I have a friend at work who likes to scare me with the idea of John McCain, Maverick President!
I think I've had my fill of Maverick Presidents.
Hmm. I'm inclined to agree with Ezra. McCain's big problem is getting the Republican nomination. If he does that, of course all the Republicans will vote for him, and are independents more likely to vote for him or whatever weenie Democrat? I think he'd roll.
Certainly, if McCain's running against Hillary Clinton, he's unbeatable. But the same is probably true of Jeb Bush, or Bill Frist, or any other remotely plausible GOP nominee.
As Ezra's commenters point out, McCain is as popular as he is because nobody's had a reason to attack him in the last six years, and the last time they did he went down pretty hard. Assuming he gets the Republican nomination - which is a pretty big assumption - he's tied to a number of very conservative positions that most of his admirers in the moderate-to-leftish spectrum simply aren't that aware of, seeing McCain as this symbol of squishily undefined bipartisanship. That's really not going to hold up at all in the heat of an actual campaign.
He's not invicible, for certain. It is just a very divided country, so any democrat has a chance to win Kerry's states + Ohio. He would, however, be an enormously strong candidate provided (key proviso) that his personality "wears" in the spotlight and he comes off as stable, not mercurial.
Assuming he gets the Republican nomination - which is a pretty big assumption - he's tied to a number of very conservative positions that most of his admirers in the moderate-to-leftish spectrum simply aren't that aware of, seeing McCain as this symbol of squishily undefined bipartisanship. That's really not going to hold up at all in the heat of an actual campaign.
This. Once you're talking about actual issues that he has to take a position on, he doesn't get a vote from anyone who isn't very conservative. And he doesn't strike me as having the personality to effectively hide his stances on the issues.
Once you're talking about actual issues
And you're seriously expecting that to happen in a presidential campaign? Swiftboat, anyone?
The press is going to give McCain a free pass and will shape a narrative that suits him, no matter his stand on issues. Even John Stewart goes all weak at the knees for McCain.
I have real difficulties imagining him getting out of the primaries. If he does, it's a testament to the weakness of the other available candidates. I just don't think that Southern Republicans are going to give up their power that easily.
3, 7: Okay, I'm going to go hide under my desk and cry now.
McCain is going to find it very hard to distance himself from his feverish support for the war, for example, where he's consistently pitched himself to the right of George Bush. This was only ever going to be a winning position if we pulled out before 2008; all indications are that Bush intends to leave the troops in until the day he leaves office.
I am really not sure McCain's conservatism hurts him much. Abortion? Judges? You can be fairly policy conservative if you don't give off scary nut case vibes. Which he doesn't. The people who he loses on conservative policy are people who were never going to vote GOP anyway. Iraq is the problem for him, but it's also the huge opportunity. As ogged points out he's the ultimate non-weenie, and he is probably the uniquely well positioned person to combine criticism of Iraq with non-weenie status. No one believed Kerry was a critic with a "plan to win." That sounds much more plausible coming from McCain. The conventional wisdom here is, I think, correct. If he can escape the primaries, and smooth out his personality, he's a monster.
The press is going to give McCain a free pass
The other Republicans running for the nomination won't, though, and they'll all be aiming to take him out first. I kinda doubt McCain can take the nomination, but if he does, he's going to come out covered head-to-toe in shit because internal GOP politics are nasty affairs. Remember South Carolina in 2000 and McCain's "black lovechild". However, he'd still be formidable in a general election, particularly if, as I expect he would, he'd pick Colin Powell as his running mate.
Okay, I'm going to go hide under my desk and cry now.
Why? Did I miss something?
The first best outcome for us is that a Democrat wins. Any Democrat, even HRC. But the second best outcome is a McCain (or even a Romney) win.
7 may be correct. If it is, I think I've laid out the only sensible response.
if, as I expect he would, he'd pick Colin Powell as his running mate
Kaboom. This really is the 50 state scenario.
I don't see him having much problem in the primaries, either. Partly because of the weakness of the opposition (I don't think anyone's really ready for another Bush) but partly because he's so assiduously courted the right of the party, and the party structure in general.
The whole narrative now---the Bruce Bartlett, William Buckley, George Will narrative, which in all classic liberal innocence E. J. Dionne picks up today---is that Bush is not a real conservative. The obvious implication is that what we really want is a real conservative. Heeeeere's Johnny!
The press is going to give McCain a free pass
The press doesn't have an intrinsic love of John McCain, any more than it had an intrinsic love of Howard Dean. It likes John McCain because he looks and acts like a winner. Once he loses this sheen - as he did before in 2000, and as he will once again once a field of ambitious Republicans sets upon him - you can expect the press to start up the "Is he stable?" questions again.
the second best outcome is a McCain [...] win.
If you want a president who will govern way to the right of GWB, then that's an acceptable outcome, I guess. McCain will be a disaster for the country. Do yourself a favor and get over your mancrush, Tim.
Colin Powell? After the run-up to the war, doesn't he look dishonest and castrated? The Powell storyline I'm familiar with has him thinking the war was a stupid idea, having no one listen to him, and then go in front of the UN and lie for it anyway.
I think the issue is that McCain has the *potential* to be an unbeatable candidate. Even if this potential isn't realized, its very existance is going to substantially distort the field. I'm not sure if that ends up being a net positive or negative for the democrats though.
Colin Powell? You've got to be kidding me. He would've been a winner six years ago, but "mobile weapons labs" have turned him into a punchline. He's got no credibility.
Does Jon Stewart really go weak in the knees for McCain anymore? Stewart used to but he seemed to really sour on McCain after he gave that speech to Liberty University.
Hey, sj, apostropher? Nothing would make me happier than being wrong, about both this, and the Congressional Democrats thread. (FWIW I think the odds are greater of my being wrong about the Congressional Democrats.) But I am about set to bet cash money. Come to think of it, I'm still owed money from the 2000 election, where is that deadbeat anyway....
the *potential* to be an unbeatable candidate
How can one be "potentially unbeatable"? That's like being "potentially unbreakable." Either you are or you aren't.
A McCain win is less bad for us than people think. He'll shift the pole from the far right toward the moderate, sane right. Can you imagine Colin Powell on a ticket with any of the Republicans that scare you most? I can't. (And if he picks Powell, he'll lose an awful lot of votes--racism is significantly less important than it was in the past, but it's not nothing. There are disagreements between the Republican Party and the Dems that go away if Republicans end up dependent on African-Americans (or Hispanics), or even sincerely start running such candidates.)
he seemed to really sour on McCain
I saw him interview McCain as he was getting set to go to Liberty, and he seemed pretty forgiving of what McCain was up to. I haven't heard him talk about McCain since.
We shouldn't overestimate the trouble McCain will get from his conservative positions. I recall that during the hotly contested 1990 Senate race in North Carolina, a statewide poll found that a majority of respondents thought Jesse Helms was pro-choice. This after he had been in office nearly twenty years, and six years after the apocalyptic Helms-Hunt race of 1984 that was (at the time) the most expensive in U.S. history.
I've said it before & I'll say it again: People who actively dislike politics will judge a candidate solely on intangibles like apparent personality and reputation--and once they've picked a favorite, they'll assume whatever they need to to believe their candidate agrees with them.
He'll shift the pole from the far right toward the moderate, sane right.
What, concretely, do you see as moderate and sane about him? He wants to see blood, blood, and get veins in his teeth over Iraq, he wants taxes on the rich cut to as low as you can get them, he opposes any hope of universal health care... where's the moderation and sanity?
A McCain win is less bad for us than people think. He'll shift the pole from the far right toward the moderate, sane right.
That's so not true. McCain's foreign policy, if anything, is worse than Bush's. And anyone he appointed to the court would likely be nearly as abominable on equality and privacy as the far-right crazies Bush has pushed.
re: 26
It depends on what happens in the primaries is what I mean. If the republicans get real desperate, the perception of McCain as unbeatable gets him anointed, he doesn't have to tack too hard to the right, and the democrats are in a *very* ugly position. If he is only a weak front runner, the rest of the republican field savages him and he doesn't even get the nomination.
anyone he appointed to the court would likely be nearly as abominable on equality and privacy
This, for sure.
Powell is a punchline to us, but not to most of the country. They don't even remember Powell addressing the UN. Never underestimate the amnesia of the American citizenry.
As apo says, the primary will be absolutely brutal. The commenters at RedState keep bringing him up every couple of weeks, simply for the pleasure of whacking him around. Limbaugh has made the McCain-Feingold bill into an atrocity--and a catchphrase. The evangelical voters are going to have a hard time with the adultery history. The Cornerite K-Lo is pushing for Romney, and since she doesn't have an original idea in her head, that means there's an early, organized opposition to McCain. So, added up, this means the primary will probably get good and ugly. I can't wait.
On the other hand, if McCain does get the nomination, we're in a world of trouble. That's the point at which we really see whether the leftie blogosphere has shit for influence on media narratives; hassling and fact-checking journalists is what this thing was built for, frankly.
On the third hand (where did that come from?), anybody who calls him or herself a libertarian should be deeply concerned about a McCain bid: the guy's a barely veiled authoritarian. He's just as conservative and power-mad as Bush, but he's likely to be more successful at implementing his insane policies. The left-libertarian conversation we've all been having the past few months are really a warm-up for opposing a McCain bid, and it's important that that argument be as strong as it possibly can be.
(I really believe that a McCain presidency could do inalterable damage to this country. And other countries.)
There is nothing, I repeat nothing, moderate about John McCain. His Senate record is in Helms-Simpson territory, just without the religious right overtones. But he's actively courting them now.
24: Stewart did bash him pretty good in the usual Daily Show segments when that was happening, and even turned him into a running gag for a while, but I never saw any interviews with him since then.
What, concretely, do you see as moderate and sane about him? He wants to see blood, blood, and get veins in his teeth over Iraq, he wants taxes on the rich cut to as low as you can get them, he opposes any hope of universal health care... where's the moderation and sanity?
On Iraq--the policy is going to be out of his hands at that point. Moreover, it is impossible for me to believe that any other Republican President is going to be better. On taxes--he voted against the Bush tax cuts before he voted (did this come up for a vote) for them. UHC was always going to have to be done incrementally, as Dean said. That can and will start happening. As someone else noted, more and more traditional Republican constituents like big business are coming around.
The wildcard we haven't discussed is that McCain loses the nomination, then mounts an independent bid with Powell. At that point, all bets are off.
SCMT, if your argument is that McCain is the least-bad Republican President currently imaginable, then I guess yes. But, you know, woo-hoo. President McCain: Somewhat Less Torture, and Slightly Fewer Pointless Wars!
On Iraq--the policy is going to be out of his hands at that point.
Foreign policy is squarely in the hands of the president at all times. Now more than ever before. And by 2009, Iraq could well be just one front in a region-wide war.
McCain loses the nomination, then mounts an independent bid
See, McCain missed his chance to go Bull Moose, though. He really could have done it in 2000, when there was pressure on everyone, including W, to look centrist. I think now he looks too old and the territory is too different.
29 - back-ish. Still busy making up work from my Sleater-Kinney-thon, which was extended longer than I expected.
The wildcard we haven't discussed is that McCain loses the nomination, then mounts an independent bid with Powell
Oh, bullflop to that. That's straight out of Kaus territory (i.e., Mickey's tendency to speculate on random third-party bids arising from random cast-off politicos).
Wow. Who's feeling lucky?
On the "real conservative" front. This is a desperate attempt by the right to distance themselves from the incompetance of the Bush administrtion. Sure, his foreign policy hasn't been conservative. But his domestic policy: judges, tax cuts, stem cells, attempted social security reform are right out of the play book. Alito and Roberts are exactly what the right could have hoped for. Blowing out spending isn't thought of as conservative although I am unsure have evidence of these mythical fiscal conservatives in the executive branch. Perhaps Coolidge? Also, the Medicare debacle was clearly part of the elect George Bush plan. Yeah, maybe a true conservative would have opposed it. And they and I, and the members of the Concord coalition can go drink alone at the end of the bar. But Will is *dreaming* if he thinks the modern GOP has any plans to get between senior citizens and their loot.
I don't get the fear of McCain here. Is it a foreign or domestic policy fear? The foreign policy side I see, the domestic seems bizarre. McCain is obviously, obviously less infatuated with executive power than Bush, he's obviously more economically centrist than Bush. What's the damage?
And anyone he appointed to the court would likely be nearly as abominable on equality and privacy as the far-right crazies Bush has pushed.
Maybe. Gawd, I hope you're wrong. But I have no idea which Republican y'all think will be less bad than McCain. It isn't as if the authoritarian streak is some strange personal overlay fitted over a conservative Republican; it's part and parcel of being a conservative Republican. Giuliani is the same way.
President McCain: Somewhat Less Torture, and Slightly Fewer Pointless Wars!
No, all indications are you'd get more pointless wars with McCain. I have no idea who the least-bad GOP choice is, but it sure as hell isn't John McCain.
40 -- then could safe-state residents trade McCain votes with the rest of the country, in order to further the third-party agenda?
McCain is obviously, obviously less infatuated with executive power than Bush
This is not obvious to me at all.
mythical fiscal conservatives in the executive branch
Well look, if Alito and Roberts make one's blood boil with rage, you are just likely to have your blood boil with rage when a Republican gets elected. Sorry! I suppose one can always try advancing one's agenda through the legislature...
51:...would have be a Democrat today, and was (IIRC) widely reviled by the True Conservatives.
Oh, bullflop to that.
I hope you and slol are right. But that's the most powerful independent ticket imaginable and this might be McCain's last chance, what with turning 70 this year.
46: Where do you see the obviousness? Bush doesn't seem driven by any particular ideology beyond elected. McCain has always been at the very far right of the Senate.
At any rate, I haven't seen any compelling case for why McCain's Iraq policy will be more popular in 2008 than it is in 2006, nor have I seen any compelling case for why Iraq will be a non-issue in the next presidential election.
why McCain's Iraq policy will be more popular in 2008 than it is in 2006
Because if anything is clear about American presidential politics, it's that candidates don't win based on policy stances.
SCMT, earlier you were arguing that McCain would switch the base of the GOP from Southern to Western Republicans, and that that was a reason not to look too askance on him. I figured out who that reminded me of: Tom Friedman on bursting the terrorism bubble. What I mean is, it's damn speculative.
Romney would probably be better than McCain, right? Jeb Bush worse though. Hard to say about Allen, obviously he's a horrible awful person but he might not be as committed to more wars.
Eisenhower
Sure, and a popular figure among Republicans for giving them eight years in the middle of the period of natural Democratic advantage. I can remember the "walk with Barry Goldwater commercial, one of the first I'd seen, from '64) But he was not a movement conservative, defeated a movement conservative for the nomination, and reconciled the party to Social Security and much else. And smart liberals, like Galbraith, were willing to give him credit for it, and for being a good president, even while he was alive.
that's the most powerful independent ticket imaginable
But it's really not. Successful independent tickets don't arise from sticking one popular politician together with another one; they arise out of one or two issues which have widespread support but are largely being overlooked by the main parties. McCain and Powell don't fit that description. It's not about shlumping some squishily-popular faux-moderates together on an independent ticket; it's about Ross Perot fixing the deficit and getting your job back from Mexico 'cause the Republocrats won't.
Romney would be better than McCain, but no Massachusetts Mormon is getting elected president in 2008. I mean, really. Jeb Bush would be better than McCain, IMO, but I don't think another Bush is going anywhere in 2008.
53:would have been a Democrat And, in fact was courted by both parties even then, before he declared himself a Republican.
60: There haven't been any successful independent tickets yet, so I don't believe that it arises from issues. It arises from personality and celebrity appeal.
I have to add my voice to the anti-McCain chorus here. I have a very dear friend who is a true progressive who nonetheless views Senator McCain with rose-colored glasses, and it drives me absolutely nuts. I think folks like to remember the battle back in 2000 as the "Good" Republicans (McCain) vs. the "Bad" Republicans (Bush), and now they think of McCain as the "Good" Republican choice. Sadly, this is a false choice.
McCain will get us more involved in troublesome military conflicts around the world, not less -- after all, this is a guy who still thinks the answer in Iraq is MORE American troops. Sheesh. And as far as I'm concerned, our personal liberties and our system of democratic government simply cannot withstand another Republican-nominated Supreme Court Justice.
Oh, and as far as Colin Powell is concerned, I absolutely guarantee you that the soul-selling deal that McCain has made with the far-right includes a clause which prohibits his selection of Powell as his running mate. In fact, there may be a mandatory provision that requires a specific selection -- Jeb Bush, anyone?
McCain is only different from the rest of the field in the arena of public relations. That may help him win elections, but it doesn't make him an acceptable potential President.
38: Stewart had McCain on recently... last week, maybe? Stewart asked him a few hard questions, saw that McCain didn't have answers, and then got down on this knees and fellated him.
I fear that any analysis on McCain's chances in the general election that is based on his policies is misguided. With the electorate today, it's a popularity contest. Also, as someone said above, I can't imagine independents breaking away from McCain.
I hope I'm wrong.
All I was saying was, Eisenhower should count as a non-mythical fiscal conservative, contrary to baa's point.
You guys are over-estimating the importance of issues in determining voter choice.
Far rightists and liberals tend to be issue-oriented, but independents are moved primarily by their emotional respnse to what they see on TV. The party that gets most of the independent votes wins.
Independent voters will vote against their own issue positions for a candidate that seems trustworthy. This is a concept that the "leaders" of the Democratic party seem unable to grasp and it is the failure to grasp this concept that has led to so many losses esp. in Presidential races.
Take, for example, the Kerry campaign. Kerry came close because so many people were scared shitless of Bush and were committed to voting Democratic no matter what--all issue people. But Kerry didn't get enough indepencent votes. He slipped at the last minute. Granted Diebold and voter surpression efforts helped but Kerry screwed himslef but being less than forthright about Iraq. This sounds like I'm saying he was wrong on the substance of his position, but I'm not. I'm saying that he clearly had no position except to keep checking the opinion polls and keep consulting his consultants, and that lack of veracity was apparent and turned off independents who thought that at least Bush meant what he said.
Independents like candidates who seem to say what they mean and mean what they say--even if the voters disagrees with what the candidate says. They'll choose the forthright guy they disaggree with over the polished smoothy every time.
So don't underestimate McCain. It won't matter a damn how conservative he is if he can keep up the image of being a straight-shooter. Actually it doesn't even matter is he really is a straight-shooter or not as long as he appears to be one.
. Hard to say about Allen, obviously he's a horrible awful person but he might not be as committed to more wars.
You and I have wildly different fears about what's worst for this country. If we actually elect someone who appears to be both an idiot and an all-but-open Dixiecrat, I might never stop crying.
Fatigue?
Fatigue is why we want out of Iraq, not why we want to stay in for another four years.
Because if anything is clear about American presidential politics, it's that candidates don't win based on policy stances.
Not entirely, no, but neither is policy as utterly divorced from presidential politics as the "MCCAIN IS DOOM!" people seem to think. If McCain were an incredibly charming war hero who argued that we could balance the budget by grinding up our children in giant government-issue cuisinarts, I'm betting he wouldn't do all that well, no matter how he sparkled on the Daily Show. Similarly, I think there's going to come a point where even liberals, with our dire need to find something new with which to shoot our feet, will have to concede that ardent support for the Iraq War is a political liability at this stage.
68: I don't think Allen would actually succeed in bringing back Jim Crow, and I don't think McCain would reverse the gutting of (say) the Civil Rights division in Justice. Starting WWIII in Iran (if W hasn't already done it) would be bad bad bad.
McCain is a real threat b/c we've got a divided electorate that's getting soft on the war, and McCain is, or will be seen as, not putting up with the torture shit, but firmer and more determined and resolute and knowing how to fix the problem.
And there is no way that he's an acceptable president. The anti-abortion shit is enough to disqualify him. We're close enough to losing reproductive rights that that's got to be a top issue . . . . doesn't it?
The foreign policy side I see, the domestic seems bizarre. McCain is obviously, obviously less infatuated with executive power than Bush, he's obviously more economically centrist than Bush. What's the damage?
baa, I'm extremely worried about privacy---not just reproductive and medical privacy, but privacy in general from surveillance, tracking, intrusive advertising, censorship. The trend towards limiting privacy are not just political in nature, although informed and responsible policies could help protect privacy in our new technological age.
I do not see McCain as an ally here. His position on abortion is one indicator of his position on medical privacy (obviously an important one to me), and his willingness to cozy up to religious conservatives is another indicator. He's defended the Patriot Act's incursions into civil liberties, I believe, and even if he doesn't care particularly about free speech issues,* he'd probably be willing to go along with the loud moralists on a few censorships, here and there.
So, while I'd vote against him on foreign policy grounds alone, I have serious concerns about his positions on domestic issues. And I don't think that they're separable---Edmund Burke got that one right.
*Ironically, this is what the wingers hold against McCain, that McCain-Feingold was an abridgement of their dearest value of free speech. We'll see how much they value speech during the primary, though, won't we?
The lesson for liberals is that our candidate needs to be right on our issues and have the style to appeal to independents.
So not Hilary because she is a Beltway smoothy and her carefully crafted designed-to-push-the -right-button statements give her away everytime she opens her mouth. Too much raw ambition showing there.
Not Edwards because his TV evangelist/used car salesman things is over-the-top and too hokey, appealing only to people who think he will appeal to their stereotype of Red Staters.
Maybe Obama, Feingold, Clark, Warner, or some combination thereof.
We need to put our politicians in front of a panel of independent voters and see how they get scored for trustworthiness before we make our choice because activist liberals are not good at predicting who independents will like.
Oh, and I can't believe I forgot this, but Colin Powell supports affirmative action, so you can bet your ass no Republican ticket will have him on it.
There haven't been any successful independent tickets yet, so I don't believe that it arises from issues.
Successful in the sense of drawing enough votes to significantly throw the balance towards one side or the other. There's never going to be a successful independent ticket in the sense of actually winning.
70: I think Allen can do a lot of harm short of that. At a minimum, if someone who constantly made use of the Confederate flag and had a noose up in his office can win the Presidency, I think a fair number of African-Americans are going to quite reasonably start wondering again, "How much does our country hate us?" That leaves aside all of the (apparently significant) evidence that he was long a physical bully. He's my worst-case scenario.
On Romney--I guess I'm reflecting on my earlier question to JM about how conservative a moderate Mormon is. My sense of her answer was that moderate Mormons are pretty darn conservative. That worries me.
The anti-abortion shit is enough to disqualify him. We're close enough to losing reproductive rights that that's got to be a top issue . . . . doesn't it?
Not unless white female voters tell us it is, and stop voting (by 10 points in '04) for Republicans. And if they do that, we can forget all of our other concerns, because the Dems will win.
Wait, don't candidates pick their running mate after they're nominated? So McCain could still pick Powell, and who are the Republicans who don't like it going to vote for? Gore? Seems McCain's one weakness (if he gets nominated, which isn't super likely) would be the war, and it's not yet clear where public opinion is going to be on that in 2008.
71: Speak for your own gender, woman.
So McCain could still pick Powell, and who are the Republicans who don't like it going to vote for?
Under the assumption that there are still some hard core racists out there, they might stay home.
they might stay home
Yeah, they might, but I thnk he could afford to leave those votes on the table, as it were. But frankly, I'd be surprised if even Colin Powell were up for being someone's bitch for another four years.
78: There are, in fact, Republican who are Republicans primarily because they think the other party is the party of minorities, feminists, and gay libertines. If you take away their reason for staying in the Republican Party, they might even trickle back to the Dems. As some folks have argued (M. Lind, the Sam's Club Republicans folk, and even T. Frank), there is a significant part of the Republican base that would as comfortable, if not more comfortable with Democratic policies, but for....
73: Edwards polls very, very well among independents.
I think Edwards is a good-enough idea. Warner too. Basically, a white boy from the South.
Hey, if being pro-life to the extent of nominating judges who think Roe was a bad law is the hurdle, then all imaginable Republicans are going to be unacceptable. If not, then you can talk about what is worse. As for Powell's stance on Affirmative Action, did anyone actual note the administration's position on gratz and gruttner. That's not Powell's problem from a GOP perspective. Being pro-life, and generally moderate, is. Like ogged, I doubt he takes the spot.
83: I really don't like Edwards. But if he's the one, then, fuck.
I can't get any sense of what Warner stands for or believes. He seems generic and blank-slatey to me.
I think Edwards is a good-enough idea. Warner too. Basically, a white boy from the South.
I'm growing more and more comfortable with Edwards as I see him less and less closely tied to the DLC. But that I'm growing to like him is a good indication that he is unlikely to get the nomination.
I can't get any sense of what Warner stands for or believes
Yeah, but I thought we agreed above that actual stances on the issues don't really count.
SCMTim, while a moderate Mormon is probably much more conservative than, say, I am, I really don't know to what degree Romney actually is Mormon. I've looked around a bit, and everyone seems too damned decorous to ask whether he, say, holds a temple recommend, has a calling within his ward, got married in the temple, etc. It's strange to me because there are very clear markers within the church whether you're a member in good standing, and those markers seem occluded for Romney.
He did serve a mission--in France, where he probably converted two people, tops (those sorts of missions often demoralize and alienate returned missionaries)--and he was valedictorian at BYU.
that I'm growing to like him is a good indication that he is unlikely to get the nomination
Yes. I voted for him last time, so obviously he can't win.
The thing that drives me nuts about Edwards is that you have to pull teeth to get him to talk about foreign policy. He spent a lot of 2004 sort of treating the war like some weird diversionary tactic, like "yes there's a war but now let me change the subject to poverty!" which is great for when you want to dodge a question about gay marriage but not so great when you're talking about a subject that an actual president would really have to deal with.
89: I'm not saying it helps or hurts his candidacy, just that I know frightfully little about the guy who was the governor of a neighboring state for eight years. Don't know enough about him to say whether I like him or don't.
whether I like him or don't
Yeah, what I meant was, I don't either: but the important thing is to pick a Southern white boy to, if not win a state or two in the South, to at least run competitively there and force the GOP candidate to spend money and craft a message to win the South. Which would divert GOP money from other places, and probably force them to the right on cultural issues.
92, absolutely. And that goofily triangulated proposal to combat terrorism and radical islamic movements overseas by focussing on poverty in the US that Ezra Klein so liked? Cute, but c'mon.
It seems to be much easier for a governor, preferabliy still in office, to be elected than anybody else. About equal with a sitting vice-president. Among stars, we have Richardson and Schweitzer, neither of whom looks like running this time. Anybody else?
90: he probably converted two people, tops
Wow. Does that really count as a failure? Converting two people strikes me as pretty good; I think I'd feel pretty pleased with myself if I managed to convert two people to anything. What's a good success rate for a Mormon missionary?
97--I'm not entirely sure. A cousin who served in Chile baptized some 15 or 20, I think. You hear stories about converting entire villages in remote, underdeveloped countries, but whether the stories are true, and whether the villages stayed converted, dunno. (I knew a number of Laotian immigrants who had been converted in refugee camps.) Another cousin went to France, and during his entire 2 year mission not a single person was baptized in his area, which is I think rather typical for developed Catholic countries. In Paris I saw missionaries standing at the Place de la Bastille singing Christmas carols--a sign that the usual outreach efforts had utterly, utterly failed.
France/Italy/Spain sounds like a good destination for Mormon slackers.
(BTW what is the situation with adult supervision on a mission? -- Does a group of kids go with an adult? Is there an adult who stays in the country and manages the mission? Or are the kids on the mission footloose and fancy-free?)
You don't get to choose where you go, and actually those countries are pretty tough on the missionaries. The mission president (the adult stationed in-country) keeps you busy doing something, and if there's nobody to visit, no doors unknocked on, no charitable works, then it's futile Christmas carols for you.
My cousin who did the France mission, who was a pretty devout Utahn, came back somewhat cynical about the whole thing; he's not really practicing much these days. He is, however, very interested in politics--Republican politics. If my cousin were to run for something, his public profile would be somewhat similar to Romney's, which is why I'm so curious about Romney's temple recommend status.
Also: are there missions in the U.S.? In rural upstate NY recently, I walked past a couple of guys who sure looked like Mormon missionaries. Couldn't figure out what they would be doing there, didn't stop and ask.
102: are there missions in the U.S.?
Everything I know about Mormonism except for what I just learned in this thread comes from this movie, according to which the answer is yes there are.
Also: are there missions in the U.S.?
Oh, sure. Didn't you see Orgazmo?
Hey, Felix! Are you coming around this evening?
This is where I shamefacedly admit to not being a big Parker/Stone fan.
Orgazmo sounds hilarious, and yeah, there are totally missions in the US. A lot of times the missions target an immigrant community, so, for example, you could get called to a Spanish-language mission in Florida.
105: I can't tonight. Got a hot date with a clown. Thanks though.
And thanks Jackmormon: follow-up question! Charitable works? Does this mean that the Mormons run soup-kitchens in Paris and Rome? For some reason I can't quite put my finger on I find it hard to picture that.
hot date with a clown
doubly redundant?
Or you could have a couple of missionaries ring your doorbell at 180 Main St. in Salt Lake City. The Temple is at about 50 Main St.
I'm a little surprised none of y'all have encountered missionaries in the U.S., I used to ride the bus with some in Pittsburgh. I think they were missionaries, anyway; is there another reason they'd be going around with "Elder so-and-so" nametags?
Come to think of it I may also have seen missionaries on the subway in NYC.
is there another reason they'd be going around with "Elder so-and-so" nametags?
Chicks dig it.
110:
hot date with a clown
doubly redundant
I'm trying so hard to get some sort of dirty joke out of that and just I can't find one. It doesn't seem fair.
I will keep you posted on my progress.
The charitable works usually start with whatever service committments the local ward has made, which, granted, usually focus on church members, but missionaries are sometimes dispatched to help out with disaster relief, for example.
I'm not sure what the position of church charities in countries like France is. Catholic churches do have some charity programs, but my impression is that the French state is pretty protective of the secularity of anything it regards as a core social function and generally tries to marginalize, defund, and outcompete them.
15: "But the second best outcome is a McCain (or even a Romney) win."
Boy, I don't see that at all. McCain is more hawkish than Bush, and his modeeration and frankness are all P.R.
And to get it back to electoral politics for a second, if reporters were following Kerry around to Mass to see if he'd been offered and if he took Communion, SURELY somebody can ask Romney about his Temple Recommend status.
Emerson, honest to gawd, tell me what Republican is better? Hagel? Abso-fucking-lutely. I'd prefer him to McCain. He seems sane. He also has no chance at all.
Straight up, Tim, I'd take Jeb Bush over McCain.
And Giuliani. I don't like either of those guys, but I really, really don't like McCain.
One problem with McCain is that he has enough charisma that he might be able to get away with shit. Bush's charisma is tarnished, but McCain's is fresh. And if McCain gets a chance, he will make Bush look militarily timid.
Thinking about the "least bad actually-possible Republican candidate" is suicidally defeatist, in my opinion. I'm looking for the least-bad actually-electable Democrat by now. I really think it's do or die.
To me this and future wars are and should be the main issue, and very few Democrats seem capable of taking a stand against war, or a pro-war stance either in some weaselly cases.
All of this "Which Republican is least bad?" talk is beside the point, though, because it's not like any of us are voting for Republicans.
beside the point
Doesn't that characterize most of our discussions here?
How many fucking converts did that bitch Jackmormon get during her mission to the Upper West Side? I might have to tell you guys a few things about her if she doesn't shut up.
I'd take Giuliani over McCain, but he has genuine Mussolini tendencies. I'd be afraid of what he would do in a major crisis.
Jeb?! His base is the religious right, and I don't see him as somehow better on foreign policy than his brother. The only benefit he appears to have over GWB is that he's less stupid. Beyond that, though....
beside the point
LB's 10 was sound and practical advice. Everything subsequent has been beside the point.
123: Even more beside the point than usual. I mean, not only will we not be selecting one of these Republicans, all of us (except baa and Idealist, I suppose) are going to be voting against whatever Republican does get the nomination. So actually arguing over whether George Allen is slightly worse or slightly better than John McCain isn't the point, since I'm going to do everything legally in my power to stop anyone in their party from becoming president.
Well, yes. I don't know about how the conversation got onto why Democrats should hate McCain more than anyone else -- from my point of view, he's a Republican and they're all dead to me. I brought up his extreme conservativism because I thought it would be an electoral problem for him with attracting moderates.
It would be cool if McCain was literally unstoppable. I would like to see a 70 year old wrestle a bear.
126: Stuff like 10 actually makes me mad. Liberals have been wandering around in a state of perpetual shell-shock and woundedness for the last couple years, curling up into balls and whimpering "please don't hurt me!" at the big bad Republicans and I'm really fucking sick of it. It's stupid, it's self-defeating, it's self-fulfilling, and it helps no one. We're not going up against evil geniuses with masterful plans for world domination; we're going up against cowed little bald men and lame duck presidents with 36% approval ratings whose full repretoire of political tricks has not expanded since the days of William McKinley.
Nobody really think Rove is a genius; nobody sane, anyway. We all just have a healthy respect for the ineptness and innate cowardice of our own party leadership.
129: I know it's tempting, but we can't keep hoping for bears to take care of all our problems for us.
To me McCain is the scariest of all, because of his charisma and ability to get crossover support.
I call the crossover support "submissive wetting" (like a puppy dog.) It's the "I'm yours -- do with me what you will" line in masochistic romance stories.
I don't know about Rove being a genius, but he's had people put together the best database presently possible and the best GOTV imaginable, and he's really good at knowing where to step in during the last 48 hours or so.
Nobody really think Rove is a genius; nobody sane, anyway
For years I couldn't go a day reading blogs without seeing a mention of Rove referred to as some arcane grandmaster in purely paranoiac terms, a political wizard for whom nothing - not even obvious fuckups like indictments and scuttled nominations - was an accident. For most of the campaign and quite a while afterward, this kind of talk would come out of the mouths of fairly respectable pundits and bloggers. Even now it doesn't seem limited to the realm of the hopelessly and obviously crazy.
Here's some practical advice, then. Democrats should spend the next year and a half smearing McCain with absolutely everything we have. Journalists who forget his record or embrace his maverick narrative should be bombarded with angry letters. Say he promises X, some cut-out (NOT our candidate) should weep crocodile tears and mournfully ask how we can trust the promises of an adulterer. I dunno, maybe somebody can dig up some military records that could be spun to suggest that maybe, just maybe he was careless when he was captured by the VC, or that his admissions under torture harmed other US soldiers, or something. This election has to be won, and if necessary, Democrats are going to have to be nasty.
Gotta go now.
We all just have a healthy respect for the ineptness and innate cowardice of our own party leadership.
But there seems to be a corresponding assumption that the otherside is as just as competent and daring as our side is inept, and that assumption flies in the face of overwhelming evidence.
he's really good at knowing where to step in during the last 48 hours or so
I'm not so sure about this. Sending W to California at the end of 2000 was dumb. He was one principled Supreme Court justice away from blowing it.
(Rove = Jerome Bettis, the unprincipled hacks on the Supreme Court = Vanderjagt, with good and evil reversed.)
I really think that you're all wrong about Rove. In the first term he took a non-existent mandate and rammed through a lot of extreme policies. He had Congress eating out of his hand for about five years. He played to the base again in 2004 and won again. He had to make no concessions to win.
Bush-Rove failed, for example, to destroy Social Security, but if they don't lose Congress they'll try again. Going after Social Security was an incredibly bold move -- like trying to abolish the New Deal and pretty much annul the modern Democratic Party -- and its defeat isn't anything to brag about. If we're defending accomplishments of 74 years ago we're obviosuly on the defensive, even if we win.
Kos just said something highly respectful about Rove's ability to close during the last day or so. Things seem to end up better than expected for him because of that ability, which is based on information and organization. My friend with a PhD in this kind of stuff (political databases) is in awe of Rove.
I trust Kos absolutely on this kind of thing. One of Rove's talents is getting absolutely the most possible out of whatever he's working with,
136 gets it exactly right. I can't see Giuliani or Jeb Bush being at all viable, Giuliani because he won't appeal to the cultural conservatives and Bush because even he has to recognize that his name is radioactive (that said, I would pay good money to see his career crash and burn for good in the aftermath of a full-on Katherine Harris meltdown). Start running against McCain now.
On the Dem side, I can't help but wonder how Clark would do if he ran a competent campaign this time around. His last one was a disaster.
he took a non-existent mandate and rammed through a lot of extreme policies
And a massive terrorist attack on the United States, and the rally-round-the-flag effect that followed it, had nothing to do with it? Any look at Bush's job approval over time indicates that world events are the factor in the success of the Bush administration, not Rove's strategy. Osama's eleventh hour video tape was Bush's most useful campaign consultant.
I trust Kos absolutely on this kind of thing
Yeah, he's got a great record on gauging the outcomes of political events.
I'm convinced that Rove believes that high approval ratings are a bad thing, because it means you're not really doing anything. That's what Bush means when he talks about "political capital".
Bush's approval wasn't that great in 2004, but Rove pulled it off. I have to blame the Democrats too, of course, but give Rove credit.
Bush really had no track record and a lot of personal weak spots, and the majority of Americans disagree with him on most issues, but he wins. 9/11, the shitty media and the lame Democrats are only part of the answer.
Strasmangelo, Kos learned something after he had his head handed to him a few times. That's why I trust him now.
142: Actually, the ridiculous tax cut at least preceded 9-11, but I blame Greenspan in large part for that. Greenspan was worshipped at the time, and he said that the U.S. should blow the surplus on a big tax cut. The Democrats should've stood up to it anyway, but Greenspan made it much harder.
Rove seems like he has only two moves in his playbook: act like you have all the power in the world and go dirty. They've worked very well but I don't think they're unstoppable. And given that Republicans are officially saying the plan is to distance themselves from Bush in 2006, I don't see that playing to his strengths.
145: Figuring out you were wrong in the past isn't any indicator that you're going to be right in the future. His record is still pretty crap, and all along he's been going by most of the same assumptions.
As I've said, Rove's strength is a fantastic database which he uses well. Great GOTV and voter-registration. Great election day performance. Good use of volunteers. A 50-state, four-year, 52-week operation. It isn't just magic with advertising and issue tweaking.
I remember the "Wolves" ad from 2004. Atrios laughed at it, and it was silly as shit, but it apparently worked with the undecideds it was aimed at.
SJ I trust Kos far more than I do you and Tim at this point, mostly because it jibes with things I've heard from other sources. I don't really understand the reasons and motives behind the badmouthing of Rove I'm seeing here. You sound like schoolkids explaining why the guy who whipped you wasn't really that tough.
I don't think I've been badmouthing Rove, Emerson. I'm somewhere between you and sj.
Figuring out you were wrong in the past isn't any indicator that you're going to be right in the future. His record is still pretty crap, and all along he's been going by most of the same assumptions.
I don't follow dKos that closely, but IIRC, his bias is towards the positive.
Bush's approval wasn't that great in 2004
His approval rating hovered around or just under 50% for most of the year. That's not great for an incumbent facing reelection, but Bush had the war and the threat of terrorism to milk. Al Qaeda is worth its weight in Roves.
but Rove pulled it off. I have to blame the Democrats too, of course, but give Rove credit.
I don't give Rove credit. The news stories leading up to the election were all about Bush screwing up Tora Bora and the cache of weapons we let insurgents make off with right after the Iraq invasion; both of those got knocked out of the news cycle when the Osama tape showed up. Bin Laden delivered the election, not Rove.
What Rove did was preside over his guy dropping forty-five percentage points over three and a half years. Again, a competent consultant could actually milk the war effectively so Bush actually had majority approval going into his second term; Rove is not that competent. His guy got reelected on dumb luck.
I'm pretty much with slol here. If I believed the public voted thoughtfully on issues, I wouldn't, but I'm a cynic, so I think that McCain will swing enough moderates and independents if he manages to get the nomination.
If the Dems go dirty they could beat him but they've starched their candidates the last two elections.
moderates get picked up by confidence, not only in the candidate but his supporters. It's beyond foolish for Ezra to admit that any Republican candidate is likely to win in 2008, and it's moderaly foolish for any of us to admit it.
Aside from that, there are far too many variables to say. This is silly.
And am I the only one who smelled something funny about that Osama tape showing up when it did? I'm not sure you can divorce strategy from fortuity so easily.
Stop being pussies.
moderately foolish. but my point stands. imagine how far bush would have gotten if his supporters had admitted what they really think of his intelligence and competence.
Bush could only be President twice, and he was President twice. How could Rove have done better? He's not doing too well with Congress right now, but he's accomplished a lot (from his point of view). His approval ratings hurt him some with Congress, but as Commander in Chief he has a completely free hand, and his CinC powers include a lot of domestic business. I expect one more big Commande rin Chief initiative out of Bush-Rove, which is why I'm so pessimistic.
I don't really understand the reasons and motives behind the badmouthing of Rove I'm seeing here.
Well, I'll spell it out, then.
- A golden opportunity fell into Rove's lap on 9/11, from a political-hack perspective. He was given a president with a 90% approval rating in wartime, fighting an unlimited war against a reprehensible enemy. And he used Bush's newfound political capital to... ram through a few bloated, unpopular pieces of legislation that either appealed to a very select subset of Bush's base (more tax cuts) or ended up appealing to nobody (Medicare Part D, energy bill). In general, Bush's approval rating steadily tanked whenever he wasn't invading a third-world country or holding up pictures of captures despots.
- Bush's behavior post-reelection does not bespeak a man who's looking to create Rove's "permanent majority," either. Social Security reform? Harriet Miers? Playing guitar on vacation days after Katrina hit New Orleans? If Rove is Bush's Brain, then somebody gave the man a lobotomy at some point, because he completely lost all ability to cope in his second term. Now, either all of this stuff is merely an anomaly - a sort of Rovian hiccup where the man is off his game - or it demonstrates that the Bush administration veered off the rails anywhere it didn't have the threat of war to dangle over people's heads. I think the answer is pretty clear: in each of these cases Bush stuck by the old Rovian tactic of never giving in, even when his position was incredibly unpopular, and it really hurt him. He kept up the SS fight way too long. He stuck with Harriet Miers well past the point where his own side was deserting him. He stayed on vacation even when New Orleans was turning into a disaster zone as if to prove that there wasn't any real reason he should get off his ass in the first place. This was consistent with Rove's strategy of "showing resolve," but it didn't show resolve; it just made people think Bush was clueless.
- Why does this matter? Because it demonstrates that we can't make Rove the villain of the piece here. Kerry lost in '04, and he lost by scoring an own goal. He could've ripped into Bush for not catching bin Laden when the tape aired, he could've gone on the offensive on Iraq months earlier than he did, he could've come out the day the Swift Boat ads aired and said "these guys are a bunch of liars and I can prove it." But he didn't do any of those things and he screwed up and he lost a race that was his to lose. And Al Gore lost in '00. Yes, it was stolen, but it wouldn't have been close enough to steal if he ran a better campaign, and that's the ugly truth. We aren't losing to heavyweights, we're losing to punks, and we should be that much more ashamed of ourselves for it. We lost the 2002 midterms, too, and we lost it in the worst way possible, by voting for a stupid and pointless war in the hopes that the subject would change to something else once the vote was out of the way. It was our ball and we dropped it every goddamn time.
And am I the only one who smelled something funny about that Osama tape showing up when it did?
That tape was delivered to al Jazeerah, text, not to the White House or the CIA. Now, I think bin Laden probably preferred Bush to Kerry as an enemy if for no other reason than recruitment purposes, but I doubt that Karl and the boys were sending Osama faxes telling him "Hold off, man, just wait until the next Zogby comes out."
Bush could only be President twice, and he was President twice. How could Rove have done better?
Well, Rove isn't Bush's family retainer; he will go on to work for other Republican politicians after him. And Rove's own stated goal has long been to help create a permanent Republican majority. No matter how pessimistic you are about the upcoming midterms, no one sane thinks that's in the cards anymore.
SJ, I think we know now why Bush has been so unsuccessful.
You might have responded to the several times I pointed out that Rove's genius isn't in issues but in organization. The Republicans are exponentially better than the Democrats on the ground. Or to the point I made that Rove-Bush think of popularity as something to spend, and not something to keep. And I didn't say much about the way Rove has succeeded in making the whole executive branch and half the media into Republican operations. Or the way that Rove, playing a supposedly weak hand, maintained almost absolute Republican Party discipline for 5 years. Or the way Rove-Bush pushed through really extreme legislation (on executive powers and tax policy especially -- the bankruptcy law looks small, but they'd been trying to get that through forever) with a pretty thin mandate and a rather small majority.
Rove is playing a different game than you think he is, and he's winning. And in normal times I'd expect him to lose both houses of Congress this fall, but I'm pretty sure he's thinking of a way to kick over the chessboard one more time, and leave the Democrats talking about what might have been.
It may be that Iraq is just too fucked up for Bush to be redeemed, but then McCain or someone will be Act II. (And the "facts on the ground" a possible Democrat would inherit are pretty grim, and you can expect the Rove team to blame everything that happens on whichever D is elected.)
157: fair enough. But enough with this "McCain will obviously win" and this "Hillary will obviously get the nomination" and this "text will obviously start losing his hair very soon" (not that you, stras, were saying any of those things upthread; I don't remember who and I'm not going to scroll up).
Satisfy your masochism in a more productive way, such as by performing a wheelbarrow race through a hot parking lot.
re: 138. Who is Mike Holmgren in this analogy? Some tool, surely.
159: Republicans have had superior organizations for far longer than the Bush era. You can't credit Rove for a database that predates him.
Rove is playing a different game than you think he is, and he's winning.
No, he's not. He's not spending popularity; he's pissing it away. What the past couple years have shown is that this is not a brilliant new cutting-edge strategy which has made George Bush the master of the world; it has shown that it is a deeply-flawed, disastrous strategy and that Bush has won despite it.
We're going to have to agree to disagree. I still don't see what your point is in badmouthing Rove, and I don't think that you've done a very good job of it either.
Bush and Rove, even if Bush is impeached tomorrow, have been successful far beyond what anyone could have guessed. They've left us a lot of fiscal and other time bombs which will force some very tough decisions over the next ten years, and all of these tough decisions will be made under conditions unfavorable to Democrats.
I don't say that Republican victory is inevitable in the fall. With a normal election, if the votes are mostly counted, I would expect th Democrats to do very well. By Rove has a big hand in both domestic and foreign policy, and a Commander in Chief initiative planned by Rove is what I fear.
Bush and Rove, even if Bush is impeached tomorrow, have been successful far beyond what anyone could have guessed.
You attribute this to Rove; I attribute this to 9/11, the persistent warmongering and scaremongering that came with it, and inept Democratic strategy. I see no reason to believe otherwise.
The three factors (9/11, the weak Dems, and Rove) aren't exclusive. Furthermore, Rove is just the guy running the Republican machine (as you said). But I think that your insistence on underestimating him is silly. I don't think that he's invulnerable, but he's damn good.
I think you're not only overestimating Rove, you're buying into a conventional wisdom which myopically posits that ass-backwards and unsound strategy is actually brilliance cleverly disguised as stupidity. Bush's approval ratings are plunging? Why, that's just what Rove intended! Bush is hemorrhaging support from within his own base, becoming radioactive to fellow Republicans? Well, that's just a canny ploy by Rove to let the GOP score points by attacking Bush! We end up with a sort of theodicy of Rove. Why do dumb things happen to smart political consultants? We may not understand, son, but rest assured, it's all part of Rove's Plan.
Again, Rove didn't succeed here: war did. Bin Laden and Saddam and Iraq did. The proof is in the second term, where we still had Rove, but we lost those key war events (invasions, captures, orange alerts, etc.), and the result was the implosion of Bush support from all sides within a year. Back in 2003 and 2004, Rove was telling anyone who'd listen that he was going to put Congress in a mortal Republican lock for a generation; now it's in danger of slipping away under his watch. The deterioration of Bush's brand and the GOP's brand are not unrelated, and Rove's oh-so-brilliant strategy most certainly can take some of the credit for that.
There are a couple reasons why it's bad to maintain a myth of Rove from a Democratic perspective: the first is that it allows us to minimize our own side's faults, because after all, if Rove is just that good, how oh how can we mortals be expected to defeat him? The second is that if we actually think Rove's half-assed strategies work - and here I'm specifically thinking of his "you don't keep popularity, you spend popularity" notions, and the strategy of playing just to the base - there's a danger that Democrats will actually try to emulate them, and if they do, we're screwed, because they won't work.
I understand you guys are enjoying this, but isn't the resolution to this conflict that Rove is fantastic at running campaigns but not very good at governance?
I'm actually not enjoying this anymore. I'm just getting into that sad internet argue-rut, where you go "A!" and the other guy goes "Maybe not A!" and you go "No really really A!" and so forth and it's all very sad and I am sorry.
And by "you" I mean "me."
I would like to see a 70 year old wrestle a bear.
I will vote for McCain if and only if he fucks the shit out of bears.
Rove's very skilled at some things, but can also be very foolish, and his tactics have great drawbacks and may be foolish in the long term. It may be wrong to put to much weight on Rove personally rather than the top republican operatives in general.
Clearly the republicans are good at a number of things, though simple ruthlessness and structural factors are more important.
And by "you" I mean "me."
Actually, I think you mean "I."
I'm not enjoying it either, exactly, but SJ seems to be saying that what I'm saying is nonsense, and he's taking meaningless poll numbers to be significant. Bush polled well in the only two polls that count.
Jesse Helms used the same strategy. Play to the base, great ground game, sacrifice popularity in order to make strong stands, and fight dirty. NC is not really a hard-right state, and Helms's polls never were that great, and he only squeaked out most of his elections, but he kept winning. And he was one of the most effective right-wing Senators in the Senate, if not the most. His goal was to make a difference, and he did.
The Democrats ARE weak. They have tried to combat this with a "move to the center" policy, and that can't work, because the Republicans can keep redefining our "center" for their base as "liberal". And the Democrats have failed to develop a ground game, and they've failed to develop a public message (with slogans like "death tax", "racial quotas", "hate America first", "Social Security is bankrupt", etc., with the accompanying think-tank position papers.)
But a lot of the Democratic weakness is the failure to understand the high-risk, high-stakes game that the Republicans play and win.
It's wrong to personalize this in Rove, but he's pretty central to the operation and it's not that far wrong. And from many points of view he's been unsuccessful in governance, but he's rammed through a lot of ambitious stuff, and he's succeeded in leaving liberals disastrous "facts on the ground" which mean that the next ten years will be spent on repairs and not on anything positive.
To me it's a copout to say "9/11". Bush was pretty successful before 9/11.
Yeah, what Rove is good at is demonizing the opposition, not building support for his candidate. What I heard again and again during the campaign was some variation of "Look, I'm no big fan of Bush, but I'm sure not voting for that weaselly SOB Kerry." 2004 should have been a referendum on Bush, but they managed to turn it into one on whether Kerry was in Cambodia forty years ago, whether he was unfair to Mary Cheney, whether he ever took a consistent stand on Iraq, etc.
Bush's approval ratings aren't Rove's domain. His opponents' approval ratings are.
At a minimum, we could learn how to build hatred of a subpopulation of the US from Rove. I remember reading an Ann Richards supporter talk about a joke punishment they wanted to employ: make someone drive out through rural Texas with a bumper-sticker that said, "I'm the homosexual that Ann Richards sent from Austin to take your guns." Forty percent of the country immediately imagines that bumper-sticker when they think of Democrats. It wouldn't be horrible if we made sure at least forty percent made assumptions in the other direction.
"I'm the evangelist that says the Republicans should rule over a woman's uterus instead of her."
No no, not uterus. "I'm the Republican who got your neighbor killed in Iraq," how about that?
177, you can try to persuade me that it's part of Rove's grand plan that Republicans are running like hell away from the President, but I'm not convinced. First paragraph of 167.
Matt, I can't even make sense of your objection there. Rove isn't running the Congressional elections, Bush isn't running for office. What I said was that Rove is good during an election of demonizing his candidate's opponent and turning that election into a debate about the opponent's deep moral failings and insufficiency as a human being. As a domestic policy advisor, he's crap, and that's what Congressional candidates are running away from right now.
And the rats off the sinking ship thing is accelerating.
OK, 168 then. Rove can be effective during an election, but as a domestic policy advisor he's still concerned about elections. (Of course his policies are terrible for the country, but he doesn't care.) And while he did a good job of gaming policy to set up the midterm elections in 2002, since 2004 he's done a shitty job thereof; partly, I think, because he's bought the myth of his own invincibility. And this provides evidence that he's not invincible.
Rove did unofficially run the 2002 GOP campaign, I think.
Well sure, he's not invincible. And Republicans are terrible at governing because they (profess to) believe that government is the problem. But Rove is straight from the Lee Atwater school of never defend your own record, just imply that your opponent is [queer/evil/colored/commie/whatever]. It isn't a foolproof strategy, but it's insane to suggest that he isn't good at it. He is.
I mean, he got a one-term governor who can barely string together two coherent sentences elected president, precisely by making a smart, decent, personable Al Gore into a pathological liar. Even with an assist from the Supreme Court, that ain't small potatoes.
God, I really am pretty fucking tired of this, though. Seriously, running a party is more about winning your own elections; it's about sustaining that party, winning future elections and getting stuff done. Since his reelection, Bush's support within his own party has been steadily eroding; this is not a sign of a successful strategy.
And really, honest to fucking god, it is all about 9/11. It's the mastodon in the room. Before 9/11, Bush was the dumb schmuck whose great accomplishment consisted of passing a fat tax cut; after 9/11 he was Young Churchhill fighting the savage Islamofascists. If you don't think Bush was headed for one-termer territory without a war to fight, then I'm sorry, but you're a chump.
he got a one-term governor who can barely string together two coherent sentences elected president, precisely by making a smart, decent, personable Al Gore into a pathological liar.
Al Gore is smart and decent, and he's come across as highly personable in a number of venues since 2000, but he did not appear consistently personable at all in the actual election. And Gore's selection of a man with the charisma and fighting strength of a dishrag as his VP did not help matters.
184 -- are you trying to say Rove is a tragic figure? (Sorry I did not get the chance to hang out witcha last night.)
I think that the Bush-Rove strategy was "Gamble big until you lose" or "Go for broke". They started losing after about 4 1/2 or 5 years, but they won a lot more than they should have.
I think that Rove is as involved with foreign policy as he is with domestic policy or elections. And everywhere, he practices Ariel Sharon's "Facts on the Ground" strategy. Change the actual real-world situation so that your opponents' ideas and proposals become irrelevant.
And if this means "Fuck things up so bad that your successors can't fix them", fine. As Billmon keeps saying, Bush's Democratic successors (if any) will be in charge of delivering the bad news to people who've been watching feelgood media all this time.
I really don't think that the Democrats can accomplish anything without scapegoating, blaming, and assigning responsibility. Therewill really have to be villains, because there will be tons of blame.
Bush's approval ratings aren't Rove's domain. His opponents' approval ratings are.
Yeah, but this is why he's only half-competent. Rove is very, very effective at sliming the opposition, and at sliming them in the most damaging way possible. But he has never been able to repair or bolster his side's reputation. Clinton would never have survived if he followed a Rovian strategy because Clinton relied on getting people to actively like him while punching back at the other guy.
I think that Rove is as involved with foreign policy as he is with domestic policy or elections.
I seriously doubt Rove has anywhere near the pull on foreign policy as do Cheney or Rumsfeld.
And really, honest to fucking god, it is all about 9/11. It's the mastodon in the room. Before 9/11, Bush was the dumb schmuck whose great accomplishment consisted of passing a fat tax cut; after 9/11 he was Young Churchhill fighting the savage Islamofascists.
You could make the same sort of claim about Clinton. He needed a crap economy and Ross Perot to win the first time, and an unbelievable economy to win the second. It's entirely possible that political consultants have very little to do with the votes of most voters. I'm even willing to believe that, given basic competence, they have no effect on elections. But I'm impressed by the mortal lock that the Republicans have on 40% of actual voters. And if the political consultants, including Rove, have had a hand in that, I'm impressed with him.
190: No, I think that requires some admirable qualities, and he has none. (Sorry too. I understand the waitresses were tools about it.)
I agree with 191 pretty much. When you go for broke you end up broke, and I think that's where Bush/Rove are electorally; I do think they've seriously hampered their party in the '06 and '08 elections. But they also have got away with much more than they should have.
And hosannas in the highest to 191. I like the proposal of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but not one that comes to namby-pamby non-partisan conclusions. Maybe one that concludes that the GOP is a racketeering organization and outlaws it.
So he ranks third after Rumsfeld? That's not exctly chopped liver, and my guess is that Rumsfeld and Cheney would both be dumpted before Rove.
Rove is good only at sliming -- especially because he attacks his opponent's strength, not his weakness. Swiftboating Kerry was fucking brilliant.
Calling the Dems "cut and runners" is sliming them on a strong point, not a weakness (ironically, most Dems, like "see-which-way-the-wind-blows-before-I say-anything" Hillary, don't want to cut and run).
If Hillary can't stop McCain, who can?
SJ, name-calling is one of my chump skillz, so watch it.
9/11 is a copout, like blaming the refs. The victory in 2000 was pretty damn impressive in itself.
And regardless of the future of the Republican Party, the transformations that Bush has made to America (law, tax policy, fiscal situation, international position, Supreme Court) are massive. All of these put Democrats in a long-term worse position. (And the US, too). Rove is a success even if he loses from here on out.
My bottom line is that I think that Rove-Bush have a few more tricks up their sleeve, probably involving use of war powers of one sort or another. Bush now has almost unlimited powers, which he has used rather sparingly so far. I don't think that they're committed to the integrity of our legal-political system.
I dunno. If say Feingold wins in 08 and 12, will Bush have a "positive" legacy at all? Tax cuts and regualtory change are easily reversed. Comapre that to what people like Thatcher, LBJ and FDR did.
If say Feingold wins in 08 and 12, will Bush have a "positive" legacy at all?
In the world in which Feingold wins, we'll all have magical flying unicorns, so no will care one way or the other about Bush's legacy.
my guess is that Rumsfeld and Cheney would both be dumpted before Rove
You've got to be kidding me. How many prominent calls have there been for Rumsfeld's resignation, going back to Abu Ghraib, compared to calls for Rove's? Just about everyone to the left of the Wall Street Journal editorial page has dutifully called for his head, and the man's still there; firing him would be a tacit admission of error in Iraq. Ditto for Cheney, only more often than not from the other side of the aisle. Any number of Republicans have salivated over the prospect of replacing him with some more popular GOP figure - at least back in the days before Bush himself was spiralling down into the 30s - and it's never happened and it's never going to happen. The fact that all the talk of dumping these guys has amounted to nothing only indicates that Cheney and Rumsfeld are considered even more valuable to Bush than CW is willing to acknowledge, while the fact that Rove was kicked to the curb in favor of Josh Bolten a few months ago suggests that his star's been on the decline.
As an aside I have to say I like how the Cult of Rove has so gripped the conventional wisdom that we've bought into the notion that approval ratings are now "meaningless." For his next trick, Karl will transubstantiate communion wafers into Senate seats!
199, 200: You don't even need Feingold. FDR did worse than Bush as far as civil rights violations and the country eventually recovered. Japanese internment wasn't permanent, and Gitmo and torture won't be either. Feingold would repair the damage sooner, but one way or another this too shall pass.
For a non-candidate, approval ratings are nearly meaningless. Bush's mediocre pre-2000 and pre-2004 approval ratings proved to be actually meaningless.
FDR committed some acts, and so did Bush, but it was Bush who succeeded in rewriting the law and stacking the court which will eventually decide challenges to the law. FDR didn't. He also ensured that public policy after a certain point will be made in the context of fiscal crisis.
My money's still on Rove, especially since he escaped indictment.
For a non-candidate, approval ratings are nearly meaningless.
Bush isn't just a non-candidate; he's the leader of his party. It's his job to raise money and support for his fellow Republicans, and to try to goad congressional Republicans into doing what he wants them to do. His second term has demonstrated that low approval ratings have made both of these duties increasingly difficult, to the extent that the GOP as a whole is being damaged merely by association with Bush. Given that the Republican party as a whole is the problem, and not just George Bush, you'd better believe approval ratings still matter.
it was Bush who succeeded in rewriting the law and stacking the court which will eventually decide challenges to the law.
Bush has "rewritten the law" to the extent that he's declared a policy of placing himself above the law - a policy that the Supreme Court has rejected. Now, this could all change if John Paul Stevens dies before the end of Bush's term and Democrats fail to filibuster his replacement, but that still will have precisely squat to do with Karl Rove (and everything to do with war panic and 9/11).
My money's still on Rove, especially since he escaped indictment.
He escaped indictment, but he sure as hell didn't escape it intact. The plan was to make him Chief of Staff; that's why he was appointed Deputy under Andrew Card in the first place. As soon as Card stepped aside for Bolten, it became obvious that Rove had taken a huge hit within the administration.
FDR did worse than Bush as far as civil rights violations and the country eventually recovered.
This kind of thing drives me nuts. FDR did a lot of iffy to bad things, but he did it prior to the civil rights revolution, and in the face of a world collapsing from the worst disaster of the last century (the Great Depression) and something that could quite reasonably be considered an existential threat (WWII). Yes, Jefferson had slaves, and didn't manumit them, even after death. That doesn't mean that if GWB had slaves today and did manumit them, he'd be somehow better than Jefferson. Context matters.
PATRIOT Act. Law.
You really are last-ditch, aren't you? You do concede that Bush has been President for the last six years (almost)?
"If Hillary can't stop McCain, who can?"
This sentence is loaded so many different ways, I'm surprised you got it off without seriously hurting yourself. If Hillary Clinton gets this nomination, I will wonder whether any of the highups in the party are sleepers. She is our weakest possible contender. Then again, I've been wrong before.
And Emerson, I love what you do here, but please cut it with the "weak democrats" bullshit. The majority of democratic legislators are ten times tougher than you or I--they fuck the shit out of bloggers, is what I'm saying--including HRC (though I think she's unelectable). I see nothing to lead me to the conclusion that they are weak. They have fought well to contain the tide of bullshit the American public brought on itself. It is the ostensible democrats who call their candidates "weak" for the sake of argument who deserve derision. It hurts the cause.
I disagree with the middle part of 204; Emerson is right that Bush has done real and substantial damage. But the first part of 204 is dead on. Does anyone think that Rove and the GOP wouldn't be happier if Bush could campaign with Congressional candidates in the midterms?
There's been terrible weakness at the national organizational level, and it rubs off on many Senators. (The Democrats in the House seem a lot tougher.) There's been a lot of non-response, weak national campaigns, an absence of long term strategy (except for "move to the center"), and weakness in the 4-year 50-state attempt to get the message out.
The trend I see is improvement, however.
My own feeling is that Rove (and his kind) have been whipping my political ass for at least 12 years, and that it's unseemly to badmouth him. I don't say he's unbeatable, but beating him requires admitting that he's been stupendously successful, and figuring out why. Every champion is dethroned eventually, but he's had a sickeningly great run.
You do concede that Bush has been President for the last six years (almost)?
Are you consciously attempting to ignore the bulk of my argument? I'm not trying to deny that Bush exists, or that he's done real damage. What I'm saying is this:
1. He's succeeded to the extent that he has because of external security threats and his shameless whoring of such, and because of Democratic inability to respond to same - not because of a unique and novel political strategy which appears to consist of pitching his political support over the side.
2. The political damage George Bush has done, while real, is not lasting in the sense that, say, the New Deal was lasting. It may take a long while to roll us back to where we were in 2000, but it'll happen. There is not a demand for Gitmo and the worst excesses of the Patriot Act independent of the War on Terror, which itself is going to burn itself out one way or another. Some of those ways are less pleasant than others, but what we're currently doing is simply not sustainable.
3. It is not merely wrong or useless to exaggerate the powers and dangers of Rovian politics; it's seriously counterproductive. It causes us to underestimate our own faults and become overenamored of strategy and tactics which simply aren't conducive to long-term positive change.
it's unseemly to badmouth him
No no. Sports metaphors, my man. You trash-talk the opponents even if they've beat you the last ten times, because that's what it takes to psych yourself up. Though, stras, I think Emerson is right to say that "external security threats" is not a valid excuse; that's like complaining about the refs. Though working the refs can be effective, if we can figure out how to do it; but again, the refs are more susceptible to teams that are confident they'll win.
211 is not really supposed to make sense, but I believe it anyway.
Play like a champion today, motherfuckers.
211 -- Stopping the trash-talking of our own side is a good start.
Our own side has blown for a while, in part because we keep thinking of it as "our own side." The various leadership groups are jockeying for internal position more than external position. Someone needs to put together the case that the DLC/TNR crowd would actually prefer a Dem majority with a shift downward in their relative position within the party than a Dem minority with their group in the driver's seat of the party. Maybe it's true, but I don't believe it. Accordingly, I want new leadership (which we are beginning to get).
Look, I don't think it's just 9/11. I think it's 9/11 and Democratic inability, even five years later, to deal with 9/11. And that fits a pattern of Democrats dropping the ball, not hitting back, pick your cheesy sports metaphor. Yes, Karl Rove is very good at sliming people, but as I've said several times in this thread, that's not all a political consultant is supposed to do, and he seems to be mediocre-to-terrible at the other stuff. It should be noted that even at those moments of Rovian sliming, Democrats handled it in ways that were especially inept. The Swift Vets thing didn't come out of nowhere; they announced they were going to publish a book months in advance. Why didn't the Kerry campaign have folders on every single one of these guys ready to release to the media the day the first ad went out? At some point these become self-inflicted wounds.
There's a tendency among liberals to turn various figures on the right into supervillains, who then become the sole source of their various recurring defeats. Why did we lose Congress? Oh, why it was that mean ol' Newt Gingrich, there wasn't anything we could've done about it! And if it's not Gingrich it's Tom Delay or Karl Rove, and as long as there's someone else to blame for our failures it feels better because then we don't have to own up to fact that we nominated a schmuck, or that the party has been a bunch of chickenshits on the war, or that Al Gore really did run a pretty crappy campaign.
Anyway, I've gotten to the point where once again I've posted about a dozen or more comments that really just say the same thing over and over, and have failed to take my own advice to stop this, so I'll stop it now and apologize.
I can't help thinking that Kerry's 49% were impressive. His campaign did seem inept at times, esp. in retrospect, but a democrat shouldn't have gotten that close.
At some point these become self-inflicted wounds.
I'm not sure who you are disagreeing with; I think most of us believe the above. See, for example, 131.
Amusinly, John and SJ both seem to be invested in their arguments because they want to argue that the dems are inept. Which may be a bit overstated. I don't think you disagree that much really.
A lot of people seem very invested in the dems being inept. I think the dems often have bad long term strategies, or no strategy, but fairly often tactically skilled.
See, that's what I'm talking about. I don't think Al Gore ran a particularly crappy campaign, or that any candidate would have had a better chance in 2000. I think we did as well as we could have done in 2004. Kerry may not have handled the Swift thing well, but the substance only really mattered to the people who weren't going to go with us anyway, and the only real damage, such as it was, came from all the folks on our side who used the occasion to trash-talk Kerry. Osama brought the challenge to a halt, and there wasn't anything Kerry could have done about that.
SCMT say what you want about the TNR/DLC crowd, the people who actively undermined Dem chances in national elections are the ones who embraced Nader in the name of new leadership. I'd be interested in an example of even remotely similar import from the TNR/DLC side.
SJ, when I saw Lieberman nominated, I thought it meant that the poo-bahs had decided that the election would turn on Florida. If so, they were right, and L was as good a choice as they had. You had someone better in mind?
That said, friends of mine involved in the Kerry GOTV effort in Florida, veterans of many years of such things, were decidedly unimpressed with his organization. This isn't so much about Kerry, but about the ad hoc nature of a national campaign. A candidate has to create a fairly large national enterprise, and conduct a high stakes business venture, on very short notice, with funding always in question. It would perhaps be a good thing if Dems managed to have a permanent national campaign staff of some kind, and some folks I know who were in the national part of the Kerry campaign were talking in early 2005 about how to fix the 'always in startup mode' problem. There's no money for such things, of course, and most people competent enough to run an organization like that required are doing something else with their time.
I completely agree with 215.
I don't want to overemphasize the weakness of the Democrats, but it's not imaginary, and something you absolutely have to think about. It won't go away. I think that the recent trends are good.
I'd save trash-talking Rove et al until after we've figured out how to beat him. I don't think we have yet, though progress is being made.
It would perhaps be a good thing if Dems managed to have a permanent national campaign staff of some kind
You have a remarkable gift for understatement. Something like this is at issue between Dean and the DLC consultant parasite shits.
"Say what you will": the DLC passively undermined the Democrats until some people left. For example, Lieberman almost single-handedly made sure that Enron had no traction for the Democrats. Practically everybody ignored changes in media rules and election procedures that the Nader types were screaming about while they were still Democrats. It was always short-term thinking in the context of bipartisanship and wise compromises, and it really failed.
Kerry may not have handled the Swift thing well, but the substance only really mattered to the people who weren't going to go with us anyway, and the only real damage, such as it was, came from all the folks on our side who used the occasion to trash-talk Kerry.
Utter, inane, clueless bullshit. There are a lot of disengaged voters (I call them "whim voters"). Rove works them very, very well.
The real mystery of the Republican success isn't the 30-35% of hardcore wingers. It's the 16% or so of so-called "moderates" who end up voting Republican. The Democrats chase them by becoming ever more moderate (= moving right), whereas Rove knows that they don't work that way at all. He throws them red meat and slogans and images and misinformation and innuendo and feelgood slogans and whatever else works.
do you know what one of Rove's favorite slogans is, John Emerson? It's that the democrats are inept and lack leadership. You are propogating that slogan right now. It is bullshit, as are the other slogans. I like reading your posts, generally, but right now I want to throttle you. Really, they're doing great things with small wooden paddles at your local S&M joint, if that's what you need, go take care of yourself.
I have specific criticisms. Lack of attention to message development and dissemination. Lack of national effort between elections. Frequently, a failure to oppose the Republicans on important issues. Often, subservience to big-money donors.
Rove may do a certain amount of inside-baseball meta-criticism of the Democrats, but his big message is that Democrats are anti-Christian, anti-marriage, anti-military, anti-American, cowardly, lewd, elitist, and corrupt. The inside-baseball stuff is small-time, and lots of Democrats say it too.
The lots of democracts saying it too, Emerson, is directly in our control. Your saying it is part of the problem. You list a bunch of generalities, but I don't see republicans doing a better job, except that they don't pull this self-hating shit that you are pulling. It's not that the republican messages are all that persuasive--they're usually very stupid--but that the individual republicans themselves so willingly repeat it.
I'm not saying: let's become the borg. But calling ourselves weak is a big problem, and we need to stop doing it. There is nothing weak about the people who are working to end the current state of affairs. Weakness is a person sitting at home, doing nothing, and announcing the futility of those people's efforts.
As I've said, maybe things have changed. I hope so. But we're talking about Karl Rove here, and his career goes way back. Some of my criticisms go back a few years.
If there's a real problem, not talking about it doesn't help.
My dog in this fight isn't the Democrats' weakness. SJ stressed that, as more mportant than Rove's strength, and I conceded that he was partly right. My main point has been that we really need to understand what the Republicans, led by Rove, have been doing and counter it effectively. And to me, bad-mouthing Rove after he's been whipping us is a copout.
I got a big dose of negativity during the Kerry campaign. I assumed at first that the weaknesses of the Gore campaign had been learned from, but I ended up not at all sure about that. There should have been a housecleaning in 2000-2001, and as far as I know there wasn't.
And the Kerry month-long non-response to the Swiftboats was like watching a traffic accident in slow motion. That kind of smear campaign was what I had been working on, and I spent over a month fulltime putting a lot of stuff together and posting it, but I found that Mary Beth Cahill had told everyone on the campaign to shun the internet. The blogger Hesiod had this experience, Kos did, and I'm pretty sure that Peter Daou, who actually worked for Kerry, also did.
That's in the past, but not very distant past. But for the last 4-6 months I've been asking how the Democrats will respond to a military escalation and/or a security crisis. They really should have been pre-positioning themselves to put Bush on the defensive if anything happens. As far as I can tell, they haven't. They've taken timid steps to criticize the execution of details, but they have not staked out a position from which to attack Bush if, for example, he escalates in Iran. And I fear that if that happens, the Democrats will be blindsided, and one more time health insurance will prove to have been an inadequate trademark issue.
I was in Paris that month, and missed the whole thing. The only month I've ever spent abroad, on my "study for the bar" money. I came back and did not understand what happened.
I think we're all in the same place right now. If we still have a democracy, we can push these guys out of it. I think we should point some of this acrimony outwards. Also I'm moderately drunk.
222: CC, my Unfogged Grand Unified Theory of the Democrats is as follows: we aren't that far away from winning Presidential elections, or from winning one or both houses of Congress, and, as a result, there are lots of groups competing to control what the next Democratic Party will look like. We end up trying to run before we catch the ball. It's not so much that we're incompetent (though I honestly believe our strategists are that), as that we're either (a) all fighting with each other for the same ball, or (b) tentative because we haven't chosen any of the several directions available to head.
As for the DLC actively harming the Democratic Party: read the BullMoose blog. There might be a negative cliche about Dems that he hasn't repeated, but I don't know what it is. TNR--Beinart just defended Lieberman on the grounds that without him, we'll all turn into raging hippies who just want to tax and spend. These people aren't morons: they know they're actively harming the Democratic Party by repeating these horrific and inaccurate caricatures. They just don't care. And they're nominally part of the party. Nader wasn't.