May 19, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 34
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Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton showed up on Meet the Press and This Week, respectively, to talk about the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. More interesting than the normal campaign platitudes, however, were the views espoused by the candidates on Iran.
Clinton came off as slightly schizophrenic on the Islamic Republic; when asked by an audience member what she would do if Iran attacked Iraq, "I don’t think any of us can predict what Iran will do. . . . I do not believe Iran will go into Iraq. If Iran were to go into Iraq, there would have to be a determination at that time. But it’s not something I’m anticipating." But she stood by her comments about "obliterating" Iran from earlier in the week, saying "Well, the question originally, as some may remember, was ‘what would we do if Iran got a nuclear weapon and attacked Israel.’ And I think we have to be very clear about what we would do. I don’t think it’s time to equivocate about what we would do. They have to know that they would face massive retaliation. That is the only way to rein them in."
While Clinton deserves credit for standing by a stalwart ally and brooking no nonsense from Iran on the issue of nuclear weapons, why wouldn’t she extend the same support to a nation we’ve spent billions of dollars and thousands of American lives to rebuild?
Obama, on the other hand, excoriated Clinton on Meet the Press for saying she would retaliate against Iran if Israel was attacked. "Israel is a ally of ours. It is the most important ally we have in the region, and there's no doubt that we would act forcefully and appropriately on any attack against Iran, nuclear or otherwise. So--but it is important that we use language that sends a signal to the world community that we're shifting from the sort of cowboy diplomacy, or lack of diplomacy, that we've seen out of George Bush." Apparently lost on Obama is the fact that diplomacy will have already failed if Iran has attacked Israel.
Back on the campaign trail, on Fox News Sunday Terry McAuliffe laid out the case he’s making to the superdelegates on behalf of Clinton. "When we finish this up on June 3rd, at that point the superdelegates got to make the decision: who is it that can best beat John McCain? Because this is what this is about, winning the election on November 4. Hillary in the last week has moved ahead in every single poll against John McCain. Senator Obama is either tied or, on Fox, behind Senator McCain. Hillary’s ahead in every poll. More importantly she now has a huge lead among independents."
Meanwhile, James Clyburn took to Face the Nation to explain just how disastrous stealing the nomination from Obama would be for the Democrats. "There are 103 historical black colleges and universities in this country, seven of them are in my congressional district. And what I was saying is, as I visited those campuses in recent weeks, that is what these young people were saying to me. They were very, very upset at all this talk about superdelegates overturning their energies and overturning their efforts. They wanted to know from me whether or not I felt that this is what was going to happen. And a lot of them were saying that they felt that all of this talk about Senator Obama were just ways to damage him permanently for--and make it impossible for him to win even if he were to get the nomination. So I was sharing with the American people what young people were beginning to say."
As my colleagues noted earlier, Barack Obama made his long-awaited sojourn to Fox News Sunday. Barnett and Goldfarb hit on a couple of important topics, but the boss may have had the most succinct evaluation: An "elegant and attractive performance, but somewhat substance free." About the only thing of interest was Obama’s insistence on raising taxes on the upper-middle and upper class.
On This Week, meanwhile, Clinton-surrogate Evan Bayh laid out the groundwork for counting Florida’s vote in the overall popular vote. "Florida does count in terms of the popular vote. The DNC can choose not to seat the delegates, but they don’t have the right, by law, to not count the votes; the state of Florida counts the votes. They voted for state legislator, for state senator, for Congress . . . they voted to amend the state constitution! As a matter of law, those votes count, and the DNC can’t override state law." Clinton’s newfound lead is, literally, the worst case scenario for the Democrats--it creates the possibility of a convention in which the superdelegates will be forced to choose between a candidate who wisely gamed the system to rack up a big pledged delegate lead by taking caucus states and a candidate who won the most total votes.
Clinton advisor Howard Wolfson showed up on Face the Nation to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the superdelegates on his boss’s trump card: Obama’s electability. "I think after significant losses in Ohio and Pennsylvania on behalf of Senator Obama," he said, "I think Democrats do have questions about whether or not he is going to be able to reach out and successfully win over the kind of blue-collar voters that Democrats need to win in order to take the White House back in November."
Closing in on the Pennsylvania primary, it’s no surprise that the principle topic of conversation on the talk shows this weekend was Hillary vs. Barack. Their surrogates were all over the place, and Ed Rendell made an intriguing point on Face the Nation about Obama’s spending. Earlier in the race, Rendell had predicted a cakewalk for Clinton (who, at the time, was leading by double digits in the polls). "I had no idea that the spending would be at a record level," Rendell said of Obama’s advertising expenditures. "I've always been a good money raiser, and I've put a lot of money on TV in the closing weeks of my campaign, but I never exceeded $1.2, $1.3 million. The Obama campaign, $2.9 million. You can't go anywhere in the Philadelphia region, you can't listen to TV for 10 minutes without seeing an ad. Given that level of spending, it's even overcoming what was a subpar performance in the debate by Senator Obama and a great performance by Senator Clinton."
This is a point that transfers over to the general; as my colleague pointed out, Obama seems poised to break his promise to participate in public financing. McCain currently polls surprisingly well against the junior Illinois senator, but it will be interesting to see if his numbers can hold up against a $100-$150 million Obama media blitz in the campaign’s waning months.
David Brooks, meanwhile, pointed out the damage that this primary has done to Obama’s image on Meet the Press. "It's been 15 months since he's been running, and the last three months have been different. … The tone of that conversation, believe me, is very different from the tone of Barack Obama's speech in Des Moines three months ago. And the campaign has changed him. And I think it's changed him in two ways, which has made him less inspiring for a lot of us who are not orthodox liberals. It's changed him because he seems like a more conventional politician, trading jibes about who's throwing which negative ad at each other, which is not particularly hopeful. And then he's become--as he's had to chase Democratic primary votes, he's become [a] much more orthodox liberal."
Sam Donaldson warned of the damage a Clinton nomination might do to the Democratic party on This Week. "The Obama supporters, a lot of them feel that there’s an entitlement there…it’s not as if ‘I hope he wins, and we worked very hard and all of that.’ It’s ‘if he doesn’t win, it’s a cheat. There’s something unfair about this.’ Guys, grow up. This is politics."
And Karl Rove was on Fox News Sunday; when asked to choose the tougher candidate, he gave the ever-so-slight nod to the junior senator from New York. "She is a more durable candidate who is better known and tougher to move; on the other hand, Obama is the untested candidate and can either perform extremely well, as he did in Iowa, or extremely badly, as he did in the debate last week. I would have to say that on points I’d give it to Clinton, but not by much."
The most striking news to come out of the Sunday morning talk shows was Stephen Hadley’s dismissive response when asked whether or not the United States should boycott the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. On Fox News Sunday, Hadley said the following:
“I think this issue is, in some sense, a bit of a red herring. I think, unfortunately, a lot of countries say ‘well, if we say that we are not going to the opening ceremonies we’ve checked the box on Tibet.’ That’s a copout. If other countries are concerned about Tibet, they ought to do what we are doing: through quiet diplomacy, send the message clearly to the Chinese that this is an opportunity with the whole world watching to show that they take into account and are determined to treat their citizens with dignity and respect. They would put pressure on the Chinese authorities, quietly, to meet with representatives of the Dalai Lama and use this as an opportunity to help resolve that situation.”
To a certain extent, Hadley is right: as Christopher Caldwell implied in his Financial Times column a couple weeks back, a boycott of the opening ceremonies is little more than an empty rhetorical gesture--a cynical attempt to gain the moral high ground without incurring any cost. But the “quiet diplomacy” so proudly trumpeted by Hadley will, in all likelihood, have the same effect of a boycott or a semi-boycott: none whatsoever. As former Olympian Joey Cheek (a founder of genocide awareness organization Team Darfur) said after Hadley’s appearance, “quiet diplomacy takes place while people are being slaughtered.” China’s atrocities cannot go unchallenged by the West, but neither has anyone resolved upon an appropriate response.
The biggest political news of the weekend was undoubtedly Barack Obama’s gaffe late last week in San Francisco, when he went out of his way to insult working class Pennsylvanians to the delight of his upper crust, liberal donors. George Will struck at the heart of the problem on This Week, noting the two distinct questions that have arisen as a consequence. “First is he condescending, b.) is he out of touch? Condescending: It’s an old liberal tradition to explain away cultural and political conservatism as a personality defect, a mental disorder--some kind of irrational flight from reality, hence ‘clinging’ to religion not ‘embracing’ religion. Out of touch: this is a man who went to Iowa and commiserated with Iowans over the cost of arugula at Whole Foods stores, of which there are none in Iowa.”
Mary Matalin believed that Obama’s biggest problem is that this wasn’t really a “gaffe,” per se: it’s what Obama and the Democrtaic elite actually believe. “Well, the damage here is that what he said accurately reflects the current Democratic party. It's more affluent. It's more liberal. That's the way it's moving. He was saying it to San Francisco Democrats, rich San Francisco Democrats, and it reflects the kind of Democrat that loses at the presidential level. In the last half century--greater than the last half century-- Democrats have not won at the presidential level unless they have a centrist southern--a centrist Southerner."
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John McCain appeared on Fox News Sunday this morning to discuss the presidential campaign with Chris Wallace. The Arizona senator called for more honesty from the Obama campaign and its surrogates when they claim that he called for our military to stay in Iraq for a century. "This, quote, ‘100 years in Iraq,’ it was obvious when you read the whole quote," he said, "where I was in an exchange with a voter in New Hampshire, a town hall meeting, the kind of exchanges that I enjoy most. He said, ‘How long are you going to be there.’ I said, ‘It could be 100 years, but it's a matter of U.S. casualties, and we have presence in countries like South Korea, Japan,’ et cetera, et cetera."
Senator Lindsey Graham, a McCain surrogate, made an appearance on This Week. There he articulated the thinking behind McCain's position on Iraq, saying "I do not want to leave Iraq as an extension of Iranian theocracy in the south; I don’t want to leave Iraq where Anbar province is occupied by al Qaeda; where there’s a war between the Turks and the Kurds in the north. There’s a tremendous amount of reconciliation--politically and militarily--that has been achieved since the surge," he told George Stephanopoulos. He added "We want a winning outcome in Iraq so when we do leave, we’re gonna leave behind a country that’s part of the solution, not the problem."
Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell was on Meet the Press, and repeated a line he’s been using throughout the primary season in regards to Hillary Clinton’s uphill battle against Barack Obama. "We elect a president of the United States, as we learned in 2000, by the Electoral College. And no Democrat can win the Electoral College without carrying three of the four big states--Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Michigan. Assuming Senator Clinton wins in Pennsylvania, she will have demonstrated, and she's running way ahead of Obama against McCain in all four of those states, and those are crucial and that's why she's the strongest candidate in the fall, without question." This statement is almost certainly true, but Rendell’s logic is faulty: success in a primary against another Democrat does not necessarily correspond to success in the general against a Republican, as Mark Murray points out in this MSNBC piece.
Ed Rendell and Bill Richardson showed up on Fox News Sunday yesterday to shill for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama respectively. The Pennsylvania governor struck at what he sees as the heart of the Obama campaign’s hypocrisy. "The Obama campaign tries to have it both ways," he said. "They say the campaign’s too negative, and they go out and turn an innocent remark--Bill Clinton was saying what a lot of us feel, we wish the issues of race and all of this other stuff would be pushed to the background so we could have a discussion about who’s got the most experience, who’s got the best healthcare plan, who’s got the best plan for the economy. And instead, they launch this all-out attack trying to take an inference out of President Clinton’s words that no fair person could take."
Peggy Noonan was on Meet the Press, and she discussed the importance of Richardson’s endorsement of Obama. "You know what I think the Richardson thing means?" she asked Tim Russert. "It means that this wonderful voodoo magic thing that the Clintons have, that they are always in control, that they run the Democratic party, that no matter what is happening on the ground or who's winning this race or the popular vote or getting the elected delegates, they're in charge, they're really secretly plugged in, they got secret wires that they're pulling, they will triumph. When a Bill Richardson comes forward, it just reminds you, the Clintons may not be in charge. They may not be pulling the wires in this race."
George Will also feels like the race is quickly slipping away from the Clinton machine. "I would much rather have had Obama’s week than Hillary’s week. She loses Michigan and Florida: that’s her only path to the nomination, electability. And she has to do that by passing him in the popular vote which she is not going to be able to do. We don’t know yet whether Bill Richardson is a pebble that presages an avalanche, but he might be. He’s a very important superdelegate. And finally, we have the release of her White House schedules, which raises the question: if being first lady like that qualifies you to run for president, why didn't Mimi Eisenhower run for president?"
Lindsey Graham took to Face the Nation to discuss just how much progress has been made in Iraq over the last year. "On the political front, we've had the de-Baathification law passed. . . . That means members of the Baath Party, who ruled the country under Saddam Hussein, are now allowed to get some of their jobs back. That means the Shias and the Kurds are saying to the Sunnis, 'come back in and help us run the country.' They passed a $48 billion budget where every group in Iraq gets to share the oil resources. There was an amnesty law telling the prisoners in Iraq that 'we're going to let some of you go; go back home, stop fighting, help build the new Iraq.' And most important of all, we're going to have provincial elections in October. The Sunnis boycotted the election in 2005, and everywhere I went in Anbar province the Sunnis are ready to vote and be part of democracy. So there's been major political breakthroughs."
It was a rough week for Barack Obama thanks to some of his reverend’s more hateful comments coming to light. Brit Hume got to the heart of the problem on Fox News Sunday. "It’s worth noting also, I think, certainly Obama knew what sort of church this is," Hume said. “Now I have no doubt that the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has done many good things; it is clearly a thriving parish with active programs for youth and anti-drugs and all sorts of other good things. There’s no doubt about that. On the other hand, for a candidate who would like us all to believe that he is post-racial this is an interesting institution. For example, this is what it says about itself: ‘We are an African people and remain true to our native land, the mother continent, the cradle of civilization.’ And it goes on to say this is a congregation with a ‘non-negotiable commitment to Africa.’ Not to Chicago, not to Illinois, not to the United States of America. But to Africa. Now look, there’s nothing wrong with that, and I wouldn’t say it’s racist, but it’s racial.”
George Will was even more direct, saying on This Week “This strikes right at Obama’s strength: I am a.) post-racial, I’m not obsessed with race, and b.) I will get you away from the acoustics of the 1960s, this blame America first, God Damn America. Of course, the candidate’s wife says America is a mean country. Why not have ‘God Damn America’?” This flap is almost certainly taking a toll; as Dean Barnett pointed out this weekend, Obama appears to be sinking in the Rasmussen tracking poll.
Who will take the Democratic nomination remains to be seen. Obama’s surrogates were out in force, making the argument that whoever leads in pledged delegates should take home the prize. On Face the Nation, Deval Patrick said he hopes that “the superdelegates, in the end, will ratify the will of the people and the pledged delegates, whichever candidate has the majority of them. I certainly hope so.” But former senator Bill Bradley painted a less rosy view of things on Meet the Press, fretting “where this is headed, potentially--and I hope it doesn't get there--is a Credentials Committee battle. Last time that happened was 1972, and the Credentials Committee made a decision not to seat the Illinois delegation of Mayor Daly and to say that the California primary was a winner-take-all, not a proportional. And if either one of those decisions had gone the other way, Hubert Humphrey would have been the nominee.”
Howard Dean made the rounds this weekend to discuss the increasing likelihood of the nasty fight inside his party continuing all the way up until the convention. "There's two things they can do," he said on Face the Nation. "One is to have this kind of an alternative process, which we're talking about now, and the other is simply to appeal to the Credentials Committee at the--at the convention, which is controlled, actually, by the delegates, not by me. And they can do a lot of things at the Credentials Committee. I think it's very unlikely that Florida and Michigan, given how close this race is, are going to be seated as-is. But everybody's going to work very hard to find a compromise within the rules that's fair to both campaigns that will allow Florida and Michigan, in the end, to be seated."
Despite the fact that it seems increasingly likely that Clinton will be down in both the delegate count and the popular vote, her supporters haven’t given up hope yet. "Well, sure, Tim, because, number one, Hillary Clinton has won states with about 260 electoral votes. Barack Obama has won states with about 190," said Ed Rendell on Meet the Press. He added that "the traditional role of the superdelegates is to determine who's going to be our strongest candidate. Tim, you and I have been doing this for a long time, as Tom has, and we know the big four in any presidential election recently are Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida and Michigan. And in all four of those states--Pennsylvania hasn't voted yet, but I assume we're going to do real well--Hillary Clinton will have taken those states."
And it’s not just about the math. As George Will pointed out on This Week, "for her to beat Obama in the Spring and the Summer, she has to argue—to John McCain’s advantage—that Obama is not winnable, not plausible as a president in November. She started doing that and it may be working."
Fox News Sunday guest Rep. Mike Pence talked about the overriding issue of this campaign: the war in Iraq. "As the Kurdish prime minister told me over lunch, I think it's seen as fragile because while the enemy has been in many respects largely beaten back in the center part of the country and in al-Anbar province, as we saw in grim detail in the car bombing and suicide bombing in Baghdad this week, this is still a lethal enemy that will use deadly force to upend the progress of stability and democracy in this country. … I did run into anxiety among many Iraqi officials about talk of a precipitous American withdrawal from Iraq. Several Iraqi leaders with whom we spoke and, frankly, regular Iraqis on the street, see the vital and critical importance of a durable American presence, at least in the near term."
On Fox News Sunday, Karl Rove explained why John McCain had to distance himself from the conservative radio host who tried to use Barack Obama’s name against him. "Using his middle name helps Obama, it doesn’t hurt him," he noted, adding "I think people look at it and say ‘hey look, that’s one step too far.’ You’re trying to leave an implication that he’s a Muslim when I know he is not. A lot of times attacks in politics fail--in fact, they turn into a negative for the person who’s doing the attacking--because people think it’s gone too far. And this, frankly, goes too far." That’s not to say Obama’s untouchable, however; Rove pointed to one possible area of attack going forward: "Now, having ties to Louis Farrakhan and his anti-Semitic comments, that’s a reasonable question."
The Democratic primary isn’t quite over yet, but we’re nearing the end. Regardless of who wins the remaining states, the math makes Obama the prohibitive favorite going forward. Mike Murphy laid out the weakness of the Democrats’ system of apportioning delegates compared to the Republican counterpart on Meet the Press:
"The great irony here is the Democrats have this kind of Mr. Nice Guy delegate system of proportional delegates. So even if she starts winning primaries, it's hard to win big enough to get the delegate advantage. We Republicans like these sudden-death, winner-takeall--because we're mean. That's why I joined up. We're all social Darwinists. And if they had had winner-take-all primaries in California and New York like the Republicans do, the vast right-wing conspiracy, she'd be in front and hard to beat right now."
(Murphy also suggested Tom Ridge as a potential VP for John McCain. You heard it here first, though not everybody likes the idea.)
Because it’s exceptionally unlikely Clinton can win the primary fair and square, the Clintons must decide whether it’s worth tearing the party apart to get the nomination. Matt Dowd warned against such a course on This Week. Whoever is "leading on pledged delegates, the party has to unite, the Democratic party has to unite behind that person. Because Barack Obama is the one that has motivated the voters in this country right now that the Democratic party needs to sort of establish a sense of leadership going forward. That’s the younger voters in this country that haven’t turned out in years gone by, and if the Clinton machine puts the screws on and is allowed to take the nomination because they’ve gone against the rules or gone against what the voters said, then your ability to motivate those voters in the fall" disappears. And that, Dowd added, "is John McCain’s dream."
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The biggest news of the week was undoubtedly John McCain’s smearing by the New York Times. While the senator may have gotten the best of it so far--even the Times’s public editor, Clark Hoyt, felt the newspaper shouldn’t have published the piece’s most scintillating passages--E.J. Dionne pointed out that the paper’s bumbling was something of a break for McCain, and that this story might not be over yet. "Sex is to journalism what the queen of spades is to a game of hearts, it overwhelms everything," Dionne said on This Week’s roundtable, but he thinks "short term, McCain had a good week because all of these conservatives rallied against the New York Times. I think long term this story hangs around because the core question . . . the sex kind of drove out the legitimate part of the story in the public’s mind, which is, ‘is this Saint John McCain?’"
The Democratic primary rumbles on. New Jersey governor Jon Corzine dodged a question as to whether or not his party’s "super-delegates" will decide the nomination, saying "we’ll see how March 4th comes out. I’m a lot more upbeat about Senator Clinton’s chances in that period. We have a big state in Pennsylvania still to vote." Knowing that those states probably won’t be enough to get his candidate, Hillary Clinton, over the top, Corzine ominously pointed out that his party "still [has] to sort out two very important elements, or states in our system, that is Florida and Michigan. How that ends up being decided, how those votes are taken into consideration."
Why does the Clinton camp need to break the rules and get Florida and Michigan’s delegates seated? Chuck Todd explained on Meet the Press:
"She'd have to do something impossible, which is win [in Texas and Ohio] by some 15 or 20 points. I mean, I sort of crunched some numbers from March 4th to see if she, she can win three of the four states, she could win Texas 52-48, Ohio 52-48, Rhode Island 52-48, lose Vermont, say, 55-45, and she will net all of three delegates in that scenario, because there's a couple things working against her. First of all, this Texas primacaucus, whatever you want to call it, where two-thirds of the delegates are going to be distributed by statewide vote in the state Senate districts and then a third of the delegates are decided later that night in a caucus."
Oh, and Ralph Nader announced his candidacy for president as well, taking up a full segment on Meet the Press to do so. I’ll be curious to see if Tim Russert grants Lyndon LaRouche equal time. The two will have about the same level of impact on the race this year.
Hillary Clinton’s continued troubles, and what she might do to right the ship, dominated the Sunday morning talk shows. George Will pointed out that Wisconsin could be rough sailing for the New York senator on This Week: "The way you stop losing is you start winning. And she has to start in Wisconsin. The problem is Wisconsin is an open primary, in that independents can vote there. There’s no fight on the Republican side, they’ll all vote on the Democratic side. Furthermore, they have same-day registration; that’s the wonderful system that gave us Jesse Ventura next door in Minnesota. Even before that . . . Democrats abroad will announce their result, they have 11 delegates . . . so that could be two more losses. Then it seems to me she has to spike, to kill this talk of winning with the super delegates. And, even worse, the Florida and Michigan delegates."
But the Clinton campaign is loathe to give up one of its few remaining advantages. Howard Wolfson invoked Howard Dean on Face the Nation in an effort to deflect the anger of the party’s left wing in the event of a nomination decided by superdelegates: "You know, I agree with Chairman Dean, who said that the superdelegates are supposed to vote their conscience, they're supposed to vote who they think will be the best person for the nation and for the party. That's why they were created, and that's what they're going to do. And I think that the reason so many of them are supporting us . . . Obama's campaign is vigorously attempting to secure their support--but the reason that so many support us is because they know that Senator Clinton is the candidate with the real solutions that we need to tackle our problems."
The Obama camp is understandably concerned. Obama supporter Dick Durbin was on Meet the Press to decry the possibility of superdelegates picking Clinton over his man. "That'd be a serious problem," he said, and he warned that it could spark a backlash. "You know, the voters will have the last word in November. The elected delegates should have the last word in Denver. Those are the delegates who have stood before the voters. I'm one of those superdelegates. . . . There are almost 800 of us. We've been involved in this party and given a lot of our lives to it. But let's be very honest about this. The final word has to be decided by elected delegates."
On a slightly different topic, Mike McConnell was on Fox News Sunday to point out just what is different as a result of the stalemate over FISA. "When the program was returned to the FISA court in January of ’07, initially we had coverage that we had asked for. But over time, because technology had changed, and the law of ’78 had not been changed, because technology had gone from a wireless world to a wired world, foreigners communicating in a foreign country, more than likely the communications would pass through the United States. Therefore the court said that if it touches a wire, consistent with the law, you have to have a warrant. Now, a warrant means probable cause, which is a very time consuming process to go through. So we were in that situation last summer, we passed the new act to improve our situation--that act has now expired."
Yesterday President Bush sat down for an exclusive interview with Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace, talking about everything from the war on terror to his legacy. His philosophy on the 2008 election:
“What really matters in a campaign is, what are the basic beliefs? What does one view as the role of the federal government? We believe the federal government ought to be empowering people, ought to trust people, the other side tends to want to empower government. We believe taxes ought to be low, they want to raise taxes. We believe we ought to be on the offense against an enemy, that this war on terror is not just a simple law enforcement matter; it requires all assets, all hands on deck, to protect the American people. We believe in the transformative power of freedom.”
Bush refused to talk about the election in terms of a McCain candidacy since Huckabee hasn’t yet dropped out. Tim Russert laid out exactly what Huckabee’s up against when the former governor showed up on Meet the Press. “You need 1191 delegates; you have 231,” Russert informed Huckabee. “That means you need 960. … There are only 819 delegates to win. So how are you going to do that?” Undaunted by the impossibility of getting to the needed number of delegates, Huckabee replied that he doesn’t “know how the math works out, but there's always the chance something stumbles. The thing is it's not just how many I need, Senator McCain also needs that many. And if he doesn't get that many, he's not the nominee either. This thing could go to the convention. Who knows? But the one thing I know, when people say, ‘Isn't it a rather complicated and convoluted path to victory?’ You bet it is. But it's a real easy path to defeat.”
New Fox News contributor Karl Rove popped up on Face the Nation to break down why McCain is the GOP’s best hope for retaining the White House:
“This is out of the latest Fox poll, and as you can see, this is Senator McCain matched against Senator Clinton. And of the Republicans, as you can see, Senator McCain gets 86 percent of the Republicans in a match-up against her while she gets 7 percent of the Republicans. He takes 15 percent of the Democrats while she takes 79 percent of them. In a match-up with Senator Obama, Senator McCain takes 80 percent of the Republicans. Senator Obama gets 10 percent. Senator McCain gets 18 percent of Democrats and Senator Obama gets 77 percent of Democrats. So in other words, Senator McCain has done at this point a better job of getting Republicans united behind him in a head-to-head with the Democrats than either one of the Democrats has done in getting Democrats united behind them.”
Byron York, on the other hand, posited on This Week that Republican hopes might rest on Democratic super delegates--the unpledged “party leaders” who get votes at the Democratic national convention--choosing the Democratic nominee. “I think that would be great for Republicans. And if Barack Obama, if it’s essentially tied or he’s slightly ahead, and he doesn’t get the nomination, we’ve had all this talk about lack of Republican enthusiasm for the Republican candidate--if you have lack of Democratic enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate you turn what is a Democratic year by all measurements into an even match.”
Barack Obama’s shellacking of Hillary Clinton was obviously the big news of the weekend, and Obama showed up on This Week to discuss his victory, and Bill Clinton’s race baiting. In one of the Clinton campaign’s most naked references to Obama’s race, the former president tried to downplay an Obama victory in South Carolina by reminding reporters that “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in 1984 and 1988.” Obama let it roll off his back, sticking to the message of change his campaign adopted early on.
“Well, Jesse Jackson ran historic races in 1984 and 1988, and there’s no doubt that that set a precedent for African Americans running for the highest office in the land. But that was 20 years ago, George, and I think that what we saw in this election was a shift in South Carolina that I think speaks extraordinarily well not just for folks in the South but all across the country. I think people want change, I think they want to get beyond some of the racial politics that has been so dominant in the past.”
It should also be pointed out that Obama pulled in nearly a quarter of the white vote this weekend, a feat Jackson never got close to in ’84 or ’88.
Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor that he is, knows full well what the Clintons are capable of. “There are not two people who are better at street fighting politics than Bill and Hillary Clinton,” Huckabee told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, adding “I’ve been telling people a long time, ‘Don’t underestimate the scrappiness with which they’ll approach this race.’ So no, I’m not surprised. And in fact, I think the one thing you have to keep your eyes on is that tactics will change, but the goal will never, ever fade, and that is win, what it takes to do it.”
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Republicans obviously have a vested interest in the Democratic presidential primaries, and nothing warms their hearts more than the brewing identity politics battle on that side of the aisle. As David Brooks pointed out last week, the first viable female candidate for president and the first viable African-American candidate for president are reaping what their party has sown--and Democratic apparatchiks couldn’t be more terrified. On This Week, Katrina vanden Heuvel said that she thinks "the important thing is that this race not become a fractious fight about race and gender." And why, pray tell, is it important not to race bait this time around? As former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd pointed out in response to Vanden Heuvel’s comment,
"The big problem is, for Democrats to win the presidency, in this day and age, they have to have an unbelievable turnout and support among African Americans, and they have to have an unbelievable support and turnout among younger voters: Both of which groups are voting for Barack Obama right now, in fairly large numbers."
On the Republican side, the sniping between Mitt Romney and John McCain is getting almost as nasty; the former Massachusetts governor used his time on Fox News Sunday to accuse Sen. McCain of, essentially, being a corrupt pawn of special interest groups. "I just don’t think that somebody who has spent their life inside Washington, that has lobbyists on every elbow, that has been chairman of one committee or another, and has all those connections, and all the favors that are owed, and owed in return, all of the scores to settle: I just don’t think that’s going to get Washington fixed," Romney said. Nevermind the irony of calling one of the Washington insiders committed to cutting pork barrel spending a pawn of lobbyists; consider instead the irony of Romney, whose key advisors (as Glen Johnson rudely, argumentatively, and unprofessionally pointed out on the campaign trail) are, you guessed it: lobbyists!
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I’ve been arguing with friends for the last couple of weeks that Clinton’s campaign is cooked once John Edwards drops out of the race and stops splitting the "change" vote with Barack Obama. Jay Carney made a point on This Week that is worth considering, however, noting of Edwards’s supporters that "While there’s a change vote that will favor Obama, they’re also downscale Democrats who might favor Hillary Clinton." If the lower class, less educated voters who comprise Edwards’s base break for Clinton--as they did in New Hampshire--once Edwards finally faces reality and drops out, Obama might be in a lot of trouble.
My favorite moment from Hillary's performance on Meet the Press? This shameless prevarication, hot on the heels of crying to gain sympathy (and a victory) in New Hampshire: "Well, you know, I don't think that either of us should use gender. I don't think this campaign is about gender, and I sure hope it's not about race. It needs to be about the individuals."
Over at Fox News Sunday, Mara Liasson pointed out that Obama can’t run on shiny oratorical skills alone:
"The legitimate point that the Clintons did make about Obama in New Hampshire was this ‘where’s the beef?’ question. And I think that he was running out the clock in New Hampshire; he came into New Hampshire with a huge lead, he thought all he had to do was give the same inspiring speech over and over again. She, meanwhile, scared to death, answered questions for two hours at a time, pulled everything out of herself that she could. He needs to start doing that more in these upcoming contests."
Face the Nation focused on the GOP, and Romney, despite a good showing in current Michigan polls, seemed to downplay the state’s importance in the grand scheme of things.
"Well, of course, I've already won one in Wyoming, and so we each now have one win. I've also got two silvers, so I've got more votes for president than anybody else in the race at this stage. I plan on winning Michigan, and there's no question, if it were just Republicans and independents, I'd win Michigan. But Democrats also get to vote in the primary here, so you can't be 100 percent sure."
The Democrats are a wild card, but what Romney doesn't mention is that the Daily Kos is running a "Mitt for Michigan" campaign. The netroots seem to think he'll make an easier target in the general.
The primaries are (finally) underway, and the Sunday talk shows were chock full of interviews, analysis, and inter-campaign squabbles. Mitt Romney showed up on Fox News Sunday, making a last-minute pitch to the voters of New Hampshire as to why he should be nominee instead of John McCain:
“He’s just been there 27 years, and hasn’t been able to get the job done. He’s somebody who wants to change Washington; he talks about changing Washington. But he’s been there for so long, he’s got so many lobbyists at each elbow, he’s worked so long, in many cases, he’s a maverick against his own party, he has brought some bills in place like McCain-Feingold, which hurt our party and I think hurt the first amendment. He fought for immigration law which I think was a terrible course, which said that all the illegal aliens that had come here illegally would be able to stay in this country forever, and I think that was a mistake.”
McCain didn't take it lying down. He popped up on Face the Nation and Meet the Press, and continued to turn what many had thought his greatest liability--his support for the war and the surge--into his biggest asset.
“But recently, in the last few years, I made the greatest change I've ever been responsible for and was part of it, and that is the change of strategy in Iraq. … No one else said the Rumsfeld strategy's going to fail and we've got to adopt a new strategy that--led by General Petraeus. That has turned this conflict around. We've got a long way to go. Al Qaeda's on the run, but they're not defeated. But I believe that's the biggest change you can make, is to save young Americans' lives.
From there he went straight into another one of his favorite themes, his long fight against waste and mismanagement at the Pentagon:
And I've been involved in--you know, if you think I'm an insider, ask Jack Abramoff, ask the lobbyists for Boeing and the Air Force guys and the people that are in jail now because we saved the taxpayers $2 billion on a bogus tanker deal. In fact, you might even ask former Secretary Rumsfeld if I'm--if I'm not an agent for change.
New Hampshire has long been forecast as a Romney-McCain showdown, but don’t forget about Mike Huckabee, even if Huckabee might want to forget about his appearance on This Week. For the second time in a row, George Stephanopoulos took the Arkansan to the woodshed on topics as varied as the surge, his lack of support for the president, and other issues. Here’s the video, watch the whole thing to get a sense of how brutal the interview was.
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Mitt Romney showed up on Meet the Press for the full hour, and the blogosphere focused on the former Massachusetts governor’s mistaken claim that he was endorsed by the NRA in 2002. What was more interesting to me, however, was the fact that the following quote contains the entirety of the discussion on Iraq, totaling about two minutes of screen time:
"If you're, if you're, if you're suggesting that, that, that it's equivalent to say that we made a number of errors and that we have a very difficult situation in Iraq, that's the same as saying the president is arrogant and bunker mentality, that's, that's where he went over the line. I've been saying for months, and I think all the Republican candidates, in fact, have been saying for months, if not years, that, that following the collapse of Saddam Hussein our policy was, was unprepared, unplanned, understaffed, undermanaged, that we made a number of errors and that much of the difficulty we face today is due to those errors. But it's very different to point out the mistakes that have been made--and the president's pointed out the mistakes as well--and then to say that the Bush administration, our president, is arrogant with a bunker mentality, that's a completely different statement for which Mike Huckabee owes the president an apology."
The lack of discussion about Iraq suggests that the situation in-country is getting better and the issue is losing salience with the media--surely a good thing for the GOP, regardless of whoever ends up being the nominee.
On Face the Nation, Fred Thompson showed up and took some shots at Mike Huckabee:
"If you look at his policies, ‘liberal’ is the only word that comes to mind. When he was governor, I mean, the things that he said, things that he did, I mean, he was very resistant to any kind of effort to stop illegal immigration, any kind of effort to make sure that those who came in illegally were not on the--on the public roles, you might say, in terms of social services. Cato Institute rated him one of the worst governors in terms of taxes and tax increases. He wanted to lift the embargo on Castro. Now he wants to close Guantanamo because he thinks it will curry some favor with other nations. It's basically a pretty social liberal policy that he has followed for several years and hasn't made any bones about it up until recently. And now I understand that he's got a tough immigration ad going on, but it--but it's not consistent with his record."
Bill Kristol continued to hammer Hillary Clinton for her performance at the last Democratic debate:
"But it does come down to the candidate, and I do think that the moment you just showed was very revealing. Why was Hillary Clinton laughing, or if I might say, cackling, when this perfectly innocuous, silly question is asked of Obama. … As if everyone’s foreign policy advisors at this stage on the Democratic side hadn’t served in the Clinton administration somewhere. But anyway, it’s an innocuous question, Obama’s about to answer it, and suddenly there’s this kind of high pitched laugh and then: ‘I want to hear this.’ Isn’t that revealing? What does that mean? Why does she want to hear it? She thought this was some kind of gotcha moment where Obama would have trouble with the answer, and I think he showed something with his quick comeback. Not just quickness, but toughness."
The biggest non-political news of the week was sports-related. This Week’s George Will talked about the Mitchell Report, Major League Baseball’s examination of the role steroids have played in the game:
"George Mitchell threw a lot of stuff in here, and some of it--these are varying degrees of accusations. Andy Pettitte of the Yankees yesterday came out and said I used Human Growth Hormone for two days because I had a sore elbow. It supposedly has healing properties. … In any case, I don’t see the moral difference between that and taking a cortisone shot as a one time healing episode as opposed to a regimen to give you an unnatural advantage."
The Sunday morning talk shows were dominated by two intelligence-based stories this weekend: the CIA tapes and their destruction, and the NIE’s take on Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol gave one theory of the CIA’s reasoning for destroying the tapes, and the mainstream media’s overreaction to the story.
"These tapes were destroyed at the direction of the Director of Clandestine Operations at the CIA: a 24 year CIA veteran praised on his retirement earlier this year by the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The idea, Ted Kennedy, the idea that this is like Watergate, that it’s politically motivated is on its face ludicrous. Ted Kennedy should be ashamed of himself--I don’t know if that’s possible. Look, we don’t know what’s on those tapes. These tapes apparently were destroyed shortly after the existence of the secret prisons abroad was leaked. Obviously, people in the CIA were very concerned about leaks. There could be very sensitive information on these tapes. Zubaydah may have given up the names of people who we then turned, we bugged, we eavesdropped on. That could have been the real fear: That really important American intelligence assets would be revealed if these tapes or transcripts of these tapes were leaked. … I think it was probably prudent to have destroyed them. Nothing could have been gained by keeping them around."
On This Week, former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was on to talk about the National Intelligence Estimate and assessment of Iran’s nuclear programs. Gingrich bemoaned the politicized nature of the report and offered a reason for the sudden about face on Iranian capabilities:
"What you have is a release which, first of all, could not have been written to be more damaging to the Bush administration than it was. And the three people who wrote it are all three former State Department employees … they’re all three people who dislike what Bush is doing. I think they deliberately undermined the administration. I think this is the equivalent of a coup d’etat by the bureaucracy. If you actually read what they said … even the unclassified version doesn’t say what the front, what the headline said. The unclassified version says that there’s a big civilian program, they have at least 3,000 centrifuges already working--and 3,000’s enough to produce one bomb a year. They have a clear commitment to get nuclear weapons; there’s no evidence they’re going to give up that commitment. What the report technically said was that there was one particular program that was secret that we were certain was ongoing, we’ve now had a defector, that’s my guess, and the defector’s told them this, and my question is: How do we know that defector’s not a plant?"
Rudy Giuliani used his time on Meet the Press Sunday morning to emphasize that progress wouldn’t have been made on the Iraninan front if the military option had been left off the table, and pointed out that something pretty specific happened in 2003 that coincided with Iran’s shifting nuclear status:
"And of course we don't, we don't want to use the military option. It would be dangerous; it would be risky. But I think it would be more dangerous and more risky if Iran did become a nuclear power. We should utilize sanctions. We should utilize as much pressure as we're capable of. But the fact that that is there, that military option is there, not taken off the table ultimately increases the pressure, doesn't it? The reality is the pressure works. They said that, too, right? They, they said in 2003 Iran abandoned its nuclear program, they believe, because of all the pressure, all the threats, that they are susceptible to that. 2003 was the year in which we deposed Saddam Hussein. It was the year in which America showed massive military strength."
Mike Huckabee found out what it’s like to lose the goodwill of the media this weekend. Up to this point, the Arkansas governor has enjoyed the image of the wily underdog, surmounting overwhelming odds and a lack of cash to mount an insurgent presidential campaign. But now polling reveals he’s the front runner in Iowa. And front runners must be destroyed.
Enter George Stephanopoulos. The This Week host wasted no time at lighting into Huckabee over an issue that causes him trouble with GOP voters: immigration reform. When asked about the children of illegal immigrants receiving in state tuition, Huckabee juked, saying “I’ll tell you what I do believe: That you don’t punish a child because a parent committed a crime, or committed a sin. You just don’t do that. And that’s why …” But Huckabee didn’t get a chance to finish: Jumping in, Stephanopoulos blocked the dodge, interrupting with “Excuse me, let me just stop you right there. That’s why you pushed a bill that would allow the children of illegal immigrants, if they went through an Arkansas high school, to get in state tuition.” When Huckabee tried to say that the bill in question related to a scholarship, Stephanopoulos again jumped in: “Well governor, let me stop you right there because, and a lot of people have looked at this, I’ve got the bill right in front of me, and I know that what you’re talking about may have been in your original legislation, but you continued to push for a bill after the scholarship provisions were dropped that would simply provide instate tuition benefits to illegal immigrants.”
Sputtering, Huckabee tried to blame the problem on the federal government for allowing illegal immigrants to flow into his state willy nilly and insinuated that all non-college graduates are drains on the welfare system--“Is [an illegal immigrant] better off going to college and becoming a tax payer as opposed to not going to college and potentially becoming a tax taker?” Stephanopoulos went on to nail Huckabee for raising taxes and for lessening prison sentences for cooking meth. Welcome to the big leagues, governor. Get used to 12 more months of this if you do manage to win the nomination.
On Meet the Press, Michele Norris explained why Obama might be picking up ground in Iowa, and revealed the most depressing television viewing statistic I’ve heard in years:
“The, the use of Oprah Winfrey in this state is particularly strategic. She is--her program is the most watched program in the state of Iowa. When you look closely at her viewership here, it's women over 50. And, you know, Iowa is a very conservative state. There are a lot of stay-at home moms; there are a lot of people who watch Oprah. And when you look at Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey, both celebrities, but celebrities that touch people in very different ways. Bill Clinton a former president; Oprah Winfrey someone that many voters, many people, many women in that key demographic look at and see as--almost as a friend.”
William Kristol is also bullish on Obama’s chances; speaking on Fox News Sunday, he expounded on his underdog theory of politics.
“Missouri and West Virginia lost last night, the number one and number two rated teams in college football, and the number one rated people in each campaign could easily lose. Obama could beat Hillary Clinton, I now think it’s about a fifty-fifty proposition. He’s got momentum. … On the Republican side, Huckabee could win, McCain could win, Thompson could win; it’s a wide open five way race.”
Hillary Clinton’s camp is stuck doing damage control for the moment. Strategist Howard Wolfson was on Face the Nation to remind people that Hillary has never been the favorite in Iowa.
“Well, look, we started out this race, we were always ahead in the polls nationally, but when we started out, we were not ahead in Iowa; we were behind. We're running against somebody from a neighboring state. We're running against somebody in John Edwards who had been there for some time, had run there in 2003 and 2004. We've made progress, and I think the race now is, as I think David would probably suggest, pretty much a dead heat in Iowa, and it's going to be a very exciting month.”
The presidential contenders were making the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows this week. John Edwards popped up on Face the Nation, repeating his ridiculous threat to take away Congress’s health care if the body doesn’t pass universal health care coverage in the opening days of his presidency:
“I will take away--do--use my power, the power that I have available to take away the health care for members of my administration. And the basic idea is I don't think politicians in Washington should be protecting their health care when we have 47 million people in this country who don't have health care coverage.”
Fred Thompson talked with George Stephanopoulos on This Week on a wide range of topics, touching on hot button topics like Islamic terrorism and abortion:
“The judicious application of soft power is very important, as well as hard power. But we’re fooling ourselves if we think that if they just understood us better we’d all get along. . . .
“I think number one, that Roe vs. Wade should be overturned; we need to remember what the status was before Roe vs. Wade. It goes back to the states. States now, just about all of them or the heavy majority of them, have laws against abortion. They’re just restricted, they’re limited by what the Supreme Court has said about Roe vs. Wade.”
Huckabee was on Fox News Sunday to talk about his resurgent campaign, and showed off his new ad featuring Chuck Norris. Huckabee’s campaign, and the tactics he is employing, calls to mind another outsider candidate making an unexpected run at establishment candidates: Jesse Ventura. Off-beat ads intended to attract voters who might otherwise be uninterested? Check. A fractured electorate where support is split between several candidates and a plurality--not a majority--will get the job done? Check. All he needs to do to complete the checklist is pull off a surprise win in Iowa.
Meet the Press was the only candidate-less program this morning, but Chuck Todd was on hand to lay some awkwardly worded wisdom on viewers, noting “the quicker this is a two-person race, the, the better for Obama and the more stark--I mean, because when you go to this whole second choice thing--and I tell you, polling Iowa is a mess, trying to understand it. But when you go to the second choice, when you don't get that threshold and, you know, all this stuff, Obama does, right now, a lot better than she does because of this change argument, because he is more change than she is.” Got it?
The big story in the world this weekend remained the crisis in Pakistan. Responding to reports that Musharraf is making a number of concessions in the face of international pressure, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on This Week to discuss what remained to be done.
“President Musharraf still has extremely important steps to take beyond the ones that he talked about--he needs to make sure these elections go forward, he needs to lift the state of emergency--but we’re standing with democratic principle in Pakistan when we say there have to be free and fair elections; we’re standing with principles of moderation when we try to bring moderate forces together; we’re standing with principles of fighting extremism when we help allies create forces that can beat back these very violent people who have tried to kill president Musharraf, who took the Red Mosque and killed many Pakistanis.”
In domestic news, the presidential election marches on. Barack Obama was interviewed for the entire hour by Tim Russert on pretty much every topic imaginable. It’s worth taking the time to check out the transcript and take a look at the only candidate with a realistic shot at derailing the Clinton campaign from the Democratic side. (Also see Kristol on Obama's performance here).
Mike Huckabee showed up on Face the Nation to talk about his resurgent candidacy and the all-important martial arts movie star endorsement.
“Well, we like to think that maybe the Chuck Norris endorsement--people are now afraid not to vote for me. But whatever the reason, I can tell you this, Bob, it's on fire. And in Iowa earlier this week, we would have two and three times--sometimes four times the size of crowds we were anticipating or prepared for. In New Hampshire it's been the same thing. And these are not just people who kind of come casually. These are folks who are ready to sign up, and who are ready to walk through eight feet of snow to get to the polls. We've had to upgrade our Web server three times in one week. We've had to hire people to answer the phones and come in and open the mail. So something's working. I don't know all to explain it myself. I think it's a combination of a lot of people praying and a lot of people working, but it's really happening, and it's pretty exciting for us.”
Also notable, John McCain discussed his shock at the news that a key leader of the Christian right was endorsing Rudy Giuliani during his interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.
“As I said about Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Mayor Giuliani, I’m not often rendered speechless, but I was at this event. … I’m still, I’m still surprised by it, and I’ll probably be surprised by it for as long as I live. [Why?] Look, for obvious reasons; Pat Robertson has usually advocated support for people that have a strong pro-life position, among other [issues]. I wasn’t the only person who was surprised in America.”
Fred Thompson showed upon Meet the Press this Sunday, sharing, among other things, his thoughts on the problem posed by Iran:
"Well, sometimes you're faced with two very bad decisions, and those are two very bad decisions. But what happens if, if a country like this, who talks in terms of the 12th imam coming back and maybe millions of people dying and so forth, including their own people. It would be, you know, on balance, it would be apparently OK with them as long as, as they would do the right thing, you know, from their own warped religious standpoint. And what would happen if they, if they sent a missile with a nuclear warhead and, and hit Israel? What would happen if they did the same to our people in the field with some kind of attacks by a nuclear weapon? What would happen then? What would happen if they held that whole region hostage in terms of oil? And oil, you know, which now, you know, $90 to $100 a barrel, much, much higher than that. Those are bad, bad circumstances and situations. I mean, that's why most people with good judgment don't run for president, I suppose."
The roundtables of both Fox News Sunday and This Week focused on Hillary Clinton and her response to the attack she weathered in the Democratic debate this week. Brit Hume pointed out that Senator Clinton’s mishandling of the debate’s aftermath is not without precedent:
"There’s something quite familiar about this, that those of us who covered Bill Clinton might remember, and that is, very often the Clintons are fumbling and inept in their first response when something goes wrong. Who can forget the famous … speech that Clinton gave at the height of the Lewinsky scandal; I thought it was the worst political speech I’d ever heard, it didn’t go over very well, he was all angry, but boy did he adapt after that. And he ended up surviving all that and moving on and now he’s the president of the world in the eyes of many people."
And Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson took a guess as to why Hillary isn’t pandering to the base of her party like some of her opponents:
"I also don’t think you should underestimate that some of her slipperiness, particularly on foreign policy issues, is preserving options as president that she’ll need. Both Obama and Edwards have not been particularly responsible on Iran, not particularly responsible on some of the Iraq related debate. She’s leaving herself room, she’s looking towards November, maybe an ability to run in that environment not jus the primary."
Iran was the topic of the day on the Sunday Morning talk shows. Republican presidential hopeful John McCain laid out the basic problem to George Stephanopoulos on This Week, saying
“This is the most unstable part of the world right now. The Iranians have dedicated themselves to a certain proposition, and that is the extinction of the state of Israel. They continue to foment unrest and terrorism in the region, they support terrorist organizations, so this is a major challenge for America.”
On Face the Nation, Sen. Carl Levin explained how he would take care of the Iranian problem:
“I think the sanctions are the right way to go. A lot of diplomatic pressure, a lot of economic pressure. Most importantly, keep the world together against Iran. Right now we've got most of the world, I think just about every country, that does not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon. It's in no one's interest that they have it, and I think most countries, including Russia, as well as Israel, obviously, but other countries in the region are not going to stand by and just simply watch if Iran gets to the point where they actually are getting to a nuclear weapon.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham wasn’t sure that sanctions are the most effective way to handle Iranian ambitions:
“Well, I have a little different take. I think Russia's sending all the wrong signals to Iran. When the Russian president goes to Iran and does a news conference with the Iranian president, embraces him, calls for other nations not to consider attacking Iran, it sends the wrong signal. I think the United Nations efforts to sanction Iran have been pitiful because of Russian--Russia and China vetoing a resolution. The European Union has some sanctions; they're fairly weak.”
And on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol chided Sen. Barack Obama and his Democratic colleagues for his naïve (lack of a) response to Iran’s increased activity within Iraq’s borders.
“Is the position of the Democratic party and Senator Obama that the Revolutionary Guard sends those rockets into [Iraq], trains fighters to fire against and try to kill … American soldiers, and we’re to do nothing. Nothing. No sanctions, no pressure, just talk to them, try to persuade them to be nice guys. Is that really the position the Democratic party wants to take?”
Also on Fox News Sunday, there was this exchange between first lady Laura Bush and Chris Wallace inspired by an item that appeared last week on THE WORLDWIDE STANDARD:
John McCain made an appearance on Face the Nation this Sunday, laying out just how he would deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions:
I would say that the Iranians can't have a nuclear weapon, in my view. But I also believe that we've got a lot of things to do--that we could do, including getting other nations together to impose meaningful sanctions, painful sanctions on the Iranians, which I think could have a beneficial effect. I'm very pleased that the new president of France's leadership on this role. There's enough economic and political clout amongst European countries and other nations in the world who share our common values and ideals and goals to put enormous pressures on the Iranians.
On Fox News Sunday, House minority leader John Boehner pointed out the slippery slope Democrats are hoping to create by its massive expansion of S-CHIP, explaining “What we believe is that we ought to be insuring poor children first. … If you look at what the Democrats are trying to do, they’re trying to create a much larger share of health coverage in America run by the government. Most people don’t want government run health insurance.”
This Week’s roundtable took on the newest addition to Al Gore’s trophy cabinet, the Nobel Peace Prize. In many ways, this exchange is symbolic of the media’s exceptionally ignorant take on global warming, portrayed here by Sam Donaldson:
George Will: The panel does the science. [Gore] does the hyperbole that gets people to pay attention to the science. … The [IPCC] says ‘over the next century we might anticipate a one foot increase in the sea levels,’ approximately what we’ve had since 1860 without a planetary crisis. Mr. Gore says ‘20 feet!’ Hence the scene in his movie where Ground Zero is under water, because he assumes that all of the ice in Greenland melts. Which, the scientists say, could happen in a thousand years or more.
Sam Donaldson: Well, wrong, wrong. There are now studies which suggest that within 30 years the polar icecap may melt.
George Will: It’s not polar. We’re talking about Greenland.
Sam Donaldson: Well it’s near enough for government work.
Meet the Press did something interesting this week, spending an entire hour talking with Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint about their new book, Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors. Among the many good points Cosby made was this one, on the mindset of the single mother:
If a young girl says, "I want to have a baby because I want something that, that loves me," that young lady is saying something. And we've got to talk to her about herself and her idea of love. She hasn't graduated from high school, she's willing to, to have a child. All of these character corrections are not being done while record companies are putting out records inviting people to continue that kind of behavior, to, to not talk about get an education. It's just as easy to put that to a rhythm.
For a real-life telling of one such story, make sure to read David Simon’s The Corner, a harrowing account of a year in the life of an inner city family. If Cosby can do something to change the mindset of such families, we’ll all be better off.
The demise of Newt Gingrich’s campaign before it even began was probably the biggest story of the week, and the former speaker of the House took to This Week to explain his reasoning:
“The McCain-Feingold Act criminalizes politics. … well, we learned yesterday morning, this was the decisive moment: I had taken leave from Fox, Randy Evan had taken leave from his law firm, we had a website set up to launch on Monday, and we were informed yesterday morning that if I had ANY communication with American Solutions after I became a candidate, it was a criminal offense. … American Solutions is technically a 527, which is a form of fundraising which allows us to develop ideas. We’ve said publicly that any polling data we release we’re releasing to both parties; we launched a workshop Thursday night and all day Saturday we had 35 different workshops being broadcast to over 2000 locations; it’s an effort to reach out on a bipartisan basis … it’s really a serious effort to say, ‘can we begin a national conversation among all people focused on solutions.’ And I’m very proud of it and we’ve had about a year of work go into it and I thought there was a way that you could continue the momentum of those ideas while I began to prepare a presidential campaign. What we learned yesterday morning was it is literally a ‘go to jail’ criminal activity.”
As Byron York points out, Gingrich probably should have known about this before the eve of his rollout. And it might not be true; Gingrich could have realized he simply had no chance by making his entry this late.
Over at Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol discussed his newfound hope for the Republicans in 2008 in the wake of the most recent Democratic debate:
“Because the Democratic candidates have more passion in conducting the war on smoking than the war on terror. Most of them want to give up in Iraq, they don’t want to do anything serious to stop Iran from going nuclear or from killing American soldiers in Iraq, they want to increase taxes, they don’t want to be at all serious about illegal immigration. I think Republicans have a good shot in ’08 running against that agenda.”
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