Ruminations of an Expatriate

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Saturday, January 5th, 2008...5:08 pm

Presidential Campaign

Having plenty of time on my hands I have the leisure to not only spend time debating religion with my Jehovah Witness friends, but also to closely follow the campaigns for the presidential nominations. So much time, in fact, I have decided in the last couple of days that I should hit the road.

So I plan to hang around to watch coverage of the New Hampshire primary results on Tuesday and then head off on a bus trip to Oaxaca, then on to visit some of the villages on the Pacific coast between Acapulco and Guatemala. I may decide to travel into Guatemala to visit Lago de Atitlan and to return home through Chiapas.

So relief from the iconoflatulence is on the way for my five readers. (Actually my iconoflatulence draws more visitors than do my travel reports.) First, though, a bit of election campaign iconoflatulence.

Given the pathetic lineup of republican candidates, such that the democrats could probably run Sparky the Fire Dog and win, I will confine my comments to those democratic candidates still with a chance at the nomination. Though, as I’ve previously noted, I am thoroughly enjoying watching Huckabee stick his evangelical finger in the eyes of the Wall Street and country club republicans, who for forty years have used his ilk as useful dupes. I also have thoroughly enjoyed the fact that the editorial staffs of two N. H. newspapers, with editorial postures at different ends of the political spectrum, took the unprecedented measure of counseling their readers to not vote for Romney, citing his extreme phoniness.

I have closely followed presidential election campaigns since 1968, when Gene McCarthy inspired legions of young people to involve themselves in the process. I sported a McCarthy flower power sticker on each door of my ‘63 Volvo. We all know how the democratic establishment utilized Mayor Daly’s corrupt predilections to pack the democratic national convention galleries with Humphrey supporters and his police to initiate a riot during which McCarthy supporters and anti-war demonstrators were pummeled with batons. I never did forgive Robert Kennedy for jumping into the contest when it became clear that McCarthy was gaining lots of traction, thus dulling McCarthy’s effort.

Recently a number of pundits ( a word I use not in the sense of “a learned person”) have set forth comparisons of Obama to John Kennedy, but only as a straw man which they could then easily knock down. To my knowledge Obama has never suggested that he was the inheritor of the Kennedy mantle.

A more apt comparison, I think, is Obama to Gene McCarthy, in that Obama is mobilizing young folks through the force of his message, his eloquence, and his charismatic persona. Obama, it seems, has an ability to connect with folks on a very personal level, such as had President Clinton. A characteristic not shared, it seems, by Senator Clinton, who comes across as cool and calculating.

Obama’s showing in Iowa, I think, is truly remarkable in that Iowa is a largely rural state populated 93% by Caucasians and in that his campaign drew very many first time caucus participants into the process, particularly young persons. There were 239,000 participants in the democratic caucuses, more than 100,000 more than participated in 2004.

Iowa is, of course, demographically unrepresentative of the entire country and its caucus system draws the participation of a smaller percentage of the population than do the ensuing primaries. So Obama’s win there certainly does not foreshadow his future campaign fortunes, though a win Tuesday in New Hampshire could, and tracking polls there are already indicating an Obama surge.

An Obama win in N.H., a number of folks have suggested, could go a ways in convincing voters in South Carolina concerned about Obama’s ability to win nationally, particularly the large number of African-American voters there heretofore supporting Clinton, that Obama can in fact win the general election.

Edward’s second place finish I’m sure is disappointing for him and his supporters, as he has spent most of the last four years campaigning there; and since his campaign doesn’t have much money to continue. He has probably already been rendered to running for vice-president. Clinton’s third place finish is a great disappointment for her campaign, which has been projecting an air of inevitability (of entitlement, it often seems to me) for months.

Though I like what Edwards says about bringing the pharmaceutical, health insurance, and oil conglomerates to toe, I am unconvinced. To me, Edwards, like Clinton, is not genuine and seems like yesterday’s news.

As for Clinton, I think her campaign has been the most inept of those of the three leading candidates. Twenty years ago she wedded herself to the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) approach and, President Clinton’s election notwithstanding, it is an approach that doesn’t work.

The DLC approach is akin to the “stealth” campaigning advocated by Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition. That is, don’t take a firm position on issues unless backed into a political corner which forces one to do so. And the DLC counsels one to strike a muscular foreign policy posture so as to the take away the republicans’ tried and true democrats as wimps meme. I think her DLC approach explains her votes to authorize the subjugation of Iraq; her vote for the meaningless, feel good Kyl-Lieberman measure to designate the Iranian Republican Guard as a “terrorist organization”; and her vote to oppose USA participation in the International Criminal Court.

It seems that the Clinton campaign “message” changes about every week. Her earlier attempt to cast herself as an agent of change didn’t fly, perhaps because standing behind her on the dais is the likes of President Clinton and Madelene Albright and her insistence that she’s been at it for 35 years. (I thought it was hilarious when Magic Johnson, in a recent campaign appearance on her behalf, indicated she been effecting change for 30 years, only to be corrected by someone off camera that she had been at it for 35 years.)

Her attempt to cast herself as the candidate with the most foreign policy experience failed to resonate, understandably so with the likes of Biden, Dodd, and Richardson in the race. The fact that Obama and others pointed out that her husband had little foreign policy experience before taking office also inhibited her persona casting in this regard.

Clinton’s appointment of Mark Penn, with his sneering, porcine countenance, as her poll driven public perception counselor, I think, was a grave error on her part. The guy presents himself as a total pig, as far as I’m concerned. And then there were her N.H. co-chair and Penn whispering about Obama’s youthful drug use, a fact Obama acknowledged in one of his books. Her N.H. co-chair subsequently was pushed overboard. Then there was former Senator Bob Kerrey accentuating Obama’s middle name, a tact popular with the right wing frothers and an act for which Kerrey subsequently apologized in a quite praiseful letter to Obama. Then there was President Clinton’s suggestion that electing Obama would be a roll of the dice, followed by Senator Clinton’s promise that she would not permit President Clinton a seat at her National Security Council meetings.

It’s been one gaffe after another by the Clinton campaign, while her opponents have run fairly error free campaigns.

With that I will try my best to spare you the iconoflatulence over the next few days. No promises though.

If interested, you may find a C-Span video of Clinton and Obama speeches to a N.H. democratic dinner here. Cinton’s speech is about mid-way on the video and Obama’s is toward the end.

UPDATE: Time’s Karen Tumulty has a report of the Cinton campaign and the dissatisfaction with Mark Penn amongst some in the campaign. It seems that not only would Clinton be wise to throw Penn under the bus, but she should probably send her husband home as well.

I wonder if Clinton doesn’t gain the nomination if she and Bill will split the sheets. Remember, if it happens you heard it here first. If it doesn’t happen, I hope you will have forgotten I ever suggested it.

FURTHER UPDATE: I just happened upon this, via TPM. So not only is Mark Penn a pig, he’s a lying pig. He even lied to Senator Clinton.

Not only that but the Clinton campaign is lying in a N.H. mailer.

The more I read on the subject the more it seems the wheels are coming off of the Clinton campaign. The knives are reportedly coming out. But, again, we will not know who the nominee from each party is until the results of Super Tuesday, Feb. 5th, are tabulated.

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