Handicapping 2008

David Seaton's News Links
I had coffee Saturday with a important political consultant from the Democratic Party who was visiting Madrid. Since the conversation was informal and off the record, I can't tell you his name, which isn't important really, since he's an insider's insider, who I hadn't heard of either until we were introduced by a mutual acquaintance. Some of the things he said were very interesting and some were quite disturbing... to me at least.

The most disturbing impression I got was that, while the Republicans are very comfortable with their base, the Democratic establishment are afraid and embarrassed by theirs. If there ever was a formula for losing that is it. The consultant also said that winning Congress was more important for the Democrats than winning the presidency, which gave me a curious impression of premature sour grapes, especially since this Congress's approval ratings are even lower than Bush's.

The Democrats seem to exist to neutralize progressive trends in the USA. This Congress was an important, perhaps a final chance to make clear that a real difference exists between the parties and this opportunity has been lost. The Democrats seem set on nominating Hillary for President and maybe she could beat Bush, but I don't think she can beat Giuliani.

It is important to remember at this point that the Democrats are not going to be running against Bush, he'll be gone and he is so exceptionally inept that very few voters are going to to associate his historic, amazing and very personal incompetence with Republicans in general... Certainly not with Giuliani.

And speaking of Rudy, it is also important to remember that what the voters have always liked most about Dubya is that he is a mean son of a bitch and Rudy is even meaner than Bush and unlike the Shrub is seen to be sharp and competent. Bush was reelected comfortably because the frightened American people wanted a bad assed prick for President... but they wanted a competent bad assed prick. They are still frightened, but they are disappointed by Bush's performance, not, repeat, not, by his selling proposition.

The Democratic campaign consultant also confirmed my impression that Mike Huckabee is hot. "To hear Huckabee, is to love Huckabee", he said. A client of his, a Democratic governor, told him in confidence that Huckabee was probably the best governor in the country. He actually is what Bush pretended to be, a "compassionate conservative". Except when he speaks on nutrition, most of what Huckabee says sounds like nonsense to me, but he is funny, he's human and he gives the impression of being both a genuinely good man and real. I think that he will probably be Giuliani's running mate and that will be a very, very, balanced ticket, indeed. Giuliani is both a thug and corrupt and his weirdness could put off the "values" voter. Huckabee on the ticket could solve all that.

Who could be Hillary's running mate? Frankly, I think there is only one human being in the world that balances Hillary Clinton and that is Bill Clinton, but I don't think he can run for Vice-President. Can he?

I think the Democrats are going to lose, because they are not true to their base, they haven't learned the Kerry lesson yet and probably never will. I don't think the people who finance the Democrats will ever allow them to be true to that base. The Republicans don't have that problem. What you see is what you get.

I'm sorry to say that it is clearer to me every day that the Democratic Party has become little more than a Judas Goat for progressives. The path to change is not going to be found leading through this version of the Democratic Party, I'm afraid. DS

Mike Huckabee on nutrition - Salon
There are two basic elements to health: good nutrition and activity. We've got to help this country to start realizing that whole, natural foods are critical to health. I often tell people a couple of basic rules of nutrition: One is, if it wasn't a food 100 years ago, it probably isn't a food today. Secondly, if it comes through the car window, it isn't food. So much of what people eat today is a chemical product that has been processed, and when you really look at what it is and read the label, you'd be better off eating the box and throwing the contents away, because the box would at least give you some fiber.

George Packer on Giuliani - New Yorker
Whenever its leading Presidential candidates appear before partisan audiences, they try to outdo one another in pledging loyalty oaths to the use of force, pandering to the war lobby as if they were Democrats addressing the teachers’ union. Giuliani has surrounded himself with a group of advisers—from Norman Podhoretz to the former Pentagon official Michael Rubin—who, having got Iraq spectacularly wrong, seem determined to make up for it by doing the same thing in Iran. Giuliani approaches foreign policy in the same mood of barely restrained eagerness for confrontation with which, as mayor of New York, he went after criminals. He has essentially promised to go to war with Iran in order to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons, and he recently suggested that waterboarding is only torture when the wrong people are doing it, and blamed the “liberal media” for giving it a bad name. He has said that he would improve America’s miserable image around the world by threatening State Department diplomats with unnamed consequences unless they defend United States foreign policy more aggressively. “The era of cost-free anti-Americanism must end,” Giuliani snarled in the polite pages of Foreign Affairs, which had invited candidates to lay out their views.

Karl Rove on Hillary - Newsweek
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.(...) 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.

Draft Al Gore... Spare the world Giuliani

"Mr. Gore’s central argument is that “reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions” and that the country’s public discourse has become “less focused and clear, less reasoned.” This “assault on reason,” he suggests, is personified by the way the Bush White House operates. " NYT review of "The Assault on Reason"

"Al Gore is a serious man confronted by a political system that is not open to a serious exploration of important, complex issues. He knows it." Bob Herbert - NYT

David Seaton's News Links
Al Gore is the only serious, mainstream, "household word" type, public intellectual left standing in a country that has produced giants like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. While I would never put him in anywhere near the same league with those titans, there is no other American political figure at this time with Gore's intellectual capacity, experience and any chance of ever being elected president (he was elected once already, after all).

Gore has identified and made his own property the two gravest problems facing America and the world today: global warming and America's deficit of democracy. This alone, whatever other merits he may possess, marks him as a historical figure.

I think Gore is wise not to run for President and to unnecessarily expose himself again to the insult and ridicule which is now what passes for public debate in the USA, but I think that the Democrats are foolish not to draft him. The present field of Democratic candidates is made up of dwarfs in comparison to Gore.

There is some idea that the Democrats are predestined to win the next presidential election... This idea is entirely erroneous in my opinion. The forces able to create and press such an unlikely dunce as George W. Bush upon the American people (twice!) are still there and certainly will marshal up every dirty trick in their massive repertoire. The two leading Democratic candidates, Hillary and Obama are singularly vulnerable to the sort of garbage that these people can brew up. Oscar, Emmy and Nobel Peace Prize winners a tad less.

The leading Republican candidate. Rudolph Giuliani is uniquely suited to exploit the weaknesses of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They would both be electable if it weren't for Al Qaeda, but Al Qaeda will still be there in October 2008.

Osama bin Laden has done very well with the Republicans and he has no reason to want to change. A Giuliani presidency could be even worse than Bush, especially with people like Daniel Pipes and Norman Podhoretz advising him. If Osama had his 'druthers' I'm sure he'd pick Rudy. And one big bomb in the right place, at the right time and I doubt if the American people would be in any mood to elect either the first woman or the first African-American president of the United States.

Perhaps the country is not ready for somebody that is really as serious as Al Gore is just yet. Another failed presidency might do the trick. After four years of Rudy Giuliani and the ensuing nightmare of war and corruption, the American people might be finally "ripe" for Al Gore.

The Democrats could save us all of this by drafting Al Gore now, but I doubt that they will. DS

Bacevich's questions for candidates

David Seaton's News Links
Professor Andrew Bacevich is one of the clearest thinking political analysts working in the United States. As a graduate of West Point he knows that strategic thinking begins with asking the right questions.

Answers to those questions themselves may change with the circumstances, but woe to the strategist that asks the wrong questions.

Obviously to ask the right questions you have to have a realistic idea of who you are, where you are and what you hope to achieve. For example, if you are in Paris and ask a passerby directions to "Times Square", you will probably find that unproductive.

As Professor Bacevich points out, all serious discussion of Iraq and post-Iraq revolves around recognizing that the United States has failed in Iraq. All presidential candidates should then ask themselves, "who we are, where we are and what we hope achieve". If they don't have plausible answers to those questions they have no business asking Americans for their votes. DS

Bacevich: 'Your Iraq plan?' is a pointless question - Los Angeles Times

Abstract: For today's presidential candidates, the question is unavoidable: What is your plan for Iraq?(...) However sincere, such questions are also pointless. To pose them is to invite dissembling. The truth is that next to nothing can be done to salvage Iraq. It no longer lies within the capacity of the United States to determine the outcome of events there. Iraqis will decide their own fate. We are spectators, witnesses, bystanders caught in a conflagration that we ourselves, in an act of monumental folly, touched off. The questions that ought to be asked now — but so far have not been — are of a different order.(...) Recall that Bush saw Baghdad not as the final destination of his global war on terror but as a point of departure. He imagined that liberating Iraq might trigger a flowering of Arab democracy.(...) None of that has come to pass. Baghdad has become a cul-de-sac. Having plunged into a war he cannot win, Bush will not relent. Iraq consumes his presidency because the president wills that it should. He has become Captain Ahab: His identification with his war is absolute. As a consequence, the "global" effort aimed at eliminating Islamic terror, launched back in September 2001, has narrowed in scope. Today the global war is global in name only. In reality, it has become a war for Mesopotamia.(...) Ritualistic allusions to freedom as the antidote to terrorism still occasionally crop up in presidential speeches, but rhetoric no longer translates into action. An administration that once touted its expansive and principled approach to preventing another 9/11 has abandoned principle. Now there is only Iraq and the effort to ensure that today's news out of Baghdad isn't any worse than yesterday's. Our political attention, then, needs to turn to whether the president's would-be successors can do what Bush cannot: acknowledge our failure in Iraq and look beyond it. Candidates who still find merit in an open-ended global war on terror should explain how we prevail in such an enterprise. Given the lessons of Iraq, what exactly does it mean to wage such a global war? Where can we expect to fight next, and against whom? What will victory look like? Candidates who, in light of Iraq, have become skeptical of open-ended global war as a response to violent Islamic radicalism should be pressed to describe their alternative. How do they define the threat? How do they propose to deal with it? Will they isolate it? Contain it? Subvert it? Relying on what means and at what costs? "What's your plan for Iraq?" was the right question back in 2002 and 2003 — although it went largely unasked and almost completely unanswered then. But as we approach the 2008 presidential election, though the tragedy of Iraq continues to unfold, that question is moot. The one that matters is this: As President Bush departs and leaves the United States bereft of a coherent strategy, what should fill that void? READ IT ALL