Pat Caddell, Democrat Operative, Unloads on His Own Party

Bob

2004-09-15 02:21:44 UTC

Post by Sordo
Pat Caddell Unloads on His Own Party
September 14, 2004
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Fox News Channel yesterday, Pat Caddell, loaded for bear. He was
on Dayside with Linda Vester, and she said, (paraphrasing) "John
Kerry, in an interview just out in TIME Magazine, talking about what's
going on in this campaign, the question is people's views of the
strength of your leadership have declined in the past few weeks. Is
this in part because you're slow in responding to the swift boat ads?
Do you think you should have been more aggressive? And Kerry says no,
I think we did absolutely fine, I think we're doing absolutely fine.
What do you say to that, Pat Caddell?"
CADDELL: People in America are not stupid. They know that he's had a
bad month. What is it about politicians that they can't simply be
honest with people and say, "It's a tough process, we made some
mistakes. But I'm going to be fighting every day, and the big day that
matters is Election Day, and I'm going to prove myself." No, to say
something honest is somehow contaminated, apparently, and whatever the
world that Washington has become. I think the problem is, first of
all, I don't think the campaign has a definition. It didn't have one
in Boston. You know, the reason we had the problem with the swift
boats is not because George Bush rounded up the swift boat veterans,
it's because the Democratic campaigners decided they would make John
Kerry's campaign about Vietnam. And when you take that scab off, the
natural result was going to be to bring people out who have very
strong feelings. Nobody in history has ever run for president as a
hero. You become a hero because people know you're a hero. You don't
run around and say you're a hero.
RUSH: Limbaugh Echo Syndrome! Limbaugh Echo Syndrome, two examples on
parade there. It was Kerry who brought up Vietnam. It wasn't Bush that
rounded up the swift boat guys. Which came first? What came first is
Kerry's convention and going on and on and on about his medals, and
his service and all this stuff and the swift boat stuff. And then how
many times have I told you, the thing that's always struck me about
John Kerry is he has to explain why he's great or why he's good. It
doesn't speak for itself when you see John Kerry. He doesn't stand
out, he doesn't tower over people in a characteristic sense, he does
of course physically in a Lurch sort of way. But he's out there
running as a hero, and he's not a hero, he's not perceived as a hero.
He's trying to make people think he is a hero. You become a hero
because people know you're a hero. You don't run around and say you're
a hero and have people believe it. Greatness does not have to be
explained, and these constant references to his service in Vietnam is
precisely what Caddell means when he says, "You don't run around and
say you're a hero, people know you are or you aren't." And he gets
even more strident in the next couple bites.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let's go back to Pat Caddell. Let's not lose track of where we
were here. Pat Caddell was on Linda Vester's Fox show yesterday
afternoon, the second of three bites that we have here. She said
(paraphrasing), "Something else that's interesting is that right now
John Kerry travels with the national news media, they trail him, and
you record everything he does but he hasn't talked to them, he's not
talked to them, given them an interview in 34 days, why is that?"
CADDELL: Because there's an arrogance. First of all, we have some of
what I would call, look, as a Democrat, we have some what I call
political crypto-gangsters who have taken over the heart and soul of
the Democratic Party in Washington, and their job is hold onto power
and hold onto money. And these are people advising a good man. And
I've known John Kerry for many years, for him not to talk to the press
is a mistake. He isn't the president. He's the challenger. But you
know what, I'll tell you what they are counting on, which I find
ridiculous, they're counting on things like what's going on at CBS
this morning with those documents, which is just unbelievable. Why
does the Democratic Party want to get into the issue of the National
Guard? National Guard leads to swift boats. And that is the last issue
in the world that John Kerry needs to be --
RUSH: The Democratic Party has been taken over by what he calls
political crypto-gangsters who have taken over the heart -- he's
right. Now, this was the guy, this was Jimmy Carter's (Watch the
Malaise Speech) pollster. Pat Caddell, and he's been involved with
some other prominent liberal Democrats. He's no shrinking violet as a
liberal Democrat. But he's right, Limbaugh Echo Syndrome here again,
there's an arrogance in the Kerry camp and did you notice, he said,
they were counting on the document thing at CBS to carry the day.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: One more Caddell bite, and he opens fire here on the
crypto-gangster Terry McAuliffe.
CADDELL: Let me tell you, when you have your national chairman, Terry
McAuliffe, who put in a hundred thousand dollars into Global Crossing
and walked off with $18 million as your national chairman, it tells
you the moral and the integrity level my party has been reduced to at
the DNC. You're going to have Terry McAuliffe going out as he did the
other day calling the president of the United States a liar? What is
wrong with these people? I don't care whether the people agree or
disagree with the president, they do not like political hacks going
around calling the President of the United States a liar. Whether he's
a Democrat or Republican. We should be talking about vision, we should
be arguing what we're going to do to change the country, and I'm
fearful, I've been saying this for months, I'm afraid the same people
are taking this party down to defeat in 2002 and 2000 are taking it
right down to defeat again. It's hand in hand with some of the
national media. Look at NBC today. They put on Kitty Kelley. Why don't
they just put on the National Enquirer? They put her on for three
straight days. (Laughing) For three straight days, do you know I went
back and checked because I read, I couldn't believe this, too, do you
know that O'Neill and the swift boat people has never been on the
Today Show?
RUSH: Yeah, we all know that, that's the point. We exactly all know
that. Kitty Kelley is not making any news of the kind she hoped and
dreamed of, nor of the kind the mainstream press hoped and dreamed of,
and because we've got the sound bites -- because of this whole forged
document business, CBS, Matt Lauer is creaming her. You know, NBC,
there was talk last week, NBC -- (talking to program observer) I know,
Caddell does sound a lot like me, doesn't he? I mean, not voice
quality, of course, but in some things, what he says about McAuliffe,
yeah. I thought this for the longest time.
At any rate, last week, everybody the asking, "Okay, does NBC go ahead
with this?" Given what's happened here with these forged documents,
can NBC run the risk of putting Kitty Kelley on? Well, they couldn't
very well, I think, cancel here. She was suing people if they canceled
interviews with her. So they contracted for three days on the Today
Show and they turned -- I don't know if Katie Couric was originally
going to do this or not. They turned over Matt Lauer and he's firing
both barrels at her. I mean, saying things like, "You know, this is
strange, Ms. Kelley, but it's a long book. You haven't found one nice
thing to say about this family? I mean is there not one decent thing
you can say about these people?"
[Kelley answers] "No, everybody thinks they're the Donna Reed Show but
it's more like The Sopranos."
None of it's real, none of it's believable. This Kitty Kelley book is
no more than the next installment of this entire bash-Bush year that
has been coordinated somehow, somewhere, at least as far as timing and
perhaps in even more ways. But, at any rate, Caddell is right.
END TRANSCRIPT

Feeding The Liar could be hazardous to the environment.
--
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.
They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country
and our people, and neither do we."
George W. Bush
8/5/04

Vote for Bush - Prove You Are Uninformed about
the REAL Issues facing the United States
which will prove you are ignorant of the following
important issues facing the U. S. right now!

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=557746

Bush by numbers: Four years of
double standards

By Graydon Carter

03 September 2004

1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security
issued between 20
January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa'ida.

104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security
and defence in the
same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.

101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security
and defence
in the same period that mentioned missile defence.

65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security
and defence
in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of
the Union
addresses.

73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his
three State of the
Union addresses.

83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change)
in his
three State of the Union addresses.

$1m Estimated value of a painting the Bush Presidential Library in
College Station,
Texas, received from Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the
United States
and Bush family friend.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the
Union
addresses.

1,700 Percentage increase between 2001 and 2002 of Saudi Arabian
spending on
public relations in the United States.

79 Percentage of the 11 September hijackers who came from Saudi Arabia.

3 Number of 11 September hijackers whose entry visas came through
special
US-Saudi "Visa Express" programme.

140 Number of Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family,
evacuated from
United States almost immediately after 11 September.

14 Number of Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) agents
assigned to track
down 1,200 known illegal immigrants in the United States from countries
where
al-Qa'ida is active.

$3m Amount the White House was willing to grant the 9/11 Commission to
investigate
the 11 September attacks.

$0 Amount approved by George Bush to hire more INS special agents.

$10m Amount Bush cut from the INS's existing terrorism budget.

$50m Amount granted to the commission that looked into the Columbia
space shuttle
crash.

$5m Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study legalised
gambling.

7 Number of Arabic linguists fired by the US army between mid-August and
mid-October 2002 for being gay.

George Bush: Military man

1972 Year that Bush walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas
National Guard,
Nearly two years before his six-year obligation was up.

$3,500 Reward a group of veterans offered in 2000 for anyone who could
confirm
Bush's Alabama guard service.

600-700 Number of guardsmen who were in Bush's unit during that period.

0 Number of guardsmen from that period who came forward with information
about
Bush's guard service.

0 Number of minutes that President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, the
Defence
Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the assistant Defence Secretary, Paul
Wolfowitz, the
former chairman of the Defence Policy Board, Richard Perle, and the
White House
Chief of Staff, Karl Rove the main proponents of the war in Iraq
served in combat
(combined).

0 Number of principal civilian or Pentagon staff members who planned the
war who
have immediate family members serving in uniform in Iraq.

8 Number of members of the US Senate and House of Representatives who
have a
child serving in the military.

10 Number of days that the Pentagon spent investigating a soldier who
had called the
President "a joke" in a letter to the editor of a Newspaper.

46 Percentage increase in sales between 2001 and 2002 of GI Joe figures
(children's
toys).

Ambitious warrior

2 Number of Nations that George Bush has attacked and taken over since
coming into
office.

130 Approximate Number of countries (out of a total of 191 recognised by
the United
Nations) with a US military presence.

43 Percentage of the entire world's military spending that the US spends
on defence.
(That was in 2002, the year before the invasion of Iraq.)

$401.3bn Proposed military budget for 2004.

Saviour of Iraq

1983 The year in which Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan's special envoy to
the
Middle East, gave Saddam Hussein a pair of golden spurs as a gift.

2.5 Number of hours after Rumsfeld learnt that Osama bin Laden was a
suspect in the
11 September attacks that he brought up reasons to "hit" Iraq.

237 Minimum number of misleading statements on Iraq made by top Bush
administration officials between 2002 and January 2004, according to the
California
Representative Henry Waxman.

10m Estimated number of people worldwide who took to the streets on 21
February
2003, in opposition to the invasion of Iraq, the largest simultaneous
protest in world
history.

$2bn Estimated monthly cost of US military presence in Iraq projected by
the White
House in April 2003.

$4bn Actual monthly cost of the US military presence in Iraq according
to Secretary of
Defence Rumsfeld in 2004.

$15m Amount of a contract awarded to an American firm to build a cement
factory in
Iraq.

$80,000 Amount an Iraqi firm spent (using Saddam's confiscated funds) to
build the
same factory, after delays prevented the American firm from starting it.

2000 Year that Cheney said his policy as CEO of Halliburton oil services
company
was "we wouldn't do anything in Iraq".

$4.7bn Total value of contracts awarded to Halliburton in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

$680m Estimated value of Iraq reconstruction contracts awarded to
Bechtel.

$2.8bnValue of Bechtel Corp contracts in Iraq.

$120bn Amount the war and its aftermath are projected to cost for the
2004 fiscal
year.

35 Number of countries to which the United States suspended military
assistance after
they failed to sign agreements giving Americans immunity from
prosecution before the
International Criminal Court.

92 Percentage of Iraq's urban areas with access to potable water in late
2002.

60 Percentage of Iraq's urban areas with access to potable water in late
2003.

55 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who were unemployed before the war.

80 Percentage of the Iraqi workforce who are unemployed a Year after the
war.

0 Number of American combat deaths in Germany after the Nazi surrender
in May
1945.

37 Death toll of US soldiers in Iraq in May 2003, the month combat
operations
"officially" ended.

0 Number of coffins of dead soldiers returning home that the Bush
administration has
permitted to be photographed.

0 Number of memorial services for the returned dead that Bush has
attended since the
beginning of the war.

A soldier's best friend

40,000 Number of soldiers in Iraq seven months after start of the war
still without
Interceptor vests, designed to stop a round from an AK-47.

$60m Estimated cost of outfitting those 40,000 soldiers with Interceptor
vests.

62 Percentage of gas masks that army investigators discovered did Not
work properly
in autumn 2002.

90 Percentage of detectors which give early warning of a biological
weapons attack
found to be defective.

87 Percentage of Humvees in Iraq not equipped with armour capable of
stopping
AK-47 rounds and protecting against roadside bombs and landmines at the
end of
2003.

Making the country safer

$3.29 Average amount allocated per person Nationwide in the first round
of homeland
security grants.

$94.40 Amount allocated per person for homeland security in American
Samoa.

$36 Amount allocated per person for homeland security in Wyoming,
Vice-President
Cheney's home state.

$17 Amount allocated per person in New York state.

$5.87 Amount allocated per person in New York City.

$77.92 Amount allocated per person in New Haven, Connecticut, home of
Yale
University, Bush's alma mater.

76 Percentage of 215 cities surveyed by the US Conference of Mayors in
early 2004
that had yet to receive a dime in federal homeland security assistance
for their
first-response units.

5 Number of major US airports at the beginning of 2004 that the
Transportation
Security Administration admitted were Not fully screening baggage
electronically.

22,600 Number of planes carrying unscreened cargo that fly into New York
each
month.

5 Estimated Percentage of US air cargo that is screened, including cargo
transported
on passenger planes.

95 Percentage of foreign goods that arrive in the United States by sea.

2 Percentage of those goods subjected to thorough inspection.

$5.5bnEstimated cost to secure fully US ports over the Next decade.

$0 Amount Bush allocated for port security in 2003.

$46m Amount the Bush administration has budgeted for port security in
2005.

15,000 Number of major chemical facilities in the United States.

100 Number of US chemical plants where a terrorist act could endanger
the lives of
more than one million people.

0 Number of new drugs or vaccines against "priority pathogens" listed by
the Centres
for Disease Control that have been developed and introduced since 11
September
2001.

Giving a hand up to the advantaged

$10.9m Average wealth of the members of Bush's original 16-person
cabinet.

75 Percentage of Americans unaffected by Bush's sweeping 2003 cuts in
capital gains
and dividends taxes.

$42,000 Average savings members of Bush's cabinet received in 2003 as a
result of
cuts in capital gains and dividends taxes.

10 Number of fellow members from the Yale secret society Skull and Bones
that Bush
has named to important positions (including the Associate Attorney
General Robert
McCallum Jr. and SEC chief Bill Donaldson).

79 Number of Bush's initial 189 appointees who also served in his
father's
administration.

A man with a lot of friends

$113m Amount of total hard money the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign received,
a
record.

$11.5m Amount of hard money raised through the Pioneer programme, the
controversial fund-raising process created for the Bush-Cheney 2000
campaign.
(Participants pledged to raise at least $100,000 by bundling together
cheques of up to
$1,000 from friends and family. Pioneers were assigned numbers, which
were included
on all cheques, enabling the campaign to keep track of who raised how
much.)

George Bush: Money manager

4.7m Number of bankruptcies that were declared during Bush's first three
years in
office.

2002 The worst year for major markets since the recession of the 1970s.

$489bn The US trade deficit in 2003, the worst in history for a single
year.

$5.6tr Projected national surplus forecast by the end of the decade when
Bush took
office in 2001.

$7.22tr US national debt by mid-2004.

George Bush: Tax cutter

87 Percentage of American families in April 2004 who say they have felt
no benefit
from Bush's tax cuts.

39 Percentage of tax cuts that will go to the top 1 per cent of American
families when
fully phased in.

49 Percentage of Americans in April 2004 who found that their taxes had
actually gone
up since Bush took office.

88 Percentage of American families who will save less than $100 on their
2006 federal
taxes as a result of 2003 cut in capital gains and dividends taxes.

$30,858 Amount Bush himself saved in taxes in 2003.

Employment tsar

9.3m Number of US unemployed in April 2004.

2.3m Number of Americans who lost their jobs during first three Years of
the Bush
administration.

22m Number of jobs gained during Clinton's eight years in office.

Friend of the poor

34.6m Number of Americans living below the poverty line (1 in 8 of the
population).

6.8m Number of people in the workforce but still classified as poor.

35m Number of Americans that the government defines as "food insecure,"
in other
words, hungry.

$300m Amount cut from the federal programme that provides subsidies to
poor
families so they can heat their homes.

40 Percentage of wealth in the United States held by the richest 1 per
cent of the
population.

18 Percentage of wealth in Britain held by the richest 1e per cent of
the population.

George Bush And his special friend

$60bn Loss to Enron stockholders, following the largest bankruptcy in US
history.

$205m Amount Enron CEO Kenneth Lay earned from stock option profits over
a
four-year period.

$101m Amount Lay made from selling his Enron shares just before the
company went
bankrupt.

$59,339 Amount the Bush campaign reimbursed Enron for 14 trips on its
corporate jet
during the 2000 campaign.

30 Length of time in months between Enron's collapse and Lay (whom the
President
called "Kenny Boy") still not being charged with a crime.

George Bush: Lawman

15 Average number of minutes Bush spent reviewing capital punishment
cases while
governor of Texas.

46 Percentage of Republican federal judges when Bush came to office.

57 Percentage of Republican federal judges after three years of the Bush
administration.

33 Percentage of the $15bn Bush pledged to fight Aids in Africa that
must go to
abstinence-only programmes.

The Civil libertarian

680 Number of suspected al-Qa'ida members that the United States admits
are
detained at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

42 Number of nationalities of those detainees at Guantanamo.

22 Number of hours prisoners were handcuffed, shackled, and made to wear
surgical
masks, earmuffs, and blindfolds during their flight to Guantanamo.

32 Number of confirmed suicide attempts by Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

24 Number of prisoners in mid-2003 being monitored by psychiatrists in
Guantanamo's
new mental ward.

A health-conscious president

43.6m Number of Americans without health insurance by the end of 2002
(more than
15 per cent of the population).

2.4m Number of Americans who lost their health insurance during Bush's
first year in
office.

Environmentalist

$44m Amount the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and the Republican National
Committee received in contributions from the fossil fuel, chemical,
timber, and mining
industries.

200 Number of regulation rollbacks downgrading or weakening
environmental laws in
Bush's first three years in office.

31 Number of Bush administration appointees who are alumni of the energy
industry
(includes four cabinet secretaries, the six most powerful White House
officials, and
more than 20 other high-level appointees).

50 Approximate number of policy changes and regulation rollbacks
injurious to the
environment that have been announced by the Bush administration on
Fridays after
5pm, a time that makes it all but impossible for news organisations to
relay the
information to the widest possible audience.

50 Percentage decline in Environmental Protection Agency enforcement
actions against
polluters under Bush's watch.

34 Percentage decline in criminal penalties for environmental crimes
since Bush took
office.

50 Percentage decline in civil penalties for environmental crimes since
Bush took office.

$6.1m Amount the EPA historically valued each human life when conducting
economic
analyses of proposed regulations.

$3.7m Amount the EPA valued each human life when conducting analyses of
proposed
regulations during the Bush administration.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned global warming, clean air, clean water,
pollution or
environment in his 2004 State of the Union speech. His father was the
last president to
go through an entire State of the Union address without mentioning the
environment.

1 Number of paragraphs devoted to global warming in the EPA's 600-page
"Draft
Report on the Environment" presented in 2003.

68 Number of days after taking office that Bush decided Not to ratify
the Kyoto
Protocol, the international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases by roughly
5.2 per cent
below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States was to cut its level by 7
per cent.

1 The rank of the United States worldwide in terms of greenhouse gas
emissions.

25 Percentage of overall worldwide carbon dioxide emissions the United
States is
responsible for.

53 Number of days after taking office that Bush reneged on his campaign
promise to
regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

14 Percentage carbon dioxide emissions will increase over the next 10
years under
Bush's own global-warming plan (an increase of 30 per cent above their
1990 levels).

408 Number of species that could be extinct by 2050 if the
global-warming trend
continues.

5 Number of years the Bush administration said in 2003 that global
warming must be
further studied before substantive action could be taken.

62 Number of members of Cheney's 63-person Energy Task Force with ties
to
corporate energy interests.

0 Number of environmentalists asked to attend Cheney's Energy Task Force
meetings.

6 Number of months before 11 September that Cheney's Energy Task Force
investigated Iraq's oil reserves.

2 Percentage of the world's population that is British.

2 Percentage of the world's oil used by Britain.

5 Percentage of the world's population that is American.

25 Percentage of the world's oil used by America.

63 Percentage of oil the United States imported in 2003, a record high.

24,000 Estimated number of premature deaths that will occur under Bush's
Clear Skies
initiative.

300 Number of Clean Water Act violations by the mountaintop-mining
industry in
2003.

750,000 Tons of toxic waste the US military, the world's biggest
polluter, generates
around the world each Year.

$3.8bn Amount in the Superfund trust fund for toxic site clean-ups in
1995, the Year
"polluter pays" fees expired.

$0m Amount of uncommitted dollars in the Superfund trust fund for toxic
site clean-ups
in 2003.

270 Estimated number of court decisions citing federal Negligence in
endangered-species protection that remained unheeded during the first
year of the Bush
administration.

100 Percentage of those decisions that Bush then decided to allow the
government to
ignore indefinitely.

68.4 Average Number of species added to the Endangered and Threatened
Species
list each year between 1991 and 2000.

0 Number of endangered species voluntarily added by the Bush
administration since
taking office.

50 Percentage of screened workers at Ground Zero who now suffer from
long-term
health problems, almost half of whom don't have health insurance.

78 Percentage of workers at Ground Zero who now suffer from lung
ailments.

88 Percentage of workers at Ground Zero who Now suffer from ear, nose,
or throat
problems.

22 Asbestos levels at Ground Zero were 22 times higher than the levels
in Libby,
Montana, where the W R Grace mine produced one of the worst Superfund
disasters
in US history.

Image booster for the US

2,500 Number of public-diplomacy officers employed by the State
Department to
further the image of the US abroad in 1991.

1,200 Number of public-diplomacy officers employed by the State
Department to
further US image abroad in 2004.

4 Rank of the United States among countries considered to be the
greatest threats to
world peace according to a 2003 Pew Global Attitudes study (Israel,
Iran, and North
Korea were considered more dangerous; Iraq was considered less
dangerous).

$66bn Amount the United States spent on international aid and diplomacy
in 1949.

$23.8bn Amount the United States spent on international aid and
diplomacy in 2002.

85 Percentage of Indonesians who had an unfavourable image of the United
States in
2003.

Second-party endorsements

90 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his
job as
president on 26 September 2001.

67 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his
job as
president on 26 September 2002.

54 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his
job as
president on 30 September, 2003.

50 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his
job as
president on 15 October 2003.

49 Percentage of Americans who approved of the way Bush was handling his
job as
president in May 2004.

More like the French than he would care to admit

28 Number of vacation days Bush took in August 2003, the second-longest
vacation
of any president in US history. (Record holder Richard Nixon.)

13 Number of vacation days the average American receives each Year.

28 Number of vacation days Bush took in August 2001, the month he
received a 6
August Presidential Daily Briefing headed "Osama bin Laden Determined to
Strike US
Targets."

500 Number of days Bush has spent all or part of his time away from the
White House
at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, his parents' retreat in Kennebunkport,
Maine, or
Camp David as of 1 April 2004.

No fool when it comes to the press

11 Number of press conferences during his first three Years in office in
which Bush
referred to questions as being "trick" ones.

Factors in his favour

3 Number of companies that control the US voting technology market.

52 Percentage of votes cast during the 2002 midterm elections that were
recorded by
Election Systems & Software, the largest voting-technology firm, a big
Republican
donor.

29 Percentage of votes that will be cast via computer voting machines
that don't
produce a paper record.

17On 17 November 2001, The Economist printed a correction for having
said
George Bush was properly elected in 2000.

$113m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, the most in
American
electoral history.

$185m Amount raised by the Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign, to the
end of
March 2004.

$200m Amount that the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign expects to raise by
November
2004.

268 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who had earned Pioneer status (by
raising
$100,000 each) as of March 2004.

187 Number of Bush-Cheney fund-raisers who had earned Ranger status (by
raising
$200,000 each) as of March 2004.

$64.2mThe Amount Pioneers and Rangers had raised for Bush-Cheney as of
March
2004.

85 Percentage of Americans who can't Name the Chief Justice of the
United States.

69 Percentage of Americans who believed the White House's claims in
September
2003 that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 11 September
attacks.

34 Percentage of Americans who believed in June 2003 that Saddam's
"weapons of
mass destruction" had been found.

22 Percentage of Americans who believed in May 2003 that Saddam had used
his
WMDs on US forces.

85 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find Afghanistan,
Iraq, or Israel
on a map.

30 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find the Pacific Ocean
on a map.

75 Percentage of American young adults who don't know the population of
the United
States.

53 Percentage of Canadian young adults who don't know the population of
the United
States.

11 Percentage of American young adults who cannot find the United States
on a map.

30 Percentage of Americans who believe that "politics and government are
too
complicated to understand."

Another factor in his favour

70m Estimated number of Americans who describe themselves as
Evangelicals who
accept Jesus Christ as their personal saviour and who interpret the
Bible as the direct
word of God.

23m Number of Evangelicals who voted for Bush in 2000.

50m Number of voters in total who voted for Bush in 2000.

46 Percentage of voters who describe themselves as born-again
Christians.

5 Number of states that do not use the word "evolution" in public school
science
courses.

This is an edited extract from "What We've Lost", by Graydon Carter,
published
by Little Brown on 9 September

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For a former college drop-out from Ontario and, briefly, a lineman
stringing up
telegraph wires on the railways of Canada, Graydon Carter, 55, has risen
to impressive
heights. The editor of Vanity Fair since 1992 after succeeding Tina
Brown he is
one of America's celebrity editors with clout, glamour and a nice line
in suits.

It is hard to imagine Carter doing physical work of any kind, beyond
exercising his
thumb on his silver Zippo lighter. His labour is restricted to rejigging
headlines in his
magazine he is a self-confessed failure at delegation of duties and
swanning to
Manhattan parties. Martini in hand, he cuts an almost princely and
dandyish figure, with
billowing shirts and similarly billowing silver hair.

The spotlight on his activities has never burned brighter. In recent
months he has
transformed the regular editor's letter at the front of the magazine
into less of a chat
about its coming contents the spreads of Annie Leibowitz and rants of
Christopher
Hitchens and more a full-bore diatribe against the world of George
Bush.