Watching Washington

Dream Ticket? Less Likely by the Day

If politics had supermarket tabloids, today's headlines would say:

TOP FUNDERS FOR HILLARY AND OBAMA IN TRYST AT MAYFLOWER HOTEL

HILLARY BACK ON RED CARPET, SEEKS OSCAR FOR SUPPORTING ROLE

These wonderments are, in fact, coming to pass. And it's just been three weeks since Clinton's withdrawal on June 7. Former President Bill Clinton has yet to commit to Obama in the flesh, but he has released a brief, written statement of support. Scholars are still trying to determine when Bill Clinton last had only 27 words to say on a subject.

All this unity may be good news for Obama and the Democratic Party, but it's bad news for those who still desperately want an Obama-Clinton ticket.

The running mate offer is increasingly likely to go to someone else, so the Clintons' next chance at having offices at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. will not come until 2012 or later.

This is the cue for protests from Clinton backers who think she absolutely must be on the ticket. It will also raise eyebrows among those who think Clinton represents Obama's best chance of winning what will turn out to be a tense, tight race.

Polls do show Hillary Clinton by far the first choice for second banana among Democrats, but that is mostly because the rest of the vote is divided among so many other prospects. A new Rasmussen poll shows her the favorite of 44 percent among Democrats, but this is down from 51 percent earlier in the month. Among independents, the Clinton magnetism weakens decisively: Rasmussen finds her the first choice of only 24 percent among unaffiliated voters. So the demand for the "dream ticket" appears to have peaked and begun its decline.

Right after Obama clinched the nomination on June 3, Clinton withheld her concession and endorsement. For her fans and many observers, this was a sign she wanted to be on the ticket and was willing to play hardball to get there. Even when she publicly withdrew and endorsed, there was a sense she might withhold her full support in hopes of forcing a merger.

Now all that seems to be in the past. This week's meeting of major fundraisers at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington signifies at least a financial merger is already in the works. Obama has asked his top-dollar donors to pitch in on retiring the Clinton campaign debt. Next up: the two onstage together at a unity event in Unity, N.H. -- a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a building project that's well under way.

Would all this be happening if the Clintons still thought they could hold out for the No. 2 spot?

If Obama were considering Clinton for veep, would he have a team of vetters that includes no known advocate for her cause? And would he name Patti Solis Doyle to be the top staff liaison to his running mate, given that Doyle was fired as campaign manager by Clinton earlier this year? Doyle would hardly represent a "Welcome Hillary" sign at Obama headquarters, and her very presence on the Obama team is considered an irritant by some Clintonians.

The signals are equally clear from the Clinton side: She will campaign for Obama even without a place on the ticket. Bill Clinton will do what he is asked. Longtime Clinton surrogates such as Terry McAuliffe and James Carville are telling Clinton financial kingpins to open up to Obama and telling foot soldiers to get ready to march.

And while some Clinton die-hards will never accept the past six months, most seem to be gravitating toward their party's nominee -- without waiting to see who the running mate may be.

It has always been evident that an Obama-Clinton pairing would be awkward, if not counterproductive. But stranger things have happened, as in the often cited case of Kennedy-Johnson in 1960.

Not long ago, Obama was trailing McCain in Florida and Ohio, two states he lost to Clinton and where she outpolls McCain. Obama also looked soft in Pennsylvania and was actually behind in must-win Michigan. Under such circumstances, he might decide he needed the dream ticket dynamic. The need to win would outweigh worries about sharing the White House with two Clintons.

But since then, Obama's polling outlook has brightened (a delayed bump from becoming the presumptive nominee). Two national polls (Newsweek and The Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg) have given him leads of 15 points over McCain.

In key states, the well-regarded Quinnipiac Poll now shows him further ahead in Pennsylvania and opening small leads in Ohio and even Florida. Quinnipiac also has Obama ahead in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado -- four swing states where his margin among independents is greater than his margin overall.

To date, McCain's camp has little to show for its outreach to women in the wake of Clinton's defeat. Polls show some women who favored Clinton are holding back. Yet Obama still benefits from a wider gender gap over McCain than John Kerry or Al Gore had over George W. Bush.

Under these circumstances, the Obama team is going to believe it can win in November without taking the Clintons on board. It is now up to the Clintons to decide how they play their new role as cheerleaders on the sideline. If they are convincing enough, they can keep all their options open past this fall, come what may.

7:42 AM ET | 06-27-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Bush Enjoying a Good Month for a Change

One thing journalists are supposed to spot is a trend. Even better is to spot a counter-trend. Best of all is to spot a countertrend that defies conventional wisdom.

So let's talk about what's been happening for President Bush. So far in June, he's had a pretty good month. And if that doesn't qualify as a counter-trend defying conventional wisdom, what does?

The president has just won major victories in Congress on two of the most stubborn issues afflicting his relations with the majority Democrats. Congress is going to relent and go along with $165 billion to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the remainder of the Bush presidency.

In other words: mission accomplished. The president can now look forward to turning over the war on terrorism to his successor with flags flying and the funding spigots still wide open.

War Funding

The failure of antiwar legislators to stanch the flow of war support is hardly new. It's been an ongoing scenario since the Iraq invasion loomed as a prospect six years ago. But by this late date, after 18 months of the first Congress dominated by Democrats in a dozen years, many had expected at least some shift.

Instead, by plowing straight ahead and keeping nearly all Republicans in line, the Bush administration has kept a share of power in the Senate. That, in turn, has helped House Republicans hang together, pull votes from the center-right Democrats and frustrate the antiwar majority within Speaker Nancy Pelosi's caucus.

The president has been aided in all this regard lately by favorable reports from Iraq itself. Security improvements there have been widely noted and generally attributed to the success of the surge, the U.S. troop buildup and the shift in tactics over the past 18 months.

While everyone this side of al-Qaida seems to welcome the change, there are disagreements about what it should mean for the next phase. The Bush administration and congressional allies see a green light to continue the commitment in Iraq. Others see the relative calm as a great opportunity for the U.S. to start withdrawing from a conflict clear majorities of Americans still consider a mistake (even as they support the surge and applaud its results).

Unpopular as this war has been, Americans still prefer good news over bad. And even if they are fed up with the rationale, they would prefer to see their troops come home bearing a banner of success rather than under a cloud of failure. So good news from Iraq, however fleeting or illusory it may yet prove to be, is good news.

The Congress kept voting for funding when the situation was at its worst. It was not about to cut off the funding at a moment of improvement. Beyond that, the members have tired of this feckless struggle and are ready to kick the larger, tougher decisions to the next Congress and the next administration.

Domestic Surveillance

In the same mood of exhaustion, House and Senate Democrats are ready to give in once again on domestic surveillance. Despite the insult and injury caused by years of warrantless spying on Americans at home and abroad, the Democratic majorities still perceive any real resistance to anti-terrorist measures as politically risky.

So the steadfast insistence of the White House, backed by a near-solid phalanx of Republicans on the Hill, once again finds enough sympathy on the fringes of the Democratic majority to prevail. In this case, this coalition secures administration-friendly changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a 1970s law that tries to bring American concepts of justice to bear on the gathering of information on anti-American spies, at home and abroad.

Congress had hoped to curb the administration's eager use of warrantless search and spying. Many in Congress had also insisted that phone companies cooperating in the taps over the past several years be answerable for their actions in court, but the administration and its allies resisted. In the end, the companies were denied blanket immunity but given something nearly as good. A judge will review their actions, determine whether they were taken at the behest of the White House, and rule accordingly. A smiling president said he could sign such a bill, and that tells you who won on that deal.

Farewell, Europe

The president also has to score his latest (and probably last) trip to Europe as a kind of success. Granted, there were awkward moments here and there. The treatment the president received was more formal than fond, and the sense of relief at his impending departure was a bit too palpable.

But on both the substance and the atmospherics, you would have to say the president came out ahead. Unlike other visits to the Continent, this one prompted little protest -- either from European power figures or from the people in the street. Instead, the president was greeted with an air of respectful appreciation. This was true in Eastern Europe (where fear of Russia is always paramount) but also in "Old Europe" -- especially in Germany, Italy and France -- where anxiety about the Russians is also on the rise. These days, it's not the Red Army causing palpitations so much as the issue of access to natural gas.

Great Britain has been something of a haven for President Bush in past years, thanks to his close working relationship with former Prime Minister Tony Blair (whom he met privately on this trip as well). Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, though less enthusiastic in his embrace, also gave the president nearly all he had publicly requested. That included a small boost in British forces in Afghanistan and a further delay in the removal of their remaining combat troops in Iraq.

Defending Core Policies

It can be said that each and every piece of good news recorded by the White House so far this month was made possible by the impending departure of this president.
It can also be argued that each of these successes will continue policies that are unpopular with the wider public, thereby increasing the danger of electoral consequences for Republican incumbents in November. Despite the news of the month, the president's approval ratings have yet to show much upward mobility.

But for the moment at least, the Bush White House is reaping some short-term dividends on its determination to end its tenure defending core policies on principle. Yes, there is a bunker mentality here -- a conscious will to be obstinate. In the long run, it may seem the height of folly.

But for the moment, it has proven a good way to hold a weak Democratic majority at bay in both House and Senate, and to give the media -- and perhaps the electorate -- something to chew on in the waning months of this presidency.

10:39 AM ET | 06-23-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

McCain's Possible Running Mates

Right now it seems likely that the choice of running mates by John McCain and Barack Obama will bring more complaints than praise. Whichever way the nominees may turn in their respective mazes, the dissents will outweigh the sighs of satisfaction.

That is because far too much hope and expectation is being freighted onto these decisions. The expectations of almost magical help are wildly out of line with the available talent.

John McCain is being told he must find someone who fastens him firmly to his party's core conservatives. And he is being told he absolutely has to have someone who broadens his appeal to the moderate middle of the electorate. He must have someone young to balance his age, someone who can deliver a state rich in electoral votes, someone acceptable to party regulars but well removed from the White House.

And, oh yes, a woman or a minority would be good.

Well, fine. There is no such person. And if such a superhuman did exist, we would soon enough find drawbacks -- personal or political -- to undermine him or her.

On the Democratic side, the demands are just as far over the top and contradictory. Obama is under pressure to choose his rival, Hillary Clinton, despite all the obvious incompatibilities and contradictions. Failing that, he must choose another woman, but not one offensive to Hillary.

At the same time, Obama is instructed to pick a governor, to cover his bases with an older white male, and, above all, to recruit someone with substantial military experience.

Oh, and, by the way, whoever it is has to have been an ardent Hillary supporter who is now equally loyal to Obama.

Once again, the list of people meeting all these criteria is the null set. Yet the expectations bar looms ever higher.

So how will these two candidates, each priding himself on his independent judgment, resolve these profound cross-pressures?

Easy. They won't.

Instead, they will trust their own instincts and probably choose people who confound us all. And in so doing they will charm some and enrage others. The idea is to surprise the watching crowd in a good way (think Bill Clinton picking Al Gore in 1992) and not a bad way (think George H.W. Bush picking Dan Quayle in 1988).

Let's face it. Running mates are good for two things. They can sometimes bring you their home state, as Lyndon Johnson roped in Texas for Jack Kennedy, and they can sometimes offer balance.

One thing they usually can't add is pizzazz. Walter Mondale tried this with Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. The First Woman motif was powerful at first, but after her husband's questionable dealings and secretiveness got into the news the experiment went sour. Bob Dole had much the same luck putting Jack Kemp on his ticket in 1996, and John Kerry fared no better with John Edwards in 2004.

So let's look at some of the top prospects in the Republican Party and let Ken Rudin handle the Democrats this week in his Political Junkie column.

Republicans

McCain would love to turn the tables by choosing a woman or a racial minority. But finding someone who meets one of these criteria without having too much downside will be daunting.

Ms. and Ms. Maine. Olympia Snow and Susan Collins are Republican senators and female. They are popular in their home state, which has just four electoral votes. Worse, both senators are pro-choice and frequently at odds with their party on other issues. If John McCain thinks he has placated his party's base enough to choose a pro-choice running mate he will have the nastiest nominating convention since Hubert Humphrey survived bloody riots in Chicago in 1968.

Kay Bailey Hutchison. The most popular politician in the second most populous state has long been a favorite suggestion for those who believe a Republican ticket with a woman would be unbeatable. But Hutchison is notably weak as an onstage or TV performer and has never gotten beyond her basic Texas take on the issues. Listen to her defending the oil companies and you get the idea. She also has a hybrid position on abortion that will displease the hardliners on either side. And is McCain really concerned about carrying Texas?

Elizabeth Dole. The onetime presidential candidate is still a senator but no longer a likely prospect for the national ticket. She is older than McCain by a month and has all she can handle getting re-elected this year in North Carolina.

Sarah Palin. The recently elected governor of Alaska is 44, the mother of five, and a former state champ in high school basketball. She is truly mediagenic, strongly pro-life and full of spunk. But can McCain say Obama lacks experience but that Sarah Palin is ready to be a heartbeat away? Can he turn over Dick Cheney's office to someone whose only previous office was mayor of Wasilla?

Something like the same question will loom if McCain breaks the mold and names a political novice like Carly Fiorina or Meg Whitman, each an embodiment of entrepreneurial success and free market savvy at Hewlett Packard and eBay, respectively. But would these women overshadow McCain's own economic credentials, and would they cloud the contrast between McCain and Obama on the key GOP issues of national security and preparedness? And is McCain prepared to deal with intraparty fallout over their views on social issues?

It does not get much easier if you give up on finding a woman and go looking for a non-Caucasian prospect in the current GOP. One who got invited to the Memorial Day Barbecue and Running Mate Sweepstakes at McCain's ranch last month was Louisiana Gov.
Bobby Jindal. He is getting a look right now because he is precociously bright, Asian American (his parents came to Lousiana from India) and a bona fide phenomenon in Republican politics. He ran Louisiana's health care system and its largest state university before becoming a congressman and then governor. And he is still just 36.

Right now the Repubicans have no prominent African-American officeholders, in Congress or the states. So this is the best way to advertise an interest in diversity. But Jindal is exactly half McCain's age, which may only make the issue more visible. Can McCain knock Obama's youth and inexperience and pick a running mate a decade younger?

So if there is not a bold breakthrough partner for McCain, what about a big state governor?

One problem is that there are not nearly as many GOP governors as there used to be before 2006, when the party's 28-22 advantage in the governorships was reversed. Worse yet, most of the survivors are not in big states.

One who would fit the bill is Charlie Crist in Florida, the man who helped deliver the fourth most populous state for McCain in January, triggering his crucial dominance in the big Super Tuesday casino on Feb. 5. But while Crist makes everyone's short list, few seem to think he will wind up being the one. As a single man who has never had the full faith of evangelicals in Florida, Crist may raise as many questions as he answers among conservatives who still doubt their presumptive nominee.

The other Republicans in big states have a variety of disqualifying problems. Arnold Schwarzenegger is foreign born and so constitutionally ineligible for the White House. Rick Perry in Texas and Sonny Perdue in Georgia have too much regional flavor for the national stage. Go down the list of the dozen most populous states and the rest of the governors are Democrats.

That brings us to Republican governors in medium-size states, such as Tim Pawlenty in Minnesota. The convention will be in St. Paul, and Pawlenty has some crossover appeal. But it's not entirely clear he could deliver his customarily blue state for McCain, let alone help out much in the adjacent swings states of Iowa and Wisconsin.

And after Pawlenty, the ranks of Republican governors consist of white men from Southern states no Republican could lose or Western states with electoral votes in single digits.

Finally, what about the men who battled McCain in the primaries? Why not Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani or Mike Huckabee or even Fred Thompson?

The first answer might be to consider the performance of this quartet in the primaries. Only Huckabee lasted through February, and he did so pretty strictly as a bid for VP. And it's hard to imagine Rudy Giuliani easing into the role of Number 2, even in the White House.

Romney would be an interesting choice, if McCain could stand having him around (never close, the two men drifted apart over the course of the campaign). Videotape clips of McCain mocking Romney in the debates would make marvelous general election ads - for the Democrats.

And remember, you can check out Ken Rudin's picks for the Democratic vice presidential candidate in his column.

7:25 AM ET | 06-12-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Who Did This To Hillary?

As the voting comes to an end, the resentment comes to a boil. And in this superheated atmosphere, accusations will fill the air.

Hillary Clinton mounted a furious comeback in the last three months of the primary season but was not able to catch Barack Obama in the delegate tally that determines the nomination. So all the hope and excitement that her late winning streak inspired among her fans may now fuel an angry search for scapegoats. Those in her camp who remain mystified by her defeat will need people to blame.

And there will be no shortage of candidates.

The Media. What's more distressing than watching your candidate lose? Watching people tell you your candidate is losing. This is why those who deliver bad news have often faced mortal risk. Historically, the deliverers knew well enough to look stricken about it. The modern media messenger may actually smile, or smirk. At that point, audience annoyance turns to rage. Too many of the people on TV seemed to be enjoying Clinton's ordeal, and too many of those people were journalists.

The media did not engineer Clinton's failure. But news reporting on her campaign has been a factor in her fall. That is because the greatest media bias is the bias in favor of a good story. And the media also treat the latest story line as the only story line. We all race to fish on the same side of the boat.

That was good news for Clinton in 2007, because the story line was about her inevitable nomination. She was dominating the debates, lining up the superdelegates and running away in the polls. The other Democratic candidates couldn't get any oxygen.

But late last fall, the inevitability story got old. The debates got more competitive. Obama started moving in Iowa, and the media ran to see what was happening on his side of the boat. His extraordinary speeches, energizing black voters and new voters, became the new compelling story line. And when he won the Iowa caucuses, that new line took over.

It took two months for Clinton to recover some momentum of her own with primary wins in Ohio and Texas. By then it may have been too late, as proportional distribution of delegates helped Obama sustain a lead among pledged delegates.

The Rules Committee. This one will be popular among those who believed, late in the game, that Clinton could claim the lion's share of the delegates from those two jump-the-gun January primaries in Michigan and Florida. But this was never going to happen. The rules that prevented it had been set last year by the very people who were being asked to overturn them.

A total ban on the two states was always unrealistic. But starting with that extreme penalty enabled the committee to compromise on a 50 percent reduction in their voting power. It was clear for months that this would be the outcome, and there were no realistic alternatives. Any appeal to the larger Credentials Committee would run smack into exactly the same set of calculations (and a committee with a smaller percentage of Clinton backers).

Michigan and Florida. Had the two mega-states voted in their regular February slots, each would have received far more candidate time and money. Had they both voted for Clinton, they would have countered the big February swing to Obama that put him permanently ahead in the pledged delegate count. By defying the national party rules, these states may have cost Clinton the contest.

Proportional distribution of delegates. Several times in the late going, both Bill and Hillary Clinton noted that under Republican rules, several of her biggest wins would have given her all the delegates from major states. That was how John McCain, with far fewer votes and far smaller percentages, all but wrapped up his nomination on Super Tuesday (Feb. 5). Proportional distribution has been a Democratic obsession since the 1968 convention fiasco, when Hubert Humphrey was nominated without having entered any primaries at all. Maximizing the democratic principle began as a reform and became a kind of fanaticism. But there is little chance the Democrats will reverse this commitment any time soon.

Bill Clinton. It's been said many times, but Hillary Clinton's husband was both the springboard for her candidacy and the millstone around her neck. She would never have been a senator from New York or a presidential candidate without him, but his distracting presence in the campaign was a constant thorn. His slighting remarks about Obama's victory in South Carolina had a racial tinge, and right up to the day of the final primary, he was stealing the media spotlight with outbursts that did his spouse no good. At this stage, the former president is probably the biggest obstacle to her being Obama's running mate. Even if you can imagine him on stage with the Obamas in Denver, where would you fit him into a new White House hierarchy?

But having a list of scapegoats does not exonerate Clinton's own campaign. Clinton lost because her campaign made mistakes, both large and small. Much has been said about the failure to organize the less populous states that held caucuses in the early months. These states allowed Obama to pile up delegates in disproportionate numbers. (By dominating in the Idaho caucus, for example, Obama got a 10-delegate bigger net payoff than Clinton got in Ohio).

Ultimately, the Clinton campaign foundered on one miscalculation that would give rise to most of its subsequent problems. From the earliest days of its conception, this campaign assumed its biggest challenge was to win in November 2008. Securing the Democratic nomination in 2008 seemed comparatively easy. No one on the Democratic horizon seemed daunting to the Clinton team during her first Senate term.

When the biggest vote of that term came up, in October of 2002, the smart money said she should vote with President George W. Bush to use force against Iraq. That would give her national security credibility against a Republican foe six years hence. This vote, of course, became her vote "for the war," and so it remained -- despite all her efforts to redefine it after the war went sour.

Without that vote, Obama would have had no substantive issue on which to oppose Clinton in the early skirmishing of 2007. As it turned out, the war issue was huge for hard-core Democrats in 2007, and it gave Obama an opening and a chance to get traction against the front-runner who was so much better known.

Without that vote, Obama might not have run at all.

10:47 PM ET | 06- 3-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

No Easy Picks for Either Party's VP

Everybody loves playing "Pick the VP" except the people who actually have to pick one. Doing it in real life often turns out to be painful and thankless.

Pick a good running mate and no one remembers the process. Pick a bad one, and no one ever forgets. The search for a vice president always begins as a careful parsing of potential pluses, but it often becomes a rather frantic scramble to minimize the minuses.

Consider the plight of the two presumptive nominees of 2008, John McCain and Barack Obama, whose selection of dance partners now dominates the blogosphere and every political conversation.

Neither man is likely to find his ideal running mate, because ideal candidates do not exist. It may be fun to imagine, for example, a "John and Mary" ticket (or better yet a "John y Maria" ticket). But try finding a Republican woman who has been elected statewide in a sizable state and who endorses the GOP platform stand against abortion.

Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison and Elizabeth Dole probably come the closest among current officeholders, although neither quite fills the bill. Hutchison has been slightly heterodox on abortion and has her political sights fixed on Texas. Dole has her hands full with her re-election campaign this fall and would not help McCain on the age front, being one month older.

That's why the name of Sarah Palin comes up. She's the 44-year-old Republican who is the first woman governor of Alaska and that state's youngest governor. Bright and mediagenic and strongly anti-abortion, she's considered a rising star who could find a place on the national stage. But her only previous office was as mayor of Wasilla. And is anyone really worried about the GOP carrying Alaska?

The lack of obvious women to pair with McCain in the political world has prompted the mention of some private sector stars such as Carly Fiorina, 54, the former CEO and chairman at Hewlett-Packard, and Meg Whitman, 51, former CEO of eBay.

Fiorina and Whitman have no political experience other than campaigning for McCain (Fiorina) and Mitt Romney (Whitman) this year. But both exude the air of business acumen often lacking when McCain talks economics himself. Both women are well-known to readers of The Wall Street Journal, but entering the national consciousness in an entirely new way would bring entirely uncertain results.

No woman was included when McCain hosted three potential veeps at his Arizona home last weekend. Romney was included, as was Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (a key backer in a key primary) and the 36-year-old freshly elected governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. A fourth prospect, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, begged off, citing a scheduling conflict (causing some to conclude the governor was happy with his current job).

But this guest list was not really McCain's short list. Each man was invited as a salute to his own achievements but also as a nod to the constituency each represents. And in the end, none may bring enough on the plus side to make up for the potential downside.

A big part of the VP problem is that prospects who fit one set of criteria perfectly are utterly unacceptable on another. Someone who looks ideal on paper turns out to be poison once picked.

The risks are especially high this year, when both nominees must confront division within their own party ranks. If McCain picks former rival Mike Huckabee as a bridge to social conservatives, does he turn off more moderate Republicans and independents? If he chooses Romney to please economic conservatives, or Crist to win Florida, do evangelicals feel snubbed?

And if he goes for Joe Lieberman, the independent Democrat from Connecticut, does he build consensus or alienate partisans on both sides?

Obama is still wrapping up his nomination, so his VP process is not so far along. But it is no less complicated. He must first decide whether to choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate. If he decides not to, as most now expect, he deepens the disaffection of much of his party. That puts even greater pressure on him to choose another woman, or at least a man who has been an outspoken Clinton backer.

It is clear that other women in the political realm -- Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sibelius, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill -- would bring back many diehard Clinton loyalists in November. But would any of them bring back enough to matter? And which of them could match Clinton's recent appeal to blue-collar white voters, especially in exurban areas?

Obama will have to weigh the appeal of these women against his need for greater credibility on foreign policy and national defense. That gap argues for a higher military profile, such as that of a former general (Wesley Clark) or a war hero senator such as Jim Webb of Virginia.

Others will say nothing does a ticket as much good as a successful centrist governor from a big state, such as Ohio's Ted Strickland or Pennsylvania's Ed Rendell, both prominent Clinton champions, or Mark Warner, a former governor of Virginia now running for the Senate. But each of these men may have limited effect on voters outside their home states.

In the end, both McCain and Obama will probably tap someone highly imperfect who just feels right to the nominee -- someone plausible and compatible who "brings something to the ticket." What that something is will be of lesser consequence.

9:06 AM ET | 05-28-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

McCain Has Little to Show for Head Start

While the war between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has dragged on, John McCain has stood alone on the Republican side of the field. He has had an unparalleled opportunity to define his candidacy, assemble a fall campaign team, shore up his support among the party's core activists and raise the money he needs to compete until his public funding starts to flow in September.

The senior senator from Arizona has dedicated himself to this agenda over the past 11 weeks. And yet today, by some measures, he is further from his goals than when he began.

Consider the matter of staff. McCain began last year with a team of consultants and loyal aides that included many from his failed bid in 2000 (notably John Weaver) and others lured by his frontrunner status for 2008. The McCain campaign went first class and let everyone know it.

But the bills piled up even as the campaign faltered. The issues of age, Iraq and illegal immigration weighed on McCain just as the national media were discovering and celebrating his GOP rivals. By the summer of 2007, the putative frontrunner was broke and dead in the water. A lesser man might have given up.

But the former POW made bold moves to survive and recover. He reduced his staff and cut his costs, allowing him to persist on a pittance compared to the self-financing Mitt Romney and the high-rolling Rudy Giuliani. McCain traveled Iowa as humbly as a local farmer, toured New Hampshire as frugally as a flint-eyed native.

When he won the New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida primaries and the preponderance of big states on Super Tuesday, McCain was back on top. And he soon brought aboard the kind of blue chip Washington big boys who imbue a campaign with the aura of success. No less a presence than Charlie Black, a mega-lobbyist in each of the last three decades, stepped in to take the helm.

But with this new hegemony there should have been an outpouring of dollars from those within the party with the deepest pockets. McCain had the right people making the calls, but the contributions did not flow in the torrent he needed. McCain had also fallen short with the rank and file who respond to direct mail pitches. And when it comes to online giving, both McCain and his party as a whole are still catching up to the Democrats.

Not to worry, the Republicans said. Campaigns sometimes get a slow start. McCain could look to heavyweights such as Tom Loeffler, the former Texas congressman who became his national finance co-chairman and promised to open the coffers of the party's biggest givers. The fiscal picture was going to brighten, and fast.

But then in mid-May a kind of internal mini-scandal swept through the top ranks of the McCain operation. It began when Newsweek reported that Doug Goodyear, McCain's choice to run the Republican convention this summer, worked for a firm that lobbied for the brutally repressive military junta in Myanmar - the government blocking aid to cyclone victims in its own country.

Let's assume for the moment that everyone really does deserve representation in Washington by top-dollar pros, even the oppressive junta ruling in Yangon. Do those same pros also deserve to occupy key slots in the presidential campaign of the presumptive nominee? This conflict might be compromising for any candidate, but McCain built his rep as the scourge of K Street. His repertoire is replete with lobbyist bashing absolutes. The irony is too baroque to be borne.

So Goodyear was gone, as were several others. And then Loeffler joined them. As the kettle reached a full boil, anti-McCain groups such as therealmccain.com were posting extensive dossiers on Black and his claim to have refrained from lobbying his campaign clients after 1984. The Web site had a list of citations for Black's campaign work for the Bush-Cheney tickets as well as for his lobbying of the Bush-Cheney administration.

Some dismiss all such travails as inside baseball, but they interfere with the defining of the McCain candidacy and the shoring up of the conservative base. McCain cannot focus on the course he is setting while battling to keep his campaign vessel upright in the sea.

To be sure, the most immediate challenge for a man with a maverick's rep is to show he can play it straight. McCain needed ways to assuage the disappointment of conservatives who had never cared for him and were making noises about sitting on the sidelines in the fall.

So he set about making himself acceptable, and in this he had the aid of Karl Rove, the erstwhile guru of President George W. Bush, and, indeed, the very consultant who had managed the political knee-capping of McCain himself in the 2000 primaries.

Under Rove's tutelage, the McCain Straight Talk Express has been visiting the touchstones of conservative orthodoxy, such as the federal judiciary ("I will appoint judges who know the law and know their own minds and know the difference") and the refusal to negotiate with enemies abroad. The word "appeasement" has become part of the McCain mantra.

In other words, the new McCain has defined his candidacy largely as a defense of the conservative consensus of the last 30 years -- which for younger voters will be synonymous with the Bush presidency. That will make it easy for the Democrats to say McCain promises nothing but Bush's third term. Indeed, they are already saying just that.

In brief, the drive for more money and party unity has yet to produce either one; and the struggle to define McCain as a candidate has produced schizophrenia within his campaign and a closer-than-ever identification with a poisonously unpopular president.

John McCain may yet be the 44th president of the United States, if only because of weakness and division on the Democratic side. But if he is to succeed, his summer and fall will have to be better than his spring, a season of great promise as yet unfulfilled.

7:21 AM ET | 05-20-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

What Keeps Hillary Going?

By now, no one needs more rehashing of the numbers, but here's the short version: Barack Obama has a virtual lock on the delegates he needs to be the 2008 Democratic nominee for president.

Obama needs only about a third of the delegates at stake in the remaining primaries and about the same share of the uncommitted superdelegates. Barring another outbreak of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama should do substantially better than that in both categories.

So game over. Even the seating of the full delegations from the outlaw primaries in Florida and Michigan is no longer a real threat to Obama's nomination.

So why is Hillary Clinton still barnstorming the country from West Virginia to Oregon (with stopovers in Kentucky and South Dakota) in a vain effort to stop him?

Let's consider a few possible answers.

She doesn't get it. She is drinking the Kool-Aid her aides are serving up on their daily conference call. She thinks the West Virginia primary (with a microscopic 28 delegates) is "critical." She thinks the real number for nomination is 2,209 rather than 2,025 (as the rest of the world thinks), because she really expects Florida and Michigan to be seated without penalty. She thinks she can sell all this to two-thirds of the remaining superdelegates, or else pry loose a lot of pledged delegates who are only part of the process because they are Obama true believers.

(This explanation is not persuasive because we all know Clinton to be a savvy politician with a head for hard numbers. In fact, you could argue, her problem is seeming too savvy and too political. So we must look further for an explanation.)

She thinks Obama will stumble. This represents a far more plausible insight. Perhaps she firmly believes her rival will, in a day or a week or a month, crash into a wall. It may be another round of Wright — worse yet than the first two — or it may be a torpedo of another nature. But somehow she is convinced he will blow up before the convention in Denver in August and she should stand at the ready until then.

(No one can dismiss the prospect of a disaster waiting in the wings for Obama. He remains a little-known rookie making his first bid for national stardom. He has been scrubbed and vetted up to now, but not to the degree he will be as the presumptive nominee. The rough stuff is just beginning, and the Clintons know this better than anyone.)

She wants the second spot on the ticket. While no one in her inner circle may admit to this right now, she has to be considering the upside and downside of being on the 2008 ticket in the No. 2 spot. She has already softened her language regarding her opponent, indicating an interest in moving beyond their rivalry. But she may think she has more leverage on Obama and his decision if she remains a rival for now.

(Is America ready for a troika consisting of Obama, Clinton and Clinton? Make no mistake, taking on one Clinton will mean all the benefits and baggage of both. Perhaps you can picture the threesome at the convention, or in the fall campaign. But in the White House? Still, if this proves the price of peace in the party, or the one way to hold the full Democratic coalition together, it cannot be dismissed out of hand. The real question is: Do Hillary Clinton's voters who say they can't vote for Obama change their minds if she's part of the package?)

She can't stop. Necessity dictates the long campaign because the Clinton campaign is now well into debt. She and her husband have lent at least $11 million from their own resources, and that number will almost surely go much higher. To get that back, the campaign must raise a great deal of money in the weeks ahead. Raising money is nearly impossible under a white flag.

She just doesn't want to stop. This campaign is clearly the culmination of Hillary Clinton's passion and her dream. Not many months ago, she seemed assured of being the first woman nominated. She seemed quite likely to be the first woman president. Now she finds herself beaten, besieged, beleaguered and substantially poorer. To quit now would be to lock in those losses. She keeps on going because to do anything else is to accept a defeat she cannot bring herself to accept.

She wants to stop, but just a little later. You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Judging by the body language and facial expressions the family displayed on stage in Indianapolis on Tuesday, they know their cards won't beat what's on the table. But by waiting for a better night or a better day to quit — after Kentucky and Oregon vote on May 20, or after the last primaries on June 3 — the Clinton team can plot a better trajectory for her future.

(Right now, Hillary Clinton might look forward to running again in 2012 or even 2016. She might also take a look at the New York governorship in 2010. And the talk about her becoming Senate majority leader also persists. Her prospects are still bright. She just needs a little time to stage manage her exit.)

She has reasons known only to her. This is the most intriguing prospect of all. Stay tuned.

12:33 PM ET | 05- 9-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Clinton Borrows from GOP Playbook

Earlier in this primary season, Hillary Clinton warned Democrats that if Barack Obama won the Democratic presidential nod, he would wilt under attacks from the GOP in the fall.

Lately, as if to prove her point, she's been running a pretty good imitation of a Republican campaign herself.

It's not just the video of her chatting up Bill O'Reilly on his conservative TV talk show on Fox News, or the endorsement from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and its wealthy right-wing publisher, Richard Mellon Scaife.

It's more about the issues she's emphasizing and the lines of attack she's opened on her rival.

Lately, her big idea has been to suspend the gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day -- a gas tax holiday. It has become her emblem of solidarity with working families. Never mind that her campaign could not name a single expert who thought this was a good idea. And never mind that it was already the centerpiece of Republican John McCain's anti-recession package.

It was enough that the gas tax idea got applause at rallies and that Obama was opposed. It gave her another chance to portray herself as down-to-earth and Obama as elitist.

Truth is, there are few ways to sound more Republican than by calling for a tax holiday. It plays into the essential Republican contention that taxes are the chief cause of economic discomfort and unfairness for working families and the middle class.

The gas tax is a special case in point. It's been Republican doctrine for generations that taxes crank up the cost of a tank of gas. Some stations used to put out signs listing all the taxes included in the price at the pump. It's not the oil companies who are sticking you up, they seem to be saying, it's the government.

In fact, the 18-cent-per-gallon federal tax does not go up as the cost of gas does, so it becomes a smaller and smaller proportion of the cost we all pay as prices (and oil company profits) hit record levels. And that's not even to mention the ecological arguments for discouraging gas consumption.

None of that matters to the Clinton campaign right now, because the gas tax holiday is not about the economy, the energy crisis or the environment. It's a psychological device to establish empathy. It's this week's version of having the candidate belly up to a blue collar bar for a shot and a beer. Hillary Clinton looked a little ridiculous knocking them back in Pennsylvania, but it was better than the sight of Obama rolling gutter balls. Note to future candidates: power drinking beats bowling because it is very difficult to miss one's mouth.

All this sports bar chatter and the gas tax are temporary gimmicks that will have their day and then pass into history. The larger Clinton strategy is to portray Obama as suspect on the issue of national security.

Remember the red phone ringing at 3 a.m.? It started ringing nearly two months ago and has yet to be answered by any of those sleeping, innocent children, one of who resembles a juvenile version of the junior senator from Illinois. It's a Clinton ad, of course, but the first time you see it you could swear it's an ad for McCain. What could be more familiar than the Republican candidate pillorying the Democrat as a peacenik?

After the April 16 debate in Philadelphia, when Obama complained about the focus of the questions and argumentative nature of the moderators, Clinton all but called him a cry baby. Her next ad on the air was a lecture on all the tough calls a president has to make in the Oval Office, capped with the Truman dictum: "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Their assault has been largely successful, as it has been for candidates in both parties over the years. Few now remember, but John F. Kennedy ran against the Eisenhower-Nixon administration in 1960 from the right on national security. Among other things, he decried the supposed superiority of the Soviet nuclear arsenal and the failure to project U.S. power in defense of certain islands off the coast of "Red China."

More recently, the flag-waving and fear-mongering campaigns have been run by conservative activists and ad makers such as Karl Rove, Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes. They have helped the GOP win seven of the last 10 presidential elections by painting a succession of Democratic candidates as liberal, elitist, irreligious, weak and out of touch -- a bad bet for a country striving to hold off foreign enemies.

Theirs is the playbook from which many of the current Clinton tactics seem to have been borrowed. It is a game plan many of Clinton's current advisors have themselves have struggled against in the past. This is their chance to make it their own. And they are making the most of it.

8:23 AM ET | 05- 2-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Sun Still Shining on Arizona's Favorite Son

It is good to be John McCain these days. Fortune beams upon him the way it sometimes did on heroes of Greek myth.

Many in the Republican Party are still rubbing their eyes in disbelief that the erstwhile maverick from Arizona is their presumptive nominee. How did it happen when several of his rivals had more assets and more affinity with the core GOP voter?

It happened in part because his rivals got in each other's way more than they got in McCain's. By winning rather modest numbers of votes and fractional percentages of the total, McCain won big states with mere pluralities and let the GOP's rules spin them into "winner take all" gold.

And if that all seems a remarkable stroke of winter luck, consider that it is happening again in the spring.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have both attracted far more votes in the primary than McCain and raised vastly more money. Yet they are using all that money and momentum against each other. McCain seems increasingly likely to be the beneficiary, not just now but in the fall against whichever Democrat survives.

Take the latest round of the controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a retired pastor without a church who insists on equating himself with the entire institution of religion in black America. The fallout is deadly for Obama, who has a 20-year association with Wright. But it's potentially toxic for Hillary Clinton as well; because the former first lady was already in danger of alienating African American voters with the tactics she and her husband used to stay alive in January and February.

But for McCain, the Wright storm presents a rare opportunity for having it both ways. He takes the high road by saying he wants to run a respectful campaign and by scolding North Carolina Republicans for an ad that ties Obama to Wright. At the same time, he gets days of positive coverage for taking that stand, and he keeps the divisive Wright issue front and center.

McCain can say he respects Wright's six years as a Marine -- getting on all the cable TV shows -- then get another cycle's worth of payoff when Wright compares the Marines to the legions of the tyrannical Roman empire.

It's almost too easy.

It is possible the Democratic vote will reunite after the nomination is eventually decided and the convention is held. But it seems equally possible the battle will continue through the convention and the rift will last much longer.

McCain need only stay alive, an interested observer from across the divide, watching the Democrats squander an extraordinary opportunity to take the White House from the Republicans. Polls suggest sizable numbers of Reagan Democrats will vote for McCain if Obama is the nominee, and many black voters and new voters will stay home if Obama is not the nominee.

The question is whether the split over personalities among Democrats will be powerful enough to outweigh all the other signs pointing to a broad, national repudiation of President Bush. Polls show majorities of Americans deeply disenchanted with the current administration and its policies, most particularly on Iraq, immigration and the economy. McCain is associated with all three, and lately has gone out of his way to reinforce his bond with Bushism.

That is why, with all the mayhem of the campaign to date, both Democratic presidential candidates remain statistically tied with McCain in hypothetical match-ups for November.

But if we have learned anything in our politics since World War II, it is that Americans choose an individual to be president, not a party or a platform.

And right now, the individual basking in the favor of the sun is John McCain.

8:39 AM ET | 04-29-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

The Proper Pennsylvania Lesson for Obama

Exit pollsters this week asked Pennsylvania primary voters at what point they had decided between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. About 1 in 4 said they had done so in the last week before the vote, and among these, 58 percent said they had decided for Clinton.

That enormous edge was far from the only factor deciding this primary. But it was a factor Obama might have done something about.

The one big event that took place in the final week of the campaign: the debate on ABC-TV on the night of April 16. While the exit poll did not specifically ask about the debate, no other happening in these final days had nearly the same potential to affect voter attitudes.

The April 16 debate was watched by more than 10 million viewers nationwide, the largest audience for any of the debates in either party in this presidential election cycle. But its impact was far wider, because debates influence far more people than just those who watch and listen.

Debates, like candidate gaffes, make their way into the voters' consciousness gradually. Most of the damage may be done days after the fact. Consider the classic example: President Gerald Ford's infamous statement (in his debate with Jimmy Carter in 1976) about Poland not feeling dominated by the Soviets. That remark barely registered with audiences during the debate, but after several cycles of media replay and regurgitation, it had become a major issue.

So it was with Obama's performance in the ABC showdown. While Clinton pounced gleefully on question after question, controlling the temperature of the evening, Obama seemed put upon and dyspeptic. And he compounded that impression by grousing about the questions in the days that followed.

Yes, the ABC team of Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos seemed obsessed with hot buttons and trivia, probing Obama's troublesome associations far more than Clinton's. But that goes with the status of front-runner, especially one who is still being introduced to the general public. Obama acted as if he had no notion such questions might be asked.

Obama seemed almost equally ill at ease when defending some of his issue positions. Pressed by a rather argumentative Gibson about the effect of capital gains tax cuts on federal revenue, Obama seemed unprepared to defend the higher rates he favors.

At a minimum, the April 16 debate was a lost opportunity for a campaign that had been on the defensive for weeks. Here was a chance to be vigorous and affirmative in meeting these challenges to the candidate's reputation, independence and patriotism.

Failing to seize that chance, Obama seemed much reduced from his usual public stature. Not only did he fall short of the presence he has in his grand speeches, he also fell short of his better debate performances against Clinton earlier this year.

Polls in Pennsylvania during the debate week detected a stalling of the momentum that had cut Clinton's formidable lead by half. From then on, Obama slipped back the other way.

When media analysts break down an Obama loss, we tend to dwell on how various groups reacted to his candidacy. We talk about how he failed to capture women, or white voters, the working class, older voters or Catholics.

At times there is an implication that these voting groups have rejected -- or at least failed to appreciate -- this youthful black visionary who has enthralled other elements of the electorate and beguiled many a veteran journalist.

But there is an obvious alternative to this interpretation. It is that Obama is failing to connect with these voting groups because, with all his assets, he is still far from a complete candidate.

There's not much someone running for office can do about his or her race, gender or age. But one can get better at selling a viewpoint or defending specific vulnerabilities. What hurt Obama most in the April 16 debate, and in other moments in Ohio and Pennsylvania, was his failure to do either one.

If Obama hopes to restore his own trajectory in May after the rocky months of March and April, he will need more than his amphitheater rhetoric and his online fundraising. He needs to master the everyday campaign arts of debate -- delivering polished and punchy lines -- and of mixing with ordinary people in a way that wins them over.

12:55 AM ET | 04-23-2008 | permalink | e-mail column