How dirty does the upcoming 2008 campaign promise to be? The focus has been on what the GOP might try to do to Democratic Senator Barack Obama if he gets the Democratic presidential nomination. But MSNBC’s David Shuster contends that the Republicans also have a treasure chest of goodies ready to use against Senator Hillary Clinton if she heads the ticket:

Two Republican officials at the Republican National Committee who are involved in “opposition research efforts” in preparation for the general election say the RNC’s oppo research dossier on Sen. Clinton runs more than 1,200 pages in length.

FYI: In some newsrooms two sources (not named in the story but revealed to editors) are enough to confirm a story. Some editors insist on three if it’s a huge development. MORE:

According to these officials, the book includes “previously undisclosed information about Hillary Clinton’s connections to the Whitewater scandal, travel office firings, and Democratic fundraising efforts.” Given that the book has not been shared with us, we’ve been unable to confirm this assertion. Furthermore, the Republican officials would not describe the nature of the “new information.”

However, I was not directed away from a front-page story in today’s Washington Times about memos/documents from the estate of Sam Dash, Ken Starr’s ethics adviser during the early stages of the Whitewater investigation. The Dash Whitewater memos and documents have been turned over to the Library of Congress (where they were presumably available to the Washington Times reporter/researcher). The documents reportedly show that prosecutors concluded that Hillary Clinton concealed information and misled a federal grand jury about her work for the Savings and Loan at the heart of the Whitewater investigation. The allegation that she concealed and misled is not new, and was sourced by reporters who covered the investigation in the 1990s (including me) to “attorneys close to Starr” or “sources in the office of the independent counsel.

The documents from Dash’s estate, however, mark the first available “documentary evidence” that Ken Starr’s office drafted a criminal indictment of Senator Clinton, also known as a “pros memo” and debated verbally and through written memos whether Clinton should actually face charges.

According to Shuster, they decided not to go after Clinton because they had doubts about the strength of their evidence and their ability to convict a first lady.

But such memos, documents, and etc. about the internal debate in the office of the independent counsel could be a gold mine for negative ads, etc.

So this means Obama is pristine and won’t face negative campaigning that will fill hours of air time for Sean and Rush et al? Hardly.

By the way, to put the RNC’s opposition research effort into context, I’m told the dossier on Senator Obama is 1,000 pages in length and that Republican researchers spent a few weeks in Chicago recently collecting information on Obama’s ties to the Weather Underground” and separately to Tony Rezko (who is currently on trial for federal corruption charges).

The difference here is: Clinton’s campaign has been saying she is totally vetted and that there is nothing new that can come out or be used against her. If there are some alleged 1,200 pages to play with, it’s unlikely that she’d face a free issue-oriented path to the White House.

Prediction: The formidable slime/distraction machine will run…no matter who is the Democratic nominee.

The e-mails, phone calls - robo and live, invites and blogs are buzzing through every inch of available space, cyber and otherwise, in Ohio right now. In the last two hours alone I’ve received information about Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Jewish community in Northeast Ohio, I was called by a live (as opposed to recorded) Hillary Clinton supporter about attending a rally tomorrow at a local high school and I’m gathering information for a fellow blogger coming into Cincinnati soon, from California, who may drop in on some campaign events.

And there’s still 19 days before Ohio’s primary on March 4.

For those who are curious, the NBC debate - the one that seemed to be in jeopardy because of MSNBC’s David Shuster “pimped out” comment regarding Chelsea Clinton’s activities on behalf of her mother’s campaign - will occur. Tickets are being issued by lottery to Cleveland State University students only, but students, faculty and staff can volunteer. Hardball will be broadcasting all day from an adjacent location with a different sign-up for tickets process, and information on press credentials has yet to be released.

Here are on the ground reports by Ohioans about the campaign events so far:

Scott Piepho reviews Chelsea speaking to students at the University of Akron, 2/14 (with photos)

Annie at The Chief Source describes the same event (with photos)

Eric Vessels gives his account of the Obama organizational meeting in Columbus last night (2/13) (with photos)

Jen at Democratic Underground describes the Obama organizational event in Cincinnati, 2/13

Man with the Muck-rake was at the Obama HQ opening event in Toledo, also on 2/13

For a population that was convinced as recently as the first week of January that Ohio wouldn’t make a difference, we are mostly very glad that we didn’t kowtow and change our primary date.

Last week’s Chelsea Clinton furor marks a low point in cable network competition for eyeballs and ears during the 24/7 news cycle and raises broader questions about their prime-time “journalism,” which has degenerated into a babble of idiot ids vying for attention.

David Shuster’s “pimped out” remark exemplifies a trend reported almost a year ago by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, that “cable news channels…are moving more toward personalities, often opinionated ones, to win audiences.

“The most strident voices, such as Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck, are among the biggest successes in winning viewers, as is CNN’s new crusader, Lou Dobbs. How much those individual shows affect a channel’s overall audience is harder to gauge. Their growth in 2006 was substantial, particularly among 25-to-54-year-olds, but those gains were not enough to stanch the overall declines.

“The shifts toward even edgier opinion are also probably a response to another change. Cable is beginning to lose its claim as the primary destination for what was once its main appeal: news on demand. That is something the Internet can now provide more efficiently.”

Something even more basic is involved as well…

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MSNBC correspondent David Shuster’s use of the phrase “pimped out” in referring to former first daughter Chelsea Clinton’s modest political activism has led to his apologizing, his suspension by the network, a major blog and commentator furor — but it also reflects a shoot-at-the-lip cable broadcast news and talk show culture that characterizes the increasingly-popular cable channels.

And howls of outrage from the Clinton campaign, coupled with suggestions that Hillary Clinton would never debate on MSNBC again, show how cable news talk can go over the line and itself become a political issue — an issue that can perhaps impact public perceptions of a candidate and of the news media itself.

First, in case you were on Venus and missed it, this You Tube shows you Shuster’s apology/non-apology (it’s phrased in a way so that it was not enough to get him out of hot water) and gives you a good chunk of the offending broadcast so you can view it in context:

Some thoughts:

(1) Shuster’s raising the issue was itself silly. Family members of candidates have been out on the hustings and working for family members for generations and/or running on their family connections. A few examples: the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Clintons, the Gores, the Kerry family… Moreover, Chelsea Clinton just a month ago came under fire in the media for not saying anything at campaign rallies. There is not the slightest thing unseemly about her working for her Mom — particularly since she is a young woman now and not a pre-teen or teen. BOGUS ISSUE to start with.

(2) His use of the phrase was dumb because, unless he needs to get wax cleaned out of his ears, there have been enough instances now of people using flippant language and getting themselves into career hot water. Some instances have been over racial language. Using sexual language linked to prostitution when describing a candidate’s daughter is giving your critics a gun to shoot you with.

(3) His comment about Huckabee won’t convince some Hillary supporters that it was a compliment. Watch it again and it can be argued that there was a touch of sarcasm in the way he said it. Additionally, in the segment he says basically that she doesn’t have a right to work for her mom until she sits down and talks to a reporter in an interview. When did THAT REQUIREMENT come about? That’s the first we’ve ever heard of it.

(4) He’s the latest instance of a media type who has gotten a big break to host a show and took it and ran with it — and slipped into a more casual, opinionated style that he could never use if he was still reporting straights news. It’s all part of our early 21st century BROADCAST MEDIA CULTURE.

Just as weblogs have now evolved largely into extended op-ed pages, so has much of television cable news evolved into talk radio transplanted into a broadcast news setting. It stems back to the creation and success of Fox News, which grafted radio talk onto the newcast model. MSNBC has been struggling for years, but it recently began making some modest gains in its programs as in many ways the anti-Fox. It’s edgy, but often a bit more to the center or the outright left. Shuster was subbing on Tucker Carlson’s show, which is a conservative news talk show.

There are several media types who joined cable talk and adapted their once-more-staid styles to the flippant, edgy style of cable talk — which is derived from talk radio which created the media role model now known as Fox. MSNBC has slowly built a lively team of talkers who often had more sedate careers in their earlier incarnations.

Chris Matthews was a superb print columnist who found his often controversial broadcast talk voice. Keith Olbermann was a topnotch sometimes controversial sportscaster who took a while to find his present HIGHLY outspoken and controversial voice at MSNBC where he has become the prime nemesis of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly.

The excellent reporter and go-getter Dan Abrams was General Manager at MSNBC for a while before returning to his own show — and he started doing menial jobs with NBC Sports,then working his way into sports reporting, NBC News and then Court TV. He now hosts his own show and his present style is lively and blunt cable news talk style.

All of them became “edgier,” “livelier,” and used (even if unconsciously in some cases) a media model with its roots in talk radio and cable talk pioneer Fox. It puts a premium on lively talk, talking — often shouting — heads, controversy and pushing the envelope on discussion.

You can almost sit in your living room and personally watch cable talk show hosts’ evolution as they first come on the air and gradually find their (flippant) voices as they adjust to the tone and tenor of cable talk — which ain’t any relationship of how things are discussed in the real world of news coverage.

In the talk radio world, those of us in San Diego have watched the evolution of our former Mayor Roger Hedgecock from mayor, to an early stumbling and often ineffectual talk show host to someone who is now as slick and professional in terms of being a first-class broadcaster as Rush Limbaugh or Ed Schultz.

So in effect, this could have been Shuster’s “big break” to his next career move — perhaps getting his own show on MSNBC eventually…which won’t happen now.

(5) The outrage from the Clinton camp is real. The Clintons have always tried to protect Chelsea and as she dips her toe into the waters of real world political campaigning, they probably went ballistic to hear someone use a word associated with prostitution to describe what is CERTAINLY her GENUINE and HEART-FELT desire to help her mother win.

(6) The controversy won’t hurt Hillary Clinton. MSNBC will bend over backwards and do somersaults now to show that it doesn’t hate Hillary, Hillary Clinton’s as a caring mother will be enhanced, and the Clinton family will (rightfully) appear as victim in this news story.

The bottom line: Shuster is suspended, when he comes back he won’t be on the fast track to his own show (at least not on MSNBC) and he never would have used those words on a report he was doing for NBC Nightly News or MSNBC.

He had fallen into, got sucked into, and was consumed by the cable TV talk radio culture which increasingly resembles the no-holds-barred world of stream-of-consciousness weblogs.

Except most of us who do weblogs would not be so dumb as to use the phrase Shuster did and virtually invite denunciations — particularly when the “issue” raised was a silly non-issue that should not have been raised in the first place.

But, then, we don’t get big salaries from networks.

P.S. There’s one silver lining in this controversy for MSNBC: It shows that at least one person is watching Tucker Carlson’s show.

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