• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami {A Japanese detective story/war novel/Kafka rip-off. It's great.}
• Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays, by Christopher Hitchens {First drafts of history, second thoughts on received wisdom, versatile meditations on great works of literature -- all by a man who can write about anything.}
• The Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Wodehouse {The Rise and Fall of the "Black Shorts," and the best of Bertie and Jeeves. You'll need Wodehouse in your life eventually. Start here; you've 89 or so more to go.}
• The Prophet Armed: Trotsky 1879-1921, by Isaac Deutscher {Magnificient biography finally back in print, along with Volumes II and III. But better start before the revolution -- and Deutscher's conscience -- was betrayed.}
• Colossus, by Niall Ferguson {Why the U.S. can't hack neo-imperialism, much to Niall's chagrin.}
• Reflections on a Ravaged Century, by Robert Conquest {Don't even try to have an opinion about the twentieth century without reading him.}
• Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh {One of the funniest books, ever. Shrinks the remainder of the "innocent abroad" genre to the vanishing point.}
• Put Out More Flags, by Evelyn Waugh {Lapidary prose on the frisson between the wars. Basil Seal riding low before he rides again; Auden and Isherwood lampooned as "Parnsip and Pimpernell."}
• The Origins of Postmodernity, by Perry Anderson {Terrific writer from the London Review of Books and New Left Review, who ought to be more famous than he is, tackles lucidly the abstruse bloodhound gang -- from Habermas to Jameson -- of Theory.}
• The Counterlife, by Philip Roth {How Portnoy learned to stop complaining and write a brilliant postmodern novel.}
• Rise of the Vulcans, by James Mann {Probably the only low-blood pressure source on Bush's brain trust. Valuable for charting the progression of neo-neo-conservatism, and how Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz contravened, and then dismantled, the Kissinger realpolitik foreign policy machine.}
• Money, by Martin Amis {Forget Bonfire and Psycho. It took the English author of The Moronic Inferno: And Other Visits to America to effectively chew up the Reagan era -- largely by reminding us that it was also the Thatcher era. A fine lesson in history repeating, too: Di and Charles were TV's original Ben and J. Lo; the Self-on-Massi sex tape is where Paris (if she can read) might have learned her stuff; and the cavalier cash flow in this soft-boiled checkbook who-dun-it tale rivals that of any West Coast dotcom monkey a decade later.}
• The War Against Cliche and Experience, by Martin Amis {If Amis kept on doing what he did in his award-winning collection of critical essays, James Wood would lose more hair. It's saying quite a lot that his non-fiction exceeds his fiction. Experience is by far the best memoir to appear in the last decade: a more muscular Speak, Memory, it's a midlife nostalgia trip pureed out of chronology, though somehow more cohesive than a stream-of-consciousness hodgepodge. Guaranteed to pluck at the coronary sinews for anyone dealing with the loss of a father.}
• Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis {A comic genius on academia, Amis is the pitch-perfect representative of postwar male rage. None of that Angry Young Man, stuff, though. His apoplexy is hilarious at any age. The faces: "crazy peasant," "sex life in ancient Rome," "shot-in-the-back." Moo, by Jane Smiley, The Straight Man, by Richard Russo and everything by David Lodge seem impossible without this Platonic key ring to rule them all, and on the campus, bind them.}
• The Letters of Kingsley Amis, edited by Zachary Leader {Pay close attention to the letters to Philip Larkin -- together with Larkin's Collected Letters (try eBay, sorry), these constitute the documentation of one of the most rewarding and hilarious literary friendships to date. Amuse yourself by guessing the exact page number where Kingsley abandons Communism.}
• The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, by V. Nabokov {I'm way underqualified, with my mean years on the planet, to state critical opinion. Still in larval adulation, which I understand is a longterm afflication. Read Anthony Lane's review in Nobody's Perfect. And M. Amis on Nabokov in toto in the prenominate War Against Cliche. And get a dictionary.}
• The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, edited by Leon Wieseltier {The style is dated and stilted, but the insights are not. Especially worthwhile: the Orwell essay, the Mansfield Park burn, and "The Situation of the American Intellectual at the Present Time" (i.e. "What Do They Know of America, Who Only the Upper West Side Know?"}
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace {Self-indulgence and the consequences of a missing-in-action editor never had it so good. The state fair, cruise ship and TV pieces are the best. But also read the Lynch essay: it'll make you want to re-watch Blue Velvet, which you can conveniently buy below.}
• Collected Poems, by Philip Larkin (edited by Anthony Thwaite) {Poetus mirabilis and, after Auden, the occupant of a near empty Hall of Metrical Wonders in the Postwar Anglophone wing of the museum. Master ironist and curmudgeon you least want to bludgeon.}
• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, by Margaret Macmillan {A dryly told account of global dust-settling after what was then myopically known as "the Great War." Explores the follies of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau, which helped bring about WWII.}
• Doomed, Bourgeois, In Love: Essays on the Films of Whit Stillman, edited by Mark Henrie {Discreet charms of the bourgeoisie given the scholarly treatment by the kinds of New Criterion-y people who liked Grosse Pointe Blank because John Cusack's assassin refused to unionize. Don't let the pedantry taint your judgment of Stillmania, though.}
• Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi {A beautiful paean to Western literature from an Eastern scholar living under Islamic statism; the Gatsby trial and Jane Austen dance chapters are particularly enjoyable.}
• Nobody's Perfect: Writings from The New Yorker, by Anthony Lane {He needs to stop it with the creepy drooling over Natalie Portman, but Lane is still the best around for losing it at the movies.}
• The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl {Adult stories, less like his children�s stuff than what O. Henry would have been like if his ironic plot twists had involved wife-swapping, cannibalism, or turning infants into superhuman bee-monsters. Might be fun for the kid who never reads, actually.}
• The Brothers Karamazov, by F. Dostoevsky, translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky {Incest! Murder! Theodicy!}
• Collected Non-Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges {A prose impresario short-winded enough to keep beside the toilet -- especially if your john is in a labrynith that transcends spacetime.}
• Love and Hydrogen: New and Selected Stories, by John Shepard {Stories narrated by John Ashcroft, John Entwistle, Nazi rocket riders, the creature from the black lagoon, and others.}
• My Life and Hard Times, by James Thurber {Think of David Sedaris, in turn of the century Columbus, Ohio. And without the gay schtick, or even a pretense at respect for his family.}
ALBUMS:
• You Are the Quarry, by Morrissey {He's back! And almost paid off the deficit incurred by Maladjusted. A few gripes: "America Is Not the World" never fulfills the promise of its title. It's an unwieldy blunderbuss, not a rapier -- and the use of "hamburger" as synecdoche for our national obesity problem is a new hackneyed low for the Oscar Wilde of the microphone. "I Have Forgiven Jesus" ultimately works, but I can't help but feel that that one was just too easy.}
• Weightlifting, by The Trashcan Sinatras {Remember them from your college radio daze? A brisk homecoming track, appositely named "Welcome Back" ("Everyone survived / Everyone's alive!" -- well, thank goodness) kicks off this highly accomplished return to musicmaking for an alt-pop band that shouldn't have stayed away so long.}
• Strange Bird, by Augie March {With a name like Augie, it has to be good. It is. Analogs fail me.}
• Evergreen, by Echo and the Bunnymen {Best 80's Band Comeback Album. No contest.}
• Mermaid Avenue, by Billy Bragg and Wilco {A fucking classic. Ukanian bloke Billy Bragg manages to capture the rhythms of dustbowl Americana better than Dylan -- the obvious disciple/witch doctor to perform a Woody Guthrie resurrection -- ever could do. All lyrics by Guthrie, music by Bragg and Wilco.}
• Don't Try This at Home, by Billy Bragg {Most people who hear Mermaid Avenue invariably want more of the man who brought it to them. This is Bragg's most "accessible" solo album, though not without the politics that's defined his career. "Accident Waiting to Happen" is a punk snarl against cultural fascism.}
• Galore, by Kirsty MacColl {May this earth angel charm the knickers off the winged principalities. MacColl died a few years ago in a boating accident, but I can only imagine how well-attended her funeral must have been by the panoply of musicians guilty of "sampling" her Celtic nightingale voice. This album consists mainly of covers, but that's more than all right for someone generous enough to never ask for top billing, despite consistently stealing the show.}
• These Are the Vistas, by the Bad Plus {"Smells Like Teen Spirit," the jazz standard. No kidding. Comes off not just better than you'd expect, but brilliantly.}
• SMiLE, by Brian Wilson {Reviewed here. Check to the right.}
• The Soft Bulletin, by the Flaming Lips {And the hard singing voice to take, but worth it anyway.}
• It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, by Public Enemy {More complicated rhymes and denser loops than have been on the radio before or sense, plus the guy with the big clock.}
• Loaded: Fully Loaded Edition, by the Velvet Underground {Funny, Lou Reed doesn't usually look this happy. Must be Laurie Anderson's doing.}
• Traitor In Our Midst, by the Country Gazette {What you always thought bluegrass was supposed to sound like.}
• The Modern Lovers, by the Modern Lovers {Speaking of Lou Reed, remember the guy with the guitar who gets shot in Something About Mary? Imagine that guy redoing "White Light/White Heat," but with lyrics about aging with dignity and eschewing drugs. That sounds like a snark, but it�s actually the SAM guy, and John Cale produced.}
• The Queen Is Dead, by The Smiths {I can't believe you don't own this already. The summa of the Moz/Marr collaboration.}
• The Boatman's Call, by Nick Cave {The Prince of Darkness may have been afraid to board a plane after 9/11, but this "New Testament" sound is proof of moisture's sustainability in Hell. "Into My Arms" is sweet enough to play your girlfriend on Valentine's Day, leaving the oldie-but-dreary "Deanna" to blast at her when she dumps you.}
• No Cities Left, by The Dears {The lead singer cried when Morrissey asked the band to open on the "You Are the Quarry" tour. That kind of gone-to-pieces sentimentalism can only lead one place: straight down. Get 'em while they're new and good.}
• The Boy With the Arab Strap, by Belle and Sebastian {Might as well order that black V-neck sweater, Rimbaud's Collected Poems, while you're at it. "Theoretical" bisexuality not a requisite, despite what angry twee detractors say.}
FILMS & TV:
• Cannibal! The Musical. {Trey Parker's college thesis, a feature-length movie musical about the only American ever convicted of cannibalism. Not for all markets, but better than most of his later stuff.}
• Before Sunset, directed by Richard Linklater {The sequel that doesn't feel like one. Why thirtysomethings who chat are more interesting than twentysomethings who do likewise. Some sluggish moments, but all made up for by a luminous final scene that made me fall in love with Julie Delpy once more. Bet it made Anthony Lane "spill [his] Sprite" again, too.}
• Collateral, directed by Michael Mann {Tom Cruise has always been a hard-working, as opposed to naturally gifted, actor. This part was his pension come early. Michael Mann is the Richard Avedon of the moving Los Angeles image. And Jamie Foxx ain't too shabby, either.}
• The Unbelievable Truth, directed by Hal Hartley {Surreal-ish debut from a master indy filmmaker and satirist. Yes, that is Edie Falco as the diner waitress.}
• Henry Fool, directed by Hal Hartley {Hartley's masterpiece. Probably the only movie about writers that's ever worked. Barton Fink, anyone?}
• Metropolitan, directed by Whit Stillman {Downwardly mobile 60's college jet set. Making a film about this demographic is like trying to play matchmaker to a Republican leper in Northampton, Mass. That the dialogue (and it's all dialogue) stays liquid-tongued is a monument to Stillman's talent... dare I say, genius?}
• Barcelona, directed by Whit Stillman {Anti-Americanism when it was more funny than scary. The "subtext" speech belongs in Bartlett's. The DVD commentary is, as someone from the earlier film might say, "priceless."}
• The Last Days of Disco, directed by Whit Stillman {An assault on 70's cliche in the best possible way -- the anti-54. Also known as Yuppies: A Defense. Chloe Sevigny gives grace to the one night stand, instead of head to Vincent Gallo.}
• Mr. Jealousy, directed by Noah Baumbach {Who wouldn't hunt down the ex-boyfriends of Annabella Sciorra? Eric Stoltz had fewer difficulties with girls in Mask. Chris Eigeman from the Stillman flicks swaps Mayflower pedigree for facial hair (modeled on David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest jacket photo), to varying degrees of success. An underrated romantic comedy, but don't say I didn't warn you: this film may engender awkward relationship conversation. It may also plant supersleuth-stalker seeds in frail men's heads. Or so I've heard.}
• Blue Velvet, directed by David Lynch {So many epigones, so far from this mark.}
• Father Ted: The Holy Trinity {BBC TV series about three priests on an island. No, not that kind of series, you sick fuck.}
I'd love to carry Texas, but it's usually not in the electoral calculation for the Democratic nominee. Florida and Michigan are.
Right, so not only should results in a state that Clinton and her campaign decided not two weeks ago would be their firewall be discounted, but results in a pair of states that held meaningless straw polls should count for more.
Parsing the Clintonites' claim that 2/3 of the country don't count a little deeper, consider just how narcissistic it is. The whole issue for them is whether a state will figure in a winning coalition for the Democratic presidential candidate (except for CT, MD, VA, ME, VT, WA, IA, WI, MO, MN, and CO, all of which don't count for reasons so compelling that they escape me at the moment); it doesn't register for a moment that other Democrats are running downticket, and their causes are not exactly bolstered by the lead candidate pissing all over their constituencies.
One of the main complaints about Bill Clinton among Democrats is that his presidency was focused singularly on his personal aggrandizement, and the success of the party was a distant afterthought. Why any loyal Democrat --- and I hardly count as one --- would give another shot at the White House to a pair of self-enriching hucksters who don't give a tinker's cuss about the long-term success of their party is beyond my ability to comprehend.
My first thought when Keith Olbermann broke into a taped replay of Hardball on Wednesday night to announce that the New York Times was reporting an affair between John McCain and lobbyist Vicki Iseman, was that McCain had come so close to the Republican nomination only to flush his presidential ambitions down the toilet of the S.S. Monkey Business. Or to put it another way, Mike Huckabee's belief in miracles over math had been vindicated.
On closer review, though, the Times' sensational lede was backed up by reporting more worthy of a supermarket tabloid than the Paper of Record. So former chief of staff John Weaver and two anonymous, disgruntled ex-aides claimed to have spoken to McCain and Iseman to keep them apart? Nine years ago? Aside from a semen sample, you couldn't ask for more rock-solid proof. (To be sure, John and Cindy McCain's insistence that it is a priori inconceivable that he would be unfaithful is a bit rich, considering that McCain serially cheated on his first wife, and his second wife was originally his mistress. But he's a maverick, so never mind.)
The actual story, which appeared in far more responsible form in the Washington Post, is the story of John McCain's long, continuing history of corrupt and corrupting relationships with lobbyists. This isn't breaking news, in the sense that it dates back to the beginning of McCain's legislative career 26 years ago, but it certainly is news to the vast majority of Americans, who are acquainted almost exclusively with the media-created character "John McCain, anti-corruption crusader," and not the actor who plays that role, a senator of middling accomplishment whose major contribution to American political life was his borderline-criminal facilitation of one of the greatest financial scandals of the last 50 years.
Those interested in judging McCain's reputation by his actions, rather than the other way around, should consult McCain: The Myth of a Maverick by Reason editor Matt Welch, easily the most worthwhile book purchase a political junkie could make this year. Here is Welch with a capsule summary of almost everything you need to know about the McCain-Iseman scandal.
The other important angle to Isemangate is the McCain campaign's pushback against it, a kind of anti-Clintonite sweeping denial that makes for optimal PR in the short term, but leaves no margin for lawyerly evasion should McCain's assertions later be disproved. Hours after the Times story went online, McCain's communications director Jill Hazelbaker averred that McCain "has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists." As Welch says, McCain's own memoirs contradict this claim.
In his press conference the following morning, in addition to denying an affair with Iseman, McCain repeatedly gainsaid the Times' much more credibly-reported account of meetings between McCain's staffers and the candidate, and between the same aides and Iseman, to put a stop to whatever relationship they had:
Q (Off mike) -- confirm again. The New York Times is pretty explicit in quoting a couple of former aides, they say --
SENATOR MCCAIN: Yes.
Q
-- saying that some of your aides intervened and confronted not just
Ms. Iseman, but you in particular, saying: Stop seeing her, don't have
a relationship with her, because this is going to hurt you. Are you
saying that did not happen?
SENATOR MCCAIN: I don't know if it happened at their level. It certainly didn't happen to me.
[...snip...]
Q So none of them, nobody in your campaign said, "Senator, she's a problem, don't deal with her"?
SENATOR MCCAIN: No. No.
Perhaps McCain's relationship with the press is so cozy that he is justified in expecting that no lie of his, no matter how bold-faced, will gain mainstream currency. For what it's worth, though, McCain's blanket denials are already coming undone. Michael Isikoff, the best investigative journalist in Washington, reports that McCain's claim that Paxson Communications (one of the firms Iseman represents) never lobbied McCain to intervene on their behalf with the FCC, is patently false. Isikoff's source? John McCain's 2002 deposition on the matter. Following on Isikoff's heels, Bud Paxson, head of the eponymous firm, contradicts McCain as well.
There is scarcely a figure in public life whose popular persona and actual political record are as wildly divergent as John McCain's, so it could be that Mr. Straight-Talk will weather the storm, and perhaps even finally consolidate his support among conservatives who hate the liberal media even more than they hate "Aztlan Juan" McCain.
In the real world, as opposed to the fact-free fantasyland in which most reporters on the McCain beat reside, John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis is a lobbyist, his senior advisor Charlie Black does his lobbying businessaboard the Straight-Talk Express, and most of his top aides are --- wait for it --- lobbyists. Meanwhile, the paladin of campaign finance reform took public financing when it appeared that his campaign was on life-support, then tried to opt out of the public financing system by putting potential future public money up as collateral for a private loan (this is probably illegal), now refuses to recognize the FEC's authority over the public or private financial status of his campaign, and best of all, took it upon himself to deliver a lecture to Barack Obama on the categorical imperative to uphold one's commitments to public financing.
When the general election gets going in earnest, expect to see McCain scold his opponent's backsliding mores on a daily basis. Dare we have the audacity to hope that this time around, McCain will finally be called out as a transparently hypocritical bullshit-artist?
I bet Koffler $100 that McCain, whom he thinks is finished, Mike Huckabee's miracle has been delivered, will carry every state remaining in the primaries.
My first thought on reading this laughable spiral into old news and irrelevance was that at least McCain's taste in women is of a higher caliber than Bill's. My second was, why would he want to cheat on a minx like Cindy? And my third was, let's see -- warmed over Keating 5 scandal, plus questions over possible tendentious dealings with a lobby that were already investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee, plus suspicion of sex denied by both parties and without any evidence to move beyond suspicion.
It's a deadlegged story. And by citing extracts from McCain's memoirs in which he lashed himself for his misbehavior in the 80's, the Times lends the impression that at least one editor was trying to forgive him in every sentence it wasn't indicting him.
Also, by waiting until he was effectively the GOP nominee, the Gray Lady hurt herself: Does she really believe this dud firecracker, originally scheduled to pop in December, can now overwhelm the Fall of the House of Clinton as the major headline of the next two weeks? The cable news channels indicate not.
Pat Buchanan, who likes McCain as much as he would a Trotskyist rabbi with a counterinsurgency manual, said on MSNBC that nothing was illuminated tonight. Unless we find a Gary Hartish photograph with Ms. Iseman or jism stains on the leather interior of that executive jet Mac bopped around in, the sniffing will stop real fast.
George Packer has been among the most thoughtful and courageous journalists to write about the Iraq War, having spent the hard hours in country and met and chronicled the harrowing stories of average Iraqis. His opinions about the legitimacy -- not to say the nobility -- of the war have changed, but throughout he has been a consummate professional (to use a slightly demode term in the age of catchpenny commentary and blogs).
The Assassins' Gate was a brilliant book, probably the best written on the war so far. Now comes Packer's moving and meditative essay in World Affairs Journal (full disclosure: I've just been assigned a piece by the editors) and it, too, is easily the best short-form writing done on the subject:
Unlike Vietnam, where the arguments became truly poisonous only after a few years of fighting, the Iraq War was born in dispute. The administration's deceptions, exaggerations, and always-evolving rationales provoked a counter-narrative that mirrored the White House version of the war in its simple-mindedness: the war was about nothing (except greed, empire, and blind folly). Once, after a trip to Iraq, I attended a dinner party in Los Angeles at which most of the other guests were movie types. They wanted to know what it was like "over there." I began to describe a Shiite doctor I'd gotten to know, who felt torn between gratitude and fear that occupation and chaos were making Iraq less Islamic. A burst of invective interrupted my sketch: none of it mattered--the only thing that mattered was this immoral, criminal war. The guests had no interest in hearing what it was like over there. They already knew.
So the lines were drawn from the start. To the pro-war side, criticism was animated by partisanship and defeatism, if not treason. This view, amplified on cable news, talk radio, and right-wing blogs, was tacitly encouraged by the White House. It kept a disastrous defense secretary in office long after it was obvious that he was losing the war, ensured that no senior officer was held accountable for military setbacks, and contributed to the repetition of disastrous errors by the war's political architects. Meanwhile, the fact that the best and brightest Iraqis were being slaughtered by a ruthless insurgency never aroused much interest or sympathy among the war's opponents. The kind of people who would ordinarily inspire solidarity campaigns among Western progressives--trade unionists, journalists, human rights advocates, women's rights activists, independent politicians, doctors, professors--were being systematically exterminated. But since the war shouldn't have been fought in the first place, what began badly must also end badly.
Freezer Burn: Hillary Clinton's plan to solve the subprime mortgage fiasco is the worst proposal to come along in decades
Americans who have paid any attention to the financial news of the past year know that something has gone terribly wrong with subprime mortgages. They may not know why something went wrong, nor even what a subprime mortgage is, but they know that there is trouble in the subprime sector, and that trouble in the subprime sector has led to trouble in the housing market and trouble for the economy generally.
Americans who have paid any attention to the political news of the past year know that the deadlocked race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination is a classic match-up of style versus substance (just ask David Brooks). Obama, as we all know, offers inspiration, uplift, perhaps even euphoria for his most devoted followers, but doesn't deliver much in the way of specific policy. Clinton, on the other hand, offers specific, concrete, detailed solutions to the problems facing her country and the world, and she promises to make up with hard work what she lacks in flash.
Given these converging financial and political circumstances, what positions and actions should we expect the Democratic candidates to have taken on the subprime mortgage crisis? Surely, we should expect something like a moving speech about the plight of subprime borrowers from Obama (but nothing more), versus a 12-point plan from Clinton that would actually fix the mess.
In fact, Obama and Clinton both have plans to address the subprime crisis. There are two salient differences between them: Obama's plan is significantly more detailed than Clinton's , and Obama's plan is a reasonable approach to the problem, while Clinton's is quite possibly the worst proposal any major presidential candidate has made in decades.
The FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation in English) was a Puerto Rican separatist group active between 1974 and 1983 that attempted to win independence from the United States through terrorism. Their favorite tactic was to firebomb densely populated civilian locations, most famously the Fraunces Tavern in New York on January 24, 1975, in an attack that killed four people and injured sixty others. The final tally of their bomb attacks was 146.
Thanks to diligent, painstaking work by the FBI and federal prosecutors, the FALN's cells were slowly rolled up and its members imprisoned in the late 70s and early 80s. Until the very end, the group had the materiél, the logistical capabilities, and the intent to murder and maim innocent people:
FBI agents obtained a warrant and entered the [group's headquarters], surreptitiously disarming the bombs whose components bore the unmistakable FALN signature. They found 24 pounds of dynamite, 24 blasting caps, weapons, disguises, false IDs and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
In August 1999, President Clinton pardoned 16 FALN terrorists, claiming that they were victims of "guilt by association" (and indeed, they were guilty associates of a terrorist organization). All the more bizarre was the fact that the FALN members had never sought clemency --- a conventional precondition to receiving it --- and Clinton had already rejected thousands of clemency applications during his tenure. Since these pardons lacked the sex & money hook of the later Marc Rich pardon, they didn't break out into national consciousness. But they were an embarrassment for the Clinton administration.
Mrs. Clinton, who by then was a candidate for the US Senate in New York, hedged her public relations efforts by denouncing the convicts without denouncing the pardons.
The question lingers, why did Clinton do it? And now we know:
Jeffrey Farrow, a key adviser on the White House Interagency Working Group for Puerto Rico recommended meetings with the president and the three leading members of Congressional Hispanic Caucus who were pushing the effort, stating in a March 6, 1999 email, "This is Gutierrez's [sic] top priority as well as of high constituent importance to Serrano and Velazquez." The next day, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Maria Echaveste sent an email to White House Counsel Charles Ruff, who was handling the clemency issue, supporting Mr. Farrow's view, saying, "Chuck -- Jeff's right about this -- very hot issue." Another adviser in the Working Group, Mayra Martinez-Fernandez, noted that releasing the prisoners would be "fairly easy to accomplish and will have a positive impact among strategic communities in the U.S. (read, voters)."
So he did it for votes. Specifically, Latino votes for his wife in New York. The Wall Street Journal carried the full story on Tuesday. It has to be read to be believed. As a blog commenter at the New Republic put it, "[it's] practically a script for the most devastating attack ad of all time -- courtesy of a 9/11 widow -- and it is all true."
The bottom line is that Bill Clinton overruled the recommendations of the FBI and pardoned unrepentant conspirators to murder in order to help his wife win an election.
Those who have followed the Clintons' careers for some time will hardly be surprised. In 1992, with his New Hampshire poll numbers sinking in the wake of Gennifer Flower's revelation of their affair, Bill Clinton took time off from campaigning to head home to Arkansas. Not to rest and relax, but to stage a photo-op snuffing of a retarded African-American death row inmate, Ricky Ray Rector, thereby proving that he was no Dukakisian pansy.
From reviving Bill's presidential campaign through an obscenely cynical and wicked effort to make him look hard on crime, to launching Hillary's senatorial campaign by going soft on terrorism, the common denominator in the Clintons' electoral gambits is willfully doing violence to the judicial system. Here's hoping neither of them gets another chance.
There would be no need to keep harping on the deplorable things the Clinton campaign has said about Barack Obama -- if the Clinton campaign could just stop saying deplorable things.
Unfortunately, from Bill Shaheen and Mark Penn none-too-cleverly insinuating that Obama was a crack dealer, to Bob Kerrey claiming nonchalantly that Obama was schooled in a madrassa, to Bill Clinton describing Obama's opposition to the war as "the biggest fairy tale" he'd "ever seen", to Bill Clinton suggesting that Obama is a Jesse Jackson-style racial protest candidate and nothing more, to Hillary Clinton letting black people know their votes are adorable but not meaningful, the Clintons and their surrogates seem incapable of exercising self-control.
Since these ugly and borderline racist remarks --- sometimes on one side of the border, sometimes on the other --- did Hillary Clinton's campaign so much good in South Carolina, it should come as no surprise that today brings two more exhibits.
First, Bill Clinton struggled, but couldn't find any way to make the case for his wife without deriding Obama as "smoke and mirrors." For those keeping track, it took Clinton eight years since leaving office, and a full year into the presidential campaign, to learn the lesson that a former president could find better ways to spend his time than personally demeaning the party's new star, or as Clinton puts it, "defending Hillary." It took him four days to forget that lesson.
Then there's this disinterested commentary from Clinton apparatchik Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania, who was forecasting the results of his state's primary:
You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.
Right, there's a crucial constituency that will vote for a woman but not a black man. And the Clintons will ride this feminists-for-racial-separatism movement to victory in November!
If there are two pieces of conventional wisdom that have proven true in this campaign, they are: 1. The longer Barack Obama campaigns, the better he does, 2. The more he wins, the more people think he can and are inclined to vote for him.
John Dickerson explains how Obama just took a big bite out of Hillary's base in the three primaries tonight -- Virginia, Maryland and D.C. There's also a rumor going round that a Dem bigwig is going to ask Clinton to bow out for the sake of party "unity." Fat fucking chance. She's put everything into Ohio and Texas, which, given the non-winner-take-all nature of Democratic primaries, seems even more wistful than Rudy Giuliani's wait-until-Florida gambit, which now seems eons ago.
What I'd quite like to see in my deliciously sadistic way is a brokered convention, which would turn the nominating contest into an intramural replay of the Dade County michegaas. People no older than my younger sister yet distinguished as superdelegates are now taking phone calls from Bill Clinton and John Kerry, persuading them to cast their lot with either Hillary or Barack. If the nominee, much less the next president, is selected by this, the least democratic aspect of a droning and exhausting selection procedure, then hanging chads be damned--our banana republic transformation will look pretty well complete.
The way the matter stands, if either Democratic contender wins every primary from here on out with a 55-45 split in votes, he or she will still not have enough delegates to qualify. So expect this to be a brutal slugfest, and one that might well cripple a party whose members say they'd be happy with either candidate running against John McCain. Muahaha.
Hillary to Black People: "You're adorable when you vote"
After her shellacking this weekend, it's hard to see how Hillary Clinton could have come up with a convincing way to spin the results. Still, she should probably have done better than this:
These are caucus states by and large, or in the case of Louisiana, you know, a very strong and very proud African-American electorate, which I totally respect and understand.
Or more succinctly, 'Anytime I lose, it's the voters' problem and not mine. And by the way, these primaries in heavily African-American states are a wonderful expression of the tapestry that is America, but can we please move on to real voters.'
Is there any chance that the Clintons will just once graciously accept defeat without compulsively implying that a state or its voters somehow don't count?
Jonathan Chait has a good reminder that the Arizona senator can be, and has been, just as ideologically capricious as Mitt Romney. Though Chait, like Matt Welch, can't help but offer up examples of McCain's admirable behavior that eclipse the evidence of his thoroughgoing cynicism. Chait also suspects, hopefully, that the candidate's neocon leanings may be subject to revision once in office. TNR is gearing up for a McCain-Obama race, and while it's self-evident which president the magazine would prefer, it has kind words for both.
One paragraph struck me as supremely unfair, however:
The fact that the war was increasingly unpopular with the public at large, paradoxically, made it all the more effective for McCain. His hawkish stance signaled to conservatives his willingness to buck public opinion. And reporters, bizarrely, interpreted his position as more evidence of McCain's probity--here was a man, gushed a string of campaign reports, willing to lose the presidency for the sake of his beliefs. In fact, the war was an issue where McCain's beliefs aligned perfectly with his self-interest, since the constituency he needed to woo, conservative stalwarts, supported Bush.
His hawkish stance may indeed have "signaled" that to conservatives, but that is not proof that his support for the surge was not out of genuine concern for winning the war. Wooing the hard right did McCain no favors as a national candidate when violence was at its peak in Iraq and his campaign was in the doldrums at home. He offered not a hint of reservation or hesitation in sticking to his risky position when even fellow Republicans thought it was doomed, so it seems rather cheap to suggest his allegiance here was political.
And consider the paradox Chait is advancing: McCain will make himself a hostage to the most tenuous valentine to movement conservatism -- our military success overseas -- but do everything in his power to alienate that contingent in his choice of liberal domestic policies. Either he's exceptionally stupid, or exceptionally noble on the gravest issue of this election. Nothing I've read of him so far suggests the former.
Back in my geekier, pubescent days, I was a major "X-phile." For a short time, I even co-hosted the AOL Fan Forum for the slightly misguided show Space: Above and Beyond, which was the brainchild of X-Files writing duo Glen Morgan and James Wong. They were responsible for some of the more memorable episodes of the latter series, as was Glen's brother Darren, who was sort of the precursor to the Charlie Kaufmann school of scriptwriting. Did I attend a fan convention or two? I regret to say that I did.
Anyway, having woken up early this morning, I saw that the Sci-Fi Channel is running an X-Files marathon beginning with the series premiere. I haven't watched the show since the late 90's and I had forgotten just how good it was in its early years. Part Twin Peaks, part Silence of the Lambs, part Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
The advent of DVDs has, I think, diminished the full impact of watching suspenseful television since it's the annoying commercial breaks that add to the suspense. Mini-cliffhangers strewn throughout every hour. Also, there's something sad about buying free programming, although I guess that's what I'm now doing watching this on basic cable.
On December 12, the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was honored with "White Snows Are Falling," a state-funded rock opera tribute staged at Moscow's Olympic Stadium. At 74, Mr. Yevtushenko is well acquainted with the concert arena venue, having become famous in the late '50 for declaiming his verses before youthful crowds hungry for genuine art in the post-Stalin -- and anti-Stalinist -- period. Back then, he published collections that sold in the 100,000-range. His good looks, charisma, and cultivated "public" persona only legitimize the inevitable comparisons with Western pop stars: Mr. Yevtushenko was always something of a Mick Jagger of the taiga.
It was with this slightly kitsch portrait in mind that I phoned him up a few weeks ago at his dacha at Peredelkino, just outside the Russian capital. Mr. Yevtushenko divides his time between Russia and the University of Tulsa, where he has taught poetry and film for nearly 20 years. The rock opera, coincident with his 75th birthday, was based on a 1980 record, "Confession," composed by Gleb Mai, who set Mr. Yevtushenko's decades-old poems to music, accompanied by the Bolshoi Theater orchestra. The poet himself was onstage to deliver more traditional live readings.
Ross Douthat, whose taste in movies and metaphysics I usually find wanting, has an excellent piece up at the NYT on the conservative crack-up over John McCain:
In spite of his record as a maverick, John McCain has become the presumptive nominee by running a classic Republican campaign, emphasizing strength abroad and limited government at home, with nods to his pro-life record. His opponents in the conservative movement, by contrast, have behaved like caricatures of liberals, emphasizing a host of small-bore litmus tests that matter more to Beltway insiders than to the right-winger on the street.
For what it's worth, I think the Limbaugh-Coulter-Hannity axis is making heavy weather out of nothing. If they really do propose to sabotage the right-wing vote, then I think their motives are clear: They wish to take credit for doing so because they suspect -- rightly, in my opinion -- that McCain can't win the general election over either Clinton or Obama.
It'll be interesting to see, nonetheless, if all the bile directed at McCain from this quarter endears him more to moderates and liberals. If McCain really were a "maverick," he'd tell his radio jeering section to fuck off, not proceed to kiss up to them.
Consider the following sentence: "Bill Clinton pimped himself out to assorted central Asian dictators." Would it be reasonable to interpret that claim as meaning that Bill Clinton literally profited by performing sexual favors on the supreme leaders of the steppes? Or might it make more sense to understand that statement as an assertion that Clinton traded his integrity for cash donations? Moreover, by using the term "pimp out" to denote Clinton's sale of his integrity, does one contribute in any way to gender inequality? (If so, kindly explain the mechanism.)
Likewise, consider another sentence: "Even in declaiming the notion that he 'wants to be the story,' Bill Clinton cannot help but be a shameless media whore." Should one understand this sentence literally to mean that Clinton somehow involved himself in a transaction of sex for cash with more than one medium? Or is there a more plausible way to read it? And does describing someone who longs for media attention to the point of self-degradation as a "media whore" perpetuate the oppression of women?
Finally, substitute the name of a woman for 'Bill Clinton' in either of the foregoing example sentences. Do the answers to the subsequent questions thereby change?
I ask because, as you've probably heard, David Shuster was suspended by NBC News after he asked rhetorically, in the context of discussing Chelsea Clinton's elevated role in her mother's campaign, "doesn't it seem like she's being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Now, to be clear, it's not a fair charge. For Chelsea Clinton to have been pimped out, under a reasonable understanding of 'pimping out' (transitively rather than reflexively) she would have to have been conscripted into a role she did not want to participate in. And that isn't the case; there is no reason to believe Chelsea's involvement in this election is anything but voluntary, and it is in no sense qualitatively different from the involvement of, say, Cate Edwards, Barbara and Jenna Bush, Karenna Gore, or Alexandra Kerry in their fathers' campaigns. (Except for her lobbying superdelegates; on which more in a moment).
So Shuster's comment was off the mark. And it betrays an assumption that, because most of what Bill and Hillary Clinton do is sordid, any political activity on Chelsea Clinton's part is suspicious as well --- which is an inductive fallacy, if nothing else.
But an expression of sexism or misogyny? Bollocks.
It is true, though, that those who accuse NBC of having double standards are on to something. David Shuster gets suspended for claiming that the Clintons 'pimped out' their daughter; Keith Olbermann doesn't get suspended for claiming that George Bush 'pimped out' David Petraeus.
So NBC caved to pressure from the Clintons, and enabled another round of fundraising from those of Hillary's struggling blue-collar constituents gullible enough to believe that, once again, the Clintons are nothing but victims. And Shuster issued a groveling apology highlighted by the imperative that "all Americans should be proud of Chelsea Clinton."
Now look: I know a lot of people who went from top-tier schools to Manhattan hedge funds. Some of them are impressive; some of them are not. But that achievement in no case obligates anyone to feel vicarious pride. Moreover, Chelsea Clinton is a 27 year old woman who has taken it upon herself to get involved in politics. And not merely by telling crowds what a great president her mom would make, but by lobbying superdelegates to vote for her mother at the Democratic convention. That is a very public role, and not one she can legitimately adopt and simultaneously maintain the position that she is a private person whom the media must not scrutinize.
What scant evidence we have of Chelsea's conduct, incidentally, suggests she inherited her parents' obnoxiousness and sense of entitlement and sense of herself as a woebegotten victim. For example, she has endorsed and distributed Robin Morgan's nutso article claiming, in effect, that the act of voting for Obama is inherently a misogynistic act. Then there is this charming anecdote about the young lady to whom we all owe our respect:
On a campaign stop in Iowa in December, a 9-year-old student reporter for Scholastic News asked Ms. Clinton if she thought her father would make a good "first man."
"I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press, and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute," she told the little girl.
What a bi#$& dick.
UPDATE: And there you have it. Hillary Clinton is demanding that David Shuster be fired. Because, of course, that's rightfully her decision to make.
Mike Huckabee may be mathematically eliminated from contention (barring his getting about 80% of the remaining delegates), but he vows to fight on. After all, he "didn't major in math," but "majored in miracles."
A presumptive Republican presidential nominee whose message to the CPAC crowd is, "hey, you could do worse," whose audience needs to be instructed not to boo him, and who gets booed there anyway, is a Republican presidential nominee with a real problem. Movement conservatives' antipathy for John McCain runs so deep that they preferred a guy who wasn't in any meaningful sense a conservative for the first 60 years of his life, to McCain, whose unconservatism consists, apparently, in opposing torture, believing that global warming is real, and that it isn't feasible to round up and deport 12 million Mexican immigrants.
How is McCain to pacify the Republican base without damaging his general election chances? His major strength as a general election candidate, of course, is his appeal to independents. If we get to the fall and he's still having to run ads like this one, he's finished.
The rapidly congealing conventional wisdom is that McCain can win over conservatives through his vice-presidential choice. I doubt it; what is a vice-presidential candidacy, after all, but an extremely enthusiastic endorsement, and as we've seen, endorsements are a lot less powerful than the perseverance of deep-seated beliefs. On the other hand, a poor veep pick could probably hurt McCain's standing among conservatives even further. And lots of people think the veepstakes are important. So let's say, for the sake of argument, that McCain's choice of running mate will be a significant factor in determining the leverage he has to run a winning general election campaign. Whom should he choose?
The common practice of putting the second-place primary candidate in the second spot on the ticket suggests Huckabee. And indeed, Huckabee has a significant constituency in the south and among evangelical and socially conservative voters who don't trust McCain. But evangelicals, though a significant proportion of the Republican rank-and-file, do not overlap the established conservative movement perfectly (or even particularly well). As Joshua Trevino argues convincingly, it was in fact the conservative establishment's all-out assault on Huckabee that made McCain's victory possible in the first place. Just a few weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh was arguing that a McCain or Huckabee nomination would destroy the GOP. Without discounting the power and prevalence of doublethink, we can probably agree that the sort of folks who think McCain '08 or Huckabee '08 would constitute conservatism's epitaph are unlikely to be assuaged by McCain-Huckabee '08.
At the same time, McCain would create problems for himself by not putting Huckabee on the ticket. For starters, what happens to the Huckabee voters? These are Republicans who chose the Huckster over both the frontrunner and the guy their opinion leaders were telling them to vote for. They heart Huckabee, and they're liable to be pissed if he's not chosen. But more importantly, Huckabee is the best natural politician the Republicans have got --- the best on the stump, the best at the podium, and the best at debates (not that this is saying much). He puts a friendly face and an affable demeanor on the ideas of the Falwell-Robertson crowd; he has a good-for-a-politician sense of humor; he isn't easily pigeon-holed as an "agent of intolerace," because even though that's precisely what he is, he doesn't seem like one. By the same token, Huckabee's self-identification with downscale voters doesn't go any deeper than affect. He has no economic ideas, apart from disliking taxes generally and the income tax particularly, he has no real economic proposals to speak of (save for the FairTax), and hence no economic proposals that are anathema to economic conservatives. If they hadn't spent most of early January demonizing him, they'd have an amiable, charismatic cipher positioned to be an ideal vice-presidential nominee.
To see just what a rare gem Huckabee is, scan the crowd at CPAC. The top-tier of politicians whose selection would enable McCain to unify the GOP (assuming that that's possible) are national punchlines. Think of Rick "Frothy Mixture" Santorum and George "Macaca" Allen. The lower tiers are populated by angry, choleric, blubbering masses of jowl fat.
Are there any other possibilities? Mark Sanford's name is being bandied about; somehow, I doubt he can hold back the wave for Hillary or (especially) Barack. Huckabee could have been the guy, but the Republicans who are horrified by McCain made Huckabee into damaged goods. And now there are no good choices.
UPDATE: Hold the bus, I've got your Republican veep choice. Bobby Jindal. It's not even close. He's smarter than the others, a better speaker, utterly credible as both a social and fiscal conservative, and offsets the history-in-the-making narrative on the other side.
Since Super Tuesday, the notion that demographic advantages guarantee victories for Hillary Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania has been floating around the blogosphere. This entry from Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft is typical of the genre.
The only problem with this theory is that it's bollocks.
Here are the ethnic breakdowns in two primary states that Obama carried, as of 2005:
Connecticut: 86.09% white, 10.88% black, 9.74% Latino, 3.56% Asian
Missouri: 86.54% white, 12.04% black, 2.49% Latino, 1.61% Asian
Here are the ethnic breakdowns in two upcoming primary states:
Ohio: 86.27% white, 12.66% black, 2.05% Latino, 1.68% Asian
: 86.83% white, 11.20% black, 3.52% Latino, 2.46% Asian
In other words, Connecticut has the least favorable ethnic demographics of any of these states, and the other three are roughly identical.
"But wait, Dan," you say. "Aren't Democrats in Connecticut black or Ph.Ds or black Ph.Ds?" Well, not quite, but they are more educated than Missouri, Ohio, or Pennsylvania Democrats --- though that difference in education, again, is somewhat offset by the much greater proportion of Latinos in CT. More to the point, education levels in MO, OH, and PA are virtually identical. Here are the statistics from the 2000 census (I couldn't find more recent figures, and in any case, it's unlikely that there was a significant change in any of these states relative to the others in the last eight years):
PA has a marginally smaller proportion of citizens with some college experience, but a marginally larger proportion with bachelor's and postgraduate degrees. Otherwise, there is no difference.
What else is left to consider? We know that Obama does better among affluent voters. Here are the three-year median incomes between 2004 and 2006:
MO: 44,651
OH: 45, 837
PA: 47,791
On this measure, too, there is no disadvantage to Obama heading into OH and PA. CT's median income is higher (59,972), but New Jersey's is highest of all (64,169), and the Garden State went to Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton may win Ohio and Pennsylvania. If she does, it will be because of her name recognition and the markers she holds in state politics. Demographics do not predetermine the outcome of these contests.
I don't write very much about gender issues, largely because there are many people who are a lot better at it than I am. However, when it comes to things like conservative opposition to the HPV vaccine, I'm a full-blown Feminazi: Cervical cancer kills thousands of women every year; we now have the ability to immunize girls against the virus that causes cervical cancer; and the distribution of that vaccine is being held-up by a group of people who think death is an appropriate penalty for harlotry.
So now that it turns out that HPV also causes oral cancer in men, will opposition to the HPV vaccine subside? Or is oral cancer an appropriate mechanism for culling the population of queers?
No peril in disagreeing with me, Dan, but I still think you overestimate the power of McCaskill and Crist's allegiances.
Let's take Missouri: Obama won by a wafer-thin margin of 10,000 votes, and the AP had actually called the state for Clinton earlier in the evening. Moreover, her lead continued well after McCaskill had come out for Obama. Salon had a fair piece about how "Obamamania" had reached deep into densely populated urban areas like Kansas City and St. Louis:
One 21-year-old voter, William Buckman, was perhaps an example of the "Obamamania" that has swept 20-something voters. "I think he's the best candidate to clean up the mess Bush made," said Buckman, who said he's in training to become a firefighter. "I really like the way he speaks, and I just feel more attached to him than any other candidate." After revealing her support for Hillary Clinton, kindergarten teacher Tina Murray joked, "I'm not going to have any friends left."
At the Saint James United Methodist Church, one of Kansas City's largest historically black churches and the church pastored by U.S. Rep. Cleaver, turnout was steady, with many voters saying they chose Obama.
"There's a long line downstairs, thank God," said one church member, as a choir began to warm up upstairs.
One voter, Carmen Swift, a 32-year-old radiologist, said she chose Obama because "I just felt he takes a stronger stand on things."
This is reflective of what I'll call the Hillary Cringe Factor: People are genuinely embarrassed to vote for her when there's such an attractive alternative running this year. And, whether you bridle or beam at the fact, Obama's skin color is driving a lot of black votes that would otherwise have gone ungrudgingly to his rival.
But I doubt the above-quoted Buckman or Swift would have different takes had their popular Democratic senator declared for Hillary.
You may be on safer ground with Crist, since Romney had polled about 3 points higher than McCain in Florida following Fred Thompson's withdrawal. Still, I think the mantle of being the presumptive candidate after New Hampshire and (especially) South Carolina favored McCain more than the governor's backing. Having his well-liked brother at the head of the Florida government didn't give Bush much escape velocity in the 2000 election (indeed, if he had any at all). Also recall that in 1994, at the height of his popularity in New York City, Rudy Giuliani went for the moribund Mario Cuomo and that wasn't enough to stop Pataki, who did well with the country club upstate Republicans.
I'll confess that this metric is all but impossible to gauge, but my impression is still that endorsements generate more media buzz than they do actual votes.
My old profile subject and now, I'm happy to say, my friend Ibn Warraq has an extract published in City Journal from his brilliant speech at the Intelligence Squared debate he had with Tariq Ramadan. The proposition was on the superiority of "Western" values -- problematic if only because those values, as Ibn deftly explains, are quite universal and geographically fungible:
In short, the glory of the West, as philosopher Roger Scruton puts it, is that life here is an open book. Under Islam, the book is closed. In many non-Western countries, especially Islamic ones, citizens are not free to read what they wish. In Saudi Arabia, Muslims are not free to convert to Christianity, and Christians are not free to practice their faith--clear violations of Article 18 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In contrast with the mind-numbing enforced certainties and rules of Islam, Western civilization offers what Bertrand Russell once called "liberating doubt," which encourages the methodological principle of scientific skepticism. Western politics, like science, proceeds through tentative steps of trial and error, open discussion, criticism, and self-correction.
The best line of the night is left out of this City Journal squib: "I'd rather live in a country where you can get stoned first, then commit adultery."
Now that his prophesied Limbaugh-led conservative backlash against the Republican frontrunner has turned out to be an abortion, Hugh Hewitt throws in with McCain.
I'll disagree with Michael at my own peril, but it seems to me that this campaign has at least two instances of endorsements mattering a great deal. First, last night was a very good night for Claire McCaskill. Missouri was a significant win for Obama --- the paradigmatic bellweather state where Hillary was way ahead a week before the primary --- and McCaskill made it happen.
Second, and more importantly, there was the Florida Republican primary. Going into the last weekend, Romney seemed to be surging. Then Charlie Crist declared for McCain, McCain bounced back to victory, and more or less sealed up the nomination.
What's certain is that endorsements matter less than they used to. In the past, an endorsement meant the unleashing of a political machine, not just an open-ended appeal. Ted Kennedy may be a popular figure among Democrats, but he obviously can't control ground operations in California. And political machines, in general, have become more diffuse. So whereas in past elections, Sens. Kerry and Kennedy and Governor Patrick would have exerted enough control on Massachusetts to deliver the state to their candidate, congressmen and state legislators now each have a semi-autonomous political machine of their own. And long before the high-profile endorsements in Massachusetts, Hillary Clinton held most of the local markers in Bay State politics.
Had Massachusetts been a stand-alone primary to which each campaign could have devoted its full resources, things might have turned out differently. Still, the idea of Ted Kennedy single-handedly flipping California Latinos to Obama, in retrospect, seems pretty fanciful. Endorsements count when the endorser can bring to bear his or her own successful operation. When they consist in little more than speeches, their appeal is limited.
How can one not stand in awe of the Boston Herald columnist's clairvoyance :
"The "could we beat Obama?" conversation is purely academic. It's over. The Clintons have defeated him already, because he is leaving South Carolina as "the black candidate."
He won't win another state. Even worse, in November Hillary will carry 90 percent of the black vote, despite their cynical, race-based campaign against the first viable black presidential candidate." --- The Corner, Jan. 26, 2008
"I am so confident of both a Patriots win today and a Romney win in Massachusetts on Tuesday that I made this pledge on the air Friday: "If the NY Giants beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl, I will vote cast my Super Duper Tuesday primary vote for (shudder) John McCain."
So when I say "Go, Pats!" I really, REALLY mean it.
I also think they are even more of a lead-pipe cinch to win the Super Bowl than McCain is to win the GOP nomination. Either way, I'm putting my money..er vote where my mouth is." --- The Corner, Feb. 3, 2008
Punters are now slowly beginning to favor Barack Obama to win the Democratic nomination, probably on the heels of the news that not only did he win the delegate contest last night, but also and perhaps more importantly, he forced Hillary Clinton's campaign to go bust in order to achieve a stalemate. In January, Hillary loaned her campaign $5 million, some of it, apparently, in a failed gambit to run up the delegate score in New York City, which forced her to devote far too many resources to the expensive New York media market, and allowed Obama to prevail easily in every caucus state.
This is grim news for Hillary for a number of reasons:
Whereas Obama's funding comes from a huge and growing number of small donations, Clinton's comes from a small number of very large donations. It is difficult enough to repeatedly ask the same sources to pony up substantial donations; with the campaign finance regime in place, many of Hillary's donors are either already maxed out or very close to it. Moreover, Obama continues to attract new donors, and Hillary does not. So Obama's funding advantage is only going to expand.
Hillary Clinton is a very wealthy woman, but unlike, say, Mitt Romney, she is not so wealthy that she can afford to dip into her own pocket to maintain funding parity with Obama.
Self-financing a campaign is a double-edged sword. Look at Romney: had he not spent tens of millions of his own money, he could never have even been competitive; but his investment clearly heightened the perception of him as an inauthentic panderer. Huckabee's crack about Romney "looking like the guy who fired you" offset what might have been Romney's very credible appeal as the best candidate on economic issues. It's not that self-financed campaigns are doomed to fail --- look at Bloomberg or Jon Corzine --- but they look at least a bit unseemly, especially stacked against the kind of grassroots support Obama enjoys.
The Clintons, in particular, look unseemly in running a self-financed campaign. Their borderline legalprobably illegal fundraising schemes, and their deep connections to any crook willing to pass around bills to politicians in the 90s, have not been issues in the campaign thus far. If Hillary is funding her own campaign though, what are the odds reporters don't begin asking some inconvenient questions? Besides which, the Clintons' sordid fiduciary dealings are not all in the past tense. Just a few days ago, the New York Times broke the news that Bill Clinton took money from Frank Giustra, Canadian mining mogul interested in uranium mining in Central Asia, and in exchange gave the Clinton seal of approval, and the international legitimacy attendant upon it, to Kazahkstan's blood-soaked dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev. I'll lay odds for anyone willing to bet that this is the only instance of the Clintons prostituting themselves to the assorted scum of the world.
Because of Obama's growing advantage in funds, he can simultaneously put together winning operations in the remaining February contests and also build organizations in Ohio and Texas, the next big prizes. Coming out of South Carolina, he had one week to contest twenty-two states, in twenty-one of which (i.e. excepting Illinois) he started from a massive handicap. He closed the gap even in the states he didn't win, poached Connecticut and Missouri, and swept the caucuses. His biggest challenge so far has been getting over the hump in a big primary state that isn't Illinois. But now he has a full four weeks to concentrate on just two states.
The race is by no means over. Obama has managed to cut into Hillary Clinton's demographic advantages somewhat, and build his own among males and African-Americans. His victories in lily-white caucus states demonstrate his ability to appeal across demographic lines if given enough time to do so. But Hillary held him off in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California. Ohio and Texas are tough for him, and almost the entire political machinery of Pennsylvania has lined up behind Hillary. But if the race looked like a weighted coin-flip in her favor before the fundraising news, it now looks like a slightly weighted coin-flip in his favor.
Or at least, it's a weighted coin-flip that he will finish with the largest number of pledged delegates. Superdelegates could well make the ultimate decision, as either of them would need to win at least 55% (and probably more) of the remaining pledged delegates to seal things. Obama should thank his lucky stars, therefore, that Howard Dean is running the party, and not a Clinton bag man like Terry McAuliffe. That gives him at least a fighting chance to win at the convention.
UPDATE: A whopping 3% of Obama's donors are maxed out. Compared to half of Clinton's donors. Ouch.
UPDATE (2/7): Hillary's surge of donations almost pays back her loan. Congratulations, Hillary donors. You've eased the financial burdens on a multimillionaire senator without contributing a dime to campaign operations.
If last night proved one thing in national politics, it is that marquee endorsements are meaningless. The Kennedy family's seemingly permanent blemish on the Massachusetts landscape was not enough to secure Barack Obama the state, and John Kerry was about as galvanizing as a booster as he was as a presidential contender.
I very much doubt that Al Gore or John Edwards -- both of whom are readying to declare for Obama, according to my old boss, Jewcy editor Tahl Raz -- could further tilt the electorate one way or the other. For one thing, Edwards' constituency of white male voters already seems to be going Obama's way without having to be told to do so.
Anyone who tries to spin the results on the Democratic side conclusively one way or another (hi Kos, I'm looking at you BTD) is full of shit. Both the popular vote differential and the delegate differential are less than 1% (in opposite directions, mind you).
On Intrade --- which doesn't measure preferences, but expectations --- the spread is Clinton 51.1/ Obama 49.8 50.1 vs. 50.1* as of 2:45 pm EST. Obama performed much better than anyone anticipated a week or two ago, Clinton dodged a knockout blow. Nobody won.
The question now is, can Obama get over the hump and win a big state primary? Specifically, can he replicate Connecticut and Missouri in Ohio or Texas?
And so there is no clear victory either way in the Democratic primary. Hillary Clinton finishes Super Tuesday with the most votes; Barack Obama (likely) finishes with the most pledged delegates.
According to my pre-Super Tuesday framework, Obama's delegate lead, and poaches in Connecticut, Delaware, and Missouri, make the night a modest win for Obama. Certainly, the next few weeks, with a series of primaries with favorable demographics and caucuses where he seems to be unbeatable, along with his funding advantage, are propitious for Obama. But the question of whether he can make good use of those fundamentals is going to ride significantly on the consensus narrative that emerges in the next few days. Did Hillary Clinton successfully fend off the challenge? Or did Obama survive the worst, and find himself poised to win an attrition war?
Here's my takeaway for the night: The delegate count is essentially tied, there is no clear momentum either way, and so the race is reset. Hillary's still the frontrunner. There are a series of contests through February that look good for Obama, culminating in Ohio and Texas on March 4. If Hillary can get a few more wins in February, she can probably go on to close things out in March. If Obama puts together an impressive string of victories, he's got a shot to finally vault ahead on March 4 and take the nomination.
Closing thought: By sitting out so far, Gore and Edwards have boosted the values of their endorsements geometrically. Either of them going for Clinton could now seal things for her. One or especially both going for Obama could make him the frontrunner. If this was their plan all along, it was very shrewd.
Granted, McCain's comeback after being out of money and left for dead is a compelling political story. And the "Mac is back!" chants in New Hampshire encapsulated that story nicely. Still, now that McCain looks like a mathematical lock on the Republican nomination, his supporters might want to select a more appropriate slogan.
One thing that occurs to me now is that Mike Huckabee will almost certainly endorse McCain. The muddled scholar of Darwinism didn't much like Romney's suggestion that he drop out and cede his percentage to the guy most likely to fire you. Assuming the mild rumors of Romney surge actually underestimate his potential to pull ahead today, if there is a run-off between him and McCain, then a Huckabee withdrawal will probably benefit McCain.
CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden has testified that only three Al Qaeda suspects have been waterboarded since 9/11 -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri -- and only because of the feared imminence of another attack on American soil. Very well. It's good to have an official acknowledgment of the torture the president has refused to outlaw and yet repeatedly said our military does not engage in. Hayden says the intel garnered from the practice has led to the prevention of further attacks, a claim that can't be substantiated one way or the other from where I sit.
I've written here before about the mendacity of the White House's stance on waterboarding, citing what the U.S. Army Field Manual stipulates as lawful methods of interrogation for prisoners of war and why these seem legitimate even to an unreconstructed hawk. (Does anyone think the authors of the Field Manual were pushovers on national security?)
Assuming Hayden's testimony is accurate, one takeaway is that talk of an American "gulag" is even more disreputable now. The Nazis and the Khmer Rouge may have waterboarded people, but they did so indiscriminately and on a much wider basis. So a simple request: Can we now fashion a moral argument against torture that is free of this sickened equivalence?
This isn't getting a lot of play, no doubt because the people covering it have no clue what they're talking about, but Hillary Clinton's proposed five-year freeze on existing mortgage interest rates is the stupidest idea any presidential candidate has put forward in a very, very long time. It's also a blatant pander to people who are struggling with ARM mortgages, and a way of piggybacking on their economic insecurities to appeal everyone who isn't sure just what's wrong with the economy, but finds the term "sub-prime" vaguely scary. (Remind me again, who speaks in generalities, and who is replete with specifics.)
Why is this such an awful proposal? Because you can't simply drop an anvil on one sector of the market and not expect repercussions elsewhere. If interest rates on existing mortgages were frozen, interest rates on new mortgages would spike overnight, and investors who might otherwise be interested in getting good values out of the housing market --- and thereby promote its recovery --- would be instantly deterred. Think the housing market looks bad today? Here's a vision of the housing market if Hillary has her way:
For everyone else though, such a freeze would be disastrous. Interest rates on new mortgages would skyrocket - perhaps past 8 percent, as the mutual funds, pension funds and other investors who typically provide capital to the mortgage market shift their money into other investments where the government isn't impairing returns. With higher mortgage rates eroding buying power, the downward pressure on home prices would only increase. Lower home prices would lead to even more defaults, as more folks who'd lost the equity in their homes choose to walk away from their mortgages.
"It certainly would not speed the recovery of the housing market," says Doug Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association. "The problem now is that investors are already worried about what the risks are, and (a rate freeze) would only widen risk premiums more."
Then there's the long-term impact such a bailout would have on behavior. While Clinton's plan would no doubt save some legitimate victims who were duped into taking out bad loans, she'd also be saving the flippers and speculators who knew the risks of low teaser rate mortgages but figured (wrongly) that they could always sell their house for a profit if the reset mortgage rate proved unaffordable. Bailing out these folks now would only encourage them to take even bigger risks down the line.
Succinctly, Hillary is offering short-term relief to a small number of people, at the cost of inflicting pain on a great many more people and damaging a large sector of the economy over a longer term.
It is perhaps the single dumbest proposal ever put forth by a presidential candidate in the post WWII era. Mollusks can do better than this. If you folks nominate this woman, despite the obvious contempt she has for you, your party is hopeless. I was saying about the same thing in regards to the two stooges from last night, but Senator Clinton made them look like giants.
Either Hillary knows what she is proposing, or she doesn't. In either case, she isn't fit to be president.
Whereas most journalists have laid back and accepted Hillary Clinton's assertions that she has a decades-long record of experience on every issue of national importance --- indeed, that nary a day has passed since her 25th birthday in which she hasn't fought for change for you and me --- McClatchy's Matt Stearns thought it might be worthwhile to look at the facts. And the facts are:
Clinton worked at the Children's Defense Fund for less than a year, and that's the only full-time job in the nonprofit sector she's ever had. She also worked briefly as a law professor.
Clinton spent the bulk of her career -- 15 of those 35 years -- at one of Arkansas' most prestigious corporate law firms, where she represented big companies and served on corporate boards...
Clinton did a great deal of public service work during her time at the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. She served on the board of the Legal Services Corp. during the Carter administration and for a time was its chair. She helped found a child advocacy system in Arkansas and took on several tasks as the state's first lady, such as revisions of the state's education system and rural health care delivery. She also served on the board of directors of the Children's Defense Fund, and on the board of a children's hospital...
She also served on corporate boards, including that of retail giant Wal-Mart from 1986-1992, frozen yogurt purveyor TCBY from 1985-1992 and cement manufacturer LaFarge from 1990-1992. She earned tens of thousands of dollars in fees from each.
Clinton's firm represented Wal-Mart and TCBY while she sat on their boards, a cozy practice that corporate governance experts frown upon because of the potential for conflicts of interest.
Politicians naturally want to stick to their chosen narratives, but other aspects of Clinton's relationship with the Rose Law Firm could remind voters of the more controversial side of the Clinton legacy.
There was her work on behalf of Madison Guaranty, a failed savings and loan at the heart of the Whitewater investigation -- the billing records of which were mysteriously found in a White House storage room years after investigators first asked for them. And there's Webster Hubbell, a Rose partner, Clinton pal and high-ranking Justice Department official who was convicted of fraud charges related to his work at the firm.
And, just to bring things up to the present, she became first lady of the United States, in which position she distinguished herself by leading an epic failure to enact health care reform, a disaster so monumental that it set back the cause 15 years and counting.
Then, of course, there is the Clintons' shameless suggestion that (a) Hillary's time in the White House counts as relevant experience for seeking the presidency, since she was part of a co-presidency (b) there would be no co-presidency if she is elected.
It's about six months too late to kill the myth of Hillary's vast experience, but late is better than never.
I'll be on the nationally syndicated radio show the Right Balance tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. EST to discuss the Super Tuesday results. You can listen live at the website, here.
Mitt Romney, whose polymer mold still looks wet, tries to appear nerdy-hip:
"What did they say in 'Star Wars?' " he asked. "What's that line? 'There's nothing happening here. These droids aren't the droids you're looking for.' "
Eric Fehrnstrom, his traveling press secretary, said it had actually been rendered: "These are not the droids you are looking for."
"These are not the droids you're looking for," Mr. Romney said. "Sorry."
Run this through your circuitry of reason and sanity, will you:
Because I have come out publicly for the senator from Illinois, I am often called upon to listen as people offer up -- with wistfulness and regret, or with a pundit's show of certainty, or with a well-earned but useless skepticism -- their bad reasons for not giving Obama their support. For a long time now, I have listened to these people with forbearance and with a sense of duty -- not to some principle of open debate or of the inherent merit in the free exchange of even meritless ideas, but rather out of obligation to the candidate whose cause I champion.
Because Obama appears to be a patient, forbearing man with a gift for listening, I figured I owed it to him to play the thing his way.
Thus does Michael Chabon admit that he's only paying attention to opposing political views out of deference to the man he thinks would want him to act this way -- and that man would be president of the United States.
You can read the entire op-ed for yourself and tell me if there are any coherent explanations for why Barack Obama is the best candidate. All I come away with is a parade of nostrums and what Irving Howe once called a "dithyrambling" style founded on sheer emotion. Apparently, Ayelet Waldman, Chabon's wife, is just as over the moon about Barack, which has this useless skeptic wondering if she'd throw Michael and the kids under the bus to save the Moshiach from the South Side.
Hillary Clinton is the crier, but lawn-watering blubbery and histrionics are becoming all too characteristic among Obama supporters. Check out the "Yes, We Can" video below, which someone might have been good enough to edit before posting it on YouTube.
Two questions:
1. When did the kitsch title of Sammy Davis Jr.'s autobiography become the campaign slogan of the season?
2. Why is the personality cult the only alternative for liberals to the "lesser of two evils" argument?
Breaking: Mike Huckabee will not carry the state of Utah, mostly because its people loathe him. Gee golly, who knew folks'd get all touchy and whatnot when you call 'em devil-worshipers?
Since none of the candidates can realistically expect to win enough delegates to clinch the nomination tomorrow, the question to ask about tomorrow's primaries and caucuses is how the outlook in each nominating contest will change between now and when the polls close. And that outlook is not simply a function of either raw vote numbers or delegate counts, but also, and perhaps most importantly, of the interpretive frame through which the media and the public view the results.
Clearly, a landslide in any direction would only admit of one interpretation, but there are a number of reasonably likely results (especially on the Democratic side) that could be interpreted in widely disparate ways, and in case of those outcomes, the crucial contest will be for control of the initial spin Tuesday night and Wednesday.
Let's look at each party, and begin with the Intrade spread, since it's a credible marker of public expectations, if not a reliable predictive tool.
Republicans:
The spread now is McCain 89.5/Romney 7.0. While I'm not about to predict some stunning Romney victory, that wide a margin seems to me to overvalue McCain and undervalue Romney. Indeed, Romney is trading so cheaply that he seems like a credible value bet --- little to lose, and would pay off handsomely.
How could a bet on Romney pay off? Apart from the interior west caucus states he is sure to win, Romney is showing late signs of life in Missouri, Georgia, and California. Unlike other dark blue states, the California GOP is as conservative as any other state Republican party in the country --- and it is a closed primary, with independents eligible to vote only in the Democratic primary. McCain will still pick up the lionshare of the delegates because of his strength in the northeast, but if Romney can pull off a comeback in California --- or perhaps just come within striking distance and pick up many California delegates, plus win Missouri --- he doesn't necessarily have to pack it in just yet. Tomorrow will exhaust virtually all the Kerry/Gore states where Republicans tilt towards the moderate wing of the party. It is at least conceivable that the schedule going forward, with its more conservative voters combined with Romney's superior organization and funding, could be propitious for Romney. Is it likely? Definitely not; but the pot is offering better than seven cents on the dollar.
The biggest obstacle to a Romney comeback is the winner-take-all configuration of the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut primaries, a remnant of Rudy Giuliani's scheme to run a favorite son campaign. Even though the GOP rewards red states with extra delegates and penalizes blue states, the tri-state area is so populous that it represents a huge delegate haul --- that McCain is highly likely to sweep. In retrospect, it is astonishing that the RNC allowed NY, NJ, and CT to get away with converting to winner-take-all rules. The effect is to give states in which the Republican electorate is very different from the national Republican electorate a hugely oversized influence in selecting the GOP nominee. That is, in fact, precisely the reason the RNC stripped Michigan and Florida of half their delegates. Why they didn't respond the same way to the Giuliani base states' scheme is a mystery that unfortunately hasn't been investigated.
Still, good results in California and Missouri would keep Romney alive. Don't count him out just yet.
Democrats:
Here things get very interesting. Democrats not only uphold proportional representation in every state, but (imperfectly) within every district. The number of delegates each district gets depends upon how the district voted in the past for Democrats; in districts with an odd number of delegates, the popular vote winner always gets at least one extra delegate; in districts with an even number of delegates, the only way to get an extra delegate is in a massive popular vote blowout.
On the eve of Super Tuesday, the Intrade spread is Hillary Clinton 52.9/ Barack Obama 47.0. That's as close as these things get, and seems about right to me. (I wouldn't bet on either of them at this point.) While Hillary is still favored to win the most populous states, Obama will pick up many delegates. If the Nevada pattern holds up --- i.e., Obama outperforming his popular vote in terms of delegate acquisition --- it could be a very long night for Hillary.
Each campaign has a set of three scenarios for tomorrow night, what I'll call the optimistic, pessimistic, and median scenarios. For Hillary, the optimistic result is sweeping the tri-state area, winning California by a larger margin (5+) than the polls currently show, picking off Alabama, doing respectably (within 15) in Illinois, and a 200+ delegate lead. The momentum for Obama in the last week makes this prospect seem unlikely, but recall the surprise we all got in New Hampshire. If Hillary's optimistic scenario is born out, it's basically over. (The optimistic scenario for Hillary, incidentally, is the pessimistic scenario for Obama.)
Obama's optimistic scenario is holding onto Alabama and Georgia, carrying the interior west caucuses, winning one of Connecticut and New Jersey (more likely Connecticut), and winning California. Should this scenario play out, it won't quite be over --- the Clinton machine is still formidable --- but Obama becomes the clear frontrunner, with a big advantage in money and a schedule favorable to him from here on out.
The median scenarios for each campaign are identical --- and they are, indeed, about what each campaign expects. This outcome would be something along the lines of Obama victories in the south and interior west and slim Hillary victories in the populous states, leading to a delegate advantage of about 100 for Hillary. If this scenario, the likeliest of the three, comes to pass, the outlook for the rest of the campaign depends almost entirely of what story we choose to tell about Super Tuesday.
One possible story is that Hillary has successfully fended off the challenge, and is on her way to a coronation in Denver. The other is that Obama has withstood the worst the Clintons had to throw at him, and survived. From here, the race proceeds to Louisiana, with its large black population, the Washington state and Nebraska caucuses where Obama's organization favors him, and the Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC primaries, which he should win. (Indeed, provided Obama is still viable after Tuesday, he will be the favorite through a string of contests until the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4.)
Additionally, Obama is not only a more prolific fundraiser than Hillary Clinton, but also tends to get his donations in the form of many small donations, as opposed to Hillary's relatively few large donations. This means that the longer the race goes on, the better for Obama, since he can stay solvent a great deal longer than Hillary can.
What will determine the narrative that emerges after Tuesday, assuming the results are indecisive in terms of delegates? The coverage leading up to tomorrow's primaries already suggests that the media are preparing a pro-Obama spin provided he is not wiped out tomorrow. (Indeed, the pro-Obama pre-spin is so widespread that a few broadcasters, especially Dan Abrams, have already begun pushing back against that pre-spin).
The other development that could tip things significantly is the endorsement primary. It is not so much that endorsements themselves deliver votes, but that they either reinforce or disrupt whatever narrative a campaign is hoping to promote. So, for example, if Hillary has a 100 delegate lead on Wednesday morning, and Edwards or Gore endorse Obama on Thursday, the pro-Obama interpretation of the results is likely to take hold (such endorsements would stymie if not kill any Hillary momentum coming out of Super Tuesday). On the other hand, if Richardson endorses Hillary, and Gore and Edwards stay out, the pro-Hillary narrative can propel her to the nomination. (If Gore or Edwards were to endorse Hillary, as unlikely as that might seem, she's a shoe-in.)
Hence, the biggest story of the day (at least if it's true), is Tahl Raz's scoop, from inside the Obama campaign, that they've brokered endorsements from Gore and Edwards, and deliberately postponed them until after Tuesday --- to set up the narrative going forward. This has a certain logic to it: Gore and Edwards would have maximal impact in the event of an indecisive result tomorrow, but it's also risky as hell. Such endorsements would have likely been enough to forestall a Hillary blowout, which instead remains a live option. Still, if Raz's sources are credible, then in two of three possible outcomes tomorrow, Obama looks good for the rest of the campaign.
Red meat conservatives think John McCain's indulgence of leftish policies on global warming, evangelicalism, torture, judicial filibusters, gay marriage, and immigration makes him a dangerous beggar at the feast. Ann Coulter has said, in her spindly cabaret way, that she'd rather vote for Hillary Clinton (Barack Obama should approve that message while it's still good). Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham sputter over the airwaves about a closet Democrat basking sacrilegiously in the aura of Ronald Reagan. Even the intellectual deacon of arch-conservatism, Jeffrey Hart, has declared for Obama, the senator with the most liberal voting record.
So how can McCain alienate so many natural allies and still nab the GOP nomination, as he looks all but certain to do tomorrow? The answer is that much like Obama, he's a gestalt candidate--his whole is greater than the sum of his parts, and people tend to like the whole.
This just in... Breaking news.... Must credit Snarksmith....
Those of you glued onto Fox missed the real excitement over on C-Span. Maria Shriver just finished an unscheduled speech at a "Women for Obama" rally at UCLA headlined by Michelle O., Caroline Kennedy, and Oprah. Maria's pitch: "If Barack Obama were a state, he would be California."
Maria Shriver tips the struggle for Kennedys, which had previously been tied with Patrick, Caroline, and Ted for Obama, and Kerry, Kathleen, and Bobby Junior for Hillary. Also, Ethel, widow of Bobby Senior, has just endorsed Obama. What's interesting about this last endorsement is that Ethel is the first Kennedy from the RFK cadet branch of the family to endorse Obama, thereby underscoring his potential crossover appeal in the fall.
However things go on Tuesday, Obama is now crushing the Clintons in the Kennedy primary. Perhaps that explains Bill's decision to bash Ted over No Child Left Behind (which, um, Hillary voted for): Since the Clintons couldn't ghettoize Obama as the black candidate in South Carolina, their Plan B is to ghettoize Obama as the Kennedy candidate. That way, they can capitalize on the longstanding antipathy of black, white, and Latino voters for Kennedys, who don't make up even 1% of the electorate in any remaining primaries.
Of course, if that doesn't work, the Clintons could always try to get the support of Joe Kennedy, but that would be a bit like a Republican seeking the endorsement of Neil Bush.
The would-be CEO president has triumphed by a wide margin in the Pine Tree State. The best news for Romney is that McCain narrowly edged out Ron Paul for second, since he gets a "Romney beats McCain" rather than a "Romney beats Paul" headline. (It's not much, but hey, Romney needs every scrap he can get at this point.)
Now, the Clintons didn't think there was anything particularly wrong when Bill Shaheen implied that Obama was a crack dealer. And they didn't think there was anything wrong when Mark Penn implied that Obama was a crack dealer. And they didn't think there was anything wrong with Bob Kerrey's suggestion that Hussein Obama attended a secular madrassa and isn't that wonderful. And the most well-oiled political machine ever wasn't well-oiled enough to forestall the distribution of the "Obama is a radical Muslim" smears. And their commitment to non-racism didn't stop Bob Johnson's post-Shaheen, post-Penn implication that Obama was a crack dealer. And their lifetime of respect for African-Americans didn't prevent Bill from belittling Obama's overwhelming victory in a highly competitive South Carolina primary (55% of the vote, 24% of the white vote) to Jesse Jackson's victories in non-competitive South Carolina caucuses 20 and 24 years ago (~5% of the white vote).
Well it seems that South Carolina finally taught them a lesson. Bill will be going on a groveling tour of black churches in LA to say sorry, presumably with his usual sincerity, for being such an asshole:
Watson, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus who has endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), tells us she'll usher the former president to more than half a dozen churches in her district where she says he needs to "renew his relationship" with congregants who were turned off by his racially tinged comments in the days leading up to and following the South Carolina primary. (Such as when Clinton compared Sen. Barack Obama's landslide victory to Jesse Jackson's wins in 1984 and 1988.)
The four-term congresswoman said she asked Clinton to write a letter to each congregation they'll visit on Sunday "explaining his commitment to civil rights and equal rights." She says the letter "is in development" but that "he knows what needs to be in it: He needs to renew his relationship with the South Central community."
Watson is among the half of the divided black caucus supporting Hillary Clinton instead of Obama for president. She remains loyal to the Clintons, she says, despite her own uneasy feelings over Bill injecting race into the primary campaign.
But just what lesson will the Clintons learn? That using race as a wedge to win elections is despicable? Or will they learn, as they learned after Bill made a public spectacle of his execution of a retarded black man, that there will always be people gullible enough to believe they give a damn about anyone other than themselves.
Incidentally, I wonder if Jesse Jackson's ass will be one of those Bill smooches. Jesse was good enough for Bill when he needed someone to confess to.
Nowhere was that judgment more needed than in 2003, when Congress was called upon to accept or reject the disastrous Iraq invasion. Clinton faced a test and failed, joining the stampede as Congress voted to authorize war. At last week's debate and in previous such sessions, Clinton blamed Bush for abusing the authority she helped to give him, and she has made much of the fact that Obama was not yet in the Senate and didn't face the same test. But Obama was in public life, saw the danger of the invasion and the consequences of occupation, and he said so. He was right.
Obama demonstrates as well that he is open-eyed about the terrorist threat posed to the nation, and would not shrink from military action where it is warranted. He does not oppose all wars, he has famously stated, but rather "dumb wars." He also has the edge in economic policy, less because of particular planks in his platform than because of his understanding that some liberal orthodoxies developed during the last 40 years have been overtaken by history. He offers leadership on education, technology policy and environmental protection unfettered by the positions of previous administrations.
By contrast, Clinton's return to the White House that she occupied for eight years as first lady would resurrect some of the triumph and argument of that era. Yes, Bill Clinton's presidency was a period of growth and opportunity, and Democrats are justly nostalgic for it. But it also was a time of withering political fire, as the former president's recent comments on the campaign trail reminded the nation. Hillary Clinton's election also would drag into a third decade the post-Reagan political duel between two families, the Bushes and the Clintons. Obama is correct: It is time to turn the page.
Think Frank Luntz and his focus groups couldn't get any weirder? Check out Frank Luntz and his focus group taking lessons in political science from the Minister of Silly Walks:
If I were working for Barack Obama, I'd distribute Ann Coulter's endorsement of Hillary Clinton as widely as possible. Coulter is more convincing on some points than others --- McCain is unequivocally against torture, Hillary isn't; on the other hand Hillary isn't actually more hawkish than Hundred-Years-War McCain --- but even where Coulter doesn't provide Republicans with a compelling rationale to support Clinton against McCain, she gives Democrats very good reason to support Obama against Clinton.
There are two reasons why Hillary Clinton's answers to the questions at last night's debate about her vote for the Iraq war were so long and convoluted. One is that she is just incapable of admitting a mistake, even when it's in her political interest to do so. But the other, and more important, is that she thinks her vote was right. (Both reasons are necessary; Hillary does not, in general, have trouble being insincere for political gain.)
Obama and Clinton were about even on points last night, until the last third of the debate, which was dominated by Iraq, and in which, in turn, Obama mopped the floor with her. There are undoubtedly a lot of voters who haven't been paying any attention until now, and were planning to vote for Hillary just because. Many of them probably don't even know that Hillary was for the war. If the Democrats really are an anti-war party, it will be a rough few days for Hillary.
Well, the real question now is: When will Microsoft beginning withdrawing its troops from Iraq?
"Shock and Awe" was Wired's headline responding to the news that the software giant has offered $44.6 billion to buy out Yahoo in what would be Microsoft's biggest acquisition yet. (Anyone remember Starbucks' sinister Phase 2 of operations?)
In a clear bid to outstrip Google of its market dominance in the search engine sector, Bill Gates is willing to pay $31 a share, which is almost twice what Yahoo's stock is worth (or was worth before the merger announcement). Unsurprisingly, the Justice Department's Anti-Trust team are already scanning the proposal's fine print.
Inhuman Power of the Lie: "The Great Terror" at 40
My lengthy review-essay of Robert Conquest's new edition of The Great Terror is now up at The New Criterion.
I met Robert Conquest two summers ago in Palo Alto, which he has made his home, as a fellow of Stanford University's Hoover Institution, for the past two decades. Christopher Hitchens had sent Conquest, the primus inter pares of Sovietology, a review I had written of a recent Stalin biography that evidently impressed him, and a lunch was arranged at the Hitchens's household. For a few hours I got to chat with the premier truth-teller of the most sustained totalitarianism of the twentieth century.
As it happened, Conquest had just completed another series of light verse--"bawdy," as he prefers to call it--at which I was fortunate enough to get an advance peek. Those familiar with the full oeuvre of this extra- ordinary man, responsible for Margaret Thatcher's "Iron Lady" speech and dubbed, at the last plenum of the Central Committee, "anti-Sovietchik number one," will know that he is also an accomplished poet, novelist, and literary critic, whose limericks have long furnished the sunnier side of Cold War tabletalk on both sides of the Atlantic. Most of these are bawdy all right, and the best trade in liturgical or ethnic humor. It would be amusing and rewarding to see the captive minds of political correctness implode should they discover such dirty rhymes in print today; the closest they'll come to a Conquest anthology is a generous helping in The New Oxford Book of Light Verse, edited by his boon companion Kingsley Amis. (The curious should check under the pseudonyms Ted Paulsen, Victor Gray, and Stuart Howard-Jones.) Among my own favorites, collected instead in Amis's Memoirs, is this technically expert animadversion on the embarrassing Observer critic Philip Toynbee:
You cannot, when dealing with Toynbee,
Just pay him back in his own coin be-
Cause talking such piss
Would come rather amiss:
So how would a kick in the groin be?
At ninety years of age, Conquest can still tell you what it was like to fire a rifle in the Spanish Civil War. He'd been "bumming around" Malaga as a student in 1936 when he befriended a few genial but scruffy anarcho-syndicalists whose Ford 10 he was good enough to get started. They invited him to "put down some señoritos" said to be holding out along the coast and, as a not-bad marksman at Winchester, he agreed. After cleaning the sorry-looking Mauser he'd been handed and getting exactly one warning shot off above the Fascist hideout (vacant, as it turned out), he boarded a boat and returned to England, his companions having declared the end to all major hostilities.
This anecdote yields quite a lot, I think, about more than Conquest's winning personality (Kingsley Amis to Philip Larkin: "Bob just goes on as if nothing has happened"). It also speaks ably of what has made him, apart from his groundbreaking research, such a powerful historian: irony and a wry sense of humor have offset some of the most tragic passages committed to print in the last hundred years. ("The sequence Lenin-Stalin-Khrushchev-Brezhnev was like a chart illustrating the evolution of the hominids, read backward.") As Amis plausibly, but inventively, tells it, when the publisher of The Great Terror asked Conquest what he'd like to re-title the book in its second edition, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and new archival material from Moscow vindicated almost all of its key judgments: "Well, perhaps, I Told You So, You Fucking Fools. How's that?"
Actually not that shocking when you think about it. Even McCain's too much of a girly-man for the McCarthyite Preying Mantis. It takes ovaries of steel to build, raze a village.
Since (late) 2004, satisfying your jones for political and cultural commentary, day-old scoops and late-breaking marginalia, and whatever else finagles its way into the cyber-planetary potluck...
• Civil Disobedience on the Web By Michael Weiss {British bloggers stand up to threats of libel lawsuits., originally published in Slate.}
• Spray-Fire Atonement By Michael Weiss {How cognitive behavioral psychology can help High Holy Day Jews who repent too much., originally published in Slate.}
• Mutiny on the Manifesto By Michael Weiss {Spineless scalawags are sabotaging the most promising leftist doctrine in decades. Don't let them., originally published in Jewcy.}
• Rise of the Faux-cialists By Michael Weiss {Three poseurs who would have Marx spinning in his grave (plus their real-deal counterparts), originally published in Jewcy.}
• Stepson of the Time By Michael Weiss {A reconsideration of Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate, originally published in The New Criterion.}
• The Surge Can Work By Michael Weiss {Everyone's wrong about the president's new war plan, originally published in Jewcy.}
• A Kibitz on Pure Reason By Michael Weiss {The author of Betraying Spinoza on rationalism, passion, and great 17th-century hair, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Brainwashing's Nemesis By Michael Weiss {How Rick Ross became a cult buster extraordinaire, originally published in Jewcy.}
• The Whiz Kid of Warfare By Michael Weiss {How Noah Shachtman has revolutionized military reporting, originally published in Jewcy.}
• A Blacklist The Left Could Use By Michael Weiss {Meet the Christopher Hitchens of postpunk, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Is Marriage the New Dating? By Michael Weiss {A divorcee, a young married, and a singleton debate wedded bliss, originally published in Jewcy.}
• The Jewish Jihad for Jesus By Michael Weiss {Why converts are leading the evangelical movement, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Tribal Threads By Michael Weiss {The designer of Gytha Mander on the holy land, holsters, and honeys, originally published in Jewcy.}
• Some Kind of Republican By Michael Weiss {The real legacy of John Hughes, published in Slate.}
My 
My lengthy review-essay of Robert Conquest's new edition of The Great Terror is now up at The New Criterion. 
