A presidential candidate needs to attract a bipartisan base of support in order to be elected president and, equally important, lead Congress and govern successfully. The 2008 election is shaping up as a true watershed national contest, defining America like 1932 (FDR,) 1960 (JFK,) 1968 (Nixon vs. Wallace), and 1980 (Reagan vs. Carter).
In a watershed election, all the issues tributaries of our politics converge on a single mighty torrent that sweeps everything before it. In 2008, the overwhelming issue will be the unending war-caused inflationary disorder of America’s political economy, represented by the collapsing dollar abroad and the collapsing housing mortgage debt structure at home. Bad U.S. housing debts, repackaged by global banks and made into collateral for additional mountains of transnational debts, have spread like a plague into the financial bloodstreams of Europe and Asia and the rest of the world. To save ourselves, America urgently needs a cure that will save the entire dollarized world as well.
Today, obviously, the urgent priority is winding up the costly, tragic Iraq war (now in its fifth year and already longer than WWII) in order to concentrate on restoring U.S. economic prosperity, now overshadowed by the spreading housing finance crisis and sharply declining home prices. The threat of a possible recession or worse in 2008-9 especially endangers the middle classes, those families who earn $50,000 or more a year. Across the country, these families who played by the rules, worked hard, saved and bought a piece of the American dream in the form of a heavily mortgaged house near good schools are in danger of losing everything because of predatory lending, steeply escalating adjustable-rate mortgages, and foreclosure and eviction. Their increasingly desperate plight will be the central economic issue in the 2008 election.
I worked as a senior policy adviser and campaign strategist for both Nixon and Reagan. A successful, electable candidate needs a strong, direct positive message. I helped both Nixon and Reagan define their winning messages. For Nixon, it was “order” at home after some 170 nightmarish urban race riots and “peace” abroad after the stunning Tet Offensive in Vietnam. For Reagan, it was “take charge” of double-digit hyperinflation and end weak, incompetent misgovernment under Carter.
None of the Above? Needed: A 2008 Surprise
By defining the most urgent 2008 issues, we can see which presidential
candidates in both parties match up with the crises America faces.
Unfortunately, the frontrunners in both parties do not match up very
well. For example, Hillary Clinton
voted for the Iraq war but now opposes it. She has little to say about
the housing finance crisis. The poll-certified Republican frontrunner,
former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani,
never voted on the Iraq war but once supported it and now seems
ambiguous about it. He, too, slides over the housing finance crisis.
Although Giuliani also benefits from high name recognition, a new CBS News/New York Times poll find his lead nearly evaporating with the entry of former Senator and TV star Fred Thompson – Giuliani leads 29 percent to Thompson’s 21 percent. The laconic Thompson, a one-term former Senator from Tennessee, is an actor turned politician, but scarcely “another Reagan.” He is a relatively new face but his scant experience and negative message are hardly Reaganesque. The “Gipper” wanted to end the Cold War without firing a shot and he had a plan that did it.
Thompson has no plan for anything. Neither does Giuliani. His experiences as New York’s Mayor and as a federal prosecutor are admirable but irrelevant. On 9/11, he said and did what any savvy, patriotic mayor would have said and done – and hundreds of thousands of ordinary New Yorkers displayed the same courage and heroism he showed on that terrible day. The hundreds of firefighters and policemen killed that day are the real heroes.
Giuliani and his “Princess Bride,” the former Judith Nathan Stish of Hazelton, PA, as Judy Bachrach calls her in a scathing Vanity Fair profile, appear to be running to be America’s first elected King and Queen, positions their outsized egos crave. Giuliani is unqualified to be president by his vary narrow experience and even more, his dictatorial temperament. His culturally extreme positions on multiple divorces, same-sex marriage, abortion on demand and other social mores are way out of step with traditional as well as social conservative values.
After the media beat the drums for Giuliani’s shocking support for the Boston Red Sox, was he simply lucky that the next day’s news reported the Mafia’s alleged 1986 plot to rub out this crime-busting U.S. Attorney? The syndicate’s dons allegedly voted 3-2 not to kill him for prosecuting hundreds of mobsters. Why do we read this “news” 22 years later? Or did Giuliani leak it? Today’s enemies are not mobsters but economic ignorance and financial arrogance in America’s highest places.
In the gaggle of present day GOP presidential candidates, I admire Representative Duncan Hunter of California, a conservative of sincere conviction and an expert on defense policy. He would make an excellent Defense Secretary. Ron Paul of Texas, a physician and an honest libertarian conservative, is also an admirable figure who could oversee an honest budget.
I agree with Dick Morris and Eileen McGann’s New York Post 10/26/07 assessment of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who has run impressively in the polls without money or organization. Morris thinks Huckabee is “an appealing, humorous, passionate orator who brings a spiritual dimension to public policy problems.” It is too early to predict whether or not he could be a challenger to Giuliani in the national primary February 5.
Senator John McCain of Arizona sadly forfeited his chance to be President by failing to supervise his staff as they looted his campaign war chest under his nose. He has sunk to just 18 percent in the latest CBS/AP poll primarily because he has continuously echoed Bush on Iraq. As late as Monday, October 22, McCain insists that a new message from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in which bin Laden scolds his followers in Iraq proves that U.S. efforts there are succeeding. Tell that to the Marines ducking roadside bombs in Baghdad.
The rest of the Republican field reflects the professional political consensus that 2008 will be a very big Democratic year. Mitt Romney, ex-GOP liberal Governor of Massachusetts, is a self-admitted opportunist and ideological cross-dresser. He would lose respectably to Hillary but might rescue a few marginal Republican congressional seats. But he is a sure loser – scoring 14 percent – largely unchanged since his August straw poll win in Ames, Iowa, where he paid the $35 fee for people who voted for him.
The mismatch suggests the field of 2008 candidates is not yet complete.
The 2008 door is wide open for an exciting, honest and energetic new face, a proven vote-getter who could finance his own campaign. How many voters are totally disenchanted with the entire field of candidates – both Democratic and Republican? How many wish there was just one more name – someone they really admire and respect -- someone they know would be both an exciting and qualified leader?
Surprise: my choice is Michael Bloomberg, two-term Mayor of New York, multi-billionaire entrepreneur and precisely the man to cure what ails America’s failing financial economy.
As a former Republican who is now (once again) a Democrat and an Independent, Bloomberg, extremely bright and street-savvy, could be the real New Yorker candidate in the 2008 race, unlike showoff Rudy or carpetbagger Hillary.
Bloomberg would organize the day-to-day defense of the world’s greatest country the same way he recruited the best of the CIA and the FBI to assist and advise him in New York. He would work with Congress the same way he works, semi-miraculously with New York’s hostile and dysfunctional City Council and Board of Education.
I believe he would do for America’s sputtering financial economy what he has done for New York’s over the past seven years.
According to Bloomberg’s mom, he hasn’t made up his mind yet. That’s OK Mrs. Bloomberg, we can wait.
Although Giuliani also benefits from high name recognition, a new CBS News/New York Times poll find his lead nearly evaporating with the entry of former Senator and TV star Fred Thompson – Giuliani leads 29 percent to Thompson’s 21 percent. The laconic Thompson, a one-term former Senator from Tennessee, is an actor turned politician, but scarcely “another Reagan.” He is a relatively new face but his scant experience and negative message are hardly Reaganesque. The “Gipper” wanted to end the Cold War without firing a shot and he had a plan that did it.
Thompson has no plan for anything. Neither does Giuliani. His experiences as New York’s Mayor and as a federal prosecutor are admirable but irrelevant. On 9/11, he said and did what any savvy, patriotic mayor would have said and done – and hundreds of thousands of ordinary New Yorkers displayed the same courage and heroism he showed on that terrible day. The hundreds of firefighters and policemen killed that day are the real heroes.
Giuliani and his “Princess Bride,” the former Judith Nathan Stish of Hazelton, PA, as Judy Bachrach calls her in a scathing Vanity Fair profile, appear to be running to be America’s first elected King and Queen, positions their outsized egos crave. Giuliani is unqualified to be president by his vary narrow experience and even more, his dictatorial temperament. His culturally extreme positions on multiple divorces, same-sex marriage, abortion on demand and other social mores are way out of step with traditional as well as social conservative values.
After the media beat the drums for Giuliani’s shocking support for the Boston Red Sox, was he simply lucky that the next day’s news reported the Mafia’s alleged 1986 plot to rub out this crime-busting U.S. Attorney? The syndicate’s dons allegedly voted 3-2 not to kill him for prosecuting hundreds of mobsters. Why do we read this “news” 22 years later? Or did Giuliani leak it? Today’s enemies are not mobsters but economic ignorance and financial arrogance in America’s highest places.
In the gaggle of present day GOP presidential candidates, I admire Representative Duncan Hunter of California, a conservative of sincere conviction and an expert on defense policy. He would make an excellent Defense Secretary. Ron Paul of Texas, a physician and an honest libertarian conservative, is also an admirable figure who could oversee an honest budget.
I agree with Dick Morris and Eileen McGann’s New York Post 10/26/07 assessment of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who has run impressively in the polls without money or organization. Morris thinks Huckabee is “an appealing, humorous, passionate orator who brings a spiritual dimension to public policy problems.” It is too early to predict whether or not he could be a challenger to Giuliani in the national primary February 5.
Senator John McCain of Arizona sadly forfeited his chance to be President by failing to supervise his staff as they looted his campaign war chest under his nose. He has sunk to just 18 percent in the latest CBS/AP poll primarily because he has continuously echoed Bush on Iraq. As late as Monday, October 22, McCain insists that a new message from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in which bin Laden scolds his followers in Iraq proves that U.S. efforts there are succeeding. Tell that to the Marines ducking roadside bombs in Baghdad.
The rest of the Republican field reflects the professional political consensus that 2008 will be a very big Democratic year. Mitt Romney, ex-GOP liberal Governor of Massachusetts, is a self-admitted opportunist and ideological cross-dresser. He would lose respectably to Hillary but might rescue a few marginal Republican congressional seats. But he is a sure loser – scoring 14 percent – largely unchanged since his August straw poll win in Ames, Iowa, where he paid the $35 fee for people who voted for him.
The mismatch suggests the field of 2008 candidates is not yet complete.
The 2008 door is wide open for an exciting, honest and energetic new face, a proven vote-getter who could finance his own campaign. How many voters are totally disenchanted with the entire field of candidates – both Democratic and Republican? How many wish there was just one more name – someone they really admire and respect -- someone they know would be both an exciting and qualified leader?
Surprise: my choice is Michael Bloomberg, two-term Mayor of New York, multi-billionaire entrepreneur and precisely the man to cure what ails America’s failing financial economy.
As a former Republican who is now (once again) a Democrat and an Independent, Bloomberg, extremely bright and street-savvy, could be the real New Yorker candidate in the 2008 race, unlike showoff Rudy or carpetbagger Hillary.
Bloomberg would organize the day-to-day defense of the world’s greatest country the same way he recruited the best of the CIA and the FBI to assist and advise him in New York. He would work with Congress the same way he works, semi-miraculously with New York’s hostile and dysfunctional City Council and Board of Education.
I believe he would do for America’s sputtering financial economy what he has done for New York’s over the past seven years.
According to Bloomberg’s mom, he hasn’t made up his mind yet. That’s OK Mrs. Bloomberg, we can wait.
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