Sen. Clinton's Management Skills

Now that some changes have been made among the personnel in the Clinton campaign, stories are swirling about a campaign that miscalculated the degree of opposition it would face, failed to establish contingency plans, and stuck with a failing strategy long after its failure became clear.

For example:

It's been said that one benefit of the torturous process presidential candidates must undergo is that it gives voters an extended view of their managerial ability. After all, this line of thinking goes, if a candidate can't organize a national campaign, he or she can't run the federal government.

If that's true, there are four emerging reasons why voters may want to take a second look at Hillary Clinton. So far, in a number of key areas, her campaign is falling short - and she won't solve the problem simply by changing campaign managers, as she did earlier this week. (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/02/clintons_squandered_lead_can_s.html)

Margaret Carlson notes:

Clinton saw the New Hampshire result as her political resurrection, where she finally found her ``voice.'' But if the voice was different, the message was the same. Her Lazarus-like win kept her from looking any further into why she lost so badly in Iowa. It put off any move to change her insular staff and validated her original strategy in which the primaries were a mere formality.

Voters would coronate her partly because she had been first lady, because shewas a Clinton, and because it was her turn after all she had been through. It wasn't as much a matter of competing as it was waiting until Super Tuesday to accept the crown. (http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&refer=columnist_carlson&sid=azceW2G4gToM)

One of the principal concerns about Barack Obama is that he will not be able to lead effectively and that his plans for Iraq represent false hope. It is safe to say that there has been plenty of false hope spread around regarding the Iraq strategy from the start. Remember the claim that, "We will be greeted as liberators?" It was that miscalculation, based on false hope that seems to have kept the Bush administration from making contingency plans in case a more hearty opposition emerged. Failure to plan for contingencies and effective reconstruction are widely regarded as among he more obvious managerial failings of the Bush administration in the Iraq War. They assumed that their cause was unstoppable, and acted without thinking it through. The result was a strategy that miscalculated the degree of opposition it would face, failed to establish contingency plans, and stuck with a failing strategy long after its failure became clear.

The military and tactical side of war will always be the purview of the Generals. No need to fear an inexperienced young president moving troops on a whim. The principal of civilian control of the military is not based on the idea that the president is a military strategist; it is based on the notion that the president has the wisdom, foresight, and humility to think it through. Self-assured and arrogant leaders make their mistakes less by alienating others than by failing to think it through. There is no reason that the Bush administration could not have planned for stiff opposition or implemented a strategy to win the peace. Yet, even after the glaring absence of such plans became obvious, the administration refused to change course, remaining loyal to Donald Rumsfeld even at the expense of the 2006 Congressional Elections.

Reading this account of the recent changes at team Clinton leaves me with the eerie feeling of déjà vu. I realize that a political campaign and a war are vastly different, and while George Bush's poor planning has cost lives, Clinton's poor planning stands only to cost her a chance at the presidency. Nevertheless, a political campaign is a managerial challenge, and while the presidency is much more than just management, Sen. Clinton has grounded her campaign on her particular strengths in that area.

Perhaps the question of voting to authorize the war is ultimately only the tip of the iceberg. Perhaps the management experience that Clinton and her team have brought to the campaign is more reminiscent of the Bush administration than she would hope to admit. If management, foresight, wisdom, and the humility to plan for unanticipated contingencies are skills we should value in a president, is Barack Obama really the more risky choice?

What's to Come?

If Peggy Noonan is correct in this Wall Street Journal editorial, Hillary's new voice won't be all that new. I hope she is wrong. I wonder if Barack Obama's hope can sustain these approaches and stick to the message? I hope so.

And if we are to believe the new voice will be a softer, more conciliatory and more engaging one, how to square that with what is going on at HillaryIs44.com, a Web site that is for all intents and purposes a back door to her war room? There you will see that federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will soon "destroy" Barack Obama in a "scandal" involving an "indicted slumlord" who is Mr. Obama's "friend of 17 years" and with whom Mr. Obama has been involved in "shady deals."

This isn't a new voice, it is the old one, the one we know too well. The item was posted on Thursday, two days after Mrs. Clinton announced her new approach.
Between sobs she is going to try to destroy Mr. Obama. She is going to try to end him. She will pay a price for it--no one likes to see the end of a dream, no one likes a dream killer. But she will pay that price to win, and try to clean up the mess later.
(Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120000928241482363.html)

What's the Difference?

People are now beginning to question Barack Obama's claim to being different. They say he votes the same way, uses the same advisers, and stands for the same ideas. People argue that Obama has accomplished little legislation in the present, bitterly divided Congress. The Clintons even say that Obama is no different for these reasons and follow that claim with accusations that his campaign is a "fairy tale," hoping to make the criticism stick both ways.

The goals that Barack Obama has do not have to be different. Those goals are clear. No one can reasonable argue that the goals he stands for are not clear and unequivocal. For too long, though, a candidate's goals have been lined up as litmus tests to determine whether or not one belongs in either party. That is how ideology works in a politics of partisanship. But partisanship shifts our attention to the goals that divide us and connects all reasonable approaches to those conflicting goals. When all the policy goals are listed, the top goal remains: To advance the political fortunes of the party or the individual.

The Barack Obama difference lies not in the goals he would pursue (health care for all, strong and unwavering national security, powerful education, and job creation) but in the MANNER in which he would pursue them and consequently in the likelihood that he would achieve them.

Critics of Barack Obama must answer one point first. Can you point to significant progress toward these goals that has come from divisiveness, bitterness, and attack?

Why was Hillary Clinton unable to achieve significant expansion of health care availability in 1993? Was it because she was not divisive enough? John Edwards thinks so, but Hillary Clinton doesn't answer that question very well.

Our greatest recent successes in legislating to solve our problems came as a result of the genuine bipartisanship following 9/11. Since that good will has been undone by the Bush administration's aggressively partisan approach, little or nothing of substance has been accomplished.

Cooperation and collaboration may be naive. It may not work, but it is a process worth trying since little progress can be identified by those who defend the divide and stalemate approach of the past 30 years.

Is Karl Rove looking for a new job?

Karl Rove, apparently with time on his hands since his lobotomy as Bush's Brain, has decided to take on Barack Obama and offer Hillary Clinton some free political advice. Testing what is sure to be the main GOP strategy against Obama in the fall, Rove trotted out charges of "lazy," "misstatements," and "saying one thing and doing another."

Karl Rove is getting tough on Barack Obama.

The man behind President Bush's two successful presidential bids, who once offered advice to Obama on how he could defeat Hillary Clinton, is now taking direct aim at him — calling the Illinois senator "lazy" and "given to misstatements and exaggerations."

"Mr. Obama has failed to rise to leadership on a single major issue in the Senate," Rove writes in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. "In the Illinois legislature, he had a habit of ducking major issues, voting 'present' on bills important to many Democratic interest groups, like abortion-rights and gun-control advocates.

And in a rare move, Rove praises Clinton for her "humanizing" moments on the campaign trail, and calls Obama just "as calculating" as the New York Democrat.

"For someone who talks about a new, positive style of politics and pledges to be true to his word, Mr. Obama too often practices the old style of politics, saying one thing and doing another," he said. (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/10/karl-rove-takes-aim-at-obama/)

Of course, Karl, praising Hillary's political genius now previously tried to advise Barack Obama on how to deal with that very "humanizing strategy."

The comments are the latest musings from the man often refereed to as "Bush's brain" on the Democratic race for the White House. In an "open letter" to Obama last month, Rove suggested he "Blow the whistle on Clinton when she tries to become a victim."

"Find a way to gently belittle her whenever she tries to use disagreements among Democrats as an excuse to complain about being picked on," he said then. "The toughest candidate in the field should not be able to complain when others disagree with her. This is not a coronation." (http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/01/10/karl-rove-takes-aim-at-obama/)

Isn't there a Republican candidate who could use Karl's advice?

If you want change, you have to work for it

Once again, we have learned tonight that polls are no more valuable than anyone else's educated guess. If you pay attention and talk to people, you are as likely to predict the outcome of a race as any vaunted pollster. They will all seize glory when they get it "right," but there are always days like today in New Hampshire. In every election, there are more polls that are wrong than those that are right. Those who are right more often, however, gain credibility and currency that helps their predictions to translate into self-fulfilling prophecies often enough that they can make a living with prognostication little better than those predicting the imminent Patriots Super Bowl victory.

The Des Moines Register poll was the closest in Iowa, and I have heard it frequently celebrated since last Thursday. But the day of the caucuses, it was widely regarded as an anomaly when compared with the other polls. Today, 10-15 point margins for Obama in New Hapshire were predicted, so that the final 2% margin of defeat (something incomprehensibly fantastic from Obama's perspective just 1 week ago), is now reported as a crushing defeat for him. Is it possible the polls were wrong? Not if you listen to the pundits. The polls were right, and the people changed...maybe, but it is at least equally likely that polls are like broken clocks...right twice a day.

The campaign for this country is underway, and it is coming soon to your neighborhood. Who wins will be up to you and to me. Discuss, deliberate, talk with others, contribute, campaign, and vote. Leave prognostication to Chris Berman. Don't ever stay home because your candidate is supposed to win easily, or you will continue allowing others to make decisions for you.

Be the change you want to see. Get out of the armchair and into the game, because, unlike the Super Bowl, in this game there are no players but us.

Ford as DNC Chair?

Tennessee Politics blog (http://www.tnpoliticsblog.com/) is reporting that James Carville is leading a group of DNC insiders aiming to dethrone Howard Dean and replace him with Harold Ford. I like Harold Ford, and I think he has an incredible political future, but this news is not about Ford or Dean, it is about the struggle for control of the Democratic party. There is an on-going split between insiders associated with Carville and the Clintons who believe that the secret to winning national elections is the focused, polarizing get out the vote strategy that Karl Rove has championed to such success over the past three election cycles. Dean, on the other hand, publicly battles with insiders as he tries to create a national party (one that wins votes all over the nation).

I am interested in opinions about this question. The insider approach will take Ford from Tennessee. It will take every other new Democrat with ideas and leave Tennessee as a permanent Red state. I MIGHT be able to be persuaded by this strategy if it had any empirical success. The simple fact is that national elections have not been won by democrats since the collapse of the New Deal Coalition during the 1960's. The two apparent exceptions (and the ones that convince the insiders of the wisdom of the strategy) are Carter and the 2 Clinton elections. To read these as evidence that focusing on the blue state base and generating intensity and turnout through polarization works for Democrats is to seriously misread those elections.

Carter: Beat Ford 50% to 48% nationally and claimed electoral success on the strength of a total sweep of the South (including Texas, a solidly democratic state at that time). Carter won in large part because of Ford's pardon of Nixon, but he still did not win a single state west of the Mississippi (except Texas).

Clinton: Beat Bush when Ross Perot bled some of the economic conservatives out of Bush's camp and Clinton capitalized on an economic downturn that crippled Bush who was a victim of his own success. Winning the first Gulf War in 30 days, Bush also presided over the end of the Cold War, so the complete absence of any apparent security concerns left Bush with nothing in the face of the economic campaign. Clinton focused on "the economy, stupid." 1992 and 1996 did convince the Clintonites that simply picking off one or two southern states would be enough to win as long as the basic coalition of big states could be maintained.

The erosion of focus on Texas completed its transition to a Red state, and the razor-thin margins that the strategy was based on have failed democrats spectacularly in 2000 and 2004. With no margin for error, the GOP can easily gather its red state votes without serious challenge and fight hard in the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Since the Democratic strategy requires winning most of those states to carry the electoral college, the GOP is at a tremendous advantage. The vaunted GOTV machine of Karl Rove focuses in those states, and the Democrats lose close one after close one.

Whether or not the "national party strategy" of Howard Dean's is the right one, only time will tell. I guess there is the risk that reaching out to the West and South will alienate the big state liberals, but that kind of deference to the New England liberals was the strategy that produced Mondale, Ferraro, and Dukakis, Bentsen. Those good candidates not electable nationally.

Sound familiar? That's the leading fear about a Hillary nomination. Let's give Dean's national strategy at least one national election cycle before with subvert it from within. Let's get Harold Ford elected in Tennessee (readers of this blog can start organizing to make that difference now), and let's nominate a presidential candidate who can restore the national appeal of the Democratic Party.

2008

GOP:
McCain
Frist
Giuliani
Allen (serious questions at best after yesterday)

Dems:
Clinton
Obama
Richardson
Bayh
Edwards
Gore

Get your punditry in here. Who does Tennessee support? Can Frist win the nomination? Can Obama carry Tennessee?