Category: The Dish

I don’t think it’s illegitimate when weighing candidates to think of how potential general election pair-ups could change the dynamic of the race and even the meaning of various candidacies. A Giuliani-Clinton race would, to my mind, be the worst dynamic. It would put the red-blue struggle on steroids, and Giuliani’s relative secularism would lead him to wage an even more bellicose and authoritarian campaign on the terror issue to win over the Christianist right. He’d be out Jack Bauering Jack Bauer – an unnerving prospect. Clinton-Romney would be a less poisonous battle, but arguably more divisive. Romney’s Mormonism makes it more likely that he will go overboard on the social issues to appease the evangelicals, and in a Romney-Clinton match-up, you just know that Bill Clinton’s entire personal life for the past seven years will be dragged out into public viewing. The GOP will try to engineer it so that the issue becomes a choice between a corrupt, boomer marital "understanding" versus a fecund, high-school sweetheart, gee-whiz marriage. Again it will be culture war central – although I’m not sure who would win. Still, if you want to relive the Lewinsky years in wartime, you know who to vote for. On Iraq, Romney is so protean he will be able both to potrray himself as Bush’s successor to his base, while signaling he will withdraw from Iraq and restore government competence in Washington to the middle. McCain-Clinton would bring out the worst in McCain, but would also, I’d say, lead to an easy McCain victory. Epecially if, as I’d bet, McCain makes Huck his veep to bring home the base. Clinton vs Huckabee would be a landslide for her, I’d say.

Put Obama in the mix and the general election mood changes drastically.

An Obama-McCain race would, as I wrote yesterday, be the best outcome in terms of actually fostering a civil, constructive debate about the future. It would also instantly create a narrative of young versus old. Obama could counter by making Biden his veep, neutralizing his foreign policy vulnerabilities. McCain could add Huck to tilt younger, and then play the experience card relentlessly. He could also run as a one-term president – we’d even believe him. Obama-Romney would be more polarizing (though no one polarizes like the Clintons), but the ugly anti-Mormon bigotry and racism would probably cancel each other out. Obama vs Huckabee would be fascinating, but I’m afraid I cannot see Huckabee gaining enough credibility on foreign affairs or economics to become president.

If I were a Republican, I’d say McCain is easily the strongest general election candidate. If I were a Democrat, the potential dynamics of a race between Clinton and a Republican – almost any of them – would make me pick Obama.

Pretty awful:

Fewer than one-in-five Pakistanis (15%) have a positive view of the U.S. — of the publics included in the 2007 survey, only Palestinians (13%) and Turks (9%) are less favorably disposed. Moreover, despite their own concerns about terrorism, Pakistanis overwhelmingly oppose U.S.-led efforts to fight terrorism — six-in-ten (59%) oppose America’s anti-terror campaign, while only 13% back it. Pakistanis are also leery of American efforts to encourage democracy in their country — 57% believe the U.S. only promotes democracy when it serves its interests, and 72% say they dislike American ideas about democracy.

However, like other Muslim publics included in the 2007 Pew survey, Pakistanis overwhelmingly endorse key democratic values and institutions.

This was true before Bush, and there’s even been a bit of an uptick in pro-Americanism lately – so you can’t blame all this on the current administration. The other good news is that however badly we’ve been playing the p.r. game, al Qaeda has been doing worse. The obvious inference is that any intervention in Pakistan should be as discreet and modest as possible.

Dynasticism isn’t easy:

Bilawal is the best bet to continue the Bhutto name.  But as a 19 year old unable to speak Urdu and raised for much of his life out of the country, he’s thoroughly unprepared to lead the largest political party in a 160 million person country.  At the same age, his mother sat as an observer in her father’s negotiations with Indira Gandhi at Simla.  Bilawal’s had no such grooming.

The major development has been the sidelining of Amin Fahim.  Does he remain as the party’s vice chair?  Will he continue as a Bhutto loyalist, in spite of having a teenager selected over him as party leader?  He will be the party’s candidate for prime minister.  Zardari hasn’t registered for the elections.  Bilawal is ineligible to contest.  Fahim is a PM candidate by default.  He could very well play the role of Turkey’s Abdullah Gul, holding the PM spot till Asif Zardari or Bilawal are ready (if ever).

And what of Asif Zardari?  Will his control over the PPP last long?  Does he have the energy and the party support?  Will he serve as a placeholder for Bilawal – or will he reign over the party’s fragmentation?  Remember, Benazir faced significant opposition during her rise to the party’s helm – and from non-family members as well.  Her consolidation of power was indelicate, to say the least. Let’s see if party stalwarts remain loyal to Zardari, or whether they’ll slowly push him back to Dubai.

New video:

So why is Musharraf lying?

(Hat tip: LGF.)

Johann Hari worries:

First, the good news. Some worthwhile safety precautions have been put in place in Pakistan over the past five years. The country’s nukes are not kept on hair-trigger alert, ready to fire at any moment. Instead, the warhead cores are kept in different places from the weapon detonation components. To put them together and make a shootable nuke would take around three days – providing a long(ish) fuse in a crisis. Even if jihadis managed to seize one nuclear weapons site, they would still need to seize another one – and secure transportation between the two – to go nuclear.

Nothing else about this picture is reassuring…

Watching the strange spectacle of a democratic political party bestow its leadership on a 19-year-old dauphin prompted a spasm of dismay this morning. Until, of course, I realized that the US is only a few notches better: we’re doing the classic South Asian thing of replacing one president with his wife and we just replaced another one with his son. Romney is the son of a presidential candidate. Who are Americans to judge the developing world any more when American politics is increasingly conducted within the family lines of a political caste?

Glenn Greenwald states the obvious:

And thus we have a perfect oligarchical system in which, literally, our most powerful and well-connected elite are free to break the law with impunity, exempt from any consequences. While exempting themselves, these same figures impose increasingly Draconian "law and order" solutions on the masses to ensure that even small infractions of the law prompt vigorous prosecution and inflexible, lengthy prison terms.

Hey, it’s worked so far.

The first test of the 2008 election cycle is imminent. Here’s my Sunday Times column on what it all means.

Ambers on the race:

The biggest sign that something is happening in New Hampshire: John McCain is starting to have to pool his events …

The biggest sign that something is happening in Iowa: Hillary Clinton’s starting to draw standing ovations in her speeches …

At this point, the polls are close enough and their reliability suspect enough to believe that anyone can win Iowa for the Democrats. Nonetheless, Clinton seems to have recovered from a tailspin, and Edwards seems to be enjoying a late surge. Did Obama peak too soon? He’s been dropping ever-so-slightly in the very latest polls and his rivals have been ticking up. In the end, the organization will probably make all the difference.

But at the same time, if it really is a three-way tie with only 1,000 votes or so between them all, how will anyone claim a clear victory? I used to think that if Clinton won Iowa, it would be over. But if she wins by a sliver, the race continues into New Hampshire and beyond. If she wins convincingly, it’s another story. If Obama wins, given last minute expectations, he could get a real boost. If Edwards wins, all hell breaks out. It’s enough to make anyone, er, excitable.