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Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Vice vs. Vice

By Scott Shepard | Wednesday, August 16, 2006, 03:52 PM

The voters in Connecticut may have trouble keeping track of former Democratic vice presidential nominees Thursday.

John Edwards, who had the second spot on the Democratic ticket with John Kerry in 2004, will be in New Haven today to campaign for Democratic senatorial nominee Ned Lamont.

That means Edwards will be campaigning against the man who immediately preceded him as the Democratic vice presidential nomination - Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.

Lieberman, who was Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, lost his party’s nomination to Lamont in the Democratic primary earlier this month, but is now running as an independent for a fourth term in the Senate.

Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, voted just like Lieberman in 2002 in support of the war in Iraq. But Edwards was the first of those potential 2008 presidential candidates who voted for the war to express regret for having done so.

Lieberman, on the other hand, has remained steadfast in his support for the war, part of the reason he lost his party’s nomination to Lamont, the anti-war candidate.

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Snow makes face, funny noise

By Ken Herman | Wednesday, August 16, 2006, 01:01 PM

White House spokesman Tony Snow went with the non-verbal and the unspellable verbal in response to a couple of questions at today’s White House briefing.

The unspellable verbal came up in response to a question following up on Snow’s insistence that President Bush is not frustrated by developments in Iraq.

“And I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it because it’s true: The president is somebody’s who’s intensely practical about these things, and not somebody who sits around and goes” … and then Snow made a noise, with an accompanying face, that kind of sounded something a little like “ewwwww.”

Realizing he had made a weird noise, Snow said he would eagerly wait to see how it turned up in the official transcript to be issued by the White House.

Here’s how it came out in the first unofficial transcript, as produced by Congressional Quarterly, that made the rounds. CQ chickened out of taking a shot at the spelling:

“And I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it because it’s true: The president is somebody’s who’s intensely practical about these things, and not somebody who sits around and goes (POUTING SOUND).”

Federal News Service, another vendor of transcripts, also ducked the spelling issue:

“And I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it because it’s true, the president is somebody who’s intensely practical about these things, and not somebody who sits around and gets — (groans.)”

The official White House transcript took a stab at it:

“And I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it because it’s true: The president is somebody who’s intensely practical about these things, and not somebody who sits around and goes, ‘Nnnnyoo!’

Snow’s non-verbal response came in response to a question about The Rev. Jesse Jackson’s offer to head to the Middle East and straighten everything out. Snow could of shook his head dismissively in a gesture that more than anything else said “not so much.”

“Sometimes a picture says a thousand words,” he said.

A few minutes later, the question came up again and Snow opted to go verbal.

“The United States has duly appointed and delegated and congressionally confirmed diplomats,” he said. “They’re the proper people to handle the work.”

Snow Iraq Jesse Jackson author=Ken Herman

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