The Tiger at Home

… the White House Chief of Staff, Josh Bolten ‘76, tells us that Scott McClellan’s account of his dismissal is roughly accurate.

So accurate, Bolten says, that McClellan must have been planning for some time to write a book, because he must have gone home from the meeting and written out a full account of it.

Was interesting to be at a small alumni panel discussion with three Secret Service agents guarding the doors.

Say what you will about John McCain & his service to the nation, the main issue of this election will be “Barack Obama — do we want him as president?”

1. The gaffes.

2. The details.

***

Given that we twice elected a man like the current president, who battles the English language daily, I don’t think this will be that much of a problem for Obama.

Except for this: Bush takes it all in good humour, as did Bill Clinton before him, and Ronald Reagan before him. The presidential candidates for both parties this year are a remarkably thin-skinned pair.

That could make a difference…

Reunions Weekend is typically a bittersweet time for me. (more…)

I don’t know about this.

Pelosi notwithstanding, I think she’s leaving the door open for a run to Denver.

Not that she’ll take it, barring extraordinary circumstances.  But I just think it’s in the nature of the Clintons to build in such escape hatches, just in case…

I agree (surprise, surprise) largely with what Chuckercanuck has written here, here and here. (Though it’s a palate for me. No warehouse management here, says this elitist snob. :p) I differ slightly on parts of this.

I do care. I like Maxime Bernier, and I thought he had real potential to be a star. I’m as disappointed as Gerry Nichols is.

That said, Canadian foreign policy is in great shape, various former Ministers of Foreign Affairs notwithstanding. (Though I wouldn’t mind a name change back to External Affairs. It isn’t all foreign…)

Update: Just had a thought — where Canadian foreign policy differs from American foreign policy right now — with the exception of Iraq, and possibly on some environmental issues — it has the virtue of being right. (China; Colombian free trade)

Who’d've thought that would happen, four years ago?

Update again:  Re being disappointed — Daifallah expresses what I’m feeling.

1. We see the potentially transformative figure who has managed to pique the interest of Rupert Murdoch.

2. We see the potentially Kerryesque figure who has gotten Jake Tapper to have fun with transcripts and video clips.

Update:  Here’s a third Obama — one who can inspire rants like this.

***

Am posting this from Porter’s lounge on the island.

It’s a very nice place. Minimalist decor — it’s all browns and beiges and whites, a minimum of advertisements, and free drinks. (I think the free wine and beer is on the flight — not that I’ll be partaking, because there are too many free drinks ahead of me this evening, and I want to have a clear head.)

One slight disappointment — no pre-clearance here. I’ll have to go through customs Stateside, I think.

But if the flight is pleasant enough, I may make a practice of using this way of getting down to the NYC area and recommend it to friends.

I’m already a fan of Newark Airport, because it’s right on the train line (therefore cheap and easy to get to midtown Manhattan or to downtown Philly).

So count me as someone who thinks that the island airport should be expanded enough that jets can fly in and out.

That said, their habit of calling this a flight to “New York” irks me — I’m not flying to New York, though I may have lunch there on Sunday. I’m flying to Newark, New Jersey.

Go defend your man.

I disagree with his politics, but I have a soft spot for political figures like Jim Webb.

The issue at hand here is whether Jacksonians — those angry Scotch-Irish people who take no guff from anyone, and who have no time at all for political correctness — still have a place in the Democratic Party.

If they do, it’s probably a winning coalition.

If they don’t, my guys will happily pick up the pieces.

… why, we’ll ban them.

In response to a series of controversies over abortion debates on Canadian campuses, the student government of York University in Toronto has tabled an outright ban on student clubs that are opposed to abortion.

Gilary Massa, vice-president external of the York Federation of Students, said student clubs will be free to discuss abortion in student space, as long as they do it “within a pro-choice realm,” and that all clubs will be investigated to ensure compliance.

Oh, Toronto.

Pressure:

Strange day.

Apparently Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have picked the chateau of the brother-in-law and late sister of my Uncle Jack (the guy who likes Romney) as their dream home.

Makes me kinda wish I’d swung by Miraval when I had the chance. (I didn’t. Would have in the summer of ‘02 when I was doing the Europe by rail thing, had Uncle Jack’s sister still been with us — but she went down with Swissair Flight 111, and I felt funny about imposing on cousins’ cousins. Mind you, my uncle and aunt dragged me to a party in Cambridge when their (the Miraval residing folks’) daughter graduated from Harvard Med, so I probably had enough social standing to ask if I could stop by and see the place.)

Whatever.

I’m still three degrees removed from Joseph Stalin. Just got in touch with the Soviet lit prof I RAed for in college — he’s 84, and escaped from the Soviet Union in the Second World War by walking west once the Germans overran his home town near Rostov-na-Donu — and we’re having tea tomorrow at the Slavic Dep’t when I get into town for my fifth reunion. He knew Svetlana Alliluyeva when she was living in Princeton.

***

Me, I still haven’t done very much with myself.

Although I’d much prefer to be discussing the Onion’s take on Obama’s expressions, Scott McClellan’s book is the thing hitting the news this cycle.

If he believed all the stuff he writes now at the time he was working for the Bush White House, he should have resigned.

If he believed the Iraq War was waged for unworthy reasons, he should have quit and spoken up about it.

Because sitting on it while the president was riding high and coming out with it now that he’s got a 70% disapproval rating… well, one might say that it makes a person look like a back-stabbing weasel.

One can sometimes be too smart by half, of course.

But I think it’s interesting to juxtapose these two things.

1. Tapper goes through Obama’s march to victory (well, all-but-certain-victory) in the Democratic primaries.

Sen. Barack Obama’s seemingly insurmountable lead definitively was built up in February, whilst Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, was busy dealing with the press fallout after lending her campaign money, saying goodbye to her campaign manager, and otherwise running a not-so-hot campaign. …

Who knows where we’d be today if Clinton had had a post-Super Tuesday strategy.

2. David Kurtz looks at Obama’s potential path to victory in the general election.

I look at the Obama electoral map and just scratch my head. Can a Dem really win the White House while losing Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida? Or winning only one of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania?

As SurveyUSA found in a state-by-state electoral college breakdown back in March, Obama could pull it off, at least in theory. But it’s not a tried and true path to the Presidency for a Democrat. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen. But it is a high stakes gamble, the kind that looks brilliant if it works and, well, probably pretty idiotic if it doesn’t. Not that Bill or Hillary would ever say I told you so.

Can he do it? Yes, he can. Will he? Well… stranger things have happened. I mean, Massachusetts went for Reagan twice.

That’s what I call this Michigan proposal from the Clinton people:

The Rules Committee has several options. The fairest would be to allocate those 57 [uncommitted] pledged delegates, to Clinton and Obama by the same ratio of their standing to one another in the average of the most recent Michigan statewide polls prior to the Jan. 15 primary. Or perhaps one Solomonic compromise, more generous to Obama than to Clinton, would be to divide the remaining delegates approximately 50-50 between the two of them, 28-27 (giving Clinton the extra delegate since she led in all the latest statewide polls prior to Jan. 15).

Ok, so of the 128 potential elected delegates, they want 71 to go to Clinton outright.  Then, of the 57 “uncommitted” delegates, they want to follow the average of the last statewide polls — which had Clinton up by 24 points — which would give her another 35 and Obama 22.

In other words, they want an 84 delegate pick-up out of Michigan, to go with a 40 delegate pick-up from Florida, to say nothing of the supers from those states — 124 net delegates for HRC.

This would cut Obama’s lead in total delegates to 70.

Suffice it to say, Obama’s people aren’t stupid.  They know better than to go along with this.

I also think fighting is good.

Watching Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama try to pander to Puerto Rico, I’m reminded of how silly this all is.

You know when Puerto Rico will get voting rights in the presidential election?  When it becomes a state.

And do you know when it’ll become a state?

When Puerto Ricans stop voting it down.  So far, statehood has been turned down in three straight referenda — in 1967, 1993, and 1998.

They don’t want independence, and they don’t want statehood.  They like having their cake and eating it too — they get to be Americans and pay no federal taxes.

Pity about Bernier. I thought, when he was promoted to Foreign Affairs, that he was a real up-and-comer in the Conservative Party — a potential successor to the PM.

But one gaffe after another shows that he just wasn’t ready for prime time.

***

I think this “he left documents at his girlfriend’s place” line is the illegal nanny excuse for Canadian politics — Harper wanted him out, and waiting for the next cabinet shuffle just wasn’t working.

But we’ll see.

Wells is liveblogging, he says.

Oh well.

***

I really liked the idea of Maxime Bernier. Reality came up short. Just like I really liked the idea of Barack Obama, and of Michael Ignatieff.

Feet of clay, our heroes have.

Update: It surprised Kady O’Malley. Need to find what the PM was saying.

Time to visit ctv.ca.

Aha. (And apparently Joe Clark isn’t happy with the government’s foreign policy direction. Whatev, Joe Who. Harper’s gone three times as long as you have in the Langevin Block. I like Canada’s foreign policy direction.)

Update again: I’ve been thinking. You know, Prime Minister Harper is enough of a badass that he might actually be telling the plain truth here — that he takes ministerial responsibility & the oaths they swear seriously enough that he will enforce it with the final penalty.

I well remember an interview with CBC Sunday back in 2004 in which he pontificated about his responsibilities as a Privy Counsellor (the Leader of the Opposition gets appointed as one sooner or later, so that he can see classified information).

Harper manages to flummox people by saying exactly what he means and what he thinks.

Update: All of this talk about cabinet documents… I feel like I’m watching an Oscar Wilde play or something…

Update again: Can he come back?

He’s young. He has time to learn the craft of politics.

He also has a very, very safe seat.

Update the third: Really, we need to have him come back.

He’s a Quebecker who believes passionately in smaller government and individual liberty.

Who has a safe seat. (And who has written a gut-wrenching resignation letter.)

This is a combination which comes along very, very rarely.

In six months or after the next election, would like to see him come back to cabinet.

Update the fourth:  Two more takes.

One from Aaron Wherry.  Another from Kady O’Malley.

Honestly, wouldn’t you love a movie where your character says, “Now listen, people, this is a street fight for the presidency of the United States,” and then schools his opponents? [See 0:54 of the trailer.]

And then you get to have a screening at your school, sit next to Kevin Spacey and joke around about who had better lines, his character or yours, and then mount a faint defense of your Democrat successor as Secretary of State in his performance against you –

“They made me out to be a little more like Don Corleone than I really am,” Baker tells Variety, a bit wryly.

He praises Tom Wilkinson, who with slicked back hair and heavy makeup comes across as an an aggressive, hard-charging James Baker, ready to win as if it were a street fight. …

“I don’t think I am as ruthless as the movie portrays me, or that Warren Christopher is as wimpish as he is portrayed to be,” Baker says.

I mean, that’s awesome.

And it sure as heck beats this portrayal of him in Zucker’s ad.

Ouch. (To be fair, Baker then backed the surge.)

Update:  Sure, he’s the villain.  But what would you expect from Hollywood, anyway?

If you must be the bad guy, be an awesome bad guy.

1. The Democrats should have gone statewide at the start.

2. Actually, that’s about it. The ending skewed a bit towards the Democrats, but it is a historical fact that had Al Gore’s people pushed for a hand recount across the entire state, unleashed Jesse Jackson to lead ever larger protest marches, and generally refused to submit quietly to Katherine Harris’s legal but unethical use of her discretionary powers as Secretary of State, Al Gore Jr. would almost certainly be the 43rd president of the United States. The outcome of this election was decided by strategic choices within the first week after the vote. It oughtn’t to be so in a modern liberal democracy. [Update: Or would he have? The Miami Herald's recount disagrees with the press consortium one that I've been going by.]

3. It is still true that the US Supreme Court didn’t decide this one. This wasn’t made clear by the movie. (Actually, the movie made the opposite point — inaccurate and historically misleading.)

4. I stand by my view that pencil-and-paper ballot systems with scrutineers from both political parties remain a superior system to that which many American states have in place. Automatic recounts should be triggered with an election’s margin of victory is within 0.5%, and if the vote becomes still closer after that, there should be a hand count under judicial supervision to settle things finally. (more…)

This.

Clinton went on in that same editorial board meeting with the Argus Leader to say “I have, perhaps, a long enough memory that many people who finished a rather distant second behind nominees go all the way to the convention. I remember very well 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, where some who had contested in the primaries, you know, were determined to carry their case to the convention.”

Let’s review: 1980 — Republican wins; 1984 — Republican wins; 1988 — Republican wins; 1992 — Democrat wins; but doesn’t reach 50 percent of the vote and is only victorious, in all likelihood, because of the third-party candidacy of H. Ross Perot.*

Well, that’s the case, anyway.

The counter-case is that this was an era of Republican dominance, so it didn’t much matter whether the Democratic race went to the convention — the fundamentals of the electorate were such that the outcome was probable anyway.

***

Oh, also: it’s interesting to wonder — and I have on these pages before — just what the 1968 DNC would have been like, had Bobby Kennedy not been assassinated.

Humphrey had probably lined up enough delegates to snag the nomination, even though he hadn’t competed in any primaries.

Kennedy had won the hearts of many. On the other hand, that didn’t help Estes Kefauver in 1952…

Update: See coverage of the 1968 California primary here.

Actually, it’s fascinating — basically, RFK was going to take it to the convention and try to steal the nomination from HHH.

That would’ve been one for the history books…

The Diplomad gets all weepy-eyed over the American political system.