Senator Obama’s campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership

The State, South Carolina’s largest and most influential newspaper, has endorsed Barack Obama in the state's upcoming primary as the Democrat most likely to unify America.

The editorial said Obama's campaign "is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership" and, he has "the best chance to repair the damage to America's global reputation." As for Hillary Clinton, the newspaper argues “restoration of the Clintons to the White House would trigger a new wave of all-out political warfare.”

Here is the editorial:

THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY in South Carolina this year offers voters an unusual choice. Earlier votes have winnowed out the most experienced candidates, leaving a field with fewer accomplishments and differences on policy, but including two candidates who come with the promise to make history just because of who they are.

Looking at the remaining field: Rep. Dennis Kucinich offers a bold plan on health care, but his platform is an odd fit for us and for many in South Carolina. John Edwards has morphed away from the optimist who won South Carolina in 2004. The candidate who stayed mostly above the fray four years ago is angry now, and pushing hard to turn working-class angst into political opportunity. He also has tried to one-up the other top Democrats with the least prudent plan for withdrawing from Iraq.

On positions from Iraq to health care, the policy differences between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama are minute. Much of the debate between them has involved making these molehills look mountainous or clashing over who-shifted-when.

The one most significant difference between them can be found in how they would approach the presidency - and how the nation might respond.

Hillary Clinton has been a policy wonk most of her life, a trait she has carried into the U.S. Senate. As her debate performances have shown, she has intelligence and a deep understanding of many issues. Her efforts in New York focused first on learning her adopted state’s issues in detail, and pursuing legislation that would not necessarily grab headlines.

But we also have a good idea what a Clinton presidency would look like. The restoration of the Clintons to the White House would trigger a new wave of all-out political warfare. That is not all Bill and Hillary’s fault - but it exists, whomever you blame, and cannot be ignored. Hillary Clinton doesn’t pretend that it won’t happen; she simply vows to persevere, in the hope that her side can win. Indeed, the Clintons’ joint career in public life seems oriented toward securing victory and personal vindication.

Sen. Obama’s campaign is an argument for a more unifying style of leadership. In a time of great partisanship, he is careful to talk about winning over independents and even Republicans. He is harsh on the failures of the current administration - and most of that critique well-deserved. But he doesn’t use his considerable rhetorical gifts to demonize Republicans. He’s not neglecting his core values; he defends his progressive vision with vigorous integrity. But for him, American unity - transcending party - is a core value in itself.

Can such unity be restored, in this poisonous political culture? Not unless that is a nominee’s goal from the outset. It will be a difficult challenge for any candidate; but we wait in the hope that someone really will try. There is no other hope for rescuing our republic from the mire. Sen. Obama would also have the best chance to repair the damage to America’s global reputation. A leader with his biography - including his roots in Africa and his years spent growing up overseas - could transform the world’s view of America. He would seize that opportunity. He would close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, which has damaged America’s moral standing, and strive to rebuild many diplomatic relationships.

Despite America’s bitter partisan divide, all sides should agree on this: In such an environment, little gets done. Congress has been largely useless under both Republican and Democratic leadership. Setting aside the ideological conflict for conflict’s sake to get anything worthwhile done has fallen severely out of fashion.

And America certainly has things to get done.

From terrorism and climate change to runaway federal entitlement spending, there are big challenges to be faced. Sen. Obama is the only Democrat who plausibly can say that he wants to work with Americans across the political spectrum to address such subjects - and he has the integrity and the skills of persuasion that make him the best-qualified among the remaining Democratic hopefuls to address these challenges.

He would be a groundbreaking nominee. More to the point, he makes a solid case that he is ready to lead the whole country. We see Sen. Barack Obama as the best choice in Saturday’s Democratic primary.

The root of Kenya’s problems is politics, not tribal affiliations

“Ancient tribal hatreds” is a common explanation by Westerners for conflicts in Third-World nations, particularly Africa. However, that simple explanation tends to overlook decades, even centuries, of cooperation and tolerance between many diverse groups. Usually, the truer answer is the same as it is the world over – old-fashioned politics. When people believe the system is fair and credible, peace usually prevails. When citizens believe the system is unfair and not credible then the reactions of those out of power will range from mild resistance to open revolt.

Kenya has been one of the more stable and democratic countries in Africa but not withhout underlying polictal problems that have fed the current conflict.

On December 27th, general elections were held. President Kibaki under the Party of National Unity ran for re-election against a split opposition – the main faction led by Raila Odinga. Early vote counts seemed to favor Odinga but Kibaki won by a substantial margin leading to charges of vote rigging. Reports by international observers of problems with the vote counting fueled further anger. Supporters of Odinga went on a rampage and much of the violence has been directed against members of the Kikuyu tribe – the dominant political group in Kenya associated with President Kibaki. Retaliation by Kikuyus as well as firing upon unarmed protestors by the countries security forces have added to the resentment of Odinga supporters. (See this previous post regarding the violence in Kenya.)

Anne Applebaum has these observations in Slate:

… Unless you were paying very close attention, you were probably tempted, as I was at first, to dismiss these events as yet more evidence of Africa's ungovernability. Uganda, Rwanda, Liberia, Somalia, Sudan, Sierra Leone—tribal enmity plus poverty equals violence. Kenya is another country evolving into a failed state. Doesn't it prove, once again, that Africa is an exception to all the rules about global development, democratization, and "progress"?

Actually, it doesn't. In fact, the closer one looks at Kenya, the less exceptional Africa seems. What was most striking to me about the recent violence in Kenya was not how much the country resembles Rwanda, but rather how much it resembles, say, Ukraine in 2004 or South Korea in the 1980s. Perhaps the real story here is not, as one headline had it, about "The Demons That Still Haunt Africa," but rather about how Africa is no different from anywhere else.

I am exaggerating, somewhat, to make a point. Of course Kenya is special, like all countries are special, and of course there are some notably bloody Kenyan ethnic conflicts. Kenya's Kikuyu tribe, which constitutes about one-fifth of the country, has dominated the country's politics and economics since independence and is profoundly resented for it. Among other things, the disturbances of recent weeks have included a wave of attacks on the Kikuyu sections of a Nairobi slum and Kikuyu-Luo violence in the Rift Valley.

But step back a few paces, remember that most countries have ethnic conflicts of one kind or another, and look at the broader picture. The immediate cause of the current unrest was not ancient ethnic hatred. The immediate cause was political. As in Ukraine, an election was held, and one of the candidates appears to have stolen it. This was no piece of subtle fakery, nor did it involve anything so legalistic as a supreme court. On the contrary, with TV cameras rolling, Kenyan paramilitary police stormed the conference center where votes were being counted—and where the challenger, Raila Odinga, was said to be ahead of the incumbent, President Mwai Kabaki—and expelled journalists and foreign observers. Soon afterward, an election official emerged to declare Kabaki the winner. Violence, apparently prepared well in advance, broke out immediately.

There will be many explanations for the viciousness of what followed, but one of them, surely, is that this particular election fraud took place at a crucial moment in Kenyan history. As any student of revolution knows, popular uprisings generally take place not in the poorest of countries, but in those that have recently grown richer. The Kenyan economy grew 6.4 percent in 2007, a figure that will rapidly translate into fewer infant deaths, better nutrition, and steadier jobs—as well as increased ambitions, both personal and political. The more hope you have for the future, the more frustrating it is to be badly governed.

And Kenya, famously, is extraordinarily badly governed. On the international "perceived corruption" rankings put together by anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, Kenya came in 150th, alongside Liberia and Sierra Leone, countries recovering from long-term civil war. Year on year, Kenyans told the organization that they pay more and more bribes. Judges are for sale, lawmaking is arbitrary, and government jobs are doled out according to ethnicity, not merit. No wonder there is widespread frustration.

Thus, there is nothing mysterious about the anger or the unrest, nothing that requires more Live Aid concerts or global outpourings of emotion, nothing especially "African" about Kenya's problems at all. Kenya needs a cleaner, more democratic, more rule-abiding government; it needs to eliminate the licenses and regulations that create the opportunity for bribery; it needs to apply the law equally to all citizens. The West can help Kenya change these things by encouraging these values through the nature of the aid it gives and the strings attached to aid. Ultimately, though, Kenya's political elite will have to decide what kind of country it wants its children to live in. Yes, there are cultural factors; yes, Kenya is unique; but in the end, politics, not culture, lie at the heart of the country's current problems.

Obama and the politics of reconciliation

The notion of race has always been peculiar to me. It is a social construct that large numbers of people seem convinced is firmly rooted in biology. Discussions about black and white people seem to overlook the fact that each of these vast groups includes hybrids of people with a wide variety of physical characteristics. It does not take a trained eye to spot differences between people from northern and southern Europe or eastern and western Africa. And it is a definition that keeps evolving. It was not that long ago in this country that Irish and Jews were not considered white.

Color has come to be the primary characteristic in racial taxonomy. People use the common terms – black, white, red and yellow – as if they accurately reflect the skin tones of humanity. These colors are very different from one another suggesting these peoples are genetically very separate from one another. They are polarizing descriptive terms. But the truth is there are no “black” people, there are no “white” people, there are no “red” people, and there are no “yellow” people. To be perfectly honest, the skin tones of all people are brown. It is the shades of brown that seems to define our publicly recognized color (i.e., dark brown = black, light brown = white, shades in between = red and yellow, etc.).

As silly as the notion of race is, it has played a significant role in the history of this country whether it was the racial cleansing of the native populations of this country that continued into the last 19th century or the chattel slavery people of African descent and the segregation of these same people following the abolition of slavery well into the 20th century. This isn’t to say race has not been a factor in the histories of other countries – clearly it has – but the language and assumptions of past racial divisions carry over into the 21st century and our political campaigns.

But while there is a certain absurdity to racial identity there remains a need to recognize the impact these identities have had on our history and present society. Rather than pit communities against one another the future of the country is going to require people reaching out across community boundaries.

Barack Obama seems to confound many Americans who have grown accustomed to the shorthand of racial identification. His parents had very different backgrounds – something that is not at all unusual for many Americans but his parents dared to cross the racial divide. Obama, in his politics, also reaches across racial community boundaries. On this day honoring Martin Luther King, it is worth giving some consideration to the significance of Obama’s candidacy. Gregory Rodriguez has these thoughts in today’s L.A. Times:

Is Barack Obama a crossover candidate? And, if so, where is he crossing over from and to?

Over the past year, Obama has been called a post-racial candidate and has been praised for his ability to transcend race. But such idealistic observations are not only wrongheaded, they fundamentally misconstrue the Illinois senator's complex identity as well as the new understanding he brings to America's ongoing debate over how best to unify our wildly diverse nation.

Last February, in an interview on "60 Minutes," Obama told Steve Croft that he had not "decided" to be African American. When asked whether he had chosen to identify as black, he responded, "I think if you look African American in this society, you're treated as an African American."

That's true, but in his bestselling 1995 book, "Dreams of My Father," Obama made the element of choice a central theme. Confused as a young man by his mixed-race origins (white mom from Kansas and an African father), he explained his search for community, and by community he didn't just mean race. Though his African ancestry comes directly from Kenya -- his father, whom he barely knew, lived briefly in the U.S. as a graduate student -- Obama chose to graft his own personal narrative onto that of the black civil rights movement. Images of like-minded people working together became, he wrote, "a form of prayer" for him, "bolstering his spirits" and "channeling" his emotions in a way that mere words and slogans could not. As a community organizer in Chicago, Obama says he learned that membership in a community is not inherited but earned.

Raised, by and large, in a white household by his mother and grandparents, Obama could very well have chosen to call himself biracial. Like Tiger Woods, he could have accentuated his mixed heritage. (Obama's white mother also claimed some Cherokee lineage.) But he didn't. He joined a black church, married a black woman and chose to live in a predominantly black area of Chicago. In other words, Obama did not try to transcend race. He embraced it.

A combination of white racism and the countercultural racial politics of the 1960s have combined to create the perception that strong racial or ethnic identities are somehow necessarily at odds with American national unity. Even diversity-friendly multiculturalists tend to pigeonhole minorities as spokespeople of their small subsets. (Have you ever noticed that there are always black, Latino and Asian representatives at round-table discussions, with a white guy as arbiter to give the big picture?)

Obama's life and work debunk the idea that his racial identity somehow effectively separates him from the majority. In his memoir, he recognizes that part of the work of the smaller community is to help redefine the broader national community. Ignoring narrow or defensive notions of racial pride, he sees no incongruity in being proudly African American and capably representing all Americans.

Nor has he felt the need to paint himself as "post-racial," or less black in any way, as he courts white voters. Watch Obama's famous 2004 Democratic Convention speech again, and it becomes clear that in the past year, his speeches have increasingly taken on a preacherly Southern inflection. That, plus his frequent references to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. -- whose birthday we celebrate today -- associate him more and more strongly with black America.

Moreover, Obama's choice to "black identify" helps broaden the collective notion of blackness. On "60 Minutes," Obama articulated this when he explained that the realization that the black experience was not singular but multifaceted helped him resolve his identity. "The African American community, which I now very much feel a part of, is itself a hybrid community. It's African. It's European. It's Native American. So it's much more difficult to define what the essential African American experience is, at least more difficult than what popular culture would allow."

Obama is accused of making white people feel good because he doesn't remind them of their collective guilt over slavery and segregation. If he wins the Democratic primary in South Carolina on Saturday, we may discover that he has begun to make plenty of black people feel good by raising their collective aspirations.

He won't accomplish this by transcending race, playing post-racial politics or in any way downplaying the role of race in U.S. society. He's not asking anyone to be any less black or more white so they can get along.

In fact, if anything, as his memoir indicates, he is encouraging people to find their communities, commit to strengthening them and then venture out to strengthen the whole. Obama plays the politics of reconciliation, the kind you'd imagine King would be proud of.

Benny Golson: “I remember Clifford”

This is Benny Golson on tenor saxophone, Curtis Fuller on slide trombone, Mulgrew Miller on piano, Buster Willians on bass and Carl Allen on drums at a concert in Salzau, Germany in 2000.

They are performing "I Remember Clifford", a Golson masterpiece written in the memory of famed trumpeter Clifford Brown who perished in a car accident in 1956. You can see his appearance on television here just a few months before he died.

The accomplishment of the surge in Iraq: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon.

Andrew J. Bacevich graduated from West Point in 1969 and served in Vietnam in 1970 and 1971. He continued in the military retiring as a Colonel in the early 1990’s. He earned his Ph.D from Princeton University in the history of American Diplomacy and has taught at West Point, John Hopkins University and Boston University. Bacevich has been a conservative critic of Bush foreign policy particularly as it pertains to Iraq.

He offers the following thoughts about the “success” of the surge in Iraq this past year in this morning’s Washington Post:

… By shifting the conversation to tactics, they seek to divert attention from flagrant failures of basic strategy. Yet what exactly has the surge wrought? In substantive terms, the answer is: not much.

As the violence in Baghdad and Anbar province abates, the political and economic dysfunction enveloping Iraq has become all the more apparent. The recent agreement to rehabilitate some former Baathists notwithstand ing, signs of lasting Sunni-Shiite reconciliation are scant. The United States has acquired a ramshackle, ungovernable and unresponsive dependency that is incapable of securing its own borders or managing its own affairs. More than three years after then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice handed President Bush a note announcing that "Iraq is sovereign," that sovereignty remains a fiction.

A nation-building project launched in the confident expectation that the United States would repeat in Iraq the successes it had achieved in Germany and Japan after 1945 instead compares unfavorably with the U.S. response to Hurricane Katrina. Even today, Iraqi electrical generation meets barely half the daily national requirements. Baghdad households now receive power an average of 12 hours each day -- six hours fewer than when Saddam Hussein ruled. Oil production still has not returned to pre-invasion levels. Reports of widespread fraud, waste and sheer ineptitude in the administration of U.S. aid have become so commonplace that they barely last a news cycle. (Recall, for example, the 110,000 AK-47s, 80,000 pistols, 135,000 items of body armor and 115,000 helmets intended for Iraqi security forces that, according to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon cannot account for.) U.S. officials repeatedly complain, to little avail, about the paralyzing squabbling inside the Iraqi parliament and the rampant corruption within Iraqi ministries. If a primary function of government is to provide services, then the government of Iraq can hardly be said to exist.

Moreover, recent evidence suggests that the United States is tacitly abandoning its efforts to create a truly functional government in Baghdad. By offering arms and bribes to Sunni insurgents -- an initiative that has been far more important to the temporary reduction in the level of violence than the influx of additional American troops -- U.S. forces have affirmed the fundamental irrelevance of the political apparatus bunkered inside the Green Zone.

Rather than fostering political reconciliation, accommodating Sunni tribal leaders ratifies the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the civil war touched off by the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, a Shiite shrine. That conflict has shredded the fragile connective tissue linking the various elements of Iraqi society; the deals being cut with insurgent factions serve only to ratify that dismal outcome. First Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division got it exactly right: "We're paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?"

****

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might "snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory." Not to worry: The "victory" gained in recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Such success comes at a cost. U.S. casualties in Iraq have recently declined. Yet since Petraeus famously testified before Congress last September, Iraqi insurgents have still managed to kill more than 100 Americans. Meanwhile, to fund the war, the Pentagon is burning through somewhere between $2 billion and $3 billion per week. Given that further changes in U.S. policy are unlikely between now and the time that the next administration can take office and get its bearings, the lavish expenditure of American lives and treasure is almost certain to continue indefinitely.

But how exactly do these sacrifices serve the national interest? What has the loss of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops and the commitment of about $1 trillion -- with more to come -- actually gained the United States?

Bush had once counted on the U.S. invasion of Iraq to pay massive dividends. Iraq was central to his administration's game plan for eliminating jihadist terrorism. It would demonstrate how U.S. power and beneficence could transform the Muslim world. Just months after the fall of Baghdad, the president declared, "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." Democracy's triumph in Baghdad, he announced, "will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation." In short, the administration saw Baghdad not as a final destination but as a way station en route to even greater successes.

In reality, the war's effects are precisely the inverse of those that Bush and his lieutenants expected. Baghdad has become a strategic cul-de-sac. Only the truly blinkered will imagine at this late date that Iraq has shown the United States to be the "stronger horse." In fact, the war has revealed the very real limits of U.S. power. And for good measure, it has boosted anti-Americanism to record levels, recruited untold numbers of new jihadists, enhanced the standing of adversaries such as Iran and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, a theater of war far more directly relevant to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Instead of draining the jihadist swamp, the Iraq war is continuously replenishing it.

Look beyond the spin, the wishful thinking, the intellectual bullying and the myth-making. The real legacy of the surge is that it will enable Bush to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor -- no doubt cause for celebration at AEI, although perhaps less so for the families of U.S. troops. Yet the stubborn insistence that the war must continue also ensures that Bush's successor will, upon taking office, discover that the post-9/11 United States is strategically adrift. Washington no longer has a coherent approach to dealing with Islamic radicalism. Certainly, the next president will not find in Iraq a useful template to be applied in Iran or Syria or Pakistan.

According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.

You can read the entire piece here.

Kenyan violence

The picture above is of two civilians killed when the police fired with live rounds into an unarmed crowd in Kenya. This and many other photographs of the deteriorating situation in Kenya can be found at Vigilante Journalist. The photographs and blog are the product of Anne Holmes. (I recommend visiting her blog to view her photographs and read her comments about the Kenya situation.)

She writes about the Kenya situation:

The last day of outlawed protests in Kenya saw a great deal of bloodshed in the Nairobi slum of Kibera. MSF has reported 15 gunshot wounds, and three deaths at the time of writing. Police and military used excessive force on demonstraters after they destroyed a portion of the train track route that leads to Uganda, effectively cutting off supply routes and further crippling the economy. They used tear gas and live ammunition on unarmed protesters.

When I arrived in Kibera it was a virtual war zone. General Service Units (GSU), or the Red Berets as they are sometimes referred to, and Administrative Police (AP) were firing live rounds at will into a neighborhood of Kibera, injuring innocent bystanders, one of whom was in his home. They seemed rather to be enjoying themselves, displaying a kind of bloodthirstiness which I had not as yet witnessed.

(Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.)

Silvan Zingg: “Watermelon Man”

This is Silvan Zingg performing Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man.” Zingg’s specialty is Boogie Woogie (seen here and here).

The Republican Presidential race: Should liberals be afraid?

Ed Pilkington considers the evidence in today’s Guardian:

Listen to these words from a leading politician campaigning for their party's presidential nomination: "I'm a uniter, not a divider. This is the start of a new beginning for America." The speaker goes on to pledge support for single working women, black people and Hispanics, and promises never to "balance the budget on the backs of the poor". As the supporters go crazy the candidate adds these final words: "I want to bring hope to people's hearts. We will seize this moment of American promise."

Barack Obama? Hillary Clinton after the tears? The speaker was George Bush as he ran for president in 2000, the same George Bush who gave the world the concept of "compassionate conservatism". Seven years on, you don't hear many references to compassionate conservatism. Several wars, unfettered partisanship, rendition, Guantánamo, Kyoto and Katrina have put paid to that. And it seems rather shocking now, with the benefit of hindsight, to think about how affectionately Bush was regarded in the months leading up to his inauguration, when commentators gushed about lovable George with his waspish good looks, his folksy Reaganesque delivery and commitment to healing America's divisions. "There are a lot of people in the centre or centre-left who wrote about Bush in glowing terms who are embarrassed about how they fawned over the guy," says Franklin Foer, editor of the New Republic.

In November, America will decide who will fill Bush's shoes. In a replay of 2000, the town halls of middle America are filled once more with talk of uniting not dividing, of hope and of seizing moments. This time round the Republicans are on the back foot, weighed down by the fallout from one of the most unpopular governments in US history and riddled with uncertainty about their purpose and future. The party is in such a mess that it is perceived wisdom that the Democrats will take back the White House on November 4. But Republicans are a wily lot and only a foolhardy Democrat would think that a third successive conservative administration is beyond the realm of possibility.

At least on this occasion there is a chance to get it right: to be prepared so that if President Bush does hand over to President Romney or President Giuliani there is not the same miscalculation over lovable Mitt or folksy Rudy. There is no excuse in 2008 to repeat the mistakes of 2000.

So what's the story behind this year's Republican hopefuls - facing the South Carolina primary tomorrow - and how worried should the world be? The first three major races have thrown up three separate winners: Mike Huckabee in Iowa on January 3, John McCain in New Hampshire five days later, and Mitt Romney this week in Michigan.

Let's start with Huckabee, the first to win. In a highly colourful crowd, he is by far the most exotic. Can you think of another major politician from Hope, Arkansas, who plays bass guitar to professional standard in a band called Capitol Offense? (Bill Clinton also comes from Hope - a town with a population of just 10,000 - and preceded Huckabee as governor of Arkansas, but he plays the saxophone.)

Huckabee famously lost 110lb and calls himself a "recovering foodaholic". He likes to frolic in front of TV cameras, throwing snowballs at his wife while campaigning in Michigan. Such jollities have endeared him to commentators - shades of Bush here - who have labelled him "engaging", "warm" and even a "friendly teddy bear".

His track record also has a progressive streak. In Arkansas, he expanded public services to the displeasure of anti-government Republicans. He also risked opprobrium over immigration - the great fault line of the modern Republican party - by giving undocumented workers access to some education. That earned him a reputation for being "soft" on immigration that may cost him dear in South Carolina tomorrow.

Then there's the other side of the score sheet. Huckabee wants an end to gun controls, which has brought gun fanatics flooding into his camp. He opposes gay marriage and in the early 1990s called for people with Aids to be quarantined - a position he no longer holds but has never publicly retracted.

Since the start of his presidential campaign he has tacked steadily to the right. To assuage those who think him soft, he has recently begun beating the anti-immigrant drum. On his website he promises that, as president, he will ensure there will be "no open borders, no amnesty, no sanctuary"; instead he will pursue "the attrition of the illegal immigrant population".

But it is his deeply held religious beliefs that should give liberals most pause. An ordained Southern Baptist minister, he spent 15 years working in the church as a preacher and tele-evangelist. The Bible for him is literal truth. He says: "My faith is my life - it defines me. I don't separate my faith from my personal and professional lives."

Religious devotion is hardly unique in a political leader - think John Kennedy (Catholic) or Jimmy Carter (Baptist). What sets Huckabee apart is that he is prepared to put his religion into practice through his politics, as he demonstrated as governor of Arkansas where he helped pass anti-abortion legislation and instigated moves to allow students to pray at college. He advocates overthrowing Roe v Wade, the US's landmark legal ruling legalising abortion and, as someone who does not accept evolution, he has called for creationism to be taught alongside Darwinism in schools. Most remarkably, he recently said that he wanted to amend the American constitution in line with the Bible: "It's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God."

It is hard to overstate how revolutionary it would be to insert God into the American constitution. The idea runs wholly counter to the spirit of the Founding Fathers who believed sovereignty was derived exclusively from "We the people".

"When I heard him say that, my eyes opened a little wider," says Laura Olson, co-author of Religion and Politics in America. "I'd be astonished if he ever managed to do it, but the fact that he has said it shows how far he is prepared to go to win the nomination."

If Huckabee is the most exotic, John McCain, the champion of New Hampshire, is the most heroic. His personal story would be barely believable in a Boy's Own comic: shot down over Vietnam and held as a PoW for more than five years, bound with "torture" ropes and for long periods beaten every two hours. Yet he refused an invitation to be released ahead of his fellow PoWs and never revealed any secrets, though he did eventually crack and sign a bogus anti-American "confession". "Every man has his breaking point," he later recalled. "I had reached mine."

On the campaign trail this week in Michigan he pointedly avoided any reference to what happened other than to poke fun at himself. "I was able to intercept a surface-to-air missile with my own plane," he quipped. He evoked implicitly his own experiences to make a passionate renunciation of the use of torture on al-Qaida terror suspects: "These tools are not American tools, and the easy way is not the American way."

Of all this year's crop of Republicans, McCain is the closest thing to the liberal's friend. He is a bipartisan progressive in the mould of Teddy Roosevelt. He has a record of challenging abuses of authority that go back to his early days in the navy, and he has often incurred the wrath of his own party by following his convictions. He opposed Bush's massive tax cuts in 2001, fought a seven-year battle against incipient corruption in political funding to forge the 2002 McCain-Feingold act, and has been a leading proponent of action against climate change. When his disaffection with the Bush administration grew intense in 2001 he even had conversations with Democratic leaders about changing party, and in 2004 there was talk of McCain becoming John Kerry's presidential running mate.

But it seems that in politics, as in a Vietnamese prison, McCain has his breaking point. In recent weeks he, too, has shifted right. He now speaks sotto voce about the need to legitimise undocumented workers while shouting from the rooftops about securing the Mexican border. He moved to mend bridges with the religious right and backed a raft of Bush tax cuts as vocally as he had opposed them in 2001. On Iraq he was a lone voice in support of Bush's troop surge - a heartfelt move for McCain that will make many liberals uneasy about his almost neocon belief in the right of military might. And he's always been vehemently anti-abortion.

"We are left with some serious questions about who is John McCain," says Foer. "The press corps has a weakness for him because of his zaniness, sense of humour and extraordinary personal story, and tend to position him closer to the centre than his record implies."

There's no danger of mistaking this week's vanquisher, Mitt Romney, of being a closet liberal. On the stump he spells out his credentials as a firebrand conservative as if he were addressing a class of infants. His speeches are filled with stars and stripes, the national anthem and tales of great patriots making the ultimate sacrifice. In his Michigan victory oration on Tuesday night he ended with the words: "We are a great and good people. That is why America will always be the most powerful nation on Earth." It's not a surprise to hear, then, that he's absolutely behind the neocon projects abroad; he believes that "this president has kept us safe over the last six years".

Much has also been made of his being a Mormon, partly one suspects because it is a headline-writer's dream. "The Mormon the merrier" was the New York Post's effort on his Michigan triumph.

In his speech on faith in American politics last month, Romney argued, much like Huckabee, that there was a place for God in the public realm. But unlike Huckabee he pledged not to "confuse" his religion with his politics. "Romney knows that his church has only 2% of the population and that if he became president he would have to be very cautious," says Olson.

A more serious criticism would be that Romney slithers about on policies. Today he vows to overturn Roe v Wade and to uphold the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. Yet when he ran against Teddy Kennedy for a senate seat in Massachusetts in 1994 he described himself as pro-choice and pro-gay. In 2003, as governor of Massachusetts, one of the most liberal states in the US, he said he felt like a "cattle rancher at a vegetarian convention", but he continued to hold nuanced positions, opposing gay marriages but approving civil unions.

David King, a political scientist at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has followed Romney's progression with interest, not least because the politician lives next door. He sees his neighbour as a classic tax-cutting economic conservative who adopts socially regressive policies when he has to. "He presents himself to different people in different ways for different constituencies. We can expect him to start speaking in a southern drawl in South Carolina and have a deep tan in Florida."

In his willingness to blow with the wind, Romney has much in common with Huckabee and McCain, it's just that he does it so blatantly and with such aplomb. He may not be the only one to flip flop in the 2008 presidential race, but he is undoubtedly the flip-flopper in chief.

Which brings us to the fourth Republican candidate to watch. He hasn't won a state yet, and is doing increasingly badly in the polls, but don't write off Rudy Giuliani just yet. If he can take Florida on January 29 - and he is devoting all his money and energy to doing that - then the recent comebacks of Romney and McCain will look timid by comparison.

Giuliani is the most intriguing of the four. Shakespeare would have enjoyed sinking his teeth into him, because the former mayor of New York is such a whirlwind of contradictions and passions, the main one being admiration of his own abilities. His stalwart behaviour on 9/11 has earned him the title of America's mayor, or Churchill in a baseball cap, and virtually his entire presidential campaign is posited on those 24 hours. But people forget, in the glare of September 11, what he was like on September 10.

For liberals, there is a lovable side to Giuliani, much like Bush circa 2000: a thrice-married man who slept on a gay friend's couch after one of his bust-ups is hardly the kind to arouse fears of a reactionary plot. But it's easy to forget the other stuff. Such as the fact that whereas McCain has been a scourge of bullies throughout his career, Giuliani is the bully. As the joke goes: "The thing about Giuliani is, either you love him or he hates you."

Mark Green, the president of the liberal radio network Air America, knows Giuliani well, having been the public advocate - a city watchdog - for New York throughout Giuliani's mayoralty. He categorises his style of leadership as "abusive, authoritarian and often effective. He would threaten and frighten people - staff, press, rivals - and they would frequently do his bidding. A close ally once told me that Giuliani gets up every morning looking for a fight he can win. That's fine for a prosecutor, and good for headlines, but it's awful for a chief executive."

There's been plenty of flip-flopping by Giuliani, too. Tough on guns while mayor of New York, but champion of the right to bear arms in 2008; pro-choice for many years, now in favour of appointing Supreme Court judges who would take a hard line on abortion. Above all, his pumped up "I'm-tough-on-terrorism" grandstanding has led him to utter some highly belligerent threats, not least to Iran which he says he would "set back five or 10 years" rather than allow it to become a nuclear power.

When Giuliani gets going, he makes George Bush appear as resolute as a marshmallow. Which makes you want to scream out the same question to him as to McCain: Who is the real Rudy Giuliani? Is it the man who slept on a gay friend's couch or the one who would bomb Iran to oblivion?

As for the other two soon-to-be-forgotten candidates: Fred Thompson, the character actor and former Tennessee senator, is making a last stand in South Carolina and can all but be discounted - if he fails to take the state on Saturday, which would be astonishing, he is effectively dead in the water; and Ron Paul has a devout following of libertarians, but he has even less of a chance.

If there's one cautionary tale to be gleaned from the trajectories of all four main candidates, it is that their flip-flopping should not be mistaken for innocent politicking. Giuliani is only talking tough on Iran to win the nomination, the argument goes, he doesn't really mean it. Romney only promises to overturn Roe v Wade as a sop to the religious right - he would never go through with it in practice. But sup with the Devil and there are consequences. As King puts it: "Any candidate who makes promises to the right of where they have been in the past might find himself beholden if he ever makes it to the White House."

One way for liberals to approach the next few days and weeks is to pray that the weakest Republican takes the nomination, thus ensuring victory for Clinton or Obama in November. It was such thinking that led the leftwing Daily Kos blog to exhort Democrats and independents in Michigan to vote for Mitt Romney, the theory being that he is one of the least electable. But this is playing with fire, because what if he won? Mental note to self: remember to see how Daily Kos covers the inauguration of President Romney on January 20 2009.

Life as a prostitute in Bangladesh

The following are excerpts of a report by Claudia Hammond of the BBC about the women in the biggest brothel in Bangladesh. Members of the Bangladeshi Women’s Health Coalition, an NGO that holds afternoon workshops on safe sex, accompanied the reporter.

The report:

One sex worker came here 10 years ago to escape her abusive husband.

Determined that her children will not grow up inside the brothel, she pays for them to be cared for in a local village.

But 350 children do live here, hiding under the bed when a client visits.

When the women get pregnant, many hope for daughters who in time will be able to join them working in the brothel.

The sex worker's room is one of the better ones, with a TV, a fan and a double bed covered in a sunflower-patterned throw.

She told me 1100 was the best time for business, when the ferry queues are at their longest.

One unexpected consequence of the rising water levels in Bangladesh is that river erosion has reduced the number of operable ferry berths, so men wait longer to cross, which in turn increases the demand for prostitution.

When I asked her if I could take her photograph, I guessed the answer might be No. But it turned out her initial reticence was due only to the fact that she had just seen a client and was not looking her best.

Appearance is very important here. She spends two hours a day and a third of her earnings making sure she looks good.

The underage girls earn more, but because she is in her twenties she is paid 100 taka ($1.50) for sex, about the same you would pay for a couple of large bottles of fizzy drink.

****
The women I met were all assertive and keen to tell me how they demand that men use condoms.

Some of the women have the power to do this, but there are also bonded sex workers who must do what their madams say.

They enter the brothel at an average age of 14 having been kidnapped, sold by step-mothers or tricked by their boyfriends.

One tells me she must see more than 25 clients a week - three during the day and then another at night.

Ten years ago she was taken from her home in the south of the country.

In time she can buy her freedom, but will probably stay in the brothel to avoid destitution.

I was told stories of families who gave up searching for their kidnapped daughters after just one week, because once they had been in a brothel they would bring shame on their family.

The women themselves feel such shame that they often give their hard-earned cash to the beggars who wait in the alleyways.

Every single woman I spoke to told me she was planning to leave in a year or so, but in reality most feel they have no alternative but to stay.

Behind the brothel there is a small, green field, which is so peaceful that it felt a world away from what is happening inside. But I soon realised this is where any woman who cannot leave will end up.

Denied Muslim burial rights, the women have their own graveyard.

This was such a grim place to visit that I found myself trying to look for any positives in the women's situation.

Perhaps there was a great sense of camaraderie. Perhaps they laughed together behind the men's backs?

But as soon as I asked, I realised I was wrong.

The woman just looked at me, and said what could possibly be good about living here? At the end of the afternoon I could just walk out and rejoin my BBC colleagues back on board the boat. She is still there.

You can read the entire piece here.

China’s Olympics to start on the 20th anniversary of the 8888 Uprising in Burma

The 2008 Summer Olympics in China will kick off on August 8th. As it turns out, this will be the 20th anniversary of the crackdown by the Burmese military junta on that nation’s 1988 pro-democracy movement.

During 1988, Burmese people rose up to protest economic mismanagement and political repression. On 8/8/88, troops fired into protesting crowds killing and wounding many. From that date on, the movement was known as the 8888 Uprising. At least 3000 people died during the 1988 confrontations between soldiers and civilians.

Of course, this past summer and fall saw a replay of the events of 1988. A new pro-democracy movement rose up to challenge the military rule and was violently put down. The international community protested and then turned its attention elsewhere. The reign of terror continues as Burmese soldiers hunt down activists.

China has been has been the principal arms seller and commercial partner of the junta in Burma, and the threat of a Chinese veto in the UN Security Council shields the generals from an international arms embargo. The junta will change its ways only when China says it must. So far, China is quite content with the military rule in Burma.

The International Herald Tribune offers these thoughts on the Chinese connection:

China has been striving to make certain that Aug. 8, 2008, the start of this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing, will be an auspicious date. The Communist authorities have even set the start of their gala for 8 p.m. on 8/8/08.

On that same day, victims of the junta ruling Burma will commemorate the 20th anniversary of a popular uprising against military dictatorship that was violently suppressed. Leaders of that movement, known as the 88 Student Generation, were among the first to be arrested when Buddhist monks led popular protests against the junta last September, and they are among the 700 protesters still incarcerated.

The numerological coincidence of China's Olympic gala and Burma's mournful memory will serve a positive purpose if it reminds the world of Burma's agony in the two decades since Aug. 8, 1988 and of the shameful symbiosis between China's government and the Burmese junta. Beijing has been the principal arms seller and commercial partner of the generals in Burma, and the threat of a Chinese veto in the UN Security Council shields the junta from an international arms embargo.

Yet the other rising power in Asia, democratic India, has shown a decent respect for international opinion by halting arms sales and transfers to Burma's military dictators. As 8/8/08 approaches, the world must see to it that when it comes to propping up the Burmese junta, Beijing's number is up next.

Green light to bomb Iran?

President Bush’s tour of the Middle East has been overshadowed by the horserace between the many candidates from both the Republican and Democratic Parties who are campaigning to replace him. However, he remains President for one more year and it is important to watch what he does and says.

So far he has been urging Arab governments to take a stronger stance against Iran. By and large the surrounding Arab governments see Iran as a problem to be managed – not solved. They have seen how the United States “solved” the problem of Iraq and are a little leery about going along with any more American solutions. So far President Bush’s official statements to Arab governments has fallen flat.

However, the President’s statements that may have an impact on the Middle East were off-hand remarks he made to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that he did not believe the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. The NIE reported the Persian country had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. The report took steam out of the White House’s steady drumbeat last summer and fall for taking action (i.e., military action) against Iran. (Of course, the report also confirmed Iran had such a program that the Iranian regime had been denying.)

Israel, surrounded by hostile governments vowing its destruction, does not hesitate taking pre-emptive military strikes when felt threatened. In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed a facility in Iraq developing nuclear weapons. Prior to 1979, Israel and Iran viewed each other as natural allies in a region where each were surrounded by unfriendly Arab governments. Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, however, relations deteriorated quickly as the official Iranian state position on Israel did a complete 180-degree turn. Unofficial relations have been up and down over the years but definitely turned sour under the administration of Mahmound Ahmadinejad. Israel has every reason to be concerned about what Iran is up to.

What is of concern is whether Bush’s remarks undermining the credibility of his own intelligence agencies’ assessments are a way of urging the Israeli government to take military action against Iran even thought the United States won’t at this time.

Here is Fred Kaplan in Slate:

President George W. Bush hasn't accomplished much on his voyage to the Middle East, but he did take the time to inflict another wound on the entire U.S. intelligence community—and on the credibility of anything he might ever again say about the world.

In the latest Newsweek, Michael Hirsh reports that, during a private conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Bush "all but disowned" the agencies' Dec. 3 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. A "senior administration official who accompanied Bush" on the trip confided to Hirsh that Bush "told the Israelis that he can't control what the intelligence community says, but that [the NIE's] conclusions don't reflect his own views."

The NIE—which was signed by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies—concluded "with high confidence" that Iran had "halted its nuclear weapons program" back in the fall of 2003. The estimate, released to the public in sanitized form, seriously undercut efforts by the Bush-Cheney White House to portray Iran's nuclear ambitions as an imminent threat—and left the world either relieved or (especially in Israel's case) alarmed that the option of a U.S. airstrike on Iran was pretty much off the table.

***
There are two … ironies. First, this NIE is the product of reforms that President Bush himself signed into law—the creation of a director of national intelligence and various other procedural changes—designed to keep intelligence analysis free of political interference.

Second, the NIE contains plenty of passages that could legitimately justify a less-than-optimistic appraisal of Iran's intentions and capabilities. For instance, the estimate found that Iran is still enriching uranium and that it "has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons if it decided to do so." The authors allowed that they "do not know" whether Iran might want to resume its nuclear-weapons program in the future. Finally, they concluded that Iran stopped the program "primarily in response to increasing international security and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran's previously undeclared nuclear work." Therefore, Bush could have argued, the pressure needs to be kept up—or else Iran will rev up its clandestine program once again.

Secretary of Defense (and former CIA Director) Robert Gates has taken this approach when talking about the NIE to international audiences. Gates has said Iran and the rest of the world shouldn't cherry-pick the findings—that if they buy the agency's conclusion that Iran has stopped its nuclear-weapons program, they should buy the less-rosy conclusions, too. For a while, Bush displayed the opposite tendency: He played up the NIE's more sobering conclusions while dismissing the main finding. Now, in a private conversation with Israel's prime minister, he's rejected the whole package and says its conclusions "don't reflect his own views" (wherever he gets them from).

This remark has three baleful consequences. First, it can't help but demoralize the intelligence community. NIEs are meant, ultimately, for only one reader, the president; and here's the president telling another world leader that he doesn't believe it because, well, he doesn't agree with it.

Second, it reinforces the widespread view that the president views intelligence strictly as a political tool: When it backs up his policies, it's as good as gold; when it doesn't, it's "just guessing." This result is that all intelligence is degraded and devalued, at home and abroad. Let's say that six months from now Bush publicizes an NIE concluding that Iran has resumed its nuclear-weapons program or that, say, North Korea is reprocessing more plutonium. Given that he pooh-poohed an NIE that rubbed against his own views, why should anyone take him seriously for embracing an NIE that confirms them?

Third, by telling Olmert that it's all right to ignore the NIE, Bush is in effect telling him that Israel should go ahead and behave as if its findings had never been published. Hirsh reports that, when Olmert was asked whether he felt reassured by Bush's words, he replied, "I am very happy." ABC News reported Monday that, at a closed hearing of the Israeli parliament's foreign affairs and defense committee, Olmert testified, "All options that prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capabilities are legitimate within the context of how to grapple with this matter."

It is increasingly unlikely, for many reasons, that the United States will bomb Iran before the year is out. But, wittingly or not, did Bush just flash a green light to Olmert?

You can read the entire piece here.

Iran urged to stop the horrific practice of stoning

Amnesty International has called for the abolition of the practice of stoning people to death in Iran. The method of execution has been used throughout history but is considered so barbaric that it is rarely practiced outside a handful of countries.

In Iran, nine women and two men await death sentences by stoning. The method involves burying men up to their waist and women up to their breasts. They are then pelted with stones – specified to be large enough to inflict pain but not big enough to kill outright – until they die. Stoning to death is a "horrific practice, designed to increase the suffering" of those condemned, the UK-based rights group says in the report.

Stoning is the favored form of execution in Iran for cases involving adultery. A disproportionate number of these cases impact on women and a majority of those stoned are women.

According to Reuters:

Amnesty International on Tuesday called on Iran to abolish the "grotesque and horrific" practice of stoning people to death.

Amnesty, which opposes the death penalty under any circumstances, said an Iranian man had been stoned to death in July last year for committing adultery, despite a moratorium being imposed on such executions in 2002.

The woman he was convicted of committing adultery with still faces the threat of being stoned, a practice that involves the woman being buried up to her breasts in sand and then pelted with stones until she dies.

"Amnesty International is calling on the Iranian government to abolish immediately and totally execution by stoning and to impose a moratorium on the death penalty," the rights group said in a 30-page report on the practice.

"Iranian law prescribes that the stones are deliberately chosen to be large enough to cause pain, but not so large as to kill the victim immediately ... It is a particularly grotesque and horrific practice."

While stoning is used relatively seldom in Iran, it is the favored form of execution in cases involving adultery and has a disproportionate impact on women, according to Amnesty.

Iran has one of the highest rates of execution in the world. In 2006, 177 people were put to death, mostly by hanging. Last year, that number was expected to be exceeded, with 124 people executed in the first seven months of the year.

As well as calling for the abolition of stoning and a moratorium on the death penalty, Amnesty also urged the Iranian government to decriminalize adultery, which is not illegal in the majority of countries.

Is the house of Reagan collapsing?

Has the Republican Party run out of steam? Are they fielding a weak field of candidates and possibly facing electoral catastrophe? Is the Republican Party simply a house of cards with different factions now sniping at one another?

This analysis from the McClatchy news service:

The house that Ronald Reagan built is in danger of collapsing.

The coalition of fiscal conservatives, national security conservatives, anti-tax activists and social conservatives that rallied behind Reagan in 1980 and has defined the Republican Party ever since is coming apart at the seams heading into the 2008 election.

All the men running for the party's presidential nomination invoke Reagan's name repeatedly. But all of them offend at least one wing of the party enough that they'd find it difficult, and perhaps impossible, to pull the disparate elements of the old coalition together.

"It's gone," said Ed Rollins, who worked on Reagan's 1984 re-election campaign and now chairs the campaign of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.

"The Reagan coalition is pretty much gone," added Karen Spencer, a Republican strategist in California who watched the Reagan phenomenon firsthand when her father served as Reagan's chief political strategist. "It's been 28 years. Maybe it is time for a change."

What happened?

Times changed, of course.

Fighting terrorism has created divisions where confronting the Soviet Union and rebuilding the U.S. military unified the party.

Cutting taxes still elates anti-tax conservatives, as it did in Reagan's day, but runaway spending by the modern party has outraged small-government conservatives.

And the much more religious tone of the party — Reagan was private about his faith — threatens to open a breach between social conservatives and country club conservatives.

Huckabee also thinks the party's in danger of losing the working-class Americans so drawn to Reagan — the blue-collar, ethnic, often Catholic "Reagan Democrats" voters who turned against the socially permissive Democratic Party of the 1970s and embraced Reagan in the 1980s.

"The Reagan coalition has certainly not seen those same middle-class, working-class Republicans feeling a part of the Republican Party as they should," Huckabee said at a debate in South Carolina last week.

Further threatening the coalition is the field of candidates now running for Reagan's old job.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona? Vietnam War hero, first to urge sending more troops to Iraq when that wasn't popular in the party, crusader against government spending.

He has the stature to make a strong argument for the old coalition. But he's criticized Bush tactics against suspected terrorists as torture, sided with the president in wanting to let illegal immigrants stay and earn citizenship and pushed a campaign-finance plan that curbed political speech.

A lot of loyal Republicans think he's anything but Republican, and the party's influential echo chamber on talk radio hates him.

Huckabee? A Baptist preacher who talks about his faith, he's excited social conservatives.

But he raised taxes as governor, wanted to let the children of illegal immigrants in Arkansas schools earn the same college aid as Arkansas-born children and called Bush's foreign policy "arrogant."

He turns off less religious Republicans — he got 6 percent of the non-evangelical vote in New Hampshire's Republican primary. He divides anti-tax advocates — the Club for Growth is against him; Americans for Tax Reform are OK with him. And talk radio big shots such as Rush Limbaugh think he's a liberal in preacher's clothes.

"Liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies," said rival Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator. "That's not the model of the Reagan coalition, that's the model of the Democratic Party."

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney? He's the most aggressive in courting the Reagan coalition, promising low taxes and small government, a strong national defense and newfound opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

But social conservatives are suspicious of his recent conversions on abortion and gay marriage — he supported the rights to both in the 1990s. To some people, that leaves Romney with one foot in each camp, but grounded in neither.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani? He cleaned up New York, reduced crime and cut taxes. He also showed calm and nerve when his city was attacked.

But he supports abortion rights, gay marriage and gun control, he's been married three times, and his private life falls short of Christian conservative ideals. Social conservatives such as Dr. James Dobson, the head of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family, say they'd bolt from the party if Giuliani is nominated.

There is, of course, the possibility of a new coalition.

McCain, for example, might pull in independents who've been leaning more toward the Democrats during the Bush years. A primary win next week in Michigan with a strong independent vote, for example, could suggest a better chance of the Republicans winning a state they've been losing.

Giuliani could replace some of the social conservatives he'd lose with suburban moderates, putting states such as Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in play for his party.

Ultimately, though, the fate of the Reagan coalition — or any strong Republican coalition — might lie in the other party.

It's important to remember that the rise of the Reagan coalition wasn't just an embrace of him, but a repudiation of Democratic President Jimmy Carter, as well as the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party.

So, too, today's Republicans might swallow their objections to McCain, Huckabee or Giuliani if the Democrats nominate a candidate that leaves many people looking for an alternative.

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is some Republicans' choice for a Democratic candidate.

Said GOP pollster Whit Ayres: "When it comes to Republicans, Hillary Clinton is a unifier, not a divider."

Democrats would be wise to heed that last warning.

Obama’s endorsements

Political endorsements do not carry the clout they used to prior to the 1970’s. Back then the nod from a prominent politician or labor leader meant a whole political machine was going to work for the lucky candidate. Nowadays, with the decline of political organizations and the rise of direct appeal by candidates to voters via television, endorsements don’t count for what they used to. However, endorsements are not meaningless.

Of particular interest are the string of endorsements Senator Barack Obama received last week. What was particularly interesting about these endorsements was the timing. They followed the victory of Senator Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire’s primary. Usually the bandwagon effect benefits the victor.

Josh Marshall has this observation:

Endorsements don't usually count for much. But if they're big enough and come at critical moments they can count for a lot. And this string of endorsements Obama has picked up since his narrow defeat in New Hampshire four days ago is, I believe, a major story that has not gotten the attention it deserves.

Since losing the New Hampshire primary four days ago, Obama has been endorsed by Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ). Additionally, he's also been endorsed by Rep. Miller (D-CA), Sen. Kerry (D-MA) and Ned Lamont. But they're in a slightly different category and it's the first four I want to discuss.

The first of these came from Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) who put out word he'd be endorsing Obama the day after New Hampshire. Johnson is a protege of former Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD). And Daschle has close ties to Obama -- a lot of operatives in the Daschle world went to Obama after 2004. So when I saw word of the endorsement I figured this was something Daschle or his former staffers had helped put together to help stabilize Obama's fortunes after the New Hampshire loss.

But now you have three others -- Nelson, Napolitano and McCaskill. Nelson and Johnson are from very red states while Napolitano and McCaskill are from swing states.

Now, there are a bunch of things you can draw from this spate of endorsements. One is that these folks don't seem worried about themselves running or having their supporters run with Obama at the top of the ticket. And these are people from either very conservative or somewhat conservative states. Despite the fact that Obama is running in some ways to the right of Clinton (at least tonally, as the candidate of unity and bipartisan reconcilation), there are still a lot of questions inevitably being asked about whether the country is 'ready' for Obama, whether that's his race, his name, his background in community organizing, his youth, etc. So these folks think America's ready; in fact, more ready than they are for Hillary.

But that isn't the biggest significance. The key is timing. You don't hit a big time politician like Hillary Clinton when she's down unless you're really against her and you're fairly confident she's not getting back up. After winning in New Hampshire, albeit narrowly and after the clobbering in Iowa, there's been a sense that Clinton may be back on track to consolidating her frontrunner status and perhaps following a modified version of the standard script in which the anointed frontrunner gets a scare in the early states before mopping up the competition as the race goes national. But these four clearly don't want that to happen. In fact, they're sticking their necks pretty far out to help make it not happen. And their endorsements, coming right now, tell me they have some confidence it won't.

To de-Baath or not to de-Baath, that is the question

The primary reason given for the “surge” in American troops in Iraq's civil wars was to buy time for the Iraqi government to achieve a number of political benchmarks – one of which was to overturn the de-Baathification rulings set down by occupation tsar, Jerry Bremer. Nothing has happened since the beginning of the surge and the so-called benchmarks President Bush said were so important a year ago, have somehow vanished from White House statements on Iraq.

That is, nothing happened until reports yesterday came out that one benchmark – de-Baathification – is being implemented. This was great news as a first step toward reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite factions in the country. (The Sunnis are a minority in Iraq but were dominant in the ruling Baath Party and, therefore, disproportionately affected by the de-Baathification ruling of the Coalition Provisional Authority after the downfall of Saddam Hussein.) As Matthew Yglesias put it, “Unlike the ephemeral "success" of the surge, reconciliation really would create the conditions under which US forces could withdraw on an uncontroversial note of success … from most all points of view.”

Unfortunately, as it is now being reported, the program may force the discharge of as many ex-Baathists as are eligible to return to government service. This from Kevin Drum:

Today saw the first concrete sign of political reconciliation in Iraq: the passage of a law that eases the anti-Baathist order put in place by Jerry Bremer at the beginning of the American occupation in 2003. In theory, the new law should allow thousands of Sunni ex-members of Saddam's civil service to once again serve in government jobs.

Whether it works out that way remains to be seen. The Washington Post quotes Ali al-Lami, spokesman for the current de-Baathification commission, saying that the law will have just the opposite effect, making it easier to get rid of even more Sunnis:

The new measure could lead to a new purge of members of the current Iraqi government, Lami said, including about 7,000 officers in the Interior Ministry. Even influential Iraqi security force officials who used to be Baathists could face removal.

"The commander of the Baghdad security plan and his assistants, according to the new law, they should retire," he said.

The New York Times provides an even bigger estimate:

One Shiite politician, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, said the new law could forcibly retire up to 27,000 former Baathists, who would receive pensions.

On the other hand, the Times quotes other officials suggesting that the law would allow 13,000 to 31,000 former Baathists to regain their jobs. So who knows? Whether reconciliation is really in the offing depends on just how the law is enforced and who does the enforcing. Wait and see.