According to a Chicago Tribune blog, Hillary is ratcheting it up in Iowa, using the piles in her warchest to hire a helicopter, or “Hill-a-copter” as the campaign has branded it, to ferry her over the midwest snow and ice on a blitz of twelve closely contested counties scheduled to begin Sunday. Is the Clinton air tour gaudy? Yes. Out of place? Utterly. Will it work? Who knows. To counter the spendthrift splashy quality of the tour, which may well turn off conservative Iowa voters, campaign sources have suggested Hillary plans to forgo her usual parka-and-pearls Iowa campaign attire for an ensemble with a distinct “mission accomplished” aura, going for a camo-and-codpiece “whatever it takes” kinda feel. Because, as everybody knows, information-age democracy is not about delegates. It’s about media-based momentum! Wink.
Republican candidates went tête-à -tête in the umpteenth debate of the campaign season in Iowa yesterday.
The whole thing played out more like a special RNC episode of SNL, where the candidates played parodies of themselves. (Who says there isn’t such thing as good TV during a writer’s strike?). Throughout, the presidential hopefuls managed to dodge, duck and talk their way out of giving anything resembling straight answers. (A poll conducted by the Des Moines Register found that viewers felt discussion of the issues “lacked detail.â€)
A highlight, for me, was when a small spat broke out about global warming, briefly interrupting the otherwise canned banter and scripted responses. Fred Thompson channeled his alter/ultra persona, NYC D.A. Arthur Branch, playing hardliner when debate moderator Carolyn Washburn asked for a show of hands from those candidates who believe climate change is a serious issue and a problem caused by humans.
A timid raising of hands was suddenly interrupted by Thompson cutting in. “I’m not doing hand shows today!†he said and Romney quickly lowered his own sad hand and started applauding Thompson’s response.
This Obama Campaign video is a twenty-minute sell to women but it’s revealing on a million levels. Obama’s wife Michelle features prominently. Alice Walker makes an appearance as do several non-celebrity civilian supporters. It’s long and candid and clearly meant to cut into any gender-biased lead Hillary may be enjoying.
One theme of the video has to do with the way foreign policy affects women, something about the tragedy of their kids going off to die as part of a macho frontier-style showdown that should have been thought through, that could have been diplomatically negotiated to much better effect. The video underlines a shift that sees foreign policy as perhaps one of junior senator Obama’s strongest suits in attempting to unseat Hillary as frontrunner. Her vaunted “experience” now seems to be working against her, her record on foreign affairs suggesting that she’s been nothing more (or less) than a fellow traveler of the Bush administration, the “cowboy diplomacy” of which has led us into unraveling wars on two continents, sunk our reputation everywhere in the world, and spurred foreign service officers of conscience to resign in droves.
Obama says his background—his family in Kenya, his growing up in Muslim Indonesia—will make a significant difference and signal the world that the dark era of isolation and xenophobia and war-making has come to an end. His wife told Iowans in Council Bluffs that Obama “called the Iraq war from the beginning. And he was right because he’s special. Because he has lived a broad life…”
Obama’s recent tougher stump tactics have won him a reported lead in the statistical dead heat that is the Iowa Democratic primary. He did a quick Q&A with Salon yesterday on foreign policy after a town meeting at Grundy High in Caucus Land.
