In 1956, I first met William F. Buckley. I was 21 and he was 31. We met in the Washington office of Holmes Alexander, who was a syndicated political columnist. We had come to Alexander seeking his wisdom; I was seeking employment as a journalist and Buckley needed backers for his new magazine, National Review.

Alexander delivered on both scores. He steered me away from a right-wing newsletter and toward a reporter’s job at the Richmond (VA) News Leader. He gave Buckley a list of wealthy conservative Maryland gentry who could help his magazine. As Buckley and I parted, he said: “Write for me Dick; you’ll be hearing from Frank Meyer.”

Frank Meyer, once a leading theoretician of the American Communist Party, was one of several former leftists who Buckley had rescued and recruited for his magazine as Editor. His sister Priscilla was the Managing Editor. After I had moved to New York as an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal, I remember with pleasure helping her close issues of the magazine while Bill was away making speeches and raising money. Great names were suddenly at my elbow editing copy such as James Burnham, author of the Managerial Revolution.

Buckley’s magazine was a brilliant fusion of many different strands of conservatism, created by three generations of writers, thinkers and would-be world changers – only he could have brought them together. The early National Review was the most exciting magazine since the New Republic and The Nation had been launched four decades earlier.

Buckley started the magazine with a $100,000 advance from his father, a successful Texas oilman. Despite his untiring efforts, the magazine never made money. But it did generate an intellectual and political revolution in American life during the generations from the 1950s to the early 1980s.

Bill Buckley revived traditional moral, political and cultural values and standards from neglect and worse. He bucked the trendy leftism of his time and challenged the post-New Deal orthodoxy of established liberalism. That orthodoxy had produced in educated circles a suffocating conformity. Buckley shattered that conformity with wit, style and daring.

In 1962, Buckley challenged his leftwing journalistic competitors by publishing a “youth issue” – produced entirely by conservative writers under 30. I was proud to be included along with Gary Wills and Joan Didion. To Buckley’s delight, the issue was a sensation. He told me privately: “Next year, we will make it even better and drop the age to 25!”

The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 was the much chronicled climax of the modern conservative movement that had its beginnings in Bill Buckley’s magazine and the first political flowering in Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential nomination.

By the time Buckley received the Medal of Freedom last year, he had helped change America and the world at large with his mind and his pen. Few writers will be as admired as he was for his enduring accomplishments.

New national polls of Democrats show Senator Barack Obama is the frontrunner for the presidential nomination. The New York Times/CBS News and USA Today/Gallup polls put his lead in double digits.

But a new headache for Senator Obama has surfaced that could have devastating impact on his presidential campaign. According to the The Times of London a British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Obama’s fundraising effort only weeks before an imprudent land deal.

The Times reports: “The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain’s wealthiest men, helped Senator Obama buy the mock Georgian mansion in Chicago where he lives. A company related to Mr. Auchi, who has a conviction for corruption in France, registered the loan to Mr. Obama’s bagman, Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko on May 23, 2005. Mr. Auchi says the loan, through the Panamanian company Fintrade Services SA, was for $US 3.5 million.”

“Three weeks later, Senator Obama bought a house on Chicago’ South side, while Mr. Rezko’s wife bought the garden plot next door from the same seller on the same day, June 15….

“Ms. Rezko, whose husband was widely known to be under investigation at the time, sold a 3m strip of her property to Senator Obama seven months later. Senator Obama says his involvement in the land deal was a “boneheaded mistake,” and he paid $US 150,000 to charity as a public atonement….

“Ms Rezko, whose husband goes on trial on unrelated corruption charges in Chicago on March 3, refused to answer questions about the case when she spoke to The Times…. Mr. Rezko has been indicted for allegedly scheming to pressure companies seeking business with the state of Illinois for contributions to the campaign of Governor Rod Blagojevich.”

Obama’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has sought to make Mr. Rezko – who has bankrolled Obama’s political career since his first run for the Illinois state Senate in the mid-1990s – an election issue by calling him a “slum landlord” in a televised debate. Clinton has repeatedly suggested that Obama has not been “vetted” by media scrutiny and will not withstand “the Republican attack machine.”

We know less about Barack Obama and his political connections than we have known about any other candidate for the presidency in the past half century. In their final debate, Clinton wanted everyone to know that she believes the press is tougher on her than on Barack Obama. According to the New York Times “She made her case by citing a sketch on last week’s Saturday Night Live that showed mock debate moderators grilling her stand-in….but fawning over the Obama character.”

Obama’s media honeymoon may be over. A veteran journalist who covers Obama regularly provides this snapshot: “He’s not at all as he appears on television. He’s cold, distant and tightly wound. But when the red light goes on the TV cameras, he’s all charm and self-discipline in his choice of words.”

This story is not going away. The Rezko-Auchi connection is sure to trigger overdue press scrutiny when Rezko’s trial begins on March 3. Obama’s name could figure in the trial although he is not accused of any wrongdoing.

Some of the same American neocon war hawks who pushed the U.S. into the “cakewalk” war in Iraq in 2003 are still pushing to extend the war to Iran. And just as the late 2007 tactical military “surge” in Iraq (especially Baghdad and neighboring Anbar Province) stabilized the battlefield as the U.S. presidential campaign began, so a geopolitical and strategic move against Iran later in 2008 could create a war scare that would benefit the Republicans in a close election.

Senator John McCain feels the pressure to find “progress” in the Iraq situation to justify his support for the war and he is non-committal on Iran. On Monday, February 25, McCain said he needed to convince the American people that “the troop escalation in Iraq is working and that American casualties would continue to decline…or I lose.”

A USAToday/Gallup poll conducted on February 8 found that 43 percent of Americans now believe the troop surge was making the situation there better, an increase from 22 percent last July. But the poll underscores just how unpopular the war continues to be, with 60 percent saying it was a mistake.

History repeats. Iranian exiles are also promoting war as the Iraq exiles did a decade ago. Exiled Iranian politicians held a news conference in Brussels, Belgium February 20th, according to Agence-France Presse . The exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) promoted U.S. air attacks on their homeland.

According to confidential Washington sources, the selection of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense had been engineered by ex-President George H.W. Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker to prevent Vice President Dick Cheney and the neocon war hawks from opening up a new war front with Iran. So far, Gates has succeeded, using the Pentagon’s senior military and civilian officials to convince the Bush White House’s inner circle that there is no more military capability to deploy beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.

The NCRI is determined to debunk the sensational American National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of December 2007 that found Iran had suspended its covert military nuclear program in 2003. This document, long delayed by Cheney, was forced into the public domain by Gates. NCRI showed the news media civilian commercial satellite images of what it said was a functioning Iranian defense ministry missile research site at Khojir in the suburbs southeast of Tehran. The Iranian government is believed to be developing a nuclear warhead there for delivery by its medium-range missiles.

The complex reportedly contains a guest villa housing North Korean technicians working at the warhead facility. Most interestingly some of the Iranian exiles’ group hinted that the intelligence data made available at the conference was being released on the private initiative of France and Israel to rebut, once and for all, the NIE’s “mistaken” conclusions about Iran’s nuclear warhead program having been suspended. On September 6, 2007, Israel bombed two sites in Syria presumed to have nuclear weapons under development. North Korean technicians were present at these sites.

AFP and other news agencies showed skepticism about the Iranian exile’s’ disclosures in Brussels. Reportedly, these were based on tips from the U.S., Israeli and French intelligence using ultra-sensitive spy satellites to uncover new “data” at Khojir; NCR’s agents inside Iran then checked out the “data” and NCRI rented commercial satellites to obtain imagery of the new “data.” It was in this way, NCRI claims, that U.S. intelligence brought the world the news of the Iranian uranium enrichment facility at Natanz in 2002 years before the Russians admitted building it.

The latest NCRI evidence and claims did not shake the Bush Administration’s public faith in the December 2007 NIE on Iran’s suspension of its nuclear program. A spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Washington’s view have not changed.

Informed European observers believe ambitious French President Sarkozy’s intelligence agencies are orchestrating the NCRI disclosures and moving into the U.S.’s place alongside Israel for an eventual diplomatic and potentially military showdown with Iran over its covert nuclear program. Sarkozy believes that the U.S., which is preoccupied with the election and led by a lame duck president, is incapable of intervening before early 2009, which he believes could be too late to prevent Iran’s nuclear capability from becoming a reality.

I believe the war hawks are badly mistaken and completely out of step with the American voters’ anti-war sentiment and any “October surprise” is certain to backfire.

The 2008 election campaign will center on the economy’s many-sided deflationary problems, and what to do about them with stagflation already ominously rising. Piling new deficits on existing debts is no solution. A global run on the dollar may bring the domestic crisis to a head as early as this spring.

The combination of a sharply slowing economy, cutbacks in consumer spending, an extremely cheap inflationary dollar and energy-driven imported commodity inflation – plus a deep-seated credit crunch forcing badly invested banks to curtail lending – is creating a crisis beyond the ability of the most astute Federal Reserve easing policy to correct by itself. Uncounted billions of dollars in bad “assets” of falling value need to be cleared from the glutted real estate markets and warehoused by a revived Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), playing the same leading, successful role as during the S & L collapse in the 1990s.

In the current vacuum of political and intellectual leadership, realistic members of the global business leadership community have a rare opportunity to propose new ideas and policy prescriptions. Reviving the RTC is merely a stop-gap. The last time the world faced deflation and credit collapse, the crisis transmuted into World War II. The only “new idea” then was government-directed mobilization; the draft ended mass unemployment.

The U.S. already has the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan consuming some $100 billion annually, offsetting the delayed $150 billion “economic stimulus” package that won’t take effect until summer.

I believe Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama will square off as the major party nominees. McCain publicly admits his lack of economic knowledge. Obama admits nothing and is waiting for his University of Chicago braintrust to come up with a plan. He is at least mentally prepared to take radical action, demanding whatever specific support he needs from the timid Democratic-controlled Congress.

McCain should not only propose making the Bush tax cuts permanent but call for reducing “non-essential” government spending by $150 billion to make fiscal room for more 2009 tax cuts. And he should call for fiscal policymakers in the Administration and the Congress to accept their neglected responsibility and ease the burdens of the overworked Federal Reserve. That approach could catch Obama in a McCain-Bernanke crossfire that might fluster the bright young man.

America has an ever-changing political center of gravity. Since the Reagan era, national elections demonstrated that America was a center-right country. But then in the 2006 Congressional elections, liberal Democrats were elected and the center started to shift leftward.

Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy anticipates that America is becoming a center-left country. If McCain beats Obama to the fiscal policy punch, advocating government spending reduction and tax cuts, he can seize the initiative and help ignite an anticipatory late 2008 -- early 2009 upswing in the economy. He might even win the election.

Retiring 81-year-old Communist dictator of Cuba, Fidel Castro, is America’s most durable enemy left over from the Cold War era. His regime is as much an antique today as the beat-up 1950s American-made jalopies the Cubans are forced to patch together and drive because of the U.S.’s continuing economic embargo.

Our enforced isolation from Cuba cuts both ways. We have hurt ourselves by waging a generations-long, secret and murderous vendetta against Castro. The bearded Communist tyrant never did succeed in exporting his Marxist-Leninist Revolution to the rest of the Western Hemisphere. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is not a Castro clone but an America-hating local clown.

From recently declassified Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. government documents released after 40 years in storage, I now know that President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, had personal knowledge of the CIA’s repeated attempts to assassinate Castro. Bobby’s counter-assassination program was called “Project Mongoose.” Whether we will ever find Castro’s yellowed “death warrant” bearing JFK’s initials is doubtful.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was stunned to discover that the CIA had been “running a Murder Incorporated all over the Caribbean.” He and Robert Kennedy alike suspected this anti-Castro plotting had backfired on the slain president. “Jack wanted to get Castro but Castro got him first,” Johnson told intimates according to The Castro Obsession by Don Bohning, published in 2005.

I had personal reasons for my own investigation of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. While writing my 1964 book, The Founding Father: The Story of Joseph P. Kennedy, my instincts as an investigative reporter prompted me to enter the labyrinth of U.S.-Cuba relations after the Castro brothers and the Kennedy mutually declared a deadly war of attrition.

It all begins in April 1961,when a force of some 1500 Cuban exiles landed on a remote swampland known as the Bay of Pigs, more than 100 miles from Havana. Only a narrow causeway connected the invasion beach to the mainland. The Cuban exiles had been financed, organized and trained by CIA officers, some of whom – in violation of their orders – accompanied their comrades to the beach. Castro was waiting with tanks and heavy guns.

The “invasion” was bogus , a betrayal of the Cubans who called themselves “Brigade 2506.” And it was also a betrayal of the new young president who was blamed for calling off the air cover and allowing the “invasion” to fail.

My research convinces me that the Bay of Pigs “invasion” was basically a “dumping” operation, eliminating many conservative, Catholic anti-Communist Cuban exiles, including the sons of the island’s leading families. The U.S. stage-managers took Brigade 2506 where it wanted to go but it was predestined to fail.

Castro, a seeming nationalist hero in the eyes of liberal “experts” high in the U.S. government’s bureaucracy, was given the gift of a triumph he didn’t deserve because the U.S. blinked before Castro did.

Raul Castro, 76, now presides, subject to his ailing older brother. Before Fidel Castro dies, America should reach out to our small neighbor and begin to end our economic sanctions that have hurt many American industries, especially agriculture for half a century. Clearly these sanctions have not worked as an effective foreign policy and the anti-American sentiment aroused by our economic sanctions often strengthens the popularity of tyrants such as Castro.

The debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Thursday in Austin, Texas was a bit of a bore and it is unclear whether Clinton’s performance at all slowed Obama’s surge and the momentum Obama seems to be building in Texas and Ohio which hold crucial primaries on March 4.

More importantly, we have learned that in a dramatic departure, Paul Volcker, the 80-year-old former Federal Reserve Chairman who rarely gives his name to politicians or causes, gave this arresting Obama endorsement in an e-mail statement released by his office starting 1/30/08:

“It is only Barack Obama, in his person, in his ideas, in his ability to understand and to articulate both our needs and our hopes that provide the potential for strong and fresh leadership.”

Volcker said he had been “reluctant to engage in political campaigns,” but added: “The time has come to overcome that reluctance.”

“We haven’t faced up to the need for coherent budget, tax and other policies that will encourage savings, innovation and investment,” he declared, “and free the U.S. from its “heavy dependence on foreign capital and maintain a stable dollar.” Volcker expressed confidence that Obama will listen closely to the best advice and act effectively.

In an interview, Volcker told me he had met February 20th with Obama’s chief economic adviser Professor Austan D. Goolsbee, an economist at the University Of Chicago Graduate School Of Business. “Potentially, the next subprime crisis is the issue of credit card debt,” says Goolsbee and Obama’s view is that the U.S. needs to improve oversight in the credit card market.

Obama has ideas about reforming the minimum wage annually and says: “If you work in America, there’s no reason for you to be poor.

“I’m confident that Obama is serious-minded as well as energetic, and that he will listen to the best available economic advice,” said Volcker.

The Brooklyn-born Democrat, who worked in the Chase Bank and served in the Nixon Administration as Under Secretary of the Treasury, was appointed to the Federal Reserve Chairmanship by President Jimmy Carter. But he did not hesitate to fight potential hyper-inflation with double-digit interest rates during the 1980 campaign at the cost of a V-shaped recession in 1982 and 10.8 percent unemployment.

The economy rebounded strongly under newly-elected President Ronald Reagan, who in 1983 reappointed Volcker at my private urging. I served as confidential liaison with Volcker from 1979-82 and believe that Volcker did more to defeat Carter than anyone else and that he then rescued the dollar that benefited Reagan.

Volcker’s endorsement carries unusually valuable weight because he is the world’s most respected central banker.

Is America ready for a black President? Barack Obama’s 10 straight primary victories with an average margin of 33 percent tell me Democrats are very decidedly for Obama because of what he represents. And he represents what everybody wants -- change. People may lie to pollsters but votes don’t lie.

And so, we have entered into a new era in our electoral history -- “Identity Politics” – where voters have turned a deaf ear to Hillary Clinton’s criticisms about Obama’s lack of authenticity and his inexperience. They don’t care.

In Wisconsin, Obama made serious inroads into Clinton’s once-stalwart women voters, increasing his margin to 49 percent from his Super Tuesday’s 43 percent. Similarly, among Clinton’s low and middle income voters, Obama increased his margin 54 percent versus 42 percent won Super Tuesday. And in another significant turnaround, according to an exit poll conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool, one third of voters in the Democratic primary came from union households and they split their votes evenly between Clinton and Obama.

Speaking of unions, consider the surprising boost for Obama by the once Republican-oriented International Brotherhood of Teamsters. After the dramatic Teamsters’ move, labor leaders said, “Change to Win,” a five-million-member coalition of unions that broke away from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. were expected to vote February 21 to endorse Obama. This will be especially important in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

This major endorsement puts the obvious question squarely on the table: how bad is Hillary’s present situation? Is it downhill from now on? The stark truth is that she does not simply need to win Ohio and Texas. She needs delegates to catch up with Obama and she also needs to win double-digit victories to close the gap. (The pledged total now stands: Obama – 1319, Clinton – 1250.) Can she pull it off? I don’t think so.

Her strategy is falling apart, her voice is becoming shriller and shriller and her sharpened attacks and advertisements against Obama are not working. And is she getting a bit too testy? Speaking in Ohio after the Wisconsin polls closed, she did not even mention the Wisconsin results! But then the networks decided to cut off her speech to cover Obama’s 45-minute victory speech in Texas, where he proclaimed: “Houston, I think we’ve achieved a liftoff here.”

Yes, his speech was too long and we heard it all because the networks have picked a winner, along with the rest of change-minded Americans.

Do you think Hillary got the message?

Strategists for Senator Hillary Clinton have looked at the March 4th primaries in Texas and Ohio, and the April 22d primary in Pennsylvania, as the ultimate “firewall” for her against Senator Barack Obama. Right now, polls show her one-time lead in Texas eroding although the most recent surveys still have her ahead in the other two states. In the Expectation Game, she’s expected to win at least two out of three.

And, of course, if she doesn’t, there’s always the superdelegates. At this point, the spinners in Hillary’s camp begin to sound as sincerely desperate as they are.

Far away from the buzz, a distinguished retired U.S. Senator and lifelong Democrat puts the razor-close race in perspective: “Obama’s winning the states that the Republicans will carry. Hillary’s winning the states that the Democrats will carry. If the election were held today, she could win. But if the election is held after March 4th, and after Obama beats her two out of three, he’ll win” adding “Obama’s got the Big Mo.”

This former Senator has no illusions about the “transcendent” Obama who has entranced so many white liberals. “Obama is a product of the Chicago Daley Machine and the big Ag multinational companies and the Chicago Board of Trade. This is the first time he’s run for president, he’s raised plenty of money and he thinks it’s all so easy. He’s arrogant,” the Senator says.

He predicts that the Clintons will use their longtime allies among the party’s 796 superdelegates – who are current and former officials, party leaders and activists – to offset the delegates Obama wins in elections and caucuses. He thinks and I agree, that it will go all the way to the convention, and it could be ugly.

The “superdelegate” rule was instituted after the 1980 election, when some Democrats believed that the role of party leaders and active elected officials had been unduly diminished. They wanted to strengthen the Democratic ticket.

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, the almost 800 superdelegates will make up approximately one-fifth of the total number of delegates. They are not selected based on any primaries or caucuses in each state, but are seated automatically, based solely on their status and current or former party positions. They are unpledged and free to support any candidate for the nomination.

New Mexico’s Governor Bill Richardson, one of the ranking Hispanics in the Party thinks a superdelegate’s vote “should reflect the vote of my state, the vote of my constituency. It shouldn’t be because you’re a fundraiser or a big shot…. If superdelegates decide this nomination, it’s going to look like big-shot politicians and fat-cats decided who would be president.”

Indeed it will. Because the Clinton-Obama contest is so close, the very existence of superdelegates will complicate the outcome and leave the Party bitterly divided.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke did not mince any words in his February 14th testimony to Congress: “The outlook for the economy has worsened….and downside risks to growth have increased.”

But the Fed Chairman is playing catch-up. I reported clear recession signs in November. Why didn’t Bernanke see it? Under rising criticism for not acting quickly enough to ease policy, Bernanke promised Congress that the Fed would act “in a timely manner as needed to support growth.” The Fed has reduced its benchmark interest rate, called the federal funds rate, five times since September, including two cuts within eight days last month. The rate has fallen to 3 percent; as recently as late summer of last year it was 5.25 percent.

Veteran Fed-watchers share my view that a recession has begun and more rate cuts are coming. I believe we will see a Fed funds rate of only 2 percent by spring. Consumer inflation was at 4.1 percent in January, but was believed to be slowing by the same Fed analysts who missed the recession signs.

With inflation in the 3 percent or higher range, anticipated further Fed easing steps would qualify as “emergency” rate reductions, restoring the real (inflation adjusted) “zero” rate level from mid-2003 to mid-2004 during the Alan Greenspan era. In effect, with a “zero” real Fed funds rate, lenders give borrowers “free money” -- a recipe for creating more inflation and another speculative bubble.

Belatedly, Greenspan now warns that the risk of a 2008 recession is 50-50. The economy’s decline is already gaining momentum. In January, the government’s index of payroll employment fell by 17,000 jobs. The service sector, the main engine of economic growth, is weakening. The Institute for Supply Management’s index of non-manufacturing activity fell sharply in January.

The Fed cannot revive growth simply by making quick rate cuts. The economy’s credit system has broken down. With bad real estate loans mounting and their capital at risk, banks are increasingly reluctant to make loans. Lenders are imposing tougher terms and conditions on would-be borrowers. Tighter credit strangles business activity and industrial expansion, and kills jobs. Unemployment is poised to jump by mid-year.

As the jobless rate rises this year while interest rates fall, the Fed will be a study in futility – pushing on a string. Cheaper money fuels Wall Street but does not stimulate long-term investment and job creation. The once unthinkable has arrived: an election-year recession.

Mike Huckabee, the former Governor of Arkansas and a distant runner-up for the Republican presidential nomination, sees no reason why he should drop out and concede to the frontrunner, Senator John McCain. So what if McCain has 723 delegates to Huckabee’s 217. Huckabee believes in “miracles,” he says in the Nation.

Why is the folksy, likeable Huckabee, a former Baptist preacher, continuing his campaigning and fund-raising? Huckabee is the youngest (51) of the three remaining Republican candidates – McCain is 71; Paul is 72 – and is an impressively disciplined man. While governor, he shed over a hundred pounds over two years by following a strict diet and exercise regimen to prepare for the present race and his introduction to millions of television viewers who had never heard of him.

“The nomination is not secured until somebody has 1,191 delegates,” Huckabee told CNN. “That has not yet happened. We’re still continuing to work and to give voters in these states a choice.” And the fact that he gave McCain a run for his money in Virginia shows the Republican Party’s desire to have a choice.

Some Republicans worry that the longer Huckabee stays in the race, the harder he makes it for McCain to make amends with skeptical conservatives. Others, such as GOP pollster Whit Ayres says that “as long as Huckabee stays positive and …does not stimulate a third-party challenge from the right,…he could actually help McCain.” I disagree.

The dream vs. reality: Doug Bandow, a former aide to President Ronald Reagan and a leading libertarian conservative, attended the 2008 Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Arlington last week, and witnessed McCain being booed by angry conservatives. “These conservatives are extremely angry; there was real hatred in that room. They haven’t accepted McCain as their presidential candidate – and probably never will.”

Pat Buchanan, writing in The American Conservative calls McCain’s coming nomination “The Great Betrayal” and quotes McCain the Sunday before the Florida primary: “It’s a tough war we’re in. It’s not going to be over right away. There’s going to be other wars. I’m sorry to tell you….” Pat concludes: “McCain is running on a platform that says your jobs are not coming back, the illegals are not going home, but we are going to have more wars. If you don’t like it, vote for Hillary.”

If McCain stumbles before he wins the nomination, I can think of potential anti-McCain scenarios under the definition of “miracles” that could stop or defeat McCain including a bolt from the Republican Party by conservatives bent on running an anti-McCain third party candidate long before the September 1-4 convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The divisions and bitterness are now so deep that such a departure is becoming a real possibility. Would Huckabee be available? You better believe it.

Senator Hillary Clinton, initially perceived as the “inevitable” nominee, is now scrambling to gain competitive parity against the extraordinary momentum of the former underdog, Senator Barack Obama who now declares himself to be the leader of “the New American Majority.”

In a decision reminiscent of Rudy Giuliani, Clinton has chosen to ignore the upcoming primaries in Hawaii and Wisconsin (February 19) and is now pinning all of her hopes on Ohio and Texas.

And belatedly, Hillary Clinton is taking up specific causes and promises – a $9.50 an hour minimum wage; a national heath care system as good as the Congressional plan; creation of “millions of good new jobs”. She is striving to be seen as the champion of older, less affluent Americans and her new message borrows freely from the populist themes of ex-Senator John Edwards.

Obama now leads in terms of primaries won and is almost dead-even in terms of delegates – 1,259 – 1,210, according to RealClearPolitics. Most important, he is expected to further humiliate Clinton in Wisconsin and Hawaii. Those victories will further fuel his momentum as they battle it out decisively on March 4 in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont. If he wins Texas or Ohio or both, he will have the nomination within his grasp.

If the Democrats deadlock at their convention and are forced to turn to their unelected super-delegates, some 800 party officeholders, present and past, functionaries, and hangers-on, it will be a self-made disastrous breaking of their promise of an open intra-party democracy.

Here is the situation I see: Clinton and her husband overestimated the country’s willingness to tolerate them for another eight years. Her $5 million “loan” to her campaign is a naked admission of money troubles and power people deserting her. And the mistake of firing her Latina campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle instantly backfired. Angry Hispanics now accuse her of disloyalty.

Obama could clinch the nomination on March 4th. Can Hillary be a graceful loser? I doubt it. More likely, she will be a vindictive one.

The possibility of Obama and Clinton running together, as rivals JFK and LBJ did in 1960, is doubtful because the competing “firsts” of race and gender cannot be compromised practically. And today, there are no plausible bosses to be peacemakers -- someone with old Joe Kennedy’s or Sam Rayburn’s authority. And I think John Edwards is Obama’s best bet for Veep.

Obama can beat McCain, but Clinton cannot. Democrats will sweep the Congressional races. Depending on the depth and severity of the 2008 economic slowdown, and the sulking of non-voting disgruntled anti-McCain conservatives, I see an Obama victory that will range from unexpectedly comfortable to a landslide. And the Democrats will make truly landslide gains in the Congress, achieving 60-plus votes in the Senate -- enough to cut off debate -- and a gain of 20-25 seats in the House. This will confirm the 2006 election results mark the beginning of a new era of Democratic presidential ascendancy.

“As home prices fall and banks tighten lending standards, people with good or prime credit histories are falling behind on their payments for home loans, auto loans and credit cards at a quickening pace,” reports The New York Times. Foreigners who are holding dollars and who read this bearish report may wish to sell their greenbacks. We ought to buy them cheap say my economist and trader friends in Wall Street.

With the revalued dollar becoming a seeming toilet-paper currency, based on recent interviews, here are my modest proposals that would have extremely positive domestic and international effects:

• The House Republican caucus would request the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to analyze President Bush’s $3-trillion-plus FY 2009 budget in the light of the emerging recession’s anticipated decline in federal revenues and the automatic increase in contra cyclical “stabilizers” such as unemployment aid, as well as the $156 billion stimulus package adopted by Congress. Without remedial action, the FY 2009 deficit could be greater than Bush’s projection of $400 billion-plus that begins next October, more than double the 2007 deficit of $163 billion.
  
  A rising Federal deficit in a time of slump has long been the neo-Keynesian conventional wisdom. But this deficit could aggravate the simultaneous worsening credit squeeze and keep the economy flat on its back. The emerging 2009 federal borrowing requirement could “crowd out” creditworthy individuals and small and medium-sized businesses seeking bank credit.
  
  Here are a couple of assignments for the CBO. First, on the domestic side, estimate the Federal Borrowing Requirement for FY 2009 and the extent of such “crowding out,” and second, prepare a list of “non-essential” expenditure reductions to accommodate the estimated FY 2009 private sector bank borrowing requirement. The less the federal government borrows, the more the private sector can.
  
  
• On the international side, the CBO should update the Treasury’s holdings of foreign currencies held in the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), and determine how much could be made available to the trading desk of the New York Federal Reserve Bank for short-term trading.

  As in the early days of the American Republic, the U.S. would announce a two-fold plan. First, the Treasury would issue U.S. notes and bonds denominated in foreign currencies, subject to a premium payable in dollars by the purchaser/creditor. Second, any foreign central bank with excess dollars may negotiate with the Treasury for swaps of selected foreign currencies, at a discount, for their redundant dollars.

  Instantly the word would spread throughout the interconnected world of money: New York is buying dollars – what do they know?

  We know that the dollar, beaten down by two terms of the Bush Administration, is ridiculously cheap. With my two-step plan, the U.S. could redeem dollars at a profit, reinforce our credit and restore our credibility ahead of the 2008 election. For example, the Bank of China, sitting uneasily on a trillion dollars in visible reserves, feels obliged to lecture the U.S. publicly on our profligacy. Suppose Beijing received a bid to buy say, $100 billion of those excess dollars for a negotiated amount of Yen or Euros, less a premium. Would Beijing bite? Perhaps Beijing might even like to sell us some Yuan!

  A strong actively traded dollar, backed by fiscal integrity and Yankee ingenuity is the first line of America’s defenses. Get busy, guys and hit those bids.

In the past decade, we’ve had the dot.com bubble and the real estate bubble. Since that magical January evening when Barack Obama won 36.7 percent of the caucus votes in Iowa, he seems to have been in a bubble, too.

His latest fourth decisive victory Sunday February 10, winning the Maine caucuses so unnerved Hillary Clinton that she made the decision to replace her campaign manager. There’s a lot to be nervous about – the official delegate count has Clinton at 1,128 and Obama at 1,116 and he is expected to do quite well today in heavily black Washington, D.C., and in Maryland and Virginia.

Whether or not he is nominated and elected president, Obama is surely a rock star-like phenomenon. A truly eloquent orator, a figure of considerable poise and grace, he is “the one” that Oprah Winfrey and others – including the Kennedys (or most of them) have awaited.

But the rush to anoint Obama may slow now that the New York Times has published a front-page story about his occasional drug-taking during his college years. In Obama’s 442-page book, Dreams From My Father, (1995), published when he was 33 – he is now 46 -- Obama spends a page and a half on references to his use of drugs.

Obama wrote that as a college student at Occidental in Honolulu from 1979 to 1981, he felt confused about his identity as the son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father. He wrote that he would get high on marijuana, and occasionally, cocaine “to help numb the confusion.” He wrote: “Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man….Except the highs had not been about that, me trying to prove what a down brother I was. I got high for just the opposite effect, something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind.”

While such honest disclosures were written before he ran for office, an adviser to Clinton could not resist the temptation of pointing out that such a “history” would make him vulnerable to Republican attacks. If the Republican squads of conservative dirt-diggers don’t drill deep, you can bet Clinton’s staff will certainly pick up the shovel.

The Barack Obama who made Law Review at Harvard is a long, long way from the junkie he feared he would become. But what Obama calls “post racial” America may turn against him as his enemies forget the “political correctness” sanctions of the 21st century and introduce his drug admissions and racial insecurities into the campaign -- possibly from “sources” the New York Times missed.

Yeah – I know Conservatives in the Republican Party are totally out of sorts with their frontrunner – Senator John McCain. And the moderates are in total confusion and who would blame them?

For example, when McCain was asked during a “Straight Talk” bus tour back in April 19, 2007 when he thought the U.S. military might send an air mail message to Tehran, McCain began his answer by singing and changing the words to a popular Beach Boys song to “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” reports the Georgetown Times. Then he added: “Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel…I totally support the President….”

More recently, McCain told a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire January 3, 2008, that “the United States military could stay in Iraq for ‘maybe a hundred years and that would be fine with me….as long as Americans are not being injured, harmed or killed." Such statements compelled Pat Buchanan to remark on the John McLaughlin Show (2/10/08) that a McCain victory would be Bush’s third term.

And what was McCain’s reward for such loyalty to Bush? President Bush sought on Friday to unify the Republican Party behind its presumptive nominee in an appearance before the annual Conservative Political Action Conference but did not mention McCain’s name! (He did call McCain. By name, a “true conservative” in a Sunday talk show interview.)

McCain’s position is a thankless one – to serve as the rear-guard of the conservative’s long advance, now coming to an end. McCain is the last man standing from the line that began with Goldwater in 1964; elected Nixon in 1968 and re-elected him in 1972; stumbled under Nixon’s self-betrayal during Watergate and finally gained historic traction and momentum in Reagan’s “Revolution” in 1980 and his re-election in 1984. The Bushes, no conservatives but careerists, destroyed almost all that preceded them.

Now, Mike Huckabee, celebrating his moment in the sun after his strong wins in Kansas and Louisiana on Saturday, February 9, has declared that: “They (the voters) spoke with one voice….and said I am the authentic conservative in this race.” (Huckabee would have to win 93 percent of the remaining delegates to realize his impossible dream.)

That said, the primary elections and caucuses to date have shown that the Democrats have a significant collective voting edge. Referring to voter turnout, Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press said that, to date, the Democrats had received 19,251,817 votes to the Republicans’ 12,957,700. In narrowly balanced America, that approximate 6.3 million voter gap is crucial.

Ron Klain writing in the New York Times “ says the Democratic vote exceeded the Republican vote by more than 200,000 in Missouri, by almost 100,000 in Georgia and by more than 50,000 in Tennessee — all states that went Republican in the 2004 presidential election. And in what were once known as competitive states in American politics — California, New Jersey and Illinois — “fuggetaboutit.”

As the Conservative Republicans continue to whine and complain about what is pretty much a fait accompli, they refuse to acknowledge that the Bush II train wreck of a failed presidency has succeeded in producing a body of Republican voters who are indifferent and apathetic.

And so Conservatives, the Republican stay-at-homes will easily give the presidency to the passionate Democratic get-out-the-voters -- tipping the scales for either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama come November 2008.

There have been countless endorsements for all of the presidential candidates but, as we have seen, these endorsements do not always affect the outcome of primaries.

And some families have split their endorsements. For example, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed Senator John McCain and his wife Maria Shriver endorsed Senator Barack Obama at a Los Angeles rally on February 3? Granted Maria is a Kennedy and her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy as well as Caroline Kennedy and Congressmen Patrick Kennedy had already endorsed Obama. But as it turned out, McCain did win California but Obama did not. Obama also lost Massachusetts.

Why didn’t Ted Kennedy stick with Hillary? Christopher Hitchens, close to the EMK crowd, writes of Hillary in Slate.com: “Indifferent to truth, willing to use police-state tactics and vulgar libels against inconvenient witnesses, hopeless on health care and flippant and fast and loose with national security, the case against Hillary Clinton for President is open and shut.”

Beyond the memories of those who have never heard of Chappaquiddick, Kennedy sees Obama as a new vessel of hope who “can lift our hopes and restore our belief that our country’s best days are still to come.” Old Joe Kennedy once famously said: “There are no accidents in politics.” Teddy Kennedy memorized it.

A new Camelot? Until the late 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower’s Midwestern provincialism had symbolized the drab, dull milieu in which politicians operated. Then the young, wealthy and stylish John and Jacqueline Kennedy came to the White House creating a new aura of glamour that surrounded everyone fortunate enough to be included in their circle. What the Kennedy’s said, read, wore and reportedly whispered to each other became the hottest gossip in America and eventually the world. But Camelot was totally bogus because the same old political business was still being conducted in the back room.

Now, unfortunately, we have come full circle. Gerald Seib wrote this week in The Wall Street Journal that the 2008 election will be less about ideology and ideas and more about governing style and leadership ability – intangible qualities. A Washington Post/ABC News poll (question 19) gives 39 percent to New Direction and New Ideas; 51 percent to Strength and Experience and 8 percent to neither or both.

“In New Hampshire, for example, Democrats who said they favored withdrawing all American troops from Iraq as soon as possible – voters who might have been expected to go toward Senator Obama, the most staunchly anti-war candidate – instead broke for Senator Clinton, 41% to 34%,” reports Seib. On the Republican side, although “McCain ranked lowest among Republicans surveyed – ‘shares your position on issues’ – he scored higher on such traits as being knowledgeable and experienced enough to handle the presidency and being honest and straightforward.”

Evidently, we still have not learned that appearances deceive and the tyranny of style will never resolve the brutal economic and financial realities and problems created by the Bush Administration.

“You know, over the past few days a lot of people have been trying to say that this is a two-man race,” he told supporters in Little Rock. “Well you know what? It is. And we’re in it!”

And Huckabee’s campaign manager Chip Saltsman added: “It gives us a lot of momentum, going forward. I think we go forward with a lot more money than we thought we were going to have,” and also indicated Huckabee was not angling for the vice presidential slot.

Huckabee, who spent two decades as a Baptist preacher and television advertising director for evangelists, speaks in familiar Southern cadences, plays the guitar and with calm dignity, makes a class-based populist argument against the “uncaring rich.” In Iowa, he showed flashes of genuine anger at Romney’s self-centered, self-financed campaign.

Huckabee is a “Walmart conservative,” a group bound to grow in the present deepening economic crisis. He shows sincere empathy for the money worries of working-class and lower-middle class families. In his quiet-spoken manner, sharp wit and folksy appeal, he evokes memories of Harry Truman of Missouri early in his presidency.

The war between Mitt Romney and Huckabee takes away the glow of John McCain’s sweep and continues to fuel the anger among Republican conservative voters. According to Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard, “Tonight’s results do not benefit Romney – no matter how his enthusiastic supporters in the blogosphere might try to spin it.” His advisers concede that Romney faces a steep climb to the nomination because of simple delegate math. And the math is daunting with Romney now facing a shortfall that would require that he win almost every remaining primary this year.

Romney is on the record for calling on Huckabee to quit the race so that he could battle McCain, perceived as an anathema to many conservative Republicans, one-on-one. Michael Luo and Adam Nossiter, report in the New York Times (2/6/08) that Romney’s advisers hope “the upshot of the grass-roots anger and a divided delegate picture is that they will be able to derail at least temporarily the rush to crown McCain as the nominee.”

On Tuesday, James C. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, released a blistering statement about McCain, saying he could not in good conscience vote for the senator. Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh, another Romney ally, also condemned McCain for his “disgraceful, dirty little trick” in releasing a private letter to him from Robert Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee, reports Jackie Calmes in the Wall Street Journal. In the letter, “Mr. Dole invoked Mr. McCain’s years as a Vietnam prisoner of war and vouched for Mr. McCain’s conservatism. ‘Whoever wins the Republican nomination will need your enthusiastic support,’ Dole wrote Limbaugh. ‘Two terms for the Clintons are enough.’”

Despite all of the Romney-McCain bitterness and attacks, I do not think this personal divisiveness will have long-term ramifications for McCain because he has proven he can win without conservative Republicans. And by the time we get to November 2008, even the Limbaughs will vote for McCain rather than see a Clinton or Obama in the White House. My bet right now is a McCain-Huckabee ticket.

The present consumer-led economic slowdown is centered in the housing sector. The presidential candidate who acknowledges this slowdown and comes up with viable proposals to reverse the continuing housing price decline will win over America’s increasingly anxious voters.

Steve Gandel, writing in Money Magazine, reports many Americans are confused about the real stakes in helping fellow borrowers who cannot afford their adjustable mortgages and face foreclosure. It’s not a favor to the irresponsible rabble as much as it is a bigger, selfish favor to us.

Without any government intervention, Gandel warns, “an estimated 3.5 million homeowners could default on their mortgages in the next 30 months. That’s the estimate of Mark Zandi, at Moody’s economy.com. Such a wholesale dump of houses for sale on a glutted market would continue to depress prices.

The Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer group, estimates that an increase of one million foreclosures would lower the prices of as many as 44.5 million homes by a collective $223 billion loss of vanished equity. “If we don’t help homeowners having problems paying their mortgage, everyone’s net worth is going to go down,” says Zandi.

Mortgage lenders who’ve taken big hits would demand much bigger risk premiums from borrowers. Rates would go up and stay up. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae, which help finance half the nation’s mortgages, have added a 1.25 percent fee to be paid by borrowers. On a $300,000 loan, that’s $3,750. The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index fell 7.2 percent in November 2007 from the year before, the biggest decline since the index was created in 2000.

Business Week warns home prices could sink an additional 25 percent over the next two to three years, through 2010. That sickening fall would bring the national housing price level back to its long-term growth trend line, a modest 0.4 percent a year after inflation.

A 20 percent decline in housing prices would wipe out all the home equity of two-thirds of the people who bought in the past year, Business Week reports. Most people believe that their houses have not lost any value yet – a shattering awakening to come.

In a 1989 study, Harvard economists N. Gregory Mankiw and David N. Weil predicted that over the next 20 years, home prices would decline by 47 percent after inflation. When people discover they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, experience shows many will simply mail the keys to the lender and walk.

So far, the only plan on the table proposed by President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson calls for lenders to help homeowners with 2/28 or 3/27 mortgages. They have a fixed rate now, typically 7 percent, but then it would rise in the next few years to as high as 15 percent. The monthly cost of a $300,000 mortgage, an initial $1995 payment, would nearly double to $3,793.

The Bush-Paulson plan would freeze the initial interest rate for an additional five years. To qualify, a homeowner would have to have a credit score of 660 (out of 850) and home equity of no more than 3 percent. Those with a higher credit score or more equity would be deemed able to refinance or continue paying. They would be stuck – a very shortsighted approach by the administration.

The housing sector depression has the potential to destroy the financial well-being of America’s middle class. I believe Bush’s economic stimulus plan which may not reach most voters until May or later is too small and will not make them feel any better.

It is interesting that the New York Times reports that in their December 2007 poll, as middle-class economic anxiety rose, 49 percent said they were more confident that Democrats would ensure a strong economy while only 31 percent trusted Republicans.

We will get our answer after the votes are counted tonight -- this Super Tuesday evening.

When they talk among themselves, shoulders bent and voices low, senior Republican legislators, lobbyists and politicians sometimes chuckle over Rush Limbaugh’s latest blast. But they do not publicly admit listening to him. The granddaddy of right-wing talk radio ranters is not quite respectable or responsible, like a fast-talking salesman telling dirty stories behind the barn.

Rush Limbaugh is as modern as the streaming Internet and as shrewd as they come in knowing what his audience of 13.5 million “ditto-heads” want to hear daily. They want resounding affirmation for their way of seeing the world, their prejudices and, yes, their principles, as they define them.

But the leader and the inhabitants of Limbaugh-land are assuming special responsibility for the future of the Republican Party. If the GOP nominates frontrunner Senator John McCain, Limbaugh warns, it will be the end of conservatism and the Party will destroy itself.

I rise to remind Mr. Limbaugh that conservatism existed while Limbaugh was still driving a truck and ranting over his CB and that the maverick’s maverick McCain, a deeply principled libertarian conservative, is the finest exemplar of our philosophy we’ve had since the “Gipper.”

The Republican Party and I, in a 55-year rollercoaster ride, have experienced the peak triumphs of Eisenhower, the dips and twists of Nixon and the grand pinnacle of Reagan. In the lowest times, the Party‘s viability and life expectancy has never been in doubt.

In truth, the Party survives, not on its corporate moneybags or toe-the-line moralists, but on its new recruits among the best and the brightest of young libertarian and traditionalist conservatives who spar with each other to tune up for battling the lefties.

The long rise and descent of conservatism, now a half-century long, is at low ebb, casting up rock-hard reactionaries while we confront silky left-European-style socialists like Barack Obama. America’s potentially catastrophic economic and financial crisis threatens the unrepresented middle-class. Obama and the Kennedy Party are promoting security under leftist, big-government, state-supported capitalism.

Obama is the prophet of the new leftism, as Teddy Kennedy clearly sees. So wake up and smell the coffee, Rush. Stop beating up John McCain, an honest libertarian conservative, or you will help elect Hillary or the slick new Obama.

Populist John Edwards’s sudden withdrawal as a Democratic presidential candidate seemed to catch even his staff by surprise, reports The Wall Street Journal. As late as last week, he had insisted that he would stay in the race right up to the nominating convention in August.

Edwards spoke passionately about poverty: “…I say to all those who are struggling in this country, we will never forget you, we will fight for you….the time has come to make the two Americas one.”

And the Democrats have reason to expect a major victory in the November 2008 election. As the economy slides into recession, Professor Ray C. Fair, the well-known Yale economist whose widely quoted forecasting model has proved accurate, predicts a whopping 55 percent to 45 percent Democratic victory, giving the Democrats the presidency and control of both chambers of Congress.

The fact that Edwards did not immediately endorse either Clinton or Obama has fueled speculation that he does not want to antagonize either candidate and jeopardize his chances of being picked for the vice presidential slot.

Who benefits from Edward’s withdrawal? Some political pundits are in agreement that Edward’s delegates will be evenly divided between Clinton and Obama. Others such as David Gergen tell CNN that Barack Obama will pick up maybe 60 percent of them and in some states that will make a big difference. But most agree that the candidate who talks about poverty, the economy and health care – the major concerns of the middle class – will get Edwards’ supporters.

The Bush Administration has failed to recognize the painful plight of the middle class as median household incomes have remained stagnant since 2001 and their rising fear of inflation as an array of service costs soar. At the same time, the two-year deflation of housing prices threatens the very foundation of middle class financial security. Bush’s economic stimulus plan is too little and too late.

The timing of Edwards’ decision is poignant. If the economy had turned so dramatically weak six months ago, Edwards’ message would have had greater impact on voters and, even more, the media.

Two years ago, the media decided what the 2008 election was “about” – the novelty of a pair of “firsts” – the first woman candidate and the first African-American candidate on a national ticket. They concentrated on the “firsts” and ignored Edwards’ urgent messages of income inequality, disparity and injustice. Now, as the economic recession and the credit crunch deepen, Edwards’ economic issues will dominate the electoral battleground.

Every candidate sets an unspoken personal limit on his emotional and financial resources. For Edwards, a native South Carolinian, this son of a mill worker had to win there if he was going to win anywhere.

He said that he and his wife Elizabeth, who has cancer, spoke at length and made the decision together to withdraw. I have only respect and admiration for their courage, strength and patriotism.