Evelyn Nieves ponders Dean's ropy veins--and Kurtz atones for his great errors

The Daily Howler on the odd Dean coverage from the Washington press:

Evelyn Nieves has a promising future. As Howard Kurtz explained last week, the inside Washington press elite has decided it just doesn’t like Howard Dean. So here’s how Nieves described the Vermonter in yesterday’s Post. This passage begins her profile of Dean, which ran on page one of the paper:

NIEVES: Howard Dean was angry. Ropy veins popped out of his neck, blood rushed to his cheeks, and his eyes, normally blue-gray, flashed black, all dilated pupils.

Just the guy you’d want for your president! Here at THE HOWLER, we were incomparably reminded of the way Roger Simon did Al Gore back in June 1999. On June 16, Gore had formally announced his run for the White House. So Simon got busy making him seem icky. Yes, this is how he began his report in the next week’s U.S. News:

SIMON: Al Gore stands in the sheltering shadow of a giant maple in the square of his boyhood hometown, two thirds of the way through one of the best speeches of his life. He’s belting it out, bringing it home, when he feels . . . a tickle.
Which turns into a trickle, a trickle of sweat, which he cannot avoid wiping away from his upper lip. This happens during nearly every speech, inside or outside, air-conditioned or not, and he just can’t help it, reaching out quickly with his left hand and executing a backhand swipe. It can happen four or five times in a 20-minute speech, but he has been trying so hard to avoid it during this speech, the speech in which he announces that he wants to be president of the United States. To no avail. Al Gore may have the heart and soul of a moderate Democrat, but his sweat glands are positively Nixonian.

Yes, that’s how Simon described a vice president announcing his run for the White House. But here’s the intriguing part: In an article in the Washington Post that same week, Howard Kurtz asked why Gore was getting such horrible press coverage. And Roger Simon came right out and told him! “We want to hear [Gore] say what a terrible reprobate the president was,” Simon said. “We’re going to make him jump through the hoops. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”

We’re going to make him jump through the hoops! Amazing, isn’t it? According to Simon, the press wanted Gore to trash Bill Clinton, and until he was willing to do what they said, they’d make him “jump through the hoops.” So Gore delivered his kick-off speech—and Simon reported how sweaty he was. And that’s why Nieves began yesterday’s profile with her description of Dean’s ropy veins. As Kurtz reported just last week, the press elite doesn’t like Howard Dean. Dean will “jump through the hoops,” too.

Howard Kurtz made a mistake last week. In the Washington Post and on CNN, he implied that Tim Russert may have overstepped in his interview with Howard Dean. In the July 1 Post, Kurtz said this: “Russert seemed offended when [Dean] could not name the number of people on active duty in the armed forces.” Trust us—“seemed offended” was implied criticism. Meanwhile, on the June 29 Reliable Sources, the scribe stepped out even further. First, he played tape of Russert scolding Dean. Then, he asked this ill-advised question:

KURTZ: Did it seem to you, Terry Neal, that that was getting a little prosecutorial, a little personal? Tim Russert hammered on that for quite a bit.
Neal wasn’t going to fall for that trick. “No, I think it was legitimate,” he said.

Readers, of course it was legitimate! Within the press corps, Russert is Pope—potentate, prime mover, poobah. His work is not subject to error. For that reason, the Post presents Kurtz in full grovel this morning, pandering hard to his paramour. As usual, Russert describes his own lack of error: “I’m never rude to people,” he says. On July 1, he made the same point: “I never personalize my interviews.”

No, Russert isn’t subject to error. But this morning, Howard Kurtz is. We emitted wry chuckles when we read this account of Russert’s work during Campaign 2000:

KURTZ: Russert also played a role in the 2000 campaign, pressing Bush about whether he had ever used drugs (the candidate wouldn’t answer) and whether he would meet with a gay Republican group (he said no).

That is pure propaganda. In fact, Russert’s interview with Candidate Bush played almost no role in the campaign. It was mentioned by almost no pundit—except for those who wondered why Russert had been such a poodle.

Final note: Infallible Russert was simply wrong in his lecture to Dean about Social Security.