Truth - Al Franken [58]
Late, late that night, Tom DeLay’s House of Representatives passed the same bill 203–58. All that was needed now for the bill to gain the force of law was the signature of the President of the United States. But he wasn’t in Washington. He was in Crawford. There were only two legal ways for the President to sign the bill. Either the bill had to go to the President—boring!—or the President could go to the bill.1
This time, unlike after the tsunami, the President felt the need to make a symbolic statement to show the Schindlers and their supporters that he felt their pain. And so, cutting a precious vacation short for the first and, he hoped, the last time, Mr. Bush went to Washington.
The President immediately received plaudits for his political canniness. Richard Cizik, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, explained why: “Look, this is a symbolic move, for sure. It’s his willingness to interrupt his vacation to make a statement.” Cizik said it “would have been acceptable” for Bush to sign the bill at his ranch, “but this President seizes opportunities when they come his way. That’s what makes him a good politician.”
Richard Cizik and George W. Bush weren’t the only Washington power players who thought the Schiavo bill was great politics. So did Brian Darling, the author of an unsigned memo that had circulated the previous week among Republicans on the Senate floor. “This is a great political issue,” Darling wrote anonymously. “This is a tough issue for Democrats.” And just as importantly, it would satisfy the holders of the infamous chits. “The pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.”
Though the pro-life base did indeed find the issue “exciting,” it quickly became apparent that most other Americans found it “disgusting.” In a CBS News poll taken March 21 and 22, 82 percent of Americans thought that Congress and the President “should stay out of” the Schiavo matter, while only 13 percent said they should be involved.
Also, only 13 percent of Americans thought that “Congress passed this bill because they really care about what happens in this case,” while 74 percent thought that they passed it “to advance a political agenda.” A mysterious 1 percent answered “neither.” Oh, and in that same poll, 26 percent of respondents said they thought of themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians. So, at best, the Republicans were getting just half of the evangelicals on this one.
That poll must have been a shock to those in Washington who had shared Brian Darling’s assessment of the political dividends to be had in exploiting the Schiavo tragedy. What had seemed like a sure bet was coming up snake eyes. It was time to kick up some dust.
Target number one: Brian Darling’s anonymous memo. It must have been news stories about the memo, not the frantic Congressional posturing and Bush’s midnight flight, that convinced Americans that Congress was just advancing a political agenda. And so, logically, the memo must have been a hoax.
Right-wing bloggers kicked it off. PowerLineBlog.com, which TIME magazine had dubbed “Blog of the Year” for its role in bringing down Dan Rather, attacked the memo’s authenticity under the suggestive headline: “IS THIS THE BIGGEST HOAX SINCE THE 60 MINUTES STORY?” As evidence, PowerLine’s John Hinderaker assembled these shocking revelations:
The memo wasn’t signed.
The memo wasn’t on official letterhead.
The memo mixed talking points (“this legislation ensures that individuals like Terri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy”) and strategy points (“Senator Nelson of Florida has already refused to become a co-sponsor”).
See? Had to be a Democratic dirty trick. In fact, Hinderaker wrote,
It does not sound like something written by a conservative; it sounds like a liberal fantasy of how conservatives talk. . . . What conservative would write that the case of a woman condemned to death by starvation is “a great political issue”?
That was a good question.