The Washington Monthly

January 31, 2008

POST-DEBATE OPEN THREAD.... Well, wasn't that pleasant? No Wal-Mart, no Rezko, no race-based disputes. I can't help but think that the last debate, the ugliest of the campaign, annoyed so many people, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama came into tonight knowing they had to be on their best behavior. They had plenty of opportunities to take some shots, but both carefully avoided confrontation.

I can never tell how people are going to respond to these debates -- in terms of who "won," or who had the best "zingers" -- but my first-blush reaction is that these two seemed to be at the top of their game. I thought Clinton was stronger on discussion of healthcare policy, which dominated the first hour, while Obama was stronger on Iraq, which dominated the second. (What's the old expression? "If you're explaining, your losing"? Clinton still seems awkward talking about her 2002 vote. She doesn't want to admit a mistake, but she also doesn't want to stand by her previous position. It leaves her in a tough spot, politically and rhetorically.)

I also noted repeated references to John McCain -- by my count, four from Obama and two from Clinton. They're already laying the groundwork for the general election, which is encouraging. (Obama also got a nice dig in on Romney, though at this point, it's probably unnecessary.)

So, what did you think?

Post Script: By the way, did CNN really need all of those cut-away shots to movie stars? Yes, it's Hollywood, we get it.

—Steve Benen 10:17 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (189)

MANO A MANO.... The final debate for the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates is about to get underway in Los Angeles, but before the event begins, David Kurtz points out to a tidbit that I found amazing.

CNN just reporting that tickets to tonight's L.A. debate between Hillary and Obama are going for upwards of $1,000 apiece.

Now, I like to think that there's more interest in the presidential campaign this year than in previous cycles, and I'm delighted by the excitement surrounding the Democratic field.

But I never thought I'd see the day in which people paid in upwards of $1,000 to see a political debate, which is going to be televised anyway.

All of a sudden, I guess it's cool to be a political junkie. I knew if I waited long enough....

—Steve Benen 7:53 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (89)

ANOTHER AL QAEDA NO. 3.... Stop me if you've heard this one: al Qaeda's #3 man has been killed.

A senior al Qaeda terrorist who allegedly plotted and carried out attacks against U.S. and coalition forces was killed in Pakistan, a knowledgeable Western official and a military source told CNN Thursday.
He was identified as Abu Laith al-Libi, 41, who was on the military's most wanted list.

Al-Libi was thought to have been involved in the February 2007 bombing at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan while Vice President Dick Cheney was visiting.

The knowledgeable Western official said al-Libi was "not far below the importance of the top two al Qaeda leaders" -- Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

CNN Middle East analyst Octavia Nasr called al-Libi the third-ranking terrorist in al Qaeda and fourth in the world.

This is certainly welcome news. I'm curious, though, if anyone has a list of al Qaeda #3s who've been captured or killed recently. I was keeping a list for a while, and I think al-Libi is the seventh, following Hamza Rabia, Abu Faraj al-Libbi, Saif al-Adel, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mohammed Sheikh Mohammed, and a senior operational leader identified in court documents as "C-2."

You'd think, after a while, al Qaeda's #4 guys would stop seeking promotions.

—Steve Benen 5:35 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (58)

OBAMA'S THE #1 LIB?....Be prepared to hear about this, over and over again, for quite a while. If Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination, it will be the staple of every Republican stump speech between now and Election Day.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was the most liberal senator in 2007, according to National Journal's 27th annual vote ratings. The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and 10th-most-liberal during his first two years in the Senate.

If all of this sounds a little familiar, it's because in 2004, National Journal named John Kerry the most liberal senator of 2004 (John Edwards was fourth), which became one of the principal talking points of the Bush-Cheney campaign, repeated at literally every campaign rally for months.

Already, this is getting plenty of play, and for all I know, this might even help Obama in the primaries, because there are plenty of liberal Democrats out there who want some reassurance that Obama really does stand with them.

But before anyone takes the National Journal rankings at face value, it's worth noting how very flawed the methodology is. Indeed, it was misleading in 2004, and it's equally misleading now.

Taking a closer look at this year's results, Obama and Joe Biden were both considered more liberal than Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders. This, alone, should make one wonder about the reliability of the rankings.

Better yet, National Journal's press release on the rankings noted the criteria was based on 99 key roll-call votes last year: "Obama voted the liberal position on 65 of the 66 votes in which he participated, while Clinton voted the liberal position on 77 of 82 votes." So, Clinton voted for the liberal position 77 times, Obama voted for it 65 times, which makes Obama the chamber's single most liberal member. Got it.

What's more, Obama was the 16th most liberal senator in 2005, and the 10th most liberal in 2006, before racing to the front of the pack in 2007. National Journal suggests this has something to do with Obama moving to the left to curry favor with Democratic primary voters.

But there's a more logical explanation: Obama missed a whole lot of votes in 2007 -- he's been on the campaign trail -- but was on the floor for many of the biggest, most consequential votes. In nearly every instance, he voted with the party. And with that, voila! The most liberal senator in America.

Except that's not much of a standard. The rankings use an amorphous meaning of the word "liberal," and the percentage doesn't take missed votes into account at all (which also helps explain why Kerry nabbed the top spot four years ago)

But none of that is going to matter for the rest of the campaign. The Republican National Committee has already issued a statement and, one assumes, every far-right outlet in the country will soon do the same.

That, of course, doesn't make it legit. As Brian Beutler noted, [T]his is philistinism masquerading as social science -- it's the U.S. News College Guide of Washington politics. Journalists ought to understand that. And those of conscience ought to ignore it, or lay it bare, but certainly not feed into it."

I think that's right, but there's just one catch: the Obama campaign needs to be cautious in how it responds. If the senator pushes too hard to distance himself from liberalism, it will backfire and hurt his campaign. Maybe something like this would work: "If finishing #1 means I stood against the Bush agenda more than anyone else, then I'll consider this an honor."

—Steve Benen 4:10 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (56)

'SLOW DOWN OUR ECONOMY'?.... ABC News' Jake Tapper has caused quite a stir with an item this morning about a speech Bill Clinton delivered yesterday in Denver.

In a long, and interesting speech, he characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren."
At a time that the nation is worried about a recession is that really the characterization his wife would want him making? "Slow down our economy"?

I don't really think there's much debate that, at least initially, a full commitment to reduce greenhouse gases would slow down the economy....So was this a moment of candor?

Actually, no, it's a moment taken out of context in such a way as to change the meaning of the sentence. Consider what Clinton actually said.

"And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties -- would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that.
But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work."

Tapper appears to have gotten the story backwards. He wrote that Clinton "characterized what the U.S. and other industrialized nations need to do to combat global warming this way: 'We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.'" Clinton actually argued the opposite.

But Tapper's mistake is spreading quickly.

The Republican National Committee, among others, are making hay of the ABC report. "Senator Clinton's campaign now says we must 'slow down the economy' to stop global warming," Alex Conant, an RNC spokesperson, said. "Clinton needs to come back to Earth. Her 'tax-it, spend-it, regulate-it' attitude would really bring the economy crashing down."

Please. How misleading was Tapper's report? Far-right blogs are criticizing it. The Corner's Iain Murray wrote:

[The ABC] video is actually (and again, I can't believe I'm saying this) really unfair to Bill Clinton. The biter bit, you may say, but I don't believe this sort of manipulation by the media is in any way helpful. The clip is out of context.... That's not good journalism in any sense.

Hot Air added:

I have to say, as much as I loathe Billy Jeff and all, ABC is misrepresenting what he said. Sure, he uttered the line about slowing down the economy, but he followed that with an explanation of why that's a bad idea.... The bottom line is that, for whatever reason, ABC actually played Clinton's "slow down the economy" line unfairly.

When conservative bloggers are defending Bill Clinton against bad journalism, you know the journalism has to be really bad.

Nevertheless, I'm afraid with the RNC and Townhall.com pushing the bogus story line, we may be looking at media malpractice along the lines of "inventing the Internet." How soon until pundits are simply asserting, as fact, the notion that Bill Clinton wants to "slow down our economy"?

—Steve Benen 2:28 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (101)

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE....Hello all. Just wanted to let everyone know that Marian and I are fine and I'll be back on the blog tomorrow. More later.

—Kevin Drum 1:35 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (23)

AN 'UNEXAMINED' DYNASTY?.... The NYT's Nicholas Kristof, who usually doesn't write too much about domestic politics, today tackles the question of family dynasties and the White House.

In a presidential campaign that has involved battles over everything from Iraq to driver's licenses, one sweeping topic has gone curiously unexamined: Does it diminish American democracy if we keep the presidency in the same two families that have held it since 1989?
If Hillary Rodham Clinton serves two terms, then for 28 years the presidency will have been held by a Bush or a Clinton. By that point, about 40 percent of Americans would have lived their entire lives under a president from one of these two families.

Wouldn't that make our democracy seem a little, er, Pakistani?

People can certainly draw their own conclusions about the two-family phenomenon -- I've heard Clinton respond to questions about it many times -- but how on earth is this a "curiously unexamined" question? The NYT itself has written about this many times.

In fact, I checked Google for the words "Clinton dynasty" and found over 400,000 results.

I get the sense Kristof is bursting through an open door on this one.

—Steve Benen 12:08 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (104)

MUKASEY'S TOLERANCE FOR LAW-BREAKING....When Alberto Gonzales would periodically stop by the Senate Judiciary Committee for oversight hearings, it was extraordinarily painful. The bulk of the poor schmo's answers, when he wasn't feigning a faulty memory, were so breathtakingly dishonest, it was almost comical.

Michael Mukasey, in this sense, is a breath of fresh air. His callous disregard for the rule of law comes across as far more competent and direct. After yesterday's hearing, Dahlia Lithwick had a gem.

...Mukasey is only willing to make and defend his decisions without explaining them. Still, he is very convincing in asserting that even though his decision is secret and its rationale is secret, and all future applications are secret, he is nevertheless confident that it's the right decision. [...]
More and more frequently, we hear members of the Bush administration crying about the evils of "lawfare" -- the notion that foreign policy gets decided in courts, and government actors are paralyzed by future legal liability and unable to act boldly to protect us. You'd think the answer would be to clarify for those government actors what the rules are, so they might conform their behavior to protect themselves. But in the new Bush/Mukasey construction, rules tip off the enemy, so it's better to make them up in secret as you go along.

At one point, Mukasey argues that he "can't contemplate any situation in which this president would assert Article II authority to do something that the law forbids." When Arlen Specter points to specific instances in which Bush has done just that -- including laws banning torture, FISA, and the National Security Act -- Mukasey takes a pass.

Apparently, for the nation's chief law-enforcement official, what's done is done.

—Steve Benen 11:02 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (32)

MAKING THE CASE FOR A MCCAIN MATCH-UP....Now that Democrats feel confident about which Republican they're going to face in November, the race for the Democratic nomination appears poised to enter a slightly different phase: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will start making the case that they can beat John McCain in a general election, and their rival can't.

To be sure, electability has been a part of the campaign process from the beginning, but it was always more of a broad, general pitch about the candidates' appeal. Now, it's going to get focused -- Dems aren't just talking about taking on a generic Republican opponent anymore; they're talking about a specific, known quantity.

For his part, Obama seized on a perceived opportunity at an event at the University of Denver yesterday.

"It's time for new leadership that understands that the way to win a debate with John McCain is not by nominating someone who agreed with him on voting for the war in Iraq," Mr. Obama said, "who agreed with him in voting to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran; who agrees with him in embracing the Bush-Cheney policy of not talking to leaders we don't like."

He added, "We need to offer the American people a clear contrast on national security, and when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party, that's exactly what I will do. Talking tough and tallying up your years in Washington is no substitute for judgment, and courage, and clear plans. It's not enough to say you'll be ready from Day One -- you have to be right from Day One."

As it stands, I actually think this is a healthy development. Clinton and Obama agree on most policy issues, and it gets tiresome to hear them argue about peripheral points. Having a GOP rival in mind should help focus the debate between them, with each able to make the case for how and why they can win the election.

As far as I can tell, the basic pitch from Obama's perspective will be: He appeals to more independents and frustrated Republicans than Clinton; he represents a better contrast (old vs. young, new vs. stale); and he unites the left and divides the right, while Clinton divides the left and unites the right.

And the basic pitch from Clinton's perspective will be: She has better support among independents and frustrated Republicans than the conventional wisdom suggests; McCain will make Obama look young and inexperienced -- especially on matters regarding the military and national security -- a line he can't use against her; and the right may rally against her, but she knows how to deal with their attacks, persevere, and come out ahead. Can we say the same about Obama?

We'll probably see quite a bit of this at tonight's debate on CNN, the first head-to-head debate of the year. Should be interesting.

—Steve Benen 10:18 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (134)

MCCAIN'S MENDACIOUS MEMORY....In 2001 and 2003, Bush pushed two massive tax-cut packages through Congress, with near-universal Republican support. Indeed, it was something akin to a GOP fealty test -- to vote for the White House tax cuts was to be a good Republican.

In the Senate, two GOP lawmakers balked -- Lincoln Chafee, who later left the party, and John McCain, who no longer wants to talk about his votes.

When pressed, McCain usually argues that he rejected Bush's tax cuts because there were no accompanying spending cuts to prevent massive deficits. The defense has always been largely incoherent, for at least two reasons. First, McCain now believes tax cuts can pay for themselves (aka, the "Tax Fairy" theory), so there was no need for spending cuts. Second, McCain, at the time, said quite clearly that his opposition to the cuts had nothing to do with spending, and everything to do with Bush's policy being excessively skewed to the wealthy.

At last night's Republican debate in Simi Valley, the LAT's Janet Hook asked for an explanation. McCain responded:

"I was part of the Reagan revolution. I was there with Jack Kemp and Phil Graham and Warren Rudman and all these other first that wanted to change a terrible economic situation in America with 10 percent unemployment and 20 percent interest rates. I was proud to be a foot soldier, support those tax cuts, and they had spending restraints associated with it.
"I made it very clear when I ran in 2000 that I had a package of tax cuts, which were very important and very impactful, but I also had restraints in spending. And I disagreed when spending got out of control, and I disagreed when we had tax cuts without spending restraint. And guess what? Spending got out of control.

"Republicans lost the 2006 election not over the war in Iraq; over spending. Our base became disenchanted."

Does this make any sense at all? The question was rather straightforward: what McCain said in 2001 and 2003 doesn't match what McCain is saying now. He had one rationale for his position then, and a different rationale for his position now. That's not necessarily the end of the world -- candidates can change their mind -- and this was a chance for McCain to explain the pretty obvious inconsistency.

But he responded with a garbled and incoherent mess. Noam Scheiber said McCain's answer was "one of the most incoherent answers I've heard at a presidential debate this campaign season." I'm hard pressed to disagree.

The point I can't get around, though, is that McCain had to realize a question like this was coming. Indeed, after a year of campaigning, he's probably heard it before.

Maybe McCain's vaunted political skills have been exaggerated a bit?

—Steve Benen 8:58 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (40)

DEBATE OPEN THREAD....Kevin had to step away unexpectedly for a day or two, but in the meantime, I thought I'd open the floor for some discussion about the Republican debate at the Reagan library.

Did Romney do anything to slow McCain down? Did McCain do anything to undermine his frontrunner status? Did Huckabee have any success gaining ground? Did Paul get a chance to talk at all?

The floor is yours.

Post Script: For what it's worth, Arnold Schwarzenegger was in attendance tonight (seated alongside Nancy Reagan), and he's poised to back McCain.

—Steve Benen 12:27 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (21)

January 30, 2008

SIGNING STATEMENT FRENZY....George Bush's signing statement frenzy has now reached epic proportions:

President Bush this week declared that he has the power to bypass four laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds to establish permanent US military bases in Iraq, that Congress passed as part of a new defense bill.

....One section Bush targeted created a statute that forbids spending taxpayer money "to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq" or "to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq."

The Bush administration is negotiating a long-term agreement with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The agreement is to include the basing of US troops in Iraq after 2008, as well as security guarantees and other economic and political ties between the United States and Iraq.

As recently as a year ago the White House at least acknowledged that Congress had the power to defund military activities if it wished. In fact, their argument, essentially, was that funding was pretty much the only power Congress had over military and foreign policy. Now, apparently, they think Congress doesn't even have that.

—Kevin Drum 7:12 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (53)

ANYBODY BUT McCAIN....I happen to think that hard-right conservatives are crazy for working themselves into such a tizzy over the possibility of John McCain as the Republican presidential candidate. But then, I think hard-right conservatives are just crazy in general. So my opinion hardly counts.

That said, I love this anti-McCain ad. It's just so.....Republican. It attacks viciously, it smears without compunction, and the production values are first rate. It's great. The question is, will $20 million worth of airplay (or whatever it's getting) be enough to save Mitt Romney's skin?

—Kevin Drum 2:36 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (85)

HI-DEF IN EVERY POT....James Joyner thinks he knows why Fox News' ratings are down:

It had been quite some time since I'd watched cable news, since I find the Internet much more efficient for information gathering, but I finally turned back to it for the New Hampshire returns and was shocked to find that Fox was still broadcasting in standard def, which looks especially bad on a large screen plasma. I switched over to CNN, which has a crystal-clear hi-def signal, and never flipped back.

Really? Even election returns have to be in hi-def? Wow.

In any case, if this is true it's bad news for the conservative movement. If a sharper TV image is all it takes to get wingers to switch over to one of the hated liberal news channels, then I predict great success this November for our side. All we have to do is promise a hi-def chicken in every pot and the couch potatoes of American will flock to our banner. Who cares if Hillary killed Vince Foster as long as she promises crystal-clear teevee that makes you feel like you're right in the newsroom?

—Kevin Drum 1:55 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (51)

PATENT WARS....I've argued before that basic economics suggests that, one way or another, both profit levels and risk-adjusted returns are bound to remain more or less constant in the pharmaceutical industry. Thus, if prices fall in the U.S., they'll rise in Europe. The alternative is that European national governments are both so stupid and such ruthless bargainers (!) that they'll literally drive the pharmaceutical industry into the ground rather than pay higher prices.

Megan McArdle is decidedly of the opposite opinion. And who knows? Maybe she's right. But although I don't feel like arguing the entire big picture question right now, this particular passage struck me:

We cannot forbid pharmaceutical companies to sell into [European countries] at discount prices, because those countries can break the patents and license generic manufacturers to manufacture the drugs. All we would end up doing is removing a small source of profit from the pharma company's books.

It's true that we can't forbid pharma companies from selling into Europe at any price they want, if only because about half the pharma industry is based in Europe in the first place and therefore outside even our theoretical control. But what's this about European countries getting pissed off and just breaking patents willy nilly? That happens occasionally in third world countries, especially with expensive HIV drug cocktails, but has it ever happened (or been threatened) in a developed country with an ordinary pharmaceutical product? Wouldn't that (a) be suicidal (American drug companies would abandon your market), (b) violate all sorts of trade agreements, and (c) set off a massive retaliatory trade war (if they can break Merck's patents, we can break GlaxoSmithKline's)? Maybe I'm missing something here, but a massive, global patent war seems pretty unlikely, doesn't it?

—Kevin Drum 1:34 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (36)

NEXT STOP: RECESSIONVILLE....Fasten your seatbelts. Economic growth is tanking and inflation is spiking:

Gross domestic product rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.6% annual rate October through December, the Commerce Department said Wednesday in the first estimate of fourth-quarter GDP.

Aside from the housing slump, slowing consumer spending, inventory liquidation and lower overseas sales restrained the economy. The 0.6% pace wasn't only much slower than the third-quarter's racing 4.9%, it was far below expectations on Wall Street.

....The price index for personal consumption expenditures rose by 3.9% after increasing 1.8% in the third quarter. The much-watched PCE price gauge excluding food and energy increased 2.7% after rising 2.0% in the third quarter.

It looks like Alan Greenspan was right: his successors are going to have a much harder job than he did because they won't have the luxury of working in a low-inflation environment. Greenspan could focus on economic growth without worrying much about stoking inflation, but Ben Bernanke can't. He's got a housing bubble that's blown up, a credit crunch, slowing consumer demand, and rising inflation. The right policy response is tricky and delicate.

—Kevin Drum 12:45 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (60)

US AND THEM....You already knew this, but the Bush administration is nuts. Here's exhibit #3,886:

America's sometimes-freewheeling ambassador to the United Nations ran afoul of his superiors by taking part in unauthorized debate with two high-ranking Iranian officials during a conference of world leaders last week in the luxury Alpine resort of Davos, Switzerland.

Zalmay Khalilzad made an unscheduled appearance Saturday at a World Economic Forum discussion of Iran's controversial nuclear program, whose participants included Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and Mojtaba Samare Hashemi, a top advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

...."Ambassador Khalilzad's appearance with the Iranian foreign minister and presidential advisor was not authorized," said a State Department spokesman, who declined to be identified while discussing a personnel issue. He said officials would speak to Khalilzad about the infraction.

It's dumb enough that we have a policy of refusing to speak to Iran in the first place, as if merely talking to them would give us geopolitical cooties. But to repeatedly get bent out of shape by the mere possibility of an American diplomat saying a few words to an Iranian even in an unofficial setting is stark raving mad. Tell me again how many days are left until next January 20th?

—Kevin Drum 12:20 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (32)

EDWARDS OUT....Everybody who lives in a more favorable time zone than me already knows this, but here's today's campaign news:

John Edwards will end his presidential bid today, a source close to his campaign confirmed, effectively narrowing the Democratic field to two contenders less than a week before the Super Tuesday round of primaries.

....According to aides, Edwards will not endorse Clinton or Obama today and has no plans to weigh in for either candidate in the immediate future.

I'm genuinely surprised. Dropping out after South Carolina would have made sense. Dropping out after Super Tuesday would have made sense. But why today? More on this later, I'm sure.

—Kevin Drum 11:34 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (148)

VISIONS OF THE PRESIDENCY....Over on the left sidebar we have a new web-only piece by Sean Wilentz that takes a look at historical governing styles and proposes three different models of presidential leadership. First are the "strong presidents," who usually have lots of Washington experience and act as hands-on executives. Second are "advisory presidents," who generally rely on a circle of counselors for basic information and guidance on major policy decisions. Third are "engineer presidents," who base their leadership on competence, technical skill, and moral purity. But not every president falls neatly into one category:

As Johnson and Reagan showed, individual presidents can, at different points in their administration, exhibit aspects of more than one of these presidential models. Some candidates, likewise, may promise to combine diverse elements of what they see as leadership, such as Obama's blend of the aide-reliant advisory mode and the post-partisan purism of Hoover and Carter.

Wilentz's examples of both the advisory mode and the engineer mode are uniformly disastrous, so this is a fairly unsubtle way of telling us that he's pretty unenthused by Obama's potential. And not for the first time, either.

But your mileage may vary. Wilentz, I think, engages in some sleight of hand by basically blaming every presidential failure of the past century on bad staff advice. But there's a mighty big thumb on that scale. After all, FDR listened to his Brain Trust, Truman had Clark Clifford and George Kennan, and Reagan had Jim Baker and Donald Regan. Surely those count on the plus side?

But hey — give it a read and decide for yourself. Whether you agree with Wilentz's specific examples or not, he provides an interesting framework for viewing presidential leadership. And especially on the Democratic side, where Obama and Hillary Clinton have largely similar substantive views, the race is all about models of leadership.

—Kevin Drum 1:20 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (84)

IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE....I realize that this is going to sound painfully patronizing, but seriously, I want to congratulate the rank-and-file voters of the Republican Party for their performance so far. Obviously I'm not planning to vote for any of the Republican candidates myself, but some are worse than others: Giuliani is a creepy one-note screwball; Huckabee is ignorant and proud of it; Thompson was a coma-inducing joke; and Tancredo, Hunter, and Paul were just vanity candidates. The two who are left, McCain and Romney, are by far the least offensive of the whole field. So: congratulations GOP. Considering what you had to work with, not a bad effort.

—Kevin Drum 12:34 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (75)

January 29, 2008

McCAIN'S BASE PROBLEM....I'm not saying anything here that we don't already know, but the Florida exit polls confirm that John McCain has a big problem. As expected, he does well among independents and moderates, but also as expected, he does less well among Republicans and conservatives. Sure, they'll mostly come around in November, but mostly isn't enough. He needs 105% of the conservative base, not 95%. Remember that Karl Rove famously had to turn out four million extra conservative evangelicals just to eke out a bare win against John Kerry in 2004.

Does anyone seriously think that any Republican candidate can kick such major ass among independents in November that he can afford a conservative base that's not charged up and working feverishly to turn out every last vote? I don't.

—Kevin Drum 10:12 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (68)

GEOGRAPHY PRIMER....Mitt Romney: "America faces competition from countries like Asia and India." Not to mention cities like Venus and Jupiter.

—Kevin Drum 9:33 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (27)

McCAIN WINS IN FLORIDA....CNN just called the Republican race for John McCain. Question: does this mean that the McCain haters are going to redouble their efforts and go absolutely ballistic over the next week? Or are they going to start realizing that McCain is now inevitable and begin the process of dialing down the vitriol and circling the wagons in preparation for taking on the Democrats in the fall?

Amazingly, it's now quite possible that the Republican Party will pick a candidate before the Democrats will. I sure didn't see that coming.

—Kevin Drum 9:21 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (30)

BYE, RUDY....So everyone is saying that Rudy Giuliani is going to drop out and endorse John McCain. I guess that's supposed to help him, right?

—Kevin Drum 9:06 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (25)

THE AGE GAP....This is weird. A few weeks ago I noted that in New Hampshire Hillary Clinton had lost to Barack Obama among 18-24 year olds and 30-39 year olds, but oddly, had won in the middle group of 25-29 year olds. I wrote it off as a statistical fluke, but guess what? The same thing happened in Florida.

Once might be a fluke, but not twice. So what's going on? Why would Hillary do 10 points better among a small donut hole of 25-29 year olds compared to the two age groups surrounding it? FWIW, this cohort is the one that turned 18 during the four years of Bill Clinton's second term. Was that a period when Hillary was especially appealing to young voters, who have stuck with her ever since?

Any ideas?

—Kevin Drum 9:05 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (76)

AN ELECTION ENIGMA....A California friend emails to tell me that he got his first campaign call last night (from Obama) and this morning he got another one. But the second call was a little more mysterious:

Today I got a call from a 213 area code, and when I picked it up a recorded voice said, "My mistake. Sorry about that." And hung up.

...What the hell was that?

I've never heard of such a thing. My only guess is that this campaign, whichever one it is, will only leave a recorded message on a machine, and if you pick up you get this odd recorded apology and then it automatically hangs up on you.

Or it's some company trying to figure out whether I'm home in the daytime. Or someone who wants to rob my house and is too lazy to call on their own.

I'm stumped. Any idea?

What say you, hive mind?

—Kevin Drum 4:05 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (66)

SOTU-OLOGY....Tea leaf reading at the SOTU last night:

When Bush proclaimed, "Ladies and gentlemen, some may deny the surge is working, but among terrorists there is no doubt," Clinton sprang to her feet in applause but Obama remained firmly seated.

Obama supporter Mark Kleiman claims vindication:

Tell me again that Obama and Clinton now have the same position on the war in Iraq. I didn't hear you clearly the first time.

Close analysis of who claps when is a venerable tradition at State of the Union addresses, so this is fair enough. But since I'm obviously totally in the tank for Hillary anyway, let me take a crack at explaining why a sometime Obama skeptic doesn't find this especially convincing. (And yes, I know it was just a small jest. But it's an opportunity to make a point anyway.)

To me, it all comes down to this: Yes, Obama opposed the war, and he opposed it for good reasons. He deserves a lot of credit for that. At the same time, taking a position when you're watching from the sidelines is a lot different from taking a position when you're in office and have to pay attention to the political winds more closely. So how has Obama done on that score? Let's be honest: since he entered the Senate, Obama has hardly been a leader of the antiwar caucus. In fact, his opposition to the war has been pretty muted and his voting record has been nearly identical to Hillary Clinton's. This strikes me as a more telling indication of what Obama would do as president than a speech he gave five years ago when he was in the Illinois legislature.

I don't mean this as a huge criticism of Obama. Electoral realities are electoral realities. But it does lead me to be generally unimpressed with cost-free symbolism like declining to clap for the surge. The real question is, what will he do once he's in office and he has to make good on his symbolism? Based on his track record over the past couple of years, my guess is that his real-world policy on Iraq would be about the same as Hillary's. Maybe a little bit better if he surrounds himself with better advisors, but that's about it.

I expect that Team Obama will have a different opinion. Have at it in comments.

—Kevin Drum 2:50 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (131)

VOUCHERS....When George Bush talked last night about the "purveyors of false populism in our hemisphere," I knew he meant Hugo Chavez. But when he talked about "Pell Grants for kids," the phrase went right over my head. I guess I wasn't paying attention to the fact that it came right after his praise for "faith-based or other non-public schools."

Anyway, long story short, it turns out that "vouchers" doesn't poll well. "Pell Grants for kids," on the other hand, does. So Pell Grants it is. Steve Benen explains.

UPDATE: From The Corner:

SOTU: "Pell Grants for Kids" [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

went over very well with my Catholic-school focus group, BTW.

—Kevin Drum 12:57 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (45)

THE REBUTTAL....Dana Goldstein didn't think much of the Democratic rebuttal to the State of the Union address:

I had been excited about Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' official Democratic rejoinder, but her speech left me cold. It relied on feel-good platitudes over any real, specific critique of President Bush. An entire passage on S-CHIP failed to mention that Bush had vetoed the legislation, denying 10 million children health care. Is there any easier shot to take? Is there any more important domestic issue in America today? And on the war, Sebelius simply did not say it should end....This rhetoric felt like a time machine back to 2004. Don't we now know enough and aren't we tough enough to critique the surge happy-talk?

Well, let's face it: these things usually suck. It's just the nature of the medium: one person, stuck all alone in a cramped room, droning on to the camera. After the pomp and applause and excitement of even a routine State of the Union address, it's almost impossible for the response to be anything but soporific.

But there was even more to it this time. Unless I miss my guess, Sebelius was trying to sound like Barack Obama, talking about unity, bipartisanship, ending the rancor in DC, etc. But guess what? Unless you've got the gift for it, that kind of stuff just sounds weak and mushy. The format and timing of the rebuttal puts the speaker at a disadvantage regardless, but there's no need to make it worse by attempting a triple axel and flubbing it. Obama has the rare talent of making that kind of rhetoric sound soaring, but lesser souls should know their limits and stick to standard speechifying.

—Kevin Drum 12:44 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (49)

FLORIDA THREAD....Sorry for the late start today. Something I ate last night really didn't agree with me.

But while I get caught up, feel free to use this thread to forecast the results of today's Florida primary. My official prediction is this: the polls will probably turn out to be wrong. This just hasn't been a good year for primary polling, has it? Beyond that, though, I have no idea who's going to win. We'll just have to wait and see.

—Kevin Drum 12:16 PM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (37)

A HELPING HAND....Jon Stewart has "friends of the show," and I have "friends of the blog." One of them is Blue Girl, Red State, and BG's computer is busted. Her other computer is busted too. So she needs a new one. I've already contributed to the new laptop fund, and if you can spare a few dollars for a worthy cause then head on over to her site pronto and hit the 'ol PayPal account. It'll get her back online, and that's good karma. And we all need good karma, don't we?

—Kevin Drum 1:56 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (29)

THE CHINA CARD....Matt Yglesias isn't happy with Hillary Clinton's "politics of militarism," but he's even less happy that Barack Obama doesn't seem willing to offer the full-throated alternative he ought to be capable of. Instead, in last week's debate, he responded to Hillary's provocation ("I am better positioned and better able to take on John McCain or any Republican when it comes to issues about protecting and defending our country and promoting our interest in the world") with a weak, rambling appeal to "overcome the politics of fear in this country." Says Matt:

I'm sympathetic to what I think Obama was trying to say, but the point is better put more simply — to have the best shot at winning national security arguments with John McCain, the Democrats need a candidate who didn't support the invasion of Iraq.

....For months, [Obama] has been unwilling to make a forceful case from the left on national security issues in a Democratic primary, so it's far from clear that [in a general election] he would, in practice, make the sort of strong arguments his record leaves him capable of making. If McCain (or, for that matter, Mitt Romney) starts talking about how in a Democratic administration North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and some Iraqi dude who doesn't like having a foreign army occupy his country are all going to team up and kill your children, it won't do to respond by whining about the politics of fear. He'll have to learn to say something in response, perhaps about how the real best way to keep Americans safe is with a focused, targeted effort that gives us the maximum chance of actually killing or capturing our deadliest foes rather than one that lets them escape while needlessly stirring up unrelated trouble that multiplies the number of adversaries we face.

OK, but here's the thing. There are two reasons Obama might not be making this argument. The first is that he doesn't believe it. If that's the case, then we're stuck. Obama just isn't the change agent we'd all like to think he is.

But let's assume he really is less militaristic than Hillary. The second reason he might not be making the argument Matt wants to hear is that he believes it would be electoral suicide. Americans, perhaps, just aren't open to the idea that a "focused, targeted effort" is what we need. Maybe the politics of fear works really well, and once the genie is out the bottle then you either adopt a hard-edged, interventionist rhetoric or else you sound like a wimp.

If that's the case — and it might well be — then what we need is a new way of convincing average voters that there are better ways of staying safe and increasing our global influence than fighting lots of overseas wars. Matt himself might have some ideas on that score. But here's another one: make an appeal to national chauvinism. In the Parag Khanna piece I mentioned below, there's a bit of discussion about how China interacts with the world, and none of it has to do with projecting military power. So what would happen if you played off that? China isn't fighting foreign wars, they're doing X, Y, and Z instead. And they're winning. So we'd better get on the stick and start doing what they're doing.

A lot of Americans — maybe most — instinctively think that the best way to react to a threat is via force. Logic isn't going to change their minds, but an argument that our dumb interventions are causing us to lose ground to other countries that are smarter than us just might. Even Joe Sixpack doesn't want us to lose ground to a billion wily Chinese, after all. Maybe it's worth a shot.

—Kevin Drum 1:30 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (104)