The White Stuff?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 25, 2007 10:29 AM

This election could, at least in theory, produce the first female president, the first black president, the first Hispanic president or the first Mormon president.

Or just another white guy.

And what do you do if you're one of those white guys? Can you use soaring rhetoric to attempt to rally White America?

The question answers itself.

I raise it here because some astute political observers are wondering whether John Edwards is carefully . . . quietly . . . subtly reminding voters that he is a Caucasian American.

Not that there's anything wrong with being a Caucasian American. But apparently there are unwritten rules against advertising that fact.

Roger Simon frames it this way:

"Generally speaking, most of us think it is OK to make appeals for votes based on race or sex -- just as long as you are in a minority group or are a woman.

"But you can't raise fears based on race or sex. You are not supposed to say, 'Hey, a black man cannot win the presidency in 2008. A woman cannot win the presidency in 2008.'

"And you can't, of course, say: 'Vote for me because I am white' or 'Vote for me because I am a man.'

"This creates a dilemma for John Edwards, who, as his wife reminds us, is a white male. (Not a group accustomed to being disadvantaged.)

"John Edwards happens to believe he can do better with rural, white, downscale voters than either Obama or Hillary can.

"But it is tough for Edwards to come out and actually say that. So maybe he uses code instead.

"For example, he says: 'If you're running in a tough congressional district . . . you gotta ask yourself, would you rather have Sen. Obama at the top of the ticket to help, Sen. Clinton at the top of the ticket to help or John Edwards at the top of the ticket to help?' 'Your instincts will tell you the right answer,' Edwards says."

ABC's Jake Tapper weighs the evidence:

"The argument is that Edwards is a Southerner from a rural background and can make Red states competitive. That Edwards is culturally of a Red State. That he is able to speak the language of the Reagan Democrat, Joe Sixpack, Mike Lunchpail.

"The argument is NOT, the Edwards campaign insists, that Edwards as a white man is more electable than a white woman or a black man.

"At the Youtube/CNN debate in July, Edwards very clearly stated, 'Anybody who's considering not voting for Senator Obama because he's black or for Senator Clinton because she's a woman, I don't want their vote.' . . .

"For weeks I've rejected the notion that Edwards is making this appeal on anything other than cultural values, his Southern twang and roots. but that 'picture in your head' clause is interesting."

Is Fred Thompson bombing or not? Slate's John Dickerson sees the Tennessean in trouble:

"Fred Thompson has it all figured out. Speaking to a group of female business leaders in Florida, he said, 'I'm kind of a laid-back guy, but I've been hardworking and successful for a long, long time. I don't have to prove myself to anybody. I've done pretty well being me. And me is all they're going to get.'

"This is either refreshing or hubris. It could be a stab at turning laziness into a virtue or an irritated refusal to modify a strategy founded on the faulty notion that a candidate can win without months of grueling hustle. Or maybe Thompson just has a quality voters find attractive in presidential candidates: He knows his own mind.

"There have been scattered signs to support the more favorable thesis. Thompson wasn't afraid to talk about reducing the growth of Social Security benefits even in retiree-rich Florida. When asked about the Terry Schiavo controversy/debacle, he didn't pander to social conservatives, even though he's desperately courting them. He said government had no business meddling in whether her life support stayed on. This reminded me of his kiss-off to Dr. James Dobson, the radio host who diagnosed Thompson as 'un-Christian' even though he'd never met the man. When Thompson was asked whether he would meet with Dobson in an effort to win him over, the candidate said he'd be happy to receive an apology from the evangelical leader but that he wasn't going to ask for one . . .

"My interviews don't represent a scientific sample, of course, but a door feels like it's closing for Thompson, even after his improved second debate performance Sunday. Thompson says the criticism is only coming from the Beltway chattering class and he'll ignore it (except, presumably, for the pundits working for him). I was prepared to think regular people had a more generous view of his slow start for awhile, but the people I talked to don't live in Washington. They live where the voting is going to take place. They're buzzing about Huckabee, not Thompson, and what they are saying about Thompson doesn't sound good for him."

More on Mike Huckabee's media boomlet, which I detailed yesterday. The Weekly Standard says Huck should enjoy it while it lasts:

"The good news for Mike Huckabee is that he's been discovered by the national media. That's also the bad news. Now that the former Arkansas governor's success at the debates and in the latest round of Iowa caucus polling has established Huckabee as a possible contender, albeit a longshot, he'll have to pay the price of a serious candidate's media examination. Disbelief in Darwinism, support for a semi-baked consumption tax scheme as a replacement for the income tax, and a wobbly fiscal record as governor are a few of the more controversial aspects of Huckabee's thin record that soon will be subjected to strict scrutiny."

At Power Line, Paul Mirengoff stays off the bandwagon:

"Consider me skeptical. Mike Huckabee is an attractive candidate who may make a nice run. But it's extremely difficult to see him as the Republican nominee. To accomplish this, he would have to surge past Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney as the first choice of hard-core Republican conservatives. Thompson and Romney both have their weaknesses, but Thompson is improving on the campaign trail, and Romney is an effective candidate with vast resources and a head-start in the key early states.

"Huckabee, by contrast, has very little money, and possesses limited stature and name recognition. Moreover, many hard-core conservatives doubt his bona fides as a fiscal conservative and/or as a potential leader of the war on terror. The problem isn't just that Huckabee makes statements like 'we broke Iraq' and seems to lack a strong sense of urgency when it comes to Iraq It's more that he simply doesn't come across as the man one would want to lead this country in a global war.

"[John] McCain is a different matter. He oozes leadership ability, and neither his toughness nor his name recognition is in doubt. Indeed, a year or so ago, many folks (albeit mostly ones who didn't understand conservatives very well) viewed him as the front-runner. Although he has lost that status, he remains arguably the candidate with the most potential to defeat Hillary Clinton.

"Yet McCain is still distrusted by many conservatives who believe (perhaps not without reason) that he has thumbed his nose at us too many times."

Is National Review officially lining up behind McCain? First Kate O'Beirne urges a second look, and now Ramesh Ponnuru argues:

"Almost all of the features that hurt him in the primaries -- from his willingness to break with his party to his campaign-finance legislation to his belief that global warming is a real problem -- would help him in the general election. Even at this stage of the campaign, he is doing slightly better than Giuliani in polls testing the Republican candidates against Hillary Clinton . . .

"My own view is that McCain would be the strongest general-election candidate the Republicans could put up next year. He is solid on almost all of the important issues: the war, judges, entitlements, abortion, trade. . . . Even on taxes, he has righted himself. He voted against the Bush tax cuts, but he has never voted to raise income taxes and, this spring, ruled out any such move in an interview with me . . .

"Sometimes people remember that they dislike someone even when they have forgotten what inspired their dislike. I think something like this has happened to McCain: His biggest problem with conservatives isn't that they have had so many disagreements, but that they have a bad impression of him. If he is to win the nomination, he needs to do something to make them take a fresh look.

"I think he should do something dramatic: Renounce ambition for a second term. He should say that he intends not just to win the presidency but to win a mandate for the few big things he really wants to accomplish: fixing entitlements and beating terrorists. A one-term limit would instantly separate McCain from the pack, making the other Republican contenders look self-interested by comparison. Concentrating on issues such as terrorism and entitlements would also play to his strengths with conservatives, and distract attention from his weaknesses."

At 71, it seems to me, that might make sense. But Matthew Continetti is dismissive:

"To me, this sounds a little too much like Bob Dole taking the gloves off and giving up his Senate seat during the 1996 election -- a bold move that did nothing but set him on the road to Doritos and Viagra commercials. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't work!"

Here's something no other presidential candidate can claim, under the New York Post headline "MOB WANTED TO WHACK RUDY":

"The bosses of New York's five Mafia families in the mid-1980s came a hair-trigger away from sanctioning a hit on then-federal prosecutor Rudy Giuliani, according to bombshell FBI records made public today.

"Before cooler heads prevailed -- the mob bosses decided by a razor-thin 3-to-2 margin not to try to whack the future mayor and presidential candidate -- at least two of the dons argued fervently that the mob-busting U.S. attorney should sleep with the fishes."

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder parses the latest LAT poll:

"Giuliani still sports a double-digit lead over Fred Thompson, but his support is soft, the party seems confused, and Republicans seem to be growing more anxious about his moral issue liberalism.

"34% of those surveyed agreed that social conservatives would be within their rights to run a third party candidate if the GOP nominated a candidate who supported abortion rights and gay rights. Paradoxically, a quarter of that 34% say they support Giuliani today.

"Abortion is a bigger issue than gay rights; less than half of Republican oppose civil unions (although most oppose gay marriage).

"Fred Thompson's support among 'white fundamentalists' seems to be growing; that's the only discernable category in which he leads Giuliani, who still retains the support of pluralities of Republican Catholics and self-defined members of the 'Religious Right.'

"Giuliani is much stronger among men than he is among women -- he received 36% of the male vote in this sample and 27% of the women's vote."

For months, Thompson wasn't a candidate. Now that he is a candidate, is it possible that he won't be a candidate in New Hampshire? And if that's the case, what kind of candidate is he?

"A key supporter to former Sen. Fred Thompson joined a rival campaign Tuesday morning, telling The Hill that Thompson is clearly not intending to campaign seriously in the first-in-the-nation primary state.

"Former state Rep. Dan Hughes was in line to serve as Thompson's state chairman, but Hughes said Tuesday he is joining Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) campaign as state vice chairman instead. Thompson's apparent reluctance to campaign in the Granite State has rubbed many voters and officials there the wrong way, and it could get worse. One source told The Hill on Tuesday that Thompson is not planning to file to run there personally, sending a surrogate instead."

A surrogate? He can't be bothered to visit the first primary state?

The newly formed group Democratic Courage is planning ads that attack Hillary from the left. I may be wrong, but won't that make her look more moderate?

The Washington Monthly has a big piece on Rudy, and I'm getting the distinct impression that Kevin Drum is not a fan:

"Choosing the best presidential candidate among the 2008 contenders is a tough job. Picking the worst is easy. Rudy Giuliani is the guy you'd get if you put George Bush and Dick Cheney into a wine press and squeezed out their pure combined essence: unbounded arrogance and self-righteousness, a chip on his shoulder the size of a redwood, a studied contempt for anybody's opinion but his own, a vindictive streak a mile wide, and a devotion to secrecy and executive power unmatched in presidential history. He is a disaster waiting to happen."

Now is this a surge or what?

"Comedian Stephen Colbert is not a threat to win the presidency, but the odds are that that his satire will win plenty of laughs and maybe even some votes.

"A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that Colbert is preferred by 13% of voters as an independent candidate challenging Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Rudy Giuliani. The survey was conducted shortly after Colbert's surprise announcement that he is lusting for the Oval Office."

Hey, they laughed at Ross Perot.

When it comes to backers of Ron Paul, the conservative blog Red State is saying thanks but no thanks:

"Effective immediately, new users may *not* shill for Ron Paul in any way shape, form or fashion. Not in comments, not in diaries, nada. If your account is less than 6 months old, you can talk about something else, you can participate in the other threads and be your zany libertarian self all you want, but you cannot pimp Ron Paul. Those with accounts more than six months old may proceed as normal.

"Now, I could offer a long-winded explanation for *why* this new policy is being instituted, but I'm guessing that most of you can probably guess. Unless you lack the self-awareness to understand just how annoying, time-consuming, and bandwidth-wasting responding to the same idiotic arguments from a bunch of liberals pretending to be Republicans can be. Which, judging by your comment history, you really don't understand, so allow me to offer an alternate explanation: we are a bunch of fascists and we're upset that you've discovered where we keep the black helicopters, so we're silencing you in an attempt to keep you from warning the rest of your brethren so we can round you all up and send you to re-education camps all at once.

"Hey, we're sure *some* of Ron Paul's supporters really are Republicans. They can post at any one of a zillion Ron Paul online forums."

Finally, a big setback for the New Republic in its effort to prove that the soldier once dubbed the Baghdad Diarist isn't a fabricator. And I finally find out why he canceled his interview with me.