Watching Washington

Failure to Launch: A Requiem for Rudy

For years to come, students of politics and the media will study Rudy Giuliani's bid for the White House and marvel at its curious trajectory.

A year ago, many of us in the political speculation business were contemplating a Giuliani candidacy and dismissing its prospects out of hand. No one could imagine this lifetime New Yorker standing in the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire, chatting as thought he had all the time in the world.

More to the point, the former mayor had spent far too many years of supporting abortion rights, gay rights and his own right to live as he pleased. He could never convert the social conservatives at the core of the Republican primary electorate. Once his full record as mayor and personal pecadilloes had been publicized, they would obscure his heroic moments of Sept. 11, 2001. The Rudy reality would undermine the mayor's myth.

No sooner had this become conventional wisdom than it began to erode. Giuliani attracted substantial contributions and moved to the top of the national polls, benefiting in part from the early collapse of putative frontrunner John McCain.

One reason was that national security stood out in mid-2007 as the one issue on which the Republican coalition remained united, and Giuliani seemed to have the patent on getting tough with the terrorists.

Moreover, he found ways to talk about abortion, gay rights and social liberalism that elided his past positions in a flurry of future pledges to appoint "strict constructionist" judges. This is well understood code for being anti-abortion when it counts most, at the moment a vacancy opens on the U.S. Supreme Court.

More than a few of us found ourselves re-evaluating our dismissal of Giuliani. He climbed to nearly 40 percent in the national trial heats within the GOP, attracting the votes not only of econo-cons and national security mavens but of social conservatives as well.

Much of the Bush White House seemed to be in his camp, along with the remaining neo-conservative establishment (still smarting from its reversals in Iraq). Influential media such as the Weekly Standard, FOX News and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal began to rally round Rudy as their best bet to maintain the Bush agenda of tax cuts at home and toughness abroad.

But in the fall, a series of bad news developments sapped the Giuliani momentum just as it had begun to pick up speed. Unflattering stories portrayed his White House ambition as primarily the brainchild of his third wife, Judith Nathan, who had alienated him from his children. Then Bernard Kerik, a longtime associate whom Giuliani had made police commissioner, was indicted for defrauding the government -- among others.

At about the same time, the National Right to Life Committee endorsed Fred Thompson for president, saying its priority was to deny Giuliani the nomination at all costs. A straw poll in Iowa and a conference for evangelicals in Washington D.C. served to elevate Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee for their professed loyalty on social issues.

But the worst thing for Giuliani may have been the apparent success of the surge, the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq. The more the surge worked, the less Iraq got out on page one. And the less news there was from that region, the less voters were peoccupied with terrorism. As night follows day, the Giuliani message declined in salience. Soon, anxieities over the housing market and potential recession would push the memory of Sept. 11 farther from the immediate consciousness of the voters.

Giuliani's standing in national polls declined steadily from its peak in August 2007 to the day of the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3. By then, Giuliani had decided the snows of Iowa were not for him and moved on. He spent time and money in New Hampshire, but not to the degree he needed to overcome his negatives in New England.

Unwilling to make his first big bet in Michigan, Nevada or South Carolina, Giuliani found himself betting it all on Florida, the last primary before Super Tuesday. The strategy was bold; no one had ever waited so long to win a primary and then succeeded in winning the nomination. But for a moment, it had a kind of plausibility. Three different candidates won the first three big events, and the field looked shattered and ready for a new leader.

The problem was that Giuliani's weeks of campaign ads and appearances in Florida were not enough to hold his early lead in the polls there. Mike Huckabee rose to challenge him, and when he fell back for lack of funding, Mitt Romney and John McCain rode in on the momentum of their wins in early states.

When the Florida field got crowded, Giuliani found himself crowded out. On primary day, it did not make it to 20 percent of the vote, and he folded his tent the following day.

In the end, it may have been that Republican voters were intolerant of anyone with Giuliani's past. Once they opened the book on his career and began to read, his chances were zero.

Or it may have been even more basic than that. Giuliani gave up too early on the early states, having decided there was just a little too much cold and snow to stand there, after all.

1:17 AM ET | 01-31-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

The Democrats' Race: Dream and Nightmare

Hillary Clinton knew one thing for certain when her presidential campaign began: She wanted to run on her own assets and abilities, not as Bill Clinton's wife. That was the best way to win, the best way to govern if elected.

Barack Obama also knew one thing when he got in: He wanted to run on his own assets and abilities, not as the African American candidate. That was the best way to win, the best way to govern.

Both stuck with these convictions through a long year of competition in 2007. The sight of their groundbreaking candidates proceeding apace on parallel tracks was an omen of better days for the Democrats -- and possibly for the country.

But after four weeks of electoral combat, the hope is under great strain. And the measure of how much the mood has changed can be found in a single quote from former President Bill Clinton.

On the afternoon of the South Carolina primary, the former president ran into a reporter who asked why it was taking both him and Hillary to beat Obama. Clinton let out a small laugh, then let fly. Ignoring the question, he announced to the reporter that Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988.

This happened hours before the results of the vote were known, but the former president was clearly prepared for an Obama win -- perhaps even the landslide that was coming. He wanted to make two things clear. The first was that South Carolina's Democratic base was inclined to vote for a black candidate when available. The second was that Obama did not need to be taken more seriously just because he won South Carolina, as indeed Jackson was not.

That is a bit of spin that someone in the Clinton camp might have been expected to offer to someone in the media at some point in the aftermath of that primary. But for it to come from the former president himself, on camera, before the results were even in, illustrated how things have deteriorated in this campaign.

It showed how hard it will be for Hillary Clinton to ever set the tone and tenor of her own campaign so long as her husband is Bill Clinton and he operates with the independence of a co-candidate. However she may have chosen to deal with a crucial primary where she got less than one black vote in five, the attitude of her campaign had already been set in the public mind by her husband.

But Clinton's remark also showed just how hard it will be for Obama to transcend race in this nominating contest, let alone in the general election. This was Bill Clinton talking, a man Toni Morrison famously called "the first black president." If he was willing to tag Obama as the Jesse Jackson of 2008, the black guy winning black votes, then who would expect Americans who are far less empathetic with African Americans to be any less race-conscious?

Was the president thinking ahead to the effect of this one primary? Or was he thinking about the several Southern primaries Obama is likely to win on Feb. 5? Was he nudging the media to write off those votes as well?

No wonder people who care about the Clintons but are attracted to Obama have found the last four weeks depressing.

We may never know whether that particular Clinton remark made a difference or not. But the Clinton attitude toward Obama in recent weeks has distressed many longtime allies, including -- by many reports -- those members of the Kennedy family who endorsed him at a public rally in Washington just 48 hours after the remark was made. And on the same day, Morrison herself announced that for all her respect for the Clintons, she was going with Obama.

8:19 PM ET | 01-28-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Obama Stays Cool in Carolina Crossfire

This is a presidential campaign season full of things we've never seen before, and now we can add the sight of an African American candidate caught in a crossfire because he has become a frontrunner.

Barack Obama was cast in that role in this week's Democratic debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Here stood a tall, young black candidate flanked by a white man and white woman, both trying furiously to take him down a peg. Any foreign observer happening upon the scene would have known immediately which one of these three was the leading prospect to win this state's primary on Saturday.

Debates have not been the best showcase for Obama, who is more comfortable having the only microphone on stage. Eloquent as he usually is, Obama in debate mode sometimes gropes for words.

Myrtle Beach had bruising moments for Obama, whose responses to probing by rivals Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were only adequate. His excuse for doing legal work for a man Clinton called "a slumlord" was glib and less than satisfying. Likewise his explanation for his many votes of "present" in the Illinois legislature. (He might have done better by noting that when Abraham Lincoln served in Springfield he jumped out a window to escape a quorum call.)

Obama's own efforts at counterpunching, such as his shot at Clinton for serving on the board of Wal-Mart, were the sort of tit-for-tat that weakens him as a champion for more positive politics. He looked to be caught in precisely the bind that Clinton's aggressive tactics are intended to create for him.

All the same, the takeaway impression from the first hour of the debate on CNN was of Obama at the center of the action, hounded on all sides, keeping his cool and remaining sympathetic. While at times his broad face looked pained, he was able to turn the mood to humor more than once and flash his trademark smile.

Clinton, by contrast, was too busy with her hit list to worry about likeability on this night. She had her facts honed, she was ready to counter his rebuttals. But the relentlessness of it all became wearing, especially when she overstepped and said: "Senator Obama, it's hard to have a straight-up debate with you because you never take responsibility for any vote." That brought boos and groans from the audience, which included partisans from all three camps. If these were not the only such sounds of disapproval heard all evening, they were certainly the loudest.

Having weathered the storms of the tense first hour, Obama could ease into the warmth of the second, when the format called for sitdown conversation. Seated in swivel chairs, the contestants turned civil. Even the most pointed questions seemed less accusatory, each challenge less provocative.

Arguments among people standing up and pointing fingers at each other are more likely to become fights than arguments among people in chairs keeping their hands to themselves. In debate after debate this season, in both parties, sitting down has lowered the decibel level and elevated the dialogue.

It was in this second half of the program that Obama had his best moments, such as his nuanced answer to the question: "Was Bill Clinton the first black president?" With a sly smile that Hillary could not resist returning, Obama proceeded to salute the former president -- admonish his recent tactics -- and joke about "dancing abilities" and other signs of "being a brother." The racially integrated audience ate it up.

It was the night of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the night the country pays its respects to King's religious and political vision. The essence of that vision is the transcendance of racial boundaries, and that is the message Obama has striven to make his own.

The biggest danger he faced in Myrtle Beach was that in strengthening his appeal among blacks (who account for more than half the state's Democrats) he would become the latter day Jesse Jackson (who ran twice for president in the 1980s without getting close). Jackson was the first serious black candidate on the national level; Obama wants to be the first to be elected. Transcending race is a worthy ideal, and it's also his only practical way to win.

11:43 AM ET | 01-22-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Campaigning in the Disunited States of Dissing

It now appears that the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have decided to climb down from the heights of moral outrage to which both rose after their remarks were interpreted as racially motivated.

Perhaps the truce was prompted by Obama calling it all "silliness," giving Clinton the chance for a reciprocal gesture of reconciliation. Or maybe it was the calendar. The week that includes the birthday (Jan. 15) and national holiday (Jan. 21) honoring Martin Luther King Jr. might not be the best time for a fight over whose attitudes are the more racist.

It is also possible the moment of clarity came after former President Bill Clinton told black radio host Tom Joyner that "the only racist remark of the campaign" was the Obama camp calling Hillary "the senator from Punjab." The would-be "First Laddie" probably did not intend this to be the low point of the controversy, but it served that purpose all the same. Sometimes it takes a little reductio ad absurdum to reveal a pose off for what it is.

Still, the Democratic presidential campaign has taken on a bitter taste that may well linger. Democrats have been congratulating themselves a lot lately, not only on their polls and prospects but on the tone of their debates. The days since New Hampshire have brought a sobering reminder of how quickly interest group politics can put a coalition party asunder.

Parties are often built on grievances, including those of disparate groups. The pyre of resentments can be a source of energy, but it can also burn out of control. Primaries can turn one faction against another in competitions of victimhood that can only be destructive.

It may have been inevitable that a presidential season that featured the first truly competitive campaigns by a woman, an African American, a Hispanic American, an Italian American, a Mormon and an ordained Southern Baptist preacher would eventually produce some angry talk about who can and can't be president. In this campaign cycle, we take on not just the glass ceiling but the color bar and the religious test all at once. Two of the candidates are past 70, so let's throw in the age issue, too.

All this may be no more than the natural progression of our history, and a welcome change from the rigidly lookalike candidate fields of the past. But with the smugness about it all, you had to wonder when the smiles would fade.

The change may have come with that moment in the New Hampshire debate when the three male Democrats seemed to be ganging up on Hillary Clinton, or when Obama said she was "likable enough." It may have been when New Hampshire women perceived a little too much glee in all those basso profundo voices proclaiming the end of her campaign.

Right at that point, the senator from New York found an opening and reached straight through to the emotional core of many women voters. She was embattled, and it was unfair and it was an experience many women could relate to. Many a woman who may have fallen for Obama in the previous week, day or hour did a 180-degree turn — almost without willing it — and found herself back home with Hillary.

With New Hampshire lost, and with it a matchless opportunity to score an early knockout, the Obama campaign came back at the gender dynamic with a resentment case of its own. If the dissing of Hillary reminded women of injustices they had known in their own lives, then the putdowns the Clinton campaign employed against Obama might be reminiscent of racial unfairness as well.

So a campaign that had avoided such reactions unleashed its feelings about Bill Clinton's "fairy tale" language (applied to Obama's explanation of his shifts on Iraq, or more subliminally to the whole Obama campaign). It also took out after Hillary Clinton for noting the role President Johnson had to play in fulfilling Dr. King's dream of civil rights.

What seemed a strained reaction to many whites — both in and out of the Clinton camp — seemed entirely plausible to plenty of African Americans. Placed in the context of earlier remarks by Clinton campaign surrogates — including a prominent New Hampshire figure who questioned Obama's electability because of youthful drug use — the latest salvo seemed only to confirm a pattern.

Soon we had both campaigns accusing the other of "playing the race card," a phrase with such a virulent history in American politics that it immediately coarsens the debate.

Once an argument has been framed in this way, both sides become highly defensive about their defensiveness. And each exchange of emotional response begets more of the same.

To the candidates' credit, they seem ready to move on. We shall see if the truce holds. But we have seen a glimpse of how tense the Democrats' internal struggle could become in the weeks ahead, and how easy it would be for the party to sap its own momentum in a year of historic electoral opportunity.

9:52 AM ET | 01-15-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Two 'Upsets' Bring Presidential Race Full Circle

A year ago, a crystal ball gazer might have announced that Hillary Clinton and John McCain would win the 2008 New Hampshire primary. At the time, of course, that prediction would have been greeted with yawns.

That's because at the outset of this long presidential steeplechase, Clinton and McCain were the favorites in the eyes of many politicians, political professionals and newspeople.

But on the way to this week's New Hampshire results, both McCain and Clinton underwent something quite near a campaign collapse. For the Republican senator from Arizona, it came early; for the Democratic senator from New York, in came in the final weeks of the year and first weeks of 2008.

Back in the spring, McCain's financial statements became the most-read documents of the new campaign year. His large and costly team was spending money faster than it was coming in. Meanwhile, McCain was taking unpopular stands in favor of U.S. military commitment in Iraq and in favor of guest worker programs and an earned path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. The first policy cost him among independents and potential Democratic crossovers. The second was anathema to many Republicans.

Before long, McCain had tumbled from the top of the GOP list, giving way to Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson and even Mitt Romney. By the late autumn, Mike Huckabee was looking like a more likely Republican standard-bearer than the man whose campaign came close to knocking off George W. Bush in 2000.

But as the campaign wore on, some of the other candidates' appeal began to wear out. Giuliani stumbled when his longtime associate Bernard Kerik was indicted in New York. Romney battled in vain to change the subject from his Mormonism. Thompson never seemed to decide to get serious about running.

Gradually, week by week, McCain began to re-emerge as a guy people could listen to and nod and mean it. He got some of his roguish humor back, not to mention his square-jawed defiance of conventional political courtesy. Support for the Iraq war also grew back somewhat, with better news from some of the battlefronts, and the immigration issue receded once the bill McCain backed failed to become law.

McCain's comeback was difficult, but he did have months to bring it about. By contrast, the comeback by Clinton had to be engineered in a matter of hours. After finishing third in Iowa, the Clinton campaign persona could not stand another big crack in its illusion of invincibility. Yet even before the Iowa caucus numbers came in, polls in New Hampshire were detecting softness in her support. Most foreboding.

This was borne out when a mild stumble over a question about drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants seemed to have her flummoxed at the end of October. Other incidents followed in which the slightest hesitation or faux pas on her part fueled several days of news coverage.

The polls, long friendly to Clinton, began to weaken and then turn against her — including in New Hampshire.

After the Iowa debacle, Clinton found the wind in her face in the Granite State as well. Polls showed her falling behind Obama by double digits. It was all happening so fast, it seemed unbelievable. And so, it turns out, it should have been.

Yes, Obama spoke to independents and Democrats and won them over in big numbers, but many of the resulting conversions were not permanent — especially among women.

Whether it was the now-famous tear in her eye that helped Clinton change minds in the final hours will be long debated. Chances are the tear was just an easily identified symbol for something larger that changed in the Clinton campaign's approach. For just a few moments, she stopped trying to impress us. All she wanted now, at long last, was a little bit of understanding.

An act? Perhaps. But it was a sign that meant something to the undecided. It meant enough for roughly one in 10 prospective Obama voters to peel off and vote for Clinton instead. This brought the reversal of fortune that left so many observers with more to explain and less to say in explanation than at any moment since George H.W. Bush won this primary over Republican rival Bob Dole in 1988.

The difference is that Dole was never so far ahead of Bush in the polls as Obama was ahead of Clinton. The 2008 reversal is by far the greater conundrum.

9:00 AM ET | 01- 9-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Six Tickets Out of New Hampshire

This week, no one is asking whether Iowa matters. It's clear the small state at the center of the country has had as much influence on the opening of the 2008 presidential race as ever — perhaps more than ever.

What's less clear is whether New Hampshire can fulfill its traditional role of narrowing the field and defining the batting order. In one party, maybe. In the other, no way.

For once, the chaos is not on the Democratic side. There, the race is about to shrink to two, for all intents and purposes. Whatever happens in the first primary voting Tuesday, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will go on to compete in other states this month and next.

The rest of the field will not keep pace, and the only question left to answer is how soon Sens. Joe Biden and Chris Dodd will be joined on the sideline by John Edwards, Bill Richardson and the others.

If she loses New Hampshire as expected, Clinton may be competitive in Michigan and Nevada, but she will have a hard time taking the more significant prize of South Carolina. That will make a comeback in Florida on Jan. 29 a towering challenge.

Far better for Clinton would be a miracle recovery in New Hampshire, making her The Comeback Kid Two, reprising her husband's triumph of spin in 1992. But even then she will likely have to battle Obama for the same handful of states before the 20-plus Tsunami Tuesday on Feb. 5.

Still, the demotion of Edwards and Richardson will simplify things for the Democrats in short order.

No such tidy projection can be made about the Republicans, who are deep in a state of disarray almost unprecedented in living memory.

After New Hampshire votes, at least six Republicans are likely to remain active, and it is possible to imagine any one of four getting the GOP nomination. Taking them in alphabetical order, they are Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain and Mitt Romney.

But which is most likely? That question may not be answered until all the votes are counted in the 20-plus states voting Feb. 5, if then. The prospect of a protracted nomination fight stretching through the Mid-Atlantic states and into the Midwestern states in mid-February is suddenly quite real. And that could mean the nomination will still be uncertain when Texas and Ohio vote on March 4.

There is a scenario by which no Republican has a preponderance of delegates even after March 4. That would leave Pennsylvania in a commanding position on April 22, and if that firewall too should fail, the Republicans could go to the Twin Cities with a couple of contenders still in the running.

The GOP has not really determined its nominee at a convention since 1952, and neither party has had a truly unstructured and unpredictable convention since 1968. Eliminating all suspense has become practically the central purpose of these non-events.

And yet the survival of four real prospects beyond the welter of contests on Feb. 5 makes anything possible. And the failure of New Hampshire to fulfill its winnowing function stands as a major culprit.

McCain is likeliest to win there, and he is the most plausible beneficiary if the party's cooler heads insist on reaching a compromise nominee. But he may not win another January contest, being in trouble again in South Carolina and less than beloved in Florida. His best shot is Michigan, where he won in 2000. But then he was not running against Romney, son of the state's popular former Republican governor, George Romney.

McCain could end the month having wowed the world in New Hampshire and nowhere else.

Romney will suffer grievous harm as his Iowa-New Hampshire strategy is shot to bits. Losing the latter test is especially galling in the state next door to Massachusetts, where he was governor. A few months ago, losing this brace of kingmaker events would have seemed unsurvivable for Romney. But he may not quit.

Romney has the great advantage of self-financing, and he should be strongest in the Western test in Nevada (he's already won a minor event in Wyoming). If he can add Michigan and compete in the other January states, he might be around into spring.

Romney might also keep churning his legs because the rivals who ought to be lapping him are mired in travails of their own.

One of these would be Giuliani. Embarrassing as it must be to lose badly in the earliest tests, Giuliani has always based his bid on winning big on Feb. 5. When Florida leapfrogged into January, it provided Giuliani his one chance for a win any earlier.

So if McCain, Romney and Huckabee divide the glory of all the other January events, there's no consensus front-runner to muscle Giuliani aside on Feb. 5.

At the same time, Giuliani could be frustrated by a loss in Florida to one of these three — perhaps Huckabee. The Arkansas preacher can stay alive with a win in South Carolina on Jan. 19. If he somehow finds the funding to last into February, he remains at least a theoretical threat to go all the way.

11:00 AM ET | 01- 7-2008 | permalink | e-mail column