Hillary bosses around the boys

Hillary Clinton triumphed in last night's Democratic presidential debate - big time, as Dick Cheney might put it.

She abandoned her longstanding pose of regal detachment; instead, she waded into the fray, took on her assailants, and basically took them apart. She didn't go after them on character, she did it on the issues. She fought cleanly, and it put her chief rivals back on their heels.

Referring to Barack Obama, she said at the start of the debate: "He talks a lot about stepping up and taking responsibility and taking strong positions. But when it came time to step up and decide whether or not he would support universal health care coverage, he chose not to do that. His plan would leave 15 million Americans out. That's about the population of Nevada, Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire. I have a universal health care plan that covers everyone. I've been fighting this battle against the special interests for more than 15 years, and I am proud to fight this battle....You know, the most important thing here is to level with the American people. Senator Obama's health care plan does not cover everyone."

Obama disputed her, of course, but the fact is that a number of health experts agree with Hillary on this. The point is, within the frame of the debate, she had quickly signaled her intention to counterattack, using policy to mock the criticisms that are usually flung her way (such as Obama's charge that she doesn't level with the American people).

She went after John Edwards, in similar fashion: "I don't mind taking hits on my record on issues, but when somebody starts throwing mud, at least we can hope that it's both accurate and not right out of the Republican playbook. Because what I believe is important is that we put forth what we stand for....Senator Edwards raised health care again -- when Senator Edwards ran (for president) in 2004, he wasn't for universal health care. I'm glad he is now."

OK, the "mud" line might have been a tad strong - my idea of "mud" is the stuff that lands in my email box, from right-wingers who paint her as a lesbian murderer - but she was accurate about Edwards changing his stance on health care. She was also greatly aided, shortly thereafter, by CNN questioner John Roberts, who suggested to Edwards that it was unfair to assail Hillary for flip-flopping on issues, when in fact he has done the same. As Roberts noted, "You were for the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository before you were against it. You were for the Iraq war before you were against it." (This debate took place in Nevada, where the big local issue is whether nuclear wastes should be stored inside that mountain. Edwards once said yes, now he says no.)

Perhaps it's sheer coincidence, but, after taking these hits from Hillary and Roberts, Edwards was fairly tame for the rest of the debate. Much later, when the questioners virtually invited him to attack Hillary for a recent hawkish vote on Iran, he demurred. Perhaps he didn't want to get booed again. Shortly before the Iran issue resurfaced, he had taken a drive-by swipe at Hillary, basically calling her a corporate Democrat, and the audience loudly voiced its disapproval. He was reduced to pleading, "No, wait a minute..." Clearly, the Democrats in the seats didn't want to see their candidates fight among themselves; that, by definition, helped the frontrunner.

Obama learned the same lesson late in the debate. While he and Hillary were fencing over the future of Social Security, and whether the cap on the Social Security tax should be raised, Obama cut loose with a line that sounded like it had been cooked up in advance. After Hillary voiced reluctance on raising the cap, Obama said, "You know, this is the kind of thing that I would expect from Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani," and the crowd didn't go for that, either. Hearing the boos, he was forced to plead, "no, no, no, this is important."

By that point in the debate, however, Obama had already ceded some valuable ground to Hillary. Early on, he was asked to explain his stance on the issue that had tripped her up at the Philadelphia debate two weeks ago: whether illegal immigrants should be given drivers' licenses. She has since honed her stance down to one word - "No" - whereas Obama, who always zaps her for not talking straight, proceeded last night to talk in circles.

At first he said, "When I was a state senator in Illinois, I voted to require that illegal aliens get trained, get a license, get insurance to protect public safety. That was my intention." But moments later he said, "I am not proposing that that's what we do. What I'm saying is that we can't" - now the audience was laughing - "No, no, no, no. Look, I have already said, I support the notion that we have to deal with public safety and that driver's licenses at the same level can make that happen. But what I also know is that if we keep on getting distracted by this problem, then we are not solving it."

Say, what? Hillary won that round simply by standing aside.

She even managed to have it both ways on the "gender" factor. When asked whether she has been portraying herself as a girl being unfairly beaten up by the boys, she said: "I'm not playing, as some people say, the gender card here in Las Vegas. I'm just trying to play the winning card. And I understand, very well, that people are not attacking me because I'm a woman; they're attacking me because I'm ahead." (She may not have been playing the gender card "here in Las Vegas," but she dealt it often, pre-Vegas. Anyway, the audience loved the "because I'm ahead" line.)

But then, seizing on an invitation from CNN questioner Campbell Brown, she proceeded to fly the banner of sisterhood: "Well, it is clear, I think, from women's experiences that from time to time, there may be some impediments. (Laughter from the appreciate women in the hall.) And it has been my goal over the course of my lifetime to be part of this great movement of progress that includes all of us, but has particularly been significant to me as a woman. And to be able to aim toward the highest, hardest glass ceiling is history-making. Now, I'm not running because I'm a woman. I'm running because I think I'm the best qualified and experienced person to hit the ground running, but it's humbling. (Applause from the women in the hall.) It's been inspiring. And I have to tell you, as I travel around the country, you know, fathers drive hours to bring their daughters to my events. And so many women in their 90s wait to shake my hand. And they say something like: I'm 95 years old, I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House."

None of her rivals dented her after that. The two booing incidents occurred after that. I got the sense that Obama and Edwards are back in their old rut: They can't rise in the Democratic polls without attacking Hillary and creating doubt about her credentials, yet Democratic audiences are not receptive to seeing her under attack. And now that she is defending herself - rather than acting as if she was cruising toward her convention coronation - the audiences might support her even more.

As time ran out, a college student playfully inquired, "This is a fun question for you. Do you prefer diamonds or pearls?" And Hillary replied, "Now, I know I'm sometimes accused of not being able to make a choice. I want both."

Hey, it's that gender card again! But thanks to her performance last night, finishing with that dash of self deprecation, her candidacy is probably stronger this morning. And that's probably the gift she wanted most.

-------

There's news on the conservative "family values" hypocrisy front. No, this isn't about Larry Craig, the anti-gay senator who got busted in the Minneapolis bathroom. And no, this isn't about Richard Curtis, the anti-gay legislator in Washington state who was caught wearing women's clothing in a gay porn store. And no, this isn't about
Glenn Murphy Jr., the (now departed) GOP chairman in Clark County, Indiana, and (now departed) chair of the Young Republican National Federation, who was recently being investigated for criminal deviate conduct, after a young associate told police that the GOP chairman had sought to perform an X-rated act upon his person.

This entry is actually about the other "family values" conservative, Florida state legislator Bob Allen, who, notwithstanding his consistent anti-gay voting record, was caught at a highway rest stop in July while offering to perform a sex act on a male cop for $20.

Yesterday, a county judge put Allen on six-months probation, ordered him to take an HIV-awareness course, and told him to stay away from the rest stop. My favorite line in today's Florida newspaper story: "Allen's future in politics remains uncertain." Apparently the Florida Republicans have yet to decide whether the chasm between Allen's voting record and his personal behavior warrants a call for his ouster.

And this is the party that claims to hold the moral high ground?

Lost pages from the Hillary script

Now that the control freaks in the Hillary Clinton campaign have been busted for planting questions at the candidate's "town hall" meetings, and have vowed to never ever do it again, perhaps a new era of spontaneity is at hand. If the Hillary people really do junk their scripts, here are the YouTube moments that you'll probably never get to see:

1. "I'm honored that you are calling on me, Senator Clinton, and picking me out of the crowd at random. My question is about your husband, who was such a wonderful president and inspiration to so many Americans. Some members of the vast right-wing conspiracy seem to insist that he has flaws - and that even you do, as well. (Spontaneous laughter.) Do you think that these conspirators are willfully delusional, or simply motivated by their envy of your demonstrable success, ever since your middle-class childhood, in working your heart out for middle-class Americans at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue?"

2. "Yes, hi, and welcome to our community. I want to ask about your 2002 vote on Iraq, when you specifically authorized President Bush to pursue a course of peace rather than war. Some of your pile-on male Democratic rivals claim that you did something 'political,' like maybe you were just thinking of some future election. As if. Isn't it true that your decision to vote Yes was actually a laudable profile in courage, the product of countless hours of wise reflection, and a testament to your seasoned leadership and experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue?"

3. "OhmyGod, like, thanks so much for letting me ask you something. Some media pile-on-ers, and I won't mention Tim Russert by name, seem to believe that your husband's decision to safeguard your First Lady papers, and keep them away from the public 'til after the election, is, like, a bad thing or something, like we might actually care what's in them. Like, aren't these pile-on-ers mostly men who would rather sit around watching football and Fox News instead of standing up and fighting each and every day for Americans who work hard and play by the rules?"

4. "Yes, oh wow, this is great, thanks for calling on me. As a woman, I am heartened by your courageous insistence that there's no need to talk in specifics about the future of the Social Security program. Thank you for using your experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to come up with the idea of forming a brand-new bipartisan commission to study the issue further. One of my gym friends this morning - she was on the Stairmaster right next to me - she said, 'Hey, how about that wonderful bipartisan commission idea?' So I know it's catching on. My question is, aren't your Democratic rivals, by clinging to their specific reform proposals, and by refusing to see the wisdom of bipartisan commissions, demonstrating that their cognitive skills are sorely limited by their male gender?"

5. "First of all, Hillary, thank you for giving us hope again. I say that because of the inspiring way you have handled the issue of giving drivers licenses to illegal immigrants. How rare it is to find a candidate who can be so consistent - seemingly saying yes to the concept one week, then seemingly saying no to the concept another week, but, in truth, demonstrating the kind of brilliant intellectual flexibility that we have yearned for these past seven years. So my question is about the people out there who claim you're a calculating flip-flopper. Besides the fact they never worked at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, why is it true that they all have the same morals as the Swift Boaters?"

6. "I do have a question for you, Mrs. Clinton, but since I can't seem to remember it, I'll have to read it to you. I forgot my glasses this morning, so please bear with me. It says right here: 'Dear senior citizen. When the senator begins to turn in your direction, raise right hand precisely six inches above right shoulder. Keep hand vertical, at 90-degree angle to the ceiling, fingers close together, do not bend wrist, nod head once, keep face in friendly mode' -- WAIT, WHERE ARE YOU FELLOWS TAKING ME? LET ME GO, I STILL HAVE A QUESTION FOR MRS. CLINTON, IT SAYS RIGHT HERE THAT......."

"Bernie, you're a good man"

The Rudy Giuliani campaign would dearly love to see the Bernie Kerik story go away. After all, it's tougher to make a case for Rudy's alleged post-9/11 leadership prowess if people are focusing on the fact that Rudy promoted his former chauffeur all the way to city police commissioner and to a brief nomination as federal Homeland Security director - all the while ignoring evidence that his underqualified pal was (among many other things) mixed up with a Jersey "waste management" company suspected of having ties to the mob.

Late last week, meanwhile, Kerik was indicted by the feds on 16 counts of tax evasion (allegedly hiding half a million bucks worth of income) and other crimes (including taking bribes while in public office). Kerik has pleaded not guilty to all charges. But Kerik and his indictment remain in the news, because yesterday one of his former lovers, the deposed book publisher Judith Regan, filed a lawsuit against her former employer, HarperCollins, and its parent company, the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Corporation, alleging that the media conglomerate had urged her to lie to federal sleuths about her recent affair with Kerik in order to protect the prospective potential candidacy of Rudy Giuliani.

Rudy skeptics will love that allegation - Murdoch's News Corporation also owns Fox News, which is headed by Roger Ailes, a longtime Rudy buddy who ran Rudy's first mayoral campaign - but...I digress. Kerik has the potential to stay in the news simply because of one largely-overlooked episode in his checkered career:

His failed, truncated stint as a top American official in post-invasion Iraq.

In May 2003, President Bush asked Kerik to journey to the newly liberated land, and train the Iraqi police force. (The indictment alleges that Kerik filed false statements about his suspicious personal finances while applying for that job.) Anyway, Kerik proved to be a disaster. He's a virtual metaphor for the Bush administration's well-documented incompetence in Iraq.

He is Rudy's gift to the Bush track record - which doesn't reflect too well on Rudy, who has been trying to sell voters on the notion that he has the best credentials and leadership skills to fight the war on terror.

Thumbing through my copy of George Packer's fine work on the American occupation, entitled The Assassin's Gate, I found only one passage about Kerik. That's because he was so inconsequential. American officials in Iraq were anticipating that Kerik would announce his national plan for training the Iraqi police, but, Packer writes, "instead, Kerik spent his time in Baghdad going on raids with South African mercenaries while his house in New Jersey underwent renovation. He went home after just three months, leaving almost nothing behind."

But Kerik gets close scrutiny in Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran's 2006 book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City. It's not a pretty picture. Kerik was barely off the plane, in that spring of 2003, when he told a State Department official that "the situation (in Iraq) is probably not as bad as people think it is."

The author recounts: "Kerik wasn't a details guy...Kerik's first order of business, less than a week after he arrived, was to give a slew of interviews saying the situation was improving. He told the Associated Press that security in Baghdad 'is not as bad as I thought. Are bad things going on? Yes. But is it out of control? No. Is it getting better? Yes.' He went on NBC's Today show to pronounce the situation 'better than I expected.'"

Kerik was so busy going out on late-night raids (which was not part of his job) that he couldn't function in daylight (when he was supposed to do his job). As the author writes, "the all nighters meant Kerik wasn't around to supervise the Interior Ministry during the day. He was sleeping."

More from the book: "Kerik held only two staff meetings while in Iraq, one when he arrived and the other when he was being shadowed by a New York Times reporter...Despite his White House connections, Kerik did not secure funding for the desperately needed police advisers...'He was the wrong guy at the wrong time,' (an American official) said later. 'Bernie didn't have the skills.'"

Bernie didn't have the skills...That kind of assessment sounds familiar. Think of Michael Brown, who didn't have the skills to run FEMA because he'd previously been a lawyer for the International Arabian Horse Association. Or George Deutsch, a kid with no science background who was handed the job of supervising NASA's top scientists, despite the fact that his skills consisted of working as an intern on the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign.

We're all familiar with the Bush credo of favoring loyalty over competence. It's worth noting that Rudy shares that credo, with Bernie as Exhibit A.

By the way, there's a fitting epilogue to the Bernie adventure in Iraq. Upon his return to America after only three months, having done little to train anybody, he was warmly welcomed at the White House, on Oct. 3, 2003, with these words of presidential praise: "He showed up (in Iraq) at times of chaos and confusion. Because of his leadership, his knowledge, and his experience, he was able to stand up a police force in Baghdad in a very quick period of time...Bernie went there and made a big difference. And for that our nation is very grateful...We're making great progress...Bernie, you're a good man."

Or, as Bush might just as easily have put it, "Heckuva job, Bernie."

-------

I see that Mike Huckabee continues to rise in Iowa. The latest CBS News-New York Times poll has the underdog Republican candidate nipping at Mitt Romney's heels, just 50 days before the GOP caucuses. He's up to 21 percent of likely caucus-goers; Romney sits at 27.

No wonder Rudy's spinners, in their Monday conference call with reporters, were talking up Huckabee ("He's been putting together, I think, a reasonably good campaign, with the resources they have and the start they had. They've really, kind of, put things together in the last weeks, I think, very well"). They'd love it if Huckabee and Romney split the religious conservative vote.

But, as I indicated recently, a Huckabee boomlet might merely prompt the press to look more closely at Huckabee, who is more than merely a folksy, silver-tongued, guitar-playing ex-governor from Arkansas. A conservative commentator has already warned that if political reporters "only did a little homework, they would discover a guy with a thin skin, a nasty vindictive streak, and a long history of imbroglios about questionable ethics."

Can Rudy spin losses into a win?

With a mere 51 days remaining before the Iowa caucuses, we have entered a new phase in the election spin cycle.

During this sprint to Jan. 3, various candidates will try to finesse expectations about the impending horserace. Those who seem destined to do poorly in the earliest key contests - Iowa and New Hampshire - will seek to persuade the media, far in advance of the actual voting, that any stumbles out of the starting gate are no big deal. Indeed, regardless of the realities on the ground, the candidate's spinners will invoke variations of this time-honored cliche: "We feel very good about where we are."

And so it went yesterday with the spinners for Rudy Giuliani, during a conference call with reporters. They basically signaled that Rudy was going to lose both Iowa and New Hampshire to Mitt Romney - a somewhat startling admission, given the fact that no Republican during the presidential primary era has won the nomination without first winning at least one of those early states - but they hastened to add that, even if Rudy does lose to Romney, it would be no big deal anyway.

And, of course, we had these lines: "We feel extraordinarily good about where we are...we feel very good about where we are positioned right now...I think we feel good about where we're at in Iowa...We feel like we're in a pretty good place. We're comfortable about where we're at....So right now, I feel very good about where we are..."

Can a national frontrunner (Rudy leads the GOP field in the latest NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, with 33 percent of likely primary voters) win the nomination even while losing the traditional gatekeeper states? The essence of the Rudy argument, from campaign manager Michael DuHaime, is that "there are multiple paths to victory," that Rudy can win the nomination by racking up delegates in the big states that vote on Jan. 29 (Florida) and Feb. 5 (notably New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois), even if he whiffs in the early-January voting in Iowa and New Hampshire.

DuHaime basically argued that because Rudy is so strong in these big states, and that because these big states are holding their contests so early in the calendar for the first time, there's little chance that a rival will get much momentum from winning Iowa and New Hampshire. He said that Rudy's advantage in these big states is "momentum-proof."

In his words, "We certainly recognize the ability for a candidate or candidates to get momentum or to be hurt by the early states. But we also recognize that this (primary season) is not the same as, say, 2000 or 1996 or '92 or '88 or '80."

We'll soon see whether this theory has any merit. It might not. The Rudy people are assuming that the enormous free publicity benefits of winning Iowa and New Hampshire will have no impact on the GOP voters in subsequent contests. Romney, who has outspent and out-organized Rudy in both those early states, also has the financial resources (personal and otherwise) to compete strongly with Rudy in the big states. Is it credible to assume that Rudy will remain "momentum-proof" if he scores lower than Romney and Mike Huckabee in Iowa (a very real possibility) and scores lower than Romney, John McCain, and Ron Paul in New Hampshire (also a real possibility)?

Two new polls show Romney widening his lead in New Hampshire. Not so coincidentally yesterday, the Rudy team's spin to lower the bar for Rudy in New Hampshire was truly creative. DuHaime said, "I mean, this is Governor Romney's backyard, and people should recognize that...If you live in New Hampshire, you know who Governor Romney is and you've seen him as (Massachusetts) governor, you've seen his campaigns for governor (in Boston TV ads)...So he should have an institutional advantage there." And as for Rudy, "this is his first political campaign in New Hampshire."

But are we really supposed to believe that, in terms of media exposure, Romney's four years as Massachusetts governor trump Rudy's eight years as "America's mayor" in the city that suffered 9/11?

And if we leave the Northeast and journey to the South, we see other potential flaws in Rudy's spin. Another key early GOP contest, on Jan. 19, is South Carolina. Rudy is by no means a lock on winning there, either. He is competing there with Romney (who is reportedly picking up religious conservative support), and Fred Thompson (a southern home boy who yesterday won the endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee, the largest anti-abortion group, which has grassroots clout in states such as South Carolina). Also, the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll reports that the South is Rudy's weakest region. Is it plausible to think that Florida on Jan. 29 would rescue Rudy if he first loses Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina?

Actually, it might be worse than that. It's possible that the Michigan Republicans will vote on Jan. 15, and that too could be rough for Rudy. The Romney family has ties to Michigan - Mitt's dad was governor there - and John McCain has a track record in Michigan, having won the 2000 GOP primary. So I'll amend the question: Is it plausible that big-state GOP voters will still see Rudy as the most viable candidate if he starts the primary season with an 0-4 record? As GOP strategist Scott Reed, who is not affiliated with any candidate, reportedly remarked the other day, the Rudy team "can't just have a Florida strategy and lose four straight races before then."

One other caveat that potentially undercuts the Rudy spin: He has largely coasted thus far, benefiting from his universal name ID, but he will be increasingly attacked by his rivals as voting time draws near. For instance, we'll see whether Republican voters remain besotted by Rudy's alleged 9/11 leadership credentials, when they learn more about how Rudy turned a blind eye to his police chief's mob affiliations and championed the guy to become director of Homeland Security...the same guy who was tapped by President Bush to train the Iraqi police in 2003, only to return as a failure within three months.

I'll look at the latter episode in detail tomorrow. Although I assume that the Rudy team's spin would be, "We're comfortable where we are right now with Bernie Kerik."

Norman Mailer, political blogger emeritus

I had not somehow divined that literary lion Norman Mailer was near death when, several weeks ago, I bought a 50th-anniversary edition of his World War II novel, The Naked and the Dead. I had only intended to reacquaint myself with a book that I had devoured as a college student, and to read the new introduction, penned by the elderly Mailer, offering a wry assessment of his auspicious debut. Now that he’s gone, of course, his words seem to carry extra weight. “Life,” he writes in the introduction, “is like a gladiator’s arena for the soul” - a line that evokes his trademark pugilism and feels true besides.

Yesterday, every obituary and sidebar "appraisal" invoked The Naked and the Dead, deservedly so. But few mentioned that Mailer had written a seminal piece of political journalism for Esquire magazine, way back in November 1960 - an article stuffed with edgy and prophetic commentary about politics and the postwar celebrity culture. It was entitled “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” and, for many aspiring scribes, reading the piece (in the words of the late New York journalist Jack Newfield) “was like the first time I heard Bob Dylan and Charlie Parker.”

Mailer’s piece has resonated down the decades. He bypassed the he-said/she-said “objectivity” paradigm and basically signaled that it was OK for a reporter to exercise the intellect rather than simply collect quotes, that it was OK to have a point of view (albeit well argued) at the expense of artificial balance. And at a time when much political reporting was two-dimensional, he offered sight and sound. His piece was as long as a novella, but I prefer to think of it as an extended post on the world’s first blog.

From “Superman,” here’s his description of John F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee, arriving at his hotel in Los Angeles, for the 1960 Democratic convention:

“He had the deep orange-brown suntan of a ski instructor, and when he smiled at the crowd his teeth were amazingly white and clearly visible at a distance of fifty yards. For one moment he saluted Pershing Square, and Pershing Square saluted him back, the prince and the beggars of glamour staring at one another across a city street….All the while the band kept playing the campaign tunes, sashaying circus music, and one had a moment of clarity, intense as a déjà vu, for the scene which had taken place had been glimpsed before in a dozen musical comedies; it was the scene where the hero, the matinee idol, the movie star comes to the palace to claim the princess, or what is the same, and more to our soil, the football hero, the campus king, arrives at the dean's home surrounded by a court of open-singing students to plead with the dean for his daughter's kiss and permission to put on the big musical that night. And suddenly I saw the convention, it came into focus for me…finally it was simple: the Democrats were going to nominate a man who, no matter how serious his political dedication might be, was indisputably and willy-nilly going to be seen as a great box-office actor, and the consequences of that were staggering and not at all easy to calculate.”

“The prince and the beggars of glamour”…Mailer was virtually the first to write about the influence of celebrity marketing in American postwar politics, and about how the Kennedy candidacy was built not on its policy stances (what Mailer dismissively called “housing projects of fact and issue”), but on its mastery of image. As Mailer saw it, Kennedy was being marketed as a dream hero for a citizenry that dreams of heroes. He explained this with a pop history riff:

“America was also the country in which the dynamic myth of the Renaissance—that every man was potentially extraordinary—knew its most passionate persistence. Simply, America was the land where people still believed in heroes: George Washington; Billy the Kid; Lincoln, Jefferson; Mark Twain, Jack London, Hemingway; Joe Louis, Dempsey, Gentleman Jim; America believed in athletes, rum-runners, aviators; even lovers, by the time Valentino died. It was a country which had grown by the leap of one hero past another…And when the West was filled, the expansion turned inward, became part of an agitated, overexcited, superheated dream life. The film studios threw up their searchlights as the frontier was finally sealed, and the romantic possibilities of the old conquest of land turned into a vertical myth, trapped within the skull, of a new kind of heroic life, each choosing his own archetype of a neo-renaissance man, be it Barrymore, Cagney, Flynn, Bogart, Brando or Sinatra, but it was almost as if there were no peace unless one could fight well, kill well (if always with honor), love well and love many, be cool, be daring, be dashing, be wild, be wily, be resourceful, be a brave gun.

“And this myth, that each of us was born to be free, to wander, to have adventure and to grow on the waves of the violent, the perfumed, and the unexpected, had a force which could not be tamed…The myth would not die.”

Mailer was ambivalent about Kennedy, whom he also described as “handsome as a prince in the unstated aristocracy of the American dream.” After watching Kennedy duel with the press and press the flesh, he decided that “there was an elusive detachment to everything he did…you were aware all the time that the role was one thing and the man another…the actor seemed a touch too aloof…one had little sense of whether to value this elusiveness, to be beware of it.”

More importantly, Mailer pondered whether the hunger for a celebrity president, for a leader invested with the glamorous trappings of heroism, might eventually hamper those who held the office. As he put it, “One could pause: it might be more difficult to be a President than it ever had before. Nothing less than greatness would do.”

I’ll willingly stipulate that hefty chunks of “Superman” are overwritten and pretentious, that Mailer sometimes strays into the thickets of his own verbiage and emerges with cuts and bruises, that he himself was a celebrity thirsting for attention and probably authored this piece with the expectation of gaining more. But he would have produced far less of value if he had merely followed conventional journalistic practices. Instead, he employed all his active senses and gave us indelible impressions (of Los Angeles itself, “one has the feeling it was built by television sets giving orders to men”), along with sharp character sketches, vivid visuals, and prescient analysis. He challenged journalists to think outside the box, long before Tom Wolfe got the credit.

His style and approach are tough to replicate. They are also easy to abuse. And I also acknowledge that political news consumers will always need the wire services, and similar outlets where the facts are served up straight. But Mailer, still early in his career, set a new standard for observation, for the strenuous exercise of the intellect, and something he said in 1974 still rings true today: “Journalism is bondage, unless you can see yourself as a private eye inquiring into the mysteries of a new phenomenon.”

Spoken like our first honorary blogger. Rest in peace.

Straight talk, bad behavior, reality check

At week’s end, let’s bestow a few awards:

Spiciest Straight Talk...Joe Biden. When he was asked last Sunday whether he would like to be considered as Democratic running mate on a ticket headed by Hillary Clinton, he dispensed with the usual variations of evasion (“I haven’t thought about it” or “I’m focused on getting out my own message,” or “There are larger issues in this campaign”). Instead, he opted for candor mode.

No frickin way, he said. Even more startling was his willingness to say why he wouldn't want the job:

"I love Bill Clinton, but can you imagine being vice president? (Bill) is such a dominant and powerful and positive force that I think the question is if you're going to stay in public life, do you want to be a contributor...I'm not looking for a ceremonial post."

Translation: Joe Biden has no desire to play second fiddle to the First Spouse.

Politicians rarely talk this brazenly, especially about a former president. But it so happens that Biden may well be right. Al Gore discovered, when he was veep to Bill, that he had to constantly compete with the First Lady for attention, access, and resources. Getting caught between the Clintons is not necessarily a dream situation, especially for somebody with Biden's expansive personality - which is why, if Hillary does become the nominee, it's probably unlikely she'd pick him anyway.

Scuzziest Campaign Behavior...Ernie Fletcher and his surrogates. That’s not the name of a ‘60s AM radio rock band. That’s the Republican governor of Kentucky, who was decimated last Tuesday night in a landslide re-election defeat. But on his way out the door, he practiced the politics of desperation, GOP-style.

He couldn't run on his record, because the Kentucky electorate already knew he was corrupt. (He was indicted while in office, after trying to fill state jobs with his political cronies, in violation of the state's merit-based hiring laws - a scheme that the grand jury called "a widespread and coordinated plan.")

Since he couldn't run on his record, he tried to run on God. But that didn't work, either. (On the eve of election day, he ordered that the Ten Commandments be displayed in the State Capitol.)

So since he couldn't run on his record, and he couldn't run on God, he went to the last option. He decided to run against gays.

His running mate, lieutenant governor candidate Robbie Rudolph, assailed the Democratic candidates (gubernatorial hopeful Steve Beshear and running mate Daniel Mongiardo) as "a couple of San Francisco treats." This was because Beshear and Mongiardo had won the endorsement of a group that advocates equal treatment for gays.

Meanwhile, singer Pat Boone, working for Fletcher, recorded a phone message that reached tens of thousands of Kentuckyians; he told them that the Democrats wanted Kentucky "to be another San Francisco." That was actually Boone's second robocall. The first one told voters that Democrat Beshear would use the governor's job to work for "every homosexual cause."

Then came the mysterious robocall that purported to be from a gay group, praising Beshear as a champion of "the homosexual lobby." The gay group denied authorship, and its denial is credible, because gays never refer to themselves as "the homosexual lobby." That's how conservatives refer to them. Anyway, nobody this week stepped forward to claim authorship of that robocall.

Even in defeat, the Fletcher folks played innocent about everything. A spokesman explained that the line about "San Francisco treats" was "not in any way an allegation of their being homosexuals." Yeah, maybe Fletcher's running mate was merely referring to Rice-a-Roni.

Samuel Johnson, the 18th-century British man of letters, once said that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel." But for desperate 21st-century Republicans, the last refuge is apparently gay-baiting.

Biggest Reality Check...from New Jersey's voters, who decisively rejected a referendum on stem-cell research. The state's reigning Democrats figured it was a slam-dunk that voters would OK this proposal to borrow $450 million for scientific research. Brad Pitt was for it, Nancy Reagan was for it, and the polls always show that most Americans favor stem-cell research. Yet the voters said no, by a margin of 53 to 47 percent.

Democrats generally view stem-cell research as one of their best wedge issues, a way to rally their base and divide Republicans by pulling moderates to their side. And the issue appeared to work for them last November in Missouri, where a Republican senator was kicked out of office. So what happened in Jersey? Was it just that the stem-cell advocates got lazy?

The bottom line was, Jersey voters are ticked off about the state's bleak financial picture (the government is $30 billion in debt). They were in no mood to essentially give the Democrats any more money, because they clearly don't trust the Democrats to spend it well.

This is vivid proof that the Democrats' apple pie issue is more fragile than it seems. The Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life, which polls on the issue, found 57 percent nationwide support two years ago, and only 51 percent support this past summer. Perhaps the benefits of government-financed stem-cell research need to be explained better (as Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine is now saying), and perhaps that can boost the numbers. But this referendum demonstrates that the issue is not necessarily strong enough to trump the passions of an angry local electorate.

And, as experience has long shown, when New Jersey voters get angry about money, no issue or politician is safe.

-------

More radio this morning. I'm talking national politics on Philadelphia NPR, along with Philadelphia Inquirer foreign affairs columnist Trudy Rubin, hosted by Marty Moss-Coane. For interested Friday slackers, the listening links are here.

Rudy and McCain, macho together

In the long-running testosterone contest better known as the '08 Republican presidential race, it's worth checking in on Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, each of whom is endeavoring, at the expense of the other, to scale new heights of machismo.

Rudy essentially says: I support torture, and not only that, I tortured Mafia tough guys in New York, and that makes me a tough guy too.

And McCain essentially says: If that guy thinks he tortured Mafia tough guys, it proves he doesn't know jack about torture, whereas I was really tortured and he wasn't, which makes me tougher than him, and means I can lead the military and he can't.

And Rudy essentially says: I don't know why anybody would object to sleep deprivation as a form of torture, because I'm sleep deprived as a candidate, so what's the big deal?

And McCain essentially says: That's a mockery and a sham and he should apologize to all insulted American solidiers who have been truly tortured, as opposed to this guy who has never even been a soldier, and therefore is not tough.

This has been going on for a number of days now, and it's symptomatic of a changing dynamic within the GOP race. John McCain is apparently back from the dead after his recent organizational implosion; he has made gains in two new national polls (at Fred Thompson's expense), and while he may never regain full political health, he is sufficiently ambulatory to poach on Rudy in the early primaries.

With Mitt Romney looking strong in Iowa and New Hampshire, Rudy dearly wants to score as a respectable runner-up in both locales on the eve of the big-state contests. But McCain is complicating Rudy's plans, particularly in New Hampshire, where the war hero peaked during the 2000 race.

Hence the macho jousting, some of which I find amusing. Giuliani is a guy who enjoyed multiple draft deferments during the Vietnam war - one author has quipped that he received one deferment for each year that McCain was stuck in captivity - and he has ever set foot in Iraq, nor has he visited Guantanamo. As for supposedly torturing Mafia guys, it appears that his vigilance did not extend to his close buddy and police commissioner, Bernard Kerik, who was mobbed up for years right under Rudy's nose, and who now faces possible indictment.

As for McCain's POW history, he needs to invoke it with great frequency only because he has so few weapons in his arsenal anymore. After pandering for months to the religious right, and feeling little love in return, and after being stiffed by the GOP base because of his support for path-to-citizenship immigration reform, and after alienating many independents by going to Iraq and wearing rose-colored glasses, MCain's war hero status is all he has left - particularly as a potential trump card against Rudy.

So which tough guy scores heaviest on the macho/torture scale? They may need to call in Jack Bauer to referee.

A whole hour on Fred

Today I joined an hour-long NPR discussion of Fred Thompson's prospects. If you're really anxious to spend an entire hour pondering Fred Thompson, you can soon find the audio here. "On Point," which originates in Boston, also signed up several allegedly sage observers besides me, most notably John Geer of Vanderbilt University.

Pat and Rudy, perfect together

What better way to honor the old adage, about how politics makes strange bedfellows, than to ponder this morning's marriage of Pat Robertson and Rudy Giuliani?

You heard right: The founder of the Christian Coalition, an inveterate foe of gays, abortion, and sinful living, has decided to endorse the guy who has defended gays, defended abortion, and squired three wives. Yes, the longtime religious right leader who once warned on TV that a Florida gay pride parade would trigger earthquakes and tornadoes ("I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you") has decided to endorse the guy who has repeatedly marched in Manhattan gay pride parades.

And yes, the defender of the faith, who once intimated on his radio show that 9/11 was God's way of punishing America for its sins ("We have insulted God at the highest levels of our government, and then we say, 'why does this happen?' Why it's happening is, God almighty is lifting his protection from us"), has opted to support the guy who presided over the culturally diverse city that was hit on 9/11.

But, in some respects, the Robertson endorsement makes perfect sense. He and Giuliani are war-on-terror hawks who see America as engaged in an apocalyptic struggle with radical Islamists; indeed, many Christian conservatives believe that this us-versus-them paradigm trumps any disagreements over the social issues. Robertson and Giuliani also bond on the importance of Israel.

There's also another important factor: Robertson has long been known as one of the more pragmatic Christian right leaders, someone who focuses on candidate electability even at the expense of prioritizing the movement's pet issues. This endorsement appears to reflect his conclusion that Giuliani, whatever his flaws, is more likely than this GOP rivals to win the general election.

The son of a congressman, Robertson has long had an instinct for the compromises of mainstream politics. He once told National Public Radio that "in terms of (making gains through) politics, it's incremental. You give a little bit and a little bit more...Politics is the give and take of a vast nation, and anybody who is absolute in their view of politics just doesn't know how the game is played."

I saw this instinct first-hand back in 2000, when Robertson was backing George W. Bush. Five weeks before the election, the Food and Drug Administrated ruled that the abortion pill could be legally marketed nationwide. Some Christian conservatives wanted Bush, an abortion foe, to loudly denounce the ruling. But Robertson didn't utter a peep about the pill, and he was pleased when Bush barely said a word. I interviewed Robertson during this episode, and asked why he had stayed silent about such a major moral issue. He explained that most Americans supported the abortion pill; therefore, he didn't want to talk about an issue that might imperil Bush's chances of winning: "If Bush gets 'off message' - and this issue would take him way off message - he'd be talking about something which, frankly, the vast majority of people don't think is a big deal...I'd just like to get (him) elected."

The question here is, can Pat Robertson help Giuliani get elected? Notwithstanding his status as a pillar of the religious right dating back several decades, Robertson is not exactly universally renowned within the movement. Many are uncomfortable with his frequent invocations of a wrathful God (who, in Robertson's view, not only triggered 9/11, but also may have prompted Israeli leader Ariel Sharon's fatal illness).

Michael Cromartie, director of an evangelical studies project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told NPR last year: "I don't know a religious conservative leader - Protestant, Catholic or Jewish - who has not run out of patience with Mr. Robertson's comments. It is really dangerous when religious leaders come out and try to tell us exactly what God is up to. This is inappropriate theologically, as a Christian leader."

In other words, the Robertson endorsement might not mean much to the grassroots Christian conservatives in the key early primary state of South Carolina, where Giuliani is locked in a struggle with Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. Indeed, he has plenty of competition in the endorsement game. Bob Jones III, chancellor of the Christian fundamentalist Bob Jones University, has signed up with Romney (as has Paul Weyrich, a founder of Moral Majority, one of the first groups in the movement); meanwhile, Sam Brownback, the ex-candidate and friend of the religious right, has just endorsed John McCain.

The failure to coalesce around one candidate demonstrates the unusual fluidity of the Republican race. One can argue that Robertson's endorsement trumps the others, simply on the basis of his fame and prominence, but the Robertson baggage may weigh heavily in the longer run.

If Rudy wins the nomination, here's something that independent swing voters might want to know: Does the candidate agree with his Christian conservative patron's view that Islam is "a bloody, brutal type of religion," and that America must be prepared to wage "a holy war between Islam and Christianity?"

Playing the victim, just like the boys do

With respect to the burning question of whether Hillary Clinton has been playing the "gender card" since her wobbly debate performance last Tuesday, I offer these observations (borrowing the rhetorical flourishes of Donald Rumsfeld):

Do I think that she's trying to play the victim, depicting herself as a girl who's being unfairly beaten up by the boys? Oh my, yes.

Do I think that her claim of victimhood is justified? Goodness gracious, no.

But do I understand her political reasons for playing the gender card? Yes.

It's indisputable that Hillary and her campaign team went into damage control mode after the Tuesday debate in Philadelphia, and sought to shift the focus away from her evasive and confusing answers by claiming instead that the boys on stage had ganged up on her in sexist fashion.

Her chief strategist, Mark Penn, reportedly told supporters in a Wednesday conference call that the Democratic campaign had become "this six-on-one to try to bring her down." That same day, Gerald McEntee, president of AFSCME, the prto-Hillary public service union, complained that the Philadelphia debate was "six guys against Hillary." Meanwhile, unnamed Clinton advisers told the Associated Press that the campaign had long planned to play the gender card, as a general strategy, in order to deflect attacks by accusing her male rivals of boorish behavior. Then Hillary went to Wellesley, her alma mater, and played the gender card herself, referring to her solitary status inside "the all-boys club of presidential politics."

Hillary shifted gears on Sunday in Iowa, claiming this time that she was not playing the gender card - "I don't think they piled on me the other night because I'm a woman. I think they piled on me because I'm winning" - but that argument (the correct one, by the way) was promptly contradicted by one of Hillary's most prominent supporters, 1984 vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro...who told The New York Times, in the Monday edition, that the boys had been "sexist." Or, more specifically, "it's OK in this country to be sexist."

This was my favorite Ferraro quote: "We can’t let them do this in a presidential race. They say we’re playing the gender card. We are not. We are not. We have got to stand up. It’s discrimination against her as a candidate because she is a woman.” First she claims that Hillary's campaign is not playing the gender card; then, in the next breath, she complains about discrimination on the basis of gender.

I'm not quite clear how all this whining about allegedly unfair treatment squares with the Hillary campaign's depiction of the candidate as a "strong woman" - it seems they want to have it both ways - although I can see why they are taking this tack. It's probably smart politics.

By all accounts, 54 percent of the Democratic primary voters are expected to be women, particularly blue-collar working women (Hillary's strongest base of support) who may often feel oppressed by guys in the workplace. Hillary wants to ensure a big turnout from those women. Simply put, she's playing the gender card because she wants to win. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, quoted yesterday by abcnews.com, recognized the strategy: "I think the campaign is trying to (reach) people who didn't even watch the debate, to say, 'Oh, they were really rude,' or something like that, and that has some salience. You know, every vote counts."

A politician can be right on the politics and wrong on the facts, however. And this claim that Hillary is being picked on because of her gender is preposterous. Kate Michelman, the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, a feminist herself (as well as a John Edwards supporter), got it right in a blog post over the weekend: "At one minute, (Hillary is) the strong woman ready to lead; the next, she's the woman under attack, disingenuously playing the victim card as a means of trying to avoid giving honest, direct answers to legitimate questions."

Actually, Hillary seems to have much in common with members of the all-boys club. Prominent males have been notorious for playing the victim. Lyndon Johnson played the Texas card, depicting himself as a country boy under seige from the smart academic elitists whom he called "the Harvards." Richard Nixon felt he was being victimized by the eastern establishment, and by one group in particular (from the White House tapes: "the Jews! left-wing! stay away!"). Bill Clinton whined about his press coverage and complained that he was being victimized by a "vast right-wing conspiracy" (his wife coined that one).

In other words, Hillary is acting just like lots of guy politicians who find themselves in a fix. Acting aggrieved, and playing for sympathy, is standard stuff; the gender card is merely the latest incarnation. It might not be particularly noble or justified, but, as Donald Rumsfeld might say to Democratic primary voters, you go to battle with the candidate you have, not with the candidate you might want or wish to have.

-------

On the other hand, what does it say about the '08 Republican presidential field, when the guy who sets the party record for Most Money Raised in 24 Hours turns out to be...Ron Paul?

Yes, the antiwar libertarian long-shot candidate raised $4.2 million yesterday, topping any 24-hour hauls by Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and the rest of the pro-war field. I emphasize the Iraq war here, because it's clear that Paul has a market for his views within the GOP base. As reported in the latest ABC News-Washington Post poll, 35 percent of Republicans now believe that the war was not worth fighting, and virtually the same percentage favors troop withdrawals.

Obviously, that's not nearly enough to propel Paul to the nomination, but I would not rule out the possibility that Paul could spring a surprise somewhere along the way, perhaps in contrarian New Hampshire.

-------

When I saw this story today, I first wanted to ensure that I was not reading a transcript from "Weekend Update" on Saturday Night Live. And, yes, the story is indeed for real:

John Kerry wants everybody to know that if he runs for president again in the future, he's really gonna fire back at those Swift Boaters next time.

He's starting to sound like Brando, playing the ex-boxer who missed his shot at the big time in On the Waterfront: "I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody..."

Fred's blasphemies, Bush's fantasies

It’s hard to believe that Fred Thompson was once ballyhooed as the ’08 conservative savior who would galvanize the GOP’s Christian conservatives. Those summer days seem like eons ago, because every time this guy opines on an issue near and dear to the religious right, he probably loses another congregation.

A week ago, for instance, Thompson declared that the GOP Congress had no business intruding in the Terri Schiavo case back in 2005 - a stance that is deemed anathema by social and religious conservatives, who believe that President Bush and the reigning Republicans were correct when they endeavored to dictate their view of morality to a grieving Florida family.

Thompson has also refused to endorse a U.S. constitutional amendment banning gat marriage – another staple of the religious right agenda – because he happens to believe (it sounds so quaint) that true conservatism requires respect for state’s rights. That’s the doctrine of federalism. As Thompson explained yesterday on Meet the Press, during his first appearance on the show as a presidential candidate, “(A)t the end of the day, if a state legislator and a governor decide that (gay marriage) is what they want to do, yes, they should have the freedom to do what Fred Thompson thinks is a very bad idea.”

But perhaps the clincher was his lengthy explanation yesterday about why he opposes the official Republican position of abortion.

For more than a generation, the GOP platform has articulated support for a U.S. constitutional amendment – better known as a Human Life Amendment – that would impose a blanket ban on the practice; as the plank puts it, “We say the unborn child had a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.” But when Tim Russert asked yesterday whether Thompson was on board, the candidate twice replied, “No.”

It’s that darn federalism doctrine again. Here’s Fred: “I think people ought to be free at state and local levels to make decisions that even Fred Thompson disagrees with. That’s what freedom is all about. And I think the diversity we have among the states, the system of federalism we have where power is divided between the state and the federal government serves is very, very well.” (Why do these politicians constantly refer to themselves in the third person?)

Well, that kind of answer just won’t do, because the party’s social and religious conservatives don’t endorse that concept of freedom. They believe in Conservatism 2.0, the updated model, whereby the federal government in Washington shall be free to dictate what people at the local level can or cannot do in their private lives. They’re fans of top-down morality, whereas Thompson was talking yesterday about bottom-up morality - allowing the locals to decide on the definitions of right and wrong.

In fact, from the perspective of the average religious conservative, the longer Thompson talked, the more blasphemous he sounded. He’s not even wild about the idea of the states enacting restrictions on abortion – not even to ban the practice for minors:

“People ask me hypothetically, you know, ‘OK, it goes back to the states. Somebody comes up with a bill, and they say we’re going to outlaw this, that or the other.’ And my response was, I do not think it is a wise thing to criminalize young girls and perhaps their parents as aiders and abettors, or perhaps their family physician. And that’s what you’re talking about…You can’t have a law that cuts off an age group or something like that, which potentially would take young, young girls in extreme situations and say, basically, ‘we’re going to put them in jail to do that.’ I just don’t think that that’s the right thing to do. It cannot change the way I feel about it morally, but legally and practically, I’ve got to recognize that fact. It is a dilemma that I’m not totally comfortable with, but that’s the best I can do in resolving it in my own mind.”

Indeed, after hearing Thompson declare yesterday that he didn’t believe in using the power of government to criminalize sinners, Christian Broadcasting Network commentator David Brody wondered, “Is this too much federalism, to the point of alienating social conservatives?”

To which I say...Ya think?

On the other hand, maybe he mollified some of them with his Iraq talk. There is still strong support for the war among social and religious conservatives (although not as much as previously), and Thompson might have pushed their buttons by toeing the company line. Check out these phrases:

“There’ve been a lot of good things happening there…I think that we’re making substantial progress…(The surge) is giving us an opportunity to succeed…things are turning…this is a front in a much larger war…we ought to stay on the course we’re on…”

Does that sound like anybody we know? With the same propensity for quoting military statistics, while saying nothing about the dearth of political reconciliation in Baghdad – which was why the surge was launched in the first place? This is Thompson’s dilemma, one he shares with his rivals: whoever does manage to mollify the religious/social conservative base, and win the nomination, must then compete in the general election. And parroting President Bush on Iraq, as Thompson did yesterday, will be bad salesmanship.

-------

Speaking of Iraq and the death of political reconciliation...

The Orwellian Ministry of Truth – excuse me, the Bush White House - tried to pull off a neat trick last Thursday night, by making it appear that an ABC News journalist had filed a puff piece extolling the war. It was simple, really. The fact-challenged apparatchiks simply scissored all the parts of the report they didn’t like. The result was an ABC dispatch that mirrored their fantasies.

The National Security Council puts out something called “The White House Iraq Update,” and emails it to government officials, congressional staffers, radio and TV talk show types, journalists and various foreign policy mavens. Tapped for inclusion, the other night, was a transcript from Jonathan Karl’s status report on the war. Here’s what made the cut.

CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS: "At the Pentagon today, military officials gave one of the most upbeat assessments of the security situation in Iraq that we have heard since the opening months of the war. Jonathan Karl is at the Pentagon tonight. Jon?"

JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: "Charlie, nobody over here is anywhere near ready to declare victory. But the military statistics tell an unmistakable story. Violence in Iraq is down. And down considerably. Baghdad's marketplaces are slowly coming back to life, as violent attacks in Iraq have fallen to less than half of what they were a year ago. Until recently, the trends had been deadly and consistent, violence steadily increasing to an all-time high in June. Since then, however, attacks have fallen four straight months -- in every category."

LT. GEN. RAY ODIERNO: "What I'm confident about, is the progress we're making I think is real."

KARL: "Roadside bombs fell in October to an average of 20 a day. Still high, but the lowest level since October 2004. Iraqi civilian deaths have fallen to a third of where they were a year ago. And after the deadliest summer ever for US forces in Iraq, US combat deaths fell to 29 last month, the lowest level in more than 3 years."

MICHAEL O'HANLON, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION: "The fact that we're seeing a durable trend over half a year time period tells us something real is going on. It doesn't mean, however, that it's guaranteed to last."

But, as Karl himself now points out, the following passages were apparently deemed unfit for White House inclusion.

O'HANLON: “... and it doesn't answer the questions about political progress.”

KARL: “In fact, there's been almost no political progress on the national level, and U.S. officials know military gains won't mean much if the Iraqi government doesn't get its act together, which is one reason the Pentagon doesn't even want to use the word ‘winning.’”

(Question to Defense Secretary Robert Gates): “You're not ready to say we're winning, that the surge is working – "

ROBERT GATES: “I think that those end up being loaded words. I think we have been very successful. We need to continue being successful.”

KARL: “Today, Defense Secretary Gates said that the reduction in violence would not have been possible without the surge of 30,000 additional troops into Iraq, but, Charlie, those troops are going home in the coming months, raising the question of whether the violence will go up when they leave.”

When ABC noticed the White House excisions, it lodged an official complaint. Caught in the act, the White House promised to send out the whole transcript. But the episode speaks volumes. It is sufficiently regrettable when an administration repeatedly defies factual reality and forfeits its credibility. It’s even worse when an administration feels compelled to twist a journalist’s work for the purposes of propaganda.

Bush's weakness in the war on terror

With so much attention being lavished these days on the perceived flaws and foibles of the ’08 presidential candidates, it’s easy to overlook the reigning master of disaster – until such moments when he reminds us why he still wears the crown.

That’s precisely what George W. Bush did yesterday, when he spoke at a conservative think tank (naturally), and uncorked one of his rhetorical whoppers, the kind that has a landslide majority of Americans counting down the days to his departure.

In remarks to a rapt crowd at the Heritage Foundation, he essentially argued that if the Democratic Senate doesn’t confirm Michael Mukasey for attorney general, it will mean that the Democrats are weak in the war on terror. (Those last eight words worked for Bush in the elections of 2002 and 2004, and apparently he still thinks they pack a punch, despite the fact that he was soundly repudiated in the election of 2006. But I digress.)

In the midst of suggesting yesterday that Democrats are terrorist-coddlers, he came out with this: “Some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden…”

He was basically arguing that the Democrats don’t take Osama bin Laden seriously, whereas he, as our vigilant protector-in-chief, does take Osama bin Laden seriously.

But wait a minute – I seem to recall that Bush, in past disquisitions about the war on terror, told us that things were going so swimmingly that we didn’t need to take Osama bin Laden seriously. Yep, that’s what the man said, in all kinds of ways:

“I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority...I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban. But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became - we shoved him out more and more on the margins...Deep in my heart I know the man's on the run...I just don't spend much time on it, really, to be honest with you…He’s a person who’s now been marginalized.”

Let's puzzle out this national security flip flop.

If Osama bin Laden in the past was "marginalized" and unimportant and thus not worthy of the president’s attention, yet now he is apparently so important that he warrants the president’s attention, it can mean only one of two things: either bin Laden is still on the margins and Bush is intentionally lying in order to serve his current political needs – or bin Laden is indeed resurgent, in which case Bush has fundamentally botched the war on terror.

I lean strongly toward the latter, based on the president's well-documented ineptitude. The Bush war team allowed bin Laden to escape from the Tora Bora mountains in December 2001 - a debacle initially documented in an April ’02 news report and confirmed three years later by CIA commander Gary Bernsten. In his ’05 memoir, Jawbreaker, Bernsten wrote that he and his team begged the Pentagon for 800 U.S. Army Rangers to help go after the bin Laden entourage, and to “block a possible al Qaeda escape into Pakistan.” He was turned down; instead, the bin Laden hunt was entrusted to Afghan warlords.

The hunt took further hits in 2002 when Bush shifted his focus to Iraq. American military units that had been geared to pursuing bin Laden and his key associates were pulled off the job and sent off to fight Saddam Hussein. As Bob Andrews, former head of a Pentagon special operations office, remarked in 2004, Saddam was a needless “distraction,” in his words, “a real diversion from the longer struggle against jihadists.”

And how has that Iraq diversion been working out for us? In April of last year, the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iraq “has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.” And bin Laden is still out there, taking full advantage.

With a track record like that, it’s no surprise that Bush, and the GOP generally, have forfeited their traditional image as strong national security stewards.

The Republicans had held that advantage over the Democrats in the polls for more than three decades, sometimes by margins of 30 percentage points. Today, the polls show the two parties roughly at parity; they also show majority disapproval for Bush’s handling of the war on terror. For these reasons, it is almost presumptuous for Bush to think that he can stand in front of a conservative think tank, and lecture the majority Democrats (and, by extension, the American majority) about Osama bin Laden and the stakes in the war on terror. His own actions – and inactions – trump his tired rhetoric.

All of which means that if the Democrats can’t wage a strongly competitive ’08 presidential race, with such a strong wind at their backs, they should sell off their DC headquarters and take up residence in a historical museum somewhere, sharing a display case with the Whigs.

Joe Biden, the underdog grown-up

I was thinking this morning about Joe Biden, and about how - in two important respects - he was arguably the real winner of the latest Democratic presidential debate.

That's actually no surprise, because, in many debates over many months, while his better-financed celebrity rivals have dominated the news coverage, he has often come across as the real grown-up on stage. He shouts too much sometimes, and sometimes his natural loquacity compels him to spew too many sentence fragments, but, just as often, the venerable senator has refused to pander, instead offering straight talk on politically sensitive topics.

Iraq is Exhibit A. Most antiwar liberals in the Democratic base want the U.S. troops brought home as quickly as possible, with scant concern about the consequences on the ground. Biden, with decades of foreign policy expertise, has been willing to suggest that such a view is naive. The Democratic base wants simple answers; Biden has been willing to describe our national security decisions as "complicated." In a recent debate, he said: "If we leave Iraq and we leave it in chaos, there will be a regional war. The regional war will engulf us for a generation."

More than anyone on stage, he has thought hard about the Iraq that we would leave behind. His longstanding plan - to establish a federal, decentralized Iraq, with separate enclaves for the warring sectarian factions - is probably imperfect (what plan is?), but he, at least, has been willing to think conceptually and pitch the idea to Democratic debate audiences. Meanwhile, 75 senators voted on Sept. 26 to approve the Biden plan in principle; the bipartisan resolution was non-binding, but it marked the first time that the chamber had decisively bucked the Bush administration's war strategy.

Biden has talked straight on other issues. In a September debate, he was asked whether, in order to guarantee the long-term solvency of Social Security, he'd be willing to essentially raise taxes. Currently, the tax we pay for Social Security is capped on the first $97,500 worth of income; some other Democrats, notably Hillary Clinton, have been reluctant to raise the cap, for fear that the Republicans will assail them as tax-hikers. At that September debate, Hillary said she'd study the issue by setting up a bipartisan commission, a classic Washington dodge. But would Biden be willing to raise the cap - and basically tax not only the rich, but the middle class?

"The answer is yes...You're either going to cut the benefits, or you're going to go ahead and raise taxes above the first $97,000...The bottom line here is, you can't (achieve Social Security solvency) by growing the economy alone. So I would raise the cap."

Which brings us to the Tuesday night debate. While John Edwards and Barack Obama were busy hammering Hillary, Biden did two noteworthy things: He talked like a grown-up about Iran, and he, more than any of his rivals, made the argument that Rudy Giuliani's 9/11 tough guy image is a fraud.

Host Tim Russert asked, "Senator Biden, would you pledge to the American people that Iran would not build a nuclear bomb on your watch?"

Biden, refusing to accept Russert's narrow question, put the matter in proper context. He began by cautioning, "This is complicated stuff" - uh, oh, there's that C-word again.

He said it would be wrong to "talk about this in isolation. The fact of the matter is, the Iranians may get 2.6 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium. But the Pakistanis (already) have hundreds - thousands - of kilograms of highly-enriched uranium. If by attacking Iran to stop them from getting 2.6 kilograms of highly-enriched uranium, the government in Pakistan falls, who has missiles already deployed with nuclear weapons on them that can already reach Israel, already reach India, then that's a bad bargain. Presidents make wise decisions informed not by a vacuum in which they operate, by the situation they find themselves in the world. I will do all in my power to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but I will never take my eye off the ball. What is the greatest threat to the United States of America: 2.6 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in Tehran, or an out-of-control Pakistan? It's not close."

In other words, he was arguing that a narrow focus on Iran, followed by a military strike on Iran, might have serious adverse repurcussions for the big picture, and for American security generally. He was also implicitly demonstrating the inherent limitations of these debates, which often devolve into yes-or-no game shows.

Meanwhile, at another point, he refused an invitation to join the Hillary-bashing, and signaled a crucial change in subject:

"I'm not running against Hillary Clinton...Rudy Giuliani (is) probably the most underqualified man since George Bush to seek the presidency. Rudy Giuliani - I mean, think about it. Rudy Giuliani - there's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11. I mean, there's nothing else. There's nothing else, and I mean this sincerely. He is genuinely not qualified to be president. Here's a man who brags about how he made the city safe. It was the Biden crime bill that became the Clinton crime bill that allowed him to do that. They wipe it out. He remains silent. The 9/11 Commission comes along and says the way to keep your city safe is to do the following things. He's been silent. He's done nothing. And now he's talking about he's going to go in and he will demonstrate to Iran, he's going to in fact lay down the law. This man is truly not qualified to be president. I'm looking forward to running against Rudy Giuliani."

Granted, one must wade through a number of Bidenesque non-sequiturs to reach bottom, but that passage was an important moment in the debate. Biden put his finger on the question that will matter most in 2008 - who will keep us safe? - and he targeted the Republican who presumes to be most qualified. If Giuliani wins the nomination, the Democrats will need to knock the 9/11 halo off his head; failure to do that could cost them the election. On Tuesday, Biden was virtually alone in taking him on.

He could have made his argument more concise (no surprise there). The Biden/Clinton crime bill put 100,000 new police officers on Americans streets, and New York City benefited from that; later, when the Republican Congress slashed the funding for that program (hence Biden's reference to "they wipe it out"), Giuliani barely uttered a peep. Meanwhile, regarding the 9/11 Commission, Biden could have mentioned that Giuliani testified in secret - and no wonder, because we now know that he admitted to the commissioners that, prior to 9/11, this alleged terrorist expert knew virtually nothing about al Qaeda and had to be briefed after the fact. There's a lot more in the Rudy file - such as his decision to place the crisis command unit inside the World Trade Center, despite the experience of the '93 bombing - but at least Biden was willing to defy the Hillary-centric theme of the debate and frame the '08 political stakes.

So perhaps the big question is, why does Biden remain mired in the second tier? It's the usual stuff, nothing new: He's tagged forever as a guy who runs his mouth too much without editing in his brain (on C-Span last spring: "You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent"); he's a career senator, with a penchant for talking about legislative nuance, and a fondness for recounting his work with other senators, yet most Americans ignore senators unless they're crossover celebrities (like Hillary and Obama); the embarrassment of his first failed bid in '87, when he lifted a British politician's rhetorical passages for his own use, has not completely faded (Giuliani retaliated yesterday by bringing it up).

But he's clearly providing a valuable service in these debates, and it would not be a surprise to find him serving in a new Democratic administration, free perhaps to attend to the nuances of foreign policy, far from the simplicities of the electoral arena, and the imperatives of celebrity.

Character attacks as a form of flattery

For two hours she stood there with a semi-civil smile nailed to her face, her shoulders squared, her head held high, swiveling left and right to look her accusers in the eye - taking it like a man, as it were - and listening to critiques of her character that essentially boiled down to this:

Hillary Clinton is dishonest, reckless, polarizing, integrity-challenged, and unelectable.

Such was the verdict rendered at the Democratic debate last night by her two chief rivals (or, in Hillary's word, "colleagues"), both of whom have decided that they cannot rise in this marathon race unless she is somehow made to fall. And such is the lot of the frontrunner - especially this one, whose steady march toward the party nomination had begun to take on the trappings of a coronation. How ironic that she took so much character flak in the City of Brotherly Love.

Barack Obama had signaled in the press several days earlier that it would be No More Mr. Nice Guy, and he did ratchet up his criticisms of Hillary, but he is instinctively too decorous to engage in bareknuckled brawling (indeed, he cautioned everyone, right at the start, that "I think this has been the most hyped fight since Rocky fought Apollo Creed"). Obama left the dirty work to John Edwards, who is even more stymied in the polls than he is, and whose whole candidacy could collapse unless he, Edwards, somehow can manage to beat Hillary in Iowa 65 days from now.

Edwards, who, as a former senator, had the luxury of not needing to decide whether to vote for the recent Senate resolution that declared Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, repeatedly banged away at Hillary for voting Yes. This way, he could assail her as a reckless Bush-enabler who is again (coupled with her 2002 Iraq war authorization vote) giving the Republican regime an excuse to go to war.

He said that Hillary voted for "a resolution that looks like it was written literally by the neocons...A lot of us on this stage have learned our lessons the hard way, that you give this president an inch and he will take a mile...what I worry about is if Bush invades Iran six months from now, I mean, are we going to hear, 'If I only I had known then what I know now?'"

The latter sentence was a frontal slap at Hillary, because that's how she currently laments her '02 war vote. Edwards had to carry the ball for Obama on the Iran issue, because Obama has actually indicated in the recent past that he thinks the Guards should be deemed a terrorist organization - and when it came time to vote on the resolution, he didn't take a position. He was out campaigning instead.

But even though Edwards got off some of the roughest lines - Hillary, he said, doesn't spend sufficient time "in tell-the-truth mode" - Obama did contend that her reputation as a polarizer is grist for the Republicans, and hence a prescription for more politics as usual: "Part of the reason that Republicans, I think, are obsessed with you, Hillary, is because that's a fight they're very comfortable having. It is the fight that we've been through since the '90s...And what we don't need is another eight years of bickering." (Edwards topped him, though, by arguing that anyone who thinks Hillary will truly reform the system must also believe in Santa and the tooth fairy.)

Hillary mostly sought to deflect the attacks by focusing most of her fire on the Bush administration, but there came a point - toward the very end of the debate - when she suddenly dug herself a hole and descended into it. Her rivals were only too happy to pile on the dirt.

She was asked to comment on a proposal, by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, to give drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants. She recently told a New Hampshire newspaper that the proposal made sense, and last night she explained why she thought that, yes, it did make sense:

"What Governor Spitzer is trying to do is fill the vacuum left by the failure of (the Bush) administration to bring about comprehensive immigration reform. We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally. They are undocumented workers. They are driving on our roads. The possibility of them having an accident that harms themselves or others is just a matter of the odds. It's probability. So what Governor Spitzer is trying to do is to fill the vacuum."

Yet, minutes later, after Chris Dodd had voiced his opposition to the idea, Hillary jumped in and appeared to say that she was actually against the idea after just having said she was for it:

"I just want to add, I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it. And we have failed -- "

Dodd jumped all over that: "Wait a minute. No, no, no. You said yes, you thought it made sense to do it."

Clinton replied: "No, I didn't, Chris. But the point is, what are we going to do with all these illegal immigrants who are (driving)?"

Tim Russert, the co-host, pounced like a cat that had just smelled fish: "Senator Clinton, I just want to make sure what I heard. Do you, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, support the New York governor's plan to give illegal immigrants a driver's license?...Do you support his plan?"

Clinton replied: "You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays gotcha." (When the press nails a politician for double talk, the politician often tries to play the victim by invoking the Gotcha Defense. President Bush does it all the time.)

She continued: "It makes a lot of sense. What is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem...Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do? No."

After that, it was a race between Edwards and Obama to say I-told-you-so. Edwards won: "Unless I missed something, Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes just a few minutes ago, and I think this is a real issue for the country. I mean, America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them." Obama followed, essentially saying: Yeah, me too. (Here's Hillary strategist Mark Penn, spinning the incident after the debate.)

But will all this intramural Hillary-bashing slow her march in the end? Edwards has been hammering Hillary in this manner for many months, yet the strategy hasn't moved the needle on his candidacy. If anything, her lead in the Democratic polls has widened. She remains highly popular with the Democratic base, and it's quite likely that the base will not warm to any rivals who critique her character in ways that might benefit the message-crafters on the Republican side. In particular, this could prove to be true in Iowa, where local Democrats prefer that their candidates make nice.

Loyalty to Hillary may be her strongest trump card, even though she persists in giving evasive or multiple answers on a range of topics (for instance, on how she'd save Social Security), while stonewalling on others (would she favor opening up her First Lady papers to public scrutiny? "That's not my decision to make," she replied).

Last night, it fell to Bill Richardson to sue for peace: "I'm hearing this holier-than-thou attitude toward Senator Clinton. That it's bothering me because it's pretty close to personal attacks that we don't need...We need to be positive in this campaign. Yes, we need to point out our differences, and I have big differences with her...I think it's important that we save the ammunition for the Republicans....the important thing is that we need to stay positive. We need to have disagreements on the issues, not on whether you can trust. I trust Senator Clinton..."

Somewhere in that particular rumination, Richardson also tried to tout his own credentials as a governor. He reminded everyone that seven of our last eight presidents had been governors. The only problem with that statement was this: It was wrong. In point of fact, only four of our last eight presidents (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush) had been governors.

But luckily for Richardson, he's so far down in the polls that his rivals don't bother to fault him for not being in "tell-the-truth mode." That's Hillary's burden alone, and she appears not be ruffled by it, because she knows that, for a frontrunner in this high-stakes game, character attacks are merely a form of flattery.

And if Obama and Edwards wind up merely dividing the not-Hillary vote, her path to the nomination will be that much easier.

-------

Meanwhile, on the Republican hypocrisy front, we now have yet another family-values conservative caught in the act. Richard Curtis, a legislator in the state of Washington, who has consistently voted against gay people...has been named in police documents as having sought sex with a man whom he met at an adult video store. There was a dispute over money, but the police documents specify that Curtis and the other guy had sex anyway.

I suppose my favorite detail is that Curtis, who is married, and who has voted against civil rights protections for gays as well as domestic partnerships for gays, was spotted in the store wearing women's stockings and a black sequined lingerie top.
(Update: Curtis resigned his state Senate seat late Wednesday.)

Wait, let me amend that. My favorite detail is actually what he told a local newspaper this week, after acknowledging that he and the other guy did have sex: "I am not gay."

No word yet on whether this family-values conservative can manage a wide stance in women's stockings.

The rich grist of presidential debates

As the Democratic presidential candidates prepare for tonight's debate in Philadelphia - their 12th or 13th, depending on your criteria - the usual complaints are being raised that these forums are too numerous, too wasteful of the candidates' precious time, and way too boring for the average American voter.

I'll stipulate that these candidates are starting to resemble the large gaggle of prison escapees in Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run, seemingly doomed to wander the land in collective misery because they are joined at the ankles by the same length of chain. Fearing that they will lose face if they offend debate sponsors, these candidates (the Republicans as well) have been rocketing hither and yon for six months already, tethered to each other, to their well-rehearsed talking points, and to their well-honed rebuttals.

I'll also stipulate that the viewing audiences are relatively miniscule: perhaps a couple million, which is roughly 10 percent of the viewership for a crucial postseason baseball game. I'll also stipulate that chaos reigns, because every TV operation from CNN to Univision, from PBS to Logo (the gay network), wants to host a debate and hence boost their profile; and every special-interest group from the AFL-CIO to the AARP, from the NAACP to the CBC wants the candidates to run the gauntlet.

As one veteran Democratic strategist, Tom Pazzi, groused to me four years ago - when the same pattern was evident, during the runup to the '04 primaries - "You just show up, and all you can do is stay on message or be evasive, no matter what the question is...To some extent, we're just doomed to do this."

And yet, in the spirit of contrarian thought, I'll suggest here that a crowded debate calendar is a good thing. Debates help the top candidates hone their rhetorical skills under pressure, and they provide the underdogs with free exposure. The viewing audiences may be small, but that's the wrong way to measure the impact of these events. The key exchanges in these debates, and the behavior of certain candidates while under questioning, have driven much of the subsequent media discussion of the '08 campaign, and have resonated in the political community for days or weeks afterward.

The debates have already supplied us this kind of grist (and this is only a tiny random sampling): Hillary Clinton's refusal to be pinned down on how she'd reform Social Security ans whethey she'd raise payroll taxes to do so; her stonewalling on the issue of whether the names of Bill Clinton's library donors should be made public; Joe Biden's insistence that Hillary is too polarizing to govern effectively; John McCain’s dismissal of Mitt Romney as a flip-flopping opportunist; Rudy Giuliani’s fumbling attempts to tiptoe away from his past record as an abortion rights defender; the GOP candidate competition to see who’s most macho on Iran; Barack Obama’s penchant for platitudes, and his persistent reluctance to duke it out with his chief rival.

Speaking of which...The latter already is deemed to be the big story in advance of tonight’s debate. Obama truly has a dilemma: he wants to travel the high road as the epitome of a new politics of civil discourse, but there is no way he can win the Democratic nomination unless he descends into the arena with Hillary. He signaled the other day that he thinks maybe he will do so, telling The New York Times that he plans to confront Hillary more forcefully. Yet I viewed that story as a fresh sign of his reluctance. If you’re really going to slug it out with the frontrunner, you simply do it; you don’t launch a trial balloon in the Times, vowing to do it.

The truth is, Obama doesn't seem to feel comfortable confronting Hillary on camera. The guy by instinct is not a street fighter - Chris Matthews last night called him "a National Public Radio liberal," and he didn't intend that as a compliment - yet the simple fact is that, if he ultimately wants the power, he'll have to fight for it. And that will require him to take on a battle-tested woman who has been in the arena since 1992. Worse yet, he'll have to fight with enough deftness to attract new followers, rather than alienate those he already has.

In a way this is a character test for Obama - and we can thank these debates for providing him the opportunity. There will always be complaints about these forums, as evidenced by this news story: "Political specialists continue discussing how many debates are too many debates...Some organizers fear that voters' interest is strained (and that) the candidates may be a little jaded..."

That's from The New York Times - on January 8, 1988.

Is Hillary narrowing the gal gap?

Since I seem to be on the subject of Hillary Clinton – as evidenced again yesterday, when I wrote in my newspaper column that she's unpopular with white males (the white guy gap) – it’s also worth noting that she has long had problems attracting a certain category of females.

Ironically, it is the category to which she herself belongs: upscale, college-educated professionals. Call it the gal gap.

This past summer, a plurality of these women told pollsters that they favored Barack Obama over Hillary in the Democratic nomination contest (35 percent to 32 percent). In late May, only 19 percent of college-educated women saw Hillary as the most honest candidate in the field; by contrast, 50 percent chose Barack Obama. And last April, in the crucial early primary state of New Hampshire, only 25 percent of professional women told pollsters that they favored Hillary.

None of this was particularly surprising, because Hillary’s brethren have actually been cool to her for years, largely for cultural reasons.

Many of these women simply didn’t like the fact that Hillary had opted to stick with Bill in the wake of the Lewinsky scandal. They felt that she had allowed Bill to walk all over her – in their view, unacceptable behavior for a feminist – and, worse yet, that she had done so only to further political ambitions that could not be fulfilled without the philanderer’s assistance. (By contrast, Hillary’s strongest female supporters – downscale, blue-collar, non-college-educated women – reportedly believe that she deserves to be lauded for making the tough decision to keep her family together.)

I can attest to the attitude among upscale professional women, having watched videos of Democratic focus groups that were convened when Hillary was first running for the Senate. Those Long Island gals didn’t mince words. And I was reminded of their skepticism yesterday, when I ran across an article in the new issue of The Atlantic. The writer Caitlin Flanagan, a well-educated professional female in good standing, lays out the anti-Hillary case. Since her ruminations are for magazine subscribers only, here’s a lengthy excerpt:

If Hillary really wants to connect with professional, well-educated women, “she would have to be willing to let us women in on the big, underlying struggle of her life that is front and center in our understanding of who she is as a woman. Her husband’s sexual behavior, quite apart from the private pain it has caused her, has also sullied her deepest – and most womanly – ideals and convictions, for the Clintons’ political partnership has demanded that she defend actions she knows to be indefensible. To call her husband a philanderer is almost to whitewash him, for he’s used women far less sophisticated, educated, and powerful than he – women particularly susceptible to the rake’s characteristic blend of cajolery and deceit – for his sexual gratification. In glossing over her husband’s actions and abetting his efforts to squirm away from the scrutiny and judment they provoke, Hillary has too often lapsed into her customary hauteur and self-righteousness, and added to the pain delivered upon these women…

“(B)ecause Hillary long ago attached her ideals and political destiny to Bill Clinton’s, she has of necessity made herself complicit – in ways that go far beyond the traditional role of first lady and candidate’s wife – in all sorts of unsavory actions, including the way he treated vulnerable women…In short, to get excited about Hillary is not to get excited about how a woman can change the world, but rather to endorse the way a certain kind of man – over time, and holding her hostage not only by her ambition, but by the love she has for a child whose home she desperately didn’t want to destroy – can diminish the very best of a woman.”

But here’s the interesting new development: well-educated professional women are starting to warm to Hillary anyway.

According to the numbers-crunchers at Gallup, who just conducted a poll analysis for the nonpartisan National Journal, Hillary’s growing autumn lead over Obama on the Democratic side is largely attributable to an influx of support from these women. That summer survey I mentioned earlier, which showed professional females backing Obama by 35 to 32 percent? Now the numbers have reversed; now it’s Hillary over Obama by 47 to 24 percent.

Apparently this is happening because the well-educated professionals are increasingly impressed with Hillary’s specificity on certain top-tier issues, notably her new health care plan, her crisp communication style, and her sense of command in the Democratic debates (another is slated for tomorrow night, in Philadelphia). That’s how some Democratic pollsters see it, anyway. But clearly Obama has hurt himself as well, by failing to close the sale. He has promised to raise the political discourse, but many professional women have apparently concluded (at least for now) that his high-road idealism is not sufficient, that they can’t get a sense of how he would actually govern.

All of which prompts one other thought: Won’t it be great when we can finally test these shifting sentiments with the help of actual votes? Is it January 3 yet?

-------

Good grief, those conservatives are sure hard to please.

Here's a Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, who has made it abundantly clear that, as an ordained southern Baptist preacher, he (a) supports a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, (b) considers abortion to be a "holocaust," and (c) doesn't believe in evolution....and yet a lot of conservatives think the guy is just too liberal.

The Washington Times reports today that some vocal conservatives are assailing Huckabee as a "treacherous liberal on taxes, social welfare spending, and illegal immigration." Fiscal conservative leader Pat Toomey complains about Huckabee's "big government liberalism." What we have here, apparently, is vivid evidence of a split on the right - between the fiscal conservatives (who care most about money) and the social/religious conservatives (who care most about the soul).

When the GOP is healthy, these factions tend to be in sync. Not so today.

-------

And congratulations to the ballclub that has owned my heart since 1962, the Boston Red Sox.