By Michael D. Shear and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 29, 2007; A01

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., Nov. 28 — The Republican candidates for president engaged in a two-hour free-for-all Wednesday night, repeatedly confronting one another directly even as they fielded video questions submitted by Internet users in the most spirited debate of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani immediately set the tone for the combative event, using the first question to continue a weeks-long feud they have waged on the campaign trail. Each accused the other of ignoring laws against illegal immigration and distorting one another’s record on the issue.

Giuliani accused Romney of having a “sanctuary mansion” by employing illegal immigrants as lawn workers and of being “holier than thou” on the issue. Romney accused Giuliani of ignoring the laws and of welcoming illegal immigrants to New York. “That’s the wrong attitude,” Romney charged in a lengthy, heated exchange.

The clash between the two was only the start of what resembled a raucous family argument, stoked by sharp questions that touched on the most contentious issues in the Republican contest: immigration policy, abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage, race and the Confederate flag.

The exchanges at the debate, sponsored by CNN and YouTube, underscored the concerns of all the leading candidates as they jockey for advantage with five weeks remaining until the Iowa caucuses, with no contender gaining a clear edge in the battle for the GOP nomination. It also provided a public forum for the arguments that the candidates have been waging through news releases and stump speeches.

Giuliani got the opening question in the form of a video submitted by a New Yorker, who challenged him for running, as mayor, a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants.

“The reality is, New York was not a sanctuary city,” Giuliani responded, noting areas of exception to enforcing the laws on his watch that he said were necessary to maintain the health and safety of city residents.

Giuliani, the GOP front-runner in national polling, was put on the defensive throughout the night as he became the target of his rivals and of several of the questioners. He was booed by some in the audience when he said the government has a right to impose reasonable regulations on gun ownership.

Romney, who leads in surveys testing New Hampshire and Iowa, appeared cautious and unsure in his answers to several tough questions. He struggled to deal with the question whether he still “looked forward to the day” when gays could serve openly in the military. He refused to answer, saying only that “this isn’t that time.”

But the clash over immigration between Giuliani and Romney quickly engulfed the other candidates. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) defended his support of legislation that many Republicans say amounts to amnesty.

Former senator Fred D. Thompson accused Romney of flip-flopping on immigration and said Giuliani had gone to court seeking to overturn a bill designed to ban sanctuary cities. “I helped pass a bill outlawing sanctuary cities,” Thompson said. “The mayor went to court to overturn it. So, if it wasn’t a sanctuary city, I’d call that a frivolous lawsuit.”

Romney and Huckabee, who are in an increasingly tight battle in Iowa, clashed over whether children of illegal immigrants should receive college scholarships. Romney said Huckabee was wrong to support such a measure in Arkansas, to which Huckabee replied: “In all due respect, we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did.”

McCain, whose campaign was damaged by his support for comprehensive immigration legislation, promised along with others that, as president, he would secure the borders, but he called on his rivals to tone down their rhetoric on the hot-button issue. If he becomes president, he said, “We won’t have all this other rhetoric that unfortunately contributes nothing to the national dialogue.”

Tancredo, the most outspoken opponent of illegal immigration in the Republican field, stood quietly through most of the early minutes. “All I’ve heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo,” he said.

There were moments of levity, often provided by Huckabee, whose best line of the night was in answer to a question about what Jesus would do about the death penalty.

“Jesus was too smart to ever run for public office,” Huckabee said, prompting laughter on the stage and in the audience.

But the debate repeatedly turned serious and confrontational. One of the toughest exchanges came over torture, pitting McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and Romney.

A questioner asked whether any of the candidates disagreed with McCain’s contention that the practice of waterboarding constitutes torture. Romney, asked to answer first, hedged, saying that as a candidate for president, he would not specify which techniques he considers torture.

McCain could barely conceal his contempt, saying he was “astonished” that Romney would think the practice might not be torture. When Romney persisted that he would not talk specifics on the issue, McCain ripped him a second time, saying that would mean “you would have to advocate that we withdraw from the Geneva Conventions.”

Arguing that this is a defining issue for the country, McCain concluded by saying, “We should be able, if we want to be commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, to take a definite and positive position on, and that is, we will never allow torture to take place in the United States of America.

Later, McCain and Paul clashed over Iraq and foreign policy, with McCain accusing the congressman of the kind of isolationism that allowed Adolf Hitler to come to power in the 1930s.

Giuliani got a question about a report Wednesday on Politico.com about security expenses for mayoral trips to the Hamptons that were allocated to a number of obscure city agencies.

Giuliani denied any wrongdoing, saying New York mayors are provided round-the-clock security. He said he knew nothing about the expensing: “They were handled, as far as I know, perfectly appropriately.”

Democrats participated in a YouTube debate in July, but a number of GOP candidates balked at joining a similar forum scheduled for September. They criticized the Democratic debate as undignified, deriding one question presented by a snowman.

Eventually, after criticism from inside the party and out, they relented, and the debate was rescheduled for Wednesday night. The format was considerably more freewheeling and unpredictable than most previous debates and, as with the Democrats, candidates competed with the creativity of questioners from all over the country who had submitted short videos on a wide range of topics.

Almost 5,000 videos were submitted, and the debate sponsors picked 34 for candidates to respond to during the two-hour session. But moderator Anderson Cooper of CNN had plenty of leeway to probe with follow-up questions .

The debate, which was held at the Mahaffey Theater, included all eight active candidates for the Republican nomination. Rep. Duncan Hunter (Calif.) also participated in the event.

The Republican debate came at a moment when the nomination battle has turned sharply negative, particularly between Giuliani and Romney. Giuliani leads most national polls of Republicans, while Romney leads in the two states with the earliest contests, Iowa and New Hampshire — although Huckabee is now in a statistical dead heat with Romney in Iowa.

When asked whether he would accept the support of the Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay organization, Huckabee joked, “You know, in my position in this entire election, I need the support of anybody and everybody I can get.”

When the topic turned to whether the next president should commit the nation to putting a person on Mars, he ended his answer by saying, “If we do, I’ve got a few suggestions, and maybe Hillary [Clinton] could be on the first rocket to Mars.”

That quip brought a rebuke from Tancredo, who told Huckabee that his willingness to spend more on space was at the root of the problem of out-of-control spending in Washington. “We can’t afford some things, and by the way, going to Mars is one of them.”

Paul drew a question about whether he might take his grass-roots support and turn it into an independent campaign for the White House next year. Denying any intention to do so, Paul said he is largely a vehicle for widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo.

“This country is in a revolution,” he said. “They’re sick and tired of what they’re getting. And I happen to be lucky enough to be part of it.”

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 28, 2007; A04

In January, as a dormant Senate chamber entered its fourth hour of inaction and a major ethics bill lay tangled in knots, Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) took to the Senate floor with a plaintive plea.

“Here we are, the sun has set on Thursday. It is a quarter to 6. The sun officially went down at 5:13. We are like bats,” the veteran lawmaker lamented to a near-empty chamber. “Hello, it is a quarter to 6. . . . I have called everybody involved. I have been to offices. I have been stirring around, scurrying around. Is there an agenda here?”

The next 10 months appear to have given him the answer. A major overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws went down in flames. Just two of a dozen annual spending bills passed Congress, and one of those was vetoed. Repeated efforts to force a course change in Iraq ended in recrimination and stalemate. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) filed 56 motions to break off filibusters to try to complete legislation, a total that is nearing the record of 61 such “cloture motions” in a two-year Congress.

And on Monday, Lott, one of the Senate’s consummate dealmakers, called it quits.

“Is he the most frustrated he’s ever been? Probably not,” said David Hoppe, Lott’s longtime chief of staff, now with the lobbying firm Quinn, Gillespie & Associates. “But frustration is cumulative.”

Lott’s departure from Capitol Hill in the coming weeks after 34 years in Congress — 16 in the House, 18 in the Senate — is further evidence that bonhomie and cross-party negotiating are losing their currency, even in the backslapping Senate. With the Senate populated by a record number of former House members, the rules of the Old Boys’ Club are giving way to the partisan trench warfare and party-line votes that prevail in the House. States once represented by common-ground dealmakers, including John Breaux (D-La.), David L. Boren (D-Okla.), James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) and Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), are now electing ideological stalwarts, such as David Vitter (R-La.), Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) and Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).

“The Senate is predicated on the ability of people being able to work together,” said former senator Don Nickles (R-Okla.), who was majority whip for much of Lott’s years as majority leader. “I’m not throwing rocks at anybody, but there’s just been a lot less of that.”

Former majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) agreed: “Senator Lott’s resignation means the loss of one of the few Republicans in leadership who often excelled in finding compromise and common ground.”

Lott has never been a policy moderate, inclined to reach agreement with Democrats on ideological grounds. But he has almost always been a pragmatist, relishing the art of the deal. Just last month, as he labored to crack a wall of Democratic opposition to the confirmation of U.S. Appeals Judge Leslie H. Southwick, Lott wondered aloud to an aide why he was working so hard for a man he did not really know and for someone who was much more closely allied with Mississippi’s other Republican senator, Thad Cochran.

“I said to him, ‘You know, it’s not that you like Southwick. You just like the process. You want the deal,’ and he just smiled,” recalled the Lott aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was divulging private deliberations. “It was a game. It was, ‘Let me figure out how to get this done.’ ”

Such dealmakers still wander the Senate’s halls: Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah.). And others could arise as a generation schooled in pragmatism — such as John W. Warner (R-Va.) and Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) — heads for the exits next year.

“Just because an individual leaves doesn’t mean you’re not going to find new centers to structure work in the United States Senate,” said Eric Ueland, chief of staff to former majority leader (R-Tenn.). Lott would “be the first to say that no individual is indispensable.”

But with the Senate almost dysfunctional, those new power centers are difficult to find.

“The Senate is still a great deliberative body,” Nickles said. “But it’s a little less congenial and a little too partisan.”

Lott made a career out of the art of the deal. In the summer of 1996, after then-Sen. Robert J. Dole resigned to pursue the White House full time, Lott took the reins of a Senate that had ground to a halt as Democrats moved to thwart GOP accomplishments ahead of the presidential election. Lott implored his colleagues to act.

In short order, Congress approved a major overhaul of the nation’s welfare laws, cleared a bevy of other bills and cut a deal with the Clinton White House on annual spending bills. After the election, Hoppe recalled, Clinton called Lott to joke that had he not gotten the Senate back on track, the Democrats might well have recaptured a chamber of Congress.

The next year, White House Chief of Staff Erskine B. Bowles and Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin — both wealthy Wall Street financiers — sat huddled in Lott’s office, as Lott and House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) tried to cut a final deal on a balanced budget agreement that included a cut to the capital gains tax rate.

“There they were, two Democrats who had been very successful in business, squaring off with two Republicans who didn’t have two nickels to rub together,” Hoppe recalled.

They struck a deal: Cut the capital gains rate and create a major federal program to offer health insurance to children of the working poor.

After the 2000 election, which left the Senate deadlocked at 50 seats apiece, Lott again struck a deal that angered many in his party. Although Republicans technically had control of the Senate with the vote of newly elected Vice President Cheney, Lott and Daschle agreed to evenly divide the committees. Moreover, they agreed, if one party won a majority midstream, either through a party switch, a resignation or a death, the other party would agree to relinquish control without a fight.

Lott reasoned that the deadlocked Senate could waste the first months of George W. Bush’s fledgling presidency in a process fight, or he could relent early and get to work.

But such deals are getting harder to come by.

On June 7, as Lott absorbed increasingly virulent attacks from conservatives for his support of a bipartisan immigration overhaul, he took to the Senate floor for another appeal.

“This is the time where we are going to see whether we are a Senate anymore,” he intoned. “Are we men or mice? Are we going to slither away from this issue and hope for some epiphany to happen? No. Let’s legislate. Let’s vote.”

Three weeks later, the immigration bill fell to a Republican filibuster, and Congress slithered away from the issue.

The posture of Rudy’s inner circle (made up of the Yes-Rudys) is ‘to hell with the critics! He’s our guy!’

By Jonathan Alter

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 1:49 PM ET Nov 17, 2007

It was the mid-1990s, and I was trying to interview Judith Regan on the telephone about a media-industry story. We’d never met, but within a few minutes the publishing dominatrix was telling me graphic details about her sex life with her ex-husband. I’ve heard variations on the same theme from several friends: with Judith, it’s always Too Much Information, abusive and profane, pouring out of her mouth in a confusing eruption of fib and fact.

The same applies to the sensational $100 million lawsuit Regan filed last week against her former employer, HarperCollins, and its parent company, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Regan alleges that she was “smeared” as an anti-Semite by her bosses and fired on a “pretext” after being urged by a News Corp. senior executive to lie to federal investigators about her past affair with Bernard Kerik, the former New York City police chief and nominee to be Homeland Security secretary who was indicted earlier this month. The point, Regan claims, was to protect Rudy Giuliani from embarrassment.

But even as News Corp. called the suit “preposterous” and Giuliani dismissed it on the campaign trail as a “gossip item,” you could see a little fear in Hizzoner’s eyes. Turncoats are dangerous, and Regan is a skillful and brazen enough media manipulator to keep this story humming for months.

The lawsuit feels thin. While it’s true that no one in News Corp. management deemed Regan anti-Semitic until it was convenient for their efforts to scapegoat her, she offers little evidence for her allegations, and is unlikely to win without smoking-gun tapes, which have yet to materialize.

But Regan, whose career blew up last year amid the fiasco of News Corp.’s seeking to profit from O. J. Simpson’s “confessions,” is not your basic disgruntled employee. She generated hundreds of millions of dollars in News Corp. revenues (with best sellers from the likes of Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore and porn star Jenna Jameson). She had her own TV show, courtesy of Murdoch and Fox News Channel founder Roger Ailes. And long before trysting with Kerik in an apartment near Ground Zero that by some accounts was supposed to be reserved for exhausted recovery workers, she was an important player in the FoxRudy power axis, now aiming for the presidency.

Before Giuliani gets there, Americans might want to learn more about the New York demimonde he runs with. In recent years, New York’s hothouse of sex and power has sometimes felt like a nuthouse, with the inmates in charge. It’s astonishing how often you hear traumatized former staffers or bemused acquaintances of Rudy and Roger and Bernie and Judith use exactly the same words to describe them: he (or she) is crazy, as if the political, media, law-enforcement and publishing worlds were run by the denizens of the “Star Wars” bar.

Beyond Giuliani’s temperamental fitness, there’s the question of whether this craziness has a way of trickling down. Giuliani’s subordinates (known as the Yes-Rudys) outdo each other in proving their fanatical loyalty. The whole culture of the inner circle is thus infected: To hell with the critics! He’s our guy!

The Kerik-Giuliani relationship was described by Kerik himself in his memoirs (edited by Regan) as something out of “The Godfather.” After each of Giuliani’s cronies kissed him one by one in a darkened room, he realized: “I was being made. I was now part of the Giuliani family, getting the endorsement of the other family members, the other capos.”

How else to explain how Kerik, who was known by Giuliani to have shady connections (he was briefed), was made police commissioner and then pushed forward in 2004 by Giuliani to handle what the candidate calls the president’s most critical function—homeland security? When his nomination was withdrawn, the explanation was a “nanny problem.” In fact, Kerik was embroiled in several scandals, at least a few of which had to be known by his fellow capos. Even now, Rudy praises him. Loyalists are loyal to the idea of loyalty. Be sure of this: President Giuliani would bring more of the same.

The founding bond for this family goes back to the 1980s. Roger ran Rudy’s first (unsuccessful) campaign for mayor in 1989; then, after winning, Rudy used his power as mayor to pressure Time Warner Cable to put the fledgling Fox News Channel on the air in 1996. No Rudy, no Fox. Ailes even asked Giuliani to officiate at his wedding.

Murdoch himself is not a big part of the family. People close to Murdoch, requesting anonymity, claim he’s never been particularly friendly with Giuliani and so far has specifically declined efforts to get behind his campaign. (He apparently prefers Michael Bloomberg.) But Ailes now has enough autonomy to boost Giuliani on Fox News, to the point where conservative supporters of rival candidates are blogging that—stop the presses!—the network is no longer “fair and balanced.”

With any luck, more episodes of this soap opera are forthcoming. It beats driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. For now, Judith Regan, media moll, is out of the family, vowing vengeance. As the Corleone family said on the eve of a mob war, “Let’s go to the mattresses!”

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/70998

Absent amnesia—which only happens on soaps—Democrats will be fine.

By Markos Moulitsas

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 2:10 PM ET Nov 17, 2007

Times are tough for the Republican Party and its candidates. Earlier this month, according to Gallup, more people strongly disapproved of George W. Bush than any previous president since the advent of polling—and, really, how could things be any different? Bush can boast of an unwinnable quagmire in Iraq, a decimated housing market, economic instability and a collapsing dollar, a dysfunctional health-care system, a still-devastated Gulf Coast, a wealth gap of a scope unseen since the Great Depression and a pervasive and disturbing image of America as a hapless, blundering giant, rather than a beacon of freedom and morality in the world.

Yet despite this dismal rap sheet, Republicans refuse to distance themselves too far from Bush and his record lest they take a hit from the fringe voters who still support his presidency. That is, after all, the Republican Party base, and no presidential or congressional candidate can get far without its help. It’s why Republicans refuse to break from the president on Iraq, despite the lack of political progress in Baghdad. It’s why Republicans voted to support Bush’s veto of the wildly popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program, denying health care to millions of needy kids. Time and again, GOP leaders have forgone sensible and popular policies in favor of catering to a shrinking and increasingly isolated base.

Consequently, to stand any chance of winning next year, Republicans must pray for a national amnesia to erase the previous eight years from the minds of voters. But amnesia only happens in soap operas—and that’s why Democrats will win in 2008. As long as Democratic candidates remind voters that the Republican platform and Bush’s record are one and the same, victory will be assured.

In his first Inaugural Address, Ronald Reagan remarked that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” While the quip has provided Republicans with a cheap slogan for two decades, the philosophy behind it is beginning to box them in. If they govern effectively, they invalidate their own antigovernment ideology. And when you elect people who believe that government won’t work, you shouldn’t be surprised when government stops working.

Bush, who in his failed congressional run in 1978 campaigned against the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, gutted the effectiveness of the Mine Safety and Health Administration as president. When sharp decreases in inspections and fines led, not unexpectedly, to a rash of deaths in underground mines from the Appalachians to Utah, the administration might have thought to reverse its leniency. Even mining companies braced for a new round of regulations. Instead, the only major move from the Bush administration has been to relax regulations, in effect rewarding mining companies for having contributed to the deaths of their employees.

When Bush chose a head for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, did he select a competent administrator experienced in disaster management? No, he appointed Mike Brown, an attorney previously fired as the “judges and stewards commissioner” of the International Arabian Horse Association for gross mismanagement. He was an incompetent horse lawyer, yet Bush deemed him capable of running the nation’s top disaster relief agency. Reagan, who once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’,” might have approved the choice, but the abandoned residents of the Gulf Coast would undoubtedly beg to differ.

Neither was the Bush administration shy about exporting its government-busting ideology to Iraq, staffing the Iraqi reconstruction effort not with experts, but with twentysomething ideologues. A 24-year-old with no finance experience was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative—with no background in accounting—was put in charge of Iraq’s $13 billion budget. If the goal was to convince people that government doesn’t work, the Bush administration succeeded spectacularly—at home and abroad.

Democrats, on the other hand, believe government can be a resource for promoting the common good and thus are invested from the beginning in governing competently, efficiently and fairly. Their ideology demands it. And what better way for Democratic candidates to illustrate this contrast than by running against the Republican trifecta—the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court—that governed throughout most of Bush’s eight years in office?

Democrats should and will use Bush and his destructive policies on the campaign trail as the primary example of what happens when people who hate government are elected to run it. The message will be that Bush isn’t a historical anomaly: he’s the embodiment of modern conservatism.

If Americans want willfully ineffective government, they’ll have a Republican Party desperate for their votes. But with 70 percent of the American people thinking the nation is on the wrong track, it’s clear they expect the opposite. As long as Democrats make that contrast clear—and Bush’s record will be integral to that argument—they should be headed for victory in 2008.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/70978

Republicans who think she’ll be easy to defeat are wrong. What they should do.

By Karl Rove

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 1:56 PM ET Nov 17, 2007

I’ve seen up close the two Clintons America knows. He’s a big smile, hand locked on your arm and lots of charms. “Hey, come down and speak at my library. I’d like to talk some politics with you.”

And her? She tends to be, well, hard and brittle. I inherited her West Wing office. Shortly after the 2001 Inauguration, I made a little talk saying I appreciated having the office because it had the only full-length vanity mirror in the West Wing, which gave me a chance to improve my rumpled appearance. The senator from New York confronted me shortly after and pointedly said she hadn’t put the mirror there. I hadn’t said she did, just that the mirror was there. So a few weeks later, in another talk, I repeated the story about the mirror. And shortly thereafter, the junior senator saw me and, again, without a hint of humor or light in her voice, icily said she’d heard I’d repeated the story of the mirror and she … did … not … put … that mirror in the office.

It is a small but telling story: she is tough, persistent and forgets nothing. Those are some of the reasons she is so formidable as a contender, and why Republicans who think she would be easy to beat are wrong. The Republican presidential nomination is the most fluid and unpredictable contest in decades, but the Democratic nominee is likely to be Hillary. Not without a fight, not without losing early contests (probably Iowa, for starters) and not without bruises and bumps.

And so the question to John McCain from a woman at a town hall in South Carolina last Monday was tasteless, but key: “How do we beat the [rhymes with witch]?” Right now, Republicans are focusing much of their fire on Senator Clinton. Criticizing her unites the party, stirs up the unsettled feelings many swing voters have toward her and allows each candidate to say why he is best able to beat her. For now, that’s enough. But when a GOP nominee emerges, he needs to remember no Republican is as well known as Hillary. The Republican has room to grow in the polls as voters get a better sense of who he is and what animates him. Here’s what he needs to do.

Plan now to introduce yourself again right after winning the nomination. Don’t assume everyone knows you. Many will still not know what you’ve done in real life. Create a narrative that explains your life and commitments. Every presidential election is about change and the future, not the past. So show them who you are in a way that gives the American people hope, optimism and insight. That’s the best antidote to the low approval rates of the Republican president. Those numbers will not help the GOP candidate, just as the even lower approval ratings of the Congress will not help the Democratic standard-bearer.

Say in authentic terms what you believe. The GOP nominee must highlight his core convictions to help people understand who he is and to set up a natural contrast with Clinton, both on style and substance. Don’t be afraid to say something controversial. The American people want their president to be authentic. And against a Democrat who calculates almost everything, including her accent and laugh, being seen as someone who says what he believes in a direct way will help.

Tackle issues families care about and Republicans too often shy away from. Jobs, the economy, taxes and spending will be big issues this campaign, but some issues that used to be “go to” ones for Republicans, like crime and welfare, don’t have as much salience. Concerns like health care, the cost of college and social mobility will be more important. The Republican nominee needs to be confident in talking about these concerns and credible in laying out how he will address them. Be bold in approach and presentation.

Go after people who aren’t traditional Republicans. Aggressively campaign for the votes of America’s minorities. Go to their communities, listen and learn, demonstrate your engagement and emphasize how your message can provide hope and access to the American Dream for all. The GOP candidate must ask for the vote in every part of the electorate. He needs to do better among minorities, and be seen as trying.

Be strong on Iraq. Democrats have bet on failure. That’s looking to be an increasingly bad wager, given the remarkable progress seen recently in Iraq. If the question is who will get out quicker, the answer is Hillary. The Republican candidate wants to recast the question to: who will lead America to victory in a vital battleground in the War on Terror? There will be contentious fights over funding the troops and over intelligence-gathering right after the parties settle on their candidates. Both battles will help the Republican candidate demonstrate who will be stronger in winning the new struggle of the 21st century.

The conventional wisdom now is that Hillary Clinton will be the next president. In reality, she’s eminently beatable. Her contentious history evokes unpleasant memories. She lacks her husband’s political gifts and rejects much of the centrism he championed. The health-care fiasco showed her style and ideology. All of which helps explain why, for a front runner in an open race for the presidency, she has the highest negatives in history.

While the prospective Republican nominee is talking about her now, the time will come soon when he must spend more time telling his story. By explaining to voters why he deserves to be our next president, he will also make clear why that job should not go to another person named Clinton.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/71000

Trailing his rivals, Edwards has injected urgency into his bid.

By Holly Bailey

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 1:47 PM ET Nov 17, 2007

There are some things about John Edwards that haven’t changed in the four years since he last ran for president. The man who was once featured in People’s “Sexiest Man Alive” issue still has that glossy, immaculate head of hair. His Tom Cruise megasmile is still disarming. And if the reaction from a crowd packed into a town hall in Iowa last week is any indication, Edwards’s silky Southern drawl can still find its target. “Oh,” one elderly woman whispered after the former senator shook her hand. “He is a handsome boy.”

Edwards is even sounding the same “two Americas” theme he did last time around—that the rich get richer while the poor and middle class get the shaft. But heading into the primaries—and trailing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in national polls and the money chase—there is an edge, and urgency, to Edwards that wasn’t there in 2004. The man who once fashioned himself as a sunny populist who refused to disparage fellow Democrats—if it’s attack politics you’re looking for, he said in 2004, “I’m not your guy”—now excoriates Clinton at every opportunity.

In Dubuque last week, Edwards stood before a United Auto Workers convention and trashed Clinton as an insider beholden to big-dollar contributors. “The person who has raised the most money from Washington lobbyists,” he said, “is not a Republican. It’s a Democrat. The person who has raised the most money from the drug industry, from the health-insurance industry … the defense industry … is Senator Clinton.” His voice rising, he said it is a “lie” that any Democrat will be a better leader than any Republican. “It does not work to replace corporate Republicans with corporate Democrats!” At the Las Vegas debate last Thursday, Edwards went after Clinton the moment he got the mike. “I am surprised at just how angry John has become,” Sen. Chris Dodd said in a statement last week. “This is not the same John Edwards I once knew.”

It isn’t difficult to see why Edwards might choose to ditch light for heat. At the start of the campaign, he was leading in all-important Iowa, where he took a surprise second place in 2004. But over the summer, Clinton and Obama caught up and most polls now have the three essentially tied, with Edwards in close second or third place. To stand out, he is returning to the skills that made him rich and celebrated. Edwards made a fortune wooing juries with emotional courtroom performances that depicted his clients as victims of money-grubbing corporations. He’s now doing the same thing in the campaign, turning the country into a courtroom and putting the front runners on trial. “Ironically, the guy we are seeing today is probably the real John Edwards, because you’re not sweet and nice and positive when you’re one of the most successful trial lawyers in the country,” says Steffen Schmidt, a Des Moines radio host and political scientist at Iowa State University.

But asking if Edwards is, in fact, newly angry turns out to be the quickest way to make his staff angry. “This is who he has always been,” says deputy campaign manager Jonathan Prince. “He’s always been fighting against special interests and standing up for the little guy.” At the same time, Prince says the tone of this campaign is different, something he attributes to the candidate’s experiences running in 2004 and to his wife Elizabeth’s battle with cancer. “He’s more passionate, more intense,” he says, “but he’s not different.”

Even so, Edwards is mindful of a backlash against his attacks. NEWSWEEK has learned that his campaign quietly conducted internal polls to see how his new tone is playing. (Aides say their numbers show it hasn’t hurt him.) Bob Shrum, who managed the John Kerry–Edwards campaign in 2004, says Edwards’s efforts could backfire. Right now, Obama and Edwards are splitting the anti-Clinton vote. But, Shrum says, if Edwards “goes heavily on the attack he may end up hurting Hillary, hurting himself and helping Obama.”

If there’s one person who knows the perils of running too hot, it’s Joe Trippi. Four years ago, he managed Howard Dean’s angry-outsider campaign, which came to a screeching stop in Iowa. This time, it’s Edwards playing the anti-establishment Dean role—and one of his top advisers is Trippi, who is once again urging his candidate not to hold back. “After all he’s been through,” Trippi says, “he understands it’s not worth selling your soul to win an election.” Trippi’s experience with Dean also should have taught him that there is a line a candidate has to be careful not to cross. On the campaign trail, no one wants to hear you scream.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/70997

Barbara Shelly
November 27, 2007

The highs and lows of the political season remind me of a riddle a friend posed a long time ago.

“What four words are sure to make a sad person happy and a happy person sad?” he asked.

I didn’t have a clue, but the answer made perfect sense:

This too shall pass.

It certainly shall. Especially in these United States, where the single unifying trait of citizens may be our capacity to be contrary.

This speaks well of us, actually. We are not a people to be pushed around or herded. Let a particular person, party or movement get too comfortable in the catbird seat, and watch the backlash begin.

Karl Rove should have known better than to go on with his silly talk of a “permanent Republican majority.” This is the nation that rejected monarchy from the outset; we are not about to let any leader or political party get too high and mighty for very long.

The signs of contrariness are all around us. Only 26 percent of Americans surveyed in a recent Gallup Poll said they were satisfied with the direction in which the country was headed. More people currently prefer the Democratic Party than the GOP.

The notion of shrinking government is out of steam; more than half the people recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center think government should help the needy.

Atheists and other nonbelievers are on the rise, partly in protest of having religious doctrine forced into political debate and public policy. Of course, what was the basis of the evangelical clout displayed this decade if not a revolt against the perceived dominance of secularism in the 1990s?

David Aikman, an author and journalist, took on the subject of atheism in a recent column in the magazine Christianity Today.

“Why a surge by atheists right now?” he asks. “One explanation could be ‘faith fatigue’ among skeptics and the hard-core Left, who ordinarily make up 15 percent of the American people. … After six years of a famously evangelical White House, the secularists have recovered from their repudiation at the polls and have come out swinging.”

I would argue that “faith fatigue” has spread far beyond the liberal intelligentsia. Not everybody is renouncing the deity, but plenty of folks in the middle are alarmed at attempts to downgrade evolution in science curriculums and restrict medical research on religious grounds.

“Another explanation is subtler,” Aikman continues in his column. “American evangelicals, we must admit, have not been immune to triumphal attitudes, arrogance, foolish public statements, and, sometimes, downright hypocrisy in personal behavior.”

Bingo.

Not to pick on evangelicals; what Aikman wrote holds true, sooner or later, for every group that drinks the intoxicating brew of power.

Coaches and sportswriters will tell you a team is at its sharpest and most cohesive when it’s working its way to the upper rung. Once there, the group loses focus. Bickering sets in. Players do arrogant and stupid things. The same can be said of presidents and their staffs, majorities in Congress, and special interests and their lobbyists.

Americans don’t suffer fools gladly; it’s another of our admirable traits. We’re adept at recognizing the point at which the lean and hungry champions of reform become the flabby defenders of an unworkable order.

A few years ago, a popular theory held that Americans had retreated into red and blue camps based on social and lifestyle issues.

That theory was wrong. Gun-packing Republicans and granola-munching Democrats are perfectly capable of forming alliances centered on mutual disgust with failed policies, corruption scandals and unnecessary wars.

Contrary we stand. Right now, in presidential politics, that’s good for the Democratic Party. But lest anyone grow giddy over the prospects, remember the lesson of the riddle:

This too shall pass.

Thomas Sowell
November 27, 2007

People who are in the top 1 percent in income receive far more than 1 percent of the attention in the media. Even aside from miscellaneous celebrity bimbos, the top 1 percent attract all sorts of hand-wringing and finger-pointing.

A recent column by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek (or is that Newsweak?) laments that “the share of the nation’s income going to the top 1 percent is at its highest level since 1928.”

Who are those top 1 percent? For those who would like to join them, the question is: How can you do that?

The second question is easy to answer. Virtually anyone who owns a home in San Francisco, no matter how modest that person’s income may be, can join the top 1 percent instantly just by selling their house.

But that’s only good for one year, you may say. What if they don’t have another house to sell next year?

Well, they won’t be in the top 1 percent again next year, will they? But that’s not unusual.

Americans in the top 1 percent, like Americans in most income brackets, are not there permanently, despite being talked about and written about as if they are an enduring “class” – especially by those who have overdosed on the magic formula of “race, class and gender,” which has replaced thought in many intellectual circles.

At the highest income levels, people are especially likely to be transient at that level. Recent data from the Internal Revenue Service show that more than half the people who were in the top 1 percent in 1996 were no longer there in 2005.

Among the top one-hundredth of 1 percent, three-quarters of them were no longer there at the end of the decade.

These are not permanent classes but mostly people at current income levels reached by spikes in income that don’t last.

These income spikes can occur for all sorts of reasons. In addition to selling homes in inflated housing markets such as San Francisco, people can get sudden increases in income from inheritances, or from a gamble that pays off, whether in the stock market, the real estate market or Las Vegas.

Some people’s income in a particular year may be several times what it has ever been before or will ever be again.

Among corporate CEOs, those who cash in stock options they have accumulated over the years get a big spike in income the year that they cash them in. This lets critics quote inflated incomes of the top-paid CEOs for that year. Some of these incomes are almost as large as those of entertainers – who are never accused of “greed,” by the way.

Just as there may be spikes in income in a given year, so there are troughs in income, which can be just as misleading in the hands of those who are ready to grab a statistic and run with it.

Many people who are genuinely affluent, or even rich, can have business losses or an off year in their profession, so that their income in a given year may be very low, or even negative, without their being poor in any meaningful sense.

This may help explain such things as hundreds of thousands of people with incomes below $20,000 a year living in homes that cost $300,000 and up. Many low-income people also have swimming pools or other luxuries that they could not afford if their incomes were permanently at their current level.

There is no reason for people to give up such luxuries because of a bad year, when they have been making a lot more money in previous years and can expect to be making a lot more in future years.

Most Americans in the top fifth, the bottom fifth or any of the fifths in between do not stay there for a whole decade, much less for life. And most certainly do not remain permanently in the top 1 percent or the top one-hundredth of 1 percent.

Most income statistics do not follow given individuals from year to year, the way Internal Revenue statistics do. But those other statistics can create the misleading illusion that they do by comparing income brackets from year to year, even though people are moving in and out of those brackets all the time.

That especially includes the top 1 percent, who have become the focus of so much angst and so much rhetoric.

By Amy Sullivan

The new message driving Barack Obama’s resurgent campaign these days is “electability plus.” He debuted the new appeal at the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner earlier this month, calling for a “party that doesn’t just focus on how to win but why we should.” Obama referred to what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the fierce urgency of now” and argued that the U.S. faces too many challenges at home and abroad for Democrats to be satisfied with merely taking the White House away from Republicans.

Electability plus means not just getting elected but getting elected for the right reasons. It is a rebuttal of the argument that Hillary Clinton should win the Democratic nomination simply because of her perceived advantage against G.O.P. rivals. And it provides a rationale for why Obama is running now, why he didn’t wait four or eight years to launch a presidential campaign.

It’s significant then that Obama’s message seems to be catching on among the notoriously pragmatic Iowans. By 55% to 33%, Iowans — who will take part in a Jan. 3 caucus that will be the first test for Democratic presidential candidates — said they favored “new direction and new ideas” over “strength and experience,” a new Washington Post/ABC poll found. In July the ratio was 49% to 39%. After trailing Clinton in the state most of the year, Obama now leads by 4 points, and he has eliminated her advantage among women voters and older voters. He is also dead even with her when voters are asked whom they trust more to handle the economy, Social Security and the war in Iraq.

To run on electability plus, of course, you first have to pass the electability threshold. There, too, Obama has fresh data on his side. His aides tout the fact that their candidate boasts higher favorability ratings among independents and Republicans than either of his main rivals. (A recent Pew survey found that 21% of Republican respondents would like to see Obama as the Democratic nominee.) And the Post poll suggests that Obama could benefit from last-minute shifts in support: 34% of Iowa voters said he was their second choice, compared with only 15% for Clinton. Under the arcane rules of Iowa caucuses, that means Obama is more likely to pick up voters who can switch their support if their candidate falls short of the required 15% bar for votes.

Winning in Iowa, however, still comes down to the fine art of connecting with individual voters. And on that front, the state isn’t always a good match for Obama’s strengths. The graveyards of political campaigns are littered with candidates who excel at forging connections with individual voters but who can’t give a big speech to save their lives. Obama may be that rare politician with the opposite problem. Before a crowd of 4,000, he can be magnetic and compelling. But before a crowd of several hundred, he can sometimes fall flat.

On a Sunday evening a week after delivering the best speech of his campaign before thousands of roaring supporters at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner, the Illinois Senator is easily distracted, interrupting himself to get a bottle of water for a man with a cough. A few minutes later, he stops in the middle of a riff to pick up an earring dropped by a woman in the front row. And Obama’s energy level fluctuates. “He hits the wall in late afternoon before really firing back up,” explains Iowa press secretary Tommy Vietor, making a sine curve with his hand. For long stretches, audience members are sitting back with arms crossed, waiting to be impressed. When he finishes, the crowd stands, yet there are few cheers.

But then a 64-year-old woman named Jane Svoboda stands up to challenge him. She wants to know why Obama doesn’t talk more about terrorism — “the people who keep attacking us,” as she puts it — and illegal immigrants. Obama discusses the need to regain global respect for the U.S. and argues that President George W. Bush erred by focusing on Iraq instead of Afghanistan. Svoboda interrupts to disagree, and that gets Obama going. “Iraq did not launch 9/11,” he says, growing more and more animated. “That is part of the misinformation that has been coming out of this Administration.”

The two get into a back-and-forth, which finally wakes up the crowd. By the time Obama moves on to immigration (”These are people who are trying to make a living. I understand they broke the law. But let me tell you something: if the minimum wage in Canada was $100 an hour …”), he is, to steal a phrase, fired up. And the crowd, which cheers so loudly that he doesn’t need to finish the sentence, is won over. The passionate response has answered their electability questions. As for the plus? On her way out of the event, even Svoboda offers a positive verdict: “He did a good job.”

By JOE KLEIN

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don’t.

Senator Christopher Dodd had a nice moment in the Democrats’ Las Vegas presidential debate. Wolf Blitzer had crashed through Bill Richardson’s blowsy, high-minded disquisition on the need to observe human rights in Pakistan, with the question, “What you’re saying, Governor, is that human rights, at times, are more important than American national security?” Richardson seemed to gulp: Was I saying that? What do I do now? Uh, can’t pull a Hillary. And so, very deer in headlights, he said, “Yes.” This gave Blitzer license to ask each candidate the same question. Barack Obama wandered around in it. “The concepts are not contradictory … they are complementary.” True — but foolishly fuzzy. It was Dodd’s turn next, and he said without hesitation, “Obviously, national security, keeping the country safe.” He was quickly seconded by Clinton: “I agree with that completely.”

But the damage had been done. The next day, I suffered through Rush Limbaugh lambasting the dopey Dems, who actually — can you believe this, friends? — put the rights of terrorists above the nation’s security! That was ridiculous. All Richardson and Obama were saying was that support for human rights was an essential component of U.S. foreign policy. They are joined in this belief by George W. Bush, whose naive support for democracy in countries that aren’t ready for it has destabilized the Middle East. Sadly, that sort of complicating detail isn’t very useful in presidential campaigns. If Richardson or, more likely, Obama wins the nomination, the Republicans will have a ready-made “Human Rights for Terrorists” spot.

Dodd and Clinton were right on the merits and astute on the politics. If the Democrats want to win in 2008, they can’t be mealymouthed on issues of national security. That doesn’t mean they need to be witlessly hawkish. It doesn’t mean they have to join the neoconservative frenzy for war with Iran. It means they have to make the arguments against folly with clarity, toughness and a heavy dose of Realpolitik. It means they will have to convince the public that they will be more effective and realistic overseas than the Republicans have been. No more “Freedom Agendas.” No more quagmires. A renewed emphasis on cleaning out al-Qaeda, even if it means special operations against the terrorist camps in Pakistan (as Obama has suggested). It also means that in each and every debate, the Dems should acknowledge the progress being made in Iraq and ask the question, So why can’t we start bringing home the troops now?

That sort of clarity has been rare in the presidential campaign and almost totally nonexistent among the Democrats in Congress, who are being foolishly partisan on two key issues: continued funding for the war in Iraq and updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Iraq-funding issue is particularly difficult. Senator Carl Levin’s proposal for a gradual troop withdrawal, starting now, is the right policy. Various Bush Administration officials — though none in the White House — have told me that a troop withdrawal is the best leverage we have for shoving the Iraqis into a national-reconciliation deal. But Levin made troop withdrawal a condition for continued funding of the war, which is a kamikaze mission. The bill couldn’t muster the votes necessary to overcome a filibuster, much less the inevitable Bush veto. Indeed, with Iraq calmer for the moment, Democrats probably have fewer votes for ending the war than they did last spring. And their continued indulgence in these futile, symbolic gestures conveys a sense of weakness and incompetence. Whatever political value these votes once had — getting Republicans on the record in favor of continuing the war — has long since dissipated and may actually work against the Democrats if the progress in Iraq continues.

The Democratic strategy on the FISA legislation in the House is equally foolish. There is broad, bipartisan agreement on how to legalize the surveillance of phone calls and emails of foreign intelligence targets. The basic principle is this: if a suspicious pattern of calls from a terrorist suspect to a U.S. citizen is found, a FISA court warrant is necessary to monitor those communications. But to safeguard against civil-liberty abuses, all records of clearly nontargeted Americans who receive emails or phone calls from foreign suspects would be, in effect, erased. Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee’s bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that — Limbaugh is salivating — House Republicans believe would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target’s calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. (Democrats dispute this interpretation.) In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid.

As Dodd said, when the President takes the oath of office, he (or she) promises two things: to protect the Constitution and to protect the nation against enemies, foreign and domestic. If the Democrats can’t find the proper balance between those two, they simply will not win the presidency.

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don’t.

By KAREN TUMULTY

Social Security has always been an issue that united the Democrats like no other. But suddenly, the most successful and popular government program in history is a subject of fractious debate in their party’s presidential primary. Barack Obama suggests that Hillary Clinton is refusing to engage in “a real, honest conversation” about the challenges that lie ahead for the program. And Clinton is accusing Obama of buying into “Republican scare tactics.”

At issue: Obama’s proposal to increase the taxes that wealthier Americans pay into the system. Currently, workers are taxed on only the first $97,500 of what they earn, a limit that will rise to $102,000 next year. Getting rid of the income cap, he says, would be enough to “virtually eliminate” the funding shortfall and guarantee the solvency of the system without cutting benefits. John Edwards would also increase the taxes but only on income over $200,000. And Clinton–well, she refuses to be pinned down on what, if anything, she would do with Social Security. Instead, she says she would put her emphasis on balancing the budget and appoint a bipartisan commission to figure out what to do with Social Security.

Turning it over to a commission is the kind of duck-and-cover drill that politicians have usually been able to get away with on Social Security. But Obama and Edwards aren’t going along this time. “We’re not really picking a fight about Social Security,” says Obama strategist David Axelrod. “We’re picking a fight about candor. [Obama] has been forthright about this, and Senator Clinton hasn’t.”

In Social Security, Obama believes he has found the perfect issue to demonstrate the transcendent brand of politics he offers. “We will not be able to solve this problem and protect Social Security for good until we stop treating it like a political wedge issue and instead unite Republicans and Democrats behind a sensible solution,” Obama wrote in an Op-Ed column in Iowa’s Quad-City Times.

But critics, including liberals who have allied with Obama on other issues, say any solvency crisis could be decades away. They accuse Obama of buying into the dire scenarios with which the Bush Administration tried–unsuccessfully–to partially privatize the system. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman went so far as to write that Obama had been “played for a fool.” Adds a Clinton strategist: “This whole conversation is bewildering. Every Democrat in America has spent the past several years arguing that Social Security is not in a crisis.”

All of this is going to be watched closely, especially in Iowa. Proportionally, the state has one of the nation’s oldest populations. In 2004, 64% of those who attended Iowa’s Democratic caucuses were over the age of 50. While much has been said and written about Obama’s appeal to younger voters, he is also gearing his campaign toward the senior set, even proposing to eliminate income taxes for older Americans making less than $50,000 a year.

As a campaign issue, Social Security has a treacherous history. The last time it figured in any substantial way in a Democratic presidential primary was back in 1992. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton seized on a single passage in Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas’ campaign literature in which Tsongas floated the idea of holding down cost-of-living adjustments for entitlement programs. Bill Clinton declared that the idea proved Tsongas was an enemy of Social Security. He hammered that misleading charge in a barrage of negative ads and clinched the Democratic nomination. Candor in politics can carry a big price.

Former Mayor Tries To Chip Away at Lead
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 26, 2007; A01

CONCORD, N.H., Nov. 25 — With Rudolph W. Giuliani looking to spring a surprise against Mitt Romney in the state hosting the nation’s first primary, the race for the Republican presidential nomination took a sharply negative turn here Sunday as the two candidates traded accusations about taxes, crime, immigration, abortion and ethical standards.

The rhetorical volleys underscored the growing stakes here in New Hampshire, where Romney leads in the polls but Giuliani now believes he has a chance to derail the former Massachusetts governor’s campaign before it can build the kind of momentum that could make him unstoppable.

Leading in national polls, Giuliani had long appeared to be playing down the importance of early-voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire in favor of the bigger states that hold their contests in late January and early February. But he said in an interview Saturday that he intends to win here. “We think we can catch him and get ahead of him,” he said of Romney.

Romney responded by tweaking the former New York mayor, saying Giuliani sounded increasingly worried about losing the nomination. “He’s not in the top three in Iowa, and he’s not in the first two in New Hampshire, so desperate times for Mayor Giuliani call for desperate efforts,” he said before leaving Concord for campaign events in western New Hampshire.

Romney dramatically escalated the attacks Sunday with a salvo at Giuliani, who had earlier criticized him over a judicial appointee who had overruled a lower court and ordered the release of a convicted killer, who has since been charged with another killing. Romney has called on the judge to resign. With his wife, Ann, and other members of his family at his side, he said it is essential for Republicans to pick a nominee “who can distinguish himself on family values” from the Democratic front-runner, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.).

He then proceeded to link Giuliani to Clinton on abortion, gay rights and immigration, and ended with tough words for the former mayor’s support for former New York police commissioner Bernard B. Kerik to be secretary of homeland security. Kerik, a longtime friend and confidant of Giuliani’s, was recently indicted on multiple corruption charges.

“I believe it’s important for someone to be pro-life, to be pro-family and pro-traditional marriage, to be in favor of legal immigration but against illegal immigration and to have a record of insisting on the highest ethical standards, and I’m afraid that on all four of those measures that Mayor Giuliani would be the wrong course for our party,” Romney said. “He is in the same position as Hillary Clinton on life and on marriage and on the ethical history of his administration, and also on sanctuary cities and immigration policy.”

Giuliani’s weekend assault on Romney went well beyond the matter of a controversial judicial appointment. During an interview aboard his campaign bus on Saturday, Giuliani belittled Romney’s claims to be a committed conservative and accused his rival of turning his back on his “one” notable accomplishment: expanding health care to cover all citizens of his state.

“When you look back on Romney’s governorship of Massachusetts, there’s only one accomplishment, and he’s running away from that,” Giuliani said as the bus rolled through New Hampshire.

“I don’t see where he’s going to make the claim to being particularly conservative as the governor of Massachusetts,” Giuliani said. “I can certainly make the claim quite accurately at being the most successful at reducing crime of any mayor in the country, probably in history.”

With former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee gaining in Iowa, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) clinging to some of the support he enjoyed in New Hampshire when he won here eight years ago, and former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) increasingly on the attack, the Republican race has taken on the feel of a five-ring circus.

Romney leads public polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire, while Giuliani and Thompson are essentially tied for third behind Huckabee in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll of Iowa Republicans. In New Hampshire, recent polls show Giuliani and McCain statistically tied for second place.

Throughout the campaign, Giuliani’s advisers have outlined a strategy that they said could overcome early losses to Romney in Iowa and New Hampshire with victories in subsequent contests in Florida, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. But Giuliani expressed little interest in putting that theory to the test unless absolutely necessary.

“It is not inconceivable that you could, if you won Florida [after losing in the early states], turn the whole thing around,” Giuliani said. “I’d rather not do it that way. That would create ulcers for my entire staff and for me. . . . We want to win as many of the early ones as possible. That’s why we’re here and not in Florida right now.”

Giuliani was dismissive of the other leading Republican candidates, particularly Thompson. Asked about Thompson’s criticism that he spends too much time talking about his record in New York, Giuliani laughed.

“I will not really respond to Fred, because it might discourage him from campaigning, and he’s doing so little of it I don’t want to discourage him,” he said, taking a shot at Thompson’s reputation as a less-than-frenetic campaigner. “It’s okay. Fred can say what he wants.”

But his toughest comments were reserved for Romney. “Nobody thought of him as a fiscal conservative,” Giuliani said. “People did think of me as a fiscal conservative. Romney says he tried to lower taxes. I give him credit for that. But he never accomplished it. I did accomplish it. . . . He wasn’t particularly good at reducing crime. I was the most effective in the country at reducing crime. Murder went up when he was governor. Robbery went up. Violent crimes went up.”

Romney accused Giuliani of mangling his facts. “He’s got a real problem checking facts,” Romney said during a Sunday afternoon interview, arguing that violent crime in Massachusetts declined 7 percent while he was governor. Giuliani aides immediately challenged that assertion.

On health care, Giuliani challenged Romney to stand behind the plan enacted while he was governor, which mandates health care for all individuals in Massachusetts. “The oddest thing is he doesn’t want to do for America what he did for Massachusetts,” he said, laughing. “He did mandate health care for Massachusetts, which is Hillary Care, and he doesn’t want to do that for America.”

“I was just across the country this week talking about my plan,” Romney said in response. “I’m very proud of my health-care plan and think it should be a model for other states to adopt.” Giuliani, he noted, has not yet laid out details of how he would address concerns about the health-care system.

Romney insisted that his decision to talk about family values on Sunday had nothing to do with the personal life of a rival who has been married three times. He said he was angry that Giuliani had used the judicial controversy to attack him after he had refrained from personally criticizing Giuliani over Kerik’s indictment. “I must admit that of all the people who might attack someone on the basis of an appointment, I thought he would be the last to do so,” Romney said.

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) will announce this afternoon that he’s retiring from the Senate late next month, stunning Republicans who had only last year reinstated Lott to their leadership ranks.

Lott, 66, the minority whip, made the decision over the Thanksgiving weekend with his family in Pascagoula, Miss., according to a senior Republican insider. Lott’s move shocked Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have seen a wave of veterans announce their decision to retire next year as the GOP looks increasingly certain to remain in the minority. But Lott is the most senior Republican to announce he is leaving office, and his decision comes barely a year after he won re-election to a six-year term.

Lott’s departure is equally stunning because, after cruising to his re-election last year, he completed a political rehabilitation from allegations of racial insensitivity because of remarks he made at a 100th birthday party for Strom Thurmond in December 2002, which led to his banishment from GOP leadership. Last November, after four years as a back-bench Republican who burnished his image as a deal-maker, Lott won a narrow race to become GOP whip, the No. 2 post in leadership.

“Fatigue has set in,” said the GOP aide, requesting anonymity to speak freely about a decision that will not be formal until a noon press conference in Pascagoula. (Check back to Capitol Briefing during the day for updates on Lott’s press conference.)

Lott grew tired of the political infighting in the Senate as Republicans have been forced into a position of merely blocking a Democratic agenda, the aide said, stressing that the decision was not connected to any health or ethical issues.

Gov. Haley Barbour (R) will be allowed to appoint a successor to the seat, but a special election to fill the remainder of the term is likely to be scheduled for next November. Barbour and Lott are both close to Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.), who worked for the senator before winning his own House seat. Pickering had decided earlier this year to retire at the end of next year rather than run for re-election to his House seat. Democrats had been wooing former state Attorney General Michael Moore to run against Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) next year but Moore demurred. (See “The Fix” for more details about the race to succeed Lott in Mississippi.)

Lott’s departure is the biggest blow yet to Republicans who have been fighting the perception that they will remain in the minority in both the House and Senate for some time to come. While many of the retiring GOP lawmakers were former subcommittee chairs and senior members not happy with minority status, Lott is the first member of either chamber’s leadership to announce he will walk away from the Capitol.

Today’s decision will complete a two-year roller coaster ride for Lott and his emotional investment in the Senate. In December 2005, Lott returned home for the holidays expecting to announce his retirement at the end of 2006. But, as he and his aides later explained, he reversed course and decided to run for re-election because he wanted to help the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, which was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. Lott lost his home in the storm, and complained at the time that he had little personal money to rebuild his Pascagoula home destroyed by the hurricane.

Billions in hurricane rebuilding funds have been approved, and a veto override this month to save a water projects bill should keep the Gulf Coast in good stead for years to come. Moreover, Mississippi Sen.Thad Cochran, Lott’s Republican counterpart, surprised some in Washington when he announced he would seek a sixth term. That took political pressure off Lott, who would not have wanted two Mississippi Senate seats up in the same year, Republican officials said.

He was first elected to the House in 1972, where he served on the House Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach President Nixon. He rose to House Republican whip in the 1980s, then won a Senate seat in 1988. He became GOP whip in 1995, and won the race to succeed former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) when he stepped down as majority leader in June 1996 to pursue the presidency.

Lott had been excoriated for his remarks at Thurmond’s birthday party five years ago, during which he reminisced about Thurmond’s failed presidential bid in 1948, saying that the United States “wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years” if the segregationist candidate had won. The comment was widely condemned, including by President George Bush, who helped recruit Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) to replace Lott as majority leader.

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 — Confronting an enormous fund-raising gap with Democrats, Republican Party officials are aggressively recruiting wealthy candidates who can spend large sums of their own money to finance their Congressional races, party officials say.

At this point, strategists for the National Republican Congressional Committee have enlisted wealthy candidates to run in at least a dozen competitive Congressional districts nationwide, particularly those where Democrats are finishing their first term and are thus considered most vulnerable. They say more are on the way.

These wealthy Republicans have each already invested $100,000 to $1 million of their own money to finance their campaigns, according to campaign finance disclosure reports and interviews with party strategists. Experts say that is a large amount for this early in the cycle.

In New York’s 20th Congressional District, in the Albany area, Alexander Treadwell, an independently wealthy former State Republican Party chairman, has invested more than $320,000 of his money in a race that Republicans predict will cost each candidate at least $3 million.

While Mr. Treadwell, the grandson of a founding executive of General Electric, plans to raise money from donors, he has privately told party officials that he is ready to invest more of his money to unseat Representative Kirsten Gillibrand, a freshman Democrat, Republicans close to him said.

Ken Spain, a spokesman for the House Republicans’ campaign committee, said that the recruiting effort has made the party more competitive heading into the elections.

“We have been very fortunate in our recruiting efforts,” he said. “There will be a number of credible Republican challengers running for Congress next year that happen to have access to personal financial resources. They are in position to run strong, well-financed grass-roots campaigns next year in some of our top targeted districts.”

But Democrats, who have been closely monitoring the Republican millionaires, assert that the recruiting underscores the Republicans’ financial weakness since they lost control of Congress in 2006.

The most recent figures show that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has raised $56.6 million and has $29.2 million at its disposal. By contrast, the National Republican Congressional Committee has raised $40.7 million with a cash balance of $2.5 million.

That is a striking turnabout for the Republicans, who have outraised the Democrats by considerable margins for years. As recently as 2006, the Republican Congressional campaign committee raised $40 million more than its Democratic counterpart, $179.5 million to $139.9 million.

“National Republicans are in disarray, forcing them to recruit inexperienced and unprepared self-funders,” said Doug Thornell, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Self-financed, deep-pocketed Congressional candidates are nothing new for either party, and the Democrats have their own share for 2008. But the Democrats do not have a concerted campaign to find such candidates, they say, while the Republicans describe the recruitment of these candidates as central to their plan for the 2008 elections.

There were 14 Republicans who had already contributed at least $100,000 to their own campaigns, compared with nine at the same point in the 2005-6 election cycle, according to an analysis of campaign finance reports and interviews with strategists. (One of those candidates is an incumbent and one recently dropped out.) Republicans say they are in discussions with other wealthy potential candidates, but declined to say how many. In particular, party leaders are targeting Democrats from districts that President Bush won in 2004.

Party strategists note that a 2002 rule known as the millionaires’ amendment has tended to discourage wealthy candidates from pouring large sums into their own campaigns early on. The rule raises campaign contribution ceilings to candidates whose opponents spend large amounts of their own money.

The Republican recruiting process typically starts with party strategists identifying wealthy contributors, businessmen or individuals who have helped finance their own races in the past. Party officials then try to provide extra help developing strategies and finding consultants and staff.

Earlier this year, Republican strategists seeking a candidate for the Eighth Congressional District in Illinois met with Steve Greenberg, a wealthy businessman who was thinking about running for the United States Senate against Senator Richard J. Durbin, a Democrat.

Over several meetings at the party’s headquarters in Washington, those strategists showed Mr. Greenberg charts and maps of the district’s demographic and voting patterns to make the case that he could unseat the two-term Democratic incumbent, Representative Melissa Bean.

The pitch worked: Mr. Greenberg, who owns Herr’s Pacific, a chain of stores that sell art supplies and craft materials, entered the race, telling party leaders that he was willing to spend his own money to run the campaign, party officials said.

National party strategists have not made any endorsements, because some of the candidates face primary challenges. Other wealthy Republican candidates who have been privately wooed include James D. Oberweis, an Illinois dairy magnate who is seeking to replace Representative J. Dennis Hastert, the former House speaker, who is retiring; Mike Erickson, a business executive seeking to unseat Representative Darlene Hooley, an Oregon Democrat; and Ed Tinsley, the owner of a restaurant franchiser, who is running for an open House seat in New Mexico.

Some senior Republicans, frustrated with what they describe as anemic fund-raising by the party’s House campaign committee, say that luring wealthy candidates is no easy fix, as it does not guarantee victory. “I’ve seen many a rich guy blow cash and still not become a member of Congress,” said one top House Republican, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be seen as criticizing his colleagues.

This Republican and others argued that ready access to large sums of money was no substitute for a candidate with the personal qualities and political assets needed to meet the demands of a modern campaign, from an unflappable manner on the trail to an established network of allies and supporters.

In fact, past elections show that candidates who spend large sums of their own money frequently end up losing. In 2006, for example, only 2 of the 10 candidates who spent the most of their own money on their own races for House seats won the elections, according to an analysis of finance records and election results.

The potential limitations of relying on candidates whose most conspicuous asset is money were on display last week when a millionaire expected to pour his own money into a Congressional bid in the suburbs north of New York City abruptly dropped out of the running.

The candidate, Andrew M. Saul, a vice chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, quit the race after disclosures that he had raised money from real estate executives seeking business from the agency. Democrats say Mr. Saul’s aborted campaign shows the inexperience of the Republicans’ wealthy recruits.

But in a campaign when Democrats are trying to expand their majority, some Republicans argue that candidates able to tap personal fortunes may, at the very least, help put some Democratic incumbents on the defensive and thereby tie up money party leaders might otherwise spend challenging Republican incumbents.

“Democrats have cause for concern,” Mr. Spain said. “Not only are these candidates well-funded. But they are running full-blown campaign operations that are already putting them on the defensive.”

Indeed, in Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, in the San Antonio area, for example, Francisco Canseco, a wealthy businessman known as Quico, has invested more than $700,000 of his own money in his campaign. He has hired a staff, including a pollster, media consultants and fund-raisers, and has already begun running television advertisements, including during the San Antonio Spurs’ N.B.A. playoff and championship games last June.

Democrats, in turn, dispatched the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to Texas to headline a fund-raising event for the district’s first-term Democratic incumbent, Representative Ciro D. Rodriguez, who has $600,000 in his campaign war chest.

Todd Smith, a top adviser to Mr. Canseco, says that the Republican candidate’s willingness to bankroll his campaign allows him to reach out to voters earlier than other candidates, who must instead court donors.

“Quico’s investment has given us an opportunity to put a full-scale campaign operation in place,” he said. “Right now, you have Congressional candidates around the country meeting with donors just to get the funds necessary to run.”

James P. Pinkerton
Newsday
November 25, 2007

Clausewitz is the name and war is my game. You’ll forgive a little levity from a dead Prussian, won’t you?

I, Carl von Clausewitz, wrote the book on war. It’s called “Vom Kriege” (”On War”), and I’m proud to say it’s been required reading at military academies for two centuries.

So when Herr Pinkerton told me he was writing a column about American military strategy in the Middle East, I told him to take the day off.

Ironically, my biggest single point about war was actually a point about peace: winning the peace. As I wrote, “War is a continuation of politics by other means.” That is, if Country A can’t get Country B to do what it wants through diplomacy, well, then, Country A might have to attack. War may or may not be just or glorious; that’s not my concern. I am practical-minded, albeit maybe a little cold-blooded.

So let’s think practically about your various wars, the ones America is fighting, or might be fighting – even the one it’s winning, even if most Americans don’t know about it.

Let’s start with Iraq. A recent front-page headline from the Washington Post – I keep up! – was revealing for its substandard Clausewitzian thinking: “Iraqis Wasting an Opportunity, U.S. Officers Say.” The gist of the story, reflecting the Pentagon’s “spin,” was that the American military had prevailed on the Iraq battlefield, but that squabbling Iraqi politicians, along with incompetent State Department diplomats, were squandering the victory.

Such a newspaper story is good for blame-shifting, but it’s not good for actual war-winning. Smart strategists know – because they read it in my book – that politics and war are a continuum. They are not separate. If you win a war and then lose the politics, well, you have lost the war.

If you don’t believe me, ask the Israelis. They’ve won all their fights against the Arabs, but they haven’t won the politics of the Middle East. And that’s why Israel is still at great risk. This coming week, the Americans are summoning the Israelis to “peace talks” in your town of Annapolis, Md., with foes that don’t really want peace. Why is the Bush administration doing this? Because the Arabs that America is relying on for help in Iraq – and against Iran – have insisted that the United States “do something” about Israel. All of which is a reminder that your country hasn’t won much in Iraq, to say nothing of Iran.

From your point of view, it’s great that the Americans and Israelis can defeat the Arabs. But until you have altered Arab/Muslim political thinking – by breaking or otherwise changing their political will – then peace conferences are mere mirage-castles in the air.

As for Afghanistan and Pakistan, let’s just say this: America sends lots of lawyers, guns and money, but you don’t seem to have true influence on the destiny of 200 million Muslims – including Osama bin Laden, lurking there somewhere.

But it’s not all bleak for America in the region. A bright spot is Sudan, which has long been a haven for Islamic radicalism and terrorism. Yes, I’ll admit, in the western province of Darfur, Muslims are massacring Muslims.

But in the southern part, the Christians have achieved many of their political objectives. How? By fighting! Give war a chance: It works sometimes.

In fact, the Christians – under the charismatic leadership of Salva Kiir, in Washington recently meeting with President Bush at the White House – are inching toward independence from the Khartoum regime.

Breaking up a hostile Muslim country? Carving out a new nation? Liberating millions of African Christians, along with substantial oil deposits, to seek new alignment with the West?

That’s a full politico-military victory, in the Clausewitzian sense, if you can keep it. You Americans should savor that success and, more to the point, study it.

David Broder
Washington Post
November 25, 2007

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama’s rise in the top tier of the Democratic presidential race has been fueled by the voters’ belief that he is a candid, forthright politician. ” ‘Hard truths’ could be the slogan for the restarted Obama campaign,” says the current New Yorker magazine, in a laudatory article. In the Washington Post’s poll last week of Iowa caucus voters, Obama’s biggest lead over Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson came when voters were rating candidates as honest and trustworthy.

And now comes Shelby Steele, the Hoover Institution scholar and author of “The Content of Our Character,” with a book-length essay arguing that Obama’s public stance is essentially synthetic.

In “A Bound Man,” Steele argues that Obama has adopted “a mask” familiar to other African Americans, designed to appease white America’s fear of being thought racist by offering them the opportunity to embrace a nonthreatening black.

Steele writes that “the Sixties stigmatized white Americans with the racial sins of the past – with the bigotry and hypocrisy that countenanced slavery, segregation and white supremacy. Now, to win back moral authority, whites – and especially American institutions – must prove the negative: that they are not racist. In other words, white America has become a keen market for racial innocence.”

Steele likens Obama’s success to the fame and fortune won by Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. But the earliest of the crossover heroes he calls “Iconic Negroes” was Sidney Poitier.

And it reminded me that in his political biography of Obama, author David Mendell reported the reaction of a focus group of liberal, North Shore (Chicago area) female voters, middle-aged and elderly, when shown a videotape of Obama speaking in his 2004 Senate campaign. Asked who Obama reminded them of, the answer was “Sidney Poitier.” No wonder Hillary Clinton’s pollster, Mark Penn, is worried by the Post’s report that Obama has tied Clinton among female voters in Iowa.

But while all of the others mentioned by Steele were entertainers of one kind or another, Obama is the first to carry the “masking” technique of the “Iconic Negro” into the realm of politics.

Steele contrasts Obama with “challenger” types such as Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, whose appeal was strictly within the black community, and who were seen as threats to the Democratic establishment.

Steele, who shares with Obama the lineage of having a white mother and a black father, writes sympathetically of the cross-pressures that drove both sons to choose to live their lives as blacks while operating in largely white institutions.

“The problem here for Barack, of course, is that his racial identity commits him to a manipulation of the society he seeks to lead,” Steele writes. “To ‘be black,’ he has to exaggerate black victimization in America. … Worse, his identity will pressure him to see black difficulties – achievement gaps, high illegitimacy rates, high crime rates, family collapse, and so on – in the old framework of racial oppression.”

It strikes me as odd that Steele, who is famously outspoken as a critic of affirmative action and a proponent of “responsibility” for black men and black families, should argue that Obama will be silenced on these issues by his heritage and his ties to the South Side Chicago black community. Obama, he says, dare not deviate from the liberal Democratic line lest black voters turn on him.

As a white reporter, I am not sure I can judge this argument. But I consulted an old and close friend of Obama’s and this was her response:

It is true, as Steele says, that Obama approaches whites with the expectation of a “core of decency” that will give him a warm response. But he is not exploiting any racial guilt feelings. Indeed, he and his wife have both said they want people to see them whole, and not just the color of their skin.

Second, she noted that Obama has said repeatedly that while blacks face real issues of discrimination, they also have responsibility for their own lives. Parents must turn off the TV, he says, and read to their children. Fathers must take responsibility for the children they bring into the world. That is definitely part of his message.

As to whether that message will separate Obama from the black voters he needs, his friend made a point supported by the latest Pew research: The black community is really two societies now, with a middle class whose values are far closer to those of middle-class whites than to those of the black underclass.

Obama, whose constituency is skewed to the middle class, may reflect those values better than Shelby Steele thinks.

Long dismissed, he’s now among top GOP contenders

Presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, right, campaigns with former pro wrestler Ric Flair outside Williams Brice Stadium before the Clemson-South Carolina football game Saturday in Columbia, S.C. Associated Press (Associated Press) Iowa poll Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was in a virtual tie in a recent poll in Iowa tracking the popularity of Republican presidential contenders: Mitt Romney, 28 percent Mike Huckabee, 24 percent Fred Thompson, 15 percent Rudy Giuliani, 13 percent John McCain, 6 percent The ABC News/Washington Post telephone poll of 400 adults considered likely to participate in the caucuses was conducted Nov. 14-18. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Michael D. Shear and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post
November 25, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa – For six months, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has owned Iowa.

He spent millions on TV and unleashed his extended family to blanket the state. He survived a farm-town blitz by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and the late entrance of former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson into the Republican race. His money and organization bought him a convincing victory at the Ames presidential straw poll and a seemingly unshakable lead in the Iowa survey.

But Romney’s vision of quick, one-two victories here and in New Hampshire is crumbling, suddenly threatened by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a candidate who spent most of 2007 out of the spotlight and has struggled to raise money. Polls now show the pair in a virtual tie in Iowa, a development that not only threatens Romney’s carefully laid plans but could reshape the GOP nominating contest.

Huckabee has received glowing reviews for his debate performances, showing off his folksy charm and playing to conservatives. But despite his second-place showing in the straw poll this summer, his campaign didn’t take off until this month, when polls began to show him overtaking everyone but Romney in Iowa. Money started flowing in – $1 million online in less than one week, according to his campaign – and he started to catch the attention of both pundits and rivals.

“There is nothing like winning,” says Bob Vander Plaats, Huckabee’s Iowa chairman. “If we come in second, that’s a story. If we beat Romney, the whole universe just changed.”

Huckabee’s surge here has further scrambled a race that already defied easy prediction. Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has consistently led national polls testing the Republican field, drawing on his name recognition and his performance after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But the GOP contest remains competitive in New Hampshire, wide open in South Carolina and now, Iowa is up for grabs.

Even Huckabee appears to have been caught unprepared for the sudden turn of events. His Iowa state director is in Costa Rica hunting snakes over the Thanksgiving weekend and won’t return to the state until Monday. On Friday afternoon, Huckabee’s Iowa headquarters at the corner of Locust and 6th in downtown Des Moines was locked and deserted.

“How much can you do on America’s number one shopping day?” Vander Plaats explained, saying the staff will gear up the office again on Monday.

With just a few weeks remaining before the caucuses, Huckabee is frantically trying to organize his supporters in the Hawkeye State. They include a network of evangelical Christians who like Huckabee’s pro-life, anti-gay marriage rhetoric, home-school activists who appreciate the work he did for their cause in Arkansas, gun-rights groups, and advocates of replacing the income tax with a national sales tax, an idea that Huckabee has championed.

His political enemies – no shortage of which have popped up in recent days – have gone on the offensive, accusing Huckabee of numerous tax hikes, ethics violations and an ill-advised pardon. The Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group in Washington, has all but turned themselves into an anti-Huckabee machine. The Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly charges that Huckabee “destroyed the conservative movement in Arkansas.”

An ordained Baptist minister with a Southern drawl, much of Huckabee’s newfound support comes from the state’s conservative Christians, many of whom lost their favorite candidate when Brownback dropped out of the race in October. Some estimates say evangelicals could make up as much as 40 percent of GOP caucus attendees.

“That is his base. You consolidate that base in a year when the turnout is going to be pretty low, that’s a pretty good base to have,” said one longtime Iowa Republican who asked to remain anonymous to talk frankly about the candidates. He said religious voters had been disappointed by Thompson’s campaign and the decision of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia not to run this year. “Huckabee is kind of what’s left standing.”

Susan Estrich
Creators Syndicate
November 24, 2007

C ollege students won’t be voting in the Iowa caucus this year. Or, at least, most of those who would have won’t now, and those who still can might not know about it yet. No matter how you look at it, it’s a mess.

The problem is the calendar. The Iowa caucuses used to be in late January, which meant students who attend college in Iowa could caucus in the cities and towns where they go to school. Since you have to register at least 11 days in advance, that left time to do everything after Christmas – or to register before break and vote when you got back. When this campaign began, all of the candidates had college coordinators and were making appearances on campuses in the hopes that it would encourage students to register to vote and get involved.

Now, it’s hardly worth the effort. The caucuses have been moved to Jan. 3, so Iowa can stay ahead of New Hampshire, which wants to stay ahead of South Carolina, not to mention Michigan. The problem is that students who go to college in Iowa aren’t back by Jan. 3.

You can’t caucus by absentee ballot. It just doesn’t work that way in a process that requires people to go to different corners of the room depending on which candidate they support, and then regroup if their chosen candidate doesn’t have enough people to meet the threshold for a delegate in his or her corner, and so on until the final division. Even in this virtual world, it’s hard to figure how you could do that without being there. And it wouldn’t be Iowa.

But is it Iowa if you disenfranchise an entire category of voters in the never-ending quest to be first?

There was, in fact, no great scheme by the rules writers in the sky that deemed Iowa should go first because it represents a shining light of democracy in action. It was an accident of scheduling back in 1976, caused by conflicts at the convention center months later that, working backward, required the precinct caucuses to be moved forward. But once Iowa became the launching ground for Jimmy Carter’s long-shot candidacy, and once Iowans realized what a good thing they had going in terms of candidate attention, media coverage and the general boost both to the economy and the issues agenda that comes from going first, the fight was on to preserve that special status. There’s an entire school of thought that says agriculture policy in the United States has been distorted for the last 30 years by promises made by candidates to win votes in Iowa.

What Iowa sold – to the rules committees, the media and the rest of the country – was not its peculiar issues positioning, but its special brand of civic democracy. Iowa might not be representative of the diversity that is America, but it was said to represent a tradition of commitment to politics, of real participation and small “d” democracy that made it a better place than most to “vet” the candidates up close before they move on to the bigger, more impersonal, less participatory arenas where campaigns are won and lost mostly because of money and media.

But how do you square that tradition with a decision to sacrifice college students to the altar of going first?

Of course, students who live in Iowa and go to school out-of-state, or in another part of the state, can caucus with their parents on Jan. 3. But that assumes they knew enough to register to vote at their parents’ addresses at least 11 days earlier – that is, the minute they got off the train or plane or out of the car. It assumes they didn’t register in the place where they go to school and, considering themselves adults, now may think they “live.” It assumes more than most of us who spend our time trying to convince young people to vote would ever choose to assume, at least voluntarily.

I believe colleges have an obligation to teach their students civic literacy in the same way we teach computer literacy. I spend a great deal of time giving speeches on campuses, and this is often my subject. I regale them with tales of my early days, doing get-out-the-vote in Dade County, Fla., where the heavily senior citizen population will literally go by stretcher if that’s what it takes to cast a ballot. Why do you think Social Security is the sacred cow, the third rail, in American politics? It’s because old people vote and young people don’t, I tell them. And it’s your own fault.

Except in Iowa, that is.

David S. Broder
Washington Post
November 22, 2007

Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster whose firm has interviewed thousands of voters this year, says the attributes most of them desire in a president for 2008 can be summed up in three words: transparency, authenticity and unity.

I needed help from him in understanding the first word. But when he said it meant honesty, openness, forthrightness in expressing views, and clarity about the sources of the candidate’s support, I said that sounded right.

The other two traits were easily understandable. Authenticity means comfort in one’s own skin, a minimum of pretense or artificiality, and especially consistency and predictability on matters of principle.

The hankering for unity is also palpable and reflects the conspicuous absence of agreement – and excess of partisanship – in the contemporary political scene. I have been saying for months that voters care less whether the next president is a Democrat or a Republican than that the person moving into the Oval Office be someone who can pull the country together to face its challenges.

That is also the theme of an excellent new book by Ron Brownstein, the able political reporter who recently left the staff of the Los Angeles Times to become political director of the Atlantic Media Company, publishers of The Atlantic magazine, National Journal and The Hotline.

The book – “The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America” – is a guide to a dysfunctional political environment that has poisoned relationships between the executive and legislative branches and made this session of Congress notably acrimonious and unproductive.

Brownstein traces the problem back to the “sorting-out” process, which shuffled both parties’ membership starting in the 1960s. Congressional districts in the South that once elected conservative Democrats began electing Republicans. States bordering Canada that once elected moderate or progressive Republicans started electing Democrats.

Where each party used to have an ideological mixture, each is now more clearly defined – in opposition to the other. The result is a Republican Party that is far more universally (and stridently) conservative; and a Democratic Party whose center of gravity has moved equally far to the left.

The center has become lightly populated, and the penalties for politicians who communicate, let alone consort, across party lines have become much stiffer. The incentives are almost all to hunker down and fight, not to compromise and settle.

The congressional divisions have been heightened by President Bush’s strategic decision to govern almost entirely within his own party’s relatively narrow political base. He courted mainly core Republicans to power his two trips to the White House and he has relied almost exclusively on Republican votes in the House and Senate to sustain his program.

While giving him some notable victories, this strategy also solidified the opposition and stiffened the Democrats’ determination to oppose him at every opportunity – whatever the consequences.

But, as Brownstein notes, there has been no comparable increase in partisanship among the voters, who cling stubbornly to a common-sense, moderate conservative view – and simply want the practical problems that bother them addressed. The things the public worries about – the Iraq War, health care, energy, immigration – are not partisan problems, but national challenges.

That is why Hart puts unity up there with the other two principal desires in his distillation of the most-wanted presidential qualities.

The current field of presidential candidates does not offer much hope of finding that ideal. But Brownstein has a suggestion that could help the eventual winner: Consider a collaborative or what he calls an “interactive” approach to the presidency.

“On health care,” he writes, “a president could ask the heads of General Motors and Wal-Mart to sit with the leaders of the major health care unions and consumer groups to explore areas of agreement, and to pinpoint their remaining disagreements. On energy issues, oil and utility executives could be brought together with environmentalists and climate scientists. Such a convening style of leadership would tap the energy of voters and interest groups alike exhausted by the warfare in Washington.”

Indeed, it would. And what a cause for Thanksgiving that would be.

Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
November 21, 2007

“So,” the woman asked, “how do we beat the bitch?” And Sen. John McCain laughed.

It was, he said, an “excellent” question. Yes, he went on to express respect for Hillary Clinton, to whom the woman referred. But not once while answering that question at a campaign stop in South Carolina recently did he suggest that it wasn’t appropriate to call Clinton a “bitch.”

Can you imagine if the Democratic front-runner were Sen. Joe Lieberman and the woman said, “So, how do we beat this Hebe?”

Can you imagine if it were Gov. Bill Richardson and the woman said, “So, how do we beat this spic?”

Can you imagine if it were Sen. Barack Obama and the woman said, “So, how do we beat this coon?”

I guarantee you, McCain would not have laughed and if he had, we would now be writing his political epitaph. But the woman asked, “How do we beat the bitch?” and McCain did laugh and now shrugs off any suggestion that he should have done more.

He’s wrong.

I get that many people don’t like Clinton. I don’t like her much myself, and my reasons echo the consensus. She seems cold, calculated, brittle.

Here’s the thing, though. I find that I can’t name a single female national political figure I do like – not respect, not agree with, but “like.” Oh, I can name you many men who, their politics aside, strike me as likable: McCain, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, even cranky old Bob Dole.

But women? Not so much. Nancy Pelosi, Janet Reno, Condoleezza Rice, Madeleine Albright … I cannot see myself – we are speaking metaphorically here – cuddling up to any of them. They all seem formidable, off-putting, cold.

Which suggests the problem here is not so much them as me. And, if I may be so bold, we. As in, we seem unable to synthesize the idea that a woman can be smart, businesslike, demanding, capable, in charge, and yet also, warm.

Consider one of the many anti-Hillary smears now circulating online. It purports to be a compendium of profane, ill-tempered tirades she has unleashed upon subordinates. Your first thought is, what an unlikable person. Your second is, or should be, wait a minute. Does George Bush never use potty language? Was Bill Clinton never brusque? Does Dick Cheney always say thank you and please?

But it’s different, isn’t it, because she’s a woman? With the men, toughness reads as leadership, authority, getting things done. With her it reads as “bitch.” There is a sense – and even women buy into this – that a woman who climbs too high in male-dominated spheres violates something fundamental to our understanding of what it means to be a woman. Indeed, that she gives up any claim upon femininity itself.

Nor is that assessment only perception. To the contrary, it has been quantified in a number of scholarly studies and papers. For example, in “Formal and Informal Discrimination Against Women At Work: The Role of Gender Stereotypes,” a research paper published this year, authors Brian Welle and Madeline E. Heilman report that the woman who succeeds at what has traditionally been men’s work – and what is a presidential campaign if not that? – risks being seen as “hostile, abrasive, pushy, manipulative and generally unlikeable.”

Sound like anyone you know?

We demand certain “feminine” traits from women – nurturing, caring, submission – and the woman in whom those traits are either not present or subordinated to her drive, ambition and competence will pay a social price.

“How do we beat the bitch?” the woman asks. She asked it without blinking, without a second thought, righteously. And John McCain laughed.

That’s telling. The ostensible purpose of a campaign is to reveal the candidate. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, it seems, is revealing a whole lot more.

LBJ. RFK. MLK. In a year of tumult, one five-day span in early spring ‘68 was disorder distilled.

By Evan Thomas

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:03 PM ET Nov 10, 2007

Lyndon Johnson’s presidency was collapsing. By day, LBJ watched as the Vietnam War worsened and his polls and credibility plummeted. Brave boasts by the generals that they could see the light at the end of the tunnel in Vietnam had been swept away; now even establishment figures like CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite were saying the United States had to begin winding down the war. In the New Hampshire primary in mid-March, an upstart peace candidate, Eugene McCarthy, a senator heretofore known more for his poetical moods than his legislative achievements, had nearly upset the incumbent president. As the winter of 1968 turned to spring, LBJ’s aides were telling him he would lose the Wisconsin primary to McCarthy on April 2.

Johnson dreaded the nights. He dreamt that he was lying in the Red Room of the White House, his body wasted and numb. His grandmother had been paralyzed in her last years, and so had Woodrow Wilson, another president who had struggled with the burden of war. Waking from his tortured sleep, LBJ would take a small flashlight and walk the halls of the White House until he found the portrait of Wilson. Touching the painting, he would be soothed, for the moment, and go back to bed.

Johnson was bitter. “How is it possible,” he repeatedly asked, “that all these people could be so ungrateful to me after I had given them so much? Take the Negroes. I fought for them from the first day I came into office. I spilled my guts in getting them the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress … I asked so little in return. Just a little thanks. Just a little appreciation. That’s all. But look what I got instead. Riots in 175 cities. Looting. Burning. Shooting …” On and on, Johnson would rant, against the students and poor people who had turned against him, despite all he had done for them, “young people by the thousands leaving their universities, marching in the streets, chanting that horrible song about how many kids had I killed that day …” (”Hey! Hey! LBJ! …”)

Johnson’s worst dream, the most violent and diabolical, began with a twisted take on a cattle stampede. “I felt,” Johnson later confided to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, “that I was being chased on all sides by a giant stampede coming at me from all directions.” There were “the rioting blacks, demonstrating students, marching welfare mothers, squawking professors, and hysterical reporters. And then the final straw. The thing that I had feared from the first day of my Presidency was actually coming true. Robert Kennedy had openly announced his intention to reclaim the throne in the memory of his brother. And the American people, swayed by the magic of his name, were dancing in the streets.”

Sen. Robert Kennedy had announced for the presidency on March 16. On Sunday evening, March 31, Johnson was scheduled to go on national television to address the nation. The speech was supposed to be about Vietnam, and it contained some surprising news on the war front. Johnson announced that the United States would cease bombing in almost all of North Vietnam, and he invited the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. But as evening air time approached, the speech still didn’t have an ending. At about 5 p.m., as Johnson’s speechwriter, Harry McPherson, was laboring over a draft, the president phoned McPherson to tell him he had written his own peroration. McPherson instantly guessed what it would say. “I’m very sorry, Mr. President.” “Well,” Johnson replied, “I think it’s best. So long, podner.”

March 31, 1968, was the beginning of one of the worst weeks in American history. From works by historians like Goodwin, Taylor Branch and Arthur Schlesinger Jr., it is possible to reconstruct the inner thoughts of the major players who staggered on- and offstage that week, like doomed actors in a Greek tragedy.

Speaking somberly, slowly, to a nationwide audience that night, Johnson recalled how the country had unified behind the presidency when JFK was shot in 1963. With the country now divided by distrust and suspicion, this was the wrong time, LBJ reasoned, for the president to plunge into partisan politics. “Accordingly,” he concluded, “I shall not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”

“You’re kidding,” Robert Kennedy said when he heard the news as he landed at La Guardia Airport that night. On the way into Manhattan, he was silent, lost in thought. “I wonder if he would have done this if I hadn’t come in,” he finally said. At his apartment at the U.N. Plaza, he glared at his boisterous aides when their revelry drowned out the sound of the TV news. RFK said he didn’t want to hear any champagne corks popping, so his wife, Ethel, brought out the Scotch instead. Ethel, at least, was in a buoyant mood about LBJ’s decision not to run again. “Well, he didn’t deserve to be president anyways,” she remarked. Ethel Kennedy gave her anxious husband what he most craved, unquestioning loyalty and love. Her husband could be a stiff-necked moralist. But he was also a brooder, who kept tattered copies of the Greeks and Shakespeare in his pocket, and he was well acquainted with the darker shades of life.

Kennedy had anguished over the decision to run. He was afraid he might tear apart the Democratic Party and be seen as a political opportunist. As President Kennedy’s top adviser and all-purpose hatchet man, he had gained a reputation, not undeserved, for “ruthlessness.” He was sure to be criticized as a power-grabber vainly seeking to restore Camelot. More deeply, he wondered if he could ever live up to his brother Jack—and whether he might suffer the same fate. He had moped and sulked and hated those signs held up by students who wanted him to run: RFK: HAWK, DOVE—OR CHICKEN? read one. Robert Kennedy could not abide being called a coward.

His entry into the presidential race had loosed a riot of popular emotion. Traveling around the country in late March, he had been mobbed. KISS ME BOBBY read the student placards in Kansas. “The crowds were savage,” recalled John Barlow Martin, an adviser. “They pulled his cuff links off, tore his clothes, tore ours. In bigger towns, with bigger crowds, it was frightening.” In Michigan, a housewife leaned into Kennedy’s car and calmly removed his shoe, which she displayed to the reporters as a trophy of war. Kennedy’s bodyguard, Bill Barry, hung on to Kennedy as the motorcade inched through the tumult. “Not so tight,” Kennedy cried out. “You’re going to break my back.” At the podium, Kennedy’s hands shook; his voice was reedy and often mournful, or hot and petulant. But it didn’t matter. Poor whites and poor blacks, rarely political allies, turned out for him. They could hear, beneath the high-flown rhetoric Kennedy’s polished speechwriters handed him, his own vulnerability and pain and genuine empathy. It gave them—some of them, anyway—hope.

Kennedy was a practical politician. He asked to have a meeting with President Johnson—to thank him and praise him, but really to try to get a feel for how hard Johnson would work against him. LBJ’s initial reaction was, “I won’t bother answering that grandstanding little runt,” but on April 3, the abdicating king and his dreaded usurper met at the White House. “I am no kingmaker,” LBJ told Kennedy, “and I don’t want to be.” Kennedy said to Johnson, “You are a brave and dedicated man.” Speaking in a near whisper, Kennedy seemed to choke on the words and had to awkwardly repeat them. Johnson was gracious, if noncommittal, but Kennedy was not fooled. Johnson did not immediately endorse his vice president, Hubert Humphrey. But the president lost no time working against RFK. A couple of hours after he had met with him, LBJ greeted Senator McCarthy, who had also stopped by the Oval Office to gauge the president’s intentions. When Kennedy’s name came up, Johnson said nothing. Then he drew the side of his hand across his throat, in a slashing motion.

While Robert Kennedy was meeting with Johnson at the White House, Martin Luther King Jr. was sitting on a plane at Atlanta’s Hartsfield airport while dogs sniffed for a bomb. The threat was aimed at King. The civil-rights leader was on his way back to Memphis to rally striking sanitation workers. “Your airline brought Martin Luther King to Memphis, and when he comes again a bomb will go off, and he will be assassinated,” was the message left by an anonymous caller to Eastern Airlines. The pilot of the flight to Memphis helpfully told those onboard they were being held up by a bomb threat to their fellow passenger, Dr. King.

King was still preaching nonviolence, but in the feverish atmosphere of 1968, his brave benevolence was hard to sustain. King had been down, slightly adrift, as the black-power movement became angrier and more militant. On Sunday, March 31—the day LBJ announced he would not run—King had given a moving sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Having won the battle against Jim Crow and legal segregation, he was now urging his people to struggle against the even-harder targets of poverty and violence. He had told a packed cathedral that mankind must face a moral reckoning. “One day we will have to stand before the God of history, and we will talk of things we’ve done,” King said. “Yes, we will be able to say we have built gargantuan bridges to span the seas. We built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies … It seems to me I can hear the God of history saying, ‘That was not enough! But I was hungry and ye fed me not. I was naked and ye clothed me not …’ ”

The week before, a march for the striking sanitation workers in Memphis had turned violent, leaving a 16-year-old boy dead. Waiting for King that afternoon in Memphis when he finally arrived at room 306 of the Lorraine Motel was a delegation from the Invaders, a local youth gang that postured with black-power slogans and paramilitary swagger. The Invaders wanted King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference to give them $200,000 to start a “Liberation School” that would teach guerrilla warfare and martial arts. King’s aides coolly regarded the Invaders as shakedown artists. According to King’s biographer Taylor Branch, one of King’s aides, Andrew Young (later mayor of Atlanta and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations), fended off the young hotheads. “How many people did you kill last year?” he asked the Invaders, in a gently mocking tone. Last week? What are you waiting for? Why not try something real in the meantime? He offered to help them write a funding proposal that King might actually endorse. The meeting ended uneasily.

King was scheduled to speak that night at the Mason Temple at the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, but he begged off, asking his No. 2, Ralph Abernathy, to stand in his place. The night was thunderstormy, with tornado warnings, and the crowd at the enormous Temple auditorium was disappointingly small. From a pay phone in the vestibule, Abernathy implored King to come, to keep faith with the sanitation workers who had turned out on the cold, wet night. King’s entrance caused an “eerie bedlam,” wrote Branch. “Cheers from the floor echoed around the thousands of empty seats above, and the whole structure rattled from the pounding elements of wind, thunder, and rain.” King came to the microphone at about 9:30, just as the storm was cresting, and launched into a rambling, rather unremarkable speech, until he came to the ending. King mentioned the bomb threat on the flight, and added, “but it doesn’t matter now.” Branch describes what happened next:

“King paused. ‘Because I’ve been to the mountaintop,’ he declared in a trembling voice. Cheers and applause erupted. Some people jerked involuntarily to their feet, and others rose slowly like a choir. ‘And I don’t mind,’ he said, trailing off beneath the second and third waves of response. ‘Like anybody I would like to live—a long life—longevity has its place.’ The whole building suddenly hushed, which let sounds of thunder and rain fall from the roof. ‘But I’m not concerned about that now,’ said King. ‘I just want God’s will.’ There was a subdued call of ‘Yes!’ in the crowd. ‘And he’s allowed me to go to the mountain,’ King cried, building intensity. ‘And I’ve looked over. And I have s-e-e-e-e-e-n the promised land’.”

King’s eyes were brimming now and a trace of a smile crossed his face. “And I may not get there with you,” he shouted, “but I want you to know tonight, ['Yes!'] that as a people we will get to the promised land!” By now the crowd was clapping and crying and preachers were closing in behind him. “So I am happy tonight!” King exclaimed, rushing into his close. “I’m not worried about anything! I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” He broke off and “stumbled sideways into a hug from Abernathy,” writes Branch. “The preachers helped him to a chair, some crying, and tumult washed through” the Temple.

The next day, April 4, an escaped convict named James Earl Ray moved into a rooming house at 424? South Main Street. A guest staying next door to Ray noticed that he was taking frequent trips to the toilet. A small window in the bathroom overlooked the Lorraine Motel. A little before 6 p.m., Ray closeted himself in the bathroom and propped a 30.06 rifle on the window ledge.

Just below, in the motel courtyard, two King aides, Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson, were talking and joking with a local musician, Ben Branch. Dr. King emerged on the balcony and Jackson called up to him: “Doc, you remember Ben Branch?” King greeted the Memphis saxophonist and song leader. “Ben, make sure to play ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand,’ in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.”

“OK, Doc, I will,” replied Branch, just before a single round from Ray’s hunting rifle tore a three-inch hole in King’s face.

If Martin Luther King was the black man who had done the most for the cause of civil rights in America, then Robert Kennedy was the white man. King had carried the cause with passion and vision and even ecstasy, while Kennedy was far more guarded and grudging, at least at first. But Kennedy was experiential, and the more he saw of discrimination and its cruel impact as he toured the South in the 1960s, the more he was moved and galled into action. It was Robert Kennedy, more than anyone, who pressed his brother, President John F. Kennedy, to introduce what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which ended legal racial discrimination in the nation.

King and Kennedy should have been natural allies, brothers in the cause, but they were not. Kennedy was irritated at King for riling up the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover by not getting rid of an accused communist spy in his ranks (Stanley Levison, falsely accused). Kennedy would later deeply regret the FBI wiretaps he authorized against King. Then there was a matter of style. King was a Prince of the Church, and regarded Kennedy as fellow royalty. He spoke to him in a grave, dignified manner that Kennedy found unctuous and cloying. When King warned of physical danger to himself and his followers, Kennedy faulted him for not showing the sort of tough-guy insouciance that Kennedy himself would have shown (or wanted to show) in times of danger. In truth, King had a rollicking sense of humor, but Kennedy never saw it.

Still, Kennedy wanted King’s political support, and he was on the verge of getting it. King was preparing to endorse Kennedy for president. Kennedy’s reaction to King’s assassination was a mixture of shock, disappointment, bitter memory of his own brother’s death and revelation about the meaning of tragedy.

It was a New York Times reporter, R. W. (Johnny) Apple, who first told RFK King had been shot. He delivered the news to the candidate as the campaign plane was preparing to fly from Muncie to Indianapolis, Ind., where Kennedy was contending in his first primary. Kennedy “sagged,” recalled Apple. “His eyes went blank.” Arriving in Indianapolis, they learned that King was dead. Kennedy seemed to “shrink back,” remembered NEWSWEEK reporter John J. Lindsay, “as though struck physically.” He put his hands to his face. “Oh God,” he said, “when is this violence going to stop?”

Kennedy was scheduled to give a speech in a poor, black area in the inner city. The chief of police warned the Kennedy entourage to stay out of the ghetto; he refused to be responsible for their safety. Ethel begged her husband not to go, but he sent her back to the hotel and went ahead. The police escort peeled off as they entered an area of run-down buildings.

The night was cold and gray, but the crowd was in an almost-festive mood. Kennedy, clad in a dark overcoat with the collar turned up, climbed onto a flatbed truck. He pushed away a speech draft offered by his aide Adam Walinsky, and pulled out of his pocket some crumpled notes he had written himself.

In this pre-instant-news era, the crowd was ignorant of King’s death. It fell to Kennedy to tell them. As the wind whipped at his hair (recently cut short, to signal he was no wild-eyed radical), he looked slightly hunched over and frail. “I have bad news for you,” he began.

In the crowd, a Kennedy adviser named John Lewis anxiously watched the strange scene. Lewis was a hero and a martyr of the civil-rights movement. Practicing King’s creed of nonviolent resistance, he had been beaten bloody as he knelt and prayed at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., in March 1965. In March 1968, he had joined RFK’s campaign because of Kennedy’s concern for the “invisible poor” and his commitment to civil rights. “The America Bobby Kennedy envisioned sounded much like the Beloved Community I believed in,” Lewis later wrote in his memoirs. Lewis had come to Indiana to help get out the black vote, and now, still reeling from the news of King’s death, he watched transfixed as Kennedy’s soft, weary voice rose over the crowd, which was still talking and laughing as Kennedy plunged ahead.

“I have bad news for you, for all our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world,” said Kennedy. Lewis noticed that a few faces had gone somber in the front rows of the thousand or so people gathered there. “… [A]nd that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.”

“No!” gasped voices in the crowd. People began to weep and drop to their knees. Farther back, people were still talking and laughing, oblivious.

Navigating the tricky shoals of race, Kennedy stumbled a little at first as he tried to relate King’s death to the killing of his own brother. RFK had never before spoken publicly about JFK’s assassination, and he could hardly bear to speak of it privately, though the death of the president had gloomily filled his thoughts for months and years. “For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and disgust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say,” he began, “that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my own family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times,” he said, his voice gaining in strength as he found his peculiar comfort zone, the realm of myth and tragedy. Kennedy was not an articulate intellectual, but he was surprisingly well read, and he could quote the texts he carried in his pocket.

“My favorite poet was Aeschylus,” Kennedy told his audience, not many of whom had graduated from high school, but who now listened with rapt attention. “He wrote, ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or black.

“So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but most importantly to say a prayer for our country, which all of us love—a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke …

“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and to make gentle the life of this world.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”

That night, as the news of King’s death spread through the blighted parts of the land, there were riots in 110 cities causing 39 deaths and injuring 2,500. But in the city of Indianapolis, where Kennedy had spoken, it was quiet.

Kennedy had trouble sleeping that night. He wandered around the Marriott hotel, stopping in to talk to some young staffers, tucking in a young speechwriter named Jeff Greenfield at about 3 a.m. “You’re not so ruthless,” said Greenfield. “Don’t tell anyone,” said Kennedy.

The Kennedy campaign quietly arranged to have King’s body flown from Memphis to King’s hometown of Atlanta. Before the funeral, young John Lewis took Bobby and Ethel into a darkened church at 1 a.m. to view King’s body in an open casket. Kennedy wordlessly crossed himself. “I said to myself, ‘Well, we still have Robert Kennedy’,” recalled Lewis.

But he didn’t. On June 4, on the night he won the California primary, an important milestone on the march to the Democratic convention in Chicago, Robert Kennedy, too, was shot. He died two days later.

CORRECTION (ADDED Nov. 20, 2007): This story originally said that Dr. King gave his final speech at the Masonic Temple in Memphis. In fact, the speec took place at Mason Temple at the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. NEWSWEEK regrets the error.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/69542

There’s wide support for a death penalty, but those who carry it out are increasingly uncomfortable.

By Evan Thomas and Martha Brant

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 4:31 PM ET Nov 10, 2007

Texas has long been the Hang ‘em high state. In 2000, it executed convicted prisoners at the rate of almost one a week. Gov. George W. Bush seemed to take pride in turning down appeals for clemency. The “Decider” was known for spending as little as 15 minutes reviewing a death case. In a Talk magazine piece, Tucker Carlson reported that Bush mocked the plea of one double murderer on death row, pursing his lips in mock desperation and whispering, “Please, don’t kill me.” (Bush later said Carlson had “misread, mischaracterized me.”)

Texas still accounts for more than half of all executions in the United States. But a strange thing is happening in the state that has executed more prisoners than any other since the U.S. Supreme Court revived the death penalty in 1976 after a brief hiatus. Texas prosecutors are less willing to seek, and juries are less willing to grant, capital punishment for aggravated murder. In 2006, only 15 Texas convicts were sentenced to death, down from 34 a decade earlier. Texas mirrors a national trend: death-penalty sentences in the 38 states that allow capital punishment dropped from 317 in 1996 to 128 in 2005, the latest year for which statistics are available.

Why the reluctance to populate death row? Polls show popular support for capital punishment stays relatively high, at about 65 percent. But when it comes to carrying out death sentences, the people involved—judges and juries, prosecutors and prison officials—are starting to recoil, or at least pull back. What is acceptable in theory seems less and less tolerable in practice. Indeed, the Supreme Court has called at least a temporary halt to executions while it examines the fine points of killing convicts by pumping lethal chemicals into their veins. “The death penalty may go out with a whimper, not a great moral revolution,” says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

The new reluctance to punish by killing is part of a historical trend. There was a time when death and torture were spectator sports, when crowds flocked to see prisoners drawn and quartered or beheaded. In some parts of the world, flogging and stoning are still public spectacles. But in the 19th century, supposedly “enlightened” states began looking for more-humane ways to serve final justice—to kill people without causing too much suffering to either the victims or their executioners. The authorities tried hanging, firing squads, electrocutions, gas chambers and, more recently, lethal injection. Each method was supposed to be an improvement over the last.

But the results could be ghastly. Too much depended on the uneven skills of the executioners. The hangman’s noose has to be handled just so. Too short a drop and the prisoner slowly strangles. Too long a drop and the prisoner can be decapitated. Witnesses to executions in the electric chair have watched, horrified, as flames shot out of the head of the doomed prisoner. In Arizona in 1992, the state attorney general vomited and the prison warden threatened to quit after observing the agonizingly slow death of a man in a gas chamber. Today not many doctors are willing to play any part in an execution, and prison guards often complain of little or no training.

Lethal injection is less violent than a firing squad and less grisly than the electric chair. In most states, the prisoner is given a “three-drug cocktail”: a sedative to put him to sleep, a paralyzing agent to stop him from struggling (or breathing) and a drug to stop his heart. But, hands shaking, guards sometimes botch inserting the needle, and veins can be hard to find if the inmate was a drug addict. In Ohio, a prisoner raised his head to announce, “It’s not working,” and in Florida, a prisoner sustained chemical burns on his arm while he grimaced for almost a half hour. Inevitably, defense lawyers began to attack the cocktail as “cruel and unusual punishment,” banned by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.

The Supreme Court has imposed a de facto moratorium on lethal injection while it waits to hear oral arguments this January in Baze v. Rees, a case that could determine whether, or under what conditions, lethal injection can be used as capital punishment. It may be that states will resort to giving prisoners a massive dose of barbiturates—the preferred method for putting down sick pets. In theory, at least, the high court will uphold a “better” form of lethal injection, setting off a wave of executions. But whether state officials and juries will want to dispose of humans like dogs remains to be seen. A single drug might take longer to work—prolonging the death throes.

Jurors and prosecutors are steering away from the death penalty because they are both more and less afraid: more apprehensive about killing the innocent and less fearful of crime. Over the past decade, the use of DNA testing on wrongly convicted criminals has overturned prison sentences for at least 200 inmates nationwide (about 15 of them sentenced to death). In 2000, Illinois declared a moratorium on executions after 13 death-row inmates were exonerated. Back in the ’80s, when violent crime was surging along with crack-cocaine addiction in cities, Americans demanded retributive justice. But as crime rates fell in the ’90s and the first few years of the new century, jurors became more lenient in capital cases.

At the same time, prosecutors began to be wary of seeking the death penalty. A series of court decisions required that more states provide competent lawyers for the criminally accused in death-penalty cases. Better defense lawyers could stall and maneuver, running up the cost to the state of bringing a capital case. The more-clever lawyers have been especially good at introducing “mitigating circumstances” into these cases, arguing that the abuse suffered by the killer as a child helps to explain the horrible crime he or she committed. Since 1982, according to New Jersey Policy Perspective, a think tank, the state has spent more than $250 million on the death penalty, or about $11 million a year—without executing a single prisoner. With legal costs soaring in death cases, states are finding it cheaper to pay for lifetime prison sentences.

In many states, jurors chose the death penalty because they feared the convicted murderer might get out on parole and kill again. But in Texas, and many other states, jurors can now sentence the convicted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. (The motives of the Texas Legislature in passing this law two years ago were not altogether humane: when the Supreme Court did away with the death penalty for juveniles in 2005, some Texas lawmakers wanted to find a way to put away youthful killers forever.)

Opinion polls show that about 70 percent of Texans still favor the death penalty. But in Dallas, the district attorney, Craig Watkins, is not sure how he feels. “It depends on which day you ask me,” says Watkins, 39. “I’m sitting here at my desk looking at some autopsy photos. So, yeah, I’m for it.” (He was reviewing the 1996 case of a woman who killed her son and now sits on death row.) “But when I come out of church on Sunday morning, I’m against it.”

Two decades ago Watkins could not have been elected in Dallas. He is black, a Democrat and a former defense lawyer. His most famous, or notorious, predecessor was Henry Wade, the Dallas D.A. from 1951 to 1986. The year Wade left office, The Dallas Morning News found a manual used by city prosecutors. It stated: “Do not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans, or a member of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or well educated.” Minorities have been disproportionately sentenced to death— especially if the victim was white. Wade apparently wanted to make sure they got no sympathy votes. Wade, says Watkins, choosing his words judiciously, was “a product of his time.” Watkins is a product of more recent times. In the 2006 election, tough-on-crime didn’t work in Dallas. “My opponent wore the number of people he had sent to death row like a badge of honor,” says Watkins, about the Republican incumbent he beat last year. Watkins’s more benign approach—stressing justice, not vengeance—was mocked as “hug-a-thug” by detractors, but Watkins won. “I see a change in mentality,” he says. “We’ve had a lot of folks coming out who didn’t commit crimes and that gives people pause.” Dallas leads the nation in the number of DNA exonerations for all counties in the United States (14). “In the near future, we will see the death penalty rarely,” he says.

There may be no such thing as a foolproof system for killing people fairly and painlessly. The smallest glitch can make too much of a difference. The last execution before the Supreme Court imposed its moratorium is a case in point. Harris County, Texas—encompassing the city of Houston—has far more executions than most states, so it has had plenty of practice. At 9 a.m. on Sept. 25, the U.S. Supreme Court announced it would hear the Baze case challenging the constitutionality of lethal injection. Michael Richard, convicted of rape and murder in 1986, was scheduled for execution that night. His lawyers rushed to file a new motion based on the high court’s ruling, but their computer crashed and they missed the 5 p.m. filing deadline. A judge refused to keep open the state court. Richard was executed at 8:22 p.m.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/69546

Bill archenemy Richard Mellon Scaife now has ‘admiration’ for him. Huh?

By Mark Hosenball

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 4:21 PM ET Nov 10, 2007

Bill Clinton is never at a loss for company. When he’s not globe-trotting or charming audiences for as much as $400,000 a speech, he’s often schmoozing visitors in his suite of offices in Harlem. Last July, the former president sat down with a billionaire impressed with the William J. Clinton Foundation’s campaign against AIDS in Africa. The two men chatted amiably over lunch for more than two hours, and the visitor pledged to write Clinton’s foundation a generous check. But there was something unusual, if not plain weird, about the meeting. NEWSWEEK has learned that the billionaire so eager to endear himself to the former president was Richard Mellon Scaife—once the Clintons’ archenemy and best-known as the man behind a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” that Hillary Clinton said was out to destroy them.

Scaife was no run-of-the-mill Clinton hater. In the 1990s, the heir to the Mellon banking fortune contributed millions to efforts to dig up dirt on President Clinton. He backed the Clinton-bashing American Spectator magazine, whose muckrakers produced lurid stories about Clinton’s alleged financial improprieties and trysts. Scaife also financed a probe called the Arkansas Project that tried, among other things, to show that Clinton, while Arkansas governor, protected drug runners.

The Arkansas Project largely came up empty, and most of the stories were ignored by all but the most avid Clinton antagonists. But one Scaife-backed conspiracy theory got widespread attention. In 1993, White House aide and Clinton friend Vince Foster was found dead of a gunshot wound in a park outside Washington, D.C. Three official investigations concluded the death was a suicide. Yet Scaife dollars helped promote assertions that Foster had been murdered—the not-so-subtle subtext being that the Clintons had something to do with it. Scaife hired Christopher Ruddy, a reporter who doggedly pursued the conspiracy theory in a Scaife newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Though discredited, the story resonated with people who believed Clinton was hiding dark secrets. Scaife and Ruddy later started Newsmax, a Web site and magazine that attacks their enemies and lauds their heroes.

Bill Clinton now finds himself the unlikeliest of Scaife heroes. Last month Ruddy posted a softball interview with Clinton on the Newsmax site (sample question: “What is the best thing about being an ex-president?”). A worshipful cover story followed in the current edition of the magazine. Clinton, it gushed, is “a political and cultural powerhouse” who is “part Merlin and part Midas—a politician with a magical touch.”

What is going on here? Scaife declined to comment, but Ruddy tells NEWSWEEK he and Scaife believe Clinton’s life since leaving office has been “very laudable,” and that he is doing “very important work representing the country when the U.S. is widely resented in the world.” He said they never suggested Clinton was involved in Foster’s death, and insisted they were not among those hyping alleged Clinton sex scandals, though he acknowledged their work may have encouraged others.

Whatever the reasons for Scaife’s change of heart, it’s not hard to figure out why the Clintons would embrace a former nemesis. As they prepared for Hillary’s presidential run, the Clintons made quiet attempts to disarm, or at least neutralize, some of their most vocal opponents. Last year Hillary accepted an offer from Rupert Murdoch (who always hedges his bets) to host a fund-raiser for her Senate campaign. The New York Times reported that the Clinton camp has also made efforts to open a line of communication to blogger Matt Drudge, who has served as a conduit for anti-Clinton GOP leaks.

Ruddy, who accompanied Scaife to the Clinton lunch, says the peacemaking meeting came about after former New York City mayor Ed Koch offered to put the two together. (Koch declined to comment.) Clinton, pouring on the charm, greeted Scaife like an old friend. “President Clinton believes in redemption and moving forward,” says spokeswoman Jennifer Hanley. Ruddy says they talked about Clinton’s charitable work and avoided opening old wounds. After receiving the full Bill treatment, Scaife left with a new outlook on the man he had once set out to crush. Scaife isn’t ready to sign on to Hillary’s campaign—he’s still a Republican. But his lawyer, Yale Gutnick, says Bill Clinton and Richard Mellon Scaife are now members of a “mutual admiration society.” Cue the apocalypse.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/69545

Just 40% of Americans go to church weekly, but 70% want a president with strong religious faith.

By Lisa Miller

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 1:39 PM ET Nov 10, 2007

Over the past three years, Sen. John Kerry has had a lot of time to think about his God, and at a meeting with journalists in Washington earlier this month he shared those thoughts. He grew up in a Roman Catholic home before Vatican II; though devout, he prayed in private behind his closed bedroom door, as was the custom at the time. In Vietnam, he prayed to God to save his life, and when he came home some of his foxhole promises no longer felt so pressing. Kerry, a divorced, pro-choice Democrat with a foreign-seeming wife, ran for president in 2004 against an incumbent whose personal Christian-conversion story was intricately woven into his public persona. Yet, out of principle or stubbornness, Kerry chose not to expound upon his own faith until late in the race—too late, he says in retrospect. In the spring and summer of ‘04, a handful of U.S. Catholic bishops announced they’d refuse Kerry holy communion on the grounds that his stance on abortion went against church teachings, and Kerry suddenly found himself having to answer fundamental questions about who he was and what he stood for. “I should have started earlier to introduce who I really was—in ‘02 or ‘03,” he told NEWSWEEK last week. He gave a big Catholic-values speech in Florida in October, but by then it was too late. “October is October. You’ve got to do this earlier,” he says. “People have to have a sense of this as a continuum. Explaining how Catholicism has shaped my view of public life—it would have made a difference.”

These revelations should be instructive to the field of ‘08 hopefuls, who as a group represent a dramatic range of religious views and observance, from Catholic to Mormon to— potentially—Jew, and from extremely orthodox (Mitt Romney) to much less so (Rudy Giuliani). Despite their religiosity or lack thereof, all will have to tell a convincing faith-and-values story to the American public—for Americans, though cynical about politicians, still love public piety. Although just 40 percent of Americans go to church every week, 70 percent say they want a president with strong religious faith, and 94 percent believe in God, according to an August survey by Pew. Kerry believes that a candidate doesn’t have to be a regular churchgoer to be elected, but cannot under any circumstances be an atheist or agnostic. John Green, a fellow at Pew, agrees. “Supporting a candidate who’s religious is shorthand for supporting a candidate with values and principles,” says Green.

If Kerry is right, then a successful candidate must neither remain mute on the faith question nor pander, but tell an authentic personal-values narrative early and often. The thrice-married Giuliani, who told values voters last month that “I don’t easily publicly proclaim myself as the best example of faith,” seems to have passed the authenticity test: last week Pat Robertson endorsed him despite their many ideological disagreements.

Americans have elected and loved secular presidents before, from Thomas Jefferson, who decided to edit the miracles out of the Gospel stories, to Ronald Reagan, who, though a movie actor and not a regular churchgoer, was able to convince people of his sincerity and commitment to high principles. In the absence of an orthodox religion story, Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow suggests that candidates tell a story about “a sense of rebirth or change or insights or awakenings.” As the religious right scrambles to cohere, perhaps this is a good moment to remember that authentic belief in God is a personal matter, and if half of Americans can’t find God in church, maybe the president doesn’t have to, either.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/69531

By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 21, 2007; 12:47 PM

LANSING, Mich. — Michigan’s Jan. 15 presidential primary can go forward, the state Supreme Court decided Wednesday, keeping alive the state’s bid to be one of the 2008 campaign’s first contests.

The court decision should make it easier for New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner to schedule that state’s primary, which New Hampshire law requires to be the nation’s first. Gardner has been waiting to see what the Michigan courts would do.

The high court’s decision should clear the way for the Republican and Democratic parties to take part in the Jan. 15 primary. Both have already filed letters with the secretary of state saying that’s their plan.

However, by holding its primary so early _ in violation of the national parties’ rules _ Michigan stands to lose half of its delegates to the Republican National Convention, reducing the number to 30, and all of its 156 delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

The national parties have imposed similar penalties on other states as party leaders have struggled to regain control of a chaotic nominating calendar.

If Michigan has its primary on Jan. 15, that would put it behind only Iowa’s caucuses on Jan. 3, Wyoming’s caucuses on Jan. 5 and _ according to many expectations _ New Hampshire’s primary on Jan. 8.

Democrats in Michigan have kept open the possibility of picking their presidential favorite through a party caucus, even if the primary is held.

That could delay a decision on the New Hampshire date even further. Michigan Sen. Carl Levin has suggested holding the Michigan caucus the same day as the New Hampshire primary, so Gardner doesn’t want to make a decision until that issue is settled. A message seeking comment was left with his office. His deputy, David Scanlan, could not say when Gardner might set the New Hampshire date.

In its 4-3 decision Wednesday, the Michigan Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings that said the law setting up the primary was unconstitutional because it would let the state political parties keep track of voters’ names and whether they took Democratic or GOP primary ballots but withhold that information from the public.

Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis said he was pleased the primary would be held and said Republicans would participate even if Democrats switched to a caucus.

“This is good for Michigan, this is good for Republicans and it’s good for the process,” he said.

Anuzis would like to see state House Democrats next week pass a bill that would restore the names of four Democratic presidential candidates who have withdrawn from the ballot. Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson pulled their names because the state violated Democratic National Committee rules by moving up the election.

A state Senate-passed bill would require all candidates’ names to be on the ballot, although it also would give them the chance to withdraw again.

East Lansing political consultant Mark Grebner, one of several people who brought the suit arguing it was wrong to let only the political parties have access to the primary voter information, said he didn’t plan to take any additional action at this point.

He doesn’t object to the primary being held, but said other people should have access to the records because the information was obtained through an election paid for with public dollars. The circuit and appeals courts had agreed with his reasoning.

___

Associated Press Writer Joe Magruder in Concord, N.H., contributed to this story.

By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, November 21, 2007; A01

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, buoyed by strong support from Christian conservatives, has surged past three of his better-known presidential rivals and is now challenging former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney for the lead in the Iowa Republican caucuses, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Huckabee has tripled his support in Iowa since late July, eclipsing former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) and Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Huckabee now runs nearly evenly with Romney, the longtime Iowa front-runner.

Huckabee’s rise from dark horse to contender in Iowa is one more unexpected twist in a race that has remained fluid throughout the year and adds another unpredictable element to the competition for the GOP nomination. His support in Iowa appears stronger and more enthusiastic than that of his rivals.

Still, there are other signs in the poll suggesting that Romney remains the candidate to beat in the state and that gains for Huckabee may be harder to achieve in the next 43 days than they were over the past four months.

Romney outperforms Huckabee and other Republicans on key attributes, with two notable exceptions — perceptions of which candidate best understands people’s problems and which candidate is the most honest and trustworthy. On both, Romney and Huckabee are tied. At the same time, Iowa Republicans see the former Arkansas governor as less credible than Romney, Giuliani or McCain on some top issues.

The poll found that overall, 28 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers support Romney, while 24 percent support Huckabee. Thompson ran third in the poll at 15 percent, with Giuliani at about the same level, with 13 percent. McCain, whose Iowa campaign appeared to derail earlier this year over his stance on immigration, had 6 percent and was tied with Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), who rose from 2 percent in July.

Huckabee’s gains were concentrated among the party’s conservative core. He saw a 28-percentage-point jump in support from evangelical Protestants, to 44 percent, and a 19-point rise among conservatives, to 30 percent. Among previous caucus attendees, his support increased from 9 percent to 29 percent.

Huckabee probably benefited from the decision of Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.) and others to quit the race. Brownback and Huckabee had been competing for many of the same religious and conservative voters. Moreover, Huckabee’s gain in this poll does not come at the expense of those still running, all of whom are faring about the same as they were in July.

But almost half of Huckabee’s supporters (48 percent) said they would definitely vote for him in January and only a quarter said there was a good chance that they would change their minds before the caucuses. In contrast, just 29 percent of Romney’s backers said they would definitely vote for him, while 42 percent said there was a good chance that they could vote for someone else at the caucuses.

The enthusiasm among Huckabee supporters was striking, particularly in a year in which Republicans have been considerably dissatisfied with the field of candidates. Half of those who now back the former Arkansas governor said they are very enthusiastic about him, compared with 28 percent of Romney’s backers.

But despite these advantages, Huckabee’s support comes almost exclusively from certain groups of voters. His challenge will be to expand his appeal.

Nearly seven in 10 of his backers are evangelical Protestants, and nearly three-quarters attend religious services at least weekly. Just 5 percent of moderate and liberal GOP voters back his candidacy. Romney, by contrast, has wider support.

It is also primarily social issues that galvanize Huckabee’s backers.

More than four in 10 Huckabee voters call abortion or broader moral or values issues the race’s top one or two concerns. That is nearly double the number of Romney supporters to highlight these issues. Overall, three-quarters of likely GOP voters think that abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, and among the 24 percent who want the procedure to be unlawful in every instance, 36 percent support Huckabee and 22 percent Romney.

But a slew of issues drive likely GOP caucus-goers. A quarter of those surveyed said immigration is their biggest or second-biggest concern when considering whom to back on Jan. 3. The same percentage, 24 percent, highlighted the war in Iraq, and nearly as many, 21 percent, singled out terrorism and national security.

Ten percent or more cited five other issues: the economy, health care, abortion, taxes, and morals and family values. Overall, eight issues ranked in the double digits, making the discussion in the Republican contest potentially more wide-ranging than that on the Democratic side. Among likely Democratic caucus-goers, only three issues reach 10 percent, and two — Iraq and health care — dominate voters’ concerns.

On immigration, Romney has an edge: 27 percent said the former Massachusetts governor is best on the issue, while Huckabee and Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.) each received 13 percent. No candidate is clearly preferred on the other top issue, Iraq, with Giuliani, McCain and Romney each considered the best by about two in 10. Giuliani doubles up the competition, however, on handling the terrorism fight.

Romney tops the field as the candidate most trusted to handle the economy and the federal budget deficit. He and Huckabee are preferred by about equal percentages on social issues, such as abortion and same-sex civil unions.

Campaign activity on the GOP side appears to be more subdued than it is among Democrats, perhaps in part because national leaders Giuliani and McCain are not prioritizing Iowa’s caucus.

About six in 10 likely caucus-goers said they have been called by one of the campaigns. Twenty-nine percent have attended a campaign event, up six percentage points from July, but far less than the percentage of Democrats who have attended an event (52 percent). A third of GOP voters have visited one of the candidates’ Web sites and 29 percent have received e-mail. About one in five has spoken with or shaken hands with one or more of the GOP candidates. Fifteen percent have contributed money.

Romney, who has pinned his bid for the nomination on success in Iowa and New Hampshire, is widely seen as the candidate who has made the biggest effort in the Hawkeye state. More than six in 10 said that he has “campaigned the hardest in Iowa.” That’s up 14 percentage points from July, and no other candidate scored in the double digits on that question.

Romney has an advantage on the question of who has the “best experience to be president,” after a 10-point increase from July, when he was about even with Giuliani and McCain. Romney had held a marginally significant edge on “best understands problems of people like you,” but while he has stayed at 21 percent on this question, Huckabee has soared from 10 percent to 25 percent.

In July, Romney had the lead on “most honest and trustworthy” at 21 percent. He has risen to 25 percent, but Huckabee jumped from 10 percent to 26 percent.

Romney and Giuliani share the top spot as the field’s “strongest leader” and as the Republicans with the best shot at capturing the White House in November 2008. About one in eight said Huckabee is the most electable Republican, while 1 percent thought so in July. About a quarter of evangelical Protestants now think Huckabee is the GOP’s top option; four months ago, that percentage was less than 1 percent.

The poll was conducted by telephone Nov. 14 to 18 among a random sample of 400 likely GOP caucus-goers. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus five percentage points.

Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

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November 18, 2007

ROBERT NOVAK novakevans@suntimes.com

Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party’s presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.

This word-of-mouth among Democrats makes Obama look vulnerable and Clinton look prudent. It comes during a dip for the front-running Clinton after she refused to take a stand on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s now discarded plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.

Experienced Democratic political operatives believe Clinton wants to avoid a repetition of 2004, when attacks on each other by presidential candidates Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt were mutually destructive and facilitated John Kerry’s nomination.

Lou for president?

The name of longtime CNN commentator Lou Dobbs has entered speculation as a possible independent candidate for president. At age 62, he never has engaged in politics, but is reported by people who know him as pondering a presidential run.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been the most likely independent candidate, particularly if Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani win the Democratic and Republican nominations. But Dobbs’ hard-line positions on immigration, international trade and globalization starkly contrast with the three New Yorkers.

If Dobbs really chooses to run, his problem would be finding sufficient campaign funds. While billionaire Bloomberg can handle this difficulty by writing a check, Dobbs would be getting a late start in campaign finance.

Out of Iowa

Sen. John McCain soon will consider opting out of the Jan. 3 Iowa presidential caucuses to take the sting out of a probable fifth-place finish there.

McCain skipped Iowa in 2000 while nearly seizing the presidential nomination from heavily favored George W. Bush. But when McCain was the early front-runner for 2008, it was decided he would contest the state this time.

The rationale for leaving Iowa now would be total concentration on the subsequent New Hampshire primary. Although McCain defeated Bush by landslide proportions in New Hampshire eight years ago, he did so with overwhelming support from independents who are likely to vote in the Democratic primary this time.

Absentee chairman

Sen. Christopher Dodd’s absence from Washington while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination has not only created a backlog of House-passed legislation at the Senate Banking Committee that he chairs. It also has resulted in unconfirmed presidential appointees, including three governors of the Federal Reserve Board.

The three proposed Fed governors — financier Larry Allan Klane, banker Elizabeth A. Duke and economist Randall S. Kroszner (now serving on the board) — all were nominated in May. Hearings were held by August, but the Banking Committee has taken no action on them.

No hearings have been held on other nominations referred to the Banking Committee: two members of the Council of Economic Advisers; director of the Federal Housing Finance Board; president of the Government National Mortgage Association, and under secretary of commerce for international trade.

Non-Republican leader

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, starting early on his bid for election next year to a fifth term from Kentucky, is running a television ad that omits one spoken word: ”Republican.”

McConnell does not flaunt his GOP credentials in a heavily Democratic state where Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher was just defeated for re-election in a landslide. The ad features an endorsement by Alben Barkley II, grandson of a Kentucky Democratic icon, Vice President and Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley. ”Mitch McConnell is helping build a new Kentucky,” says the grandson, as he connects the Republican leader to ”the Barkley legacy.”

McConnell is not listed among the most seriously threatened Republican incumbent senators for 2008, and the strongest prospective Democratic challenger — Rep. Ben Chandler — has announced he will not run for the Senate. But facing what could be a dismal year for Republicans with unexpected defeats, McConnell is preparing an aggressive campaign.

This weekend’s summit focused mostly on poor nations, climate change, and the euro vs. the dollar.

By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Cairo

A rare meeting of the heads of state of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Saudi Arabia this weekend was predictably focused on prices. But the price most often discussed wasn’t the cost of oil, but rather the plummeting US dollar.

As oil hovers near $100 a barrel, it’s causing global jitters. Some economists worry that price, which depending on whose math you use is either near or above an inflation-adjusted record, could push many world economies into recession.

But the organization that was created in 1960 to stabilize prices, today wields less clout than it once did over the cost of crude. The 13-nation cartel once controlled prices often by just talking about pumping more or less oil. But now its leaders say booming world demand – largely from India and China – and concern over a possible US attack on Iran are driving prices.

“OPEC is still a major force, but it’s certainly far less influential that it was in the 70s or 80s,” says Mustafa Alani, at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “What we saw at this conference is that the leaders of OPEC were giving assurances that they’ll do all they can to maintain the stability of the oil supply. But can they do it? We don’t know.”

OPEC’s biggest producers – Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors – say they’d like prices to be a little lower but are pumping near capacity now. After all, their currencies are pegged to the dollar, so a weak US economy hurts them, too. Analysts say that while Saudi Arabia and others might be able to squeeze out an extra 1 million barrels a day, that’s only 3 percent more than estimated current OPEC production of 31 million barrels a day.

The new reality facing OPEC left the ministers over the weekend discussing once peripheral issues: pricing oil in US dollars, climate change, and developing nations. Political opponents of the US – Iran and Venezuela – have been pushing for the market to be moved from the US dollar into stronger Euros. While analysts say that is unlikely to happen anytime soon, the fact that such issues – not oil prices – got so much attention reflects changing times.

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said earlier this week that he did ask OPEC members to increase supply, though he said that the request seemed to have fallen on deaf ears.

Anyone hoping that the OPEC Summit – the first meeting of the leaders of its member states since 2000 – would bring relief from gas prices that have jumped 25 percent this year to above $3 a gallon in the US, is going to be disappointed.

On Friday, crude oil traded in the US rose $1 to over $95 a barrel after Venezuela’s Oil Minister Rafael Ramírez said, “OPEC can’t do anything about the price … there is enough oil in the market.”

Venezuela – whose leftist President Hugo Chávez appears to revel in tweaking the nose of the US, which he alleges backed a failed coup against him five years ago – has been pushing for higher oil prices in tandem with Iran, as well as a move away from the US dollar.

In this, both countries failed. Saudi Arabia – which accounts for about 30 percent of OPEC production – clearly signaling its opposition to what it views as the politicization of the commodity.

After Mr. Chávez urged OPEC’s leaders to use their oil wealth to become an “active political agent” and warned that oil prices would rise above $200 a barrel if the US takes military action against his ally, Iran, Saudi King Abdullah dismissed his arguments.

“Oil … should not become a tool for conflict and emotions,” he said. “Those who want OPEC to become an organization of monopoly and exploitation ignore the truth.”

The joint OPEC statement released at the end of the summit said that the “stability of the oil market is essential,” which oil analysts said was a repudiation of Venezuela’s and Iran’s aims.

Chávez also called on oil producers to sell to poor countries at prices at about one-fifth of the current market price, an idea that gained no traction and appeared designed to bolster his populist credentials. The only support for this idea came from Ecuador’s leftist president, Rafael Correa. Even Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who Chávez was scheduled to meet later Sunday in Tehran, failed to back to him on this suggestion.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has portrayed himself as a man of the people and the promise of his 2005 election campaign to spread Iran’s oil wealth to every dinner table struck a chord with voters. During a visit to Venezuela last January, Ahmadinejad kept that populist touch, announcing with Chávez the creation of a $2 billion anti-US fund. And on Sunday, after meeting with President Correa, Ahmadinejad promised to use his country’s oil wealth to fight “imperialism.”

But his promises remain unfulfilled for most Iranians, though Iran has seen its oil revenues surge in the past five years. Despite the cash boom, Iran’s economy is struggling under the weight of high unemployment and rising inflation, not to mention US sanctions. He simply isn’t in a position to back up his rhetoric, analysts say.

“Iran can’t even think about this case [of cut-rate sales to poor countries], because the oil price works in the market economy,” says Abbas Maleki, a former deputy foreign minister of Iran, and chair of the International Institute for Caspian Studies.

“The best way for Iran is to establish a fund for development, to support development projects,” says Mr. Maleki, who was recently a fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “OPEC already has a development fund for Africa and Third World countries … Iran wants to spend all oil revenues in Iran.”

Indeed, though OPEC made it clear it isn’t in a position to lower prices, a silver-lining for the US is that Chávez’s efforts to build a populist bloc within OPEC fizzled.

“There are basically two camps, Iran and Venezuela and one led by Saudi Arabia,” says Mr. Alani, the oil analyst. “What happened at this conference was that the leaders of OPEC – Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states – made it clear they oppose the use of oil as a weapon, so the radicals within OPEC were isolated.

“What’s going to happen now is the leaders will do everything they can to maintain supply. But there’s very little they can do if there’s an attack on Iran or something of that nature. In that case, prices will double, perhaps go to $300 a barrel.”

Scott Peterson contributed reporting from Tehran, Iran.

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD

WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 — Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.

But with the future of that country’s leadership in doubt, debate is intensifying about whether Washington has done enough to help protect the warheads and laboratories, and whether Pakistan’s reluctance to reveal critical details about its arsenal has undercut the effectiveness of the continuing security effort.

The aid, buried in secret portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of Pakistani personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security training center in Pakistan, a facility that American officials say is nowhere near completion, even though it was supposed to be in operation this year.

A raft of equipment — from helicopters to night-vision goggles to nuclear detection equipment — was given to Pakistan to help secure its nuclear material, its warheads, and the laboratories that were the site of the worst known case of nuclear proliferation in the atomic age.

While American officials say that they believe the arsenal is safe at the moment, and that they take at face value Pakistani assurances that security is vastly improved, in many cases the Pakistani government has been reluctant to show American officials how or where the gear is actually used.

That is because the Pakistanis do not want to reveal the locations of their weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel the country is now producing.

The American program was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush administration debated whether to share with Pakistan one of the crown jewels of American nuclear protection technology, known as “permissive action links,” or PALS, a system used to keep a weapon from detonating without proper codes and authorizations.

In the end, despite past federal aid to France and Russia on delicate points of nuclear security, the administration decided that it could not share the system with the Pakistanis because of legal restrictions.

In addition, the Pakistanis were suspicious that any American-made technology in their warheads could include a secret “kill switch,” enabling the Americans to turn off their weapons.

While many nuclear experts in the federal government favored offering the PALS system because they considered Pakistan’s arsenal among the world’s most vulnerable to terrorist groups, some administration officials feared that sharing the technology would teach Pakistan too much about American weaponry. The same concern kept the Clinton administration from sharing the technology with China in the early 1990s.

The New York Times has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable. The newspaper agreed to delay publication of the article after considering a request from the Bush administration, which argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons.

Since then, some elements of the program have been discussed in the Pakistani news media and in a presentation late last year by the leader of Pakistan’s nuclear safety effort, Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who acknowledged receiving “international” help as he sought to assure Washington that all of the holes in Pakistan’s nuclear security infrastructure had been sealed.

The Times told the administration last week that it was reopening its examination of the program in light of those disclosures and the current instability in Pakistan. Early this week, the White House withdrew its request that publication be withheld, though it was unwilling to discuss details of the program.

In recent days, American officials have expressed confidence that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is well secured. “I don’t see any indication right now that security of those weapons is in jeopardy, but clearly we are very watchful, as we should be,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon news conference on Thursday.

Admiral Mullen’s carefully chosen words, a senior administration official said, were based on two separate intelligence assessments issued this month that had been summarized in briefings to Mr. Bush. Both concluded that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal was safe under current conditions, and one also looked at laboratories and came to the same conclusion.

Still, the Pakistani government’s reluctance to provide access has limited efforts to assess the situation. In particular, some American experts say they have less ability to look into the nuclear laboratories where highly enriched uranium is produced — including the laboratory named for Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man who sold Pakistan’s nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

The secret program was designed by the Energy Department and the State Department, and it drew heavily from the effort over the past decade to secure nuclear weapons, stockpiles and materials in Russia and other former Soviet states. Much of the money for Pakistan was spent on physical security, like fencing and surveillance systems, and equipment for tracking nuclear material if it left secure areas.

But while Pakistan is formally considered a “major non-NATO ally,” the program has been hindered by a deep suspicion among Pakistan’s military that the secret goal of the United States was to gather intelligence about how to locate and, if necessary, disable Pakistan’s arsenal, which is the pride of the country.

“Everything has taken far longer than it should,” a former official involved in the program said in a recent interview, “and you are never sure what you really accomplished.”

So far, the amount the United States has spent on the classified nuclear security program, less than $100 million, amounts to slightly less than one percent of the roughly $10 billion in known American aid to Pakistan since the Sept. 11 attacks. Most of that money has gone for assistance in counterterrorism activities against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The debate over sharing nuclear security technology began just before then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was sent to Islamabad after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the United States was preparing to invade Afghanistan.

“There were a lot of people who feared that once we headed into Afghanistan, the Taliban would be looking for these weapons,” said a senior official who was involved. But a legal analysis found that aiding Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program — even if it was just with protective gear — would violate both international and American law.

General Musharraf, in his memoir, “In the Line of Fire,” published last year, did not discuss any equipment, training or technology offered then, but wrote: “We were put under immense pressure by the United States regarding our nuclear and missile arsenal. The Americans’ concerns were based on two grounds. First, at this time they were not very sure of my job security, and they dreaded the possibility that an extremist successor government might get its hands on our strategic nuclear arsenal. Second, they doubted our ability to safeguard our assets.”

General Musharraf was more specific in an interview two years ago for a Times documentary, “Nuclear Jihad: Can Terrorists Get the Bomb?” Asked about the equipment and training provided by Washington, he said, “Frankly, I really don’t know the details.” But he added: “This is an extremely sensitive matter in Pakistan. We don’t allow any foreign intrusion in our facilities. But, at the same time, we guarantee that the custodial arrangements that we brought about and implemented are already the best in the world.”

Now that concern about General Musharraf’s ability to remain in power has been rekindled, so has the debate inside and outside the Bush administration about how much the program accomplished, and what it left unaccomplished. A second phase of the program, which would provide more equipment, helicopters and safety devices, is already being discussed in the administration, but its dimensions have not been determined.

Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, which designed most of the United States’ nuclear arms, argued that recent federal reluctance to share warhead security technology was making the world more dangerous.

“Lawyers say it’s classified,” Dr. Agnew said in an interview. “That’s nonsense. We should share this technology. Anybody who joins the club should be helped to get this.”

“Whether it’s India or Pakistan or China or Iran,” he added, “the most important thing is that you want to make sure there is no unauthorized use. You want to make sure that the guys who have their hands on the weapons can’t use them without proper authorization.”

In the past, officials say, the United States has shared ideas — but not technologies — about how to make the safeguards that lie at the heart of American weapons security. The system hinges on what is essentially a switch in the firing circuit that requires the would-be user to enter a numeric code that starts a timer for the weapon’s arming and detonation.

Most switches disable themselves if the sequence of numbers entered turns out to be incorrect in a fixed number of tries, much like a bank ATM does. In some cases, the disabled link sets off a small explosion in the warhead to render it useless. Delicate design details involve how to bury the link deep inside a weapon to keep terrorists or enemies from disabling the safeguard.

The most famous case of nuclear idea sharing involves France. Starting in the early 1970s, the United States government began a series of highly secretive discussions with French scientists to help them improve the country’s warheads.

A potential impediment to such sharing was the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which bars cooperation between nations on weapons technology.

To get around such legal prohibitions, Washington came up with a system of “negative guidance,” sometimes called “20 questions,” as detailed in a 1989 article in Foreign Policy. The system let United States scientists listen to French descriptions of warhead approaches and give guidance about whether the French were on the right track.

Nuclear experts say sharing also took place after the cold war when the United States worried about the security of Russian nuclear arms and facilities. In that case, both countries declassified warhead information to expedite the transfer of safety and security information, according to federal nuclear scientists.

But in the case of China, which has possessed nuclear weapons since the 1960s and is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Clinton administration decided that sharing PALS would be too risky. Experts inside the administration feared the technology would improve the Chinese warheads, and could give the Chinese insights into how American systems worked.

Officials said Washington debated sharing security techniques with Pakistan on at least two occasions — right after it detonated its first nuclear arms in 1998, and after the terrorist attack on the United States in 2001.

The debates pitted atomic scientists who favored technical sharing against federal officials at such places as the State Department who ruled that the transfers were illegal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and under United States law.

In the 1998 case, the Clinton administration still hoped it could roll back Pakistan’s nuclear program, forcing it to give up the weapons it had developed. That hope, never seen as very realistic, has been entirely given up by the Bush administration.

The nuclear proliferation conducted by Mr. Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who built a huge network to spread Pakistani technology, convinced the Pakistanis that they needed better protections.

“Among the places in the world that we have to make sure we have done the maximum we can do, Pakistan is at the top of the list,” said John E. McLaughlin, who served as deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time, and played a crucial role in the intelligence collection that led to Mr. Khan’s downfall.

“I am confident of two things,” he added. “That the Pakistanis are very serious about securing this material, but also that someone in Pakistan is very intent on getting their hands on it.”

David S. Broder
Washington Post
November 18, 2007

During Thursday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was given a chance to answer the question about offering driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

Before CNN’s Wolf Blitzer turned to him, several of Richardson’s rivals had wrestled with the question that had thrown Sen. Hillary Clinton for a loop in the previous debate, triggering two weeks of complaints that she was being dodgy.

Clearly intent on setting that notion to rest, she answered this time with a monosyllable, “No.” Her governor, Eliot Spitzer, had abandoned the plan a day earlier, so she was joining the retreat.

Instead, it was Sen. Barack Obama who seemed flummoxed, At first, he acknowledged that he had voted as an Illinois state senator to require undocumented aliens to “get trained, get a license, get insurance to protect public safety.” But a moment later, confusingly, he said, “I am not proposing that that’s what we do.” And finally, he said, “Yes.”

Former Sen. John Edwards objected to the question, then said, “No, but … anyone who’s on the path to earning American citizenship should be able to have a driver’s license.”

Sen. Chris Dodd said, “I think driver’s licenses are the wrong thing to be doing, in terms of attracting people to come here as undocumented.”

Rep. Dennis Kucinich objected to the question because “there aren’t any illegal human beings,” and, after an irrelevant swipe at NAFTA, ended up agreeing with Edwards.

And then came Richardson, who said that four years ago, when the Legislature sent him a bill allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses, “I signed it. My law enforcement people said it’s a matter of public safety. … We wanted more people to be insured. When we started with this program, 33 percent of New Mexicans were uninsured. Today, it’s 11 percent. Traffic fatalities have gone down. It’s a matter of public safety. States have to act when the federal government and Congress doesn’t act (on comprehensive immigration reform).”

Blitzer then turned to Sen. Joe Biden, whose whole answer, like Clinton’s, was, “No.”

And, of course, none of the other candidates was ever asked, “What about the public safety argument cited by Richardson?”

That is revealing of the weakness of these debates as tools for helping voters decide which candidate to support. The TV impresarios are so eager for headlines, they rarely pause to ask the candidates for evidence to support their opinions or assertions. It is bang-bang, but rarely because-and-here’s-proof.

On driver’s licenses, Richardson offered such proof, but in another case, he did not. His “solution” to Iraq is to pull out all U.S. troops and contractors within a year and leave it to “an all-Muslim, all-Arab peacekeeping force, with some European forces, headed by the U.N.”

Well, it’s a nice idea, but such a force exists only in Richardson’s imagination – and none is likely to materialize. But he is not called upon to explain.

Three weeks ago, it was Clinton “stumbling.” On Thursday, she was feisty and aggressive, flinging her own accusations of mud-slinging at Edwards and Obama, and finding inconsistencies in their positions.

In all the sound and fury, several important points were lost. The candidates circled around – but never directly engaged – the question of whether it is realistic, effective and practical to mandate that every family in the country obtain health insurance – and if so, how it would be financed.

As to international policy, we learned along the way that Clinton is more hard-line than her main rivals, not only on her willingness to keep a substantial residual force in Iraq, but in her belief that national security trumps human rights as a priority for American foreign policy. No Jimmy Carter she.

But the implications of these positions go unexplored, because there’s always another candidate, another topic, another headline clamoring for attention.

I suspect these candidates are better than they have looked, and that they’d have reasons to give, if they had time to utter them. I know the voters deserve better. Can’t these debates be rescued?

Panel’s report sees ‘irreversible’ effects

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, right, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chairman Rajendra Pachauri present the panel’s synthesis report on climate change after the IPCC XXVII closing ceremony Saturday in Valencia, Spain. Associated Press (Associated Press )

Laurie Goering
Chicago Tribune
November 18, 2007

As concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere accelerate ahead of scientists’ projections, global warming is unequivocally under way, with potentially “abrupt or irreversible” effects looming, a Nobel Prize-winning United Nations panel on climate change reported Saturday.

The world still has time to avoid the most severe effects of climate change, however, if it can rapidly deploy existing and soon-expected new technology to cut carbon emissions, something that probably would require setting a price on carbon emissions to be effective, the Synthesis Report’s authors said.

Without such action, “unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt,” the report warns.

The document, a synopsis of three climate reports released earlier this year by the thousands of scientists who make up the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is intended as a succinct policy guide on the risks of climate change and the possible means to mitigate or adapt to it.

Policymakers, set to meet in December in Bali, Indonesia, are expected to use the report as their baseline to begin the tortuous process of trying to replace the expiring and largely ineffective Kyoto Protocol on limiting greenhouse gas emissions with a new and more effective world plan to slow climate change.

“We cannot afford to leave Bali without such a breakthrough,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in Valencia, Spain, after the report’s release Saturday. The potential consequences of quickening climate change are “so severe and so sweeping that only urgent global action will do,” he said. He called the problem “the defining challenge of our age.”

The report paints a grim picture of what the world might look like if policymakers – and in particular major polluters such as the United States, China and India – fail to act quickly to begin cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

“This report will have an incredible political impact,” said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.’s top climate change official. “It’s a signal that politicians cannot afford to ignore.”

Without action, rises in sea level will accelerate, forcing millions of people out of low-lying coastal regions. Worsening droughts, severe storms and water shortages will affect many regions of the world, and changing conditions are likely to put at least 20 to 30 percent of the world’s species – including virtually all its coral reefs – on the route to extinction, the report said.

Levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere already are the highest in 650,000 years, the report said, and emissions are expected to grow 25 to 90 percent by 2030, even taking into account current efforts to cut them.

That suggests that if accelerating levels of emissions aren’t cut soon, the world could see catastrophic changes, including the complete melting of Greenland’s ice sheet and a worldwide sea level rise of 20 feet, within a few hundred years. Less dramatic effects would be widely noticeable by 2030 or even 2020, the report said.

Most at risk are the Arctic, which is on the path to being ice-free in late summer; sub-Saharan Africa, with little money or ability to adapt to predicted changes; low-lying small islands, which face inundation, and the huge river deltas of Asia and Africa, where tens of millions of people in low-lying areas face rising seas, storm surges, river flooding and risk becoming climate refugees, the report said.

Already, “there is high confidence that neither adaptation nor mitigation alone can avoid all climate change impacts,” the report said, noting that some changes, such as the melting of glaciers, are happening much faster than scientific predictions.

Lowering worldwide greenhouse gas emissions can be done at moderate cost but only if it is done quickly, the report said. That would require, among other things, quickly reorienting decisions on $20 trillion worth of energy infrastructure investment planned between now and 2030, and rapidly testing as many technologies to cut carbon emissions as possible.

Establishing a cost for emitting greenhouse gases – a “price of carbon” – could take advantage of market mechanisms to help drive emissions cuts, the report said, noting that the costs of inaction are likely to be much higher than the costs of acting now.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the climate panel, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore earlier this year, urged “a new ethic by which every human being realizes the importance of the challenge we are facing and starts to take action through changes in lifestyle and attitude.”

The United States opted out of Kyoto in 2001, arguing that the science was unproven and that the burden of mandatory emission cuts was unfair since it excluded fast-growing China and India.

Chief U.S. delegate Sharon Hays said doubts have been dispelled. “What’s changed since 2001 is the scientific certainty that this is happening,” she said in a conference call late Friday. She did not indicate that Washington would abandon its policy of voluntary emission cuts.

Democrats stymied again on withdrawal

Shailagh Murray
Washington Post
November 17, 2007

WASHINGTON – Senate Republicans Friday blocked the latest effort by Democrats to end the Iraq war, rejecting a $50 billion military funding package that would have required President Bush to begin withdrawing troops.

The 53 to 45 tally fell seven votes short of the 60 needed and signaled that the contours of the war debate, now nearing its one-year anniversary, have barely changed. An alternative GOP proposal, which would have provided $70 billion with no strings attached, failed 53 to 45, falling 15 votes short.

The Democratic version was approved by the House earlier this week. It would have required President Bush to start a phased redeployment of U.S. forces within 30 days of enactment, while shifting the military role in Iraq to specific missions. Those include protecting U. S. diplomatic facilities, assisting Iraqi security forces and engaging in targeted counterterrorism operations. It set a Dec. 15, 2008, goal for completing the process.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he may bring the Democratic bill back to the floor in December. He and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have agreed that Bush will not receive more war funding this year unless he accepts Democratic withdrawal terms.

That’s out of the question, said White House spokesman Tony Fratto, who dismissed the Democratic vote as a political stunt.

“Once again, they tried to pass a bill that provides incremental funding, tries to micromanage the war from the halls of Congress,” said Fratto. Democrats “know that such a bill will be vetoed, should it ever come to the president’s desk.”

In May, Bush vetoed an Iraq spending bill that contained Democratic withdrawal conditions, and Congress backed off. Reid and Pelosi said they would not consider a new approach to the funding request until January. In the meantime, they said, the Pentagon could draw from its $471 billion annual budget to cover war expenses.

Republicans said they expect to win the funding showdown eventually – just as they did this summer, owing to the mathematical reality of the Democrats’ tiny 51 to 49 majority in the Senate.

Republicans accused of being obstructionist

Michael Doyle
McClatchy
November 17, 2007

WASHINGTON – Forget about a farm bill, for now.

An utterly stymied Senate on Friday failed to muster the votes needed to consider a $286 billion farm bill, making it much more likely that the package will get postponed into 2008.

The delay alarms fruit and vegetable growers, who seek a record increase in federal spending.

Farm-state senators aren’t too happy, either.

“It may slip into next year; I don’t know,” conceded Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

Harkin, the chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, mustered 55 votes to break a filibuster. He needed 60. Partisanship prevailed, as every Democrat voted to proceed and all 42 votes to block the bill came from Republicans.

The 55-42 filibuster vote Friday capped 10 days of inaction, during which time the farm bill remained inert on the Senate floor. Although 260-plus amendments have been drafted, many unrelated to farm policy, senators remain split over substance, process and politics.

The Senate now embarks on a two-week Thanksgiving vacation, during which time farm organizations will pressure GOP lawmakers. If motivated, Harkin insisted, Senate leaders still could solve their problems in early December and start negotiations with the House of Representatives before Christmas.

“We just want them to get on with it,” said Jack King, the manager of national affairs for the California Farm Bureau Federation. “Why wait?”

The Californians have joined with growers in Florida, Michigan, Washington and other specialty-crop states to promote increased spending on fruits and vegetables. A House farm bill approved in late July offers $1.7 billion for specialty crops.

The Senate proposal offers $2 billion for specialty crops, with about half of the total paying for school snack and lunch purchases. Both the House and Senate legislation would provide four or five times the level of specialty-crop funding included in the current farm bill, which expires this year.

If agreement cannot be reached on a new bill, Congress could extend the current legislation. But that would postpone indefinitely the gains for farmers, food stamp recipients and rural communities contained in the new legislation.

“If we have a continuation of the current farm bill, we have no provisions for half of the crops in the country, the fruits and vegetables,” warned Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.

Well over half of the farm bill’s total spending goes toward food-stamp and nutrition programs. Both House and Senate bills largely continue traditional subsidies for crops, including cotton, rice, wheat and corn, though with some modifications.

Many Republicans like the underlying farm bill, which won unanimous approval from the 21-member Senate Agriculture Committee. Nonetheless, they kept it bottled up Friday out of solidarity with other GOP colleagues who want to offer amendments on hot-button political issues. One potential amendment, for instance, would bar illegal immigrants from obtaining driver’s licenses.

Another potential amendment would bar crop subsidies to residents of San Francisco; New Haven, Conn.; and other self-designated “sanctuary” cities that harbor illegal immigrants. Other proposals range from cutting estate taxes to granting firefighters collective bargaining rights.

Senate Democratic leaders want limited amendments, all germane to agriculture. In part, this keeps manageable a bill that already spans 1,600 pages and avoids amendments primarily designed to force politically awkward votes.

“If you want to offer this on some other bill, on an immigration bill, fine,” Harkin said. “But not on the farm bill.”

Stalling the farm bill also can serve some political purposes. Stabenow charged Republicans with pursuing a “strategy to block us from achieving anything,” while Harkin contended that the White House’s Capitol Hill allies want to protect the president from making a politically sensitive veto.

White House officials say the Senate bill is packed with taxes and “budget gimmicks,” and they want changes, including stricter limits on which farmers get subsidies. The Senate bill, for instance, prohibits subsidies to farmers with gross annual incomes over $750,000. The White House wants this cut to $200,000.

“To put it simply, I believe our farmers and ranchers deserve and need something better,” Acting Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner said this week.

Peter Baker
Washington Post
November 17, 2007

WASHINGTON – Maybe he’ll bring the slide show.

Former Vice President Al Gore plans to return to the White House after Thanksgiving, apparently for the first time since leaving office, to be honored by the man who beat him seven years ago.

President Bush will host five American winners of this year’s Nobel Prizes in the Oval Office on Nov. 26, including the winner of the Peace Prize, who fell 538 votes short of hosting the event himself. No word on whether the Supreme Court will be on hand to mediate in case of trouble.

The president regularly invites Nobel laureates for a handshake and photograph and decided this year would be no different, even if they include his vanquished rival from 2000. The Gore camp said the White House went out of its way to accommodate the former vice president’s schedule, even moving the event when there was a conflict with the first proposed date. Bush telephoned Gore on Friday to finalize the arrangements.

“The president wanted to call him and lock that in and make sure he’s going to be able to come,” said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. “He also offered his congratulations and said he looked forward to having him here.”

A Gore adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged the awkward nature of the event. “It’s unusual, that’s for sure,” he said. “But the conversations were good, and the White House has been very gracious about it.”

The situation is not entirely unprecedented. Bush invited Jimmy Carter to the White House to mark his Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, even though the former president had been lambasting the march to war in Iraq.

President Bill Clinton honored defeated challenger Bob Dole with the Presidential Medal of Freedom three days before taking the oath of office for the second time in January 1997.

But Bush and Gore, while together at events such as the opening of Clinton’s library in 2004 and Gerald Ford’s funeral last year, have never reconciled the bitterness from their showdown, and the adviser believes that Gore has not been back to the White House since leaving as vice president.

Gore has been a vocal critic of Bush’s policies, while the president has been dismissive of his former opponent’s work against global warming. Asked once whether he would see Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Bush had a curt response: “Doubt it.”

This could be the chance to change that. “I’m sure he would love to give the slide show to the president,” the Gore adviser said.

By AP/PHILIP ELLIOTT

(CONCORD, N.H.) — New Hampshire’s attorney general is investigating phone calls to voters that pretend to be opinion polls but then undercut presidential contender Mitt Romney and his Mormon faith — and make favorable statements about Republican rival John McCain.

McCain says they’re not his doing and he wants them stopped. Romney says it’s a religious attack and “un-American.”

McCain said of the phone calling, “It is disgraceful, it is outrageous, and it is a violation, we believe, of New Hampshire law.” His campaign asked the attorney general to investigate, and McCain, campaigning Friday in Colorado, asked other candidates to join in the request.

One McCain adviser, Chuck Douglas, said “we believe it is being done by one of the other campaigns. We don’t know which one.”

Western Wats, a Utah-based company, placed the calls that initially sound like a poll but then pose questions that cast Romney in a harsh light, according to people who received the calls. In politics, this type of phone surveying is called “push polling” — contacting potential voters and asking questions intended to plant a message, usually negative, rather than gauging attitudes.

A spokesman for the company would not comment on whether it made the calls. However, its client services director, Robert Maccabee, said, “Western Wats has never, currently does not, nor will it ever engage in push polling.”

The 20-minute calls started on Sunday in New Hampshire and Iowa. At least seven people in the two early voting states received the calls, some as recently as Thursday.

Deputy Attorney General Bud Fitch said New Hampshire has never prosecuted a case involving such calls but was moving forward. He cautioned against expecting an immediate resolution.

“Generally, these investigations can take at least several days and sometimes several weeks,” Fitch said.

Among the questions the caller asked was whether the person receiving the call knew Romney was a Mormon, that he received military deferments when he served as a Mormon missionary in France, that his five sons did not serve in the military, that Romney’s faith did not accept blacks as bishops into the 1970s and that Mormons believe the Book of Mormon is superior to the Bible.

“It started out like all the other calls. … Then all of the sudden it got very unsettling and very negative,” said Anne Baker, an independent voter who was called in Hollis, N.H.

In Iowa, Romney supporter and state representative Ralph Watts got a call on Wednesday.

“I was offended by the line of questioning,” Watts said. “I don’t think it has any place in politics.”

Romney, campaigning in Las Vegas, said Friday, “The attempts to attack me on the basis of my faith are un-American.”

The former Massachusetts governor’s Mormon faith has been an issue in his presidential bid, especially with conservative evangelicals who are central to his strategy to cast himself as the candidate for the GOP’s family values voters.

Baker, who got a call in New Hampshire, said the caller initially wouldn’t tell her who was behind it. Eventually, Baker was told the caller was from Western Wats.

Last year, Western Wats conducted polling that was intended to spread negative messages about Democratic candidates in a House race in New York and a Senate race in Florida, according to reports in The Tampa Tribune and the Albany Times Union, which also said Western Wats conducted the calls on behalf of the Tarrance Group.

That Virginia-based firm now works for Romney’s rival, Rudy Giuliani. The campaign has paid the firm more than $400,000, according to federal campaign reports.

In his statement on behalf of Western Wats, Maccabee said the company was not currently conducting “any work for … The Tarrance Group in the state of New Hampshire or Iowa, nor have we for the period in question.”

Maccabee added that confidentiality agreements prohibit the company from commenting on specific projects or clients.

Ed Goeas, chief of the Tarrance Group, said there is no connection between the Giuliani campaign and Western Wats.

“I know absolutely it’s not us,” Goeas said. “I can say with absolute, no, it’s not us.”

Western Wats also worked for Bob Dole’s presidential campaign in 1996. Employees said they used such calls at that time to describe GOP rival Steve Forbes as pro-abortion rights.

New Hampshire law requires that all political advertising, including phone calls, identify the candidate being supported. No candidate was identified in the calls.

Whoever is behind the calls, Romney said part of the blame must go to the 2002 McCain-Feingold law that limits campaign contributions. The phone campaign, he said, “points out how ineffective it has been in removing the influence of money and underhanded politics.” He added, “I have seen over the last several weeks more and more reports of e-mails, of literature being passed out and now push polls which attack me on the basis of religion, and I think that’s very disappointing and un-American.”

Last night was a tale of two debates.

The first 15 minutes of the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas featured clashes between the top three candidates — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards — over Social Security, Iran and telling the truth.

The next hour and 45 minutes were, well, slower. All seven candidates got into the act, offering bits of their stump speeches and trying to cajole CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer into giving them a little more speaking time.

Anyone who reads the Fix regularly (Fixistas unite!) knows which part of the debate we liked better.

Below you’ll find the night’s winners and losers (according to The Fix). Ranking the candidates’ performances is an inherently subjective exercise so remember this is just one man’s opinion. Disagree? Or — fingers crossed — agree? Sound off in the comments section.

WINNERS

Hillary Rodham Clinton: Clinton’s performance in tonight’s debate will quiet (if not totally silence) talk that her campaign is struggling. Clinton set the tone early on by pushing back aggressively against Obama and Edwards and, in our mind, got the best of both exchanges. She was clearly aided by a sympathetic crowd who decided early on that they weren’t interested in watching the candidates fight. As a result, Clinton largely got a pass on her three biggest weaknesses: her equivocation on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, her vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization and her vote in favor of the 2002 use of force resolution against Iraq. On a question about playing the gender card — another potential problem area — Clinton was clearly prepared and delivered her line of the night: “People are not attacking me because I am a woman, they are attacking me because I am ahead.”

Barack Obama: Yes, we know he fumbled the same question (driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants) that Clinton muffed in the last debate. And, yes, of course he should have known that sort of question was coming and been better prepared to answer it cleanly. But, put that flub aside and Obama offered himself as a credible and — more importantly — safe alternative to Clinton in last night’s debate. The first 15 minutes were dominated by a back and forth between him and Clinton (a good thing for a campaign trying to turn this into a two-person race) and for much of the rest of the debate Obama offered his “we can do more” vision succinctly and forcefully. “Don’t keep on assuming we can’t do something,” Obama scolded Blitzer at one point. “I am running for president because I think we can do it.”

Joe Biden: We can’t help it, we like the guy. Biden is regularly the life of these debates — launching self deprecating one-liners one minute and riffing on how he was introducing legislation before some of the candidates on the stage were even born the next. Biden is at his best when talking foreign policy and he got plenty of opportunities to do that last night. He spoke eloquently about the dangers posed by Iran and scored points on Pakistan by noting that he had spoken to both President Pervez Musharraf and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto before President Bush had.

LOSERS

John Edwards: For those pushing the idea that Clinton’s decision to directly respond to Edwards was a sign that the race is now officially a three-way contest, we say hogwash. Clinton effectively shot Edwards down in their first exchange and when Edwards tried to again go at Clinton later in the debate he was all but booed down by the audience. Make no mistake: Edwards is an able debater who clearly knows what he believes and says it. But, for most of last night’s debate it felt as though he were extraneous to the proceedings and when he did get his speaking time he seemed slightly too keyed up for the audience.

Chris Dodd: Despite his new haircut (we like it), Dodd had trouble standing out. His best moment was his impromptu Spanish outburst — he was in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, he helpfully added — but it wasn’t enough to truly get him noticed. Dodd’s problem in the debates is symptomatic of his larger problem in the race: he doesn’t fit any niche. And, without a niche, he winds up falling through the cracks (humor us; it’s been a long week.)

Debate Fairness Complaints: Going into these events, everyone knows the deal: the candidates at the top of state and national polls are going to get the most questions directed at them and the majority of the speaking time. If you aren’t in that top tier, you have to find your own way to stand out (see Biden, Joe). Politics ain’t beanbag.

By Chris Cillizza |  November 16, 2007; 8:00 AM ET  | Category:  Eye on 2008
Previous: Hillary Hits Back | Next: The Line: Even for Senate GOP, Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining Main Index –>

Americans must act now to alleviate shortages

November 15, 2007

The following editorial appeared Monday in the Dallas Morning News.

“I am sorry to say this, but we are headed toward really bad days,” a prominent energy economist told Time magazine last week. “Lots of targets have been set, but very little has been done. There is a lot of talk and no action.”

That was no alarmist talking. It was Fatih Birol, the chief economist for the International Energy Agency, an oil industry organization whose annual World Energy Outlook report is widely considered a reliable indicator of petroleum supplies. Released as the price of oil neared $100 a barrel, the 2007 forecast sent an urgent message to world governments: The days of cheap oil are probably over.

It’s not hard to understand why. The current daily supply of oil can barely cover world demand. With China and India rapidly industrializing, the International Energy Agency expects that the planet will require 116 million barrels daily by 2030 – an increase of more than 50 percent from today’s output – to slake its petroleum thirst.

Can increased production meet the expected demand? Depends on whom you talk to. Dallas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is one of the petroleum experts who believes that world oil production has peaked. If peak-oilers are right, there’s nowhere for the oil supply to go but down and nowhere but prices to go but up. Others, including the International Energy Agency, believe that the current shortage is critical but manageable with necessary adjustments in both production and consumption, as well as investments in research and development.

The permanent end of cheap oil not only would hit American consumers at the gas pump, but in just about every other way. Our consumer economy, for example, depends on the foreign-made goods shipped inexpensively from overseas manufacturers. The points of potential pain are endless. Moreover, there looms the threat of resource wars over dwindling supplies of a substance that no modern country can do without.

Now is the time to quit talking and start acting. Thoughtful Americans know that we can’t keep living like this forever. Our nation must start investing heavily in public transportation, domestic drilling and research into renewable energy sources and clean-coal technology.

Whether the world supply of oil has absolutely peaked or is not rising to meet demand because of human folly, there’s going to be a lot less of the black stuff around in the near future. And that’s going to hurt.

November 15, 2007

As the Democratic presidential race finally gets down to brass tacks, two issues are becoming paramount. But only one of them is clearly on the table.

That is the issue of illegal immigration. A very smart Democrat, a veteran of the Clinton administration, told me he expects it to be a key part of any Republican campaign and is worried about his own party’s ability to respond.

I think he has good reason. The failure of the Democratic Congress, like its Republican predecessor, to enact comprehensive immigration reform, including improved border security, has left individual states and local communities struggling with the problem. Some are showing a high degree of tolerance and flexibility. Others are being more punitive. But all of them are running into controversy.

I noticed a new Siena College Research Institute poll of registered voters in New York. It found heavy opposition to Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to permit undocumented aliens to obtain driver’s licenses; nearly two-thirds opposed the latest version.

Moreover, the issue is part of a weakening of support for Spitzer, who now has a 2-to-1 negative job rating and, for the first time, an overall unfavorable image. Asked if they are inclined to support him for re-election in 2010, only 25 percent say yes, while 49 percent say they would prefer an anonymous “someone else.” It was just last year that Spitzer was elected in a landslide. On Wednesday, Spitzer announced that he was abandoning the driver’s license idea.

That is New York, home state of both Hillary Clinton and Rudolph Giuliani. And the driver’s license question is the one that tripped up Sen. Clinton when she was asked about it at the Philadelphia debate and gave answers that were indecisive – and nearly indecipherable.

The other candidates had more time to compose an answer, so were spared the embarrassment. It was the pummeling she received from Barack Obama and John Edwards during and after that debate (and from moderator Tim Russert) that brought her husband, former President Bill Clinton, into the campaign, with the charge, as he put it, that “those boys have been getting tough on her lately.”

The former president’s intervention – volunteered during a campaign appearance on her behalf in South Carolina – raised the second, and largely unspoken, issue identified by my friend from the Clinton administration: the two-headed campaign and the prospect of a dual presidency.

In his view, which I share, this is a prospect that will test the tolerance of the American people far more severely than the possibility of the first woman president – or, for that mater, the first black president.

As my friend says, “there is nothing in American constitutional or political theory to account for the role of a former president, still energetic and active and full of ideas, occupying the White House with the current president.”

No precedent exists for such an arrangement and no ground rules have been – or likely can be – written. When Bill Clinton was president, the large policy enterprise that was entrusted to the first lady – health care reform – crashed in ruins.

The causes were complex, and some of the burden falls on other people – Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the interest groups and, yes, the press. But as one who reported and wrote in excessive detail and length about that whole enterprise, I can also tell you that the awkwardness of having an unelected but uniquely influential partner of the president in charge affected every step of the process, from the gestation of the plan to its final demise. She was never again asked to take on such a project.

And this was simply the confusion sown by having the first lady in charge. Put the former president into the picture – however “sanitized” or insulated his role is supposed to be – and the dimensions of the problem loom even larger.

No one who has read or studied the large literature of memoirs and biographies of the Clintons and their circle can doubt the intimacy and the mutual dependency of their political and personal partnership.

No one can reasonably expect that partnership to end, should she be elected president. But the country must decide whether it is comfortable with such a sharing of the power and authority of the highest office in the land.

It is a difficult question for any of the Democratic rivals to raise.

But it lingers, even if unasked.

Leonard Pitts Jr.
November 15, 2007

“People say believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.” – Gladys Knight & the Pips, “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” 1967

“Trust none of what you hear and less of what you see.” – Bruce Springsteen, “Magic,” 2007

It’s what you’d expect from George W. Bush.

He is, after all, the fellow whose spokesman once fielded questions from a GOP stooge pretending to be a reporter, whose deputy FEMA chief was caught conducting a fake press conference, whose functionaries routinely screen the crowds and pre-select the questioners at public events lest, God forbid, some ordinary citizen ask the president of the United States a tough question.

So yeah, this was precisely what you’d expect W. to do. Thing is, he didn’t do it.

Rather, it was Hillary Clinton whose campaign admitted last week that it planted a question at a campaign stop in Iowa. It seems a college student was approached by a Clinton staffer and asked to ask the candidate about global warming. The young woman asked the requested question, but she also told people about it and the news, as news is wont to do, got out.

Clinton’s rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination clucked pious reproach, but campaign reporters tell us it is actually standard procedure nowadays for campaigns to plant friendly questions.

And surely the cheap plastic artificiality of the age is established beyond question when even the run for the nation’s highest office becomes a CGI effect. The acronym is for computer generated imagery, the digital wizardry in the movies that allows Spider-Man to swing convincingly through the canyons of New York City and Titanic to sink realistically in ice bound seas.

“Forrest Gump” was a groundbreaker in the use of CGI, what with rendering Lt. Dan a double amputee and putting Forrest in the Oval Office, complaining to John F. Kennedy that he had to pee. But many of its effects were less obvious: birds flying out of a cornfield; a reflection in a lake; the lighting of the sky. There, CGI was invisible; you didn’t know sleight of hand was involved unless the filmmakers chose to tell you.

Politics has become much the same. Yes, it was always a con job: the candidate always backlit against the American flag, gazing soulfully into the distance, his opponent always a greasy sleaze who would, if elected, bulldoze the senior center and put up a Hooters in its place. But it was once easier for a reasonably intelligent observer to know when he or she was being conned. As fakery becomes more sophisticated and ubiquitous, knowing becomes more difficult. Maybe even impossible.

The quotes juxtaposed above describe the arc some of us have traveled as a result: from healthy skepticism to whatever lies beyond skepticism. It is telling that the most potent political insurgencies of recent years – H. Ross Perot in 1992, John McCain in 2000, Barack Obama, now – have all had in common one trait: perceived authenticity, a sense that they spoke not from polls and position papers, but from conviction. Maybe it’s also telling that Perot and McCain lost and that Obama trails Clinton in national polls.

Maybe we like being fooled. Maybe we are, at some level, complicit in our own conning. If people can be dazzled and duped into choosing a given soft drink or antacid, maybe it’s no surprise they can be induced to choose a future in much the same way. (Bold Italics mine – Kautzman)

The problem is, next year’s election will be the most crucial in a generation. The next president will have to repair the massive damage – social, environmental, geopolitical – wrought by the current one. So we need and deserve to know how these would-be presidents propose to do this. Instead we get flimflam, the old okey-doke, carnival barkers and special effects. Politics as CGI.

But the danger is real. God help us if the next president is not.

By Rich Lowry

It’s a paradox of this election season that the most conservative candidate in the Democratic presidential field is the one most hated by conservatives. Hillary Clinton will not make extravagant promises about pulling American troops from Iraq, defends declaring elements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization and won’t endorse massive new payroll taxes to fund Social Security. For this, she is attacked by rivals to her left, who are then cheered on by conservatives.

Welcome to the world of Hillary hatred, which will be a fixture of our politics for at least the next year if she wins the Democratic nomination. The animus against her is the latest round in a revenge cycle out of a classic Greek tragedy. First there was the conservative hatred of Clinton of the 1990s, avenged by the liberal Bush hatred of today, to be repaid in kind with four or eight years of rollicking Hillary hatred should she be elected President.

Liberal, Phony–Same Difference

With conservatives, she is caught in an inescapable trap of acrimony. The two things they most dislike about her are her liberalism and (what they consider) her phoniness. When she adopts a standard left-wing position, it is taken as confirmation of her plans to impose a Euro-socialism on America. When she takes a more moderate position, it is taken as confirmation that she is hiding her true plans behind dastardly artifice. Either way, she evokes conservative scorn.

Hillary has a history with the right. She didn’t merely stand by her man during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. While “everyone else was crying and helpless” (as she put it to a friend), Hillary smote Bill’s accusers with her famous “vast right-wing conspiracy” appearance on the Today show at the scandal’s inception.

Her marriage is one of the chief conservative counts against her. Whereas her supporters see a messy union that Hillary has valiantly preserved under extreme provocation, conservatives see a corrupt bargain. She has certainly been as much enabler as victim of Bill’s infidelities; her instinct has always been to attack any of his paramours who go public.

Her style of liberalism grates in a way that Bill’s doesn’t. His liberalism seems practical, in keeping with his “can’t we all get along?” bonhomie. Hillary’s liberalism has a more admonitory edge, in keeping with her buttoned-up demeanor. In her memoir, Living History, she writes that she was tasked in grade school with keeping the “incorrigible boys” in line, a role that seems entirely in character. Conservatives bristle at the sense of being told what to do, and they detect a tone of moral superiority in her advocacy of children’s programs and health care. When she says, “It takes a village,” they hear an implicit threat to have government impinge on their prerogatives as parents.

Stuck in the Middle

But Hillary hasn’t exactly been a provocative liberal lately. Her primary campaign has been marked by her careful avoidance of any positions that would swing her too far left for the general election. Conservatives fasten on her caution and stiff demeanor as proof positive of her fakery and insincere maneuvering. Prior to her widely panned performance in Philadelphia, she met practically every verbal challenge at debates with a studied laugh, which might have softened her image but galled conservatives more than anything she could ever say.

One might expect at least a little grudging respect from conservatives for how Hillary has managed to hold the right flank, such as it is, in the Democratic field. And one might expect some grudging respect for her record since the 1990s as their hardened enemy combatant. Alas, it won’t happen.

Conservatives might hate Hillary desperately–quite literally. They want to believe that her sheer unlikability will make up for all the Republican Party’s weaknesses going into 2008, that the public is as vested in hating her as they are. They may despise Hillary Clinton, but it’s on her that they now pin their hopes.

By Joe Klein

A few days after her roughest night as a candidate–the Oct. 30 Democratic presidential debate–Hillary Clinton could be found ambling along a spectacular bluff overlooking the Mississippi River in a town called Clinton, Iowa, with former Vice President Walter Mondale, a ghost of Democratic disasters past. It was the photo op for an endorsement that seemed a potential kiss of death. Mondale is a smart and decent man, but he ran the worst sort of cautious front-runner campaign for the nomination in 1984, was nearly upended by the younger, more dynamic Gary Hart in the primaries and was utterly trounced by Ronald Reagan in the general election, in part because, in an untypically incautious moment in his acceptance speech for the nomination, he said he would raise taxes.

Clinton has been accused of running a cautious front-runner campaign. She is challenged by a pair of dynamic younger candidates in Barack Obama and John Edwards. She has endorsed higher taxes for the wealthy. And more than a few Democrats worry that she cannot win a general election, even against a disgraced and exhausted Republican Party. In other ways, however, Clinton is the furthest thing from Mondale imaginable. A vote for Clinton is, at bottom, a radical proposition. It is a vote for the first woman President, the most dramatic expansion of American possibility since a Catholic was elected President in 1960. In the past six months, Clinton has transformed herself into a far more dynamic campaigner than Mondale ever was. But most important, there is a stark difference in political philosophy between them: Clinton is a pragmatic moderate, and Mondale was an old-fashioned liberal. Bill Clinton rode to the presidency as the champion of an organization, the Democratic Leadership Council, that was founded as a direct reaction against Mondale’s disastrous campaign. Indeed, a few minutes after the photo op, Senator Clinton offered the clearest statement of her own–and her husband’s–philosophy that I’ve ever heard. It came during a brisk question-and-answer session with local residents. A retired dairy farmer complained about the deregulation of his industry and asked what she’d do about it. “During this campaign, you’re going to hear me talk a lot about the importance of balance,” she began, after acknowledging that the Bush Administration had gone too far toward deregulation in most areas. “You know, our politics can get a little imbalanced sometimes. We move off to the left or off to the right, but eventually we find our way back to the center because Americans are problem solvers. We are not ideologues. Most people are just looking for sensible, commonsense solutions.”

It was classic Clinton. And having watched both Clintons for nearly 20 years now, I believe it is an honest summation of what they think they’re about: “Getting stuff done,” as Bill Clinton used to say. That means being flagrantly political, working the system, making the compromises necessary to get the best deal possible to enact their priorities. It is the domestic-policy equivalent of Realpolitik, and it drives partisans crazy on both sides of the political divide. Conservatives go ballistic because they don’t see Hillary Clinton as a moderate at all–she’s a tax-raising, socialized-health-care-loving peacenik feminazi. She and her husband steal conservative memes and tropes to hoodwink the masses. During the political nuclear winter of the 1990s, Yale professor Stephen Skowronek opined that Bill Clinton was the sort of President who inspires a special frenzy in his opponents–Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon were others–because he takes the more accessible parts of their agendas and adopts them. Hillary Clinton inspired an even greater frenzy because she was a gender revolutionary, transforming the cotton-candy role of First Lady into a power position. She wasn’t nearly as charming as her husband either. And she seemed … tougher.

But Senator Clinton has trouble on the left as well, especially in a Democratic primary. The Clintons were always perceived, especially by the populist labor left, as Wall Street fellow travelers on issues like free trade and fiscal conservatism. They were seen as ideological trimmers, betraying the interests of the working class. These days, after seven years of Bush extremism, there is a fury in the Democratic base, an impatience with compromise–with The Politics of Parsing, as Edwards put it in a devastating webcast about Clinton’s performance in the Oct. 30 debate. And so, when Hillary Clinton and I sat down for a chat the day after the Mondale endorsement, I asked her about political balance. Most members of her party would agree that George W. Bush had taken the nation wildly off-kilter to the right, but when had the government been imbalanced to the left? “One would argue that welfare reform was to a great extent a reaction to going off too far in one direction,” she said carefully, acknowledging the success of her husband’s 1996 initiative–although, according to some historical accounts, she had reservations about it at the time. But she quickly moved back to the Bush presidency. “You don’t usually talk about political philosophy” in a political campaign, she said, but the public understands that Bush’s stampede to the right “is exactly what is wrong today … And it has been a dangerous experiment, in my view.”

The resort to Bush-bashing was Clinton’s safety net in the Oct. 30 debate, the place she could go to deflect her opponents’ attacks. But those attacks are likely to grow more intense as the campaign winds toward its Jan. 3 climax in the Iowa caucuses–and the questions of who Clinton is, what she really believes and whether the Democratic Party really wants to return to the pragmatic “balance” of Clintonism will be front and center. This is still a close campaign, at least in Iowa, where the traditionally undependable polls have Clinton with a lead over Obama, and Edwards trending down to third place. Clinton was actually eager to review with me the attacks against her in the debate because those are the issues–and the perceptions about her personality–that she’ll have to confront in the next two months.

The debate seemed a signpost: the beginning of the real campaign after more than a year of fund-raising and inside baseball. And her performance seemed a crystallization of the problems that have always plagued Clinton, the notion that she is perpetually calculating, triangulating and cold, without core convictions. On the other hand, in several dozen interviews over a weekend in Iowa, I simply couldn’t find anyone who had actually seen the debate–not even among the political junkies who attend her meetings. Clinton’s public demeanor at these rallies suggested that she had taken the punch and moved on, even if her campaign briefly made the mistake of playing the gender-victim card in a clunky webcast called The Politics of Pile-On, which showed all the boys repeatedly attacking her. “Look, I was not as artful or as well spoken as I could have or should have been, so I take responsibility for that,” she told me. “But I think there’s also the realization … that we’ve got difficult, difficult problems. I think Americans are ready for substance. I think they want to get beyond the 30 seconds [debate answers], and I think they want to get beyond a President who had never a doubt, never a sense of complexity, never really shared his thinking about anything with them to say, ‘Well, look, this is where we are, here’s where we have to get, here’s how difficult it is, here’s what I need you to do.’”

Actually, Clinton’s debate performances–and her candidacy–don’t seem quite so cautious or fudgy when you look at the transcript or travel with her on the trail. Her worst moments have come when she has tried to have it both ways on programs proposed by fellow New York Democrats. This is a too-clever-by-a-lot tendency she shares with her husband: the hope that she can admire untenable proposals made by other Democrats–like the recent tax reform proposed by Congressman Charles Rangel and Governor Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses–without actually supporting them. She was caught on the latter in the debate and roundly hammered. But this sort of fudgery is not unusual among politicians. Edwards took the same admiring-but-not-quite-supporting position on driver’s licenses when he was interviewed by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos a few days later. In fact, other Democrats–except Christopher Dodd, who flat-out opposed the idea–seemed prohibitively chuckleheaded on this issue: it is hard to imagine why a recent illegal immigrant, unfamiliar with U.S. roads and driving practices, would come forward to get a driver’s license just so that he or she could be held liable in the event of an accident.

The propensity of Democrats to be chuckleheaded in ways easily exploited by Republicans is what Clinton, in most cases, is trying to avoid with her lawyerly answers. Her refusal to support higher Social Security taxes on the wealthy is a perfect example. “For the life of me, I don’t understand what my opponents are trying to achieve,” she said. “It is potentially a trillion-dollar tax increase.” Clinton’s point seems solid on several grounds. There are higher priorities than Social Security in 2008, especially if you want to enact universal health insurance or a real energy-independence plan, both of which will require revenue increases. And why start the negotiations now, in the Democratic primary? History shows, as Clinton attests, that the best way to deal with this issue is through a bipartisan commission, where both sides can share the blame for doing the right thing.

There is a larger problem with the conventional wisdom that Clinton has been too careful and calculating in this campaign. That charge is often expressed as a question about her “authenticity”–that foolish journalistic cliché meant to denote the appearance of informality and spontaneity. But authenticity is not the same as courage. You can fake authenticity. You can’t fake courage. Clinton has always had a problem with authenticity. Her laugh, sometimes awkwardly manufactured for public use yet always delightfully raucous in private, is Exhibit A. But her plans on the big domestic-policy issues–health care and energy–have been courageous and detailed, more sophisticated than her opponents’–and very, very smart politically. Just before our interview, Clinton gave a speech launching her energy-independence proposal. It would drastically reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by auctioning off permits to pollute and is similar to Obama’s–but Obama has added a fillip of honesty by telling his audiences that the program might result in higher energy prices. I asked Clinton why she hadn’t been similarly honest, and she immediately turned it around: Obama wanted to spend the proceeds of the pollution auction–perhaps as much as $50 billion–on alternative-energy research and development. “I have committed to putting money from that auction into programs to … cushion the economic impact on working and poor families,” she said. And then she added scornfully, “So if you want to go and get some debating point telling people this is going to cost you money, then I don’t think you’ve thought through the policy as carefully as you could … This is going to be a tough transition. It’s got to be done politically. One of the ways to make it politically palatable is to rebut the Republican talking point that … it’s another huge tax increase on Americans. You know what? It isn’t.”

There is one area in which Clinton does seem to be fudging unduly for political purposes: foreign policy. Her vote supporting a Senate resolution to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization seems a case in which she took the vote to protect her flank from Republican attacks in the general election. It is a vote that especially rankles Democrats because the resolution was sponsored by the reviled neo-neoconservative apostate Joe Lieberman. Clinton told me she took the vote because she favors economic sanctions against Iran as an alternative to doing nothing, but it was a nonbinding, symbolic resolution that could be construed as supporting Bush in another foolish crusade. The economic sanctions will happen anyway. Clinton then pointed to other Senators–people like Jack Reed, Dick Durbin and Carl Levin–who had voted against the Iraq war and yet supported the resolution, but that’s the sort of argument you make when you can’t convincingly explain your own actions. My guess is that she’s taking political cover on Iran. Clinton’s actual foreign policy positions haven’t been much different from Joe Biden’s or Obama’s. She is rhapsodic about the possibilities of diplomacy, and she has earned the trust of the military because of her hard work on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Her refusal to be pinned down on her exact plans for leaving Iraq has been the subject of recent attacks by Edwards. But Edwards’ proposal to immediately withdraw 50,000 troops from Iraq–without saying which troops, from what regions and what the remaining troops would do–demonstrates a careless political expediency on an issue that demands the utmost care.

“She’s run what Washington would call a textbook campaign. But the problem is the textbook itself,” says Obama. There is something to that. The prospect of a woman President is so unusual that there is a real need to sell a textbook political image, the notion that Clinton wouldn’t be much different from, or less tough than, any of her male opponents. There is a need to show her as solid and personally conservative–the sort of person who won’t go crazy on us. And there is the ever present all-too-textbook reality of the Clinton machine: a campaign awash in the dark arts of polling, market-testing and fund-raising (although Obama’s groundbreakingly cool campaign is just as stage-managed). Edwards is right to raise the red flag over Clinton’s successes in milking the health care, insurance, defense and other rancid lobbying sectors for contributions–although Edwards is no boy scout, given his history as a hedge-fund rainmaker and his closeness to the trial lawyers’ lobby.

As I’ve watched Clinton perform over the past year, it has been hard not to admire the sheer effort she’s made–to know the issues, to become a more effective speaker on the stump, to be more personable, to loosen up a little. It is also hard not to admire the sheer, pellucid quality of her intelligence. She has already proved herself an indefatigable campaigner and a deft debater, with a personal confidence that Bill–who always seemed desperate for approval–never had. Rather than collapse under the pressure of what promises to be a tense and thrilling campaign, she seems more likely to break free from the cocoon of her stereotype and emerge from the shadow of her husband’s brilliance. The biggest decisions about Hillary Clinton have yet to be made, and they are largely out of her control. Do people really want a woman President? Do they want the Clinton circus back in town? Do they want to keep trading the presidency between these two weird families? “Who knows?” said Karl Rhomberg, a former Scott County Democratic chairman, after watching Clinton perform in Davenport, Iowa. He pointed out that four years ago, in November, Howard Dean was inevitable, and John Kerry was over. “But 40% were undecided going into the last week of the caucus. It’ll be the same this time. Hillary is 20% smarter than the guys, but a woman has to be just to pull equal. And I can’t stand thinking about what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are going to do to her. People are just sick of that. They love Obama. He’s very inspiring. But in the end, Iowans vote on electability. I hate to say it, but my guess is they’ll vote for the white guy–Edwards–this time, just like they voted for the war hero last time.”

It was a chilling thought. I’m sure Edwards wouldn’t want to win that way, and I’m not so sure he will. But Rhomberg’s scenario wasn’t at all implausible. It certainly raises the central issue of this Democratic campaign: whether Hillary Clinton’s excellence as a candidate will be enough to overcome her family’s garish political history, the undiluted hatred that will be directed against her and the demons that still haunt our nation.

By KAREN TUMULTY, Jay Newton-Small

Hillary Clinton wasn’t on the ballot last year in western Pennsylvania, but you might not have known that from the ad that ran on local television a month before the election. The spot featured images of Clinton with Democratic congressional candidate Jason Altmire, who had served on her health-care task force when she was First Lady. It was one of more than 30 negative campaign commercials run against Democratic candidates in which Clinton played a co-starring role, according to the research firm TNS Media Intelligence. “The opposition did research in my district,” says Altmire, who won in a squeaker and is not endorsing a candidate. “You can imagine what they might do next cycle.”

A fear among Democratic candidates has been growing along with Clinton’s lead in the Democratic presidential primary, though few care to talk about it on the record. The 2006 election saw Democrats winning up and down the ballot in areas that have traditionally been hostile territory, from county elections on George W. Bush’s Texas turf to House and Senate races in places like Montana, Virginia, Kansas and North Carolina. But some Democrats worry that those fragile gains could be difficult to hold in 2008 if one of the most polarizing figures in politics is at the top of the ticket. “We have a lot of districts that are 50-49, where if the wind blows too hard, it’s going to switch,” says Missouri House Democratic whip Connie Johnson, a John Edwards supporter. “Many tell me that Hillary would be a lightning rod in their districts.” Union officials say similar concerns have influenced their decisions regarding candidate endorsements. That helps explain why one of the largest, the Service Employees International Union, made the unusual move of allowing its local and state chapters to decide for themselves which presidential candidate to back.

While recent national polls show Clinton matching up well against every potential Republican competitor, the picture looks very different in Republican and swing states. Says a purple-state Congressman who is nervous about holding onto his seat if Clinton is the nominee: “She certainly will get Republicans riled up. They will not only go out and vote against her–they’ll stop off at their neighbors’ house along the way and drag them to the polls.”

A late-October Quinnipiac University survey underscored this point. Nationally, it showed Clinton being edged out by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 45% to 43%, within the margin of error. In red states, however, she ran behind him, 49% to 40%, and she trailed, 47% to 41%, in the purple ones. By comparison, Illinois Senator Barack Obama beat Giuliani by a single percentage point (43% to 42%) nationally but held that same margin in the purple states and came within 6 points (45% to 39%) in the red ones.

Clinton’s strategists have argued that the other Democrats benefit from the fact that they are not as famous as she is and have not been subjected to 15 years of demonization by the Republicans. They add that any of Clinton’s lesser-known rivals would see his negatives quickly rise should he get the nomination and be thrown into what is certain to be a brutal general election.

If the polls are to be believed, running with Clinton is something to which Democratic candidates had better resign themselves. And in that case, warns a purple-state Democrat, it’s better to keep your misgivings to yourself. “No one wants to talk about her down-ticket effect for fear she’ll win,” the official says, “and she’ll take it out on you.”

Trudy Rubin
Philadelphia Inquirer
November 14, 2007

The next few weeks, or maybe days, will determine the fate of Pakistan – a country containing both Islamist terrorist groups and nukes.

This is the quintessential post-9/11 nightmare. A military dictator losing his grip, with local cells of Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida poised to take advantage.

No wonder Gen. Pervez Musharraf thought the White House would have to back a dictator over a restoration of constitutional rule. After all, President Bush has ditched his democracy pitch in Arab countries like Egypt, where he’s bought the argument that only a strongman can hold back the Islamists.

But when it comes to Pakistan, that argument doesn’t hold water. Despite $10 billion in U.S. aid, the Taliban and al-Qaida have set up bases in northwest Pakistan; domestic jihadis are setting off suicide bombs and seizing control of peaceful Pakistani villages. With corruption rife, and poverty widespread, Musharraf’s support at home has plummeted.

President Bush seems finally to have grasped that Musharraf has become an obstacle to the anti-terrorist fight. So what can we expect in Pakistan in the near future? And can, or should, the White House try to ease the Pakistani general out?

As to the first question, there is a reasonable way out for Musharraf, but he has refused to grasp it. Time for this option is quickly evaporating. It may be time for the White House to start thinking about Plan B.

The current crisis began when Musharraf declared emergency rule. He was trying to avoid a judgment by Pakistan’s supreme court that his selection by parliament for a second term, while in uniform, was illegal. He could have made a deal with Pakistan’s strongest civilian politician, Benazir Bhutto, that permitted him to remain president, while she became prime minister via elections. The White House tried to facilitate this Plan A.

Instead, he tossed the judges – along with thousands of protesting lawyers and other leaders of civil society – in jail. When Bhutto finally decided to call her followers to the streets on Friday, he put her under temporary house arrest and imprisoned hundreds of her party leaders.

Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf now says he’ll doff his mufti and hold elections. With the judiciary in jail and the media muzzled, few believe him. The key question is whether the army will keep backing the general-president.

Here’s where things get really interesting. Musharraf’s designated successor as military commander if he leaves the army is Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, a man widely admired within the Pakistani military and by members of Pakistani civil society. Kiyani is said to be a “soldier’s soldier” who wants the army out of politics.

U.S. and Pakistani military officials have told the media that Kiyani supports a stronger military effort against Islamic extremists. Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies have traditionally been more focused on India, but Kiyani understands that times are changing.

Kiyani is also said to support a new U.S. plan to train Pakistani troops to fight Islamic extremists in the country’s tribal areas along the Afghan border.

Equally important, his background indicates he would be ready to work with an elected civilian leader like Bhutto, who is favored to win free and fair elections. Bhutto has publicly pledged to fight hard against the Islamists. But some critics argue the army would never cooperate with her.

However, a Pakistani source close to Bhutto told me: “Kiyani is the only general with whom Bhutto has good relations. … He was her deputy military secretary during her first term as prime minister.”

This brings us to Plan B, replacing Musharraf with a new team to handle Pakistan’s security: an elected civilian leader (probably Bhutto) with a strong popular base, and a new army commander, both committed to fighting Pakistan’s internal jihadi scourge.

Can the White House advance such an outcome? Any heavy-handed interference would undercut the legitimacy of a new team.

However, Pakistanis with whom I’ve spoken urge Bush to press more strongly for a return to constitutional rule with genuinely free elections.

They say he should urge Musharraf to step down – or seek re-election as a civilian president.

Should such pressure fail, well-known Pakistani journalist Ahmad Rashid expects civil unrest inside Pakistan to increase; he expects the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida to take full advantage of such a political vacuum. At some point the army would probably have to intervene and force Musharraf out, but only after months of dangerous chaos. This can be avoided if we can only get to Plan B.

Cal Thomas
Tribune Media Services
November 14, 2007

This will probably kill his career, but I rise to praise Sen. Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut.

In a speech last week before Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, Lieberman said, “Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.”

Dictionary.com defines “patriot” this way: “a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.” The key words are “defends his or her country and its interests with devotion.” By this definition Joe Lieberman is a patriot.

Is it in America’s interest to lose in Iraq? Is it in America’s interest not to have a strong enough military – in personnel and in weapons – to defend us against the myriad threats confronting the country now and those that will likely confront it in the near future? Is it in America’s interest to see Democratic politicians dedicated to making a lame duck president a dead duck, not supporting him in any way for partisan political reasons just to win the White House?

Lieberman doesn’t think so, but he stands virtually alone among leading members of his party.

If you consider history, there were many Democrats who supported a vigorous foreign policy dedicated to protecting American liberties and encouraging them in other countries. Those Democrats rarely, if ever, criticized a president of either party for his foreign policies and ex-presidents mostly held their tongues when it came to criticizing their successors. Those days are gone.

The late Sen. Henry Martin “Scoop” Jackson, a Democrat from Washington state, was among the last of the modern leaders of his party to believe such things. Jackson, who died in 1983, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1984.

At the awards ceremony, Ronald Reagan said, “Scoop Jackson was convinced that there’s no place for partisanship in foreign and defense policy. He used to say, ‘In matters of national security, the best politics is no politics.’ His sense of bipartisanship was not only natural and complete; it was courageous. He wanted to be president, but I think he must have known that his outspoken ideas on the security of the nation would deprive him of the chance to be his party’s nominee in 1972 and ‘76. Still, he would not cut his convictions to fit the prevailing style. I’m deeply proud, as he would have been, to have Jackson Democrats serve in my administration. I’m proud that some of them have found a home here.”

One searches in vain for similar sentiments among leaders of today’s Democratic Party. When Jackson died, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, another Democrat of the old school, said of his friend and colleague: “Henry Jackson is proof of the old belief in the Judaic tradition that at any moment in history goodness in the world is preserved by the deeds of 36 just men who do not know that this is the role the Lord has given them. Henry Jackson was one of those men.”

In his Johns Hopkins speech, Lieberman said of Senate colleagues who voted against his resolution to declare Iran’s revolutionary Quds Force a foreign terrorist entity (privately telling him they agreed, but don’t trust Bush): “There is something profoundly wrong – something that should trouble all of us – when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran’s murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.”

Exactly. God bless Joe Lieberman, a true patriot.

Democrats Make War-Funds Threat
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 14, 2007; A01

NEW ALBANY, Ind., Nov. 13 — A budget dispute erupted into a full-scale battle Tuesday as President Bush vetoed the Democrats’ top-priority domestic spending bill and the party’s Senate leader threatened to withhold war funding if the president does not agree to pull out of Iraq.

The long-anticipated clash came to a head as Bush rejected a $606 billion bill to fund education, health and labor programs, complaining that it is too expensive and is larded with pork. Within hours, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declared that Bush will not get more money to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year unless he accepts a plan to complete troop withdrawals by the end of next year.

The exchange encapsulated a broader confrontation over national priorities, a battle both sides appear eager to wage heading into an election year. As Bush demands full funding for the war, he signaled that Tuesday’s action will be the first of a cascade of vetoes killing other spending bills, casting himself as a deficit hawk blocking a tax-and-spend Congress. Democrats are seeking to paint Bush as a reckless leader who spent the nation deep into debt through failed war policies while ignoring schools, medical research and other vital areas.

The showdown evokes the budget battle of 1995 between President Bill Clinton and a Republican Congress that led to the federal government’s shutdown. A politically weakened Clinton used that episode to redefine himself, just as an unpopular Bush wants to wage a veto fight to demonstrate strength with 14 months left in office and to play off a Congress with as little public support as that led by Newt Gingrich a dozen years ago.

The president vetoed the appropriations bill funding the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education at the White House before flying here to lambaste Congress in a speech to local leaders. He said that the bill spends nearly $10 billion more than his proposed budget and includes more than 2,200 pet projects, or earmarks, such as a prison museum, a sailing school taught aboard a catamaran and a program teaching Portuguese as a second language.

“The majority was elected on a pledge of fiscal responsibility, but so far it’s acting like a teenager with a new credit card,” Bush said in his speech here. “This year alone, the leadership in Congress has proposed to spend $22 billion more than my budget provides. Now, some of them claim that’s not really much of a difference — the scary part is, they seem to mean it.”

At the same time, Bush signed a $459 billion annual Defense Department spending bill that increases the Pentagon’s budget 9.5 percent to fund operations other than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although that legislation also includes what he calls unnecessary spending, he said he considers it important to deliver money to the military in a time of war.

Democrats and their allies quickly attacked Bush for his veto of the education-health bill. House Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.) called it “pure politics,” and the National Education Association, a teachers union, called it a “politically-motivated attack on children.” Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean vowed that “Republicans will pay for it in next year’s elections.”

Many Democrats contrasted the $10 billion Bush objected to in domestic spending with the $196 billion he has requested for war funding. “With today’s veto, the president has shown once again how out of touch and out of step he is with the values of America’s families,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “Cancer research, investments in our schools, job training, protecting workers and many other urgent priorities have all fallen victim to a president who squanders billions of dollars in Iraq but is unwilling to invest in America’s future.”

At a Capitol Hill news conference, Reid threatened not to give Bush any of the money he has sought to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan this year. The House has unveiled legislation giving Bush the first $50 billion of the war funding request but requiring him to begin troop withdrawals immediately and to plan for pulling out combat forces by the end of next year. If Bush vetoes the bill, as threatened, Reid said, “then the president won’t get his $50 billion.”

Bush rejected one bill in his first six years in office while Republicans controlled Congress. He has now used his veto pen five times this year, including for an earlier troop-withdrawal plan, a $35 billion five-year expansion of a children’s health insurance program and a $23 billion water-projects authorization. Congress overrode him on the water bill, the first rejection of a veto in his presidency.

But Tuesday’s was his first veto of any of the 12 annual spending bills that keep the government operating. The education-health bill he rejected included entitlement spending for programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, as well as $150.7 billion in discretionary spending. Congress sought to restore $3.6 billion that Bush had cut from those discretionary programs in his proposed budget and add $6.2 billion on top of that, for a net 4.3 percent increase in spending. Among the additions was more money for Bush’s own No Child Left Behind school-accountability program.

Democrats vowed to try to override Bush’s veto but do not appear to have the votes. The House approved the bill last week 274 to 141, three votes shy of the two-thirds majority necessary to override a veto; the Senate voted 56 to 37 for the measure, falling 11 votes shy of a veto-proof majority if all senators vote.

Bush also used his trip here to denounce Congress for not acting on the energy plan he outlined in his State of the Union address at the beginning of the year. He set out a series of deadlines for action, insisting that Congress pass a veterans affairs spending bill before Thanksgiving, legislation to ease the impact of the alternative minimum tax within the next couple weeks and his separate war-spending plan by Christmas.

Speaking against a backdrop emblazoned with the slogan “Holding the Line on Taxes,” he vowed to veto tax increases, including a measure that passed the House last week exempting middle-class families from the AMT by raising taxes on financial managers, equity fund managers and multinational corporations. “If you find a bill that doesn’t have a tax increase, just wait awhile,” he said. “They’ll put one in there.”

By Joe Klein

There are plenty of empty seats at some of Barack Obama’s meetings now. His media coverage isn’t as breathless as it used to be. His poll numbers have been static, with the important exception of Iowa, where he is creeping upward. His performances have been static too, nourishing but unexciting. He has been more herbivore than carnivore in debates. All of which occasioned that most banal of modern journalistic ceremonies in the days leading up to the Oct. 30 Democratic debate: a fevered, unsolicited-advice orgy. None of the advice was substantive, of course. It was all about tactics. He had to attack Hillary Clinton. He had to make his move or lose–which, given the tendency of Iowa and New Hampshire voters to make last-minute decisions, wasn’t remotely true. Even his consultants got into the act, requesting an interview with the New York Times, in which Obama announced–pathetically– that he was going to be more specific in his criticisms of the front runner.

And so, there he was onstage next to Clinton the night before Halloween and not exactly dressed as an assassin. He took his shots, judiciously–and more comfortably as the evening wore on. But Obama wasn’t nearly as avid or effective as John Edwards, whose soft Southern accent can camouflage an awful lot of aggression. For most of the debate, Clinton was able to deflect the attacks, mostly by professing her fierce and limitless desire to reverse the depredations of the Bush Administration. But just when it was beginning to seem that her evasions were more potent than her opponents’ assaults, she stumbled–badly, perhaps–on the question of granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. She made the argument for it, then denied she favored it. “Unless I missed something,” Edwards said as he nailed the coffin, “Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes.”

Clinton’s character, her tendency to lawyer questions rather than answer them, is now front and center in this campaign, and that is appropriate. But I’m still stuck on the frenzy to judge Obama’s worth by his willingness to attack Clinton. I spent part of the day of the debate watching a parade of talking heads expatiate endlessly on how dire was the need for Obama to go macho. It was “journalism” at its most useless. The ability to eviscerate your opponents is far less important in a President than the ability to defend yourself. In the nine primary campaigns I’ve covered, the willingness to attack was a) a sign of desperation and b) a leading indicator of failure, especially if it became the defining characteristic of a candidacy. Four years ago, John Kerry wisely decided not to go negative on Howard Dean and won the nomination when Dean and Dick Gephardt slaughtered each other in a negative-ad shoot-out. Now that Edwards has taken the lead against Clinton, Obama might profit by staying aloof and presidential.

But then, Obama’s low-key campaign has been confusing to the press, and perhaps to the public, from the start. A few days before the debate, I spent a day with Obama in Iowa, and the most striking thing to me about the Senator’s performances was the scrupulous honesty of his answers, his insistence on delivering bad news when necessary. A woman asked if he believed that stay-at-home moms should be eligible for Social Security. There is a way most politicians answer such questions: a moving tribute to the virtues of child-rearing, then on to the next question without ever making the commitment. Obama did the moving tribute–with a joke about his ineptitude as a parent–but then he told the woman no. “We can’t extend those benefits without huge financial implications,” he said.

The very next question was about global warming. Obama laid out his rigorous cap-and-trade plan for reducing carbon emissions, but then he said, “One of the themes of this campaign is to tell voters what they need to hear, not just what they want to hear … So I’ve got to tell you there will be a cost to this–and the utility companies will pass it along to consumers. You can expect a spike in electricity prices,” although, he added, the new technology should ultimately bring those prices back down.

I don’t know if this sort of quiet, unsolicited honesty can work in our rude, noisy politics, but it certainly is far more presidential than the dodging and fudging that you get from most candidates. It has been argued that Obama’s style is too cerebral, too élitist. That may be true. He assumes a maturity in his audiences, and in the press, that simply may not exist. But given the stakes in 2008, perhaps it’s time for all of us to grow up and meet the challenge of a difficult moment for our country.

By Joel Stein

It sometimes seems as if someone is playing a cruel practical joke on Ron Paul. He goes to a college and delivers the same speech he’s given for the past 30 years of his political career, the one espousing the Austrian school of economics. Only now the audience is packed with hundreds of kids in RON PAUL REVOLUTION T shirts who go nuts–giving standing ovations when he drones on about getting rid of the Federal Reserve and returning to the gold standard. After a speech at Iowa State last month, when nearly half the crowd had to stand because there were only 400 seats, a hipster-looking student worked his way through the half-hour-long line to shake Paul’s hand. This was surely it–the moment when the straight faces would break and Paul would be wedgied up the flagpole. “When you see Bernanke,” the kid said, “will you tell him to stop cutting rates when gold hits 1,000?”

Politics might be rock ‘n’ roll for nerds, but the nerds aren’t supposed to be quite this nerdy. The leader of the disaffected in next year’s presidential election–the Howard Dean, the Ross Perot, the Pat Buchanan–is a kindly great-grandfather and obstetrician whose passion is monetary policy. Paul, a 72-year-old hard-core libertarian Republican Congressman who is against foreign intervention, subsidies and the federal income tax, is not only drawing impressive crowds (more than 2,000 at a postdebate rally at the University of Michigan last month) but also raising tons of cash. In the third quarter of 2007, Paul took in $5.3 million (just slightly less than GOP rival John McCain), mostly in small, individual donations. On Oct. 22, he aired his first TV ads, $1.1 million worth in New Hampshire.

The numbers are even more impressive considering that as of early October, 72% of GOP voters told Gallup pollsters they didn’t know enough about Paul to form an opinion. He has been able to attract followers in the debates, where he’s presented a clear, simple philosophy of personal freedom and responsibility. He bluntly refers to the U.S. as an empire. And the nerdiness lends Paul’s simple message an aura of credibility, especially on a stage with more polished politicians and their nuanced positions. “He’s about something that American nerd culture can get on board with: really knowing one subject and going all out on it,” says Ben Darrington, a Ron Paul supporter at Yale. “For some people, it’s Star Wars. For some people, it’s Japanese cartoons. For Ron Paul, it’s free-market commodity money.”

The libertarian’s traction is most apparent on the Internet, where his presence far outstrips that of any candidate from either party. His name is the most searched, his YouTube videos the most watched, his campaign the topic of songs by at least 14 bands. “The last thing I would listen to is rap,” Paul says. “But there’s something going on when there’s a rap song about the Fed.” On Tuesday, both Paul and Tom Cruise were guests on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The actor went to Paul’s dressing room to thank him for his work on a bill fighting the forced mental screening of grade-school kids. “Go. Go. Go. Go hard,” Cruise said. Paul turned to an aide and asked, “What movies has he been in?”

Paul’s fans–and there were more than 100 of them in Leno’s audience, many of whom had flown in from out of town–are entranced by a man who responds to surprising information with “Wowee” and a jaw-dropped smile not often seen apart from 5-year-old boys and Muppets. “It’s the message. Ron isn’t that exciting as himself,” says Andre Marrou, who was Paul’s running mate when he ran as a Libertarian in 1988. “I saw him referred to in print as semi-eccentric. He’s maybe 10% eccentric. It’s his ideas that are eccentric. But it’s basic Americanism.” Paul is such a strict constructionist that he autographs pocket Constitutions more often than Tommy Lee signs breasts.

But Paul’s popularity can’t necessarily be explained by a previously undetected craving for gold-standard debates on college campuses. His message, even if packaged in obscure economic lectures, is that there is something very corrupt, very Halliburton-Blackwatery going on with our military-industrial complex, and that can attract some pretty weird followers. At the Iowa State event, a student stood outside in a tricornered hat and Revolutionary War-era suit, ringing a bell. Representative Tom Tancredo, another long-shot GOP candidate, tells me that after a debate in New Hampshire, one of his staffers walked up to a guy in a shark costume and asked him if he was a Ron Paul supporter. “No. They’re all nuts,” replied the shark. “I’m just a guy in a shark suit.” There is a subset of Paul supporters who believe 9/11 was an inside job by the U.S. government. And there are anarchists as well: they’ve picked Nov. 5, Guy Fawkes Day, for a fund-raising drive.

“His supporters are the equivalent of crabgrass,” says GOP consultant Frank Luntz. “It’s not the grass you want, and it spreads faster than the real stuff. They just like him because he’s the most anti-Establishment of all the candidates, the most likely to look at the camera during the debates and say, ‘Hey, Washington, f____ you.’”

The one place Paul hasn’t become a major player is where it counts: in the polls, where he hasn’t broken above 5% and has yet to pass Mike Huckabee. Paul realizes he’s not a favorite among the pro-war, pro-Bush Republicans. “A lot of times at my rally, I say, ‘We’re diverse. We even have some Republicans,’” he jokes. (His largest Meetup.com group gathers in liberal Austin, Texas; another sizable one is in San Francisco.) And he isn’t sure where all this sudden support will lead.

Paul doesn’t expect that he will win the nomination, and he has no interest in running as an independent again. But he also doesn’t see himself endorsing one of the other Republicans in the general election. “Those people who support me wouldn’t believe it,” he says. “If I said, ‘Giuliani’s a great guy, and he’ll reduce subsidies and bring the troops home’? I couldn’t do that.” Even nerd revolutions don’t surrender.

By Dan Balz and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, November 12, 2007; A01

DES MOINES, Nov. 11 — In the space of an hour this weekend, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.), using some of their most pointed and forceful rhetoric of the campaign, framed in stark terms the choice for Democrats deciding their party’s presidential nomination.

Clinton gave a strong speech at the Iowa Democratic Party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner late Saturday night, but Obama, criticized for occasional lackluster performances on the campaign trail, delivered one of his most focused and powerful addresses. In the view of many in the audience, he emerged as the oratorical winner at the biggest Democratic political event in Iowa before the state’s January caucuses.

Obama said his candidacy could produce a new Democratic majority capable of breaking the gridlock and polarization that have plagued Washington for a decade or more. “The same old Washington textbook campaigns just won’t do it in this election,” he said. “That’s why not answering questions because we’re afraid our answers won’t be popular just won’t do it.”

But Clinton, the front-runner for the nomination, used the same event to fire back at rivals such as Obama, who have attacked her with increasing sharpness over the past two weeks. She defended herself as someone who has stood strongly for and with middle-class voters and against the policies of President Bush and the Republicans.

Clinton argued that she has a combination of strength, experience and values that none of her rivals can match. “We must nominate a nominee who’s been tested and elect a president who is ready to lead on Day One,” she said.

Obama and Clinton were at it again Sunday, this time over the future of Social Security. On NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama said again that he would favor raising the cap on payroll taxes to help alleviate future financial problems for the government retirement system. Clinton, campaigning in Waterloo, said she isn’t yet prepared to endorse that idea. She told an Iowa voter recently that she was open to taking that step but said in a debate that she was not advocating it.

Iowa’s caucuses are 53 days away and, while Clinton holds a substantial lead in national polls, in this state she, Obama and former senator John Edwards (N.C.) are in a competitive three-way contest.

The Jefferson-Jackson Dinner drew an estimated 9,000 Democratic activists and has marked a turning point in the battle for Iowa in recent presidential campaigns. Every one of the candidates saw it as an opportunity to gain an advantage in the final weeks of campaigning. For Obama and Clinton, the last speakers, it was an opportunity to sharpen an argument that has been brewing for weeks.

Edwards was the first of six presidential candidates to speak, and he tried to elbow his way into the Clinton-Obama rivalry with a populist call for Democrats to stand up against corporate interests and cleanse Washington of the corrupting influence of money and power.

“Washington is awash with corporate money, with lobbyists who pass it out, with candidates who ask for it,” he said as he called on Democrats to show some backbone in challenging the status quo.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson also spoke from the elevated stage in Veterans Memorial Auditorium, during a program that ran more than three hours and included introductions by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), speeches by Iowa politicians and a traditional auction.

The length of the evening tried the patience of the Democratic activists, who milled about during many of the speeches. But the crowd snapped back to attention when Clinton arrived on stage about 10:40 p.m. Central time, and remained riveted through Obama’s presentation, which ended close to 11:30 p.m.

Neither mentioned the other by name, but it was clear to everyone in the audience that they were aiming at one another. Obama has accused Clinton of not being clear on the issues. Her response Saturday was to say: “There are some who will say they don’t know where I stand. Well, I think you know better than that. I stand where I have stood for 35 years. I stand with you, and with your children and with every American who needs a fighter in their corner for a better life.”

Obama was even more provocative in his rhetoric. To applause, he said, “I am running for president because I am sick and tired of Democrats thinking the only way to look tough on national security is by talking and acting and voting like George Bush Republicans.” Asked Sunday on NBC to whom he was referring, Obama singled out Clinton for a recent vote on Iran and said many Democrats, including Clinton, had supported the 2002 Iraq war resolution.

Edwards was less pointed Saturday in his criticism of Clinton than he has been recently, but by Sunday he was back to attacking her directly. During a news conference in Des Moines, a reporter pointed out to Edwards that Clinton had said that it’s clear where she stands.

“Where is that?” Edwards responded.

“What do you think?” the reporter asked.

“I can’t tell,” Edwards replied.

Most of those in the audience Saturday night already knew whom they would back in January, but not all. Barbara and Mike Donnelly arrived not certain whom they would support in the Democratic caucuses.

The Oskaloosa couple left with colorful glow necklaces, handed out by Obama’s campaign, peeking out from under their coats.

“We just think he’s a very strong character,” Barbara Donnelly said. Obama’s speech “crystallized it for me,” Mike Donnelly said. “I like Hillary and Edwards. But there was something about Barack tonight. He was so forceful.”

Randy Naber of Muscatine left the auditorium still committed to Edwards and fond of Clinton, but like others, he was impressed with Obama’s performance. Obama, he said, “really surprised me tonight.”

That was good news for the Obama campaign, but the weekend showed just how intense the rest of the battle for the nomination will be.

When nominating contests were squeezed into January, it was to ease Iowa’s impact. But in an ironic twist, the Hawkeye State may now be more crucial.

By Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 4:32 PM ET Nov 3, 2007

Iowans are nice, maybe too nice. Late last month, NEWSWEEK political blogger Andrew Romano followed Democratic candidate John Edwards into the Depot restaurant in Shenandoah, Iowa (home of the Everly Brothers), and saw a woman wearing an Edwards button. Are you a supporter? the reporter inquired. “That’s just today,” she responded. “Joe Biden was here earlier this week and I was wearing his buttons.” So, Romano asked, it’s between Biden and Edwards for you? “No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head at the re-porter’s innocence. “This is Iowa. I’ve even worn a Romney sticker.”

Pity the presidential candidates who spend many millions of dollars and months crisscrossing Iowa’s thinly populated landscape searching for supporters. Jimmy Carter, the first candidate to exploit Iowa, sometimes left notes on the doors of empty farmhouses saying he’d dropped by. The contenders are prospecting for those few hardy souls who will go out in subfreezing temperatures on a January night and spend two or three hours in the local high-school auditorium casting—and then, sometimes changing—their votes. “In Iowa, people are so nice they’ll tell you they’ll support you, but then they don’t show up,” says Wally Horn, the longest-current-serving Democratic state senator in Iowa. Even if they do, sometimes the bargaining is just beginning. Under the Democrats’ rules in Iowa, a candidate must collect at least 15 percent of the vote at a local caucus to be considered “viable.” If the votes fall short—entirely possible in a six- or seven-person field—then the caucusgoers can switch their votes to another candidate, setting off a hectic round of horse trading and arm twisting and turning close contests into sudden runaways.

It’s all arcane and confusing—and critically important to the 2008 presidential race. According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, Hillary Clinton is 20 points ahead of other candidates nationally, but if she doesn’t win the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, her campaign could implode. The current polling in Iowa is far closer—Clinton leads Barack Obama and Edwards, but not by much—and, given past history and the fickleness, er, niceness, of Iowa voters, polls may not mean much anyway. In 2004, Howard Dean looked strong in Iowa. He seemed to have plenty of money, and he had flooded the state with “Deaniacs,” young and zealous supporters who knocked on every door and got out the vote. But on caucus night, the front runner finished third and was reduced to the primal “Scream,” his candidacy’s last yelp.

Iowa is an odd place to anoint as kingmaker (or kingbreaker) in the race for presidential nominations. True, it is just about in the center of the country, the classic “heartland,” and it is fairly well balanced between liberals and conservatives. But it is notably older and whiter than the rest of the country, and its voters sometimes demand a level of pandering that is embarrassing even to politicians who know little shame. Its baroque caucus system is not very democratic: only one in 29 Iowans braves the cold to vote. But it has become, along with New Hampshire, state of the first primary, the traditional bellwether of American presidential politics. Though there is still an outside chance New Hampshire will leapfrog Iowa and hold its primary in December, it seems likely that the Hawkeye and Granite states will preserve their one-two punch.

For years, other bigger, more representative states have suffered from early-nominating-contest envy. This time around, many big states, including Florida and Michigan, California and New Jersey, pushed their primary dates up on the calendar. The scrambling and jostling was slightly ridiculous, if not unseemly—the Democratic National Committee warned Florida it would not seat the state delegates at this summer’s national convention if Florida persisted in moving its primary date to Jan. 29 (it did it anyway, figuring an early primary would give the state more clout). For all the desperate jockeying, the net result may have been, ironically, to magnify the power of Iowa and New Hampshire. There once was a time when Iowa caucused a good month before New Hampshire’s primary and New Hampshire came three weeks before the rest. Now it seems Iowa will caucus on Jan. 3 and New Hampshire will vote on Jan. 8—just before Michigan votes on the 15th and Nevada caucuses on the 19th. When a candidate had 30 days, he could recover from defeat in Iowa, just as Ronald Reagan did after an upset loss to George H.W. Bush in 1980. But there will be almost no time to come back from a subpar showing in Iowa in 2008—potentially creating a catapult or slingshot effect.

The candidates are well aware of Iowa’s significance. According to The Wall Street Journal, the three leading Democrats—Clinton, Obama and Edwards—have spent twice as much money in Iowa as in New Hampshire, and far more than in any other early-voting state. Clinton has opened 25 offices in Iowa and has at least 117 staffers there. Obama has spent more than Clinton—between $5 million and $6 million, versus $3 million to $4 million for Clinton. Obama has opened 33 field offices and is targeting 17-year-olds who can caucus if they turn 18 by Election Day ‘08. (The youth vote may be a false beacon for Obama: the average Iowa voter is in his or her 50s.) Obama is strong in Iowa’s small black community (less than 2 percent of Iowa’s voters), though Flora Lee, Sioux City president of the NAACP, has heard black voters at dinner parties gloomily say, “Well, he’s black, he’ll get assassinated.” The less-well-financed Edwards has toured all 99 counties and has been working the state almost nonstop since 2004.

The Republicans are investing less in Iowa. The national front runner, Rudy Giuliani, has all but written off the state—he is not likely to do well among the evangelicals who dominate the GOP caucuses. But Mitt Romney, who’s atop the polls in the state, has been pouring resources into Iowa, and Mike Huckabee is counting on the caucuses to vault him from the second tier to man-to-beat.

All the candidates know the history of Iowa as a graveyard for front runners and a launching pad for long shots. George McGovern led the way. The anti Vietnam War candidate didn’t win Iowa in 1972, but his surprising second-place finish to front runner Ed Muskie shook up the race. (Muskie’s the only presidential candidate who won in Iowa and New Hampshire, only to lose the nomination.) The press began looking at Iowa as a harbinger: when ABC’s Bill Lawrence said Muskie’s campaign almost ran off an icy road in Iowa, reporters began sensing that the Democrats’ establishment candidate was vulnerable in New Hampshire.

In 1975, the then obscure Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter wandered the state, introducing himself by saying, “Hi, I’m not a lawyer and I’m not from Washington.” Carter didn’t attract much attention at first. Steve Hansen, now director of the Sioux City Public Museum, recalls walking by his college cafeteria and seeing candidate Carter sitting alone. Hansen turned to a friend and asked, “Should we stop in? He looks kind of lonely.” Carter’s low-paid guerrilla staffers rigged straw polls, stacked political dinners and wooed national reporters. Carter’s media man, Jerry Rafshoon, mortgaged his house to buy ads. It’s now forgotten that Carter came in second to “Uncommitted” in the caucuses, but he beat everyone else in a crowded field and was on his way.

In 1980, George H.W. Bush defeated Ronald Reagan and declared he had “the Big Mo.” The Big Mo fizzled by New Hampshire, but his strong showing on the campaign trail helped Bush secure the second spot on the GOP ticket. Dean’s flameout in 2004 holds several lessons. Dean thought he had created the “perfect storm” going into Iowa, a Netroots-generated youth revolution that would flood the state in bright yellow school buses. But the out-of-town kids wearing orange caps were regarded as aliens by Iowans. At the same time, Dean got caught up in a negative ad war with Dick Gephardt. Their wrestling match turned into a suicide pact in Iowa, which really does value “niceness.” Dean thought he had lined up the Democratic establishment by winning union support. On one late swing, the government workers union insisted Dean campaign for votes at a correctional facility near Ft. Dodge. Their goal was to win over prison guards, but it looked like Dean was stumping for votes among criminals.

Iowa does have one great virtue over the big primary states: the candidates actually meet voters at diners and farms and in their homes. In the large states, voters are reached wholesale, through media events and slick ads. Campaigning in Iowa is still mostly retail. “Someone has got to start this process and the question is: do you want to start it in California or New York, where … the media plays a disproportionate role?” asks former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack in an interview with NEWSWEEK. “Or do you want to start it in a place where these candidates have to visit with real voters for extended periods of time, answer questions that haven’t been covered in the press and can create these surprising moments?”

There is something heartwarming about watching elderly ladies scribbling notes while grilling candidates on the intricacies of agricultural policy. But there can be too much of a good thing. Iowa voters are used to being catered to, and they can be even more difficult to satisfy than a K Street lobbyist with high-polish shoes and a big expense account. “You’ve got to be pretty real to convince Iowans,” says Phil Claeys, 58, a ’60s flower child turned community organizer. “We’re not in awe of anybody. We’re in awe of the corn.”

Iowans have learned how to “farm the government,” as they say. The Hawkeyes stand first among 50 states in overall farm subsidies. Vilsack insists the caucuses play no role in this largesse, that Iowa’s congressional delegation delivers the goods, but presidential candidates pander anyway. John McCain, Clinton and Fred Thompson all opposed subsidies for ethanol, the fuel made from corn, at some point during their Senate careers, but as presidential hopefuls, they are all at least vaguely pro-ethanol—citing, of course, the need for energy independence to protect national security.

Still, Iowa farmers are not satisfied. “These candidates come out and promise the world,” says Linus Solberg, speaking to NEWSWEEK the week after he hosted a campaign event for Edwards in one of his barns. “But when they get back to Washington, it’s business as usual.” Though Edwards is trying to appeal to small farmers being pushed aside by giant agribusiness, Solberg, a hog farmer, complains that Edwards left quickly without shaking hands. “He’d been to four places already and was flying out for some union that was going to endorse him,” says Solberg.

The Democrats have been dancing around the ticklish subject of immigration, trying to please Hispanics without offending Iowans who want tighter border controls and no social services for illegal immigrants. “They don’t want to get into it because then people have to take one side or another,” says Johnny Bautista, 21. “They’re just kind of avoiding it.” “We’re just a pawn in their political game,” says Rick Swanson, 48, owner of Sioux City’s Chesterfield Friday Night Social Club, who complains that immigration “is just getting out of control.”

Iowans deserve the first caucus because “they’re hardworking people with a sense of responsibility,” says Joni Vondrak, 39, who, with her husband, Chris, 39, raises cattle outside Sioux City. But neither she nor her husband plans to vote in the caucuses, because they doubt the results will make much difference. “As Iowa goes, the nation doesn’t go,” says Chris. Actually, the Iowa caucuses have predicted the parties’ candidates about 60 percent of the time, which is why many presidential candidates spend so many months traveling those long, lonely roads.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/67930

Masters of politics can flip-flop. Clinton isn’t in a league with her husband, but is she agile enough?

By Jonathan Alter

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:29 PM ET Nov 3, 2007

“She’s a congenital liar.” that was New York Times columnist William Safire in 1996, assessing First Lady Hillary Clinton’s responses on Whitewater, “Travelgate” and other now-distant flaps. The line was a tad strong (not to mention imprecise for a language maven) and it led her husband to say that if he weren’t president, he would have punched Safire in the nose. But if Hillary hadn’t flatly lied about those often-trumped-up scandals, she wasn’t forthcoming either. Her parsimony with documents made it seem as if she had something to hide when she didn’t. More like a “congenital lawyer.”

The lawyer is back, like one of her bad hairdos from the 1990s. Clinton was bruised in last week’s Democratic debate in Philadelphia because she seemed trapped in a series of fuzzy nonresponses that might have worked in opaque corporate legal filings at the Rose Law Firm but sounded evasive and mealy-mouthed in politics. Her rivals pounded her for what John Edwards called “double talk.” It reminded me of when President George H.W. Bush said in 1992 that his challenger, Gov. Bill Clinton, “wants to turn the White House into the Waffle House.” (To drive home the point, Bush made the charge while campaigning at a Waffle House in Spartanburg, S.C.)

Of course, it didn’t work for Bush. “Slick Willie” had other great strengths to compensate for his exasperating I-didn’t-inhale word games. So did Franklin D. Roosevelt, who during the 1932 campaign was for the League of Nations—before he was against it. On Prohibition, he was neither a “wet” nor a “dry” but a “damp,” a position for weasels that left resolving the legalization of alcohol to the states. Masters of politics get away with trimming, hedging and flip-flopping, while the John Kerrys of the world cannot.

We know Hillary isn’t in a league with her husband or FDR as a politician, but is she agile enough to dodge all the incoming fire? Is she “Slick Hillary”? And what do her acrobatics on issues such as Iran, Social Security, driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants and the Clinton Library records tell us about what it would be like to spend the next four or eight years with her?

On Iran, Clinton makes a decent case that she voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization, to build diplomatic pressure on the regime. But her claim last week that Barack Obama’s plan for a new relationship with Iran would “short-circuit the diplomatic process” would be more convincing if the Clinton foreign policy she claims to have helped implement had done anything significant to advance that process when her husband was in office.

On another big debate topic—Social Security—Clinton’s position on bolstering the entitlement for the soon-to-be-retiring baby boomers makes her sound like a politician of the 1980s, afraid to touch the “third rail.” She may be right that the system isn’t in immediate crisis, but repeating like an annoying mantra that she’s against privatization (who among Democrats isn’t?) and for “responsibility” is itself irresponsible. Contrary to her obfuscations, she must know perfectly well that wealthy retirees should pay taxes on their Social Security benefits just like ordinary income.

Today’s rapidly developing third rail (at least in some states) is supporting driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, as favored by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. When Tim Russert asked Clinton her view of it, she claimed it was a “gotcha” question, as if he had asked for the name of the president of Tunisia. As of last week, driver’s licenses for illegals is for Democrats what the State Children’s Health Insurance Program is for Republicans—an “80-20″ issue, meaning they see a Mack truck (in the form of 80 percent of the public) bearing down on them if they get on the wrong side of the debate.

The issue that hurt Clinton the most last week was least relevant to the public. While the availability of the Clinton Library papers is not going to determine anyone’s vote, it gave Obama an opening to tap old fears about her. He made the reasonable point that she shouldn’t brag about her White House “experience” without releasing the evidence to prove it.

In truth, the Clintons have been much better than the Bushes on releasing documents. But once again, as she did in her famous “pretty in pink” press conference in 1994, she made you think something was there when there probably wasn’t. Houdini in reverse.

Despite her debate stumble, the Hillary Clinton I followed around New Hampshire last week is a much-improved model from the old days. It felt as if she were already the incumbent, with tightly choreographed events and a message that is poll tested but also adroitly customized to her personal story: a new anecdote about an arrogant Harvard law professor telling her 37 years ago that “Harvard already has enough women” is particularly compelling for starry-eyed young women in the audience.

Clinton was relaxed, at least mildly amusing and deft at drawing on her status as a history-making woman without sounding like a strident feminist. These are compensatory strengths for her frequent failure to answer direct questions directly. But politicians, like ordinary mortals, only change around the edges. A lawyer she was, a lawyer she will be.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/67935

Carl Leubsdorf
Dallas Morning Herald
November 12, 2007

A year before Americans elect their next president, polls suggest that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani will be the nominees, the race will be close and Clinton starts with a modest advantage.

History says the unanticipated will disrupt that scenario.

In virtually every recent election, the outcome has not matched what seemed likely a year ahead of time. Many changes surprised the pundits and other self-styled experts (including columnists). And one of the few that came out the way that was forecast required a monthlong disputed recount and a Supreme Court decision, President Bush’s razor-thin triumph over Al Gore in 2000.

Some anointed front-runners quickly collapsed, from Democrat Edmund Muskie in 1972 to Democrat Howard Dean in 2004. Others barely known a year before the vote, like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, ended up as presidents.

Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, whose re-elections had seemed in some doubt, won easily. Carter and George H.W. Bush lost re-election campaigns they started as favorites.

Inherent flaws undermined some candidates.

Howard Dean’s early 2004 lead stemmed from a weak field and his own success in Internet fundraising. But his lack of foreign policy experience and narrow liberal base helped doom him.

A generation earlier, Muskie misread how fervently Democrats wanted an anti-war candidate. Sen. George McGovern didn’t.

The first President Bush failed to grasp the country’s yearning to attend to its domestic agenda. Carter’s inability to cope with Iran’s capture of more than 60 U.S. diplomats underscored his weak leadership.

So what could upset the likely 2008 scenario? Here are some possibilities:

Democrats: No one has voted yet, and the primary results could undercut what most pundits forecast as a virtually inevitable Clinton nomination, starting with an upset in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses. As last week’s debate indicated, she faces two increasingly desperate rivals, Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards. It took only a modest misstep last week for many to question her inevitability.

A new controversy or scandal involving her husband, the former president, could remind some voters why they disliked the tumultuous Clinton years.

Absent that, people who realize that 20 years of Clintons or Bushes in the White House are enough might vote Republican, giving the GOP a narrow victory. Or enough independents might decide that, while not opposed to a woman president, they have sufficient doubts about this woman.

Republicans: All signs are that current support is soft. Giuliani’s national lead might vanish if former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney can parlay early victories in Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan into unstoppable momentum.

A surprise victory by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa or Sen. John McCain in New Hampshire and mixed results elsewhere might muddle the GOP race even further. It even might produce a deadlocked convention and lead to a compromise nominee.

The GOP’s southern base might help former Sen. Fred Thompson revive what looks today to be a lagging campaign.

Democrats may be able to turn Giuliani’s assertive personality against him by portraying him as unpredictable, bull-headed and likely to continue the international adventurism of the Bush years.

And Giuliani’s nomination could lead to a conservative third party, draining off valuable GOP votes and making him uncompetitive with Clinton.

The Landscape: Events in the Middle East – or a terrorist attack at home – could transform the political playing field and affect what Americans want from their next president.

The Iraq war, which now looks like a drag on Republican prospects, could turn sharply better, turning a GOP negative into a positive – or at least a wash.

The Bush administration could decide to use force to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons potential, producing unforeseen circumstances that could affect either party race – or certainly the general election.

A significant economic downturn triggered by the housing slump would undercut Republican claims of a strong economy, adding one more reason for voters to make a change.

“The only thing we can count on is that there will be stuff happening that we have no way of anticipating,” analyst Charles Cook said.

And it wouldn’t take much to turn today’s likely scenario into a totally different outcome.

Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
November 12, 2007

Beg pardon, but who died and made Al Sharpton president of the negroes?

Not that Sharpton has ever declared himself as such. But the fact that some regard him as black America’s chief executive was driven home for the umpteenth time a few days ago after TV reality show bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman got in trouble for using a certain toxic racial epithet – six letters, starts with “n,” rhymes with digger – on the phone with his son.

As you may have heard, Chapman was expressing disapproval of the son’s black girlfriend. “It’s not because she’s black,” he said. “It’s because we use the word ‘n – – -’ sometimes here. I’m not going to take a chance ever in life of losing everything I’ve worked for for 30 years because some f – – – n – – – heard us say ‘n – – -’ and turned us in to the Enquirer magazine.”

Naturally, the son sold a tape of the conversation to the National Enquirer. Which leaves me in the awkward position of simultaneously loathing what Chapman said and pitying him for having raised a rat fink son who would sell out his own father for a few pieces of silver. Anyway, with his life and career circling the drain, an apologetic Chapman fell back on what is becoming standard operating procedure for celebrities who defame black folk. He contacted Sharpton.

In so doing, he follows the trail blazed by Don Imus, Washington shock jock Doug “Greaseman” Tracht, and Michael Richards, who sought out Sharpton (or, alternately, Jesse Jackson) after saying what they wished they had not. They were all in turn following the news media, which, whenever a quote on some racial matter is required, turn to the right reverends by reflex. You’d think they knew no other negroes.

I don’t begrudge Jackson or Sharpton their fame. Jena, La., might have gone unnoticed had they not used that fame to direct public attention there. Still, I question whether we ought not by now have grown beyond the notion that one or two men can speak for, or offer absolution in the name of, 36 million people.

Certainly, black America has a long and distinguished history of charismatic leadership, from Frederick Douglass to Booker T. Washington to W.E.B. DuBois to Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X to Martin Luther King Jr. It was King to whom the “president of the negroes” honorific was jokingly applied during the civil rights era in recognition of the moral authority that allowed him to rally masses. Since King’s murder in 1968, a number of men have jockeyed to position themselves as his heir. They have not been conspicuous by their success.

Louis Farrakhan couldn’t do it, handicapped as he is by the fact that he is Louis Farrakhan. Sharpton couldn’t do it; one hardly thinks of moral authority when one thinks of the man at the center of the Tawana Brawley debacle. Jesse Jackson seemed to presage a new era of charismatic leadership when he ran for president, but he is dogged by a perception some of us have that he serves no cause higher than himself.

But beyond the strengths and weaknesses of the men who seek to be charismatic leaders, there is a sense that the job itself has grown obsolete. Who, after all, are the nation’s white leaders? To what one man or woman do you apologize when you insult white folks? Doesn’t the very idea that there could be one person deny the complexity and diversity of the population?

Similarly, black America is served by dozens of magazines, Web sites, television networks and media figures that did not exist when King was killed. So it’s about time news media – and those who will insult us in the future – get past this notion that one or two people are anointed to speak for 36 million. That is a simplistic, antiquated and faintly condescending idea.

I speak for myself. Don’t you?

Darlene Superville
Associated Press
November 12, 2007

WASHINGTON – Democrat Barack Obama said Sunday that if elected he will push to increase the amount of income that is taxed to provide monthly Social Security benefits.

Obama and other Democratic presidential candidates previously have signaled support for this idea.

But during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama said subjecting more of a person’s income to the payroll tax is the option he would push for if elected president.

He objected to benefit cuts or a higher retirement age.

“I think the best way to approach this is to adjust the cap on the payroll tax so that people like myself are paying a little bit more and people who are in need are protected,” the Illinois senator said.

Currently, only the first $97,500 of a person’s annual income is taxed. The amount is scheduled to rise to $102,000 next year.

Obama’s proposal could include a gap or “doughnut hole” to shield middle-income earners from paying more in taxes, he said.

Obama has tried to draw contrasts between himself and front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton on Social Security, saying on the stump and in TV ads that she has dodged tough questions about its finances.

He said some tough decisions will be in order because Social Security is the most important social program in the country.

Clinton has said growing the economy will pump more money into Social Security’s coffers. She also has said she would create a bipartisan commission to recommend solutions.

Speaking on Sunday in Iowa, Clinton said she would move more carefully than her rivals on dealing with the looming shortfalls rather than raising the income cap.

“I know it may sound good at first blush,” said Clinton. “If you look at all the complexities of this, I think it’s much smarter to say: Look, we’re going to deal with the challenges by fiscal responsibility and we’re going to use a bipartisan commission. And we’re not going to do it by further burdening middle-class families.”

Social Security is projected to start spending more than it collects beginning in 2017, with its trust fund depleted in 2041.

Obama also invoked his friend, billionaire Warren Buffett, who Obama said has expressed concern that he pays less in Social Security taxes than anyone else in his office.

“And he has said, and I think a lot of us who have been fortunate are willing to pay a little bit more to make sure that a senior citizen who is struggling to deal with rising property taxes or rising heating bills, that they’ve got the coverage that they need,” Obama said.

Iran, Russia and Venezuela Feel the Benefits

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 10, 2007; A01

High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone.

The consequences are evident in minds and mortar: anger at Chinese motor-fuel pumps and inflated confidence in the Kremlin; new weapons in Chad and new petrochemical plants in Saudi Arabia; no-driving campaigns in South Korea and bigger sales for Toyota hybrid cars; a fiscal burden in Senegal and a bonanza in Brazil. In Burma, recent demonstrations were triggered by a government decision to raise fuel prices.

In the United States, the rising bill for imported petroleum lowers already anemic consumer savings rates, adds to inflation, worsens the trade deficit, undermines the dollar and makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to balance its competing goals of fighting inflation and sustaining growth.

High prices have given a boost to oil-rich Alaska, which in September raised the annual oil dividend paid to every man, woman and child living there for a year to $1,654, an increase of $547 from last year. In other states, high prices create greater incentives for pursuing non-oil energy projects that once might have looked too expensive and hurt earnings at energy-intensive companies like airlines and chemical makers. Even Kellogg’s cited higher energy costs as a drag on its third-quarter earnings.

With crude oil prices nearing $100 a barrel, there is no end in sight to the redistribution of more than 1 percent of the world’s gross domestic product. Earlier oil shocks generated giant shifts in wealth and pools of petrodollars, but they eventually faded and economies adjusted. This new high point in petroleum prices has arrived over four years, and many believe it will represent a new plateau even if prices drop back somewhat in coming months.

“There’s never been anything like this on a sustained basis the way we’ve seen the last couple of years,” said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University economics professor and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. Oil prices “are not spiking; they’re just rising,” he added.

The benefits, to the tune of $700 billion a year, are flowing to the world’s oil-exporting countries.

Two of those nations — Iran and Venezuela — may be better able to defy the Bush administration because of swelling oil revenue. Venezuela has used its oil wealth to dispense patronage around South America, vying for influence even with longtime U.S. allies. And Iran could be less vulnerable to sanctions designed to pressure it into giving up its nuclear program or opening it to inspection.

The world’s biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, is using its rejuvenated oil riches to build four cities. Projects like these are designed to burnish the country’s image, develop a non-oil economy and generate enough employment to maintain social stability.

One is King Abdullah Economic City, a mega-project on the kingdom’s west coast. According to Emaar, a real estate development firm in Dubai, the city will cost $27 billion and be spread across an area three times the size of Manhattan. A contractor who works there said a wide, palm tree-lined boulevard cuts a dozen miles across an ocean of sand and ends at the Red Sea. Construction workers in hard hats are navigating excavators, dredging land and digging foundations for a power plant, a desalinization plant and a port. The project will eventually include an industrial district, a financial island, a university and a residential area, and is expected to house 2 million people.

Despite mega-projects like this, Saudi Arabia is running a budget surplus. It has paid down much of the foreign debt it accumulated in the late 1990s and is adding to its foreign-exchange reserves.

Russia, the world’s No. 2 oil exporter, shows oil’s transformational impact in the political as well as the economic realm. When Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, less than two years after the collapse of the ruble and Russia’s default on its international debt, the country’s policymakers worried that 2003 could bring another financial crisis. The country’s foreign-debt repayments were scheduled to peak at $17 billion that year.

Inside the Kremlin, with Putin nearing the end of his second and final term as president, that sum now looks like peanuts. Russia’s gold and foreign-currency reserves have risen by more than that amount just since July. The soaring price of oil has helped Russia increase the federal budget tenfold since 1999 while paying off its foreign debt and building the third-largest gold and hard-currency reserves in the world, about $425 billion.

“The government is much stronger, much more self-assured and self-confident,” said Vladimir Milov, head of the Institute of Energy Policy in Moscow and a former deputy minister of energy. “It believes it can cope with any economic crisis at home.”

With good reason. Using energy revenue, the government has built up a $150 billion rainy-day account called the Stabilization Fund.

“This financial independence has contributed to more assertive actions by Russia in the international arena,” Milov said. “There is a strong drive within part of the elite to show that we are off our knees.”

The result: Russia is trying to reclaim former Soviet republics as part of its sphere of influence. Freed of the need to curry favor with foreign oil companies and Western bankers, Russia can resist what it views as American expansionism, particularly regarding NATO enlargement and U.S. missile defense in Eastern Europe, and forge an independent approach to contentious issues like Iran’s nuclear program.

The abundance of petrodollars has also led to a consumer boom evident in the sprawling malls, 24-hour hyper-markets, new apartment and office buildings, and foreign cars that have become commonplace not just in Moscow and St. Petersburg but in provincial cities. Average income has doubled under Putin, and the number of people living below the poverty line has been cut in half.

But many economists have called petroleum reserves a bane, saying they enable oil-rich countries to avoid taking steps that would diversify their economies and spread wealth more equally. Russia, for example, has rising inflation, soaring imports and a lack of new investment in the very industry that is fueling the boom.

‘Our Oil Wealth Is a Curse’

The problems are worse in Nigeria, which is battling an insurgency that has curtailed output in the oil-rich Niger River Delta. The central government has been disbursing its remaining oil revenue, though corruption has undermined the program’s effectiveness. The government has also cut domestic gas subsidies, raising prices several times over in the name of improving health, education and infrastructure.

“Our oil wealth is a curse rather than a blessing for our country,” said Halima Dahiru, a 36-year-old housewife, as she waited for a bus near a Texaco station in Kano, the commercial capital of northern Nigeria. Billows of dust enveloped the gas station as vehicles frenetically cruised along the laterite-covered road, adding to the harmattan haze that blankets the city.

“You go to bed and wake up the next morning to hear the government has increased the price of petrol, and you have to live with it,” she said. “The only sensible thing to do is to adjust to the new reality because nothing will make the government listen to public outcry.”

Newly oil-exporting countries such as Sudan and Chad and the companies operating there — including Malaysia’s Petronas and France’s Total — are winners. Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, is booming, with new skyscrapers and five-star luxury hotels, despite U.S. and European sanctions aimed at pressuring the country to halt attacks against people in the western Darfur region.

Chad’s government has used some of its oil revenue to buy weapons rather than develop the country’s economy. In eastern Chad, there are hardly any gas stations; people buy their gas — often for motorcycles, not cars — from roadside stands that sell it out of glass bottles.

Oil-importing countries face their own challenges. The hardest hit are the poorest. Last year, Senegal’s budget deficit doubled, inflation quickened and growth slowed. The cash-strapped state-owned petrochemical business had to shut down for long periods.

In China, the government increased domestic pump prices on Oct. 31 by nearly 10 percent with shortages, rationing and long lines throughout the country. Violence broke out at some gas stations, including an incident last week in Henan province in which one man killed another who had chastised him for jumping to the front of a line for gas.

A scarcity of diesel fuel even hit China’s richest cities — Beijing, Shanghai and trading ports on the east coast — which in the past have been kept well supplied. In Ningbo, a city south of Shanghai, the wait at some gas stations this week was more than three hours, and lines stretched more than 200 yards.

Rumors circulated that gas stations or the government was hoarding fuel in anticipation of further price increases, prompting the official New China News Agency to warn that anyone caught spreading rumors about fuel-price increases will be “severely punished.”

Li Leijun, 37, a taxi driver, said he was so angry that he was unable to buy fuel that he argued with gas station attendants and called the police. “I still didn’t get any diesel,” he said.

Since shedding orthodox Maoist economic policies, China’s leaders have unleashed decades of pent-up demand. China consumes 9 percent of world oil output, up from 6.4 percent five years ago, according to the International Energy Agency. Yet it still subsidizes fuel. As a result, consumption this decade has skyrocketed at an 8.7 percent annual rate despite soaring prices and concerns about the environmental impact of profligate fuel use.

Consumption in South Africa is also defying high prices as long-impoverished blacks join the middle and upper classes. Cars are a status symbol, and gasoline consumption jumped 39 percent in the decade after the end of apartheid in 1994. New-vehicle sales last year rose 15.7 percent over 2005.

Highly developed consumer nations have been better able to adapt. In Japan, which relies on imports for nearly 100 percent of its fuel, nearly everyone is a loser — with the big exception of Toyota.

Yet Japan has been weaning itself off oil for years. It now imports 16 percent less oil than it did in 1973, although the economy has more than doubled. Billions of dollars were invested to convert oil-reliant electricity-generation systems into ones powered by natural gas, coal, nuclear energy or alternative fuels. Japan accounts for 48 percent of the globe’s solar-power generation — compared with 15 percent in the United States. The adoption rate for fluorescent light bulbs is 80 percent, compared with 6 percent in the United States.

Still, rising fuel prices are pushing up the prices of raw and industrial materials, as well as food, which relies on fertilizers and transportation. Because of rising wheat prices, Nissin Food Products, the instant-noodle industry leader, will increase prices 7 to 11 percent in January, the first price hike in 17 years.

Greasing Toyota’s Gears

A winner is Toyota. Soaring gasoline prices have buffed the image of the hybrid Prius and Toyota’s other fuel-efficient models, such as the Camry and Corolla. Although stagnant in Japan, sales were strong in North America, Europe, Asia and emerging markets. In October, Prius sales stood at 13,158 vehicles, up 51 percent from 8,733 in October last year. Worldwide, the number of hybrid cars sold by Toyota surpassed 1 million in May.

Britain’s national average gasoline price topped 1 pound per liter, or about $8 a gallon, for the first time this week because of record oil prices.

“But there is very little publicity about it — you don’t see many headlines saying, ‘Oil at all-time record high,’ ” said Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, a published by the Energy Institute in London. “It’s different from the United States. Here, everyone has just accepted that it is expensive.”

While British drivers are feeling the pinch, the government is gaining revenue, Skrebowski said, because about 80 percent of the cost of gas is tax. Because Britain produces almost all the oil it consumes, its economy has been cushioned against increasing oil prices, Skrebowski said.

But Britain’s North Sea oil production is dwindling, having peaked in 1999 at 2.6 million barrels per day. Today, production is 1.4 million to 1.6 million barrels per day, Skrebowski said, while domestic oil consumption is about 1.7 million barrels a day. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who took office in June, has made energy independence a priority.

Meanwhile, analysts said, Europeans buying oil priced in dollars are finding the rising prices somewhat cushioned by the strength of their currency. The value of the dollar has been sliding to record lows against the euro and the British pound.

Argentina has tried to keep fuel prices for consumers at artificially low levels.

President N¿stor Kirchner in recent years has leaned heavily on energy companies to keep prices down, going so far as to call for a public boycott of Royal Dutch Shell when the company raised pump prices. Individual suppliers — wary of attracting the ire of the government — have adopted a policy of raising prices gradually and by small amounts.

As the market pressures have mounted, Kirchner has signed a series of agreements with Venezuelan President Hugo Ch¿vez. This year, the two created a project called Petrosuramerica, a joint venture designed to promote cooperative energy projects and provide energy security to Argentina.

In Brazil, the region’s largest economy, high oil prices have had a different political effect. Last year, the country became a net oil exporter, thanks to major increases in domestic oil exploration and the country’s broad use of sugar-based ethanol as a transport fuel.

But new oil wealth can trickle away even more easily than it comes. Last month, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Kazakhstan’s credit rating after the country’s banks lost billions on purchases of subprime mortgages.

Correspondents Peter Finn in Moscow, Blaine Harden in Tokyo, Ariana Eunjung Cha in Shanghai, Kevin Sullivan in London, Craig Timberg in Johannesburg, Stephanie McCrummen in Nairobi, Monte Reel in Buenos Aires and Faiza Saleh Ambah in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, and special correspondents Aminu Abubakar in Kano, Nigeria, and Alia Ibrahim in Beirut contributed to this report.

 
Historically Low Tally for New Attorney General
By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer and
Friday, November 9, 2007; A01

A divided Senate narrowly confirmed former federal judge Michael B. Mukasey last night as the 81st attorney general, giving the nominee the lowest level of congressional support of any Justice Department leader in the past half-century.

The 53 to 40 vote came after more than four hours of impassioned floor debate, and it reflected an effort by Democrats to register their displeasure with Bush administration policies on torture and the boundaries of presidential power.

The final tally gave Mukasey the lowest number of yes votes for any attorney general since 1952, just weeks after lawmakers of both parties had predicted his easy confirmation. Mukasey takes the place of Alberto R. Gonzales, who left under a cloud of scandal in September.

He avoided defeat only because a half-dozen Democrats voted in favor of the appointment along with Republicans and Democrat-turned-independent Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.).

Mukasey, 66, had outraged many lawmakers and human rights groups by repeatedly refusing to classify waterboarding, a simulated-drowning technique, as torture. His few Democratic supporters said last night that, although they are troubled by his equivocal views on waterboarding, they believe Mukasey represents the best possibility for change at the troubled Justice Department. “This is the only chance we have,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

The other Democrats in favor of the confirmation were Sens. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Evan Bayh (Ind.), Thomas R. Carper (Del.), Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.).

The fractured tally signals that Mukasey will face a deeply skeptical Democratic Congress as he takes over at Justice, which has been demoralized and emptied of senior leadership in the wake of scandals.

The challenges facing Mukasey over the next 14 months are severe, from rebuilding confidence at Justice to crafting new strategies to combat a growing violent-crime problem. Mukasey has also pledged to review the Justice Department’s controversial legal opinions on torture and detention policies, and he will have to cope with the outcome of a series of internal investigations into alleged misdeeds by Gonzales and his aides.

Although Mukasey is unburdened by political ties to President Bush, and cast by the administration as a clear-eyed reformer, his nomination was nearly derailed after he said he found waterboarding repugnant but did not have enough details to determine its legality. The issue quickly caught fire with grass-roots Democrats and was stoked further when all four Democratic senators running for president announced their opposition to Mukasey’s confirmation.

Last night’s debate was largely an internal argument among Democrats, as Republicans gave large chunks of their own time to allow those in the other party who supported the retired judge to speak.

Feinstein and Schumer, whose support for Mukasey on the Judiciary Committee allowed the nomination to proceed to the Senate floor, made no apologies for their yes votes, portraying them as pragmatic decisions aimed at improving the Justice Department.

Schumer, a key party leader who has come under sharp attacks for suggesting Mukasey as a nominee to the White House, said he is “wrong on torture — dead wrong.” But Schumer said Mukasey’s answers on other questions show he will act as a bulwark against extremists within the Bush administration.

“Politics has been allowed to infect all manner of decision-making,” Schumer said. “Now, we are on the brink of a reversal.”

But a much longer procession of other Democrats railed against Mukasey and, in some cases, pointedly criticized Schumer and other supporters. Saying torture prompted the nation to “lose our way,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said the Justice Department’s internal legal justifications for waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation tactics had cost the U.S. government its standing around the globe.

“Torture should not be what America stands for,” Leahy said. “How would our soldiers react if they found someone waterboarding another American soldier?”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said that “only an attorney general who’s not afraid to speak truth to power” can lead the Justice Department.

Seven senators, including those running for president, did not vote. The late-night tally was thrown together unexpectedly after daylong negotiations between GOP and Democratic leaders.

Mukasey garnered the lowest number of yes votes among confirmed attorneys general since James P. McGranery, who was approved by a vote of 52 to 18 in 1952 during the Truman administration. The only recent competitor is John D. Ashcroft, who attracted 58 yes votes from the GOP-controlled Senate in 2001.

Staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

John R. Christy”);”>John R. Christy. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Nov 1, 2007. pg. A.19

I’ve had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don’t think I will add “0.0001 Nobel Laureate” to my resume.

The other half of the prize was awarded to former Vice President Al Gore, whose carbon footprint would stomp my neighborhood flat. But that’s another story.

Both halves of the award honor promoting the message that Earth’s temperature is rising due to human-based emissions of greenhouse gases. The Nobel committee praises Mr. Gore and the IPCC for alerting us to a potential catastrophe and for spurring us to a carbonless economy.

I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never “proof”) and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.

There are some of us who remain so humbled by the task of measuring and understanding the extraordinarily complex climate system that we are skeptical of our ability to know what it is doing and why. As we build climate data sets from scratch and look into the guts of the climate system, however, we don’t find the alarmist theory matching observations. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite data we analyze at the University of Alabama in Huntsville does show modest warming — around 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, if current warming trends of 0.25 degrees per decade continue.)

It is my turn to cringe when I hear overstated-confidence from those who describe the projected evolution of global weather patterns over the next 100 years, especially when I consider how difficult it is to accurately predict that system’s behavior over the next five days.

Mother Nature simply operates at a level of complexity that is, at this point, beyond the mastery of mere mortals (such as scientists) and the tools available to us. As my high-school physics teacher admonished us in those we-shall-conquer-the-world-with-a-slide-rule days, “Begin all of your scientific pronouncements with ‘At our present level of ignorance, we think we know . . .’”

I haven’t seen that type of climate humility lately. Rather I see jump-to-conclusions advocates and, unfortunately, some scientists who see in every weather anomaly the specter of a global-warming apocalypse. Explaining each successive phenomenon as a result of human action gives them comfort and an easy answer.

Others of us scratch our heads and try to understand the real causes behind what we see. We discount the possibility that everything is caused by human actions, because everything we’ve seen the climate do has happened before. Sea levels rise and fall continually. The Arctic ice cap has shrunk before. One millennium there are hippos swimming in the Thames, and a geological blink later there is an ice bridge linking Asia and North America.

One of the challenges in studying global climate is keeping a global perspective, especially when much of the research focuses on data gathered from spots around the globe. Often observations from one region get more attention than equally valid data from another.

The recent CNN report “Planet in Peril,” for instance, spent considerable time discussing shrinking Arctic sea ice cover. CNN did not note that winter sea ice around Antarctica last month set a record maximum (yes, maximum) for coverage since aerial measurements started.

Then there is the challenge of translating global trends to local climate. For instance, hasn’t global warming led to the five-year drought and fires in the U.S. Southwest?

Not necessarily.

There has been a drought, but it would be a stretch to link this drought to carbon dioxide. If you look at the 1,000-year climate record for the western U.S. you will see not five-year but 50-year- long droughts. The 12th and 13th centuries were particularly dry. The inconvenient truth is that the last century has been fairly benign in the American West. A return to the region’s long-term “normal” climate would present huge challenges for urban planners.

Without a doubt, atmospheric carbon dioxide is increasing due primarily to carbon-based energy production (with its undisputed benefits to humanity) and many people ardently believe we must “do something” about its alleged consequence, global warming. This might seem like a legitimate concern given the potential disasters that are announced almost daily, so I’ve looked at a couple of ways in which humans might reduce CO2 emissions and their impact on temperatures.

California and some Northeastern states have decided to force their residents to buy cars that average 43 miles-per-gallon within the next decade. Even if you applied this law to the entire world, the net effect would reduce projected warming by about 0.05 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, an amount so minuscule as to be undetectable. Global temperatures vary more than that from day to day.

Suppose you are very serious about making a dent in carbon emissions and could replace about 10% of the world’s energy sources with non- CO2-emitting nuclear power by 2020 — roughly equivalent to halving U.S. emissions. Based on IPCC-like projections, the required 1,000 new nuclear power plants would slow the warming by about 0.2 ?176 degrees Fahrenheit per century. It’s a dent.

But what is the economic and human price, and what is it worth given the scientific uncertainty?

My experience as a missionary teacher in Africa opened my eyes to this simple fact: Without access to energy, life is brutal and short. The uncertain impacts of global warming far in the future must be weighed against disasters at our doorsteps today. Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus 2004, a cost-benefit analysis of health issues by leading economists (including three Nobelists), calculated that spending on health issues such as micronutrients for children, HIV/AIDS and water purification has benefits 50 to 200 times those of attempting to marginally limit “global warming.”

Given the scientific uncertainty and our relative impotence regarding climate change, the moral imperative here seems clear to me.

—

Mr. Christy is director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and a participant in the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Clinton, in Particular, Draws Equal Parts Cash and Vitriol

By Jose Antonio Vargas
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 8, 2007; A01

Candidates use the Internet to generate buzz, draw grass-roots support and raise record amounts of money. But in the intense, round-the-clock world of online presidential campaigning, the good comes with the bad.

“The pool of negativity is much bigger, and it spreads virally,” said Mindy Finn, chief online strategist for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s Republican presidential campaign. “The Web can be hateful.”

Just ask Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Sites such as StopHerNow.com and AgainstHillary.com, funded by conservatives who have followed her political career since the 1990s, are easily searchable on Google. Unflattering online videos, including the “mash-up” page that portrayed the Democratic front-runner as an Orwellian Big Brother, are heavily viewed on YouTube. And Facebook, the online sociopolitical hub of the moment, is the unofficial capital of anti-Clinton country: One group, Stop Hillary Clinton, has more than half a million members, compared with the nearly 51,000 who have signed up as supporters on her Facebook profile. It’s the largest group on Facebook against a candidate.

In many ways, the Web is more effective than television advertising and direct mail, the traditional methods campaigns and independent groups have used to try to define their opponents, political analysts say. It’s cheaper, and it spreads information more quickly. But so far, anyway, its potential for affecting a presidential campaign is relatively untested.

“Imagine if the Swift Boat group posted their ad on YouTube before airing it on TV,” said Victor Kamber, author of “Poison Politics: Are Negative Campaigns Destroying Democracy?” “With the enthusiasm that these campaigns are drawing right now, it’ll be easy to find supporters who can spread whatever they want to spread — and make sure that their fingertips are not on it.”

Kamber was referring to the TV ads aimed at discrediting Sen. John F. Kerry’s war record four years ago. Relatively few of the ads actually ran, but they were frequently rebroadcast on news and cable shows. On the Web, the ads had relatively little impact — after all, YouTube, which popularized video sharing, wasn’t born until February 2005.

On sites such as YouTube, humor, originality and, most of all, creativity are rewarded, setting a relatively high bar for getting noticed but opening up the possibilities of poking fun at opponents — or possibly smearing them — to virtually anyone.

“The key, of course, is coming up with material that’s funny, racy and special enough to capture people’s attention,” Kamber said.

Online negative campaigning dates back at least to 2000 and the e-mail chains that attacked Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Vice President Al Gore. But there are far more weapons today. “You have to go multimedia when you’re attacking now,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a longtime campaign expert who has studied negative ads. “Send an e-mail, embed a YouTube video, send a link to your site. It’s much more sophisticated.”

On the Web the technology is relatively simple, and it can be difficult to trace a blog or a video. Though Romney’s campaign was linked to a site attacking former senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), it was quickly taken down, and the bulk of attacks so far have been launched by amateurs, who are usually able to remain anonymous.

“Campaigns have no control on what’s already out there and what will get out there,” said Joe Rospars, new-media director for the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

The devastating impact last year of the “macaca” video on the Senate reelection campaign of George Allen (R-Va.) illustrated the kind of nightmare a candidate could face online. So far in 2007, the best example of a successful viral attack has been the March video targeting Clinton, inspired by an iconic 1984 Apple Computer commercial.

It casts the former first lady as the droning voice of totalitarianism, and it’s one of many homemade YouTube videos (”Hillary Clinton Is Satan,” “10 Things I Hate About Liberty, Starring Hillary Clinton”) attacking her. A few days after the “1984″-themed anti-Clinton video was uploaded on YouTube, it was blogged, linked to and, weeks later, picked up by news organizations. It’s been viewed more than 3.8 million times.

Phil de Vellis, who posted it anonymously before being identified by bloggers, came up with the idea while sitting in his Washington apartment. Its purpose, he said, was as clear as its title: “Vote Different.” De Vellis was working for a Web design firm hired by the Obama campaign at the time, but he insists that he produced the video on his own.

“The video is effective because it says something that a lot of people, a lot of Democrats, are thinking but weren’t saying. It hit a nerve,” said de Vellis, 34, a lifelong Democrat who now works for a media company advising candidate Bill Richardson, the New Mexico governor.

Clinton is not the only candidate under attack on the Internet. The Five Brothers blog, where Romney’s sons share personal details about their family, has been widely parodied. Obama’s biography on Wikipedia, the write-it-yourself encyclopedia, has been vandalized numerous times; anonymous editors have inserted racial epithets, and “Obama” has sometimes been changed to “Osama.” For months, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) has had a YouTube problem. A New Yorker made a satirical video criticizing what he thinks is Giuliani’s waning support on gay rights, and Brave New Films has regularly created ads, posted on its site and uploaded on YouTube, lambasting him.

Still, Clinton has been the biggest target by far, attacked by the left because of her centrist positions and by the right for her association with President Bill Clinton. Her campaign doesn’t directly address the online hostility and points to the $8 million she raised online last quarter. Peter Daou, her Internet director, wrote in an e-mail: “Our campaign welcomes the diversity of views and vigorous debate that takes place online.” But maybe not what Stephen DeMaura, then a senior at American University and now head of the New Hampshire Republican Party, started a month before the anti-Clinton “1984″ video. DeMaura, 22, called it “Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary),” a play on the Facebook group “Barack Obama: (One Million Strong for Barack),” which has 392,000 members.

Or such Facebook groups as “ANTI Hillary Clinton for President ‘08,” which has 65,000 members, and “Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich,” which lists 20,000. DeMaura writes in the group’s page: “Democrats, Republicans, and Independents can now unite behind a single cause — that of ensuring Hillary Clinton is not elected President of the United States.”

As of yesterday, DeMaura’s group had 543,000 members, 10,000 more than the week before.

Glenn Hurowitz, a Democrat from D.C., is one of the group’s newest members. A few weeks ago, the 29-year-old started Democratic Courage, a political action committee aimed solely at fighting Clinton.

“Fact is, the general population hasn’t tuned in to this election yet, and the more people tune in, the more they’ll know about Hillary Clinton, the less likely she’ll get the nomination,” said Hurowitz. “That’s the beauty of the Internet. What might be bad for the candidates is good for people like me . . . trying to have an impact.”

While the online animosity doesn’t necessarily mirror the general public’s view of Clinton — she’s solidified her lead in national polls, especially among Democratic voters — it speaks to the extreme, love-her-or-hate-her reaction she evokes. In a recent Zogby poll, half of those surveyed said they would never vote for her.

As with anything to do with Clinton, the reasons are complicated.

Some argue it’s plain old-fashioned misogyny, especially since studies have shown that the political Internet is largely male. “The idea of a woman being president really rankles some people, and there’s nothing she can do right in the wake of that,” said Jane Hamsher of the liberal blog Firedoglake, one of the most prominent female bloggers.

And others point to Clinton’s distinctive history: As the highest-profile candidate in the race, she’s been in the national spotlight longer than anyone.

“Remember the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ that Hillary Clinton talked about in the late ’90s? Well, it’s the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ gone online — and then some,” said Peter Leyden of the New Politics Institute, a liberal think tank that helps Democrats take advantage of the Internet. “What the Web does so well is it picks up the early warning signals, the first glimmers of a movement. Think of the online world as kind of a more visceral connection to the zeitgeist.”

If Clinton and Giuliani end up facing each other next November in the general election, “it will be like World War III on the Web,” predicts Gregg Birnbaum, political editor of the New York Post and founder of JustHillary.com, an online aggregator of stories about the New York senator. “There’s an enormous amount of historical material out there on both of them, and the virtual hand-to-hand combat would be something like we’ve never seen before,” Birnbaum said. “All the videos, all the blogging — all the Web allows.”

Kathleen Parker
Orlando Sentinel
November 7, 2007

When Hillary Clinton fumbled a recent debate question about New York’s plan to grant driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, she helped clarify at least one issue that keeps getting muddied: Illegal immigrants are illegal.

Why, then, are we granting them driver’s licenses?

Thus far, eight states allow illegal immigrants to receive licenses or permits (and 10 states offer in-state tuition) – all in the spirit of making America a better place.

But we don’t want to encourage immigrants to come here illegally.

Gotcha.

The illegal immigrant problem is huge, obviously, and there’s no single solution. But there is one word that would get the ball rolling in the right direction and win a lot of voters’ hearts: disincentivize. Stop making it so attractive to slip through, over and under the border.

As long as we offer jobs, medical treatment, driver’s licenses and in-state tuition to those who come here illegally, why would any right-thinking, would-be immigrant take a number and wait his turn? Why not just throw in the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders and free tequila while we’re at it?

Arguments favoring services and privileges for illegal immigrants always point to the broader benefits to society. Healthy immigrants mean a healthier America; an educated populace means fewer jobless dependents; legal drivers are more responsible because, allegedly, they’ll also buy insurance and stick around when they have an accident.

The latter seems unconvincing given that illegal immigrants, by definition, tend not to think legally. In any case, by the same logic we might also say that amnesty is good for the country because then everyone would be legal. Rather than fix something, we simply accommodate circumstances. As in: Kids are having sex anyway, so we’ll just give them condoms.

Advocates for licensing also argue that illegal immigrants can’t get jobs without a driver’s license. Do I hear bingo? Isn’t that the point?

On the one hand, we argue that employers should be penalized for hiring illegal immigrants; on the other, we insist that the immigrants need driver’s licenses because employers demand them. I’m beginning to see how Clinton got so tangled up. You cannot argue rationally in defense of the irrational.

The Monday morning quarterback is, of course, a brilliant seer, and the stands are filled with hindsight prophets this week. Here’s one more shoulda for the pile-on. When NBC’s Tim Russert asked why she thought New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses made sense, Clinton should have simply said:

“It makes sense for states to seek solutions given the federal government’s failure to reform immigration, but I’m not 100 percent satisfied with the licensing plan. Unfortunately, Tim, I’ll need more than 30 seconds to outline my concerns.”

Or something to that effect. Instead, Clinton called for immigration reform. It’s easy to say we need reform. Everybody agrees with that. It’s much harder to say we need to stop rewarding “illegal.”

Clinton even refused to use the term “illegal immigrant,” preferring the blander “undocumented worker,” as though people who cross our border illegally are just like the rest of us except for those darned documents.

They may be nice, hard-working people, but they’re not like other immigrants who, having come here legally, have demonstrated a commitment to the rule of law and fairness.

Surely, we can love our neighbors and be a pro-immigrant nation without granting de facto citizenship to illegal immigrants through a menu of rights and privileges. As is, all that’s missing is the oath – and any meaning attached to it.

Beyond principle, there are practical reasons for denying licenses to illegal immigrants. As some reformers have pointed out, the driver’s license is more than a permit to drive. It’s a nationally recognized ID that implies citizenship, and is the most coveted “breeder document” of terrorists because it allows them access to all the other things they need to blend in – jobs, housing, bank accounts – as well as access to commercial airplanes and rental cars.

Many states still don’t verify applicants’ identities. In May 2001, when Tennessee dropped its requirement that applicants supply a Social Security number, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants applied for licenses, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

There may be no way to solve every aspect of the immigration problem. Certainly, no serious person thinks we can round up 12 million people and deport them. But it would be refreshing if we began to take seriously what it means to be a citizen and stop making it so attractive to be a lawbreaker.

That would make sense.

Eric Boehlert
Media Matters for America
November 6, 2007

Did you notice the contrasting media responses to comedian Stephen Colbert’s short-lived plan to get his factually challenged TV namesake on the ballot for the South Carolina presidential primary? The mainstream Beltway press could barely contain its glee as it cheered on the stunt, lavishing all sorts of media attention on Colbert and basking in the entertainment glow that his act brought to the White House campaign trail.

By contrast, it was mostly left to nontraditional online outlets, such as The Huffington Post and Gawker, to strike a skeptical chord, to suggest that perhaps this wasn’t the best idea since Colbert’s publicity stunt might pose a distraction at a time when the campaign should be focusing on big issues.

That’s a fair point. But consider this: The Colbert candidacy only became a distraction because the press allowed it to, because the press literally drives itself to distraction on the campaign trail. That’s not an unfortunate side effect of the process. That’s the goal.

I’m almost relieved that Democratic officials in South Carolina squashed the Colbert stunt by denying his attempt to get on the ballot. That’s the only way the press was going to drop the story.

Think of the political press corps as that fat kid from “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory,” Augustus Gloop. For too many journalists, the lure of the Colbert candidacy is akin to Wonka’s river of chocolate, the one that lured the candy-loving Gloop into the deep end and got him stuck inside the tubes. The press already seems to do everything it can to avoid covering campaign substance. Instead, it pursues trivia such as John Edwards’ haircut, or Hillary Clinton’s laugh and her cleavage. The allure of a saccharine story like Colbert’s running gag was simply too tempting.

That’s because the press has decided to cover presidential candidates as celebrities, as personalities. The media phenomena became enshrined during the 2000 contest when the press announced that presidential campaigns were no longer about how candidates might function as presidents, what they might actually do as commander in chief. Instead, campaigns were about personalities – which candidate was fun to be around and which one was authentic.

The approach is thriving today. Look at the latest research findings from the campaign trail: “Just 12 percent of stories examined were presented in a way that explained how citizens might be affected by the election,” according to Editor & Publisher magazine. “And just 1 percent of stories examined the candidates’ records or past public performance.”

The obvious media reaction to the Colbert candidacy should have been to note it as the book-selling publicity stunt that it was, have a chuckle, and move on. Instead, the press lingered, giving the story way too much attention, and often at the expense of more pressing topics.

For instance, ABC’s “Nightline” found time to cover the Colbert candidacy. Yet “Nightline” has not found time during the past six weeks to cover the war from Iraq.

Colbert’s race did momentarily seem to gain newsworthiness last week when a Rasmussen poll showed the “Comedy Central” host grabbing an impressive 13 percent when positioned as an independent candidate.

None of the news reports I saw about the polling results mentioned it, but what exactly is the point of conducting a national poll since Colbert is only trying to get on the ballot in one state? Meaning, of the 1,200 people Rasmussen polled, it’s likely that, based on census data, maybe 10 or 20 of the respondents were actually from South Carolina. It’s like running a national poll on whom Americans would prefer to be the next senator from New York; it’s a perfectly pointless exercise except, of course, that in the case of Colbert it’s fun and entertaining.

Nonetheless, on Oct. 29, “Good Morning America” host Diane Sawyer, in an apparent reference to the Rasmussen poll, suggested that, “If (Colbert) keeps gaining at the rate he’s gaining, by the end of November he could be the leading candidate.”

Question: In the history of modern-day American presidential campaigns, has a new candidate ever entered the race polling at roughly 10 percent and then proceeded to pick up an additional 10 percent each week for four weeks running? Ever? Why would anybody suggest that a late-night comedian might be able to accomplish what no other candidate has ever done in American politics? What would prompt somebody to suggest that Colbert, by next month, might soon be garnering 40 percent and be the leading candidate for president?

Answer: Because it’s fun.

Michael Barone
U.S. News & World Report
November 6, 2007

October 2007 may turn out to be the month that immigration became a key issue in presidential politics. It hasn’t been, at least in my lifetime.

The Immigration Act of 1965, which turned out to open up America to mass immigration after four decades of restrictive laws, wasn’t one of the Great Society issues Lyndon Johnson emphasized in 1964. The Immigration Act of 1986, which legalized millions of illegal immigrants but whose border and workplace provisions have never been effectively enforced, was a bipartisan measure unmentioned in the debates between Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale.

There was no perceptible difference on immigration between George W. Bush and Al Gore in 2000. Both favored a comprehensive bill with legalization and guest-worker provisions. John Kerry in 2006 and 2007 voted for immigration bills along the lines supported by Bush.

Now, things look different. In the Democratic debate on Oct. 30, Tim Russert demanded to know whether Hillary Clinton supported New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s policy of issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. The forthright answer: yes and no. A clarifying statement by the Clinton campaign later in the week did not much clarify things: a hedged yes. It was one of several issues on which Clinton seemed to take calculating and ambiguous nonpositions. But it is one that may have major reverberations in the presidential campaign – and in congressional races, as well.

The reason is that the Democrats – and Bush – are out of line with public opinion on the issue. That became clear as the Senate debated a comprehensive immigration bill in May and June. Most Republicans and many Democrats, in the Senate and among the public, turned against the bill. Supporters of the bill tended to ascribe that to something like racism: They just don’t like having so many Mexicans around.

But if you listened to the opponents, you heard something else. They want the current law to be enforced. It bothers them that we have something like 12 million illegal immigrants in our country. It bothers them that most of the southern border is unfenced and unpatrolled. It bothers them that illegal immigrants routinely use forged documents to get jobs – or are given jobs with no documents at all.

You don’t have to be a racist to be bothered by such things. You just have to be a citizen who thinks that massive failure to enforce the law is corrosive to society.

That was apparent to me as I listened to a focus group of Republican voters in suburban Richmond, Va., conducted by Peter Hart for the Annenberg School of Communications. One voter after another complained that the immigration laws were not being enforced. None of them made any derogatory remarks about Latino immigrants – two said they admired how hard they work. They don’t want to see Latinos banished from this country. They want the immigrants here to be here legally.

Which leaves Democratic politicians and political candidates out on a pretty flimsy limb. Most of them reflexively back a comprehensive bill, and some of them (like Bush and a number of Republicans backing such a bill) have dismissed opponents as racists.

Most Democrats have also been backing bills extending various benefits to illegal immigrants, like the Dream Act for college education for illegals brought over as children. There are appealing arguments for such bills. But most voters reject them. And most voters certainly reject driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants. That was one of the issues that led to the recall of Gov. Gray Davis in California in 2003.

The Republican presidential candidates have taken note. Only John McCain, a longtime backer of a comprehensive bill, stands apart, and he concedes that voters are demanding tougher enforcement. In the special congressional election in Massachusetts on Oct. 5, the Republican was able to hold the Democrat to 51 percent by stressing immigration as one of his two top issues.

Other Republicans are likely to echo that theme next fall. And the Democratic presidential nominee (unless Chris Dodd gets the nod) is going to have to explain why she or he believes it’s a good idea to give illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.

The last several Democratic nominees could have said that they’re just taking the same position as their Republican opponent. The 2008 nominee won’t be able to say the same of hers or his (unless McCain gets the nod).

“The centrality of illegal immigration to the current discontent about the direction of the country may be taking us back again to a welfare moment,” write the shrewd Democratic strategists James Carville and Stanley Greenberg. Yup.

Candidates Back Costly Proposals
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 6, 2007; A01

All of the leading Democratic contenders for the presidency are committed to a set of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that would change the way Americans light their homes, fuel their automobiles and do their jobs, costing billions of dollars in the short term but potentially, the candidates say, saving even more in the decades to follow.

Former senator John Edwards (N.C.), who from the outset has made global warming one of the three pillars of his campaign, explains his ambitious plan to Democratic primary voters in terms of sacrifice.

“I know what presidential candidates are supposed to do; they roll in here every four years and they promise you this, they promise you that. What I’m going to do is tell you the truth,” Edwards says at nearly every campaign stop. “It won’t be easy, but it is time for a president who asks Americans to be patriotic about something other than war.”

The strong medicine Edwards and his fellow candidates are selling — an 80 percent cut in greenhouse gases from 1990s levels by 2050 — tracks with a plan espoused by scientists. But it is a plan that will require a wholesale transformation of the nation’s economy and society.

In a speech yesterday in Iowa, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) said she plans to address climate change and the nation’s energy needs by launching an effort to require U.S. vehicles to average 55 miles per gallon by 2030 and providing $20 billion in “Green Vehicle Bonds” to help the auto industry transform to production of more efficient cars. Clinton estimated that by 2030, her plan would cut foreign oil imports by two-thirds compared with current projections.

“This is the biggest challenge we’ve faced in a generation — a challenge to our economy, our security, our health and our planet. It’s time for America to meet it,” Clinton said. “. . . I believe America is ready to take action, ready to break the bonds of the old energy economy and ready to prove that the climate crisis is also one of the greatest economic opportunities in the history of our country. . . . It will be a new beginning for the 21st century.”

According to energy expert Tracy Terry’s analysis of a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, under the scenario of an 80 percent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels, by 2015 Americans could be paying 30 percent more for natural gas in their homes and even more for electricity. At the same time, the cost of coal could quadruple and crude oil prices could rise by an additional $24 a barrel.

“I’d be the first to tell you: This is not necessarily the greatest political calculation,” Edwards acknowledged in an interview, adding that audiences tend to pause before expressing their support when he lays out his climate plan. “No matter what the politics are, there’s such a moral responsibility to address this issue. We’ve got to do it.”

In a Des Moines speech last month, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) predicted that new technology will ultimately bring rising energy costs back down. “But at least on the front end, there’s going to be some costs, and we can’t pretend like there’s a free lunch,” he told the crowd.

While Democrats are working to outdo each other on climate change — New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, for example, supports a 90 percent greenhouse gas reduction by midcentury — GOP presidential candidates remain more skeptical, to say the least. Former senator Fred D. Thompson (Tenn.) stands by his commentary on National Review Online that warming on other planets has led some people “to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.”

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said in the wake of Gore’s Nobel Prize win that when it comes to global warming, “if we try to deal with it at too hysterical a pace, we could create problems.”

Among Republicans, only Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) — who began crusading against climate change after a heckler dressed as a penguin followed him around New Hampshire during his 2000 presidential bid — backs a specific, 60 percent cut in greenhouse gases by 2050. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee endorsed a mandatory carbon cap last month but has not laid out specifics.

The issue has turned into a Democratic primary litmus test, and many party strategists say it could be a way to win over in the general election suburban Republican women, who tend to place a high priority on environmental issues.

“It’s a huge issue. I’ve been stunned by this,” said Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, who found in a May poll that energy independence and global warming were cited as America’s most important domestic challenge by 29 percent of respondents, second only to health care. “I think this is a top-tier voting issue that has crossover appeal,” Greenberg said.

In contrast to 2000 and 2004, when Gore and John F. Kerry played down their environmental records, these Democratic candidates have already begun advertising on climate change. As of mid-October, energy and global warming issues were second only to Iraq in terms of ad topics. Friends of the Earth, which endorsed Edwards for his aggressive climate change policy, also began running radio ads in New Hampshire on his behalf.

Democrats have promised to ease the pain by taking the money that would come from putting a price on carbon, whether through a tax or auctioning off pollution credits, and investing it in technological research, job training, tax credits for consumers who buy cleaner vehicles and subsidies for those hit hardest by rising electric bills.

Several Democrats have even taken the unusual step of compensating for their campaigns’ sizable carbon footprints by contributing to groups that seek to reduce greenhouse gases by planting trees and funding clean-energy projects. Edwards gave $22,000 to NativeEnergy to atone for the emissions of his campaign’s travel. Clinton gave just under $11,600 to the same group to cover her campaign’s operations in April, May, June and July. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) paid $1,000 to CarbonFund.org for July, August and September, and uses a charter air company that offsets the carbon footprint of its flights.

Democrats’ boldness, however, could carry a political price. The eventual GOP presidential nominee is almost certain to attack Democrats over the huge costs associated with limiting emissions. “They will come at this hard,” said John Podesta, who heads the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and sees an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases as necessary.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who has just co-written a book on the environment called “A Contract With the Earth,” said either party could face serious consequences if they mishandle the question of climate change. A Democrat running on “litigation and regulation” could alienate voters, he said in an interview. “You can just calculate the costs,” Gingrich said.

“Then, Republican candidates are on the opposite extreme,” he added. “A candidate who’s anti-environment and denies global warming gets killed in the suburbs.”

Edward Parson, a University of Michigan law professor who worked in the Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Bill Clinton, said that to reach the 80 percent goal by 2050, Americans would have to capture and store carbon emissions from every power plant in the country. “A world that gets to that big a reduction in greenhouse gases is a world where you’re paying more for energy,” he said.

Dodd, the one Democrat to back a carbon tax, has vowed to use the $50 billion that would be generated each year to fast-track research, development and deployment of renewable and energy-efficient technologies. He said Democrats will counter GOP attacks by making climate policy “part of the economic revival of the country.”

“We’re borrowing a billion a day to bring fuel from offshore,” he said in an interview as he campaigned in Iowa. As for the costs associated with confronting climate change: “People can complain about the price. I don’t know how you can think that price is as bad as what we’re paying right now.”

Staff researcher Karl Evanzz contributed to this report.

Leonard Pitts Jr.
Miami Herald
November 4, 2007

You might want to wash your hands after reading this.

After all, many other folks touched this paper (or screen, as the case may be) before you, and you don’t know where their hands have been.

For all you know, the last person to touch the paper was carrying Entamoeba histolyca, a parasite that causes amebiasis. You could end up with stomach cramps, bloody stools and an abscess on your liver. And that’s assuming the disease doesn’t spread to your lungs and brain.

Or maybe the last person to use the computer recently came into contact with African green monkeys. You could contract Marburg hemorrhagic fever. It brings rash, vomiting, chills, chest pain, sore throat, fever and diarrhea. And jaundice, pancreatic inflammation and severe weight loss. And delirium and shock. And liver failure and multi-organ dysfunction. And then you might die.

You think I’m trying to scare you? You’re right. Why should I be the only journalist in America who isn’t?

Consider what happened about two weeks back when every news organization in the country suddenly, simultaneously, discovered that staph infections kill people.

You could not turn on the television or pick up any publication this side of TV Guide without encountering alarmist stories about Staphylococcus aureus. Like flocks of birds that turn in the same direction at the same time in response to some invisible stimulus, it was as if every news editor in the country got the same memo at the same time: this is staph week.

Most of the stories were about MRSA, i.e., Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a staph strain that does not respond to common antibiotics. This made the so-called “super-bug” a headline magnet.

You know how many times staph was mentioned in U.S. newspapers in the first two weeks of October? According to a computer search: 155. Know how many times it was mentioned between the 15th and the 31st? 1,650.

So did staph somehow become deadlier in the last two weeks than it was before? No.

“Staph is not new,” says Nicole Coffin, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “Even MRSA is not new. In the hospitals it’s been around for 30 years. In the general population, it’s been around for at least 10 years.”

According to Coffin, the media’s staph infection stemmed from a story in the Journal of the American Medical Association nearly a month ago. JAMA reported on a study that found there were 19,000 fatal MRSA infections in 2005.

The number was higher than researchers had expected. But even that comes with a caveat: researchers cautioned that the methodology they used was significantly different than that of earlier studies, so direct comparisons with earlier data are dicey.

Am I making light of staph? Far from it: One of my family had a serious bout with the infection just this year. So I’m not diminishing staph. I am, however, ridiculing media.

As in the people who bring us shark attacks! Poison gases in your home! Bacteria lurking in hotel sheets! The pedophile next door!

We live evermore in the United States of Fear. We are entertained by it. Titillated by it. Distracted by it.

And we have learned to move as media move, together like birds in a flock, attention changing constantly and for no apparent reason. Already, fear of staph is fading. Tomorrow there will be fear of something else.

Meanwhile, in other news, 47 million Americans have no health insurance, the number of hate groups in this country has risen by 40 percent in seven years, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are projected to cost $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years.

Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to wash your hands.

James P. Pinkerton
Newsday
November 4, 2007

Al Gore and Newt Gingrich are very different figures, but they are both going through a similar process: They are becoming elder statesmen.

And how does one become an elder statesman, anyway? It’s an easy, two-step process: First, have something important to say and be tireless in saying it. Second, stop running for president, because then people will let their guard down; they will listen to the substance of your message, not worry about tracking your upward political mobility.

Oh, and a third thing: Optimism sells better than pessimism. So while the former Democratic vice president is getting most of the glory, worldwide, with his message of profound eco-repentance, it’s the former Republican House speaker’s message of practical problem-solving that is ultimately going to play better in America.

Everybody knows about Gore, of course. But most didn’t know of his interest in global warming until relatively recently. Yes, he has been thinking about the issue for decades, but when he got to the White House in 1993, he was relatively quiet; maybe his quietude had something to do with future political ambitions.

And so, for example, in 1997, when the U.S. Senate, including Barbara Boxer and Teddy Kennedy, voted 95-0 to reject the Kyoto international global warming treaty, Vice President Gore didn’t say much. With public opinion lopsided against the treaty, how could he speak up in protest — and still preserve his political viability for 2000?

In fact, Gore didn’t become his own emancipated man until he left the White House in 2001, finally free to argue for drastic action against greenhouse gases.

Yet, while Gore does a great job of telling us what we’ve done wrong, he’s less effective at outlining a plausible action plan that would solve the problem: reduce the world’s carbon dioxide, as opposed to just America’s CO2. The dilemma is that if we reduce and they increase, nothing is gained.

But, of course, Gore is out of office now, with no plans to run again. He can say what he wants, leaving others to admire him without having to worry about voting for him.

Meanwhile, Gingrich, who retired from Congress in 1998, has trod his own path toward greater environmental awareness. His latest book, “A Contract With the Earth,” co-authored with Terry Maple, former chief of the Atlanta Zoo, carries a friendly foreword from Harvard’s E.O. Wilson, one of the most important and influential biologists of the 20th century.

Yet, Gingrich is not Gore. He does not reach a final conclusion as to whether human beings are causing climate change — and thus many environmentalists will dismiss him. Yet at the same time, Gingrich wants to implement a green agenda, his way. He and Maples write, “We favor reducing carbon loading in the atmosphere as a bold forward step and positive public value.”

So what’s Gingrich’s alternative solution? First, nuclear power. And second, big prizes for inventors who come up with, for example, a workable hydrogen engine. As he points out, there’s a long history of offering prizes. Past awards have fostered advances in construction, navigation and aviation. So why not the environment?

More technology, more incentives — that’s Gingrich’s approach. And interestingly, in his post-presidential run mode, the Georgian is being well received, because people hunger for real solutions, not just feel-good or feel-bad rhetoric.

On Monday, Gingrich spoke at Johns Hopkins University, receiving an overwhelmingly friendly response.

Gore and Gingrich, enjoying their “elder” status, now must watch as their White House-hopeful juniors wrestle with their enviro-ideas. But here’s a prediction: Those who follow Gingrich’s techno-optimism will have an easier time than those who put on Gore’s hair shirt.

Stephen Winn
Kansas City Star
November 3, 2007

Last month, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general claimed improbable ignorance about the brutal interrogation procedure known as “waterboarding.” And since he supposedly knew so little about it, Michael Mukasey told irritated lawmakers at a confirmation hearing on Oct. 18, he could not say whether it amounted to torture.

In fact, he piously declared, it would be irresponsible for him to offer an opinion.

The most charitable explanation for this performance is that Mukasey is a profoundly incurious man.

Waterboarding, after all, has been much in the news – for years. And right at the center of many of those news stories has been Alberto Gonzales, the very man for whom Mukasey now offers himself as a suitable successor.

So even if Mukasey had never developed an interest in this controversy before he was nominated for attorney general, what’s his excuse for failing to get up to speed once he knew he was headed for a confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill?

Mukasey had to know he would be asked about waterboarding, a practice that the CIA reportedly used at least through 2005.

In the Oct. 18 hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, tried his best to help out the ostensibly befuddled nominee by explaining what the technique involves:

“Do you have an opinion on whether waterboarding, which is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning – is that constitutional?”

(My only quibble with that wording is the phrase “simulate the feeling,” which is understated. The victims are in fact drowning – they are sucking in water rather than oxygen – and would presumably die if that continued for long without a break.)

It seems ridiculous to say that this treatment doesn’t amount to torture.

Certainly there is no doubt about this in the mind of Sen. John McCain, a Republican presidential candidate who suffered torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam:

“Anyone who says they don’t know if waterboarding is torture or not has no experience in the conduct of warfare and national security,” McCain said recently.

In the hearing, though, Mukasey played dumb even after he had the procedure spelled out for him: “If it amounts to torture,” he said, “it is not constitutional.”

Note the wiggle word “if.” It leaves open precisely the question that Mukasey was being asked.

Whitehouse pronounced himself “very disappointed in that answer.” It was, the senator said, “purely semantic.”

“I’m sorry,” Mukasey replied.

Not sorry enough.

The true test of an apology is whether the offender actually does anything to remedy the offense. And on Tuesday, Mukasey issued a written response to lawmakers’ questions that merely offered more evasions.

He did say that waterboarding was “on a personal basis, repugnant to me.” But he refused to acknowledge that this repugnant activity was in fact torture. Instead, there were just more meaningless semantics: “Hypotheticals are different from real life.”

He said he would need more briefings and so forth.

The torture issue now appears to be holding up his confirmation. The nominee has had two weeks to learn all he needs to know. By now he should recognize that such interrogation tactics violate federal law, international human rights standards and traditional American values.

Until he’s figured that out, it would be irresponsible for members of Congress to confirm him as the next attorney general.

Kathleen Parker
Orlando Sentinal
November 3, 2007

When you’re leading the Democratic presidential race, as Hillary Clinton is, you might expect other candidates to focus their sharpest criticism your way.

Yet the spin coming out of the Clinton campaign is that the men were ganging up on Hillary. Sorry, but when girls insist on playing hardball with the boys, they don’t get to cry foul – or change the game to dodge ball – when they get bruised.

Not that Hillary Clinton did any whining herself following Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia. She’s too smart for that. But somehow the idea magically surfaced that the men were piling on.

The New York Times reported that Clinton’s campaign officials tried to create sympathy for Hillary the same way they did when Republican Rick Lazio confronted her during their 2000 Senate race. A Clinton adviser told the Washington Post that, “Ultimately, it was six guys against her, and she came off as one strong woman.” A headline on the Drudge Report said:

“Scorn: As the Men Gang Up.”

Piffle.

Hillary’s campaign people took swift advantage of her status as assault victim. A clever video, “The Politics of Pile-On,” shows in rapid-fire succession the other candidates mentioning Clinton’s name and ends with her saying:

“I seem to be the topic of great conversation and consternation, and that’s for a reason.”

Sa-wish! Score one for Clinton.

There’s a reason, all right. Hillary’s having her cake and eating everybody else’s, too. It must be frustrating to challengers who need to attack her positions, but fear the inevitable piling-on accusations and the appearance of bullying a woman.

In debate post-mortems, moderators Brian Williams and Tim Russert were also accused of joining the pile-on, especially Russert, who kept pounding Hillary for straight answers when she tended to “bridge” to other topics.

In some instances, the pounding was justified. Hillary is nearly as proficient, if not as artful, as her husband in avoiding a firm position that might alienate someone somewhere.

When asked, for example, whether she supports New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposal to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, as Clinton apparently said she did to a New Hampshire newspaper, she circled the question.

She wasn’t necessarily for it, but she wasn’t necessarily against it.

She wouldn’t necessarily support it, but she could understand why Spitzer was doing it: to address the failure of the Bush administration, of course.

She also mentioned Congress’ failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who deserves a more prominent place in the Democratic lineup, seemed to better understand the concept of answering a question.

No, he said, a driver’s license is a privilege and illegal immigrants don’t get one. How hard was that? Pretty hard, apparently, if you don’t want to offend a single Spanish-speaking voter in the U.S.

Hillary also refused to answer candidly when asked if she would release communications between her and then-President Bill Clinton that might illuminate her claims to White House experience. The former president has ordered all records kept under seal until 2012, but Hillary’s response suggested that she has no choice in the matter. She can’t ask her husband to lift the ban?

In another instance, Russert asked three times whether Hillary would pledge as president to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. Hillary gave three answers that were sort of yes-ish, but that left uncomfortable wiggle room for failure. She pledged “to do everything I can to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.”

Why not just say, “Yes, I pledge”? She can still try diplomatic approaches, including carrots and sticks, as she mentioned, but why not simply say Iran won’t get the bomb under her watch?

Getting a straight answer from Hillary is consistently challenging, as other candidates noted – hence the many “Hillary” references. Their “attacks” weren’t only because Hillary leads the pack, but because she’s cagey to a fault.

At times, Hillary’s relationship to nuance borders on compulsion more than wisdom. If her husband triangulated, she pentagonates. She’s been working so many sides for so long that she seems incapable of yes or no.

Hillary can handle the men just fine. What’s giving her problems is Hillary.

By William Kristol

“In case you missed it, a few days ago Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum. Now, my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time.” This jab by John McCain at Hillary Clinton at the most recent Republican presidential debate received the evening’s only standing ovation. Admittedly, those standing were partisan Florida Republicans. Still, it was a moment–in its combination of high-spirited playfulness and polemical sharpness–that made me think happier days may lie ahead for the GOP.

The first two years of George W. Bush’s second term were rough: the situation in Iraq worsened, and his key domestic proposals–Social Security and immigration reform–flopped. The big Republican losses last November followed. Since then, it’s been conventional wisdom (including among many Republicans) that 2008 is likely to be a replay of 2006–this time leading to the loss of the White House too. But this conventional wisdom could well be wrong. Here are three reasons.

1) The Democrats’ takeover of both houses of Congress last November turns out to have been a mixed blessing for them. The approval numbers for the Democratic Congress have been trending downward. It hasn’t been easy for Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to keep the party’s liberal base and its new supporters happy at the same time. And the Bush White House has made some adjustments. The election defeat coincided with a crisis about how to move forward in Iraq. Bush decided against Donald Rumsfeld but also against the Iraq Study Group, and for General David Petraeus and the surge. Democrats forecast an even deeper quagmire. Instead, we’ve seen progress–which could well continue and broaden. Meanwhile, Michael Mukasey–not Alberto Gonzales–will be making the case for the Administration on the tools it needs to conduct the war on terrorism. A respected and independent former judge, Mukasey will have credibility that Gonzales could only dream of.

2) Polls still show a hangover from November 2006, with Democrats having an advantage. But history suggests that may not hold up. Winning control of Congress doesn’t necessarily signify much about the next presidential contest. The last time Congress flipped was 1994–and that GOP sweep was followed by a Bill Clinton victory in 1996. Democrats took back the Senate (and thus control of both bodies of Congress) in 1986, and George H.W. Bush won easily in 1988. Voters like checks and balances.

It’s true that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama now run ahead of the GOP candidates in matchups. But as often as not in recent presidential elections, the candidate who eventually won had trailed at some point by margins as large as those now facing the likely Republican nominees. This was true of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Bush in 1988 and Clinton in 1992. And in the two most recent elections, Republicans haven’t done badly. The GOP candidate made a far closer race of it than expected in a special election in the strongly Democratic 5th Congressional District in Massachusetts, losing by only 6 points despite being outspent about 4 to 1. And 36-year-old Republican Congressman Bobby Jindal won the governorship of Louisiana with a majority in the first round of balloting.

3) Watching the Republican candidates in the debate in Orlando, Fla., I wasn’t filled with dread about the general election. The Democrats are going to nominate either a one-term Senator (Clinton) or a half-term Senator (Obama), neither with much in the way of legislative achievements. Against that, the GOP will offer one of the following: a remarkably successful two-term mayor (Rudy Giuliani), a business leader as well as Governor (Mitt Romney), a four-term Senator and war hero (McCain), an effective two-term Governor (Mike Huckabee) or a Senator with as much experience as Clinton and who was a star prosecutor and has an appealing personal story (Fred Thompson).

And then there’s the McCain moment. Why did it galvanize the crowd? Perhaps because it brought together three Republican themes: the Democrats are the party of big spending (the museum earmark) and cultural liberalism (the Woodstock concert), while the GOP is the party that understands war (”I was tied up at the time”). It’s true that McCain is uniquely qualified to make that last point–but if he’s not the presidential candidate, he can advance it as the vice-presidential nominee or as a prospective Secretary of Defense. At a time of war, in a culturally conservative country with voters suspicious of Big Government liberalism, it would be foolish to underrate the chances of the presidential nominee of the more hawkish, socially conservative and anti-Big Government party.

By Steve Rushin

If the 2008 presidential election comes down to a choice between Hillary Clinton and front runner Rudolph Giuliani, Americans will elect a woman before they will elect a bald man. The U.S. has had more than five bald Presidents, but Americans haven’t voted one into office in 51 years, when Dwight Eisenhower won a second term over Adlai Stevenson–the second consecutive election in which two bald men went head to glorious head.

That was 1956, when 20th Century Fox released The King and I, starring Yul Brynner as the King of Siam. It was an annus mirabilis for hairless potentates but also the twilight of their brief golden age–the last time heads of state were not synonymous with heads of hair.

When President John F. Kennedy went hatless during his Inauguration speech in 1961, he committed in essence a double homicide: of the hat industry and of the prospect that any bald man would ever have to the nation’s highest office.

Since Eisenhower left the White House, voters have carved out a Mount Brushmore of Presidents–Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton–with magnificent hair. What we need is a tonsorial memorial to those giants–Ike, Winston Churchill, Mohandas Gandhi, David Ben-Gurion–of the World War II era, that one brief and very shining moment in history when baldness was tantamount to greatness.

Today the only thing voters like less than a candidate who gets a $400 haircut is a candidate who doesn’t require one at all. Whether or not they realize it, voters think of great leaders as people with haircuts, and really great leaders as people with haircuts named for them. George Clooney once wore a Caesar. It is unlikely that he will ever ask his stylist for a Stevenson.

Or a Giuliani. Indeed, the last time Giuliani was elected to anything (re-elected as mayor of New York City in 1997), he had a scalp full of hair (wink, wink), even if that comb-over was the biggest political cover-up since Watergate.

In the present presidential campaign, some of Giuliani’s rivals have receded (John McCain), and some have even reseeded (Joe Biden, whose scalp is less spartan than it used to be), but none are nakedly, unabashedly bald. Not even Homer Simpson, who announced his candidacy to David Letterman and combs his pair of hairs to the right, a two-string comb-over that still leaves him two strings shy of a ukulele.

Hair is, quite literally, political cover. The emperor may have no clothes, but he damn sure better have a comb. Charles the Bald, the 17 century King of France and Holy Roman Emperor, was not bald but fully maned, to judge by the portraits and coins of the day. The nickname was evidently ironic, the way 300-lb. members of Hells Angels frequently answer to “Tiny.”

I wish it weren’t so. As a bald man, I long for a President who is, in the words of the English poet Matthew Arnold, “bald as the bare mountaintops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.” This is the baldness of Sean Connery or Michael Jordan or Buddha.

But as a realist, I know I can never be President, will never be part of the American hairistocracy. The presidency is not one of those high-profile jobs in which you can sneak by with a paisley head scarf (think Steven Van Zandt of the E Street Band) or a pompadour wig (think Steven Van Zandt of The Sopranos).

Balder men can be aldermen, even Governors and Senators. We seem to have a competitive advantage as late-night TV sidekicks (Paul Shaffer and Kevin Eubanks) and early-morning TV weathermen (Al Roker and Willard Scott).

But no bald man has been voted into the White House in 12 elections. (Gerald Ford doesn’t count. And neither does Dick Cheney.) Before Ike, you have to go all the way back to the election of 1836 and Martin Van Buren. But his white sideburns were so overcompensating–two enormous parentheses bracketing the nonrestrictive clause of his face–that he is seldom thought of as bald.

The country’s most prolifically failed presidential candidate, Harold Stassen, ran nine times, and in many of those elections he wore a toupee so alarming that the Washington Post thought it resembled a “sullen possum that had been dipped in bronze.”

But Stassen knew that wearing a bronzed possum was safer than hitting the stump with a naked scalp. Why? For the same reason, perhaps, that bald men are icons of evil in the movies, from Lex Luthor to Dr. Evil to Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life. Sometime in our political history, baldness was downgraded from Churchillian to … Dr. Phil-ian.

Hairless breeds never win the Westminster Dog Show. And they no longer win the dog-and-pony show that is a presidential election, no matter what surveys say about Giuliani as the Republican front runner. Forget the Roper polls. I trust the barber poles.

In a new book, former Bush speechwriter and NEWSWEEK contributor Michael J. Gerson warns against learning the wrong lessons from Iraq.

By Michael J. Gerson

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:54 PM ET Oct 27, 2007

Whatever the eventual outcome of the Iraq War—a precipitous, politically driven withdrawal, a gradual counterinsurgency victory, or something in between—it is necessary to begin drawing some lessons. The first is unavoidable: Regime change is the most difficult of foreign policy options, the most fraught with unintended consequences, and the least suited to the American style of war. Regime removal, it turns out, is relatively easy, given our country’s unrivaled military capabilities. But regime removal is different from regime change, which may require a massive and costly effort of nation building—especially when a society has been debilitated by decades of totalitarian rule. For nearly thirty years, Saddam Hussein instilled terror and distrust, fed divisions of clan and tribe, and encouraged the fears of the Sunni minority. Wounds so deep heal slowly and gradually, and only in an atmosphere of security and order—an atmosphere the Coalition did not initially provide.

Throughout most of my White House experience, I intuitively sided with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s combative confidence against Secretary of State Colin Powell’s caution and diplomacy. But it is now clear to me that, despite its indisputable utility on today’s battlefield, the Rumsfeld Doctrine, with its stress on light and flexible high-tech military power, is less well suited to an occupation like Iraq than are certain elements of the Powell Doctrine—especially the need for clear goals and overwhelming force. Defeating an insurgency is possible (a fact proven in Malaysia and El Salvador); and sometimes it is necessary. But this kind of counterinsurgency campaign cannot be conducted quickly or on the cheap. For years, lower-level officers had made the case that when American troops in Iraq came into an area and stayed, there was relative calm. But for years there were not enough troops to make that strategy work on a sufficient scale in Baghdad.

Another lesson concerns the power of dramatic acts of violence in a media age. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi’s strategy in Iraq, in the end—even after his own end—was successful. Al-Qaeda was not responsible for most of the attacks in Iraq, but it authored the most spectacular and bloody ones—the destruction of mosques, the carnage at busy markets. And this had two effects. It created images of hopeless chaos in the American media, undermining public support for the war. Even more destructively, the attacks fed sectarian divisions within Iraq at the expense of democratic aspirations. The attraction of freedom is powerful. But hatred is not without its appeal, either, especially in the absence of order. A small group of ruthless men proved capable of fanning that hatred through spectacular acts of murder …

Not long before I left the White House, the president put the situation to me bluntly: “If the definition of success is no bombings on TV, America is in trouble. If the definition of success is steady progress in Iraq toward self-sufficiency, we can win.” This explains President Bush’s emphasis on public resolve. “The most important thing to know,” he continued, “is that I’m not going to waver.” Resolve is not a substitute for effectiveness and competence in the War on Terror—but effectiveness and competence cannot prevail without it …

… There is also danger in learning the wrong lessons from Iraq—or in overlearning the lessons of caution. Some claim the American project in Iraq was doomed from the beginning, because Iraqis and Arabs more broadly are culturally incapable of sustaining democracy. That is a familiar historical charge, made in other periods, against Catholics in Southern Europe, Hindus and Muslims in India, Eastern Orthodox in Eastern Europe, and Confucian cultures across Asia. All of these groups experienced difficult days in their democratic transitions—moments when the skeptics seemed to be vindicated. Did Indian democracy look to be successful when more than a million people died by violence during the partition process in the later 1940s? But in all of these cases, betting against the advance of democracy was a poor wager.

It may be possible that the Arab world is the great exception to this trend of history; but if so, Iraq does not prove it. Americans who first entered Iraq did not report an inevitable sectarian conflict. To the contrary, the Shia were remarkably patient during the first two years after the liberation. Iraqis of every background, including most Sunnis, were pleased that Saddam was gone and were generally inclined to withhold judgment about the occupation. There was little resentment at the size of the occupation force, and great hope that the arrival of the Americans would improve the lives of the Iraqi people. Nor were the successive elections an illusion. They were real achievements. Iraqis voted under considerable threat, in percentages greater than do Western democracies—advances that should not be forgotten or denigrated.

Given these events, an imperious contempt for the Shia—a belief that barbarians will always be barbarians—is neither fair nor helpful. Iraqi patience and goodwill were not lacking; rather, they were squandered when the Coalition failed to provide security and basic services. Sectarian conflict was not preordained—it intensified when many of the Shia lost confidence in the ability of the Coalition and Iraqi army to defend them and turned for protection and revenge to militias and death squads. Iraq does not demonstrate that democracy is impossible in the Arab world; it demonstrates that founding a new democracy is difficult in a nation overrun by militias and insurgents.

This is not to say that support for democracy in the Arab world always requires immediate elections. Such elections in Saudi Arabia, for example, would likely result in a government more oppressive and dangerous than the current one. But in Iraq there was no alternative to elections. After the invasion and liberation—undertaken, it bears repeating, primarily for reasons of national security—the president was not about to install a potential Shia dictator in place of the old Sunni dictator. That kind of cynical power game would likely have facilitated a massive Shia retribution and perhaps even genocide against the Sunnis. Democracy is necessary in Iraq precisely because it is the only political system that eventually can tame sectarian tensions, giving the Shia majority the influence it deserves, while guaranteeing the rights and representation of the Sunni minority.

But democracy in Iraq certainly has enemies—jihadists, Baathist holdouts, and religious militias—who happen to be some of the worst criminals on the global stage. We have been led by history to a simple choice: do we stand with the flawed democrats of Iraq, or abandon them to overthrow and death? Some foreign-policy realists argue that such considerations of honor mean little in international affairs. But this national commitment is more than a matter of chivalry. If America abandons Muslim leaders and soldiers who are risking their lives to fight Islamic radicalism and terror—in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere—the War on Terror cannot be won.

Another false lesson is found in the assertion that the Iraq War has actually been creating the terrorist threat we seek to fight—stirring up a hornet’s nest of understandable grievances in the Arab world. In fact, radical Islamist networks have never lacked for historical provocations. When Osama bin Laden proclaimed his 1998 fatwa justifying the murder of Americans, he used the excuse of President Clinton’s sanctions and air strikes against Iraq—what he called a policy of “continuing aggression against the Iraqi people.” He talked of the “devastation” caused by “horrible massacres” of the 1991 Gulf War. All this took place before the invasion of Iraq was even contemplated—and it was enough to result in the murder of nearly three thousand Americans on 9/11. Islamic radicals will seize on any excuse in their campaign of recruitment and incitement. If it were not Iraq, it would be the latest “crime” of Israel, or the situation in East Timor, or cartoons in a Dutch newspaper, or statements by the pope. The well of outrage is bottomless. The list of demands—from the overthrow of moderate Arab governments to the reconquest of Spain—is endless.

America is not responsible for the existence of Islamist ideology. Yet the shifting prospect of American success or failure in the Iraq War does have an effect on the recruitment of radicals. All “pan movements”—political ideologies that claim historical inevitability—expand or contract based on morale. Bin Laden talks of how the Arab world is attracted to the “strong horse”—the victor, the evident winner—and there is truth in that claim. In an ideological struggle, perception matters greatly, and outcomes matter most. Israel’s perceived defeat in Lebanon in 1982 helped produce a generation of terrorists, convinced that armed struggle could humble their enemy. If America were really to retreat in humiliation from Iraq, Islamist radicals would trumpet their victory from North Africa to the islands of the Philippines … increase their recruitment of the angry and misguided … and expand the size and boldness of their attacks.

Perhaps the most dangerous and self-destructive lesson that might be drawn from Iraq is a hyper-caution indistinguishable from paralysis. In a backlash to the Iraq War, some Democrats seem to argue that any future American action or intervention will require both certainty as to the validity of our intelligence and international unanimity. The evidence on weapons of mass destruction must always be conclusive, or else it must always be mocked and dismissed. The United Nations must always grant its blessing and legitimacy. Were America to accept these ground rules, we would become a spectator in world events. The demand for intelligence certainty would allow flickering threats to become raging fires before any action were taken to extinguish them. The demand for international unanimity would make interventions to prevent genocide or ethnic cleansing nearly impossible. America acted in the former Yugoslavia under President Clinton without U.N. support, and may need to do the same in other places in the future. At some point, caution becomes demoralization, and humility becomes humiliation …

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/62313

The always-evolving nomination process provides ample time and challenges to compel candidates to reveal their characters and skills.

By George F. Will

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:25 PM ET Oct 27, 2007

Someone urging a “bold,” “decisive,” “comprehensive” solution to this or that problem tries to dispel doubts by blithely saying, “Hey, what is the worst that could happen?” If, hearing that, you think to yourself, “Oh, you have no idea,” you probably wisely flinch from a federal “solution” to the “problem” of the admittedly messy system of choosing presidential nominees.

Many states that think their interests are being slighted think other states are behaving badly—meaning self-interestedly—by holding early primaries. The entire process is untidy, as freedom often is, and the tidy-minded are threatening to have the federal government fix it.

Congress, they say, should divide the nation into four regions that vote in monthly intervals, with the order of voting rotating every four years. Or Congress should spread the voting over 10 two-week intervals, starting with clusters of small states, with the largest states voting last. Or something.

But all such federal solutions might be unconstitutional. Not necessarily, said Richard Hasen of the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles in recent testimony to a Senate committee. But probably, said William Mayer, professor of political science at Northeastern University, also testifying.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate the time, place and manner of congressional elections. But regarding presidential elections, the Constitution gives Congress only the power to set the time for choosing presidential electors, leaving the manner of selecting them to state legislatures. On the principle that where the Constitution is silent regarding federal power it is permissive regarding states’ powers, some argue that Congress has no power to impose regional primaries on states. Furthermore, some Supreme Court rulings imply that such imposition would violate the parties’ First Amendment associational rights.

Hasen, however, notes that Article II gives Congress the power to set a single national date for presidential elections and, Hasen says, that power should extend to setting the time for the nomination of presidential candidates. In 1941, the Supreme Court held that Congress could regulate congressional primaries as well as general elections. And the court has read the Constitution as allowing Congress to regulate the financing of presidential as well as congressional campaigns, and the power to change the voting age for elections for all federal offices.

Hasen also argues that were Congress to legislate a national plan for primaries, this would limit the scheduling freedom of states without interfering with the internal workings of the parties. But it would interfere momentously: It would deny the parties the right to make for themselves the potentially high-stakes decision of when to select national convention delegates.

Mayer responds that the federal government has no constitutional authority to compel states to hold presidential primaries on particular dates or to select national convention delegates in particular ways. Furthermore, no government at any level has the power to compel political parties to use a particular way to nominate their presidential candidates.

The Supreme Court, upholding the constitutionality of the Federal Corrupt Practices Act of 1925, affirmed Congress’s power to legislate to protect government “from impairment or destruction, whether threatened by force or by corruption.” That acknowledgment of Congress’s power to protect what Mayer calls “the fundamental integrity” of election processes does not, however, license Congress to legislate against untidiness arising from free choices of the states and parties. Mayer considers it “almost willfully perverse to say that, because the Constitution permits Congress to determine the time of one particular step in the presidential selection process, it therefore gives Congress the power to determine the time of every step in the process.”

The law long ago stopped treating parties as purely private associations, in part to end the practice of white-only primaries. But since the 1970s the Supreme Court has, Mayer says, “upheld the claims of political parties almost every time they have come in conflict with state law.” Parties are not purely private entities, but neither are they appendages of government. They are voluntary associations, cloaked in the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of association. And the most important function for which people associate in parties is the selection of candidates.

Anyway, it is premature to pronounce the existing process unsatisfactory, or more so than whatever the next process might be. Regional primaries would penalize some candidates randomly, depending on the order regions voted in a particular year. If there had been regional primaries in 1992 and Southern states had voted last, that might have doomed Bill Clinton, who for the first five weeks won no primary or caucus outside the South. In 1976, Gerald Ford won an average of 60 percent in Northeastern primaries, 35 percent in Western ones. Jimmy Carter won 62 percent in the South, 35 percent in the Northeast, 21 percent in the West.

From one cycle to another, the process evolves as federalism allows—indeed incites—competitive improvisations. The salient question is: Does today’s process provide sufficient time and challenges to compel candidates to reveal their characters and skills? It does, thereby demonstrating this: What is messy is not necessarily a mess.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/62305

Because of lynching’s violent, racist history, the mere invocation of it can make people insanely angry.

By Ellis Cose

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:20 PM ET Oct 27, 2007

In an age when lynching is no longer accepted, what is the meaning of a noose? When a twisted rope, evocative of such a hideous history, hangs so far away from the horrors that defined it, is it still worth getting worked up about? Or when nooses appear on trees, on doors and in well-traveled public places, should we dismiss them as tasteless diversions? Cries for attention from sick, benighted souls? If only the questions were purely hypothetical. In the past few weeks, nooses have appeared in numerous places, spawning an orgy of coverage along with questions about their significance and potential harm.

The catalyst seems to be the brouhaha in Jena, La. Last year six black students there were accused of beating up a white student after three nooses were found hanging from a tree outside a school. The blacks were charged with attempted murder. Though the charges were subsequently reduced, outrage over the students’ being charged with such a serious crime culminated in a demonstration last month that drew an estimated 10,000 protesters to the tiny town of 3,000.

Now, it appears, nooses have become the totem of choice for some troubled people. Earlier this month a black professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College found a noose hanging from her office door. USA Today recently cataloged an array of such incidents: nooses at the University of Maryland, in a Long Island, N.Y., police locker room and in a bus-maintenance garage in Pittsburgh, to name a few. RACIAL CRISIS? OR JUST ROPE IN THE HANDS OF FOOLS? asked the headline atop a New York Times column.

I’d lay odds on the latter. This is an outbreak of copycat idiocy perpetrated by mean-spirited people who get a thrill out of seeing others riled up. And a lot of people have taken the bait. At Columbia, the noose spawned a rally in support of the targeted professor. In her State of the College address, president Susan H. Fuhrman said the perpetrator had “targeted all of us who believe in diversity.”

It’s unclear exactly what effect the noose was supposed to have. But it is clear that it stirred emotions out of proportion to its threat. The reason, of course, has to do with the history of the noose—or, to be more precise, the legacy of lynching.

Between 1882 and 1951, more than 5,000 people were lynched in the United States, according to statistics kept by the Tuskegee Institute. Not all were black. Roughly a fourth were white, Mexican or Asian. But lynchings of blacks were different from lynchings of whites. Many were “spectacle” lynchings, public rituals designed to make the point that “black bodies still belonged to white people,” writes Cynthia Carr in “Our Town,” which explores a 1930 lynching in Marion, Ind. Newspapers and public officials frequently egged on the lynch mobs, plying them with lurid (and often false) details. “Stories of sexual assault, insatiable black rapists, tender white virgins … were the bodice rippers of their day … The cumulative impression was of a world made precarious by Negroes,” reports historian Philip Dray in “At the Hands of Persons Unknown.”

Because of lynching’s violent, racist and sexually charged history, the mere invocation of it can make people insanely angry—or, as Clarence Thomas demonstrated during his Senate confirmation hearings (when he referred to his treatment as a “high-tech lynching”), silence a roomful of normally loquacious politicians. Still, 2007 is different from 1907.

Hate crimes didn’t even have a name then. It was reasonable to believe, especially in the South, that “uppity,” or even just random blacks, could be lynched with impunity. In 1990, Congress mandated the attorney general to collect data on hate crimes, and the FBI pledged to work with local officials to prosecute such transgressions. More important, lynchings and other hate crimes—be they anti-Semitic, anti-gay or anti-black—no longer have broad public support.

People still engage in hateful behavior: the FBI recorded 7,163 bias incidents in 2005, the last year for which statistics are available, down slightly from the 7,947 recorded a decade earlier. The majority were racial incidents, mostly against blacks. Still, no one really believes a Columbia professor is about to be lynched.

A position paper by the American Psychological Association concluded that most hate crimes were the work of “otherwise law-abiding young people.” Their actions were sometimes fueled by alcohol or drugs, “but the main determinant appears to be personal prejudice,” which blinds aggressors “to the immorality of what they are doing.” Extreme crimes “tend to be committed by people with a history of antisocial behavior.”

Maybe it’s time to stop getting so upset about these stupid gestures. Use them as occasions to educate—to revisit and extract lessons from history. And in cases where prosecutable crimes are committed, make the fools feel the full impact of the law. But to treat their acts as a serious expression of anything other than cruelty is to grant them an importance that they do not deserve.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/62297

Robert Scheer
Creators Syndicate
November 2, 2007

Not to stoke any of the inane conspiracy theories running wild on the Internet, but if Osama bin Laden weren’t on the payroll of Lockheed-Martin or some other large defense contractor, then he deserves to have been. What a boondoggle 9-11 has been for the merchants of war, who this week announced yet another quarter of whopping profits made possible by George W. Bush’s pretending to fight terrorism by throwing money at outdated Cold War-style weapons systems.

Lockheed-Martin, the nation’s top weapons manufacturer, reaped a 22 percent increase in profits, while rivals for the defense buck, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, increased profits by 62 percent and 24.7 percent, respectively. Boeing’s profits jumped 61 percent, spiked this quarter by its commercial division. But Boeing’s military division, like the others, has been doing very well indeed since the terrorist attacks.

As Newsweek International put it in August: “Since 9-11 and the U.S.-led wars that followed, shares in American defense companies have outperformed both the Nasdaq and Standard & Poor’s stock indices by some 40 percent. Prior to the recent cascade of stock prices worldwide, Boeing’s share prices had tripled over the past five years, while Raytheon’s had doubled.”

Not bad for an industry in serious difficulty with the sudden collapse of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s, when the first President Bush and his Defense Secretary Dick Cheney were severely cutting the military budget for high-ticket planes and ships designed to fight the no-longer-existent Soviet military. Sure, they had Iraq to kick around, but the elder Bush never thought to turn the then very real aggression of Saddam Hussein into an enormously expensive quagmire. He both defeated Hussein and cut the military budget.

Not so Bush the younger, who exploited the trauma of 9-11 as an occasion to depose the defanged dictator of Iraq and thus provide a “shock and awe” showcase for the arms industry, which continues to benefit obscenely from the failed occupation. The second Iraq war, irrationally conflated with the 9-11 attack that had nothing to do with Hussein, provided the perfect threat package to justify the most outrageous military boondoggle in the nation’s history.

The bin Laden boys only had an arsenal of $3 box knives, but Bush claimed Hussein had WMD. Sadly for the military-industrial complex, Hussein’s army collapsed all too suddenly. But the insurgency, much of it fueled by the Shiites, who were ostensibly on our side, provided the occasion for pretending that we are in a war against a conventionally armed and imposing military enemy.

Of course, we are in nothing of the sort with this so called “war on terror,” a propaganda farce that draws resources away from serious efforts to counter terrorism to reward the corporations that profit from high-tech weaponry that has little if anything to do with the problem at hand.

As Columbia University professor Richard K. Betts points out in Foreign Affairs magazine: “With rare exceptions, the war against terrorists cannot be fought with army tank battalions, air force wings or naval fleets – the large conventional forces that drive the defense budget. The main challenge is not killing the terrorists but finding them, and the capabilities most applicable to this task are intelligence and special operations forces. … It does not require half-a-trillion dollars worth of conventional and nuclear forces.”

That half a trillion only covers the Pentagon budget for expenses beyond the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars or the Department of Homeland Security. Those last three items total more than $240 billion in Bush’s 2008 budget requests. Add to that the $50 billion spent on intelligence agencies and an equal amount of State Department-directed efforts, and you can understand how we manage to spend more fighting a gang of mujahedeen terrorists, once our “freedom fighters” in that earlier Afghanistan war against the Soviets, than we did at the height of the Cold War.

“The Pentagon currently absorbs more than half of the federal government’s discretionary budget,” writes Lawrence J. Korb, “surpassing the heights reached when I was President Reagan’s assistant secretary of defense. … And much like the 1980s, we are spending billions of dollars on weapons systems designed to fight the Soviet superpower.”

Thanks to bin Laden and Bush’s exploitation of “war on terror” hysteria, the taxpayers have been hoodwinked into paying for a sophisticated military arsenal to fight a Soviet enemy that no longer exists. The Institute for Policy Studies calculated last year that the top 34 CEOs of the defense industry have earned a combined billion dollars since 9-11. They should give bin Laden his cut.

Judiciary Chairman Endorsed Justice Nominee but Says He, Like Other Democrats, Is Concerned About Torture Question
By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writer and washingontpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, November 2, 2007; A03

As Democratic opposition builds over attorney general nominee Michael B. Mukasey, no Democratic lawmaker has found himself in a tighter spot than Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who had eagerly recommended the former federal judge as a consensus candidate.

After Mukasey refused to say whether an interrogation technique called waterboarding amounts to illegal torture, Schumer has watched a growing number of his colleagues announce their opposition to the judge.

Schumer, who has remained uncharacteristically quiet throughout the furor, said in an interview yesterday that he is now “wrestling” with whether to vote against a nomination that he was instrumental in bringing about. He compared the controversy to the 2005 nomination battle over Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

“From this administration, we will never get somebody who agrees with us on issues like torture and wiretapping,” Schumer said at one point, suggesting an argument in favor of Mukasey, who faces a Senate Judiciary Committee vote on Tuesday. “The best thing we can hope for is someone who will depoliticize the Justice Department and put rule of law first.”

But Schumer said minutes later that his mind is not made up: “He’s the best we can get, but that doesn’t necessarily ensure a yes vote. I thought John Roberts was the best we could get, but I voted no.”

The outcome of Schumer’s internal struggle could prove pivotal to Mukasey’s chances, as a growing number of Democrats, including four other members of the Judiciary Committee, have announced their opposition to the nominee, as have all four senators who are seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

The deteriorating political situation led President Bush yesterday to mount a vigorous defense of Mukasey, saying that Democrats are subjecting the former federal judge to standards that no candidate for attorney general could meet.

“It’s wrong for congressional leaders to make Judge Mukasey’s confirmation dependent on his willingness to go on the record about details of a classified program he has not been briefed on,” Bush said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in Washington. “If the Senate Judiciary Committee were to block Judge Mukasey on these grounds, they would set a new standard for confirmation that could not be met by any responsible nominee for attorney general. That would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war.”

But key Democrats continued to signal opposition to the suddenly controversial nominee. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said his position is not “much of a secret,” saying Mukasey’s attempt at explaining his view on waterboarding has left his nomination in doubt.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) announced his opposition yesterday, becoming the fourth Democrat on the Judiciary Committee to promise a no vote. Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who originally predicted easy confirmation but has since become deeply critical of Mukasey, is expected to announce his position today in Vermont.

All nine Republicans on the committee are likely to support Mukasey, but if all 10 Democrats oppose the nominee, the confirmation would die in committee.

Republicans privately say that the nominee’s prospects hang on a few votes, particularly those of Schumer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who has broken ranks with her party in the past. Should Schumer and Feinstein side with other Democrats in opposition, Judiciary Republicans are likely to seek to forward the nomination with a neutral or negative recommendation to the full Senate for a confirmation vote.

Schumer originally suggested Mukasey to head the Justice Department eight months ago, after the senator became the first Democrat to call for the resignation of then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales over his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys. Schumer, whose chief counsel is a former federal prosecutor in the Manhattan courts that were overseen by Mukasey, had also recommended him as a worthy Supreme Court candidate in 2005.

But Mukasey, who was sailing to an easy confirmation, alarmed many Democrats on Oct. 18 when he repeatedly refused to say whether waterboarding is torture. The technique, which simulates drowning, has been used by the CIA but is barred by the U.S. military and has been widely condemned as torture by human rights groups.

Mukasey tried to mollify Democrats by saying in a letter earlier this week that he found the technique personally “repugnant,” but he reiterated that he could not determine whether it is illegal without being privy to classified details.

Mukasey’s response has been deemed insufficient by many Democrats and sparked an outcry among antiwar liberals who provided much of the political energy — and financial contributions — that propelled Democrats to the majority. Schumer, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, needs those supporters as he tries to expand the majority next year. One group, Democrats.com, began an e-mail campaign last night urging its supporters to withhold donations to Schumer if he votes for Mukasey.

During yesterday’s telephone interview, Schumer said that his decision will hinge largely on whether he believes Mukasey would be independent of the White House. He said that was “called into question” by some of Mukasey’s views.

“The question is whether he will show the requisite independence,” Schumer said. “That’s what I want to clear in my own head. . . . If Congress passes a law forbidding waterboarding, would he enforce that?”

Schumer’s colleagues are keenly aware of his awkward position. In announcing his opposition to Mukasey on Wednesday, Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said he could not predict the outcome of the close vote and noted the undecided posture of Schumer, with whom Durbin lives in a group house of Democrats. “I haven’t polled my colleagues, including the one I live with,” Durbin said.

Some Republicans, meanwhile, are openly chortling at Schumer’s dilemma.

“Mukasey and Schumer, aren’t they partners? Wasn’t that the Schumer pick?” Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said yesterday. “It’s become a problem for him.”

Comedian planned multi-primary run

Comedian Stephen Colbert speaks Sunday in Columbia, S.C.Associated Press (Associated Press)

Gabrielle Russon
Chicago Tribune
November 2, 2007

WASHINGTON – TV comedian Stephen Colbert’s mock presidential campaign suffered a setback Thursday when Democrats in South Carolina, the lone state where he pledged to run in both the Republican and Democratic primaries, denied him the political stage.

Although he paid a $2,500 filing fee, the executive committee voted to keep Colbert off the Democratic ballot, said state party chairwoman Carol Fowler. The filing fee will be returned to him, she said.

“I think this committee that votes took their responsibilities seriously. Our rules are pretty specific about what makes a legitimate candidate,” Fowler said. “There was nothing personal about him; they like him a lot, but they think this is a serious process.”

Colbert also missed the deadline Thursday to pay a $35,000 filing fee for a spot on the GOP ballot, a Republican official said. During Wednesday’s episode of “The Colbert Report,” Colbert said he wouldn’t spend the $35,000 for the GOP’s filing fee.

“Thirty-five thousand, guys?” he asked. “I understand you have to keep a club exclusive, but I paid less for my black-market liver.”

On the campaign trail recently, Colbert said, “I promise, if elected, I will crush the state of Georgia … Our peaches are more numerous than Georgia’s. They are more juiciful.”

With his deadpan delivery, Colbert first gained notoriety on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” before leaving for “The Colbert Report.”

Many have followed the television star’s every move since Colbert first announced his candidacy, which coincides with the release of his new book, “I Am America, (And So Can You!).”

Kate Riley
Seattle Times
November 1, 2007

You could have knocked me over with a WASL test book.

My 10-year-old son received a letter signed by Gov. Christine Gregoire and Superintendent of Public Instruction Terry Bergeson. “Congratulations!” it started. “… We are very proud of you, and you should be very proud of yourself.”

Apparently, my son “achieved the state reading, writing and mathematics learning standards.”

Here’s the punch line to my son’s letter. He is autistic in a self-contained special-education classroom with limited mainstreaming, can read some words, can add a little and can barely draw a straight line. Much as it pains me, I told my colleagues a few months ago, there is no way my pride and joy will ever meet state learning standards.

And then he did – or so they say.

Recently, a bright young acquaintance confided she didn’t pass the fourth-grade math test. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her my son, whose limitations she is aware of, nailed it!

I’m feeling a little hoodwinked.

I was an editorial writer before I was a mother. I drank the high-standards Kool-Aid way back in 1993 when education reform started. I was moved by my work as a tutor for an adult literacy program. I was stunned to learn my student with a third-grade reading level had graduated high school. If she had gotten help at 10 instead of 30, her whole life might have been different.

Since then, I have written scores of editorials supporting the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. I defended keeping standards high.

“The diploma has to mean something,” I argued. Over. And over. And over.

As the stakes ratcheted up to become the threshold for graduation this year, I was persuaded to spike my WASL Kool-Aid with a little accommodation.

Sure, let’s have alternative ways to pass the WASL. The students still have to meet standards, they’ll just do it in different ways. So a kid who has test anxiety gets to show he meets the same high standards in a different way, in a portfolio of work.

Which is how my son took the test – by portfolio in the Washington Alternate Assessment System. It was a meticulously kept body of work, representing honest, hard effort and, indeed, progress. But it did not – repeat, did not – meet any common-sense interpretation of fourth-grade standards.

Turns out, in education’s semantics wonderland, there are standards and then there are standards. Under the No Child Left Behind policy, the federal government requires states to establish standards for special-education students. In Washington, special-education students have only to meet their own personal “standard” based on the goals in their annually revised Individual Education Plans.

There is no accountability to ensure these individual special-education “standards” aren’t low-balled, although state officials say accountability measures are on the way.

OK. Let’s get this straight. This stupid assessment doesn’t change the worth of my kid, or any kid. He’s still the nicest, most fun member of the family to be around and he’s got great taste in music.

But what these tests should tell us honestly is whether a student meets one reasonable minimum standard of academic achievement – for all kids. Most can – with work and support. Sadly – and this is from one parent who struggles out of denial every day – some cannot. That’s a fact.

“You don’t want him to count against the school, do you?” was a question I heard more than once as I asked questions. Well, no, but I don’t want him to artificially inflate the school’s success rate, either. I especially don’t want to let schools off the hook if they are failing younger versions of my adult student years ago, who, when given a chance, advanced quickly to ninth-grade reading level.

Most troubling to me is the larger public-policy implication of my son’s letter. He goes in the “pass” column for his school, his district and the state. He is a supporting statistic in federal reports to show adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind program.

I hold this astonishing letter in my hands, and can’t help but feel like a co-conspirator in a public sham.

Philadelphia Inquirer
November 1, 2007

PHILADELPHIA – On the day after the Democratic debate here, the tempest generated by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s handling of the issue of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants refused to go away.

Democratic and Republican presidential candidates alike joined in criticizing her Wednesday.

And the Clinton campaign, hoping the episode will not become a metaphor for evasiveness, clarified her position on the issue and put out a Web video mocking her opponents for “piling on.”

In the debate, Clinton struggled with a question about whether she supported a proposal by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to allow illegal immigrants to get licenses.

At first, she appeared to endorse the idea, saying she understood why Spitzer wanted to issue licenses. Then, she seemed to reject it, saying she “didn’t think this was the best thing for any governor to do.”

Her Democratic rivals seized upon her performance, hoping to use it as confirmation of their claim that she has avoided specific positions.

“I think last night’s debate really exposed this fault line,” Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said on Wednesday. Wednesday, the Clinton campaign issued a statement confirming that she does, in fact, support the Spitzer plan.

Republicans joined in the attack on the Democratic front-runner, slamming her both for waffling and her support for an idea that the electorate does not welcome.

According to a CNN/USA Today survey taken in mid-October, Americans oppose licenses for illegal immigrants by a 3-1 ratio. Democrats oppose it by almost 2-1.

The candidates themselves are divided on the issue, a fact obscured by all of the attention paid to Clinton’s back-and-forth during the debate.

Obama, after saying that he couldn’t “tell whether she was for it or against it,” supported licenses for illegals.

In a show of hands during the debate, three other candidates appeared to support it: Edwards, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, of Ohio.

Senators Christopher Dodd, of Connecticut, and Joseph Biden, of Delaware, said they opposed the proposal.