UPDATE: The Times now admits the story of “hiding” funds was bogus. Better late than the day after the New Hampshire primary, I guess.
I don’t support one candidate in the Republican primary yet. I supported McCain in 2000 but he has made some choices that make him a lot harder to support this time. I think campaign finance reform, as defined in the bill he sponsored with Senator Finegold, was dumb and has led to more corruption rather than less. McCain seems to respond most vigorously to personal affronts. He was caught up in the Keating Scandal as a freshman Senator. This was a cynical ploy to make the scandal bipartisan. Keating was a constituent of McCain’s. That was not true of the others, except Deconcini. He was only peripherally involved but it tarred his reputation and he has been a ferocious opponent of political skulduggery ever since. However, the legislaton he sponsored has made matters worse with the growth of “527” groups, so-called because that is the section of the IRS code that approves them. He also was angered when tobacco company executives lied to him committee in hearings some years ago. He decided to punish them for that and, I submit, legislation based on personal pique is usually bad legislation. Smoking causes illness but so does eating. Once the truth is available to the public about smoking and it has been for 50 years, government’s role should stop. McCain doesn’t see that.
Rudy is a better general election candidate as far as I can see. He is also the best equipped to accomplish what needs to be done. David Frum has a couple of reader contributions about Rudy that I think deserve emphasis. Here is one.
Reader Michael Ladenson writes:Here’s why I support Giuliani, and it has nothing to do with his response to September 11: Rudy Giuliani eliminated street crime in New York City. The conventional wisdom said it couldn’t be done, and the reasons are suspiciously similar to what the same bloviators say about the war against Islamofascism today: 1. There actually isn’t a problem; if you think it’s a problem, you’re a racist. 2. Okay, there is a problem, but it’s because of white racism; to try to eradicate the problem using barbaric force without solving the root causes is useless.3. Okay, force can in some sense solve the problem, but unless you bend over backwards to accommodate the rights and liberties of your assailants, you’re creating a climate of fear – essentially a dictatorship.Giuliani may be a rank egotist. He may have treated his own family like a monster (instead of treating them with respect, like President – well, you know who). I don’t particularly care. Where it counted, he showed the toughness and wisdom to ignore the conventional wisdom; to disregard the epithets hurled at such failed law-and-order mayors as Ed Koch and Frank Rizzo; and to do exactly what he said he would do. It is the most breathtaking political achievement of anyone in the race.For the objections outlined above are essentially a form of western self-hatred, and they have come tumbling out to cede the fight to our enemies. Giuliani’s triumph over such nonsense in New York is enough qualification for me.
That sounds about right to me. Also, the recent miniscandal about police protection for his wife when she was still his girlfriend, is bogus. The lefty bloggers had fun with it for a few days but it is a non-scandal. Frum has another reader comment that I want to emphasize.
Reader Troy Doby writes: How did we win the Cold War? That is the essential question, it seems to me, to understanding both how we can win (and also lose) the War on Terrorism.We won the Cold War because the Russians were maneuvered into a position that they couldn’t borrow any more money from Western banks to feed their urban population with imported wheat. Bread was extremely important in the Soviet Union (Xleb i mir was Lenin’s slogan that helped him with the soldiers). What precipitated this was the price of their one valuable export commodity, oil, wasn’t as valuable as it had been. At the same time, they were fighting an expensive, non-terminal war in which they were bleeding.We are engaged in a contest in which the price we pay for an important commodity, oil, keeps increasing, while we are bleeding in a theater of the war that may have some solution, but in another theater (Afghanistan again) that is likely to get hotter. The price we and our allies have to pay for this commodity helps few of our allies (Norway is the only beneficiary) while strengthening adversaries or potential adversaries (Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, . . . ) Petroleum has really only one purpose — to fuel transportation. Yes, it is the feedstock for plastics and other industries, but that is almost residual compared to fuel for transportation. So we need to find a way out of using petroleum for transportation. This is where the debate should begin. The problem is, nobody is talking about this. Nobody is there. That’s why I could not care less about the coming election. While all the Republicans are talking about who’s a bigger believer in Jesus, I yawn. Jesus isn’t going to get us out of our predicament.
I think the talk about Jesus is about over but the reality of energy policy is pretty well stated. Romney has done pretty well, has less baggage than Rudy and may well be electable. I wonder if he has the stones to get done what needs to be done. Bush has done well in Iraq, a crucial front, but has been weaker on domestic issues. Energy policy (and I don’t mean Global Warming) will be a challenge that Bush has, so far, not met.
Good post, Dr. K. I am continually amazed—well, disheartened—by the people who swarm all over Guiliani’s personal life, while at the same time saying that personal attacks are evil when it is a candidate they like. Some of those people were crowing about this very loudly, and I hope that they now will admit that they were wrong (more accurately, the news reports that they accepted so gleefully were wrong).
Once again, a differential yardstick is being used. So it ever is, in politics.
Me, I want someone tough to deal with the islamofascists. They think we are weak, and looking at folks like Pelosi and Reid, who can blame them? They *know* better with Guiliani. Or McCain, for that matter.
I like what Dennis Miller said recently: he wants to elect someone that the islamofascists are afraid of.
True, we need people to “fix” the problems in government (like earmarks), but that is a long term fight. The world is a scary place, and the Jimmy Carter approach just plain doesn’t work.
Just my opinion.
I’m wondering that if we HAD to elect a Democrat, which one should we hope for? I’m thinking Obama, who is naive, but would be tough in foreign policy, and might crack the whip on some things in Washington, such as earmarks.
I think Hillary would be tough on foreign policy, but we would see WAY MORE of the same in DC. Edwards and the others scare me the most: they would negotiate surrender around the world so they could come home and pump as much power into the Washington Bureaucracy and lobbying scene as they could get away with.
DB, I enjoy your posts…but what makes you think that Obama would be tough in foreign policy? I’m happy to learn about positive things about the guy; so far I see him as VERY inexperienced.
I’m with you on Edwards. A total tool. And Hillary is scary, is the vibe I get.
Just my opinions.
>what makes you think that Obama would be tough in foreign policy?
He has talked tough a couple of times, and I think he would be worried about being too soft, so he would be tough and cautious to compensate. So mainly just my gut feeling. Not much to go on.
It gets me to thinking that since FDR/Truman, no actual or proposed Democrat President has been good at foreign policy. And I’m not a big fan of FDR: we had to deal with that era’s troublesome notion of dividing Germany/Vietnam/Korea (still dealing with Korea).
I have a blog acquaintance who raves about Joe Biden in general, and foreign policy in particular, “the smartest guy in the room”, etc., etc. I can’t share his enthusiasm.
DB, I think all we really have to go on is our gut. The media slants everything one way or another. Who knows what the truth is, anymore? And frankly, the older we get, the better our BS detectors.
Biden is indeed smart, but he has made some awful choices in his life, apart from those hair plugs. That is the saddest thing about life: choices that you make early on can impact your life decades later.
Whoever wins in November will inherit a not very safe world. I have this strange view of the Presidency. I think that, when you get elected President, you get this manila envelope full of things that NONE of us ever get to know. Bad, awful things. And as the new President, those problems are now yours. You don’t get to talk about them. You don’t get to complain. You have to deal with them, good and bad, right and wrong, and just stomach the criticism from people who don’t know a damned thing about those problems.
Very different than the campaign trail or bumper sticker sound bites.
All the partisan crap is just that: crap. And pundits and talking heads and yes, even folks like us, get to malign and criticize without knowing what is really going on. It must be maddening.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
Thus, I hope whoever wins is strong, and can rise above rhetoric.
Eric, I like your manila envelope theme.
One thing that makes the Presidency tougher and tougher is that there is more and more human activity on this planet, and the ensuing problems get funneled to the responsible leaders.
I was doing a bit of research on the movie “I Am Legend”. I found this bit about a previous adaptation, 1971’s “Omega Man”:
–The production company wanted a set that looked like an abandoned metropolitan area, but it was too costly to build. The producer drove through downtown L.A. one weekend and discovered there were no shoppers, so the majority of the film’s exterior was shot on location during the weekends.–
I can’t imagine finding a suitably abandoned part of LA today.
The presidency inherits a permanent government which trends left and is difficult to move no matter what the president’s agenda. Reagan had modest success but he understood that personnel equals policy. Political appointments allow the president to get some control of the bureaucracy. Bush had two major problems. One, and it is never mentioned, the Democrats held up most of his appointments through most of the spring and even summer of 2001. I think that contributed to the intelligence failure of 9/11. That was a consequence of the tied election. The second problem is that Bush, for reasons that I cannot understand, elected to keep most of the Clinton people in the foreign policy shop at State and CIA. It may be because he didn’t care that much about foreign policy. Remember his early pronouncements about avoiding “nation building.” Timmerman’s book spells out the magnitude of Bush’s failure to get control of the bureaucracy, especially at State and CIA. It has dogged his presidency. Hopefully, Rudy knows better.
Is there a way to recieve a review of this?