February 17, 2008
Campaign Season 6: Voting the Better Candidate
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers

Friday, February 15
The Problems with Obama

Under pressure to produce some facts and specifics, the Obama team is beginning to release a little on the economy, taxes, and new entitlements. But the problem is that Obama himself seems not familiar with the details, and still prefers talking only about hope and change. Wonks releasing details doesn't solve the problem. And it won't, until he, the candidate, can talk in serious fashion ex tempore about the specifics he wants to achieve.

The other problem could well be racial. His coalition initially was based on the notion that he would capture 60 percent of the black vote in a tough competition against the wife of our first honorific black president, and go on from there to cobble together a coalition with other minorities and elite whites. But his success seems to have been achieved with a slightly different calculus — 80-90 percent of the African-American vote, elite yuppie whites, and students and Moveon.org progressives.

The problem with that is illustrated by Hillary's last-ditch appeal to win Texas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania with working-class whites and Hispanics. Since the agendas and past voting records of Obama and Clinton are nearly identical, and since he is the far more inspirational candidate, she hopes to tap into a growing resentment that his appeal is boutique for whites, and based on racial solidarity among African-Americans; the former turns off the working classes and the latter other minorities as well as poor whites. I think squaring that circle is every bit as problematic as McCain pacifying the conservative base. And the Democrats would worry about a candidate coming into the convention that lost the popular primary vote in the key November states of California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Texas, and Pennsylvania.

With Hillary, Obama looks youthful and invigorating. But beside the scarred old veteran McCain, he will appear inexperienced and wet behind the ears. Putin's comment that Hillary didn't have a head reminds us that the problems in the world are not, pace Obama, due to misunderstanding or miscommunication, but because thugs like Ahmadinejihad, the Chinese apparatchiks, Assad, Putin, Chavez, etc. profoundly dislike the impediments the United States poses to their respective carnivorous agendas. McCain gets it, the others don't (cf. his Putin KGB quip compared to Hillary's 'duh' redundant remark that Putin didn't have a soul.)

These creepy leaders are more like beady-eyed wolves that wish to break into the global hen-house and prey on the European, African, Asian, and Latin American chickens inside — and so pace back and forth, eyeing the trigger finger of the farmer with the shotgun at the door. They know exactly what they want, and how to get it, and can't wait for the guardian to sit down, discuss their hunger, and invite inside them for discussions — and some lunch.

Wednesday, February 13
The Better Ticket?

No one can quite decide (the polls favor Obama) whether Clinton or Obama is the tougher opponent for McCain. Contrary to popular wisdom, I think Obama is the weaker candidate in the general election for a number of reasons:

One, there is less chance that Hillary would accept the VP and unify the party (Obama just might accept a VP to get the requisite experience and stature for the next run);

Two, so far his repertoire is limited to the brilliant set "change" speech and repartee in debates, but we have no idea how he will sound when asked for specifics in ex tempore occasions;

Three, his high-profile wife Michelle, being bright, educated, confident, but completely without experience in reacting to criticism or counter-argument, is a loose cannon, and so are some of his staunchest supporters (who wants a Moveon.org ("General Betray Us") endorsement? or the support of his "black value system" church?);

Four, moderates and independents are surprised that the non-race candidate has been winning overwhelming block racial support. One might have expected Obama, in a race against the liberal wife of the first 'black' President to garner 50 percent or 60 percent of the African-American vote, but not 80 percent. That disparity might in itself prompt a like counter-reaction among whites, Latinos, and Asians that legitimizes voters taking into consideration race — as Hillary's surrogate Gov. Rendell, in perfect Clintonian fashion, has just "suggested."

Tuesday, February 12
McCain’s Prospects

In the next nine months we will witness a fascinating tension within the McCain campaign as he tries to solidify his base while not alienating independents and moderate Democrats. A couple of things could make that easier, in addition to his efforts at outreach.

Time will help, since it will sink in that a number of Supreme Court appointments, a de facto defeat in Iraq (cf. the latest Pelosi assessments), multifaceted tax increases, and enlargement in entitlements more than outweigh worries about campaign-finance reform, questions about Guantanamo, and past heresies on immigration. McCain’s constant lectures about deficit spending can only help.

Second, the media will soon turn on McCain with a vengeance — and base conservatives will have to sort out their complaints that he is too liberal in the context of their strident opponents in the media damning McCain for transforming into a right-wing nut.

Third, it will sink in soon that conservatives are in this dilemma for reasons that have nothing to do with McCain — the embarrassing scandals of 2006-7, the huge increase in federal spending and entitlements between 2001-5, the failure to use sufficient force in Iraq in the early days of the insurgency, all eroded support for a Republican agenda. The Abramoff, Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Duke Cunningham, etc. scandals had nothing to do with McCain, but turned off independents, since social conservatives suffer the additional wage of hypocrisy with their party was hit with all that.

Fourth, we haven’t really heard the alternative agenda. If the opponent is Obama, and his advisers and past speeches are any guide, then the contrast with McCain will be fundamental. The media has focused on Bill’s disturbing outbursts, but if one were to collate carefully what the smart, well-educated, but sorely inexperienced Michelle Obama has said thus far, it would be equally interesting — and only will amplify in the general election the stark choice between an Obama and McCain.

For McCain to win in this current anti-incumbent, anti-Republican climate of war and economic uncertainty, everything will have to break right — the base will have to make a choice for the better, not the best, alternative and soon cool the rhetoric; the VP choice will have to be inspired; independents and moderates will have to be convinced that McCain’s unique life-story and national security fides trump all else; and he will have to wage an effective campaign, hope his opponents don’t, and trust that Iraq will continue to improve while the economy is stabilized.

A lot of ifs — but again he is the only candidate that gives Republicans a shot. All the other candidates, in this year, in this climate, and given the campaigns they waged, equate to 1964 all over again.

Monday, February 11
NATO Epitaphs

There has been a recent series of disturbing op-eds and press conferences concerning European participation (or lack thereof) in the NATO mission in Afghanistan — the common theme being either an unwillingness or inability of our continental partners to fully engage the enemy, despite a European Union with 1.7 million men and women under arms.

What is baffling (perhaps not really given the social and demographic landscape of the last 20 years), is that a united Europe — drawing on its collective manpower and long military and scientific traditions for the last 2000 years — had been the dream of every nefarious and megalomaniac conqueror.

But now when that mad dream is finally realized, but under lawful and peaceful auspices, and the ensuing resources could be used for humanitarian purposes rather than for Caesarian, Napoleonic, or Hitlerian conquest, only stasis follows?

There is a terrible irony here: the ferocious European military tradition that was unleashed on itself from Waterloo to the Verdun could not be reformulated for something other than civil annihilation, saying removing a psychopath like Milosevic or subduing medieval killers such as the Taliban or containing the murderers in Darfur? In the end the Europeans will have to deal with their own tragic paradox: when the military will was there, too many nations used it for ill ends; and when the aims were good, there was no longer any will. I'll let others sort out the cause and effect of all that.

Monday, February 11
Why Sitting Out the Fall Election is a Very Bad Idea

Recently, Al-Qaeda terrorist, Abu Maysara, a senior adviser to Abu Ayyoub al-Masri, was killed, and his translated diary reveals profound Al-Qaeda depression at its dramatic recent battlefield defeats and the loss of the hearts and minds of Iraqis to their Americans and Iraqi allies. Nonetheless, Speaker Pelosi now assures us of the surge that "There haven't been gains ...The gains have not produced the desired effect... This is a failure. This is a failure."

Saturday, February 09, 2008
Enough Is Enough

OK, already — enough about those loans.

I think the Obamas really need to cool it on their personal angst stories about their student loans. Two Harvard Law tuitions are not an entitlement, but a gamble — one of going into short-term debt to have marquee credentials for long-term security.

In their case, their joint professional careers and incomes (apparently nearly a million last year) paid off well and more than justified their savvy undergraduate and professional school Ivy-League gambit.

But consider: (1) that their Ivy-League student loans are hardly proof of first-hand experience with typical student indebtedness; (2) that their availability (e.g. why is the public subsidizing Harvard Law School?) should instead be a reason for gratitude to the government for the subsidy rather than anger that it had to be paid back; (3) that a better source of criticism would be the universities themselves whose tuition rises faster than inflation, and whose billion-plus tax-exempt endowments could subsidize tuition far better, as Congress is now arguing; (4) that the remedy of eliminating private lenders and creating or expanding another federal agency, is, by liberal universities' own admission, going to raise not cut costs.

There is a familiar theme here unfortunately: the expansion of middle-class entitlements is a birthright that only government can grant; and the experience of relatively affluent Harvard-trained lawyers gives them first-hand empathy with the middle-class ordeal.