McCain Scores

“[In picking a vice president,] the primary responsibility is to select one who will immediately take your place if necessary”

--John McCain, November 28, 2007

OK, that was yesterday’s wisdom. As I have written, Obama goofed, and it was up to McCain—blessed with the opportunity to go second—to capitalize on Obama’s error of bypassing a female in the year Clinton produced 50% of the electoral excitement. I’m so impressed McCain did what he had to do: pick a woman. Palin is better than Hutchinson (a Washington insider) or Firoina (discharged CEO). Good going, John!

Here are three reasons, from many, McCain did right:

1.

"Barack Obama should have begged Hillary Rodham Clinton to be on his Democratic ticket. John McCain may well be about to bring that chilling fact home to Barack Obama."

--Tennessee Guerilla Women (a blog)

Obama proved too weak to take the Clintons on board; his weakness contrasts with Kennedy’s strength in 1960, when JFK added near enemy Lyndon Johnson to his ticket in order to win (Reagan did the same with Bush 41 in 1980).

2.

“McCain has to be bold and daring and take the election away from the Democrats. . . Pawlenty is safe in a year when McCain needs to be bold.”

--Jay Cost

3.

[Palin] gives fence-sitting whites who feel they ‘ought’ to vote for Obama because of the historic nature of his candidacy an excuse to find history on the other side”

--Noah Millman

The “New Class”

Conservative commentator Michael Medved articulates a strong contradiction coming out of the Denver Democratic convention that I had felt, not yet verbalized. Democrats are full of stories of how they (Biden, Hillary, Michelle and brother, Barack, Virginia’s John Warner) rose from modest beginnings in the great American self-reliance, hard work, family values tradition. But then all say we need government to help everyone else. As Medved puts it, “these smug and preening politicians suggested that we’re brilliant and strong and special enough to make it to the top without government help, but most of the mere mortals who are watching us on TV will get nowhere at all unless we somehow use taxpayer money to assist them.”

Medved adds,

The contradictions emanating from the Democratic convention—praising individual stories of opportunity and upward mobility, while decrying the general disappearance of opportunity and mobility-- actually mirror the most puzzling anomaly of recent public opinion polling. By overwhelming majorities, Americans describe the state of the country as dire and desperate, while similarly lopsided majorities rate their own status as successful, satisfying and optimistic.

Medved attributes the contradiction to “media alarmists and complaints from politicians” that have convinced Americans “the nation at large teeters on the verge of collapse and destruction.”

I think these Democrats are sincere. Blessed with extraordinary talent that explains their success, they truly believe it’s government that will elevate the rest of us, who compared to them, indeed do “teeter on the verge of collapse and destruction.” These Democarts are the “vanguard of the proletariat,” Milovan Djilas’ “New Class." And as outdated as the Soviet Union.

Advice for Obama

You have to laugh. Dan Gerstein, who describes himself as a Democratic strategist, begins his Wall Street Journal opinion piece “Obama Should Just Be Himself” by rejecting the off-broadway play’s pitch, “I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change.” Gerstein suggests Obama doesn’t have to change at all to win.

Gerstein then tells Obama to advocate education reform, saying, “No challenge is more consequential for our country than closing the achievement gap in our urban schools and raising the competitiveness of our workforce. And no special interest has done more to stand in the way of change in our public schools than the teachers unions that dominate Democratic politics.” Gerstein wants Obama to “embrace [the] aggressively pro-innovation set of principles" of Gerstein's client, Democrats for Education Reform.

As we saw earlier, Obama has yet to favor education reforms that union members see as sticks, not carrots. “You’re Perfect, Now Change.”

To Rule in a Democracy, One First Listens

America has a ruling class. Its parts control both parties. The larger part of the ruling class is Democrat, has been since the late 1960s, and became increasingly so with the presidency of George Bush, who represents the party hardy, rich kids the hardworking wealthy majority learned to detest in college (all I really need to know I learned at freshman orientation). For America’s meritocracy, the enemy is the lazy and overpaid—mostly Republican.

Republicans, a minority of their class, in the 1960s linked up with “the Silent Majority”, Middle Americans who felt left out of the Democratic Party that intellectuals took over in 1968. Intellectuals were limousine liberals who escaped Vietnam and pushed racial equality in working class neighborhoods and schools. Middle America still believes in God, and associated much of what’s wrong in America—feminism, sexual freedom, crime, legal abortion, bussing, affirmative action—with the rise of secularism. And Middle America, which disproportionately died in Vietnam, believed America stands for principles worth dying for overseas.

The 1960s change, which politically led to Republicans controlling the White House, Congress, or both after every election beginning in 1968 except 1976, 1978, and 1992—34 of 40 years—means Republicans are a minority of the ruling class, but the natural ruling party of a center-right, faith-based country.

Democrats want the political power that comes from controlling the White House. As leftwing blogger Glenn Greenwald, in Salon.com ironically put it (Greenwald thinks he’s a representative of the masses, as in “vanguard of the proletariat”): “Preserving ‘the centralization of government power in the White House’ is the best and most effective means devised thus far for allowing the political elite to run the country without interference from the dirty, stupid masses. . .”

Whether or not Democrats capture the presidency depends on whether or not they can view the country the way average Americans do. In a democracy, winners don’t ignore “the dirty, stupid masses,” they fight on their behalf.

McCain Should Pick Kay Bailey Hutchison for Veep

I said the next vice president should be a woman. Obama goofed. Now it’s set up for McCain to pick a woman vice president. Dick Morris has pointed out that there is only a 2% difference between men and women backing Obama. Historically, says Morris, 10-15% more women than men back the Democrat. Women are upset Obama passed over his historical opportunity to select Clinton, so seem to be withholding their support.

Morris says McCain should capitalize on Obama’s error by selecting Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Martin Sieff at upi.com dismisses former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina, my previous choice, saying McCain will suffer by associating with a CEO-type in an election where corporations are unpopular. Sieff also backs Hutchison as the only possible female choice. So do I.

The Elitist

“John McCain can’t remember how many houses he owns.”

-- Gov Tim Kaine (D-Va.)

If Obama seems disconnected from Middle America, what’s one to say about John McCain, who with his wife may have twelve houses? Even though Obama and his wife made $4 million over the past two years, the McCains seem to be richer. McCain appears unfocused on the economy issue, and Democrats are saying, “no wonder.”

If the economy is bad, and if world events allow the economy to be the issue that decides the election, McCain loses. Having too many houses helps him lose bigger.

I’m puzzled as to why McCain’s gaffe on his number of houses doesn’t just knock him out of the race right here and now. I’m getting it wrong, I think, because I'm an intellectual, not a working class voter. Working stiffs, as opposed to intellectuals, expect their leaders to be richer, so McCain’s houses aren’t so big an issue. What does matter is whether or not the candidates really understand working class problems, and more important, whether candidates have a way to fix them.

Since 1968, Republicans have understood the average voter worries about a government that takes more than it gives. Democrats are the party of government, and gain power when people believe government will give them more than it will take. 2008 seems such a time. That’s why it’s so important for Republicans to build mistrust in Obama’s true agenda. Obama being different from working class voters, not being one of them, is a worry. He may take from them to help some other group. McCain, for all his houses, seems to be a regular guy. Is Obama?

Washington Post Ombudsman Owns Up to Media Bias

"It doesn't look good," writes Deborah Howell, the Washington Post's ombudsman [picture]:

Democrat Barack Obama has had about a 3 to 1 advantage over Republican John McCain in Post Page 1 stories since Obama became his party's presumptive nominee June 4...In overall political stories from June 4 to Friday, Obama dominated by 142 to 96. Obama has been featured in 35 stories on Page 1; McCain has been featured in 13, with three Page 1 references with photos to stories on inside pages...This dovetails with Obama's dominance in photos, which I pointed out two weeks ago.

"This is not just a Post phenomenon," Howell writes. She reports that the Project for Excellence in Journalism has monitored campaign coverage in large and medium-circulation newspapers, broadcast evening and morning news shows, news Web sites, major cable news networks, and public and other radio. Its latest weekly report shows that for the eighth time in nine weeks, Obama received significantly more coverage than McCain.

Also, the Center for Media and Public Affairs reports that late night jokes on Leno, Letterman, and O’Brian and from Comedy Central’s John Stewart and Stephen Colbert over January-July “favored” McCain over Obama 549 to 382. And that was before McCain said he’s unsure how many homes he owns.

Is Obama’s Pain Our Pain?

Obama says, “my story is your story.” We believed Bill Clinton could “feel” our “pain.” But Obama, predicted here to run his general election campaign as a Son of Kansas, really has to sweat to jam his book-length (Dreams of my Father) resumè into a Middle American pigeon hole. Obama is brilliant, successful, talented and hardly an average American. His dreams are to rebalance America toward leadership by the meritocracy that ran the nation out of Washington from 1933 to the mid-1960s. The very elite Middle America mistrusts.

I like the way Edward Luttwak, the noted military historian, talks about the problems facing America today:

the immense wealth of the US—a country of 19,000 local airports and a Mediterranean's worth of private pools—is being eroded by seemingly insurmountable political inhibitions against pragmatic remedies for key problems, from illegal drugs to mass transport, to healthcare. (The latter—including the monstrous Medicare programme that pays for quintuple bypasses for 97 year olds at a total cost that will soon exceed the Pentagon's entire budget—now consumes 16 per cent of the US economy).

Towering above even Luttwak’s difficulties—a public education system run to benefit its employees, not its customers.

Not Liberal, but Sick?

Barack Obama said Monday, "Mr. McCain, the economic disaster is happening right now, maybe you haven't noticed." Where are we economically? If the average voter believes he or she is suffering, that means something. But we are not in recession, unemployment isn’t unusually high at 5.7% (it averaged 5.8% in the 1990s), and the price of oil has fallen to where SUV sales are on the rise again.

It’s not a good time, and the stock market, a predictor of the near-term economic future, has dropped over the past two days to 800 points below “healthy” (Dow 12,000, S&P 1,300, NASDAQ 2,500) on my Fox Index. The picture, though, hardly justifies Obama’s use of the phrase “economic disaster.”

For Obama and Democrats, the real “disaster” will be an economy healthy enough to keep Barack out of the White House. Obama’s elite, liberal base isn’t large enough to elect a president. In general, the American masses and their elite are in two different camps. But liberals have the money, the intellectual firepower, and the media domination including of the entertainment industry needed to, in Lincoln’s words, “fool all of the people some of the time.” And Democrats can lay claim to being able fix an economy (through Keynesian pump-priming) wrecked by Republican mismanagement. So a sour economy is key to Obama’s victory, and so Obama will see bad economic news whether or not it is there.

FOX Index Jumps on Oil Price Drop

The stock market rose significantly today. Oil declined nearly $4 to about $116, a drop of 3%. Since its early July peak, crude oil futures have declined 20%, and are back to levels left in early May. The market is responding positively not only to the drop in oil prices, but also to rising U.S. productivity, which should mean a stronger dollar and a reduced inflation threat. The S&P 500 is within 4 points of its healthy floor of 1300, and the Dow and NASDAQ also rose sharply, cutting the below-floor deficit of the FOX Index from -648 to -336, a reduction of nearly ½.

Monthly Iraq Index Obsolete?

Our latest monthly highly abbreviated version of the Iraq Index, published and updated twice a week by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, shows evidence that Iraq's level of violence has subsided to the point where U.S. forces are hardly waging a war. If violence returns, we will resume tracking it. For now, and one hopes forever, a monthly Iraq Index report seems unnecessary.

The summary for July follows:

Americans Killed in Action, Iraq (monthly average)
2003: 32
2004: 59
2005: 56
2006: 58
2007: 63
2008: 26
July: 5

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: 2.54 (7/08)

Electricity (megawatts)

Prewar: 3,958
Goal: 6,000
actual: 4,570 (7/08)

Since our previous monthly report, the monthly American KIA total fell from 19 in June to 5, the lowest count for any month of the Iraq war. More have died on single days earlier in the war. Iraqis, not Americans, are taking the lead in what military combat missions are still underway. [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.] American combat forces will be leaving Iraq; it's a question of how fast, how soon.

In July, oil output rose from 2.51 to 2.54 million barrels a day, the highest monthly total ever. Revenue from oil exports continues to hit all-time highs, with June's total the highest on record (July's total will grow with later sales figures added). As with oil, output for electricity increased, growing from 4,470 megawatts in June to 4,570 megawatts in July, the fourth highest monthly total ever. Electricity output in the 4,500 megawatt range is significant because Iraq needs 8,500 megawatts to meet its demand, and gets up to 4,500 megawatts from privately-owned generators.

FOX Index Declines

Stocks dropped heavily yesterday, amid concerns about oil pipeline disruptions in Turkey, below-expectations quarterly earnings at Wal-Mart and AIG, and an increase in weekly jobless claims. I consider Wall Street to have reached a base level of health when the Dow is at 12,000, the S&P 500 at 1,300, and the NASDAQ at 2,500. Currently, the indexes are -648 below base, falling from yesterday’s -377.

Bad Bear News

How does one characterize properly American capitalism’s current state? Its financial crisis is roughly a year old. During that time, the media have been on recession watch, predicting recession (as have I), in some cases even depression weekly, daily. Where is that recession? Looks now like we may not see one before Election Day (growth in the April-June quarter will effectively rule out the classic definition of recession—two quarters of negative growth—anytime before January 2009).

The media’s motives are transparent: they want Obama to win. As one conservative writer put it, the media believe bad economic news helps Obama because “the Democrats have all the right answers domestically and have lost presidential elections only because of national security and cultural concerns.”

So media focus on bad economic news. There’s one hiccup: suddenly high gas prices are helping Republicans because the GOP is willing to drill offshore, Democrats aren’t, and the people side with Republicans. Of course Democrats are onto this difficulty in July, and will surely finesse it by November. Sharp fuel price drops offer one solution, but then of course the economy doesn’t look so bad.

Another problem is falling housing prices. Until our homes stop losing value, people will feel bad and buy less. According to the Case-Shiller home price index, home prices in 20 major cities are down a staggering 15.8% over the past year—a Depression era rate of collapse. The latest (May) data shows continued big hits for Miami, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.

Yet the Case-Shiller survey also notes the rate of decline has slowed in each of the last three months, and that home prices actually rose in Atlanta, Boston, Denver and Dallas. The report adds that falling prices are “a necessary ingredient if the housing market's to work out its excesses and begin growing again.” No pain, no gain.

Education Failing Americans

Noting two significant studies on U.S. education, The New York Times' David Brooks says we have “forfeited” the educational achievement lead we once enjoyed over our economic rivals, and that “threatens the country’s long-term prospects.” We’ve hardly increased the population’s average years of schooling since 1970, the year the percentage of students graduating from high school peaked at 80%. The ratio has declined since. One researcher blames the problem on deteriorating family environments, which mean five year olds, the age at which Brooks says one can estimate school success with “depressing accuracy,” arrive displaying (or not) motivation, emotional stability, self-control and sociability.

Brooks believes the biggest “economic” problem America faces is our “skills gap.” He dismisses McCain’s push for school choice, including charter schools (to me, the right way to go). He says those seeking education reform must battle within the Democratic Party, the only place schools receive serious attention.

In an earlier column, Brooks praised the Education Equality Project, backed by the urban school chiefs of New York, Washington D.C., Baltimore, and Newark as well as Al Sharpton. The Project is willing to say, “Today’s school systems aren’t broken. They were designed to meet the needs of teachers and adults first, and that’s exactly what they are doing.” Brooks hopes Obama, like the Project, will put students first by enforcing accountability and backing reforms that remove failing teachers and administrators. But on education, Brooks has found Obama so far to be “all carrot, no stick.”

2008 is not 2006.

Bush continues to suffer a low presidential approval rating, just 31% according to Gallup. His approval is below the 37% rating he had in 2006, when Bush’s poor performance figured importantly in the Democrats’ crushing congressional election victory. Bush’s tenure worked against Republicans in 2006, and continues to do so in 2008.

Yet there are important differences. First, Iraq. The war there had gone badly for the U.S. during most of 2003-06 (2005 with three free elections had been a good year), and in late 2006, the bipartisan Iraq Study Commission issued a report paving the road to noble defeat. Two months later, as Bush rejected defeat in favor of his surge, Barack Obama told us, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it'll do the reverse.” How much has changed since.

Second, there’s the performance of Congress. In 2006, the country was tired of the congressional Republicans, in power for 12 years, and personified by the Mark Foley scandal. Now Democrats run an unloved Congress that can’t seem to do anything about the high cost of energy, with Democrats refusing to drill for U.S. oil offshore. The people want offshore drilling. Will offshore drilling as a congressional issue in 2008 rival the 2006 Mark Foley scandal, even if gas prices drop? Hard to tell.

Working for Democrats in 2008: continued bad economic news, high gas prices and recession or not. In 2006, the economy wasn’t an issue. This year it is.

Liberal Senate, Liberal Nation

Stu Rothenberg’s Political Report is a top handicapper of U.S. Senate contests. Looking at his current information, I believe the Democrats will pick up five senate seats, pushing their majority to 56. Rothenberg already awards Democrats the GOP open seats in Virginia and New Mexico, and predicts John Sununu will lose his New Hampshire seat to former governor Jeanne Shaheen.

Rothenberg rates the GOP open seat in Colorado a toss-up, but congressman Mark Udall should win and join his cousin Tom (running in New Mexico) in the Senate. I also believe the corrupt (“bridge to nowhere”) Alaska senator Ted Stevens will lose. An Obama landside threatens blue state Republicans Susan Collins (Maine), Norm Colman (Minnesota), and Gordon Smith (Oregon), all of whom will be sympathetic to an Obama agenda should they survive, along with blue state holdovers Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania).

With this total of 61, Obama will have a great opportunity to push past the last remaining barrier to a liberal take-over of Washington—the 60 votes required to end a Senate filibuster. Of course, the liberals will have far more control if Democrats win 9, not 5, senate seats, giving Democrats alone 60. Keep watching.

Three Thoughtful Comments

1. “the operation was a failure, but the patient has survived, and is somehow becoming healthier by the day”

From Noemie Emery, Weekly Standard:

Saddam is gone, Al Qaeda in Iraq is on the run, the Sunnis are with us, the Shia are turning against their militias, and the Washington Post is suggesting that "Iraq, a country with the world's second largest oil reserves and a strategic linchpin of the Middle East, just might emerge from the last five years of war and turmoil as an American ally, even if its relations with Iran remain warm." In other words, the operation was a failure, but the patient has survived, and is somehow becoming healthier by the day. Seldom has failure appeared quite so good. [Democrats] are caught between a public that would rather not lose a war and a base of Bush-hating, antiwar supporters to whom the idea of giving up on losing would feel like the worst loss of all.

2. “for . . . European governments . . . [t]he notion of moral hazard is . . .alien”

From Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal:

With its July 1976 raid on Entebbe, Israel demonstrated there was an alternative to negotiating with terrorists. [Entebbe offered] the possibility that, eventually, hostage takers would realize they're in a bad business. Instead, business has boomed. In Iraq in 2005, Germany paid $5 million for the freedom of a kidnapped aid worker. The results were predictable. . .-- the 'value' of German kidnap victims has risen in the Middle East. Maybe it's par for the course that European governments should act this way: The notion of moral hazard is . . .alien to them . . . It's a different matter when Israel behaves the same way . . . in the face of terrorism. Israel still defines the standard of democratic courage by which the rest of the free world must, sooner or later, measure itself.

3. “there are severe limits to what we know and can know”

From David Brooks, New York Times:

Saying farewell to the sort of horrible social engineering projects that dominated the 20th century is [major] progress. We can strive to eliminate . . . poverty. We can take people out of environments that (somehow) produce bad outcomes and try to immerse them into environments that (somehow) produce better ones. But we’re not close to understanding how A leads to B, and probably never will be. This age of tremendous scientific achievement has underlined an ancient philosophic truth — that there are severe limits to what we know and can know; that the best political actions are incremental, respectful toward accumulated practice and more attuned to particular circumstances than universal laws.

Media in Obama’s Plane

I earlier wrote the media “want to be seen as so biased in favor of Obama that they will be blamed for (actually credited with) Barack’s win.” This is proving to be more obviouly true than even I thought.

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, who covers the media, broke a story yesterday that television’s Big Three—Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric—will all travel with Obama on his upcoming swing through Europe and the Middle East, including Iraq. Kurtz writes that the trip “is now guaranteed to be a major media event.” No kidding.

Kurtz adds, “Obama has been quite adept at working the media. He is on the cover of this week's Newsweek, again, after star turns on Us Weekly, ‘Access Hollywood’ (with kids) and, not so happily, the New Yorker. And the contrast with the coverage of John McCain's campaign has been striking. . . McCain's trip to Colombia and Mexico two weeks ago was barely covered, although NBC and ABC sent correspondents.”

Worse, Kurtz’ Washington Post colleague Dan Balz, in a column titled, “Why is John McCain in Colombia?”, wrote the time McCain “spent in Colombia and Mexico matters less than the message it sends -- or perhaps more correctly, the absence of a message that it sends. What is McCain trying to tell voters by this visit?” McCain gets slammed for his uncovered trip, Obama gets total coverage of his. Media bias couldn’t be more transparent.

More Support for Obama Softness

Peter Beinart, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is another (see the Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss) advocate for tying Obama to soft power. Beinart attacks those --as he puts it--driven by “fears of being called soft.” In Beinart’s opinion, Obama “won't lose because he looks weak. The greater danger is that he will change positions in a bid to look strong.”

Beinart, in the great tradition of Newsweek's Evan Thomas, seems to believe rewriting history is easy, because nobody knows it anymore. Here are some of Beinart’s questionable assertions:

 Beinart says President Johnson mishandled Vietnam because he feared being “destroyed” as Democrats were in the early 1950s over the loss of China. He suggests Halberstam (Best and Brightest) believed “The mid-1960s were not the early 1950s. The Red Scare was over.” In fact, Johnson feared not McCarthyism (“the Red Scare”), but as Halberstam knew and wrote, the actual loss of Vietnam, which Johnson felt would ruin him politically as China’s loss ruined Truman. Johnson lost anyway, because the Vietnam effort in the end proved too costly, something not evident to Johnson or the American people at the beginning.

 Beinart says “Democrats live in terror of being called soft” and “worry about the backlash that awaits Barack Obama if he defends civil liberties, or endorses withdrawal from Iraq, or proposes unconditional negotiations with Iran.” Beinart dismisses these worries because “the share of Americans citing terrorism as their primary concern hovers around 4%.” In fact, Beinart’s argument is embarrassing because it's hardly about a July poll; by November, people will want to know how an Obama limited to “soft” power can protect America from terrorism and from a nuclear Iran.

 Beinart says McCain has stupidly “abandoned the foreign policy center,” since Republican election winners take care “not to appear too hawkish.” In fact, Beinart is playing games, since Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan--all three--won partly because thay didn’t have to sell a soul on their hawkishness, no matter what Ike said about Korea, Nixon Vietnam, or what “evil empire” Reagan did in Lebanon. Obama's folks should worry that if voters want toughness, they’ll back McCain.

 Beinart says McCain makes a big political mistake by refusing to “liquidate an unpopular military intervention” in Iraq and instead working to increase U.S. forces there. In fact, Beinart is knocking a surge that brought us success that certainly helps McCain. Where’s Beinart’s head?

 Beinart says Obama, instead of worrying about being “soft,” should “articulate a vision based on the principles of global cooperation and human dignity that animated Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.” In fact, both these Democrats famously went to war to further American democracy, as McCain would in Iraq.

Obama and "Soft Power"

"I think Barack Obama would do wonders for America's soft power."

--Harvard’s Joseph Nye

The term “soft power” has to be one of politics’ great self-inflicted wounds. It’s supposed to mean something better than Bush’s over-reliance on force, but the words actually suggest appeasement in the face of terrorists, nuclear bomb-waving Iranians, and other threats to peace. Joseph Nye [picture] invented “soft power,” and sells it as a preferred alternative to “sticks” or even “carrots” (he believes we do better to “co-opt” our potential adversaries than hit or bribe them). Yet to me, “soft power” is like the word “wets,” the pejorative Margaret Thatcher’s supporters (later known as “dries“) threw at predecessor Edward Heath and his allies for pushing “soft” solutions.

Nevertheless, Obama supporters such as the Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss (who favorably quoted Nye above) have high hopes for “soft power”. They instead worry about the “hard power” folks now crowding around Obama.

As Dreyfuss writes:

 nowhere else are expectations as high for what an Obama presidency will mean as in foreign policy[--]the end of George W. Bush's wrecking-ball approach to world affairs. [But can] an Obama administration . . . articulate a coherent progressive purpose for American foreign policy[, since] his team appears to be falling back on the liberal interventionist notions of the 1990s that led us into Iraq. [It’s] important that progressives drive their ideas into the campaign's debates.

Dreyfuss spots these positive soft power developments:

 Obama would . . . open talks with adversaries such as Iran, Syria and Cuba; end torture and close Guantánamo; renounce unilateralism and preventive wars; . . . seek a "world without nuclear weapons,” [and] in sharp contrast to presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, . . . put the threat of terrorism in its proper perspective, elevating the importance of other threats to security, from poverty to pandemic disease to global warming.

 Obama's celebrated 2002 speech, in which he called Iraq a "dumb war" and warned that it would destabilize the Middle East and fan the flames of terrorism, was a key reason antiwar Democrats rallied to his side during the primary season.

 Obama's declaration that he'd meet with Iran's leaders sets him apart. . . Obama has been widely praised for insisting on a central role for diplomacy and negotiations, and for supporting the normally less than shocking idea that diplomats sometimes talk to adversaries and enemies.

 Progressives . . . put their faith in the senator's character and innate instincts and . . . the likelihood that he "will actually listen to foreign leaders he sees."

But Dreyfuss frets about evidence of hard power:

 Obama's team has seen the addition of . . . Madeleine Albright, . . . William Perry and . . . Sam Nunn, the promilitary conservative from Georgia.

 [there’s a] tendency to see the world in Manichaean terms. [Obama:] "I dismiss the cynics who say that this new century cannot be another [in which] we lead . . . We must lead the world."

 Obama's foreign policy team [opposes cutting] the Pentagon's bloated budget. . . even though, not counting spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, it has nearly doubled since 2000 and is roughly equal to the military spending of all other countries combined.

 Obama's . . . support for a continued arms buildup [raises] the question of whether he understands the political and economic constraints the United States will face in future years.

 he'd attack Pakistan unilaterally to take out Al Qaeda-linked forces if there was "actionable intelligence" about their location. . .

 Obama . . .impressed hawkish Jewish leaders. "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power... everything," he said, adding. . . he supported "banning the export of refined petroleum to Iran," which . . .could lead to a US-enforced naval blockade of Iran.