The Price Of Forgetting A Presidency

The achievements of President Johnson are overshadowed by his failure to get our military out of Vietnam. But on the 100th anniversary of Johnson's birthday, Joe Califano, Johnson's special assistant for domestic affairs, reminds Democrats of Johnson's greatest achievements and urges them to learn from them. Johnson's shrewd political sense, extensive knowledge of parliamentary procedure, compassion and courage helped him achieve what Kennedy had started. Democrats would be wise to not only acknowledge his successes but also learn from his failure. All the candidates have vowed to get us out of Iraq, a challenge that undoubtedly parallels the crisis Johnson faced in Vietnam.

Johnson's "we shall overcome" speech was one of the best ever given to Congress.

John Edwards made reducing poverty a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Yet he never mentioned Lyndon Johnson, the first -- and only -- president to declare war on poverty and sharply reduce it.

Recounting the achievements of Democratic presidents, Barack Obama cites Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy -- but not LBJ, the president responsible for the laws that gave him (and millions of others) the opportunity to develop and display their talents and gave this nation the opportunity to benefit from them.

When Hillary Clinton noted that "it took a president" to translate Martin Luther King's moral protests into laws, she broke the taboo and mentioned Johnson, only to be rebuked. Lyndon Johnson is the invisible president of the 20th century. The tragedy of Vietnam created a cloud that still obscures Johnson's achievements.

Our nation -- particularly Democrats -- pays a high price for indulging in this amnesia. If we make Johnson's presidency invisible, we break the chain of this nation's progressive tradition and deny people an understanding of its achievements and resilience from the time of Theodore Roosevelt. Worse, we lose key lessons for our democracy: that courage counts and that government can work to benefit the least among us in ways that enhance all of us.

Americans under 40 have seen in Washington only administrations that were anti-government, mired in scandal, inept, gridlocked, driven by polls, or tilted toward the rich and powerful. For decades Americans have endured political micromanagement in which passage of one bill -- welfare reform, No Child Left Behind -- over an entire Congress or presidential term is considered an accomplishment.

President Johnson submitted and Congress enacted more than 100 major proposals in each of the 89th and 90th Congresses. His initiatives included establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and endowments for the arts and humanities as well as environmental and consumer protections. But his heart was in the War on Poverty. When Johnson took office, 22.2 percent of Americans lived in poverty. When he left, only 13 percent were living below the poverty line -- the greatest one-time poverty reduction in U.S. history. Johnson proposed and convinced Congress to enact Medicare, which today covers 43 million older Americans; Medicaid, which covers 63 million needy individuals; the loan, grant and work-study programs that more than 60 percent of college students use; aid to elementary and secondary education in poor areas; Head Start; food stamps, which help feed 27 million men, women and children; increases in the minimum Social Security benefit, which keep 10 million seniors out of poverty; and an array of programs designed to empower the poor at the grass roots.

No president since Johnson has been able to effect any significant reduction in poverty. In 2006, the poverty level stood at 12.3 percent; today is it almost certainly higher. He also threw himself into the fight against racial discrimination. In 1964 there were 300 black elected officials in America. By 2001, there were some 10,000 elected black officials across the nation, more than 6,000 of them in the South. In 1965, there were six black members of the House; today there are 42; the only black member of the Senate is headed for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Behind these achievements are important lessons for future presidents. LBJ was a revolutionary whose conviction that poverty and racial discrimination were moral issues helped shape the nation's response. He knew that the political capital from the sympathy generated by John Kennedy's assassination and the huge margin of his own election in 1964 was a dwindling asset. He saw himself in a race against time as he fought to remedy the damage that slavery and generations of prejudice had inflicted on black Americans. In his War on Poverty, he sized up the limited patience of Congress and affluent Americans.

Johnson had extraordinary courage and fought for racial equality even when it hurt him and his party. After signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964, Johnson was defeated in five Southern states, four of which Democrats had not lost for 80 years. In 1965, he drove the Voting Rights Act through Congress, and in 1966, he proposed legislation to end discrimination in housing.

In the 1966 midterm elections, Democrats lost 47 seats in the House and three in the Senate. Border-state and Southern Democratic governors and members of Congress demanded that Johnson withdraw his housing proposal and curb his efforts to desegregate schools. Undeterred, in 1968, he pushed the Fair Housing Act through Congress.

Those who seek to change the ways of Washington should remember, too, that Johnson knew how to reach across the aisle. He assiduously courted Republican members of Congress to support his Great Society proposals, not only because he needed Republican votes to pass the initiatives but because he saw bipartisan support as an essential foundation on which to build lasting commitment among Americans. He knew that the endurance of his legislative achievements and their acceptance by state and local governments, private interests, and citizens required bipartisan support.

Too many lessons of Lyndon Johnson's presidency have been lost, because the Democratic Party, the academic elite, political analysts and the media have made him the invisible president. It's time to take off the Vietnam blinders and see his entire presidency.

Bearing No Burden

In a recent editorial, the Washington Post hammers away on the notion that any tax increase on the wealthiest Americans - those taxed at the top marginal rate - is harmful for the economy.

The notion that a country at war should ask its citizens to bear the burden of higher taxes is now viewed in many quarters as quaint, if not ludicrous. In fact, rather than shared sacrifice, the watchword since the inception of the war in Iraq has been shared bounty: For the first time in U.S. history, taxes have been cut during wartime. The House of Representatives, to its credit, voted to pay for a small slice of war costs -- increased educational benefits for returning veterans -- with a small tax on the wealthiest Americans. Under the House measure, the tax rate for individuals earning more than $500,000 annually, or couples earning more than $1 million, would have risen by one-half of one percentage point.

Of course, this was anathema to congressional Republicans and the Bush administration. "A tax increase would be harmful to jobs and economic growth, and the President has been clear that tax increases are unacceptable," the administration said in its statement on the measure. "If the bill presented to the President contains a tax increase, he will veto it." It was also a non-starter in the Senate, where Democrats didn't even bother to press the issue when they took up the war spending bill. The likelihood is that the House will accede to the Senate's more spendthrift ways.

But as the costs of war mount, it's worth considering the arguments against paying for even a piece of them. Harmful to jobs and economic growth? Those who are lucky enough to have been asked to pay this extra tax constitute a minuscule fraction of American taxpayers, three-tenths of 1 percent. They would have had to ante up, on average, an additional $8,770 in taxes, according to calculations by Citizens for Tax Justice. As a result of the Bush tax cuts, this group has reaped an average savings of $126,690. Hard to see how asking these folks to give just a smidgen of that back, to finance the educations of those who might otherwise have no way of joining their ranks, would cripple the economy.

One particularly specious argument against this provision was that it would hammer small businesses that are the engine of economic growth, since many small businesses pay taxes at the individual income tax rate. House Republicans, inveighing against the measure, contended that it was a massive tax increase on small businesses because 82 percent of returns in this bracket contain small-business income.

As the Brookings Institution's William G. Gale showed in dispensing with this claim several years ago, only 1.3 percent of taxpayers with small-business income fell into the group taxed at the top marginal rate of 35 percent, which applies to incomes of more than $357,700. Furthermore, small-business earnings accounted for only one-third of income for taxpayers in that bracket. Especially at the highest income levels, these are not necessarily small-business owners but wealthy individuals who may do some consulting or real estate investing on the side.

These sorts of ad hoc tax hikes to finance ad hoc costs are not the optimal way to construct tax policy. It would be better to fashion a system that would bring in enough revenue to pay for the demands of government, accompanied by debates about how the tax burden should be distributed and how to prioritize needs. In addition, soaking the extremely rich cannot be the answer to every financing dilemma. At some point, tax rates, whether on small-business owners or ordinary individuals, can become so burdensome as to be counterproductive. But the country is not at that point. It is a sad commentary that even the smallest tax increase, even for the noblest purpose, is now automatic veto bait.

Invoking a Tragedy

The Fix reports on the Keith Olbermann response to Hillary Clinton's recent invoking of the RFK assassination.

Whoah. Actually, WHOAH. To say Olbermann's outrage was palpable is, um, an understatement. "You cannot say this," Olbermann lectured Clinton at the start of a series of comments that spanned more than ten minutes. He went on to call Clinton's comments "insensitive" and "heartless", adding that the comments offered a glimpse into the New York senator's soul that was "not merely troubling but frightening." Later he added: "We cannot forgive you this, Senator."

Battle of the Blogs

In the most recent issue of Vanity Fair, James Wolcott explores “the vicious Clinton-versus-Obama rupture” in the liberal blogosphere, which has only widened the split amongst Democrats and, to this point, given John McCain a free pass. An excerpt:

After two terms of George W. Bush, which only seemed like a scarred eternity, American voters (so the scenario went) would be pining for Democratic recapture of the White House and a return to competency as a novel change of pace. Let the reclamation begin. In January 2009, the former president would pack his saddlebags and head back to his Texas ranch, secure in the knowledge of having wrecked pretty much everything there was to wreck (Iraq, the dollar, the national debt, America’s prestige abroad, the rebuilding of New Orleans, the Endangered Species Act).

The president’s impromptu tap dance at the White House as he killed time waiting for a tardy Senator John McCain to arrive for his official endorsement as the Republican nominee was the perfect vaudeville symbol for the breezy, wanton disconnect of this administration from the consequences of its actions, the unsinkable cheer of its sunshine superman. Despite his dapper moves, Bush’s dragging approval numbers were proof that his old white magic had lost its spell, that his was not an aura in which it was healthy to bask. He shrivelled everything he touched. (So far 29 House Republicans have announced their retirement this cycle, one sure sign of blight.) In the electoral battle to succeed Bush, the positivity seemed lopsided: the Democrats had cornered the market on good vibrations and Pepsodent smiles, while the Republicans—apart from Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee—majored in grim tidings and sour dispositions. Poll after poll showed that Democrats were happy with their top candidates—Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama—while Republicans kept scanning the horizon for a hunk of salvation, measuring Fred Thompson for Ronald Reagan’s raiment until he went logy on them and had to be put out to graze. Even the second tier of Democratic contenders, from happy warrior Joe Biden to Dennis Kucinich, with his red-tressed, tongue-pierced, statuesque wife, seemed like a Happy Meal compared with furrowed Republican also-rans such as Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo. One by one the camera fodder dropped out of the race as the winnowing process culled the weak, the fanged, and the superfluous, the Republican field reduced until John McCain became the winner by default, the last bowling pin standing.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews is fond of repeating the political maxim “Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line,” and a halfhearted queue formed behind McCain’s candidacy despite the cranky impetuosities of a highly crafted nonconformity that grated on the Rush Limbaugh dittoheads, the Club for Growth tax-cut fanatics, and the nativists who wanted to Berlin Wall the border with Mexico to keep out the intruders causing Lou Dobbs such gastritis. Democrats had fallen in love with Obama, in heavy like with Hillary and Edwards. A born-again populist, Edwards functioned as a lubricant, a slick lining separating—and dampening the friction between—two competing iconographic surge forces (the first black presidential nominee versus the first female nominee) and drawing enough support on Daily Kos and other liberal-Dem Web sites to diffuse the animosity, competitive zeal, and gender-generational differences between the two camps.

Once Edwards dropped out of the race, however, the buffer zone was removed, direct contact replaced triangulation, and the Obama and Hillary supporters faced off like the Jets and the Sharks. The rancor was disproportionate in intensity and extravagant in invective, a fervor worthy of ancestral foes. Months-old grievances seethed and erupted as if they had been bubbling for centuries in a lake of bad blood. On the most egoistic plane, it seemed like a clash of entitlements, the messianics versus the menopausals. The Obama-ites exuded the confidence of those who feel that they embody the future and are the seed bearers of energies and new modalities too long smothered under the thick haunches of the tired, old, entrenched way of doing things.

The Hillarions felt a different imperative knocking at the gate of history, the long overdue prospect of the first woman taking the presidential oath of office. For them, Hillary’s time had come, she had paid her dues, she had been thoroughly vetted, she had survived hairdos that would have sunk lesser mortals, and she didn’t let a little thing like being loathed by nearly half of the country bum her out and clog her transmission. Not since Nixon had there been such a show of grinding perseverance in the teeth of adversity, and Nixon in a pantsuit was never going to be an easy sell contrasted with the powerful embroidery of Obama’s eloquence—his very emergence on the political scene seemed like a feat of levitation.

Hillary’s candidacy promised to make things better; Obama’s to make us better: outward improvement versus inward transformation. With Hillary, you would earn your merit badges; with Obama, your wings. Hillary’s candidacy was warmed-over meat loaf—comfort food for those too old or fearful to Dream.

Our Troops as Propaganda

As he has unfortunately been prone to do, the President used our troops as a convenient backdrop again yesterday. The obvious ploy, which seeks to create the impression that the men and women of the military wholeheartedly endorse his policies over the Democrats decried in his speeches, rings a little hollow considering they have no choice in the matter. Nevertheless, despite its shamelessness, it creates the impression he wants so it continues.

As reported yesterday:

"We should be able to agree that our troops deserve America's full support," Bush said at an outdoor ceremony on a massive field lined with members of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. "And that means that the United States Congress needs to pass a responsible war funding bill that does not tie the hands of our commanders and gives our troops everything they need to complete and accomplish the mission."

…In his speech to troops, Bush defended his war policy and said that when it comes to deciding troop levels in Iraq, his message to commanders remains: "You will have all the troops, you will have all the resources you need to win."

Each time the President offers unlimited resources and manpower to those in Iraq, you have to wonder what the Afghans and the servicemembers fighting in Afghanistan think about that. It not only undermines what they are trying to accomplish but it cheapens their service by making their efforts (on the true front-lines of the war on terror) an afterthought. It’s time that the President finally provide all of our servicemembers, regardless of where they serve, with a policy that is more worthy of their sacrifice.

The False Advocate Cont...

In approving an emergency supplemental appropriations bill this afternoon, the Senate followed the House's lead in also approving a bipartisan measure to modernize the GI Bill. If signed into law, it will be a monumental step toward recognizing the service and sacrifice of the men and women who defend our nation in uniform. It would provide an investment in their future and would serve a valuable role in assisting their transition into civilian life while better equipping them for employment in an increasingly competitive workforce. This GI Bill has been championed by Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel, two combat veterans and decorated war heroes, as well as a number of Senators from both parties who have served in previous conflicts (including Medal of Honor winner, Senator Daniel Inouye), and has been a priority of every major veterans service organization, including the VFW and American Legion. Needless to say, it sailed through Congress with overwhelming support.

However, it is not supported by John McCain, who didn't even show up to vote for this historic legislation OR the underlying money for the open-ended war he champions. No, McCain feels that this investment in the education of our service-members is too generous. If anyone challenges him, he huffs and puffs and grows irritated as if his service record alone provides immunity to any such assertions. To the thousands in uniform who fight the war, to those who have already served, and to those who look to one day serve, it is more than insulting...especially since it comes from a man who has said publicly that he has no problem with Americans fighting and dying in Iraq for the next 100 years.

More on today:

McCain skipped the vote in favor of campaigning in California, including attending a fundraiser sponsored by San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos. But his White House rivals, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) were very much present.

"I respect Senator John McCain's service to our country," Obama said on the Senate floor. "But I can't understand why he would line up behind the president in opposition to this G.I. Bill. I can't believe why he believes it is too generous to our veterans." McCain's comeback was withering, a lengthy statement questioning Obama's knowledge of veterans issues and his commitment to national security."I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans. And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did," he said in the statement.

The issue is likely to reverberate for weeks. The House will take up the Senate-passed war funding bill after Memorial Day recess, then dare Bush to make good on his promised veto. McCain has shown no sign of backing away from his opposition to Webb's updated G.I. Bill, which he says is too costly and is so generous that it would lure soldiers and Marines away from an already stretched military. And he appears more than willing to challenge virtually every veterans organization on the issue, from the Republican-friend Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion to the more Democratic VoteVets.org.

"We're certainly pleased that the G.I. Bill has passed and now will likely go to the president, but disappointed that Senator McCain put his own coffers ahead of this crucial debate, and chose not to vote," said Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and VoteVets chairman. "Senator McCain knows how tough things are for those fighting in Iraq, and when they get home. All of us would love to spend time getting money and talking football. But, sometimes there are more important things to do in life."

McCain on Veterans Issues

For years, John McCain has lived off of his reputation as a war hero who suffered through unimaginable hardships because he chose to wear the uniform of his country. His service is truly admirable and his courage is certainly unquestioned. But what his service does not do is give him a free-ride on military personnel and veterans' issues. In fact, if you look at his record over the years, he has done little of substance, if anything at all, to improve the pay or benefits of the brave men and women who fight to defend our country. It's a sad track record because of the leadership positions he has held, including his current position as ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and because of his stature in the Senate as a champion for the military. But alas, he has secured billions over the years on behalf of the military industrial complex, but he has done very little for the men and women who have served in harm's way.

Jay Newton-Small explores the question - "does McCain have a veterans problem?"

Of all the voting groups John McCain will target this fall, none would seem like more of a sure thing than this country's war veterans. So why is the celebrated Vietnam War hero and POW bracing for a potentially bad week with so many men and women who have served in uniform? The point of contention between the two seemingly natural allies is a piece of legislation the Senate is expected to vote on this week to update the 1944 G.I. Bill to provide expanded education assistance and opportunities to the armed forces. The bill, co-sponsored by two other Vietnam veterans in the Senate, Republican Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Democrat Jim Webb of Virginia, would effectively provide full tuition and housing costs at a four-year public university for veterans who have served at least three years of active duty.

Given his family's and his own long and distinguished service career, the bill would seem like a natural fit for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But McCain, concerned about the estimated $4 billion annual price tag and the incentive he worries it might give people to leave an already strapped military, has sponsored his own competing proposal. It increases the existing monthly education benefit from around $1,100 to $1,500 a month while adding more generous benefits for those who've served more than 12 years.

McCain's concerns, however, don't seem to impress the vast majority of veterans' organizations. They are feverishly lobbying him to support the Webb and Hagel bill, which simply adds the new program's expense to the $165 billion annual emergency war supplemental, a move President George W. Bush has threatened to veto. (The House version offsets the program by increasing taxes by 0.5% on those individuals who earn more than $500,000 a year and couples who earn more than $1 million, a move also under veto threat.) "This isn't about anything partisan; we are firmly supporting the bill that does right by the veterans, does right by the troops, and that is not McCain's bill," said Ramona Joyce, a spokeswoman for the American Legion. "It could do McCain damage with veteran voters if this issue drags out."

Even with the current dustup, it's hard to imagine John McCain not winning the majority of the veterans vote in November. But the nation's 26 million veterans are by no means a monolithic voting bloc, and any level of disappointment with McCain could sway some undecideds. The Democratic National Committee is already gleefully preparing TV spots about McCain's position on the Senate bill. And, sensing a vulnerability in McCain's seemingly greatest strength, some Democratic strategists are already contemplating what other veterans votes they can bring up this year.

Obama, who sits on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, has already won some support from many Iraq and Afghanistan vets who oppose the war in Iraq, and has been actively trying to expand his appeal to older veterans — though his efforts in that regard didn't help him in the primaries in veteran-heavy states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. To underline his own family's military pedigree, Obama plans a trip in coming weeks to the Punchbowl National Cemetery in Hawaii, where his grandfather, who served in World War II, is buried. Obama and McCain's G.O.P. rival, the antiwar presidential candidate Congressman Ron Paul, actually beat McCain in donations from the four branches of active military this year, according to a study by the Center for Responsive Politics.

This is not the first time McCain, who has a proud history of opposing what he views as excessive government spending, has found himself at odds with his fellow veterans on legislation. He's voted for veterans funding bills only 30% of the time, according to a scorecard of roll-call votes put out by the nonpartisan Disabled Americans for America. Under the same system Obama has a 90% rating — though, of course, he has spent a much shorter time in Washington.

"Senator McCain clearly needs to be recognized for his military service and in some respects that will play to his advantage, but when it actually comes to delivering health care and benefits during war, Senator McCain's going to have some explaining to do," said Paul Sullivan, director of the nonpartisan Veterans for Common Sense.

Who are the Bad Guys Actually Rooting For?

On the heels of Knesset-Gate and John McCain’s ridiculous assertion that terrorists are endorsing Obama because McCain is their worst nightmare and Obama is soft, Joe Klein explores the question of “who are the bad guys rooting for in 2008” in this week’s TIME.

Who are the bad guys rooting for in 2008? John McCain would have you believe the answer is clear. Barack Obama wants to meet with the leaders of enemy states, especially Iran, "which would increase their prestige," McCain says, and convey the impression of American weakness. To punctuate the point, McCain persistently barks that Obama wants to meet with the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a flagrant anti-Semite but a relatively powerless figurehead. Obama did say during a debate last summer that he would meet with foreign leaders without preconditions.

"He shorthanded the answer," Senator Joe Biden recently said. Ever since, Obama has been creatively fuzzy when asked directly if he would meet with Ahmadinejad — and he has begun to point out that the real leaders of Iran are the clerics led by the Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, who controls Iran's foreign policy and its nuclear program. Obama has also been explicit about the need to start with lower-level talks, a presidential summit coming only if there were progress in those negotiations. In his previous, straight-talking incarnation, McCain would have allowed Obama the modifications to his shorthand answer and debated the issue on the merits. Not this year.

When I asked McCain on May 19 why he kept linking Obama to Ahmadinejad, he said that Ahmadinejad represents Iran at the U.N., which is a fair point, and that the "average American" thinks he's the leader of Iran, which he isn't. Indeed, it could be argued that McCain's Ahmadinejad obsession "increases the prestige" of a relatively powerless loudmouth for domestic political gain. Linking Obama to the world's most famous anti-Semite certainly doesn't hurt McCain among Jewish retirees in Florida, a swing state.

In any case, don't be surprised if Ahmadinejad pulls a bin Laden and "denounces" McCain just before the election this year. Why? Because the last thing Iran's leaders want is an American President who doesn't play the role of the Great Satan. They need the mirage of an implacable, saber-rattling foe to distract their population from the utter incompetence of their government. An American President who said, "Let's talk," would lead an awful lot of Iranians to ask their leaders, "Why aren't you talking?"

...(McCain) is all bluster and impatience. If nothing else, his assault on Obama has renewed questions about whether McCain has the temperament to be President. A few years ago, in friendlier times, the Senator and I talked about the Cuban missile crisis. At a crucial moment, John F. Kennedy received two messages from the Soviets — one bellicose, one accommodating. He chose to ignore the bellicose message and very likely saved the world. "You probably would've chosen the wrong message," I teased McCain. "I probably would have," he laughed. He was joking, but given his behavior of late, you've got to wonder.

An All-Time Great in Congress

Scott Lehigh in the Boston Globe:

It was the kind of report this state has been dreading since Saturday. The perpetual motion machine that is Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. That sad news comes just as people were starting to hope that Kennedy, who was flown to Massachusetts General Hospital on Saturday after suffering a seizure, really was going to be OK.

Now, while they hope for the best, Kennedy's friends and fans must begin to imagine a time without him in the US Senate. And that's awfully hard to do. Presidents and governors have come and gone, but Kennedy has been a constant for the Commonwealth. He's been a famous, forceful, resolute voice in national politics for as long as most of us have been politically aware.

"Let's be hopeful and optimistic," Kennedy's old friend Gerry Doherty said yesterday, his voice seeming to quaver as he tried to be hopeful himself. "He has a great amount of physical resilience." He recalled Kennedy's grit after the June 1964 plane crash that broke his back and left him hospitalized for five months. "He is a tough guy," Doherty said.

He's that and more. Stroll out past the Courageous Sailing Center on Pier 4 in Charlestown, and you'll find a large granite boulder dedicated to the senator by Mayor Tom Menino and the citizens of Boston on his 70th birthday. It's an appropriate monument, because for decades, Kennedy has been an absolute rock for this city and this state.

"There's nobody like him," Governor Deval Patrick said on Monday. No, there isn't. Kennedy is a political nonpareil, a legend in his own time who, after four and a half decades in the Senate, still toils like a miner at his trade. He numbers with a small handful of all-time greats in Congress. A list of what he has done for this state would stretch almost to infinity.

In a business where people eye each other suspiciously, Kennedy enjoys a remarkable esteem on both sides of the aisle. He's fierce in a fight, but he has the ability to battle without making it personal. Nor is he a pointless partisan. As was once said of William Gladstone, Kennedy is an old(er) man in a hurry - a hurry to get things done. One reason he's so effective is that he's not an ideologue, but rather a principled pragmatist who understands that accomplishments require compromise.

When it comes to his bedrock values, however, Kennedy won't bend. John Sasso, who got his start in national politics working on Kennedy's 1980 presidential campaign, remembers the 1994 Senate campaign, when the senator stood in genuine danger of losing to a hard-charging Mitt Romney. Senior members of Kennedy's campaign team were at his Back Bay condo, going over worrisome polling numbers - numbers that showed people thought Kennedy was out of step with the times. One adviser brought up the charged issue of welfare - only to have Kennedy stop him in mid-sentence.

"He said, 'I am not going to change how I approach poor people for the sake of this campaign. I don't care what happens,' " Sasso recalls. Perhaps less known is Kennedy's human touch. In a business full of the pompous and the self-absorbed, he is a genuine people person with a deep sense of compassion. Longtime Kennedy friend Phil Johnston recalls that when his oldest sister, Kate Coffey, died in 2002, Kennedy called late in the day to express his condolences. "I later found out that his daughter Kara was diagnosed with lung cancer that same day," Johnston says. "But he still found time to call. That's the kind of sensitivity to others that he displays regularly."

One thing I've often heard from readers is how Kennedy solved a problem for them that no one else had even seemed to care about. He has never lost his energy or his empathy. "It's amazing the number of people in the last two days who have asked me to give him their best wishes, and to say that he helped them to do this or that," says Doherty. Millions will be pulling for him and praying for him as he begins his most difficult fight.

The Liberal Lion

Tim Rutten in the LA Times:

Change is in the air this political season -- in the ever-increasing likelihood that an African American will stand as the Democratic nominee for the presidency, and in the near-certainty that Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, the Senate's liberal lion, soon will exit the institution he has bestrode like a colossus for nearly 50 years.

Just as Barack Obama's primary victories remind us that change often goes hand in hand with progress, so the sudden news of Kennedy's illness is a somber reminder that change also is inevitably loss. Call it tragic wisdom.

Watching the outpouring of emotion from both sides of the aisle Tuesday at the news of Kennedy's condition, it was clear that his senatorial colleagues already are stricken by his impending departure. Partly, of course, that's because Kennedy's tenure in that chamber spans one of the most tumultuous eras in this nation's history. He will exit the Senate as its third-longest-serving member ever. When he first took his seat in 1962, Jim Crow and its de facto shadow were a fact of American life, and women's rights barely extended beyond the franchise. This year, Kennedy enthusiastically endorsed and campaigned for Obama in his contest against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A new world, surely, and one he helped usher in. But also one that seems to be unfolding without three qualities that distinguished Kennedy's long service. The first is empathy. It's shocking just how tenuous belief in the possibility of empathy as a public emotion has become. Kennedy's brother, Bobby, was fond of quoting the ancient Greeks. One of them, Thucydides, once was asked, "When will there be justice in Athens?" He replied, "There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are."

If Ted Kennedy's 46 years in the Senate have stood for anything, it is for the enduring power of that antique insight. He is a rich, wonderfully connected Boston Irishman, and yet his life's labors have been on behalf of blacks and women and Latinos, for people who sweated for a minimum wage and couldn't pay their sick child's doctor's bill and asked for nothing more than a public school good enough to give their child a fair foothold on the ladder's next rung. Their slights and injuries were his own.

Today, increasing numbers of Americans and their politicians are lost to narcissism and its communal expression -- identity politics. We believe that no one can feel our pain but us, and we care for none outside our tribe. Kennedy's career has been a half-century reproach to that crabbed notion of the American condition. He believed unshakably in solidarity and the common good, and if that now seems quaint, the fault -- and the loss -- is ours and not his.

Child of privilege that he undoubtedly was, Kennedy also stood for a second quality that is fading: the belief that after the accumulation of wealth came an ambition -- indeed, an obligation -- for public service. It's a notion this new Gilded Age finds slightly ridiculous, but not long ago we expected our national leaders to amass their fortunes before taking office and not during or immediately after. There is a meanness of spirit to an age that commoditizes elective office into an economic opportunity.

Finally, one of the reasons Kennedy's Senate comrades will feel his departure so acutely is that he always stood for a civil partisanship. There was no more committed liberal Democrat in that chamber. A struggle with Kennedy was a bare-knuckle fight to the finish, but always according to traditional politics' version of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. It was never personal, and differences never precluded friendship, which is why the senior Massachusetts senator could work with George Bush or John McCain or Orrin Hatch, and will leave office with a record as one of the most effective lawmakers of all time. Nothing deforms our contemporary politics in quite the way the loss of Kennedy's old-fashioned civility does.

In his recently published memoir, Ted Sorensen, John Kennedy's special counselor, recalled how the president secretly dispatched him, along with Bobby, to assist his youngest sibling in his first run for the Senate. Teddy's opponent was the favorite nephew of Democratic House Speaker John McCormack, whose help JFK desperately needed, so it was necessary to maintain fictional neutrality.

Sorensen thought Teddy a callow candidate. But his brothers' murders and personal tragedy changed that. For a time, it seemed he might become an American Parnell, a leader of vision and skill undone by personal appetites. That too was surmounted. Today, Sorensen judges him thus: "More respected and effective today than some presidents have been, Ted long ago came to terms with the fact that he need not be president to fulfill his portion of the Kennedy legacy. ... I think he will ultimately die in the Senate. More active and at home in that body than either of his brothers, Ted was -- and still is -- the most relaxed campaigner of the three, with an easier style on the public platform, the best politician, better able to work with other senators in both parties.

"Always the liberal lion, he has proven to be a courageous battler on the cutting edge of issues both domestic and foreign, maintaining the liberal tradition of his brothers, even when others in the Democratic Party showed less courage. ... Jack and Bobby would have been proud."

The Aging Senate

In light of the recent health troubles of Senators Kennedy, Specter, and Byrd, the AP provides an interesting perspective on how “their battles with age and illness are the hallmarks of the nation's oldest-ever Senate and reminders of the fragility of power."

"A Strong Guy with a Great Heart"

Senator Robert Byrd: "My thoughts and my humble prayers are with Senator Kennedy, my dear friend, Ted; with his wife Vicki; and with the members of the Kennedy family.

I hope and pray that an all-caring, unlimited God will watch over Ted and keep Ted here for us and for America. Ted, Ted, my dear friend, I love you and I miss you. And Irma, Irma, my darling wife Irma, would say: Thank God for you, Ted. Thank God for you."

The False Advocate

VoteVets.Org are going to the airwaves to bring attention to the fact that Senator McCain, who has been propped up in this election as the unrivaled friend of the military, continually refuses to fight for the men and women in uniform who have sacrificed, and continue to sacrifice, on our behalf. He asks the world of them but offers nothing in return. The latest example - his opposition to a modernized GI Bill that would reflect the increasing costs of higher education and better ensure that our nation makes an appropriate investment in those who defend our freedom.

What to Watch in Oregon

The Politico lays out the top five things the “Oregon political strategists and experts will be watching Tuesday.”

How quickly is the race called? Good news for the East Coast-based TV networks: Oregon, already three hours behind on Pacific Standard Time, isn’t expected to take long to count the mail-in ballots because of their electronic tabulating machines. The ballot counting begins in the morning and the first unofficial results are released at 8:00 pm local time. They will continue to be updated until all the ballots have been counted. According to the Secretary of State’s office, 727,527 ballots had been returned through Sunday.

Be careful not to read too much into the early tabulations, which are likely to heavily favor Obama because they will come out of Portland and Multnomah County, said Paul Gronke, a Reed College political science professor.

The showing in the strongholds. Heavy voting in Portland and surrounding Multnomah County are a good sign for Obama. He is expected to beat Clinton by a 2-to-1 margin in this metropolitan area “full of young Democrats under the age of 35,” said William Lunch, a political analyst with Oregon State University.

Clinton needs to perform well in southern Oregon and east of the Cascade Mountains – areas that are considered more rural and conservative. Following the strategy followed in other states, that’s where Clinton sent her husband to campaign. Look to Bend’s Deschutes County, Medford’s Jackson County and Pendleton’s Umatilla County, experts said. “If [Obama is] winning all of those, he’s going to roll up a big margin,” Hibbitts said.

How goes Marion County? The county, which is home to more than 300,000 residents and the state capitol of Salem, has yielded votes within 5 percentage points of the actual statewide primary results in 1988 and 2000 – the last elections with no incumbent president on the ballot. There is a mix of income levels in the area, from upscale liberals to blue collar workers. Clinton needs to win this county by almost double digits if she has any hope of taking the state, said Lunch.

Follow the demography. Political observers expect women to comprise as much as 58 percent of the statewide vote. That would appear to be a promising sign for Clinton, but polls in Oregon have shown Obama leading among women voters. West of Portland, Washington County will be a good gauge of suburban female voters. If Clinton has strength in the state other than in rural and small-town areas, she could find it in this county, said Wiener.

To test Obama’s support among blue-collar Democrats, look to heavily industrialized Albany in Linn County about 70 miles south of Portland, Hibbitts said. Obama should do well in the blue-collar counties “relative to Ohio and Pennsylvania,” Hibbitts said. “I’m not saying he’s going to win those counties, but I think he may win some of them. He may win a significant number. And he won’t get beat 3-to-1 the way he did in Pennsylvania in some of those counties. Here, I think he’ll be very competitive, even in the places that he might lose.”

For a glimpse at the Hispanic vote, look to Woodburn in Marion County, where half of the 20,000 residents are Latino. Good advance work led Obama to eat lunch at a local Mexican restaurant there earlier this month. To measure college activity, keep an eye on Corvallis in Benton County. Home to Oregon State University and high-tech workers at the major employer, Hewlett Packard, Obama should win the area by a 2-1 margin, Lunch said.

What's the turnout? With the presidential primary and closely contested Democratic primaries for U.S. Senate (the seat held by Republican Gordon Smith), attorney general and secretary of state, experts are predicting a "turnout" of 60 percent or more. In Oregon, which conducts elections by mail, the measure of turnout is actually the percentage of ballots returned.

“I think we’re going to have the highest Democratic primary here that we’ve had probably in 40 years and that was the Kennedy-McCarthy primary in ‘68,” Hibbitts said, “and that was really the last time Oregon actually mattered in presidential politics.”

What to Watch in Kentucky

The Politico lays out the top five things the “Kentucky political strategists and experts will watch for Tuesday.”

How goes Montgomery County? In 1988 and 2000 – the last elections with no incumbent president on the ballot – this county of less than 25,000 residents in the Outer Bluegrass region of the state was within 5 percentage points of the actual statewide primary results. Statewide, the Suffolk survey put Clinton 26 points ahead of Obama—51 percent to 25 percent, with 11 percent undecided, 6 percent for John Edwards, 5 percent uncommitted (an actual option on Kentucky ballots) and the rest declining to respond.

The power of John Edwards. Kentucky could provide a good litmus test for whether the former North Carolina senator’s endorsement will help Obama make inroads with the blue collar and elderly white voters who have flocked to Clinton.

Edwards, who dropped his own bid for the nomination in January, remains on the ballot in Kentucky and 6 percent of Kentucky Democrats intend to vote for him, according to the Suffolk poll, conducted in the days after Edwards endorsed Obama.

In West Virginia, another state dominated by blue collar white voters where Edwards was still on the ballot, he drew 7 percent of the vote. Clinton finished with a whopping 67 percent, leaving Obama with 26 percent. Clinton herself told reporters last week in Rapid City, S.D.: “I imagine that Sen. Edward’s endorsement will be of some help to Sen. Obama in Kentucky.”

But David Paleologos, who directed the Suffolk poll, said Edwards’ Kentucky supporters are unlikely to vote for Obama. “These are people who, for whatever reason, have a high disdain for both candidates,” he said. Only 11 percent of respondents who picked Edwards had a favorable impression of Obama—compared to 56 percent who viewed him unfavorably. Clinton didn’t fare much better with Edwards’ backers—17 percent viewed her favorably compared to 67 unfavorable.

The role of race. Exit polls in neighboring West Virginia found one in five voters admitted race was a factor in their vote. Of those, more than four in five voted for Clinton. Kentucky, which is 91 percent white, has a larger black population than West Virginia. And though Kentucky voters may also factor race into their votes, they also might be more reluctant to admit it to exit pollsters, said Laurie Rhodebeck, an associate political science professor at the University of Louisville.

“Voters get a little prickly here if you say race” drove their choice, she said. “They’ll say, ‘It’s more that we’re concerned about his church ties or his lack of military experience or that he seems so young and untested.’ Those may be socially acceptable ways of saying they’re uncomfortable with a black candidate.”

Obama’s popularity numbers in Kentucky are similar to those he had in West Virginia before its primary, according to Suffolk polls taken in those states on the weekends before their primaries. In Kentucky, 43 percent of the poll’s respondents said they viewed Obama favorably versus 43 percent who had unfavorable impressions. In West Virginia, Obama had 44-percent favorability and 41-percent unfavorability ratings.

The battle for Louisville. Both candidates have strongholds in the state’s biggest city, which is home to more than 700,000 of the state’s 4 million residents, so turnout will be key. Obama stands to do well in precincts in the city’s West End, which has high concentrations of black voters, and in the Highlands, which is home to many University of Louisville academics and other educated professionals (as well as Clinton’s state headquarters).

He has run lots of radio ads in the city and also has the support of its congressman, John Yarmuth (D-Ky.). At a state party dinner this month, Yarmuth boasted Obama intended “to contest Kentucky today … (and) believes Kentucky can be a blue state in November.” Clinton figures to do well in Louisville’s South End, home to Ford and General Electric manufacturing plants and many of the white employees who work at the plants.

“That’s precisely the type of issue that she’s been addressing,” Rhodebeck said. “So if voters were wavering about whether to vote or who to vote for, that bad news could be to Hillary’s benefit.” In the rest of the state, Clinton is well-positioned in the nearly 50 counties in the eastern part of the state that are part of Appalachia, as well as in western Kentucky. In order for Obama to hold down her winning margin, he needs to do well in Louisville and Lexington, home to the University of Kentucky, and in the relatively affluent northern Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati.

Mind the (time-zone) gap. Kentucky polls are open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. But because the state is divided between the eastern and central time zones, polls in the eastern part of the state close one hour before those in the west. Since the eastern part of the state is home to the areas in which Obama hopes to be competitive (Louisville, Lexington, the Cincinnati suburbs) and since cities tend to report more quickly than rural areas, early results may make it appear a closer race than it is.

The western part of the state, though less densely populated, is mostly Clinton country. Democratic turnout could be driven up in part of western Kentucky by the party primary for the congressional seat being vacated by Rep. Ron Lewis (R-Ky.). As the western part of the state reports its results tonight, expect to see Clinton’s margin widen.

Senate Forecast

Kos breaks down some of the potential party-switching Senate races by the latest batch of Rasmussen polling:

1. Virginia (R-open): 5/8 - Gilmore (R) 37, Warner (D) 55

Still the DSCC's best recruiting success, giving us as close to a sure thing in the Senate this fall.

2. New Mexico (R-open): 5/14 - Pearce (R) 37, Udall (D) 55: Wilson (R) 36, Udall (D) 57

The Udall-Wilson numbers look even better than the Gilmore-Warner numbers above, but Pearce is likely to win the Republican primary so this race gets slotted second. And if my Unified Theory of Primaries holds (the winning primary candidate closes the gap against a foe with a cleared primary field), then this will ultimately be a tighter race. Of course, when you have an 18-point advantage, "tighter" is relative.

3. New Hampshire (R-Sununu): 4/30 - Sununu (R) 43, Shaheen (D) 51

The first two races spoil us, making a "mere" 8-point lead against an incumbent look anemic. Well, it's not. Still, we are out of "sure thing" territory.

4. Alaska (R-Stevens): 4/12-14 - Stevens (R) 43, Begich (D) 48

Alaska number four on the list? Well, a Rasmussen poll conducted at the same time gave Begich a 2-point lead, suggesting that the long-time Senate institution, "Tubes" Stevens, is truly running out of steam. In reality, Colorado below is probably a stronger bet than Alaska, but that's not to diss our chances in this state. Alaska's chances of going Blue this year are real.

5. Colorado (R-Open): 4/16 - Schaffer (R) 43, Udall (D) 45

New polling on this race would likely show a bigger Udall lead. Schaffer has been hit with connections to Abramoff and had a widely reported and ridiculously embarrassing moment when a mountain identified in one of his ads as Colorado's Pikes Peak turned out to actually be Alaska's Mt. McKinley.

6. North Carolina (R-Dole): 5/8 - Dole (R) 47, Hagan (D) 48

Fresh off her primary boost, Dems have a solid candidate in Hagan, and Republicans are stuck with that "R" next to their names. I would slot this race below Minnesota if I was ranking by chance of success, but this one is at worst a pure toss-up.

7. Texas (R-Cornyn): 5/5-7 - Cornyn (R) 48, Noriega (D) 44

These shocking results confirmed a previous Rasmussen poll also showing a mere 4-point deficit. Noriega's problem is money -- he's been less than adept at raising it and Cornyn has lots. And Texas is an expensive state. If Noriega can overcome the money problems, it's clear there's a yearning for change in the Lone Star State that he can tap into.

8. Oregon (R-Smith): 5/7: Smith (R) 45, Merkley (D) 42; Smith (R) 47, Novick (D) 41

Will whoever wins the Democratic primary get a primary boost against Smith? Either way, this race is starting to show some sign of life when it once seemed to slip away from contention.

9. Minnesota (R-Coleman): 5/12-15: Coleman (R) 51, Franken (D) 44

Franken is going through a rough spot, having been busted with tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid state taxes from gigs and projects all over the country. He's paid that stuff off, and the question is whether it's merely a blip or a longer-term problem. I'd guess the former.

10. Mississippi (R-Wicker): 12/10-12/7: Wicker (R) 47, Musgrove (D) 39

Okay, the poll is hopelessly out of date, but I've got my second poll of this race coming out either late this week or next Monday. We can adjust Mississippi's place on this list according to those results. Given the results of last week's House special election, I wouldn't be surprised with some tightening.

11. Maine (R-Collins): 5/14: Collins (R) 52, Allen (D) 42

Collins is well liked in the state, but even she's starting to bleed support from huge early leads she previously enjoyed. Bush and his war in Iraq are proving a drag on anything they touch, and Collins remains an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Iraq. Collins is still over 50, and hence considered safe, but the trendlines aren't looking good for her.

12.) Kentucky (R-McConnell): 5/7-9: McConnell (R) 48, Lunsford (D) 36; McConnell (R) 47, Fischer (D) 35

The Republican Senate minority leader under 50 percent? Oh my! Perhaps it might have something to do with his anemic 48-45 approval rating. McConnell dodged a bullet when the Dems two top choices -- Rep. Ben Chandler (who will win Kentucky's open seat in 2010) and State Auditor Crit Luallen -- passed. But he won't be out of the woods until he can consistently get over that 50 percent hump.

13. Lousiana (D-Landrieu): 3/26-4/9: Landrieu (D) 50, Kennedy (R) 38

There's been just a single good poll on this race the entire 2008 calendar year, this one, so we have no proof that this will shape up to be the competitive race the GOP hopes it'll become. With Democrats picking up a House seat two weeks ago in a district Bush won by 19 points in 2004, it seems that even Red-trending Louisiana is in little mood for Republicans. Throw in an energized black electorate with Obama at the top of the ticket, and this becomes an even tougher slog for Republicans.

Kennedy switched parties at the wrong time in history, it would seem, though it's too early to be counting our lucky stars. There's still plenty of time for this to develop into a real race.

14. Kansas (R-Roberts): 5/3: Roberts (R) 52, Slattery (D) 40

Really, what the hell is Kansas doing on this list? Well, if these numbers stay static in the next couple of months, then Roberts will be safe. But for a Republican that won with 83% of the vote in 2002, Roberts is not used to being tested, and Slattery hasn't even started campaigning. This is still a likely Republican seat at the moment, but it's far closer than it should, by rights, be. We may have a surprise brewing here.

15. Nebraska (R-Open): 5/15: Johanns (R) 55, Kleeb (D) 40

I polled this race last November and Johanns, the wildly popular former governor of the state (who won his last election with 69 percent of the vote) was crushing Kleeb 59-28. This last poll shows that we may have more of a race on our hands. I've got my second Nebraska poll due out late this week, so we'll see if Rasmussen's numbers are confirmed, or if they're too optimistic.

A 15-point deficit is "optimistic"? It's a fantastic result, and one that shows that this race could be truly competitive before all is said and done. And given that Obama trails by only 11 points in the state (compared to 23 points with Clinton), and we have another state were Obama at the top of the ticket gives our Senate candidate a fighting chance.

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Here's some context: Look at what Rasmussen said at roughly this point in time two years ago about the races Democrats picked up in 2006:

Minnesota - Actual: Klobuchar 58, Kennedy 38; 4/27: Klobuchar 45, Kennedy 43

Missouri - Actual: McCaskill 50, Talent 47; 5/8: Talent 43, McCaskill 40

Montana - Actual: Tester 49, Burns 48; 5/11: Tester 48, Burns 44

Pennsylvania - Actual: Casey 59, Santorum 41; 4/20: Casey 51, Santorum 38

Rhode Island - Actual: Whitehouse 53, Chafee 47; 4/26: Chafee 44, Whitehouse 41

Virginia: Actual - Webb 50, Allen 49; 4/4: Allen 50, Webb 30

The Injection of Nazi

On Slate, Anne Applebaum explores the strange and unproductive need for politicians to inject the Nazis into the political discourse. An excerpt:

"Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals. … We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, 'Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided.'" - George W. Bush, May 2008

"Moreover, in our time, these threats are not diminishing… [and] in these new threats, as during the time of the Third Reich, are the same contempt for human life and the same claims of exceptionality and diktat in the world." - Vladimir Putin, May 2007

No, by citing these two quotations, I am not drawing comparisons between George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, two vastly different men. Nevertheless, it is clear from the above that Bush and Putin, despite their vast differences, do share a common ailment: They both suffer from the inexplicable need to inject the Nazis into current political debate whether they belong there or not.

...I am not, I hasten to add, arguing here against the public discussion of history. If the Nazis were being invoked more generally - in warnings, say, about the unpredictability of totalitarian regimes - they might be a useful part of a number of discussions. Unfortunately, Nazi analogies are nowadays usually deployed in order to end arguments, not to broaden them. Once you inject "Hitler" or "the Third Reich" into a debate, you have evoked the ultimate form of evil, put your opponent in an indefensible position—"What, you're opposed to a war against Hitler?"—and for all practical purposes halted the conversation.

Invoking the Nazis also changes the tenor of a debate. There may be good, tactical reasons for choosing not to negotiate with Hezbollah or the Iranian regime, for example (the best reason, usually, is that the relevant diplomats are fairly sure that negotiations won't work). But calling opponents of this policy "appeasers" distorts the debate, giving tactical choices a phony moral grounding. In reality, circumstances do change, even where "terrorists and radicals" are involved, as this administration in particular knows perfectly well.

Clearly the circumstances changed, for example, in the case of North Korea, a regime that was featured as a part of the axis of evil in 2002 and with whose leadership a number of Bush administration officials now negotiate full-time. ...Still, that doesn't mean that the Americans participating in talks with North Korea are the precise contemporary equivalents of Neville Chamberlain, and it doesn't mean that the North Koreans are about to invade Poland.

By the same token, we don't learn anything useful by calling Kim Jong-il "Hitler," we haven't achieved much by calling Bush or Blair a Nazi, and the idea that people who want to negotiate with Iran are the moral equivalent of Vichy collaborators is ridiculous. Seventy years have now passed. Let's put the ghosts of Munich to rest, this time for good.

The Politics of Diplomacy

In the current issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria responds to the Bush-McCain assertion that diplomacy is akin to appeasement and isolation is a show of strength.

President Bush chose an odd place and time to claim that talking to "terrorists and radicals" in the Middle East is like appeasing Hitler in the 1930s. As Bush was speaking in Israel, his preferred strategy against such adversaries was collapsing next door in Lebanon. The Bush administration's strategy against Hizbullah has consisted of a mix of isolation, belligerence and military pressure. It refuses to talk to the group or its supporters in Tehran and Damascus. Two years ago, Washington unquestioningly supported Israeli Prime Minister's Ehud Olmert's decision to attack southern Lebanon, Hizbullah's stronghold. The United States provides the Lebanese government and Army with aid and has responded to the current crisis by promising to speed up delivery of weapons. Yet today Hizbullah is stronger in Lebanon, Iran is more influential in the region, and the United States and its ally, Prime Minister Fuad Siniora, have been marginalized.

…It's not just Hizbullah. In dealing with many such groups—Hamas, the Taliban—the Bush administration has adopted a macho, exclusively military approach. All three of these groups have a political base in their societies that is deep and enduring. Denouncing them as evil and promising to destroy them will not change that; in fact, doing so only adds to their mystique of resistance and struggle. What we need is a political strategy to combat, contest and weaken the appeal of these groups or to marginalize their violent factions. Such a policy would naturally involve some contact with their leaders, but as part of a much broader effort to engage all groups in these societies politically.

We are trying to handle Lebanon with one hand tied behind our back. We will not make contact with the Syrians or the Iranians to find out if their interests are identical, or to discern the contours of a deal. We have little political leverage and we refuse to engage in a process that might give us some. "It's a much broader regional problem," says Norton. "When I was advising the Iraq Study Group I noticed that though the members disagreed on many things, the one on which there was unanimous support was the need to make contact with Iran." One of the group's members, Bush's own Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, made precisely this argument last week.

Perhaps Gates noticed that violence has declined in Iraq largely because the United States decided to engage with Sunni militants whom it had regarded for years as sworn enemies, giving cash to those whom we called terrorists only a few months earlier. In fact, this administration's few successes have come when it's agreed to talk with its adversaries. Bush authorized negotiations with Libya and North Korea—both of which he regarded as terrorist states and one of which he placed in the Axis of Evil. As for Iran, we've talked with Iranian officials on several occasions over issues relating to Afghanistan and Iraq.

James Dobbins, the administration's representative in the 2002 talks to form the government in Afghanistan, described the Iranians as "straightforward, reliable and helpful. They were critical to our success." President Bush's remarks on the solemn occasion of Israel's 60th anniversary may have been political. But much worse, they were dishonest.

Knesset-Gate Continued...

During a press gaggle aboard Air Force One, White House Counselor Ed Gillespie said: “And I would again encourage the media, whatever you want to do, it's your editors - to ask them if maybe you might ask the Speaker of the House, or the leader of the Senate, or the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, what sentence that the President uttered, what words do you disagree with in those comments in the Knesset?”

Senator Joe Biden, never one to back down, gladly responded:

“Here’s what I disagree with – this White House long ago perfected the art of the political misrepresentation and innuendo masquerading as policy and stringing together sentences that seem unobjectionable when read in isolation, but send a very different message when read together. What is stunning is that this is the only president I can think of – and I’ve served with seven of them – who would engage in this kind of activity while overseas in the Knesset, even as he revealed a totally incoherent policy.

“In the space of three paragraphs, the President cited the outrageous statements of Iran’s leader; said “some” believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals; and drew a parallel to “an American senator” in 1939 declaring that talking to Hitler might have prevented World War II and the Holocaust. Then, his staff told the press on background that the remarks were a reference to calls by Senator Obama and other Democrats to engage with Iran, only to later say on the record the President intended no such thing. Karl Rove would be proud.

“As to the incoherence, to say that those who would negotiate with these terrorists and radicals are peddling “the false comfort of appeasement” is one of the most extraordinary self-indictments by any administration in history. As recently as the day before the President made his remarks, his own Secretary of Defense called for engaging Iran. His Secretary of State has done so repeatedly. And the President himself struck a deal with Libya’s Qadafi and wrote polite letters to North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, who would make most people’s top ten lists of “terrorists and radicals.”

“The President was right to engage Libya and North Korea, just as his cabinet officials are right to want to engage Iran. That’s the best way to get them to change their conduct. The President was profoundly wrong to launch a political attack from abroad. That’s beneath the office of the Presidency. Ed Gillespie should stop playing the American people for fools.”

The Richest Man in the World Endorses a Candidate

"I've got a conviction about him that I don't get very often. He has as much potential as anyone I've seen to have an important impact over his lifetime on the course that America takes."

"So it would be Barack Obama, — [he] would be my preference."

More Members, More Problems

The Times reports on the “Unintended Consequences of the House Democrats’ Winning Streak.” An excerpt:

While much of the Congressional political focus has been on the declining fortunes and numbers of House Republicans, House Democrats have their own problem – they are winning too many elections. By prevailing in conservative locales where they ordinarily would not have a chance, Democrats are widening the ideological divide in their own ranks and complicating their ability to find internal consensus.

It is a nice problem to have, but it is one that can bedevil party leaders. As their numbers expand, they have to juggle the competing interests of Travis Childers, the new pro-gun, pro-life, anti-tax Democrat from northern Mississippi and someone like, say, Nancy Pelosi, a pro-choice, pro-gun control liberal from San Francisco who sees government as a solution.

Ms. Pelosi, who as speaker will have the job of managing these increasingly divergent philosophies, said it is to the advantage of both the party and the nation to mesh such differing views. “We welcome the diversity of opinion that exists in our country, and we want our solutions to America’s problems to reflect that diversity,” she said.

But the strain of balancing the political imperatives of a right-of-center to pretty far left-of-center caucus has already strained the Democratic majority in the House. In the most recent example, the party’s intricate scheme for passing a war spending bill collapsed Thursday when most Republicans sat out the war money vote and most Democrats, who oppose spending any more money on combat in Iraq, voted against it.

That left the Democratic majority without the votes to pass a spending bill that, in the leadership’s calculation, is essential to protecting the party’s image on national security as well as members from conservative districts who cannot afford to be seen as failing to support troops in the field. Most of those lawmakers, including many freshmen, backed the war funds. The money will no doubt be approved eventually, but the outcome exposed a vexing divide among Democrats on handling of the war spending. Of course, the vote also left Republicans trying to explain why they were abstaining on financing a war they support as the crucial front in the war on terror, but that is another story.

Collateral Damage

The Post reports on the politics of "guilt by association" and uncovers some aging Communists who are apparently fed up with the Clinton hypocrisy.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton questioned rival Barack Obama's ties to 1960s radicals, her comments baffled two retired Bay Area lawyers who knew Clinton in the summer of 1971 when she worked as an intern at a left-wing law firm in Oakland, Calif., that defended communists and Black Panthers.

"She's a hypocrite," Doris B. Walker, 89, who was a member of the American Communist Party, said in an interview last week. "She had to know who we were and what kinds of cases we were handling. We had a very left-wing reputation, including civil rights, constitutional law, racist problems."

Malcolm Burnstein, 74, a partner at the firm who worked closely with Clinton during her internship, said he was traveling in Pennsylvania in April when Clinton attacked Obama for his past interactions with William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, members of Students for a Democratic Society who went on to found the bomb-making Weather Underground. "Given her background, it was quite hypocritical," Burnstein said. "I almost called the Philadelphia Inquirer. I saw what she and her campaign were saying about Ayers and I thought, 'Well, if you're going to talk about that totally bit of irrelevant nonsense, I'll talk about your career with us.' "

But her decision to target Obama's radical connections has spurred criticism from some former protest movement leaders who say she has opened her own associations to scrutiny. "The very things she's accusing Barack of could be said of her with much greater evidence," said Tom Hayden, a leading anti-Vietnam War activist, author and self-described friend of the Clintons.

And around we go… Without engaging in a tit for tat, it is interesting to note the lack of press attention on some of these dubious Clinton (“the fully vetted candidate”) associations/dealings. But you have to wonder how long the ridiculous “guilt by association” tactics of this campaign will continue. After all, they are distracting from the real issues before the American people and ultimately will splatter mud on everyone involved.

Robert Reich, who went to Yale Law School with Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton and later served in the Clinton administration, called Hillary Clinton's attack on Obama "absurd," adding: "That carries guilt by association to a new level of absurdity. Where does guilt by association stop? I mean, she was a partner of Jim McDougal in the 1980s, for crying out loud." Reich is now an Obama supporter.

"Once you introduce the concept of guilt by association, everyone is in trouble because there is no end to it," he said. "The goal is to render Barack so unelectable that the party has to turn to her. Because the goal is so narrow and obsessive, she's not aware that she's also going to be collateral damage."

There Can Only Be One

Veepstakes Continued...

The Hill recently asked all 97 senators not running for president the same question: “If you were asked, would you accept an offer to be the vice presidential nominee ?” It's clear that some clearly take themselves too seriously while others provide a good laugh. Some responses:

John Barrasso (R-Wyo. ) “We already have a vice president from Wyoming. So we’ll have to see if Sen. McCain asks me to chair his selection committee. That seems to work well. It certainly seemed to work well for the last guy from Wyoming.”

Evan Bayh (D-Ind. ) “It’s presumptuous to even speculate about that kind of thing. But I suspect that’s not the sort of thing you say no to.”

Bob Bennett (R-Utah ) “Of course. Big house, big car, not much to do. Why not ?”

Tom Carper (D-Del. ) “Yes. Sign me up. I’ve been kidding people for years: The hours are better, the wages are just as good — who ever heard of a vice president getting shot at ? — and it’s a great opportunity to travel.”

John Cornyn (R-Texas ) “I’m running for reelection to the United States Senate … Is anybody saying no ? If asked, I would have to respectfully consider it. How’s that ?”

Larry Craig (R-Idaho ) “I would say, ‘ No, Hillary. ’”

Chris Dodd (D-Conn. ) “Never say no. You always have to give it some thought. It depends who asks you, too.”

Byron Dorgan (D-N. D. ) “Are you kidding ? Every senator would accept that offer. My guess is that almost every senator looks at themselves in the mirror in the morning and sees either a future president or vice president.”

Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif. ) “Of course. I think anybody would.”

Lindsey Graham (R-S. C. ) “I have said that John needs to pick someone that he feels comfortable with and will help him win in the fall. I like him, and I feel comfortable with him. But I think there are other portfolios that help more than I do.”

Judd Gregg (R-N. H. ) “No. I don’t like going to funerals.”

Tom Harkin (D-Iowa ) “No, I’d have Jon Stewart stand in for me. Jon Stewart. That’s my guy.”

James Inhofe (R-Okla. ) “No. I enjoy life too much.”

Edward Kennedy (D-Mass. ) “I plan to stick with my current job until I get the hang of it.”

Joe Lieberman (I-Conn. ) “Once is enough. I already have the T-shirt and I’m proud of it. I yield to my colleagues.”

Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark. ) “I have not considered it. It’s a hypothetical I don’t need to answer. I’m not going to play ‘ What if. ’”

Barbara Mikulski (D-Md. ) “Absolutely. Absolutely. I think I would be great. First of all, I know how to behave at weddings and funerals. And I know how to be commander in chief. I’d bring a lot of fun to the job. We would rock the Naval Observatory.”

Bill Nelson (D-Fla. ) “If Hillary’s the nominee, Barack will be the running mate. If Barack’s the nominee, Hillary will be the running mate. That’s my answer.”

Mark Pryor (D-Ark. ) “They can do a lot better than me. I just don’t see it happening. I don’t know what I’d bring to the ticket. I’d have to think about it. I don’t see how I would add much to the ticket. To give you an honest answer, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Pat Roberts (R-Kan. ) “No. I don’t cut ribbons well or give eulogies at funerals.”

Arlen Specter (R-Pa. ) “Absolutely not.”

Ted Stevens (R-Alaska ) “No. I’ve got too many things that I still want to do as a senator. And I don’t like the idea of a job where you sit around and wait for someone to die.”

Ron Wyden (D-Ore. ) “I have a unique perspective on this. I am the only senator to have announced I am not running for president, because there should be someone here to serve as the Senate’s designated driver. I intend to stay in that position.”

Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said they’d have to check with their wives first.

Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who at 90 is the chamber’s oldest member, noted that his job as president pro tempore already allows him to preside over the Senate just as Cheney does as Senate president. “And I do not enjoy spending a lot of time at ‘undisclosed locations.”

Bush-McCain Politics as Usual

The President’s sudden interest in the Middle East peace process last year was clearly nothing more than a desperate political ploy to allow him to say, like many Presidents before him, that he tried. It was naïve, it was contrary to his previous seven years of indifference to the issue, and it was obviously far too little, far too late. But before the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel, surely the President would use the opportunity to speak of healing old wounds and bringing opposing sides together in the name of peace. Far from it.

Instead, he chose to engage in fear-mongering, to create divisions back home, and to discredit an American presidential candidate in the eyes of a foreign government. In doing so, he inexcusably took a political shot at Barack Obama by not only insinuating that he was naïve and weak but by also calling him as an appeaser, not unlike those who allowed the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany. That's right, he engaged in partisan domestic politics while addressing a foreign government, and, in criticizing his political opponent, made a Hitler analogy in the heart of Israel. So much for “politics stops at the water’s edge!”

Washington Post: It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.

Despite the absurdity and inappropriateness of the President’s comments, it may actually benefit Barack Obama. After all, the Democrats should take every opportunity they can to talk about the failed Bush-McCain foreign policy of the last 7 years because it’s an important distinction in this election. It’s the Bush policy that has emboldened Iran and it is the Bush approach to foreign policy and other issues that has polarized the country. McCain offers more of the same while Obama, agree or disagree with his policy, offers a new approach that is sorely needed.

On this issue, Obama's approach and mindset are reflective of Presidential foreign policy luminaries such as Kennedy (“We should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate”), Nixon (see China), and Regan (see Soviet Union), and are supported by most foreign policy experts and many in the President’s own administration, including the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense. The President's rhetoric highlights the past flaws and current missteps of Bush-McCain Republicans and highlights the vastly different way they approach the issues of our time. Americans are ready to move on.

President Bush: "Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Barack Obama: "It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power - including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy - to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel."

Senator Joe Biden’s informal statement: “This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous. Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset…and make this kind of ridiculous statement. He’s the guy who’s weakened us. He’s the guy that’s increased the number of terrorists in the world. His policies have produced this vulnerability the United States has. His intelligence community pointed that out not me. The NIE has pointed that out and what are you talking about, is he going to fire Condi Rice? Condi Rice has talked about the need to sit down. So his first two appeasers are Rice and Gates. I hope he comes home and does something.”

Senator Joe Biden’s formal statement: “There is an emerging, ugly pattern in this campaign that is deeply disturbing and also terribly damaging to our national security. Three weeks ago, the presumptive Republican nominee for President said: “I think it's very clear who Hamas wants to be the next president of the United States. So apparently has Danny Ortega and several others… If Senator Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly.”

In recent days, his surrogates have repeated that outrageous statement. And now, today, the President of the United States, speaking in the Israeli Knesset, had this to say: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along… We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American Senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

White House aides told reporters on background that the President’s remarks are a reference to calls by Senator Obama and other Democrats for the U.S. president to engage countries like Iran. This kind of political attack rhetoric masquerading as policy is exactly why we’re in such trouble around the world, why we’re less secure and our adversaries are stronger. Instead of trying to fool the American people and demonize Democrats, the President should be spending his time trying to get us out of the hole he’s dug.

I try to refrain from criticizing a President when he’s traveling. But for the President to leave the country and unleash a political attack on Barack Obama and Democrats cannot go unanswered. We are not going to tolerate long distance swift boating. The President said that a willingness to talk to adversaries like Iran is a ‘foolish delusion’ and alleged that those who advocate engagement offer ‘the false comfort of appeasement.’ If the President really believes that, I assume that the first thing he will do when he gets home is to fire his cabinet. His own Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State favor negotiations with Iran.

For example, Secretary Gates said just yesterday: “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage… and then sit down and talk with them. If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling they need anything from us.”

Secretary Rice last year repeatedly called for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program:

February 25, 2007: “We’re leaving open the track of negotiations because the best way to resolve this would be for Iran to come to the table.”

October 12, 2007: “The whole purpose… is to convince Iran that the best way to achieve its stated goal of civil nuclear power is to engage in negotiations… the United States has made it clear that [if Iran suspends enrichment] we would reverse 28 years of American policy and engage fully in discussions with Iran… about anything Iran wants to put on the table. I would close by saying I think the question is not, as I’ve been asked sometimes, ‘why will the United States not talk to Iran?’ The question really is: ‘why will Iran not talk to the United States?”

And of course, this is a President who made a deal with Libya’s leader Qadafi and writes polite letters to Kim Jong Il in North Korea. Under George Bush’s watch, it’s Iran, not freedom that has been on the march: Iran is much closer to the bomb now than it was seven years ago; Iran’s influence in Iraq has gone from zero to sixty because this President’s misguided war gave Shi’ite religious parties inspired and nurtured by Iran a path to power and opened the door to Tehran. When Iran’s President goes to Iraq, our ally there, Prime Minister Maliki, embraces him on both cheeks. Whose policy produced that?; Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah is ascendant.

And beyond Iran, the world has become a much more dangerous place for America because of the failures of this administration’s foreign policy. According to our own intelligence services, Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the people who actually attacked us on 09-11 – is stronger now than at any time since 9-11 and planning new attacks. Around the world, terrorist recruitment is on the rise and there were more attacks in 2007 than in 2006, and more attacks in 2006 than in 2005.Hamas – which came to power in elections the administration insisted take place -- controls Gaza and launches rockets at Israel every day. Lebanon is on the verge of civil war.

And of course, 140,000 American troops remain stuck in Iraq with no end in sight. In short, under George Bush, the entire Middle East has become more dangerous and the United States and our allies, including Israel, less secure. His policy has been an abject failure. So for him to call those who rightly see the need for change ‘appeasers’ is truly delusional. For him to do it abroad is disgraceful. I believe that as we rally our allies and Russia and China to increase pressure on Iran to end its dangerous nuclear program, we also have to do much more to reach out to Iran – including through direct talks. That’s the best way to exploit cracks within the ruling elite and between Iran’s rulers and its people, who are struggling economically and stifled politically.

The Iranian people need to know that their government, not the United States, is choosing confrontation over cooperation. The President’s saber rattling is the most self-defeating policy imaginable. It forces Iranians who despise the regime to rally behind their leaders and spurs instability in the Middle East, which adds to the price of oil, with the proceeds going right into Tehran’s pockets. The worst nightmare for a regime that thrives on isolation and tension is an America ready, willing and able to engage. And by the way, since when has talking removed the word “no” from our vocabulary? It’s amazing how little faith this administration has in the power of America’s ideas and ideals.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: "We have a protocol . . . around here that we don't criticize the president when he is on foreign soil. One would think that that would apply to the president, that he would not criticize Americans when he is on foreign soil. I think what the president did in that regard is beneath the dignity of the office of president and unworthy of our representation at that observance in Israel."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “Not surprisingly, the engineer of the worst foreign policy in our nation’s history has fired yet another reckless and reprehensible round. More than seven years into his Presidency and in the sixth year of the directionless Iraq war, President Bush has yet to learn that his brand of divisive partisan rhetoric is precisely what has made America and our allies less secure. And for the President to make this statement before the government of our closest ally as it celebrates a remarkable milestone demeans this historic moment with partisan politics.

“President Bush’s own actions demonstrate that he believes negotiations – at the right moment, under the right conditions and with the right leaders – can both show strength and produce results. He has relied on negotiations with North Korea and Libya, two state sponsors of terror. And by conducting discussions with Russia, China, Libya, North Korea and Iran in recent years, President Bush has demonstrated his belief that negotiations can be a tool to advance America and Israel’s national security interests. I call on the President to explain the inconsistency between his Administration’s actions and his words today.”

"The belief that somehow communications and positions and willingness to sit down and have serious negotiations need to be done in a face to face fashion as Senator Obama wants to do, which then enhances the prestige of a nation that's a sponsor of terrorists and is directly responsible for the deaths of brave young Americans, I think is an unacceptable position, and shows that Senator Obama does not have the knowledge, the experience, the background to make the kind of judgments that are necessary to preserve this nation's security."

John McCain in 2008: "Yes, there have been appeasers in the past. The president is absolutely right." Asked whether he thought Obama was one of them, he said he didn't know. He didn't know!

John McCain in 2006: When asked "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?" McCain answered: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States. Even if McCain had not favored doing business with Hamas two years ago, he had no business smearing Barack Obama. But given his stated position then, it is either the height of hypocrisy or a case of political amnesia for McCain to inject Hamas into the American election.

Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA): "The president swallows the microphone every time he opens his mouth."

As the Times reports:

Thursday was not the first time the term “appeasement” has cropped up in the Bush administration lexicon. In 2006, in advance of the midterm elections, Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld invoked the analogy as a line of attack against critics of the war in Iraq. Then, as now, it was controversial.