corrente

The word is "traction."

WASHINGTON The White House may have mishandled accusations leveled by their former counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke by attacking his credibility, keeping the controversy firmly in the headlines into a second week, political analysts said.

Clarke's charge that the Bush administration did not regard the threat posed by the al Qaeda organization as an urgent matter in the run-up to Sept. 11, 2001, has been superseded by a secondary issue of whether National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice should testify under oath before the national commission investigating that day's attacks.

"The administration's attempts to discredit Clarke have backfired. They have merely given the story legs and hurt the administration. The issue of whether Rice should testify should keep the story alive for several more news cycles," said University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape.

"The Bush administration and its allies have certainly not helped the story go away," said Howard Opinsky, a Republican operative who ran media relations for Arizona Sen. John McCain during his 2000 presidential bid.

Opinsky said the White House needed to change the subject and begin talking about what it has done since September 2001 and what it is doing now to make Americans safer.

"There isn't a good way for them to spin this story. They need to get beyond it," he said.
(via Reuters)

And this is a debate that Democrats should be very willing to have.

It is, in fact, the debate Clarke wished to ignite in his book: the question of the opportunity cost of Iraq (back here). We can begin by noting the fecklessness of the Bush administration both on AQ and on the loose nukes issue for Blue cities (here).

We can do better! (In fact, under Clinton, we did do better, back here.)