Elections 2008: Weekly Scorecard (12/08)

This is the first of RKR’s weekly round-ups of the candidates’ performances, which we plan to run during the 2008 presidential election season. This week we learned of the release of the NIE, Romney’s putative JFK-like speech on religion, the CIA’s destruction of its interrogation DVDs, dark tales of Huckabee’s tenure as Governor, including his release of a convicted rapist in response to pressure from the right who later raped and murdered again, more harmful facts about Giuliani’s adultery-expensing scandal, and more squabbling between Hillary and Obama. With that teaser, let’s see how they fared:

THE REPUBLICANS

Mike Huckabee. Huckabee began the week with a head of steam following his strong performance in the CNN/YouTube debate. He rocketed to first place in Iowa and second place nationally in the polls. His aggressive courting of the religious right has clearly paid dividends — he is now their man. Indeed, his success with the evangelicals — who have a longstanding distrust of Mormons — likely drove Romney to make his “JFK” speech more than any other factor.

Huckabee’s success has brought new scrutiny, and with it, some troubling stories about his tenure as Arkansas Governor. If he gets the nomination, these skeletons may prove his undoing. First, the name Wayne Dumond may soon become as infamous as Willie Horton — arguably the story of Huckabee’s release of Dumond from prison is far worse. Dumond was a dangerous Arkansas prisoner who Huckabee released despite the protests of numerous victims, and who raped and murdered again following his release. In addition, there’s evidence that politics played a role: anti-Clinton forces advocated Dumond’s release because his rape victim was a distance cousin of Bill Clinton, and they argued that somehow Dumond’s conviction was proof of a conspiratorial travesty of justice by a vengeful Governor Clinton. If this weren’t enough, by week’s end Huckabee’s earlier advocacy of quarantining AIDS victims and homosexuals also began to come to light. Not great for someone who claims to be God’s horse in the race.

The interesting part is that while this news might hurt Huckabee among moderate Republicans and independent voters, its unlikely to greatly harm his standing with the evangelical base that has committed to him. He may have reached the point with the base where he’d have to be found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy to lose. These issues are more likely to hurt Huckabee, and the GOP generally, should he get the nomination.

Grade: B

John McCain. McCain also began the week with some momentum following one of his strongest performances in the CNN/YouTube debate. He is helped by the fact the immigration issue has faded somewhat while his support for the surge and experience in national security matters have become more valued assets with the base.

Nevertheless, he can’t seem to catch fire and leap-frog Giuliani, who has been fighting more aggressively to own the national security issue. There’s a palpable sense, confirmed by the general lack of movement in the polls during the week, that McCain’s time has passed.

Grade: B-

Rudy Giuliani: Not a good week. He began slowly with a mixed performance at the CNN/YouTube debate. At times he revealed his nasty and arrogant side, which was not a great introduction to the huddled masses outside New York City. Meanwhile, he has spent the week trying hard to ignore the scandalous reports about his use of the NYPD off-budget for Judy’s personal travel and security detail, while he was still married to Donna Hanover. At first, the Giuliani camp tried to explain the unusual practice of providing her with police security and chauffeured excursions as the logical response to a threat on her life. As the week wore on, reports traced the expensing back to 1999, before Rudy’s affair was known to the public (or to his wife Donna Hanover). Odd that Judy would receive a threat due to her relationship with Rudy before the affair was publicly known. Other facts, such as Giuliani’s unusual practice of prepaying travel expenses, allegedly to avoid close scrutiny of the expense details, have added weight to the story.

The trouble for Rudy is the scandal feeds a larger narrative of arrogance and imperialism — compounded by Judith in her tiara — that the rules the rest of us schmucks live by don’t apply to Rudy. In some ways, the narrative is a caricature of Bush — a sense that he will do what he wants when he wants without accountability or shame. The evangelical base never trusted him in the first place, and with Huckabee’s rise as their chosen one, Rudy now has a smaller margin of error.

Meanwhile, early this week Rudy rolled out a new ad using the old Iranian hostage crisis as a foil to display his neocon credentials. The ad is horribly wrong on the facts. It coincidentally hit the airwaves just as the NIE was released, which by finding that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003, undermined the lunatic position of Giuliani’s chief foreign policy adviser, Norman Podhoretz, who has been demanding the U.S. bomb Iran immediately. The ad implies that Ronald Reagan deserves all credit for the hostages’ release within an hour of him being sworn in as president in 1981. First, the Carter administration had brokered the deal for their release and its execution was well underway prior to the swearing in ceremony. Second, Reagan is hardly a poster child for being tough with Iran, given that he secretly and illegally sold the Ayatollah’s regime military weapons as part of the Iran-Contra scandal later in his term. Who knows what Iran did with those weapons, but it’s doubtful they used them to do favors for the “Great Satan,” Uncle Sam, or our allies. Giuliani’s alliance with a nutjob like Podhoretz may work during the GOP primaries, but should he win the nomination, his choice of Podhoretz as consigliere will only expose Giuliani’s own inexperience and poor judgment in foreign affairs and national security matters.

Grade: C-

Mitt Romney. Romney was damaged goods coming out of the CNN/YouTube debate. His exchanges with McCain (about torture), Giuliani (about immigration) and even Anderson Cooper (about gays in the military) that night seemed to knock him off his talking points and rattle him. Instead of looking like the future leader of the free world, he seemed like a mid-level manager having technical trouble with his power point demonstration. He clearly was focused on Rudy at the start of the week, but as the week wore on, it seemed Romney recognized the “Big Mo” was with Huckabee among the evangelical base. As a result, his mid-week speech on religion was carefully aimed at the evangelical base, not moderate Republicans and independents. That is, unlike JFK’s speech to which Romney’s was casually compared by the MSM, Romney was not trying to persuade more fair minded voters that he wouldn’t be religiously doctrinaire as president; he was trying to persuade evangelicals that they should see him as a zealously committed man of faith who shared their socially conservative values.

The speech was too little, too late for his target audience. Huckabee comes across as the genuine article to the base, while Romney is distrusted for his more socially liberal beliefs while governor of Massachusetts. Without carrying a healthy percentage of the base, Romney will not have the critical mass of passionate voters and volunteers to take him to the nomination.

Grade: C

Fred Thompson. Fred Thompson was brought into the race to be what George Allen was supposed to be before his Macaca moment — the proxy for Ronald Reagan (or the myth of Reagan as remembered by the base) in this race. But he has failed to use his acting skills like the Gipper to capture anyone’s imagination, and it’s apparent that Huckabee has taken this leading role.

Grade: C-

Ron Paul. He came across as a fringe candidate at the CNN/YouTube debate, even among the base which despises his position on Iraq, and has done nothing since to change that perception. He continued to register in the single digits in most polls during the week, despite the MSM’s fascination with the Paultards.

Grade: D-

Tancredo and Hunter. The GOP’s Mike Gravel continue to waste resources with their vanity campaigns.

Grade: F

THE DEMOCRATS

Joseph Biden. Biden continues to show no evidence of running for office higher than secretary of state or vice president.

Grade: C-

Hillary Clinton. Not nearly as bad a week as the MSM, which is starving for a horse-race, would lead you to believe. While the races in Iowa and New Hampshire have tightened, she has not slipped nationally and her supporters are the most committed. The NIE’s report on Iran’s abandonment of its nuclear weapons program in 2003 might have harmed her with the liberal base, given her vote for the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment, but the focus of that story in the MSM has focused on the Bush administration’s veracity during the preceding six months about the Iranian threat. In addition, the attacks from the left only help Hillary position herself for the general election, which no Democrat can win without winning a majority of the independent voters (something the liberal base tends to forget). No major breaking news, good or bad, for the week — more of a solid workman-like effort with a sense that she is poised to fight as aggressively as necessary. But her success is still largely premised on her tenacity, familiarity and sophisticated campaign rather than a groundswell of affection.

Grade: A-

Chris Dodd. Like Biden, continues to show that he aspires to nothing more than a cabinet position.

Grade: C-

John Edwards. Edwards engaged in his own form of triangulation this week, by positioning himself in the middle of the squabbling Hillary and Obama and above the fray. Apparently, his campaign believes that this kindler gentler approach will be more effective with Iowa voters. However, the reason politicians define their opponents in negative terms is because it works. Edwards’ unilateral disarmament is risky and I would expect him to slip to the third place in Iowa. And he can’t afford to lose Iowa — he has probably spent more time in every Iowa county in the last two years than any candidate for governor.

Grade: C-

Dennis Kucinich. It’s probably time Dennis began thinking more about retaining his House seat, which is increasingly in jeopardy, than his impossible quest for the presidency. Note to self: If you think you saw something unusual in the sky, don’t tell the world you saw a UFO.

Grade: D

Barack Obama. This was the week of Oprah, and this alone makes it a good week for Obama. With this air cover, he shrewdly pursued the parallel strategy of ratcheting up the rhetoric against Hillary. To his credit, his campaign is fast and effective in defining the narrative whenever it finds itself in a battle with Hillary, and in defusing his own gaffes. He also continues to get “transformative candidate” press — the kind that folks like Colon Powell got earlier in his career when people filled in the blanks about his unknown positions with their own hopes and dreams. Some of the press seems more about what Barack Obama’s candidacy could mean to the world symbolically than what kind of president he would actually be. With only a few years in the senate and missed votes on key issues like Iran, he is comparatively untainted by the sausage-making of difficult political compromises that Hillary has had to make in her two senate terms and while in the West Wing. But in due course, he will become more defined, either by himself or his opponents. His gamble is that voters will find the potential he represents to be greater than who he has actually been — he’s the political equivalent of a number one draft pick out of high school who is drafted for his upside potential over the accomplished college senior. For now, this week was essentially a draw. Yet the battle between Hillary and Barack remains the sole source of electoral drama on the Democratic side.

Grade: A-

Bill Richardson. He seems suspiciously similar to Biden and Dodd in his aspirations, although his candidacy seems, oddly, both more credible due to his impressive public record and more amateur. His off-the-cuff remarks in interviews and debates, and general lack of preparedness, suggest he probably should have dropped out of the presidential race to pursue Domenici’s senate seat, which was his for the taking. Now that race will likely go to Udall.

Grade: D