Prime Minister's Question (PMQ) Time

John McCain campaigned (at least for a while) on the idea of coming before Congress to answer questions a la the British Prime Minister. But if after watching the above video, one imagines that a President McCain might have -- after cool reflection -- decided that an East Room presser was a better idea after all.

Bill Clinton was publicly encouraged to hold a PMQ by members of his own party, but demurred; PMQ was not an option for other Presidents (like 40 and 43, linked in this entry with the immortal words "What the President meant to say...")

The "Loyal" Opposition

Intellectual bankruptcy is not limited to Republicans inside the Washington Beltway.

Last night's rebuttal to the President's Address to Congress by LA Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) provided more of the same.

With the bottom of the economic fall-out from the eight years of the Bush Administration still nowhere in sight, Gov. Jindal had a remarkable policy prescription: the country needs less regulation, less oversight, and in effect, less guvr-mint.

In an courageous attempt at revisionism, it wasn't Bush Administration incompetence that exacerbated Katrina -- it was "some bureaucrat" that required rescuers to have insurance. (One does have to respect Jindal's chutzpah, however; you would think that the GOP would want to leave Katrina well enough alone.)

It's not an out-of-control financial system that brought the country's economy to a stand-still, but rather those who refuse to believe that "Americans can do anything."

And in a time when consumer confidence is at a historic low (according to the Conference Board, the index is at 25, down from 37 a month ago, and one-third the 75 from one year ago), the recipe is more of the same: less government, fewer taxes.

After the electoral losses in 2000 and 2002, many Democrats argued that the party needed to return to its roots. Gov. Howard Dean rode the borrowed line ("I'm from the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party") to early fundraising and poll success in 2003. But Dean eventually flamed out, and it was Bush, not Kerry who was elected in 2004.

Jindal's message last night was eerily reminiscent of Dean's. The GOP problem was not that its policy prescriptions -- less government, less oversight, deficits don't matter -- were wrong, but rather that the GOP abandoned the hymnbook. The argument that the policies themselves are flawed in these times seems to escape both Jindal and the rest of his party.

Obama touched on the point last night:

A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

Well, that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.

In fact there's only one group that currently seems able to summon organized opposition to President Obama: Wall Street.

While the POTUS tried to brush off the vagaries of the market with a line ("I understand that, on any given day, Wall Street may be more comforted by an approach that gives bank bailouts with no strings attached and that holds nobody accountable for their reckless decisions, but such an approach won't solve the problem"), the market does have an effect on -- and reflect -- consumer wealth and consumer confidence.

This morning's opening -- DJIA down 150 at mid-day -- seemed to reflect Wall Street's continuing depression. And reflected that even as the President talks up the long-term future, in the short-term there's more pain to go.

Finally, Jindal's delivery was also a problem, as noted by even Fox News. But the style should not be confused with the substance. And the substance was bad enough.

Super-Delegate-dom

Although a win tomorrow by Obama in both Ohio and Texas will make the point moot (and don't think for a minute that the Clintons won't try to fight on if they win one of the two states, and lose the other narrowly), Geraldine Ferraro's op-ed last week about the role of super-delegates is worth revisiting.

Ferraro served on the Hunt Commission, which in 1982 revised the manner in which the Democratic Party chose its nominees. Last week in the NY Times, she wrote that "[T]he superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow," after many of them "walked away" from the party's nominee (President Jimmy Carter) in 1980.

In 1984, these superdelegates stuck with former Vice President Walter Mondale when he was in trouble, having lost 16 of 26 primaries or caucuses to Senator Gary Hart. But the core group of 700 or so superdelegates stuck with Mondale (many had committed before the primary season even began), and as Hart later said, "I got almost none of them, because [Mondale] was considered inevitable."

But whatever happened in the general election in 1984?

If you listen to Ferraro, it was a deus ex machina that caused the general election defeat:

We lost in 1984, big time. But that loss had nothing to do with Democratic Party infighting.

But while the loss may have not have had anything to do with 'infighting', the record reflects that Mondale lost 49 of 50 states (he also won the District of Columbia, along with his home state of Minnesota.)

The superdelegates helped Mondale on his way to a record matched only by George McGovern in 1972, who won just Massachusetts and DC.

Perhaps the 1984 voters, like those in 2008, had a better sense of who could challenge Ronald Reagan in the fall. After all, it's hard to argue that Gary Hart would have fared worse.

The Ghost of Ronald Reagan

Elections, we are told, are about the future. But so far, the 2008 Presidential election has been very much about the past -- and the legacy of Ronald Reagan.

John McCain, fighting to get control of the fractious Republican party, will later this week dust off old black-and-white photos with the then-Governor Reagan taken shortly after he was released from captivity in Hanoi:



Mitt Romney has spent much of the past month attempting to lay claim to the mantle of "the Reagan legacy" himself, albeit without much success. (It should be noted that neither McCain nor Romney has observed Reagan's 11th Commandment.)

On the Democratic side, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama famously engaged in a squabble during the South Carolina primary about whether Obama supported Reagan's politics, and whether Reagan was "transformative" political figure.

But the real parallel may be with Reagan's 1976 campaign for the nomination. Like Obama, Reagan was running against a virtual incumbent (Gerald Ford), at least in the eyes of the party, but one who had never been elected. Like 1976, the field was a two-person race (Reagan was actually almost knocked out of the running in the early primaries, rallying in North Carolina.) And like 1976, it appears that Obama will chase Hillary all the way to the convention, where Reagan gave one of the most famous concession speeches in modern political history.

And a speech that pointed the way to the Reagan sweep in 1980.

The Battle for Conservatism

Mitt Romney's Presidential efforts suffered through a difficult December. Throughout the month references all over the web (and eventually in the MSM) were made to his "evolution" on conservative touch-stone issues, from gay marriage to abortion. But starting shortly after Christmas, with the Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court's opinion in Doyle v. Secretary of the Commonwealth (which Romney had championed), the subsequent vote that advanced the proposed state constitutional amendment on gay marriage, and the announcement this week that he had "raised commitments" of$6.5M for his Presidential campaign, Romney looked like he had turned the page on 2006.

But this morning, a carefully edited video of portions of Romney's 1994 debate against Ted Kennedy was apparently posted on YouTube, and has quickly circulated through the liberal blogs. It's one thing to read Romney's words, it's quite another to see him on screen.

With Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and George Allen (all seen, once upon a time, as potential conservative standard-bearers) out from the 2008 race, Romney has been fine-tuning his appeal to the GOP 'base.' But it seems that someone is trying to make sure that these 'base' voters are made aware of Romney's not-as-conservative past, including some comments distancing himself from icon Ronald Reagan. The good news for Romney: he's getting people worried. And it's quite early in the process for this type of material (which is probably among the "best" anti-Romney video available) to surface.

Query: which GOP front-runner would have reason to fear a candidate who received the unwaivering support of conservative Republican primary voters?

Gerald Ford, RIP

The coverage of President Gerald Ford's death last night serves as a nostaglic reminder of a different era - one where a moderate Republican from Michigan could rise to be Vice President and President without being elected. He was the ultimate transition figure - both from the Nixon Era, but also from a different time in politics, before the Reagan Revolution (in fact, it could be argued he was the first casualty of that Revolution, granting Reagan a 'concession' speech at the 1976 GOP Convention that overshadowed, in many observers' eyes, the President's own acceptance of his nomination.) But in death he has seemed to gain the respect that failed him (the Chevy Chase-lampooned stumbles, the Poland gaffe in the 1976 debate, and of course the pardon of Nixon) through his Presidency.

Godspeed, Mr. President.