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.

Obama may have won the battle, but the war?

To CBSNews.com senior political editor Vaughn Ververs, the numbers behind the numbers tell the real story. Divisive racial politics may have helped Obama carry South Carolina, where African-Americans were 53% of the vote. But the same divide will cost Obama dearly on Super Tuesday, when the white Democratic majority registers its opinion. According to Vevers:

"Not presidential" is how former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle described Bill Clinton's behavior on the campaign trail of late. All the same, it may be effective. Clinton's campaign is aimed at capturing voters who make up a huge part of the Democratic demographic: Middle class, white, female, older. Those are the voters who may shy away from backing a "black" candidate, as they have in earlier contests in this race. Despite his huge margin of victory, Obama captured just a quarter of white voters [emphasis added].

And the nasty tactics had another purpose - to knock the candidate of "hope" off the mountaintop and down into the gutters of hardball politics. Forcing the man who has sought to connect himself to the legacy of inspirational leaders of the nation's past (he announced his candidacy in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln) to trade blows and accusations with Bill Clinton on the divisive issue of race only serves to muddy both. And there's some evidence that it worked. Fifty-eight percent of South Carolina voters said they felt Obama unfairly attacked Clinton during the campaign.

Clinton: “Winning Ugly”

Michael Tomasky, editor of Guardian America, supplied the title of this blog item. Tomasky has this to say about Clinton’s victory over Obama in Nevada yesterday:

[Bill Clinton] campaigned against a fellow Democrat no differently than if Obama had been Newt Gingrich. The Clinton campaign may conclude that, numerically and on balance, Bill helped. But, trust me, to the thousands of committed progressives who supported him when he really needed it, who went to the mat for him at his moment of (largely self-inflicted) crisis but who now happen to be supporting someone other than his wife, he's done himself a tremendous amount of damage.

The final price of victory is the splintering of base Democratic voters. African Americans solidified behind Obama, 79-18%. Hispanics, behind Clinton, 64-23%. Young voters went heavily for Obama. Old voters heavily for Clinton. These divisions threaten to flower into schisms. There will be plenty of time to put the pieces back together. But. . .

Clinton’s winning coalition of women, Hispanics, and elderly also includes white males, who have—since race entered the campaign—coalesced behind Clinton/against Obama.

GOP’s Front Runner

South Carolina did reduce the Republican field. Thompson is out. While Huckabee has a shot at Georgia and Alabama on Super Tuesday, perhaps Missouri, and even Tennessee depending upon what Thompson does there, he’s running out of money. McCain is now the front-runner, having won South Carolina and New Hampshire and in the process defeating Huckabee and Romney each head-to-head. Huckabee won only Iowa, and of the major contests, Romney won only Michigan. McCain leads Giuliani (and Romney) in Florida polls taken before McCain’s South Carolina victory, meaning McCain's lead should grow. And if Giuliani loses Florida, he’s done.

Romney’s money gives him staying power. He’s running 2nd now.

Nineteen Days to Super Tuesday: Republicans

The large GOP field for president is about to be narrowed by two. South Carolina is the primary that selects Republican nominees; no Republican has won his party’s nomination without first carrying South Carolina. While that may not be the case in jumbled-up 2008, it seems likely that victory strategies for McCain, Huckabee, and Thompson all require a win in South Carolina. Yet only one can win (and this blog long ago wrote off Thompson). So after Saturday, in effect there will be only Romney (who is hoping to add Nevada to his Tuesday win in Michigan), Giuliani (who must win in Florida to stay alive), and the South Carolina winner.

Low voter turnout for the GOP primaries, along with very poor fundraising efforts by all Republican candidates, are early signs that this year, the country is leaving the GOP behind. The party’s inability to settle on a frontrunner seems more a sign of weakness than strength. It’s dangerously close to “who cares?” Still, there are months and months and months to go—time for change, as some would say.

Twenty Days to Super Tuesday: Democrats

The Economist’s “Lexington” did write about how Democrats handicapped themselves by neglecting the “middle America” that saw the ‘60s as a national nightmare. But Lexington went on to say why Democrats by 2008 have overcome that handicap, and stand poised to recapture the White House in November—even with Clinton leading the party. Three reasons:

1. the Democratic Party has replaced cultural liberalism with a deliberate cultural conservatism (avoiding debating the death penalty and gun control), with Clinton supporting a flag-burning ban, and Obama favoring big military budget increases.

2. Nixon's strategy of defending the moral majority against the cultural elites is running out of steam, now that Republican candidates have had their fair share of divorces. Also, old-fashioned economic populism, rather than Nixon-style cultural populism, is catching fire across both parties.

3. for all the endless comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq, students are more worried about getting good jobs than changing the system. The counter-culture long ago made its peace with capitalism. Moreover, race relations are utterly transformed, with a thriving black middle class, and with Bush 43 having made a black woman who grew up in the segregated South his secretary of state.

Yet the economy offers the biggest reason why Democrats are likely to prevail.

“You Go Girl!”

In just a few words about the 1960s, the Economist’s “Lexington” nails what I’ve attempted to say about that decade in entry after entry: “The Democratic Party marginalised itself by shifting decisively to the left on everything from the war to sexual politics,” while Republicans hit on the winning formula of presenting themselves as “champion of the ‘silent majority.’” Lexington adds, “Republicans and Democrats have replayed these themes ever since” the 1960s, Republicans characterizing Democrats as “Harvard Yard hippies” and Democrats accusing Republicans of “repeating the mistakes of Vietnam in Iraq.”

So along comes Obama, in Iowa charting for Democrats a hopeful path to a less-contentious future. Lexington quotes him saying (in words we already quoted), “Clinton and others, they've been fighting some of the same fights since the sixties, and it makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done.”

But if Iowa represented the future, Clinton’s New Hampshire victory represents a “not so fast!” yank back to the present. Democrats are still, at base, union members worried about their jobs. Old fashion Democrats like Clinton.

Yet it was women who provided Clinton's New Hampshire victory margin. In two sound bites—her “I’m hurt!” joking response to a question about her likeability on Saturday and her Monday wet-eyed answer to the question "how do you do it?"—Clinton reminded women that she is the standard bearer for the unfinished battle women care most about, and that as Clinton's emotion suggested, men still don't want women to win. Anyway, Karl Rove, among others, has pointed to the importance of Clinton's two emotional moments as the key to her victory.

Iraq: Is Peace Breaking Out?

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
December: 17

Americans Killed in Action, Vietnam (monthly average)
1965: 128*
1966: 420
1967: 767
1968: 1140
1969: 785
____
* = 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: 2.10 (Revised downward, 1/07)
actual: 2.42 (12/07)

Electricity (megawatts)

Prewar: 3,958
Goal: 6,000
actual: 4,240 (12/07)

Since our last monthly report, the American KIA total dropped to its lowest level since February 2004, before Abu Ghraib, before the Mahdi army got going, back to the time al-Qaeda was just organizing its Iraqi insurgency. The KIA total for the past three months is similarly lower than any three months since December 2003-February 2004. For the year 2007, a year that included some of the war's worst months for American KIA, the monthly average is down to 63, in line with the two-a-day average for every year since the war's first. But American KIA in December, of course, averaged only one every two days. This is remarkable. [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 continue to show success. Oil output is up to its highest daily total since October 2005, and is the fifth-highest oil daily output average for any month since the war began. Revenue from oil exports continues to rise for the previous month's output, though November's total was below October's record. As for electricity, output is also up for December--rising from 4,120 megawatts to 4,240 megawatts. For the July-December half year, electricity remained above 4,000 megawatts each month, unprecedented for any half year period since the war began.

Detractors point to the surge's failure to hit political targets set by Bush a year ago. It's true the major national targets--passage of laws to share oil revenue, to hold provincial elections, and to achieve de-Baathification--are all unmet. But what's happened is that informally, power and revenue are making their way to Kurdish and Sunni hands, thus achieving bottom-up the objectives we were trying to force top-down on Iraq's government last January.

Happy Days (Part 2)

Public radio yesterday carried an account of the works of George MacDonald Fraser, who has just died. Fraser wrote a series of books about Harry Paget Flashman, the bully and coward featured in Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857). The original portrayed Tom Brown as an upstanding, though according to the reviewer boring, Christian hero, who through virtue and teamwork overcame Flashman’s evil deeds. But Fraser, writing in our times, turned Flashman into an anti-hero, a deceitful womanizing coward who somehow continuously comes out on top—the devil defeating virtue. Fraser wrote novels for our times. The NPR reviewer loves Fraser’s series.

To me, the NPR rave about Flashman sums up the media’s love for the storyline of the 1960s—rebellion against established order, mixed with misbehavior that offends those who should be offended. The storyline seemed to prevail when youthful media persons helped end an unpopular war and then drive Nixon from office. But the destruction of the old order brought mostly Republican victories in its wake. Americans wanted something more positive. They wanted good to defeat evil. They wanted hope. Yet today’s media still cheers for a domestic recession (now that Iraq no longer produces black headlines) that will drive Americans away from Republicans. And they may get their wish. But is this the right road to power?

Into this dark world of media cheering against America comes Barack Obama. His stunning victory yesterday suggests Democrats may return to their roots in the Roosevelt politics of optimism that embraced America's virtues. Could it be that the country, like Iowa, hungers for an end to the politics of division, the politics we have known over the nearly five decades since Kennedy’s uplifting “Time for Greatness” 1960 campaign for president?

Happy Days (Part 1)

The Democratic Party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Kennedy was robust, optimistic, and filled with hope. Old style liberalism. These liberals believed in America’s future, embraced America’s power, and used that power—including our military strength—to help build a better world.

After Kennedy and his brother were assassinated, Democrats’ mood turned darker. Talk was more about the enemy within—fellow Americans who undermined our better nature—than about America’s greatness of in the face of a still-undemocratic world. I think media drove the internal enemy storyline, even making it work for Democrats on occasion, though Republicans have won the White House 7 of 10 times since Bobby Kennedy died.

In the spirit of darkness over hope, the media have lead Democrats to ignore the biggest success story of 2007—Petraeus’ Iraq surge. Michael Barone says the surge taught us 1) no mission is impossible for the U.S. military; 2) societies are transformed from the bottom up, not the top down, and most of all; 3) never bet against America. As Barone writes, while some of “Bush's critics seem to have relished the prospect of American defeat . . . it appears that they have ‘misunderestimated’ him once again.”

While TIME overlooked Bush’s General—Petraeus—in naming its “person of the year”, Britain’s Telegraph has forthrightly corrected the error and from London, proclaimed Petraeus “The Sunday Telegraph's Person of the Year.” According to the article, “The critics said it couldn't be done, but [Petraeus’] vision and determination . . . have brought greater security and cause for optimism to the people of Iraq.” Thanks Telegraph for telling the truth we don’t read here.