The decline and fall of ‘Meet the Press’ – Newt Gingrich edition
I can hardly get through a whole episode of Meet the Press anymore, since Tim Russert passed and ceded the throne to Fox News contender David Gregory, whose legendary buddy act with George W. Bush somehow earned him the reputation of “tough Washington correspondent.” Gregory, or “Stretch,” as Dubya called him, has danced with Karl Rove, and rarely has met a Republican idea he doesn’t like. But you’d think that sitting in that chair would at least inspire him to ask the occasional follow-up question. So when former (disgraced) House Speaker Newt Gingrich said this about the Senate’s healthcare bill:
NEWT GINGRICH: … This is a bad bill, written in a horrible way, and the most, the most corrupt legislation I’ve seen in my lifetime.
… one might have expected a reaction something like this:
FICTIONAL DAVID GREGORY: Now hang on a second Mr. Speaker. During the 2003 House vote on the Medicare prescription drug bill, there were similar allegations of millions in lobbying money, back-room deal-making, and even bribery on the House floor to get that bill passed. Your successor, then-Speaker Dennis Hastert, presided over the longest roll-call in House history, and there were accusations that a Republican Congressman, Nick Smith of Michigan, had his son’s re-election threatened in order to secure his vote. How can you criticize the Democrats now, given that history?
Unfortunately, we’re dealing with Real David, not Fictional David. And Real David simply dropped the matter and pivoted to a totally new question for Andrea Mitchell (who didn’t bring it up either. Go figure.)
And Newt wasn’t done. Later in the interview, he offered David a second bite at the journalistic apple, building on an “Audacity of Irony” theme he’s been building regarding Capitol Hill “corruption” lately:
REP. GINGRICH: Well, let me say, first of all, I think that the president had an enormous opportunity. If you look at his last campaign stop in Manassas, Virginia, and then you look at the Grant Park speech the night he was elected, there was a, an openness, there was a bipartisanship, there was a transparency. If he had wanted to be an Eisenhower, I think the country would be fundamentally different today. So I think a great deal of the sourness is a function of secret deals, ramming through stimulus with–in a, in a secret way, basically bribing senators, going from “The Audacity of Hope” to the audacity of raw power. And I, I think this has been an enormous problem.
The Republicans face a very different challenge, and, and it’s what we faced in ’04. They need to be the alternative party, not the opposition party. You, you can’t build, ultimately, on bitterness and successfully create a new majority.
David? Your turn:
MR. GREGORY: Do you fear that’s what Republicans are doing now?
(Sigh.) What do I have to do to get some journalism on Meet the Press these days? Maybe he should have offered Newt a sandwich and a massage. At least that would have been good television.
So since David didn’t bother, let’s review how the Medicare Part D (“D” for “doughnut hole” where seniors fall in and their drugs don’t check out) was passed. From Sourcewatch, a brief review:
On June 23, 2004, Public Citizen released a study noting that:
- Special Interests Spent $141 Million in 2003, Hired 431 Lobbyists With “Revolving Door” Connections to Congress and the White House
- “The revolving door between the White House and K Street has made the Bush administration indistinguishable from the industry,” said Craig Aaron, senior researcher for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch and lead author of the report.
- “If it wasn’t bad enough that most of the key negotiators working on the Medicare bill were preparing to cash in on K Street as soon as it passed, Bush has brought in more drug industry and HMO insiders to implement and promote this disastrous new law.”
The lobbying was so insidious, it even had ties to infamous GOP crook-for-hire Jack Abramoff:
In a letter to Speaker Hastert, Democratic Leader Pelosi, Democratic Whip Hoyer, and Ranking Member Waxman ask for a congressional investigation into the role played by the Alexander Strategy Group, a lobbying firm closely linked to Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, in the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug Act and the drafting of the budget reconciliation bill currently before the Congress. (Read the letter here.)
And then there was the alleged bribery. This from Slate, back in December 2003:
Who Tried To Bribe Rep. Smith?Stop protecting him, Congressman.
By Timothy NoahPosted Monday, Dec. 1, 2003, at 6:17 PM ET
Rep. Nick Smith, R-Mich., says that sometime late Nov. 21 or early in the morning Nov. 22, somebody on the House floor threatened to redirect campaign funds away from his son Brad, who is running to succeed him, if he didn’t support the Medicare prescription bill. This according to the Associated Press. Robert Novak further reports,
On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father’s vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, [Rep.] Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.
Speaking through Chief of Staff Kurt Schmautz, Smith assured Chatterbox that Novak’s account is “basically accurate.” That means Smith was an eyewitness to a federal crime. …
And then, of course, there was the really, really bad bill. From Paul Krugman, circa 2005:
There was a brief flurry of outrage when Congress passed the 2003 Medicare bill. The news media reported on the scandalous vote in the House of Representatives: Republican leaders violated parliamentary procedure, twisted arms and perhaps engaged in bribery to persuade skeptical lawmakers to change their votes in a session literally held in the dead of night.
Later, the media reported on another scandal: it turned out that the administration had deceived Congress about the bill’s likely cost.
But the real scandal is what’s in the legislation. It’s an object lesson in how special interests hold America’s health care system hostage.
The new Medicare law subsidizes private health plans, which have repeatedly failed to deliver promised cost savings. It creates an unnecessary layer of middlemen by requiring that the drug benefit be administered by private insurers. The biggest giveaway is to Big Pharma: the law specifically prohibits Medicare from using its purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices.
And this:
Meanwhile, Thomas Scully, the former Medicare administrator – who threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary if he gave Congress the real numbers on the drug bill’s cost – was granted a special waiver from the ethics rules. This allowed him to negotiate for a future health industry lobbying job at the very same time he was pushing the drug bill.
If all this sounds like a story of a corrupt deal created by a corrupt system, it is. And it was a very expensive deal indeed. According to the Medicare trustees, the fiscal gap over the next 75 years created by the 2003 law – not the financing gap for Medicare as a whole, just the additional gap created by legislation passed 18 months ago – will be $8.7 trillion.
As to Newt himself, Fred Wertheimer once dubbed him “perhaps the leading practitioner of the Washington influence money game, certainly one of the two or three top practitioners,” and added that:
“…when it comes to money, lobbyists, the break-down of the political system, Newt Gingrich is the opposite of revolutionary. He is the chief protector, preserver, and defender of this corrupt system.”
Why? Because it’s true. As David Sirota pointed out in this laundry list of Gingrich “issues,” a few of which I’ll include below:
GINGRICH STARTED THE K STREET PROJECT: “Starting in the mid-1990s, some Republicans, including then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and DeLay, have advocated tracking the political affiliation of lobbyists, as part of an effort to place more conservatives on K Street.” [Source: Washington Post, 8/2/02]
GINGRICH RAKED IN CASH FROM THE K STREET PROJECT’S SHAKEDOWN OPERATION: “Their strategy, which Norquist dubbed the ‘K Street Project,’ was designed to transform Washington’s business PACs and lobbies — and the businesses they represented — into loyal soldiers in the new Republican revolution. In exchange for legislative favors, Gingrich, DeLay, and other congressional leaders expected that the businesses would provide the funds to keep them in office. Meanwhile, Norquist’s group, the Christian Coalition, and other Wednesday groups would be rewarded with generous ‘educational’ contracts from the Republican campaign committees. In 1996, Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform received a $ 4.6 million windfall from soft money contributions to the Republican National Committee. This new strategy worked admirably during Gingrich’s first six months as speaker. While the Republican leadership introduced a spate of controversial bills gutting regulatory agencies, business contributions more than doubled from what they had been during a comparable period in 1993.” [Source: American Prospect, 3/13/00]
GINGRICH OVERTLY USES LEGISLATIVE FAVORS TO GET LOBBYIST CONTRIBUTIONS: “The most famous and ominous warning came in 1998 from then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and then-Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.). The two leaders held up a vote on intellectual property legislation in protest of the Electronics Industry Association’s plan to hire a Democrat to run the group.” [Source: Washington Post, 6/26/03]
Ok. So now we know Gingrich was the architect of the regime of corruption that he is now supposedly outraged over. But what about the Abramoff scandal in particular? Did Gingrich have anything to do with helping Abramoff use corruption to ascend to prominence? Or should we believe Gingrich is shocked – just shocked! – that this could have happened? Let’s take a look:
ABRAMOFF KNOWN TO BE CLOSEST TO GINGRICH: “Few lobbyists in Washington are closer to House power brokers Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay than Abramoff.” [Source: Washingtonian, 12/98]
ABRAMOFF REGULARLY TOUTED HIS PROXIMITY TO GINGRICH & USED IT TO WIELD POWER: “In these capacities and through his work on political campaigns and grassroots efforts with organizations such as the Republican National Committee, the Christian Coalition, and the National Jewish Coalition, Abramoff developed and maintains strong ties to Speaker Newt Gingrich, Majority Leader Dick Armey, Majority Whip Tom Delay and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Chris Cox and their staffs.” [Source: Preston, Gates & Ellis Press Release, 12/30/94]
… But David Gregory wouldn’t know anything about that. He’s just a Washington reporter, and the host of the most unnecessarily damaged brand in Sunday talk: “Meet the Press.”
Meanwhile, Jake Tapper on “This Week” did the job Gregory would not do, delivering a tough, fair interview with Mitch McConnell. Increasingly, “This Week” is the Sunday show to watch (along with always fun “Chris Matthews Show” and “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”)
UPDATE: Check out the Huffpo’s really great Sunday show rundown, complete with neat Homeland Security slideshow!
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