Did Bill Kristol use the Gray Lady to fight the McCain campaign's civil war?
Was John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann fired for leaking sensitive information to his friend, the longtime McCain backer and New York Times columnist William Kristol? Were Kristol, Scheunemann, and deputy communications director Michael Goldfarb at the heart of a feud inside the McCain camp over the Palin candidacy—with Kristol fighting the battle in his Times column? McCainiacs associated with the campaign tell The Daily Beast that whatever happened between Scheunemann and McCain on a formal level, it’s clear that there was a serious rift in the week before the election, and that the cause of the split boils down to one word: Kristol.
Kristol’s New York Times column—written inside what the McCain campaign considered enemy territory—was read with great interest. As Kristol used column after column to boost Sarah Palin, suspicions built inside the campaign that Kristol and McCain staffers close to him had written off McCain and were now determined to salvage Palin as a vehicle for Republican politics in the future, possibly the Republican nomination in 2012. Michael Goldfarb—who left Kristol’s Weekly Standard to work on communications for the McCain campaign—also repeatedly came under suspicion among McCain insiders for his close ties to Kristol and his “manic zeal” in fending off questions over the Palin candidacy.
There was a serious rift in the week before the election, and the cause of the split boils down to one word: Kristol.
As one McCain adviser put it to me: “In the last six weeks there was a remarkable echo. You could listen to arguments made by folks inside of the campaign who were close to Bill Kristol and then open up The New York Times and read them in Kristol’s columns. It was ‘set Sarah free,’ coupled with an agenda designed to appeal to the religious right and the more raucous elements of the party. They got their way often enough, and we started noticing that at many of the Palin functions it was nonstop ‘Sarah, Sarah,’ while John McCain all but vanished. Were they trying to get McCain elected in 2008, or to help Palin on the way to the Republican nomination in 2012? You can’t get yourself into a situation in which anyone can credibly ask that question.”
A scan of Kristol’s columns in The Times shows what the McCain insider was talking about.
His first two columns following the announcement of the Palin pick were devoted to general efforts to bolster Palin’s image and fend off criticisms that she lacked the necessary experience to fill out the Republican ticket. On September 1, in a piece headlined “A Star is Born,” Kristol argued that the Palin choice would bolster McCain’s image as a “shrewd and prescient gambler.” And on September 8, his column was devoted to debunking criticism of Palin’s qualifications and praising her as a woman “of the people.” “McCain didn’t just pick a politician who could appeal to Wal-Mart Moms. He picked a Wal-Mart Mom.” These pieces were crafted in what was in retrospect the golden age of the campaign. After a financial crisis erupted on Wall Street, however, the Kristol columns got became tactical in their orientation.
On September 28, Kristol wrote: “McCain needs to liberate his running mate from the former Bush aides brought in to handle her—aides who seem to have succeeded in importing to the Palin campaign the trademark defensive crouch of the Bush White House. McCain picked Sarah Palin in part because she’s a talented politician and communicator. He needs to free her to use her political talents and to communicate in her own voice.” The same column contains the first intimations of discord within the campaign, claiming that McCain had criticized his staff over their handling of Palin and suggesting that he had instructed Steve Schmidt and Rick Davis to “liberate” her to go on the offensive. He also suggests that the campaign recalibrate and focus its attacks on Obama’s “radical past,” especially on his relationship with Jeremiah Wright. The next week, Kristol advanced this line of attack in an interview with Palin herself. Palin wondered aloud why Obama’s relationship with Wright “isn’t discussed more”—a deviation from McCain’s own wishes, which were that Wright not be discussed at all.
On October 13, Kristol’s criticism reached the boiling point. “Fire the campaign,” he thundered. “What McCain needs to do is junk the whole thing and start over. Shut down the rapid responses, end the frantic e-mails, bench the spinning surrogates, stop putting up new TV and Internet ads every minute. In fact, pull all the ads—they’re doing no good anyway. Use that money for televised town halls and half-hour addresses in prime time.” Among the McCain tactics that had failed, he acknowledged, were the very ones he had advocated just two weeks earlier.
Tracy Quan's latest novel is Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl, set in Provence and praised in The Nation as a "deft account of occupational rigors and anxieties before the crash." Tracy's debut, Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and the sequel, Diary of a Married Call Girl, are international bestsellers. A regular columnist for The Guardian, she has written for many publications including Cosmopolitan, The Financial Times, and The New York Times.
Joe Mathews is a journalist, an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and a contributing writer at the Los Angeles Times. He previously served as Justice Department reporter for the Wall Street Journal and as a city desk reporter at the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of The People’s Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy.
Gerald Posner is the award-winning author of 10 investigative nonfiction bestsellers, ranging from political assassinations, to Nazi war criminals, to 9/11, to terrorism (www.posner.com). Posner lives in Miami Beach with his wife, the author Trisha Posner.
The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
Renata Espinosa is the New York editor of Fashion Wire Daily. She is also the co-founder of impressionistic fashion and art blog TheNuNu and a sometimes backup dancer for "The Anna Copa Cabanna Show."
Amanda Fortini has written for The New Yorker, Slate, Elle, and New York, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles.
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national security affairs for Harper's Magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.
by Scott Horton
Who in the New York Times lead editorial staff thought that Bill Kristol was a suitable replacement for the vaunted and much loved William Safire. Even I as a liberal read the NYT for the William Safire columns.
Bill Kristol is a sad and disgraced replacement for the thoughtful conservatism of William Safire, he has shown none of the acumen and more than little of the knowledge of any of the thoughtful conservatives. Much to the chagrin of the NYT, Bill Kristol is an ideologue with delusions of grandeur, who cannot string two thoughts together with enough sense to work his way out of a paperbag.
I was and am appalled at the choice of the NYT staffers of Bill Kristol and will loudly proclaim that he is worse at writing and thinking than a bag full of monkeys trying to win "a" banana.
The Neo Conservatives love using the Cultural Conservatives as shock troops, playing on resentments and paranoia about government while doing their level best to surpass Byzantium in Big Government Lust
I agree that William Kristol is no replacement for William Safire. It is important to read conservative perspectives. I would love to see TDB's own Mr. Buckley writing that column.
Bill Kristol. It should be crystal clear by now that he is just a right wing nut.
Even if Kristol had not intervened in the campaign, he should be fired for using his column to push the Republican ticket rather than to engage in good faith discussion. In other words, he wrote things that he could not have believed, but that he thought would promote the ticket.
"What emerges on a close reading is this: Palin and those closest to her inside the campaign were eager to wage a Lee Atwater-style campaign designed to demonize Barack Obama, with Palin as the figure leading the charge."
Hasn't the country suffered enough at the hands of these monsters? Jesus!
Mark my words and gird your loins. The entire Republican party is going to explode in hot geysers of blood and bile
and pathetic, old, whiteman envy and anger. We owe Sarah
a tremendous debt of gratitude.
OMG - I knew William Safire and let me assure you, Kristol is no Safire. None of this surprises me - the Times should fire him for his conflict of interest. He will then be free to roam with the Palin's, the Limbaugh's, the Hannity's, and all the other right-wing, no intelligence neocons.
McCain's campaign in my mind rated about a "C". Palin was the only bright spot in the entire thing, and she deserved to be brought out of the tank. McCain fought about like the British did in the war for American Independence. He made himself an easy target, fought back with kid gloves, and never got to the bottom of why the root of the mortgage crisis was the result of the Democrat's shake down of the banks. Maybe McCain believed the American public could not understand it. I disagree.
Then, McCain also lived up to his word that he "would not make Obama's citizenship an issue," even though Obama has proven to the world that his word is worthless.
The end result of all of McCain's grandiose gestures was enough to make a lot of people think Obama was far more shrewd and capable of running a government.
Who can really argue with it?
Bill Kristol is a large tumor on the face of the republican party. He is a rabid neocon that advocated for the Iraq war and every other disastrous Bush policy. I was one of those outraged when the Times hired him. A conservative viewpoint is one thing, but he is as rational as a sociopath. He needs to go the way of all the other neocons who destroyed this country.
I like the idea of Christopher Buckley at the NY Times for a conservative viewpoint. It is needed. But Kristol. I would read his NY Times column and then click over to the WSJ for a more balanced view. That's not a joke. I really did. I wanted to know what conservatives were thinking about all of this. Kristol's columns were not giving me a not-rotten-in-Denmark kind of feel. I was impressed with Buckley's being not completely crazy in all of this; his post about why he supported Obama was wonderful. I assume he would still be a critical voice for conservatives, but he might also be rational. One last comment: I'm one of the 45% in South Carolina who voted for Obama. As a white female native Mississippian who will turn 40 next year (grew up in the 70s), it's really hard to take in that this is happening in my lifetime.
Someone in the main office screwed up. The Republican party is in the business of pandering to the economically and intellectually challenged by appealing to their fears and failings, not by actually asking one of the unnumbered and unwashed to represent the party. If the Repubs ever get back in office, she would be perfect for FEMA.
It's hard to have memory--it simply demands context at every turn. The NYT carried the Republican water with great enthusiam for the so-called Whitewater scandal. They were so rabid in the 'let's impeach our President for getting a xxx in the oval office" that it created a lunacy in journalistic group think that we still suffer from. They broke out the fife and drums for the war in Iraq though clear evidence was available that the reasoning for this folly was completely cracked. Mea Culpas? Too little, too late, obviously.
So how and why does the newspaper with a previous claim to real legitimacy arrive at this low point? Two reasons come to mind: a mindless fear of being labeled Liberal at the same time the Republican fanatical wing got smarter and smarter. They not only figured out how to manipulate the electorate to vote against their self interest, they figured out how to manipulate the "main stream" media to such a degree, it is too late to recover. There's much more but alas...
Bill Kristol? A drop in the bucket.
After watching or reading Kristol, I need a shower. If it weren't for the fact that he's helped engineer things that have caused death (see: war, Iraq), he would be a character on the Simpsons. Why does this awful man have not one - but three jobs?? He should write about the unemployed. He can do his research by joining them.
The New York Times should not wait until Bill Kristol's contract expires. He should be fired. Yes, Chris Buckley would be a wonderful replacement! As would Constantine, by the way.
This piece of .... is one of the architects and proponents of what his favorite marionette couldn't define: The Bush Doctrine*
You can't make this stuff up.
*see: Project for a New American Century. Run for toilet. Vomit.
Bill Kristol does not "thunder". He has a quivering, uncertain speaking voice that I suspect reveals more than he wishes. His logic is appalling as well. He is neither intellectually honest, nor, I suspect, honest with himself.
See "Good Will Hunting" for clarification.
This is precisely why I stopped reading the NYT after they knowingly misled us into Iraq. It's worse than opera: even though I speak the language, I have no way of judging the merits of the claims, since I have no fist-hand knowledge of the various propagandists posing as either journalists (Judith Miller) or pundits (Kristol).
Kristol's support of Palin fits into another narrative. The neocons want to have not strong leaders in office, but manipulable figureheads -- ones who will be satisfied with flag-burning laws, prohibitions against gay marriage, a repeal of Roe v. Wade, and the like.
The real work going on behind the scenes will be a constant dismantling of the apparatus of the state. A President Palin would be W. with lipstick -- surrounded by the Heckuva-Job Brownies screwing up everything they touch.
A few administrations like that, and the US government would be bankrupt and no longer functional. America would be a country not of the people, but a jungle of gated communities and private security contractors keeping the rich neocons and their co-conspirators living the high life.
The rest of humanity would not matter anymore.
If Dick Cheney is Satan, Bill Kristol is the Dark Prince. Both are capable of making the most blood-curdling statements in the most mild-mannered of voices. He has been 100 percent wrong on every major issue since the Project for a New American Century. His penchant for attacking intellectuals, science, and the media, and the absolute zeal with which he prosecutes the case that all liberals are terrorists or friends of terrorists makes him the most dangerous threat to democracy and the American way of life since Joe McCarthy.
Has the "genius in his own mind" Kristol ever been right about anything? His radically warped pro-Israel slant on policy matters has proven to be totally wrong-headed and possibly anti-American. Go check out his manifesto at www.projectforanewamericancentury where you will see how he was selling the whole attack Iraq/push the world around/disregard for the well being of the United States mumbo jumbo for years. Then the Republicans got way to much power and actually went and did the things this loser was advocating. And look at us now! Kristol is pathetic.
Further proof that Kristol is a two-faced slimeball with a subversive agenda. Isn't he the one who outed Valerie Plame? The man lacks any moral compass and it would seem he actively worked to torpedo his own party's candidate. Has the Times no shame?
Bill Kristol's crime is that he was allegedly involved in the McCain campaign?
If so, there are many in the media who shouldn't bother reporting to work on Monday given their outright support of Obama.
Please.
"Bloody Bill" has a consistent record of being wrong. Not just wrong, but tragically (for this country) wrong. He will be in the footnotes of history, along with Wolfowitz, Fieth, Rumsfeld, AEI, PNAC and his fellow travelers.
Let us encourage them that they lost because Rev. Wright wasn't talked about enough. We should encourage them the be victims and to advance Palin.... They are right! They need to listen to Rush, Coulter,, Kristol, Hannity, Dobson and really really get down to dirty smear tactics. It has worked so well since 2006.
Yes Bill, a little more smear would really put a shine on the Republican brand. Go for it!
Kristol is a truly awful writer, incredibly boring to read. The Times picking him was clearly the result of some kind of blind affirmative action policy to dig up a famous conservative-any famous conservative-to replace Safire.
Apropos of Palin, it's amusing to note that even in today's Times, defending herself from the Fox News revalations that she didn't know which countries were in Nafta or what, exactly, Africa is, Kristol's protege said:
"if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about Nafta, and about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context"
She still does not understand that Africa is a continent, and not a country at all. Quite remarkably geographically challenged even for a provincial politician. With this level of intellectual capability, I don't think she has much of a future, despite Kristol's efforts.
Thank you.
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