American Power

Thursday, March 20, 2008

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Only 18% of those surveyed by Gallup agreed U.S. troops should be withdrawn "on a timetable as soon as possible."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.

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."

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Blogging Politics: Network Effects and the Hierarchy of Success

Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell have edited a special issue of Public Choice on the political power of the blogosphere.

In their introductory empirical article, "The Power and Politics of Blogs," the authors hypothesize how network effects tend to push the most popular blogs to the top of the blogosphere:

We argue that bloggers and readers face an important coordination problem, which may be analyzed as a pure coordination game. The problem is as follows. Most bloggers wish to maximize their readership, but face very substantial difficulties in gaining new readers. Given the vast number of blogs even in the political subsection of the blogosphere, it is extraordinarily hard for them to attract readers, even when they have something interesting and unique to offer. Blog readers, for their part, want to find interesting blog posts—in terms of either new information or a compelling interpretation of old information. However, given search costs and limited time, it is nearly impossible for readers to sift through the vast amounts of available material in order to find the interesting posts.

Blogs with large numbers of incoming links offer both a means of filtering interesting blog posts from less interesting ones, and a focal point at which bloggers with interesting posts, and potential readers of these posts can coordinate. When less prominent bloggers have an interesting piece of information or point of view that is relevant to a political controversy, they will usually post this on their own blogs. However, they will also often have an incentive to contact one of the large “focal point” blogs, to publicize their post. The latter may post on the issue with a hyperlink back to the original blog, if the story or point of view is interesting enough, so that the originator of the piece of information receives more readers. In this manner, bloggers with fewer links function as “fire alarms” for focal point blogs, providing new information and links. This reduces the need for bloggers at the top of the link structure to engage in “police patrols” to gather information on their own....The skewed network structure of the blogosphere makes it less costly for outside observers to acquire information from blogs. The networked structure of the blogosphere allows interesting arguments to make their way to the top of the blogosphere. Because of the lognormal distribution of weblogs, the media only needs to look at the top blogs to obtain a “summary statistic” about the distribution of opinions on a given political issue. The mainstream political media—which some bloggers refer to as the “mediasphere”—can therefore act as a transmission belt between the blogosphere and politically powerful actors. Blogs therefore affect political debate by affecting the content of media reportage and commentary about politics. Just as the media can provide a collective interpretive frame for politicians, blogs can create a menu of interpretive frames for the media to appropriate.

That's a fairly academic discussion.

The bottom line is their main point about hyperlinking and and trackbacking: To be successful, lower level "9th tier" bloggers need to keep busy signaling important new scoops and stories to those at the top of the blogging chain. Sweet hyperlinks back to the lower tier bloggers drive traffic, familiarity, and with luck, popularity.

But there's a lot more that goes into it, I would argue.

Some bloggers, like Drezner himself, are academics who've built a name in scholarly research, and with that authority - and vigorous self-promotion - they're able to establish a reputation as a "focal point" blogger among fellow academics and the media establishment.

Other bloggers are part of the existing media establishment, like Michael Medved and Michelle Malkin. Their success at blogging is a relative function of their success in radio and television, or perhaps even from the synergistic relationship of all three media (in Malkin's case, especially).

In both examples, academics and media personalities, there's a degree of exposure from related professional activities that helps drive traffic to their homepages.

Other cases are harder to figure out.

Some folks are just darn good bloggers, who write well and build a reputation and following in the online community. Captain Ed is a good example. When he was at Captain's Quarters, he broke some big news stories, working essential as an online journalist. Talking Points Memo has followed a similar trajectory to the top of the left blogosphere.

Then there are those who are just incredibly hip, or something, who've built a large community of readers and linkers who feed off each other in the classic ideological echo chamber. There are too many to name here, but Kos on the left and Power Line on the right seem to fit the classic focal point blogs which are often at the center of some of the top online political debates.

(I'd note that the guys at Power Line are closer to the Captain Ed model than is Kos, in that they've been key in breaking open big media stories, cementing their influence as influential focal point blogs; in contrast, Kos just seems to chum the waters of the extremist, nihilist left, apparently envisioning himself as the center of the universe of the left's contemporary online media environment).

Other than that, some blogs just build popularity through community and a strong message or focus (Screw Liberals comes to mind). These are folks who've got some kind of verve or schtick, and they're able to make a good go of it, largely as an aside to a regular career (or they've got a darn good set of values, like Gayle at Dragon Lady's Den, through which they become good and loyal friends to their readers).

So, is there any advice for the aspiring blogger, who hopes to leap up the rungs of the blogging hiarachy, perhaps at some future point working to bring down a network news anchor or some other feat of citizen's journalism?

Who knows? Most bloggers only generate a few readers, and then burn out after a period of futility of variable duration (that's just from my own observation).

I nevertheless thought Michelle Malkin offered some pretty good advice on how to be a successful blogger, over at Right Wing News:

There are a couple of factors. The first is not to try to be somebody else. If you want to be a success...don't be another Michelle Malkin or Glenn Reynolds or a Drudge wannabe. The marketplace of ideas rewards original ideas and original thinkers and I think having a niche is very important. ...The blogosphere rewards fresh information and reporting, energy, initiative, and...I think a lot of the humor blogs do well, like Iowahawk, Ace of Spades HQ. There are so many people with something unique to add. Plus, it takes a work ethic. You're not going to be successful if you only post 2 or 3 times a day and if you don't have fun doing it, you shouldn't be in it.

That last part's key.

Last summer I had a months-long e-mail exchange with Titus (formerly Angevin13) over at the Punch Die. (Titus has a solid reputation, and was very successful in garnering links, including a couple of "instalanches" from Glenn Reynolds). We were obssessing on how to increase our exposure in the conservative blogosphere, offering each other different tips to drive traffic and blog power.

To be honest, it's awfully hard to build up a regular readership, much less online media influence. But Malkin's last point seems most relevant here: Publish regularly, with lots of original analysis.

As some readers here have noticed, I've really picked up my own publishing volume this year. I didn't really plan it. Things just starting coming together as I was blogging John McCain's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. I got extremely invested in his success, and with all of intensity of the race - and not to mention the outbreak of McCain Derangement Syndrome - my blog started getting a lot of attention, links, and even solictations for advertising.

I'm still down on the lower rungs (the 9th tier, I imagine), but some days I get all kinds of links from high-traffic blogs like Gateway Pundit, and from aggregation sites like Blog Report, Memeorandum, and RealClearPolitics.

But as I used to tell Titus: Blogging's not my career. I'm a father, a husband, and a professor of political science. Though I must admit, sometimes that order gets a bit discombobulated amid the considerable affliction I've got with my own citizen's journalism!

Resilience of Power: The Strategic Implications of Iraq

This entry is a follow-up to my Sunday post, "The Lessons of Iraq."

In that essay Jules Crittenden noted that "Iraq has become the central battlefield in the 21st century's Islamic war..."

Indeed it has, and while challenges continue, our sacrifices are being repaid, as President Bush noted today.

The president also acknowledged the continuing protests against the war. It seems that no degree of military and political progress will deter war opponents from their endless calls for unconditional surrender. The war's routinely disparaged as a disaster, precisely when analysts have identified the long-term positive strategic externalities of our deployment.

Walter Russell Mead, writing in the new American Interest, suggests that the military turnaround in Iraq over the last 15 months demonstrates the phenomenal resilence of American power, with far reaching implications:

First, the prestige of the American military could be significantly enhanced, both at home and abroad. For a liberal democracy to carry out a successful counterinsurgency campaign under a media spotlight is difficult under any circumstances. Many critics of the Iraq war effort argued consistently that such a victory was impossible, and that therefore the only possible course was to stage an American withdrawal in the least humiliating and disruptive way possible. Others, at home and abroad, argued that American military power reflected technological superiority and large budgets, but that both the American military and American society lacked the will and the ability to prevail in tough ground combat.
Defeating al-Qaeda and other Sunni insurgents, while persuading both Sunni and Shi‘a militias in Iraq to pursue their goals through non-military channels, would be a substantial and striking victory in the face of this simple-minded conventional thinking. The American military would emerge from Iraq tempered and tested rather than broken, with a demonstrated capability at counterinsurgency in the Middle East. This could end up a significant factor in international affairs, because it could suggest that the approach of countering American military strength by concentrating on asymmetric warfare might not be quite as promising as some had hoped....
When it comes to the Middle East, the one thing we know we won’t see is a peaceful, happy region where American leadership is trusted and popular. The confrontation with Iran remains explosively dangerous....

But victory, however qualified, will help in a region where the United States will continue to have vital interests in play. Some of these consequences have already been felt. There is some significant polling evidence that, despite constant and even growing dislike of the United States, support for suicide bombing and other terror tactics has fallen in the Arab world in recent years. Al-Jazeera footage of bombs going off in Iraqi markets has not inspired a generation to join al-Qaeda; it has filled far more people with loathing and horror at the gruesome consequences of this form of war. The victims are Arabs, not Americans or Israelis. As the Arab world has watched the insurgency in Iraq with unprecedented immediacy, traditional Arab and Islamic teachings against anarchy and rebellion look more sensible than ever.
Defeat for the insurgents will only strengthen this view. Al-Qaeda will be seen, correctly, as having employed unacceptable tactics and imposed unendurable suffering in Iraq, while achieving nothing. This conspicuous and corrosive failure will not only weaken the appeal of jihadi extremists; it will also strengthen the claims of traditional, sensible religious teachers to speak for the core values of Islamic religion and civilization.
It is likely, too, that a perceived American victory in Iraq, however modest, would contribute to a general reconsideration of American power. Before 9/11, many observers in the United States and abroad significantly overestimated America’s true position in the world. Americans particularly tended to exaggerate America’s global influence and popularity. After 9/11, and even more, after the bungled move into Iraq, the floundering failure of the American occupation, and the country’s descent into chaos, world opinion overcorrected. Widely considered a colossus that could not be stopped in 2000, America came to be seen by 2007 as a badly governed, near-bankrupt country in rapid and irreversible decline.
Having overshot in both directions, the world may now move toward a more sustainable and accurate view of American power and its world role. The United States is likely to remain the world’s largest economy and, in both political and military terms, its most important state for some time to come. Rivals and potential rivals all face constraints and obstacles even more daunting. This re-assessment of the American prospect would likely come regardless of developments in Iraq, but should events there continue to move favorably, many will be struck by the resilience of American power.

See also, Reuel Marc Gerecht, "A New Middle East, After All: What George W. Bush Hath Wrought."

Photo Credit: New York Times

Year of Denial: Obama's Contradictory Statements

ABC News reports that Barack Obama remains plagued by a series of contradictory statements on his relationship to Jeremiah Wright, including his repeated denials of any knowledge of his pastor's incendiary anti-Americanism.

Obama's not off the hook. The longer questions of credibility and veracity remain, the less likely his Philadelphia speech will be seen as Kennedyesque:

Buried in his eloquent, highly praised speech on America's racial divide, Sen. Barack Obama contradicted more than a year of denials and spin from him and his staff about his knowledge of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's controversial sermons....

His initial reaction to the initial ABC News broadcast of Rev. Wright's sermons denouncing the U.S. was that he had never heard his pastor of 20 years make any comments that were anti-U.S. until the tape was played on air.

But yesterday, he told a different story.

"Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes," he said in his speech yesterday in Philadelphia.

Obama did not say what he heard that he considered "controversial," and the campaign has yet to answer repeated requests for dates on which the senator attended Rev. Wright's sermons over the last 20 years.

Read the whole thing.

Apparently Obama's also been less the forthcoming on the extent of his relationship to Antoin "Tony" Rezko, his Chicago-area political fixer.

But staying with the denials of Wright's inflammatory hatred, be sure check out the latest from Vinegar and Honey:

Do you think that it really accomplished anything? I don't. I think it will serve only to stir up more bitterness and resentment on both sides, and I doubt that anyone was inspired to work on the issue of the great racial divide in this country....

The fact that he denied ever hearing any of the incendiary comments of Reverend Wright, or any knowledge of his strong anti-white establishment feelings, only made himself look worse. At least, today he finally did acknowledge that he knew of some of it, but still tried to justify it.

There you have it, straight from the heartland.

Also, check my big conservative blog roundup on the controversy, "Obama's Speech."

See more, as well, at Memeorandum.

Iraq Five Years In

Today marks the 5th anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

President Bush gave an address this morning marking the start of the war:

“Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision — and this is a fight America can and must win,” President Bush said, according to a transcript of his address at the Pentagon.

The president hailed the courage of the men and women serving in Iraq and said their effort helps protect America.

“Defeating this enemy in Iraq will make it less likely that we will face this enemy here at home,” he said.

While much of the media coverage today and tonight will lionize the antiwar left - whose members are protesting today in Washington - the focus today should rightly be on those who've fought for American security and Iraqi democracy.

There's a number of first-person collections of war stories around the web today, and these deserve wide circulation. I was moved by the story of Tim McLaughlin, a Marine first lieutenant, whose personal flag went up on the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square, Baghdad, on April 9, 2003 (in the photo above).

McLaughlin shares how he felt after his service in Iraq:

No one has to convince me that there is a difference between the way the world is and the way it should be. I’ll stand for the way the world should be every time. Peace. Human rights. Racial, sexual and religious equality. But when the noise, trouble and hard work get in the way, not everyone makes the same sacrifices. We won’t always get it right, and it’ll never be perfect, but I’m proud of the people I’ve stood with.

See also the entry at Neptunus Lex, "Five Years In":

As for me, five years ago I stood on the bridge of a veteran warship as wave after wave of F-14s and FA-18s, EA-6B Prowlers, E-2 Hawkeyes and S-3 Vikings rattled down the catapults, the thumping of the waterbrakes moving through the ship, the steam from the catapults rising, the afterburners lighting up the night. Heavy laden, wallowing off the deck rather than springing airborne. Worried for them over the beach, wanting desperately to be with them, but assigned other duties. Somebody had to do it....
We left home knowing the importance of the work to come. We trained hard along the way, knowing that the more we sweated, the less we’d bleed. Waited on tenterhooks for months as the diplomatic dance played out. Watched as the temperatures started to rise again, thought about the hundreds of thousands of young men ashore, wearing CBR gear as they waited in the dirt and dust and pondered those things that only infantrymen know when everyone knows it’s coming but it hasn’t happened yet.
We fought hard as hard as we could for weeks, sprinting. And then it was “over,” and we left. Losing two more aircraft on the way home, stupidly. Partied like rock stars in Perth. Ran very low on fuel coming back north, as wild seas made at sea refueling more hazardous than degraded sea keeping. Made it good a few days later south of Indonesia. Picked up Tigers in Pearl. Came home to an exultant country that celebrated us with emails, letters, posters, cheering crowds on the quay and spouting fireboats in the bay. Family on the pier. We came home never doubting that we had done the right thing.
Except it wasn’t over, and we’re still there, at sea and ashore and in the air. And the crowds no longer cheer.

Go on over there and give Neptunus a big thank you.

Show him that some of us still do cheer.

Iraq Pre-2003: The Bipartisan Consensus

Via Ed Driscoll, be sure to watch this YouTube on the bipartisanship surrounding Saddam's Hussein's threat to international security before 2003:

See also Christopher Hitchens, "How Did I Get Iraq Wrong? I Didn't."

The Wright Path? Race, Patriotism, and GOP Election Strategy

The Republican Party has long been known for developing winning electoral coalitions around the issues of race, rights, and taxes. Often associated with the "Southern Strategy," the focus on the volatile topic of race has opened up the GOP to charges of insenstivity to the problems of minorities and the poor.

The question of race in 2008 is even greater than in past years, with the potential nomination of the nation's first African-American as the Democratic Party's standard-bearer. Can the GOP campaign effectively against a candidate who seems to personify a post-racial appeal?

The Politico takes a look at how questions of race and patriotism have been put on the agenda by Barack Obama's Wright controversy:

For months, Republican party officials have watched with increasing trepidation as Barack Obama has shattered fundraising records, packed arena after arena with shrieking fans and pulled in significant Republican and independent votes.

Now, with the emergence of the notorious video portraying Rev. Jeremiah Wright damning the country, criticizing Israel, faulting U.S. policy for the attacks of Sept. 11 and generally lashing out against white America, GOP strategists believe they’ve finally found an antidote to Obamamania.

In their view, the inflammatory sermons by Obama’s pastor offer the party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a powerful motivating force for the conservative base.

In fact, the video trove has convinced some that, after months of praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she arouses, that they may actually have easier prey.

“For the first time, some Republicans are rethinking Hillary as their first choice,” said Alex Castellanos, a veteran media consultant who recently worked for Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Even Obama’s much-lauded Tuesday speech, which detailed his relationship with his church and focused on the issue of racial reconciliation, failed to shake the notion that Republicans had been given a rare political gift.

It's no wonder.

Wright's preachings are repudiated by nearly everyone in the United States.

The GOP rightly has an election issue of legitmate concern to a majority of Americans - people who truly love their country, and who differentiate between our actions as the leading democratic nation state, a nation in the lead in the West's progess on race, rights and political inclusion.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Obama's Non-Transcendentalism

Barack Obama's racially-charged scandal is the most gripping episode so far in an election already bound for the history books as the most fascinating in decades.

Yet one of the most important developments in the campaign to date took place Tuesday in Philadelphia, with Obama's speech on race and religion. For all Obama's oratorical power, the Wall Street Journal characterized the speech as frankly mundane in its non-transcendental implications:

The political tide for Barack Obama was inconceivable as recently as a few months ago, and it may still carry him into the White House. A mere three years out of the state legislature, the Illinois Senator has captured the Democratic imagination with his charisma, his silver tongue, and most of all, his claims to transcend the partisan and racial animosities of the day.
But the suddenness of Mr. Obama's rise allowed him, until recently, to evade the scrutiny that usually attends Presidential campaigns. If nothing else, the uproar over Reverend Jeremiah Wright has changed that. In Philadelphia yesterday, the Senator tried to explain his puzzling 20-year attendance at Reverend Wright's Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, while also using his nearly 5,000-word address to elaborate on the themes that have energized his candidacy. It was an instructive moment, though not always in the way the Senator intended....
Mr. Obama sought to rehabilitate his image by distancing himself from Mr. Wright's race-paranoia. He talked about his own multiracial background - son of a white mother and Kenyan father - and said, "I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible."
Mr. Wright's remarks "expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country," Mr. Obama continued, and are "not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity" - his way of broadening out the discussion to include his political message.
Less uplifting was his attempt to pair Mr. Wright's extremism with Geraldine Ferraro's recent remarks as "the other end" of the spectrum on race. Mr. Wright's sermons are rooted in a racial separatism and black liberation theology that is a distinct minority even among African-Americans. Ms. Ferraro was, at worst, saying that Mr. Obama is helped because many Americans want to vote for someone who is black.
It is also notable that Mr. Obama situated Mr. Wright within what the Senator sees as the continuing black-white conflict and the worst excesses of racial injustice like Jim Crow. He dwelled on a lack of funding for inner-city schools and a general "lack of economic opportunity." But Mr. Obama neglected the massive failures of the government programs that were supposed to address these problems, as well as the culture of dependency they ingrained. A genuine message of racial healing would also have given more credit to the real racial gains in American society over the last 40 years.
The Senator noted that the anger of his pastor "is real; it is powerful," and in fact it is mirrored in "white resentments." He then laid down a litany of American woe: "the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man who has been laid off," the "shuttered mill," those "without health care," the soldiers who have fought in "a war that never should have been authorized and never should've been waged," etc. Thus Mr. Obama's message is we "need unity" because all Americans are victims, racial and otherwise; he even mentioned working for change by "binding our particular grievances."
And the cause of all this human misery? Why, "a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many." Mr. Obama's villains, in other words, are the standard-issue populist straw men of Wall Street and the GOP, and his candidacy is a vessel for liberal policy orthodoxy - raise taxes, "invest" more in social programs, restrict trade, retreat from Iraq.
Needless to say, this is not an agenda rooted in bipartisanship or even one that has captured a national Presidential majority in more than 40 years. It would be unfortunate if Mr. Obama's candidacy were toppled by racial neuroses, and his speech yesterday may have prevented that. But it also revealed the extent to which his ideas are neither new nor transcendent.

See also my earlier post, "Obama's Speech," which includes links to 40 top entries on Obama's address from across the conservative blogosphere.

Obama's Racial Peril

Barack Obama, with his speech today, harnessing the height of his rhetorical power, sought to end his campaign's downward spiral of racial recrimination.

As powerful a speaker as he is, I don't think he closed the deal (see a conservative blog roundup here).

Indeed, as Jim VandeHei and John Harris argue, Obama's address may have unpacked even deeper challenges to his transcendental message:

Barack Obama’s plunge into the race issue in Philadelphia on Tuesday at times sounded more like a sermon than a speech.

But beneath the personal anecdotes and historical allusions, it was a delicately crafted political statement — one that makes clear that Obama understands exactly how much peril he is facing.

Even before the Jeremiah Wright controversy erupted in recent days, voting patterns in several states made clear — for all the glow of Obama’s reputation as a bridge-builder — how uneven his record really is when it comes to transcending deep racial divides.

The Philadelphia speech offered lines calculated to reassure all the groups with which he is most vulnerable.

For working-class whites — whose coolness toward Obama helped tilt Ohio to Hillary Rodham Clinton — Obama spoke with understanding about why they dislike busing and affirmative action. “Like the anger in the black community, these resentments aren’t always shared in polite company,” he said.

For Hispanics, who have sided with Clinton in the vast majority of states this election, he lashed pundits scouring polls for signs of tension between “black and brown” and said the two communities face a common heritage of discrimination and inadequate public services.

Finally, Obama sought to connect with white Jewish voters — potentially one of the rawest nerves of all amid the Wright controversy — denouncing those blacks who see “the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.”

It will take weeks, at least until the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, to know whether all of Obama’s political and cultural base-touching succeeded.

Even before that verdict arrives, the speech counts as a remarkable event — most of all for the specificity with which Obama discussed racial attitudes and animosities that politicians usually prefer to leave unmentioned.

Gallup also examines the staggering hurdles for Obama's post-racial agenda:

Barack Obama's major speech on race in Philadelphia Tuesday is a reminder of the continuing, and highly charged, impact of race in American society and in this presidential campaign.

Obama, confronted with the continuing controversy over statements made by his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, tried to limit the damage by discussing what he called "a misunderstanding that exists between the races." Obama's speech presumably had the objective of shoring up as much white support for his presidential candidacy as possible among Democratic voters, particularly in the large state of Pennsylvania, the location for his speech and a state that holds its Democratic primary on April 22....

While Obama's focus at this point is largely on his attempt to win the Democratic nomination, his viability in the general election (should he win the nomination) will also be affected by white voters' views of his candidacy.

I'll have more on this in forthcoming posts.

Obama's Speech

I'm teaching all day, but I've read Barack Obama's major speech today on race and religion, and I've watched video clips of key excerpts (available on YouTube):

As always, I'm impressed by this man's oratorical power.

Yet for all its brilliance, the speech displayed all the standard Democratic Party talking points of grievance and retreat, on the economy and the war.

But what's most troubling is how miserably Obama failed in divorcing himself from the hatred of Jeremiah Wright's theology at Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama appears woefully ill-advised on the imperative of separating himself from Wright's anti-Americanism, teachings so forcefully expressed this week in the outrageous displays of black liberation radicalism.

Here's Paul Mirengoff at Powerline:

Although Obama's speech is not without its evasions, I consider it a courageous one by usual political standards. He has refused to walk away from Wright's black liberation theology when it might well have been expedient to do so. The rest of us now should have the courage to take Obama at his word and decide whether it is acceptable to elect as president of the United States someone who carries Rev. Wright around as part of him, and who takes his ranting seriously.

That's key. Obama has not repudiated but reaffirmed as part of his being the very cruelty of which Wright preaches, here, for example:

The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and biases that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright ... I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community ... These people are a part of me.

Actually, he could have disowned him, if that's what he truly wanted. He could have shown not just the courage to embrace liberation doctrine, but true stength to renounce that which renounces America.

Note how Kathryn Jean Lopez puts it:

The more I think about this speech, the more I think Obama said: Damn straight, Rev. Wright is angry. That's how I wound up at his church. That's why I stay there. I'm mad too, I just control it better. Now let's get electing me president so we can all feel good.

See all the analysis at Memeorandum.

*********

UPDATE: Checking around the blogosphere, it looks indeed that Obama's controversy's not going to bed:

A Blog For All: "Obama's Hope For Changed Circumstances."

Ace of Spades: "Did I Hear Comments That Might Be Considered Controversial? Yes."

American Princess: "Concentrate On Something Else."

Amy Proctor: "Obama Speech Neglected to Address White Americans."

Atlas Shrugs: "Race Speech: Obama Exploits the Racial Divide."

Astute Bloggers: "Barack the Victim Bill Cosby the Victor."

Blond Sagacity: "Obama Claims Ignorance."

Blue Crab Boulevard: "The Big Speech."

Booker Rising: "Booker Rising on Obama's Speech On Race And Religion."