Occam’s Razor

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

It’s the Bushes vs. the Clintons

I am sure I am not the only one intrigued by this USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll. For the first time this poll suggests that if Hillary Clinton were to run for president in 2008 a majority of Americans today would vote for her. Of course it’s a long way from 2008. The last we had heard from Hillary Clinton she had expressed no desire to run for the presidency in 2008. But Americans are clearly warming up to Hillary Clinton. Although she still commands high negatives from highly partisan Republicans she is increasingly embraced not just by Democrats but also by Independents.

And no wonder. For many of us Hillary Clinton is one classy, articulate, respected and balanced woman. Unlike our current bumbling and oafish president, Hillary, like her husband, is articulate. She connects with broad sections of America. She is poised and has a certain gravitas. Rather than being extreme, she is seen as mainstream. Although arguably she comes from a family of some wealth and privilege, politics were never her primary calling. In her case this plays to her advantage, and makes a plausible case that she is in politics to help people. The vast majority of politicians are far more into boosting their ego and strutting their power than helping ordinary Americans.

She has made a few political mistakes along the way. She was instrumental in her husband’s national health insurance task force. Pilloried at the time in that role her actions now seem foresighted. Twelve years later more Americans lack health insurance than ever. The costs for those of us fortunate enough to have it increasingly are going through the roof. She is also widely remembered for her remarks about a “vast right wing conspiracy” against her husband. While the conspiracy remark was likely hyperbole, in retrospect there were certainly lots of connected and partisan Republicans busy sharing notes and dirt about the Clintons. Particularly as we watched the triumph of neoconservatism in the last two presidential elections and the clearly bogus case for war against Iraq, her hyperbole no longer seems quite so fantastic. Politicians not beyond making a false case to take this nation into war would have no qualms about pushing lies about the Clintons.

As the junior senator from New York she has made a mark for herself in the Senate by being both tactful and assertive. It would be hard to find anything she has done in her five years as a senator that has hit an off note. She pushes for common sense progressive policies yet she is clearly for a solid national defense. She bends over backward to accommodate Israeli interests. In New York State she is very popular among her constituents, in spite of being a relative outsider. Even her archenemy Newt Gingrich has found many things to admire about Hillary Clinton.

Should Clinton try to run for the presidency we could expect the usual vitriol and dirty tricks from the Republican Party. However, it will be tough to find mud that will stick to Hillary. Unlike her husband, she isn’t a philanderer. She comes across as pragmatic and sincere: the real deal unlike her duplicitous husband. Republicans will likely be successful in whipping up their base. But their base is only so large and the number of independent voters are increasing. That still leave a fair number of Republican women who, if they don’t particularly like Clinton, at least respect her. Some of the progressive and moderate ones will even vote for her.

Democrats that have been polled about potential candidates for 2008 prefer Hillary more than two to one over other likely candidates. So should she choose to run for president it is likely that she would find a natural base of support within her party. Others have suggested that if she had a running mate like General Wesley Clark the ticket would be unbeatable.

The animosity toward the Clintons is easily understood in retrospect. Bill Clinton demonstrated that he could peel apart Southern states through a combination of a good old boy persona and middle of the road stances. This frustrated the Republican Party during a decade that was otherwise very good for them politically. In particular they were frustrated in their aspirations to fill the federal benches with conservatives. As the party of the black and white thinkers they could not deal with a politician who changed his opinions. But mostly, aside from Bill Clinton’s moral failings, he was an extremely deft politician. With a few exceptions Bill was able to dodge around every one of the traps laid for him by his opponents, and the traps were voluminous.

I think in retrospect the Clinton years will be seen with much nostalgia. They were prosperous years for most Americans. During the 1990s we had the longest peaceful expansion of the economy in history. We had nearly a decade of real wage growth and higher stock markets. That has not been the case during Bush’s tenure. While many would argue that September 11th changed everything, it is hard to argue with many other statistics that show overall employment barely changed from when Bush took office. Overall the stock market indices are still down considerably from where they stood 2000. If there was Clinton fatigue in 2000 it will be Bush fatigue, or anyone who sounds or acts like Bush, in 2008. Most likely the Republicans won’t be nimble enough to understand this. Rather than pick someone relatively mainstream like John McCain they are more likely to pick someone from the neoconservative and religious base of the party like Bill Frist. This makes Democratic prospects for recapturing the presidency in 2008 good regardless of the Republican candidate.

But on some other level Bush’s father’s defeat in 1992 by Bill Clinton wounded the pride of the Bush family. And since that election there has been the need to even scores. Bush’s second term win showed that he could do what his father could not. However Bill Clinton also won successive terms. At the end of Bush’s term there will be a total of two Clinton terms and three Bush terms, if you count Bush’s father. What to do for an encore?

Hillary’s successful run for the presidency would settle the score. Should she win a second term then it would be Clintons 4, Bushes 3. But it is likely that brother Jeb would want to try a run for the presidency himself at some point. Should Jeb succeed there is no real response, unless Chelsea decides to take up politics like her parents.

But should Hillary win the presidency, in addition to being the first woman to ever win the presidency, many would perceive her win as the triumph of Clinton progressivism over Bush neoconservatism. As I noted after the last election even though Bush won by the time his term is over he will have wished he had lost. Should Hillary run and win the presidency in 2008 then mainstream and clear thinking policies will have returned to the Oval Office. And hopefully after suffering the Bush and Reagan follies through 20 of the last 28 years, voters will finally understand the real value in electing progressives.

May 30th, 2005 at 11:56am Posted by Mark | Politics 2005 | one comment

Infidelity: It’s Not So Simple

Prurient Americans (which, frankly are most of us) are waiting breathlessly for the release of Bill Clinton’s tell all book, My Life. Rest assured most of us will not start at Chapter One. Instead we will skip ahead to the part of the story where Monica Lewinski shows up. As you might expect many of the key details (from Clinton’s perspective) have already been disclosed. We learn that once Bill confessed his sins to Hillary he was in the doghouse. Apparently the First Lady can make the President of the United States spend two months sleeping on the couch. We learn that the whole family did counseling. Because we’ve seen snippets of Clinton’s interview with Dan Rather (scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes on Sunday) we learn that Bill dropped his pants for Monica “just because I could.”

It is doubtful that the book would sell quite as well if Clinton had kept his relationship with Ms. Lewinski wholly platonic. It is ironic that his human failing will cause sales of the book to climb into the stratosphere. For all the legal woes and bills inflicted upon him by Ken Starr and the vast right wing conspiracy during his years in office he may end up laughing all the way to the bank.

Clinton’s father died before he was born. He watched his stepfather repeatedly assault his mother. He learned very early to compartmentalize his feelings. He was hardly surrounded by role models during his upbringing. So in retrospect if he had a predisposition toward secrecy and trailer park trash it is perhaps not too surprising. It didn’t help that he was a fairly attractive guy, a terrific public speaker and a born extrovert. Add the title of President of the United States to his resume and if Ms. Lewinski was his only moral failing in office then I frankly give the guy some credit.

As a rule women other than my wife don’t fawn over me. But if I had a 21-year-old temptress willing to perform repeated acts of fellatio on me I doubt I would have held on very long. Most of us guys, when we are only with other guys and after a few beers will candidly admit we are more than capable of such indiscretions. Part of the male brain is wired toward infidelity. It takes repeated conscious effort to live up to our wives’ expectations. Fortunately for us we are rarely in positions of power. Most of us aren’t attractive like Bill Clinton. So his scenarios tend to be hypothetical for most married men. Because we are not alpha males it is easier for us to proclaim our undying commitment to our wives. It’s not that hard to be morally sanctimonious, at least in public, when others in the public spotlight succumb to temptation.

If there is an aspect to the whole sordid affair that really irks me though it is that we quickly resort to stereotypes. Bill was bad for straying. Hillary was good because she didn’t. Monica was a slut and would put out for any guy, not some star struck young lady with intimacy issues. That’s as deep as our thinking goes. Because Hillary held out and Bill didn’t, she is the one with the grievance. She was pure. Bill was Evil. End of public discussion.

This is balderdash. I’ll grant you that there are certain marriages where the wife can make a fairly convincing claim of innocence. We’ve all heard stories of husbands who repeatedly cheat on their wives. At the same time we repeatedly shake our heads wondering why the wives just don’t file for divorce or how they could be so clueless. I think in even the most egregious cases some fault lies on both parties. In the case of the chronically cheating husband the wife was probably more than a bit myopic going into the marriage in the first place.

I can cite the case of someone in my wife’s side of the family. He is roughly Bill Clinton’s age. At the time I first met him he was getting married for the second time. But by that time he had already fathered two children out of wedlock. His father repeatedly cheated on his mother. His father allegedly spent much of his adult life being verbally and physically abusive to them and wrapped up in an alcoholic haze. Wife Number Two was a woman who came from a family of some privilege and money. His wife didn’t learn about much of his sordid past until shortly before the marriage. Yet that did not seem to deter her from marrying him. I don’t know why she married him. Hopefully it was for love. But there were lots of alarm bells that should have gone off. There was one thing though: this in law is a really good-looking guy. We’re talking 9 on a 10 scale, at least. I can’t help but wonder if his looks overwhelmed her common sense. Anyhow, rest assured they have been divorced for some time. Eventually he strayed and hit the booze. She tried to patch things up, but it didn’t work out. He had mentally left the marriage years earlier. And now he is onto wife number three. Last I heard she was still a divorcee and not anxious to get remarried.

There is no way to know for sure the dynamics of the Clinton marriage. But I bet Hillary was more than a little star-struck by Bill. Certainly she knew Bill came from a dysfunctional family. She was likely attracted to him because he was handsome. But I bet part of the attraction was he gave the appearance that he could surmount his past. If so this was a naive assumption. She should have known better. The odds were that if she married Bill she would have many an episode of heartache. Warning flags were there and it appears she chose to ignore them.

Or maybe she figured she could change Bill. This is another one of those fatal mistakes often made by myopic women fixated on one particular guy. I’m guilty of it myself. I have learned the fallacy of this reasoning through the school of hard knocks. No one can ever change anyone. Personal change can only come from within.

Whatever the complex dynamic of the Bill and Hill relationship, Bill’s affair with Monica Lewinski was really a symptom of a larger dysfunctional marital relationship. Hillary was probably clueless. She shouldn’t have been clueless. If the relationship were at the deep enough intimacy level it most likely would not have happened. And if Hillary had reached that inner core of Bill Clinton’s being she would have known who he really was and perhaps never married him. For that she should shoulder some responsibility. I don’t know what kept her busy during the mid 1990s, but I have a feeling she should have spent much more private time with Bill. The work necessary to sustain a rich marriage gives the appearance of being postponed to revel in the thrills of power and prestige.

Hopefully as a result of this encounter their marriage now has that level of intimacy and connection it likely lacked. But somehow I am skeptical. Hillary is a senator and spends at least six days a week in Washington and away from her husband. It sounds like the pattern is repeating itself, except this time there is a role reversal. I hope there is no new Monica Lewinski in Bill Clinton’s future. He’s not quite the Alpha male he was now that he is out of power. But I wouldn’t be surprised if another one turned up in time.

June 19th, 2004 at 11:19am Posted by Mark | Best of Occam's Razor, Sociology | no comments