Can McCain Win the Conservative Vote?

At a town hall meeting in Bedford, N.H., a man vied for the attention of Senator John McCain.

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With John McCain on a hot streak coming out of the Iowa caucuses, speculation is turning to McCain's chances as the Republican standard-bearer. Will conservatives who long ago wrote McCain off as old news - or hopelessly liberal - give the Arizona Senator a second look?

Can McCain win the backing of conservatives in a general election matchup against the Democratic nominee (who's looking to be Barack Obama, if the Iowa results serve as a decisive harbinger of change)?

Jim Addison over at Wizbang offers a concise endorsement for a shift to McCain among conservatives (via Memeorandum):

My long lamented friend Jesse Burke, a man who lived in excruciating pain from the most severe and crippling form of rheumatoid arthritis, inspired many people to overcome their challenges. His motto was, "A winner never quits - and a quitter never wins!" He never met John McCain, that I know of, but they share kindred spirits.

I, with many others, wrote off the McCain campaign earlier last year after they had squandered their early money for little result, and the candidate moved in to "restructure" the effort. Normally in politics that is an early sign of a quick exit from a race. McCain vowed to fight on, and most of us in the chattering classes yawned and turned our attention elsewhere.

Award points for perseverance: McCain slogged on with his streamlined campaign. His return to viability consisted of equal parts of his own recovery and of the gradual diffusion of support for his rivals. The Republican nomination race is once again a wide-open contest, and guess who is in the thick of it?

As most conservatives do, I have grave reservations on McCain's past positions on Campaign Finance Reform, the "Gang of 14," and the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill. I have on more than one occasion vowed I would stay home rather than vote for him for President, but I must admit that if the choice presented is McCain or Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama/John Edwards, I could not, in good conscience, not vote for him.

For conservatives, holding one's nose with one hand as the other pulls a lever is nothing new. We've been doing it for decades, with the sole reprieve of Ronald Reagan (who violated enough conservative principles himself to earn our ire).

If it's McCain, or Hillary, what say you? If not voting is your choice, do you not at least admit you would endanger the country thereby?

See a also RightwingSparkle, "Why McCain?"

The choice hasn't been hard for me. See my earlier posts on the McCain campaign, and his comeback, here, here, here, here , here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Why McCain? Why should McCain be the pick for conservatives in 2008?

I made the case for McCain throughout 2007.

I've heard all the criticisms: He's too old; he's too liberal; he's selling out our First Amendment rights with his liberal alliance on campaign finance; he's in bed with Kennedy on immigration...and so on.

But McCain has been right on the war in Iraq, which should be a decisive issue for conservatives. His recent debate performances have been steely; and throughout it all, thick and thin, McCain has stood strong on his values, not jumping ship on all the issues when facing heat or when the political wind is turning.

McCain's also "the one" on issues besides the war and terrorism. He's firm on spending, and he'll work to reform earmarks. He's pro-life as well. On immigration, he's learned his lessons and will stick with border security first before worrying about the other pressing elements of comprehensive reform.

The conservative opposition to McCain doesn't serve the GOP well. Thompson waited way too long to enter the race, and Giuliani's primary strategy is flawed. Huckabee is a good guy, but he's way out of his league on foreign policy, and his record on crime and fiscal policy leaves a lot to be desired.

McCain will pull Republicans together with his ability to promote compromise and accomodation. Partisanship's vital, of course, but the country's obviously seeking change, and tweaking some conservative positions might work to coopt some of the demands for a new direction.

I suggest readers take a few minutes to review McCain's commencement address at the New School University in New York from May 2006.

McCain's address is a magnificent statement of America's enduring principles and values. It is also a fair and humble speech, placing America's faults within the context of our historic opportunities. These are the words of a true patriot, of a true leader.

I hope conservatives will recognize McCain - like any man - has made mistakes, but he doesn't compromise his values, and he's right for America in 2008.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Post-Iowa Polls Show McCain Pulling Out Lead

A Concord Monitor/Research 2000 poll, following up New Hampshire voter preferences after the Iowa caucuses, shows John McCain pulling out 6-point lead over Mitt Romney (via Memeorandum):

John McCain has doubled his support since mid-December and leads Mitt Romney, 35 percent to 29 percent, according to a Concord Monitor/Research 2000 post-Iowa survey of likely Republican primary voters in New Hampshire. Mike Huckabee was the choice of 13 percent of those surveyed, followed by Rudy Giuliani at 8 percent, Ron Paul at 7 percent, Fred Thompson at 3 percent and Duncan Hunter at 1 percent.

Also, a new CNN/WMUR New Hampshire presidential primary poll has McCain holding a solid lead over Romney in the Granite State:

The new poll suggests McCain is now the front-runner in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination in New Hampshire.

Thirty-three percent of likely GOP Granite State primary voters support the senator from Arizona, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney six points back at 27 percent.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's in third place at 14 percent, with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in fourth place at 11 percent.

Rep. Ron Paul of Texas follows with 9 percent, and Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee are tied at 1 percent.

Huckabee won the Republican Iowa caucuses, with Romney coming in second, even though Romney's campaign vastly outspent Huckabee's organization in Iowa.

Romney was the front-runner in most New Hampshire polls until last month, when McCain pulled even in many surveys.

"It looks like Huckabee's victory among Iowa Republicans helped John McCain more than Mike Huckabee. Huckabee gained one point among New Hampshire Republicans. McCain gained four. A week ago, McCain and Mitt Romney were tied in New Hampshire. Now McCain now leads Romney by 6 points," said [CNN senior political analyst Bill] Schneider.

With two days to go, and with what sounds like a solid debate performance Saturday night (see here, here and here), the Arizona Senator looks poised to reprise his 2000 New Hampshire primary win.

Clinton Campaign On the Ropes

Hillary Clinton's campaign has been shaken to the core by its third place showing in Iowa. Karen Tumulty over at Time as an analysis:

The scope of Barack Obama's victory in Iowa has shaken the Clinton machine down to its bolts. Donors are panicking. The campaign has been making a round of calls to reassure notoriously fickle "superdelegates" — elected officials and party regulars who are awarded convention spots by virtue of their titles and positions — who might be reconsidering their decisions to back the candidate who formerly looked like a sure winner. And internally, a round of recriminations is being aimed at her chief strategist, Mark Penn, as the representative of everything about her pseudo-incumbent campaign that has been too cautious, too arrogant, too conventional and too clueless as to how much the political landscape has shifted since the last Clinton reign. One adviser summed up the biggest challenge that faces the campaign in two words: "Fresh thinking."

Specifically, those inside the campaign and outside advisers fault Penn for failing to see the Iowa defeat coming. They say he was assuring Clinton and her allies right up until the caucuses that they would win it. Says one: "He did not predict in any way, shape or form the tidal wave we saw." In particular, he had assured them that Clinton's support among women would carry her through. Yet she managed to win only 30% of the women's vote, while 35% of them went for Obama.

A modest rise in Iowa turnout from traditional levels — say by about 20,000 or 30,000 — might have been easy to write off as merely the result of superior tactics on the part of the well-funded Obama operation. But the fact that voters flooded the caucuses, and that Obama swept just about every demographic group, speaks to something larger that is going on in the electorate, Clinton strategists now acknowledge.

That leaves them facing problems on two levels. The first, and easier one to grapple with, is how to deal with Obama. Even as the results in Iowa were still coming in, the Clinton campaign was mobilizing onto an attack footing. But it's possible that the most difficult problem is not Obama; it could be Clinton. How can she retool her message — and her identity as a virtual incumbent — to resonate with an electorate that seems to yearn more for change than any other quality? Says one longtime Democratic strategist, who is close to the Clintons: "Fundamentally, she is who she is; she can't change who she is, and maybe this is not her time."

Actually, I didn't see Obama winning Iowa until the last few days. Clinton's inevitability seemed just that, inevitable. Her bumps on the road to Iowa - for example, in her flip-flopping debate performances - didn't seem to derail her prospects. Nationally, Clinton still held dramatic leads over her rivals in public opinion. Things looked like they were going as planned.

But in the last couple of days before Iowa we saw local polling presaging an Obama upset. It's always good to take survey results with a grain of salt, but these polls nailed it.

What's it going to take for Hillary to pull it together? New polling shows that race has tightened. While Clinton's campaign continues to hammer Obama on inexperience, it's fairly clear that experience is the last thing voters in Iowa were looking for.

Sure, New Hampshire voters are less volatile, they're less inclined to the politics of experiential repudiation, right? Perhaps not. The Clinton campaign is faced with the monumental short-term task of transmogrifying the candidate into an agent of change. This is after hammering for months the rock-solid credentials of Hillary's six years in the Senate and "decades of experience" fighting for the empowerment of the disenfranchised.

How will it all turn out? Clinton's still in the game, for sure. She could lose New Hampshire, but still have a strong opportunity to take a majority of the upcoming primaries and caucuses. It does look, however, that 2008 is shaping up to be one of those monumental election years of fundamental transformation, as seen in the Iowa results from both parties.

It's still early, but momentum is a powerful thing. This year's multi-format mass-media saturation has magnified momentum intensely. Tuesday in New Hampshire might be the most important first-in-the-nation primary we've seen since the 1970s.

(Note also that Clinton was booed at a New Hamphire campaign stop today. That can't augur well for her chances on Tuesday.)

Photo Credit: Time

Barack Obama: The Hope of Black America?

Barack Obama's stunning win in the Iowa caucuses has some black Americans reflecting on the Obama campaign's meaning for America's enduring racial dilemma, from the New York Times:

For Sadou Brown in a Los Angeles suburb, the decisive victory of Senator Barack Obama in Iowa was a moment to show his 14-year-old son what is possible.

For Mike Duncan in Maryland, it was a sign that Americans were moving beyond rigid thinking about race.

For Milton Washington in Harlem, it looked like the beginning of something he never thought that he would see. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re on the cusp of something big about to happen,’ ” Mr. Washington said.

How Mr. Obama’s early triumph will play out in the presidential contest remains to be seen, and his support among blacks is hardly monolithic.

But in dozens of interviews on Friday from suburbs of Houston to towns outside Chicago and rural byways near Birmingham, Ala., African-Americans voiced pride and amazement over his victory on Thursday and the message it sent, even if they were not planning to vote for him or were skeptical that he could win in November.

“My goodness, has it ever happened before, a black man, in our life, in our country?” asked Edith Lambert, 60, a graduate student in theology who was having lunch at the Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston.

“It makes me feel proud that at a time when so many things are going wrong in the world that people can rise above past errors,” added Ms. Lambert, who said she had not decided whom to vote for. “It shows that people aren’t thinking small. They’re thinking large, outside the box.”

Other black presidential candidates, like Shirley A. Chisholm and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, have excited voters in the past. Mr. Jackson won primaries in 1984 and 1988.

Over and over, blacks said Mr. Obama’s achievement in Iowa, an overwhelmingly white state, made him seem a viable crossover candidate, a fresh face with the first real shot at capturing a major party nomination.

“People across America, even in Iowa of all places, can look across the color line and see the person,” said Mr. Brown, 35, who was working at the reception desk at DK’s Hair Design near Ladera Heights, a wealthy Los Angeles suburb.

Describing himself as a “huge, huge supporter,” of Mr. Obama, Mr. Brown added: “So many times, our young people only have sports stars or musicians to look up to. But now, when we tell them to go to school, to aim high in life, they have a face to put with the ambition.”

I'm leery of such talk. Obama's not a traditional black candidate. Some of the other interviewee's touch more closely on why Obama's not going over with black traditionalists, who are still grounded in the politics of racial recrimination (rather than Obama's politics of hope):

Some voters said Mr. Obama’s heritage as the son of a white mother and an African father meant that he was not exactly black, but added that it allowed him to appeal to more people.

“He’s demonstrated that a mixed-race guy with a Muslim name can get far,” said Tony Clayton, 43, as he had his shoes shined at the Metro station at L’Enfant Plaza in Washington. Mr. Clayton was referring to Mr. Obama’s middle name, Hussein.

These comments represent large numbers of African-Americans:

Even amid the joy over the dawning sense that Mr. Obama could indeed become president there were hesitancy and doubt.

“Right now, it’s too good to be true, and I think most of us don’t want to get our hopes up too high,” said Eboni Anthony, 28, manager of Carol’s Daughter, which sells scented candles, soaps and moisturizers across the street from Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn. “I think racism is as alive as it was 30 years ago.

“I would love to believe in a fairy tale of having a black president. But I don’t believe the whole United States would agree to it.”In Harlem, Mr. Washington, a 37-year-old manager of business development for a medical health research company, expressed similar skepticism.

“Listen, I’ve lived in the sticks, so I know how this country is,” said Mr. [Milton] Washington, who is half Korean and has lived in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Indiana and Virginia. “In the beginning, it was like, ‘I’d love a black dude, especially a black dude like that in the office.’ But I didn’t think it was possible.”

At the Bessemer Flea Market near Birmingham, Jasper V. Hall, 69, said: “I was hoping he didn’t win. I didn’t want him to get shot.”

We'll have to see how things turn out in other states, but Obama's support is going to be especially strong among Americans who see the Illinois Senator as bridging the racial divide, particularly liberal whites.

Recall early in 2007 Obama's rising popularity triggered a backlash amongst black traditionalists, those who argue the historic civil rights agenda of overturning enduring, systemic racism.

See, for example, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, "Why Blacks Won't Necessarily Back Obama," or Time's "Can Obama Count On the Black Vote?"

What is likely to happen is the traditional black leadership - Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, etc. - will rally around Obama if he wins the nomination (notice how little traditional civil rights groups have mobilized for Obama so far).

The trick for Obama - if he becomes the Democratic standard-bearer - is whether his mantra of change includes burying the interest group politics of victimization that the old-line civil rights organizations uphold. This is the real promise of Obama's campaign for black America. An Obama presidency might truly break with the stale redistributionist politics of traditional Democratic constituencies. He might really press for hope in a politics of entrepreneurship and private opportunity, a politics of personal and family responsibility, and politics of educational achievement and professional aspirations for historically disadvantaged communities.

If Obama sticks to his talk of transracial progress, this would be the promise of real modern-day equal opportunity America, an agenda of real change.

Will the black community embrace it? I'm not betting on it.

McCain May Benefit From Huckabee’s Iowa Jolt

This morning's New York Times has an analysis of how John McCain can benefit from Mike Huckabee's win in the Iowa caucuses:

Mike Huckabee’s defeat of Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses jolted a Republican Party establishment already distressed about the state of its presidential field.

But out of the turmoil may rise yet another opportunity for Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose candidacy all but collapsed last year.

If only by default, Mr. McCain is getting yet another look and appears to be in a strong position competing against a weakened Mr. Romney in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.

Mr. McCain is the latest beneficiary of the continuing upheaval in the Republican field that has seen nearly all of the candidates rising at various points. Among them were Mr. McCain, former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee and Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York.

Mr. Romney’s defeat in Iowa only underlined concerns that many Republicans had expressed about him, while the success of Mr. Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas, gave rise to new worries among the Republican establishment.

“Among the intelligentsia of the party, there is definitely a deep concern about Huckabee getting the nomination because a lot of them think he can’t win,” said John Feehery, a former senior House Republican aide and party operative. “Part of it is self-interested panic since they have their own horses in the race, and none of them are riding Huckabee.”

Mr. McCain, then — after a year in which his campaign nearly collapsed, the Iraq war and a controversial immigration bill eroded his popularity, and he was forced to continue his candidacy on a bare-bones budget — may be in the right place at the right time....

Even before the Iowa vote, polls suggested that New Hampshire voters were embracing Mr. McCain and his slightly iconoclastic message the way they did in 2000. At the same time, they were moving away from Mr. Romney.

Advisers to Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney said they believed that Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, was already weakened before Iowa and was now even more vulnerable. Evidence of that could be seen in a furious exchange of attack advertisements between the two men Friday.

Complicating Mr. Romney’s life even more, Mr. Huckabee’s campaign manager, Ed Rollins, suggested he was entering something of a temporary alliance of interest with Mr. McCain against Mr. Romney. Mr. Rollins said Mr. Huckabee would be using the next several days to present what he said would be an unfavorable comparison of their records as governor.

“We’re going to see if we can’t take Romney out,” Mr. Rollins said. “We like John. Nobody likes Romney.”

Perhaps the Huckabee forces are angling for the vice-presidential slot on a potential McCain-Huckabee ticket in the fall.

Rich Lowry suggests McCain's got advantages:

McCain’s comeback has been fueled by the success of the infusion of troops into Iraq that he was supporting long before anyone had thought to call it “the surge.” In his early and fierce advocacy of the surge, McCain did far more to advance the war on terror than any other candidate. It showed keen strategic intuition and put in the best possible light characteristic McCain qualities, especially a cussed willingness to forge his own path.

But Lowry argues McCain's used his firm prescience on Iraq to push a number of other policy apostasies on the party that may weaken him in his quest to recapture the frontrunner's perch.

How that question gets resolved may depend more on how the campaign plays out over the next days and weeks, and less so on the candidates' policy resumes.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Republican Race is Wide Open

Doyle McManus over at the Los Angeles Times argues that the Republican primary race is wide-open:

The resounding victory of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa's Republican caucuses means the race for the GOP's presidential nomination remains up for grabs among at least four candidates and may not be resolved until 24 states vote in a climactic Super Tuesday next month, Republican political analysts said Thursday.

"This keeps the race completely wide open," said pollster Whit Ayres. "This is still the most open race for a Republican nomination in modern memory -- no question about it."

Huckabee, a Baptist minister-turned-politician who was almost unknown outside his home state as recently as last summer, drew the votes of thousands of self-described evangelical Christians to score a decisive victory over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

But the race for the Republican nomination moves next to New Hampshire, where Christian conservatives are a much smaller share of the electorate -- and where polls suggest Huckabee stands virtually no chance of winning. Instead, the race there is principally between Romney and Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

After New Hampshire, the campaign moves to Michigan and South Carolina, where Huckabee, Romney and McCain all appear competitive, and then to Florida, where former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is spending millions of dollars on a risky late-state strategy to seize control of the race.

"This is a big win for Huckabee. . . . But it's also a victory for McCain," said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who is unaligned in the presidential race. "It's a victory for McCain in that the race is now broken up, and it's coming into a part of the calendar that's favorable to McCain: New Hampshire and Michigan."

McCain, who spent little time or money campaigning in Iowa, finished in a virtual tie for third place with former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee. In New Hampshire, though, recent polls have shown McCain closing in on Romney.

If Romney had won in Iowa, he would have gained a boost for his New Hampshire campaign -- and a chance to score wins in the first two contests of the nomination campaign. Instead, he risks two losses in a row, and suffering "two black eyes in the first two events is going to be very difficult to overcome," Reed said.

"This race is going to extend to Feb. 5," he predicted, citing the date when 15 states, including California, will hold primary elections and nine more will hold caucuses. "It's too fragmented to finish before then. And there are too many delegates on Feb. 5 for candidates to pass up."

The prospect of such a contested nomination battle is unsettling to some Republicans. In recent years, the party has most often entered an election year with a leading candidate who, while challenged by upstarts, most often went on to win.

"This year, there's no heir apparent," Ayres said.

The issue is about more than tradition. Since 1968, the party that has chosen its nominee first -- and thus gained more time to heal the divisions of the primary campaign -- has won the White House eight of 10 times.

I've warned a couple of times about the dangers of a prolonged nomination battle. The intraparty primary fight creates tremendous animosity among the top-tier contenders - the wounds take time to heal, often not until after the convention, leaving the party in a fissiparous state and vulnerable to the opposition.

Perhaps the indecisive nature of the contest this year is good for the voting electorate, and as McManus notes, the February 5 primaries will provide a wider opportunity for more states to make a difference in the nomination.

New Hampshire's next, though, and this New York Times story indicates how Senator John McCain's well positioned there to capitalize on his momentum:

Mr. McCain has been the greatest presence here, often having the state to himself. Seizing on his clean sweep of endorsements from 26 newspapers in the area, he has been able to reinvigorate a campaign that six months ago was largely written off.

New Hampshire, whose voters pride themselves on their independence from party orthodoxy and who are interested in an array of issues not on the agenda in Iowa, is friendly territory for Mr. McCain — a point he is making in a new advertisement released Thursday recalling his victory here in 2000.

A remaining unknown factor will be what role independent voters, who make up nearly half of all registered voters in the state and were critical in Mr. McCain’s victory last time, will play in this election. Voters frequently say they are trying to decide between Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, which seems striking, given their wide differences on issues, particularly the war in Iraq. But Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa showed his strength in drawing independent voters to his campaign.

Mr. McCain is also focusing on issues important to many independent voters, like climate change and improving the United States’ image abroad by taking such steps as closing the prison at the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Scott Lehigh at the Boston Globe says this is McCain's second chance to make a mark in the Granite State.

Photo Credit: New York Times

John McCain Looking to New Hampshire!

John McCain met expectations in Iowa by taking 13 percent in the caucuses, and now the focus is on New Hampshire's primary next Tuesday.

James Carney over at Time looks at what's ahead for the McCain campaign:

John McCain took home a modest fourth place finish in the Iowa caucuses, garnering 13% of the Republican vote. But he may be as big a winner as Mike Huckabee. Huckabee's knockout of Mitt Romney in the caucuses was exactly what the McCain campaign, which spent little time or money in Iowa, needed from the state. McCain decided several months ago to stake his entire campaign on New Hampshire, where he is ahead of Romney (who governed next door in Massachusetts) in the most recent polls. Now that Romney has been severely wounded in Iowa, and with New Hampshire's Republicans historically cool toward Christian conservatives, McCain is suddenly poised to win big on Jan. 8 — and, perhaps, beyond.

Read the whole thing.

McCain's looking to be the Comeback Kid of '08.

The Arizona Senator was leading national polls heading into Iowa (Pew Reseach had McCain up by a couple of points in a January 2 survey), and while some late polls show Mitt Romney getting a last-minute boost of support in the Granite State, the full-impact of the Romney Iowa debacle remains to be seen.

Of course Romney sees McCain as the big threat in New Hampshire, not Huckabee, so that might be a little clue as to the real campaign action forthcoming this weekend!

Photo Credit: New York Times

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UPDATE: Zogby's got a new poll, with new survey data through January 3 (via Memeorandum):

Republican John McCain has leapt into first place in the GOP primary race in New Hampshire, while Clinton holds on to a six–point edge in the first three–day Reuters/C–SPAN/Zogby telephone tracking poll of likely voters shows.

McCain’s lead is based on strength of support among moderates and independents, while Romney holds his own in what is, like Iowa, a two–man contest at this point in the GOP contest. Among moderates, McCain wins 53% support compared to 24% for Romney – and little significant support for anyone else on the GOP side. Among mainline conservatives, the two are evenly matched with Romney winning 32% and McCain winning 31%. Among self–described “very conservative” likely primary voters, Romney leads by a wide margin with 38%. Mike Huckabee is in second among the demographic group, with 21%. McCain is third with 19%.

Among men, McCain leads Romney, 35% to 30%, and among women, McCain has 32% support to Romney’s 30%. Huckabee is third and Giuliani a close fourth in both gender demographics.

I'll have more updates on the New Hampshire race over the weekend.

Clinton's Collapse of Inevitability

I noted in my election night post that Hillary Clinton's third-place showing in Iowa has really put the lie to the inevitability thesis we've seen all 2007. Clinton campaigned as the inevitable Democratic nominee, the media played it up, and her rivals fought it.

But as Fred Barnes notes at the Weekly Standard, the Iowa results have nuked Hillary's odds-on aura:

SO MUCH FOR THE inevitability of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee. The biggest story in the world today is the defeat of Clinton and the entire Clinton political machine, led by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in the Iowa caucuses. Iowa has the first contest in the 2008 presidential race, but it's not always a critically important event. This year it was.

The second biggest story is the Iowa victory of Barack Obama, a senator from Illinois who has just finished his third year in office. He is an African-American with remarkable appeal across racial and cultural lines. Obama is now not only the favorite to win the Democratic presidential nomination, he's the candidate in either party with the best chance of becoming the next president.

Mike Huckabee's defeat of Mitt Romney here in the Republican caucuses was extraordinary. But beating a former one-term Massachusetts governor is hardly as historically significant as Obama's triumph over Clinton. Until recently Huckabee, a Baptist preacher and the ex-governor of Arkansas, wasn't taken seriously by the media and political communities, including by me. But in Iowa he proved to have impressive campaign skills that may allow him to reach beyond the conservative Christian base responsible for his victory here. To win the Republican nomination, he'll need to.

Barnes follows up this analysis with his projections for the upcoming primaries.

See more analysis at Memeorandum, as well as this piece over at The Politico:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) heads out of Iowa as the biggest news story in the world and a force that strategists for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) are uncertain how to stop.

With the New Hampshire primary just four days away, Clinton and her team now must convince voters that choosing Obama would be risky for the party and the country — but they must do it in a way that doesn’t make her look small or desperate.

“Everyone underestimated this conflagration,” said a former Clinton administration official.

“If people think he’s electable, they’ll vote with their hearts and not their minds.”

For Obama, a key challenge is to absorb the new scrutiny that comes as people wrap their heads around a new idea — President Obama — and as Clinton supporters do their best to raise doubts about him.

Clinton’s camp had felt she had a better chance of winning New Hampshire than Iowa, and her press in the Granite State has generally been good.

But with the vicious media coverage she now seems likely to face, she could well go 0 for 2 heading into the South Carolina primary, where a strong black vote provides an inviting environment for Obama.

I'm not jumping on the pessimism bandwagon. If anyone can come back from a third-place Iowa showing, it's Hillary Clinton. The challenge is steep though, and the whole country's on the edge of its seat until Tuesday.

The other big winner coming out of Iowa is John McCain, and New Hampshire's looking even better for him with Romney's collapse in Iowa.

Huckabee and Obama Take Iowa by Storm!

Today's results in Iowa shouldn't be surprising, at least not if one trusts public opinion tracking polls.

Still, the victories for Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama are startling, given the come-from-behind triumph for the former Arkansas governor, and the taking-on-Goliath feel to Obama's win over Hillary Clinton.

Adam Nagourney, over at the New York Times, takes a look at the Iowa results from this perspective:

Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a first-term Democratic senator trying to become the nation’s first African-American president, rolled to victory in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night, lifted by a record turnout of voters who embraced his promise of change.

The victory by Mr. Obama, 46, amounted to a startling setback for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 60, of New York, who just months ago appeared to be the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The result left uncertain the prospects for John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, who had staked his second bid for the White House on winning Iowa.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards, who appeared to edge her out for second place, both vowed to stay in the race.

“They said this day would never come,” Mr. Obama said as he claimed his victory.

On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who was barely a blip on the national scene just two months ago, defeated Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, delivering a serious setback to Mr. Romney’s high-spending campaign and putting pressure on Mr. Romney to win in New Hampshire next Tuesday.

Mr. Huckabee, a Baptist minister, was carried in large part by evangelical voters, who helped him withstand extensive spending by Mr. Romney on television advertising and a get-out-the-vote effort.

“Tonight we proved that American politics is still in the hands of ordinary folks like you,” said Mr. Huckabee, who ran on a platform that combined economic populism with an appeal to social conservatives.

Mr. Huckabee won with 34.4 percent of the delegate support, after 86 percent of precincts had reported. Mr. Romney had 25.4 percent, former Senator Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee had 13.4 percent and Senator John McCain of Arizona had 13.2 percent.

On the Democratic side, with 99 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Obama had 37.5 percent of the delegate support, Mr. Edwards 29.8 percent and Mrs. Clinton had 29.5 percent. Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico was fourth, at 2.1 percent.

Two Democrats, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, dropped out of the race after winning only tiny percentages of the vote.

The first thing that strikes me when reading this account is how Nagourney notes how both Edwards and Clinton "vowed to stay in the race."

Hello!

Iowa helps build momentum, sure, but this election's still wide open by any definition of the phrase.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads in public opinion polls in New Hampshire and nationally (by a 22 point margin). Of course, Obama's win and the resulting "big mo" this weekend will certainly change some of these numbers, but it's way too early to call it a day for any of the top tier candidates. New Hampshire will be a real test for Clinton - if she doesn't win there I'd definitely argue her frontrunner inevitability throughout 2007 was the biggest campaign ruse since Howard Dean's screaming collapse in 2004.

On the Republican side, while the Huckabee win is pretty amazing - considering how recent his rise to the top tier has been - it's Romney's collapse that's probably the most astonishing development. Even more so than with Clinton, Romney's got to win New Hampshire next Tuesday (a neighboring state to Massachusetts, where Romney held the governor's mansion).

I think Fred Thompson's got to be relieved a bit by a third place showing, and for McCain to take over 13 percent of the vote nary an effort in the Hawkeye State may be one of the best performances of the night.

I'll have more analysis over the next couple of days.

Photo Credit: New York Times

War is Taking Back Seat on Campaign Trail

Candidates will be making their last pitches today in Iowa, before caucus-goers weigh-in with their picks for the major-party nominees.

Yet it turns out that the war in Iraq has receded in importance for many voters, as domestic issues are seeing greater salience in the electorate. The New York Times has the story:

The Democratic and Republican presidential candidates are navigating a far different set of issues as they approach the Iowa caucuses on Thursday than when they first started campaigning here a year ago, and that is likely to change even more as the campaigns move to New Hampshire and across the country.

Even though polls show that Iowa Democrats still consider the war in Iraq the top issue facing the country, the war is becoming a less defining issue among Democrats nationally, and it has moved to the back of the stage in the rush of campaign rallies, town hall meetings and speeches that are bringing the caucus competition to an end. Instead, candidates are being asked about, and are increasingly talking about, the mortgage crisis, rising gas costs, health care, immigration, the environment and taxes.

The shift suggests that economic anxiety may be at least matching national security as a factor driving the 2008 presidential contest as the voting begins.

The campaigns are moving to recalibrate what they are saying amid signs of this changing backdrop; gone are the days when debates and television advertisements were filled with references to Iraq.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York recently produced a television advertisement that attacked the Bush administration for failing to deal with “America’s housing crisis.” Mitt Romney, the Massachusetts Republican, has begun talking about expanding health care coverage, an issue of particular concern in New Hampshire.

“People say that health care is a Democratic issue,” he said. “Baloney.”

John Edwards of North Carolina has a ready answer when asked about immigration at rallies here — a subject that rarely if ever came up at Democratic gatherings a year ago. He drew cheers at a New Year’s Day rally in Ames when he said that while he would support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, he would insist that none could become naturalized “until they learned to speak English.”

Part of the shift appears to stem from the reduction in violence in Iraq after President Bush’s decision to send more troops there last year. Mrs. Clinton, who once faced intense opposition from her party’s left over her vote to authorize the war, now is rarely pressed on it, though Democrats say it continues be a drag on her in this state. Senator John McCain, a strong proponent of increased troop levels, is off of the defensive and now positions himself as having been prescient about what would work to quell the violence.

Frankly, it's hard to be more antiseptic analytically than this. The war will remain a key issue troughout the year, and it's likely that success on the ground in Iraq threw the Democrats off of their game, since we saw troop withdrawals as the party's main priority in 2007.

John McCain deserves his rocket boost back to the front of the pack, for he's been consistent in his support for the war, and his strategic theory - announced before the troop surge - has been vindicated by events. (McCain's even thinking ahead, suggesting he's not against the idea of serving only one term as president.)

Rudy Giuliani's seen the political results from the change in Iraq, and he's hoping to create a similar political dynamic with his focus on a troop build-up for Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney's just trying to hang in the race, and Fred Thomspon's already contemplating his exit, which may come as early as tonight if he fares badly in today's caucuses.

The Epochal Battle of Campaign '08

Today's Wall Street Journal's got one of my favorite types of political news articles: the big picture analysis. The Journal's Gerald Seib argues that we're seeing in 2008 the end of the Reagan-Bush political era in American politics (a Reagan or a Bush was on the top of the ticket in every election since 1980).

Here's the introduction:

When Iowa voters walk into their state's caucuses tomorrow night, they will be kicking off a milestone campaign year that promises a new political course for America.

For the first time in 80 years, no incumbent president or vice president from either party is seeking the White House, creating an unusually unsettled campaign with no obvious front-runner. Power in Congress is divided so evenly between the two parties that neither has really been in control since the 2006 elections. Now, in the wide-open 2008 general election, voters will declare whom they want to run the executive and legislative branches.

Americans will make that choice at a time when they are distinctly uneasy. Record numbers of voters are choosing to declare themselves politically independent -- and thus open to moving either left or right. Both the Republican president and the Democratic Congress are receiving historically low public-approval ratings, another sign of voter unease. More broadly, the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has in recent months found the nation to be in the midst of the most prolonged period of public dissatisfaction in 15 years, as measured by the share of voters who say the country is "on the wrong track."

In one sense change is inevitable. This year marks the end of what can be considered the Reagan-Bush era in American politics that began when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. In six of the last seven general elections, a candidate named Reagan or Bush has appeared atop a national ticket, defining a brand of internationally engaged conservatism that has been the dominant strain in American politics for more than a generation.

Now the stage is set for an ideological rethinking in both parties. "The mood for change is more than one of small incremental adjustments," write Republican pollster Bill McInturff and Democrat Peter Hart, who conduct the Journal/NBC News poll. "It is concern for the next generation as well as widespread unhappiness with both President Bush and the Congress."

The question is: Change to what? At the outset of the year, Democrats, having been out of the White House for the past seven years and in the minority of Congress for six of those years, stand the best chance of benefiting from the mood for change.

So far, it appears that presidential candidates Barack Obama among the Democrats and Mike Huckabee among the Republicans have benefited most from the public desire to shake things up. They are fresh faces who seem to represent departures from the establishment.

Seib points to the war in Iraq, the economy, and immigration as three top issues facing the electorate in 2008. Underlying the issues is the pent-up demands for government to do something. Polling data finds the lowest number of Americans seeing the country moving in the right direction since the 1992 election.

Will 2008 be one of those earthquake-style elections of earlier eras, a realignment toward decades of Democratic Party political dominance?

I don't think so. Sure, this is an extremely different political cycle, with new faces and demographics being represented in the political system like never before.

But I don't see some kind of new governing philosophy emerging, and I don't see the making for some dramatic systemic political change (Republicans have been doing well at the state level, which doesn't augur well for a broader, long-term national Democratic movement).

The Democrats so far have been unable to pick up the best elements of the old Bill Clinton-New Democrat governing style, especially on trade and markets.

I wouldn't be surprised if a Democratic administration even sought to turn back from the Clinton administration's biggest domestic achievement - welfare reform - although I don't think the electorate's so disenchanted with politics that people would welcome a return to mass welfare dependency. I hope I'm wrong of course, which I mention because we are seeing public support for Democratic social-welfare proposals on health care - mandated programs which are looking to stifle competition, reduce choice, and ration care. As Seib notes:

Anxiety over the economy, and particularly worries about health care, could prompt a return to classic big-government liberalism. In this scenario, voters would turn to government to provide health care and bail out homeowners thrown on the street by the escalating payments on their adjustable-rate mortgages. Democrat Hillary Clinton has been aggressively pushing the message that the government should ensure health coverage for all Americans.

I'm more optimistic on the GOP side. All the major candidates are committed to America's mission in Iraq, with just moderate differences in how they'd approach the broader war on terror (Mike Huckabee's a bit of an outlier, but even he'd keep up the troop deployment in Iraq). It's less clear what a GOP president will offer in 2009, but I'm convinced that grassroots forces will push a Republican White House to the right on the top issues on the agenda.

Read the whole article, in any case.

I have some doubts about some of the other hypotheticals raised, for example, that the election might produce some type of post-partisan electoral synthesis. No, I think the country's not geared toward moderate renaissance, if we ever had such a time.

GOP's Rival Camps May Pose Problems in November

This morning's Los Angeles Times suggests the Republican Party's divisions in the primaries could spell trouble come November. Here's the introduction:

The long-standing coalition of social, economic and national security conservatives that elevated the Republican Party to political dominance has become so splintered by the presidential primary campaign that some party leaders fear a protracted nomination fight that could hobble the eventual nominee.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney aspires to build a conservative coalition in the mold of Ronald Reagan, but his past support of abortion rights gives many social conservatives pause. Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister, is a purist on social issues but has angered economic conservatives because he raised taxes while he was governor of Arkansas.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona have tough-guy images and hawkish records, but many Republicans are wary of them because of their immigration and other policies.

The breach within the party was evident here Tuesday, two days before Iowa holds the first nominating contests of the presidential race, as Huckabee and Romney each sought to show he could reach across the conservative spectrum and unite Republicans, as did Reagan and George W. Bush in prior elections.

I've written previously about the GOP divide (see here and here, for example).

The problem's not just that no new Reagan has emerged to energize a broad, rejuvenated conservative movement. The GOP's at war with itself - it's a collection of narrow constituencies unmindful of Reaganesque big-tent politics.

Pro-life forces can't stand Rudy Giuliani. Tough-on-immigration activists feel betrayed by John McCain, who's seen as backing the Bush administration's alleged pro-amnesty alliance with liberals such as Teddy Kennedy. Fiscal conservatives and law-and-order hawks have hammered Mike Huckabee. Opposition to Huckabee's so intense that some conservatives are saying they'd rather vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election!

My hope, as I've stated before, is that the primary process isn't so divisive as to create irreparable damage to the nominee. That's wishful thinking, I guess, if early indicators on the eve of Iowa are any clue.

See more analysis at Memeorandum.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

Rudy Giuliani and Homeland Security

Rudy Giuliani's got a new article over at City Journal laying out his plan for homeland security:

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United States has confronted both the deadliest attack and one of the most destructive natural disasters in the nation’s history. The term “homeland security” wasn’t part of the national debate during the 2000 election. Now, after September 11 and Hurricane Katrina, every American understands that homeland security is at the heart of a president’s responsibility.

There have been no fewer than 14 attempted domestic terrorist attacks and nine international plots against American citizens and interests since 9/11, according to reports in the public record. There have been plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and airplanes crossing the Atlantic. Terrorists have conspired to murder American soldiers at Fort Dix and planned to ignite the fuel lines beneath John F. Kennedy International Airport. Not a single post-9/11 plot on U.S. soil has succeeded to date. That is no accident; it is a measure of our increased vigilance as a nation.

The fight against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups will be America’s central challenge for years to come. We will achieve victory in what I call the Terrorists’ War on Us only by staying on offense: defeating terrorist organizations and hunting down their leaders, wherever they are; helping Afghanistan and Iraq establish stable and representative governments; aiding the spread of good governance throughout the Muslim world; and defeating militant Islam in the war of ideas.

Such international efforts are essential to winning this war, but not sufficient. We must also protect our people and economy, secure our borders, and prevent terrorist attacks here at home. These responsibilities are the domestic dimension of the larger struggle, and they require a focus on more than terrorism. As Stephen Flynn points out in his book The Edge of Disaster, “Nearly 90 percent of Americans are currently living in locations that place them at moderate to high risks of earthquakes, volcanoes, wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, or high-wind damage.” Preparing for terrorist attacks and for natural disasters are complementary goals: when cities and states prepare for natural disaster, they also strengthen our response to potential terrorism.

Read the whole thing.

Giuliani points to three components of a continuing domestic anti-terror program: prevention, preparedness, and resilience.

I like what he says about domestic surveillance:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, enacted in 1978 to exclude eavesdropping on foreign communications from judicial oversight, must be modernized and expanded to encompass not just phones, as the current law does, but also newer technologies, such as the fax machine and the Internet. Antiquated laws—enacted when such technologies weren’t part of everyday life—cannot be allowed to hamstring our federal law enforcement and foreign intelligence services. Some members of Congress want to throw as many legal obstacles as possible in front of FBI agents and intelligence officers as they try to intercept communications between known al-Qaida leaders and U.S.-based operatives who will carry out attacks. This is the last thing we should do.

That's not going to be popular with the left's civil liberties wing.

Giulani's campaign has lost some of his luster, and he's not my pick for the nomination, but I'm confident the country would be in good hands under a Giuliani administration.

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UPDATE: Red State offers a powerful endorsement of Giuliani for president:

Oh, I know it’s not fashionable to support the Mayor these days. He took a beating in December over allegations (since proven unfounded) that he abused City funds to pursue his extra-curricular love life. His failure to do a Romney-style flip-flop on social issues has earned him the undying enmity of many on the right. His strategy (and it is a strategy, by the way) of trying to reduce the utterly inequitable influence of Iowa and New Hampshire over the primary process and focus instead on states with more than seven electoral votes has been declared dead-before-arrival by those who are quite sure they know better. Conventional wisdom wags its sagacious head and tells us he’s done.

But then again, Rudy’s never been a conventional wisdom type. And neither have I.

So here’s why I've chosen Giuliani. He functions under inconceivable pressure. When the proverbial refuse hits the fan, he is able to think beyond himself, make decisions and exert that elusive quality of “leadership” that can pull a country through tragedy and loss. You don’t need me to tell you this. We know it for a grim fact. We all remember where we were on 9/11. I think it’s pretty safe to say we all remember Giuliani. I cannot tell you how Mitt Romney, John McCain, Fred Thompson or Mike Huckabee would behave under comparable circumstances. I can guess, and I expect some would do better than others. Certainly Senator McCain’s biography demonstrates that the Mayor does not have a monopoly on personal heroism. But do I think any of them would surpass Giuliani in a major national security crisis?

I doubt Giuliani's got anything on McCain in terms of resolve in facing domestic and international crises.

McCain remains my first pick, as readers know.

I don't have a second pick, but unlike some conservatives, I will not panic over a Huckabee nomination, crossing over to vote for the Democratic nominee.

A Surge in Iraq Security

War opponents are intent on highlighting 2007 as the deadliest year in Iraq since the invasion (see here, here, here, and, here, for example). While this is true in total, the bulk of deaths came early in the year, with the last three months showing a dramatic drop in casualties.

The Los Angeles Times has more:

December emerged as possibly the safest month for U.S. forces in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and the least deadly for Iraqi civilians in the last 12 months, but overall 2007 was the bloodiest year of the war, according to figures released Monday.

The Iraqi Ministry of Health said 481 civilians died nationwide last month in war-related violence such as bombings, mortar attacks and sectarian slayings. It said 16,232 civilians died last year. The 2006 death toll was 12,320.

"I remember 2007 was the explosions year," said Abd Hadi Hussein, a Shiite Muslim resident of Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. He recalled carrying a woman who had been injured in a bombing to a hospital in August. "She was completely burned, and people could not recognize whether she was a man or a woman. She kept asking about her little girl. But then the woman died. This memory I can't remove from my mind.

"But this year, 2008, I am very optimistic," he said, citing the recent celebrations for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha and the crowded Christmas Masses held in Baghdad.

On the military front, 21 U.S. personnel died in Iraq during December, according to Department of Defense figures released by the independent website icasualties.org, making the average daily death tally last month the lowest since the start of the war. It was possible the military could report additional deaths for the month in coming days, but the casualty number was striking when compared with the December 2006 total of 112.

The key factor in declining casualies has been the U.S. military buildup throughout 2007.

After May, both civilian and military deaths declined, with the last three months seeing the lowest level of military deaths compared to any other 3 month stretch since March 2003 (by mid-2007, non-combat troop deaths were the lowest in three years).

The question going forward, as discussed in the Times piece, and other sources, is how long can the improvements be sustained?

Here's Michael O'Hanlon's assessment:

Iraq’s security environment is considerably improved, with security at its best levels since early 2004. This is largely thanks to the surge-based strategy of Gen. David Petraeus and the heroic efforts — and sacrifice — of so many American and Iraqi troops and police officers (more Americans have died in Iraq in 2007 than in any previous year, though death rates have dropped greatly in the last few months). But Iraq’s political environment and its economy are only marginally better than a year ago. High oil prices have helped the latter, but violence and rampant corruption remain huge problems.

The number of trained Iraqi security forces steadily rises. It had better, since American troop levels are scheduled to drop to pre-surge levels by summer, although the new strategy, with its emphasis on protecting the civilian population, is to continue. Given Iraq’s fragile sectarian relations and weak institutions, the likelihood is that further American troop reductions will have to be slow and careful if the progress is to continue.

General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, takes a cautiously optimistic view, arguing that a continuing U.S presence in the country over the long-term is the best guarantee of security.

American Interests in the Persian Gulf

Walter Russell Mead's got a great piece on U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf over at OpinionJournal. Check it out:

Few subjects matter as much as oil, the Persian Gulf and American foreign policy. But few subjects are less well understood. Even relatively sophisticated observers will attribute American interest in the Persian Gulf to Uncle Sam's insatiable thirst for crude, combined with an effort to gain lucrative contracts for American oil firms. The U.S. on this view is something like a global Count Dracula, roaming the earth in search of fresh bodies, hoping to suck them dry.

True, the security of America's oil supply has been an element in national strategic thinking at least since Franklin Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz in the waning days of World War II. And true, the U.S. government has never been indifferent to the concerns of the major oil concerns. But the security of our domestic energy supplies plays a relatively small role in America's Persian Gulf policy, and the purely commercial interests of American companies do not drive American grand strategy.

Mead provides statistics on the declining share of Persian Gulf oil supplies to overall U.S. petroleum imports and production. But check out Mead's broader discussion of U.S strategic interests in the region:

For the past few centuries, a global economic and political system has been slowly taking shape under first British and then American leadership. As a vital element of that system, the leading global power--with help from allies and other parties--maintains the security of world trade over the seas and air while also ensuring that international economic transactions take place in an orderly way....

For this system to work, the Americans must prevent any power from dominating the Persian Gulf while retaining the ability to protect the safe passage of ships through its waters. The Soviets had to be kept out during the Cold War, and the security and independence of the oil sheikdoms had to be protected from ambitious Arab leaders like Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and Iraq's Saddam Hussein. During the Cold War Americans forged alliances with Turkey, Israel and (until 1979) Iran, three non-Arab states that had their own reasons for opposing both the Soviets and any pan-Arab state.

When the fall of the shah of Iran turned a key regional ally into an implacable foe, the U.S. responded by tightening its relations with both Israel and Turkey--while developing a deeper relationship with Egypt, which had given up on Nasser's goal of unifying all the Arabs under its flag.

Today the U.S. is building a coalition against Iran's drive for power in the Gulf. Israel, a country which has its own reasons for opposing Iran, remains an important component in the American strategy, but the U.S. must also manage the political costs of this relationship as it works with the Sunni Arab states. American opposition to Iran's nuclear program not only reflects concerns about Israeli security and the possibility that Iran might supply terrorist groups with nuclear materials. It also reflects the U.S. interest in protecting its ability to project conventional forces into the Gulf.

As Mead concludes, American interests extend beyond the immediate Iranian problem, to the security of vital sea lines of communication from the Arabian Gulf and the coast of East Africa, to the Indian Ocean and Southeast, and beyond.

The vital importance of sea power and American national security goes back at least to Alfred Thayer Mahan in the late -19th century - a point protesters shouting "no blood for oil" often overlook (see here and here, for bit on that controversy).

Laptops Taking Over Computer Market

I just bought my wife a laptop computer for Christmas. We promptly hooked it up to a router for wireless connectivity, and we've been enjoying it non-stop, including the kids!

I figured I was behind the times on this, but perhaps I'm just part of the growing trend toward computer mobility, as today's Los Angeles Times suggests:

After decades as the computer of choice for homes and businesses, the desktop PC is being pushed to the scrap heap by its smaller, nimbler sibling: the laptop.

They've been around since the early 1980s, but portable computers are finally taking over. Last year, for the first time, American consumers bought more of them than desktops. Sixteen of the 20 bestselling PCs on Amazon.com this holiday season were laptops.

U.S. corporations are expected to make laptops the majority of their computer purchases in 2008. BNSF Railway Co. already has. Of the 4,000 Dell Inc. computers it bought last year, 60% were laptops, so rail inspectors could file reports from their trucks and other employees could work from home.

"They were in a totally tethered world, and now they have no tethering at all," said Jeff Campbell, the Fort Worth company's chief information officer.

Faster, cheaper technology is behind the most sweeping change the computer industry has seen in a generation. Buying a computer that can be spirited away in a briefcase or backpack no longer requires a big sacrifice in performance, storage or money.

Through common devices called docking stations, users can connect their laptops to external monitors, keyboards and mice while seated at a desk, then eject them and work from a coffeehouse, library, airplane or living room.

The surge in laptop sales is also fueled by the pervasiveness of wireless networks in homes and public hangouts. Having Internet connections everywhere makes laptops much more useful.

Parents and kids consult laptops for quick facts at the dinner table as they once did with encyclopedias. Cocktail-party hosts fire them up to amuse with the latest YouTube video or television show. Workers plop them down on the road and connect to the office without missing a beat.

And sales are expected to accelerate as devices such as the iPhone and tablet PCs pack more power and utility into ever-smaller packages.

"It's not really a computer anymore," said Dag Spicer, senior curator of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. "It's a companion, it's your memory, it's your teacher and your entertainer."

I mostly work on a desktop, at work and in my home office. I do like the mobility of the laptop around the home. This last couple of days I've been blogging at the dining room table, where I can sit with my boys and watch movies at the same time - family entertainment multitasking!

I like this section from the Times' piece, on the coffee shop etiquette for notebook computers:

With their newfound popularity, laptops are doing for computing what cellphones did for talking - bringing the activities into public places. With that, new social norms and rules of etiquette are emerging.

At Ritual Coffee Roasters cafe, a mecca for laptop users in San Francisco, owner Eileen Hassi hired an electrician last spring to disable the electrical outlets. Regulars at the coffeehouse were spending so much time riding the free wireless network -- as many as eight hours at a stretch - that patrons who wanted simply to sip their lattes couldn't find seats.

You're welcome to work on your laptop here, Hassi explained, "until your battery dies."

That's pretty good!

Photo Credit: Jakub Mosur, Los Angeles Times

Divining Supreme Power in Iran

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's "Supreme Leader" (pictured above), does not always call the shots in the Iranian regime, according to this Los Angeles Times article:

For years, Western analysts have struggled to understand the inner workings of Iran's leadership. To many, it is a government tightly controlled by the Shiite Muslim clergy. But the power of the clerics has steadily eroded. Increasingly, power is distributed among combative elites within a delicate system of checks and balances defined by religious as well as civil law, personal relations and the rhythm of bureaucracy.

Iran analysts struggle to discern which officials have authority and how much. And when Iranian officials make public pronouncements, it often is unclear whether they are expressing established policy or fighting among themselves -- speaking for their own faction or just themselves.

Concentric circles of influence and power that emanate from the supreme leader include the clergy, government and military officials -- and at their farthest fringes, militiamen and well-connected bazaar merchants -- altogether perhaps 15% of Iran's 70 million people.

Even the man regarded in Iran as the highest-ranking cleric in Shiite Islam finds himself constrained and challenged.

Those inside Iran's circle of power, says Ali Afshari, an analyst and former student activist now living in Washington, operate according to unique rules.

"It is not a democracy or an absolute totalitarian regime," he said. "Nor is it a communist system or monarchy or dictatorship. It is a mixture."

The article discusses Ali Khamenei's power as situated within the khodi system, the Persian term for "one of us":

"In our society there is a red line between khodi and non-khodi," said one political activist. "If you've never been on the right side of that divide, you're considered guilty until proven otherwise. If you're not khodi, you don't have the right to criticize."

Khamenei and his closest advisors are at the center of that power structure, overseeing grave matters of state, including the country's nuclear program and domestic policy, from a huge tree-shrouded compound in downtown Tehran. Each day, the Supreme National Security Council, Khamenei's main think tank, faxes his orders to newspapers, television stations and government officials. Clergy spread the word at homes and Friday prayer sessions.

Surrounding the supreme leader are several powerful committees consisting of dozens of clerics, each established to cement the central role of religion in Iranian politics. The Council of Experts chooses the supreme leader. The Guardian Council vets laws and candidates for public office. The Expediency Council mediates legal disputes.

Next are the leaders of the Revolutionary Guard and armed forces, who are appointed by Khamenei; the elected president; the Cabinet; parliament; senior military commanders selected by the supreme leader; and the senior clerics in the holy city Qom.

Beyond that are governors and other provincial officials, all approved by the president. At the outer rim of khodi are well-connected merchants, militia members and millions of volunteers who make up the government's shock troops.

Included in the system are people with different ideologies and agendas, including the offspring of Western universities and onetime operatives in the shah's intelligence service whom Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini needed to help bring down the shah in the 1970s, defend his revolution and withstand attack from Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the 1980s.

From the beginning, Iran's leaders fought over how wide to expand the circles of power, and how much room there would be to challenge the leadership.

Even those on the outer fringes of power can buck authority, especially if they retain a rank within the religious hierarchy. Despite a moratorium on stoning those convicted of morality crimes, a judge this year in the western village of Takistan ordered the stoning of a man for adultery.

Instead of firing the official, judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi decided the judge had a point: Stoning was, after all, part of Islamic law.

Though ordinary people have limited freedom to criticize the power structure, analysts and officials in Tehran say that the heads of government agencies eagerly devour results of polls about their leaders' performance and Iranians' attitudes toward everything from women's dress to making peace with the U.S. Many of Iran's leaders fear a popular uprising like the one that toppled the shah or the communist governments of Eastern Europe.

One after another over the past decades, Iranian leaders have tried to control this convoluted system -- and failed.

This article reminds me of studying political science in the 1980s, when "Sovietologists" worked hard to divine crucial leadership dynamics in the Kremlin, assessing every purge or power shake-up in terms of U.S.-Soviet relations, and international security more broadly.

Perhaps the Times is trying to tell us something with their analysis.

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Note: Political scientists code Iran's political system as a non-democratic regime, composed of theocratic and quasi-democratic principles. Power is concentrated at the pinnacle of the political system in the Supreme Spiritual Leader, according to Iran's Islamic Constitution of 1979.

The Supreme Leader is the pivot of government, mediating politics and policy-directives between the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. He selects the presidential candidates (who in turn are elected in a national election), and he can dismiss an elected president under the authority of "the interests of Islam." Iran's executive branch bureaucracy is dominated by the clergy, who direct policy in the semi-public institutions of the state. The most important bureaucratic sectors are the culture and security services (the ministries of culture and intelligence), and the military under the leadership of Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

Party politics and political participation are highly regulated by the state. Western principles of dissent, free speech, and a liberal press are alien to the current Iranian political culture. A current dilemma for the regime is how to manage demands from Iran's rising middle class for greater interest group participation in politics, democratic representation in government and elections, and respect for basic human and political rights.

See Mark Kesselman, ed., Introduction to Comparative Politics, 7th edition (Houghton-Mifflin, 2007).

Photo: Los Angeles Times