Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) appeared on MPR's Midday's Meet the Candidate series. Listen here. Norm talked about Iraq, healthcare, his judgment, fiscal responsibility while constantly playing up how bi-partisan he is. In a fit of hubris he also advised his Senate opponents on how they should campaign. I listened so you don't have to and I'll interpret the Norm-speak^TM into standard English for you.

Here's a couple of Norm-speak^TM gems:

"I will run on my 30 years of service to Minnesota including being an agent of change ..."

"I try to be Minnesota's mayor in Washington."

"More people ask me about healthcare than about the war."

"During the Republican years in control of Congress, we kept the spending under the rate of inflation."

Aren't those be-oots? I'll start the analysis after the break.

The concept of Norm as an agent of change is laughable. He certainly is a 99% improvement in voting for President Bush's agenda compared to Paul Wellstone as he so famously quiped in the aftermath of Paul's death.

Maybe Norm was just riffing of his buddy Rudy "9/11" Giuliani who wants to be America's mayor with wanting to be Minnesota's Mayor. I think this is a brilliant ploy as Giuliani's campaign is doing so well.

Top advisers to former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani have voluntarily agreed to forgo their salaries or consultant fees, an indication that Giuliani's strategy of sitting out the early primaries is causing fundraising problems for the campaign.
(WashPost)

The reason that more people ask Norm about healthcare than Iraq is Norm is very careful to have his meetings in small towns or during weekdays if its in a city. He will never have a open town hall forum in a city in the evening when lots of people could attend. If he did, he'd find out that people don't like his position on Iraq. 70% of Minnesotans want the US out of Iraq.

If the Republicans were so fiscally responsible how is it that we are running the biggest deficit in the history of ... I dunno ... the Universe?

NOTE: I very carefully listened and transcribed. I edited out the "ums", "uhs" and stutters. The bad grammar is for the most part just the way Norm talks.

Judgment

Here's the question. Pretty tough question actually.

(7:33) It is campaign season and six years ago you said that you didn't question Paul Wellstone's patriotism, but you questioned his judgment in the runup to the vote on the resolution. And here we are almost five years later in the war and 3900 Americans dead, tens of thousands of Americans wounded, maybe as many as 150,000 Iraqi citizens dead, half a trillion dollars spent on the war, is it fair now for your opponents and voters to question your judgment?

When questioned about his judgment, Norm had this to say:

(starts at 8:08) By the way I still question judgment. I still question Bremer's judgment I question Rumsfeld if we would have done the things that Petraeus is doing now I think that we would be in a better position. And so from that perspective, is it my judgment based on the belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction which by the way which was the judgment of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton and and and the Israelis and the Germans. That was at that time the right call to make I have no question about that and I can't look back but I can look forward.
[emphasis mine]

Most importantly, Norm wants to be sure that Minnesotans don't look back to closely on Norm's tenure. They need to look forward to all the great things he wants to accomplish in the future. Norm certainly did not question Paul Bremer's judgment or the lack of any rebuilding plans during the build-up to the war. Norm was simply a cheerleader. Now Norm claims to have a "belief" that Saddam had WMDs and BTW, Bill and Hillary did it, too. We all know that they were wrong on the war. So you were cheerleading then and you really don't have an excuse for you lack of judgment? Am I being to harsh?

Norm wasn't done talking about judgment.

I would question the judgment of those who would simply say that that we that we that we that we leave that we say we've done enough and move on because if that were the case the level of uh of first the sacrifice they made would be for nought, but but the level of in stability in the region the level of turmoil in the region would only in the end pose greater threats so we're at a point now the the discussion now would be nice by the way to in a bipartisan way instead of fighting about where where we've been talk about where we're going.

This is a brilliant rhetorical ploy. Instead of answering the question about his judgment, turn it around and claim that anyone who opposes the occupation of Iraq has poor judgment.

Let's review:

• Norm supports this war 100% and wants to stay the course.
• Anyone who wants otherwise has poor judgment.

So maybe he realizes that's rather weak, so he talks about how his "judgment" to stay the course is reaping such wonderful gains in the battlefield.

We've achieved some military success. On both sides of the aisle folks should recognize that. We have the need for more aggressive movements toward a hydrocarbon law, towards debaathification toward power sharing. Both sides should agree to that. We should have a unique opportunity where we can seize the military success, move forward with the reconciliation and have America step back into a more secondary role and actually have some stability in the middle east and give you the other part of that which is I think is another possibility out there that's the possibility of peace between Israel and the Palestinians in part because of what we've seen in Iraq has demonstrated by the way to the other Arab neighbors that the threat to peace in the middle east is not is not Israel and the US but its terrorism. That's the greatest threat to the House of Saud and Saudi Arabia, that's the greatest threat to Mubarek in Egypt that's the greatest threat to Abdullah in Jordan. I've spoken to the foreign ministers, the Presidents and Prime Ministers of these countries and so Iran and it and its fostering of extremism through supporting Hezbollah and Hamas and Muqta al Sadr in Iraq has now kinda been identified as the enemy to stability. That's a positive in that now you may now have arab nations one throwing Al Queda out which would be stunning in Iraq and secondly coming together to reject terrorism and hopefully reaching a point where we can where we can establish a Palestinian a Israeli state that lives peace respecting the right of each other to exist.

Just an aside here before I get to my main point -- so the success in Iraq could lead to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian situation? Huh? The Bush Administration has spent exactly ZERO effort on this until a month ago. They're going to resolve it in one year? Simply ludicrous.

Overall, that is quite a detour from discussing his judgment. Maybe name-dropping and talking about the war on terror will distract us? First of all, the surge was not about achieving military success, it was about providing some breathing room in which the Iraqi government could get its act together.

CLAIM: “The surge worked.”

FACT: In October, the Government Accountability Office assessed that of the eight political benchmarks set forth by President Bush and Congress, the Iraqi government had only “met one legislative benchmark and partially met another.” Since then, progress has stalled on key areas laid out by Bush: an oil law, de-Baathification reform, a process for amending the Constitution and provincial elections.
(Think Progress)

Oops. Those silly facts keep getting in the way. But Norm wasn't done dissembling about his judgment quite yet.

So I think there are positives that can come out of this situation in which there have been many mistakes and many miscalculations and think we have an opportunity an opportunity to look forward and would be a mistake as Harry Reid says the war is lost, to say as some say that we should simply leave, we should seize this opportunity and in the end hopefully have a more secure middle east which would mean a more secure America.

So a kernel of truth slips from between Norm's brilliant white teeth: There were "many mistakes and many miscalculations." Norm was supposed to be providing oversight. The United States is suffering from an unchecked, run-away train of an Administration. Even an Imperial Presidency. We needed oversight and Norm provided none where it mattered. As Chair of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Norm had the power to drag anyone before his committee to testify on whatever he wanted. But he provided no oversight on the following:

• Intel reports on WMD's
• Dispersal of the Iraqi Army
• NSA's secret wiretapping program
• Cronyism in appointments in Provisional Govt
• Torture at Abu Ghraib
• No bid contracts
• Billions of dollars of State Department cash disappearing in Iraq
• Corruption among contracting companies in Iraq
• Poorly constructed facilities built by contractors
• Contaminated water drunk and used by troops
• Abuses committed by contracting companies in Iraq
• Production problems for MRAP vehicles
• Wrong or not enough armor for troops and their vehicles
• Death of Pat Tillman
• Lies surrounding abduction and rescue of Jessica Lynch
• Overcharges among contracting companies in Iraq
• Guantanamo

BTW, Norm ... how well do you think that constantly referring back to how the war on terror is making us more secure is going to play? The top issues are the occupation of Iraq, healthcare and now the mortgage crisis.

There was plenty more, but it's late and I'm not feeling so well. Don't worry dear readers, Norm didn't make me sick, its the flu.