Hillary Clinton May Seek 1996 Welfare Act Dismantling

Think back to 1996.

The Clinton administration was on the verge of signing the most important social policy legislation since the 1960s - a law that would end the welfare entitlement that had locked poor Americans in a cycle of dependency for decades - and stalwart liberals were railing against the bill as a pending calamity: Women and children would be sleeping on grates. The shift to federalize the program would create a "race to the bottom" as states beat each other to the finish line in the abandonment of the poor.

Peter Edelman, a top advisor to President Clinton on domestic policy, resigned his post, and wrote a blistering attack on the legislation in the Atlantic, "The Worst Thing Bill Clinton Has Done."

"Wait until the next recession," opponents screamed. We'll be back in the 1930s.

Well, amid the current economic uncertainty - with all the talk about a Bush "depression" descending over the land - talk of a welfare policy calamity's making a comeback.

This morning's New York Times has an important piece that suggests Hillary Clinton's rethinking her support for the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA):

In the summer of 1996, President Bill Clinton delivered on his pledge to “end welfare as we know it.” Despite howls of protest from some liberals, he signed into law a bill forcing recipients to work and imposing a five-year limit on cash assistance.

As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton supported her husband’s decision, drawing the wrath of old friends from her days as an advocate for poor children. Some accused the Clintons of throwing vulnerable families to the winds in pursuit of centrist votes as Mr. Clinton headed into the final stages of his re-election campaign.

Despite the criticism and anxiety from the left, the legislation came to be viewed as one of Mr. Clinton’s signature achievements. It won broad bipartisan praise, with some Democrats relieved that it took a politically difficult issue off the table for them, and many liberals came to accept if not embrace it.

Mrs. Clinton’s opponent in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama, said in an interview that the welfare overhaul had been greatly beneficial in eliminating a divisive force in American politics.

Mrs. Clinton, now a senator from New York, rarely mentions the issue as she battles for the nomination, despite the emphasis she has placed on her experience in her husband’s White House.

But now the issue is back, pulled to the fore by an economy turning down more sharply than at any other time since the welfare changes were imposed. With low-income people especially threatened by a weakening labor market, some advocates for poor families are raising concerns about the adequacy of the remaining social safety net. Mrs. Clinton is now calling for the establishment of a cabinet-level position to fight poverty.

As social welfare policy returns to the political debate, it is providing a window into the ways in which Mrs. Clinton has navigated the legacy of her husband’s administration and the ideological crosscurrents of her party.

In an interview, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that “people who are more vulnerable” were going to suffer more than others as the economy turned down. But she put the blame squarely on the Bush administration and the Republicans who controlled Congress until last year. Mrs. Clinton said they blocked her efforts, and those of other Democrats, to buttress the safety net with increased financing for health insurance for impoverished children, child care for poor working mothers, and food stamps.

Mrs. Clinton expressed no misgivings about the 1996 legislation, saying that it was a needed — and enormously successful — first step toward making poor families self-sufficient.

“Welfare should have been a temporary way station for people who needed immediate assistance,” she said. “It should not be considered an anti-poverty program. It simply did not work.”

During the presidential campaign, she has faced little challenge on the issue, in large part because Mr. Obama has supported the 1996 law. “Before welfare reform, you had, in the minds of most Americans, a stark separation between the deserving working poor and the undeserving welfare poor,” Mr. Obama said in an interview. “What welfare reform did was desegregate those two groups. Now, everybody was poor, and everybody had to work.”

Mr. Obama called the resulting law “an imperfect reform.” Like Mrs. Clinton, he called for an expansion of government-provided health care, child care and job training to assist women making the transition from welfare to work — programs he says he helped expand in Illinois as a state senator.

Asked if he would have vetoed the 1996 law, Mr. Obama said, “I won’t second guess President Clinton for signing.”

Among some advocates for the poor, the growing prospect of a severe recession and evidence of backsliding from the initial successes of the policy shift have crystallized fresh concern. Many remain upset that Mrs. Clinton, once seemingly a stalwart member of their camp, supported a law that they contend left many people at risk.

“If there is no national controversy about welfare reform, we paid an awfully high price,” said Peter Edelman, a law professor at Georgetown University who has known Mrs. Clinton since her college days, and who quit his post as assistant secretary of social services at the Department of Health and Human Services in protest after Mr. Clinton signed the measure.

“They don’t acknowledge the number of people who were hurt,” Mr. Edelman said. “It’s just not in their lens. It was predictably bad public policy.”

Forcing families to rely on work instead of government money went well from 1996 to 2000, when the economy was booming and paychecks were plentiful, economists say. Since then, however, job creation has slowed and poverty has risen. The current downturn could be the first serious test of how well the changes brought about by the 1996 law hold up under sharp economic stress.

“We should have enormous concern about the lack of a fully functioning safety net for families with children,” said Mark H. Greenberg, director of the Poverty and Prosperity Program at the Center for American Progress, a liberal research group.

Notice the language here, of "forcing families" to work rather that receive government handouts, and of the "current downturn" that's now a test of how well the PRWORA will hold up under "current economic stress."

This is truly an amazing spin.

First, Hillary Clinton, as the Times piece notes, was one of the biggest backers of welfare reform and praised the legislation in her memoirs. Indeed, her support for "ending welfare as we know it" strained her relationship with top welfare entitlement advocates like Marian Wright Edelman (the wife of Peter Edelman).

Clinton's new welfare focus contrasts with her campaign's appeal to the middle class; it is a bid to capture the support the Democratic Party's big government constituencies who were attracted to John Edwards' two America's class warfare campaign.

But note, too, that here we are, not even 18-months since the 10th anniversary of the 1996 reform, when the economy's not even officially been declared in recession, and we're seeing serious discussion on the left of dismantling the most important domestic policy legacy of the Bill Clinton administration.

In the summer of 2006, National Review argued that the Clinton welfare law was "the most successful transformation of social policy in 50 years."

It still is, and it's way too early to rejuvenate left-wing big government social programs ostensibly designed to allieviate poverty. The underlying attack on AFDC-style welfare programs is that they stifle individual responsibility and self-sufficiency. This has become bipartisan consensus in the last couple of decades, at least among Democratic party centrists.

Not just that. The economic situation hardly merits calls to renew welfare entitlements:

Unemployment's creeped back up to 5.1 percent in the most recent statistics, a level that's far from some purported calamitous endpoint. I see "help wanted" signs wherever I go, at good, attractive retail businesses. People are working and making do, and we've yet to see stories of women and children sleeping on grates.

We may face some difficulties yet, but it seems awfully early to move toward a counter-revolution on welfare handouts.

All of this goes to show how incredibly opportunistic and shallow are contemporary left-wing policy debates.

In November 2006, the Atlantic ran a long feature essay on Hillary Clinton's political achievements during her first term in the Senate, glorifying her staunch fidelity to DLC-style political moderation of 1990s.

Now look where she is, scoring cheap political points demonizing a program that not even two years ago her husband Bill Clinton was pumping up as "creating a new beginning for millions of Americans."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Focus on the War We Are Winning Today

Michael Yon, at the Wall Street Journal, argues that the Iraq debate in Congress this week focused on the conventional wisdom of 2004-06, when violence was on the rise and the mission was truly at a dangerous risk of collapse.

That's changed over the last year, but war critics continue to yammer away with the meme of the war's a "fiasco." As such, continual talk of troop withdrawals misses the point. We've achieved a phenomenal turnaround, and we should be thinking of ways to consolidate and preserve it:

I may well have spent more time embedded with combat units in Iraq than any other journalist alive. I have seen this war – and our part in it – at its brutal worst. And I say the transformation over the last 14 months is little short of miraculous.

The change goes far beyond the statistical decline in casualties or incidents of violence. A young Iraqi translator, wounded in battle and fearing death, asked an American commander to bury his heart in America. Iraqi special forces units took to the streets to track down terrorists who killed American soldiers. The U.S. military is the most respected institution in Iraq, and many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers. Yes, young Iraqi boys know about "GoArmy.com."

As the outrages of Abu Ghraib faded in memory – and paled in comparison to al Qaeda's brutalities – and our soldiers under the Petraeus strategy got off their big bases and out of their tanks and deeper into the neighborhoods, American values began to win the war.

Iraqis came to respect American soldiers as warriors who would protect them from terror gangs. But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic, school or a neighborhood. They learned that the American soldier is not only the most dangerous enemy in the world, but one of the best friends a neighborhood can have.

Here's more:

We know now that we can pull off a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq. We know that we are working with an increasingly willing citizenry. But counterinsurgency, like community policing, requires lots of boots on the ground. You can't do it from inside a jet or a tank.

Over the past 15 months, we have proved that we can win this war. We stand now at the moment of truth. Victory – and a democracy in the Arab world – is within our grasp. But it could yet slip away if our leaders remain transfixed by the war we almost lost, rather than focusing on the war we are winning today.

I made a similar argument yesterday. See, "The Historical Significance of General Petraeus."

Thoughts on Barack Obama's Radicalism

Gateway Pundit has a YouTube mashup of Barack Obama's conflicting statements on race and whiteness.

I'm not always so thrilled by these video clips, so check it out yourself.

But Gateway's commenter, "The Elector of Saxony," summarizes some of my recent concerns on Obama's suspicious connections to radical organizations:

The more I learn about Obama, the more there is to dislike. When you read the description of Barack's home life, it is hard to square his background with someone who views America as a racist, oppressive society....

You would think that such a man would view America as Ronald Reagan did, or at least as JFK did. After all of the riches, power, and accolades bestowed upon him, he and his family still see America through the eyes of Kruschev, Castro, and Ahmedinijad.

Isn't that the most alarming thing about the man? He a walking, breathing exemplar of what is great about America, and yet he believes ( or pretends to) that it is a cruel, unfair, and racist nation and fosters this notion in the minds of others.

Check out the whole post at Gateway.

See also, Just One Minute, "Obama's Appeal (The Secret Thereof)."

Plus, don't forget my post from yesterday, "Palestinians See Obama as Close Ally."

The Historical Significance of General Petraeus

I noted yesterday that General David Petraeus, the Supreme Commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq, is the architect of one of the greatest military comebacks in American history.

Future academic research will have to deliver the decisive verdict on this point, but Retired Col. Ken Allard makes the case for Petraeus' historical brilliance in an essay today at the San Antonio Express-News:

There he was, this generation's equivalent of George Marshall, the brilliant proconsul testifying before Congress to underline the improbable but now indisputable victory over al Qaida.

In military history, the turn-around David Petraeus has commanded in Iraq rivals MacArthur's surprise landing at Inchon....

An earlier and more attentive generation might have idolized Petraeus. This one barely grasps his victory and has no idea who he is. The Pew Research Center reports that 55 percent of the public cannot even recognize his name — roughly the same percentage as those who wish the war would just fade away.

For most Americans, Iraq is distant thunder, an unpleasant interruption troubling the nightly news. Even if war coverage finishes above the producer's cut-line, the dots are rarely well connected for an audience in which military illiteracy is always a working assumption.

An example over the last fortnight has been the Shiite revolt in Basra and other parts of Iraq. Ever since Saddam's overthrow, well armed sectarian militias have been a basic fact of Iraqi life — so much so that it once seemed as though the country might be partitioned along ethnic and religious lines: Kurd, Sunni and Shiite. The surge changed all that, particularly when reinforced by the recreated and resurgent Iraqi military — the key to any American exit strategy worthy of the name. The new correlation of forces created the stable platform on which both military and political progress might be made.

Those developments could first be seen in the astonishing Sunni uprising against al Qaida, although the logic was pure Machiavelli: Where tribalism reigns, simply become the strongest, meanest tribe in the neighborhood.

Similarly, the authors of the new counterinsurgency strategy also seemed to have learned something from the Untouchables: When the enemy sends three of yours to the hospital, send five of his to the morgue. But al-Qaida clearly understood what the media and their notoriously fickle audiences did not: Americans had finally become serious about winning.

Victory has its own logic, eventually prompting the long overdue fight against the Shiite militias. However clumsy and ill-timed by the Maliki government, however uneven the skills of the adolescent Iraqi military, the assault against Shiite strongholds was exactly what was so loudly demanded on Capitol Hill this week: An unmistakable harbinger of Iraqi political progress.

How will history remember these successes?

I think the long-run legacy of Petraeus will mirror shifting historical interpretations of the war.

Short-term journalistic assessments remain dourly dismissive of American military and political capacity, a pessimism rooted in a thinly disguised antipathy to America's assertive international preponderance.

Yet, we will see, over the next few years, the U.S. wind down the mission, and Iraq's own forces of democracy and security will consolidate into a stable regime, with an increasing sense of national identity and political cohesiveness.

I'm more sure of it now than ever.

As noted today, by Samir Sumaida'ie, Iraq's Ambassador to the United States:

Those who argue that Iraq is fractured and hopelessly broken – a Humpty Dumpty that can never be put together again – are wrong....

Iraqi national identity has been weakened, but it is alive and kicking, and will embarrass all of those who rushed to write its obituary.

Opponents of the war have been writing Iraq's obituary since late 2003.

Meanwhile, the war's supporters have mounted a Herculean effort in resisting incessant demands for retreat and surrender. But with the Petraeus turnaround, endorsed here by Ambassador Sumaida'ie, the potential for the consolidation of Iraq's democratic federal system is no longer in question.

Iraq will be the standard against which other Arab governments are judged, and General David Petraeus will go down as one of the most important wartime commanders U.S. military history.

Professor's Office Postings Called "Unprofessional and Insubordinate"

Inside Higher Ed has the story of Richard Crandall, a professor at Lake Superior State University, who was pressured by his administration to remove politically incorrect materials from his door in 2007 (via Memeorandum):

Getting one’s own office can be a rite of passage right up there with defending a dissertation or receiving tenure — and many professors’ lairs are reflections of their own attitudes and beliefs. Usually, it takes just a quick glance at the door, as anyone who’s taken a stroll down the hall of an academic building can attest: What a professor finds amusing, outrageous or just plain interesting is there for all to see.

At a public university, such common displays of individual preference would presumably fall under the protections of the First Amendment. But not when such displays are offensive to others, according to officials at Lake Superior State University, which threatened to reprimand a tenured professor whose door boasted cartoons and other images of a conservative political bent. In a March 26 letter to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which had been monitoring the case and publicized it on Wednesday, an outside lawyer representing the university reiterated its argument that because the professor “acted in an unprofessional and insubordinate manner, his actions cannot be considered protected speech.”

The first complaints date back to 2005, and the professor, Richard Crandall, was ordered to remove the materials from his door in 2007 (he eventually complied). Items included a photo of Ronald Reagan, pictures mocking Hillary Clinton, a sign posting a “Notice of the Weekly Meeting of the White, Male, Heterosexual Faculty and Staff Association (WMHFSA),” and various cartoons about abortion, Islamic terrorism and other topics. One depicts two hooded women looking over a photo album. One says, “And that’s my youngest son, Hakim. He’ll be martyring in the fall.” The other replies, “They blow up so fast.”

The university argues that the postings contribute to a hostile environment and therefore do not fall under First Amendment protections, although such arguments have not fared well historically in the courts. No lawsuit has been filed, but in the past some professors whose cases have been publicized by FIRE have pursued legal action. The university did not respond to requests for comment.

FIRE and Crandall, who could not be reached for comment, point out that other professors at the university are able to post politically charged pictures and phrases on their doors without consequence, presumably because their perspective is liberal or leftist rather than conservative or right-wing. (The university appeared to argue that it wasn’t the political perspective but the denigration of religious minorities that was the problem.) In photographs provided to FIRE, one Lake Superior State professor’s door features an “Exxpose Exxon” slogan and an “Honor Veterans: No More War” bumper sticker, while another door bears a sign asking if the Bush administration works for “Big Oil and Gas.”

“We really think this is a case that’s amenable to public pressure because the double standard here is so transparent,” said Robert L. Shibley, FIRE’s vice president. “The fact is that clearly other professors are allowed to express their political views on their door, which is very common ... it seems only Professor Crandall is the one who’s the problem.”

My department floor hosts a classic amalgam of politically-charged office-door postings.

See also Glenn Reynolds, and his reader's comment:

The professor's-door-as-billboard is one of the most important course-scheduling tools a student has. When I was a history major and law student walking down Office Hall for whatever reason, a door plastered with Tom Tomorrow cartoons was a good marker for what professors - and hence courses - to avoid like the plague.

McCain Won't Rule Out Preemption

John McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting, has refused to rule out the use of preemptive military force against America's enemies, MSNBC reports:

Republican Sen. John McCain refused Wednesday to rule out a pre-emptive war against another country, although he said one would be very unlikely.

The likely Republican presidential nominee was asked Wednesday at a town-hall style meeting if he would reject "the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war," a reference to Bush's decision to invade Iraq without it having attacked the United States.

"I don't think you could make a blanket statement about pre-emptive war, because obviously, it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces," McCain told his audience at Bridgewater Associates Inc., a global investment firm.

If someone is about to launch a weapon that would devastate America, or have the capability to do so, obviously, you would have to act immediately in defense of this nation's national security interests."

McCain said he would consult more closely and more carefully "not with every member of Congress, but certainly the leaders of Congress."

Photo Credit: MSNBC

Hat tip: Great Satan's Girlfriend

Palestinians See Obama as Close Ally

Today's Los Angeles Times has a troubling story on the history of Barack Obama's personal relationship with a number of Palestinian activists, including the late Professor Edward Said.

While the Times piece bends over backwards to portray Obama's connections to Palestinian constituencies as the normal activities of a politically ambitious grass roots activist, in the context of Obama's other questionable relationships - to Antoin Rezko, the Weather Underground, and his pastor of hate, Jeremiah Wright - today's expose provides further support for claims that an Obama administration might not maintain rigorous fidelity to American's traditional security interests and partnerships:

It was a celebration of Palestinian culture -- a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.

A special tribute came from Khalidi's friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi's wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.

His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It's for that reason that I'm hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation -- a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid's dinner table," but around "this entire world."

Today, five years later, Obama is a U.S. senator from Illinois who expresses a firmly pro-Israel view of Middle East politics, pleasing many of the Jewish leaders and advocates for Israel whom he is courting in his presidential campaign. The dinner conversations he had envisioned with his Palestinian American friend have ended. He and Khalidi have seen each other only fleetingly in recent years.

And yet the warm embrace Obama gave to Khalidi, and words like those at the professor's going-away party, have left some Palestinian American leaders believing that Obama is more receptive to their viewpoint than he is willing to say.

The article goes to great lengths in painting Khalidi as a moderate on the Arab-Israeli conflict, but some passages raise flags over Khalidi's loyalties:

At Khalidi's 2003 farewell party, for example, a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, "then you will never see a day of peace."

Even further:

In the 1970s, when Khalidi taught at a university in Beirut, he often spoke to reporters on behalf of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. In the early 1990s, he advised the Palestinian delegation during peace negotiations. Khalidi now occupies a prestigious professorship of Arab studies at Columbia.

He is seen as a moderate in Palestinian circles, having decried suicide bombings against civilians as a "war crime" and criticized the conduct of Hamas and other Palestinian leaders. Still, many of Khalidi's opinions are troubling to pro-Israel activists, such as his defense of Palestinians' right to resist Israeli occupation and his critique of U.S. policy as biased toward Israel.

Other sources suggest Khalidi might not be so "moderate."

As FrontPageMagazine reports, Khalidi's been at the forefront of the post-911 movement among activists condeming the United States as the world's leading terrorist state:

As the radical activists of the 1960s have aged and moved on, in significant numbers, to prominent positions in the faculties and administrations of American universities, the political atmosphere in college classrooms from coast to coast has become palpably anti-American. Throughout academia, leftist professors with captive audiences of young adults seamlessly transmit their own political worldviews from one generation to the next.

Consider what is occurring at Columbia University, which recently appointed professor Rashid Khalidi – a longtime, outspoken critic of the United States – to the anonymously endowed Edward Said Chair in Middle Eastern Studies. Depicting a nation that can scarcely do anything right – either at home or abroad, Khalidi calls the US a land “where routine media abuse of Arab-Americans, violations of their rights, and racist stereotyping and caricatures have only grown more prevalent since September 11th of [2001].... ”

Khalidi blames the horrors of 9-11 on none other than the US. “[F]or decades the United States itself helped to foster some of the radical-extremist Islamic tendencies that gave rise to the horrific attacks on US cities,” he says. “[I]f there is . . . hatred for the United States in many countries in these [Middle Eastern] regions, it is not necessary to look at Islamic doctrine [or] the supposed centrality of the concept of jihad to Islam for the causes.

The Los Angeles Times also mentions Obama's relationship to Said, an outspoken Palestinian rights spokeman, who has been identified as openly supporting terrorism against the United States:

Obama in 1998 attended a speech by Edward Said, the late Columbia University professor and a leading intellectual in the Palestinian movement. According to a news account of the speech, Said called that day for a nonviolent campaign "against settlements, against Israeli apartheid."

The use of such language to describe Israel's policies has drawn vehement objection from Israel's defenders in the United States. A photo on the pro-Palestinian website the Electronic Intifada shows Obama and his wife, Michelle, engaged in conversation at the dinner table with Said, and later listening to Said's keynote address. Obama had taken an English class from Said as an undergraduate at Columbia University.

There's been a frustrating - even insidious - tendency in Barack Obama's career to associate with some of the greatest anti-American individuals and groups of recent years. Yet, we've heard, over and over by Obama defenders, throughout the Wright controversy, for example, that "guilt by association" is not a legitimate basis of criticism against the Illinois Senator.

Yet, it's clear that these associations with outspoken and radical critics of the United Sates are part of a pattern: Obama has gravitated to - and moved within - some very suspicious circles of America's underground subversives.

Note too, that while the Los Angeles Times strikes an overall balance in its account of Obama's Palestinian ties, the conclusion to the article is telling:

Nationally, Obama continues to face skepticism from some Jewish leaders who are wary of his long association with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who had made racially incendiary comments during several sermons that recently became widely known. Questions have persisted about Wright in part because of the recent revelation that his church bulletin reprinted a Times op-ed written by a leader of Hamas.

One Jewish leader said he viewed Obama's outreach to Palestinian activists, such as Said, in the light of his relationship to Wright."

In the context of spending 20 years in a church where now it is clear the anti-Israel rhetoric was there, was repeated, . . . that's what makes his presence at an Arab American event with a Said a greater concern," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director for the Anti-Defamation League.

This story deserves wide attention and deep investigation.

The more I read about Barack Obama's relationships, the more I question this man's judgment.

Recall the old saying, "birds of a feather flock together?" Well, the associational plumage surrounding Obama's group ties is looking less pro-American all the time.

Photo Credit: New York Times, "Obama Says Real-Life Experience Trumps Rivals’ Foreign Policy Credits."

The Blogger Mom: New Career Trajectory for the Internet Set

As I always say, blogging's not my full-time job (right!), but there's hope!

Just think: You too can be the next stay-at-home blogging sensation! Your spouse can quit work as your blog rockets up the Technorati rankings and you rake in the ad revenues of upwards of $40,000 a month!

The Wall Street Journal's got the rags to riches story of "mommy-blogger," Heather Armstrong":

Lots of businesses get hate mail, but few owners react the way Heather Armstrong does. She prints out nasty emails, puts them in her driveway and drives over them with her car. "That's the attitude I have," she says, "and it's made my life a thousand percent better."

Steeling herself against vitriol is one of the challenges of being, by many measures, the nation's top parenting blogger. The 32-year-old at-home mother's irreverent, occasionally profane and often hilarious musings on prosaic topics from potty-training to postpartum depression have propelled her blog, Dooce.com, to No. 59 among the Web's top 100 blogs, according to Technorati, a blog search engine. The Salt Lake City resident enjoys enviable influence and enough ad revenue that her husband Jon quit his job in 2005 to manage advertising for Dooce (rhymes with moose).

Among the Web's 200,000-plus bloggers on parenting and family, few have succeeded to the extent of Ms. Armstrong; countless at-home parents would love to be in her position. But less obvious is the behind-the-scenes price an at-home mom pays to shoulder her way to prominence in the blogosphere -- giving up her privacy, sustained time off and any remnants of work-family boundaries at all.

Most powerful individual bloggers, such as Arianna Huffington of HuffingtonPost.com on politics, or Mario Lavandeira of PerezHilton.com on celebrities, keep a measure of personal distance by blogging on public topics. In contrast, Ms. Armstrong writes about herself, her husband, her 4-year-old daughter Leta, clashes with her parents and the escapades of her dog Chuck. She has the ability "to make the mundane seem interesting," says Pete Blackshaw, an executive vice president at Nielsen Online. In a measure of fans' devotion, a recent post on removing a raccoon from her chimney drew 530 comments.

TOP MOTHERHOOD BLOGS

Accounts from the home front that can be real, revealing and sometimes raw.
• Dooce.com
• 5minutesformom.com
• designmom.com
• parenthacks.com
• scribbit.blogspot.com
• fussy.org
• notesfromthetrenches.com
• stirrup-queens.blogspot.com
• izzymom.com
• suburbanbliss.net
Source: Technorati

Mommy blogs in general tend to be everyday diaries of details one might share over coffee -- baby's first step or the perils of finding a preschool. Most are blander than Dooce, less humorous and significantly less profane.

Most Web diarists, for example, are too reserved to report, as Ms. Armstrong does, that she's "married to a charming geek," had "lived life as an unemployed drunk" for a while, or landed briefly in a mental hospital for postpartum depression. Some mommy-bloggers find her cursing and vulgarity offensive. But it's that outrageousness, humility and raw honesty that also feed her bond with readers, making her dominant in an emerging Web sector Mr. Blackshaw calls "The Power Mom."

Ms. Armstrong's fan base is a powerful lure for advertisers. Neither she nor her husband will discuss ad revenue, but they and the Internet rating service Quantcast say that Dooce draws about four million page views per month. In a "quick back-of-the-envelope guesstimate," Shani Higgins, Technorati's vice president, business development, estimates the site could yield $40,000 a month in revenue from companies coveting her traffic, such as BMW and Verizon.

Ms. Armstrong's product endorsements -- bestowed only on items she's purchased, she says -- wield impressive clout. Yukiko Kamioka in Colchester, England, says she was struggling with only 10 visitors a day to her Web site, seabreezestudio.co.uk, until Dooce endorsed her handmade bags; 3,000 visitors immediately swamped her site, and she soon sold out of her merchandise.

The life of a blogger, though, inflicts significant strain. A scathing parody on ViolentAcres.com, set up as a letter to her daughter Leta, said, "Since your father and I started exploiting you for cash, neither one of us has had to work a real job for a few months now. Score!" Last week, another popular blogger on parenting, Boston writer Steve Almond, quit his BabyDaddy blog on Babble.com, citing "angry and aggrieved" responses to his writings.

Behind her hip façade, Ms. Armstrong feels similar pain. She says she has sought therapy to cope with vitriolic posts. "The hate mail will invariably happen, and when it does your entire world will crumble around your ears," she says. In one example, she says a person she thought was a friend posted a comment saying she "wanted to punch me in the face because she hated me so much." She adds she can understand why "famous people turn to drugs or commit suicide."

Hey, who disabled my comment moderation!

No, wait, Dr. Phil, yo, can you fit me in?!!

CBS Give Couric the Boot

From the department of who could've predicted it, the Wall Street Journal reports that Katie Couric will leave the CBS News anchor spot before hittting even the half-way mark in the contract for her much touted 5-year debut as the first women to hold down a nightly network news broadcast:

After two years of record-low ratings, both CBS News executives and people close to Katie Couric say that the "CBS Evening News" anchor is likely to leave the network well before her contract expires in 2011 -- possibly soon after the presidential inauguration early next year.

Katie Couric and CBS are prepared for her early exit from the network.
Ms. Couric isn't even halfway through her five-year contract with CBS, which began in June 2006 and pays an annual salary of around $15 million. But CBS executives are under pressure to cut costs and improve ratings for the broadcast, which trails rival newscasts on ABC and NBC by wide margins.

Her departure would cap a difficult episode for CBS, which brought Ms. Couric to the network with considerable fanfare in a bid to catapult "Evening News" back into first place. Excluding several weeks of her tenure, Ms. Couric never bested the ratings of interim anchor Bob Schieffer, who was named to host the broadcast temporarily after "Evening News" anchor Dan Rather left the newscast in the wake of a discredited report on George W. Bush's National Guard service.

In a statement yesterday, a "CBS Evening News" spokeswoman said, "We are very proud of the 'CBS Evening News,' particularly our political coverage, and we have no plans for any changes regarding Katie or the broadcast." In a separate statement provided by another spokeswoman, Ms. Couric said, "I am working hard and having fun. My colleagues continue to impress me with their commitment to the newscast, and I am very proud of the show we put on every day."

Adding to the pressure on CBS to improve the newscast is the faltering performance of CBS's prime-time schedule and CBS Corp. itself. CBS's stock price has slumped in recent months amid questions about the company's growth potential. Its broadcast network is a key revenue source for CBS -- more so than for most media companies, which tend to have a wider array of assets.

It's possible that Ms. Couric could survive if a major news event lifted the newscast's ratings or some other shift occurred at CBS.

Assuming the two part ways, it's unclear what will happen to either the "Evening News" or Ms. Couric. CBS executives are investigating which prominent news personalities are nearing the end of their contracts.

One possible new job for Ms. Couric: succeeding Larry King at CNN. Mr. King, who is 74 years old, has a contract with the network into 2009. CNN President Jon Klein, a CBS veteran with close ties to some at the network, has expressed admiration for Ms. Couric's work, and the two are friends. They had lunch in late January, and the anchor attended Mr. Klein's birthday party in March. Time Warner Inc.'s CNN said, "Larry King is a great talent who consistently delivers the highest profile guests, and we have no plans to make a change." Through a publicist, Mr. King declined to comment.

Mr. King's talk-show slot at CNN might be a better fit than evening-newscast anchor for Ms. Couric, who is 51. She made her reputation as a skilled interviewer when she was an anchor at the "Today" show on General Electric Co.'s NBC network.

I think I watched Couric maybe two or three times amid the buzz of her debut a couple of years back.

Forget Larry King. Maybe she and Deborah Norville can co-host a reality show for media-sensation flame-outs: "Network News Hotties Do Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale."

Dissing Military Decorations is Still a Smear

I noted previously that the radical left eschewed a dramatic pre-testimony smear of General Petraeus this year. Given the backlash MoveOn.org generated last September, perhaps the lefties smartened up a bit this time around.

Well, actually, no.

It turns out Matthew DeBord, an unafflliated "writer," in today's Los Angeles Times, offers a stomach-turning diss of Petraeus' military decorations:

Gen. David H. Petraeus may be as impressive a military professional as the United States has developed in recent years, but he could use some strategic advice on how to manage his sartorial PR. Witness his congressional testimony on the state of the war in Iraq. There he sits in elaborate Army regalia, four stars glistening on each shoulder, nine rows of colorful ribbons on his left breast, and various other medallions, brooches and patches scattered across the rest of the available real estate on his uniform. He even wears his name tag, a lone and incongruous hunk of cheap plastic in a region of pristine gilt, just in case the politicians aren't sure who he is.

That's a lot of martial bling, especially for an officer who hadn't seen combat until five years ago. Unfortunately, brazen preening and "ribbon creep" among the Army's modern-day upper crust have trumped the time-honored military virtues of humility, duty and personal reserve.

Think about any of the generals you've seen in recent years -- Norman Schwarzkopf, Barry McCaffrey, Wesley Clark (all now retired) and others -- and the image you'll conjure no doubt includes a chest full of shimmering decorations. In Petraeus' case, most of them don't represent actual military action as much as they do the general's devotion to the institution of the U.S. Army and vice versa. According to an annotated photograph produced by the Times of London last year, the majority of ribbons on Petraeus' impressive "rack" were earned for various flavors of distinguished service. As brave as he may be and as meritorious in general, is all that ostentation the best way to present the situation in Iraq to an increasingly war-skeptical public?

Of course, Petraeus' goal is not just to make simple, soldierly arguments before Congress -- it is to dazzle, at least initially, with the blazing imagery of rank. What, after all, are mere Brooks Brothers suits on the members of Congress in the face of a fighting man's laurels? Some of the showiness can be attributed to regulations: The official uniform of the Army is to be worn in a very specific manner, and the brass have an obligation to live up to their billing by showing plenty of ... well, brass. On the other hand, if you're wearing four stars, you surely have some say when it comes to matters of peacockery.

Notice the "minimal combat" slur at the beginning of the second paragraph: ... an "officer who hadn't seen combat until five years ago."

For those who are engaged in the debates over the war, DeBord's cheap shot here is a slyly ramped-up version of the "chicken hawk" slur, which is normally reserved for neocon Kaganites alleged to be sitting in cushy D.C. media offices while real grunts are getting mashed in the maw of America's "endless wars."

No, here we have a new twist: An actual, even unbelievable, attack on the martial fitness of our top U.S. commander in Iraq. But the argument's more crude than compelling. Notice how DeBard distorts the historical record to make only military leaders of THIS WAR eligible for the "ribbon creep" dismissal:

The greatest military leaders, in the age of organized national armies, have often conspicuously modified the official requirements of the uniform, even in the most public of settings....

George Patton was flamboyant, in his jodhpurs and riding boots, but he backed it up in battle after battle. His legend derived equally from brilliant tactics and an outrageous wardrobe.

Frankly, I'd think it was undignified if Petreaus was under-decorated in attending a major hearing on the war's progress before the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, one of the most powerful oversight bodies in the Congress.

Look closely at the Patton example, however: The general was known to sport a pearl-handled Colt .45 on his side, which to some might have itself been a bit grandish, but "he backed it up" in battle after battle?

DeBord might want to rethink his historical analogies.

General Petraeus is the primary author of the Army's new counterinsurgency strategy, which is proving so effective that current U.S. military experience is revolutionizing operational doctrine for 21st century battle. Not only that, folks in some quarters are talking about America's strategic comeback last year as one of the greatest military reversals in the history of the American armed forces!

Sixteen months after President Bush ordered the change in strategy, the surge has earned a place among the most important counteroffensives in U.S. military annals.

Thus, in some ways, DeBord's commentary exceeds the unscrupulous backstabbing of MoveOn.org. The "Betray Us" ad was sick enough, although we at least saw an explicit antiwar agenda attached to it. With DeBord's opinion, we see a smear delivered that just slides in subterraneously, bludgeoning a degree of disrespect that serves no other purpose than to bolster an already influential anti-military culture that's debilitating American military readiness.

Iraq Progress: Nothing Succeeds Like Success

The debates over General Petraeus' Iraq testimony are already in full bore (see Memeorandum).

In the mainstream press, the Washington Post today reports that senators are incredulous on Iraq's progress and insistent in seeing some light at the end of the tunnel:

Asked repeatedly yesterday what "conditions" he is looking for to begin substantial U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq after this summer's scheduled drawdown, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said he will know them when he sees them. For frustrated lawmakers, it was not enough.

"A year ago, the president said we couldn't withdraw because there was too much violence," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). "Now he says we can't afford to withdraw because violence is down." Asked Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.): "Where do we go from here?"

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said: "I think people want a sense of what the end is going to look like."

But the bottom line was that there was no bottom line. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker echoed what they said seven months ago in their last update to Congress -- often using similar words. Iraq's armed forces continue to improve, overall levels of violence are lower than they were last year, and political reconciliation is happening, albeit still more slowly than they would like.

Members of the antiwar left, who've mostly held back from strident pre-testimony smears against Petraeus (like the ones we saw last September), have now initiated - true-to-form - their post-testimony attacks, as evident, for example in Robert Scheer's essay over at Huffington Post:

General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then--as it would be to repeat the charge now.

By undercutting the widespread support for getting out of Iraq, Petraeus did indeed betray the American public, siding with an enormously unpopular president who wants to stay the course in Iraq for personal and political reasons that run contrary to genuine national security interests. Once again, the president is passing the buck to the uniformed military to justify continuing a ludicrous imperial adventure, and the good general has dutifully performed.

Scheer demonstrates his own whacked credentials by endorsing MoveOn's "Betray Us" campaign, which even congressional Democrats denounced.

The recriminations of this war are likely to go on for some time, to be played out in the electoral battles this year. Recall, too, that Gallup indicated how polarized the war's become, so the left's attacks are par for the course.

Still, recent antiwar criticism, struggling to stay relevant amid success on the ground, has now shifted to the "endless war" meme, assailing the costs of the deployment, and taking the administration to task for "wearing out" the military.

Victor Davis Hanson, in his new essay at Commentary, put things in perspective, especially on this question of military fatigue:

Still another point of [antiwar criticism] relates to the status and image of the U.S. military. If the spectacular three-week victory over Saddam in 2003 led to a kind of temporary triumphalism, the four years of hard fighting, long rotations, and casualties that followed it prompted a deep-seated revisionist pessimism. Our military was said to be worn out, poorly led, and prone to crimes like Abu Ghraib and the Haditha “massacres.” The Pentagon was indicted as having been fatally blindsided by the ingenuity and ferocity of enemy attacks. Enlistments were said to be to be falling below manpower targets, with no end in sight.

Today’s perception is once again different. Thanks to the success of our counter-insurgency tactics and the consequent drop in violence—during 2007, ethnic fighting in Baghdad decreased by over 90 percent—ordinary Americans are beginning to grasp that our military forces, and especially the Army and Marine corps, are within sight of accomplishing a task that is still confidently pronounced impossible by some prominent public figures.

As of December 2007, enlistments in the four services have exceeded manpower goals, and entirely new combat brigades are being created. Our officers and their troops, however weary they may be from repeated tours, are now acknowledged to be the world’s most sophisticated practitioners of counter-insurgency warfare. Their competence is on display not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan, where American veterans of the Iraq war have proved far more adroit against the Taliban than their unseasoned NATO allies. Like the emergence of Sherman’s Army of the West in the autumn of 1864, which renewed the North’s faith in its military prowess and in the wisdom of Lincoln’s war planners, the Petraeus command in Iraq has prompted a new appreciation of our military’s talents.

What about troop deployments, an issue much agitated among supporters of the war no less than among opponents? If the 2003 lightning strike on Saddam was tendered as confirmation of the efficacy of Donald Rumsfeld’s “revolution in military affairs,” the subsequent bloody occupation was taken as a rebuke not just to the Rumsfeld doctrine, but also to the entire notion of an expeditionary war conducted with a small local footprint. For much of 2004, former generals, antiwar politicians, and some proponents of the war insisted that too few troops had been committed in 2003 and far too few allotted for the subsequent occupation. Initial calls for a corrective surge in 2004, voiced by stalwarts like John McCain, stipulated reinforcements in numbers ranging from 80,000 to 100,000 troops. But by mid-2007 a much smaller compromise figure of 30,000 was reached—the maximum number considered to be politically palatable, sufficient to support a change in tactics, and, given other American military deployments around the globe, just barely doable.

So we have gone from a general feeling in 2003 that 200,000 was the right number to execute our brilliant defeat of Saddam Hussein, to a subsequent consensus that it was veritable insanity to commit a mere 150,000 troops to pacify a country of 26 million, to an acknowledgment that, after four years of fighting, a surge to 160,000 was large enough. The point is hardly to suggest there is no correct answer to the question of numbers or that manpower needs do not change with the pulse of battle, but rather, in the light of today’s good news, to cast doubt on the fiercely held revisionist orthodoxy of 2004-06 that the total size of the needed deployment of American occupiers lay in several hundreds of thousands.

Read the whole thing.

I'll have more on the Petraeus testimony in upcoming posts.

Republican Iraq Veterans to Run for Congress

Yesterday ABC News argued that Iraq war veterans were likely to vote Democratic this year, "Surprising Political Endorsements By U.S. Troops":

ABC's Martha Raddatz asked American soldiers in Iraq what issues are most important to them when looking at the presidential candidates.

Though the military is not supposed to engage in partisan political activity, these soldiers spoke out about their personal endorsements, and their opinions are likely to matter. In 2004, 73 percent of the U.S. military voted for a presidential candidate, and officials believe it may be even higher this time around.

PFC Jeremy Slate said he supported Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., because of his stated intention to pull out of Iraq right away.

"That would be nice," Slate said, "I'd like to be home, yea."

SFC Patricia Keller also expressed support for Obama, citing his representation for change.

Spc. Patrick Nicholls from Eggawam, Mass., pointed out that many soldiers on the frontlines frequently think about their families back home.

"We think about how our families are doing back home. That's a major concern, like how the economy is doing, also as well as where we're going to be in the future. Because really, truly, what we consider we're doing, we're doing a valuable job, we want to make sure that the efforts we make are appreciated."

I'm sure many - if not most - of the members of the Armed Services have similar sentiments. Polling does indicate a war-weariness among current and former members of the four service branches.

The same surveys also find that 9 out of 10 military personnel think that the Iraq war can be won.

Victory will be a lot harder, however, if a Democrat comes to power in January, which might explain why seventeen Iraq veterans are seeking seats to the Congress in November, and they're running on the GOP side:

Seventeen Iraq combat veterans are running for House seats as Republicans, pledging to continue the war once in Congress and linking themselves to Sen. John McCain's candidacy for president.

As Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, prepares to go to Capitol Hill Tuesday to discuss his record there, some of the vets also came to Washington to link themselves to the general whose 2007 troop surge they believe has improved America's prospects for victory.

In 2006, the Democrats had some success with a slate of veterans who used their military credentials to argue against the war. The Republican veterans argue that such antiwar vets are the exception and, even though the public is still against the war, they will be able to make the case that the country is succeeding and should commit the resources to achieve victory.

"Iraq's going to be a tough issue for everybody, but we're going to be uniquely positioned to deal with it," says former Marine Cpl. Keiran Lalor, a Republican running in the Hudson Valley of New York. "The Democrats went around and found the exception to the rule: They found the Iraq vets against the war."

The Republican vets have linked themselves to Sen. McCain's presidential bid and hope to ride to victory on his coattails. They hope that if independents decide to support Sen. McCain and his commitment to finish the job in Iraq, they will vote that way down-ballot as well.

While most of the group, calling themselves Iraq Veterans for Congress, are running against incumbent Democrats, four are in primary contests for seats currently held by Republicans. In two of these races, the veterans are challenging incumbents the national party would prefer to run again. An additional vet has already won the primary for an open Republican seat.

Several members of Iraq Veterans for Congress, founded by Mr. Lalor, are running in districts considered safe for Democratic incumbents, making their candidacies largely symbolic. Mr. Lalor faces Democratic freshman Rep. John Hall, a former rock singer with the 1970s group Orleans.

Mr. Lalor says he is running to represent Gen. Petraeus, who was born in Cornwall, N.Y., a town in the 19th district, and whose alma mater, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is also in the district.

The actions of these GOP Iraq veterans provide a stark contrast to the common antiwar sentiment suggesting that soldiers are "victims" in the Bush administration's endless wars.

November's congressional election results will really tell us what's happening in public opinion, so stay tuned.

Glenn Greenwald's Sock Puppetry!

I don't know if Glenn Greenwald uses sock puppets to defend himself in the blog wars of which he's constantly engaged.

I can point to what others are saying, arguments which make Greenwald look like a hack.

Karl at Protein Wisdom has a post up, "Rick Ellensburg: The Silence of the Sock-Puppets," which suggests Greenwald's engaged in pseudonymous posting defending himself:

Rick Ellensburg is quite upset that Megan McArdle and Dan Drezner supposedly defended the establishment media in response to another recent Ellensburg screed, which complained that the media was more interested in covering stories like Barack Obama’s bad bowling score or his relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright than the declassification of the 2003 “torture memo” drafted by John Yoo, then a deputy in the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.

In reality, Drezner and McArdle did not defend the media so much as critique Ellensburg’s arguments.

Rick Ellensburg? Who's Rick Ellensburg?

As Ace of Spades notes, Ellensburg's Greenwald's "magic boyfriend" who pops up at key moments to defend Greenwald in the blog wars:

It has already been proven that "Rick Ellensburg," Certified Greenwald Defender, blogs from the same area of Brazil that Glenn Greenwald does. And is active on the internet at the same time as Greenwald. And favors the same "to recap" construction and use of hyphens that Greenwald does.

But check out Patterico:

Glenn Greenwald is irate that conservative bloggers dared to take notice. Greenwald (also known as Thomas Ellers and Rick Ellensburg, among others) complains bitterly that conservative bloggers went digging deep into the comment sections of various liberal blogs, found inappropriate and hateful comments, and then began insisting that these isolated comments proved something.

To the contrary, Greenwald insists, anonymous comments by hateful leftists prove nothing about the left generally. Nothing!

Here's more, from Patterico:

If your mouth is agape at the shameless hypocrisy of this, then you must [not] be familiar with Greenwald.

These comments are staggeringly hypocritical, viewed in the light of Greenwald’s extensive history of spotlighting anonymous comments at conservative blogs to reach broad-brush conclusions about the entire conservative movement. Greenwald is a prime practitioner of this “transparently flimsy and misleading method” of tarring the other side. And, in marked contrast to Greenwald’s tender concern today for whether ugly leftist comments “are representative of the blog itself,” Greenwald is famous in conservative circles for highlighting extreme comments on conservative blogs — comments that in no way represent the views of the posts to which they are responding, or of the bloggers generally.

I think folks are clearly on to Greenwald's hypocrisy.

But if you don't have time to follow all the lines of circumstantial proof of Greenwald's sock puppetry, just read McArdle's incredibly powerful logical takedown of Greenwald, and her immortal line:

Mr Greenwald's anger at the establishment power structure seems to be rapidly transmuting into anger at the non-Glenn-Greenwald power structure...

Touche!

Does Obama Share Wright's Views?

Lanny Davis, at the Wall Street Journal this morning, argues that while Barack Obama "clearly" does not share the extremist views of his paster, Jeremiah Wright, he's nevertheless remained a member of the reverend's flock (via Memeorandum):

I have tried to get over my unease surrounding Barack Obama's response to the sermons and writings of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. But the unanswered questions remain.

I am a strong supporter of and a substantial fundraiser for Hillary Clinton for president (though in this column I speak only for myself). I still believe she should and will be the Democratic nominee. But if Sen. Obama wins the nomination, he needs to understand that this issue goes well beyond Clinton partisans. Now is the time to address these questions, not later.

Clearly Mr. Obama does not share the extremist views of Rev. Wright. He is a tolerant and honorable person. But that is not the issue. The questions remain: Why did he stay a member of the congregation? Why didn't he speak up earlier? And why did he reward Rev. Wright with a campaign position even after knowing of his comments?

My concerns were retriggered when I read for the first time three excerpts from Rev. Wright's sermons published several weeks ago in a national news magazine:

- "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
-- Sept. 16, 2001 (the first Sunday after 9/11)

- "The government . . . wants us to sing God Bless America. No, no, no. God damn America; that's in the bible, for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human."
-- 2003

- "The United States of White America."
-- July 22, 2007

As I read and reread these words, I keep thinking: If my rabbi ever uttered such hateful words from the pulpit about America and declared all Palestinians to be terrorists, I have no doubt I would have withdrawn immediately from his congregation.

In his eloquent Philadelphia speech, Mr. Obama likened Rev. Wright to a beloved, but politically extremist, family member with whom one profoundly disagrees but whose rage one understands.

But this comparison just doesn't work for me. I don't get a chance to choose my family members. I do get a chance to choose my spiritual or religious leader and my congregation. And I do not have to remain silent or, more importantly, expose my children to the spiritual leader of my congregation who spews hate that offends my conscience.

Mr. Obama made a choice to join the church and to ask Rev. Wright to marry him and his bride. He said for the first time a few weeks ago that had Rev. Wright not recently resigned as pastor of the church, he would have withdrawn. But that only reraised the same questions: Why didn't he act before the resignation?

Well, why didn't he? Why didn't Obama act to separate from his relationship to the preachings of an America-bashing black liberation theologian.

It's an assumption, based on Obama's statements alone, that the Illinois Senator "clearly" does not share Wright's views. But if this is so clear, so self-evident, what substantiation do we have other than Obama's public professions?

If actions speak louder than words, Obama still going to have Wright as a political liability in the fall.

Obama's come up short in putting to bed concerns about Wright's teachings. He needs to return to the question once again, indicating that he's reexamined his statements since the crisis erupted. He needs to make a new address renouncing Wright's hatred once and for all. That will require, of course, a total renunciation of all ties to his church.

It should not be difficult.

All he has to say is "I will no longer attend a church that blames America for the evils befallen its people. My campaign is above that. I'm ending the division right now..."

People on both sides of the political aisle, as Davis' essay here shows, are waiting.

Petraeus: Don't Even Think About Troop Cuts for 45 Days!

I saw only a few minutes of General David Petraeus' testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (I watched streaming video online at work), but as I noted earlier, Hillary Clinton was toeing the implacable antiwar line in her questioning (more about that later).

It turns out Petraeus would not even consider discussing additional troop reductions beyond current plans, a period terminating in 45 more days.

The New York Times has the story:

Telling Congress that progress in Iraq was “fragile and reversible,” the top American commander recommended Tuesday that consideration of any new drawdowns of American troops be delayed until the fall, making it likely that little would change before Election Day.

The commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, refused under persistent questioning from Senate Democrats to say under what conditions he would favor new troop reductions, adding that he would not take the matter up until 45 days after a current drawdown is complete in July. His recommendation would leave just under 140,000 American troops in Iraq well into the fall.

Tuesday’s hearings lacked the suspense of last September’s debate, when the focus was on measurable benchmarks and heightened expectations of speedy troop withdrawals. But they thrust the war to the center of the presidential campaign, as General Petraeus faced questioning from the two Democrats and one Republican still vying for the White House. He told them that progress in Iraq had been “significant and uneven.”

General Petraeus’s tone was notably sober, and he acknowledged that “we haven’t turned any corners, we haven’t seen any lights at the end of the tunnel,” despite an intensified American military campaign over the past 15 months that at its peak had more than 160,000 American troops committed to the five-year-old war.

The increased troop commitment sharply reduced insurgent attacks across much of Iraq last year, but the stretch of relative calm was broken last month when the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered an assault on Shiite militias in Basra, setting off renewed violence there and around Baghdad.

At times, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democratic candidates, and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, seemed to be talking about two different wars. “We’re no longer staring into the abyss of defeat, and we can now look ahead to the genuine prospect of success,” Mr. McCain said.

That's because they are talking about two different wars.

The Democrats are rehashing the "lessons" of Vietnam, from which they hope for an Iraqification of the war, with just enough troops left behind to secure the U.S. embassy in Baghdad (so those evacuation helicopters will have a place to land).

McCain, on the other hand, sees gradual progess, which has been achieved at tremendous cost and against the odds. Perhaps the war he has in mind is World War II, where many battles were close run, often overcoming the odds in achieving allied victories ...

I'll have more analysis in the morning.

Is the White House Worth It This Year?

Is the presidency really a prize this year? Will taking over in January effectively kill the winning party for the next couple of election cycles?

Naturally, winning the Oval Office is the highest political plum in the land. Politicians with progressive ambition work their entire lives in electoral politics holding the possibility of a successful White House run in the backs of their minds. This explains the normal but excessive caution most office-holders and -seekers apply to their jobs. One nasty gaffe - played over and over again on TV - can ruin a perfectly good career.

Does this logic hold for '08?

We're in the fifth year of a long, grinding war, and while the surge has been successful, it's still too early to claim total victory. We need to be in country at some substantial level much longer, with more than a token "residual force" needed to protect, say, nothing more than the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

Not only that, the economy's certainly looking forward to some rough times ahead. Even if we don't buy all the doom-and-gloom coming from the Democrats and the press, it'll be years before the housing market's and resumes a reasonably steady path of appreciation, and more big financial institutions are likely to collapse before things get turned around (or we're likely in for some more huge government bailouts, which can't be sustained for long while still calling this a free-market economy. Washington Mutual's planned $5 billion infusion may avoid that bank's collapse in the short term).

I've thought about the growing "perfect storm" of policy difficulties in the context of John McCain's success in wrapping up the GOP nomination.

In 2000, had he taken the nomination from George W. Bush, he would have taken over the executive branch at a time of relative peace and prosperity. A McCain administration in the early 2000s would have, of course, faced the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the subsequent economic recession, but as deeply painful as those crises were, this year really does look like a fundamentally different year in politics - perhaps 2008 could even turn out to be a political earthquake on the scale of the 1860 and 1932 elections, particularly if a Democrat wins the White House.

So should an apiring candidate for presidency relish the challenges of the new era, or dread a long clean-up period upon election to a first term of office (Matthew Yglesias is already downgrading the presidency for next year, arguing that the surge has left "the Iraq War into the next president's problem." Will the elections this year deliver a favorable congressional majority? Can a new occupant hold together his party coalitions Washington and in the electorate?

Charlie Cook's got an article up on these problems at National Journal:

Should Republicans want to hold onto the presidency in 2008?

It sounds like a stupid question, and maybe it is. But one thing that has been true over the last couple of decades is that both parties have enormously strong self-destructive tendencies. If left to their own devices, they will do themselves in. To give one party the White House and majorities in the House and Senate is like a ticking time bomb; it's only a matter of time before it explodes and the party loses, and loses big.

While conceding that the last year has supplied more unexpected twists and turns than any presidential election year since 1968, it is nearly certain Democrats will retain majorities in the Senate and House after this election. My hunch is that Democrats will pick up three to six Senate seats, bringing them from a 51-49 majority to somewhere between 54-46 to 57-43.

In the House, the Cook Political Report is being pretty conservative, with a current forecast of a Democratic gain of five to 10 seats, but the chance of bigger gains is much greater than the chance of smaller gains.

At this point in time, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama has a 95-percent chance of winning the Democratic nomination. The window for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to win enough pledged delegates to persuade superdelegates to vote for her is pretty much closed.

She can't win the remaining contests by sufficient margins to appreciably close the gap at this point, and superdelegates are breaking more toward Obama than Clinton. Short of a Rev. Jeremiah Wright-level embarrassment visiting Obama each week for four or five consecutive weeks, this thing is over.

So what about the general election? Tracking polling by the Gallup Organization of around 4,400 registered voters conducted Tuesday through Friday, Wednesday through Saturday and Thursday through Sunday shows presumed GOP nominee John McCain and Obama tied at 45 percent. The Arizona senator had a 2-point lead over Clinton in all three sets of tracks, matching the error margin.

This race is more likely to be determined by events or circumstances that have yet to develop than anything specific we can point to today. But it is also true that a Democrat needs to be ahead in the popular vote, measured by national polls, by at least a point or two in order for that to dependably translate into an Electoral College majority.

Simply put, the Republican vote is much more efficiently allocated around the country. Aside from Nebraska and Maine -- states that apportion their electoral votes in part by who wins congressional districts -- once a state is won by a single vote, there is no bonus for winning big. The rest of the votes count in the national polls like all others, but have no impact on the outcome of the election.

Aha! The GOP vote's more efficiently allocated nationally than that of the Democrats'.

But let's not get too excited. Here's Cook:

But this brings us back to the original point. Should Republicans want to win? If Democrats win the presidency and hold onto the House and Senate, how long will it be before they self-destruct?

Democrats had majorities in the House and Senate when Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, and it took the party only two years to lose majorities in both. For Republicans, they already had control of the House and Senate when George W. Bush won in 2000. It took six years before they self-destructed, losing majorities in both chambers.

Lord Acton is famous for his line that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." It is debatable how much is corruption, how much is arrogance and overreaching, and how much is sloth or growing out of touch, but the result is the same. Whether it is Democrats or Republicans, conservatives or liberals, too much unchecked power is an inevitable problem.

A different way of approaching it is that every decade or two, a party has to destroy itself and be reborn. Like forests need fire to begin the regeneration process, from time to time, parties need the dead wood cleared out and space made for new growth to emerge. But to rise like a phoenix, you have to get down to ashes first.

As painful as 2006 was for the GOP, the party did not appear to hit rock bottom. A good case can be made that the Republican Party would be a stronger, better party five years from today if it reconstituted itself now.

An argument can be made that McCain is such a iconoclastic, nontraditional Republican that he could represent and bring change to the party. He could perhaps decrease its emphasis on cultural and religious issues, a move many see as important. Whether he could lead that rebirth without the GOP actually losing the White House is an interesting question.

All of this is fine to say from the cheap seats. But in the real world, competitors always play to win. Republicans and Democrats should fight this election as if there were no tomorrow. That's the way it should be.

Hmm, iconoclastic, non-traditional? Go McCain!