By PAUL KRUGMAN – The New York Times

As the debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan’s opponents aren’t arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don’t want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don’t want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.

Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already made headlines with one such shot: looking at an $825 billion plan to rebuild infrastructure, sustain essential services and more, he derided a minor provision that would expand Medicaid family-planning services — and called it a plan to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives.”

But the obvious cheap shots don’t pose as much danger to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a plan through as arguments and assertions that are equally fraudulent but can seem superficially plausible to those who don’t know their way around economic concepts and numbers. So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced. Any time you hear someone reciting one of these arguments, write him or her off as a dishonest flack.

First, there’s the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years.

It’s as if an opponent of the school lunch program were to take an estimate of the cost of that program over the next five years, then divide it by the number of lunches provided in just one of those years, and assert that the program was hugely wasteful, because it cost $13 per lunch. (The actual cost of a free school lunch, by the way, is $2.57.)

The true cost per job of the Obama plan will probably be closer to $100,000 than $275,000 — and the net cost will be as little as $60,000 once you take into account the fact that a stronger economy means higher tax receipts.

Next, write off anyone who asserts that it’s always better to cut taxes than to increase government spending because taxpayers, not bureaucrats, are the best judges of how to spend their money.

Here’s how to think about this argument: it implies that we should shut down the air traffic control system. After all, that system is paid for with fees on air tickets — and surely it would be better to let the flying public keep its money rather than hand it over to government bureaucrats. If that would mean lots of midair collisions, hey, stuff happens.

The point is that nobody really believes that a dollar of tax cuts is always better than a dollar of public spending. Meanwhile, it’s clear that when it comes to economic stimulus, public spending provides much more bang for the buck than tax cuts — and therefore costs less per job created (see the previous fraudulent argument) — because a large fraction of any tax cut will simply be saved.

This suggests that public spending rather than tax cuts should be the core of any stimulus plan. But rather than accept that implication, conservatives take refuge in a nonsensical argument against public spending in general.

Finally, ignore anyone who tries to make something of the fact that the new administration’s chief economic adviser has in the past favored monetary policy over fiscal policy as a response to recessions.

It’s true that the normal response to recessions is interest-rate cuts from the Fed, not government spending. And that might be the best option right now, if it were available. But it isn’t, because we’re in a situation not seen since the 1930s: the interest rates the Fed controls are already effectively at zero.

That’s why we’re talking about large-scale fiscal stimulus: it’s what’s left in the policy arsenal now that the Fed has shot its bolt. Anyone who cites old arguments against fiscal stimulus without mentioning that either doesn’t know much about the subject — and therefore has no business weighing in on the debate — or is being deliberately obtuse.

These are only some of the fundamentally fraudulent antistimulus arguments out there. Basically, conservatives are throwing any objection they can think of against the Obama plan, hoping that something will stick.

But here’s the thing: Most Americans aren’t listening. The most encouraging thing I’ve heard lately is Mr. Obama’s reported response to Republican objections to a spending-oriented economic plan: “I won.” Indeed he did — and he should disregard the huffing and puffing of those who lost.

By DAVID E. SANGER – The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with the enthusiastic support of the left wing of his party, fueled by his vehement opposition to the decision to invade Iraq and by one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate.

Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Timothy F. Geithner as secretary of the Treasury — suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues.

The choices are as revealing of the new president as they are of his appointees — and suggest that, from its first days, an Obama White House will brim with big personalities and far more spirited debate than occurred among the largely like-minded advisers who populated President Bush’s first term.

But the names racing through the ether in Washington about the choices to follow also suggest that Mr. Obama continues to place a premium on deep experience. He is widely reported to be considering asking Mr. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to stay on for a year; and he is thinking about Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander and Marine Corps commandant, for national security adviser, and placing Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary whom Mr. Obama considered putting back in his old post, inside the White House as a senior economic adviser.

“This is the violin model: Hold power with the left hand, and play the music with your right,” David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton official who wrote a history of the National Security Council, said on Friday, as news of Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Geithner’s appointments leaked. “It’s teaching us something about Obama: while he wants to bring new ideas to the game, he is working from the center space of American foreign policy.”

The reason, several of Mr. Obama’s transition team members say, is that they believe that the new administration will have no time for a learning curve. With the country facing a deep recession or worse, global market turmoil, chaos in Pakistan and a worsening war in Afghanistan, “there’s going to be no time for experimentation,” a member of the Obama foreign policy team said.

That explains Mr. Obama’s first selection: Rahm Emanuel, another centrist Democrat and former member of the Clinton White House, as his chief of staff.

In some ways, the choices made so far are reminiscent of the way the last senator to be elected president, John F. Kennedy, chose a cabinet. As president-elect, Kennedy soon picked three top officials significantly more conservative than he was: Dean Rusk as secretary of state, Robert S. McNamara as secretary of defense and C. Douglas Dillon, a Republican, as secretary of the Treasury. They helped him navigate the Cuban missile crisis, but also got him bogged down in Vietnam.

Of all the choices Mr. Obama has made so far, it is the selection of Mrs. Clinton that appears the biggest gamble, in part because she has never had to engage in the give-and-take of high-stakes diplomacy, and in part because no one really knows how she will mesh with the Obama White House.

In her discussion with the president-elect, several members of his transition team said, Mrs. Clinton expressed no doubt that she could be a loyal member of the Obama team — though she was reportedly deeply conflicted about giving up her Senate seat and the independent power base it afforded her.

During the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton went out of their way to point out their foreign policy differences, with Mrs. Clinton portraying herself as a hawkish Democrat and defending her decision to vote in favor of the 2002 resolution that Mr. Bush later considered an authorization to use military force against Saddam Hussein. (Later, she said she fully expected Mr. Bush to use diplomacy first — and was shocked that he did not.)

Now the question is less one of ideological differences than whether a Clinton State Department could become something like Colin L. Powell’s: an alternative, though weak, power center that made little secret of its differences with the White House.

“Anyone who tells you they really know how this is going to work out,” one senior transition official said Thursday, “is telling less than the truth.”

If Mrs. Clinton is taken from the “Team of Rivals” model, Mr. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is from the Team of Neutrals.

“He’s no liberal,” said a former colleague at the Treasury Department, where he managed the American response to the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s.

At the time Mr. Geithner developed a reputation as the ultimate pragmatist, putting together a package of more than $100 billion in aid to halt the financial contagion. That turned out to be a training session for his role, a decade later, in the bailouts of Bear Stearns, A.I.G. and the injection of nearly $350 billion in Congressionally authorized money, whose exact use has become something of a political football.

Mr. Geithner grew up in Asia — in Tokyo, New Delhi and Bangkok — and keeps his ego well in check. He asks a lot of questions, but does not have Mr. Summers’s overwhelming — some say overbearing — personality.

“He clicked with Obama,” one outside adviser said. “If you think about it, their sort of cool, distant styles are alike.”

Paul Krugman* – O Estado SP

Talvez as pesquisas de opinião estejam equivocadas e John McCain esteja prestes a protagonizar a maior frustração eleitoral da história dos EUA. Neste momento, porém, parece que os democratas conseguirão ganhar a Casa Branca e aumentar sua maioria no Congresso.

A maior parte dos debates pós-eleitorais provavelmente será sobre o que os democratas devem fazer com o seu mandato. No entanto, eu gostaria de fazer uma pergunta diferente, igualmente importante para o futuro da nação: o que a derrota significará para os republicanos? Poderíamos pensar, quem sabe até esperar, que os republicanos embarcassem numa busca por sua identidade, perguntando a si mesmos se eles perderam o contato com o americano médio, e como isso teria acontecido. Contudo, não acredito que isso vá ocorrer tão cedo.

Ao invés disso, o partido que restar será o que vai aos comícios de Sarah Palin, nos quais a multidão grita: “Vote McCain, e não Hussein!”. Será o partido representado por Saxby Chambliss, senador da Geórgia que, ao observar o grande número de eleitores negros participando da votação antecipada, alertou a seus partidários dizendo que “os outros sujeitos estão votando”. Será o partido que cultiva fantasias ameaçadoras sobre as raízes marxistas – ou seriam islâmicas? – de Barack Obama.

DIREÇÃO

Será que o Partido Republicano se tornará mais radical, e não menos? As projeções sugerem que essa eleição vai tirar do Congresso muitos dos republicanos moderados remanescentes, ao mesmo tempo mantendo a linha dura do partido.

Larry Sabato, analista eleitoral, prevê que sete vagas no Senado, atualmente em poder dos republicanos, passarão para os democratas. Segundo a classificação liberal-conservadora, elaborada pelos cientistas políticos Keith Poole e Howard Rosenthal, cinco dos senadores prestes a perder a vaga são mais moderados do que o senador republicano médio. Assim, a parte do partido que permanecer no Congresso será de orientação ainda mais à direita. O mesmo deve ocorrer com os deputados.

Além disso, a base republicana parecia estar se preparando para considerar a possível derrota não como uma condenação das medidas conservadoras, mas como o resultado de uma conspiração maligna. Uma pesquisa recente realizada pela Democracy Corps descobriu que os republicanos, em uma proporção superior a dois para um, consideram que McCain está perdendo “porque a grande mídia é tendenciosa” e não “porque os americanos estão cansados de George W. Bush”.

McCain estabeleceu os moldes para que sejam feitas as declarações de que a eleição foi roubada, ao declarar que o grupo de ativistas Acorn “está prestes a cometer a maior fraude eleitoral da história dos EUA, possivelmente destruindo o tecido da democracia”. De acordo com o site Factcheck.org, a Acorn jamais “foi considerada culpada ou sequer acusada” de ter incentivado fraudes eleitorais. Não é necessário dizer que os eleitores que a organização tenta registrar são, na maioria, os “outros sujeitos”, como diria o senador Chambliss.

Seja como for, a base republicana, encorajada pela campanha de McCain, acha que a eleição deveria refletir a opinião dos “verdadeiros americanos” – e a maioria dos leitores desta coluna provavelmente não se enquadra nessa definição.

Assim, diante de pesquisas sugerindo que Obama vencerá na Virgínia, um dos principais assessores de McCain declarou que a “verdadeira Virgínia” – a porção sul do Estado, excluídos os subúrbios da capital, Washington – é favorável a McCain. A maioria dos americanos vive atualmente em grandes áreas metropolitanas, mas durante visita a uma pequena cidade na Carolina do Norte, Sarah Palin descreveu aquela comunidade como “aquilo que eu chamo de verdadeira América”. A verdadeira América, ao que parece, é provinciana, em sua maior parte sulista, e acima de tudo, branca.

INTOLERÂNCIA

Não estou dizendo que o Partido Republicano está prestes a se tornar irrelevante. Os republicanos ainda estarão em posição de bloquear algumas iniciativas democratas, especialmente se os democratas não conseguirem obter uma maioria no Senado capaz de evitar obstruções. E essa capacidade de obstrução garantirá que o Partido Republicano continue a receber grande quantidade de dólares corporativos: este ano a Câmara depositou muito dinheiro nas campanhas dos republicanos no Senado, na esperança de negar aos democratas uma maioria suficiente para aprovar leis.

No entanto, a longa transformação do Partido Republicano em partido da direita irracional, santuário de racistas e reacionários, é um processo que será acelerado como resultado da derrota. Isso confrontará os conservadores moderados com um dilema.

Muitos passaram os anos de Bush imersos na negação, fechando seus olhos para a desonestidade e para o desprezo pela lei. Alguns tentaram manter-se mergulhados nessa negação durante as eleições deste ano, mesmo quando as táticas de McCain se tornaram cada vez mais sujas. Um dia, porém, eles serão obrigados a concluir que o Partido Republicano se tornou o partido da intolerância.

* Paul Krugman é colunista do ‘The New York Times’

Blog de Paul Krugman do New York Times

House votes no. Rex Nutting has the best line: House to Wall Street: Drop Dead. He also correctly places the blame and/or credit with House Republicans. For reasons I’ve already explained, I don’t think the Dem leadership was in a position to craft a bill that would have achieved overwhelming Democratic support, so make or break was whether enough GOPers would sign on. They didn’t.I assume Pelosi calls a new vote; but if it fails, then what? I guess write a bill that is actually, you know, a good plan, and try to pass it — though politically it might not make sense to try until after the election. For now, I’m just going to quote myself:

So what we now have is non-functional government in the face of a major crisis, because Congress includes a quorum of crazies and nobody trusts the White House an inch.

As a friend said last night, we’ve become a banana republic with nukes.

By Dan Balz – Washington post

If Hillary Clinton hopes to prove she should be the Democratic nominee, today is the day to show it.

The political environment heading into Tuesday’s primaries in Indiana and North Carolina has been ideal from Clinton’s perspective. Barack Obama has been on the defensive over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the issue terrain is better than she could ask for.

Indiana is as close to a toss-up state as the Democrats have seen in a long time, giving Clinton the chance to demonstrate superiority in a head-to-head competition. North Carolina seemingly offers her an opportunity to embarrass Obama — if in no other way than by holding down his expected victory margin — in what should be solid territory for him.

Obama spent last week trying to shake the Rev. Jeremiah Wright off his back. His decision to break with his former pastor won applause from some Democrats and earned him superdelegate support. But Obama strategists know the issue has not gone away. As one Republican put it Monday, when you spend the first 20 minutes of “Meet The Press” answering questions about your pastor, you know you’ve still got a problem.

Economic issues, the staple of Clintonian politics, are at the center of the campaign now. Whenever Iraq dominated the debate, Clinton was on the defensive because of her vote to authorize the war. But Iraq, while important, has receded. Rising gasoline prices, the home foreclosure crisis, fears of job losses and recession, and, as ever, the cost and availability of health care, play to her inherent strengths as a champion of the middle class.

Obama has been dogged with question: Why didn’t he break with Wright sooner? Why can’t he win working-class white voters? Why does Clinton beat him in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania when he is heavily outspending her? The concentration on his problems has turned Indiana and North Carolina into tests he must pass — or face more questions about whether his once high-flying campaign has been permanently brought back to ground.

Clinton has largely escaped intensive scrutiny. Not, of course, on her gas tax holiday proposal. Economists and Obama have roundly criticized that idea, but to her apparent relish. Other ideas she has thrown out — putting OPEC in the dock at the World Trade Organization, for one — have not been well scrubbed. That is what happens when (a) you have won recent contests and (b) your chances of becoming the nominee are seen as remote.

As part of Post’s the “8 Questions” project that runs in Tuesday’s newspaper, I asked a group of strategists a ninth question: Has the emergence of the economy as the dominant issue in the election made Clinton a stronger general election candidate than Obama? Or do her high negatives make Obama the party’s better choice?

More of the respondents said her high negatives remained such a problem that Obama was likely the stronger general election nominee, despite the shift in the issue terrain.

Those who said yes cited the Clintons’ long history on the economy. “What’s left of the Clinton brand remains economic common sense,” wrote one Democrat. “Economy has allowed HRC to shine with her depth of knowledge and feel for the economy [and] has highlighted Obama’s weakness,” wrote a pro-Clinton Democrat.

But they were in the minority. Bill Carrick, who was a top strategist in Dick Gephardt’s 2004 campaign, which was heavily focused on the economy, said Obama is still the party’s better choice. “Senator Clinton has adjusted to the ascendancy of economic issues with great skill but her negatives have gone even higher as the campaign has become nastier,” he wrote. “Obama is still better positioned for the general election.”

“The nominee has to be able to say, ‘John McCain supports all of George Bush’s economic policies. I’m going to make the economy work for the middle class again,’” wrote Steve Murphy, another ex-Gephardt adviser who was part of Bill Richardson’s campaign team this year. “I think Obama can handle that.”

Can Clinton overcome those perceptions, which may be a major obstacle for superdelegates? One Democratic strategist offered this thought on Monday. “If she performs higher than expected [in areas where her negatives are high], it might suggest that folks are starting to believe she is the better general election candidate and are willing to put aside their negative assumptions about her.”

That makes Indiana and North Carolina so important to Clinton. She needs strong performances — victory in Indiana and a close finish in North Carolina — to prompt a reappraisal of her general election prospects by the remaining uncommitted superdelegates.

After Tuesday, there will be no real opportunity for her to change the race. The remaining states offer predictable outcomes and the delegate math remains all in Obama’s favor. Whether she will risk a bloody rules or credentials fight over Michigan and Florida is not clear right now, but as one Democrat put it, Clinton probably doesn’t have the time to overtake Obama and still unify the party.

Still, the past week has played to her advantage and she has campaigned as if she knows it. A slow grind to the final primaries on June 3 is not in her interest. If she cannot capitalize in Indiana and North Carolina, there’s little reason to think she will be given another opportunity like this during the rest of the campaign to demonstrate why she should be the nominee. That’s why May 6 long has been circled on calendars as so significant.

By ADAM NAGOURNEY – THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Democratic Party may prove to have been the real loser in the Pennsylvania primary on Tuesday.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York defeated Senator Barack Obama of Illinois by enough of a margin to continue a battle that Democrats increasingly believe is undermining their effort to unify the party and prepare for the general election against Senator John McCain of Arizona.

That worry was confirmed in exit polls that again highlighted the racial, economic, gender and values divisions in the party that Republicans would no doubt try to exploit if Mr. Obama won the nomination.

To take one example, only 50 percent of Democratic Catholic voters who attend church weekly said they would vote for Mr. Obama in a general election; 25 percent said would vote for Mr. McCain.

“This is exactly what I was afraid was going to happen,” said Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a Democrat who has not endorsed anyone in the race. “They are going to just keep standing there and pounding each other and bloodying each other, and no one is winning. It underlines the need to find some way to bring this to conclusion.”

The Democratic Party, so energized and optimistic just a few months ago, thus finds itself in a position few would have expected: a nomination battle unresolved, with two candidates engaged in increasingly damaging attacks. At a time when the Democratic Party would dearly like to turn its attention to Mr. McCain, it now faces at least two more weeks of campaigning — and perhaps considerably more — risking continued damage to the images of both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama.

That said, the fears confronting Democrats could be swept away reasonably soon. Mrs. Clinton still faces immense hurdles to securing the nomination, and it remains possible that her candidacy could come to an end in as little as two weeks, when Indiana and North Carolina vote. Should that be the case, the Democratic Party would presumably have the time and the motivation to heal its wounds.

“We have problems going both ways, but that is going to get healed,” said Joe Trippi, who was a senior adviser to the presidential campaign of John Edwards of North Carolina, who quit the race earlier this year. “If it doesn’t get healed, we have problems.”

Still, the voting patterns on Tuesday underlined what has been one of Mrs. Clinton’s central arguments to Democratic Party leaders in asserting that Mr. Obama would have trouble as a general election candidate. Once again, as in Ohio six weeks ago, he is struggling to win support from the kinds of voters that could be critical to a Democratic victory in the fall. Mrs. Clinton posed the question bluntly on Tuesday.

“Considering his financial advantage, the question ought to be, why can’t he close the deal?” Mrs. Clinton said outside a polling place in a northern suburb of Philadelphia. “Why can’t he win in a state like this?”

Mr. Obama continues to hold a lead over Mrs. Clinton in the total popular vote cast, as well as in pledged delegates. Those factors will weigh heavily on the superdelegates, elected Democrats and party leaders whose votes will be needed to give Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Obama the 2,025 total to claim the nomination.

Still, there were some worrisome signs for Mr. Obama after what has been several rough weeks for him on the campaign trail. At the least, he would have some work to do going into the fall if he wins the nomination, a point made even by his supporters.

“The negative attacks have had a little damage,” said Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico. “I do believe it’s recoverable, mainly because of his theme of unity and bringing people together. But it has brought a little bit of damage.”

Mr. Richardson, reflecting the general concern among Democrats about the campaign, added: “I also believe Senator Clinton’s negative attacks have hurt her as well, as recent polls have shown.”

The results of the exit poll, conducted at 40 precincts across Pennsylvania by Edison/Mitofsky for the television networks and The Associated Press, also found stark evidence that Mr. Obama’s race could be a problem in the general election. Sixteen percent of white voters said race mattered in deciding who they voted for, and just 56 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election; 27 percent of them said they would vote for Mr. McCain if Mr. Obama was the Democratic nominee, and 15 percent said they would not vote at all.

After weeks in which Mr. Obama was pressed to explain what his opponents sought to characterize as disparaging remarks about gun owners and church-goers, Mrs. Clinton defeated him among those voters.

About 15 percent of Democratic voters said they would vote for Mr. McCain over Mr. Obama in a general election. Mrs. Clinton defeated Mr. Obama overwhelmingly among Catholics, a constituency that will be critical in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“There are issues people raise about him, and there are also issues they raise about Senator Clinton,” Mr. Bredesen said. “They both have great strengths and they also have weaknesses. The sooner it is we end this and try to figure out how to address those weaknesses, the better.”

Mrs. Clinton was quick to vow that she would push on to the next big races in Indiana and North Carolina. Yet if the outcome threw her enough of a line to keep going, it probably did not do much to help her accomplish two of her top goals: narrowing Mr. Obama’s overall lead in the popular vote, or his lead in delegates elected in caucuses and primaries to date.

But Mrs. Clinton faces some tough obstacles. Her campaign is effectively out of money, and the results Tuesday may not make it that much easier to raise money

“She needed a big win because a big win might spark the $30 million or $40 million coming into her that she is going to need to compete in Indiana, North Carolina, Oregon and West Virginia,” Mr. Trippi said.

Megan Thee, Marjorie Connelly and John M. Broder contributed reporting.

Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. presented a series of proposals to overhaul the regulation of Wall Street on Monday in Washington.

By STEPHEN LABATON – The New York Times

Published: March 31, 2008

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. on Monday formally laid out an ambitious plan to overhaul the regulatory apparatus that oversees the nation’s financial system. Senior lawmakers and industry lobbyists predicted that most of the plan would run into difficulty.

The product of a lame-duck Republican administration facing a Democratically controlled Congress, the plan would consolidate federal agencies that regulate the nation’s securities and commodities futures markets and eliminate a third agency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, which oversees savings and loans. It proposes to create a commission that would set new minimum licensing standards for mortgage originators.

By his own account, Mr. Paulson, along with other senior officials, do not want lawmakers to act on the proposal until after the housing crisis is over — and that is likely to be after a new president takes office.

“Some may view these recommendations as a response to the circumstances of the day,” Mr. Paulson said in a speech Monday at the Treasury Department. “That is not how they are intended.”

Democratic leaders are already drafting bills to impose tougher supervision over Wall Street, and some say that Mr. Paulson’s plan does not go far enough in reining in risky practices among banks.

Insurance and some banking groups began over the weekend to formulate plans to oppose various provisions. And several features were criticized by regulators appointed by the Bush administration.

Senior lawmakers, while praising the administration for raising important points for further discussion, said the odds of a major overhaul in the remaining days of the Congressional session were long.

“Since this is opening day in baseball, I might as well make a baseball metaphor,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who heads the Senate banking committee. “This is a wild pitch. It is not even close to the strike zone.”

Mr. Dodd and other Democrats were hoping to move legislation this week that would help homeowners facing foreclosure.

Still, elements of the Paulson plan — including a proposal to expand the authority of the Federal Reserve to examine investment banks and other financial institutions that have previously roamed free of federal oversight — clearly speak to the recent tumult on Wall Street that has hurt the economy. And President Bush, through his spokeswoman, urged Congress to quickly approve the proposed changes.

“Secretary Paulson has been working on this package for about a year, so it’s not like pulling a rabbit out of a hat,” Dana Perino, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One on Monday.

The administration’s proposal will do almost nothing to regulate the alphabet soup of sophisticated financial products that have fueled the financial crisis. And it will not rein in practices that have been linked to the mortgage crisis, like packaging risky loans into securities carrying the highest ratings.

Hedge funds and private equity firms, which have enjoyed freedom from government oversight for years, would finally fall under federal watch. But that oversight would be minimal, enabling the government to do little beyond collecting information until a widescale crisis has already occurred.

The checks and balances in the plan reflect the mindset of Mr. Paulson, the plan’s architect, who came to Washington after a long career on Wall Street, including a stint as chief executive of Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Paulson has worried that any effort to substantially tighten regulation could hamper the ability of American markets to compete with foreign rivals — and, in fact, the proposal stemmed from a series of policy discussions that began well before the current tumult that has rocked the nation’s economic underpinnings.

The plan began last year as an effort by Mr. Paulson to streamline the different and sometimes clashing rules for commercial banks, savings and loans and nonbank mortgage lenders.

“This blueprint addresses complex, long-term issues that should not be decided in the midst of stressful situations,” Mr. Paulson said in his remarks on Monday. “These long-term ideas require thoughtful discussion and will not be resolved this month or even this year.”

Mr. Paulson also deflected blame for the current tumult away from the Bush administration. “I do not believe it is fair or accurate to blame our regulatory structure for the current turmoil,” he said.

Under the plan, the Fed would have some authority over Wall Street firms, but only when an investment bank’s practices threatened the financial system as a whole. The Fed would be able to examine internal bookkeeping of brokerage firms, hedge funds, commodity-trading exchanges and any other institution that might pose a risk to the overall financial system.

The plan would also merge the Securities and Exchange Commission with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates exchange-traded futures for oil, grains, currencies and the like. And the blueprint suggests several areas where the S.E.C. should take a lighter approach to its oversight, including allowing stock exchanges greater leeway to regulate themselves.

Some agencies within Washington’s patchwork system of financial regulation would be consolidated. One new agency, which the Treasury calls a “prudential financial regulator,” would focus on the safety of financial institutions that have explicit government guarantees. The other watchdog would oversee business conduct to protect public investors and customers of financial firms.

Congress would have to approve almost every element of the proposal, and Democratic leaders are already drafting their own bills to impose tougher supervision over Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and the fast-growing market in derivatives like credit default swaps.

Administration officials acknowledged last week that they did not expect the proposal to become law this year, but said they hoped it would help frame a policy debate that would extend well after the elections in November.

Em bate-papo organizado pelo jornal francês Le Monde pode-se acompanhar o debate interno para a escolha do candidato Democrata e as relações de ambos aspirantes, Obama e Hillary, com os eleitores e com a máquina do partido. Tudo caminha para uma decisão na própria convenção e com peso maior dos delegados do aparelho partidário. Hillary Clinton já anunciou que escolhera Obama como Vice em caso de vitória dela. Por sua parte, Obama permanece mudo sobre está questão. O bate-papo esta em francês e contou com a participação de um pesquisador da Universidade de Harvard.

L’intégralité du débat avec Arthur Goldhammer, chercheur au Center for European Studies à l’université de Harvard, et auteur du blog French politics

Xavier : Quelle est, selon vous, la raison principale du retournement de situation actuel en faveur d’Hillary Clinton ? Ses attaques répétées contre la campagne de son concurrent ont-elles joué un rôle ?

Arthur Goldhammer : Je crois qu’il y a beaucoup de raisons à ce retournement. Ce n’est pas facile d’en choisir une. D’abord, il y a la question de l’expérience. Une publicité de la campagne Clinton évoquait la peur d’avoir à la Maison Blanche quelqu’un qui manquait d’expérience en matière de sécurité nationale. Cette question de l’expérience est peut-être la raison principale.

Mais d’après les sondages de sortie des urnes, une question très importante pour les électeurs de l’Ohio a été l’économie. Il y a eu une faute grave du conseiller d’Obama pour l’économie, qui a eu une réunion avec un membre du consulat canadien à Chicago. Il a alors évoqué la question du traité de libre-échange de l’Amérique du Nord (Alena). Pour les électeurs de l’Ohio, c’était une question importante, souvent synonyme de perte d’emplois. Beaucoup ont cru qu’Obama tenait un double langage sur ce traité. La campagne de Clinton a mis l’accent sur cette question, et cela a porté, à mon avis.

(mais…)

Este artigo vale a pena, apesar de cumprido e só acessível a quem lê inglês. Ele permite acompanhar a evolução do processo eleitoral norte-americano e sua relação com o impacto da crise econômica na população do pais. Ele reforça minha convicção que um presidente democrata será eleito em novembro, mas muito dependerá da mensagem sobre a crise. Por enquanto, se como mostra o artigo, os candidatos Republicanos estão fora da realidade, os principais candidatos democratas permanecem com posições vagas. Os Estados-Unidos vão precisar muito mais que generalidades e os eleitores estarão muito sensíveis aos efeitos da crise.

(mais…)

ELECTION RESULTS

New Hampshire

Democrats	Vote
Clinton	110,550	39%
Obama	102,883	36%
Edwards	47,803	17
Richardson	12,987	5
96% reporting

Republicans	Vote
McCain	86,802	37%
Romney	73,806	32%
Huckabee	26,035	11
Giuliani	20,054	9
96% reporting

Comebacks in New Hampshire Revive Campaigns

Doug Mills/The New York Times
Hillary and Bill Clinton after Mrs. Clinton won the Democratic primary
Tuesday night in Manchester, N.H.

 

By PATRICK HEALY and MICHAEL COOPER

The New York Times
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York rode a wave of female support to a surprise victory over Senator Barack Obama in the New Hampshire Democratic primary on Tuesday night. In the Republican primary, Senator John McCain of Arizona revived his presidential bid with a Lazarus-like victory.
(mais…)

Ricardo Balthazar

Valor

Mike Huckabee, o ex-pastor evangélico e candidato a presidente que virou a sensação da temporada no Partido Republicano, conhece a Bíblia de trás para frente. Na semana passada, quando um repórter de TV perguntou o que ele achava dos adversários, Huckabee recorreu ao versículo 17 do capítulo 54 do livro de Isaías, um dos profetas do Antigo Testamento.

“Toda arma forjada contra ti não prosperará; toda língua que ousar contra ti em juízo, tu a condenarás”, diz a passagem. Esse tipo de retórica costuma agradar num partido em que os evangélicos são metade do eleitorado. Mas será preciso bem mais do que isso para vencer os diversos obstáculos que Huckabee e os republicanos enfrentarão na corrida à Casa Branca.

Sete candidatos brigam pela indicação do partido para concorrer na eleição presidencial de novembro do ano que vem. Huckabee e outros quatro têm chances. A disputa está tão embolada que alguns comentaristas começaram a cogitar a possibilidade de que a indefinição se prolongue por meses, e que o candidato republicano só seja conhecido em setembro, na convenção nacional da legenda.

(mais…)

On the back of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani refashioned himself as a national hero, a top presidential candidate—and, through his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, became a very wealthy man. But the questionable backgrounds of some of the firm’s clients make one wonder what Rudy wouldn’t do to make a buck. As Giuliani’s former crony Bernard Kerik faces trial, the author uncovers troubling signs of greed, poor judgment, and conflict of interest.

by Michael Shnayerson January 2008

Vanity Fair

Giuliani has failed to mention that certain policies
he champions would benefit clients of his firm.
Photographs by Nigel Parry/CPi.

(mais…)

On the back of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani refashioned himself as a national hero, a top presidential candidate—and, through his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, became a very wealthy man. But the questionable backgrounds of some of the firm’s clients make one wonder what Rudy wouldn’t do to make a buck. As Giuliani’s former crony Bernard Kerik faces trial, the author uncovers troubling signs of greed, poor judgment, and conflict of interest.

by Michael Shnayerson January 2008

Vanity Fair

Giuliani has failed to mention that certain policies
he champions would benefit clients of his firm.
Photographs by Nigel Parry/CPi.

On a late-spring day in 2001, Rudy Giuliani’s divorce lawyer stood on the steps of the New York State Supreme Court Building and told reporters the shocking truth. His client, the mayor of the city—beleaguered by an angry wife who wanted more money—had only $7,000 to his name.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite the truth. Just a year earlier, the mayor had $400,000 to $800,000 in pension and retirement funds due him, and now he had a $3 million book deal. Still, in New York City, what was that for a powerful man of 57? Not much.

Three months later came 9/11.

Whatever deal Donna Hanover finally struck to end her marriage, she must feel cheated, because Giuliani is now worth somewhere between $18 million and $70 million. A chunk of his personal fortune has come from giving speeches, month after month, for a standard fee of $100,000. Much of it, though, has been earned as founder and chief rainmaker of his consulting company, Giuliani Partners. Headquartered in a 24th-floor office overlooking Times Square, it has reportedly earned more than $100 million in the past six years.

That office is a cheery one, filled with sports mementos (a wooden seat from the old Yankee Stadium, a football signed by Jets legend Joe Namath), the accoutrements of the ex-mayor’s passions (among them a beautiful wooden humidor for expensive cigars), and, on almost every flat surface, silver-framed photographs of his 53-year-old third wife, Judith Nathan. On his wooden desk sits a little sign with the inscription i’m responsible. It was here, over these last six years, that Giuliani placed calls to make things happen for his clients—many of them engaged in some aspect of the security industry that boomed as a direct result of 9/11.

Giuliani’s firm capitalizes on his 9/11 experience by specializing in security technologies.

These days Giuliani’s office sits mostly empty as he canvasses the country for money and votes in his bid to become the Republican nominee for president in 2008. Is he even still working for Giuliani Partners? It’s a relevant question, because if he isn’t—and, really, how could he be in these busy weeks of campaigning before the first Republican presidential primaries?—then he shouldn’t be drawing a salary from the firm. According to a former top Federal Election Commission official, that would be a breach of election law: the firm would in effect be making undeclared campaign contributions.

The answer, from Giuliani Partners C.E.O. Mike Hess, is that “Rudy is no longer involved in the day-to-day operations of Giuliani Partners. He maintains his ownership interest.” To the point of whether Giuliani is still earning money from Giuliani Partners, the answer seems a bit delphic, especially after a Washington Post article from October 30, in which Giuliani Partners spokeswoman Sunny Mindel described Giuliani as still working part-time for the company.

To anyone who has followed Giuliani’s meteoric rise in business, that dodge is unsurprising. There are, it seems, at least two Rudolph Giulianis. One is the crusading former U.S. attorney and 9/11-bedecked ex-mayor of New York, cloaked in the six core values prominently featured on Giuliani Partners’ Web site: Integrity. Optimism. Courage. Preparedness. Communication. Accountability.

The other Rudy Giuliani is the one who has brazenly built a business on his 9/11 fame. Some of his clients have been large, established companies, such as Aon, the global risk-management firm that lost 175 people in the World Trade Center attack; Entergy, which operates nuclear power plants; and Delta Airlines and U.S. Airways. But a number have been scrappy little penny-stock start-ups, one of them backed by an S.E.C.-disciplined stock swindler. These are the players who have needed Giuliani most, to promote them, to open doors for them in government or business, or merely to lend them his name, at a very high price, so they can boost their stock or get bought by bigger fish. In doing business with these companies, Giuliani has sometimes created at least an appearance of poor judgment, or greed, or both. But if the crusading ex–U.S. attorney understands the importance of appearances, the other Rudy Giuliani seems oblivious to them.

More…

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign aides are considered especially adept at beating back attacks that they consider untrue or unfair.

Photo Credit: AP

By Howard Kurtz

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 24, 2007; Page A06

On the evening of Nov. 16, Phil Singer, a spokesman for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, got a tip from a journalist about a Robert D. Novak column that would be published the next day.

At 11:40 the following morning, when Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) put out a statement on the thinly sourced item — which charged that the Democratic senator from New York was sitting on “scandalous” information about her rival — the Clinton team was ready.

“Once again Senator Obama is echoing Republican talking points, this time from Bob Novak,” Clinton communications chief Howard Wolfson e-mailed reporters.

After another statement from Obama, who demanded that Clinton refute the charge, Wolfson fired again: “It’s telling that the Obama campaign would rather spend the day throwing mud in Bob Novak’s sandbox than talking about the issues.” And for good measure, the campaign recycled some of its greatest hits against Obama on a newly launched Web site dubbed “The Fact Hub.”

Every presidential campaign finds itself dealing with allegations, exaggerations and rumors that require a quick response. But journalists say that Clinton campaign officials are the fastest and fiercest at pushing back against media accounts that they regard as unfair or inaccurate.

“We live in a minute-to-minute media culture,” Wolfson said. “What may seem like a small story one day could snowball into a larger story the next day. Left unchecked, false stories can take on a life of their own.”

Obama has also been the subject of unsubstantiated reports, such as a claim by a conservative Web site that he had not put his hand on his heart in Iowa during a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. The Obama camp explained that a Time photo of the event — which showed Clinton and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) with hands on their hearts — was taken during the singing of the national anthem.

“Untrue rumors need to be beaten back,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “Often the media spend too much time focusing on the superfluous.”

Strategists for Obama believe that Clinton could have defused the three-paragraph Novak item by notifying Obama’s staff to say that it was untrue. “I think we pretty effectively took this issue head-on and were able to put it to bed,” Burton said.

Bill Clinton honed the art of rapid response in his 1992 campaign, as memorialized in the movie “The War Room.” President Bush’s campaigns were known for even swifter reactions to criticism, as blast faxes gave way to BlackBerry messages and technology fostered a nonstop news cycle.

As a former first lady who lived through numerous scandals in her husband’s White House, Hillary Clinton seems determined to avoid the fate of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the 2004 Democratic nominee, who later admitted he was too slow to respond to attacks on his Vietnam War record by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

“One of the greatest strengths of the Clinton campaign is they’ve internalized and updated the lessons of 1992 for the new media era,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican campaign veteran. “When it comes to rapid response, you can’t be too fast, but you can certainly be too hysterical. It’s important to get information into reporters’ hands as quickly as possible, but you don’t want to be the deputy press

The Clinton camp unleashed the heavy artillery on Nov. 8. Singer was driving to the Arlington headquarters that morning when he heard part of a National Public Radio report on two women whose lives had been touched by the campaign. At the office, Singer learned that he had missed an interview with a waitress at a Maid-Rite sandwich shop in Toledo, Iowa, who said that “nobody got left a tip” after Clinton ate a loose-meat sandwich at the lunch counter.

As the tale, powered by a link on the Drudge Report, ricocheted across the Internet, Clinton staffers tracked down those who were at the restaurant, including the aide who paid the bill with his credit card.

“The Clinton campaign was upset that we hadn’t called them to talk about the tip,” said NPR reporter David Greene, who acknowledged that he should have checked further. “We weren’t trying to do gotcha journalism.”

Singer sent off an e-mail to NPR: “The campaign spent $157 and left a $100 tip at the Maid-Rite Restaurant. Wish you had checked in with us beforehand.” As the Republican National Committee began e-mailing the NPR report to the press, Clinton staffers contacted reporters and got their denials onto blogs at the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and the New York Times and other media outlets. An aide was also dispatched to hand the waitress $20.

“The first version of a story is incorrect, it gets pounced on, your opponents jump on it, and trying to get the toothpaste back in the tube is almost impossible,” said Jay Carson, Clinton’s traveling press secretary. “All of a sudden you have reputable news organizations chasing it.” With the tip yarn, he said, “you’re in the middle of a full-fledged controversy over something that didn’t really happen.”

The Clinton campaign isn’t reticent about challenging news reports that turn on interpretation, either, and critics have likened its aggressive tactics to those of the Bush White House, which has had tense relations with the press corps.

“Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke,” the New Republic says.

Clinton aides know they run the risk of highlighting small items that might otherwise receive scant attention but have concluded that, most of the time, that is an acceptable risk. “Vigilance is very important,” Wolfson said. “I think Democratic voters expect a nominee’s campaign to know how to correct the record.”

Uma reflexão que poderia servir tambem para o Brasil. O livro concerne a politica nos Estados-Unidos, porem me provoca uma curiosa simetria, mesmo em se tratando de dois países bem diferentesBy MICHIKO KAKUTANI

The New York Times

During President George W. Bush’s first term, one of his senior political advisers summed up the prevailing philosophy at the White House like this: “This is not designed to be a 55 percent presidency,” he said. “This is designed to be a presidency that moves as much as possible of what we believe into law while holding 50 plus one of the country and the Congress.” Bold ideas that could mobilize his conservative Republican base were prized over efforts to convince independent voters in the center; sharp divisions over the administration’s policies were regarded as proof of Mr. Bush’s decisiveness and willingness to challenge conventional thinking.

 

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Ellen McMenamin

Ronald Brownstein

 

 

 

THE SECOND CIVIL WAR

How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America

By Ronald Brownstein

484 pages. The Penguin Press. $27.95.

 

Related

‘The Second Civil War,’ by Ronald Brownstein: Extreme Politics (November 11, 2007)

Lars Klove for The New York Times

 

As the veteran political reporter Ronald Brownstein observes in his timely and compelling new book, this is very much how President Bush has governed: “In his congressional strategy he consistently demonstrated that he would rather pass legislation as close as possible to his preferences on a virtually party-line basis than make concessions to reduce political tensions or broaden his support among Democrats.” And in his dealings with both Congress and other nations before the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Brownstein goes on, Mr. Bush “sought not to construct a consensus for a common direction on Iraq, but rather to obtain acquiescence for the undeviating direction he had charted in his own mind.”

Mr. Bush’s failure to build a broad coalition of public support would contribute to his precipitous slide in public opinion, as the war bogged down; and his administration’s highly partisan approach to governing would fuel efforts on the part of liberal activists to push the Democratic Party into a more confrontational, adversarial stance as well. Indeed, as Mr. Brownstein notes in “The Second Civil War,” America has entered what Ken Mehlman, the campaign manager for Mr. Bush in 2004, calls an era of “hyperpartisanship.”

“The ideological differences between the parties are as great as at any time in the past century,” Mr. Brownstein writes. “But the country is split almost exactly in half between the two sides. Deeply and closely divided is an unprecedented and explosive combination.”

While voters for the losing side always feel unrepresented when the other party wins unified control over the government, he says, they used to be able to look to heretics in the majority coalition who championed an approximation of their views, but with waning numbers of these mavericks — i.e., liberal Republicans or conservative Democrats, who moderated their parties’ stands — this option is increasingly unavailable. Moreover, as activists on both sides have come to exert more leverage on their parties, bipartisan cooperation is scorned, and big issues requiring comprehensive solutions (like health care and immigration reform) are sidelined in the standoff.

Although many of these developments might seem obvious to anyone who follows politics, Mr. Brownstein — a longtime political correspondent and columnist for The Los Angeles Times, and now political director of Atlantic Media Company — does a highly nuanced job of dissecting this alarming phenomenon, while eloquently situating it within a historical context and examining its palpable consequences for the country at large.

Mr. Brownstein contrasts the current age of “hyperpartisanship” with the “age of bargaining,” during which Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson (at least until his landslide victory in 1964) worked and negotiated, usually by necessity, with opponents on the other side of the political aisle. While this system tended to make for incremental, rather than revolutionary, reform, Mr. Brownstein says, “it compelled political leaders who held contrasting views and represented differing constituencies to talk and listen to each other.” It could also lead to big, overarching policy making: most notably, a bipartisan strategy for resisting the Soviet Union and contesting the cold war.

During what Mr. Brownstein calls “the age of Transition,” Nixon warred with the Democrats over foreign policy but cooperated with them on many domestic issues, leading to an extension of the Voting Rights Act, the end of the draft, the 18-year-old vote, the Consumer Product Safety Act and a variety of environmental legislation. Reagan’s presidency, he says, “unleashed ideological energies that widened the distance between the parties and escalated the conflicts between them.”

But at the same time, he adds, Reagan’s “political and personal tendencies were integrative, not divisive,” and he “mostly sought not to deepen ideological or partisan differences but to transcend them in an appeal to shared assumptions” about “individualism at home and American exceptionalism in the world.”

As for President Bill Clinton, Mr. Brownstein credits him with trying to rebuild a political majority for the Democratic Party by synthesizing priorities from the left and right and integrating ideas from a broad spectrum of thinkers and interests. But if Mr. Clinton managed some important centrist achievements — including a crime bill, the passage of Nafta and welfare reform — he also personally became (especially in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal) a flash point for controversy, which “accelerated the trend toward a political alignment that divided the nation more along lines of culture than class.”

In fact, Mr. Brownstein argues that the House vote to impeach Mr. Clinton — marked by vociferous partisan confrontation, and the explicit rejection of any compromise (like censure) that might have united the parties and the country — may well signify “the final, full transition into the political era” of hyperpartisanship in which we now live.

In the course of this book Mr. Brownstein astutely examines the many factors that contributed to this development: the emergence in the ’60s and ’70s of interest groups on both the left and right (representing everything from women’s and gay rights to anti-abortion and anti-gun-control interests), which would exert growing influence on Washington; the abandonment of the seniority principle in Congress, which meant, in Mr. Brownstein’s words, that “everyone was judged every day on how often they voted with their party, how much money they raised for their colleagues, and how reliably they stood with their ‘team’ in rhetorical firefights against the other side”; the increasing homogenization within each of the parties, which saw a widening gap between Republicans and Democrats; and the growing partisanship of the media with the ascendance of talk radio, Internet blogs and cable news channels like Fox News.

In describing the history of partisanship in this country Mr. Brownstein writes with both an authoritative understanding of the political dynamics in Washington and a plain-spoken common sense. He points out the practical dangers of hyperpartisanship — how it has prevented America’s leaders from agreeing on everything from a comprehensive immigration plan to a strategy for reducing the country’s dependence on foreign oil to a long-term plan for securing Social Security. And he reminds us that while the country itself is not more divided than it has been in the past (especially when compared, say, with the 1960s or the 1860s), the nation’s current political system accentuates differences instead of bridging them.

In contemplating the possibility of building a political system that would be “less confrontational and more productive than today’s,” Mr. Brownstein explores a host of suggestions, including term limits for Supreme Court justices, the opening of all party primaries to independents, and the formation of a viable third party. Some of these suggestions may seem unrealistic, given the current state of politics. But the low approval rates for both the Bush White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress, combined with a growing conviction that the country is now off-track (an ABC News/Washington Post poll this month showed that 74 percent of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction), attest to the public’s dissatisfaction with legislative gridlock and poisonous fights over national security, social issues and Supreme Court appointments.

In the long term, Mr. Brownstein writes toward the end of this sobering book, “the party that seeks to encompass and harmonize the widest range of interests and perspectives is the one most likely to thrive. The overriding lesson for both parties from the Bush attempt to profit from polarization is that there remains no way to achieve lasting political power in a nation as diverse as America without assembling a broad coalition that locks arms to produce meaningful progress against the country’s problems.”

 

Eric Thayer for The New York Times

Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, right,
took his presidential campaign to voters’ doors in Des Moines last month

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: November 4, 2007
The New York Times

DES MOINES, Nov. 3 — With a year to go until Election Day, the Republican and Democratic Parties are going through internal battles over their very identity, even as the races for their presidential nominations intensify. In many ways, the battles over how the parties will define themselves in the post-Bush era are nearly as significant a political fight as the presidential contest itself.

The continued strength of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor who supports abortion rights and gay rights, is testing the question of whether social issues still drive Republican primary voters. Mr. Giuliani is talking about terrorism, cutting taxes, his record in managing New York City government — but he has made no serious effort to shade his positions to appeal to the social conservatives who helped reshape the party over the past three decades and helped President Bush win the White House twice.

Should Mr. Giuliani win the nomination, he would give the party a very different definition and face than the Southerners and evangelicals who have been ascendant until now.

The challenge to orthodoxy is slightly less marked on the Democratic side, where the party has tilted from the left to the center over the past 20 years. Tough talk about Iran by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has put her at odds with much of her party, and her nomination would suggest the party is willing to embrace a relatively hawkish foreign policy even as it promises to end the war in Iraq.

It typically falls to the nominee to provide the ideological framework for his or her party. That appears to be especially so this time, reflecting how both parties are somewhat adrift after eight years under Mr. Bush.

“The Republican Party is waiting for a nominee to voice a post-Bush vision for the party,” said Richard N. Bond, a former Republican National Committee chairman.

Of the two, the Republican Party seems to be at more of a turning point. Even if Mr. Giuliani fails to win the nomination, the fact that so many Republicans were willing to consider a candidate who was openly for abortion rights and gay rights — something that would have been unthinkable four years ago — suggests just how much the definition of what it means to be a Republican is changing.

On the Democratic side, the thirst to retake the White House is easing some of the party’s traditional internal divisions. “Ideological battles tend not to happen when parties believe they are going to win,” said Joe Andrews, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

Still, if Mrs. Clinton should win the nomination, her campaign so far suggests that she would follow in her husband’s footsteps by trying to bridge the divide between the party’s liberals and centrists. A victory by former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, whose campaign is being run and highly influenced by many of the same advisers who managed Howard Dean’s presidential campaign in 2004, would suggest the party is leaning more to the left.

For Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, it may be more a matter of tone than ideology. Mr. Obama has said he wanted to transcend partisanship even as he appeals for support from a party whose base has been hungry for partisan battle. Mr. Bond and others have suggested that a victory by Mr. Obama could produce the most striking change in the identity of the Democratic Party.

“Obama is in a position to reposition his party not only in terms of issues, but in terms of offering a more general embracing appeal,” Mr. Bond said.

More…

The Bush Effect:
The President as Asset, but Only to Democrats

Consider this tally: 47 to 2.

That’s the number of times Democrats invoked President Bush’s name during their most recent debate to the number of times Republicans mentioned him at theirs (and one of the two Republican mentions was criticism from Representative Ron Paul of Texas, an antiwar candidate). Such are the consequences of being one of the least popular presidents since the invention of modern polling.

Aside from Mr. Paul, the Republicans almost never directly criticize the president. They hardly talk about him at all. And when they do, it never seems to have much of a four-more-years ring to it. “Change Begins With Us,” is one of Mitt Romney’s slogans.

The Republicans are in a bind. The president’s approval rating was at 30 percent in a CBS News poll in mid-October, so to embrace him is to risk alienating voters in the general election. But the same poll found that more than two-thirds of Republican voters still approved of Mr. Bush’s job performance, so if the candidates are too critical of him they risk offending primary voters.

The candidates walk a tightrope, refraining from criticizing Mr. Bush while sometimes telegraphing their independence from him. Rudolph W. Giuliani praises Mr. Bush as keeping the nation safe even as he presents himself as a competent manager, perhaps to draw a contrast with the president. Senator John McCain says little about Mr. Bush, but is outspoken in his criticism of some members of the administration. Fred D. Thompson presents a basically optimistic view of the nation, but criticizes some Bush programs, like the No Child Left Behind law.

Mr. Bush faces a challenge of his own: How to stay relevant as coverage of the race to succeed him eclipses coverage of his presidency. While it is unclear how potent a fund-raiser he will prove, whether Republicans will ask him to campaign for them, or what role he will play at the convention, Mr. Bush may have shown a glimpse of his strategy in recent days as he stepped up his criticism of the Democratic Congress.
MICHAEL COOPER

The Money Race:
Democrats Find Favor With G.O.P. Mainstays

As if Republicans need more evidence that they are in for a tough 2008, even traditionally Republican industries are shifting more of their giving to Democrats this year, and especially to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who leads the Democrats in polls.

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which categorized contributions by industry, individuals working in the finance, insurance and real estate businesses have given $32.5 million, or 54 percent, of their contributions this year to Democratic presidential candidates. Mrs. Clinton alone received $12.1 million of that money.

A total of $28.2 million went to Republicans. Rudolph W. Giuliani, who leads the Republicans in national polls, received about $10.5 million.

The trends are even clearer when compared with 2004 (when there was only one Republican, President Bush, seeking contributions).

People working for energy and natural resources companies gave 80 percent of their presidential contributions to Mr. Bush in 2004. This year, 59 percent of their money has gone to Republicans. Mr. Giuliani has been the biggest recipient, with $818,000. Mrs. Clinton is second with $569,000.

The health care industry, which had a rocky history with the last Democratic administration, President Bill Clinton’s, has given $6.3 million to Democrats, including $2.6 million to Mrs. Clinton, more than any other candidate. It has given $4.8 million to Republicans.

The construction industry still favors Republicans but less than before. It put about 70 percent of its presidential money into Mr. Bush’s campaign in 2004 but has given just 59 percent of it to Republicans this year; Mr. Giuliani received $1.4 million, and Mrs. Clinton received $1.3 million.

Likewise, agribusiness, which gave to Republicans by a 3-to-1 ratio in 2004, has only slightly favored Republicans this year, with $3.2 million for presidential candidates. Mitt Romney received the most, $565,000, but Mrs. Clinton was close behind, with $524,000.
DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Rudy Giuliani

Este artigo trata do debate sobre saúde entre os candidatos a Presidente dos USA, ou melhor dito, trata da questão do caráter do candidato Republicano, Rudy Giuliani e do lugar da verdade na campanha eleitoral e na mídia.A mentira, disse Krugman, não é uma opinião diferente. Ela ilustra a personalidade do candidato e sua falta de escrúpulos, ou simplesmente sua ignorância. A mídia deveria tratar o fato como tal e não considerar isto uma questão de opinião.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

“My chance of surviving prostate cancer — and thank God I was cured of it — in the United States? Eighty-two percent,” says Rudy Giuliani in a new radio ad attacking Democratic plans for universal health care. “My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44 percent, under socialized medicine.”

It would be a stunning comparison if it were true. But it isn’t. And thereby hangs a tale — one of scare tactics, of the character of a man who would be president and, I’m sorry to say, about what’s wrong with political news coverage.

Let’s start with the facts: Mr. Giuliani’s claim is wrong on multiple levels — bogus numbers wrapped in an invalid comparison embedded in a smear.

Mr. Giuliani got his numbers from a recent article in City Journal, a publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute. The author gave no source for his numbers on five-year survival rates — the probability that someone diagnosed with prostate cancer would still be alive five years after the diagnosis. And they’re just wrong.

You see, the actual survival rate in Britain is 74.4 percent. That still looks a bit lower than the U.S. rate, but the difference turns out to be mainly a statistical illusion. The details are technical, but the bottom line is that a man’s chance of dying from prostate cancer is about the same in Britain as it is in America.

So Mr. Giuliani’s supposed killer statistic about the defects of “socialized medicine” is entirely false. In fact, there’s very little evidence that Americans get better health care than the British, which is amazing given the fact that Britain spends only 41 percent as much on health care per person as we do.

Anyway, comparisons with Britain have absolutely nothing to do with what the Democrats are proposing. In Britain, doctors are government employees; despite what Mr. Giuliani is suggesting, none of the Democratic candidates have proposed to make American doctors work for the government.

As a fact-check in The Washington Post put it: “The Clinton health care plan” — which is very similar to the Edwards and Obama plans — “has more in common with the Massachusetts plan signed into law by Gov. Mitt Romney than the British National Health system.” Of course, this hasn’t stopped Mr. Romney from making similar smears.

At one level, what Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney are doing here is engaging in time-honored scare tactics. For generations, conservatives have denounced every attempt to ensure that Americans receive needed health care, from Medicare to S-chip, as “socialized medicine.”

Part of the strategy has always involved claiming that health reform is suspect because it’s un-American, and exaggerating health care problems in other countries — usually on the basis of unsubstantiated anecdotes or fraudulent statistics. Opponents of reform also make a practice of lumping all forms of government intervention together, pretending that having the government pay some health care bills is just the same as having the government take over the whole health care system.

But here’s what I don’t understand: Why isn’t Mr. Giuliani’s behavior here considered not just a case of bad policy analysis but a character issue?

For better or (mostly) for worse, political reporting is dominated by the search for the supposedly revealing incident, in which the candidate says or does something that reveals his true character. And this incident surely seems to fit the bill.

Leave aside the fact that Mr. Giuliani is simply lying about what the Democrats are proposing; after all, Mitt Romney is doing the same thing.

But health care is the pre-eminent domestic issue for the 2008 election. Surely the American people deserve candidates who do their homework on the subject.

Yet what we actually have is the front-runner for the Republican nomination apparently basing his health-care views on something he read somewhere, which he believed without double-checking because it confirmed his prejudices.

By rights, then, Mr. Giuliani’s false claims about prostate cancer — which he has, by the way, continued to repeat, along with some fresh false claims about breast cancer — should be a major political scandal. As far as I can tell, however, they aren’t being treated that way.

To be fair, there has been some news coverage of the prostate affair. But it’s only a tiny fraction of the coverage received by Hillary’s laugh and John Edwards’s haircut.

And much of the coverage seems weirdly diffident. Memo to editors: If a candidate says something completely false, it’s not “in dispute.” It’s not the case that “Democrats say” they’re not advocating British-style socialized medicine; they aren’t.

The fact is that the prostate affair is part of a pattern: Mr. Giuliani has a habit of saying things, on issues that range from health care to national security, that are demonstrably untrue. And the American people have a right to know that.

Judith Warner for The New York Times

The shocks just keep on coming:

Hillary Clinton leads the Democratic field with 51 percent of the vote.

She beats Barack Obama by 24 percentage points among black Democrats.

She is projected now to beat Giuliani – or at the very least to be in a statistical dead heat with him in the general election.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. According to the received wisdom of those in-the-know here in Washington, Hillary was supposed to be divisive, unelectable, “radioactive.”

It was the fault of Bill and Monica, and the fact that you never knew when there was going to be another Bill and Monica. It was the fault of Hillary – for not taking the hard line on Bill and Monica the way a woman of her stature and standing was supposed to do. And it was the fault of voters – those people out there who would never, ever elect another Clinton.

Why? Because … everyone said so.

(“I think the one thing we know about Hillary, the one thing we absolutely know, bottom line, [is] she can`t win, right?” is how MSNBC host Tucker Carlson once put it to New Republic editor-at-large Peter Beinart. “She is unelectable.”)

The “we” world of Tucker Carlson knew what they knew about Hillary Clinton — right up until about this week, I think — because they spend an awful lot of time talking to, socializing with and interviewing one another.

What they don’t do all that much is venture outside of a certain set of zip codes to get a feel for the way most people are actually living. They don’t sign up for adjustable rate mortgages, visit emergency rooms to get their primary health care, leave their children in unlicensed day care or lose their jobs because they have to drive their mothers home from the hospital after hip replacement surgery.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters, it turns out, do.

Alongside the newest set of poll results showing Clinton’s surprising levels of popularity among lower- and middle-class women, white moderate women, even black voters, was another story this week, based on a new set of data from the I.R.S.

It showed that America’s most wealthy earn an even greater share of the nation’s income than they did in 2000, at the peak of the tech boom. The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported, earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005 (the latest date at which this data are available), up from the high of 20.8 percent they’d reached in the bull market of 2000. The bottom 50 percent of people earned 12.8 percent of all income, compared with 13 percent in 2000. And the median tax filer’s income fell 2 percent when adjusted for inflation (to about $31,000) between 2000 and 2005.

More and more people are being priced out of a middle class existence. Because of housing prices, because of health care costs, because of tax policy, because of the cost of child care, The Good Life – a life of relative comfort and financial security – is now, in many parts of the country, an upper-middle-class luxury.

Given all this, you would think that Clinton’s big policy announcement this week on improving life for working families would have been big news.

After all, it contained a number of huge new middle class entitlements: paid family leave and sick leave, most notably. There were a number of tried-and-true triggers for outrage from the right wing and the business community like government standards and quality controls for child care. There could have been debate stoked among the many childless workers who now feel parents are getting too much “special treatment” in the workplace (Clinton supports legislation to protect parents and pregnant women from job discrimination). At the very least, someone could have accused Clinton of trying to bring back welfare. (She supports subsidies for low-income parents who wish to stay home to raise their children.) Or someone could have questioned how realistic it really is to pay for all that – to the tune of $1.75 billion per year – simply by cracking down on the “abusive” use of tax shelters, as Clinton proposes to do.

But there was none of this. Clinton’s family policy speech in New Hampshire all but sank like a stone. If it was covered at all, it was often packaged as part of a feature on her attempts to curry favor with female voters. (“Clinton shows femininity,” read a Boston Globe headline.) It was as though the opinion-makers and agenda-setters, waiting with bated breath for Bill to slip up, just one more time, couldn’t see or hear the message to middle-class voters.

(“I do see you and I do hear you,” Clinton said in a speech on “rebuilding the middle class” earlier this month. “You’re not invisible to me.”)

In contemplating the disconnect, as I often have done, between Hillary and her upper-middle-class peers, I find myself thinking of psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

In Maslow’s theory of human motivation, needs were mapped out in a pyramid form. The broad array of physiological needs was at the bottom, followed by the almost equally wide range of safety needs: things like bodily and financial security, secure physical health and work, and property ownership. Transcendent needs, like truth, justice, wisdom and self-actualization, were in the tiniest triangle up at the top. As their “lower-level” needs were met, Maslow theorized, people moved up the pyramid; they did not – unless the material circumstances of their lives changed dramatically – move back.

The American middle class, it seems to me, is looking to politicians now to satisfy a pretty basic – and urgent – level of need. Yet people in the upper middle class — with their excellent health benefits, schools, salaries, retirement plans, nannies and private afterschool programs — have journeyed so far from that level of need that, it often seems to me, they literally cannot hear what resonates with the middle class. That creates a problematic blind spot for those who write, edit or produce what comes to be known about our politicians and their policies.

Having used that Maslow pyramid analogy, I want to make clear that I do not mean to impute to upper middle class people a “higher” (in the sense of “better”) form of political reasoning. I am merely trying to say that the wealth gap has brought an experience gap that is in turn producing a gap in perception — one that, I predict, will yield a wealth of surprises in this election period.

Hopefully, they’ll be good ones.

About Judith Warner

Judith Warner’s book, “Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety” (excerpt, NPR interview), a New York Times best-seller, was published in February 2005. She is currently the host of “The Judith Warner Show” on XM Satellite Radio. “Domestic Disturbances” appears every Friday.
Photo by: Jean-Louis Atlan

Par Guillemette Faure (Rue89)

L’ancien maire de New York Rudolph Giuliani n’a pas toujours porté la panoplie de pompier du 11 septembre. Avant les attentats de 2001, les New-Yorkais l’ont vu à plusieurs reprises habillé en femme. Il a enfilé escarpins et bas résille pour un numéro avec les Rockettes, des danseuses de revue. Il a porté une perruque blonde et du rouge à lèvres dans un numéro de Victor-Victoria avec Julie Andrews. Et il s’est affublé de gros seins contre lesquels Donald Trump a écrasé son nez. (Voir la vidéo.) L’occasion: la soirée du “Inner Circle Dinner”, un dîner traditionnel de la presse new-yorkaise à la fin duquel les politiques font leur show. Un exercice auquel Rudy Giuliani s’est toujours plié avec bonheur, comme le prouve cette autre vidéo. (Voir la vidéo.) Ses costumes travestis font partie de ses bagages de maire de New York, une ville plus tolérante et plus à gauche que le reste du pays. Pendant ses années à la mairie, Giuliani a aussi défilé à la Gay Pride. A l’époque de sa séparation avec sa deuxième femme, l’atmosphère de leur foyer était tellement orageuse qu’il était allé se réfugier chez un couple d’amis homosexuels.Politiquement, il a défendu le droit des femmes à l’avortement, une position à laquelle il a mis un bémol depuis son entrée dans la course à la Maison Blanche, mais qu’il n’a pas cependant reniée, contrairement à son adversaire l’ex-gouverneur Mitt Romney.Un candidat républicain plus souvent en robe qu’HillaryA trois mois des primaires des prochaines élections, l’homme en tête des candidats à la succession de George Bush, côté républicain, a, comme l’a écrit un chroniqueur américain, été vu plus souvent en robe qu’Hillary Clinton.

“Le succès de Giuliani à ce stade signifie que la droite chrétienne aboie plus fort qu’elle ne mord”, nous résume Alan Wolfe du Boston College: “Les républicains qui sont en tête des sondages sont des gens qui ne plaisent pas à la droite chrétienne.” Ainsi du sénateur John McCain qui, en 2000, traitait les leaders de la droite chrétienne d”agents d’intolérance’, ou Mitt Romney, parce qu’il est mormon.

A l’inverse, observe encore Wolfe, ceux qui pourraient plaire aux évangélistes peinent à décoller dans les sondages, comme l’ancien pasteur Mike Huckabee gouverneur d’Arkansas, ou le sénateur du Kansas Sam Brownback, le chouchou de la droite conservatrice, crédité d’1% des intentions de vote.

Les conservateurs semblent se déterminer sur d’autres critères que l’opposition à l’avortement et au mariage gay. On est loin des élections de 2004, lorsque Karl Rove, l’éminence grise de George Bush, avait mobilisé les électeurs évangélistes en agitant les épouvantails du mariage homosexuel et de l’avortement.Alan Wolfe n’hésite pas ainsi à prédire:

“Giuliani plait aux électeurs conservateurs qui croient en sa force sur les questions de sécurité nationale. On se souviendra de cette élection comme de celle où les évangélistes ont perdu leur influence au sein du parti républicain.”

Professeur à George Mason University, Mark Rozell voit une autre explication:

“Beaucoup de conservateurs évangélistes sont capables de surmonter leurs différends avec Giuliani. La raison? Les trois mots de la langue anglaise qui les effraient le plus: ‘président Hillary Clinton’.

“Ils veulent que le parti républicain garde le contrôle de la Maison Blanche, et éviter à tout prix un retour des Clinton. Ils préfèrent voter pour un candidat qui puisse gagner plutôt que de soutenir un candidat qui leur semble plus pur mais qui n’ait pas de chances de gagner.”

Les groupes évangélistes envisagent de soutenir un troisième candidat

La question divise la droite chrétienne. Plusieurs grandes figures évangélistes comme James Dobson, fondateur du groupe Focus on the Family envisagent, en cas de nomination de Giuliani, de soutenir un candidat d’un troisième parti. Stratégiquement, a expliqué James Dobson sur Fox News, une victoire d’Hillary ménagerait plus le pouvoir de la droite chrétienne qu’une de Giuliani:

“Si Rudy Giuliani gagne, je vous assure que le mouvement d’opposition à l’avortement est cuit. Alors que si c’est Hillary qui gagne, il y aura une mobilisation contre tout ce qu’elle voudra faire”.

Bill Sikes / AP

Democratic presidential hopefuls from left, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., former Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska arrive on stage for a debate at Dartmouth College on Wednesday.

Na longa campanha, candidatos à presidência dos EUA confundem o eleitorado, diz analista

Pedro Doria

O Estado de São Paulo

Na quinta-feira, os políticos que concorrem à candidatura presidencial pelo Partido Republicano se encontraram para um debate. Nem todos foram. Na quarta, foi a vez de os democratas se reunirem. Numa campanha tão longa – serão 18 meses no total – os debates parecem que nunca param. “Os candidatos falam, falam e dão a impressão de que nada dizem”, comenta o analista de mídia Todd Gitlin. Confundem o eleitor, que acaba fazendo uma opção mais pela forma do que pelos fatos.

Para o especialista, a má impressão é em parte responsabilidade da imprensa – para ele, “superficial, sensacionalista e mais preocupada com embates que produzam espetáculo” do que com conflitos entre idéias. Ainda assim, com o governo de George W. Bush desgastado, o escolhido pelos democratas deve vencer. “Há uma geração que os republicanos estão focados no objetivo de chegar ao poder”, diz Gitlin. Tiveram à disposição o dinheiro das grandes corporações e a disciplina da direita religiosa. Mas a militância democrata, organizada pela internet, pode mudar o jogo.

O que não muda é a natureza dos EUA, sempre mais conservador que o resto do Ocidente. “Foi o primeiro país moderno a fazer sua Revolução”, explica o professor. “O movimento conservador não quer que aquelas conquistas desapareçam.” A seguir, os principais pontos de sua entrevista para o Aliás.

OS CANDIDATOS

“Se você me perguntar o que cada candidato diz, eu não saberia.Estão todos os dias, todas as horas, nas TVs, nas rádios, nos jornais. Falam, falam e não dizem nada. Minha esperança é que, se prestarmos muita atenção, se lermos as transcrições de tudo que dizem, talvez descubramos que aqui e ali estejam conversando como adultos a respeito de temas importantes como impostos, saúde, educação. Porque a quantidade de coisas que falam é tão grande que, talvez, no balanço, algo de importante tenha sido dito.

CAMPANHA PRESIDENCIAL

“Ainda assim, e insisto que é apenas talvez, esta que está começando se mostre ligeiramente melhor que as campanhas presidenciais recentes. Digo isso porque será uma campanha longa, são 18 meses entre o anúncio das candidaturas e a eleição, e os candidatos têm tido muitas oportunidades para se encontrar, o que facilita o confronto de idéias. Por outro lado, debates que reúnem cinco ou dez políticos não são debates. São sabatinas da imprensa feitas consecutivamente.

MÍDIA

“A cobertura da imprensa se nivela por baixo. É superficial, sensacionalista, fofoqueira. Os únicos confrontos políticos que interessam são aqueles que apelam de alguma forma ao espetáculo. Mas não quer dizer que esteja pior. A cobertura da eleição de 2000, esta sim foi realmente terrível. Havia tanta fumaça, tanta confusão, que ninguém se lembrou de ir atrás do passado dos candidatos. A distorção dos históricos pessoais de George W. Bush e Al Gore teve imensas repercussões, a começar pela habilidade de Bush de fazer-se vencedor do pleito. Comparado com aquilo, a imprensa vai muito bem. Mas ser melhor do que foi em 2000 não é vantagem.

VALORES

“Entre os americanos há uma crença enraizada de que os Estados Unidos sejam uma terra privilegiada, quase mítica, e suas instituições devem ser preservadas. No DNA cultural do povo está uma necessidade de afirmar e reafirmar sua religiosidade, que é atípica no Ocidente. Não quer dizer que americanos sejam mais ou menos religiosos que os outros, apenas consideram importante enfatizar sua fé. Os EUA foram o primeiro país moderno a fazer uma revolução com sucesso e o argumento dos conservadores é de que os ganhos daquela revolução devam ser preservados. Num país em que a maioria teve acesso à terra própria no início de sua história, no período colonial, valores como o direito à propriedade são profundamente arraigados. Mas, evidentemente, há valores que podem ser considerados antagônicos a este, como uma tradição incrivelmente igualitária.

REPUBLICANOS

“Eles são extremamente focados na conquista de poder. Têm uma incrível quantidade de dinheiro. Apesar de representarem um grupo pequeno de facções, conseguem atrair candidatos com imenso apelo público, homens carismáticos, capazes de capturar a imaginação da massa de americanos. Têm a disciplina da direita cristã e o dinheiro das grandes corporações. É por isto que o predomínio conservador já dura uma geração.

DEMOCRATAS

“O momento favorece os progressistas. O aparato do Partido Democrata está disciplinado graças ao presidente da legenda, Howard Dean. Há um sistema eficiente de mobilização dos militantes e de arrecadação de fundos via internet. Dean conseguiu fazer com que as facções que compõem o partido aprendessem que precisam cooperar, ao invés de disputar entre si. Eu diria que os democratas chegaram tarde à festa. Mas chegaram.

INTELECTUAIS

“Boa parte do sentimento anti-Bush vêm de intelectuais, mas eles não são organizados. Não há um movimento. Costumo brincar dizendo que enquanto a direita estava marchando sobre Washington, a esquerda marchava sobre o departamento de inglês das universidades…

JUVENTUDE

“Os anos 60 exacerbaram o ativismo estudantil, mas ele não se manteve. Os estudantes de hoje são muito dedicados às aulas e querem se formar, entre outros motivos porque o custo do ensino superior ficou alto. Naquela época, os jovens tinham valores diferentes dos de seus pais, queriam sair do establishment. Havia um rompimento geracional. Hoje, os jovens fazem parte do establishment e os riscos em viver fora do padrão são muito maiores. Não é mais possível viver uma vida de pobreza confortável, como era. E há uma mudança de foco. Os estudantes estão menos interessados em liderar uma revolução. São de certa forma menos presunçosos, menos ambiciosos.”

The Economist, publicado pela revista Eu&, do jornal Valor (para assinantes)

É difícil acreditar agora, mas até a primavera de 2005 (segundo trimestre no Hemisfério Norte), Condoleezza Rice era tida como uma possível candidata à Presidência dos Estados Unidos. Ela havia sido nomeada secretária de Estado, em substituição a Colin Powell, no começo do segundo mandato de George W. Bush, e uma viagem pelo planeta estava correndo bem. Em Paris, o embaixador francês para os EUA observou que “todos estavam determinados a se apaixonar” por ela, que provocou surpresa em Wiesbaden ao aparecer em público com botas de couro de cano alto (à altura do joelho). Seu porta-voz chegou a ponto de alimentar especulações sobre uma possível candidatura ao plantar o assunto junto a um jornalista.

AP

A estrela de Condoleezza, que subiu tão rápido, caiu de volta na obscuridade, e o motivo é fácil de ser percebido para qualquer um que ler estas duas biografias: “Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power”, de Marcus Mabry (Rodale, 362 págs., US$27,50) e “The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy”, de Glenn Kessler (St. Martin’s Press, 304 págs., US$ 25,95). Como secretária de Estado, na maioria das vezes não conseguiu lidar com uma teia de problemas que ela própria ajudou a criar quando estava se transformando em uma conselheira de segurança nacional notadamente fraca. Visionário, Powell disse sobre o Iraque: “Se você o subjugar, passará a ser dono dele.” Isso pode muito bem servir como epitáfio à carreira de Condoleezza no topo das esferas formuladoras de política dos Estados Unidos.

Dos dois livros, o de Mabry é o mais completo; uma biografia em grande escala cobrindo a vida de Rice da infância na violenta e segregacionista Birmingham, no Alabama, até os dias atuais. Ele tirou o título de seu livro de uma frase que era sempre dita na família dela, a de como negro americano era preciso ser “duas vezes bom” para vencer na vida, ainda mais no caso das mulheres. Mesmo assim, muita coisa do que ele relata carrega isso. Condoleezza cresceu na cidade que na época pode muito bem ter sido a mais racista dos EUA; ela ouviu e sentiu a explosão do atentado de supremacistas brancos à Sixteenth Street Baptist Church em 1963. Sua família, porém, se mudou para o Colorado, mais tolerante, quando ela tinha 12 anos. Lá, seu pai rapidamente subiu à posição de administrador-sênior da Universidade de Denver.

O começo da carreira de Condoleezza – primeiro para uma vaga na mesma universidade, depois para Stanford e daí para o Conselho de Segurança Nacional em Washington, voltando depois para Stanford para se tornar diretora aos 38 anos – mostra portas se abrindo prontamente. Mabry não produz nada sugerindo que ela teve de ser “duas vezes melhor” para conseguir tudo isso.

Sua maior oportunidade surgiu em 2000, quando o candidato George W. Bush a escolheu para auxiliá-lo na política externa, assunto sobre o qual ele admitia não conhecer quase nada. Mabry mostra muito desse entrosamento instantâneo entre essas duas pessoas muito diferentes, uma mulher muito culta e o bagunceiro arrependido, embora não consiga explicar totalmente isso. Condoleezza chegou a descrever o candidato como dono de uma “mente incrivelmente curiosa”. Mais tarde, Bush a descreveria como “a mulher mais poderosa da história mundial”.

O que torna um mistério como ela trabalhou tão mal para ele. O consultor de segurança nacional tem como dever coordenar a formulação da política externa dos EUA. Mesmo assim, Condoleeza parecia nesse cargo completamente incapaz de resolver as muitas disputas entre o secretário da Defesa, Donald Rumsfeld, e o secretário de Estado, Colin Powell. Mesmo sem isso, seria impossível não atribuir a ela grande parte da culpa pelos erros cometidos no Iraque. Se ela percebeu que os EUA estavam enviando um número muito pequeno de soldados e tivesse rejeitado todo o planejamento pós-guerra, deveria ter dito ao presidente: ele a ouvia e ela tinha acesso a ele. Se não percebeu, deveria ter percebido.

Mabry discorre detalhadamente sobre a incapacidade de Condoleezza de admitir seus erros. Essa qualidade de inapetência também se estende à sua recusa em aceitar qualquer parcela de culpa na não-antecipação dos atentados terroristas de 11 de setembro de 2001. O livro apresenta evidências em abundância dos alertas que foram repetidamente enviados a ela pela CIA (um dos sucessos pouco alardeados da agência) e sua incapacidade de levá-los a sério. Ele observa que Condoleezza parecia não ter a menor idéia sobre a força do terrorismo em geral.

Já o livro de Glenn Kessler se concentra nos dois primeiros anos de Condoleezza Rice como secretária de Estado e sua fracassada tentativa de relançar a política externa americana. É um relato fascinante de como a diplomacia é conduzida de perto

Kessler dá o devido crédito à inteligência e energia de Condoleezza. Mas sua conclusão clara é de que a maioria dos problemas que ela tentou resolver estava além de sua capacidade. Ele critica os limites do que a equipe de Condoleezza chama de “idealismo prático”; para Kessler, o termo não faz sentido. A campanha de Condoleezza pela democracia no Oriente Médio é especialmente criticada: quando as eleições trazem resultados embaraçosos, como no Líbano e na Palestina, o instinto dela é simplesmente tratar os resultados como aberrações, ignorando as próprias palavras sobre democracia. A administração desistiu há muito de tentar promover sociedades mais livres na Arábia Saudita e no Egito, ambos aliados americanos. Os esforços para impedir o Irã de se transformar em uma potência nuclear também deram em nada e a guerra no Iraque ainda está longe de uma solução.

É possível, conclui Kessler, que algum historiador do futuro venha a enxergar Condoleezza de uma maneira mais favorável. Mas, com seu atual emprego chegando ao fim, as possibilidades não parecem boas.

O Globo Online

RIO – Pela primeira vez, o presidente dos EUA, George W. Bush, previu que a senadora Hillary Clinton derrotará o também senador Barack Obama na luta pela indicação do Partido Democrata para a eleição presidencial do próximo ano.

A previsão está no livro “Evangelical President”, de Bill Sammon, que será lançado nesta segunda-feira. De acordo com a obra, Bush afirma que Hillary “tem presença nacional e habilidade para arrecadar dinheiro suficiente para sustentar um esforço em várias frentes”.

Entretanto, Bush manifestou otimismo:

“Acredito que o nosso candidato possa derrotá-la, mas será uma disputa dura(…) Eu realmente acredito que os republicanos vão manter a Casa Branca”.

De acordo com as últimas pesquisas, os favoritos para representar os republicanos no pleito de 2008 são o ex-prefeito de Nova York Rudolph Giuliani, o ex-senador e ator Fred Thompson, o senador John McCain e ex-governador de Massachusetts Mitt Romney.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Last Thursday there was a huge march in Jena, La., to protest the harsh and unequal treatment of six black students arrested in the beating of a white classmate. Students who hung nooses to warn blacks not to sit under a “white” tree were suspended for three days; on the other hand, the students accused in the beating were initially charged with second-degree attempted murder.

Paul Krugman.

And one of the Jena Six remains in jail, even though appeals courts have voided his conviction on the grounds that he was improperly tried as an adult.

Many press accounts of the march have a tone of amazement. Scenes like those in Jena, the stories seemed to imply, belonged in the 1960s, not the 21st century. The headline on the New York Times report, “Protest in Louisiana Case Echoes the Civil Rights Era,” was fairly typical.

But the reality is that things haven’t changed nearly as much as people think. Racial tension, especially in the South, has never gone away, and has never stopped being important. And race remains one of the defining factors in modern American politics.

Consider voting in last year’s Congressional elections. Republicans, as President Bush conceded, received a “thumping,” with almost every major demographic group turning against them. The one big exception was Southern whites, 62 percent of whom voted Republican in House races.

And yes, Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is about moral values, religion, support for the military or other explanations sometimes offered. There’s a large statistical literature on the subject, whose conclusion is summed up by the political scientist Thomas F. Schaller in his book “Whistling Past Dixie”: “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters to depict American conservatism as a nonracial phenomenon, the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.” More…

By Patrick Healy

Hillary Rodham Clinton on “Meet the Press” (Photo: Alex Wong/”Meet the Press”)

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton rarely does the Sunday morning talk show circuit, but she barnstormed all five of the major programs today to try to capitalize on the mostly positive reviews of her new health care plan – and to address some of the controversies in her campaign, such as her recently exposed fugitive fund-raiser.

The timing of her appearances was no accident: Mrs. Clinton and her advisers believe that she has entered the fall campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in a position of unusual strength. Today, therefore, seemed like a good moment to run the gauntlet of the Sunday shows – a gauntlet that can be withering, and where Mrs. Clinton knew she would face strict scrutiny of her sharply changed positions on Iraq.

Mrs. Clinton generally did fine – there were no major gaffes, no flashes of a chilly or combative side. When Republican attacks were mentioned, she stuck to her trademark belly-laugh – though she overdid it a tad on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

There was no major news committed, but she did offer some illuminating details on a range of issues –- health care for illegal immigrants, Iraq and the Moveon.org controversy, public financing for political campaigns, Bill Clinton’s role in her administration, and the ugliness and dirty tricks she will not tolerate in her political camp.

Senator Clinton appeared on “This Week,” “Fox News Sunday”, “Face the Nation and “Meet the Press” this morning. She was also on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
(Photos: ABCNews.com, Fox, via AFP/Getty Images, CBS.com, Alex Wong/”Meet the Press”)

Her comments about one of her top campaign fund-raising bundlers, Norman Hsu, a ’90s-era fugitive who now faces new fraud charges, only repeated the talking points that her advisers have offered: She did not know he was a con man, he fooled dozens of campaigns, she has instituted criminal background checks for major donors, etc.

She did say, on ABC News’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” that she might co-sponsor a bill introduced by a rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, to provide public financing for campaigns.

“I’m going to co-sponsor anything that looks like it can move us in that direction, because my view on this is we’re not going to get anything done at this point with the president, with, unfortunately, a Republican minority that engages in filibustering, but we’re going to try to build a commitment to doing it,” she said.

She also said that, if she were president of Columbia University, she would not have extended an invitation to the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to speak there on Monday as part of a World Leaders Forum on campus.

“Well, if I were a president of the university, I would not have invited him. He’s a Holocaust denier. He’s a supporter of terrorism. But I also respect the right in our country to make different decisions,” she said on CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.”

And she also disavowed the political shot at her Republican rival, Rudolph W. Giuliani, that one of her supporters, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, took when he said recently that Americans beyond New York would soon learn about his three marriages and his wobbly relationships with his two children.

“Governor Vilsack has said that he was wrong in saying that and I agree, he was — we are not running a campaign that goes down that road,” Mrs. Clinton said on ABC. “We’re trying to stay focused on the issues, stay focused on the differences between me and the Republicans.”

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By MATT BAI

The Times Magazine

There are at least half a dozen reasons that a lot of political prognosticators, including many inside his own party, will tell you that Rudolph Giuliani will never be the Republican nominee for president, no matter what the polls say. They are, in no particular order:

Jeff Mermelstein for The New York Times

Rudy Giuliani campaigning in Iowa, Aug. 15, 2007.

Jeff Mermelstein for The New York Times

Rudy Giuliani campaigning in Iowa, Aug. 15, 2007.

1. As New York’s mayor, he was pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-gay rights.

2. He has demonstrated an odd propensity over the years for publicly dressing up in women’s clothing, proof of which is now readily available online, including a disturbing clip of Donald Trump nuzzling the mayor’s bosom.

3. He once endorsed Mario Cuomo for governor.

4. Once, while mayor, he holed up for months at the apartment of a gay couple who were close friends of his. Try explaining that one at Bob Jones University.

5. He has divorced two times; the last time, he broke the news to his family on national television. His two children don’t seem inclined to vote for him, let alone nominate him for Father of the Year.

6. Presidential politics is said to be largely about warmth and likability, and these aren’t words that leap to mind with Giuliani. His former political ally, Ed Koch, once felt moved to write a book titled “Giuliani: Nasty Man.” It sold well.

And yet here we are, just past Labor Day, when presidential campaigns become tangible affairs, and Rudy Giuliani isn’t showing any signs of fading. In fact, he continues to lead the rest of the Republican field in just about every national poll (followed closely by Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney), taking advantage of a fractious party flailing for direction in the era after George W. Bush. While Giuliani trails Romney in the critical early states of New Hampshire (where Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, is basically a local) and Iowa (where Romney seems willing to spend much of his estimated $250 million fortune to win over every churchgoing farmer in the state, if that’s what it takes), a bevy of polls show Rudy cleaning up in large, delegate-rich states on the coasts. More…