Election 2008

Barack Obama’s speech on race this week brought the issue to cable news, blogs, and dinner tables nationwide. Shadi Hamid, a blogger and American of Middle Eastern descent, watched the speech from Jordan and thought “he might as well have been talking about the burgeoning anger toward America felt by millions of frustrated Muslims around the world.” Hamid writes in this Saturday’s Washington Post.

Thus far, the national discourse on the question of Muslim anti-Americanism, and particularly the violence and terror perpetrated in the name of Islam, has been dominated by condemnation and denunciation. As it must be. Targeting innocents — whether they are Israeli children on their way to school or the nearly 3,000 Americans who showed up to work one day and found it would be their last — can never be excused. And we must unapologetically wage war on those who seek to destroy us.

At the same time, we can’t simply wish future violence and terrorism away by relegating it to the domain of irrational, crazed fanaticism. We cannot say that “they hate us for who we are” and leave it at that.

Obama’s comments about race in the United States apply to a number of racial and cultural conflicts around the world. Would a President Obama apply the same logic to international misunderstandings as domestic?

Last week, when the U.S. archives released 11,000 pages of Hillary Clinton’s documents from her eight years as First Lady, it was not the trove of information that many expected. Why? One reason: some of what transpired was never written down. Another: the government censored much of the most potentially enlightening information. The official, misleading word for this practice is “redaction.” But this wasn’t mere editing. Of the 11,000 pages, many had extensive content blacked out before they were released to the press.

Did Mrs. Clinton play a role in the Northern Ireland peace process? Did she negotiate the transit of refugees from Kosovo? Did she contribute to the formulation and conduct of foreign policy during her husband’s tenure as President? She and her campaign say that she did, but the “redacted” documents from her tenure as First Lady don’t tell us the answer. On the days when Bill Clinton made critical foreign and security policy decisions – the disastrous Somalia intervention, the response to the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the terrorist attack on the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, the U.S. air attack on Yugoslavia – there is no contemporaneous record of Mrs. Clinton having taken part in them. There is obviously no official role for a First Lady in the “3 a.m. phone call” scenario that has become so much a part of Hillary Clinton’s campaign advertising. We are asked to believe that she is “ready on day one” based on her proximity to decision makers, not her having been one.

Mark Penn and other Clinton supporters point to now-Senator Clinton’s decades-long life in the public eye as evidence of “vetting” – another misused word. True, many journalists have written about Bill and Hillary Clinton in the course of their political lives – enough to fill a library. But “vetting” is usually an organized, directed process, not the independent activity of journalists. Also, it usually implies a positive outcome, as in “Mrs. Clinton has been vetted for the position of X, and has been cleared for duty.” Political candidates – even for high office – really don’t get vetted in any systematic way. (Witness last week’s chance revelations that led to the downfall of New York Governor Elliot Spitzer.) Even when personal peccadilloes are exposed, voters may not be aware of them, or may disregard their importance. Victory in a political campaign should not be confused with ethical vindication.

It is not clear why so much of Hillary Clinton’s record as First Lady has been censored – sorry, redacted. But it is clear that we cannot consider her “vetted” until all evidence – supporting and otherwise – about her foreign policy record is made available. For the same reason, the public has every right to see “unredacted” copies of the Clintons’ tax records.

When we hear about State Department contract employees prying – unauthorized — into Barack Obama’s passport file, or seven-year-old videos of Obama’s church pastor being surfaced in an effort to discredit him, it is clear that we are into a very extreme season of “opposition research” – yet another misnomer. Such so-called “research” amounts to nothing so much as an effort to find more mud beneath a river of slimy political tactics.

Senators and Representatives travel abroad on a regular basis, usually on fact-finding trips funded through the generosity of one various interest group or another. As a Senator, John McCain has made many such trips, many of which have been to the Middle East and Europe. This time, though, the purpose is broader.

Acting as his party’s chief ambassador, McCain is meeting with high-ranking officials in Israel, Iraq and Europe. In preparation for his time with Prime Minister Brown and President Sarkozy, McCain released this op-ed in the Financial Times. In it he says,

Americans and Europeans share a common goal – to build an enduring peace based on freedom. Our democracies today are strong and vibrant. Together we can tackle the diverse challenges we face…

McCain seeks to “strengthen the transatlantic alliance,” but in order to do so he must secure his party’s nomination and win November’s general election; which is, after all, the purpose of his trip (it’s not as if the average middle class family in London are potential swing voters from whom he is asking for votes).

Note the venues and personalities involved in McCain’s excursions: Prime Minister Blair, President Sarkozy, Iraq, the Wailing Wall, Israel, and Palestine. These are images well known to the politically conscious American. While filling the presidential role, McCain seeks to raise awareness of his foreign policy background, and reinvigorate his own image as a forward-thinking candidate for President.

Update: From the New York Times,

Senator John McCain’s trip abroad this week — which took him from the Middle East to No. 10 Downing Street to the Élysée Palace here — was more than just a Congressional fact-finding trip, or even a candidate’s attempt to appear statesmanlike.
It was also an audition on the world stage for Mr. McCain in his new role as the Republican presidential nominee. And it offered him the chance to test his hope that he could repair America’s tattered reputation by shifting course on some of the policies that have alienated its allies, in areas like global warming and torture.

John McCain, while bolstering his foreign policy credentials on a trip to Europe and the Middle East, made an erroneous and rare gaffe today.

Iran=majority Shiite. Al-Qaeda=majority Sunni. For years John McCain has worked on foreign affairs issues in the Senate and as a presidential candidate, but the basics are good to have down. As some commentators have noted, if it weren’t for Obama’s speech winning a great deal of free media, this might be on the front pages of the papers. Nevertheless, what a good friend and travel buddy Joe Lieberman is!

The blogosphere, like cable news, is abuzz with analysis and discussion of Barack Obama’s speech today, “A More Perfect Union.” Overall the commentary has been positive, with many applauding Obama’s thrust to the fore the issues of race and religion in American society and raising the level of political rhetoric.

In the speech, however, Obama responds to the recent controversy of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his church pastor in Chicago. By some analyses, Obama is acting on the defensive; but his speech seems to have gained for him all the benefits of “offense.”

The political team at NBC has this round-up of commentary.

Taylor Owen at Oxblog thinks the speech is a testament to Obama’s Christianity and the unique voice he offers to the political dialogue.

the style he exhibited goes to the core of his candidacy. He speaks about issues, controversial issues, with a political voice that hasn’t been heard before. He transcends old ideological, ethnic, religious and historical divides. This voice is not just new to the US, but internationally. This is why so many people in Canada and Europe, for example, are watching him in a way they don’t even look at their own leaders.

Owen agrees with Andrew Sullivan, who vociferously advocates for Obama on his blog, that the candidate is transcendent of the race divide, among others.

I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history.

The Economist sees it as a possible turning point in the primary contest.

Barack Obama’s ambitious and impressive speech on race and religion earlier today has rightly got the political pundits and blogosphere buzzing. It may even set the stage for a new chapter in this primary season. It is unlikely the Reverend Wright controversy is over just yet, but Mr Obama has tried to change the context of this conversation.

And in case you missed it, here is the speech in full:

Obama took a controversy and elevated it to the level of a national dialogue. He stood in front of eight American flags and a blue backdrop; he wore a blue tie and a dark suit. He looked presidential. To the extent that Rev. Wright’s comments wavered beyond the scope of his pulpit, Obama ensured that his response raised the issue of race to the contemporary consciousness.

Hillary Clinton delivered a major speech on Iraq today, amid the growing sense of crisis in the financial markets.

“The American people don’t have to guess whether I’m ready to lead or whether I understand the realities on the ground in Iraq or whether I’d be too dependent on advisers to help me determine the right way forward.”

John McCain is on a short trip to Europe and Iraq to highlight his foreign policy experience. From the Wall Street Journal:

John McCain takes an overseas detour from the campaign trail this weekend to the Middle East and Europe. The Arizona senator says he is doing it as a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, not the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. He insists this isn’t a campaign trip.

In both cases, events that could presumably generate significant foreign policy press–and therefore discussion–have been overshadowed by the concern foremost on Americans’ minds: the economy.

News of the buyout of Bear Stearns echoed throughout Wall Street and international markets. The news of the weakening dollar and likelihood that the U.S. is in a recession filtered through the national news.

In what was expected to be the foreign policy election, voters are increasingly finding the economy to be their foremost concern. At this point in the process, very few have changed their story to: “it’s Iraq, stupid.”

Writing at the New York Times, Andrew Kohut reports on new Pew Center data that Americans, while voicing clear domestic priorities, are unsure about the direction foreign policy should take after Bush.

Opinion surveys show that American views about the world will not only challenge the presidential candidates of both parties in the general election, but will force the winner in November to deal with a citizenry that is downbeat about the world and fractured along partisan lines.

Disillusionment with the Iraq war has ushered in a rise in isolationist sentiment comparable to that of the mid-1970’s following the Vietnam war. Pew surveys have found as many as four in 10 Americans saying the United States “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.”…

A rise in isolationism has signaled a diminished public appetite for the assertive national security policy of the Bush years and, in general, a less internationalist outlook.

Did Bush, inadvertently, bring about a new era of isolationism? As the economy looks to be on the verge of recession and the dollar at record-breaking lows, are Americans realizing the cost of the Iraq war–as the Economist writes, what economists like Joseph Stiglitz estimate to be 3 trillion dollars?

Great powers almost never pay for their wars up front. Even in America’s war of independence, the revolutionaries printed money to finance their campaign.

But the Pew figures point to a populace that is starting to experience the effects of the war expenditures. If the news continues to worsen, the candidates will have little choice but to draw upon isolationist sentiments. Whether the U.S. can afford such a lack of foreign policy remains an open question.

This blog recently reported on the volatility of the Obama campaign’s foreign policy surrogates (Susan Rice: neither Clinton nor Obama are ready for the 3am phone call; Samantha Power: Clinton is a “monster”). Throughout the campaign, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have had to keep a particularly watchful eye on their surrogates’ and supporters’ public appearances. But as the media attention grows and the campaigns need surrogates to convey increasingly negative messages, surrogates are taking on a greater burden.

Geraldine Ferraro, an open supporter of Hillary Clinton, has taken her turn spurning controversy. After the South Carolina incidents for which Mrs. Clinton apologized, Geraldine Ferraro has again brought race into the conversation:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

Marc Ambinder says it best: “gas, meet fire.”

UPDATE: The former Vice Presidential candidate is now a former member of Hillary Clinton’s finance committee. Geraldine Ferraro stepped down today saying “that Senator Barack Obama’s campaign was twisting her words to make her appear racist and that this was hurting Mrs. Clinton.”

The two incidents that have caused resignations from the Obama (Samantha Power) and Clinton (Ferraro) campaigns, demonstrate the unprecedented speed with which

A comment each to a Scottish or a minor Los Angeles area newspaper first led to vehement controversy on the Internet, then cable news, then national news. In just two days, and amid the height of another political scandal, it’s yet another sign that campaigns are facing increased scrutiny from all sides this time.

Photo: Getty Images via npr.org

Barack Obama seeks to usher in a new kind of politics. His stump speech calls on supporters to help him “end the politics of fear,” and borrowing from John F. Kennedy, “that we should never fear to negotiate.” Now in a one-on-one battle with Hillary Clinton for the nomination, Obama has been forced to the defensive, searching for an effective way to fight back.

Hillary Clinton has persisted with her claim that Obama is less prepared than she and John McCain for the “3am phone call” that will come as President. But the Obama campaign is built upon positive ideals–the candidate could tarnish his image, should he go negative. The answer: send out the surrogates, particularly those who can vouch for national security credentials, to convey the message.

The Obama campaign had two of its most high-profile foreign policy advisors, Susan Rice and Samantha Power, grant a series of interviews with the press. They tried to send the message that, in their views, Senator Obama was equally, if not more qualified for that middle-of-the-night phone call than his opponents.

In one of these interviews, Samantha Power let it slip in what she thought was an off-the-record comment to The Scotsman that she thought Hillary Clinton had been a “monster” during the campaign. Ms. Power, a prominent scholar and advocate for US involvement in Darfur, quickly apologized and resigned from her post with the campaign. She issued a number of apologies to Senator Clinton, most of them equally as poignant as this:

Susan Rice took her turn speaking with the press this week, as she responded to Senator Clinton’s characterization of Obama’s in ability to handle the 3am phone call. On Tucker Carlson’s show on MSNBC, Ms. Rice announced that she believed neither Clinton nor Obama have substantial national security experience.

As Samantha Power pointed out, she is a relative novice to the tires of a political campaign. Ms. Rice, while not new to the Washington and foreign policy arenas, also made a slight error in her comments on television. Both have created nominal headaches for the Obama campaign, and failed to accomplish their objective. Instead, they made the candidate seem to be just what he had intended to combat: inexperienced.

Democrats have a problem. Not the excitement of a close race, in which millions have voted in primaries for the first time, and not the prospect of running against a Republican Party weakened by an unpopular President. The Democrats’ problem, which threatens to outweigh their considerable advantages, is their inability to govern themselves.

It is now mathematically certain that, without delegates from Florida and Michigan, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama can go to the Democratic Party convention in Denver in August with enough elected delegates to win the nomination. Democrats from Florida and Michigan, you will recall, decided last fall to disobey the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and hold their primaries in January. The Party then ruled that the delegates chosen in these two states would not be allowed to vote at the Convention.

In deference to the DNC, Obama and Clinton did not campaign in Florida and Michigan — although Hillary did go to Florida for fund-raisers right before the vote. Obama’s name was not even on the Michigan ballot. Hillary won both primaries easily, and now Hillary’s supporters in these two states are lobbying to have the election results upheld and the delegates seated. More likely, there will be a new primaries scheduled in Michigan and Florida.

NPR’s Juan Williams said it best last night on Fox News:

I think that Barack Obama is in a trap here. He can’t say, “No, I oppose a do-over,” because otherwise, he’d then be saying he wants the status quo, which is to disenfranchise those voters. Hillary Clinton can take the higher ground, but you and I both know what she has out of this is delegates. She wants to say she she’s won not only the popular vote and she’s likely to win the popular vote in both those states, but to win those additional delegates. It’s a trap.

Now, that’s the scenario. If you count today the delegates elected through votes in primaries or caucuses, Obama has 1366, Clinton 1222. A candidate needs 2025 delegate votes at the Convention to win the nomination. There are a total of only 611 more delegates left to be chosen through state primaries. Because delegate votes will be awarded proportionate to the election results in these states, neither Hillary or Obama can capture enough in the remaining primaries — excluding Michigan and Florida — to win the nomination.

Michigan and Florida together would have added another 338. That leaves the Democratic Party with a potentially schism-causing choice: either change its ruling in effect and include Michigan and Florida votes, or allow the so-called “superdelegates” — there are 795 of them from around the country — to determine who becomes the Party’s candidate. Right now, the superdelegates who have already declared a preference are fairly evenly split between Obama (209) and Clinton (242). But they are not “pledged,” and can change their minds and vote for whomever they please.

Hillary and Obama have already staked out positions on how the Michigan and Florida primary results should be treated, but there is really no one in a strong position to mediate between them. The DNC and its Chairman, Howard Dean, have been shown to be ineffectual so far in enforcing their own decisions.

There are a number of nightmare scenarios for the Democrats that are, of course, dream scenarios for the Republicans. The worst might be if a candidate who wins the most votes in the primaries — with or without Florida and Michigan — fails to get the nomination. This would not only be a “train wreck” in terms of efforts to unify the Party for the general election, but would discredit the American political process in the eyes of many in the United States and around the world.

As the WSJ’s Peggy Noonan puts it today, the Democrats are in the trenches today, and for weeks to come. As they fight it out, in the muck and mud of a now less than clean campaign, they need to decide if a non-democratic result will help the Democratic Party.

At least until late April, Democratic party infighting will ensue. John McCain, widely recognized for his dedicated service to the United States and his hawkish approach to foreign affairs (particularly Iraq), received the Republican presidential imprimatur this week and is the party candidate for November’s general election.

As the unpopular President endorsed McCain, media and thereby voter attention stayed on the Clinton-Obama contest for the Democratic nomination.In the first of, presumably, many attempts to come, Hillary Clinton continued her foreign policy offensive against Barack Obama today. This time, however, the Senator from Illinois did not sit on the sidelines: through a chief foreign policy surrogate, Prof. Susan Rice, Obama’s camp made it clear that they do not believe Clinton’s “3am phone call” accusation–that Clinton is prepared for the call in the middle of the night, and that Obama is not–to be factually substantiated.

That said, Hillary Clinton was on the offensive today as she claimed to have “crossed the threshold” of acting as commander in chief. She said that while John McCain had certainly acted as statesman, reporters would have to check with Obama’s camp whether this was the case for him. Obama’s campaign inteds to fight back, and watchers are settling in for at minimum another month of campaigning, at the extreme, Denver.  The question for us is whether the candidates will proceed with the use of foreign affairs as a way to gain votes.

Hillary Clinton emerged the comeback winner last night (and early this morning), as she added Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island to her “W” column. Exit polls showed that Texas voters who made their decision within the past three days, voted for Senator Clinton over Senator Obama, 63-37.

Hillary Clinton fought Obama to the end, releasing negative ads and offering combative stump speeches. Each mistake the Obama campaign made in the past few days, Clinton jumped: principally the Canada-NAFTA incident, and Tony Rezko. But more often than not, the Clinton campaign sought to turn the discussion back to her talking points.

Significantly, one of the ads the Clinton campaign released in Texas brought the conversation back to national security. In the context of who is best to “answer the red phone call in the middle of the night.” Timing is everything.

Yesterday’s election results were another lesson in how hard it is to predict outcomes in this year’s campaign. America is sharply divided, but where the dividing lines are varies from state to state and from day to day. The opinion polls in Texas and Ohio misjudged Hillary’s strength, just as they did in New Hampshire in January, forcing us to conclude that either the pollsters are incompetent or the (Democratic) electorate is impressionable and subject to last-minute mood swings.

I think it is more the latter. If you look at the last 72 hours before the New Hampshire contest, and the several days leading up yesterday’s vote, media coverage highly favored Hillary Clinton. Right before the New Hampshire vote the “news” was her emotional answer to a citizen asking her at a Town Hall meeting “How do you do it? How do you keep up?” Her response was good television, a news clip that was incessantly repeated in the last day or two before the New Hampshire vote. The media concluded that Clinton had “found her voice,” although her stump speech remained the same. After Hillary pocketed a victory, the pollsters, in league with the media, concluded that they needed to do more polling close to the election in order to capture the impact of such last-minute dynamics.

Now Clinton has found her voice again. CNN reported last night from Texas that about two-thirds of last-minute deciders voted for Hillary. What influenced their vote? Was it her TV commercial or the incessant media coverage of the commercial? Was it the dubious report of an Obama aide’s discussion of NAFTA with the Canadian consulate in Chicago, or the way Clinton succeeded in browbeating the media into covering it? (”I would ask you to look at this story, substitute my name for Sen. Obama’s name and see what you would do with this story. That’s what I would ask you to do.”)

The media have become the “back story,” to use their phrase. If it can be shown that in a close race it’s the media coverage above all that influences voters, then the campaigns will fight over every bit of “breaking news.” By playing media victim in the run-up to yesterday’s vote, starting with her rehearsed quip in last week’s TV debate (“If anybody saw ‘Saturday Night Live,’ maybe we should ask Barack if he’s comfortable and needs another pillow”), Hillary showed she understood better than Obama the media’s hunger for news and respect. Many broadcasters and journalists weren’t sure whether they had (perhaps unconsciously) favored Obama, but they couldn’t afford to ignore the allegation. After all, if Saturday Night Live “reported” it, and Hillary repeated it, it was “news!”

More than campaign commercials and pamphlets, it’s the news media’s coverage of them that has become the line of scrimmage in the Democratic campaign. Barack Obama may not like this kind of game, but he can’t change the playing field or the spectators. All he can try to do is to influence the way it’s covered.

Just last Wednesday, Robert Novak wrote: “Inside the Democratic Party, it is already taken for granted that the queen is dead and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is the king.” A few days earlier, Mark Halperin counted 16 “underappreciated Obama advantages.” What — only 16?

Such is the world of media and politics that tonight, on the eve of the March 4th primaries, Hillary Clinton is cast in nearly all mass media as tomorrow’s likely victor — even if she should gain fewer delegates. Dick Morris, once gleeful at the prospect of Hillary’s demise, predicts enough bounce for Clinton to extend the Democratic campaign through spring. The Michigan and Florida primaries, annulled by the Party, will be restaged, he predicts.

Ohio ice will be Pensylvania mud before this is all over. And the mud will be slung with abandon.

Two weeks of Saturday Night Live, yesterday’s Sixty Minutes and today’s Daily Show have showcased a laughing, self-deprecating Hillary, while regular newscasts have featured a series of questions about Obama’s character. First, the Tennessee Republicans unearthed a photo of Obama in an African costume, then Obama’s erstwhile supporter Rezko went on trial for corruption. Finally, today a slime-covered story surfaced picking up on the NAFTA-Canada angle. It seems that one of Obama’s economic advisers met with Canadian consulate officials (at their request) and, according to a leaked report of the meeting, the adviser told the Canadians that Obama’s critique of NAFTA was only for public consumption. Although the Canadian government denied this — as did the adviser and Obama himself — the damage for this election eve news cycle was done. Hillary quickly said Obama had given a “wink and a nod” to the Canadians not to take his NAFTA criticism seriously.

A gotcha moment, eh?

The usually distinct line between politics and parody was blurred once again over the weekend by Saturday Night Live, the long-running American television show.  Hillary Clinton flew on Saturday from Ohio, where she was campaigning for tomorrow’s primary, to New York to appear in a skit alongside a comic who makes fun of her.  Then she sat for a taping of another TV program that gets high ratings from spoofing politicians and their foibles, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  That program is set to air tonight.

Foreign readers (and others somehow insulated from the current theater of American politics) can find clips of these shows on YouTube.  Don’t be surprised if this all seems more like “Alice Through the Looking Glass” than political reality.  With so much at stake in tomorrow’s votes in Ohio and Texas (and Vermont and Rhode Island), Hillary Clinton is trying every tactic to sway voters.  The current, accepted wisdom is that candidates do well in such circumstances to join in with popular entertainers who mock them, thereby showing a “human” side and gaining free publicity.

Thus, Hillary appeared on national TV on Saturday night as the faux “Hillary” took part in an extended lampoon of the last Clinton-Obama debate satirizing the media questioners for allegedly going easy on Obama and hard on Clinton.

Huckabee, Obama and even John McCain have all appeared on this and similar shows in the past, but for Clinton to take time off from retail politicking right before a crucial vote says something about her campaign and perhaps the American electorate.

If she narrowly wins tomorrow, Clinton’s forays into self-deprecation may be credited by the media and her feuding advisers as having “shaped” the last-minute media “environment,” and influenced Ohioans and Texans to vote for her.  Many credit her teary-eyed moment in front of the cameras on the eve of the New Hampshire primary last January as playing just such a role.

Can it really be that such “earned” media — the term of art for news-making events that get candidates free airtime — will be decisive?  Or will it be the “red phone” TV commercial paid for by her campaign that was unleashed this weekend in Ohio and Texas?  Here the motif was a play on frightening symbols and images, this time designed to cast Hillary as the experienced foreign policy hand ready to tackle a middle-of-the-night foreign policy crisis.  Although quickly criticized, this attack ad — like the comedy skits — is probably effective last-minute politics.   In our topsy-turvy world, it’s all about getting spin, even if you’re trying to amuse and frighten people at the same time.