Friday, Oct. 20, 2006
Friday, Oct. 20, 2006
Hail Mary: If George Bush wants to make one last-ditch effort to cut Republican losses in November, he should dump Karl Rove and bring on a new strategist: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.
Why abandon Karl for his evil twin Kim? Some reasons are obvious. Every good campaign needs a madman. Kim’s colorful personal life and successful rehab will give him credibility with embattled Republican incumbents. Helping the RNC develop a credible nuclear threat would give it a powerful weapon to mobilize turnout in tough years like this.
But the real reason to hire Kim Jong-il is that he has stumbled onto what may be the only desperate strategy Bush has left: to say he’s sorry. It’s so crazy, it just might work.
Yesterday, Kim met with a delegation from China. According to a South Korean newspaper, Kim told the Chinese that “he is sorry about the nuclear test.”
Saying you’re sorry has become a staple of modern politics. But even in this apologetic age, Kim has set a new standard. Most apologies take years, decades, or sometimes centuries. Kim put North Korea in a position to start World War III and apologized just 10 days later. Doom today, oops tomorrow.
Of course, we don’t know whether Kim is actually sorry. For that matter, the report appeared in the South Korean press, so he may never have even told the Chinese he was sorry. It may be some kind of passive-aggressive tic that will lead him to bomb Japan and then tell the world he was only kidding.
Still, President Bush could learn a thing or two from his crazed nemesis. Bush is cruising for a bruising from American voters in November. Conservatives have already begun their circular firing squad, but after Election Day, the only target will be George Bush. Even if Democrats don’t take back both houses of Congress, conservatives will still blame Bush for a near-death experience. If Democrats sweep, Mark Foley will be the answer to a trivia question, but all sides will long remember how much they couldn’t stand Bush.
The White House’s current strategy—indeed, the political strategy of the entire Bush presidency—is the opposite of an apology. They plan to take their lumps and tough it out. Forget “stay the course”—Rove’s survival plan is “keep smiling.”
The Bush White House believes it must keep a stiff upper lip so the base doesn’t lose hope for November. But the base is the one most convinced that the end is near. Elected Republicans openly predict an electoral debacle. Only Bush’s inner circle, in the tradition of Katrina, acts like it can’t see disaster at its door.
So, the president has a choice: He can eat crow now, or eat it later. While the crow might seem harder to choke down now, if Bush waits until after the election, there may be far more of it to swallow.
To be sure, the one thing harder than getting George Bush to apologize would be deciding where to start. He owes economic conservatives (and the rest of us) an apology for spending too much, social conservatives an apology for conning them into thinking he was one of them, and every American an apology for calling himself a war president when he had no clue how to actually win one.
Bush would do himself and his party the most good by showing genuine reflection, remorse, and openness to a new direction. But if the president isn’t ready to apologize for his own mistakes, he could start by apologizing for crimes he didn’t commit all by himself. If Kim Jong-il can tell the Chinese, “Sorry about the nuclear test,” surely George W. Bush can tell Americans, “Sorry about the 109th Congress.”
In a tearful, Checkers-style speech from the Oval Office, Bush could apologize for the earmarks, the indictments, and the Foley scandal, and pledge to make sure they’ll never happen again. He could thank Dennis Hastert for his lifetime of service, and accept his resignation as Speaker. The president could then announce that John McCain has agreed to use his floor privileges as a former congressman to step in as caretaker speaker until the whole place is cleaned up.
“Only one in six Americans approves of the job Congress is doing,” Bush could say. “Let me assure you: I am not one of those people. In fact, I have spoken to Hill Republicans, and I believe I can speak for every member of the Republican caucus when I say that they don’t approve of themselves, either.”
Democrats and disgruntled independents might not accept Bush’s apology. But conservatives would love it. At Bush campaign rallies, the RNC could hand out thousands of buttons and hand-painted signs that said, “We’re Sorry, Too!”
Why would Bush approve this message? Because he knows it works. Bush’s entire 2000 campaign was built on that very premise of apologizing for the Republican Congress. He criticized the House for cutting the Earned Income Tax Credit and promised to unite the country after the partisan rancor House Republicans brought on with impeachment. That was the only real difference between Gingrich conservatism and compassionate conservatism: Bush sounded like he was sorry about it.
Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006
Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006
The Face That Launched a Thousand Gunships: Not to brag, but over the last decade, my humble home district in Idaho may have elected more genuine extremists per capita than anywhere in America. These days, the national political scene is rife with pretenders like Ann Coulter who make outrageous statements just for effect. But Idaho’s own Helen Chenoweth, who died this month, was the real thing—beyond-the-pale before beyond-the-pale was cool.
Chenoweth retired in 2000 after three terms, one of the few members of the 1994 class to keep her promise on term limits. But in her prime, she was without peer. She wondered how the Pacific salmon could be endangered, when she could buy canned salmon in the grocery store. She defended the militia, and insisted on being called “Congressman,” because in her view, the white male was the real endangered species. She read French libertarians, not French existentialists. Perhaps most famously, Chenoweth popularized the far right’s fear of a vast federal conspiracy of “black helicopter” gunships that were coming to take away our guns, our land, and our survival shelters.
Those are hard shoes to fill. If Ann Coulter ran for Congress in Idaho’s 1st District, she’d be canned salmon. Five candidates to Coulter’s right would say to her, “You’re no Helen Chenoweth.”
Chenoweth’s successor, Rep. Butch Otter, said at her funeral that since he came to Congress six years ago, other congressmen have tried to convince him that “you’ll never be as conservative as Helen, so quit trying.” In his eulogy, Otter pledged, “I didn’t quit trying, and I’ll never quit trying.”
Otter may have equaled Chenoweth’s lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 95 percent, but he never came close to matching her extremist authenticity. After he led a House revolt against the Patriot Act, he became something of a liberal hero, which was tough to explain back home.
So like Chenoweth before him, Otter decided to leave Congress. He’s heavily favored to be elected governor in November. With an open congressional seat, Idaho Republicans have spent 2006 playing a game of “Can You Top Helen?”
This spring, six candidates carved each other up in a bitter GOP primary. The runner-up, an anti-immigration candidate named Robert Vasquez, has already announced that in 2008, he will challenge Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, whose lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union is a mere 94 percent.
The winner of the primary, with a commanding 26 percent of the Republican fringe, was a state representative named Bill Sali. Human Events calls him a “swashbuckling conservative.” The leading political historian in the state, Randy Stapilus, dubbed Sali “one of the weakest Idaho state legislators in the last couple of decades.” That’s august company, indeed. Sali once testified that the “brain fade” he suffered after a car wreck hasn’t hindered him, because “much of the time in the Legislature, critical-thinking skills are not necessarily needed.”
Sali is an embarrassment, all right, but more of the Coulter than Chenoweth variety. Earlier this year, Sali brought the Democratic minority leader, a breast cancer survivor, to tears on the House floor by alleging that abortion could cause breast cancer. The Republican speaker of the House was so angry, he stripped Sali of his committee assignments and started fuming like Idaho’s favorite son, Napoleon Dynamite. The speaker said of Sali, “That idiot is just an absolute idiot.”
In a normal year, even a freakin’ idiot could win the 1st District. Republicans held the seat in both of the last two Democratic midterm landslides, in 1974 and 1982. In 2004, Bush carried it with 68 percent against John Kerry, who considers Idaho a second home.
Republicans may well hold on to the seat again. As Randy Stapilus says, 1st District voters “don’t embarrass easily.” But a new robopoll last week showed the race still too close to call. The Democratic candidate, Larry Grant, is a centrist and former executive at Micron Technology, the biggest employer in the state. He recently won the endorsement of the influential Spokane Spokesman-Review, a Republican-leaning newspaper that serves the northern half of the district.
Bill Sali could be ultraconservatism’s canary in the coal mine. But even if he loses, extremists should take heart. As the late Helen Chenoweth might say, if right-wing nuts were an endangered species, we wouldn’t be putting them on the shelf. … 10:14 A.M. (link)
** Update: Today’s Roll Call agrees:
“The latest example of GOP worries about holding onto traditionally staunchly Republican seats was manifested in a new ad buy this week in Idaho’s 1st district, where according to a Democratic source, the NRCC just bought three weeks’ worth of TV time to defend an open seat that seemed safely in Republican hands.”
Friday, Oct. 13, 2006
Friday, Oct. 13, 2006
Family Ties: Any parent can understand why Mark Warner didn’t want to leave home before his three daughters. Building a nationwide campaign that takes you to every county in Iowa: $100 million. Never missing your daughters’ soccer games: priceless.
Running for president is a wrenching family decision for any politician, but especially for a governor. Senators, by definition, have already chosen to live part of their lives on the road. Some move their families to Washington and spend more weekends than they’d like politicking back in their home state. Some take an apartment in Washington and commute home to see their families from Friday to Monday (when they’re not politicking). Only a lucky few, like Tom Carper of Delaware, live close enough to see their children every morning and every night.
Unlike the commuter’s life of senators and congressmen, a governor’s home life is remarkably normal. Governors work just as hard and campaign just as much, but they live above the store. In most states, the job comes with a mansion—so governors’ kids not only still get to see their mom or dad every night, but the state gives them a bigger room and backyard in the bargain. With state helicopters at their disposal, no late votes, and state troopers chauffeuring them at 90 miles per hour, governors can almost always make it home for dinner.
That’s one reason most governors wouldn’t trade their current jobs for anything, and those who give them up because of term limits or to run for the Senate often wish they could have their old jobs back. When he announced his presidential campaign 15 years ago, Bill Clinton wasn’t kidding when he said he was giving up “a life and a job I love.” George W. Bush said the same in 2000. In a country suspicious of political ambition, both Clinton and Bush benefited as candidates from the sense that they’d almost rather be governor than be president.
So, John Dickerson is right: Anyone who has spent time around Warner can see why he would rather wave off a presidential bid than say goodbye too soon to his family.
In the first major spin scrum of the 2008 cycle, Warner’s decision prompted a mad scramble to declare which other unannounced candidates gained the most from a race without him. Like most preseason handicapping, that’s a silly question with no known answer.
The truth is that in the main, every potential candidate stands to lose from Warner’s exit. A presidential race is not a cakewalk, where each departure automatically boosts the chances of all the remaining contestants. Nor is it a dinner party with assigned seating, liberals at one table and moderates at another, where one candidate can watch another leave and think, “More wine for me!”
No, the nominating contest is more like a friendly argument—a group effort to answer the same two extraordinarily hard questions: how to get elected president, and what to do for the country. Just as any group discussion suffers from the loss of a voice of reason, the whole Democratic field will miss the smart, sensible voice of Mark Warner.
The most successful presidential candidates, in fact, are those who learn the most from their rivals. In 1992, Bill Clinton gained a great deal from running against smart, sensible primary foes like Paul Tsongas and Bob Kerrey. In the general election, he even benefited from Ross Perot, a nut whose ideas made sense nonetheless.
George W. Bush won the Republican nomination in 2000 by pretending to be a reformer like John McCain and would have been a stronger candidate if he’d actually learned enough to mean it. After the 2004 primaries, John Kerry should have taken Will Saletan’s advice to steal John Edwards’ message.
At the end of his ill-fated 1988 primary campaign, Al Gore used his concession speech to thank each of his rivals, one by one, for the particular lessons they’d taught him. It was a classy move, only slightly marred by the fact that the field was so large, he forgot to mention one candidate’s name and had to learn one last, painful lesson.
Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006
Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006
Can’t Lose: Ask paranoid Democrats their innermost fears going into the midterm elections, and you’ll hear two answers. First, that the Foley scandal will force another October surprise to come out of the Republicans’ closet: Osama Bin Laden. Second, that on Election Night, Diebold electronic voting machines nationwide are secretly programmed to stop counting Democratic votes as soon as Democrats pull within one seat of taking back the House or the Senate.
Attention, conspiracy theorists: The biggest conspiracy to steal votes already happened. It’s called redistricting, and it offers Republicans’ only real hope of holding onto the House this fall.
Democrats have never quite recovered from the anguish of watching Al Gore win the popular vote in 2000, only to lose the presidency in the Electoral College. Since 2004, many Democrats have become convinced that rigged voting machines in Ohio cheated John Kerry out of his chance to lose the popular vote and still win the Electoral College.
But you don’t need a tinfoil hat to see how much redistricting could cheat an unsuspecting electorate this fall. In every national poll, Democrats now lead the congressional vote by a ridiculously large margin: Newsweek has it at +12 points (51-39), Washington Post/ABC at +13 (54-41), the New York Times at +14 (49-35), CNN at +21 (58-37), and USA Today/Gallup at an unimaginable +23 (59-36)—twice the lead Republicans had before the 1994 sweep.
The election is still four weeks off, and these generic ballot questions are of little value in actual races. Three weeks ago, the same USA Today/Gallup poll had Democrats and Republicans in a dead heat, at 48-48. Mark Foley and Bob Woodward didn’t cost Republicans 23 points in one month; more likely, Gallup just happened to interrupt the dinners of a different mix of people.
Even so, the Election Scorecard average of those five polls, all conducted at the end of last week, gives Democrats a whopping 17-point advantage. In a presidential election, a 17-point win would produce a 500+ electoral vote landslide. In 1994, Republicans took back the House by winning the popular vote by seven points—51.5 percent to 44.7 percent—and picked up 54 seats.
Yet even after poring over this week’s bleak poll numbers, Karl Rove isn’t completely crazy to imagine his party holding onto the House in November. Democrats aren’t likely to win the popular vote by seven points, let alone 17. But what’s really keeping Rove’s dark hopes alive is the Safehouse that Jack and Tom Built—the firewall of safe districts that could enable the Republican party to survive what would otherwise be a China-syndrome political meltdown.
If congressional districts were truly representative, a party that won a seven-point victory in the popular vote would walk away with a 7 percent edge in the 435-member House of Representatives, or roughly a 30-seat majority. For Democrats, that would represent a pickup of around 45 seats.
In a Category 5 political tsunami, anything is possible. But a cold-eyed look at the districts in play shows the tough slog Democrats have, even in a banner year, just to get to a simple House majority.
The RealClearPolitics rankings of the Top 40 House races show how steep the terrain has become. By RCP’s count, in order to pick up 10 seats, Democrats will have to carry five districts that Bush won by 14 points or more in 2004, including three that Bush carried by more than 20 points. For a 30-seat gain, Democrats will have to carry 12 districts that Bush won by 10 points or more. Only one of those 30 districts gave a 10-point margin to John Kerry.
That’s no reason to discount Democrats’ chances of taking back the House in November. In each of the top 30-40 races, it’s quite possible to see how the Democrat can win. But Democrats need to remember about the House what we learned the hard way about the Electoral College—even with a popular majority, we still have to run the table.
Tom DeLay traded his career for a mug shot in order to build the Republican majority’s most formidable levee, the gerrymander of Texas’s 32-seat delegation. In 2005, two big states—California (with 53 seats, more than the 20 smallest states put together) and Ohio (with 18, a number remarkably close to the incumbent Republican governor’s approval rating)—trounced fair-redistricting initiatives that would have put more House seats in play.
California Democrats opposed redistricting in order to punish Schwarzenegger. As a result, House Republicans could well survive the worst political year in a generation without losing a single seat in the largest state (and one of the bluest). And because he got pounded at the polls, Schwarzenegger turned himself back into a centrist who’s now riding the wave instead of drowning in the tsunami.
Rigged districts defeat the very reason we have a House of Representatives in the first place. The founders wanted one chamber that would be held accountable to the popular will every two years. When the Electoral College is wrong, at least it’s a wrong the framers intended.
Thanks to DeLay, conservatives who now want their party to surrender Congress in November may find that they can’t lose for trying. The irony is profoundly tragic: A Republican Congress that owed its existence to the term-limits movement went on to build the most absurd system of incumbent protection since the Great Wall of China.
