Category: Election 2008

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Election 2008 Foreign Policy Obama Politics The Clintons

A Hypothetical Question of Judgment

JFK alone at his desk in the Oval Office

[digg-reddit-me]It’s early spring 2012. The most recent National Intelligence Estimate and the intelligence communities agree that Iran is less than a year away from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Daily leaks to the press from the national security apparatus provide the now familiar drumbeat of fear as a prelude to a war. Karl Rove – retired in Texas but being consulted by those planning a Republican comeback – begins to ask the question: “Who let Iran go nuclear?” He makes it clear – as does the Republican presidential nominee – that it was the job of the current president to prevent Iran from going nuclear. “Do you feel safer now than you did four years ago?” they ask.

Every morning, the first two items on the president’s agenda are:

  1. A status report on the Iranian situation;
  2. An update on how the election campaign is progressing.

The pressure to take dramatic action is building, as much from domestic political pressures as foreign actions. Military action could be catastrophic, although it still might be the best of available options. Although it is never discussed, it is understood that a war would practically guarantee the president’s victory in November – despite a shaky economy that the Republicans have largely been able to blame on the current president.

Every morning, the president must balance the options and calibrate American strategy. There are no black and white issues – and in the end, the decision is on his or her shoulders alone.

It’s 2012 – whose judgment do you trust to make the right decision?

Updated: Let me be clear – as far as I’m concerned, the correct answer is, to borrow a line from Fox Mulder, “Trust no one.”  Which is why I think it is important to support a candidate who seeks to reduce executive power and allow the traditional checks and balances to reassert themselves.

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Foreign Policy Iraq McCain The War on Terrorism

Man, there’s a country where they have great tactics to prevent suicide bombings

Yglesias on the difficulty in coming up with effective policies for Iraq’s problems:

…there’s really nothing we can do to stop sporadic bombing attacks. It’s not, after all, that you look at Italy and say “man, there’s a country where they have great tactics to prevent suicide bombings – Iraq should really implement those.” Rather, you don’t see suicide bombing where you don’t see would-be suicide bombers and that’s not the kind of outcome a foreign military force can produce in Iraq. So things will probably get worse again, but not as bad as they were at the very worst times.

I think that about sums up where we are – and what we can accomplish.  I understand that Mr. McCain’s answer to this problem is a century of occupation – if that’s what it takes.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Hope Wins the Night

I haven’t any posted anything today because I’ve been busy – not being I’m moping over the fact that after throwing “the kitchen sink” and everything else she could think of against Mr. Obama, Ms. Clinton managed to gain only ONE (1) delegate last night.

Obviously it would have been better in many ways if Ms. Clinton were shut out last night and forced to withdraw her candidacy.  But Mr. Obama has now weathered another full-force attack of the Clintons and keeps consolidating his ground.  He is in a better strategic position today than he was yesterday.

Here’s some bracing words from Andrew Sullivan.

The New York Times, in an article full of Clinton spin, still had to conclude that: “But for all the millions of votes Mrs. Clinton has now won, simple math is still her enemy.”

Of course, I still see a significant advantage in the fact that one of the most hated politicians in America will continue to stay in the race…

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Quote of the Day

Maureen Dowd in The New York Times:

On “Nightline” last week, Hillary once more wallowed in gender inequities, asserting that it’s harder for her to run than her opponent — a black man with an exotic name that most Americans hadn’t even heard a year ago.

“Every so often I just wish that it were a little more of an even playing field,” she said, “but, you know, I play on whatever field is out there.”

Is that how she would deal with dictators, by playing the refs and going before the U.N. to demand: “How come you’re not asking Ahmadinejad these questions first?”

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Election 2008 Obama Politics

Gray’s Papaya for Obama!!

[digg-reddit-me]Ms. Clinton lost the endorsement battle for the famous New York chain “home of the $3.50 ‘Recession Special’ (two franks and a 14-ounce drink)”, Gray’s Papaya.

The prominent chain instead endorsed Mr. Obama with large signs on all of its prominent stores in Manhattan. Mr. Gray, who is 71, tried to downplay the significance of his endorsement: “I am often wrong, unfortunately. I think I’m going to be right this time, though.”

I used to pass a Gray’s Papaya on the way to work every day – but upon switching jobs, I no longer do.

So now, we add to the unlikely endorsements Mr. Obama has managed to garner – the Teamsters, Louis Farrakhan, David Duke, Bill Clinton in 2004, every newspaper in the country except the New York Times – and Gray’s Papaya.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

The New York Times Endorsement

I made a big deal of the New York Times endorsement at the time.  I thought they endorsed Ms. Clinton to hedge their bets – and that the endorsement was rather weak.  Some disagreed.

But The New Republic is reporting that the Times almost didn’t endorse Ms. Clinton:

On January 25, the New York Times endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton. At the time, the 1,100-word editorial stood out for both its tepidness and early appearance, coming near the front-end of the primary season.

The rest of the article is here.

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Election 2008 Politics The Clintons

A short history of “Whoops!”

Eleanor Clift of Newsweek:

The much vaunted Clinton campaign operation, billed as the biggest, baddest game in town, had no post-Super Tuesday strategy because its leaders apparently didn’t think one was needed. Whether that’s due to arrogance or ignorance, it’s the campaign equivalent of what President Bush did in invading Iraq without a post-Saddam plan. The primaries are in a very true sense a practice run for the White House, and if you emerge with high marks, as Obama has, it’s a pretty clear statement of the kind of government you would run. Obama has shown a steadiness in demeanor and message. Clinton has blown through $120 million dollars, and her persona is more confused than ever.

There was an article in The Onion from 2004 that I have been looking for, but am unable to find. The headline read: “Bush Reelection Campaign Better Planned Than Iraq War.”

You can’t extrapolate from a good campaign means that a candidate will govern well; but if you cannot run a good campaign – and you’ve never proved you can run anything – I think how the campaign is run becomes a major issue.

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Election 2008 Politics The Clintons

Awkwardly phrased spin

“Hillary Clinton’s not going anywhere,” Mr. McAuliffe said. “Hillary’s going to one place. She’s going to Denver as the Democratic Party nominee.”

From the Times on Friday.

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Domestic issues Election 2008 Liberalism Politics The War on Terrorism

Linda Chavez’s unhinged “patriotism”

Linda Chavez wrote in an article that originally appeared in the New York Post about “Liberal patriotism” that real patriotism understands these simple facts:

Our elected officials don’t make America great, nor do temporal policies. America is great because of its people, its defining institutions and its freedoms.

As a liberal and a patriot, I agree with Ms. Chavez. At least in this instance. But somehow, Ms. Chavez manages to praise America’s “defining institutions and its freedoms” ((Which must obviously include the Congress, the courts, the laws of the land, and the Bill of Rights.)) while endorsing the power of the executive branch to break the law, violate the freedoms of its citizens without due process, violate the Bill of Rights, and even torture. Ms. Chavez’s understanding of patriotism itself is so tortured that she manages to decry – at a full column’s length – a candidate’s spouse’s off-the-cuff remark as demonstrating a nefarious anti-freedom-ism while applauding that the Attorney General, in his considered testimony, refused to reject “cruel and inhuman treatment” of prisoners as is Constitutionally required of him.

Somehow, “freedom” – in the sense Ms. Chavez uses the term – has nothing to do with violating civil liberties. And upholding the “defining institutions” of America sometimes requires breaking the law. Those who seek to uphold the law – or who are embarrassed by the blatant lawlessness – are not considered patriots. Instead, they “put politics before the national interest” and give “aid and comfort to the enemy” while trying to “hamper the military’s ability to fight…effectively.” There is a more sympathetic way to view Ms. Chavez’s inflammatory and extreme rhetoric but she certainly doesn’t encourage anyone who disagrees with her in the slightest to attempt to find it.

To some extent, I ask myself: why do I even care about what this woman is writing? She may be wrong; she may be using her position as a syndicated columnist to promote lies and unfairly attack good people. Isn’t it a standard “conservative” line that liberals are in fact traitors by their very nature? ((See anything Ann Coulter has said in the past decade, and much of what Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have said.)) But at this point, is it even newsworthy that a “conservative” political commenter regularly calls the majority of Americans “America-haters” – and worse?

Maybe not. But it is worth pointing out again – and again – that as these hacks drape themselves with the Stars and Stripes, they undermine the very freedoms and attack the very people they claim to admire.

There is a reasonable argument to be made in favor of torture, law-breaking, and freedom-impingement. But it involves compromises our core values in the face of enemy aggression. That’s an argument no hack wants to make.

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Domestic issues Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

A Card-Carrying Civil Libertarian

 Jeffrey Rosen, writing in The New York Times today, compares Ms. Clinton’s commitment to civil liberties and privacy to Mr. Obama’s:

[Ms. Clinton’s] speeches about privacy suggest that she has boundless faith in the power of experts, judges and ultimately herself to strike the correct balance between privacy and security.

Moreover, the core constituency that cares intensely about civil liberties is a distinct minority — some polls estimate it as around 20 percent of the electorate. A polarizing president, who played primarily to the Democratic base and refused to reach out to conservative libertarians, would have no hope of striking a sensible balance between privacy and security.

Mr. Obama, by contrast, is not a knee-jerk believer in the old-fashioned liberal view that courts should unilaterally impose civil liberties protections on unwilling majorities. His formative experiences have involved arguing for civil liberties in the legislatures rather than courts, and winning over skeptics on both sides of the political spectrum, as he won over the police and prosecutors in Chicago.

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