Iowa Debate Analysis
by Roger Wm.
Hughes
The Iowa Des Moines Register
debate covered little new ground but demonstrated
that each candidate has chosen the line on which
they will fight out their campaign.
Howard Dean may have made the
most revealing comment when he began to talk about
the fact that he will “balance the budget in the
sixth or seventh year of his term.”
It was reminiscent of the kind of mistake made by
President H. W. Bush when he looked at his watch
while candidate Bill Clinton was responding to the
issue of people suffering because of the poor
economy of the time. Whether it becomes a
signature of Dean’s style of mis-speaking and
presuming the candidacy is yet to be seen. After
Dean made his statement the audience began
laughing at Dean’s presumptive second term. He was
clearly dazed and blankly unaware as to why the
laughter erupted from the live audience at his
statement…
In a signal as to the nature of
the divided labor support in this election, the
greatest rift and desire to mix it up came over
Dick Gephardt’s charge that he was the only one
who had opposed NAFTA and the Chinese trade
agreement. Everyone wanted to take on a piece of
Gephardt and defend their position on that front.
John Edwards made the most point against Gephardt
by getting him to admit that Edwards did not vote
against NAFTA. Edwards also listed a number of
trade agreements that he opposed including fast
track trade agreement authority for the President.
Gephardt still made points and
left the closing statement for the large number of
industrial unions supporting him:
"Howard, you were for NAFTA, you came to the
signing ceremony. You were for the China agreement
... It's one thing to talk the talk, you've got to
walk the walk," Gephardt said.
Dean took several hits from the
traditional triad of Dick Gephardt, John Kerry and
Joe Lieberman on Iraq, running against Washington,
raising taxes on the middle class and the
hypocrisy of not opening up his sealed records. In
addition, Dennis Kucinich hit him for not agreeing
to pull the troops out of Iraq now.
Kerry, in a clear statement
aimed at Dean, said Democrats can't defeat Bush by
being light on national security ... “We can't go
back to raising taxes on the middle class. We need
a president who has the temperament and the
judgment to be able to convince America that we
know how to make this country safe.”
Lieberman’s attack was, "I don't
know how anybody could say that we're not safer
with a homicidal maniac, a brutal dictator, an
enemy of the United States, a supporter of
terrorism, a murderer of hundreds of thousands of
his own people ... in prison instead of in power."
Dean’s rebuttal was that we have
lost 23 more troops since the capture of Saddam,
and we are canceling airline flights and we should
have concentrated on Osama bin Laden:
“I
actually don't believe that, because I think,
given the time that's elapsed, we could have done
the proper thing, which George Bush's father did,
and put together a coalition to go after somebody
who was a regional threat but not a threat to the
United States.”
“Our
resources belong in fighting Al Qaida. Al Qaida
has got us in a position where we're now worried
because we're at level orange. We need a
concentrated attack on Al Qaida and on Osama bin
Laden. Saddam Hussein has been a distraction.”
Lieberman offered this rebuttal:
“…
Howard Dean's criticism of my statement that we're
safer with Saddam Hussein gone. You know what? We
had good faith differences on the war against
Saddam. But I don't know how anybody could say
that we're not safer with a homicidal maniac, a
brutal dictator, an enemy of the United States, a
supporter of terrorism, a murderer of hundreds of
thousands of his own people in prison instead of
in power.”
“And
to change the subject as Howard does and to say
that we haven't obliterated all terrorism with
Saddam in prison is a little bit like saying
somehow that we weren't safer after the Second
World War after we defeated Nazism and Hitler
because Stalin and the communists were still in
power… We have many threats to our security, there
is no question. We are a lot stronger... “
Dean made his frequent argument
regarding the Bush middle class tax cut -- that
property taxes for schools, college tuition and
health insurance premiums have all increased
higher than the Bush middle class tax cuts, which
Dean targeted at $304.
Lieberman chastised Dean for not
recognizing the middle class tax cut and said that
in Iowa it was closer to approximately $1,800 for
a middle income family of 4.
Dean was also challenged on not
being the only Democrat candidate who balanced a
budget -- Gephardt argued he had gotten the votes
for President Clinton’s plan to balance the
budget.
For the full transcript of the
debates visit the
Washington Post.
Different foreign policy views
The NY Times offers a lengthy
article covering the differences between the
Democrats’ and Bush’s foreign policy views. The
Democrats are trying to retain some aspect of the
title of Defender of the Public during these times
of war on terrorism. Much of the debate centers
around America’s unilateral position of power in
the world:
The
consequences of unilateralism in Iraq dominate the
debate. Yet if you talk to Democratic policy
experts, Iraq rarely appears as the country's top
national security priority. In ''An American
Security Policy,'' a study ordered by Tom Daschle,
the Senate minority leader, and written by a group
that included top former Clinton aides like
William Perry, the former defense secretary;
Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state;
and Sandy Berger, the former national security
adviser, Iraq appears as only the fourth of six
major areas of concern. The first is ''The Loose
Nukes Crisis in North Korea,'' and the second is
the overall problem of weapons of mass destruction
in Russia, Pakistan, Iran and elsewhere.
A unifying aspect for the Bush
team is Condoleezza Rice during the 2000 campaign:
''The
belief that the support of many states -- or even
better, of institutions like the United Nations --
is essential to the legitimate exercise of power''
proceeds from a deep discomfort with the fact of
America's power. This discomfort is, in turn, the
residuum of Vietnam.
The article also points to the
arrogance and vulnerability of Wesley Clark’s
arguments with the Bush administration:
Clark
embodies what is most powerful, but perhaps also
what is most vulnerable, about the Democratic
critique of the Bush administration's national
security strategy. Clark's first book, ''Waging
Modern War,'' is a minutely detailed account of
the Kosovo air campaign, the first, and so far
only, war fought by the NATO alliance, which Clark
conducted as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander. You
could easily read the book as a primer on the
futility of multilateral warfare, for Clark
describes his endless battles with the Pentagon,
the White House and our 18 allies. On several
occasions, the war effort almost collapsed from
dissension. But it didn't: the Serbs ultimately
withdrew, the Kosovars returned home and for
several years now an uneasy peace has reigned in
Kosovo. ''The real lesson of Kosovo is this,''
Clark writes: ''To achieve strategic success at
minimal cost, a structured alliance whose actions
are guided by consensus and underwritten by
international law is likely to be far more
effective and efficient in the long term.''
Clark further argues:
''It's
not where you bomb and what building you blow up
that determines the outcome of the war.”… ''That's
what we teach majors in the Air Force to do --
make sure you hit the target. It's the overarching
diplomacy, the leverage you bring to bear, what
happens afterward on the ground, that gives you
your success. And for that you need nations
working together.'' That, in a nutshell, is the
Wesley Clark alternative paradigm of national
security.
The article points out the
debate is not about whether there is a war on
terrorism but rather how to conduct that war.
There are no McGovernite doves here save one:
…The foreign-policy debate is no
longer ideological, if ideology has to do with
differing conceptions of ends, rather than means.
The Democrats are not really a peace party.
Defense spending, once the great threshold issue
separating hawks from doves, has been laid to
rest. You have to go as far to the left as Dennis
Kucinich to find a candidate who wants to cut,
rather than increase, defense spending.
MoveOn.org ad has Bush as Hitler
The liberal activist group
MoveOn.org came under fire Sunday from Republicans
over a television ad on its website that morphed
an image of President Bush into Adolf Hitler. The
30-second spot was one of more than 1,500 entries
for a contest MoveOn.org sponsored to find one
that "tells the truth about George Bush's
policies."
Eli Pariser, campaign director
for MoveOn.org, said the ad appeared on the
website with hundreds of others submitted by the
public and voted on during a two-week period. They
were removed Dec. 31, when the voting period had
ended. According to the organization the ad didn’t
make the cut
A panel of judges, including
such Democratic stalwarts as actor-director
Michael Moore, campaign strategists Donna Brazile
and James Carville and actor Jack Black will
select the winner, to be announced Jan. 12.
Dean working Feb 3 circuit
The
LA Times reports on how Dean is working hard
on the Feb. 3 primary states:
While
Howard Dean's rivals are focusing almost entirely
on the first several states that vote in the
Democratic presidential race, the former Vermont
governor appears to be building enough strength in
the next wave of contests that he could virtually
clinch the nomination by mid-February, even if he
stumbles early.
With
Dean's opponents forced to concentrate their
efforts on Iowa and New Hampshire — or, at most,
the seven predominantly Southern and Western
states that vote on Feb. 3 — the front-runner's
emerging advantage in states such as Michigan,
Wisconsin, Virginia, Maine and Washington that
follow with primaries or caucuses later in
February could provide him a formidable firewall
against any early reversals.
The Times also carries a short
primer on Dean’s life, if you haven’t read one of
the two books already out there.
Newsweek/Time on Dean
Howard Dean is the subject of a
major story. The article reflects on the usual --
not since Jimmy Carter has anyone come from the
outside, the Internet phenomenon, changing
positions, numerous gaffes, etc… but the
interesting line is about trade. Trade is
the Holy Grail of the industrial labor movement.
And the industrial unions are the ones who are
supporting Dick Gephardt:
…Dean
was for NAFTA and GATT, but now opposes any
further free-trade agreements unless they have
higher labor and environmental standards. He once
thought it might be wise to raise the retirement
age to protect Social Security; now he rules that
out. Dean once thought Medicare was a miserable,
poorly administered program; now he wants to save
and expand it.
Time Magazine’s cover carries their feature
story on Dean. There the question is, who is
Dean?:
To
understand how he thinks, Dean tells TIME, it
helps to look at the way he and his doctor-wife
Judith Steinberg treated their patients in their
family practice back in Vermont. "She's very
methodical. She'll exhaust all the possibilities
until she gets to the one that's the most likely,"
he tells TIME. "I'm intuitive, and I jump steps
ahead. Part of what gets me in trouble on the
stump is that I shorthand things. I know what I'm
thinking, but I don’t say every word of it. I was
that way as a doctor. I eliminate possibilities
unconsciously, before they get to my
consciousness. It's also part of my political
judgment. I often know I want to do things before
I know why, although the thinking goes on all the
time. The way I think is, if you give me
information, I tuck it back somewhere and work on
it and work on it and work on it without being
aware of it. All of a sudden, 10 months later,
something will pop out, based on a whole series of
things that I've learned in the last 10 months.
And finally, all of a sudden, it falls into
place."
Clark 1 day no gaff
Wesley Clark appeared on Meet
The Press with Tim Russert and acquitted himself
without the usual gaffs of the past. However, we
are yet to see if he can go more than three or
four days without showing himself as not ready for
prime time. Clark has made outrageous statements
concerning President Bush in the past -- such as
calling President Bush a reckless, radical,
heartless leader. Today he at least had a reply as
to why he said what he said:
TIM
RUSSERT: The campaign against George W. Bush, let
me show you and our viewers what you said about
the president. "Clark referred to Bush as `a
reckless, radical, heartless leader.'" Why such
harsh words from a general about a commander in
chief?
GEN.
CLARK: Well, Tim, that's the truth. We went into
Iraq. It was reckless. We didn't have our allies.
We didn't have the right number of troops. We
didn't have a plan for what happens next. And we
can see the results. Radical, because he's not
taking care of the American people. He's pursuing
a radical rightwing agenda of tax cuts for the
wealthy. Just today there is a story that they're
going to try to reduce the budget deficit by
cutting veterans' benefits, going after people who
need job training, at a time when we've got nine
million people unemployed in this country, going
after housing for people with low incomes. That's
a radical agenda. Heartless, because if he had any
sympathy and compassion for people at all, he
wouldn't take those kinds of leadership steps.
This man is pursuing a rightwing, radical agenda
for America. It's not what the American people
want; it's not the way our country should be led.
He was also asked about how it
could be that President Bush could have stopped
9-11 attacks as Clark claims:
TIM
RUSSERT: General, you also said something else.
And this is how the Baton Rouge Advocate captured
it: "Clark said the president `didn't do his duty'
to protect American from attack on September 11,
2001. `I think the record's going to show he could
have done a lot more to have prevented 9/11 than
he did.'" What else could George Bush possibly
have done, and why didn't anyone else in Congress
or in the military suggest things that could have
protected us on 9/11?
GEN.
CLARK: Well, when this administration came to
office, Tim, they were told that the greatest
threat to American security was Osama bin Laden.
And yet, on 9/11, there was still no government
plan, no plan sanctioned by the president of the
United States, no plan directed to go after that
threat of Osama bin Laden. The ship of state was
on autopilot. People in agencies were doing what
they had been told to do. But the top leaders in
the government hadn't focused the resources of the
United States of America to take action against
the greatest threat facing America. And that's the
job of the president of the United States,
especially when it comes to national security. The
buck stops on his desk. He's the man, or woman,
who's supposed to pull things together and get the
focus right. He didn't do it.
While Clark’s responses help to
explain the wild attacks on Bush, they are not
likely to go away if he is the nominee. He will
not get away with these kind of sophomoric
responses in the general election. Good theater is
not always good politics -- especially if the
curtain is pulled back on outrageous charges.
On Monday Clark is going to
announce his plan of reforming the American tax
system. It is likely that it will not receive any
play until late in the day as the coverage of the
Iowa debate continues to be rehashed until then.
Wondering about Kucinich
If you are wondering about how
long Dennis Kucinich is going to be in the race
for President, check out this e-mail on the
Kucinich site:
"Hi
All: This afternoon as I left my part-time job in
downtown Seattle to take the bus home, I saw a
homeless woman. She was bundled up against the
cold. All of her belongings were piled onto one of
those little wheeled contraptions used for
luggage, tied together with bungee cords. Under
the bungee cords, displayed prominently, was a
Kucinich for President sign. Her own version of a
bumper sticker. Her own statement of hope. If she
can get Dennis' name out there, we can."
- R. Weinstein, Seattle, Washington
Preparing for Dean
The
Associated Press reports the Bush team is
preparing their campaign for Dean. The report
shows they are not over confident of beating Dean:
Bush's
chief political adviser, Karl Rove, reportedly at
one point had told Republican activists that Dean
was the dream candidate for the Bush campaign.
But
Rove and Bush re-election campaign manager Ken
Mehlman have been far more guarded in their recent
assessments of the Dean challenge, according to
those close to the campaign.
Republicans worry that in the face of continuing
job losses in industrial states, many of the
"Reagan Democrats" who supported Bush in 2000 may
return to the Democratic fold. Bush's constant
revisits to the Midwest and his fleeting support
of steel tariffs reflect this concern.
Dean of the Democrats
The
NY Times reports that Bill Clinton loves the
fact he gets to play advisor to all of the
candidates for President:
All of
the party's major candidates for president say
they call on Mr. Clinton for advice. They say the
former president always seems eager to talk
politics, and one says the former president
sometimes seems to relish the calls as an excuse
not to work on his memoirs.
"He
said to me once, `I shouldn't be spending this
much time, I've got to be writing my book,' " this
candidate said. "But if you get him at home or in
the office and he's not traveling, he has the
time. And he loves it."
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