He Is Running But Now He Can't Hide!

A friend inquired why Sam Nunn came out for Obama and though I have not been in touch with Sam, nor will I, I replied: either Sam intends to run at some point after this election and did not want to alienate Black voters, wants to become Sec. of State or Defense in an Obama presidency and loses nothing if Obama does not get elected but mostly because he just cannot stand the Clintons and believes they were bad for the DLC wing of the Democrat Party.


I have posted a variety of commentary on the current campaign. Apparently Liberal Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are willing to throw their markers down in Obama's favor no matter what he says or does so the polls indicate the Pennsylvania election, to be held Tuesday, is narrowing despite Obama's gaffs. (See 1 - 9 below.)

Carter and Egypt upbeat about what Carter thinks he can bring about - release of Israel's Cpl Shalit based on Hamas conditions. Since Carter and Egypt come at the situation from a different perspective it is little wonder they are up beat - Israel gets back one kidnapped soldier, Israel releases hundreds of terrorist prisoners, ceases its response to Hamas attacks and opens its borders all for a good will promise from Hamas which is sworn to Israel's destruction.. Who knows, Olmert might be stupid enough to agree. (See 10 a and b below.)

Netanyahu, naturally, has a different slant on Hamas than Carter and Egypt and throws down a challenge to Olmert. (See 11)

Dick

1) POTOMAC WATCH
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL



A 'Bitter' Misstep

Speaking of "bitter," here's an individual who may now qualify for that description: Barack Obama.

Scandals come and go, and this election cycle has had its share of 24-hour news uproars. But every once in a while an event comes along that sticks, and in the process changes the political equation. Mr. Obama's description at a San Francisco fund-raiser of "bitter," small-town Americans who "cling" to their guns and their God is looking to be such a moment. Let us count the ways in which Mr. Obama might now be wishing he'd stuck to Internet fund raising:


- He has likely given Hillary Clinton a new lease on the Pennsylvania primary. A week ago, she was facing a mutiny, a mounting crowd of Democrats calling for her to quit. The Obama camp sniffed blood and was shooting for an upset that would end it all. He's been outspending his rival two-to-one in the Keystone State, and had closed Mrs. Clinton's double-digit leads to within the margin of error.

The Pennsylvania polls haven't registered a post-"bitter" Obama dive, but his momentum has stalled. And while Mrs. Clinton has no greater prospect of catching him in pledged delegates than she did a week ago, a respectable win provides her with plenty of rationale to keep with it. Even Mr. Obama appears to have acknowledged this new reality, telling supporters yesterday that he now hoped to wrap things up in May. Maybe.

- He's given Mrs. Clinton fresh super delegate ammunition. The crux of the Clinton "electability" pitch is that Mr. Obama can't win the white, working-class Democrats the party needs to gain the Oval Office. In Ohio, she trounced him 3-to-1 among white voters without a college degree – a group that made up half the electorate.

Up to now, Mr. Obama has gamely argued those voters will come around once he's the nominee. Mrs. Clinton was always set to beat him among this set in Pennsylvania, but she can now spin that win into a case that Mr. Obama has actively alienated these voters, and that he can't get their support come November.

- "Yes We Can" has devolved into "Who the Heck Is This Guy?" Mr. Obama's political brilliance to date has been to use his message of hope to deflect questions about himself or his record. He'd actually created the perception that to challenge him was to challenge "hope" itself. Think back to that soaring race speech, which so successfully turned the debate toward America's shared problem, and away from Mr. Obama's individual Jeremiah Wright problem. But the San Fran comments proved one scandal too many; man and message have now been de-linked.

And so nearly the whole first hour of Wednesday's debate was devoted to Mr. Obama's gun-God comments, his wisdom in sticking with a rabid pastor, his links to 1960s radicals, even his patriotism. The candidate's frustration was visible, and he spent yesterday complaining the debate was the latest in "gotcha games" that take away from the "issues." Then again, among the important "issues" for many voters are a candidate's beliefs, character and judgment. Mr. Obama will just have to get used to it.

- Among the people who now get to ask these uncomfortable questions is Mrs. Clinton herself. Granted, a full-frontal assault against Mr. Obama is dangerous territory for a woman who only recently was ducking incoming Bosnia fire, and who inches up in the un-favorability ratings with each new poll. But if Wednesday's gloves-off debate performance was anything to go by, Mrs. Clinton now sees at least a yellow light to join the Obama dissection.

- The press is no longer in the tank. Debate moderators Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos proved Mr. Obama's waking nightmare. This isn't bias, so much as a belated recognition by the media that maybe it doesn't know its subject matter as well as it might. Never underestimate the press' ability to fall back in love with a young, charismatic idealist. But for now, the gloss is off.

Condescension aside, the political point Mr. Obama was making at his fund-raiser was that Democrats need to get voters thinking about the economy, since his party struggles when the discussion is social or cultural issues. (Recall Howard Dean's 2004 moan that Southerners were so riveted on "God, guns and gays" that they wouldn't acknowledge the brilliance of his plans for education or health care.)

So there is some irony that Mr. Obama has guaranteed this political cycle will now contain a hefty focus on . . . church and guns. The latter, by the way, is an issue some Democrats still "bitterly" credit for losing Al Gore key states in 2000. Sure enough, firearms made a prominent appearance at Wednesday's debate, forcing both candidates (who've spent the past week lauding American gun "traditions") to remember they were still fighting in a liberal, gun-control primary. Their hem-and-haw answers surely left neither gun-owners nor gun-haters happy, guaranteeing future discussion.

It's unclear if or how Mr. Obama's comments will play longer term, assuming he's the nominee. But consider this: It is no longer the case that top Republicans are rooting for Mrs. Clinton, who has been long viewed as the weaker opponent. This past week filled GOP heads with visions of Michael Dukakis, as Mr. Obama revealed his liberal, inner, out-of-touch self.

At least a few on the right have decided that if the choice is between getting voters to remember why they didn't like Mrs. Clinton 15 years ago, or getting voters to remember why they didn't like Mr. Obama a few minutes ago, they'll take the fresher memories.

This primary is still Mr. Obama's to lose. This presidential election is still the Democrats' to lose. Nonetheless, with a few off-the-cuff remarks, Mr. Obama has made all of it a little less clear.


2) The Obama Aesthetic
By Thomas Lifson

Barack Obama's campaign has been all about image. The well-dressed, impeccably groomed, and elegantly articulate speaker was able to speak of hope, change, and unity, and for awhile the public bought it. Capitalizing on the huge store of guilt, compassion, and hope for better racial relations among the vast majority of Americans of all races, Obama posed as the man who might heal the wounds of the past.

The bonhomie lasted for months, as the press corps, no strangers to Obama's own guilt and hope and leftist inclinations, averted its eyes from those elements of his politics and life story that were discordant with a unifier's mission, and portrayed him as almost supernaturally virtuous. Obama long ago learned how to disarm strangers who might find him an unusual or perhaps threatening figure, and as long as the scrutiny didn't get too detailed, the game worked splendidly.

But that was before Hillary Clinton's campaign took him seriously. Before the Clinton war room wizards, past masters of planting stories and themes in friendly media hands, got to work on him. American Thinker and other conservative websites long have been pointing to his Alinskyite past, noting his Senate voting record and his propensity to associate with left wing extremists like Bill Ayers. But until very recently, the major media were content to allow his chosen narrative of centrism and unity to prevail. No messy qualms about actual policies disturbed the aesthetic of hope and optimism and unity.

The press collaboration with Obama's PR became so sickeningly obvious that Saturday Night Live was able to mock it savagely, and receive kudos for puncturing the bubble. With the impetus of scornful laughter haunting them, mainstream journalists began to pay more attention to Obama's dubious associations. Video of Pastor Wright hit ABC, and from there the rest of the mainstream media began to pay attention to discordant notes in his rhetoric of reassurance to middle America.

The ABC News-sponsored debate Wednesday night featured unprecedentedly tough questioning (at least for a liberal) by George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson. Obama stumbled in his responses, comparing admitted terror bomber Bill Ayers to United States Senator Tom Coburn, a physician who has delivered thousands of babies. Even more astonishingly, when reminded that capital gains tax increases actually decrease tax revenue while cap gains tax cuts increase them, he actually retreated to the realm of class warfare, insisting that regardless of the consequences, he wants to punish the owners of capital in the name of "fairness."

Welcome the new aesthetic of Barack Obama, the left wing ideologue. The signs have long been there, for those with the eyes to see them.

It is no accident that Obama has become the candidate of the Democrats' left wing fringe, typified by the Daily Kos crowd, despite his continuing efforts to sound a centrist note. The kind of people who are comfortable working with a poster of Che Guevara looking over their shoulders have been attracted to Obama because they read the little signals belying his centrist pose.

Of course, it may be unfair to hold a candidate responsible for all the actions of any of his supporters, but when a campaign itself indulges in the aesthetic of leftism, it may actually mean something. Take the striking posters of the candidate created by left wing artist Shepard Fairey Obama change poster, Obama Progress poster sold by the online Obama store run by his campaign. The entire run of the Fairey posters has sold out, so popular are they among the leftist cognoscenti whose aesthetic tastes run to nostalgic socialist realism.

Of the Fairey posters, the "Progress" poster is the most interesting. "Progressive" is, of course, the favorite euphemism for the hard left today.

Take a close look at the Obama campaign emblem placed on the "progress" poster. It is placed almost as if it were a medal worn on his lapel. And in place of the ordinary Obama campaign "O" seen on the "Change" poster, the "Progress" poster features a five pointed star in the middle.

This is not to suggest that Obama is some Manchurian Candidate controlled by a conspiracy from the vanished USSR, but rather that his campaign is choosing to cultivate a hard left constituency via semiotic means. There is in America a substantial faction of the hard left which waxes nostalgic for the good old days of Soviet art and culture, and members of this group have been cultivated by the Obama campaign.


Of course, the smug in-group nostalgia for an evil and murderous ideology is not only repellent to most Americans, it is easily mocked.

3) Have We Seen the End of Two-Party System?
By Reed Galen

Regardless of the outcome this November, the state of the major political parties in America will be far different than anyone expected at the beginning of the 2008 cycle.

On the GOP side, the Republican National Committee was a well-known bastion of Mitt Romney supporters. But John McCain's resurrection -- Phoenix is an appropriate hometown for him -- dashed the hopes of conservative Republicans. At the same time, the Democrats never expected Barack Obama, popular as he was even early on, to be a real force in the contest. Hillary Clinton, still in the race, however precariously, has not lived up to the hopes of the dyed-in-the-wool DLC Democrats hoping for a return to the heyday of her husband.

None of that, however, would normally spell the end of the parties as we know them. But while Senator McCain has solid conservative credentials in practice and on paper, his willingness and ability to reach across the aisle have made some on the right suspicious of his true motives. His nomination steers the RNC toward a more centrist place than it's been since Richard Nixon was the nominee.

Should Senator McCain capture the White House, his presidency and control of the party could leave social conservatives, who comprise about a third of the party, on the outside looking in.

The Democrats have an entirely different problem. Senator Obama has turned the Democratic primary into a full-fledged movement within the party. His wing now appears to make up a majority of Democrats in the country. Senator Clinton still counts much of the party machinery among her supporters, but, regardless of the outcome of their contest, Obama's rise forces the party to face something that's been staring at them for some time: They have been a movement without a coherent ideological framework for too long.

In a way, the parties appear to be trading places. Dedicated Republicans have long been accused of being unwavering ideologues, willing to lose on principle rather than win on compromise. A John McCain presidency would radically shift that dynamic, if he follows the bipartisan method he used in the Senate.

Democrats, even before Bill Clinton, have been painted as waffling, poll-obsessed surrender monkeys; the champion of the little guy but still beholden to well-funded special interests. Hillary Clinton as nominee would likely continue that trend. Obama, however, could radically return the belief system of the Democrats to the days of FDR federal intervention and the party's image to the days of Kennedy's Camelot.

Voters today, as we have seen from this cycle's chaotic and at times schizophrenic primary season, are better informed and more engaged than in any election in recent memory, especially on the Democratic side. This is not to say that Republican voters are uninformed, quite the contrary, but with Iraq starting its fifth year and the economic downturn, they have been discouraged about the party's prospects and turned to a maverick known for his detachment from the conservative elite.

With the dawn of the 21st century, we've seen revolutions in almost every facet of American life. Why shouldn't it be the same with our politics? Why must party politics be relegated to two choices? In an era of growing individual choice, personality politics will become ever more dominant. Rather than a party putting forward a candidate, John McCain has taken over the Republican Party and it appears that Barak Obama may wrest control of the Democratic Party from the Clintons.

Both choices represent the diminished power of the party structure. Is it any surprise that we're now looking for something more than Republican or Democrat?


Barack Obama has been able to preach racial harmony while attending and donating to Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church for two decades. He has been able to masquerade as a centrist while hobnobbing with the radical chic activists and unrepentent terrorists of Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He has been able to pose as a centrist while believing in the necessity of punishing owners of capital. But with Hillary Clinton and her minions aggressively pursuing him, and an awakened press chagrined at giving him a pass for so long, those days may be numbered.


4) McCain readies unorthodox campaign
By: Jonathan Martin

For reasons of financial necessity, personal preference and plain politics, John McCain is gearing up to run one of the least traditional presidential campaigns in recent history.

The problem is that even prominent strategist within McCain’s own party wonder if his unorthodox strategy will work.

Facing the prospect of competing against a Democrat who is on track to shatter every fund raising record — and confronted by his own inability to rake in large bundles of cash — McCain and his key advisers have largely been forced into devising a three-pronged strategy that they hope can turn their general election weaknesses into strengths.

McCain will lean heavily on the well-funded Republican National Committee. He will merge key functions of his campaign hierarchy with the RNC while also relying on an unconventional structure of 10 regional campaign mangers.

And finally — and perhaps most importantly — McCain will rely on free media to an unprecedented degree to get out his message in a fashion that aims to not only minimize his financial disadvantage but also drive a triangulated contrast among himself, the Democratic nominee and President Bush.

McCain advisers acknowledge they have little choice but to seek free entry into the media marketplace, as they have no chance of matching Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton in a dollar-for-dollar ad war, given that the Arizona senator’s fund raising totals pale in comparison to both his prospective opponents and the Bush-Cheney political machine.


But aides also hope they can turn necessity into virtue and argue that by facing tough questions from reporters on his bus each day and potentially even tougher ones from audience members at frequent town hall meetings, McCain will demonstrate how he’s different from two politicians who are far less accessible.

“People in the country are in a very bad mood, and they want to have change,” says Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to McCain. “And the first place they evaluate change is through the prism of what kind of campaigns candidates are running. Voters will have an indication of the different kind of presidency he would preside over by looking at his campaign.”

Mark Salter, another top aide to McCain, says Obama is running “one buttoned-up, conventional campaign.”

“Is new politics just stadium-sized crowds and lots of money?” he asks.

But the tactics aren’t solely meant to portray the Democratic candidates as distant and McCain as grounded.

McCain aides also want to paint their guy as different from an unpopular administration that prefers secrecy to transparency and friendly crowds to unpredictable ones.

“Sen. McCain believes every American should participate in the arena, and that includes people that don’t agree with him,” Schmidt says, taking care to note that such unscripted exchanges have waned “in the last decade.”

Additionally, McCain and his advisers want to pursue voters that look different than the bare majority coalition that Bush put together twice.

“We’re running a campaign that is not designed to get 50-plus-1 percent of the vote,” says Schmidt.

Even if they can’t win in places such as California or inner cities — both of which McCain will stop in during his different-sort-of-Republican tour starting this week — they want to send a signal that he intends to at least compete for nearly every vote.



“You want to make sure that you tailor the campaign to the candidate and not other way around,” said Charlie Black, a top adviser. “And McCain sincerely believes in campaigning everywhere.”

But McCain’s campaign plan is as much about pragmatism as it is perception, despite efforts by his campaign team to create the notion that they are taking this route of their own free will.

First, his advisers can read polls and recognize the daunting right track/wrong track polling headwind that is gusting in their face.

Differences between Bush and McCain will be “discussed at great length,” promises one aide.

“He’ll be direct about it. He’s never gratuitous, never disrespectful, but there are going to be policy breaks where it couldn’t be clearer.” Two areas of difference McCain will highlight: global warming and spending.

And, quite practically, McCain doesn’t have much choice but to run a campaign that differs from the Bush model, given his lagging fund raising performance.

“It is true we’ll be outspent,” concedes Black. “But between the RNC and McCain, we’ll raise enough money.”

Indeed, to help counter their money deficit, McCain strategists now suggest that the proper comparison should be between the combined assets of the campaign and the RNC and that of their opponent and the far less flush DNC.

“The McCain camp is funded jointly” is how one adviser describes it.

By taking federal funds — something they intend to do, campaign manager Rick Davis told a closed-door meeting of chiefs of staff on Capitol Hill last week — McCain will receive $84 million.

That money, McCain aides say, will be bolstered by the $20 million in coordinated funds that they can legally direct the RNC to spend on anything they want.

Further, they’ll rely on the committee-campaign joint Victory Fund run out of the RNC, which allows contributions of up to $28,500 per person — far more than the $2,300 donors can give to individual candidates.

The Victory dollars will go into the states and be used to hire staffers, who in some cases will serve as the de facto McCain aides.

Other elements of the campaign, such as those tasked with developing coalitions and lining up surrogates, will also be placed at the RNC to save on overhead.

“Those functions that can legally be done at either [the campaign or RNC], we’ll err on the side of doing them at the RNC,” Black says. “The whole thing is under one umbrella in the way we are budgeting.”

So instead of hiring a traditional political director and field director at the headquarters, for example, they’ve so far effectively merged the functions between Davis’ deputy at the campaign, Christian Ferry, RNC adviser and former Rudy Giuliani chief Mike DuHaime, and the regional managers themselves.

The 10 regional managers, the last of which are being hired this week, will have both autonomy over and responsibility for the key elements of the campaign in their area: the political and field operation, relations with state and local media, and fund raising.


Some will have just a couple of states, while others will have as many as six; the average will be about five. To spread the wealth, there will be at least one targeted and genuinely competitive state in each region.

They’ll have a daily phone call with McCain’s Arlington, Va., headquarters and answer directly to Davis. If Davis is absent, Ferry will ride herd. DuHaime will offer guidance from his role at the RNC.

The hope is to give these aides complete hiring and budget authority for their regions to make for a more responsive and agile campaign. As Davis told Hill aides last week, the goal is to have 80 percent of the structure in the field and 20 percent back at headquarters.

“You can get better service, better coordination and, most importantly, get decisions made much more quickly if it’s done in the states,” argues Frank Donatelli, deputy chairman of the RNC and the chief liaison between the committee and the McCain campaign.

“We have some confidence in it, because it’s kind of the way we got nominated,” adds Black. “Our people were out in the states. By definition, people in New Hampshire and South Carolina had a lot of authority.”

There has, however, been much private grumbling in the ranks of Republican operatives that such a decentralized plan, the campaign equivalent of federalism, will inevitably prove unrealistic and have to be scaled back.

First, says one prominent GOP strategist, Davis won’t be able to directly oversee regional aides with all the other responsibilities that come with running a campaign. And further, says this source, delegating so much decision-making authority to different individuals will lead to mixed results. “There are some things campaigns are going to do everywhere because they work and are fundamental to the campaign,” says the strategist.

“In every campaign, some people perform up to expectations, and some people don’t,” Black said by way of tamping down such criticism. “If some [regional campaign managers] don’t perform well, of course they’ll get more supervision.”

Other Republicans suggest McCain is overcompensating for his top-heavy early campaign last year, which went broke and forced him to the brink before his improbable comeback.

“The Mehlman campaign style of ’04 would never work for him, and the beginning of the campaign proved that,” noted another GOP operative with ties to Bush world. “But I just don’t know if this is realistic — why experiment in such a large-scale way?”

McCain strategists insist their paradigm can work. And the sour national climate for the GOP, McCain’s limited money supply and his preference for an impromptu campaign style that he can take to all parts of the country mean there is no other option but to break the mold, says one aide.

“To run a normal, typical race like a normal, typical Republican, we would win 45 percent of the popular vote and 189 electoral votes,” this aide says. “You can’t just go to Columbus.”

5) The Democrats’ Wimp Factor
By Michael Hirsh
As Obama's patriotism is questioned, he's starting to look more and more like John Kerry in '04.



The specter of John Kerry in 2004 is beginning to haunt the Democrats in 2008. It is the specter of wimpy campaigns past. It showed up, like Banquo's ghost, at the debate Wednesday night in Philadelphia, particularly when Hillary Clinton joined with ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson to nip away at the edges of Barack Obama's patriotism. Between the questions about Obama's meager association with William Ayers, a former Weatherman, and the suspicions raised by his lack of a flag lapel pin, the likely nominee is slowly being turned into John Kerry. He is becoming, in other words, a candidate who may be mostly right about national security but who will lack the Red State street credo to carry his point—and the election.

Once again timorous Democratic advisers behind the scenes are hoping they can run mainly on the ailing economy. While their candidates are urging an end to George W. Bush's war in Iraq, they are terrified of questioning the larger premises of his "war on terror" or John McCain's redefinition of it as the "transcendent challenge of the 21st century." Today's Dems are, in other words, proving unequal to the task of reclaiming the party's mostly honorable heritage on national security. This view is sadly out of touch, today more than ever. To little notice, Obama's tough, clearly stated position on Bush's war—that it was disastrously misdirected toward Iraq when Afghanistan was always the real front—is becoming conventional wisdom, even among the Bush administration's top security officials, like Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. During two days of nearly impenetrable testimony on Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week, one answer rang out as clearly as an alarm bell. Under questioning from Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Crocker admitted that Al Qaeda poses a greater threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan than it does in Iraq. No one knows more about this than the ambassador, an Arabic-speaking diplomat who previously served as envoy to Pakistan and whose career practically tells the story of America and the age of terror going back to the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut.

Yet the region that poses America's number one threat is getting little in attention and resources compared to Iraq. What Obama is arguing on the stump is pretty close to what Gates and the Joint Chiefs have been quietly hearing from their military advisers: that the best the United States can do with its scant NATO force of 37,000 in Afghanistan is to hold off the resurgent Taliban and their Al Qaeda guests in a stalemate. Under current conditions Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief culprits of 9/11, will continue to have plenty of room to roam, un-harried by any large-scale U.S. or Pakistani effort to go after them. This is even truer today; next door to Afghanistan, Pakistan is transitioning into a post-Musharraf era and seeking to negotiate more with the extremists. Obama called last year for two additional brigades to be sent to Afghanistan, and last week he was joined by Biden, who told an audience at Georgetown University that "the longer we stay in Iraq, the more we put off the day when we fully join the fight against the real Al Qaeda threat and finally defeat those who attacked America seven years ago." Biden added that Gen. Dan McNeil, commander of the international force in Afghanistan, told him during a visit in February "that with two extra combat brigades—about 10,000 soldiers—he could turn around the security situation in the south, where the Taliban is on move. But he can't get them because of Iraq." Even Hillary Clinton has been tacking, very quietly, in Obama's direction.

No one, in other words, has a better case to make on national security right now than Barack Obama. John McCain is still out there contending that Iraq is the central battlefront and quoting Osama bin Laden favorably to justify his argument (not to mention mixing up Shiites and Sunnis). Under normal conditions this position might saddle McCain with a real "vulnerability"—to use a term the Dems like to employ about themselves—but it doesn't seem to hurt him much now. The Democrats are too afraid of his all-American "story," as Hillary put it. John Kerry, a winner of the Silver Star in Vietnam, spent most of his 2004 campaign defending himself against vague suggestions of treason based on his antiwar testimony in 1971, when as a young officer returning from Vietnam he asked, penetratingly and relevantly for today, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

Obama is being placed on the defensive on flimsy grounds as well, and there he's likely to stay, rendered permanently suspicious by association thanks to questions about Ayers and the "anti-American" statements of his pastor, Jeremiah Wright. As Clinton said helpfully during the debate, "It goes to this larger set of concerns about how we are going to run against John McCain." She's right, but her fears are self-fulfilling. The more damage she does to Obama, the harder it will be for him to take the offensive against a bona fide patriot and war hero like McCain. Safer just to talk about the economy and health care.

Insecurity over national security has been eating at the Democrats ever since Vietnam destroyed the party's proud self-image, which was forged by FDR, Truman and JFK in World War II and the early years of cold war containment (both Democratic success stories). Obama, by most accounts, is confident of his ability to reclaim this grand tradition. "Of all people I've dealt with on foreign policy issues, this guy takes to it like a duck to water," one of his top advisers, Greg Craig, a former State Department policy planning chief, told me recently. But the party's peculiar pathology could yet drag Obama down. He's getting Kerryized. At a time when he should be taking on John McCain, he's being forced to talk about lapel pins.




6) How Obama and the radical Ayers became news
By Joanna Weiss


It began as a blog entry in 2005 from a woman to the left of Barack Obama. It turned into a conservative cause célèbre. Then it entered the mainstream consciousness in a prime-time debate on ABC.


And that's when political emotions erupted on the campaign trail.

The sudden national focus on the connection between the Democratic presidential hopeful and a Vietnam-era radical named William Ayers - a onetime fugitive from justice who told The New York Times, "I don't regret setting bombs" - set the political world abuzz. The news that Obama held a campaign event at Ayers's home in 1995, and served with Ayers on a Chicago community board, was either damning or innocuous, a worthy disclosure or a sure sign of the decline of political journalism.

But the Obama-Ayers story itself is a case study in the ways that news jumps between blogs and traditional media, the lingering power of network news, and the persistence of Internet conspiracy theories. In fact, it was hard yesterday to tell which got more scrutiny: the link between Obama and Ayers, or the link between ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Sean Hannity of Fox News.

Stephanopoulos was the one to ask Obama about Ayers during Wednesday night's debate, amid a string of challenging questions addressed to both candidates. He asked Obama about his links to Ayers, a former member of the domestic terrorist group the Weather Underground. "Can you explain that relationship to voters and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?" Stephanopoulos asked.

Obama replied that Ayers was a neighbor and acquaintance. "The notion that . . . me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense," he said.

But Hillary Clinton, Obama's rival in the tight Democratic race, jumped on the issue - and brought up the fact that Ayers's comments about not regretting his 1970s bombings happened to appear in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001. Obama shot back that Clinton's husband had pardoned or commuted the sentences of two other members of the Weather Underground.

It was, for many Americans, an introduction to a subject that could linger in the public consciousness for months. Wednesday's debate was the most-watched of this presidential cycle, drawing 10.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings. It even beat "American Idol" in Philadelphia, San Antonio, Albuquerque, and Orlando, Fla.

Jeffrey Schneider, a spokesman for ABC News, said the Ayers question arose because it has been in the political ether and addressed by several other news organizations in recent months - and because the network's own queries to the campaign had yet to yield a comment from Obama.

In political circles in Chicago, where Obama rose in politics and Ayers is now a college professor, an Ayers-Obama connection has been known for years. In January 2005, in a progressive liberal blog called "Musings & Migraines," a Chicago-based blogger named Maria Warren - whose writing suggested she was to the left of Obama - recalled watching the candidate give a "standard, innocuous little talk" in 1995, in the living room of Ayers and his wife, former Weather Underground member Bernardine Dohrn, when Obama was running for the state Senate.

"They were launching him," she wrote, "introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread."

When Obama became a presidential contender, it was conservatives who picked up on the story. On Feb. 2, conservative British writer Peter Hitchens mentioned Ayers in a piece titled "The Black Kennedy: but does anyone know the real Barack Obama?" in the London Daily Mail. A week later, a mention of Ayers appeared in an anti-Obama blog known as Rezko Watch.

Soon, the story turned up in the mainstream American press: in the Bloomberg news service, a Washington Post blog, and the New York Sun. An overview of the Ayers-Obama connection, published on Politico.com on Feb. 22, circulated widely on the Internet.

At that point, conservative bloggers began to question whether the major media organizations would challenge Obama on the relationship.

"Will the media expose Obama?" writer and editor Rick Moran wrote on his blog, right wing nut house.com. "Will they criticize Senator [John] McCain if he tries to paint Obama as a radical? Will they dig deep into Obama's associations and associates to discover the truth?"

Among the mainstream reporters looking into the Ayers story, it turned out, was Jake Tapper, ABC's senior political correspondent. Tapper outlined Ayers's background in a April 10 blog entry titled "Stormy Weather." He also asked Obama about Ayers on the campaign trail, but didn't get an answer, ABC spokesman Schneider said.

Hence, Schneider said, the Ayers question was posed in the debate.

But soon after the debate ended, blogs friendly to Obama were abuzz with theories about the Ayers question. Many of them pointed out that the day before the debate, Stephanopoulos had been a guest of Hannity on the conservative commentator's radio show. Hannity had raised the Ayers story himself and said, "Is that a question you might ask?"

"Well, I'm taking notes right now," Stephanopoulos said. And a conspiracy theory was born. "Hannity Spoon fed Left-Field Debate Question to Stephanopoulos," trumpeted a blogger on the Huffington Post.

Schneider denied any Hannity connection.

Clint Hendler, assistant editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, said the slow rise of the Ayers story - and its seemingly sudden appearance Wednesday night - largely reflects Obama's surge to front-runner status, which brings more scrutiny.

Still, that the Ayers story reached network TV at all left some critics incensed. Washington Post television critic Tom Shales called the debate question "tired tripe" and wrote that Stephanopoulos "looked like an overly ambitious intern helping out at a subcommittee hearing, digging through notes for something smart-alecky and slimy."

But Moran, the conservative blogger, said he thinks the mainstream media are making up for past light treatment of Obama, "whereas before they may have been enthralled with the guy. These are legitimate questions. They speak to this guy's judgment."

7) Declarations: Hillary Fades While McCain Watches
By PEGGY NOONAN


On Tuesday Hillary Clinton made the best speech of her campaign. She told the American Society of Newspaper Editors how she conceives "the power and promise of the presidency." She asserted that President Bush had been "unready" for the office, did not understand its "constitutional character," exhibited in his decisions an "ideological disdain." She said she hopes to "restore balance and purpose" to the presidency, and detailed specific actions she would take immediately on entering the White House.

It was an important speech, and someone, probably many someones, worked hard on it. It was highly partisan, even polar, but it was a more thoughtful critique of the administration, more densely woven and less bromidic, than she has offered in the past, and she used a higher vocabulary. So eager was she to be heard she actually noted at one point that what she'd just said was not "a sound bite."

And here's the thing. It didn't matter. Nobody noticed. A room full of journalists didn't notice this was something new and interesting. And they didn't notice because nobody is listening anymore.

Mrs. Clinton is transmitting, but people aren't receiving. She has been branded, tagged. She's been absorbed, understood and categorized. People have decided what they think, and it's not good.

It took George W. Bush five years to get to that point. It took her five intense months. Political historians will say her campaign sank with the mad Bosnia lie, but Bosnia broke through only because it expressed, crystallized, what people had already begun to think: too much mendacity there, too much manipulation.

Timing is everything. "Too late to get serious," I wrote in my notes. For before this, Mrs. Clinton's campaign was all dreary recitation of talking points, rote applause lines followed by rote applause.

The next day the Washington Post had its latest numbers. A "majority of voters now view her as dishonest," it said, bluntly. Six in 10 said she was "not honest or trustworthy." Which itself doesn't tell us, really, anything new, but concretizes, like the Bosnia story, what is already known.

This is what I think will happen. At some future point Mrs. Clinton will leave, and at a more distant one she will try to come back. But more than one cycle will have to pass before she does. She'll need more than four years to shake off the impression she made in 2008. And this is how you'll know she's making another bid for the presidency. She will wear skirts. Gone will be the pantsuits that made her look like a small blond man with breasts. It's the new me, I wear skirts! Her first impulse is to think cosmetically. A long and weary life in politics has left her thinking this is the way to think.

All of which sounds as if I foresee a Pennsylvania drubbing for her. I do not. I just think that whatever happens in Pennsylvania, the decision has been made, the die cast. Barack Obama's supporters will not be denied. He broke through, gained purchase, held his ground, the one thing Mrs. Clinton could not afford. When I speak to super delegates, the vibration is there: It is the moment of Obama.

And now his problem emerges. It is two-headed. It is not that he is African-American, or half so, and it is not that he is liberal. Liberalism too, one senses, is having a moment.

It is his youth, his relative "untriedness," the fact that he has not suffered, been seasoned, been beat about the head by life and left struggling back, as happens to most adults by a certain time. This is what I hear from older people, who vote in great numbers. They are not hostile to his race, they are skeptical of his inexperience.

The other is elitism, a charge that clearly grates on him and unnerves his wife, who has a great deal that would be attractive in a first lady (intelligence, accomplishment, beauty) but lacks placidity, which is, actually, necessary. All first ladies, first spouses, should be like Denis Thatcher, slightly dazed, mildly inscrutable, utterly supportive. It is the only job in the world where "seems slightly drugged" is a positive job qualification. The key is to know you are not the drama, you do not draw the lightning, you are a background player who yet has deep, unseen power. (The "deep, unseen power" part keeps you serene and energized. The constant possibility of quiet revenge keeps one peppy.)

Sen. Obama seems honestly surprised by the furor his the-poor-cling-to-God-and-guns remarks elicited, and if one considers his background—intense marginalization followed by the establishment's embrace—this is understandable. He was only caught speaking the secret language of America's elite, and what he said was not meant as a putdown. It was an explanation aimed at ameliorating the elites' anger toward and impatience with normal people. It's a way of explaining them, of saying, "You have to remember they're not comfortable and educated like us, they're vulnerable and so we must try to understand them and feel sympathy for and solidarity with them." You could say this at any high-class dinner party in America and not cause a ruffle. But America is not a high-class dinner party.

Mrs. Obama said Tuesday that she is from the South Side of Chicago and a working-class home, and seemed to argue that no one from such humble beginnings could be an elitist. But America is full of people who started low, rose high and internalized what the right people think, which is another way of saying what the elites think. To rise in America is to turn left, unless you are very, very tough or protected by privilege of the financial or familial kind.

Can Mr. Obama survive this? Yes. But it made a bad impression, the kind it's hard to eradicate. Good news for him: the trope that blacks aren't snobs, they're patronized by snobs. Also, he doesn't seem haughty. He seems like a nice man. Also the person exploiting his gaffe is Mrs. Clinton.

* * *

Meanwhile, John McCain makes daily, small, incremental gains. He happily watches the Democrats fight and happily advances his cause. Did you see him on "Hardball" the other night with the college students of Villanova? They were beside themselves at the sight of him. It seems to me it would be a brilliant thing for him to announce he means to be a one-term president, that he means to have a clean, serious, one-term presidency in which he will do things those under pressure of re-election do not and cannot do. This would be received as a refreshment, a way out for the voters in a year they seem to want a way out. For many in the middle it would be a twofer. You get a good man, for only four years, and Mr. Obama gets to grow and deepen. He'll be better older.

The downside? Americans like knowing they can fire a president. It's how they keep them in line. And lame-duckness from day one would not be empowering.

If Mr. McCain went this route, how and when he said it would be everything. As with Mrs. Clinton, timing will be everything.

See all of today's editorial



8) The Damage Done:Will Clinton's attacks create a damaged Democratic nominee?
By Eleanor Clift



Hillary Clinton made news in the Democrats' debate in Philadelphia, declaring "Yes, yes, yes" when pressed on whether Barack Obama could win in November. It's not a message her advisers convey in private. But it was the right move, even if she doesn't really mean it. In a debate focused on a series of gotcha questions served up by the moderators, Obama spoke haltingly much of the time, choosing his words with extraordinary care because he knew they would be pounced upon.

He was on the defensive, never a good place to be. But Clinton needed to do more than just keep him rocked back on his heels; she needed a knockout punch. He avoided inflaming any of the mini-scandals dogging him—which counts as a something of a triumph at this stage of the race. Clinton argued that she's the better candidate against John McCain because she's been thoroughly vetted while there are too many unanswered questions about Obama, including his association with the founder of the radical 1960s group the Weather Underground. Obama countered that Hillary's husband had pardoned two members of the group. "You couldn't pass your own vetting test," he chided.

Obama pointed out that he was eight years old when William Ayers, a college professor in Chicago and an Obama supporter, was involved in the Weather Underground. Visibly exasperated by the tone of the debate, Obama said the emphasis on gaffes together with innuendoes drawn from guilt by association were distractions from the real issues and a relic of the old style of divisive politics that the voters want to end. That's the core of Obama's message, and judging by the polls he's right. Episodes that have captivated the press have had little impact on the underlying dynamic of the race. "If there's a huge backlash among white working-class voters, it's not in any numbers I've seen," says William Galston, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution. Clinton can't stop the negative thrusts at Obama altogether, but she has to figure out how to keep the stories going while minimizing the damage to herself. That may be an impossible task. An ABC-Washington Post poll this week found that Clinton's negatives exceeded 50 percent, with voters seeing her as untrustworthy. "Voters make assessments of these charges, and it may very well be that she has reached the point of diminishing returns," says Galston, a Clinton supporter. "If she's seen to be an agent of keeping it going, it may nick him, but it will cut her."

Obama gave Clinton a big opening when he told an audience at a San Francisco fund-raiser that rural voters in Pennsylvania are "bitter" because their jobs are gone and politicians haven't delivered for them, which is why they "cling" to religion and guns. The remark gave Clinton the opportunity to portray Obama as another in a long line of effete Democrats who can't relate to working people. His comments dominated the news cycles for days—in much the same way that the first revelations about Rev. Jeremiah Wright spawned seemingly endless rounds of coverage. The "bitter" answer, captured on audiotape, came in response to a question about whether Obama could win white rural voters because he is black. He basically said these voters have other grievances more salient than race, which is why they don't vote their economic interests and are vulnerable to wedge issues having to do with God, gays and guns. Clinton surely knows what Obama was trying to say, but seeing her path to the nomination narrowing, she manipulated his words for political gain. Fair enough. She hurts him, but she hurts herself more. Pollster Doug Schoen, who has advised her in the past but is not associated with the campaign, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post urging her to switch permanently to attack mode—because that's the only way she can win. She's already tarred with running a negative campaign, so she has nothing to lose, he argued.

Schoen made the same point in a panel discussion in Washington last week sponsored by the Week, which collects and distills must-read journalism. He was practically shouted down when he insisted Hillary hadn't run any negative ads—since she never actually named Obama in her infamous "3 a.m." ad. Karl Rove, sitting on the same panel, said Clinton had run a poor campaign and should have responded sooner and more forcefully that Wright "wouldn't be my pastor." Rove chortled over how vulnerable he thinks Obama will be once the Republicans get hold of him. He said that the speech on race that the media slobbered over was the most cynical exercise he's ever seen. He carries a copy of it in his briefcase just to keep him on his game.

Unless Hillary can surprise us once again, repeating the triumph she had in Ohio when Pennsylvanians go to the polls, Rove is likely to have Obama to kick around. The Philadelphia debate didn't do anything to help either candidate, and quite possibly hurt them both, but we are slowly evolving toward a result that seems increasingly inevitable: Obama as a Democratic nominee whose vulnerabilities boost chances of a Republican victory in the fall.


9) Delegates to Dean: Make Us
By Jay Cost
Howard Dean was on Wolf Blitzer's show yesterday, and Drudge picked up his admonition to the super delegates with the splashy headline: "Dean To Delegates: Decide Now." In the interview, Dean says that he wants the super delegates to begin "voting" now. "We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time," he said. "We've got to know who our nominee is."

Unfortunately for the party, Dean is in no position to tell the super delegates when to decide. The reason? The chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee carries with it very little political power - certainly not enough to sway super delegates.

It has been this way for a very long time. Fifty years ago, political scientists thought of the political parties as "truncated pyramids." The idea behind this metaphor is that it was the state parties that were really in charge. The national parties were powerless organization that few paid attention to. In fact, while digging through the scholarly literature on the parties from the 50s and 60s, I could only find two major works on the national committees. One of them is Politics Without Power. In it, Cornelius Cotter and Bernard Hennessy argue that the DNC and RNC were basically ad hoc entities without coherent organizational structures. They were there to be used by the president for his electoral purposes and, when the President was of a different party, to host the national conventions. That's it.

Flash forward to the 1970s. There's a convergence of two trends in electoral politics. First is the rise of television and the mass media campaign. This induced a great need for campaign cash. Second is the imposition of the Federal Elections Campaign Act (FECA) of 1972, and the 1974 amendments that limited the amount of money that candidates could collect from individuals. This gave the national parties a new task - legal money laundering. This is their essential function today. All six national party organizations (the two national committees plus the four Hill committees) collect large sums of cash by waving the party banner, and then distribute this money to candidates. The Hill committees help candidates for the House and the Senate. During presidential elections, the national committees primarily help the presidential candidates - which is exactly what John McCain and the RNC are working out right now.

The key word is "help." The consensus among political scientists is that the national parties do not impose some kind of "party will." My research has found that this consensus, while essentially true, is overstated. The national parties do exercise some political power over candidates. However, it is only a modest amount.

Relevant to the issue of the Democratic nomination, there is no formal mechanism for Dean to exercise power over super delegates. Nor, for that matter, is this a power the DNC chairman has ever typically had. He has not been a party strongman. As noted above, in the days when there were party strongmen, the state parties ruled the roost. They supplied the smoke for the smoke-filled rooms.

Dean, of course, might have some informal power - perhaps thanks to the "50 State Strategy," which has tried to rehabilitate atrophied state parties. Some super delegates might owe him a favor or two. However, I doubt that this would imply influence over the congressional super delegates. Furthermore, Dean is a bit of a lame duck. His term is up next year. If the Democrats win the election in November, what we will likely see at the DNC is an adjustment to fit the needs and preferences of the President. This is typical. For instance, David Wilhelm, Clinton's campaign manager, became DNC chair in 1993.

Here we can appreciate how the national committees are still a bit like the powerless organizations that Cotter and Hennessy found. Unlike the Hill committees, they are "captured" by the President for his term in office. This makes it difficult to develop long-range institutional goals, and therefore difficult to exercise real power. Ironically, if the Democrats do win the election in November, that might mean the end of the "50 State Strategy." If President Obama or President Clinton doesn't buy into it, we can be confident that the new chairman will discontinue it.

To understand this nomination battle, we need to adjust our image of the national parties. The best way to think of them is as little more than guidance counselors with bank accounts. The candidates are in charge. Contrary to what Blitzer says in the aforementioned interview, Dean is not the "leader of the Democratic Party." That's a mis-characterization of the role of the DNC and its chairman.

It is instructive to contrast the changes in the parties with the changes in the government. The 20th century saw a federalization of many governmental tasks. Matters previously entrusted to state governments were turned over to the federal government. The parties had a completely different experience. The powers of the state parties were handed over to candidates for office, not to the federal parties. The role of the parties now is essentially to serve the electoral needs of those candidates.

This is why the "Democratic Party" cannot stop this nomination race. There is no party entity with the power to say, "OK, you two. Enough is enough." In keeping with the "candidate control" model of electoral politics, the only two who can stop it are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. That's the modern party system for you. 20th century reformers thought the parties were meddling institutions that corrupted the political process. So, they stripped them of their power. Accordingly, the Democrats are at the mercy of their candidates.

Footnote: if you listen to Dean's interview, he says that some super delegates have already "voted," and that he wants the rest to "vote" soon. This is not how the super delegate system works. Dean knows that, and I think what he is trying to do is spin things a little bit. The fact is that the super delegates have only endorsed candidates so far. They vote in Denver. Not before. What they say today does not necessarily constrain their votes in Denver. So, we should expect that, if the race remains close through the summer, both Obama and Clinton will work to "flip" super delegates.

10a) Carter meets Hamas leader, sets out plans for Israel-Hamas truce

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter set out plans for a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel at a meeting with Syria-based Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal in Damascus on Friday.

Carter held more than four hours of talks with Meshal on Friday in one of the highest-profile meetings between the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip and a Western figure.

Carter's aides planned to return for further talks with Hamas officials on Friday night, senior Hamas official Mohammed Nazzal said.

Carter's willingness to meet Hamas officials has drawn criticism from Israel and the United States.

The second round of talks would focus on details of proposals put forward by Carter and also examine the issue of the release of an Israel Defense Forces soldier held by Hamas.

Hamas was open to the release of the soldier, Gilad Shalit, "but not without a price", Nazzal said. Hamas has previously demanded Israel free hundreds of jailed Palestinians in return for the captive soldier's release.

Nazaal said the discussions with Carter's advisers would focus on the "price and mechanism" for releasing Shalit.

He added that the Carter and Meshal had discussed important issues in their meeting Friday, but details were left to their aides to hammer out. Hamas' leadership would need a few days to reach a position on the main issues of Shalit, a ceasefire with Israel, and control of border crossings linking Gaza to the outside world.

"This meeting was not a courtesy call, concrete proposals were discussed and we admire Carter for making this effort. The discussions were frank and direct," Nazzal said.

Egypt said on Friday it was making "good progress" trying to negotiate a tacit ceasefire, including a prisoner exchange, between Israel and Hamas.

Carter, 83, brokered the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt when he served as the President of the United States. He is currently on a tour of the Middle East to hear views on solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and earlier met Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The former president and Assad posed for photographs ahead of their meeting at a presidential palace. One source familiar with the talks said Carter would raise in his meetings the issue of Shalit.

Previous efforts to broker a prisoner exchange deal between Hamas and Israel involving the soldier, have floundered. A Hamas official said Friday that Shalit would never see the light of day until Israel released Palestinian prisoners held in its jails.

But the source said that Carter remained positive that a solution could be found.

"Carter is very upbeat. The publicity put out by his detractors made him more determined to pursue a different way with Hamas. He is optimistic that the meeting will advance efforts to end the soldier's saga," the source said.

In their meeting, Carter and Assad stressed the importance of achieving peace in the Middle East, through finding political settlements to lift the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip and lessen the sufferings of the Palestinian people, Syria's SANA news agency reported.

In a proposal passed to Carter this week, Shas cabinet minister Eli Yishai offered to meet the leadership of Hamas to ask for Shalit's release - a move which would contravene official Jerusalem policy.

On Thursday, Carter met two senior Hamas officials in Cairo after Israel refused him permission to enter the Gaza Strip, where they live.

Carter said the Hamas leaders he had met in Cairo told him they would accept a peace agreement with Israel negotiated by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the rival Fatah faction, if the Palestinians approved it in a referendum.

But one of them, Mahmoud Zahar, wrote this week that a peace process could not start until Israel withdrew from all the land it captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, ended its military presence in the West Bank and Gaza, dismantled all settlements, repudiated its annexation of Arab East Jerusalem, released all prisoners and ended its air, sea and land "blockade" of Palestinian land.

"Given what we have lost, it is the only basis by which we can start to be whole again," Zahar wrote in the article published by the Washington Post this week.

10b) Egypt makes 'good progress' in Israel, Hamas cease-fire talks

The Egyptian government is aiming for both sides to agree to a "period of quiet," said Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

Speaking of Egypt's attempts to assist in negotiation, Reuters reported that Gheit explained the reasons behind this wording to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. "Hamas wants to call it a period of quiet. That suits the Israelis because they do not want to reach a signed, written agreement with Hamas," he said.

The truce plan that Egypt is trying to broker has three elements, according to the Reuters report. The first is that Hamas must stop firing missiles into Israel, and Israel must agree not to target Palestinians in Gaza and cease "targeted killings, assassinations or what have you," said Gheit.

Second, 400 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel would be swapped for captured IDF soldier Gilad Schalit.

"Our information is that he is still alive," said Gheit of the Schalit. No further details were given.

Allowing border crossings to be opened between Gaza and Israel is the third element, reported Reuters. "If the crossings are to be open, then we would ensure that the flow of goods, of people, of material and of everything is allowed and the Palestinians in Gaza will not feel deprived as they are right now," said the Egyptian foreign minister.

The report stated that these talks involved only Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert - no Hamas representatives were present.

11) Bibi: If PM can't fix Gaza, he should go



Israel will ultimately have to "bring down" the Hamas regime in Gaza, and
this can done in a way that does not necessitate a permanent return to the
Strip, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu has told The Jerusalem Post.

In a Pessah interview, Netanyahu accused the Olmert government of failing
the people of Israel by tolerating the relentless attacks out of Gaza, and
said the IDF knew exactly how to counter the violence but was being
prevented from doing so by "a failure of the political leadership."

The Post reported Thursday that according to assessments in Jerusalem, a
major IDF incursion into the Gaza Strip to significantly weaken Hamas -
similar but more difficult than Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank
in 2002 - would not take place until about a month or a month-and-a-half
after US President George W. Bush's planned visit here in mid-May.

By then, the last of the world's leaders to have come here to celebrate the
state's 60th anniversary would have left. The timing would also place the
incursion in the middle of summer, considered an optimal time for this type
of operation.

Netanyahu said that handling "a terrorist enclave" was "not that
difficult... The first thing is to deprive [the enemy] of sanctuary and the
second is to increase the cost to the point of bringing down the regime.
Change the rules of the game. It shouldn't be an incremental tit for tat -
that they kill a few of our people and we kill a few of theirs."

Asked whether what he meant by this was killing more Hamas people, he said:
"I say we have to go from attrition to deterrence, and if necessary to bring
down the regime - and ultimately, I believe it will be necessary... there
will be others who will rise to fill the vacuum. But we cannot tolerate the
current situation. No country would suffer this."

At the same time, Netanyahu cautioned against depriving the Gaza population
of basic necessities. Even though such a move would be "very popular," he
said, "it is not clear that that is the best way to do it, and I would not
do that."

If the Olmert government did not know how to stop the Gaza attacks, he
urged, "let them clear the way for people who can do it a lot better. It's
unacceptable what is happening in Gaza. The [government] might think this is
the best possible government. Tell it to the residents of Ashkelon, Sderot,
soon of Ashdod. Most Israelis understand this is unacceptable, and most
[foreign] governments I talk to can't begin to fathom why Israel is not
using the vast power it has to stop it."

Netanyahu was blisteringly critical of numerous aspects of government
policy - notably including the push for a "shelf agreement" with Mahmoud
Abbas's Palestinian Authority that would be implemented only when conditions
allowed, which he said risked giving "everything away" and would see the
creation, after southern Lebanon and Gaza, of "a third Iranian base here."

He said the shelf agreement was being pursued not because of American
government pressure, but because of the Olmert government's misguided
decision. "I don't think this American administration would lean on Israel
to do something [that Israel] didn't intend to do in the first place," he
said.

But Netanyahu was thoroughly supportive of the government's position on
Teheran's nuclear program.

"On Iran, you won't hear a partisan position from me, because there is
none," he said. "There is no coalition or opposition on the nature of the
Iranian nuclear threat and the need to roll it back. There is complete
unanimity and cooperation between the prime minister and myself."

Asked whether, if all else failed, Israel could live with a nuclear Iran, he
said: "Our policy should be that Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons,
period," and "we still have time to ensure that it doesn't happen."

Netanyahu said he disagreed with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "on most issues:
political, security, economic policy, education..."

But he reserved his most stinging critique for the government's handling of
Iranian-backed terrorism in general and the Gaza crisis in particular.

"The unilateral retreat from Lebanon [in 2000] immeasurably strengthened
Hizbullah and produced an Iranian base north of the country, from which they
launched 4,000 rockets [in 2006's Second Lebanon War]," he said. "That base
is arming itself feverishly now, with 40,000 mostly Iranian missiles of
greater range and payloads, which is almost three times what they had before
the war.

"The same policy of unilateral retreat from Gaza that Olmert advocated
produced the immeasurable strengthening of Hamas, leading them ultimately to
overtake Gaza, giving them a second Iranian base, from which, since the
disengagement, they fired 4,000 rockets as well. That base, too, is being
armed feverishly, as we predicted," he went on. "These two failures should
have made people stop in their tracks before they offered to make a third
base here [in the West Bank], which is essentially what the government is
doing."

He said the government was pretending that Abbas "has a supermarket and they
could buy a product called 'Peace' on the shelf. In that supermarket, Israel
pays in advance and gets nothing in return, but an Iranian base and more
rockets and terror.

"The public is being told it's all or nothing. You either give everything
away or give nothing away. Both courses are unwise and dangerous," he said.

Netanyahu urged the development of what he called "an economic peace" with
those Palestinians who want it, while retaining security control of the West
Bank. In Gaza, he said, "ultimately, we will have to bring down the Hamas
regime."

Netanyahu noted President Hosni Mubarak said a week ago that Egypt now had
"a common border with Iran."

But Egypt's population centers were 200 kilometers away, he pointed out.
"Israelis cities and towns literally touch the [Gaza] border. We have a much
more dangerous border and ultimately, over time, we let this happen."