Republicans Signing Up for Barack Obama

It's not unusual for business people of any political affiliation to contribute to one party one year and the other the next and to sometimes donate to both parties if a clear winner isn't evident. One could argue that it's a form of covering your bets. But it's curious that some Republicans are choosing Barack Obama early on. Truthout caught this story by Sarah Baxter of The Sunday Times:

Disillusioned supporters of President George W Bush are defecting to Barack Obama, the Democratic senator for Illinois, as the White House candidate with the best chance of uniting a divided nation.

(snip)

...last week a surprising new name joined the chorus of praise for the antiwar Obama - that of Robert Kagan, a leading neoconservative and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the late 1990s, which called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Kagan is an informal foreign policy adviser to the Republican senator John McCain, who remains the favoured neoconservative choice for the White House because of his backing for the troops in Iraq.

But in an article in the Washington Post, Kagan wrote approvingly that a keynote speech by Obama at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs was "pure John Kennedy", a neocon hero of the cold war.

(snip)

Disagreements on the war have not stopped John Martin, a Navy reservist and founder of the website Republicans for Obama, from supporting the antiwar senator. He joined the military after the Iraq war and is about to be deployed to Afghanistan.

"I disagree with Obama on the war but I don't think it is a test of his patriotism," Martin says. "Obama has a message of hope for the country."

(snip)

Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton has many Republican defectors of her own, including John Mack, chief executive of Morgan Stanley, who helped raise $200,000 for the president's reelection, qualifying him as a "Bush ranger". He said last week that he was impressed by Clinton's expertise. "I know we're associated mainly with the Republicans but we've always gone for the individual," Mack said.

No doubt the motivations of Republicans and conservative independents supporting Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or other Democrats can vary. Some may genuinely want to see a serious change. Some may be responding to Barack Obama's optimism and unity rhetoric. Some may want a Democrat who's Republican-lite. Some may be cynically supporting the candidate mostly likely to lose in the 2008 general election. Others may be just covering their bets. But it's worth watching in one of the oddest eras in American politics.

Hillary Clinton Calls for Government Reform

I don't doubt the intentions and ability of Hillary Clinton. And I don't doubt that she would do a fine job if elected president. Her call for government reform is certainly in the right direction as Philip Elliott of the AP reports in the North County Times:

Presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday assailed a "culture of cronyism" in government as she vowed to streamline the federal bureaucracy and improve accountability.

In a speech in this early primary state, Clinton called for slashing 500,000 government contractors, potentially saving up to $18 billion a year, and promised to cut back on no-bid government contracts.

"It's not exactly the subject matter that gets people marching in the street, but if we don't restore the confidence and the competence of our government, we will see the steady erosion of our government's capacity," the New York senator said.

(snip)

Her proposals echoed "Reinventing Government," or REGO, a program launched during her husband's administration and run by Vice President Al Gore. REGO was credited with saving taxpayers more than $136 billion over eight years by cutting the federal work force, trimming layers of management and cutting subsidies for items like mohair and wool.

Senator Clinton is in the ballpark but the mere mention of Al Gore and his successful leadership of the "Reinventing Government" program makes me wish he were in the running for the presidency in 2008. In 2000, the media thought it was cute to undercut Gore and they gave us George W. Bush. I wouldn't mind seeing what Gore can really do.

I'm all for government reform and George W. Bush's incompetence and cronyism makes the case for the need for reform better than any Democratic candidate. But there's another area of reform that's needed if government reform is to be meaningful. Bush's corruption goes hand in hand with corrupt businesses. The North County Times, for example, helped to break the story on Duke Cunningham and the cozy business relationship he had with businesses looking for favors. There are still honest corporations in America but they're under attack by the crooked types looking for favors and a wink from the government. Big Business also needs serious reform. No other candidate has done a better job in real life terms of taking on businesses unwilling to live up to their responsibilities than John Edwards. That was what his law business was about: holding business accountable.

Democrats need to be pro-business but that makes sense only if they are also pro-workers and in favor of real competition. The three can go hand in hand. Bill Clinton did a terrific job of creating jobs during his eight years. But he stumbled in the long run on globalization. He allowed businesses to define what globalization would mean and it has not gone well for many American workers. And Clinton's policies could not protect workers from the damage a right wing conservative like Bush could do to the wages of average Americans. This time around, we need deeper, long-lasting reforms that ensure workers the best economy for everyone and not just riches for a rapidly developing privileged class that is increasingly dominating our public life to the detriment of our democracy and the deteriment of a broad-based middle class. Hillary Clinton is definitely touching the right bases but I would like to see more before I'm convinced she understands just how much damage Bush and his fellow conservatives have done to our country and how much needs to change.

Hillary Clinton Has All-Star Rebuttal Team

No matter who wins the Democratic nomination in 2008, each of the current candidates know they have to do a better job than Kerry of responding to the kind of bizarre right wing attacks that have become business as usual in the Republican Party, at least the party we keep seeing these days. Maybe if Hagel or even Huckabee win the Republican nomination, we'll see a clean race but no one is banking on that. Hillary Clinton has put together an all-star team to protect her back against right wing games and attack ads. Here's the story from Philip Sherwell of the British newspaper, the Telegraph:

The first woman to run on a US presidential ticket has promised her friend Hillary Clinton that she will help her fight Republican "dirty tricks" in the race for the White House.

"The only thing that can stop Hillary becoming the next president would be smears and dirty tricks," said Geraldine Ferraro, the Democrats' losing 1984 vice-presidential candidate. "I've told her I'll go anywhere and speak any time to make sure that doesn't happen."

She outlined her plans for a display of female solidarity with the Democratic presidential frontrunner last week in an interview in her office overlooking Ground Zero, where the World Trade Centre once stood in lower Manhattan.

Miss Ferraro, 71, ... has joined the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and Billie Jean King, the former tennis star, in a "rapid rebuttal force" of well-known women on standby to defend and promote Sen Clinton's candidacy.

That's a great team. Ferraro, of course, is being a team player by saying that the only thing that can stop Hillary Clinton are smears and dirty tricks of the kind we've seen of late from Republicans. But here are the facts: Hillary Clinton is in a wide open race with at least three other contenders for the Democratic nomination. She should not assume that she has either a lock on the campaign money needed or on the votes. The Republicans decided to give George W. Bush a coronation simply for raising the most money before the first vote was cast in the 2000 primaries. It's up to the Democrats to show that ideas matter and that the average American voter matters.

If Hillary Clinton shows us that she has the total package and that she understands that a president taking office in 2009 will be facing a very different set of problems than the president who took office in 1993, she may very well go all the way. In any case, there are parts of her team I like very much and it is a good sign.

Tom Vilsack Endorses Hillary Clinton

I like Tom Vilsack. His speaking style is a bit dull but if you listen closely to what he's actually saying, he gets it. I'm to the left of him somewhat, but he's a principle moderate and we need more like him. I'm sorry he dropped out of the race.

Vilsack and his wife have had a friendship with the Clintons for some time so it's not surprising that Tom Vilsack is endorsing Hillary Clinton. Reuters has the story:

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who dropped his brief presidential bid last month, endorsed Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's candidacy for the White House on Monday.

"This is the person to be the next president of the United States," Vilsack said at a news conference with Clinton. "She is tried, she is tested and she is ready."

Vilsack said the endorsement was in part a result of the former first lady's fund-raising efforts on his behalf during his first campaign for governor in 1998.

"In politics, loyalty is a commodity that is rare," Vilsack said.

I appreciate what Vilsack is saying but given how dysfunctional loyalty in the Republican Party has become, I wish he had found a better way to talk about loyalty. There's also concern that Hillary Clinton can sometimes be more loyal to her campaign contributors than to her Democratic supporters. If Hillary Clinton wins the nomination, I will work for her and work hard but I hope she doesn't take people like me for granted.

Actually, my loyalty is reasonably easy to buy. All a candidate has to do is put the American people first, work hard for the average American, take on the growing new problems of the 21st century and take on the issues that have been ignored for the last twenty-five years. In defense of Bill Clinton, he was obstructed on some issues by an obstinate Republican Congress but he had his weak areas. Bill Clinton didn't push very hard on the environment or on a decent energy policy. And in his first term, foreign policy at times was not on the front burner. Hillary Clinton needs to give us some strong assurances that she'll do better than her husband did on some of these critical issues.

'Vast Right Wing Conspiracy' Is Back

One moment Hillary Clinton is brilliant and the next moment she brings back a cliche from the 1990s. I never liked it when she coined the phrase, 'vast right wing conspiracy.' I knew what she meant but I thought, at the time, that it made her look petty when a more thoughtful explanation would have served her better. Here's the AP story in The Guardian:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday described past Republican political malfeasance in New Hampshire as evidence of a ``vast, right-wing conspiracy.''

Clinton's barbed comments revived a term she coined for the partisan plotting during her husband's presidential tenure and echoed remarks she made last weekend in New Hampshire, which holds the nation's first primary.

(snip)

Clinton asserted on Tuesday that the conspiracy is alive and well, and cited as proof the Election Day 2002 case of phone jamming in New Hampshire, a case in which two Republican operatives pleaded guilty to criminal charges, and a third was convicted.

Like I said, I didn't like the phrase the first time around and I don't think much of it now. For one thing, it makes it sound like someone or a small group is in charge of such a conspiracy. In reality, there have been multiple scandals in the last six years, some in the White House, some in the Senate, some among Republican fundraisers, and some in the House of Representatives. I know, I know, it seems every time we hear of one of these scandals, there's two or three characters in the scandal with a close connection to somebody like Karl Rove. But Hillary's phrase feels like one of those phrases tested on a focus group rather than worked through until its owned by the speaker.

The corruption in the Republican Party has been going on for some time now and it's gotten increasingly worse since the 1980s. One can argue that the Reagan presidency never fully addressed the issue, at least not in a way that was in the best interests of the public. The senior Bush called for more honest government and he gave pardons to members of the Reagan administration and changed any number of rules, legally, to make it easier for Republicans to pull nonsense. Newt Gingrich and George W. Bush simply threw out the rules and Kenneth Starr went off on a $70 million fishing expedition with the clear help of right wing friends in the media. But its not one vast conspiracy.

Certainly, Republicans in leadership positions have engaged in some conspiracies, Duke Cunningham and Tom DeLay being the two best examples. But there have been multiple 'conspiracies' on the part of the big players in the Republican Party, if that's how one wants to look at it. Too many Republican leaders talk about values while looking for big money and what it is they have to do to get that money. That's a party that simply has lost its moral compass. Newt Gingrich compounded the problem by actively recruiting political candidates who 'share' his values. But the overwhelming majority of Republican rank and file are generally hardworking and honest people who frankly have not been looking very critically at the leaders of their own party and sometimes don't really want to take a look. I can understand when people want to fight for their 'heroes' but there aren't too many heroes in the Republican Party these days worth fighting for.

Now Hillary Clinton isn't too far from the truth. I'll give her that, but she needs to keep it real.

Although Republicans in power have become corrupt or prefer too often to look the other way, I think we're talking, to some extent, about a generational problem. To be honest, there are sometimes similar problems in the Democratic Party, particularly when it comes to big money donors. I would prefer Hillary Clinton to explain how she herself would be listening to average Americans rather than big money. We all know that a politician at the national level needs money and that's a fact of life but the fact that Hillary Clinton is fighting with Barack Obama for big money donors is not necessarily a good sign, even if both candidates are considerably cleaner than much of the Republican leadership these days.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Speak in Selma, Alabama

Senator Obama and Senator Clinton gave good speeches in Selma, Alabama over the weekend. From what I hear, Barack Obama had the stronger reception but the truth is that both Democratic presidential candidates were well received. Here's the story from Richard Fausset and Jennie Jarvie of the Los Angeles Times:

Presidential candidate Barack Obama staked his claim to the African American experience Sunday, despite a personal background far from the bloodshed that was typified in this Deep South city during the struggle for civil rights.

Yes, the senator said, his grandfather was a Kenyan, but a racist system similar to America's limited him to work as a cook for whites. Yes, Obama said, his mother was a white woman from Kansas. But she learned colorblindness from the likes of Selma's 1965 freedom marchers, marrying the son of that cook in Hawaii.

All of that, Obama said, made him "the offspring of the movement" — and it made his first visit to Selma a sort of homecoming.

"Don't tell me I'm not coming home when I come to Selma, Alabama," the Illinois Democrat said.

(snip)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, was also here to celebrate the anniversary of the Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing, in which black protesters were beaten by white state troopers on March 7, 1965.

Clinton brought her husband, the former president, a beloved figure among many black voters who was inducted into the hall of fame of the National Voting Rights Museum. She too claimed to be a beneficiary of the civil rights era — because it eventually led to advances for women.

Despite some serious questions I've raised about the Clintons and the Iraq war, I continue to think well of them. It's clear Hillary Clinton is still trying to figure out how to incorporate Bill Clinton in her campaign—in fact, that may become her biggest challenge. Given Wesley Clark's assertion that the Bush administration had considerable ambitions in 2002 in terms of taking on more than just Iraq, I continue to have questions about how much Bill Clinton knew about these things. What kind of discussions did he have, for example, with Tony Blair? And what kind of discussions with Hillary? I hope Senator Clinton doesn't think she can avoid some of the questions around her vote and around Bill Clinton connection to the Iraq policy by simply piling up enough money to simply overwhelm her Democratic competition. The Republicans will not be so easy with her if she wins the nomination.

I continue to like Barack Obama but I admit to worrying about how much is there beyond his rhetorical brilliance. He would be a good president but our nation is in trouble and we need the best president we can get. Let's hope if the senator from Illinois is still hot a year from now and is winning the nomination that he is what we hope he is.

I'm still puzzled by how Barack Obama is covered. There are people who seem to accuse Senator Obama of not really experiencing what it's like to be black since his father was African and he was raised in Hawaii, far from Alabama. But that's ridiculous too. Those who are black Americans share the same experience in school, jobs and elsewhere. Barack Obama also worked for a number of years in community organizing on the south side of Chicago; that's a powerful experience in itself.

I guess Republicans are finally beginning to worry about Obama though. They have recently pointed out that Barack Obama's family on his mother's side (who's white) were slaveholders way back when. Actually, since most African Americans have some white blood in their background, it's very common to have ancestors who owned slaves, if you go back far enough. I suspect most Americans, including whites, who can trace their family tree to those who were here in the United States before 1800 would find relatives on the family tree who were slaveholders. That happens to be true of one side of my own family.

Slavery was the one big issue our founding fathers wrangled with and could not solve when they wrote the US Constitution but it should be noted that they ended the trade and that many men of the constitutional convention would have preferred to end slavery. We forget too easily how far we have come and how much work there is to do. When conservative or right wing Republicans play games with the history of the law, people should remember that, in fact, we inherited the laws of kings and cavaliers in 1776, and not the laws of free men (and later, women). Despite the serious problem of not dealing fully with slavery, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights moved clearly in the direction of real freedom. Now Republican movers and shakers talk about being free and etc. but when you scrutinize what they're doing, their objective is to protect the status of the wealthy and the privileged. It's 2007, and we are still creating the laws of a free nation and we still have a ways to go.

Hillary Clinton Ambitious Campaign

It's early. The general election is 20 months away. The primaries are a little more than 10 months away. I appreciate how hard Hillary Clinton is working for the nomination but she seems to making every effort to win the nomination by summer of this year which would be a record of sorts.

At least she is beginning to make Bill Clinton part of her campaign instead of oddly avoiding the issue. Here's one story from The Hotline:

The Hillary Clinton camp is rolling out the big names of the Clinton Administration in its “grassroots” effort to raise $1M in a week.

The “One Week One Million” campaign launched last week with high profile e-mail (and accompanying picture that still has us scratching our heads) from “Bill Clinton.”

(As of 9 am, they had raised $619,896.)

And here's another article from the Earth Times:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaking at a fundraiser in San Francisco, said that her husband may have a role as a U.S. diplomat if she becomes president.

She said that former President Bill Clinton is "the most popular person in the world right now,'' the San Francisco Chronicle reported, and promised to keep up with the tradition of using former presidents as roving diplomats.

Bill Clinton would make a very fine diplomat—there's no question of it—but sooner or later we need to talk more openly about the political relationship between Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton—particulary in relation to Iraq and Hillary's vote to support Bush's war. The clearest path is straightforward. Hillary needs to clear the air. And Bill Clinton can help by helping us to understand the role of his administration in our dealings with Iraq, the influence that both Republican and Democratic neoconservatives had on our approach to Iraq in the 1990s, and his personal role in facilitating the relationship between Tony Blair and George W. Bush, if indeed that is what happened. We knew in 2002 and we know even more certainly now that Bill Clinton's policy of containment was the right approach to Iraq but he still had a role that needs to be explained and understood.

Last week, Paul Krugman of The New York Times had a few thoughts on Hillary Clinton (via Truthout):

The experience of Bush-style governance, together with revulsion at the way Karl Rove turned refusal to admit error into a political principle, is the main reason those now-famous three words from Mr. Edwards - "I was wrong" - matter so much to the Democratic base.

The base is remarkably forgiving toward Democrats who supported the war. But the base and, I believe, the country want someone in the White House who doesn't sound like another George Bush. That is, they want someone who doesn't suffer from an infallibility complex, who can admit mistakes and learn from them.

And there's another reason the admission by Mr. Edwards that he was wrong is important. If we want to avoid future quagmires, we need a president who is willing to fight the inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom on foreign policy, which still - in spite of all that has happened - equates hawkishness with seriousness about national security, and treats those who got Iraq right as somehow unsound. By admitting his own error, Mr. Edwards makes it more credible that he would listen to a wider range of views.

In truth, it's the second issue, not the first, that worries me about Mrs. Clinton. Although she's smart and sensible, she's very much the candidate of the Beltway establishment - an establishment that has yet to come to terms with its own failure of nerve and judgment over Iraq.

The problem with the Beltway establishment is that it's so cocksure it has the answers that it's been falling on its face for some years now, though most of the falling has been done by those connected to Bush and his fellow Republicans. One cannot ignore, however, those giving Bush and his crew a free pass for so long. Does Hillary Clinton now oppose Bush because of the incompetence of his administration, which of course is now evident to all, or does she understand how fundamentally flawed Bush's foreign policy vision was from the beginning? If all she is saying is that she would be more competent than Bush, that suggests that she has a poor understanding of what it will take to repair our foreign policy. We need a strong defense and a vigorous State Department with all the tools it can use—and I, for one, would welcome Bill Clinton as a roving ambassador—but what we do not need is a Democratic version of neoconservativism. Hillary Clinton's recent trip to Afghanistan is a good sign that she understands the importance of finishing the war there. Nevertheless, Senator Clinton needs to clear up some of these issues instead of simply steamrolling her way to the nomination.

Tom Vilsack Drops Out of Presidential Race

Tom Vilsack may not have been the best speaker on the campaign trail, but he had serious credentials to bring to a presidential campaign. He's dropped out due to the difficulty of raising money. I know it's early but if Democrats want a wide open race, it's time to start contributing to the candidates and keeping them viable. Here's the story from Kay Henderson of Reuters in The Washington Post:

Democrat Tom Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, dropped his longshot 2008 White House bid on Friday after he failed to keep pace with his big-name rivals in raising funds.

"It's really about money," Vilsack said at his Des Moines headquarters as he shut down his 3-month-old campaign operation.

(snip)

Vilsack is the second declared Democratic candidate to drop out of the 2008 race, following Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh's withdrawal in December just weeks after entering.

"I came up against something for the first time in my life where hard work and effort couldn't overcome," Vilsack said. "I just couldn't work any harder, couldn't give any greater effort and it just wasn't enough."

I wish Vilsack had stayed in. The other day, I saw a brief glimpse of a speaking style that he used that might have served him well. Over the years, I've seen a number of candidates grow into a much better candidate over the course of a number of months. Even John Kerry didn't make a serious move in the polls until December of 2003.

In any case, I'm getting a little concerned. One of the reasons a mediocrity like George W. Bush became president is that through his father's connections he essentially wrapped up the 2000 nomination before the first vote; a number of better qualified candidates dropped out because they couldn't raise $200 million, an outrageous sum back in 2000. Bush seem well set in early 2000 but he ran into trouble with John McCain (when McCain when still interesting) but had the money, the muscle and the sleaze to push on through to the nomination. Money and mediocrity won.

Now there's nothing mediocre about the field of Democratic candidates, including Bayh and Vilsack who have dropped out. But we could wind up with a candidate who isn't the best choice for the times we are facing. Hillary Clinton is a well-qualified candidate but she shows signs that she's following the George W. Bush method of simply wrapping up the money and otherwise largely ignoring the real issues of the day and bypassing the Democratic rank and file. She also shows signs that she's more concerned about what her contributors want rather than what's best for our country. Notice that Bayh and Vilsack are moderate Democrats and the only moderates left now are Biden and Clinton. In the end, the voters may indeed prefer a moderate, but we need a serious debate before the voting begins. I hope the remaining candidates stay in the race until there have been a few debates. But they need support.

The Hillary Clinton Question

I'm not ready to go negative on Hillary Clinton but she has some thinking and explaining to do whether she likes it or not. This is not 1992; we've had eight controversial years from the Clintons where the negativity came primarily from the far right but any number of things were not handled well by the Clintons; and we've had six years of a failed presidency under George W. Bush that have been like nothing any of us have ever seen. Things have changed in fourteen years and Hillary needs to understand it.

I looked on Hillary Clinton's news section on her site tonight and I'm not comfortable by what I see here, here and here. A lot of us have been cutting Hillary Clinton some slack since some negative news started appearing in the last six weeks about other Democrats and seemed the kind of thing that comes from the right but, posting some of these things on her campaign website give cause to be concerned. Hillary has the potential of being a fine president but not if she's keeps up some of the negativity and resistance to being upfront with voters.

I'm willing to give Hillary the benefit of the doubt because some of the things going on are outside the kind of things I usually follow and I feel I don't know all the details yet. Here's a post by Arianna Huffington to think about:

In his interview with Maureen Dowd, which is filling up email inboxes all around DC and Hollywood, David Geffen made this prediction about the Hillary Clinton campaign (which Dowd dubbed "Clinton Inc"): "That machine is going to be very unpleasant and unattractive and effective."

It didn't take long for Clinton Inc to prove him right. Not long after Dowd's column hit the streets, "that machine" whirred into high gear with Clinton Communications director Howard Wolfson firing off a press release condemning Geffen and urging Obama to denounce him:

While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign's finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband.

If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money.

The thing is, Geffen is not Obama's "finance chair" nor his "principal fundraiser" as Wolfson also claims.

Was the assertion that Mr. Geffen was Barack Obama's campaign finance chair a deliberate fib or just a mistake? Either way, it doesn't put Hillary in a good light.

Hillary Clinton's refusal to explain her vote is also troubling. In the background, hanging over her shoulder whether she likes it or not is Bill Clinton. Now I voted twice for Bill Clinton and was glad to do so. Among other things, Clinton did a terrific job with the economy and the creation of jobs after a number of years of stagnant job growth. And I appreciate what our former president did to Chris Wallace on Fox News and I appreciate what our former president is doing with his many worthwhile ventures these days. But.... While I have been concerned with the Bush administration's profound incompetence and lies and while I spent a lot of time examining how we got into Iraq, Clinton and some of his advisers have an odd way of popping up in the background.

I remember reading an article before the war in Iraq where Bill Clinton apparently urged Tony Blair to be patient with George W. Bush; nothing was stated explicitly about Bill Clinton's position but it seemed to suggest that perhaps our former president favored the invasion of Iraq, albeit by way of the UN and with multilateral support. Some of President Clinton's former advisers were also very hawkish about Iraq. None were more hawkish than James Woolsey, the CIA director under Clinton, and one of the few neoconservative Democrats. With all due respect to Hillary Clinton, she does have some explaining to do if only to put any number of her supporters at ease about her position on foreign policy and Iraq and how she arrives at her decisions. I don't insist on anything elaborate but I'm far from being satisfied by what she has said so far. And frankly, it feels like someone has something she's trying to avoid. I hope not.

One last thing. Hillary Clinton has been selling herself as a moderate Democrat and I say that's just fine, as long it's the kind of moderate Democrat we expect of Jack Murtha or Diane Feinstein or Mark Warner or Jim Webb or any number of others. What we do not need is a Democrat, or rather former Democrat, like Joe Lieberman. Lieberman represents business as usual in Washington. Our country needs something far better than that at the moment.

Richard Cohen on Hillary Clinton

John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are capable top level candidates far more connected to the world as it really is than the crowd Republicans put up for president these days. Unlike current Republicans, however, people like myself aren't shy about expressing criticism, points of disagreement or concerns about candidates we would gladly vote for. The rubber stamp Republicans of the last six years will go down in history for their complete inability to act responsibly or question anything a president of their party does. The inability of most of the media to notice the lack of responsibility among Republican members of Congress or the White House is something I'll never understand; and when a few of the bigger names do come around to recognizing the failures of somebody like Bush, some of them still seem to miss the picture.

I used to read Richard Cohen of The Washington Post on a regular basis but his judgment slipped badly on Iraq, and certainly more badly than did Hillary Clinton's judgment. In his column today, Richard Cohen wrote:

Yet another man has betrayed Hillary Clinton. This time it's George W. Bush, who not only deceived her about weapons of mass destruction but, when granted congressional authorization to go to war in Iraq, actually did so. This, apparently, came as a surprise to her, although in every hamlet and village in America, every resident who could either read or watch Fox News knew that Bush was going to take the country to war. Among other things, troops were already being dispatched.

Somehow, Bush's intentions were lost on Clinton, who then as now was a member of the United States Senate. This was the case even though she now rightly calls Bush's desire to topple Saddam Hussein an "obsession."

(snip)

... For reasons extraneous to this particular column, I thought the war would do wonders for the Middle East and that it would last, at the most, a week or two. In this I was assured by the usual experts in and out of government. My head nodded like one of those little toy dogs in the window of the car ahead of you.

First, let's get on Cohen's case for that unnecessary sexist first sentence. It's cleverness that doesn't add anything to a supposedly serious discussion.

Now let's get some issues straight. Presidents aren't always honest. That's not news. But if a proposal is on the table, members of Congress have various ways to verify, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs, what the real issues are behind the politics. At least that's how things used to work up until 2002; Richard Cohen himself fell victim to the new Bush marketing method by way of the discussions he had with the 'usual experts.' What Cohen didn't know at the time was how carefully orchestrated the 'experts' were, particularly by Cheney in the background always claiming to know more than anybody else and always manipulating the evidence with the help of a political public relations team that gave short shrift to the real facts. I've read several books now where generals, for example, took for granted that what they were being told by the 'experts' was true and how they slowly realized the hard way how very wrong the 'experts' were.

As for everyone knowing we were going to war, that became more obvious the closer we got to March of 2003 but it was not a certainty in the summer of 2002 when the Bush Administration began publicly pushing its case for war. And of course we all listened to Bush lie through his teeth every time he said he hadn't made up his mind about whether we were going to war. During this time, Congress, though mainly the Democrats, were trying to get Bush to respect a process, such as going to the UN and trying to get real multilateral help and trying to get a clearer assessment of the Iraqi threat (the Bush Administration was claiming at the time that it had more evidence and would present it in due course, but no such additional evidence existed). Bush kept going through the motions but he largely blew off the process for most of the five months that followed the vote. These are things Cohen knows so his column is a bit disingenuous.

Iraq was a major strategic blunder. Senator Clinton has yet to acknowledge that fact and has instead chosen to focus largely on Bush's incompetent execution of the war. When Clinton came back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I briefly thought she was finally going to get on the right page. But she began triangulating again. To my mind, Hillary Clinton has some explaining to do largely because she keeps hedging and waffling on what happened. That's a Clinton habit that doesn't work anymore and it's a habit we all hope Senator Clinton breaks because we have, after all, moved on to a very different era, with different needs, and Clinton is, after all, a very good candidate, but being straight with the voters is more in line of what we need. If Hillary Clinton doesn't come up with a more acceptable explanation for her past position on Iraq, then yes, Barack Obama and John Edwards are going to have a better chance of taking the nomination than Hillary.

Hillary Clinton Says She Was Misled

Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton is doing well in the polls. In Iowa this weekend, the very talented former first lady was greeted like a rock star. Here's a story from Ray Quintanilla of of the Chicago Tribune:

DAVENPORT, IOWA -- On the second day of her campaign swing across the state, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) confronted her vote for the invasion of Iraq by saying she was misled, and she called on President Bush to end the conflict before leaving the White House in 2009.

"I live with this every day," Clinton told a standing-room only crowd in this Mississippi River community on Sunday. "The president is determined to move forward on a plan that won't succeed. He should extricate the country before he leaves office."

She doesn't quite say it, but I'm glad that Hillary Clinton essentially admits she made a mistake. When you admit that you have made a mistake, you get closer to the reality; that means you can get closer to the problem and do something about it—that's a lesson President Bush has not yet learned.

But the Bush Administration dragged us into a war in Iraq that we did not need and deliberately said things that were not true. And many Americans were misled and no one should forget that. But I have a question. It's not an idle question and sooner or later the Clinton campaign is going to have to address it. Bill Clinton was president for eight years; he dealt with Iraq several times. What was Bill Clinton's position on all this and what advice did he give Hillary, if any?

Hillary Clinton Is the Frontrunner But...

Twenty-eight years of Bushes and Clintons? David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo has the story from a reader who puts it clearly.

Hillary Clinton Is In

Four days before Bush's State of the Union address, Hillary Clinton on her website has announced she's forming an exploratory committee and is definitely running. I suppose that means the official announcement that she's running will be after the exploratory committee does its thing. But this is par for most of the candidates and I don't mind. Senator Hillary Clinton is the first woman with a serious chance of winning the presidency and that's news.

Here's the story from Glenn Thrush of Newsday:

"I'm in. And I'm in to win."

With these words Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton launched her hyped and historic bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination on Saturday, her first stop on the treacherous road that could culminate in her inauguration as the nation's first woman commander in chief.

In a conversational two-minute video posted on her campaign Web site, the former first lady announced that she's set up a presidential exploratory committee.

"As we campaign to win the White House, we will make history and remake our future," Clinton, 59, said on HillaryClinton.com. "This campaign is our moment, our chance to stand up for the principles and values that we cherish."

Wasting little time, Clinton is traveling to Iowa next weekend, her maiden voyage to the first caucus state and an act of political triage: She's currently running fourth among Iowa's liberal Democratic voters.

I wonder if the tape was made before her trip to Asia or after. Her TV appearances over the last two days made her look like she had a bit of jet lag and in the tape she looks like herself again. I noticed she borrowed a couple of lines from John Edwards. Of course, half the Democratic field in 2004 borrowed lines from Bill Clinton and why not? Bill Clinton knew what he was doing when he ran for president. There are many good reasons to admire Bill and Hillary and I believe the senator would make a fine president: I'm just not sure she fully understands the current era. But I'll have no trouble supporting her if she wins.

Here's more on Senator Clinton's announcement from Patrick Healy of The New York Times:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s entry into the 2008 presidential contest yesterday set off rounds of e-mail messages and conference calls among both her allies and opponents, some of whom were shaking their heads that a major political event was happening early on a Saturday morning.

Advisers to some of her top 2008 rivals — Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts — replied within minutes to requests for comment, and signaled that the Clinton announcement meant that the 2008 race was truly under way.

(snip)

Clinton advisers said that they chose Jan. 20 as the target date for an announcement during a meeting in mid-December, and that Mrs. Clinton was “raring to go” on Friday.

Hillary Clinton's website and announcement can be found here (www.hillaryclinton.com).

Given that Bush's annual state of the union message has become something of a charade, I'm glad that Hillary Clinton made her announcement this weekend. Maybe it will suck some of the oxygen out of Bush's latest public relations push to remake his image and to peddle more war in the Middle East and to sell his nonsense about victory. After more than four years of war in Iraq, no one should pretend that Bush has accomplished anything of value for the United States. But that means sooner or later, Hillary Clinton is going to have to address her own misjudgments on the issue of Iraq. And perhaps the misjudgment of her husband. But let's save that for another day. The real story is that we have a wide open presidential race.

Hillary Clinton on Iraq and Afghanistan

Hillary Clinton gave a press conference after her trip to Iraq and Afghanistan. Margaret Talev of McClatchy Newspapers has the story in the Kansas City Star:

Just back from Iraq and facing doubters in her own party, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., on Wednesday opposed President Bush's plan to send more troops and offered an alternative that stops short of an immediate withdrawal or cutting funds.

Instead, Clinton called for capping U.S. troop deployments in Iraq at Jan. 1 levels, beginning soon to move them out of Baghdad and eventually redeploying forces to Afghanistan. She also stressed that Iraq's government must meet benchmarks for political progress before it gets more U.S. aid.

Despite Clinton's stiffened posture on Iraq, the war remains a political burden for her as she weighs a 2008 run for the presidency. The Democratic Party base is staunchly anti-war and displeased that she has never rejected her October 2002 vote to authorize the war. While she's voicing greater opposition to Bush's war leadership, she's not as fervently anti-war as some of her rivals for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

(snip)

Much like the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group last month, Clinton's plan would pressure Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government to meet benchmarks for political progress before it can receive additional U.S. funds. The Iraqi government should decide how to allocate oil revenues among all factions, disarm sectarian militias and let former Baath Party members resume civilian work as teachers, nurses and the like, she said.

I saw the press conference and appreciated what Senator Clinton was saying but I was puzzled by the woodenness of her prepared text. When she finished the text, she returned to the more natural style she is known for though she made a minor gaffe by calling Senator Bayh: Secretary Bayh. Clinton has a natural style that seems to be disappearing as she prepares to make a decision about running for president. In my opinion, she needs to get back to who she is. We need her to be a strong candidate.

For the past year, Hillary Clinton's position on the war has been moving away from lukewarm support of Bush's position (with caveats) towards a nuanced opposition to a failing war (except, of course, that disengagement has to be done carefully so that we don't unleash a regional war). There seems to be two possible stories on Hillary. One story is that she's a tough, principled Democrat whose positions are somewhere in the middle and who has increasingly become disillusioned with the extraordinary incompetence of the Bush administration. The first story gives her a winning chance (there is room in the party for a somewhat liberal, moderate-liberal or moderate candidate to win). But the other story is that she is too cautious, careful and calculating as she threads her way towards a position that can give her a win in a presidential race. The second story makes people uneasy.

The story Hillary needs is the one where she simply makes her case; she is a ways from that storyline and it would be a loss for the Democrats if she can't find it. Her trip to Asia and what she says about what needs to be done in Iraq and Afghanistan were steps in the right direction; so it's not just that she has to make her case, she has to make it real.

Hillary Clinton in Afghanistan and Pakistan

There's not exactly a whole lot to report but here's a story on Hillary Clinton's visit to Asia courtesy of AP writer Jason Straziuso in The Guardian:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton ate breakfast with soldiers from New York and Indiana at the main U.S. base in Afghanistan on Sunday before meeting with the top American general in Afghanistan and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, officials said.

Clinton, a Democrat from New York who is considering running for president, later went to Lahore, Pakistan, where she met briefly with Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf late Sunday, according to a foreign ministry statement.

At the meeting, Musharraf said a ``peaceful and stable Afghanistan was in Pakistan's vital interest,'' the statement read. Musharraf also ``affirmed Pakistan's firm resolve to fight extremism and terrorism.''

I'm a little uneasy with Pakistan's policy towards the Taliban which seems to be one of occassional pressure on the Taliban mixed with long periods of benign neglect followed by gestures and promises of doing something and, well, otherwise—not much happens. Since they're not on the same page, it keeps the Americans and the home crowds pacified I suppose. Pakistan claims that it's not harboring al Qaida, and that' s only true in the sense that they'll capture members of al Qaida if they happen to fall into their laps or start creating trouble in Pakistan but otherwise Pakistan doesn't seem to have an active program in the Northwest Territories of tracking down al Qaida where many believe they are probably located.

Given who Hillary Clinton is, I'm surprised by the lack of coverage. I hope when she comes back that she gives us some details on what she learned.

Hillary Says No to Troop Surge in Iraq, Yes to Troop Surge in Afghanistan

Senator Hillary Clinton is on her way to Iraq and Afghanistan. Here's one story from the International Herald Tribune:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is headed to Iraq this weekend with two other lawmakers as the rest of Congress engages in a fierce debate over President George W. Bush's plan to send 21,500 additional troops to salvage the U.S. effort there.

Clinton, Democrat of New York, who is considering running for president, is traveling with Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, a Democrat who had also considered the 2008 race but opted out, and Representative John McHugh, Republican of New York.

The three, who are all members of armed services committees, are to meet with top Iraqi officials and U.S. military commanders, and also travel to Afghanistan.

Here's more details from Glenn Thrush of Newsday:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is heading to Iraq and Afghanistan this weekend - and calling for a troop "surge" in Afghanistan even though she opposes a similar measure in Iraq.

Clinton's trip isn't surprising politically. As the top Democratic contender in 2008 who voted for the war - and hasn't recanted - Clinton needed to emphasize her foreign policy strengths: gravitas, affection for the troops and on-the-ground experience in a war zone.

On Wednesday, as President George W. Bush delivered his address on his plan for a 21,500-troop increases in Iraq, Clinton was about the only serious contender in either party to turn down an invitation to dissect the speech on TV.

Although many people perceive Hillary Clinton to be a liberal, most Democrats actually consider her politics over the last six years to be moderate and even sometimes moderate/conservative. Now political labels in 2008 are going to mean less than they have in the past simply because people are more concerned about leadership these days. But even Republican 2008 contenders are engaging the press more than Hillary. Senator Clinton's carefully timed statements with long bouts of silence on some issues are actually somewhat puzzling. Being a leader isn't simply about establishing foreign policy credentials and having long lunches with powerful people, it also means engaging and shaping the issues of the time.

But I welcome Senator Clinton's position on Afghanistan, the neglected war that should have been completed a long time ago. Perhaps when she gets back she'll discuss that some of the troop surge for Iraq depends on taking troops from Afghanistan which is really in no position to lose those troops.

Hillary Clinton Grinding It Out

Hillary Clinton is not in the 2008 presidential race yet, but many polls and political rankings put her in first place for the Democratic nomination. Chuck Todd of The National Journal has ranked the Republican and Democratic candidates; here's what he's says about Hillary Clinton:

1. Hillary Rodham Clinton (last ranking: 1)

The best thing to happen to Clinton may be the rise of Obama, because for the time being, the glare is off of her while she readies herself for a run. Sure, she’ll get incredible scrutiny, but it will be nowhere near the scrutiny she’d be getting if Obama wasn’t sharing the "gee whiz" stage right now. Still, the Obama buzz ought to scare her for this reason: There's clearly a hunger (be it in the media, the Democratic establishment or even among actual voters) for an alternative to Clinton. These Democrats probably won't dump her for just any Christopher Dodd, Bill Richardson or John Edwards that comes along, but for a guy like Obama, it's tempting.

Clinton can't just keep grinding this out. The earlier she gets in, the better. As John Kerry (D) proved in '03-'04, it's better to get your bad months out of the way early and then be a comeback candidate later in the year. She can survive a long campaign better than most front-runners and ought to see that as an advantage. Don't be surprised if she fires things up a bit sooner than Bush's '99 playbook (which Clinton folks seem to like) calls for.

First, I wouldn't underestimate John Edwards. Like Al Gore, Edwards is already influencing the 2008 race by speaking up on a number of issues (for that matter, Biden, who has the least chance of winning, also is affecting the 2008 election by calling Bush out on Bush's disgraceful plan to pass the Iraq problem on to the next president). And I wouldn't underestimate Barack Obama's ability to speak in a way that resonates with the times as if he understands more clearly than others the powerful need for a new approach.

As for Hillary, grinding it out, in my opinion, is not going to get her to the White House. In California, we've had Democrats 'grind it out' in runs for governor and it doesn't work. Crossing your t's and dotting your i's and carefully listening to pollsters and consultants tends to turn candidates into mush.

These are not the 1990s. Times are changing. Even in the last election, paying a lot of attention to campaign contributors with deep pockets is no longer working all that well for Republicans; it's not likely to work well for Democrats if they ignore rank and file activists whether those activists are moderates, liberals, union members, soccer moms or young people looking for a future. Sometimes Hillary is able to show flashes of brilliance but those flashes have to infuse the spirit of her campaign somehow. Here's a clue about Hillary's chances: when she finally decides to run, will she sound any different than she does now? Will she stir up excitement? Will she make people stop and think about what she is saying? Will she motivate people to join her campaign? That's the challenge she faces.

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Ethanol

The more I read about the conventional wisdom of the 2008 election, and particularly some comments made about the Democratic side of the race, the more uneasy I get. Conventional wisdom badly missed when it came to Iraq and I think they're badly missing when it comes to our nation's needs in 2008 and the dynamics in play. For one thing, events are moving quickly on a wide range of issues—that's a consequence of six years of neglect and six years of major blunders on the part of President Bush and Republicans in Congress. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are smart people and not for a moment would I want to underestimate either one, but I believe they're going to have to work carefully to sidestep some of the same old tired thinking of the conventional media.

Here's an article by Shailagh Murray of The Washington Post:

The attack ads practically write themselves: Hillary Clinton voted against ethanol! Barack Obama wants to increase taxes!

Such are the perils of running for president as a senator. The two front-runners for the 2008 Democratic nomination are newcomers to the chamber. But in the two years that Clinton and Obama have overlapped, they have taken opposite sides at least 40 times. That's a lot of material to mine, and even misrepresent.

(snip)

In corn-growing Iowa, the first stop in the presidential nominating process, Clinton will have to explain the ethanol vote she cast on June 15, 2005. The senator recently softened her stance, but she is on record opposing a large federal boost for the grain-based fuel.

And Obama voted to increase taxes when he opposed a package of business breaks that included the extension of middle-class provisions. Clinton voted for the tax bill -- before she voted against it, as did Obama, in the legislation's final form.

(snip)

Over the past year, Clinton has warmed to ethanol. Buffalo has decided to build a big ethanol plant, making the issue a home-state concern. In May, Clinton said current ethanol production is "a long way from helping us deal with our gas problems" and added: "We need to be moving on a much faster track."

Obama voted for the ethanol mandate. "As a senator from a corn-growing state, Obama will have no problem on the ethanol issue and can tout his credentials on this score with a clear conscience," said Peverill Squire, who teaches politics at the University of Iowa.

First of all, the politics of ethanol is evolving very fast as we gain a better understanding of its potential role in the future of America's energy. Murray should be careful to learn what the ethanol issue is all about instead of merely understanding the politics involved. For one thing, ethanol is currently heavily dependent on fossil fuels for its production. Second, ethanol production isn't very efficient; areas like Iowa and some surrounding states may be able to gain enough net energy from production to justify turning to ethanol but it's still a very poor yield of energy. It's been pointed out that the efficiency of plants isn't all that great when it comes to converting energy from the sun for storage; in fact, in terms of energy return, most farmers might be better off planting windmills and solar panels because the energy return would be much greater.

There is a role for ethanol but not on the scale some of its promoters suggest, at least not at this time. There is a small role for ethanol to play at the national level but it has more to do with minimizing pollution in urban areas. There is a local role for ethanol in several states and if cars can use both gas and ethanol of different mixtures—as they do in Brazil—then ethanol can be part of a mixed economy that gets its energy from various sources, depending on what's best for any region in our country. There may come a time when ethanol may become more efficient to use, depending on how well various research efforts go, but it would be dangerous to put all our eggs in the ethanol basket, particularly given how a poor a substitute it is at the moment for our energy problems.

In fact, it would be far smarter, and sooner than later depending on how the politics work out, to start taxing fossil fuels at the pump. Higher fossil fuel prices will stimulate conservation and they will stimulate a broad range of possible alternatives, particularly if money is put into alternative energy research, ethanol included. If ethanol is meant to be used, it needs to demonstrate that it can truly be an alternative energy. One more thing should be added: ethanol doesn't do much for global warming if we're just burning fossil fuels to make ethanol and then burning ethanol to power our cars.

Politics is a tricky thing and pandering to any number of interests is sometimes unavoidable but I will be skeptical of any politician who pushes ethanol too hard and I will be skeptical of any reporter who criticizes a candidate for not pandering to the voters.

Hillary Clinton Opposes Possible Bush Plan

A promising sign that Hillary Clinton is beginning to move beyond the generalities that have characterized her possible presidential bid is her statement today that she opposes the troop 'surge' that apparently is being advocated by Bush as he attempts to mitigate his failures in Iraq; Senator Clinton says such a surge can only make sense as part of a comprehensive plan to deal with Iraq. As we all know, Bush does not do comprehensive plans. Here's the AP story in Truthout:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she would not support a short-term increase in American troop presence in Iraq unless it was part of a more comprehensive plan to stabilize the country.

Clinton also offered the broadest indication yet that she was close to a decision on whether to enter the 2008 Democratic presidential field.

"I want to make sure the decision is right for me, my family, my party and my country," Clinton said during an interview on NBC's "The Today Show." ...

(snip)

"I am not in favor of doing that unless it's part of a larger plan," Clinton said. "I am not in favor of sending more troops to continue what our men and women have been told to do with the government of Iraq pulling the rug out from under them when they actually go after some of the bad guys."

Clinton, who voted in 2002 to authorize military intervention in Iraq, said she was wary of increased military presence in the war-torn country.

"I'm not going to believe this president again," Clinton said.

Most of the world and most of the nation do not believe George W. Bush has much credibility these days. I'm glad to hear that Hillary has finally come around but she needs to work on rebuilding credibility in her own judgment. She stuck by Bush far longer than she should have. Instead of following the pack of Democratic presidential hopefuls, she needs to show that she can lead the pack whether as a moderate, a liberal or according to some principled position in between. Her proposal to divide up Iraq's oil among all the people in Iraq might be a step in that direction.

To be honest, however, the oil proposal sounds like something Bill Clinton would come up with. An issue that Hillary needs to address is simply this: if something were to happen to Bill, could she come up with her own ideas? She needs to come up with ideas before too long that one would not necessarily associate with the former president. A realistic environmental and energy policy that doesn't pander to the usual special interest groups that are associated with big money would be a possibility.

Newsweek on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

According to Newsweek, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are the only two Democrats who are running and it's not certain they can beat John McCain. Well, that's not entirely what the magazine says but the cover and the inside story seem to suggest that. The main story is eight pages long; here's a section that caught my eye:

The former president will campaign separately from his wife across the country, almost as if he's a vice presidential candidate. This will multiply their impact, but it also avoids the direct side-by-side comparison that hurts Hillary, as it did when both spoke at the funeral of Coretta Scott King. Friends predict she will take speaking lessons (as he did some years ago) so that her speeches are less like policy-wonk laundry lists. They also believe she needs to show her sense of humor more in public, but in a way that's self-deprecating, not the sometimes sarcastic wit she wields in private.

(snip)

... A recent Marist Poll showed that 47 percent of respondents nationwide "definitely will not consider" voting for her, a percentage that alarms some former aides to President Clinton. Those numbers will need to change for Democratic primary voters—now comfortable with assessing electability—to move her way.

A sobering message for Obama is the example of Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. in the 2006 midterms. ...

... ...a second, lesser-known attack ad was more troubling to Ford and could be used someday against Obama, too. It showed Ford in a church as the narrator tags Ford as a hypocrite on religious values. Then there was Ford's decision to ambush Corker in a parking lot. It may be that black candidates seeking white votes have less room than other politicians to go on the attack. That could leave Obama trapped between his positive tone and the need to be tough. If he loses his temper in the process, it might prove fatal politically. The margin for error for a rookie is small.

John McCain is not quite the gentleman he once was and a growing number of Americans are beginning to understand how conservative he is; the new John McCain and other Republican hopefuls have seen how successful Bush-era Republican attack ads are against Democrats and are hiring the kind of people who can do their worst. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and any of the other Democratic presidential candidates will have to convince voters in the primaries that they can handle the minefields.

John Kerry was a fine candidate and would have made an excellent president but he was slow to handle the Swiftboaters who were allowed to lie and smear Kerry for weeks. The voters are catching on to this kind of stuff and are beginning to understand that the Republican base currently favors right wing candidates, particularly at the national level, and these candidates happen to be out of touch with America and simply can't win without a nasty bag of tricks. Still, at the end of the day, a Democratic candidate needs to know how to handle the pressure and how to defuse Republican smear campaigns.

Come to think of it, if Americans want to be in charge of their democracy, they need to get better at understanding how wealthy Republicans often finance these smear campaigns; to put it plainly, voters must discount TV ads and such that carry such phony messages if they don't want our elections to be dominated by a wealthy Republican elite.