Barack Obama

It is interesting to watch the US elections and to see the rise of Senator Obama. I think it tells you a lot about the state of mind of the American public as to why he is doing as well as he is. I think in any normal election Obama would have died a death months ago, however in an election that comes after Iraq things are different. Americans feel less self-confident and less capable of deploying their ‘greatest nation’ rhetoric. Americans are looking for something or someone to give them back their mojo. In the words of Bonnie Tyler they are ‘holding out for a Hero’. The American public has alighted on Barack Obama as the ‘hero’ that they need. They feel that he can heal their country, salve the wounds of Iraq and go even further and heal the historic race divide in the US. In many respects different groups project their agenda’s and outlooks onto Obama and suggest that he fits their needs. Senator Obama has assisted this by travelling light and not really expounding many positions of his own. Those he has have either got him into trouble such as his NAFTA shenanigans or are so saccharine as to barely be noticed. So the American electorate project all their hopes and dreams onto him in place of his own positions.

 There is a significant danger in this whole approach. If as now seems likely Senator Obama emerges as Democratic nominee and then goes on to win the White House in November I think that it could be a huge disappointment. So invested would a President Obama be with so many divergent hopes, dreams and fantasies that there is no way he could get through a six month period let alone an entire term without provoking serious disappointment. When the reality dawns and trumps the campaign rhetoric, the ardent zealots will melt away like the snow in Spring. When Obama shows by his actions that he is not that different from ‘just another politician’ then the hope that he expounds now will become the despair of the disillusioned. When the reality dawns and Obama’s share-price tanks then everyone will realise that the way in which through this primary campaign his supposed skills have been leveraged and leveraged again and his persona inflated way beyond political reality was highly dangerous, but by then it will be far too late.

Hillary’s response to Ann Coulter

Super Tuesday

Well tomorrow is the big one in the US, Super Tuesday. Lots of states, and lots of delegates and quite a lot of rubbish being written about it too. Firstly I am going to make a small prediction and that is this, Hillary will not do as badly as people suspect and Obama will not do as well as the hype is suggesting. My suspicion is that there is some movement in the polls to Obama but nothing like the juggernaut that is being shown in the polls and certainly nothing like the Obamarama hype that is developing. Frankly if you paid too much attention to journalists on both sides of the Atlantic you would think that Barack Obama is the closest thing to the second coming of Christ. It is ridiculous. To think that Barack Obama isn’t a politician with all the strategists, spin-merchants and all the other paraphanalia is to be naive. BHO is probably the most addictive drug on the market at the moment and it is judgement altering.

Frankly when you look at Obama what do you see, you see a young untried Senator still in his first term, he gives a reasonable speech and he is anti-war. That is the sum total of his appeal. There is little policy detail, there is little other than over-hyped mood music. This is a guy who thinks that he can get to the White House just by saying he can. He is in point of fact a monumental fraud, and the severe danger is that Democrats are gullible enough to fall for it. Let us be clear, if Obama were to win the nomination and win in November he would enter the Presidency with less experience than the man he would be replacing. To me that is a concept almost too frightening to contemplate. If we thought George W Bush made some bad judgements the potential for Barack Obama to make worse ones is colossal. The comaprison is made between Obama and JFK but frankly this is ludicrous, JFK had been in the senate for 7 years and a member of congress for 13, he had also been involved in the Second World War. The two CV’s just are not comparable.

What though of Hillary, she makes much of her experience. Her experience though is patchy in itself but she has been a Senator for 7 years and has been active for a lot lot longer. She was certainly the most political First Lady in US history. Her policy ideas are certainly the mark of an experienced wonk who has been burned in the past. She has also faced the kind of vilification that is usually reserved only for those touched by peculiar evil. To come through this demonstrates a toughness and a character that would be vital for a US president. Her positions on everything that matters are much more centrist than Barack Obama’s and I suspect that whilst her rhetoric is anti-war it is much more nuanced than Obama’s and certainly isn’t as pacifist in general. I think that of the two Hillary Clinton’s credentials are the stronger, but not by a lot.

US Elections - Could the style translate

I have been avidly following the US elections, I have my preference as can be seen from blogs passim. The more I see of the way elections are conducted in the US the more I like what I see and think that the UK political system is not quite up to the same standard. I think that it comes from historical differences and whilst it would be nice to bolt the US system into the UK I can’t see it happening or working if it did. The cultural differences are too great.

The UK political system evolved out of a monarchical set up and evolved as an adversarial system. There were a number of reasons for this, firstly the parties initially were a ‘King’s party’ and the Opposition. The opposition is still framed as Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, in that they are loyal to the crown but opposed to those around the crown. It grew as an adversarial system out of the redress of grievances bought to the King, and the fact that most of the members of the main check on the executive were drawn from the lawyerly profession. In many ways democracy was bolted onto the existing system of the merchant and professional classes exercising the power that their ‘new’ wealth had bought. Parliament was founded as a composite between the ancient interests of the Kingdom and the new commerce interest. Hence now why the House of Commons has an arcane feel about it.

The US political system came about deliberately and out of the bowels of a different style of adversarialism. The US constitution, codified unlike its UK counterpart, was deliberate and based on a philosophy of balance. It is a beautifully crafted document and the checks and balances it creates still function today. It has a democratic principle at its core, that the centre shouldn’t overbear the constituent parts that each part should have representation as regards its relative size and also representation as regards it being an equal part of the whole. The executive is entirely separated from the legislative and the judiciary and no one section of government has more power than another. There can be no power grabs in the US by a grasping politician on the make. In the UK the executive is drawn from the legislative and thereby both are diminished. Of course the US has issues within the political sphere, but no country does not, the fact of the matter is that the US system feels much more instinctively Democratic than the UK system.

Could we have a US style system in the UK? I don’t know I think that the obstacles are big. Firstly I think the British people and media have a schizophrenic relationship with personality politics and the US system breeds personality politics in spades. I think that that would be a serious bar to that type of system in the UK. The US system breeds characters from the grassroots up to the top, in the UK we have to get established celebrities to contest our one example of something similar to the US system in the London Mayoralty. The US system also separates legislators from being involved in government. The PM under a US system would have to be elected at large by some means and would not sit in Parliament, nor would any government minister. The US do not have the executive turnover either, root and branch reshuffles are not common in US politics and usually happen only after an election, in the UK a major reshuffle is de rigeur every summer. I think the US system is better in that it allows someone to master their brief over the medium term, the UK system is a block on getting anything done as ministers change so frequently that priorities are never static. One other advantage I think the mechanics of the system in the US has is timing, the US are currently choosing their next President, the person will be chosen in November and start work in January next year. The issues that will be most pressing when the next President starts work are largely known now and if not a reasonably educated guess can be made this means that the US public and the respective parties are making a live choice. In the UK party leaders are chosen 4 or more years out from the election that will be taking place, it means that the parties have to guess who will be the best person for a scenario that is largely unknowable. It is more by luck that you get a decent candidate.

I would actually welcome a directly elected PM, a non-Parliamentary executive and a smaller more effective House of Commons balanced by a separate Senate style upper chamber. I would welcome the kind of legislative oversight that the US has, I would welcome the kind of active local politics that the US seems to have. I think it is wishful thinking that it would ever happen but I think it would be utterly refreshing to have the Essex Primary closely followed by the Yorkshire Primary debate live from Northallerton with half a dozen Conservative or Labour or Lib Dem candidates actually debating the issues.

Iain Dale is wrong!

This is not about what you think it is! Iain Dale has a post on his blog suggesting that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would both be considered Conservatives in the UK. I disagree. Of course modern politics is very difficult to work out as there is a bunching effect in the political centre. I would argue that the centre ground is not a static construct, it consists of the portion of the political spectrum that most people occupy at a given time. This shifts over time and the sensible politician needs to be in the place that the majority are. If you don’t meet people where they are, they wont move to where you are! Now the reason that Iain Dale is wrong about Clinton and Obama is this, all politicians want to shift the centre ground over time. Margaret Thatcher moved the centre ground over her period of office gradually to the right. Blair and Brown from 1997 moved on to the centre ground as Thatcher/Major had moved it and gradually tugged it leftwards. So how you define a politician is where do they want to tug the centre ground?

In terms of the UK we have three principle political parties, Labour, Conservative and the Liberal Democrats. For simplicity Labour tend to want to tug the centre leftwards, Conservatives want to tug the centre rightwards, and Liberal Democrats seem to want to leave the centre in the centre. So what about Barack and Hillary where do I say they would fit, well it is clear that they are both highly attuned to the political centre as they find it, but where do they want to move it? I would argue that both of them in different ways want to shift the centre marginally leftwards. Barack Obama seems to want to go further than Hillary so I would define them as both fitting into the Labour party but Barack Obama is more of a Brownite and Hillary is more of a Blairite.

Why I am for Hillary

As you know I am pretty Conservative in my outlook, and in UK elections I have always voted Conservative. I would however if able to vote in the US Presidential election currently vote for Hillary Clinton. Now to many of my colleagues this is rather like first century Christians admiring Nero so I would like to offer my rationale for this.

In any election the choice has to be the best person for the job, and this election is no different. However the US Presidency is about more than merely the governance good or elsewise of the USA. The fact is that the US President is acknowledged as being one of the strongest voices in world affairs. This comes from the military and economic position of the nation the US President leads. Consequently foreign policy is a very very big part of the President’s role. This is not an argument for experience, I don’t think that it matters if you have foreign policy experience or not but the US and the rest of the world should be able to trust the President’s judgement. Of course the size of the US economy also means that it impacts in other ways upon the rest of the world. It is said in economic terms that if America sneezes the world catches a cold, in the future with the ascent of China and other economies Americas position will diminish but it is still a major economic player so the US President needs good economic credentials too. There are also many other judgements to be made.

Now temperamentally I would tend to be a Republican voter in the US, as the Republican party is the rightward party. Politics though exists on a continuum from extreme right to extreme left and the parties in the US do not occupy the exact same space on the continuum as the similar parties in the UK. Parts of the Republican party would not be acceptable in the UK Conservative party, likewise some members of the Democrat party would not have a home in Labour. Consequently it is not always given that a UK Conservative will find themselves agreeing with Republicans, or disagreeing with Democrats, it all depends on the nature of the spokesman in any case.

Let me look at the main Republican Candidates, McCain, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee in order and my reasons for rejecting them. First John McCain, who in any other election would probably be the recipient of my support as he is the more moderate type of republican. I am not an ageist but in the current climate John McCain at 71 is too old. There is a much increased probability of a President who is over 70 on assuming office not completing his term due to death. It is a fact and with global instability and the threat of terror, the US and the world could ill afford the crisis of a President dieing in office. Of course that can happen with younger candidates, and if it happened the US and everyone else would cope but I see little sense in tempting the situation. Also a President McCain would be hamstrung as an expected one term only President which would cause difficulties in governing in terms of lame duckedness in the first term and if he were to run for a second it would likely split the Republicans due to a one term expectation. Secondly Giuliani, who is an engaging character and could be a strong candidate for the US Presidency. His failure though is that he has turned a unique selling point into a sole selling point, he seems stuck in a 9/11 time warp which to me is more indicative of a candidate for therapy not the US Presidency. Mitt Romney who with matinee idol looks certainly fits the look of a US President, and my does he know it. This is an election though not an audition, and frankly his position on many issues has switched and switched back so often I am at a loss to know what he stands for except standing. Mike Huckabee, now he could be a complete surprise and be a sensible candidate he doesn’t look like it from here but that could be because he is having to generate recognition and appeal to the Republican base. Maybe he can do what most candidates tend to and tack to their base for the Primaries and away for the showdown. If so I might take a second look.

Now for the principal Democrats, Obama, Edwards and Mrs Clinton. Firstly John Edwards, the former VP nominee under John Kerry and quite an engaging man he has that lilting southern drawl similar to my American Aunt (they are from the same state) however many of his positions are to the left of the current British Labour party, I cannot support them so I can’t really support him. Barack Obama, the supposed great hope of the Democrats is certainly an inspiring story and quite telegenic. However he too often shows his lack of judgement like over Pakistan, he is someone I think the US couldn’t trust simply because he sounds good but when you scratch the surface there is nothing there. He is the mirage candidate, the oasis of hope that if elected would be a massive disappointment for those that put him there and a considerable danger to the US and the world not because of what he would do but of what he would fail to recognise he needed to do. It is fine to be a candidate of hope but, hope doesn’t flourish unless there are deep foundations with Barack Obama I cannot see any foundations yet, and that is a shame as otherwise he would be a new JFK type candidate but he isn’t. Finally Hillary Clinton, who is probably the most unnecessarily divisive candidate in this election. The fact of the matter is that if most people bothered to listen to her she is the most thoroughly worked up candidate on either side, she knows what she is going to do and it shows. The point is so many people made their mind up about Hillary long ago and few will allow themselves the opportunity to change their minds. Of course Hillary holds views and would pursue policies I wouldn’t agree with but frankly that is true of any candidate in any election. She appears to show a shrewder judgement on foreign policy issues than the other candidates and has a domestic policy agenda which is fairly hard to disagree with in the main. Yes she is on the left, but within the Democratic coalition she is one of the more rightward leaning and I think she would be a respectable figure on the world stage, more so than anyone is yet giving her credit for. So I am for Hillary, despite reservations, despite the fact that almost everyone on the right thinks she is the devil incarnate. I know that when you look at her as a politician instead of a caricature she is very impressive.

Iowa

So Obama won in Iowa, interesting, it certainly means that Hillary is no longer a shoo-in if she ever was. I still suspect that the votes stack in her favour even though there will be a little movement to Obama now. I’m prepared to wait a little see what the next few contests yield before deciding that Hillary is finished as some will certainly suggest. Over on the Republican side Huckabee won, which is interesting as well as he could be the Republican surprise package. Giuliani looks to have problems as he barely registered on the radar in Iowa. McCain looks to be putting in a strong showing, we shall see if it is enough which I doubt. I am now less sure of who will emerge from the Republican side, I see 4 potentials now depending on how the votes come down in the remaining contests. I still think Clinton will emerge from the Democratic campaign with the delegates to secure nomination. All in all this is shaping up to be exciting.

First Post of 2008

Happy New Year, I took a bit of an extended break over the Christmas/New Year period but am now back and raring to go! 2008 looks like being an interesting year, politically we will have the continuation of the Brown/Cameron dynamic in the UK but the big political story will undoubtedly be the US Presidential election. Tonight is the first caucus in Iowa and frankly lots of rubbish is being written about it so why not add a bit more. On the Republican side the two most likely ultimate winners haven’t really expended a lot of effort in Iowa so the result will be skewed and will probably tell us little about the ultimate shape of the race. The Democrats have a more interesting race as all the candidates have campaigned quite heavily in Iowa. A fair number of pundits reckon that if Hillary doesn’t come first she is in trouble, I don’t necessarily agree. The race is tight, if she is a very close second to Obama then she can get away with an excuse. If she is miles behind then she may have a problem. I suspect that when the result comes through she will either be top in Iowa or a very tight second. In that instance she will be challenged but not weakened. It would be good to remember that George W Bush was run quite hard in the primaries by John McCain in 2000 and still emerged the victor quite handsomely for the nomination. I suspect that as the primary season continues Hillary will emerge the handsome victor and strengthened by the showing of Obama. I suspect he would also then be a strong candidate for the number 2 spot on the ticket, we shall wait and see. I am certainly looking forward to November whoever the candidates are!

Al Gore and the Presidential race

Apparently Al Gore has again said that he isn’t running for President. At this stage in the game it would be hard but not impossible for him to catch up to the other Democrat candidates. I think though what would hurt him most would be his major identification with just one policy area. He made the choice to be an environmental campaigner, it makes it much harder for him to broaden out his agenda now that he is seen as a one trick pony.

My money is on Hilary, not because I like her, but because I cannot now see her failing to secure the Democratic nomination. As for the Presidential election, I guess my money would have to be on Hilary again because the mood in the states seems to be resolutely Anti-republican not just Bush style Republicanism. If I am right then it will be a ground-breaking and interesting Presidential election and a similarly ground-breaking and interesting 4 years!

Hillary

Yes, yes, I know what am I doing posting about Hillary? Well clearly every right-winger ought to be lining up to call names and hound Hillary endlessly. However I can’t help admiring Hillary, yes I know she has her faults but I think that she at least deserves as fair a hearing as the other candidates in the race. I think the time is coming when the USA will have a female President that is certain, is it Hillary Rodham Clinton though?

Clearly I could not conceivably vote for a person of Hillary’s political persuasion and I doubt if the Republicans star woman (Condi) will go for the nomination but as a casual observer I am going to be watching the 2008 race with interest!!!