Category Archives: Barack Obama

Is Romney the Republican Hillary?

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Even as Hillary Clinton is being criticized for going negative on Obama (and Obama is apparently making the most of it), as I try to clean up e-mail from the past week, I see a similar pattern starting to emerge over on the GOP side.

It’s a testament to Mike Huckabee’s rising status in recent days that, even before the Des Moines Register poll came out, he was under attack by Mitt Romney:

And as we know, THEM’S FIGHTIN’ WORDS among the sort of folk Romney is trying to win over (and trying to express that he is one of, which is the amusing part).

Of course, Romney wasn’t entirely alone in going after Iowa’s new front-runner. Here’s a release from Fred Thompson. Poor ol’ Fred just wants to get noticed these days, I suppose.

She Stoops to Conquer

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Clintonista Robert Reich is a little disappointed in his old friend Hillary, as he writes on his blog in a post headlined, "Why is HRC Stooping So Low?"

… Yesterday, HRC suggested O lacks courage. "There’s a big difference
between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we’re
willing to fight for," she told reporters in Iowa, saying Iowa voters
will have a choice "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody
who’s walked the walk." Then asked whether she intended to raise
questions about O’s character, she said: "It’s beginning to look a lot
like that."

I just don’t get it. If there’s anyone in the race
whose history shows unique courage and character, it’s Barack Obama.
HRC’s campaign, by contrast, is singularly lacking in conviction about
anything. Her pollster, Mark Penn, has advised her to take no bold
positions and continuously seek the political center, which is exactly
what she’s been doing.

All is fair in love, war, and politics.
But this series of slurs doesn’t serve HRC well. It will turn off
voters in Iowa, as in the rest of the country. If she’s worried her
polls are dropping, this is not the way to build them back up.

To the extent that he’s got a point, it’s related to the point I was making back here. Obama continues to be, by comparison to his chief rival, the guy who’s following the high road. And it seems to be paying off for him, finally.

Obama leading in Iowa, and for the Right Reason

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Obama_2008_democrats__wart3

Good news today out of Iowa, and I’m not just referring to the fact that Barack Obama has pulled ahead of Hillary Clinton. That fact in itself would not be all that much to cheer over; in some ways, I’m about as likely to prefer Hillary as I am Obama.

The good news is the reason that "conventional wisdom," as codified by the WSJ today, gives for his ascendance — his anti-partisan message:

DES MOINES, Iowa — A month before Iowa holds the
first contest of the 2008 presidential campaign, a newly energized Sen.
Barack Obama has opened a narrow lead here, but many Iowans in both
parties say they could change their minds in the next 30 days about
which candidate to support.
    Mr. Obama’s rising popularity was fueled by a fiery
speech three weeks ago in which he vowed to turn away from the partisan
battles of the Clinton-Bush years. That, plus the surprising strength
of his Iowa ground organization, is galvanizing his campaign.

That, as I’ve written before, speaks to my one great concern about Mrs. Clinton — that her nomination, much less her election, will doom us to more (if not an escalation) of the wasting Bush-Clinton Wars that have so polarized our nation. Mr. Obama, more than any other candidate in either party, has done the most to indicate his desire to be president of the whole country, not just partisan Democrats.

The WSJ traces Mr. Obama’s rise to the above-mentioned speech:

    The night of the dinner, he delivered a call for unity that tweaked Sen. Clinton as a polarizing figure, without naming her. "America, our moment is now," Sen. Obama thundered. "I don’t want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Red America against Blue America. I want to be the president of the United States of America."
    Rival campaign operatives sat there stone-faced. But some attendees put down their signs and thunder sticks for other candidates, jumped to their feet to cheer him on and grabbed Obama campaign materials as they streamed out of the arena.
    "Barack found his voice" that night, says Gordon Fischer, a longtime Iowa Democratic leader who recently decided to support Sen. Obama. "That’s when the man and the moment met."

This is promising.

Obama_2008_iowa_wart2

The senators’ excuses for being MIA on Mukasey

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Here is something I meant to post yesterday, but didn’t have time after I finally got the info I needed.

Friday morning, I was reading up on Mukasey’s confirmation the night before, when I noticed that not one of the senators running for president had recorded a vote. Since I still needed a topic for my Sunday column, I thought this might be it. I decided to put each of their campaigns on the spot, and write on the basis of the responses I got.

So I e-mailed contacts at each of the five campaigns. Under the heading, "Where was Sen. (blank)?" I wrote:

(contact name),

Why was Sen. (blank) (along with all the other presidential contenders)
recorded as "not-voting" on the Mukasey nomination last night? What was
more important? And what was the senator’s position on the question of
whether he should have been nominated?

— Brad

Unfortunately, the replies were slow coming in. The first was from B.J. Boling with John McCain at 11:51 a.m.:

Hi Mr. Warthen-

Senator McCain’s policy is to be present when his vote would affect the
outcome.  When Sen. Feinstein and Schumer decided to confirm Mukasey it
became clear McCain’s vote wouldn’t change the outcome. He has clearly
supported Mukasey’s nomination. (Please see Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham’s letter below.) Senator McCain was receiving the endorsement of
Sen. Brownback in IA.

Thanks
BJ

I think BJ was confused; the Brownback endorsement was the day before. Anyway, I didn’t hear from the next campaign — Joe Biden’s — until 2:47 p.m.:

Brad:

Tried to reach you by phone to discuss but got your voice mail so thought I would respond my e-mail.

Don’t know exactly where Senator Biden was late yesterday when the
Mukasey nomination came up on the Senate floor.  However, Senator
Biden had expressed his strong opposition to Judge Mukasey’s
confirmation (link to his statement…) and voted against
reporting the nomination out of the Judiciary Committee.  Further,
Senator Biden has previously indicated that he would not miss a vote in
which his vote would determine the outcome.  Obviously, the Mukasey
vote was not close giving the fact that six Democrats had announced
their support for Judge Mukasey well in advance of the actual vote
taking place.  Call me if you have any further questions.

 

Trip King

It should be noted that because I was swamped — it being Friday, and my having to switch gears and pursue a completely different column idea — I wasn’t answering my phone, which presented an obstacle to the campaigns. Amaya Smith kept trying to call me, mentioned that she was doing so in an e-mail. I explained that I’d rather have e-mail because I didn’t have time to talk, so she wrote:

Here is the Senator’s
statement opposing Mukasey early on.

That was at 3:06. At 3:50, I heard from Michelle Macrina with Chris Dodd. She wrote,

Brad,
At a time when the confirmation seemed assured, Senator Dodd was the first Democrat to voice his opposition to Judge Mukasey’s nomination based on his position on the Rule of Law. He registered his opposition repeatedly and urged his colleagues to do the same.

Zac Wright with the Hillary Clinton campaign was apparently having a bad day, and missed my first e-mail. After I e-mail him again, he responded at 6:14 p.m. with:

She’s made every effort to make her votes, as evidenced by having the best attendance record of the candidates running.  But she’s running for President and was campaigning in NH.  Had this been a close vote, she would have been there.

She’s already spoken out about her views. 
This is her statement from the Senate yesterday.

So those are their stories, and I suppose they’re sticking to them. If I’d had time to chat, I would have pursued the matter further with each, but I was multitasking, and this was a lower priority than cranking out pages. I’m just getting to this now.

What do y’all think?

 

Contrasting Obama, Clinton on licenses

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After having read or heard Barack Obama expressing his objections to Hillary Clinton’s answer to the debate question about N.Y. Gov. Spitzer’s driver’s license proposal, I finally asked Amaya Smith with his campaign for a statement of what Sen. Obama thinks about it. (That had been missing from the bits and pieces I had run into up to that time.) Here’s what Amaya said:

Barack Obama supports providing secure identifications to undocumented immigrants as a way to reduce fatalities on the roads, and give our law enforcement personnel the tools they need to fight crime and stop terrorism.  However, this can only be a stopgap measure on the road to comprehensive immigration reform that includes securing our borders, fixing our broken immigration bureaucracy and bringing the 12 million undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and onto a responsible path towards citizenship.  Gov Spitzer’s original plan is consistent with Senator Obama’s views on the issue.

To me, that didn’t sound wildly different from what Hillary had said, so to refresh my memory, I went back to fetch it:

"You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays ‘gotcha.’ It makes a lot
of sense… what is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a
serious problem. We have failed, and George Bush has failed. Do I think
this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand
the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this —
remember, in New York; we want to know who’s in New York, we want
people to come out of the shadows. He’s making an honest effort to do
it; we should have passed immigration reform.

OK, so Obama’s for it, but has reservations, seeing it as no more than a stopgap. Hillary sees reasons why the governor would do it, and doesn’t want to criticize, but in the end has reservations too strong to be for it. Which is where I am, only I’m not offended by Obama’s position. It makes sense, too. Seems to me like we have two reasonable people here, both of whom see the pros and cons, but they end up a few degrees away from each other, on different sides of a line.

I end up on Hillary’s side. I see how licenses could be a way of bringing underground people out into the open and tracking them — not to mention making New York’s roads somewhat safer. But in the end, I think there are too many negatives to granting the licenses, including homeland security problems. And ultimately, the Congress should have passed the comprehensive immigration reform bill, which would accomplish the goals Obama says he’s aiming for.

If there were a scale with zero being the position of Lou Dobbs (completely against), and 10 being Spitzer (completely for), it seems like Hillary’s a 4, and Obama’s a 6.5 or 7. Not exactly polar opposites.

But then again, I don’t understand the passions this issue generates. Robert Ariail — who has upcoming cartoons both making fun of poor Dennis and hitting Hillary the way Obama is (if anyone still thought Robert marched in step with the rest of us, that should settle it) — and I just had another discussion/argument about the issue this morning, with little ground given by either of us. Robert’s a fence-and-deportation guy; I’m for the defunct McCain/Graham bill.

P.S. — I had lunch with Amaya and Kevin Griffis back on Oct. 18. Nothing eventful, aside from the fact that the maitre d’ had to shunt us off to a private room because although Kevin wore the obligatory sport coat, he wore in with jeans. The purpose of the lunch was for Kevin to introduce me to Amaya, a mission which he accomplished. Consider this to be my official, belated contact report.

As if the Democrats weren’t bad enough last night…

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Now Mitt Romney has jumped in, along with Edwards and Obama, for a twofer — demagogue the immigration issue, and bash Hillary.

Just got around to reading this e-mail that William Holley of the Romney campaign sent me this morning:

    One more for you:
    If y’all didn’t catch the Democratic debate last night, Senator Clinton and other Democrats made some troubling remarks in support of a plan in her home state of New York to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
    That won’t fly here in South Carolina.
    Governor Romney, on the on the other hand, has a clear record of opposing driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.
    Here is a “Romney Vision” policy document on the issue: http://mittromney.com/News/Press-Releases/Romney_Vision_Illegal_Immigration

    Enjoy.

Urging me to "enjoy" it is being just a tad optimistic there, William.

Lay off Dennis the Menace. Hillary, too

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Debateoct

At last night’s debate, Tim Russert sought to have fun at Dennis Kucinich’s expense, and succeeded.

"Did you see a UFO?" asked the immoderate moderator. "I did," said Mr. Kucinich, and the place burst into laughter. He struggled on to explain, "ItDennis
was (an) unidentified flying object, OK. It’s like — it’s unidentified. I saw something."

If you see an object in the sky and you don’t know what it is, it’s an unidentified flying object. But you see, Superficial America — the version of America that exists on television, on blogs, at press conferences, and throughout political campaigns — has officially decided that Dennis the Menace, whom we all know as flaky to begin with, has duly outdone himself by admitting that he saw a UFO at (and this is the really rich part) Shirley Maclaine’s house. Everybody laugh now.

Yeah, Dennis is a fringe kind of guy, but this is unfair. It’s part of the dumbing-down and oversimplifying function of mass media, and people who live their lives as extension of said media. Call them the Blathering Classes. This shorthand culture demands that everyone fit into an assigned cubicle, preferably one of two choices in each case: Left or Right, Democrat or Republican, winner or loser, conservative or liberal, black or white, yes or no.

We saw the same foolishness at work in the way the other candidates jumped on Hillary Clinton for having answered a question about Gov. Spitzer’s immigrant driver’s license proposal pretty much the way I would:

"You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays ‘gotcha.’ It makes a lot of sense… what is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. We have failed, and George Bush has failed. Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do? No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this — remember, in New York; we want to know who’s in New York, we want people to come out of the shadows. He’s making an honest effort to do it; we should have passed immigration reform.

John Edwards, who would never be accused of holding a nuanced or complex few of any emotional issue, pounced:

"Unless I missed something, Sen. Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes, uh, just a few minutes ago. And, I think this is a real issue… for the country. I mean, America is looking for a president  who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them.

To my view, a person who explains that this is not an issue with a simple answer, and explains why — which Mrs. Clinton did — is the one who is being straight with us. To expand on something I’ve said before, anyone who thinks there’s a simple answer on this one is either not really thinking, or is NOT being straight with us.

Obama was no better:

I was confused on Sen. Clinton’s answer. I, I, I can’t tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important. One of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face.

Excuse me? She just did that.

Joe Biden said he wasn’t running against Hillary Clinton; he was running to be leader of the free world, a job he’s actually prepared for over lo these many years. Maybe that’s why he’s doing so poorly; Superficial America has no patience for that sort of thing.

Why don’t candidates ask us for more than our votes?

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
    “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win….”
       — John F. Kennedy, 1962

WHAT WOULD we do if one among the horde of candidates seeking to become president of the United States in 2009 challenged us as a nation to do something hard?
    Most Americans alive today can’t remember a president or would-be president doing anything remotely like that. The ones we’re used to are all about what they’re going to do for us, not what we should do for our country. Republicans want to cut our taxes; Democrats want to give us more programs and, to hear them all talk, at no cost to us.
    But I believe that if the cause were worthwhile and the proposal made sense, we’d rise to it. Maybe not all of us, but there’s a critical mass out here who would follow someone courageous enough to ask us to do our part.
    I, for one, am sick of being treated, by people who seek my vote, as some sort of “gimme-gimme” baby, lacking in any sense of responsibility for the world around me. Those of us who are grownups are used to accepting, in our personal lives, challenges that are by no means easy to meet — going to work day after day, paying our bills, raising children. Why would we not understand a president who said, “Here’s a challenge that concerns us all, and here’s what each of us needs to do to rise to it”?
    Young people among us want to pitch in and accomplish difficult things a lot more than we give them credit for. Part of Barack Obama’s appeal among the young is his call to service, his challenge to build a better nation. But unless I’ve missed it, he has not asked us, as a nation, to do anything hard.
    Don’t misunderstand me, as did a colleague who wrote:

    The feeling I get… is that you’re so frustrated that you just want the government to demand SOME SORT OF SACRIFICE, on something, anything. Whether it’s needed or not. Doesn’t really matter what.

    Well, yes and no. Sure, there’s a part of me that just wants to be asked for a change to do something, if only for the novelty: Buy bonds, save scrap metal, whatever.
    But there’s more to it than that. The truth is, our country faces a lot of challenges that demand something or other from all of us, but political “leaders” have a pathological fear of pointing it out to us.
    Back when JFK challenged us to go to the moon because it was hard, we did it — even though there was no practical reason why we needed to do so. Sure, it gave us the creeps to think of “going to sleep by the light of a communist moon,” but it was a symbolic competition, with only marginal applications to the true, deadly competition of the arms race. We couldn’t stand not to be No. 1.
    But today we have very real, very practical challenges that have tangible consequences if we fail to meet them.
    Take just one of them: our dependence on foreign oil.
    Sen. Joe Biden had a great speech a while back about how President Bush missed the golden opportunity to ask us, on Sept. 12, 2001, to do whatever it took to free us from this devil’s bargain whereby we are funding people who want to destroy us and all that we cherish. And yet, his own energy proposals are a tepid combination of expanding alternative fuels (good news to the farmer) and improving fuel efficiency (let’s put the onus on Detroit).
    A broad spectrum of thinkers who are not running for office — from Tom Friedman to Robert Samuelson to Charles Krauthammer — say we must jack up the price of gasoline with a tax increase, to cut demand and fund the search for alternatives. It makes sense. But the next candidate with the guts to ask us to pay more at the pump will be the first.
    My friend Samuel Tenenbaum is on a quixotic quest to build support for restoration of the 55-mph speed limit. It would be hard (for me, anyway), but the benefits are undeniable. It would conserve fuel dramatically, starving petrodictators from Hugo Chavez to Vladimir Putin to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It would save thousands of lives now lost to speed on our highways.
    Samuel pitches his idea to every candidate he can corner. They smile and move away from him as quickly as possible.
    But you know, when I wrote a column a while back proposing the creation of an Energy Party — that would among other things demand that we jack up the gas tax by $2 a gallon (to fund an Apollo-style project on alternatives), institute Samuel’s 55-mph limit, ban SUVs for anyone without a proven “life-or-death need to drive one” and build nuclear power plants as fast as we can — I got a surprising number of positive responses. I think that was less because my respondents thought those were all good ideas. I think they just liked the idea of being asked to do something for a change.
    Energy independence is just the start. Add to it the urgent needs to stop global warming, win the war on terror, make health care affordable while at the same time avoiding the coming entitlements train wreck, and you’ve got a list of things that require a lot more audience involvement — and yes, sacrifice — than our current candidates have been willing to ask us for.
    And while you may not feel the same, I’m dying to be asked. Not because it would be easy, and not even because it would be hard, but because these hard things actually need doing.

Who could be president of ALL of us — Hillary or Obama?

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Clinton_2008_wart2

This is probably not going to change anybody’s minds out there, but before Democrats put the tiara on Hillary Clinton and send her down the runway, they really ought to ask themselves: Would anybody besides us vote for her? I realize that a lot of her supporters are likely to be personally offended that someone other than true-blue partisans would get a say in this, but unfortunately, them’s the rules.

And time and time again, a key difference between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama emerges: She appeals to the party-warriors who want to refight the polarizing battles of recent years, and he appeals more to people who want consensus government.

It was summed up fairly well last night by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who had this to say upon endorsing Obama:

“A lot of the Democrats are feeling heady these days — we’re sensing victory. We feel like we can reach out and grab at the White House again …. But I’m asking you to beware my friends. Beware because this discontent with Republicans is not enough to ensure a Democratic victory, nor should it be. I believe the challenges before us transcend party partisan politics. We don’t just need a Democrat — we need a leader.”

But the fact remains that plenty of folks just want a Democrat, preferably one who yearns to stick it to the "vast right-wing conspiracy," which apparently refers to the 50 percent of the electorate that says it would never vote for Mrs. Clinton — while Mr. Obama’s negatives in the same poll were only at 37 percent.

As I said, this post probably won’t change any Democrats’ minds, as those who care about getting the votes of Republicans and independents probably already prefer Obama between the two, and the rest would stick with Sen. Clinton.

But I thought it was time to issue a warning to the Democrats similar to the one I raised to Republicans a few days ago: You really, really need to think about November, people.

And I would add, you really need to think about the next four years. There are a lot of us out here who just aren’t going to put up with any more of this incessant red state-vs.-blue state, tit-for-tat, so’s-yer-mother, trashing of our shared public life.

Obama_2008_taxes_wart

Which candidate do YOU hate the most?

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Ahillary             "NEVER? Whaddaya mean, ‘never?’"

Seems like I’ll stoop to anything to get you to click on a blog post, doesn’t it? Sorry about the headline. Tacky. I would never encourage you to hate anyone.

But my point was to share with you the results of this Zogby poll, which found that half the electorate says it would never vote for Hillary Clinton. She has the highest negatives, and Mike Huckabee and Bill Richardson have the lowest, going by that standard. (You may have already read about this, as it came out Saturday, but I’m just now getting around to checking the e-mail account the release came to). An excerpt from the report:

    While she is winning wide support in nationwide samples among Democrats in the race for their party’s presidential nomination, half of likely voters nationwide said they would never vote for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a new Zogby Interactive poll shows.
    The online survey of 9,718 likely voters nationwide showed that 50% said Clinton would never get their presidential vote. This is up from 46% who said they could never vote for Clinton in a Zogby International telephone survey conducted in early March. Older voters are most resistant to Clinton – 59% of those age 65 and older said they would never vote for the New York senator, but she is much more acceptable to younger voters: 42% of those age 18–29 said they would never vote for Clinton for President.
    At the other end of the scale, Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrats Bill Richardson and Barack Obama faired best, as they were least objectionable to likely voters. Richardson was forever objectionable as President to 34%, while 35% said they could never vote for Huckabee and 37% said they would never cast a presidential ballot for Obama, the survey showed….

Here’s the full list:

Whom would you NEVER vote for for President of the U.S.?

%

Clinton (D)

50%

Kucinich (D)

49%

Gravel (D)

47%

Paul (R)

47%

Brownback (R)

47%

Tancredo (R)

46%

McCain (R)

45%

Hunter (R)

44%

Giuliani (R)

43%

Romney (R)

42%

Edwards (D)

42%

Thompson (R)

41%

Dodd (D)

41%

Biden (D)

40%

Obama (D)

37%

Huckabee (R)

35%

Richardson (D)

34%

Not sure

4%

I got to thinking about it just now, and wondered for the first time which, of all the candidates, would I be least likely to choose at this point? Here’s how I would rank them personally:

Mind you, that’s just off the top of my head, based on what I know now, without any of my editorial board colleagues setting me straight on any of the calls. And I’ll admit I cheated on one — I can’t even picture "Hunter," much left summon up any relevant impressions, so I just sort of buried him in the pack toward the "less likely" end, hoping no one would notice.

How about you?

Obama’s elevator small talk

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Obama

Based upon the umpteenth statement I’ve read along these lines, here’s my impression of Barack Obama making small talk on an elevator:

"Yes indeed, the weather is very fine today. Come to think of it, the air felt much like this on the day in 2002 when I voiced my highly principled, adamant opposition to the Iraq War. Let me tell you about it…"

Those experts are FAST, man!

1 Reply

Ordinary folks just can’t react as quickly as the experts. That’s proven time and again by the "experts" who keep responding to every policy position Barack Obama sets forth.

Today is a typical example.

At 11:48 a.m., I received an e-mail announcing that "EXPERTS PRAISE BARACK OBAMA’S PLAN TO CREATE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL."

But it wasn’t until four minutes later, at 11:52, that the plan was actually released. That’s when I got this e-mail, anyway: "Obama Outlines Plan to Address Disparities in America’s Justice System."

These experts must have ol’ Doc Brown helping them out. He’s sort of an expert, too, I guess.

Having an Obama mañana

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Today I seem to be having an Obama mañana.

First, I run into Max, who tells me that on Saturday the campaign is going to try to knock on 50,000 doors in South Carolina. Every county is organized, hundreds of volunteers are ready in-state, and hundreds more are expected to come from elsewhere to help. Should be quite an impressive feat if they pull it off — and if any campaign can, it’s Obama’s.

Then I read this on the front page of The Wall Street Journal. It’s getting to where I’m as likely to run into the names of local folks I know in national publications as in The State. The theme of the story is that all politics is local — and in this case, "local" means Greenwood, S.C. Such local characters as Rep. Anne Parks and Obama spokesman Kevin Griffis are characters in the tale. Anyway, the piece is a good read if you can call it up. And if you can’t here’s an excerpt:

GREENWOOD, S.C. — When Barack Obama wants to get a campaign crowd really fired up, he tells the story of a whistle-stop a few months back in this out-of-the-way town.
    He was having a down day; the weather and his mood were both foul. And he had driven to Greenwood — "an hour and a half from anywhere" — to keep a promise to a state legislator. Just a handful of well-wishers were there to greet him.
    Suddenly, the Illinois senator heard a voice sing out from the back of the room: "Fired up! Ready to go!" It came from a tiny woman in a big-brimmed church hat. She repeated the chant. Before long, everybody joined in, and Mr. Obama himself was again feeling the spirit.
    "Here’s a lesson for you," he said while telling the Greenwood story at a rally in Carroll, Iowa, this month. "If you’re fired up and ready to go, we can change the world."
    But beyond Mr. Obama’s soapbox rhetoric about Greenwood is a more complicated story, of small-town politics, snubs and jealousies — and a reminder that even presidential campaigns can be very personal and very local. Mr. Obama’s appearance in Greenwood may have left him fired up, but it also left bruised feelings among local Democrats and left his campaign with a damage-control job that continues to this day…

Finally, I overhear somebody at another table at breakfast talking about Obama, and I find myself wondering if the guy is taking over South Carolina. But it’s just someone mentioning the candidate’s appearance at a couple of churches here in the Columbia Sunday, and I had already read about that.

Wonkish offerings from Romney, Obama

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And for all you substantive-policy freaks out there, here are two appropriately dense offerings, which came to me in back-to-back e-mails today.

First, I got this note from William Holley, a very nice young man with the Romney campaign:

Good morning everyone –

 Please take a moment to look at Governor Romney’s newly
released Strategy for a Stronger America – a compilation of  more than 50 policy
proposals covering everything from fighting radical jihad to achieving energy
independence to ending illegal immigration to controlling federal spending.  You
can even download your very own copy, absolutely free of
charge.


Introducing the Strategy for a Stronger America, Governor
Romney wrote: "Our future depends on our willingness to hold to the principles
that have guided and built our nation.  It depends on the character and
sacrifices of the American people.  And it depends on leadership to craft and
implement a Strategy for a Stronger America." 

— Will

Right next to that was another earnest release from Barack Obama, which I invite y’all to read and tell me what you think of it. I MIGHT be able to wade through the highlights of a strategic-vision document, but it’s more than I can bear to obsess over tax policy — although I have great respect for Obama for doing so, because there’s a world full of folks out there who care about such:

Obama
Announces Major Middle Class Tax Relief Plan
Embargoed
Remarks Provided Below

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Barack Obama today announced a bold and innovative plan to reform America’s tax code so that it works for the middle class in a speech to the Tax Policy Center in Washington, DC. Obama’s plan would provide a substantial tax cut for nearly all working Americans, for homeowners, and for low- and middle-income seniors.   

Obama made the case that our current tax code reflects the wrong priorities by rewarding wealth instead of work, and he pledged to restore fairness to the tax code to strengthen the American economy.

Obama’s middle class tax relief plan would provide $80-85 billion in tax cuts to America’s workers, seniors and homeowners by:

  • Cutting taxes for 150 million Americans and their families,
    allowing them to get a tax cut of up to $1000.
  • Easing the burden on the middle class by providing a
    universal homeowner’s tax credit to those who do not itemize their deductions,
    immediately benefiting 10 million homeowners, the majority of whom make under
    $50,000 per year.
  • Eliminating the income tax for any American senior making
    less than $50,000 per year, eliminating income taxes for about 7 million
    American seniors.
  • Simplifying tax filings so millions of Americans can do
    their taxes in less than 5 minutes.

Obama would pay for his tax reform plan by closing corporate
loopholes, cracking down on international tax havens, closing the carried
interest loophole, and increasing the dividends and capital gains rate for the
top bracket.

The plan can be viewed in full HERE.

Obama’s youth registration drive

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Knowing of my interest in Barack Obama’s appeal to young voters, his S.C. campaign brought this to my attention:

Obama Campaign Launches
Youth Voter Registration Drive

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Beginning tomorrow, Barack Obama’s South Carolina campaign will launch a week-long effort to register 1,000 new voters on college and high school campuses across the state.
    In addition to the registration drives, the campaign will hold events in Orangeburg and Greenville next week focused on registering and organizing young people. (Details on the events will be announced next week.)
    “Barack Obama’s message about fundamentally changing our politics has energized and inspired young people,” Obama South Carolina Youth Vote Director Elizabeth Wilkins said. “Now we have to make sure they’re registered to vote and get them to the polls.”
    The campaign will have a presence on at least 40 high school, college and university campuses across the state next week, registering young people to vote. In its drive to engage and mobilize high school and college students, the campaign held a public rally at Coastal Carolina University in Conway last week where Obama attracted nearly 2,000 people.

As it happens, I’m not the only one who has been impressed by the way the freshness Obama’s message seems a natural for the idealistic young. Of course, some of those who are thus impressed are less than impartial. Moss Blachman, whose son Max I mentioned in connection with the campaign in my recent column, said he spent a day with the Obama kids and found the phenomenon rather inspiring.

And Phil Noble from down Charleston way has urged me to revisit the subject, going so far as to give me the names and/or contact info on 10 impressive young Obama supporters. I had to smile when I saw the names, because it brings up the old editorial board joke, "Who’s his daddy?" (The joke is both on us and on South Carolina. We’ve been doing this so long, and South Carolina is a sufficiently small state, that whenever somebody news breaks onto to the political scene, it seems that as often as not, we know his or her parents.) He mentioned Max (although as "Moss and Penny Blackman’s son," not by name), and our own Laurin — but we know them, right? Both reformed bloggers.

He also listed Anton Gunn, who I thought was a particularly impressive legislative candidate, and three others who had very familiar last names — such as Bakari Sellers, son of Cleveland.

So yeah, I probably will get back to the subject — or maybe I just did.

Obama’s folks catch Hillary with her foot in it

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Well, now, this is interesting. Kevin Griffis, Barack Obama’s communications director for South Carolina, brings my attention to a January statement of Hillary Clinton’s regarding talking to the heads of rogue governments. It looks pretty doggone inconsistent with what she was saying last week about Obama’s intention to do so.

Anyway, here’s what Kevin said:

HEADLINE: how’s this for irony?
Thought I’d send this to you on
background. Just go to the 5:15 mark. I feel like we’re going full
circle. Let me know what you think. The transcript follows.


Here’s the clip:


And here’s the transcript:

OLBERMANN: Would you reach out immediately to the Syrians and the Iranians, even with the tensions between this country and Iran?

SEN. CLINTON: Absolutely. I don’t see it as a sign of weakness. I see it as a sign of strength. You know, our president will not talk to people he considers bad. Well, there are a lot of bad actors in the world, and you don’t make peace with your friends. You’ve got to deal with your enemies, your opponents, people whose interests diverge from yours.

Right now we’re flying blind when it comes to Iran. We don’t have good intelligence about Iran, about what their real motivations are, who’s calling the shots; the same with Syria. And I would immediately open a diplomatic track. And I don’t think we would lose. In fact, I think we would gain insight.

I mean, if we have to take a firm stand against Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons, let’s get more information before we do that. Let’s figure out, you know, what levers of power in their society we might be able to pull and push.

Kevin asks what I think. I think that without a whole lot of extenuating explanation that I have not heard from either candidate, both sound awfully naive. There are lots of ways to "deal with your enemies, your opponents," and handing them a propaganda coup is not generally considered the wisest way.

I also think that — unless there was some stuff that explain away this comment that I haven’t seen — Hillary is sounding a lot less tough-minded, and Brooks and Krauthammer might want those bouquets back.

Obama, the young, and the magic of Making a Difference

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
HOW’RE YOU gonna keep ’em down on the blog after they’ve heard Obama?
    For an old guy, I have a lot of ways of keeping in touch with the young, idealistic and enthusiastic — my kids, my kids’ friends, my friends’ kids… and Weblogs.
    But these kids today — they need to learn to stick to something. Law student Laurin Manning was really cooking with her LaurinLine, one of the foremost political blogs in the state. Then she quit toMax2_2
politick for real, rather than just writing about it.
    Then there’s Max Blachman [at right],
son of my friend Moss, who started “Democrats in the South” just over a year ago and was cooking along fairly well for a while. He last posted on March 3.
    Both Laurin and Max have gone to work for Barack Obama.
    And they are far from alone. Thursday, I met Elizabeth Wilkins [below left], originally from New York, who’s down here as youth vote director for the Obama
campaign. What pulls Elizabeth so far away from home? “It’s not
every 23-year-old who gets to work on a campaignWilkins for a man who might be the first black president.” True, but there’s more than that.
    Poor John McCain is laying off members of the Pepsi Generation left and right, but his Senate colleague from Chicago seems to have an employment agency going for the kids. (Not that they’re all paid. Most aren’t.)
    Yes, campaigns in general tend to be youth-heavy. The rest of us have family responsibilities; we seek job security more lasting than the next news cycle.
    But there’s something about Obama that makes the youthfulness of his supporters seem more apt, something that reminds me of my own youth — and not just because the first time I saw him in person was when he spoke to the College Democrats of America over at the Russell House on Thursday. It was there that I heard him, among other things, reassert (to applause) that he would rush right out and have meaningful talks with the thugs who run Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and, by logical extension, pretty much any other regime that would be tickled magenta to be handed such a great propaganda photo-op.
    It’s easy for a graybeard like me, or that crusty old neocon Charles Krauthammer, or Hillary Clinton for that matter, to dismiss such promises as “irresponsible and frankly naive” — as did Sen. Clinton to anyone who would listen last week after her chief rival gave her that opportunity to sound mature, tough and sane.
    But beyond the fact that young people think mean people suck, and it’s mean not to talk to people, and that we should have done more of that before going all Angry Daddy on Saddam, there’s a positive reason why Obama has a particular appeal to the young: He describes public service as something you can engage in and still feel clean.
    Poor Joe Biden, who’s even older than I am, got into all sorts of trouble for calling Obama “clean,” but that’s just what he is. And for those who are focusing on details of the latest 24/7 news cycle’s scandal or whatever, it’s easy to forget how appealing “clean” can be to the fresh-faced.
    It can be a compelling issue, and it belongs completely to Obama. Bill Clinton’s wife, late of the Rose Law Firm, can’t touch it. Nor can the $400 haircut who wants to be the nation’s trial lawyer. And those old guys over on the GOP side — forget it.
    The 23-year-old who still gasps somewhere within me is convinced that Barack Obama is completely for real when he channels JFK via Jimmy Carter. Remember Jimmy Carter — not the old guy with the hammer who shakes his finger at us like Miz Lillian when we fail to be sweet to other nations, not the Grand Incompetent of Reagan Revolution lore, but the original, the one whose green bumper sticker I had on my orange 1972 Vega back when even I was 23?
    He was never going to lie to us. He would lead us from the partisan, crooked, nasty cesspool of Watergate and the angst of Vietnam. He would help us to be the kind of country that JFK had promised we would get to be, back before Everything Went Wrong.
    Well, I do. And it wasn’t about Democrat or Republican or liberal or conservative or black or white or money or any of that stuff embraced by the people who had messed things up. It was about Clean. It was about Meaning.
    I first spoke to Barack Obama — very briefly, because of cell phone problems while I was traveling through mountains — a month ago. He only wanted to talk about one thing: Clean. He was unveiling his plan for “the most sweeping ethics reform in history,” — “Closing the Revolving Door,” “Increasing Public Access to Information,” and other Clean Government 101 stuff.
    But with that overflow crowd of college kids providing better reception than my Treo, I realized that for this candidate, such yadda-yadda basics were more than just the talking points of that one day.
    “Here’s the point,” he told them. “I wanted you to know that I’ve been where you are. I loved the world as a young man, and I wanted to make a difference. I’ve often been told that change wasn’t possible, but I’ve learned that it was. I believe that it still is. And I’m ready to join you in changing the course …”
    Not just the course of war, or the wicked oil companies, or me-first politics, or meanness, but changing the lousy way that things are, period.
    He invoked “an image of young people, back in the civil rights movement, straight-backed, clear-eyed, marching for justice…” and told them they could be those young people. They were those young people.
    He reaches across time, across cynicism, across the sordidness of Politics As Practiced, offering to pull them in to the place where they can make a difference.
    You can see how, to someone who’s 23, he’d be worth ditching the blog for.

“Come in, Obama…”

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Got back late last night from a quick drive up and back to Pennsylvania. As I mentioned I would be doing, I had a brief interview with Barack Obama while on the road Friday. Unfortunately, since I was entering mountains near the North Carolina/Virginia border, it was briefer than either of us anticipated.

One thing I know for sure is that he is a polite man for a big shot. The last word I heard from him amid the crackling was a puzzled, "Sir…?" as I faded out. (I’ve tried to imagine, say, John Kerry being that polite. I can’t.)

But I certainly appreciate the effort on his part, and the campaign aides who labored first to establish, then to re-establish, the connection.

Now, what were we talking about? We were talking about his proposals for cleaning up the executive branch of the federal government. I found the proposal — I had received a 12-page PDF in advance — to be thoughtful, principled and fairly comprehensive. (And I would have posted it in advance, but it was embargoed then. It no longer is.)

A lot of the 12 pages went into modest detail on the sins in this regard of the Bush administration. So cynics might dismiss it as a way of saying once again to the Democratic primary base, We all know how wicked the Bushies have been; well, I won’t be like that at all!

But let me defend the senator against that charge on two counts. He didn’t make this stuff up; there are plenty of actual ethical sins for this administration to answer for. Secondly, these are perfectly sound things to promise to do.

In a way, the proposals are probably a bit boring to most people: So you’re going to be a good steward and avoid corruption? Well, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Shouldn’t that be the default position?

But I think the candidate deserves credit for his proposals to actively pursue integrity in his administration. It’s less "I promise not to steal the spoons," and more, "here’s how I’m going to keep the spoons safe."

I am reminded of the way Jimmy Carter promised to clean up government, post-Watergate. And I mean that in a good way. The pursuit of virtue and honor in government were what I liked best about Jimmy. But I am reminded of an anecdote I heard about the days after Carter’s 1976 election victory. One of his people met with South Carolina supporters to thank them for their efforts in the campaign, and to say that any hiring for administration positions would be handled in an open, above-board and merit-based way. There would be no jobs handed out "in smoke-filled rooms."

One of the South Carolinians — an African-American officeholder, something you need to know to make full sense of the comment — protested, "But I just got in the room, and I just started smoking." (This is a certain person known as a bit of a wag, so he probably wouldn’t mind my using his name in connection with this third-hand account — I’ll ask him about it next time I see him and check the story before I do that, though.)

Anyway, I was starting to tell that story to Obama, and to ask whether he’d gotten any pushback from supporters or other Democrats saying they didn’t like such promises as this:

Barack Obama will issue an Executive Order asking all new hires at the agencies to sign a form affirming that no political appointee offered them the job solely on the basis of political affiliation or contribution. The Executive Order will also require that all employees engaged in and making hiring decisions also certify that they will not take political affiliation into account as they make hiring decisions for career positions.

Of course, it hit me as I was asking about this that that sort of thing is more likely to come up in the general election — or right after a victory, when you’re dealing with "supporters" who are not necessarily True Believers in your ideals. But I thought I’d ask anyway.

I was in the middle of that convoluted question when we lost the connection.

Anyway, I’ve linked above to the entire position paper. Here it is again. It’s a PDF. Let me know if you have trouble reading it, and I’ll post it as plain text. Let me know if you have any questions I should ask him about it, and I’ll try to work them in next time I speak to him.

Harpootlian for Obama

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Dick Harpootlian, a.k.a. the Mouth of the South, is famous for having said he didn’t want to buy the black vote; he just wanted to rent it for a day.

Apparently, Barack Obama has managed to entice him into a longer-term relationship. Here’s what the Charleston paper had to say about that today:

   
A former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party said Monday he would throw his support behind presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
     Harpootlian
"I see in Barack Obama … the same magnetism I saw in Bill Clinton," said Dick Harpootlian, who met with the Illinois senator during his first campaign visit to this early voting state Friday.
    Harpootlian’s announcement came as New York Sen. Hillary Clinton made her first campaign trek through South Carolina. Harpootlian, who has in the past called Clinton a polarizing political figure, downplayed his comments Monday and said she or any of the Democratic candidates would make a fine president.
    But he said Obama was the embodiment of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that people be judged by their character, not their skin color.
    Harpootlian said he would immediately begin fundraising for Obama.
    "I think it will be easy to raise money for him," he said.