EVENING UPDATE,  MARCH 12,  2008

NEW GAME IN TOWN

The question is whether the change in leadership in New York State will have any impact on the presidential campaign.  The short answer is no.  A Democratic governor is being succeeded by another Democrat in a state that is expected to be safely in the Democratic column in November, barring some sharp reversal.  Outgoing governor and patron of the sensual arts Eliot Spitzer is a Clinton supporter, and so, presumably, is the incoming David Paterson.  But Paterson is African-American, is from Harlem, and one can respectably suggest that his enthusiasm in presidential matters may lie with another candidate.

The political implications could grow if there is that sharp reversal.  Another terrorist attack in New York State might shift the politics of the voters rightward, just as crime in New York City, which is heavily Democratic, propelled the career of the Republican, Rudy Guiliani.  Then the political leadership of the governor might play a role.  Hillary Clinton is a New York senator, and is seen as engaged on homeland security.  Barack Obama lacks the home-state advantage and is not a beacon on national defense.  If Obama is the nominee, and the presidential race in New York becomes tight, the new governor might have a hard time convincing centrist Democrats to stick with Obama.  Spitzer, a more commanding figure before the fall, would have an easier time.

ALSO GONE - FERRARO

It was a day for New York Democrats to say farewell.  I don't how the party planners will handle all the good-bye parties.  Geraldine Ferraro is the latest to vanish:

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro stepped down on Wednesday from her finance committee position with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, a campaign spokesman said.

The decision came after Ferraro, the only woman to run on a major U.S. party's presidential ticket, said Clinton's rival, Barack Obama, would not be ahead in the Democratic presidential race if he was not black.

Ferraro, a former U.S. representative from New York, was a member of the campaign's finance committee and raised funds for Clinton's White House bid, the spokesman said.

Barack Obama earlier rejected Ferraro's comments but said he did not think they were meant to be racist.

As said here yesterday, Ferraro was probably right, although it was a bit insensitive for her to say so.  Her resignation was inevitable in a campaign year in which the race card is constantly dealt.

FLORIDA AND MICHIGAN - THE ONGOING DEM CURSE

The Democrats still haven't solved their Florida and Michigan problem. Unless they do, their convention will look ridiculous, with two key states missing.  Today the Obama and Clinton sides staked out different claims, meaning the deadlock continues:

WASHINGTON — After a week of shadow-boxing, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama issued their clearest statements yet on how they would prefer to resolve the impasse over the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries.

Not surprisingly, they staked out opposing and irreconcilable positions.

Mrs. Clinton, in an appearance before a Hispanic business group in Washington Wednesday morning, argued that the delegates should be seated based on the results of the Michigan and Florida primaries, which were held in January in violation of Democratic Party rules.

Mrs. Clinton won both contests by sizable margins and would narrow the delegate gap with Mr. Obama by about 60 delegates if the January results are honored, but the delegations have been barred because of the party rules violation. She now trails Mr. Obama by more than 100 pledged delegates, according to most counts.

“The results of those primaries were fair and should be honored,” she told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here.

Alternatively, she said, Florida and Michigan should hold new primary elections, probably in early June after the remaining primaries are completed and perhaps by statewide mail-in ballot. She and her advisers believe she would do well in any revote and gain a major boost in delegates and momentum with two season-ending victories.

Senator Obama said no:

Mr. Obama’s did not spell out his Plan B, but he said that any revote would be problematic, particularly if conducted by mail in Michigan and Florida, two states that have never conducted a mail-in election. He said he would like to see the Michigan and Florida delegations seated in an “equitable” way, without spelling out what that would mean.

It is, as an early screen comedian liked to say, "a fine mess":

There is no easy or universally acceptable solution to the problem, according to Rick Hasen, a professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and an expert on election law and administration.

“From the viewpoint of legitimacy of elections, this is a mess,” said Mr. Hasen, who is politically neutral. “Yes, we had a contest, but it was a contest run under unusual rules. Candidates were not allowed to campaign and voters were told by the D.N.C. their votes wouldn’t count. That kind of election doesn’t comport with our usual democratic norms.”

He added, “We’re facing a really politically unpalatable situation in which two states that are potentially important to a Democratic victory in November are being told they don’t count. And it’s all the fault of legislators and party leaders who pushed these early elections.”

The mess can grow.  If Democrats nominate a candidate with Florida and Michigan missing from their convention, John McCain can begin his election campaign in Florida, can inform residents that they don't exist in the Democratic Party, and can assert that they're still considered citizens in his.  He can fly to Michigan and say the same thing the next day.  Even if he gains five percentage points in each state, that may be enough to swing a presidential election.

And the Democrats know it.

THE NEW TEFLON CANDIDATE

The great Victor Davis Hanson publishes a very tough column on Obama, claiming that racial pandering and posturing are paralyzing the way we normally speak in political campaigns:

No doubt having a middle name like Hussein was ‘cool’ at Columbia and Harvard where it might solidify one’s ethnic or exotic fides. By the same token, a well-paid, Ivy-League-educated African-American woman like Michelle Obama, of course, had considerable success in lecturing upscale elite liberal audiences on their sloth, or cynicism, or why one should not heretofore have pride in the United States, or why America was a mean place. And a bumper-sticker African-American identify was advantageous in the Ivy League for Obama, and essential for success in local districted Chicago politics.

But once one slowly metamorphosizes from a state politician to a liberal Illinois Senator to the purported Democratic nominee, then all of those self-embraced identities that deliberately emphasize, rather than play down, race and culture can become polarizing to a wider constituency — and must be as muffled by the candidate as they are emphasized by his opportunistic opponents.

So now we are in this silly situation, in which at one time Obama was happy enough to remind some that his middle name was Hussein and now it is a slur for other less well-intentioned to do so; in which his wife’s browbeating of America was salve to guilty liberals and now it is considered illiberal to question her assumptions; in which a candidate who rose to prominence as a “black” candidate and garners majority margins of 90% among African-American against a very liberal female opponent insists that he has transcended race and to suggest otherwise is, well, racist.

Read the whole (and short) piece.  The argument is powerful.  Hanson concludes:

McCain may become a proper antidote for all this. Unlike the verbose Michelle Obama, he really has suffered in his life; unlike Barack Obama he really has reached across the aisle and paid a price for it; and unlike Obama's promises of transparency, he really does talk in specifics and bluntly rather than in mellifluous platitudes. And as for an against-the-odds candidacy, in postmodern America a 71-year-old survivor of communist torture and malignant melonoma seems to match the narrative of a young Ivy-League graduate of mixed ancestry.

Well said.

THE REAL WORLD

These little inconvenient stories remind us that there's reality out there.  According to some European authorities, the Iranians are advancing at a faster pace than we'd thought:

IsraelNN.com) The European Commission for Joint Research (ECJR) estimated after conducting a simulation last month of Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges that the Islamic Republic might well achieve nuclear capability by the end of 2008.

According to a report by Omedia, the ECJR also said that if the centrifuges are running at top efficiency, Iran may produce enough atomic material for a nuclear warhead by the end of the year.

Pay no attention.  Nothing to see at all.  Just more scare talk.  It's the industrial-military complex. 

OUR FALLON SYMBOL

Related to the Iran issue, some are making much of the fact that the head of Central Command, Admiral William Fallon, is being eased out. No dissent allowed among the Bushies, the critics scream.  But top analyst Max Boot isn't buying the argument, and thinks Fallon's departure is just fine:

To see why Tuesday's "retirement" of Navy Adm. William "Fox" Fallon as head of U.S. Central Command is good news, all you have to do is look at the Esquire profile that brought about his downfall.

Its author, Thomas P.M. Barnett, a former professor at the Naval War College, presents a fawning portrait of the admiral -- a service he previously performed for Donald Rumsfeld. But evidence of Fallon's supposed "strategic brilliance" is notably lacking. For example, Barnett notes Fallon's attempt to banish the phrase "the Long War" (created by his predecessor) because it "signaled a long haul that Fallon simply finds unacceptable," without offering any hint of how Fallon intends to defeat our enemies overnight. The ideas Fallon proposes -- "He wants troop levels in Iraq down now, and he wants the Afghan National Army running the show throughout most of Afghanistan by the end of this year" -- would most likely result in security setbacks that would lengthen, not shorten, the struggle.

Yeah, Boot makes sense.  There's more:

Like a lot of smart guys (or, at any rate, guys who think they're smart), Fallon seems to have outsmarted himself. He thinks the war in Iraq is a distraction from formulating "a comprehensive strategy for the Middle East," according to the profile. The reality is that the only strategy worth a dinar is to win the war in Iraq. If we fail there, all other objectives in the region will be much harder to attain; if we succeed, they will be much easier.

That's something that Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno -- the architects of the surge -- understood, but that Fallon never seemed to get. Let's hope that his successor will have a better grasp of the region and of his role. This president, any president, deserves a Centcom commander who carries out his policies rather than undermines them.

Lincoln fired generals as well.  Commanders were replaced in World War II.  Truman fired MacArthur.  In Vietnam, the drifting William Westmoreland was replaced by the sharper Creighton Abrams.  This new move follows a long tradition.  Search for the best.

And I'll be back tomorrow, sooner if events warrant.

Posted on March 12, 2008.