Is There an Obama Strategy?

And if so, what is it? Or perhaps more precisely, whose? The question comes to mind on a reading of Leslie Gelb's Power Rules, modestly presented as his memo to the next (i.e., current) President. It's an uneven book--a fair amount of pious gasbaggery (you can skip the first chapter), and more than a hint of "and-so-I-told-the-Pope." (although in fairness, his personal anecdotes are mostly on point). But for all its superficial flatulence, there is a fair amount of hard-headed, specific advice.

A key point: a President neeeds a strategy; otherwise he winds up chasing his own tail. It must set goals; and they must be achievable. Truman had strategy: resist the Soviets by pouring money into Western Europe. He kept at it, and it worked. Bush senior had a strategy: ease the transition form Communism. It worked--thanks not least to Bush's skill at coordinating a talented team. Indeed it worked so well that we can hardly understand it in retrospect--hardly imagine how bad things could have gone wrong if it did not work. Bush junior had a strategy: use Iraq to show the world we can promote democracy. But it didn't work, and we wound up back at (or behind) the line of scrimmage.

Gelb credits Nixon and Kissinger with a strategy, but is more than elaborate flaming-plate throw: use China (and the Yom Kippur War, and arms control) to distract attention from the fact that we'd just lost war. Carter may have had a strategy, but nobody has any idea what it was. Clinton probably didn't (and here is an aside: reading Gelb, it occurs to the reader that one problem with Clinton is that he really didn't like to decide anything--much happier in the seminar room, where the discussion can go on foreve)..

Does Obama have a strategy? It is hard to tell. He has a protean vision, which is not quite the same thing. One doubts that his Secretary of State has a strategy--whatever her virtues, grand vision is just her style. If there is a strategy, then, it may emerge from the other visibile player in the foreign policy arena--Joe Biden, who counts perhaps as a natural ally of Gelb's and a natural conduit from the adviser to the advised.

She'll Be What?

Wha--?

I certainly don't have, and don't expect to have, any regrets about voting for Barack Obama (or at any rate, against the GOP). I figured that I would get mad at them soon but I didn't expect it to be quite this soon. But look at today's news:

• The auto bailout. Okay, it is not an Obama initiative. But it looks like it is going to happen, and it looks like Obama won't be able to stop it and perhaps won't want to stop it. Ironic that most of the opposition is coming from just those Republicans I would most like to see sent packing out of town. Just one more demonstration that ideas have a truth value independent of those who hold them.


• Hillary. That's the wha--? part. With so many others, it is hard for me to see why she would want it. But unlike so many others, I can't imagine why he would want her. Yes, yes, Team of Rivals, Lincoln and Seward, a smart guy hires smart guys to work for him. But foreign policy? It has never been her brief, and I don't know of any evidence that she is specially good at. I admit my admiration for Hillary has always been somewhat less than unlimited. But I concede her talents, and she has certainly earned herself a place in public life. But Secretary of State? What am I missing?

[For clarification--my own first choice is still Chuck Hagel. I saw somewhere that three percent of voters currently characterize themselves as "moderate." Lonely out here.]

Kumbaya

I have to confess I really don't have a clue how exactly the Hillary supporters are going to react to the great disappointment--I'm certainly not plugged in and my instincts are not that great to begin with. But if I were looking for clues, I might want to start with "Anne" who, if I understand things right, is a regular, intelligent and instructive commentator over at DeLong. Brad posted the notorious "How Can We Beat that Bitch?" squib; no particular problem with that, but Anne responded with, I think, eleven separate comments ranging from mildly acerb to downright angry. If this is the future, it ain't pretty (link).

Damn Straight

There are many experienced Democrats who would make suitable running mates, and for the purposes of governing Mr. Obama needs to pick someone he can work with. Above all, he can't appear to bend to ultimatums from the House of Clinton. This is a test of Mr. Obama's political judgment and toughness. If he can't stand up to Hillary and Bill Clinton, forget about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Link, and thanks, David.

The Presidency: A Sense of History

I'm hearing the people who lament that they'll never see a female president in their lifetime and I'm tempted to respond with the soothing deflector that "these things take time."

I bite my tongue. Partly that's so somebody else doesn't bite my head but in fact I agree: "these things take time" is an evasion. "Time" can turn into "forever," and forever is a long time. Also, I have to acknowledge that I never have been that crazy about Hillary. Respect, yes; even vote for her if it came to that. But not with enthusiasm.

Yet there may be some solace in the long view. I'm too lazy to do the homework myself so I will restrict myself to the rhetorical form. How many female senators do we have now? How many female governors? I'm not certain, but I know it is a whole lot more than we had in 1984. And it cannot be more than a few years until they are a majority in office, just as they are in life. The bench just gets stronger every year.

Remarkably, the same cannot be said for blacks. Once, we had Ed Brooks in the senate; now we have Barack Obama.

Still, we do have Barack Obama. I think Obama, too, is an imperfect candidate. but how often have we had a perfect candidate? A free trip to the Paris for the first person to name even one. Okay, George Washington, but you can't name another.

And for perspective, take a second look at 1984. Then we had Jesse Jackson and Geraldine Ferraro. Today we have Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I'd say we've come a long way.

Fn,: And FWIW, I'd say that for the moment at least, Jackson is conducting himself with a good deal more dignity than Ferraro.

How to Lose an Election

Surveying the Clinton csmpaign, Charles Cook (in his email column) attempts to draw some lessons for experience on how to lose an election.

Recent history shows terrific examples of how to handle and how not to handle tough losses.

In the 1994 Maryland governor's race, Democrat Parris Glendening, the county executive for Prince George's County, edged Ellen Sauerbrey, the state House of Delegates Republican leader, by a scant 5,993 votes out of more than 1.4 million cast.

Some Republicans said they smelled foul play, although a subsequent bipartisan investigation found none. Sauerbrey fought and fought, long after it was clear that she would not prevail, earning her the moniker, "Ellen Sourgrapes."

In the 1998 rematch, though Glendening's popularity was on the wane, Sauerbrey's mishandling of the recount likely prevented her from taking advantage of the situation and she lost, 55-45 percent.

In 2006, Republican automobile dealer Vern Buchanan edged out Christine Jennings, a banker and the Democratic nominee in Florida's 13th District, by 369 votes, though the results were clouded by evidence of voting-machine irregularities.

But once again, the candidate on the short end of the stick handled it badly.

This too, might put Jennings at a disadvantage in her rematch effort this fall against Buchanan. A strong Democratic tide might push her over the top, but that's what it would take, as she came across as a sore loser.

The model for how to lose gracefully is South Dakota Sen. John Thune. Then a House member, Thune lost his 2002 challenge to incumbent Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson by just 524 votes, with suggestions of voting irregularities on Indian reservations clouding the outcome.

But Thune stepped back, handled the outcome with grace and was able to leverage that into being well positioned to take on Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., just two years later and unseat him.

Instructive stuff. But apparently his reach didn't go back far enough to pick up 1962, when we all learned that we wouldn't have you-know-who to kick around any more:

It Would Help In Pennsylvania and Ohio...

Coming back to American politics after a few weeks away, it occurs to me-couldn't McCain simplify things if he would just put Hillary on the ticket? It would give him cover on those social issues of which he professes to know so little (and care even less). They could share fantasies about what they saw in the combat zone. And it ought to confuse the hell out of Geraldine Ferraro.

What a Long, Strange Road it's Been

Shorter Harold Ford:

Obama needs to put Clinton on the ticket to help him with the blue-collar white male vote.

Yglesias has already weighed in with a take on why this idea is idiotic (link).

Maybe so, but isn't Harold Ford somebody who counts as an "establishment voice" in Dem circles? If he says it, doesn't this mean that this is an idea goin' 'round?

Not Enough

Stolen from Kedrosky:


So, good, but not good enough. I was going to say "jut like Hillary." But no: I know what's going to happen to Yahoo (Microsoft will win). Right now, I haven't any idea what will happen to the Democrats. Clinton and Obama do, indeed, look more and more like two aging plug-uglies who can bloody each other up but can't land a knockout punch.

They say John McCain is smiling and well he may. But if he has anything to smile about, it is not so much that they are bloodying each other up as it is that by lengthening the primary they are shortening the fall campaign. I've long thought that the biggest for of my age-mate McCain is fatigue--guys like us like to go to bed at 9 o'clock. When we don't get plenty of rest, we get cranky and say stupid things. McCain missed that round before because of the weirdly discontinuous Republican primary story. But it may happen yet.

Fn.: Friend of a friend says that McCain is stuck in 1968. Ha! Yes, that too.

Night Thoughts at the Beginning of Spring

Here it is coming on Spring of an election year and I am remembering my (late) (former) mother-in-law and the campaign of ’68. Bear with me…

She was having a bad year: she was sick, probably sicker than we knew, and just generally not having a good time. She did pay attention to the Presidential race. She didn’t like any of ‘em.

Oh, ho, I thought. That is what happened when you are old and lose your vim.

Flash forward to 2008. I’m a good deal older now than she was then (she died in ’69). Also a good deal healthier, and that’s a mercy. And as to the Presidential race, I …

I what? Well, actually, I cannot say I don’t like any of them. In a way, I like all of them. John McCain is indeed your loveable crotchety uncle. Barack is wonderful. For Hillary—okay, I guess “like” is too strong a word but I do respect and on the whole admirer her: she’s a wonky overachiever and her heart is in the right place.

But may I take you into my confidence, dears? Truth is, no one of them is really fit to be president. McCain? Yikes. For all his curmudgeonly charm, he’d be a lunatic decision maker. Hillary? Let’s face it, she never has learned the lessons of the health care debacle, and she’d probably screw it up the same way again. Barack? Well. I guess I said enough a couple of days back (link).

Mrs. Buce dismisses my cartwauling, with the observation that we’ve often—usually—endured mediocre presidents or worse, and have pretty much gotten away with it. There’s some truth to the general point but I do not find it consoling. I know that every candidate (in every race) wants us to believe that we stand “at a crisis,” but this time I’d say we really do stand at a crisis, in which we need all the craft and sagacity we can get. And we get this? This?

[Truth is, I’d give two seconds’ thought to a Bloomberg/Hagel ticket. Fortunately, it is not on offer—and the chances that we, in this environment, elect a Wall Street zillionare are pretty near to zero.]

And my mind wanders back to ’68. Recall the state of play that year: Nixon. Humphrey. Wallace. You knew who you wanted to vote against in that race, but it wasn’t quite clear who you wanted to vote for. I suspect my mother-in-law didn’t vote at all.

I’ll vote for somebody, and I’ll say a prayer that I got it right and that s/he’ll get it right. But oy, I wish I had another choice.

Fn.: Looks like I said all this before.

Shrillery

The Wichita Bureau weighs in on Hillary. It's the voice:

Hillary (and almost any woman) addressing a large group comes across as shrill. She needs to speak in normal tones and rely on the amplification system to make her heard. The tone of her voice is just too high. Grates.

Oddly, the Royal Army trained (and may still train) its RSMs to give marching and maneuvering orders in shrill voices – as being more easily heard in the din of battle. It sounds funny to us who have been trained to listen to the low pitch voices of speakers as ‘better’. Kennedy had a high voice and seemed to avoid the ‘Dean scream’ – and speak conversationally.

I’m not sure there is a woman speaker who doesn’t come across as shrill – possibly excepting your buddy the Italian correspondent at NPR Silvia Fujoli (I can’t begin to guess the spelling). She might sound good in a debate.

That's Poggioli, big guy.

Charlie Cook Says it's Over

....Out of politeness, the Democratic establishment is holding off on calls for Clinton to drop out of the race until after the Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont nominating contests on March 4. Democrats owe her that much.

However, Clinton victories in those states with sufficient margins to generate the delegates needed to overtake Obama are extremely unlikely. Once she comes up short, the calls for her to get out will begin. Within a few weeks, this is precisely what should happen. Maybe sooner, maybe a bit later -- but it will happen.

If the political situation were not futile enough, the financial reality certainly is. There simply will not be enough money for her to go on.

Source:Charlie Cook's weekly email newsletter, from The National
Journal (link).

Et tu Maureen?

When suddenly there is heard at midnight
A company passing invisible
With wonderful music, with voices, -
Your fortune giving way now, your works
Which have failed, the plans of a lifetime
All turned illusions …

—Constantinos P. Cavafy

You might have to be alert to notice that Maureen Dowd today did what the Gods did to Antony once they decided he was beaten: she decamped (link).

She’s picked on Hillary before but she picks on almost everybody so there’s nothing to be made of that. Today, I think, is different.

She opens with an all-purpose snark: “It’s not yet clear which prejudice will infect the presidential contest more — misogyny or racism.”

But fast-forward to the bottom of the page:

Those close to Hillary say she’s feeling blue. It’s an unbearable twist of fate to spend all those years in the shadow of one Secretariat, only to have another gallop past while you’re plodding toward the finish line.

I know that the attacks against powerful women can be harsh and personal and unfair, enough to make anyone cry.

But Hillary is not the best test case for women. We’ll never know how much of the backlash is because she’s a woman or because she’s this woman or because of the ick factor of returning to the old Clinton dysfunction. …

As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you can’t take Bill out of the equation. Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies.

Instead of carving out a separate identity for herself, she has become more entwined with Bill. She is running bolstered by his record and his muscle. She touts her experience as first lady, even though her judgment during those years on issue after issue was poor. She says she’s learned from her mistakes, but that’s not a compelling pitch. … If Hillary fails, it will be her failure, not ours.

(Emphasis added, of course.) Translated: As Mehitabel the cat would say, Cheerio, my Deario. Or Cavafy again:

As becomes one worthy as you were of such a city,
Firmly draw near the window,
And listen with emotion but not
with the complainings and entreaties of cowards,
Listen, your last enjoyment, to the sounds,
The wonderful instruments of the mystic company,
And say farewell, farewell to Alexandria you are losing.

—Id., The Poems of C. P. Cavafy, 26
Translated by J. Mavrogordatos
(The Hogarth Press, London 1951)

Alito, McCain and Alito's Neighbor, and the Rest of the Lot

Above the Law has come up with a reason why John McCain is cool towards Justice Alito: Alito doesn't like The Sopranos, the TV show about Alito's neighbor, Tony Soprano (link).

Raises the question of what kind of shows McCain does like--probably tells you a lot about the man. Much has been made, for example, of Nixon's taste for Patton. I can't remember anything at the moment about the tastes of the incumbent, except that I do recall he enjoyed watching replays of "Baghdad Bob," the insanely optimistic press flac for Saddam Hussein, who kept shouting "we will bury you!" as the pillars crumbled around him. (link) And Ronald Reagan was, as they say, the president who thought World War II was a movie.

I'm probably not hip enough on TV or movies to do justice to this inquiry. I assume McCain would enjoy Top Gun; he might not be crazy about Grumpy Old Men; I wonder what he thinks of Officer and a Gentleman? As to the others--it's a little hard to picture Hillary enjoying any TV show (except, now that I think of it, maybe Frontline or the News Hour with Jim Lehrer?). I'm hazy on Barack at the moment also, but this bit from Tom McMahon may stimulate some suggestions (link):

WTF? (Clinton Campaign Division)

Brad DeLong says we can be confident that Hillary can run the world's only superpower because she can run a presidential campaign (link). Now this:

Patti Solis Doyle had been living on borrowed time as Clinton's campaign manager following the disastrous showing in Iowa and the rockiness leading up to the New Hampshire primary.

"What happened today would have happened the day after New Hampshire had we lost," one source said, adding that others may soon follow Solis Doyle's departure.

Initially, Clinton's former White House chief of staff, Maggie Williams, was brought in to run the campaign even though Solis Doyle was still there. The result was confusion and awkwardness for the staff, who weren't sure who was really in charge.

But even more problematic was the campaign's money crunch. Over the last seven years, Clinton had raised $175 million for her reelection and her presidential campaign. But Solis Doyle didn't tell Clinton that there was next to no cash on hand until after the New Hampshire primary.

"We were lying about money," a source said. "The cash on hand was nothing."

In turn, Clinton didn't tell Solis Doyle that she was lending her own money to keep the campaign afloat. Solis Doyle found out third-hand. And when she asked Clinton about it, the senator told her she couldn't understand how the campaign had gotten to such a point.

Link (emphasis added). Say again, these ladies are on ther short list of best and most loyal friends and they are caught in a farrago of secrets and lies? Are we sure she can run a campaign?

Update: if you think this is harsh, take a look at the pile-on building up today over at Kevin Drum.

Obama: I Drank the Bong Water!

The NYT has the goods on Obama. I suppose there are a lot of crotchety grandpas who try to curry favor with the kiddies by exaggerating the tales of deviltry from what may have been a pretty humdrum youth (moi, your honor?). But is Obama the first presidential candidate ever to squeeze himself into this ill-fitting suit? I can't think of another, but here's the headline: Old Friends Say Drugs Played Bit Part in Obama's Young Life (link).

Eeuw--but it’s a difficult call. A few years ago, I sat on some committees to screen candidates for judgeships. We used to have to ask them if they ever did drugs. A few would say—Drugs? Nope, sorry, end of story. A good many would say—Um, well, but that was a long time ago and never very much blah blah. Once in a while, you’d get the guy who would say—You kidding? I drank the bong water! That last response was novel enough to be refreshing, but you did suspect that some of them were prevaricating as much as the minimizers.

I see that Obama does, however, have at least on guilty secret to live down: he read Nietzsche. No, no, I tend not to regard a youthful flirtation with Nietzsche as a disqualification from high office, any more than I would an adolescent fling with Ayn Rand (you should stop sometime, though). Kind of touching, actually—all those sober- and pimply-faced infants with black overcoats and a little wisp of grey on the upper lip, packing a battered Vintage paperback edition of the Gay Science:

Horizon: infinity.—We have left the land and taken to our ship! We have burned our bridges—more, we have burned our land behind us! Now, little ship, take care! The ocean lies all around you; true, it is not always roaring, and sometimes it lies there as if it were silken and golden and a gentle favorable dream. But there wil be times when you will know that it is infinite and that there is nothing more terrible than infinity…Alas, if homesickness for land should assail you, as if there were more freedom there—and there is no longer any “land!”

—Friedrich Nietzsche, Gay Science 124 (Vintage Paperback ed. 19--)

Come to think of it, I’ll bet there is a good chance that Hillary Clinton read the same stuff.

Lost in Translation: The Democrats

Gotta be the weirdest headline I read all week:

Don't reduce Democratic primaries to 'skirt or negro'

Link. Thanks, Dave.

Is DeLong Being Coy?

Brad DeLong does something odd. (link). Weighing Clinton v. Obama, he says:

[T]he Hillary Rodham Clinton who made such an administrative mess of health reform in 1993-1994 could not have run the campaign she has run over the past two years. Thus I am now confident that either has a reasonable shot of being in the top 20% of American presidents.

Why is this odd? Let’s go to the tape:

My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994—is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.

You anticipate me: that is Brad DeLong, writing in 2003 (link). Now, I have a high regard for DeLong, even if he does get off the reservation every once in a while (link). But I think he deserves to be taken seriously—and indeed, I have long regarded him as a principal component of a mosaic that helps to shape my own view of Clinton. In particular: it has always impressed me how much she is disliked by those in a position to know—those who were close to her in the Bill years (if you doubt me, check the list of Obama supporters from a year ago, back when he was still the outsider). In this picture, DeLong counts as a vital component.

Now, I don’t pretend to be a master of the entire DeLong oeuvre, but I’m not aware of any place where he squarely and explicitly addresses his change of heart. In a cursory Google search, I do find one occasion when a commentator threw these words back in DeLong’s face. DeLong’s response? Actually, I am not clear there is a response. DeLong enters a comment—the single word “touché,” but it isn’t clear whether he is responding to this post or another (link).

A Google search for the critical phrase turns up 1,000 hits—a great many, it seems, from Clinton enemies delighted to find such sharp language from someone you might expect to be a friend.

I don’t suppose you would say "friend" just yet (are the Clintons ready to forgive?), but you’d certainly have to say "friendly." I really think the situation calls for a bit of clarity—more explanation on how he got from “there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president,” to now, where she is looking at the top 20 percent.

Postcript: I see that Kevin Miller picks up on the point in the DeLong comments (link).

Outsourced: On Obama, Huckabee, etc.

The Wichita bureau does my thinking for me this morning:

Obama remains too green. Dowd makes the point that he really didn’t see the Clinton high-low block coming. He’s too thin skinned. If we need an official visionary, he’s our guy. If we need a tough decision maker with the right connections, it’s Hillary. She brings her own biases and pent up grudges but she ain’t thin skinned. Brittle perhaps.

And if Bill doesn’t really love her, he sure can fake the anger. Pick on my wife, you $%&!. Where’s my horsewhip. Or better still, cane him on the street. (Old Washington custom, caning.)

Yes, that gets it nicely. A defining moment for me was when he snubbed Hillary at the State of the Union. What do you think this is buddy, a junior prom? You'll need to deal with that woman when she is majority leader in the Senate.

Wichita also weighs in on my current fascination, the Huckster:

I think that McCain would make a serious if not fatal error in picking Huckabee as VP. I might be able to vote for McCain if the spare were acceptable; Huckabee is not. He represents a minority in the Republican party and the machine in Washington would eat him. Or simply let him loose on some of his silly issues (evolution, the poor) and make the decisions some where else. He alone of the field does not seem to have the connections to put together a team of experts to run the government.

Well put again. I guess what continues to fascinate me about Huckabee is that genuine likeability, coupled with gobsmacking ignorance. He charms the birds off a tree and the next time you look, he's talking about adding lanes to I-95. Ironic that it leaves me rooting for the one Republican for whom I have the most personal contempt--the one whose hair doesn't move in a high wind, but who has sufficient lack of prnciple that he might actually run a half-way decent government.