Friday, December 12, 2003
Could this be true?
A Deliberate Debacle
By PAUL KRUGMANPublished: December 12, 2003
James Baker sets off to negotiate Iraqi debt forgiveness with our estranged allies. And at that very moment the deputy secretary of defense releases a "Determination and Findings" on reconstruction contracts that not only excludes those allies from bidding, but does so with highly offensive language. What's going on?
Maybe I'm giving Paul Wolfowitz too much credit, but I don't think this was mere incompetence. I think the administration's hard-liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation.
Surely this wasn't just about reserving contracts for administration cronies. Yes, Halliburton is profiteering in Iraq — will apologists finally concede the point, now that a Pentagon audit finds overcharging? And reports suggest a scandal in Bechtel's vaunted school-repair program.
But I've always found claims that profiteering was the motive for the Iraq war — as opposed to a fringe benefit — as implausible as claims that the war was about fighting terrorism. There are deeper motives here.
Mr. Wolfowitz's official rationale for the contract policy is astonishingly cynical: "Limiting competition for prime contracts will encourage the expansion of international cooperation in Iraq and in future efforts" — future efforts? — and "should encourage the continued cooperation of coalition members." Translation: we can bribe other nations to send troops.
But I doubt whether even Mr. Wolfowitz believes that. The last year, from the failure to get U.N. approval for the war to the retreat over the steel tariff, has been one long lesson in the limits of U.S. economic leverage. Mr. Wolfowitz knows as well as the rest of us that allies who could really provide useful help won't be swayed by a few lucrative contracts.
If the contracts don't provide useful leverage, however, why torpedo a potential reconciliation between America and its allies? Perhaps because Mr. Wolfowitz's faction doesn't want such a reconciliation.
These are tough times for the architects of the "Bush doctrine" of unilateralism and preventive war. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow Project for a New American Century alumni viewed Iraq as a pilot project, one that would validate their views and clear the way for further regime changes. (Hence Mr. Wolfowitz's line about "future efforts.")
Instead, the venture has turned sour — and many insiders see Mr. Baker's mission as part of an effort by veterans of the first Bush administration to extricate George W. Bush from the hard-liners' clutches. If the mission collapses amid acrimony over contracts, that's a good thing from the hard-liners' point of view.
Bear in mind that there is plenty of evidence of policy freebooting by administration hawks, such as the clandestine meetings last summer between Pentagon officials working for Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy and planning — and a key player in the misrepresentation of the Iraqi threat — and Iranians of dubious repute. Remember also that blowups by the hard-liners, just when the conciliators seem to be getting somewhere, have been a pattern.
There was a striking example in August. It seemed that Colin Powell had finally convinced President Bush that if we aren't planning a war with North Korea, it makes sense to negotiate. But then John Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control, whose role is more accurately described as "the neocons' man at State," gave a speech about Kim Jong Il, declaring: "To give in to his extortionist demands would only encourage him and, perhaps more ominously, other would-be tyrants."
In short, this week's diplomatic debacle probably reflects an internal power struggle, with hawks using the contracts issue as a way to prevent Republican grown-ups from regaining control of U.S. foreign policy. And initial indications are that the ploy is working — that the hawks have, once again, managed to tap into Mr. Bush's fondness for moralistic, good-versus-evil formulations. "It's very simple," Mr. Bush said yesterday. "Our people risk their lives. . . . Friendly coalition folks risk their lives. . . . The contracting is going to reflect that."
In the end the Bush doctrine — based on delusions of grandeur about America's ability to dominate the world through force — will collapse. What we've just learned is how hard and dirty the doctrine's proponents will fight against the inevitable.
A Deliberate Debacle
By PAUL KRUGMANPublished: December 12, 2003
James Baker sets off to negotiate Iraqi debt forgiveness with our estranged allies. And at that very moment the deputy secretary of defense releases a "Determination and Findings" on reconstruction contracts that not only excludes those allies from bidding, but does so with highly offensive language. What's going on?
Maybe I'm giving Paul Wolfowitz too much credit, but I don't think this was mere incompetence. I think the administration's hard-liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation.
Surely this wasn't just about reserving contracts for administration cronies. Yes, Halliburton is profiteering in Iraq — will apologists finally concede the point, now that a Pentagon audit finds overcharging? And reports suggest a scandal in Bechtel's vaunted school-repair program.
But I've always found claims that profiteering was the motive for the Iraq war — as opposed to a fringe benefit — as implausible as claims that the war was about fighting terrorism. There are deeper motives here.
Mr. Wolfowitz's official rationale for the contract policy is astonishingly cynical: "Limiting competition for prime contracts will encourage the expansion of international cooperation in Iraq and in future efforts" — future efforts? — and "should encourage the continued cooperation of coalition members." Translation: we can bribe other nations to send troops.
But I doubt whether even Mr. Wolfowitz believes that. The last year, from the failure to get U.N. approval for the war to the retreat over the steel tariff, has been one long lesson in the limits of U.S. economic leverage. Mr. Wolfowitz knows as well as the rest of us that allies who could really provide useful help won't be swayed by a few lucrative contracts.
If the contracts don't provide useful leverage, however, why torpedo a potential reconciliation between America and its allies? Perhaps because Mr. Wolfowitz's faction doesn't want such a reconciliation.
These are tough times for the architects of the "Bush doctrine" of unilateralism and preventive war. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their fellow Project for a New American Century alumni viewed Iraq as a pilot project, one that would validate their views and clear the way for further regime changes. (Hence Mr. Wolfowitz's line about "future efforts.")
Instead, the venture has turned sour — and many insiders see Mr. Baker's mission as part of an effort by veterans of the first Bush administration to extricate George W. Bush from the hard-liners' clutches. If the mission collapses amid acrimony over contracts, that's a good thing from the hard-liners' point of view.
Bear in mind that there is plenty of evidence of policy freebooting by administration hawks, such as the clandestine meetings last summer between Pentagon officials working for Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy and planning — and a key player in the misrepresentation of the Iraqi threat — and Iranians of dubious repute. Remember also that blowups by the hard-liners, just when the conciliators seem to be getting somewhere, have been a pattern.
There was a striking example in August. It seemed that Colin Powell had finally convinced President Bush that if we aren't planning a war with North Korea, it makes sense to negotiate. But then John Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control, whose role is more accurately described as "the neocons' man at State," gave a speech about Kim Jong Il, declaring: "To give in to his extortionist demands would only encourage him and, perhaps more ominously, other would-be tyrants."
In short, this week's diplomatic debacle probably reflects an internal power struggle, with hawks using the contracts issue as a way to prevent Republican grown-ups from regaining control of U.S. foreign policy. And initial indications are that the ploy is working — that the hawks have, once again, managed to tap into Mr. Bush's fondness for moralistic, good-versus-evil formulations. "It's very simple," Mr. Bush said yesterday. "Our people risk their lives. . . . Friendly coalition folks risk their lives. . . . The contracting is going to reflect that."
In the end the Bush doctrine — based on delusions of grandeur about America's ability to dominate the world through force — will collapse. What we've just learned is how hard and dirty the doctrine's proponents will fight against the inevitable.
US mocks European fury over Iraq reconstruction contracts
US President George Bush laughed off European legal threats (Photo: EU Commission)
The rhetoric was sharpened in the new transatlantic political and legal spat yesterday - just days after a trade war over steel was averted.
There was sharp criticism of the US government's decision to award lucrative Iraqi reconstruction contracts to only those countries with troops in the country from the European Commission and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
A spokesman for the European Commission said that contracts should be awarded on the basis of international law and World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. He added, "we don't need another trade conflict".
Mr Schröder said, after a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "international law must apply here. It does not help to look backwards".
For his part, Mr Annan described the decision as "unfortunate". France, China and Russia also criticised the move.
Bush laughs off legal threats
But US President, George W Bush laughed off European threats of legal action. When asked about the comments, he joked, "international law? Well, I'd better call my lawyer".
The President strongly defended his decision, saying, "it's very simple: our people risked their lives, the people of the friendly coalition risked their lives and the contracts will reflect that".
However, he is keen to keep the "lines of communication open".
He telephoned the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to announce that he was sending a special envoy - James Baker - next week to discuss the restructuring of Iraqi debt.
Encouragement, not punishment
Washington says that the list of eligible countries is an encouragement to join the coalition, rather than as a retrospective punishment for countries who refused to join in the US-led assault on Iraq.
As for legal action under WTO rules, it is unclear how successful a European appeal might be. Experts pointed out yesterday that Iraq is not a member of the WTO and therefore any challenge would be difficult.
In addition, WTO rules do allow discrimination on the grounds of national security, which the US invoked yesterday when making the announcement.
The contracts are worth $18.6 billion.
US President George Bush laughed off European legal threats (Photo: EU Commission)
The rhetoric was sharpened in the new transatlantic political and legal spat yesterday - just days after a trade war over steel was averted.
There was sharp criticism of the US government's decision to award lucrative Iraqi reconstruction contracts to only those countries with troops in the country from the European Commission and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
A spokesman for the European Commission said that contracts should be awarded on the basis of international law and World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. He added, "we don't need another trade conflict".
Mr Schröder said, after a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "international law must apply here. It does not help to look backwards".
For his part, Mr Annan described the decision as "unfortunate". France, China and Russia also criticised the move.
Bush laughs off legal threats
But US President, George W Bush laughed off European threats of legal action. When asked about the comments, he joked, "international law? Well, I'd better call my lawyer".
The President strongly defended his decision, saying, "it's very simple: our people risked their lives, the people of the friendly coalition risked their lives and the contracts will reflect that".
However, he is keen to keep the "lines of communication open".
He telephoned the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to announce that he was sending a special envoy - James Baker - next week to discuss the restructuring of Iraqi debt.
Encouragement, not punishment
Washington says that the list of eligible countries is an encouragement to join the coalition, rather than as a retrospective punishment for countries who refused to join in the US-led assault on Iraq.
As for legal action under WTO rules, it is unclear how successful a European appeal might be. Experts pointed out yesterday that Iraq is not a member of the WTO and therefore any challenge would be difficult.
In addition, WTO rules do allow discrimination on the grounds of national security, which the US invoked yesterday when making the announcement.
The contracts are worth $18.6 billion.
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Attack of the Killer Bras
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOFPublished: December 10, 2003
The New York Times
Shun Shui Village is in China's Guangdong province.
HUN SHUI VILLAGE, China — The most important thing happening in the world today is the rise of China, and that's the reality hovering in the background of the delicate U.S.-China talks under way in Washington this week.
So I decided to "cover" the talks not in Washington, where it's easy to be overwhelmed by details of Chinese bra imports and U.S. policy toward Taiwan, but here in southern China's Taishan area, which accounted for a majority of Chinese emigrants to the U.S. until a few decades ago.
The descendants of Taishan include my wife, Sheryl WuDunn. (A WuDunn is what you get when you cross a Wu ancestor who doesn't speak English with a U.S. immigration officer who doesn't speak Chinese.) When Sheryl and I first traveled here in 1987, we met her distant cousins, poor peasants who spent their time wading in the rice paddies. The entire clan had about as many teeth as Sheryl does.
Back then, Shun Shui Village had no paved roads, no motor vehicles, no telephones and three black-and-white televisions. Now, along the paved road through the village, every house has a color television, and most have phones and motorcycles. Among Sheryl's distant kin, the youngest son of parents with only a second-grade education has just graduated from the university and bought a cellphone.
Multiply Shun Shui's transformation by the 700,000 villages of China, and you begin to appreciate the implications of China's industrial revolution. One study has found that China accounted for 25 percent of the world's economic growth from 1995 to 2002 (measured by purchasing power parity), more than the U.S.
Soaring Chinese demand has become the major force propping up world energy prices, and the International Energy Agency predicts that China will have net oil imports of four million barrels a day by 2010 — twice Iraq's current oil exports.
Where will that oil come from? What will China's carbon emissions mean for global warming and the New Jersey coastline? Will the U.S. and China go to war over Taiwan, or over the Diaoyu Islands now controlled by Japan? Will China sustain its boom or collapse into chaos?
Instead of engaging on these issues, the White House and both parties in Congress seem intent on launching a new trade war with China. Washington appears unable to focus on anything more weighty than the supposed Chinese dumping of bras and nightgowns in our markets (even though U.S. companies don't make bras).
That's myopia. There was a wonderful American movie in 1966 called "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming," which poked fun at anti-Soviet hysteria. Maybe it's time for an update: "The Chinese Nighties Are Coming!"
President Bush has generally handled China quite sensibly, and it was also smart to warn Taiwan against steps toward independence. China's leaders have reciprocated, and have been especially helpful this year in restraining North Korea.
But with next year's elections approaching, the White House has turned demagogic and begun clubbing China over trade so as to win votes in manufacturing states, while endangering cooperation on a broader agenda. There are plenty of reasons to prod China to behave better — I know people who are in prison here, including a South Korean photographer (who often shoots pictures for The Times), whose only sin was documenting the plight of North Korean refugees in China. But our trade denunciations are petty and intellectually dishonest.
Unlike Japan a decade ago, China does not have a huge global trade surplus. Its imports are growing faster than its exports, up 40 percent this year. And exports to America grew after factories moved from Taiwan and Hong Kong to the mainland. Moreover, some 52 percent of China's exports come from foreign-owned factories.
One can quibble about China's keeping its currency cheap to promote exports. But China is stabilizing its currency by buying U.S. debt, financing Mr. Bush's budget deficit and keeping U.S. mortgage rates low.
Managing the rise of China will be one of the world's toughest challenges in coming years. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is offering Mr. Bush both cooperation and patience, and it ill behooves us to slap him around for selling us cheap bras
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOFPublished: December 10, 2003
The New York Times
Shun Shui Village is in China's Guangdong province.
HUN SHUI VILLAGE, China — The most important thing happening in the world today is the rise of China, and that's the reality hovering in the background of the delicate U.S.-China talks under way in Washington this week.
So I decided to "cover" the talks not in Washington, where it's easy to be overwhelmed by details of Chinese bra imports and U.S. policy toward Taiwan, but here in southern China's Taishan area, which accounted for a majority of Chinese emigrants to the U.S. until a few decades ago.
The descendants of Taishan include my wife, Sheryl WuDunn. (A WuDunn is what you get when you cross a Wu ancestor who doesn't speak English with a U.S. immigration officer who doesn't speak Chinese.) When Sheryl and I first traveled here in 1987, we met her distant cousins, poor peasants who spent their time wading in the rice paddies. The entire clan had about as many teeth as Sheryl does.
Back then, Shun Shui Village had no paved roads, no motor vehicles, no telephones and three black-and-white televisions. Now, along the paved road through the village, every house has a color television, and most have phones and motorcycles. Among Sheryl's distant kin, the youngest son of parents with only a second-grade education has just graduated from the university and bought a cellphone.
Multiply Shun Shui's transformation by the 700,000 villages of China, and you begin to appreciate the implications of China's industrial revolution. One study has found that China accounted for 25 percent of the world's economic growth from 1995 to 2002 (measured by purchasing power parity), more than the U.S.
Soaring Chinese demand has become the major force propping up world energy prices, and the International Energy Agency predicts that China will have net oil imports of four million barrels a day by 2010 — twice Iraq's current oil exports.
Where will that oil come from? What will China's carbon emissions mean for global warming and the New Jersey coastline? Will the U.S. and China go to war over Taiwan, or over the Diaoyu Islands now controlled by Japan? Will China sustain its boom or collapse into chaos?
Instead of engaging on these issues, the White House and both parties in Congress seem intent on launching a new trade war with China. Washington appears unable to focus on anything more weighty than the supposed Chinese dumping of bras and nightgowns in our markets (even though U.S. companies don't make bras).
That's myopia. There was a wonderful American movie in 1966 called "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming," which poked fun at anti-Soviet hysteria. Maybe it's time for an update: "The Chinese Nighties Are Coming!"
President Bush has generally handled China quite sensibly, and it was also smart to warn Taiwan against steps toward independence. China's leaders have reciprocated, and have been especially helpful this year in restraining North Korea.
But with next year's elections approaching, the White House has turned demagogic and begun clubbing China over trade so as to win votes in manufacturing states, while endangering cooperation on a broader agenda. There are plenty of reasons to prod China to behave better — I know people who are in prison here, including a South Korean photographer (who often shoots pictures for The Times), whose only sin was documenting the plight of North Korean refugees in China. But our trade denunciations are petty and intellectually dishonest.
Unlike Japan a decade ago, China does not have a huge global trade surplus. Its imports are growing faster than its exports, up 40 percent this year. And exports to America grew after factories moved from Taiwan and Hong Kong to the mainland. Moreover, some 52 percent of China's exports come from foreign-owned factories.
One can quibble about China's keeping its currency cheap to promote exports. But China is stabilizing its currency by buying U.S. debt, financing Mr. Bush's budget deficit and keeping U.S. mortgage rates low.
Managing the rise of China will be one of the world's toughest challenges in coming years. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is offering Mr. Bush both cooperation and patience, and it ill behooves us to slap him around for selling us cheap bras
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
. . And Who Might Stop Him
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, December 9, 2003; Page A27
Democrats these days resemble a group of friends standing in the middle of a railroad track and watching as a giant locomotive bears down on them. The train is still far enough away so they have time to move aside. But the friends just stand there, locked in an argument over whether they should jump to the left or the right.
The danger all Democrats anticipate is the Republican Party's genius at using what have come to be called "wedge issues" to win over voters who lean Democratic on matters of economics and social justice but not on questions related to culture, religion or the meaning of patriotism.
This weekend, many of the Democratic presidential candidates chose to offer a crash course in Wedge Politics 101. The professors were not of one mind.
Howard Dean's bluntness hasn't failed him yet. His latest coup was word yesterday that Al Gore will endorse him. Dean was characteristically blunt this weekend: "Why can't we talk about jobs, health care and education," Dean said on "Fox News Sunday," "which is what we all have in common, instead of allowing the Republicans to consistently divide us by talking about guns, God, gays, abortion and all this controversial social stuff that we're not going to come to an agreement on?"
For Democrats, it's a nice idea. The problem is that President Bush and his party won't just sit there and let his opponents run on issues of their own choosing. In 2002 Bush injected the war on terrorism, the debate over Iraq and the battle over homeland security into one election contest after another. Democrats could not snap their fingers and force the voters to care only about economics and health care.
Sen. John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and retired Gen. Wesley Clark believe their own biographies are the answer to the most powerful Republican wedge of the moment: patriotism. At the Florida Democratic Convention last weekend, Clark gave a spirited preview of how he would turn red, white and blue into Democratic colors. Clutching an American flag posted next to him on the platform, Clark declared: "We'll never let George W. Bush or Tom DeLay or John Ashcroft tell us we don't have this flag. It belongs to us."
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina proposes to beat back one set of wedge issues rooted in culture with a battery of Democratic wedges rooted in economic class. As a son of the South born to humble circumstances, Edwards argues that his voice is far more authentic than Bush's in speaking for NASCAR dads, country-and-western moms and the slew of other groups the political class is inventing to label culturally conservative middle-class voters. Edwards's detailed program is designed to make a moral issue out of what he calls the president's preference for "wealth" over "work." And Edwards keeps taking regionalist shots at Dean -- Edwards did it again on Sunday -- for proposing to "tell Southerners what they should believe."
The fact that Democrats are arguing about the perils of wedge politics suggests an important turn in this presidential contest. Now that Dean is established as the party's front-runner, the debate among rank-and-file Democrats as well as Democratic elites is over whether Dean himself will be a walking wedge issue for Bush. Will he be easily parodied as an antiwar New England liberal (even though Dean is a centrist on many issues) who avoided service in Vietnam and is out of touch with God-fearing, cultural conservatives, despite his opposition to gun control?
That Dean has begun to address the issue directly suggests that his finely tuned political antennae are sending him a warning. But Dean's critics in the party have reason to fear that because no single rival has caught on as an alternative, Dean may sweep past a split field by winning small plurality victories in the Southern primaries that begin after voting in Iowa and New Hampshire. Gore's endorsement strengthens the chances that Dean will pull off a Southern coup similar to Gov. Michael Dukakis's showing in the 1988 primaries. Against three rivals from Southern and border states (one of them was Gore), the Massachusetts governor did just well enough in the South to secure the nomination.
And even if Rep. Richard Gephardt slows down the Dean machine by beating Dean in Iowa, Gephardt's continued viability could further slow the emergence of a single anti-Dean alternative.
And so the war over wedges is really two contests: Dean against the field to prove that he would not be God's gift to Bush political maestro Karl Rove; and the battle among Dean's rivals to emerge quickly as the alternative who can answer both Rove's wedges and Dean's passionate Web-heads, contributors and organizers.
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, December 9, 2003; Page A27
Democrats these days resemble a group of friends standing in the middle of a railroad track and watching as a giant locomotive bears down on them. The train is still far enough away so they have time to move aside. But the friends just stand there, locked in an argument over whether they should jump to the left or the right.
The danger all Democrats anticipate is the Republican Party's genius at using what have come to be called "wedge issues" to win over voters who lean Democratic on matters of economics and social justice but not on questions related to culture, religion or the meaning of patriotism.
This weekend, many of the Democratic presidential candidates chose to offer a crash course in Wedge Politics 101. The professors were not of one mind.
Howard Dean's bluntness hasn't failed him yet. His latest coup was word yesterday that Al Gore will endorse him. Dean was characteristically blunt this weekend: "Why can't we talk about jobs, health care and education," Dean said on "Fox News Sunday," "which is what we all have in common, instead of allowing the Republicans to consistently divide us by talking about guns, God, gays, abortion and all this controversial social stuff that we're not going to come to an agreement on?"
For Democrats, it's a nice idea. The problem is that President Bush and his party won't just sit there and let his opponents run on issues of their own choosing. In 2002 Bush injected the war on terrorism, the debate over Iraq and the battle over homeland security into one election contest after another. Democrats could not snap their fingers and force the voters to care only about economics and health care.
Sen. John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, and retired Gen. Wesley Clark believe their own biographies are the answer to the most powerful Republican wedge of the moment: patriotism. At the Florida Democratic Convention last weekend, Clark gave a spirited preview of how he would turn red, white and blue into Democratic colors. Clutching an American flag posted next to him on the platform, Clark declared: "We'll never let George W. Bush or Tom DeLay or John Ashcroft tell us we don't have this flag. It belongs to us."
Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina proposes to beat back one set of wedge issues rooted in culture with a battery of Democratic wedges rooted in economic class. As a son of the South born to humble circumstances, Edwards argues that his voice is far more authentic than Bush's in speaking for NASCAR dads, country-and-western moms and the slew of other groups the political class is inventing to label culturally conservative middle-class voters. Edwards's detailed program is designed to make a moral issue out of what he calls the president's preference for "wealth" over "work." And Edwards keeps taking regionalist shots at Dean -- Edwards did it again on Sunday -- for proposing to "tell Southerners what they should believe."
The fact that Democrats are arguing about the perils of wedge politics suggests an important turn in this presidential contest. Now that Dean is established as the party's front-runner, the debate among rank-and-file Democrats as well as Democratic elites is over whether Dean himself will be a walking wedge issue for Bush. Will he be easily parodied as an antiwar New England liberal (even though Dean is a centrist on many issues) who avoided service in Vietnam and is out of touch with God-fearing, cultural conservatives, despite his opposition to gun control?
That Dean has begun to address the issue directly suggests that his finely tuned political antennae are sending him a warning. But Dean's critics in the party have reason to fear that because no single rival has caught on as an alternative, Dean may sweep past a split field by winning small plurality victories in the Southern primaries that begin after voting in Iowa and New Hampshire. Gore's endorsement strengthens the chances that Dean will pull off a Southern coup similar to Gov. Michael Dukakis's showing in the 1988 primaries. Against three rivals from Southern and border states (one of them was Gore), the Massachusetts governor did just well enough in the South to secure the nomination.
And even if Rep. Richard Gephardt slows down the Dean machine by beating Dean in Iowa, Gephardt's continued viability could further slow the emergence of a single anti-Dean alternative.
And so the war over wedges is really two contests: Dean against the field to prove that he would not be God's gift to Bush political maestro Karl Rove; and the battle among Dean's rivals to emerge quickly as the alternative who can answer both Rove's wedges and Dean's passionate Web-heads, contributors and organizers.
A two part series from today's Washington Post:
How Dean Could Win . . . By William Kristol
Tuesday, December 9, 2003; Page A27
Going into the final day of the college football regular season, Oklahoma was undefeated and ranked No. 1. The Sooners had the best defense in the nation, had outscored their opponents by an average of 35 points and had a nine-game winning streak against ranked teams. "OU: Among best ever?" USA Today asked (rhetorically) on Friday. Kansas State, by contrast, had three losses, and had never won a Big 12 championship. Oklahoma was favored by two touchdowns. Kansas State, of course, won, 35-7.
For the next 11 months, Republicans, conservatives and Bush campaign operatives should, on arising, immediately following their morning prayers, repeat that score aloud 10 times. Underdogs do sometimes win. Howard Dean could beat President Bush. Saying you're not overconfident (as the OU players repeatedly did) is no substitute for really not being overconfident. And if Bush loses next November, it's over. There's no BCS computer to give him another shot at the national championship in the Sugar Bowl.
Could Dean really win? Unfortunately, yes. The Democratic presidential candidate has, alas, won the popular presidential vote three times in a row -- twice, admittedly, under the guidance of the skilled Bill Clinton, but most recently with the hapless Al Gore at the helm. And demographic trends (particularly the growth in Hispanic voters) tend to favor the Democrats going into 2004.
But surely the fact that Bush is now a proven president running for reelection changes everything? Sort of. Bush is also likely to be the first president since Herbert Hoover under whom there will have been no net job creation, and the first since Lyndon Johnson whose core justification for sending U.S. soldiers to war could be widely (if unfairly) judged to have been misleading.
And President Bush will be running for reelection after a two-year period in which his party has controlled both houses of Congress. The last two times the American people confronted a president and a Congress controlled by the same party were in 1980 and 1994. The voters decided in both cases to restore what they have consistently preferred for the last two generations: divided government. Since continued GOP control of at least the House of Representatives seems ensured, the easiest way for voters to re-divide government would be to replace President Bush in 2004. And with a plurality of voters believing the country is on the wrong track, why shouldn't they boot out the incumbent president?
But is Dean a credible alternative? Was Kansas State? Dean has run a terrific primary campaign, the most impressive since Carter in 1976. It's true that, unlike Carter (and Clinton), Dean is a Northeastern liberal. But he's no Dukakis. Does anyone expect Dean to be a patsy for a Bush assault, as the Massachusetts governor was?
And how liberal is Dean anyway? He governed as a centrist in Vermont, and will certainly pivot to the center the moment he has the nomination. And one underestimates, at this point when we are all caught up in the primary season, how much of an opportunity the party's nominee has to define or redefine himself once he gets the nomination.
Thus, on domestic policy, Dean will characterize Bush as the deficit-expanding, Social Security-threatening, Constitution-amending (on marriage) radical, while positioning himself as a hard-headed, budget-balancing, federalism-respecting compassionate moderate. And on foreign and defense policy, look for Dean to say that he was and remains anti-Iraq war (as, he will point out, were lots of traditional centrist foreign policy types). But Dean will emphasize that he has never ruled out the use of force (including unilaterally). Indeed, he will say, he believes in military strength so strongly that he thinks we should increase the size of the Army by a division or two. It's Bush, Dean will point out, who's trying to deal with the new, post-Sept. 11 world with a pre-Sept. 11 military.
But what about Sept. 11? Surely Bush's response to the attacks, and his overall leadership in the war on terrorism, remain compelling reasons to keep him in office. They do for me. But while Bush is committed to victory in that war, his secretary of state seems committed to diplomatic compromise, and his secretary of defense to an odd kind of muscle-flexing-disengagement. And when Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., said on Sunday with regard to Iraq, "We're going to get out of there as quickly as we can, but not before we finish the mission at hand," one wonders: Wouldn't Howard Dean agree with that formulation? Indeed, doesn't the first half of that sentence suggest that even the most senior of Bush's subordinates haven't really internalized the president's view of the fundamental character of this war? If they haven't, will the American people grasp the need for Bush's continued leadership on Nov. 2? If not, prepare for President Dean.
The writer is editor of the Weekly Standard.
How Dean Could Win . . . By William Kristol
Tuesday, December 9, 2003; Page A27
Going into the final day of the college football regular season, Oklahoma was undefeated and ranked No. 1. The Sooners had the best defense in the nation, had outscored their opponents by an average of 35 points and had a nine-game winning streak against ranked teams. "OU: Among best ever?" USA Today asked (rhetorically) on Friday. Kansas State, by contrast, had three losses, and had never won a Big 12 championship. Oklahoma was favored by two touchdowns. Kansas State, of course, won, 35-7.
For the next 11 months, Republicans, conservatives and Bush campaign operatives should, on arising, immediately following their morning prayers, repeat that score aloud 10 times. Underdogs do sometimes win. Howard Dean could beat President Bush. Saying you're not overconfident (as the OU players repeatedly did) is no substitute for really not being overconfident. And if Bush loses next November, it's over. There's no BCS computer to give him another shot at the national championship in the Sugar Bowl.
Could Dean really win? Unfortunately, yes. The Democratic presidential candidate has, alas, won the popular presidential vote three times in a row -- twice, admittedly, under the guidance of the skilled Bill Clinton, but most recently with the hapless Al Gore at the helm. And demographic trends (particularly the growth in Hispanic voters) tend to favor the Democrats going into 2004.
But surely the fact that Bush is now a proven president running for reelection changes everything? Sort of. Bush is also likely to be the first president since Herbert Hoover under whom there will have been no net job creation, and the first since Lyndon Johnson whose core justification for sending U.S. soldiers to war could be widely (if unfairly) judged to have been misleading.
And President Bush will be running for reelection after a two-year period in which his party has controlled both houses of Congress. The last two times the American people confronted a president and a Congress controlled by the same party were in 1980 and 1994. The voters decided in both cases to restore what they have consistently preferred for the last two generations: divided government. Since continued GOP control of at least the House of Representatives seems ensured, the easiest way for voters to re-divide government would be to replace President Bush in 2004. And with a plurality of voters believing the country is on the wrong track, why shouldn't they boot out the incumbent president?
But is Dean a credible alternative? Was Kansas State? Dean has run a terrific primary campaign, the most impressive since Carter in 1976. It's true that, unlike Carter (and Clinton), Dean is a Northeastern liberal. But he's no Dukakis. Does anyone expect Dean to be a patsy for a Bush assault, as the Massachusetts governor was?
And how liberal is Dean anyway? He governed as a centrist in Vermont, and will certainly pivot to the center the moment he has the nomination. And one underestimates, at this point when we are all caught up in the primary season, how much of an opportunity the party's nominee has to define or redefine himself once he gets the nomination.
Thus, on domestic policy, Dean will characterize Bush as the deficit-expanding, Social Security-threatening, Constitution-amending (on marriage) radical, while positioning himself as a hard-headed, budget-balancing, federalism-respecting compassionate moderate. And on foreign and defense policy, look for Dean to say that he was and remains anti-Iraq war (as, he will point out, were lots of traditional centrist foreign policy types). But Dean will emphasize that he has never ruled out the use of force (including unilaterally). Indeed, he will say, he believes in military strength so strongly that he thinks we should increase the size of the Army by a division or two. It's Bush, Dean will point out, who's trying to deal with the new, post-Sept. 11 world with a pre-Sept. 11 military.
But what about Sept. 11? Surely Bush's response to the attacks, and his overall leadership in the war on terrorism, remain compelling reasons to keep him in office. They do for me. But while Bush is committed to victory in that war, his secretary of state seems committed to diplomatic compromise, and his secretary of defense to an odd kind of muscle-flexing-disengagement. And when Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., said on Sunday with regard to Iraq, "We're going to get out of there as quickly as we can, but not before we finish the mission at hand," one wonders: Wouldn't Howard Dean agree with that formulation? Indeed, doesn't the first half of that sentence suggest that even the most senior of Bush's subordinates haven't really internalized the president's view of the fundamental character of this war? If they haven't, will the American people grasp the need for Bush's continued leadership on Nov. 2? If not, prepare for President Dean.
The writer is editor of the Weekly Standard.
David Brooks on Howard Dean. A pretty interesting analysis of Dean's recent persona, but even more interesting is the concept of the " Internet Man ", which I thik spreads well beyond Howard Dean. It s a social phenomenon, not at all confined to Mr. Dean.
The Mysterious Stranger
By DAVID BROOKS
My moment of illumination about Howard Dean came one day in Iowa when I saw him lean into a crowd and begin a sentence with, "Us rural people. . . ."
Dean grew up on Park Avenue and in East Hampton. If he's a rural person, I'm the Queen of Sheba. Yet he said it with conviction. He said it uninhibited by any fear that someone might laugh at or contradict him.
It was then that I saw how Dean had liberated himself from his past, liberated himself from his record and liberated himself from the restraints that bind conventional politicians. He has freed himself to say anything, to be anybody.
Other candidates run on their biographies or their records. They keep policy staff from their former lives, and they try to keep their policy positions reasonably consistent.
But Dean runs less on biography than any other candidate in recent years. When he began running for president, he left his past behind, along with the encumbrances that go with it. As governor of Vermont, he was a centrist Democrat. But the new Dean who appeared on the campaign trail — a jarring sight for the Vermonters who knew his previous self — is an angry maverick.
The old Dean was a free trader. The new Dean is not. The old Dean was open to Medicare reform. The new Dean says Medicare is off the table. The old Dean courted the N.R.A.; the new Dean has swung in favor of gun control. The old Dean was a pro-business fiscal moderate; the new Dean, sounding like Ralph Nader, declares, "We've allowed our lives to become slaves to the bottom line of multinational corporations all over the world."
The philosopher George Santayana once observed that Americans don't bother to refute ideas — they just leave them behind. Dean shed his upper-crust WASP self, then his centrist governor self, bursting onto the national scene as a mysterious stranger who comes out of nowhere to battle corruption.
The newly liberated Dean is uninhibited. A normal person with no defense policy experience would not have the chutzpah to say, "Mr. President, if you'll pardon me, I'll teach you a little about defense." But Dean says it. A normal person, with an eye to past or future relationships, wouldn't compare Congress to "a bunch of cockroaches." Dean did it.
The newly liberated Dean doesn't worry about having a coherent political philosophy. There is a parlor game among Washington pundits called How Liberal Is Howard Dean? One group pores over his speeches, picks out the things no liberal could say and argues that he's actually a centrist. Another group picks out the things no centrist could say and argues that he's quite liberal.
But the liberated Dean is beyond categories like liberal and centrist because he is beyond coherence. He'll make a string of outspoken comments over a period of weeks — on "re-regulating" the economy or gay marriage — but none of them have any relation to the others. When you actually try to pin him down on a policy, you often find there is nothing there.
For example, asked how we should proceed in Iraq, he says hawkishly, "We can't pull out responsibly." Then on another occasion he says dovishly, "Our troops need to come home," and explains, fantastically, that we need to recruit 110,000 foreign troops to take the place of our reserves. Then he says we should not be spending billions more dollars there. Then he says again that we have to stay and finish the job.
At each moment, he appears outspoken, blunt and honest. But over time he is incoherent and contradictory.
He is, in short, a man unrooted. This gives him an amazing freshness and an exhilarating freedom.
Everybody talks about how the Internet has been key to his fund-raising and organization. Nobody talks about how it has shaped his persona. On the Internet, the long term doesn't matter, as long as you are blunt and forceful at that moment. On the Internet, a new persona is just a click away. On the Internet, everyone is loosely tethered, careless and free. Dean is the Internet man, a string of exhilarating moments and daring accusations.
The only problem is that us rural folk distrust people who reinvent themselves. Many of us rural folk are nervous about putting the power of the presidency in the hands of a man who could be anyone.
The Mysterious Stranger
By DAVID BROOKS
My moment of illumination about Howard Dean came one day in Iowa when I saw him lean into a crowd and begin a sentence with, "Us rural people. . . ."
Dean grew up on Park Avenue and in East Hampton. If he's a rural person, I'm the Queen of Sheba. Yet he said it with conviction. He said it uninhibited by any fear that someone might laugh at or contradict him.
It was then that I saw how Dean had liberated himself from his past, liberated himself from his record and liberated himself from the restraints that bind conventional politicians. He has freed himself to say anything, to be anybody.
Other candidates run on their biographies or their records. They keep policy staff from their former lives, and they try to keep their policy positions reasonably consistent.
But Dean runs less on biography than any other candidate in recent years. When he began running for president, he left his past behind, along with the encumbrances that go with it. As governor of Vermont, he was a centrist Democrat. But the new Dean who appeared on the campaign trail — a jarring sight for the Vermonters who knew his previous self — is an angry maverick.
The old Dean was a free trader. The new Dean is not. The old Dean was open to Medicare reform. The new Dean says Medicare is off the table. The old Dean courted the N.R.A.; the new Dean has swung in favor of gun control. The old Dean was a pro-business fiscal moderate; the new Dean, sounding like Ralph Nader, declares, "We've allowed our lives to become slaves to the bottom line of multinational corporations all over the world."
The philosopher George Santayana once observed that Americans don't bother to refute ideas — they just leave them behind. Dean shed his upper-crust WASP self, then his centrist governor self, bursting onto the national scene as a mysterious stranger who comes out of nowhere to battle corruption.
The newly liberated Dean is uninhibited. A normal person with no defense policy experience would not have the chutzpah to say, "Mr. President, if you'll pardon me, I'll teach you a little about defense." But Dean says it. A normal person, with an eye to past or future relationships, wouldn't compare Congress to "a bunch of cockroaches." Dean did it.
The newly liberated Dean doesn't worry about having a coherent political philosophy. There is a parlor game among Washington pundits called How Liberal Is Howard Dean? One group pores over his speeches, picks out the things no liberal could say and argues that he's actually a centrist. Another group picks out the things no centrist could say and argues that he's quite liberal.
But the liberated Dean is beyond categories like liberal and centrist because he is beyond coherence. He'll make a string of outspoken comments over a period of weeks — on "re-regulating" the economy or gay marriage — but none of them have any relation to the others. When you actually try to pin him down on a policy, you often find there is nothing there.
For example, asked how we should proceed in Iraq, he says hawkishly, "We can't pull out responsibly." Then on another occasion he says dovishly, "Our troops need to come home," and explains, fantastically, that we need to recruit 110,000 foreign troops to take the place of our reserves. Then he says we should not be spending billions more dollars there. Then he says again that we have to stay and finish the job.
At each moment, he appears outspoken, blunt and honest. But over time he is incoherent and contradictory.
He is, in short, a man unrooted. This gives him an amazing freshness and an exhilarating freedom.
Everybody talks about how the Internet has been key to his fund-raising and organization. Nobody talks about how it has shaped his persona. On the Internet, the long term doesn't matter, as long as you are blunt and forceful at that moment. On the Internet, a new persona is just a click away. On the Internet, everyone is loosely tethered, careless and free. Dean is the Internet man, a string of exhilarating moments and daring accusations.
The only problem is that us rural folk distrust people who reinvent themselves. Many of us rural folk are nervous about putting the power of the presidency in the hands of a man who could be anyone.
Monday, December 08, 2003
Democracy, Not Off-the-Shelf
By William Raspberry
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A25
The Bush administration seems determined to get into the business of exporting democracy to the Middle East. And a lot of Americans are wondering what took so long. After all, America is the political, military, economic and, yes, cultural envy of the world, and the one thing we are certain has produced that enviable status is the way we govern ourselves: U.S. democracy.
Viewed that way, it seems downright uncharitable not to offer the world a draft of the elixir that has made us what we are.
Thus it was that a month ago, in one of the more stirring speeches of his presidency, George W. Bush was urging a "crusade for freedom," beginning, conveniently, in Iraq but spreading with such force as to engulf the whole region, including our friends the royally ruled Saudis.
And I'm thinking: Maybe we ought to back off just a bit.
It isn't that I don't favor democracy. I do, and I'd love to see more of it in the world. But because of America's peculiar history (excluding that unpleasant little episode called slavery), we may be thinking of democracy as a lot easier, more natural and more inevitable than it is.
We sometimes behave as though, if we can only get democracy on the supermarket shelf alongside other forms of government, the world will choose it the way it would choose fresh-squeezed orange juice over canned.
So what's wrong with getting democracy on the shelf? Nothing at all. I'd love it to be available; I'd love to see our foreign policy promote it; I'd love us to tilt toward democracy at every opportunity.
But when the talk is in the context of Iraq (with overtones of transforming the Middle East), it seems to suggest not just support of local democratic stirrings but a policy of injecting democracy every chance we get. And even that will strike some people as no more inappropriate than the idea of Christian proselytizing has struck others. I mean, those people need Jesus, and it's our God-ordained role to spread that word.
Sometimes, in religion and in politics, it works. There are more Christians and more democracies today than there were a generation ago.
Still, there is reason for caution. After all, it takes a lot more than theoretical availability to get nations to choose democracy, and it takes a lot more than elections, however free or fair, to produce it. I'm reminded of an observation uttered more than 10 years ago by someone who understood the point.
"Elections are not automatically the establishment of democracy. . . . Democracy is a process, painful to establish in a land that has never known democracy, where suspicions are high, where absolutism has been the way of life. In a way it's a cultural thing that needs to be based upon respect for human rights, for other people's opinions, for institutions, including the courts. Elections are only a step -- a necessary step -- toward the goal of democracy."
The words were from Francois Benoit, a representative of Haiti's government during the exile of the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But they are worth noting and remembering.
So is this: Democracies are not necessarily engines of great morality. The Communitarian Network recently invited responses to the Bush proposal that America reconsider its 60-year support of autocracies in the Middle East. Here is what one respondent, a Canadian professor, had to say:
"Democracies can be worse than autocracies. To be poor in democratic Mexico or Brazil is certainly worse than to be unrepresented in Cuba or Saudi Arabia. We should know better than to put much stock in the form of government. That it is necessary even to say this shows how tightly we are in the grip of a clichéd ideology."
That is professor Michael Neumann's caution. Here is mine: When you combine overwhelming military might with the utter certainty that your way is the one true way, the temptation can be very strong to impose truth -- political or religious -- at gunpoint.
We could do with a bit less cocksure certainty on both counts.
By William Raspberry
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A25
The Bush administration seems determined to get into the business of exporting democracy to the Middle East. And a lot of Americans are wondering what took so long. After all, America is the political, military, economic and, yes, cultural envy of the world, and the one thing we are certain has produced that enviable status is the way we govern ourselves: U.S. democracy.
Viewed that way, it seems downright uncharitable not to offer the world a draft of the elixir that has made us what we are.
Thus it was that a month ago, in one of the more stirring speeches of his presidency, George W. Bush was urging a "crusade for freedom," beginning, conveniently, in Iraq but spreading with such force as to engulf the whole region, including our friends the royally ruled Saudis.
And I'm thinking: Maybe we ought to back off just a bit.
It isn't that I don't favor democracy. I do, and I'd love to see more of it in the world. But because of America's peculiar history (excluding that unpleasant little episode called slavery), we may be thinking of democracy as a lot easier, more natural and more inevitable than it is.
We sometimes behave as though, if we can only get democracy on the supermarket shelf alongside other forms of government, the world will choose it the way it would choose fresh-squeezed orange juice over canned.
So what's wrong with getting democracy on the shelf? Nothing at all. I'd love it to be available; I'd love to see our foreign policy promote it; I'd love us to tilt toward democracy at every opportunity.
But when the talk is in the context of Iraq (with overtones of transforming the Middle East), it seems to suggest not just support of local democratic stirrings but a policy of injecting democracy every chance we get. And even that will strike some people as no more inappropriate than the idea of Christian proselytizing has struck others. I mean, those people need Jesus, and it's our God-ordained role to spread that word.
Sometimes, in religion and in politics, it works. There are more Christians and more democracies today than there were a generation ago.
Still, there is reason for caution. After all, it takes a lot more than theoretical availability to get nations to choose democracy, and it takes a lot more than elections, however free or fair, to produce it. I'm reminded of an observation uttered more than 10 years ago by someone who understood the point.
"Elections are not automatically the establishment of democracy. . . . Democracy is a process, painful to establish in a land that has never known democracy, where suspicions are high, where absolutism has been the way of life. In a way it's a cultural thing that needs to be based upon respect for human rights, for other people's opinions, for institutions, including the courts. Elections are only a step -- a necessary step -- toward the goal of democracy."
The words were from Francois Benoit, a representative of Haiti's government during the exile of the democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. But they are worth noting and remembering.
So is this: Democracies are not necessarily engines of great morality. The Communitarian Network recently invited responses to the Bush proposal that America reconsider its 60-year support of autocracies in the Middle East. Here is what one respondent, a Canadian professor, had to say:
"Democracies can be worse than autocracies. To be poor in democratic Mexico or Brazil is certainly worse than to be unrepresented in Cuba or Saudi Arabia. We should know better than to put much stock in the form of government. That it is necessary even to say this shows how tightly we are in the grip of a clichéd ideology."
That is professor Michael Neumann's caution. Here is mine: When you combine overwhelming military might with the utter certainty that your way is the one true way, the temptation can be very strong to impose truth -- political or religious -- at gunpoint.
We could do with a bit less cocksure certainty on both counts.
Hillary, Congenital Hawk
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: December 8, 2003
Columnist Page: William Safire
Forum: Discuss This Column
E-mail: safire@nytimes.com
WASHINGTON — Senator Hillary Clinton, sweeping through the Sunday morning talk shows after her somewhat upstaged Thanksgiving visit to the war zones, startled her conservative detractors by emerging as a congenital hawk. (I used that adjective "congenital," in the sense of "habitual," in derogation of her credibility back when the world was young.)
She does not go along with the notion that the Iraqi dictator posed no danger to the U.S.: "I think that Saddam Hussein was certainly a potential threat" who "was seeking weapons of mass destruction, whether or not he actually had them."
When Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" gave her the opening to say she had been misled when she voted for the Senate resolution authorizing war, Senator Clinton countered with a hard line: "There was certainly adequate intelligence without it being gilded and exaggerated by the administration to raise questions about chemical and biological programs and a continuing effort to obtain nuclear power."
On forgotten Afghanistan, like many hawks, she was critical of the failure of European nations "to fulfill the commitment that NATO made to Afghanistan. I don't think we have enough American troops and we certainly don't have the promised NATO troops."
Would she support an increase of U.S. troops in Iraq? Senator Clinton associated herself with the views of Republican Senator John McCain, who disagrees with Bush and the generals who say they have adequate strength there. She cited McCain's conviction that "we need more troops, and we need a different mix of troops." And she directed a puissant message to what some of us consider the told-you-so doves who refuse to deal with today's geopolitical reality: "Whether you agreed or not that we should be in Iraq, failure is not an option."
Her range of expressed opinions urging us to "stay the course" can only be characterized as tough-minded.
Of course, to the relief of Democratic partisans, she is dutifully critical: like some neocons, she zaps the Bush administration for failing to plan adequately for the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam. She proposes an "Iraq Reconstruction Stability Authority" to build an international bridge to a greater U.N. role. Clinton also wants a close look at where our intelligence went wrong, but takes a long view of the weak gathering and faulty analysis: "This was intelligence going back into my husband's administration, going back to the first President Bush's administration."
Consider the political meaning of all this. Here is a Democrat who has no regrets for voting for the resolution empowering the president to invade Iraq; who insists repeatedly and resolutely that "failure is not an option"; who is ready to send in a substantially greater U.S. force to avert any such policy failure — and yet whose latest poll ratings show her to be the favorite of 43 percent of Democrats, three times the nomination support given front-runner Howard Dean.
What cooks? One reason is that Hillary stands aloof, hard to get, while all the others are slavering for support. Another could be that most Democrats don't yet realize she's a hard-liner at heart. A third is that her personal appeal to liberals (and apoplectic opposition from conservatives) overwhelms all Democrats' policy differences. A fourth — and don't noise this around — could be that she speaks for the silent majority of centrist Democrats who yearn for the Old Third Way without Mr. Clinton.
Now for a moment's mischief. If President Bush wins re-election, Hillary would likely gain the Democratic nomination in 2008, and would run as the favorite against, say, Republican Bill Frist or Jeb Bush. But if Howard Dean wins nomination and election in 2004, he would surely be the Democratic candidate again in 2008, and by the time 2012 rolls around, Hillary would be a wizened, doddering Medicare recipient facing a tide of voter resentment after eight years of Dean's executive-privilege arrogance in power (I exaggerate for effect).
Thus, envision this G.O.P. whispering campaign soon directed to women, liberals and the legions of centrist, semi-hawkish, non-angry Democrats: If you want the Clinton Restoration to the White House in '08, the only way to make it happen is to stay the course with Bush in '04.
A dirty trick? Undoubtedly. I disavow any connection to it.
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: December 8, 2003
Columnist Page: William Safire
Forum: Discuss This Column
E-mail: safire@nytimes.com
WASHINGTON — Senator Hillary Clinton, sweeping through the Sunday morning talk shows after her somewhat upstaged Thanksgiving visit to the war zones, startled her conservative detractors by emerging as a congenital hawk. (I used that adjective "congenital," in the sense of "habitual," in derogation of her credibility back when the world was young.)
She does not go along with the notion that the Iraqi dictator posed no danger to the U.S.: "I think that Saddam Hussein was certainly a potential threat" who "was seeking weapons of mass destruction, whether or not he actually had them."
When Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" gave her the opening to say she had been misled when she voted for the Senate resolution authorizing war, Senator Clinton countered with a hard line: "There was certainly adequate intelligence without it being gilded and exaggerated by the administration to raise questions about chemical and biological programs and a continuing effort to obtain nuclear power."
On forgotten Afghanistan, like many hawks, she was critical of the failure of European nations "to fulfill the commitment that NATO made to Afghanistan. I don't think we have enough American troops and we certainly don't have the promised NATO troops."
Would she support an increase of U.S. troops in Iraq? Senator Clinton associated herself with the views of Republican Senator John McCain, who disagrees with Bush and the generals who say they have adequate strength there. She cited McCain's conviction that "we need more troops, and we need a different mix of troops." And she directed a puissant message to what some of us consider the told-you-so doves who refuse to deal with today's geopolitical reality: "Whether you agreed or not that we should be in Iraq, failure is not an option."
Her range of expressed opinions urging us to "stay the course" can only be characterized as tough-minded.
Of course, to the relief of Democratic partisans, she is dutifully critical: like some neocons, she zaps the Bush administration for failing to plan adequately for the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam. She proposes an "Iraq Reconstruction Stability Authority" to build an international bridge to a greater U.N. role. Clinton also wants a close look at where our intelligence went wrong, but takes a long view of the weak gathering and faulty analysis: "This was intelligence going back into my husband's administration, going back to the first President Bush's administration."
Consider the political meaning of all this. Here is a Democrat who has no regrets for voting for the resolution empowering the president to invade Iraq; who insists repeatedly and resolutely that "failure is not an option"; who is ready to send in a substantially greater U.S. force to avert any such policy failure — and yet whose latest poll ratings show her to be the favorite of 43 percent of Democrats, three times the nomination support given front-runner Howard Dean.
What cooks? One reason is that Hillary stands aloof, hard to get, while all the others are slavering for support. Another could be that most Democrats don't yet realize she's a hard-liner at heart. A third is that her personal appeal to liberals (and apoplectic opposition from conservatives) overwhelms all Democrats' policy differences. A fourth — and don't noise this around — could be that she speaks for the silent majority of centrist Democrats who yearn for the Old Third Way without Mr. Clinton.
Now for a moment's mischief. If President Bush wins re-election, Hillary would likely gain the Democratic nomination in 2008, and would run as the favorite against, say, Republican Bill Frist or Jeb Bush. But if Howard Dean wins nomination and election in 2004, he would surely be the Democratic candidate again in 2008, and by the time 2012 rolls around, Hillary would be a wizened, doddering Medicare recipient facing a tide of voter resentment after eight years of Dean's executive-privilege arrogance in power (I exaggerate for effect).
Thus, envision this G.O.P. whispering campaign soon directed to women, liberals and the legions of centrist, semi-hawkish, non-angry Democrats: If you want the Clinton Restoration to the White House in '08, the only way to make it happen is to stay the course with Bush in '04.
A dirty trick? Undoubtedly. I disavow any connection to it.
