I don't know about Mary Beth Cahill.

Not much fire there. Couldn't refute any of Judy Whore's obvious Repuke biased questions. You gotta say more than "that's just the way Republikans are".

She's boring and doesn't look or sound like she really believes in what she's doing.

The person I was thinking of was former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, who was Kerry's campaign chair in NH (for anyone who read my original post which due to my error is not relevent here.)

And I think you must have Mary Beth Cahill confused with someone else.

to Bush's campaign manager when he asked for a tape of the Dem celebrity fundraiser. She would have to go a long way before I would believe that she's ineffective - that was the best letter ever.

July 13, 2004

Ken Mehlman
Campaign Manager
BUSH-CHENEY '04, Inc.
P.O. BOX 10648
Arlington, VA 22210


Dear Ken:

Over the past several months, allies of the President have questioned John Kerry�fs patriotism while your staff has criticized his service in Vietnam. Republicans and their allies have gone so far as to launch attacks against his wife and your campaign has run $80 million in negative ads that have been called baseless, misleading and unfair by several independent observers.

Considering that the President has failed to even come close to keeping his promise to change the tone in Washington, we find your outrage over and paparazzi-like obsession with a fund-raising event to be misplaced. The fact is that the nation has a greater interest in seeing several documents made public relating to the President�fs performance in office and personal veracity that the White House has steadfastly refused to release. As such, we will not consider your request until the Bush campaign and White House make public the documents/materials listed below:

�œ Military records: Any copies of the President�fs military records that would actually prove he fulfilled the terms of his military service. For that matter, it would be comforting to the American people if the campaign or the White House could produce more than just a single person to verify that the President was in Alabama when said he was there. Many Americans find it odd that only one person out of an entire squadron can recall seeing Mr. Bush.

�œ Halliburton: All correspondence between the Defense Department and the White House regarding the no-bid contracts that have gone to the Vice-President�fs former company. Some material has already been made public. Why not take a campaign issue off the table by making all of these materials public so the voters can see how Halliburton has benefited from Mr. Cheney serving as Vice-President?

�œ The Cheney Energy Task Force: For an Administration that claims to hate lawsuits, it�fs ironic that the Bush White House is taking up the Courts�f time to keep the fact that Ken Lay and Enron wrote its energy policy in secret behind closed doors. Please release the documents so that the country can learn what lobbyists and special interests wrote the White House energy policy.

�œ Medicare Bill: Please release all White House correspondence between the pharmaceutical industry and the Administration regarding the Medicare Bill, which gave billions to some of the President�fs biggest donors. In addition, please provide all written materials that directed the Medicare actuary to withhold information from Congress about the actual cost of the bill.

�œ Prison Abuse Documents: A few weeks ago, the White House released a selected number of documents regarding the White House�fs involvement in laying the legal foundation for the interrogation methods that were used in Iraq. Please release the remaining documents.

We also wanted to wish you a happy anniversary. As we are sure you and the attorneys representing the President, Vice-President and other White House officials are aware, today marks one year since Administration sources leaked the identity of a covert CIA agent to Bob Novak in an effort to retaliate against a critic of the Administration.

In light of the fact that the Administration began gutting the laws protecting the nation�fs forests yesterday, we hope you will accept the paper on which this letter is written as an anniversary gift. (The one year anniversary is known as the �gpaper anniversary.�h)

Sincerely,


Mary Beth Cahill

Campaign Manager

to Bush's campaign manager when he asked for a tape of the Dem celebrity fundraiser. She would have to go a long way before I would believe that she's ineffective - that was the best letter ever.

to Bush's campaign manager when he asked for a tape of the Dem celebrity fundraiser. She would have to go a long way before I would believe that she's ineffective - that was the best letter ever.

Her job is to manage the campaign and that's what she's best at -- managing. I just don't agree that she has to 'show fire' on TV to be effective. She made the key points, (for instance she repeated twice that the Time poll is only one of three), stayed on message, and I think there are a lot of relatively calm people out there, perhaps even women who see someone like Mary Beth when they look in the mirror, who find calm, rational answers appealling.

I like her thinly veiled comtempt for the spineless whore, Judy Woodruff.

Dull, uninspiring, emotionless and not ready for prime time. It's OK to be calm but by damn be ready to refute Judy whore's digs.

yes, Judy and the Bush campaign want Kerry campaign manager on TV talking about whether or not Kerry is a flip-flopper.


But I don't.

When Judy says "VP Cheney and Gov Pataki say your guy is a flip flopper and has a twenty year history of changing his mind", I believe she might have said something a little more responsive than "we want to talk about the future".

. . . and, she did say more than "we want to talk about the future." Among other things, she said, "All they can do is ridicule because they can't run on their record."

I think it was an excellent accent - short, sweet, nails them in one neat soundbite.

But, since that's not good enough, what should she have said?

flip flop charges to cover their own changes of policy and thinking such as the number one priority after 911 was to hunt down and destroy Osama bin laden's terrorist network".

The flip-flop charges aren't just to cover up changes in policy, or problems with 9/11 or Osama. That answer would be putting too fine a point on the issue.

Much better to say - as she did - that the Bush campaign resorts to ridicule because they can't talk about their record - an umbrella smackdown that includes the issues you talked about but also can cover a multitude of other problems the Bush campaign has. This is an all-purpose, consistent message that everyone on the Kerry team can use whenever this comes up, regardless what the issue is.

audience. Better to throw a short straight jab that connects than a big round house punch back by nothing but hope. First discredit the accusers. Then point out Kerry's record and then what he wants for this country otherwise the ridicule looks like truth.

I'm spending a good deal of time here defending a guy I really didn't want to run in the first place. I'll tell you what though, as a life long Dem I want someone who will stick their face right back in a lying Repuke's face and yell BULLSHIT!!

She did the right thing - set the paradigm for that "non-believing audience" which provides the context the other message bearers will use to beat Bush over the head with details.

You're assuming that the "non-believers" have never heard Bush accused of lying or that they believe he did lie. That's not the case. Those voters who believe that Bush lied about Iraq are probably already with Kerry. Those who don't yet believe that won't be swayed because they heard Mary Beth Cahill - or anyone else - say, "Bush can't call us flip-floppers because he's a liar." If someone isn't yet convinced that Bush is a liar, the accusation that you're suggesting is not effective more effective.

It's much better to say, "They have to ridicule us because they can't talk about their record" - the accusation that he can't talk about his record is a broad charge that's as difficult to refute as "he's a flip-flopper."

I don't know about the folks who don't suspect * of prevaricating. I talk to them everyday.

but you just told everybody in the nation that the Republicans' "number one priority after 911 was to hunt down and destroy Osama bin laden's terrorist network"

Without even hinting at what the flip-flop was....

And you made it sound like I'm AGAINST hunting down and destroying Osama bin laden's terrorist network since for some bizarre reason my campaign manager went on TV and attacked the GOP for making that their number one priority.

You're helping to show how the crafting and dissemination of a message is much more complicated than many people think it is.

It's also what our glorious leader calls stratagery...

Their convention was a flop and their sleaze campaign was a disaster (Rush Limbaugh is trying to convince his hoopleheads that the Clintons were behind the Swift Boat ads)....

Going negative plays right into their hands...they need to start trading chippy charges about what went on in 1971 and who said what to who because they can't do anything positive.

Everything they've done has been a failure. We don't have to say that. What we need to do is give specifics on how to fix it and tell people why they should vote for us.

The convention shows that, after all those months of hooting how "negative" we were, the only reason the whole "brain trust" could come up with for people to vote for the Texas Souffle in four days of hoohah is that he's Anybody But Kerry.

didn't crap where he was. OK Donald? This is a response that answers a specific charge leveled at Mary Beth by Judy the prostitute. Glass houses and stones and stuff like that.

Judy didn't mention 9/11 or Osama. She asked Mary Beth how the campaign plans to respond to the Bush campaign ridiculing Kerry as a flip-flopper. Why go off on a tangent arguing about 9/11 and Osama, which, as MrBenchley pointed out, would only backfire on Kerry.

are making a serious run at Kerry's so called flip flop on Iraq. Osama's name wasn't mentioned specifically but the charge was a blanket thrown over Kerry's entire political life. IMHO Kerry has done some backsliding but that is not entirely bad. Kerry, or a spokesperson for him, is going to at some point in time speak about the flip flop issue or go down in flames. But for * to go from "Wanted dead or alive" to I don't give good flip about Osama is bell ringer IMHO and not off on a tangent.

and this 3-minute interview was definitely not one of them. The point of this interview - and, indeed, all of the interviews being done today - is to set an overall tone and offer the campaign's broad message - that Bush's convention was a bust, that he offered nothing for the American people but smear and fear and that his attacks on Kerry are nothing more than attempt to change the subject because he can't talk about his record.

Today is NOT the day to get bogged down in minutae.

said the the war on terror was being won, and then that the war on terror couldn't be won, and then that the war on terror could be won?

"I believe it's a critical issue of trust and confidence."
And you build those by having straight answers on real issues, not by having a pissing contest with America's town drunk.

because she skipped over the flip flopper crap (which Chimpy himself killed early this week) and jumped all over "ridicule."

She made the GOP look childish and petty...which they are.

"This is a response that answers a specific charge leveled at Mary Beth by Judy the prostitute."
Your response bit the big one. You didn't tell America what the fuck the flip-flop was....for that matter, in two posts you still haven't spelled it out.

I'm beginning to wonder if you can spell that flip-flop out without my help:
Osama went from "dead or alive" to "Osama who? "
"I'm confused, was it Osama or Michael Moore that the GOP was going to smoke out?"


And neither of those snappy responses, or anything in your fumbling attempts answers Judy's question about Kerry...which Cahill does, and very effectively too. Pointing to Chimpy's flip-flopping in that context amounts to: "Nyah nyah...you stink too."

"Glass houses and stones and stuff like that."
Geeze-louise, how can I ever cope with eloquence and reasoned measured arguments such as yours?

my opinion. I was not impressed with Cahill's performance.

Or anyone else who is already on board with Kerry.

But she was likely very effective with people who are still on the fence.

my opinion. I was not impressed with Cahill's performance.

Do you remember who Bill Clinton's campaign manager was in 1992?

Like most campaign managers, Mary Beth Cahill is a behind the scenes person, and has done a great job. People forget that she replaced the original campaign manager and turned the entire operation around late last year.

As for her answers in the interview, I think she did a great job. She was professional, rational and projected an air of calm that sends the message that the Time Magazine poll is nothing to get our shorts in a bunch about.

How else can anyone answer questions such as "what do you think about the Bush campaign ridiculing Kerry for being a flip-flopper" than to say, "they have to resort to ridicule because they can't run on their record?" A 3-minute interview is not the place to do a point-by-point refutation of Bush-Cheney charges, especially charges such as this one that offers a broad slap without any specifics. That's what they want the Kerry people to do. They sling a broad, un-substantiated negative characterization and then hope that we bog ourselves down with detailed answers that no one really listens to anyway. I think that Cahill answered the questions well.

There's nothing wrong with the answer: "they have to resort to ridicule because they can't run on their record" In fact, that;'s a great soundbite and right to the point.

"They sling a broad, un-substantiated negative characterization and then hope that we bog ourselves down with detailed answers that no one really listens to anyway."
Or else they hope that we go "Oh yeah? Well, Bush's grandfather was a Nazi" or the like and voters turn off both sides....

there's no reason to get into a tit for tat "oh, that's not true" down their laundry list...not when the convention's keynote speaker wants to fight a duel on TV....you don't even have to poke fun at them.

They have no issues to campaign on...four years of being in charge, and all they have is stuff they fucked up royally (Mission Accomplished!) or stuff they're going to do some day in the sweet bye and bye that nobody wants.

signed,

the Choir

FDR didn't sit around chippying charges with Hoover when the GOP called him Rosenfeld and said his polio was syphillis...

Truman didn't trade chippy charges with Dewey when Dewey said he was a crook....

Kennedy didn't bother with Nixon's whispering campaign about religion.

At the end of the day the campaign is about who we are...and we're not gutter rats who need to depend on personal attacks and smears.

Mary was pathetic.

Below is my posting in our travel agents forum:


Boy President Bush really does not want to retire to Crawford. He promised something for everybody. But the overriding theme of his speech and RNC is: I performed well after 911. So forget my miscalculations and catastrophic success. Forget my candor for admitting we cannot win the war on terror the way I had performed last 3 years.

Now exactly what did Bush do after 911 that proved he is a great leader?

Invading Afghanistan? But we would have invaded Afghanistan even if a kindergartner sat in the Oval Office.

So because of invading Iraq? Why, and why at that time? Saddam was a dictator. But he had been a dictator for 20 years and had been cooperating with US much of the time. Even if we have to remove him, why at that time before we catch Bin Laden and stabilize Afghanistan.

We knew all along that we could remove him anytime we wanted to. We had rounds and rounds of discussion on this forum before the war. Nobody here is military expert. But even nobody here doubted that our military is capable of removing him. So our President must have also known that as well. So why did he not take the time and get our plans for peace worked out before he gave the order? His own secretary of state warned him, you break it, and you own it. So why did he allow that catastrophic success to happen? Catastrophic because of his poor judgment as a President at time of war and peace. Success because of our military.

His miscalculations cannot be punished by reducing his salary. According to him, a teacher has to accountable for not teaching well. His poor judgment caused death and injury for thousands of our young men and women. The majority of them died or injured after our military success. Yet he wants us to give him another chance. If you made an agent error of $4000, and your contract is just up for renewal, would your agency boss give you another 4 years?

At this time of war and sky high deficit, the President did not appeal to our sense of honor and sacrifice. Instead he promised permanent tax cut for the rich. He even promised a bunch of social government programs (but no taxes to fund them) to please the democrats. But shame on me, if I can be fooled.

I forgot why I voted against him last time. This time I know exactly why I will vote against him again.

I have not been very pleased with the way Kerry campaign responded to the diversions and distortions of the Bush campaign. We need to expose each and every single half-truth and untruth or outright lie heaped upon Kerry. Many prestigious political columnists like those of Washington Post and New York Times already exposed those distortions. But a lot of working people do not read papers. The Kerry Campaign just has to reiterate what the investigative journalists already had dug up and spread the truth. Every lie unanswered is a lie spread.

n/t

the very men who lied us into the Iraq debacle".

Completely off message and does nothing to refute the flip flop charge. It simply says, "Oh, yeah? Well, we may be flip-floppers, but HE's a liar!"

And then, the Bush campaign comes back and says, "Oh, yeah? He smears the President of the United States as lying us into a war that he just said he would STILL for. Another Kerry FLIP FLOP!"

I think her answer was an excellent one - completely dismisses their charge as petty and not worth commenting on because everyone knows it's just a diversionary tactic.

accusers. It dismisses the charge with the obvious pained look of "you know, I had an answer for that just a minute ago". We're above this petty nonsense attitude is exactly why we're sucking hind tit now.

and anyone who watched it knows that is 100% UNTRUE.

Look, you have your take and I have mine. For me it just wasn't what I expect from a manager.

totally UNTRUE. Really not much room for interpretation here for anyone who saw it. Your charges are false and misleading smears.

Now that sure would serve a purpose now wouldn't it. Your interpretation is totally false and untrue.

As anyone seeing it would confirm.


You are entitled to your opinion about whether she should have taken Woodruff's bait. But I will challenge your factually incorrect statements that she looked 'pained', 'confused' or 'in doubt'.

To imply that someone is stating something false or misleading because they perceive a different "look" is totally intolerant and small.
To state that her performance in tone, text and visual was brilliant and stellar is also misleading and false.

I saw that interview and I agree with your assessment. I was very disgusted at the way she handled the questions.

And it did it in the 15-second soundbite. This was not the forum for her to launch into a detailed attack on Bush and his henchmen.

Not about being above anything - it's about staying on message and making sure our message actually does what we want it to do.

And, we're hardly "sucking hind tit now."

ASAP !

twenty years. I worked on campaigns with her. There is no one better. She worked Leahy, Barney Frank, who by the way was not a particularly wonderful candidate, Huge, rumpled but funny as all get out. Loved him. Claiborne Pell, never underestimate Mary Beth. She will bring him through. I only know of one instance and that was either Oregon or Washington where she didn't get a victory. She had a decent democrat running against the guy who had to quit, after the election, because of sexual harassment. It didn't come out in the papers I think it was Packwood.

Right. Hire back the guy who, after you fired him for incompetence, hired on with a rival and then turned around and attacked you.

He has many of the same characteristics as Karl Rove, with one big missing ingredient. Karl Rove is good at what he does.

You must think that Kerry's stupid.

No way.

It's all hands on deck for this election!

And I doubt either they or anyone else would want them to be.

any serious national campaign strategist.

I heard that she and her assistant just moved from being
Kennedy senate staff to helping Kerry because he had just had
a big disagreement with his campaign manager Jordan who then quit.

I think Kerry is really still without a real campaign manager, with
Mary Beth just coordinating a bunch of consultants.

She's a campaign MANAGER, which is an entirely different thing.

Carville and Rove are not campaign managers.

What you "heard" and what really happened have absolutely no connection.

Mary Beth is more than just a manager of a bunch of consultants. She is the manager of the most successful Democratic campaign in years, who took a campaign that appeared to be on its last legs, turned it on a dime and secured the nomination just 6 weeks after the first primary.

The attacks on her in this forum are both inexplicable and outrageous.

She has some very impressive turn arounds in campaigns. Who the hell cares what judy the whore has to say. Mary Beth will out.

for the first time and she was quite a disappointment. She did not come off very well at all in my opinion. It seemed as if Woodruff was deliberately asking her questions that would have enabled her to strongly refute some of the allegations against Kerry. She failed to do that. Also, she did not come off as a very warm person but somewhat snobby to me. I just expected a more knowledgeable and forceful person to be handling a presidential campaign.

It isn't Kerry who's running around desperately trying to explain that when he said "we can't win the war on terror" he didn't mean what he said....

It seemed as if Woodruff was deliberately asking her questions that would have enabled her to strongly refute some of the allegations against Kerry.

Remember, the keynote speaker who summed up all those allegations in a raving, rambling speech that seemed batshit crazy to those watching on TV, then went on to confirm that he was batshit crazy by having a meltdown on TV and challenging someone to a duel. Pretty much everybody in America is laughing their asses off about it, and those who haven't will soon catch up with it via the magic of comdey programs and video tape.

So why do you suppose somebody like Woodruff, who seems to be more or less biased toward the GOP, would deliberately try to bring up those allegations again as if they were valid?

And why might kissing them off be the very smartest thing anyone could do?

who don't have a clue about campaign strategy and message and thereby, fall into the trap of saying something outrageous that would completely change the subject, take her candidate off message, and leave him open to a major smackdown by the press and Bush campaign?