Inside Mitt's Mind

The news this morning is that the McCain/Palin campaign has apparently released a new ad accusing Barack Obama as having a single educational legislative accomplishment: that of passing "legislation to teach 'comprehensive sex education' to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read?"

The Obama campaign reacted swiftly, and accused the McCain campaign of being dishonorable:

It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls - a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn't define what honor was. Now we know why.

Smearing an opponent is not honorable, but it's not the first time that McCain has done so in this cycle.

In late January, with his campaign in trouble, Romney was buried in Florida when McCain took a Romney quote about setting timetables in Iraq and twisted its meaning by changing the context. Here's the Romney quote:

[T]he president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about. But those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re going to be gone. You want to have a series of things you want to see accomplished in terms of the strength of the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police, and the leadership of the Iraqi government.

But during the primary season, McCain seized on the single word "timetable" and claimed that by discussing 'timetables', even in private (with Iraq PM Maliki), Romney was part of the defeatist crowd that was against the Surge:

Governor Romney obviously said there had to be, “timetables,” although they had to be secret because we weren’t going to tell the enemy when we were leaving. I mean, that’s — that’s just a fact. And if we’d have done that, as the Democrats and some Republicans wanted to do, we would’ve lost that surge and al-Qaeda would be celebrating a victory over the United States of America.

To be sure, Romney was in trouble already, having lost Iowa and New Hampshire; but a win in Florida would have put him back on the map, and McCain's distortions helped seal his fate.

At the time, the mainstream media didn't pay much attention to what McCain was engaged in; after all, as George W. Bush famously told McCain himself in 2000 (when McCain was being smeared for his adopted daughter from Bangladesh), it's just 'politics.'

McCain's 2000 experience may have changed him, like Richard Nixon's experience in Illinois and Texas did in 1960. When the "new Nixon" got another change -- in 1968 and 1972 -- he left nothing to chance.

Wonder what Mitt thinks.

Hillary and the Expectations Game

Could not agree more with Seth Gitell's recent post about the 'Hillary-in-free-fall' stories that are now rampant in the press. For instance, Howard Fineman's piece earlier in the week (clearly written pre-debate, although the dynamics did not change yesterday) is featured prominently on Drudge this afternoon. Billy Shaheen's comments over the past few days resulted in his resignation from the NH campaign yesterday, giving rise to a series of stories about a 'campaign-in-disarray'. And the New York Times' Adam Nagourney earlier in the week wrote a story emphasizing how the Clintons have never really campaigned in Iowa (the 1992 caucuses were ceded to favorite son Tom Harkin) and that there was tension between the President's advisors and the campaign's staff.

The reality is that as a former First Lady, with extremely high name-recognition, and a national front runner for months on end, expectations should be -- fairly -- for convincing wins everywhere. Moreover, the 'inevitability' argument that the Clinton campaign has been touting for months should be making a loss anywhere -- Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina -- a mortal wound.

(Just as a point of comparision -- and yes, it was a different era and before the Iowa caucuses took on their current importance -- but, LBJ 'lost' the New Hampshire primary in 1968, even though he received a majority (49%) of the votes, to Gene McCarthy's 42%.)

Yes, Hillary has had a bad month. Yes, Obama has proved to be an effective counter-puncher. And yes, there's still a lot of time left (although less time than the calendar would indicate, when one takes into account the days lost to Christmas and the holiday week.)

But right now, a win in Iowa for Hillary would effectively end the race. And even a convincing win by Obama there may not end the talk of a Clinton 'firewall' in New Hampshire, Nevada, or
South Carolina. Moreover, with the Democratic delegates reflecting proportional representation (see, e.g., 2004 NH Democratic results) -- rather than the closer-to-winner-take-all primaries on the GOP side (see 2000 Michigan results) -- meaning that a wounded Clinton campaign could continue on past Super Tuesday and into the Spring.

The Clinton campaign has one other advantage: a base level of support that is the flip side to her high negative ratings. While some voters will not vote for her under any circumstances, others -- and especially women -- want to vote in favor of the first truly viable woman candidate. It should surprise no one that Clinton's new ad is focused on three generation of "Rodham" women, all of who think Hillary should be president.