Holiday Weekend Book Review: "Renegade"

The 18 Best Tidbits from The Book

1. On election day when Bill Ayers showed up at the polling place at the same time Barack Obama was voting, campaign manager David Plouffe e-mailed, "What is this? The bar in Star Wars?"

2. On election night, just after the race was called and as Obama was about to take the stage in Chicago, he made his first executive decision: He killed the fireworks. "I don't think it's appropriate," he said.

3. Obama's marriage was rocky after his failed race for Congress in 2000. Wolff writes, "She was angry at his selfishness and careerism; he thought she was cold and ungrateful."

4. As he was deciding whether to run in '08 or wait, David Axelrod advised him, "My reading of history is that people rarely suffer for having run too soon."

5. The original gameplan: Place 2nd in Iowa, behind John Edwards but then win New Hampshire.

6. Obama's proudest moment of the campaign: Slogging through Nevada after the New Hampshire disappointment, and slightly edging Hillary Clinton in delegates. It's when Plouffe made clear the campaign wouldn't be about the popular vote, but delegates.

7. Obama wrote his entire speech on race himself, mostly late at night in hotel rooms. He finished 2 a.m. the day of the speech and e-mailed it to Axelrod. "This is why you should be president," Axelrod e-mailed his boss. He knew of no other candidate who could have written such a complex and subtle speech under such pressure.

8. In mid-December, a month before Iowa, Obama confronted Hillary directly at the airport in Des Moines over tensions between their campaigns. Clinton grew agitated and waved her hand, poking her finger at him. Obama placed his hand on her arm, she recoiled. After he walked away he later told his aides, "I never saw that look of concern in her eyes before. I think we can win this one."

9. Obama won the endorsement of John Kerry before the Iowa caucuses. But the campaign decided rolling out Kerry before Iowa would hurt their outsider message. "We're not the D.C. people. We've got this far without them. Let's close it," said Mitch Stewart, the Iowa caucus director.

10. That hubbub over the State of the Union snub, when Obama reportedly failed to shake Clinton's hand? Obama turned away from Clinton, but said he had only turned away to answer a question from his other seatmate, Sen. Claire McCaskill.

11. After the primary, Clinton said she'd only submit to vetting if she was assured the vice presidency. That was a signal to Obama's aides that Clinton wanted to disqualify herself.

12. Obama's Vice Presidential short list boiled down to Senators Joe Biden and Evan Bayh and Governors Tim Kaine and Kathleen Sebelius. The view inside the inner circle is that he was always leaning towards Biden.

13. The day after the convention when John McCain unveiled Sarah Palin as his running mate, Obama adviser Pete Rouse said, "This is not going to wear well. It is a stunt."

14. Plouffe estimates Palin's nomination was worth about $20 to $25 million dollars in fundraising for Obama.

15. Two stylistic problems that Obama aides worked to correct during debate prep: 1) When Obama wanted to look serious, his facial expression could appear angry 2) He often cocked his head to listen to his rivals, which left him looking snootily. He corrected both before debating McCain.

16. Obama's team didn't mind the "socialist" line of attack against their candidate. They had polled the term down to "its underwear. "It's excessive," said Plouffe. "They say, 'I might no agree with him on taxes, but I don't think anybody running for president is a socialist.'

17. In the immediate weeks of the Obama administration, there was tension between Valerie Jarrett and Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel was "unsettled" by her personal relationship with the Obamas and wanted her outside the White House, preferably in the Senate. But the president wanted her close.

18. Several top Senate Democrats encouraged Obama to pick Clinton as his Secretary of State. They wanted her out of the Senate. Some thought Clinton carried on her campaign too long, drained Democratic resources and they were unwilling to offer her a position ahead of her lowly rank as a junior New York Senator.

McCaskill's Political Intelligence

A BOOK REVIEW OF "THE POLITICAL MIND"
Author Dissects McCaskill's P.I. During Her 2006 Race

"The Political Mind," by clinical, personality and political psychologist Drew Westen, is a scientific look at how pure emotion is the most important factor in driving voters decisions --- and ultimately election outcomes. Westen's fascinating discoveries through years of research shows how emotion trumps reason and how impressions trump issues in campaign after campaign. Westen, who reveals he's a partisan Democrat, skewers his own party for not understanding the need to move an electorate. His conclusion: Personal feelings towards a candidate are more important than positions on issues. And policies of a candidate only matter to voters to the extent that those policies influence their emotions.

Throughout his book, Westen, an Emory University professor, points to Sen. Claire McCaskill's use of words and emotions during her 2006 campaign to help build his case. Westen, who calls Missouri's junior Senator a "rising superstar," argues that McCaskill is one of the few Democratic candidates who understands and successfully uses emotion, imagery and rhetoric to her advantage. In one exchange on Meet the Press, Westen praises McCaskill for her combinded "bluntness, folksiness and a powerfully evocative metaphor," to make her point.

MR. RUSSERT: Ms. McCaskill, you said this. "We should redeploy our troops strategically within the region over a two-year time frame." What does that mean?

MS. McCASKILL: . . . You know, as a daughter of rural Missouri, we have a saying, "If you're in a hole, you need to quit digging."

Westen credits the success of McCaskill and other Democrats in 2006 to this: "On a range of issues, Democrats began to use phrases and imagery that translated the Democratic litany that had shown little traction earlier in the campaign into the language of values and emotion."

Here's another Westen rule for campaign managers: "There is no more important task of a lead strategist or debate coach for a candidate than to identify areas of ambivalence or defensiveness and to work with the candidate until he or she has an emotionally resonant response to tough questions."

Westen again points to the 2006 McCaskill race versus then-Sen. Jim Talent. Defensiveness, in Westen's eyes, erodes voter enthusiasm and leaves a bad taste in voters' mouths. In their Meet the Press debate, Westen says, "Tim Russert simply asked Talent the kinds of questions Democrats should have been asking their opponents about their stands on abortion for years, challenging them on the natural entailments of their black-and-white position on when life begins:

MR. RUSSERT: When do you believe life begins?

SEN. TALENT: I believe it begins at the beginning, at, at conception.

MR. RUSSERT: So that embryo is a human being?

SEN. TALENT: Yeah. I think whatever it is that makes -- if I . . .

MR. RUSSERT: And so, and so to use that for research is taking of a life?

SEN. TALENT: Yeah, it's the, it's the use -- instrumental use of a person for some purpose . . .

MR. RUSSERT: Then why do you favor exemptions in abortion law for rape . . .? If it's a human being, why are you allowing the taking of that life?

SEN. TALENT: Ok. Well, I've I've supported those exemptions over the years. It's a situation where the pregnancy was not voluntary, and I think the law ought to draw a different balance under those circumstances. But as I said before, I mean, I support . . .

MR. RUSSERT: But it is the taking of a life under your . . .

SEN. TALENT: That's, that's right.

Westen continues to point out the probing of Talent's position, noting Russert's reference to Senator Danforth's support of embryonic stem cell research.

MR. RUSSERT: If you have a three-year-old with juvenile diabetes, people believe that research on the embryonic stem cell may in fact bring about a cure.

SEN. TALENT: That's right. The research -- I've said I think the research is promising. I think it's speculative. And the good news, Tim, is we're not in a position where we have to make this kind of choice, we have alternatives that science is developing. At MI . . .

MR. RUSSERT: Right now?

SEN. TALENT: Well, yeah. I mean, look, all this is speculative. They haven't, they haven't been able to clone an embryo, they haven't been able to get cures yet out of pluripotent stem cell research . . .

In Talent's response, we see all the signs of defensiveness: stammering, hemming and hawking, making illogical leaps, inserting abstruse language (pluripotent stem cell research). And Talent's response set McCaskill up for one of the most brilliant displays of political intelligence of the 2006 midterm elections:

MS. McCASKILL: My faith directs me to heal the sick. God gave us the miracle of human intelligence to find cures. Our country has never turned its back on medical research and we shouldn't in Missouri . . . I respect people who disagree with me on this issue on principle, I understand there are differences. I come down on the side of hope, hope for cures and supporting science. And I think it's very important that someone be principled, strong and not muddled, but very clear and straightforward about their position on this issue.

Normally Democrats are the ones hedging on "values issues." But in this case the shoe was on the other foot. Talent's moral principle (life begins at birth, so a discarded has the same moral status as a child with diabetes) made clear that he was putting a moral abstraction above the life of a living child. McCaskill artfully contrasted their two opposing moral positions. She appealed to hope and compassion and challenged Talent's religious position with one of her own. In speaking of the miracle of human intelligence, she used a word that signaled to many conservative Christians that she cared about their values and culture while enunciating a stance with strong appeal to those in the political center. She acknowledged her respect for people with principled stands other than hers but made clear that her stand was a deeply principled one.

McCaskill's political intelligence was apparent from her first moments on the political stage in 2006. One of the reasons Democrats won more elections than expected in 2006 was that party leaders carefully picked candidates high on political cases.

But Westen is not without criticism for McCaskill. He says McCaskill showed that same defensiveness on he touchy topic of abortion. Here's his analysis of McCaskill's answer on a question on partial-birth abortion during that same Meet The Press appearance:

The vast majority of Americans (85 percent) believe abortion should be permitted when the mother's life is in danger. But nearly 90 percent support some restrictions . . . The most frequent interpretation of these seemingly conflicting results is that Americans are 'divided' on abortion, a position that makes Democrats anxious, particularly in red or purple states, and typically leads either to silence or to a defensive, "I'm kind of pro-choice, but not really" response. A prototypical example is Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill's response with then Senator Jim Talent on Meet the Press in 2006:

MR. RUSSERT: Do you support a ban on partial-birth abortion?

MS. McCASKILL: I do, within the constitutional framework that we currently have, with the exception for the life of the mother. I also support parental notification. On the whole issue of abortion, what we need to do --- I, I, I certainly believe that abortion should remain safe, legal and rare in the early term, but why don't we concentrate on prevention? Why don't we all -- none of us want abortion, none of us support abortion [turns to Talent, as if seeking support]. Let's come together and work on preventing abortions in this country, making adoption easier and, and, and do the right thing to, to, drop the number of abortions instead of making health care more unavailable to poor women, which in fact drives up the number of abortions in this country.

McCaskill was one of the sharpest, most emotionally intelligent candidates the Democrats fielded in any race in 2006 and was able to defeat an incumbent in a state that usually sees red in national elections. Yet her response was defensive, indexed by the initial retreat to legalism ("within the constitutional framework . . ."), followed by a gratuitous reference to her position on parental notification (which Russert hadn't asked about,) followed by an uncharacteristic stumbling for words and a barrage of half-measures designed to change the subject from what she apparently believed was an unpopular stance in her home state.

Westen goes on to in part blames this on the national party, for being unable to generate a principled stand that could spare its candidates from having to "invent their own response" at every turn. He argues that the Democratic Party's position on abortion is incoherent. He argues that it would be better if Democrats took a principled stand and stuck to it.

If you tell the truth about what you believe, people are more likely to hear your message. And they're even more likely to be receptive if what you feel happens to converge with what they feel. So here is a simple, compelling, three-dimensional distillation of what the average American feels about abortion . . . It represents a compelling moral vision that Democrats can contrast everywhere with the moral vision of the right . . . And it is deceptively simple, and in this case readily summarized in three sentences:

Abortion is a difficult and often painful decision for a woman to make. It's a decision only she can make, based on the dictates of her own conscience and faith, not on the dictates of someone else's. But except under exceptional circumstances, such as rape, incest or danger to her health, she should make that decision as early as she can, so she is not aborting a fetus that is increasingly becoming more like a person.

Holiday Weekend Review: "The Bush Tragedy"

"The Bush Tragedy" is a revealing psychological portrait of the Bush presidency, that delves into 43's family drama, faith and consequential decisions. The following isn't an endorsement of journalist Jacob Weisberg's conclusions; just some of the more titillating nuggets I came across in this satisfying read:

1. Bush's faith is utilitarian -- not theological. He puts religion to work for his purposes . . . "When a Houston reporter asked Bush about the difference between the Episcopal church he was raised in and the Methodist one he began attending after he was married, he replied, 'I'm sure there is some kind of heavy doctrinal difference, which I'm not sophisticated enough to explain to you.'"

2. Bush does not conform well to the true evangelical definition . . . "Bush . . . seldom goes to church. Unlike most other evangelicals, Bush blithely uses profanity, and as governor would play poker. He doesn't tithe. He didn't try to convert others. He didn't raise his daughters in his faith . . . He isn't hiding his beliefs, he simply doesn't have many of them."

3. Secretly recorded private conversations with Bush in 1999 and 2000 by former adviser Doug Wead reveal Bush's raw feelings about personal questions and evangelical leaders . . . "On one, (Bush) acknowledges illegal drug use decades back: 'Doug,' Bush says, 'it doesn't just matter cocaine, it'd be the same with marijuana. I wouldn't answer the marijuana question. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried . . . I don't want any kid doing what I tried to do [pause] thirty years ago . . .' "Speaking of an upcoming meeting with evangelical leaders, (Bush) notes: 'As you said, there are some code words. There are some proper ways to say things and some improper ways. I am going to say that I've accepted Christ into my life. And that's a true statement.' On another tape, he he goes over what he plans to tell one evangelical minister who wanted Bush to promise not to appoint homosexuals to his administration: 'Look James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick the gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?'"

4. The Bush team mulled former Missouri Sen. Jack Danforth as a possible running mate back in 2000 . . . "As the top contenders for the job disgorged their flaws, Cheney himself became more and more alluring. Unlike Danforth, he didn't patronize Bush as a novice in need of guidance."

5. Cheney's mild manner mislead some people about his politics . . . "When (Cheney) was in Congress, a Washington Post story described Cheney as a 'moderate.' The congressman asked an aide to correct the paper's error."

6. Without the anthrax attacks, Bush probably would have not invaded Iraq . . . "As horrific as September 11 was, it was a discrete crime, whose perpetrators were quickly identified and pursued. The anthrax letters, by contrast, killed only a few people, but remained unsolved . . . Inside the administration, the October bioterror attacks had a greater impact than is generally appreciated . . . The anthrax attacks in New York and Washington created a sense of vulnerability that was in many respects greater than the mass murder at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. To this day, officials disagree about whether the sender or senders were Islamic terrorists or Americans . . ."

7. Bush overruled Cheney on vaccinating the entire country against smallpox . . . "Bush eventually announced a compromise: mandatory vaccination of 500,000 military personnel . . . Those who believe the vice president operates in bad faith -- that he concocted evidence of Iraqi WMD to justify a war -- should consider his stance on universal smallpox vaccination. Even a safe vaccine would have killed a few hundred Americans . . . Cheney's readiness to sacrifice hundreds of civilian lives may sound like Dr. Strangelove. But if the idea was mad, it was sincerely mad, testifying to how seriously he took the possibility that Saddam had biological weapons . . .The smallpox episode punctures another myth too: that Bush blindly follows Cheney. Bush's sense of autonomy is far too sensitive for him to function as anyone's puppet."

8. Bush's inflexibility and stubbornness is rooted in the old family drama. . . "To accept negative judgments about his decision to invade Iraq or his handling of the occupation would threaten something more vulnerable than troop morale. It would vindicate his father's diplomacy, caution and flexibility over his own hawkish attitude . . . His father gave him a memo that (Brent) Scowcroft had asked him to pass along about Iraq. The president glanced at it before throwing it aside, telling his dad, 'I'm sick and tired of getting papers from Brent Scowcroft telling me what to do, and I never want to see another one again.' With that 43, stalked out of the room and slammed the door behind him."

9. Bush believes his successor will be like Eisenhower . . . "In a background interview with a group of television reporters in September 2007, Bush said that the president who succeeded him would be like Eisenhower, who was critical of many of his predecessor's policies, but continued them once he was in office."

***Feel free to pass along a review of your recent holiday or lakeside reading . . .

Book Review: "The Argument"

It's been awhile since I've been able to plow through a good political read. This 24-hour age of hyper-blogs and continuous filings makes books hard to get to. After all, there's always another AP wire to check or web-post to peruse.

Still, a well-written hardbound book can still stand the age of time and provide long-term knowledge and lessons that outlast the pithy post of the day. It's just a coincidence that this book is in part about how the online influence of bloggers is changing our politics.

"The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle To Remake Democratic Politics," is an inside look at the movement grass-roots bloggers and wealthy progressives are waging to change the landscape of the Democratic Party. It chronicles Howard Dean's movement in 2003 through the 2006 election cycle and the early innings of campaign 2008. Writer Matt Bai does a great job of putting you in the room where the high-stakes conversations between the leaders, volunteers and donors are driving the future of the party. But after 300 pages, Bai's conclusion is that after all the money, enthusiasm, and hope that's been built by the party heading out of 2007, many of the leaders, movers and shakers in the progressive movement still lack the courage and vision to offer a big idea that could drastically change the country and the party's future. (Take note, this book was penned pre-Obama phenomenon . . . you can argue amongst yourselves if he's yet offered that big, grand idea.)

Bai quotes former New York Governor and legendary Democratic orator Mario Cuomo to make his case. Cuomo argued that big elections are usually about one single issue. Just one. And sometimes, it's not an issue, but an argument. Jimmy Carter won on cleaning up government after Watergate. Ronald Reagan ran and won on supply-side economics and forcing a showdown on the cold war. Bill Clinton won on fundamentally changing the economy.
Cuomo argued in 2000, there was no big issue and that void amounted to a virtual tie. In 2004, it was all about President Bush's war on terror. Cuomo said in 2006, Democrats got a gift because of Iraq. Then before a room full of progressive Democrats, Cuomo did the equivalent of throwing a bucket full of cold water on them. He said, without Iraq, Democrats would have nothing to talk about.

"If Iraq is not an issue, then what issues do we have to talk about," Bai quotes Cuomo asking the group of leaders at a meeting in Miami. "So far the Democrats have talked about what I think it's fair to say are very timid proposals. The minimum wage? No one in this room would say that's not a good idea. It's a good idea. Lower prices for prescription drugs? Another good idea. And yet, he went on sadly, none of these were grand enough to restore the soul of a party. "Where does that leave you," Cuomo asked. "It leaves you in the same position you were in 2004-without an issue. Because you have no big idea."

Again, this was written before most of the 2008 campaign. So it's fair to ask, have Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton offered up one big idea in this race? Is it universal healthcare? Is it ending the war in Iraq? Or does that big, overarching rationale remain muddled?

More notable anecdotes and observations from Bai's book:

• He compares the Democratic party's problems to the problems of automaker General Motors. "Just as GM couldn't begin to consider a world without Pontiacs, neither could Washington Democrats and their interest groups envision a world where every single liberal provision of the last seventy years didn't exist intact," Bai writes. "This made real innovation . . . all but impossible."
  
• A classic political ploy. Bai describes a scene where former President Clinton has lunch with one of the party's top donors in order to squeeze more money out of him. As the lunch went on too long, an aide touched the president's arm, urging him to move along. Clinton snapped at the aide -- lashing out so he could continue talking with this really? interesting? campaign contributor he just met. It's an old Washington trick. But it worked. Before the donor left, he wrote a check for fifty grand.
• Old Democratic political pro Pat Caddell was incensed. House Democrats had voted down a more lenient amendment on designating illegal immigrants as felony criminals. Bai writes the reason they did it was entirely tactical. They supported the gentler misdemeanor bill, but just wanted the G.O.P. to pass the harsher felony bill so they could use it against them in November. Caddell disagreed with the tactics supported by the progressive bloggers. "They had no convictions --- only tactical maneuvers -- and they were willing to endanger helpless immigrants to score a few points," Bai writes.
• Howard Dean's 50-state strategy was criticized by many Democratic insiders and elected officials. Why should the party spend money in Idaho that could be used in a battleground like Ohio? Bai writes that Dean was undeterred by the criticism. He writes of a trip to Alaska, where Dean decided allocating just one organizer to the state wasn't enough. He wanted three or four . . . in ALASKA! After meeting with Dean, Alaska's party chairman announced to four hundred Democrats assembled at a fund-raiser that Dean just decided to spend more money on another Alaska organizer. Dean's personal aide began rolling his eyes, and typing a text message in his cell phone. It was the aide's job to tell some poor staffer that they needed to find $35,000 for Alaska . . . of all places.
• Dean's 50-state strategy came from his campaign for president, according to Bai. Bai writes about a Dean stop in West County, Missouri, where he met a woman who said there was no longer even a Democratic Party to join in her county. Those types of encounters lead Dean to believe that if you lived in a targeted state like Ohio or Pennsylvania, you could hardly avoid seeing a Democratic nominee. On the other hand, in Nebraska or Wyoming, you might not even know there was a Democratic party. "Targeting meant that Democrats no longer even tried to be a truly national party," Bai writes.
• Why did Virginia Governor Mark Warner decide against an '08 run? Bai believes it was his close encounter with bloggers and the progressive movement. "I suspected his various run-ins with the donors and bloggers of the new progressive movement had also convinced Warner, that in order to succeed, he was going to have to be more angry and divisive than the governor who had won over so many Republicans," Bai writes.
• Bai writes that in a meeting of top Democratic officials after the 2006 election, Washington Congressman Adam Smith argued against pushing big ideas towards 2008. "Big ideas were overrated, he said, and usually unworkable. What Democrats really had to do was show they were competent, so they could build on their majorities, two years later. Others seconded this . . . This wasn't the time to overstep with big ideas or new paradigms," Bai writes of the meeting. "Here were some of the leading progressive minds in a party that had just days earlier taken power . . .and all they could think about was one thing: keeping power."