Chris Cillizza's bias Washington Post Blog

The Washington Post has a blog in its “political” section called “The Fix” by Chris Cillizza. The title of today’s enrty was “Dean Pops Off,” and it referred to an interview Howard Dean gave last night on MSNBC’s Hardball, during which according to Cillizza, “he launched a few of the rhetorical rockets that he became infamous for during his unsuccessful 2004 presidential campaign.”

I decided to suspend my immediate “what-did-he-say-now” reaction and actually read the transcript provided by Cillizza of what Dean actually said. What I read was a reasonable discussion that included some traditional partisan nitpicking but relative even-handedness.

Here is how Cillizza described part of the interview:

“Asked whether executive privilege should govern President Bush's nomination of White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, Dean resorted to a phrase that will ring familiar to any 8th grade boy.

“I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called," Dean explained.”

Pretty childish of Dean, huh? But wait! Here is the actual portion of the interview dealing with the Miers nomination:

MATTHEWS: Do you believe that the president can claim executive privilege?

DEAN: Well, certainly the president can claim executive privilege. But in the this case, I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called. He's got to go out there and say something about this woman who's going to a 20 or 30-year appointment, a 20 or 30-year appointment to influence America. We deserve to know something about her.

I must confess, I have no idea what Dean was referring to with his salami reference, but it seems pretty tame stuff. When asked by Matthews if this was an example of cronyism, Dean replied with the following: “I wouldn't go that far. We don't know Ms. Miers. I've always believed people ought to begin with the benefit of the doubt.” Hardly the ravings of an out-of-control demagogue, particularly when he goes on to suggest that he doesn’t care if she is pro-life as long as she will uphold the law.

Cillizza then described the discussion of the Plame leak in the following way: "Dean went on to suggest that he did not find it "very credible" that Vice President Dick Cheney was totally unaware of the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the media in 2003, adding: "The M.O. of the Bush administration is to discredit your opponents and attack them personally rather than attack them for their position."

What Cillizza neglected to mention was that Dean’s observation was arguably accurate. From Richard Clark to Paul O’Neil (and those are just former allies), the Republicans in general and certainly this administration does engage in exactly what Dean suggests. I am not suggesting that Democrats do not use the same tactics (that is a discussion for another time) but they certainly take the heart for it when they do, heat which is called “rhetorical rockets” by Cillizza when a Democrat says it.

Under the “comments” section of the blog, I am happy to note that others have commented on the unfair characterization of Dean’s interview. I just wanted to do the same here.