Britain and America

Democrat presidential candidates discuss Iran

Obama needs to raise the stakes if he is to defeat Hillary Clinton

Greetings from Charleston, South Carolina.  This evening Sam Coates and I attended the first Democrat debate of this presidential cycle that was sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee.  Here are a few quick observations:

Mixing with people in the debate hall it is clear that Democrats expect to win in 2008.  They believe their field of candidates is very strong.  Giuliani is the only one they have some fear of.

Although John Edwards performed well tonight the race has a two horse quality to it.  At the end of proceedings it was Senators Obama and Clinton who were thronged by the crowds.  They both - particularly Obama - won the most applause and cheers through the evening.  Clinton was always in command of the debate and will still be the frontrunner after tonight.

Iraq is defining this race.  There was no strong sense of a new agenda from tonight.  No grand new Democratic vision for America.  No radical new policies.  When and how to withdraw from Iraq defined the debate and could yet define the Democrats.  There was a lot of anti-Bush rhetoric as a result - and as might be expected - but the Dems won't be running against Bush next year.  The GOP will have a new prince.

Neil Kinnock's plagiarist Joseph Biden was impressive.  Senator Biden kept pointing out that some of his fellow Democrats' plans for immediate troop withdrawals from Iraq were impractical.  It would take at least a year, he said, to withdraw 160,000 troops from Iraq.  It wasn't a crowd pleaser but it has the benefit of being true.

All questions tonight were selected by CNN from 3,000 videos posted on YouTube.  The evening was bigged up as a revolutionary way of reconnecting voters with politicians.  It worked to a significant extent.  Some of the questions asked on the videos were very imaginative.  Nearly all appeared to come from the heart.  CNN did all of the selecting which was a shame.  I would have preferred a process where CNN filtered out videos that were silly, crude or obviously the product of a special interest and then YouTube visitors could have voted for the twenty or so questions they most wanted asked.  That would have added some web-based democracy to tonight's interesting experiment in user-generated content.

In the video below Senator Obama presents his 'let's change the world' message.  My guess is that he'll only beat Clinton if he raises the stakes.  If the election is about competence and a safe pair of hands the former First Lady will probably secure the nomination.  If Barack Obama can persuade people that America really needs a changemaker he might just triumph.  He played safe tonight - emphasising bridge-building and competence.  His video points to an emphasis on ambition that could yet make the difference for his candidacy.

Joseph Loconte: A Deliberate Failure of Imagination

Joseph Loconte, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and commentator for National Public Radio, is the editor of The End of Illusions: Religious Leaders Confront Hitler’s Gathering Storm.

U.S. authorities announced last weekend that they had prevented a suspected Muslim terrorist cell from launching a "chilling" plot to destroy John F. Kennedy International Airport—a scheme to kill thousands of civilians and create economic chaos by blowing up a jet fuel artery that runs through densely populated neighborhoods. “Had the plot been carried out,” warned U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf, “it could have resulted in unfathomable damage, deaths, and destruction.”

Yet just 24 hours later, Democratic presidential hopefuls debated America’s war on terrorism as if the airport terror plot were a fraternity prank run amok. The CNN-sponsored debate—which included Senator Joseph Biden, Senator Hilary Clinton, Senator Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Rep. Dennis Kuscinich, Senator Barack Obama and Governor William Richardson—showcased the debilitating failure of political leaders to think deeply about the threat of radical Islam.

Sen. Obama was asked if the Bush administration’s strategy to thwart terror at home has been a success, since the United States has not suffered any terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11. Without hesitating, Mr. Obama delivered his studied judgment of the matter: “No.”

Obama conceded that “there are some things that the Bush Administration has done well,” but failed to name them. The Patriot Act, electronic surveillance techniques, aggressive interrogation of terror suspects, the killing and capture of scores of al Qaeda leaders and operatives—none of these unpleasant features of America’s war on terror received any credit.

The Democrats once supported the Iraq war...

Last night in the Democrats' first debate of their nomination process they all agreed that the war in Iraq was lost...

...but, with one or two exceptions, they are not without responsibility for sending America into Iraq: