Watching and waiting to see if someone takes on President Obama in the primaries makes for impatience. One taps one's fingers and speculates and daydreams, itching to get out there and help make history happen. What follows is one take on what could be, though the odds on it are difficult to compute.
A superb source of info on political trends is the Huffington Post. One of its regular bloggers is Gary Hart, onetime United States senator and presidential candidate. Hart, like most of the other Huffington bloggers, is temperately but substantively critical of the Obama administration and its defeatist mindset and weak will.
As Hart has always been very much a political striver, I have to wonder if the ongoing search for a liberal opponent to the prez has reached his door? As recently as the early 2000s he was looking into the possibility of another presidential run. The longer nobody else tries for it, the more inclined he may be to begin taking such a task seriously despite all that weighs into the scale against it.
If you watch Hart on YouTube from last year and the immediately previous years, you will find that he is very articulate and clear-headed, though not a compelling personality. He still looks good for an oldtimer: thick dark gray hair, firm features, a strong and slender body that is unbent and without stiffness. There even remains something boyish in his demeanor.
He has baggage, of course. His presidential quest of '88, when he was the frontrunner for the Dem nomination following a strong showing four years earlier, was done to death by the news media. Replacing without advance notice their policy of respecting the privacy of candidates' private lives, reporters exposed his tendency to affairs with women. After JFK and Bill Clinton, and after the passage of decades, that tendency, which one hopes is in the past, might no longer count for much in a campaign. It helps that he is still with the wife, Lee, who put up with his shenanigans.
Well, why Gary Hart, of all people? Few are as qualified for the presidency. As a young lawyer he was prominent in the effort to make the Democratic party more democratic and deliver it from control by the old party bosses after the '68 election. In '72 he was George McGovern's campaign manager, and a keen one. He then served two terms in the Senate from Colorado, 1975-87, where he was a doer and was seen as a comer. Seeking the presidency, he was an "Atari Democrat" or "neoliberal", emphasizing the economic advantages of emerging technologies and running on non-ideological "new ideas". He was a centrist in a time when the center was still midway across the ideological spectrum rather than far into the right outfield; in today's terms he is a liberal.
Crucially, Hart has long been a thoroughgoing and much-respected authority on national security and defense issues, advocating a lighter and smarter military and getting listened to. Administrations have repeatedly drawn on his expertise. Five days before 9/11, he publicly warned that terrorists could and would strike and that thousands of lives would be lost; he and a few others had urgently advocated the creation of a department of homeland security while our leaders were dozing.
Were Hart to have a go at it, his age would be a factor. He will turn 76 within a month after the '12 election. Considering that he seems in excellent shape, my guess is that he could finesse that. He might want to (1) immediately pick a consistently progressive young runningmate who would be ready to step in at once if need be; (2) pledge that he would not run for re-election and might resign at some propitious time after setting things in motion; and (3) state that upon taking office he would give his cabinet an undated letter of resignation which it could activate if it felt that he was not totally up to the day-to-day requirements of the position. Together with such measures, his brainpower and energy level might suffice to see him through.
Would Hart be the ideal Obama challenger? One can dream of an inspired leader, which he presumably would not be. But he could probably do ably what a challenger should do: communicate his reasoning to the American people in vigorous language with candor and a command of hard fact; carry the fight to the Republicans, hitting hard rhetorically, as he does in his blog; and invoke moral authority on social questions and on the kind of society we want to be.
If he ran, he should firmly refuse to be put on the defensive by anyone, whether reporters or politicians, and should stay on message with detailed critiques and specific proposals, doing a significant part of his campaigning online so as to conserve his native vitality.
Walter Mondale once famously asked Gary Hart during a debate, "Where's the beef?" Today the beef is with whoever goes after the Obama administration. If Hart wants to assume that role, he can probably do so, at least if no one else of standing applies for the job first.
It's pretty iffy, yes; but it's worth mulling over.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Saturday, August 13, 2011
CONVENTIONAL THINKING
If I'm not fooling myself -- which is always a possibility, of course -- the coming forward of a meaningful Democratic rival to President Obama is right on top of us.
Lately veteran journalist Jeff Greenfield gave us a lengthy rendition of the familiar incumbents-can't-be-dumped chant, which ended on the incongruous note that if things don't improve for him Mr. Obama may be the first chief exec since Chester Alan Arthur to be denied renomination. (Well, which is it?)
Another veteran journalist, Eleanor Clift, wrote that the Dems are too terrified of the Repubs to risk weakening their man and that as a result nothing is going to be done despite the liberals' discontent and outrage. She added that anyone who went after the first black president would be viewed as an enemy by the black community and so would be left without political prospects.
Let's consider that last point. Nobody has been hurt as badly by the failed economy as blacks have, and nobody will suffer more from the assistance cutbacks that Mr. Obama has just agreed to. To say that blacks will vote their race rather than their vital interests strikes me as cynical and even racist. Were I a white candidate opposing the president, I would make Harlem one of my first stops and would expect to make hay there.
Yes, polls right now -- when there is no challenger -- say that most Dems and a high percentage of blacks want the prez again. But give us another option with a name and a face and a stirring message and I think that paradigm will quickly be replaced. A little shaking up and something that has been held on the surface only by inertia will sink to the bottom, while something unforeseen rises to the top.
Clift talked to Ralph Nader, who has sent out letters to 150 people he sees as prospective candidates. He told her that nobody thinks any of them could pull an upset in the primaries but that they could prod Mr. Obama to the left. I am glad that he is active, but the kind of candidacy he envisions would be a wasted effort. Someone who means to fight for what we stand for without winning is not an alternative to Mr. Obama but is Mr. Obama. Nothing is going to make a difference except with a person of the type who can and will lead and do joyous battle and make every effort to seize the nomination and go after a specific mandate.
Political realists "know" that nothing can be that hasn't been before. If they were right, no novelties would have come along. No one from the Deep South and no movie actor and no black aspirant would have gotten to the White House, because these things were unprecedented.
Let's look at the cases we keep reading about in which a party lost after its president met with a serious challenge, which are cited to "prove" that the same thing would happen again:
>Could the GOP have held on had the pols renominated Chet Arthur? I'd say no. It was entrenched and it stank of corruption. The opaque accidental president was both a champion spoilsman and a recent foe of the spoils system; that turn-about left him with few friends in either camp. Grover Cleveland had reform credentials ("We love him for the enemies he has made"), and the Democrats' hour had come.
>Could William Howard Taft have been favored again if Teddy Roosevelt hadn't sought to deny him a second term? I'd judge not. Progressivism was at its high water mark and Taft was a conservative and had disappointed the people's expectations.
>Would Harry Truman have gotten another nod if he had run and Estes Kefauver hadn't? Not conceivably. Harry was flagrantly unpopular; Ike would have plowed him under.
>Could Lyndon Johnson have made it if he hadn't bowed out and if Gene McCarthy had stayed home? No, I'm convinced the Dems were better off with Hubert Humphrey, who in part succeeded in distancing himself from LBJ's base-dividing war policy, something that the top guy himself couldn't have done.
>Would Jerry Ford have beaten Jimmy Carter had Ronald Reagan not tried to unhorse him? That's dubious. The Nixon pardon had slackened public trust in him. More importantly, his was a stalled administration in a time of widespread dissatisfaction over a weak economy, so that people felt they had nothing to lose by switching.
>The latter evaluation applies also to Mr. Carter, in opposition to whom Ted Kennedy had vainly struggled to overcome the legacy of Chappaquiddick, without which he might have been victorious.
>It applies as well to George H.W. Bush, who was beset, albeit weakly, by Pat Buchanan.
Those are the relevant instances. It seems to me that in every one of them the party was up against it regardless of whether an alternative candidate emerged. Contrary to the experts, I think anxiety over impending defeat did much to produce the challenge, rather than the challenge being what produced the defeat.
And now is different from those times, anyway. It has gotten steadily easier to mount a real revolt against a displeasing chief executive. YouTube and Facebook have rendered organizing and fund-raising not only easy but potentially even spontaneous!
We are told that we must have either the Republicans or a president who will not stand up to them. Are we really such chumps as to settle for that? I continue to predict that we won't. Barry Goldwater's old slogan, "A Choice, Not An Echo", recommends itself to us.
There has to be somebody credible in this huge and oh-so-varied country, who will make a bid, even at the sacrifice of comfort and privacy, to revive our economy and restore our democratic heritage. (There are only about a quarter million energetic lawyers who could do it.)
Pray that I'm right about what's going to happen, now on the cusp of a potentially momentous moment in our history.
Lately veteran journalist Jeff Greenfield gave us a lengthy rendition of the familiar incumbents-can't-be-dumped chant, which ended on the incongruous note that if things don't improve for him Mr. Obama may be the first chief exec since Chester Alan Arthur to be denied renomination. (Well, which is it?)
Another veteran journalist, Eleanor Clift, wrote that the Dems are too terrified of the Repubs to risk weakening their man and that as a result nothing is going to be done despite the liberals' discontent and outrage. She added that anyone who went after the first black president would be viewed as an enemy by the black community and so would be left without political prospects.
Let's consider that last point. Nobody has been hurt as badly by the failed economy as blacks have, and nobody will suffer more from the assistance cutbacks that Mr. Obama has just agreed to. To say that blacks will vote their race rather than their vital interests strikes me as cynical and even racist. Were I a white candidate opposing the president, I would make Harlem one of my first stops and would expect to make hay there.
Yes, polls right now -- when there is no challenger -- say that most Dems and a high percentage of blacks want the prez again. But give us another option with a name and a face and a stirring message and I think that paradigm will quickly be replaced. A little shaking up and something that has been held on the surface only by inertia will sink to the bottom, while something unforeseen rises to the top.
Clift talked to Ralph Nader, who has sent out letters to 150 people he sees as prospective candidates. He told her that nobody thinks any of them could pull an upset in the primaries but that they could prod Mr. Obama to the left. I am glad that he is active, but the kind of candidacy he envisions would be a wasted effort. Someone who means to fight for what we stand for without winning is not an alternative to Mr. Obama but is Mr. Obama. Nothing is going to make a difference except with a person of the type who can and will lead and do joyous battle and make every effort to seize the nomination and go after a specific mandate.
Political realists "know" that nothing can be that hasn't been before. If they were right, no novelties would have come along. No one from the Deep South and no movie actor and no black aspirant would have gotten to the White House, because these things were unprecedented.
Let's look at the cases we keep reading about in which a party lost after its president met with a serious challenge, which are cited to "prove" that the same thing would happen again:
>Could the GOP have held on had the pols renominated Chet Arthur? I'd say no. It was entrenched and it stank of corruption. The opaque accidental president was both a champion spoilsman and a recent foe of the spoils system; that turn-about left him with few friends in either camp. Grover Cleveland had reform credentials ("We love him for the enemies he has made"), and the Democrats' hour had come.
>Could William Howard Taft have been favored again if Teddy Roosevelt hadn't sought to deny him a second term? I'd judge not. Progressivism was at its high water mark and Taft was a conservative and had disappointed the people's expectations.
>Would Harry Truman have gotten another nod if he had run and Estes Kefauver hadn't? Not conceivably. Harry was flagrantly unpopular; Ike would have plowed him under.
>Could Lyndon Johnson have made it if he hadn't bowed out and if Gene McCarthy had stayed home? No, I'm convinced the Dems were better off with Hubert Humphrey, who in part succeeded in distancing himself from LBJ's base-dividing war policy, something that the top guy himself couldn't have done.
>Would Jerry Ford have beaten Jimmy Carter had Ronald Reagan not tried to unhorse him? That's dubious. The Nixon pardon had slackened public trust in him. More importantly, his was a stalled administration in a time of widespread dissatisfaction over a weak economy, so that people felt they had nothing to lose by switching.
>The latter evaluation applies also to Mr. Carter, in opposition to whom Ted Kennedy had vainly struggled to overcome the legacy of Chappaquiddick, without which he might have been victorious.
>It applies as well to George H.W. Bush, who was beset, albeit weakly, by Pat Buchanan.
Those are the relevant instances. It seems to me that in every one of them the party was up against it regardless of whether an alternative candidate emerged. Contrary to the experts, I think anxiety over impending defeat did much to produce the challenge, rather than the challenge being what produced the defeat.
And now is different from those times, anyway. It has gotten steadily easier to mount a real revolt against a displeasing chief executive. YouTube and Facebook have rendered organizing and fund-raising not only easy but potentially even spontaneous!
We are told that we must have either the Republicans or a president who will not stand up to them. Are we really such chumps as to settle for that? I continue to predict that we won't. Barry Goldwater's old slogan, "A Choice, Not An Echo", recommends itself to us.
There has to be somebody credible in this huge and oh-so-varied country, who will make a bid, even at the sacrifice of comfort and privacy, to revive our economy and restore our democratic heritage. (There are only about a quarter million energetic lawyers who could do it.)
Pray that I'm right about what's going to happen, now on the cusp of a potentially momentous moment in our history.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
HERE COMES?
I can taste it.
What is it? A viable, free-wheeling populist candidacy in the Democratic presidential primaries.
The latest and biggest sellout by the Obama administration has probably sealed its fate. I used to think that the president could win the election if renominated, in which case we'd have another four years of pain and stultification, probably to be followed by a Republican regime and the completed wrecking of every social advance of the past century. But Obama is now looking like Carter: a one-termer who will lose, not because he's a liberal but because he's viewed as not up to the demands of the job in trying times.
Most recently we have Ralph Nader stating in an interview that there is a near-100% chance that a Dem will take on the president. That fits with my own assessment. With this much disaffection and frustration, I'd say it can't not happen. A challenger will have all the issues, together with all the emotional fire-power.
So far the situation in the Dem camp has been discouragement, fear, and passivity. Those unhappy with the president -- as who isn't by this time? -- have been afraid to disunite the party lest it lose and we end up with fanatics running the country.
But fear can be turned into anger, and anger can be turned into resolution and energy that can be harnessed for a cause. What that takes is called "leadership". (I realize that to the Democrats that's an alien concept; but the phenomenon does exist out there.)
Nader had pledged earlier that he would help find a Dem alternative, so I think we can figure that he has been taking soundings and offering suggestions. The concern had to be that he would come up with someone who would split the party but couldn't win: some avowed socialist or some testosterone-deprived professor of ecological science. So I am encouraged that he is talking in terms of a former senator or former governor. A veteran pol running as an outsider could have an advantage, having been vetted and knowing how to campaign effectively and how to avoid typical beginner's missteps.
Nader doesn't seem to have any particular individual in mind. That could mean that no one has taken his bait, or it could mean that several people are considering it. The absence of gossip about anyone at all seems to imply that the "community" of politicians isn't hearing anything, as it would leak from every pore if it did. This contrasts with Nader's confidence. Yet I don't read the latter as a bluff.
He says the only question is the candidate's level of stature. But the issue isn't stature. It's ability to generate conviction and support. Some obscure lawyer who is smart and aggressive and clean enough to withstand scrutiny could do that.
In our system we have seen candidates come out of nowhere and get nominated. William Jennings Bryan, a Congressman and activist, was new to most people when the Dems picked him at age 36. Wendell Willkie was devoid of electoral experience and had been a Dem until not long before when the Repub convention surprised itself by yielding to the carefully packed galleries' chant of "We Want Willkie!".
Either I'm way wrong or we will have ourselves a candidate within days or weeks. It feels as if it's on its way and tremendously close.
What is it? A viable, free-wheeling populist candidacy in the Democratic presidential primaries.
The latest and biggest sellout by the Obama administration has probably sealed its fate. I used to think that the president could win the election if renominated, in which case we'd have another four years of pain and stultification, probably to be followed by a Republican regime and the completed wrecking of every social advance of the past century. But Obama is now looking like Carter: a one-termer who will lose, not because he's a liberal but because he's viewed as not up to the demands of the job in trying times.
Most recently we have Ralph Nader stating in an interview that there is a near-100% chance that a Dem will take on the president. That fits with my own assessment. With this much disaffection and frustration, I'd say it can't not happen. A challenger will have all the issues, together with all the emotional fire-power.
So far the situation in the Dem camp has been discouragement, fear, and passivity. Those unhappy with the president -- as who isn't by this time? -- have been afraid to disunite the party lest it lose and we end up with fanatics running the country.
But fear can be turned into anger, and anger can be turned into resolution and energy that can be harnessed for a cause. What that takes is called "leadership". (I realize that to the Democrats that's an alien concept; but the phenomenon does exist out there.)
Nader had pledged earlier that he would help find a Dem alternative, so I think we can figure that he has been taking soundings and offering suggestions. The concern had to be that he would come up with someone who would split the party but couldn't win: some avowed socialist or some testosterone-deprived professor of ecological science. So I am encouraged that he is talking in terms of a former senator or former governor. A veteran pol running as an outsider could have an advantage, having been vetted and knowing how to campaign effectively and how to avoid typical beginner's missteps.
Nader doesn't seem to have any particular individual in mind. That could mean that no one has taken his bait, or it could mean that several people are considering it. The absence of gossip about anyone at all seems to imply that the "community" of politicians isn't hearing anything, as it would leak from every pore if it did. This contrasts with Nader's confidence. Yet I don't read the latter as a bluff.
He says the only question is the candidate's level of stature. But the issue isn't stature. It's ability to generate conviction and support. Some obscure lawyer who is smart and aggressive and clean enough to withstand scrutiny could do that.
In our system we have seen candidates come out of nowhere and get nominated. William Jennings Bryan, a Congressman and activist, was new to most people when the Dems picked him at age 36. Wendell Willkie was devoid of electoral experience and had been a Dem until not long before when the Repub convention surprised itself by yielding to the carefully packed galleries' chant of "We Want Willkie!".
Either I'm way wrong or we will have ourselves a candidate within days or weeks. It feels as if it's on its way and tremendously close.
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