Hillary: Bashing the Youth Vote

Via psericks, this pisses me off:

In a jab at Obama’s efforts to encourage out-of-state students who attend college in Iowa to caucus, [Hillary] Clinton said the caucuses are only for people who live in this state.

“This is a process for Iowans. This needs to be all about Iowa, and people who live here, people who pay taxes here,” she told the Clear Lake crowd.

It pisses me off not because she’s dissing my vote (the MI primary/caucus monstrosity, that big contest for delegates that have been taken away, has been pretty much called for Hillary already). It pisses me off because I’ve run the precinct organization for a county with two large universities (U Michigan and EMU). And I’m well aware of the way that HAVA laws in many states have affected college students’ ability to vote. Read more

It Takes Astute Observation, Not Mea Culpas

Mark Halperin has a hysterical op-ed in the NYT today, designed to be a mea culpa for the failures of presidential campaign journalism. Halperin reveals the reason behind the press corps’ obsession with horse race politics–they all read Ben Cramer’s What It Takes–and then admits that success in a political horse race does not necessarily equip someone to run the country.

For most of my time covering presidential elections, I shared theview that there was a direct correlation between the skills needed tobe a great candidate and a great president. The chaotic and demandingrequirements of running for president, I felt, were a perfect test forthe toughest job in the world.

But now I think I was wrong. The“campaigner equals leader” formula that inspired me and so many othersin the news media is flawed.

Wow, Mark, that’s one doozy of an insight. You mean all this horse race campaign journalism is counter-productive to choosing a good president? Who could have imagined that?!?!?!

The reason I say it’s hysterical, though, and not just pathetic, is in Halperin’s description of how he determined that he had been wrong–his analysis of the two presidents he has covered in the last sixteen years. See, Halperin describes those two presidents as both being great politicians–"wildly talented."

Our two most recent presidents, both of whom I covered while they weregovernors seeking the White House. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush arewildly talented politicians. Both claimed two presidential victories,in all four cases arguably as underdogs. Both could skillfully serve asthe chief strategist for a presidential campaign.

And then he proceeds to describe how the characteristics that made these "wildly talented" politicians made them failed presidents. Of note: he sees them both as failed presidents, Clinton and Bush. Here’s how he supports his claim that Clinton’s was a failed presidency:

For instance, being all things to all people worked wonderfully wellfor Bill Clinton the candidate, but when his presidency ran intotrouble, this trait was disastrous, particularly in the bumpy earlyyears of his presidency and in the events leading up to hisimpeachment. The fun-loving campaigner with big appetites and anundisciplined manner squandered a good deal of the majesty and power ofthe presidency, and undermined his effectiveness as a leader. What muchof the country found endearing in a candidate was troubling in apresident.

See where I’m going with this? Halperin claims that a guy who presided over tremendous economic growth, some innovative policy solutions (many of which I dislike, but admire for their pragmatism), and real success in foreign policy, had a failed presidency. He claims that a guy whose approval ratings stayed high during a trumped up impeachment "ran into trouble." Halperin clings to the Village’s caricature of the Clinton presidency all so he can claim both Clinton and Bush failed. And in the process, he ignores a great deal of hard work and policy wonkiness that, in fact, made Clinton a successful president. Precisely the kind of characteristics you’d want good presidential journalism to cover–a candidate’s comfort with the complexity of policy issues that translates into competent governance.

You see, Halperin tries hard to explain away his failures of judgment and discernment as failures of process. But in the process, he only emphasizes those failures of judgment. If Halperin really believes that Clinton and Bush experienced the same level of failure in office; if he remains ignorant of Clinton’s considerable discipline (in all matters not involving his penis) and hard work and policy acumen, then he has proved his own failures of basic observation, not a failure to cover the right topics.

With his op-ed, Halperin proves he couldn’t identify good governance if it looked him in the face. Sure, he calls for a different kind of campaign journalism. But at the same time, he proves he’s not the guy to provide it.

Read more

GOP Offer Healthcare to All Those without Pre-Existing Conditions

According to the LAT, the GOP presidential candidates have come up with a brilliant way of offering insurance to the uninsured: leave out those with pre-existing conditions, including people with medical histories just like the candidates’ themselves.

When Rudolph W. Giuliani was diagnosed with prostate cancer in thespring of 2000, one thing he did not have to worry about was a lack ofmedical insurance.

Today, the former New York mayor joins two other cancer survivors inseeking the Republican presidential nomination: Arizona Sen. JohnMcCain has been treated for melanoma, the most serious type of skinmalignancy, and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson had lymphoma, acancer of the immune system.

All three have offered proposals with the stated aim of helping the 47million people in the U.S. who have no health insurance, includingthose with preexisting medical conditions.

But under the plans all three have put forward, cancer survivors suchas themselves could not be sure of getting coverage — especially ifthey were not already covered by a government or job-related plan andhad to seek insurance as individuals.

"Unless it’s in a state that has very strong consumer protections, theywould likely be denied coverage," said economist Paul Fronstin of theEmployee Benefit Research Institute, who has reviewed the candidates’proposals. "People with preexisting conditions would not be able to getcoverage or would not be able to afford it."

I was drawn to the Read more

The Real Reason

I’ve got a different interpretation of the news–via ThinkProgress–that Bush is advising Democrats to keep their options open to sustain the permanent war in Iraq.

Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked inwhere you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, thingscould change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enoughcontinuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president wouldbe in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.”

“Especiallyif it’s a Democrat,” the chief of staff told The Examiner in his WestWing office. “He wants to create the conditions where a Democrat notonly will have the leeway, but the obligation to see it out.”

Rather than some Rovian gimmick to gain advantage in the presidential election, I think this just suggests that Bush believes that when a Democrat becomes President in 2009 (and I do think this suggests he thinks it highly likely), she will review intelligence and get advice and realize that the US must stay in Iraq. Here’s the logic Bush offers.

emptywheel’s Continuing Obsession with Ed Gillespie

Via CREW, I see Ed Gillespie making grand promises that the GOP will have a scandal-free election in 2008.

Ed Gillespie, President Bush’s counselor and a former chairman of theRepublican Party, acknowledged that ethical scandals have hurt the GOP.He predicted that by 2008, the party "will not have candidates who haveany kind of ethical considerations that will be a concern to thevoters."

Like CREW, I’m not holding my breath that the GOP will be willing to jettison Stevens, Domenici, Doolittle, Lewis, and a slew of others.

But I’m increasingly fascinated with the prominent role of Lobbyist-in-Chief, Ed Gillespie. We now know he was included in discussions, in spring of 2006 (at precisely the time Andy Card and Scottie McClellan were ousted), about whether or not to fire Rummy. He picked up the portfolios of both Dan Bartlett and Karl Rove, two of the last hold-outs from the Texas Mafia. And now here he is, promising to do what Karl Rove couldn’t do–excommunicate the corruption from the Corruption Party.

The Lobbyist-in-Chief is accruing an awful lot of power in fairly short order. Is Gillespie the guy corporate America imposed on BushCo to ensure the Republicans not lose power for all eternity? And is Gillespie the Read more

Skubick’s Off the Record

I talked about Norm Pearlstine’s Off the Record the other day. Well, here’s a more fun Off the Record–my appearance (with three other bloggers) on Michigan’s own "Timmeh," Tim Skubick’s show, Off the Record, over the weekend on MI’s PBS stations. I don’t often link to my teevee appearances, but I had a lot of fun taping this. Among other things, I got to:

  • Emphasize that Barack Obama was polling third, ahead of Fred Thompson, in Iowa (and that, in spite of hiding his fundraising, Thompson still couldn’t raise much money)
  • Talk about how uninterested Republicans are in this year’s Presidential race
  • Talk about how, if only we can aspire to be as competent as the French, universal healthcare would actually improve our healthcare and save us money
  • Get one of the Republicans to agree that the worst thing would be to have George Bush in charge of our healthcare
  • Call Mitt and Giuliani flip floppers, with worse women problems than Bill Clinton ever had–I even got Giuliani’s cross-dressing in!
  • Point out that Cheney’s Pakistan policy has the effect of paying the Taliban

It’s a fun time to talk to Republicans about the Presidential campaigns!

Click here to watch it on RealPlayer now. Here’s the info on when Read more

None of the Above

Here’s the way I figure this math, from the Iowa Straw Poll.

They had 24,000 voters in 1999.
They wanted 20,000 voters today.
They got 14,000.

That says, presumably, the Iowa Republican Party wrote off 4,000 votes because Giuliani and McCain pulled out and Thompson’s not in yet (24,000 minues 20,000).

But that still leaves 6,000 people (20,000 minus 14,000) they expected–and didn’t get. I’m going to count 5,000 of those 6,000 as votes for "None of the Above" with the rest going to Obama. Even if we gave those 1,000 to Obama (6% of the total would have given him 1,440), that still says that "None of the Above," with 5,000 votes, still out-polled Romney, who spent millions, 5,000 to 4,516. I know this is all funny math. But still, I do think this counts as a win for "None of the Above."

And here’s the best part. This is supposed to be a fundraiser for Iowa’s Republican party–straw poll tickets cost $35 apiece. Which means Iowa’s Republican party just made $350,000 less than it made in 1999 of this thing.

Republican Self-Hate

Crooks & Liars links to Bobo Brooks informing Chris Matthews that Republicans hate Matthews’ man-crush, President Bush.

BROOKS: Bush…you gotta remember though…a lot ofRepublicans hate Bush. I mean, we look..we talk about the Democrats,how they hate Bush, in private…

MATTHEWS: What do you mean, “hate Bush?”

BROOKS: They think Bush is incompetent and destroying their party.

Having just taped a Sunday show of my own (this one may be good–I’ll actually provide a link, but it’ll air ten days from now), I gotta say, Bobo is right–and Democrats really need to start hammering on it.

The two Republicans on the show with me were pushing against Democratic health care proposals, saying, "well you don’t want our health care to run like Katrina or Iraq…" To which I said, "Okay, we’ll make sure Bush isn’t in charge of our health care program. We’re in agreement." This got them nodding enthusiastically, until I continued, "But if we can only aspire to be as competent as the French, we should have working health care." Which shut them up. (Of course, I’m sure it wasn’t really as cool as I remember, so assume I’m just self-promoting here.)

At the same time, these republicans were no more willing to speak enthusiastically about any of their Presidential candidates. I kept hammering them about how Obama is running third, among Republicans, in Iowa.

Perhaps most surprising of all,Obama actually finished third as the preferred general electioncandidate of registered Republicans, at 6.7 percent, behind Romney(21.8 percent), and Giuliani (10 percent), but ahead of Thompson (5.2percent) and McCain (1.8 percent).

And how the leading Republican candidates fail either 2004’s standard of flipfloppery or Republican standards of the last 12 years on social conservatism. Which again brought some embarrassed admissions that there wasn’t much exciting in the Republican field. We’re about a week and a half late piling on top of this self-hate–though the DNC has a new website out to join in the fun. But this should be the main point of every Democrat out there–the Republicans, as a party, have failed so badly even Republicans hate them.

Republicans are just barely containing their disgust for the leaders of their party. At this point, we’d do really well to unleash that sentiment.

The Next Four-Branch Presidency

Since Fred Thompson got into the Presidential race in a big way, I’ve increasingly been getting this creepy feeling. I keep thinking: when was the last time we had a charismatic (if ugly, in this case) candidate who knows nothing about policy and is even less interested in taking a stand on policy, who seems to be hiring the right advisors, but who himself, still seems to be Bush league. Yeah–I’m getting a weird Bush feeling from Thompson.

Add in the fact that he might easily prevent Al Gore from winning the Presidency (again) by ensuring a Tennessee win.

Most importantly, though, I have imagined that Thompson is the GOP’s best chance to replicate the un-American structure of the Bush Presidency, where all the major decisions appear to be made in the margins, by Cheney, all the while Cheney protects himself by invoking his creative theories of being a fourth branch of government. You see, I’m really beginning to believe that Thompson is in so that those committed to continuing the basic policies of the Bush Administration can do so, once again behind the facade of a puppet president.

And then I read this:

Politico‘s Mike Allen told NPR that Fred Thompson has a Read more

Mark Warner’s Nukes

Well, it appears to be all Warner all day today.

Someone mistook me for a bigtime blogger and I got invited to attend Mark Warner’s post-talk blogger chat. I asked the first question, which went something like:

I’m going to ask the Iran question, but I’m going to get at it sideways. You said that Iran is the biggest WMD threat out there. But Pakistan is a tremendously unstable country right now. And if Musharraf fell, Al Qaeda could get the bomb within 6 weeks. And al-Baradei has just said that Iran does not now have the bomb. So why is Iran the biggest threat?

He then listed several reasons why Iran was a threat: Ahmadenijad’s nuttiness, a “regional strategy,” support for terrorism. I pointed out that none of those things were WMDs. I’m not certain, but I’m fairly sure he argued that Hammas was a big threat, although he did later admit that Al Qaeda is a threat.

Anyway, I think I at least made him think about this differently.

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