Debating the Invasion of Iraq

Glenn Greenwald, like many other disastrously implacable opponents of the war, can't get a grip on the current realities of progress in Iraq, and instead remains stuck in a pre-surge time-warp of denunciations against the evil Bush/Cheney regime.

Here's Greenwald taking down Anne-Marie Slaughter's criticism of war opponents' endless recriminations over the origins of the war:

This plea that we all just forget about the unpleasant past - stop trying to figure out who was responsible for the Iraq War - has become the principal self-defense weapon of the pro-war political establishment. That's their only hope for evading responsibility for what they've done. It's also the central hope on which the entire McCain campaign rests -- that we should just all forget about the painfully wrong and misleading things John McCain said and did in making himself into the prime cheerleader for the most disastrous and unpopular war in American history, and focus instead on how he (somehow) has the experience and judgment to lead us to glorious Victory.

But why would we, and why should we, just ignore the question of who spawned this disaster? In trying to determine what to do now, isn't it rather important to know whose judgment and knowledge can be trusted and whose should be considered worthless? From the perspective of their own-self interest, the demand by war advocates like Slaughter and McCain that everyone forget about what they said and did in the past is understandable - it's natural to hope that one's own wretched and destructive conduct would be forgotten - but for the country, doing that would be completely irrational.

Wretched conduct?

What's so wretched about upholding a series of 16 UN resolutions that Saddam Hussein had ignored or defied. As Michael Glennon recounts, the Iraq war was authorized by the United Nations after the U.S. Congress issued its resolution on the use of force against Iraq's violation of international law?

But check Peter Feaver, in his essay over at the Weekly Standard, "Why We Went Into Iraq":

On the night that John McCain secured the Republican nomination, he said about Iraq that "it is of little use to Americans for their candidates to avoid the many complex challenges of these struggles by re-litigating decisions of the past."

He is right that it would be a mistake for his campaign to focus on the past at the expense of the future. Either of his Democratic opponents will be on far more vulnerable terrain defending the incoherencies of their proposed plans to "end" the war than if they get to cherry-pick debates from the past with the benefit of hindsight.

But there are at least four reasons why Senator McCain would be making a mistake if he avoided entirely the historical debate.

First and foremost, the historical case remains an important factor in determining votes....

Second, even if you are focusing narrowly on shoring up public support for continuing the mission, the historical case matters. People who think the war was the right thing and also think we will succeed have a stronger stomach for continuing American efforts than people who think it was a mistake but still think it is winnable.

For the public to believe that a commander in chief can bring the Iraq war to a successful conclusion, they must have a strong degree of trust in that leader. If the public only hears unrebutted attacks about the original decision to invade Iraq, the lies and myths will take hold and undermine public confidence in the continuing effort in Iraq.
For instance, after the 2004 election, the Bush administration largely stopped "relitigating the past" and focused almost all of its Iraq messages on the future. The Democrats, in contrast, kept up a barrage of partisan attacks about the original decision. The Bush nolo contendere stance may have been interpreted by many Americans as tantamount to a guilty plea. Is it any surprise, therefore, that according to one CBS/NYT poll last year, as many as 60 percent of respondents said they thought "members of the Administration intentionally misled the public" in making its case for the war with Iraq whereas before the 2004 election (when the Bush team was making a stronger defense) only 44 percent believed that myth.

Third, the historical case for invading Iraq is much stronger than conventional wisdom pretends. It is not as strong as the administration thought in 2002, but it is far stronger than the average listener to late-night comics or talking heads - i.e., a normal American--might think today....

Finally, the failure to defend the historical case has allowed Democrats to avoid answering tough questions about their own stances. Senator Obama, for instance, loves to praise his own judgment in coming out against the Iraq war in 2002, favoring instead containing Saddam Hussein with a vigorous weapons inspections regime. What Obama has never explained is how he thought the United States could reconstitute the containment/inspections regime absent a credible threat of force. When Obama gave his 2002 speech, there were no inspectors on the ground in Iraq and the U.N. sanctions were falling apart. It was the U.S. threat of force--the very threat Obama was protesting--that reinvigorated the Security Council and reestablished the inspections regime.

McCain cannot stake his entire candidacy on trying to persuade people to support the original war decision. After several years of one-sided propaganda, American attitudes on this are fairly entrenched and unlikely to move much. But he shouldn't cede the ground without a fight.

Feaver, a political scientist, provides a level of fairness and objectivity you never see in the likes of surrender advocates like Greenwald, or any of the others among the hare-brained antiwar hordes.

He makes a good case too: Don't cede ground to the antiwar nihilists. Don't let their campaign of evasions, lies, and myths take hold in the public consciousness. We've come too far - through thick and thin - to surrender to the same forces who cheer the hostage beheadings and Downs syndrome suicide bombers killing Americans today.

Our cause was just in 2003, and remains so today, and the costs that so many have borne for Iraq's liberty and security demand nothing less than maintaining the public's confidence that we're doing the right thing.

See also, "Shame on You: The False Testimony of the Antiwar Movement."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Hillary, Obama, and the Democrats

Amid all the Democratic Party controversies of recent weeks, the fact remains the race is still far from decided. Indeed, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen argue that Hillary Clinton's actually got practically a snowball's chance at winning the nomination, but her campaign's staying in the game by any means necessary (via Memeorandum):

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

In other words: The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics.

Read the whole thing.

Personally, Hillary has a legitimate case that she's won the big states, which are key in the electoral college, and she'd be better able to unify more traditional elements of the old-line Democratic Party coalition.

She's also doing well heading into Pennsylvania, where polls and data analysis show her leading Obama by double-digits.

Mathematically, however, Obama's almost guaranteed to come out ahead in the delegate count, which has the Clinton campaign initiating a behind-the-scences move against him:

To foster doubt about Obama, Clinton supporters are using a whisper and pressure campaign to make an 11th-hour argument to party insiders that he would be a weak candidate in November despite his superior standing at the moment.

“All she has left is the electability argument,” a Democratic official said. "It’s all wrapped around: Is there something that makes him ultimately unelectable?”

But the audience for that argument, the superdelegates, will not easily overturn the will of the party’s voters. And in fact, a number of heavyweight Democrats are looking at the landscape and laying the groundwork to dissuade Clinton from trying to overturn the will of the party rank and file.

The argument against Clinton's whisper campaign is that if she's succesful in pulling enough superdelegates her way to win at the convention, the party could end up choosing a nominee who did not win the popular vote.

But such a scenario's within the party's rules, and as the DNC's recently prevailed in upholding its rules in denying Florida a do-over primary for its penalized delegation, it'd be hypocritical to deny Clinton a chance to win the nomination by leveraging her power with the superdelegate bloc.

That's the lesson people should not forget: In effect, don't count out the Clinton machine.

Shame on You: The False Testimony of the Antiwar Movement

Via Midnight Blue, be sure to watch this powerful video of pro-victory counter-demonstrations against last week's Winter Soldier II gathering of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

The latest protests allege American atrocities in Iraq. Beverly Perlson, founder of Band of Mothers, tells the antiwar agitators, "Shame on You" (at 1:30 minutes):

Also, check out FrontPageMagazine's analysis of recent antiwar activity, "The Protesters Fizzle":

Over the last week, various groups of anti-war protesters have gathered in front of U.S. government buildings to mark the fifth anniversary of our campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Around the nation, these protests have been a monumental flop. In our home town, a building which houses military recruiting was targeted. The protesters there were met by a crowd twice as large of individuals who support the troops, along with dozens of police officers, some dressed in full SWAT gear.

One man in attendance as a counter-protester was Sam Bell, a Marine during Vietnam, who remembers how he and other service members were treated upon their return stateside by many of the American public. “I want (the troops) to make sure we back them,” said Bell. “They have a job, they’re doing their job, and they should be respected for that. No matter what.”

Naturally, we tend to notice when things happen more than when they don’t. But like the old saying, no news is good news; the same could be said of the war on terrorism. The protests are a flop because America is beginning to see light ahead.

Let’s look at the positives. There are major benefits as a result of the sacrifices of those serving America and defending her in this noble cause. Great strides have been made in Iraq in the last five years since Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched against Saddam Hussein. But the greatest success is inside our own borders. It’s been six and one-half years since the horrific terrorist attacks of 9/11 in which over 3,000 American lives were lost -- and there has not been another attack on American soil since then. This is an outstanding accomplishment considering that al-Qaeda is still bent on the destruction of America. Multiple potentially deadly plots against the United States have been disrupted and numerous terrorists have been captured, including some top al-Qaeda leaders. Increased worldwide counterterrorism efforts since 9/11 have constrained the ability of al-Qaeda to attack the U.S., and this means America is safer.

Of course war is a fluid enterprise which needs to be constantly analyzed and reassessed so that changes can be made as necessary. Such a reappraisal was carried out in 2007 with the “surge” of 30,000 American troops sent into Iraq. This surge has forced out Islamist extremists and decreased the sectarian violence and bloodshed. Iraqi violence rates have dropped 60 percent since last June. There has been a significant decline in civilian casualties. Sen. John McCain, a strong supporter of the surge, recently said following his visit to Iraq, “We have achieved enormous success but they are still a very viable and tough enemy. There is no doubt in my mind that the surge is succeeding. Thank God for Gen. (David) Petraeus, one of the greatest generals in American history.”

Leaders from several branches of the military, recently arrived to help the new Iraqi government get up and running, say things are moving in the right direction. One Marine said these are “amazing times.” The new Iraqi leaders are “all patriots who are trying to rebuild their country. Most have been the subject of multiple assassination attempts.” He called them “very brave men.”

Much has been said about this being an “unpopular war,” but we need to engage in a national paradigm shift and begin to see the glass as “half full” instead of “half empty.” We all want our service men and woman to come home as quickly as possible, but not at the expense of making a huge mistake. By withdrawing the troops before the new Iraqi government is fully up and operating -- and before the al-Qaeda terrorists have been rooted out -- will make it likely that terrorist will have the ability to strike and harm America again. Vice President Cheney, while visiting in Iraq, told soldiers in Balad, “We have no intention of abandoning our friends or allowing this country of 170,000 sq km to become a staging ground for further attacks against Americans.”

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reminds us that good things take a long time and great achievements don’t happen over night. Examples she used are the founding of the United States, the end of slavery in America and the fall of the Soviet Union. We need to be patient and stay the course. In our fast paced society we have all gotten used to quick results but there are times when perseverance and patience are rewarded. It’s been a matter of two steps forward and one back, but wonderful improvements have been made for the people in Iraq since the downfall of Saddam Hussein. A critical key to keeping Americans safe from terrorists is the stabilization of Iraq and the destruction of terrorist strongholds.

That's well said.

See also, "The Lessons of Iraq ," and "The Resilience of Power: The Strategic Implications of Iraq."

Political Superstar: Obama Energizes the Hollywood Base

While the Democratic Party is obviously fractured over the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama nomination battle, and while Obama's Wright controversy has clearly damaged the Illinois Senator in public opinion, there's some evidence that Obama's Philadelphia speech on race and religion has energized the left-wing base, at least in Hollywood, a bastion of limosine liberals.

Tina Daunt, at the Los Angeles Times, has the story:

CAREER disasters (which usually involve some embarrassing bootlegged video or gossip magazine exposé) are commonplace in Tinseltown. If you're lucky, you can redeem yourself by being honest - and then dazzling audiences with an unexpected Oscar-worthy performance.

Perhaps the same holds true here for politicians.

After the YouTube videos surfaced showing Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, making racist statements, the senator's entertainment industry supporters were beyond worried: Some thought Obama was, quite simply, finished....
And then, on Tuesday, their candidate made the speech of a lifetime: He talked about race relations in America in terms never before used by a U.S. presidential candidate. (By Thursday, the speech was viewed more than 1.6 million times on YouTube.)....

So in less than a week, the mood among pro-Obama forces in Hollywood went from despair to delight, and that means a reenergized campaign out here.

Expect lots of pro-Obama efforts from the glitterati in the coming weeks. Moveon.org already has a major initiative underway. The group announced last week that it is teaming with Academy Award winners Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and Oliver Stone, multiple Grammy winner John Legend, author Naomi Wolf and others to hold a new ad contest called "Obama in 30 Seconds."

The effort provides a platform for Obama supporters to show in 30-second spots what inspires them about the senator's candidacy. MoveOn will buy time to run the winning ad on national television before Pennsylvania's crucial April 22 primary. Affleck explained the effort this way: "MoveOn's 'Obama in 30 Seconds' ad contest is a chance for everyone, from aspiring filmmakers to armchair pundits, to raise their voices to put Obama over the top and help make history."

Legend called the contest a "powerful way for ordinary citizens to be involved in an extraordinary moment in our history."

The list of other people involved in the MoveOn campaign is dazzling. It includes musician-activist Michael Franti; actor-musician-director Adrian Grenier; Academy Award-nominated producer Ted Hope; author and civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson; award-winning documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy; Stanford Law professor and founder of the Center for Internet and Society, Lawrence Lessig; recording artist Moby; Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas; Lionsgate Entertainment President Tom Ortenberg; Native American activist and documentary filmmaker Heather Rae; Focus Features President James Schamus; producer and entrepreneur Russell Simmons; hip-hop musician DJ Spooky; Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmakers Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg; and Grammy Award-winning songwriter and musician Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam.

Of course, if the going gets really tough, Obama still has George Clooney as his ace in the hole, though Clooney has kept a low-key profile in this campaign.

Hollywood friends understand, perhaps better than anyone, what it means to make a comeback. And what it takes.

I wonder if Daunt's onto something here.

With one extremely flawed speech, Obama's been able to shake off the ignominy of his ties to Trinity United Church and restore his credibility among the Hollywood media elite (and notice Markos Moulitsas' inclusion on the all-star roster).

I just finished watching Obama's latest speech following his endorsment by Governor Bill Richardson. It's looking like the deepest crisis of Obama's campaign has essentially martyred him among the latte-sipping media mavens and nihilist netroots agitators.

Perhaps contemporary televised presidential politics makes deeper reflection on the big issues of day virtually impossible. People speakk about how Obama's speech was mature and adult-like, but the rallying taking place around Barack Obama this week is demonstrably adolescent.

We're seeing not just the rehabilitation of Obama, but the endorsement by the chattering classes of his radical theo-ideological agenda of overthrowing the historically-purported forces of American oppression.

Barack Obama as political superstar: Is there nothing that will slow this guy down?

See further analysis at Memeorandum.

Diminishing International Relations: Left Bloggers and Foreign Policy

I'm really intrigued by Anne-Marie Slaughter's entry at the Huffington Post, "Stop Gotcha Politics on Iraq."

Slaughter's apparently taken flak from the left blogosphere for her article, "A Duty to Prevent," which appeared in Foreign Affairs in 2004. In the essay she suggested that the Bush administration did not go far enough in adopting multilateralism in working to prevent nuclear proliferation. Apparently, some commentators, like Tom Hayden, have attacked Slaughter as backing uncritically the Bush administration's Iraq policy of preemption.

For those unfamiliar with her work, Slaughter's one of the top international relations scholars working in the "norms and institutions" research paradigm (liberal internationalism). She's a huge advocate of multilateral coooperation and the legalization of world politics.

What's interesting in her HuffPo entry is how she not only engages but elevates to policy respectability left-wing blog commentators like Matthew Yglesias, who have very little expertise in international relations theory. Check it out:

The point of the article, entitled "A Duty to Prevent," was not to approve the war in Iraq, still less to encourage another such venture, but rather to make the point that to improve the chances of effective multilateral responses to situations like the apparent build-up of weapons of mass destruction in a nation under U.N. sanctions it was critical to update multilateral rules and to develop the capacity for preventive action far short of the use of force.

This debate has already gone several rounds. Atlantic blogger Matt Yglesias picked up the same line from the same article and drew the same inference in an op-ed in the LA Times last fall. I emailed him and explained, speaking for myself (I am not advising any campaign):

I would not rule out unilateral action under any circumstances; a nation that had chosen to try unilaterally to stop the genocide in Rwanda in the face of both global and regional inaction would be hard to condemn. Similarly, it is imaginable that the United States or any other nation could conclude that it had absolutely no choice but to use force to defend its vital interests. But the entire point of our article was to minimize the likelihood of either of these situations ever occurring by embracing doctrines in the humanitarian and the non-proliferation area that would spur non-military collective action early in the game and would ensure global or at least regional authorization of force if it came to that....

Yglesias quoted this paragraph in a subsequent post and added that he found little to disagree with, although he questioned whether it is politically or legally possible to define "vital interests" in a way that does not open the door to unilateral interventions by many countries. That's a fair question and a fair debate, one that I would happily join with Tom Hayden.

Hayden's post and many other commentaries surrounding the fifth anniversary of the invasion are a microcosm of the problem with our Iraq policy as a whole. The debate is still far too much about who was right and who was wrong on the initial invasion and far too little about how, in Obama's formulation, to be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. That does not mean that those of us who were wrong about Iraq -- with whatever nuances, explanations, and justifications we might care to offer -- do not have a great deal to answer for. We do. But it does mean that until we can fix the mess we are in, everyone who cares about what happens both to our troops and to the Iraqi people should force themselves to face up to the hard issues on the ground rather than indulging in the easy game of gotcha.

Now, readers know that I comment regularly on this debate over "who's right or wrong" on Iraq. My post, "The Lessons of Iraq," lays out my position concisely, and see as well the debate over the war at Slate, "How Did I Get It Wrong?"

I think Slaughter's naive to think the debate on Iraq's justification or success will conclude any time soon. The deepest ideological divisions in society today revolve around the appropriate role of U.S. of force in the world, and the controversy's getting a big boost on the 5th anniversary of Iraq.

While Slaughter's obviously a scholar who's steeped in the literature on the international norms of war, peace, and cooperation, most in the antiwar movement enter the debate from a considerably less learned perspective. Theirs is more of the postmodern ideological agenda which seeks peace at any price, vilifying power and warfare as fascist and Hitlerian. There exist tremendous contradictions in this approach, and some on the left are indeed intense advocates of projecting forward military power for humanitarian operations (Samantha Power, for example).

But the politics of the Iraq war seem light years away from the controversies over the use of force in the Balkans in the 1990s. While realists criticized the Clinton administration for supporting intervention in the alleged absence of vital national interests, the current debate over Iraq has been much more divisive, mobilizing an antiwar movement that has struggled to rekindle the power of the 1960s-era of political radicalism.

Yglesias, for all of his credentials as a top lefty blogger, appears not far removed in his criticism of the war from the folks at Code Pink or INTERNATIONAL Answer.

That's my problem with Slaughter. While public intellectuals have throughout history provided powerful moral and ideological criticisms of politics and public purpose, contemporary left-wing debates on the Bush administration are mired in nihilism and anti-Americanism.

By engaging the antiwar blogosphere the way she does, Slaughter elevates the spokesmen for the uncleansed, unhinged fringe to the realm of reasoned foreign policy debate.

So far, I'm not impressed by the quality of analysis of top left-wing antiwar bloggers like Yglesias, as well as Glenn Greenwald and Josh Marshall.

These people are pundits, not poltical scientists. If policymakers want to listen to them and act on their recommedations, that's perfectly fine, but scholarship has a peer evaulation process that promotes the best, most rigorously practiced research and ideas to the top of the intellectual marketplace. Yglesias and his sort are not in that realm.

Not all theory has policy relevance, of course, but much does. By elevating the often intemperate but wholly ideological conspiracies and ideological attacks of the left blogosphere to the level of dispassionate professional policy advocacy, Slaughter demeans the very profession to which she is a committed pathbreaker.

For more along these lines, see my takedown of Josh Marshall's foreign policy, "Uninformed Comment: Josh Marshall on American Military Power."

See more at Memeorandum.

Fundraising Totals Heading for the Record Books

New campaign finance reports show fundraising patterns for the 2008 election heading into record-breaking territory.

The Los Angeles Times has a report:

Led by Barack Obama, Democratic and Republican presidential contenders -- including the remaining candidates and those who dropped out -- have raised $790 million since the campaign began 14 months ago, campaign finance reports filed Thursday show.

Obama, the freshman Democratic senator from Illinois, reported raising $192.7 million and spending $154.7 million on his campaign through the end of February. He spent $42.7 million in February while competing in more than 30 nominating contests.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was second in fundraising. She collected $34.6 million in February, pushing her total to $173.8 million. That includes $10 million from her Senate campaign account and a $5-million personal loan. Clinton owes consultants and other vendors an additional $3.7 million.

The presumptive GOP nominee, John McCain, raised $11 million in February, his best month. Overall, the Arizona senator had raised $60.2 million, and spent $49 million through the end of February. McCain paid off much of his debt to consultants and other vendors. An aide to McCain said Thursday that McCain had raised more in the month of March than he did in any three-month period previously.

McCain's campaign stalled last summer when he ran out of money. He said at the time that he would take federal matching funds for the primary season, but he reversed that position after he became the presumptive nominee and money started flowing.

Through the same 14-month period four years earlier, President Bush raised $158 million and Sen. John Kerry $41.4 million for their presidential runs.

Democratic presidential candidates overall, including those who dropped out, raised $461 million and spent $384.7 million, compared with Republicans, who raised $328.8 million and spent $290.8 million.

By the end of the primary period in 2004, Bush had raised $275 million and John Kerry $253 million. Both candidates did without public financing in the primaries, although they both accepted full public financing for the general election.

So far this year, it looks like both candidates in the general election will foregore public financing to run their campaigns entirely on individual "hard-money" contributions, but there are some uncertainties. The Wall Street Journal looks at the role of individual contributors in election 2008, with an emphasis on the powerful trends in online giving:

The recent flood of Internet donations that has helped pump 2008 presidential campaign coffers to highs also is accomplishing what Watergate-era campaign-finance regulations set out to do: dilute the influence of special interests and wealthy donors.

The main beneficiaries of the boom in small donors are Democratic contenders Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Both were expected to file reports with the Federal Election Commission Thursday night detailing their February fund raising. The Obama campaign has released numbers indicating the Illinois senator would report raising about $55 million in February, a one-month record for a primary candidate. About 90% of the total came from donors who gave in increments of $100 or less.

New York Sen. Clinton also has seen a jump in small donations: For the $35 million she received in February, the average donation was about $100, and about 80% came over the Internet, campaign officials said. In January, 35% of her money came from donors giving $200 or less, compared with 16% from such donors in the last three months of 2007, according to the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute in Washington. "I think what it shows is you can run major campaigns on small donations. The Internet makes it more possible," said Brad Smith, a former Republican chairman of the FEC, and now chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics, a conservative legal organization in Alexandria, Va....

The surge in small Web donations comes as the three-decade-old rules for public financing of presidential campaigns are fraying. The system, designed to ensure that candidates have enough resources to make their case to voters and to encourage them to seek small donations, uses taxpayer money to match the first $250 a campaign raises from each donor. But for candidates in the primaries, it imposes strict spending limits that Congress never indexed to inflation, leading some candidates to shun public funding as inadequate.

For general elections, the government makes a lump-sum grant to the two major party candidates -- this year, $85 million. No nominee has ever opted out of the general-election public system, but Sen. Obama is considering it. "We have built the kind of organization that is funded by the American people. That is exactly the goal and the aim of everybody who's interested in good government and politics," Sen. Obama said in a Feb. 26 debate.

I'll be surprised if Obama takes public financing for the fall campaign.

What's more interesting is the GOP equation. John McCain, the maverick campaign finance reform advocate, will handicap himself with public money. Obama will likely raise more than $85 million, and should McCain accept public money, he could put himself at a competitive disadvantage should the Dedmocratic money machine pick up steam even more in the next few months. GOP campaign bundlers can match Democratic Party financial firepower, even in a year like this one, in which the Democrats are attracting so much attention (thus money dynamics will be close on both sides). McCain's money strategies will go a long way toward shaping the competitiveness of the race, of course. He'll need to clarify his positions on money in politics as we go forward, considering his abject wrong-headedness on the issue in past years.

Whoever wins in November should put campaign finance on the top of their legislative agenda. We need fewer - if any - limitations on individual contributions. As this year's showing, people want to support the candidates of their choice.

The old Watergate-era campaign finance regulatory regime's not working, and Americans need to think anew about the relationship of campaign giving, policy influence, and democratic participation.

Scapegoat: Obama Blames War for Economic Problems

As if the Wright controversy wasn't enough, Barack Obama's proving to be a leading member of the "Hoover Democrats," given his intemperate and uninformed remarks on the Iraq war and the economy.

The New York Times has the story:

Senator Barack Obama on Thursday blamed the fragile economy on “careless and incompetent execution” of the Iraq war, imploring voters in this swing state to consider the trickle-down economic consequences of the war as they choose a successor to President Bush.

“When you’re spending over $50 to fill up your car because the price of oil is four times what it was before Iraq, you’re paying a price for this war,” Mr. Obama said to an audience at the University of Charleston. “When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war.”

One day after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigned here, Mr. Obama arrived in West Virginia for his first trip before the primary on May 13. The state is also likely to be a general election battleground, and Mr. Obama delivered a critique of Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

“No matter what the costs, no matter what the consequences, John McCain seems determined to carry out a third Bush term,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s an outcome America can’t afford. Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned.”

Frankly, I wasn't planning on a second big economic analysis in one day (after this one), but hey, Obama's on shaky ground here.

In addition to my earlier post, see the Council on Foreign Relations, "Iraq, Afghanistan, and the U.S. Economy":

Expert opinion varies wildly on the relevance of U.S. war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan to the health of the U.S. economy. At the most basic level, economists disagree whether these wars will have a positive or negative long-term economic impact. Total military spending (including spending on support and operations inside Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as operations tied to the “Global War on Terrorism,” all of which are budgeted separately from the U.S. defense budget) remains relatively modest compared to historical levels. During World War II, defense spending rose to levels as high as 37.8 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Even including war-spending supplements and terror-war expenditures on top of the normal defense budget, today that number comes to about 6.2 percent of GDP. While experts say the total costs of the wars should thus be kept in perspective, they also point to collateral economic consequences beyond direct expenditures. These include international debt accrued to sustain war costs, volatility on the global oil markets in part attributed to violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the geopolitical uncertainty engendered by a war that remains widely unpopular outside the United States. These things, experts say, all come with economic consequences of their own.

Thus, just looking at that introduction casts some doubt that the war's caused current U.S. economic difficulties. Even in the case of some "collateral damage," most people look right here at home for the source of our troubles, with the housing market for starters.

The latest Business Week, for example, describes current economic woes as a credit crisis linked to collapsing real estate. War spending's not mentioned, and even the instability of the dollar is discounted as foretelling deeper economic problems.

The Economist focuses more comprehensively on decades-long trends in financial markets:

The seeds of today's disaster were sown in the 1980s, when financial services began a pattern of growth that may only now have come to an end ... At first this growth was built on the solid foundations of rising asset prices....

But something changed in 2001, when the dotcom bubble burst. America's GDP growth since then has been weaker than in any cycle since the 1950s, barring the double-dip recovery in 1980-81.

Yet, like Wile E. Coyote running over the edge of a cliff, financial services kept on going. A service industry that, in effect, exists to help people write, trade and manage financial claims on future cashflows raced ahead of the real economy, even as the ground beneath it fell away.

The industry has defied gravity by using debt, securitisation and proprietary trading to boost fee income and profits. Investors hungry for yield have willingly gone along. Since 2000, according to BCA, the value of assets held in hedge funds, with their high fees and higher leverage, has quintupled. In addition, the industry has combined computing power and leverage to create a burst of innovation. The value of outstanding credit-default swaps, for instance, has climbed to a staggering $45 trillion. In 1980 financial-sector debt was only a tenth of the size of non-financial debt. Now it is half as big.

This process has turned investment banks into debt machines that trade heavily on their own accounts. Goldman Sachs is using about $40 billion of equity as the foundation for $1.1 trillion of assets. At Merrill Lynch, the most leveraged, $1 trillion of assets is teetering on around $30 billion of equity. In rising markets, gearing like that creates stellar returns on equity. When markets are in peril, a small fall in asset values can wipe shareholders out.

The crisis in housing and finance is also the basis for the recent UCLA Anderson School economic forecast, which discounts consensus predictions that the U.S. economy's in recession.

The Los Angeles Times summarizes the findings:

The Anderson forecasters contend that the economy has been wounded mainly by the collapse of residential real estate. The number of jobs overall will continue to increase, but not at a pace fast enough to employ the growing numbers of people seeking work.

National unemployment will peak at 5.6% at the beginning of 2009, according to the forecast, from 4.8% currently."

In a recession, jobs are easy to lose and hard to find. This time there are not a lot of layoffs, so jobs aren't easy to lose, but they are hard to find," [UCLA Anderson Forecast Director Edward] Leamer said.

So far, most of the jobs lost in California and the nation have been in construction and financial services, but those losses are small compared with the severe manufacturing job losses in the recessions of 1990 and 2001.

Obama's campaign is at a crossroads. He's gotten a lot of media time in defending his relationship to Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ, although he's lost ground in public opinion polls to Hillary Clinton and John McCain at the same time.

Apparently, Obama's looking to the financial crisis to restore some traction to his flailing presidential bid. Unfortunately, a number of the latest reports on economic circumstances don't seem to be cooperating.

(To be fair, see also, "Slump Moves From Wall St. to Main St.")

Democrats Still Weak on Security

Karl Rove, over at the Wall Street Journal, argues that the Democratic Party remains woefully weak on national security:

One out of five is not a majority. Democrats should keep that simple fact of political life in mind as they pursue the White House.

For a party whose presidential candidates pledge they'll remove U.S. troops from Iraq immediately upon taking office - without regard to conditions on the ground or the consequences to America's security - a late February Gallup Poll was bad news. The Obama/Clinton vow to pull out of Iraq immediately appears to be the position of less than one-fifth of the voters.

Only 18% of those surveyed by Gallup agreed U.S. troops should be withdrawn "on a timetable as soon as possible." And only 20% felt the surge was making things worse in Iraq. Twice as many respondents felt the surge was making conditions better.

It gets worse for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Nearly two out of every three Americans surveyed (65%) believe "the United States has an obligation to establish a reasonable level of stability and security in Iraq before withdrawing all of its troops." The reason is self-interest. Almost the same number of Americans (63%) believe al Qaeda "would be more likely to use Iraq as a base for its terrorist operations" if the U.S. withdraws.

Just a year ago it was almost universally accepted that Iraq would wreck the GOP chances in November. Now the issue may pose a threat to the Democratic efforts to gain power. For while the American people are acknowledging the positive impact of the surge, Democratic leaders are not.

In September, Mrs. Clinton told Gen. David Petraeus "the reports that you provide to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief." This week, she said "we'll be right back at square one" in Iraq by this summer.

In December, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to admit progress, arguing, "The surge hasn't accomplished its goals." He said a month earlier there was "no progress being made in Iraq" and "it is not getting better, it is getting worse."

Asked by CNN's Wolf Blitzer on Feb. 9 if she was worried that the gains of the last year might be lost, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shot back: "There haven't been gains . . . This is a failure." Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee told the Associated Press the same month that the surge "has failed."

This passionate, persistent unwillingness to admit what more and more Americans are coming to believe is true about Iraq's changing situation puts Democrats in dangerous political territory. For one thing, they increasingly appear out of touch with reality, a charge they made with some success at the administration's expense before the surge began changing conditions in Iraq.

Well, I never thought I'd be ahead of the curve with Karl Rove, but baby, you're singing my song!

See for example:

* "Glenn Greenwald is Wrong About Iraq Public Opinion."

* "Large Majority Opposes Immediate Iraq Withdrawal."

* "The Lessons of Iraq."

As Rove notes, the "Democrats appear to have an ideological investment in things going badly in Iraq."

You can say that again: "Unwavering Commitment: Democrats Dug In on Iraq Retreat."

Obama the Challenger

John Hinderaker at Powerline's got an excellent post up on Obama's speech:

In A Bound Man, Shelby Steele’s insightful book about Barack Obama, Steele distinguishes between two types of successful African-American public figures: bargainers and challengers. Bargainers state, in effect, “I will presume that you're not a racist and by loving me you'll show that my presumption is correct.” Blacks who offer this bargain are betting on white decency. Naturally, whites respond well.

Challengers take a different approach. They say, in effect, that whites are racist until they prove otherwise by conferring tangible benefits on them. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are paradigm challengers. In fact, Steele finds that black politicians tend to prefer this approach because not adopting it leads to suspicion among black leaders and their constituents who fear that if whites are let off the hook too easily, black power will be diminished.

Barack Obama made his political breakthrough as a bargainer. By constantly referring to the national yearning (including, he said, by many Republicans) to "come together" as blacks and whites, Obama presumed we are not racists. His reward was an almost magical appeal to broad portions of the electorate.

Obama, of course, would like to remain a bargainer. But Steele predicted this would be difficult given the scrutiny presidential candidates receive because bargainers must wear a mask. Once we learn who they really are and what they really think about race, the magic is lost. They can no longer offer us the required assurances that they know we’re not racists, and hence they can no longer receive our unconditional love.

Obama, it is now clear, has been wearing a mask. No one who listened to his post-racial happy talk would have guessed that he regularly attends a church run by a pastor who preaches hatred of “White America,” much less that Obama is close to that pastor.

Once the offensive tapes of Wright surfaced, Obama quickly recognized that his candidacy had entered a new phase (call it post-post-racial). Now he would have to remove and/or replace his mask. Now he would have to tell us, at least to some extent, who he really is and what he really thinks about race.

This week Obama did this, and with more candor than might have been expected. Although Obama did not reveal what I take to be his full ambivalence about America as a force in the world, he talked seriously and sincerely about race. He admitted that his election alone will not satisfy our yearning for a post-racial America. To the contrary, Obama disarmingly declared, “I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy – particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.”

Obama also confessed that, despite his disagreement with Wright’s most extreme statements, “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community; I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” And this is not just the result of personal loyalty. It’s also because Obama considers Wright’s extreme views an understandable, though mistaken, reaction to the evils of the America Wright experienced growing up. In fact, Obama was clear that without understanding Wright’s views and taking seriously the “complexity” they reflect, America cannot get on with “solving” its other problems – health care, education, etc.

To some extent, then, Obama became a “challenger.” Whites no longer will be let off the hook easily. They now must confront the “complexity” of race relations that Wright, however imperfectly, raises. And this must be done over an extended period, not just in a single election cycle.

Obama still wants to make a deal with white America, but the deal no longer seems like a great bargain.

Obama's a challenger, and that's a huge disappointment.

Hillary Clinton Was Present at the White House When Bill Clinton Had Sex with Monica Lewinsky

Hillary Clinton was present at the White House on days when President Bill Clinton had sexual relations with Monica Lewinksky, CNN reports:

Sen. Hillary Clinton was in the White House on multiple occasions when her husband had sexual encounters with Monica Lewinsky, according to newly released documents.

The National Archives on Wednesday released more than 11,000 pages of Clinton's schedule when she was first lady.

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign pushed for the documents' release, arguing that their review is necessary to make a full evaluation of Clinton's experience as first lady.

But the documents also provide a glimpse into Clinton's life during her husband's publicized affair.

The scandal involving former president Bill Clinton and Lewinsky, first broke in the national media on January 21, 1998.

According to the documents, Hillary Clinton started that day at a private meeting in the White House.
She later made an appearance at a college in Baltimore, Maryland, and stayed there until late in the afternoon before returning to the White House for a black-tie dinner.
The schedules reveal where Clinton was, but provide no indication of how she dealt with the controversy.
Carl Bernstein, who wrote a biography of Hillary Clinton, said there was much more going on behind the scenes....
The papers show Hillary Clinton had no public schedule on the day independent counsel Kenneth Starr was appointed to investigate Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, or on the day Bill Clinton was deposed in the case.

On the day the affair began -- November 15, 1995, according to Starr's report -- Hillary Clinton had a private meeting and a meet-and-greet with then-Vice President Al Gore and Nobel Prize winners.

Lewinsky said she and the president had an encounter in the bathroom outside the Oval Office study on January 7, 1996. This is the same day the president and his wife had a small dinner gathering at the White House, according to the documents.

The president and Lewinsky also had a sexual encounter on February 4, 1996, according to Lewinsky. On this day, the president and Hillary Clinton went to the National Governors Association annual dinner.

Hillary Clinton kept up a busy schedule as the affair spiraled into impeachment.

See also,"Hillary at White House on 'Stained Blue Dress' Day," and "HRC Schedules Arm Foes, Allies."

Palestinians Support Attacks on Israel, Poll Shows

The New York Times reports that a majority of Palestians favor violence over talks with Israel:

A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.

The survey also shows unprecedented support for the shooting of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

The pollster, Khalil Shikaki, said he was shocked because the survey, taken last week, showed greater support for violence than any other he had conducted over the past 15 years in the Palestinian areas. Never before, he said, had a majority favored an end to negotiations or the shooting of rockets at Israel.

“There is real reason to be concerned,” Mr. Shikaki said in an interview at his West Bank office. His Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, which conducts a survey every three months, is widely viewed as among the few independent and reliable gauges of Palestinian public opinion.

His explanation for the shift, one widely reflected in the Palestinian media, is that recent actions by Israel, especially attacks on Gaza that killed nearly 130 people, an undercover operation in Bethlehem that killed four militants and the announced expansion of several West Bank settlements, have led to despair and rage among average Palestinians who thirst for revenge.

Mr. Shikaki’s poll also showed that the militant Islamist group Hamas, which Israel and the United States have been trying to isolate, is gaining popularity in the West Bank while its American-backed rival, the more secular Fatah, is losing ground. Asked for whom they would vote for president, 46 percent chose Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, the current president, while 47 percent chose Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

Also, note John McCain's comment on Hamas, provided during his current Mideast tour: "It’s very difficult to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extinction..."

I'll say.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Uninformed Comment: Josh Marshall on American Military Power

John McCain's taking heat on the left for his assertion that Iran has ties to al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni terrorist group. As Iran's a Shiite nation, many have questioned McCain's claims to national security expertise.

In fact, McCain's on solid ground on Iran and al Qaeda, as Eli Lake points out today at the New York Sun:

Senior military officials from Multinational Forces in Iraq have said on the record that Iran provides support for Sunni terror outfits in Iraq, but they have not identified them as Al Qaeda in Iraq. A former commander of a group that has at times aligned with Al Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic Army of Iraq, Abu Azzam al Tamimi, told Al Arabiya television on January 18, 2008, that Iran "interferes in every aspect in Iraq." When asked whom Iran supports, Mr. al Tamimi said, "Everybody — it works with the government, with the opponents of the government, with the opponents of the government's opponents, with Al-Qaeda, with the enemies of Al-Qaeda, with the militias, with the enemies of the militias ... Iran spreads its investments everywhere – with the Shiites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds," according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

But the purpose of this post isn't to parse the various statments of Iranian influence in Iraq.

Instead, let me shift over to the poorly informed attack on McCain by Josh Marshall, the publisher of Talking Points Memo.

In a post yesterday, "Unfit for Duty," Marshall called into question not just McCain's foreign policy acumen, but the entire economic-military foundations of America's policy in Iraq. After announcing McCain's unfitness for the Oval Office, Marshall offers his reasoning:

The idea that fighting jihadists in Iraq or policing the country's sectarian and ethnic disputes is the calling of this century is one that is belied in virtually everything we see in flux in today's world and which seems certain to affect us through the rest of our lifetimes and our children's.

It is very difficult to draw practical lessons from history. But one of the closest things to a law is that military power is almost always built on economic might. And the former seldom long outlasts the latter. Indeed, countries with sound finances have routinely been able to punch over their weight -- great Britain and the Netherlands during different periods are key examples. So fiscal soundness even over the medium term is much more important than any particular weapon system or basing right.

Then you step back and see the huge number of dollars we're pouring into Iraq, the vast mountains of capital being piled up in China, the oil-fueled resurgence of Russia, the weakness of the dollar (not only in exchange rate but in its future as a reserve currency), the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world. I don't think I've ever heard anything from John McCain that suggests he's given serious consideration to any of these issues, except as possible near term military challenges -- i.e., is China building a blue water navy to challenge the US, Russian weapons systems, etc.

Candidly, I do not think I've heard sufficient discussions or solutions to these challenges from my preferred candidates. But neither has the myopia that McCain has about Iraq. Or the willingness to spend -- how else to put it -- like a drunken sailor in that country at the expense of everything else now going on in the world.

Hillary Clinton has stipulated to McCain's qualifications as Commander-in-Chief; and Obama, implicitly, does the same. But his record actually shows he's one of the most dangerous people we could have in the Oval Office in coming years -- not just because he's a hothead in using the military, but more because he seems genuinely clueless about the real challenges and dangers the country is facing. He's too busy living in the fantasy world where our future as a great power and our very safety are all bound up in Iraq.

That's a big takedown, with a lot of claims.

Note first that the notion that we're in a long-term conflict with the forces of Islamic terror is not controversial among foreign policy elites.

The normal criticism of current policy is that the U.S. relies too much on military power to fight what should be a multi-pronged campaign, using cultural, diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments in a wider, more diversifed war on Islamic terror (for some expert opinion to that effect, see Audrey Kurth Cronin, "How al-Qaeda Ends. The Decline and Demise of Terrorist Groups").

Further, some have argued that Islam at base is a religion of victory, as revealed in scripture, and that the ulimate goal of the faith is to render the infidels asunder.

So, while there's certainly room for debate, to make the sweeping assertion that the imperative of "fighting jihadists in Iraq" is belied by "everything we see" in the world today is a miserably unspecified claim, if not a matter of crazed ramblings outright.

But more deeply, Marshall's argument on the fundamentals of military power demonstrates serious ignorance on international affairs, thus raising questions of his own qualifications.

He states, for example, that America's relative international fiscal weakness is illustrated by "the huge number of dollars we're pouring into Iraq, the vast mountains of capital being piled up in China, the oil-fueled resurgence of Russia, the weakness of the dollar (not only in exchange rate but in its future as a reserve currency), the rising tide of anti-Americanism around the world."

Each one of these points can be rebutted, and in fact I've touched on most of these points at various times at this blog.

For example, we are indeed pouring tremendous resources into Iraq. But miltary spending today is a fraction of what the United States spent in the 1980s. The United States can afford the war, and it's a political question - not an economic one - as to the extent that we're spending too much, or that the war spending could be used for other things (see, for example, "Bear Any Burden? The U.S. Can Afford Iraq").

As for China's dollar holdings, good for them: The Chinese have amassed impressive capital reserves as a result of their increasing success as an export platform to the United States. That's not a threat to American interests, however: It's an indication of the power of the American market and U.S. consumer demand for Chinese goods found at various price levels and stages of manufacturing sophistication.

The Chinese have little interest in dumping dollars, because they've no interest in damaging the enonomy of their primary export market. Similar arguments were made regarding Japan in the 1980s, and within a decade Japan itself was struggling to excavate itself from the deepest recession in postwar Japanese history.

That's a historical comparison Marshall would do well to consider.

How about the U.S.dollar as reserve currency? Is the dollar on the way out?

Not at all. The fact is, in international comparisons there's no credible challenger today to the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in global financial markets. The Wall Street Journal wrote about this a week ago, "Dollar's Dive Deepens as Oil Soars."

Roughly 90 percent of the world's monetary transactions in finance and trade are conducted in dollars, and international actors have huge investments in current monetary rules and procedures which are not quickly replaced (inertia, basically).

Besides, the dollar continues to provide banking and sovereign institutions an unparalleled currency as a store of value and unit of exchange. The closest competitors are the euro, the yen, and the yuan. Yet not one of these currencies has any immediate chance of replacing the greenback - despite its weaknesses - as the world's dominant currency. All three suffer from substantial deficiencies, which limit their attractiveness as alternative world currencies (for some initial information on this, see Benjamin J. Cohen, "Global Currency Rivalry: Can the Euro Ever Challenge the Dollar?").

What about that global anti-Americanism?

It's not true that the United States faces anti-American hostility among the Western democratic nations of the world (see "America’s Image in the World"). Even among the developing nations, the anti-Americanism that we do see is isolated to Arabic nations of the Midde East and South Asia.

The record's thus mixed, and not to be discounted, of course.

Still, the United States scores well on non-survey indicators of international goodwill in a great many countries. For example, notice the tremendous outburst of lasting respect for the United States in Indonesia following America's strong leadership in tsunami humanitarian relief efforts. Also, in Africa, the U.S. has generated tremendous goodwill through its global AIDS battle, a public health project unrivaled in size and scope among all the nations of the world.

So what to make of Josh Marshall's analysis?

He's not to be trusted, whatsoever. Which is too bad, because the Talking Points Memo's apparently an award-winning online jounalistic project (so what does that say about the quality of TPM's peer evaulators?).

If one dissects his attack on John McCain's foreign policy expertise, we might conclude, at the least, that Marshall's the last person who should be making such sweeping dismissals of the credentials of the GOP nominee-in-waiting.

It's not just Marshall, of course. For all the buzz about the blogosphere emerging as a powerful force in politics, much of what's distributed as commentary and analysis is bunk. For example. Glenn Greenwald's touted around the left blogosphere as some big expert on the war on terror, but he's been debunked so many times by specialists its not even funny.

In any case, I'll have more analysis later. In the meantime, don't doubt Iran's playing a substantial role in backing al Qaeda's operations in Iraq.

Wright Controversy Damages Obama, Polls Find

Newly available polling data indicate that Barack Obama's controversial relationship to Reverend Jeremiah Wright has damaged him politically. The Times of London has an overview:

New polls released today suggest that Barack Obama has been damaged significantly by the controversy over his pastor's inflammatory remarks and that the the issue has become a serious threat to his presidential ambitions.

A new national Gallup tracking poll indicates Hillary Clinton regaining her lead over Mr Obama for the first time in a month, now leading him 49 per cent to 42, a 13 point shift to the former First Lady in less than a fortnight.

Mrs Clinton now also holds a 16-point lead over Mr Obama in Pennsylvania, their next contest on April 22, according to a poll for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. In addition, Mr Obama has lost his once commanding lead among independent voters to John McCain, the Republican nominee, in a new CBS poll.

Mrs Clinton leads Mr Obama in the Keystone State by 51 per cent to 35. Mr McCain is backed by 46 per cent of independents, to 38 per cent for Mr Obama. The Gallup and Pennsylvania polls were taken at the height of the controversy, but before Mr Obama made a major speech on the issue on Tuesday.

Despite widespread praise for Mr Obama's speech, in which he used the controversy to challenge America to move beyond its current racial tensions, aides to Mrs Clinton now believe that the incendiary comments of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright offer her perhaps her best chance of winning the Democratic nomination.

At the same time, Republican strategists believe that the incendiary and videotaped sermons, in which Mr Wright declares "God damn America", blames US foreign policy for the September 11 attacks, attacks Israel and levels racist insults against the Clintons, offers them a powerful way to destroy Mr Obama if he becomes the Democratic nominee.

Mrs Clinton's chances of winning the nomination narrowed significantly this week after it became almost certain that her efforts to force re-votes in the disputed primary states of Florida and Michigan had failed.

With only ten contests left, Mr Obama has a virtually impregnable lead among elected delegates, but because the race has been so tight, neither candidate is likely to reach the 2,024 needed to clinch the nomination.

This means that the most important audience for both candidates now is the Democratic Party's 800 superdelegates, the congressmen, senators, former presidents, governors and officials who are free to back either candidate and who will very likely determine the nomination.

The Clinton camp believes the sheer vulgarity of Wright's sermons - and the Illinios Senator's refusal to completely divorce himself from them - will cause lasting damage to Obama's electability, a fact that could be used to persuade a number of superdelegates to back the New York Senator.

Clinton, of course, needs to play it cool, avoiding further mudslinging in a campaign already tarnished by race-baiting.

Still, Clinton's certainly benefited from the controversy. She can, with tact, point to Obama's relatively greater vulnerability to likely smear attacks by GOP swiftboating 527s in the general election.

The links to various polls are here:

* FOX: "More Than Half Believe Obama Doesn't Share Views of Pastor Wright."

* Gallup: "Clinton Holds Onto Lead Over Obama."

* Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, "Clinton Leads by 16 points in Statewide Poll."

* Rasmussen, "The Impact of Pastor Wright and THE SPEECH on Election 2008."

See more analysis on Obama's polling trends at Memeorandum.

Morning After: Objectives in Iraq Now Possible

The partisan divisions over the Iraq war continue today, the morning after the 5th anniversary of the launch of the U.S. mission.

Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama called for a U.S. troop withdrawal from the country. Meanwhile, implacable war opponents relentlessly insist on call the war a failure, even illegal.

But as I've said many times, American military success in bringing greater security to Iraq and is moving the U.S. and the Iraqis closer to achieving victory in the war. This morning's Wall Street Journal elaborates:

Five years after U.S. and coalition forces began rolling into Iraq on their way to Baghdad, it's easy to lament the war's mistakes.

The Bush Administration underestimated the war's cost -- in treasure, and most painfully in lives. The CIA and every other Western intelligence agency was wrong about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. failed to anticipate the insurgency and was almost fatally late in implementing a counterinsurgency. It allowed the U.N. to design a system of proportional electoral representation that has encouraged its sectarian political divisions. And so on.

These columns have often discussed these and other blunders. But we have always done so while supporting the larger war effort and with a goal of victory that would be worthy of the sacrifice. Five years on, and thanks to the troop "surge" and strategy change of the last year, many of the goals that motivated the original invasion are once again within reach if we see the effort through.

If we see the effort through?

That is the question, alright. The antiwar left has no intention of seeing our effort through, and both Clinton and Obama continue to stump on an antiwar platform.

If you read WSJ's piece, the essay lays out the major milestones of the war, of which I've chronicled here in recent posts (see, for example, "The Lessons of Iraq").

But note further, just yesterday Iraqis themselves made a major effort toward greater sectarian reconciliation, as the Los Angeles Times highlights:

Iraq's presidential council dropped its objections Wednesday to a law that helps clear the way for provincial elections that are considered key to reconciling the country's ethnic and religious factions.

The unexpected announcement by the council, made up of the country's president and two vice presidents, follows intense lobbying by U.S. officials to make the power-sharing compromises needed to solidify a recent drop in violence.

U.S. patience with Iraq's fractious politicians is wearing thin as the war enters its sixth year. But Wednesday's decision offers American officials here a sign of progress, which they can use to make the case in Washington for time over the summer to assess the impact of U.S. troop withdrawals underway before pulling out more forces. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker will make their recommendations to Congress next month.

The measure, which defines the relationship between the country's 18 provinces and the central government, calls for elections by Oct. 1. Iraq's parliament approved it Feb. 13 under a package deal that included a $48-billion national budget and an amnesty plan for some of the mostly Sunni Arab detainees languishing in custody.

But such forward movement is not the focus of the today's lefty internet chatter. It's all a failure, a disaster, a lie - name your noun (see here, here, and here, for example).

As the Washington Post indicates, in response to the Democratic Party's withdrawal agenda:

BOTH Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton propose withdrawing U.S. troops at the most rapid pace the Pentagon says is possible -- one brigade a month. In the 16 months or so it would take to remove those forces, they envision the near-miraculous accomplishment of every political goal the Bush administration has aimed at for five years, from the establishment of a stable government to agreement by Iraq's neighbors to support it. They suppose that the knowledge that American forces were leaving would inspire these accords. In fact, it more likely would cause all sides to discount U.S. influence and prepare to violently seize the space left by the departing Americans.

With equal implausibility, the Democratic candidates say they would leave limited U.S. forces behind to prevent al-Qaeda from establishing bases. They assume that an Iraqi government that had just been abandoned by the United States would consent to the continued presence of American forces on its territory. In all, Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama speak as if they have no understanding of Iraqi leaders, whom they propose to treat as willing puppets.

Indeed, the Democrats and their antiwar underlings don't have a clue. Everyone's tripping over each other as they beat a hasty retreat, damn the consequences. This is precisely as we're making significant political gains (which is what the Dems have demanded repeatedly) and when Iraqis themselves are seeing more security and hope for the future than any time in the last five years.

The Democratic candidates are hoping to keep Iraq in focus as a winning election issue, which is likely to be unsuccessful.

The party's antiwar base, on the other hand, just wants a U.S. defeat, a political and strategic repudiation of the reviled Bush regime and their GOP supporters. These folks, amid all of our progress, are clearly the biggest dead-enders on the domestic political scene.

See more analyis at Memeorandum.

The Hoover Democrats?

Well, some on the far left are starting to call George W. Bush the next Herbert Hoover, but it's actually the Democrats who are looking more like the failed the thirty-first president, according to Lawrence Kudlow:

What exactly is wrong with an optimistic president who has confidence in the long-run future of the American economy?

President Bush took this stance in a recent interview with me and at the Economic Club of New York. He told me, "Like any free market, there's also downturns, and we're in one. But I am confident in the long-term strength of our economy."

Optimism, after all, is one of the few levers our chief executive can use every day. By remaining optimistic, Bush is borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan, and rejecting a whole book of malaise from Jimmy Carter.

Kudlow argues that Bush "will avoid anything that will doom future economic growth," and wants to let markets, not governments, sort things out:

And yet he's attacked for his free-market moorings. Liberal columnist Maureen Dowd says he's "plum loco." She and Sen. Charles Schumer call him the new Herbert Hoover.
But let's take a closer look.

It was Hoover who signed the Smoot-Hawley trade-protectionism act and overturned the Coolidge-Mellon tax cuts. These disastrous measures -- along with monetary contraction from a fledgling Federal Reserve -- turned a recession into a depression. FDR didn't help matters, either. His misbegotten tax hikes on successful earners and businesses, and his alphabet agencies to control the industrial and farming sectors, extended the depression and held unemployment near 20 percent.

Today, it's the Hill-Bama Democrats who want to raise taxes on successful producers. And they want to turn protectionist by reopening NAFTA and stopping any new open-trade treaties. Schumer himself has spent years bashing China, threatening the nation with huge tariffs if its currency policies don't conform to demands.

If anyone has resurrected the party of Hoover, it's today's Democrats. They've adopted pessimism as their national pastime, and want us to believe we're already in a long and deep recession.

Read the whole thing.

Kudlow lays out a bevy of upbeat economic statistics that the doom-and-gloom (Hoover) Democrats and their radical allies are ignoring, and he also shows how competitive GOP nominee is against either of Democratic contenders.

The implications: Once again, "Democrats Have No Slam Dunk in '08."