Australia’s refugee problem has attracted global attention. This from the New York Times.
Keane: on campaigning, Obama and luck
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In war, luck is a definable quantity. Some generals — the type Napoleon famously preferred — are lucky. U.S. Grant referred constantly to his own luck as a military leader. Patton strongly believed in luck. Oddly enough, military luck seems to favour risk-takers and innovators. But wars end, and few are the successful generals who get to fight the next war. In politics, if you stay in the game, eventually your luck turns bad. John Howard, for example, was lucky for much of his term as Prime Minister. He’d been utterly unlucky during his first stint as Opposition Leader in the 1980s, but for his first three terms he was favoured by fortune — sneaking home in 1998 despite obtaining less votes than Labor; being handed the Tampa and September 11 for the 2001 election, having Meg Lees ready to sacrifice her party to get the GST through, having a prize galoot in Mark Latham for an Opposition Leader, and having a deputy too gutless to ever challenge him. For a while, in the aftermath of the 2004 election and winning control of the Senate, Howard seemed destined for a permanent golden run. But in retrospect that was the exact moment his luck not merely ran out, but turned against him. Thereafter, he couldn’t take a trick. Indeed, just about every single piece of good fortune he’d ever had seemed to come back and bite him. National security scares turned into bungles. Interest rates went up. Howard was forced to give a leadership transition timetable. Liberals in Lindsay decided to have their own version of the Ralph Willis letter. When Howard’s luck turned, it turned with a vengeance. George W. Bush’s career tells the same story. Bush for a long time seemed eerily fortunate. He escaped any serious scrutiny of his draft-dodging during Vietnam, or of his terrible business record. And remember he stole the 2000 election not once but twice, launching one of the most appalling smear campaigns in presidential history against John McCain after McCain thumped him in New Hampshire. The election of McCain, a superior candidate at that point to both Al Gore and Bush, would at least have spared us the regency of Dick Cheney, who has inflicted profound damage on the world in the last eight years. Bush even had the chance to start over after September 11, such was the outpouring of sympathy and fellow-feeling in the aftermath of the attacks. Remember Le Monde’s “Nous sommes tous les Americains”? But that spirit of goodwill and support was instead used to embark on a strategically — not to mention morally — disastrous war so unutterably stupid as to support the contention of a British diplomat that Bush was the best recruiting officer Al-qaeda could have. Bush even got lucky in 2004, up against the unconvincing John Kerry, although he had to resort to another smear campaign to hold onto the presidency. As with Howard though, that marked the end of his good luck, as if he had borrowed a whole lot of the stuff and now faced a margin call on his political fortune. And as with Howard, traits that once were strengths became fatal flaws. First his plans to partially privatise social security ran into the ground. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina showed up his administration’s cronyism and incompetence. And all the time, with a steady drip of body bags and uncounted civilian deaths, it was becoming clear how badly the occupation and reconstruction of Iraq was being handled. Bush’s leaking authority was undermined further in the controversy over Dubai Ports World and, after disastrous mid-term elections in 2006, on immigration reform. Given all that, the meltdown of the US financial sector and a plunge into recession in the last days of Bush’s term look almost inevitable. His turn in fortunes has spread out from the White House and into his own party. For a long while, John McCain — no longer the lunatic brainwashed in a Hanoi cell who had fathered a black child, but the party’s standard-bearer — managed to keep a distance from the profound damage inflicted by Bush on the Republican brand. But there was no escaping the stench of the financial meltdown, even if McCain had not mishandled his own response. What was a fighting chance around the time of the conventions has become a lay-down misere for Obama. And the damage has gone further, threatening a Senate and House electoral slaughter sufficient to hand full legislative control to the Democrats. Political luck eventually turns if you stay in the game long enough. Which Barack Obama should bear in mind. He is a lucky man. Not merely to find himself up against a crippled, indeed feeble, Republican party, but to be on the ticket at all. It is only because John Edwards kept his infidelity secret for as long as he did that Obama is there. But for Edwards’s lying, we would now be on the eve of the election of the first female president, Hillary Clinton, a candidate superior in every way to the man about to enter the White House. Obama’s biggest piece of fortune, however, might be one he shares with Kevin Rudd. He’s got an economic disaster at the start of his time in office, and there’s no better way to instantly look like you’ve got the right stuff. |
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9 Comments
I agree with Will. Obama has worked flat chat in this campaign and Mr Keane wipes all that away with his claim that Obama has had ‘luck’ on his side. I fail to see how John Edwards’ marital infidelity has played into Obama’s hand. Also, while I do not mind Hilary, what makes Mr Keane so sure she was the best candidate? I wonder if McCain was seriously the best candidate in 2000, as the author claims. I do agree though that Howard’s & Bush’s strong suits (national security etc) came back to bite them both. It was great to watch.
Clinton is better than Obama in terms of experience, electoral appeal, policies and ruthlessness. Other than that, Obama is outstanding.
Bernard, could you explain how Hillary Clinton is better than Obama in terms of electoral appeal (whatever that means)? “Electoral appeal” is a vague expression that could include some of the other criteria you employ. From all I’ve read, heard and seen, much of Obama’s appeal to swing voters is his attraction as an agent of change — change from so many of the traditional US political attitudes that have discredited the US both at home and abroad. People understand that Obama may not live up to all their expectations but they hope he will go reasonably close and so do I. I have always liked Hillary but I do not believe she could have inspired the voters as Obama has. In that context her spouse would have been a liability.
“But for Edwards’s lying, we would now be on the eve of the election of the first female president, Hillary Clinton…” What rubbish.
From your articles on the US election throughout the season, it’s been clear that you don’t think too much of Obama, but your dislike of the candidate has blinded you to his strategic ability. Yes Obama’s been lucky - the climate in the US has been pro-Democrat for some time now - but you do you honestly think it has been luck that has got him to this point in the election? Obama has played the strategic political landscape of 2008 far better than anyone else - far better than the dynastic political machine of the Clintons, far better than McCain. The quality of his ground game, of his enormous network of volunteers, and his focus on states in the primaries neglected by ‘better candidates’ has been what has got him to where he is; if he wins, it won’t be because Edwards lied, or even because of the financial crisis.
Oh and she has a much better spouse.
Fewer votes, not less votes.
Excellent opinion piece and all the more impressive because it goes against the flow.
John McCain will probably go down in history as defeated by Bush twice for the Presidency.
Obama is a charismatic figure and the role of the ‘Fourth Estate’ in his likely ascension to the office has been I think the real story of this campaign. In the end however I doubt that its role as his cheer squad will likely hold him in good stead to make policy in the next 2 years.
Obama has barely put a foot wrong (or if he did then like Biden’s errors we barely heard of them) but to wrest the Presidency that should not be simply enough. Neither essentially should a generic call for ‘change’ be enough.
From Australia’s parochial perspective I agree with Downer that McCain would better serve our interests.
When/if the ‘inevitable’ happens, I wish Obama well and loads more of that good luck!
Once again Keane shows us that he just doesn’t get it; he doesn’t understand why Hillary lost, and he seemed more interested in defending his previous diminution of Obama as a McGovern-like disaster, which looks as absurd and vacuous now as it back then.
Edwards’ cover-up had absolutely nothing to do with Obama routing Hillary in primary season. Edwards campaigned to the left on his war vote and economic populism, which put him into the orbit of Obama’s primary voters not Hillary’s. But Edwards was never even a truly viable candidate, regardless of his despicable cheating, because he simply lacked the necessary gravitas and resonance with the electorate due to his association with the failed Kerry ticket and his general phoney gloss. Polling shows he was always an after-thought / third fiddle.
Keane simply can’t bring himself to give credit to Obama genuinely outfighting Hillary in the primary. Hillary was locked into her own inevitability, ignoring vital caucus battles - which allowed the Obama-Plouffe number-crunching machine to steam roll her candidacy, accumulating margins, whilst the Hillary campaign was measuring the drapes. Keane, you seriously need to have a read of some serious treatments of Hillary’s loss, look at her campaign’s missteps, and stop buying the DLC kool-aid.
Nobody would deny that Obama has enjoyed a favourable innings for the party brand, but you’re kidding yourself if you think Hillary would be doing better. Hillary would be still running a swing-state strategy; there would be no epic 50-state ground game; Harold Ford would be in the DNC instead of Dean; they’re be no record turn-out for youths. I have no idea why you find Hillary so inspiring, but believe me it is shared in the key Obama-demo.
She is effective enough, but being the spouse of a president who wasted political capital in office, and who always did better at building his own brand than his party’s doesn’t give her “executive experience.” cf. Obama’s huge coat-tails.
That’s meant to read ‘not’ shared by the Obama key demographic.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Hillary is decent, but she would not be filling stadiums, bringing in huge numbers of recurrent < $200 donations, and inspiring volunteerism on the kind of scale that has completely demoralised the McCain GOTV effort. She would be running the same failed DLC strategy, using the same lobbyist and PAC money, and be evoking the same insider, polarised dynamic that Obama is riding into office against.
Also, compared to Democrats like Biden, and even Republicans like Hagel and Lugar, who also voted for the war, Hillary’s vote showed the most craven and shallow focus-group mentality about how she would decide foreign policy issues. So her supposed executive experience turns out to be putting her finger in the air and making decisions based on which way the wind is blowing. That’s not something I find remotely inspiring or commendable. Indeed, it is exactly that kind of artifice and shallowness which has inspired the netroots to reject her for Obama, alongside her history of video-game paternalism and her pathetic race baiting in the primary.
I can thank Hillary for one thing, her attacks about Ayers turned out to be helpful for Obama in the general election by defusing the issue.
Anyway, I look forward to Keane regaling Crikey readers with the story of his circumnavigation around the Crikey office, sans pants, as he promised he would do if Obama wins. It will be entertaining if for no other reason than, in the absence of some future reality-based epiphany, it likely to be the closest thing to his ever embracing the full extent of his complete misreading of Obama and the 2008 electoral landscape.