The Media’s Stampeding Herd

I’m sure you’ve also had this experience: You watch a candidate or official make remarks on television, and you get a sense of what they’re saying, but the media ends up reporting an entirely different interpretation, and you wonder if you’re the only person who heard the candidate/official as they intended to be heard!

The media are piling on Hillary Clinton for her remarks at the Dem debate this week about New York governor Elliot Spitzer’s efforts to bring illegal aliens out of the “shadows” by granting them restricted driver’s licenses. It’s not just the commentators — it’s carried over into “objective” news reports that call her remarks “evasive” and “vague” and more.

I watched that debate. I heard her remarks. I heard something entirely different from all the pundits and news “reporters.” First, let me say that that was not her best night — and this is something I’ve not heard a single person say: She looked tired and tense to me. And when one is tired and tense, one isn’t in top form. It happens to everyone. And I’m not writing this to defend Hillary Clinton, even though she is my favored candidate, but simply to express my bafflement over this huge pile-on. (I have said, and will continue to say, that I will support the Democratic candidate, whoever that is.)

Let’s get back to what I heard her saying: To me, she was trying, in a very short timeframe, to describe the complexities of the immigration issues facing our nation’s 50 governors who don’t have a comprehensive federal immigration plan that serves them well. She wasn’t endorsing or evading an endorsement — she was describing and expressing sympathy for Gov. Spitzer’s predicament.

She was also being the “wonkish” Hillary we’ve heard so much about: She likes to look into the complexities of issues and express all sides. To me, that’s an admirable trait. And I think that John Edwards’ remarks that the American people want “simple” answers are insulting to the American people! There are complex issues that require consideration of all sides. And, instead of Edwards and Obama joining her in the common sense remarks she made that the Bush adminsitration has failed to create a federal immigration policy, the two desperate second- and third-place competitors turned on her. It’s nonsensical — in terms of smart political strategy — that Edwards and Obama would abandon the correct focus on Bush’s failures and instead solely attack one of their own. I know you guys are desperate to move up in the polls, but this is low.

I was expressing my frustrations to my friend Other Lisa, and she told me that Balloon Juice had written a great post that agrees with how I viewed Hillary Clinton’s remarks and the idiocy of the media pile-on:

I have only been a Democrat for just a few hours, and already I feel the need to defend Hillary. Brace yourselves.

Hillary is getting a bum rap for this:

On the blogs and elsewhere, it is being played out as if this is more evidence of Hillary engaging in doublespeak, or flip-flopping, or whatever, and, quite frankly, it is bullshit. Kevin Drum goes so far as to call it “unusually spineless.” Hillary’s position is quite clear- we have a mess, what Spitzer is doing makes sense, and I may not like it and it may not be the best solution and it is certainly not without flaws, but in the void created by the lack of action by Congress and this administration, I understand why he is doing it. Read the transcript, and get out of ‘Gotcha’ mode:

Clinton: Well, what Governor Spitzer is trying to do is fill the vacuum left by the failure of this administration to bring about comprehensive immigration reform. We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally. They are undocumented workers. They are driving on our roads. The possibility of them having an accident that harms themselves or others is just a matter of the odds. It’s probability.

So what Governor Spitzer is trying to do is to fill the vacuum. I believe we need to get back to comprehensive immigration reform because no state, no matter how well intentioned, can fill this gap. There needs to be federal action on immigration reform.

***

Clinton: Well, I just want to add, I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do…

(Unknown): Wait a minute…

Clinton: And we have failed. We have failed.

Dodd: No, no, no. You said—you said yes…

Clinton: No.

Dodd: … you thought it made sense to do it.

Clinton: No, I didn’t, Chris. But the point is, what are we going to do with all these illegal immigrants who are driving…

Dodd: That’s a legitimate issue. But driver’s license goes too far, in my view.

Clinton: Well, you may say that, but what is the identification?

If somebody runs into into you today who is an undocumented worker…

Dodd: There’s ways of dealing with that.

Clinton: Well…

Dodd: This is a privilege, not a right.

Clinton: Well, what Governor Spitzer has agreed to do is to have three different licenses, one that provides identification for actually going onto airplanes and other kinds of security issues, another which is another ordinary driver’s license, and then a special card that identifies the people who would be on the road, so…

Balloon Juice continues:

That isn’t doublespeak. That isn’t trying to have your cake and eat it, too. That isn’t the classic Clinton triangulation that infuriates us all so much. It is someone recognizing that there are realities on the ground that supercede simple responses that may make one or another political faction happy, or make a good soundbite, but won’t deal with the problem at all. You would think you all had had enough of rigid and reflexive stupidity the past seven years and ‘solutions’ that work great in fantasyland (“The war will pay for itself!”and “We will be greeted as liberators!”), and would appreciate someone being, well, sensible. Sometimes you don’t have a magic answer that makes you 100% happy.

Read all of Balloon Juice’s excellent analysis at his blog.

Chris Matthews and David Shuster (”Clinton‘s evasiveness [comes] at a crucial time …”) piled on Hillary Clinton on MSNBC’s Hardball. Here’s a sample of Matthews joining the media stampede:

Flim-flam! That‘s her problem right now, isn‘t it, flim-flam, that she says one thing and she hedges, and then when she gets caught, she said, I didn‘t say that. Thank God we‘ve got videotape. She did say it makes a great deal of sense.

Then, later in the show, Matthews had Eliot Spitzer on to explain his proposals and his rationales. Let me state that I am not an expert on immigration policies or on the driver’s license programs, but a lot of what Gov. Spitzer said made COMMON SENSE to me.

Gov. Spitzer also addressed some of the complaints against drivers licenses, including that they could be used as “breeder documents” and he emphasized, over and over, that this is a national security measure.

It makes sense to me that we want to know the identities of illegal aliens, for innumerable reasons. What if they’re in an accident? What if there’s a security alert, and we need to locate them? Why would we want them to remain in the “shadows,” unidentified and unreachable?

Until Tom Tancredo can get all 13 million of the illegal aliens on buses out of the country (snort), we are better off knowing who these people are.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer took some heat for his original proposal to allow illegal immigrants to get driver‘s licenses, I.D. cards, basically. Then he was criticized for retreating from his plan, and instead granting a limited license to illegals that some say would make them a target.

And now he‘s at the center of the issue that may set back Hillary Clinton in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Governor Spitzer, thank you very much for joining us on HARDBALL tonight.

You had some tough words the other day for Lou Dobbs. Do you want to expand on them?

GOV. ELIOT SPITZER (D), NEW YORK: Actually not, because I think the issue we should talk about is what the policy is…

MATTHEWS: OK, so you want to limit that?

SPITZER: … not the rhetoric on the other side.

MATTHEWS: Oh, OK. Well…

SPITZER: But that—that‘s OK.

MATTHEWS: I thought I was going to have you expand on your rhetoric.

But I guess you don‘t want to do it.

SPITZER: No. You know, we try to stick to substance most of the time.

MATTHEWS: OK. Let me ask you about this.

It seems to me, if you look at California and New York, the two biggest states, you said—you have had similar experiences. The governor there, the Democratic Governor Gray Davis, had a bill which basically said, we can create a driver‘s license for people in the country without documentation, also an I.D. card, if that‘s what they prefer, rather than a driver‘s license.

SPITZER: Right.

MATTHEWS: Your original proposal was something like that. It would be to create a driver‘s license for people here without documentation that also could serve as an full-fledged I.D. card.

Is that not the pressure you‘re getting from the Latino legislators?

They want a full-fledged I.D. card, not just a driver‘s license.

SPITZER: Well, Chris, I think we have a very traditional political dynamic here, where there‘s some on one side who say, don‘t give any I.D. to a million people who are here.

As a governor, I‘m trying to deal with the security reality, with the million people here who are undocumented. From a security perspective, we need to know who they are, what they‘re doing. If they‘re going to drive, as many do, I would rather they be licensed, so we know who they are, where they go, and they can get insurance. As a pure security matter, all the security experts agree on that.

From the other perspective, there are advocates who—who, with some merit to their argument, say, you know what? Don‘t differentiate. It becomes a scarlet letter. We‘re saying, no, it‘s not a scarlet letter. We‘re creating two licenses. Each is equally valid. One of them complies with the federal security statute REAL I.D. One of them does not, and will merely be differentiated by saying “not good for federal I.D. purposes.”

So, we are trying to accomplish our security objective and accomplish a very important public purpose here that has been agreed upon. And I will give you a little tidbit in a second not many people have focused on.

We‘re trying to accomplish a security objective that is critical for New York State, as a state that has, as I said, a million undocumented immigrants, has been the site of terrorist strikes. We know what security is all about.

This is good from a security perspective. And I could cite, whether it‘s Richard Clarke or Bill Bratton, or Secretary Chertoff himself, who said that what we are doing will move security forward. And, so, we‘re trying to make this a security effort. And that‘s what it is.

And let me give you one little tidbit. The state of Utah actually created a driver‘s license for undocumented immigrants. This is a number of years ago. The governor at—at the time who approved of this was none other than Governor Leavitt, who is a member of President Bush‘s Cabinet today.

Seven states currently do this…

MATTHEWS: All right.

SPITZER: … Michigan, Hawaii, a bunch of others. Secretary Leavitt did it when he was governor. Governor Richardson, presidential candidate, did it in his first year as governor of New Mexico.

So this is a policy that makes sense from a security perspective. A lot of rhetoric on either side, unfortunately, but it is smart policy.

MATTHEWS: What do you say to the fact that a lot of those people that were—that killed themselves attacking those buildings in New York on 9/11 were carrying whole stashes of I.D. cards, of driver‘s licenses. They were all in the country, most of them illegally. Yet they had a whole pile of I.D. cards. Isn‘t that exhibit A for the danger of issuing I.D. cards, that people can use at airports?

SPITZER: Just the opposite, they cannot use these to get on airplanes. That‘s why they say “not valid for federal purposes.” In fact, Secretary Chertoff has said specifically that by doing this, we will have the most secure driver‘s license system, among the most secure in the nation. We will move security forward. The prescription for disaster is when you ignore the fact that people are here and let them get forged and fake identification.

Every security expert, Richard Clarke, the IG of Homeland Security, who had an op ed in “USA Today,” all agree the best thing to do is to bring the best technology to bear, which is what we will—facial identification technology, all sorts of scanning technologies, require them with a foreign passport, and only then to be able to get a driver‘s license, so we know who they are and where they are.

Give you one more validator on this; the 9/11 Commission specifically looked at the issue of whether or not you should require proof of how you‘re here before you give somebody a driver‘s license and said that‘s not the issue. They said put in place the very technology we‘re putting in place. As recently as today, Slade Gordon, a former United States senator, Republican from the state of Washington, on the 9/11 Commission, endorsed my policy.

This is the sort of validation from security experts, not political rhetoric. The political rhetoric is very easy, frankly on both sides of this issue. I‘m trying to do what is good security policy right down the middle.

MATTHEWS: But you‘re denying the fact that your initial goal was to give people here illegally full-fledged I.D. cards, not just the ability to drive a car. And you‘ve only backed down on that because you were forced to by opposition.

SPITZER: Chris, I hate to disagree with you; but what I did was work with the Department of Homeland Security, with Secretary Chertoff, to say how can we make what we‘re trying to do comply with Real I.D.? Real I.D. has been a controversial statute, as you know. The mandates imposed on the states initially were onerous financially. They didn‘t make sense. Secretary Chertoff and I and others negotiated, worked hard; and the Department of Homeland Security has said, if you put in place the measures that you are talking about putting in place, you, as the state of New York and other states as well, will be in compliance with Real I.D.

And at that point, I said good, we can accomplish all of these objectives, security and identification card. It‘s good for us, good for individuals to come out of the shadows. Everybody wins. And that‘s why this policy has the center supporting it.

MATTHEWS: So the “New York Times” is wrong in saying that you had an initial position they liked and backed down from that? They‘re wrong, you‘re saying?

SPITZER: Even they every now and again aren‘t exactly right.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about your hopes as an American for the fact we can have a secure I.D. card in this country. I know the ACLU and libertarians on the right and civil libertarians on the left have a real problem with Americans ever having a tamper proof I.D. card. They don‘t think we should have to have one. I don‘t have a problem with it. I‘m not in love with it. But I think we need something to make sure who‘s here legally. Where do you stand on that principle?

SPITZER: I have no fundamental problem with people having an identification card. In essence, we have one. People either have a Social Security number or a tax ID number or a driver‘s license or a passport; and the very premise of what I am saying right now, the reason we want the million undocumented immigrant whose are in New York, 14 million in the nation, a million here in New York state, we want them to be visible. We don‘t want people living in the shadows. We don‘t want people to have a presence we don‘t know about.

That‘s why the very predicate of my security argument has been let us know who is here. If that is what an I.D. card does—yes, I know there are going to be some on either end, the libertarians and perhaps the ACLU as well will disagree with it. Knowing who is here is a legitimate argument. As somebody said, privacy does not necessarily mean anonymity. I think in this day and age, having some identification is not an unwarranted position.

MATTHEWS: Well said. One last thought; these I.D. cards—not the I.D. cards, but the limited driver‘s license you‘re proposing for people without documentation, are you sure those cards, those driver‘s licenses you‘re talking about issuing, will not be used for any other purpose than driving a car?

SPITZER: It depends on what you mean any other purpose. If it gives somebody‘s age and they need to to prove they‘re old enough to get a drink, I suppose it could be used for that. But if you‘re talking about getting on an airplane, absolutely not. That is the critical differentiation between a document that satisfies Real I.D. and one that does not.

MATTHEWS: They will not be able to use them to establish a paper trail to begin developing a facsimile of legality?

SPITZER: No, they will not be what we call breeder documents. That is a term that some of us who have studied this have gotten to know. It will not be the basis for then subsequent documents that can then circle back so you could then get a federal I.D., a real I.D. documentation.

MATTHEWS: Thank you very much, the governor of the Empire State, Eliot Spitzer. Thank you for coming on HARDBALL tonight.

Now, back to my alternate reality. Actually, it feels good, if lonely, that I can see and hear what I see and hear, and come up with my OWN conclusions and not have to depend on Chris Matthews to interpret for me HOW I SHOULD THINK.