Election 2008

The fireworks started when President Bush spoke to the Knesset, but the fuse had been in plain sight just waiting for a match. The debate over direct talks with Iran, one of the main foreign policy disagreements among Democrats campaigning to be President, is nothing if not an open invitation to Republicans to jump in. John McCain on occasion has done so. But today, instead of John McCain starting the polemic, it was Bush himself, in Israel, with a play to a foreign grandstand.

Without mentioning Obama by name, Bush told the Knesset:

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

There is a chance — a very small one — that Bush did not intend to light the match. But when you’re the President of the United States, giving a prepared speech before the Israeli parliament, and accuse “some” people of behaving like Neville Chamberlain, it doesn’t get overlooked. In the time-honored traditions of Washington politics, you don’t name the target of your attack, you just describe it. Then, depending on your acting skills, you feign surprise.
The White House denied afterward that the President was referring to Obama, but even McCain seemed to think he was. Obama, said McCain, “needs to explain why he wants to sit down and talk with a man who is the head of a government that is a state sponsor of terrorism, that is responsible for the killing of brave young Americans, that wants to wipe Israel off the map, who denies the Holocaust. That’s what I think Senator Obama ought to explain to the American people.’’

Many statements in a political contest can be parsed in a blatantly subjective way. The way Obama refers to McCain’s statement about having troops in Iraq for a hundred years is an example of this. McCain clearly isn’t interested in a hundred years’ war. (Yesterday, in fact, he said he would end the war in four years.)

But, clearly, the general sense of Obama’s call for diplomatic contacts with Iran is to give priority to tough diplomatic work — not appeasement.

Indeed, as Obama pointed out later today, Bush’s own Secretary of Defense, Bob Gates, said earlier this week that “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them… . If there is going to be a discussion then they need something, too,” he said. “We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the ‘demandeur’ with them not feeling they do not need anything from us.”

A rather ingenious argument.

Come on down to the FPA blog on Climate Change to see the post On the Campaign Trail with John McCain.

Has anyone compiled a list of the ways this election campaign has broken the mold? As Barack Obama closes in the on the Democratic nomination and we prepare for the general election campaign, perhaps it’s time for us to consider how this campaign already has proven unlike any other. It may help prepare us for the the precedents yet to be broken. Here’s my basic calculus:

– First African-American nominee of a major political party;

– First woman to come within a hair’s breadth of a major party nomination;

– First campaign for President by a former First Lady;

– Oldest non-incumbent nominee of a major party;

– Greatest age difference (24 years) between the two major candidates;

– Greatest number of voters participating in primaries and caucuses (33 million among the Democrats alone);

– Greatest number of debates among candidates of the major parties during the primary campaign (47 by my count);

– Most money spent by candidates prior to the start of the general election campaign ($1 billion by all candidates and their parties so far);

– Most money raised by a candidate within a 24-hour period (via the Internet);

– First contest in which the final three candidates were all standing members of the U.S. Senate;

– First election since 1952 in which neither the incumbent President nor Vice President sought the Presidential nomination of his own party;

– First campaign in which citizen-journalists (via blogs and YouTube) broke news stories, disclosed candidates’ gaffes, and questioned candidates directly.

– First wartime candidate for President whose own son served on the field of battle.

– Lowest approval ratings by an outgoing President (31 per cent).

It’s clear that Senator Obama has won the Democratic primary in North Carolina, but Indiana remains (as of this writing) “too close to call.” As expected, Obama has done well in the metropolitan areas (i.e., Indianapolis, Fort Wayne), and Senator Clinton is polling high among more rural Democrats.

Tonight’s results had the potential to tip the nomination battle in favor of either of the candidates. It has not done so. Instead, and without regard to the reality of the delegate count, the race will go on. Senator Clinton hopes to sway superdelegates to her column; Obama will hope to garner support for a general election candidacy. Clinton will aim to continue the battle until the convention in August–make it a game of staying power and gumption, both of which she seems to have in abundance. It’s clear Obama supporters would rather unite around their candidate and prepare him to take on John Mccain. But what do Democratic and moderate voters want?

Each candidate delivered an impressive speech tonight, both attempting to best position themselves for the weeks ahead.  The result: the candidates will continue to do their job–campaigning–unless a back-room discussion and/or public pronouncement by a party elder can encourage Obama or (more likely) Clinton to back down.

Update: Huff Post is calling Obama the “presumptive nominee.”  Perhaps the main attraction will begin sooner than first thought…

Everyone of my generation remembers this quote; few recall that what bellicose Nikita Khrushchev actually said was more like, “We will outlast you.” The quote had its impact at the height of the Cold War and in the 1960 U.S. elections. Kennedy and Nixon argued over who among them was best at standing up to the USSR. Kennedy argued that the Republicans had allowed a “missile gap” to develop that favored the USSR. Kennedy won — but the so-called “missile gap” actually didn’t exist.

Now it’s the frightening face of Ahmedinejad that fires the electoral imagination in the United States. Hillary Clinton promises to “totally obliterate” Iran if Iran should launch a nuclear attack on Israel. Here’s the exact quote:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if Iran were to attack Israel with nuclear weapons),” Clinton told ABC TV on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary. “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

Yesterday, practically on the eve of the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, ABC TV offered Hillary a chance to revise her word choice. Her response: “Why would I have any regrets (about my choice of words)? I’m asked a question about what I would do if Iran attacked our ally, a country that many of us have a great deal of, you know, connection with and feeling for, for all kinds of reasons. And, yes, we would have massive retaliation against Iran.”

The recent National Intelligence Estimate found that Iran had stopped efforts to process or enrich uranium. CNN reports today that voters in Indiana and North Carolina don’t rate Iran among their top concerns. So why Hillary’s bellicose language?

The political logic, as during the days of the “missile gap,” is to exaggerate a threat and response in order to make your opponent look weak. There’s also the added attraction of identifying your candidacy as being more “pro Israel” in advance of Bush’s travel to Israel to commemorate her 60th anniversary.

So much for truth and politics. Or, as Khrushchev once said, “politicians are all alike. They promise to build a bridge, even where there is no river.”