“Governor For President? No Thanks”: Challenging “Broder’s Law” That Says Governors Are Best For The Oval Office
Let me declare the end of an era: the governor-era in presidential elections. It was mostly nice while it lasted. Senators seem be in, for those who are actually politicians.
For years, pundits felt with all their hearts that governors were golden kings when it came to running for president. This political gospel was spread throughout the land, mostly because the dean of Washington opinion-makers, the late David Broder of The Washington Post, believed it devoutly. Broder’s law was repeated on Sunday talk shows until it had an aura all its own.
Let’s review the facts on the ground. Among the four front-runners in this cycle – Donald Trump (R), Ben Carson (R), Hillary Clinton (D) and Bernie Sanders (D) – the Republicans have zero political experience, and the Democrats have served as senators.
Meanwhile, the governors in the running are lagging far behind. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) thought being a model-good governor would give him a certain “je ne sais quoi.” Clearly not; he’s a distant third behind the opponents with congressional experience. The former mayor of Baltimore has yet to gain traction, though he’s followed all the signs to higher office.
John Kasich, the Republican governor of a swing state, would be the strong candidate to beat in Broder’s book. He’s in the single digits, last I looked. Three sitting Republican governors, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Perry of Texas, fell out of contention. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is hanging on but looks like a loser, too. Two young Cuban-America senators, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, are outrunning Christie in this race.
The late Broder believed in governors the way my grandfather believed in building highways in the Eisenhower era. Don’t get me wrong; I liked Broder and he was kind about my wish to get into his line of work. The reasoning was simple: Those with executive authority over a state have better job training to govern the nation.
In the span of decades from Presidents Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, indeed it was true that governors often made it to the Oval Office. This paradigm crossed party lines, since Carter and Clinton were Southern Democrats and Reagan and Bush were governors of California and Texas, respectively.
The truth is, I noticed the old Broder faith beginning to break down in 2008, but I didn’t want to say anything at first. (I mentioned it in The Huffington Post.) The Democratic crop of candidates fielded more senators than you could shake a stick at: not only Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but also Chris Dodd and Joe Biden. The telegenic Republican nominee, Matt Romney, a perfectly good governor of Massachusetts, lost to a younger freshman senator whose oratory could coax the stars out of the sky.
So here’s the thing. The reason why public trust in sitting governors as candidates is not part of the 21st landscape is this. The American people were so disillusioned with George W. Bush’s presidency – marked by war-mongering in the beginning, Hurricane Katrina in the middle and an economic downturn in the end – that governors have no special favor anymore. In fact, they may have to work to overcome that label.
It’s a 2016 amendment to Broder’s law.
By: Jamie Stiehm, U. S. News and World Report, November 23, 2015
“A Week Of GOP Cowardice And Bigotry”: In Time Of Crisis, Too Many Politicians Feed Fear And Scapegoating”:
In the somber days since ISIS terrorists killed 130 people in coordinated attacks on Paris, elected leaders from around the world have been searching for solutions. But far too many American politicians have fallen back, instead, on that old standby in times of crisis: Stirring up fear and finding someone, anyone, to scapegoat, no matter how unconnected the scapegoated person is with the problem at hand.
Sadly, in Congress that took the form of a House vote to in essence stop the U.S. resettlement of refugees from Iraq and Syria by imposing nearly impossible bureaucratic requirements on what is already the toughest vetting system for anyone seeking entry into the U.S. This bill was scapegoating in its purest form, framing as terrorists people who are fleeing the very violence that this bill was supposedly trying to prevent.
The House vote — in which 47 Democrats joined nearly every Republican — was the culmination of a week of cowardice and bigotry sweeping the political landscape.
There was the Missouri state legislator who urged his governor to watch out for “all flavors” of Muslims and the mayor of Roanoke who invoked the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a positive model for how to treat American Muslims.
And there were the 31 governors who declared that their states would turn away Syrian refugees who go through the U.S. refugee resettlement program.
Not wanting to miss out on the action, of course, Republican presidential candidates have been tripping over themselves to outdo one another. Donald Trump has speculated that refugees from Syria “could be one of the great Trojan horses.” Mike Huckabee, in what can’t even be described as a dog-whistle, has told Americans to “wake up and smell the falafel” when it comes to Syrian refugees. Chris Christie said he’d get tough on Syrian orphans. Ted Cruz has suggested that the U.S. only admit Christian refugees from Syria, although how he plans on testing people’s religious faith is unclear. Jeb Bush has hinted at the same thing, saying he would back refugees who can “prove” that they’re Christian, which shows what this is all about. If you have a system that’s strong enough to “prove” someone’s true religion, don’t you think it could also properly vet people for national security purposes? Jeb Bush was supposed to be the mature establishment candidate. So much for that.
These politicians are feeding what a new Public Religion Research Institute poll reports is an “increased xenophobic streak in the American public.” It’s no coincidence that threats against American Muslims have been reported across the country in the days since the Paris attacks.
It is of course reasonable to ask that refugees be vetted — they already are — but if security were the real issue, our current debate wouldn’t be about refugees at all. In fact, if someone were intent on sneaking into America to cause harm, exploiting the refugee resettlement program with its intensive and lengthy screening processes would be the hardest way to do it. No, what is behind the anti-refugee campaign of the Right is not reasonable concerns about security, but something much uglier.
The candidates who are now spewing cynical anti-refugee rhetoric are often the same ones who claim that their opponents don’t believe in “American exceptionalism,” and the movement so willing to embrace explicit anti-Muslim bigotry is the same one constantly telling us that religious freedom is under attack. They seem to have forgotten the vibrant pluralism and commitment to shared values that make us exceptional, and a beacon of freedom to the persecuted, in the first place. Looking back on the history of our country, our best days have been when we opened ourselves to people facing persecution, not the times we turned them away and demonized them. Let’s not let this become the American Way.
By: Michael B. Keegan, President, People For the American Way; The Blog, The Huffington Post, November 24, 2015
“Do We Have Basic Minimum Standards?”: Crossing Over From Bravado Into Mental Illness.
Do you think this is the kind of country that would replace Barack Obama with a president who mocks people for their disabilities? This is actually a serious question.
And before you object, I know all about the previous occupant of the White House. I remember when George W. Bush did an interview back in 1999 with Tucker Carlson and decided to make fun of Karla Faye Tucker for pleading for her life:
The most disquieting aspect of Mr. Carlson’s report of Mr. Bush’s language is not what it says about Mr. Bush’s ability to dignify politics after President Clinton’s squalor. Rather, it is that Mr. Bush may have been showing off for Mr. Carlson, daring to be naughty. He may be proving his independence, which Mr. Carlson likes, but it is independence from standards of public taste — not the sort of independence many voters will be seeking in a successor to Mr. Clinton.
Mr. Carlson reports asking Mr. Bush whether he met with any people who came to Texas to protest the execution of the murderer Karla Faye Tucker. Mr. Bush said no, adding: “I watched [Larry King’s] interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like `What would you say to Governor Bush?’ ” Mr. Carlson asked, “What was her answer?” and writes:
” `Please,’ Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, `don’t kill me.’ “
Ms. [Karen] Hughes, who says Mr. Bush’s decision not to commute Tucker’s sentence was “very difficult and very emotional,” says Mr. Carlson’s report is “a total misread” of Mr. Bush. Mr. Carlson, who describes Mr. Bush as “smirking,” says: “I took it down as he said it.”
Nothing remotely resembling the King-Tucker exchange that Mr. Bush describes appears in the transcript of Mr. King’s hour-long Jan. 14, 1998, program. And it is difficult to imagine anything Mr. Bush said that Mr. Carlson may have “misread” that could do Mr. Bush credit.
I also know that the Bushes were the precursors to the current post-truth party. For example, after Carlson reported on Bush’s mocking of a woman he had condemned to death, and also on Bush’s liberal use of profanity, he got some major pushback from the campaign.
“Then I heard that Karen Hughes accused me of lying. And so I called Karen and asked her why she was saying this, and she had this almost Orwellian rap that she laid on me about how things she’d heard — that I watched her hear — she in fact had never heard, and she’d never heard Bush use profanity ever. It was insane. I’ve obviously been lied to a lot by campaign operatives, but the striking thing about the way she lied was she knew I knew she was lying, and she did it anyway. There is no word in English that captures that. It almost crosses over from bravado into mental illness. They get carried away, consultants do, in the heat of the campaign, they’re really invested in this. A lot of times they really like the candidate. That’s all conventional. But on some level, you think, there’s a hint of recognition that there is reality — even if they don’t recognize reality exists — there is an objective truth. With Karen you didn’t get that sense at all. A lot of people like her. A lot of people I know like her. I’m not one of them.”
When Carlson says that Karen Hughes “almost crosse[d] over from bravado into mental illness,” he could just as easily be describing Donald Trump.
There is one difference, however.
When Bush mocked Karla Faye Tucker, he did it in the privacy of the backseat of a car. His campaign could and did deny that it ever happened.
Donald Trump mocked New York Times investigative reporter Serge Kovaleski’s disability on a stage in front of thousands of supporters. There’s no denying that he did it or what he meant by it. At another point, Trump said that conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer, who is partially paralyzed, “couldn’t buy a pair of pants.” That was also captured on camera.
So, even if there isn’t as much difference between George W. Bush and Donald Trump as people might think, there’s a lot more ammo to use against Trump.
So, I ask again, is this the kind of country that would replace Barack Obama with a president who mocks people for their disabilities?
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, November 26, 2015
“Jeb Bush Needs More Than Endorsements”: Highlighting The Extent To Which His Campaign Has Stalled
Tuesday proved to be another telling day in the lackluster presidential campaign of Jeb Bush.
While a new Quinnipiac poll showed the former Florida governor polling at just 4 percent in Iowa, Bush’s team was busy touting its latest endorsement from a member of Congress. Yet the latter event, coming from little-known Michigan Representative Mike Bishop, did not exactly carry the heft required to eclipse the former.
To be sure, Bush has among the healthiest portfolios among Republicans in the so-called endorsement primary that measures support with party insiders. The problem for Bush, however, is that such support means little in a year of political outsiders. To make matters worse, the relative paucity of elected officials and prominent political groups that have gotten behind Bush, compared to those that got behind his brother and other GOP nominees, highlights the extent to which his campaign has stalled.
Including Tuesday’s endorsement from Bishop, Bush has now received the backing of 26 members of the House of Representatives and three senators. He lacks a sitting governor’s formal support. At the same point in the 2000 election—roughly 10 weeks from the Iowa caucuses—George W. Bush had the backing of 133 members of the House (including then-Speaker Dennis Hastert) and 24 senators, as well as 26 governors, according to data from James Madison University political scientist Marty Cohen, who co-wrote The Party Decides, a study of the endorsement primary.
“George W. Bush was in a far stronger position at this point in the race than his brother,” said David Karol, a political scientist at the University of Maryland and a co-author with Cohen. “There’s almost no comparison.”
The many early endorsements in 2000—along with huge financial advantages—helped George W. Bush clear the field, whereas the younger Bush finds himself in a race in which many candidates are vying for endorsements and key endorsers who are waiting to see who emerges intact from the fight before they loan names and organizations to candidates.
“The party is not really decided in effect yet,” Cohen said, comparing the tight GOP race to what the website FiveThirtyEight has calculated is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 447-to-2 lead over Senator Bernie Sanders in the Democratic endorsement primary.
Among 2016 Republicans, Jeb Bush is ahead in the endorsement primary—by FiveThirtyEight’s weighting as well as a simple count of nods from current national officeholders—far eclipsing polling front-runners Donald Trump and Ben Carson.
Along with Senator Ted Cruz, however, those outsider candidates have managed to secure endorsements from some influential figures who don’t hold office but can help mobilize voters on their preferred issues—a group that the Party Decides authors find at least as powerful as elected support. Businessman Carl Icahn has tossed his support to Trump, for instance, and former General Electric CEO Jack Welch is officially backing Cruz.
Karol ascribes Jeb Bush’s slowness to lure high profile endorsers to being out-of-step with the base on key issues including immigration as well as to his personality.
“He’s just also not a compelling candidate,” he said. George W. Bush, by contrast, had “better political instincts and also more appeal, more personality.”
The organizational strength that Bush’s team often uses to sell him to prospective endorsers has not sped up the process any. That infrastructure was supposed to be able to power him through the March states after rivals ran out of staff and money, doesn’t much distinguish him anymore.
A super-PAC working on Bush’s behalf has also failed to convince would-be endorsers through its massive advertising efforts. Since Sept. 1, Right to Rise has purchased 3,749 TV spots in Iowa TV markets at an estimated cost of more than $3 million, according to data compiled by the ad tracking firm Kantar/CMAG. This makes the super-PAC the largest ad buyer in the state by far. The next closest competitor (the pro-Bobby Jindal group Believe Again) had bought just half as much in Iowa before their candidate dropped out of the race.
Yet even as Right to Rise has poured millions into the race, endorsements for Bush have slowed, with only two national elected officials lending their names to his cause in November. Senator Marco Rubio, whom many election watchers see as Bush’s chief rival for establishment support, racked up nine new endorsers this month, more than doubling his previous slate.
On the debate stage, where a strong performance could lure more high profile endorsements, Bush hasn’t done himself any favors.
“His performance in the debates is what was weak to say the least, and that made some people think twice,” said Cohen, of James Madison University.
The Bush team continues to emphasize the difference between this year’s race and the one his brother ran.
“Our focus is on how Jeb’s endorsements and support compare with the people he is currently running against for the presidency, among which is not his brother George,” said spokeswoman Allie Brandenburger.
The best hope for Bush, Cohen said, might be the fact that he continues to stay on top in the endorsement primary despite his challenges in the popular surveys.
“I’m a little surprised that he’s managed to pull some congressional endorsements in the last week of two,” he said. “Maybe his campaign does remain viable because of that.”
By: Ben Brody, Bloomberg Politics, November 25, 2015; John McCormick Contributed to this article.
“The Massive Irony For Ted Cruz”: Bromance On The Rocks: Surging Ted Cruz Begins To Poke Donald Trump
Ted Cruz’s moment has arrived.
Less than 10 weeks before Iowa voters cast the first votes of the presidential campaign season in Feb. 1 caucuses, a new Quinnipiac poll shows the Texas senator statistically tied with Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for the lead in the state. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Cruz is tentatively beginning to take on the brash New York billionaire after months of cozying up.
Twice in recent days, the Texan has seized opportunities to distance himself from Trump’s policies and rhetoric.
First, Cruz disagreed with Trump after the New Yorker expressed openness to setting up a registry of Muslim Americans in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks. “I’m a big fan of Donald Trump’s but I’m not a fan of government registries of American citizens,” Cruz told reporters in Iowa, according to Politico. “The First Amendment protects religious liberty, I’ve spent the past several decades defending religious liberty.”
Then over the weekend, he politely chided inflammatory rhetoric from fellow Republicans on immigration, citing Trump, in an interview with The Associated Press. “Tone matters,” Cruz said. “Are there some in the Republican Party whose rhetoric is unhelpful with regard to immigration? Yes.”
Cruz’s campaign said to expect more distinctions to come.
“Senator Cruz has drawn policy contrasts with his opponents before and he will continue to do so as he shares his own record and positions with voters on the campaign trail,” said Catherine Frazier, Cruz’s spokeswoman. “As the field continues to narrow, it’s only natural that the contrasts between the front-runners will become more evident.”
The contrast-drawing follows an unusual summer and fall bromance between Trump and Cruz that included a July meeting at Trump Tower in New York, instigated by the Texan, and a September rally on Capitol Hill headlined by the two Republican candidates. On Oct. 8, Cruz admitted his strategy was to eventually win over Trump’s supporters. “In time, I don’t believe Donald is going to be the nominee, and I think in time the lion’s share of his supporters end up with us,” he told WABC’s Rita Cosby.
Trump’s persistent national lead since July, defying a steady stream of predictions about an impending implosion, has forced a strategic shift for Cruz. The Texan is looking to capitalize as he rises to the top tier of the GOP race and as former Iowa front-runner Ben Carson sinks under scrutiny. The new Quinnipiac poll of Iowa Republicans, released Tuesday, found Trump at 25 percent, with Cruz at 23 percent — a 2 percent gap that is inside the survey’s margin of error. Carson was third in the Quinnipiac Poll with 18 percent.
“Ted Cruz should be taken very seriously. He’s laid out a very well thought out grassroots and fundraising network across the country. He’s been very strategic in his timing,” said Ron Bonjean, a veteran Republican operative who is not affiliated with any of the presidential campaigns.
For Cruz, Trump presents an obstacle and an opportunity. The politically incorrect New Yorker has been outperforming the Texas firebrand at his own greatest talent: deploying scorched-earth rhetoric to channel the anti-establishment sentiments in the GOP. But Trump’s bravado gives Cruz a chance to paint himself as something nobody in Washington would accuse him of being: prudent and measured.
“There is massive irony here for Ted Cruz to be asking Donald Trump to tone it down,” said Bonjean. “He’s trying to look like the most adult candidate in the room — the most realistic alternative that could take away Trump voters.”
The irony is that Cruz has built an image upon angering Republican leaders with tactics like incubating the government shutdown of 2013, forcing weekend work as he makes a stand, and calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor this summer. It has been a tactical use of his Senate seat, Bonjean said, that has enabled Cruz to cultivate his conservative base and that now positions him to seize his political advantage. “He has built a foundation brick by brick for this moment.”
The appeal of Cruz is straightforward: He’s a crusader for tea party and evangelical Christian causes with the scars to show for smashing fists with a Republican Party leadership that is increasingly disliked by the base. And he has an unusually large war chest for a non-establishment figure — $26.5 million as of his third quarter filing with the Federal Election Commission, along with $37.8 million as of June 30 by a quartet of super PACs supporting him — towering over the fundraising of past Iowa caucus winners Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, who are running again and trying to appeal to the same conservative base.
Cruz is battling on a second front with presidential rival and fellow Sen. Marco Rubio, seeking to cast the Floridian as an establishment-friendly foil to his insurgent persona. The two first-term senators, who have been neck and neck for third place in an average of national polls, are duking it out over Rubio’s support for immigration reform in 2013 and Cruz’s vote this year to curtail the government’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone data.
Meanwhile, Trump has suggested Cruz is copying his ideas, telling conservative radio host Laura Ingraham last week that “Ted Cruz is now agreeing with me 100 percent.” The confrontational New Yorker has also indicated he’ll take the gloves off if Cruz becomes a threat to his nomination.
“If he catches on, I guess we’ll have to go to war,” Trump said last Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
By: Sahil Kapur, Bloomberg News, Tribune News Service; The National Memo, November 24, 2015
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