Out Today

I'm sick today. Back tomorrow.

Mark

South Africa's Gamble

Voters in Zimbabwe are at the polls today, and they've only got one presidential candidate to vote for. That would be president Robert Mugabe. The onetime freedom fighter has turned into a despot, most of the world says. The leader of the main opposition party in the country has taken refuge in the Dutch embassy. Mugabe ignored calls by several of his neighbors to put off the vote. How, you might ask, does this man manage to stay in power despite worldwide condemnation?

Some might argue it's done through sheer force of arms. There are reports of political killings throughout the country, most attributed to Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party. Yet there's another player in the grim battle for control of the country once known as Rhodesia. South Africa, Zimbabwe's most powerful neighbor, seems to have taken on the role of Mugabe's enabler. It's South Africa and it's president, Thabo Mbeki, who have worked hardest at blocking international action against the Mugabe government.

Mbeki firmly believes that diplomacy, not condemnation, will save Zimbabwe. He and his team are apparently working feverishly to negotiate a political end to the violence that's wracked the country. Indeed, Thabo Mbeki says it was largely through his country's efforts that the first presidential election back in March took place at all.

Mbeki is counting on his 28 year friendship with Mugabe to make diplomacy work. He now even stands at odds with his predecessor, Nelson Mandela, who bemoaned Zimbabwe's "tragic failure of leadership". He will soon have to get off the dime of quiet diplomacy. Put simply, it's not working. An election with one candidate standing is no election at all.

It's time Thabo Mbeki sees Robert Mugabe for who he is.     

A Delicate Dance

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have buried the hatchet in the political sense. She's endorsed him, and will be on the stump with the presumptive nominee tomorrow in New Hampshire. Behind the scenes, however, negotiations are ongoing to determine everything from Hillary's role at the Democratic National Convention to who pays for her travel when she's out campaigning on his behalf.

Anyone who hasn't been on ice for the past six months knows just how contentious the primary season was between these two. Word is, Bill Clinton can't let go of those primary battles, and his role moving forward is still to be determined. It's symbolic of how this high stakes game is being played that high powered lawyer Robert Barnett has been brought in to hash out details. He's brokered book deals for Obama, and both Clintons.

While Obama has asked his big donors to help the Clinton campaign pay off debt, he's indicated he won't be asking smaller donors to do likewise. His aides say further that there's only so far he's likely to go, given his desire to raise record sums for the general election.

With so much at stake, look closely at the body language of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as they stump together tomorrow. There will be ample opportunity, since there's little else for those cable news operations in 24 hour mode to cover. 

That body language should speak as loudly as anything the two of them have to say. 

 

Revisiting the Politics of Fear

So Charlie Black, John McCain's foreign policy advisor, made a serious mistake this week. He was candid with Fortune magazine in saying a terror attack on US soil would help his guy. He also said the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan may have been an "unfortunate event", but it helped McCain in New Hampshire.

Charlie Black was saying something the McCain camp has been trying to promote in a more artful way. That is, their man is better suited to keep the nation safe from terror. Despite McCain's disavowal of Black's blunt assessment, and Black's own regrets, this will be a recurring theme in the battle for the White House.  And why not? It's worked before. 

The GOP ran with the Osama bin Laden tape that appeared less than 100 hours before the 2004 presidential election. Again, it gave their man the ability to tout his national security credentials. Even McCain himself was quoted as saying the tape was "very helpful" to President Bush. Since they seem to have little else to use as a wedge issue this time around, why not use national security?

However, the politics of fear may be doomed to failure this time around. It could well be trumped by the politics of change as articulated by Barack Obama. Yet there are still some who worry that some event, either inside or outside the US, will refocus the nation's attention on whether we are truly safe. The possibility of an Israeli military attack against Iran comes quickly to mind.

Something like that happens, the politics of fear will make a comeback.  

McCain the Environmentalist?

John McCain has suggested a new national prize: $300 million dollars to anyone who can build better car battery. No doubt the high cost of gasoline at the pump is driving the Arizona senator's concern for revolutionizing the auto industry. The battery he'd reward would have to trump both plug-in hybrids and electric cars. The winner would also have to deliver power at 30% of current costs. 

This, McCain says, would break the back of US dependence on oil. He may be right about that, but how then does he explain his speech last week in Houston where he dropped his opposition to offshore oil drilling? Is there one strategy for oil rich Texas, and another for more green friendly California, where he made his battery challenge?

McCain has also called for improved enforcement of fuel economy standards. That too makes sense, until you look at his voting record in the Senate. He's voted against improving those same standards. It would appear McCain is late to the table as an auto crusader. He's criticized Barack Obama for supporting subsidies for corn based ethanol, while at the same time saying he now supports the fuel because gas prices are so high. 

Weaning America from dependence on fossil fuels should not be the function of the price of gas. This country would make a grave mistake if in the unlikely event that prices fell, the calls for alternative fuels ceased or were put on the back burner. 

Then where will John McCain be?

A Promise Broken?

Although most Americans won't notice it, Barack Obama's decision to abandon public financing for the general election comes with some risks. First, it opens him up to charges of hypocrisy. Wasn't this the same guy who promised to negotiate an agreement by which he'd accept public money, and the restrictions that go with it?

To be sure, there are a number of reasons why Obama would be the first candidate to opt out of the public finance system since the system was set up. First, he's proven to be an extraordinary fundraiser. From the beginning of the race through the end of April, Barack Obama raised an astonishing $266 million dollars. A good deal of that money came from small donors. Some are estimating he'll raise even more to run against John McCain. With that kind of fundraising acumen, why limit yourself to what you get from public financing?

Obama also knows the money he'll raise will serve a second purpose. It will make McCain spend his more limited resources in places he might not otherwise. That fits nicely with DNC chair Howard Dean's 50 state strategy, one the Democrats have avoided the past two election cycles. 

Yet Obama knows he must first weather the political heat for his decision. That heat will come from good government groups and Republicans who see a political opportunity. Today he releases his fundraising report for May.

That means this story has least one more news cycle left.

The Rush to Drill

You've got to give it to the Republicans. They know how to try to exploit an issue, and they're not above using half truths or untruths to make their point. Take, for example, the new push to lift the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, coupled with trying to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or ANWR. The GOP knows there's nothing quite like the recent spike in the price of gas at the pump to push an agenda like this, and that's just what they're doing.

For President Bush, the offshore drilling represents a reversal of a previously held position. No problem. It also means he's asking for the overturning of a ban his father extended when he was president. No matter. Bush and his friends in Congress continue to push the notion that offshore and ANWR oil drilling will provide immediate help for Americans at the pump.

They all know better. All this drilling is speculative at best, and the risk for spills and other accidents remains high (see Katrina and Rita). And then there's the fairy tale about China. Somehow, the Republican talking point memo spewed the argument that China was already drilling off the coast of Florida, courtesy of an agreement with Cuba. No such drilling is taking place, but that hasn't stopped conservative "experts" from going on cable news shows and perpetuating the myth. Once a talking point, always a talking point.

The real solution to America's problems at the pump will come not from drilling, but from starting to end, once and for all, this country's dependence on fossil fuels. That involves, among other things, good old American ingenuity.

We haven't run out of that, have we?    

America Safer?

So now John McCain is trying to nail Barack Obama with the old September 10th trick. This was first tried against Democrats by none other than Karl Rove. You may remember that in early '06 Rove said the GOP has a post 9/11 view of the world, while the Democrats had a pre-9/11 view. Yeah, that worked. Eleven months later the Republicans lost control of both houses of Congress. McCain won't fare much better using the argument on Obama.

His people argue Obama has a naive view of the enemies America faces. The rationale? Obama had the nerve to argue the nation can crack down on terrorists using (believe it or not) the American legal system. He contrasted the indefinite detention of detainees at Guantanamo Bay with the successful prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.

The Illinois senator also favored the Supreme Court ruling that allowed detainees to challenge their imprisonment in US courts. McCain called it one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Yet here is where Obama wins the argument. Detaining those folks at GITMO hasn't brought the US one step closer to apprehending the one person everyone acknowledges is responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks. That would be Osama bin Laden. In fact, he may die of old age if current efforts under this administration to find him continue unchanged.

That doesn't even take into account the human cost of the Iraq war, which was initially justified as an extension of the effort to smash al-Qaeda. That, by the way, is a war McCain continues to support.

So exactly who doesn't understand the threat to America? 

Want Fewer Deadbeat Dads? Read On!

If Barack Obama accomplished anything with his speech on deadbeat dads Sunday, it was hopefully to create a national conversation on the issue. So.....Here's my two cents. If you want to start the process of making good, caring fathers more prevalent, let's start with the notion this isn't just a black problem. Yes, folks, white dads can be deadbeats too. That makes it an American problem. 

Then, let's look at how the country has dealt with other problems, say, the issue of smoking. America has gone from acceptance to tolerance to intolerance to outright rejection of cigarettes. People who smoke are viewed as a negative exception, no longer the rule. How did this happen? By the skilled use of media, specifically, media aimed at young people.

Think about how that would work if the goal was to spread the concept of responsible fatherhood. Public service announcements could be created that showed young men rejecting their peers who don't support their children. Young women would refuse to date young men for the same reason. These are themes that transcend race, and while the results wouldn't be seen overnight, eventually the message would sink in.

If we're serious about responsible fatherhood (and motherhood, for that matter), speeches may well be the first step. Action should be next.

Obama Pivots

His appearance at a Chicago church wasn't well publicized. It wasn't even on the church's Website. Yet Barack Obama's Father's Day address at Chicago's Apostolic Church of God made headlines. First, Obama chose not to speak at the church he just left, Trinity United. Second, he picked a hot button topic, the need for fathers, especially black fathers, to step up and be more responsible. 

The theme isn't new. Bill Cosby has received both praise and criticism for his remarks on the subject. Obama himself has brought it up before. Yet there was new resonance in his words this time. He is now, after all, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. "Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a father", says Obama. He used his own experiences as a child and a father to drive the point home.

The effect of his words on fathers themselves will be tough to gauge. Demanding that any group take responsibility for their actions doesn't solve much in the short term. However, politically, it was a brilliant stroke. How better to make yourself known to a skeptical public than to talk about your own less than perfect background? Obama knows about the effect of absentee fathers because he had one. He even went so far as to say he's an imperfect father himself.

Black folks know what Barack Obama was talking about. Let's see how others respond.

Tax Wars

In case you aren't already aware, we're beginning to enter a "fallow" period in political coverage. The presidential nominees of both parties are set, and the national conventions are still a couple of months away. Congress will soon be in recess, so there won't even be much inside the Beltway chatter to report on. Why else would taxes, something most Americans hate but hate to talk about, come center stage?

Barack Obama and John McCain have spent the better part of this week beating each other up over their tax proposals. This is better than questioning each others' patriotism, or who wears a flag lapel pin, but it still makes peoples' heads hurt. McCain is trying hard to paint Obama as just another "tax and spend liberal". Problem is, McCain's tax proposal sounds an awful lot like the one person he's trying to run away from, President Bush.

A non partisan group has studied both plans, and says (no surprise here) that neither is perfect. However, there is some food for thought. Obama's plan would actually reduce taxes on the middle class, that is, families earning from $37,000 to $66,000 dollars. The reduction would be just over $1000. John McCain's plan would also lower taxes for the same group, but only by $319 dollars. In fact, the biggest beneficiaries of McCain's proposal would be those making $2.8 million dollars a year and up.

McCain's people argue that the analysis by the Tax Policy Center is flawed, but as mentioned, the group is non partisan. McCain argues Obama wants the greatest tax increase since World War II. The Tax Policy Center says that's an exaggeration. Republicans have used taxes like a bludgeon against a succession of Democrats, state and national.

McCain may have to find something else.   

Under the Bus, Part 1

So Vice Presidential vetter Jim Johnson was the first to be thrown under the bus by the Obama campaign as it pivots toward the general election. Johnson, the consummate Washington insider, quit his volunteer role after non stop slagging by Republicans over sweetheart mortgage deals he got from the very toxic lender Countrywide Financial. He quit the day after Obama himself tried to downplay the controversy.

All of this should come as no surprise. Countrywide has, rightly or wrongly, been intimately associated with the current mortgage mess. And average Americans wish they could get a sweetheart mortgage just like Jim Johnson did. He should have stepped down, and he did. The incident, however, is instructive for other reasons.

For one, the Republicans found an opening, and wouldn't let go of it. Never mind that Dick Cheney was part of Bush's vetting process back in 2000, and found the best person for the VP job was....(trumpets please) himself! We all know how that turned out. Yet Obama stuck with Johnson for precisely one news cycle. When his campaign realized the story wasn't going away, Johnson did. The speed with which all this happened is an acknowledgment of a new political landscape in America.

No appointment will go without scrutiny. No opportunity to skewer the other side will be missed. And, most importantly, no one will be allowed to become a distraction from the goal of winning the White House.

That goes for Obama and McCain. We'll see who's next to get thrown under the bus. 

Big Brown Letdown

Being out of town this past steamy weekend, and with little else to do before going out to dinner, the wife and I decided to watch the Belmont Stakes on tv. My wife isn't much of a racing fan, what with questions about the treatment of the horses and all. However, it wasn't long before we realized that television had turned at least two hours prior to the race into an infomercial for the favorite, Big Brown. He was, we were told, on the cusp of making history. After all, no horse had won the Triple Crown in 30 years.  

We were then treated to story after story about the horse, his jockey, his jockey's son, his trainer, his trainer's daughter (I'm not making this up), all in the name of building up to this historic mile and a half race. The other horses in the race? Mere fodder for Big Brown's ambition. They were given cursory introductions, and not much more. At one point, I looked at my wife and we both wondered what would happen to this overdriven hype machine if Big Brown lost the race. Then what would they cover?

We got our answer. Big Brown, seemingly positioned in third to overtake the leader Da' Tara, simply ran out of gas in the stretch. The horse finished dead last, the first Derby and Preakness winner to do so. Okay, so what does the media do after a 38-1 shot wins the race from start to finish? Do they focus on the extraordinary upset of Da' Tara? Nope. They spend virtually the entire post race coverage on what went wrong with Big Brown. In fact, it seemed an eternity before they actually had a single shot of Da' Tara in the Winner's Circle.

All this is to say what people saw in the coverage of the Belmont Stakes is all that's wrong with media in the early 21st century. A pre-written script with an unscripted ending turned out to be no script at all.

Worst of all, there will be no lessons learned.

Game On!

John McCain may not be the greatest orator presidential politics has seen, but he sure knows how to take advantage of an opportunity. He didn't wait for the dust to settle after Barack Obama's history making claim on the Democratic presidential nomination to ask for a series of town hall meetings across the country.

For McCain, the timing couldn't have been better. Obama was (and still is) dealing with the fallout from Hillary Clinton's long, drawn out exit from the race. So McCain sends a letter proposing 10 such meetings, with both candidates criss-crossing America together, as John Kennedy and Barry Goldwater agreed to do back in 1963.

The proposal was also structured to play to McCain's strong suits, and away from Obama's. McCain thrives in unscripted, unstructured environments while Obama does best giving speeches. The Arizona senator's camp also realizes that Obama will have trouble claiming to be the candidate of change if he backs away from this challenge. Ten such meetings before election day, an average of two per month, constricts Obama's schedule, making him tethered to McCain not just for the meetings, but the time it takes to get to them.

No doubt about it, this is an interesting gambit, one that you have to admire, even as it appears certain Obama won't bite. For him, a smart move would be a counterproposal that cuts down on the number of town hall meetings McCain wants, and sets a schedule the Illinois senator can live with.

Nice try, though.   

The Case of the Vanishing Leverage

Barack Obama made history last night. John McCain gave a tepid speech to a half empty room in Louisiana. And Hillary Clinton? Well, she was Hillary being Hillary. Her "I'll be making no decisions tonight" line was an exercise in delusion. The decision was made for her, and she knew it. So just who does she think is still asking what does Hillary want?

As Obama soared last night, Hillary simply engaged in cheap theatrics. If she's trying to use her refusal to concede as leverage for whatever she does want, she could find herself out in the cold. The Clintons, both of them, are watching their clout in the Democratic Party vanish before their very eyes. From her "I won the popular vote" mantra, to the disingenuous use of a congressional supporter to re-float her vice presidential aspirations to her demand that her supporters be respected, Hillary Clinton did not distinguish herself yesterday.

Barack Obama has a number of well qualified people he can choose as his running mate. Many people have gone back and forth as to whether picking Hillary Clinton would work politically. I am one of them. After last night, however, the decision appears clear. Barack Obama should look elsewhere, to Jim Webb, to Sam Nunn, to Janet Napolitano, to some one worthy to be the vice presidential nominee.

It's now clear Hillary Clinton is not that person.      

The End of the Road

With today's primaries in Montana and South Dakota, a long, winding, and tortuous road finally ends for the Democratic Party. No matter what Hillary Clinton's people say about waiting, her scheduled speech in New York tonight could well be the last one we hear from her as a candidate. And make no mistake, she's been a flawed candidate.

Her run against Barack Obama has stained her legacy, and that of her husband with a constituency the Democrats can't afford to alienate, black voters. Ironically, it wasn't that she was determined to see the race to the finish that bothered people, it was the way she conducted her campaign. When her people finally realized that Super Tuesday wouldn't be the coronation they thought, there was no back-up plan worth talking about.

That's when the Clintons, both of them, decided to pull out all the stops. Changing staff, flogging the media, and in the end, naked appeals to white working class voters and demands to the DNC rules committee all failed to stop Barack Obama. Even her late season victories did little more than provide a road map to the Obama campaign as to the work they still need to do.

It was all so strange, and so unnecessary. Still to be determined is how Hillary exits, and how hard she and her husband work to get a fellow Democrat elected in November.

Time will tell.  

Back To You, Bill!

While the wonks focus on whether Hillary Clinton's campaign is over now that the Rules and Bylaws Committee has made their decision and Puerto Rico's voters made theirs, a new distraction appears in the form of an exhaustive piece in Vanity Fair about former President Clinton. Written by Todd Purdim, the article chronicles Bill Clinton's strange journey through his wife's campaign, and a whole lot more.

The piece so upset Bill Clinton's people that they've circulated a response of more than 2000 words! There are efforts to refute, point by point, some of its central assertions. Purdim's piece, using a number of anonymous sources, details some of Clinton's questionable associations, statements, and behavior that go back even before the current election cycle. By way of full disclosure, Purdim mentioned he's married to former Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers, but said she wasn't a source.

No matter. Despite refusing to talk to Purdim, the Clinton camp  hinted Myers, given her close proximity to Purdim during off hours, must have told him something. They even went so far as to chronicle the alleged past sins of Vanity Fair. Something much have touched a nerve. And all this as Hillary continues to play out the string, trying to turn a win in Puerto Rico into an upset the likes of which has never been seen in American politics.

These are strange days, indeed.