Ellen Ratner is the White House Correspondent and Bureau Chief for The Talk Radio News Service, covering the White House and providing exclusive reports to talk radio stations from the Congress and government agencies. Ms. Ratner is a news analyst on The Fox News Channel where she has a weekly segment entitled "The Long and Short of It" with Jim Pinkerton. She is heard on over 500 stations across the United States representing individual stations as well as syndicated shows on both commercial and public radio venues. In addition she writes a weekly column "Liberal and Proud" for World Net Daily. She developed the podcasting site, www.newstalkcast.com, which is currently in beta testing. She is also the only talk show host granted two in-person interviews with President Clinton.
Ratner is the political editor and Washington bureau chief for Talkers Magazine, the "bible" of the talk industry. In addition, she has developed College Media News, a broadcast service for college and university radio stations, served by students interning in Washington, DC. In the capacity as Political Editor of Talkers Magazine, she developed the concept of combining radio rows with immediate Internet access via the site, www.radiorow.net. In addition, she has trained many groups in use of radio, television and Internet media. Her latest book, Getting On! Talk Radio, Talk Television, Talk Internet, will be published in November, 2005.
A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Ratner graduated from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. She earned a Masters Degree in Education from Harvard University.
From 1973 to 1986, Ratner served as co-director and co-founder of Boundaries Therapy Center, in Acton, MA. Also, from 1974 to 1981, Ratner was the Director of the Psychiatric Day Treatment Program at South Shore Mental Center in Quincy, MA. In 1984, Ratner joined the Addiction Recovery Corporation as a Consultant on Program Development. From 1986 to 1990, Ratner served as Vice-President of Research, Development, and Service at the Addiction Recovery Corporation and as Director of its ARC Research Foundation. She served as Principal Investigator for an outcome research study, determining treatment outcome factors in alcoholism and chemical dependency treatment.
Ratner is the author of The Other Side of the Family: A Book for Recovery from Abuse, Incest and Neglect (Health Communications, Inc.), published in 1990. In February 1997, Ratner published "101 Ways to Get Your Progressive Ideas on Talk Radio," published by National Press Books and Talkers Magazine.
In politics, honesty is never the best policy. If you doubt that, just ask Democrat Sen. Harry Reid. He simply gave voice to what 99 percent of the world and at least 60 percent of Americans already know – Bush's Iraq gambit is lost. For this bit of honest, Reid has been pummeled relentlessly by every armchair patriot, knight of the carpet and drawing-room hero in the country.
If he was willing to go that far – and he wasn't for very long, because he had no sooner made his remarks than he was on the Senate floor, issuing ''clarifications'' – let me, with a lot less to lose, be equally blunt: the war is lost. Bush won't admit it – how can he? – although he has talked of ''mistakes'' being made. Naturally, he hasn't specified, but he has no need to because virtually every observer of this war already knows what those mistakes were – something in the core of President Bush prevents him from recognizing that he is doing a poor job as commander in chief . Not only has he bungled the management of the war, he has done a poor job communicating about the war to both the world and his fellow Americans. You see, he's bungled the message, too. If he has a clue about ''Why We Fight,'' he hasn't been able to convince many even in his own party, let alone the loyal opposition.
So along comes Sen. Reid who declares at last that the emperor has no clothes. Only unlike the story, Reid doesn't wake up his fellow citizens to this fact – he merely articulates what they already know. After all, the Democrats weren't given control of both houses of Congress last November because of Harry Reid's good looks. So an angry electorate that has for years been whining about the fact that all politicians are liars, finally gets one who tells the truth, and voila! – the incoming mail suggests some people would just prefer to be lied to.
I'll be the first to admit Harry Reid should have coupled his absolutely on point observation with a few plans, like, ''the war is lost unless we ...'' Or ''the war is lost, so let's cut our losses and redeploy in such a way that we can win, etc.'' But there is no denying the truth about what he did say. He talks like Gen. Patton and my right-wing friends accuse him of being Casper Milquetoast. People love to complain about how America has changed since 1945 and about how we couldn't win one like we won World War II. I say fiddlesticks. If America's changed, it's because we've become a country in denial – I hate to quote a movie, but as Jack Nicholson said in ''A Few Good Men,'' ''You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!'' This week as a country, we've proved that we can't handle the truth.
We've had no real debate about this war. We've shouted about patriotism, treason, support the troops, cowards and liars, but no real debate about strategy, tactics and whether the Iraqis want the vision of Toledo, Ohio that George Bush is selling. Or whether they're even capable of re-creating Toledo in a place like Sadr City.
The way I figure it, bad policy is like joining AA – first you have to admit there's a problem. Harry Reid, two years late, finally admitted there was a problem – that the old ways couldn't continue and that the war is lost. If we all just face reality, we might be able to climb out of this hole.
Sorry folks, but Harry Reid, thank you.
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