September 24, 2003
Why Money Won't Matter
Why Money Won't Matter - Jonathan Alter in Newsweek 9/29/03
Newsweek's cover story "package" is both less provocative and more informative than most of the TV and newspaper coverage has been so far and deserves to be blogged in total. This piece on money explores the "nuances" in a way the general can appreciate.
Fund-raising at this stage is a fancy poll. You can have half as much cash as the next guy and still win. The issue: Clark’s political skills If Wes Clark goes nowhere, you can already hear the tired punditry: He didn’t have enough cash. He started too late. Blah, blah, blah. This analysis has already begun, though it is close to meaningless. LET’S START WITH THE MONEY. In the primary season, fund-raising is mostly just a fancy and not terribly accurate poll—a way to measure support among the wealthy and, with the Internet, the passionate. You can have half as much money as the next guy and still win because, unlike Senate campaigns, presidential contests are fought out in the “free media,” where live-TV skills trump paid ads. Money helps build a field organization that can cushion later missteps, but it’s the symptom, not the cause, of success. I’ve seen candidates win Super Tuesday states where they had no ads on the air and only a half-dozen volunteers on the ground. Remember: momentum generates money, not the other way around.
Similarly, early starts are relevant only if the candidate is simultaneously obscure and in touch with the national mood, like Jimmy Carter in 1976. Four and a half months—the time between now and the first primaries—is plenty of time to introduce oneself to the voters. While it’s true that Iowa and New Hampshire voters like to meet their presidential candidates personally before they vote for them, there’s an easy solution for Clark—skip the cumbersome, labor-intensive Iowa caucuses, where the Democratic Party is not in sync with the military anyway. Al Gore in 1988 and John McCain in 2000 blew off Iowa and paid no price; they lost the nomination for other reasons.
Will the Clark team spin "losses" in Iowa and NH this way? Stay tuned.Let’s admit it: the “money primary” and early field organizing are covered so extensively so that we political reporters have something to do before the real fun begins. Sorry to use another sports metaphor, but this is like handicapping the baseball season based on the size of a team’s payroll and how early the players report to spring training. It sounds obvious, but the only real way to judge both athletes and politicians is by how they perform on the field. Can they keep it between the foul lines? Execute a squeeze play? Work the umpires (in this case, reporters)?
The political equivalent of these attributes boils down to timing, message and temperament. If a candidate can master all three—and not alienate the press—his future is bright. While Clark looks to be in good shape on the first two, the third remains a big question mark. He has to adapt to all the requirements of this different sport. When Michael Jordan tried out for the White Sox, he could run and field but couldn’t hit.
That's why they pay the big bucks at the news weeklies: this is the kind of objective analysis I hope the new campaign team is offering, and it goes to my earlier point that WKC is playing much better to the troops than the pundits.Clark’s timing is exquisite. In any other election year, a former general wouldn’t have a chance in the Democratic Party, which is deeply ambivalent about the military. But active Democrats know that they must restore credibility on this issue to stay competitive as a party. Even if he fades, Clark helps in that process. Republicans are already trying to tar him with the Clinton brush; both are Rhodes scholars from Arkansas (though not close friends), and a chunk of Clinton’s staff is joining Clark. Yet even Karl Rove might have trouble turning a winner of the Silver Star into a weenie. Clark pushed so hard to liberate Kosovo in 1999 that he alienated the other brass. They were wrong and he was right, and millions of lives were saved. The timing is good for a humanitarian hawk. Although he hasn’t yet outlined specifics, Clark’s message is also strong. It will basically be that he is more in touch than Bush on domestic policy and more competent on foreign policy.
This season, competence in the Oval Office is critical, at home and abroad. Re-election campaigns are all rehire/fire decisions. Because the voters went through something big and traumatic with President Bush on 9/11 and most felt he did a good job, he has a reservoir of psychic support to draw on. So the anger Howard Dean represents is not a terrific general-election message. A stronger message for Democrats is that the voters must reluctantly fire this likable president because he’s not performing. Clark is in a good position to make that case.
The issue for Clark is temperament. A friend of his told me last week that he had “never seen him relax.” A moment later the friend added that to win, Clark “must relax.” It may be that Clark has too thin a skin about his thin skin and may resent efforts to make him confront the rookie mistakes that have already begun. Even so, some of the interpersonal issues are being overplayed in the press. in “War in a Time of Peace,” David Halberstam writes that Clark “saw brilliantly what was in front of him ... like a laser scope.” Great quality in a president.
But Halberstam also writes that “his peripheral vision ... was considerably more limited.” This is a potentially deadly flaw: politics is all about sensing the audience around you. Clark could be disciplined enough to teach himself these skills—or they may be unteachable. The wonderful thing about the grueling process of a presidential campaign is that we will soon learn the answer. Either way, it’s a lot more relevant to his political fate than how much money he pulls in at his next fund-raiser.
Tony Soprano Goes to the United Nations
To his admirers, Pres. Eisenhower's penchant for golf relected the image of a Bob Hope, easy going and confident, while Bill Clinton's inability to keep it in his pants reminded the more indulgent of us of Michael Caine's Alfie. Ronald Reagan struck skeptics as a close cousin of Sleepy from the Seven Dwarfs, while Gerald Ford might have been a prototype for "Dumb and Dumber."
George W. Bush, of course, would like to inspire comparisons with all the great Hollywood heroes of the air, from "Twelve O'Clock High" to "Top Gun." But those who witnessed his more than usually snarky appearance before the United Nations yesterday might have noticed striking similarities to one of contemporary pop culture's most complex yet amoral anti-heroes, Tony Soprano.
Remember the episode where Tony takes over the business of a "degenerate" gambler who can't pay his vig? Tony and his crew exact payment by "busting out" the poor schmuck's sporting goods store, purchasing thousands of dollars in merchandise for which they have no intention of paying but will resell at a 100% profit. Davey Scatino, thrown out of his house for good measure, moves into his store and sleeps in a tent.
Another degenerate gambler, Saddam Hussein, infuriated us by refusing to roll over and beg after the first Gulf war, and when members of his Rotary Club exposed our homeland security as, well, insecure, we decided we'd set an example for others who failed to respect us as the guys in the white hats. And how would we reimburse ourselves for the trouble and expense Saddam caused us? In oil, of course, which while it would eventually enable the average Iraqi to purchase an SUV, would in the meantime prevent the cost of fuelling Arnold's Hummer from approaching the cost of the Hummer itself.
When Iraqi oil didn't readily squirt out of the ground into the gas tanks of our Escalades, another tactic from the Tony Soprano play book suggested itself. Let's say Tony's waste management was being threatened by "unfair" competition from one of those big high-tech conglomerates moving in on his "accounts." He might have a sit-down with Johnny Sack from across the river and ask Johnny to send some of his boys over to New Jersey to teach the interlopers a lesson about unfair competition. Given that they share corrupt politicians and many other business interests, Tony would be justifiably upset if Johnny asked him for a piece of the waste management business for helping with this little problem.
Perhaps next season Asian mobsters might threaten Tony and Johnny's thing on both sides of the Hudson, but the bad blood left over from the failed garbage negotiation would taint any unified effort to fend them off. That might just be the end of the Sopranos. Word is the West Wing is shifting to the right. Here's hoping they regret that move going into the 2005 season.
A U.S. soldier in Iraq
A U.S. soldier in Iraq wonders: 'How many more must die?'
Tim Predmore is on active duty with the 101st Airborne Division near Mosul, Iraq. . . . He has been in Iraq since March and in the military for about five years. Another serviceman who feels dissed by his commander-in-chief.
"Shock and Awe" were the words used to describe the awesome display of power the world was to view upon the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. It was to be an up-close, dramatic display of military strength and advanced technology within the arsenal of the United States and the United Kingdom's military.
But as a soldier preparing for the invasion of Iraq, the words "shock and awe" rang deeper within my psyche. These two great superpowers were about to break the very rules they demand of others. Without the consent of the United Nations, and ignoring the pleas of their own citizens, the United States and Britain invaded Iraq.
"Shock and Awe"? Yes, the words correctly described the emotional impact I felt as we prepared to participate in what I believed not to be an act of justice but of hypocrisy.
From the moment the first shot was fired in this so-called war of liberation and freedom, hypocrisy reigned. Following the broadcasting of recorded images of captured and dead U.S. soldiers over Arab television, American and British leaders vowed revenge while verbally assaulting the networks for displaying such vivid images. Yet within hours of the deaths of Saddam's two sons, the American government released horrific photos of the two dead brothers for the entire world to view. Again, a "do as we say and not as we do" scenario.
As soldiers serving in Iraq, we have been told that our purpose here is to help the people of Iraq by providing them the necessary assistance militarily as well as in humanitarian efforts. Then tell me where the humanity was in the recent Stars and Stripes account of two young children brought to a U.S. military camp by their mother, in search of medical care? The two children had been, unbeknownst to them, playing with explosive ordinance they had found and as a result were severely burned. The account tells how the two children, following an hour-long wait, were denied care by two U.S. military doctors. The soldier described the incident as one of many "atrocities" he has witnessed on the part of the U.S. military.
So then, what is our purpose here? Was this invasion due to weapons of mass destruction as we so often heard? If so, where are they? Did we invade to dispose of a leader and his regime on the account of close association with Osama bin Laden? If so, where is the proof? Or is it that our incursion is a result of our own economic advantage? Iraq's oil can be refined at the lowest cost of any in the world. Coincidence?
Is this true? I wonder why that is if so.
This looks like a modern-day crusade not to free an oppressed people or to rid the world of a demonic dictator relentless in his pursuit of conquest and domination but a crusade to control another nation's natural resource. At least for us here, oil seems to be the reason for our presence.
Whoaaa, I thought at first Predmore was a poster-boy for Clark but this bitterness sounds more like Dean. Even I don't think it was only about oil, though you got to wonder how guys who eat, sleep and drink the stuff didn't know how run-down Iraq's oil industry was or how to protect it from sabotage.
There is only one truth, and it is that Americans are dying. There are an estimated 10- to 14-attacks on our servicemen and women daily in Iraq. As the body count continues to grow, it would appear that there is no immediate end in sight.
I once believed that I served for a cause: "to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Now, I no longer believe; I have lost my conviction, my determination. I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies. My time is done as well as that of many others with whom I serve. We have all faced death here without reason or justification.
How many more must die? How many more tears must be shed before America awakens and demands the return of the men and women whose job it is to protect them rather than their leader's interest?
With that, we might consider to what extent this degree of demoralization renders Predmore even more vulnerable to injury. Sad. Sad. Sad.