Outside Organizations Give Hillary Clinton a Boost

This post follows up my earlier entry, "Interest Groups to Dominate Big Money Campaign Finance."

In the wake of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign reform legislation, we're seeing the increasing importance of interest groups in the political process - not just in the realm of money and politics, but in traditional grassroots organizing and mobilization.

This Los Angeles Times story on outside interest group influence in Hillary Clinton's campaign really captures the trend:

They are the basic chores that can make or break a political candidate: identifying likely supporters, getting them excited and making sure they turn out when it's time to vote.

And as the Democratic presidential campaigns focus on the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Hillary Rodham Clinton has a major advantage: Three organizations outside her campaign are lending a big helping hand with those difficult and expensive tasks, pouring more than $2 million and an army of fresh troops into the last-minute push. The outside effort, much larger than any being mounted on behalf of a rival campaign, is led in large part by EMILY's List, the nation's largest political action committee and a significant force in Democratic politics. Allied with it are the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Teachers.

The unions are supporting pro-Clinton radio and television advertising and direct mail contacts with targeted voting groups. Separately, AFSCME has dispatched more than 200 paid workers to Iowa. The fly-in gives Clinton about twice as many such workers in the state as rival Barack Obama, officials of his campaign say.

EMILY's List also is trying a new technique developed with the help of Google to reach female voters there, especially those who are unsure how to navigate the state's complex caucus system. Whenever someone in Iowa searches online for "recipe," "stocking stuffer" or "yoga," for instance, a banner will pop up inviting the searcher to visit a website supporting Clinton.

How much effect the last-minute infusion of money and other resources will have is unclear, but the effort has stirred concern in the Obama campaign. "When you are in a tight race like this, any- and everything matters," said Obama's field director, Steve Hildebrand.

The effort by EMILY's List and the two unions reflects the increasing importance of so-called independent expenditures, in which groups officially independent of a particular campaign pay for advertising, consulting fees and other expenses that might otherwise be covered by the candidate. Such spending is on the rise in both Republican and Democratic campaigns.

And such groups can accept more in donations than a candidate can. Individuals may give no more than $2,300 to a candidate per election, but they can give $5,000 to independent political action committees like EMILY's List. So long as the outside groups avoid "coordinating" their efforts with the favored campaign, federal rules permit the groups to advocate for the candidate by name.

Here's more from the article on EMILY's List:

Its name is an acronym for the slogan "Early Money Is Like Yeast" ("it helps the dough rise"). It raised $46 million for candidates in the 2006 election. It trained campaign personnel. And it has been a source of early cash for female Democratic candidates across the country who support abortion rights.

In addition to its own spending on Clinton's behalf in Iowa, the group has bundled hundreds of contributions directly to her campaign. It also has begun a separate effort encouraging New Hampshire women to support Clinton when their state votes Jan. 8.

Female voters are crucial to Clinton's success, but her relationship with them is complicated. She draws her strongest support from younger, blue-collar women who view her as a champion. Wealthier, college-educated women, surveys show, are drawn more to Obama.

The Web-based effort by EMILY's List got its start earlier this year, after research showed that more than half of those who caucused in Iowa in 2004 were women and that their numbers could soar in 2008.

All the campaigns have been targeting women -- it's one reason Obama campaigned with Oprah Winfrey. But Clinton strategists found that their candidate did particularly well among women who were unsure whether they would participate in a caucus.

The most common reason women said they were hesitant to attend caucuses was that they didn't know what would happen. EMILY's List launched a website called You Go Girl -- the one linked in banner ads on the Iowa Google searches -- to educate voters.

Another reason some women said they might not attend caucus sessions was family obligations such as providing dinner. So the website offers "caucus-night recipes," including chicken-noodle and taco casseroles.

Other campaigns are buying Google ads, but typically they are linked to political search terms, not consumer preferences.

"We wanted to find women where they live online," said the technology guru at EMILY's List, Maren Hesla. "If we can increase caucus attendance by just 5,000 statewide, that could make the difference in a race like this."

We'll see alright, come January, how effective all of this outside support is.

Clinton's been having a lot of problems with the women's vote (as I've noted before). Perhaps if EMILY's List mobilizes the down-market chicken noodle mom turnout, she'll have a shot at beating Barack Obama to salvage whatever hopes the campaign might have had for some early momentum (early Iowa and New Hampshire momentum is the yeast in this case).

Economic Success and Campaign '08

What does the personal economic success of John Edwards and Mitt Romney tell us about American politics at the end of 2007? The New York Times offers some ideas:

By the final weeks of 1984, well before either turned 40, John Edwards and Mitt Romney had already built successful careers. But the two men were each on the verge of an entirely new level of financial success.

Mr. Edwards, then making a nice salary as a lawyer at a small North Carolina firm, spent early December staying at the Inn on the Plaza in downtown Asheville. Scattered around his room were legal documents relating to his first big malpractice case, a lawsuit filed by a man named E. G. Sawyer, confined to a wheelchair after his doctor had overprescribed a drug. On Dec. 18, at the courthouse opposite the hotel, a jury awarded Mr. Sawyer $3.7 million.

In Boston, Mr. Romney had risen to become a vice president at Bain & Company, an upstart management consulting firm, and had recently been chosen to run a spinoff investment firm known as Bain Capital. He spent the end of 1984 flying around the country — in coach class, to save money and to show his investors how serious he was about turning a profit — visiting companies and deciding whether to invest in them.

In the decade that followed, Mr. Edwards would win one big verdict after another, and Mr. Romney would oversee a series of hugely profitable investments.

Like thousands of other Americans in a global, high-technology economy in which government was pulling back and wealth was being celebrated, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney used talent, hard work and — as both have suggested — luck to amass multimillion-dollar fortunes. They became a part of a rising class of the new rich.

Whether this class is a cause for concern — whether it deserves some blame for the economic anxiety felt by many middle-class families — has become a central issue in the 2008 presidential race. And Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney are basing their candidacies in large measure on the very different lessons each has taken from his own success.

“Some people come from nothing to being wildly successful and their response is, ‘I did this on my own,’” Mr. Edwards said in an interview. “I came to a different conclusion. I believe that I did work hard, and I think people should work hard, but I think my country was there for me every step of the way.”

Today, he added, “the problem is all the economic growth is going to a very small group of people.”

Mr. Romney, by contrast, talks about the ways that his experiences at Bain showed him how innovative and productive the American economy can be and, particularly, how free markets can make life better for everyone.

“There is a model of thought among the Democrats — that the amount of money, the amount of wealth in a nation, is a fixed amount,” he said in an interview. “And that if Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are making a lot of money, that just means somebody else is not able to make as much. That happens to be entirely false.”

The two men represent a clear divide between the Democratic and Republican parties over whether the government should redistribute more wealth, from the rich downward, now that economic inequality is greater than it has been since the 1920s.

Mr. Romney and Mr. Edwards also represent a divide among the affluent themselves. Many of the new wealthy — the great majority, in all likelihood — see their success as a sign of this country’s economic strength. Yet there is also a minority — including Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates’s father, who have both opposed eliminating the estate tax — worried about inequality.

Read the whole thing.

Romney supports open economies, with the free movement and capital and trade. He sees government providing an institutional-legal framework for the individual in society to achieve upward mobility:

“Sometimes I get frustrated when I hear politicians say there are two Americas,” Mr. Romney said this month during a campaign stop at a general store in Windham, N.H., referring to the theme of Mr. Edwards’s 2004 campaign. “I don’t believe there are two Americas.”

John Edwards, on the other hand, is today's most prominent Democratic populist. He sees government as regulator of "economic fairness." Edwards thus supports raising taxes on income beginning at $200,000 annually.

The problem for Edwards and tax-and-spend liberals generally is that economic data do not support their claims of fundamental economic unfairness, and their subsequent calls for tax redistribution. As the Wall Street Journal noted this week:

Last week the Congressional Budget Office joined the IRS in releasing tax numbers for 2005, and part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all up substantially since 1990, and even somewhat since 2000. Meanwhile, Americans with an income below the median -- half of all households -- paid a mere 3% of all income taxes in 2005. The richest 1.3 million tax-filers -- those Americans with AGIs of more than $365,000 in 2005 -- paid more income tax than all of the 66 million American tax filers below the median in income. Ten times more.

For the political left and most of the media, this means only that the rich are getting richer, so of course they're paying more taxes. And it is true that the top earners have increased their share of total income. Yet, as the nearby table shows, the rich showed more rapid gains in reported income shares in the 1990s than in the first half of this decade. The share of the richest 1% jumped to 20.8% of total income in 2000, from 14% in 1990, but increased only slightly to 21.2% in 2005. This makes it hard to pin their claim of "rising inequality" on the Bush tax cuts, though the income redistributionists are trying. By this measure, the Clinton years were far worse for "inequality"....

The IRS statistics also tell a story a more complicated economic story than the media claim. First, American continues to be a society of upward income mobility. Over the past decade, millions of Americans have joined the once highly exclusive club of six- and seven-figure earners. Some 304,000 Americans earned more than $1 million or more in annual income in 2005, compared to 110,00 in 1996 and 176,000 in 2000. Because there is no cap on the top income share, this increase in millionaires pushes the top income (and taxes paid) share higher. The number of millionaire households in net worth also increased to nine million in 2006, up from six million in 2001, according to TNS, a global market research firm.

Liberals decry this as proof of a new "gilded age." But we'd say these gains are a sign that more Americans are joining the ranks of the truly affluent.

Obviously there are significant problems today, with market instability from the sub-prime fallout a concern on the minds of many citizens and policymakers.

Actually, I think Edwards is right to focus attention on economic dislocation among large numbers of people in the country, and especially the issue of persistent povery among certain demographic groups. Yet I don't don't see a high-tax, protectionist economic agenda - one likely to be adopted not by a Democratic administration in 2009 - as the way to move forward in opening opportunity to an even larger number of Americans.

One thing we might do is focus on policies supporting positive individual-level attributes as they contribute to upward mobility. Here's what Brink Lindsay said about the wealth gap earlier this year:

Much of the increase in measured inequality has nothing to do with the economic system at all. Rather, it is a product of demographic changes. Rising numbers of both single-parent households and affluent dual-earner couples have stretched the income distribution; so, too, has the big influx of low-skilled Hispanic immigrants. Meanwhile, in a 2006 paper published in the American Economic Review, economist Thomas Lemieux calculated that roughly three-quarters of the rise in wage inequality among workers with similar skills is due simply to the fact that the population is both older and better educated today than it was in the 1970s.

It is true that superstars in sports, entertainment and business now earn stratospheric incomes. But what is that to you and me? If the egalitarian left has been reduced to complaining that people in the 99th income percentile in a given year (and they're not the same people from year to year) are leaving behind those in the 90th percentile, it has truly arrived at the most farcical of intellectual dead ends.

Which brings us back to the real issue: the human capital gap, and the culture gap that impedes its closure. The most obvious and heartrending cultural deficits are those that produce and perpetuate the inner-city underclass. Consider this arresting fact: While the poverty rate nationwide is 13%, only 3% of adults with full-time, year-round jobs fall below the poverty line. Poverty in America today is thus largely about failing to get and hold a job, any job.

The problem is not lack of opportunity. If it were, the country wouldn't be a magnet for illegal immigrants. The problem is a lack of elementary self-discipline: failing to stay in school, failing to live within the law, failing to get and stay married to the mother or father of your children. The prevalence of all these pathologies reflects a dysfunctional culture that fails to invest in human capital.

Other, less acute deficits distinguish working-class culture from that of the middle and upper classes. According to sociologist Annette Lareau, working-class parents continue to follow the traditional, laissez-faire child-rearing philosophy that she calls "the accomplishment of natural growth." But at the upper end of the socioeconomic scale, parents now engage in what she refers to as "concerted cultivation" -- intensively overseeing kids' schoolwork and stuffing their after-school hours and weekends with organized enrichment activities.

This new kind of family life is often hectic and stressful, but it inculcates in children the intellectual, organizational and networking skills needed to thrive in today's knowledge-based economy. In other words, it makes unprecedented, heavy investments in developing children's human capital.

For Lindsay, the policy recommendations that follow from this center on educational institutions, specifically creating more competition in the delivery of educational services.

I doubt, however, that educational choice alone will be enough to help families feel they aren't falling further behind. Tax policies should promote a full employment economy, and we can help those at the lower rungs of the income ladder with a generous earned-income tax credit. Open markets through trade integration will also keep the U.S. economy connected to global economic developments, with new sources of human and economic capital continuing to provide the dynamism for robust growth.

David Petraeus is Man of the Year

I wrote at length earlier on Time's selection of Vladimir Putin as "Person of the Year" (here and here).

I'm especially bothered by Time's celebration of Putin's revival of premodern Russian authoritarianism, a disastrous trend to recognize while the United States fights two wars of democratic consolidation on the periphery. I noted, instead, that General David Petraeus ought to naturally have been selected as person of the year.

William Kristol at the Weekly Standard has now made the case for Petraeus as well, for his leadership in Iraq throughout 2007 :

We are now winning the war. To say this was not inevitable is an understatement. Even those of us who were early advocates and strong supporters of the surge, and who thought it could succeed, knew the situation had so deteriorated that success was by no means guaranteed. Two military experts told me early in 2007 that they thought the odds of success were, respectively, 1-in-3 and 1-in-4. They nonetheless supported the surge because, even at those odds, it was a gamble worth taking, so devastating would be the consequences of withdrawal and defeat. We at THE WEEKLY STANDARD thought the chances of success were better than 50-50--but that it remained a difficult proposition.

Petraeus pulled it off. The war is not over, of course. Too quick and deep a drawdown--which some in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the Bush administration are, appallingly, pushing for--could throw away the amazing success that has been achieved. Still: It is as clear as anything can be in this world, where we judge through a glass darkly, that General David H. Petraeus is, in fact, America's man of the year.

Time ludicrously chose to make Russia's ex-KGB agent-turned president Vladimir Putin its cover boy. They just couldn't make Petraeus man--oops--person of the year. Our liberal elites are so invested in a narrative of defeat and disaster in Iraq that to acknowledge the prospect of victory would be too head-wrenching and heart-rending. It would mean giving credit to George W. Bush, for one. And it would mean acknowledging American success in a war Time, and the Democratic party, and the liberal elites, had proclaimed lost.

The editors couldn't acknowledge their mugging by reality. That's fine. Nonetheless, reality exists. And the reality is that in Iraq, after mistakes and failures, thanks to the leadership of Bush, Petraeus, and General Ray Odierno--the day-to-day commander whose contributions shouldn't be overlooked--we are winning.

The reality is also this: The counterinsurgency campaign that Petraeus and Odierno conceived and executed in 2007 was as comprehensive a counterinsurgency strategy as has ever been executed. The heart of the strategy was a brilliant series of coordinated military operations throughout the entire theater. Petraeus and Odierno used conventional U.S. forces, Iraqi military and police, and Iraqi and U.S. Special Operations forces to strike enemy strongholds throughout Iraq simultaneously, while also working to protect the local populations from enemy responses. Successive operations across the theater knocked the enemy--both al Qaeda and Sunni militias, and Shia extremists--off balance and then prevented them from recovering. U.S. and Iraqi forces, supported by local citizens, chased the enemy from area to area, never allowing them the breathing space to reestablish safe havens, much less new bases. It wasn't "whack-a-mole" or "squeezing the water balloon" as some feared (and initially claimed)--it was the relentless pursuit of an increasingly defeated enemy.

That defeat has implications far beyond Iraq. In 2007, Iraq's Sunni Arabs fought with us against al Qaeda, and Iraq's Shia Arabs joined with us to fight Iranian-backed Shia militias. So much for the notion that Americans were doomed to fail in their efforts to mobilize moderate Muslims against jihadists. The progress in Iraq in 2007 represents a strategic breakthrough for the broader Middle East whose importance would be hard to overstate.

One additional point: Petraeus's counterinsurgency stands out not just for its conceptual ambition and the skill of its execution but for its humanity. There were those who argued that the U.S. military could not succeed in counterinsurgency because Americans were not tough and bloodthirsty enough. They said that brutality was essential in subduing insurgents and our humanity would be our downfall.

They were wrong. The counterinsurgency campaign of 2007 was probably the most precise, discriminate, and humane military operation ever undertaken on such a scale. Our soldiers and Marines worked hard--and took risks and even casualties--to ensure, as much as possible, that they hurt only enemies. Compared with any previous military operations of this size, they were astonishingly successful. The measure of their success lies in the fact that so many Iraqis now see American troops as friends and protectors. Petraeus and his generals have shown that Americans can fight insurgencies and win--and still be Americans. For that and so much else, he is the man of the year.

See also Power Line for more analysis and links on Petraeus as Man of the Year.

South Carolina's "Black Primary"

I've written a few times about Barack Obama's presidential campaign and the politics of race (see here, here, and here). I've been particularly interested in Obama's transracial appeal - that is, his ability to transcend the acrimony and ugliness of America's most intractable political issue.

Polls continue to show Obama captures broad support across the electorate. Yet, underneath the media glare of celebrity endorsements and polling surges, the nastiness of racial policies threatens to rear its gnarly head.

Exihit A is a new piece at The Nation, "South Carolina: Inside the 'Black Primary." The article focuses on the unusual blackness of South Carolina's presidential primary. Here's a quick snippet:

With African-Americans likely to make up a majority of primary voters on the Democratic side, South Carolina's contest is as close to a "black primary" as we're going to get in 2008 - the only time in the entire campaign, almost certainly, when Democrats will be fighting all-out for African-American votes. Clinton's support among African-Americans, largely thanks to her husband's popularity, proved surprisingly strong at first, as did her smooth, state-of-the-art machine politics; as late as September, a CNN poll gave her a stunning 57 percent of the black vote here, to Obama's paltry 33. That would deal a death blow to Obama's chances, not only here but in the February 5 primaries, especially in Alabama and Georgia, where large numbers of black voters are weighing their choices--and watching South Carolina.

But while the contest here has been widely portrayed as a Clinton-Obama battle for black votes--especially those of black women reportedly torn between their enthusiasm for electing a sister versus a brother - the real focus, from the get-go, has been relentlessly on Obama. In a state where the Rev. Jesse Jackson's wildly successful 1988 uprising still stands as a high-water mark for black political aspirations, Obama's cool style and post-civil-rights rhetoric went over like a lead balloon in the early months of the campaign. The trouble was epitomized by a speech he gave to the legislative black caucus in April, where he offered his joking opinion that "a good economic development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks weren't throwing garbage out of their cars." To folks like Kevin Alexander Gray, who ran Jackson's campaign here, this smacked not of fresh thinking but of "the oldest racial stereotypes. Translation: black people are dirty and lazy." Obama's middle-of-the-aisle message and delivery kept reinforcing black South Carolinians' doubts about whether he was sufficiently one of them. "I've heard people say, and I've probably said it myself, 'He's a white boy,'" says Gray. "Or he's what some working-class black people perceive as a middle-class Negro. Anyway, let's face it: you don't get a revolution from Harvard."

Obama's not black enough? Heard that one before? This is more of the "insidious ritual" of high profile blacks having to prove their credibility by being "down with the brothers and the sisters."

The debate on Obama's bona fides in the black community died down a bit with Hillary's continued dominance in national polls. But as The Nation article points out, South Carolina's essentially an African-American primary on the Democratic side - a "black thing," an election that provides a powerful case study on Southern racial politics in the post-civil-rights era.

Note though: If there are impediments to the emergence of transcendental black politics in the South, it's not because of lingering Jim Crow sentiment, at least by indications from this article.

The South Carolina campaign has opened a unique window into the fractured state of black politics in twenty-first-century America--a gumbo of bleak cynicism, wary pragmatism, frustrated progressive aspirations and messianic longings. It has been, for black voters and candidates alike, one long, extended soul search. And it ain't over yet.

And it's not likely to be over any time soon, given some of the notions about black sentiment here:

From the beginning, Clinton has been the fall-back candidate for African-Americans here. She has done all the expected things to woo black voters: held forth in black churches and colleges, called for removing the Confederate flag from the Statehouse, lined up endorsements from preachers and politicians, and deployed her wildly popular husband to the state with increasing urgency. She's talked about the Bible (favorite book: James), and she's winced over the "Corridor of Shame," a particularly desperate and heavily black stretch of I-95 that was the subject of a recent documentary by the same name. It hasn't hurt that Clinton's campaign started early with a "phenomenal, highly professional organization" that Obama's more free-flowing, grassrootsy campaign was hard-pressed to match, said Scott Huffmon, a political scientist at Rock Hill's Winthrop University. But mostly, Huffmon said, "She's attracted voters worried about Obama's viability, or his politics, or his 'blackness.' They love Bill, and that's enough. It's not about her."

That became crystal clear in the spring, when prominent State Senator Robert Ford explained why he'd opted for Clinton over Obama. "Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose because he's black and he's on top of the ticket," Ford told the AP. "We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything."

Most folks prefer to put it a little less bluntly. At the Spartanburg rally I ask Phyllis Carter, who teaches English at a local two-year college, why she's standing in line to shake Clinton's hand. "I think she's the brightest person, doing what she's doing, and she's done it a long time," Carter said. "She's the best. I think about Obama all the time. But he may not have the experience to do what she can do. The fact that she's a woman--she's special." What about the argument that a woman can't win? "Ah, we're over all that stupid stuff," Carter said.

But what about the other "stupid stuff," I asked. Is it easier for a woman to win than an African-American? Carter paused, pursing her lips. "Maybe." She paused again. "Look at how long we've been here: 1554. Now, we didn't come on boats because we decided we wanted to come and be a part of you. We came on a boat tied left leg to right leg. The accomplishments that we've done since then are pretty amazing when you think about it. We're not going away. We're going to be voted for at some point in the game. One of these days we'll have a President."

Here's a really telling excerpt:

Across town in Obama's cramped and bustling Spartanburg office--a converted attic upstairs from the local Democratic Party headquarters--it was a whole 'nother story. "Pull up a chair, honey," said Carolyn Reed-Smith, an elementary teacher working the phones at a folding table. "I had been really drawn to Hillary at first," she explained. "Because I voted for her husband. I thought, 'Wow! Now we'll have him and her.'" But then in June Obama came to Reed-Smith's church, Mount Moriah Baptist, and made a convert. "He had such a calming presence. It's sort of biblical, but I believe in men having dominion and having some sort of mystical power that God gave them," she said. "I believe Barack has acquired that."

To Reed-Smith, the questions about Obama's "blackness" actually point up one of his most important assets. "I believe that he has the best of two cultures within him. He has had such loving nurturing from our African culture, and then I think from the Caucasian culture he has the wit and intellect that's so sharp. I just think that both of those things together, it's the best of both worlds that he has within him. I just felt like I would rather work to see that he gets the presidency."

That says a lot. Here's a woman whose discussion of Obama's most important assets illustrates a key variable in explanations of persistent black poverty and social disorganization: Low expectations, that is, the idea that possessing a powerful intellect is a "white" trait, characteristic of the "Caucasian culture."

No mindset could be more deleterious to the promise of black Americans than the self-segregation of blacks to the ghetto of inferior expectations. Blacks must break from premises of reduced ability based in feelings of low self-esteem, fearfulness, sadness, and ideologies of victimhood.

Obama's problem is that he's moved beyond the 1960s-era freedom struggle frame of reference on the future direction of the race. Because he transcends victimhood, Obama can't be the African-American community's "black messiah": He's not "the one," despite Oprah Winfrey stump speeches to the contrary:

At the big rally in Columbia, Oprah notched up her Obama-as-savior rhetoric by referencing a scene in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. "I remember Miss Pittman, her body all worn and withered and bent over. As she would approach the children, she would say to each one, 'Are you the one? Are you the one?'" Oprah didn't mention that Miss Pittman was looking for a black messiah. She didn't have to. "I watched that movie many years ago, but I do believe today I have the answer to Miss Pittman's question. It's a question that the entire nation is asking. Is he the one?" Tentative cheers. "Is he the one?" Big cheers. "South Carolina," Oprah proclaimed, "I do believe he's the one."

When Efia Nwangaza heard that, she could only wonder: "He's the one for who, and what?" Nwangaza, a longtime activist and onetime Green Party US Senate candidate, is among the many black (and white) progressives left cold by the symbolic standoff between Clinton and Obama. But it didn't stop her from driving from Greenville to witness the Sunday spectacle. "I had mixed feelings," she told me afterward. "I was really moved by it. By the yearning of the people who were there to have someone representing them and their interests. I understand the yearning, in that I am also tired. Having been a civil rights-cum-human rights activist all my life, having had movement parents, I would be so relieved to know that there is a fruitful end to those efforts, and that some candidate embodied it. But I don't think that's what's happening with Barack Obama."

Or Hillary Clinton. "When I look at what both Obama and Clinton say, and what they do, they are not it. They are both chameleons. They are both opportunistic. They both come from the overcompensatory 'being first' frame of reference. Which means that they will be more white male than any white male, including George W. Bush, would ever be. My feeling is that people across the board are being sold a bill of goods."

Kevin Alexander Gray, who's working on a book called The Decline of American Politics, From Malcolm X to Barack Obama, seconded the point. "People say they're voting for Obama because they want a change. A change to what? This is people thinking that the cosmetic is more important than the structural. Obama is a candidate who happens to be black. That's his prerogative, and it's fine. But it's not what we need. Obama's campaign is not a movement. It is someone running for office."

I'm not voting Democratic precisely because of sentiments such as this.

Black politics today is more about revolutionary transformation than about building political coalitions for pragmatic change. As long as the yearning for a black messiah remains key to large segments of the black voting constiuency, a true black politics of transcendentalism will remain out of reach.

John McCain Reviving Frontrunner Status

New polling data has Senator John McCain pulling into the top tier among candidates in the GOP presidential field. Here are the findings from the new USA Today poll of New Hampshire voters:

Among Republicans, Mitt Romney's lead has narrowed to single digits over John McCain, who hopes to repeat the victory here that ignited his presidential campaign in 2000....

Romney leads McCain, 34%-27%. Including only those whose votes are set, Romney's lead narrows to 19%-15%, within the survey's margin of error of +/— 5 points.

Effectively tied for third place are former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, at 11%, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, each at 9%.

Also, a new FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll (Dec. 18-19, 2007) puts McCain in a statistical tie for first place among nationwide primary voters, with Giuliani, Romney, and McCain taking 20, 19, and 19 percent respectively.

Peter Brown over at The Politico argues that McCain's making a miracle comeback:

For those who believe in miracles, there is the legitimate possibility that John McCain could win the Republican presidential nomination. If so, he'll make Bill Clinton's comeback kid of 1992 look like a piker.

Of course, the Republican senator from Arizona needs a series of events to break his way, but things are moving in that direction.

Even the possibility that he could still win the nomination after being given up for dead by some of his own supporters potentially creates a movie-script scenario.

Remember, McCain entered the 2008 presidential race at the head of the pack.

The smart money said even though his maverick ways had alienated lots of conservative activists, in a party that normally nominated the early leader, McCain was the guy in the right spot at the right time.

But there was significant resistance to him in the grass roots, his early campaign was poorly managed and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani zoomed past in the polls while political insiders were knowingly declaring McCain's candidacy as good as dead.

In addition, he was tarred with being the presidential field's perhaps biggest supporter of an unpopular war in Iraq, and then he signed onto immigration-reform legislation that GOP conservatives considered amnesty - a four-letter word in Republican precincts.

By last summer, McCain's campaign was broke, amid predictions of his withdrawal from the race. Reporters were writing canned campaign obituaries to be ready when he actually pulled the plug.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral. He was able to raise enough money to keep going, and the tide began to turn his way.

Now, that's not to say he has regained his front-runner status - far from it. But his nomination is no longer a pipe dream.

Most of all, the Iraq war has been going better. As one of the best-known supporters of President Bush's surge strategy, McCain's constantly blunt rhetoric that he would rather lose a campaign than lose a war is paying dividends, especially among Republicans.

And, as the campaign has worn on, none of the other candidates has closed the sale. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and Giuliani have all had their opportunities, but failed to break away from the pack. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is now the hot candidate, but remains an unknown to most voters.

Simply put, none of the other contenders has yet to meet the basic standard that Americans require of a president - that they can feel comfortable with a person in the Oval Office deciding whether to send U.S. troops into harm's way.

Brown might be underestimating McCain's surge. As Romney and Giuliani struggle, and as Huckabee comes under closer scrutiny, voters might decide on McCain - a known quantity, firm in his positions, with demonstrable leadership abilities.

See also the National Review, "Is McCain Back?"

The Pregnancy of 16-Year-Old Jamie Lynn Spears

The news of Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy came with something of a shock around my house.

Good Morning America was on the tube Wednesday morning while I was getting ready to take my oldest son to school. The Disney Channel and Nickleodeon are on almost 24-7 at our place, so when my boy casually remarked, "Jamie Spears is pregnant," I did a double-take! "What are you talking about? She's the wholesome side of that family."

But it turned out to be true. I thought about writing on Spears after seeing this Philadelphia Inquirer editorial, but I thought, "nah...well, maybe if it makes the front-page at the big national papers..."

So, since Spears' pregnancy is covered in a lead story at today's New York Times, here goes:

Talk about teachable moments.

In schools and shopping malls and around the dining room table, the subject of teenage pregnancy and sex was suddenly and uncomfortably in the air as mothers and daughters and fathers, too, talked about — or tried not to talk about — the pregnancy of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, who plays the perfect, well-liked and, it is understood, virginal teenage girl on “Zoey 101” on Nickelodeon.

High school girls here wondered aloud on Thursday why no one was talking about contraception. Parents across the country, on the other hand, commiserated over the Internet about how, thanks to Ms. Spears, they were facing a conversation with their 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds about sex.

“Nowadays, nothing’s safe, not even cartoons,” Diana Madruga, who has an 11-year-old daughter, said as she wrapped up her shift as the manager of a Dunkin’ Donuts here in the Boston suburbs.

Shopping at American Girl Place, the doll store, in Manhattan, Sharon Carruthers said she had used the news as an opportunity to talk about the dangers of teenage pregnancy with her 10-year-old daughter, Yasmine. “I want my daughter’s mind in the real world,” said Ms. Carruthers, who is from Deptford, N.J. “But this is not what my daughter is going to do in her life. She knows better. She knows right and wrong.”

Yasmine shook her head. “I never expected her, of all people, to do this,” she said, referring to the girl who in her mind is both Zoey and Jamie, the actress who plays her. “She’s supposed to be the good one in the family.”

High school girls who had already had their hearts broken by the all-too-public life of Ms. Spears’s older sister, Britney, known as a hard-partying mother of two, worried that their younger sisters would be devastated by the news — or, worse, that their sisters might think it was “cool” to be 16 and pregnant.

“She’s the idealistic little girl,” Alicia Akusis, 17, said of the television character Zoey between classes at Concord-Carlisle High School here. “She does perfect in school. Boys like her because she’s pretty, but she doesn’t deal with boys. She’s really smart, she’s really cool, she’s an empowering girl character.”

Ms. Akusis said she hoped that her younger sister and stepsister, who are both 11 and love the show, would not find out about Ms. Spears. “I don’t even want to bring it up with them,” she said. “I don’t want them to be disappointed.” It would be like their discovering that Santa Claus was not real, she said.

Ms. Akusis’s friend Mikala Viscariello, 16, was less concerned with shielding the young than with facing the realities of modern life. “There is no excuse for not using contraception,” Ms. Viscariello said.

Ms. Akusis shot back, “I don’t think she should have gotten pregnant in the first place.”

Perhaps the news of Ms. Spears’s pregnancy should not have been so surprising in what has seemed to be the year of the unwed mother in popular culture. First there was the movie “Knocked Up,” in which a 24-year-old entertainment journalist accidentally gets pregnant in a drunken evening. Now there’s “Juno,” about a 16-year-old who confronts an unplanned pregnancy and decides to have the baby.

But Nickelodeon has won wide acclaim as a sanctuary from the hypersexualized youth culture. That is what burned up Matt Younginer of Columbia, S.C., who was shopping with his 9-year-old daughter, Ansley, in Manhattan.

“She loves ‘Zoey 101,’ ” Mr. Younginer said. “It’s usually Britney Spears who would do that stuff, not Jamie Lynn. She was supposed to be one of the good, clean actresses for girls to follow after. I think it just sends an awful message for the young girls.”

Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, said Thursday that “Zoey 101” was one of its most popular shows among viewers 9 to 14.

“Nothing about the content, characters or the storytelling on our air has changed at all,” Mr. Martinsen said. He said that Nickelodeon was discussing a special on the issue with Linda Ellerbee, the television journalist who is the host of “Nick News.” “Whenever an issue becomes so prevalent that it’s inescapable,” Mr. Martinsen said, “her show is where we turn to help kids navigate and interpret and understand it.”

A teachable moment? My first thought exactly, and frankly it's good to learn that parents of children younger than my son are talking to their kids about pregnancy and childrearing.

I think the comments above by Sharon Carruthers about her daughter knowing "right and wrong" pretty much sums up a key issue for me. I simply had my son think about how a 16 year-old teenager might care for a baby. How would she (or he) be able to continue with her education? What about college?

I asked my wife if she'd heard the news. She mentioned that Lynne Spears, the mother of Britney and Jamie Lynn, was putting on hold the publication of a parenting book. Well, that might be a good idea, come to think of it!

Photo: New York Times

Vladimir Putin and Russian Authoritarianism

Did Time magazine screw-up in its selection of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year?

I suggested in an earlier post that General David Petraeus, one of Time's runners-up, should have been selected (thank you Bill O'Reilly). I'm seeing a few others who agree on that point as well. Michael Barone has this to say, for example:

Time magazine has chosen Vladimir Putin as the person of the year. This strikes me as an odd choice. Yes, Putin has been an important player on the international stage; yes, he has frustrated American efforts to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons; yes, he has been more intransigent on asserting Russian power on the "near abroad," the former Soviet republics, which, like Ukraine, Georgia, and the Baltics, seek to take a different course. But he has been doing these things for years, and he has made no important advances, at best incremental progress, in calendar year 2007.

In contrast, Time's fourth runner-up for person of the year, Gen. David Petraeus, has made an enormous difference this past year. With the help of many others (which is true of any leader), he has turned around the military situation and the political situation (if not at the top-down national level, then at the bottom-up local level) in Iraq. What seemed to be an imminent American defeat has been transformed into an imminent American success. And Petraeus has done more than any other person to turn that around.

I'll come back to Barone's point below (but see also Tom the Redhunter).

My dissatisfaction with Putin's pick is his growing authoritarianism. At a time when the United States is struggling mightily to consolidate democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, it seems contradictory to our values to bestow media recognition on the autocratic, retrograde leader of the Russian state.

An article Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal raised important questions about Russia's steady drift toward authoritarian politics. The article, "Putin and Orthodox Church Cement Power in Russia," chronicles the growing alliance between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church.

The article opens with a discussion of Sergei Taratukhin - a defrocked orthodox priest - who recanted his denunciations of Russian state power to get back in the good graces with the regime:

Mr. Taratukhin's repentance reinforces what has become a pillar of Mr. Putin's Russia: an intimate alliance between the Orthodox Church and the Kremlin reminiscent of czarist days. Rigidly hierarchical, intolerant of dissent and wary of competition, both share a vision of Russia's future - rooted in robust nationalism and at odds with Western-style liberal democracy.

In recent months, Orthodox priests have sprinkled holy water on a new Russian surface-to-air-missile system called Triumph and blessed a Dec. 2 parliamentary election condemned by European observers as neither free nor fair. When the Kremlin last week unveiled its plan to effectively keep Mr. Putin in charge after his time as president ends, the head of the church, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II, went on TV to laud the scheme as a "great blessing for Russia."

"The state supports the church, and the church supports the state," says Sergei Kovalyov, a Soviet-era human-rights activist. Three decades ago, he was locked up with Mr. Taratukhin, the wayward Siberian, at Perm-36, part of the Soviet gulag. Mr. Kovalyov remembers his former prison-mate well: Jailed for anticommunist agitation, he kept getting sent to an isolation cell after a gutsy but foolhardy effort to expose security-service snitches spying on prisoners....

Today's intimacy between church and state revives in many ways a relationship that existed before the Revolution of 1917, when a czarist rallying cry was "Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationhood." Russia today has no czar and its constitution mandates a division between church and state. But Mr. Putin has increasingly assumed a czar-like status, hailed by the patriarch and other supporters as a "national leader" endowed with an almost mystical right to rule indefinitely.

The alliance also has roots in Russia's Soviet past, when the KGB hounded dissident clerics and favored those loyal to the state. It recruited many churchmen as agents or informers. Among the agents, say people who have reviewed KGB archives, was the current patriarch, Alexy II.

Asked about the accusations against the church and the patriarch, Vsevold Chaplin, a senior priest in the church's Moscow headquarters, said there were no "specially planted KGB workers" within the church. This, he said, is a "myth." He added that contact with Soviet authorities was "not immoral" if it didn't harm individuals or the church. A church commission looked into the question of KGB collaboration but didn't make its findings public.

Mr. Kovalyov, the Soviet-era dissident, says: "Our patriarch and our president have the same background. They are from the same firm - the KGB."

Russia embraced Christianity just over a millennium ago and belongs to the Eastern Orthodox tradition, which split from the Western church in the 11th century and posits the ideal of "symphonia," or cooperation between church and state.

Occasional attempts by Russian churchmen to defy state authority have been crushed. When the 16th-century head of the Moscow church, Philip, criticized the abuses of Ivan the Terrible, he was taken before a kangaroo court, convicted of sorcery and ordered to repent. He refused. The czar had him murdered. Peter the Great in the 18th century placed the church under state control because he viewed it as an obstacle to modernization, and also his power. Communism later enshrined atheism as Russia's state creed. Thousands of priests were murdered or sent to the gulag.

As the Soviet Union was imploding in 1990, democratic reformers around President Boris Yeltsin faced a "very serious and painful" decision, says Sergei Stankevich, at the time a senior Yeltsin adviser and head of a policy group responsible for religion. The issue, he says, was what to do with a priesthood compromised by links to the KGB.

"It was not just one or two people. The whole church was under control," he says. "We knew it for sure because we looked at the archives," which use code names to describe priests' involvement in numerous operations. These ranged from campaigns to muzzle dissident clergy to KGB-orchestrated efforts to counter criticism from foreign churchmen of Soviet religious repression.

Read the whole thing.

It may not appear to casual readers why this tightening between Russian church and state is so problematic.

Note though: Compared to the Western democracies of North America and Europe, Russia's political history evolved in the absence of the cultural, political, and religious requisites pushing the state's development toward liberal, pluralistic political foundations.

One of the most significant developments in pre-revolutionary Russia was the tight relationship that emerged between what is today's St. Petersburg and the Byzantine Empire. The close ties to Byzantium pulled Russia in the direction of Eastern culture, and away from the liberalizing tendencies found in Western Europe. Russian rulers adopted Orthodox Christianity rather than Roman Catholicism. This alliance with the Eastern Church increased the impact of Mediterranean influences, seen not just in religion, but also in the adoption of the Cyrillic alphabet (see the Wall Street Journal's graphic on the tightening alliance between the Russian state and the Orthodox Church).

What is more, the Eastern influence combined with internal decay and outside invasion to hinder the potential for liberalizing tendencies to take root. The Mongol hordes - the major invading power - whisked out of Central Asia to dominate Russian politics for 200 years (beginning around 1280). Their brutality delayed Russia's indigenous development and many of the local potentates adopted patterns of harsh Mongol despotism, which served to reinforce the earlier strains of authoritarianism found in the Byzantine tradition.

This two-century interregnum stunted Russian political development and strengthened a culture of encirclement and need for stability. As Lawrence Mayer has argued:

The long period of Tatar [Mongol] control isolated Russia from Western Europe at the very time when Europe was experiencing pivotal events such as the Renaissance and the Reformation. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this period, which is among the most significant in the history of Western civilization and is considered to mark the beginning of the modern era. As a consequence, Russia never really participated in the debates concerning such issues as the proper relationship between Church and state, the questioning of the Church and state authority, and the importance and value of the individual.

Russia's experiences, beginning at the time of the Mongol invasion and moving forward, illustrate a salient feature of the Russian psyche that is still present today - the perceived need for security and protection from invasion. While it is correct to think of Russia as an expansionist power, especially from the sixteenth century on, we should be aware of the other side of the coin. While Kiev [St. Petersburg] was fighting the invaders from the East, several European groups, most notably Swedes and the Germans, seized the opportunity to stage their own attacks on Russia. These and other invasions down through the centuries, by Poland, Sweden, France, Germany, and others, may help to explain a subsequent Russian feeling of insecurity and a preoccupation with strength, security, and buffer zones.

This discussion really just hits the tip of the iceberg: Russian political development lacked additional attributes common in Western development, such as a demarcation of property rights from control of the state; a system of law binding on ruler and subject alike; and class systems of egalitarianism rather than subjugation and bondage.

This authoritarian culture was thus perfectly adaptable to the emergence of the Marxist-Leninist totalitarian regime that followed the Russian Revolution of 1917. Today, as the Wall Street Journal points out above, the state's move toward the Orthodox Church harkens to earlier, darker eras of Russian absolutism.

It's thus fitting that Time's lead story on Putin's recognition is entitled, "A Tsar Is Born." The Russian president has consolidated power on the basis of Great Russian nationalism, centralized bureaucratic control, and economic recovery. Having been isolated during the period of NATO expansion in the 1990s, and with two American hegemonic wars currently being waged on the southern borders of Russian power, it's not surprise that Putin has mounted a robust policy of strategic independence and resurgence amid intense domestic centralization.

These are not welcomed trends, however. As Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner-Weiss argue in the January/February 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs:

There is also very little evidence to suggest that Putin's autocratic turn over the last several years has led to more effective governance than the fractious democracy of the 1990s. In fact, the reverse is much closer to the truth: to the extent that Putin's centralization of power has had an influence on governance and economic growth at all, the effects have been negative. Whatever the apparent gains of Russia under Putin, the gains would have been greater if democracy had survived.

So, to return to Time 's pick of Putin as Person of the Year. Note Michael Barone's additional observations:

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Time didn't name Petraeus as the person of the year because its editors didn't want to spotlight and honor American success. This was not always so, as you can check by looking at Time's archive of person of the year (originally man of the year) selections over the years. During World War II, Time chose Gen. George Marshall as man of the year for 1943 and Dwight Eisenhower for 1944. To be sure, Time did not always name those admired by its founder, Henry Luce, a liberal Republican and interventionist in the run-up to World War II. For 1942, it named Joseph Stalin for the Soviets' successful resistance to the Nazi invasion that began in 1941, but it had also, justifiably, named Stalin as the man of the year in 1939, because the Hitler-Stalin pact agreed to in August 1939 enabled Adolf Hitler to invade Poland without serious opposition. Indeed, Time also named Hitler man of the year for 1938, when he got Britain and France to appease him by destroying the power of Czechoslovakia to resist conquest.

Time claims to bestow the honor on an individual who - "for good or ill" - most affected the news of our lives and "embodied what was important about the year."

Well, if that's the criteria, I'd say runner-up Al Gore should have easily been selected over Putin. But more troubling are the historical selections from those on the "ill-side," which include some of the 20th-century's most bloody tyrants, who at the time also happened to be among America's most implacable enemies.

It's a strange and troublesome selection process. Thus, readers can see why I would argue that, ultimately, on the biggest issue facing the United States and the world this year, General David Petraeus truly is the Person for the Year for 2007.

The Lost Promise of Democratic Power

Check today's Los Angeles Times piece, "Democrats Savor Power For a Year but End It Feeling Unfulfilled:

Congressional Democrats ended their first year in control of Congress in more than a decade Wednesday, approving a $555-billion government spending measure that gave President Bush $70 billion for an Iraq war they had promised to end.

And underscoring the frustrations that have beset the new majority much of the year, Democratic leaders left the Capitol complaining that much of their agenda had been thwarted by congressional Republicans who repeatedly stopped their most cherished initiatives.

"We could have accomplished so much more," said a rueful Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at a news conference in the old office of a Reid predecessor, Lyndon Johnson.

Despite the more than five dozen Iraq-related votes throughout the year, Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) were never able to muster the support needed to compel the president to begin withdrawing U.S. forces.

They were also forced to renege on their pledge not to add to the federal debt. On Wednesday, the House spared more than 20 million middle-class taxpayers from paying the alternative minimum tax but abandoned any effort to recoup the $50 billion in lost revenue.

And as Democrats scrambled to pull together a budget bill in the face of veto threats from the president and solid GOP opposition on Capitol Hill, they scaled back plans to expand funding for education, Head Start, community health centers and other domestic programs.

In the end, Democrats were able to shift spending "only slightly at the margins," said G. William Hoagland, a former senior Senate GOP budget aide. "But not for want of trying."

Democratic leaders strove Wednesday to highlight the changes the party had accomplished after 12 years of almost uninterrupted Republican control on Capitol Hill. "America is in a better place than we were one year ago today, and the fact that Democrats control the Congress is part of the reason," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.)

Congressional Democrats this year shifted the national debate about the war, the environment, even fiscal responsibility -- once a bedrock concept for the GOP that had been largely ignored by the president and his allies on Capitol Hill for the last six years.

The Democratic energy bill signed Wednesday by the president marked a historic change in the nation's environmental policy, providing the most significant increase in fuel-economy standards for vehicles in more than three decades.

Democrats passed the most sweeping overhaul of ethics rules for Congress since the Watergate era. They raised the minimum wage for the first time in a decade. They cranked up dormant oversight machinery, subjecting the Bush administration and others to a stream of subpoenas and investigations, forcing Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to resign and focusing new attention on fraudulent activities by U.S. contractors in Iraq.

And, although Democrats could not overcome GOP resistance to their budget priorities, many federal budget watchers credit them with bringing a new focus on the consequences of running up the national debt, which now tops $9 trillion, or $30,000 for every American.

"The major accomplishment is what they didn't do that a Republican Congress might have, like more tax cuts that weren't paid for, more spending that wasn't offset," said James R. Horney, who follows federal fiscal policy at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

But in a year in which the two parties were locked in a fierce showdown over the war that inflamed partisan tensions, those accomplishments were often overshadowed.

And as Democrats and Republicans maneuvered for political advantage, legislative business in the Capitol frequently ground to a halt.

In the Senate, the 49-strong Republican caucus used the chamber's procedural rules to filibuster legislation by demanding a 60-vote supermajority to move dozens of bills. Senators held 62 roll-call votes this year to break filibusters, more such votes than most Senates see in a two-year session.

Frustrated Republicans, many of whom chafed at their new minority status, accused Democrats of breaking their pledge to run a more bipartisan Congress by limiting GOP amendments to bills and shutting out Republicans from negotiations on drafting of bills.

"The Democratic majority said they wanted to try to work in a bipartisan way to get things done, but we've seen anything but bipartisanship," said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).

As Democrats battered Republicans over the war in Iraq, Republicans repeatedly blocked Democratic attempts to impose timelines for withdrawing troops.

The partisan divide also took a toll on tax and budget legislation.

Democrats took power offering pledges to offset tax cuts and spending increases through new pay-as-you-go budgeting rules. But the president and Senate Republicans prevented any move to pay for the $50 billion in alternative minimum tax relief with new taxes on wealthy Americans.

Democrats also couldn't enact one of their most popular measures, a plan to extend health insurance to more low-income children nationwide.

And, facing veto threats, Democrats found themselves severely hamstrung in how they could use the federal budget to fund domestic priorities they claimed had been neglected under the Bush administration.

Democrats did provide more money than Bush sought for veterans care, student aid, energy subsidies for the poor, grants to local law-enforcement agencies, housing programs, and programs to promote energy conservation and develop cleaner fuel sources. But in many cases, the additional funding was modest.

Democrats, for example, had to scale back their plans to expand research funding for the National Institutes of Health to a point that did not cover inflation.

"Unfortunately, we did not do as well as we believe we should have," said Mila N. Becker, director of government relations for the American Society for Hematology. "We ended up with an amount that is very disappointing. I think people had higher hopes."

Even some traditional Democratic allies expressed disappointment.

"The year began with a lot of promise," said AFL-CIO Legislation Director William Samuel. "It's been much more difficult than I expected. . . . We're not making as much progress as we had hoped."

Wednesday evening, the $555-billion omnibus budget bill passed the House 272-142, with 194 Republicans and 78 Democrats voting for it. Most Democrats voted against the measure because it included war funding.

Congressional Democrats' struggles have not gone unnoticed. Public approval of Congress, which climbed to near 40% in surveys taken at the beginning of the year, a high mark for recent years, dropped to 22% in a Gallup Poll earlier this months.

Click here for the Times' graphic, "Budget Changes."

The Democrats' year as majority party has been strange, especially in their inability to get anything of substance accomplished.

See also, "Congressional Pork Helps Vulnerable Democratic Freshmen," "President Bush Surging at End of Tenure," "Democratic Finger-Pointing ," "John Murtha's Cut-and-Run Turnaround," and "Democrats Can't Get Things Right on Iraq."

Interest Groups to Dominate Big Money Campaign Finance

Interest Groups have picked up influence in the campaign financing regime in the wake of the 2002 bipartisan reform of federal election laws. The Wall Street Journal has the story:

One of the defining features of the 2004 presidential campaign was the devastating attack on Sen. John Kerry by an obscure group called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. In the years since, such independent political groups have only grown stronger, and they are poised to play an even bigger role in the 2008 elections.

Political groups unaffiliated with the two major parties account for an increasingly large share of spending on federal campaigns -- 19% of the total in 2006, up from just 7% in 2000, according to an analysis of campaign-finance data by The Wall Street Journal. They now are horning in on crucial campaign activities once dominated by the parties, such as buying ads and getting out the vote.

In Iowa, independent groups are whipsawing voters with a range of conflicting messages. An organization called Common Sense Issues has funded automated phone calls backing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and criticizing his chief Republican rivals. The Club for Growth, an antitax group, is working to defeat Mr. Huckabee with attack ads.

On the Democratic side, an organization called the American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education has spent $250,000 on radio ads in Iowa backing Sen. Hillary Clinton. An environmental group called Friends of Earth Action is running ads against Sen. Clinton.

Over the past four years, the national Democratic and Republican parties have raised and spent less on elections than during the prior four years, when adjusted for inflation. At the same time, independent political groups have more than doubled their spending, and have begun to rival the parties as an election-season financial force, the Journal's data analysis shows.

The shift, largely the result of campaign-finance laws intended to curtail big-money donations to parties, could further polarize the American political landscape. Because the Republican and Democratic parties aim to appeal to broad swaths of the electorate, they tend to be moderating forces in politics. That isn't true of the independent groups, which range from the Sierra Club and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to fringe groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which disbanded after the 2004 election. They often pursue narrower agendas or causes further out on the political spectrum.

The nonprofit groups are financed by wealthy individuals, corporations, labor unions and other interest groups. Unlike the national parties, they face no limits on how much money they can take in from contributors. They often don't have to disclose their donors' names until months after an election -- if at all.

During the 2000 election cycle, such outside groups spent at least $260 million on presidential and congressional races, one-fifth as much as was spent by national political parties, according to the Journal analysis of campaign data provided by the Federal Election Commission and two nonpartisan organizations that track political spending. During the 2006 midterm elections, these outside groups spent about $600 million, almost two-thirds as much as was spent by the Republican and Democratic parties, the data indicate. Candidates themselves still account for the biggest piece of spending -- a bit less than half.

Overall, the amount of money poured into each two-year election cycle continues to climb. Data from the FEC and several groups that track campaign finance indicate that total spending during presidential-election cycles rose from $2.8 billion in 1995-96 to $3.6 billion in 1999-2000 to $4.8 billion in 2003-04. This year and next, it is expected to hit $6 billion, political strategists say.

Read the whole thing.

The rise of big money group financing - and the concomitant decline of the political parties - is the most important implication of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform act of 2002. The consequences of reform are understandable, as I've noted before with respect to the rise of big-money "bundlers" in recent elections:

...as any student of campaign finance knows, money in politics is like the winding waters of a raging river. Should a dead log block the river's passage, the water finds a way to continue its flow, up, over, and around the impediment. So it goes with money. The McCain-Feingold reform act of 2002 is largely responsible for making the current crop of bundlers so powerful. The law has also made interest group 527 organizations (a regular target of criticism) powerful producers of campaign advertising. Who knows what consequences will flow from the next round of "progressive" campaign finance reforms?

It actually pretty fascinating how groups have adapted to the laws. They increased their activity and made the political process dramatically more pluralistic. The flow of money as such is how our politics should operate: Anyone can contribute and both sides of the political spectrum have influence.

It'll be interesting to see the types of "527" attack organizations that emerge in the 2008 general election. More "General Betray Us" from the left, and swiftboating from the right. Let the games begin!

New Poll Shows No Republican Frontrunner

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows a dead heat between Rudy Guiliani and Mitt Romney in the race for the GOP presidential nomination:

Rudy Giuliani has lost his national lead in the Republican presidential race, creating the party's most competitive nomination fight in decades just two weeks before voting starts.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows the former New York City mayor now tied nationally with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 20% among Republicans nationally, just slightly ahead of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 17% and Arizona Sen. John McCain at 14%. At a time when Mr. Romney has fallen behind Mr. Huckabee in the leadoff state of Iowa, the result signals a dramatic shift in the nature of the Republican contest: In a party with a history of rewarding established front-runners, there's no longer a front-runner of any kind.

In part, this reflects the extraordinary openness of the first White House race in 80 years without an incumbent president or vice president seeking the office in either party. Though the survey shows Sen. Hillary Clinton maintaining a 22 percentage point national lead over Sen. Barack Obama, she too faces a stiff challenge in Iowa and other early states from Mr. Obama and 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards.

In Mr. Giuliani's case, his fall from a high of 38% of the Republican vote earlier this year appears to stem largely from unfavorable publicity surrounding his personal life, his security business and his relationship with controversial figures such as one-time police commissioner Bernard Kerik. Just 35% of Republican voters rate Mr. Giuliani highly on having "high personal standards that set the proper moral tone for the country."

By contrast, 65% rate Mr. McCain highly on that score, 60% for Mr. Romney, and 53% for Mr. Huckabee. At the same time, fewer than half of Republican voters say that Mr. Giuliani, a moderate who favors abortion rights, or Mr. Huckabee, a conservative Christian with a populist tilt, or Mr. McCain, an ex-prisoner of war who has staunchly backed the Iraq war, "shares your position on the issues."

A fifth candidate, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, also draws double-digit support at 11% after shooting up to second-place support in the Republican field earlier this year. The fluidity in the race has scrambled calculations for the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, the Jan. 8 New Hampshire primary, and the Jan. 19 contest in South Carolina -- all of them historically important in shaping the nomination outcome. Aside from fluctuations in the candidates' personal images, the issue agenda is shifting as well amid rising concerns about an economic downturn.

I just wrote about the increasing salience of the economy among voters. But what interests me here is how well John McCain does on moral standards (as readers know well by now, I'm pulling for McCain). Unfortunately, the ethics issue's not a driving factor for most voters, but it could combine with other important factors - like concern on Iraq - to lift McCain a bit over the next couple of weeks.

As the article notes, the GOP race is extraordinarily open, and fun to watch as well!

Economy Moving to Forefront of Political Agenda

Peter Wallsten over at the Los Angeles Times argues that the economy is causing a shift in the presidential election debate:

As an election approaches, campaigns often brace for a last-minute event that could alter the political landscape. But the surprise this time isn't a scandal or a calamity overseas. It's an abrupt shift in the debate away from the battlefields of the Middle East and toward kitchen-table issues, such as the economy.

Suddenly the presidential campaign's longtime front-runners are facing new challenges, and lower-tier candidates are climbing.

The decline of national security and the rise of economic concerns has scrambled the race in both parties, helping underdog candidates make a case for themselves and forcing the leaders to change their tactics.

Rudolph W. Giuliani and Hillary Rodham Clinton have built their campaigns around the argument that they would step into the Oval Office best-prepared to be a strong wartime commander-in-chief. They have belittled rivals and each other as weak or naive when it comes to dealing with enemies.

Now voters in both parties are looking less for strength than for candidates who can offer change or a more reliable adherence to each party's core values -- or simply for someone who feels more likable.

The shift has benefited Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee, who in recent weeks have narrowed or closed the gaps in key early-voting states, challenging front-runners Clinton and Giuliani. And it has fostered the sense that both parties' nominations are up in the air, with Democrat John Edwards and Republicans John McCain, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson all homing in on domestic issues to connect with voters, or emphasizing differences in leadership style.

"There has been a shift, a subtle shift," said nonpartisan pollster Scott Rasmussen. "You can overstate it, because Iraq and security issues are still important."

The shift helps explain why Clinton, the Democratic New York senator, and Giuliani, the former Republican mayor of New York City, have moved to retool their images before caucuses are held Jan. 3 in Iowa.

Each front-runner had been feeding off the other: Giuliani boosted his Republican credentials by attacking Clinton, and Clinton pointed to those attacks as evidence that her party needed a tested survivor of the brutal partisan wars of the 1990s.

But this week the two are talking more aggressively about working hard to solve problems on voters' minds.

Clinton is showing a softer side by featuring friends giving sentimental website testimonials about "the Hillary I know." And Giuliani, while still embracing the aura of strength he gained after leading New York through Sept. 11, is trying to broaden his image. In what his campaign billed as a defining speech over the weekend in Florida, Giuliani pledged to fight poverty, improve education, cut taxes and end illegal immigration.

It was no coincidence that Giuliani's address in Tampa -- a hub of moderate Republican voters in the crucial battleground state -- seemed to put his once-dominant theme of strength in a new context. Cautioning that "middle-class families feel that the American dream may be slipping away," Giuliani exhorted the crowd to "decide for optimism, not pessimism; for hope, not despair; for strength, not weakness; for victory, not defeat."

The public's mood shift has been detected in a number of surveys and is viewed by analysts as the result of the housing-sales slump, fears of recession and an ebb in violence in Iraq. In an ABC News-Washington Post poll released last week, 24% of adults ranked the economy and jobs as their most pressing concern in choosing a candidate, slightly higher than the 23% who said Iraq.

Last month, the same poll showed 29% ranking Iraq as their highest concern, compared with 14% who pointed to the economy and jobs.

In New Hampshire, with voting set for Jan. 8, more than one in five Republican voters surveyed for Fox News ranked the economy as their leading concern, compared with 14% who listed the war. Immigration was the second most-cited issue in that poll, at 16%.

And in Florida -- which holds its primary Jan. 29 and has long been considered Giuliani's strongest early-voting state -- one survey by Rasmussen Reports showed Huckabee not only leading Giuliani overall but also among voters who claim to care most about Iraq.

I'm not fully convinced that Iraq's receding all that much from the public eye. It is true - as I noted in a previous post - that the economy is emerging as a priority among voters, although not by much.

Certainly both the economy and foreign policy will be driving factors in voter preferences next November. But some economists are betting against a recession in 2008, so it remains to be seen if we'll have full-blown pocketbook voting in the presidential election.

Vladimir Putin is Person of the Year

Time magazine has selected Russian President Vladimir Putin as Time 's Person of the Year. The editors explain why they chose Putin here:

In a year when Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and green became the new red, white and blue; when the combat in Iraq showed signs of cooling but Baghdad's politicians showed no signs of statesmanship; when China, the rising superpower, juggled its pride in hosting next summer's Olympic Games with its embarrassment at shipping toxic toys around the world; and when J.K. Rowling set millions of minds and hearts on fire with the final volume of her 17-year saga—one nation that had fallen off our mental map, led by one steely and determined man, emerged as a critical linchpin of the 21st century.

Russia lives in history—and history lives in Russia. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Soviet Union cast an ominous shadow over the world. It was the U.S.'s dark twin. But after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Russia receded from the American consciousness as we became mired in our own polarized politics. And it lost its place in the great game of geopolitics, its significance dwarfed not just by the U.S. but also by the rising giants of China and India. That view was always naive. Russia is central to our world—and the new world that is being born. It is the largest country on earth; it shares a 2,600-mile (4,200 km) border with China; it has a significant and restive Islamic population; it has the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and a lethal nuclear arsenal; it is the world's second largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia; and it is an indispensable player in whatever happens in the Middle East. For all these reasons, if Russia fails, all bets are off for the 21st century. And if Russia succeeds as a nation-state in the family of nations, it will owe much of that success to one man, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

No one would label Putin a child of destiny. The only surviving son of a Leningrad factory worker, he was born after what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War, in which they lost more than 26 million people. The only evidence that fate played a part in Putin's story comes from his grandfather's job: he cooked for Joseph Stalin, the dictator who inflicted ungodly terrors on his nation.

When this intense and brooding KGB agent took over as President of Russia in 2000, he found a country on the verge of becoming a failed state. With dauntless persistence, a sharp vision of what Russia should become and a sense that he embodied the spirit of Mother Russia, Putin has put his country back on the map. And he intends to redraw it himself. Though he will step down as Russia's President in March, he will continue to lead his country as its Prime Minister and attempt to transform it into a new kind of nation, beholden to neither East nor West.

TIME's Person of the Year is not and never has been an honor. It is not an endorsement. It is not a popularity contest. At its best, it is a clear-eyed recognition of the world as it is and of the most powerful individuals and forces shaping that world—for better or for worse. It is ultimately about leadership—bold, earth-changing leadership. Putin is not a boy scout. He is not a democrat in any way that the West would define it. He is not a paragon of free speech. He stands, above all, for stability—stability before freedom, stability before choice, stability in a country that has hardly seen it for a hundred years. Whether he becomes more like the man for whom his grandfather prepared blinis—who himself was twice TIME's Person of the Year—or like Peter the Great, the historical figure he most admires; whether he proves to be a reformer or an autocrat who takes Russia back to an era of repression—this we will know only over the next decade. At significant cost to the principles and ideas that free nations prize, he has performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power. For that reason, Vladimir Putin is TIME's 2007 Person of the Year.

The interview with Putin is here.

The editors note that the title of Person of the Year is not an honor, and I personally don't pay much attention to the announcement.

The full list of finalists is here, a listing which includes General David Petraeus.

Bill O'Reilly says Petraeus is "The Factor" person of the year:

On Wednesday, Time magazine will announce its person of the year. And on its Web site, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is the leading vote getter. Memo to Time: No.

Al Gore is also a crowd favorite because of his global warming campaign. Ahmadinejad getting some attention. But again, he would not be a good choice and Time knows it.

Now "The Factor's" Person of the Year must meet some very strict requirements. The person must have done something extraordinary, must be a world player, and must have changed history in some way. That is our yardstick.

And so, "The Factor" person of the year is General David Petraeus, who has turned a disastrous military situation in Iraq into a possible victory in less than a year. You will remember how the general got worked over by some Congress people, how many folks said publicly the so-called "surge" in Iraq would not work.

Well, they were wrong. Violence is now at the lowest levels since the conflict began in 2003. —Obviously, a stunning turn around in less than a year.

As "Talking Points" has stated, there are Americans who desperately want the USA to lose in Iraq. Some of those people are in the media. So reporting on the surge has been sparse to say the least.

The hate-Bush crowd simply will never admit anything good can come from the Iraq conflict. These people are bitter, dishonest, and of course, damaging to America.

A fair amount of people can oppose the war in Iraq yet want to see their country succeed in that place. There's no question that a stable Iraq is good for the world because it provides a bulwark against Islamic terrorism and Iranian expansion.

The cost has been great. We all know that. In suffering and cash. And the Iraqi government is still a mess. But General Petraeus, backed by a brave and professional U.S. military, has restored much order, largely defeated the Iraqi A Qaeda thugs, and at least given the good people of that country a chance to prosper. General David Petraeus is "The Factor" person of the year by a wide margin.

Petraeus is the "American Power" person of the year as well.