A sequel to my Sunday post: While trolling through my notes on the Rick Santorum-Bob Casey NBC debate, and checking the transcript, I find even more grist for discussion.
1. Incumbent Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Santorum is fortunate that his Democratic challenger is either (a) slow off the mark, (b) insufficiently acquainted with foreign policy basics, or (c) exceedingly cautious.
Santorum repeatedly voiced his eagerness to shift the focus away from the war on Iraq by invoking a new enemy: “At the heart of this war is Iran. Iran is the, is, is the problem here. Iran is the one that’s causing most of the problems in, in Iraq....We need to do something about stopping the Iranians from being the central destabilizer of the Middle East...I think the focus should not be Iraq, should be Iran.”
Casey might have scored some points if he had countered Santorum’s argument with this factual observation: If Iran is more of a threat today, it’s because the Bush administration made it so -- because the U.S. invasion eliminated Iran’s top enemy in the region, and replaced Saddam, an avowed foe of Shiite Islamist parties, with a tottering government that is dominated...by Shiite Islamist parties friendly to Iran.
Aside from the fact that host Tim Russert was dominating many of the exchanges, it’s possible that Casey passed up this opportunity only because, as a cautious centrist, he didn’t want to sound like he was opposing the “mission” on principle, since he had just said that “I’m not ready to abandon the mission.”
2. Casey did make decent political use of Donald Rumsfeld. Most Americans now believe, at the very least, that Iraq has been fraught with multiple failures of execution. Even war supporters like Joe Lieberman and John McCain have long called for Pentagon chief Rumsfeld’s resignation. Casey goaded Santorum into defending the guy (“I think Secretary Rumsfeld has done a fine job”), but, given the current polls in Pennsylvania, Santorum’s view is out of step with sentiment in vote-rich moderate Republican suburbia.
On the other hand, Casey was vague on what he would do to improve the situation on the ground in Iraq; he kept talking about the need for “clear benchmarks” as a measurement of progress, but didn’t offer any criteria, much less anything that would suggest creative new thinking.
3. The public’s anti-incumbent mood is driven in part by a desire to hold the incumbents accountable. Santorum probably didn’t help himself by taking a stand against accountability: “I don’t play Monday morning quarterback. That’s not, that’s not what you do here in Washington, D.C.”
4. On the other hand, Santorum willingly played “Monday morning quarterback” on whether the Bush administration has been sufficiently militant. Santorum, eager to show that he has at rare moments differed with the White House, did so by running to Bush’s right: “A big problem I have with this administration is it hasn’t been tough enough on Iran...It should not have negotiated with the Iranians on their nuclear program.” But can Santorum win the hearts of moderate swing voters by claiming that he is more hawkish than Bush?
5. Casey didn’t exactly shine when Santorum brought up the administration’s intelligence surveillance programs. This is a good issue for Republicans, because at least half of all Americans seem willing to entertain civil liberties curbs, in the interests of national security.
Casey said last February that he was worried about civil liberties, remarking in an interview that even if the Bush programs are not illegal, “I think people get very concerned about tipping the balance in favor of a policy that impacts how Americans can communicate.” But in the NBC debate, Casey said that “we should keep the programs and keep the wiretaps...” He seemed to be poised to argue that a compromise could strike the proper balance, but didn’t bother to pursue the point.
6. But Casey got in a good jab on the issue of slapping sanctions on Iran (which both he and Santorum support). Here’s what Casey said (in his meandering way): “The number one, or the most prominent, at least, opponent of sanctions, critic of, Iran’s sanctions when he was in the private sector at least, his name is Dick Cheney. It’s not some, some European. Dick Cheney opposed sanctions when he was at the Halliburton company...Rick, do you, are you going to sit here today and not denounce him for continually opposing sanctions, and are you going to give the money back that he raised for you?”
This question was a three-fer: It put Santorum on the spot, reminding voters of his close ties to the administration and to the unpopular veep; it potentially reminded voters of the veep’s ties to a company that has played a key role in our cost overruns abroad; and it potentially positioned Casey as being tougher on Iran than the uber-tough number two (whose company has been doing a lot of business with Iran, most recently concerning natural gas).
Santorum’s answer, “I’m not going to denounce the vice president of the United States,” didn’t trump the question.
7. In terms of pure theatre, Santorum swamped Casey on the issue of legislative pay raises in Harrisburg. I doubt that most viewers knew anything about this dispute -- during the summer of ‘05, in the dead of night, state lawmakers used a loophole to dramatically raise their pay -- which probably helped Santorum to paint Casey, albeit briefly, as a complicit incumbent. Casey is the state treasurer who had subsequently signed those higher checks.
Santorum: “You didn’t do anything when you could’ve stopped it....Why didn’t you stop it, Bob?...Why didn’t you try to stop it? Why didn’t you try to stop it? You could’ve stopped it!”
And what Casey said was, “It’s called following the law, following the law...Following the law...Following the law...Following the law, Rick...”
Casey, again a tad slow on the uptake, missed the chance to say, for example, that the pay raise scheme was basically quarterbacked by the governing Republicans in Harrisburg (the GOP controls the legislature), and that 11 state Republican incumbents were thrown out of office during the May primaries.
Casey did play a role, since he was in the governing chain of command, but, politically, it appears that the voters most incensed about the pay raise are the fiscal conservative Republicans who already vented in May. In those vote-rich Philadelphia suburbs, will swing-voting moderates care more about that than about Iraq?
8. Many national Democrats have long lamented the fact that Ed Rendell tends to say things that hurt the party. Witness this gubernatorial comment (which Russert brought up during the debate), as it appeared this summer in the conservative Weekly Standard magazine: “Rick Santorum has proven that he gets the job done. Time and time again he has come through...I will eventually campaign with Casey. But, no, you won’t see me attack Santorum. I work well with him...When it comes to Pennsylvania, Santorum delivers.”
Asked about this Sunday, Casey said that “as a governor, you’ve got to work with both parties, and I’m glad that he does.” That response didn’t begin to address the reality that Rendell -- who heads the party ticket in November -- clearly wouldn’t mourn if Casey was beaten. Indeed, Santorum’s best asset might be his track record in bringing home the bacon, and the enhanced clout he would have if re-elected.
Given the current political mood, that issue might be all he has.
About Me
- Dick Polman
- Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. This online column is cited by The Washington Post as one of the top five mainstream political blogs in the country, and is touted by former "Hardball" TV producer Howard Mortman as "the immediately must-read political blog." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns. In his 22 years at the Inquirer, he has also been a foreign correspondent based in London; a baseball writer covering the Philadelphia Phillies; a general-assignment writer in the feature section; and a longtime Sunday magazine contributor. In the early '80s, he wrote three metro columns a week for the Hartford Courant. A graduate of George Washington University, today Dick is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence."