Temperament and the Presidency

This piece was written some weeks ago as an op-ed. It was submitted to several major newspapers and rejected. Too strong? I'll let you be the judge.


Temperament and the Presidency

You are a member of the search committee looking for a new CEO for a large multinational Corp. The job requires negotiating contracts with unions, overseeing numerous mergers and acquisitions, dealing with government regulators, and doing long rang strategic planning for the corporation to ensure its future profitability. One of the applicants at first glance looks good but under the heading of “my weaknesses” he has listed impetuousness, stubbornness, an inability to admit mistakes and a slowness to correct them as well as some problems with anger management. Would you hire him? Well you might give him an A for honesty, but you certainly wouldn't hire him, especially in light of the fact that there were several other good applicants available to choose from. The voters of Iowa and New Hampshire and other early primary states have a far more important job than choosing the CEO of a major company. They are the search committee responsible for helping the Democrats choose their nominee for president of the United States. The question is are Howard Dean’s self-admitted temperament problems relevant to the issue of his fitness to be president? The answer is clearly yes.


By his own admission as well as those of his friends and relatives Howard Dean has problems with a quick temper, stubbornness, and impetuousness. All of these issues have been addressed before by numerous writers and are summarized quite well in a recent Washington post editorial. (Assessing Mr. Dean 12/28/03) The question is do these have any bearing on his ability to beat Bush in the fall election and more importantly on his ability to be a successful president ?


Though you may hate them, George Bush and Carl Rove are not stupid, especially when it comes to politics. The statements that Dean has already made (the 9/11 comment probably being the most egregious of many) can and will be used against him in the November election. Remember how they successfully shaped the image of Al Gore as a liar or at least a serial exaggerater, with much less material at their disposal than Dean has already provided. It seems clear to me and many others that Dean is already a seriously flawed candidate that has little if any chance of beating Bush.


But what about the larger issue. Could an admittedly stubborn impetuous man with occasionally questionable judgment make a good president? Let’s take another tack for a second. Let’s put this man in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis. Would he have the judgment and calm resolve necessary to stop World War Three? Would he have been able to withstand the temptation to invade or bomb, as virtually all of president Kennedy’s advisors were recommending, or would he have followed the course that Kennedy chose, to negotiate and save the world from nuclear devastation. In this case having experienced advisors or even an experienced vice-president would not have averted war. The buck stops on the president’s desk and there is no substitute for calm reasoned judgment on the part of the president Judgment cannot be absorbed by osmosis from one’s advisors. You either have it or you don’t.


I will argue that personality and temperament are critical issues to address in picking a president. Richard Nixon was bright and had well thought out policies but his presidency ultimately failed because of his personality and temperament. And that failing almost brought down our republic.


We as Democrats have many good candidates this year, some more electable than others, but all of them have shown throughout their careers that they have far better temperaments to be president than Howard Dean. Unfortunately, Gov. Dean has shown himself to be a fatally flawed candidate who although he may get nominated is unlikely to get elected. Or, if by some miracle of fate he is elected, is unlikely to be successful. In this increasingly dangerous world the personality and temperament of our future president should not be viewed, as it is in some quarters, as a side issue, but rather as a central and important qualification for the office of President.

Mickey

A Wild Ride

Oh my. Brace yourselves, folks; we are in for a wild ride. In the last two days the polls have shown so much movement that all the gaming and analysis of the last two months may become moot. Kerry, Edwards and Clark are on fire, and Dean is sinking fast. Who would've thunk it? I truly don't know how to analyze what's going on and what it means for Clark. I will leave that for the professional pundits. But suffice it to say that we are in a position today that we couldn't even dream about two weeks ago, but one thing has been proven and that is that everything can change very quickly so as happy as we are today we still must keep the goal in focus and continue to work hard. And hopefully, for those of you in New Hampshire, not freeze your ass off in the process. And to think I almost went up there (for those of you that don’t know I live in sunny Florida and have a deep aversion to cold)

I have decided to go to South Carolina and campaign. It looks like too much fun not to get into the act. Of course the way things are going, it looks more and more like Florida's primary on March 9th will mean something; and so we have begun organizing down here for that eventuality. The other half of this blog -- my darling daughter and her wonderful husband -- are making plans to come down here and campaign for Clark as well. I’m sure it has nothing to do with our weather vis-à-vis Boston’s this time of year.

Everybody remember to keep your blood pressure medicine close at hand; you'll need it for the next ten days.

Mickey.

Hear, Hear!!

This is a totally gratuitous posting to say how much I agree with my Dad's post about labeling people as Democrats. Does anyone remember those commercials for breakfast cereal (I don't recall which one...) where it was always a kid and a parent not agreeing on anything, but then finally sitting down at the breakfast table and agreeing on their breakfast cereal? Well, that's like me and my father on Wes Clark, except that politics is way more important than breakfast cereal.

My dad and I will never agree about that tattoo I got when I was 19, but we support the same man for President. Pay attention, oh ye of little faith. Wes Clark is an inspirational candidate. Wes Clark brings people together. I am proud to stand with my father and support Wes Clark for President, and I hope to stand with my father at Clark's inauguration. If you're there, look for us. We'll be the people arguing loudly about a tattoo.

It's the Supreme Court Stupid

I would liked to go back and amplify part of my previous post. I said that I have been willing to vote Republican as long as my core social values were not at stake. Affirmative action, abortion rights, separation of church and state, and government lending a hand to those who need it while at the same time the maintaining individual liberty and freedom from undue government intrusion into our personal lives. Well the above, and more, are at stake in this election. Think Supreme Court, think Clarence Thomas and think four more years of Bush and maybe three nominations to the highest court. If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, then you are reading the wrong blog. I have made this point before both here and elsewhere, but it’s worth repeating. Bush can do tremendous damage to this country in four more years both domestically and globally but three more Clarence Thomases on the Supreme Court can change this country beyond recognition for the next thirty years. So let’s not be so concerned with labels this year, let’s not turn our back on the candidate most likely to defeat Bush because he didn’t always vote Democratic or because he said some good things about Bush early on. I too was impressed with this administration after 9/11 and had high hopes that he would live up to his campaign rhetoric and be a compassionate conservative. He wasn’t and now I oppose him with all my heart and soul; and guess what? I’m a Democrat too.

I don’t want a purist candidate this election, I WANT A WINNER, and if he sometimes voted Republican in the past I couldn’t care less. Wes Clark is a winner -- always has been, always will be -- and he’s a fighter without the chip on his shoulder that Dean has. We need both of these attributes in our candidate this year to beat Bush. So let’s not argue about who's a Democrat and who's not; that argument pales in the face of what's at stake this year. Wes Clark can win and therefore he should be our nominee.

Mickey

Who is a Democrat

We knew it would come down to this. The shit has truly hit the fan, but I must admit I'm a little surprised where it's coming from. Two days ago John Kerry refused to say anything negative about Wes Clark and yesterday Jean Shaheen of his campaign came out and stated that Clark was not a Democrat. Shaun Dale of UPPER LEFT puts it this way,

" Well, Governor, with all due respect, you aren't the arbiter of who and who isn't a Democrat. Neither am I, or anyone else. Wes Clark says he's a Democrat, has (finally) registered as a Democrat, and is running for office as a Democrat."
He's a Democrat.

I haven’t always voted Democratic. When the Democrats nominated someone I wasn’t comfortable with and the Republicans had someone better I voted Republican. As long as I felt that my core social concerns were not at stake then I voted on issues of Fiscal restraint and national security. It used to drive me crazy that the Republicans had such a hold on those issues and that I couldn’t have it all, but that was the perception for many years even if it wasn’t always the reality.

So two things bother me about the Shaheen attack: one, that Kerry would stoop so low immediately after saying publicly that he wouldn’t attack Clark, and two, that he didn’t even have the guts to do the heavy lifting himself. Six months ago Kerry was my first choice -- it was only after his campaign went nowhere and Dean’s took off that I became a Clark man. My advice to the Clark campaign is: stick to the issues. If I agree with you on the issues you can call yourself a Democrat, Republican, Independent, or libertarian and I’ll still vote for you because we are all Americans. And if we have the same values then labels don’t mean shit. I would have voted for Nelson Rockefeller and I might have voted for McCain, so does that make me a Republican? The American people are tired of labels, they are tired of partisan warfare by the lunatic fringe of both parties. They want a leader, not a demagogue. That’s what Wes Clark is offering and I hope he doesn’t change.

Mickey.

Items of interest

As always, Professor Krugman's column is excellent..

Hmm, the Army War College thinks Clark is right about that whole Iraq thing after all.

Kerry campaign attacks Clark; I love Clark's statement in response (from WaPo):

As Kerry focused on Iowa, Shaheen dealt with his problems in New Hampshire, where Clark has overtaken Kerry for second place, behind Dean. She showed a videotape of Clark's appearance before an Arkansas Republican Party fundraising dinner in 2001, in which he praised Bush and members of his Cabinet, then said:

"I welcome Wesley Clark to our party. I just don't think someone who raised money for Republicans, praised George W. Bush after he had begun his systematic reversal of Bill Clinton's policies, and who as recently as this past summer refused to rule out running for president as a Republican should be the Democratic nominee for president."

"When you're attacked like this, it's the sincerest form of flattery in politics," Clark said in response.

Okay, that's all for now, folks.

Salon really starting to piss me off

Yet another article in Salon today that assumes that real Dems can't possibly support someone other than Dean. I am getting more and more irritated with Salon's Dean-biased coverage (see my post last week on Huffington's column there). If one more article in Salon tells me that since I don't support Dean, I must be a spineless, old-school, appeaser from inside the beltway with no vision for the future of the Democratic party, I'm just going to have to stop reading it for the duration.

Today's offender: The Media vs. Howard Dean

My letter to the Editor:

------

I've been a Salon reader since the beginning, and usually very impressed with your coverage of politics. But I'm very disappointed in your coverage of the 2002 Democratic Presidential Nomination race. Salon appears to believe that those who support candidates other than Howard Dean are not real Democrats or have been fed a pack of lies by the right-leaning mass media. Last week's example was Arianna Huffington's column in which she implied that the only people who aren't Dean supporters are "Democratic Honchos" from "inside the beltway". Today's example: The lead sentence on the most recent article "the Media vs. Howard Dean" is "Democrats haven't voted yet, but reporters have got the story: The former Vermont governor is angry, gaffe-prone and unelectable. How do they know? Republicans, and anonymous Democrats, told them so".

I am neither a Republican nor an anonymous Democrat. I do not support Howard Dean for President, and it's not simply because I find him angry, gaffe-prone, and unelectable. I also believe we need a President with strong credentials in the international community, not, as Dean admits he has, a little hole in his resume there. I support Wesley Clark for President, and I think Salon needs to spend a little less time obsessing about Dean, and a little more time researching why perfectly good Democrats might support someone else.

moving on up

It's official: Tucker Carlson has just picked Wes Clark to win the nomination on the Chris Matthews show. He says "even the Democrats aren't crazy enough to nominate Howard Dean." The odds from the pundit's poll also from the Chris Matthews show shows a doubling of the likelihood of a Clark victory (still only 25%). "Meet the Press" with John Kerry as guest still had to devote several minutes of their round table discussion to the Clark surge in New Hampshire. I have not said it publicly but for many weeks I have felt that the decision to skip Iowa was the smartest thing the Clark campaign has done. This was voiced by one blogger several weeks ago; however, as I'm over 50 I can't for the life of me remember who made this case. The conventional wisdom has been that it was a grave mistake to skip Iowa; I don't think that will be true. The opportunity to campaign extensively without the clutter of other candidates has enabled Clark to get his message out, and, based on the polls and the reports on the CCN blogs, he has been successful beyond our wildest dreams. People are paying attention now -- not just the extreme fringes of the party, but the rank and file. And Dean doesn't play well with the mainstream of the Democratic party. Electability and temperament are starting to seriously be considered in choosing a candidate, and Dean doesn't do well on either count.

The Paul O'Neil flap has the possibility of changing the dynamics of the general election significantly. Here we have a Bush insider confirming what Clark has been saying for months: that the Bush administration was after Saddam Hussein from day one and used 9/11 as an excuse to do what he wanted to do from the beginning. This makes the nomination more important than ever. Bush can be beaten. He is not as popular as the recent polls would suggest. For Democrats to nominate Howard Dean under these circumstances would be a crime. This is not a throw away election. Democrats have a real chance of victory and we need to be very pragmatic about who we nominate. We need to nominate Wes Clark who, in the most recent poll I've seen, (I will try to find it and post it) is within 7 points of Bush. Dean is 15 points behind. It is conventional wisdom (I love that term) that Clark is the strongest candidate to run against Bush.

So let's keep working and keep giving. Money got us to this point and Clark will take us the rest of the way. See you all at the inauguration.