Of all the ways to introduce Rudy Giuliani, this has to be the least sensible. From the Federalist Society’s 25th anniversary conference:
Just a week after the indictment of former Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, [former Solicitor General Ted Olson] said Giuliani had shown “the wisdom and humility to surround himself with talented, dedicated and energetic people” as mayor.
Seriously? Giuliani’s strength is his choice in associates? Let’s put that to the test:
* Giuliani inexplicably backed Bernie Kerik, and made him the city’s police commissioner, after he’d been briefed on Kerik’s organized crime connections.
* Alan Placa was accused by a grand jury report of sexually abusing children, as well as helping cover up the sexual abuse of children by other priests. Giuliani then put Placa, his life-long friend, on the payroll of Giuliani Partners. (Adds Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks suspected priest abuse, “I think Rudy Giuliani has to account for his friendship with a credibly accused child molester.”)
* Kenneth Caruso, a close Giuliani friend and business partner, has been accused of conspiring to steal $10 million invested through a Caribbean bank.
* Thomas Ravenel, the chairman of Giuliani’s presidential campaign in South Carolina, was indicted on cocaine distribution charges.
* Arthur Ravenel, the replacement chairman of Giuliani’s presidential campaign in South Carolina, has characterized the NAACP as the “National Association for Retarded People,” and has an unusual fondness for the Confederate battle flag.
* Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), the family-values conservative caught up in a prostitution scandal, was not only Giuliani’s top Senate backer, he was also the regional chairman of Giuliani’s campaign.
A “talented, dedicated and energetic” group, to be sure.
Campaigning in New Hampshire today, John McCain, well aware of the Iraq war’s unpopularity, insisted that he’s been a critic of the administration’s approach for years.
McCain also notes, especially for anti-war voters, that he was an early critic of the war strategy waged by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
“The strategy was going to fail with Rumsfeld. I fought against. I spoke against,” he said.
He’s been repeating this line quite a bit lately, holding himself out as one of the leading critics of the Bush war policy before Rumsfeld’s ouster a year ago. Indeed, two weeks ago, McCain told a GOP audience that it was he, and no one else, who was willing to step up and make the Republican case that the White House policy was failing.
Most political reporters are noting McCain’s talking points, but few are explaining how wrong they are.
In his stump speech, McCain argues that he “clearly pointed out [what] was a failed strategy.” This just isn’t true. In December 2003, McCain praised Bush’s strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”
And now he wants to position himself as a critic of Bush’s pre-2007 policy? For anyone who’s been paying attention, it’s a little late for that.
Following up on an item from last week, State Rep. Bob Allen (R) — aka, Florida’s Larry Craig — was convicted recently by a six person jury of one misdemeanor count of solicitation for prostitution.
Late last week, to the delight of Florida Republicans, Allen resigned from the legislature.
Allen’s letter to House Speaker Mario Rubio said he would resign on Feb. 15, 2008, or earlier if a replacement election can be held. […]
In his letter, Allen citied “the requirements of my family and my private life, and in order to seek justice in the upcoming appeal process” as reasons for his decision.
The University of South Florida professor Susan A. MacManus, an expert in Florida politics, responded, “With the environment today and the anger of voters … it’s probably a good thing personally and professionally.” She added that a political comeback for Allen “would be difficult.”
Apparently, if you’re an anti-gay Republican who offers to pay an undercover police officer to allow him to perform oral sex on him in a public park restroom, voters hold a grudge.
I highly recommend Reed Hundt’s new post over at TPMCafe about the state of the primary campaign and confusion about the difference — in a modern political context — between going on the offensive and going on the attack. I won’t try to summarize or restate Reed’s argument, just suggest that you go read them. But I’ll touch on an overlapping point about the state of the race.
Like a lot of people I’d recently been criticizing Barack Obama’s aimless and unaggressive campaign. And that has changed, at least to a degree, in the last week or two. But being more aggressive doesn’t mean unloading on Hillary. It might involve some attacks on her, sure. But that’s not the basic point. As a practical matter, given Hillary’s longevity in Democratic politics (meaning basically how much she’s a known quantity to partisan Democrats) I don’t think it will accomplish that much. And largely because of that it won’t be enough to make Obama the nominee by default.
What’s the premise of Obama’s campaign? I hear less triangulating, more principle (which basically means the same thing), change, etc. But those are slogans. To make these work politically I think Obama would have to say, Clinton is the cautious Democratic politics of the past. It was good in its day. And I respect all that Sen. Clinton has accomplished for our party. But I’m about something different and that’s why X, Y and Z. Perhaps it’s something dramatic on climate change. But that’s not the point. I’m not running his campaign. But I think you need policy specifics that demonstrate the point.
So Obama says we Democrats know X, Y and Z is necessary. And I’m going to propose and commit to passing legislation in my first two years in office. And you can see I’m different because watch, Hillary won’t follow me.
As it is, at the beginning of the last debate when they both made their basic pitch for their candidacy, it was Hillary’s poll-tested platitudes and then Obama criticizing Hillary’s establishmentarian platitudes with platitudes about change and other platitudes about avoiding platitudes.
TPM Reader GS responds …
I disagree with your analysis that Obama and Edwards need to provide some distinct policy difference and base their offense on drawing distinctions on those issues. Voters simply don’t care much about issues. Voters care about how they feel about the candidate–whether they feel they share the same values with the candidate (this is why the would-I-have-a-beer-with-him question has loomed so large in presidential politics while whether a universal healthcare proposal has a mandate is relegated to an afterthought). Then they care about whether they feel that the candidate will follow through and act on those values. This is why questions of integrity and constancy loom so large. Then some voters care about some single issues. Issues come into play when candidates can use them to illustrate their values. Democrats have long held a large lead on the issues that concern most Americans, yet have lost election after election. More importantly, once you draw a distinction from Hillary, she will try to make it seem like she is on board with your plan and blur any distinctions you can make. All signs point to a more successful strategy of distinguishing on Clinton’s values and integrity. It is much more likely to be successful to attack on those points because that is what people care about and there is a pre-existing story line about the Clintons that can be used in this effort. I encourage you to talk to Drew Westen and to read the Political Brain–I am shamelessly stealing his ideas.
Many have made the argument about what I think Marc Schmit has called the Dems policy literalism. And it’s a point I agree with. Strongly. But saying shared values doesn’t make it so. And it’s very easy to get led astray by a lot of jargon and nonsense. I probably should have been more clear. The point is not to beat Hillary on the issues. But if Obama’s angle is to show he’s more principled, less likely to sway in the political winds and so forth, he needs to ILLUSTRATE IT and not just assert it.
And that’s basically what I’ve seen so far.
On the issue of the pre-existing story line, I don’t buy it. Not as a sufficient vehicle for Obama to take the nomination. The main reason is that the Clintons — both of them — are really well known to Democratic voters. And that story-line is really well-known to Democratic voters. And with both of these being the case, she’s crushing Obama in nationwide polls and doing pretty well in most individual primary states.
I find it very implausible that Obama’s going to change people’s verdict on this essential question about Hillary over the next couple months when she’s such a known commodity.
Relatedly, I think this ignores the fact that many of these arguments, or versions of them, have been made for years by Republicans. And that creates a big hurdle in and of itself for selling them to a strongly-identified Democratic primary electorate.
In any case, going back to the point of the original post, Obama is starting to go on the attack against Hillary. But I agree with Reed that he’s not in any meaningful sense on the offensive. Hillary’s taken some real hits over the last few weeks. But her campaign still maintains the initiative. And it’s being run on her team’s script.
Let me just add a little more on the discussion last night of Obama and his campaign.
Since I’ve been focusing so much on what I see as his campaign’s shortcomings, it might come off to some like I’m saying his advisors are idiots, that he’s running the worst campaign ever and that his chances at the nomination are hopeless. And I want to assure you I’m not saying any of those things. Anything can happen. And as the 2004 primaries show, it often does. I think Hillary is much, much less likely to suffer a Dean-like implosion than Dean did. But the truth is that Obama really isn’t that far behind and Hillary’s lead isn’t nearly as prohibitive as the conventional wisdom suggests.
My disappointment with Obama’s campaign to date is that it’s really, ironically, been pretty old politics to me. And I mean that in this sense. Going back several cycles, you’ve often had some version of the Gore v. Bradley campaign in 2000. One candidate who’s the establishment party figure and another who talks about new stuff and change and principle and generally whets the appetites of the party’s cerebral types but then never quite delivers with anything specific and gets crushed by the well-oiled campaign of the establishment candidate. I’ve seen different versions of this in Mondale/Hart, Clinton/Tsongas, Gore/Bradley. And the same result every time.
The reason it seemed like it might be different this time is that Obama was raising the kind of money that would allow him to match Hillary dollar for dollar in ads, foot soldiers and infrastructure. But so far I haven’t seen a case made for Obama over Hillary behind the fact that it’d be cooler to have him as president than her — a point I concede, but one I doubt is sufficient to get him the nomination.
And the truth is that however we got to this point, he needs to take the initiative and change the dynamic of the race. Or else the conclusion we’re headed toward looks pretty clear.
Crony US Attorney Paulose says members of the Federalist Society are victims of a new McCarthyism and black-list.
She further alleges she’s being hounded out of her office for her religion, ideology, gender and skin color.
A lawyered-up Cookie Krongard claims: my own notes exonerate me of perjury.
Obama’s stump speeches are now alluding to Jeff Gerth’s reported 20-year plan for Clinton co-domination.
Remember how Fred Thompson was the GOP’s ticket to holding the White House in 2008? One of the great stories of the 2008 campaign has been the non-story of Fred Thomspon, his almost complete irrelevancy to the progress, discussion and direction of the campaign so far. In today’s Sunday Show Roundup episode of TPMtv, we look at how the Fred fantasy started coming unhinged from the Fred reality …