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.