March 8, 2008
Campaign Season 9: Playing for Keeps
by Victor Davis Hanson
NRO The Corner

Friday, March 7
Rein in the Obamians?

Obama's campaign, heretofore quite spontaneous and frenetic, needs to take a time out, gather together, and start to get a grip — and get some crusty, cigar smoking pros to knock some heads. First, the candidate gets huffy at a press conference, then the unnecessary NAFTA flap, then Michelle is back at it again (America is "just downright mean"),and then his advisor Ms. Power (not content to be sober and judicious despite past attacks on her) gives an unnecessary book promo interview and dubs Hillary a "monster.”

All this has a deer in the headlights look to it, as the mantra "hope" and "change" starts to get old, and we are getting back too to a normal old 19th century campaign of head-to-head invective and back and forth — which Obama has not yet gone through.

Two things are starting to happen and the Obama pros need to get a handle on it ASAP. One, there is a McGovernish flavor to the campaign of a bunch of freelancing ideologues that are going off message and in sloppy fashion ranting and raving in petulant 60s-style. Two, the shelf life of all messiahs is not long if they don't produce miracles, and Obama has not quite yet knocked Hillary off as expected, So the above-the-fray, change-the-world, love-ins will have to change a bit since they only get you 40-45% of the electorate, close but not quite enough . He can't get too specific since his message is too hard left and if he goes after Hillary's tax returns (a gold mine of embarrassments given Bill's who knows what and speaking fees) or her past scandals, he's a betrayer of the promised new politics.

He may decide to play conservative fourth-quarter, run-out-the-clock delegate arm-twisting, spike his loose cannons, let surrogates go after Hillary, and still hope-and-change it through Penn.

The significance of all this? The two are airing all sorts of things that would be hard for McCain to dredge up and he probably would not, but once out, his campaign can refer to something that is already out in the public domain.

Never count out, underestimate, or take the stake out of the Clintons.

The lesson of all the Democratic primary proportionality and Byzantine rules is that Democrat egalitarians have managed to ensure that the eventual result will probably be anything but democratic, and the rising acrimony is starting to make a dream-team ticket less and less likely.

Wednesday, March 5
Party of Anecdote

One striking difference between McCain's speeches and those both of Obama and Clinton is the former's absence of personal misery stories. At least McCain is clear on two vital issues of our time: ensuring that U.S. forces once committed to war defeat the enemy rather than withdraw in defeat, and ensuring that we cease borrowing money to spend what we don't have or are not earning.

94% of mortgages may be paid each month, but we hear constantly from Obama of foreclosure signs and the evicted. Unemployment may still be at historic lows (cf. the frequent 6-7% of the last three decades), but in Hillary's world Jane Doe and Joe Sixpack are out of work and starving. The point is not that these are not real stories, but that these human agonies are not put into any broad perspective to ascertain to what degree things in general are far worse than before.

A poignant anecdote is instead intended to move, sadden, and finally anger us — to the point of begging a Hillary or Barack to intervene to stop the unceasing misery of innocent others. The net result is one of profound depression that America is such an awful, failed country — and I'm not sure if that innacurate storyline is one they really want to pound home to the voters for the next nine months. It all sounds right out of an Athenian court case where the victim brings in starving children in rags to sway the popular jury.

If one were going to make the case for agony and hardship, the Democratic candidates should at least make it rational and collective: e.g., gas is over $3.50 a gallon, this means X billion out of U.S .pockets, and Y dollars more lost from your personal budget for the year — AND this is due to A, B. and C that we had some control over. It gets worse when we get to education, where the culprit is always the absence of money, never the lack of standards, the absence of accountability, the politicization of the curriculum, the infusion of therapy into the classroom, the popular emphasis on sports or leisure rather than on knowledge, or the role of unions in stifling individual initiative and excellence.

I don't think I have witnessed any campaign in recent memory so full of platitudes and mush — and thousands of personal voice tales of catastrophe right out of Dickens.

Tuesday, March 4
Peter-About that $5

Peter, "Yes, She Can" and "Tested and Ready" is trumping "Hope and Change" The race surely goes on, or as Hillary just put it "Counted Out, But Not Knocked Out," "As Ohio Goes, So Goes the Nation," "We're Going On, We're Going Strong," etc. etc. etc. And as she reminded us again, no one has won the presidency without winning Ohio, and she just did. As a good Clintonite, just reflect: Hillary wins Texas and Ohio, reminding us that she wins the big states in play every time (CA, FL, MASS, MI, NJ, NY, OH, TX—and soon PA), and as we wind down the final stretch, she clearly has the momentum, as serious voters reflect on her long service versus the Obama fad. Surely in Clinton logic spring's verdict should not count more than the stale tallies of winter. Or as Hillary's spokesman just cried in anguish on behalf of voters in the primaries to come, "Let us go on, let the people speak!" Peter! Mere "rules" should not trump fairness, technicalities should not be used to disenfranchise thousands in Florida still smarting over the trauma of 2000. Nor would you wish to disenfranchise millions in Michigan whose votes we must also count, befitting the party of the people. Moreover, the purpose of the superdelegates is to ensure sober, experienced men and women factor in the necessary intangibles, weighing "caucus" state delegates versus the more important big "in-play" state plebescite delegates that better reflect the will of the people and the party's interests in November. No, I think the Clintons are just getting warmed up, reminding us that millions in the upcoming primaries like Pennsylvania wait "wanting their turn" to vote for the Clintons. And I suggest Clinton, Inc. is already sending out amnesty forms to turncoat superdelegates who leaped too soon, offering them a no-grudges-held offer to get back in line—or else.

Tuesday, March 4
Peter—About that $5

Peter, "Yes, She Can" and "Tested and Ready" is trumping "Hope and Change" The race surely goes on, or as Hillary just put it "Counted Out, But Not Knocked Out," "As Ohio Goes, So Goes the Nation," "We're Going On, We're Going Strong," etc. etc. etc. And as she reminded us again, no one has won the presidency without winning Ohio, and she just did. As a good Clintonite, just reflect: Hillary wins Texas and Ohio, reminding us that she wins the big states in play every time (CA, FL, MASS, MI, NJ, NY, OH, TX—and soon PA), and as we wind down the final stretch, she clearly has the momentum, as serious voters reflect on her long service versus the Obama fad. Surely in Clinton logic spring's verdict should not count more than the stale tallies of winter. Or as Hillary's spokesman just cried in anguish on behalf of voters in the primaries to come, "Let us go on, let the people speak!"

Peter! Mere "rules" should not trump fairness, technicalities should not be used to disenfranchise thousands in Florida still smarting over the trauma of 2000. Nor would you wish to disenfranchise millions in Michigan whose votes we must also count, befitting the party of the people. Moreover, the purpose of the superdelegates is to ensure sober, experienced men and women factor in the necessary intangibles, weighing "caucus" state delegates versus the more important big "in-play" state plebescite delegates that better reflect the will of the people and the party's interests in November.

No, I think the Clintons are just getting warmed up, reminding us that millions in the upcoming primaries like Pennsylvania wait "wanting their turn" to vote for the Clintons. And I suggest Clinton, Inc. is already sending out amnesty forms to turncoat superdelegates who leaped too soon, offering them a no-grudges-held offer to get back in line — or else.

Monday, March 3
Money Trumps All?

Listening to the rhetoric of populism and radical egalitarianism Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, UC Berkeley, and unnamed other campuses are exploring setting up joint graduate programs with some Saudi Arabian universities that segregate, Jim-Crow-style, students by sex and discourage participation by Jews. Money apparently trumps all even at the centers of political correctness. Michelle Obama gives lectures urging avoidance of the corporate world, though she worked there once, and her third of a million dollar salary at the University of Chicago is no small potatoes. Hillary's current populism doesn't extend to Bill's mega-corporate speaking fees or Chelsea's job in hedge funds-compensation made possible by the sort of wide-open, freewheeling, free-trading marketism that she is apparently lamenting in Ohio. John Edwards crashed and burned in part because his past corporate employment, elite corporate tastes, and high-speaking fees were at odds with his blue-jeans rhetoric.

The wonder is not that our elites in academia, politics, and social work appreciate the good life, but that their tastes and practices are so at odds their creed, especially in this campaign age of populism. The contrast is such that it demands an explanation? Only elites of the Left can battle the right-wing conglomerate? Why should liberals not enjoy the fruits of their corporate labors? Enough capital ensures that high taxes and income redistribution won't imperil those who enjoy the good life? The populism/political correctness is just another trope in a crowded field?