Was President Bush Behind the NEI Report? An Update

This entry is a follow-up to my previous post, "Was President Bush Behind the NIE Report?" I noted there that Robert Baer, the author of a Time piece arguing Bush greenlighted the NIE, "provides absolutely no evidence for his claims, so I lend no credence to this analysis."

Caroline Glick has followed this up with an excellent essay weighing the Baer assertion, "The abandonment of the Jews." Here's the introduction:

The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear intentions is the political version of a tactical nuclear strike on efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs.

The NIE begins with the sensationalist opening line: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Teheran halted its nuclear weapons program." But the rest of the report contradicts the lead sentence. For instance, the second line says, "We also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Teheran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons."

Indeed, contrary to that earth-shattering opening, the NIE acknowledges that the Iranians have an active nuclear program and that they are between two and five years away from nuclear capabilities.

The NIE's final sentence: "We assess with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decides to do so," only emphasizes that US intelligence agencies view Iran's nuclear program as a continuous and increasing threat rather than a suspended and diminishing one.

But the content of the NIE is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is the opening line - as the report's authors no doubt knew full well when they wrote it. With that opening line, the NIE effectively takes the option of American use of force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons off the table.

There are two possible explanations for why President George W. Bush permitted this strange report to be published. Either he doesn't wish to attack Iran, or he was compelled by the intelligence bureaucracy to accept that he can't attack Iran.

Arguing the former in Time magazine, former CIA agent Robert Baer explained, "While the 16 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."

The alternative view - that Bush was forced to accept the report against his will - is also possible. The report's primary authors, Thomas Fingar, Vann Van Diepen and Kenneth Brill are all State Department officials on loan to the office of the Director of National Intelligence. According to the Wall Street Journal, all three are reputed to be deeply partisan and hostile to Bush's foreign policy goals. Furthermore, for the past four years the three have reportedly worked studiously to downplay the danger of Iran's nuclear weapons program and to discredit their opponents within the administration.

Thursday The New York Times ran a story detailing the process in which the NIE was collated that lends credence to the view that Bush was compelled to accept it. According to the Times, in the months preceding the NIE's publication, Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, purposely prevented the White House from seeing any of the raw intelligence data on which the NIE's radical conclusion on Iran was drawn. This alone indicates that the intelligence community may well have presented Bush with a fait accompli.

But it really doesn't make a difference one way or another. Whether the president agrees or disagrees with the NIE, he is boxed in just the same. The NIE denies him the option of taking military action against Iran's nuclear program for the duration of his tenure in office. So for at least 14 months, Iran has nothing to worry about from Washington.

And the NIE's political repercussions extend well beyond the current administration. Today, no Democratic presidential candidate will dare to question the opening line of the report. The Democratic Congressional leaders are demanding that the administration immediately open bilateral talks with Iran. And Senator Hillary Clinton is being pilloried by her party rivals for her Senate vote in favor of classifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization.

That nails it. The NIE will be the retreatists' gift that keeps on giving in 2008. But read the rest of Glick's entry, where she argues that the ultimate result of the Iran report will be the abandonment of Israel to full strategic isolation vis-a-vis the Persian menace.

Today's Wall Street Journal has more on the "Iran Curveball":

President Bush has been scrambling to rescue his Iran policy after this week's intelligence switcheroo, but the fact that the White House has had to spin so furiously is a sign of how badly it has bungled this episode. In sum, Mr. Bush and his staff have allowed the intelligence bureaucracy to frame a new judgment in a way that has undermined four years of U.S. effort to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions.

This kind of national security mismanagement has bedeviled the Bush Presidency. Recall the internal disputes over post-invasion Iraq, the smearing of Ahmad Chalabi by the State Department and CIA, hanging Scooter Libby out to dry after bungling the response to Joseph Wilson's bogus accusations, and so on. Mr. Bush has too often failed to settle internal disputes and enforce the results.

What's amazing in this case is how the White House has allowed intelligence analysts to drive policy. The very first sentence of this week's national intelligence estimate (NIE) is written in a way that damages U.S. diplomacy: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program." Only in a footnote below does the NIE say that this definition of "nuclear weapons program" does "not mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."

In fact, the main reason to be concerned about Iran is that we can't trust this distinction between civilian and military. That distinction is real in a country like Japan. But we know Iran lied about its secret military efforts until it was discovered in 2003, and Iran continues to enrich uranium on an industrial scale, with 3,000 centrifuges, in defiance of binding U.N. resolutions. There is no civilian purpose for such enrichment. Iran has access to all the fuel it needs for civilian nuclear power from Russia at the plant in Bushehr. The NIE buries the potential danger from this enrichment, even though this enrichment has been the main focus of U.S. diplomacy against Iran.

In this regard, it's hilarious to see the left and some in the media accuse Mr. Bush once again of distorting intelligence. The truth is the opposite. The White House was presented with this new estimate only weeks ago, and no doubt concluded it had little choice but to accept and release it however much its policy makers disagreed. Had it done otherwise, the finding would have been leaked and the Administration would have been assailed for "politicizing" intelligence.
The result is that we now have NIE judgments substituting for policy in a dangerous way. For one thing, these judgments are never certain, and policy in a dangerous world has to account for those uncertainties. We know from our own sources that not everyone in American intelligence agrees with this NIE "consensus," and the Israelis have already made clear they don't either. The Jerusalem Post reported this week that Israeli defense officials are exercised enough that they will present their Iran evidence to Admiral Michael Mullen, the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he visits that country tomorrow.

For that matter, not even the diplomats at the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency agree with the NIE. "To be frank, we are more skeptical," a senior official close to the agency told the New York Times this week. "We don't buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran." Senator John Ensign, a Nevada Republican, is also skeptical enough that he wants Congress to establish a bipartisan panel to explore the NIE's evidence. We hope he keeps at it.

You can say that again!

The editors note that the NIE is weakening international consensus on Iran, with China and Russia seeking an easy alternative to a firm riposte. But like Glick, the Journal editorial board's not going easy on the administration:

We reported earlier this week that the authors of this Iran NIE include former State Department officials who have a history of hostility to Mr. Bush's foreign policy. But the ultimate responsibility for this fiasco lies with Mr. Bush. Too often he has appointed, or tolerated, officials who oppose his agenda, and failed to discipline them even when they have worked against his policies. Instead of being candid this week about the problems with the NIE, Mr. Bush and his National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, tried to spin it as a victory for their policy. They simply weren't believable.

It's a sign of the Bush Administration's flagging authority that even many of its natural allies wondered this week if the NIE was really an attempt to back down from its own Iran policy. We only wish it were that competent.

Finally, check out Charles Krauthammer's essay on the Iran report over at Time, where he concludes, "there is no reasonable argument for taking military action off the table."

Pearl Harbor Remembered

The Cincinnati Post has a nice remembrance of Pearl Harbor:

Joe Whitt kept his memories of the horrors and heroics of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to himself for 35 years.

But he has been educating children, civic groups and anyone else who asks since the nation's Bicentennial in 1976. At 84, he has no intention of letting up on this 66th anniversary of the devastating surprise air assault that launched America into World War II.

"I have plenty to talk about, and I hope my story answers some of the questions in young people's minds," he said.

Whitt, who lives in Bethel, is president of the Ohio chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. He is among just 90 survivors left in Ohio among about 25,000 nationally.

"In Cincinnati, we are down to the bare bones. We have seven members. Two of them are in nursing homes," he said.

Six decades after the attack, numbers have dwindled and infirmities have hobbled many who survive, which has translated into far fewer trips to schools and other education events. The Cincinnati chapter's secretary treasurer is now Jean Adams, the widow of George Adams, a Pearl Harbor veteran who died on Dec. 7, 2004 - exactly 63 years after he witnessed the attack.

There is no one to replace George Adams as an eyewitness to history, but Mrs. Adams intends to keep his stories alive through supporting Whitt and the survivors' organization.

"It was important to my husband and so it was important to me. It's difficult for me to express. Pearl Harbor was part of our country's history, and I just think it was important for people to know what happened," Mrs. Adams said.

"The majority of the men were in their teens. My husband had just turned 19. He was a petty officer. I'm not sure young people realize what's happened and why. Without George and other men like him, I'm not sure where we would be," she said.

Whitt spoke to a pilots group at Lunken Airport Thursday night and appeared at a memorial event in New Richmond on Sunday. He can talk for hours because every detail of the attack remains fresh in his mind.

He was a seaman first class station on the USS San Francisco when the Japanese planes came. He and his mates concurred that the country was headed for war with Japan, but they figured on meeting their enemy in battle in the Philippines, where the Americans, he thought, would "clobber them in a day or two."

Instead, he was on the deck of the San Francisco, a cruiser that was docked and getting an overhaul, when the Japanese fighter planes attacked. He and all but five crewmates killed by machine gun fire were among the lucky ones because a construction crane kept the Japanese bombers from getting close enough for good shots.

"We put World War I helmets on our heads. The planes were so low you could almost hit them with a potato," he said.

Armed with a rifle, he shot at the planes as they passed by. "I had a view of the whole operation in the harbor. Big billows of black smoke and sound of guns firing. I never did see a plane dive straight down but they would come in on a heavy slant. They would come in real fast and drop those bombs and then they would pull up and roll over on a loop. The ones that dropped the big shells came in higher up," he said.

"I saw the Arizona as she blew up. It was just a tremendous explosion," he said, referring to the battleship that sank in the harbor, taking 1,177 crew members to a watery grave.

He would spend another five years in the Navy, mostly as a machine gunner.

Whitt fought in the south and north Pacific, including battles in the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

"I'm one of the few men who heard the first and last shots of the war," he said.

To adults and high school students, he tries to tell the whole story, including gruesome details of sailors eaten by sharks, the task of cleaning up body parts after an attack and other horrors.

"I try to tell them the heroics of the men, that these were young men, some of them not as old as they are. I was always on the guns fighting the Japanese, and I never saw one bit of cowardice in these young men," Whitt said.

According to Whitt's records, just one survivor remains in Northern Kentucky. That is Alvis Kinney of Highland Heights, who could not be reached for comment.

In Mount Sterling, Ky., Raymond Turley freely tells his story, though he has rarely done so in public.

He was a corporal in the Army Air Corps, a maintenance man on B-40s at Wheeler Field near Pearl Harbor.

He was having breakfast in the mess hall, preparing for a trip to Honolulu when he heard the first explosions, which he and others mistook initially for a U.S. Navy plane crash.

"We thought the Navy had cracked up one of their planes. We ran to the windows, and we saw the second bomb, and then we saw the rising sun on the wing of that plane.

He and two other soldiers began running for their barracks as Japanese planes systematically destroyed the B-40s, which were neatly lined up in two rows.

A man Turley didn't know told him to lay down near a curb to avoid machine gun fire, then instructed to run out of harm's way. He never got the stranger's name or saw him again, and Turley considers him a guardian angel.

Turley isn't confident that the drama of that day will be remembered when he's gone.

"I've got a Pearl Harbor survivor tag on my vehicle and very seldom does anyone say anything about it," he said. "I think most have pretty well forgotten about it, but I hope not because we laid our lives out many times."

Whitt knows the time of eyewitness accounts of Pearl Harbor and the ensuing war in the Pacific won't last forever, but he hopes their stories will.

"The only thing we can hope for is like the Civil war battles. I hope they keep it in the proper context where they tell it like it really was and not like Hollywood. The heroes were the men that we buried at sea. The thousands, and thousands killed in battle," he said.

The Los Angeles Times also has a story on Pearl Harbor survivors, "Pearl Harbor Lives in Hearts of Its Vets."

See more stories, here.

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UPDATE: Via Hammering Sparks From the Anvil, check out this Pearl Harbor YouTube:

The video draws on clips from Touchstone's 2001 motion picture, "Pearl Harbor."

Containing Iran?

The dust has yet to clear from this week's NIE bombshell, so one might think we'd avoid another abrupt change in foreign policy thinking on Iran.

Not so lucky, I guess, considering the publication of Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh's new piece over at Foreign Affairs, "The Costs of Containing Iran." The authors argue that the Bush administration's Iranian containment policy is destined to failure: Stuck in a Cold War-era mindset, the perspective's woefully inadequate considering the current correlation of forces in the Middle East:

Taking a page out of its early Cold War playbook, Washington hopes to check and possibly reduce Tehran's growing influence much as it foiled the Soviet Union's expansionist designs: by projecting its own power while putting direct pressure on its enemy and building a broad-based alliance against it. Washington has been building up the U.S. Navy's presence in the Persian Gulf and using harsh rhetoric, raising the specter of war. At the same time, it funds a $75 million democracy-promotion program supporting regime change in Tehran. In recent months, Washington has rallied support for a series of United Nations resolutions against Iran's nuclear program and successfully pushed through tough informal financial sanctions that have all but cut Iran out of international financial markets. It has officially designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and the IRG's elite al Quds Army as a supporter of terrorism, allowing the Treasury Department to target the groups' assets and the U.S. military to harass and apprehend their personnel in Iraq. Washington is also working to garner support from what it now views as moderate governments in the Middle East -- mostly authoritarian Arab regimes it once blamed for the region's myriad problems.

Washington's goal is to eliminate Iran's influence in the Arab world by rolling back Tehran's gains to date and denying it the support of allies -- in effect drawing a line from Lebanon to Oman to separate Iran from its Arab neighbors. The Bush administration has rallied support among Arab governments to oppose Iranian policies in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. It is trying to buttress the military capability of Persian Gulf states by providing a $20 billion arms package to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates. According to Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, one of the arms sales' primary objectives is "to enable these countries to strengthen their defenses and therefore to provide a deterrence against Iranian expansion and Iranian aggression in the future." And through a series of regional conclaves and conferences, the Bush administration hopes to rejuvenate the Israeli-Palestinian peace process partly in the hope of refocusing the energies of the region's governments on the threat posed by Iran.

Containing Iran is not a novel idea, of course, but the benefits Washington expects from it are new. Since the inception of the Islamic Republic, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have devised various policies, doctrines, and schemes to temper the rash theocracy. For the Bush administration, however, containing Iran is the solution to the Middle East's various problems. In its narrative, Sunni Arab states will rally to assist in the reconstruction of a viable government in Iraq for fear that state collapse in Baghdad would only consolidate Iran's influence there. The specter of Shiite primacy in the region will persuade Saudi Arabia and Egypt to actively help declaw Hezbollah. And, the theory goes, now that Israel and its longtime Arab nemeses suddenly have a common interest in deflating Tehran's power and stopping the ascendance of its protégé, Hamas, they will come to terms on an Israeli-Palestinian accord. This, in turn, will (rightly) shift the Middle East's focus away from the corrosive Palestinian issue to the more pressing Persian menace. Far from worrying that the Middle East is now in flames, Bush administration officials seem to feel that in the midst of disorder and chaos lies an unprecedented opportunity for reshaping the region so that it is finally at ease with U.S. dominance and Israeli prowess.

But there is a problem: Washington's containment strategy is unsound, it cannot be implemented effectively, and it will probably make matters worse. The ingredients needed for a successful containment effort simply do not exist. Under these circumstances, Washington's insistence that Arab states array against Iran could further destabilize an already volatile region.

What's so ineffective? Why will containment of Iran make things worse in the Middle East?

For one thing, Nasr and Takeyh argue that Iran in no way presents a threat on the same level as the old Soviet Union. Particularly, the authors suggest that Iran is not a revisionist power, and is not "seeking to create disorder in order to fulfill some scriptural promise, nor is it an expansionist power with unquenchable ambitions."

I find this a strange claim, particularly coming from Nasr, who has written that the administration's Iraq policy left a strategic power vacuum inside the Middle East, which Tehran - as the leader of a regional Shiite resurgence - was all too eager to fill.

Not to be outdone, Peter Galbraith, writing in the New York Review of Books, argued that America's difficulties in Iraq positioned Iran toward a situation of dominance previously unheard of:

Of all the unintended consequences of the Iraq war, Iran's strategic victory is the most far-reaching. In establishing the border between the Ottoman Empire and the Persian Empire in 1639, the Treaty of Qasr-i-Shirin demarcated the boundary between Sunni-ruled lands and Shiite-ruled lands. For eight years of brutal warfare in the 1980s, Iran tried to breach that line but could not. (At the time, the Reagan administration supported Saddam Hussein precisely because it feared the strategic consequences of an Iraq dominated by Iran's allies.) The 2003 US invasion of Iraq accomplished what Khomeini's army could not. Today, the Shiite-controlled lands extend to the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Bahrain, a Persian Gulf kingdom with a Shiite majority and a Sunni monarch, is most affected by these developments; but so is Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, which is home to most of the kingdom's Shiites. (They may even be a majority in the province but this is unknown as Saudi Arabia has not dared to conduct a census.) The US Navy has its most important Persian Gulf base in Bahrain while most of Saudi Arabia's oil is under the Eastern Province.

I imagine the administration's brinkmanship throughout the year has forced a shift among foreign policy liberals such as Nasr and Takeyh: We have, on the one hand, the claim that Iraq has destabilized the region, with Iran emerging as a new systemic power broker; while on the other hand we have a newer softening line that suggests Iran's not as dangerous as the administration asserts. Hmm?? Having our cake...?

A second major claim by the authors indicates that threat perception of Iran among Arab states varies widely: Some Arab regime worry about Iranian power, others not so much:

The Bush administration's strategy also fails to appreciate the diverse views of Arab states. Arab regimes are indeed worried about Iran, but they are not uniformly so. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain decry Iranian expansionism and fear Tehran's interference in their internal affairs. But Egypt and Jordan worry mostly that Iran's newfound importance is eroding their standing in the region. The stake for them is not territory or internal stability but influence over the Palestinian issue. Even within the Persian Gulf region, there is no anti-Iranian consensus. Unlike Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, for example, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates do not suffer a Shiite minority problem and have enjoyed extensive economic relations with Tehran since the mid-1990s. Far from seeking confrontation with Iran, they fear the consequences of escalating tensions between it and the United States. Even U.S. allies in the Middle East will assess their capabilities and vulnerabilities, shape their alliances, and pursue their interests with the understanding that they, too, are susceptible to Iran's influence. A U.S. containment strategy that assumes broad Arab solidarity is unsound in theory.

Perhaps, although the Los Angeles Times suggests that the NIE has signaled to some regional states a reduction of U.S. influence in the Middle East, as well as an increasingly free hand for Iran to fulfill its ambitions of regional dominance:

The dwindling possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran is changing the dynamics of Middle East politics and raising Arab concern that Tehran may now feel emboldened to strengthen its military, increase its support for Islamic radicals and exert more influence in the region's troubled countries.

Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations opposed military action against Iran's nuclear program. But, analysts said, those governments were privately relieved that U.S. threats helped to further preoccupy Tehran, which had irritated much of the Arab world with its deep involvement in the politics of Iraq and Lebanon and support for the radical Palestinian group Hamas.

The U.S. intelligence report released Monday, which says Iran does not have an active nuclear weapons program, has eased international pressure for sanctions and invigorated the Islamic Republic's hard-liners. This comes as the Arab world has been trying to counter Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rhetoric and his government's influence over the presidential turmoil in Lebanon, the politics in Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The report did not allay Arab fears over Iran's nuclear intentions and its program to enrich uranium.

The same day the intelligence assessment was made public, Ahmadinejad became the first Iranian president to attend a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The meeting in Doha, Qatar, was hailed by many as a symbolic milestone to defuse decades of tensions between Shiite-dominated Iran and other oil-producing, mostly Sunni nations of the region. The Iranian leader, however, said little at the meeting to calm nerves about his country's regional ambitions.

Suspicion that Iran seeks to dominate the Persian Gulf region has prompted some Middle Eastern states -- including Saudi Arabia, which the U.S. regards as the leading Arab voice -- to increase military spending.

"There's no trust on the Arab side about Iran's intentions," said Christian Koch, research director for international studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. "There are concerns of Iran's nuclear program for military purposes. There are concerns about Iran's influence in Iraq, over the unsettled political situation in Lebanon and over the dispute regarding" three gulf islands in Iran's control that are claimed by the United Arab Emirates.

Most importantly, Nasr and Takeyh argue the American weakness over Iran counsels not power politics but diplomacy, and especially the creation of regional institutions of multilateral cooperation - something of a "new order" for the Middle East:

Instead of focusing on restoring a former balance of power, the United States would be wise to aim for regional integration and foster a new framework in which all the relevant powers would have a stake in a stable status quo. The Bush administration is correct to sense that a truculent Iran poses serious challenges to U.S. concerns, but containing Iran through military deployment and antagonistic alliances simply is not a tenable strategy. Iran is not, despite common depictions, a messianic power determined to overturn the regional order in the name of Islamic militancy; it is an unexceptionally opportunistic state seeking to assert predominance in its immediate neighborhood. Thus, the task at hand for Washington is to create a situation in which Iran will find benefit in limiting its ambitions and in abiding by international norms.

This call for greater attention to institutions and norms, I would argue, is Nasr and Takeyh's ultimate goal. But adopting such a shift - at least wholesale - holds disastrous implications.

The Western democracies have worked through international institutions for the last four years to rein-in Iran's nuclear ambitions. Even if Iran indeed curtailed its weapons program in 2003 (which would take some willing suspension of disbelief), the fact remains that continuance of Tehran's peaceful nuclear development program will generate the scientific expertise and programatic infrastructure needed for nuclear weapons capability.

In addition, no one can be completely certain exactly what's happening inside Iran - in terms of both its arms procurement and foreign policy intentions. We do know that Iran is one of the world's most dangerous sponsors of international terrorism, its terrorist proxies battled for Israel's destruction in the 2006 Mideast war, and the ultimate acquisition of nuclear capability would introduce an unacceptable level of instability to a region already in the grips of catastrophic danger.

The United States needs to continue with a combination of containment and sanctions, but we should never let down our guard by ceding influence and capability to some shady regional multilateral grouping of appeasement hawks.

Endorsing John McCain

The Lexington column at The Economist offers an endorsement of John McCain for the GOP presidential nomination:

THERE are all sorts of reasons to be puzzled by the state of today's Republican Party. How did the party of fiscal responsibility become the party of out-of-control spending? How did a party that prided itself on its foreign-policy skills become the author of the fiasco in Iraq? But from the narrow point of view of the election, an even more pressing question arises: how did the Republicans lose their ability to spot star power?

A month before the primaries the Republicans have no idea whom to nominate. Rudy Giuliani? He's ahead in the national polls, but he lags in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire; and many social conservatives hate him. Mitt Romney? He's ahead in New Hampshire, but he lags in national polls. And what about Mike Huckabee? The latest poll in Iowa shows the preacher from Hope, Arkansas, leading the pack there. No one can predict the outcome with any confidence, since no fewer than five candidates are getting between 10% and 25% of the Republican vote. This confusion is odd for two reasons. The first is that it is the Democrats who are supposed to be the disorganised party. The second is that the Republicans seem intent on ignoring the political star in their ranks. That man is John McCain.

Mr McCain is such a familiar figure that it is easy to forget how remarkable he is. He fought heroically in Vietnam, spending more than five years as a prisoner-of-war, when many other politicians of his generation discovered, like Dick Cheney, that they had “other priorities”. He has repeatedly risked his political career by backing unpopular causes.

Mr McCain's qualifications extend beyond character. Take experience. His range of interests as a senator has been remarkable, extending from immigration to business regulation. He knows as much about foreign affairs and military issues as anybody in public life. Or take judgment. True, he has a reputation as a hothead. But he's a hothead who cools down. He does not nurse grudges or agonise about vast conspiracies like some of his colleagues in the Senate. He has also been right about some big issues. He was the first senior Republican to criticise George Bush for invading Iraq with too few troops, and the first to call for Donald Rumsfeld's sacking. He is one of the few Republicans to propose sensible policies on immigration and global warming.

Mr McCain's qualities are particularly striking if you contrast him with his leading rivals. His willingness to stick to his guns on divisive subjects such as immigration stands in sharp contrast to Mr Romney's oily pandering. Mr Romney likes to claim that his views on topics such as gay rights and abortion have “evolved”. But they have evolved in a direction that is strikingly convenient—perhaps through intelligent design. Can a party that mocked John Kerry really march into battle behind their very own Massachusetts flip-flopper?

Mr Giuliani gets good marks for character. His record as mayor of New York bespeaks toughness. His performance on September 11th 2001 proves that he can take charge in a crisis. But what about judgment? He chose Bernard Kerik to run the NYPD, made him a partner in his consultancy, and persuaded the White House to nominate him as head of the Department of Homeland Security. Mr Kerik is now facing serious corruption charges. The Democrats will be happy to remind people of other lapses in Mr Giuliani's judgment if he wins the nomination.

The weakness of the two front-runners is persuading many Republicans to turn to Mr Huckabee. Mr Huckabee is indeed an attractive candidate—a good debater and a charming fellow. But he is woefully lacking in experience. He knows next to nothing about foreign and military affairs, and his tax plans are otherworldly. A presidential debate between Mr Huckabee and Hillary Clinton would be a rout.

So why have so many Republicans written off Mr McCain? There are two reasons—one bad, the other more reasonable. The bad reason is that they worry that he is not really one of them. Mr McCain has broken with Republican orthodoxy on everything from tax cuts to campaign finance to immigration. But look at his record more closely and you discover that he is a Republican in good standing. His fights with his fellow Republicans have been driven by his (usually justified) conviction that they were betraying Republican principles. He opposed Mr Bush's tax cuts because he thought they would create a deficit. He led the charge against pork-barrel spending and lobbyists such as Jack Abramoff because he thought they undermined the principle of small government. Immigration is a genuine problem: he is seriously at odds with the bulk of his party on the issue, though many independents would go with his plan.

The more persuasive reason for worrying about Mr McCain is his age. The senior senator for Arizona will be 72 if he takes office in January 2009—two years older than Ronald Reagan when he was inaugurated. But Mr McCain is an extraordinarily energetic 70-year-old, far more full of beans than many younger candidates. (“My philosophy is to just go, go like hell,” he says. “Full bore.”) The American constitution also provides an insurance mechanism against presidential death or illness. Provided Mr McCain chooses a sound vice-president, his many positive qualities outweigh worries about his age.

There are signs that Republicans are swallowing their doubts about Mr McCain. He is gaining some momentum in New Hampshire (he is barely campaigning in Iowa because he has long ridiculed the absurd ethanol subsidies with which many farmers there line their pockets). The New Hampshire Union Leader gave him a ringing endorsement this week. He is creeping back up the polls nationally, and is now coming second to Mr Giuliani. Republicans need to keep swallowing. Mr McCain is surely worth another look.

I probably wouldn't beat up on Romney and the others as much as Lexington, but I don't doubt McCain's the one for the GOP in 2008.

See also my earlier post on the New Hampshire Union-Leader's McCain endorsement.

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UPDATE: This morning's Wall Street Journal suggests McCain's sparkling in New Hampshire.

Mitt Romney and Religious Freedom

I just watched Mitt Romney's address on religious freedom on YouTube. It's not a speech of Mormonism. Romney's address was a statement on faith and morality in American history. As such, Romney places himself in the great stream of American leaders who have steeled themselves against the great challenges of the day through the power of belief and the pride of this nation's respect for religious difference. Romney stands strongly with this majestic tradition.

Here's the background of yesterday's speech, from USA Today:

Republican Mitt Romney's much-anticipated speech Thursday on the role of faith in the USA echoed the message made by another Massachusetts politician seeking the White House nearly 50 years ago: Religious tolerance, not church membership, is what should matter to voters.

The former Massachusetts governor vowed to serve "no one religion, no one group, no one cause and no one interest" if he makes it to the White House. Romney also defended his Mormon faith, which some Christians view as heretical.

"I believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God and the savior of mankind," Romney said. "My church's beliefs about Christ may not all be the same as those of other faiths. … These are not bases for criticism, but rather a test of our tolerance."

The speech, delivered at the George Bush Presidential Library, underscored the crucial role that religion now plays in politics, especially in the GOP. Conservative Christians who solidly backed George W. Bush in 2000 are now divided among several Republican contenders, and their support is up for grabs in early states.

It's not clear if Romney's talk was successful in swaying evangelicals, according to the Wall Street Journal:

Although it included statements such as "I believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God," Mitt Romney's speech on religious freedom elicited mixed reviews among some of the evangelical Christians whose votes are key to the Republican presidential nomination.

It remains to be seen if the former Massachusetts governor's address yesterday, intended to allay concerns about his Mormon faith, will boost his standing amid religious conservatives in early primary states, where he is facing competition from Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister.

Using historical references to illustrate the connection between politics and religion, Mr. Romney gave sporadic insights into his personal beliefs. He reasserted his affiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ("I believe in my Mormon faith, and I endeavor to live by it") while saying he wouldn't allow church leaders to influence his decisions as president.

Mr. Romney said differences between his church and other religions should be a test of tolerance, not fodder for criticism, and he paid homage to other traditions, including "the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals" and "the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims."

Some Christians didn't want to hear such preaching about plurality. The speech didn't win the vote of Republican Steve Carlson, a Pentecostal Christian and a consultant for the nonprofit voter-education organization Iowa Christian Alliance. "If my choice is between Mike Huckabee, who I know is saved, and Gov. Romney, who as a Mormon...I'm going to pick Mike Huckabee," Mr. Carlson said.

In the days leading up to the speech, Mr. Romney said it wouldn't be about his faith. He used the word "Mormon" only once, about five minutes into his address. In contrast, he mentioned "God" 15 times.

A sizeable group of voters remain mystified by Mormonism. Bernie Hayes, a 52-year-old from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said he finds the religion's tenets illogical and too different from mainstream Christianity. "I don't want a president who believes something so off-base," he said. The fact that Mr. Romney doesn't want to discuss his faith "makes it worse," said Mr. Hayes, who supports Mr. Huckabee.

"I don't think it answered any questions about the Mormon religion and how it plays into his candidacy," said Joe Mack, director of the office of public policy for the South Carolina office of the Southern Baptist Convention. "I'm not sure it changed the minds of South Carolina Baptists." Mr. Mack said he will choose a candidate based on where he stands on abortion issues.

Janis Groves, a Baptist from Bryan, Texas, who attended the address, was pleased that Mr. Romney didn't delve into specifics. "No," Ms. Groves, 59 years old, said curtly when asked if she wanted to learn more about the religion. "We are leery."

As I suggested above, it's helpful to look at Romney's speech in the context of America's religious tradition. The United States has no state-sponsored religion, but we are a people of God. Every president reaffirms this country's essential spirituality. I don't think Romney will fail that test, if elected president. He recognizes the power of faith as a driver of human goodness. I liked this section, from the text of his address:

"It is important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it's usually a sound rule to focus on the latter -- on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

"We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America -- the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

"The founders proscribed the establishment of a state religion, but they did not countenance the elimination of religion from the public square. We are a nation 'Under God' and in God, we do indeed trust.

Romney came off as tremendously caring and understanding of diversity. I think we need that in a president. Further, Romney has clinched the deal on the morality of leadership - i.e., this is a man who's got the integrity and decency to lead the country at a time when, as Romney notes, fundamental moral purpose takes a back seat to many of our more material pursuits.

Here's the challenge Jon Meacham posed for Romney earlier this week, in his essay at Newsweek:

Romney ought to call on Americans to recover and respect what Benjamin Franklin called our public religion: the belief that there is a divine force at work in the world, by whatever name, and that we render homage to it by doing good to others. Acts of charity and grace need not be religiously inspired, but many are. Religious people can be intolerant, cruel and exclusionary; they can also be broad-minded, kind and welcoming. And the same can be said of people who adhere to no religious faith. Yet it is the case that many Americans are religious—or say they are—and that the fundamental promise of the Founding, that all men are created equal, is grounded in the divine, as the gift of the "Creator."

I think Romney has made the call, and I think his speech powerfully restates the doctrine that we are a people blessed with "the gift of the 'Creator.'"

See also, "Romney Nails It: Faith in America," over at The Conservative Manifesto; check out the commentaries at Memeorandum as well.

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UPDATE: There's considerable buzz over Romney's speech, and naturally not all favorable.

Eleanor Clift remarks that Romney's address was a quintessential Republican speech:

If Romney gets the nomination, this is the moment that lifted him above the others and made him a plausible and pluralistic leader. He pledged that if elected president he would serve "no one religion, no one group, no one cause and no one interest." For the first time in his richly endowed quest, he rose above the day-to-day jabs on the campaign trail to deliver a speech that inspires. It was billed as a message for white evangelical Christians, who have been reluctant to embrace Romney because they're wary of his religion. But it was really a vision speech for a broader Republican Party adrift in the wake left by George W. Bush and searching for its moorings.

See also a trio of Wall Street Journal commentaries, from the editors, Peggy Noonan, and Naomi Schaefer Riley.

The Washington Post, I imagine, captures the concerns of many when it argues that Romney dismissed non-believers:

Where Mr. Romney most fell short, though, was in his failure to recognize that America is composed of citizens not only of different faiths but of no faith at all and that the genius of America is to treat them all with equal dignity. "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom," Mr. Romney said. But societies can be both secular and free. The magnificent cathedrals of Europe may be empty, as Mr. Romney said, but the democracies of Europe are thriving.

TPM Central puts it more pointedly: "Romney Spokesman Won't Say If Atheists Have Place In America."

Voters Split on Illegal Immigration

Today's Los Angeles Times poll finds a majority of Americans favoring a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, although the public evinces a significant degree of restrictionist sentiment:

One-third of Americans want to deny social services, including public schooling and emergency room healthcare, to illegal immigrants, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found.

Still, in a sign of ambivalence among voters about the emotionally charged issue, a strong bipartisan majority -- 60% -- favors allowing illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes to become citizens if they pay fines, learn English and meet other requirements.

Those crosscurrents create treacherous political waters for the major presidential candidates, many of whom have tended to avoid spotlighting the issue. But all have been forced to address the issue under repeated questioning at campaign events and candidate forums.

During Tuesday's radio debate among Democrats, the candidates were asked if citizens should turn in someone they know to be an illegal immigrant. Most said no. In other settings, however, several have been talking a tough line on issues such as denying driver's licenses to illegal immigrants.

Some poll respondents, in follow-up interviews, expressed frustration that the candidates had not been more forthright in addressing immigration-related issues.

"I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think the candidates know what the answer is either," said Lodie Lambright, a retired state government worker in Rhode Island....

Asked to pick from a list of issues what was a top priority for presidential candidates, 15% said illegal immigration -- the fifth-most mentioned topic behind the Iraq war, the economy, protecting the country from terrorist attacks and healthcare. Asked how much of a problem illegal immigration is, 81% of respondents said they considered it important, including 27% who said it was one of the country's most pressing problems.

The poll also makes clear that respondents make a distinction between legal and illegal immigrants. Asked if illegal immigrants had made a positive or negative contribution to their community, 36% said negative, whereas 21% said positive and 29% said the effect was not discernible.

When the same question was asked about legal immigrants, 12% said their contribution was negative, compared with 46% who said positive and 31% who saw no discernible effect.

"I don't mind immigration, but I do think they need to learn the English language and should become an American citizen," said Patricia Buckner, a Florida retiree....

The survey, which allowed respondents to name as many as five social services they would allow, showed a disparity: Far more people would allow access to emergency room care and schooling than other benefits, such as food stamps and driver's licenses.

About 46% of respondents said that immigrants should be able to get emergency medical treatment, and 40% said they should have access to public schools.

But 22% of those surveyed said that illegal immigrants should be able to get limited driver's licenses -- a question that has put the Democratic presidential candidates on the spot recently.

The finding underscores the political climate that caused many leading Democrats to oppose licenses for illegal immigrants when it was proposed in New York this year by Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat, who eventually backed down.

When Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was asked about the proposal in a debate in late October, she praised Spitzer but stopped short of backing his plan. In a debate a few weeks later, she said she opposed driver's licenses for illegal immigrants.

Some of those resisting the idea of providing a range of services to illegal immigrants say that it drains resources from U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who are in need.

"It seems like our money in this country is going out faster than it is coming in, and [the spending is] helping the people who are not U.S. citizens," said Buckner, who described herself as a liberal Democrat.

Read the whole thing. Voters oppose tuition discounts for illegals at state colleges (not good for Mike Huckabee). Yet a strong majority supports some kind of comprehensive reform of the nation's failed immigration system. Voters expressed favorable opinions on variations of the Bush administration's immigration reform proposal (64% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans).

Finally, Democrats have no political advantage on immigration heading into 2008. Indeed, the parties are statistically tied on the question of which party would do a better job handling the issue. As progress on Iraq continues, the GOP candidates would do well to flesh out tough but principled immigration positions which combine border security with policy resolution to the legal crisis of illegal alien limbo status.

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."