Keep Your Eye Out For...


Everyone is talking Obama, Hillary, Gore, McCain, Guiliani, Romney...but pay attention to Newt Gingrich. Very quietly this guy has been talking calmly, candidly, and seriously about Iraq.

While Hillary can do nothing more than oppose Bush's troop surge (so what does that mean - she supports the status quo?), Ginrich is talking candidly about the cost of losing, strategies for winning, mistakes that were made, and how to move forward.

Here are some sample articles, speeches, interviews, etc.

I never cared all that much for Ginrich, but I'll give him this: he's smart as hell, experienced, and has the tone of a man who no longer cares what opinion polls think of him. He rose to the top and came crashing down. Now he's rising again and with that, you get wisdom. My dad said something smart in 1996 - he said the Republicans were stupid to run Bob Dole because their soul was Ginrich. They may have beaten Clinton that year. But the old school Republican party prided themselves on decency and it was Dole's turn to run. That Republican party doesn't seem to exist anymore. That should not be construed as remorse - which would be completely phony because I never liked those guys to begin with. So onto other matters...

Of course we all like Obama - what's not to like? But I don't like how everyone treats him as some sort of political messiah. I don't believe in angels, I don't believe in being rescued or being saved by some magical person coming over the hill in majestic backlight. And it feels to me everyone (dems, i mean) want Obama to be that person. This time around, we need to err on the side of wisdom and not hope.

Hillary strikes me more and more as a political opportunist like her husband. I mean when you take away the brains and the connections and the experience, what are these two people? Does Hillary have...I hate to say it without a sense of irony...any character? I mean, what does she stand for? What does she believe in? She is smart. She is tough. I like her. But I guess this sickly feeling about her that she sold her soul somewhere along the line to keep herself in the game. But that's probably something we all do. I guess I don't imagine that for her it was a very hard decision. Which makes me suspect that deep down, there just isn't much there.

On other news, I started reading Kevin Drum the other day. Has a couple of interesting posts about the anti-war movement prior to the war.

He takes up the issue of anti-war liberals and pro-war liberals - the anti-war position of "I told you it was a mistake the whole time," versus the pro-war liberal position of, "Iraq is a mess, but for none of the reasons the anti-war liberals predicated."

He seems to think the anti-war liberals ought to be given the benefit of the doubt, because, well, they were MORE right or in his words, they got the big questions right. I, of course, disagree because I think it is a stupid game to get too invested in American failure. The anti-war was more broadly, a movement rooted in constraining the use of American power around the world and opposing a democratically elected American president because they didn't like his vibe. They filled in the blanks with reasons why Iraq would fail and the reasonable ones were worried the day Iraqis dipped their fingers in purple ink. I think they're on the wrong side of history and mistake our enemies for our friends. But anyway, Drum looks at the issue more consisely and better than I do...