Reverend Wright Conspiracy?

I am not one of those conspiracy freaks. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy. I believe that United States astronauts actually walked on the moon. I believe that it was al Qaeda, not the CIA, that attacked the World Trade Center in 2001. However, there is something about this Reverend Wright thing that gives me bad vibes.

Can it be just a coincidence that the videos of Reverend Wright’s preaching surfaced when Senator Clinton’s campaign was at rock bottom? And, what about those photos of the reverend with Bill Clinton in the White House? Isn’t it possible that the videos were actually released by the Clinton campaign? Can it be that Reverend Wright is a secret agent in the Clinton campaign and staged his preaching trip to make sure that his views would remain as a cloud over the Obama campaign? In the last debate, wasn’t Senator Clinton particularly gleeful when she repeatedly found Senator Obama guilty by association? Is it just a coincidence…

Maven, cut it out. You sound like one of those conspiracy crazy.

Thank you, precious reader, for stopping my ranting. Bill and Hillary Clinton couldn’t be that devious. Could they?

Ti-ime Is On Her Side

If you’re coaching basketball and your team is looking winded and the other side has just run off ten or twelve unanswered points and clearly has all the momentum, it is time to make the “T” sign and call time-out. For Hillary Clinton, the time-out was built into the primary schedule and it came none too soon. With his string of wins, Barack Obama clearly had Clinton on the ropes, and if there were a bunch of primaries next week, his momentum may have overwhelmed her. But, because of the genius of various states in moving their primaries as far forward as possible, for the rest of this month the only delegates up for grab will be from Wisconsin, Hawaii, Guam and the Virgin Islands. (When, exactly, did we give Guam and the Virgin Islands any votes for president?)

So, now that she has been saved by the bell, what exactly can Senator Clinton do to take back the momentum? Of course she will pour all her energy and borrowed money into the big March prizes, Texas and Ohio. Hillary’s success this year has been mainly in the big states and she has reason to hope that that trend will continue. In Texas she expects to score high with Latinos, who until this past weekend were not particularly captivated by Barack Obama. In Ohio, she’s hoping that her Clinton name will bring back memories of the ‘90s and she’ll get the kind of support that Bill Clinton received in the Buckeye State.

But, I’m not sure that Hillary is only relying on recapturing the heart of the voters. Her strategy must include continued strong-arm tactics to gain the support of the “Super Delegates.” No, dear reader, these are not superheroes. Super delegates are elected officials and party bigwigs to whom the Democratic Party gives free passes to and votes at their quadrennial convention. Super delegates were introduced into the Democratic Party nominating process after the party’s defeat in the 1980 election. The theory was that super delegates were necessary to protect the party from the voters choosing a candidate who political pros thought was unelectable. It is clear that in the past the super delegates have saved the party from the folly of the electorate. In 1984, for example, the super delegates threw their support to Walter Mondale to avoid the party nominating the unelectable Gary Hart. So, even if Hillary doesn’t win big in Texas and Ohio, the fellow aspiring to be the country’s first “First Man” can continue to twist arms to get the supers to reject the will of the people.

That the party that was once called “The Democracy” should have such an undemocratic feature as super delegates seems rather strange to me. Do the voters really want elected and unelected party bigwigs dictating who the party’s nominee is? I fear that should Senator Obama win a significant number of the remaining primaries but be denied the nomination by the party’s super delegates the voters may rebel in November. Even though I’m not sure that the voters have done a better job in picking party nominees than did the old smoke-filled room method, I think it is too late to go back to a system in which party insiders choose the nominee regardless of the will of the voters.

Having said this, I think it is interesting to look at the numbers. As of today, Senator Obama has won 1112 delegates in primaries and caucuses compared to 978 won by Senator Clinton, giving him a lead of 134. However, among those super delegates who have expressed their preference, Clinton leads Obama 233 to 147, cutting Obama’s total lead to only 48. These numbers seem small, but in a nomination contest this close every delegate is important. So, both the Clinton and Obama campaigns will be working hard to convince the 337 super delegates that have not yet chosen to side with their candidate.

And then there is the question of Florida and Michigan. As you know the Democratic National Committee has “punished” these two states for violating party rules in moving up their primary dates by denying both states any delegates at the convention. I will not discuss the wisdom or fairness of disenfranchising Democratic voters in those states. The fact is that the DNC made this decision and it affected the decisions of the candidates to contest those state’s primaries. Obama campaigned in neither state and even had his name removed from the ballot in Michigan. The Democratic voters in those states who bothered voting gave Senator Clinton significant victories in what were meaningless elections. Or were they?

The DNC has been showing signs of backing down. Maybe it is worried about the image of nobody standing up at the convention when Florida and Michigan are called on a roll call. So, it has offered Democrats in those states the chance to regain their delegates by holding caucuses to choose them. As far as I know, neither state party has shown any interest in the DNC solution.

So, what happens now? Senator Clinton, who won both “meaningless” primaries, is urging that the Florida and Michigan delegates, most pledged to her, be seated. Senator Obama and his supporters object that this is unfair because he did not contest those states because of the DNC decision. Undoubtedly, unless some other solution is found, this dispute will have to be decided at the convention. The delegates that Senator Clinton “won” in the Michigan and Florida primaries will show up and demand to be seated. Whether or not those delegates are seated may ultimately be decided by a vote of the already seated delegates.

And, what about the courts? Undoubtedly, some voters in either or both Michigan and Florida are going to march up to their local United States District Court and ask that the judge order that delegates from their state be seated at the Democratic National Convention. (A United States District Court in Florida has already dismissed a suit by Florida Senator Bill Nelson to force the Democratic National Committee to seat delegates to be elected in Florida’s primary. Nelson v. Dean, No. 4:07cv427-RH/WCS (N.D. Fla. Dec. 14, 2007)). The precedents may favor the right of the party to control the method of selecting its nominees but a lawsuit would sure be messy.

I see no fair way of settling this dispute. If the decision of the DNC is upheld, the Democratic voters of Florida and Michigan are deprived of representation at the convention. If, on the other hand, the decision is reversed, Senator Clinton will derive an unfair advantage because the delegates in Florida and Michigan were not won in contested elections.

So, dear reader, there is certainly reason for Senator Clinton to be optimistic. She can fight the election battle for delegates in Texas and Ohio without being overwhelmed by Senator Obama’s momentum. She can win over a significant majority of the 337 uncommitted super delegates. And, she can find some way to get those Florida and Michigan delegates seated. For political junkies like this maven, this year is turning out to be a real blast.

Something About Hillary

Tomorrow is the presidential primary here in the Old Dominion, and it’s put up or shut up time for this maven. You may remember that when Bill Richardson dropped out of the race several weeks ago I promised to vote for him anyway as the most qualified candidate. At the time, I expected that by the second week in February the nomination would already be wrapped up and I could cast my vote for Richardson as a protest. Well, to the delight of the Times-Dispatch editors, the way Virginia votes tomorrow could really affect the outcome of the nomination fight (at least for the Democrats) and so I have to decide who to vote for.

The maveness has been a devoted follower of Hillary Clinton’s run for the White House for more than a year. She has told me that before she dies (which I pray will be many years in the future) she wants to see a woman elected as President of the United States. I can understand how she and many other women feel. In our country’s two hundred thirty years there have been many women who could have provided great leadership but were denied the opportunity to run for president. And, clearly, many of the men we have elected to be numero uno have been pretty mediocre. So, I do agree with my wife that it’s about time for a woman to be president.

However, just as I wouldn’t vote against a candidate because she is a woman, I will not vote for one on those grounds either. I will evaluate a candidate’s experience and policies and leadership ability and will vote for that candidate regardless of his/her sex.

Senator Clinton’s campaign has focused on her experience. I must have heard her brag about her “thirty five years” of experience at least twenty times. So what exactly was Hillary doing during those thirty five years? Thirty five years ago was 1973. In 1973, Hillary Clinton graduated from Yale Law School. According to her bio on the Washington Post’s website (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2008-presidential-candidates/hillary-clinton/), Hillary’s first job was as a staffer for the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives where she worked for one year. After that she served for one year on the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School. She then was employed by the Rose law firm in Little Rock where she worked from 1976 through 1992. Meanwhile, Mrs. Clinton’s husband was elected Governor of Arkansas and so from 1979 to 1981 and then from 1983 through 1993 she was the First Lady of Arkansas. When her husband became President of the United States in 1993, Hillary Clinton became First Lady of the United States. Most recently, with the expiration of Bill Clinton’s second term as president, Mrs. Clinton was elected United States Senator from New York. She has served in the Senate from 2001 until the present.

Every moment of people’s lives will affect them in whatever job they perform, including being President of the United States. So all of Hillary’s personal and professional life will mold what kind of president she may be. However, Senator Clinton claims that there is something special about the last thirty five years that make her particularly qualified to be president.

We can discount her first two jobs out of law school, as a congressional staffer and as a law school “faculty member,” as having no real relevance to being president. I’m also not sure how her years with the Rose law firm make her any more qualified to be president than thousands of other attorneys practicing law for influential law firms throughout the country. So, the thirty five years of experience upon which Senator Clinton bases her claim to the White House must really be the twelve years she was the governor’s wife in Arkansas and the eight years she was the president’s wife in Washington, D.C. (and, of course, the seven years that she has served as the Junior Senator from New York).

There have been some very influential first ladies in our country’s history. It is said, for example, that after Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke in 1919, Edith Wilson was acting as president for the remainder of his term. This may be the truth, or it may be more legend than fact. Eleanor Roosevelt, as first lady, was so active in government matters that she became a political actor in Washington almost independent of her husband. Some would say that Mrs. Roosevelt served at least as significant a role in motivating the country to get through the Depression and World War II then did President Roosevelt.

There have been other first ladies who came to Washington with a passion to accomplish some public good during their tenure, in addition to their purely ceremonial role as hostess of the White House. Rossalynn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush have all accomplished much as First Lady.

But Senator Clinton argues that her tenures as First Lady first of Arkansas and then of the United States provided her with the type of experience that would enable her to “hit the ground running” on January 20, 2009. I find it hard to buy her assertion.

It is true, that Bill Clinton assigned more responsibility to his wife than did other presidents. For example, he appointed her chair of the President’s Council on Health Care Reform. In that roll she became only the third first lady to testify before a committee of the Congress. However, as I remember it, the recommendations that came out of that council were so controversial that the president decided not to push for its passage. Mrs. Clinton continued engaged in various political issues and lobbied successfully for the passage of several significant programs during her tenure as first lady. But, I still have not heard how any of her experiences as first lady are relevant to being president.

It is true that Hillary and Bill Clinton lived together in the White House residence. This provided them the opportunity to discuss public policy issues and the president often asked for his wife’s advice. However, this factor is not unique to the Clintons. All of the presidents and first ladies shared the White House residence and many of the presidents discussed public policy with their wives.

Regardless of how much responsibility her husband may have given her, we need to remember that being first lady is not close to being the president. First ladies are not responsible for leading the Executive Branch of government. First ladies do not serve as Commander in Chief of United States military forces. First ladies do not make foreign or domestic policy decisions. They do not make appointments to the Cabinet or the federal courts. They do not negotiate treaties with foreign governments. They do not have the awesome (or awe full) responsibility of controlling our nation’s nuclear arsenal. In short, for first ladies, the buck does NOT stop here.

So, in this maven’s mind, the only experience that Senator Clinton has that would relate to her being President of the United State is the seven years she has served in the United States Senate. No matter whether I count with a calculator or on my fingers, this does not amount to “thirty five” years experience.

But, dear reader, although her claim to all that experience bothers me, it is not the major problem I have with Senator Clinton. Look, I have no doubt as to her leadership abilities. I have seen her performance in the campaign during this past year and I am convinced that she has the ability to be president. I approve of most of her policy positions. In fact, I find it very hard to explain objectively what it is about Hillary that leaves me feeling uneasy. This is particularly bothersome to a maven, who should be making decisions based on objective criteria, not based on feelings.

Perhaps my feeling is that the Hillary Clinton we have been seeing since this campaign began is not the real Hillary Clinton. It seems that Hillary Clinton the presidential candidate is a carefully rehearsed character. There is just something about Hillary that doesn’t seem genuine. It is clear that she is extremely intelligent. She seems to come up with the right answers to most of the questions that the media and her opponents have thrown at her. But I have the feeling that the views she expresses are not necessarily her own; they seem more the consensus opinion by all her advisors of what she should be saying.

On top of that, I have the feeling that there is something about Hillary that is being hidden from us. It’s like the ads for the product are all well thought out and well presented but there is something that they’re not telling us. Maybe this feeling I have is leftover from the bitter taste I had during the last years of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Although I do believe that much of the aura of scandal that floated around the Clintons during their tenure in the White House was manufactured by those who couldn’t abide Bill Clinton being president, I am still upset by President Clinton’s behavior with respect to Monica. Not only did he lack the ability to keep his pants zipped up in the Oval Office, but when he was caught he lied about it, both in a sworn deposition and in a televised statement to the American people.

Perhaps it is unfair of me to have my feelings about Bill Clinton prejudice my feelings toward Hillary. I would really like to be able to judge her candidacy purely on the facts. But I just can’t seem to do that. There is just something about Hillary . . .

Hillary’s Loan

The news that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign cupboard was bare and that Senator Clinton had to loan five million dollars to her campaign left me with a couple of questions.

1- According to Senator Clinton’s December 31, 2007, disclosure statement filed with the Federal Election Commission her campaign had raised about one hundred five million dollars. Of that amount, the campaign had spent about seventy eight million dollars, leaving an end-of-year balance of about thirty eight million dollars. Less than six weeks later, her campaign had spent so much money that the senator had to loan it five million dollars of her own funds. So, if Senator Clinton did such a bad job controlling her campaign spending, why should we expect her to be any better in controlling government spending should she become president?

2- How exactly does a person who has spent the last sixteen years as a public servant (as First Lady and United States Senator) manage to accumulate so much money that she has five million dollars laying around to loan to her campaign? It seems like a lot of pocket change to me.

Dream Team? Be Serious

My maveness has been suggesting it for weeks. Now the CNN guys have brought it out in the open. How about a Clinton-Obama or Obama-Clinton ticket for the Democrats in the fall? Not only would it be historic in having a woman and an African American as nominees for president and vice president (not necessarily in the order stated) but it would be hard to beat.

For the media, it just couldn’t be better. The media have really loved this past year with both the first woman and the first African American as serious candidates for president (not that I forget Shirley Chisholm). But, alas, we are approaching midnight and half of this story may soon go away. At whatever time either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama gain enough delegates to win the nomination, the other will go back to the Senate and this year will suddenly become only half as historic as now. So, in the fine media tradition of trying to make the news rather than just report it, Wolf Blitzer and his “Best Political Team” have proposed this dream team. And, as everybody is reporting it today, neither candidate ruled it out.

Oh really? This maven watched the debate last night (there’s nothing more entertaining than rival candidates just oozing with love for one other) and I’m not sure I heard the same thing. What I did hear was both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton acknowledging that the other would make a fine running mate. What I didn’t hear was either candidate saying s/he would agree to run as number two.

Neither Mr. Obama nor Mrs. Clinton have to run for reelection this year, so it is safe for either of them to run for VP (although if my memory serves me right, Joe Lieberman did run both for VP and for reelection to his Senate seat in 2000). The real question is whether it is safe for either of them to be elected vice president. Although in recent administrations vice presidents have been given more and more responsibility (some suggest that Dick Cheney is actually the closet president), it is still second place. Moving from the Senate to vice president just might prove to be a career-ending decision.

Mrs. Maven tells me that being vice president puts one in position to run for president in a few years. I agree (and not just because she is my wife). Being vice president often makes one the odds-on favorite to win the party’s nomination four or eight years hence. But let’s look at a little history. Of the four sitting vice presidents who have run for president since 1960 only one, George H. W. Bush in 1982, has been elected (although, of course, Richard Nixon was finally elected eight years after he left the vice president’s office). As Richard Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and Al Gore in 2000 learned, being vice president doesn’t necessarily mean you will be elected president.

Of course we can’t discount the possibility that the president will die in office and that the vice president will inherit the office. As we’ve heard in many campaigns in the past, “Would you want _____ to be one heart beat away from being president?” Although eight of our presidents have died in office thus thrusting their vice presidents into the White House (and one resigned making his vice president into president), there is a long list of vice presidents who were elected to this office and were never heard of again. For a person ambitious to be president, accepting the vice presidency and hoping that your boss will die before January 20 four years from now is not the best way of getting the job.

So, why would either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama give up her/his influential seat in the United States Senate to become vice president? For the good of the party? To get a chance to run for president in eight years? To get the chance to cast a vote in the Senate when there is a tie? I’m not sure agreeing to serve as vice president is a good political decision for one eager to serve at the top.

But, didn’t Lyndon Johnson agree to give up his very powerful job as Majority Leader of the Senate to run for vice president in 1960? I really don’t know how the Kennedy brothers convinced LBJ to run for number two. (Historians suggest that the vice presidency was offered to Johnson as a courtesy and that the Kennedy brothers—especially Robert—were shocked when Lyndon accepted.) Senator Johnson certainly couldn’t have known that the considerably younger man who would become his boss would not live to complete his term. Why he gave up such power for a job not worth a bucket of warm spit will forever be a mystery.

We will have to wait to see whether my maveness’ and Wolf Blitzer’s “Dream Team” becomes a reality. But, if I were you, unless you have a wonderful set of lungs, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Dewey Defeats Truman!

In its lead editorial today, our great metropolitan daily (The Richmond Times-Dispatch for you out-of-towners), tried to explain Senator Clinton’s unexpected defeat of Senator Obama in the New Hampshire Democratic primary last week. As you know, before the vote the political polls indicated that Senator Obama would build on his Iowa caucuses victory by thrashing Senator Clinton in New Hampshire. All the political pundits were stunned by Senator Clinton’s seventy five hundred vote victory over Obama. How to explain it?

The TD tried to explain the upset by what it calls “The Wilder Effect.” It harkened back to the 1989 election for governor here in the Commonwealth. Before the election, the polls showed Democrat L. Douglas Wilder (African American) with a significant lead over Republican Marshall Coleman (Caucasian). On the day of the election, however, Mr. Wilder beat Mr. Coleman by a scant few thousand votes. “The Wilder Effect,” according to the TD, is the tendency of white voters to tell pollsters that they will vote for a black candidate although they do not really intend to do so. Presumably, these voters lie to the polls to avoid being perceived as racists. Only in the privacy of the voting booth will they reveal their true preferences.

Good try, TD, but I have a different explanation. The polls were just wrong. Way back when I was a wee lad, cutting my political teeth on a Democratic Party primary election in Brooklyn, USA, I learned the truth about polls, and it has nothing to do with race or ethnicity. The only poll that counts is the one on Election Day.

In 1965, the New York Democratic Party was choosing between two candidates for mayor—Sanitation Commissioner Paul Screvane and City Comptroller Abe Beam. I campaigned for Screvane going door-to-door in my neighborhood urging people to vote for him. On the night before the election, we sat around the Monroe Democratic Club celebrating our victory the following day. Why this premature party? The final polls on that Monday indicated that Screvane was going to beat Beam rather badly.

But, I forgot to tell you one key fact about the candidates. Paul Screvane was of Italian origin; Abe Beam was a Jew—the first Jew to run for mayor of New York. On Election Day, a funny thing happened. The Beam people hired a large number of busses and transported huge numbers of residents of Jewish senior residences to the polls to vote for Abe. Some came to the polls in wheel chairs; others actually on stretcher beds. Most of these older people hadn’t voted in years. Certainly the pollsters had not included them in their samples. So, on primary day, the Democratic electorate proved the pollsters wrong by choosing Abe Beam, rather than Paul Screvane as their candidate. I call this “The Abe Beam Effect,” or as Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

There is another “effect” that may explain the big New Hampshire upset. I will call this one “The We’re Gonna Teach Those Outsiders a Lesson Effect.” It was explained by a New Hampshire voter the day after the election. He said that people in New Hampshire are very independent and resent all the media and pollsters telling them how they are going to vote. He thought that a significant number of New Hampshire Democrats changed their vote from Obama to Clinton at the polls just to prove the political professionals wrong.

So what is the real reason that Hillary beat Barack in New Hampshire? Frankly dear reader, I don’t give a damn. The fact is that the polls were wrong and Clinton won. “The Guy with the Most Votes is the Winner Effect” triumphs again.