Campaigns like people go through life phases, and nothing can be more distressing to a candidate and his/her supporters as when journalists start reporting a political death rattle. That now seems to be the stage of the campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

You can hear the characterizations in the reports of TV news journalists and read references to it in some news reports. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported that Senator Clinton knows the race is over. But it now seems like that narrative in a campaign’s cycle has kicked in, given a report in the New York Times:

On the day Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was endorsed by the governor of North Carolina, a supporter gave her a three-foot-long balloon replica of herself, complete with blond hair, black pantsuit and wide pink smile, which Mrs. Clinton promptly took on her plane and laughingly showed off to reporters.

On Thursday, little more than two weeks later, the doll lay on the sofa by her seat on the plane, shriveled and deflated.

With her candidacy running out of time — and perhaps air — the Clinton campaign has taken on a distinctly subdued mood.

Mrs. Clinton found herself largely ignored on Friday while a battle raged between Senator Barack Obama on one hand and Senator John McCain and President Bush on the other.

This has been a week of agony and ecstasy for the Clintons - and she could face the same kind of week again.
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Regular gas was $3.55 a gallon here in southeastern Ohio yesterday.

Many people I know are curbing their summer travel plans. They’re even doing more planning when it comes to everyday errands, combining them so as not to waste gas.

This, of course, as average fuel prices climb, is happening across the country and the three leading presidential candidates have noticed. They’ve also noticed that the big oil companies are reporting record profits.

First, Senator John McCain and now, Senator Hillary Clinton have said that they want to give US drivers some relief at the pump. They would both suspend the federal gasoline tax during the summer driving season. Senator Barack Obama has opposed the idea.

Obama has, in effect, put himself in the position of opposing a tax reduction.

That can be a dangerous stance to take. Early in the administration of George W. Bush, the President proposed tax cuts. Supply side economics insisted that if the federal government reduced Americans’ tax burdens, the economy would be stimulated and overall federal revenues would increase as a result of increased investment in the economy and greater personal income. The Bush tax cuts went into effect, but in the Senate, two members of the President’s Republican party opposed the plan: Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and John McCain of Arizona. At the time, McCain argued that reductions in taxes ought to be matched by reductions in spending.

McCain’s classic conservative position didn’t match the new conservative orthodoxy however, an orthodoxy which I think, results from a misreading of the Reagan years. Reagan, you’ll remember, got Congress to pass tax cuts as well. At the same time, Congress went along with massive increases in Defense Department outlays, endorsing the Reagan policy of trying to bring down “the evil empire” by forcing the Soviet Union into an arms and spending race that, it was thought, would bring the Soviets to their senses or to their knees. The Soviet Union collapsed, I believe, under the weight of the moral and fiscal bankruptcy of communism and because of a combination of the policy of containment in place from 1945 on in the US and the stupid decisions of the Moscow regime, the stupidest of which being the war in Afghanistan, where Muslim zealots like Osama bin Laden fought a guerilla war of attrititon designed to bleed the Soviets of people and money.

But Reagan insiders and apologists like Peter Robinson–whose book, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life is excellent, by the way–conclude that in the end, budget deficits don’t matter. I doubt that Reagan himself, a stalwart opponent of deficits for decades, would draw the same conclusion, seeing the deficits his administration ran as temporary, and regrettable, expedients, necessary in the face-off with the Soviet Union, essential to causing the Soviets to reduce their nuclear stockpile.

McCain’s initial refusal to support the Bush tax cuts has won him a world of hostility from believers in the new conservative orthodoxy.
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Republicans might be interested to know that there are some people in the world, in this case in Brazil, who already assume that John McCain will beat either of his Democratic challengers.

But according to Paulo Sotero who writes for Brazil’s Estadoa, Brazilian elites should not only give up the idea of forecasting a U.S. election still six months away, but they should reassess a number of preconceived notions that lead them to believe that Republican presidents make better allies for Brazil. Read the rest of this entry »

Now that a turning back of the financial deregulation that began under Reagan and continued under Bush I, Clinton and Bush II looks imminent, what U.S. President is most to blame for the current crisis? Patrik Etschmayer writes for Switzerland’s Nachrichten, “Only when regulations were relaxed under Ronald Reagan did the first rather costly banking disaster ensue: The Savings and Loan crisis. This led to the recession of the early 1990s, which helped secure Bill Clinton’s 1992 electoral victory. But Clinton didn’t heed the warning. Even though it is now no longer discussed, and all fingers point toward George W. Bush - his actions alone could not have resulted in today’s disaster. … Clinton worked until almost the end of his term to abolish Glass-Steagal. The Congress fought him for years just as it had under Reagan and Bush the First. But in 1997, the FED Board of Directors under Alan Greenspan eliminated rules that limited securities trading for savings banks.”

In explaining why things have gone so badly that stricter banking rules are now necessary, Etschmayer writes, “Legal regulation seems to be the only way to rein in the apparently boundless greed - because bankers, speculators, hedge-fund managers and other stock market players large and small - and not only in the United States - seem to have lost the capacity to distinguish between freedom and foolishness.”

Read the rest of this entry »

At this point it’s almost a cliche to say that the candidacy of Barack Obama has sparked excitement around the world. But on the continent of Africa, that excitement and the hope that his campaign inspires is particularly poignant. Such is the case in the obscure African nation of Benin, which hit the headlines recently when it briefly hosted President Bush. Sulpice O. Gbaguidi of the newspaper Fraternite writes, ‘Hurricane Obama has already done damage to the very small circle of remaining American presidential candidates. The sublime Black Democratic candidate has effectively erased any trace of the usual symbolism used by Black candidates. … Barrack must quickly forget the failures of the Black community represented by Al Sharpton and Senator Carol Mosely Braun. And neither did Republican Alan Keyes nor Lenora Fulani , a perennial independent candidate, lift Black skin to a pedestal. … if the Kennedy family - which supported Bill Clinton in 1992 - happen to be Obama supporters, it is for the White House that Barrack’s destiny is being forged.’

By Sulpice O. Gbaguidi

Translated By Sandrine Ageorges

March 11, 2008

Benin - Fraternite - Original Article (French)

His candidacy has thrilled America even as his native country of Kenya is in turmoil [Actually, America is Obama’s native country]. His wife Michelle already dreams of becoming the first black “first lady” of the world superpower. In his latest book entitled The Audacity of Hope, Barrack Obama expresses his ambition, coupled with a determination and impressive daring: to succeed George W Bush at the White House. But blocking his path to the U.S. presidency is the obstacle of Hillary Clinton, a fearsome woman who has already tasted the flavor of American power as first Lady. Nothing, however, can dilute the passion of columnists for the Senator of Illinois, who defies the dinosaurs of American politics.

Like his two young daughters Malia Ann (9 years old) and Sasha (6 years old) - whose souls must have conversed with the heavens to create a seismic shift at the Democratic caucuses, which are nevertheless slow in delivering their verdict - I am allowing myself to indulge in the craziest optimism for the fate of Barrack’s presidential future. Although the chances of Republican veteran John McCain remain intact and one shouldn’t sell the bear’s fur too quickly, Hurricane Obama has already done damage to the very small circle of American presidential candidates. The sublime Black Democratic candidate has effectively erased any trace of the usual symbolism used by Black candidates.

Far from the exploits of Dick Gregory, a comedian and ardent defender of civil rights who entered the starting blocks of the marathon for the White House as a foil, Obama appears to be a serious contender for the Oval Office.

Better than Shirley Chisholm , the first Black [woman] elected to the House of Representatives who was swept away during the 1972 Democrat primaries, the Kenyan [Obama], smarter and better equipped, has offered a real challenge to the wife of the former U.S. President. In my opinion, Obama - the very model of Black ambition - is more explosive than legendary pastor Jesse Jackson, who was unable to obtain the Democratic nomination in 1988, and was defeated by …

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of the U.S. election.

With President Bush expected to step off Air Force one in the obscure West African nation of Benin, the people of the country are prepared to shower him with almost unprecedented praise. It will be the first visit of an American head of state in that nation’s history. In the gushing words of this op-ed article from Benin’s Fraternite newspaper, ‘To state it plainly, the boss of the White House will share with us his American virtues. God Bless America. Hopefully the divine blessing enjoyed by the heirs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson will descend on a nation singing of a New Dawn.’

Sulpice O. Gbaguidi

Translated By Kate Davis

February 15, 2008

Benin - Fraternite - Original Article (French)
The main event of mid-February is, undoubtedly the visit to Benin by American President George W. Bush. The leader of the global superpower should be walking on our nation’s soil tomorrow, Saturday. Or, to state it plainly, the boss of the White House will share with us his American virtues. God Bless America. Hopefully the divine blessing enjoyed by the heirs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson will descend on a nation singing of a New Dawn.

According to the Foreign Ministry statement, “the visit is part of an African tour the American president will make lead to Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana and Liberia.” History tells us that the last tour of Africa by George W. Bush was in July 2003. And at that time, he went to Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria. It’s clearly a privilege and an honor to welcome an American president. Not since we achieved independence in 1960 has an American president landed at the Cotonou Airport; from John Kennedy (who was in power in 1960) to Clinton, and including Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush’s father. Benin’s list of honors is short and meager. The arrival of Bush Junior means therefore that he has an appointment with history.

Even though the visit by the head of the White House will be nothing more than a three hour stop at Cotonou Airport, he will breathe the fresh air of change. On the road to development, Benin is willing to expose itself to the contagion of economic development. Boni Yayi [President of Benin ] should drink in the advice of the most powerful man in the world. The president can boast of having removed a cruel weight of history by attracting the leader of the greatest army on the planet to Benin.

Bush Junior couldn’t resist our efforts to consolidate democracy and social development in our country. This visit, which is a diplomatic victory for Yayi’s team, looks like a bonus brought about by democracy and a barometer of change for the regime. …

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing African press coverage of President Bush’s tour.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell has hinted the GOP may not get his vote in the 2008 Presidential election in remarks that contained some thinly-disguised barbs aimed at President George Bush:

Former US secretary of state Colin Powell said Sunday he was weighing his options in the 2008 White House race, hinting he may cross party lines and vote against the Republican nominee.

“I will vote for the candidate I think can do the best job in America. Whether that candidate is a Republican or Democrat or an independent,” Powell told CNN’s “Late Edition.”

“Frankly, we lost a lot in recent years,” Powell added in a swipe at the administration of President George W. Bush, under whom he served as secretary of state from 2001 to 2005.

And his comments contained what some will see as even more suggestions that he is not pleased with the tenor of American foreign policy under the second George Bush:

Powell, a top general and former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said he would vote for the candidate with a vision “that starts to restore confidence in America. That starts to restore favorable ratings to America.”

“I am going to be looking for the candidate that seems to me to be leading a party that is fully in sync with the candidate and a party that will also reflect America’s goodness and America’s vision.”

At the same time, he had some nice things to say about Democratic Senator Barack Obama, but made it clear (a) he doesn’t agree with Obama on everything and (b) he’s not ready to endorse anyone (yet):

He also praised Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, who is also an African-American, and locked in a battle for the White House nomination with Hillary Clinton.

“I think he’s been an exciting person on the political stage. He has energized a lot of people in America. He has energized a lot of people around the world,” Powell told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

“And so I think he is worth listening to and seeing what he stands for.”

But Powell added he did not share all Obama’s views, nor did he completely share the views of the other candidates.

“I think every American has an obligation right now at this moment in our history to look at all the candidates and to make a judgment not simply on the basis of ideology or simply on the basis of political affiliation but on the basis of who is the best person for all of America and which party and what does that party look like?” Powell added.

Powell is the great might-have-been of American politics.

He had been a rising star in the administration of the first President George Bush, and his philosophy fit in well with that administration. Several members of the first Bush administration have expressed unhappiness with the policies of the present Bush administration, but Powell was always the good political soldier as well as the good soldier.

He had been talked about for years as a possible Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate, but his political stock fell when he defended the war in Iraq. Ironically, by all accounts Powell was marginalized and even somewhat humiliated within the present Bush administration as he fought a losing battle that pitted him against the then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, two of the administrations most pro-active hawks.

The Swamp (which has a transcript of the CNN interview) notes:

CNN showed an interview with former Gen. Colin Powell last night in which the former secretary of state played his cards close to his chest when Wolf Blitzer asked him who he’d be supporting for president.

But based on his comments about the need for a presidential candidate who could repair America’s standing in the world, Powell at times seemed to be indicating a strong inclination towards Sen. Barack Obama.

And he also appeared to send a signal to Republicans that he wouldn’t look kindly on the party if Sen. John McCain became the nominee and many conservatives decided not to rally behind the senator from Arizona.

Why does all this matter?

To a lot of people, Powell is indicative of the independent-thinking Republican who could be a moderate or conservative but is not a lockstep supporter no matter what of the current Republican faction that now controls the Republican party and the White House. Despite a reputation diminished by his (losing) White House battles and argument that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the United Nations, he remains a highly appealing and credible figure to independent voters who have also shown an affinity for McCain, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and others who don’t quite fit into the “sports team” partisan mode.

If he makes it known during the campaign that he’s going to vote for a Democrat, it could be something factored in by independent voters — voters who are increasingly necessary in winning elections.

This article in the German publication Die Welt (The World), and cited in an interesting post by Robin Koerner, says that Europeans are getting a hazy picture of Barack Obama’s views on foreign policy and national security issues.

I think that it also precisely identifies Obama’s area of greatest vulnerability with US voters once the fall campaign begins. (Should Obama be the Democratic nominee for president, which appears likely.)

But in fairness to him, with rare exceptions, few new presidents come to the White House with significant diplomatic or national security experience or with strategic visions born of such experience. George W. Bush certainly had no such vision. His father, who had served brief stints as US envoy to China, US ambassador to the United Nations, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency had something of a foreign policy vision, inherited from every post-World War Two president, from Truman to Reagan. But even the elder Bush was shy on “the vision thing,” as he called it.

The last US president to possess a combination of experience and strategic vision in the realms of foreign policy and national security, and both were abundantly present in him, was Dwight Eisenhower. His possession of these assets paid off hugely as, at the height of the Cold War, Eisenhower expertly extricated the US from the Korean War (within six months of his taking the oath of office) and kept the nation at peace through the balance of his term. Eisenhower did this largely without grand pronouncements. Too often his successors in the Oval Office have thought that speeches equaled policy. As an old national security pro, Ike knew better.

Before Eisenhower, whose first term began in January, 1953, the last president to have anything like a strategic vision was Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909). In spite of his bombast and a militarism which resulted in violating other nations’ sovereignty to, as TR himself bragged, “take” Panama, his basic approach to foreign affairs was similar to the one Ike consistently pursued and Roosevelt himself memorably summarized: Speak softly and carry a big stick.

This approach is what later generations would call “foreign policy realism,” an approach that asked three basic questions: Read the rest of this entry »

Does American culture’s profusion of military jargon help a candidate like John McCain? According to O Globo’s William Waack, one of Brazil’s best observers of foreign affairs and the United States, ‘In a country where one of the worst offenses is to be called a ‘loser,’ it’s useful to pay attention to that espirit (there is no better expression) that emphasizes combat, soldiers and veterans, which is something that one doesn’t see in other Western countries.’

By William Waack

Translated By Brandi Miller

January 31, 2008

Brazil - O Globo - Original Article (Portuguese)

It would be incorrect to call American society “militarized,” but for those who have lived in the United States for even the briefest period of time, one’s attention is drawn to how much military jargon is a part of everyday language. One example is to say that so-and-so is “flying under the radar” - an old aerial combat expression used to describe someone behaving in a furtive manner.

Another example is the idiom, “going over the top (superando o topo),” which is widely used to describe someone when they have taken the initiative. The “top,” in this case, are the walls of a trench, when an infantry soldier leaves its relative protection and is forced to confront enemy fire and go on the attack.

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Does the anointment of Barack Obama by the patriarch of the Kennedy clan somehow conflict with America’s iconic democratic image? According to this op-ed article from the Nachrichten newspaper of Switzerland, ‘What influence do the Kennedys, or in fact any family clan, have in the United States? Apparently, more than anyone would have thought possible in such an iconic democracy. The parallels to the rise of European feudalism are striking.’

By Patrik Etschmayer

Translated By Ulf Behncke

January 28, 2008

Switzerland - Nachrichten - Original Article (German)

The triumphs of Barak Obama in his fight for the Democratic presidential nomination simply keep coming. First he inflicted a bitter defeat on Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina primary; and now he has received the official endorsement of the Kennedy clan, one of those families which in the United States epitomizes the political aristocracy.

The Clinton’s were in the process of entering this elite group, to which the Bush family also belongs. For that, Hillary would have required the noble blow of Ted Kennedy, brother of the legendary John F. Kennedy and Senator of Massachusetts. At the very least, she would have needed him to keep out of the primaries. But things have turned out differently. When the election campaign turned uglier and certain remarks were made that could have been interpreted as racist, Kennedy seemed to increasingly side with Obama. Read the rest of this entry »

Unless Rudy Giuliani pulls off a Florida surprise in next Tuesday’s primary, there are now three Republicans with some chance of winning their party’s presidential nomination: John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee. Recently, I speculated on who might be the vice presidential running mates of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the event that one of them becomes the Democratic nominee for president. But what about the remaining Republican contenders?

Each would have their own particular needs when it came to selecting running mates. In this post, I want to address what and who McCain will likely need in a running mate.

McCain should, by all rights, be the clear frontrunner, given the usual orderly succession of Republican presidential politics. That he isn’t results in part, from the fact that neoconservatism, with its advocacy of Wilsonian intervention in foreign affairs, has at least temporarily changed the definition of conservatism. Additionally, on at least two major issues–immigration reform and campaign financing–McCain has departed from conservatism. Some will also mention his opposition to President Bush’s 2002 tax cuts. Others will excoriate his participation in the Gang of Fourteen, ignoring how the compromise struck by those US Senators in 2005, made it possible for the President’s conservative nominees for the US Supreme Court to be confirmed without controversy.

Be that as it may, McCain, an orthodox Goldwater-Reagan conservative who is an advocate of strong national defense, restrained government spending, Second Amendment rights, and an end to abortion, doesn’t have the luxury that Ronald Reagan had in selecting running mates in 1976 and 1980. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s history lesson — at least for you young’uns — is about Lee Atwater, the daddy of the South Carolina Republican primary as we know it and prototype for Karl Rove and every dirty-trick political consultant to come down the mud shoot in the last 25 years.

It was Atwater who mastered some of the slimier aspects of modern American politics, including push polling and floating reputation-destroying rumors.

Atwater mentored Karl Rove, among other hatchet men, and Rove used one of his teacher’s most effective tricks – starting a whispering campaign, in this instance a claim that John McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock – in the 2000 South Carolina primary. This dirt, as well as an attendant rumor that McCain’s wife was mentally ill, arguably cleared the way for George W. Bush to win the primary and begin his ascendancy to the Republican nomination.

Among Atwater’s other dirty tricks:

* Push polling for Republican candidate Floyd Spence in South Carolina in 1980 through fake surveys that informed white suburbanites that his opponent, Tom Turnipseed, was a member of the NAACP.

* Spreading rumors in 1984 that Democratic vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro’s parents had been indicted for numbers running in the 1940s.

* The legendary 1988 television commercial on behalf of George H.W. Bush tarring Michael Dukakis for furloughing Willie Horton, a convicted murderer who subsequently committed a rape while on a furlough from a life sentence while the Democratic candidate was governor.

It was Atwater who in 1980 talked the South Carolina Republican State Committee into moving the primary to late January after Iowa and New Hampshire to ensure that southern conservatives would have some say in who the GOP nominee would be.

He was an adviser to President Reagan and Bush senior and became the chairman of the Republican National Committee after Dukakis was thumped in 1988. Atwater’s controversial tenure lasted less than two years because in 1990 he was diagnosed as having an unusually aggressive form of malignant neoplasm.

Shortly before his death from the brain tumor, he said he had converted to Catholicism and in touching acts of repentance that moved me to reconsider a man I once loathed, made public and written apologies to the people he had slimed, including Dukakis and Turnipseed.

In an article for Life magazine written a month before his March 1991 death at age 40, Atwater wrote:

“My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The ’80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don’t know who will lead us through the ’90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”

It goes without saying that, since his passing, Atwater has been remembered not for his deathbed humility but as a seminal player in the debasement of American politics.

As today’s South Carolina primary goes down to the wire, the dirty knives have again been unsheathed against John McCain, including the use of robo-calls that accuse him of voting “to allow scientific experiments to be done on unborn children.”

While Poppy Bush couldn’t play his way out of a paper bag, Lee Atwater was an accomplished guitarist. Rhythm and blues was his forte. He briefly played backup guitar for Percy Sledge during the 1960s and even at the height of his political power would play concerts in the Washington, D.C., area including several appearances with B.B. King.

New Hampshire’s Republican primary was always a must-win for Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Now that it’s clear that Romney is going to finish a distant second behind Arizona’s senator, John McCain, Romney’s campaign is all but over. But McCain’s win in the Granite State will say the same thing that Mike Huckabee’s win in Iowa four days ago said: Republican voters either want more choices (which they won’t get) or they want more chances to choose (which are coming).

Iowa was always the ballgame for the Democratic nomination. Desperate to retake the White House, Democrats were bound to get in line behind the Iowa winner in order to focus on the general election. After Illinois’ senator Barack Obama won in Iowa, his support in New Hampshire ballooned.

Following Iowa, Obama’s win of the nomination was never in doubt. But a 10% margin of victory for the Illinois senator will make the continued campaigning of New York’s senator Hillary Clinton and former North Carolina senator John Edwards untenable. Party leaders and contributors will send them the message to back off so that Dems can save their powder for the fight with the Republican nominee.

As of Wednesday morning, the big political story will be the Republican nomination fight. A New Hampshire win for McCain will give him a big boost in subsequent primaries. Party leaders, in the party that usually rewards its nomination to the next person in succession, may swallow their dislike of the Arizona hero in order to prevent Huckabee, this year’s maverick Republican, from having a shot at the nomination.

The implosions of the Romney and Clinton candidacies are as analogous to each other as the successes of the Huckabee, McCain, and Obama campaigns have been to each other.
Read the rest of this entry »

What role should religion play in politics?

That question has suggested itself for many reasons during the already too-long 2008 presidential campaign.

It’s a question of particular interest to me because I’m a lifetime political junkie, a student of history, and a Lutheran pastor.

There are, it seems to me, three main reasons we’re asking the question in a major way this year.

The first is the candidacy of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a Mormon. Personally, while I have the same disagreements with Mormonism as those advanced by evangelical Christians, I’ve never felt that Romney’s religion should preclude him from consideration for the presidency.

Article 6 of the Constitution says that there should be no religious test for holding federal office. As an American, I believe in the rightness of that provision.

But I also believe in it because I’m a Christian. Jesus’ command to love my neighbor entails appreciating the abilities and skills of all people, even those who don’t share my faith.

While polls show that there are some Christians who simply would not vote for a Mormon for president, I don’t think that this is anything like a majority view.

And frankly, I think that the question of whether a Mormon would be accepted in a position of political importance was answered in 1953. It was then that Ezra Taft Benson, a high official in the Mormon religion, was confirmed as Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower Administration. In those days, the post was a lot more important and highly visible than it is today.

In 1968, Mitt Romney’s father, Michigan governor George Romney ran for the Republican presidential nomination. His bid came to grief over what I thought was a vicious misrepresentation of something he told a New Hampshire radio interviewer about the Johnson Administration’s attempts to, as he saw it, brainwash him regarding the War in Vietnam. The media and Romney’s opponents, Richard Nixon among them, portrayed the former auto executive as susceptible to brainwashing, not strong enough to be president. It’s a tragedy that George Romney’s candidacy was brought to an end in that way. Despite the exaggerations of his son, the elder Romney was deeply committed to civil rights. He was a can-do guy. But it wasn’t because of his Mormon religion that Romney, who later served as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Nixon Administration, failed to become president. His Mormonism wasn’t even considered. Nor should it have been.

Two factors have made Mitt Romney’s Mormon affiliation significant this year. One is the importance of the Religious Right in the Republican coalition. Frankly, I dislike the Religious Right. (And the Religious Left, for that matter.) There is simply no way to draw a straight line from faith in Jesus Christ or the Bible as the Word of God to a consistent political philosophy. As a Christian leader, it deeply disturbs me when pastors or other Christian leaders presume to say that Jesus is a Republican or a Democrat. Or that God is a liberal or a conservative. Christians who make such claims subordinate the Deity, the One I believe to be Lord and Creator of heaven and earth, to temporary, temporal philosophies and preferences. In effect, they shove God aside and instead, worship their parties or platforms. Nonetheless, the Religious Right has put a premium on candidates conforming not just to their political views, but also their claimed religious doctrines.

Romney’s Mormonism also became important because, quite frankly, he made it that way. Over a year ago, Romney supporter Hugh Hewitt asked Christian pastor-bloggers to say whether they felt that Romney’s religion should preclude his being considered for president by Christians. Mine was the first reply Hewitt published, I believe. Simply, I said that, no, Christians should not dismiss a Romney candidacy because he was a Mormon.

But clearly, the Romney campaign felt something like paranoia on this issue. The prime campaign biography, written by my friend Hewitt, is called A Mormon in the White House? It was one of many elements of an effort on the part of the Romney campaign to earn the support of the Religious Right.

Every politician, of course, wants to gain support with important constituencies by demonstrating that they hold common beliefs and values. But Romney has appeared to attempt to appeal to the Religious Right by blurring the very real differences that exist between Christian beliefs and Mormon teachings.

This, it seems to me, was an incredibly stupid thing to do, politically speaking. That’s because the Religious Right has changed. For all my criticism of it, the Christian conservative political movement has attained a certain maturity. One characteristic of that maturity is that voters who identify with the movement no longer move in lockstep with their so-called “leaders.” Another is that neither its leaders or its rank and file voters expect that politicians are going to agree with them on every issue. Pat Robertson, after all, has endorsed Rudy Giuliani. The movement is also wary of pols who give lip service to all their issues yet, like many Republicans for the past twenty-five years, have done nothing to change what they see as wrong in Washington and the United States.

Mitt Romney would have done better at appealing to the Religious Right if he had, instead of trying to appear to be a kind of Baptist Mormon, simply said, as John Kennedy did of his Catholicism in 1960, “I’m not a Mormon running for president. I’m an American running for president who happens to be a Mormon.” He could have then taken his own religious affiliation off the table and simply demonstrated common political cause with those to whom he’s been trying to appeal.

Romney, in his “Faith in America” speech, delivered at the presidential library of George H.W. Bush, seemed, in part, to deliver such a message. But then, he said that freedom needs religion and religion needs freedom. While I personally believe that the Judeo-Christian tradition fosters the kind of civility and respect for neighbor that allows for the functioning of democracy, Christian faith, in particular, hasn’t needed freedom of religion to grow. Indeed, it seems to grow best and strongest when its natural inclination for subversiveness is given full vent. Historically, Christian faith has always grown strongest under the threat and persecution of repressive regimes. Freedom, then, isn’t a necessary prerequisite for religious belief. Nor is it impossible for freedom to develop without religion.

Be that as it may, after seeming to want to take religion off the table, Romney put it back, appearing to arrogantly tell those who have no faith that their participation in the political process was unwelcome.

Read the rest of this entry »

The results of the Iowa caucuses, coming on January 3, will likely tell different stories in the presidential nominating races of the Republican and Democratic parties.

That shouldn’t be surprising. For months now, the campaigns for the two parties’ nominations have unfolded like tales from parallel universes. The datelines and the timelines are the same, but the plotlines are altogether different.

Democratic voters are generally happy with their field of presidential contenders.

The Republicans have been restive. For months, people hankered for former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson to enter the race, for example. But once he did–”belatedly” according to the current bizarre standards, he was met by a collective yawn.

The respective parties’ debates have found Democratic and Republican candidates spending time talking about different topics, almost as though they were speaking to two different countries. Democrats talk more about health care and Republicans focus more on illegal immigration.

But it’s the difference in politics in the two parties that most interests me right now. The stakes associated with the Iowa caucuses and then, the New Hampshire primary, which happens on January 8, are very different for Democrats and Republicans.

At present, it appears that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee will win the Iowa caucuses in the Republican Party. That will afford the affable former clergyman a bit of a bounce in his bid for his party’s nomination.

But it would be a mistake to conclude that Huckabee will automatically become the presumptive Republican nominee if he wins in Iowa. Such cautions are especially appropriate in the Republican universe.

In 1980, for example, George H.W. Bush narrowly won in Iowa, taking 32% of the vote. The elder Bush pronounced that he had Big Mo–momentum–in his corner as he headed to New Hampshire. Because the Bush family had strong New England roots, many presumed it would be a likely spot for a Bush to win, thrusting him toward the GOP presidential nomination. But it didn’t happen. Big Mo shifted his allegiance and Ronald Reagan was nominated for the presidency.

There’s another reason an Iowa win might not give Huckabee a big boost from Big Mo. Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers are both more conservative and more evangelical than voters in New Hampshire’s primary. The composition of Iowa’s Republican caucus-goers is advantageous to Huckabee. The composition of New Hampshire’s likely primary-voters is not. Not only New Hampshire’ Republican voters more moderate and dramatically less evangelical, the state also allows independents to cast votes in the parties’ primaries.

While Huckabee can certainly capitalize on an Iowa win, it’s likely that such a victory will say less about enthusiasm for him, at least for the moment, than about a decided lack of enthusiasm for the presumptive frontrunners going into Iowa, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.

A Huckabee win in Iowa then, will be a signal that the race for the GOP nomination is far from over. For Republicans, that will heighten New Hampshire’s importance.

For some time, it’s been clear that two members of the Republican field have built-in advantages for the New Hampshire primary race. One is Arizona’s senator, John McCain, a maverick whose appeal among Granite State voters was strong enough to give him a win there in 2000.

But the Republican with overwhelming apparent advantages in New Hampshire was Romney. For any Massachusetts pol, campaigning in New Hampshire has always been like the Red Sox playing at Fenway Park. On the Democratic side, John Kennedy, Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas, and John Kerry all knew that they could count on New Hampshire to give their quests for the presidency boosts. In 1964, while he served as ambassador to South Vietnam for a Democratic president, former Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Richard Nixon’s 1960 vice presidential running mate, won the New Hampshire presidential primary.

Given his advantages, the New Hampshire primary has always been a must-win for Romney. The stakes in the Granite State will only get bigger if he loses in Iowa. Failure to win in New Hampshire will spell the end of his quest for the nomination.

Romney operatives must be feeling that they’re watching a train wreck, as their candidate, prone to gaffes and exaggerations, loses support in both Iowa and New Hampshire, watches Huckabee surpass him in the first state, and sees McCain revivify his New Hampshire constituency, all at Romney’s expense.

If Iowa and New Hampshire produce two different winners and the elimination of Romney from the field, as I expect they will, the winner of the Republican nomination will be unknown through at least the South Carolina primary on January 26. Front-loading be hanged, the Republicans will have a race on their hands.

But in that parallel universe, the race for the Democratic nomination, a very different tale is likely to be told. In recent weeks, Illinois’ senator Barack Obama, has been pulling even with or surpassing New York’s senator, Hillary Clinton, not only in Iowa, but now in New Hampshire. If Obama wins in Iowa, as I expect that he will, the Democratic race, unlike the one among Republicans, will be effectively over. Barack Obama will then be the Democratic nominee.

The reason is simple. In 2004, the Democrats had a large field that included John Edwards, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Howard Dean, and John Kerry. When Kerry defied conventional wisdom and won in Iowa, Democratic voters became like traditional ward-heeling politicians, swallowing whatever misgivings they may have had about Kerry to back him. True-believing liberals forgot their loyalty to Dean and got on board with the Massachusetts senator. Democrats, many believing that the Bush Republicans had stolen the 2000 presidential election, were desperate to win. Dems decided to unite behind Kerry.

It almost worked. John Kerry got more votes than any Democratic presidential nominee in history. More than Franklin Roosevelt. More than Lyndon Johnson. Certainly more than Bill Clinton, who only mustered plurality votes in two successive elections. The problem is that George W. Bush got more votes, popular and electoral.

In the intervening years, the Democrats have built up even more desperation to put a Democrat in the White House. If the polls are to believed, quite a lot of independents and not a few Republicans agree with them. Democratic candidates are receiving more contributions from more contributors than their Republican counterparts. Crowds for Democratic candidates are larger and seemingly more enthusiastic than those for Republican candidates. Democratic rank-and-file voters, as much as the party’s professionals, want to win in 2008.

If Obama defies the odds and stands down the formidable Clinton machine in Iowa, the trend toward the Illinois senator, in New Hampshire and elsewhere, will become a tidal wave.

Two parallel universes. Two differing scenarios. The result? The presidential nomination of the party which generally gives its nod to the candidate next in line up for grabs. The party which pioneered democratization in its nominating process to give more candidates a shot closing ranks to support one person ten months before the general election.

But, as I always say when making political prognostications: Or not.

Until the U.S. hit on the Surge strategy, the war in Iraq was just one bad trip after another. Now, as I noted here the other day, there is a damning calm in Mesopotamia – damning because it is likely a calm before yet another storm since that window of opportunity the Surge provided for the Baghdad government to get the national house in order is slamming shut.

The Al-Maliki government, of course, has blown the huge opportunity the Surge represented. And now, reverting to form, there is no U.S. post-Surge strategy as regional warlords and militias grab power right, left and center.

Nevertheless, this “calm” has had the effect of taking Iraq off of the radar screens of those few engaged Americans and the TV screens of all Americans, which leaves the war in Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO troops continue to take a half a step forward and one step back six years on because of the absence of a viable current strategy there, as well.

The recipe for undoing the early successes in Afghanistan, which supposedly included routing the Taliban, has several ingredients:

* The U.S. never delivered on claims that it would pour zillions of greenbacks into Afghanistan for reconstruction. The reality is that Washington has been downright stingy compared to similar nation-building efforts in Kosovo and Bosnia, to cite two examples. (Irony Alert: The U.S. had made the same claim in 1989 but failed to deliver after the Soviets were sent packing when Bush père was president.)

* The biggest reason that Washington never delivered this time was that it became distracted and then consumed by the Iraq war. No more than 26,000 American troops have been committed to Afghanistan at any given time, while there are six times as many in Iraq. The NATO contingent in Afghanistan totals about 28,000.

* There has been a concommitant diversion of counterterrorism experts and other resources from Afghanistan to Iraq.

* As in Iraq, training up Afghan army and police forces has been painfully slow.

* The Taliban are more resilient than the U.S. has given them credit for. They weren’t decimated. They merely slipped over the pourous border with Pakistan, then back again, and are raising bloody hell at every opportunity.

* Pakistan, supposedly the U.S.’s staunchest regional ally in the fight again terrorism, has done more harm than good by coddling the Taliban and allowing Al Qaeda a safe haven in the mountainous border region with Afghanistan.

* And that reliable evergreen: Afghanistan is ungovernable.

More U.S. troops have long been seen as the cure for what ails the Afghan mission, but those troops have been slogging away in Iraq. Barnett Rubin observes that while more troops might help, “they will just fail more quickly and more messily” if the mission isn’t right.

The big problem, Rubin argues:

“[I]s the lack of a coherent regional strategy, especially toward Pakistan and Iran, and the failure from the very beginning to invest adequately in governance and development and in any aspect of security but the Afghan National Army. All of these resulted from decisions taken by the Bush administration in 2001-2002, not from our European allies.”

The solution being posited among the U.S. and those erstwhile European allies is appointing a high-level coordinator.

But Rubin lets the air out of that balloon straight away:

“Such coordination is badly needed. But calling someone a high level coordinator does not enable him to produce high-level coordination. . . . Unless the coordinator presides over a pooled international budget for Afghanistan, including security sector reform, development aid, and counter-narcotics, he will just become another agency that needs to be coordinated. Inevitably, he will be tempted to spend his time hectoring the Afghan government rather than coordinating the international actors.”

The key words here are “pooled international budget.” That seems to me to be an oxymoron since the U.S. and various European countries have taken a piecemeal approach and are likely to continue to do so, the U.S. especially as Iraq remains a huge distraction.

It’s time to take a deep breath and a step back and ask what the heck is going on with the Central Intelligence Agency.

This is prompted by the CIA scandal of the moment – the destruction of terrorist interrogation tapes that the spy agency had been explicitly told to hang on to. That, of course, is an outgrowth of the larger issue of the Bush administration’s embrace of torture.

Make no mistake about it: The CIA in theory is every bit a necessity in the era of global terrorism as it was during the Cold War. I think.

As Herbert Meyer, a former CIA intelligence big and Reagan administration official puts it, “the CIA is to the president what radar is to the captain of a 747 — it’s the management tool that enables him to see things up ahead before they otherwise would be visible; to see looming dangers early enough to avoid them and thus to set a safe course toward his destination.”

By that token, George Bush and presidents before him have been flying blind much of the time:

* The CIA dawdled in the period between the Cold War and the 9/11 attacks. Some CIA officers correctly assessed the threat of Al Qaeda and radical Islam, a small unit was created to monitor Osama bin Laden and there was credible intelligence that at least two of the 9/11 hijackers were in country and learning to fly passenger jets. But this intelligence was marginalized, most notably in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 19th hijacker, and the officers who actually knew what was afoot were ridiculed for their zealotry.

* Those failings are substantially the fault of the Clinton administration, but President Bush is complicitous. He never fulfilled his promise to reform the CIA, having never intended to do so anyway. He kept CIA Director George Tenet, who was best at fighting the same turf wars that the president’s own father had fought as CIA director 30 years ago. He later appointed Porter Goss, a partisan Republican who was fiercely protective of the agency’s old-boy network and installed the corrupt Kyle “Dusty” Foggo to supervise the agency’s day-to-day operations because of his connections to GOP campaign donors with deep pockets.

* When the CIA did get Bin Laden in its crosshairs, which it did at least once during the Clinton years following the West Africa embassy bombings and USS Cole attack, as well as several times since, the White House refused to give its blessing.

* A scathing 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report found that the CIA and other intelligence agencies fell victim to false “group think” when assessing Iraq’s weapons capabilities and produced overstated or incorrect conclusions that played perfectly into the Bush administration’s predetermination to take out neocon bugaboo Saddam Hussein no matter what. The result is a war without end.

What to do?

Meyer argues that the biggest problem is that the people running the CIA just aren’t good enough. To which I add that the people running the White House haven’t been so hot, either.

Lo these many years later, I still shudder to think that then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was, by her own admission, still fighting the Cold War when Tenet and J. Cofer Black, the State Department’s counterterrorism guru, stopped by in July 2001 to warn her that Al Qaeda posed a threat to the homeland. Rice has said she can’t remember the meeting.

Conservatives in particular like to say that there were strong CIA directors in the good old days, notably Allen Dulles and William Casey. But Tim Weiner argues persuasively in his terrific Legacy of Ashes (2007) that both had more than their share of ignominious failures, including missing the building of the Berlin Wall, the invasion of Korea by China, the rise of the Iranian ayatollahs and the Mother of All Intelligence Failures prior to 9/11 — the CIA’s failure to anticipate that the economic decline of the Soviet Union would lead to its collapse.

There is one signal CIA success of the last quarter century – the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan – but that of course led to the emergence of the Taliban and provided a comfy base for Al Qaeda.

Veteran columnist Andrew Greeley calls the CIA a dysfunctional bureaucracy that “produces $40 billion worth of crap every year” and therefore should be abolished.

I’m not ready to go that far, but with every new scandal and every new round of excuse making by and for the CIA, the idea has greater appeal.