“ELISABETH” — White House mystery woman? Somebody tell Atrios! I’m sure he’ll be right on it.
UPDATE: A reader suggests that it may be Elizabeth Becker of The New York Times, who coauthored this story on Wolfowitz’s appointment, which has passages like this:
President Bush said today that he would nominate Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense and one of the chief architects of the invasion of Iraq two years ago, to become president of the World Bank.
The announcement, coming on the heels of the appointment of John R. Bolton as the new American ambassador to the United Nations, was greeted with quiet anguish in those foreign capitals where the Iraq conflict and its aftermath remain deeply unpopular, and where Mr. Wolfowitz’s drive to spread democracy around the world has been viewed with some suspicion. . . .
Despite the displeasure of some diplomats who had hoped that the administration would appoint a person without the almost radioactive reputation of a committed ideologue, they said that they expected Mr. Wolfowitz to receive the approval of the World Bank’s board of directors in time for Mr. Wolfensohn’s departure in May.
Indeed it does. And note that this article isn’t even captioned “News Analysis” — it’s supposed to be, you know, straight reporting.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Fred Kaplan writes that “Wolfowitz is not so bad a choice for World Bank boss.”
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Eric Pfeiffer says it was Elisabeth Bumiller, not Elizabeth Becker. I guess Becker’s just guilty of shoddy pseudo-journalism, not press-conference preening. Or maybe it’s her coauthor, David Sanger? Doesn’t sound like him, really, but who knows?
Stephen Hayes also credits (if that’s the word) the question to Bumiller, and has some observations on Wolfowitz’s surprisingly strong base of Democratic support:
Biden said he believes Wolfowitz will enjoy strong support in Europe. “I’ve had a lot of talks about Paul in European capitals. They know him as a serious intellectual and an engine of change.”
Although some Democrats have criticized the selection, notably House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, others have praised the pick. “I know him to be an extraordinarily intelligent, creative thinker who has the potential to do a good job at the World Bank,” said Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, regarded as one of the Senate’s most partisan members.
But, apparently, less partisan than the two Elis(z)abeths!
MORE: Reader P.S. Malloy observes: “Maybe they are two different people, but if so that just compounds the mystery. They both used the phrase ‘chief architect’ of the Iraq war. Is that a coincidence or is there some collusion among NYT writers as to how to characterize administration personnel? Does the Times pass around among its reporters suggested monikers for public figures it does not favor?” Probably came from a MoveOn email.
STILL MORE: Related comments here: “Where is Jeff Gannon when we need him?” It wasn’t just Bumiller engaging in gratuitous attacks disguised as questions. “If reporters are going to preface questions with a long, hostile preamble, is it too much to expect them to get their facts right?” Yes, it is.
MORE STILL: Showing his usual deft political judgment, John Kerry is opposing Wolfowitz, which gets this rather harsh reaction:
Senator Kerry’s diatribe boggles the mind. The nonsense about “Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz’s repeated and serious miscalculations about the costs and risks America would face in Iraq[,]” is ironic, to say the least, on two obvious levels.
First, Senator Kerry himself has made “repeated and serious miscalculations about” every important strategic issue in the last 30 years – wrong about the Vietcong, wrong about Latin America, wrong about the Soviet Union, wrong about defense spending, wrong about terrorism, etc. If he is bent on attacking someone, I’m not sure track record is the way for him in particular to go.
Second, one thing I left off the above list is Iraq – Sen. Kerry was spectacularly wrong about that, too. And Paul Wolfowitz was right. . . . But while Sen. Kerry spent months arguing with himself about Saddam Hussein, Dep. Sec’y Wolfowitz was busy winning the war and holding fast in the belief that Muslims living under tyrannical terrorist regimes yearned for freedom just like everyone else, and that helping them achieve it was the best guarantor of American national security. We are now watching that vision transform the Middle East.
Ouch.
STILL MORE: Several readers note that — although the Becker link above still works — the Times is now fronting its International page with this, more muted version of the story, which omits most of the cheap shots.
Is the NYT going to a blog-based model — publish, then edit?