O’Donnell explained how the tweet got there– it was paid for by the National Inflation Association, a group that “pumps up tiny unknown stocks that deal with gold and silver.” Lohan has been tweeting out advertisements to support herself, though this one may be the first with such overt political overtones. Among those behind the National Inflation Association, O’Donnell explained hilariously, was the “youngest person in the nation’s history to be accused of securities fraud when he was all of 16.”

O’Donnell had Milbank on to give some insight into the world of paid celebrity tweets, who revealed that, while Lohan does make money on Twitter, she still is “not as good as Kim Kardashian” at getting paid for. He also estimated that, should he need it, O’Donnell would probably rake in about $50 a tweet if he sold them, “perhaps a premium because you don’t wear an ankle bracelet,” and noted that Lohan had tweeted many other advertisements– just not one about the Federal Reserve before. Whether this revelation will deter Lohan from publishing political tweets (unlikely if she needs the money) or make them less newsworthy is yet to be determined, but it appears that, alas, she may not in earnest be joining the Ron Paul Revolution anytime soon.

The segment via MSNBC below:

Kurtz remarked on how the picture was released despite Breitbart’s intentions, “I take Breitbart at his word that he didn’t know that somebody on the Opie & Anthony staff was going to snap a picture of the picture.” Milbank wasn’t buying Breitbart’s argument and instead echoed the belief of some who thought this was just a convenient way for Breitbart to get the photo out there.

Kurtz defended Breitbart here, responding “you’re just annoyed because Breitbart, who doesn’t like the liberal media, is actually getting some credit on this story.” Milbank disputed that assertion, believing the story has just reached the overkill point now. Yet even if during this exchange Kurtz painted Breitbart in a fair and favorable light, it doesn’t seem Breitbart is happy. Today on Twitter, Breitbart revealed he is not pleased with the fact that he is never invited on the show to defend himself. Is this something that might be remedied in the future, since it now seems like Kurtz might consider Breitbart to be a reliable source?

Watch the clip from CNN below:

Saturday night, I was a guest of Time Magazine at the star-studded Time-CNN-People-Fortune pre-reception in the Washington Hilton’s Lincoln Room. According to Time (although I can vouch for most of it), the guest list included:

Here is a list of some of the politicians, media, and celebs that stopped by: Chris Colfer; Mila Kunis; Matthew Morrison; Mira Sorvino; Jon Hamm; Colin Powell; Steve Buscemi; Wolf Blitzer; Twitter co-founder Evan Williams; Eric Stonestreet, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Ariel Winter from “Modern Family;” Sen, Scott Brown; Alyssa Milano; Jason Biggs; Bristol Palin; Chace Crawford; Candy Crowley; Tony Romo; Russell Simmons; Michelle Trachtenberg; Tom Hooper; Tara Subkoff; Tory Burch; Timothy Geithner;  David Plouffe; Eliot Spitzer; Anita Dunn; Meghan McCain and TIME Managing Editor Stengel; People Managing Editor Larry Hackett; FORTUNE Managing Editor Andy Serwer.

TIME WHCD guests Jay Roach, director and executive producer of “Game Change” for HBO and Danny Strong, producer of “Game Change” mingled with TIME’s Mark Halperin, co-author of the best selling book that they are adapting.

I didn’t shoot a whole lot of video (although I did get a decent number of still shots), as this was mainly a social occasion, but just enough to get a sense of the atmosphere.

On my way to the hotel, I ran into David Shuster and another old friend of mine, and as we walked into the hotel, I was stunned to see a dense crowd of media covering the entry. In the first section of video, that’s Shuster and a colleague working the velvet rope, while the rest of us continued in to the hotel.

Later, I spotted The Office star Mindy Kaling (who plays Kelly Kapoor on the show), and asked her what made her want to attend our little dinner.

The laugh of the night, for me, came from Fox News anchor Chris Wallace who, when I introduced myself, narrowed his eyes into a suspicious glare, held up his hand, and said, “Wait, who are you with? Media Matters?”

I laughed and said, “No, those guys hate me.”

I also ran into former White House Communications Director (and Fox-fighting heroine to many on the left) Anita Dunn, who immediately volunteered that she “loves Mediaite.com,” which I then made her repeat on-camera (after quizzing her to make sure she was really talking about us, and not Media Matters).

As I was speaking with Dunn, who should wander over but Mediaite Editor-at-Large Rachel Sklar, who contributed her own set of party photos to this post.

After the dinner, (which I spent filming protesters outside the hotel, and watching the President and Seth Meyers in a suite full of Rachel Sklar‘s pals) I went to the buzzed-about Capitol File after-party in the Reagan building. The balance of the video is a brief shot of the Cap File party, and a minute or so of a killjoy Code Pink protester, who, I found out, annoyed even the liberals in the crowd.

People I ran into but didn’t photograph include: Jake Tapper and wife Jennifer (who were leaving the pre-parties as I came in), Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (who streaked through the party like a fiscal Frank the Tank), Glee star Matthew Morrison (who unwittingly threw a pick-move on me as I tried to track Geithner down), Meghan McCain (who I saw but didn’t really recognize until I saw her name on the post-party email), Joe Klein, CNN‘s Will Cain, Dan Lothian and Suzanne Malveaux, Morning Joe EP Chris Licht, HuffPo‘s Sam Stein and Jon Ward, Will.i.am, AP‘s Ben Feller, The Washington Times‘ Liz Glover, and ABC News Radio‘s Ann Compton (I did photograph Ann, who looked like a million bucks, but the pictures were too dark).

Here’s a gallery of stills that I took Saturday night, along with some further observations, followed by a slew of stills from Rachel Sklar.

[Show as slideshow]

Gallery

Simon stated some other reasons for the media preferring to cover Trump and Bachmann because quite simply “they say outrageous things and they’re fun.” Yet Simon suggests that Trump as a candidate completely falls apart if you attempt to imagine him sitting in the Oval Office and trying to make important decisions. Dana Milbank agrees that the amount of coverage is not appropriate and considers Trump to be an “absolute joke.” Milbank, more so than the others on the panel, is worried that the media is “just being played” by all of these potential candidates who he thinks are really just interested in self-promotion and enhancing their speaking fees.

Watch the clip from CNN below:

What’s more, Milbank is calling on others in the media to resist covering every word, move, clothing purchase and accusations of blood libel made by Wasilla’s most famous export:

I feel powerless to control my obsession, even though it cheapens and demeans me.

But today is the first day of the rest of my life. And so, I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin – in print, online or on television – for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free February. With enough support, I believe we may even be able to extend the moratorium beyond one month, but we are up against a powerful compulsion, and we must take this struggle day by day.

What makes any individual “newsworthy” is certainly a matter of opinion, but the fact remains that the media remains fascinated with Palin – or at least fascinated by the ratings and viewers she is able to draw – because numbers don’t lie. So, it’s a bit difficult to argue that The Media (lamestream, blamestream or otherwise) is forcing Palin down the public’s gullet when people keep willingly consuming, if not seeking out, more and more information about her or the latest headlines she’s managed to inspire.

Say what you will about Palin, but the woman is adept at keeping her name in people’s mouths. And she continues to make her mark on politics, pop culture, slang, fashion, and history. Of course, it’s a chicken-or-egg scenario depending on whether you believe Palin is able to impact media coverage because she is an influential figure, or if she’s an influential figure because the media deems her worth the coverage.

Host Howard Kurtz asked the right question of Milbank in the following exchange:

Kurtz: “It’s fair to hold a talk show host responsible for what some violent or perhaps unbalanced person does because they like what this person says on the airwaves?”

Milbank: “Yes Howie in the aggregate . . . [they] need to worry about that fraction of 1% who just might be driven over the edge.”

Milbank offers the final justification for his assertion by saying “in Glenn Back’s case, I’ve documented a few cases in which it’s led a crazy person to snap.” Therefore Milbank believes even though rhetoric of the right might not be responsible in this case, attacking Beck and Palin now is a legitimate form of “rough justice” for their past sins. Milbank’s argument follows the tortured logic of Media Matters founder David Brock who claimed Beck was responsible for three thwarted assassination attempts either because a psychopath claimed Beck as an influence or some tangential evidence existed to suggest an unstable lunatic may have watched Beck at some point in their life.

What is most disturbing about this week’s entire conversation of “rhetoric” and summed up here, is what if by chance Loughner actually did have a t-shirt from the Beck/Bill O’Reilly “Bold Fresh Tour” or dare I say, had Sarah Palin’s Alaska saved on his DVR? Is it the serious argument of intelligent people that in such a case Beck and Palin would be responsible for the deranged individual’s actions? And even more, that in our society everyone’s free speech should be constrained by what a “fraction of 1%” might construe to be an incitement to violence? If that’s the case then Milbank better stop talking because as the author of an extremely unflattering biography of Beck, he himself could then be held responsible for Beck’s current fifteen operating death threats.

This ludicrous argument that agitators on the right or the left could in any way have culpability for the actions of one crazy person is seemingly so absurd, yet strangely so widespread amongst commentators. Thus Palin and Beck are entirely justified to defend themselves from anyone’s, yes I’ll use the word, libelous implication that they somehow are responsible for a violent act perpetrated by an unhinged “fan.” Beck has thus far laughed off such accusations, while Palin passionately declared them “reprehensible.” Yet no matter their reaction, the fact remains that such false accusations of blame are themselves dangerous forms of rhetoric, and if we’re playing the “words can incite violence” game, then they were likely the cause of yesterday’s death threat made to a Tea Party leader.

Watch the clip from CNN below:

If John McCain gets any more hostile toward his Senate colleagues, they might consider having him go through the metal detector before he enters the Capitol.

Saturday’s debate on the repeal of the “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” policy was only half an hour old when the Arizona Republican burst onto the floor from the cloakroom, hiked up his pants and stalked over to his friend Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). Ignoring Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who had the floor, McCain hectored the men noisily for a few moments, waving his arms for emphasis.

When McCain finally stormed off, Durbin shook his head in exasperation and Lieberman smiled. A minute later, McCain returned – he had apparently remembered another element of his grievance – and resumed his harangue.

It turns out McCain’s fury was stirred by a trifle – he had wanted more time for the debate, which the Democrats eventually gave him – but that was typical. It doesn’t take much to set off McCain these days.

Earlier in the week, he was observed in the unseemly act of publicly gloating on the Senate floor over his success in killing a massive spending bill. He’s also been raising hurdles to the ratification of the Obama administration’s nuclear arms treaty with Russia. At the same time, he led the opposition Saturday to repealing the ban on openly gay men and lesbians serving in the military – taking on Lieberman, who led the other side.

McCain’s statement on the floor was roughly one part argument, four parts tantrum. “So here we are about six weeks after an election that repudiated the agenda of the other side,” he said, and those who would repeal don’t-ask-don’t-tell “are acting in direct repudiation of the message of the American people.” (Actually, polls show support for repeal.)

He bemoaned “this bizarro world that the majority leader has been carrying us in,” and taunted: “Maybe it will require another election.” The Arizonan suggested those who vote to repeal would have blood on their hands. “Don’t think that it won’t be at great cost,” he said, punctuating his words by bouncing on his toes and chopping with his left hand. It will “probably,” he said, “harm the battle effectiveness which is so vital to the survival of our young men and women in the military.”

McCain famously said in 2006 that he would support repeal once military leaders recommended it. Instead, he led the opposition to repeal. McCainologists in the Capitol speculate that on this and other issues he’s driven less by policy consideration than by personal animosity. A decade ago, his antipathy toward President George W. Bush led him to seek common cause with Democrats to thwart a Republican president. Now his antipathy toward President Obama has made him a leading Republican hardliner.

On Saturday, McCain’s rage was all the more striking because the general tone of the debate was tame. Republicans were mostly defensive, objecting not to the service of homosexuals in the military but to procedures and other technical matters. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said of the repeal: “Should it be done at some point in time? Maybe so, but in the middle of a military conflict is not the time to do it.”

Read Milbank’s full column here.

I don’t usually bother looking at the Washington Post. But I’m inside the Beltway right now, so I spared a peek — and for my sins ended up reading Dana Milbank, who praises Obama for punching the hippies.

So far, so usual. But then I read this:

This is a hopeful sign that Obama has learned the lessons of the health-care debate, when he acceded too easily to the wishes of Hill Democrats, allowing them to slow the legislation and engage in a protracted debate on the public option. Months of delay gave Republicans time to make their case against “socialism” and prevented action on more pressing issues, such as job creation. Democrats paid for that with 63 seats.
Um, that’s not what happened — and I followed the health care process closely. The debate over the public option wasn’t what slowed the legislation. What did it was the many months Obama waited while Max Baucus tried to get bipartisan support, only to see the Republicans keep moving the goalposts; only when the White House finally concluded that Republican “moderates” weren’t negotiating in good faith did the thing finally get moving.

So look at how the Village constructs its mythology. The real story, of pretend moderates stalling action by pretending to be persuadable, has been rewritten as a story of how those DF hippies got in the way, until the centrists saved the day.

Read Krugman’s full blog post here.

UPDATE: Krugman appears to be picking a fight with the Washington Post Opinion team today, as he just published another short item on his blog — this time taking a swipe at Washington Post columnist David Broder. He says:

Uh-oh. David Broder says the tax deal marks the beginning of Obama’s recovery. The president is doomed.

Remember, Broder declared that Katrina would boost Bush’s image, by showing his forcefulness as commander-in-chief — and then spent the next three years predicting a Bush comeback just around the corner.

And yes, the column is actually titled “Centrist on the rise.” You can’t make these things up.

Here’s Pareene’s introduction to his project:

Think of the War Room Hack 30 as an all-star team — or a rogues gallery. These are the most predictable, banal, intellectually dishonest and all-around hacky newspaper columnists, cable news shouting heads and political opinion-mongers working today. We compiled the list by reading blogs and Op-Ed sections and watching 24-hour cable news channels for about a decade, and then listing about 200 people who rarely fail to annoy us. We cut the list down to 30 people whose continued employment most baffles us, and then we ranked them in order of shamelessness.

Seems like a sound use of the scientific method.

Already, Pareene has highlighted numbers 30-23 on his list. They are, in descending order of awfulness:

30. David Brooks (“The milquetoast New York Times conservative never has anything to say”)

29. Matt Bai (“The political reporter who doesn’t believe in political science”)

28. Andrew Malcolm (“The Drudge-baiting conservative L.A. Times news blogger”)

27. Pat Caddell (“The pollster and ultimate Fox Democrat”)

26. Jeffrey Goldberg (“His inaccurate Iraq stories helped pave the way for war”)

25. Mickey Kaus (“The longtime blogger pioneered pointless contrarianism”)

24. Dana Milbank (“The Washington Post columnist combines horrible puns with cheerful sexism“)

23. Howard Kurtz (“The longtime media reporter and walking conflict of interest”)

What do you think of the list so far? Who would you recommend be added to it? Is Pareene totally off-base in calling these eight pundits hacks? And who do you think will end up with the (dis)honor of being named number one? Give us your thoughts in the comments, and keep your eye on The War Room as the rest of it is revealed.

[h/t The Awl]

“Fox hater” Milbank was the crux of O’Reilly’s “Talking Points” memo, where he recounted the story thus far and read from Milbank’s latest column, where the latteer quipped, “Hilarious! Decapitation jokes just slay me, and this one had all the more hilarity because the topic of journalist beheadings brings to mind my late friend and colleague Danny Pearl, who replaced me in the Wall Street Journal‘s London bureau and later was murdered in Pakistan by people who thought sharia justified it.” Milbank also noted that he believed the irritation from the right at him was more about his Glenn Beck blockbuster than his comments, though O’Reilly didn’t mention that. Instead, he clarified that, while Milbank said “I would like violence to befall him. Not true! I would like honesty to befall him.”

Karl Rove didn’t have much to say about the Beck issue, either. Instead, he tried to cheer Milbank out of his “snarky” demeanor so as to get him to stop writing “bitter and brittle and nasty” columns, brandishing a white board with the words “Stop Taking Yourself So Seriously or Be Consistent” on it.

The segment from tonight’s Factor via Fox News below:

In the following clip, Kelly (who co-hosted Fox News’s election night coverage) defends the specific comments that Milbank claimed to be evidence of her bias. Milbank wrote on Wednesday:

As Fox’s Megyn Kelly announced that one Democratic senator, expected to lose big, was in a race “too close to call,” she commented: “That’s, uh, an interesting update.” When Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), said by Fox commentators to be endangered, cruised to an easy win, Kelly commented: “Alas.”

The victory party would have to focus on the 60-seat gain Fox projected for Republicans in the House – an enormous win, though not at the upper end of the forecasts. Fox commentator Karl Rove, pleading for “perspective,” said it still qualified as a “blowout evening.” To be fair and balanced, Fox brought in a nominal Democrat, pollster Doug Schoen. “This is a complete repudiation of the Democratic Party,” he proclaimed.

We wrote on Wednesday “Milbank’s understandable critique of Fox News’ tone is diminished by his own lack of fairness in his reporting; it seems like he’d have the reader believe that Democratic pollster Doug Schoen was the lone left-of-center voice on the channel,” before listing the panoply of other left-of-center personalities. Kelly reiterated the proper context of her “alas” comment which, in fairness, was said in a different manner than the way it was presented by Milbank.

There is also the predictable (and oddly promotional?) shots at progressive media watchdog site Media Matters, but perhaps the oddest moment was the decision by O’Reilly and producers to put up an image of Milbank’s Washington Post editor Fred Hiatt, then following with a eerily threatening comment “Fred, have a nice weekend,” reaffirming O’Reilly’s trope as the bullying beat cop. Watch the segment from Fox News below.

Bernie Goldberg

Milbank, long a favorite target of O’Reilly’s, was under the microscope of implying that no liberal commentators were on hand for Fox News’ election coverage in his Washington Post piece today (Milbank, it turns out, was in the minority believing Fox was one of the less objective networks last night). Bill O’Reilly asked Goldberg whether Milbank should be fired for being dishonest, a question which Goldberg seemed to find immaterial, due to the Post‘s “irrational fear of Fox News.” “It’s because of this arrogance that so many people have lost faith with the so-called mainstream media,” he concluded.

As for last night’s election coverage, Goldberg had praise for Fox News and CNN, appreciating their “professional jobs” and comparing their work to MSNBC, which he claimed “jumped the shark.” “They broke the cardinal rule of journalism,” he explained: “you don’t have partisans cover hard news events.” Comparing their coverage to The View and mocking their “schoolgirls,” O’Reilly suggested that “it didn’t have to be that way,” and that having Joe Scarborough on during prime time. Goldberg countered that that would be impossible because “serious journalists don’t want to be anywhere near those people.

Goldberg also took a “shot” at O’Reilly for comparing former Rep. Alan Grayson to criminals– “that’s not fair to the criminals, Bill.”

The segment from tonight’s Factor via Fox News below:

Washington Post

The Politico numbers are rather surprising, considering the sustained interested in Beck as a personality:

The Washington Times’s Jennifer Harper reported Wednesday that the sales of Dana Milbank’s new book on Glenn Beck, “Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Teabagging of America” were “tepid” and “in the hundreds” two weeks after publication.

A source in the industry gets specific with POLITICO about just how tepid: 914 copies the first week, and 663 copies the second, according to Bookscan. (Bookscan accounts for about 70 percent of books sold, and does not count e-books.)

That’s around 5 percent of the 38,700 books printed.

Random House, who published the book, refused to comment, and Milbank himself was tongue-in-cheek about the sames, calling these numbers “absurd” but adding that he was aware the book wouldn’t sell like, say, Arguing with Idiots or The Overton Window. Milbank also cites Amazon numbers in his defense and, yes, Tears of a Clown is #2 on the “History and Criticism” bestsellers list.

While the sources in the Politico piece are anonymous and Milbank has never quite been a completely partisan figure, Beck fans and allies have made all of an occasion out of the report with the comical Twitter hashtag #sellingbetterthanMilbank.

“We are at the place where the Constitution hangs in the balance,” Beck told Bill O’Reilly on November 14, 2008, just after President Obama’s election. “I feel the Constitution is hanging in the balance right now, hanging by a thread unless the good Americans wake up.”

The Constitution is hanging by a thread. Most Americans would have heard this as just another bit of overblown commentary and thought nothing more of it. But to those familiar with the White Horse Prophecy, it was an unmistakable signal. The phrase is often attributed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormon Church. Smith is believed to have said in 1840 that when the Constitution hangs by a thread, elders of the Mormon Church will step in — on the proverbial white horse — to save the country.

And all this time I thought Beck was just speaking in plain old apocalyptic language! Who knew. Also, why does it matter? Is anyone actually worried that the Mormon population (1.4% of the entire population) is going to rise up and overthrow the country? Probably not. Then again, as Milbank points out, many Christians “malign [Mormomism] as a cult” so perhaps this revelation is supposed to make all his non-Mormon Christian viewers — who presumably were not previously aware of the secret code — nervous, or resentful, or both. There’s more.

But there is a Beckian twist in his version of the prophecy. Unlike the church leaders’ versions, Beck’s vision carries the possibility of a bloody end. On the night of Feb. 24, 2009, Beck outlined this prospect for his viewers. People who “don’t trust the government,” he said, would “see the government as violating the Constitution, and they will see themselves as defenders of the Constitution. Not a good mix. Then they take matters into their own hands.”

As it turned out, taking “matters into their own hands” ended up being the 8/28 rally where a few hundred thousand mostly white, mostly middle-aged, generally very tame people wearing Restoring Honor t-shirts showed up on the National Mall in August to listen to Beck speak in a language I would describe less as a “secret Mormon code” than a combination of the 12 steps meets Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing meets Revelations. But maybe I was wearing the wrong decoder ring.

In his weekly column today, Milbank details a visit to RNC headquarters, where he ventured to find the state of the “Republican establishment” to be a slightly more comfortable affair that the shambles he expected to find after listening to the media. In fact, he found a promotion for the book Young Guns, on, among others, the party’s vigorous septuagenarians and their youthful ideas. He notes that one of the authors ecstatically told the press the book was “the No. 1 political book on Kindle! It’s 26th overall on Amazon!” At the very least, the RNC was not dying commercially, he argues.

But the crux of his piece has little to do with book sales and much to do with the harmony of ideals he finds between established Republican leaders and the Tea Party. Yes, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin have butted heads. Yes, the party appeared to collectively hold its breath for a few months in May when Rand Paul decided he would make the 1964 Civil Rights Act a major player in the news cycle. But, Milbank argues, no one with power in the GOP has broken ranks with the Tea Party movement as a whole. He notes that RNC Chairman Michael Steele and figures like House minority leader John Boehner have heaped praise upon the movement and asserted that, were they not in positions of authority already, they would be seeking further involvement with the Tea Party. And as for Rove, “after [Christine] O’Donnell‘s victory, George W. Bush‘s “brain” declared on Fox News that ‘this is not a race we’re going to be able to win,’ citing the ‘nutty things’ she has said. (The nominee has claimed, among other things, that there are mice with human brains.) But after hearing complaints from Tea Party types such as Sarah Palin, Rove returned to Fox News to say that O’Donnell is ‘not out of the game’ and that he was ‘one of the first’ to endorse her.”

The evidence, Milbank concludes, points to a union between the two where the Republicans both support and attempt to control the Tea Party, such that there is little ideological dispute. He does leave open-ended whether there is too little wiggle room out at the front of the movement and whether that may cause friction between the two. Instead, he offers: “The Republican establishment of popular imagination, like the Georgetown salon, no longer exists. If there is a Republican establishment, the Tea Party is it… [GOP Party leaders are] stepping out in front of the Tea Party parade and pretending to be drum majors.”

In the media disarray that emerged as a result of this year’s series of Tea Party victories, to think of the Tea Party and the GOP as essentially the same thing takes much of the excitement out of the game. On the other hand, that the Democrats will have to contend with unified ranks of conservatives and the small-government conservatives and/or libertarians that claim the Tea Party mantle (that’s enough of a power struggle in itself) may be something the left has to worry about significantly more than the right.

Dana Milbank

“With each passing year, the class notes for the famous House Republicans Class of ’94 get more lurid,” he argues. Using yesterday’s Mark Souder scandal as a launch point, Milbank cites Mark Foley, Mark Sanford (who won election to the House of Representatives in 1994), and John Ensign as examples. He even throws in a couple of Congressmen involved in the Jack Abramoff scandal to add to the 15/73 number, though the closest thing to lewd conduct in that affair was the signature fedora Abramoff decided to don to court. He also takes a jab at former Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr for, well, being “socially libertarian.” When he tries to explain the why behind the scandals, however, he only focuses on sex scandals and uses logic that can apply to the political career of someone from any ideological background:

Yet millions of people live in the Washington area, and relatively few of us have adulterous relationships with married subordinates we have hired to assist us in broadcasts for Christian media outlets. That, and not this town’s “poisonous environment,” is why Souder is resigning.

Perhaps the problem is that lawmakers are spending too little time in Washington. In the old days, they moved their families here; now they jet back and forth and focus on raising campaign money, straining marriages. That reality, combined with the sense of invincibility many lawmakers acquire, has ensnared more than a few of Souder’s classmates — most of whom came to town with a “family values” message.

Milbank leaves the analysis open-ended, however, since he only gives that number in absolute terms. 15 out of 73—about 21%, one in every five politicians—doesn’t seem alarming, but rather par for the course for any other collection of politicians. I’ll admit that my perspective might be skewed from a lifetime in New Jersey, where we long for the righteous days of Jim McGreevey, but think of five names of any American public officials, and chances are at least one of them will be Rod Blagojevich or Larry Craig, or any politician with a sullied name. While part of this is publicity, some percentage of it must also be sheer number of corrupt politicians, from the days of the Teapot Dome Scandal to the rise and fall of Monica Lewinsky.

Centuries of political scandal have still not satiated the media’s interest in the topic, nor has it suppressed the desire to make it appear as if corruption werer a trend rather than a fact of life. Take, for example, the corruption “trend” of late 2009. To celebrate (?) the release of former Ohio Congressman and current Ohio Congressional candidate James Traficant from jail, Newsweek’s “The Gaggle” blog officially declared that “Suddenly, Disgraced Politicians Are Cool Again” in September 2009. For some reason, it was Traficant’s release from jail that made corruption a fashion statement, not the previous Year in Blago or the New Jersey arrests of 44 suspects in a corruption raid in July 2009 that stripped the town of Hoboken of it’s three-week-old mayor. It even ignored the fact that Traficant, a proto-Blago of sorts (hair and all), and his shenanigans had not been making news for years before he was released from jail.

Milbank is absolutely correct in noting that there is something “lurid” about the Congressional Class of 1994. There is something “lurid” about a number of all politicians in every capacity. In artificially extracting the history of the 1994 Congressional Republicans from the long-term political narrative, he fails to note that moral and legal corruption are not by nature just their problem, but an issues Americans have consistently dealt with for centuries.

Milbank, who is not coming at the issue from a Republican perspective, wrote in his column that while he understood the ideological purging that both parties often participate in as the nation polarizes before an election, losing a someone with Crist’s history of bipartisanship would be severely detrimental to Republicans. For one, he notes that Crist is faring much better in general election polls against probable Democratic candidate Kendrick Meeks:

The only reason a far-right candidate such as Rubio is competitive at all is because this year heavily favors Republicans. In a normal election year — 2012, perhaps — Republicans will rue their purging of the Crists and Specters who could have kept them competitive.

He has a point. Rubio is extremely off-putting for many on the left, and legislators are forced by their job into negotiating in a bipartisan manner. Entering Congress with a rigid ideological view, even if in earnest, will either end in legislative gridlock or make the partisan “flip-flop” in order to get anything done.

That’s not to say that Milbank is forgiving of excessive ideological wavering. Milbank is clearly a Crist fan and, while he disagrees with many of Rubio’s views, he saved his sharpest attacks for Eric Cantor and Mitt Romney, who he called the “Naked Opportunist wing of the party” for waiting until it was abundantly clear that Rubio would win before endorsing a candidate. While other Rubio supporters come off in Milbank’s take on the matter as radical or insane, Cantor and Romney are dismissed completely as ideologically vapid outside of their desire to win for their team.

His column also makes some veiled mentions of a point of contention involving Crist’s private life, claiming that his decline in the Republican polls were the result of a “man-crush” between him and Obama (also harkening back to an attack ad by the Rubio campaign displaying Crist and Barack Obama embracing that some opponents considered homophobic). Crist must not be too happy that even his supporters have to joke about his sexuality, but at this point he’ll probably take what he can get.

Dana Milbank

“World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow.” This is how Milbank, who has made a career out of legendary introductions, opens his column. He continues to describe Washington, DC looking like a “military encampment” and a “May Day parade.” He quips that the title of President is no longer known as “leader of the free world,” and suggesting that Obama gave the “world’s greatest dictators” a lesson in neutralizing the media.

It doesn’t get much better for Obama when Milbank begins to cite other reporters who feel the same– reporters who were used to wheedling information out of tight-lipped leaders like the Saudi royal family, the King of Jordan, and Chinese President Hu Jintao. They all expressed regret at how little access the White House gave them to international talks and events. The comments are damning because they originate from a group that already expects to be shunned, not from comparatively privileged American journalists who are accustomed to a certain standard of transparency.

At some points, though, Milbank does drift off into the barely-relevant, like his accusation that Obama “broke with years of protocol” by attending a soccer game without telling his security. The fact that he joked that “reporters were upset” about this was insulting to Milbank, despite the fact that the instance was a needless risk to his wellbeing and not directly a snub to reporters.

It’s important to note that Milbank was in hot water recently for defending White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel– he is probably one of the last in line anyone would expect to make repeated references to communism in order to attack President Obama. Yet the secrecy seems to have struck an important nerve within him that, with every new comment about it from reporters used to a world of obstructed journalism, grew more irritated. That said, chances are Milbank isn’t going to run off and make some crayon signs with hammers and sickles on them anytime soon. It is precisely because Milbank has been outlandish in the past to defend Obama that his now being outlandish to attack him is so shocking, and, if Milbank is right about the issue, might be a wake-up call to Obama officials to take a little extra time to make sure the reporters are well-tended to.

[Photo via White House Museum]

That may not cut it. WaPo‘s Dana Milbank wonders whether the reporters for foreign outlets, “many operating in repressive countries, got the impression that the vaunted American freedoms are not all they’re cracked up to be.” Blitzer video below.

Related: Even Obama Wants To Ditch The White House Press Corps

In this installment of Inside the White House Press Corps, Sam talks about that first presser, the Nico Pitney-Dana Milbank dustup, covering the White House, and really delivers the goods on embarrassing TV habits. I also learned that Sam needs a boost to his Twitter follower count, so get on his feed and start tweeting him.

It’s best to just reproduce this introductory paragraph verbatim:

According to legend, if you catch a leprechaun in the forest, the little creature must grant you three wishes. Our Kenyan Hawaiian commander in chief evidently has the luck of the Irish, because, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, President Obama bagged himself a leprechaun — in Cleveland, of all places — and on Wednesday his first wish was granted.

Yes, the entire piece continues in this tone– health care reform is a “wish” the “little guy” is granting the president for getting caught, “leaping leprechauns!” After the shocking revelation that Milbank is both a birther and believes Kucinich is a magical elfish creature washes over, his serious point is just as incomprehensible. He argues that Kucinich’s move forward will be the first step towards a united Congress for health care reform. Or, as he explains, “his capitulation was the clearest sign that the left, after 15 months of antagonizing Obama because of his compromises, is now ready to cooperate.”

Except the left has been cooperating, with the exception of more radical members like Kucinich. Yes, President Obama is now one vote closer to reform, but it isn’t a vote that carries weight with the bulk of the opposition. And therein lies the problem: Milbank’s analysis seems to assume that the Democrats’ greatest opposition to the bill lies within. If only Obama could convince people like Kucinich to vote for the bill, he would win. Except nowhere near the bulk of his problems come from people to his left, which is why he felt he had the political space and time to spend with Kucinich– he was the exception to the rule. And Kucinich’s support of a bill is not going convince any conservatives to hop on board.

The controversy surrounding Emanuel’s reputation in the paper began with a piece by Dana Milbank suggesting most of President Obama’s troubles could have been avoided through his Chief of Staff’s advice. A news story by Jason Horowitz several days later reinforced the notion, with a series of anonymous comments from insiders that seemed to form a consensus around the idea. David Broder disagreed vocally with both Milbank and Horowitz, and questioned the position of Horowitz’s piece in the news section. And now it’s the ombudsman’s job to settle the dispute between the colleagues and set the record straight publicly. Except, to do that, he’s thrown the entire paper’s infrastructure under the bus.

Alexander’s description of the Washington Post office does exonerate the paper of having any uniform bias, but it also reads like a logistical nightmare. He notes that the Post is not alone in lacking direction–“in reality, any large newsroom is so chaotic that there are days when you wonder if editors and reporters could organize a one-car caravan”– but later addresses the issue specifically, pointing out that Horowitz and Milbank were not aware of the content of each other’s pieces.

Horowitz told me that his story ‘had already started taking shape’ before Milbank’s column appeared and dismissed the notion of coordination.

Apparently neither one of the two writers nor any editors considered finding out the content of both pieces in case they were heading in the same direction. The explanation makes it seems as if all the Post writers work on whatever they want and often cover the same topics without realizing it, with some pieces ending up in the opinion section and some in news, depending on who happens upon the copy laying around on someone’s desk. Working together would have avoided the entire problem. Incorporating Horowitz’s work into Milbank’s opinion piece would have strengthened it considerably, but as it stands alone Horowitz’s piece– which Alexander admits– is questionable for its overwhelming support of one side of the issue, especially from anonymous sources.

The strange thing is that Alexander’s repudiation of anonymous comment journalism comes in a piece where he is attempting to defend the paper’s credibility. He explains the pitfalls of anonymous sources and proceeds to point out how rampant the practice of quoting them is at the Washington Post, including in the work of the story’s apparent hero, the “legendary” Broder. It’s an interesting approach to take if Alexander is attempting to restore a legitimacy he sees under threat. Sure, a newspaper needs some sort of organization to propagate a uniform agenda, but it also needs organization to collect accurate information and write worthwhile news pieces, and this does not make objectivity and credibility mutually exclusive.

Both Milbank and Broder present equally impassioned arguments for either side, Milbank claiming that “Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter” while Broder calls the whole thing a “remarkable fiction” perpetrated by “some of Emanuel’s friends [who] are so eager to exonerate him that they are threatening to undermine the president.” The high-profile disagreement in the press even got to Robert Gibbs this morning, where he had to deny there was any animosity between the President and his Chief of Staff.

Whether Emanuel is a righteous, alienated figure or a catty gossip-monger who doesn’t know his place is not the question Yglesias seeks to answer though, because he finds the entire situation symptomatic of a larger issue with the Democrats in general: they have no self-confidence. Why are Democrats trying to blame each other for their problems, he asks, when there aren’t really that many problems to begin with? Why not just highlight the successes?:

“But the broader problem with Emanuel’s viewpoint is that he actually encapsulates the Democratic Party’s main political problem with regard to national security: a perilous lack of self-confidence. It’s true that the right landed some blows with its arguments against Guantánamo’s closure and its hand-wringing over Mohammed’s trial. However, these hits need to be situated within the larger context of an administration that’s done an excellent job of winning the public’s confidence on national security.[…]

Not only do Democrats have a pathetic lack of self-confidence on national security issues, they’re also unable to recognize a strong hand when they have it. Instead of press leaks in which aides compete to brag about how they urged the president to stand tall and fight, we have finger-pointing about who’s to blame for an alleged fiasco even in the absence of any objective problem.”

Yglesias isn’t the first to reveal the self-esteem issues on Team Obama (it is the basic premise of yesterday’s SNL presidential mega-parody), but he is the first to accurately identify them as the force behind the kind of petty backroom politics that leads Dana Milbank to be inundated with insider tips on how much Obama’s failures are not Emanuel’s fault– and the ones that push Broder to defend the president’s positions. Yes, the Democrats’ political capital is close to rock bottom at this point thanks to many unpopular positions they have taken, but a defeatist attitude is a self-fulfilling prophesy. “Blaming” each other for things that are going well makes it seem like even they understand that they are wrong, rather than persuading anyone to agree with their stances.

“Last week I mentioned three books on air…Friday all three of these were in the top ten…Don’t let anybody tell you, [cue funny voice] oh you watch Glenn Beck, oh you’re just a dumb-dumb-dummy. This audience reads more books than I think any audience I’ve ever witnessed.”

I checked and during yesterday’s show, ‘Lincoln at Peoria” ranked #25,689. It is currently at #251. Not top ten exactly, but not too shabby either considering it’s a “careful, balanced look at Abraham Lincoln’s stirring 1854 Peoria, Ill., speech, writer and historian Lehrman finds a ‘prelude to greatness’ that put the little-known lawyer and politician on the path to national prominence while laying the intellectual groundwork for his presidency.”

In related news, perhaps WaPo writer Dana Milbank (who apparently recently cottoned on to what we’ve been aware of for quite some time, ahem) is hoping for a similar boost in sales for the book on Beck he has reportedly been signed to pen. From Politico:

Milbank, who only had about 750 words to tackle that question in his Washington Post column, is now writing a book on the conservative radio and television host: “Tears of a Clown.” And he’s already started researching.

“I’ve signed up for the elite membership on GlennBeck.com,” Milbank told POLITICO.

Milbank said that what sets Beck apart is a willingness to go where other hosts will not. “I think he has a lower bar, and commercially, it’s pure genius,” Milbank said. “He has found the absolute sweet spot in the market right now.”

No kidding.

Related:
Glenn Beck [Mediaite]

In our increasingly tribal politics, both sides are more demanding of ideological purity than they were when Lieberman came to the Senate in 1988.”

–Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, explaining the Democratic aversion to what he calls “the Liebermonster”

It’s no great secret that Senator Joe Lieberman has enraged many liberals with his vocal, well-publicized threats to derail the health care bill under consideration. MSNBC lambastes Lieberman night after night; Wonkette calls him the “worst person in the history of the universe” (and that’s one of the nicer things they call him); even Senator Al Franken vented his frustration with Lieberman by shooting him down in the Senate.

Dana Milbank’s theory: Lieberman is just an old-school moderate, which is something today’s hyperpolarized Senate can’t handle.

“In our increasingly tribal politics, both sides are more demanding of ideological purity than they were when Lieberman came to the Senate in 1988. The constant purging of heretics has left Congress ever more polarized. This, more than anything done by Lieberman or Ben Nelson or Olympia Snowe, is why the government can’t get anything done.

Those who accuse Lieberman of a recent right turn have probably forgotten that in his first campaign for Senate he secured the endorsement of William F. Buckley in defeating a liberal Republican, Lowell Weicker. Lieberman criticized Weicker for opposing U.S. military actions and accused him of trying to raise taxes.

His ideology has not changed one bit, as measured by vote ratings.”

Washington Post columnist and Power Grid #3 Dana Milbank delivers an impassioned Sunday column today, using a literary allusion and extended metaphor to describe the dealmaking that occurred yesterday in the Senate. It’s all very Southern — straight out of a Tennessee Williams play, he contends in “Sweeteners for the South.” And it may sound like your typical gimmicky op-ed fare, but it works this time. I mean, her name is Blanche.

Her, of course, being Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, the final hold out among the Democrats in the Senate, all of whom were needed to keep the bill alive. The other Senator in need of wooing was Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who earlier in the day agreed to support the proliferation of the legislation in return for a financial “fix” for her state. “And it’s not a $100 million fix. It’s a $300 million fix,” she said.

Milbank writes:

The plot was gripping — the bill survived Saturday’s procedural test without a single vote to spare — and it brought out the rank partisanship, the self-absorption and all the other pathologies of modern politics. If that wasn’t enough of a Tennessee Williams story line, the debate even had, playing the lead role, a Southerner named Blanche with a flair for the dramatic.

On Lincoln, he continues: “Like other Democratic moderates who knew a single vote could kill the bill, she took a streetcar named Opportunism, transferred to one called Wavering and made off with concessions of her own.”

The entire story is an illustrative tale of politics in their most nakedly loathsome, “we always knew it was this way” way, spun by Milbank into a compelling narrative. It’s a perfectly frustrating and instructive Sunday read. And here it is.

(h/t Pat’s Papers)

In another case, the sickness was a financial malady responsible for the moving and the shaking, as New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin skyrocketed from the #37 Print/Online Reporter to #5 thanks to the forthcoming release of his verbosely titled book Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System—and Themselves. The latest issue of Vanity Fair includes an excerpt from the work, as well as a Q&A, in addition to the buzz Sorkin has received from his other recent financial coverage in the Times of shamed businessman Guy Hands, a salacious take entitled “A Financier Peels Back the Curtain.” As a result, he’s setting Google ablaze.

Elsewhere, Lorne Michaels benefitted from SNL‘s return (enjoy the classics here!), jumping from #4 to #2 among TV Executives, while TV reporter Ann Curry leaped nine spots, from #20 to #11 after a highly publicized interview with disputed Iranian President Ahmadinejad as well as likely gaining some followers after a public report about an emergency landing on her Twitter account. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg crept up the media mogul top 5, to the fourth slot, after announcing that the social networked topped 300 million users and is now profitable. Meanwhile, madness in Washington took the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank to #1 from #3 in the Print/Online Reporters category.

A handful of huge jumps included Armen Keteyian, from #50 to #12 among TV Reporters after an Emmy win for investigative journalism. Similarly, the start of the NFL season meanted a #43 to #13 jump for TV reporter Michael Smith, while the ever pleasant Ann Coulter elbowed her way to the top’s outer edges — from #20 to #8 when it comes to TV Pundits.

Check out the entire set of rankings here.

WashPost Launches America’s Next Great Pundit Competition

Aspiring pundits across the country have the chance to be “America’s Next Great Pundit” by entering The Washington Post’s political columnist competition.

Starting today The Washington Post opinions section is asking people around the country to tell us why they deserve to publish their opinions in The Washington Post and be the next Dana Milbank or Eugene Robinson. Ten contestants will be picked from among all the entrants, and then the field will by narrowed down by rounds of challenges testing the skills a modern pundit must possess. They’ll have to write on deadline, hold their own on video, and field questions from Post readers. After each round, a panel of Post personalities and reader votes will help determine who gets another chance at a byline and who has to shut down their laptop. The ultimate winner will get the opportunity to write a 13-week column that may appear in the print and/or online editions of The Washington Post.

Follow the competition or launch your career by entering online at www.washingtonpost.com/pundit.

WHY. WHY. WHY. Oh wait, I know why: User-generated content, and buzz buzz buzz. Hey man, if it’ll bankroll the next Walter Reed exposé, it’s cool. Actually, a contest encouraging people to be the next Dana Priest might be good, too.

Here’s what these pundits will do, by the way. From the website:

Beginning on or about Oct. 30, ten prospective pundits will get to compete for the title of America’s Next Great Pundit, facing off in challenges that test the skills a modern pundit must possess. They’ll have to write on deadline, hold their own on video and field questions from Post readers. (Contestants won’t have to quit their day jobs, but they should be prepared to put in about eight hours a week for three weeks.) After each round, a panel of Post personalities will offer kudos and catcalls, and reader votes will help to determine who gets another chance at a byline and who has to shut down their laptop.

PACK UP YOUR LAPTOP AND GO! Here’s what the triumphant bloviator or bloviatrix will win:

The ultimate winner will get the opportunity to write a weekly column that may appear in the print and/or online editions of The Washington Post, paid at a rate of $200 per column, for a total of 13 weeks and $2,600. Our Opinions lineup includes a dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, regulars on the national political talk shows and some of the most influential players inside the Beltway. We’ll set our promising pundit on a path to become the next byline in demand, the talking head every show wants to book, the voice that helps the country figure out what’s really going on.

Almost as romantic as The Bachelorette, eh? We can’t wait. You might even see us there — we’re comin’ for you, DemocracyGurl4583!

Back then, hearing the news of a VP selection by text message made us all giddy; hours of cable news time was spent pondering the hubris of Greek pillars at Invesco Field; Hurricane Gustav was threatening to wipe the whole GOP event off the map; and the country was about to be introduced to a little-known politician who showed enormous promise named Sarah Palin. Wow.

PHOTOGALLERY: 2008 CONVENTIONS

Through it all, a cadre of journos, news execs, pundits in TV makeup, upstart bloggers and jockeying political operatives had gotten used to each other’s faces on the campaign trail, through stops in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Super Tuesday and more, with their speeches, rallies, debates, spin rooms, hoe-downs, barbecues, fundraisers, black-tie dinners, arugula, waffles, shots of JD, the thrill of final victory and the bitter, bitter pall of defeat. In August-September 2008, it all converged into one Mega-Week (give or take a few days of travel time) as the whole gang plus everyone else who could score some couch space converged on Denver and Minneapolis/St. Paul. It was lots of work but lots of fun — like sleepaway camp for politicos. So – if you’re bored and nostaligic on this sleepy summer long weekend, you’re in luck — I took the best of my 600+ photos from last year and winnowed it down to the very best of the bunch, for some golden Kodak moments featuring any and all of — in no particular order — Joe Scarborough, Joe Klein, Mika Brzezinski, Arianna Huffington, Jake Weisberg, Dana Milbank, Luke Russert, Kevin Madden, Mark Salter, Ana Marie Cox, Jon Klein, Anderson Cooper, Rick Stengel, Mary Katherine Ham, Chuck Todd, Betsy Fischer, Trent Lott, John Roberts, Laura Ingraham, Jonah Goldberg, Patrick Gavin, Rick Klein, Tucker Carlson, Amy Argetsinger, Norah O’Donnell, Pat Buchanan, Ryan Lizza, Joel Stein, Walter Isaacson, Courtney Hazlett, Keli Goff, Chris Cillizza, Mike Isikoff, Alan Cumming, Jason Jones, Samantha Power, Cass Sunstein, Carly Fiorina, Larry Page, Henry Kissinger, Chad Hurley, Jon Hamm, John Dickerson, Obama Girl, Ari Melber, Josh Green, Joan Walsh, Ron Brownstein, Matt Cooper, Fred Armisen, will.i.am, Markos Moulitsas, Chevy Chase, Tammy Haddad, Lynn Sweet, Karen Tumulty, Ben Smith, John Oliver, Karl Rove, David Carr, Kathleen Sebelius, Sammy Hagar, Rahm Emanuel, Katie Couric, Peggy Noonan and various people eating free food at the CNN Grill. Was that just a blatant attempt at showing up in all of your Google alerts? Perhaps. But still, the pics are pretty fun. Check them out here — and happy Labor Day Weekend!

PHOTOGALLERY: 2008 CONVENTIONS