America in Transition

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.”

Come on down to this blog’s sister on climate change where I’ve written about Tom Friedman and the Candidates, specifically about a suspension of the federal gas tax this coming summer.

Already the presider over one of the longest primary races in recent history, the Democratic party chairman has put a deadline on the fun.

This morning Howard Dean, comparing himself to a basketball referee, announced on the Sunday morning talk show “Meet the Press” that he believes the Democratic party needs to choose a nominee before the end of June. Leaving speculation as to whether Dean’s statement will aid either candidate in the upcoming North Carolina and Indiana primaries aside, it’s clear the many reasons Dean would want to end the party infighting.

Unifying the party in time to beat John McCain is Dean’s first priority. A turbulent party convention in August would leave less than ten weeks for general election campaigning. Both Clinton and Obama, by this point, have been properly “vetted” through the national media, but Dean needs to ensure that both his party and the public view the Democratic candidate as presidential. McCain’s tours—of the Middle East and the American South—plus the lack of any fierce competition for him over many months result in a definite advantage for the Republican.

Dean, Clinton, and Obama have each done the analysis and come to similar conclusions as to where McCain’s weaknesses lie. As of now, neither of the candidates has been able to focus consistent resources to expose and capitalize on the areas in which McCain is most vulnerable: on the issues.

Dean is hoping that an earlier decision will permit Obama or Clinton more time to differentiate issue positions among themselves—we’ve certainly learned of those nuances in the twenty-one debates—but from McCain’s. Particularly on Iraq, McCain is not in line with the American mainstream. His staunch support for the surge, even given his original hesitation of Bush’s plans for war, leaves McCain among conservatives rather than moderates, as his “maverick” moniker would posit. Whether we realize it or not, McCain’s approaches to Iraq and other “textbook” issues are decidedly conservative.

On the other hand, McCain’s candidacy upsets the blue-red norm. As the Pew numbers suggest, McCain is not seen as a true-blood conservative among many of the most conservative voters; nor is he beloved by all moderates given his recent championship of the most conservative of causes such as tax cuts. The lack of definition of McCain’s candidacy is both a blessing and a curse for the Democrats: Democrats have the opportunity to shape McCain’s image, but the later they join, the more time McCain has to define it himself. Dean, in doing his job, would like to stop McCain from controlling any element of the general campaign.

In war, Aeschylus wrote, truth is the first casualty. In political war, such as the current fight to become U.S. President, truth dies a thousand deaths. Case in point: who now leads the “popular vote” in the Democratic race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? When the results came in from Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary, Hillary quickly claimed that she had the popular vote lead, 15,116,688 to 14,994,905. But this tally included the results of two primaries that the Democratic Party National Committee had declared invalid. And it excluded the votes of thousands of Democrats who voted in states that held caucuses. Otherwise, Obama would hold on to the popular vote lead by at least a percentage point. These caveats were not mentioned by Clinton or her surrogates, since this part of the truth was — to borrow from Al Gore — inconvenient.

Countless inconvenient truths have been discarded along the campaign trail in recent months. How about John McCain’s statement last week in New Orleans that, had he been President at the time Katrina struck, he would have immediately flown to New Orleans? On August 29, 2005, just as Katrina hit, McCain was hosting President Bush in Arizona. The occasion? A photo-op commemorating McCain’s birthday. He could have told the President in person what to do. To admit last week that he didn’t was… inconvenient.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is destined to become this campaign’s unwitting victim of what Stephen Colbert parodies as “truthiness” — a manipulated, wished-for truth. The Clinton opposition research machine discovered some wild quotes from this pastor of a South Side Chicago church. Better yet, they had them on videotape so a couple of sound bites could be played over and over on the “news” networks and commented on by Clinton surrogates and by suitably outraged citizens who were not given an opportunity to hear Wright’s sermons in their entirety.

The knife turns slowly in the war against the truth. Less than two months ago, on 60 Minutes, Hillary could say, when asked, “He’s not a Moslem — as far as I know,” thus sowing doubt that Obama might be some sort of Manchurian Candidate for the Islamic faith. A month later, however, once the Wright tapes were discovered, Obama was “rebranded” a devout member of Wright’s Trinity Church — so close to Wright that he should be accountable for whatever the Baptist minister said.

Even Obama is not immune to the siren call of Truthiness, as when he quotes McCain as wanting U.S. troops in Iraq for “a hundred years.” McCain was clearly not talking about a wartime deployment, but some sort of peacetime basing arrangement like the U.S. has with Japan, South Korea, Italy or Germany.

For many years, it was assumed that our news media would challenge such misrepresentations of fact, but now most seem more intent on generating heat than light. Every allegation, no matter how spurious, is grist for the news cycle; if an allegation is quickly shot down, the controversy ends. So the news media, especially the commentators and the on-line partisans, do all they can to keep the “story” alive. And each camp, knowing the futility of putting out truth, responds by shooting off a new salvo of “attack” ads, or having a surrogate do it for them.

For a taste of things to come, watch the work of a freshly minted anti-Obama group, National Campaign Fund, aka www.exposeobama.com. If the North Carolina Republican Party feels obliged to take down its own TV attack ad against Obama, they can always turn to a 527 group, like the National Campaign Fund, to get the “truthiness” out. Not directly, of course. That’s against the law.

On the eve of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, passions are running high — higher than for any election residents of this Commonwealth can remember. This is not because the popular vote is expected to be close — all the polls favor Hillary Clinton — but because the outcome will greatly influence how and when the more than 300 uncommitted “superdelegates” will declare their loyalties. At this point, who wins the remaining superdelegates wins the Democratic nomination. And the superdelegates, along with some ten per cent of Pennsylvania Democrats voting tomorrow, have yet to make up their minds.

Let’s pause for a moment to consider the whys and wherefores of Pennsylvania procrastination.

First, the superdelegates. They come from all over the United States and most are elected officials or local party activists. Many entered politics when Bill Clinton was President and remained loyal to him throughout his tumultuous Presidency. Barack Obama has been slowly winning them over in recent weeks and Hillary needs to stop this trend. The only way she can do this is with a large victory tomorrow, since Pennsylvania’s 158 regular delegates will be split between her and Obama on a roughly proportional basis. (The Pennsylvania result could even resemble the Texas primary, where Clinton won a majority of the popular vote, but netted fewer than half of the elected convention delegates. This is because convention delegates are allocated according to Congressional districts, whose boundaries are often drawn to favor urban areas.)

This is a terrible situation for your average superdelegate, who wants nothing so much as to be on the winning side. Imagine being an elected Democrat at a local or national level and the candidate you support fails to win the Presidential nomination. Worse, most of the voters in your district/state vote for the other guy/gal, who goes on to become President. Not a good career move.

For this reason, of the 795 total superdelegates, 303 are waiting to declare allegiance until they think they know who will win. If they wait until the bandwagon is briskly moving toward Denver, they may have to run to catch up; if they hop aboard too soon, there’s a chance they may find themselves on the wrong wagon. In fact, some of the declared superdelegates (in this category, Hillary leads Obama, 258 to 234) have hinted that they could change their minds, based on Pennsylvania and the few subsequent remaining primaries.

But how about the Pennsylvanians? Pennsylvania Democrats, whether bitter or just frustrated, have other reasons for putting off the choice of a candidate. “The Keystone State” in some ways is the U.S. in microcosm. There’s a populated area in the East and a populated area in the West; traffic and transport moves East-West and West-East across the state, but often doesn’t stop in between. The North-Central region is remarkably rural. And there are many places that seem like they’ve been passed over.

Those who remain in the Pennsylvania heartland don’t necessarily regret not being in New York (or Philadelphia), but many recall better times and don’t feel that Washington has done much for them lately. They feel this more acutely than neighboring states like New Jersey or Maryland (dominated by the Boston-Washington corridor) or West Virginia (leader in pork barrel projects that their aged senator has won for them over the last half-century).

No, Pennsylvanians are a cross-section of the America that often seems neglected. They don’t mind having the spotlight for once turned on their entire state — not just a cross-state rivalry, or a sports team. This hasn’t happened for a while, and it’s unlikely to happen again soon. This despite the fact that Pennsylvania, though the sixth largest state in population, has suffered among states the third greatest number of Iraq War deaths.

So Pennsylvanians — at least some of them — will procrastinate a few hours more. They will vote their pocketbooks — and for the candidate they think best understands how different they are, and how much they resemble so much of the country.

I’ve got a post on Coal and the Candidates over at the FPA’s Climate Change blog if you’re interested and have a moment. 

They’re the two topics you’re never supposed to raise at a dinner party: religion and politics. In the past week the two have been on the verge of collision in Washington and Pennsylvania amid a papal visit, and an approaching and important primary.

Where religion and politics intersect is a murky place in American politics. As candidates for office seek to offend as few voters as possible, they strategically calculate the ways through which they can ensure support from various demographic groups. This cycle, Clinton and Obama have not shied away from discussing religion openly—due to both choice and circumstantial pressure—and have micro-targeted voters based upon demographics. In the Pennsylvania primary this week, once again we will see the fruits of the campaigns’ efforts to excite and inform voters in the state.

At the CNN “Compassion Forum” in the state on Sunday, Obama and Clinton got a minimal chance to engage in religious dialgue. Instead, they traded jabs/defended themselves over “bitter” accusations, “misspeaks” about Bosnia, and drinking on the campaign trail. On Wednesday, as ABC spent the first hour of the debate questioning Clinton and Obama on similar issues, the candidates once again engaged in ad hominem back-and-forth—both because of ABC’s questioning and the state of such nonsensical issues as topical now in the campaign.

The rhetoric may have devolved into such a state due to the longevity of both campaigns in the state of Pennsylvania. It has been about a month since the laststate primary, and both camp Clinton and camp Obama have been working in the state for even longer.

Pennsylvania, typically a battleground in general elections, has not played a substantial role in a primary in recent years. Nevertheless, like many a general election contender before them, Clinton and Obama have taken a scientific approach to swaying Pennsylvania’s religious groups. In the state nearly 30 percent of voters are Roman Catholics, many of whom of Irish or Polish heritage. Mainline and evangelical Protestants constitute another 43 percent of voters in the state; a mere seven percent identify with the historically black protestant religious tradition (according to a 2007 Pew Research study.)

In attempts to engage voters, Hillary Clinton has drank with Irish Catholics, and Obama has gone bowling—cultural activities, not religious. In this campaign, however, Obama’s religious views in particular have been a point of discussion. Obama has tied his faith story to that of the black community in the United States as a result of the controversy about his Pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama has not raised such rhetoric in Pennsylvania; he hasn’t had the chance, as he fights the notion that he is “elitist.”

Its relatively high percentage of white Catholics not withstanding, the state of Pennsylvania roughly matches the U.S. norm in its religious demographics. Tuesday’s primary results could provide a glimpse into the psyche of the nation and the extent to which religion will be relevant in the fall.

Image of the National Cathedral courtesy of Flickr under a Creative Commons License.

Halfway through last night’s Philadelphia debate, the 21st among Democrats in the course of the last year, the questioners from ABC-TV finally got to substance: Will you promise to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq, they asked, regardless what advice your generals give you?

Here’s the essence of Hillary’s answer:

I will ask the secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and my security advisers to immediately put together for me a plan so that I can begin to withdraw within 60 days. I will make it very clear that we will do so in a responsible and careful manner, because obviously, withdrawing troops and equipment is dangerous…

I will begin to withdraw troops within 60 days. And we’ve had other instances in our history where some military commanders have been very publicly opposed to what a president was proposing to do.

But I think it’s important that this decision be made, and I intend to make it.

Obama’s statement this time omitted his usual reference to a 16-month timetable for withdrawal:

I will always listen to our commanders on the ground with respect to tactics. Once I’ve given them a new mission, that we are going to proceed deliberately in an orderly fashion out of Iraq and we are going to have our combat troops out, we will not have permanent bases there, once I’ve provided that mission, if they come to me and want to adjust tactics, then I will certainly take their recommendations into consideration; but ultimately the buck stops with me as the commander in chief.

In terms of substance, very little difference, but in terms of tone, Obama’s reply is less declarative and more deferential toward the military. By using a lexicon that the U.S. military recognizes — mission versus tactics — Obama frames his answer in a way that is likely to give him (and his commanders) more flexibility.

On the issue of Iran, a similar difference in tone was apparent. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who was once a top aide to Bill Clinton, challenged Obama on what he would do about Iran — and how he would protect Israel. The latter topic is always ripe for a bidding war between candidates eager to gain the “Jewish vote,” and as I pointed out in a previous post (see “Four Letter Words” below), the question of support for Israel was bound to come up in relation to Iran. Earlier in the day, in fact, Obama had met with Jewish groups in Philadelphia — according to news reports, to “reassure” them about his views on Iran, Israel and his opposition to the deplorable anti-Semite Louis Farahkan.

In his debate response, Obama was careful to thread the needle, staking out a firm but necessarily vague position without backing down on his well-known promise to engage the Iranian leadership directly:

I will do whatever is required to prevent the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons. I believe that that includes direct talks with the Iranians where we are laying out very clearly for them, here are the issues that we find unacceptable, not only development of nuclear weapons but also funding terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as their anti-Israel rhetoric and threats towards Israel. I believe that we can offer them carrots and sticks, but we’ve got to directly engage and make absolutely clear to them what our posture is.

Now, my belief is that they should also know that I will take no options off the table when it comes to preventing them from using nuclear weapons or obtaining nuclear weapons, and that would include any threats directed at Israel or any of our allies in the region.

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: So you would extend our deterrent to Israel?

OBAMA: As I’ve said before, I think it is very important that Iran understands that an attack on Israel is an attack on our strongest ally in the region, one that we — one whose security we consider paramount, and that — that would be an act of aggression that we — that I would — that I would consider an attack that is unacceptable, and the United States would take appropriate action.

By contrast, Hillary’s response to the same question is to up the ante with a more sweeping declaration of a “security umbrella:”

I think that this is an opportunity, with skillful diplomacy, for the United States to go to the region and enlist the region in a security agreement vis-a-vis Iran…

We’ve got to begin diplomatic engagement with Iran…at a low level. I certainly would not meet with Ahmadinejad, because even again today he made light of 9/11 and said he’s not even sure it happened and that people actually died. He’s not someone who would have an opportunity to meet with me in the White House. But I would have a diplomatic process that would engage him.

And secondly, we’ve got to deter other countries from feeling that they have to acquire nuclear weapons. You can’t go to the Saudis or the Kuwaitis or UAE and others who have a legitimate concern about Iran and say: Well, don’t acquire these weapons to defend yourself unless you’re also willing to say we will provide a deterrent backup and we will let the Iranians know that, yes, an attack on Israel would trigger massive retaliation, but so would an attack on those countries that are willing to go under this security umbrella and forswear their own nuclear ambitions.

And finally we cannot permit Iran to become a nuclear weapons power. And this administration has failed in our efforts to convince the rest of the world that that is a danger, not only to us and not just to Israel but to the region and beyond.

Therefore we have got to have this process that reaches out, beyond even who we would put under the security umbrella, to get the rest of the world on our side to try to impose the kind of sanctions and diplomatic efforts that might prevent this from occurring.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Clinton, would you?

CLINTON: Well, in fact, George, I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region.

Again, a difference in tone.  By proposing a “security umbrella” for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — states that don’t even recognize Israel and that have no nuclear ambitions — Clinton strives for a muscular stance.  Phrases like “trigger massive retaliation” — usually meant to imply the use of nuclear weapons — should probably not be used in campaign debates at all.  But to use them at the same time that one is promising — irrespective of military advice — to begin a withdrawal of military forces from Iraq within 60 days of taking office, sends a mixed signal to the region that we would do well to avoid.

We’re now into day four of the latest media-driven debate: Was Barack Obama “elitist” last Friday in talking about small town Pennsylvanians in front of Chardonnay sipping, brie-snacking San Franciscans? Wolf Blitzer, backed by his “best political team in television”(!) is still pacing about “The Situation Room” in search of an answer. The polls in Pa. are ambiguous, he tells us. Some put Obama only a few points behind.

But wait, what is the national impact? Hillary and John McCain are on the attack. Hillary has a new TV ad, with a few select Pennsylvanians saying how offended they are that Barack would say they “cling” to guns and religion because they’re “bitter” over the state’s economic woes. McCain says Obama must be “out of touch.” Legions of out-of-state spin doctors and media meisters are in their respective war rooms, doubtless sipping wine themselves, trying to figure out how they can keep this “issue” alive in the days leading up to next Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary. Stay tuned for more serious discussion of the issues!
Such is the state of Election 2008 that after countless debates, speeches, position papers, town hall meetings, and press conferences that the three remaining candidates have said all they can possibly say, and the media have reported about all they can possibly think of. All that’s left is to wait for events — be they slips of the tongue, polls or (finally!) the elections themselves. So much for reporting.
In San Francisco, where I write from now, the gotcha quote may have come at a fundraiser at this house, Gordon and Ann Getty’s, far from the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. Between sips of Chardonnay, or so one is led to imagine, one of the wealthy assembled asked Obama why it was so hard for him to reach blue-collar voters. To which he replied:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, a lot of them — like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they’ve gone through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, and they cling to guns, or religion, or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

The SF Chronicle tells us that blogger Mayhill Fowler got in, carrying a concealed MP3. The rest, as they say, is history — because it certainly isn’t journalism, nor is it policy analysis.

Apart from the superficiality of this “issue,” the circumstances of the fundraiser in a wealthy West Coast community may tell us more about our failure as Americans to connect with each other, than an errant quote that is alleged to divide us.

I for one, as a former small-town Pennsylvanian and current San Franciscan, don’t see a contradiction between Iron City Beer and Mondavi Cabernet. Both go well with cheese. And the price of both is going up. And that gets my attention whether I’m in Pittsburg, California or Pittsburgh, Pa. It’s time for those promoting this story to crawl out of the newsroom bunkers and campaign war rooms and talk about some real issues.

One truth about John McCain’s foreign policy views: He’s no slave to fashion. Opposed Reagan on deploying Marines to Lebanon in 1983. Lobbied the Bush White House for last year’s troop “surge” in Iraq. The NYT tried yesterday to classify McCain’s foreign policy viewpoints based on his mix of “realist” and “neo-con” advisers, but was ultimately frustrated.

The post-modernist way that political labels are viewed these days is partly responsible. “Liberals” seldom use the label when running for national office, “conservative” is almost always inadequate in describing a candidate, unless there’s a clear context in either social, fiscal or foreign policy. The Atlantic Monthly’s Jonathan Rauch calls McCain “Mr. Conservative,” but then goes on to qualify him as a Burkean traditionalist, rather than an ambitious foreign policy revolutionary.

McCain does seem to like the idea of cheering on the spread of democracy, however. For years he’s been associated with the International Republican Institute, one of the NGOs funded by Congress to advance democracy in formerly Communist countries. And now, in his recent foreign policy discourse in Los Angeles, he has proposed a League of Democracies.

The need for the League arises because, says McCain:

…we must also lead by attracting others to our cause, by demonstrating once again the virtues of freedom and democracy, by defending the rules of international civilized society and by creating the new international institutions necessary to advance the peace and freedoms we cherish. Perhaps above all, leadership in today’s world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation.

One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies. We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to. We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact — a League of Democracies — that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests…

How different are these sentiments from the ideas of Woodrow Wilson, FDR or even Madeleine Albright? Albright started up a Community of Democracies just eight years ago in order to have a kind of forum of like-minded democratic leaders. It appears to still exist, but has scarcely been heard from in recent years.

The idea of mobilizing democracies is a lofty ambition but usually works better on paper and in speeches than in reality. George W. Bush began his Presidency without such ambitions but, by the time of his second Inaugural had become a convert. Presidential candidates are supposed to have a “vision,” but the American electorate might be content with more modest “conservative” expectations. As the curmudgeonly Pat Buchanan puts it, “What has the Bush-McCain democracy crusade produced, save electoral victories for the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Hamas? And if we dump the sultan of Oman, President Mubarak, and the king of Saudi Arabia, who does McCain think will replace them?”

If you look carefully, you can see that Barack Obama’s vulnerability in foreign affairs is not his inexperience. His questioning of General David Petraeus on Wednesday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing was thoughtful and probing, focusing on whether the conditions set by U.S. commanders for withdrawal could actually be achieved. Obama also correctly points out that Congressional tenure alone is no guarantee of foreign affairs expertise (watching the hearings made this painfully evident). It is even plausible that Obama’s private travel abroad in Indonesia and Pakistan actually may have given him some insights that most Congressmen never gain. Maybe that’s why he spoke out against the invasion of Iraq in 2002 when Hillary voted for it.

No, Obama’s problem in foreign affairs is not his inexperience — it’s whether he will be opposed by supporters of Israel for his stance favoring talks with Iran. As Petraeus pointed out, Iran continues to assist terrorists and insurgents in Iraq and represents a major threat to Iraq’s security. Time/CNN correspondent Michael Ware, who interviewed Petraeus on Wednesday, was particularly adamant in stressing the now obvious point that the struggle for influence in Iraq is essentially between the United States and Iran. Given Iran’s Islamic fundamentalism (at least in its leadership), its virulently anti-Israeli rhetoric, and given Obama’s support for official US contacts with Iran — Obama seems to have staked out a politically vulnerable position. It is only a matter of time before Hillary tries to turn this into a “kitchen sink” to be thrown at him. If she fails, and Obama is nominated, McCain will pick up where Hillary left off.

Washington is still digesting Petraeus’ hours of testimony and interviews, but his assessment of Iran’s activities was impossible to ignore and in other times would be a clear casus belli.

Last October, here’s what General Petraeus said:

“[The Iranians] are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers…There is no question about the connection between Iran and these components, (the) attacks that have killed our soldiers.”

This week, the general added that Iran is “funding, training, arming and directing” Shiite Muslim militias known as “special groups… Unchecked, the[se] special groups pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq,” Petraeus said.

Finally, Joe Lieberman asked: “Is it fair to say that the Iranian-backed special groups in Iraq are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians?”

Petraeus’ response: “It certainly is. I do believe that is correct. Again some of that also is militia elements who have then subsequently been trained by these individuals.”
All this spells more trouble in Southwest Asia and the Middle East at a time when the American public is looking for relief from our foreign engagements there. As Senator Lugar (one of the rare foreign policy experts in the Senate and now about to retire) put it: “Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient. Iraq will be an unstable country for the foreseeable future.”

Lugar’s candid comment had the intellectual honesty of someone not running for office. America is in a funk over the economy and over Iraq. It doesn’t want another four-letter word — Iran — added to its vocabulary of words best left unspoken. Congress’ fixation on withdrawal from Iraq and silent treatment re Petraeus’ warnings on Iran told Tehran all it needs to know. America will probably not attack Iran — not for killing our soldiers nor for resuming uranium enrichment — but Hillary will attack Obama verbally for being willing to talk to opponents of Israel. That’s good politics in Pennsylvania, but ignores the fact that by next January our willingness to talk may be totally undermined by our unwillingness to do anything else.

If you happen to be wrapped up in the news cycle, you would be aware of the diminishing chance Hillary Clinton has to win the Democratic nomination. Keep in mind, though, that it’s only early April. (seriously!)

One of Clinton’s chief strategists, Mark Penn, left the campaign over the weekend. Reportedly, he departed voluntarily. Also reportedly, Clinton was furious over his meeting with a delegate from Colombia regarding the Colombian free trade agreement, a proposal the candidate does not support. No matter which is more true; at this point Mrs. Clinton might be expected to insist upon a tight reign.

For the past two months, Clinton has lost momentum to Obama. Either candidate–Clinton or Obama–will have to gain support among both “real” delegates and superdelegates to win at the convention. While many Democratic voters have chosen their candidate, superdelegates’ votes are still fluid. Until the final voting at the convention, many will voice support for one of the candidates, some will change their minds, and others will remain undecided. By nature, these Democratic party insiders are tied to the influence of the media and the news cycle. Momentum in the press and in primaries lead to superdelegate perspectives.

For Clinton, it is “tough math” to say the least. According to NYT, however, a full 364 superdelegates are undecided or chose not to answer in a recent poll. This week (or two) the pendulum swings in Obama’s favor, but the Pennsylvania primary is approaching and Clinton is expected to do well in the state. Emphasis then turns to North Carolina, and the Democrates are likely to continue the competition.

And thus the horse race continues, as does its coverage.