Barr, Bandow, and Abramoff

Doug Bandow is Senior Policy Advisor to Bob Barr's Libertarian presidential campaign.

By bringing Bandow aboard, Barr is showing that he has a unique approach to the ethics issue. Business Week reported on December 16, 2005:

A senior fellow at the Cato Institute resigned from the libertarian think tank on Dec. 15 after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients. Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service, told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s.

Though libertarians are averse to government regulation, they do place a high value on integrity. The Cato Institute put it well in its 2005 annual report:

Absent the principles of individual liberty to guide policymakers, power becomes an end unto itself, and corruption inevitably will follow. From the pathetic case of Rep. “Duke” Cunningham, to the scandalized GOP in Ohio, to the bipartisan scandals in Congress related to the Jack Abramoff affair, corruption in politics appears endemic. America deserves much better, particularly with the enormous problems facing our great nation.

Polls

A couple of interesting nuggets in some of the latest national polls. WaPo/ABC asked which party voters trusted to do a better job coping with the main problems the nation faces over the next few years. Respondents picked the Democrats by 21 points, 53 to 32. That's the largest margin in favor of one party since the question was first asked in 1982. The next biggest margin was 16 points in January 1985 when the Republicans, in the aftermath of Reagan's 49 state victory, had a 16 point lead.

Quinnipiac has a new poll that gives demographic breakdowns of the general election trial heats. For all of Hillary Clinton's boasting that she's the champion of the working class whites (defined in the poll as whites w/o a college education), she still loses them to McCain by 7 points, 48-41. Even more interesting is that she runs no better than Obama since he loses to McCain by the same 7 point margin, 46-39.

The Godfather and Foreign Policy

Lots of buzz out there about this article comparing various foreign policy stances with characters in the Godfather. Sonny is the neo-con with his willingness to go to the mattresses for any perceived threat. Tom Hagen is the liberal internationalist who relies on negotiation to achieve his goals. And Michael is the realist who blends compromise and conflict:

Michael relinquishes the mechanistic, one-trick-pony policy approaches of his brothers in favor of a “toolbox,” in which soft and hard power are used in flexible combinations and as circumstances dictate. While at various times he sides with Tom (favoring negotiation) or Sonny (favoring force), Michael sees their positions as about tactics and not about ultimate strategy, which for him is solely to ensure the survival and prosperity of the family. Thus, he is able to use Sonny’s “button men” to knock out those competitors he cannot co-opt, while negotiating with the rest as Tom would like. This blending of sticks and carrots ensures that Michael is ultimately a more effective diplomat than Tom and a more successful warrior than Sonny: when he enters negotiations, it is always in the wake of a fresh battlefield victory and therefore from a position of strength; when he embarks on a new military campaign, it is always in pursuit of a specific goal that can be consolidated afterwards diplomatically.

I'm not so sure about this. Isn't Michael the ultimate neo-con, utterly unrestrained by norms or institutions? He's the one that hatches the scheme to kill Sollozzo and his police captain bodyguard, a step that even the hot-headed Sonny initially thinks is beyond the pale. And then at the end of the movie, Michael organizes the ultimate military operation to "settle all family business" by eliminating the heads of the other five families and establishing a Pax Corleone in which the family's power is even more unassailable. This scene brings to mind the reports that in the aftermath of 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld assembled a list of six or seven countries to invade, a settling of U.S. "family business" as it were.

VP Picks

Chris Cilizza has the top 5 VP picks for both candidates. For McCain, they are:

5. Mitt Romney
4. Charlie Crist (Gov. of FL)
3. Rob Portman (former OH congressman, U.S. trade rep, etc.)
2. John Thune (Senator from SD)
1. Tim Pawlenty (Gov. of MN)

No surprises here except, possibly, the exclusion of Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina.

For Obama, the picks are:

5. Sam Nunn (former Sen. from GA)
4. Tim Kaine (Gov. of VA)
3. Hillary Clinton
2. Ted Strickland (Gov. of OH)
1. Kathleen Sebelius (Gov. of KS)

This list is a bit more surprising, mostly for its absences. First is Jim Webb, Senator from VA and former Sec. of the Navy for Ronald Reagan. He's got the foreign policy credentials of Nunn, he's from swing state like Kaine and Strickland, and he's the white, working class appeal of Clinton and Strickland. The second is Claire McCaskill, Senator from MO. She doesn't have executive experience like Sebelius, but she's much more likely to help Obama in MO than Sebelius would in deep red Kansas.

I could go on to add some other names like Evan Bayh of IN, Mark Warner of VA, Bill Richardson of NM, Tom Vilsak of IA, Joe Biden of DE, etc. This raises a further point about the talent pools in both parties. On the Democratic side, the pool is pretty deep. In addition to the names above, it wouldn't be hard for me to come up with the names of another half-dozen or so talented and attractive politicians with real national potential. On the Republican side, not so much. Gingrich? You must be joking. Jeb Bush? Not with that last name.

I'm not sure why this is. Is the Republican party just that exhausted?

Penn's Idiocy

Mark Penn has gotten lots of heat for his mistakes in this campaign, but this has to be the worst:

Clinton picked people for her team primarily for their loyalty to her, instead of their mastery of the game. That became abundantly clear in a strategy session last year, according to two people who were there. As aides looked over the campaign calendar, chief strategist Mark Penn confidently predicted that an early win in California would put her over the top because she would pick up all the state's 370 delegates. It sounded smart, but as every high school civics student now knows, Penn was wrong: Democrats, unlike the Republicans, apportion their delegates according to vote totals, rather than allowing any state to award them winner-take-all. Sitting nearby, veteran Democratic insider Harold M. Ickes, who had helped write those rules, was horrified — and let Penn know it. "How can it possibly be," Ickes asked, "that the much vaunted chief strategist doesn't understand proportional allocation?" And yet the strategy remained the same, with the campaign making its bet on big-state victories. Even now, it can seem as if they don't get it. Both Bill and Hillary have noted plaintively that if Democrats had the same winner-take-all rules as Republicans, she'd be the nominee.

Ouch. The last time Democrats used winner-take-all allocations was 1972. I wouldn't be surprised to hear Penn argue that Obama can't win the nomination because he still doesn't have the needed two-thirds of the delegates.

Bloomington

MSNBC's David Schuster just pointed out that most of the uncounted ballots in Monroe County (Bloomington, home of Indiana University) are absentees. According to him, many of these are from students who left when classes ended two weeks ago. This could be another source of Obama ballots if the rest of the Lake County ballots get him within shouting distance of Clinton.

It's Over

The conventional wisdom is coalescing. Both Drudge and Tim Russert are saying that Obama is the nominee. Obama owes a big debt of gratitude to the mayor of Gary, IN.

Pat Buchanan

I ask again, why is he still on TV?

Cassandra Crossing

Newt Gingrich sounds the alarm for Republicans. Whatever. What I want to know is if Gingrich has ever described a particular moment as anything other than a hinge of fate in which the future of civilization hangs in the balance unless people choose to employ his nine or ten-step plan for peace, prosperity, and Republican political success? Just asking.