After yesterday's right-left jabs from the Washington Post, the Republican Great White Hope is bashed today by the New York Times with charges of a Nixonish slush fund from tobacco lobbyists during his days as lieutenant governor of Arkansas.
Huckabee's sudden rise in the polls has drawn hits not only from Big Media (read cosmopolitan urban latte drinkers) but little media like National Review, whose web site keeps raining anti-Huck posts, including not only doubts about his conservative credentials but scorn for his claims of a theology degree when he was actually a seminary dropout.
Compared to Rudy Giuliani's whoppers, Huckabee's little fibs look benign, but there seems to be a deeper unease about him percolating across the political spectrum. National Review editor Rich Lowry says he agrees with the assessment that "Huckabee could be a disaster," likely to "lose conservatives on taxes, spending and immigration and alienate moderates and Democrats on social issues."
To add to all the ideological confusion, there is a remarkably statesmanlike piece by Huckabee in the new issue of Foreign Affairs asserting "The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. In particular, it should focus on eliminating Islamist terrorists, stabilizing Iraq, containing Iran, and toughening its stance with Pakistan."
Huckabee's foreign policy stance sounds suspiciously urbane (read ghost-written) for a candidate who was surprised by reporters' questions about NIE conclusions on Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Political campaigns are supposed to sort out such questions but, as Iowa and New Hampshire draw near, will there be time for voters to see the real Huckabee stand up?
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
Larry Craig Is Sticking to His Guns
Washington's Walking Embarrassment is still sitting proudly in his Senate seat and, along with his Idaho colleague, Michael Crapo (sic), is blocking President Bush’s nomination of Michael Sullivan to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
According to the Editorial Board blog of the New York Times, "Mr. Crapo’s spokesman said his boss is hearing from gun owners and dealers with 'concerns about ATF policies regarding gun sales and even ownership.' It may be, he said, 'that the federal government is getting a little too aggressive with people who haven’t done anything wrong.'
"It’s a remarkable claim to make in a month in which a young gunman in Nebraska shot 11 people, killing eight of them, at an Omaha shopping mall, and another killed four young people in two attacks on religious organizations in Colorado, before taking his own life.
"The Colorado gunman, according to the Denver Post, spent a year buying guns and ammunition...and all of his purchases were within the law. When a large shipment of ammunition was sent to a post office box owned by the gunman, the authorities were alerted, the paper reports--and specifically determined that he had a legal right to receive it."
Awaiting action by the Senate Ethics Committee on his little Minneapolis men's room misunderstanding, Sen. Craig is sticking to his guns maintaining the record that earned him an A+ from the National Rifle Association. The voters who saw him inducted into Idaho's Hall of Fame this fall must be proud.
According to the Editorial Board blog of the New York Times, "Mr. Crapo’s spokesman said his boss is hearing from gun owners and dealers with 'concerns about ATF policies regarding gun sales and even ownership.' It may be, he said, 'that the federal government is getting a little too aggressive with people who haven’t done anything wrong.'
"It’s a remarkable claim to make in a month in which a young gunman in Nebraska shot 11 people, killing eight of them, at an Omaha shopping mall, and another killed four young people in two attacks on religious organizations in Colorado, before taking his own life.
"The Colorado gunman, according to the Denver Post, spent a year buying guns and ammunition...and all of his purchases were within the law. When a large shipment of ammunition was sent to a post office box owned by the gunman, the authorities were alerted, the paper reports--and specifically determined that he had a legal right to receive it."
Awaiting action by the Senate Ethics Committee on his little Minneapolis men's room misunderstanding, Sen. Craig is sticking to his guns maintaining the record that earned him an A+ from the National Rifle Association. The voters who saw him inducted into Idaho's Hall of Fame this fall must be proud.
Cutting Up Huckabee, Left and Right
In the Washington Post today, the new Republican White Hope is being carved up like a Christmas turkey from both sides of the political spectrum.
"Is the thought of Mike Huckabee as president just vaguely scary?" Eugene Robinson asks. "Or have we learned enough about the man that we should be hair-on-fire alarmed at the prospect...that he could actually win?
"Huckabee," former Bush speech writer Michael Gerson notes, "is managing to compromise his most distinctive virtue at the very moment the attention of the public is focused on his candidacy. In politics, a candidate can bend over backward so far that his spine snaps."
Robinson's complaints are that the former preacher is "anti-reason" in denying evolution, a "country bumpkin" in his uninformed attacks on Romney's Mormon faith and "the last person in the country to learn that U.S. intelligence agencies now believe Iran ended its nuclear weapons program four years ago."
Gerson faults Huckabee for accepting the endorsement of "one of the most divisive figures in the most divisive debate in American politics," Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-immigration group, the Minuteman Project, who has called for Bush's impeachment over failure to enforce border security and proclaims, "I will not promote violence in resolving this, but I will not stop others who might pursue that."
After being sliced from both directions, the Huckabee candidacy is left as a spineless carcass with no intellectual meat on its bones. Can somebody send the man a recipe for making turkey soup?
"Is the thought of Mike Huckabee as president just vaguely scary?" Eugene Robinson asks. "Or have we learned enough about the man that we should be hair-on-fire alarmed at the prospect...that he could actually win?
"Huckabee," former Bush speech writer Michael Gerson notes, "is managing to compromise his most distinctive virtue at the very moment the attention of the public is focused on his candidacy. In politics, a candidate can bend over backward so far that his spine snaps."
Robinson's complaints are that the former preacher is "anti-reason" in denying evolution, a "country bumpkin" in his uninformed attacks on Romney's Mormon faith and "the last person in the country to learn that U.S. intelligence agencies now believe Iran ended its nuclear weapons program four years ago."
Gerson faults Huckabee for accepting the endorsement of "one of the most divisive figures in the most divisive debate in American politics," Jim Gilchrist, founder of the anti-immigration group, the Minuteman Project, who has called for Bush's impeachment over failure to enforce border security and proclaims, "I will not promote violence in resolving this, but I will not stop others who might pursue that."
After being sliced from both directions, the Huckabee candidacy is left as a spineless carcass with no intellectual meat on its bones. Can somebody send the man a recipe for making turkey soup?
Naming Names and Playing Games
One afternoon when I was 13, a crowd gathered at an old movie studio near where I lived in the Bronx. Policemen stretched their arms to open an alley for people getting out of limos. A tall man in fitted yellow sports shirt and slacks, striding ahead with no expression on his tanned face, Joe DiMaggio got out of a car, crossed the sidewalk and disappeared into the building.
I had never been to Yankee Stadium a mile away so I knew him only from grainy newspaper pictures and jumpy newsreel clips. The sudden texture and color of his face and clothes shocked my senses into a sweet awareness that he actually lived in the same world I did. For weeks, I kept replaying those vivid few seconds in my mind. Beyond the baseball cards and box scores, Joe DiMaggio was suddenly real. I had seen him six feet away.
Today's baseball players are familiar figures in our living rooms, but their mythic quality remains, and the news about their use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs is even harder to take than it might have been back then when they lived on a distant planet.
Roger Clemens and Andy Pettite have been part of my grandkids' lives since they were old enough to sit in front of a TV set or eat a hot dog at Yankee Stadium. How are they to understand what is being said about the men they try to emulate in their Little League games?
As troubled as all of us are about the use of steroids by the role models for millions of kids, there is something reckless about publicly indicting so many men on the kind of evidence, much of it from informants trying to save their own skins, that is the basis of the Mitchell Report. There is a flashback to the times when Congressional committees named names and ruined careers that way.
Those who control and profit from the game should protect their investments by setting new rules and enforcing them by all means. But they have had years to do that. Are 400 pages of hearsay about 89 Major League players the best or the only way to move ahead now?
My nostalgia for Joe DiMaggio and other idols of his time may be clouding my mature judgment but, in those days, we still believed in the presumption of innocence before we plastered people's names all over headlines that would ruin their reputations.
I had never been to Yankee Stadium a mile away so I knew him only from grainy newspaper pictures and jumpy newsreel clips. The sudden texture and color of his face and clothes shocked my senses into a sweet awareness that he actually lived in the same world I did. For weeks, I kept replaying those vivid few seconds in my mind. Beyond the baseball cards and box scores, Joe DiMaggio was suddenly real. I had seen him six feet away.
Today's baseball players are familiar figures in our living rooms, but their mythic quality remains, and the news about their use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs is even harder to take than it might have been back then when they lived on a distant planet.
Roger Clemens and Andy Pettite have been part of my grandkids' lives since they were old enough to sit in front of a TV set or eat a hot dog at Yankee Stadium. How are they to understand what is being said about the men they try to emulate in their Little League games?
As troubled as all of us are about the use of steroids by the role models for millions of kids, there is something reckless about publicly indicting so many men on the kind of evidence, much of it from informants trying to save their own skins, that is the basis of the Mitchell Report. There is a flashback to the times when Congressional committees named names and ruined careers that way.
Those who control and profit from the game should protect their investments by setting new rules and enforcing them by all means. But they have had years to do that. Are 400 pages of hearsay about 89 Major League players the best or the only way to move ahead now?
My nostalgia for Joe DiMaggio and other idols of his time may be clouding my mature judgment but, in those days, we still believed in the presumption of innocence before we plastered people's names all over headlines that would ruin their reputations.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Best Behavior
If they issued grades for deportment, the six Democratic Presidential candidates who took part in today's Iowa debate would all have earned A's. No bickering, backbiting or mud slinging.
The good behavior started at Reagan airport en route when Hillary Clinton apologized to Barack Obama for her now-departed New Hampshire co-chairman's snide statement on Obama's "drug use" and carried over onto the stage as the candidates, for the most part, gave crisp answers on the issues with a minimum of reaching around to pat their own backs.
If there was a transcendent moment, it came after Joe Biden's defense against charges of racist comments when Barack Obama went beyond politics to create a moment of grace.
“I’ve worked with Joe Biden, I’ve seen his leadership,” Obama said. “I have absolutely no doubt about what is in his heart and the commitment that he has made with respect to racial equality in this country. So I will provide some testimony, as they say in church, that Joe is on the right side of the issues and is fighting every day for a better America.”
Everyone on the stage today seemed capable of restoring sanity and good sense to the Oval Office.
The good behavior started at Reagan airport en route when Hillary Clinton apologized to Barack Obama for her now-departed New Hampshire co-chairman's snide statement on Obama's "drug use" and carried over onto the stage as the candidates, for the most part, gave crisp answers on the issues with a minimum of reaching around to pat their own backs.
If there was a transcendent moment, it came after Joe Biden's defense against charges of racist comments when Barack Obama went beyond politics to create a moment of grace.
“I’ve worked with Joe Biden, I’ve seen his leadership,” Obama said. “I have absolutely no doubt about what is in his heart and the commitment that he has made with respect to racial equality in this country. So I will provide some testimony, as they say in church, that Joe is on the right side of the issues and is fighting every day for a better America.”
Everyone on the stage today seemed capable of restoring sanity and good sense to the Oval Office.
Everything a Politician Should Be
Lee Hamilton was visibly angry this week, a rare sight in more than 40 years as one of the most admirable figures in American politics.
Reacting to news that the CIA destroyed interrogation tapes, the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission said, "Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge."
In a hero-less age, Americans might want to take a closer look at Hamilton, as the Christian Science Monitor did yesterday in a profile titled, "Washington's Bipartisan Power Broker."
The piece cites his success, as head of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, in getting Haleh Esfandiari, his director of Middle East Studies, out of a Tehran prison on charges of spying.
After being rebuffed for months by political leaders, Hamilton appealed to Iran's most powerful man, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and won her release.
Hamilton, the Monitor says, is "Washington's middleman, the mild-mannered moderate more interested in solutions than sound bites. People who know him well compare him...as a man of pragmatism, to 'that other Hamilton'–-Alexander, the Founding Father famous for his worry about the dangers of faction."
Watching Hamilton chair the House’s Iran-Contra hearings a quarter of a century ago, it struck me he should run for President in 1988.
It struck others, too, but the boomlet soon ended. “He told them he didn’t want to do it,” his aide announced, “he didn’t want to look into it, he just wants to keep doing what he’s doing.” The New York Times called his response “a standard of modesty believed to be extinct on Capitol Hill.”
Hamilton had skewered Oliver North, Bush pere and President Reagan himself with a flat-out “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” simplicity: “Policy was driven by a series of lies...A few do not know what is better for the American people than the people themselves.”
But he resisted pressure for impeachment, saying it would damage the country after the trauma of Nixon's departure a decade earlier.
Lee Hamilton was thinking about what's best for America, He still is.
Reacting to news that the CIA destroyed interrogation tapes, the co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission said, "Did they obstruct our inquiry? The answer is clearly yes. Whether that amounts to a crime, others will have to judge."
In a hero-less age, Americans might want to take a closer look at Hamilton, as the Christian Science Monitor did yesterday in a profile titled, "Washington's Bipartisan Power Broker."
The piece cites his success, as head of the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, in getting Haleh Esfandiari, his director of Middle East Studies, out of a Tehran prison on charges of spying.
After being rebuffed for months by political leaders, Hamilton appealed to Iran's most powerful man, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and won her release.
Hamilton, the Monitor says, is "Washington's middleman, the mild-mannered moderate more interested in solutions than sound bites. People who know him well compare him...as a man of pragmatism, to 'that other Hamilton'–-Alexander, the Founding Father famous for his worry about the dangers of faction."
Watching Hamilton chair the House’s Iran-Contra hearings a quarter of a century ago, it struck me he should run for President in 1988.
It struck others, too, but the boomlet soon ended. “He told them he didn’t want to do it,” his aide announced, “he didn’t want to look into it, he just wants to keep doing what he’s doing.” The New York Times called his response “a standard of modesty believed to be extinct on Capitol Hill.”
Hamilton had skewered Oliver North, Bush pere and President Reagan himself with a flat-out “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” simplicity: “Policy was driven by a series of lies...A few do not know what is better for the American people than the people themselves.”
But he resisted pressure for impeachment, saying it would damage the country after the trauma of Nixon's departure a decade earlier.
Lee Hamilton was thinking about what's best for America, He still is.
Blackening Obama
As the polls dwindle down, Hillary Clinton's supporters are performing what they delicately call "the political equivalent of a proctology exam on the opposition" by pelting Barack Obama with slime and hoping some of it will stick.
Twisting old news about real estate deals, drug use and (shades of Nixon) slush funds into attacks on his character that might make Karl Rove blush, they are topping it off with accusations that Obama's campaign is importing college students to vote illegally in the Iowa caucuses.
A Clinton national co-chairman is spreading word about possible problems from Obama's youth that Republicans could use if he is the Democratic nominee.
"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" he told the Washington Post. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks"
Meanwhile, the "Hillary is 44" attack crew is dredging for every bit of gossip about "Obama’s myriad real estate deceptions and transactions" and other alleged "lies."
Conservative smearmaster Robert Novak is helping stir the pot. Last month he provoked a Clinton-Obama spat with a report that "agents" of the Clinton campaign had been "spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent."
Today he spotlights an accusation on "Face the Nation" last Sunday that Obama is illegally spreading money from a Nixon-like fund to bolster political support and shoots it down by claiming the PAC fund "contributed to Clinton's 2006 Senate reelection and, in the current cycle, to Jeanne Shaheen's Senate campaign in New Hampshire, even though her husband, Bill Shaheen, heads that state's Clinton campaign."
The days are growing shorter in Iowa and New Hampshire, and more than one kind of darkness is setting in.
Twisting old news about real estate deals, drug use and (shades of Nixon) slush funds into attacks on his character that might make Karl Rove blush, they are topping it off with accusations that Obama's campaign is importing college students to vote illegally in the Iowa caucuses.
A Clinton national co-chairman is spreading word about possible problems from Obama's youth that Republicans could use if he is the Democratic nominee.
"It'll be, 'When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?'" he told the Washington Post. "There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks"
Meanwhile, the "Hillary is 44" attack crew is dredging for every bit of gossip about "Obama’s myriad real estate deceptions and transactions" and other alleged "lies."
Conservative smearmaster Robert Novak is helping stir the pot. Last month he provoked a Clinton-Obama spat with a report that "agents" of the Clinton campaign had been "spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent."
Today he spotlights an accusation on "Face the Nation" last Sunday that Obama is illegally spreading money from a Nixon-like fund to bolster political support and shoots it down by claiming the PAC fund "contributed to Clinton's 2006 Senate reelection and, in the current cycle, to Jeanne Shaheen's Senate campaign in New Hampshire, even though her husband, Bill Shaheen, heads that state's Clinton campaign."
The days are growing shorter in Iowa and New Hampshire, and more than one kind of darkness is setting in.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Drunk on Power and Piety
If less were at stake, George Bush's personal journey would evoke sorrow and pity--a ruined life being "redeemed" by self-deception.
His statement to Martha Raddatz of ABC about addiction is like watching a man walk unknowingly toward a cliff and taking a whole nation with him.
"I had too much to drink one night, and the next day I didn't have any," Bush said. "The next day I decided to quit and I haven't had a drink since 1986."
"And you did it just cold turkey?" asked Raddatz.
"I'm a better man for it," Bush said.
For two decades, the 40-year-old who made that decision with no self-knowledge has replaced one addiction for another, giving up alcohol for power and piety without understanding what drove him to either and the distortion of reality that comes with both.
It doesn't take psychological training to see the signs--the stubbornness, the inappropriately cheerful response to disaster, the refusal to listen to any questioning of his behavior--that would be clear in an addict from any other walk of life.
His father's speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, came close to calling it in the Wall Street Journal, of all places:
“Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president since polling began. He's in a good mood...
“Americans...like the president to be the cool-eyed realist, the tough customer who understands harsh realities. With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic. He's the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural. Actually it's weird."
"Alcohol," the President said yesterday," can compete with your affections. It sure did in my case, affections with your family, or affections for exercise. It was the competition that I decided just wasn't worth it."
George Bush was restored to his family, he exercises regularly and he has no clue about what addictive behavior can do when it takes over the most powerful position in the world.
His statement to Martha Raddatz of ABC about addiction is like watching a man walk unknowingly toward a cliff and taking a whole nation with him.
"I had too much to drink one night, and the next day I didn't have any," Bush said. "The next day I decided to quit and I haven't had a drink since 1986."
"And you did it just cold turkey?" asked Raddatz.
"I'm a better man for it," Bush said.
For two decades, the 40-year-old who made that decision with no self-knowledge has replaced one addiction for another, giving up alcohol for power and piety without understanding what drove him to either and the distortion of reality that comes with both.
It doesn't take psychological training to see the signs--the stubbornness, the inappropriately cheerful response to disaster, the refusal to listen to any questioning of his behavior--that would be clear in an addict from any other walk of life.
His father's speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, came close to calling it in the Wall Street Journal, of all places:
“Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush? Every major domestic initiative of his second term has been ill thought through and ended in failure. His Iraq leadership has failed. His standing is lower than any previous president since polling began. He's in a good mood...
“Americans...like the president to be the cool-eyed realist, the tough customer who understands harsh realities. With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic. He's the one who goes off on the toots. This is extremely irritating, and also unnatural. Actually it's weird."
"Alcohol," the President said yesterday," can compete with your affections. It sure did in my case, affections with your family, or affections for exercise. It was the competition that I decided just wasn't worth it."
George Bush was restored to his family, he exercises regularly and he has no clue about what addictive behavior can do when it takes over the most powerful position in the world.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
"Dumbest Guy on the Planet" Explains It All
At a Neo-Con reunion last night, Don Rumsfeld's Three Stooges, who planned the war in Iraq, got together to blame the mess there on somebody else, L. Paul Bremer, who ran the occupation for the first two years.
Former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith told the faithful at the American Enterprise Institute that his plan was not "to be around for many, many months" but that Bremer overruled him, thereby putting the US in today's stalemate.
Feith, labeled by Gen. Tommy Franks as "the dumbest effing guy on the planet," was introduced by former colleague Richard Perle while Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank lover, sat up front and agreed that Feith was "pretty much on the mark."
After hearing about the talk, Bremer told a reporter that Feith's "argument isn't with me," that President Bush told him before leaving for Baghdad to "take our time setting up an interim administration."
In reviewing George Tenet's memoir for the Wall Street Journal, Feith accused the former CIA Director of making up stories about how we got into Iraq. With his own book due for publication is March, Feith is getting a head start on fabricating his own.
Former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith told the faithful at the American Enterprise Institute that his plan was not "to be around for many, many months" but that Bremer overruled him, thereby putting the US in today's stalemate.
Feith, labeled by Gen. Tommy Franks as "the dumbest effing guy on the planet," was introduced by former colleague Richard Perle while Paul Wolfowitz, the former World Bank lover, sat up front and agreed that Feith was "pretty much on the mark."
After hearing about the talk, Bremer told a reporter that Feith's "argument isn't with me," that President Bush told him before leaving for Baghdad to "take our time setting up an interim administration."
In reviewing George Tenet's memoir for the Wall Street Journal, Feith accused the former CIA Director of making up stories about how we got into Iraq. With his own book due for publication is March, Feith is getting a head start on fabricating his own.
The Prudent President
The compassionate conservative who ran in 2000 lost his empathy on the way to the White House but, after years of spending for wars and tax cuts for the wealthy, is belatedly rediscovering his fiscal prudence--about health insurance for children, school aid and public housing.
Bush's latest act of compassionate conservatism is to deny funding for the Social Security Administration that would cut delay of financial aid to the disabled, many of whom now have to wait years to have their claims adjudicated.
As a New York Times editorial points out today, "the backlog of applicants who are awaiting a decision after appealing an initial rejection has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000. The average wait for an appeals hearing now exceeds 500 days, twice as long as applicants had to wait in 2000.
"Typically two-thirds of those who appeal eventually win their cases. But during the long wait, their conditions may worsen and their lives often fall apart. More and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing."
After Congress last month passed a bill to give Social Security $275 million more than he requested, enough to hire judges to speed up the process, the President vetoed as profligate an amount that wouldn't pay for a day of the war in Iraq.
What would America be like if we had elected an unfeeling liberal (as many disaffected Democrats believe we actually did) in 2000 rather than the compassionate conservative who is setting our priorities now?
Bush's latest act of compassionate conservatism is to deny funding for the Social Security Administration that would cut delay of financial aid to the disabled, many of whom now have to wait years to have their claims adjudicated.
As a New York Times editorial points out today, "the backlog of applicants who are awaiting a decision after appealing an initial rejection has soared to 755,000 from 311,000 in 2000. The average wait for an appeals hearing now exceeds 500 days, twice as long as applicants had to wait in 2000.
"Typically two-thirds of those who appeal eventually win their cases. But during the long wait, their conditions may worsen and their lives often fall apart. More and more people have lost their homes, declared bankruptcy or even died while awaiting an appeals hearing."
After Congress last month passed a bill to give Social Security $275 million more than he requested, enough to hire judges to speed up the process, the President vetoed as profligate an amount that wouldn't pay for a day of the war in Iraq.
What would America be like if we had elected an unfeeling liberal (as many disaffected Democrats believe we actually did) in 2000 rather than the compassionate conservative who is setting our priorities now?
Family Gathering
The Presidential candidates are beginning to look like relatives who came for the holidays and stayed too long.
At first it was just going to be the kids--Hillary, Barack, Rudy with his newest wife, and John, if he wasn't on one of his trips to Iraq. But then all kinds of kin you invite but don't expect to come started showing up.
Nephew Mitt drove up with a dog on the car roof, told all kinds of stories about where he'd been and got into a beef with Rudy about the people who were doing the yard work.
Great-uncle Fred arrived late and went up to the guest room for a long nap.
Cousin Mike came in from the cold and started eating everybody's lunch.
After Barack got reclusive Aunt Oprah to show up for appetizers, Hillary called Chelsea and her mother, and the old homestead started filling up like the Marx brothers' stateroom.
Somewhere in the attic, Ron Paul is checking his e-mail on a laptop, and who knows what all those distant relatives are yakking about in the basement?
It's great to have a big family, but how long are they all going to hang around?
At first it was just going to be the kids--Hillary, Barack, Rudy with his newest wife, and John, if he wasn't on one of his trips to Iraq. But then all kinds of kin you invite but don't expect to come started showing up.
Nephew Mitt drove up with a dog on the car roof, told all kinds of stories about where he'd been and got into a beef with Rudy about the people who were doing the yard work.
Great-uncle Fred arrived late and went up to the guest room for a long nap.
Cousin Mike came in from the cold and started eating everybody's lunch.
After Barack got reclusive Aunt Oprah to show up for appetizers, Hillary called Chelsea and her mother, and the old homestead started filling up like the Marx brothers' stateroom.
Somewhere in the attic, Ron Paul is checking his e-mail on a laptop, and who knows what all those distant relatives are yakking about in the basement?
It's great to have a big family, but how long are they all going to hang around?
Monday, December 10, 2007
Nine-Year-Old Scoop
The Drudge Report works in wondrous ways.
The banner this morning, under a picture of Mike Huckabee wagging his finger, is 'Take This Nation Back for Christ' leading to a news report of his speech at a Southern Baptist Convention. The small type notes it was made in 1998.
Click through, and you get the story from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, making the then-governor sound as if he wants, not to be President, but Pastor-in-Chief of the nation.
"The reason we have so much government is because we have so much broken humanity," it quotes him as saying. "And the reason we have so much broken humanity is because sin reigns in the hearts and lives of human beings instead of the Savior...
"Government knows it does not have the answer, but it's arrogant and acts as though it does. Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed...
"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."
The provenance of this Drudge scoop is suggested by the fact that the speech was made in Salt Lake City, where reporters were given copies of a book Huckabee had written as well as one titled "Mormonism Unmasked," exposing the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Cui bono to make Huckabee look like a religious nut? Or, in today's world, would his supporters consider the story a plus?
The banner this morning, under a picture of Mike Huckabee wagging his finger, is 'Take This Nation Back for Christ' leading to a news report of his speech at a Southern Baptist Convention. The small type notes it was made in 1998.
Click through, and you get the story from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, making the then-governor sound as if he wants, not to be President, but Pastor-in-Chief of the nation.
"The reason we have so much government is because we have so much broken humanity," it quotes him as saying. "And the reason we have so much broken humanity is because sin reigns in the hearts and lives of human beings instead of the Savior...
"Government knows it does not have the answer, but it's arrogant and acts as though it does. Church does have the answer but will cowardly deny that it does and wonder when the world will be changed...
"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives."
The provenance of this Drudge scoop is suggested by the fact that the speech was made in Salt Lake City, where reporters were given copies of a book Huckabee had written as well as one titled "Mormonism Unmasked," exposing the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Cui bono to make Huckabee look like a religious nut? Or, in today's world, would his supporters consider the story a plus?
Dress Right or Die
As a woman in a pants suit campaigns to become President of the United States, others are being killed on the streets of Basra for wearing makeup and not covering their faces.
Religious vigilantes have murdered at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city because of how they dressed, the police chief told AP yesterday, and "dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior."
As American politicians debate the future of the country we invaded almost five years ago, what is happening in Basra, "known for its mixed population and night life" under Saddam Hussein, is a chilling reminder of what we will leave behind, no matter how well the Surge works.
Can the sectarian madness we unleashed be negotiated away by Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad? The Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr controls Basra, but one of his aides blames the murders on "gangs with foreign support to destabilize the city," while citing the "religious principle that says that wearing makeup and forgoing the hijab (headscarf) in public is a sin."
"But killing them," he concedes, "is a sin bigger than this one."
When President Bush makes his next self-congratulatory speech about bringing the blessings of democracy to Iraq, someone should ask him about the women of Basra and remind Hillary Clinton what she voted for in the resolution opening the door to our doing the same for Iran.
Religious vigilantes have murdered at least 40 women this year in the southern Iraqi city because of how they dressed, the police chief told AP yesterday, and "dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior."
As American politicians debate the future of the country we invaded almost five years ago, what is happening in Basra, "known for its mixed population and night life" under Saddam Hussein, is a chilling reminder of what we will leave behind, no matter how well the Surge works.
Can the sectarian madness we unleashed be negotiated away by Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad? The Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr controls Basra, but one of his aides blames the murders on "gangs with foreign support to destabilize the city," while citing the "religious principle that says that wearing makeup and forgoing the hijab (headscarf) in public is a sin."
"But killing them," he concedes, "is a sin bigger than this one."
When President Bush makes his next self-congratulatory speech about bringing the blessings of democracy to Iraq, someone should ask him about the women of Basra and remind Hillary Clinton what she voted for in the resolution opening the door to our doing the same for Iran.
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Torturing Questions
News today that members of Congress, including Nancy Pelosi, failed to protest when they were briefed about waterboarding and other harsh techniques of interrogation five years ago recalls the disturbing Milgram experiments of the 1960s.
A Yale professor wanted to find out how much pain people would inflict on others for what they believed to be a good cause.
"Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others," Prof. Stanley Milgram reported, "and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation."
We still don't know the answer to that question, which was originally raised in an effort to see behind the Eichmann defense for Nazi atrocities during World War War II, "I was only following orders." But we should keep trying to find out.
Today's revelation about waterboarding further underscores how dicey individual morality can become under social pressure. According to the Washington Post, "officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support.
"'Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,' said [Porter] Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. 'And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.'"
All this is clearly intended to relieve pressure on the Administration for its secrecy, including the destruction of torture tapes, but if involving lawmakers clears the air of some holier-than-thou posturing, it doesn't absolve anyone or lessen the need to move forward in the public debate on what kind of people we are and want to be.
What Stanley Milgram wrote in 1974, looking back on his experiments, might be as good a place as any to start:
"There was a time, perhaps, when people were able to give a fully human response to any situation because they were fully absorbed in it as human beings. But as soon as there was a division of labor things changed. Beyond a certain point, the breaking up of society into people carrying out narrow and very special jobs takes away from the human quality of work and life. A person does not get to see the whole situation but only a small part of it, and is thus unable to act without some kind of overall direction. He yields to authority but in doing so is alienated from his own actions.
"Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps, but he had only to sit at a desk and shuffle papers. At the same time the man in the camp who actually dropped Cyclon-b into the gas chambers was able to justify his behavior on the ground that he was only following orders from above. Thus there is a fragmentation of the total human act; no one is confronted with the consequences of his decision to carry out the evil act. The person who assumes responsibility has evaporated. Perhaps this is the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society."
As today's furor over torture goes on, it might help to think about that.
A Yale professor wanted to find out how much pain people would inflict on others for what they believed to be a good cause.
"Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others," Prof. Stanley Milgram reported, "and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation."
We still don't know the answer to that question, which was originally raised in an effort to see behind the Eichmann defense for Nazi atrocities during World War War II, "I was only following orders." But we should keep trying to find out.
Today's revelation about waterboarding further underscores how dicey individual morality can become under social pressure. According to the Washington Post, "officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support.
"'Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,' said [Porter] Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. 'And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.'"
All this is clearly intended to relieve pressure on the Administration for its secrecy, including the destruction of torture tapes, but if involving lawmakers clears the air of some holier-than-thou posturing, it doesn't absolve anyone or lessen the need to move forward in the public debate on what kind of people we are and want to be.
What Stanley Milgram wrote in 1974, looking back on his experiments, might be as good a place as any to start:
"There was a time, perhaps, when people were able to give a fully human response to any situation because they were fully absorbed in it as human beings. But as soon as there was a division of labor things changed. Beyond a certain point, the breaking up of society into people carrying out narrow and very special jobs takes away from the human quality of work and life. A person does not get to see the whole situation but only a small part of it, and is thus unable to act without some kind of overall direction. He yields to authority but in doing so is alienated from his own actions.
"Even Eichmann was sickened when he toured the concentration camps, but he had only to sit at a desk and shuffle papers. At the same time the man in the camp who actually dropped Cyclon-b into the gas chambers was able to justify his behavior on the ground that he was only following orders from above. Thus there is a fragmentation of the total human act; no one is confronted with the consequences of his decision to carry out the evil act. The person who assumes responsibility has evaporated. Perhaps this is the most common characteristic of socially organized evil in modern society."
As today's furor over torture goes on, it might help to think about that.
Giuliani's Single Slip-Up
Life imitates old movies. On "Meet the Press" today, when asked about recommending Bernard Kerik, his friend of ill fame, to President Bush as director of homeland security, Rudy Giuliani, for the only time in an hour of questioning about multiple counts of public and private misfeasance, admitted he "made a mistake" in not vetting his old friend and associate carefully enough while at the same time claiming good judgment 95 to 99 percent of the time.
Stanley Kubrick did this better and funnier in the 1964 movie, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
Asked by President Merkin Muffley how Gen. Jack D. Ripper, who is about to blow up the world, was not detected as a psychotic by the foolproof "human reliability tests," Gen. Buck Turgidson replies: "Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."
President Giuliani couldn't have said it better.
Stanley Kubrick did this better and funnier in the 1964 movie, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
Asked by President Merkin Muffley how Gen. Jack D. Ripper, who is about to blow up the world, was not detected as a psychotic by the foolproof "human reliability tests," Gen. Buck Turgidson replies: "Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."
President Giuliani couldn't have said it better.
Dethroning America's King George
The creation of a Bush monarchy by Administration lawyers was decried at week's end by Rhode Island's freshman senator, Sheldon Whitehouse.
"This nation," he said on the Senate floor Friday, in reviewing the need for FISA reform, "was founded in rejection of the royalist principles that 'l’etat c’est moi' and 'The King can do no wrong.'"
But, Whitehouse contends, White House and Justice Department lawyers have given their President unprecedented powers to decide what's legal in spying on American citizens. In effect, unless Congress acts to modify their usurping of authority to allow the Oval Office monarch to do whatever he wants, Bush is free to do just that without consulting Congress or the courts.
Reviewing the circular logic in "highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance" by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, Sen. Whitehouse arrived at a "nutshell" description of this new definition of President power:
"1. 'I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.'
"2. 'I get to determine what my own powers are.'
"3. 'The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.'"
Whitehouse reminded Senate colleagues, "We are a nation of laws, not of men...Our Attorney General swears an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States; we are not some banana republic in which the officials all have to kowtow to the 'supreme leader.'”
The Senator from a state that had its own version of the Boston Tea Party was urging them to correct "a second-rate piece of legislation passed in a stampede in August" and take away the powers that all the king's men have conferred on the monarch with more than a year to go on his White House throne.
"This nation," he said on the Senate floor Friday, in reviewing the need for FISA reform, "was founded in rejection of the royalist principles that 'l’etat c’est moi' and 'The King can do no wrong.'"
But, Whitehouse contends, White House and Justice Department lawyers have given their President unprecedented powers to decide what's legal in spying on American citizens. In effect, unless Congress acts to modify their usurping of authority to allow the Oval Office monarch to do whatever he wants, Bush is free to do just that without consulting Congress or the courts.
Reviewing the circular logic in "highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance" by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, Sen. Whitehouse arrived at a "nutshell" description of this new definition of President power:
"1. 'I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.'
"2. 'I get to determine what my own powers are.'
"3. 'The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.'"
Whitehouse reminded Senate colleagues, "We are a nation of laws, not of men...Our Attorney General swears an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States; we are not some banana republic in which the officials all have to kowtow to the 'supreme leader.'”
The Senator from a state that had its own version of the Boston Tea Party was urging them to correct "a second-rate piece of legislation passed in a stampede in August" and take away the powers that all the king's men have conferred on the monarch with more than a year to go on his White House throne.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
There Goes the Log Cabin Vote
"Mike Huckabee," the AP reports, "once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could 'pose a dangerous public health risk.'"
If the preacher is planning to go Reaganesque in his surge toward the GOP nomination, this news will not sit well with the 47 chapters of the Long Cabin Republicans, who got their start in California in 1977 when the Great Communicator opposed an anti-gay ballot initiative against teachers and helped defeat it.
Reagan wrote a letter outlining his views, in which he said, "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this."
In contrast, answering a questionnaire when he was running for the Senate in 1992, Huckabee wrote: "It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."
The former Arkansas governor won't be making any new friends in Hollywood either when they learn he opposed federal funding for AIDS research and suggest that celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna who support it do so "out of their own personal treasuries."
But as a candidate this year, Huckabee did a little flip-flopping on his web site: "My administration will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals."
Huckabee and Mitt Romney might have bumped into each other racing toward new positions on gays from opposite directions. But he could make a new friend in Lou Dobbs, who wants to treat illegal immigrants as lepers, too.
If the preacher is planning to go Reaganesque in his surge toward the GOP nomination, this news will not sit well with the 47 chapters of the Long Cabin Republicans, who got their start in California in 1977 when the Great Communicator opposed an anti-gay ballot initiative against teachers and helped defeat it.
Reagan wrote a letter outlining his views, in which he said, "Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual's sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child's teachers do not really influence this."
In contrast, answering a questionnaire when he was running for the Senate in 1992, Huckabee wrote: "It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population, and in which this deadly disease for which there is no cure is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents."
The former Arkansas governor won't be making any new friends in Hollywood either when they learn he opposed federal funding for AIDS research and suggest that celebrities like Elizabeth Taylor and Madonna who support it do so "out of their own personal treasuries."
But as a candidate this year, Huckabee did a little flip-flopping on his web site: "My administration will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals."
Huckabee and Mitt Romney might have bumped into each other racing toward new positions on gays from opposite directions. But he could make a new friend in Lou Dobbs, who wants to treat illegal immigrants as lepers, too.
"And That's the Way It Is..."
After the Tet offensive in early 1968, the Most Trusted Man in America announced the war in Vietnam could not be won. "If I've lost Cronkite," the President of the United States said, "I've lost America" and conceded by announcing he wouldn't run for reelection.
Walter Cronkite is 91 now, and George W. Bush is no Lyndon Johnson, but America's news nanny, who tucked us in every evening for two decades by ending the CBS Evening News with "And that's the way it is," has declared "Our Troops Must Leave Iraq."
In a piece co-written and appearing in print, Cronkite's voice is still being heard. In the Japan Times, on the eve of Pearl Harbor day, he concludes:
"Congress must act. Although Congress never declared war, as required by the Constitution, they did give the president the authority to invade Iraq. Congress must now withdraw that authority and cease its funding of the war.
"It is not likely, however, that Congress will act unless the American people make their voices heard with unmistakable clarity. That is the way the Vietnam War was brought to an end. It is the way that the Iraq War will also be brought to an end. The only question is whether it will be now, or whether the war will drag on, with all the suffering that implies, to an even more tragic, costly and degrading defeat. We will be a better, stronger and more decent country to bring the troops home now."
Trust is not what it used to be, and age has diminished the reach of Cronkite's voice, but he is still trying to tell America how it is.
Walter Cronkite is 91 now, and George W. Bush is no Lyndon Johnson, but America's news nanny, who tucked us in every evening for two decades by ending the CBS Evening News with "And that's the way it is," has declared "Our Troops Must Leave Iraq."
In a piece co-written and appearing in print, Cronkite's voice is still being heard. In the Japan Times, on the eve of Pearl Harbor day, he concludes:
"Congress must act. Although Congress never declared war, as required by the Constitution, they did give the president the authority to invade Iraq. Congress must now withdraw that authority and cease its funding of the war.
"It is not likely, however, that Congress will act unless the American people make their voices heard with unmistakable clarity. That is the way the Vietnam War was brought to an end. It is the way that the Iraq War will also be brought to an end. The only question is whether it will be now, or whether the war will drag on, with all the suffering that implies, to an even more tragic, costly and degrading defeat. We will be a better, stronger and more decent country to bring the troops home now."
Trust is not what it used to be, and age has diminished the reach of Cronkite's voice, but he is still trying to tell America how it is.
A Referendum on Church and State
As long as we have come this far in George Bush's undeclared theocracy and Mitt Romney's open endorsement this week, doesn't the Republican Party owe Americans a clear choice--a Huckabee-Romney or Romney-Huckabee ticket--that would, in effect, be a referendum on the separation of church and state?
Some may fear the outcome of such a confrontation with a more secular Democratic ticket, but the alternative is to keep allowing the Religious Right to keep dominating the American conversation far out of proportion to be their true numbers and in contradiction to a consensus that existed in the nation's politics since 1776 until Islamic terrorists gave Bush's Christian absolutists a climate of fear in which to propagate their own extremism.
Failure to bring this debate out into the open allows a unthinking nod of heads to Romney's religiosity that asserts "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom."
For over 200 years, Americans have subscribed to the proposition that freedom requires freedom and that everyone, in the words of John F. Kennedy "has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice...where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."
In claiming his right as a Catholic to be considered for the presidency, Kennedy was affirming the separation of church and state. In claiming his right as a Mormon, Romney is blurring that tradition.
"I would not look with favor," JFK told Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960, "upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty...And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it."
Responding to Romney's speech, Huckabee, the former preacher, said "it's a good thing and healthy for all of us for people to discuss faith in the public square," but diplomatically evaded details of his own, such as his views on evolution and women as pastors, noting that "where two or more Baptists are gathered together, there are at least seven different opinions."
Until now, Democrats have been unwilling to confront this question, settling for affirmation of their own faith in addressing evangelicals but not drawing the distinction between religion as a private matter and a deeply divisive public issue.
By nominating Huckabee and/or Romney, the Republican Party would inevitably make that part of the choice for the kind of America voters envision and want.
Some may fear the outcome of such a confrontation with a more secular Democratic ticket, but the alternative is to keep allowing the Religious Right to keep dominating the American conversation far out of proportion to be their true numbers and in contradiction to a consensus that existed in the nation's politics since 1776 until Islamic terrorists gave Bush's Christian absolutists a climate of fear in which to propagate their own extremism.
Failure to bring this debate out into the open allows a unthinking nod of heads to Romney's religiosity that asserts "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom."
For over 200 years, Americans have subscribed to the proposition that freedom requires freedom and that everyone, in the words of John F. Kennedy "has the same right to attend or not to attend the church of his choice...where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."
In claiming his right as a Catholic to be considered for the presidency, Kennedy was affirming the separation of church and state. In claiming his right as a Mormon, Romney is blurring that tradition.
"I would not look with favor," JFK told Protestant ministers in Houston in 1960, "upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty...And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it."
Responding to Romney's speech, Huckabee, the former preacher, said "it's a good thing and healthy for all of us for people to discuss faith in the public square," but diplomatically evaded details of his own, such as his views on evolution and women as pastors, noting that "where two or more Baptists are gathered together, there are at least seven different opinions."
Until now, Democrats have been unwilling to confront this question, settling for affirmation of their own faith in addressing evangelicals but not drawing the distinction between religion as a private matter and a deeply divisive public issue.
By nominating Huckabee and/or Romney, the Republican Party would inevitably make that part of the choice for the kind of America voters envision and want.
Friday, December 07, 2007
History Lessons: Mitt, Huckabee and Hillary
This week, Presidential candidates who are trying to sell the future are involved with echoes from the past.
Mitt Romney's Texas speech, meant to invoke John F. Kennedy, drew on Nixon's Checkers speech as well, using his family to validate himself, insisting on his own virtue and pandering to his audience in a way JFK would have disdained.
His sermon is getting mixed reviews on the right--a Pat Buchanan rave and a John Podhoretz pan--but, like Nixon, Romney seems to have kept his candidacy from going down tubes.
Mitt's nemesis, Mike Huckabee, is getting the Dukakis treatment with accusations of being naïve in freeing a murderer-rapist to kill again. But the Republican preacher is a lot faster on his feet and smoother than the Democrats' 1988 candidate, and he has already started to convert his Willie Horton problem into a failure of "the system" rather than his own.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is faced with reminders of the 1948 campaign, in which an over-confident Thomas E. Dewey, anointed by the public opinion polls, ran a cautious campaign and was overtaken by "Give 'em Hell, Harry" Truman.
As Truman himself said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."
Mitt Romney's Texas speech, meant to invoke John F. Kennedy, drew on Nixon's Checkers speech as well, using his family to validate himself, insisting on his own virtue and pandering to his audience in a way JFK would have disdained.
His sermon is getting mixed reviews on the right--a Pat Buchanan rave and a John Podhoretz pan--but, like Nixon, Romney seems to have kept his candidacy from going down tubes.
Mitt's nemesis, Mike Huckabee, is getting the Dukakis treatment with accusations of being naïve in freeing a murderer-rapist to kill again. But the Republican preacher is a lot faster on his feet and smoother than the Democrats' 1988 candidate, and he has already started to convert his Willie Horton problem into a failure of "the system" rather than his own.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is faced with reminders of the 1948 campaign, in which an over-confident Thomas E. Dewey, anointed by the public opinion polls, ran a cautious campaign and was overtaken by "Give 'em Hell, Harry" Truman.
As Truman himself said, "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."
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