It isn't "way too early" to think about who the Democratic running mate will be

People say it’s “way too early to be thinking about” [NYT link] who’ll be the vice-presidential nominee when we haven’t even started voting for the person who’ll make that decision. But wait, shouldn’t we think about what the ticket might be before choosing the nominee, while it could still inform our votes in the primaries? I don’t like the idea that we must follow a certain schedule about which questions to think about when, or that we can’t think more than one step into the future.

Those who say the choice of running mate doesn’t matter very much are wrong. It can matter a lot. A good running mate can smooth over some of the nominee’s weaknesses (that’s been true of at least the last 3 running mates to win, who all eased concerns about the future president’s experience and competence). A weak choice can raise serious questions about the nominee’s judgment (Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle); it’s our only chance to see what kind of person the president would hire for their administration before we cast our votes.

So, what are some of the plausible Democratic tickets for 2020? Any nominee will want a ticket with diversity. We can assume it won’t be two Straight White Men; it’s highly unlikely that the ticket will be, say, Biden/Bennet or Bernie/Beto.

If Elizabeth Warren is the nominee, I could see her choosing Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, or Julián Castro. Each would add a different and significant kind of diversity. All of them have been generally performing well in the debates. I can’t see any glaring, irreconcilable differences that would stop her from choosing them — they’re not Delaney, who Warren ridiculed as running for president just to say what he “won’t fight for.”

Buttigieg and Castro would love us to think they’d flip their states in the Electoral College (as unlikely as it might seem for Trump to lose his vice president’s state of Indiana or deep-red Texas). But a successful running mate generally isn’t picked as a tactic to win just one state. Obama didn’t choose Biden to win Delaware; same with Dick Cheney’s two states of Wyoming and Texas; Paul Ryan didn’t manage to win Wisconsin for Romney, etc. Warren surely knows all this.

The running mate could be someone who isn’t running now; for instance, Warren might choose Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. But there are so many Democratic presidential candidates that it would be surprising if they all got passed over for VP.

If Pete Buttigieg wins the nomination, it’s easy to see him going for gender diversity by choosing Elizabeth Warren or Tulsi Gabbard, who were both outstanding debaters this week. Warren would excite progressive voters, but the last thing Buttigieg needs is more race-related concerns about his campaign, and he could count on Trump to make a big issue out of Warren’s past representations of being Native American. This couldn’t be dismissed just by calling out Trump’s crude word choice in bringing it up.

Buttigieg and Gabbard would be two young veterans who both speak compellingly about their military experience. Buttigieg might want to accentuate this side of his background, along the lines of Bill Clinton choosing Al Gore to emphasize that they’re a new kind of Democrat. Journalists would have their work cut out for them just listing all the ground Tulsi Gabbard could break as a 30-something, Hindu, American Samoan, vegetarian, surfing martial-arts instructor who took her congressional oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita instead of the Bible.

Buttigieg/Booker could also be appealing, but they’re both male. And unfortunately, Buttigieg has to worry about bias against him as a gay man, so even if this shouldn’t matter, he probably wants a running mate with a relatively traditional personal life; Booker has never been married and doesn’t have kids. Kamala Harris also doesn’t have kids, but more importantly, I don’t expect any nominee to choose Harris with all the questions about her record, in these days of increased interest in criminal justice reform.

I have a harder time speculating about who Joe Biden would choose, since he seems generally unpredictable and erratic. So I have no guess for him — and even if I did, I’d expect him to choose someone else!

That leaves 2 other candidates in the top 5, but I don’t expect them to be nominated so I’m less interested in guessing who their running mates would be. Kamala Harris’s image as a tough prosecutor is ill-suited to the current political moment, and her response to Gabbard’s attack last night wasn’t confidence-inspiring on that front. Self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, who’d be in his 80s for most of his presidency, is even more of a long shot now than last time.

No one else seems likely to win the nomination, but that could change. Almost every presidential race gives us at least one huge surprise . . .

Now can we take Bill Clinton's alleged sex offenses seriously?

In an article for the Atlantic called "Bill Clinton: A Reckoning," Caitlin Flanagan writes:

let us not forget the sex crimes of which the younger, stronger Bill Clinton was very credibly accused in the 1990s.

Juanita Broaddrick reported that when she was a volunteer on one of his gubernatorial campaigns, she had arranged to meet him in a hotel coffee shop. At the last minute, he had changed the location to her room in the hotel, where she says he very violently raped her. She said she fought against Clinton throughout a rape that left her bloodied.

At a different Arkansas hotel, he caught sight of a minor state employee named Paula Jones, and, Jones says, he sent a couple of state troopers to invite her to his suite, where he exposed his penis to her and told her to kiss it.

Kathleen Willey said that she met him in the Oval Office for personal and professional advice and that he groped her, rubbed his erect penis on her, and pushed her hand to his crotch.

It was a pattern of behavior; it included an alleged violent assault; the women involved had far more credible evidence than many of the most notorious accusations that have come to light in the past five weeks. But Clinton was not left to the swift and pitiless justice that today’s accused men have experienced. . . .

The notorious 1998 New York Times op-ed by Gloria Steinem must surely stand as one of the most regretted public actions of her life. It slut-shamed, victim-blamed, and age-shamed; it urged compassion for and gratitude to the man the women accused. Moreover (never write an op-ed in a hurry; you’ll accidentally say what you really believe), it characterized contemporary feminism as a weaponized auxiliary of the Democratic Party.

Called “Feminists and the Clinton Question,” it was written in March of 1998, when Paula Jones’s harassment claim was working its way through court. It was printed seven days after Kathleen Willey’s blockbuster 60 Minutes interview with Ed Bradley. If all the various allegations were true, wrote Steinem, Bill Clinton was “a candidate for sex addiction therapy.” To her mind, the most “credible” accusations were those of Willey, whom she noted was “old enough to be Monica Lewinsky’s mother.” And then she wrote the fatal sentences that invalidated the new understanding of workplace sexual harassment as a moral and legal wrong: “Even if the allegations are true, the President is not guilty of sexual harassment. He is accused of having made a gross, dumb, and reckless pass at a supporter during a low point in her life. She pushed him away, she said, and it never happened again. In other words, President Clinton took ‘no’ for an answer.”

Steinem said the same was true of Paula Jones. These were not crimes; they were “passes.” Broaddrick was left out by Steinem. . . .

The widespread liberal response to the sex crime accusations against Bill Clinton found their natural consequence 20 years later in the behavior of Harvey Weinstein: Stay loudly and publicly and extravagantly on the side of signal leftist causes and you can do what you want in the privacy of your offices and hotel rooms. . . .

The Democratic Party needs to make its own reckoning of the way it protected Bill Clinton. The party needs to come to terms with the fact that it was so enraptured by their brilliant, Big Dog president . . . that it abandoned some of its central principles. The party was on the wrong side of history and there are consequences for that.

I'm inclined to agree with all that. And yet, this article seems oddly incomplete: it talks a lot about "Democrats" and "feminists" . . . but says nothing about the media as a whole. The media is making a bigger story of a movie producer's sex offenses than the media ever made out of the 42nd President's sex offenses! The vast majority of articles I've read that mention Bill Clinton's sexual misconduct use relatively benign-sounding terms like "personal life," or "affairs," or "peccadilloes." A "peccadillo" means "a slight offense." I've seen the media use that kind of language to describe what Bill Clinton has done far more often than I've seen terms like "sexual harassment," "sex offenses," "sex crimes," "sexual violence," "sexual assault," or "rape."

Why did Democrats allow Hillary Clinton to coast to the nomination?

I've never understood it. Her only strong competition was a cranky, ill-informed 75-year-old self-proclaimed socialist yelling about revolution. The problem wasn't a lack of available alternatives: liberals pleaded with Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden to run, but for some reason, they didn't, even knowing they're old enough that this decision might close the door on ever becoming president. And it's hard to believe that Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine, hadn't considered running for the 2016 nomination after being vetted by Obama in 2008.

In the end, Hillary Clinton proved herself to be a painfully mediocre candidate. It's one thing to lose toss-up states like Florida and Ohio, but the fact that she lost Pennsylvania and Michigan speaks volumes. This happened even though her campaign was far better funded and she was believed to be the only candidate with a serious get-out-the-vote operation.

When you consider how she failed at mastering the delegate game in the 2008 primaries, then went on to win her party's nomination only with bizarrely weak competition (and more narrowly against Bernie Sanders than anyone had excepted), then lost the general election to a historically unqualified candidate, the conclusion is clear: Hillary Clinton is just not a skilled politician. As she openly admitted during the campaign, she lacks the political gifts of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. It's great that she's self-aware enough to realize that, but why didn't the Democratic Party as a whole realize it before it was too late?

Bill Clinton on "our one remaining bigotry"

Here's former President Clinton giving the keynote address at a gala for the 100th anniversary of The New Republic:

So we need inclusive economics. We need inclusive governance. And we have to give back to systems of cooperation which minimize the happening of big, bad things and maximize the chances that good things will flow. And we have to do it through networks. That is the business of the 21st century. We can do it. But . . . you can't do it if you refuse to talk to people that disagree with you and to work with them.

You know, Americans have come so far since, let's say, the era of Joe McCarthy. I mean, think about it. We're less racist. We're less sexist. We're less homophobic than we used to be. We only have one remaining bigotry. We don't want to be around anybody who disagrees with us. And if you look, actually residential patterns in America are changing. I mean, not just on by Congressional Districts. I mean fixed-line borders, like counties, the internal, social and political complexion of them are changing, and we also are siloing our information sources.

I read the other day that 47 percent of self-identified conservatives will only watch Fox News on television. That's good for Fox News. I mean, it's a good business model. My mother-in-law, who died a couple years ago at 91, and whom I love dearly and who lived with Hillary in our Washington home while she was secretary of state and senator, was the most liberal member of our family. She watched Fox News every day. I asked her if she was trying to give herself a heart attack. She said, "No, I'm just trying to keep my blood pumping."

But then my—but then she seriously said—she said, first of all, Bill, I need to know what they're saying so I have an answer and I need to know what they're saying in case they're right. She said, nobody's wrong all the time. It's like almost biologically impossible.

So it was really interesting to see for me—as I had time to study this in the last few years—how much we are disaggregating ourselves from people who disagree with us.

So one of the things that I hope The New Republic will do in the coming century of its life and innovation is to actually make people debate an issue instead of labeling each other. I was shocked—you know, campaigns I used to be a part of, you'd see these negative ads or positive ads. But they were usually like reasonable ads subject to fact-checking, like, "My opponent wants to vaccinate cows against mad cow disease, and I think it's a terrible waste of money." And the other one said, "No, we really should do this, because just one mad cow can make a lot of people sick."

In other words, they would hit each other over something real. This was, "My opponent voted with the president 93 percent of the time." Well, what did they vote on? Would that include all the budgets? What is it? There's all this sort of dark labeling business going on. And I think the differences are healthy, but not if they're meaningless designed to shut people's brains down instead of fire them up, because unfortunately if you want to return to the kind of broad-based prosperity we had in the 1990s, it will require some really clever thought.

For example, I was blessed because the information technology revolution moved out of Silicon Valley, and the exchange companies here in northern Virginia, and the videogame companies in Texas, and Route 28, and it went into every aspect of the American economy. So all I had to do was put the pedal to the metal and try to figure out how to get it to places and people that would otherwise be left out and left behind. And it was 8 percent of our employment, 20 percent of our job growth, 33 percent of our wage growth, guaranteeing broad-based prosperity. The bottom 20 percent of our workforce's income grew as much as the top 5 percent, the only time in more than 40 years. A hundred times as many people moved out of poverty into the middle class as during the Reagan presidency, which was the high point of trickle-down economics.

Now there are people who say, if you look at Uber, Airbnb, all the fun stuff, that now we're on the 100 percent downside of that and all these technological innovations are by definition using less labor and not starting enough economic activity in some other place to generate more jobs. I don't believe that, by the way, because we're still a couple million jobs or more we could be generating in America on the energy revolution, which would in turn create a lot of other jobs, and because the biotechnology revolution is just getting underway, and because there are four or five categories in which there will be more jobs created in health care, even if we continue to implement the law and we continue to lower the price of it relative to our competitors.

But this is the first thing we have to do. We have got to focus on having an economy where prosperity is more broadly shared. And we have to think about it for the rest of the world, too, because a lot of the appeal of a lot of these groups comes to young, angry people who don't have anything to do when they get up in the morning and don't have anything to look forward to and think, unless they go pick up a rifle or a bomb, every tomorrow will be just like yesterday.

When I was born at the end of World War II, more than half The New Republic's life ago—alas, way more than half—my native state's income was 56 percent, I think, of the national average, the second poorest state in the country. But if you could put clothes on your back and food on the table and feed a neighbor who walked up unannounced, nobody really thought they were poor. And it was relatively rare to see somebody who had nothing to do and no way to earn any money.

When I was in law school, I had six jobs, never more than three at once. I never felt burdened or put upon, because I always knew that I could do something. I became a lawyer because I wanted a job where nobody could ever force me to retire. I wanted to die with my boots on. . . .

But the point is there was this sense of possibility in our country. So we had to do the civil rights revolution, because we were cutting too many people out of it, but once we did that, there was a sense of possibility. We have got to recover that. And we have to understand, in my opinion, that immigration reform is a part of that.

Having lost it, I can tell you: Youth matters. The youth of a workforce matters. One of the problems is, according to Fareed Zakaria's show last Sunday, Americans think 31 percent of our population are immigrants. And in fact, it's about 12 percent or 13 percent.

But I really was almost physically ill at the—what some people say when all those Central American immigrants showed up at the border. I don't even know if everybody here knows this, but there had been zero net in-migration from Mexico in the last four years. Zero net in-migration from Mexico, partly because the previous president, Mr. Calderon, established 140 tuition-free universities. And last year, Mexico, barely a third our population, graduated 113,000 engineers, the United States 120,000. They're in the innovation business. All you got to do is go to Mexico City now and look around. . . .

George W. Bush signed a bipartisan bill saying that if somebody showed up on our border and they felt they were at risk, they had a right to a hearing. It was a good and decent thing. It's fine if the administration is trying to protect people where they live so they can process there and they're not all lined up on the border, but to think that this means, oh, the border's out of control, the world's coming to an end, we don't need immigration reform, it's wrong. Those people will make America's future.

Do we have to have fair rules? Do we have to make people wait in line, do you not want people jumping? Yeah, all of that's true. But the more prosperous our neighbors get, the less illegal immigration we'll have and the more we'll want people to come here and, if they get an education, to stay here, particularly, and contribute to us. So I'm looking forward to what will be said tomorrow. . . .

The New Republic can affect that, not by pretending there's only one side of the story, but making sure people at least know what's going on. We've got—if you want to have inclusive governance, there has to be a conversation that has some rough relationship to the facts. And I don't mean just the facts that are useful in a political debate. Everybody in a busy life has to be careful not to become vulnerable to the storyline and have it then turn out to be inconsistent with the story.

But I'm just telling you, you should not be pessimistic about America. And you should not be pessimistic about the world. These guys are not going to win over the long run in the Middle East with the strategy of decapitating everybody that disagrees with them. The local people (inaudible) now, the Kurds are fighting back. It may be a long, hard fight, so nobody wants to live that way. They are recruiting by and large who are looking for a quick trip to Heaven because they think all those tomorrows on Earth are going to be just like yesterday.

"Why Democrats Can’t Win Over White Working-Class Voters"

This is a pretty good Slate article, though I could have done without the accusations that people who prefer Bill Clinton's welfare reform to the previously open-ended welfare are "racist."

Also, this part of the article doesn't make sense:

in the 2012 presidential election, Republican nominee Mitt Romney ran a series of ads—concentrated in the white working-class areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania—attacking President Obama for “gutting welfare” and “cutting checks” to people who wouldn’t work.

According to that link, Romney ran ads attacking Obama for "gutting welfare reform" — not "gutting welfare," but expanding welfare.

The forgotten lesson from the Clinton impeachment and the 1998 midterms

Ramesh Ponnuru explains why the trifecta of ongoing news stories that are widely seen as harmful to President Obama (Benghazi, IRS, and Associated Press) might not help Republicans in the midterm elections:

The biggest danger for Republicans in giving themselves over to scandal mania is one that the conventional retelling of the Clinton impeachment neglects. Republicans didn’t lose seats simply because they overreached on Clinton’s perjury. It is true that his impeachment was unpopular, and public approval of the Republicans sank as they pursued it. Still, only 5 percent of voters in the 1998 election told exit pollsters that the scandal had played a role in their decision, and Republicans got a majority of those voters.

Social Security was the top issue for more than twice as many voters, and Republicans lost that issue by 18 percentage points. Even more voters cared about education, which Republicans lost by 34 points. They lost on health care and the economy by similar margins.

For the most part, Republicans didn’t campaign on impeachment in 1998: They didn’t say, “Vote for me and I’ll do my level best to oust Clinton.” Their strategy was more passive. They were counting on the scandal to motivate conservatives to vote while demoralizing liberals. So they didn’t try to devise a popular agenda, or to make their existing positions less unpopular. That’s what cost them -- that, and the mistake of counting on statistics about sixth-year elections, which also bred complacency.

Republicans have similar vulnerabilities on the issues now. They have no real health-care agenda. Voters don’t trust them to look out for middle-class economic interests. Republicans are confused and divided about how to solve the party’s problems. What they can do is unite in opposition to the Obama administration’s scandals and mistakes. So that’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to win news cycles when they need votes.

Congressional Republicans were right to press for hearings on all of these issues. But investigations of the administration won’t supply them with ideas. They won’t make the public trust Republicans. They won’t save them from themselves.

Bill Clinton admits the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and discriminatory

Clinton writes:

As the president who signed the act into law, I have come to believe that DOMA is ... , in fact, incompatible with our Constitution.

Because Section 3 of the act defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, same-sex couples who are legally married in nine states and the District of Columbia are denied the benefits of more than a thousand federal statutes and programs available to other married couples. Among other things, these couples cannot file their taxes jointly, take unpaid leave to care for a sick or injured spouse or receive equal family health and pension benefits as federal civilian employees. Yet they pay taxes, contribute to their communities and, like all couples, aspire to live in committed, loving relationships, recognized and respected by our laws.

When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that "enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination." Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory.

Bill Clinton for Senate, not Caroline Kennedy

Let's do this dynasty thing right.

The seat is supposed to be passed down within the same family as the resigning politician. So, isn't Bill Clinton the obvious best choice?

And having a Senator with actual merit would be nice.

Being a famous woman who was sired by a president of the appropriate party shouldn't count.

I'm a resident of New York state. We unfairly get just two Senators -- the same as states with less than a tenth of our population -- so we have a particular need and ability to get first-rate people for the job. If Governor Paterson chooses an inadequate Senator, it'll be an outrage. 

Yet smart liberals like Michael Kinsley are making a dumb argument for Caroline Kennedy: hey, we already have lots of Senators who got the job purely through nepotism. Well, if that's true, then that's bad too!

Let's say we grant that the US has a lot of unqualified lawmakers who were appointed based on nepotism (though he all but admits his own examples don't really support this claim). That still doesn't explain why we should be complacent about this state of affairs.

The only thing we should worry about is trying to do the right thing in the future, since that's the only thing we can change. Critiquing what's happened in the past is a convenient way to dodge our actual responsibility.

The issue of the day isn't whether the Wisconsin plutocrat Herb Kohl should be a Senator; he already is. The issue we're facing now is whether Caroline Kennedy should become a Senator now.

I have no idea what her true convictions are -- does anyone? She's certainly had a lot of solid liberals in her family. But to assume she doesn't have her own distinctive views that might be quite different from any of them is belittling and shamelessly anti-feminist. Based on everything I've heard about her, it sounds like she's coasted through life lending her name to utterly uncontroversial causes ("patriotism, poetry and public service") that shed no light on her privately held ideology.

Finally, we have no idea if she has what it takes to succeed in national politics, and the fact that this is an appointment prevents anyone, including her, from knowing beforehand. (This point has been made before.) It's a rough, sometimes brutal business; most people probably couldn't stomach it. It might make you feel good to praise her as a thoroughly decent and competent human being, but that's just not enough. The question is whether she has what it takes to excel at this specific job, and I haven't seen anything to remotely suggest that she does.

SIDE NOTE: The blog post I linked to in the first sentence is headed "Chelsea for Senate," and it goes on to suggest either Chelsea or Bill. I changed it to just Bill because Chelsea would be unconstitutional -- too young.

More of the greatest moments from the 2008 presidential race (up to 99)

And now: the latest installment of my ongoing list of the greatest moments from the 2008 race for president.

In case you missed them the first time, here are the previous installments:
1 - 44 (on the path to becoming #44)
45 - 77

As always, I've mostly given just quotes without attributions so that the list can double as a fun trivia game to test your campaign knowledge, if you so desire.

The new ones are mostly from the general election, with a few stragglers from the primaries that were just too good not to include:

78. "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
[blog]

79. "Did I mention he's black?"
[video]

80. Obama kicks off the general election by reaching out to whites
[video]

81. "We should be able to deliver bottled hot water to dehydrated babies."
[video] + [commentary]

82. "How do we beat the bitch?" "... That's an excellent question."
[video]

83. "That's not change we can believe in!"
[video, starting at 1:20 and interspersed with commentary]

84.  "[She] came to us with news that, as parents, we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned."
[story]

85. "That old Beach Boys song, 'Bomb Iran'? Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb..."
[video]

86. "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?" "In what respect, Charlie?"
[video + transcript]

87. "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."
[story]

88. "I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere."
---> "I was for infrastructure being built in the state, and it's not inappropriate for a mayor or a governor to request and to work with ... their Congressmen, their Congresswomen, to plug into the federal budget ... a share of the federal budget for infrastructure. What I supported was a link between the airport and the community, and we have found that link now."
[video]

89. "I just gotta make clear: I got tested with Michelle."
[video]

90. "Learning about sex before learning to read?!"
[video]

91. "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession."
[video]

92. "I wanna cut his nuts off."
[video]

93. awkwardest pause ever
[video]

94. "He's the biggest celebrity in the world."
[video]

95. "I think -- I'll have my staff get to you. It's condominiums where ... I'll have them get to you."
[audio] + [story]

96. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man."
[story]

97. "I've been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years, as anybody who's been around us knows. ... So the story's just false."
[video]

98. "Suppose for example you're a voter. And you've got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don't think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom would you vote? [pause] This has nothing to do with what's going on now."
[story]

99. "I want you to ask yourselves: were you just in this campaign for me?"
[video + transcript]


(Photo of the Obamas and Bidens from Obama. Photo of Palin with troops originally from a government site and preserved by A Second Hand Conjecture. Photo of McCain on TV by sloomis08.)

History for Hillary Clinton supporters

As I said in my previous post on the idea that the media was sexist against Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, I still haven't gotten to what bothers me the most about that charge. So here it is.

A lot of the criticisms are based on the fact that some of the comments made about her have been superficial and trivial: her speaking voice, her display of cleavage.

I admit that when I see references to her legs or the fact that she wears pant suits, my reaction is: hey, that's sexist and unfair. So I'm not saying I approve of all this. (As I said before, though, it doesn't bother me for people to talk about her voice or cleavage.)

But it doesn't make sense to go from saying that the media's criticisms of her have been superficial ... to saying that Hillary in particular was hurt by sexism.

A presidential race is a zero-sum game. That means that anything that hurts one candidate has to help the other candidate. Therefore, if something "hurts" all the candidates, it really hurts none of them. If you're saying she was hurt by sexism, that's implying not just that there were unfair criticisms of her, but that they were criticisms of a sort that male candidates don't have to withstand.

Well, I agree that there have been some unfair criticisms of her. But to imply that male candidates aren't treated just as unfairly, or that the discussion of them isn't just as superficial? I mean, maybe you could believe that ... if you had never observed how any other presidential candidate has ever been treated.

I have some news for Clinton supporters who think that superficial criticisms of her are evidence of sexism:

PRESIDENTIAL RACES ARE UNFAIR

Media Focus on Candidates' Personal Quirks

Trivialities, Superficialities Discussed More Than Policy Issues

Barack Obama is criticized for not wearing an American flag pin on his lapel. His exotic name is a major topic of discussion among serious commentators.

John Edwards is ridiculed for seeming to spend too much time and money on his appearance.

Mitt Romney is criticized for being too polished and robotic, and his own staffers worry that his hair is "too perfect."

Bill Richardson receives little media attention despite having a more impressive resume than Clinton, Edwards, or Obama, and you have to wonder if the fact that he's not as conventionally attractive as those three candidates has something to do with it.

Before he officially enters the race, the media focuses on Fred Thompson more than any of his Republican rivals even though he doesn't have especially interesting ideas or accomplishments. The discussion in the media largely focuses on his perceived "sex appeal" and masculinity.

Dennis Kucinich is mocked as an elf-like creature whose wife is too attractive for him. While he might be too far left to have a real chance at becoming president, you have to wonder if he'd receive more favorable coverage if he had equally liberal positions but were a suave 6'4" man with a baritone voice.

John Kerry is criticized more for his stodgy demeanor than his policy stances — which the media don't report on because they're too busy mocking his rhetorically clumsy but substantively defensible statement that "I voted for it [one particular Iraq appropriations bill] before I voted against it [a related but significantly different bill]." It becomes common to talk about his horse face.

After Howard Dean loses the Iowa caucus in 2004, the media never report on him without mentioning that he let out an ill-considered yelp (which is always referred to as "the Dean scream") in an understandable effort to rally his supporters after a shocking defeat.

Dick Gephardt is routinely derided for lacking a "rock star" quality even though he's actually one of the most passionate speakers among the 2004 candidates.

Al Gore is criticized for seeming "stiff" and "wooden," for sighing heavily in a debate, for wearing "earth tones," and for walking over toward Bush in an awkward manner. He receives an enormous amount of attention for aggressively kissing his wife Tipper at the Democratic Convention -- a stunt clearly intended to broadcast his male sexuality.

George W. Bush is regularly mocked for stumbling over his words.

Bill Clinton is regularly mocked as fat.

George H.W. Bush is famously called a "wimp" on the cover of Newsweek magazine and is criticized for asking for a "splash" of coffee.

John F. Kennedy has a better tan and shave than Richard Nixon in a debate. This is widely seen as being a major factor in Kennedy's victory.

Presidential races are superficial and unfair. That's true whether the candidate is a Democratic or a Republican. It's true whether the candidate is a man or a woman. And it's unlikely to change in the near future.

(Photo of Edwards from the Edwards campaign.)

From 44 to 77 moments on the path to becoming #44

This is a sequel to the previous 44 moments on the path to becoming the 44th President of the United States of America.

Some of these are genuine "updates" in the sense that they happened after I posted the previous list, but there are also others that I just didn't get to last time.

As with the previous list, I've usually left out the speakers so that you can use this as a test of your campaign knowledge. If you feel like it.

And as with previous list, I owe a huge thanks to the Veracifier YouTube channel operated by Josh Marshall's great blog Talking Points Memo, where I got many of these clips from.

Here you go:

45. "I think we've made clear that the issue related to cocaine use is not something that [our] campaign was in any way raising."
[blog with video]

46. "Can I ask you about your ... uh ... why you're so angry?"
[transcript]

47. "It'll be dispirited. It'll be spirited. Because there are stark differences. I'm a proud, conservative, liberal Republican. Conservative Republican."
[video]

48. Obama on aliens
[video, 1:25 - end]

49. "Based on his remarks yesterday, well, I may not know him as well as I thought either."
[video at 1:45]

50. "I'll tell you what, I'm not going to put my lot in with economists."
[video, 2:15 - 3:00]

51. "Would you be happy with that being a home of a U.S. garrison like Guantanamo or Germany all those years, where we'd have 50,000 troops permanently stationed in that country?" "No, I would hope that we could bring them all home."
[video]

52. "I've now been in 57 states."
[video]

53. "I can't make her younger.... There's lots of things I can't do."
[video]

54. "If you have something that just directly contradicts the facts, and it's coming from a former president, I think that's a problem."
[video]

55. "I think that it's possible ... having the spotlight was something attractive to him."
[blog]

56. "Do you think Rev. Wright loves America as much as you do?"
[video at 2:20]

57. "You're not wearing a lapel pin, are you?"
[video]



58. "It's no more than an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history."
[video at 1:30]

59. "Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again."
[video at 0:20 - 0:35]

60. "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen."
[video]

61. "You said that the Iranians are training Al Qaeda. They're training extremist terrorists." "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda."
[video, 0:55 - 1:15]

62. "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."
[video]

63. "Thanks for the question, you little jerk."
[video]

64. "A rare audience outburst over the agreement between 'rejecting' and 'denouncing.'"
[transcript]

65. "WHAT DI DHE DO AFORE HOW LONG AND WITH WHO ?? PLS TELL BOB HELLO BOB"
[blog]

66. "They were published on 9/11, and he said that he was just sorry they hadn't done more, and what they did was set bombs, and in some instances people died. ... I think that this is an issue that certainly the Republicans will be raising."
[video, 4:00 - 4:45]

67. "I approve this message. And not the other one."
[video]

68. "Actually, I don't know where you got that quote from."
[video, 1:30 - 2:00]

69. "There is nothing to base that on -- as far as I know."
[blog + video]

70. "Racism works in two different directions. I think they're attacking me because I'm white."
[blog]

71. "I see many of them in the audience here today."
[video]

72. "We disagree on a lot of issues, but I agree: you are the candidate of change."
[video at 2:00 - 2:15]

73. Obama dancing
[video]

74. "I think you could argue that Americans overall are better off."
[video, 2:15 - 2:30]

75. "Your problem ... is you don't know what you're talking about. ... You don't understand there's a difference between talking to the enemy, and appeasing."
[video]

76. "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.... We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."
[video]

77. "Boy, you'd better be president. You've gotta be president!"
[video]

(Photo of John McCain by Chris Dunn. Photo of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama from Suresh K. Photo of Bill Clinton by Roger H. Goun. Photo of Mitt Romney by Tim Somero. Photo of Obama with daughter from Obama.)

Reverse of cool

My post on Obama and the coolness factor drew a response from Stuff Running 'Round My Head, who points out that Bush is pretty clear proof that being a bumbling oaf is ... brace yourself ... a detrimental quality in a president. If having the-opposite-of-charisma can impair a presidency, then doesn't it follow that charisma can strengthen a presidency?

Take a look at Bush's well-meaning but cringe-inducing attempt to ingratiate himself to the Irish people, for instance:



If you watch his answer around 7:25 - 7:35, he looks like a forlorn child: "Really what you're talking about is France -- and uh, um ... [shakes head] ... they didn't agree with my decision ..."

In Bush's defense, the interviewer certainly wasn't helping. (What a way to start an interview with a visiting head of state: "Unfortunately, the majority of our public do not welcome your visit"!) But an Obama, a Blair, or a Bill Clinton would have made it go more smoothly. Even Hillary Clinton -- not the most charismatic or likable politician -- can stand up to the most incessant bluster and keep her cool more than Bush.

At this point, I realize I'm going way beyond my original "coolness matters" thesis. After all, I used Bush as a positive example in my original post. So focusing on the superficial is a double-edged sword. Charisma, of course, doesn't do much on its own -- you want it to coexist with nuance, intelligence, the ability to think on your feet. Let's just hope we get this powerful combination in January 2009.

Top 44 moments from the path to becoming #44

As promised, the following is my highly biased, incomplete, and unfair list of classic moments from the 2008 presidential primaries.

With a few exceptions, I’ve generally given just a quote with a link, but no attribution or names. If you like, you can use this as a test of your campaign knowledge by trying to identify the speaker before clicking the link!

Huge thanks to the Veracifier YouTube channel set up by Talking Points Memo, where I got a lot of these clips from.

Part of me envies those who were blogging when all this stuff was going on, but another part is glad I can just whip this together in one shot, to blatantly mix metaphors.

So, in no particular order, here they are:

1. “We even know how to talk about eating fried squirrel and stuff like that, so we’re on the same wavelength.”
[video]

2. "I'm not doing hand shows today."
[video]

3. "I'm looking forward to you advising me as well. I want to gather up talent from everywhere."
[blog + video]

4. "I was tied up at the time."
[video]

5. the Romney face scrunch
[video at 4:10]

6. "Here's the thing. After a couple minutes, I was feeling kind of fired up. And I was feeling like I was ready to go."
[video]

7. "I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible!"
[video, 1:20 - 2:20] + [blog]

8. "I ... opposed Iraq from the beginning ..."
[video]

9. "I just don't want to see us fall backwards!"
[video]

10. Huckabee shows the negative ad he's not going to show
[blog]

11. Russert channels an Iraqi nationalist
[video, 3:30 - 4:45]

12. "I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother."
[video at 13:45]

13. "I think that my daughters should probably be treated by any admissions officer as folks who are pretty advantaged."
[video]

14. "a noun, a verb, and 9/11"
[video, first few seconds]

15. "I am honored ... I am honored ... I am absolutely honored ..."
--> "Shame on you!"
[debate] --> [speech 2 days later]

16. “Maybe 100!”
[video]

17. “Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America ... in a way that Bill Clinton did not.”
[video]

18. “He has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years.”
[video]

19. Romney debates separation of church and state with radio host during commercial break, and eventually tells him off
[video]

20. “Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself ....”
[story]

21. "I want to make change, but I've already MADE change!!!"
(debate in between Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary)
[video at 0:35]

22. “Well, that hurts my feelings.”
[video]

23. “Who let the dogs out?!”
[video]

24. bug in hair
[video]

25. "We're going to win Florida."
[video]

26. Hillary Clinton on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants
[video]

27. "She is a monster too. That is off the record."
[article]

28. "It's not surprising that they get bitter. They cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations."
[audio clip at 0:25]

29. "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice ..."
[video]

30. "I just said some things that ... didn't jibe with what I knew to be the case."
[blog]

31. "Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?"
[blog]

32. "We would be able to totally obliterate them."
[video]

33. McCain says he's "pleased" to have endorsement of pastor who said Katrina was retribution for gay pride parade
[video, 3:05 - 4:45]

34. Hillary Clinton endorses McCain and herself for Commander-in-Chief
[video]

35. "It would be OK to repeal [Roe v. Wade]."
[article]

36. "The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad."
[article]

37. "Well, I'll talk to him later!"
[video]

38. "When I was a kid, I inhaled frequently. That was the point."
[video]

39. "... [he] was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing but he said it in his book ..."
[video, 1:20-2:00]

40. "He said, 'Katrina! Katrina!' So I then gave my answer on Katrina."
[video, 9:20 - 10:45]

41. "It's very important that we have a president who is mindful of the cruelty that is perpetrated on animals."
[article]

42. Hillary Clinton refuses to state a policy on Social Security
[video, 8:15 - 9:10]

43. Edwards says Obama and Clinton have both assured him they'll carry on his fight against poverty
[video at 5:00]

44. “Sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this, a night that years from now ... you'll be able to look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began.”
[video at 8:50]