Black Thugs and the Death of Sean Taylor

I addressed the state of the black lower third in my earlier post, "Sean Taylor and the African-American Crisis."

In that post, Jason Whitlock refers to the "black KKK" and the pain, fear, and destruction arising from the cycle of violence associated with that group. Whitlock recognizes that the notion of a black KKK is unorthodox and dramatic, but other commentators regularly make similar points. In a recent article at Newsweek, Raina Kelley argues that the Taylor murder brought out all the old stereotypes. She argues that young black men are stigmatized as gangstas, asking for trouble:

There was a sad inevitability to the media coverage of NFL star Sean Taylor's murder last week in Miami—Taylor succumbed to blood loss after a bullet severed his femoral artery. First, there was shock and disbelief—a standard response to a life cut down in its prime. Taylor was just 24 years old but was already widely feared throughout the NFL as one of its toughest hitters. He will be sorely missed in the Redskins' defensive backfield. Much of that grief, however, failed to gel into compassion or consideration of his legacy. Instead, it became a search for Sean Taylor the thug.

Taylor and his girlfriend were sleeping with their 18-month-old daughter beside them when someone broke into his house and shot him. So far, investigators are considering it a botched robbery and have brought in two teens and a young man for questioning. Within hours of his death, though, cable-news hosts and sports columnists were looking for proof that he was a bad boy who lived and died gangsta. Taylor did give them some ammo: he skipped a day of the NFL-mandated rookie symposium three years ago and was fined seven times for late hits and uniform infractions. He spat in the face of an opponent during a playoff game, missed a mini-camp and sometimes freelanced outside the defensive scheme—all considered bad form in the image-conscious NFL. Off the field, he was pulled over for a DUI in 2004, but the charges were thrown out. In 2005, Taylor was arrested for aggravated assault and faced 46 years in jail for waving a gun and beating up the alleged thieves of his ATVs. He pleaded no contest to reduced charges, and was sentenced to 18 months probation. His SUV was later shot 15 times in a drive-by. These events indicate that Taylor was far from an angel. But do they mean he was a menace to society destined to die bloody?

The drive-by shooting and then the birth of his daughter, Jackie, in 2006 seem to have scared Taylor straight. Taylor's close friend, Arizona Cardinals player Antrel Rolle, even suggested Taylor was targeted because he was trying to build a new life. His team has been eager to tell the press that he had matured. Fox Sports reported that Taylor wanted to work hard and play by team rules: "If you don't take it serious enough, eventually one day you're going to say, 'Oh, I could have done this, I could have done that'," he said at this year's training camp.

But Taylor's redemption song has been forgotten in the crush to judge him by the character of his assassins. Michael Wilbon, an African-American sports columnist from The Washington Post, commented in his Q&A blog, "Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it. He ain't the first and won't be the last." Yes, Taylor grew up in a violent world if you take the football into account. Yet he was primarily raised by his chief-of-police father in a middle-class home and attended private school.

So why the rush to make Taylor a thug? Perhaps because that's how the average American sees young black men—unapologetic thugs hustling and acting out. But for oft-mentioned exceptions such as Oprah Winfrey, Barack Obama and Will Smith, our media are awash with thugs—whether it be "I Love NY" on VH1, "Socially Offensive Behavior" on BET or the recently released movie "American Gangster," starring Denzel Washington. Demeaning images of African-Americans are encouraged not only by mainstream media sources that use them to attract the eyeballs and dollars of black youth, but also by black entertainers who profit from it. The Rev. Al Sharpton was biting in his analysis of the situation last week. "Young black men have become stigmatized by this image of young black men as thugs," he said. "And young black men have bought into it. Now studious young black men aren't really black, and the people who are fighting this imagery aren't keeping it real."

So with another death of a young black man blanketing news coverage, African-American leaders are beginning to ask if the thug is a self-created narrative that's gotten out of control. Black males ages 15 to 19 die by homicide at 46 times the rate of white males their age. They are also seven times more likely to be incarcerated than their white peers. Groups like Concerned Black Men, Enough is Enough, and the National Urban League are fighting back against what they portray as a culture of self-destruction fueled by entrenched poverty, racism, failing schools and the relentless hip-hop fairy tale of drug dealer turned Veuve Clicquot-swilling multimillionaire rapper. Leroy Hughes of Concerned Black Men describes their work as "putting kids in a position to mitigate stereotypes. They don't know that they are more than what they see on TV."

And there is growing proof that African-Americans are weary of their sons' being encouraged or assumed to be thugs. In a survey performed last month by the Pew Research Center, 71 percent of African-Americans said that rap had a negative impact, while 54 percent of young black adults believed that portrayals of African-Americans in movies and TV had a negative impact on society's view of black people. Taylor was not a thug. But it is sadly true that he will not be the last young African-American to die pointlessly. If we are to change this course of events, both the name-calling and the glorification of the gangsta life will need to stop.

I think Kelley is right to warn against the thug stereotype. That said, brandishing a gun and beating thieves does count a bit toward a vigilante image that's at odds with reasonable NFL expectations of players as role models.

Michael Wilbon, cited by Kelley, wonders why the Redskins star slept with a machete under his bed, if he was truly turning his life around. Taylor had a reputation in the 'hood, and somebody was out to get him. Why didn't he get out? He'd made it as a pro. He had a choices:

Here's something we know: People close to Taylor, people he trusted to advise him, told him he'd be better off if he left South Florida, that anybody looking for him could find him in the suburbs of Miami just as easily as they could have found him at the U a few years ago. I'm told that Taylor was told to go north, to forget about Miami. I can understand why he would want to have a spot in or near his home town, but I sure wish he hadn't.

The issue of separating yourself from a harmful environment is a recurring theme in the life of black men. It has nothing to do with football, or Sean Taylor or even sports. To frame it as a sports issue is as insulting as it is naive. Most of us, perhaps even the great majority of us who grew up in big urban communities, have to make a decision at some point to hang out or get out.

The kid who becomes a pharmaceutical rep has the same call to make as the lawyer or delivery guy or accountant or sportswriter or football player: Cut off anybody who might do harm, even those who have been friends from the sandbox, or go along to get along.

Mainstream folks -- and, yes, this is a code word for white folks -- see high-profile athletes dealing with this dilemma and think it's specific to them, while black folks know it's everyday stuff for everybody, for kids with aspirations of all kinds -- even for a middle-class kid with a police-chief father, such as Taylor -- from South Central to Southeast to the South Side. Some do, some don't. Some will, some won't. Some can, some cannot. Often it's gut-wrenching. Usually, it's necessary. For some, it takes a little bit too long.

I'm saddened by the death of Sean Taylor. That said, I don't think attacking the media for focusing on Taylor's thug-like attributes helps build the agenda of individualism, entrepreneurship, education, and responsibility that will be necessay to lift those mired at the bottom rungs of the black lower third.

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UPDATE: The Washington Post has an update on the burglary at Sean Taylor's home, "New Details Released in Taylor Shooting Case."

The Politics of the National Intelligence Estimate

John Bolton has a great essay today at the Washington Post, which points out the deep flaws in NIE Iran report. The article's worth a good read, but I wanted to cite the final conclusion here:

...many involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as "intelligence judgments."

That such a flawed product could emerge after a drawn-out bureaucratic struggle is extremely troubling. While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all.

These are points I stressed in my earlier posts on the NIE, here and here. I'm especially bothered by Iran's new bellicosity this week, which puts the lie, in my opinion, to the benign image of Iran that's being bandied about by the media and left-wing Bush-bashers.

Let me also point readers to an awesome post over at Falling Panda, "News From Iran Shows Bush Doctrine Works." The author, Dan Joseph, really did a comprehensive analysis of both the domestic and international influences and consequences surrounding the NIE:

For several years now we have heard conspiracy theories floated by Iraq war opponents everywhere that the Bush administration had pretty much settled on attacking Iran. To hear them tell it, it wasn't simply going to be a strategic bombing of the rogue nation's nuclear facilities, but rather an all-out, Iraq-style, ground war.

Of course, there is no evidence that the administration was planning such an attack. But with the mission in Iraq going badly, it was political rhetoric which succeeded in making the far-left and the Democratic base hate the president even more and unite the left around the idea that a war against Iran was inevitable unless John Edwards or some other far-left dove was brought in immediately to stop it.

Now, keep in mind: all of this fear-mongering of another Bush war came against the backdrop of an Iran which most believed was in the process of (or close to being in the process of) building a nuclear weapon. Despite the obvious danger of such a prospect, the left showed that they were far more concerned with an imperialist America actually using its military than they were of a radical Islamic nation with a nuke.

Now a new NIE intelligence estimate tells us that Iran halted their development of nuclear weapons in 2003.

The left seized on this finding immediately and pointed to it as evidence that the Bush administration over-hyped the threat posed by Iran, with the goal of bringing us into another war. We've come to expect this type of knee-jerk reaction from the tin-foil hat crowd and Bush haters, but as is usual these days, on matters of foreign policy the opposition let their mouths get a couple steps ahead of their brains on this one.

Read the whole thing. Joseph's piece is a classic. I especially like this part:

I shouldn't even have to point out that those who are trying to score political points off of this NIE report are the same folks who have been calling the President a liar or implying that he misled the nation in the lead up to the Iraq war.

Bingo! Not only does the report embolden Iran, it has inflamed the intemperate, ill-informed anti-Bush attacks across the web.

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UPDATE: Today's Christian Science Monitor includes an article with an eye-opening title, "Iran's Nuclear Know-How Unimpeded."

Economy is Top Priority for Voters in 2008

This Wall Street Journal article focuses on economic turbulence as the big election issue of 2008:

For months, Dale Albright, a 30-year-old Tampa, Fla., bankruptcy lawyer, has watched as his clients buckle under mortgage and credit-card debts. After an expensive recent hospital stay, he's worried that a run of bad luck could leave him in financial straits, too.

"I care about bringing our troops home...and for the most part, I believe as far as domestic terrorism goes, I think we've got that pretty much under control," Mr. Albright says. "But the economy really scares me." A longtime Republican, this election he says he's voting Democrat.

With the parties just weeks away from the first presidential nominating contests, economic concerns are seizing a top spot in many voters' minds. Falling housing prices, rising gasoline prices and health-insurance worries are supplanting the war in Iraq and concern over terrorism....

While the Bush administration has reduced its 2008 growth forecast slightly -- to 2.7% from 3.1% -- officials maintain the country is in generally good shape. "I believe we're going to continue to grow," Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in an interview. "I've always said these credit-market problems weren't going to work themselves out quickly. And the housing-credit market, the price of oil -- these are the risks. But we have a very diverse, healthy economy."

Fifty-two percent of Americans say the economy and health care are most important to them in choosing a president, compared with 34% who cite terrorism and social and moral issues, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll. That is the reverse of the percentages recorded just before the 2004 election. The poll also shows that voters see health care eclipsing the Iraq war for the first time as the issue most urgently requiring a new approach.

The figures partly reflect the better news from Iraq, where security has improved since the U.S. added troops and cut deals with Sunni Muslim tribal leaders. Some voters link the issues of the economy and Iraq. Richard Scown, a 61-year-old equipment-lease broker in Las Vegas, frets about "all the money we're spending there, and all the issues we have here."

Mr. Scown, a lifelong Republican, says he and his wife probably will vote for the Democratic nominee. "The Republicans haven't shown anything yet to suggest they've got a clue about the direction we're going with the economy," he says.

Irma Lipscomb, a 79-year-old Republican-leaning voter from New Market, Va., says she and her husband were just billed $300 for their first month's delivery of home-heating oil, nearly twice what they paid monthly last winter. And while her Social Security checks will have a small cost-of-living increase in the new year, she says, "they'll take it all back for health care" -- now her top concern.

Overall inflation measured 3.5% over the past year, but energy costs jumped 14%. "If you look at a market basket of middle-income goods -- college tuition, gas, child care, health care, food -- you will find inflation growing twice as quickly as the overall measure," says Jared Bernstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. While wages have kept slightly ahead of inflation in recent years, many workers have seen their hours cut and their take-home pay stagnate, he says....

In hard times, as voters look to government for relief, Democrats traditionally have the edge. That is especially true when the incumbent president is a Republican, and, as in Mr. Bush's case, has low marks in polls for fiscal stewardship. In a Journal/NBC poll in July, respondents by double-digit margins preferred the Democratic Party over the Republican Party to deal with the economy, health care, gas prices and the federal deficit.

Until lately, Republicans have been fairly quiet on economic issues. Last week's CNN-YouTube Republican debate focused on the hot-button social issues important to the social conservatives dominant in the party today -- abortion, gay rights, illegal immigration and gun control.

Timing may play against the Republicans, because the current slowdown could accelerate next year, just as voters are making up their minds. "The house-price decline in particular is likely to depress confidence and spending a great deal further," says Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, a research firm based in Valhalla, N.Y.

The pessimism, moreover, isn't momentary but reflects voters' worries beyond the current business cycle. Early last month, a sobering consensus emerged from a focus group of a dozen Republican-leaning voters in the Richmond, Va., area, sponsored by the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The participants unanimously agreed that they didn't think their children's generation would be better off than their own -- breaking with traditional American optimism -- largely due to the debt future taxpayers will inherit.

"Who's buying our loans?" said former secretary June Beninghove, 67. "Who's going to own us? We are going to give ourselves to another country because of debt."

To one Democratic strategist this all sounds familiar. Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton's campaign manager, James Carville, had the words "The Economy, Stupid" written on a Marks-a-Lot board at campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Ark. He says the point of the message was "to keep everybody focused. It was a change election -- change versus more of the same."

Says Mr. Carville, "If anything, the anxiety is bigger now."

Carville's claim is not well substantiated. The recession of 1991 saw high unemployment and a slow job recovery. People in some parts of the country were calling the downturn a second Great Depression. The United States was just beginning defense conversion following the end of the Cold War, and the shift to the entertainment, technology-centered economy of today was still half a decade in the making.

We have economic volatility today, certainly; and there's going to be further shakeout from the housing collapse. But as long as job growth stays steady and exports continue at their robust levels, I doubt we'll have as dire a situation as during the first Bush administration.

Continued progress in Iraq will take the big Democratic election-winner off the table, so look for further economic demonization of the administration by Democrats who'll do anything for a return to power.

Was President Bush Behind the NIE Report?

Robert Baer, over at Time, speculates that President Bush gave the thumbs up for the NIE Iran report:

Bombing Iran, it seems, is now off the table. There's no other reasonable take on the latest National Intelligence Estimate that concludes Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

But there is also no doubt that the Bush White House was behind this NIE. While the 16 intelligence agencies that make up the "intelligence community" contribute to each National Intelligence Estimate, you can bet that an explosive, 180-degree turn on Iran like this one was greenlighted by the President.

And explode is what the hawks in and outside the Administration are about to do. They were counting on Bush being the one President prepared to take on Iran. As recently as last month, Bush warned of World War III if Iran so much as thought about building a bomb. Bush's betrayal is not going to go down well. The neocons, clinging to a sliver of hope, will accuse the intelligence community of incompetence, pointing out that as late as 2005 it estimated "with high confidence" that Iran was building a bomb.

Bush's National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, put the best face on the new report, claiming that it was our diplomacy and saber rattling that forced the Iranians to back down. As for the intelligence community, it explained its reversal by hinting that new intelligence had surfaced.

Neither explanation is entirely accurate. The real story behind this NIE is that the Bush Administration has finally concluded Iran is a bridge too far. With Iranian-backed Shi'a groups behaving themselves, things are looking up in Iraq. In Lebanon, the anti-Syrian coalition and pro-Syrian coalition, which includes Iran's surrogate Hizballah, reportedly have settled on a compromise candidate, the army commander General Michel Suleiman. Bombing Iran now would upset the fragile balance in these two countries. Not to mention that Hizballah has threatened to shell Israel if we as much as touch a hair on Iran's head.

Then there are the Gulf Arabs. For the last year and a half, ever since the Bush Administration started to hint that it might hit Iran, they have been sending emissaries to Tehran to assure the Iranians they're not going to help the United States. But in private, the Gulf Arabs have been reminding Washington that Iran is a rabid dog: Don't even think about kicking it, the Arabs tell us. If you have to do something, shoot it dead. Which is something the United States can't do.

So how far is Iran from a nuke? The new NIE says 10 to 15 years, maybe. But that's a wild guess. The truth is that Iran is a black hole, and it's entirely conceivable Iran could build a bomb and we wouldn't know until they tested it.

Yet for now we should at least be happy with the good news: Armageddon is postponed.

Baer provides absolutely no evidence for his claims, so I lend no credence to this analysis.

Perhaps the administration is looking for some breathing room. But after mounting a strong PR campaign against Iran all year, and with success in Iraq giving the U.S. a platform to advance its agenda on Iran, it makes little sense to me to capitulate to Tehran.

Mike Huckabee Surges Nationally

When I wrote the title to my recent post, "Mike Huckabee: The Republican Frontrunner?, I was joking a bit (hence the question mark).

But as today's Los Angeles Times poll shows, Huckbee really is pulling to the front of the pack in the race for the GOP presidential nomination:

Mike Huckabee, the ascendant Republican presidential candidate in Iowa, is enjoying a surge of support across the country -- and Rudolph W. Giuliani seems to be paying the biggest price, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

Huckabee has pulled into second place, close behind Giuliani, in the national survey of Republican-leaning voters. The results signal that Huckabee's candidacy is catching fire beyond Iowa -- where several recent polls have shown him with a slight lead or in a virtual dead heat with Mitt Romney, who long had led in the state where the nomination process officially starts.

In the Times/Bloomberg poll, Huckabee was preferred by 17% of likely GOP voters -- up from 7% in a similar October survey.

Support for Giuliani, the former New York mayor who once enjoyed a commanding lead in national polls, slid 9 percentage points over the last two months -- to 23%.

Support for other GOP candidates remained largely unchanged.

Analysis of the results and interviews with poll respondents show that Huckabee is drawing on conservatives and churchgoers who like his open embrace of religious values -- a powerful faction of the party that is skeptical about Giuliani because of his more liberal views on social issues.

Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, "is charismatic and very outspoken about his faith," said Julie Bricker, a student in College Station, Texas. "I agree with a lot of the points he makes [opposing] abortion and gay rights."

And as Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, prepares for a Thursday speech on religious values, an overwhelming majority of the GOP-leaning voters surveyed said their view of him was not influenced by his being Mormon. Thirteen percent said his religious affiliation would make them less likely to vote for him.

Read the whole thing.

The poll also finds Hillary Clinton maintaining her strong lead nationally on the Democratic side (so the recent tightening in Iowa's Democratic polling hasn't filtered across the country).

It's the Republican race that's most fascinating, though. My previous Huckabee post generated an interesting comment thread, which included some aggressive Fred Thompson supporters who came off more like Ron Paul's "Paulbots" that supporters of a mainstream GOP candidate.

As readers know, I'm all for John McCain. The Times poll has the Arizona Senator trailing Fred Thomspon by three percentage points (at 11 percent). As I've suggested, a New Hampshire win or strong second-place showing for McCain is essential to his campaign's survival.

Poll Shows More Public Backing on Iraq

I noted the improvement in public support for the Iraq war in an earlier post, "Public Opinion Rebounds on Iraq," This uptick in public sentiment is increasingly sustained, according to a new Gallup survey:

Public views of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq have improved over the past month, and Americans' outlook about winning the war is brighter than it was in September....

Four in 10 Americans now say the U.S. troop surge in Iraq that began earlier this year is making the situation there better. This is up from 34% four weeks ago and from 22% when Gallup first measured it in July.

Since August, more Americans have tended to say the surge is making the situation in Iraq better rather than worse, but today's ratio -- 40% vs. 20% -- is the most positive yet recorded. Thirty-nine percent of Americans currently say the surge is not making any difference; this is down from 43% in September and 51% in July.

Read the whole thing. The change in opinion is found mostly among Republican-leaning independents. Democrats harbor blackened views of the Bush administration, and they viewed General David Petraeus' September progress report with skepticism.

These findings are significant in showing how defeatist mentality is not isolated to the Democratic Party's radical, netroots base.

In other Iraq news, there's a new Kurdish-Sunni agreement on oil profits that is marking the beginning of a broader cooperative effort between the two ethnic factions - this is part of the "political reconciliation benchmark" Democrats keep yammering about. Jules Crittenden has the story.

Confidence Game: Questioning Intelligence on Iran

The nation's editorial pages are abuzz this morning following the NIE bombshell yesterday. Here's the Wall Street Journal's opinion:

As recently as 2005, the consensus estimate of our [intelligence] spooks was that "Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons" and do so "despite its international obligations and international pressure." This was a "high confidence" judgment. The new NIE says Iran abandoned its nuclear program in 2003 "in response to increasing international scrutiny." This too is a "high confidence" conclusion. One of the two conclusions is wrong, and casts considerable doubt on the entire process by which these "estimates"--the consensus of 16 intelligence bureaucracies--are conducted and accorded gospel status.

Our own "confidence" is not heightened by the fact that the NIE's main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials," according to an intelligence source. They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

For a flavor of their political outlook, former Bush Administration antiproliferation official John Bolton recalls in his recent memoir that then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage "described Brill's efforts in Vienna, or lack thereof, as 'bull--.'" Mr. Brill was "retired" from the State Department by Colin Powell before being rehired, over considerable internal and public protest, as head of the National Counter-Proliferation Center by then-National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

No less odd is the NIE's conclusion that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to "international pressure." The only serious pressure we can recall from that year was the U.S. invasion of Iraq. At the time, an Iranian opposition group revealed the existence of a covert Iranian nuclear program to mill and enrich uranium and produce heavy water at sites previously unknown to U.S. intelligence. The Bush Administration's response was to punt the issue to the Europeans, who in 2003 were just beginning years of fruitless diplomacy before the matter was turned over to the U.N. Security Council.

Mr. Bush implied yesterday that the new estimate was based on "some new information," which remains classified. We can only hope so. But the indications that the Bush Administration was surprised by this NIE, and the way it scrambled yesterday to contain its diplomatic consequences, hardly inspire even "medium confidence" that our spooks have achieved some epic breakthrough. The truth could as easily be that the Administration in its waning days has simply lost any control of its bureaucracy--not that it ever had much.

In any case, the real issue is not Iran's nuclear weapons program, but its nuclear program, period. As the NIE acknowledges, Iran continues to enrich uranium on an industrial scale--that is, build the capability to make the fuel for a potential bomb. And it is doing so in open defiance of binding U.N. resolutions. No less a source than the IAEA recently confirmed that Iran already has blueprints to cast uranium in the shape of an atomic bomb core.

The U.S. also knows that Iran has extensive technical information on how to fit a warhead atop a ballistic missile. And there is considerable evidence that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps has been developing the detonation devices needed to set off a nuclear explosion at the weapons testing facility in Parchin. Even assuming that Iran is not seeking a bomb right now, it is hardly reassuring that they are developing technologies that could bring them within a screw's twist of one.

Here's the New York Sun:

Iran has been enriching uranium, or nuclear fuel, for nearly two years despite two Security Council resolutions urging them to suspend. To believe the Mullahs have halted their nuclear weapons program, one has to believe that all of those spinning centrifuges in Natanz are to fuel power plants in a country that is the world's third leading exporter of petroleum and natural gas.

That is precisely how Iran's diplomats defend their enrichment. They spin their centrifuges in blatant violation of their prior agreements, but they say they are within their rights because they are pursuing alternative energy and not atomic bombs. The reactor in Natanz, they insist, is for peaceful purposes only. The document released yesterday buys into this line, but contains so much hedging that it will take months to sort out what the analysts are implying in the way of policy.

Robert Kagan, at the Washington Post, discusses the implications of the NIE (via Memeorandum):

Regardless of what one thinks about the National Intelligence Estimate's conclusion that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 -- and there is much to question in the report -- its practical effects are indisputable. The Bush administration cannot take military action against Iran during its remaining time in office, or credibly threaten to do so, unless it is in response to an extremely provocative Iranian action. A military strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities was always fraught with risk. For the Bush administration, that option is gone.

Neither, however, will the administration make further progress in winning international support for tighter sanctions on Iran. Fear of American military action was always the primary reason Europeans pressured Tehran. Fear of an imminent Iranian bomb was secondary. Bringing Europeans together in support of serious sanctions was difficult before the NIE. Now it is impossible.

With its policy tools broken, the Bush administration can sit around isolated for the next year. Or it can seize the initiative, and do the next administration a favor, by opening direct talks with Tehran.

Negotiating will appear at first to be a sign of weakness. The Iranians could use talks to exploit fissures between the United States and its allies, and within the U.S. political system.

But there is a good case for negotiations. Many around the world and in the United States have imagined that the obstacle to improved Iranian behavior has been America's unwillingness to talk. This is a myth, but it will hamper American efforts now and for years to come. Eventually, the United States will have to take the plunge, as it has with so many adversaries throughout its history.

This is as good a time as any. The United States is not in a position of weakness. The embarrassment of the NIE will be fleeting. Strategic realities are more durable. America remains powerful in the world and in the Middle East. The success of the surge policy in Iraq means that the United States may be establishing a sustainable position in the region -- a far cry from a year ago, when it seemed about to be driven out. If Iraq is on the road to recovery, this shifts the balance against Iran, which was already isolated.

The U.S. could make lemonade here if it frames a diplomatic push to include both nuclear and human rights issues, similar to the Helsinki process with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Recall Shelby Steele's recent argument as well, in which he argued that the U.S. could build its international image with a bold diplomatic stroke on Tehran.

There is an alternative to the diplomatic game: Continue work with members of the U.N. Security Council for a new round of sanctions on Iran, combined with increased international intelligence cooperation to get to the bottom of Iran's nuclear program. If new, incontrovertible evidence showing Iran's progress toward nuclear capabilities can be secured, the military option can be placed back on table. I'd have more confidence in that game.

See also my previous post, "Iran and Nuclear Weapons."

Iran and Nuclear Weapons

Today's big news item is obviously the release of the National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003. The Washington Post argues the NIE's a blow to the Bush administration:

President Bush got the world's attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

The new intelligence report released yesterday not only undercut the administration's alarming rhetoric over Iran's nuclear ambitions but could also throttle Bush's effort to ratchet up international sanctions and take off the table the possibility of preemptive military action before the end of his presidency.

Iran had been shaping up as perhaps the dominant foreign policy issue of Bush's remaining year in office and of the presidential campaign to succeed him. Now leaders at home and abroad will have to rethink what they thought they knew about Tehran's intentions and capabilities.

"It's a little head-spinning," said Daniel Benjamin, an official on President Bill Clinton's National Security Council. "Everybody's going to be trying to scratch their heads and figure out what comes next."

Critics seized on the new National Intelligence Estimate to lambaste what Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards called "George Bush and Dick Cheney's rush to war with Iran." Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), echoing other Democrats, called for "a diplomatic surge" to resolve the dispute with Tehran. Jon Wolfsthal, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, termed the revelation "a blockbuster development" that "requires a wholesale reevaluation of U.S. policy."

But the White House said the report vindicated its concerns because it concluded that Iran did have a nuclear weapons program until halting it in 2003 and it showed that U.S.-led diplomatic pressure had succeeded in forcing Tehran's hand. "On balance, the estimate is good news," said national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. "On the one hand, it confirms that we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons. On the other hand, it tells us that we have made some progress in trying to ensure that that does not happen."

Hadley disagreed that the report showed that past administration statements have been wrong, noting that collecting intelligence on a "hard target" such as Iran is notoriously difficult. "Welcome to the real world," he said.

The left-wing blogosphere is having a field day with the NIE report (see Memeorandum). (Glenn Greenwald's got a rabidly (radical) anti-Bush post on the affair, "Our Serious Foreign Policy Geniuses Strike Again.")

I'm going to take a closer look at the full report, but I find the conclusions odd, based on my own reading of journalistic and scholarly sources on Tehran's march to weapons capability.

Just Sunday, Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins - authors of The Nuclear Jihadist - published a penetrating essay warning of the threat from Iran's development program:

In recent weeks, international attention has been focused on the political crisis in Pakistan and whether the military there could lose control of the nukes that Khan helped develop -- estimated at between 50 and 120 devices -- if the political situation were to spiral out of control or if radical Islamists were to take over.

But we believe the bigger threat today comes from Iran, where the country's leaders are forging defiantly ahead toward the bomb -- even as the Bush administration seems equally relentless in its determination to stop them. This is a recipe for a global confrontation that could make the Iraq war seem tame by comparison, and it has gotten to this point thanks to A.Q. Khan.

The most immediate threat is that Iran's scientists will soon complete their mastery of the uranium enrichment cycle, enabling them to produce fissile material that could fuel a civilian reactor (as they claim is their intention) or, in higher concentration, power a bomb. A Nov. 15 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that 3,000 centrifuges are online at Iran's Natanz underground enrichment plant, and that Iran is in the final stages before the production of enriched uranium. While IAEA officials suggest privately that technical hurdles remain, the fact is that Iran is on the verge of enriching uranium on an industrial scale....

Even more troubling, and less noticed by the media, was Iran's admission to the IAEA in November that it had made substantial progress in testing an advanced type of centrifuge, known as the P-2. Iran's enrichment plant now uses P-1 centrifuges, but investigators have learned that the P-2, like its predecessor, the P-1, came to Iran directly from Khan. This machine would cut in half the time it takes to enrich uranium, moving up a showdown with the United States and its allies. Estimates on when Iran might be capable of developing a nuclear weapon have ranged from two to 10 years.

Iran, of course, did not simply volunteer to the IAEA that it was working on the P-2; it's never quite that simple. The IAEA's dealings with Tehran are replete with examples, ever since Iran's secret nuclear program was exposed by an exile group in 2002, of officials denying the existence of one program after another, only to acknowledge them when confronted by evidence to the contrary. The IAEA has credited Iran with cooperating on some key issues, but viewed in context, the repeated evasions undermine Iran's credibility on virtually everything it has said about nuclear issues, including whether there is a military side to its program....

The existence of the P-2 designs troubled... the IAEA, and they pressed the Iranians for months over whether they had translated them into actual machines. Eventually Iran conceded that work had been done on the P-2 by a private contractor, but insisted that the project had been abandoned. U.S. intelligence and skeptics at the IAEA doubted the claim, speculating instead that the P-2 could be the nucleus of a parallel enrichment project still hidden from the IAEA.

Fast forward to April 2006. That's when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acknowledged to the media that Iranian scientists were indeed working on the P-2, which he boasted would quadruple Iran's enrichment capability. The IAEA had to wait until Nov. 7, 2007, for formal acknowledgment from Iran of the work. By then, Iran was running mechanical tests on the P-2s, a step short of introducing uranium hexafluoride -- the final stage before the production of enriched uranium.

The story of the P-2s is a case study in how Iran has managed to make substantial gains in enrichment technology despite international scrutiny and pressure.

Some outstanding political science research also has offered credible warnings on the consequence of Iranian nuclear capability. Colin Dueck and Ray Takeyh, in their provocative article, "Iran’s Nuclear Challenge," argued that while the timing was at issue, Iran's procurement of nuclear weapons would be a dangerous development:

Once Iran completes the necessary infrastructure, from mining to enriching uranium at the suitable weapons-grade level, and masters the engineering skill required to assemble a bomb, it could cross the threshold in a short period of time. All this would depend on the scope and scale of the program and the level of national resources committed to this task. Iran today does have an accelerated program, but not a crash program similar to Pakistan’s in the early 1970s, when the entirety of national energies was mobilized behind the task of constructing a nuclear device. In this context, Iran’s persistent determination to complete the fuel cycle—which it has a right to do under the NPT—is ominous, because doing so would bring the country close to a weapons capability.

There's certain to be further debate on Iran's program, especially since the political origins of the NIE's most recent findings are suspect. Norman Podhoretz, over at Commentary, notes his deep suspicions:

These findings are startling, not least because in key respects they represent a 180-degree turn from the conclusions of the last NIE on Iran’s nuclear program. For that one, issued in May 2005, assessed “with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons” and to press on “despite its international obligations and international pressure.”

In other words, a full two years after Iran supposedly called a halt to its nuclear program, the intelligence community was still as sure as it ever is about anything that Iran was determined to build a nuclear arsenal. Why then should we believe it when it now tells us, and with the same “high confidence,” that Iran had already called a halt to its nuclear-weapons program in 2003? Similarly with the intelligence community’s reversal on the effectiveness of international pressure. In 2005, the NIE was highly confident that international pressure had not lessened Iran’s determination to develop nuclear weapons, and yet now, in 2007, the intelligence community is just as confident that international pressure had already done the trick by 2003.

It is worth remembering that in 2002, one of the conclusions offered by the NIE, also with “high confidence,” was that “Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.” And another conclusion, offered with high confidence too, was that “Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material.”

I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, is now bending over backward to counter what has up to now been a similarly universal view (including as is evident from the 2005 NIE, within the intelligence community itself) that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons. I also suspect that, having been excoriated as well for minimizing the time it would take Saddam to add nuclear weapons to his arsenal, the intelligence community is now bending over backward to maximize the time it will take Iran to reach the same goal.

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

If this is what lies behind the release of the new NIE, its authors can take satisfaction in the response it has elicited from the White House. Quoth Stephen Hadley, George W. Bush’s National Security Adviser: “The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically—without the use of force—as the administration has been trying to do.”

I should add that I offer these assessments and judgments with no more than “moderate confidence.”

One of America's top Middle East experts, Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, released an analysis of UN and IAEA reporting on Iran last week. Here's the conclusion from the synopsis:

The evidence presented provides strong indications that Iran is pursuing a
nuclear weapons program. Specifically, Iran is known to have made significant
efforts in all of the following areas, most of which have been tracked by the
IAEA for some time:

* Beryllium (neutron reflector)
* Polonium (neutron initiator)
* Plutonium separation
* Uranium enrichment
* Machining of Uranium hemispheres
* Re-entry vehicle design
* Acquisition of North Korean (Chinese) weapons design? AQ Khan network transfers
* High explosive lenses

The attached briefing shows that the IAEA has traced a pattern of
Iranian efforts that fit a coherent and consistent nuclear weapons program that
is difficult to explain in any other way, but no certainties are involved.
Moreover, major uncertainties exist in virtually every aspect of any effort to
characterize what kind of program Iran may be intending to create, when it will
have a significant stock of weapons, and how it intends to deploy and exploit
such a capability.

At the same time, there is wide range of possible
Iranian activities that the IAEA may never be able to fully address, even if
Iran does adopt the full range of NPT protocols...

The CSIS report is hefty (at 55 pages), but it notes that of 2006, Iran stopped reporting information to the IAEA under international monitoring and transparency protocols. Even Mohammed ElBaradei recognized that Iran's evasion and recalcitrance created a situation of crisis proportions.

See also Democracy Arsenal (not a neoconservative outfit in the least), which argues:

You don't want to believe the Bush Administration . . . I'm right there with you. But concern about Iran's nuclear program was not exclusively American; it was shared by every member of the Security Council and Germany.

In the end, I doubt the NIE report will provide any closure to the issue. There might be administration retreat from the march to war, but those at odds with the report will question the impartiality of the intelligence community. Peaceniks opposed to the robust exercise of American military power will rejoice that their dire warnings have beeen vindicated (and they'll continue to rail against the "neocons" and their black helicopters).

The ultimate winner is, of course, Iran, which can call for reprisals against the West as its leadership continues to work for its ultimate goal of establishing regional hegemony in the Middle East.

Oprah's Rewriting Every Line for Clinton-Obama Race

This post is a follow up to my last entry, "Going Down? Hillary Clinton on the Defense in Iowa." In that essay I noted how Barack Obama has closed the gap in Iowa, and his momentum is threatening Hillary's inevitability.

For a great follow-up, check out Dan Gerstein at the Wall Street Journal, who argues that Clinton's sorry response to Oprah Winfrey's Obama endorsement tops the recent implosion of the Clinton juggernaut:

It's tempting to write off the celebrity-endorsement bout between the Obama and Clinton campaigns - with Oprah Winfrey in Barack Obama's corner and Barbra Streisand in Hillary Clinton's--as just another episode of the Democratic Party's long-running series of superstar superficiality.

But there's actually a meaningful and telling metaphor wrapped up in this fleeting game of dueling divas, one that helps explain why Sen. Obama's much-hyped yet largely unfulfilling candidacy is finally breaking through, and why the Clinton juggernaut appears (at least for the moment) to be breaking down.

Indeed, after spending much of this year struggling to escape the experience box that the Clinton campaign had so adroitly stuffed him into, Sen. Obama could not have asked for a better, more striking contrast of surrogate symbols to draw out his major differences with the front-runner, and to drive home his increasingly trenchant argument that Mrs. Clinton is the candidate of the status quo.

Let's start with the "O-factor." Oprah is the Swiss Army knife of political validators, a spectacularly accomplished black woman who is admired by Americans across every demographic, and would thus be a boon to any candidate. But her particular potency for Sen. Obama in this contest is not her race or gender or even the sum of her many parts, but what she is perceived to be lacking--a political agenda.

More than anything, Oprah is a uniquely transcendent figure in our public life: engaged in serious debates and willing to put her money where her mouth is, yet unsullied by the ugly political and culture wars of the past two decades, and independent in her thinking and affiliations. In this, she personifies the new post-Bush, post-partisan, post-boomer politics Sen. Obama is preaching. She is the way we want things to be (at least those of us outside the narrow margins of the ideological extremes): genuine, unifying, trustworthy, aspirational.

Read the whole thing. Gerstein's play on the lyrics to "The Way We Were" is a riot! What's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget, right?

Here's Gerstein:

So how did the Clinton campaign respond to the news that Oprah would be stumping for Sen. Obama this coming weekend? Instead of sticking to their core message, and showing the confidence of a true front-runner, they fell into the tit-for-tat trap of countering with the endorsement of the polarizing, '60s-studded Streisand - in essence, the anti-Oprah. In doing so, the Clinton camp did not just fail to blunt or dilute the O-factor, they managed to accentuate it by unwittingly suggesting Mrs. Clinton stands for--like the Streisand anthem--the way we were.

To many Democrats, that brings back broadly positive feelings of peace and prosperity. But for hard-core activists, that could also mean the misty, waffle-colored memories of triangulation, corporate friendliness and job-killing trade pacts (among other liberal gripes about Bill Clinton). And for less partisan primary voters, it could be the scattered pictures of equivocation, Whitewater, Lewinsky, and a continuation of the petty, divisive politics that have come to define the Bush-Clinton years for voters across the political spectrum.

Oh Bill...it was all so simple then! If we had the chance to do it all again...would we? could we?

You gotta love it!

Going Down? Hillary Clinton on the Defense in Iowa

The conventional wisdom on Hillary Clinton's inevitability has been holding up so long now that her newfound difficulties in Iowa seem especially interesting. Barack Obama's closed the gap in the Hawkeye State. Today's Wall Street Journal has the story:

A month before Iowa holds the first contest of the 2008 presidential campaign, a newly energized Sen. Barack Obama has opened a narrow lead here, but many Iowans in both parties say they could change their minds in the next 30 days about which candidate to support.

Mr. Obama's rising popularity was fueled by a fiery speech three weeks ago in which he vowed to turn away from the partisan battles of the Clinton-Bush years. That, plus the surprising strength of his Iowa ground organization, is galvanizing his campaign.

Over the weekend, the Des Moines Register released a poll showing Sen. Obama was the choice of 28% of Iowa Democrats likely to attend the state's Jan. 3 caucuses, up from 22% in the newspaper's October poll. That compares with 25% for the former Iowa front-runner, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, down from her previous 29%. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, once the leader here, held steady at 23%. Given the margin of error, the race is almost a three-way dead heat.

But as critical to the outcome is the fact that over half the state's voters who have a preferred candidate say they may end up caucusing for someone else....

Since late October, Sen. Clinton has been the target of fellow Democrats' barbs about her stances on Iraq and Iran, as well as her character and her candor. The attacks were bound to raise doubts with voters and erode her lead. Moreover, Mr. Obama, with the large sums of money he has raised, has had the resources to more than match Sen. Clinton in a state that requires massive statewide organizing, as well as to surpass her in television advertising.

Among Democrats... it has long been widely believed that a decisive win for Sen. Clinton could, in effect, crown her as the nominee. Not only has she long led her rivals in national polls by double digits, but Iowa had long stood as the only early voting state where she wasn't far ahead, though her margin has tightened in New Hampshire and elsewhere.

It turns out that Clinton's attack machine is already ratcheting up the smear mode to thwart Obama's momentum. The Washington Post reports:

With a new poll showing her losing ground in the Iowa caucus race, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) mounted a new, more aggressive attack against Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Sunday, raising direct questions about his character, challenging his integrity and forecasting a sharp debate over those subjects in the days ahead.

Clinton has hammered Obama recently over his health-care proposal, arguing that he is misleading voters because it omits millions of people and would not lower costs. But Sunday, in a dramatic shift, she made it clear that her goal is to challenge Obama not just on policy but also on one of his strongest selling points: his reputation for honesty.

"There's a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we're willing to fight for," Clinton told reporters here. She said voters in Iowa will have a choice "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who's walked the walk."

Asked directly whether she intended to raise questions about Obama's character, she replied: "It's beginning to look a lot like that"....

The new Clinton strategy, acknowledged by her senior advisers as an intentional pivot, carries significant risks and could produce a potential backlash if voters perceive her as growing too negative. The Register's poll also found that Clinton was seen by Iowa voters as the most negative of the Democratic contenders.

Obama had the support of 28 percent of respondents, up six points from the last Register poll, in early October. Former senator John Edwards (N.C.) drew 23 percent. Clinton was in the middle at 25 percent, down four points from early October. The margin of error is 4.4 percentage points.

Clinton, campaigning across Iowa on Sunday, appeared to be spoiling for a fight with her chief Democratic rival in national polls -- even at one point describing the battle as "fun."

"I have said for months that I would much rather be attacking Republicans, and attacking the problems of our country, because ultimately that's what I want to do as president. But I have been, for months, on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks. Well, now the fun part starts. We're into the last month, and we're going to start drawing the contrasts," she said.

Ron Christie, at the The Hill's Pundit Blog, sees the beginning of the end for Clinton:

To be honest, I never thought in the first few days of December I would proffer that the Hillary Campaign for President is near the end. To wit, her national poll numbers have been plummeting since she seemed unable to answer a simple question whether she favored issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. She tried to be too cute on the issue by implying that she supported the issuance of such licenses before commenting that people were piling on and that she was being attacked by “the boys.”

While this might sound like a sound strategy in the comfort of campaign office suites, American voters see through such cynicism and posturing for pure political purposes. And now the Clinton strategy has backfired, and backfired badly.

After strutting around the country as the inevitable nominee who had to deal with the nettlesome opponents who were merely prolonging the inevitable, Sen. Clinton (N.Y.) has begun to realize, perhaps too late, that citizens of Iowa and New Hampshire take their role as casting the first ballots in the race for president of the United States very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they have started to punish the “inevitable” front-runner who was awaiting coronation by rewarding former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.) and current Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) with strong surges in the polls.

And now Sen. Clinton has decided to dig a bigger hole for herself by attacking the integrity and candor of Iowa caucus front-runner Obama. And Clinton is attacking a political candidate for his integrity and candor? As “Dandy” Don Meredith used to sing on “Monday Night Football” decades ago late in the fourth quarter: “Turn out the lights, the party’s over. All good things must come to an end.” Attacking Sen. Obama, a fresh face and generally positive campaigner, with the Clinton War Machine will remind voters once again why they have tired of Clintons posturing and preening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Turn out the lights: After losing Iowa and New Hampshire, the Clinton party will be over for 2008.

The situation is in flux, obviously. The Pew Center has Clinton 31% to 26% over Obama, although the survey's polling began November 7, and might not be reliable.

Check Memeorandum for more analysis. Expect the mudslinging character assassinations to pick up full steam in the weeks ahead. Obama's not going to be able to stay on the high road if he hopes to fend off the Clinton machine.

John McCain Could Be Last Man Standing

Eleanor Clift, in her online column, argues that John McCain's new momentum has positioned him to the front of the pack in New Hampshire:

A funny thing happened on the way to New Hampshire. John McCain got his mojo back. Meeting with reporters in his campaign headquarters, McCain, back from Iraq and on his way to South Carolina, held forth on a variety of subjects in the easy, straight-talking way that earned him a special place in political journalists' hearts in 2000, and that still sets him apart from almost every other leading contender for the presidency on either side.

He had just come from taping the Charlie Rose show, an hour's exploration of his inner feelings, he said, and he seemed eager to get to Iraq and the gains made by the buildup of U.S. troops. "John Edwards used to call it the McCain surge. He doesn't anymore. I wish he would," McCain said. With roughly half of Americans now saying the war in Iraq is going well, according to a Pew Research Center poll, McCain hopes his firmness in sticking with the war will translate into a first- or second-place finish in New Hampshire.

It's a long shot for a candidate who during the summer had to shed much of his staff and is operating on a tight budget, but McCain seems comfortable and on his game. The Republican race is so fluid that almost anything can happen. And for an electorate searching for authenticity, the new McCain is the old McCain, the candidate we saw eight years ago who speaks his mind and whose personal story brings a moral dimension unmatched by his rivals. The questions now are whether Republicans will see McCain as their most electable nominee and whether the independent voters that launched him in 2000 will return to him in New Hampshire. "His destiny is out of his hands," says Matthew Dowd, who was George W. Bush's pollster in 2000 and 2004 and is now unaffiliated with any candidate or party.

For McCain to make a comeback, several things have to fall in place. Mike Huckabee has to win Iowa or do damage to Mitt Romney. The two current GOP front runners, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have to continue the demolition derby they kicked off in Wednesday evening's YouTube debate on CNN, jabbing each other about who's tougher on immigration and crime. The hint of scandal around Giuliani has to grow. That would leave the voters faced with Huckabee, who raised taxes in Arkansas to build roads (heresy for conservatives); a lethargic Fred Thompson, who can't seem to stir himself for the big fight, or McCain, a credible commander in chief who's always been pro-life. McCain could be the last man standing.

Reminded by a reporter at Monday's "sandwiches and scoops" session that Thompson had made fund-raising calls for him before entering the race, McCain quipped, "I'd like to see those phone lists." McCain is not coy about what he has to do. He has to win in New Hampshire, or come close enough to claim the "Comeback Kid" mantle that Bill Clinton rode to victory after finishing second in 1992. He also has a stake in how the Democratic race shakes out. If the Democratic contest seems settled by the Iowa returns, McCain would benefit because independents, fully a third of the New Hampshire electorate, generally flock to the party where the action is. In other words, if Hillary Clinton, the front runner nationally and in New Hampshire, wins Iowa, she will look like a foregone conclusion, and independents won't want to waste their vote on a race that's already over.

Voters in New Hampshire don't have to declare party allegiance until Election Day, and if the independents decide to play on the Republican side, McCain could be the beneficiary. Here's an example of how powerful this dynamic is: if it hadn't been for the excitement around McCain in 2000, Bill Bradley would have beaten Al Gore in New Hampshire, and perhaps snatched the nomination. "A Clinton victory in Iowa would be the best thing that could possibly happen to John McCain," says Bill Galston, a former domestic-policy adviser in the Clinton White House who is now with the Brookings Institution. "And if that doesn't happen, [second best would be] an Edwards victory, because Edwards is not going to be much of a player in New Hampshire. An Obama victory would be trouble for Hillary—but a disaster for McCain."

McCain is finally running the campaign he should have from the start. Will it be enough? It may. The history of presidential primary politics is littered with surprises: failed front runners, and dead-in-the-water winners.

This is interesesting. I hadn't thought about a Hillary factor on the GOP side. The case for McCain in the Granite State makes sense, of course, if New Hampshire voters can shift to the GOP primary on election day. Based on my preferences for the Republican nomination, I say go Hillary!

See also yesterday's post, "New Hampshire Union-Leader Endorses John McCain."

Public Opinion Rebounds on Iraq

In a little reported development in the mainstream press, public opinion on the Iraq war is showing continued improvement.

These findings come from the Pew Research Center's new Iraq poll out this week:

For the first time in a long time, nearly half of Americans express positive opinions about the situation in Iraq. A growing number says the U.S. war effort is going well, while greater percentages also believe the United States is making progress in reducing the number of Iraqi casualties, defeating the insurgents and preventing a civil war in Iraq.

Roughly half of the public (48%) believes the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going very or fairly well. Judgments about the overall situation in Iraq have been improving steadily since the summer. As recently as June, only about a third of Americans (34%) said things were going well in Iraq.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Nov. 20-26 among 1,399 adults, finds that improved public impressions of Iraq are particularly evident when it comes to security-related issues. The number of Americans who say that the United States is making progress in reducing the number of civilian casualties in Iraq has doubled from 21% to 43% since June. The proportion saying that progress has been achieved in preventing terrorists from establishing bases in Iraq is also up substantially, as is the number saying the U.S. is making progress in defeating the insurgents militarily.

However, a rosier view of the military situation in Iraq has not translated into increased support for maintaining U.S. forces in Iraq, greater optimism that the United States will achieve its goals there, or an improvement in President Bush's approval ratings.

By 54%-41%, more Americans favor bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq as soon as possible rather than keeping troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized. The balance of opinion on this measure has not changed significantly all year. Similarly, Americans remain evenly divided over whether the U.S. is likely to succeed or fail in achieving its goals in Iraq; improved perceptions of the situation in Iraq have not resulted in a changed outlook in this regard. In addition, Bush's overall job approval now stands at 30%, which is largely unchanged since June and equals the lowest marks of his presidency.

While we're seeing positive change, the Pew findings indicate that the public's good and tired of our long slog toward consolidating Iraq's democracy. As casualties continue to decline, however, and as more positive coverage of the war emerges in the press, we should see additional improvement in the polling numbers.

What does continued improvement in Iraq mean for the Bush administration? The Pew summary shows no changes in President Bush's poll standings. Bush has just under 14 months left in office, and while we may not see a dramatic turnaround in his support, things are definitely looking up for the administration.

Clark Judge, over at the Washington Times, argued earlier this week that President Bush will see a rebound in 2008:

For the more than a year, the Democratic presidential candidates, the mainstream media and the smart Washington money have all assumed an unpopular and discredited George W. Bush would drag down the Republican ticket, making next year's balloting a sure-thing replay of 2006. Now, amazingly, the president may be set for a comeback.

True, Mr. Bush's poll numbers long ago went to where no president — or at least no president ever succeeded by his own party's candidate — had ever gone before, and remained there. The number of Americans who disapprove of his performance has exceeded by wide margins the number of those who approve for most of his second term.

Yet more than two years of bad news for the president may have set the stage for good news in the year ahead. For months now, the president's critics have portrayed him as obstinate, deaf to the calls of the people, bullheadedly unwilling to abandon mistaken initiatives.

Exhibit A has been the war in Iraq. But almost every administration initiative comes in for such an attack. Not a Democratic candidate debate goes by without some reference to the "failed policies" of the current administration.

It has been a powerful narrative. But if the public sees those "failed" policies start to succeed, its understanding of the president could change on a dime. What was once regarded as "obstinate" would become "courageous." What was previously considered "bullheaded" would become "principled" — and "deaf to critics" would become "leadership." This kind of about-face could be in the works now....

In 1987, President Reagan's fortunes were down. The GOP had lost the Senate the year before. Iran-Contra and the defeat of Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court had followed. But then the Soviets started to give way on arms and other agreements, the economy continued to grow despite the October stock market crash and Reagan began the long climb in the polls that helped put the current president's father in the Oval Office.

The same could happen in 2008. Most of the fundamentals are in place. With one or two more developments breaking the president's way, this year's story of the stubborn chief executive could become next year's of a profile in courage.

Who would have thought it possible? George W. Bush becomes Hillary Clinton's worst nightmare.

Now that's something to look forward to!

New Hampshire Union-Leader Endorses John McCain

The New Hampshire Union-Leader has endorsed Arizona Senator John McCain in the GOP presidential primary race:

On Jan. 8, New Hampshire Republicans will make one of the most important choices for their party and nation in the history of our presidential primary. Their choice ought to be John McCain.

We don't agree with him on every issue. We disagree with him strongly on campaign finance reform. What is most compelling about McCain, however, is that his record, his character, and his courage show him to be the most trustworthy, competent, and conservative of all those seeking the nomination. Simply put, McCain can be trusted to make informed decisions based on the best interests of his country, come hell or high water.

Competence, courage, and conviction are enormously important for our next President to possess. No one has a better understanding of U.S. interests and dangers right now than does McCain. He was right on the mistakes made by the Bush administration in prosecuting the Islamic terrorist war in Iraq and he is being proved right on the way forward both there and worldwide.

McCain is pro-life. Always has been. He fights against special-interest and pork-barrel spending, and high spending in general, which ticks off liberals and many in the GOP who have wallowed at the public trough. Yet he also has the proven ability, unique among the contenders, to work across the political divide that has led our government into petty bickering when important problems need to be solved.

We have known John McCain for many years. We will write more about him in the days ahead. For now, we leave you with this to ponder:

When McCain was shot down and taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese, he was repeatedly beaten. When his captors discovered that his father was a top U.S. admiral, they ordered him released for propaganda purposes. But McCain refused, insisting that longer-held prisoners be released before him. So they beat him some more. He never gave in then, and he won't give in to our enemies now.

John McCain is the man to lead America.

Debra Saunders also boosts McCain today in her piece over at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Readers know I'm a McCain backer. Although the GOP race is looking more like a three-way contest among Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, and Mitt Romney, any of the five top candidates (Romney, Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Huckabee, and John McCain) could win in Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina.

McCain's still in the hunt in the Granite State. RealClearPolitics tracking poll averages have McCain in a close third in New Hampshire.

The New Hampshire Union-Leader's endorsement might help McCain push into the state's very top-tier (although research shows a limited impact of newspaper endorsements in the contemporary electoral environment). A win or a strong second-place showing would help keep McCain's drive going heading into the February 5th round of primary voting nationally.

It's exciting, in any case.

Mike Huckabee: The Republican Frontrunner?

With just a month to go, Mike Huckabee has surged to the front of the pack in the Iowa GOP presidential horse race, as a new Des Moines Register poll indicates:

Mike Huckabee has leaped ahead of Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney in Iowa, seizing first place in a new Des Moines Register poll of likely Republican caucus participants.

Huckabee wins the support of 29 percent of Iowans who say they definitely or probably will attend the Republican Party's caucuses on Jan. 3. That's a gain of 17 percentage points since the last Iowa Poll was taken in early October, when Huckabee trailed both Romney and Fred Thompson.

Other poll findings indicate that the former Arkansas governor is making the most of a low-budget campaign by tapping into the support of Iowa's social conservatives.

Romney, who has invested more time and money campaigning in the state than any other GOP candidate, remains in the thick of the Iowa race with the backing of 24 percent of likely caucusgoers. But that's a drop of 5 points since October for the former Massachusetts governor.

Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, the frontrunner in national polls, holds third place in Iowa at 13 percent, despite waging a limited campaign in the state.

Thompson, a former U.S. senator from Tennessee who waited until September to formally enter the race for the Republican nomination, has slipped to fourth place in the Iowa Poll, at 9 percent.

U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas are tied for fifth place at 7 percent each. Four other candidates trail them. The new Iowa Poll, conducted over four days last week, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

The complexion of the race could easily change in the last month of intense campaigning ahead of the caucuses, which lead off the presidential nominating process. Roughly six in 10 likely Republican caucus participants say they could still be persuaded to support another candidate. Poll participant Thelma Whittaker, a retired teacher from Columbus Junction, is leaning toward supporting Huckabee in the caucuses but also could back Romney.

"I'm a very conservative Republican and I feel that (Huckabee) follows through with those ideas," said Whittaker, who is troubled by the country's moral decline. On the other hand, she wonders if Huckabee is a strong enough candidate to win the White House for the GOP.

When it comes to Romney, "I go along with a lot of his ideas,'" Whittaker said, "but he's also done some flip-flopping that scares me on issues like abortion and taxes."

Huckabee has come a long way since last May, when he languished in a tie for sixth place in the Register's poll, garnering the support of just 4 percent of likely caucus participants then.

His campaign picked up steam after he notched a surprising second-place finish in the Iowa Republican Party's straw poll in August.

The Register's new scientific poll shows Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, leading Romney 38 percent to 22 percent among those who consider themselves born-again Christians. In October, Romney edged Huckabee 23 percent to 18 percent among people in that group, which accounts for one-half of all likely caucus participants.

Similarly, Huckabee holds a 2-to-1 lead over Romney among those who say it is more important for a presidential candidate to be socially conservative than fiscally conservative.

See also the other commentaries over at Memeorandum.

This morning's Los Angeles Times has a front-page analysis of Huckabee's political life. There's some interesting nuggets in the piece, especially the Michael Dukakis moment from Huckabee's term as Arkansas governor:

Shortly after he became governor, Huckabee expressed his support for the release of a convicted rapist -- who, once freed, sexually assaulted another woman and killed her. Wayne Dumond had been sentenced to life plus 20 years in 1984 for raping a 17-year-old cheerleader. Tucker, Huckabee's predecessor, reduced Dumond's sentence in 1992, making him eligible for parole.

In 1996, according to the Democrat-Gazette, Huckabee questioned Dumond's guilt and said he might commute his sentence to time served. He also met with the parole board in a closed session. Some board members have said Huckabee pressured them into releasing Dumond; others said he did not.

Dumond was released from prison in October 1999. He chose his next victim 11 months later.

Huckabee's Democratic opponent, Jimmie Lou Fisher, seized on the issue in the 2002 governor's race, and Dumond's first victim campaigned on Fisher's behalf. Huckabee's campaign ran ads blaming his predecessor for commuting the sentence. Fisher was considered a weak candidate; Huckabee was reelected with 53% of the vote.

In other instances, Huckabee's political instincts seemed sharper. Soon after taking office, he began to lobby strongly for a one-eighth-cent sales tax to fund state parks and conservation efforts. The measure required the approval of voters, and Huckabee, an avid outdoorsman, advertised the effort by touring the Arkansas River on his bass boat - a public relations gambit that garnered significant positive press for both the governor and the measure, which voters approved in 1996.

Anti-tax conservatives don't think Huckabee's instincts on taxes are so great:

As Huckabee's stock rises in the Republican primaries, conservatives are looking closely at his record on taxes. The Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group, has been running ads against Huckabee, harshly criticizing his record and portraying him as "Tax-Hike Mike."'

Huckabee has responded by calling the group the "Club for Greed." He says that in addition to supporting tax increases as governor, he also called for a $90.6-million cut in income taxes -- and other smaller, more narrowly targeted tax cuts. He defends his record as that of a pragmatic governor trying to meet the needs of a poor, underdeveloped state.

More recently, Huckabee has veered back toward the party line: He signed a no-tax-hike pledge that had been presented to the candidates by Americans for Tax Reform, another conservative group. Grover Norquist, its president, said Huckabee's pledge would carry more weight if he disavowed his past decisions to raise taxes.

"I am pleased he has made a commitment not to raise taxes in the future," said Norquist. "I would feel better if he spoke of his previous record as a mistake. Instead he defends it."

Huckabee's got a big bit of balancing before him. He's wrapping up the evangelical vote, but the GOP's small-government conservatives, law-and-order types, and immigration hawks are going to hammer him on his liberalism.

This is a very interesting GOP primary race, that's for sure. Be sure to see my earlier Huckabee post, "Mike Huckabee's Coming On Strong."