I’m back.

Now that I’m back on American soil, time to establish some ground rules: discussion of Hillary Clinton’s husband and his scandals and errors and foibles are completely off-limits for the discussion of her presidential campaign, as she is a completely separate entity from her husband, and it’s not like she’s grabbing him and walking arm-in-arm with him every time she needs to shore up her support with African-Americans…. oh, wait, she is, never mind.

By the way, poor Hillary. She, Bill, and Obama are featured in the photo of the day, on the front page of the New York Times with John Lewis on one arm and her husband on the other… and behind her some guy’s holding up a poster of the Time magazine cover with Obama’s face and the headline, “The Next President?”

I suppose it could have been worse for Hillary. Someone could have held up an issue of National Review.

It’s moving week, so updates will be a little less frequent… but I will spotlight this news from Quinnipiac, which raised my eyebrows.

Widening his lead in the 2008 presidential race in New Jersey, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani tops New York Sen. Hillary Clinton 50 – 41 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.  Arizona Sen. John McCain ties Sen. Clinton 45 – 45 percent.

This compares to a 48 – 41 percent Giuliani lead over Clinton in a January 25 New Jersey poll by the independent Quinnipiac University. In that survey, McCain had 44 percent to Clinton’s 43 percent. 

In this latest survey, independent voters back Giuliani 55 – 34 percent over Clinton; Giuliani also gets 91 percent of Republicans and 15 percent of Democrats.   In a McCain-Clinton matchup, independents back the Republican 50 – 37 percent; McCain also gets 83 percent of Republicans and 10 percent of Democrats.

In other possible 2008 matchups:

Giuliani tops Obama 50 – 39 percent;
Obama edges McCain 45 – 41 percent.

…In a Democratic primary matchup, Clinton gets 41 percent, with 19 percent for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, 10 percent for former Vice President Al Gore, 5 percent for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and 3 percent for Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden.

Giuliani leads a Republican primary with 58 percent, followed by McCain with 15 percent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with 5 percent and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 2 percent.

Interesting…

I’m as fascinated by the headline, “Blacks Shift To Obama, Poll Finds” as the next guy. 

But the poll has the detail:

“This Washington Post-ABC News poll was conducted by telephone February 22-25, 2007, among a random national sample of 1082 adults, including an oversample of 86 black respondents.”

Hmm. As of July 1, 2005, the estimated population of black residents in the United States, including those of more than one race, made up 13.4 percent of the total U.S. population. By my back of the envelope calculation, if the sample of 1082 adults perfectly matched the U.S. population proportions by race, 145 respondents would be African-American.

Just 145? (Remember, the 86 oversamples – additional calls made to reach a particular demographic - are included in the national sample.) Is that the number of respondents who prompted this analysis:

Clinton’s and Obama’s support among white voters changed little since December, but the shifts among black Democrats were dramatic. In December and January Post-ABC News polls, Clinton led Obama among African Americans by 60 percent to 20 percent. In the new poll, Obama held a narrow advantage among blacks, 44 percent to 33 percent. The shift came despite four in five blacks having a favorable impression of the New York senator.

A sample of 145 (or even a little more) isn’t a small one, but it’s not exactly huge, either. A sample size of 200 results in a margin of error of 7 percent (at a 95 percent level of confidence); a sample size of 100 results in a margin of error of 10 percent.

From last month, Obama is up 24 percent, Hillary is down 23 percent. Any way you slice it, that’s a significant shift. But one can’t help but wonder if 145 respondents is enough to justify a page A1 headline, “Blacks Shift To Obama, Poll Finds.”

Over at the American Spectator, Philip Klein notes a reference to “the 9/11 card” in New York magazine and observes that one of the primary fault lines between the parties is whether they think our national response to the threat of al-Qaeda demonstrated on that day has been appropriate (or perhaps even insufficient!) or whether they think we have reacted wildly and recklessly.

I have always argued that one of the biggest dangers we face is that as the years go by without a terrorist attack on American soil, and as the costs of fighting terrorism mount, people will want to return to the days when we treated terrorism as a “managable” threat. Of course, it would be a huge mistake to point to the absence of attacks that have been the result of increased vigilance against terrorism as an excuse to return to the lax attitude that brought us 9/11 in the first place. 

The 2008 election, I believe, will hinge on this very issue. Do we want to return to the days when terrorism was a part of political life, but not the central part, or do we want to remain committed to aggressively battling jihadists? That’s why I think the election will come down to Obama vs. Giuliani–both of them are the purest representatives of each point of view. Liberals will argue that they’re every bit as committed to defeating terrorism as conservatives, only smarter about it. But underlying all of their arguments is a mocking attitude toward those of us who believe that the war on terrorism is worth fighting–they believe that conservatives are wildly exaggerating the threat of terrorism and Islamism and that we are overly obsessed with 9/11.

I know which side I think is right; but I also know that recent events like the 2006 election suggest that at least a small majority of the country might disagree with me.

Think about it – the Taliban tried to assassinate Cheney yesterday. Could you imagine if that had occurred in 2002? The snarky too-bad-they-missed comments on Huffington Post would be considered too tasteless for public comment. As mentioned in the Corner yesterday, there would be serious discussion in Congress about how best to strike back at Taliban interests in Pakistan. (As our new DNI said yesterday, Pakistan is where the real fight is going on these days.) Heck, had this happened a few years back, Toby Keith would be working on a song about it.

Today, the standard comment after any terror warning is a suspicious “I question the timing.” The color-coded homeland security system is widely derided as a joke, and we seem permanently stuck on “yellow with spots of orange.” When they foiled the plot to bomb airliners in London last summer, some folks honestly charged the whole thing was a hoax designed to distract from Ned Lamont’s victory in the Connecticut senatorial primary.

As of this moment, a Rudy vs. Obama showdown seems believable, and I’m not certain that the country wouldn’t be sorely tempted by an Obama presidency under that scenario. To Joe Voter, why not choose a man who is completely unassociated with the 9/11 attacks, and who goes on and on about this warm, friendly, “audacity of hope”, compared to a man who reminds us of one of our darkest days?

And yet… this all presumes that our life continues as “normal,” the way it is today. If we’re digging bodies out of a pile of rubble in the middle of one of our great cities, will the country be as eager to give the new guy a try just because he’s so charismatic? If we’re afraid of inhaling poison in our mailboxes, will John Edwards look like he’s the man who can take commend in a crisis?

For that matter, will Rudy, McCain, or Mitt? Or anybody else?

That is the supreme gamble that every candidate is making as they position their candidacies for 2008. Come Election Day next year, will we have the same priorities then as we do now?

I can’t believe I missed this detail in the New York Times last week:

In a telephone interview Thursday, Mr. Obama said he had not been aware beforehand of the statement his campaign had put out Wednesday morning responding to the public demand by Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s hard-driving senior communications adviser, that Mr. Obama denounce Mr. Geffen and return the money he had raised.

Mr. Obama said he had been on a red-eye flight, getting a haircut and taking his daughters to school as the fight broke out, and strongly suggested he had told his aides he wanted to stay above the fray.

“I told my staff that I don’t want us to be a party to these kinds of distractions because I want to make sure that we’re spending time talking about issues,” Mr. Obama said. “My preference going forward is that we have to be careful not to slip into playing the game as it customarily is played.”

Obama’s campaign didn’t clear their statement with the candidate? He had no idea this was going on?

(That’s a shame, since I thought “oh, give me a break, Geffen was once one of your best buds” was the quickest, best jab anyone had thrown at the Clintons in a long time.)

Kos is gloating. “Still, Obama didn’t smack down Gibbs private, he did so publicly, in about the highest-profile publication in the country (and its front page). That’s called “sending a message”.”

Smart Washington Guy pipes up: “Obama is either disconnected from the campaign or his own staff. More importantly, here’s a guy willing to throw one of his own people under the bus in the New York Times. He looks not ready for prime time.”

Alternate theory, with nothing to back it up right now: Obama wanted to take the shot, but not risk scuffing his Mr. Clean Messiah image, so he attributes the jab to those darn rogue staffers.

Word is, if you raise $300,000 for Hillary’s campaign, you, too can enjoy some private time with Bill Clinton. And, as either a bonus or a drawback… no Hillary.

A top supporter of Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign tells Election Central that former President Bill Clinton is hosting a series of private gatherings of elite donors designed to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars a pop for his wife’s President campaign.

And here’s the unusual thing about these big-ticket events: Hillary isn’t at them. The main attraction is the former President — Bill, Bill, and only Bill…

“Her gathering are meant to raise maximum dollars in front of maximum crowds,” the Hillary backer tells us. “His are much smaller, but the threshold amount of money to attract him is around $300,000. He’s a major fundraising vehicle for her. It’s a way of attracting significant additional money at smaller events where people can have intimate conversations with the former President.”

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson confirmed that the former President was conducting the events but was unable to say whether they were attracting such dollar amounts.

The top Hillary backer added: “They’ll call her fundraisers and say, `If you can bring together contributions in the $300,000 vicinity, and we can find an opening in President Clinton’s calendar, then we can put something together.’ Or they’ll say, `I’ve got the President on this or that date for an hour and a half — can you raise $300,000 for it?’”

Raising $300,000 a pop, huh? We know that the donors can’t just write a check for that amount. The current maximum is $2,100 for a primary and $2,100 for a general election. So every attendee of these “private chats with Bill” meetings must have, by my back-of-the-envelope calculation, found 72 donors willing to give the maximum.

The charge against undeclared but widely mentioned potential presidential candidate Al Gore, from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research:

Gore’s mansion, located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

The defense, as told to Think Progress. 

1) Gore’s family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.

2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family’s carbon footprint — a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore’s office explains:

What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore’s do, to bring their footprint down to zero.

It’s great that Al is installing solar panels and fluorescent bulbs, but according to Tennessee Power, his usage is still going up. The number’s going in the wrong direction, buddy.

I’m in complete agreement with Captain Ed. Gore’s claim that he’s no eco-sinner because he purchasing “carbon offsets” essentially means that rich people can pay for other people to plant trees on their behalf; poor people don’t have that option. And by the way – how many trees is Al having planted on his behalf to offset 18,400 kWh per month? That’s gotta be a heck of a lot of trees.

(HT: Instapundit.)

On a related note, when trying to determine if Gore is serious about running, David Frum says, “follow the waistline.”

It’s not the most earth-shattering scandal, but it certainly doesn’t look good for Hillary to forget to list the family charity that she helps head on annual Senate financial disclosure reports for the past five years.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former president Bill Clinton have operated a family charity since 2001, but she failed to list it on annual Senate financial disclosure reports on five occasions.

The Ethics in Government Act requires members of Congress to disclose positions they hold with any outside entity, including nonprofit foundations. Hillary Clinton has served her family foundation as treasurer and secretary since it was established in December 2001, but none of her ethics reports since then have disclosed that fact.

The foundation has enabled the Clintons to write off more than $5 million from their taxable personal income since 2001, while dispensing $1.25 million in charitable contributions over that period.

Clinton’s spokesman said her failure to report the existence of the family foundation and the senator’s position as an officer was an oversight. Her office immediately amended her Senate ethics reports to add that information late yesterday after receiving inquiries from The Washington Post.

Perhaps the most interesting sections came here:

One Arkansas recipient was the Diane Blair Foundation. Diane Blair is the late wife of James Blair, the businessman who helped Hillary Clinton with controversial commodities trades in the late 1970s that netted her about $100,000. There are two foundations in Diane Blair’s name. One is a private family charity; the other funds a center for the study of Southern politics at the University of Arkansas.

The Clintons’ tax form indicates the money went to the private charity, but James Blair said in an interview yesterday that the Clintons “miscoded” the entry. The check actually went to the university fund, he said.

“She was Hillary’s closest friend,” Blair said of his wife, who died in June 2000.

Ah, cattle futures! Boy, I’ll bet that takes a lot of us back. Whitewater hearings, mysteriously disappearing and reappearing documents in the White House, papers disappearing from Vince Foster’s office… good times, good times.

I notice an observation at Slate that doesn’t quite add up from Bruce Reed, who was President Clinton’s domestic policy adviser, and is president of the Democratic Leadership Council:

Gravel Pit: For the political press, this week’s shootout between the Clinton and Obama campaigns was as intoxicating as a hunter’s first whiff of gunpowder on Opening Day. The Hotline dubbed it “Slash Wednesday.” The tabloids went Postal. The only way to make Roger Ailes happier would have been to let Maureen Dowd referee a Mark Penn/David Axelrod Jello-wrestling match on pay-per-view.

As a card-carrying Clintonite, I tend to agree with John Dickerson that Round 1 went to Clinton. But there’s an easy way for everyone in the field to come away a winner: Don’t bother having a Round 2.

Hm. If the fight was such a win for Hillary and such a loss for Obama, why the strong desire to see it stop?

Reed argues that the fight serves none of the candidates well, that they’re better off discussing the issues, etc. But Geffen’s charge hit at a couple of issues — who President Clinton chose to pardon and who he didn’t; when the Clintons are willing to do what’s unpopular if they believe it is right; and the character issue. As another Slate writer put it:

Note to Hillary: Your husband cheated on you and was fined $90,000 for lying about it to a federal judge. [Insert by Jim: And he had his law license suspended for several years, didn't he?] Everybody thinks he’s still cheating on you. Your fellow Democrats are tolerant, but they wonder what the deal is. That isn’t the “politics of personal destruction.” It’s due diligence.

This sort of issue is going to come up again and again. For Edwards, making the pitch to the party’s base, the line of criticism is going to be “You can’t trust Hillary, she compromises too much, she supports whatever is popular, even conservatie proposals like banning violent video games and flag burning.” For Obama, a potentially powerful line of criticism will be, “Weren’t you tired of politics as it was practiced by the Clintons during the 1990s? Wasn’t it ugly, needlessly divisive, arrogant, and exhausting? Didn’t the Clintons repeatedly put you in the position of defending the indefensible? Wouldn’t we all prefer a break from the tired fights of the past?”

Word is Cheney is okay (and right now, CNN International is talking about Alan Greenspans’ comments, no word of any developments in Afghanistan). But Cheney’s somewhat near-miss with a suicide bomber is a reminder that our world – and the dominant issues of the campaign – can change in a New York minute.

I like the guys at the Politico, but sometimes one gets the feeling their headline writers are a little over-caffeinated.

The headline: Gore’s Oscar Fuels Call for Late Run

“Honestly, this was the inaugural parade we all envisioned,” said Donna Brazile, his former campaign manager. “Gore’s political stock is hot right now. I don’t know if I would cash in now with so many players still on stage. There’s no reason to force him to declare tomorrow.”

So actually, it sounds like she’s calling on him to wait until the “stage” is less crowded. In other quotes, I guess one could argue she’s calling on him to run – she says she opposed a run in 2004 – but is it terribly shocking that Brazile would be an enthusiast of a Gore candidacy? Couldn’t they find somebody who’s not a potential campaign employee to quote calling on Gore to run?

Friends who talk regularly with Gore say that he believes what he tells the press – that he’s not planning to run for president. Backstage on Sunday night, he repeated his mantra: “I do not have plans to become a candidate for office again.” No draft movement is being authorized or encouraged, and there are no internal discussions of a campaign, the friends insist. But they say he has deliberately not closed the door. It just doesn’t feel right to him and he’s only 58. So the crescendo will rise. Brazile, now the founder and managing director of Brazile and Associates, is neutral in the race but says she would work for Gore if he declared…

“The crescendo will rise”? I’m still waiting for the orchestra to warm up the overture. Or for the conductor to tap his baton. The closest thing to a person encouraging Gore to run quoted in the story is Leonardo DiCaprio, during his on-stage schtick with the former Vice President.

In a sign that we are rapidly approaching the Apocalypse of American Political Rhetoric, the Democratic National Committee has issued a press release quoting conservatives who generally support Rudy Giuliani, but acknowledge his flaws and weaknesses, and declared “Conservative Leaders Oppose Giuliani’s Candidacy.” 

Among the more egregious butchering of individuals’ quotes:

Frum Said Giuliani Can’t Win. Neoconservative David Frum, ex-speechwriter to President Bush, put it bluntly when asked about Giuliani’s shot at the nomination. “He has one obstacle in his way: the social conservatives. And he shouldn’t just assume he can get past it,” Frum said. [New York Daily News, 11/15/06]

 Klein Said Giuliani Victory Would Be Difficult. The American Spectator’s Philip Klein wrote that “a Giuliani victory would be difficult, not impossible.” [GayPatriot, 11/19/06]

Now, those of us with a verbal score above 200 on our SATs will notice that Frum did not say Rudy can’t win; he said he has an obstacle, and he shouldn’t just assume he can get past it. [And does anyone think for a moment that Giuliani is assuming he can get past social conservatives without reaching out to them?]

And Philip Klein is not happy, as he is one of Giuliani’s biggest fans in the blogosphere and the exact article that the quote is cited from stated, “In a unique time, America’s Mayor finds himself in prime position to win the presidency.” And what, exactly is surprising, about the statement that a victory would be difficult? Every presidential victory is difficult.

Thank you, DNC, for doing your part to obliterate honest discussion of politics in this country. Just as when you eagerly cited the comments of NRO contributors who pointed out the off-his-game performance of President Bush in the first debate of 2004, you have demonstrated that any time a Republican or right-of-center fellow acknowledges the flaws, weaknesses, or problems of their leaders, they will have it used against them and cited as a major scandal or blow to party unity in one of your rapid-response press releases, as if anyone’s mind has ever been changed by one of those.

Time for a contrarian note or two.

Patrick Ruffini, who I approvingly (and enviously) quote in the below post, titles his post “A Sign Gore Is Running?” and then wonders if the update to Gore’s web site is a sign that the former Vice President is getting ready to jump in the race. I think it’s just an attempt to maximize the benefits from last night’s Oscar win. The e-mail list can just as easily be used to send e-mails to buy the film on DVD as be urged to join the grassroots of a primary campaign.

Meanwhile David Remnick has written the love letter to end all love letters to Gore in the New Yorker.

In increasing numbers, poll results imply, Americans are disheartened by the real and existing Presidency, and no small number also feel regret that Gore—the winner in 2000 of the popular vote by more than half a million ballots, the almost certain winner of any reasonable or consistent count in the state of Florida—ended up the target of what it is not an exaggeration to call a judicial coup d’état. Justice Antonin Scalia routinely instructs those who question his vote in Bush v. Gore to stop their ceaseless whinging. “It’s water over the deck,” he told an audience at Iona College last month. “Get over it.” But it is neither possible nor wise to “get over it.” The historical damage is too profound.

Anyway – another striking sentence:

If only to take an honest man’s word for it, Gore’s entry into the race is unlikely. Clinton, Obama, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Joseph Biden, Christopher Dodd—the field already provides a pool of talent and a range of possibilities infinitely more encouraging than the status quo.

Yes, that’s what I’m yearning for: President Christopher Dodd. It was big of Remnick to leave Kucinich off the list.

In other news, the great Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics thinks John Edwards is losing his mojo in Iowa.

The numbers are a bit odd – an 8 point jump for Hillary in a month in Zogby’s poll? (Strategic Vision has smaller movement, but it’s away from Edwards and towards Hillary more than Obama. And Vilsack was already losing support.)

Perhaps by being one of the first ones in, perhaps Edwards becomes “old news” faster, and potential supporters forget about him/lose interest in him? Or perhaps it’s way too early to find anything meaningful in these polls.

I’d like to think that the Israel statements, the pictures of his mega-mansion, and the hiring, retaining, and resignation of the bloggers, etc., have hurt Edwards, but I’m skeptical. I’m just not used to Iowa Democrats reacting to news stories the same way I do.

I read two really interesting things this weekend. First, short details about Tom Vilsack, the first candidate to withdraw: He had 50 staffers in his Iowa headquarters, and had raised $1.1 million from Nov. 9 to Jan. 31, according to campaign finance reports, he had spent all but $396,000. (So he spent about $700,000 in three months? On what, air fare to New York City for the Daily Show?)

Second, from a reader of Mickey Kaus, a theory that Hillary Clinton has made a major error by declaring her campaign so early:

Obama panicked her into a way-too-early-announcement. The cause of the panic was fund-raising (poaching of presumed supporters), which is the least vulnerable aspect of her campaign. Basically, if she wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, she wins the nomination. The most she can spend in Iowa and New Hampshire is $20 million, every last dollar counted, including the surrounding states primary television advertising that will be seen in Iowa. So money is not her problem. Imagining that it was and therefore entering the race six-to-eight months before she needed to was a MAJOR mistake. Had she entered in August or September, the surge would have run its course successfully or not. The Iran issue would be that much further along. Pandemic flu would have hit or not hit. Etc. By announcing early, she brought into play a hundred unnecessary variables.

So – in the era of the two year campaign, this raises the question – how much money does a serious candidate need? How much money should a serious candidate spend?

And, darn it, Ruffini’s thinking along the same lines.

The only reason Vilsack gave for dropping out of the race was money. He had recruited a series of top-notch operatives (Democrat celebrity-consultants tend to gravitate towards the long-sots more than do the Republicans). He had a staff of 50 in his Des Moines headquarters and was promoting the fact that he had racked up 3,000 “ones” in Iowa — which is short for a diehard vote at the Caucus.

 

Vilsack was running a top-heavy, traditional campaign when only untraditional campaigns get to go from single digits to 20-30 percent. His model was just wrong…

 

If you’re at 1% in the polls, you have to prepared to do all of this for $5 million or less in 2007. If you can’t, you have no business running for President. Because the political marketplace just isn’t big enough to support your lofty $15-20 million fundraising goal. If and when lightning strikes, the money will be pouring in hand over fist online and in direct mail.

Bingo. In an era of a much longer campaign, candidates have to get a lot more careful about how they spend their money.

So here’s my thought about Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, and any other aspiring president who’s getting mentioned but who hasn’t actually declared their candidacy or formed an exploratory committee: Don’t bother with the official stuff. Just travel around the country, yourself and maybe one aide, speaking to audiences. Make the argument. Be the talking head, do the interviews. If asked if you’re running, say, “maybe, I’m thinking about it, but I haven’t decided yet.” If someone argues that it’s late, scoff and point out how ridiculously early the cycle has begun. If the candidate is racking up little or no expenses, there’s little or no need to compete in the pirahna pool of campaign fundraising at this moment.

And then, sometime this fall, when you’ve hopefully generated some free media, you jump into the race officially.

I’ve been having fun arguments with another expat out here about American campaigns; he wants America to adopt the British system of very short official campaigns. From one of my e-mailed rants to the Brit-style enthusiast:

There’s an aspect of “the early bird gets the worm” to this, and the widespread belief that the person who is out making appearances first has a head start on winning over voters. And since most candidates start out with zero name recognition, they have to establish their reputation among voters, and that takes time. I think that money that is being spent on the 2008 presidential race right now is being essentially wasted because only the diehard political junkies are paying attention. But it remains to be seen.

 

In 2004, Wes Clark was one of the last to announce his campaign, and by then the best staff had been picked over, etc. He had less time to build a campaign infrastructure, less time to familiarize himself with a diverse range of issues (his comments outside military policy were pretty weak), some voters had already committed to another candidate, etc. When the announcements started this cycle (Edwards in late December) nobody wanted to be too much later, because nobody wanted to be in Clark’s position – trying to make up ground.

 

When will people start their campaigns later? When they see no advantage to starting them early.

In this cycle, we may see other candidates dropping out well before the Iowa caucus. (“Simon says everyone still in the race in December take one step forward. Not so fast, Dodd and Biden.”) Right now, 50 Vilsack staffers are looking for work with other campaigns. A late entrant with enough buzz can assemble a pretty good staff from the folks who are unemployed from working on other short-lived campaigns. Or they can use up their funds to pry a Joe Trippi-type out of media work.

Least Shocking Headline In Recent Memory: Gore Wins Oscar

Second-Least Shocking Headline In Recent Memory: Hillary Could Carry Connecticut in 2008

Was any Republican presidential contender counting on putting Connecticut in play in the coming election?

Interestingly, in a McCain-Edwards matchup, McCain would carry the state in the Quinnipiac poll, a result I would not have predicted.

Dear Democratic Presidential candidates…

Please do not drop out of the race after I close up shop on the blog for the day. Like Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack just did.

It’s just… rude.

I knew I could count on Peggy Noonan to score the Hillary-Obama fight correctly.

Howard Wolfson, Mrs. Clinton’s spokesman and an emerging dark prince among political operatives–he is, in the strange way of Washington, admired by journalists for his ability to mislead them–quickly responded with a challenge: If Mr. Obama is a good man, he’ll renounce Mr. Geffen and give back the money he contributed in his famous Hollywood fund-raiser. This was widely considered a brilliant move. Is it? Now everyone who follows politics even cursorily will have to have an opinion on whether Mr. Obama should apologize, which means they’ll have to know exactly what Mr. Geffen said, which, again, boiled down, is: I’ve known them intimately for almost 20 years, and they’re bad people and bringers of trouble. It’s good for Mrs. Clinton that America is going to spend the weekend discussing this? It’s good that Mr. Geffen’s comments, which focused on the area on which she is most touchy and most vulnerable–the character issue–will be aired over and over again? Mr. Wolfson might have been better off with, “We’re sorry to hear it, as Mrs. Clinton thinks the world of David.”

Mrs. Clinton has never gone after a fellow Democrat quite the way she’s going after Mr. Obama, and it’s an indication of how threatened she is not only by his candidacy but, one suspects, his freshness. He makes her look like yesterday. He makes her look like the old slash-and-burn. I doubted he could do her serious damage. Now I wonder.

What Mrs. Clinton is trying to establish is this: to criticize her–to speak of her critically as a human being, as a person with a record and a history and a style and attitudes–is, ipso facto, to be dirty, and low, and destructive. To air and raise questions about who she is, how she operates, and what can be inferred from her past actions is by definition an unjust act.

But Americans have always–always–looked at and judged the character and personality of their candidates for president. And they have been right to do so. It mattered that Lincoln was Honest Abe, Washington had no personal lust for power, that FDR was an optimist and a manipulator, that Adams was a man of rectitude and no small amount of stubbornness. These facts, these aspects of their nature, had policy implications and leadership implications. They couldn’t be more pertinent. They still are.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. This knee-jerk invocation of deflecting all criticism with laments of “The Politics of Personal Destruction™” is the conversational equivalent of invoking cloture, an effort to cut off further debate and discussion.

It’s lame, it’s stupid, and it should not have worked for as long as it has. It has turned into an all-purpose deflective technique to avoid accountability and honest debate:

“Senator, why did you vote to raise taxes on middle-income families?”

“You know, I think Americans are tired of these kinds of personal attacks…”

Arrrrgh.

Strategic Vision, 600 likely Democratic cacus goers, aged 18+, and conducted February 16-18, 2007. The margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

John Edwards 24%
Hillary Clinton 18%
Barack Obama 18%
Tom Vilsack 14%
Joe Biden 5%
Bill Richardson 3%
Wesley Clark 2%
Chris Dodd 1%
Dennis Kucinich 1%
Undecided 14%

I should note that for all my disdain for Edwards, his path to the nomination seems surprisingly plausible. He’s ahead in Iowa; because of his close union ties he could/should win Nevada; he finished second in New Hampshire last time, and he could/should win South Carolina. One can see him finishing first or second in the first four primaries, and with that, getting some serious momentum and establishing himself as the Not Hillary or Not Obama candidate…

I suppose Barack Obama should have expected that he would come under fire from the netroots for hiring a spokesman who previously worked for a group that ran anti-Howard Dean ads back in 2003-2004.

Robert Gibbs was was spokesperson for John Kerry in 2003, and he worked under the direction of Jim Jordan. Both of them grew to detest Howard Dean, as they saw their frontrunner candidate slip in his position to Howard Dean over the year. For Jordan, it was a case of terrible strategic advice that he was fired, but he went on to position himself below the media production through in 2004 and did quite well. Robert Gibbs remained a spokesperson, but his next gig wasn’t Barack Obama until after Obama won the primary in 2004. Before that, Gibbs became the spokesman for a new group called “Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values”. A group that promptly created the most disgusting ad I’ve ever seen occur in a Democratic primary against Howard Dean.  

The ad (view the ad here [and YouTube]) slowly moved in on a Time Magazine cover featuring bin Laden, zooming in on a close-up of Osama’s eyes, while saying that Howard Dean was an unqualified Democratic candidate because of his lack of military or foreign experience.

Tricia Enright, who was the spokeswoman for Howard Dean at the time, summed the ad up best, saying: “Whoever is behind this should crawl out from underneath their rock and have the courage to say who they are.” But Robert Gibbs, who was the spokesman for the group, embraced the slime ad against Dean, and refused to say who had funded the ad. Now sure, you can say that Gibbs was just doing his job. But Gibbs wasn’t just aligned with the group, he was in the leadership. The group took seed money from crooked former Senator Robert Torricelli to get off the ground, and then went out and raised over a million to run the ad. Gibbs was one of three people that made that ad happen.

The criticism comes from Jerome Armstrong, who was the netroots guy for Mark Warner until he lost interest in the presidency. (I’m not even going to get into the astrology jokes.)

When somebody points out that John Edwards hired a blogger who’s frothing at the mouth about religious belief, daring a libel suit with the Duke Lacrosse team, and likes metaphorically poking Christians in the eye with Virgin Mary semen jokes, we’re told that criticism of Edwards is just plain McCarthyism. That holding Edwards accountable for hiring the bloggers was outrageous, a manifestation of the right-wing noise machine, a out-of-line smear (in the form of, um, quoting her) etc., blah blah blah…

But Obama’s spokesman working on an ad against Dean (and, presumably, for Kerry) from a bunch of years back…. that’s fair game. That’s a major issue that Obama ought to respond to right now.

Hmm. John Tabin of the American Spectator writes in, pointing out that the conventional wisdom that the Hillary-Obama tussle ended up with a win for Clinton may not be so set in stone.

Tabin:

Slate’s John Dickerson thinks that the Geffen episode was a misstep for Obama. I’m not so sure. It served to insert Obama into an event that was supposed to be about the candidates who showed up. And as Oscar Wilde observed, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

Indeed, as some bloggers would say. If Hillary doesn’t show up at a debate, she’ll be mentioned by one of the other candidates, and we saw Obama a topic of discussion this week. It’s hard to picture the absence of any other candidate being noticed by the rest of the field. 

Howard Kurtz:

But isn’t everyone buzzing about Geffen turning on the Clintons, not the degree to which Obama is responsible for Geffen popping off?

Margaret Carlson is going with the a-pox-on-both-their-houses response:

Geffen’s comments would be lining the kitty-litter box by now if the Clinton campaign hadn’t decided to make a federal case out of them. Communications director Howard Wolfson went ballistic, putting out a statement accusing Obama of the politics of personal destruction, calling on him to return the dough and cut loose Geffen for “viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband.’’

…If these two front-runners are going to go at each other over nothing, they may yet leave space for someone else to emerge.

Finally, Rich weighs in:

I suppose I agree with the CW that it was a mistake for Obama to be baited into responding to Hillary, but I’m not sure how much a pointed press statement is going to hurt his positive image in the long run and the usual rule of thumb in such things is that it is a mistake for a front-runner ever to “attack down” against a trailing candidate. The big beneficiary here is probably John Edwards, who might be able to come up the middle if there’s a bruising Hillary-Obama fight, just as he came up the middle in Iowa in 2004 when Dean and Gephardt pounded one another.

By next week, we will have moved on to another brouhaha, so I have my doubts about how much this incident will affect either candidate. But I’m less impressed with Hillary’s attempts at counterpunching than with Obama’s efforts to stay above the fray.

UPDATE: E.J. Dionne also prefers the they-both-lost and grow-up memes.

Because Clinton pulled her saintly opponent off his pedestal and made her new enemy Geffen into an Obama problem, she might be seen as the net winner. In truth, both campaigns showed they care a lot more about themselves than the causes (and the party) to which they claim to be devoted.

Isn’t it the distinctive trademark of an E.J. Dionne column that he uses the adjective “sainted” on a Democrat, and is neither sarcastic nor smirking?