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Pew Research finds the majority of us expect success in Iraq. Ed Morrissey posts on the likely beneficiary.
… The big question will be how this affects the presidential race. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have campaigned on their commitment to withdrawal, especially Obama, who has tried to position himself to Hillary’s left. That made sense in the beginning of the primary campaign, when the surge had yet to begin and the violence appeared to overwhelm the American mission in Iraq. Now, however, it looks more like a senseless surrender with success in reach.
It’s not just Republicans, either. Half of all independents now believe that the US needs to remain in place until the gains in Iraq have been secured. The one presidential candidate arguing that policy also happens to be the Senator who spent the last three years arguing for a better counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. John McCain already had significant appeal for centrists and independents, and this makes his case even stronger.
And then finds a Rasmussen poll as possible illustration
So far, the burden of the early clincher hasn’t done much to damage John McCain. In a sign that the increasingly bitter Democratic primary campaign may provide some assistance to the Republican nominee, Rasmussen shows McCain ahead of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the normally blue state of Michigan. And in worse news, McCain has pulled even in Pennsylvania as well:
John Fund sets the tone for a lot of today’s picks.
As the political career of Eliot Spitzer melts down, many will lament that what the governor on Monday called his “progressive politics” fell victim to his personal foibles. If only he hadn’t made mistakes in his private life, they will moan, New York could have been redeemed from its squalid, special-interest dominated stagnation.
That’s nonsense. More is at issue here than a mere private mistake. The governor’s frequent use of a prostitution ring was of public concern — because, notes Henry Stern, head of the watchdog group New York Civic, “people could easily have blackmailed him, you can’t have that if you’re governor.”
True enough, New York’s dysfunctional and secretive state government desperately needs fumigation, with both political parties sharing in the blame. But Mr. Spitzer’s head-butting approach to redemption — involving the arbitrary use of power and bully-boy tactics — was no improvement. As for reform, his first budget grew state spending at three times the rate of inflation, and is a major reason the state now faces a $4.5 billion deficit. When the governor tried to reform the state’s bloated Medicaid program, the health-care workers’ union ran a TV campaign against him, and he quickly caved.
Mr. Spitzer seemed to excel only in the zeal with which he would go after perceived adversaries. …
Fred Dicker owns the Albany beat. Here’s his take.
ALBANY – I saw many signs early on that Eliot Spitzer was to politics what Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry was to religion – a consummate hypocrite – but few, if any, of his governmental colleagues (and even fewer members of the largely fawning press corps) appeared able to see it as well.
To many of them, Spitzer could do no wrong.
They thought he was “right” on the issues that supposedly counted – government involvement in the private economy, hostility to Wall Street, gay marriage, even more campaign-finance restrictions (that favor the wealthy like Spitzer) and tighter gun laws.
So what did it matter if he turned into a boorish Richard Nixon when he unleashed the State Police on his leading Republican nemesis, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, or repeatedly violated his self-proclaimed principles of government openness, public accountability and an end to influence of special interests? …
Charles Gasparino is next.
IN the fall of 2006, with Eliot Spitzer plainly on his way to a landslide win in the governor’s race, I commiserated with one of Attorney General Spitzer’s chief targets, former New York Stock Exchange chief Dick Grasso.
“He’s going to be governor,” Grasso told me, sounding wounded and enraged, “and nothing will stop him.”
Yes, I replied – but he’ll ultimately blow himself up.
I can’t repeat the phrase I actually used in a family newspaper; let’s just say I predicted Spitzer would someday step on a most sensitive part of his own anatomy.
As a reporter covering him – and then becoming the target of one his office’s no-holds-barred intimidation games – I saw Spitzer’s shortcomings first hand: his zealotry, his wild temperament and his penchant for sleazy tactics.
But I never thought I’d be proven right in the most literal sense …
Ever the one to look beyond the fray, Michael Barone notes a troubling aspect of the Spitzer mess.
… When society has effectively legalized something that is still theoretically illegal, there is always the possibility of selective prosecution—targeting individuals who are in disfavor with someone in government. Selective prosecution is tyranny, and the possibility of selective prosecution is a powerful argument for legalization of the behavior that the society has chosen to condone. …
Power Line has the picture.
John Podhoretz has a good take.
John Kass of Chi Trib reacts to wife as stage prop.
Did New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer have to drag his wife, Silda Wall Spitzer, up there, in her pearls and powder blue Chanel jacket like some prop to be shamed?
Did he have to parade her before the cameras, so lovely and tired, disgraced and betrayed, for all to see?
No. And he’s a coward for doing so, and for betraying his wife again in public, for compromising all of us who watched the two of them on TV the other day at that terrible news conference.
He was cool, seemingly forceful, making one of those weasel statements that befits lawyers, a vague apology but nothing in his words admitting he broke the law. So he had things together, he was under control, drawing it all out, teasing federal prosecutors into offering him a deal: Spitzer resigns, they don’t press charges on his money transfers to the high priced online whorehouse.
The former prosecutor who attacked, among other things, prostitution rings, has been hoisted on some whore’s petard.
And Silda stood beside him mute, like one of those people who crawl out of burning cars, make it to the side of the road and stare at what brought them there. …
Kimberley Strassel thinks the media have a lot of blame for Spitzer’s tactics.
The fall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer holds many lessons, and the press will surely be examining them in coming months. But don’t expect the press corps to delve into the biggest lesson of all — its own role as his enabler.
Journalists have spent the past two days asking how a man of Mr. Spitzer’s stature would allow himself to get involved in a prostitution ring. The answer, in my mind, is clear. The former New York attorney general never believed normal rules applied to him, and his view was validated time and again by an adoring press. “You play hard, you play rough, and hopefully you don’t get caught,” said Mr. Spitzer two years ago. He never did get caught, because most reporters were his accomplices.
Journalism has many functions, but perhaps the most important is keeping tabs on public officials. That duty is even more vital concerning government positions that are subject to few other checks and balances. Chief among those is the prosecutor, who can use his awesome state power to punish, even destroy, private citizens.
Yet from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it. Many journalists get into this business because they want to see wrongs righted. Mr. Spitzer portrayed himself as the moral avenger. He was the slayer of the big guy, the fat cat, the Wall Street titan — all allegedly on behalf of the little guy. The press ate it up, and came back for more. …
More on that line from That Gay Conservative.
Vaclav Klaus wrote a piece for the Australian on globalony.
A WEEK ago, I gave a speech at an official gathering at Prague Castle commemorating the 60th anniversary of the 1948 communist putsch in the former Czechoslovakia. One of the arguments of my speech, quoted in all the leading newspapers in the country the next morning, went as follows: Future dangers will not come from the same source. The ideology will be different. Its essence will nevertheless be identical: the attractive, pathetic, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of the common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice the man and his freedom in order to make this idea reality. What I had in mind was, of course, environmentalism and its present strongest version, climate alarmism. …
… The climate alarmists believe in their own omnipotency, in knowing better than millions of rationally behaving men and women what is right or wrong. They believe in their own ability to assemble all relevant data into their Central Climate Change Regulatory Office equipped with huge supercomputers, in the possibility of giving adequate instructions to hundreds of millions of individuals and institutions.
We have to restart the discussion about the very nature of government and about the relationship between the individual and society. We need to learn the uncompromising lesson from the inevitable collapse of communism 18 years ago. It is not about climatology. It is about freedom.