Embarrassment of Embarassments?

For most of this primary season, the standard refrain was that the Democrats suffered (if that’s the word) from an embarrassment of riches. They had a half-dozen terrific candidates, it was said, and I don’t deny it. The last two standing, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are not just excellent, but historic, groundbreaking. Either would be a vast improvement over the incumbent.

All true—except the incumbent ain’t running in ’08 and that’s the rub. The embarrassment of riches has real potential to turn into an embarrassment of embarrassments.

In spite of themselves, the Republicans have selected John McCain, their most electable candidate by far. Many Democrats see McCain as essentially in line with his party, and that may be true, too, the talk radio yahoos notwithstanding. But tarring McCain with Bush won’t be easy since McCain has often been a Bush antagonist. His vote on the taxes and his bitter 2000 GOP primary class with the president are just two examples, and two is probably enough.

Meanwhile, Sen. Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, for all his strength, has huge weaknesses, mostly glaring. No matter how much one questions the value experience, the fact that Obama has been in the Senate for just four years. Abraham Lincoln, another gangly lawyer from Illinois, had even less experience in office—this is true. But Lincoln was a national leader of the anti-slavery movement. Obama was never a national leader before winning his Senate seat.

While Obama has run a terrific primary campaign, he has never won a tough general election. People forget it, but Obama won in 2004 only after his opponent Jack Ryan, an investment banker turned schoolteacher, dropped out in late June after a nasty sex scandal involving him and his ex-wife the actress Jeri Ryan. Amazingly, the Illinois Republicans could not find anyone to take Ryan’s place, so they bussed in perennial candidate Alan Keyes, who of course lost badly to Obama.

Obama is even more untested as a public servant. While he had some success in the Illinois legislature, that’s not the stuff of national campaigns. We often hear of his days as a community organizer. But what did he do? He was a civil rights lawyer, but tell us a case he won. He taught law school, but was never a full professor.

But he was right on the Iraq war—give him that. But after months about being defensive on the war issue (and rightly so) Sen. Clinton has herself has put Obama’s anti-war record in perspective: I think you’ll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say — he’s never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience,” Clinton said a few days ago. “I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002.”

Of course, McCain won’t concede Obama was right, as Clinton has. This could wind up hurting McCain, but it could also help him in one of two ways. He could convince the voters that his position—the surge—is correct now, even if the war was a mistake initially. Or he could impress the voters as a man of staunch principle, McCain’s specialty, his ace in the hole, even if it’s not true.

McCain has a proven ability to attract independents. The fact that he is hated by the clownish right only helps in this regard. Then there is the 3 AM question, that Clinton has famously made. It must be said at the outset that the 3AM question is idiotic. The president is not a fireman or a cop or a soldier. The president makes decisions after deliberation—at least 99.9% of the time—not when he is roused from slumber. The one split second call a president may have to make is whether the military should fire on a target, such as if the CIA learned where Osama Bin Laden was hiding. But even then, the decision would have been grounded in intense and extensive prior discussions. The one recent exception is President Bush’s immediate reaction to the 9-11 attacks—and remember how inept it was.

Still, if the voters (or some voters) take the question seriously, McCain wins the point over a junior senator who no one ever heard of until four years ago.

To be sure, Obama has huge strengths; McCain has obvious weaknesses (his age, his part affiliation, his advocacy of even more war). It may not happen, but the prospect for a Democratic collapse in November is very real.

Bush’s Resignation: It’s a Start

Yesterday’s Iraq hearing told us a lot about what we already know: Iraq is a mess and the “progress” there is uneven at best. But it told us little or nothing about what we don’t know: How do we know when to get out, and, if not now, when?

The questions morally and strategically are: (1) whether our exit would leave the Iraqi’s worse off—and how much extra Iraqi violence and misery would be justified by the decline in death and suffering by U.S. troops? (2) What effect would the departure of U.S. forces have on our “interests” in the Middle East? Both questions are blurred by the desire for “victory” or the fear of “defeat.” It’s not clear now what we stand to win, nor what we might lose.

While these are hard questions, it seems clear that the president has no interest in studying them. Bush is so totally invested in his war—and in his desire not to “lose” it—that he will never change strategy: he will continue with the war, while allowing for the drawdown advocated by Gen. Pretaeus, which, as many have noted, is not a decision but an inevitability. The Democrats, meanwhile, control Congress, but not by enough votes to force the president to change. Thus we have a quagmire—not just in Iraq, but here at home.

Bush, of course, has no credibility on Iraq. To his credit, he has stopped talking about victory, I think, but without acknowledging that his previous course had failed and that his rhetoric was destructive. Still, he now must hide behind the general, who, after all, was selected presumably because he is largely in agreement with the president. (Whether the White House shaped or vetted Petraeus’ testimony is not the point. They chose the man who would give the testimony.) But he does have blocking power.

The only way out is for Bush to resign and leave office now, not waiting until 2009. Cheney, of course, would have to quit, too. The president’s departure would not sole the problem. But it would permit an honest reassessment of what, if anything, we owe the Iraq and what policies are best for us.

Libby gets nothing and likes it

Even if you believe that Scooter Libby was wronged (though he was convicted) or that the investigation of the Valerie Plame leak was wrong (though it was ordered by Ashcroft) Bush’s commutation of his prison term is phony. Bush said he “respects’ the jury’s verdict but that Libby’s sentence was “excessive.” Never mind that the sentence was imposed by a Republican judge and could have been appealed. If that’s the case, why not commute Libby’s sentence after he has served half or a quarter of his time or a single month? Wouldn’t that show more respect for the jury and the law, and still show mercy?

As for the large fine, who can doubt that the tab will be picked up by friends of Cheney, or Cheney himself, as a small down payment for favors granted and future favors expected.