Watching Washington

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

 

Desperately Seeking a Campaign Scoreboard

After nearly six weeks without a primary or a caucus, practically everyone following the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination is at wit's end.

Frustration and bewilderment are the watchwords of the hour.

Is it because the performances of the candidates are deteriorating? Perhaps. The latest debate (ABC News, April 16, Philadelphia) left partisans of candidates (and neither candidate) both underwhelmed and vaguely depressed.

You could blame it on moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, as many outside of ABC News and their publicity department did. But the candidates, too, left much to be desired.

Polls show the country likes and trusts both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton less now than it did earlier this year. Obama seems halting on defense, while Clinton prevaricates on offense, so it's hard to find either inspiring at the moment.

But something else has gotten out of kilter as well in this long break in the voting. It's the lack of any truly meaningful measure of where it's going. With no one out there voting for all this time, we've been wandering in a forest with no marked trail.

Sure, we have the polls, which move around enough to keep cable TV anchors breathless and wide-eyed. The problem is that they fluctuate and contradict each other so much, they undermine their own credibility.

Take for example, the two most recent national polls on the Democratic race. The Gallup tracking poll has Obama up by just 3 points, down from 11 earlier in the week. That would tend to suggest his remarks about bitter small-town people clinging to guns and religion had finally registered and done him harm, and that his performance in the midweek debate was hurting as well.

But then along comes a Newsweek poll done in the same time frame that shows Obama up -- wait for it -- 19 points. That would represent by far his largest advantage in a national poll to date. What does that say about the bitter-cling snafu or the debate?

The polls in individual states can also be confusing. In Pennsylvania, polls released on April 15 showed Clinton leading Obama by as many as 14 points (typical of her lead in March and early April) or as few as 5.

Later in the week, a Zogby poll found her ahead by just 4, a Rasmussen poll by just 3. And a poll released at midweek (before the debate) by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm in Raleigh, N.C., looked at nearly 1,100 Democrats in Pennsylvania and found Obama ahead by 3 points.

Similar confusion reigns in Indiana, which votes on May 6. Surveys in that state in recent weeks had given Clinton consistent leads in mid-to-high single digits. The state was generally considered to be in the Ohio-Pennsylvania pattern, with blue-collar voters and rural voters opting for Clinton and offsetting Obama's advantage among blacks and the educated and affluent. But this week, two polls, including one for the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg News, gave a 5-point bulge in the state to Obama.

So who's ahead, and by how much? What is registering with voters, and what is not? It is difficult to find a metric that satisfies.

Of course, we still have the total of pledged delegates, a number with real consequence. The problem is that this total has not changed much in more than a month. Anything that remains static that long becomes part of the landscape; we notice it less and less.

What about those superdelegate totals, the rolling tally of elected officeholders and party officials who will go to the convention and determine who gets the nomination in the end? Here, Obama has whittled away at what was once a substantial lead for Clinton. Now it's inside of two dozen delegates. But again, there isn't enough drama in this to grab people.

We are reduced, then to collecting anecdotes and seeking a pattern. This is the sort of non-numeric, squishy stuff that political journalists have always mucked about in -- dating back long before the computer or the telephone poll.

We take note when every major daily newspaper in Pennsylvania endorses Obama, but then we move on. We take note when Robert Reich, the first secretary of labor in the administration of Bill Clinton and a friend of Bill since Oxford days, endorses Obama. And we may even notice when two former U.S. senators, Sam Nunn and David Boren, endorse Obama.

Nunn speaks for defense hawks in the Democratic Party like few others have in decades. As a senator from Georgia, he rose to chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and won effusive praise from such conservatives as Barry Goldwater. Boren, who was governor of Oklahoma before being elected to the Senate, was the godfather of campaign finance reform in the 1980s, long before Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold took over the franchise.

But Nunn and Boren both left the Senate in the 1990s, and neither cuts much mustard in Washington these days, so it's hard to say whether their endorsements will register.

That's been part of the problem now for nearly six weeks. Nothing really resonates like results.

12:03 PM ET | 04-19-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Bush and Cheney: Riding Out on the Hard Line

It was the 10th of April in his final year in office, and President Bush sent several ultimatums to Congress before flying to Texas for a three-day weekend.

In his demands, he directed the lawmakers to:

1) Approve $108 billion in spending for Iraq without attaching strings or domestic spending.
2) Accept the suspension of troop withdrawals from Iraq for an indefinite period.
3) Sign off on a free trade agreement with Colombia without amendment.

The president's attitude on all three issues might best be described as impatient insistence. Why hadn't Congress complied with his wishes already?

Hearing the president, it was easy to imagine him in the spring of 2003, full of the authority that comes with a wartime mission and high approval ratings.

It was as if Congress existed to carry out his program, and as if there were no reason to think any reasonable person would disagree with him on any of the three issues at hand.

All this could be posturing, of course. The president might actually understand the resistance to his priorities far better than he lets on. It is even possible that he would use his days at the ranch, as President Lyndon B. Johnson once did, to schmooze and bargain and cajole the Hill's key members.

If that were the case, they might be days well spent. Back in Washington, the president might stand to get more of what he wants, while still allowing Congress some taste of success.

But will he? This president has never shown much interest in the grit and grind of working the Congress. When he was riding high he could issue directives, or send Vice President Cheney to the Hill to order the troops into line.

That was when his party still controlled the House and Senate majorities. It was also when his approval ratings still defied gravity. For a long time, this man could not seem to wear out the nation's admiration.

But on the day his latest extended weekend began, his approval rating in the Gallup Poll fell to 28 percent — the lowest for any president since Jimmy Carter hit the same number in his last year in office.

What troubles the Bush White House is not so different from those of the Carter years. The country is stuck in an endless stalemate in the Middle East that most Americans find both incomprehensible and insupportable. Gas prices are at record highs. The economy is faltering in the midst of a credit and banking crisis still unfolding on Wall Street.

As for the administration, its response to challenge after challenge ranges from disappointing to dysfunctional. The latest failing involves a regulatory culture at the Federal Aviation Administration that enabled major airlines to fly planes that hadn't been inspected. With that bad news came the overnight cancellation of thousands of flights, stranding passengers at airports across the country.

The president, we are told, will be "keeping an eye" on that situation from Crawford this weekend.

When people look more closely at the Bush administration, they see a cabinet and sub-cabinet in near-constant turmoil. The latest to depart, Alphonso Jackson at Housing and Urban Development, didn't leave because the nation's housing market is dropping or because no one in power seemed aware of the looming mortgage crisis. He left because of allegations he directed lucrative contracts to cronies.

Underlying all of Washington's woes, of course, is the national anxiety over Iraq. Two days of congressional testimony by the respected and popular Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker left an impression of stoic resignation. U.S. troop withdrawals would have to be suspended this summer. More troops would remain after the surge than had been in Iraq before the surge. Progress made is "fragile and reversible."

While some found the report unsettling, the president seemed satisfied. The general would have "all the time he needs." Guarded and cautious as Petraeus and Crocker had been, Messrs. Bush and Cheney were full of new hope. The vice president even checked in with two of his favorite talk show hosts, Sean Hannity and Hugh Hewitt.

"There's a lot of good things happening," a sunny Cheney enthused.

It is one thing to see a glass half empty and pronounce it half full. It is another to contemplate the dregs and insist the glass is brimming.

5:53 PM ET | 04-11-2008 | permalink | e-mail column

 

Will Democrats Care if the Clintons Are (That) Rich?

It's hard to imagine that anyone watching the 2008 presidential campaign woke up on Friday still thinking of Bill and Hillary Clinton as that impecunious yuppie couple we met in Little Rock back in 1992.

Still, eyes popped and eyebrows rose at the numbers in the news: The Clintons rolled up well over $100 million in their first seven years out of the White House -- including $20 million last year.

It's been well publicized that both the former president and former first lady received millions for their autobiographical manuscripts. And there's been general acknowledgement that Bill Clinton leads the list of top-dollar speakers at international conclaves.

What may have caught some of us by surprise, however, is the number and the average swag from those speaking engagements. You knew there were people willing to spend astonishing sums to impress their guests, but $52 million for speeches at business gatherings and motivational confabs? That's a lot of impressiveness.

The sheer speed and overpowering ease with which the fresh Clinton fortune was amassed amazed us. The Clinton legend, heretofore framed entirely in terms of political office, takes on a gilded edge.

Is any of this a problem for anyone other than the professional Clinton detractors? Will ordinary voters, especially those making less than $50,000 a year, be OK with a putative champion who's literally making 400 times as much?

Democrats in the past have accepted presidential nominees who were born to great wealth (Jack Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt), as well as those with aristocratic pedigrees (John Kerry, Al Gore, Adlai Stevenson) and those who were affluent before arriving in the Oval Office (Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter). Just as many of the Democratic standard bearers have been sons of the middle class who spent much of their prior career in government (Clinton, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey and Harry Truman).

Democrats had a chance to size up each of these candidates and their financial background. They could decide whether they accepted JFK or FDR as a friend of the working man. Now they are being asked to make the same decision about a candidate borne on a tide of money generated by her husband's willingness to sell the cachet and connections of his presidency in the marketplace.

As a rule, most ex-presidents have made a soft landing on the assets they had before entering the White House. They were people of means first, national leaders after. Not the Clintons. They spent their early years together in government and their middle years together primarily in government. She made some money as a lawyer, but nothing like what she might have made outside of Arkansas.

When Bill was elected, the Clintons had never even owned a home. But over the next eight years, they became accustomed to holidays on Martha's Vineyard and in other exclusive retreats. It was a lifestyle to which they could see themselves becoming accustomed. That is an adaptation few could resist.

So once in the private sector, they made up for lost time. Bill Clinton may have been the first president in our history to be young, energetic and saleable enough to maximize his post-office earning power in this way. He saw his opportunities and took them.

No one questions his right to have done so, or her right to have ridden along. But for those who find any aspect of Clinton Inc. unseemly, the prospect of giving the enterprise another lease on the White House will be troubling.

9:10 PM ET | 04- 4-2008 | permalink | e-mail column