Random thoughts on Iowa

Barack Obama proves he will be a formidable candidate, though it is probably too soon to say — as far too many of the television talking heads did last night — that he is now the favorite to win the White House.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, now has a lot to prove. A candidate whose entire campaign had been based on her inevitability just can’t finish third — and a candidate making a direct appeal to women shouldn’t allow her rival to garner more support from women.

Joe Conason, in a fine column, points out the image that summed up for me Clinton’s failure — Madeleine Albright and other members of the Cinton old guard standing behind the candidate, a “listless tableau of the old Clinton administration” that “only heightened the freshness and vitality of Obama’s superb victory speech.”

John Edwards put a lot of effort into Iowa to finish second, but he finished far stronger than expected — a victory of sorts that should mean more cash and a bit of momentum. And — while the pundits won’t necessarily admit it — a receptiveness to his anticorporate message.

And Bill Richardson may have earned himself a chance to be considered as VP.

On the Republican, welcome to anarchy. Mike Huckabee’s victory seems, at least to me, to be evidence of the rent fabric of the GOP coalition. The evangelicals don’t trust Rudy Giuliani, John McCain or Mitt Romney; the business conservatives despise Huckabee; no one seems to like Fred Thompson; and the security faction — well, does it even exist at this point.

I think the headline on this New York Times story — “Race Upended, Candidates Sprint Toward Tuesday Vote” — is pretty accurate.

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Kucinich or Edwards? Ask Obama

Neither the South Brunswick Post nor The Cranbury Press will be making endorsements in the New Jersey presidential primary that is now just 33 days away. That said, I am a voter and I think it useful to share my thinking on what I might do come Feb. 5.

In general, I like Dennis Kucinich. The Ohio congressman is one of the only candidates to oppose the war in Iraq from the beginning, opposes war generally, is pushing for impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney and supports a single-payer, national healthcare program.

But Kucinich is not the only interesting candidate out there — and something he did the other day has given me pause. Kucinich has asked his supporters to toss their caucus votes to Barack Obama if Kucinich does not crack the 15 percent threshold needed to stay on the ballot.

I hope Iowans will caucus for me as their first choice this Thursday, because of my singular positions on the war, on health care, and trade. This is an opportunity for people to stand up for themselves. But in those caucus locations where my support doesn’t reach the necessary threshold, I strongly encourage all of my supporters to make Barack Obama their second choice. Sen. Obama and I have one thing in common: Change.

But change to what? I was intrigued by Obama in the beginning, after his rousing speech four years ago. His freshness was very Kennedy-esque. But attempting to read his vapid book — “The Audacity of Hope” — disabused me of the notion that there was anything to the Illinois senator. The book is a vacant tract that is critical of both sides for being too partisan and ideological and essentially tries to paint the senator as being above all that. The problem, at least in the couple of chapters I managed to slog through (I gave up because I found the book to be nonsense), is that he posits a lack of ideology as a solution.

What’s wrong with that, you may ask? Well, ideology is just another word — a political perjorative, admittedly — for political philosophy. What Obama is offering, basically, is a candidacy long on hope (i.e., feel-good buzz words that make him a natural for the Oprah/Dr. Phil set) and short on substance. His actual candidacy has tacked to the right as Obama has sought to prove how different and new he is — a Clintonian approach that has out-Clintoned Hillary Clinton. On nearly every issue, he has positioned himself not only to the right of Kucinich, Mike Gravel and John Edwards, but also the former first lady.

And yet, it is to Obama that Kucinich wants his supporters to turn.

As late as this morning, I was still pretty committed to Kucinich, but then I read this piece by Norman Solomon on Tom Tommorrow‘s blog. He says

Reasons for a Kucinich vote remain. The caucuses and primaries are a time to make a clear statement about what we believe in — and to signal a choice for the best available candidate. Ironically, history may show that the person who did the most to undermine such reasoning for a Dennis Kucinich vote at the start of 2008 was… Dennis Kucinich.

Solomon was offended by Kucinich’s Obama statement, which he says “doesn’t seem to respect the intelligence of those of us who have planned to vote for Dennis Kucinich.”

It’s hard to think of a single major issue — including “the war,” “health care” and “trade” — for which Obama has a more progressive position than Edwards. But there are many issues, including those three, for which Edwards has a decidedly more progressive position than Obama. But the most disturbing part of Dennis’ statement was this: “Sen. Obama and I have one thing in common: Change.” This doesn’t seem
like a reasoned argument for Obama. It seems like an exercise in smoke-blowing.

He continues:

The best argument for voting for Dennis Kucinich in caucuses and primaries has been what he aptly describes as his “singular positions on the war, on health care, and trade.” But his support for Obama over Edwards indicates that he’s willing to allow some opaque and illogical priorities to trump maximizing the momentum of our common progressive agendas.

Presidential candidates have to be considered in the context of the current historical crossroads. No matter how much we admire or revere an individual, there’s too much at stake to pursue faith-based politics at the expense of reality-based politics. There’s no reason to support Obama over Edwards on Kucinich’s say-so. And now, I can’t think of reasons good enough to support Kucinich rather than Edwards in the weeks ahead.

It’s a tough argument to dismiss — and one that leaves me wondering what the Kucinich campaign is really about.

So, for whom will I vote? I don’t know. Give me a month to mull this over and I’ll get back to you.

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Reform-minded

Charles Stile in The Record touches on a note similar to the one I strike in my own column today: the unlikelihood that the Legislature will pass real reforms.

Governor Corzine has promised a renewed agenda on the issue this year, and so have leaders of the Legislature. But Corzine’s State of the State speech next week will be almost solely devoted to his plan to restructure state debt by raising tolls. That obsession will probably eat up much of his agenda this year. And he is not likely to do something dramatic, such as extend New Jersey’s pay-to-play ban with a sweeping executive order, which has been pushed by campaign finance advocates.

There will be little appetite or time for sweeping reforms this year. Besides, the Democratic leadership is not inclined to unilaterally level the playing field just because their Republican counterparts say it’s the right thing to do.

Senate President Dick Codey is a cautious incrementalist, not a firebrand reformer. Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts wants to “put everything on the table” for discussion and also talks of a future in which all legislative contests operate under “clean elections” guidelines. Sounds intriguing, but I suspect we’ll see a raft of smaller reforms while we wait for the full realization of his utopian vision.

Stile then offers some interesting ideas — “small, albeit important steps that lawmakers can take this year that could serve as critical building blocks of reform”:

  • Require candidates and campaign committees to spend most of their contributions on their own races. This would limit sending — or “wheeling” — large blocks of money from one part of the state to another.

    • Shrewd contributors donate to several county committees and races, with the hope (and tacit understanding) that it will be spent for some of the sky’s-the-limit battles. But the practice allows donors to evade contribution limits and makes party leaders indebted to special interests who pay the tab. Codey has talked about passing a law that plainly states that “wheeling” is illegal. That’s not enough.

  • Limit the amount of money legislative leaders can spend on races. There was something surreal last year in watching legislative leaders wiring World Bank-sized loans to pay for life-and-death power struggles in the wilderness of Cape May and Cumberland counties.

  • The only ones who benefited were political consultants, who got a percentage for the cost of producing all those negative mailers and television ads. I know this is wishful thinking, but I don’t feel the panel that promoted the creation of these legislative leadership committees in 1993 envisioned giving them this kind of corporate power to raise and spend money.

  • Ban state contractors from making donations to legislative leaders. The pay-to-play ban prohibits donors from receiving lucrative state contracts if they gave contributions to the governor or to the campaign accounts controlled by the governor’s party, such as county committees. But donors get around that by giving to legislative leaders, who are exempt from the ban.

  • Close the loophole in the state pay-to-play ban that exempts politically connected law firms, engineers, architects and other professional services. Technically, the ban does restrict these firms from getting state work, but it only forbids principals who hold at least a 10 percent equity stake in the firm. That allows firms’ partners and associates to continue giving without fear of penalty.

    • These are intriguing reforms that, absent the larger changes needed, could keep the notion of ethics on the table.

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