Reader Elmer sends "The Insider" column from today's Corning Leader [pdf]. Bob Rolfe, the retired Leader editor who writes the twice-weekly column, says he'll vote for Massa mainly because of his position on the war in Iraq.
If you're not sick of reading about last week's protests and the "packing" comment, I have three observations to make. They're behind the jump to spare those who can't stand to hear another word.
Fights about dumb remarks occupy far too much bandwidth in today's political media.
Randy Kuhl's "packing" remark barely rose to Michael Kinsley's definition of a gaffe: "when a politician tells the truth -- or, more precisely, when he or she accidentally reveals something truthful about what is going on in his or her head." Kuhl's remark was more of a dumb, offhand comment, one which might have gone unnoticed in a friendly gathering, but not when he was on the record.
The ensuing controversy was essentially political theater, which is often a contest over who's more offended. Kuhl was offended that the D&C would print his comment "out of context". His opponent was offended by the "gansta rap" term.
The real reason that so much time is spent on dumb comments like these isn't hurt feelings. Reporters and partisans have decided that a few dumb comments, or perhaps a dumb stunt, is enough to end the career of a politician. Recent examples include Howard Dean, and perhaps, Mitt Romney. But that's a presidential race, not a race for Congress where most of Kuhl's constituents have known him for 20 years. Residents of the 29th have already formed a more durable impression of Kuhl, one that can probably withstand a few dumb remarks.
So follows my second observation:
Portraying Randy Kuhl as a bad, bad man won't lead to his defeat.
Every time Kuhl says something dumb, which isn't that often, a legion of partisans resurrect every bad fact we know about Kuhl, and draw outrageous conclusions about him as a person. These conclusions fly in the face of the facts: Kuhl may be a flawed person (as are we all), but he's not crazy, and he's a hard worker.
Kuhl is active in his district, has an almost-perfect attendance record, and has a long history in the Southern Tier. If he's going to be beaten, it won't be because of his personal history, which everyone has processed, nor will it be from a couple of dumb comments. Kuhl's going to have to be beaten on lack of responsiveness on substantial issues.
If you want to see what a lazy, crazy Member of Congress looks like, take a look at Barbara Cubin. Babs likes to make racist remarks, threatened to slap her wheelchair-bound opponent after a debate, and missed more votes this session than a Congresswoman who died in April. Cubin is the kind of disaster that Democrats wish for. Kuhl isn't, and viewing him as such is a dangerous miscalculation.
Since Kuhl will be beat on issues and responsiveness, let's move on to the most important point:
The whole "security" controversy is the transparent attempt to change the subject from our security to Kuhl's.
Kuhl's "packing" comment garnered all the attention, but even if he hadn't said it, he still would be guilty of dragging a security red herring into the discussion about opposition to the war.
Kuhl portrayed the protesters as outsiders with "rap sheets". I've been in contact with one of the protesters. Here's his "rap sheet":
1) violation trespassing - for locking myself in my church's bell tower with another guy and ringing the bell in mourning for the dead, when the war first began.
2) Rounded up by the capital police in DC last September, along with various priests, pastors, nuns, monks, and people of faith, as we made our way to the Senate office building. I paid fifty bucks and was released without being charged with a crime.
3) This latest one is being called criminal trespassing.
These are not life-endangering offenses. There may be some threat to Kuhl's office, but it doesn't come from a bunch of pacifists who live in the district or around nearby Cayuga Lake.
The reason Kuhl tried to change the subject to his security is because he's arguably made the rest of us less secure. Right before coming home last week, Kuhl was on the wrong side of another symbolic though damaging vote on HR 3159. That bill mandates reasonable deployment periods for soldiers and reservists. Kuhl's colleague Jim Walsh (NY-25), who's also facing a tough election, voted for the bill, because he knows political dynamite when he sees it.
This bill is about the true security issue facing our country. The Iraq war is wearing out our ground forces, and inflicting long-term damage on our military. Recruiting is way down, even after standards have been lowered. If we are really facing a "long war", we might well lack the military capacity to fight it.
The protest arrests gave Kuhl a convenient excuse to change the subject, but at some point he'll have to address the damage done by the war, and that's a daunting issue for a man whose party is supposed to be best at keeping us safe.
Reader Elmer sends links to coverage of yesterday's Dresser-Rand strike rally in the Elmira Star-Gazette and Corning Leader. Eric Massa was one of the speakers at that rally.
Granolabox has photos and video of an anti-war protest by ministers in Watkins Glen on Thursday. The protest announcement was an item in the Star-Gazette, but is protest itself didn't get any mainstream media coverage that I saw.
Nine-year-old Alison Kimball of Big Flats went to Washington to lobby Senators Schumer and Clinton, and Representative Kuhl. Alison is an insulin-dependent diabetic and she wants Congress to re-authorize the Special Diabetes program, which provides $150 million a year in research funding. The reauthorization would increase that amount to $200 million per year.
For those of you who want to check up on Alison's bill, it's HR 2762 in the House and S 1494 in the Senate. It's in committee in both houses.
Earlier this week, I got another robo-call from the "Campaign to Defend America," which is part of Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, one of the sponsors of the recent protests. Like the call I received last month, it mentions a specific vote and tells me to call Kuhl's Bath office:
Hello, this is the Campaign to Defend America. I'm John Brunhn. I'm an combat Iraqi veteran. Last week, Congressman Randy Kuhl voted against giving our brave soldiers in Iraq rest time with their families, even after 15 months of combat and multiple combat tours. Call Congressman Kuhl at 607-776-9142. Tell him to stand up to Dick Cheney and Halliburton. Our soldiers deserve time with their families and should not be forgotten in this endless Iraq civil war.
The bill in question is HR 3159, which mandates that deployments of active-duty troops to combat can't occur unless the unit has had a period of rest at least as long as the last deployment. It also prohibits deployment of reserve units if the unit has been deployed during the last three years. The bill allows the president to waive the restriction in case of national emergency, and it permits individual service members to volunteer for early deployment.
The bill passed the house on almost party-line vote and is now in the Senate. Randy Kuhl voted against the bill. James Walsh in neighboring NY-25 was one of the few Republicans to vote for it.
The Democrat and Chronicle's new editorial blames the whole "packing" controversy on blogs taking comments out of context. Their new line is that the context of the comment was new security measures at the Capitol, not protests.
My message to the D&C: what you wrote couldn't have been clearer. Here is the whole paragraph, which had the heading "Protesters":
Kuhl said that he wasn't at his offices when the protesters in Bath and Fairport were there. When I asked him if he had ever protested, he said "Yes, when I walked off the floor in Congress recently." I asked if that means he thinks the protesters have a right to do so and he again said "yes, just not over the line." He said that the types of protests have caused him to rethink security at his offices and that means securing doors. He said they are "more protective now" and that he "thought about packing."
The context of protests was provided by the D&C, not the "blogosphere". According to the D&C, we were supposed to "check the facts with the editors and reporters at the meeting. Or with Kuhl himself." That line is a laughable desertion of basic journalism by the supposed paper of record for Monroe County. If you want to be considered a "professional journalist", you need to report what's said in an interview correctly. There are no "facts" to be checked other than those generated by the D&C itself.
Speaking of facts, here are a few: the "packing" remark was reported on the D&C's blog at 1:12 PM on Tuesday by an editorial board member. It was followed by two posts by D&C reporters, including the editorial page editor. If the remark was out of context, it could have been corrected by them then. Wednesday morning's editorial said the following (emphasis mine):
Kuhl said, not in jest, that he has thought of arming himself, given the perception — not accurate, he said — that he is an inflexible supporter of President Bush's approach to the Iraq war.
This watered-down paragraph is less clear about the context of Kuhl's remark, but it leaves the impression that the reason Kuhl wants to pack has to do with opposition to the war, not heightened Capitol security.
It was not until Wednesday afternoon, at 1:45 to be precise, that Tom Tobin decided that Kuhl's remark was "a casual reply". His colleague, James Lawrence, wrote this at 2:38 p.m.:
But I believe Kuhl wanted to make the point that he was concerned about personal safety and that of staff at his district offices in the aftermath of demonstrations there by anti-war activists.
Today's editorial called it "friendly banter" and re-cast the context of the remark as Capitol security. Who knows what the D&C's next version of the story will be, but I'll bet we haven't heard the last from them on this topic. It appears that they'll say anything after feeling a little heat from readers and Rep. Kuhl.
The proper way to address a mistake, if that's what the D&C believes they made, is to publish a correction. The unprofessional and cowardly way to deal with a mistake is to blame it on others. Today, the D&C took the latter route.
Reader Elmer sends an Iraq story [pdf] from today's Corning Leader, based on Kuhl's meeting at the Leader on Wednesday. This is the most in-depth coverage of Kuhl's views on the war that I've seen to date. He sets out three factors that he's considering: the Petraeus report, progress toward an Iraqi government, and the economic condition of the country.
Rochesterturning found some in-depth coverage of Kuhl's "packing" comment on the Sleuth blog at the Washington Post.
Reader Elmer sends a link to the Star-Gazette, which reports that Eric Massa will appear at a rally for striking Dresser-Rand employees Saturday. The Massa campaign has also announced that he'll be featured on Air America radio tomorrow morning at 7 a.m.
In Kuhl coverage, I missed a story in today's Democrat and Chronicle by one of their editorial board members.
Randy Kuhl's interview with the Corning Leader is worth a good read by anyone who's planning the next anti-war demonstration. In that article, Kuhl makes the protesters, who came from a few miles out of the district, sound like dangerous outside agitators, and blames them for an increase in security at the Bath office.
I think it's pretty clear that the only risk to Kuhl's staff from the bunch who occupied his office was nasal irritation from the scent of patchouli, or perhaps a splitting headache. (If you don't believe me, take a look at the Messenger-Post video of the Fairport office sit-in.) Nevertheless, this bit of negative publicity was easily avoided, if the protesters would have displayed a little bit of flexibility in their planning.
I'll bet that a good number of the protesters in Bath were from the district, but none of them wanted to be arrested. Apparently only the "outsiders" longed to be cuffed and booked, and when that wish was granted, their hometowns (and rap sheets) became public record. The only reason we've been spared the identity of the Fairport protesters is because they were "tricked" into not getting arrested.
Where is this need for an arrest as the outcome of a protest coming from? Chapter 3, page 12 of the super-groovy protest handbook? I'll bet that the protest would have gotten every bit as much publicity if the arrests hadn't occurred. Instead, now we have Kuhl making an issue of tactics instead of substance. I'm sure he would have tried that in any case, but the protesters made it so very easy.
Reader Elmer sends the Elmira Star-Gazette coverage of Randy Kuhl's visit with its editorial board yesterday. Kuhl's take on the surge comes off as a bit more lukewarm in this round of questioning.
"I'm very skeptical of the surge. I know that sooner or later, we have to bring our men and women home," said Kuhl, R-Hammondsport.In other news, Kuhl and Kirsten Gillibrand (NY-20) reportedly share the front cover of the Farm Bureau newspaper in tribute for their work on this year's farm bill.
Update: Elmer also sent the front page [pdf] of today's Corning Leader. Here's the jump [pdf]. That story all about upgrades to security at Kuhl's office in Bath.
First a sit in, now the preachers: Kuhl will be getting the word from a set of ministers at a protest in Watkins Glen tomorrow.
Also, the D&C editorial blog is backpedaling furiously about Kuhl's "packing" comments. (Thanks to Rochesterturning for bothering to read that blog, which has no feed.)