Safire: Never Love a Stranger

WASHINGTON — Both power centers of the Democratic establishment — the Kennedy left and the Clinton middle — are frantic at the prospect of losing control of their party to Howard Dean. They fear a McGovernesque debacle that would hand the G.O.P. a super-majority in the Senate.

Clintonites were first to take the Dean threat seriously. As reported gleefully in this space (full disclosure: I'm rooting for Dean's candidacy in hopes of the debacle), the Clinton crowd surrounded ex-Gen. Wesley Clark with Clinton managers, spinmeisters, pollsters and fund-raisers and marched him into battle against Dean.

The Clinton political strategy was, as usual, astute: let Dick Gephardt slow Dean down in Iowa, then push Clark hard enough to upset Dean in New Hampshire, or at least attract enough of the isolationist vote from Dean to let John Kerry squeak through.

Of course, if the national economy had gone south, Hillary would have gone South with Clark on her ticket to take on an unemployment-ravaged Bush herself. But with the economy surging and Democrats robbed of their central issue, Hillary can wait till 2008. It is in the Clintons' interest for the 2004 Democratic nominee to lose respectably, not in a landslide, laying the basis for a 2008 comeback that would be impossible if Dean were in the White House.

But what of the other power center of the Democratic establishment — who would be its logical stop-Dean candidate? Not Gephardt, who — although an ardent tax-raiser and entitlement maven — has been a stalwart supporter of winning the war and peace in Iraq. Not Joe Lieberman (too centrist and moralist), not Wes Clark (property of the Clintons), not John Edwards (too light).

So the Kennedy Left moved in to resuscitate John Kerry's campaign. Kerry is a war hero who led Vietnam Vets Against the War and has long been a Kennedy Senate ally. Some liberals believe he expunged his sin of having voted for this year's resolution to overthrow Saddam by recently joining Kennedy in voting against paying for it.

The Kennedyization of the Kerry campaign was carried out by Jeanne Shaheen, the former New Hampshire governor. She prevailed on the candidate to fire his longtime manager, Jim Jordan, and replace him with Mary Beth Cahill, Ted Kennedy's chief of staff. Cahill has impeccable far-left credentials, from Emily's List fund-raising to Representative Barney Frank's staff. She is an ideological soulmate of the superb writer and Kennedy Boston braintruster Robert Shrum, who has been battling Jordan to yank Kerry's moderate position over to the demonstrative dovecote.

Will this Kennedy-Clinton Combine be able to save the Democratic establishment from the assault of this generation's McGovern? Will Terry McAuliffe, imposed on the Democratic National Committee by the Clintons, count any more now that Dean has broken free of the normal financing to rely on Internet movers and billionaire George Soros?

Dean has an unexpected development going for him: because his basic pitch has been to deride Iraq's liberation, he is the one Democrat not ensnared in the now-embarrassing denunciation of Bush economic policy.

Every Democratic candidate, Dean included but not most loudly, has been hammering at the rising deficit and the loss of new jobs, blaming both on Bush tax cuts. But that ground is crumbling under them; if prosperity continues to make its comeback, their biggest complaint would become Bush's greatest boast.

Then Dean would make a bumper sticker out of what we have already begun to hear: "It's the War, Stupid." He would echo the McGovern slogan, "Come home, America," and if the war is going badly in a few months, Dean would blow Clinton and Kennedy and the other old-timers away.

But both Democratic power centers are surely considering the other possibility: that Bush is lucky. What if the war on terror begins to succeed by next summer, casualties decline, Saddam is found or Osama is killed? In that case, Bush would campaign on both growing prosperity and impending victory.

In that case, the Clinton-Kennedy establishment would be better off maintaining control and losing respectably with Kerry, Clark or even Gephardt than getting buried in a landslide with Dean. And in 2008, as Jeb Bush and Condi Rice fight out their G.O.P. primaries, Hillary will be tanned, rested and ready.

Safire was right that the consequenses to Hillary of a Dean run could be disatarous, both for her and the dems.

The question is, since she is the only sure bet to beat him, can she take the chance with someone else? And does she really trust Kennedy to work to her political ambitions? Does she think, alternatively, she can out manuvere him 4 year hence when he stabs her in the back?

I still think her time is now. She has a card up her sleve. I don't know what it is, and neither does Safire, but she has one. The Clintons always have one.

There's been no mention of Al Gore in the article, but he's been sounding more and more like a candidate the last few weeks. If Hillary's the 800 pound gorilla, Gore is surely at least a 400 pound gorilla, and would have substantial support if he suddenly decided to jump into the race (absent a Hillary candidacy, of course).

One reason Gore hasn't been mentioned is because the Toons have successfully marginalized him. No one likes a pompous windbag, and no one likes a pompous windbag who loses an election to a neophyte Texas governor in a contest he should have won by five to seven points.

Al Gore is an ass clown. Period.

I'm counterintuitive on the war. Right now, the conventional wisdom is that the war is going south in Iraq and this is bad news for Bush. I'm betting that things will improve as more Iraqis hit the streets, a government there gets going, and the 1st Marine Division hits the Sunni Triangle (where it's going to get really rough for the Ba'ath, rougher than it is now).

I can almost sense this coming, as the Democrats have placed all their chits on the war.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

It is in the Clintons' interest for the 2004 Democratic nominee to lose respectably, not in a landslide, laying the basis for a 2008 comeback that would be impossible if Dean were in the White House.

Interesting.

Hillary's gonna run, one way or the other. The only question is the year.

I agree with you on this -- in fact, I think things are probably going better than our media would have us believe. We've had a few hundred casualties, all told. I expected a few thousand just to seize Baghdad. (Not to say that each death isn't a tragedy, of course.)

The other night I watched Hardball (I'm a masochist), and I think Matthews must have been off his meds. They led with a six or seven minute feature by one of their local reporters in Baghdad, just full of optimism and hope -- he basically took a walk down a Baghdad street, and there were late model cars driving by, expensive jewelry and western clothes in the shop windows, smiling passersby, etc.

Then Matthews spent the rest of the show ranting at his guests about how horrible things are in Baghdad. I was sitting there, open-mouthed, wondering if Matthews even watched his own lead-in. ANd I think it's a larger problem -- I think the reporters in NY and DC are seriously out of touch with what's actually going on in Iraq, and a lot of them don't even listen to their own correspondents' reports.

Both power centers of the Democratic establishment — the Kennedy left and the Clinton middle — are frantic at the prospect of losing control of their party to Howard Dean. They fear a McGovernesque debacle that would hand the G.O.P. a super-majority in the Senate.... Every Democratic candidate, Dean included but not most loudly, has been hammering at the rising deficit and the loss of new jobs, blaming both on Bush tax cuts. But that ground is crumbling under them; if prosperity continues to make its comeback, their biggest complaint would become Bush's greatest boast.

Delicious. You just can't gather the words to properly express your appreciation for the opposition running to raise taxes as the economy surges and the deficit subsides, to implement hugely costly entitlements that would extend national debt out as far as the eye can see, and to thwart the spread of democratic principles and human rights in this new Age of Liberty, begun under Ronald Reagan and spurred forward under George W. Bush. Isn't it lovely to watch them squirm?

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