In a little-noticed interview published yesterday, Alaska's own Senator-for-Life, Ted Stevens, demonstrated his tenuous hold on reality and concluded that the biggest problem facing this nation is . . . you guessed it: the media!
Poor, poor Ted. At times, during his sit-down session with the editorial board of the Anchorage Daily News, Stevens managed to sound almost rational, but then every time he says a few more words and blew it, either with a statement that was bound to create a "Wha?!?!" reaction or by flying off the handle at his interviewers, whom he clearly viewed as though they were representing the Inquisition instead of a newspaper.
I'm not going to attempt any real analysis here, since this is a classic example of Republican unintentional humor (which would be far funnier if the consequences weren't always so tragic). Selected excerpts follow.
The saddest thing in reading through the senator's responses to the various questions is the clear disconnect between what's he's saying and where he tends to place the blame. Reality -- and his own party's responsibility in crafting that both pre-Bush and during the present administration -- has no place in the world inhabited by Stevens. Perhaps it all got clogged in the internet tubes on the way to his office or home.
The discussion starts out by talking about Iraq:
Q. What do you see as the way forward (in Iraq)?
A. Patience, which the press doesn't seem to have much of. . . . The great difficulty is people who say "Pull out" don't have an answer when you ask, "What will you do with a new Iraq that's really al-Qaida with the oil production? ... What's your answer going to be to what they want to do to the United States?
Q. Isn't al-Qaida a Sunni organization in a Shiite country? Are you suggesting the Sunnis are going to end up back in charge of Iraq?
A. I'm not exactly certain who's going to be in charge of Iraq. I don't know if we pull out. And, by the way, I don't think it's necessarily a Sunni organization.
Hmm. Clearly his intelligence sources are different from those of everyone else. He may need to catch up on his reading. Furthermore,
(Someone) was quoted as saying we ought have sent 300,000 people instead of 30,000 people (in the surge). You're not going to like this, but Clinton kept cutting down the numbers of our people in the Army and the Air Force. Cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting.
That's right, people, the reason we never had enough troops in Iraq wasn't because of Bush and Rumsfeld's micro-force strategy, and later the recommendations of the commanders on the ground, it was really all Bill Clinton's fault and that of those military-hating Democrats! Uh-huh. You kind of lost me there, Ted.
Q. Well, how much patience are you prepared to have?
A. Your question is how much patience have I got for the news media. This frantic demand to totally withdraw without regard to any consequences I think is just, it's immature, immoral as far as I'm concerned.
-- -- --
Q. I'm getting a better idea of what you don't think we should do in Iraq, which is not to leave precipitously, than what you think we should do.
A. I'm not a general. What the hell would you ask me that for? ... I don't make any military plans. I review them, and I give them money. ... I don't have any idea what they should do at this point. ... I think we'll succeed, I really do.
Nice way to completely ignore the questions asked, Senator. And I'm so glad to hear that you think we'll succeed. Now I guess I'll have to drop my opposition to the war.
Then, when the subject turns to his own problems, Sen. Stevens get more than just a bit tetchy:
Q. I wanted to touch just briefly on your own situation and legal controversies.
A. You're not going to touch it at all or I'm going to leave. We had the understanding it was not going to come up.
Q. I understood the investigation wouldn't come up.
A. It's not going to come up at all.
Q. OK. What about your ability to be effective in Congress?
A. What about it? You're destroying it. More people are repeating what you're writing in your paper than anything else in the country. This paper has caused me more difficulty, and I've told you that before, than anything else. You've created me as the senator-for-life. You've been hanging me weekly.
You read any paper, the information -- most of it is not true -- started right here. And your guys just yesterday, they taunt me. They taunt me with statements that really no respectable reporter would ask a senator. . . . This paper has done nothing but try to assassinate me.
Way to win over those hearts and minds on the editorial staff by claiming that they're out to get you. Whaddya bet that the Anchorage Daily News won't be looking to carry water for the dear old senator anytime soon. Even in a state that values fierce independence as much as Alaska does, I don't see how getting into a fight with the biggest newspaper can be helpful.
It's time for Alaskans to tell Ted that he needs to go take up residence in the attic like the crazy old coot that he's become (not that he's as senile as Sen. Bunning, mind you). The man is obviously obsessed far more with trying to preserve his tarnished reputation than with issues of concern in his state. Forty years in the Senate is more than enough, and one can only hope that voters next November agree.
RaceTracker wiki: AK-Sen