Al’s ballot blues

Florida relaxed its standards two years ago and the resulting flood of presidential candidates may have cost Gore the election.

By Eric Boehlert

Topics:2000 Elections, Al Gore

They called themselves Floridians for Fair Elections. Made up of grass-roots activists from Common Cause, the Libertarian Party, the Reform Party and the Green Party, the coalition formed in the late ’90s in an effort to ease access to the state’s overly restrictive ballot. Bureaucratic hurdles and high filing fees, they argued, made it almost impossible for non-Republicans or non-Democrats to run effective races in Florida.

Two years ago their ballot access initiative passed with more than 60 percent support among Florida voters. Overnight, Florida’s ballot went from being perhaps the hardest in the country to get on for third-party presidential candidates to being by far the easiest.

The unintended consequences, however, were on display this past Election Day, the state’s first major polling event since the initiative passed. There, ballots suddenly crowded with nearly a dozen presidential candidates created widespread voter confusion in some counties using punch-card ballots. That bafflement translated into tens of thousands of nullified votes, votes most likely intended for Vice President Al Gore. Plus, there’s little question that if it hadn’t been for the state’s newly relaxed ballot standards, Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, who siphoned off tens of thousands of votes from Gore in Florida, wouldn’t even have been on the state’s ballot.

In other words, Florida’s feel-good ballot access initiative may well have cost Gore the presidency.

Known as Revision 11, the ballot access push was sponsored in 1998 by Florida’s unique Constitution Revision Commission. Made up of 37 appointed members, the CRC convenes once every 20 years, holding public meetings and weighing possible amendments to the state’s Constitution.

Lobbied by Floridians for Fair Elections, who found no support for reform among the state’s elected officials, CRC adopted the push for equal ballot access. “It took an end run around the legislature to do it,” says Daniel Walker, a leading Florida Libertarian Party member.

Florida’s fierce opposition to third parties dates back to 1928, when ballot confusion helped the Communist Party grab 2 percent of the presidential vote, its best showing in the entire country. Instead of reforming the ballot, an embarrassed Florida essentially eliminated all procedures for third-party candidates to get on the ballot, according to Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News. In 1970, the state’s Supreme Court softened the law some, but Florida still remained hostile toward candidates outside the Republican or Democratic parties.

Revision 11 changed all that. But in a quirk, the Florida legislature, while codifying the ballot amendment language into law, made it far easier for third-party candidates running for president to get on the ballot than those running for local or state office.

According to Revision 11, the legislature simply had to make certain that “Independents and candidates of minor parties would have to be allowed on the ballot on the same conditions as Republicans and Democrats.”

This language still allowed the legislature to impose significant restrictions — which it didn’t do. “It didn’t follow logically that Florida had to suddenly become the easiest state [for presidential candidates] just because of Revision 11,” says Winger. For instance, he says, the state could have required parties to have at least 1,000 registered members in Florida.

Instead, the guidelines merely required that presidential candidates be from “nationally recognized” parties, have a national convention, certify to the state its nominee and produce a list of 25 electors who would vote for its candidate if he or she won the state. No filing fee or petitions were required.

“It’s very, very easy,” says Winger, who says the hardest part of the process for Workers World Party nominee Monica Moorehead was finding 25 adults in Florida who were registered party members who would agree to be listed as potential electors. She eventually did.

So did nine others. Florida’s ballot for president last week included 10 candidates, as well as a space for a write-in. The parties represented included the Constitution Party of Florida, the Natural Law Party and the Florida Socialist Worker’s Party — not to be confused with another entrant, the Socialist Party of Florida.

The crowded field surprised even some Revision 11 supporters. “I thought there would be five or six candidates at the most,” says Lisa Bullion, the chairwoman of Florida’s Libertarian Party. “Nobody envisioned that many candidates on this year’s ballot.”

Without Revision 11, it’s doubtful most people would have envisioned Nader on Florida’s ballot. Based on the state’s previous, more stringent requirements, Nader would have had to get signatures from 82,000 registered Florida voters in order to secure a spot on Election Day. By comparison, Nader failed this year to get on North Carolina’s ballot, where he needed 51,000 signatures, and Georgia’s, where he needed 39,000. In ’96, running as a write-in candidate in Florida, Nader won just 4,096 votes.

In September, county supervisors of elections across the state were given the final slate of accepted presidential candidates. As they began to design their local ballots, supervisors in punch-card counties knew right away they had a problem on their hands. How to fit all the names and party affiliations on an 8-by-4-inch punch card? Solutions: Cram them onto one page, spread them out over two or use, as Palm Beach County did, the infamous “butterfly ballot.”

“Revision 11 spelled the end of punch-card ballots,” says Pam Iorio, supervisor of elections in Hillsborough County, in the Tampa metropolitan area. “We didn’t know it at the time because ballot design was not front and center when the amendment passed. But I knew it when we started laying out the ballot for the 2000 election. We’ve never had a presidential ballot as long as we had last week, and it was a challenge to punch-card counties.”

Seventeen of Florida’s 67 counties, including the state’s five largest, use the antiquated punch-card system. Why? It will cost a county the size of Hillsborough $10 million to switch to a new tabulating system.

Iorio stuck with a traditional, single-card ballot design, but was not happy with the results: “It was compressed, there was not a lot of white space.” While election officials have discretion when it comes to design, and can, for instance, abbreviate party affiliations to save space, Iorio felt that with so many presidential candidates representing obscure minor parties she needed to spell them all out, which ate up crucial space.

“It was difficult,” adds Susan Tucker Johnson, spokeswoman for Duval County’s supervisor of elections. “We felt like our options were limited.” In a first, Duval, home of Jacksonville, went with a two-page presidential punch-card ballot. Five candidates were listed on the first page, which at the bottom read in bold type: “Turn page over for continued list of candidates for president and vice president.”

The problem, says Iorio, who rejected that design in her county, is, “People turn a page and believe they’re onto a new race and vote again.”

That appears to be exactly what happened in Duval County, where nearly 22,000 of the county’s 280,000 voters, or roughly 9 percent, mistakenly punched holes in both cards. Those ballots were automatically discarded by machines for “overvoting.” The normal rate of punch card overvoting is less than 1 percent.

Although Bush won Duval County, election data shows nearly 12,000 of the discarded overvotes came from just four districts in predominantly black sections of Jacksonville, where Gore won roughly 80 percent of the vote.

Unlike “undervote” ballots with “pregnant chads” that haven’t been pushed all the way through but can be manually recounted, overvotes are lost forever.

In Palm Beach County, Supervisor of Election Theresa LePore, reportedly concerned about the county’s large population of senior citizens, used a butterfly ballot to make sure the crowded presidential field of candidates all appeared in large print. But because of the ensuing confusion, another 19,000 double-punched ballots, most of them likely for Gore, were thrown out by machines.

Combined, in Duval and Palm Beach counties, where confusing, crowded punch-card ballots reigned, there were just over 40,000 overvotes. Based on the election returns in those counties, and knowing where the overvotes took place, it’s likely Gore would have picked up approximately 28,000 of those nullified votes.

(That number could be grounds to challenge the election. If Florida’s secretary of state certifies the results, Gore has five days to formally contest them, which as a matter of Florida law would not be difficult: According to a 1999 provision, an election challenge can be based solely on the “rejection of a number of legal votes sufficient to change or place in doubt the result of the election.”)

That 40,000 figure in Duval and Palm Beach is especially telling, considering that all of the other 65 Florida counties combined only had 130,000 votes voided.

The surge of presidential candidates in the wake of Revision 11 had little impact on counties that use more sophisticated voting procedures and don’t have to worry about crowded ballot space. For instance, Leon County, home of the state capital, Tallahassee, uses an optical scan system in which voters fill in a bubble with a pen instead of punching a hole in a card. Whether there are five candidates or 15 listed, it does not matter. Not surprisingly, just 181 votes, or 0.2 percent of that county’s total, were nullified.

Even some Revision 11 proponents, like Dorothy Byrne, coordinator of Florida’s Green Party, speculate that Florida’s ballot access law may be toughened up in an effort to avoid a repeat of this year’s Election Day train wreck. “I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they change it in some fashion by 2004,” she says.

For Al Gore, that may be too little, too late.

: Eric Boehlert, a former senior writer for Salon, is the author of "Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush." More Eric Boehlert

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The “Saturday Night Live” of the West Bank

A hit satire show on the West Bank wrings laughs from the Occupation -- and gets canceled for humor that hits home

By Joel Warner

The 'Saturday Night Live of the West Bank

(Credit: Joel)

Topics:Middle East, 2000 Elections

The hit Palestinian TV satire show “Watan ala Watar” began its Aug. 14 episode with a sketch featuring Palestinian Attorney General Ahmad Mughani getting besieged by Palestinians filing lawsuits over “Watan ala Watar” making fun of them. One woman says in Arabic that the TV show hadn’t parodied her yet, but she’s sure it’s going to, so she wants to file suit preemptively. In the middle of the commotion, the frazzled Mughani, played by “Watan ala Watar” co-creator Imad Farajin, gets a phone call: “Watan ala Watar,” it turns out, just made fun of him, too.

The sketch ends by showing Farajin and his “Watan ala Watar” colleagues one year later, silently clowning around, suggesting that even if Mughani and his government cohorts muzzle them, that won’t stop the comedy crew’s high jinks.

Those high jinks have been a runaway success since “Watan ala Watar,” aka “Homeland on a String,” hit the airwaves in 2009, the first political satire show ever broadcast on Palestinian TV. The weekly 15-minute show’s three creators became local celebrities in the West Bank capitol of Ramallah, where they live and work, and episodes became a must-watch phenomenon, especially during Ramadan, when the show ratchets up to a nightly schedule. The holy month is akin to a U.S. “sweeps” period, with everybody at home by the TV. Last year, a local polling organization found that 60 percent of those in the West Bank and Gaza who’d seen “Watan ala Watar” actively approved of it — far higher approval ratings than those of either Fatah or Hamas, the two major political parties.

From the start, the show enjoyed a surprising amount of editorial freedom, considering that it aired on state-run television in the Middle East. “We told officials there would be one condition: no censorship,” says the show’s 30-something co-creator Manal Awad, who dresses in stylish, modern clothes and speaks English with a heavy British accent, courtesy of her time in London where she got a master’s degree in theater directing.

Palestinian officialdom agreed, allowing the show to air a sketch in which progress on an Israeli peace deal is announced by Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — that is, Mahmoud Abbas the 13th, at a time 500 years in the future. Hamas, the Islamist party governing the Gaza Strip, received its share of knocks, too. One skit featured an Islamist judge making eyes at a male courtroom reporter. While Hamas’ Ministry of Information has called “Watan ala Watar” “an example of black propaganda,” the show has long enjoyed the blessing of the Palestinian Authority. Yasser Abed Rabbo, one of President Abbas’ closest advisors and head of Palestine TV, even played himself on the show.

Most promising of all, during this year’s Ramadan, “Watan ala Watar” had competition: “EscotChat,” a new sketch comedy show that aired 20 minutes later. “Five years from now, you will find comedy clubs and comedy series here, and not just ‘EscotChat’ and ‘Watan ala Watar,’”says Ihab Al-Jarere, “EscotChat’s” creator.

“Watan ala Watar,” it seemed, was helping Palestinians ascend the Middle Eastern comedy ladder, the unofficial scale in which Egyptians are considered to be the funniest of the funny and the Jordanians the exact opposite. (As one Palestinian joke goes, “Have you heard the one about the Jordanian businessman? Every morning before work he puts on his shirt, tie and angry face.”)

But then, two days after “Watan ala Watar’s” skit about the attorney general sketch aired, Palestine dropped a few comedy rungs closer to Jordan. Mughani, in a move reminiscent of the skit itself, pulled the show off the air.

It had told one controversial joke too many — and Mughani and his cronies weren’t the only ones not laughing. Recently, the show had diversified its subject matter, turning its satirical gaze upon Palestinian society itself. “We criticize all the governments, Hamas and Fatah, but they haven’t changed since we started,”says Awad. “We needed new figures to criticize.”

That’s why in one recent sketch, the show took on the local medical industry’s outdated practice of settling malpractice issues outside of court with informal payoffs, depicting a doctor and a grieving mother bargaining over a dead baby as if haggling over prices at the market. Another episode satirized the shabbiness of Palestinian Authority police. In the skit, officers on the lookout for drunk drivers couldn’t afford breathalyzers, so they’re forced to smell the scofflaws’ breath — and get drunk themselves off the fumes.

Those jokes didn’t go over so well. While local politicians had been fair game (maybe because in territories still controlled by Israel, the Palestinian Authority doesn’t have much authority at all), the Palestinian elite apparently was not. The local police and the physicians’ union filed grievances, and “Watan ala Watar’s” creators say that for the first time ever, officials censored them. Meanwhile, newspaper opinion pieces called the show a disgrace, and somebody hacked the TV show’s Facebook page, causing it to lose 40,000-plus fans.

Then, on Aug. 16, the attorney general, noting the complaints, pulled the plug. “Watan ala Watar” hasn’t been on since, with “EscotChat” moving into its time slot. “I thought this season was going to be a really, really huge success,” sighs Awad between puffs of an ever-present cigarette. “I didn’t expect this really aggressive reaction against us.”

This wasn’t the only recent aggressive reaction to artistic rabble rousing in Palestine. In April, a masked gunman shot and killed Juliano Mer-Khamis, founder of the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, a murder that’s still unsolved. While Palestinians mourned his death as a national tragedy, some weren’t surprised: Mer-Khamis was a half-Jewish artist and activist who was always pushing the cultural envelope, staging versions of Animal Farm that featured boys and girls onstage together, wearing pig masks and criticizing the revolution. As Awad says of Mer-Khamis’ murder, “You can’t force new thoughts on people. Bit by bit, you have to work with them.” Maybe Awad and her colleagues had been guilty of the same mistake.

Do such developments suggest the people here aren’t yet ready to laugh at themselves? Is comedy in Palestine as stagnant as the peace process?

Far from it, in fact. There has always been humor in Palestine,” says Sharif Kanaana, a Palestinian folklore professor who’s been collecting local jokes since 1989, from the jubilant highs of the two intifadas (where many zingers involved street kids getting the better of Israeli soldiers) to the disillusioned lows in between. (A typical post-intifada joke goes, “Several heads of state meet with God and make requests for their people. To each, God says, “Not in your lifetime.” Then Yasser Arafat asks for his people’s freedom and God says, “Not in my lifetime.”) “It’s not just fun and entertainment,”says Kanaana. “It is a pan-human way of people expressing themselves.”

And in a place defined by absurdity — where the beach is a few miles away but people in the West Bank have to hopscotch though Jordan and Cyprus to get there — if Palestinians aren’t allowed to express themselves through laughter, what else do they have left?

That’s why the people haven’t taken “Watan ala Watar’s” shutdown lightly. Hundreds have signed on to Facebook campaigns such as “People against the decision to stop broadcasting Watan ala Watar,”and “People want Watan ala Watar,” and in Bethlehem, protesters marched against the decision.

Many officials agree with them. “This decision of the attorney general is bad news and, in my opinion, is wrong,” says Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib. “I think I speak for Prime Minister Salam Fayyad as well.” Politicians such as Fayyad are savvy enough to know that in a period where Middle Eastern dictators are falling left and right, now is not the time to crack down on free speech.

While “Watan ala Watar’s” shutdown could be bad news for the Palestinian Authority, it could end up being good news for the comedians behind the show. Headline-grabbing controversies, after all, are a comedian’s bread and butter. Awad hints that Watan ala Watar is already fielding offers from other media outlets, and the hubbub may even score the show attention in Israel. “I haven’t heard of them, but it’s a shame that they were shut down,” says David Kilimnick, an Israeli comic who owns the Off the Wall Comedy Basement club in Jerusalem. “I wouldn’t be against giving them a stage here.”

In the meantime, Palestinians can catch a glimpse of “Watan ala Watar” at the three comedians’ weekly live show at an upscale open-air restaurant in Ramallah. Two days after being pulled off the air, the trio took the stage there armed with timely material. As television news cameras rolled, the three apologized for being late. They said they had been detained at Attorney General Mughani’s house. “Watan ala Watar” may be muzzled by the authorities, but that’s not going to stop them from clowning around.

Joel Warner, who blogs for Wired.com and Psychology Today, is co-authoring a book about traveling around the world with a humor professor in search of what makes things funny. Find out more at Humorcode.com and on Twitter @HumorCode.

: Joel Warner, who blogs for Wired.com and Psychology Today, is co-authoring a book about traveling around the world with a humor professor in search of what makes things funny. Find out more at Humorcode.com and on Twitter @HumorCode More Joel Warner

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It’s still OK to hate Joe Lieberman

Sure, he's fighting to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." He's also still a sanctimonious troll

By Alex Pareene

Joe Lieberman

Topics:Joe Lieberman, War Room, 2000 Elections, Don't Ask Don't Tell, U.S. Senate

It looks very much like “don’t ask, don’t tell” will finally be repealed, 17 years after the discriminatory policy was enacted. And it’s thanks, in very large part, to the tireless work of independent/”Connecticut for Lieberman” Sen. Joe Lieberman. Yep, Joe Lieberman, the single most annoying man in the United States Senate — the august home, since the days of our founders, of America’s most annoying citizens — was instrumental in righting a fundamental injustice. Andrew Sullivan has anointed him a “civil rights hero,” and barring some last-minute betrayal or successful Republican attempt to delay the vote until the New Year, he may actually earn the title.

But it’s still totally OK to hate the guy.

Seriously.

Seven months ago the guy introduced a bill that would automatically strip Americans of their citizenship if they were charged with “a terrorist act.” He named it “the TEA Act.” Why did he do that? Because he’s a political troll. Not in the “living under a bridge eating goats” sense, but in the old Usenet sense of someone who purposefully enrages and frustrates members of a community, while pretending to have no idea what he’s doing.

Joe Lieberman gets his kicks trolling the left — how else to explain why he nearly torpedoed the fragile healthcare reform process by blatantly reversing himself on the Medicare buy-in?

Liberals used to be told that while Lieberman was a hawk, he was a reliable liberal Democrat on domestic issues. That reliable liberal Democrat recently promised to fight to his last breath to protect the rights of our richest citizens to have smaller tax bills.

Even before Iraq, this was the guy who took to the Senate floor to ponder “the moral consequences for our country” of Bill Clinton’s misbehavior. He regularly flirted with banning “indecent” music and video games. Before Al Gore picked him as his running mate — whereupon Lieberman did all he could to sink the campaign from within, by throwing his debate with Cheney and repeating GOP talking points during the recount — Lieberman even voiced support for Social Security privatization.

That whole miserable history of sanctimonious opportunism aside, it’s true that Joe Lieberman has always proudly fought for the rights of gay and lesbians to serve openly in our armed forces.

While his opposition to “don’t ask, don’t tell” is one of the handful of positions Joe Lieberman hasn’t reversed himself on, his support for gays in the military is pretty much directly tied to his blood lust. Of course he wants gay people in the military — he wants everyone in the military, and he wants the military everywhere. He supports the right of every American to serve his or her country regardless of race, creed, color or sexual orientation, and he also supports making those brave young heroes invade and occupy the entire Middle East, forever.

So you’re still OK hating the guy.

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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Maureen Dowd phones in world’s worst Obama speech reaction column

The New York Times columnist talks about the new Oval Office carpet, and makes ancient Al Gore jokes

By Alex Pareene

Maureen Dowd

Topics:The New York Times, 2000 Elections, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Iraq, Iraq war, Media Criticism, White House, War Room

Award-winning New York Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a political column about Barack Obama’s speech last night! Of course the column had to be finished in time for this morning’s paper, so it was obviously written in 10 minutes or so yesterday afternoon, before the speech was actually delivered. There is a joke about Al Gore and “earth tones” in the very first sentence of this column on Barack Obama’s speech about the Iraq war.

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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Reading “The Clinton Tapes,” thinking about Obama

The president and the historian provide a candid, intimate look at how the GOP became a nasty party of obstruction

By Joan Walsh

Topics:2000 Elections, 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Political Books, Republican Party

I need a break from the rhetorical outrage beat. I was going to write about the Newsmax columnist who all but advocated a military coup to bring down Obama, then I was pondering a post about Rep. Alan Grayson’s claim that the GOP health reform plan amounts to if you get sick, “die quickly.” But I’m tired of overheated rhetoric right now, (plus the indefatiguable Alex Koppelman got to both stories first!) so I took refuge in Taylor Branch’s new book, “The Clinton Tapes.” I had planned to review it, but it’s almost 700 pages, and I have a day job. If I took the time to read it and then write about the whole thing, it would be weeks before I’d get it done — and I think the book has insights that are supremely relevant to today.

So I thought I’d try to blog my review, over several days, and ask for your help, if you’re reading the book. Every few days I’ll write about what I am learning, and anyone who’s reading, or curious, can participate in comments. (We could do the same thing with “Going Rogue” next month, but it would probably take us about an hour.)

I have to start by saying Taylor Branch’s trilogy, “America in the King Years,” is my favorite work of history. He brought the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. alive for me. And to see my favorite civil rights historian — so far, there are some up-and-comers that deserve a look, too! — grappling with the president who, until Obama, thought and did more about civil rights than any president before him, well, it’s a thrilling combination. The book opens with the pair believing they are fulfilling the movement they’d worked for as young men, convinced Clinton can do so much to advance King’s goals, though we know that eventually politics got in the way. Still, it’s important to remember that civil rights was the mission that animated Clinton’s, and Branch’s, passion for politics.

One hundred pages in, here’s what’s fascinating. First: Serendipitously, Branch started his private, taped talks with Clinton nine months into the Clinton presidency, in October, roughly where Obama is now, the better to focus you on the parallels and differences in their first year. I am not privy to the secrets of the Obama White House, but Branch brings the reader directly into the rooms where a red-eyed, exhausted Clinton sits talking late into the night about the challenges he faced in Mogadishu, Bosnia, Haiti and Iraq (remember how he bombed a weapons facility to retaliate for an attempt on President Bush’s life, so W. wouldn’t have to start a war!); the disappointment of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and the thrill of the short-lived Israeli-Palestinian peace accords, signed just eight months into his presidency; his failure to get a stimulus bill passed (thanks to Democratic turncoats and Republican opponents); the early work on healthcare reform (and that 1,342 page bill) and the controversial NAFTA.

Reading it all, your head and heart hurt for Obama. We know our presidents have to juggle multiple crises, that’s the job, but the way Branch depicts the pace of it, and the toll it took on Clinton (who still found time to help Chelsea with her math homework), well, it made it real. I got tired just thinking about it. I am probably going to be a little easier on Obama in the weeks to come.

There are some wonderful windows on policy triumph and disappointment: He depicts a stormy but funny meeting of Democratic senators to tell Clinton why they’ll block any liberalization of policy on gays in the military. Robert Byrd leads off fulminating about the immorality of homosexuality, and Clinton tries to head him off by noting that adultery is immoral (ahem) but we don’t dismiss military folks for cheating on their spouses. Sam Nunn raised the unit cohesion argument (there was a lot of discussion of those close quarters, especially on Navy ships!). Clinton observes Sen. Ted Kennedy on the sidelines: “I couldn’t tell if Teddy was going to start giggling or jump out the window” as the talk turned to the bawdy, omnisexual practices of ancient Greek and Roman warriors.

But at the end of the day, Clinton said, he was surprised by the fact that he couldn’t tell which of the opponents truly believed it was bad to have gays in the military (or anywhere else); all they discussed was the politics of the proposal. That theme would recur. Clinton was the consummate horse-trader, no steely ideologue, but even he was surprised at the extent to which politics trumped policy, or even the silly idea of what’s right or what’s best for the country, in every single debate.

There are also eerie parallels with some of Obama’s battles this year. Clinton lost the stimulus battle that Obama (after compromising) won, doomed by zero Republican support and duplicitous Dems like Oklahoma’s Chuck Boren, who kept insisting he needed the bill to be bipartisan. (Hello, Max Baucus!) The utter hypocrisy of the GOP is well traced back to 1993, when they fought an anti-deficit bill that would have cut spending and raised some taxes. They’ve been the party of no for 16 years, even switching sides to say no, cynically, to completely opposite ideas: They were against shrinking the deficit when the Dems were for it; now they’re suddenly worried about deficit spending (after eight years of Bush budget-busting) when Dems are trying to spend money on the economy and healthcare, and not merely war and bailing out Wall Street and banks.

Branch is mystified by Clinton’s strange passivity with the press — he just accepted that they’re against him, and he put none of his considerable charm and charisma behind the task of courting them, unlike the young president he so admired, John Kennedy. The funniest scene in the first four chapters comes during an interview with Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner and political correspondent William Greider. Greider comes in with a photo of a destitute American (who’d apparenty been in Clinton’s “Faces of Hope” campaign materials), and began guilt-tripping Clinton. Branch paraphrases:

Here is one of the countless poor people who looked to you for leadership; you were their last hope! Now they feel utterly disillusioned and abandoned. Can you look into this face and name one thing that you have done to help? Or one principle you won’t compromise? One cause you will uphold? One belief you would die for ? [In fact, the R.S. interview transcript shows that Greider said the man told him: "Ask him what he’s willing to stand up for and die on."]

Clinton “kind of went off on him,” he told Greider.

He told Greider he had done things already that no other president would do. He had raised taxes on the rich and lowered them for the working poor. He introduced the AmeriCorps service program, which Rolling Stone campaigned for … He was taking on the gun lobby and the tobacco industry. He had proposed fair treatment for gay soldiers. He was fighting for national health care coverage, and more, but liberals paid very little attention to any of these things because they were bitchy and cynical about politics. They resented Clinton for respecting the votes of conservatives and opinions of moderates. They wanted him to behave like a dictator because they didn’t really care about results in the world … He said he had pointed at Greider to tell him the problem is you, Bill Greider. You are a faulty citizen. You don’t mobilize or persuade, because you only worry about being doctrinaire and proud. You are betraying your own principles with self-righteousness.”

Clinton took a breath. “I did everything but take a fart in his face.”

In fact, the president was much more eloquent on tape than in his memory (although he might have misremembered what he said directly to Greider, or else Greider cut it). You can read, and listen to, the actual exchange on the Rolling Stone site. It’s fun.

Here’s Clinton’s retort, verbatim, with some narration from R.S.:

The president, standing a foot away from Greider, turned and glared at him. Clinton’s face reddened, and his voice rose to a furious pitch as he delivered a scalding rebuke — an angry, emotional presidential encounter, the kind of which few have ever witnessed.

“But that is the press’s fault, too, damn it. I have fought more damn battles here for more things than any president has in 20 years, with the possible exception of Reagan’s first budget, and not gotten one damn bit of credit from the knee-jerk liberal press, and I am sick and tired of it, and you can put that in the damn article.

“I have fought and fought and fought and fought. I get up here every day, and I work till late at night on everything from national service to family leave to the budget to the crime bill and all this stuff, and you guys take it and you say, ‘Fine, go on to something else, what else can I hit him about?’ So if you convince them I don’t have any conviction, that’s fine, but it’s a damn lie. It’s a lie.

“Look what I did. I said that the wealthy would have to pay their fair share, and look what we did to the tax system. I said that I’d give working families a break, and I did. People with modest incomes, look what’s going to happen. Did I get any credit for it, from you or anybody else? Do I care if I get credit? No.

“But I do care that that man has a false impression of me because of the way this administration has been covered. It is wrong. That’s my answer. It is wrong. I have fought my guts out for that guy, and if he doesn’t know it, it’s not all my fault. And you get no credit around here for fighting and bleeding. And that’s why the know-nothings and the do-nothings and the negative people and the right-wingers always win. Because of the way people like you put questions to people like me. Now, that’s the truth, Bill.”

[At this point the president started to walk away but changed his mind and came back, still mad as hell.]

“That’s why they always win. And they’re going to keep winning until somebody tells them the truth, that this administration is killing itself every day to help people like them and making some progress. And if you hold me to an impossible standard and never give us any credit when we’re moving forward, then that’s exactly what will happen, guys like that will think that. But it ain’t all my fault, because we have fought our guts out for ‘em. And the bad guys win because they have no objective other than to win. They shift the blame, they never take responsibility. And they play on the cynicism of the media.

“That’s not what I do. I come to work here every day, and I try to help that guy. And I’m sorry if I’m not very good at communicating, but I haven’t gotten a hell of a lot of help since I’ve been here.”

Let me make you read one part of that quote again, because you could be talking about the Obama administration’s dilemma in 2009:

“That’s why they always win. And they’re going to keep winning until somebody tells them the truth, that this administration is killing itself every day to help people like them and making some progress. And if you hold me to an impossible standard and never give us any credit when we’re moving forward, then that’s exactly what will happen, guys like that will think that. But it ain’t all my fault, because we have fought our guts out for ‘em. And the bad guys win because they have no objective other than to win. They shift the blame, they never take responsibility. And they play on the cynicism of the media.”

The bad guys win because they have no objective other than to win. Sixteen years later, it’s just as true. After opposing efforts to censure Rep. Joe “You lie!” Wilson, Republicans are trying to censure Rep. Adam Grayson (whose rant maybe went over the top,) even though Rachel Maddow assembled a string of video clips showing at least a half-dozen Republicans depicting Democratic healthcare plans as an effort to get Americans to die, drop dead, be killed, you name it, by any means necessary. A lot of my liberal Twitter friends were over the moon about Grayson’s string of bold remarks, and while part of me enjoyed turning the tables on the lying ideologues, part of me thinks Democrats win when they stick to facts and focus. And part of me is laughing at that naive part of me right now.

Wait, I said I was going AWOL on the rhetoric war. I tried. It’s going to be a fun book. Stay tuned. Tell me what you think.

: Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh

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I’m so angry, it’s time to change

Ever since the 2000 elections I've been angry -- not just at the government but at all of us Americans.

By Cary Tennis

Topics:2000 Elections, Since You Asked, Mental Illness

Dear Cary,

The past few years my personal life has taken a nosedive. I think the biggest factor is this anger I’ve got inside, which frequently prevents me from socializing and meeting new people (or just having a good time with people). Basically I’ve become a very grumpy middle-aged man.

This all basically started after the 2000 election. By now, I feel justifiably disgusted by the Bush administration and his supporters of course, but it’s bigger than this. I also feel my fellow Americans the past two decades or so have been awash in gleefully/mindlessly practicing the seven deadly sins, of which I believe ignorance should be added as the eighth.

Anyway, I know some people go to anger management therapy but I’m not sure that is for me. You associate that type of therapy with people who have snapped, people who have abused people physically as well as verbally. My anger is merely my own; I don’t lash out; I just despair, because I know lashing out would cost me (my job, family, friends).

BTW, I have been on Prozac for about 15 years for mild chronic depression. Normally I feel like Prozac has been good for me, keeping away the blue days and making my skin thicker. I also exercise a lot, running three times a week and playing soccer, but lately I’m pissed off even after a good workout! I eat pretty well and drink moderately. But lately I’m thinking my chemistry is not right (though dropping the antidepressant sounds very risky).

Can you or Salon readers offer any advice? I fear I am on a path to becoming an urban hermit, joylessly working toward retirement, and maybe not giving a toss when I get there.

Anger Issues

Dear Anger Issues,

Some of us who think of ourselves as liberal, rational, freethinking, freedom-loving patriots have a special problem with anger. We are deeply affected by what we see going on in our country. We see a symphony of outrage heaped upon outrage; we see the brazenness of it, its roots in years of secret plotting; we perceive intricate patterns in its serpentine, many-tentacled, conspiratorial vastness; we see our sacred precepts violated, sacred vows trashed; we jeer the garishly painted faces of evil as they trot onstage, and our jeers do not seem to be heard and this compounds our outrage; we join our compatriots in outrage, and our righteous anger grows.

We think our anger is justified. The abuses are so obvious, the perpetrators so shameless, the crimes so awful and historic. Who would not be angry? How could anger be our problem?

But our anger is our problem. At historic moments like this, we are called to come up with something better than anger.

If you are not sure whether anger management classes are for you, then the intelligent thing to do is to go to a few sessions and see what methods are being used. Fearlessly investigate and make an honest assessment. If it appears that others have benefited from these methods, consider how you might adapt those methods to your own situation. Your situation may not be as dire as theirs. Use what is useful. Leave the rest. Participants in the workshop are likely to be at different stages in their anger. Some may have lashed out physically. Some may have suffered legal and financial consequences. Others may just be curious, or feel that they are not skillful enough in their management of anger. You may learn from all of them. And you may have things to teach them as well.

By beginning in this individual way, we have a chance to demonstrate the collective superiority of another approach. The country’s response to 9/11 was a response of anger, as if anger would suffice. The country responded to a cunning, devastating blow with brute anger and was led into a trap. We responded as the enemy expected, with blind, misguided, disproportionate violence, like the one-eyed Cyclops stumbling with rage, outwitted in the cave by a nimble Ulysses. If Enlightenment ideals are to prevail over religious tyranny once again, anger will not suffice. We must be more cunning, more devastating, wiser, more full of resolve, better controlled, more far-thinking, more strategic. We must be better statesmen, better orators, better historians.

When angry we cling to what we feel will shield us and we drop what we sense is a burden or an encumbrance. Collectively, as a nation, in response to the 9/11 attacks, it could be said that we clung to our pride, our feelings of masculine superiority and our addiction to ease and consumption; we held on to our simplicity of feeling, our belief in our goodness, our woundedness. And we dropped our love of ideas, our belief in ideas, our faith in a future of law and reason, our reliance on intelligent pragmatism, our unshakable reliance on constitutional principle.

We dropped what we needed and clung to what was useless. Now we are in a pickle.

Those of us who saw this happen feel a sputtering rage. But we must not fall into the trap again. We must work as individuals to let go of our anger so that collectively we can think more clearly and see what is before us.

Letting go of anger is hard. It’s like letting go of money. We give up, we pay, we sacrifice what we have held dear, but we bring home peace of mind in a big shiny box with a bow on it. What could be more American than that?

But seriously, in seeking peace of mind, it can be most difficult to let go of the anger we think is justified.

So I do hope you will look into these anger management sessions. But you can go far beyond that. You have much to gain by working with your anger. It may be the doorway to a new way of thinking and living.

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Cary Tennis is Salon's advice columnist. His latest book is "Citizens of the Dream: Advice on Writing, Painting, Playing, Acting and Being." He leads writing workshops and creative getaways, and occasionally tweets and bellows as @carytennis on Twitter.

What? You want more?

Read more Cary Tennis.
Ask for advice. Letter writers please note: By sending a letter to advice@salon.com, you are giving Salon permission to publish it. Once you submit it, it may not be possible to rescind it. So be sure.
Ready? OK, Submit your letter for publication.
Or, just make a comment to Cary Tennis not for publication.
Or, send a letter to Salon's editors not for publication.