Posted on 08/11/2009 8:15:57 AM PDT by khnyny
Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan -- "Look, it's really him!" a young woman, swathed in a black scarf, whispered to her seatmate as President Hamid Karzai took to the stage to address the crowd.
Normally, an incumbent president's appearance at a campaign rally in his own capital, especially one held less than a month before he faced a reelection bid, wouldn't be any cause for surprise.
....
Because there has been no credible nationwide polling since the start of the campaign last month, the likelihood of that is difficult to gauge.
"There just aren't any numbers!" said political strategist James Carville, who is advising the Ghani campaign, sounding entirely cheerful about the prospect of flying blind.
"There's no polling, no focus groups," Carville, who shot to national prominence as the chief strategist of Bill Clinton's juggernaut-like 1992 presidential bid, said in a telephone interview from the United States. "It's kind of refreshing."
Before the start of the campaign, Obama administration officials were highly critical of Karzai, but the U.S. has adopted a carefully neutral position on the outcome of the vote, voicing hopes only for a free and fair election.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Carville really needs a towel on his head....
But, but, I thought Obama was all about diplomacy? So what this article says to me is, Obama doesn’t like working with Karzai, so Obama is going to take his toys and go home resulting in a major loss of US security.
Karzai is not flawless and that Ghani guy is not a bad candidate. As finance minister and one of the few Afghan politicians with an economic background, he might be better for Afghanistan than Karzai.
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