Naughty and Nice
If you could get beyond its nasty elements, the campaigning last week offered an intriguing view of where American politics stands as it enters one of its most consequential months in memory. The races in both parties became tighter, jockeying for advantage more intense, and divisions within and between the parties more pronounced.
On the Democratic side, the polls say Clinton and Obama are neck and neck in Iowa and now New Hampshire, with Edwards just slightly behind. Hillary is turning to Bill for strategy and public support, as his comments on Friday attacking Obama indicate.
Among Republicans, Romney is suddenly losing steam in Iowa, a state he has campaigned in more than any other Republican. His Meet The Press appearance today was shaky. And Giuliani, ahead in national polls for months, looks vulnerable. Newt Gingrich calls it the most wide-open Republican race since 1940.
It’s as though, with the January 3 Iowa caucuses and January 8 New Hampshire primary fast approaching, the voters in both states are giving their options more serious thought. “Undecideds” now must decide, and those whose preferences were stated without reflection, now have a final opportunity to reconsider their judgment.
One imagines the folks in Iowa being grateful for the chance to select Christmas presents instead of chosing among Presidential aspirants. There are, at last, no more candidates’ debates before the Iowa vote.
Has anything changed in the candidates’ positions? Not really. Having seen so many candidates up close and personal over the last year, the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire appear set to reject some of the most experienced ones (at least in foreign affairs) – Biden, Dodd, Richardson – in favor of candidates who have other qualities (and more money to advertise them). On the Republican side, the story is not that different: John McCain has just picked up the Des Moines Register endorsement, but lags in the national polls.
Before we bid farewell to at least some of these candidates, however, I invite you, in this season of giving, to give them one last hearing. Senator Dodd spoke here in San Francisco at the World Affairs Council, Senator Biden was the object of a flattering portrait on the front page of the New York Times, and McCain and Richardson spoke well in their respective debates in Des Moines last week. It may well turn out that in the Democratic Party, when the argument became “Who can achieve change?” those with the most experience in Washington were seen as those who had had the chance to deliver, but who failed to do so.
As for the “nasty elements” I mention above, how else can you describe the attention given to whether Mormons thought “Jesus and the devil were brothers” – a remark by Baptist Mike Huckabee in questioning Mormon Mitt Romney’s beliefs – contained in today’s NYT Magazine, for which Huckabee apologized earlier this week? Or how about this week’s debate organizers including Alan Keyes as a Republican candidate while excluding Denis Kucinic on the Democratic side? Or, still, how about Clinton’s campaign co-chair trying to make an issue out of Obama’s teenage drug indiscretions?
Clinton apologized to Obama, as did Huckabee to Romney. It’ll get more naughty, before it gets nice.