Ana Marie Cox has an interesting post on "not for attribution" and "off the record" press releases. She blames the fact that "the iffy truism that Americans don’t like negative campaigning has never had much of an impact on the actual practice of negative campaigning -- just the desire to avoid even the APPEARANCE of negativity." That's persuasive. I also agree with her, and Karen Tumulty, and (apparently) Adam Nagourney, when they say that "off the record" and not "for attribution" "are agreements journalists make with their sources, not declarations the sources make whenever they feel like it. If you say, 'I want this off the record,' and then the reporter says, 'I want it on the record,' and then you keep talking, well, by most standards, you’ve no one but yourself to blame. Sending out an email with that declaration attached is the same mistake, made virtually."
On a related note, my morning mail came with some useful, if slightly odd, opposition research from the DNC on Rudy Giuliani's record of being a rational spender. This is relevant because Giuliani is giving a speech today on fiscal discipline, where he will apparently argue that he's got it, and if the DNC is to be believed, not mention such factoids as "spending went up 30% under Giuliani as mayor, or by $9.5 billion. Even stopping the tally before costs related to 9/11 finds a 28% increase, or $8.9 billion more in annual spending then before he took office," and "As he left office at the end of 2001, the New York Times wrote that Giuliani himself 'estimated the 2003 fiscal year budget gap at $2.9 billion' for his successor. However, JoinRudy.com brags that Giuliani 'turned a $2.3 billion budget deficit into a multi-billion dollar surplus.'"
This sort of oppo research is interesting for its utter purity. It is just trying to embarrass Giuliani. Democrats, after all, don't believe that it's a problem to increase spending while in office, or run the occasional deficit in order to fund necessary investments. For that matter, Giuliani, as his record shows, also doesn't believe such fiscal responsibility is a problem. But in order to appeal to the GOP electorate, he's been touting himself as much less financially rational than he actually is. Elections are weird.
