Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The historical revisionism on the terror alert system (and probably the what happened in America generally during the Bush years) is underway. Melinda Henneberger, Roger Simon and Chris Matthews kicked it off on Thursday with the following dismissive, jocular treatment of the subject (all emphasis mine):

ROGER SIMON, “POLITICO”: It is stunning, in that it confirms what many of us believed at the time, that the one theme that Bush had for his re-election was vote for me or die. That was his message-

MATTHEWS: Yes.

SIMON: — the convention on. You know, John Kerry is not a bad man. He’s just a naive man. He can’t deal with the terrorists, you know. A vote for him and you’re going to wake up and you’ll be killed. The terrorists will invade. And it was carried out even to the extent of apparently seriously discussing raising the national threat level.

MATTHEWS: And they’re reaching for the joy buzzer every two seconds, it looks like, in this crowd. You know, something to zing you with. You know, nice to meet you, zing. We’re going up to code red tonight. Melinda, it’s amazing. He said-listen to this quote in here-I’ve underlined it, obviously. I always do that. “It seemed possible to me and others around the table” — this is in the situation room at the White House, going over what to do to save the country from Osama bin Laden-“that something could be afoot other than simple concern for the country’s safety.” And this showed that there was an intersection of politics in all this business. It’s right in the book. It’s coming out in two weeks. Melinda?

MELINDA HENNEBERGER, POLITICSDAILY.COM: This is what a lot of people, of course, said at the time was going on. So it confirm what a lot of us did think. But I don’t think he really covers himself with glory in saying this now. It is very much like Colin Powell, you know. If he felt like maybe he should have stepped down at the time, maybe that would have been the right decision. I don’t know how interested people are at this point in Tom Ridge’s dark night of the soul. And I don’t know that there’s political fallout because what he’s talking about happened five years ago, even though you certainly could argue, well, they were playing politics of fear then, and they’re doing it again now with health care. But I’m not sure those dots will be connected.

MATTHEWS: Isn’t this going to add to the American people’s general cynicism about politics, Roger? My own uncle, who is a plumber, uncle Joe no matter what happened that went bad, somebody left their wife or something, or somebody stole some money-he always said the same thing. It’s like everything else. It’s like everything else. It seemed to cover all the bases back then, Roger. And the people are going to hear this and say, Ridge says they were playing games with national security on that alert system, and somebody is probably going to say somewhere, it’s like everything else. These guys.

SIMON: If you can add to the level of cynicism about politics, this will add to it. I also have to say, as bad as this was, I think Tom Ridge was the only person in America who actually cared about the alert system. I mean, we never knew what to do when it was yellow. We never knew what to do when it was orange. Then you would turn on the radio and hear there was an amber alert. You would be confused even more.

MATTHEWS: There it is. We’re looking at it. Melinda, how did you change your weekend lifestyle when told it was going to be yellow instead of orange that weekend before the election? I mean, do you wear brown? What do do you? Do you wear less flashy colors that day?

HENNEBERGER: The plan was duck tape and bottled water, as I recall, wasn’t it? Remember the duck tape?

MATTHEWS: I love the duck tape. When they said, if it succeeded, you suffocated. I like that one. If you actually got a successful duck tape in your house, there would be no air coming in, and you would die.

HENNEBERGER: It’s like if the witch was guilty, she sank. Right.

MATTHEWS: I always liked that one.

No one in the mainstream said it was politicized at the time, and people were panic-stricken when the alert level was raised. It is infuriating to see this going on, and it seemed to pass without anyone calling bullshit on it.