Grassroots Leaders Like Me

My latest letter from Tim Morgan began like this:

Dear Friend,

I don't want to believe you've abandoned the Republican Party, but I have to ask . . . Have you given up?

Our records show that we have not yet received your Republican National Committee membership renewal for the critical 2008 presidential election year.

As the Treasurer of the RNC, I know our Party's success depends directly on grassroots leaders like you.

So I am surprised and concerned especially because I know how generously you supported President Bush and the RNC in the past. You helped to advance our vision for America and elect Republicans at all levels of government.

I know other things come up, and perhaps you've just been delayed in renewing your membership. If that's the case, I understand.

But we've not heard from you this year -- and I hope you haven't deserted our Party.

Call me crazy, but I don't think "Have you given up?" is ready to stand toe-to-toe with "Yes We Can" in the general election. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn't desert the Republican Party, ...

Krugman's Keys to a Landslide Victory

The phrase "Obama Derangement Syndrome" has entered public usage. It seems to have two strains. The first is adulation for Senator Obama beyond what can be linked to his accomplishments in public office. The second is the more usual strain, irrational dislike, which has to date infected a number of Democrats, but none more publicly than Paul Krugman. He continues his quest to be the poster boy for ODS in his New York Times column today, "Deliverance or Diversion." Stay with this excerpt until the punchline:

But Mr. Obama, instead of emphasizing the harm done by the other party’s rule, likes to blame both sides for our sorry political state. And in his speeches he promises not a rejection of Republicanism but an era of postpartisan unity.

That — along with his adoption of conservative talking points on the crucial issue of health care — is why Mr. Obama’s rise has caused such division among progressive activists, the very people one might have expected to be unified and energized by the prospect of finally ending the long era of Republican political dominance.

Some progressives are appalled by the direction their party seems to have taken: they wanted another F.D.R., yet feel that they’re getting an oratorically upgraded version of Michael Bloomberg instead.

Others, however, insist that Mr. Obama’s message of hope and his personal charisma will yield an overwhelming electoral victory, and that he will implement a dramatically progressive agenda.

The trouble is that faith in Mr. Obama’s transformational ability rests on surprisingly little evidence.

Mr. Obama’s ability to attract wildly enthusiastic crowds to rallies is a good omen for the general election; so is his ability to raise large sums. But neither necessarily points to a landslide victory.

So, in this installment of Krugman's anti-Obama screed, Democrats are supposed to be concerned about Senator Obama winning the nomination because it is not clear that he can secure a landslide victory in the general election. And if they believed him, and thought twice about voting for Senator Obama in the remaining primaries, they would instead vote for Senator Clinton.

Going first to personalities, is it really Krugman's contention that the odds of a Democratic landslide victory are higher with Senator Clinton than with Senator Obama as the nominee? Going next to tactics, is it really Krugman's contention that the odds of a Democratic landslide victory are higher with Senator Obama campaigning to the political left of where he is now? Or that they are higher if he makes partisan rhetoric a more central part of his campaign? If he holds any of these views, then he's got precious little company among rational people in holding them.

I don't doubt that Krugman and many others would be happier if they could implement a more so-called progressive agenda as a result of the 2008 election. But this group does not comprise a majority of the voting public, to say nothing of a landslide majority. Absent that majority, the candidate needs to have appeal beyond the political left.

And, yes, many people -- myself included -- do fault the Republicans of the last several years for the poor state of public policy today. They've had the presidency since 2001 and majorities in Congress over much of that time. To not hold them responsible would be ridiculous. But that does not mean that we would opt for government by a 51% majority in the opposite direction if there is a possibility of something based more on a broad-based, politically centrist consensus. People seeking that consensus will be voting for Senator McCain or Senator Obama.

Ethics Reform in Louisiana

The most interesting excerpt of a very interesting tale of Louisiana politics in today's New York Times:

In a town where legislators have been known to proclaim paid-for meals a principal draw to public service, this was an especially unpopular move. Last week, State Representative Charmaine L. Marchand of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans said the limit would force her and her colleagues to dine at Taco Bell, and urged that it be pushed to $75 per person, to give them “wiggle room.”

No public groundswell took up her cause, and the $50 limit held.

Read the whole thing, and hope for more good things from Governor Jindal.

Ferraro on Superdelegates

Geraldine Ferraro owns up to having created the superdelegate process in 1982 when she was the vice chairwoman of the House Democratic Caucus. The first part of this New York Times op-ed is a reasonable historical retelling. But then she falters, as do all justifications of this system. Here's the key excerpt:

Today, with the possibility that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will end up with about the same number of delegates after all 50 states have held their primaries and caucuses, the pundits and many others are saying that superdelegates should not decide who the nominee will be. That decision, they say, should rest with the rank-and-file Democrats who went to the polls and voted.

But the superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow. They were, and are, expected to determine what is best for our party and best for the country. I would hope that is why many superdelegates have already chosen a candidate to support.

Besides, the delegate totals from primaries and caucuses do not necessarily reflect the will of rank-and-file Democrats. Most Democrats have not been heard from at the polls. We have all been impressed by the turnout for this year’s primaries — clearly both candidates have excited and engaged the party’s membership — but, even so, turnout for primaries and caucuses is notoriously low. It would be shocking if 30 percent of registered Democrats have participated.

If that is the case, we could end up with a nominee who has been actively supported by, at most, 15 percent of registered Democrats. That’s hardly a grassroots mandate.

More important, although many states like New York have closed primaries in which only enrolled Democrats are allowed to vote, in many other states Republicans and independents can make the difference by voting in Democratic primaries or caucuses.

Whatever its imperfections, whether genuine (low turnout) or alleged (open primaries), the nominating process is not improved by resolving a close race for pledged delegates with backroom deals for superdelegates. Read the rest of the op-ed, where her partisan interests become evident.

Delegates that Steal?

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein step up to the plate to argue for a positive role that superdelegates can play in the Democratic nominating process in their New York Times op-ed, "Delegates of Steel." To put it charitably, they whiff. Their thesis:

But a review of the history of superdelegates suggests they are likely to play a constructive role in resolving the nomination before the convention and in unifying the party for the general election campaign.

Strike One. Either the superdelegates vote to support the candidate who received more pledged delegates, in which case they are irrelevant, or they vote to support the candidate who did not receive more pledged delegates, in which case they overturn the democratic process.

Working up to their big finish, the authors claim:

In 2008, where two strong and capable candidates are fighting it out on every front, where the difficult issues of race and sex are on the table and where the gap between the two in total votes and pledged delegates is likely to be small, the potential for an explosive convention, where in the end half the delegates (and half the party) feels they have been cheated, is real.

Strike Two. If the candidate with slightly more pledged delegates receives the nomination, then half the delegates (and half the party) will feel like they lost a close contest to a worthy rival. Small problem. If the candidate with more pledged delegates does not receive the nomination, then half the delegates (and half the party) will feel like they have been cheated. Big problem.

And that big finish:

In this case, the nomination could come down to a difficult and complex credentials battle over whether to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida. To have a nomination settled in this way is a bit like having an election settled by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court. Averting this kind of disaster is just what superdelegates are supposed to do.

Strike Three. It is the substitution of the views of the (bought and paid for) superdelegates for those of the voting citizenry that makes the nomination a bit like having an election settled by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court. There need not be a difficult and complex credentials battle. If the DNC wants to allow Michigan and Florida to have a voice in selecting the nominee, then it should schedule contested primaries in both states near the end of the primary season to choose those delegates. If it does not, based on its prior decisions, then the delegates don't get seated.

The current system is not perfect. Introducing superdelegates makes it further from perfect.

Super Delegates

Matthew Mosk and Paul Kane, writing in today's Washington Post, show just how sleazy the courtship of super delegates has become. This is a train wreck waiting to happen. If the choices of the super delegates overturn the choices of the directly elected delegates, this will not end well for the Democratic Party.

Governor Romney Takes His Leave

At today's CPAC conference, Mitt Romney departed the Republican primary field. Given the way he campaigned, I am not sorry to see him go. I was sorry to see the way he campaigned.

I have two grievances about his New Hampshire campaign. First, he just didn't show up. I direct a Public Policy Center at a college in New Hampshire. I didn't meet him. I met Senator McCain, Governor Huckabee, Congressman Paul, Congressman Tancredo, and unfortunately missed Congressman Hunter's event on campus. I saw the Mitt-mobile around town once or twice and was introduced to one of Governor Romney's sons by a student trying to bring Governor Romney to campus for a public lecture. What was he doing that he didn't have time to hit one of the few major colleges in the state?

Second, I know what he was doing with some of that time--spending his own money to saturate the primetime televsion hours with superficial, cynical, negative television ads. That's a fast way to alienate New Hampshire voters. It's one of the virtues of having the first primary here. The New Hampshire primary is designed for what McCain did--a rampage of townhall meetings where he took Q&A from the audience until they were satisfied he had heard and understood their concerns. And don't get me started again about Romney in Michigan.

Here's the irony. Based on his record and his personal resources, Governor Romney could have had the nomination in a walk. A Republican president in 2009 would have to work with a Democratically controlled legislature and would face a number of tough challenges. Maybe Governor Romney hasn't been keeping up with current events, but he actually faced an even more extreme version of that scenario in Massachusetts and had a reasonable record to show for it. All he had to do was to make the case that he worked with the Democrats to deliver results for the citizens of his state while holding the line on conservative issues. The problem with Senator McCain's record is that he has not held the line on conservative principles in his commendable efforts in the Senate to work with Democrats to deliver results. (Campaign finance and immigration are two prime examples.) An honest and positive campaign on that issue, without the free-lunch, supply-side economic rhetoric and the negative ads, would have generated a lot of support.

Two Ideas for the Primary System

Having watched the primary season unfold from a very nice vantage point, I think that the nomination processes would have been better served by approval voting. From a potentially long list of candidates, voters simply vote for as many of them as they find acceptable. The candidate with the most votes wins.

The main advantage of approval voting is that it allows voters the opportunity to express a preference for more than one candidate. The drawback to approval voting is that it does not provide voters with the opportunity to rank candidates within the set that they find acceptable. With approval voting, we wouldn't see primary voters having to worry about "wasting a vote" in expressing a preference for a candidate who has little chance of achieving a plurality. There would be less pressure on candidates to drop out of the race if they don't "win" one of the early states. This is particularly important given how much weight the early primaries seem to have.

I also find it odd that the national parties award delegates in proportion to a state's total population rather than some other measure that considers the distribution of voters across the two main parties. Consider the case of New York. There is almost no chance that it will go for the Republican candidate in the general election, regardless of the nominees from the two parties. So Senator Clinton's victory there tells us nothing about whether she is a more viable Democratic candidate in the electoral college than is Senator Obama. Ditto for Senator McCain.

It seems like a party could get a more viable candidate by awarding more delegates to states that are expected to be more competitive in the general election and fewer delegates to states that are expected to be less competitive in the general election. There is a limit to how much downweighting could be done in a state in which the party is strong--that would encourage state party leaders to discourage turnout, which is unhealthy to say the very least. But some movement in this direction could be helpful.

Storehouses of Ideas

I hadn't realized that Chris DeMuth is stepping down as the president of the American Enterprise Institute. Here is an essay he wrote reflecting on the nature and role of think tanks. I thought the following excerpt was interesting:

I have tried to explain it to people who have been setting up liberal and leftist think tanks in recent years, advising them that the secret of success is to go away and spend thirty years in the political wilderness. They have thought I was joking. Let me try again here.

Every one of the right-of-center think tanks was founded in a spirit of opposition to the established order of things. Opposition is the natural proclivity of the intellectual (it's what leads some smart people to become intellectuals rather than computer programmers), and is of course prerequisite to criticism and devotion to reform. And for conservatives, opposition lasted a very long time--in domestic policy, from the New Deal through 1980.

It's been more than half that period of time since 1980, and the conservative think tanks are now part of the status quo and not the political wilderness. Maybe the Lefties aren't the only ones who could benefit from a few day hikes.

Read the whole thing.

The Conservative Car on the Obama Express

That's where Dartmouth Professor of English Emeritus Jeffrey Hart is sitting, according to this article in today's local Valley News. There's no questioning his conservative bona fides. Here's his reasoning about Senator Obama's candidacy:

And so it is that Jeffrey Hart counts himself a member of Obama's “new American majority” -- a group of voters the Illinois senator says are fed up with the partisan excesses and wrangling of the last two decades and eager for a practical, cooperative approach to the issues that have divided Washington.

“It turns out that these political parties are not always either liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican,” Hart, a 77-year-old with thick white hair who lives in Lyme, said in an interview at his home yesterday. “The Democrat, under certain conditions, can be the conservative.”

Hart's estrangement from George W. Bush's brand of conservatism -- which Hart describes as “radicalism,” citing an expansion of federal spending and aggressive foreign policy -- began some time ago. After voting for Bush in 2000, Hart says he supported Sen. John Kerry in 2004. In the 2006 Congressional elections, Hart cast a ballot for Democrat Paul Hodes -- not Charlie Bass, the Republican whom Hart had voted for six times — out of frustration over the Iraq War, which he says has been mishandled.

“It's all wrong,” Hart said. “It's not going to be a beacon of liberty. There's no indication that Bush or Wolfowitz or Cheney looked at Iraq and said, ‘What are the problems here?' It’s as if Eisenhower did D-Day not knowing whether they had a cliff or a swamp on the other side.”

There are other problems with today's Republicans, according to Hart. He said his erstwhile party allied itself too closely with activist evangelical Christians. Perhaps more significantly, Hart said, the party has failed to adapt in order to address urgent domestic issues such as healthcare policy and the future of Social Security, thus forgetting Burke's famous caveat to conservatives: “A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”

The current Republican field does nothing to raise Hart's hopes. He said McCain is “candid and authentic” but too committed to keeping up the U.S. military presence in Iraq; former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Hart said, “would say anything to get the nomination.”

In Obama, by contrast, Hart sees a Great Communicator in the mold of Reagan, John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt, a leader who can inspire Americans to work together on the problems of the 21st Century.

By the end of the line, that train car might be very crowded.

Read the whole thing.

They Found Their Happy Place

What a difference a day makes. With only two candidates remaining for the Democratic Party's nomination, the tone of last night's debate was far more congenial than the Republicans the night before or any prior debate among the Democrats. With all the nastiness in the recent campaign, both candidates needed to present this sort of an image (well, maybe not literally the image above). That doesn't mean it was an effective debate, in terms of helping a voter decide between the two candidates. Best line of the night goes to Senator Obama:

The reason that this is important, again, is that Senator Clinton, I think, fairly, has claimed that she's got the experience on day one. And part of the argument that I'm making in this campaign is that, it is important to be right on day one.

Super Tuesday's results will not likely be enough to decide between the two, and so there will be plenty of time for other strategies to be played.

Read the full transcript here.

An Unseemly Republican Debate

I had the same reaction to last night's Republican debate as Governor Romney in the picture below.


I have over the last few months noted my displeasure with Governor Romney's negative campaign tactics and appreciation for Senator McCain's willingness to show up and be straightforward in his rhetoric. Last night's debate was a step in the opposite direction.


It is utterly incomprehensible that McCain would continue to push this "timetable as buzzword" mischaracterization of Romney's remarks on resolving the war in Iraq. I actually started to feel sympathy for Romney, despite the fact that he's been doing similar things to McCain for months. I would have thought that the lesson McCain would have drawn from this, given that he and not Romney has the momentum, is that it is a tactic that doesn't work.


If Romney actually ran honestly on the detailed record of things he did in office and in the business sector, rather than on cheap slogans about them, he would have had a much better chance to have gotten my vote in the New Hampshire primary. As a Republican governor facing a Democratic legislature, he managed to hold the line on conservative issues and work with the legislature to pass reforms on things like health care that his citizens wanted. That's a similar environment to what he would face and a reasonable outcome to expect if he were elected President in 2008.

Why I Am Not Looking Forward to Tonight's Debate

David Brooks draws some lessons from the McCain victory in Florida's Republican primary. Then he discusses some things he's still figuring out:

First, how desperate is Romney? The Wednesday debate is his last shot at turning this around. If he is truly frantic, he will hit McCain hard on the temperament issue and hope McCain blows up on national TV. It will be an ugly assault, but the mark of a man who is willing to try anything. If Romney’s not willing to get that ugly, he’ll just use the same arguments he tried in Florida.

In a word, I think it will be vicious. More from Brooks:

Second, what does delegate hunting look like? For decades, presidential primaries have been settled by momentum. That is unlikely to happen on the Democratic side. Super-Duper-Looper Tuesday will almost certainly not settle the Democratic race because each side will emerge with many delegates. But how do you campaign in this environment? Do you try to win states? Do you focus on Congressional Districts with high turnouts, which sometimes get rewarded? Do you care about the national aggregate numbers next Tuesday? Almost nobody now living has done this before. And the challenge for us journalists is that we will have no clue next Tuesday how to make sense of the hundreds of different sorts of results that will come in.

Yes, pity the poor journalists. Here's a suggestion. Listen to your readers.Look what it turned up at Andrew Sullivan's blog.

Obama and the Clintons

Some links from around the blogosphere on the nasty turn the Democratic contest has taken:

• "The Fine Art of Misrepresentation" at Obsidian Wings
• "The Bill Factor" at Oxblog
• "A New Clinton Shuffle" at A Red Mind in a Blue State

Enjoy?

The Mayhem in Myrtle Beach

That's how this feature at Salon described the Democratic candidates debate in South Carolina last evening. It also noted:

It was about as nasty a debate as we have seen in this presidential cycle — and Mitt Romney was not even in the state.

I'm guessing that the tone of the campaign has changed because the Democratic candidates really do believe that their biggest competition is each other for the nomination, rather than the Republicans in the general election.

McQ at QandO has a thorough compilation of reactions to the debate. This one is particularly good, courtesy of the Carpetbagger Report:

[T]his probably isn’t the direction that actually benefits Obama. Clinton doesn’t mind getting into a good ol’ fashioned brawl; she’s quick, smart, and quite adept in these scuffles. Just as importantly, she’s not afraid to throw dirt — Clinton said last night of Obama, “The facts are that he has said in the last week that he really liked the ideas of the Republicans over the last 10 to 15 years.” That’s patently false, but it didn’t seem to matter.

The problem for Obama is getting dragged into the mud when he wants to aim higher.

I never thought that an Obama-Clinton ticket made sense--if he bests her in the primaries, then he doesn't need anything she can offer in the electoral college. And a Clinton-Obama ticket really doesn't make sense either--she already has problems being upstaged by her husband, so why would she want that from her running mate as well? But it seemed like bridges were burned last evening, and there's no going back (at least until the Republicans start replaying the most acrimonious exchanges during the general election campaign in the fall).

Health Care 2008

This new page at HealthCentral compares the Presidential candidates' positions on health care, including reform, the uninsured, drug prices, prevention, technology, and stem cells. It also has an interesting graphical representation of the candidates, where you can plot your own views.

Enjoy!

Why Stop There?

PGL at Angry Bear, reacting to the previous post, asks why stop with criticizing Governor Romney for his pandering? It's a reasonable question, but it has the standard economic answer--diminishing marginal returns to blogging about other people's mistakes.

Thinking a bit more about it, candidates deserve less slack when they make statements that are at odds with the personas they project in the campaign. Governor Romney campaigns specifically on his experience in the private sector and its contribution to economic growth. When he panders based on moving government resources to the aid of one particular constituency, that should be identified for what it is.

PGL then takes Governor Huckabee to task for, in the context of a question about lagging economic growth, advocating energy independence without acknowledging that any path to energy independence (e.g., a carbon tax) will reduce economic well-being in the near term. PGL is absolutely right. It's another answer that doesn't add up. But lots of people say silly things about energy independence, and this one didn't grab my attention.

McCain's answer to the question was better (some reasonably straight talk about the jobs not coming back and the need for retraining opportunities). Giuliani's was awful. Thompson's answer defended Giuliani's awful answer. Ron Paul's was probably the best. Read the whole transcript here--this is the first question to each candidate. What I liked about Paul's answer was that, in the course of his rambling answer, he said:

The recession has been predictable. We just don't know exactly when it will come.

If you do the wrong thing, it's going to last for a long time. The boom period comes when they just pour out easy credit and it teaches people to do the wrong things. There's a lot of malinvestment, debt that goes in the wrong direction, consumers who do the wrong things, and businessmen who do the wrong thing.

So we have to attack this and understand the importance of Austrian theory of the business cycle. If you don't, we're going to continue to do this and the longer you delay the recession, the worse the recession is, and we've delayed a serious recession for a long time.

The housing market's already in depression and a lot of people are hurt and the standing of living in this country is going down. Look at what's happening to the dollar.

And what is being offered by the Federal Reserve and Treasury and everybody in Washington? Lower interest rates. Well, lower interest rates is the problem. Artificially low interest rates is the artificial stimulus which causes the bubble, which allows the inevitable recession to come.

So what we need to do is deal with monetary policy and not pretend that artificial stimulus by more spending is going to help. That won't do you one bit of good.

It isn't perfect, but it's pretty good. To be clear, more government spending will mechanically prop up the rate of GDP growth. As PGL notes, given the way we do budgeting in this country, that means our kids will be paying (through a higher government debt burden) for our desire to avoid a slowdown in GDP growth. Why are we entitled to their money to clean up our housing mess?

Romney Targets Michigan

The Pander-fest moves from New Hampshire to Michigan, with Mitt Romney leading the way. Quoting from Glen Johnson of the Associated Press:

"How Michigan is doing, how the manufacturing sector, how the domestic auto manufacturing sector is doing, really is a pretty good bellwether of what the future holds for this nation," he said.

Accusing Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, of presiding over a "one-state recession," Romney added: "If anyone wants to know what the nation would be like under Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, they can just look at what Michigan is like under Jennifer Granholm."

Romney pledged research funds to help revitalize the state, as well as trade reforms and efforts to help the auto industry transition to more fuel-efficient vehicles.

"Measure me not by what I say, but what I do," he said, with unusual passion. "I will fight for Michigan. I will commit to you that if I'm president of the United States, I will not rest if Michigan is in a one-state recession. If I'm president, the one-state recession is over."

(I am going to speculate that these talking points did not receive the Greg Mankiw seal of approval.) Judging by Romney's campaign tactics in New Hampshire, I'm going to guess that his near-term anti-recession strategy for Michigan is to spend obscene amounts of his own money on misleading attack ads against Huckabee and McCain.

Back from the Voting Booth

The VoxWife and I cast our ballots this morning. There was one vote for Senator McCain and one vote for Senator Obama. It seems like that's where a lot of people are today. Consider the end of this article in The New York Times today:

In the Republican ranks, Mr. McCain, 71, is a curious bookend to Mr. Obama. He is the oldest candidate in either party besides Ron Paul, another Republican, who is 72. Yet he draws hundreds of young people at some events.

Mr. McCain drew many hundreds when he spoke at Dartmouth, a number exceeded only by the 2,000 students who showed up for Mr. Obama.

“He is seen as Washington but not in it,” said Ronald G. Shaiko, an associate director of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth who works with focus groups. “They think he’ll upset the apple cart.”

Mr. McCain admits to admiring Mr. Obama’s appeal as a “wonderful thing” and has taken to borrowing a line or three. He has been channeling Mr. Obama, calling on Americans to “serve a cause greater than their self-interest,” a theme from his campaign in 2000.

At forums, he may hand the microphone to a young man with ONE, a group dedicated to eradicating what it calls “stupid poverty” and disease. The group has more than 17,000 members in New Hampshire.

At Dartmouth, Emily Goodell, 18, sat astride a strange fence, contemplating a vote for Mr. McCain or Mr. Obama.

“It is kind of a strange thing since they have different views on many of the issues,” Ms. Goodell said. “They come across as genuine. I trust them.”

Nearly as striking is the absence of young people on the trail traveled by Mitt Romney and Rudolph W. Giuliani. Mr. Romney visited Dartmouth, but the earth did not shake.

“He went straight to the medical school,” Professor Shaiko said. “He wanted to talk to adults. He has no presence here.”

Still, the youth vote has an uncertain mojo. For the moment, Mr. Obama is like catnip for many people younger than 30. Less certain is if his “it moment” will be sustained.

The results of the Rockefeller Center focus group before the Democratic debate in September at Dartmouth may be instructive. Mr. Obama’s stock dropped after he stood shoulder to shoulder with more experienced rivals.

“His talking about his work in the state legislature while another candidate is talking about negotiating with the North Koreans was a turnoff,” Professor Shaiko said. “They found him coming up short on experience.”

It has been an interesting turnaround for Senator Obama in those three months, and it has been equally interesting to see this aura emerge around him and Senator McCain. It does not seem to have much to do with the two parties, either. The longest line at the polling place was still the one to change affiliations back to undeclared.

Perhaps a Microcosm of the Democratic Contest

I was unable to watch the candidate debates last evening, but Greg Mankiw provides what may be a microcosm of the contest on the Democratic side. The candidates were asked the following:

Al Gore favors a carbon tax. None of you have favored a carbon tax. Is it a bad
idea? Or is it just so politically unpalatable that you guys don't want to
propose it?

Greg diagnoses the responses of Governor Richardson as ignorant or disingenuous, those of Senator Obama as clear and honest (and correct), and those of Senator Clinton as vacuous. (Senator Clinton's response was so off topic that by the time the questioning got to Senator Edwards, the discussion had moved on to something else.) For Clinton's response, I might have chosen evasive, to link this to a broader theme.

I think that this exchange, which is a stark example of differences that over the past year have been more subtle, gives an indication of why Senator Obama may have appeal that crosses over the political center. I can respect his answer but not the other two.

And if clarity, honesty, and accuracy are important criteria in determining my vote, then I fully acknowledge that the Republican field doesn't go any deeper than Senator McCain. If he doesn't secure the nomination, then I may be looking for more options across the aisle come November.