Occam’s Razor

Democrats choose pragmatism on Universal Health Care

I find it remarkable how much the health care debate has changed in the last few years. Not long ago, it was anathema for many mainstream politicians to even suggest that Americans needed universal health insurance. Now, every Democratic candidate for running for president has his or her own plan. Republican candidates, while rejecting the idea of “government run” health care plans are proposing tax credits and other incentives which they believe will make health care easier to acquire.

By big margins, Americans are saying they have had enough with our current health care “system”. They no longer buy into the notion that America has the best health care. Perhaps it does, if you are independently wealthy. The rest of us are stuck with either substandard insurance through our employer, paying through the nose for our own policy or spending much of our free time praying that we do not get severely ill. Every year, assuming we do not join the ranks of the uninsured, our premiums and deductibles rise. Moreover, the list of covered procedures grows smaller.

Doctors and employers hate our health care “system” too. Unless they spurn insurance altogether, they generally are paid a fraction of their fee. For doctors, it seems like they spend more (uncompensated) time hassling with insurance companies than seeing patients. Insurance companies frequently override their recommendations for patient care. Patients like my wife, who have had several major operations, are sent home after just a night in the hospital. Ideally, surgeries are done on an outpatient basis. As for employers, providing health insurance becomes more problematic every year. Many small businesses do not even bother.

Movies like Michael Moore’s Sicko have documented how other countries are successfully providing universal health care. The fear mongering tactics of the insurance companies and HMOs no longer frighten us. How could anything the government comes up with be scarier than what we already have? How often do you see senior citizens bitching about Medicare? Now we understand that the money insurance companies saved by kicking us out of the hospital too soon is being used instead to coax congressional representatives and senators into making sure the system does not change. Finally, so many years later, it looks like our representatives are finally developing a backbone. Providing we elect a Democratic president and Congress in 2008, the chances for having universal health care in this country are excellent. It is about freaking time.

But which way to go? To me the Republican calls for tax credits are ludicrous and fully worthy of derision. They certainly do not provide universal health insurance. Health care savings accounts are fine if you have sufficient income to put money into them, but they are hardly a panacea to rising health care costs. If you are living from paycheck to paycheck, they are useless. One of the reasons I am so optimistic that Congress will go Blue next year is that Republicans still subscribe to ridiculous ideas like these. It is like saying they believe in the tooth fairy. Get real, Republicans! Not all problems can be solved by the marketplace. That is why governments exist: to step in where the public needs are not being addressed adequately by the private sector. It is right there in our constitution: our government exists in part “to promote the general welfare.”

As a liberal, revolutionary change excites me. Like many liberals, a single payer health care system strikes me as ideal. So why can I not fall in line behind it? I cannot because I know that, at least in this country, massive changes like this one tend to bollix up the whole system rather than solve the problem. Health care in America is too big and too institutionalized to change radically. It will doubtless cost us more, but to effect change that will actually work, we have to incrementally change what we have now, as imperfect as it is.

I spent some time today reading the health care proposals of Democratic candidates. With the exception of known eccentrics like Dennis Kucinich, the candidates are proposing measured and evolutionary changes in order to provide universal health care. Republican candidates are merely sticking their toes in the health care waters. Democratic candidates, on the other hand, are offering pragmatic and workable plans that build on the existing system.

Hillary Clinton was the latest candidate to release her health care proposal. Sometimes being last is best. Perhaps because of her presumed front-runner status, her proposal received a great deal of media coverage. It showed that she had thought through the mistakes she and her husband made in the 1990s. With her plan, if you are satisfied your current health plan you can keep it. If you do not like it, you can select from the many plans that are available to us federal employees, all of which have to take you no questions asked. Otherwise you are free to enroll in a public plan that will look a lot like Medicare. Her plan requires that every American purchase health insurance coverage but premiums are limited to a percentage of income. Rolling back some of the bigger Bush tax cuts for the very rich will help pay for her plan. She also thinks a lot of money can be squeezed from current inefficiencies in the system.

Will all of her savings be realized if enacted? Probably not. Many of these “savings” are likely smoke and mirrors. At this point, our health care system is so complex that it makes our tax code look simple. However, her plan and the many like them proposed by other Democratic presidential candidates are pragmatic steps that provide the universal coverage we need. Making the uninsured pay for even a portion of the cost of their care should mean that you would be paying less for your health care. Your premiums are so high in part because you have been indirectly subsidizing the uninsured all along.

Perhaps over time we can evolve into a single payer system. If so, it will likely take many decades. We will still be envious that other developed countries like Canada, Great Britain and France can provide better care at lower cost through their single payer systems. At least we will at last have some form of universal health insurance. It will not be a perfect system but it will be good enough. Doctors will keep billing. Insurance companies will still take their slice of the health care pie. Yet overall, it will be better. Employers can concentrate on making profits instead of worry about how they will afford double-digit health insurance premium increases. I hope that our doctors will spend more time with patients, and less on the phone haggling with insurance companies. While it will not be perfect, only multimillionaires will want to revert to the health care mess that we have now.

September 21st, 2007 at 09:00pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | no comments

Desperately seeking Reagan

Wanted: Republican presidential candidate. Must be tall and have gravitas in his voice. Must convince Americans that it is Morning in America again. Dyed, slicked back hair optional but highly preferred. Former actors and governors preferred. Must be a rich white Republican male. Apply at Republican National Committee.

Good news for disgruntled Republicans: Former senator and Law & Order actor Fred Thompson has decided it is not too late to run for President. Fred belatedly but officially kicked off his campaign last week, spurning a debate with fellow candidates in New Hampshire for a folksy chat with Jay Leno instead. Fred is now hitting the Iowa and New Hampshire campaign trails hard. Desperate Republicans are rushing to check Fred out. They are all wondering the same thing: is Fred our next Ronald Reagan?

Sadly for Republicans, it appears not. To this Democrat, listening and watching Fred last week revealed that he sounds and behaves a lot more like George W. Bush than Ronald Reagan. It is not that Fred does not know how to act. He proved that on Law & Order. What he is missing is the ability to articulate. When handed a script and coached by competent directors, Fred made a convincing district attorney. However, on the stump he comes across as bumbling. He struggles to articulate a coherent message and often reverts to platitudes. His grasp of the facts often is appalling. If he is to be the next Reagan, Republicans will be forced to project a lot more into him than is actually there. His Southern accent and rambling style also reminds me of George W. Bush. After eight years of Bush, I doubt most Republican want to replace Bush with someone who looks and acts a lot like him.

Better to go for someone without the muddled southern drawl, someone more handsome and with better hair. In other words, maybe it is time for Republicans to hold their nose and vote for someone from the liberal northeast, i.e. Mitt Romney. In addition to being handsome, he is also tall and articulate. His Mormon faith is still viewed with suspicion by many Republicans, but at least he is a faithful family man. He has also walked away from conservative principles from time to time, but perhaps these instances can be forgiven. After all, he had to work with a Democratic legislature. Mitt has been through Republican hell and back. At least he has been battle tested.

Although blessed with a huge personal fortune, Mitt may be missing a bit in the style department. This may explain why former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani leads among Republicans in nationwide polls. Unfortunately, he is missing the needed Reagan hair. Perhaps he can talk with William Shatner, who can point him to a place that will give him a good price on a toupee. Among all the candidates, Rudy at least sounds the most like Ronald Reagan. He can swagger without it looking insincere. He may lack Reagan’s self-deprecating style, but he sure knows how to sound sure of himself. If only he were, well, better at being faithful. Maybe it does not matter anymore, since the Republican candidates are rife with questionable moral character issues. Unfortunately, in Rudy’s case there are moral red flags everywhere. Stepping around on the missus can perhaps be forgiven provided it is done with some discretion, but when done so flagrantly it is hard to excuse. Giuliani can at least be given credit for having nerve. Stepping around with another woman and inviting the press to witness it all at least showed he had nothing to hide. Moreover, that gay couple he lived with for a while, well, perhaps they were Log Cabin Republicans. Anyhow, the image of Rudy standing by the ruins of the World Trade Center six years ago with a bullhorn in hand is indelible. He sure looked and sounded commanding at the time. If he became president, clearly Giuliani would not be a limp-wristed Jimmy Carter type who might agonize over tough decisions. Above all a Republican president must charge decisively forward. This apparently is what leadership means to Republicans.

Sam Brownback has great hair but suffers from being in the back of the pack with little in the way of accomplishments. John McCain is reliable but too old and has taken too many controversial positions. Campaign finance reform? How the heck are Republicans supposed to win if they cannot have an uneven playing field?

Then there are all these congressmen running. You know the Republican Party is in deep doo doo if three of their candidates are congressmen. These include Duncan Hunter, Tam Tancredo and Ron Paul. Ron Paul at least is enough of a gadfly to liven up their otherwise dreary presidential debates.

This leaves only Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas. Here is a word of advice for Republicans: if you want a chance of actually winning the presidential contest next year, nominate Huckabee. You can also have a good time with it because he will probably run against Hillary Clinton, and you loath both Bill and Hillary anyhow. It would be karmic justice to nominate him. He followed Bill Clinton as governor of Arkansas and like him was born in Hope, Arkansas. Huckabee also has the advantage (how to put this nicely) of being the only Republican candidate who comes across as mainstream rather than extreme.

Sadly, although he has nice hair he neither looks nor sounds much like Reagan. So Republicans need to give the Reagan thing a rest. Perhaps by applying enough voltage to Reagan’s grave he will emerge in a zombified state to lead the free world again. Perhaps he could even run for president again. I am sure our newly conservative Supreme Court that they could issue an appropriate ruling.

Jesus came back from the dead but Ronald Reagan does not appear to have his powers. Therefore, Republicans will just need to accept the sad fact that there is no new Ronald Reagan waiting in the wings out there. Even if there were, America is not the same country it was in 1980. Cherish his memory. Overlook his mistakes. Perhaps you can carve his image on Mount Rushmore. Reagan can perhaps be impersonated, but he cannot be equaled. It is time to give up the foolish Reagan fantasies and to make your best pitch from the candidates you have.

September 11th, 2007 at 02:21pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | one comment

Quick Political Hits

Rather than focus on a single topic today, as is my usual practice, I just want to dump a potpourri of political thoughts that are running through my brain at the moment.

Karl Rove’s Resignation. There is plenty of evil to go around within the Bush Administration. Arguably, Bush, Cheney and Bush’s political strategist Karl Rove formed something that resembled a triumvirate of evil. Perhaps this was why Bush was so quick to notice an Axis of Evil: it takes one to know one. Cheney is the administration’s immoral head. Cheney is smart enough to know that certain actions like their torture policies, illegal electronic surveillance and the turning the Justice Department into another wing of the Republican agenda were both wrong and illegal. Rove was its amoral head. Rove simply did not care, which was arguably worse. None of them cared a whit about upholding the rule of law if it conflicted with their political agenda. It was always party first, country second. The U.S. Constitution became their toilet paper. At least with Rove’s resignation one of the heads of this hydra is gone. Karl, the 2006 election gave you the kick in the pants you deserved. The 2008 election will prove the ultimate undoing of your “legacy”. Good riddance.

Bombings in Ninevah Province, Iraq. These bombings were horrible but predictable. While it will take days to get an accurate death toll, it looks like al Qaeda terrorists murdered at least 200 Iraqis. How reprehensible but unsurprising it was that al Qaeda chose to target a small ethnic sect, the Yazidis, in these attacks. It is impossible to know whether these bombings were the consequence of our Whack a Mole strategy or not, but it seems likely. These bombings suggest two things to me. First, it demonstrates the ultimate futility of Bush’s surge. The price of modestly reducing the violence in and around Baghdad alone took most of our armed forces, yet no one is calling for a draft. In fact, it was explicitly ruled out recently. To apply our surge across the entire country of Iraq would require a draft. Yet even we could summon the will, this sort of carnage would still continue across Iraq. Second, al Qaeda’s real aims have little to do with destroying America. It is abundantly clear that al Qaeda’s goal in Iraq is to kill and terrorize Iraqis. To me the “fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here” strategy amount to voluntarily relocating our citizens 6000 miles so they can be targeted by terrorists. Since our presence seems to add to the violence and needlessly kill our soldiers, why the hell are we still there?

Iowa Straw Poll. What a meaningless event. The votes do not count. Those who bother to vote have to be bribed to attend. It seems to be a way for campaigns to squander their money and for campaign consultants to earn fat paychecks. Historically there is not much correlation between winning the straw poll and winning the Republican nomination anyhow. The mainstream media would do us all a favor by simply ignoring event.

Early Voting. This crazy strategy of states trying to one up each other to be one of the early states to have primaries and caucuses has to stop. It makes no sense to cast the first votes for a party’s nominee nearly a year before the election. It raises the cost of campaigns, limit our choices and lengthens the time between determining a party’s nominee and the general election. Increasingly, if you are not politically connected or have at least a hundred million dollars of fortune stashed away, you should not even bother to run for president. However, these early voting initiatives are a great way to establish an oligarchy. It strikes me that we are halfway there already.

Declaring Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corp “Terrorists”. This is just so wrong. When we have solid evidence that members of their Guard have been ordered to fill cars with explosives and blow themselves up in crowded markets then maybe we can call them terrorists. Calling them terrorists is like calling the Chinese Army terrorists for moving ammunition into North Vietnam to aid the Vietcong during the Vietnam War. This declaration is all about building a case for attacking Iran and is doing so using broad brush propaganda tactics worthy of Goebel. It is unworthy of our great nation. Iran’s guard may be supporting their Shi’ite brothers or may be helping Iraqis end an occupation, but that is not terrorism. Let us not cheapen this dreadful word, lest it lose its meaning.

August 15th, 2007 at 08:22pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | one comment

No Easy Answers on Islamic Terrorism

Perhaps it got your attention on Wednesday when Senator and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said this about the Pakistani government:

There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. . . . If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.

From the back of the Republican pack, on Tuesday representative and presidential nominee Tom Tancredo had this suggestion for what we should do if there is another 9/11 type event:

If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina.

Obama at least tempered his remarks by saying that he would double foreign aid to $50 billion a year, and allocate $2 billion to combat the influence of Islamic madrassas schools and to improve our public relations. These are actions that I support. However, statements like those quoted suggest to me that neither Tancredo nor Obama are ready to be our next president. Perhaps this is why I find myself drawn toward candidates who truly grasp the dimensions and nuances of the terrorist threat. Maybe it is time for me to give money to Senator Joe Biden’s campaign. At least Senator Biden gets it.

There is no question that our erstwhile ally in the war on terrorism, Pakistan’s president and possible dictator for life General Pervez Musharraf, could do a lot more to root out elements of al Qaeda. It, along with the Taliban, controls a rather lawless area of northwestern Pakistan. Osama bin Laden, if he is still alive, is likely living in that remote area. Even if he is not, it is clear that what leadership al Qaeda has is likely concentrated in that area.

The real goal of the United States is to reduce and eventually eliminate Islamic sponsored terrorism. Would capturing Osama bin Laden solve this problem? It probably could not hurt. Certainly, the man deserves to be brought to justice. However, al Qaeda has no centralized leadership. Those who think al Qaeda would go away with his capture or death are likely deluding themselves. Indeed, it could be argued that we are better off with bin Laden alive but on the run than we would be if he were dead. There is no way to know for sure, of course. That is part of the problem. The chessboard we are playing is bafflingly complex. One thing we have learned is that our actions, which often seem entirely reasonable and logical, are often counterproductive. Our invasion of Iraq is a case in point.

If our military were to strike in northwestern Pakistan with a limited but sustained military campaign to root out al Qaeda, what would be the results? It is hard to say for sure but I doubt we would end up safer than we are now. I hope that we would not try to emulate our tactics in Iraq by essentially occupying that part of Pakistan and hoping for its eventual pacification. I hope that if we did go into that lawless area that our mission would be targeted, surgical and we would withdraw after a matter of days or weeks. However, even if we succeeded in finding bin Laden and destroying the nexus of al Qaeda in that area, I doubt we would end up more secure from Islamic terrorism. I think it is much more likely that it would inflame anti-American feelings, already very high in that area of the world. I think it would lead to the recruitment of fresh terrorists to take up their cause. Islamic inspired violence directed against our country would increase rather than decrease.

Osama bin Laden understands all this of course. The reason he chose to attack us on September 11, 2001 was that he knew we would respond with 20th century tactics to a 21st century problem. By doing so, it aided his ends, as the spread of terrorism inspired by al Qaeda since that event demonstrated.

Just as we cannot solve Iraq’s problems through military force, neither can we win the war on terrorism through military force. Iraq’s problems, in the unlikely event they can be solved at all, are political in nature. The same is true with our war on terrorism. This is a political war that is won through succeeding at political tactics.

Obama was half-right by realizing that in order to end terrorism we have to address the issues that feed it. It is much as firefighters create fire lines to stop forest fires. We need to focus most of our resources in the war on terrorism, not by sending occupying troops or selling high tech military hardware to Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia, but by working toward political reconciliation and improving the living standards of people in the region. We must replace religious fanaticism, oppression and despair with its most potent antidote: hope.

Principally this means bringing a just and lasting political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It will require personal diplomacy, it will require the United Nations, it will require the organizations like the League of Arab States, and it will require any resource that can be brought to bear. While we are doing this, we must invest massively in sound non-partisan non-governmental organizations. We need to use these organizations as proxies to address the poverty, oppression and lack of opportunity that feeds the cycle of violence in that area. It means building schools by the hundreds in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It means creating affordable housing instead of refugee camps. It means building and improving roads, bridges and water treatment plants.

It also means making our military aid to Israel conditional on their solemn commitment to remove government support for Jewish settlements outside the state of Israel. It means making our aid to Israel conditional on their agreeing in principle that it will eventually withdraw to their 1967 borders. The conflict in that part of the Middle East is has its roots, not so much in the creation of the state of Israel, as it does in aftermath the 1967 Gulf War. Obviously, these are not easy things to do, which is why new workable political and economic tactics are vital.

Our real national security interests are in fact intimately tied to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. We must not do this unilaterally but together with the United Nations and other multinational organizations. We need to reduce the number of sticks and increase the number of carrots. The one resource Americans have in abundance is money. We have huge gobs of money, which are a direct result of our peace, freedom and stable democratic government. By the time our debacle in Iraq is over, we will have squandered at least a trillion dollars. Yet even this vast sum will hardly be noticed in our massive economy. We can afford to sponsor a Marshall-type plan for the Middle East, through neutral parties, that should replace hopelessness with hope. We also need to provide huge amounts of basic humanitarian assistance for a region that is still very much war torn and overflowing with refugees. Any new Marshall plan should cost a tiny fraction of what we have already recklessly squandered away in Iraq.

Our primary goal should always be to do what we can to reduce the factors fueling Islamic terrorism. If a particular action is likely to add fuel to the fire, we need to assess whether it is really in our national interest. Certainly destroying cities like Mecca and Medina as Rep. Tancredo suggested would guarantee eternal war and enmity against our country. It would be the most counterproductive, not to mention the stupidest thing we could possibly do in reaction to Islamic terrorism.

Our next president, unlike our current one, needs to be fully mindful of these tradeoffs. He or she must be progressive enough to push for the real political changes that might actually solve our long-term problem with Islamic terrorism. Senator Obama’s unwise remarks suggest he has not grasped the totality of the problem facing us. Let us hope that Democrats choose a nominee, based not on how inspiring they find his or her speeches at political rallies, but on whether they have the maturity, wisdom and judgment to apply our country’s resources wisely in these areas of the world during these very turbulent times.

August 4th, 2007 at 11:18am Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | 2 comments

Betting on our next president

No, I am not calling our next presidential election in July 2007. We still have six months to go before the first presidential primary vote is cast. Moreover, history is replete with front-runners going to the back of the pack, and visa versa. Back in January I sized up the presidential candidates and warned that only fools would pick them that early. So, no, I am not picking our next president.

Nonetheless, if I were a bookie setting the odds, I know on whom I would place my money. Ladies and gentlemen, I award four out of five odds to our 44th (and first female) president: Hillary Rodham Clinton!

Please understand that I am not placing odds on Senator Clinton because I am particularly enthusiastic about her candidacy. I am not particularly enthusiastic about any of the current lot. Unlike Howard Dean’s candidacy four years ago, for whom I was feverishly attending meet ups and emailing my friends, while I think most of the Democratic candidates running are pretty good, none of them has connected with me the way Howard did. (I did give John Edwards $50 last month, not because I am enthusiastic about him, but because he needed the money more than Senators Clinton and Obama did. I wanted to see him achieve rough fundraising parity.)

However, particularly after reading this Washington Post-ABC News Poll it is hard to escape the conclusion that barring some rather stupid screw up (which seems unlikely from the stage-managed Senator Clinton) that Hillary Clinton will probably win the Democratic presidential nomination and thus the general election.

My gut tells me that given the current political dynamics there is no way that any nominated Republican candidate can win the 2008 presidential election. Chuck Hagel, should he run as an independent could possibly alter the dynamics of the race and win or tip the election, but his odds are very long too. He has expressed zero interest in running for president in 2008. Even if he did the odds would be markedly against him, since he would start out far behind in both recognition and money.

Republicans have a four-letter word problem this time around and you know who he is. Back in March, I said the obvious: Bush was killing the Republican Party. Since that time, President Bush has exacerbated the Republican Party’s election problems to a degree even I did not anticipate. Virtually every action he takes makes his anemic poll numbers drop even further. While Congress’s poll numbers are equally bad, they are bad because Republicans have enough votes to obstruct much the agenda of the Democratic Congress. This in turn is driving more animus toward Republicans in Congress. Voters took a swipe at Republicans in last fall’s elections. Now they are ready to go for the jugular. In a normal election, since Democrats picked up seats in 2006, they would lose seats in 2008. However, this will not be a normal election. I fully expect Democrats to pick up both House and Senate seats in 2008. Moreover, I suspect the margins will be similar to the 2006 midterms.

To me the likelihood that any Republican will win the presidential race in 2008 is about one in ten. One can get a sense of this by looking at hypothetical match up polls. Even in hypothetical races like Republican favorite Rudy Giuliani vs. back of the pack John Edwards, the Democratic candidate still comes out ahead. This could reflect the voters’ lack of enthusiasm for individual Republican candidates. Yet it is also likely indicative of a general bias to vote for change over voting for more of the same. Clearly, the Democrats are well positioned as the party of change.

Which leaves looking at the poll numbers among the Democratic candidates. Senator Obama continues to generate the most enthusiasm and money. However, at least so far, that does not seem to be enough to catapult him into the lead. Nor is it that he is not well known. At this point, he has excellent name recognition across the country. People have formed opinions about Senator Obama. Regardless, as the Washington Post poll measured, despite some narrowing of the race earlier in the year voters are not as enthusiastic about Obama as they were. Currently Senator Clinton leads Senator Obama by 15% among Democratic primary voters. John Edwards polls at a relatively anemic 12%.

In the money race, while Clinton is a bit behind Obama, they are close enough where the money factor should not matter too much. Both candidates will be able to tap and retap a reliable donor network. Given that most of those who are likely to vote have already formed their impressions, the number of minds that can be changed among primary voters is likely rather small. This leaves only major goof ups between now and the general election to substantially alter the dynamics. Senator Clinton, having studied at close range the way her husband ran his campaigns, is too smart and stage-managed to make any severe goofs. She knows how to stick to a message.

Senator Clinton herself if a formidable candidate. She is smart, articulate, attractive and well informed. She sounds convincing and plausible on the campaign trail. At one time men seemed less inclined to vote for her, but now men like women have a positive opinion of her overall. Senator Obama may not have the baggage of voting for the Iraq War Resolution but as the Washington Post poll demonstrates, Democrats do not seem to be holding that vote against her. While some in Republican circles see Senator Clinton as radical, in fact she is quite mainstream. For example, she is not calling for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq. She is not too public about it, but when pressed she thinks it will be necessary to keep tens of thousands of U.S. troops in and around Iraq to quickly react to events in the region. In short, when the general election rolls around, while she be in the center of the political arena. The closest Republican candidate who can run from the center is Rudy Giuliani. However, he is also very strongly in favor of continuing Bush’s disastrous foreign policies. He would need to change his positions rather strongly to overcome that perception. In doing so, he will likely be seen as insincere and pandering. Since elections are typically won from the center, Senator Clinton is the likely beneficiary.

So my money is on Hillary Clinton. I do think it is quite possible that John Edwards will win the Iowa Caucuses, simply because he has practically lived in Iowa the last few years. Yet I doubt unless there is a change in the political dynamics that he can sustain momentum much past Iowa. We will have a clearer picture in about six months.

If you disagree, please leave a comment telling me where my logic fails.

July 29th, 2007 at 09:36pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | one comment

Uninspired

Is anyone really inspired by any of the candidates currently running for President of the United States in 2008? I am not.

This is the first election in my lifetime where there is neither a president running for reelection nor his anointed vice president waiting in the wings. Consequently, it seems like everyone and his grandmother is running for president. With so many candidates to choose from, why does it feel like mediocrity abounds?

On the Republican side, there is Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City and current Republican Party front-runner. He put on a good show immediately after 9/11 but his overall record as mayor of New York City was hardly exemplary. He certainly had his peaks in popularity and he can take credit for removing much of the crime from the city. However, his style left much to be desired. He proved himself tin-eared, pompous, secretive and extraordinarily vindictive. His friend Bernard Kerik plead guilty to corruption charges resulting from his actions as Corrections Commissioner for the city. Despite this, Giuliani promoted him to the Bush Administration for Secretary of Homeland Security. You have to wonder what he might be smoking on the side to do something this stupid. Then there is his disastrous personal life which the national press so far has chosen to ignore. He not only cheated on his wife, but did so quite brazenly in public, in front of the tabloids and without a care in the world. New Yorkers were thrilled to see him leave office.

John McCain is certainly an honorable man, but he seems intent to dig his own political grave. Give him an A for sticking to principle on national security issues like Iraq. However, this is like giving Thelma & Louise an A for hitting the accelerator at the end of the movie. We do not solve terrorism by continuing a losing strategy.

Mitt Romney is handsome but is far more vulnerable to flip flopper charges than John Kerry ever was. He was proponent of gun control and then he was for the second amendment. He is now against gay marriage and civil unions but once supported domestic partner benefits. He was for stem cell research in 2002 but now opposes research using cloned embryos. Who is the real Mitt Romney? He will be whomever he needs to be to win the nomination, is what the answer appears to be.

The rest of the Republican bunch consists of unknowns who are very likely to remain unknowns. They may each have merits, but they have not demonstrated a way to connect themselves with the voters nationally. Say Senator Brownback and most people say Senator Who? They have no idea where he comes from or what he stands for. While he may have done some great things in the Senate, they were not great enough to garner national name recognition. Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore was my governor once upon a time. He cut the much hated car tax, but it came back to bite him when the recession arrived. Rather than pull back on the car tax, he gave short shrift to both roads and schools in order to pay for car tax relief. Mike Huckabee did nothing to distinguish himself while governor of Arkansas. Being mere U.S. representatives running for president puts Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo out to pasture. Representative Ron Paul is a libertarian and consequently unelectable. Fred Thompson is not officially in the race yet, but his short Senate career was hardly distinguished. At least he has name recognition from his Hollywood acting days. Tommy Thompson was at one time my boss (when I worked for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), but his work there was unremarkable. He is hoping he can connect with voters who remember his success chopping of the welfare roles in Wisconsin before President Clinton persuaded the Congress to do the same thing. However, that was so long ago though that most voters have forgotten.

On the Democratic side, there of course is Hillary Clinton, who has six years as a U.S. senator. I would count her eight years as First Lady but while she doubtless had influence she had no direct power. I keep trying to get excited over Hillary and I keep failing. She seems too stage-managed. As The Washington Post documented recently, she is staged managed. She has a whole slew of official and unofficial female advisers that act as her de-facto Praetorian Guard. Her biggest mistake of course was for voting for the Iraq War, a vote she still has not officially recanted. She recently voted against funding for continuing the Iraq War, likely because she knew it would play well politically with Democrats. However, she has also stated that she thinks that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will have to stay in Iraq indefinitely. How is this getting us out? She has the advantage of being attractive and articulate but she strikes me as simply more of the well moneyed centrist Democratic tradition. Mostly, she makes me want to yawn. If she had not been married to Bill, she would suffer the same ignoble fate as Elizabeth Dole.

Having voted for the Iraq war and then later saying it was a mistake also makes John Edwards a flip flopper. Perhaps to amend his mistake, he is now running not just against the war, but as a populist. Yet his populism strikes me as a bit too convenient and timely to be wholly sincere. I do not care if he spends $400 on his haircut, but I do care that he was stupid enough to charge it to his campaign. I like most of his positions but they seem curiously to be tailored to give red meat to the liberal wing of the party, and thus improve his chances at winning the nomination. Nor am I convinced that even if he were elected he would have the political savvy to get many of his great ideas through the Congress.

Barack Obama remains a terrific orator, but some inept steps during his campaign so far have made me cautious. He has something of an aura surrounding him the likes we have not seen since John F. Kennedy. However, it takes more than aura to be an effective president. I would like to see how he spends the next ten years as a politician before he tries to reach for the Oval Office.

I was quite enamored with Bill Richardson until I learned more about him. His credentials look great, until he goes along with the Republican line that Democrats (except him) are tax spenders. It is clear which party is the “charge everything to the national credit card” party, and it is not the Democratic Party. In addition, his command of certain facts left a lot to be desired. Sorry Bill, Roe v. Wade did not happen was not a 1980s Supreme Court decision. It was a 1973 decision.

Gravel is an amusing joke running for president. Kucinich is just a joke. Kucinich’s positions are so extreme and weird that even I, a good Democratic liberal, want to run away from him. That leaves two aging senators: Joe Biden and Christopher Dodd. Of the two, Biden has more name recognition and credibility. Nonetheless, this is hardly his first try for the presidency. He never garnered more than tepid interest so this dynamic is unlikely to change in 2008. Like Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, Biden also voted for the Iraq War, and at the time gave impassioned speeches about the major threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Given the open field, it is surprising and disappointing that those who do have the necessary combination of gravitas, command of the field and the experience to run for president cannot seem be bothered. Maybe they realize what I have long suspected: actually being president is a lose-lose proposition. Even so, for the good of the country I think Al Gore and retired General Wesley Clark should throw their hats into the ring. I could support either with enthusiasm.

The United States is at a crucial point in its history. It needs someone of Lincoln’s stature to be president. Unfortunately, what we are getting are uninspiring candidates. Perhaps this will encourage independents to fill the void.

I am a good Democrat but if these are the best both the Republicans and Democrats are able to field, they would deserve it if an independent ran and won instead. We need excellence right now, not mediocrity or more of the same. I wish both parties could throw out the current candidates and bring in a set of fresh faces. We can do better than this.

June 22nd, 2007 at 08:33pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | 3 comments

Same old soap

When you are doing dishes, you might as well keep your mind engaged. I live in the Washington metropolitan area and C-SPAN radio is available. So on Saturday evenings I get dishpan hands listening to C-SPAN radio’s Road to the White House. Last night C-SPAN was broadcasting live from Des Moines where Iowa Republicans were having their annual Lincoln Day Dinner. The convention center was full of Iowa GOP and Republican presidential hopefuls, the latter of whom were selling that same conservative soap to a GOP-friendly crowd. Naturally, this being the GOP, you had to spend $75 to get in to hear them in the first place.

I found the time I spent listening to the event quite helpful in my understanding the current groupthink of the Republican Party. All the major presidential contenders were there: Rudy, John and Mitt as well as a number of lesser GOP presidential wannabees like Rep. Tom Tancredo, Senator Sam Brownback and Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Their themes were remarkably consistent.

First, according to the speakers the Democrats, although they have only been back in power a few months, have returned to their roots. As a Democrat, this was news to me. Apparently, my party has apparently reverted to form. We are all a bunch of McGovernites: awful, ultra-left, tax and spend, free abortions for all welfare mothers type of party with no religious or moral values. There was only one cure: more of that same GOP soap: low taxes, no abortions, a bloated military and very big and very manly fences on our borders. Winning the War on Terrorism over there so they will not come over here was also a recurring theme. Each candidate was in favor of winning the War on Terror in a general sense. However, not one of them had the courage to step up to the plate and advocate what would be required to actually win the war in the way they envision it: institute a draft and raise taxes to pay for it. In the event of a fire in the kitchen, simply shouting the word “draft” would have cleared the Polk County Convention Complex in thirty seconds.

Granted, at these sorts of events politicians have a tendency to preach to the choir. However, if these are the themes the GOP is expecting to carry into the 2008 election, the GOP is in deeper trouble than even I expected. This is no way to win an election. It is a great way to catastrophically lose an election, put a Democrat in the White House and pile on Democratic majorities. Perhaps that is why only 40% of Republicans surveyed are satisfied with their announced presidential candidates. It might also explain the inexplicable: why Republicans nationwide are so enthusiastic about Rudy Giuliani. Perhaps it is because of all the candidates out there, only Rudy has a real chance of winning. If the GOP wants to maintain any political power, they would be wise to hold their noses and vote for Rudy, even though he is a gay rights and abortion friendly Republican. These may be egregious Republican sins, but the American people have consistently supported abortion rights and the homophobes among us are now a distinct minority.

Instead, the Republican Party has candidates like John McCain with a whopper of a losing message: let us stay in Iraq as long as it takes, no matter how hopeless, in order to defeat the terrorists. No wonder his fundraising is so anemic. One could even argue that McCain’s position on some level is logical. Unfortunately, it is not politically possible. I know I would like to own a fleet of Lamborghinis. However, I am not obscenely wealthy. I had better set my sites lower. Maybe I should consider a Lexus. Winning the War in Iraq is now simply out of the question because we cannot afford to stay there indefinitely and even if we could, the cultural bridge between Western and Islamic thinking is too wide. Americans have sobered up. John has not.

For all their whining, at least Democrats understand the War in Iraq is a lost cause. They are grounded in some political reality. Doing what is right and just is fine, if you can actually pull it off. Not a Republican I listened to yesterday had a realistic plan for how to win in Iraq, or to win the War on Terror. However, they did have lots of platitudes. Nor have they quite discerned cause and effect. To me the War in Iraq looks like a sectarian war, and our presence there is construed as an occupation, not a fight for democracy. Unlike John McCain, I do not believe that if we leave Iraq they will follow us home. If you want to know what will happen there after we leave, look at what is going on there now. The various factions will continue to duke it out with insurgencies and terrorist incidents.

What is going on in Iraq today has far more to do with Muhammad’s death in 682 A.D. than it has to do with decadent American values. Iraq just happens to be a part of the world where Sunnis and Shiites live in close proximity. Al Qaeda is far more concerned about wiping out the apostasy of the Shiite version of Islam (although that is impossible) than in waging a holy war on the West. Most likely, by the time this sectarian war (it is more accurate to call it a sectarian war than a civil war) ends, neither side will arise victorious. Shiites will continue to practice their version of Islam as they always have. Unfortunately, there is little doubt that the body count will be very high.

Republicans though seem to want to stay in Fantasyland. Americans overall though are a lot more sober. They realize the War on Terror needs rethinking and rescoping, because what we are doing is pointless and counterproductive. Both Republicans and Democrats share the same long-term goal, but each side has radically different ideas on how to get there. Republicans would like to label Democrats as “cut and run” but that label does not work anymore. Americans want a workable strategy to actually win the War on Terror. More of the same is just folly.

On virtually every point that I heard Republican presidential candidates address yesterday, the nation has moved on. The one issue that Americans might actually care about is stemming illegal immigration. It would be hard to build a successful campaign on this one issue, though. Otherwise, the public has moved strongly away from Republican positions. We support abortion rights as we have for more than thirty years. We want more stem cell research and do not believe that an inert fertilized blastocyst consisting of a few cells is the equivalent of human being. We favor equal privileges for gays and lesbians. We realize the folly of solving our health care crisis through “solutions” like medical savings accounts when most of us live from paycheck to paycheck. We want a health care system that does not disappear if we are unemployed. We acknowledge that global warming is real and must be addressed. We want Social Security and Medicare to be solvent. We want more social spending on things that matter, like early childhood education, not less.

The nation’s demographics are changing. America is now a broadly pluralistic and multiethnic society where whites will soon no longer be in the majority. Today’s children are growing up in this reality. They give no more thought to the color of someone’s skin that they do the color of their eyes. Racism is out; tolerance is in. Country club Republicans are out; MoveOn.org is in. Deficit spending is out; fiscal discipline is in. Ideology is out; pragmatism is in. These forces are sweeping across the country. George W. Bush is the last gasp of a dying era. His counterproductive strategies and his rubber stamp Congress actually accelerated these fundamental changes. Americans applaud initiatives like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi meeting with Syrian government officials. They realize that obstinate behaviors and intransigence are counterproductive. We realize that the world is changed through making friends and through dialog, and rarely with armed force.

Perhaps Republicans can repackage their old soap to look like new soap. Voters though are now very leery of Republicans, and for good reason. We have been doubly burned now, first by Reagan and now by George W. Bush. It turns out that what matters are not presidents lying about oral sex, but presidents lying us into a war. Republicans would be much smarter to address issues that Americans care about rather than sell us solutions to our problems that are more of the same old soap.

April 15th, 2007 at 01:02pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | one comment

End the Money Primary

It was not that long ago when no one cared how much money a candidate did or did not raise more than a year before the election. That was because a year before an election it was still possible to feign disinterest in higher office, suddenly feel a higher calling, spend some weeks touring Iowa and New Hampshire in a campaign bus and still win a party’s presidential ticket.

Today, even though our next national election is more than a year and a half away the press is all agog over the first returns from the so-called Money Primary. This week declared candidates began releasing their FEC reports showing how much money they raised in the first quarter of the year. Perhaps because the press have nothing better to do, even though there is still a bloody civil war going on in Iraq, they have become obsessed with how much money announced presidential candidates have collected this far out. Hillary Clinton reports an obscene $35M raised, although $10M was transferred from the coffers of her overstuffed 2006 Senatorial reelection campaign. More surprising though is that Barack Obama, the articulate and photogenic African American junior senator from Illinois matched her $25M. On the Republican side, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, whom even most Republicans would say “Who?” led the pack with $20M in campaign contributions. The press now sees him as hot stuff.

All this money and not a single vote has been cast, or will be cast until next January. One thing is for sure: winners of the Money Primary will have huge amounts of money at their disposal to saturate the airwaves and newspapers in early states. Will all this money buy them the votes they are looking for? Perhaps not. By the end of December 2003, my preferred candidate Howard Dean had amassed a then stunning $41M war chest. He was considered unbeatable. Yet he failed to win a single primary. As I learned in a painful way, having a small but fervent crowd of supporters willing to keep sending in donations was no guarantee that the rest of my party members would come to share my views.

My guess is that in the 2008 campaign that money will matter much more. This is because the Democratic Party and the State of California in particular have changed the rules. So that their state can get disproportionate national influence, states seem to be on a contest to see which of them will vote earliest for party nominees. Democrats in Nevada will caucus on January 19th, only five days after the Iowa caucus. South Carolina will hold its Democratic primary a week after New Hampshire, on January 29th. Perhaps most egregiously, California passed a law requiring its primary be moved to Super Tuesday on February 5th. Until now, none of the Super Tuesday states were large and populous states. As the most populous state in the country, California voters will likely be a deciding factor on who will be nominated by their party. To win California, the only effective outlet for a candidate will be their airwaves, and that will require them to have a large bank account.

Should I care about these trends? Probably not, but I do. Maybe I am a stuffy traditionalist, but I liked having Iowa and New Hampshire leading the pack. Both states have relatively small populations. This allowed voters to have plenty of opportunities to check out candidates in person. In short, it was possible for voters in these states to develop informed opinions and get personal feedback from candidates. Now, with the shuffling of the primary calendars, caucuses and primaries are more likely to be won based on which candidate does the best marketing and buys the most TV and radio time. Expect fewer debates between candidates and for them to spend less time in any particular state. In fact, to compete they will have to spend even more time fundraising, and less time pressing the flesh with us average voters.

I am not suggesting that Iowa and New Hampshire should always be the first states to vote for nominees. However, I do think that there is a lot of merit to having candidates get to know a state and its issues in detail. What we can now expect is more drive by campaigning consisting of large and boisterous staged events, rather than forums in small town halls and diners where people can interact directly with candidates.

Perhaps this is democracy in action, but I do not like it. I see zero correlation between the worth of a candidate and his or her ability to raise money. I do not want a president that excels in fund raising. I want a president that I feel is in tune with the issues that truly matter to the average person. Time spent by candidates in small town halls and knocking on doors is not at all wasted. Not only does it give a chance for voters to get to know candidates, but much more importantly, it also forces candidates to interact one on one with ordinary people. It helps ground them as a candidate. Raising money at rubber chicken dinners surrounded by partisans may make a candidate feel good. However, these events tend to surround candidates with people who think and act a lot like them. They are not a representative sample of voters.

If I had the power to redesign the primary schedule, primaries would occur later rather than sooner. In recent years, we generally knew who would win a party’s nomination by the end of February, or by early March at the latest. No office, not even the presidency of the United States should be so damned important that it requires hundreds of millions of dollars to be bankrolled long before a vote is taken. Nor should those candidates with more money have a disproportionate advantage. It should be possible to win a nomination the way Jimmy Carter did: by using shoe leather rather than media consultants. The Money Primary demonstrates a candidate’s ability to convince others to give him or her money to run for office. It says zero about their qualifications or ability to be an effective president. In fact, it helps obscure these very points.

I would like to see a law that prohibits any candidate for announcing that they are running for a national office until a year before the election. It would also prohibit people from providing campaign contributions or for a candidate from hiring or paying any staff until the candidacy is official. In addition, it would prohibit a candidate from dipping into their previous campaign coffers to fund a subsequent election. These ideas, along with staggering the dates of state primaries and caucuses on a rotating basis would do a lot to even the playing field for candidates while also allowing the best candidates to emerge, rather than the best-marketed ones.

April 5th, 2007 at 08:15pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | one comment

Bush is killing the Republican Party

The Pew Center published a remarkable poll Thursday. In 2002, Americans were split politically right down the middle. When asked, the percent of Americans who called themselves Republican (or leaning Republican) was virtually equal with the number identifying themselves as Democrat (or leaning Democratic). This has now changed dramatically. 50% of Americans now identify as a Democrat or leaning Democratic. 35% identify themselves as Republican or leaning Republican.

What happened? While a variety of factors contributed to the political shift, which was borne out in the 2006 elections, doubtless the largest factor is our War in Iraq. As I noted some time ago, the public has turned irretrievably against the war. Right or wrong, regardless of the long-term consequences, Americans are insistent that our involvement in this war must end. Consequently, when Republicans line up behind the President on Iraq, it only deepens the animosity of the public toward Republicans. By a nearly two-thirds majority, Americans now favor a withdrawal from Iraq by the end of 2008. Many would like us to leave sooner. A significant minority want us to leave immediately. The public sees that our armed forces are in the midst of a civil war. They did not sign up for this scenario in 2003. As we begin the fifth year of this unnecessary war, they simply want us out.

As we learned in Vietnam, it is much easier to invade a country than to get out of it. The House of Representatives made it clear yesterday that it wants to begin a process that gets our troops out of Iraq. The bill it passed calls for the withdrawal of most forces by September 2008. The President has promised to veto the bill should it come to his desk.

As a diarist on DailyKos noted yesterday, there is slim chance that there will be the votes in the Senate to pass something similar to the House bill, simply because the margin between parties is tighter. Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) is incapacitated, and the allegedly Democratic senator from Connecticut, Joseph Lieberman, will certainly vote against a fixed timetable for withdrawal. However, one other thing is also certain: only Congress can appropriate the money for our Iraq involvement. With the money running out, failure to pass a funding bill would, by default, make it difficult to sustain our forces there.

It is not clear how such a scenario would play out politically. During the Gingrich Revolution in 1995, a similar tactic resulted in shutting down the government. This caused a huge backlash against the House Republicans. It eventually gave President Clinton the upper hand. In this case, no one is threatening to shut down the federal government, only to benignly stop explicit funding for the War in Iraq by not supporting it with appropriations. This would be spun as failing to support the troops. So most likely, what will happen will be a game of political chicken. My sense is that if the Congress holds firm, what will likely be agreed to is approval of stopgap funding. I believe Congress would ultimately agree to continue funding at present levels in Iraq for six months, to see if the “surge” will in fact work and to see how the political winds ultimately blow as the 2008 elections move closer. I do not see from a House and Senate conference a bill acceptable to the President that would also be supported by the House.

There are initial signs that the surge of troops in Baghdad is having a calming effect in the city. This is not too surprising, given that when the surge ends the number of troops in Iraq will be at an all time high. The mission in Baghdad will essentially be what it should have been four years ago. This may give Bush a temporary political boost. By itself, it will not solve the underlying political problem. There is slim evidence that Sunni and Shiite groups are prepared to make the political accommodations necessary for genuine peace. Just as worrisome, it is highly unlikely that the Iraqi army and police will become both united and a stabilizing force in the region. So perhaps some rough peace could temporarily be purchased in Baghdad at the cost of a sustained American occupation. In this event I suspect there will continue to be scattered acts of carnage. With the political problem unsolved, and with too many other forces who will simply not accept political accommodation, the violence will shift toward easier targets of opportunity. The choice will then be to continue an American occupation of Baghdad indefinitely in order to ensure a rough peace there, or withdraw. There is no proposal being considered to bring in the number of occupation forces necessary to secure the entire country. This would require a draft, and except for a few eccentrics in Congress, neither political party wants to go there.

One thing that will not change is the date of the 2008 elections. A more politically savvy Bush might be willing to cut his losses in Iraq near the end of the year in hopes that Republicans will benefit in the 2008 elections. This would be contrary to his stay the course rhetoric. However, if the surge falters later this year he could say, “We did the best we could, but the Iraqis have not stepped up to the plate.” The start of a withdrawal later this year and his initiative might provide cover and political benefits to the Republican Party going into 2008 (or at least limit their losses).

This is unlikely. Even if it happens, it would likely be of marginal benefit to Republicans. We can expect more yielding on Iraq from Republicans in Congress, particularly from Republican senators up for reelection in 2008. Ultimately, as elections approach the political dynamics favor the Democrats. For Iraq is unlikely to get much better. Consequently, it should get easier, not harder, to pass bills that require the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq.

Unless it moderates some key positions, the demographics look increasingly bad for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party. Like it or not, our nation is changing culturally, racially and generationally. Generations Y and Z are growing up in a culture where racial differences, sexual orientation and hot button issues like gay marriage are less important. They are passionate about issues like the environment. However, as they move toward becoming vested members of society, they too will feel the squeeze of the cost of living. Consequently, Republicans may eventually draw back some of these people on issues like taxation and the scope of government. In the short term, although history suggests otherwise, I see Congress becoming significantly bluer in the 2008 election. The president we elect depends more on the personalities of who is nominated. Providing that Republicans can nominate someone politically moderate like Rudy Giuliani, they might retain the White House. In any event, much of the traditional Republican agenda is likely to bite the dust. Their recent legacy of fiscal wreckage will be too fresh in our minds.

There is great potential for a savvy Democratic Party to rebuild its political base over the next few years. Democrats have learned that being out of power sucks. Historically they have not done a great job of consolidating their political power. There is some hope though that Democrats have learned the lesson. Both Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seem to understand how to be effective leaders. How they navigate dicey issues like Iraq over the next year may determine how much the Democrats can increase their political power.

Republicans though should be afraid — very afraid. Standing on principle is all well and good. In this case standing on principle is likely to leave their party marginalized in a way not seen since 1976. Their party leaders would be wise to pressure Bush to get out of Iraq quickly. Otherwise, it is possible that none of them will live to see their party in the majority in Congress again.

March 24th, 2007 at 04:37pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2007 | no comments

Run, Al!

Back in 2000, I voted for Al Gore, but not enthusiastically. His campaign was ineptly run, and he seemed wholly insincere even to those of us who voted for him. He was the victim of putting too much faith in media consultants. Love or hate George W. Bush (and clearly, I am in the latter camp) you had a good idea of what he stood for. He was not going to be appointing any namby pamby liberal judges, that was for sure. In addition, there were going to be tax cuts forever. Most importantly to many Americans, he represented a clean break from Bill Clinton’s well documented (though in retrospect, largely irrelevant) deficiencies.

Despite all the hoopla about how that election finally turned out, I didn’t shed too many tears for Al Gore. Granted, I shed a lot more a few years later when it became clear of the magnitude of our (or should I say our Supreme Court’s) mistake. The United States will be paying the karmic debt for the Bush Presidency for decades. It is not as if 9/11 would have been a cakewalk for any president. One thing is clear in retrospect: Al has the brains and common sense that all but the most diehard Republican fools now admit that Bush lacks. You know that had the CIA presented its information on Iraqi intelligence to President Gore, rather than going to war, Al would have told the CIA, “This is crap. Get me something that is better sourced.” The Iraq debacle simply would not have happened in a Gore Administration.

Instead, Gore withdrew from public life, did some adjunct teaching and tried to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He got in some trouble for asking Democrats to endorse Howard Dean for president in 2004. (In retrospect, his endorsement was probably smart, because Dean is authentic, whereas Kerry was not.) After the 2004 elections, Gore zeroed in as the most public and passionate advocate for his most important issue: global warming. As you may have read in the news, his film An Inconvenient Truth is now in theaters. It has been well received and has shaken up even many of the most diehard global warming skeptics. By communicating on a subject that he is passionate about, Al seems to have found is mojo at last. Although I have yet to see the film, I have seen the previews. At least in the previews, his performance is stunning. Gone is the Wooden Al that made us cringe in 2000. Finally, we have the real and authentic Al, and I love what I see.

Al says he is not running for president in 2008. However, he does often sound like a candidate. Most noticeably, he has been the major speaker at a number of lectures sponsored in Washington by MoveOn.org. In his speeches, he has delivered devastating critiques of the Bush Administration that were not just coherent, but delivered passionately and convincingly.

Richard Nixon lost the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy. For a while, it appeared that he had gone out to graze permanently in a different pasture. Of course, he reemerged and managed to win the 1968 election. Ironically, he won that election because the Johnson Administration could not find a way out of Vietnam. Nearly forty years later we find ourselves in a similar situation in Iraq. Al is too smart to have a “secret plan” to end this war. Yet one thing is now clear: America needs effective leadership in the war on terrorism. We need someone with a realistic and nuanced plan, not someone whose strategy amounts to slavishly following an ideology.

When I survey the likely 2008 presidential candidates, I am largely uninspired. Howard Dean has ruled out running so that he can tackle the arguably larger problem of bringing Democrats back into the majority. There are likely candidates like Russ Feingold whom I feel passionate about, but who I also know probably leans too far to the left to be elected. Hillary Clinton is the early favorite, yet she claims she is concentrating on her own senatorial reelection this year, not a White House bid. (However, she is raising boatloads of money, far more than she will need to win reelection, which is in the bag anyhow.) I have heard Hillary speak. When her husband was running for president, I even had the opportunity to shake her hand. There is no question that she is an excellent speaker. However, she has a huge percentage of people who will not vote for her under any circumstances. In fact, most of these people totally loathe her. Kerry clearly is positioning himself to run again, but as a well-understood candidate now, he is unlikely to generate new enthusiasm. Of course, others want to try or try again. They include John Edwards, Joe Biden, and even Christopher Dodd (who most Americans do not know). Wesley Clark is my current favorite among these potential candidates, although he too has some passionate enemies.

Clark is no longer my top choice. I want Al. (However, Clark could make an excellent vice president.) I want the Al that I see in An Inconvenient Truth. I want him passionately. This Al Gore is the real deal that he withheld from us in the 2000 campaign. This is the authentic Al, stripped of his masks. He no longer has to worry about triangulating, his poll numbers or following the dubious wisdom of the Beltway insiders. It should feel creepy that old Wooden Al has metamorphosized at last into the Authentic Al. His sincerity, genuineness and passion is now plain for all to see.

It is time to draft Al Gore in 2008. Yeah, I know he says he is not a candidate. I think that he can be persuaded to change his mind if we keep speaking up. Because not only would he be the best Democrat to run for the presidency, I think he is by far the best person to lead our nation at this crucial time in our history. As he goes across the nation speaking and listening, we need to speak to him. We may need to shout. Al, the country needs you. You are being called to service your country. Do not let your country down at this critical time in history.

May 26th, 2006 at 08:13pm Posted by Mark | Politics 2006 | one comment