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January 26, 2008

South Carolina's Lasting Impact

The true legacy of this election cycle's South Carolina slimefest remains to be seen.

In 2000, John McCain faced a do-or-die contest in South Carolina and got slashed by allegations that he had fathered an illegitimate black child and abandoned his fellow POWs in Vietnam. McCain lost in South Carolina by 11 points and his campaign never recovered.

This time around, the mudslinging occurred on the Democratic side. Clinton attacked Obama for supporting the policies of Ronald Reagan, a false claim, and many Clinton surrogates found ways to mention Obama's religion or past drug use. And Bill Clinton called Obama's record on Iraq a fairy tale, compared him to Jesse Jackson, and repeatedly brought up race, all while chastising the press for trivializing the campaign. Obama was baited into responding with his own nasty ads.

The result, even the Clinton campaign admits, is that the candidate who was once transcendent and post-racial is now very clearly "the black candidate." That may serve Obama well in a Southern state like South Carolina, where half the Democratic electorate is African-American, but it will take off some of his sheen in the eyes of white voters across the country. And that's why South Carolina's role in this campaign will not end until the February 5 primaries (and possibly even later ones) are decided. If Obama loses even a small share of the white vote in those states, he will struggle mightily to beat Clinton.

So how did Obama win tonight? As he said in his victory speech in Columbia, he had a "diverse coalition." According to exit polls, he took 80 percent of the black vote, but also 24 percent of the white vote (polls leading up to the election said he would win just 10 percent). He won big amongst voters under 30, but actually won every age group except the over-65ers. He won amongst the one-fourth of voters who identified as independents, but he also won big amongst the three-fourth who identified as Democrats. Fifty percent of voters said they attend church once a week or more: Obama more than doubled Clinton's support in that block.

And regardless of type and subtype, Obama brought people out. He won more votes today by himself than were cast in the entire 2004 Democratic primary. He won more votes by himself than Huckabee and McCain won together one week ago in South Carolina's Republican primary.

The Clintons may well have sacrificed this state in order to better their chances of winning elsewhere. Roughly 40 percent of voters said they made up their mind in the last week. Half of those people went for Obama, and one-third went for Edwards. Few went for Clinton. Those who said they factored Bill Clinton's campaigning into their decision went for Obama instead of Clinton. Seventy percent of voters thought the Clinton campaign attacked Obama unfairly. In short, people hated the negative campaigning in recent days. The Clintons, consciously or by chance, used South Carolina to color Obama as the "black candidate" in the eyes of voters across the country. And if that meant South Carolinians were disgusted by the way they did it, so be it.

What's Next for (Bill) Clinton and the Anti-Obama Attack Machine?

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is an interesting race." So said former President Bill at a campaign rally in Independence, Missouri, on Saturday night, while Barack Obama was cleaning his wife's clock in South Carolina. Well, Bill Clinton has done his best to make the contest more interesting—and more down-and-dirty. Campaigning in South Carolina, he drew Barack Obama into a mudwrestle and sucked up plenty of oxygen. Though Clinton failed to stop a much-anticipated Obama win in the Palmetto State—and might have even pushed voters toward Obama—he certainly helped shaped the race to his wife's benefit. Obama has been campaigning as an unconventional and inspirational leader against a conventional and divisive politician. Yet the ex-president managed to turn the contest into a face-off between two acrimonious camps, which undermines Obama's preferred narrative: a transformational candidate versus a Washington rerun. And today—before the vote-counting began—Clinton compared Obama to Jesse Jackson. It was tough not to read Clinton's remark as an attempt to dismiss Obama as the black candidate who cannot win.

Clinton's hit-man role has peeved some Democrats. Two days ago, Robert Reich, who was Clinton's labor secretary, blogged that "Bill Clinton's ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife's campaign." But should the Clintons care if they lose Reich but gain the nomination?

Short answer: no. But there will be recriminations. Clinton's South Carolina rampage will not be forgotten by Democrats and liberals. And it remains to be seen if B. Clinton will continue his anti-Obama crusade in the coming days, as Supersaturated Tuesday approaches. The day before South Carolina Democrats voted for Obama over Clinton by a two-to-one margin, I asked a senior Clinton campaign aide if the campaign had any reservations about Bill Clinton's actions in South Carolina. This aide looked pained. "He cannot be controlled," s/he said. I remarked that it looked as if Clinton had been deployed in a strategic manner. "Not for some of us," the aide said. But the campaign could have decided not to send him to South Carolina, I noted. "Yeah, Mr. President, we have some important campaign rallies for you to attend in Alaska," the aide replied—sarcastically.

Can it be that Bill Clinton is a rogue operative? I doubt it. He still has to answer to his wife, and she has an influential role in the campaign. But it might be that within the Clinton campaign there are those who will do much to win and those who will do whatever it takes to win. Hillary Clinton often decries the Republican attack machine (and sells herself as a candidate tough enough to survive its blasts). But she has an attack machine of her own. And it has cooked up some rather audacious if not bogus charges against Obama—including, most recently, the accusation that Obama is soft on Ronald Reagan.

In a triumphant victory speech on Saturday night—one of his best adressess—Obama lashed back:

We are up against the conventional thinking that says your ability to lead as President comes from longevity in Washington or proximity to the White House. But we know that real leadership is about candor, and judgment, and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose—a higher purpose.

We are up against decades of bitter partisanship that cause politicians to demonize their opponents instead of coming together to make college affordable or energy cleaner; it's the kind of partisanship where you're not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea—even if it's one you never agreed with. That kind of politics is bad for our party, it's bad for our country, and this is our chance to end it once and for all.

But will "that kind of politics" cease? Will the Clinton camp ratchet down after South Carolina? Will the leash on the Big Dawg be tightened? Not if the Clinton crew (at the top) view South Carolina as a battlefield loss but a strategic success in their effort to de-Obama Obama.

Obama Wins South Carolina; Plus, Bill's Jesse Jackson Comparison

Um, polls have been closed for 1 min and 50 seconds and MSNBC has already called South Carolina for Obama. According to the network itself, 0 percent of precincts have reported. More analysis to come.

By the way, earlier today Bill Clinton was asked in South Carolina what it means that it takes two Clintons to compete with one Obama. He said (and I'm paraphrasing), "Well, listen. Jesse Jackson won this state, too." Yikes. That answer has nothing to do with the question, but it does do three things. One, it lowers expectations. Two, it attributes Obama's victory exclusively to his race. It basically means, "Hey, a black candidate is always going to win this state." And three, it compares Barack Obama to a guy who is considered exclusively an advocate for black America, and whom many white Americans have an uncomfortable relationship with.

And, of course, it injects race into the conversation. Considering the fact that Bill Clinton has been running around South Carolina chastising reporters for focusing on race, it's a pretty cynical thing to say. Very strategic, and not very pretty.

Update: I'm still irritated by this B. Clinton statement. It's really dismissive of black voters: it suggests that they will always vote for a black candidate, instead of evaluating candidates on their merits. And it ignores the fact that just a few weeks ago, H. Clinton was crushing Obama in heavily black South Carolina.

Update Update: Video of B. Clinton's statement after the jump.

Exit Polls in South Carolina Point to Importance of Economy, Dirty Politics

The AP has some exit polling out. Let's take a look at what it says about the South Carolina electorate.

Half of voters cited the economy as the most important issue. Twenty-five percent said health care and 20 percent said Iraq. Those were the only choices, however, which skews the numbers pretty badly. When Mother Jones runs its own exit polls, we'll do it better.

One out of four exit poll respondents said America is not ready for a black president. The same number said America is not ready for a woman president. So... South Carolina isn't completely on board the diversity train yet.

People were really not happy with the candidates. According to exit polls from MSNBC, 70 percent of all voters thought Hillary Clinton unfairly attacked Barack Obama. Fifty-six percent thought Barack Obama unfairly attacked Hillary Clinton. And voters of all stripes were unhappy with the Clintons: 75 percent of black voters thought they played dirty, 68 percent of white voters said the same.

Many pundits are assuming Barack Obama will win this handily—the only question is by how much. Have we learned nothing from New Hampshire? No assumptions. Anyone could win this primary tonight. Besides, will it kill us to wait another few hours to find out for sure?

Here's a more worthwhile question: how much of the white vote can Barack Obama win? He won very, very substantial portions of the white vote in Iowa and New Hampshire. Some polls in SC show him winning just 10 percent. If that's actually the case, Clinton's strategy of, well, reminding everyone that Obama is black (over and over) has worked.

Amman Dispatch

In a chilly apartment office in the booming, white-villaed Jordanian capital yesterday, an associate of my contact, a slim aristocratic Jordanian, dressed in a navy sports jacket, discusses in fast English various subjects of interest, his cigarette extended into the air. Downed cups of tea before us, I was writing as fast as I could on a huge notebook whose pages detached as I turned them. And then in the course of discussing why he blocked a certain transaction, he came to: " ... But I would never do anything to harm my idol, the greatest leader, Saddam Hussein." More professions of love for Saddam followed as I kind of started. But the conversation remained benevolent, and I later found this view that Saddam knew how to manage Iraq better than the current American-propped-up, Shiite-run setup to be pretty widespread and ordinary among the admittedly few Jordanians I got to meet, who were universally incredibly hospitable, and whose borders, under the omnipresent official portraits of a benevolently smiling King Abdullah and his late father King Hussein, are open to pretty much everyone, including some one million of Iraq's wealthier emigrees, Syrians, Saudis, Gulf investors, Lebanese, Turkish, Americans, Israelis, etc., albeit with an extensive and watchful security superstructure. Massive real estate contruction booms around the city, with towers, new hotels, villas and industrial offices going up. A half hour drive out of the capital, peasants from out of a Biblical scene herd sheep and goats on roadside hills, and petit blue and green decoratively painted Isuzu pick-up trucks deliver wooden crates of fresh tangerines, eggplants, and tomatoes to markets. Another Jordanian I met, Samir, discussing the importance of education and his university degree in good English, got to the subject of the Shiites -- "who do not practice the right Islam" -- as well, and how Saddam "was like a king" who knew how to govern the Iraqis, "who are difficult, they are not easy like the Jordanian people."

When I opened the floaty blinds in my hotel room, I looked across the traffic circle to the huge white stone hotel built apparently by an Iraqi associate of Saddam's who is rumored to have stolen millions of dollars of his money. I flipped on the TV, featuring an Al Jazeera International program on how hard it is for women in Israel to get a Jewish divorce, and the top news of Gaza Palestinians standing off against Egyptian riot police trying to close the Rafah border between Egypt and Gaza, and in the morning, using bulldozers to break down a new opening in the barrier walling them off, and hordes of people crossing through.

This morning, when I needed to buy a charger for my dying cell phone and the Amman shops my driver and I went to were closed, a taxi driver across the street pulled his charger out of the car and gave it to us for a couple dollars. How he figured out the situation so quickly and generously decided to offer his seemed part of a kind of communal local culture of sharing that also included driving between the lanes and making left turns across the incoming traffic, without even a honk or hardly a brake from the oncoming traffic. Beyond the small towns, we flew down the military highway, passing checkpoint after checkpoint. Sawahike Ameriki - American journalist - the driver would tell the soldiers. And they'd peer through his window at me in the backseat, and wave us through. At the border, I filed onto a bus with Arabs, Jews, Israelis, Jordanians, American and British, and we made our way across the half mile to the other side, interrupted by a couple more passport checks and a stop by a young female soldier using mirrors to check the bottom of the bus for bombs. After which, our busload emptied out and filed through Israeli security. In the entrance to the Israeli side of the border crossing with Jordan hangs a black and white framed photo of Israeli prime minsiter Yitzhak Shamir and the late Jordanian King Hussein, who in 1994 made the peace treaty that brought more peace and prosperity to two lands where the people do not necessarily see much eye to eye, except the benefit of such an agreement. "We very much need peace," my Jordanian driver told me, as a Syrian truck pulled ahead of us, full of Jordanian cucumbers and tomatoes.

Attorney General John Edwards?

Bob Novak has a report out that says unnamed "Illinois Democrats" are "quietly passing the word that John Edwards will be named attorney general in an Obama administration." Novak is a hyperpartisan bullshit artist who will make stuff up in order drive a wedge between Democrats, so it's hard to take this all that seriously.

But it does raise an interesting thought experiment. John Edwards is a passionate fighter for the poor, for labor, and for universal health care—he would be a wonderful addition to any Democratic administration. He would be a great attorney general, particularly because he could fight for workers on labor law issues and he could fight for the traditionally disenfranchised on election law. He could really reinvigorate the role of the Secretary of Labor. He could head a regulatory agency like the FDA, where his distaste for corporate power could combine with his passion for fair and affordable health care. And he would make an exciting VP choice for Obama, as I've said for quite some time.

That's a long-winded way of saying, even if he doesn't get the nomination, more Edwards! Of course, the Edwards folks probably don't want to hear that. They want to hear "Edwards for prez!" And that's why the Obama people are floating this rumor, assuming it's true: it gets the progressive media to laud Edwards' potential as an attorney general while further marginalizing his chances for the presidency.

What Saddam Learned From George H.W. Bush

Why did Saddam Hussein decide to invade Kuwait in 1990? George Piro, the FBI agent who interrogated Saddam for seven months, explains in a new interview:

In the course of several face-to-face discussions, Piro said Hussein also told him that the incident that finally led him to decide to invade Kuwait in 1990 was a personal insult by the emir there.

"What really triggered it for him, according to Saddam, was he had sent his foreign minister to Kuwait to meet with the emir al-Sabah . . . to try to resolve some of these issues. And the emir told the foreign minister of Iraq that he would not stop doing what he was doing until he turned every Iraqi woman into a $10 prostitute. And that really sealed it for him, to invade Kuwait," Piro said in the interview.

Wow, what a preposterous justification for invading a much smaller country! I wonder where Saddam got the idea such nonsense was acceptable?

Here's George H.W. Bush speaking on December 20, 1989, seven months before the invasion of Kuwait, explaining why he'd just invaded Panama:

Last Friday, Noriega declared his military dictatorship to be in a state of war with the United States and publicly threatened the lives of Americans in Panama.

The very next day, forces under his command... brutally beat a third American serviceman; and then brutally interrogated his wife, threatening her with sexual abuse. That was enough.

Here's the Washington Times the next day:

More than anything else, it was a rape threat by Pananamian soldiers to a U.S. naval officer's wife that triggered President Bush's decision to oust "Maximum Leader" Manuel Antonio Noriega... She was "sexually harassed" and threatened with rape, the incident that administration officials called the last straw.

The women of America and Iraq are very, very lucky they have men like George H.W. Bush and Saddam Hussein looking out for them.

January 25, 2008

Analysis Shows Possible Pattern in Missing White House Emails

Since last Spring, the White House has repeatedly told the press and Congress about a potential problem involving millions of missing emails. But last Thursday the story changed: An administration spokesman told reporters "we have no way of showing that any emails at all are missing."

(You can find all of our past coverage of this issue in our missing White House emails index.)

Rep. Henry Waxman, the Oversight Committee chairman, was understandably concerned by the sudden change in the administration's story. They had originally told him that there were 473 days for which no email was archived; now they were saying they weren't sure if any were missing at all. So Waxman and the Oversight Committee scheduled a hearing on February 15 to clear up all the confusion. He quickly fired off letters to White House counsel Fred Fielding (PDF) and Allen Weinstein, the National Archivist (PDF), requesting their testimony. Also invited to testify is Alan Swendiman, the Director of the Office of Administration.

The weeks leading up to the hearing were supposed to be quiet. But the missing emails story has a way of not staying put, and the days since Waxman's announcement have been no exception. The committee's letter to Fielding included the first publicly available list of days for which no emails were archived by various departments. That list can be traced back to the White House itself—the dates were reproduced from notes Oversight Committee staffers took when they were briefed by the administration about the problem last September.

After Waxman released the dates of the missing emails, bloggers moved quickly to check them against news events. If the distribution of days for which the administration was missing emails appeared random, then the White House had probably just experienced a technical glitch due to incompetence. But a less-than-random set of days would point to more sinister explanations, including potentially criminal destruction of records. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which is suing the White House to ensure the preservation of the missing emails, issued lists of prominent news events on the days that no emails were archived so that journalists and the public could better judge what was actually going on.

Bloggers moved fast to analyze the new data. On Monday, the liberal blog firedoglake published an detailed analysis indicating that "almost all the periods for which OVP or WH were missing emails... were periods during which they were responding to document requests or subpoenas." The apparent connections could just be a coincidence; after all, correlation does not imply causality. But CREW and firedoglake's analyses certainly appear to point to a non-random cause for the emails' disappearance.

While it's likely that none of this will really come to a head before Waxman's hearing on the 15th, the most recent developments may have an impact off the Hill. Last year, CREW teamed up with the National Security Archive (NSA), another nonprofit, and sued the government to ensure the preservation of whatever missing emails could be saved. The latest changes in the administration's story may influence how the court rules. The White House responded to a court order last week by answering some of the questions the plaintiffs had been asking about the emails. In its filing, the White House admitted, among other things, that it had recycled backup tapes from the first nine months of 2003, when the Valerie Plame leak occurred and the country went to war with Iraq. Having no backup tapes will make recovering any emails from that part of 2003 even harder, and the nature of computers means that every day that goes by will make deleted emails still lingering as "ghosts" on individual hard drives harder to find.

If the plaintiffs can convince the court that the administration's filing in response to the court order was incomplete, they might be able to get more information before Waxman's hearing. Anne Weismann, CREW's chief counsel, told me earlier this week that she's hoping the flip-flopping will "make the court recognize it’s just not getting the full story from the White House."

Parsing the Compromise Stimulus Deal

The stimulus package President Bush and House leaders concocted on Thursday is better than the President's proposed package but has left some economists wanting more.

If you don't know the outlines of the plan, here they are. The plan gives individual tax filers up to $600 back in the form of a tax rebate and gives couples up to $1,200, with an additional $300 per child. The plan also includes tax cuts for businesses. The total value is $150 billion.

Democrats agreed to the plan because it doesn't make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent and because the tax filers eligible for the full rebate are capped by income at $75,000 (filers lose 5 percent for every $1,000 in income above that amount). The White House agreed to the plan because it didn't include any additional unemployment benefits or an increase to the food stamp program, which President Bush called "unnecessary spending projects." There were plaudits all around.

But for all the self-satisfied back-slapping in Washington, outside observers were somewhat ambivalent. Conservatives wanted deeper tax cuts, and liberals were underwhelmed by the package's relief for the poor.

"Useful, but flawed and probably not enough," said a New York Times analysis, citing economists who criticized the plan because it will not act fast enough: rebates checks will not be mailed until May at the earliest. The rejected increases in unemployment benefits and food stamps would provide more immediate help (and—bonus!—would target those most in need). Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed to Congressional Budget Office numbers showing that unemployment insurance and food stamp provisions would inject "more purchasing power into the economy within one to two months." He also predicted the corporate tax cuts in the plan, similar to those found in past packages, would have "only modest stimulative effects."

Greenstein did praise the package for not leaving millions of low- and moderate-income Americans unaided, as the White House's original plan would have done.

Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, called the roughly $50 billion in aid for businesses "scandalous," saying, "It is common sense and established economics that businesses invest and hire when they have customers—not when they get subsidies for equipment to make things they can't sell."

The Senate plans on taking a long look at the House/White House plan and then making adjustments as the Senators see fit, so some of the criticisms may be dealt with. Others, though, could arise. The final details matter: billions of dollars are at stake. But what both Democrats and Republicans are counting on is that whatever specifics end up in the final package, as unsatisfying as they may be, will be enough to satisfy the number one customer: those jittery markets across the world.

Update: Krugman weighs in here. He's not impressed.

NYT Dumps on Giuliani in McCain Endorsement

Today, the New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain. They most certainly did not endorse Rudy Giuliani. From the McCain endorsement:

The real Mr. Giuliani, whom many New Yorkers came to know and mistrust, is a narrow, obsessively secretive, vindictive man who saw no need to limit police power. Racial polarization was as much a legacy of his tenure as the rebirth of Times Square.

Mr. Giuliani’s arrogance and bad judgment are breathtaking. When he claims fiscal prudence, we remember how he ran through surpluses without a thought to the inevitable downturn and bequeathed huge deficits to his successor. He fired Police Commissioner William Bratton, the architect of the drop in crime, because he couldn’t share the limelight. He later gave the job to Bernard Kerik, who has now been indicted on fraud and corruption charges.

The Rudolph Giuliani of 2008 first shamelessly turned the horror of 9/11 into a lucrative business, with a secret client list, then exploited his city’s and the country’s nightmare to promote his presidential campaign.

But really, are Republicans going to care about an endorsement that begins, "We have strong disagreements with all the Republicans running for president" and goes on to support a guy because he "is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing"? Liberals love McCain! Time for a Michelle Malkin blog post!

(H/T Wonkette)

Update after the jump.

Looks like McCain is taking fire from the other Republican candidates for getting the endorsement of the liberal NYT. McCain's response:

"In the case of the (former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt) Romney campaign, which I understand is the one that is making most of it, in all due respect, I got the endorsement of both of his hometown newspapers. The Boston Globe, which is known to be liberal, and the Boston Herald, which is very conservative. We got the endorsement of all the people who know him best, in both New Hampshire and Massachusetts. I appreciate anyone’s endorsement."

Ouch.

Saddam's Interrogator Speaks

As Bruce notes below, George Piro, an FBI agent who was Saddam's sole interrogator, will be on Sixty Minutes this Sunday:

Saddam Hussein initially didn't think the U.S. would invade Iraq to destroy weapons of mass destruction, so he kept the fact that he had none a secret to prevent an Iranian invasion he believed could happen. The Iraqi dictator revealed this thinking to George Piro, the FBI agent assigned to interrogate him after his capture.

Saddam still wouldn't admit he had no weapons of mass destruction, even when it was obvious there would be military action against him because of the perception he did. Because, says Piro, "For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam. He thought that [faking having the weapons] would prevent the Iranians from reinvading Iraq," he tells Pelley.

He also intended and had the wherewithal to restart the weapons program. "Saddam] still had the engineers. The folks that he needed to reconstitute his program are still there," says Piro. "He wanted to pursue all of WMD…to reconstitute his entire WMD program." This included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Piro says.

I've long believed claims about how "Saddam was bluffing!" and "Saddam was going to restart his WMD programs the second our back was turned!" were bogus. (For instance, see here and here.)

I may have to reevaluate. However, based on just the Sixty Minutes teaser, I remain skeptical. Here's why:

1. The US recorded all the interrogations of Saddam. I have a hard time believing if there were sections that would make Bush look good, we wouldn't have seen them.

2. There's no evidence for any of this. Despite what CBS says, of course, Saddam "admitted" over and over and over again that Iraq had no WMD. Iraq said it in dozens of UN declarations, and Saddam personally said it on Iraqi national TV and in an interview with Dan Rather. And there's no indication he took any specific action to bluff the US or Iran in some way; on the contrary.

The CIA Duelfer report is also extremely vague about any direct statements of intent by Saddam about his future intentions. The most it provides is this: "During a custodial interview, Saddam, when asked whether he would reconstitute WMD programs after sanctions were lifted, implied that Iraq would have done what was necessary." This interview was almost certainly conducted by Piro. Meanwhile, the Duelfer report also provides direct statements by underlings that Saddam repeatedly told them Iraq would NOT reconstitute its WMD programs if the UN followed through on its declared intention to create a mideast "zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery.”

So it's possible is Piro isn't being honest here. (My antennae quiver at the fact the first journalist he spoke to is Ronald Kessler, author of embarrassing hagiographies of both George and Laura Bush.) It's also possible Saddam was not honest with Piro. You can easily imagine Saddam would want to claim he had some kind of master plan, rather than accidentally fucking up to the degree his country was invaded.

3. It's also possible Piro is overstating something real. Saddam might have acted in some minor way at different times to obstruct inspections, with the idea this would make Iran believe Iraq still had something, while trying to come clean at other times.

In any case, I'll definitely watch the Sixty Minutes segment. Sadly, though, the reality behind it—whatever it is—won't matter. Given the way the America works, the Piro interview will establish for all time that Saddam was bluffing, was itching to get nukes, etc.

Bill Clinton to Continue Attacking Obama '08 for Acting Like Clinton '92

Patrick Healy writes in the New York Times that the Clintons feel the Bill-as-attack-dog strategy ("sphincter-like") is working, and needs to be continued.

Advisers to Sen. Hillary Clinton have concluded that Bill Clinton's aggressive politicking against Sen. Barack Obama is resonating with voters, and they intend to keep him on the campaign trail in a major role after the South Carolina primary.

The Clinton team has decided that the benefits of having Bill Clinton challenge Obama so forcefully, over Iraq and Obama's record and statements, are worth the trade-offs of potentially overshadowing Hillary Clinton at times, undermining his reputation as a statesman and raising the question among voters about whether they are putting him in the White House as much as her.

Much more after the jump...

...Bill Clinton has shown as much ability as his wife -- or even more -- to stir public and media skepticism about Obama's position on Iraq and his message of nonpartisan leadership, Clinton advisers say.

Bill Clinton is purposely trying to play bad cop against Obama, a senator from Illinois, and is keenly aware that a flash of anger or annoyance will draw even more media and public attention to his arguments, campaign officials say.

According to Healy, we can look forward to Bill continuing the act in California, New York, and other later primaries. E.J. Dionne explains how cynical this all is in the New Republic.

Ronald Reagan, Clinton said [in 1991], deserved credit for winning the Cold War. He praised Reagan's "rhetoric in defense of freedom" and his role in "advancing the idea that communism could be rolled back."... Clinton was careful to add that the Reagan military program included "a lot of wasted money and unnecessary expenditure," but the signal had been sent: Clinton was willing to move beyond "the brain-dead politics in both parties," as he so often put it.

His apostasy was widely noticed. The Memphis Commercial Appeal praised Clinton two days later for daring to "set himself apart from the pack of contenders for the Democratic nomination by saying something nice about Ronald Reagan."

...I have been thinking about that episode ever since Hillary Clinton's campaign started unloading on Barack Obama for making statements about Reagan that were, if anything, more measured than Bill Clinton's 1991 comments... Obama's not particularly original insight was a central premise of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Clinton argued over and over that Democrats could not win without new ideas of their own...

That's why the Clintons' assault on Obama is so depressing. In many ways, Obama is running the 2008 version of the 1992 Clinton campaign. You have the feeling that if Bill Clinton did not have another candidate in this contest, he'd be advising Obama and cheering him on.

Years of decrying the politics of personal destruction and now this...

January 24, 2008

GOPers Debate (Nicely) in Florida; Here Are the Whoppers of the Night

At Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, the GOP contenders did their best not to make any news. No one attacked anyone; no one disagreed on any major policy matter--except regarding a proposal to establish a national catastrophic insurance fund that would back up private insurance firms. (Rudy Giuliani, playing to Florida homeowners, voiced his support for it; Mitt Romney supported the general notion; John McCain attacked legislation that would set up such a fund as a $200 billion boondoggle.) Generally, the candidates made up a chorus for tax cuts and fighting--make that, winning--the Iraq war. (Then there was Ron Paul.) At times, the candidates hailed their rivals. It was so.... un-Democratic. No nastiness--even though McCain and Romney, essentially tied for first place in the Florida polls, have been hurling negative ads at each other. (A Romney ad assails McCain for flip-flopping on tax cuts; a McCain spot blasts Romney for...flip-flopping on tax cuts. McCain is actually comparing Romney to John Kerry.)

If you were forced to pick a winner--and in the absence of policy disputes, the debate was all about the horse race--you'd probably have to choose Romney, who seemed quasi-commanding and who this night, for some reason, looked more like Hollywood's idea of a president than usual. But no candidate hurt his own prospects. That doesn't mean, though, they didn't come out with some whoppers. Here's a sampling:

* Moderator Tim Russert asked McCain about a comment McCain had supposedly made--"I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues; I still need to be educated"--and McCain shot back, "I don't know where you got that quote from; I'm very well-versed in economics." Well, McCain did tell the Baltimore Sun, "The issue of economics is something that I've really never understood as well as I should." So much for being "well-versed."

* Asked whether it was un-American for U.S. banks to seek infusions of billions of dollars in capital from foreign sources, Giuliani said there was nothing wrong with that as long as "they're transparent." Giuliani, though, still refuses to be transparent about his own multi-million-dollar business dealings, declining to release information about the clients and foreign officials he has worked with as a consultant.

* McCain said that the invasion of Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein was "hell-bent on acquiring" weapons of mass destruction. Actually, he wasn't. Saddam might have desired WMDs. But for years prior to the invasion, the Iraqi dictator had suspended his WMD program and done nothing to pursue WMDs, according to the final report of Charles Duelfer and his Iraq Survey Group.

* Mike Huckabee, voicing his support for Bush's invasion of Iraq, said that just because the United States didn't find WMDs in Iraq that "doesn't mean it wasn't there." The aforementioned Duelfer report--and Duelfer took over the Iraq Survey Group as a hawk who had believed Saddam possessed WMDs--made it clear that Saddam not only had no weapons in the years leading up to the war, he had no WMD program. In other words, there were no WMDs to be found in Iraq--period.

* Romney praised Bush for mounting the Iraq war and making sure al Qaeda could not gain "a safe haven" in Iraq "for launching attacks against us." That was certainly not an issue prior to the invasion. Saddam had no operational ties with al Qaeda. And now there's little, if any chance, that the small and unpopular al Qaeda outfit in Iraq could take over Iraq, pushing aside the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds.

* Romney claimed that under Hillary Clinton's universal health care proposal, everybody will get their coverage "from the government." Here's how Clinton describes it: "If you have a plan you like, you keep it. If you want to change plans or aren't currently covered, you can choose from dozens of the same plans available to members of Congress, or you can opt into a public plan option like Medicare." That's not a government-only plan.

* Huckabee said that Americans "ought to be able to respect people who don't have any [faith]." Yet in a book he co-wrote in 1998, Huckabee huffed, "Men who have rejected God and do not walk in faith are more often than not immoral, impure, and improvident (Gal. 5:19-21). They are prone to extreme and destructive behavior, indulging in perverse vices and dissipating sensuality (1 Cor. 6:9-10)." That just doesn't come across as a respectful attitude regarding people who don't have faith.

But the candidates sure did behave nicely.

Blinded by McCain, Michelle Malkin Misreads MoJo

Michelle Malkin, my old sparring partner at Fox News, ought to reread my colleague Jonathan Stein's dispatch on the feverish McCain hatred among right-wing commentators (including Malkin). On her blog, Malkin cites the article as--a-ha!--yet more proof of the "left-wing media's love affair" with Senator John McCain. But in the piece, Stein shows McCain no affection. He merely reports on the rage McCain triggers among conservative leaders, writers, and bloggers, noting that this gang, already upset with McCain's recent success in the GOP primaries, will go ballistic if he does well in Florida and--gasp!--on Supersaturated Tuesday. Her item confirms the point of the piece: McCain sure pushes these guys and gals over the edge. And consider this: McCain is the only major Republican party candidate who's done any heavy-lifting in support of George W. Bush's war in Iraq. Yet he gets no love from these war cheerleaders. What ingrates.

Saddam Gambled And Lost, Says FBI Agent

Saddam Hussein played up his mythical WMD stockpile in the belief that the U.S. would not invade, according to George Piro, an FBI agent who interrogated him after his December 2003 capture. Apparently, he was convinced that the U.S. would only drop a few bombs, not send in ground troops. He'd survived a similar air attack in 1998, he told Piro, and thought he could do it again. But why, you ask? He wanted to keep up his tough-guy image. "For him, it was critical that he was seen as still the strong, defiant Saddam," Piro says. "He thought that would prevent the Iranians from re-invading Iraq." Piro will appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday.

Michelle vs. Bill: In the Democratic Race, the Spouses Go at It

Can Michelle Obama take down Bill Clinton?

Well, can she at least exploit the spouse of her spouse's chief rival to raise money for her own spouse?

On Thursday afternoon, the Obama campaign sent out a fundraising appeal signed by Barack Obama's wife that uses Bill Clinton's recent swipes at Senator Obama as its main get-out-your-checkbooks motivator. She writes:

We knew getting into this race that Barack would be competing with Senator Clinton and President Clinton at the same time.

We expected that Bill Clinton would tout his record from the nineties and talk about Hillary's role in his past success. That's a fair approach and a challenge we are prepared to face.

What we didn't expect, at least not from our fellow Democrats, are the win-at-all-costs tactics we've seen recently. We didn't expect misleading accusations that willfully distort Barack's record.

Barack Obama isn't relying on a former President of the United States to campaign for him.

He's relying on us -- you, me, and hundreds of thousands of people like us who are giving whatever they can afford to support this movement.

The Obama vs. Clinton and Clinton spat has been getting ugly, so much so that some Democratic leaders have been complaining that Bill Clinton has gone too far in assailing Obama, the most inspiring figure the Democratic Party has seen in years.

But, as I've already written, a mud-fight between the Clintons and Obama benefits Hillary Clinton. All this sniping sucks up oxygen (time and media attention) that Obama could otherwise be using to make his case that he's a transformative, unconventional candidate committed to change and a new brand of politics. If in the days before Supersaturated Tuesday, the race comes across to television viewers (read: would-be voters) as a fury of accusation and counter-accusation, the more conventional candidate with the more conventional message will have the upper hand. You know who that is.

By keeping Obama (and his wife) in the gutter, Bill Clinton renders it tougher for Obama to inspire and to soar. And it's hard to imagine that Mr. Clinton does not realize that.

Happy 2008! Your Prius' Fuel Efficiency Just Dropped 16%

Old-school Detroit must be smiling just a bit right now. After decades of providing unrealistic fuel-efficiency estimates—those big numbers touted in magazine ads and printed in large fonts on the vehicle-details stickers in new car lots—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finally modified its method for calculating average miles per gallon, and the most fuel-efficient cars on the road have taken the biggest hit. Then again, they have a lot farther to fall.

The new method, which applies to all 2008 models and beyond, still doesn't quite reflect actual driving conditions, but unlike the old numbers, which basically reflected your mileage in heaven (or, if you prefer, in an idealized lab setting), the new ones take into account things like acceleration, winter driving, air conditioner use, and realistic speeds (ever tried doing 55 in a 55 zone on a moderate-traffic day? It's a recipe for abuse). Alas, the new formula appears to favor the gas guzzlers. Combined mileage for a 2007 Toyota Prius (automatic, 4 cylinder, 1.5 L engine) is down 16 percent under the new formula, to 46 mpg. The '07 Honda Civic Hybrid is also down 16 percent, to 42 mpg.

On the other hand, the Hummer, that very symbol of anti-environmental profligacy, didn't do as badly. The mileage for a 2007 H3 with 4WD only fell 12 percent. Its new EPA rating is 15 mpg.

Some of the very dirtiest dogs, the midlife-crisis vehicles, did almost as badly as the Prii, although to knock the mileage of a Ferrari 612 Scaglietti down 15 percent only required a drop of 2 mpg. It's a fast car, but with its new EPA rating of 11 mpg (premium gas), it'll drain wallets even faster. Ferrari's 599 GTB (automatic, 12 cylinder, 5.9 liter engine) got luckier; it only lost 8 percent in its drop from 13 to 12 mpg—and who drives an automatic Ferrari, fer chrissake! Meanwhile, Lamborghini's L-148 Mucielago (manual, 12 cylinders, 6.5 liters) dropped from 11 mpg to 10, a 9 percent loss. (You can find out how your own muscle car did here.)

The general trend was thus: The more beef under the hood, the less efficiency loss under the new calculation. The Ford Escape Hybrid and Toyota Accord Hybrid, which have bigger engines than the hybrid Civics and Prii, lost 13 percent EPA efficiency, leaving each with 27 mpg.

Now if only the agency could find a way to include guilt in its calculations…

"The Man's" Morse Code and the Continuing Blight of White Racism

Well, all my subliminal advertising worked: I'll be on Colbert today, barring death, famine, or a Britney Spears sighting.

If Tuesday's show is any indication, Colbert has still got it, writerless or not. If you didn't see it, you missed something sweet, wonderful and daring. I had extreme fun the first time last year and am determined to do so again. Here's hoping that I actually speak, given Colbert's nonstop high jinx. If I do, here's what I hope to get around to saying: Barack, don't let The Man force you to pull a Sister Souljah and apologize for being black.

In Slate, Mickey Kaus gallantly provides a primer for Barack to "escape the ghetto." Here's the thinking of no doubt many oh-so-post-racial white politicos (though Kaus doesn't endorse the entire idea; he just pubs it up): The moment Barack allowed the dreaded Reverend Al Sharpton to defend him against criticism for his past drug use, Obama became a race hustler, dealing the (oh dear, not this again) race card from the bottom of the deck. Sharpton is the embodiment of black perfidy, and to align oneself with him is to reject any claims of race transcendence or racial fair dealing, no matter whom whites ally themselves with. In other words, Caught ya being black, Obama! And we thought you were different. Funny how playing the race card is something only liberal blacks can do (though Secretary Rice's frequent invocation of girlhood segregation and knowing one of the Four Little Girls in Birmingham, not to mention Thomas' "high tech lynching," are never invoked as examples).

One of the things I didn't want to accept in Hillary's "it took a President to get the job done" was that she was sending The Man's Morse code—for President, read "white person," and for MLK, read "nice sermon, oratory boy, now step aside so the grown ups take over." Now I'm beginning to wonder. Are white folks calling up their new and improved inner night riders? SUVs instead of horses, but the demand, the expectation, of supremacy, remains the same.

Check out good old Dick Morris at Townhall neatly summing it up whilst simultaneously giving whites their marching orders. A victory for Obama in South Carolina will actually equal his eventual defeat, inevitable black defeat, as nature intended:

The run-up to South Carolina and the primary itself will feature constant focus on the African-American vote. Analysts and pundits will wonder if the wife of the “first black president” will lose to the real thing. She will. But, in a curious way, this will hurt Obama more than it will help him. It will create a racial subtext to a campaign that, until Iowa, didn’t have one. Watching blacks block vote for Obama will trigger a white backlash that will help Hillary win Florida and to prevail the week after.

A racial subtext that didn't exist before? Lord, the psychic energy it takes to maintain a belief in one's own innate superiority and everlasting innocence. But you can't say he's wrong in his prediction, though it might be nice if we could agree that it's, you know, morally wrong. In any event, Kaus suggests that Obama might want to get his Souljah on. If he does that, he will definitely lose my vote, not to mention my respect. When Bill did it, it was exactly the same as apologizing for being liked by blacks. If Obama does it, it will be exactly the same as apologizing for being black. It will be announcing that he's "different," better than the Negro hordes and should be forgiven his melanin. After all, its been purified by white blood. See how articulate and clean I am! No gold tee-fuses here. And my kids' names don't have any apostrophes or end in -ita. I did drugs, but hey, I did them with your kids in an Ivy League school.

The idea that Obama should feel the need to find something or someone black to denounce (Kaus, sincerely trying to be helpful, I believe, suggests affirmative action as the least offensive of Obama's choices) is pure insult, pure racism. Hillary Clinton can deploy Bob Johnson, purveyor of anti-black filth so vile his own mother should disown him, but Obama has to set up black targets of opportunity? I'm with Robert George. Instead of going Souljah, Obama should "tell the truth and shame the devil" of the black miscreants who align herself with him. His advice on Johnson was dead on:

Obama needs to turn this around: The response to Johnson's crack that Obama is taking racial cues from "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner" is to say, "Well, I'd rather my daughters learned about race from a movie like that—giving an optimistic view of society—than from the trash Mr. Johnson's BET often inflicts on Black America with scantily-clad women shaking their behinds and gangstas rappers using N-, B- and H- words gratuitously. Does Mr. Johnson believe that is "real life"? Does Mrs. Clinton associate herself with the images of women that Mr. Johnson's network has been spewing for years now?"

These are some questions to which many of the women of South Carolina might appreciate hearing some answers.

Obama: Confront the racism and white supremacy head on. Not with whining and overt denunciations of racism, but with the facts. Fact number one must be: Black is beautiful.

None of this is to say, of course, that there are no black problems to be dealt with, but if Obama isn't going to be the one to deal with them as constructively as possible—a la his gentle but firm rebuke of black homophobia, xenophobia and antisemitism—who will? (And, by the way, who's telling the truth on white folks?) I'd like to see him talk with blacks about the root causes (yeah, I went there) of black violence, poor educational and health outcomes, the war between black men and black women. Not denounce them. Try to heal them.

Who but Obama will treat blacks as free and equal human beings, deserving of the nation's time, attention and investment? If he goes Souljah, no one.

Giuliani Foreign Policy Advisor Says 'Bomb 'Em'

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With Rudy Giuliani hanging on at least until I-Can't-Believe-We-Have-Nine-More-Months-Of-This Tuesday (February 5), his candidacy still matters, if a little bit less than before. You might be interested to know, then, that one of the Hero of 9/11's neocon foreign policy advisors has just written an astoundingly long-winded piece in the conservative journal Commentary advocating that the U.S. military bring its shock and awe to Tehran. Norman Podhoretz, intellectual godfather to the neocons who goaded us into the Iraq mess, argues that the only way to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is a preemptive bombing campaign—this despite the latest National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran suspended its nuclear program in 2003. The only question, says Podhoretz, is of "who should do the bombing." Israel? Nope, they don't have the necessary military capability to ensure success and, besides, the Iranians would blame us anyway. "If Iran is to be prevented from becoming a nuclear power," he writes, "it is the United States that will have to do the preventing, to do it by means of a bombing campaign, and (because 'If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long') to do it soon."

So, does Rudy agree with this assessment? After all, as of October, Podhoretz was still among the group of hawks whispering in his ear (along with the likes of Daniel Pipes and Michael Rubin). According to Giuliani's chief foreign policy advisor, Charles Hill, a State Department veteran who also worked as an aide to U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali, the answer is no. "Norman's position is unique to Norman, and it's well thought out," Hill told the New York Sun last fall. "It is not a far out, radical position, and it is deeply felt and held intellectually, but it is unique to him. Rudy Giuliani has Rudy Giuliani's view." What's that exactly? That we should give tougher sanctions a chance. As for Podhoretz, he says, "I express my views mainly through email communications to the foreign policy team. Rudy is free to accept or reject them."

Still, having Podhoretz in the mix (not to mention Pipes and Rubin) is enough to make you question where Rudy's really coming from. He might as well add the Filipino Monkey as his communications secretary...

A Quick Hebrew Lesson for the Obama '69 Campaign

Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson notes that Obama is now selling gear with his name in Hebrew. One small mistake: That '08 should really be a '69, since the election occurs in year 5769 in the Jewish calendar.

Update: I misread the Obama website; it doesn't call the pin the "NY for Obama button." But speaking of New Yorkers, you can get Hebraicized Hillary tote bags and t-shirts from Jews for Hillary.

Prepping for Bush's State of the Union

President Bush's final State of the Union is coming up in just four days (yeah, we hadn't really heard about it either). The video below puts last year's SOTU into context and gets your bullsh*t force-field up and running, so you won't kill yourself on the 28th.

A Black Box for Botox?

In a move likely to be protested by TV anchorwomen and medi-spas everywhere, the consumer group Public Citizen has petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to place a black box warning label on Botox indicating that the popular anti-wrinkle treatment can be deadly. The FDA has received reports of at least 16 Botox-related deaths, including four in children under 18, as well as 180 cases of serious adverse reactions to the drug.

The adverse reactions are much worse than a few laugh lines. The botulism toxin, which smooths wrinkles by relaxing muscles, occasionally migrates far beyond the creased brow. Botox can paralyze the respiratory muscles or cause difficulty in swallowing, a problem that leads to food and liquids lodging in the lungs and causing life-threatening pneumonia.

European regulators have already widely publicized the risk, but the FDA has been slow to react, leaving Americans blissfully ignorant about the perils of vanity and doctors free to administer the drug for all sorts of unapproved uses. (The only cosmetic use of Botox approved by the FDA is for smoothing wrinkles between the eyebrows.) While the new FDA data are striking, didn't we all sort of know, deep down, that paralyzing your face with a deadly poison was probably a bad idea? Here's hoping that Public Citizen helps make wrinkles fashionable again.