ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MAY 31, 2004
WASHINGTON - - During the last election, I went down to Austin, Texas, to talk to the top people in the George Bush campaign and ask them what they had to do to win.
They were well aware that Bush had a somewhat modest record in public office (he had been elected to two terms as governor of Texas), but they were confident they could get past that.
They talked about a “bar of competency” that Bush had to get over in the minds of the public. Once he cleared that bar, they said, once he proved himself competent to be president, then his other qualities and his positions would carry the day: His desire to unite rather than to divide people, his compassionate conservatism, his promises of tax cuts and educational reform, etc.
The Bush campaign felt that the debates with Al Gore did boost Bush over the bar (even though Bush lost by more than 500,000 popular votes in the election) and that in any case the terrible events of Sept. 11 and Bush’s effective handling of them put the competency issue to rest forever.
Which meant that the Bush re-election campaign would be about strength, not competency.
Bush, an incumbent, war-time president, would ask the question, directly and indirectly, “Who is strong enough to fight world terrorism?” and “Who is strong enough to protect the Homeland from those who would attempt to destroy us?”
Those behind the Bush campaign felt this was a winning formula. Nobody could stand toe-to-toe with George Bush on strength. He had protected us before and he would protect us again. Nobody had his record.
Then came the Iraq war. It went very well. We defeated the Iraqi army decisively and once again Bush looked strong and decisive.
But then came the occupation of Iraq and things began to fall apart.
It has now become clear that the administration wildly miscalculated how popular an American occupation would be with the Iraqi people, how the Iraqi army might be needed to maintain order and the role of the militias in a post-war Iraq.
As American deaths mounted, other questions began to be asked: What was our plan? What was our definition of victory? How were we going to get other nations to come and fight in Iraq? What kind of government could we create that the Iraqis would accept? And, most importantly, how were we going to get our troops home?
George Bush was supposed to be a “CEO-style” president, who assembled a team of good people, and let them do their job. But his team that planned the Iraq occupation seemed to have let everyone down very badly, while Bush maintained little oversight or control.
And, almost overnight, the Bush re-election campaign became about competency.
Sure the United States had the strength to invade other nations, but did it do so for competent reasons? (Where were those huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was supposed to have, by the way?) Were we competent in our planning? Did we have a plan at all? And now that 135,000 U.S. troops were committed to Iraq, did we have a realistic, competent plan to bring them home?
Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, does not have a position on the war that is significantly different than Bush’s: Like Bush, Kerry believes we cannot “cut and run” and that we must stay in Iraq until an effective government is established and troops from other nations can be persuaded to replace our troops.
But who is more competent to do this? Kerry asks. Who, for instance, is more likely to have success in persuading foreign countries to come to our aid? George Bush, who seemed to spurn international alliances before Sept. 11 or John Kerry?
Protecting the American homeland, too, has become a question of competence.
Attorney General John Ashcroft goes on television to announce a dire threat to the United States from terrorists, but then Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who had not been consulted, goes on television to say the threat “was not the most disturbing I have seen during the last couple of years.”
This raises the issue of competency.
And this is the issue that George Bush does not want raised.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MAY 26, 2004
WASHINGTON - - Political campaigns spend millions and millions of dollars on political commercials.
Most people contribute to political campaigns for altruistic reasons: they want to improve their community, their nation, their world. I wonder how many people would give, however, if campaigns were more honest in their solicitations and said, “Please give us your dough so we can buy TV ads with it.”
As I have written before, campaigns think ads have magical powers to sway our minds.
And it is now conventional wisdom in political circles that George Bush’s first wave of negative political ads damaged John Kerry’s poll standings and that Kerry’s response with his own ads has now boosted him.
But according to a new poll by Advertising Age magazine, that conventional wisdom is nonsense. Virtually nobody, the magazine says, is influenced by political ads.
“More than half the consumers queried in a new Advertising Age poll conducted by Lightspeed International Research said the blitz of presidential campaign ads had not influenced them,” writes Ad Age’s Ira Teinowitz this week, “and in total, 92% said the ads had not swayed them to change their prospective votes.”
The poll was conducted among 1,653 respondents nationally who had actually seen ads for both Bush and Kerry. The polls also breaks out results for eight battleground states. And guess what? “In those states, which are carrying the bulk of the presidential hopefuls' advertising, both candidates' ads are viewed as even less persuasive (only 17% found Mr. Bush's "very persuasive" vs. 8% for Mr. Kerry),” the polls says.
Other findings include:
- - “The majority, 60%, of national respondents said Mr. Bush's ads aren't focusing on issues they care about, and even more, 69%, said Mr. Kerry's ads don't address issues they care about.
- - “A full 88% of national respondents said the ads have not changed their opinion about key issues in the race, although domestic issues such as employment and the economy have been more affected than issues such as the Iraq war, education or abortion.
- - “To no one's surprise, two out of three respondents -- regardless of state or party -- view political ads for the presidential race overall as too negative. And that could work against the candidates, as one-third of respondents said a candidate's negative ads -- rather than sway them to vote for that candidate -- may actually influence them to avoid voting for them.” (Campaigns simply do not believe this, however. They believe that even though people say they hate negative ads, they are swayed by them nonetheless.)
- - “Even though the election is a little over five months away, already 55% of respondents believe there is too much political advertising.”
But there is going to be more, much more, political advertising to come.
I must point out that another poll, also just released, disagrees with the notion that political advertising doesn’t really work magic.
A poll released Wednesday says: “Since John Kerry began showing positive biographical television ads about himself in early May, he appears to have reversed a slide in public impressions of him in the battleground states, the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey shows.”
“Polling cannot prove what causes changes like these,” said Adam Clymer, political director of the survey, “but the most likely cause of Kerry’s boost is the impact of his advertising in these states. Nationally, there has been no real change in his favorable-unfavorable balance, but where the ads have been intense, there has been a change.”
Well, maybe the ads could be the reason. But couldn’t there be another reason?
Kerry has also been intensely campaigning in the battleground states. So couldn’t actual campaigning, in which candidates go out and meet voters in the flesh and give speeches, and get covered by local media, which have much more credibility than political ads, account for Kerry’s improved poll standings?
I realize this is heresy. Because if campaigning by the candidate rather than expensive ads really were the critical factor in elections, then what would campaigns spend all that money on?
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MAY 24, 2004
WASHINGTON - - John Kerry is floating the idea that he will go to the Democratic convention in Boston at the end of July, but will not accept the nomination so he can have an extra month or so to spend money on campaign commercials and avoid federal spending limits.
Let me say right now, I do not believe this will ever happen because some ideas are just too dumb even for politics.
Let me count the ways this idea is too dumb:
1. If Kerry does not accept the nomination at his convention, how will he get anybody to watch it? The damn things are dull enough, but a convention without the presidential candidate accepting? Who would tune in to watch such a thing? And by giving up their audience, the Democrats will give up tons of free publicity.
And even among Democratic party stalwarts, how many will want to go to Boston in late July to experience traffic jams and security delays without the pay-off of an acceptance speech to boost their spirits and rally them for the fall campaign to come?
And where does this leave the vice presidential candidate? Does he or she also delay accepting the nomination? And give up one of the biggest viewing audiences he or she may ever get?
2. According to one expert, Kerry can expect a 14-point bounce in the polls following his convention. If that sounds too high remember that Michael Dukakis left his convention in 1988 some 17 percentage points ahead of George H.W. Bush (and then Dukakis squandered that lead by going back to Boston and playing governor, the only job he ever really wanted.)
In other words, by refusing to accept the nomination, Kerry risks giving up a huge poll bounce and all the psychological advantages that go with it.
3. And what does Kerry get in return? He gets to spend millions of more dollars on TV commercials…in August. August! Watch a lot of political commercials in August do you? In fact, let me ask a more basic question: Do you ever watch political commercials?
Campaign gurus believe in TV commercials even more than they believe in their own candidates for two reasons: First, commercials are totally controllable. When candidates are left to their own devices and give speeches, hold town hall meetings, conduct press conferences or engage in debates, anything can happen.
But you can control each frame of a commercial. You choose the words, the pictures, the music, the background, the mood, etc. Why risk having the candidate go out and screw things up, when you can just run several million dollars worth of ads that are perfectly honed to your specific (and usually very dull) message?
Second, and this is even less pleasant, a variety of people on campaigns make their money from the commercial ad buys. They get a percentage of the money that is spent on putting the commercials on the air and this can mean millions of dollars for them. This is a bad system, which encourages the over-buying of ads, few of which are ever really watched by actual human beings.
4. If Kerry does not give his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, how will he get anybody to watch him when he does give it? There are only two moments before Election Day when large numbers of people actually focus on the presidential campaign: the conventions and the debates.
I don’t care if Kerry gives his acceptance speech naked in the middle of Fenway Park in September, he will never get the audience he would have gotten at the convention in July.
The Kerry campaign wizards tried to get cute once before: They had Kerry make his presidential announcement speech in South Carolina (pretty far from his home state of Massachusetts) in front of an aircraft carrier. Kerry went on to lose South Carolina - - one of the few primary states he did lose - - by 15 percentage points.
5. In talking to many voters over the last year, I have never heard a single one say they wanted more political maneuvering from the candidates. I have heard many say they wanted to hear a little inspiration.
So which is John Kerry prepared to deliver in July?
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MAY 19, 2004
WASHINGTON - - It was called the “McCain Swoon” and referred to how the usually cynical, nasty, scorched-earth political press of America simply fell in love with John McCain during his presidential campaign in 2000.
It was very hard not to. He was not only frank and friendly, he also spent virtually all his time with reporters, answering any question we asked.
Maintaining “message control” - - an obsession of modern campaigning - - simply did not exist on the McCain bus.
McCain was the message and nobody controlled him. Not even McCain.
The press could not help loving this and the swoon was real at least among some reporters. Even the fact that McCain was a conservative often got passed over in the press coverage.
During the 2000 campaign, at a dinner with the editors and reporters of U.S. News & World Report, I said to McCain: "Anecdotal evidence -- what we call reporting -- suggests to me that many of the independents and even Democrats who are supporting you in New Hampshire have no idea how really conservative you are."
"Done a hell of a job fooling them, haven't we?" McCain said.
We all laughed.
Nobody was disturbed more by the McCain swoon than his primary opponent, George W. Bush. After McCain stomped Bush by an incredible 18 percentage points in New Hampshire, Bush was on the ropes and had to win South Carolina.
It was in South Carolina that I asked Bush whether he thought there was a press conspiracy to boost McCain at his expense.
"I don't think there is any plot; I hope there isn't," Bush said, “but it's an amazing phenomenon, I'll tell you that. It's like the flap over the foreign leader deal. A guy gets up and quizzes me - - it's my fault for trying to answer - - but John McCain says something about the ‘ambassador to Czechoslovakia.’ Well, I know there is no Czechoslovakia [it's the Czech Republic], but yet it didn't make the nightly national news. I'm not going to gripe about it, but the media question is starting to pop up."
While McCain’s eventually lost in 2000, he became the rarest of political phenomena: a person whose stature is actually enhanced by engaging in a losing presidential campaign.
He is one of the most popular figures in politics today, which has led to a new McCain swoon: The continuing speculation that McCain will become John Kerry’s running mate, even though McCain says he absolutely won’t. (There is also some doubt that a majority the delegates to the Democratic National Convention would nominate McCain, regardless of Kerry’s wishes.)
But I must admit it would be wonderful to have McCain back on the road again. And to show why, I reprint an actual transcript of a typical afternoon on the McCain bus. All the significant questions had been asked (several times) and now we were engaging in what we really enjoyed, a “lightning round” with McCain.
“Favorite word,” a reporter asks him.
“Principle,” he says.
“Favorite dead hero.”
"Uh, Julius Caesar."
“Favorite dead hero within the last 2,000 years.”
"OK, off the top of my head, Lincoln. Although the more I read and study, the more intrigued I am by Teddy Roosevelt,” he says.
“Favorite living hero, non-sports.”
"Colin Powell, served his country, a wonderful man,” says McCain.
“Favorite ice cream.”
"Blackberry."
“What kind of tree would you like to be?” (I have to admit I think I asked him this, but I was joking.)
"Cottonwood," McCain answers seriously. "They are really lovely. And when the wind goes through them it makes a beautiful sound and they are really beautiful. They grow all over Arizona where there's water.”
“They're about the only trees that grow in Arizona, aren't they?”
“Sycamores grow there,” he says. (This is a guy who knows his trees.)
“Favorite TV series.”
“Seinfeld, but I generally watch CNN, Discovery, A&E or the History Channel.”
“Favorite book?”
“For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
“Favorite music.”
“Fifties and Sixties rock and roll.”
“Favorite lazy-day activity.”
“Going to a sporting event.”
“Alternate career choice.”
“Foreign service.”
“Childhood nickname.”
“Johnny.”
“First car.”
“1958 Corvette.”
“First job.”
“Newspaper delivery boy.”
“Favorite comic strip.”
“Doonesbury.”
“Favorite junk food.”
“Doughnuts.”
“Worst habit.”
“Coffee.”
“Favorite toothpaste.”
“Listerine.”
“Listerine makes toothpaste?” a reporter asks.
“Uh, Colgate,” McCain answers.
“Mousse or gel?”
“Spray.”
“Favorite album.”
“ ‘Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!’ by Frank Sinatra.”
“Favorite song.”
“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”
“Favorite breakfast cereal.”
“Raisin Bran.”
“That’s George W. Bush’s favorite, too!” a reporter says.
“Can I change to corn flakes?” McCain says.
We all laugh.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MAY 17, 2004
WASHINGTON - - Think the race between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry is going to be close? Been hearing a lot about a 50-50 nation? Think the red and blue states are going to grapple and grunt and groan and give us another nail-biter on Election Night?
Nah. Not gonna happen. This race is going to be a blowout, a tsunami, a Krakatoa. At least that is the hottest new theory that has been occupying the chattering classes for weeks now.
“The most likely outcome of this race is a landslide victory for John Kerry,” says Chuck Todd, editor-in-chief of the nonpartisan political briefing, The Hotline. “The second most likely outcome is a landslide victory for George Bush. The least likely outcome is a close race.”
Doug Sosnik, Bill Clinton’s political director during his 1996 re-election campaign, says: “I don’t think this race will be close.” And while he is not yet “100 percent certain” who will win, he does say, “The numbers for President Bush show him in grave danger.”
Tony Quinn, co-editor of the California Target Book, a nonpartisan political publication, says that maybe the experts who have been telling us how divided the nation is “are all wrong and this will be a blowout election that could go in either direction.”
And the Wall Street Journal reported last week that campaign operatives are bracing for “a race that breaks decisively one way or another.”
Wait, it gets better. We won’t even have to wait until November to find out which way things are breaking! According to Sosnik “the next 90 days will determine the outcome of the election.” But how about all those stories you’ve been reading about how this election “is going down to the wire” and will be determined in the final days before Nov. 2? Nah, again. “The least important phase of this election,” Sosnik says, “will be the last 14 days.”
True, there are those who disagree, primarily Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush re-election campaign, who says, “I am not frigging Jean Dixon and I don’t bend spoons, but given the nature of the country I don’t think there is going to be a landslide either in the popular vote or the Electoral College.”
But Chuck Todd bases his landslide theory on the history of recent elections: In the last 25 years, incumbent presidents have either won or lost by large margins in the Electoral College. In 1980, Jimmy Carter lost to Ronald Reagan 49 to 489. In 1984, Reagan beat Walter Mondale 525 to 13. In 1992, George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton 168 to 370 and in 1996, Clinton beat Bob Dole 379 to 159.
In other words, when it comes to casting a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down on their incumbent presidents, Americans are usually not that divided.
“I don’t think whether you are re-hiring a president or re-hiring a plumber, your thought process is that much different,” says Sosnik. “You ask what kind of job did he do last time and that decides whether he will be re-hired. When you are three and a half years into a president’s four-year term, people have pretty much made up their minds about what kind of job the president has done.”
Further, those who believe the election will be a blow-out point not just to history, but to the special nature of this election. “In 2000 the electorate was erratic because it was not a nationalized election,” Todd says. “But this time the question is not about who invented the Internet, but who invented the Iraq war.”
Sosnik believes this will be an historic election in which voters will want to send a message. “The people have not spoken since Sept. 11 on the direction in which they want the country to go,” he says. “At times like this, people want a decisive course, they want to deliver a mandate. Besides, Bush’s actions are so aggressive, so muscular that the dynamic middle of the country will choose a course either for Bush or for his opponent.”
But what signs do we watch for (since waiting for Election Day itself is just too, too boring?) In this, Sosnik, a Democrat, and Dowd, a Republican, agree: the best indicator on how an incumbent president will do on Election Day is his approval rating.
Two weeks ago, Dowd told me, “The incumbent president usually gets a vote right at his approval rating. If we are at a 51-52 approval (on Election Day), we will win by 1 or 2 points.”
But when Dowd said that, Bush had a Gallup approval rating of 52 percent. Last week, that figure fell to 46 percent, the lowest of the Bush presidency.
“For an incumbent to be at 46 percent job approval at this point in an election year has historically always spelled defeat” for presidents since 1950, Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, said.
And a Pew Research Center poll released last week showed even lower numbers for Bush, with his approval at just 44 percent.
Still, whether this election is going to be decided soon or not until November, whether it will be a runaway or a deadlock, Matthew Dowd has advice for everybody on how to handle it when the dust settles.
“Don’t dance in the end zone,” he says, “and don’t cry in your beer.”
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MAY 12, 2004
WASHINGTON - - I can’t remember the last time Bill Clinton sent me an e-mail.
No, wait, I can remember.
It was: Never.
I do remember the last communication of any kind that we had.
It was in 1998 when Clinton was wrestling with the Monica Lewinsky affair and impeachment and I was a White House correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.
So our last exchange was probably something like:
ME: “Mr. President! Mr. President! Mr. President!”
CLINTON: (to Secret Service agent) “Have that one killed.”
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I awoke this Wednesday, checked my BlackBerry (isn’t that what everybody does as soon as he awakes?) and saw there was a message from the former president.
And in the subject field were the words: “We can’t rest now.”
I didn’t recall having ever rested with Clinton, so I knew he was not turning down a specific request of mine. But I was curious.
I knew that Clinton had just finished his autobiography, that it would be published in June and that it was reportedly 900 pages long.
A word about 900-page books: Ouch!
That is the sound they make when they fall on your foot.
If you have small children, pets, or Ross Perot around your house, you have to make very sure that you do not keep Bill Clinton’s new book on a high shelf where it could fall off and squish somebody or something.
How big is a 900-page book? Well, Amazon.com is selling a very nice King James version of The Holy Bible, both Old and New Testaments, and it has only 796 pages.
On the other hand, Clinton’s book might cover more ground.
Its first printing will reportedly be 1.5 million copies, which is a whole bunch of books.
I have written four books and the total sales for all four of them amounts to somewhat fewer than 1.5 million copies.
Clinton also got a reported $10-12 million to write the book, which means the publisher was betting that Clinton would write a lot more about sex than about Social Security and the environment. (I’ll bet the publisher loses that bet.)
The book will be titled: “Hillary’s Husband: Bad As I Wanna Be.”
No, I am making that up. The book has the somewhat more mundane title: “My Life.”
According to Amazon, the publisher is going to charge $35 per copy, but you can get one from Amazon for $21. It is already their No. 4 bestseller and it hasn’t come off the presses yet.
As the short title might indicate, Clinton finds writing a painful process.
Tuesday, he gave a speech at a fundraiser during which he said, “For three months I have done nothing but try to finish the story of my life. That was hard enough to live the first time.”
Everybody laughed.
"I've got to finish the book," Clinton went on. "I need my life back."
And if I lived Bill Clinton’s life, I would want it back, too.
In any case, he is clearly done with his book and now has time to send me deeply personal e-mails.
“Dear Roger,” he began, which I thought was a promising beginning. “ ‘Good for you. Now get back to work.’ ”
This stopped me cold. I did not understand it at all. I should get back to work? I have been at work. Where has Clinton been except writing books at $10-12 million a pop?
“Should we be proud of the extraordinary grassroots accomplishments of John Kerry's campaign so far?” Clinton went on. “Of course, we should. But, if we're serious about winning, we've got to realize that the true test of our commitment is ahead of us, not behind us.”
Wait a second, I thought to myself. Maybe this wasn’t a personal message from Bill Clinton after all!
“In fact, it's staring us right in the face,” Clinton went on. “We knew that the Republican attack machine was going to come after John Kerry hard. But, I have to say, even I have been surprised by how vicious they've been.”
At this point, I knew the e-mail had been written by somebody other than Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton has never been surprised by anything in his life (except getting caught - - and that happened only once.)
“Let's fight back,” the e-mail went on. Then it invited me to contribute to the Kerry campaign.
I was crushed. This was not a personal e-mail after all. It was just another political campaign solicitation masquerading as a warm and personal note.
Only at the bottom of the e-mail, did the Clinton personality shine through:
“Please,” the e-mail said, “do not reply to this message.”
No problem.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MAY 10, 2004
SIMON SAYS:
It is really a toss-up which is more stressful: work or vacation.
If you don't believe that four-leaf clovers are luckier than rabbits' feet, just ask any rabbit.
Like Katharine Hepburn, Charlotte Rampling will never lose her beauty.
If you own a laptop or a BlackBerry, you must always have a paperclip close by to reset them if they need it. Pencil points do not work (and might be bad for the device) and forget about pen points. Since I do not always follow my own advice, I have had to awaken sleepy hotel desk clerks at 2 a.m. to demand they search their desks for paperclips. We live in a world in which high-tech devices require low-tech rescues.
“Dinner for Five” on the Independent Film Channel is hypnotically watchable.
Anyone who has never gone to an auction is missing a lot of fun. (On the other hand, if you scratch your head at the wrong moment, you might end up having to pay for a Renoir.)
Is it true the Supreme Court is planning Casual Fridays?
Somebody explain it to me: We’re the only side with airplanes, we’re the only side with helicopters, we’re the only side with tanks, we're the only side with artillery and we’re the only side with ultra-sophisticated surveillance systems. So how come guys armed only with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades are giving us such a hard time in Iraq?
I can't believe it: The waiter in the Jackrabbit Slim's scene in “Pulp Fiction” is Steve Buscemi.
My favorite quotation from Mary McGrory: “I have always felt a little sorry for people who didn't work for newspapers.”
Although I am not one of them, many people judge other people by their shoes.
Green is a very good color for spring. I wonder who came up with it.
What is the proper etiquette when someone next to you on a plane begins to snore?
Razors now have up to four blades per cartridge and toothbrushes have bigger handles and more bristles. So how come toilet paper is still the same size?
When is the last time you asked anybody for his fax number?
Is it still OK to say, “My bad”? I didn't think so.
Am I the only person who believes that any doctor who performs surgery for “The Swan” should lose his medical license forever?
Paperback pick of the month: “Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: Aug. 27, 1883.”
Is there anybody who doesn't love a sun shower?
Leave it to British Prime Minister Tony Blair to put it best about the Iraq prisoner torture photos: “We went to Iraq to get rid of that sort of thing, not to do it.”
At the same time, President Bush was saying, “Because we acted, torture rooms are closed, rape rooms no longer exist.” Right.
Guys lose interest when their charcoal grill is replaced with a gas grill. Guys like to make fires.
Can we stop saying, “Let's think outside the box”? Saying that has become so inside the box.
Line of the year from former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders speaking about Bill Clinton: “If he'd been my husband, I would have pinched his head off and told God he'd died.”
Some hotel chains have figured out that guests want good beds. And some have figured out that they like nice bathrooms. So when is some hotel chain going to figure out that guests would like a little SOUNDPROOFING?
There is nothing that makes a worse first impression than a limp handshake.
I have never seen a rug shop actually go out of business.
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MAY 5, 2004
WASHINGTON - - It was not front page news any place in America when a federal appeals court ruled last week that John Demjanjuk should be stripped of his U.S. citizenship because he was a guard in a Nazi death camp.
Demjanjuk used to be big news, but no more. Which is a shame. Though Demjanjuk is 84 and probably wishes nothing more than to live out his last years in relative obscurity, this is something he does not deserve.
Demjanjuk, born in Ukraine, used to be called Ivan the Terrible by those prosecuting him, but it was discovered some years ago that, in reality, he is merely Ivan the Unspeakable, Ivan the Reprehensible, and Ivan the Despicable.
The Israeli Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that there was “reasonable doubt” that Demjanjuk was Ivan the Terrible, an infamous Nazi guard at the Treblinka death camp.
Demjanjuk , a former Cleveland auto worker, entered the United States in 1952, became a citizen in 1958, was stripped of that citizenship in1981 and was sent to Israel for trial in 1986. There he was convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death, a sentence that was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.
After being released from an Israeli prison, he returned to the Cleveland area.
The United States government could have let the matter drop, but it didn’t. Neal Sher didn’t.
In 1993, Sher headed the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which hunts Nazis. It is often a tedious, unrewarding job consisting of poring over old documents and checking immigration records.
But it is also the kind of job that affects you, that changes you, that doesn't let you go.
"I have been reading about this story for years, and it is never put in the proper perspective," Sher told me. "Demjanjuk was not just a guard in one of the concentration' camps, as terrible as those were. He was a guard in the murder factories.
"In two years, one and half million men, women and children were murdered in these camps. Within two hours after reaching the camps, most were killed. There was no slave labor, no work. They were herded by the Ukrainian guards and slaughtered."
And there is no doubt, not a shred, Sher said, that Demjanjuk was one of those guards.
“People sometimes ask, `Why are you going after some simple camp guard?,' ”Sher said. "It is necessary to understand that Demjanjuk was no simple guard. Demjanjuk went to Sobibor death camp and participated in the extermination process. The evidence tying Demjanjuk to Sobibor is ironclad. And service at any concentration or death camp renders someone inadmissible to enter the United States."
The decision by the Israeli Supreme Court stated there was evidence that Demjanjuk was a member of the SS, served in one death camp (Sobibor) and two concentration camps (Flossenberg and Regensburg) and held a job "whose purpose was murder and whose object was genocide and whose like is unknown in the history of humanity."
The court also found, however, that "reasonable doubt" existed that Demjanjuk was the "Ivan the Terrible" of the Treblinka death camp and that while Israel could try him for his other crimes, it was "unreasonable" to do so after keeping him for more than seven years in an Israeli prison.
"Let us make no mistake," Sher said, "he was acquitted only on the grounds of being Ivan the Terrible at Treblinka. To have served at Sobibor makes him no less terrible than to have served at Treblinka. The Ivans at Sobibor were Ivans the Terrible, too.”
"If you were in an auto plant in Cleveland, you built cars for a living," Sher
said. "When you worked at Sobibor, you killed Jews for a living."
So the U.S. government continued its case against Demjanjuk, affording him the full due process of law.
"Compare the due process Demjanjuk got to the due process the little kids at Sobibor got," Sher said. "I can't help thinking of the little kids. The little kids who were dragged and beaten and killed by the likes of Demjanjuk."
Last week, a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. government has proven through “clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence” that Demjanjuk should be stripped of his citizenship.
A family spokesman said Demjanjuk would challenge the court’s ruling.
Gregory A. White, U.S. Attorney in Cleveland, said: "Demjanjuk is one of the most seriously implicated Nazi persecutors to be found in the United States, and the court's decision is a critical step in the government's effort to secure a measure of justice in this case.”
Federal prosecutors will seek deportation for Demjanjuk.
But this raises a problem: What country on earth would take him?
ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MAY 3, 2004
WASHINGTON - - Matthew Dowd, 42, works in an anonymous, red-brick high-rise in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, a building that bears no hint on the outside that it houses the George W. Bush re-election campaign on the inside.
Through the glass doors there is the usual security - - friendly guards with large sidearms - - and bevies of young and earnest campaign workers dressed in strict business attire: ties knotted, slacks pressed. With the exception, that is, of Matthew Dowd.
Dowd is the campaign’s chief strategist and he is dressed this day as if he were about to attend a picnic. He is wearing a dark, shapeless sweater and dark washpants. He can’t wait for the election to be over so he can get back to his home in Austin, Texas, and he seems to be dressing in anticipation of that day.
He is sitting in a small, windowless conference room that has a smiling, color picture of Laura Bush on one wall and a whiteboard that is scrawled with an unintelligible formula, no doubt for a Bush victory on Nov. 2, on the other.
“The long-term outlook is good,” Dowd says. “We’ve made it harder for Kerry to convey a message about the president to the public. They want to drive our approval down. But we’ve cut his net positives in half.”
This is the world that Dowd lives in, the world of political polling: approval ratings, favorable/unfavorable ratings and right-tracks/wrong-tracks.
Both campaigns seek not just to define their own candidate, but to define their opponent. From the Bush campaign’s point of view it goes something like: The president is a strong, wartime leader, who will safeguard the economy and the homeland and John Kerry is a flip-flopper, a waffler and a liar.
Just as the Bush campaign succeeded to a certain extent in portraying Al Gore as a fabricator in 2000 (Did he really invent the Internet?), it now believes it is succeeding in portraying Kerry the same way.
The importance of this is obvious: If you can’t believe Kerry about his Vietnam service (Did he really throw away his medals?) then you can’t believe him about George W. Bush, either.
“Voters filter out what Kerry says about the president, because they don’t trust Kerry,” Dowd says.
While Dowd is quick to not take full credit for this - - “Kerry has done a lot to himself,” he says, “saying and doing things then re-enforce negative preconceptions” - - there is no doubt the Bush campaign has played a role in shaping a public perceptions about Kerry.
Yet it is hard to detect any air of great exuberance when one talks to Bush’s people. They believe he will win, but nobody is predicting a landslide. Unless you re-define landslide.
“A 4-5 point victory on Election Day would be a landslide for the kind of country we are in today,” Dowd says.“If the election were held today, it would be a Bush victory by a couple of points, 51-49.”
The Democrats say this is nonsense and point to a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, in which only 36 percent of those interviewed believed the country was on the right track while 55 percent believed it was on the wrong track.
Dowd is not worried by this, however. He has his own polls. And his own strategy. “The race is close and will remain close due to the divided and polarized nature of the country,” he says. “You will get 45-46 percent of the vote no matter what you are for or against. This is not like the Reagan years when you had 20 percent of the vote you could move. Today, there is about 8 percent you can move. Our range is very small. We have two goals: Motivate our base on Election Day and get a share of the swing vote.”
Though just who makes up the swing vote in America is a matter of some disagreement, Dowd identifies it as three groups: Suburban married working women; younger working-class males; and Hispanics.
He expects these groups to swing back and forth as the months proceed - - giving Kerry a boost in the polls after the Democratic National Convention in late July and then giving Bush a boost after the Republican National Convention in late August. “Then it is 60 days to the finish,” he says. (“I have 10 brothers and sisters and they split about the way the country does,” Dowd, a former Democrat, once said. “On any given day it is 50-50.”)
The number that Dowd watches closely is the president’s job approval rating. “The incumbent president usually gets a vote right at his approval rating,” Dowd says. “If we are at a 51-52 approval (on Election Day), we will win by 1 or 2 points. If the president is at a 49 percent approval, he will get 50 percent of the vote, especially with a third-party candidate in the race.”
The most recent Gallup Poll shows Bush with a 52 percent approval rating, the ABC News/Washington Post poll has him at 51 percent, the Pew Research Center poll has him at 48 percent and the CBS New/New York Times poll released last week has him at 46 percent. As the Times explained, however, “In statistical terms, these are virtually the same.”
Which ought to keep things interesting. So interesting, in fact, might we not have another election where the winner is not known weeks after Election Day?
“We are all watching that,” Dowd says. “Closely.”