Flatine & Lowry - February 17, 2006

JIM LEHRER: And to Flatline and Lowry: Fake Democracy founder Johnny Flatline and National Review editor Rich Lowry. David Brooks is off tonight. Johnny, and so after a week, is the Cheney story over?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, according to FOX it‘s over. They have put countless numbers of paid off pundits on the screen, insisting the story is dead. Talk about working hard at wishing something away, they are doing it. And that alone should be cause for suspicion.

JIM LEHRER: Rich, what's your view about whether or not the vice president mishandled this? I mean, forget the accident itself but the uproar that ensued afterward over the handling, is there some fault there?

RICH LOWRY: Yeah. I think they clearly should have gotten it out as soon as possible on Saturday night. But there were extenuating circumstances. They're down there in the boondocks, Cheney has no staff. My understanding is that he was understandably crushed and shaken by the incident. So they wait to do it Sunday, and they're also thinking if they had just put out a statement Saturday night "Oh, by the way, Cheney shot someone and we don't know his condition but we're just letting you know" there would have been a firestorm anyway. And if they had released any information prematurely that was incorrect, they also would have gotten hammered for that.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think about that, Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, I grew up in the Texas hunting business. The whole state is covered up in important people on hunting trips. This was not Siberia. Look, we are dancing around the obvious here. Any good prosecutor would tell you Cheney had to be stinking drunk. The responses are too telling. I mean, wife beaters leave trails this good. He refuses any public appearance for a over a day? Law enforcement is delayed. One thing I’ve learned in my own Texas hunting experience, is rich guys on hunting trips like to drink. In this case, Cheney probably drank irresponsibly. People may not realize that he has a colorful drinking past like Bush. I think Cheney was drunk, and his victim might have been drunk as well. And shooting somebody while drunk is a felony in Texas, which is why Cheney has been so secretive on this. On top of that, he was hunting without a proper hunting license. Us little people get fined for that sort of thing. But watch him get every possible benefit of the doubt by his fans. Since I view him as a war criminal and traitor to the United States, I’m not so willing to give him such benefit of my doubt. He’s a liar, I know he is, so I don’t believe a word he says on this.

RICH LOWRY: but in terms of news value it ended today when Whittington came out and looked pretty hearty and gave an incredibly gracious statement. If he had done that three days ago, been in a condition to do that three days ago, everything would have been different. And also his turn for the worse bollixed the White house plan for dealing with this.

JIM LEHRER: The heart problem on Monday.

RICH LOWRY: Right. Because initially they're going to have - my understanding - they're going to have the president make a lighthearted remark about it Tuesday, figure that takes care of the Tuesday news cycle; do something with Cheney Wednesday or Thursday, and I'm not sure what, and then have this Wyoming event Friday. But when he has the heart condition, you can't joke about it anymore, and it kind of blew up that initial plan.

JIM LEHRER: Peggy Noonan, a conservative columnist, a former speechwriter for the first President Bush, had a piece in the Wall Street Journal I think yesterday, an op-ed page piece where she said this could, in fact, lead to Vice President Cheney stepping down and the president picking a successor who would be in great shape to be the 2008 Republican nominee. Does that make sense to you?

RICH LOWRY: No, no, and I think there's zero chance of that, especially the way it played out later on in the week here where I think the vice president put it behind him. Also, you know, Vice President Cheney is not responsible for the president's political problems. He could be the most popular vice president we've ever seen in this country and he'd still be in the low 40 percent approval. The vice president's standing just doesn't matter that much. Plus, selecting a presumptive 2008 nominee would be extremely controversial and divisive in the party. That's why I think it's very unlikely that would happen.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think, Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Oh, sure. Attaching your future political career to the most defective administration in American history is just brilliant. I wonder how many will just lunge at the chance? If things continue like this, I can assure you, the next President will not be Republican. Oh, wait. I forgot that our elections are rigged. So maybe we will be getting Republican presidents forever.

RICH LOWRY: And also, ironically, just given the polarized poisonous nature of our politics, the fact is that he's a hate magnet, as Peggy Noonan put it, makes him more popular with the Republicans and makes him more valuable in terms of reaching out to the Republican base.

JIM LEHRER: What kind of marks would you give the press over the handling of this incident, particularly the White House press corps, they were the people in the front lines, so to speak, on this?

RICH LOWRY: I think it was absurd overreaction. And, as I said, I think Cheney's office should have gotten it out sooner but a 14- or 18-hour delay in the scheme of things over this kind of incident I think is meaningless.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: He probably was drunk, he probably broke the law, and he needed 18 hours to sober up. My God, wake up you patsies. I fault the White House press core for not going for the obvious here. Think about it. You are Cheney, which means you are higher than God. You screw up big time in friendly territory. Judgement is clouded and panicked. What do all dishonest powerful people do when they screw up? They cover up. They hide. They delay. They have trouble getting their stories straight. Communication among their troops gets clouded. It’s right there beating you over the head, yet you just can’t help but play along with their little charade.

JIM LEHRER: Oh, you don’t buy that?

RICH LOWRY: Exactly. I still think it's an absurd overreaction but it's the reason that there was the overreaction.

JIM LEHRER: Now, staying on Cheney here there's been word this week of the possibility, at least, that the vice president has some direct involvement in the Plame/Libby situation. How do you read that?

RICH LOWRY: Well, I think it's mostly what we've been talking about and hearing about. Well, one, the vice president did accrue more power to his office in this executive order a couple of years ago where the president says the vice president, too, has power to classify and also my understanding is to declassify material. And apparently he used that to allow Scooter Libby to talk to reporters about the national intelligence estimate about Iraq's WMD programs. And this is being, I think, conflated with the Plame matter and being spun into some scandal. I just don't think it is because that national intelligence estimate ended up being declassified itself and released to the press and a lot of the people who have been complaining about Cheney's secretiveness and all the rest of it this week I'm sure are the same people that wanted to see the basis for the war being released and declassified at that time.

JIM LEHRER: Do you have a view on this, Johnny?

Johnny Flatline: I do.

JIM LEHRER: Share it with us.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: The Bush family has been known to punish those who cross them. This is an arrogant family. And Cheney’s ability to lie about the obvious, is more stubborn than Bush. I think Cheney to this day, won’t admit that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. This guy has absolutely no regard to honesty with the public. He’s a dictator of the first degree. And if he and Bush are telling bold faced lies about WMD’s, it would not surprise me that they would turn a spy who was ruining their lie. They took pretty harsh action against Mary Mapes who was instrumental in both Abu Graib news releases, as well as Bush’s little AWOL incident. These guys take no prisoners. They are brutal, vicious, and evil.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Finally, Katrina, this has been the week of Katrina on the Hill, both the House and Senate have had hearings. How has Michael Chertoff, the secretary of housing -- of Homeland Security, handled this, do you think, Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Incompetent. What else do you want me to say? The Bush administration does not look for talent when they hire. They work by cronyism. Bush is a crony himself. He certainly didn’t get his job based on ability, so why should we expect him to hire others any differently. He has lived in a world of insider favors, and that’s his thought process. He’s an elitist ignoramus, a child of spoiled privilege. All of these guys don’t have a clue how to do their jobs. We don’t need another hearing to convince anybody of that. This is just a finger pointing session to make Congress feel better about itself. We are living in the Republican dream. They dominate every branch of government, so life is supposed to be perfect. Competence is supposed to be high. Everything should be getting better. So I’m very confused as to why we are now pointing to incompetence. How can that be possible if the Republicans are in control of everything? Who is going to be responsible for these failures?

JIM LEHRER: Rich?

RICH LOWRY: It's classic government failure. The whole thing was a government failure and part of it has to do with the nature of the Department of Homeland Security, which is just a monstrosity with these 22 separate organizations thrown in there without a lot of thought by either party in Congress or apparently the President of the United States. So I have a little sympathy for Michael Chertoff and trying to manage this unmanageable thing.
But it came down in the end of the day to leadership and something is stuck in my mind that Michael Brown said last week during his hearings. If this had been a terrorist attack in New Orleans, he said, it would have been all different. And I think there's something to that because it was a classic case of fighting the last war where that was what the federal government was really primed to respond to and they didn't have the same level of awareness and initiative in the word of that report that came out this week when it was a natural disaster.

JIM LEHRER: Did you hear anything from Chertoff this week in response to the criticism that makes you think he can fix this?

RICH LOWRY: You know, he's going to try. It sounds like he has the right ideas. He's basically still trying to make this department cohere; and one thing he talked about this week is, you know, making every one of those 22 separate entities that has some operational capacity, sort of melding them and making them work together. But it's a huge task.

JIM LEHRER: You have got 22 seconds, Johnny.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I will paraphrase Jerry Springer, who said, ‘if that Superdome had been filled with thousands of white high school cheer leaders, our government would have had every helicopter known to man out there getting them out instantly. We all know why that didn’t happen here.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you both very much.

Brooks and Flatline - February 10, 2006

JIM LEHRER: Here in the non-Muslim world, how do you think the non-Muslim world has been handling this cartoon controversy, Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Not much worse than how neocon Americans handle criticism.

JIM LEHRER: What do you mean by that?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, for starters, we learned from the British that Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera’s headquarters. Now what kind of leader of the free world would want to bomb a TV station? That kind of violent desire is no better than what we observe among poor angry people in the streets. Rich people riot, too. They just use more sophisticated means to destroy.
This cartoon controversy is significant, but it’s a bit arrogant to put all the criticism on the Muslims for this. If we were a more shining example of honesty and compassion, perhaps they could handle our cartoon jokes a little better. We pretend to have free speech, but it’s constantly under attack not by Muslims, but by our own government. Bush wants to hide information from us. He wants to hide what he does each day. He wants to hide the Abu Graib photos to protect us from the truth. He spends billions of dollars in propaganda to sway our minds. He gets people fired who do their job too well, like Mary Mapes did on his military record with Dan Rather. People in power use money to control which opinions get aired on TV. Our Congress act insulted if anybody dares to really perform any meaningful review of a high level nomination. Remember Ms. Cheney after 9/11, trying to shame anybody who dared to question our war? She said we needed moral unity - which is the most Hilteresque phrase I’ve ever heard in my life. That’s the same reasoning used by violent right wing Muslims to have people killed for insulting their religious icons. Ms. Cheney may not want you killed for protesting her so called moral war, but she would certainly like to see you lose your job and your employability.
We use dishonest means in this country to quell speech that big power doesn‘t want heard. Real freedom of expression is where the real battle is. If we believe in our freedom, this is where we should stand strong, because while it might be insulting, it sure as hell beats bullets and bombs. If that was the worst we ever did, I think most Muslims could not only learn to forgive us. They might even learn to laugh a little.
So yes, we can criticize and analyze them. But in the end, we arrogantly forget that we are probably worse, because in the grand scheme of things, we usually kill more people.

JIM LEHRER: Who have we killed?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Just pick your decade. Right now it’s mostly Iraqi’s. Nobody is counting, but it’s surely over 100,000 dead Iraqis. If we were as Christian as we pretend to be, those deaths would weigh, should weigh, very heavy on our conscience. But it doesn’t. We find an excuse, blame it on 911, or whatever. It’s absurd.

DAVID BROOKS: I would say it's about four or five centuries. It's really a group of people, some educated people have who gone back to the 13th Century, some who never left the 13th Century, but basically who have decided that the way we live with this barrage of ideas, the way we live our life trying to improve ourselves, is not the way they want to live their lives.
They believe the truth has been revealed and the central epic in history is not progress; it's the conflict between the faithful and the invader, and the infidel and the Jew and the crusader, and that that's essentially the conflict they see and the conflict they long for.
And it is - I think it is a major week for the West because it has reminded people how vast the conflict is between us and some elements of the Muslim world.
We have seen in Indonesia and also in Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani has been very strong against the protests and you have begun to see a lot of moderate Muslims rise up. But nonetheless, it's an ugly - it's an ugly scene.

JIM LEHRER: But is it a conflict that is possible to say, okay, we have this conflict, now let's move on, or is there any resolution? How do you resolve something like this?

DAVID BROOKS: The protest in London, the slogans and the signs were "Go to Hell Freedom" behead anybody who attacks Islam. The imam in Copenhagen said they believe in freedom, we believe in the prophet, as if the two are totally opposed.
You know, I do think it's not a clash of civilizations or the West versus Islam, but these people who were the fundamentalists have opted totally out of our civilization and, you know, we've been sort of measured in how we respond to them which I think is silly. I mean, they are fundamentally opposed to the way we live; whether we're measured or not is not going to make any difference in their minds.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: This is where liberal arguments start to make sense. I say the best medicine for this, is more cartoons. Let’s continue to inflict an argument of words. That’s far better than bullets. Teach our enemy how to fight us with words. Let them make fools of themselves by giving them more things to be fools about. This is how Ghandi beat the British. This is how MLK beat the whities. They both shamed opposition by revealing the absurdity of their violence.

DAVID BROOKS: You know, there's political differences, obviously but what's at stake here is so much different. I think that the murder of Pim Fortuyn, the Dutch politician, the gay Dutch politician, who made this point, we can have multiculturalism or we can have pluralism, but we can't have both, with a subset of people that doesn't believe in pluralism that wants to enforce laws on homosexuals, on women. So you have got to make this choice and that's the choice Europe is making. I think they're feeling it much more seriously than we are but that's the choice they found they have to make.

JIM LEHRER: So to summarize, both of you think this is going to get worse before it gets better?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I hope the free world defends it‘s freedom, by continuing to promote free thought. We certainly have a dire shortage of free thought in this world.

DAVID BROOKS: We're involved in this democratic moment where they feel threatened, at the same time they feel strong; they're winning elections. But the elections are a threat to their mentality.

JIM LEHRER: All right. The NSA surveillance story: How would you summarize the week on that story, David?

DAVID BROOKS: I think surreptitious movement.

JIM LEHRER: Oh, my.

DAVID BROOKS: We've had this with this lockdown and we've talked about it week after week where the White House says we had the power, we had the power, and a lot in Congress said we don't have the power.
And I think what you've seen are first two things, Democrats much less willing to talk about it for political reasons; the Republicans more willing to talk about it, Brownback and Specter and Lindsey Graham, so suddenly more opposition is coming from the Republican side than the Democratic side.
But secondly, I think you've become to see some signals that they're thinking of having - the White House - thinking of having some conversations with the Hill, maybe to find some way which we've been talking about of trying to get both parties together to have some law that will regularize the oversight or this spying, or whatever you want to call it.

JIM LEHRER: How do you read it right now?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, we are moving further away from democracy, as the President operates above the law, Congressional puppets submit to it, and the law of the land for Bush is determined by vote. If the majority thinks he can‘t break a law, then there‘s no need to discuss it further. The ruling is cast. There‘s no prosecutor, there‘s no judge, there is just a mob with pitchforks saying, ok, you can do it, because we voted, and the yes‘s won. That‘s the new law of the land. As Bush told his staff a few months back, the Constitution is “just a God Damned piece of paper.” He’s obviously correct. It’s a worthless piece of paper, only used for convenience. For gun control, it’s obeyed to the letter. But for control of Bush, or free speech, or civil rights, it’s a law of convenience, applied to only the little people.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it is a positive issue for them. I think you've seen Democrats disappearing from the talk shows because a lot of them don't want to talk about this issue, especially with the riots around the world, people say, hey, this is a scary world. There have been these defections, if you want to call them that. People say, Congress has a role here, Congress has a role in oversight. But what they're trying to do is preserve the program, just give it that legal framework.

JIM LEHRER: Lindsey Graham, Mike DeWine, and all those people say the program is fine, let's just take the legal argument off the table and move on.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: I wish I could go make a legal framework for myself, after I break the law. Yes judge, I killed her, but I’m here to create a legal framework for the killing so that is can be made legal after the fact. A legal framework is a beautiful talking point because it sounds so innocent. Did Carl Rove feed you that line?

DAVID BROOKS: No.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, if you created it, you should get Rove to pass it to the others. It’s a wonderful way of admitting Bush broke the law, but making it sound innocent and honest. Very effective. I have to admire those Republicans. They know how to sound so innocent when they break the law. They are all like slick lawyers. Nixon should have created a legal framework for Watergate. Then he could have stayed in office.

JIM LEHRER: Michael Brown, the FEMA hearings, we heard the discussion between Senators Lieberman and Bennett. What's your impression of what's going on here? What are we finding out that surprises you, if anything?

DAVID BROOKS: I think we are finding out, I wonder if Michael Brown is now going to be become a hero as he begins scapegoating the administration when he was the symbol of the administration he was the villain. Now suddenly he'll be the poor little scapegoat.
I think what most senators, Sen. Lieberman and Sen. Bennett, both said, and they were - what you saw in those two senators were pretty a non-partisan look at the hearing and Susan Collins, also the chairman. They said the guy has some responsibility but it's not clear that not only him and it's clear that there was this complete failure of this chain of command.
As for the exact timeline, and I think Sen. Bennett spoke about this, it's incredibly hard to tell exactly what happened when and who as Sen. Bennett said, the importance of which call and what moment. I'll suspect, as he said, we'll never know that. We know it was a big mess-up and that's all we need to know at least from my point of view.

JIM LEHRER: Johnny?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Homeland Security was a mistake. Adding more bureaucracy was not a smart move. It was a political move. And very unRepublican, I might add.. Hopefully, at minimum, we can learn that lesson from these hearings. But almost all government investigations are geared to cast blame away from those running for re-election. Politicians only know how to grand stand when they investigate things. Half the time, they don’t even ask questions, because they aren’t even interested in the answers. Instead, they make speeches, like some judge who has already made a ruling. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for anything meaningful, or anything we don’t already know.

JIM LEHRER: You mean for things like Katrina?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Our government is less and less focused on the need of our people, because it is mostly focused on things that don‘t matter: drug wars, gay marriage, tax breaks for the rich and so on. The reality of suffering people is bit too much for these clowns. The head of FEMA is more concerned about his wardrobe than the plight of poor people with no home. I’ll bet he wears a nice suit to the hearings.

JIM LEHRER: One quick thing before we go. There's been some criticism of the political overtones of the Coretta Scott King funeral this week. Do you have any thoughts about that?

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah. I thought when they swore in Hillary, it was a little much. No, I think - you know, I think there are moments when you don't politicize. And a funeral is one of those moments just as a matter of principle. I don't care whose funeral it is. You just don't do it there.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think -- the big criticism has been of President Carter.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, I think one must consider the person in the funeral. This lady made a lifetime of fighting injustice. So it‘s hard for me to imagine her being displeased with the idea that some bold comments were made in her honor against an abusive administration. I don‘t know why you think there‘s been big criticism of Carter. What you mean to say is, there‘s been more right wingers upset with Carter, because he was the most effective at embarrassing their dictator. So of course, they seek to criticize anybody who effective at making them look bad. I was proud of Carter for being so blunt, for saying things that Democrats in office don’t have the guts to say, while Bush and his wife cowered in the background, right behind him. He’s so rarely in a real public, where the audience is not profiteered, that the only time he can ever hear what the public thinks, is when he goes to a funeral. And that’s because he can’t filter the people who attend. So yes, this was a good thing. I hope it happens again, real soon before Bush goes back to hide in his shell.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you both.

Flatline - On Chameleons

This is valid commentary, with loads of potential. I may venture to say, highly likely to be at least a percentage correct, if all bets are on the table. The incest of candidate selection is one of the big give-aways of the poor condition of our democracy, and something I've written about in various papers entitled "The Mathematics of Democracy." However, the evidence brought forth of the rather absurd connection between Bush to fundamentalist religion is compelling as well (self serving as it may be). Even Mommy and Daddy Bush are personal friends with Billy Graham.
Pat Robertson has been given loads of power from Bush (financially speaking). The Reagan administration was far more secular than the Bush family - and Reagan was pretty nutty. Gore Vidal has also written some interesting chapters on the intense fundamentalist beliefs Reagan. Chomsky has commented on how seculars still had the upper hand on Reagan's staff. And I've seen plenty of articles about Dubya thinking he is a tool of God. I'm not so sure they are faking it at all. The religious arm of this country is deap, and strong and wealthy. And it has it's dividends to power. There are plenty of powerful, rich people in this country who firmly believe in the shit they shovel. I know they also use this to keep a lid on the masses. But many of the elite who execute this crap, also believe in it. It's like a reinforcing ego mechanism, where the more power they get, the more sure they are that the belief is right. The Pope is a great example. Plus, the evidence that Bush is just plain stupid is overwhelming. In fact, the error rate of this administration is extremely predictable, based on their shear ignorance and arrogance factor - a lethal combination. Just listen to Alberto Gonzalez for 5 minutes, and pull your jaw off the floor as you ponder his thoughts. And despite the Bush history to the CIA, there is just too much divide going on under the ocean floor, between the smart arm of our intelligence employees, and the dishonest, dumb, greedy, political arm - led by the newly appointed American terrorist Negroponte. I don't see enough organization there to be monolithic. In fact, I think there's a silent civil war going on between the brains and idiots, even in the intelligence community.

The Bush types might get rich in the short term, stealing from America, and third-worldizing our population based on your theories, but the price of the theft might cost us our world power. Russia did it. The still have billionaires. But their world power is in shambles. My bet is the United States will definitely lose it's position as the world's most powerful country in my life time. People who still work for living (like the Chinese) will take over that top stop. I'm compelled by Jim Rogers, who thinks the 21st century will belong to China. America has had it's turn. Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who said that even America will eventually fall to tryanny in a century or two? Warren Buffet has made some frightening predictions in recent months. He, like many, expects the dollar to crash, and crash hard rather soon, perhaps changing the policital landscape in a big way, and he seems to be hinting at that. If there was money to be made for big power, then why is Buffet taking billions out of the country and hiding it in other currencies of the world? The investor guru Marc Faber thinks war will increase as world tensions keep going up. None of these outlooks are very promising for us minions of America. And my favorite analysis of all comes from the great Ortega y Gasset, in The Revolt of the Masses. I think his theory, which is nearly a century old, might hit the nail on the head. Translated through my contemporary eye, it goes something like this:

Our democracy is dead, because we have eliminated honest competition from the political model. In fact, the USA has one of the highest incumbant re-election rates in the world. 300 million people can compete for American Idol, but they cannot compete for President or Congress. The death of this competition means the death of democracy, because dishonest competition prevents the best and brightest people from attaining their appropriate positions of responsibility. The result is tyranny, because we find our country is being run into the ground by complete idiots, raised on political incest and theft. Arrogance is what keeps them blind and keeps them moving. When the cream can't rise to the top, we get guys like Dubya Bush - non-intellectuals who are totally incompetant and can't finish a sentence. The CEO of America is not the best and brightest we could find for the job. Far from it. And now we get to pay the price for raising an idiot to the podium. Ignorance is expensive. Enron is a microcosm of America. Both has the same accounting techniques. And both have leaders who think their kingdom is so entirely invincible, they never even consider the mere possibility that maybe, just maybe, the cards could come tumbling down. What previous empire hasn't suffered the same fate?

Visitor Comment - Chameleon Analysis

Johnny you're a smart guy and way up on what's happening as I see it. But Bush 'wasting' treasure on the war is really a great investment for the future of people like him and rich folks. If I may illucidate: A missle costs roughly a million dollars say. Rich contractors made those missles. Now take that concept and run with it. Just the tip of the iceburg. Another thing(which if you don't mind-I'd like to point up) that's often overlooked and not understood about this awol son-of-a-bitch is that: he's his father's son. The father lead a double life before becoming the head of the CIA. So? Well he is the consumate chameleon for one. Authors give homage to his duplicity and cunning. So logic dictates the Son understands the power of secrecy and things better left out of conversation such as secret prisons full of dissidents. Talk about your faking a democracy. And my belief is one shouldn't be put off by his espousal of religion. It's a smoke screen. He's about raping our country of it's resources and shooing in the Mexicans and other poverty stricken peoples. And making damn sure the rich never get taxed.

Brooks & Flatline - February 3, 2006

JIM LEHRER: And to the analysis of Brooks and Flatline-New York Times columnist David Brooks, Fake Democracy founder Johnny Flatline. Mark Shields is off tonight.

JIM LEHRER: Johnny, how do you read the coming of John Boehner as House majority leader?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: We took away a skunk and put back a stink bug.

JIM LEHRER: What do they mean? No difference?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Still smells bad, although, nothing can stink quite as good as Delay can. He’s a pile of shit. Brown and runny. The new guy, well he stinks when you pluck him, or step on him.

JIM LEHRER: I see.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Come on, does anybody really care who the Republican criminals pick to lead them? This is like musing over who the next mafia mob boss will be. It‘s not relevant. The rubber stamp is still made of rubber.

JIM LEHRER: But David, aren't some people saying this is less about John Boehner than it is about Blunt and his connection to Tom DeLay and the need to - or the perceived need, at least, to disconnect completely from Tom Delay?

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, branding matters.
And Roy Blunt's a perfectly nice guy who all they all like; when he lost, they gave him a standing ovation. He is quite popular, a good guy but he was branded as the status quo.
And when this guy John Shadegg, who was the third candidate, came in and said reform, reform, reform, he moved the whole debate over a little. And then Shadegg was too new so they went to Boehner, who I think is a bipartisan person.
I think the big difference with Delay is much less team-oriented, much less my team, your team.
But, you have to remember these races -- when you hear about what happens in these meetings, it is so emotional. These House Republicans - maybe House Democrats too - they are so passionate, they tear up, they cry. And they really had this emotional thing within the family.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with Johnny that very little changes though?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, no, in part because I do think there is going to be less partisanship, less team spirit than Delay, which is easy because nobody was more partisan that Delay
But two other things are going to happen: First of all they are going to have to have reform agenda. And the House -- is yet to be determined but I think it will be pretty serious. I think Republicans are pretty wary of what’s going to happen. And then the second thing that is going to happen is they have got to have a positive agenda. They have got to have an agenda of how people face their life every day. And they're really beginning to think about a fresh agenda, which is something people in the House have not been doing because Delay has been consumed with himself for a year.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Oh yeah, they are going to change the world, balance the budget, give us pay raises, bring peace to Israel and Iraq, pacify the Iranians, give us a tax break, end all gay marriage and put women in jail who abort their babies. It’s going to be so glorious, this Republican government, that when I start getting those telephone calls from Al Queda, they will be there to block those calls and bomb the Muslim call center where they originate.

JIM LEHRER: A lot of people have asked me just in the last 24 hours, hey, why in the world is the House majority leader such a big deal anyway? Why isn't the speaker of the House the one who makes all these Tom Delay type decisions? How did Delay get to be so powerful?
DAVID BROOKS: I actually think he is not that powerful. I think Dennis Hastert - and I have asked a lot of members about this, who really runs the House, there was a perception that it was Tom Delay but I think Dennis Hastert ran the House and runs the House.
But I will say that what is happening in the future, I think there is some debate, there is some fresh thinking in part because the area of crisis.
I began to hear members talk about why don't we make it a two-year budget as opposed to a one-year budget, which is the wonkiest but oldest reform, probably John Adams was talking about it, taking the budget over two years. But it is a symptom of hey, something is new here, we have got to change. We just got to change.

JIM LEHRER: One thing before we leave the subject, Roy Blunt said today that the media calls for a new face in the party's leadership rather than a desire by Republicans for change is what drove the outcome. People were -- the Republicans were reading the media clips instead of listening --

DAVID BROOKS: I had a Republican senator say to me last week, he said, if you ever get in trouble, blame the media.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: And for God‘s sake, if you are Republican, don‘t ever blame yourself.

JIM LEHRER: New subject, David, the NSA surveillance issue, what did you make of that intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing yesterday, when all the leaders of the Intelligence Committee on one side and the senators picking at them on the other?

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah. I guess what struck me first is how partisan it is. You know, we've been talking on this show for a couple weeks about getting together and saying reform, let's reform the FISA bill, this law that governs the intelligence and so we can all agree, we'll have the program, we'll get it under some judicial framework so, very little hint of that. Republicans utterly confident that they don't need the frame -- that it is legal, Democrats very angry.
And I tell you what struck me emotionally myself was all the members saying how badly the nation had been hurt by the publicity -- not so much because Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida didn't think they were being surveyed but they were saying that intelligence agents all around the world were saying, can't you guys keep a secret? And as a member of the media, and even the New York Times, you know, that's something -

JIM LEHRER: Which broke the story --

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, which broke the story -- you do have to think. I was struck by the fervor with which they all said that.

JIM LEHRER: You mean people like Porter Goss, head of the CIA -

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

JIM LEHRER: And Negroponte -

DAVID BROOKS: And Negroponte.

JIM LEHRER: -- who is not an emotional --

DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, a serious guy.

JIM LEHRER: What did you think?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Negroponte. Isn’t that the guy who helped Reagan finance the death of thousands in Central America under Reagan? He’s a terrorist, right? Oh, wait, he’s on our team, so that means he’s good. I’m sorry, it’s so confusing to remember who is good and who is evil sometimes, because both sides like to kill so much. Negroponte, the killer, is in charge of our national secrets. Is he listening to my calls? Can I trust him? I am white, so I guess I don’t have anything to fear. But I'm liberal, and he has a long, long record of killing liberals in other countries. Hmm. I don't know? This guy actually scares me even more than Cheney does.
I‘m sorry for getting off base here. The wiretaps, yes, this is the kind of talk they are desperate to portray because they are all scared to death of their President being found guilty of committing a crime, which, uh, he did break the law. But since he's a Republican, he is above the law. It's only citizens and Democrats and little people who actually have to follow the law.

JIM LEHRER: There seems to be a lot of attention on the whistle blower somewhere in some spy agency.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Well, in the Bush government, there is no Crime Stoppers number to call when you catch the President breaking the law. You basically get hung out to dry, or maybe even jailed for catching a criminal. Carl Rove has a special forces team to deal with these t ypes.

JIM LEHRER: Those hearings are on Monday, we will see what happens. Before we go, how does the State of the Union look three nights later, David?

DAVID BROOKS: A lot heavier and more substantive. (laughter)

JIM LEHRER: Johnny, how did the state of the union look three days later?

DAVID BROOKS: That's all I get?

JIM LEHRER: Flesh it out a little bit.

DAVID BROOKS: I think what you're hearing is from conservatives --

JIM LEHRER: They're upset, conservatives are upset?

DAVID BROOKS: Liberals are upset, where's the beef? You know, a lot of little - conservatives are upset because this is big government conservatism, there is nothing government won't take over. And you are hearing a fair bit of that from the right.
I would say the first thing I noticed is that there is ferment on energy and portable healthcare. Bush didn't propose huge things on this. But there is a debate starting that we need a big energy program and we need to make healthcare portable.

JIM LEHRER: Not necessarily what he proposed.

DAVID BROOKS: But something. Almost every senator and representative I have spoken to said I want to have a big plan, let's do something big, and so it's beginning.
It will wait for the next president but it sort of moved the ball a little I would say.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: This speech was a waste of time. The real news will be after the speech, when he releases his budget. Never listen to what they say. Watch what they do.
The only things Bush has proven he is good at is wasting money on war and giving our money to his friends. That he can do. But everything else is just empty air.

JIM LEHRER: The Wall Street Journal editorial page leading the thing -
Quickly, before we go, there was also a big report criticizing the administration on Katrina this week. What do you think that -- is that having any resonance?

JOHNNY FLATLINE: You read the editorials in the Wall Street Journal? Isn‘t that like listening to FOX news? I mean, the news in that paper is excellent. But the editorial department is another story. That is the laughing stock of the media. But, hey, maybe they got one right this time. I didn‘t read it, so I can‘t comment. But I’m sure the people of New Orleans must be delighted with Bush right now. They probably think he is a flawless president beyond reproach.

DAVID BROOKS: Michael Chertoff would say he would do the designation which the GAO was calling for in a terrorist attack, they weren't prepared.
You know, I would just -- no I don't think we are stunned that this is a disaster. It confirms my basic view of this whole disaster all along -- it was August. People were on vacation. And they were not ready in late August.

JOHNNY FLATLINE: Yeah, well read Richard Clarke’s book about the 911 fiasco, and you’ll see how they insist on not being prepared. I really think they are too busy working on things that don’t matter to the rest of us. There is simply not enough time to do anything that matters. The next 3 years will be a contest to see just how much crap the American people can take from their pathetic leader. I’m going to buy that bumber sticker that reads “2008, the end of an error.” For me, that sums up the kind of news we have going on here.

You know, I realized something yesterday when I was gasing up my car. You know how gas is now about 75 cents more than it used to be. Well, it dawned on me that the extra 75 cents is an idiot tax. That’s right, it’s an idiot tax. That extra cost has got to be the cost of having Bush for President. All of the war, the conflict, the tension, the distrust, the scared markets, the failing dollar, that’s all Bush. He gets full credit for increasing the risk of the world. And that extra risk has been monetized in the gas system by nearly a dollar a gallon. Just remember that whenever you buy a new tank of gas. You are giving an extra 5 or 10 dollars into thin air, thanks to George W. Bush. That’s what I call the stupidity tax. And we all have to pay it.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you both very much.