Right idea, wrong mountain for GOP candidate in Colorado

The Democrats have Vice President Joe Biden for gaffe laughs. Now the Republicans in Colorado have a candidate wrestling with an all-too-familiar PR scandal in his scenic home state: not being able to recognize his own state's mountains.

It's the sort of gaffe possibly unique to a state with more than a dozen distinct mountain ranges. First it was former congressman Bob Schaffer, whose initial ad in an unsuccessful U.S. Senate race last year touted his Colorado loyalty by noting that he proposed to his wife atop Pikes Peak.

The problem: The ad flashed an image of Alaska's Mt. McKinley.

Now it's former congressman Scott McInnis, who hopes to become the GOP's gubernatorial nominee next year. His Web page debuted with a striking image of snow-capped peaks. Problem is, the peaks look like none in Colorado. The slip-up was unearthed by the political junkies at ColoradoPols.com (who, like many Coloradans, seem to be a bit mountain-mad as well).

They determined the image is actually of the Canadian Rockies. The McInnis campaign swiftly replaced it with a photo of the Flatirons, iconic peaks that loom over the left-leaning town of Boulder. Blame Google Images, said spokesman Mike Hesse.

Getting a mountain photo wrong isn't really all that hard to do. See more not-Colorado mountains in photo above.

A young McInnis volunteer searched the Web for "Colorado Rockies" and got the Canadian image instead.

Staffers had been warned to make sure all images were 100% Colorado. "We're aware this had happened before and we told them to be very careful of that," Hesse said. "It was a hiccup. Overall I'm delighted with the website and we're moving forward."

-- Nicholas Riccardi

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Photo: AustrianAlpsInfo.com

It's always the media's fault; Robert McNamara talked about Vietnam

As The Ticket reported earlier, John F. Kennedy's secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, died today at 93. He was a key architect of the disastrous U.S. military involvement in Vietnam who later admitted his mistakes.

In this C-SPAN archive video from 1995, McNamara discusses with Brian Lamb the role of the often-attacked media in that Southeast Asian conflict, specifically about whether the critical American press coverage caused the loss. It's worth a listen in light of subsequent events.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: U.S. Air Force

Video: C-SPAN

Obama pushes reset button on U.S.-Russian relations, inks nuclear deal in Moscow with what's his name; read the full transcript

President Obama, meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow, signed a preliminary deal today to reduce their nations' stockpiles of nuclear warheads to as few as 1,500 each. The deal is only a guideline for future negotiations. But the leaders of the two biggest nuclear powers in the world hailed the pact as a measure of improved cooperation. In fact, as a gesture of goodwill, Russia agreed to allow the U.S. military to move arms through Russia for the war in Afghanistan, easing the logistics headaches for Pentagon planners and, according to the White House, saving the U.S. government $133 million a year.

At a news conference in the gilded halls of the Kremlin, standing in front of enough U.S. and Russian flags to drape a small Third World country, both spoke of a thawing in the Cold War, which made relations tense for most of the second half of the 20th Century.

Medvedev said that the relationship between Moscow and Washington "does not correspond to its potential." Obama agreed, saying that the two had "resolved to reset U.S.-Russian relations."Noting joint cooperation on dealing with North Korea and Iran, and on combating Al Qaeda, Obama said "I won't pretend that the U.S. and Russia agree on every issue," but he insisted that the two superpowers "are leaving behind the suspicions and rivalries of the past."

Obama was asked if he trusted Medvedev. The question had echoes of an earlier U.S.-Russian summit, when President Bush said he had looked into then President Vladimir Putin's soul and determined he could trust him.  Mindful of this minefield of history, Obama replied: "I trust President Medvedev to listen."

The U.S. president was also asked another politically sensitive question -- who was actually running Russia, Medvedev or Putin. "My impression is that they are working very effectively together," he said diplomatically, noting that his first concern was Medvedev but that he would be having breakfast with Putin in the morning.

You may recall that during the 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton, now Obama's secretary of state, was adamant that no matter who won the Russian election for president, Putin would actually be running the country. Asked by NBC's Tim Russert who was likely to win the Russian presidential election, she replied, "Meh, Me-ned-vadah -- whatever." Obama agreed with Clinton that no matter who won the Russian election, Putin would maintain "the strongest hand" in Russian politics. But candidate Obama didn't even venture a guess at how to pronounce his name -- and Russert didn't press him.

That led to a Saturday Night Live skit about how much harder the media was on Clinton than Obama.

Today, Obama said Medvedev's name frequently, and without incident. But at one point, thanking Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen "and his counterpart," he didn't even try to pronounce Gen. Nikolai Makarov's name.

In any event, touting a new, post-Cold War alliance between their countries, the U.S. and Russian presidents greeted each other warmly during their news conference. You can read the transcript below.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Nesting dolls on sale in Moscow showcase President Barack Obama on the left and a shared depiction of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin on the right. Credit: Misha Japaridze / Associated Press

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Robert McNamara, architect of Vietnam War whose regrets made him opponent of Iraq War, dies at 93

Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam War and President Kennedy's secretary of Defense, died this morning at his home in Washington at the age of 93. He had been the president of Ford Motor Co., and Kennedy plucked him as part of a new generation of managers who could bring business skills and brain power to government, part of an elite circle that author David Halberstam would dub, "The Best and the Brightest."

As The Times noted in its obituary, McNamara, who stayed on as Pentagon chief into the Johnson administration, oversaw the massive buildup of U.S. forces in Vietnam between 1964 and 1968, earning him the sobriquet as the war's architect.

But perhaps the greatest legacy of McNamara's tenure -- one that could echo in the post-mortems over President George W. Bush's war in Iraq -- is that in later years he disavowed his decisions, particularly his conviction that if Vietnam fell to communism other Southeast Asia nations would also be vulnerable. "We were wrong, terribly wrong," he said. "We owe it to future generations to explain why."

It isn't often you hear a major public official acknowledge mistakes of his own making, but two decades after the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon with loyalists rushing to get aboard and  communism, McNamara began to speak out.

He gave a series of interviews at UC Berkeley in which he confessed he no longer believed in the domino theory. "It was certainly the conventional wisdom among the foreign policy establishment," he said. "I think we were wrong, and certainly misjudged it."

He wrote a memoir, "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam," again questioning the "domino theory," an underpinning of U.S. policy that held that if South Vietnam fell to Communist control, other countries in Southeast Asia would too. "My aim is neither to justify errors nor to assign blame," he wrote in the book, "but to identify the mistakes we made."

Later, interviewed by filmmaker Errol Morris for a documentary called "Fog of War," McNamara said:

We all make mistakes. I don't know any military commander, who is honest, who would say he has not made a mistake. There's a wonderful phrase: "The fog of war." What "the fog of war" means is: War is so complex it's beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend all the variables. Our judgment, our understanding, are not adequate.

The experience of being wrong on a epic scale -- more than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam, along with hundreds of thousands in Vietnam and Cambodia -- made McNamara an opponent of the Iraq War. Concerned that the Bush administration officials had failed to heed the lessons of Vietnam when they went into Iraq. he told a reporter for Canada's Globe and Mail in 2004, "We're misusing our influence. It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong."

Rest in peace.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo:  President John F. Kennedy sits in his favorite rocking chair in the Oval Office during a meeting with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, center, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson on March 16, 1961. Credit: Associated Press

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Joe Biden update: Private phone calls followed by private meetings

 

With President Obama far away in Russia today, Vice President Joe Biden won't be showing up for work until around noon, according to his official schedule.

Just back himself from a holiday-weekend trip overseas to Iraq, Biden saw some Iraqi leaders, a sandstorm and some U.S. troops, including his son Beau, who's scheduled to take over the Biden family Senate seat in Delaware after the November 2010 election.

Today, Biden's schedule starts at 12 p.m. with some secret phone calls with governors and mayors around the country about the administration's economic stimulus plan that has so far stimulated unemployment way beyond the rate its officials predicted last winter.

We won't know exactly what the vice president and those he is conversing with say because these conference calls are closed to the media. (UPDATE: After the two stimulus calls, the White House said the following officials participated: Democrat Govs. Chet Culver of Iowa and Jennifer Granholm of Michigan and Republican Govs. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Rick Perry of Texas and Jodi Rell of Connecticut.

Another call involved Mayors Dave Bing of Detroit, Joey Durel of Lafayette, La., Ashley Swearingen of Fresno and Charlie Tomlinson of Corvallis, Or and Whatcom County Executive Pete Kremen in Washington state.)

However, because this is the most transparent presidential administration in national history, after these private phone calls, Biden's schedule calls for him to spend the rest of the day in "private meetings." These are also closed to the media. So no one knows who they are with or what the subjects of conversation are.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Getty Images

Russian TV grills Obama on heroes, favorite movie, his nice wife

OK, in Russia you're not supposed to ask national leaders tough questions; it's part of an informal program to help journalists protect their own health. So why do differently with the brand-new American President Barack Obama? He arrives in Moscow today with Michelle for only his second visit there and first face-to-face with the real Russian power-that-is, Vladimir Putin.

So no questions on sticky healthcare reform costs or why the U.S. unemployment rate is already so much higher than his administration said it would go or how come the stimulus spending is taking so long or whether it'll even work at all. Leave that for most American reporters to not ask about.

But a nice little softball chatty TV interview to make the Democrat feel at home  and introduce Obama to Russian viewers. You'll never guess what Obama likes least about himself. (Hint: He did it again this weekend out of camera sight.)

We'll have to ask this president later what he saw when he looked deep into former KGB spyboss Putin's eyes/soul. (What do you see in the eyes above?)

-- Andrew Malcolm

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President Obama interview with Russia ITAR-TASS/ROSSIYA TV 

Q   Mr. President, thank you very much for having us today. 

THE PRESIDENT: Thanks.

Q  It's your first interview for the Russian media.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q   And it will be on air in TV Channel Russia on the 4th of July. Congratulations, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you so much. Thank you very much, and I'm very much looking forward to visiting Russia on Monday.

Q   You're leaving for Russia and it will be your second time there. What's your personal sense of Russia?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I had a wonderful time when we visited both Moscow and Perm -- this was several years ago. I was traveling as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, interested in issues of nuclear proliferation. The people were very warm; we had a wonderful reception. I had a wonderful time visiting Red Square and the Kremlin. 

I think that traveling there as President obviously is very different, and now those issues that I was interested in as a senator -- of nuclear proliferation, how we can reduce tensions and conflicts between our countries -- I'm in a position, hopefully, to get more accomplished than my first visit.

Q  And what we in Russia can expect from the new American leader?  How you see the role of the Russia in the world?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, look, Russia is a great country with an extraordinary culture and....