Off the Mark

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 18, 2007 9:58 AM

"Obama's First Blunder," the headline said.

It turned out instead to be Dick Morris's first blunder of the 2008 campaign.

The political strategist turned Fox News commentator had a column in The Hill yesterday, accusing Barack Obama of an "inexplicable pro-nepotism vote."

The Illinois Democrat's offense? "He joined only a handful of Democrats in opposing a Senate reform banning the increasingly widespread practice of legislators hiring their family members on their campaign or PAC payrolls," Morris wrote. And: "The public will not take kindly to a senator who pledged to clean up the political process" voting in this fashion.

"Why did he vote against it?" Morris added on "Hannity & Colmes." "Because Jesse Jackson's son has his wife on his House payroll, and he didn't want to get him mad at him."

A pretty good issue, if true. But Obama voted for the amendment in question. Morris was flat-out wrong.

He's right about the amendment. Putting relatives on campaign payrolls reeks of impropriety. But Morris is not much of a vote-counter. (Obama's office says he blamed the mistake on a researcher.)

Morris, who worked for Bill Clinton, praised Hillary for voting for the amendment (which means no campaign position for Bill, though I suspect he'll offer plenty of free advice).

Says Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor: "Dick obviously took a ready-fire-aim approach when he wrote this column. Hopefully next time he'll check his facts before criticizing a politician for a position he didn't take."

Morris does the right thing this morning by posting a mea culpa: "I want to retract the allegations in my column yesterday that criticized Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for voting against a bill to prohibit campaign committees and PACs from paying spouses and relatives. In fact, he voted against tabling the bill.

"I sincerely apologize to the senator for my mistaken reading of the record and want to commend him for his correct vote on the issue, unlike the majority of his fellow Democrats, including likely presidential candidates Sens. Joseph Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)."

Hillary Clinton, for her part, engaged in a fascinating bit of triangulation yesterday.

She officially joined the anti-surge camp by declaring her opposition to shipping more soldiers to Iraq. But she wants to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Now this may be a carefully considered judgment that Iraq is a quagmire-like civil war that is all but lost, while defeating the Taliban is still a strong possibility if we help the Kabul government. But it also has the effect of signaling to voters: I may be against further escalation in Iraq, but I'm not against military deployment when it serves our interests. The first part will appeal to Democratic primary voters (though not as much as advocating withdrawal), the second to general election voters who might be wary of a female commander-in-chief.

The New York senator hit "Today" and the "Early Show" yesterday, and held a mid-afternoon press conference, one day after Barack Whatzisname got into the race. On NBC and CBS, she declined to engage her new rival, limiting herself to platitudes about having a vigorous primary and a national conversation and yadda yadda yadda.

As for her news conference, which was covered by the cable nets, let's just say she gave a droning performance, exhibiting none of the passion that the issue almost demands.

On Iraq, Clinton is for capping the number of troops, pressuring the Baghdad government and "eventually" pulling out--a position that almost perfectly straddles the stay-the-course crowd and the pullout-now camp.

I do think HRC is reluctant to usurp too much presidential authority after having watched her husband being challenged by Congress on Bosnia. But I also think she is a very cautious political player. And if she does swing toward a phased withdrawal from Iraq, it becomes harder for her to defend her 2002 pro-war vote--a problem that Obama, who opposed the invasion and wasn't even in Congress at the time, doesn't have.

Hillary, who has universal name recognition and no problem raising money, wants to get into this race on her own timetable. The New York Daily News ("Obama's Early White House Bid Rattles Clinton Camp") quotes unnamed aides as saying she could form a campaign committee this week. We'll see.

The New York Post put Clinton's odds at 3 to 1, Obama's at 5 to 1 and Chris Dodd at 100 to 1. Ouch.

The Boston Globe casts Hillary's plan as a response to Obama:

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, under fire from antiwar activists and confronting a charismatic antiwar rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, yesterday sharply increased her criticism of President Bush's war policies, calling for a congressionally mandated cap on the number of troops in Iraq and an increase in forces in Afghanistan."

The Chicago Tribune sees her responding to pressure from the left:

"Last year, liberal Democratic activists booed, hissed and heckled Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as she reiterated her firm opposition to setting a date for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

"But now, fresh from her third trip to Iraq, Clinton (D-N.Y.) has launched a public-relations blitz, emphatically declaring her opposition to President Bush's decision to send 21,500 additional troops and calling for American forces to begin leaving Baghdad."

Isn't it interesting that these papers barely allow for the possibility that Clinton is doing what she believes is right?

Ditto for the New York Daily News: "Sen. Hillary Clinton went on the offensive on Iraq yesterday and ignored the surging candidacy of presidential rival Barack Obama except to give him a sly dig."

The dig? I had to read it twice:

"'I'm looking forward to a spirited and substantive debate about issues, about goals, about aspirations, about experience, about the kind of things voters will be interested in,' Clinton said on CBS' 'Early Show.'"

Ack! She mentioned experience! Quite a blow, huh?

The WashPost lead managed not to allude to Obama: "Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) offered her harshest assessment to date of President Bush's Iraq war strategy yesterday, continuing her steady evolution from one of the war's staunchest supporters to one of the administration's most prominent critics."

There's a huge amount of 2008 buzz out there. National Review gives Obama his due:

"Critics scoff that Obama is too green to be a serious presidential contender, but he must be taken seriously, like it or not. Politically, the senator's inexperience in Washington can serve to absolve him of responsibility for the current unpopular state of affairs. His liberal voting record in the Senate, along with his impassioned speech against the war in Iraq in 2002, will play well in his antiwar party's primaries. It probably will force the once pro-war Hillary to conclude that she has to move farther left, thus reinforcing her image as an over-calculating politician (her latest Iraq trip can be thought of as her 'find an excuse to get more left on the war' tour).

"Meanwhile, Obama's brief record will provide fewer targets for the GOP than were available with the long-serving Kerry. And should Obama's lack of any executive experience prove troubling to voters, he will no doubt argue that the current chief executive's background in business and a governor's mansion didn't ensure success in the White House. Senator Obama has yet to prove he can take a political punch, and, inevitably, he will experience a serious media downdraft at some point."

So far, he hasn't even encountered a serious media breeze.

Americablog's John Aravosis likes Obama, but offers a bit of advice:

"Obama win the presidency? Sure, some day. Will he win this time? I'm not sure, but it's obviously far too early to tell -- hell, I never thought Kerry had a chance in hell of becoming the Democratic candidate, and well . . .

"Though I wonder if the electorate might find Obama too green to win this time. After 8 years of Bush, the voters could very likely desire brains and experience. Then again, whether he wins or not, a presidential run is still a good chance for Obama to get his name out there -- and he certainly is doing that -- and set himself up as a prime talking head and a possible run in the future. No one says you have to win the first time."

I disagree. The problem is that Democrats don't like to nominate past losers. The last time the party gave the nomination to someone who had run before--and who wasn't already vice president, a la Gore and Humphrey--was Adlai Stevenson in 1956. Republicans, by contrast, love to nominate their war horses (Reagan, Bush Sr., Dole).

"One bit of advice for the Obama crowd. Teach your boss to use the word 'I.' Obama was on CNN last week, talking about Bush's Iraq escalation plan, and he kept talking about (and I paraphrase) how 'our office was considering that' or how 'my staff is looking at that' or how 'we are certainly thinking about that.' It's no your office, it's not your staff, and it's not we. It's you. It's I. Obama is far too new at this to be adopting Senator-speak so quickly."

Betsy Newmark finds the Obamanian rhetoric rather vague:

"Okay, I'll bite. How does he plan to tackle these big problems. What are his solutions? At some point, he has to move beyond talking about a third way that bridges partisanship. And that involves more than teaming up with Republicans for earmark reform. That's a fine start, but if he votes for everything the Democrats put forward and voted against everything that Republicans and Bush put forward, how does that represent the new nonpartisanship? Is his big difference that he'll vote like a typical Democrat but just not criticize the Republicans while doing criticizing their policies? That's nice, but it isn't any sort of move into a purple America. Eventually, platitudes will not be enough. Then we'll get a look at how Obama really is different."

How valuable is experience? Joe Klein defends Obama on that score:

"Paul Mirengoff at Powerline argues that Barack Obama is the candidate with the scantiest credentials to be president in (recent) American history. To which I can only ask, What about George W. Bush?

"Yes, Bush had been governor of Texas--a relatively powerless role, after a career of nepotistic business failures--but he came to the White House proudly and defiantly unaware of the rest of the world. Obama has actually lived in another country--Indonesia, when he was a child--but more important, he is a student of history, has an excellent working knowledge of foreign policy issues and, as his early opposition to the Iraq war proves, has a judicious sense of the limits of American power. Obama doesn't have much experience with military affairs, but he'll learn. And that, in the end, is what made Bush lack the 'credentials' to be President--not so much the lack of experience, but the lack of knowledge and curiosity."

John Podhoretz damns Hillary with faint praise:

"Re Hillary's opposition to the surge: If I were a cynical Democratic political adviser who cared far less about the outcome of the war than I did about strengthening my party's hand, I would counsel Washington Dems to do exactly what they're doing -- oppose the president in every way and try to split the GOP apart without making any substantive moves to end the war now. By doing this, in every way, Iraq is entirely and solely Bush's war. If things improve, they will have done nothing to impede him. If things continue to worsen, they will be on record having opposed the surge.

"The only problem with it is that it's not an honorable course. But who ever said crass political calculations were honorable?"

Of course, there is the argument that the Iraqis will be forced to settle this thing on their own once we take away their military crutch.

At the Nation, John Nichols wants some specifics from candidate Obama:

"Democrats like Barack Obama. But they don't necessarily know what it is about him that appeals to them.

"Obama's challenge is to quickly provide grassroots Democrats with a rationale for his candidacy. There will be a lot of discussion about how he must compete with Clinton, but that's not the challenge. If she runs, Clinton will do so as what she is: a cautious centrist with lots of money and prominent support but with dubious grassroots appeal. Obama's real challenge will be to make sure that he compares favorably with Edwards."

More bad news for the president in this L.A. Times poll:

"As he seeks to chart a new course in Iraq, Bush also faces pervasive resistance and skepticism toward the U.S. commitment -- more than three-fifths of those surveyed said the war was not worth fighting and only one-third approved of his handling of the conflict. And in a striking measure of Bush's declining credibility, half said they believed he deliberately misled the U.S. in making his case for invading Iraq . . .

"Even Bush's political base, a source of support throughout his presidency, showed signs of cracking: about one-fourth of Republicans said they do not believe the war was worth fighting and a roughly equal number opposed the troop increase."

Why did the White House finally cave on its domestic eavesdropping program, after a year of doggedly insisting that there was no need for court approval? Two words: Democratic Congress.

"The Bush administration's abrupt abandonment on Wednesday of its program to eavesdrop inside the United States without court approval is the latest in a series of concessions to Congress, the courts and public opinion that have dismantled major elements of its strategy to counter the terrorist threat," says the New York Times.

Finally, even sex surveys can have a partisan split:

"Republicans use text messaging to initiate sex more often than Democrats."

Is that just because they can afford fancier gadgets?