Candidates on Candid Camera

This is an iffy time for political consultants. They see the millions of campaign dollars candidates are raising for the ’08 elections, and still get chills knowing that all the paid ads in the world might not survive one good amateur hit on YouTube. Cameras are everywhere, nailing liquor store thieves, red-light runners and politicians exchanging angry words with constituents.

Just ask House Appropriations Chair David Obey. After a particularly bitter and unsatisfying debate over a Democratic supplemental funding bill for the Iraq war, he got into a raucous wrangle outside his office with an angry constituent. Although Obey had just explained Democrats don’t have the votes to end the war, the unidentified lady demanded they do so. “We can’t get the votes!” shouted Obey. “Do you see a magic wand in my pocket? How the hell are we going to get the votes for it? We ain’t got the votes for it!”

If that wasn’t frustrating enough, imagine the Congressman’s surprise when a video of his hallway tirade was replayed over and over that day, and the next, on CNN. It is a sign of the times that the confrontation was secretly recorded and posted on Internet for all the world to view.

Congressional Republicans were ecstatic, emailing news of Obey’s outburst to reporters they feared might have missed it on all the cable channels.

If the GOP thinks that video is helpful to them, they should think again. Sure, the tape shows an irritated Democratic anti-war leader shouting at one of his own constituents, but the point he makes—that his party doesn’t have the votes to overcome Republican opposition to ending the war—is THE Democratic message for the 2008 elections.

In the 2006 midterms, independents voted overwhelmingly against Republican incumbents. Their purpose: to give the country a Democratic Congress that would end the war. Now the Obey video is a grim reminder there are still enough Republicans left standing to keep the war going. So in 2008 expect to see that Obey tape played over and over, with the tag line: “Give Obey his magic wand: vote Democratic.”

Democrats can also count on Vice President Cheney to bring more and more independents to the polls in ’08. For the GOP, Cheney, looking more and more like an evil troll (or the Penguin from Batman), is the crazy relative you keep locked in the basement who breaks free every now and then and holds a stuck-in-time press conference attacking the patriotism of Congressional Democrats and forecasting victory in Iraq, gibberish and loony platitudes that serve only to remind voters he has been wrong about everything from the start. Cheney may have impoverished his country with his made-up reasons for going to war, but you won’t hear any complaints over at Halliburton. The Iraq project is more lucrative than Cheney ever presided over as their on-campus CEO.

For ordinary, non-zealot Republican voters, these are difficult times. They are so desperate for a true conservative, non-adulterous Presidential candidate (as a wag noted, of the three leaders for the nomination, the Mormon is the only one who has had one wife) they’re reaching out to TV and Hollywood for a law-and-order fictional reprise of Reagan.

For them, the current spate of political news is Watergate all over again. They must dread to pick up the morning newspaper and must shudder when the “breaking news” graphic appears on their cable TV screen. With the ongoing scandals over Walter Reed’s treatment of wounded veterans, the firing of federal prosecutors for not being “Bushie” enough, more FEMA fumbles on the Gulf Coast, more FBI trashing of our civil liberties, the midnight nomination of rejected Swift-boat ambassadors, etc., the media that long gave them a pass is having a difficult time just keeping up.

Mitt Romney is the latest to report millions of dollars in campaign contributions, but he remains firmly fixed in single digits in the polls. Does anyone believe he can ever raise enough money to counter the recent Doonesbury cartoon series lampooning his historic flip-flops on gun control, abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, etc?

As for Democrats in `08, just roll the Obey tape. Play it again and again until their party in Congress has enough votes for their magic wand.

A CEO For President

A CEO for the USA” was the headline for the April 30 edition of National Review’s cover story on Mitt Romney. It reflects the views not only of founder Bill Buckley but of fat-cat Republicans everywhere whose money and influence determine the party’s choice for President.

Interestingly enough, working Americans are already caught up in this idea of CEOs controlling their lives. Such as those Circuit City employees fired for rising to a level of competence that demanded better pay. So much for the American Dream of work hard and you’ll get ahead. George W. changed all that when he replaced experienced FEMA hands with political cronies who made such a botch of Katrina that all will soon receive the Medal of Freedom.

Romney does have a credibility problem. He’s like the weather in Chicago—if you don’t like his stance on an issue, just wait a minute and it will change.

In the Republican Presidential primaries, the jut-jawed Romney (National Review sees a resemblance to Dudley Do-Right) isn’t alone in the race to become America’s CEO. Rudy Giuliani ran America’s largest city for eight years and now says he’s ready to run America. His party may be out to lunch on all the issues ordinary people care about, but not Rudy. He’s selling competence, not ideology.

Now he’s bringing that fabled Giuliani competence to bear on the most pressing domestic issue facing our nation—a dysfunctional health care system that is bankrupting families and businesses.

Trolling for votes in New Hampshire, Giuliani said all the Democratic candidates want universal health care. “They want us to be like another France, with government-controlled health insurance,” he said derisively. (“An audible hiss went through the well-heeled crowd of 200 wine-sipping Republicans”, reported the New York Daily News.)

And well they should hiss. Frozen in snow and time, these New Hampshire voters can recognize competence over ideology. Giuliani was telling them and the American people (including the 47 million uninsured) that if elected President our country will be spared a health care system the World Health Organization ranks as the best in the universe.

France’s system covers everyone. It is noted for its short waiting periods, affordability, freedom of physician choice, doctors who still make house calls, exemplary gynecological care, quality health care for immigrants and the poor, while spending about half of what Americans pay to fund a health care system ranked 37th in the world.



A recent Kaiser Foundation study of American health care finds that private medical insurance fails to meet three essential criteria: that it be available, affordable and adequate. We have a system where insurance companies make money not by providing care, but by denying it.

As a cry for universal health care resounds throughout the land (at least the blue states), Romney tells voters he’s been there, done that. He brags that as governor of Massachusetts, he delivered on universal coverage. The plain truth is his so-called “reform” plan represents a massive cost shift onto the backs of working families. The legislation mandates high-deductible, bare-bones coverage that warms the hearts only of insurance agents.

Our country tells the world how to create democratic institutions, but we ignore how other societies have successfully dealt with the health care crisis. There isn’t a country in the industrialized world that would trade their health care system for ours.

As George W. markets democracy to the Middle East, Dudley Do-Right tells National Review he wants Muslim states to have the benefit of our “health care initiatives and innovations.” I’m sure the President’s Health Savings Accounts will be very big in Falujah.

Voters should keep all this in mind in 2008. If it’s the bottom line of the health insurance industry they’re concerned about, they should elect a CEO. If it’s their own bottom line they’re worried about, they might want to elect a President.

A Winning Way Out of Iraq

In recent weeks thousands of people in several cities marched in protest of the war in Iraq, demanding that the Democratic-controlled Congress find a way to end it, and end it fast. Just this morning I received an e-mail from Panama Bob, one of this column’s few devoted readers, telling me of an Internet conversation he had with old friend and retired newsman, Bud Liebes. “In saying hello, I asked Bud for his thoughts on Iraq and what he said struck me like a lightning bolt:

`We should leave Iraq before 2008 and pledge to help rebuild the infrastructure that we destroyed, help rebuild and equip their hospitals and help train the medical staff and technicians.`” Bob continues: “Putting aside the fact that it's the right thing to do, what Bud is saying is our ticket out. It would let the world know the United States has regained its common sense while not losing its conscience. It would put us in a position to leave with some honor, and the ability to return in some form. It's what America is waiting to hear.”

When I read this, it made me wonder how we can have so many smart people on Capitol Hill working 24-7 on that one issue and whose political lives depend on finding a solution yet they can’t arrive at so simple and profound a way out of that horrible mess as these two guys have come up with exchanging e-mails. Panama Bob has even drafted the resolution for ending the war:

However good our citizen's intentions, however cruel the reign of Saddam Hussein, and however devious the administration's reasons for entering us into a war in Iraq, we have unleashed several thousand years of tribal animosity and hatred that we can't hope to control.

What's clear is that Iraq is embroiled in a sad and cruel civil war we can no longer hope to mediate. What's clear is that there is more chance for peace in Iraq if we are not patrolling the streets. What's finally, painfully clear, is that whatever we do now, somebody will suffer for it.

The most reasonable thing we can do is pull to the sidelines in hopes that those engaged in Iraq's civil war as well as their various allies in the Arab war will see that their best hope lies in peaceful co-existence.

There is not the slightest hint that even one more day of American participation and shedding of blood will advance the prospect of peace by so much as an hour.

What's most painfully clear to we Americans, though, is that from the perspective of the average Iraqi citizen, that we are the proximate cause that the comparative peace they had before 2003 no longer exists.

With that in mind, as America withdraws from its well-intentioned but futile mission in the streets of Baghdad and throughout Iraq, we must acknowledge a responsibility. We say this to the people of Iraq and their neighbors: We pray you can restore civil sanity. We pray you can bring peace to your streets.

And when you do, we pledge to help, to the best of our ability, some of t he unintended consequences of our effort to lift Iraq from the yoke of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. When you achieve peace, as we hope is inevitable, we pledge to help rebuild Iraq's shattered infrastructure. We pledge to help restore drinking water, power and medical facilities.

It may be that Iraq was not--perhaps may never be--ready for a Western style Democracy. It is unarguable that there are those who helped us with our attempts will be in danger of their lives, and it is our pledge to help relocate them until such time as Iraq welcomes them back.

Everything about our efforts in Iraq have been well-meaning at least on the part of the American people, and tragic in their implementation and their consequences. We do not intend to give up the battle against those who would bring their terror to our shores. To remain strong, to not be drained or discouraged in that fight, is in our self-interest. However, accomplishing that requires charting a new course that repudiates those who embarked so recklessly and untruthfully into war four years ago; a venture that has been cruelest, above all, in its utter lack of planning and foresight.

We, however, have no cause for shame or reason to apologize concerning what the people of America thought we were attempting and would indeed accomplish. That is the past, although there are still those who need to be held accountable.

Today: America--and the world--looks to us for new direction: looks for what we like to think of as our trademark: common sense combined with compassion and responsibility. Nothing could more convince the American public and the world that we have regained our common sense without losing our conscience and compassion...as what I have outlined today. There are many nations in the Mid-East whose people look to us for assistance, and we should not withhold that assistance. However, it should not be aid that leaves their loved ones dead and their homes in rubble.

There is the new, infinitely more difficult, course we must embark upon. Among our many priorities and obligations, none is more important that removing our soldiers from harm's way in a hopeless mission. That is our first goal. From there, with God's help and the good will of others, everything else is possible.