January 15, 2008

     It was silly to think we could have a presidential campaign with a serious black candidate and not have race as an issue.  Now it is an issue, sort of, kind of.   Senator Hillary Clinton probably started it when she said that Martin Luther King's dream "began to be realized when President Johnson passed the (1964) Civil Rights Act."

 

     Not exactly.  Both men worked to help the Act become law.  King did it as a moral leader, the Gandhi of his generation, who could, with his words, energize a nation to pursue a dream.  Johnson did it as the president who'd been a senator, who knew all the arms to twist.  The Senate passed the bill by summoning 67 votes to end a filibuster which had lasted fifty-seven working days, and lots of people deserve some of the credit.  Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen, quoting Victor Hugo: "Stronger than all the armies is an idea whose time has come."  Democrat Clair Engle of California, mortally ill, unable to speak, pointing to his eye to indicate that was how he wanted to vote.  Lots of people.

 

     And King and Johnson talked, of course.  The next year King urged a voting rights bill.  Johnson agreed, said a march would help. They marched at Selma, Alabama, and state troopers clubbed them.  John Lewis, now a Congressman from Georgia and a Clinton backer, got a fractured skull that day. They marched again with federal protection.  The bill passed.  Two very different men who shared a goal.

 

     We haven't reached the goal of ending racism, of course.  But we have inched forward.  Those bills, which those two very different men helped pass, meant progress.  We keep moving forward, though not quickly.  It is silly, surely, to suggest that Senator Clinton would want to slow that progress.  It is silly as well to suggest that Barack Obama would.  John Lewis says Obama is "no Martin Luther King" and that's probably true, but who among us is?  No country gets a star that bright very often.

 

     We can argue about tactics.  Did school busing work?  Is affirmative action a good idea?  But surely Clinton and Obama and most of us believe in the words that got us started:  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...."  And surely Clinton and Obama and most of us nowadays could still march to the old civil rights movement hymn:  "Black and white together, we shall overcome some day."  It's coming;  it's just not coming quickly.   

 

          

January 13, 2008

Okay, it's Michigan's turn. Troubled state. Unemployment is at 7.4%, highest of any state, almost 50% above the national average. And Mitt Romney, whose dad was governor there, is talking jobs. "What Michigan is experiencing the whole nation will experience unless we fix what's happening in Michigan...." Well, no.

The whole nation is not as dependent on the automobile industry as Michigan. The whole country hasn't lost jobs because Americans buy more foreign cars than they used to. Romney also jumped on John McCain for saying that some of those Michigan jobs are gone forever. But, of course, they are. "I had to give some straight talk," McCain said. "Jobs...have left and will not come back, but we're going to create jobs, we're going to create a new economy."

And of course that is what will have to happen if Michigan is to recover. You can't go back to the old Big Three carmakers; you have to go in new, high tech directions. Romney's home state, Massachusetts, has done well at that, sparked by the runoff from universities like MIT and Harvard. Do any of the candidates know how to do that in Michigan? If one of them wins, we may find out.

Meanwhile, polls in Michigan show McCain and Romney about even, with Mike Huckabee within striking distance in third place. Unlike the other two, Huckabee stresses his religion. "For a long time, those of us who are people of faith have been asked to support a candidate who would talk to us. But rarely has there been one who comes from us." He means himself, of course. He also stresses his opposition to abortion, and plans to stay in the state through the primary, hoping to upset the frontrunners.

The others? Fred Thompson is in South Carolina. Rudy Giuliani has in effect conceeded all the early states and is hanging out in Florida. I mean, what the heck, the beaches are good and there's terrific seafood if you know where to go. He's been there so long that by now he probably does. Who needs the presidency anyway? Try the pompano.

January 9 (out of sequence)

If you like politics, New Hampshire's primary was about as good as it gets.

There was Barack Obama, the Democratic winner in Iowa, finishing second behind Hillary Clinton, who was third in Iowa. There was Mike Huckabee, the Republican winner in Iowa, finishing third in New Hampshire behind John McCain, who was fourth in Iowa. There was Mitt Romney, who spent millions in these early states, finishing second again. Who's a frontrunner now? I have no idea.

And even the calendar has gotten complicated. The next test for Republicans is Michigan on the 15th. The Democrats punished Michigan for moving its primary to such an early date by voting to strip the state of all its delegates to the party convention. They did the same thing to Florida, which moved its primary up to January 29th. It's hard to imagine those two big states won't eventually have delegates at the convention. The eventual nominee will probably demand it, but for now Republicans will be campaigning hard in them. Democrats won't.

January 19th? Nevada caucuses; it's the first time the state has tried caucuses. Stay tuned. We're used to the South Carolina primary, but this year it's on two different dates--the Republicans on Jan. 19th, the Dems on the 26th. The Democratic race may be the more interesting. About half the state's voters in that contest will be black. The Clintons have always done well with African-American voters; Maya Angelou called Bill Clinton the first black president. But how will his wife do against Obama who, of course, is black?

Florida votes on the 29th--again, only Republican delegates are at stake. It's where former New York mayor Rudolf Giuliani--7th in Iowa, 4th in New Hampshire--has spent a lot of time, but so many others will have won so many other events by then it may not do him any good.

And then Super Tuesday, twenty-four states including the heavy hitters--New York, California and so on. That may decide it. But look at the wonderful, confusing weeks we'll have between now and then. This really is about as good as it gets.

January 10, 2008

     According to data posted on the internet by the Center for Responsive Politics, the various presidential candidates raised about 420 million dollars in the first three quarters of 2007.  More by now, of course, but those numbers aren't available yet.

 

     Some raised more than others.  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were the leading Democrats:  she, with over ninety million;  he, with eighty.  Long shot New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who has dropped out, raised over eighteen million;  Dennis Kucinich, who hasn't, raised about two.

 

     Is this fair?  Well, no.  A Clinton starts out with huge advantages--husband an ex-president, all the lists he assembled during his campaigns, and so on.  An Obama has fewer advantages;  a Kucinich, apparently, fewer still.   And so we come back to an old question:  should we switch to public financing? 

 

     It's available now, of course, but there's a catch.  If you take government money, you have to agree to government spending limits--state by state.  So when Senator Clinton announced early in 2007 that she wasn't going to use public financing, other potential candidates knew that if they did, they were going to be outspent big time.

 

     How would pubic financing work?  You could do it in several ways--simply give the campaigns money,  mandate free TV time for them, or some combination of those.  What it would do, of course, is lessen the power of the fat cats--the corporate bundlers, the law firms, the lobbyists.  It would mean less influence by various interest groups on the election process and, therefore, more clout for the average voter.

 

     Do we want this?  Congress doesn't;  public financing bills get proposed from time to time but don't pass.  Is that because the Congressmen are already elected, have lists from their last campaign and that people thinking about running against them now probably don't?  What do you think? 

January 7, 2008

     Tension time, today and tomorrow.  Candidates sweating, campaigns facing death.  Negatives springing up in New Hampshire's fertile soil.  No wonder;  the vote's coming up, and while Iowa removed some long shots--senators Biden and Dodd--New Hampshire may kill off a one-time frontrunner.  Or two.

 

     But it isn't, as some wise person once said, over 'til it's over."  One poll has Barack Obama ten points ahead of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, which sounds like a landslide.  But if you keep reading, you learn that the poll's margin of error is plus or minus five points, so the seeming landslide is in fact a statistical tie.  And while polls are useful, they are snapshots, not predictions.

 

     Still, it's fun to see that Clinton, as well as Obama, is now the candidate of change.  She's been in the public eye for fifteen years now so that may be a stretch.  But if she gets away with it, more power to her.  And if she doesn't, her campaign may well be over.

 

     The Republican race is harder to read.  Mike Huckabee's victory in Iowa was based on the votes of evangelical Christians and there are fewer of them in New Hampshire.  But Mitt Romney in recent appearances has sounded evasive and flip-floppy.  John McCain in the big weekend debate called him the "candidate of change" not meaning it as a compliment.  And when Romney told Mike Huckabee not to criticize his position on an issue, Huckabee shot back, "Which one?"

 

     Actually, if I could have one wish magically granted, it would be for more civility--not in the campaign, which has been quite polite so far, but in the Congress.   I can remember Robert Michel of Illinois, the Republican leader in the House from 1980-1995, talking about how they'd argue an issue hammer and tongs but, at the end of the day, you'd still be friends with the folks you'd been yelling at.

 

     That changed for many reasons:  leaders like Newt Gingrich preferred partisanship to collegiality;  more and more visits made home to campaign or raise money;  and so on.  Members don't know each other as well as they used to.  Maybe you can't go back, but Congress worked better back then and maybe, just maybe, some of the new people who get elected this year will want to give civility a try.

 

January 4, 2008

     It was different--Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, not Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney--and it was fun.  Now on to New Hampshire and what happens there.

 

     First, the Democrats.  Hillary Clinton, trumpeted by many in recent months as the inevitable nominee, has lost that aura.  She has the money to come back in New Hampshire and her spokesmen now say they're ready for a marathon campaign.  But there are worrisome signs for her.

 

     Change was the issue most Democratic caucus goers cited in Iowa and, of course, that was Obama's issue.  Clinton cited her experience.  Obama had a huge lead over Clinton among independents (41--23%).  They make up the largest voting bloc in New Hampshire and can vote in either party's primary there.  Obama led among young and middle-aged voters;  Clinton, only among those over sixty.  That's not to say that New Hampshire independents will vote the same way as those in Iowa but, if you're a Clinton backer, it's not a good sign.  And I have a feeling--no poll question quite asked this--that a lot of Americans are fed up with twenty years of Bushes and Clintons and just want somebody new.

 

     Anyway, if you're Clinton, New Hampshire is probably a make or break state.  Robert Shrum, a veteran Democratic consultant who was John Kerry's senior strategist in 2004, told the New York Times, "If Hillary doesn't stop Obama in New Hampshire, Obama is going to be the Democratic nominee,"  and that sounds about right.  Her husband finished out of the money in Iowa in 1992, then finished second in New Hampshire, labeled himself the Comeback Kid and won the nomination.  A repeat of that seems unlikely.

 

     Republicans?  A whole different game.  60% of Iowa's Republican caucus goers told entrance pollsters they were evangelical Christians.  Mike Huckabee got 46% of them, far ahead of Mitt Romney's 19%.  But New Hampshire Republicans are less evangelical, more anti-tax.   Huckabee has been attacked for raising some taxes as governor of Arkansas, though he answers that he's cut others.  He's likeable, has a sense of humor even about himself--unusual in presidential candidates--but will New Hampshire Republicans support a candidate who doesn't believe in evolution?  I don't know.

 

    Huckabee's win in Iowa hurts Mitt Romney, who spent time and money in the state.  It doesn't much hurt John McCain, who didn't and who won the Granite State eight years ago.  So New Hampshire could end up a battle between Romney and McCain.  Both parties may have two-person races by next Wednesday. 

 

     One thing's for sure:  real voting is a lot more fun than straw polls, don't you think?

 

    

 

        

January 1, 2008

Bob Herbert reminds us in today's New York Times that 1968 was forty years ago, now that we're in '08, and we haven't really gotten over it yet.

'68 started with an unpopular president, Lyndon Johnson, waging an unpopular war in Vietnam. A relatively unknown senator, Eugene McCarthy, ran against Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Kids flooded the state for him; "neat and clean for Gene" was the slogan; and he got 42% of the vote. Johnson withdrew, though an aide told me years later that some time after making his withdrawal announcement, Johnson did consider rigging a draft. He decided not to.

Robert Kennedy ran and seemed to spark hope among all kinds of Americans. And then Martin Luther King was murdered and American cities burned. Kennedy broke the news to a mostly black crowd in Indianapolis and said in a moving and almost incoherent speech, "I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times." And then he was killed and a great many Americans who thought they could change the world decided that no, they couldn't.

And here we still are. What we need, I think, is a president who again wants to change the world. This administration has cheapened the United States, lowered its standards, dirtied its image around the world. This administration claims the right to use torture, the right to imprison people it doesn't like indefinitely without letting them know what they're accused of or what, if any, evidence there is against them. It has held prisoners secretly in foreign countries. It has claimed the right to tap our telephones and read our mail without court orders. It has claimed the right to start wars, though the Constitution says Congress is supposed to do that. And so on and so on. It's a long list.

I hope the next president, whoever he or she may be, goes back to the older America, the one the men who wrote the Constitution had in mind, a limited government, a president with limited powers, not a king, a government of laws and not of men. We need a leader like that; I hope we get one.

December 31, 2007

     They start counting real votes on Thursday.  The Iowa caucuses are then, on Tuesday the 8th, the New Hampshire primary.  After those two, we'll know something.  Not who the nominees are, maybe, but we'll know of lot of people who won't be. 

 

     In 1984, for instance, Walter Mondale and Gary Hart finished first and second in Iowa and went on the battle through the primaries for a nomination Mondale finally won.  But others, including John Glenn, vanished after Iowa   His headquarters, I remember, was in the same building as the Red Cross  but even they couldn't save his candidacy.

 

    So after Iowa it'll be a smaller field, maybe two in each party.  Republicans?  The polls say Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.  Former New York mayor Rudolf Giuliani has pretty much stayed out of the early states--Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina--planning to do well in Florida, but the party may be over by then.

 

     Democrats?  The polls, again, say Iowans are fairly evenly split among three candidates:  Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. Edwards' campaign seems to have come lately to a single word:  fight.  He says it two or three times in every sentence, almost as if he were running for cheerleader or maybe boxing coach.  Do Iowans like fighters?  We'll find out.  Again, my guess would be that two of those three survive to trudge on in New Hampshire.  Iowa doesn't always pick winners;  it does winnow the field.

 

     So the stage is set and Washington, the political center of the country, is of course glued to its screens watching the unfolding battle?  Well, no.  Not exactly.   Washington is glued to it's newspapers and TVs not because of politics but because the Redskins--the football team--have improbably won four straight and made the NFL playoffs. 

 

     Some cities are just good sports towns.  I grew up in one, Chicago, where the baseball and basketball and all the other teams had lots of serious fans. Washington's different.  Nobody gets all that worked up aout the Capitols (hockey), the Wizards (hoops) or the Nationals (baseball). But when the Redskins do well, the place rocks. 

  

    So if you run into a Washington friend Thursday night and ask, meaning Iowa, "Who won?" the answer will probably be, "The game's not 'til Sunday, stupid."  It's a funny town.