Update (8/16/2008): Please see the following
- excellent arguments by David Sirota against Bayh for Obama's VP: Will Obama Wave Bayh Bye to the White House?
- on Bayh's close relationship and DLC connections with Mark Penn (who's a global corruptocrat): Who Says Penn is Finished?.
- Say No to Evan Bayh, by Booman.
To follow are some of the reasons why I think Bayh should not be on the Democratic ticket with Obama this year.
Bayh has been a Lieberman/McCain clone on war and civil liberties:
- Bayh co-sponsored Lieberman's Iraq war resolution, as did McCain. All three of them voted for the war.
- Bayh is the main sponsor/author of the Iran resolution S.Res. 580 which Lieberman and McCain are co-sponsoring. The house version of this bill, H.Con.Res. 362, calls for a (naval and other) blockade of Iran, an act of war.
- Bayh voted for the FISA amendments/immunity bill, as did Lieberman. McCain would've voted for it had he not skipped the vote; he voted for an earlier version of the bill which contained retroactive immunity.
- Bayh and McCain voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment (McCain was a co-sponsor).
- Bayh, McCain and Lieberman voted for cluster bombing civilians and refugees (by voting against a bill proposed to ban cluster bombing.)
- All three of them voted for Patriot Act Reauthorization in 2006.
- He was the chairman of the DLC during 2001-2005 (coinciding with the worst Republican-lite behavior by the Democratic party, including many of them voting for the war.) Lieberman preceded him as the DLC chair.
which I think everyone should be aware of.
Bayh has a moderate record in other areas. But why would we want to put someone with McCain/Lieberman like record on the war on the Democratic ticket, just a heartbeat away from the Presidency? Wasn't HRC's vote for the war the main reason why she was denied the nomination?
Strategically, if Obama does pick Bayh, then he'd squarely lose his argument that McCain showed bad judgement in aggressively pushing/hawking the war; that's because Bayh did the same by co-sponsoring the war resolution along with McCain (Bayh's excuses for his war vote are bogus ((see Update 2 below for a detailed explanation as to why)), as were HRC's during the primary.) Without that initial judgement argument on tap, McCain's surge argument (that he showed better judgement than Obama on the surge) WILL win out, and that would be disastrous for Obama.
Also, Bayh disparaged Dean with ad-hominem attacks in 2003 and he did the same to Obama last year and earlier this year as an HRC surrogate. Here's one instance where Bayh was fear-mongering outrageously against Obama:
Marc Ambinder, 12/27/07
One Clinton surrogate went a little off message, too... Sen. Evan Bayh, per MSNBC:
He added that in a general election, Republicans would likely raise the specter of international attacks in attempt to garner votes. "When there are unfortunate calamities like this, the Republicans (will say), ‘See. See what we told you? We have to have someone who’s strong to defend America at a time of concern.’ Well, Senator Clinton is strong," he said. "And she’s experienced. And she’s tough enough to defend this country and do it in a way that’s true to our values, the civil liberties we cherish, and that’s one of the reasons why I’m supporting her."
Speaking after the event, Bayh again emphasized the need for experience. "I think they know we live in a dangerous world, and tragedies like this just remind us that we need someone with the seasoning, the experience and the strength to be commander in chief during uncertain times," he said. "The job of the next president is not to be entertainer in chief. The job of the next president is to move our country forward to make the substantive changes that will matter in our daily lives, and to protect us in an uncertain and dangerous world. And that’s why in a field of very good candidates, I believe Senator Clinton has the right combination of experience and strength to accomplish all of those things."
If I were McCain, I'd certainly run this as an ad (should Bayh be the VP nominee) along with the other BS Bayh smeared against Obama during the primary.
Just why would and why should Obama shoot himself in the foot by selecting Bayh?
~~~
Update 1: H/T to dengre on this post at the TPM:
Bayh As Veep? But He Co-Chaired Neocon Committee For The Liberation Of Iraq With McCain!
By Greg Sargent - July 16, 2008, 6:03PM
That's because in 2003, Bayh was an honorary co-chair of the neocon pro-war Committee for the Liberation of Iraq -- a group he joined along with none other than John McCain and Joe Lieberman, according to a press release from during the run-up to the invasion.
Check this out, from the group's press release on February 14th, 2003 (via Nexis):
The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI) is pleased to welcome Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) as an Honorary Co-Chairman. Bayh becomes the third U.S. Senator to join the committee after Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced their participation on January 28.
"To remove weapons of mass destruction, we must remove the regime of Saddam Hussein," said Bayh. "To think anything else is to delude ourselves." Senator Bayh was a leading sponsor of the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq (P.L. 107-243), and was a driving force in securing the overwhelming vote in the Senate on Oct. 11, 2002.
During the Senate debate on Iraq, Bayh made a compelling case for action: "It is my heartfelt conviction that weapons of mass death in the hands of a brutal dictator such as Saddam Hussein, combined with suicidal terrorist organizations that would all too eagerly use these instruments of mass destructions against us, represent an unacceptable risk for the safety and well-being of the American people."
"Senator Bayh has been a powerful voice on important national security issues. He understands that only the liberation of the Iraqi people will end the threat posed by Saddam Hussein," said CLI President Randy Scheunemann. "Senator Bayh's participation is in the finest traditions of bipartisanship in American foreign policy."
The Committee is a neo-con group that was formed to propagandize the country into war. It boasted such illustrious neocon members as Bill Kristol, former CIA director James Woolsey, and even McCain senior foreign policy adviser and Chalabi-bamboozler Randy Scheunemann, whom Josh has been blogging about.
~~~
Update 2: Bayh recently gave the excuse that there was an "intelligence failure" to explain away his Iraq war vote. That excuse doesn't hold up under scrutiny: Bayh was a member of the senate intelligence committee (SIC) in 2002 when the Iraq War Resolution (IWR) was brought up and voted on. Therefore, it was actually his job (along with the others on the committee) to expose the lies that the Bush administration was pushing in the lead up to the war.
Sen. Bob Graham's oped (Graham was the chair of the SIC) in Washington Post a couple of years ago lays out how things played out in that committee:
What I Knew Before the Invasion
By Bob Graham
Sunday, November 20, 2005
At a meeting of the Senate intelligence committee on Sept. 5, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet was asked what the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) provided as the rationale for a preemptive war in Iraq. An NIE is the product of the entire intelligence community, and its most comprehensive assessment. I was stunned when Tenet said that no NIE had been requested by the White House and none had been prepared. Invoking our rarely used senatorial authority, I directed the completion of an NIE.
Tenet objected, saying that his people were too committed to other assignments to analyze Saddam Hussein's capabilities and will to use chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons. We insisted, and three weeks later the community produced a classified NIE.
There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.
Under questioning, Tenet added that the information in the NIE had not been independently verified by an operative responsible to the United States. In fact, no such person was inside Iraq. Most of the alleged intelligence came from Iraqi exiles or third countries, all of which had an interest in the United States' removing Hussein, by force if necessary.
The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as "If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year," underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq.
Two weeks after those proceedings, Sen. Graham voted against the war, and as we see here:
... at the time of the Iraqi war vote in October 2002, when Sen. Bob Graham begged his colleagues on the floor of the Senate to read the 90 page classified NIE on WMD (as opposed to the 25 pages of declassified materials).
"Friends, I encourage you to read the classified intelligence reports which are much sharper than what is available in declassified form," Sen. Graham reports stating on the floor of the Senate in October 2002.
"We are going to be increasing the threat level against the people of the United States." He warned: "Blood is going to be on your hands"
Sen. Graham has explained that the classified version did not support the later claim by George Tenet that the WMD issue was a "slam dunk." The former Florida senator has also explained that the 25-page declassified document didn't accurately represent the classified NIE; "gone" were the assessments of Saddam Hussein's intentions to use WMD, omitting "a huge component" selectively removed.
link
during the debate, Sen. Graham strongly urged his senate colleagues to read the 90 page NIE (classified and hence inaccessible to the general public) before voting on the IWR (apparently subtly suggesting them to vote against the war.)
There wasn't exactly an "intelligence failure" as Bayh claims. This is roughly what happened:
- Bush, Cheney, Rove and other neocons concocted a collection of lies to sell the war to the public and the members of congress.
- People like McCain, Lieberman and Bayh co-opted and parroted those lies instead of questioning and demanding (as they were supposed to do as members of a coequal branch of government, namely the congress) the administration to provide valid facts.
- Had Graham not pushed Tenet to produce the intelligence estimate, the classified 90-page estimate would not have come to exist. That estimate showed many cracks in the pro-war claims being peddled to the public. The unclassified 25-page available to the public was cooked up to slant towards supporting the bogus case for war.
Bayh was a participant in those proceedings of the intelligence committee (unless he skipped those meetings) who also had access to the full 90-page NIE (as did all other members of congress), but yet proceeded to co-sponsor and vote for the war resolution. Therefore the "intelligence failure" excuse doesn't pass the muster. In reality, there was malicious intelligence manipulation by the Bush administration and intelligence vetting+reading failures (and evidently a willful co-opting of the administration's push towards a war) by members of congress, especially (some) members of the SIC such as Evan Bayh.
Bayh's excuse for the Iraq war also falls flat given his participation in the CLI mentioned in Update 1 above, and the fact that he's now an eager and the main sponsor of the Iran Resolution (SConRes 580, item #2 in our list near the top.)