2008 Election archives
When John McCain picked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate at the start of the Labor Day weekend, analysts immediately labeled the move as a cynical ploy to woo Hillary Clinton's female voters, who still felt jilted by the Democratic Party's selection of Barack Obama as their nominee.
But only a political insider would see the world so narrowly. It's men, not women, that Obama should be worried about losing.
Like others, I do not see Kim Gandy and the National Organization for Women stumbling over themselves to put a woman in the White House as they did earlier this year. It's the married men, who felt abandoned by the Republican Party on its march towards theocracy whose votes are put back in play with the selection of Sarah Palin.
Within twenty four hours of the Palin pick, one of my best friends declared his excitement for the McCain campaign. He made this announcement as I was driving him home from the airport - he had been in Denver all week at the Democratic National Convention. My father and my brother voted for Obama in the Texas Primary, but on the heels of the Palin nomination, my father wanted to know how he could donate to McCain's campaign and let them know that it was all about her.
So what gives? I've had trouble explaining this transformation to others because most people see politics as linear. Obama, on the far left of American politics, is about as far away from the anti-abortion, pro-gun, pro-tax cut Palin as you can get. Even my two-dimensional, circular theory of politics - that Big Government Liberals and Big Government Conservatives aren't so far apart - fails to explain how one woman could cause such a tectonic shift in people's political persuasions.
Sarah Palin's greatest asset is not the fact that she has more executive experience than Barack Obama and Joe Biden - combined. Her track record of fighting corruption and reforming government may not boost her running mate's chances. Nor will, Sarah Palin win over many voters because she lowered property taxes in Wasilla by sixty percent when she was Mayor.
No, Sarah Palin brings a new aesthetic to the once pallid McCain for President Campaign. The effect that Palin, a former Miss Wasilla and runner-up for Miss Alaska 1984, has had on the McCain campaign goes well beyond men's tendency to avoid thinking with their heads. She's making an old man look young.
American voters like to see their leaders as a reflection of themselves. That is why we hold politicians to a higher moral standard than, say, Hollywood actors. To many men across the country, Obama, the fresh-faced candidate of change was young and virile, and offered hope not only for the country, but for themselves. Although the projection of self upon the candidate was imperfect - Obama is indeed young, and with his svelte physique he doesn't look like most Americans - it was the best among many poor choices.
But the addition Sarah Palin to the GOP ticket changes the equation. As Rush Limbaugh put it, she's a babe.
You've, of course, heard the expression that we are the company we keep. I am well aware that people perceive me differently whether I am hanging out with my twenty year-old buddies than when I am with my friends in their thirties. I don't even want to think about how the look at me when I am enjoying happy hour with my sixty year old associates!
Likewise, perceptions of John McCain and Barack Obama have shifted because of their selection of a running mates. Throughout the next few months, Sarah Palin, an intelligent, charming, attractive woman half his age, will be by John McCain's side as he makes his case to become president. To many men, that's got to be the American Dream. John McCain, overnight, went from an American Methuselah, to a political version of Hugh Hefner.
So I have to ask: who wins the virility wars now, Barack?
There's nothing better to grab a nation's attention than a good old-fashioned sex story. It seems every few months, politician we've never heard of - and some we have - has his personal indiscretions exposed across the national media.
When it comes to covering sex scandals, the press is so consumed about coming to the party too soon - under the guise of concerns about privacy or propriety - that they never time a story's release appropriately. And it's a tortured path that leads - regardless of the political orientation of protagonist - to criticism of political bias.
Since 2007, readers of the National Enquirer, Slate's Kausfiles and, well, the Internet, have been familiar with the name Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer for former Senator John Edwards. Only this last week, however, did I realize that her name was not pronounced "Riley," because there was nary a peep about her - and the suspicions surrounding her involvement with the Edwards campaign - in the national press.
When Edwards was caught hiding from photographers in a Beverly Hills hotel restroom at 2:40 in the morning, did we hear about it? Did we see the pictures of Edwards coddling Hunter's child in a room of that very hotel? Not until John Edwards admitted to having an affair with Hunter did the story of Edwards' extramarital affair break into the mainstream media consciousness.
It is more curious when the story broke rather then how. That Edwards was cheating on his cancer-stricken wife had been known throughout the Democratic primaries. To ignore that, as the press did, only served to benefit their story line of a competitive primary season and, as some of her supporters allege, to hurt Hillary Clinton's chances of winning the Democratic nomination early.
While the effects on the Democratic Primary are debatable, the timing of the Edwards story raises an important question about political coverage: what does the media know about the two presumptive nominees, Republican Sen. John McCain and Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, and when will they tell us what they know?
Sex scandals involving Republicans always seem to get exposed right around election season. The media sat on the Mark Foley Instant Messaging scandal from May until after Labor Day in the 2006 election cycle. In the 2003 recall election, the Los Angeles Times dropped a stink-bomb of a story about Arnold Schwarzenegger's grabbiness the Thursday before voters went to the polls. And only after Senator John McCain secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Republican nominee that the New York Times ran its poorly-sourced sex scandal story on the Senator.
Meanwhile, the media sat on the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal until the story was forced into the open by the Drudge Report and we all learned of the infamously stained blue dress. The media apparently knew nothing about New York Governor Elliot Spitzer until the FBI went after him. In all fairness, they pounced on the David Vitter story when the Republican Senator admitted he had hired a call girl. And Sen. Larry Craig's frequenting mens' restrooms for sex was widely known across Internet chat rooms and political sites for two years before a courtroom confession broke his story. Had his Minneapolis encounter not occurred, questions about his tap-dancing skills surely would have arisen in his next re-election campaign. In these cases the press only reported the stories when their hands were forced.
Will Republicans only learn the truth about their nominee after the Minneapolis convention, when it is too late to change horses? And, pray tell, what does the media has on Obama, the media's own personal love child? If there were something scandalous, would American know about it before it is too late? Somehow, I have to wonder.
With only 13 weeks to the Presidential election, I have basically tuned out. I have a hard time placing all my chips on Barack Obama's judgement, which lacking experience, is all he has to offer. And since John McCain gleefully bucks the bedrock beliefs of the Republican Party, I am turned off by his candidacy.
I like to think of myself as a moderate Republican, one who believes that the government should stay out of our pocketbooks and out of our personal lives. The values that attract me to the Republican Party are simple. I believe in limited government, personal responsibility and individual liberty. There is a role for government in providing things like infrastructure and a common military defense which would not otherwise be provided by the collective actions as individuals. But as far as the government's job, that's it.
Unfortunately, the Republican nominee for president has made his reputation as a maverick by violating those very principles. When you look at the volumes of experience John McCain has had in the United States Senate, his "moderation" from Republican values, always seems to involve extending the long arm of big government.
John McCain's signature legislation, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, flies in the face of the Republican principles I hold dear. It says who may speak, and how much, and it assumes that no one can be trusted to be free from corruption. So much for personal responsibility!
As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee in the late Clinton Administration years, McCain battled the tobacco industry, pushing for higher taxes to pay for anti-smoking programs and to pay states' healthcare costs, once again, expanding the role of government because people cannot be trusted to make their own decisions.
McCain became a media darling partly by challenging George Bush for the presidency eight years ago, working the press on a personal level as a way to combat the the president's winning strategy. And in the early days of the administration, the Arizona Senator embraced his "maverick" label to contrast himself with the new Republican President.
He took on climate change, the losing Democratic nominee's issue, and HMO reform, an issue embraced by then-new Sen. Clinton when she was First Lady and then cast one of two decisive votes to keep George Bush's 2001 tax cuts from being permanent. So much for individual liberty when it comes to the pocketbook!
After September 11th, it was John McCain who pushed legislation to federalize airport security.That fact that should be written on the bottom of the trays at airport security stations where you take off your shoes, and unload you hair gel and MacBook from your carry-ons.
When justifying his votes for Democrat-backed Supreme Court nominees Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Steven Bryer, McCain claimed that, "under our Constitution, it is the president's call to make." But when President Bush made his choices for the courts, McCain stepped in with the "Gang of Fourteen" preserving the right for Senators to filibuster the his party leader's nominees.
Most of McCain's fourth term in office has been spent negotiating immigration reform legislation which would extend the hand of government deep into the hiring practices of businesses around the country. "Enforcement first," if it means a crackdown on employers, is a big government, not a small government, approach to fixing immigration problems in America.
At the Republican Convention, McCain will try to cast himself as a conservative since he has already lost the media love affair to his opponent, Barack Obama. But McCain's record - and, unlike Obama he has a long one - shows where and how he breaks from Republican values, expanding government and taking away personal liberty based on the assumption that people cannot be trusted to take responsibility for their own actions. That's a maverick trend I'd like to buck!
With one hundred days before the election, New York Times Columnist Frank Rich has declared Democratic nominee Barack Obama the "Acting President" of the United States, based, apparently on the candidate's ability to assemble large crowd and amass television ratings. But as he basks in the glory of his European adventure, is it possible that Barack Obama has peaked too soon?
In the world of college football, coaches have to remind their players and alumni boosters that championships aren't won in September, they're won in January. The same is true of electoral politics. An "acting president" in July must still win in November.
Unfortunately for Obama, the headiness of his European coronation may turn against him in the next fourteen weeks.
The greatest risk for any public figure is to offend the media, it's main pipeline - yes, even in these days for Facebook, IM and blogs - to voters. When Bill Clinton wagged his finger to the press corps in 1998, and was later proven to be a liar, the press turned - really turned - against him for the first time in his administration.
Heretofore, Barack Obama has enjoyed an amiable relationship with the media, and in some cases, journalists' conduct could be considered lewd, which has led both of his rivals, Clinton and McCain, to cry foul. But the campaign's treatment of the press during Obama's whirlwind tour of the middle East and Europe seems to have soured them on the candidate.
Even before his feet hit the ground in the Middle East, Barack Obama's relationship with his press entourage when Der Spiegel took a quote from the Iraqi president out of context and interpreted it as an endorsement of Obama and his policies. Having the American press root for you is one thing - that's just us, kids - but having the foreign press manipulate world leaders on your behalf is not likely to win many votes on this side of the Atlantic.
This unique turn of events continued. On the first stop of Obama's whirlwind tour, when in Afghanistan, he had no official press pool, no reporters and no press conference on the ground. NBC's Andrea Mitchell broke ranks with her network colleagues and actually criticized the candidate for conducting what she called, "fake interviews."
Later on the trip, reporters complained that at Obama press conferences, only the candidate was given a microphone, so only the candidate could be heard but not the reporters' potentially hostile questioning.
By the time Obama arrived in Berlin to give his Victory Column speech, the mood of the press had turned on the candidate. In the coverage I saw his remarks played second fiddle to the setting and its place in history which were steadily compared to Berlin speeches by presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Substantively, Obama's speech did not measure up.
I must admit that I was busy celebrating my birthday, in grand style, over the weeklong Obama trip, but I do not once recall hearing Barack Obama's voice until his appearance on Meet the Press Sunday morning. His arrogance in not responding to legitimate questions from Tom Brokaw was off-putting, not only to me, but, I suspect, also to the media.
The press has gotten a taste of the "Acting President" Barack Obama administration, and I don't think they like it. With fourteen weeks to go, Obama's greatest risk is told in the Greek tragedy of Icarus, who soared on wings made of wax, and ignored the warnings not to fly to high. Drunk with the power of flight, he flew too close to the sun and the wings melted, there was no one there to catch him. If Obama continues to run his campaign like a presidential administration - with tightly-choreographed events and restricted access to the candidate - his alleged allies in the media may no longer be there should he start to fall.
It's "Jobs Week" in the John McCain for President campaign, focusing on policies that will help create jobs in the American economy. Keep taxes low, balance the Federal budget, making health care more affordable and establishing energy independence will help create jobs, according to the GOP Presidential contender.
But the bad feelings between McCain campaign and the Republican party's more conservative supporters over the nominees outspoken moderation on immigration is clouding the discussion. At the heart of the jobs debate, is the question of immigration. Unlike during past recessions, when immigrants were blamed for coming here and stealing American jobs few people are making that argument. Instead, the consensus seems to be that the immigrants who are here are working jobs in America, but they aren't necessarily taking American jobs.
In fact, the first question any uninterested observer should ask about the American economy is, why create jobs if we are importing labor? Because we are doing just that. America is importing labor when we outsource jobs to India or China. We import labor when we hire illegal immigrants to cook our food and clean our toilets. These are all jobs Americans could do, but even with unemployment increasing by the tens-of-thousands, we're not.
Before my brother and his family stayed in my apartment a couple weeks ago, I tried hiring some help to clean the place up. I asked many of my friends for referrals, and they extolled the virtues of Google Language Tools when dealing with their maids. But when one question came up - does he or she have the right to legally work in the United States? - the silence was deafening.
I went the safe route and hired a service, so they would have all the employer liability, but even then, only one of the three team members spoke English. Clearly the 6.8% of California workers on the unemployment list have not been looking for work cleaning toilets in West Hollywood.
But as John McCain revises his position on immigration as quickly as Barack Obama decides to look at the facts on the ground into consideration when he decides what to do in Iraq, one angle to the immigration debate gets left out. More than securing our borders and offering amnesty to undocumented immigrants, the best way to solve the problems at America's southern border is to create jobs...Mexican jobs.
While it is unadvisable to make sweeping statements about millions of people at once, it seems clear that the reason for the large numbers of undocumented workers in America is for better economic opportunities. And when "economic opportunity" means being a dishwasher or line cook, you know that things must be bad back home. And if they hated their families enough to get away from them by heading north, then why keep sending money back?
Unfortunately, on the campaign trail, the position of creating jobs in Mexico is not much of a winner if you're running for President of the United States. Instead, it is being danced around, referred to as part of more general discussions of trade issues and the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Senator McCain is an ardent supporter of NAFTA and all free trade. Conversely, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama caused a stir back in February when he said that NAFTA, "ships jobs overseas and force parents to compete with teenagers for minimum wage at Wal-Mart," and that he wanted to renegotiate the 1993 deal. .
Closing America's border to free trade, however, would probably create a giant sucking sound of immigrants coming north as lost jobs in maquiladoras make the perceived economic opportunity of minimum wage jobs in America even greater, especially if President Obama increases the minimum wage, to boot!
On the other hand, Republican John McCain has gone out on a limb and embraced free trade with the same fervor that he has embraced the equally popular Iraq War. It's dangerous politically, but smart as a policy. Keeping free trade with Mexico creates jobs south of the border producing everything from tomatoes to Volkswagens.
Only if the opportunity gap between Mexico and the United States can be closed will illegal immigration cease to be an issue. We can close that gap by tearing down America's economy, or by helping build Mexico's economy and creating Mexican jobs. I'd hope we can all agree on the latter.
Over the last week, Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama have engaged in a serious policy debate over energy policy. With oil pushing $140 a barrel, and gasoline breaking $5 a gallon in some parts of California, the debate shows the contrasts between the two candidates and, unfortunately, the shortsightedness of American politics in general.
John McCain's proposals to bring down energy costs are based primarily on the economic theories of supply and demand. McCain wants to increase supplies by allowing offshore drilling and domestic exploration, and constrain demand by challenging the private sector to develop new, gas-sipping technologies. What else would you expect from a Republican?
Barack Obama's idea for bringing down oil and gas prices, however, should offend anyone who got a passing grade in their freshman economics class in college. Obama's plan to bring down gas prices would be to tax oil companies' profits. Of course, after those profits are taxed the cost of the tax would have to be passed on to the revenue-generating side of the equation, to the consumer. Obama would then redistribute these taxes to help poorer Americans pay at the pump. What else would you expect from a Democrat?
But what we need in America are not partisan "solutions" like those but real alternatives for Americans to stop using gasoline altogether. The best way to end America's dependence on foreign oil is to get Americans to stop using oil. And the fastest way to accomplish this in a long-term way is to adopt new transportation and planning policies which allow Americans to abandon their automobiles altogether.
Out of the blue this weekend, my parents commented that they really liked my story about the cobwebs growing on my car eight weeks ago then struck the fear of God asking me if I thought they could live in my neighborhood without a car. After catching my breath, I found the polite response: "I am sure you could live without a car in Texas, too."
But, really, such a lifestyle is impossible in a subdivision outside San Antonio's Loop 1604, but there are plenty of parts of the city where such a lifestyle would be possible as long as two elements are present: density and mass transit.
Detroit won't like it and neither will our "friends" the Saudis, but if enough Americans abandon the idea that they must have a half-acre estate with the white picket fence, a haven best accessed by car, not subway, bus or train, we really could use less oil. Instead of suburban sprawl, we should pursue a model of Jeffersonian Urbanism, where we live in dense, but walkable and livable, neighborhoods. Only when we can get out of our cars will we forget about the price of gas.
With transportation infrastructure - highways and subways - the axiom is and has always been, "build it and they will come." Expand the freeway and, over time, people will just move further away from their jobs and the freeway will be congested. Build a subway and jobs and housing density will increase near the subway stops until a natural built-in ridership exists. One clearly reduces car and oil dependency, the other doesn't.
So let's take those royalties from John McCain's offshore drilling, or the receipts from Barack Obama's windfall profits tax, and invest them in mass transit. Let's also ease environmental rules not on oil companies, but on towns and cities, so that they can use their planning process to create livable, dense, walkable, urban neighborhoods. Do that, and only those who choose to live a car-oriented lifestyle would complain about gas prices. But it would be their choice, and American's don't look kindly on poor lifestyle choices.
As Hillary Clinton prepares to bow out of the Democratic race, I cannot help but feel that she is doing the nation, and her party a disservice by leaving the campaign.
She's clearly got support. And not just from folks like me who began this political year vowing to "vote for a New Yorker."
Since the media all but declared Sen. Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee in February, the voters have tried sending a message: he is not their man. Since March 1st, Obama suffered major losses in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and was trounced at the polls in Rhode Island, Kentucky, West Virginia and Puerto Rico. Since Obama became the party's front-runner the actual Democrats going to the polls have rejected his campaign of ideological extremism.
Somehow that message hasn't made it past the media hype supporting Obama. And given the Democratic National Committee's resistance to count every vote, maybe it is time for Hillary Clinton to concede the nomination. But she shouldn't give up on getting to the White House.
Independent campaigns that work apart from established parties often have more impact on day-to-day politics than we - or party historians - like to acknowledge. Lincoln's support came from abolitionists working outside mainstream politics. Teddy Roosevelt's ideas about 20th Century governing - encapsulated in his run for the White House as the "Bull Moose" candidate - led to substantive changes in the Republican Party politics. The Clintons themselves benefitted from independent Ross Perot's messages on fiscal policy - and heeded them once they gained th White House. If Clinton truly believes that the Democratic Party is disenfranchising voters in key swing states, then she should denounce its efforts, just as Obama, eventually, denounced his former pastor and church and launch her own run for the White House.
In doing so, Hillary Clinton can remind Democrats what the party used to stand for, and return to her husband's roots as a populist centrist. Hillary has an opportunity to wake up the echoes, cheering the names of Hiram Johnson and Susan B. Anthony, to lead a post-partisan, Post-Progressive coalition to victory, whether the odds be great or small.
A post-partisan, Post-Progressive Clinton would have a chance to win because - unlike other years - the two main parties choices are so stark. And I think many Americans like me are a little turned off by the choice between Republican John McCain and Democrat Obama. With McCain we have a Washington veteran, who claims to be conservative, but is best known for bucking the party of small government to advocate big government programs and regulating our freedoms. The alternative - a partisan ideologue whose oratory is easy on the ears but has shown no ability to accomplish anything other than win the affections of young voters and the popular press - is no more attractive.
Making things worse: At this juncture in the campaign, Obama and McCain have spent so much political capital speaking to their base that they have forgotten to speak for Americans. So who knows what they'll do once they're elected? A third-party Hillary Clinton, freed of the shackles of Democratic ideology, could talk to real Americans and address the issues straightforwardly.
On Iraq, she could say that, based on the intelligence given, her vote to authorize the war was the right one, and anyone who voted against the president - given what we thought we knew - would be dangerous to have in the White House. Now that we know that we had faulty intelligence, she can say she regrets the vote, but the U.S. must now focus on how we can keep winning the peace and bring our troops home victorious. That's straight talk you won't hear from Obama or McCain.
Clinton could focus on balancing the budget, just as her husband did, by growing the economy and controlling spending. While McCain's fighting pork-barrel spending sounds nice, it produces but a drop in the bucket when it comes to balancing the budget. Meanwhile Obama's plans would vastly expand government spending, while his tax hikes would send the economy back into recession.
A third-party Clinton could talk honestly about healthcare, free of the shackles of the nurses unions and other special interests which get in the way of true reform, and could offer a safety-net of care for Americans supplemented by insurance for those who need private healthcare.
And a Post-Progressive Movement for the 21st Century could tackle the 800-pound gorilla in Washington: entitlement reform. Ross Perot scared the bejesus out of voters with charts talking about how Social Security and Medicare would eat up the Federal Budget, helping Bill Clinton gain the White House. The problems Perot outlined in 1992, are about to come to roost and the Clintons owe it to America to be talking about them, now. Understanding that we have no option but to fix these systems, the American people will rally behind a candidate who talks solutions that are not seen as partisan.
By returning to her Democratic Leadership Council roots - the path of moderation that served the Democratic Party well - Hillary Clinton today has the ability to transcend politics and be the post-partisan leader Americans have been seeking. She can choose to fall in line and put party ahead of principle, give in to the will of the media ahead of the will of the voters, and prove correct those who selected a candidate other than the inevitable Clinton. This is an important choice for one other reason: If she cannot stand up for the voters who supported her, then we should not trust her to stand up for America when it counts.
Last September 26, I broke with conventional wisdom and predicted that the economy, not the war in Iraq, would be the deciding issue in the 2008 election. I was wrong. Ironically, the issue that President Bush heralded as the most important challenge facing America before 9/11 will be the issue that determines his successor: China.
Regardless of what happens with the economy - whether we slip into a recession or narrowly avoid one - the issue will be an afterthought by August 2008. Either things will be getting better - as recent activity on Wall Street seems to indicate - or the issue will have lost its political currency as the drumbeat of recession fade to provide little more than the background rhythm to the campaign march.
Much to this political junkie's regret, it looks more and more like the two parties' conventions will provide no more drama than usual. Instead, the conventions and the campaign will be framed by what happens in the two weeks prior: the Beijing Olympics.
How we relate to China is perhaps the critical question facing America today. When he came to office, President Bush made it his top priority, engaging China in a dialectical competition of superpowers old and new. But then 9/11 happened and the world's most populous country fell our of America's consciousness, as the U.S. slowly developed a relationship with China that was more codependent than competitive.
The China Question is about much more than foreign policy and the basic question of whether we should have a competitive or a cooperative relationship with the country. Each approach is a dual-edged sword.
The chief argument for why we need a cooperative approach with China is economic. China is beginning to rival oil in its importance to America's well-being. America's ability to have growth without inflation depends on our ability to outsource manufacturing to China, while growing our science and service sectors here at home.
This trade benefits everyday Americans by keeping the products we buy affordable, and it benefits China by giving working-class jobs to millions of its inhabitants. Ours is a symbiotic relationship that, if broken, could have disastrous geopolitical consequences.
At the same time, China's economic growth comes at a cost to the environment that can be seen on our shores. As much as a quarter of the air pollution in Los Angeles comes from China, and with its smoke-belching ships coming in to port in San Pedro and Long Beach, the Chinese can probably be considered the single-largest source of pollution in California.
China can no longer get a pass on the environment like it got in the Kyoto Treaty. Unless China joins in the fight against climate change, no regulation or cap-and-trade system here at home will make a dent. If we restrict our economic activity with environmental regulation while allowing China to pollute at will, the sun will set on the American empire faster than the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Morally, pursuing a cooperative relationship with China is dubious as well. Beijing's human rights record is notorious and while its subjects are beginning to enjoy economic liberties, the concept of universal human rights is foreign to them. How can we claim to be defenders of freedom, whilst turning a blind eye on the world's great oppressors?
Pulling out of China, economically, would be exponentially worse than pulling out of Iraq militarily, but maintaining the relationship without action on the environmental and human rights front will also place us in peril.
The China Question has everything: the economy, the environment, human rights and geopolitics. But it does not have partisanship, yet. Neither ideology espoused by John McCain, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton provides a logically consistent answer to the many issues it raises.
This voter wants to know how our would-be Presidents would approach this tangled web with China, and after the world focuses on Beijing this summer, many others will be asking the same question: Is China friend or foe, or is our relationship status summed up with, "It's Complicated"?
Although I am a registered Republican, I am first and foremost a capitalist. So much of the last ten weeks of my life has been developing and managing an online outreach campaign on behalf of one of the Democratic presidential candidates.
While I have learned a lot about the internal divides within the Democratic Party - and at times wondered how we Republicans ever lose elections to these people - I have also gotten an insight into the American voter on a state-by-state basis. I've come to one conclusion: a good number of Americans still don't know who Hillary Clinton is.
In purchasing Google Adwords, I have gotten a behind-the-scenes look at what people are searching for, and the numbers are staggering. In Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania, more than two-thousand people per day misspelled Hillary Clinton's name; In Indiana and North Carolina, one out of six searches for Hillary Clinton have just one "L" in her first name. Another five percent are looking for Hillary Rodman Clinton, who apparently served eight years First Lady of the NBA Bad Boys Club.
It's not as if Hillary Rodham Clinton weren't First Lady of the United States for eight years, or that her first name were not printed on her campaign materials - the signs and placards at all her events let you know which Clinton is running: Hillary! Yet people who own computers and are researching the candidates still don't seem to know her yet.
Unfortunately for those people who do not yet know who Hillary Clinton is, Googling her isn't going to tell you much. The first page of results yields her official campaign website, her Senate website, the White House website and her MySpace profile, all of which will tell you what she wants you to hear. The rest of the links - CNN, Washington Post and the New York Times, for example - only give information on the candidate from a media-filtered perspective. The only "independent" source is Wikipedia, and I imagine the Kossacks will get to that page at some point.
Perhaps more interesting from my perspective is who advertises to the Googling masses for each candidate. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have made a point of "owning" their search pages. Search for either candidate and their own website is the sponsored link that returns - at a cost of somewhere near $3 each time someone clicks on the link, a fortune in click-through ad rates. Go try it and come back, while the folks in Mountain View ring the cash register. Somewhere there is GOP experiment that might be called "Spend Obama's Money Experiment" waiting to happen.
When I Google Clinton, an ad for Time Magazine shows up, and when I Google Obama, I get the Chicago Tribune, along with an ad saying Obama gets an "A+" on Middle Class Issues, but when I click on it, he really has an 80% rating, with 50% absences. That website must be grading on a curve!
The role of the Internet in politics continues to evolve. While the blogs were all the rage back in the 2004 campaign, segmentation and specialization in readership and editorial has made them little more than an echo-chamber for preaching to the choir.
With contextual advertising - buying ad depending on what the reader has called up on the page - it is possible to do some very elegant micro-targeting. Look up the MySpace profile of a veteran of the Marine Corps, as I did a few weeks back, and see an ad from John McCain, targeted directly towards service members and vets. But this is also a risky strategy because such ads could also end up on less-than desirable websites using similar keywords - "service" and "men" in their contexts. For my editor's sake I won't link to them here, you will have to use your imagination.
With search marketing, there is the prospect of reaching persuadable voters, who for whatever reasons are going online to look for information about the candidates. And right now, a well placed search-marketing ad campaign can be done efficiently if targeted to the right search terms and geography.
But as more political consultants and interest groups realize that they, too, can end up on Hillary Clinton's search results - and get a decent click-through rate - it may be that the real winner in this primary and future elections is neither Clinton nor Obama. It's Google.
Although Pennsylvania's "decisive" primary decided absolutely nothing, Democratic Party leaders should learn a few things from the past seven weeks. Senator Hillary Clinton is not backing down and is finally willing to fight for the nomination. Barack Obama can outspend his opponents 3-to-1 and still not shift enough voters to win an election. And, most importantly, if Clinton can win in Indiana and Puerto Rico, the party's leaders will face a tough decision in August not between two candidates but about the future direction of the Democratic Party.
Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton can win their party's nomination on pledged delegates alone. The decision will come down to two groups of party leaders - the infamous super-delegates and the much-less scrutinized Democratic Party Credentials Committee, which will decide whether to seat delegates from Florida and Michigan.
Led by Alexis Herman, James Roosevelt, Jr. and Eliseo Roques-Arroyo, the Committee is made up of three representatives from each state's slate of delegates, and they will end up deciding whether Florida and Michigan's delegates and each state's superdelegates will get a vote in Denver. Whether or not Florida and Michigan count could well be the deciding factor between whether Clinton or Obama has a lead in pledged delegates, the popular "vote", or in both.
Obama supporters have their talking points at the ready for this fight: their candidate is a once-in-a-generation leader who has brought new voters into the Democratic Primary. Turn them away with what might be seen as backroom manipulation of the "popular" vote - a decision to count Michigan and Florida after all - and they may never come back.
For any political operative, that is a seductive logic: rather than dividing the existing political pie between Democrats and Republicans, make it larger by bringing in new voters. But it's doesn't really hold up.
Here in California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger brought new voters into the California electoral process when he ran for Governor in 2003 and again in 2006 when he ran for re-election. The Republican governor carried 57 of 80 Assembly Districts in 2006. 22 of these were seats held by Democrats. Since 2002, Republicans have not picked up any state Legislative seats in California; as far as California Republican candidates are concerned, Schwarzenegger has no coattails.
The Democratic Party's last once-in-a-generation transformational leader, John F. Kennedy, remains a great inspiration to his party and to this nation. But how well have Democrats done since the Kennedy Administration?
Conversely, the risk to the Democratic Party of not seating the Florida and Michigan delegations is much greater. For starters, both Florida and Michigan are swing states, which if either is lost, could swing the Electoral College to Republicans.
More important is who actually voted in the Florida and Michigan primaries: people who took the time to go to the polls and cast a ballot they weren't even sure would count. Those are a die-hard voters.
In grassroots politics, these folks would be called "fours" or "fives" - meaning that they had voted in four or five of the last elections. As opposed to the "zeros" or "ones" who joined the Democratic Party primary process only to cast a ballot for Barack Obama, you can bet your money that these "fours" and "fives" will be casting votes regardless of who is on the ballot.
To deny the votes of the Democratic Party's most loyal voters in two critical swing states is a risky gambit. To deny their voice solely to appease "Obama voters" who have shown no previous support for the Party, nor evidence that they would were his name not on the ballot, is a sucker's bet - one that even as a Republican, I could not in good conscience recommend they make.
Editor's Note: Scott Olin Schmidt holds a significant financial interest in a corporation which is advising an independent expenditure committee on marketing of pro-Clinton websites. But that still doesn't mean he'll vote for her.
Conventional wisdom in Republican circles and among the mainstream media is that the longer and hotter the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination gets, the better for our nominee, John McCain. Republicans giggle with glee at the sight of two Democrats tearing each other apart, with the same gusto as the media looks with horror.
But I, for one, am not quite convinced that a protracted nomination battle will be a bad thing for the Democrats in the end. While there is plenty of schadenfreude for Republicans watching Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama wallop each other, the mudslinging between Democrats may work to their favor in the end.
My five year-old nephew would be able to see the allegory for the McCain campaign in an old children's tale, the Tortoise and the Hare. For those who do not remember the Aesop, the story goes like this: a rabbit and a turtle are in a race, the rabbit gets off to a quick start while the turtle plods along steadily. The rabbit decides to take a rest, but is overtaken and passed by the turtle and loses in the end.
The Republican nomination process felt a lot like that rascally rabbit this year. In 23 mere days between New Hampshire and Florida, John McCain went from also-ran to the nominee. It really wasn't much of a race. Since then, he has toured the nation, and the globe, but has he not really been in an all-out campaign mode - unlike both Democrats.
Before the 2008 Presidential Election began, neither Clinton nor Obama had ever faced much of an electoral challenge; let's face it, Rick Lazio and Allan Keyes are no John McCain. But just as a vaccination introduces a small but manageable dose of a virus into the system in order to build defenses against a disease, the Democratic mudslinging between Clinton and Obama could ultimately inoculate the eventual nominee from Republican attacks, whomever he or she may be. And they will have months of campaign trench-warfare under their belts by the time their party picks a nominee. That's more time on the road in campaign mode than John McCain has had in his nearly eight decades.
The names Tony Rezko or Reverend Jeremy Wright seem today to be road bumps to the nomination for Barack Obama. But by addressing these issues, and absorbing their impact in March, not October, the junior Senator from Illinois may be able to inoculate himself from these issues later on. Likewise, Travelgate, Whitewater, Monica, Bosnian snipers - and more - will be old news by the time that Hillary gets the nomination, should that come to pass.
In contrast, John McCain has by and large managed to get this far without enduring many attacks. Outside of a below-the-belt article from the New York Times, the worst that McCain has faced was an ad by Mitt Romney which only referred to the Senator metaphorically as a Republican proxy for Hillary Clinton.
Between now and September, John McCain will be an afterthought in the national media, as newspapers, television and the websites large and small all focus on the merits of having either Clinton or Obama in the White House. Come Labor Day, McCain will be the political hare. He may need to be awakened from his nap!
So to my Republican friends, I must say, "be careful what you wish for," and to my associates across the aisle, I say, "simmer down," it's always darkest before the sun rises.
Over the Easter Holiday, as I listened to messages of hope and redemption, I was reminded not of my early years attending a suburban Texas Protestant church, but of the presidential candidacy of Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.
The core mesages of Obama's campaign - hope and change - are at their heart, messianic. Weren't hope and change the virtues Christ himself was preaching as he led his followers to Jerusalem to overthrow the corrupt leaders in the temple? Obama's candidacy offers many Americans hope that one man can go into the temple known as Washington, D.C. and rid the place of its corruption, bring its inhabitants together and deliver us to a promised land - a changed land - of peace and prosperity.
Like others, I am somewhat troubled by the devotion of Barack Obama's followers. To hear Obama's supporters speak reminds me of some evangelical Christians in their devotion to the man and his cause. Such is the degree of faith Obama supporters are required to maintain that I'm reminded of a famous quotation: "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me."
I don't feel as though I'm exaggerating. Not too much, anyway. About ten days ago, I was chatting with two friends, one who has been on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton and one who is a reporter for a local news station. To protect his identity, we'll just say he's Not Backing Clinton. Here is how I recount the conversation:
"If you think the media is biased towards Obama, we are not. If we have a bias, it is towards the truth," my reporter friend started.
"Oh really?" was all we had to say to egg him to elucidate.
"See McCain and Clinton, they have long records of public service and public statements, and so we can check and see if they're telling the truth. But because they have records to contradict what they're saying, we have to report on it. Obama has no record to contradict what he says, so therefore, we must assume that everything he says is the truth. And so, if it seems we are biased towards Obama, it is because our bias is for the truth, and Obama is the Truth."
At that point, I had to get another cocktail.
The similarities between Obama supporters and Evangelical Christians are becoming clear: they are both based on a fundamental reliance on faith. Clinton and McCain supporters tend towards empiricism - basing their vote on a candidate's record and ability to implement solutions, Obama's followers must put aside their skepticism and have faith in their candidate's vision.
Because he has no record of, you know, actually doing things in the United States Senate, Barack Obama must ask his followers to believe in his ability to implement hope and change, just as the Bible asks its readers to have faith that the earth was created some 5,000 years ago.
So no, Barack Obama is no secret-Muslim Manchurian Candiate trying to infiltrate America's political system. Rather, Obama is exploiting people's need to believe in something and with soaring oratory has attracted a flock of believers.
With the rapid collapse of financial house Bear Stearns over the weekend, the collapse of the house of cards that Wall Street built atop America's housing boom is underway--despite temporary market rallies indicating otherwise. And while much attention will focus on how a company deemed solvent on a Wednesday could be belly-up by Sunday, America needs to come to grips with the fact that accountability for the current credit crisis is widespread.
When economic and financial systems are in crisis, the initial urge is to take action to mitigate the pain. But in mitigating the effects of the housing bust, we may only be spreading it out longer and delaying the time that we can recover. What is really needed is a full-scale assault to root out the causes of the housing collapse before we can begin the growth cycle anew.
The knee-jerk reaction in Washington - and on the campaign trail - is to do whatever it takes to keep people in their homes. This is admirable, and certainly a worthy goal but it should not be done with a carte-blanche for all Americans who are facing foreclosure or are struggling to pay their mortgages. Blame for the recession America seems to be facing, and inflation we are currently fighting, lies not solely at the feet of Wall Street, but at the front porches of hundreds of thousands - if not millions of Americans - whose action should warrant their being labeled nothing more than"Main Street criminals".
Housing prices were able to inflate in America over the past decade not because Americans were becoming wealthier, but because many unscrupulous Americans defrauded the nation's financial systems.
I have no doubt that the FBI, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and - eventually - Congress will conduct investigations into Bear Stearns and whichever financial institution takes it in the chin next. But such investigations will only focus on the symptoms, not the causes, of America's current economic turmoil.
What we need now, are further investigations into how so many people got into homes they could not afford. Let's do some quick cocktail-napkin math. If at the peak of the housing boom, the median price of a home in Southern California's San Fernando Valley was $750,000, then that would require mortgage payments in the range of $4000-5000 per month. To qualify for such a mortgage, that would require an income close to $200,000, especially in such a high-tax state. And how many people are making that kind of money? Not even in tony Beverly Hills does the median income come close to those levels!
The state attorneys general need to go back to the work that they gave up after scoring some high-profile victories in their investigation of the mortgage industry. Mortgage brokers, realtors, and appraisers who profited unscrupulously need to be held accountable for putting Americans in a place of peril by lending money and encouraging those who couldn't afford big-ticket mortgages to buy - on little more than faith and wobbly credit.
But the investigation should not stop there. Before anyone benefits from a "foreclosure freeze" or other federal program to keep them in their homes, their mortgage applications should be reviewed. If anyone facing foreclosure lied about their income, assets or ability to pay, then not only should they not receive mortgage assistance, they should be prosecuted for fraud by the local District Attorney. These Main Street Criminals essentially robbed their bank with a pen, and not a gun. In many cases walked away with more cash than one could likely get from an armed robbery.
Every day, the rest of us Americans are paying for these excesses. We pay with our taxes going to bail out people in mortgages they cannot afford, and we pay with the billions of dollars needed to bail out Bear Stearns. We pay with inflated housing costs, we pay with each rate cut that sends inflation higher and the dollar lower, and we pay with soaring costs of commodities, every time we buy a cup of coffee.
From Wall Street to Main Street, everyone who contributed to the current credit crunch must be held accountable. Because the rest of us are paying, day after day.
The world is watching American elections like never before. After eight years of the Bush Administration, the prospect of change is palpable, especially in Europe, a continent that is clamoring to regain its relevance in the world. But the world should be cautioned: Be careful what you wish for.
On a recent trip to Europe, my suggestion that John McCain may well be the next president, drew pleas from Europeans that we Americans cannot let the world down. "It's time for a change," I was told, echoing the monosyllabic campaign message of Barack Obama.
Well, the biggest changes in foreign policy that Democrats are proposing come in the guise of economic policy. Both Clinton and Obama have threatened to pull out of the NAFTA free trade agreement unless their demands are met. That's foolish pandering and Republican nominee John McCain is right to criticize them for this: What message would that send to our allies around the globe about how we treat our two closest friends in the global community?
Globalism is real. Although some Americans may see other countries around the world getting richer and think that wealth is coming - literally - at their expense, that is the wrong lesson to learn from the global economy. Instead, the growing interconnectivity of the global economy means that we must all care about each others' well being and economic welfare because when anyone catches an economic cold, we all stand to suffer the sniffles.
In a speech to the Georgetown University Forum on Global Competitiveness, former Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar hit this point on the head when he pointed out the impact that America has on European economies through trade, investment and labor movement. The economic impact of the U.S. on Ireland is twice that of the impact in China. Anzar's observation that Europe can only be an economic power, not a military one, requires that Europe keep its borders open to trade, and that America do the same.
At the same conference, former Clinton Assistant National Security Advisor Anthony Lake - now and advisor to the Barack Obama campaign - came to a different conclusion from the same set of facts. He started from the basic premise that we should not attack globalism or praise it, we should accept it. That's refreshing coming from an Obama advisor but his solution seems to offer a return to the past, not a move forward.
Lake then spoke about the world's problems - from competition over scarce commodities such as corn or oil, to Global Warming to the War in Afghanistan - and correctly pointed out that no one country can "solve" these problems alone. But even if the United States has the willingness to say "Yes We Can" and change our approach to these issues, Lake worries that the rest of the world - Europe, in particular - lacks the institutional support to make change happen.
When you look at Europe's greatest institutional model - the European Central Bank - Lake seems to have a point. Since adopting the Euro, the less well-off countries of southern Europe have seen their economies flourish, but growth has come at the cost of inflation. Conversely, in northern Europe, the inflation that came after the initial adoption of the Euro has subsided, but they now suffer from the choke-hold of high interest rates and low growth.
My "Amsterdam Beer Index" - handy for the casual traveler trying to figure coss - show that the cost of a Dommelsch has gone from 2.95 Euros down to 2.50 and as low as 2.20 over the past three years, remaining steady in dollar terms, but also a clear (albeit anecdotal sign) of a slowing Dutch economy. Why? The ECB has chosen to forsake growth in order to fight inflation, at the cost of double-digit unemployment and growing unrest.
Militarily, Lake implied, Europe's institutions are even worse off and they must be bolstered if they intend to cooperate with the United States in NATO and fighting the war on terrorism. Europe, the potential future Secretary of State alleged, has gotten a free ride from the U.S. during fifty years of the Cold War and eight years of Bush unilateralism.
The only conclusion I can draw from that is that after pulling out of NAFTA, the Obama Administration would try to re-militarize Europe. As someone who remembers what he learned about the last time protectionism and militarization were the global norms, I have to say that sort of change - a change to the past, not the future - isn't exactly what we're looking for. Is it?
It has become a standard political axiom: when it comes to presidential races, Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line. Regardless of whether the voters ultimately confirm this conventional wisdom, there's one bipartisan truth: breaking up is hard to do.
As a sizeable portion of the nation goes ga-ga over Barack Obama, we should remember that political love affairs seldom last as long as the break-ups. Here in California, we've seen just how difficult it can be when a political love-affair turns sour.
Former Governor Gray Davis was popular enough to win two terms in office, but when he cheated on Californians by lying about the extent of the budget crisis in 2002, the Golden State quickly threw the bum out with a special recall election less than a year later.
In dumping Davis, Californians fell hard on the rebound for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, developing what now seems like a co-dependent relationship.
We swept Schwarzenegger into office in 2003, on the hopes that he could shake up the broken system called California government. Two years later, we rejected each of his appeals to fix the state's problems, which sent his popularity plummeting. While many expected a break-up in 2006, Californians went back to Schwarzenegger to stand by our man for another four years. With another budget crisis looming, and the state looking once again un-governable, many wonder what kind of doormat the California voter must be to have Arnold walking all over them!
Likewise, across the pond, the French are rapidly falling out of love with President Nicolas Sarkozy. Although he was elected less than a year ago, his jet-set lifestyle and very public romance with Italian songstress Carla Bruni, the French have soured the President on their choice, like an uncorked bottle of Bordeaux.
With today's news, Democratic voters are no doubt having an inner debate between the attractive, smooth-talking Casanova or the practical fiancée who promises to put food on the table every night. Until Tuesday evening, infatuation had been winning over pragmatism.
But all love affairs must end, and with the candidacy of Barack Obama, the question is whether America breaks up with him before popping the question in November and meeting at the altar on January 20, 2009.
Obamamanics got a taste of what the break-up with Barack could feel like this week, when we learned of secret meetings between the Senator's advisors and a foreign government.
When reports first trickled out of Canada a week ago saying that Barack Obama's economic advisor had met with a representative of the Canadian Consulate and said that the Senator was really not a protectionist despite his rhetoric on NAFTA, the campaign denied that such a meeting took place. But when internal memos proved otherwise, the Obama campaign started backtracking. The lies, and the duplicity left many voters feeling scorned and made what should have been a coronation in Texas and Ohio into just another leg in this marathon primary. Kind of like Obama was cheating on his "wife" - the American public.
A marriage is a lifetime commitment, and one not to be taken lightly. Still, in politics and, more importantly governing, four years can seem like a lifetime. The wedding date is set for America's next love affair. But who will be at the altar? And will we still have butterflies in our stomachs?
Although it is too early to write an official post-mortem on the Bush administration, it is worth taking a look back at the last eight years - from George Bush the candidate, who showed signs of promise as a uniting centrist governor to George Bush the president, who is regarded as a dividing and bumbling - to gauge the currently dwindling stock of presidential contenders.
Most Americans will agree that the presidency of George W. Bush was been rather a disappointment. For conservatives, George Bush will be derided for pursuing liberal policies like immigration reform, and in the long eye of history, a Medicare prescription drug benefit which will bankrupt the system even earlier than projected. Liberals deride the President for overseeing two recessions and sending our country to war.
Folks like myself, who kind of supported President Bush from the beginning will be disappointed with him more for his failure to achieve Social Security reform, immigration reform and making his tax cuts permanent. These failures derive from what is his greatest strength and his greatest weakness: consistency.
In presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004, President Bush promised to lower taxes, fix Social Security, give prescription drugs to seniors, win the war in Iraq and make housing more affordable. You can't say he hasn't delivered on these promises - or at least tried. You may not like the man, but you cannot charge him with changing his positions.
Normally, that would be a virtue in politics, but what we've seen with the Bush Administration is that our leaders must be able to adapt to change in order to affect it.
So when I look to the candidates in the running for President now, I weigh them in this light: Do they possess a consistency verging on obstinacy, or are they someone who can read the tea leaves of changing times and provide effective leadership?
As a Republican, my natural instinct should be to look at our front-runner through the prism of the last eight years. Senator John McCain holds his hard-headedness and consistency up as his greatest quality - even when he doesn't walk the walk. In his come-to-Jesus speech last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Republican front-runner equivocated his positions so widely that you could drive a truck through the exit clauses he added to his promises to the Conservative base. But at least they're promises he won't break!
On the flip-side, there is the candidate of change, Barack Obama. With so few accomplishments in the United States Senate, you would hope that Obama would give potential voters more than flourishing rhetoric. But when even my Democrat friend, "Blond David" says Obama lacks substance and doesn't say anything, you have to worry. The blond isn't just referring to David's hair color! I do know that Obama has become the most liberal United States Senator during his campaign for President and that alone is unsettling.
Which brings us to Hillary Rodham Clinton. Watching her pander to Democratic voters before the California primary, I had to cringe at visions of higher taxes, government healthcare programs and more. But based on President Bill Clinton's White House record, I can apply familiar logic: if you don't like her positions today, just wait awhile and they will change again.
In eight years in office, Bill Clinton gained a reputation for being a flip-flopper, a label which has become synonymous with Democratic candidates ever since. It's true he changed his positions, quite a bit either to triangulate between the extremes of the Liberal Left or Conservative Right or to adopt policies that, well, most Americans wanted.
The poll-driven governing that defined the Clinton years is not exactly leadership, but it's better than sticking to your guns when they're out of ammo, as President Bush has done. If Sen. Clinton can show even hints of such crass pandering to the will of the people, she'll deserve a second look - even from this Republican.
If, as I have suggested, Mike Huckabee is the Bill Clinton of this election cycle and Barack Obama is an Oval Office Arnold Schwarzenegger in the making, then the comeback kid of the Republican pack, Arizona Senator John McCain has a parallel which is equally clear from past Presidential contests: Senator and former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
Just comparing the campaign trajectories of McCain and Kerry demonstrates a close parallel between the two candidates. During the summer and fall leading up to their respective elections, each candidate was written off for dead, polling in the single digits. But early wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, coupled with the collapse of the media-designated front-running campaign left each candidate inheriting their party's nomination by default.
Like John Kerry in 2004, Senator McCain is not very inspiring to his party's base. In fact, to many Republicans, John McCain is more know for his betrayals on tax cuts, campaign finance reform and immigration than for his strong national security record. Conversely, McCain's record of service in Vietnam will most likely play as an asset in 2008, rather than as a liability as it did for Kerry. Don't expect McCain to be "Swift Boated" even in a general election.
If McCain is lucky, as the Republican nominee, he will face Hillary Clinton in November, for she is just about the only political figure in America who is as polarizing as Kerry's 2004 opponent, George W. Bush. And, of course, we saw how much that helped the junior Senator from Massachusetts.
But wait! The parallels between McCain and Kerry don't stop with their war records! Both have a solid record...of flip-flopping on the issues.
I've already detailed how McCain's "straight talk" comes across more like double-speak, but the hits keep on coming.
In the California Republican Primary debate, the first question posed by CNN's Anderson Cooper was whether Americans were better off than they were eight years ago, when George W. Bush took office. McCain's negative assessment led Cooper to follow up by concluding, "It sounds like that we're not better off is what you're saying," to which the Senator had to stumble around to find a more positive-sounding answer about job creation and the economy.
Janet Hook, from the L.A. Times, later put McCain on the spot later in the debate about why he opposed President Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, asking, "Now, more recently you've been saying that the reason why you opposed the tax cuts at first was because they weren't offset by spending cuts. But back when you actually voted against the tax cuts in Congress, you said you opposed them because they favored the wealthy too much. So which is it?"
In his typical double-speak, McCain answered, "I disagreed when we had tax cuts without spending restraint," re-writing history once again.
But McCain also appears to have flip-flopped on his own immigration bill as well, stating that he would not vote for his own legislation today - a fact buried in some rambling pandering about the processes of the United States Senate.
I guess you could say McCain was for his own position on immigration before he was against it! Sounds a lot like a position that John Kerry would take!
United States Senators do not have a good track record of being elected President, especially those who have served in the body for awhile. Perhaps this is because of the deliberative nature of the body, which makes it hard to be an obstinate fighter for one's convictions, but it usually ends up with the same campaign attack in a general election. Flip...Flop! Flip...Flop!
A year ago, California politicians decided to split the state's June primary elections and move its presidential contests to February 5. The goal, we were told, was to enhance the state's standing in national political circles and get the candidates to talk about issues that matter to Californians.
Coincidentally, the state legislature was able to get a ballot measure extending their term limits on the earlier ballot...(but that's a whole 'nother story, as the kids say). And with less than a week to go, I’ve heard nary a whisper about those so-called issues facing the state. In fact, some people are wondering whether California’s clout would have been greater had their primaries not been held on the crowded Super Tuesday ballot.
Many federal issues hit us here at home in California, and they bridge partisan divides, but no one is talking about them. So far I have seen one television ad with Sen. Hillary Clinton talking about the environment. It was so vague, it could have been an ad for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger except that he’s not on the ballot.
California Republicans recently surveyed indicated their top priorities as immigration and the War on Terror - not much different from GOP voters across the country so it's hard to justify how a discussion on these issues was worth the cost of adding a third electoral cycle for the Golden State.
So, I say if the presidential candidates want to appeal to Californians over the next week, let’s give them some things to talk about. Here's my list of questions. You voters - Democrats and Republicans - should feel free to try this at home as well.
How will California keep its economy growing if we cannot get enough water to where it is needed? Growth in Arizona and Nevada is taxing supplies of the Colorado River and federal environmental lawsuits are threatening the ability to transfer water from the San Joaquin Bay-Delta. What’s their plan to keep Southern California from shriveling up in a drought?
How do we pay for transportation improvements? More than half of the country’s international trade travels through the ports of Oakland, Los Angeles and Long Beach, and California’s freeways are among the nation’s most congested. Yet California sends more tax dollars to Washington than it gets back. How are we going to pay for freeway expansion, goods movement and improving public transit?
California has taken a leadership role on the environment and is serving as an incubator for green business of all different types. Yet the federal government has gotten in the way of the state’s ability to pass its own air quality rules. Should the federal government continue to force California to use ethanol, despite its dubious environmental benefits, and should the EPA continue to block California’s vehicle emission curbs?
Although California bans gay marriage just like the federal government, it mandates employers treat all employees equally when it comes to benefits like as health insurance. So domestic partners have to pay federal taxes on these benefits while married couples do not. Is that fair? And a bonus question to any candidate who like Mike Huckabee thinks sexuality is a choice: When - exactly - did you choose to be straight?
These are all issues that have no easy answers, and are neither Republican nor Democrat, they're truly Californian. None are likely to come up on the presidential campaign trail in Iowa or New Hampshire although a few might surface in New York or Illinois. Still, if California is going to get its money’s worth for switching its presidential primary date, I’d like to hear some answers.
The clock is ticking…
“Mac is Back,” the chanters declared, reminding me of those two years I spent as an awkward, nerdy kid at San Antonio Macarthur High School, deep in the heart of Texas. But it isn’t flashbacks of a 90’s suburban adolescence that make my stomach groan when I hear the phrase today. These days, I'm reminded about where “Mac” - Sen. John McCain - had been and why he should expect no less than a return ticket back to wherever he came back from this time around.
If you compare John McCain’s winning ways to his campaign of 2000, you’ll notice something. He’s not doing any better in 2008, in terms of getting votes, than he did when he ran unsuccessfully against President George W. Bush. In many states, he is doing worse. The difference is that, in the crowded Republican field of 2008, a small plurality of votes has given him the appearance of “winning,” compounded by the rekindling of a media love affair.
This feeling will not last once McCain has to attract Republican voters with only one or two alternatives instead of four or five candidates.
I have to admit that my newfound distaste for John McCain is recently acquired. After he won the New Hampshire primary, I started to think of him as a tolerable candidate who could make me break my “I’m voting for a New Yorker” pledge for the 2008 election. But after two weeks for McCain to wear thin on me as I remembered why I didn’t like him in 2000.
Watch the Senior Senator from Arizona closely on the TV. Look at his eyes. Am I the only one who thinks he blinks excessively? Al Gore did this, and when Al Gore blinked a lot, in flutters, I saw a man who was surely lying to me. John McCain’s mouth is saying something about the “straight talk express” but his eyes tell me he is lying.
But what bothers me the most about John McCain is that he is disingenuous whenever he talks about his “Straight Talk Express”. From taxes to social policy to foreign policy, listen closely to McCain’s “maverick” positions and the dualism of his positions will make you think that his policy is coming out the backside of a horse - maverick or otherwise.
Take the War in Iraq. When Nebraska Senator Chuck Hegel started getting attention from the bookers at Meet the Press and the other Sunday talk shows for being the lone Republican to stand up to George Bush, John McCain was a little too quick to follow, criticizing the Bush Administration for its war policy. Now trying to appeal for Republican votes, McCain is claiming that he was an architect of “The Surge” policy currently being implemented—quite successfully—by the Bush Administration. I can guarantee you that if the presence of more American soldiers in Iraq had corresponded to an increase in casualties, McCain would be criticizing the Administration for not getting them there soon enough!
McCain appeared the maverick in 2004 when he stood up to the President on a major issue of that campaign - gay marriage. McCain opposed amending the United States Constitution to ban gay marriage, calling it "un-Republican" - but it wasn’t because he believes that all Americans deserve equal rights and protections under the law. Out of the national scrutiny, McCain lent his support to a ballot measure banning gay marriage in Arizona. Like John Kerry that year, he told one audience that the matter should be left to the states, then he told another what he thought the states should do. So he was against banning gay marriage before he was for it!
Today, McCain is embracing George Bush’s tax cuts, joining calls to make them permanent. That, I like, because, well, you’re going to see major economic and social disruptions if the tax cuts are all let to expire in 2011. But back in 2001, John McCain was one of the most vocal opponents of the tax cuts and is partially responsible for why they had to have an “expiration date” before they were passed.
Although McCain is one of the most vocal critics of earmarks, these special congressional appropriations still have found their way to Arizona - which is among the top half of states for getting pork out of the recent Health and Human Services budget.
Sounds more like the "Double-talk Express" if you ask me!
When the Republican field gets narrowed down to a choice between Mitt Romney and John McCain, Mike Huckabee and John McCain or Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, well, getting 36% of the vote - his largest total yet - won’t get Senator McCain as far as it has gotten him to date.
Maybe his colleagues in Capitol Hill can console him with a chant of “Mac is Back” in the hallways of the Hart Senate Office Building.
As America familiarizes itself with this year’s large crop of presidential candidates, it seems easier to compare the people running to office to politicians we’re more familiar with than to get to know them ourselves. Indulging in this parlor game a few weeks ago, I compared Republican Mike Huckabee to the Bill Clinton of 1992—but one without the demons of gluttony and adultery. Today, it's Sen. Barack Obama's turn.
And as with Huckabee, the best comparison for the Democratic presidential contender is a someone from across the political aisle.
The Obama campaign has embraced a monosyllabic message: change. Obama wants to spread hope through change to unify the country, much to the chagrin of those who point out that not all Americans may desire unifying around Obama’s specific version of change.
Here in California the tone of Obama’s message is familiar. It sounds much like that of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's why Obama may have trouble selling his fairy tale to Californians on February 5th. We’ve voted for a politician who promises the sizzle without the fat.
The defining moment of the Obama candidacy came not with his win in Iowa, but in a Las Vegas debate in mid-November. When asked what he would do about sending nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain - an unpopular idea in the state - the Illinois Senator skipped the pandering and started with the dreaming.
“I don't think it's fair to send it to Nevada... because we're producing it.” Obama said, before continuing, “so what have to do is we've got to develop the storage capacity based on sound science. Now, laboratories like Argonne in my own home state are trying to develop ways to safely store nuclear waste without having to ship it across the country and put it in somebody else's backward.”
Moderator Wolf Blitzer wasn’t buying it, so he pressed on, asking, “until there's some new technological breakthrough, as you would hope and all of us would hope, where do you send the waste?”
After criticizing Blitzer for trying to find out what Obama’s practical solution to a real and urgent problem was, Obama rejected the question entirely: “But -- but -- but I'm running for president because I think we can do it. I reject... I reject the notion that we can't meet our energy challenges.”
Then he finished with a flurry: “We can, if we've got bold leadership in the White House that is saying we are going to do something about climate change, we are going to develop renewable energy sources. That's what I intend to do as president. And we shouldn't, you know, be pessimistic about the future of America.”
As I see it, neither ‘hope’ nor ‘change’ will make the nation’s very real nuclear waste go away, but Senator Obama wasn’t having any of it, acting as if the President could wish away the nation’s problems. Barack Obama isn’t running a fairy tale campaign, as Bill Clinton suggested, he’s running for President of Fantasyland.
When he ran for Governor back in 2003, Schwarzenegger promised change. He said he would “blow up the boxes” of bureaucracy in Sacramento, address the budget crisis, pension reform and other pressing needs. When his actual proposals were put on the ballot two years later, voters rejected them.
With a booming economy, the State’s finances and the Governor’s public image improved - until this month. In his State of the State address, Schwarzenegger sounded like a visionary uniter of men, expressing his faith in government to address monumental crises, as it had in response to the Southern California wildfires last fall. The budget, he suggested, was in just such a crisis, and he entrusted the legislature to rise up to the moment and dream big about what can be done to improve education and provide universal healthcare in the face of a $14 billion fiscal hole.
The good will did not last long, however. Once the TV cameras were turned off and Schwarzenegger actually had to “govern”—releasing his budget blueprint which slashed school funding and closed public parks and beaches - Californians realized that you cannot have sizzle without the fat.
So far, the Obama message is all about the sizzle. We should be optimists about America and have faith that if we can dream a solution we can achieve it. Those are worthy goals indeed, but more often than not, those who hold them are forced to face the dirty reality of governing. Having bought the Schwarzenegger sizzle twice, Californians may be reluctant to think that a third time might work when Obama comes around to charm us.
Even before New Hampshire voters went to the polls, Democratic presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton was reduced to tears by her faltering campaign. Once considered inevitable, the Clinton campaign suffered early setbacks shifting the discussion from when she'll lock up the nomination to when she'll shutter the campaign offices.
Perennial presidential campaign advisor, the losing Bob Shrum thinks that Hillary's mistake was to focus on being "ready" when what the voters apparently wanted was "change" - the two competing themes in the monosyllabic Democratic presidential primary. But perhaps Clinton's greatest mistake was even showing up for the early contests instead of focusing her resources on the states where she had a lead. And her early campaign troubles highlight the possible wisdom of
