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March 21, 2007
March 15, 2007
The Daily 2008
The leading Democratic presidential candidates and Republican senators John McCain and Sam Brownback attended yesterday's meeting of the International Association of Fire Fighters. The forum was mostly uneventful as candidates lavished praise on firefighters and criticized their treatment by the government: from health care and labor issues to a lack emergency equipment. Of course the biggest story was Rudy Giuliani's absence after the union attacked his decision to reduce the number of firefighters doing recovery operations shortly after 9/11. The union endorsed John Kerry in '04 and Republicans "stand little chance of winning the union's endorsement" because of their opposition to labor initiatives.
Giuliani had his own meeting though: a 1,000-person fundraiser in Manhattan where he cast himself as a can-do candidate and said he's "impatient and singled-minded" about his goals. Meanwhile, a Quinnipac poll surveyed New Yorkers, 46 percent of whom said Mayor Bloomberg would make a better president than Giuliani.
Out in California, the state GOP is struggling with a proposal to open its presidential primary to independent voters, who would probably favor Giuliani or McCain. Michael Shear at the Washington Post writes that McCain is trying to recapture the maverick spirit of his '00 campaign now that he trails Giuliani.
On the Democratic side, the Des Moines Register has a long follow-up to a report earlier this week that quoted Sen. Barack Obama as saying "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people" in a discussion of the Middle East, a remark that's now drawing fire from some Jewish Democrats. Obama is also under scrutiny for whether he believes homosexuality is "immoral" after dodging three consecutive questions about the issue yesterday.
For the second time this week Bob Shrum's revelations have struck another Democrat. Shrum writes in his new book that Clinton lobbied to be Kerry's vice presidential pick but was denied because of her high negative ratings in polls.
Find the rest of today's election news at RCP's Politics and Elections page.
The Long Exit
Many people have commented on the fundamental lack of seriousness with which some Democrats have approached the Iraq debate but few, if any, have done it as well as David Brooks does this morning in the New York Times:
The fact is there are two serious approaches to U.S. policy in Iraq, and the Democratic leaders, for purely political reasons, are caught in the middle, and even people like Carl Levin are beginning to sound silly.One serious position is heard on the left: that there's nothing more we can effectively do in Iraq. We've spent four years there and have not been able to quell the violence. If the place is headed for civil war, there's nothing we can do to stop it, and we certainly don't want to get caught in the middle. The only reasonable option is to get out now before more Americans die.
The second serious option is heard on the right. We have to do everything we can to head off catastrophe, and it's too soon to give up hope. The surge is already producing some results. Bombing deaths are down by at least a third. Execution-style slayings have been cut in half. An oil agreement has been reached, tribes in Anbar Province are chasing Al Qaeda, cross-sectarian political blocs are emerging. We should perhaps build on the promise of the surge with regional diplomacy or a soft partition, but we certainly should not set timetables for withdrawal.
The Democratic leaders don't want to be for immediate withdrawal because it might alienate the centrists, and they don't want to see out the surge because that would alienate the base. What they want to do is be against Bush without accepting responsibility for any real policy, so they have concocted a vaporous policy of distant withdrawal that is divorced from realities on the ground.
Say what you will about President Bush, when he thinks a policy is right, like the surge, he supports it, even if it's going to be unpopular. The Democratic leaders, accustomed to the irresponsibility of opposition, show no such guts.
March 14, 2007
Edwards on Global Warming
This video is just more proof John Edwards is running hard to capture the heart and soul of the netroots. After explaining his reason for boycotting the FOX News debate in Nevada he actually says that potential global warming in the next 75 years "will make world war look like heaven."
Maybe he should spend some time watching the History Channel and old WWII clips to see what a real world war would look like, and that was with weapons over 60 years old. God forbid we have world war over the next 75 years with nuclear weapons and the state of armaments today. I can't predict the future, but I'd be willing to bet that the weather over the next 75 years will not be as bad as a real world war.
This type of stuff, eerily like:
If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president, people like Christopher Reeve will get up out of that wheelchair and walk again.
is one of the reasons John Edwards' favorable/unfavorable ratings are so bad for a guy who hasn't been on the national stage for that long. In the most recent Hotline/FD poll he had a +12% (39/27) favorable/unfavorable spread and in the ABC/WP it was down to single digits at +7% (46/39). These type of favorability numbers only complicate his uphill road to the nomination.
Rudy's Chances
An interesting pro-Giuliani email:
It seems clear that the conservative punditry and - most especially - conservative religious leaders are panicked over the probability of the Republican Party will nominate Rudy Giuliani as its Presidential candidate for 2008. The conventional wisdom is that primary voters don't know just how liberal Rudy is and when they find out, they'll flee to another candidate. Between now and February of next year, religious conservative leaders will do everything they can to destroy Rudy's candidacy.The problem is there appears to be a disconnect between the conservative punditry and religious leaders and the Republican primary voters expressing in polls their approval of Rudy as their likely candidate. How can this be?
No part of the electorate follows politics more closely than primary voters. The fact is they already know about Rudy's past liberal positions. But they also know Rudy is a born leader, agrees with them on most issues and is probably the only Republican candidate who can handily beat Mrs. Bill Clinton or Mr. Obama. Republicans - conservatives & moderates - want to win. More than that, they want to keep the Clintons and the Obamas out of the White House.And when Republican primary voters look at all the other candidates, what viable alternatives do they actually have?
• McCain: War hero who's contemptuous of conservatives, who seems to have a screw loose and could self-combust at any moment
• Romney: Plastic, seemingly computer-generated, opportunistic flip-flopper - and let's not kid ourselves, the Mormon thing is going to be a problem for some
• Gingrich: Great guy, smart as a whip, been married 3 times, had affair during Clinton impeachment thing, so much baggage - has higher negatives in polling than Hillary
• and the flavor of the day - Fred Thompson: Boring, lack-luster career in the senate, not really qualified, flash in the pan and won't finish in the top 3None of the other candidates are on the radar and, as such, worth mentioning.
If Rudy wins the nomination, will Dr. James Dobson et al run a 3rd party candidate in the general election? If so, they'll commit political suicide.
New Hampshire Poll
New polls numbers out of New Hampshire today has Hillary Clinton with a 7 point lead over Barack Obama, 32% to 25%. That's much larger than a Suffolk poll two weeks ago which had Clinton at only a 2 point advantage (28-26), but the sample size was about half (212 likely voters) of the new poll (401 likely voters).
In the RCP Average for the New Hampshire primary, Clinton's lead over Obama is 4.3 points with a long 10 months to go until the primary on Jan 22.
Obama is heading to New Hampshire this Friday to campaign. Asked about the new trend of states moving their primary dates up to Feb. 5, Obama said, "If anything, all the eyes in the nation are going to be fastened on New Hampshire and the kind of retail politics that is called for in New Hampshire becomes that much more important because this is where most of the country is going to get a sense of who the candidates are."
Clinton, Kaplan and the Establishment
There's a mini-uproar brewing over the new CBS "Evening News" executive producer Rick Kaplan and his friendship with the Clintons.
Interestingly, the CBS News blog, Public Eye, is giving the issue some attention. Of course, blogger Brian Montopoli concludes that "Kaplan is capable of covering the Clintons fairly." Whether that's true, it's understandable that the right side of the blogosphere is howling about the perceived bias of a news executive who slept in the Clinton White House twice.
Otherwise, what we're reminded of in this story is just how ingrained Hillary Clinton is with the media and political powerbrokers. Does Barack Obama have any network news executive friends? He might, but those are the kinds of relationships one gets having lived and worked in the elite power circles of Washington and New York for the last 15 years. Being the Establishment Candidate comes with some fringe benefits.
Unfortunately for Clinton, the increasingly powerful left-wing base loathes the establishment. Straw polls aren't much good for anything other than gauging the mood of the activists, so it's worth noting that a recent straw poll conducted by the left-wing site MyDD came up with these results:
Candidate 1st Choice
Obama 36%
Edwards 33%
Richardson 10%
Clinton 5%
Kucinich 2%
Also remember how masterfully John Edwards stoked the left-wing's hatred of Fox News by being the first to drop out of the Nevada debate. That's the kind of thing the base loves and it's the kind of thing Clinton just can't do without ticking off some of her powerful friends - friends like Fox News' Rupert Murdoch, who, let's recall, held a fund-raiser for her last year.
The Daily 2008
California's new Feb. 5 primary date has given the state's politicians new clout as they become important proxies for presidential campaigns. One especially close relationship is between Rudy Giuliani and Bill Simon, who unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2003 and is now Giuliani's policy director and salesman to the right. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer doesn't want his state to be left out of the spotlight and said he would like to move the primary date to Feb. 5 as well.
In Washington today, Giuliani will not attend a presidential forum hosted by the International Association of Fire Fighters as they and other first-responder groups criticize Giuliani's record from emergency preparedness to 9/11 search-and-rescue operations. As RCP was first to report yesterday: Sen. John McCain will not attend the Club for Growth meeting this month because of a prior committment in Iraq.
Speaking of Iraq, Bob Shrum's new book says John Edwards was "skeptical" about voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 2002. According to Shrum, Edwards voted for the war after being told by advisers he didn't have the credibility to vote against it and that he had to vote for it to be taken seriously on national security during his 2004 campaign. "It wasn't a political calculation. It was a mistake," Edwards said yesterday after claiming he had "no idea" what Shrum was talking about. Tomorrow Edwards is slated to deliver a "major policy address" on poverty in New Hampshire.
Elsewhere, Ben Smith at the Politico reports that a Democratic AIPAC member has asked Sen. Barack Obama to clarify his claim that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that he was open to the idea of loosening restrictions on direct aid to the Palestinians.
As Obama plays defense, Sen. Hillary Clinton is playing offense. This morning Clinton called on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign during a "Good Morning America" interview. Yesterday Clinton reprised the "vast right-wing conspiracy" line that she originally used to describe efforts against her husband during the Lewinsky scandal. Clinton said it was "proven" in a New Hampshire court that the conspiracy exists after two Republicans pleaded guilty to charges concerning a 2002 case of Election Day phone jamming.
The rest of today's election news can be found at RCP's Politics and Elections page.
March 13, 2007
Edwards vs. Shrum
An interesting story today from the AP about a forthcoming book by Democratic strategist Bob Shrum.
Democratic strategist Bob Shrum writes in his memoir to be published in June that he regrets advising Edwards to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. He said if Edwards had followed his instincts instead of the advice of political professionals, he would have been a stronger presidential candidate in 2004.
Which is all very nice of Shrum to say no doubt. Problem is, Shrum's account is bad for business.
Edwards spokesman David Ginsberg disputes the suggestion that Edwards was making a political calculation with the 2002 vote that he has called the most important of his career.
Throughout the 2004 campaign, Edwards and John Kerry could never successfully spin their Iraq war votes. Which is why both Edwards and Kerry - who isn't even running - ended up saying after the election simply that they made a mistake. This calmed the antiwar activists, even if it elided over some inconvenient statements Kerry and Edwards had made back in 2002 about the threat Iraq posed to the United States.
So it's understandable for Edwards' spokesman David Ginsberg to say this in response to Shrum's version of events:
John Edwards cast his vote based on the advice of national security advisers and the intelligence he was given, not political advisers," Ginsberg said. "He got political advice on both sides of the argument, and made his own decision based on what he thought was right, not political calculation.
While this argument lessens the charge that the administration lied, it does serve to cast Edwards as a responsible politician, one who makes decisions based on what he knows and is prepared to admit mistakes.
But what of Shrum's version?
Shrum writes that Edwards, then a North Carolina senator, called his foreign policy and political advisers together in his Washington living room in the fall of 2002 to get their advice. Edwards was "skeptical, even exercised" about the idea of voting yes and his wife Elizabeth was forcefully against it, according to Shrum, who later signed on to John Kerry's presidential campaign.But Shrum said the consensus among the advisers was that Edwards, just four years in office, did not have the credibility to vote against the resolution and had to support it to be taken seriously on national security. Shrum said Edwards' facial expressions showed he did not like where he was being pushed to go.
But go there he did, and, unfortunately for Edwards, Shrum's account makes him look as if he was swayed for political reasons.
McCain to be in Iraq During Club for Growth Event
The McCain campaign informs RCP that Senator McCain will be overseas in a "war theater" at the time of the Club for Growth conference at the end of this month. This has been a long-standing trip and thus a conflict with the March 31st and April 1st speaking slots for McCain at the event.
This helps explain what on the surface looked like a bizarre political move by the McCain campaign to just "skip" the anti-tax, supply-side group's winter conference. The contrast of McCain's rivals being in Palm Beach while Senator McCain is with the troops in Iraq should mitigate the political fallout from his absence.
However, the speed with which his opponents on the Internet jumped on his absence coupled with Club for Growth President Pat Toomey's less than enthusiastic column in today's Wall Street Journal only highlight McCain's troubles with large blocs of the conservative electorate.
Vitter & Rudy: Wound Too Tight?
Quin Hillyer has an interesting tidbit on what may have contributed to David Vitter's decision to back Giuliani, and also a word of caution to all of the Rudy booster's in the GOP.
The Vitter endorsement probably will help Giuliani some, it's true, but in one sense it is a case of like attracting like. Just as stories are becoming rampant about how obnoxiously and outrageously the mayor was known to berate reporters (not that I am a big defender of the media in general, but we're talking flying way off the handle here), he gets an endorsement from another politician prone to totally freakazoid behavior of the same sort. I once wrote a rather positive notes package about Vitter, only to have him call me up and go absolutely bonkers on me for nearly 10 solid minutes --we're talking large decibel level here -- because the notes mentioned that he already had blanketed the state legislative district for which he was running with high quality glossy flyers handed out door to door.The problem? Vitter was furious that I had used the word "glossy," because he said I was trying to imply that he was a slick politician without substance. Never mind that nothing else in the notes package hinted at that, nor that anybody had publicly suggested such a thing during the race that was just beginning, not that I even believed that myself. And of course never mind that "glossy" is, obviously a precisely accurate description of a type of photo paper, which is of course the way the word was used. I mean, the Vitter eruption came totally out of left field. But people who know him know that he's wound about five times more tightly than an old Titleist balata golf ball.
That same characteristic in both Giuliani and in McCain make them easy targets for Hillary's henchmen to exploit in a general election campaign with a media biased in Hillary's favor. It is a very, very good reason why conservatives should not leap on board too soon for the mayor, even though he does have much to recommend him. This does not mean that conservatives should write him off, not at all, but only that there is no need for any early commitments.
Vitter Good for Rudy, Toomey Bad for McCain
Forgetting Giuliani's not insignificant lead in the polls (ahead by 17.2% in the RCP Average), two news events yesterday further illustrate what the Giuliani campaign is doing right and how the McCain camping is struggling.
Endorsements by your average governor or senator are usually not that big a deal, especially from a state that does not have a significant role in the nominating process, but Louisiana Sen. David Vitter's endorsement of Giuliani is a big positive for the Giuliani campaign, because it sends a message that Rudy is acceptable to social conservatives. If a social conservative from a southern state like David Vitter can get behind the former mayor of New York, it takes some of the punch out of the anti-Giuliani analysis that he will be found unacceptable to Republican primary voters.
Contrast this positive development for the Giuliani campaign with the news from the Club for Growth that Senator McCain is declining an offer to speak at their winter conference in a couple of weeks.
The Club for Growth is happy to announce a star-studded array of guest speakers for its 2007 Annual Winter Conference in Palm Beach, Florida., to be held March 29 - April 1, 2007. Joining the Club for Growth for its policy forums are declared or potential presidential candidates former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; Kansas Senator Sam Brownback; and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Arizona Senator John McCain was invited to attend, but declined.
Skipping the CPAC event could be tactically justified; however, the unexplained Club for Growth snub just doesn't make a lot of sense politically. At the beginning of February when Giuliani threw his hat into the ring and became the favorite I suggested:
The McCain campaign is going to have to a find non-social-issues path to taking down Giuliani and they can't commit the same mistake they made in 2000 by going after independents and Democrats before capturing the nomination. McCain has to find a way to energize Republicans behind his candidacy. Strategically, McCain would be well advised to position himself as the pro-growth, supply-side conservative in the Republican field.
There is not a clear pro-growth, anti-tax candidate in the GOP field today, which is an opportunity for all of the Republican candidates. The reality is McCain does need to be proactive in finding ways to get Republicans enthusiastic about his campaign. Steadfastness on the war will not be enough to deliver Senator McCain the nomination, especially when his main competition is Giuliani. By itself skipping the Club for Growth event is no big deal, but on the back of his absence at other recent conservative gatherings he is doing himself no favors among the conservative activists he is going to need over the course of 2007 to put himself in the position to win the votes in January and February 2008.
The Daily 2008
Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee of The New York Times tell us what we already knew about the GOP field, just with newer information: the party is restless. A new NYT/CBS News poll reports that 40 percent of Republicans think Democrats will win next year, 58 percent want a candidate who's "flexible" on withdrawing from Iraq, but most don't know enough about the leading candidates to make a choice.
In other news on the GOP, Sen. Chuck Hagel's deferred decision about a presidential run may be based on his hope that voters will become tired by the current field and embrace a fresher, more anti-war candidate come fall. But as former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey put it: "On the other hand, it's very difficult to run for president unless you're running for president."
Conservative Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) was made Rudy Giuliani's regional Southern chair and said the mayor isn't running to "advance any liberal social agenda." Yesterday, Giuliani told reporters he was cool to the idea of President Bush immediately pardoning Scooter Libby. "I know more about pardons than anybody needs to know about them," Giuliani said of his time running the pardon office in the Justice Department.
Mitt Romney will be on Giuliani's turf next week in New York where he'll try to raise money from big-name donors who Giuliani hasn't totally locked up. Out west Romney received the backing of a former Nevada governor at the same time the state's GOP faces an internal pushback to the early primary date it set last week.
Not to be forgotten, Democrats are trying to outfox each other. Al Sharpton asked why Sen. Barack Obama, who is against the Iraq war, supported Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary, even though Lieberman is the "biggest supporter of the war," according to Sharpton.
Should Obama or another Democratic make things close at the Democratic convention next year, Sen. Hillary Clinton will turn to "superdelegates" to make her the nominee. These "superdelegates" are mostly Congress members, governors and national committee members who act like free agents at the conventions, unlike delegates selected in the primaries and caucuses.
The Hill reports that Clinton has created a network of Democratic lobbyists and insiders three times the size of Obama's base of Beltway support. Obama has declined contributions from lobbyists for his presidential campaign and even money lobbyists may raise on behalf of others
Find the rest of today's news at our Politics and Elections page.
Election 2008
I was on Hugh Hewitt's national radio program last evening discussing the 2008 campaign. The audio stream lost the section where I suggested the country was tired of the sixteen years of bitterness with the Clinton and Bush presidencies, all of which was working in Obama's favor in his battle for the Democratic nomination. Most of the discussion was on Hagel, Obama and Thompson.
Carol Platt Liebau was filling in for Hugh, who is in New York promoting his new book, "A Mormon in the White House."
March 12, 2007
Hagel's Road Less Traveled
When Frost found himself at the crossroads, he took the road less traveled. And that, he said, made all the difference. When Sen. Chuck Hagel finds himself at the crossroads, he calls a press conference.
"America stands at an historic crossroads in its history. It is against this backdrop that I find myself at my own crossroads on my political future. Burdened by two wars, faced with dangerous new threats and global uncertainty, beset by serious long-term domestic problems and divided by raw political partisanship-America now reaches for a national consensus of purpose."
Wait for it; wait for it...
"I am here today to announce that my family and I will make a decision on my political future later this year."
One doesn't have to follow Frost's advice and take the road less traveled, but, man, if you're going to call a press conference, make a decision.
Media Alert
It's a bit short notice, but I'll be on The Live Desk with Martha MacCallum at 1pm Eastern today.
'08 Nevada Poll
Research 2000 poll in Nevada:
Republicans
Giuliani 38
McCain 18
Gingrich 13
Romney 4
Democrats
Clinton 32
Obama 20
Gore 11
Edwards 11
Richardson 2
Clark 2
Head-to-Head Matchups
Giuliani 46 - Clinton 38
Giuliani 44 - Obama 42
Ready, Aim.......Hit Giuliani
The first of what will be many death blows aimed at the Giuliani candidacy hit Drudge today in the form of a video clip of then NYC mayoral candidate Rudy Giuliani in 1989 running on the Republican-Liberal line against David Dinkins.
There must be public funding for abortions, for poor women. We can not deny any woman the right to make her own decision about abortion because she lacks resources. I have also stated that I disagree with President Bush's veto of public funding for abortion.
Rudy is now at 38% in the latest RCP Average, which will most likely be his peak as more candidates get in the race and more clips like this continue to be unearthed. If Fred Thompson gets in the race, he would likely vault to a strong third very quickly.
Let's be clear: Video clips like this are totally expected and just part of the long string of baggage the Giuliani campaign is going to have to manage if they hope to capture the Republican nomination. It is exactly clips like these (and the three marriages, and the Bernie Kerik sludge) that make many analysts discount Giuliani's chances.
It will be very important to monitor the reaction to this video and how the Giuliani campaign manages damage control. We will learn quite a bit about just how strong of a favorite Rudy really is today (and I do think he is the favorite) or whether the Giuliani doubters are correct and he is simply not nominatable.
The Brownback Interview
I sat down with Senator Brownback in his office last Wednesday. You can read the full transcript of the interview below the jump, but let me offer a few quick observations about why Brownback is such an intriguing candidate.
Obviously, he's a hero to cultural conservatives, but Brownback is also taking the lead in the Senate on comprehensive immigration reform and he's the only Republican in the current field who came out against the President's surge in Iraq (though Chuck Hagel might be getting into the race today),
Another interesting piece of Brownback's profile that is sometimes overlooked: he grew up on a farm and was elected the youngest Secretary of Agriculture in Kansas history. When it comes to retail politics with Republicans in Iowa, he's basically one of them. How well can Rudy stand on a farm or in a local town hall meeting and talk "ag" issues? What about McCain? And how much will it even matter?
While there are questions about how well Rudy's brash New York City style will play in Iowa, I don't think there's any doubt that Sam Brownback is going to wear very well as a candidate in Iowa over the course of a long, twenty month campaign.
Can Brownback win Iowa? If the top tier candidates fall away or flame out and he's left standing as a solid alternative, sure it's possible. That would probably still leave him as a long shot to win the nomination, though it would certainly enhance his chances of getting a VP nod, especially if Rudy goes on to win and is looking for balance.
Just as a point of historical reference: since 1984 the Republican winner of the Iowa caucus has gone on to win the party's nomination five out of six times. The only exception was in 1988, when Bob Dole won Iowa with 37% of the vote, Pat Robertson finished second with 25%, and the eventual nominee, George Herbert Walker Bush, placed third with 19%. Obviously, Bob Dole was from Kansas. Guess who took Dole's seat in the Senate? Sam Brownback.
Read the full transcript of my interview with Senator Brownback below the jump...
Revisiting Fred Thompson
My sense is that if you are conservative and were watching Fox News Sunday yesterday, you liked what you saw in former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson. My sense is also that if you are a Republican presidential candidate, you didn't.
Host Chris Wallace went down the litany of questions and Thompson hit all the right notes from a conservative voter's perspective: Pro-life; Scalia-like judges; against gay marriage; opposes gun control; would pardon Libby; and supports the President's surge in Iraq.
Thompson's record in the Senate from 1995 through 2002 sustained his answers: His lifetime American Conservative Union rating is 86 (out of 100) and his lifetime Americans for Democratic Action (the liberal quotient) rating is a measly 5. Add in his presence in front of the camera as well as his folksy way of speaking, and it's no wonder conservatives are pressing him to get into the race.
There were a few stumbling blocks, however. On immigration, Thompson had to splice some comments he's made which make it sound as if he agrees with his friend Sen. John McCain. The very fact that he felt he needed to address that issue means Thompson well understands that the McCain position doesn't play well with the conservative base. Wallace also asked, though didn't press, Thompson about his previous support for campaign-finance reform - another McCain albatross.
But there are two questions Wallace didn't ask. First, he didn't ask Thompson about tort reform. In 1995, the GOP-led House passed a tough medical liability bill that included tort reform as part of the Contract With America. Things were all ready to go in the Senate under Majority Leader Bob Dole, when freshman - and former trial lawyer - Thompson introduced his own medical liability reform bill, sans tort reform. The bill passed and in conference committee the House's tort reform package got completely extirpated. Conservatives were outraged and many blamed Thompson.
Second, Wallace introduced his guest by asking, "Is Fred Thompson the next Ronald Reagan?" What he didn't bring up is that this isn't the first time conservatives have expected big things from Thompson nor the first time he's been compared to Reagan.
In a 1999 National Review article by Jay Nordlinger, for instance, we're reminded that Thompson's Senate career failed to live up to the hype. Who recalls that in 1994, before Thompson was even sworn in, Dole tapped Thompson to give the rebuttal to an economic address by Bill Clinton? The day after his five-minute retort the New York Times ran a headline "A Star is Born." The New Republic followed with an article called "Reagan Redux." Nordlinger wrote, "The mentioning class began to mention him as a possible vice-presidential nominee in 1996, and certainly as a contender for the top prize in 2000."
But life in the Senate got in the way. In addition to the tort reform mess, Nordlinger says, Republicans were also upset that Thompson, as chairman of Governmental Affairs Committee, wasn't as eager as they were to go after the White House during investigations into campaign-finance reform abuses. "On top of all that, they think he seems joyless, arrogant, and hostile to the political p's and q's that ordinarily make for success in Washington," Nordlinger wrote. Ouch.
Perhaps enough years have passed and perhaps Thompson was never suited to life in the Senate - not a bad quality, to be sure. After all, there's a reason senators rarely make it to the White House. But with Thompson-mania sure to increase following his Wallace interview, these are issues Thompson is going to have to address.
Obama's Audacity
I'm not sure this is even news, but I found it interesting. On March 2 the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story about Craig Robinson. Robinson is the head coach of the Brown University men's basketball team, and he also happens to be Barack Obama's brother in law. Obama married Robinson's younger sister, Michelle, in 1992.
(Some quick disclosure: Craig Robinson is a fellow Princeton grad (eight years my senior) and we've met a couple of times over the years through mutual friends - though I promise you he wouldn't know me from Adam. Michelle is also a Princeton grad, Class of 1985, whom I've never met)
With that out of the way, the Inquirer story begins with the following hook:
In the early 1990s, when his sister brought her new boyfriend home for the first time, Craig Robinson was understandably wary.
Now read how the article ends:
As for his brother-in-law, Robinson still shakes his head when he remembers that initial meeting. "We were talking about a variety of things and he said, 'I'm thinking about running for president one day,' " Robinson said."I said, 'President? President of what?' "
Again, in a generic sense, news that Obama is ambitious is very much "man bites dog." The guy was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, etc.
On the other hand, I can't recall seeing anything like this about Obama in print before. Robinson is talking about meeting him sometime in the early 1990's, probably during the latter half of 1991 when he returned to Chicago after graduating from Harvard Law and began work as a civil rights attorney (as stated above Barack and Michelle were married in 1992).
So, if Robinson's recollection is accurate, more than five years before Barack Obama first ran for elected office he was thinking and talking somewhat openly about running for President. Even though it sounded like a deluded fantasy to Robinson at the time, it provides a revealing glimpse into Obama's ambition. The fact that he would say such a thing to his girlfriend's older brother on their first meeting is another conversation altogether but it also speaks to a remarkably high level of confidence, ambition and, yes, audacity).
Part of Obama's appeal is that he appears refreshingly unambitious relative to his competition. Unlike Hillary, who seems to have spent every minute of the last ten years calculating each move with respect to its impact on her presidential ambitions, and unlike John Edwards, who has been running for President non-stop for the last five years, Obama has cultivated an image of being "the right man at the right moment." He's gone out of his way to make self deprecating remarks about his hyper popularity, and when discussing his thoughts about running for President he said more than once that "This is an office you can't run for just on the basis of ambition."
That's absolutely true. Personally, I think Obama made the right choice in running this year, even if it is a bit audacious. Still, it's a bit shocking to learn via his brother-in-law that Obama's audacious move seems to have been on his mind and in the works for a lot longer than most people thought.
The Daily 2008
USA Today surveys the presidential field and finds candidates who reflect "broad trends in American life that also have affected the nation's schools, workplaces and neighborhoods" and has detailed polling data showing how comfortable different voting segments are with a particular type of candidate.
Sen. Hillary Clinton has used her unique position as the only female candidate to appeal to women, but Democratic female support isn't locked up -- a split personified by dueling abortion rights endorsements between Clinton and John Edwards. Both candidates and their fellow Democrats are hiring consultants from Nevada and building organizations there.
In Iowa, Sen. Barack Obama said Palestinians are suffering and if "we could get some movement among Palestinian leadership" he'd like to see some loosening of restrictions on direct aid to Palestinians. Obama's wife will play a major role in her husband's campaign, both as advisor and booster. Mrs. Obama recently hired a chief of staff and changed her work status to part time.
Today, Sen. Chuck Hagel will make a major announcement at the University of Nebraska, though it's still unclear if he'll announce for president after staying in his Omaha townhouse this weekend. In other GOP news, Sen. John McCain said "out of control" spending was the reason Republicans lost Congress last year. Rudy Giuliani continues his foray into the presidential arena by canceling all of his future paid speeches. So far neither McCain or Giuliani has been scheduled to attend the South Carolina GOP's version of Super Tuesday: three GOP county conventions on April 21. Sen. Sam Brownback sat down with Tom for an extensive interview, which you can find here.
Get the rest of today's news at our Politics and Elections page.
March 09, 2007
Friday Funnies
Some cartoons from earlier in the week that piled up in my bookmark folder:
(Mike Shelton, Orange County Register)
(Nick Anderson, Houston Chronicle)
(Brian Barling, Christian Science Monitor)
Federal Court Overturns D.C. Gun Law
Big news out of the nation's capital today, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down 2-1 the District's handgun ban as a violation of the Second Amendment. Lots of reaction from the blogosphere, which I posted below, but here's the relevant paragraph of Judge Laurence Silberman's majority opinion:
To summarize, we conclude that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government (or a threat from abroad). In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment's civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual's enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.
Expect this one to decided by the Supreme Court right around, oh, Summer 2008.
The legal experts at Volokh Conspiracy have the wrap-up here with some thoughts on how this might play in the presidential race.
Cato's Tim Lynch sums it up: "This is a very big deal."
Some more reaction from How Appealing. And thoughts on the decision's political ramification from Wizbang and Ace of Spades, which asks, "Is Rudy's gun-control stance rendered moot through jurisprudence?"
Guess Who'll Be on FNS?
You know Wallace is going to ask the question, but will he get an answer?
Must See Obey TV
Watch Democratic House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey get exercised:
He later apologized in an interview with The Hill, saying:
"What so frustrated me about the encounter is that it became apparent that she had no idea that the bill she was being asked to tell me to vote against would set a deadline for our getting out of Iraq," he said. "So many of these liberal groups don't adequately inform their members. They don't have the full story about what we're trying to do and they wind up not being able to distinguish their friend from their enemy. These people won't take yes for an answer." [snip]"I'm sorry that the frustration happened to erupt in that hall," he said. "I wish it hadn't. If these groups would inform people before they hit the Hill...we might have a better chance to have the votes to end this thing."
Timing Is Everything
As a follow up to Blake's post, consider the following timing: Yesterday at around 3am, Eastern Standard Time, America's new top general in Iraq gave his first