This is news that has come and gone, even though the actual event will take place in less than 48 hours.  I guess I still find it striking (but not necessarily surprising) that there's virtually no questioning among the larger public as to the impropriety of two witnesses undergoing questioning in the same room, at the same time, and within earshot of each other's answers.

More suprising, perhaps, is that noone it seems has made it a campaign issue.  Are Dems. waiting until after the interview to raise their public eyebrows at the President's inability to go it alone before the commission?  Or is it that raising the issue before a generally uninterested citizenry simply allows Scott McClellan to tell us for the nth time "...that it is extraordinary for a sitting president of the United States to sit down with a legislatively created commission."

The Sunday NYTimes is running a four-page piece (by Johnston and Dwyer) on pre-9/11 failures. I don't think there's anything new, here. What I think is of interest are the article's omissions.

First, Richard Clarke's much publicized criticisms of the Bush administration were for all practical purposes ignored in the article. Instead, we get statements like this: "On July 27, Mr. Clarke informed Ms. Rice that the threat reporting had dropped. But White House officials said that Mr. Bush continued to ask about any evidence of a domestic attack." Maybe it's just me, but Bush comes off looking pretty good with this kind of juxtaposition, especially if one believes what White House officials say.

If the generals can't bring themselves to vote for Bush, then how can Americans who claim to "support the troops"?

While Democrats roar, the generals are silent -- in public. Many confide that they will not cast their normal Republican votes on Nov. 2. They cannot bring themselves to vote for John Kerry, who has been a consistent Senate vote against the military. But they say they are unable to vote for Don Rumsfeld's boss, and so will not vote at all.

From Novak's column last Thursday.  (This one obviously wasn't leaked by Rove).

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak08.html

Friday's Washington Post reports:
This is Bush's 33rd visit to his ranch since becoming president. He has spent all or part of 233 days on his Texas ranch since taking office, according to a tally by CBS News. Adding his 78 visits to Camp David and his five visits to Kennebunkport, Maine, Bush has spent all or part of 500 days in office at one of his three retreats, or more than 40 percent of his presidency.

I'm not suggesting that this be a dominant theme for the Kerry campaign, but isn't this an easy campaign ad waiting to happen?  Consider the number of people who are looking for work.  And, despite some of the hype about the most recent job numbers, consider the number of people who have jobs but are working fewer hours.  

"Americans are out of work, and the President's on vacation.  And that's how he spends more than a third of his time."

Here's the link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62524-2004Apr8.html
And for a nice graph of the drop in hours worked:
http://www.nathannewman.org/log/archives/001624.shtml#001624

Republicans are complaining that certain 527's, namely MoveOn.org and the Media Fund, are "coordinating" their ads with those of the Kerry campaign.  At least two objections can made against this complaint.

I just glanced at the Times and saw this headline: "Bush Agrees to Answer All of 9/11 Panel's Questions" (Philip Shenon, 3/10/04).  Am I the only one who thinks this is a little misleading?  

If you've read a transcript from this morning's White House press briefing, you'll recall the rather torturous exchange with Scott McClellan resulted in 1) McClellan's asserting the president would answer all of the commission's questions and 2) McClellan's refusing to say Bush would meet with the commission for more than one hour.  When pressed on what would happen if not all questions had been answered by the end of the first hour, McClellan refused to answer directly.  As one reporter kindly pointed out, "What you said doesn't make any sense, Scott."  The Times's quote of McClellan (i.e. "Nobody's watching the clock.")  is his most and only definitive statement on the matter, and it's greatly outweighed by his repeated refusals to answer questions about the time limit.  The "clock"-quote looks to me like a slip on McClellan's part.

If McClellan genuinely wanted to suggest that Bush's interview with the commission might go beyond a mere 3,600 seconds, couldn't he have saved everyone alot of trouble by just saying so?  That's why I think the article's title is misleading.