Month: December 2009

Huh? "We cannot allow the pen to be mightier than the sword"

lonegan.tiff

First time today that I'd ever heard of Steve Lonegan (left). (Thanks for that, by the way, to Jon Stewart's The Daily Show) Lonegan is the senior policy director for the U.S. conservative group Americans for Prosperity. Lonegan was once mayor of Bogota, New Jersey, and unsuccesfully tried to win the Republication nomination to run for governor of New Jersey. On Tuesday in Washington, he spoke at the “High Noon for Health Care” rally of conservatives who oppose the health care legislation now before the U.S. Senate.

One thing that struck me — even as a Canadian — was how homogenous the crowd was. It was all middle-aged white people, and this in a part of the U.S. that has, well, a whole lot of people who are not white. One of the posters held up by those at the rally had the slogan “Keep your hands off my health care” and someone had drawn a hand to accompany that slogan — and coloured it black.

That disturbed me a bit but not nearly as much as what Lonegan said to the rally:

“Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are out of touch with the American people. But they don't understand or choose not to understand that we are endowed with our creator with these rights and they're not going to take them away. Because we're going to kill the bill. Kill the bill. Kill the bill. My fellow Americans, we cannot allow the pen to be mightier than the sword. We've heard that over and over again.”

No, really, that's what he said. “We cannot allow the pen to be mightier than the sword.”

Watch it for yourself. Lonegan comes on at about 9:30 into this clip and makes his rather odd comment at 10:45 into the speech.

Update: This Week in Pork Barrel Politics

That's a deliberately, er, colourful headline to this post because, on Wednesday, at least, we saw the government commit to spend $26.6 million but only a fraction of that — $2.9 million — will be spent in a way that is specifically targetted at Conservative ridings.

This follows two days of announcements — chronicled here — where Conservative-held ridings overwhelmingly were the beneficiaries (and those held by one Maxime Bernier were particularly lucky!) of government investment.

Wednesday, this week, was a big week for FedNor – the Northern Ontario Federal Economic Development Agency — that is part of Industry Canada (Tony Clement, prop.). FedNor rolled out a pile of press releases yesterday with more than $9 million in new federal investment spread out among its major regions. Thunder Bay, the largest city in the north, got the lion's share of that money and, notably, the two Thunder Bay ridings are held by the NDP. The extremely cynical will note that it serves the Conservatives to help boost an NDP MP's profile with funding in a riding that is likely to send back either an NDP or a Liberal but highly unlikely to ever elect a Conservative. Olivia Chow in the downtown Toronto of Trinity-Spadina is often held up as a good example of the kind of riding where the Conservatives are happy to throw Chow some bones from time to time because they know the alternative for voters there is not a Conservative candidate but a Liberal one. Almost the same deal in Thunder Bay where voters, until 2008, had been pretty much electing Liberals for the last decade or two.

In any event, here's the summary scorecard for Wednesday, Dec. 16. What I'm counting is the number of press releases issued by any government department and then adding up how much federal funding is being committed in each press release. I then make a determination as to where that federal funding will be spent and put it in a political party's column. In some cases, the spending of the money will directly benefit voters in multiple ridings. Yesterday, for example, Conservative MP Rick Dystra announced $1.5 million will go to the Grape Growers of Ontario, funding that will benefit grape growers in several different regions of the province and, hence, several different ridings. For those projects, I assign an 'M' for multiple ridings and tabulate those results as well. Here's the results:


12/16/09 BQ Announcements 1
Sum of Funding_Total 1,493,152
CPC Announcements 9
Sum of Funding_Total 2,943,624
LPC Announcements 2
Sum of Funding_Total 12,873,167
M Announcements 2
Sum of Funding_Total 1,771,000
NDP Announcements 6
Sum of Funding_Total 7,509,323
Total Number of Press Releases 20
Total Federal Funding Commitment $26,590,266

More anecdotal evidence of Conservative pork barrelling

Monday was the first day of Christmas break for members of Parliament. Most were back in their ridings and, as usual when they're on a break week, it's tie for the federal government to start rolling out funding announcements so that local MPs can take credit for the spending. (The local MPs are always government MPs, no matter who is in power).

Here's the scorecard so far this week:

  • On Monday, Dec. 14, I found 22 announcements in which one government department or another committed to spending $18.8 million. Of those, 18 announcements involves spending that will occur almost exclusively in a Conservative MP's riding. Those 18 announcements totalled $12.9 million.
  • On Tuesday, Dec. 15, I found 6 announcements worth a total of $2.82 million. Of those, 5 are to be spent in Conservative ridings for a total of $$2.7 million.

Here's the announcements from Dec 14 (See note on table layout at the bottom) :


Lebel CEDQR Lebel New hotel construction Havre-Saint-Pierre QC $1,100,000 QC BQ Asselin
Lebel CEDQR Bernier Grant to Mecanium Inc. for guidance services to business Saint-Georges QC $97,200 QC CPC Bernier
Lebel CEDQR Bernier New wastewater treatment Beauceville QC $623,420 QC CPC Bernier
Lebel CEDQR Bernier Wastewater treatment system Saint-Jules QC $931,500 QC CPC Bernier
Lebel CEDQR Bernier RINC: Arena upgrade Beauceville QC $468,667 QC CPC Bernier
Lebel CEDQR Bernier RINC: Water play area Vallee Jonction QC $43,823 QC CPC Bernier
Lebel CEDQR Cannon Loan to Auberge du Draveur to modernize Maniwaki QC $212,500 QC CPC Cannon
Yelich WD Day Okanagan School of the Arts training program Oliver BC $400,000 BC CPC Day
Moore PCH Devolin Lindsey Concert Foundation to fund concert series Lindsay ON $22,000 ON CPC Devolin
Lebel CEDQR Gourde Loan to Fromagerie Bergeron to buy new equipment Saint-Antoine-de-Tilly QC $500,000 QC CPC Gourde
Lebel CEDQR Gourde RINC: Improvements to municipal park and rec centre Saint-Gilles QC $184,808 QC CPC Gourde
Lebel CEDQR Gourde New multifunctional centre Saint-Sylvestre QC $706,306 QC CPC Gourde
Aglukkaq HC Kerr Training/recruiting francophone health care students Ottawa ON $1,965,566 NS CPC Kerr
Finley HRSDC Shory Homelessness Partnering Strategy Calgary AB $240,000 AB CPC Shory
Finley HRSDC Warkentin For 2010 NW Alberta Regional Skills Canada Competition Peace River AB $25,370 AB CPC Warkentin
Yelich WD Warkentin Replacing public works facility High Level AB $2,543,040 AB CPC Warkentin
Yelich WD Jean Dwarf Mistletoe Remediation Project Boyle AB $3,500,000 AB CPC Jean
Yelich WD Jean RINC: Renovations to local arean Boyle AB $347,000 AB CPC Jean
Moore PCH Kent Captus Press grant Concord ON $96,949 ON CPC Kent
Ashfield ACOA MacKay RINC: upgrades to sport courts, Wanderers Grounds Field House Halifax NS $710,000 NS M M
Ritz AAFC Shipley Pulse Canada to develop herbicide Centralia ON $772,000 NATIONAL M M
Yelich WD Day Osoyoos Indian Band & CSQ Environmental Tecnologies Oliver BC $3,285,750 BC NDP Atamanenko

And here's the set from Dec. 15:


Lebel CEDQR Paradis Pomerleau Park multifunction centre Ascot Corner QC $112,894 QC BQ Bonsant
Moore PCH Allen_Mi Carleton-Victoria Arts Council Perth-Andover NB $8,000 NB CPC Allen_Mi
Clement FEDNOR Clement Community economic development Huntsville ON $152,000 ON CPC Clement
Lebel CEDQR Genereux Grelots, Bâtons et Cie du Fou du cochon to buy equipment La Pocatiere QC $94,000 QC CPC Genereux
Lebel CEDQR Gourde Upgrading water supply Lotbiniere QC $1,645,572 QC CPC Gourde
Prentice EC Oda Leaskdale Manse National Historic Site Uxbridge ON $803,332 ON CPC Oda

I'd be most pleased to be advised of any funding announcements that I missed.
Table Layout:Column 1: The name of the minister that is signing off on the funding.Column 2: The departmental code responsible for the funding.Column 3: The name of the MP making the announcement. Sometimes the minister responsible is also the announcing MP.4: A brief description of the funding initiative5: The municipal “placeline” on the funding press release.6: The provincial “placeline” on the funding press release.7: The total amount of federal funds committed.8. The region or province of the country that will benefit from the funding. NATIONAL means the funding will benefit Canadians in more than three provinces.9. If the funding is going to spent almost entirely in one riding, then this code identifies the party that holds the riding. BQ, NDP, LPC, or CPC. An M denotes that the funding will benefit Multiple ridings.10. The name of the MP whose riding is benefitting from the funding. M here means that multiple MPs are benefitting.

Senate appointments and proroguing: Some background

Yesterday, I filed about the possibility that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will appoint senators, prorogue Parliament, table a throne speech, table a budget and then watch the Olympics — roughly in that order. That story included this bit:

By parliamentary tradition, prime ministers generally do not name senators or make other significant appointments while Parliament is prorogued (although Harper did just that last winter in the midst of the coalition crisis.)

Well, if Harper did it last year, he wasn't the only one to ignore this tradition, I am informed by officials with his office:

While Parliament was prorogued between Nov. 12, 2003, and Feb. 2, 2004:

• Prime Minister Paul Martin and his entire Cabinet was sworn in

• A new Clerk of the Privy Council was appointed

• Jim Munson was called to the Senate (Dec 10)

• 49 returning officers were appointed

• 8 ambassadors were appointed, including Allan Rock (UN)

• Jennifer Stoddart was named Privacy Commissioner

• Sheridan Scott was appointed Commissioner of Competition

Harper's holiday to-do list? Appoint senators, prorogue Parliament, throne speech, budget, Olympics

If there's one thing we've learned watching Prime Minister Stephen Harper over the last (almost) four years, it's that he refuses to lose control of the political agenda. Keeping that in mind, some of his advisors are pushing for the following:

1. When Liberal Senator Jerry Grafstein retires on Jan. 2 — the date of his 75th birthday — there will be five senate vacancies. Advisors say: Appoint 5 Conservatives. Result: Conservatives have a plurality – but not a majority – of Senate votes for the first time in a decade at least of 51-49 over the Liberals. Note: He may announce those Senate appointments as early as Friday.

2. Prorogue Parliament. Likely in mid- to late-January but could be anytime during the holiday break. Proroguing "resets" Parliament. And, according to Parliamentary procedure, committees in the Senate — where the Liberals now have majority control — and the House are disbanded. When they reconstitute, Conservatives will have the majority in the Senate. Despite Senate standings, Liberals will keep their majority on Senate committees — and the power to gum things up for the Tories — until a general election or, you guessed it, a prorogation. Note: Harper could prorogue anytime — but the key politically for him will be to tell Canadians that, though he's proroguing or suspending Parliament, he's calling MPs back, as scheduled, in late January.

3. Call Parliament back for Jan. 25 as planned and deliver a Speech to the Throne. For the Prime Minister, it's a historic throne speech. For the first time in a decade or so, the Liberals do not hold the hammer in the Senate. Harper will highlight this important inflection point in his Throne Speech for this Parliament's Third Session to talk about non-monetary things he'd like to do like reform the senate. Eight-year term limits could be just around the corner.

4. After tabling the Throne Speech, table a budget, likely in early February. Budget 2010 will be anti-climactic because all of the things the governmetn will do in Budget 2010 were announced in Budget 2009. There will be no surprises here. It's  stay-the-course, recovery-is-fragile affair intended to show voters that gamesmanship is over for the Tories and prudent, competent management is in. We'll figure out how to slay the deficit in Budget 2011 or later.

5. Everyone go watch the Olympics. The Games begin Feb. 12 in Vancouver and run through Feb. 28. Harper will expect politicians, like most Canadians, to work while the Games are on and he will not prorogue or suspend Parliament while the Games are on. And here's a note from Harper to opposition politicians: If you want to go nuts on Afghan detainees, knock yourselves out — the Olympics will dominate newspaper, television, and radio coverage so you'll be yelling into a vacuum. The detainee issue, Conservatives believe, is absent from the MSM now and with the Olympics dominating coverage even with the House returning, it won't make a front page anywhere at least until March – if at all [UPDATE: Good chance Afghan detainee issue makes top spot in a lot of papers and newscasts tomorrow/tonight with this story.] And if it does, Harper can say he and his government did not avoid or run for Parliament on the issue.

That's about what I wrote about today:

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper is being pushed by some of his own advisers to prorogue Parliament next month as the most effective way to win control over the Senate and, ultimately, push ahead with his government's agenda on climate change, justice, and Senate reform.

But the act of prorogation — the equivalent of hitting the reset button in Ottawa — would only be the first in a trio of moves as the Conservative government lays out a new policy agenda, one that is likely to be more ambitious because, for the first time since Brian Mulroney was prime minister, the Liberals will no longer have the majority of votes in the upper chamber.

MPs are not due to come back to Parliament until Jan. 25. One scenario under consideration by Harper's inner circle would be for the prime minister to prorogue Parliament a few days before that, have MPs return to Ottawa as planned on Jan. 25, and then quickly roll out a speech from the throne followed by the presentation of the 2010 federal budget — all before the Winter Olympics get underway in Vancouver on Feb. 12.

Still, if he does choose to prorogue, Harper would open up himself to some other potential political problems, primarily because prorogation has some similar effects to a general election: it would kill 40 pieces of government legislation — including the government's own tough new bills on consumer product safety and on harsher sentences for drug traffickers — and it would disband parliamentary committees.

Read the rest …

Tags: , , , ,

Pork barrel politics on Salt Spring Island?

This just in from the public affairs department at Simon Fraser University, part of their regular e-mail updates to reporters to let us know what members of the faculty are standing by to comment on whatever the issue of the day is. in today's update, SFU political scientist Patrick Smith agrees with charges made by operators of some airports in B.C.'s interior that the federal Conservatives appear to be playing a little pork barrel politics on Salts Spring Island, in the riding of Gary Lunn, the minister of state for sport. From the SFU newsletter:

Small and regional airports in B.C.’s Interior are charging the federal government with playing pork barrel politics in its imposition of a new air security rules during the Olympics. Ottawa is forcing regional airports to divert flights to better equipped, larger airports if they don’t meet beefed up security requirements. While regional airports are expected to pay for the upgrade themselves, a tiny airport on Salt Spring Island has had full security installed, courtesy of the federal government. SFU political scientist Patrick Smith agrees with charges that Ottawa is favoring a riding held by Gary Lunn, the minister of sport in the Conservative federal government. “Prime Minister Harper is acting a lot like his predecessor Jean Chretien. The Liberals were grand at taking care of business while doing the nation’s business. The Conservatives are showing the same old signs.”

, ,

The Oscar (and $750,000) for "Best NGO" goes to Ottawa-based group

In the world of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the annual Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship is, those in the know tell me, is about as big a deal as winning an Oscar is for those who work in Hollywood. The award is named for Jeff Skoll, the Canadian who ended up as one of the founders and top executives at eBay. I remember writing about Skoll when I was a tech reporter and, at one point, he was Canada's second-richest Canadian, behind only the late Ken Thomson. Skoll still has lots of money and has been keen to use his eBay wealth to do some good in the world.

The award is one way Skoll does this.

So (drum roll please), the Oscar for NGOs this year goes to:

Peace Dividend Trust of Ottawa! Congratulations. This group does its work in Afghanistan, Haiti and East Timor and tries to get international aid agencies to source whatever they need to do their work from local suppliers. That means giving local suppliers — who are often operating with pre-industrial or, at best, developing world management skills and technology — the means to plug into technology-driven supply chains of modern aid organizations.

The Skoll Foundation will give PDT $750,000 (U.S.) and provide the kind of advice and investor interest that a venture capitalist might show in a promising startup.

PDT's founder, by the way, is Scott Gilmore who was born in Flin Flon, Manitoba, grew up in Edmonton and is now based here in Ottawa. Way to go, Scott!

The press release:

Peace Dividend Trust (PDT) announced today it is the recipient of a three-year, USD $765,000 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (SASE). The award, which recognizes the most innovative and effective approaches to resolving critical social issues, was made in support of PDT’s mission to make peace and humanitarian operations more effective, efficient and equitable in countries like Afghanistan, Haiti, and East Timor. Founded by Canadian Scott Gilmore, Peace Dividend Trust is just the second Canadian organization to join the prestigious group of Skoll social entrepreneurs who are working around the world on issues such as tolerance and human rights, health, environmental sustainability, peace and security, institutional responsibility, and economic and social equity.

Peace Dividend Trust also received an unprecedented endorsement from the United States Government through a joint memo issued by US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and General Stanley McChrystal, directing all US government agencies in Afghanistan to use PDT’s services. PDT’s flagship project in Afghanistan is boosting GDP growth and job creation by channeling international aid and operational spending into the local economy through increased local procurement. Since 2006, PDT has redirected over $370m of new international spending into the Afghan economy, creating thousands of jobs on the ground.

“Peace Dividend Trust is honoured by the Skoll Award, which will provide a significant boost to our efforts to change the way aid is delivered on the ground to the people of Afghanistan and in other conflict zones,” said Scott Gilmore, Founder and Executive Director of PDT. “We are also extremely gratified by the US government’s decision to support PDT’s work to create jobs and build the Afghan economy”.

“Peace Dividend Trust, and its founder Scott Gilmore, are tremendous additions to the community of Skoll social entrepreneurs,” said Sally Osberg, President and CEO of the Skoll Foundation. “In developing a new, innovative model for peace and humanitarian operations, Scott and his team have demonstrated large-scale impact in a relatively short period of time. We’re thrilled that our support will enable Peace Dividend Trust to reinforce and grow its operations in war torn and post conflict regions around the world, ultimately resulting in a stronger peace and larger peace dividend for those affected communities.”

“The Skoll award will enable PDT to continue to expand our organization and increase our impact. It will allow PDT to hire peacekeepers and aid workers with new ideas for improving the lives of people effected by conflict around the world”, added Scott Gilmore.

Scott Gilmore will accept the award at a special ceremony on April 15, 2010, at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University. Scott will be participating in the three-day World Forum along with over 800 attendees from the social entrepreneurship community.

The cost (tono you and I) of saying goodbye in politics: Nearly $7 million

Cabinet shuffles get a lot of attention in the mainstream media and appropriately so: Those moves can tell a voter a lot about the direction of the federal government and the kinds of priorities the government is working on.

But here, inside the Parliament Hill bubble, journalists, lobbyists and political staffers also pay a great deal of attention to who's doing the political work in the Prime Minister's Office and in each minister's office. The choices made by these people — known as ministerial “exempt staff” can also help a sharp-eyed observer get a sense of what's going on in the government. They are called “exempt staff” because they are exempt from the regular hiring procedures of the civil service and are appointed at the minister's pleasure to do the political work that a minister must deal with.

Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt has, what seems to me, to be a pretty reasonably sized “exempt staff” with pretty common positions, such as Chief of Staff, Director of Communications, and Director of Parliamentary Affairs. You can check out her political staff roster here. But Raitt, to use one example among many in cabinet, has also seen a lot of staff turnover in her office. Most famously, Raitt had to let her former Director of Communications Jasmine MacDonnell go after that famous tape incident. But staff members leave ministers' offices all the time. Some times they want to leave; some times they don't.

Ottawa insiders, though, will tell you that more come and go partly because of the Conservatives' Federal Accountability Act, which prohibits these staffers from signing up as lobbyists for five years after their employment. For better or worse, that's cut down on the potential labour pool for staffers and its also meant that, by and large, staffers tend to be young and inexperienced. You might find an experienced lobbyist in town who might make an invaluable policy advisor to a given minister but even if that mid-career or late-career lobbyist was ready to take a big pay cut in the name of some political cause in order to join the minister's office, it is a very special kind of lobbyist who can afford to write off five years in the business once s/he leaves the minister's office.

So, with all the staff changes at the political level, Liberal MP John McCallum wondered what it's been costing taxpayers when exempt staff get fired/resigned, as MacDonnell and many others have, or negotiate a severance during the the last two years of the Conservative government and so he tabled an Order Paper question. It was returned (answered) on Dec. 7. Here's the Q-and-A:

Question No. 477–

Hon. John McCallum:

With respect to section 3.7 of the Treasury Board’s Policies and Guidelines for Ministers’ Offices, between October 19, 2007 and October 19, 2009 what is the total amount of funds dispersed from the Consolidated Revenue Fund to pay for: (a) severance pay for departing exempt staff of the combined Cabinet including the Prime Minister’s Office, all Ministers’ offices and all Ministers of States’ offices; and (b) separation pay for departing exempt staff of the combined Cabinet including the Prime Minister’s Office, all Ministers’ offices and all Ministers of States’ offices?

Hon. Vic Toews (President of the Treasury Board, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, between October 19, 2007 and October 19, 2009 the total amounts of funds dispersed from the consolidated revenue fund to pay for severance and separation pay for departing exempt staff of the combined cabinet including the Prime Minister’s Office, all ministers’ offices and all ministers of states’ offices were (a) $2,013,300, and (b) $4,907,032 respectively.

Afghan detainees and the release of sensitive documents

Catching up on my e-mail after returning to Ottawa from Seoul, South Korea and this odd press release has popped up. It's from the Department of Justice. The release appears to be prompted by a story in someone's newspaper, though it doesn't say what newspaper or what the story is about. I think is a pretty safe guess and assume that this is in relation to demands by opposition politicians to relea se documents associated with the treatment by Afghan authorities of suspected Taliban insurgents caught by Canadian soldiers:

National Security and Its Application to the Canada Evidence Act

OTTAWA, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Dec. 6, 2009) – A recent media story incorrectly described the application of national security concerns to documents released under the Canada Evidence Act.

The notion of impact on national security is defined according to the three-part test established by the Federal Court of Appeal in the case of Ribic v. Canada (Attorney General)(2003)185 C.C.C. (3d) 129 (F.C.A.).

Government agencies identify sensitive information by having their experts vet the relevant documents to identify national security concerns. Officials from the Department of Justice National Security Group then assess their submissions.

Officials apply the same test as would the Federal Court:

1. First, the officials must determine whether the information sought to be disclosed is relevant or not to the litigation. If not, it is not necessary to proceed any further.

2. Second, the officials must determine whether the disclosure of the information would be injurious to international relations, national defence or national security.

3. Third, if the officials conclude that the disclosure of the information would result in injury, they must determine whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs in importance the public interest in non-disclosure.

The Department of Justice must balance the claim of injury that may be caused by the release of the information against the public interest of disclosing the information.

,

Shaping the coverage: The story behind the stories on Obama's Afghanistan decision

When an editor orders up a 'tick-tock', they want a detailed chronology or diary of a particular news event. Tick-tocks are a lot of fun to read for folks who like what is often referred to as stories that are “Inside Baseball” or “Inside the Beltway” or, its Ottawa equivalent, “Inside the Queensway”. A good tick-tock, though its very mission is to provide as many details as possible about the evolution of a particular news event, can have a broader appeal when a reporter is able to build a dramatic narrative out of the whole thing.

And so it was with three tick-tocks that appeared over the last few days about how U.S. President Barack Obama came to the decision he did on Afghanistan.

Now, Politico goes to work to provide its own behind-the-scenes look at this kind of behind-the-scenes reporting:

The art of the 'tick-tock':
Behind the scenes of this morning's 'behind-the-scenes' stories about Obama's surge
by POLITICO's Mike Allen and Alexander Burns

A long reconstruction of President Barack Obama's Afghanistan 'surge' deliberations, splashed on the front page of Friday's Los Angeles Times, featured the sort of journalistic candy that is the rarest treat on the White House beat: a behind-the-scenes anecdote (from the Situation Room, no less) — with an actual quote from the president. 'To emphasize his desire to speed up the deployment, the president held up a printout copy of the bell curve [a graph projecting a troop buildup over time] and pointed to its apex, indicating the peak of the flow,' the article says, then quotes 'one official' as reporting that the president said: 'I want to move this to the left. … We need more troops in sooner.'

The front page of [Sunday's] New York Times features a much longer reconstruction of Obama's Afghanistan deliberations, with the same Veterans Day scene and (nearly) the same quote: ''I want this pushed to the left,' he told advisers, pointing to the bell curve. In other words, the troops should be in sooner, then out sooner.' The tidbit neatly serves both the press and the White House: The reporters appear to be getting a juicy scoop — the sort of take-you-there detail that might turn up in a Bob Woodward book years after the fact. And the president's aides are dishing an irresistible illustration of a take-charge president's proactive approach to his decision to commit 30,000 more troops to war. Today's Washington Post also has an Afghanistan tick-tock that posted on the web Saturday afternoon, five minutes after The New York Times' opus. L.A. editors rushed their piece into type after a sit-down White House briefing on Thursday, knowing that competitors were working on their own versions.

The White House gets a 'mission accomplished' grade for all three stories, each of which amplifies the West Wing's desired storyline: A smart, probing president cuts through the fog of competing visions to come up with his own unique version of a surge — the in-and-out version that he announced at West Point on Tuesday night. The implicit message of the material fed to the papers: This was not just a Potemkin debate over a foregone conclusion. Unlike President George W. Bush, we took a long, hard look at the options and alternatives. And unlike the armchair warriors in the Bush administration, we didn't let ideology drive strategy. This president knows the cost of war, and wasn't taking the troop commitment lightly.

'Inside the Situation Room: How a War Plan Evolved' is the two-column lead headline of The New York Times, with the article spread over two ad-free pages inside. The White House Press Office (sorry, no Deep Throat) coordinated a series of tick-tock briefings for individual reporters with top players late last week, explaining the similarity in themes and color among the pieces. Obama aides pushed — 'shopped,' as reporters cynically put it — to multiple reporters a description of a chastened president returning to his deliberations after a visit to Arlington National Cemetery. One reporter, who had resisted the description as too pat, was amused to find it as the lead of The New York Times account.

White House officials were most delighted by The New York Times story, both because it emphasized their desired themes and 'moments,' and because it was the most thorough. The Times story was written by Peter Baker, with feeds from 10 other well-sourced reporters in the paper's Washington Bureau. The Washington Post had three bylines (Anne E. Kornblut, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung and credited two other reporters and a researcher. The L.A. Times version is the most spare — 1,600 words, compared with 4,500 for The New York Times and 3,330 for The Post — and carried two bylines (Christi Parsons and Julian E. Barnes), with a credit for one other journalist. The Post story lacks visibility into the thinking of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an essential player in the deliberations. The New York Times, which Obama reads, got by far the most access. One official who gave tick-tock briefings said he took The Times the most seriously, and was pleased with the result. 'It's the one to stick in the time capsule,' the official said.

A former New York Times editor who helped pioneer the tick-tock recalled in an e-mail how the format became so popular with the paper's brass: 'We realized forcefully that on Sundays we could cream the newsweeklies' inevitable Monday cover stories, and we delighted in doing it. In general terms, the form developed as an antidote to the hyping of minor spot developments to look like big news, and thereby fill out the front page on mostly news-free Sundays.' White Houses quickly learned to exploit this hunger, and serve up details that bolster the message they're trying to send. In Bush's first term, both The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post became suspicious of his aides' string of accounts of how detail-oriented and take-charge Bush was behind the scenes, and pulled back from writing tick-tocks that relied too heavily on White House anecdotes that couldn't be verified.

None of the Obama accounts is hostile – all of them hew, more or less, to the line that Obama took his time to make a difficult decision that reflected his priorities and a rigorous internal debate. The Los Angeles Times story reflects that favorable narrative most exactly. The New York Times and Post are slightly more critical, for different reasons. Baker makes it implicitly clear just how divided the Team of Rivals was. But he closes by emphasizing consensus and the president's serenity in his decision. In the Post's narrative — which starts with an annoyed POTUS telling his advisers he feels less-than-usually 'sedate' about the need to speed up the war plan — Obama comes off as a more impatient leader, and his lack of enthusiasm for a no-holds-barred war plan receives greater attention. The Post and, to a lesser extent, The New York Times indicate that the administration had to navigate serious civilian-military tensions as Obama shaped his strategy. In Baker's narrative, the leaks of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's initial report on troops and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry's memo recommending against a surge represented the most explosive conflicts between uniformed and civilian staff. But in The Post's telling, there are hints of a more basic level of misunderstanding between an administration that didn't quite grasp how to talk to military leaders. Only the Los Angeles Times hints at the political considerations that were on the minds of some advisers. And none of the stories discerns what sort of internal disagreement about the war may persist.