Inside Politics

Bushspeak

One final take on President Bush’s 62-minute press conference Tuesday night, this from the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes:

“He was heroically on message, relentlessly repetitive, but effective in his own way,” Mr. Barnes wrote yesterday.

“Washington hates this type of public performance, which is characteristic of Bush. The press, the political community, the inside-the-Beltway lifers — they prefer a rich display of details, a bit of nuance, and some wit. Reporters, particularly, are soft on presidents who seem to like them or at least pretend to — or who pander to them.

“Bush, of course, gives them none of that. He’s not aiming to please the Washington crowd — the political elite. His audience is outside the Beltway — the mass — and he does surprisingly well in appealing to it. How does he do it? By being plain spoken and amiable and down to earth. By sounding more like Midland, Texas, than like Georgetown or Chevy Chase,” Mr. Barnes wrote.

Fox News triumph

Incidentally, the Fox News Channel had three times the viewers of CNN during Mr. Bush’s press conference, according to Nielsen.

Fox News had 5,156,000 viewers, compared with 1,740,000 for CNN and 867,000 at MSNBC.

Look, Katie, look

A group of September 11 families has released an open letter thanking National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for her testimony before the September 11 commission, and demanding that the commission stop “the incredible notion” that President Bush did nothing to prevent the attacks.

Signed by 40 relatives, the letter complains that commission members are trying to “grandstand for political gain” and embarrass Mr. Bush, according to the New York Post yesterday.

“I see the commission going partisan and that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. If it does that, it will be nothing but a political disgrace,” said former United Firefighters Association Chief Jimmy Boyle, who lost his son, firefighter Michael, on September 11. “It’s a whole new world as of Sept. 12, [2001], and I believe President Bush is the right man.”

The letter continues, “We believe Dr. Rice when she says that the president ’would have moved heaven and earth’ to prevent a terrorist attack had he known such an attack on our homeland was imminent. Any suggestion otherwise is incredible and inflammatory.”

But are liberal journalists willing to give these families a forum?

Said political observer Glenn Reynolds at his Web site (www.instapundit.com), “Hey, I wonder if these folks will be on Chris Matthews’ ’Hardball’? Maybe Katie Couric will have them on too.”

Not mainstream

House Democrats are preparing a “Catholic Voting Scorecard” to show that Catholic Democratic lawmakers are closer to the position of the U.S. Catholic hierarchy on key issues than Catholic Republicans, the Hill newspaper reported yesterday.

A project of Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Nick Lampson of Texas, both Catholics, the scorecard compares votes from Catholic lawmakers on issues of importance to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops: partial-birth abortion, human cloning, child tax credit refunds, the Defense of Marriage Act, global AIDS relief and HIV/AIDS funding, assistance to needy families and raising the minimum wage.

A preliminary copy of the scorecard said the 67 Catholic House Democrats received an average score of 76 percent, while the 49 Catholic Republican members averaged 64 percent.

“Many of the issues they’re talking about really have nothing to do with actual Catholic teaching or religion. It is interpretation of economic policy,” said Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican, who said the Democrats are “attempting to make liberal Democrats look like mainstream Catholics.”

Frank Monahan of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said his organization had nothing to do with the scorecard and does not rank lawmakers.

Samantha loses

A candidate who stayed in his campaign despite surprise photos showing him wearing dresses lost his bid for office in a Texas runoff election Tuesday.

Sam Walls, 64, who ran for a seat in the Texas House, had said he would not give in to “blackmail” from whoever circulated the photos, saying they tried to use “very old, personal information” to force him out of the race.

The Fort Worth Star Telegram recently said that the Cleburne-based businessman was “known in the Texas cross-dressing community as Samantha Walls.”

Before the photos of Mr. Walls in a blond wig and print gown surfaced last week, he was favored to win over real estate broker Rob Orr. Republican leaders urged him to withdraw, but he refused. Mr. Orr won with 65 percent of the votes.

“Some people have said they feel sorry for me, but let me tell you how wonderful it has been for me,” Mr. Walls said after his loss. “If you have not had the opportunity to find out that all your friends are true friends, then I feel sorry for you.”

He told the Star Telegram that his family had “dealt with” the dress issue and called his cross-dressing “a small part of my personal past.”

Mr. Orr will face Democrat Greg Kaufman in November.

Feel the draft

Is Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry shying away from the idea of requiring “mandatory” public service from high school students? He introduced the idea May 20 during a speech to veterans and students.

Libertarian presidential candidate Aaron Russo has kept a watchful eye on it.

Mr. Russo, perhaps seeing another chance to annoy Mr. Kerry, ramped up his own antidraft rhetoric by saying that Mr. Kerry recently continued to use the pesky word “mandatory” in his description of student service at his campaign Web site.

But as of yesterday, Mr. Russo said, the “mandatory” adjective was strangely missing from the account — though it still turned up in a check of the site’s archives. The disappearance is a mystery — “just another indicator of the flip-flop nature of John Kerry, perhaps,” one insider said.

As part of his 100-day plan to change America, Mr. Kerry proposes a comprehensive service plan that would grant four years of college tuition for students in exchange for two years of national service.

Ad strategy

President Bush’s re-election campaign soon will scale back its advertising, a shift that officials say follows the campaign’s long-term strategy to run high levels of ads only when voters are paying attention to the presidential race.

Democrats questioned whether Mr. Bush’s campaign planned the pullback for another reason: The ads have not helped the incumbent Republican gain an edge over Democratic challenger John Kerry.

“We had planned on doing waves of advertising in higher and lower amounts from the very beginning,” depending on “windows of opportunity” when public interest was high, said Matthew Dowd, the campaign’s chief strategist.

Bush advisers won’t say by how much the campaign will curtail its advertising.

• Contact Jennifer Harper at jharper@washingtontimes.com or 202/636-3085.