Its very interesting to see Bill Clinton, often touted as the "first black president", so cleverly playing what many consider the race card.

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004141629_apclintonrace23.html

Bill Clinton says race shouldn't be an issue in the Democratic presidential campaign. Well, then perhaps he should stop talking about it.

The caustic politics of race and gender took center stage in the Democratic race Wednesday as a combative Clinton campaigned on behalf of his wife, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and lashed out at the rival Barack Obama campaign and the media for focusing on race.

But it was Clinton himself who dished on the topic when he told an audience in Charleston that he was proud of the Democratic Party for having a woman and a black candidate. In response to a question from a crowd member who asked about "race-baiting" by the media, Clinton said he understands why Obama is drawing support among blacks, who are expected to comprise at least half the primary turnout.

"As far as I can tell, neither Senator Obama nor Hillary have lost votes because of their race or gender. They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender _ that's why people tell me Hillary doesn't have a chance of winning here," the former president said. "But that's understandable because people are proud when someone who they identify with emerges for the first time."

One of the best political strategists of his generation, Clinton may be hoping to lower expectations for Saturday's primary. He may have his sights on Feb. 5, when voters in 22 states take part in a national primary. It would likely work to Hillary Clinton's advantage to have the electorate polarized by race, given that most Feb. 5 voters will be white and Hispanic; she won the Hispanic vote overwhelmingly in last week's Nevada caucus.

Strategists working for the New York senator deny any intentional effort by Bill Clinton, his wife or even surrogates like Bob Johnson, who referred to Obama's admitted drug use, to stir the racial debate. But they say they believe the fallout has had the effect of branding Obama as "the black candidate," something he has worked to avoid.

One Clinton supporter openly played the race card.

After fielding several questions from a crowd of about 200 in Kingstree, Bill Clinton called on a black man standing off to the side of the small stage. The man identified himself as a pastor and told Clinton that "black America is voting for Obama because he's black."

The man also said Democrats are in a "dangerous position" because if Obama wins the nomination, voters will put a Republican in the White House.

"They're not ready to for a black president," the man said.

Several black audience members nodded their heads. Several said in unison, "That's right!"

Clinton responded, "First of all, as an American, I have to tell you I hope you're not right."

He then said that despite the "mean things" said about him "in the Obama camp this week," he would support the Illinois senator in November should his wife lose the nomination fight.

"If he wins the nomination, I will do what I can to help him win the election," Clinton said.

"The reason I think Hillary is more electable is not race, it's this: If there is a security crisis somewhere between now and the election, the fact that Hillary" has served on the Senate Armed Services Committee and has visited more than 80 nations "will make it much harder for them to spook people by saying she can't handle a national security crisis," Clinton said.

"If they (conduct) one of their standard negative campaigns," he added, "I think it'll be easier for her to withstand it because she has so much scar tissue."

Still, he said twice in his remarks that all three Democratic candidates _ Clinton, Obama and former Sen. John Edwards _ could beat any Republican nominee in the current political climate.

The pastor who raised the specter of racism later refused to identify himself to an Associated Press reporter. He was escorted by a security guard who shooed away strangers.

In Charleston, Clinton scolded reporters for asking about an Obama supporter's accusation that the Clinton campaign has used race as a wedge issue like past GOP campaigns.

"This is almost like once you accuse someone of racism and bigotry the facts become irrelevant," a red-faced Clinton said. "Not one single solitary citizen asked about any of this, and they never do."

He said the Obama campaign is encouraging reporters to write about race.

"Shame on you!" he told a reporter.

Shame on anybody who plays the race card.

___

Associated Press writer Mike Baker contributed to this column.

Does not matter what Bubba says if McCain wins the Republican primary. McCain certainly can appeal to Democrats uncomfortable with Bubba in the Whitehouse again, with lots of time on his hand to wreak havoc with the interns.  Also, McCain has strong support from independents. The only way McCain will loose the General Election is if he blows his top during one of the debates or questions from the Press. He is a bit of a hothead and that could cause some issues.

There are people that would definitely not vote for Hillary, not matter what. On top of it, due to her reputation during Bubba's terms, her nomination definitely would bring out the Republican voters to poll during the General Election. With Bubba playing the race card, it is splitting the Black and Hispanic votes and may cause Blacks to not fully support Hillary if she wins the primary.

Hence, it looks the Democrats will be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory yet again. Thanks Bubba.

Why we worry about damn Obama or Bill or Mccain or Romney ? Its bullshit ! Lets see our country getting deterioted day by day by f0cking Prachanda, Girija and Makunae . America will still be the same or more advanced if anyone wins unlike Nepal where leaders are asssholes

Obama South Carolina win was quite something. The Barack Obama Kennedy hope dream inspiration party is in full swing and it will be hard for the Clinton Machine to bust the party. People young and old are off their couches and heading to the Obama party.

Power_Ranger

I don't care about Obama, i am for Hillary.  I think what ever  Bill Clinton  is doing ,it doesn't bother me, he is just there so support his wife . People and especially media are taking differently just because he was a former president.  You can take every thing in a different way, what about Oprah who endorse Obama?   You can take it in race way. I am pretty sure Hillary will win, we will see in super tuesday. Obama is too young, i don't care what speech he gives, just because he is charming and charismatic means he should win the race. You can see in debate, how every presidential candidates give hopes. Let us just dream.
I am just telling what i feel.

Ya SS74k !! Hillary for next president.
Fact is Neither Black or woman is going to win in USA.Nov election is not a democratic Primary. No one can beat McCain .It is easy for him to beat Hillary's experience and Obama is kid and is black kid.
But would still love to see Hillary run for President and Obama as vice-President.It will be definately interesting race.Making new milestone in American Politics.

Race card - Common Obama is playing race card not Clinton.SC win is because of Black and Obama knows it is not good for him to be labeled black candidate.30% white vote is still not enough and Ya if black doesn't vote for democrat then who is gonna give them more welfare  Mitt Romney! by cutting Taxes.Clintons have always been good to black and vice-versa.It is no brainer if there is black - black is going to vote for black.Simple and with white votes getting divided between Clinton and Edwards , Obama is enjoying Democratic primary.

To me, it doesn't matter who wins since I'm NOT a citizen. The reason I came here for ONE purpose, MONEY. I hope the economy gets better ($1 dollar less than 63 Rupees, my parents have already started making fun of me now). I'm for HILLARY for economy, if nothing else she can get hints from BILL who by the way left with 500+billion surplus. I dont' care about race, Obama DOES NOT say or has done anything of substance esp related with economy. I don't care for that feel good factor. SHOW ME THE MONEY. The recession and declining value of US doller around the world is my concern.

Trust me, HILLARY will eventually win after all the dramas, no matter what.

IMI,McCain??? Does he even have money left to do anything?

Bob Marley Bro ! Thats exactly what we here for Money

Obama cannot win the primaries or the general election on hope alone. Neither can Hillary or McCain on experience alone. While I am excited by Obama's candidacy, I am not deluded about his prospects. By the same token, neither am I deluded of anyone else's. George Bush won the 2000 elections in spite of a good economy that favored the Democrats. He won the 2004 election in spite of a not-so-good economy that again favored the opposition. The myth that Americans vote with their check books alone has long been dispelled (unless the economy is really really really bad)

Hope, I believe, is a campaign strategy for Obama just like race was for the Clintons. People might not vote for hope alone, but hey, it sure seems to drive up turnout. It's not that Obama doesn't have specifics, I have heard him talk in detail about social security and medicare reform. Talking about policy makes him like every other candidate, so by talking about hope and transcendental politics, he is doing what both Gore and Kerry failed to do and what Bush did so well : he is saying I may not be a policy wonk, but I can connect with you. If you think that can't win elections, think again.

Also, I think it is realitistic to expect the next President could be Obama, Clinton, McCain, Romney or Guiliani. Each of them has a realistic shot at it. That's about as much punditry I can do. Only as the numbers come in the real polls can anyone say anything with more certainty.

On another note, while I am not a big fan of Romney, here's an argument for his candidacy from a conservative blogger, that challenges the thinking that Romney cannot do well in the general elections. It appears many conservatives dont like McCain and might not turn out to vote for him going by the pronouncements of Rush Limbaugh and many conservative bloggers. If McCain doesn't get conservatives to vote for him and he is competing with Obama for independent votes,  I'd say that might give Obama the upper hand since the liberal core of the Democratic party is not  alienated from his candidacy the way the conservative core seems to be from McCain's. Now pit Hillary against McCain:  she has much less appeal against independents and McCain's hand gets stronger.

This is a wide open race and too fluid at this time. I think Hillary and Barrack have an equal shot at the nomination right now. Unless Guiliani or Huckabee do well in Florida  this could also shape out to be a two man race pretty soon on the Republican side between McCain and Romney.

All eyes on Florida and Super Tuesday for future trends.

Obama-Clinton ticket? Are you kidding me? That's not going to happen, especially after what has taken place in the last few weeks. If Clinton somehow wins the nomination, then she will have a hard time garnering votes even from faithful democrats, let alone independents and some republicans who will be crucial in general elections. On the other hand, in SC which has been one of the most loyal republican states for some time now, Obama recieved more votes than McCain and Huckabee combined, more than double of Clinton's, and got more votes than the total votes casted in the democratic primary in 2004, which was a record turnout then. Obama can win the most republican states in general election; Hillary can't.

Its ludicruous to say that Obama won SC only because he was black. Obama handily deafeated his opponents in Iowa, which is more than 95% white. He finished close second in NH, which has similar racial make-up. In NV( where he won more delagates than Clinton), he won the rural white votes but lost the black votes in Vegas. SC just happened to have different racial make-up. Its not about this or that; as Obama said in his victory speech, its past vs. future.

On economic policy, Obama has put far more detailed and sensible than that of Cliton's. Clinton copied items from Obama's stimulous plan, and for the same stimulous plan, graded by the Washington Post, Obama received A- and Clinton received C+! Obama understands free market; Clinton wants to freeze the interest rate for five years. Is that even sensible??

Despite his big win in SC, I don’t believe Obama can win the nomination or election.  Obama without doubt sound nice guy but one important character he lacks in being US president is toughness.  I don’t remember when was the last time America elected “Nice guy” president.  Right now all these hard core Republicans like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill Kistrol are supporting Obama, I even heard Limbaugh defending Obama last week.   Now I don’t think they are supporting him because they love him, I think they know how to play with him in general election.  During a debate last year Obama said he will meet Castro, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad etc on his first year as president.  Why aren’t these Republicans pointing on that now?  These things will start coming to Obama later.  They have been fighting the Clintons for more than 16 years and unlike Obama they can punch back those Republicans.  American voter change mind all the time and one Swift Boat from Republicans can give the Presidency back to the Republicans again.  Remember what happen to John Kerry when he choose not to fight back against those nasty adds.  Well the Clintons can play those dirty Republicans game and they can defiantly beat them. 

 

I love the fact that the Clintons can fight back hard knuckles style.

That is what it is needed to be the holder of the most powerful seat on earth.

Go on, Hillary, go on.

Go on with your "sham,dam ,danda & bhed".

That's a good case for Hillary and one that she is trying hard to sell. What is interesting is other tough guy, in fact supposedly the toughest guy in the race, Guiliani, is not doing well even amongst the 'tough and mean' constituency so it will be interesting to see how toughness plays out in this election.

My two cents : (0.01) Florida and (0.01) Super Tuesday.

Guiliani knows he may be popular Italian American from NY but he is a hard sell in Midwest with his family problems and TV antics.So he is not even trying there.I think for Republicans ,McCain is the best choice.

The old folks in the business all think the Clintons will eventually prevail. That's what I thought too but I'm not sure anymore. I believe Obama the American "Political" Idol show is getting people out to vote whom otherwise would not have bothered to come out. The Billy strategies so far have back fired. People are telling Billy to shut up and shove it. And Hillary has no Charisma. It's Man (Obama)Vs Machine (Clinton). Next big fight Super Tuesday.

Tisa -

Source:
http://www.nypost.com/php/pfriendly/print.php?url=http://www.nypost.com/seven/01282008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/giulianis_last_stand_480021.htm

GIULIANI'S LAST STAND

By RYAN SAGER

anuary 28, 2008 -- TOMORROW in Florida, Rudy Giuliani will make what is expected to be his last stand of the '08 race. What went wrong?

As an early (2006) believer in his capacity to become this race's frontrunner, I'd have to say that he's run a campaign that deserves to lose.

While he focused strategically on Florida and the Feb. 5 states, he undermined this by pitching his campaign thematically to Iowa and other parts of the GOP least likely to vote for him.

Now, should Giuliani lose tomorrow and overall, the media blame will fall mainly on his much-maligned late-state strategy. But it's tough to see any other path he could have taken.

As Giuliani told reporters on Thursday in Boca Raton: "It was the best choice when you consider all the circumstances that were presented to us about resources and strengths and weaknesses and the place where you can make your case most effectively."

Indeed, it was. It was always a risky strategy - but a pro-choice New York City ex-mayor has no safe strategy for chasing the GOP nomination.

Yet it was also a plausible strategy. Anyone knocking it should have to answer how better Giuliani could've invested his resources. Poured money into Iowa, where even Mitt Romney was washed away by the surprise rise of Mike Huckabee? Bet the farm on South Carolina, where he would've been a long shot?

This, though, brings us to New Hampshire. He needed to make a stand somewhere early on, placing high if not winning; his campaign recognized that the Granite State was the place for a northeastern, moderate Republican to do that.

In fact, as late as early December, he was second in New Hampshire. He invested significant money and time in the state in late '07. But when he started losing ground to a resurgent John McCain, instead of fighting for the moderate vote, he fled to Florida, finishing fourth in New Hampshire.

Why was Giuliani so hard pressed to compete in New Hampshire? That's where his strategic issues intersected with the problems with his message.

Giuliani was running a hard-right campaign, and that didn't play in New Hampshire, a state with a moderate GOP electorate. He wasted most of the fall dueling with Romney over who hates immigrants more.

Both candidates are full of it on the issue - neither had shown any interest in the border until they were told the GOP base was in revolt over it - and it hasn't ended up determining the GOP primaries anyway. Who ultimately won New Hampshire and South Carolina? The "amnesty" candidate, McCain.

His back up against the wall in December and early January, Giuliani's backup strategy was to start playing the terrorism card. While he had been knocked unfairly throughout 2007 for being the "9/11 candidate" (back then, he actually talked about his record in New York City ad nauseam, not 9/11), he started playing into the worst stereotypes of himself.

In January, he launched a sickening ad packed with images of protesting Muslims, bombings and Osama bin Laden. The message was clear: Terrorists want to kill your children! Vote Rudy!

In recent weeks, like his rivals, Giuliani turned to an economic message - and even to some local pandering, including support for a federal hurricane-insurance fund - but it all looks like too little, too late.

For a time, the prospect of a Giuliani candidacy excited those of us who think the GOP has gone wildly off course under President Bush - with out-of-control spending and pandering to the Christian Right. And to those of us who think the Republican Congress' tear against immigrants is both bigoted and unwise politically.

But faced with deficits to make up on abortion and past support for gay rights, Giuliani pursued a strategy that systematically dismantled everything that once made his candidacy appealing to his core supporters. The man who was once supposed to extend the GOP's reach outside of the South - in states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, California - instead played a southern strategy.

The best thing Giuliani can do now is to bow out gracefully should he come up with anything less than a win tomorrow. He had his chance and wasted it: The least he can do now is stop wasting our time.

editor@ryansager.com

(1) McCain: "A Tale of Two Mitts" Web Ad


Using the theme of Masterpiece Theater, John McCain plays Mitt Romney's flip-flops on abortion, gun laws, and the role of Ronald Reagan.


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(2) Romney Ad questions McCains Republican credentials:

Captain, the reason for Rudy's fall is because of his extra baggage from his affair and his buddy the police chief whom he recommended to be Homeland Sec.  Also his social value was never liked by his fellow conservative Republicans. 

The Kennedy Mystique

Something fundamental has shifted in the Democratic Party.

Last week there was the widespread revulsion at the Clintons’ toxic attempts to ghettoize Barack Obama. In private and occasionally in public, leading Democrats lost patience with the hyperpartisan style of politics — the distortion of facts, the demonizing of foes, the secret admiration for brass-knuckle brawling and the ever-present assumption that it’s necessary to pollute the public sphere to win. All the suppressed suspicions of Clintonian narcissism came back to the fore. Are these people really serving the larger cause of the Democratic Party, or are they using the party as a vehicle for themselves?

And then Monday, something equally astonishing happened. A throng of Kennedys came to the Bender Arena at American University in Washington to endorse Obama. Caroline Kennedy evoked her father. Senator Edward Kennedy’s slightly hunched form carried with it the recent history of the Democratic Party.

The Kennedy endorsements will help among working-class Democrats, Catholics and the millions of Americans who have followed Caroline’s path to maturity. Furthermore, here was Senator Kennedy, the consummate legislative craftsman, vouching for the fact that Obama is ready to be president on Day One.

But the event was striking for another reason, having to do with the confluence of themes and generations. The Kennedys and Obama hit the same contrasts again and again in their speeches: the high road versus the low road; inspiration versus calculation; future versus the past; and most of all, service versus selfishness.

“With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion,” Senator Kennedy declared. “With Barack Obama, there is a new national leader who has given America a different kind of campaign — a campaign not just about himself, but about all of us,” he said.

The Clintons started this fight, and in his grand and graceful way, Kennedy returned the volley with added speed.

Kennedy went on to talk about the 1960s. But he didn’t talk much about the late-60s, when Bill and Hillary came to political activism. He talked about the early-60s, and the idealism of the generation that had seen World War II, the idealism of the generation that marched in jacket and ties, the idealism of a generation whose activism was relatively unmarked by drug use and self-indulgence.

Then, in the speech’s most striking passage, he set Bill Clinton afloat on the receding tide of memory. “There was another time,” Kennedy said, “when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a New Frontier.” But, he continued, another former Democratic president, Harry Truman, said he should have patience. He said he lacked experience. John Kennedy replied: “The world is changing. The old ways will not do!”

The audience at American University roared. It was mostly young people, and to them, the Clintons are as old as the Trumans were in 1960. And in the students’ rapture for Kennedy’s message, you began to see the folding over of generations, the service generation of John and Robert Kennedy united with the service generation of the One Campaign. The grandparents and children united against the parents.

How could the septuagenarian Kennedy cast the younger Clintons into the past? He could do it because he evoked the New Frontier, which again seems fresh. He could do it because he himself has come to live a life of service.

After his callow youth, Kennedy came to realize that life would not give him the chance to be president. But life did ask him to be a senator, and he has embraced that role and served that institution with more distinction than anyone else now living — as any of his colleagues, Republican or Democrat, will tell you. And he could do it because culture really does have rhythms. The respect for institutions that was prevalent during the early ’60s is prevalent with the young again today. The earnest industriousness that was common then is back today. The awareness that we are not self-made individualists, free to be you and me, but emerge as parts of networks, webs and communities; that awareness is back again today.

Sept. 11th really did leave a residue — an unconsummated desire for sacrifice and service. The old Clintonian style of politics clashes with that desire. When Sidney Blumenthal expresses the Clinton creed by telling George Packer of The New Yorker, “It’s not a question of transcending partisanship. It’s a question of fulfilling it,” that clashes with the desire as well.

It’s not clear how far this altered public mood will carry Obama in this election. But there was something important and memorable about the way the 75-year-old Kennedy communed and bonded with a rapturous crowd half a century his junior.

The old guy stole the show.

Johny -

True. Goes to prove even the mighty tough can fall because of other weaknesses.

And here's a rebuttal (of sorts) to the Kennedy endorsement:

Source: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0801w.widmer.html

ohn F. Kennedy is not running for anything in 2008, but you’d never know it. A front-page photo in the New York Times recently showed his electability in Serbia, of all places, where local candidates are vying to establish their credentials as the latest citizens of the New Frontier. Back in the U.S., no candidate has captured the reflected glory of JFK more than Barack Obama, thanks to his youth, eloquence, and message of change. The Kennedy-Obama parallel has been played up by the press, and Obama’s campaign has not discouraged those comparisons—indeed, it has brought in Ted Sorensen, JFK’s talented speechwriter, to make speeches and render the judgment of history. But the comparison falls short when voters consider the key question for 2008: foreign policy experience. It’s true that Obama, like Kennedy, is a youngish senator (at 46, three years older than Kennedy when he ran for president), but the parallel falters after that. The more one looks into Kennedy’s lifelong preparation for the job, the more one realizes how misleading it was, then and now, to describe him as inexperienced. Everyone who has stressed Kennedy’s youth, from Dan Quayle in 1988 to Obama today, has bumped up against the uncomfortable fact that JFK was an extremely well-informed statesman in 1960. As Lloyd Bentsen reminded us in the zinger that pole-axed Quayle, the truth was a lot more complicated than the myth. Kennedy, of course, was a decorated veteran of World War Two, which he fought in the South Pacific. But before and after the conflict, he had acquired travel experiences that most people take a lifetime to accumulate, richly detailed in biographies like Robert Dallek’s An Unfinished Life. His father was ambassador to the United Kingdom in the pivotal year 1938, and young Kennedy was in the audience of the House of Commons as the Munich deal was furiously debated (the experience shaped his first book, Why England Slept). As a young man, he made American officials uneasy with his relentless desire to see parts of Europe and the world that few Americans ever encountered. In 1939 alone, he took in the Soviet Union, Romania, Turkey, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Greece, France, Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia. As the war was ending, he attended the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations, filing seventeen dispatches for the Chicago Herald American. He maintained this lively interest in world affairs as a young Congressman. In 1951 he went on two extraordinary journeys, the first a five-week trip to Europe, from England to Yugoslavia, to consider the military situation on the continent. Then, a few months later, a seven-week, 25,000-mile trek that included Israel, Iran, Pakistan, India, Singapore, Thailand, French Indochina, Korea and Japan. It was this trip, in particular, that awakened a sense in him that the old colonial empires were doomed, and that the French effort to keep Vietnam was especially futile. In the aftermath of his trip, he gave speeches that ridiculed the French (and by extension, the American) position, and proved that he was no simplistic Cold Warrior. In 1957, he continued to chart a maverick’s course with a deeply-informed speech on Algeria that criticized France and the U.S. for trying to sustain an unsustainable conflict against an insurgent population. It infuriated both Democrats and Republicans, and France, a NATO ally at the time, was enraged—but obviously he was correct. Critics and admirers alike have generally neglected the full extent of Kennedy’s early experience. But clearly it shaped him profoundly, and each journey deepened his portfolio. Further, each trip empowered him, and gave him the confidence to swim against the tide, a trait that would prove essential in the presidency. While dedicated to veterans and certain core principles of American defense, he also showed, well before his election, a growing skepticism of the extremes of Pentagon thinking. Perhaps most impressively, he found the courage to reject the knee-jerk isolationism of his most important backer—his father, Joseph P. Kennedy. To be sure, even with all of that training, Kennedy showed inexperience during his early months in the White House, including the disastrous decision to invade Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, and his ineffective performance at his first summit with Khrushchev in Vienna. But he soon righted himself, and returned to the independent judgment that he had acquired during his long and literal journey toward the presidency. Of course, travel does not instantly translate into electability—if it did, Geraldo Rivera might be president. But it’s an important consideration, especially for a candidate like Obama, who is running against an array of Democratic contenders (Biden, Dodd, Clinton, Richardson) who have far more first-hand experience dealing with issues of foreign policy and national security. And compared to Kennedy, Obama’s record of world travel is quite thin. Like Kennedy, Obama did spend some time in his youth living in a foreign country. And because that country, Indonesia, is both Asian and majority Muslim, Obama can—and does—claim to have a unique perspective on a region and a religion that increasingly command Washington’s attention. But it’s worth noting the considerable differences between Obama’s and Kennedy’s overseas experiences. Kennedy lived in Europe, then the geo-strategic center of the world, as a footloose young man who had front-row seats at momentous diplomatic dramas, thanks to his ambassador father. Obama lived as a boy in Indonesia—a big, fascinating country, but not central to U.S. global strategy. If that childhood experience had a genuine impact beyond teaching him the obvious truth that the world is diverse, then he needs to make it clearer how he will translate that knowledge into sound policy. As an adult prior to wining elective office, Kennedy continued to see the world, including from the helm of a PT boat. Obama’s campaign has implied that the candidate traveled extensively before assuming office, but so far has resisted appeals to provide further information. Given the prevalence of the Kennedy comparison, Obama’s travels have become relevant enough to be made public. Like Kennedy, Obama has taken several long trips as a lawmaker—through the Middle East, Africa and the former Soviet Union. But there is one noteworthy gap in Obama’s itinerary: except for a brief stopover in London, returning from Russia in 2005, he has apparently never been to Western Europe since launching his political career. What renders this gap especially surprising is that Obama is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe. Not only has the Senator not visited the region his committee oversees, but as Steve Clemons of the Washington Note has observed, Obama’s committee has not held a single policy-oriented hearing since he’s been chairman. Europe may not be the central playing field it was in Kennedy’s day, but it remains essential to the global set of alliances and relationships that the U.S. needs to cultivate in the new century. In fact, there is no place where it will be more urgent to rebuild bridges. As Obama knows, the United States cannot do it alone—and Europe will need to play a supporting role in whatever strategy the next president articulates. It is encouraging that Obama has several times displayed what his campaign calls independence, expressing his disapproval of the Iraq war in particular. But disapproving Iraq is not exactly independence—it is more or less the standard line on the left, and quite different from developing a nuanced third position, which was Kennedy’s strength in the 1950s, as he steered between the hand-wringing of Stevenson liberals and the mindless conservatism of many Democrats and Republicans on the right. It’s true that Obama threatened to bomb Pakistan, a position that most people on the left would find scary—but that is not the kind of measured solution, tough but practical, that most of us associate with JFK. In fact, it is a rather extraordinary lurch to the right, like an involuntary tic, that most on the right would actually disavow. It is difficult to see how a bombing run over Pakistan would do anything to help anyone except the very people it was designed to punish. In an editorial supporting Obama, the Boston Globe called attention to his “intuitive sense of the wider world.” But “intuition” would have seemed a silly quality to JFK, a realist even among the realists of his day. He and the other veterans he had served with were tired of inflated promises and wanted a world that would live up to the sacrifice they had already made for it. Like Kennedy, Obama certainly has a capacity to learn, and learn quickly. But there are qualities that cannot be gleaned from briefing books, even by the quickest study—independence of judgment, calm determination, and the deep knowledge of all possibilities that comes from years of experience in the trenches. To his credit, Obama has not personally cited intuition as a reason to vote for him, but the campaign profited enormously from the Globe endorsement, and has tolerated a certain vagueness about his background and intentions that now needs to be clarified. In fact, no modern politician has trafficked more in “intuition” than President Bush, who trumpeted his “instincts” to an incredulous Joe Biden as his justification for invading Iraq, and famously claimed to see into the soul of Vladimir Putin. To run entirely on intuition and the negation of experience can work, and did in 2000. But to do so while wearing the deeply realist mantle of John F. Kennedy is to spin a garment of such fine cloth that it is completely invisible.