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