His political action committee is officially launching today, and it has hired an Iowa native who was credited with building a winning strategy for George W. Bush in the Hawkeye State before being implicated in a scandal involving the firing of U.S. Attorneys, allegedly for political reasons.

Sara Taylor, daughter of an Iowa pipe fitter turned state legislator, was just 24 in 1998 when she was tapped by Karl Rove and Bush to lead their Iowa strategy.

Sara Taylor

The strong foundation in Iowa led to her being dispatched to Florida to help with the campaign’s controversial recount efforts, and then to an oversight position in the Midwest political office led by Ken Mehlman.  In total, Taylor held an eight-year working relationship with the Bush administration, her last assignment being White House Political Director and answering directly to Rove. She was the youngest person to ever serve in the position, and the first Republican woman to hold the post.

In May 2007, Taylor gave up the position, citing a need for “normalcy” in her life, but it soon became clear that she was a figure of interest in the U.S. Attorney scandal. In July of the same year, she was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where she refused to answer several questions. That testimony, still available via YouTube, is probably what won Taylor the most notoriety in bipartisan circles, but she already was and remains a well-known and respected political operative in Republican circles.

Although she did move back to Iowa during the brunt of the U.S. Attorney scandal, she didn’t stay long. By the end of the August she had filed papers with the federal government, signaling her intention to begin lobbying for Ames-based Renewable Energy Groups, Inc. She also joined several other Republican operatives, including a former senior staff member for Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson, to found BlueFront Strategies, a private-sector advertising and public relations firm. The following year she co-founded Resonate Networks, a company positioned to capitalize on her expertise with political micro-targeting.

Our sister site The Minnesota Independent reports that Taylor has been tapped to serve as one of the senior advisors for Pawlenty’s political action committee. If and when the Minnesota Republican does decide to make his campaign official, however, there is little doubt that Taylor will provide a keen and strategic eye into Iowa politics, which can only benefit a candidate looking to make a name for himself in the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

As of last Friday, Carroll County had 14,969 registered voters: 5,310 Democrats, 3,155 Republicans, 6,499 no party voters, and five others.

How the no party voters break here could say a lot about the state of the race across Iowa, although with an economy that has so far avoided the worst of the nation’s economic crisis, voters here may be more persuaded by social issues — as the many letters to the editor in the Carroll Daily Times Herald dealing with the issue of abortion show.

Some factors to consider:

While it is historically Democratic, Carroll County now has two Republican state legislators running unopposed.

In terms of sheer logistics, or boots-on-the-ground campaigning, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is overwhelming Republican John McCain.

Obama has an office here and has had staff in place dating back well before the caucuses. Additionally, Obama campaigned in Carroll twice, just after Labor Day 2007 as the caucus season heated up and in the final days after Christmas.

Obama, who pulled crowds of more than 600 people in each of two visits here, turned that enthusiasm into living and breathing Iowa caucuses support in capturing Carroll County with 35 percent of the delegates.

McCain never visited Carroll although highly popular (and unopposed) State Rep. Rod Roberts, R-Carroll, was an early supporter of McCain who stuck with the Arizona senator even as the campaign struggled in Iowa.

With Obama bringing new voters, and a well-oiled campaign organization, into the process, history may be out the window.

That said, Carroll County will be watched closely because it went to Obama in the Iowa caucuses and to President George W. Bush in the last two general elections — 55 percent to 45 percent for Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

In 2004, the president’s positioning on national security issues and abortion factored heavily into his overwhelming victory in Carroll County, local supporters said then.

“Carroll County is no longer a Democratic County,” said former Republican lieutenant governor Art Neu the day after the 2004 election. “People may still register Democratic out of force of habit.”

Added then Carroll County Republican Chairman John Werden, “Maybe in the future you can quit referring to Carroll County as traditionally Democratic. That’s old news.”

Prior to 2000 Democrats racked up some big wins in the county. In 1960 John F. Kennedy won with 60 percent of the vote in Carroll County, beating Richard Nixon.

Four years later, President Lyndon Johnson walloped Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, 76 percent to 23 percent in Carroll County.

During the Iowa caucuses, the eyes of much of the world were on Carroll, and for that reason alone, the race here is seen as revealing.

A British television crew from Sky News filmed a segment on in the caucus activity here on Adams Street downtown.

Sirius Satellite Radio did a live interview from Carroll and the Washington Post and Associated Press have frequently filed stories with a Carroll dateline.

“With 25-plus appearances by the candidates, three campaign headquarters and numerous other visits, it’s no wonder that as caucuses come to culmination, Carroll will be a very important hub,” said Jim Gossett, executive director of the Carroll Area Development Corp.

No matter the outcome, Carroll Countians can’t claim they were uninformed. The county had 26 presidential candidate visits in the 2008 cycle — showing that the campaigns saw the area as valuable political turf.

Alice McCabe and Christine Nelson were originally awarded $750,000 by a jury for harm and pain related to a strip search performed by Michelle Mais, a former Linn County jailer. Mais filed a motion with U.S. District Court arguing that the awarded amount was “excessive.” Chief Judge Linda Reade agreed, lowered the award amount to $75,000 and set a new trial, limited to only the award, for Oct. 27.

Although McCabe and Nelson filed to postpone the trial, but Reade refused. The two women will be represented in the upcoming case by Cedar Rapids attorney Dave O’Brien.

Asked by CNN’s Zain Verjee if she thought Palin’s resume included sufficient foreign policy experience, Bush said, “Of course she doesn’t have that.”

“You know, that’s not been her role,” she continued, “But I think she is a very quick study, and fortunately John McCain does have that sort of experience.”

“On behalf of the First Lady and the Lt. Governor, I want to take this opportunity to honor the lives of the thousands of victims of the attacks on America which occurred on September 11, 2001,” Gov. Chet Culver said in a statement. “Seven Iowans were among those who lost their lives on that day. We will forever keep them, and their families, in our thoughts and prayers.”

Culver’s directive acts upon a joint resolution approved by Congress and signed into law December 18, 2001 (Public Law 107-89) by President George W. Bush, which designates Sept. 11 of each year as “Patriot Day”:

I [President Bush] also call upon the people of the United States to observe Patriot Day with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and remembrance services, to display the flag at half-staff from their homes on that day, and to observe a moment of silence beginning at 8:46 a.m. eastern daylight time to honor the innocent Americans and people from around the world who lost their lives as a result of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Ironically, as Paul Kennedy, Professor of History and director of International Security Studies at Yale University, points out in an op-ed piece, Obama has spent more time on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan than the current commander-in-chief, President George W. Bush.

Kennedy offers the following tally as a mode of comparision:

Nov. 27, 2003, for two and a half hours , at a Thanksgiving dinner with American troops, exclusively in the large U.S. base at Baghdad International Airport.

June 3, 2006, for five to six hours, in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone Sept. 3, 2007, for six to seven hours , visiting Al-Asad Air Base, the American fortress in western Anbar Province.

That’s not even a full day in Iraq in more than five years of fighting. Wow! Those who doubt presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s experience of, and familiarity with, the world outside the United States may have forgotten that during his January 2006 visit to Iraq, he actually spent two days (according to ABC News) “flying to areas outside the safety of the green zone to meet with American and military commanders on the ground.”

The president has visited Afghanistan only once, where he spent five hours in Kabul, on March 1, 2006, when conditions were fairly stable. What, one wonders, was the point?

How can we explain this? In the case of Iraq above all, how can a leader instigate a long, messy war, keep demanding hundreds of billions of dollars for it, appeal to the American people to stay the course, and not actually spend some time there to see what is going on?

Real commanders surely ought to demonstrate, not obsessively (like Hitler) but at least regularly, a deep interest in what is happening to the forces under their command.

Kennedy made the observation while compiling research for a new book on World War II, which focuses on the travels of the two leaders of the Western Alliance, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

Kennedy defended the analogy between Bush and the Second World War leaders in his op-ed piece:

A comparison of the present Bush administration with the record of Roosevelt and Churchill is actually not unfair, if only because the White House itself has so insistently invoked that earlier age, the era of “the greatest generation.”

To most members of the present Bush administration — and to American neoconservatives more broadly — Churchill himself is an icon, the historic embodiment of what they in their turn have been pursuing in their own global war.

It is, therefore, instructive — and to me, rather disturbing — to list the number and the duration of the visits that President Bush has paid to the actual theatres of war since our invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq, beginning in 2001, nearly seven years ago (remember, Churchill was prime minister a lesser time).

Based on the comparison, Kennedy draws two conclusions:

The first is that this president finds it emotionally difficult to be at close quarters with the aftermaths of disaster and setbacks, whether in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, in the ravaged streets of Iraqi cities, or in the rubble of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks. It would have been something if Mr. Bush had been seen shoulder-to-shoulder with the combative Mayor Rudy Guiliani, supervising the rescue operations following that vicious attack.

Secondly, I do not buy the argument that, in order to avoid another Kennedy-type assassination, the president of the United States should be cocooned from absolutely any danger. It is a completely unhealthy state of affairs that the most important decision-maker in the world should be so relentlessly protected from anything that is unpleasant, like some of the later czars of Imperial Russia.

It is unhealthy that presidential Press conferences are increasingly such prefabricated, uncontroversial events. It is truly unhealthy that there exists no political place where the head of government has to debate his critics.

A parade of speakers in St. Paul, including Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a Hispanic businessman, an Arizona educator, and President Bush (speaking from the White House via video link) hailed the prospective nominee John McCain for his courage as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, his 26 years in Congress, even his decision to adopt a child from Bangladesh.

Partisan rhetoric was, for the most part, muted. “John McCain doesn’t speak the language of service. He has lived a life of service,” said Bachmann, presumably in reference to the too-eloquent Democratic nominee Barack Obama. In a clumsier swipe, President Bush averred that if McCain’s North Vietnamese captors could not break his resolve, the “angry left” could not either.

The crowd of 20,000 people responded with rapt attention and the occasional standing ovation, even as the last two speakers of the evening worked hard–Bush loyalists might say too hard–to distinguish the nominee from the man he hopes to succeed.

Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson noted with a hint of admiration that the party’s new standard bearer once dated a stripper. (The TV cameras mercifully spared us Cindy McCain’s reaction to her husband’s taste in female company.) Thompson reminded the Republican faithful that young Congressman McCain bucked Ronald Reagan on the wisdom of sending U.S. troops to the Middle East, an observation that seemed to send a ripple of unease through the crowd. And Thompson described the federal government, run for the last eight years by the already-forgotten incumbent, as “wasteful and too often incompetent.” No one was heard to object.

The solution to the “nightmare” of contemporary Washington, said lapsed Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman, was John McCain. Among the Arizona Senators’ many accomplishments, Lieberman explained, was his hostility to “corrupt Republican lobbyists”–some of whom were no doubt itching to exit the premises in search of strippers unfamiliar with public service. Lieberman added kind words for the various legislative accomplishments of Bill Clinton, the former Democratic president who warmly endorsed Obama just a week ago—and the confused crowd responded with applause.

To be fair, it has not been an easy convention for the GOP rank and file. On Monday, Republicans who pride themselves on traditional family values had to learn to scratch the phrase “illegitimate child” from their vocabularies, lest they be taken as less than loyal to prospective vice president (and grandmother) Gov. Sarah Palin. Last night, they began to learn another lesson: that McCain’s campaign slogan, “Country First,” also means “We got no brand.”

Jefferson Morley is National Editorial Director of the Center for Independent Media.

Latham has embraced campaign help from George Bush in the past when Bush held a fundraiser for his campaign in 2002. And in this last Congressional session, he voted with the Republican Party 92% of the time.

“With Bush’s approval ratings at a record low, no wonder Latham is attempting to reject the President. However, Latham’s actions speak louder than his words. Just saying you are separating from Bush can’t hide years of blind loyalty to the President,” said Greenwald Communications Director Erin Seidler.

U.S. Rep. Tom Latham (Source: Wikipedia)

U.S. Rep. Tom Latham, R-Ames, says President George W. Bush won’t be getting an invitation to campaign for him in Iowa’s 4th District this election year.

“He would have to be invited and I don’t think I’m going to do that,” Latham said in an interview.

Why not?

“Because I want to have the focus stay on my race and certainly differences with my opponent,” Latham said.

Latham noted that President Bush did campaign for him in Iowa in 2002.

“Today, I think I want to focus on the local issues,” Latham said.

Latham predicted that the presidential race between U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would have limited impact on his re-election fight against Democrat Becky Greenwald of Perry.

“I think Iowans separate races,” he said. “They look at individual races. There’s a certain group on both sides” that will vote straight ticket, he said, but most will not.

Latham sees the number one issue as energy, and he thinks his support of more domestic exploration combined with a track record of advocacy for renewable energy will resonate in the 4th District.

The traditional Republican message of low taxes will also be vital in this economic climate, Latham said.

While many political observers expect 2008 to be a rough year for Republicans, Latham — who steers clear of the provocative partisanship to which his neighbor to the west, U.S. Rep. Steve King, subscribes — says he’s weathered storms before.

Folllowing reapportionment in 2002, Latham, who had represented a more western Iowa district, found himself with 60 percent new constituents in the current 4th district in a race against well-known Democratic insider John Norris.

“That was probably the most difficult, the one we had to raise the most money for,” Latham said.

He added, “Certainly I don’t take anything for granted. Looking back, 2002 was a huge challenge because of the new district.”

Latham pointed out that he broke ranks with the president on State Children’ Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), voted twice in support the farm bill and to override the president’s veto on that legislation. Recently he and the president were on opposite side of an issues surrounding Medicare reimbursement for doctors.

“There’s a lot of differences on major issues we have around here,” Latham said.

He added, “I think it just shows you have to be independent in this job. I’m not agreeing with the president on everything.”

Despite Latham’s claim to independence, the Greenwald campaign has made efforts to tie the incumbent to the Bush administration and the Republicans in Congress, with whom they say Latham has voted 92 percent of the time.  Although the president has not traveled to Iowa for Latham this year, high-profile Bush advisor Karl Rove attended a closed-press fundraiser for Iowa Republicans last week.

Like former White House press secretaries.

But now we have Scott McClellan, 40, White House press secretary from 2003 to 2006, writing something of a tell-all book on the Bush administration during the sale of the Iraq war and the post-Katrina blundering.

I have much trouble with former political staffers writing dishy books after having the privilege of serving behind the curtains of power. It’s the job of the press to get back there and reveal the warts — not the job of well-paid Benedict Arnolds who jump from what should be high-minded public service to the low road of celebrity cable TV commentator.

For a year and a half in the mid-1990s I served as the Washington, D.C.-based communications director for U.S. Rep. Pat Danner, D-Mo.

For most of my tenure she was a two-term congresswoman. As a result of this lack of seniority our office had limited power, although we did speak in Congress for a wide swath of Missouri, and her membership in the conservative Democrat Blue Dog organization, which would swing over on some GOP initiatives, gave us more influence than most two-termers.

When you have the privilege of serving in this capacity, of being in the office when speeches are written, votes are determined and arguments aired, part of the deal is that, upon leaving, for good, bad or indifferent reasons, you go on your way. You don’t rip your former boss in a book or magazine article. I didn’t run over to the Kansas City Star and offer to write a piece for one of its Sunday sections when I left Danner’s employ. She taught me a lot about politics. End of story.

If political leaders suspect they are going to get McClellaned, they will put more of a premium on loyalty than robust thinking. They will isolate themselves even more, and the nation will be worse for it. There should be trust — not blind, unthinking trust, but trust in the offices of our elected officials.

For those of us, make that much of the nation, who have strongly believed what former Bush confidant and spokesman Scott McClellan reportedly writes in his controversial new book, the “revelations” about alleged Bush deceptions and incompetence are powerful confirmations on long-held instincts of the sort one prominent Carroll High School graduate holds.

Charles Neu, the younger brother of former Republican Lt. Gov. Art Neu and a son of former 26-year Carroll Mayor Arthur N. Neu, has been with Brown University for more than 30 years, including a stint as chairman of that school’s history department.

Neu has dedicated his life to studying great men, and he finds no greatness in George W. Bush.

“He never had much of a serious purpose in his life,” Neu said in a recent interview with the Carroll Daily Times Herald. “He never really even had much of a business career. He’s not even well-educated though he had a chance to become well-educated, but not the will to do so. And this guy ends up leading the nation? He’s doesn’t even have good verbal skills. He’s clearly a person who doesn’t read very much. You just watch him speak and struggle to find words.”

Neu’s comments carry some weight because of his estimable background. These are things he should say in public.

McClellan writes from the inside what Neu said from the outside.

The book, “What Happened Inside the White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” is slated for release next week, but prominent news organizations like The New York Times as well as bloggers already have their hands on it.

According to The Times, McClellan uses the book to charge that the president was engaged in “self-deception” and that Iraq was a “serious strategic blunder.”

The Chicago Tribune reports the book recounts an evening in a hotel suite “somewhere in the Midwest.” Bush was on the phone with a supporter and motioned for McClellan to have a seat.

” `The media won’t let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,’ I heard Bush say. `You know, the truth is I honestly don’t remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don’t remember.’”

Some of this can be filed under titillating, but most of it appears to be in the category of rehash for McClellan.

Even for those who have nothing but contempt for the president, McClellan’s book should be highly troubling. It follows a dangerous trend in which close advisers to presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, use their post-job memoirs (often released while presidents are still in office) to reveal what should be private conversations on policy and process and personalities in which the commander in chief and his circle can debate without fear of a town crier looming in their midst.

Attacks of conscience are different. If you quit over a decision you think is disastrous for the nation, it is fair to air that reason, although the timing of one’s departure in such a situation should send a clear signal without words having to be spoken.

There is also an important place for works of history with staff members discussing presidents and leaders and their recollections of events and decision-making. Such books and comments contribute greatly to American learning and allow future leaders to learn from the past.

And, of course, revealing illegal activity is a different ball game altogether, obviously.

McClellan’s purpose appears to be much more malicious where President Bush is concerned.

In the near term Bush detractors may cheer McClellan’s book, but it is not good for American democracy.

(Photos: Top is cover of McClellan book. Second photo is of former Congresswoman Pat Danner.)