Consensus Anyone?

Newsweek’s Robert Samuelson says the oil crisis demands that we start drilling for oil at home--in the Arctic wilderness, offshore in Florida, the Gulf, and the West Coast. Doing so could double our current proven reserves. We should drill with environmental sensitivity.

Tom Friedman of the New York Times is back after writing a book that has got to be about the energy crisis and how to fix it. Anyway, that’s the subject of his first column back at the paper. Friedman writes, “We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.” Like Samuelson, Friedman wants to lower demand for oil and increase energy supply. But his solution is to have government subsidize solar and wind power.

Don’t we need solar power, wind power, and oil, and nuclear energy, and taxes to limit consumption? Can’t we get together on this?

ABC’s Betsy Stark no prophet.

A month ago, after the stock market rocketed to its best 2nd quarter take-off in 70 years, ABC’s Betsy Stark told us it would likely go back down again in a few days like a “see saw”. I decided to watch for that swing. It didn’t come. Today, the stock market was up yet again. The Dow cleared 13,000 points for the first time since January 8, and the S&P 500 similarly topped its key 1,400 level, also for the first time since January. The market is responding positively to signs the Fed has stopped cutting interest rates, which could translate into a stronger dollar and declining oil prices.

ABC News led its broadcast tonight with a story about the high price of food, then much later, briefly mentioned the Dow’s clearing 13,000. Bad News Betsy, always on the alert for signs the economy is crumbling and paving the way for a Democratic victory in November, was nowhere in sight.

McCain Provides for the Common Defense (II)

In his World Affairs Council address a month ago, McCain emphasized the urgency of taking on Islamic extremism:

 [We must] confront the transcendent challenge of our time: . . . radical Islamic terrorism. . . They alone devote all their energies and indeed their very lives to murdering innocent men, women, and children. They alone seek nuclear weapons and other tools of mass destruction not to defend themselves . . . but to use against us wherever and whenever they can. Any president who does not regard this threat as transcending all others does not deserve to sit in the White House. . .

 passive defense alone cannot protect us. We must . . . have an aggressive strategy of confronting and rooting out the terrorists wherever they seek to operate, and deny them bases in failed or failing states. . . Prevailing in this struggle will require . . . the use of . . . public diplomacy; development assistance; law enforcement training; expansion of economic opportunity; and robust intelligence capabilities. . . Our goal must be to win the "hearts and minds" of the vast majority of moderate Muslims.

 If you look at the great arc that extends from the Middle East through Central Asia and the Asian subcontinent all the way to Southeast Asia, you can see those pillars of democracy stretching across the entire expanse, from Turkey and Israel to India and Indonesia. Iraq and Afghanistan lie at the heart of that region.

Comment: McCain is right. Islamic terrorism, because it is asymmetric, is a low-cost, therefore viable, threat to our civilization. We are at war with Islamic extremism right now, and the president must, must effectively lead this war. McCain opposed Rumsfeld’s leadership, favored the surge before the word existed, and fully backs Petraeus’ counter-terrorism strategy. McCain knows we must also be serious about al Qaeda in Pakistan, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and about extremism in Iran. On the biggest issue of our time, he’s the leader we need.

McCain Provides for the Common Defense (I)

A month ago, John McCain outlined his foreign policy in a speech before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. In one key part of the speech, McCain stressed the need for leading democracies to pull together, and added the U.S. must do a better job of listening to our friends:

 President Harry Truman once said of America, "God has created us and brought us to our present position of power and strength for some great purpose." . . . There is the powerful collective voice of the European Union, and there are the great nations of India and Japan, Australia and Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, Turkey and Israel, to name just a few of the leading democracies. There are also the increasingly powerful nations of China and Russia . . .

 We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact -- a League of Democracies -- that can harness the vast influence of the more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests. At the heart of this new compact must be mutual respect and trust. Recall the words of our founders in the Declaration of Independence, that we pay "decent respect to the opinions of mankind."

 [We should ensure] that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia. . . Western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization's doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom.

Comment: Democracy is the best form of government. It’s not something to force down someone’s throat; it’s something that evolves when a people embrace it. Democracies should offer a positive example to others, and democracies should support each other. McCain is right to favor drawing the democracies together in common purpose, and to call out by name some of the larger democracies. But why form an exclusive club that leaves out Russia or China? Since democracy is about people power, why not focus on the larger states—democratic or not—and work to draw them together in common purpose? I named those nations and called for such unity here.

Good Ol’ Days of Free Trade

"Obama graciously concedes that 'not every American job lost is due to trade'. Not every job? The true figure – according to the apolitical US Council of Economic Advisors – is that only 3% of US job losses can be attributed to 'outsourcing'."

--Dominic Lawson, The Independent (London)

Lawrence Summers, the former Clinton treasury secretary and un-PC Harvard president, is now preparing us for the end of free trade as we know it. Summers says America will find it “increasingly difficult to mobilize support for economic internationalism;” i.e., Democrats like Obama won’t have it.

Summers makes three points:

1. Developing countries increasingly export goods such as computers that the US produces on a significant scale, putting pressure on wages. At the same time, rising global prosperity increases the rewards accruing to the already [wealthy] such as [filmmakers], where the US has a comparative advantage.

2. The growth of countries such as China raises competition for energy and environmental resources, raising the price for [average] Americans.

3. Growth in the global economy encourages the development of stateless elites whose allegiance is to global economic success and their own prosperity rather than the interests of the nation where they are headquartered.

Summers says the “stateless elites,” operating in the pursuit of global economic improvements, oppose “progressive taxation, support for labor unions, strong regulation and substantial production of public goods that mitigate its adverse impacts.”

It’s pretty obviously bad for any Democrat to oppose high taxes on the rich, labor unions, strong regulation, and production of public goods. So the Obama forces indeed are going to separate themselves from free trade and its well-documented benefits.

Bad news for America. Oh, for the days of Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, even Bill Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Summers.

Engineering a better world.

What is the core difference between the two parties? Here’s an attempt from Daniel Patrick Moynihan to break down the liberal-conservative difference:

“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

The "cultural wars" fought since the 1960s mean America today has shreds of our Judeo-Christian culture existing uneasily with an American popular culture driven by sex, violence, rock and roll, drugs, junk food, and whatever else Madison Avenue finds will sell goods and services. Both liberals and conservatives like and hate parts of the all-American mix, meaning liberals too have stuff they fight to hang onto. Their power position within the political equation, for example.

Why has the media become such a fiercely partisan (Democratic) force, attempting to guide our political destiny when a generation ago reporters strived for objectivity? The answer may be they are losing power, and will play rough to hang on to what they have. Real insight into this condition comes from John Podhoretz, writing in Commentary.

Podhoretz calls the “Newseum” [picture] just opened opposite Washington’s National Gallery a “news mausoleum,” because the newspaper industry is in its death throws. While the downward spiral began with television, television only extinguished weaker papers, leaving behind large, successful, profit-making news organizations in each metropolitan area that benefited greatly from their monopoly domination of the local market. The New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times, etc. These papers’ major profit center was classified advertising, each little line sold at full price. Now Craigslist performs the same service for free, and newspapers are going under. Says Podhoretz:

"When a monopoly begins to lose market share by as much as 10% per year, withering and fading on its own and not on account of specific competitive pressure, it is a sure sign that the structural integrity of an entire industry has been compromised. Implosion is sure to follow—and is indeed taking place in every city in every region of the country. For anyone who depends on newspapering for his livelihood, there is simply no mistaking the death rattle."

So newspapers are desperately fighting to remain relevant. According to Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein at the University of Chicago, we fight harder to hold what we have than we do to get something new:

"[Any] crisis is compounded by what psychologists call 'loss aversion.' Numerous studies have shown that humans hate losses much more than they like gains. This means that losing $1,000 hurts you about twice as much as winning $1,000 makes you feel good."

So how would Thaler and Sunstein improve matters for losers? Discussing the housing crisis, they proclaim:

"Government regulators can't change human psychology, and they shouldn't try. But they can . . . craft regulations to protect us from the people who can be our own worst enemy: ourselves."

Government helps us combat “our own worst enemy: ourselves”? Isn't this the essence of liberalism, government fixing “us” in ways we can’t fix “ourselves”? Save us from government. Save us from newspapers.

“Sen. Clinton, Does Truth Matter?”

One has to be impressed with Clinton’s staying power. For the fourth time, she won a contest that could have knocked her out of the race had she lost. She did this before in New Hampshire, California, and Texas. Now Pennsylvania. Not so impressive—the way she wins.

In the 2002 Pennsylvania gubernatorial primary between Ed Rendell, then mayor of Philadelphia, and Bob Casey, son of the former Pennsylvania governor, Rendell won by capturing Philadelphia and its four surrounding counties by wide margins. Casey lost while winning 57 of the state’s remaining 62 counties. If Rendell's path was Obama’s strategy against Clinton yesterday, it failed. Clinton carried both Bucks and Montgomery counties north of Philadelphia by a large enough margin to win the combined vote in Philadelphia’s four surrounding counties —seriously damaging Obama’s metro Philadelphia-based strategy.

Montgomery county has the 11th largest Jewish population of any county outside New York, and Bucks county’s is 22nd. So what did Clinton do just before the election? She announced she would “totally obliterate” Iran if she were president and Iran attacked Israel. Iran is a far bigger and more powerful nation than Iraq was in 2003. While her rhetoric flies in the face of Democratic calls for negotiation and diplomacy to replace Bush/Chaney warmongering, Clinton’s bombastic comment evidently helped her win over metro Philly’s Jewish voters.

In similarly intemperate comments, Clinton promised in last week’s debate to end the U.S. military role in Iraq and withdraw our troops even if her military advisors said to do so would be a mistake, and she promised not to raise taxes on people making less than $200,000 a year. Both promises are absurd, and without a doubt Clinton would break them were she elected.

Clinton is shameless. She’ll say anything to get elected. Clinton knows that if she becomes president, it will be in spite of widespread evidence that she lies freely. So what difference do a few more lies make?

Keeping the pen mightier.

"The tongue is mightier than the blade."
--Euripides, d. 406 B.C

Obama preaches change. To me, Obama practices status quo. The old politics is intelligent people wielding the power of words to rule on behalf of the masses. The elite truly believes people who talk better and write better should rule. Democracy is tricky for elites, because the people--not an elite portion of them--are supposed to be sovereign.

The American elite has manipulated words to construct a phantom counter-elite the elite then knocks down on behalf of the masses. The elite portrays America’s counter elite as a minority of dirty businesses who pass money through K Street to run the country, in conjunction with right-wing talk radio, Fox News, and extremist, anti-abortion televangelists. The bad guys stole the 2000 election to put a puppet in the White House whom they have manipulated to go into Iraq for oil, to give tax breaks to the rich, to ship jobs to China, and to drown blacks in the waters of Katrina.

The elite will make America better by spending money at home where it should be spent, not wasting it abroad. Government is our friend. Controlled by the informed people, government will end war, create jobs, give us sound health, green the planet. And no victim will be left behind.

By contrast, in my view history progresses as the masses take direct control. In the elections of 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004, the masses figured out the elite was trying to send America in a cosmopolitan, peace before victory, anti-faith direction and voted Republican. In 1976, 1992, and 1996, the masses believed Democratic-led government would improve their lives. In the Republican victories, 7 of 10 times, the people looked past the pen (the media) and saw the elite for what it is—contemptuous of average Americans. Obama, as agent of the status quo, wants power to remain with the elite, not pass to the unwashed. But to win, he must hide the truth that he seeks to strengthen elite power at the masses’ expense.

Economic Issue Will Slam McCain

Roll Call executive editor Mort Kondracke has points showing why it will be so hard for McCain to win any economic argument with Obama in the fall:

 [Last February], a team of four Democratic Congressmen led by Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) demolished a team of Republicans led by Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.) by citing evidence Americans are not better off than they were when Bush became president.

 Median household income in the United States rose $6,000 in the Clinton administration, to $49,163, but fell to $48,023 during Bush's first six years in office.

 the economy grew by an average of 4% during the Clinton years and created an average 1.8 million jobs a year. Under Bush, gross domestic product has grown just 2.7% a year and created 369,000 jobs a year - and [the current] recession [will] cut even those numbers.

 The price of gasoline in 2001 was $1.39 per gallon. Now, it's $4. The number of Americans lacking health insurance was 38 million; now, it's 47 million. The national debt was $5.7 trillion in 2001; now, it's $9.2 trillion. The dollar was worth 1.07 euro; now, it's .68. The poverty rate, college costs, take-home pay, personal indebtedness, foreign oil dependency and the trade deficit all are worse than they were when Bush took office.

 According to the Brookings Institution, two-thirds of Bush's tax cuts went to those in the top 20% of income and left those making less than $100,000 a year paying more of the total burden of federal taxes than any other income group.

Breakthrough Election? (III)

Over the broad course of history, Democrats gained from the Depression, when Roosevelt successfully rallied northern working class voters behind the New Deal. Since 1932, Democrats have hoped economic issues will keep the population voting Democratic.

The 1960’s battles over civil rights and Vietnam brought the national elite into the Democratic Party, with national media holding open the door. The media played a key supporting role in the civil rights revolution, then media led the effort to use Vietnam to rid the country of Johnson and used Watergate to unhorse Nixon.

By 1974, the media had replaced the presidency as America's power center. Democrats since that time expect media control of the national agenda will keep power in Democrats’ hands. And from 1954 to the present, except for 2002-06 (and a few months in 2001), Democrats have successfully held the presidency or at least one house of Congress.

But divided control represents incomplete victory. Democrats now want it all—the presidency and both houses of congress. In the last 40 years, Democrats had full control only in 1976-80 and 1992-94. Today, the media are working to make Iraq (which they treat as Vietnam 2), the economy, and Bush’s ineptitude at home (Katrina) the basis for a Democratic breakthrough win in November.

While the table is set for Democratic victory, the outcome may depend on distorted reporting about the economy and Iraq. As this blog has noted, on both topics the media paint a bleaker picture than the actual reality.

Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, observing Wednesday’s debate, pounced on the unreality of Obama pledges on the economy and Iraq. The pledges threaten Democratic reliance on the economic and Iraq issues in November, if McCain is able to turn Obama’s words back on the Democrat. As Brooks wrote, Obama:

 made a sweeping read-my-lips pledge never to raise taxes on anybody making less than $200,000 to $250,000 a year. That will make it impossible to address entitlement reform any time in an Obama presidency. It will also make it much harder to afford the vast array of middle-class tax breaks, health care reforms and energy policy Manhattan Projects that he promises to deliver.

 Then he made an iron vow to get American troops out of Iraq within 16 months. Neither Obama nor anyone else has any clue what the conditions will be like when the next president takes office. He could have responsibly said that he aims to bring the troops home but will make a judgment at the time. Instead, he rigidly locked himself into a policy that will not be fully implemented for another three years.

Breakthrough Election? (II)

Wednesday’s crucial debate between Clinton and Obama points to difficulties the presumptive Democratic nominee may face in November. Democrats need to win back white, working class voters that only white Southern Democratic nominees Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have successfully attracted in the last 40 years. The Washington Post’s Marie Cocco, a Clinton backer, smells Obama trouble with this group, zeroing in on Obama words that betray his elite separation from blue-collar whites. First, Cocco discusses Obama’s March 18 speech defending his relationship to the Rev. Wright, then she looks at his famous San Francisco remarks about working class “clinging.” Cocco writes:

 five seemingly insignificant words in [Obama's March 18 speech] struck me: "As far as they're concerned." This is how Obama prefaced his remarks about whites of immigrant stock whose experience is that, "as far as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything" and they've grasped whatever success they've achieved on their own. It is an awkward qualifier, suggesting that this is a perspective or a belief, and not necessarily the truth.

 [Obama says] working-class Americans living in small towns are bitter about their economic stress, and so they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti- immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." [Obama] has tried to talk his way out of this jam in part by pointing out that clinging to religious faith is a good thing. But what of those he says cling to "antipathy to people who aren't like them"? The word for such people is racist, and Obama knows it.

Princeton professor Larry Bartels has researched the precise group Obama is said to have offended—small-town, working class voters lacking a college degree. (Significantly, Bartels didn’t limit his working class sample to whites only.) Bartels concluded that not only do these small town Americans vote on economic as opposed to social issues, but also that they historically divide their votes nearly evenly between Republicans and Democrats. If Bartels is right, then Obama’s remarks have done him little permanent damage. If Cocco's right, then Obama may be losing a constituency Democrats needed in the past.

Breakthrough Election? (I)

The Civil War defined America until the Great Depression. The North won, its capitalist elite ran the country through the Republican Party, and Democrats, the South, workers and farmers made do. The Compromise of 1877, the one that put Republican Rutherford Hayes in the White House when Democrat Samuel Tilden [pictured] had actually won, kept national power with the GOP. Democrats in turn got back control of the South, as Hayes promised to end Washington’s Reconstruction efforts to empower Southern blacks.

From 1860 to 1932, Republicans controlled the White House 78% of the time. No Democrat besides Tilden (not Cleveland, not Wilson) ever won a popular vote majority. Unchallenged in Republican- controlled America, a white, male, Protestant, capitalist northern elite built on small business and backed by conservative newspaper publishers ran the nation.

Underneath, America was changing, reshaped by millions of immigrants. The New Deal brought to power the largely immigrant proletariat, poorer farmers, and especially, the proletariat's vanguard of intellectuals, along with a far more conservative Southern elite that had been the Democrats’ core group during the wilderness years. While the North’s upper class remained largely Republican, the country’s East Coast-based meritocracy moved Democratic. This Democratic coalition controlled the White House 78% of the time between 1932 and 1968.

The New Deal coalition fractured in the 1960’s with the civil rights struggle. Republicans under Goldwater in 1964 first captured a South that resented the integration Kennedy and Johnson forced on them. Then, as the civil rights struggle moved into northern working class neighborhoods, it alienated another Democratic core group--white ethnic Americans. But meanwhile, the Republican northern elite shifted independent or Democratic, in support of civil rights and in opposition to the Vietnam War conservative Republicans still endorsed. By Reagan’s election in 1980, much of the white working class and most of the South had left the Democrats. So in spite of poweerful elite opposition to its rule, Republicans controlled the White House 70% of the time from 1968 to the present.

Is 2008 another turning point? Republicans now depend upon northern churchgoing anti-abortionists, upon a shrunken slice of the elite limited mostly to small-business and the military, and upon people throughout the country but concentrated in the South who feel alienated from today’s secular, unpatriotic national elite. This grouping no longer seems large enough to win a national election. Many who supported Bush in 2004 now feel Bush kept us in an unnecessary war (Iraq), that he cares only about the wealthy while leaving working stiffs behind (the economy), and that he mismanages government (Katrina). They are looking to vote Democratic this fall.

McCain Searches for Unstupid Economic Message

"[McCain] seems to have decided that it would be folly to run as the candidate of belt-tightening and balanced budgets in a year when economic insecurity is uppermost in voters' minds. Thus the grab-bag approach on display in this speech. . . leaving McCain without a signal theme. . ."

--Ross Douthat, The Atlantic

John McCain did what he had to do yesterday—attempt to articulate an approach to our economic difficulties that would compare favorably to prescriptions Democrats are offering. But as with The Atlantic’s Douthat, the Wall Street Journal felt McCain’s “pudding still has no theme.”

Here’s what the Journal liked:

 McCain spoke out strongly for tax reform and endorsed the specific idea of an optional flat tax. By making it optional, he deflects Democratic claims he'll rob Americans of their tax deductions.

 McCain repeated his proposal to cut the corporate tax rate to 25% from its current 35%. This is a competitive necessity, as the U.S. now has the second highest developed world corporate tax rate after Japan.

 McCain took a hard line on spending, promising to veto any bill with earmarks, and pledging a "one-year pause in discretionary spending increases," except for defense and veterans.

The Journal, however, didn’t like McCain's call for Washington to suspend the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gasoline tax during the Summer to help people hit by high oil prices. Lowering gas prices will likely increase demand, thereby driving prices up and diminishing the original discount.

McCain also took direct aim at overpaid business executives. If voters trace our problems to rich oil barons and Wall Street CEOs, they'll elect Obama. As the Journal concluded, “McCain tried to show voters he feels their pain. What they need and want to hear is . . .that he [will] fight for [their] prosperity.”

Failure? Don't think so. This is progress.

"Hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq, but most of all speak of no progress in Iraq."

--Sen. Joe Lieberman. 4.8.08

Gen. Petraeus’ report to the Senate on Iraq was a study in contained optimism. Too much has gone wrong in the country since 2003 to allow too much talk of going right. But anyone who looks closely at recent developments in Iraq has to be excited. It’s not just that al Qaeda is so much on the run that our main al Qaeda problem has returned to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border areas where it all began. No, that’s only part of the story.

The big story of 2008 is Nouri al Maliki’s determination to bring the armed (by Iran) Shiite militia of Muqtada al Sadr under government control. Maliki, by undertaking this action, has placed himself on the side of the U.S., the Sunnis, the Kurds, and all the Shiites who don’t like or who fear Sadr. Maliki’s forces have yet to win. But in the upcoming battle, it helps that not only does Maliki have lots of support, he also doesn’t need to destroy Sadr or defeat his Iranian backers. Maliki only needs to move Sadr away from using armed force, and into the political arena, where Sadr already has support.

We don’t need an Iraq of one mind. We just need to have an Iraq at peace. And that now seems possible.

After just a year, Petraeus is on his way to becoming one of the great generals in U.S. history. Mao Zedong told us that guerrillas move among the people like fish in the sea. Sir Robert Thompson of Malaya taught us that separating guerrillas from the sea—draining the ocean—took a decade or more. Petraeus is discovering you don’t have to drain the ocean at all. You just work harder than the guerrillas do on making the sea accept you. I don’t believe Petraeus himself thought this could happen so quickly. He’s holding down his joy. (“Champagne pushed to the back of the refrigerator.”)

But wow. And rembember who gets the major credit: the Iraqi people.

Iraq Back in the Headlines

With al Maliki's attempt to gain control over renegade Shiite militias in Basra and Baghdad, Iraq is back in the headlines again. Here's our latest monthly look at Iraq, a highly abbreviated version of the Iraq Index, published and updated twice a week by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution:

Americans Killed in Action, Iraq (monthly average)
2003: 32
2004: 59
2005: 56
2006: 58
2007: 63
2008: 31
March: 29

Americans Killed in Action, Vietnam (monthly average)
1965: 128*
1966: 420
1967: 767
1968: 1140
1969: 785
1970: 413
____
* = First U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam, 5.3.65
Vietnam table compiled by Galen Fox using Defense Department sources.

Crude Oil Production (m. bbls./day)

Prewar Peak: 2.50
Goal: 2.20 (Revised upward, 1/08)
actual: 2.38 (3/08)

Electricity (megawatts)

Prewar: 3,958
Goal: 6,000
actual: 4,220 (3/08)

Since our last monthly report, the monthly American KIA total dropped to 29 in March from 33 the month before, even though 8 Americans died on a single day, March 11. And the monthly American KIA average remains at half the rate of 2 a day sustained for most of the Iraq war, with the monthly average for 2008 at 31, the lowest for any year of the war. [Please note: the number of KIA is almost always lower than the media-reported total of American deaths, which covers all causes, including non-hostile. Our Iraq and Vietnam figures are KIA only.] The single best marker of the surge's success is the continued low rate of American KIA since September 2007.

In March, oil output remained steady at 2.38 million barrels a day. Revenue from oil exports continues at all-time highs, with January's total the highest on record, and February's the second highest. When complete figures are in for March, its revenue should be at or near the top, partly due to oil's all-time high prices. As for electricity, output was up from 3,950 to 4,220 megawatts, the highest for any March on record (electricity demand is seasonal, making seasonal comparisons the most relevant).

The Iraq Index has included results of an ABC News/BBC/ARD German TV/USA Today poll of Iraqi public opinion completed in February. The results show increased optimism from Iraqis. By 36% to 26%, they say security in Iraq is getting better. Last August, they said "worse" by 61% to 11%. Asked to rate the overall situation in Iraq, 61% of Shia, 16% of Sunni, and 45% of Kurds said it was "very good" or "good." Last September, those figures were: Shia, 39%, Sunni 2%, Kurd, 17%. Asked how things would be a year from now, 46% said "better," 20% "worse." Last August, the figures were "better" 23%, "worse" 42%.

Tribal Warfare Revisited

Michael Barone, writing in US News, has come up with an analysis of the Democratic primary that’s very close to my entry, “Tribal Warfare.” Barone writes, “analysts have been seeing the battle for the Democratic nomination as tribal warfare, between blacks and Latinos (and Jews), between young and old, between upscale and downscale.” To that, Barone adds his own, “one that separates voters more profoundly than even race. That's the divide between academics and Jacksonians.” Barone argues,

“Academics and public employees (and of course . . . most academics in the United States are public employees) love the arts of peace and hate the demands of war. Economically, defense spending competes for the public-sector dollars that academics and public employees think are rightfully their own. . .[W]arriors are competitors for the honor that academics and public employees think rightfully belongs to them. Jacksonians, in contrast, place a high value on the virtues of the warrior and little value on the work of academics and public employees.”

Barone is on to something. But while his Jacksonians don’t like government interference, the working class whites supporting Clinton do. The Clinton folks are regular Democrats who loved the New Deal, Old Glory, God, war hero JFK, and Hillary’s doughnut-eating husband. While they don’t reject blacks per se (Colin Powell is o.k.), they don’t like uppity, highfalutin blacks like Obama. The tribal warfare Clinton’s tapped into by going after the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is upscale/elite v. downscale/white.

Anyway, that’s how I see it.

Business Reporting: Doom, Gloom, Sly Smiles

The stock market yesterday recorded its largest first-day-of-the-
second quarter gain in seventy years. But Betsy Stark on ABC News last night skipped the upbeat superlatives, argued the market moves up and down like a seesaw, and essentially proclaimed the market would soon dip steeply again. Thanks Betsy. We know you are fixed on pushing the bad economic news that will bring Democratic victory this Fall. Wouldn’t want the other outcome, would we?

Investor’s Business Daily put it this way: “As the election nears, the mainstream media, unable this time to make an issue out of Iraq, are focusing on the economy on behalf of the Democrats. And they're more than a bit overwrought.”

In fact, the stock market historically rises six months before any recession ends, so a current recession still seems likely even with the market recovering. And a second quarter recession virtually guarantees a November incumbent party defeat. Furthermore, the housing market decline has yet to hit bottom. It all means that, even if the stock market is headed up, Stark is likely to have both her recession and her Democratic victory.

While biased reporting seems unnecessary, it’s a fact of life. John Lott at Fox News in a recent study documented media economic reporting bias. He found that:

• A Nexis search on news stories during [a] three-month period [of Clinton’s recession] from July 2000 through September 2000 using the keywords “economy recession US” produces 1,388. By contrast, the same search over just the last month finds 3,166. Or, even more telling, take the three months from July through September last year, when the GDP was growing at a phenomenal 4.9 percent. The same type of Google search shows 2,475 news stories. Over 78 percent more negative news stories discussed a recession when the economy under a Republican was soaring than occurred under a Democrat when the economy was shrinking.

• The average unemployment rate during President Clinton time was 5.2%. The current unemployment rate is 4.8%.

• Kevin Hassett and I looked at 12,620 newspaper and wire service headlines from 1985 through 2004 for stories on the release of official government releasing numbers on the unemployment rate, number of people employed, gross domestic product (GDP), retail sales, and durable goods. Even after accounting for how well the economy was doing (e.g., what the unemployment rate was and whether it was going up or down), Democratic presidents got about 15% more positive headlines than Republicans for the same economic news.

Iraq Bombs at the Cineplex (II)

Hollywood’s effort to aid the anti-Iraq war cause has come a cropper yet again--the sixth time.

From Us Magazine:

Despite heavy press, Ryan Phillippe couldn't save his Iraq war drama Stop-Loss: It tanked, at No. 8, with just $4.5 million. It joins a long string of Iraq-themed movies, including Charlize Theron's In the Valley of Elah, that have bombed.

Bush’s War (Part II)

“Don’t get mad, get even.”
--attributed to John F. Kennedy

Why is “Frontline’s” Iraq program a one-sided chronicle of Bush administration screw-ups? The enemy, it seems, is Republican—those who ruined the good America of multiculturalism, tolerance, and government programs to help the needy, who wreaked the good America that leaves other countries alone; the good America that began with the New Deal, spawned the civil rights revolution and women’s equality, and during the Clinton presidency overcame Reagan’s backlash against progressives. In 2000, this good America was poised to provide universal health care, to fight global warming, and to protect us from rapacious capitalists (Enron, Texas Oil), when Bush, after losing the popular vote, stole the White House and ruined it all.

Liberals like “Frontline’s” writer-producer-director Michael Kirk believe Bush used 9.11 to generate a “War on Terror” to help Republicans win the 2002 midterm elections. But then Bush “stepped in it.” He stupidly invaded Iraq to take out Saddam Hussein; a comical figure the world could have lived with who at least kept his Shiites under control, a faker with not a single weapon of mass destruction, and a secularist with no connection to 9.11 religious militants. By going after Saddam, Bush embraced the mistake that would undo his presidency, thereby righting the wrong of Bush’s stolen 2000 election.

The liberals Bush pushed aside had revenge on their minds. Revenge is best served cold. As in “Frontline.”

Kirk’s story of Iraq doesn’t break new ground. Instead, “Frontline” recaps the media’s years-long effort to document everything that went wrong in Iraq, even when mistakes contradict other mistakes. For example, Kirk’s experts pounded Bush for not providing overwhelming force, as the Powell Doctrine required. Then Kirk’s narrative denounced Bush for sticking with Rumsfeld, who advocated a “light footprint” in Iraq through 2006. But when Bush fired Rumsfeld and pushed through an increase in U.S. troops, Kirk’s show jumps on Bush for throwing good soldiers and marines at a hopeless cause. In short, “Frontline’s” media people attack Rumsfeld for trying to leave too soon, and Bush for staying too long.

“Frontline” criticizes Bush for having a U.S. proconsul (Bremer) run Iraq, for taking him out too early, and for backing a democratically chosen Shiite (al Maliki) who wasn’t secular and who wouldn’t have been “selected principal by your local school board.” Are we supposed to encourage democracy or frustrate it? “Frontline’s” chronicle of mistakes doesn’t seem to care.

“Frontline” scores Bush for blocking the destruction of Fallujah in 2003, thus allowing the insurgency to take root, then later attacks Bush for having destroyed Fallujah in 2004, thus discouraging Sunni participation in the January 2005 Iraqi elections (“Frontline” fails to mention more Sunni voters stepped forward in two subsequent 2005 elections). In “Frontline’s” simple world, whatever action Bush took blew up in his face. To make its point, “Frontline” ignores Fallujah today, a city run by Sunnis who back the Bush-led U.S. military and fight al Qaeda.

Iraq is bad. Bush is bad. To “Frontline”, what happens to Iraq hardly matters. Iraq’s people hardly matter. The only thing that matters is payback for Bush’s illegitimate 2000 win.

Bush’s War (Part I)

“Frontline” has just scorched Bush for Iraq yet again in the bluntly-titled two-part program “Bush’s War.” Interviewed online yesterday at Washington Post.com, the show’s writer-producer-director Michael Kirk [pictured] provides insight into where he stands. Here’s one revealing online exchange:

"Dayton Ohio: It would have been nice to see some positive feedback on the reconstruction as well as what is happining with the troop surge. It is obvious we didn't have enough troops on the ground in the beginning, but what about now?
"Michael Kirk: Sadly, if you read the newspapers in the last two days--you learn that the 'surge' and the tenuous 'peace' between Sadr's militia and the American troops seems to have broken down. Efforts to keep the lid on in Iraq seem to be in jeopardy."

Further showing his bias, Kirk talks about “the so-called war on terror,” notes “our army is in pretty desperate shape--perhaps broken by the Iraq experience,” and in his “Frontline” show, fails to provide a photograph or even a mention of Petraeus, the general who has made obsolete Kirk’s dark vision of America in Iraq (Kirk villainizes all U.S. principals by portraying them in black and white extreme close-ups that clearly reveal all their warts).

For people like Kirk, the Iraq story has become the over-heated radiator you want to cap so you can close the hood and get back on the road to Democratic victory in 2008. Iraq helped defeat Republicans in 2006, after having provided Democrats much ammunition in 2004. Now it should be one of the three pillars, along with Katrina and the economy, to put a Democrat in the White House in 2008. Kirk certainly does everything he can to make Iraq come across as a continuing disaster.

But five years on, Iraq is no longer a disaster. Inconvenient.

Tribal Warfare

the Reverend [Wright] turned Obama — in the minds of some working-class and crossover white voters — from “a Harvard law graduate into a South Side Black Panther.”

--Maureen Dowd 2.23.08

I have just learned a new word, “deracinated.” Its meanings: “1. To be pulled out by the roots; uprooted. 2. To be displaced from one's native or accustomed environment.”

We are in a remarkable election campaign. It is so hard-fought that already we are at the raw tribal warfare stage close elections don’t see until their final days. But in the current campaign, as her own people have said, Clinton long ago tossed the kitchen sink at Obama, during the run-up to March 4th’s Super Tuesday II.

Still earlier, Clinton had seemed the inevitable winner. Women are 60% of the Democratic Party, and dominate the party’s anti-war, big-spending-at-home agenda. Democrats are a coalition of special interests, with women special interest No. 1. Clinton was the right Democrat for the times.

But Obama ended up corralling the most powerful part of the Democratic constituency—its liberal elite. The elite works harder, works smarter, cares more and spends more. I have argued that among cause-driven liberals Obama has the better cause; blacks win hands down any “most victimized” face-off with women.

After throwing the kitchen sink at Obama and still trailing, Clinton has now moved her campaign beyond the elite to working-class whites, using behind-the-scenes the argument that no black person tied to someone who talks like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright will ever be elected president. Hers is the basest form of tribal warfare, implicitly asking for votes “‘cause I’m white.”

Obama has responded by refusing to be deracinated (see above) from his black constituency. He declined to throw the Rev. Wright “under the bus.” He knows support for Wright will cost him white votes. But Obama realizes he must be true to his base, the party’s liberal elite, which might throw him “under the bus” if he were to betray his black origins. Obama intends to remain authentic, and keep his cred. If he loses because he stood up for a black brother, wrong though that brother’s words were, then so be it.

Clinton also seems to be authentic. Her tribe believes that turning the world right side up, having our female majority finally rule, is an end that justifies drawing on white origins to defeat a black man. Her tactical choice, while it will cost Clinton further liberal support, should help with the larger white electorate.

People call McCain a maverick. But for Republicans, he’s the real McCoy. It’s artificial to have Democrats running on their military records, as Gore and especially Kerry did. Republicans are the party of national security, closely linked to the military and the only party truly worried about enemies abroad. “Law and order” today includes a strong military presence overseas, one unafraid to carry the fight to our enemies. McCain is the Republicans’ man.

Obama. McCain. Clinton. Each an authentic leader for America’s tribal warfare.

Iraq Victory Worth the Cost?

It’s five years since the U.S. coalition began military action to remove Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from power. “Victory” in that action meant turning Iraq over to a civilian, post-Saddam government capable of managing its own affairs. We are making progress, but have yet to win. For the American people, that’s a problem. Considering that the British defeat at Yorktown effectively settled in 1781 a Revolutionary War that officially began with our Declaration of Independence in 1776, no American war except Vietnam—a U.S. defeat—has lasted beyond 5.25 years.

There are two big reasons why the Iraq war’s length is less significant than was the case for past wars. First, we are taking relatively few casualties, and are doing so with an all-volunteer military. Second, the war represents a relatively small share of our total national product.

1. Relatively few casualties.

The total number of American dead in Iraq is comparable to those lost in our smaller wars—the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Spanish-American War [see chart]. Yet in the Revolutionary War, 1 of every 610 Americans lost his life, 1 of every 3,320 in the War of 1812, and one of every 30,650 in the Spanish-American War. In Iraq, our professionals who died represent only 1 in every 76,100 Americans.

2. Relatively small share of GDP.

Amity Shlaes, writing in Bloomberg, has the figures: “Back in 1986, the year before Ronald Reagan threw out his ‘tear down this wall' challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev, defense spending was 6.2% of the U.S. economy. In 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, it was 9.5%. In 2005, 2006, and 2007, defense spending was about 4% of GDP—as low as during the early 1990s, when the U.S. was enjoying the ‘peace dividend’ after the Soviet Union's collapse.”

If we are able to firm up a counter-insurgency victory over al-Qaeda in Iraq—after having rid the world of a dangerous, oil-rich Saddam Hussein—and if we are also able to leave in place a Shia-led Iraqi government that is independent of Iran, the U.S. and the West will indeed have secured a victory well worth its cost.

Plus 163

On the eve of Super Tuesday II, Obama had 1197 pledged delegates, and Clinton 1034. Obama led in pledged delegates by 163.

Eight days later, after contests in Vermont, Rhode Island, Ohio, Texas, Wyoming, and Mississippi, Obama has 1403 pledged delegates, Clinton 1240. Obama leads in pledged delegates by 163.

“Please let me be a victim. Please.”

. . . those who consider it a matter of urgency to impress on you at a dinner party that they are, say, “one-sixteenth Cherokee Indian.”

--Christopher Caldwell, Financial Times

Caldwell, obviously unknowingly, captures me exactly. It’s part of his larger argument that the world's well-off—and not just whites, for remember Michelle Obama—are desperate to identify with victims. As Caldwell writes:

• Love and Consequences—the memoir of a half-American Indian girl adopted into a caring but star-crossed black family in gang-infested Los Angeles—was [written by] a 33-year-old, white, middle-class suburbanite named Margaret Seltzer [pictured], the product of private Episcopal schools and various creative writing programmes. She made the whole thing up. Scandals over made-up memoirs are becoming epidemic.

• Last week, Misha Defonseca admitted that Misha, her international bestseller about fleeing the Holocaust as a young Jewish girl in Belgium, was invented. So was her Jewish identity. Her book joins a list that includes a memoir of childhood in the Majdanek and Birkenau concentration camps by “Binjamin Wilkomirski” (a story made up by the Swiss Protestant clarinettist Bruno Dössekker); Norma Khouri’s account of honour killings in Jordan that did not actually happen; and James Frey’s alcoholism “memoir” Millions of Little Pieces. What is at the root of this rash of fabrications?

• Various anti-racisms and victimologies provide the only rock-solid consensus morality that society has. But there is a problem with a moral system based on the injustices wrought by one class of people on another—not all people can participate in it with equal moral authority [emphasis added].

• Seltzer. . . needed black gangstas to make her voice heard, not the other way around. People are intensely interested in the inner lives of American inner-city gang members. Rap music. . . has a large paying following in virtually every country in the world. The same cannot be said of the cultural products of white, middle-class creative-writing students from the San Fernando Valley. {As] Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times asked: “How many talk shows would have booked Seltzer if she had forthrightly admitted she was a white writer of imaginative fiction with a social conscience that impelled her to write about gang life in South Los Angeles?”

• [Seltzer] was doing the same thing that immigrants did a century ago when they changed their names . . . bartering away a bit of her identity in order to be taken more seriously. She was concealing, as best she could, her membership in a low-prestige ethnicity in order that she might participate on a more equal footing in the national conversation.

Recession, and how to limit it.

if we are not in a recession, it is a darned good imitation of one; we are in an unprecedented real estate and credit crisis that is whipping its way through the U.S. economy.

--Kevin Giddis, managing director, fixed income trading, Morgan Keegan & Co.


Joanne Morrison of Reuters offers signs that our economy is in a bad spot:

• While a decline in U.S. home prices is needed to attract buyers back and end the housing slump, there is no bottom in sight. Policy-makers like Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin fear potential home buyers may wait on the sidelines for an extended period. Even though U.S. home prices fell last year for the first time in a generation, sales continue to slow, only adding to the glut of inventories.

• "We're not near [the bottom] yet so people are going to continue to wait on the sidelines," said JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli. "The Fed should forget about everything else now and just do whatever is necessary to bring a bottom for home prices into sight," said John Lonski, chief economist at Moody's in New York. The Fed's latest data shows that the net wealth of U.S. households in the final three months of last year fell for the first time in five years, and the percentage of equity that Americans have in their homes sank to the lowest since 1945.

Is there a way out? Martin Feldstein of Harvard, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan, thinks there is. He says a voluntary loan-substitution program could reduce the number of defaults and dampen the decline in house prices—wihout violating contracts, bailing out lenders or borrowers, or increasing government spending.

Feldstein calls current housing-related risk greater than anything we have seen since the 1930s. After house prices exploded between 2000 and 2006, rising some 60% more than the level of rents, the inevitable decline since has reduced prices by 10%,with an additional 15% to 20% decline needed to correct the excessive rise. Yet these lower prices will mean widespread defaults and foreclosures, unemployment, and declining economic activity.

To limit the damage, Feldstein wants public policy to reduce the number of homeowners who will slide into default. Since house prices still have further to fall, this can only be done by reducing the value of mortgages. Here’s how Feldstein’s government program might work:

The federal government would lend each participant 20% of that individual's current mortgage, with a 15-year payback period and an adjustable interest rate based on what the government pays on two-year Treasury debt (now just 1.6%). The loan proceeds would immediately reduce the borrower's primary mortgage, cutting interest and principal payments by 20%. Participation in the program would be voluntary and the interest payments would be, like mortgage interest, tax deductible. The current mortgage servicer would collect both on the primary mortgage and on the government loan, remitting government payments to Washington. Homeowners will participate if they prefer the certainty of an immediate and permanent reduction in their interest cost to the possibility of defaulting later if the price of their home falls substantially.

Feldstein says the government must act quickly to reduce potential mortgage defaults, using something like his loan substitution program.

The Surge's Success Continues

Here’s our latest monthly, highly abbreviated version of the Iraq Index, published and updated twice a week by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution:




Americans Killed in Action, Iraq (monthly average)
2003: 32
2004: 59
2005: 56
2006: 58
2007: 63
2008: 33
February: 31

Americans Killed in Action, Vietnam (monthly average)
1965: 128*
1966: 420
1967: 767
1968: 1140
1969: 785
1970: 413
____
* = First U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam, 5.3.65
Vietnam table compiled by Galen Fox using Defense Department sources.

Crude Oil Production (m. bbls./day)

Prewar Peak: 2.50
Goal: 2.20 (Revised upward, 1/08)
actual: 2.38 (2/08)

Electricity (megawatts)

Prewar: 3,958
Goal: 6,000
actual: 3,910 (2/08)

Since our last monthly report, the monthly American KIA total dropped from January's 34, and remains at half the monthly rate of 2 a day sustained for most of the Iraq war. In fact, the KIA total over the past six months (181) is the lowest for any six-month period since the war began. [Please note: the number of KIA is almost always lower than the media-reported total of American deaths, which covers all causes, including non-hostile. Our Iraq and Vietnam figures are KIA only.] These low American KIA figures beginning in September 2007 are the best indication the surge is working.

In February, oil output increased from 2.24 to 2.38 million barrels a day, and reached its highest output level for any February since the war began. Revenue from oil exports continues to rise, with January's total the highest on record. As for electricity, output did decline from December--going below 4,000 megawatts for the first time in nine months. Yet February's output was the highest for any February since 2004.

Parliament in February enacted two more benchmark laws, one providing for provincial elections in October, and another--a follow-on to January's de-Baathification law--that grants amnesty to thousands of mostly Sunni people still in Iraqi custody. The only key benchmark parliament has yet to enact, a law to share oil revenue with Sunni areas, is de facto already underway.

Into History’s Dustbin?

Kathleen Parker [picture] hides her age, but she’s apparently roughly as old as Obama (46). Her age is important, because in her latest column, she says the real gap between Obama and Clinton is age, not race or gender. As Parker writes, “politicians who seek ascendancy with arguments of a boomer past will merely highlight that his or her time belongs to history.”

Parker’s target is Clinton supporter Gloria Steinem, and indirectly, Clinton herself. According to Parker, Steinem (73) in a recent speech on behalf of Clinton “tried to make the case that Hillary's faltering campaign was owing to America's greater guilt over racism than sexism. Voters feel worse about slavery and Jim Crow than they do about ‘gynocide’." Parker quotes Steinem saying, "A majority of Americans want redemption for racism, for our terrible destructive racist past and so see a vote for Obama as redemptive." Parker similarly assigns Shelby Steele to history’s “dustbin” for writing a book that indicates Obamamania is largely a white phenomenon “for the reasons Steinem mentioned.”

Unfortunately, I belong in the generational dustbin along with Steinem and Steele. I recently wrote, “Americans feel good when they think of a black man running the country. It fulfills our dreams of a post-racial America, a multi-racial nation leading the world toward its better nature. . . [I]t’s nice to have a woman in the top spot. But we never fought a civil war to separate women from their chains, and white women got the vote in 1920, not 1965.”

Making Parker’s point that my views are “history,” my daughter took exception to what I wrote, saying America’s support for Obama has little to do with race. Parker found that one-third of voters under 30 are Hispanic, black, or gay/lesbian/bisexual, and that they and the younger other two-thirds “show almost identical attitudes toward Hispanics, blacks and whites.”

Of course “boomer” whites and Hispanics, obviously not voting to make anybody’s point, defeated Obama in Ohio and Texas last night.

The General Begins

"Hope is making a comeback, and let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change". . . Michelle Obama has lived her adult life -- Princeton, Harvard Law, a top law firm, a $342,000-a-year job doing community relations for the University of Chicago hospital system –- [in the American elite]. As Samuel Huntington has pointed out, people in this stratum tend to have transnational attitudes -- all nations are morally equal, except maybe for ours, which is worse.

--Michael Barone, 2/23/08

I owe the title of this submission to Michael Barone. Barone is a conservative, co-editor of the Almanac of American Politics, and one of the best students of national politics. Obama is very likely to be our next president. Barone senses what’s wrong with that. Obama and his supporters reject, with emphasis, American exceptionalism, while millions of us believe “exceptionalism” defines the America we know. Without America in our view, the 20th century would have turned out much worse.

And in the 21st century? Henry Kissinger, in an interview with Der Spiegel, cut to the chase when he said, “it is obvious that the United States cannot permanently do all the fighting for Western interests by itself. So, two conclusions are possible: Either there are no Western interests in [opposing radical Islam] and we don't fight. Or there are vital Western interests in [such opposition] and we have to fight.” That means Americans and Europeans. But without American leadership, how likely is Europe to join up?

After Iraq, most of our national elite has declined to lead the world into battle with radical Islam. Opposition begins with the media. So it was hardly surprising that 24 hours after John McCain de facto claimed the GOP nomination last Tuesday, the New York Times placed an above the fold front page 3,000 word off-lead in its two upper left-hand columns, with bylines from four reporters, suggesting McCain had an affair with a telecommunications lobbyist nine years ago. According to the conservative Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes, here’s why the Times’ attack on McCain was an outrage:

• The story was almost entirely attributed to "people involved in the campaign" speaking "on the condition of anonymity." The Times had only one former McCain adviser who would speak for the record, and his comment did not speak to the alleged affair. Both McCain and the lobbyist have denied any romantic relationship.

• Times executive editor Bill Keller admitted he was “surprised by how lopsided the opinion was against our decision [to publish] with readers who described themselves as independents and Democrats joining Republicans in defending Mr. McCain from what they saw as a cheap shot."

• If you don’t think the Times is out to get the GOP nominee-to-be, recall how the newspaper, beginning on October 25, 2004, ran 16 articles and opinion pieces about looting at the al Qaqaa munitions facility in Iraq. The Times dismissed suggestions that its attention to the issue was politically motivated. But, as National Review's Byron York asked later: "Why was the Al Qaqaa story so important in the eight days leading up to the election that it merited two stories per day, and so unimportant after the election that it has not merited any stories at all?"

Clinton: What Went Wrong

A year ago, I predicted Clinton would be our next president, and Obama would be her vice president. After Obama’s ninth and tenth consecutive wins since Super Tuesday—in Wisconsin and Hawaii, not counting his “beauty contest” win in Washington State—that prediction looks wrong. Clinton could regain her lead with successive victories in Texas and Ohio March 4 and Pennsylvania April 22. Should she lose one of those three, however, she likely loses, period.

What happened to Clinton? Of course, Obama’s surge to the top is most of all a credit to him. Clinton’s problem was common to all of us who underestimated Obama and his strategy. Still, Clinton had a commanding lead in a race that was hers to lose.

Joshua Green has had as good a look as any inside “Hilleryland,” one good enough to have led the Clintons to block publication in GQ of one of his pieces. Writing recently in the Atlantic, Green mentioned these problems with Clinton’s campaign:

• Arrogance. Green saw this in the person of Patti Solis Doyle [pictured], Clinton’s recently-fired campaign manager, who was “Clinton’s alter ego and was installed in the job specifically for that reason.” Solis Doyle went around saying, “When I’m speaking, Hillary is speaking.” Campaign team arrogance, according to Green, “led directly to the idea that Clinton could simply project an air of inevitability and be assured her party’s nomination.”

• Solis Doyle. She coined the phrase “Hilleryland,” and earned Clinton’s complete trust by enforcing discipline and stopping leaks during a 2000 Clinton senate campaign rough patch, but Solis Doyle both underperformed as a fundraiser and overspent as a manager, wasting financial resources that should have been a major Clinton asset.

• Bill Clinton. The campaign seriously believed the “first black president” stuff about Bill Clinton; that Bill would gather and maintain a large part of the African-American electorate for his wife.

• Strategy. Chief strategist Mark Penn and media consultant Mandy Grunwald, who wanted Clinton to stick to the issues, prevailed internally over adman Dwight Jewson and BillPal Harold Ickes, who thought Clinton "should confront her chief shortcoming—the notion that she was power-hungry and calculating.”

• Complacency. Clinton’s sense of inevitability led her to postpone the launching of her presidential campaign, or even to talk about it, until after she had won senate re-election in 2006, conceding a crucial fundraising head-start to Obama.

• Ignorance. After campaign law changes limited the role of $100,000 big whale donors, a "new generation of fund-raisers able to corral . . . four-figure checks suddenly became the true prize. . . people like Mark Gorenberg, Alan Solomont, and Steve Westly [not] well known to the Clintons. . . tech moguls who hail from a wealth center, Silicon Valley, that barely existed during Bill Clinton’s last run.” They went for Obama.

No California, Yes Potomac.

I missed on the California primary outcome last Super Tuesday. I also missed on the importance of Super Tuesday, which I said last August would give us our two general election contenders. California and Super Tuesday worked for John McCain. By grabbing 152 of California’s 158 Republican delegates, McCain forced chief rival Romney out of the race.

But on the Democratic side, Clinton beat Obama by 10% in the California popular vote, and won 207 delegates to Obama’s 163. Her victory denied Obama front-runner status, though Obama fought her to a draw overall in the 22 Super Tuesday contests. For Obama in California, what went wrong? For one thing, early voting. George Will has noted Obama lost by 380,000 votes to Clinton in California. But 2 million Californians voted early, before Obama’s late, poll-captured surge. Surely had more waited before voting, Obama would have closed the gap. Obama also lost the California Hispanic vote to Clinton 69% to 29%. Early voting Chicanos missed La Opinion’s endorsement of Obama three days before the election. La Opinion, published in Los Angeles, is the nation’s #1 Spanish language newspaper.

So Obama lost California. So what? A week later, he has won eight straight contests, many by wide margins, today including all three Potomac contests. Those eight wins have given him 167 delegates to Clinton’s 82, a margin of 85 delegates that nearly doubles Clinton’s California margin over Obama of 44 delegates. For the first time since Iowa, Obama leads Clinton. He is the front-runner, as he hoped to be after California, just one long week ago.

Iraq Measurements Decline Slightly

Here’s our latest monthly, highly abbreviated version of the Iraq Index, published and updated twice a week by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution:




Americans Killed in Action, Iraq (monthly average)
2003: 32
2004: 59
2005: 56
2006: 58
2007: 63
2008: 34
January: 34

Americans Killed in Action, Vietnam (monthly average)
1965: 128*
1966: 420
1967: 767
1968: 1140
1969: 785
1970: 413
____
* = First U.S. combat troops arrived in Vietnam, 5.3.65
Vietnam table compiled by Galen Fox using Defense Department sources.

Crude Oil Production (m. bbls./day)

Prewar Peak: 2.50
Goal: 2.20 (Revised upward, 1/08)
actual: 2.23 (1/08)

Electricity (megawatts)

Prewar: 3,958
Goal: 6,000
actual: 4,010 (1/08)

Since our last monthly report, the monthly American KIA total has doubled from December's 17, yet it remains only half the monthly rate of 2 a day sustained for most of the Iraq war. And the KIA total over the past five months averages under 30. The last time any five-month average stayed under 30 KIA was June-October 2003, early in the war. In a further sign of changing times, no Americans have died in helicopter crashes since September. [Please note: the number of KIA is almost always lower than the media-reported total of American deaths, which covers all causes, including non-hostile. Our Iraq and Vietnam figures are KIA only.]

Our other indicators also show deterioration from December. Oil output dropped from 2.42 to 2.23 million barrels a day, but remains above the target revised upward last month to 2.2 million bbls/day. Revenue from oil exports continues to rise, and January's total was the second highest on record. As for electricity, output also dropped from December--going from 4,240 megawatts down to 4,010 megawatts. Yet the string of months during which electricity has remained above 4,000 megawatts extended to an unprecedented eight. Previously, the longest such streak was five months.

In January, the al-Maliki government achieved one of the three key benchmarks set out for it a year earlier when parliament passed a de-Baathification law that allows many Sunni ex-officials back into government. The other two measures--sharing oil revenue and sending political power to local authorities--are de facto already underway.

1968, 2008.

On June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy won the California Democratic primary 46% to 42% over fellow anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy. That victory, reversing McCarthy’s defeat of Kennedy a week earlier in Oregon, made Kennedy the front-runner for the party’s nomination for a few minutes, until he was assassinated.

June 5, 1968—39 years and 8 months ago—was the last time the California primary was decisive in presidential politics. Yet tomorrow, California could vault Obama past Clinton toward the presidency.

Kennedy was a force in 1968. His appeal across race and class lines offered the promise of unifying a deeply divided nation. Kennedy’s appeal built from the ex-attorney general’s fight against segregation in the Deep South in 1963-64, at the time the battle for civil rights was at its fiercest.

In 1968, the struggle to realize the dream of “black and white together” still continued. Kennedy stood on the right side of that fight. McCarthy? Anti-war, without question. But with no dog in the civil rights struggle, and nothing to match Kennedy’s backing of Cesar Chavez’s effort to organize Hispanic farm workers, McCarthy was one-dimensional. Kennedy lived the battle to bring America together, the dream of crossing class and race lines. Because people could feel Kennedy’s authenticity, they responded highly emotionally to his candidacy. Kennedy’s California victory, fueled by Black and Hispanic support, truly could have changed the course of history.

Obama in his person brings “black and white together.” Americans feel good when they think of a black man running the country. It fulfills our dreams of a post-racial America, a multi-racial nation leading the world toward its better nature. Obama is competent and confident. He can do it.

Too bad for Clinton. Symbolically, it’s nice to have a woman in the top spot. But we never fought a civil war to separate women from their chains, and white women got the vote in 1920, not 1965. Women are too powerful for their struggles to match the deep satisfaction we get from having a black man lead us.

In the end, it’s about race, and about us getting our history right by moving beyond race. If the people of California so believe, Obama will carry their state tomorrow and be on his way to leading the world.