Monday, December 03, 2007 - Posts
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Introducing "Karma Watch," an occasional series examining the karmic ups and downs of the presidential candidates. Journalists aren't in the business of reading tea leaves, but sometimes it's hard not to notice patterns ...
On Friday, a man claiming to have a bomb strapped to his chest took several Clinton campaign workers hostage in Rochester, N.H.
On Saturday, ice storms ripped through the Northern U.S., forcing Hillary to phone in to an event in Iowa where she was supposed to appear.
On Sunday, a Des Moines Register poll showed Clinton trailing Obama in Iowa by three points--the first time Obama has taken the lead there. The senator from New York has since stepped up her attacks on the newly strengthened challenger.
On Monday, the Clinton campaign's press charter plane filled with smoke on the tarmac in Mason City, Iowa. Clinton was on her way to an event at Buddy Holly Place, where the musician last played before his fatal plane crash.
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“Fluid” seems to be everyone’s favorite word to describe the Republican race. Maybe that’s why, looking at John McCain, I can't help but think of embalming fluid.
But somehow, McCain isn’t dead yet. After delivering a solid debate performance last week and snagging the Manchester Union Leader’s endorsement yesterday, McCain must be feeling young again. He signed up for not one but two big media appearances today, first this morning with pal Don Imus and then this evening for an MTV/MySpace forum (7 p.m., MTV). He even secured the coveted endorsement of Curt Schilling. To Imus, McCain insists that "we're coming on very well." (Listen here.)
The problem is, the polls don’t reflect these small victories, at least not yet: McCain still trails a distant third in New Hampshire, and he’s invisible in Iowa or South Carolina. But he’s still fun to watch. For example, peep this magical interview between McCain and MTV veejay Sway Calloway. The money quote: “I intend to work hard for the youth vote of America. That's why I go on 'Jon Stewart.' That's why I go on 'Letterman.' That's why I go on 'Leno.' That's why I'm here with the worst interviewer I've ever had.” Sway rolls with it: “That’s an honor coming from you, because bad means good, right?” McCain goes, “Bad, bad, bad, bad,” and sounds like he’s about 80 percent joking. (A tone he's pretty much mastered.)
Some have theorized that should Huckabee take Iowa—a less outlandish scenario now than it was just two weeks ago—neither Romney nor Giuliani will have enough momentum to win New Hampshire, so McCain will take the Granite State. I don’t buy it. He’s got his New Hampshire diehards, but why would Giuliani and Romney supporters swing over to has-been McCain instead of rising-star Huckabee, assuming they swing at all?
Either way, it’s impressive that McCain is still kicking. He keeps a schedule that would ruin someone a third his age. Whether appearing before a college-age crowd tonight makes him look alive or out of touch, he’d be wise to take his daughter Meghan's advice: “Keep it real.” Because, as she says, “you can smell when someone’s being disingenuine.”
Listen to the Imus interview. Watch the MTV interview.
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Mike Huckabee returns to Iowa for the first time in 24 days today, and the time away seemed to do him some good. When news first broke that Huckabee was going to campaign outside of Iowa during the majority of November, a senior Romney aide showed me the headline with a pleased smile and a glimmer in his eye. Pundits cautioned that Huckabee was ruining his momentum in the Hawkeye State. But they were wrong: Huckabee's charm lingered.
So today he arrives in Des Moines to glowing headlines of his continued surge in the state. A glimpse back at the main themes of Huckabee's three Iowa-free weeks:
- Bump in the polls: When Huckabee left, Iowa polls had him trailing Romney by double digits. Now he holds a margin-of-error-proof lead over Romney. Romney, feeling vulnerable, has decided to hold The Mormon Speech in response.
- Aggressive endorsements: Huckabee picked up support from both Chuck Norris and Ric Flair over the past few weeks. College Republicans nationwide made pained puns about "hearting Huckabee."
- Advertisements: Huckabee compensated for his lack of face-to-face visits with two new ads, one touting his conservative and Christian credentials and one touting Chuck Norris' fist.
This isn't to say Huckabee had a stress-free vacation. His opponents have begun to attack his pro-immigration record. Ethical questions from his time as Arkansas governor have also begun to dog his campaign. But the attacks seem to have added fuel to Huckabee's rise.
Huckabee's success creates a dilemma. Does he spend the rest of December in Iowa, trying to make sure that Romney doesn't sneak back into first on caucus night? Or does he look past the state--at the risk of alienating caucus-goers--and try to make his candidacy viable in other early primaries? It's unlikely New Hampshire Republicans will flock to the polls to support a Southern Baptist, so Huckabee really needs to make a choice between Iowa and South Carolina. Given that he was still a dark horse just weeks ago, it's what you might call a high-end problem.
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Presidential candidates have accused each other of being childish before, but never quite like this. Hillary Clinton sent out a weekend e-mail blast announcing, "SEN. OBAMA REWRITES HISTORY, CLAIMS HE HASN'T BEEN PLANNING WHITE HOUSE RUN." The statement takes issue with Obama's claim that "I have not been planning to run for President for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for.” In fact, the release says, Obama has been planning on becoming president since kindergarten, when he wrote an essay called “I Want To Become President.”
The statement works on two levels: Big picture, it’s part of a larger attack on Obama’s honesty. If we can’t trust him to be straightforward about his ambitions, how can we trust him at all? But the statement also repeats a strategy previously noted in this space: portraying Obama as a child. Last month, Hillary argued that just because Obama lived abroad as a 10-year-old doesn’t mean he knows foreign policy. In some ways, her words suggested, he’s still that 10-year-old. Now she paints Obama as a conniving, opportunistic, careerist kindergartener.
She has a point about Obama downplaying his own ambitions. It's not like he woke up one day in January and decided to run. And to be fair, Obama has gone after Hillary on this point as well, echoing a suggestion published in the book Her Way (and since denied) that Hillary and Bill had a “20-year plan” to attain the presidency. But that doesn’t change the inherent silliness of marshaling Obama’s kindergarten essay as evidence of dishonesty.
More importantly, though, how does it benefit a candidate to paint his or her opponent as wanting the job more badly? Obama has spent many months pillorying Hillary for her lack of foresight on the Iraq war. Why is foresight about one's own career suddenly a liability? Sure, Obama might want to perpetuate the image of Hillary as calculating and opportunistic. But to try and out-casual your opponent—to pretend that you can wake up one day and fall into the Oval Office—is just, well, childish.
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