Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Best of the Web Today

Bye-Ku for Rudy Giuliani

From 9/11
Things went downhill on the road
To 11/4

Bye-Ku for John Edwards

Such a pretty man
Gee, his hair looks terrific
Looks aren't everything

Edwards Yay, Giuliani Eh
Each of the two bye-kus above this item links to an Associated Press story about the respective candidate's decision to withdraw from the race, and the contrast is quite striking. Here is the AP's Nedra Pickler on the lovely and talented Edwards:

Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies but never diverted his campaign, The Associated Press has learned.

Wow, how did the AP learn that Edwards's campaign was "scrappy" and that it "steered his rivals toward progressive ideals"? That must've taken some heavy-duty research!

Pickler also credits Edwards with having "waged a spirited top-tier campaign against the two better-funded rivals." It seems that he "burst out of the starting gate with a flurry of progressive policy ideas":

The ideas were all bold and new for Edwards personally as well, making him a different candidate than the moderate Southerner who ran in 2004 while still in his first Senate term. But the themes were eventually adopted by other Democratic presidential candidates--and even a Republican, Mitt Romney, echoed the call for an end to special interest politics in Washington.

Who'd a thunk that "even a Republican" would endorse Edwards's bold new idea of "an end to special interest politics in Washington"?

By contrast, the AP's Devlin Barrett covers the Giuliani withdrawal straight:

Rudy Giuliani, who bet his presidential hopes on Florida only to come in third, prepared to quit the race Tuesday and endorse his friendliest rival, John McCain.

The former New York mayor stopped short of announcing he was stepping down, but delivered a valedictory speech that was more farewell than fight-on.

Giuliani finished a distant third to winner John McCain and close second-place finisher Mitt Romney. Republican officials said Giuliani would endorse McCain on Wednesday in California. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the public announcement.

Barrett notes that the former mayor's distant third-place finish in yesterday's Florida primary "was a remarkable collapse for Giuliani"--ultimately a matter of opinion, we suppose, but one with which it's hard to disagree. In describing Giuliani's background, he has some kind words, but they are much more tempered than Pickler's on Edwards:

Giuliani hung his bid for the Republican presidential nomination on his leadership. His stalwart performance as New York mayor in the tense days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks earned him national magazine covers, international accolades and widespread praise.

Yet, Giuliani was always a Republican anomaly--a moderate-to-liberal New Yorker who backed abortion rights, gay rights and gun control in a party dominated by Southern conservatives.

Now it is true that everyone, even reporters, is human. If you spend a good portion of your life covering politics, you are going to develop feelings about politicians, and if you're not careful, they may slip into your news coverage. What bothers us about this Pickler dispatch--and about many other instances of media bias we've pointed to over the years--is that the reporter doesn't even seem to have bothered to be careful. It may not be possible for a reporter to achieve the ideal of perfect objective detachment, but that's no excuse not to try.

Conservatives vs. McCain
With Rudy Giuliani's withdrawal, the Republican presidential field is officially down to four men, two of whom certainly will not win the nomination. Ron Paul can be dismissed as a fringe candidate, and we are confident that his supporters are mature and realistic enough not to send us angry emails protesting this blindingly obvious observation. Mike Huckabee has proved a flash in the pan, finishing well back in two primaries in his native South.

John McCain is the clear front-runner after winning New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. But what about Mitt Romney? He has performed well beneath expectations, winning only the "silver" in Iowa and New Hampshire despite having vastly outspent and out-campaigned his rivals. He did beat McCain in Michigan, where Romney's father was a popular governor, but other than that the former Massachusetts governor has nothing more to show for himself than victories in Wyoming's and Nevada's uncontested caucuses.

But some conservatives still hope for a Romney comeback. Blogger Josh Treviño manfully makes a case that Romney actually won Florida, referring to exit-poll numbers (the CNN link didn't work for us, so we're going with MSNBC instead) that found the following:

Romney won pro-lifers.

Romney won the mainstream religious. (Huckabee won the very religious--less than one-fifth of the pool.)

Romney won the Protestants.

Romney tied Huckabee with Evangelicals.

Romney won the pro-GWB voters.

Romney is the primary second choice of Giuliani voters, Thompson voters . . . and McCain voters.

Romney won the immigration hard-liners.

Romney won the upper-middle class, earning between $100,000 and $200,000 annually.

Romney won the terrorism-oriented voters.

Romney won the self-identified conservatives and the self-identified very conservative.

Romney won the values-oriented voters.

Romney won the white voters.

Romney won the tax-cutting voters.

It seems the only group of voters McCain won was . . . the voters.

One point worth noting: While it is true that Romney was the "primary second choice" of Giuliani voters, this was by a very slender margin. Of the Giuliani voters in the exit poll, 47% said Romney was their second choice, and 46% said McCain was. (Huckabee voters, meanwhile, went 55% to 32% in McCain's favor.) One imagines that Giuliani's endorsement of McCain will have some effect on the former's supporters in other states.

As Treviño suggests, Romney has emerged as the candidate of "conservatives," or at least of conservative political activists. The chief rap on Romney, though, is that he is not a man of conviction--that in his two runs for statewide office in Massachusetts (U.S. senator in 1994 and governor in 2002) he expediently took positions that are very liberal by GOP lights, and that differ drastically from the views he now espouses.

The conservative defense of Romney, we suppose, is that he didn't really believe those positions, whereas when McCain has departed from the conservative mainstream, he has been sincere and committed. Fair enough. But who is going to be a more loyal supporter in the long run--someone who agrees with you on everything, but insincerely, or someone who agrees with you on some things, disagrees with you on others, and is clear about which is which?

It strikes us that the degree of vituperation that many conservative activists feel toward McCain has more to do with their activism than their conservatism. McCain's signature legislative accomplishment, the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, is a regulatory regime that specifically targets political activists.

This columnist agrees with the activists that McCain-Feingold is an outrageous assault on the First Amendment. But we are not a political activist, so that this is not personal to us. Neither is it to most voters, and that may help explain why McCain keeps winning even though the activists can't stand him.

Next in Line
Just a bit of political trivia: If Republicans end up nominating McCain--the runner-up in the 2000 nomination contest--they will be very much playing to type. Except for 1964, every Republican nominee since 1956 has fallen into one or more of the following categories:

  • Sitting president (1956, 1972, 1976, 1984, 1992, 2004).

  • Sitting or former vice president (1960, 1968, 1988).

  • Previous nominee (1968).

  • Runner-up for last seriously contested nomination (1980, 1988, 1996).

  • Immediate family member of a past president (2000).

The Democrats, by contrast, have nominated candidates who fell into none of these categories (and who were not otherwise obviously "next in line") six times: in 1960, 1972, 1976, 1988, 1992 and 2004.

Obviously part of the reason for the disparity is that the Republicans have won more recent presidential elections (nine between 1952 and 2004) than the Democrats have (five), and thus have had more presidents or vice presidents to draw from. Still, the trend is quite remarkable, and it may tell us something about the GOP's character.

Assuming McCain is the nominee this year, and the GOP remains true to form, who will the next Republican presidential nominee be? There are only three possibilities: Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and--if McCain wins in November--whoever his vice president is.

Bush v. Gore Redux?
Florida's Democratic primary, also yesterday, got lots less attention than the Republican one did, because the national Democratic Party had decided in advance that it wouldn't count. Trying to halt the trend to early primaries, the national party decided it would not seat delegates chosen before Feb. 5 in any state other than Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina--and that means Michigan and Florida, both of which Hillary Clinton won decisively.

In Michigan, as we noted Jan. 16, Barack Obama and John Edwards didn't even put their names on the ballot, and Mrs. Clinton beat out "uncommitted" by 55% to 40%. In Florida, Obama and Edwards were on the ballot, but Mrs. Clinton still cruised to victory, 50% to 33% over Obama. And now, reports The Wall Street Journal's Jackie Calmes, Mrs. Clinton wants her delegates:

Five months after all Democratic candidates agreed Florida and Michigan wouldn't get delegates to the August presidential convention, Hillary Clinton now says they should--a reversal that would benefit her now that she has won both states, unchallenged, following Tuesday's Florida primary.

But that, some Democrats fear, could ignite a racially charged fight rivaling conventions of the 1960s, should her contest against Barack Obama remain close to the end. . . .

With perhaps several hundred delegates at stake toward the 2,025 needed for nomination, the New York senator's position "could lead to the mother of all credentials challenges" for the Michigan and Florida delegates at the convention, said Tad Devine, an expert on the Democratic Party's nominating process.

If the number were enough to defeat Illinois Sen. Obama, who is trying to become the first black president, "the most loyal constituency in the Democratic Party"--African-Americans--"will feel that they've been shut out of the party," he added. "And that will have huge repercussions--not just at the presidential level, but in every race where African-American support can determine the outcome."

The likelihood that it will come to this is low--although then again, so was the likelihood that the 2000 presidential election would turn the way it did in Florida. That analogy is on target in another way: If Mrs. Clinton does need Michigan and Florida to win the nomination, and she does wage a fight to honor their credentials, she will have behaved just as the Democratic Party and the Gore campaign did in Florida in 2000.

Having lost a heartbreakingly narrow election, Gore and the Dems sought to change the rules after the fact in order to provide him a margin of victory. But here's a crucial practical difference: The Gore gambit helped reinforce black voters' loyalty to the Democratic Party by playing on their fears of racist disfranchisement. What Mrs. Clinton is contemplating will be directed against a black Democrat. If she wins the nomination by playing this game, blacks may end up feeling that the Democratic Party is not loyal to them.

83 Years Young

  • "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times."--Jimmy Carter, Playboy, November 1976

  • "Obama's campaign has been extraordinary and titillating for me and my family."--Jimmy Carter, The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 30, 2008

Update From Havana
"Man Struggles to Return From the Dead"--headline, Reuters, Jan. 29

Haven't We Seen Enough of Him?
"Judge Orders Nifong Removed From Suit"--headline, Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C.), Jan. 30

So How Was She Supposed to Play Pool?
"Eli Manning Took Cues From Mother"--headline, New York Times, Jan. 29

Hey, He's Lost a Few Pounds!
"Regents Weigh New CU President"--headline, Denver Post, Jan. 30

Pond-ering Seems Right to Us
"City Council Ponders Best Way to Study Water"--headline, Paris (Texas) News, Jan. 29

Such as, 'Dude, Where's My Change?' and 'Does This Thing Sell Doritos?'
"Marijuana Vending Machine Posing Many Questions"--headline, DogFlu.ca, Jan. 30

Help Wanted
"Canby Police Look for Utility Worker Impersonator"--headline, KATU-TV Web site (Portland, Ore.), Jan. 30

Someone Set Up Us the Bomb
"Dwarves' Trojan Horse Bus Raids"--headline, Daily Telegraph (Australia), Jan. 28

News of the Tautological
"Blaze Ignites at Norman Burn Site"--headline, Oklahoman, Jan. 29

News You Can Use

  • " 'Don't fight in front of the kids' and other advice you can ignore"--subheadline, Parenting.com, Jan. 29

  • "Mock Democratic Convention"--headline, WHSV-TV Web site (Harrisonburg, Va.), Jan. 28

Bottom Stories of the Day

  • "GHS Students Not Picking Up After Lunch"--headline, Greenwich (Conn.) Time, Jan. 30

  • "Streetlight on Dubuque Lane Could Save Endangered Mailbox"--headline, Austin American-Statesman, Jan. 29

  • "Woman Found Dead Once Lived in Augusta"--headline, Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, Jan. 30

  • "A Norwegian professor who's considered one of the country's leading experts on US politics has ranked George W Bush as the worst US president in history."--subheadline, Aftenposten(Norway), Jan. 29

  • "UN Chastises Israel, Praises Arab States, and Disappoints Canada"--headline, Arutz Sheva, Jan. 30

America's Moral Authority Is at Steak
The Humane Society of America claims that a California slaughterhouse has been "waterboarding" cattle "to prod unfit animals into the slaughterhouse so they could be processed into food that may have ultimately ended up in school lunch programs," Reuters reports from Washington:

The video showed workers kicking cows, ramming them with forklift blades, applying electric shocks and even using a hose to simulate the feeling of drowning so the animals would revive long enough to pass federal inspection.

"The attempt was to make them so distressed and to cause them so much suffering that these animals would get up and walk into the slaughterhouse," Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, told reporters.

We must say, even we find this use of waterboarding excessive. Though we suspect we'd feel differently if they were using it on Khalid Sheikh Moo-hammed.

(See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary on The Editorial Page. Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ezzie Goldish, Corodon Fuller, Kibi Hoffmann, Chris Bergman, Ethel Fenig, Dave Rennie, Dan O'Shea, Doug Black, Brian O'Rourke, Paul Smith, Steve Karass, Mordecai Bobrowsky, William Golden, Tom Ferris, Jim Tracy, Nancy Zimmerman, Mark Van Der Molen, John Nernoff, Lewis Sckolnick, Daniel Winston, Dave Kolander, Andy Hefty, Paul Dyck, Jon Sanders, Jim Woosley, Joe Perez, Jason Shanker, Jeff Stephens, Colin Crossman, Brian Grabowski, Nick Marble, George Struve, Jerry Rhoden, David Englet, Cris Simpson, Scott McEachin, Mark Davies, Tad Doviak, Andrew Cowin, Lauren Hays, Doug Levene, Samuel Moeller and Jim Jacobsen. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

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