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Category: Politics
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America’s ruling families
We’ve come to expect political dynasties. They’re a fact of life in the U.S., perhaps even more than royal succession is in the modern UK.
The 2008 presidential campaign is the first since 1952 without a sitting president or vice president. An entire generation has grown up thinking the race for the White House requires the presence of a Bush or a Clinton.
Even beyond the obvious – the Bushes, Kennedys, Rockefellers, Roosevelts and Adamses – many American clans have passed the political baton from one generation to the next.
In recent decades, Hendrik Hertzberg writes in the New Yorker, the “dynastic dynamic” has accelerated.
The presidential field includes not only Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of a former president, but Mitt Romney, son of a former governor of Michigan. Hertzberg notes that there are currently five U.S. senators whose fathers preceded them in the Senate. A prominent example in the House is Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose father was a member of Congress and the mayor of Baltimore.
Such connections yield intriguing Muckety maps. One of our favorites was created by the marriage of Howard Baker and Nancy Kassebaum, which linked not only their separate Senate careers, but the legacy of Kassebaum’s father, former Kansas Gov. Alf Landon, and Baker’s former father-in-law, Sen. Everett Dirksen.
Political dynasties tend to overlap with the business and media spheres. (Think Maria Shriver.) After Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs died in an airplane crash, he was succeeded by his wife, Lindy. One daughter, Barbara Boggs Sigmund, was mayor of Princeton, N.J., before dying of cancer. Another, Cokie Roberts, is a correspondent for ABC and NPR, and the wife of journalist Steven Roberts. A son, Thomas Hale Boggs Jr., is a powerful Washington lobbyist.
Offspring of the powerful can learn from their parents’ example and their parents’ mistakes. Or can they choose not to learn at all. Hertzberg’s column closes with an observation on George W. Bush:
“Bush’s failure to learn much of anything for the past six years suggests a deficit of character, not of experience; his unwillingness to employ his father’s skills and advice on behalf of the nation shows a disrespectful disregard for a dynast’s biggest advantage. He has given both freshness and family a bad name.”
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Kay Bailey Hutchison Protects Oil Interests
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Colbert Vote Skyrockets
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Veco Corruption Trial Begins
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Times concedes error with Moveon.org ad
The New York Times is backing down – somewhat – on a controversial ad placed by the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org that infuriated conservatives.
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Under the headline “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” the full-page ad contended that the American commander in Iraq was “constantly at war with the facts” in giving upbeat assessments of progress and refusing to acknowledge that Iraq is “mired in an unwinnable religious civil war … Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.”
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But on Sunday, the New York Times admitted it “made a mistake” by charging MoveOn a discount rate to run the ad. Some conservative groups had criticized the Times for playing favorites with MoveOn by charging the lower price.
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The lower rate of $64,575 is normally reserved for ads that can be placed at any time – a standby rate – but MoveOn had requested a specific date for the ad to run. The Times said it should have charged $142,083 for running the ad on that specific date, and that it would collect the difference from MoveOn.
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Did the Times violate its own ethics rules by running the ad in the first place?
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Yes, according to Clark Hoyt, the newspaper’s public editor. “The ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability policy that says: ‘We do not accept advertising that is gratuitously offensive on a personal nature,’ ” Hoyt wrote in the Times on Sunday.
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“Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was ‘rough,’ he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s performance of his official duties,” Hoyt added.
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The Times public editor wasn’t the only critic of the ad. Conservatives were outraged and flooded the Times with complaints. President Bush called the ad disgusting and Vice President Dick Cheney called it “an outrage,” and even the Democratic-controlled Senate overwhelmingly condemned the ad in a 72-25 vote.
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But even under this assault, MoveOn.org isn’t backing down. It was still promoting the “General Betray Us” ad on its home page Monday. “We are very happy that the Times has revealed this mistake for the first time, and while we believe that the $142,083 rate is exorbitant, we will pay it,” the group said in statement.
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On the web
\nBetraying Its Own Best Interests – New York Times
\nMoveon.org press release – PR Newswire -
Why Ray Hunt is So Powerful
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Blackwater’s protective web
Blackwater USA, the State Department’s largest private security contractor, is under siege on several fronts.
Iraq’s state minister for national security affairs announced today that the firm would face criminal charges for the fatal shootings of Iraqi citizens. Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C., is also under investigation on the home front.
But a tight web of political and business connections helps shield the company from the most formidable of attacks.
Erik Prince, the former Navy SEAL who founded Blackwater in 1996, is a major contributor to the GOP. Federal Election Commission records show that he has given more than $200,000 to Republican committees and candidates in the last decade.
His sister, Betsy DeVos, is the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party and wife of Amway co-founder Dick DeVos, unsuccessful candidate for governor.
Prince is also on the board of Christian Freedom International, a nonprofit whose aim is to help persecuted Christians around the world. Fellow board members include former Sen. Don Nickles and former Swiss ambassador Faith Whittlesey.
The group’s president, Jim Jacobson, was a policy analyst with the Reagan White House. Its vice chairman, Paul Behrends, was a partner in the once-powerful lobbyist firm, Alexander Strategy Group, which represented Blackwater. The group closed shop in January 2006, citing unfavorable publicity from its ties to Jack Abramoff.
Blackwater’s vice chairman, Cofer Black, is former director of counterterrorism for the CIA and also a top adviser to the Mitt Romney presidential campaign.
Officers of Blackwater’s parent company, Prince Group, include Joseph Schmitz, former inspector general of the Defense Department and the son of a congressman. (An irrelevant but interesting connection here: Schmitz’s sister is Mary Kay LeTourneau, the former school teacher who was prosecuted and imprisoned for having sex with an underaged student. The two were married after her release in 2004.)
Blackwater resumed guarding American diplomatic convoys in Iraq on Friday, after Iraqi officials backed away from plans to expel the company. The Iraq ministry said Blackwater guards had fired on a Baghdad square without provocation, killing 11 people.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has ordered a review of security practices in the wake of the shootings. Federal prosecutors also are investigating whether company employees illegally smuggled weapons into Iraq.
On the web:
Iraq Probe of U.S. Security Firm Grows – Washington Post -
Mark Warner Running for Senate
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New School Touched by Hsu Scandal
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