newspaper writers. But President Obama set off plenty of chatter at this week's presser by giving the second question to a "Huffington Post" blogger. It wasn't just the selection of Nico Pitney -- Obama has called on "The Huffington Post" before -- but the way the president seemed to invite a particular question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Nico, I know that you and across the Internet we've been seeing a lo of reports coming directly out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet.

Do you have a question?

PITNEY: Yes, I did. But I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian.

"Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad..."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: All right.

Nico Pitney, you said the White House notified you that you would probably get a question at the news conference. Everyone assumes what we just saw was orchestrated.

PITNEY: No. From beginning to end, there was no planning involved. I was the one who posted that I was going to be soliciting -- that I was soliciting questions from Iranians. I chose the question.

The reason President Obama made that comment is because he was trying to make a point that he was taking a question from an Iranian. And it's interesting that Dana, of all people, wrote this column very negatively. I mean, this is a person, Dana, who, when he had a chance to ask Obama a question, he approached him in the hall during the campaign and asked him not one, but multiple questions about how he looked in a bathing suit.

I mean, that to me is pathetic, and I would -- you couldn't stage manage me into that, Dana.

MILBANK: Well, Nico has some -- evidently, some very interesting things to do.

What I have never done in my life, Howie, is worked in collusion with an administration, whether it's this one or another one. I believe that whether it's Nico Pitney, with "The Huffington Post," or whether it's Carl Cameron, with Fox News, the White House should not be calling somebody the night before saying, we are going to call on you if you ask a question on a particular subject asked in a certain way.

PITNEY: But I was... MILBANK: Nico, the night before, sent out an e-mail to his colleagues -- "Some big news. The White House called earlier this evening and asked if I could ask a question of President Obama at his press conference tomorrow on behalf of an Iranian. I'm about to post a solicitation to the blog Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. It seems fairly like that this will happen, but as they told me, this is not 100 percent."

PITNEY: This is exactly as I described it. I posted an initial solicitation.

MILBANK: At the request of the White House.

PITNEY: No.

MILBANK: No, it says right here in your e-mail that that's what you did.

PITNEY: No, it doesn't. In fact, it's exactly what I wrote...

MILBANK: "I'm about to post a solicitation to the blog Facebook, Twitter," after hearing from the White House.

PITNEY: Facebook, Twitter, exactly. So, my solicitation was merely over e-mail.

When I found out that the White House was going to potentially take this question, I went to a Farsi language social network site, to Twitter using a Farsi message, to Facebook. I tried to -- if I was going to have that opportunity, I was going to canvass as many Iranians as possible.

MILBANK: That's fine.

PITNEY: So it is -- and, you know, for -- this is someone -- Dana's column...

KURTZ: Do you think there's some jealousy involved by maybe the establishment in the fact that you got that very prominent second question?

PITNEY: Oh, I mean, I think it's jealousy. I think it's hypocrisy.

You know, Dana wrote a column, as his colleague at "The Washington Post," Greg Sargent, pointed out, hailing the "Mission Accomplished" banner moment in May, 2003, the day after.

MILBANK: What?

PITNEY: I mean, it's...

MILBANK: Look, there's plenty of fiction here, but I brought some other -- shall we go through the record here, Nico?

PITNEY: Go through what record? MILBANK: Your Web site was complaining about I was not holding the Bush White House to account. I'd like to say that here's a full list of documentation of me holding the Bush White House to account.

PITNEY: Well, I'm not sure where...

MILBANK: Your colleagues at "The Huffington Post."

Let's pose -- can we just pose one question, Nico? If the White House called up Fox News and said, "Major Garrett, we will call on you tomorrow if you ask a question about health care, and you ask it in a certain way?" Would you say that's OK?

PITNEY: They didn't say in a certain way. See, this is dishonest. And it's been dishonesty and errors from the beginning.

Your initial piece on this posted an hour after the press conference, had two errors, which you acknowledged to me an e-mail. You said you had corrected them. It took seven hours.

MILBANK: Is that right, Nico?

PITNEY: And the signal is you are very quick to malign and very slow to correct.

MILBANK: Look, Howie, I can't deal with fiction on this show. I mean...

KURTZ: All right. I'm going to -- you two are going to have to take this outside, because I want to get Amanda Carpenter in.

Does any of this smell like collusion to you?

CARPENTER: Well, I can tell you from -- I hear a number of claims from the right side of the issue on this, and they say that Nico is a person who worked on Democratic campaigns, then went on to go work for the Center for American Progress, where he ran a very partisan blog called "Thing Progress," and then was asked by the White House to ask those questions. So he's not -- I mean, the question was fair.

KURTZ: Well, I don't think he's not denying that you have left of center views.

PITNEY: No. I mean, I think the question is the quality of the question.

CARPENTER: But the concern from the right side of things is...

PITNEY: Jeff Gannon asked softballs. I asked a legitimate question.

CARPENTER: I'm not saying you did anything wrong, but I think the administration calling you beforehand, thinking that you are probably going to ask something sympathetic, escorting you to the front of the press room, to then ask a question in a place where everyone should get a fair crack at the president, is unfair.

PITNEY: I mean, the question, again...

KURTZ: It was a legitimate question. Let's make that clear.

PITNEY: It was a legitimate question. Sure.

(CROSSTALK)

PITNEY: It was be a strange conspiracy, considering Obama dodged the question.

KURTZ: Well, there's no guarantee you get an answer.

There is a long, and less than honorable, tradition of presidents trying to manipulate the media, perhaps none more so than Barack Obama's immediate predecessor. And if Pitney were going to be granted a question, obviously it would be about Iran. Nevertheless, he was not told to "ask a question on a particular subject asked in a certain way" (emphasis mine). And as a blogger at crooksandliars.com has explained:

Just to put this into perspective, think about this. Nico Pitney has spent the last two weeks tirelessly developing sources from inside Iran, aggregating every relevant story available on the internet through every available form of the new communication technology and synthesizing one of the most most difficult and important foreign policy stories of the decade.

But Pitney, at the end, made the most relevant point, noting "it was a strange conspiracy, considering Obama dodged the question."

If you hadn't heard the actual question asked by The Huffington Post's Pitney, you would have thought the question was a gimme (Republican chairman Limbaugh: "And here of course is Obama's scripted response."). But Obama did, in fact, wisely dodge the question, stating (responding, to be generous):

Well, look, we didn't have international observers on the ground. We can't say definitively what exactly happened at polling places throughout the country. What we know is that a sizeable percentage of the Iranian people themselves, spanning Iranian society, consider this election illegitimate. It's not an isolated instance, a little grumbling here or there. There is significant questions about the legitimacy of the election.

And so, ultimately, the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, not in the eyes of the United States. And that's why I've been very clear: Ultimately, this is up to the Iranian people to decide who their leadership is going to be and the structure of their government.

What we can do is to say unequivocally that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with peaceful dissent, that spans cultures, spans borders, and what we've been seeing over the Internet and what we've been seeing in news reports violates those norms and violates those principles.

I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.

Huh? What was that all about? Not the question, for sure, which Obama would have addressed if he- or any President- had safely been able to. Clearly (not a description of the reply, to be sure), it would be hard to imagine a more difficult question for a President to answer. Which is probably why Pitney answered it- and should be praised, alongside whatever Iranian gave him the question.




But more importantly- is Pitney related to this guy? Or this guy?