July 3, 2008 | 3:39 pm

The traveling candidates

Posted by Raphael J. Sonenshein

As John McCain finishes his tour of Colombia and Mexico, Barack Obama is making plans for a trip to Israel, Iraq, France, England, and Jordan.  Smart for Obama, not so smart for McCain. 

Obama needs to be seen as credible on the world stage, and McCain needs to be seen as somebody who knows the price of gas in Toledo.

Republicans are quite worried about Obama’s upcoming trip, and have been telling reporters that they are not very happy about McCain’s.  McCain had already been to the countries Obama will visit, and this was a more modest one.  Nothing particularly bad happened on McCain’s foreign tour, and there was even some good news when the government of Columbia managed to rescue some hostages with a quite brilliant intelligence coup.  McCain was well treated by government leaders, which is not particularly surprising, but not particularly newsworthy either.  When traveling abroad, McCain can hardly put distance between himself and the unpopular President Bush.  Perhaps it was just that McCain is frustrated by the campaign and uninterested in domestic issues, and hoping that foreign policy expertise will be the entire ball of wax for the election.  McCain is acting like a president near the end of his term, going abroad because it’s more comfortable than getting darts thrown at you at home.

When asked about the trip, his campaign aide said it had been McCain’s idea and “the campaign was fine with it.”  In my experience, that’s a new one.

Meanwhile, Obama is laying plans for his grand tour.  Unlike McCain, he is likely to get a big popular reception overseas.  His every utterance, though, will be watched closely to see if he makes a mistake.  Jewish voters will be very interested to see how it works out in Israel.

In any case, Obama can use a change in the story line right now.  His switch on the FISA vote from opposition to support was a real disappointment to many of his most devoted supporters.  His initial reaction to the Wes Clark dustup with John McCain, rejecting Clark’s comments, seemed wimpy to many Democrats.  There is a worry in the party that he may be “playing not to lose” with excessive caution rather than “playing to win” and being more aggressive.

On the domestic side, though, Obama’s travels to red states are perking up Democrats, especially in those states.  He visited North Dakota and Montana, buoyed by a poll in the latter red state showing him leading McCain.  Meanwhile, McCain is visiting states to raise money (New York, California, etc) but not places where he is likely to win.  So even on the domestic travel front, Obama is besting McCain.

Where McCain is hurting Obama is in the daily back-and-forth of the campaign.  So far, this is turning out to be one of Obama’s weaknesses, and McCain’s strength.  The years that McCain invested in winning the favor of political reporters (the barbeques, the intimate chats on the bus, the cultivation of their friendship) has paid off handsomely. 

In addition to being a big referendum, a campaign is also the sum total of a bunch of days that each candidate tries to win.  The McCain people are being out-spent and out-organized.  But they are out-messaging Obama.  Obama’s team is unaccountably on the defensive, looking to fight back against charges instead of pressing their advantage.  Republicans are jumping on every Obama mistake, and even creating ones that don’t exist (such as the mythical special deal Obama did not actually receive on his home loan). 

Meanwhile, the Obama people are spending precious little time making McCain pay for his mistakes or inconsistencies.  If they’re not careful, they will find themselves in the position of all candidates who try to run out the clock and to rely on organization and money instead of message.

June 27, 2008 | 7:19 pm

Torture: What did we know, and when did we know it?

Posted by Raphael J. Sonenshein

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.  The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

These chilling words, written by retired General Antonio Taguba, who had conducted the first official investigation of the Abu Ghraib scandal, were placed before the American people on June 18.  The story of torture as US government policy is one of the most shameful episodes in American history, but it is likely to disappear in the heat of the presidential election campaign.

Neither party wants to talk about torture.  Republicans have begun to understand that they face profound moral and legal problems from countenancing torture.  Democrats are scared of appearing weak on terror.  (I expect a nice run of comments below suggesting that by renouncing torture as government policy I am “doing Hizbollah’s work.”)

A murky history serves all purposes.

But of course we always knew.  We knew in the way that we know something without quite acknowledging it to ourselves.

The government and the media protected our sensitivities by softening the words. But we could sense through the foggy language – “enhanced or harsh interrogation techniques” “prisoner abuse” – that the reality was torture.  Even when it was revealed this year that a committee of top Bush administration officials went to Guantanamo to supervise torture, and when the president acknowledged that he knew of and approved of this committee’s work, we were still told by the president a few days later that it was all the responsibility of a few errant soldiers.

Spokespersons muddied the debate with fictional “doomsday scenarios” in which heroic interrogators, 24-like, drew critical information from monstrous terrorists.  We were told that plots had been broken up, even when the evidence of these plots evaporated upon close inspection.  This week, we heard the arrogant testimony of Vice President Cheney’s “legal” advisor, David Addington, and the author of the torture memo, John Yoo, smirking in front of a House committee.  It was hard to watch Yoo refusing to say that the president lacks the authority to bury a person alive or to torture a child in front of a suspect’s parent.  It was clear that neither was much afraid of being held to account, especially by Congress.

Finally, though, we have to ask: who are these people?  How did a small band of fanatics get themselves into position to so pervert America’s ideals?  How did they run roughshod over the protests of those in the military and law enforcement communities who protested, much more than Congress did?  Do these people bear some responsibility for their actions for which they should be held to account?  Do we?

There is something about torture that is profoundly hostile to Jewish tradition.  To me, torture has always gone hand in hand with superstition, the Dark Ages, ignorance, absolute authority, terror, and intolerance.  I see the rack, straining horses, and the other tools of official torture.  I always associate torture with the Inquisition, which in the old phrase, was not good for the Jews.

It was the Enlightenment, the rise of reason and the belief in constitutional authority that created a more tolerant atmosphere for Jews and for many others.  Torture is incompatible with that tradition.

No nation more deeply absorbed the Enlightenment than America.  It is in our Constitution, with its protections for liberties and our separation of powers.  The 8th amendment enshrines it.  It is in the tradition started by George Washington in the Revolution, who ordered that even though the British had badly mistreated American prisoners, all British prisoners were to be treated justly.  I don’t remember anybody calling George weak on terror, even against the British who would have hanged him had they caught him.  No people committed graver sins against humanity than the Germans in World War II, but the USA treated German soldiers with the greatest of humanity.

How did our definition of strength so deteriorate from Washington and Roosevelt to the Bush crowd?  How did humane treatment by the powerful come to be seen as weak, and bullying those who are in our physical control come to be seen as strong?

We’ll find our way back because two centuries of tradition is much stronger than we imagine.  But let’s begin with a real word, and give up the comforting euphemisms.  The word is torture.

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June 19, 2008 | 2:45 pm

Will the Democrats cave on telecom immunity?

Posted by Raphael J. Sonenshein

It looks like Congressional Democrats are going to cave in to the Bush administration, this time on telecom immunity for illegal surveillance of Americans.  Maybe public opposition will stop the roll over.  Maybe this is a drama that will end better than it is going right now.  But I wouldn’t bank on it.

You may recall that we found out a few years ago that several telecom companies had agreed to help the administration illegally wiretap Americans.  Numerous lawsuits have been filed to hold them accountable.

The telecoms, big campaign donors, joined with the administration to try to bully Congress into granting them retroactive immunity for actions that they have never fully disclosed.  And media reports now suggest that the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate are going to pass the bill the White House wants.  It will have a fig leaf to hide how pathetic the Congressional resistance was.  If the companies can show a written document that the president or his representatives said it was all legal, then the lawsuits will be dismissed.  I can’t wait until another illegal action by somebody else is justified by such a letter.

It is not impossible that the media reports themselves are part of a White House strategy to build momentum for a legislative victory.  But I am not optimistic.

It was embarrassing watching the Lakers roll over for the Celtics in Game 6 of the NBA finals.  But at least the Celtics were a much better team.  I think one needs to explore the outer realms of psychology to understand how, in an election year that greatly favors the Democrats, with Republicans demoralized, the Democratic party would give in to a president whose latest approval rating is 24%.  All I can imagine is that this party has been beaten down so much on national security for so many years, that they simply have lost the capacity to resist.  I would also not underestimate the impact of telecom campaign donations.

If anybody on Capital Hill were watching the presidential race, they might notice that John McCain is closely tied to the telecoms, and that Barack Obama opposes this deal.  By caving in now, they are doing McCain’s work for him, taking a potentially embarrassing issue off the election table.

It’s particularly disheartening that in a week that saw clear evidence that the administration guided and inspired the program of torture that may well constitute war crimes, the Democrats in Congress may see fit to cave in.  I wonder how the White House will see this.  Democrats love to imagine that Republicans will not attack them on national security if only they get everything they want.  More likely, the White House will feel contemptuous and even more emboldened to do whatever it wants in its waning days.

The thing about courage is that it has great consequences all over the map.  Obama is attacking McCain on terrorism and war issues, rather than quivering in fear of Republican attacks.  If Congress has any hope of keeping the White House from using its final days for dangerous excursions into the further reaches of global warfare, a little courage would go a long way.

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June 8, 2008 | 11:13 am

Hillary withdraws—the end of the beginning

Posted by Raphael J. Sonenshein

Now that Hillary Clinton has issued her long-awaited and full-throated endorsement of Barack Obama, the extended first phase of the 2008 race is over.  There is a slight feeling of anti-climax as we wind up for the big one.  On the Democratic side, the semi-finals were monstrously difficult, while the Republican division was relatively quiet.

But it won’t be long before we realize that for the first time in months, there are only two candidates, not three.

The post-mortems on Hillary’s campaign are already pouring in, and I don’t intend to join the crowd.  Just as in sports, winning doesn’t mean you did everything perfectly and losing doesn’t mean you did everything wrong.  Hillary’s juggernaut, designed for years to win in 2008, was derailed by a better campaign that could not have been anticipated in advance.  Had Obama not run, and had he not found the soft spots in the Clinton machine – the boiling rage in the party about the Iraq war, the value of caucus states in accumulating delegates, the new ways to raise money online in small amounts – then all the things we call weaknesses would have been seen as strengths.

Great candidacies by African Americans tend to come from the reform wing of the Democratic party.  That’s how Tom Bradley came up in Los Angeles.  Like Obama, he took a reform model that is often bloodless, and linked it to African Americans to create a winning combination.  It’s hard to see it coming, because time after time the reform candidate for the Democratic nomination loses without a working class base.  Few anticipate just how powerful African American candidates can be when linked up to broader reform coalitions.

Changing a political party is a bloody business.  When the Clintons came up in 1992, they took a party that was on the left and pulled it to the center.  There are people still angry about that shift.  The Clintons proved that in the 90s, with Republican ideas in the ascendancy, that was the way to win.

What changed in 2008 was that the national loathing of President Bush, far more intense and deep than the voter rejection of his father in 1992, gave a chance for a more aggressive, bolder, more national Democratic party than the Clintons had designed.  If this becomes a winning strategy, it will create a new Democratic party linking presidential and congressional campaigns (including through Obama’s fundraising success) that hasn’t been seen since the 1960s.

I’ve been saying all along that the Democratic race would be over just after June 3.  All right, so I was off by a few days, but I was close.  It’s not really completely over, because of the buzz about whether Clinton should be on the ticket as VP.  I think that’s doubtful, but it will consume more time.  The Clintons are always going to make campaign news, and I expect Bill to offer unsolicited and unhelpful advice to Obama in public.  I also expect Hillary to be very active and very supportive.  She will not disappear.

For all the anger in the Democratic campaign, the primary race was more helpful than hurtful.  There were no serious ideological disagreements between the two candidates.  Rather, it was a conflict of personas and styles.

An open seat allows more scope for primary hurt than an ideological insurgency against an incumbent president of one’s own party (e.g., McCarthy against Johnson in 1968, Reagan against Ford in 1976, Kennedy against Carter in 1980, Buchanan against Bush in 1992).  Those are almost always fatal.

Indeed, McCain has been hurt by the weakness of the Republican field, and by his ability to stay out of the line of political fire in the primaries.  He seems genuinely shocked to be attacked by the Obama campaign, and his famous temper seems ready to blow at any time.  He would have been better off hearing about this stuff from his fellow Republicans first.

Obama now has the chance to directly reach out to constituencies that were in a close dialogue with Clinton: women, Jews, Latinos, working class whites.  Clinton doesn’t own these constituencies, but she got there before Obama.  She generated a remarkable vocabulary for speaking to them, and showed Obama the way. Now he gets a chance to introduce himself to them once again.

So….let the games begin!

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June 1, 2008 | 12:02 pm

Obama and the politics of distraction

Posted by Raphael Sonenshein

Democrats have trouble winning presidential elections.  One reason is that they have difficulty keeping the campaign focused on their issues.  Polls show that this year especially the issues favor the Democrats, with the big ones, the Iraq war and the economy deeply in the Democrats’ favor.

But campaigns are not stately debates about issues.  They are also battles over what the debate will be about.  The politics of distraction can be very powerful, and Democrats have struggled with it for years.  Consider how John Edwards found his campaign derailed because he had an expensive haircut.  John Kerry had to deal with false attacks on his war record.

Right now, the biggest distraction for Obama is Hillary Clinton’s quixotic campaign.  Even though she has no chance to win the nomination, she keeps going (at least for a few more days).  Media coverage of the fairly ridiculous case for Florida and Michigan being seated at the Democratic convention distracted from Obama’s attack on John McCain for flubbing how many troops we have in Iraq.

Of course, the biggest distraction for Obama has been the Rev. Wright controversy.  And since this is a real issue, he has had to deal directly with it at some length.  While he has dealt fairly effectively with the story, and this week quit the church, this distraction may always be there as a kind of low-level illness.  But there will be more, and the Republicans are artful at working the media to keep them alive.  A good example is the misstatement Obama made about his uncle liberating a Nazi death camp.  He had the wrong camp, and corrected it.  It made headlines.

In order to keep the distractions from messing up your campaign, you have to speak loudly, clearly, and firmly.  You have to say things that are more interesting than your haircut, or the latest distraction.  And you have to say them over and over again.  You can’t get caught up in the distractions.  Deal with them, and move on quickly. So far, Obama is showing some skill at this, as he has directed his attacks at McCain, and not at Clinton.  That’s a way of saying, without saying, that the nomination race has been over for a while.  He turned McCain’s distraction of challenging him to go to Iraq into an attack on McCain’s lack of knowledge about Iraq despite his several trips there.

I expect a cascade of distractions from here on.  They are like marbles on the floor, or nails in the roadway.  They will keep coming.  If one doesn’t work, another one will come up.  They will come by viral email.  They will come on radio talk shows.  They will be presented on the evening news.  Some will be true, if pointless.  Some will be plainly false.

Obama’s road to the White House is not paved with thoughtful debates, although there will be some.  It’s paved with marbles and nails.  His task will be to keep our eyes on the road.

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May 22, 2008 | 4:39 pm

Israel is central to the Republican strategy in 2008

Posted by Raphael J. Sonenshein

Have you noticed that Israel is making its way into the Republican talking points in a very big way as this campaign proceeds? This seems to be one of those 60th birthday gifts that leaves the recipient a little baffled and doubtful.

While it is hardly news that Republicans have been trying for about 30 years to pry Jewish voters away from the Democrats by emphasizing support for Israel, the centrality of this argument as a way to win broader political support is new indeed. This is about more than winning Jewish votes, although that is part of it. Israel is emerging as the central Republican argument for their foreign policy of pre-emptive war and global belligerence.

In a backhanded way, this is a sign of how much American Jews and Israel have won deep and bipartisan support. It's increasingly possible to win voters who are not Jewish by supporting Israel and support for Israel may now symbolize an agreed pillar of American foreign policy. (You may hate the war in Iraq, but still strongly support Israel.)

The most spectacular example is the President's shocking speech to the Israeli Knesset in which he accused Obama (under the pretend guide of "some") of abetting terrorism in a manner comparable to those who "appeased" the Nazis, all because he would talk with Iran. McCain and his buddy Joe Leiberman immediately jumped in to support Bush's comments. McCain, perhaps unwisely, brought up Ronald Reagan as someone who would never, never talk to those mean Iranians. (I guess Reagan sending them weapons was better since it didn't require actual conversation.)

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Israel is becoming the all purpose mantra of embattled Republicans. Don't like the Iraq war? It was really fought to protect Israel. John McCain's ally Rev. John Hagee may be a total crackpot, but hey, he really really loves Israel. What he thinks about Jews may not wear quite so well. Israel is the explanation for basically the entire Bush foreign policy. (As in: We had to free the Middle East by force so the newly liberated and grateful nations would rush to make peace with Israel.)

In going after presumptive nominee Obama, Republicans are now rephrasing statements in order to make their case. Republican congressional leaders twisted a statement by Obama that was in support of Israel to make it sound as if he were blaming Israel for Middle East unrest. Expect more of the same.

To rephrase the classic question, is all of this good for Israel? Bush's Knesset speech suggests that he expects Israel, where he is popular, to be a central, partisan symbol in the 2008 American election. But Israel's interest is to have a sympathetic and supportive American president, whether McCain or Obama. Israel's American base depends on drawing support from the leaders of both parties, so as not to be subject to the political winds of which party is up and which is down. Is it really Israel's job to save the imperiled Republicans from what is shaping up to be a major November drubbing?

On the other hand, these attacks may push Obama to ramp up his communications with the Jewish community regarding Israel. Republicans generally get a pass from supporters of Israel (except Bush, Senior and his friend James Baker) because their "brand" has been solidly established on that front. Democrats have to work harder to establish their bona fides, but don't always realize that they have to do this. Didn't I already make myself clear, they often say? Say it a thousand times if you have to.

Remember that in 2008 defining how a Democratic foreign policy is good for Israel is not only essential to winning Jewish voters, but to making a credible case for a broader American foreign policy. When it comes to change, foreign policy is a little dicey.

And support for Israel is a great way to provide reassurance that dropping Bush's foreign policy will still leave at least one enduring fundamental intact.

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Read Raphael Sonenshein's latest opinion piece for the Los Angeles times -- 'In Tom Bradley's shadow (The contest between Mark Ridley-Thomas and Bernard Parks and is steeped in L.A.'s black political history)'

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May 2, 2008 | 2:07 pm

Jews and Rev. Wright

Posted by Raphael J. Sonenshein

here is the story.

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April 21, 2008 | 11:49 pm

The Democratic Race: The End is Nigh

Posted by Pol Observer

The Democratic race is just about over, and not just because of the calendar.  I don’t think this race is going to make it to the convention.

The last big state primary is tomorrow, in Pennsylvania.  In the unlikely event that Clinton loses to Obama, she may well withdraw.  Of course, that threat to withdraw is itself a tactic that has worked before in drawing her voters to the polls in Texas and Ohio.  If, as seems more likely, Clinton wins narrowly, the race moves on to a block of May primaries with even more delegates at stake.

The last primaries are in the first week of June.  And that is where the dynamic changes no matter what happens between now and then.  It is likely that the superdelegates, like the referee in a bloody boxing match, will step in and declare a “technical knockout” by swinging their votes to one candidate.  Howard Dean, DNC chairman, wants them to do it now, but I think they will not want to preempt the voters in the remaining states unless there is a dramatic shift in the results.

The other reason that, to me, the end is nigh, is a straw in the wind.  As defeat looms, a certain bitterness sets in where previously there had been high hopes.  So when Bill Clinton praised older voters for not being “fooled” by Obama’s rhetoric (and thereby suggested that younger voters had been fooled), I heard echoes of the former president Bush in 1992, bemoaning how he could possibly be losing to this pup Bill Clinton from Arkansas, and complaining about how MTV was a “teeny bobber” network.

The other straw is that I don’t find myself thinking how Hillary would match up against John McCain.  My brain is not accepting information on that question, because it does not compute as likely to occur.  I do find myself wondering a great deal about how the fall campaign between Obama and McCain will go, and my guess is that this is a typical assumption right now.  I find myself thinking about race and politics these days, and wondering how the experience of Tom Bradley’s defeat in 1969 and victory in 1973 for L.A. mayor bears on what might be a truly historic election in 2008.  It will really be something to see these racial issues, rich and agonizing in their complexity, play out on the greatest political stage in the world.  I’m particularly interested in how the Jewish community will see the campaign.

Some months ago, I would have been equally engaged in the historic question of America’s first woman president, a goal I fervently hope will be achieved soon.  I understand that many Clinton supporters feel that the chance of a woman being elected president depends on Hillary, now.  But I think this is incorrect.  There is a tremendous “bench” of women politicians ready to move up, especially on the Democratic side.  There is a tier of dynamic women governors and senators who are likely to make the jump much sooner than people think.  In fact, we might see women in the #2 spot on either ticket, which is a major boost toward the presidency.  On the Democratic side alone, there are Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Kathleen Sibelius of Kansas all of whom have won tough elections in red or purple states.

On the other hand, should Obama not win this time, I don’t foresee a rush of African American candidates from the wings.  Black candidates have had trouble winning statewide elections, the jumping off point for presidential candidates, and even more so in red and purple states.  Obama has jumped the pack.  Even if he loses, though, he might break the cycle of Democrats turning their backs on those who lose, and he might get a second shot if he does a great job helping state and local Democratic candidates.  No Democrat since Adlai Stevenson has had that opportunity.

So let’s see what happens tomorrow in the Keystone State.

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