Only moments before, Obama, trying to get ahead of the growing crisis, had bemoaned to reporters about how we “got to this point” and expressed his outrage over the bonuses as if he, his administration and Hill Democrats had nothing to do with it.

But in all the furor over the bonuses, one question was curiously absent in the president’s hastily called South Lawn news conference, held before he left on a trip to California: “If the bonuses were so outrageous, why, sir, did you sign the bill?”

There are two possible answers. Obama knew the stimulus bill enabled the bonuses and signed it anyway on the advice of his economic team, which had argued the sanctity of contract law; or, more likely, he didn’t know the “Dodd Amendment” had been added and he signed in ignorance.

Unfortunately for the president, his failure to explain his decision to sign the bill only raises more questions, a lot more. Did his own White House economic and legislative staff actually read the bill, and does Team Obama White House have any idea what Team Obama Treasury is doing? And what about the $100,000 in AIG political contributions taken by the Obama campaign, which was raised by a reporter at the news availability but totally ignored by the president?

With growing concerns about whether Obama is, as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) put it last week, “up to speed,” the AIG scandal has morphed from a populist backlash story to become a legitimate question of presidential competence.

It is also a situation that could have been avoided if Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress had addressed the need for a stimulus package in a more disciplined, less panicked way.

On the day the stimulus bill passed Congress, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) threw the bill to the House floor after Democratic leaders gave Members just hours to read the conference bill and warned, “1,100 pages that not one Member of this body has read. Not one.”

Apparently, he should have included the president and some of his key economic advisers. Like Obama, Hill Democrats found themselves between a rock and a hard place. If Boehner was wrong, then they knew this provision was in the bill all along and the AIG hearings of the past week were nothing more than political theater.

But if Boehner was right, Obama and Democratic leaders had forced Members to vote on the largest spending bill in history and nobody, including them, knew what was in it. Ironically, Obama’s people were the only policymakers who actually did have time to find out the particulars of the bill because Obama, despite his demand for immediate passage of the legislation, took four days to actually get around to signing it.

If this “historic legislation” could wait four days for signature, couldn’t Congress have had two of those days to read it before voting, or were Obama and Democratic leaders worried that if people read the bill and found provisions like the AIG loophole, it wouldn’t pass?

We now know that Obama, who expressed such anger over the AIG bonuses, had the opportunity to, in essence, veto them and didn’t. No one expects any president to read a 1,000-page bill, but taxpayers have a right to assume that someone in his White House knows exactly what the president is about to sign.

Maybe they were all too busy with the cap-and-trade initiative, the health care initiative, the new Iran policy, the new budget, the new combat veterans’ self-pay health care program, the California “campaign” rallies or prep for the Leno show.

Maybe that also explains why five months after the election, Obama still hasn’t staffed the top positions at Treasury other than Geithner’s. But where was the White House legislative affairs team when the discussions with Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), the water carrier for the enabling amendment, took place?

Either they didn’t report back or they were out of the loop; neither explanation adds confidence. Nor do Geithner’s increasingly dubious explanations of what he knew about the bonuses and when he knew it.

First, he said he learned about the bonuses on March 10. Then, we discover he was asked about the bonuses in a Congressional hearing March 3. The fallout continued as we learned that the bonuses were common knowledge at the Fed back in the fall when Geithner headed the New York Federal Reserve Bank, which was overseeing AIG activities.

The past week may well have been a watershed moment for this president. Issues of competence and confidence now cloud the country as the American people begin to question the “man behind the curtain.”

David Winston is president of the Winston Group, a Republican polling firm.

Roll Call

For the past six weeks, Democrats and Republicans have been engaged in the biggest, riskiest, most costly game of political speed chess in the nation’s history.
A chess game starts with the “opening,” a series of moves that define the basic structure and direction the game is likely to take.

Sometimes chess players will begin with an unexpected opening to throw the opponent off. Then they execute a series of moves that takes the game back to a more familiar opening. That’s called transposition.

By presenting an unexpected opening before returning to the familiar, the player hopes his opponent’s moves will be less sharp.

This has clearly been Team Obama’s opening.

During the campaign, Barack Obama talked about creating a different kind of Washington, reducing partisanship, welcoming ideas “wherever they came from,” getting rid of earmarks, banning lobbyists from his administration and ensuring transparency.

During the transition, Obama made moves toward the political center with some moderate Cabinet appointments and statements.

Once in office, however, what looked like real change quickly transposed into the traditional Democratic liberal opening.

Obama handed over responsibility for writing the stimulus package to Hill Democrats, tolerated the exclusion of Republicans from the process, nominated lobbyists for key positions and looked the other way when his promised waiting period for signing legislation went by the boards — and that was just the first two weeks after the inauguration.

This was followed by his “new era of responsibility budget” that saddles the country with massive debt for generations and his decision to abdicate any responsibility for the omnibus budget bill and its 8,500 earmarks. Today, Obama’s transposition is virtually complete.

The Washington battle is back to the old traditional Republican versus Democrat debate, only with much bigger stakes and played at warp speed by Washington standards.

Democrats are once again pushing huge tax and spending increases as Republicans argue just the opposite.

Because they’ve been in this position before and lost, Democrats understand that to win in this center-right country, they must paint this as the direst economic crisis since the Great Depression by scaring people into overcoming their natural skepticism of policies of the far left.

To persuade centrist voters to embrace a leftist agenda, Democrats also have to successfully define the origins of the crisis to their benefit by blaming greedy bankers, the rich and Republicans for not regulating financial institutions.

Republicans counter that it was the Democrats’ social engineering policies at the root of the economic meltdown, pressuring banks to make risky loans and blocking reforms of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003.

In George Orwell’s “1984,” one party slogan asserted, “He who controls the past, controls the future.” Apt words for Democratic attempts to revise history to push their current agenda.

Ironically, when Obama and Hill Democrats sat down at the table in January, they were in a position to define the game, another chess concept called “initiative.” Whoever moves first has it and game play determines whether it can be sustained or wrested away by the opponent.

But the president has frittered away his initiative. As the markets tank, 401(k)’s disappear and public confidence begins to erode, Obama seems to have forgotten that the country wants seriousness and steadiness from its leaders in times of crisis, not gimmicky summits and photo ops.

By using the crisis to push a left-wing laundry list, he has begun to lose focus on his most serious challenge — the economy.

A radical new cap-and-trade energy policy that will raise the cost of energy on every American, a controversial housing policy and a cut in home mortgage deductions that will cause home values to decline even further are just a few of his proposals for change that have become negative distractions.

And he apparently does have time to worry about Rush Limbaugh. As the Democratic attack on Limbaugh showed, Obama and company clearly don’t know what to do about Wall Street, so they retreated to the kind of partisan politics candidate Obama promised to reject.

Republicans have not yet wrested the initiative away from Obama and Hill Democrats, but they have made progress as seen in survey results.

Support for Obama’s policies now trail his personal support, but if he keeps playing the game for speed and tactical gains, history shows his numbers are likely to shift, possibly quickly. Already, several national surveys put his job approval at less than 60 percent.

Obama needs to rethink his position. He might listen to what film director Stanley Kubrick had to say about the game: “What chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it’s really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.”

Roll Call

His shots may have gotten a laugh in the White House briefing room, but across America, homeowners who are “playing by the rules” and paying their mortgages on time were cheering for Santelli, who clearly struck a nerve. Round One goes to Santelli.

Gibbs’ decision to go into attack mode was clear evidence that, for the first time in this new presidency, Team Obama is worried. Maybe it was the Santelli video’s half- million hits on YouTube or maybe it was the larger problem that their White House debut has been characterized by a series of missteps.

Cabinet selection screw-ups have reminded voters that Democrats and taxes have never been a good combination and undermined Obama and his staff’s image of competence and cool. His administration’s stimulus package, written by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and rammed through Congress by a Democratic majority with no pretense to bipartisanship, has struggled.

The markets have failed to rally behind the new administration’s economic policies with the Dow losing more than 800 points, about 10 percent of its value, since Barack Obama took office. For millions of Americans watching their retirement income, college funds and savings continue to disappear, it’s no surprise Obama’s extra $13 a week tax cut hasn’t provided the political boost his administration expected.

So, last week, the last thing this White House needed was a popular uprising in the form of a “Chicago Tea Party” protesting its new $75 billion housing bailout. This episode, which may not be over, is a reflection of a White House that has reached a structural decision point. Tonight’s historic address to Congress occurs at a time of great consternation and fear after what has been a tumultuous first month for this president.

In part, Obama’s problems stem from a political identity crisis. Is he the Obama who campaigned on a promise of new bipartisanship in Washington or the Obama who asked for Republican ideas and then let Pelosi and Reid ignore them?

Is he the self-described centrist of the campaign who promised to govern from the middle or the president who offered up a classic leftist spending bill, unique only in its breathtaking size.

For President Obama, tonight’s address has become more than an economic report card to Congress or even another attempt to sell his economic recovery plan. This address to Congress has become a structural positioning speech.

He must decide whether he is going to continue to pursue a single-party approach to governing based on the “we won” doctrine or embrace a true consensus approach to solving the nation’s serious problems. What much of Washington’s chattering class has forgotten in all the hype about partisanship over the past month is the fact that the majority party defines the level of bipartisanship, not the other way round.

Real bipartisanship means minority inclusion in both the legislative process and the final product. It isn’t a party at the White House and a free cocktail.

Over the past few weeks, many Democrats and pundits have seemed to suggest that accepting a social invitation from the president requires his “guests” abandon their principles at the door in gratitude, as if political philosophy were a matter of good manners. If that logic held true, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) ought to have the president over for brats and beer and set the same expectations for an ideological flip from Obama.

The president deserves credit for at least talking to Republicans, but one phone call by Obama reining in Pelosi would have done far more to create the post-partisan Washington he promised. That call was never made.

Real bipartisanship is defined by whether and how much the majority will allow minority participation in the legislative process. Obama has another chance to begin again tonight to keep his promise. He has a choice.

Will he offer an agenda based on increased taxes on small business, more government spending, more government control of health care and cuts in defense spending, or will he try to create real consensus with an agenda that reflects all elements of American life and the ideas of both parties?

He can use this speech to structurally position himself on the left by appealing to his liberal base as he has done recently or he can embrace real bipartisanship and achieve a broad majority coalition. In November, the American people didn’t vote to change the country’s basic centrist, free-market principles; they voted for leadership they believed would focus on their problems and solve them.

This remains a center-right country. Tonight’s speech will tell us the kind of president Barack Obama intends to be.

David Winston is president of the Winston Group, a Republican polling firm.

Roll Call

When the control room erupted into chaos, Flight Director Gene Kranz told his team to settle down, “Let’s work the problem, people,” he said. “Let’s not make things worse by guessing.”

Last week, Rep. Dave Camp (Mich.), the top Ways and Means Republican, posed the following question to Thomas Barthold, deputy chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, at a hearing on the Democrats’ stimulus bill.

“Can you tell me, Mr. Barthold, how many jobs will be created by this legislation?”

Barthold answered, “Well, in short, Mr. Camp, I can’t.”

Having decided to focus this column on the New Deal logic of the Democrats’ latest economic stimulus bill, I gave some thought to ending the piece right here. Case made.

After all, if the raison d’être for this unprecedented, megabillion-dollar emergency spending package is to quickly stimulate the ailing economy, if its first objective is to create jobs or “save” them — the newest entry in the Democrats’ political lexicon — then isn’t it fair to ask how many jobs and how soon?

We’re still guessing. Originally, President Barack Obama and Hill Democrats had promised a “timely, targeted and temporary” recovery plan that would produce or save 2 million jobs. That figure, like the stimulus package itself, has grown to somewhere from 3 million to 4 million jobs depending on who’s talking and what time of day it is. And that’s the problem.

Despite all the promises of fast action to create millions of jobs, much of the $825 billion stimulus bill bears a striking resemblance to the annual Democratic budgetary wish list — but this time on steroids — and fails to meet the criteria of timely, targeted or temporary.

The Democrats’ own Congressional Budget Office shot holes in claims that the stimulus funding for job-creating projects would come fast and furious.

According to its recent report, which has now predictably been removed from its Web site, the CBO found that only $26 billion, or just 7 percent, of the major government spending in the legislation will see the light of day in 2009 and only 38 percent, or $110 billion, by the end of 2010.

To be fair, Obama’s OMB director disagrees with his own party’s Congressional analysis, as do Congressional Democrats, ironically, and predicts that 75 percent of the funding will be out the door creating jobs by the end of fiscal 2010. Again, one might ask the question, “Based on what?”

Anyone who has ever worked in the federal bureaucracy knows that regardless of who is president, it moves at a snail’s pace. Billions of dollars in grants to individuals, private groups and the states are doled out every year as part of the federal government’s normal budget process, and it takes months, if not years, to get the funds to qualifying recipients.

Why should we assume that the federal government will suddenly become a model of efficiency, getting stimulus checks out the Treasury door? While we now await a “revision” from the CBO, no doubt duly chastised by its Democratic bosses, chances are the CBO got it right the first time.

As we have seen with most government-created “infrastructure” projects going back to the Great Depression, they simply don’t fix the unemployment problem. The private sector does.

Okay, so the bill isn’t timely. What about targeted? When you’re spending $825 billion on everything from contraception to broadband communications, it’s difficult make that claim. Some of the proposed spending reflects some good thinking, putting money toward information technology in the health care arena or in underserved rural areas, for example.

But that kind of targeting ought to come through the annual appropriations process that allows time for serious debate and a healthy exchange of ideas. Instead, much of the spending, as it stands now, seems to be little more than gifts to important Democratic constituencies.

Finally, are the proposed programs and projects funded by the stimulus package temporary? At the 1964 GOP convention, Ronald Reagan said “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll see here on earth.” Not much has changed.

The notion that the recovery legislation’s billions of dollars of programs and projects will simply disappear at some prescribed moment lacks credulity, especially given the recent Washington, D.C., track record of Democrats and Republicans.

When former President Bill Clinton proposed his politically useful “100,000 cops on the street” initiative to provide federal grants for hiring of new community-based cops, he made friends with mayors and police chiefs all across the country.

It was supposed to be a short-term, temporary program. It became a continuing federal grant program when local jurisdictions found themselves unable to pay new recruits’ salaries after the grants ran out. Are we supposed to believe that the “temporary” programs paid for by the stimulus package won’t run a similar course?

In the next couple of days, the Republican House leadership will offer Obama an alternative approach to the Democrats’ nearly trillion-dollar stimulus package. It will reflect a very different philosophy, a belief that small business remains the engine of American job creation. A quick review of the Democrats’ economic stimulus bill shows a party still clinging to the old idea, invalidated in the 1930s, that government is the best creator of long-term jobs.

Yes, elections have consequences, and as Obama pointed out to Hill Republicans in a White House meeting, he won. But victory and pork-barrel politics notwithstanding, he would be wise to listen to his own promises of change and open his mind to new ideas that might fit his own administration’s criteria of “timely, targeted and temporary.”

Original story on rollcall.com

The note supposedly said, “To my successor: When you find yourself in a hopeless situation, open the first letter and it will save you. Later, when you again find yourself in a hopeless situation, open the second letter.”

Sure enough, his replacement, Leonard Brezhnev, soon had reason to open the first letter. It said, “Blame it all on me.” That’s what the new party leader did, and it saved his job. Later, he found himself in a similarly dire situation and supposedly grasped for Khrushchev’s second letter as he desperately looked for a solution.

He ripped open the letter and read Khrushchev’s final words of advice: “Sit down and write two letters.” It’s a story, let’s hope, President-elect Barack Obama has heard. The moral of the story is, of course, honeymoons don’t last forever and Obama’s will be over when he “owns” the economy, for better or worse.

As he is about to take office, however, most of America is willing to give him the honeymoon every president gets; but for much of Washington’s political and media insiders, the clock has already started running.

A presidential honeymoon is usually unpredictable, much like the real thing. Its length depends on the personalities involved and promises made during the campaign, the tenor of the times, and the political environment in which the new president must lead. For John F. Kennedy, the glamour of his candidacy and the drama of the Cuban missile crisis overcame the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and he enjoyed a honeymoon that continues to this day.

For Bill Clinton, the honeymoon was short-lived. By the end of May 1993, a series of political missteps had dragged his numbers down to 36 percent approval and 50 percent disapproval.

For Obama, however, Ronald Reagan’s early months and years in office may provide not only be a better analogy to current times but a cautionary tale about when a national recession becomes a president’s personal millstone. Reagan assumed the presidency with America in a severe economic crisis, dispirited by the long Iran hostage situation and threatened by a belligerent Soviet Union.

In the economic debate of the past few months, we have forgotten the grim economic legacy Reagan inherited. The inflation rate was nearly 12 percent. Today, it’s less than 2 percent. Interest rates were running at double digits with home mortgages as high as 15 percent. Today, a traditional 30-year mortgage averages around 5.5 percent.

The unemployment rate in January 1981 was at 7.5 percent, even higher than today’s 7.2 percent, and people were reeling not only from high gas prices but long lines as well. This isn’t to say that Obama isn’t inheriting a very difficult economic situation, but Reagan faced an equally daunting economic challenge.

On Jan. 20, 1981, however, people didn’t view it as Reagan’s recession. It was Jimmy Carter’s, and the American people understood that. Reagan took over the presidential reins with a job approval of 51 percent and 13 percent disapproval.

Obama will begin his presidency with high favorable ratings as well. A mid- December USA Today/Gallup poll found 75 percent of the American people approved of his handling of the transition. Rasmussen Reports put his job approval at 67/30 in its daily tracking on Monday.

He will also benefit from the fact that today, Americans blame the struggling economy on George W. Bush, but if the early years of Reagan’s presidency offer any insight on honeymoons, it is that voters are an impatient lot. For Reagan, his honeymoon faded in less than a year.

By December 1981, he had slipped to 49 approval/41 disapproval. What had been Carter’s recession just a year before was now becoming Reagan’s political albatross as his favorable ratings began a steady slide that continued throughout the year. Reagan now “owned” the economy and his political fortunes were tied to it.

When unemployment hit 10 percent in October 1982, his job approval dipped to 42/48. A month later, Republicans lost 26 seats in the House and a raft of governorships and state legislatures.

Time magazine’s post-election issue characterized voters’ mind-set this way: “The message read: reduce unemployment, bring down the deficit. The President was being told what practically all U.S. Presidents are told two years after their chiefdom is hailed: no mandate is forever. In presidential elections one votes for the sky. In off-year elections one looks at the street.”

Obama will face the same kind of assessment two years from now, but unlike Reagan, who had to work with a Democratically controlled House, voters understand that Democrats now control Washington. Obama’s policy prescription for what ails the economy appears to be roughly the same New Deal government spending approach offered by Franklin Roosevelt in his first term and by Democrats in Reagan’s.

Republicans would be wise to work with the new president by offering alternative plans and programs that will provide evidence of the stark differences that exist between the two parties’ economic policies. It’s important to remember that in 1938, years after billions of dollars had been invested in government “work” programs, the unemployment rate was more than 19 percent.

In the end, Obama and his party’s success or failure in the 2010 Congressional elections will depend on two factors: when the American people decide that this has become President Obama’s economy, and how the economy is doing at that moment. Obama can blame Bush; but as Brezhnev discovered, he can’t blame his predecessor forever.

Original story at rollcall.com

The truth is, voters don’t want to hear why the other guy is bad. They want to know why you are a better choice. People want hear how candidates will govern, how they will solve problems and what they really stand for.

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) put it this way: “Wal-Mart doesn’t get ahead by attacking Sears but by offering better value.” In the past two elections, Republicans failed to win over voters because they failed to tell them how they would address their concerns.

The GOP has spent the past 10 years and hundreds of millions of dollars trying to drive up Democrats’ negatives. Sometimes they succeeded, but rather than solidifying the GOP’s majority coalition, over time, this self-defeating strategy made it permanently vulnerable. Republicans found themselves with razor-thin victories, no mandate to govern and growing unfavorable ratings.

Rothenberg also argued that Congressional Republicans were forced to employ a negative attack strategy because sitting presidents and presidential nominees define a party, not Congressional candidates. He’s half right.

Yes, President George W. Bush’s job approval was a significant drag on the ticket. But it is possible for a ruling party to overcome an unpopular incumbent. Just ask France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, who managed to win election despite the huge unpopularity of fellow party member and former President Jacques Chirac.

He did it by making a clean break with Chirac’s policies and offering up a positive agenda of his own. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), however, failed to convince voters that he had a viable plan to deal with an increasingly troubled economy. Instead, he predictably fell back on a politics-as-usual attack strategy to define Obama rather than define himself and his vision to voters.

Instead of focusing on the merits of his own tax plan or trying to make his health care plan comprehensible, his campaign relied on unserious, negative ads like the “sex ed ad” questioning Obama’s character. It didn’t work.

As Daniel Finkelstein observed in the London Times about the McCain campaign’s attack spots, “They are ignoring a golden rule of politics. Your attack ads also shape views of you. Whether or not the [the Britney Spears/Paris Hilton ad] makes Mr. Obama look smaller, it certainly makes John McCain look smaller.”

In fact, it is possible to overcome a negative national political environment and do it without resorting to harsh personal attacks.

Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) is a good example. Rothenberg attributes his victory to negative attacks on his Democratic opponent. I did the polling for this race and saw the dynamics in play up close.

Souder spent 2007 and the first half of 2008 building his positives with voters. During the campaign, he spent half his time reinforcing those positives and the other half defining a choice by drawing a fair and effective contrast with his opponent’s qualifications and issue positions.

This was not, however, a traditional “negative” attack campaign. First, it was a balanced approach of positive and contrast tactics. Second, Souder’s campaign reflected the distinction between a contrast ad that defines a substantive choice between two candidates based on issues or résumés as opposed to over-the-top negative spots questioning a candidate’s integrity and morals in a personal way.

In recent losing elections, we’ve seen more of the latter, and it has negatively impacted the Republican brand. Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) was ill-served when his campaign ran a spot that implied now-Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), as state treasurer, had invested state funds in organizations with alleged ties to terrorists. It was ridiculous, and it backfired.

The same could be said of the famous “blond bimbo” ad against Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr. in the 2006 Tennessee Senate race, aired by the Republican National Committee and without now-Sen. Bob Corker’s knowledge. Internal polling showed the ad cost Corker his lead and made the race much more competitive than it should have been.

The attack on now-Sen. Jim Webb (D) in the Virginia Senate race as a purveyor of pornography and the “godless” ad used in Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s (R-N.C.) losing reelection battle are still more egregious examples of the kind of attack media Republicans must reject.

For too many operatives, when it comes to campaign strategy, defining the opponent isn’t one option; it’s the only option. But there is another way. We’ve seen a model that worked for Republicans — the energy issue — even in the very negative political environment of the past year.

By coalescing behind a strong idea, Republicans were able to win this issue, not through an attack strategy designed to define Democrats but by positively arguing their case to the American people for an “all-of-the-above” energy policy. It was a good first step on the road back from the wilderness that we can learn from.

Republicans won’t regain a majority coalition until they reject attack-based campaigns and prove Republicans are ready to govern by first winning issues.

Unquestionably, there were elements of truth in those complaints — Bush’s job approval was a significant drag on the ticket, for example, and some of the media did take sides in the presidential contest on a whole new level. But, just as it did in the 2006 elections and three special elections for House seats that followed, the Republican Party fundamentally misunderstood the root cause of its failure to maintain a majority coalition: an inability to articulate a positive agenda that connected with voters.

Instead, the blame was placed on everyone and everything but the issue-less, relentlessly negative campaigns that party operatives have promoted for years; campaigns aimed almost entirely at turning out an angry base rather than appealing to a broader coalition.

This year, the same players dragged out the same, tired negative campaign strategy and, not surprisingly, the party hit a brick wall. As Albert Einstein liked to say, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

To rebuild its winning coalition, the party must change, not by jettisoning its core principles but by using those principles to create a modern Republican Party, in touch once again with a country that remains center-right. Some party leaders and pundits have suggested the GOP has simply lost its way.

All it has to do to regain majority status, by their reckoning, is return to the principles of Ronald Reagan. But that thinking is based on revisionist history.

Reagan didn’t create Republican principles in the late 1970s. He crafted a modernized agenda based on those principles, but one that reflected the challenges of his time. For example, Reagan embraced the traditional Republican principle of less government regulation, but applied it to create a new environment that encouraged innovation and allowed the emerging technology industry to take off.

Reagan provides a good model. When it came to setting his agenda, he relied on a set of core values, but he wasn’t afraid of changing technologies or changing times. He embraced them, pushed bold solutions and made history.

The world today, however, is very different from the one Reagan inherited nearly 30 years ago. The GOP must develop a modern agenda that acknowledges those differences, addresses the key concerns of this generation of Americans and keeps the country strong and competitive.

Yes, we must remain true to our basic principles. Yes, we can look back for inspiration. But we must look forward for solutions that reflect the challenges of these times. And as we do, we must build that modern Republican agenda in a more inclusive way if the party is to have a long-term future.

The GOP cannot remain viable if it continues to sustain the kind of losses we saw this year with younger voters, Hispanics, middle-income voters and other key swing voters. The modern Republican agenda must connect with more than the base.

Along with accepting the need for a forward- looking, inclusive, modernized agenda, it’s time the party also embraces a modern approach to campaigns. The negative campaign strategy, tactics and training that have characterized Republican operations for most of the past two decades are more than outdated. They simply don’t work.

In fact, one could argue, at this point, they are doing more harm than good.

Is it any surprise that the Republican brand has become so negative when, over the past three election cycles, national Republican committees and individual campaigns have chosen to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads rather than promoting Republican ideas and candidates in a positive way?

On the National Republican Congressional Committee’s YouTube site, not one ad in the 60 highlighted on its first couple of video pages offered a positive view of the party or individual Republican House candidates. In 2008 as it did in 2006, the party squandered millions and, more importantly, a crucial opportunity to have a conversation with the American people about what Republicans would do to solve their problems.

What we have here is a “failure to communicate” on all fronts, especially when it comes to the new media technology. From YouTube to Twitter to the blogosphere to building effective e-mail lists, the GOP is significantly behind.

Building a new media capability must be a top priority of the incoming heads of the party committees. So should a revamping of the education and training programs that turn out young campaign operatives steeped in the mythology of negative campaigning and the antiquated notion that all politics is local.

These future leaders of the party must understand that ideas matter, that voters today are looking for leaders with positive solutions, and that nationalized elections are the new reality in the age of the new media.

If acceptance is the last phase of the five stages of grief, then it’s time Republicans moved on to this reality: A modern, future-oriented Republican agenda based on core principles and supported by a modern Republican Party is the way out of the wilderness.

How did Republican base strategy work with these crucial voters? First, exit polls at the House level showed Republicans lost independents by 8 points, 43 percent to 51 percent. This was an improvement over 2006, when Republicans lost them by 18 points, 39 percent to 57 percent, but was still worse than 2004, when they lost them by 3 points, 46 percent to 49 percent.

Second, Republicans lost middle-income voters ($50,000-$75,000 per year) by 5 points, 46 percent to 51 percent, Catholics by 13 points (42-55) and married women with children, who have played key roles in recent elections, by 5 points (46-51). Four years ago, married women with children voted Republican by a margin of 9 points (54-45).

Third, the huge slide of younger voters toward the Democratic Party ought to set off alarm bells for any Republican concerned about the future viability of the party.

Despite all the hype, we saw only a slight increase in turnout among voters ages 18-29, going from 16 percent of the electorate in 2004 to 18 percent in 2008. More important, however, was the Democrats’ huge 29-point margin with this group (63-34). In 2004, Republicans lost this group by only 11 points (44-55).

Finally, there were several shifts in party identification that should also concern GOP leaders. In 2004, Republicans and Democrats were even in party ID, 38-38. Exit polls Tuesday showed Democrats with a 7-point advantage, 40-33.

Democrats’ 40 percent ID fell at the high end of their typical range, showing no extraordinary shift. For Republicans, however, their drop to 33 percent was an atypical result, the lowest ID since 1986.

A preliminary look at what happened in terms of party identification seems to indicate a shift from Republicans to independents. The number of self-identified independents rose from 25 percent in 2004 to 28 percent in 2008, the highest level since 1990; bad news for Republicans.

But there is some good news for Republicans. The data show clearly that this is still a center-right country. In the 2008 election, 34 percent of voters identified themselves as conservative. This reflects no change from 2004 and an increase of 2 points from 2006. You have to go back to the 1994 election to find a higher percentage of conservatives (37 percent).

Liberals also increased slightly, up to 22 percent, from 21 percent in 2004, but conservatives still hold a 12-point advantage. Moderates remain the largest segment of the electorate at 44 percent, just a point lower than 2004.

When it came to the No. 1 issue, the economy, cited by 63 percent of voters in the exit polls, Democrats won those voters overwhelmingly, 55-43. Second, at 10 percent, was the war in Iraq, which Democrats also won, 59-39.

So what should Republicans take away from this election? That issues do matter and the majority of voters philosophically side with Republican center-right solutions. But when Republicans take the attitude that “this election is not about issues” as Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) campaign openly asserted, they throw that advantage away.

Key voter groups moved to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Democrats because Republicans failed to articulate a clear economic message based on ideas. Contrary to conventional GOP campaign wisdom, a negative attack strategy is simply no substitute for an idea-based strategy. Lost in millions of dollars of negative ads, voters never heard what Republicans were for.

Fortunately, there is a positive model for Republicans to follow. Since the 2006 elections, there has been only one clearly identified GOP legislative success story, the issue of energy. House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and other House Republicans, with the help of former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), put forward a comprehensive “all of the above” energy proposal and forced Democrats to abandon the ban on off-shore drilling.

Republicans’ energy initiative changed public thinking. In exit polls, when asked “Do you favor or oppose drilling for oil offshore in U.S. waters where it is currently not allowed?” 69 percent of voters favored drilling; only 27 percent opposed.

That success translated into votes. Among voters who said energy was their top issue, Republicans won them 49-47. Republicans need to extend the energy issue model to other issues, the most obvious being the economy.

Republican campaigns have to get back to talking about issues that matter to people and stop thinking they can win with tactical tools and negative attacks. GOP campaigns are going to have to learn how to present ideas and solutions, something they have been remarkably inept at doing in recent years.

Simply put, most Republican campaigns today do not know how to have a conversation with the electorate, and the results are painfully obvious. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be hearing all kinds of excuses for the Republican losses. They’ve already begun as operatives blame everyone and everything but their own ineptitude. It’s time the Republican Party put ideas first.

David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party in Great Britain, provided a model Republicans ought to embrace: The purpose of a political party is not to win elections, but to prove it is ready to govern.

Original story at rollcall.com

Until a full sample is completed, some of the underlying demographics may be disproportionate. So, in the interests of electoral integrity and to help avoid a similar rush to an erroneous conclusion next Tuesday, here is a short primer on how to interpret Election Day exit polls and results.

Exit Polls: The first official exit polling data will be made available to the networks at 5 p.m. It’s risky business, however, to rely too heavily on these first numbers because in most states they will reflect only two of three waves of interviews. It would be like looking at the results of 667 interviews out of a 1,000 national sample and expecting the final numbers to be exactly the same.

Drawing conclusions from the 5 p.m. exit poll data is further complicated by the fact that the data has not yet been matched to actual precinct voting returns, which can produce some changes.

Key States: When elections break one way or another, categories of states tend to move decisively. Four key states will come in early and could be predictors of the final outcome: Indiana, Virginia, North Carolina and Ohio. Ohio is clearly a swing state, but the other three have been reliably Republican in recent presidential elections. As the exit polls and actual results begin to come in, if Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is even or close in any of those states, especially Indiana, it could represent a potential significant shift.

Key Groups: Independents will be crucial to the outcome of the election. From 1994 through 2002, Republicans won this important voter group. Democrats edged out a small victory with independents in 2004, 49 percent to 46 percent. In 2006, Republicans lost this voter bloc by 18 points, 39 percent to 57 percent, and along with it the House and Senate.

To have a chance at winning the White House and making any headway in Congress, Republicans must be in a position of near parity with Democrats in attracting independent voters. The Catholic vote is another group to watch.

In the past two presidential elections, Republicans and Democrats split this key bloc. But in the 2006 election, Republicans lost Catholics by 11 points, 44 percent to 55 percent. If the margin next week is closer to 2006 than 2000, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Congressional Republicans face a hurdle not only nationally but in key states like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Florida and Ohio.

The fate of the middle class has been a central issue throughout the election. Republicans won middle-income voters ($50,000-$75,000) from 1992 to 2004, losing them in the 2006 elections. While the voting behavior of this group tends to be more evenly divided in presidential election years, it remains a key voter segment for the Republican coalition.

Married women with children have also been a major factor in past Republican victories. In 2002, the GOP won them 55 percent to 43 percent; in 2004, 54 percent to 45 percent. However, in 2006, Democrats made gains, splitting this vote at 49 percent each. To have a good night Nov. 4, Republicans need to win this group by a margin of close to 10 points.

Party Identification and Turnout: The wide disparity in national presidential election polls has created much controversy and speculation in recent weeks. The significant differences in the ballot test in various polls reflect uncertainty about current voter registration and how it will translate into actual voters.

In every election since 1992, exit polls showed party self-identification for Democrats and Republicans ranged from 36 percent to 40 percent each. In only one of those elections, 2002, did Republicans outnumber Democrats, and then by only a small margin. In fact, Republican self-identification numbers remained relatively constant in six of the past eight elections at 36 percent.

One of the biggest questions concerning voter turnout is the participation of younger voters and African-Americans. As a percent of the final election turnout, African-Americans made up 10 percent and 11 percent, respectively, in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Seventeen percent of the electorate in each of those elections was made up of young voters, ages 18-29.

The question isn’t whether more of these voters will turn out, but whether they will represent a larger portion of the electorate than in previous years. Yes, more young voters turned out in the 2004 elections, but it’s important to remember that the size of the total electorate also increased by 20 percent, from 106 million to 122 million.

This year may be different. Because of the Obama factor, we may see unusual increases in the turnout of both groups. Some pollsters have created survey samples based on that assumption rather than past voting behavior. This adds an element of uncertainty to results and explains some of the disparity in presidential ballot test numbers in national surveys and tracking polls.

Last, on election night, if the margins for either candidate get big enough, it will overwhelm state-by-state Electoral College dynamics. Remember, in 1992, Bill Clinton won by 5.6 percent and got 370 electoral votes. In 1980, Ronald Reagan swept the election by a margin of 9.7 percent and won 489 electoral votes.

So said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), then-ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, in response to a Bush administration proposal offered five years ago by then-Treasury Secretary John Snow to reform Fannie and Freddie. Snow’s plan would have gone a long way toward depoliticizing the two housing giants and reining in their subprime lending spree that is at the heart of today’s economic crisis. In fact, the Times called the proposal “the most significant regulatory overhaul … since the savings and loan crisis.”

Over the past month, Democrats have blamed the economic meltdown on Bush and a lack of oversight and regulation. Yet its origins can be traced back to the Clinton administration and Congressional Democrats, led by Frank and current Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who pushed a reckless economic policy to achieve an important and well-intentioned social outcome — increased low-income and minority home ownership.

Republicans aren’t against regulation, but they are against mindless and needless regulation that makes American business less competitive. They created the idea of an “ownership society” that encourages home ownership, but they also believe regulation is necessary to prevent fraud or injustice, whether on Wall Street or Main Street.

In fact, it was Republicans starting with Snow, former House Financial Services Chairman Richard Baker (La.) and former Reagan Treasury official Peter Wallison who first raised the alarm bells about Fannie and Freddie’s dubious lending policies. Even as late as 2005, reform legislation sponsored by Sens. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), and co-sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) among others, went nowhere as Democratic leaders blocked consideration. Unwilling to buck his party, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) failed to support these crucial reforms as well.

Ironically, it was because of Democratic opposition to Republican reform that the very people Democrats said they wanted to help have been hurt the most. In their criticism of the Democrats’ role in the housing crisis, Republicans aren’t “blaming the poor” as Frank recently charged.

To the contrary, Republicans understand that the majority of low-income and minority borrowers didn’t fail the system when they reached for the American dream of owning their own home. They didn’t cause the problem. It was the system that put a reckless policy ahead of proper standards that failed them.

In her controversial remarks before the first vote on the housing bailout, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said of the housing crisis, “Democrats believe in the free market, which can and does create jobs, wealth and capital, but left to its own devices it has created chaos.” In truth, over the past decade or so, the free market wasn’t “left to its own devices” when it came to mortgage lending.

Before the Clinton administration’s “subprime surge” in the late ’90s, the free market, the lending industry, had solid standards in place to prevent exactly the kinds of defaults on home loans that have led to the demise of Fannie and Freddie, cost thousands of families their homes and now threaten the entire economy.

In fewer than 20 days, the American people will go to the polls under the shadow of an economic crisis that most thought could not happen here. The country is at an ideological tipping point, which is why the integrity of the political debate about this economic crisis is so important. To misread the cause of this crisis is to misread the solution.

To see the Great Panic of ’08 as a failure of capitalism or free-market economics is to misunderstand what happened. Seeking a beneficial societal outcome, increased home ownership for low-income people, Democrats forced banks unnecessarily into risky economic behavior and, in doing so, abandoned the free-market principles that have served this country well since its founding.

On Nov. 4, voters will determine far more than who controls Washington for the next four years. They will decide whether this country remains committed to the values of a free-market economy or moves left to embrace the principles of socialism and a command economy.

They will choose between two very different presidential candidates and political ideologies — one who believes in the inherent strength of free markets to provide jobs and opportunity and one who believes in government intervention to achieve social outcomes. We’ve seen in the past four weeks the catastrophic results the latter can bring. Every American is footing the bill for what was a misguided ideological decision that vividly illustrates the law of unintended consequences.

Thomas Jefferson said, “Information is the currency of democracy.” More than 200 years later, his words were never more relevant.

Only an American electorate that understands the history and dynamics of this extraordinary economic collapse will have the tools to make an informed choice. And that choice couldn’t be any starker.
Original story at rollcall.com

The answer is simple. When it comes to picking their presidents, the American people want steak, not sizzle. McCain delivered a convention packed with a newfound energy and excitement following his choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his running mate and boffo speeches by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) and former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) that brought down the house.

And McCain closed it out by giving voters the steak they were looking for — an acceptance speech with substance. He moved viewers by telling them in a very personal way of his time as a prisoner of war and how it changed him. But he also offered up his vision for the future — one of reform and change — and ended with a little sizzle of his own, bringing the delegates to their feet with one of the best oratorical closes in recent political memory.

Despite all the pre-convention hype, when the confetti had settled, it was McCain’s “Country First” convention that won the ratings battle with 38.9 million viewers, beating out Obama’s 38.4 million. Palin blew Sen. Joseph Biden out of the park with 37.2 million viewers for her acceptance speech in contrast to the Delaware Democrat’s 24 million.

But the more important numbers are the post-convention polls. Initially, Obama got a small bounce after his convention, but it was a short-lived gain that masked what has been a tightening over the summer. When McCain and GOP Congressional leaders moved to make energy a central economic issue, Democrats’ generic advantage began to shrink.

Last week, Republicans were positioned for a breakout and McCain led the charge, delivering a convention bounce the Obama people didn’t see coming. On Sunday, the USA Today/Gallup Poll had McCain at 50 percent to 46 percent over Obama, an 11-point gain. But more significantly, it showed McCain has closed the gap on the key question of who can better handle the economy.

Before the conventions, Obama held a 19-point advantage on this most important of issues, but the new poll shows it has dropped to 3 points, within the margin of error. Gallup’s daily tracking, which showed Obama with an 8-point lead just after his convention, now puts McCain in the lead by 5.

By midweek, more polls will give us a better feel for the size and staying power of the bounce, but it’s already clear that “Country First” beat the “Colossus of Colorado.”

McCain’s surprise choice of Palin excited the base in a way that no other choice would have done while, at the same time, connecting with a number of key voter groups: married women with children, independents and blue-collar Democrats.

Reinforcing this connection with swing voters were McCain’s and Palin’s speeches.

McCain, in vintage form, smartly and honestly first took on his party: “We lost [the people’s] trust, when we valued our power over our principles. … We’re going to change that.”

Palin staked out her ground as a reformer with an electrifying speech that showed she represents a new generation of conservatives who don’t fit the narrow-minded, out-of-touch mold Democrats and the media have tried to cast on the GOP. Voters saw a changing of the GOP guard in St. Paul, Minn., and they liked it.

The post-convention environment finds Obama and his campaign on the defensive. By raising concerns about Palin’s experience, Obama, Biden and their bidders only raised more questions about Obama’s experience.

The over-the-top criticism of Palin by Democrats, left-wing bloggers and the media also put the Obama campaign on the defensive. After his campaign’s initial condescending statement in response to the Palin announcement, Obama and Biden tried to back away and take the high road. But thanks to continuing ill-advised comments by his surrogates, left-wing bloggers and even Oprah Winfrey, damage to his image has been done.

Obviously frustrated, Obama’s campaign has even complained that McCain’s convention slogan was an attack an his patriotism, thus conjuring up the Carly Simon line, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” “Country First” had nothing to do with Obama and everything to do with McCain and his lifetime of service — the central theme repeated throughout the convention.

It’s a long time until November. Palin has hurdles to leap, and the Obama camp will pull out all the stops. The candidates will have to survive the debates, and voters will be watching closely. The conventions proved that.

But with the end of the convention period, the McCain campaign has a big and well-deserved win under its belt.

Article on rollcall.com

Choosing to stay with his comrades in a North Vietnam prison and enduring five and a half years of torture, starvation and solitary confinement, the Arizona Republican understands desperate circumstances better than most. Selecting a running mate is a big decision but an act of “desperation” in McCain’s biography of life experiences? Not hardly.

McCain has always understood the concept of high stakes, whether it was as a guest in the Hanoi Hilton or backing a troop surge in Iraq when the president and Defense secretary of his own party strongly opposed him. In the case of the surge, he was proved right.

It’s understandable that the media didn’t know what to make of McCain’s surprise choice of Sarah Palin, the little-known governor of Alaska. Many Republicans, myself included, didn’t know much about Palin either. So, that first round of press calls and appearances left reporters with little to chew on.

Now, we’ve had a few days to digest McCain’s selection and see Palin in action. Clearly, she faces some tough hurdles in the next few weeks, convincing not only the media but voters that she has the right stuff to sit a heartbeat away from the presidency.

But her maiden speech electrified a cheering crowd of thousands in Dayton, Ohio, and likely did the same with many more watching it at home. Her performance was near-perfect, stumble-free and personable as she hit all the right political and biographical notes.

Now that we’ve had a chance to watch a little bit of her performance on the stump and learn more about this unusual politician’s background and record, McCain’s decision still seems risky but also has the potential to reap big benefits for the campaign. Palin’s greatest strength is likely to be her firsthand knowledge and experience in the energy arena.

With energy the key component of the economic debate this year, her years taking on Big Oil while advocating a proactive, pro-drilling posture makes her the energy expert in the race. Her credibility on energy issues gives McCain the opportunity to continue the progress he’s already made on the economic issue with his call for more domestic drilling.

None of the other “big three” on the two tickets can claim her expertise on what is not only an economic issue but a national security issue, and apparently, she knows her stuff.

On “Meet the Press,” CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, who interviewed Palin last week before her selection, told Tom Brokaw she was impressed with Palin’s knowledge on energy, saying, “She came across so strong with regard to economic matters as they relate to energy and as they relate to overall economic growth, I think it was a very savvy pick actually.”

She also adds strength to the ticket as a reformer. Until now, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), with his call for change, has been able to appropriate the mantle of reformer that has characterized most of McCain’s Congressional career. While Washington insiders understand that McCain has earned his maverick label over two decades of taking issue with party leaders and presidents, many voters may not.

Palin’s selection puts the reform issue back in play by letting McCain assert that his ticket, not Obama’s, represents a pair of real reformers. We know McCain’s record and we’re learning about her battles with powerful Republicans from Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska) to former Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski. This will provide a marked contrast with Obama, who has been unable to cite a single example in which he took on the political leadership of his party on any serious issue.

Palin can also claim her executive experience as a plus. While she has been in the governor’s office a relatively short time, McCain can point to her “reform” record in the energy area, taxes, education, ethics, and in her decision early on to do away with many of the trappings of office.

Finally, Palin gives McCain and Republicans an opportunity to rebuild the winning Republican coalition that fractured in 2006 by appealing to three key elements of that coalition: married women with children, independent women and blue-collar voters. She may pick up a few disgruntled Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) voters, but her real strength is more likely to lie with these three groups, which were a significant contributing factor in the Republican loss of the House and Senate two years ago.

She will also be extraordinarily popular with the Republican base. We’ve seen evidence of this already as the more conservative elements of the party have praised the selection of Palin. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Palin’s selection is evidence that it is possible to choose a running mate capable of appealing to both the base and swing voters.

Sarah Palin has her work cut out for her in the next 60 or so days — getting through the convention, her first media interviews and the vice presidential debate to name three. She cleared her first hurdle Friday with room to spare.

Article on rollcall.com

All was going according to plan at the convention kickoff rally when presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) inexplicably bungled his introduction of running mate Sen. Joseph Biden (Del.), calling him “the next president.” Taking a cue from his leader, Biden proudly followed suit by referring to Obama as “the next president of the United States, Barack America.”

This not the way to begin a nominating convention that needs to give Obama a bounce — a big bounce. The current political environment gives Democrats a substantial edge, yet almost three months after securing the nomination, Obama continues to underperform, running well behind the Democratic generic ballot advantage.

Despite switching a long list of liberal positions in an obvious move toward the center, he has failed to create a significant margin between himself and presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (Ariz.). Democrats are concerned, and they should be.

The context for the fall election has changed significantly. Both McCain and Obama succeeded in their respective primaries, in large part, because of their positions on the Iraq War.

But, as the surge has succeeded and there appears to be light at the end of the Iraq tunnel, the economy has superseded the war as the top issue. Democrats had counted on voters’ anti-war feeling to carry them to victory in November. As that issue has faded, they have turned to the faltering economy as a fallback strategy.

While they still have an advantage over McCain and Republicans on the economy, polls show their lead is shrinking, and increasingly, they find themselves on the wrong side of the most critical element in the economic rubric of issues: energy.

Democrats can thank $4 a gallon for turning their election strategy on its head. Much to their dismay, Obama and Hill Democrats have now discovered that following “uber-green” Al Gore and his “handmaiden” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) down the “no drilling” path has put them squarely at odds with the vast majority of voters.

Democratic Members of the House and Senate can read polls, too, and are, no doubt, still waiting for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Pelosi to explain why the Democratic Congress’ job-approval numbers are lower than the president’s. The public was unhappy with Congress before energy emerged as the central economic concern, but Republicans had not given them a reason to reconsider the 2006 election.

The energy issue, led by House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and McCain, has given voters a reason to consider Republicans again.

While neither campaign has developed a clear economic message, McCain’s support for increasing domestic energy is far closer to the views of the majority of Americans. Most polls show that about 70 percent of voters support increased drilling.

It’s not surprising that Obama, reinforced by most of the Democratic Party leadership, has resorted to a combination of classic Democratic class-warfare rhetoric (which didn’t work for Gore), personal shots and a one- dimensional message of change that is wearing thin.

Given Obama’s issue flip-flops over the past few weeks, Americans don’t really know what kind of change he offers other than the fact that he isn’t George Bush and, according to every Democrat including Obama who will hit the podium this week, John McCain is. Choosing the consummate Washington insider as his running mate reflects the obvious problems Obama is having with his brand.

He wants to continue to claim the mantle of change, but polls show people are simply not convinced he’s ready to be either commander in chief or chief diplomat. So, he picks Foreign Relations Chairman Biden in an effort to close the experience gap and runs headlong into his own outsider image of change, so carefully crafted during the primaries.

Biden brings a quick wit (which gets him into trouble on occasion) to the campaign, and that will make him a formidable opponent, particularly in the debates. He also will help with Catholics, a key voter group that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) won in the primaries by sizable margins.

But his sharp criticism during the primaries of Obama’s lack of experience only reinforces the underlying source of Obama’s underperformance, and when it comes to party unity, he simply isn’t Hillary Clinton.

Add to voter wariness their impatience with the kind of personal, nonissue attacks Obama launched last week over McCain’s “housing” gaffe and the outcome of the convention becomes even more important.

I suspect hardly a speaker will leave the stage without a crack about McCain’s homes or allusions to his age. That is exactly the kind of attack politics voters don’t want, and Obama promised to reject, putting him once again in conflict with his brand and giving the McCain campaign justification for raising Rezko, Wright, Ayres and other Obama skeletons as issues.

The Obama campaign is off track and off message, which is why the convention has become so crucial. Clearly frustrated by his lack of progress, Obama is discovering, as are Pelosi and Reid, that being the “anti-Bush” isn’t enough. Neither is simply being for some obtuse promise of “change.”

To be successful, the Democratic convention must convince voters that a leftist doctrinaire is really just like them, that his running mate’s earlier criticism of his lack of experience no longer applies, that Hillary and Bill Clinton are really on board, that Obama’s new attack strategy doesn’t conflict with his brand, and that Democrats are really in tune when it comes to energy and the economy.

That’s a tall order.

Article on rollcall.com

That would be the political equivalent of putting C-SPAN up against the Super Bowl and expecting ratings.

Let’s face it. McCain could parachute into the Broncos’ stadium with his new running mate, and the media would relegate his announcement to “in other political news yesterday.” This trial balloon, if it is a trial balloon, is a nonstarter.

His campaign already tried a direct assault on Obama’s oratorical skills the night Obama cinched the nomination. They’re still taking flak over that decision and the color green.

The timing and choice of the running mates, however, is one of the more interesting strategic decisions facing both campaigns. While who they select is important, in politics, timing, as the old line goes, is everything.

For Obama, the longer he can delay the announcement, the better off he is. Obama knows his issue positions are not in tune with the country. That’s a fact borne out in polling data showing the country is still center-right.

Obama can claim to be a centrist and even change his views to move in that direction, but any objective review of his legislative record and the positions he espoused during the primaries show him to be far left of center.

Until now, most of the media focus has been on process. It has centered on his oratorical skills, his wife, his racial identity, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Obamamania, his biography, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson and the VP choice. All process, no issues.

Once he chooses a running mate, however, the biggest process question will have been answered, and Obama might actually have to talk about issues in a substantive way. From a strategic point of view, the longer Obama can delay that moment and continue to talk, albeit effectively, in generalities about change, he takes time off the clock and puts McCain at a disadvantage.

For McCain, the debate over his choice of running mate is a distraction. The sooner he picks his VP candidate, the better, for several reasons. First, it lets McCain get back to talking about the issues, where he is strategically far better positioned than Obama.

McCain ought to ramp up his rhetoric on the differences between his views, which are center-right, and Obama’s leftist doctrine. McCain won’t win this election on style points, but he can win on substance.

Second, choosing a running mate doubles the number of official spokesmen for the campaign. This might seem a silly argument were it not for the fact that the national media coverage of Obama has been so excessive.

The Tyndall Report, a media watchdog Web site, found that since Obama won the nomination in June, he has gotten 114 minutes on the network evening news broadcasts to McCain’s 48. The weekly news magazines have given Obama twice as many covers.

McCain has made three foreign trips in recent months. Not only were the Big Three anchors uninterested in accompanying him, the network news coverage of the visits was minimal, particularly when compared to Obama’s weeklong media extravaganza. To doubters, I commend Howard Kurtz’s excoriating review of the media’s “imbalanced” coverage of Obama on CNN’s “Reliable Source” last Sunday.

Finally, naming his VP choice now moves McCain’s campaign beyond the unhelpful debate about the base and whether his running mate will appeal to the most conservative voters out there. The discussion ought to be focused on who can best address the issues that concern the vast majority of voters.

If McCain hopes to appeal to the kind of broad base he will need to defeat Obama, his running mate should bring experience in economic issues, such as how to create jobs and spur economic growth while keeping taxes low. Rudy Giuliani and former House Member-U.S. Trade Representative-Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman are good examples of possible choices who can talk about economic issues with credibility and also reach out to the center, where the election will be won or lost.

For McCain, much of the VP speculation has focused on two criteria — age and mollifying the base. His VP announcement gives him the opportunity to put the base argument to rest and take back the No. 1 issue for most voters: the economy.

Obama’s lack of experience in foreign policy has received media attention. His equal lack of experience in economic matters has not. Polls indicate Obama’s strength on economic issues has more to do with an unpopular Republican president (or a negative environment for the GOP) than either his economic proposals or any personal expertise.

McCain, who has spent 25 years dealing with the country’s economic problems, can claim far more experience on his worst day than Obama on his best. Obama’s thin record has called into question his qualifications to be commander in chief; the same skepticism ought to apply to his credentials to serve as economist in chief.

McCain’s VP selection gives him a media-intensive forum to outline his plans for the economy and change the debate. The sooner that discussion begins, the better.

Article on rollcall.com

Thanks to the guy who told us “words matter,” issue “refining” as political speak now enters the realm of such classics as “revenue enhancement” (tax increases) and “strategic redeployment” (retreat). If this were just another politician, this kind of behavior would hardly be surprising.

But for the past 18 months, Obama has marketed himself to his supporters, especially his youngest backers, as a new kind of candidate, wrapping himself in “change we can believe in.”

But can we? I’m not knocking Obama simply because he had a change of heart or mind on a particular issue. It’s important that as candidates debate policy, voters give them the flexibility to rethink positions when circumstances change.

Finding one’s way through what is a political thicket of policy positions isn’t easy for any candidate. Voters want leaders with consistency and principle, but they also want men and women who constantly assess the social, economic and security environment as it is and as it might be.

When it comes to crafting policy, consistency is a good thing and at times essential; so is a willingness to revisit a position when circumstances dictate.

If the state of the economy worsens or a serious national security threat arises, it would be irresponsible for politicians not to acknowledge those changes and adjust their policies accordingly. After Pearl Harbor, what had been an isolationist Congress abruptly changed course because circumstances had changed, in that instance dramatically.

After 9/11, President Bush, who had opposed nation building in the 2000 campaign, reversed himself and embraced it as part of his Iraq policy. Whether one agrees or disagrees with that decision, it was a radically changed national security environment that led Bush to a proactive stance on the war on terror.

But is it changed circumstances or political expediency that is driving Obama’s policy U-turns? If Sen. Obama has now learned that the surge in Iraq has worked, that FISA is, in fact, necessary to protect the security of the United States, that overly restrictive gun laws don’t reduce crime, or that free trade does more good than harm, so be it.

If he now sees that welfare reform of the mid-1990s was necessary, that not all late-term abortions can be justified or that Iran “does pose a serious threat” to the United States after all, then his reversals on all these positions could be justified.

But that isn’t what he has been saying. To the contrary, he is trying to convince the American people that his recent policy switches on all these issues were, in fact, his views all along. That he is simply “refining” those original positions, not reversing them.

In the case of his wholesale abandonment of public financing, his explanation simply defies credulity. When faced with his first test of choosing principle or political advantage, Obama failed to live up to his own standards. That left some of even his staunchest supporters with a queasy feeling, wondering what happed to the high-minded principles that drew them to him in the first place.

Critics have tried to equate Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) change on domestic oil drilling with Obama’s policy switches. But in McCain’s case, economic and social circumstances did change significantly.

When gas goes to more than $4 a gallon, candidates ought to rethink every energy option — more domestic drilling, more nuclear power, more conservation and more alternative power sources. In adopting a comprehensive approach, McCain did exactly that.

Last week on Hannity & Colmes, National Review Editor Rich Lowry asked Democratic pundit Michael Brown a very compelling question. How would he explain Obama’s recent major policy switches to one of the millions of young, naive Obama supporters so personally invested in their candidate’s promise of “change you can believe in?”

Brown, without a moment’s hesitation, proffered that in order to get elected, all presidential candidates change positions once the primaries are over. Everybody moves to the center.

His advice to young Obamaniacs could be summed up as, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”

That may work for most politicians, but it’s problematic for one who has set himself apart as a different kind of candidate, one who rejects the old politics. He may discover there is a high a price to pay when one walks away from the central promise and premise of a political campaign. Just ask George H.W. Bush, who once pledged, “No new taxes.”

Barack Obama has not rejected his original positions as wrong, misguided or even out of date. Instead, he has pushed principle aside and now offers his young idealists and the rest of the American people a general election theme — “refinement you can believe in.”

Article on rollcall.com

Although the Democrat at one point led the sitting VP by 17 points, Bush rallied to beat Dukakis by 314 electoral votes. (Dukakis lost one when the Electoral College convened.)

In that election, Bush carried states such as Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, Vermont and California. Yes, California. A short four years later, the tide had turned. Bill Clinton won by a margin of 5.6 points and got 370 electoral votes.

In the end, he trounced Bush by 202 votes in the Electoral College, carrying states such as Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana and West Virginia.

No, the 1988 and 1992 elections were not held in a parallel universe. In fact, looking at recent history, these kinds of margins in presidential races were more the norm than the exception.

Five months from the 2008 election, political pundits and operatives are trying to use national and state polls to predict a winner in this fall’s presidential sweepstakes.

In the stampede to handicap the odds for the November election, the debate over the value of national polls versus state polls has become an ongoing argument in political circles. What the discussion needs now, as the campaign moves into the general election phase, is context.

In close election battles, like the two most recent presidential races, the resulting margin in the Electoral College has been so close that a slight change in voter preference in just a state or two could have changed the eventual outcome. A small difference in Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004, and we would be saying goodbye to President Gore or in the midst of President Kerry’s re-election battle.

But the closeness of those races has made us forget that when the margin at the national level becomes large enough, the margin in the Electoral College becomes not just bigger but exponentially bigger. What changes the dynamics of the presidential contest is the size of the winning national coalition, and that change simply overwhelms state-by-state dynamics.

In other words, when the breadth and depth of a candidate’s national coalition becomes substantial enough, it tends to tip many states in one direction. Historically, if a candidate wins the popular vote by approximately 5 points or more, the result in the Electoral College is far more lopsided than one might expect.

Harry Truman won in 1948 by 4.5 points yet defeated Thomas Dewey in the Electoral College by 115 votes (although one of his electors voted differently when the college convened). On the other hand, a win below 4 points tends to produce the kind of races we have seen in the past two elections, with Electoral College results of 271-266 in 2000 and 286-251 in 2004.

The one oddity came in 1968, when Richard Nixon won by less than 1 point but topped Hubert Humphrey by 110 electoral votes. This was the result of George Wallace’s third-party effort, which hurt Humphrey and skewed polls as predictors.

For a concrete example of how this phenomenon works, look at the 2004 election. Both presidential campaigns were state- focused and not national-coalition-focused. Instead, they relied on base strategies that depended on finding like-minded voters in key states and turning them out.

This strategy was unfortunate for Republicans at the House level because it caused them to lose independents for the first time since the Gingrich revolution and set the table for the one-sided 2006 elections. With both campaigns focused on their respective bases, their reach was minimized; and, as a result, neither candidate had much of an ability to get more than 50 percent.

Each was talking to just enough voters to win in the key states they needed to eke out a national victory while the big middle, hardly a small part of the electorate, got short shrift. This year’s presidential campaign is much different.

Both Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) have talked about building large coalitions and running 50-state campaigns. They are competing for voters whom presidential candidates did not pursue in the two previous elections.

Whether it is McCain going after the old Reagan Coalition by reaching out to working- class voters, independents and Catholics, or Obama focusing on independents, young people and upscale voters, both are trying to build a coalition far different and far larger than their immediate predecessors. Regardless of the outcome, this approach is better not only for the election process but, inevitably, for whomever becomes the next president.

Why does it matter whether a president wins by 370 electoral votes or just seven? Close races deny presidents the kind of indisputable mandate that gives him or her the political and popular strength to govern, and that is the purpose of a president just as it is a political party — to govern.

In the next few months, daily national tracking and polling in key states will fuel a running debate on the actual status of the race. While state-by-state polls could be predictive, keep an eye on the national polling margins.

As long as one side or the other stays ahead in these polls by at least 5 points, it will be clear which candidate is succeeding in building a broad-based winning coalition.

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The “power, pork, and attack” strategy, devised and executed by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) over the course of seven years, did bring scandal with it. But to interpret the 2006 loss as the result of corruption is to miss the greater point.

Simply put, voters sacked the Republicans because they perceived the GOP had done nothing to address voter problems and fundamentally misunderstood their growing concerns with cost-of-living issues. Instead of offering new ideas, Republicans continued negative attacks and tried to “out-Tip” Tip O’Neill when it came to district-by-district pork.

The problem Republicans faced then —and still face today — stems from a lack of substance behind their brand, a reliance on dogmatic ideology to define themselves rather than focusing on finding solutions to larger voter concerns on health care, energy, jobs, housing and security.

The GOP “brand problem” has led voters to believe that Republicans do not care about people, in particular the middle class. House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio), whose recent GOP energy proposal is a significant step toward addressing negative voter perception, often says that Republicans have to “earn” their way back to majority status.

What does that mean? It means defining a view of the future that is compelling and possible, not defining one’s opponent. It means defining a Republican Party concerned about people, not one that says problems can’t be solved or it isn’t Washington’s job.

It means applying conservative principles to problems with the kind of intellectual vibrancy that underpinned the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions. That is the challenge facing the party in this historic election. The Republican brand problem is all about defining the future for voters — what a Republican president and Congress can do to help them.

We need a clean break from the politics of the past. We have to break from the party’s image of power for power’s sake, its image of incompetence, of a lack of purpose or caring. To prove that we are the party best able to achieve the lofty goals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we have to create a modern GOP that embraces change.

That doesn’t mean abandoning conservative principles. It does mean, however, rejecting the thinking that got a right-of-center party on the wrong side of a right-of-center country. Data show the GOP label itself is a drag on the party and its candidates at all levels.

In a recent survey, we tested the Democratic message of unity and change to solve problems with a Republican message asserting that Washington is broken and needs fixing to ensure a safer, healthier, more prosperous future.

When the statements were read to voters without partisan attribution, the GOP message won by 12 points. When we attached partisan labels to the very same statements, it lost by 6 points. Clearly, the Republican Party brand is in serious trouble.

Given the products of a political party are its ideas on issues, years of running campaigns that relied on defining Democrats rather than Republican policies have weakened the GOP brand. Survey research over the past four years has shown Democrats with a huge issue-handling advantage on energy, education, health care and Social Security.

What should be even more alarming to Republicans is that research shows voters put more faith in Democrats to be more fiscally responsible and to better handle the economy, jobs and the Iraq War. Republicans hold an advantage on one issue, the war on terror, and they tie on taxes.

How did Republicans dig themselves into this hole? They simply forgot that the broader purpose behind Ronald Reagan’s and Newt Gingrich’s revolutions was to change America through ideas. When a party is more concerned about earmarks, hitting up K Street and attacking the opponent than finding conservative solutions for rising health care costs, falling home prices or high gas prices, voters will perceive its leaders as uncaring and insensitive to their needs.

Yet, despite the 2006 election debacle and despite three special election losses this year in Republican districts, a number of influential party operatives are arguing for more of the same. They advise, “Stick with the status quo; attack your opponent, bring home some bacon to brag about, spend more money. You’ll be fine.” Tell that to the three special election candidates who won’t be joining the House Republican Conference.

While Democrats face the same kind of voter discontent, they remain ahead in national polls because Republicans haven’t broken through as a viable alternative. Contrary to Democratic claims, however, voters haven’t embraced their party’s ideology over the past year. That gives Republicans an opening.

Whether the party can take advantage of the opportunity depends on whether it accepts the premise that ideas will win this election, not money or dogma, and shows that it is ready to govern. That will take a clean break from the past to modernize and create the Republican Party of the future.

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Yet, in the week that his campaign and its willing followers in the media all but declared Obama the Democratic presidential nominee, his first step toward the general election was to take the low road by raising one of the sorriest episodes in the history of the Democratic Party — the Keating Five scandal of more than 20 years ago.

Introducing Obama at an Oregon town meeting Friday, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) happily did the candidate’s dirty work by lobbing the first cheap shot of the general election campaign. Ridiculing Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) support for less regulation, DeFazio sneered, “I guess maybe for a guy who was up to his neck in the Keating Five and saving[s] and loan scandal, less regulation is better.”

If Obama were sincere in his calls for a new kind of politics, one might have expected him to denounce DeFazio. But when asked about DeFazio’s attack, Obama instead called the Keating Five scandal fair game, saying, “I don’t have any doubt that John McCain’s public record about issues that he’s apologized for and written about is germane to the presidency.” So much for the “new” politics of Barack Obama.

Clearly, DeFazio’s attack and Obama’s reinforcement signaled a calculated decision to use the savings and loan scandal as political ammunition to hit McCain hard as a conventional Washington politician — corrupt and beholden to special interests.

There is just one impediment to the nasty little narrative Obama and DeFazio are trying to peddle: longtime Democratic lawyer Bob Bennett. In November 1989, Bennett was appointed special counsel to the Senate Ethics Committee by then-Chairman Howell Heflin (D-Ala.) and Vice Chairman Warren Rudman (R-N.H.) to investigate the relationship between five Senators and Charles Keating, owner of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan in California.

Bennett devotes an entire chapter in his new book, “In the Ring,” to the Keating Five scandal; his firsthand account not only clears McCain of wrongdoing, but to this observer, provides evidence of the grossest kind of political manipulation on the part of Senate Democratic leaders at the time.

After months of thorough investigating, Bennett recommended to the committee that no further action be taken against either McCain or then-Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), a result that didn’t go down well with Democrats on the committee. As Bennett puts it in his book, “My recommendation that the only Republican in the group, John McCain, be exonerated caused a big political problem, but my recommendations were based on evidence not politics.”

Bennett lost the fight when Senate Democratic leaders, fearing a political backlash if the bipartisan “Keating Five” became three Democrats, decided to ignore Bennett’s counsel and hold public hearings on all five Senators. Calling this decision “pure politics,” Bennett today says this was “perhaps the first time the recommendation of a special counsel not to charge a Senator was rejected.”

Simply put, Democrats on the Ethics Committee needed a Republican target to ensure the investigation did not become a one-party scandal even if it meant sacrificing John Glenn to do it. Apparently, Democrats were willing to ruin the reputations of two national heroes to protect the Democratic Party’s political fortunes.

The truth, which we can thank Bennett for revealing, is that neither McCain nor Glenn should have been included in the public hearings. This is an astonishing revelation that represents exactly the kind of morally bankrupt politics Barack Obama says he rejects. But his actions of last week call into question his rather insistent and constant claim to the moral high ground in this year’s election.

In choosing to use this issue, Obama made a conscious decision to ignore the Ethics Committee’s final report on the Keating affair in 1991, which concluded that “Senator McCain’s actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him.” Obama also chose to disregard later comments about McCain made by Fred Wertheimer, the head of Common Cause, which filed the original ethics complaint behind the Ethics Committee investigation.

Wertheimer was quoted in a 1999 New York Times article saying, “Senator McCain’s commitment on the issue [campaign finance reform] has been real and deep, and his leadership has been courageous in publicly challenging his own party and Senate colleagues.” Moreover, McCain himself has publicly and painfully accepted responsibility for his handling of the Keating situation.

Yet, Obama, the “new” politician, says this issue is fair game in the general election.

Last week, Mark McKinnon, the McCain campaign’s media strategist, suggested a series of debates and joint town-hall meetings between the two presumptive nominees beginning this summer. When asked about the McCain campaign proposal for these less structured joint appearances, Obama called it “a great idea,” telling reporters he would welcome the “opportunity to debate substantive issues before the voters with John McCain.”

Now we know what the Obama campaign considers a “substantive” issue, and it isn’t positive or “post-partisan.” What DeFazio and Obama did in raising the Keating Five scandal was no different than Senate Democrats’ willingness, almost two decades ago, to sacrifice the good names of two of the nation’s most devoted sons for pure political expediency.

There is nothing new or different in that, and it certainly isn’t what Barack Obama is selling. Instead, he has methodically created a self-serving self-portrait of a different kind of politician, one who will not stoop to the kind of raw campaign tactics that, too often, have marred our elections.

Obama’s actions last week make it increasingly clear his campaign is becoming all too familiar. It’s called politics as usual.

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It’s been a rough week for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Instead of finally closing the deal on the Democratic presidential nomination, he was soundly defeated by New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary.

But more than just losing another major state, his failure to attract blue-collar Democrats has raised doubts about his ability to put together a winning coalition in key big states in November.

If that weren’t enough, Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, also re-emerged this week with defiant and impolitic appearances before the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Press Club.

Still, I suspect, his campaign is comforting itself with the notion that at least things can’t get any worse. Except they can get worse — and much worse at that.

For the first time in nearly two decades, California may now be in play for both parties, the Democrats’ worst nightmare.

Unlike Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states where Obama’s weakness with “Reagan Democrats” has kept him from wrapping up the nomination, the Hispanic vote and, to a smaller degree, the Asian vote, could well be his Achilles’ heel in California this November.

Democrats will be quick to discount this notion, rejecting out of hand any possibility that this usually reliable Democratic mega state could end up in the Republican column. But even a basic analysis of primary election and exit poll results shows that Obama may have a Hispanic problem every bit as significant as his working-class disconnect that has been so apparent in recent primaries.

Looking at the overall outcome on Super Tuesday, Clinton won the Hispanic vote by a huge 63-35 percent margin. State by state, the numbers are equally remarkable. In New Mexico, her winning margin with Hispanic voters was 26 points; 38 points in New Jersey; 35 points in California; 47 points in New York; 20 points in Massachusetts; and 14 points in Arizona.

Even in his home state of Illinois, Obama only eked out a 1-point victory over Clinton with Hispanic voters, 50-49 percent. Post Super Tuesday, Clinton won the Hispanic vote in Texas, 66-32 percent and in Maryland, 55-45 percent.

While the Hispanic vote will play a key role in a number of states, none is more important or has more potential to change the outcome of the general election than California. Democrats must win California to win the presidency, and in recent presidential elections, Republicans have all but opted out of playing in the Golden State.

It takes an enormous amount of time and money to campaign in California, and for years, the odds didn’t favor Republicans. In 2000, Gore won the state with 53-42 percent. Kerry also carried California handily with 54-44 percent.

But Obama’s weakness with Hispanic voters could be a game changer in California.

In 2000, Hispanics accounted for 14 percent of the California electorate and 21 percent in 2004. One would expect that percentage to be even higher in 2008.

A more in-depth look into the numbers shows Obama’s usual strength with younger voters doesn’t hold true for young Hispanic voters.

In California, Obama won white voters ages 18-29 by a big margin, 63-32 percent. But Clinton won younger Hispanics, who voted more like Hispanics than young people, with 65-35 percent.

Obama is also at a disadvantage in California because the African-American vote, which now gives him more than 90 percent support in most states, makes up a much smaller part of the overall electorate. In 2006, it accounted for only 5 percent of the vote, 1 point less than the Asian community, which is also not good for Obama.

Clinton won Asian voters in the California primary by a staggering 71-25 percent. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also won the Asian vote easily by 62-37 percent.

Ideology may also be a factor in California. When asked to self-identify in the Democratic primary, white voters broke down 58 percent liberal, 32 percent moderate and 10 percent conservative. But among Hispanics, a much lower 43 percent identified themselves as liberal, 41 percent as moderate and 11 percent as conservative. Among Asians, the breakdown was even more favorable to the GOP, coming in as 34 percent liberal, 55 percent moderate and 11 percent conservative.

Arizona Sen. John McCain may have been at odds with a part of the GOP base on immigration and other issues. But as it turns out, he may be perfectly positioned to take advantage of Obama’s Hispanic problem, not just in California, but in blue states like New Jersey as well.

In 2004, Hispanic voters made up 10 percent of the New Jersey electorate. Kerry won the state with 53 percent, close enough to make New Jersey a target state for Republicans in 2008.

Clinton’s 38-point margin over Obama with Hispanic voters in the New Jersey primary, coupled with McCain’s moderate conservatism, could be a potent prescription for a tight race in November with even small movement in key groups like Hispanics or working-class swing voters.

The media are right to focus on the fissures in Obama’s electoral strategy that fail to address his problems with the kind of working-class voters who swung to Ronald Reagan in 1980. But they need to add Hispanic and even Asian voters to the list of Obama spoilers.

For the McCain campaign, they may have to add “California Here I Come” to music on the bus.

David Winston is president of The Winston Group, a Republican polling firm.

Correction: April 29, 2008

The column originally misidentified the percentage of Hispanic votes for Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in the Illinois primary. Obama had a 1-point victory over Clinton among Hispanic voters, 50 percent to Clinton’s 49 percent.

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The morning show anchor raised the issue of New York Times columnist Frank Rich’s scolding of Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) for their cynical assertions that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wants to fight the Iraq War for another 100 years. Vieira asked Obama, “Are you willing to admit that you’ve distorted his statements?”

Obama, in the finest “I dare ya” tradition of Gary Hart, responded, “No. That’s not accurate. We can pull up the quotes on YouTube.”

Let’s do that, Senator. In truth, the video of McCain’s comments on the potential for a long commitment of U.S. troops in Iraq is clear. Contrary to Obama’s claims, McCain never advocated for a “100-year war.”

Zachary Roth wrote of Obama’s “stepped up attacks on McCain’s ‘100 years’ notion” in the Columbia Journalism Review: “Obama is seriously misleading voters — if not outright lying to them — about exactly what McCain said.” Similar sentiments have been expressed across the ideological media spectrum from Fox News to the Washington Post to Slate magazine.

The videos on YouTube that ought to really matter to voters are those of Obama that show his willing mischaracterization of McCain’s remarks along with his apologists who, when called upon to explain the boss’s dishonest statements about McCain, simply denied they were ever uttered.

When you know a candidate’s every word is on the Web usually in minutes, that kind of denial takes real chutzpah, and David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign manager, apparently has plenty of it. Two days before Obama’s “Today” appearance, Axelrod told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, “He [Obama] isn’t saying that Sen. McCain has said we would be at war for 100 years.” Really?

Let’s pull up some of Obama’s actual quotes on the matter. “We’re now bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years,” Obama said during the presidential debate in Cleveland on April 5. “[Sen. McCain] says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq,” he said at a rally in Houston on Feb. 19.

“And when it comes to foreign policy, John McCain says he wants to fight a 100-year war, a 100 years he says, as long as it takes,” Obama said at a rally in Bangor, Maine, on Feb. 9. Those are just three examples.

A similar denial strategy was attempted on the issue of Obama’s pledge last year to accept public financing in the general election. When Obama first publicly supported the notion, he was still an underfunded and underestimated candidate back in the presidential pack. His support of public financing was not only pragmatic, it also played into the image he was trying to create for himself as a “new” kind of politician, a post-partisan candidate unwilling to sell out to moneyed interests.

Last November, in response to a questionnaire from the Midwest Democracy Network asking whether he would agree to “forgo private funding in the general election campaign,” Obama responded with an unambiguous “yes.” He also pledged, “If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.”

Well, McCain agreed; but in February, when asked by The Associated Press about Obama’s stated intention to take public financing, his spokesman Bill Burton said, “There is no pledge.” I suppose it depends on what the meaning of “pledge” is. What really changed over those three months was the size of Obama’s bank account.

Both of these controversies — Obama’s distortion of McCain’s “100 years” statement and his decision to renege on his public financing promise — create a nagging suspicion that the man behind the curtain isn’t quite the wonderful wizard we’ve been led to believe.

Instead, Obama and his campaign are looking all too familiar these days –– typical politicians suffering from a sense of righteous entitlement that they believe gives them permission to depart, on occasion, from the usual political rules. Fudging the facts about what McCain says or doesn’t say is all right because this candidacy operates on a different moral plane.

Breaking a campaign promise is acceptable when the end — Obama’s ascension to the presidency — justifies the means. Until recently, it all seemed to be working for them.

But, as Obama’s stumbles and gaffes have finally begun to get media scrutiny, he and his spokesmen have been forced to take another approach, a kind of “thesaurus” strategy.

Instead of denial, they revise, explain, clarify and refine his statements while maintaining their inherent rightness. His remarks are misunderstood, distorted, misconstrued, mischaracterized, misrepresented or taken out of context by his political opponents or unfriendly media.

Obama certainly didn’t mean his white grandmother was a racist. He really didn’t like Ronald Reagan and those who said he did were just playing a “Washington trick.” Of course, Obama would have left his church had not his pastor retired and acknowledged that his statements “deeply offended people and were inappropriate.” Just for clarification, Jeremiah Wright has made no such public acknowledgement.

His remarks about bitter working-class voters in small towns turning to guns and religion were just a matter of poorly chosen words. He’s very sorry if anyone was offended, but the “underlying truth” of what he said remains.

All candidates say things in error. They misspeak. They get tired. A staffer makes a mistake. It happens, and explanations are sometimes necessary.

But when one sets himself apart as a new kind of leader, above the crass partisan politics of the past, he raises expectations. But instead of meeting them, Obama seems to believe he deserves a standard all his own.

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In three short months, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) have managed to take lemonade and turn it into lemons. They and their campaigns have created a deep and increasingly bitter divide within the Democratic Party, unfortunately along racial and gender lines.

But it also is unfortunate for the political process and for the country.

The candidacies of Clinton and Obama are proof of how far we have come in righting wrongs of the past. While Republicans may benefit from the nasty turn this campaign has taken, no one who cares about the country ought to revel in this kind of primary fight.

But one cannot ignore the irony of the situation. The Democratic Party, which has spent the past thirty years promoting identity politics and the policies that go with it, now finds itself being torn apart by the very candidates who represent those politics.

Yet, it is the Clinton and Obama camps that must take responsibility for the negative tone of this campaign. Obama has claimed the mantle of the first “post-racial” presidential candidate, but his close relationship with a pastor of undisputed racial animus and virulent anti-Americanism has put his own character and judgment into question.

The Clintons have played the race card as well, whether it was Bill Clinton’s comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson after the South Carolina primary or various Hillary supporters raising questions about Obama’s electability. But the Obama campaign’s comparison of Geraldine Ferraro’s comments to those of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was equally cynical.

When it comes to gender, Clinton has tried to have it both ways. She cried in New Hampshire. In Ohio, she harshly scolded, “Shame on you, Barack Obama”; and in a tone reminiscent of the OK Corral, challenged him to “meet me in Ohio. Let’s have a debate about your tactics and your behavior on this campaign.”

In recent weeks, as Obama has sent out a parade of mostly male party leaders to call for her exit, Clinton and her supporters, have taken to characterizing the effort as the “boys” against the “girl” in the race.

But it was “sniper-gate” that illustrated her attempts to be both victim and take-charge leader at the same time. Playing for sympathy, she told several audiences the story of her 1996 trip to Bosnia, joking that in the White House there was a saying, “If a place was too small, too dangerous or too poor, send the first lady.”

But then, she proceeded to portray herself as a kind of “G.I. Jane” on a perilous mission for the president, dodging bullets on the tarmac as she dashed to the safety of the motorcade. Winston Churchill once talked of the Boer War saying, “There is nothing more exhilarating than being shot at without result.”

We all now know Mrs. Clinton was never under fire, but her tall tale definitely got results — just not the one she hoped for. As Sen. Clinton was trying to climb out of her self- imposed foxhole, the Obama camp went over the top comparing Bill Clinton to Joe McCarthy for a comment he made that they claimed questioned Obama’s patriotism.

Both candidates are to blame for the tenor of the campaign, and both candidates are beginning to pay a price with the voters.

In Gallup Poll daily tracking earlier in March, Obama beat McCain by 2 points, 46 percent to 44 percent. The most recent tracking, on March 29, shows a 5-point switch with McCain now beating Obama 47 percent to 44 percent. In the earlier poll, Clinton was leading McCain 47 percent to 45 percent. The newer numbers show McCain over Clinton, 48 percent to 44 percent. The poll had a 2-point error margin.

The most devastating numbers, however, are Gallup’s data showing that the bitterness between the Clinton and Obama voters could take a real toll in November. During polling March 7-22, a staggering 28 percent of Clinton voters and 19 percent of Obama supporters said they would vote for McCain if their candidate loses the nomination. Who are these voters?

Gallup found they are independents and conservative Democrats, the very swing voters who were the key components of Ronald Reagan’s winning majority coalition. It’s unlikely those numbers will remain that high. But the very fact that such a significant number of voters are willing to defect to the Republican nominee in this kind of negative political environment belies the argument that once the nomination process is over, the two Democratic candidates’ supporters will all come together in a Kumbaya moment.

Meanwhile, the Gallup Poll found McCain’s favorability had increased 11 points, reaching an eight-year high of 67 percent. The contrast between McCain and his potential rivals couldn’t be more stark.

Clinton and Obama have spent the past three weeks alternately sniping at each other or trying to explain one political problem after another. McCain has spent his time in more presidential endeavors, meeting with world leaders, giving major policy addresses and visiting the troops in Iraq. This week, voters will see his campaign focus on McCain’s lifetime of service to the country.

Obama and Clinton have given McCain an unexpected opportunity to reach voters with a positive message about himself, his hopes for the country and his solutions to the problems people care about. And this could go on for months.

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A month later, Wilson, rather rudely, turned Roosevelt down. And in September, the frustrated hero of San Juan Hill grumbled, “Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action.”

Yet, tonight, the Democratic Party may well lock up the nomination for a man whose success in this historic campaign to date has rested almost solely on rhetoric and personality rather than on ideas or action. Democrats appear ready to choose a left-wing doctrinaire to lead their party this fall to the frustration of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), who has spent decades preparing for this moment only to have victory snatched away by a younger, far less experienced candidate whose charm and oratorical skills have propelled him to frontrunner status.

Between Sen. Barack Obama’s fundraising and rhetorical skills, the media has all but called the general election for the Illinois Senator. We’ve seen stories of the McCain campaign in disarray (haven’t we heard that before?), Republicans wallowing in doom and gloom, President Bush’s continuing unpopularity along with the war, and a slipping economy.

Still, despite all this bad news and a media whose coverage of Obama is so over the top that it has become the butt of Saturday Night Live jokes, underestimating the tenacity and principles of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) or overestimating the rhetoric and record of Obama is a mistake. A quick look at the head-to-head general election numbers today show a McCain-Obama race as a dead heat.

I’m not suggesting the fall election will be an easy one for Republicans. It won’t, but there are reasons why this race may not be the cakewalk Democrats expect. First, when it comes to some key swing voter groups that will likely decide the fall election, Clinton has shown far more strength than Obama.

She has been particularly popular with married women with children, Hispanics and blue-collar Democrats. While Obama will no doubt pick up Clinton supporters in these groups, McCain’s role and extensive record as a maverick Republican on issues such as national security, the war and immigration put him in a good position to challenge Obama for these voters and rebuild the center-right majority coalition.

Second, McCain’s center-right political ideology is far more in tune with the majority of Americans. While McCain’s more centrist issue views have irritated the Republican base on more than one occasion, Obama was recently tagged the most liberal Senator in 2007 by the National Journal, hardly a Republican mouthpiece.

In its rankings, originally developed by Bill Schneider of CNN, National Journal gave Obama perfect liberal ratings in two of their three categories. Clearly, Obama is not merely left but to the extreme left. A center-right candidate like McCain focused on solutions will have an advantage over an ideologue, particularly with swing voters.

Third, unlike Obama, who talks about change but has accomplished little, McCain has a track record of working, often successfully, for change. And as Brit Hume put it on Fox News Sunday this past weekend, he has the “battle scars” to prove it. McCain was willing early on to risk his candidacy on his public and pointed support for a surge and a new strategy in Iraq.

In a very dramatic way that cost him politically, he took on Bush and called for Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation over the direction of the war, bluntly stating, “I would rather lose a campaign than a war,” making it very difficult for Democrats to characterize McCain’s campaign as little more than a third Bush term.

But the war isn’t the only issue on which McCain has taken on his own party. As head of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, McCain held hearings to investigate the Abramoff lobbying scandal with no regard to where it would lead.

Obama has made lobbyists an issue in his campaign against Clinton, promising to ban them from “his White House.” He should get credit for his work to revamp Senate ethics rules. McCain has an extensive record of ethics and campaign reform far beyond the Jack Abramoff hearings.

But if actions do speak louder than words, then Obama’s attempt to renege on a promise he and McCain made a year ago to accept public funding in the general election campaign ought to give voters pause.

Finally, yesterday Clinton began running a devastating ad showing that Obama, as chairman of the Foreign Relations Subcommittee on European Affairs, which oversees NATO’s role in Afghanistan, failed to hold even one hearing on the Afghanistan war. Given his frequent criticism of the Bush’s Afghanistan and Iraq policies, the issue that forms the raison d’être for his candidacy, Obama had not only the authority but, I would suggest, the responsibility to hold oversight hearings.

Running the ad the day before the Texas and Ohio primaries may be too late to save Clinton, but it gives Republicans a green light and a great opportunity for the fall to portray in the most vivid of terms that “rhetoric is, in fact, a poor substitute for action.”

If Obama is the Democratic nominee and the race centers on personality rather than performance, Democrats will win. But if McCain can demonstrate that he not only has talked the talk, but walked the walk, Obama may learn why Teddy Roosevelt is one of John McCain’s political heroes.

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On the other hand, a number of talk show hosts and others speaking for the most conservative wing of the party have suggested that McCain must reach out to the “base” in order to have any chance of winning in November. Meanwhile, the media have picked up the drumbeat with cover stories like Newsweek’s “There Will Be Blood: Why the Right Hates John McCain.”

All of this talk represents a fundamental misconception about the makeup of the Republican Party. Yes, it is a center-right, conservative party based on a set of basic values and principles. But more than 10,000 interviews with Republican primary voters done for exit polls on Super Tuesday show that GOP voters are far more complex than the way they are depicted by activist politicos and the media.

When asked to self-describe their political ideology, Republicans were given five choices: liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative or conservative. Naturally, the first two barely registered; the breakdown in the Super Tuesday states went this way: 27 percent called themselves moderates; 36 percent somewhat conservative and 28 percent said they were very conservative.

It’s interesting that the largest bloc was the somewhat conservative voters, with very conservative voters and moderates playing an equal role in the party. What that says is that the GOP center of political gravity is actually found among the somewhat conservative.

Looking at what happened, moderates, not surprisingly, supported McCain over Mitt Romney by a 32-point margin, 55 percent to 23 percent. With very conservative voters, Romney beat McCain 45 percent to 19 percent.

But the largest voter segment, somewhat conservative voters, went for McCain over Romney by 41 percent to 34 percent. That’s probably going to come as a big surprise to anyone who has been listening to the political pundit class expound upon McCain’s “problems” with the base.

True, in some states, independents were allowed to vote in the Republican primary, but a look at Florida, the first closed-primary state, shows the numbers are about the same.

Florida Republicans self-identified as 28 percent moderate, 34 percent somewhat conservative and 27 percent very conservative. Again, McCain won moderates over Romney, 43 percent to 21 percent. Romney beat McCain with very conservative voters, 44 percent to 21 percent.

But as with the aggregate totals for Super Tuesday, McCain carried somewhat conservative voters, in this case by 3 points, 35 percent to 32 percent. Again, somewhat conservative voters, this time registered Republicans only, made up the largest bloc of Florida Republican voters.

These results ought to make Republican strategists rethink what has been party conventional wisdom when it comes to creating a winning coalition in 2008. In the 2004 and 2006 elections, the national party leadership opted for a 50 percent-plus-one strategy that relied on a high turnout of the base rather than building and expanding a majority coalition by reaching out to the Big Middle.

It worked, just barely, in 2004. It failed in 2006. In that election, Republicans focused on increasing the base and sacrificed Ronald Reagan’s majority coalition in the process as it lost sight of the need to attract independents to win.

The GOP lost independents by 18 points, a key group that until the 2004 election it had won every year since 1994. Ignoring the middle and embracing a negative attack strategy rather than an idea-based strategy cost the party both the House and Senate. 2006 proved, without a doubt, that all politics isn’t local.

So here we are eight months before another presidential election. Many are clamoring for John McCain to change his ways. Some conservatives want him to embrace the “base strategy” that 2006 proved no longer works.

The fact that their Democratic counterparts are recommending the same move to the right for McCain ought to lead these base-strategy enthusiasts to think twice about the merits of promoting this approach.

The base is very important but, by itself, can’t constitute a winning coalition. Reagan understood better than anyone the need to reach out to independents and like-minded conservative Democrats.

If Reagan had followed the 50 percent-plus-one strategy, he would have missed what ended up becoming a key component of the Republican winning coalition for nearly 20 years, the Reagan Democrat. Ultimately, it was that coalition that flipped the South, giving the GOP a structural advantage on the national political map and victories in five of the last seven presidential elections.

In that context, it’s important also to understand exactly who makes up the “Big Middle” that will be so important this fall. Contrary to what many think, these voters aren’t left- leaning “squishes.” In fact, the middle is composed of groups such as married women with children, Catholics, middle-income earners and independents, all likely to be center-right and all elements of previous Republican majority coalitions.

No question, John McCain has some work to do with very conservative Republicans. But McCain’s track record in the primaries has placed him at the center of gravity within the Republican Party, which is where he needs to be to reassure very conservative voters and re-engage the “Big Middle.”

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The House leaders’ economic stimulus package, agreed to last Thursday by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the Bush administration, may not have been Reagan and Gorbachev ending the Cold War, but for a capital that hasn’t seen a relatively friendly, bipartisan compromise on a major piece of legislation in years, it was a welcome turn of events.

When the Fed signaled the need for quick Congressional action on a slowing economy, Pelosi, Boehner and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on behalf of the administration were able to put aside partisan jockeying, most amazingly in the middle of a hot presidential primary season, and get the job done. Now, the onus is on the Senate to take a similar tack and resist its natural inclination to load down the $150 billion stimulus package with extraneous and unnecessary funding and programs.

Dissecting the details of this deal to keep the American economy from slipping into recession probably would make a fascinating read, but what makes it especially interestingly is the fact that the solution came from Capitol Hill, not the presidential campaign trail. Most political observers assumed once the actual primary voting began, the candidates, both Democratic and Republican, would set the national policy agenda and debate.

For most of last year, Democratic Congressional leaders, presidential candidates and media focused on the Iraq War as the top issue. More than one pundit, particularly on the Democratic side, predicted that the outcome in Iraq would determine the outcome of the 2008 election.

But a closer look at the 2006 exit polls would have shown them that, in reality, the American public already had moved on, as respondents cited the economy, not the war or scandals, as the most important issue in determining their vote. Yet, throughout most of last year, the Democratic presidential candidates’ central argument revolved around who was the most consistent opponent of the war and who would get the troops home faster.

But that was before the surge began to work and the housing crisis and stock market dive that followed changed the dynamics of the Hill and the presidential campaign. As presidential primary voting neared, the administration and Congress were seen more and more as lame ducks, tasked with keeping the government running until the next election. No one expected them to be able to get much done in the election year.

Conventional wisdom had it that when it came to developing new policy and programs, the presidential campaigns were where the action would likely be. But thanks to the new media’s ability to turn public attention to an issue practically overnight, a bipartisan economic stimulus package became a national priority in a matter of days, and the spotlight returned to Capitol Hill.

It was a surprise to many to find solutions coming from that most unlikely of places, the House, where some of the hardest-fought partisan battles have raged for the past 15 years. Instead of the presidential campaigns, Congress and the administration, at least for the moment, found themselves at the policy-setting center of gravity once again.

In the negotiations between Pelosi, Boehner and Paulson, pragmatism replaced partisanship. Democrats, stinging from criticism that they have failed, as the majority party, to get much done, were willing to put their wishes for a bigger and more expansive bill on the back burner. Republicans, who would have preferred a more targeted approach that limited rebates to taxpayers along with help for small business, accepted reality, too.

They understood that as the minority, this was the best they were going to get. And, in the case of an ailing economy, something was better than nothing. Moreover, from their perspective, putting money directly back into the pockets of working Americans rather than indirectly through expanded government programs was consistent with Republican economic philosophy even if tax cuts were their preferred approach.

For the next couple of weeks, as many of the big delegate-rich states hold their primaries, we may see Washington shaping more presidential campaign discourse because it’s clear that voters, again thanks to new media, can now focus on more than one political arena and issue at a time. Who benefits?

For Republicans, getting the political focus back on the economy gives them a slight edge. This remains a center-right country, and tax hikes are no more popular today than they ever were.

The presidential candidates will offer their solutions for what ails the economy, and voters surely will listen. But they also will watch as Congress debates economic policy, whether to keep taxes low to help the middle class afford increasing health care costs, gas prices, and local property taxes and provide help for small business or whether to raise taxes in order to expand government programs and assistance.

As they do, the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to tax and spending policies will become apparent in very concrete ways.

Article on rollcall.com

Thus, we learned how the Democrats intend to justify their three-year silence about the program, which was broken only when The New York Times went public, giving Democrats an opening for a new line of attacks on the president and his national security policies.

In a weak performance, Harman actually tried to explain her lack of oversight by suggesting that she, like Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), her counterpart on the Senate Intelligence Committee, had no one to talk to about their concerns. Voicing strong support for the program in one breath, Harman then tried to have it both ways, saying, “I talked to absolutely no one because I would have violated three different federal criminal statutes had I talked to anyone.”

Referencing the publication of the Times article, Harman pleaded that when it came to the Congressional “Gang of Eight” who were briefed on the program, “There was no way to raise any reservations before that.” No way?

How about picking up the phone and calling the president, the vice president, House Intelligence Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) or the head of the NSA surveillance program? Or, if the phone wasn’t her complaint line of choice, how about a letter to any of the above officially raising her objections, and which would have required an official reply?

Harman talked to no one.

Of course, Rockefeller did pen a short note to Vice President Cheney expressing worry over the program’s oversight, but he never mentioned the letter or his concerns to Roberts. Instead, he popped the missive into his safe, waiting years for a politically opportune moment to release it, a moment conveniently provided by the Times.

But Harman and Rockefeller are hardly alone in their rhetorical contortions on the issue of NSA surveillance. Most Capitol Hill Democrats seem to have adopted what amounts to the inverse of a Biblical approach to the problem: Love the sin but hate the sinner. They are desperately trying to straddle the national security fence, telling everyone who will listen that they now are enthusiastic supporters of the program. It is the real and growing threat to America’s civil liberties posed by President Bush that’s got them worried.

In reality, their conundrum, whether on the NSA anti-terrorism program, the USA PATRIOT Act or the war itself, reflects a party in disarray in two disturbing ways. First, Democrats simply have been unable to come to terms with what they believe, deep down, as a party about national security. They have no ideas, no alternatives, so they try to pass off criticism as content.

Second, Democrats have become so irrationally angry about Bush that they reflexively oppose anything the president is for. When the Times story broke, most Democrats rushed to judgment and to the microphones to instinctively condemn the program and the president. What they have now discovered is that they are on the wrong side of this issue. In a recent New Models poll done by the Winston Group, we asked the question, “Do you favor or oppose allowing federal authorities to conduct surveillance on individuals’ e-mails and phone calls to al Qaeda operatives without a court order?”

Sixty percent of survey respondents favored the surveillance; 37 percent opposed. When the terrorism aspect of the program is mentioned, other polls have showed similar results, and Democrats have found themselves in 2004 all over again. In the presidential election, Democratic nominee John Kerry’s (Mass.) fluid policy positions on the war became the embodiment of the party’s internal conflict on national security issues which has plagued them since 1972. Nothing captured that conflict better than the Senator’s famous “I voted for it before I voted against it” statement, referring to his flip-flopping position on the $87 billion military appropriations bill in 2003 for the war in Iraq.

Like Harman today, Kerry wanted to have it both ways: to appeal to both opponents and proponents of the war. The best you can say about his conflicting positions is at least he had the decency to take those two positions at two different times. Now, Democrats seem to have adopted a new strategy. Call it Kerry 2.0: They are desperately trying to be both for and against the program at exactly the same time.

In short, the current Democratic position on the tapping of international terrorist phone calls can be summed up this way: “The NSA surveillance program is crucial to national security and should be continued. We support it. It is also illegal and a threat to civil liberties. We oppose it and, of course, George Bush must be held accountable for his illegal actions.” This is not a national security policy that makes sense, or a national political party that can be taken seriously. It is clearly an absurd position.

Finding the right balance between intelligence-gathering and civil liberties is no easy task, and I suspect administration officials would be the first to agree with that statement. But in briefing the Hill on the NSA anti-terrorism program, they fulfilled their obligation to keep Congress informed. If the Democrats had concerns about its purpose or implementation, they had a similar obligation to do their oversight duty and propose real alternative strategies. They failed and in doing so risk total irrelevancy when it comes to the joint responsibility Republicans and Democrats share for national defense and homeland security.

Voters elect leaders, not critics who sit on the sidelines feigning helplessness.

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