David Petraeus is the one potential rival for 2012 who worries the White House
The recent Democratic defeats in the Virginia and New Jersey races for governor were mainly over local reasons. But they are still having a disproportionate impact at national level. There is the Republican jubilation at blunting the Obama effect and the blow to Democratic morale, and then there are 84 other reasons. That is the number of Democratic congressmen and women whose constituencies cast their presidential votes for George W Bush in 2004 or John McCain in 2008. These 84 are now Washington’s walking dead, fearful of facing the voters at next year’s mid-terms and gun-shy of supporting Obama on health reform and climate change.
The 84 endangered representatives have reason to feel glum. The health bill that they’re meant to read runs to 1,990 pages and the wind is blowing against them. There has been a huge shift in sentiment among independents, voters who are registered with neither party. In last year’s election Obama split them evenly with McCain in Virginia and won just over half of them in New Jersey. In this year’s races, over 60 per cent of independents voted Republican in Virginia and New Jersey.
Because the elderly have been frightened into thinking their Medicare benefits will be cut, the Democrats lost the over-60s vote. Worse, in Virginia, they narrowly lost the under-30s. Finally, the Dems also lost big among those without a college degree; those voters switched heavily to the Republicans this year, with a swing of almost 30 per cent in Virginia and about 15 per cent in New Jersey. If Obama cannot turn this around, he’ll lose Congress next year and the White House in 2012.
The coming of King David
As Republicans scent the prospect of a one-term president, their gear-up for 2012 intensifies. So far, there are three names in the hat and the Rasmussen poll has just done some testing in Iowa. Mitt Romney beat Sarah Palin 52-37 and that folksy evangelical Mike Huckabee beat her 55-35.
Sadly, they did not poll on the name that is getting both parties excited: General Petraeus—or as he’s known to his enemies in the Pentagon, “King David.” The New Republic has called him the new Eisenhower. The New York Times reports that he’s the one potential rival who worries the White House. And the Republican establishment, in the shape of former Senate leader Bill Frist and McCain adviser Mark McKinnon, are saying nervously that he won’t run. That’s a bit much coming from McKinnon, since it was the success of the Petraeus surge in Iraq that revived the McCain campaign from the almost dead.
On the left, there are alarmist mutterings about a generals’ putsch. These are based on the claim that Petraeus, Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal and the former army vice chief of staff Jack Keane have tried to bounce Obama into swallowing McChrystal’s leaked report asking for another 40,000 troops.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, aide to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state, said: “We had this happen one time before, with Douglas MacArthur.” (General MacArthur was sacked by President Truman during the Korean war because he wanted to invade and/or nuke China). No leftist, Wilkerson also likens the pressure on Obama to the time the military tried to get Kennedy to invade Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis. “It took a lot of courage on Kennedy’s part to defy the Pentagon, defy the military—and do the right thing.”
If nothing else, the fuss has added to the list of known expletives. When national security adviser Jim Jones went to Kabul in June, he warned the generals that if they asked for more troops, the president would have “a whisky-tango-foxtrot moment”: Pentagonese for what the fuck.
Could hillary run in 2012?
It’s not only Republicans who are hearing the siren call of 2012. If Obama is that badly wounded, Hillary Clinton may have her last shot at the White House. That’s the paranoid thinking around the office of White House politico David Axelrod, whose aides are trying to explain why she hailed as “unprecedented” Israel’s offer to restrain new settlements in the West Bank.
If Clinton were to break with Obama and run against him in the primaries, she would need a point of principle. Accusing him of betraying Israel might fit the bill. Axelrod’s office lost little time in forcing her to backtrack and say that Netanyahu’s offer “falls far short” of US expectations.
But the Dems may not want to dump Obama. Yale political scientist David Mayhew has run the numbers and found that an incumbent in the White House tends to win re-election two times out of three. When the presidency is open, the party that was in power wins only half the time.
Our man in washington
Our man in Washington, Nigel Sheinwald, is so deeply Europhile that he is sometimes mistaken for the ambassador from Europe. His previous jobs include permanent representative to the EU in Brussels and Europe director in the foreign office. Naturally, he is finding it hard to explain where the Conservatives now stand on the EU. Washington has gathered that they won’t have Gordon Brown to kick around for much longer but they are baffled by Cameron and Hague (“sounds like a suspiciously cheap brand of scotch,” sniffs one senior White House staffer). Could they possibly be as anti-European as they sound? The timing is unfortunate, just as Americans are getting used to the EU and hoping it might help balance China.
Despite trying manfully in the best diplomatic tradition, Sheinwald can’t put his heart into explaining Tory policy. And his old chums keep passing through. Recently he threw a bash for Paul Adamson, publisher of the pro-EU magazine E!Sharp, who revealed that it was dreamt up over drinks in the den of co-founder Nigel.
The recent Democratic defeats in the Virginia and New Jersey races for governor were mainly over local reasons. But they are still having a disproportionate impact at national level. There is the Republican jubilation at blunting the Obama effect and the blow to Democratic morale, and then there are 84 other reasons. That is the number of Democratic congressmen and women whose constituencies cast their presidential votes for George W Bush in 2004 or John McCain in 2008. These 84 are now Washington’s walking dead, fearful of facing the voters at next year’s mid-terms and gun-shy of supporting Obama on health reform and climate change.
The 84 endangered representatives have reason to feel glum. The health bill that they’re meant to read runs to 1,990 pages and the wind is blowing against them. There has been a huge shift in sentiment among independents, voters who are registered with neither party. In last year’s election Obama split them evenly with McCain in Virginia and won just over half of them in New Jersey. In this year’s races, over 60 per cent of independents voted Republican in Virginia and New Jersey.
Because the elderly have been frightened into thinking their Medicare benefits will be cut, the Democrats lost the over-60s vote. Worse, in Virginia, they narrowly lost the under-30s. Finally, the Dems also lost big among those without a college degree; those voters switched heavily to the Republicans this year, with a swing of almost 30 per cent in Virginia and about 15 per cent in New Jersey. If Obama cannot turn this around, he’ll lose Congress next year and the White House in 2012.
The coming of King David
As Republicans scent the prospect of a one-term president, their gear-up for 2012 intensifies. So far, there are three names in the hat and the Rasmussen poll has just done some testing in Iowa. Mitt Romney beat Sarah Palin 52-37 and that folksy evangelical Mike Huckabee beat her 55-35.
Sadly, they did not poll on the name that is getting both parties excited: General Petraeus—or as he’s known to his enemies in the Pentagon, “King David.” The New Republic has called him the new Eisenhower. The New York Times reports that he’s the one potential rival who worries the White House. And the Republican establishment, in the shape of former Senate leader Bill Frist and McCain adviser Mark McKinnon, are saying nervously that he won’t run. That’s a bit much coming from McKinnon, since it was the success of the Petraeus surge in Iraq that revived the McCain campaign from the almost dead.
On the left, there are alarmist mutterings about a generals’ putsch. These are based on the claim that Petraeus, Afghan commander General Stanley McChrystal and the former army vice chief of staff Jack Keane have tried to bounce Obama into swallowing McChrystal’s leaked report asking for another 40,000 troops.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, aide to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state, said: “We had this happen one time before, with Douglas MacArthur.” (General MacArthur was sacked by President Truman during the Korean war because he wanted to invade and/or nuke China). No leftist, Wilkerson also likens the pressure on Obama to the time the military tried to get Kennedy to invade Cuba during the 1962 missile crisis. “It took a lot of courage on Kennedy’s part to defy the Pentagon, defy the military—and do the right thing.”
If nothing else, the fuss has added to the list of known expletives. When national security adviser Jim Jones went to Kabul in June, he warned the generals that if they asked for more troops, the president would have “a whisky-tango-foxtrot moment”: Pentagonese for what the fuck.
Could hillary run in 2012?
It’s not only Republicans who are hearing the siren call of 2012. If Obama is that badly wounded, Hillary Clinton may have her last shot at the White House. That’s the paranoid thinking around the office of White House politico David Axelrod, whose aides are trying to explain why she hailed as “unprecedented” Israel’s offer to restrain new settlements in the West Bank.
If Clinton were to break with Obama and run against him in the primaries, she would need a point of principle. Accusing him of betraying Israel might fit the bill. Axelrod’s office lost little time in forcing her to backtrack and say that Netanyahu’s offer “falls far short” of US expectations.
But the Dems may not want to dump Obama. Yale political scientist David Mayhew has run the numbers and found that an incumbent in the White House tends to win re-election two times out of three. When the presidency is open, the party that was in power wins only half the time.
Our man in washington
Our man in Washington, Nigel Sheinwald, is so deeply Europhile that he is sometimes mistaken for the ambassador from Europe. His previous jobs include permanent representative to the EU in Brussels and Europe director in the foreign office. Naturally, he is finding it hard to explain where the Conservatives now stand on the EU. Washington has gathered that they won’t have Gordon Brown to kick around for much longer but they are baffled by Cameron and Hague (“sounds like a suspiciously cheap brand of scotch,” sniffs one senior White House staffer). Could they possibly be as anti-European as they sound? The timing is unfortunate, just as Americans are getting used to the EU and hoping it might help balance China.
Despite trying manfully in the best diplomatic tradition, Sheinwald can’t put his heart into explaining Tory policy. And his old chums keep passing through. Recently he threw a bash for Paul Adamson, publisher of the pro-EU magazine E!Sharp, who revealed that it was dreamt up over drinks in the den of co-founder Nigel.
