Category: The Dish

This video – laced with some tired leftist tropes – is nonetheless effective in reaching Hispanics, it seems to me. What has struck me most about this campaign this time is how much of it – message, imagery, music, organization – has been generated outside the actual entities of the actual campaigns themselves. At least, that has been the case with Paul and Obama. No wonder the Clintons and Romneys lagged.

By the way, here’s another YouTube classic. The seven year-olds are clearly in the Obama camp.

The most interesting op-ed of the last week, to my mind, was Reuel Marc Gerecht’s extremely sane, and not naive, argument for trying to talk to Iran’s leadership. He follows Bob Kagan in making this case. It speaks for itself. To me, it’s infuriating that the US has somehow managed to lose the global p.r. war against the fundamentalist fruitcake, Ahmadinejad. Finding a way to regain the international high-ground – even though it may not make much difference with Putin – is a necessary precursor to any toughening of the rhetoric or military and economic pressure. That’s why Obama’s position makes a lot of sense. And not just to peacenik lefties.

Sometimes, it takes courage to speak the bleeding obvious:

"I will tell you personally that I think it was probably a mistake going to Iraq."

I don’t know any sane observer who doesn’t believe that. It does not mean, however, that immediate withdrawal is the best policy. The arguments for the war and for occupying the place indefinitely are logically and strategically separate, if related, questions. It seems to me that you could have been for the war but against the surge; or even against the war and for the surge; or against both or for both. But it is also possible for people in every camp to believe that the invasion was a mistake. The question before us is whether continuing to occupy Iraq for another few decades lessens or compounds the original error. That’s an empirical question. I’m inclined to believe, as regular readers now, that it compounds the error, but I don’t think that’s self-evident; and I’ve been struggling with it in my waking moments this past week. More to come.

My old friend, Chip Kidd, unleashed:

Now, she’s sarcastic. And this:

"I’m not asking you to take a leap of faith on me. I’m asking you to look at the record."

The record is that the senator’s one single attempt at policy implementation – healthcare reform – was an enormous failure in which her own arrogance, secrecy and paranoia derailed universal healthcare for a decade. On the most critical foreign policy decision of her career, Iraq, she was disastrously wrong. And in terms of management experience, she clearly can’t run even a campaign half-way competently. I think she’d be better off asking people to take a leap of faith, don’t you?

A retarded Jewish alcoholic in Nazi Europe whose puppy has cancer. It has Oscar written all over it.

A pompous, self-righteous, crashing bore enters the race. Fallows, a Nader protege, sighs.

The Saudi government – our strong ally – arrests 57 men for … flirting.

Watching senator Clinton attempt to regain some lift as she paraglides into history is almost enough to evoke pity. Almost. The Clintons come with their own boundless reserves of self-pity so further reinforcements seem unnecessary to me. And I suppose they could somehow still find a brutal, soul-grinding path to the nomination. But we’ve learned something important these past couple of weeks.

Clinton is a terrible manager of people. Coming into a campaign she had been planning for, what, two decades, she was so not ready on Day One, or even Day 300. Her White House, if we can glean anything from the campaign, would be a secretive nest of well-fed yes-people,  an uncontrollable egomaniac spouse able and willing to bigfoot anyone if he wants to, a phalanx of flunkies who cannot tell the boss when things are wrong, and a drizzle of dreary hacks like Mark Penn. Her only genuine skill is pivoting off the Limbaugh machine (which is now as played out as its enemies). Her new weapon is apparently bursting into tears. I mean: really.

It’s staggering to me that she blew through so much money for close to nothing (apart from the donuts). Without that media meltdown in New Hampshire, she would have been forced to bow out much earlier. She didn’t plan for contests after Super Tuesday. She barely planned for any before that. She was out-organized in Iowa and South Carolina, and engaged in the pettiest form of politics in Florida and Michigan. Her fundraising operation was very pre-Internet. She has no message that isn’t about her and the Republicans. Her trump card – Bill – managed to foment a 27 point loss in South Carolina. The Clintons, we can now safely say, got lazy. Or rather their old and now forgotten lackadaisical attitude toward governing returned like a persistent flu to campaigning. We tend to forget that their entire governing agenda after 1994 was essentially finessing Gingrich and battling impeachment. (Their entire agenda before 1994 was successful Eisenhower economics, and disastrous Hillarycare). It’s been fifteen years since the Clintons actually stood for a coherent message, and it turns out they had forgotten that you kind of need that for a presidential run.

How did they come this close to losing this? They had all the money, all the contacts, all the machine levers, the entire establishment, the biggest Democratic name in decades, and they’ve been forced into a humiliating death-match by a first-term black liberal with a funny name. It seems obvious to me that the Clintons blew this because they never for a second imagined they could. So they never planned to fight it. Once put in a fair contest, they turned out to be terrible campaigners, terrible politicians, bad managers, useless executives, wooden public speakers. If you’re a Democrat, that’s good to know, isn’t it? All that bullshit about Day One and experience? In retrospect: laughable.

Whatever happens in this campaign, if it finally puts the Clintons in our rear-view mirror, it will have been worth a great deal. We’re not quite there yet, and the moment you feel any sympathy for a Clinton, they will use it to their own ends. But I’m enjoying the backward glance, however long it lasts. We’re nearly free of them. Nearly.

It was extremely pleasant not to have to respond in real time to the McCain story. Reading the blogosphere as a simple observer, it was, however, a little depressing to see the knee jerk partisanship. Several liberal bloggers exercised some skepticism toward the story and some conservative ones had a little Schadenfreude, but in general, it felt like a lot of people on the right were just relieved to be able to do the old Hannity-hate routine at the NYT. After this demoralizing campaign for Republicans, you can’t blame them, I suppose. But it’s still a little sad to see how much of conservatism is now a series of hate objects.

What did I think? I’m with Clark Hoyt. The implication of a sexual affair was a step too far. The story was mildly interesting and somewhat damaging without that detail, and Keller should have realized that sticking it under a file called ‘The Long Run" wouldn’t take the edge off it. So a net loss for the NYT, I’d say. Still … am I the only one wondering if this might not be the end of it? Isikoff revealed that McCain fibbed or misremembered in his blanket dismissal of the non-romantic charges, which is not reassuring if you’re a McCain supporter. The revelation of some deep grudges within the McCain circle, aired by David Brooks, is also not a good omen. And the details of all those lobbyists close to McCain does dent his post-Keating squeaky-clean image a little. There are a few loose strings here that might unravel a little more of McCain’s momentum. I don’t know if there’s more  to come. I hope there’s not. If something were to crop up proving an affair, McCain would be in terrible trouble. I hope not. We deserve a good campaign on the war, the economy, the debt and the climate.

And, besides, McCain’s a hero. I don’t know many people who mistake him for a saint.