Inside Politics

Then and now

The TV networks ran 58 stories on the Karl Rove-Valerie Plame-Joseph Wilson flap from July 10 to yesterday, although the special prosecutor has never said Mr. Rove is even the target of the investigation, the Media Research Center’s Rich Noyes reports at www.mediaresearch.org.

“Even though the morning shows often eschew esoteric political stories, there have actually been 32 morning-show segments devoted to Rove, compared with 26 on the evening newscasts,” Mr. Noyes said.

“Flash back seven years ago to the Lewinsky scandal, when the New Yorker ran an article attempting to discredit Linda Tripp by announcing that she had been arrested for shoplifting as a teenager, but hadn’t noted the arrest when she applied for a Pentagon security clearance (because the judge had expunged the arrest from her official record).

“Bill Clinton’s Pentagon spokesman, Kenneth Bacon, eventually confessed to leaking Tripp’s confidential personnel file to the New Yorker’s Clinton-friendly reporter Jane Mayer, but his ‘apology’ could be described as less than contrite: ‘I’m sorry that I did not check with our lawyers or check with Linda Tripp’s lawyers about this,’” he said at a May 21, 1998, briefing.

“But when the victim was an anti-Clinton whistleblower, the networks didn’t seem to care that a high-ranking government official had used an illegal leak (violating the Privacy Act) to a reporter in an effort to discredit a critic. From March 1998 to November 2003 (when Tripp was awarded $595,000 from the Defense Department), the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening shows ran just 13 stories on Clinton’s ‘Leakgate’ over five-and-a-half years. Much of the coverage was downright hostile to Tripp, not those who violated her privacy.”

Northern Strategy

“Call it the Northern Strategy. Last week Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman stepped out in front of a crowd gathered for the NAACP National Convention in Wisconsin and coolly announced the death of the hotly debated and controversial electoral strategy successfully used by Richard Nixon in 1968.

“The ‘Southern Strategy,’ as it has become known, helped Republicans win in many states of the former Confederacy in that election by appealing to defecting conservative Democrats,” Brendan Miniter writes at www.OpinionJournal.com.

“The GOP’s success in what was once the solidly Democratic South came, unfortunately, as some Republicans were ‘looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,’ Mr. Mehlman told the group. ‘I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.’

“These aren’t the first steps Republicans have taken to reach out to black voters. But Mr. Mehlman’s speech is an important turning point in reaching out to a reliably Democratic voting bloc. It’s also a necessary step if Republicans are going to remain competitive on the presidential level by improving their performance in Northern states with large, inner-city black populations.” Mr. Miniter said.

“On the same day that Mr. Mehlman spoke to the NAACP, President Bush traveled to Indiana to meet with black leaders and spotlight their volunteer activities. The president also has appointed two secretaries of state — Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice — who are both accomplished individuals who happen to be black.”

Mr. Miniter said the new approach is likely to get its first significant test in Maryland’s 2006 Senate race, where black Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele is expected to be the Republican standard-bearer.

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