McCain has been on the Daily Show more than any other guest. This may be the toughest interview he’s gotten on any show.

There’s approximately one minute of wackiness and sort of unbecoming chumminess, then Stewart goes after him hard on Iraq, Reid (Stewart may be the only “news” anchor to accurately characterize the majority leader’s remark), and gets a huge round of applause for this bit:

STEWART: How do you quell a civil war when it’s not even your country?

::APPLAUSE::

MCCAIN: Well, I know what side they’re on.

STEWART: They’re on America’s side.

::EVEN HUGER APPLAUSE::

I’m in New Hampshire for McCain’s “relaunch” tour, we’ll see if the flop sweat has evaporated.

UPDATE: The whole interview really is worth watching, if only to see McCain’s genuine frustration in not being able to get Stewart to give an inch — even though McCain gives several. It’s the kind of debate that McCain could benefit from if there were more of them, perhaps because there are moments when it looks like he might change his own mind. That he never will is the real problem.

Rahm Emanuel’s office has put out excerpts of the speech that he plans to give at Brookings this morning, one that is being touted as the first shot in the Democrats’ effort to put the various Bush Administration scandals into broader–and darker–context. These are themes you are likely to be hearing a lot:

…I’ve also always recognized that there is a balance; that we should never allow the basic functions and solemn responsibilities of government to be subjugated to or take a backseat to politics or party interests.

President Bush came to the White House with an entirely different understanding.

Not since the days of Watergate, when our judicial system and intelligence community were deployed by the White House in the service of partisan politics, have we seen such abuses. And in many ways, what we have seen from this administration is far more extensive than that scandal.

Partisan politics has infiltrated every level of our federal government – from scientific reports on global warming to emergency management services to the prosecutorial power of the federal government itself. Even the Iraq War – from our entry to the reconstruction – has been thoroughly politicized and manipulated.

The Bush Administration has redefined the famous challenge of President Kennedy’s inaugural address. Instead of “Ask not what your country can do for you,” it has become “Ask what your government can do for our party.”

Recently, even those who had become somewhat inured to the intense partisanship of this Administration were shocked by the political manipulation of our U.S. Attorneys. And we have just begun to feel the impact of this scandal. Just as Hurricane Katrina exposed the issue of incompetence, the U.S. Attorney scandal has placed a spotlight on the Administration’s pattern of always placing the Republican Party’s interests before the public interest.

Now, the U.S. Attorney scandal will be to public corruption what Hurricane Katrina was to incompetence in the Bush Administration.

And the scandal has created a new context for viewing and evaluating scandals in the Bush Administration. Americans have learned just how the Bush Administration works and are discovering that under President Bush, no function of the federal government is free from the influence of politics.

And this is no accident. It’s all by design. The incidents I will list today are not a laundry list of one offs or isolated cases of corruption. There is a common denominator. Instead of promoting solutions to our nation’s broad challenges, the Bush Administration used all the levers of power to promote their party and its narrow interests.

Principals and supporters of the Bush Administration have taken to attributing its myriad failures to mere incompetence.

In his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales denied politics was involved in his firing of eight U.S. Attorneys. Instead, he suggested that the dismissals were just “poorly handled” or a PR failure. The Attorney General could offer no coherent explanation for the fiasco, because to do so would unveil the guiding principle at the core of this White House — insinuating partisan politics into every aspect of government and bringing politics into what used to be a political-free zone – the Justice Department.

Even today, after three months of interviews and investigations and public discussion we still do not know who drafted the list of U.S. attorneys to be fired. We have been left with only three logical explanations for their dismissal:

1) the names of 93 U.S. Attorneys were thrown in a hat and eight were selected at random; or

2) the eight U.S. Attorneys were incompetent, a notion that has been dismissed by the Justice Department’s own rankings; or

3) a White House fearful of public corruption cases further weakening their hold on power concluded that attorneys leading public corruption cases were not “loyal Bushies” and had to go.

They had a plan. They carried it out. And now America is paying the price.

Let’s begin with the biggest issue facing our nation: the war in Iraq. We now know that when the CIA and other intelligence agencies failed to find evidence to justify the President’s rationale for war, the Administration browbeat the CIA to tailor its intelligence. Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld even set up their own intelligence arm to provide the desired evidence.

And when former-ambassador Joseph Wilson cast doubt on the Administration’s contention that Saddam was trying to obtain uranium in Niger for a nuclear weapon, Cheney’s chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, embarked on a smear campaign by leaking the identity of Wilson’s wife, an undercover CIA officer.

Once the Iraq War was launched, we all knew how important the reconstruction would be to securing the peace. But politics extended to that country’s reconstruction and the examples are truly shocking:

The person chosen to oversee Iraq’s health care system was the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan. The man he replaced was a physician with a master’s degree in public health and post-graduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and UC-Berkeley and taught at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health where he specialized in disaster response.

A 24 year-old with a background in commercial real estate was hired by the Authority to reopen and manage the Iraqi stock exchange.

The daughter of a prominent neoconservative was tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion annual budget.

Nothing was free from political influence.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I usually avoid press comment when I’m up here, but I felt so strongly about what Senator Reid said in the last couple of days, that I thought it was appropriate that I come out today and make a statement that I think needs to be made.
Translation: I wanted to go onRush Limbaugh, but he was busy.

I thought his speech yesterday was unfortunate, that his comments were uninformed and misleading. Senator Reid has taken many positions on Iraq. He has threatened that if the President vetoes the current pending supplemental legislation, that he will send up Senator Russ Feingold’s bill to de-fund Iraq operations altogether.

Translation:: I, on the other hand, have taken only one position of Iraq, despite any changes in the situation on the ground: I have never missed an opportunity to mislead the American people.

Yet only last November, Senator Reid said there would be no cutoff of funds for the military in Iraq. So in less than six months’ time, Senator Reid has gone from pledging full funding for the military, then full funding but with conditions, and then a cutoff of funding — three positions in five months on the most important foreign policy question facing the nation and our troops.

Translation: The President and I have been entirely, consistently wrong. Anyway, we’re winning, so what’s the fuss?

Yesterday, Senator Reid said the troop surge was against the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. That is plainly false. The Iraq Study Group report was explicitly favorable toward a troop surge to secure Baghdad. Senator Reid said there should be a regional conference on Iraq. Apparently, he doesn’t know that there is going to be one next week. Senator Reid said he doesn’t have real substantive meetings with the President. Yet immediately following last week’s meeting at the White House, he said, “It was a good exchange; everyone voiced their considered opinion about the war in Iraq.”

Translation: Picky, picky. The Iraq Study Group was not opposed to a temporary surge, in order to ease the way for American withdrawal by, uh-oh, darn it, March 2008…which, [expletive deleted] idiots, is exactly what the [expletive] Democrats are proposing. The Iraq Study Group was also in favor of direction negotiations with Iraq and Syria, which we have, uh, ignored. Which is why there are real fears that next week’s Cairo conference will be a bust. If only those damn Arabs would listen to reason.

What’s most troubling about Senator Reid’s comments yesterday is his defeatism. Indeed, last week, he said the war is already lost. And the timetable legislation that he is now pursuing would guarantee defeat.

Translation: Damn that Bob Gates for saying the Congressional debate was valuable. Why the hell can’t we get a loyal SecDef. Where the hell is Rummy?

Maybe it’s a political calculation. Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics. Senator Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq will bring his party more seats in the next election. It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage. Leaders should make decisions based on the security interests of our country, not on the interests of their political party.

Translation: We have never played politics with Iraq. We didn’t schedule the initial authorization vote for just before the 2002 elections. We didn’t cook the intel. We had nothing to do with the Mission Accomplished banner. The Navy told Bush to put on the flight suit. We didn’t ignore the insurgency and spend vast resources on the Iraq Survey Group to look for non-existent WMD. Karl Rove never told Republicans they could use the war for their benefit. We never questioned the patriotism of people who opposed the war. I’m not questioning Harry Reid’s patriotism now. And if you can’t get that through your thick heads, you stupid, stupid Americans…you stupid Americans impatient with our master plan for VICTORY in the middle east…you…you… well then, as I once explained to Pat Leahy [expletive deleted].

For the first time ever, Toyota tops GM worldwide sales for the quarter. John Edwards is the first to jump on the issue, but I suspect we will be hearing more about it from the other candidates.

P.S.: Mr. Swamp, who just last year traded in our (still running) 1988 Camry for a new one, won’t be surprised.

UPDATE: To Ama and Atothek and other commenters who may be wondering why Edwards is talking about South Korea in a statement about a Japanese automaker, perhaps this will make things a bit clearer.

To Disappointed Again, please see Ana’s post below this one.

ANOTHER UPDATE WEDNESDAY MORNING: Cousin Justin’s take over at the Curious Capitalist.

A quick tour of the news channels shows CNN reporting on the supplemental, MSNBC on Cho’s escort service dealings and Fox looking at border regulation. No one is currently reporting on the hearing regarding Pat Tillman’s “friendly fire” death in Afghanistan (remember that war?). If journalism is the first draft of history, Congressional hearings are the ugly marked-up graded copies. There’s been testimony from Tillman’s family and from Jessica Lynch, who put it rather eloquently:

“I had the good fortune and the opportunity to come home and tell the truth. Many soldiers like Pat Tillman did not have that opportunity. The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype.”

You can watch the grim proceedings here.

TANGENTIALLY RELATED: Wonkette scores a fascinating and hilarious commentish interview-thingee with the Marine who kept score at Gonzales’s hearing last week. His endearing autobiographical sketch is available here, at Iraq Veterans Against the War. He is apparently still looking for “plus one” to the Make Hip-Hop Not War concert in Baltimore tonight, btw.

Tom Hamburger of the LA Times reports a new and potentially significant investigation by a normally obscure federal office, one that is looking at whether the nexus of the various scandals of the day might be at the White House. Hamburger writes:

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.

“We will take the evidence where it leads us,” Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. “We will not leave any stone unturned.”

UPDATE: As “Chinatown“-inspired commenter Jake Gittes notes, Scott Bloch is not without controversy himself. Among other things, the Log Cabin Republicans called for his resignation two years ago because of his position that federal law does not protect government employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

UPDATE2: CREW weighs in on Bloch.

This was a very good speech for several reasons:

1. It transcended the usual Bush-bashing–though there was plenty of that–and was a reminder that foreign policy is about more than Iraq and the region.

2. It was courageous, calling for more money for foreign aid, which is quite unpopular in the country and easily exploitable by Republicans.

3. It was beautifully written, simple and eloquent. I especially liked this part, not because it was startling in any way, but because of the elegance of the language and the essential truth of the sentiment:

The disappointment that so many around the world feel toward America right now is only a testament to the high expectations they hold for us. We must meet those expectations again, not because being respected is an end in itself, but because the security of America and the wider world demands it. This will require a new spirit – not of bluster and bombast, but of quiet confidence and sober intelligence, a spirit of care and renewed competence.

Updates: Ezra may have not read the entire speech yet, but he’s absolutely right about this.

Swampland reader Florida accurately points out that Fareed Zakaria has an excellent column on the Chinese attitude about foreign aid and how it differs from the Bush Administration’s.

Finally, I’ve been traveling with John Edwards the past few days–I’ll have more about that in my column this week (policy not haircuts, by the way)–and he makes much the same point as Obama about the importance of staying involved in the world and increasing foreign aid. Good for them both.

Who could this eyewitness to the David/Crow/Rove smackdown possibly be?

In the eyewitness’ version, again, David and Crow are a bit more aggressive than their own story suggests. The eyewitness says David told Rove, You need to bring in new people to tell you the truth. Rove mentioned Dr. John Marburger, the White House science advisor. At that point, according to the eyewitness, Crow began poking Rove’s chest with her finger, demanding to know what corporations were underwriting Marburger’s work. Rove said Marburger had been in academia most of his career.

I’m told that people just a few feet away couldn’t hear what the participants were saying, but maybe there was a really good lip-reader around…

Thanks a ton for all the questions you posed here. It will take awhile to work through them; I decided to start with some housekeeping-related queries first. A nice batch was submitted by paul_lukasiak:

1) You have the title of “editor of Time.com” Do you actually perform any editorial functions — do you, for instance, offer your peers “blogging tips” either before they publish a post, or after they’ve done so? If not, would you PLEASE start?

I have offered many “blogging tips” to my colleagues in the Swampland, which were probably worth every bit of the nothing that they paid for them. But beyond gentle encouragement to ignore the noise and concentrate on the signal, my editorial duties are more amorphous than most.

2) You have a great set of commenters here. Any chance of using them as “guest bloggers” say one a week? The biggest problem with Swampland is that everything seems filtered through Beltway conventional wisdom — some variety would be helpful.

I’ve been campaigning for a regular guest blogging slot for some time, the idea that we might tap a commenter every so often intrigues a few of us and I suspect we’ll figure out a way to try it. Thoughts on how to choose the guinea pig temporary interlocutor would be welcome.

3) I’d also like to suggest that you bring Justin over here from “Curious Capitalist” (politics and economics are intertwined…or to use the cliche “its the economy, stupid.) His stuff is good…and he seems to understand the relationship between blogger and commenters. And I also think Swampland needs a “political media” blogger — given the way the media effectively sets the political agenda and defines the ‘acceptable’ limits of debate on every issue, no serious group blog on politics can (IMHO) afford to not have someone watching the media

See above re: guest bloggers. I think getting cross-site debate with Justin and possibly Poniewozik (from “Tuned In”) on media would be a great way to liven up all of our conversations.

4) Instead of/in addition to this little video gimmick (and lets face it, its a gimmick, or are Karen and Jay using it to get “ready for their closeup”, a vlogging is their audition reel) why not have each of you set aside an hour each week to respond to the audience in the blog — basically, we don’t want YOU picking the questions (or at least acting like you aren’t ignoring the questions that large chunks of your audience want answers to.)

This is the kind of thing that sounds like we’d be able to do easily but, remember, some folks still actually report/leave the building/raise families/sleep. Swampland is a side project for 3/4th of the people who do it — they’re not paid any more than before, they’re not given any time off from their regular duties. Believe it or not, they were hired to be journalists. So quaint! Sure, everyone values the dialog here but creating a specific burden for contributors might not be the best use of the little time they have spend in the Swamp.

That said, we do read the comments. Really. And even if they’re not responded to, they’re thought about. Maybe a little too much.

(Several people asked about having a “live chat” rather than a vlog Q&A. I’m all for that, too, and have talked to our tech people about what the prospects are for doing it.)

I’ll try to get to a few more questions tomorrow, feel free to use this thread to ask more questions.

UPDATE: Oh, right: HTML support and troll rating, both of which a lot of people asked about. Asked and not yet answered by the tech folks. I think images will not be in the offing, but stuff like links and ital and blocks quotes, yes. Troll rating, on the other hand — let me ask the hive mind: What system could be implemented? I’m familiar with Scoop but don’t know of simpler systems that could be compatible with Time’s site. Are there MSM blogs out there that handle this well? Which ones?