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IOWA !!

Obviously I haven't been keeping this place up - I'm blogging now at WesleyClarkWeblog.  Well, okay, it's dead.   My political-junkie page nowadays is mostly Daily Kos - go to my links page!

October 8, 2003

A friend who lives in the Peachblossom State wrote:

After today, I don't EVER want to hear about how fucked up Georgia politics are or how STUPID Georgia voters are.

By comparison, we look like a state of Rhodes scholars.

The hell of it is, I have absolutely no answer to this.  Sonny Perdue may be inherently absurd, but compared to Arnold Schwarzeneggar?  California has always been balanced between two stereotypes: the Golden State, and the Land of Fruits and Nuts.  Yesterday, about 55 percent of the electorate came down on the side of the latter.

That said, the media bloviating and over-analysis has been typically absurd.  The recall has few larger lesson.  It was a perfect storm, peculiar to the circumstances of California - though perhaps "perfect earthquake" would be more geographically fitting.

Whether or not Gray Davis was a bad governor, he is a truly awful politician.  The guy has negative charisma.  When we were being screwed by the electricity swindle, it should have been his finest hour.  He could have gone after Bush and his crooked industry buddies with a red-hot poker - remember, this was before 9/11, before Bush had the crisis-leader aura that has only just lately worn off. 

If he had, it might not have solved the (contrived) short-term problem, but it would have focused the blame exactly where it belonged ... and today, Gray Davis would the the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, not the most humiliated politician in America, and Ahhnold would still be just an action movie star past his prime.

But Davis didn't.  As governor, he was a first-rate chief of staff, dealing with technical problems but totally deaf to message and tone.  So, when he needed his base, it wasn't there for him.  It's that simple, and that sad.  To paraphrase the great line from The Wizard of Oz, Davis wasn't a bad man - just an exceptionally bad wizard.

As for a recall of Ahhnold, that is - at least for now - a nonstarter.  Unless he has well-hidden depths, he will fall on his face in soon enough.  His campaign was all image, no substance.  A majority of CA voters were suckers, and will pay a sucker's price. 

Our political energies must turn to a different task, with far higher stakes: ridding ourselves, next fall, of the truly calamitous folly of George W. Bush.

October 7, 2003

Rix Pix - Recall Special

I've always been proud to be from California, but I'm afraid that this evening I'll be embarrassed.  God, I hope I'm wrong!

My predictions:

Recall: 52 / 48.  Election Day voting will be dead even, but absentees will tip it.

Replacement Ballot:

Ahhnold - 40

Cruz - 36

McClintock - 20

Camejo - 3

Assorted Riffraff - 1

October 6, 2003

Yeah, I've been spending time posting on various boards, instead of keeping up my own damn blog.

California recall update:  I was wrong - obviously - when I guessed a couple of weeks ago that Gray Davis was the effective winner of the free-for-all debate.   Or, rather, I was correct only in my follow-up warning that the media would play it as a win for Ahhnold, because they so badly want the ratings bonanza that Kaliforniens-Gauleiter Schwarzeneggar would assure them.  

However, the media can't resist a feeding frenzy, even if it might cause premature cancellation of a promising high-ratings miniseries.  The groping and Hitler-admiration stories have thus stalled Ahhnold's momentum in the California recall race.  A Knight-Ridder poll from Wednesday through Saturday showed firm support for the recall slipping from 52 percent last Wednesday to 44 percent on Saturday.    The buzz is that other polls now show the recall as a tossup.

The big unknowns are whether there will be a last-minute surge back toward Ahhnold, and what is in the absentee ballots already cast.  Some were cast before the debate that Ahhnold "won."  Others were cast between the debate and the breaking of the Gropenator stories.  Probably, though, most were cast by people who were firmly committed, one way or the other.  If you're hanging in the balance, the temptation is to hold off till election day - and perhaps take a pass even then.

Either way, it will likely be close.

There are a million things to say about the Valerie Plame affair, so I won't try to say them all.  As often, Josh Marshall has one of the best takes - regardless of legal investigations, why hasn't Bush come down on people in his inner circle who burned a CIA agent?

Also worth noting, though, is a piece by Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard.  When Kristol writes a "White House in disarray" story, the problem is serious.

The question of whether Clark is really an authentic Democrat keeps coming up on Dem-oriented discussion boards, such as Daily Kos.  I'll just put here a cleaned-up version of a reply I made on that question:

What exactly makes someone an "authentic Democrat?" True that for elected officials we can look at their track records. For anyone else we can only look at their stands on issues. Sure, Clark could be jiving, out of pure ambition, but the burden of proof is to show why we should assume this. People rarely lie about their fundamental values - they may spin them, but not flat out lie.

For what it's worth, Clark gave the most trenchant critique of school vouchers - and the whole idea that "competition" is a cure-all - that I recall seeing from anyone. It doesn't pass the Plaus-O-Meter test that he made it up without believing a word of it.

By way of analogy, statements quoted on these boards show that Dean struggled last summer and fall over the war-vote question, as a great many serious people did. We could argue that his final decision to come out against the war was opportunistic. He was a long-shot at the time, and opposing the war when he did gave him huge traction he couldn't have gotten any other way.

I suspect in fact that Dean was siezing an opportunity - but only because it was where he'd already decided to come down. He concluded that the war was a huge mistake, and only then decided to take that ball and run with it. More power to him.

As for Clark, my take, for what it's worth: For most of his life, I don't think he thought about politics much as such. He felt that as a soldier he should not be political. As he rose through the ranks, though, and got stars on his shoulders, he did think - a lot - about strategy and the big global picture. His thinking was shaped, as for all of us, by his experience and also by his core values.

We know - not just from his writings, but from his Kosovo performance - what he believes about the world and America's role in it. He's a multilateralist, and ultimately a Wilsonian internationalist. That puts him firmly in the Democratic tradition of foreign policy, and totally opposed to the Republican outlook in either its isolationist or neocon go-it-alone-and-screw-everyone-else modes.

Foreign policy isn't an island unto itself. Both parties' foreign policy traditions are firmly linked to their broader outlooks about human nature and human society. In a nutshell, "we're in this together" versus law of the jungle. So, when Clark started thinking about political questions, the same attitudes and experience that led him to Democratic foreign-policy views naturally led him the same way on domestic issues.

At that, I don't think Clark really thought of going for the brass ring till he saw what an incredible bollux the Bush crowd made after 9/11. He might have run for governor of Arkansas, but the calamitous road he sees Bush taking us all down in the world is what made him decide to go for the White House.

September 28, 2003

Valerie Plame.

Expect to be hearing a lot more about her in the coming days.  For those who are not hard core news junkies, the two important facts about her:

1) She is also Mrs. Joseph Wilson, Mr. Wilson being the former ambassador who was sent to check out the story that Saddam was trying to buy "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, and was dissed by the White House when he reported back that there was nothing to it.

2) She is a covert CIA operative - at least, she was till her cover was blown by two "senior White House officials," who outed her to Bob "Prince of Darkness" Novak and five other reporters.   Only Novak originally spilled the beans, a couple of months ago, and the story has been bubbling along just under the surface till now.

Today, the story blew wide open in the Washington Post.  I didn't save the Post link, but Josh Marshall has a good rundown on the whole skinny in his ever-useful Talking Points Memo blog. 

Now, Ms. Plame was presumably not running around in a catsuit with a silencer-equipped pistol strapped to her calf.  Her cover was apparently as a "private consultant" in the energy business.  But, plain and simple, she is basically a US spy.  Outing a covert agent is serious business.  For White House officials to out a covert agent as political payback against her husband, because he didn't tell them what they wanted to hear, is really serious business. 

People get to wear bright orange prison jumpsuits for this sort of thing.

September 25, 2003

I'm not a neutral observer, but I'd call today's debate a win for Clark. No home runs, but a solid performance when he was the new guy who had to show he is not a flash in the pan.

He's also helped by the bit of nasty 3-way spat among Dean, Gephardt, and Kerry. It wasn't a huge deal (just a few minutes all told), and I don't care "who started it" - it doesn't help any of the three involved, who happen to be the other three leading contenders.

Edwards stayed out of the fight, and came off well all around, but he's still in a tough spot overall. His best hope was a Clark crash & burn, which doesn't look likely now.

Lieberman actually wasn't bad, but kind of blew it at the end by whining about how this was the first time he hadn't been booed.  As for the others:

If our cultural set was for grandfather figures, Graham would be leading. As it is, go back and save your Senate seat, grandpops. (Sorry!)

Kucinich - finish high school and mellow out, and you could have a future.

Braun. Just plain classy lady. If Arianna Huffington is every man's fantasy mistress, CMB is the fantasy wife.

Al Sharpton had the best line of the afternoon, welcoming Clark to the party - in contrast to the other (unnamed) longtime Dems who act like Republicans.

Meanwhile, the Mighty Wurlitzer is tooting away like mad against Clark, per today's Drudge.  And so it goes.  No doubt who Karl Rove is most afraid of.

A somewhat sobering after-note to my comments below on the California debate.  Watching the post-game show on CNN, it was pretty clear that the spin - especially from Jeff "Hey, I'm on TV!" Greenfield - was that Ahhnold had somehow won.  Like Bush in the 2000 debates, he evidently "won" by not babbling incoherently.

The buzz I've seen on the Web is that MSNBC had pretty much the same pro-Ahhnold spin.  

Evidently the cable networks really want Ahhnold to be the next governor of California.   It is not hard to guess why.  It has nothing to do with politics or ideology.   It is for one embarrassingly simple reason:

Ratings.

For the cable news nets, Ahhnold has already been manna from heaven - do you think a California gubernatorial debate would have been carried live and nationwide, if he weren't in it?  (Just look at the other debates, where the Chickenator hasn't shown up.)   Ahhnold as governor would be the media gift that keeps on giving.  The only thing better would be J. Lo as governor.

Maybe the good news in the bad news, though, is that the sound bite of the evening was Ahhnold being an asshole: "I have the perfect part for you [Arianna] in Terminator IV."  Good one for pulling in the women's vote.

Today's debate among the Democratic prez nominees will, IMHO, be the single most important day for the Clark campaign.  His debut brought spectacular national poll numbers, both within the Dem field and in trial heats against Bush.  It also had a significant stumble, in soundbiting his position on the Iraq war.  For a lot of grassroots Dems there's also a legitimate question of why he voted Republican into the '80s, when he was a grownup who should have known better.

Today he can start to lay those questions to rest.  It will also be our first chance to see how he stacks up head to head against the rest of the Dem field.  The debate won't be determinative on either count - a lot will depend on what specific questions get asked.  Still, we'll have a good idea by this evening whether he has the legs for the long haul, or is just this month's girl.

September 24, 2003

Tom McClintock, Cruz Bustamante, Arianna Huffington, Peter Camajo, and - oh yes, Ahhnold Schwarzeneggar - had a debate this evening. 

Gray Davis won.

It wasn't really quite a debate, but it wasn't at all as lame as it originally sounded.   The candidates did get all the questions in advance, but couldn't just give canned answers - instead it developed into pretty much of a free-for-all.   So free, in fact, that they were talking over each other much of the time, underlining the circus element of the whole recall process.

All five candidates are sharp - even Ahhnold has brain power waay beyond George Bush, not to mention any of the others.  If you want a right-wing nutjob, McClintock is your guy.  Camejo ought to quit the 3rd party schtick and take his place on the left side of the Democratic dialogue.  Arianna just plain sparkles - what can I say? ;)  Cruz Bustamante was the least flashy, but the grownup at the table.  He also had the finest bit of the evening, about the heavy load that "illegal aliens" carry in the California economy.  (Camejo, following him, was nearly as good.)

Still, Gray Davis won, because the chaotic show just demonstrated once again that this is a circus.  Voters who are wavering on the recall question were given that much more reason to have second thoughts about the entire process.

September 22, 2003

This does it.

I just tipped from being "Clark-interested" to a definite Clark supporter. (Sure, if he flames out, it's probably back to Dean.)

Robert "Prince of Darkness" Novak is the one rightie columnist I read regularly, because he may be evil but he's not stupid, and actually can be a pretty good reporter. And, embarrassing though it is, I use a link to Drudge to get to Novak.

Which I just did, to check out his regular Monday column. So, what do I find? A huge Drudge headline about Clark and the Mladic's-hat episode,* plus a box linking five other attacks on Clark. And then, when I head on over to Bob Novak, whatcha know? He's also pitching the Mladic hat thing.

Has Dean, or anyone else, gotten the Mighty Wurlitzer tooting away at full blast like this? It's damn well obvious that the Mighty Wurlitzer - which means Karl Rove - is scared to death of Wes Clark.

And anyone who's got Karl Rove scared to death ... that's my guy! :)

*Historical note:  Ratko Mladic was one of the nastiest Bosnian Serb militia leaders during the Bosnian civil war.  Around 1995, with NATO still unwilling to kick ass and take names, Gen. Clark was sent to talk to Mladic, "soldier to soldier," to try and get him to ease up.  In the course of this, the two exchanged military caps.  This is the kind of thing that happens when military types meet to negotiate.

Sad to say, Mladic is still at large.  (As, of course, are both Saddam and Osama.)  At least Slobodan Milosovic, the chief instigator of the Balkan horrors, is behind bars in The Hague.

September 21, 2003

Plan B? 

I predict that by this time next year - probably a good deal earlier, in fact - we will no longer be in Iraq.  The most basic reason is that our situation on the ground is fast approaching untenable.  The insurgency appears to be gaining ground instead of losing.  Ominous indications hint that the "great silent majority" of Iraqis are running out of patience with us, at any rate in central Iraq.  Even our handpicked Governing Council is starting to take actions without "consulting" with the occupation authorities.  (They are also, apparently, at risk of getting picked off.)

Our untenability on the ground in Iraq has already been pointed out by others, such as blogger Steve Gilliard.  Now, you could argue that just because the situation in Iraq is untenable is no reason for George Bush to abandon his triumph.  He wouldn't be the first stubborn ass of a leader to miss the obvious.  In the long march of history, he won't be the last.

But it isn't just the situation on the ground in Iraq that is becoming untenable - there's also the situation on the ground here in the US of A.  At some point fairly soon, Karl Rove is going to go to Bush and tell him, "Iraq has to go away, or you won't get re-[sic] elected."  In fact, Rove may already have done so - there is a tantalizing hint of it here (link probably expires in a few days).

The way to make Iraq go away, so far as the US media and American public opinion are concerned, is to end the steady trickle of American troops coming home in flag-draped coffins.  Afghanistan had "gone away" - even as it fell into a shambles and the Taliban regrouped - till the mess in Iraq called new attention to the mess in Afghanistan, and dragged it back into the news. Once US troops are out, Iraq news will fall back to Page A-32, and the occasional segment on the PBS NewsHour and NPR.  It will vanish from the network news as though it had never existed.

At any rate, that is what Bush has to hope for, and why he will get us out of there before the election season heats up.  It might not work out that way, of course.   Iraq might fall into a civil war too noisy to completely ignore.  Hardline Islamists might take control, or al-Qaeda types might move in in a big way.  The worst-case scenario would be if Saddam somehow muscles his way back in.  (And this time, no more Mr. Nice Guy!)

If Saddam makes a comeback, Bush is toast next fall.  He cannot survive the bumper stickers, SADDAM GOT HIS JOB BACK - HAVE YOU?

More likely, though, Saddam really is finished.  Even for the Baathists, he's last year's girl.  There will be new black-mustache guys eager to take his place - who won't be baggage for Bush to carry, because no one in this country ever heard of them.  "Towelheads" are pretty interchangeable, after all.   By 2005-2006, Iraq might well be more of a headache than it had been since 1991 ... but that, after all, will be after the election.

Now, this may cause some trouble on the right.  The Weekly Standard crowd will likely break from Bush - but they were never really his guys in the first place; a lot of them backed McCain in 2000.  Conceivably, McCain might even challenge Bush, if the withdrawal is manifest before the primaries, but his magic won't work a second time.  Meanwhile, Limbaugh, the Fox gasbags, and the rest will be beating the drum about how we Overthrew a Terrible Tyrant, Restored Democracy to Iraq, and so on.  Fundamentalist preachers will explain how it is all right there in the Book of Revelation.

How this plays out politically, I'm not sure.  As the old saying goes, you can put a pig in a party dress and call it a debutante, but it's still a pig.   The dittoheads will dance with it, but some fraction of GOP voters will still smell the whiff of old, overcooked bacon.  If Clark is the Dem nominee, he's probably the one guy who can effectively take it to Bush on his foreign policy failures, whatever happens.  Dean, or Gephardt, or any of the others, probably wouldn't even try.   If the job market is still in the toilet, they arguably won't need to.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

On the Democratic nomination front, I was obviously at least partly wrong in supposing that Gen. Wesley Clark had a complete campaign organization up and ready to move out.  He made a few significant stumbles on his first couple of days out of the box - no biggies, in spite of the play they got among junkies, but clear signs of a new campaign still feeling its way out.  On the other hand, the accounts I've seen suggest that his early campaign events are going pretty well.  A Newsweek poll had him leading the Dem field - nothing to be taken very literally, but clearly showing him as a contender.

Clark has had plenty of media experience, but nothing compares to a presidential campaign.  I'd say that he's had his first taste of live fire - except that, like John Kerry, he has experienced real live fire.  The kind that flatlines your pulse, not just your polls.

How it goes from here, we'll see.   

-- Rick Robinson

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