After watching Kerry implode these past few weeks and now Clarke looking like a total fool, I have come to the conclusion that Karl Rove is the most powerful man in the universe for pulling all this off.

One wonders if Al Gore ever uttered the word "terrorist". Certainly not since 1993.

Al Gore will probably proudly announce that he invented it.

Seriously, I wish I could agree that Clarke is coming across as a fool, but it seems he perceived threats better than others. I doubt that Bush (or Clinton) is damaged by this testimony, because honest citizens know that they also had most of the relevant information and didn't demand action.

Clarke should just come out and admit that the most pressing priority of the Clinton Administration was limiting damage caused by the heat seaking missile in the President's pants.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

W is down 6 pts in the overnight Rasmussen poll.

Blog readers know that Clarke is an incompetent, two faced, ass covering bureaucrat who resented being demoted. However, voters watching CNN can be forgiven for holding his testimony against the President.

Rove is no genius if he can't shove the ample anti-Clarke evidence -- provided for free by weblogs -- through the media filter.

Clark is doing a wonderful job in padding his retirement and offsetting his historical incompetance while serving three presidencies.

"W"'s down, "W"'s up, wait, he's down again...

All irrelevant, until September, unless someone drops 30 points behind.

Even that doesn't assure defeat, as Dean illustrated.

I was not meaning to imply that the downtick in W's poll numbers is permanent, only that the media's uncritical acceptance of the words of a disgruntled failure with and ax to grind and a book to sell have clearly hurt the President. Events, and his own campaigning can erase the damage, but net-net damage was done.

Isn't it clear that the real contest is between Bush and the media?

For a reminder of the Clinton Administration's laser-like focus on terrorism, let's go back to April 2000 for this:

Clinton administration declares AIDS a security threat

And Sandy Berger chats about it here.

The interesting thing is the more Clarke talks, the more his anamosity toward Condi Rice becomes apparent, which logically is the only explanation behind his Scott Ritter-like whiplash shift from strong Bush supporter in 2002 to major attacker today.

But could you imagine what the press would be doing right now if you had a Democratic president in office, and a former Republican national security advisor making claims like this and showing almost open hostility towards the administation's top female appointee and No. 2 top African-American appointee after she downgraded his importance in the new administration? Man, the Bicycle Co. hasn't printed enough cards in its history to handle the number that would be played against the accuser, and Republicans in general, under this scenario...

This seems topical too, on the question of priorities: EXCERPT: CLINTON REPORT TO CONGRESS ON NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: (Outlines U.S. policy for the Middle East, No. Africa, South Asia)

January 11, 2000

Now, if you read down far enough you come to a short section on terror. It is after the sections on the North Korea, the Middle East peace process, Libya, Iraq, Iran, India v. Pakistan, and the Caspian.

To be fair, terror is also mentioned in conjunction with Libya and Iran.

Top priority.

To JAB's point I haven't seen any mention of the Clarke contradictions in the main press. It is clear that the press will be worth at least 5-10 pts for Kerry this campaign - hopefully it isn't enough to beat Bush.

The contraction, and Jim Thompson's questioning of Clarke on it, made it into the morning AP wire story, but it made it in 14 inches down. That's low enough so that either people don't read it, or in some cases, the bottom of the story is edited by papers due to space requirement.

Comparing the 1st 8 Mo of the Bush to the immediate preceding period (i.e., say last year of Clinton) is apples/oranges ..

For the sake of discussion, assume Clinton had AQ as a ‘very high’ priority (higher than GWB in early 2001) – if so, a compelling reason for it was he was a LAME DUCK – his presidency is OVER --- it’s ‘mop-up’ time where things not generally perceived as strategically important (health care, Oslo) are already done, failed or successful.

A more accurate (if somewhat arcane) comparison would be between the 1st 8 mos of Bush and what Al Gore would have done – and since Gore did not highlight it in his campaign, there’s no reason to think the WOT would have any higher visibility under a Dem admin.

To put the last point in a slightly different light, the reason it wasn’t ‘high’ on GWB’s list was because Gore didn’t FORCE it to be by emphasizing in the campaign..

A comical point:

When Clarke says ‘I don’t know why (something or other) couldn’t have been done in Feb 2001’ – he’s delusional.. the 1st month ?

I believe that the Clarke affair will help GWB in the long run for several reasons:

* It forces Democrats, in their desperation to tarnish Bush, to make the case that he should have taken bolder action against terrorist threats. This reverses their existing position that Bush has acted to brashly and unilaterally against the terrorists. This has the effect of conditioning the public to want more decisive action in the WOT, which will benefit Bush in the election.

* It takes John Kerry out of the spotlight for the time being. All the coverage is focused on Clarke, the administration and the hearings. The presidents men get extended media coverage to defend the president and his record.

* It further erodes the Clinton record on the WOT, and paints the democrats as overly concerned with multilateral relations and the "law enforcement" model of anti-terrorism.

Taking Kerry out of the spotlight is a good thing for the Kerry campaign. In fact, it's their only chance at victory. If the President's opponents can convince people to vote *against* Bush, it could be enough, since no way a majority of people (or even Democrats) will choose to vote *for* Kerry. But can you really hide your candidate for 9 months and win? Doubtful.