| 29.04.2008 |
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| With Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama mired in a bruising battle that only helps John McCain, Democrats are looking for a way out. How about a neutral candidate that could unite both camps, has political experience and is beloved internationally? In other words, how about Al Gore? Sure, last year's Nobel Peace Prize recipient has repeatedly said that he has no plans to run for the presidency in 2008. Perhaps Mr. Gore will rethink his decision when he finds out efforts to draft him have crossed the Atlantic. Germans, who unfortunately can't vote yet in the presidential election, are urged via www.algore2008.de to push Al Gore to run this fall. The team behind the site – a lawyer, a historian, a business economist, a sociologist and a computer scientist –don't fail to lavish him with praise. They declare the runner-up for Time's Person of the Year award 2007 as the Man of the Century in their page header. With such an honor bestowed upon him, the century being only yet 7 years old, surely that will make Al Gore rethink his plans, won't it? |
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| 27.04.2008 |
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| Hillary Clinton's repeated calls for more debates with Barack Obama after the Pennsylvania primary haven't been having much of an effect. No public outcry demanding another face-off by the two Democratic candidates. No media frenzy around the idea of another Hilllary vs Obama encounter. So Clinton yesterday upped the ante by challenging Obama to a Lincoln-Douglas style debate. It worked. The media took the bait and dutifully reported about the proposed duell. After all, who knew at the time that the Lincoln-Douglas debates would become an oratorical landmark? Who knows, if Clinton and Obama debated under the Lincoln-Douglas rules maybe it would transform the event from slugfest to rhetorical masterpiece. But it wouldn't. While Clinton challenged Obama to a Lincoln-Douglas debate, she didn't really mean it. First, there was not one Lincoln-Douglas debate, but a series of seven debates. Second, each debate lasted three hours and had a set format. The first candidate would start speaking for one hour, followed by the second candidate who had an hour and half after which the first candidate closed the event with a thirty minute rebuttal. Third, in today's media world no one but C-SPAN would broadcast an event lasting three hours where the shortest answer lasts a half hour. Today, we wouldn't consider the Lincoln-Douglas debates as debates. Instead, we would call them three very long speeches by two candidates with the possibility to react to what the opponent said. Even if Lincoln and Douglas were around today, they would find it hard to reach an audience if they stuck to the format. For the Democratic presidential candidates, it would be impossible. Hillary Clinton knows this. As all trailing candidates do, she simply wants another chance to square off against Obama. That's why she conveniently interprets a Lincoln-Douglas style debate as simply having a debate without a moderator, when it actually entails a lot more than that. But that wasn't Clinton's point. She wanted to increase the pressure on Obama to agree to another debate and she achieved it by throwing Lincoln and Douglas in the mix. |
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| 26.04.2008 |
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| As mentioned previously in this blog, the Obama swoon is over. Not just in the U.S. but also in Germany. The most recent proof of it can be found in today's edition of Die Welt. The paper published a blistering critique of Barack Obama. In a lengthy article entitled „Invisible Man: The Unscrupulous Barack Obama (or The Conscienceless Barack Obama, depending on how one translates gewissenlos) Fred Siegel, Professor at Cooper Union, Senior Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute and former advisor to Rudy Guiliani, argues two basic points: One, Obama is a great orator with nothing to back up his fancy rhetoric. Two, despite his camelot rhetoric, Obama is simply a product of the traditional Chicago-style politics of corruption. Perhaps, these arguments aren't new, but while they wouldn't have gotten any traction a year ago, they do now. I was going to elaborate on Siegel's points, but then found out that he had stated most of them at a discussion hosted by a neoconservative frontline magazine. Read them here for yourself. Just one more thought on Siegel's charge that Obama is a product of Chicago-style politics. What about Hillary Clinton then? Does Park Ridge not count? |
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| 25.04.2008 |
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| There's an interesting project taking place right now that tries to measure how presidential candidates fare on the Internet. It's called the US Election 2008 Web Monitor and is conducted by ECOresearch, a network of scientists from different fields. The Web Monitor analyzes the coverage candidates receive on an international basis. So how does it work? The system scans on a weekly basis the web sites of 150 media organizations from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as of 50 environmental organizations, the Fortune 1000 companies and 1000 relevant political blogs. According to ECOresearch the data is analyzed in three ways: - Attention presents the number of references to a particular candidate as a percentage relative to all candidate references in a given week. The percentages next to each value indicate weekly changes. - Sentiment tracks the co-occurrence (semantic association) of a candidate's name with positive and negative terms taken from a tagged dictionary. - Keywords identify topics associated with the presidential candidates by comparing the frequency of terms in sentences that contain the name of a candidate with a reference distribution taken from the sample's complete set of documents. I found some of the results rather interesting, especially the country comparisons. Just go the web site and check it out yourself. By the way, ECOresearch is nonpartisan and funded by the Austria's Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT) and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency. |
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| 24.04.2008 |
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| I liked Mike Huckabee from the start. Not because of his political positions or a conviction that he would be a good president. Actually, I'll admit that I had never really heard of him during his tenure as Arkansas Governor, even though Time magazine named him one of the five best governors. So my fondness of Huckabee is entirely apolitical and starts with his name. As a boy, I had read and loved Huckleberry Finn. How cool is it that decades later someone with a similar sounding name comes along and runs for president. To top it off, he was the last man standing against John McCain long after Republican heavyweights Rudy Guliani and Mitt Romney called it quits. What's more, Huckabee plays in a band called Capitol Offense that covers CCR, the Rolling Stones and the Eagles, and after being diagnosed with diabetes he lost more than 100 pounds and kept it off – unlike a former German foreign minister. Now that we are left with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama fighting it out until the bitter end and John McCain trying to sound presidential, it often feels like the last smidgeon of fun, ease and amateurism has vanished from the campaign. Everyone is so dedicated and determined all the time. Today, it was announced that Mike Huckabee is writing a book about his failed run for presidency. The still unnamed oeuvre is supposed to hit the stores two weeks after the election. Immediately after reading the news, the thought crossed my mind whether Mike Huckabee got into the campaign just to right this book. And I have to admit, I like that thought. |
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| 23.04.2008 |
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| The analysis of Hillary Clinton's victory in Pennsylvania in Rome's daily La Repubblica is rather sober. Clinton needed to win badly. Not just to keep her hopes of moving into the White House alive; it was also a matter of not running out of money. According to the paper, her victory in Pennsylvania was the only chance of convincing donors to reopen their wallets and prevent a shameful defeat. The clash of the titans continues, writes Germany's Die Welt, adding that it already has produced one definite loser: the Democratic party. "One year ago a victory by John McCain was unthinkable. McCain can thank the clash of the Democratic titans that it isn't anymore." Many other European commentators agree. Martin Kilian, who blogs as Der Amerikanist for the Swiss Tagesanzeiger sums it up nicely: "The Democratic agony just won't end." "Hillary Clinton has her Rocky Balboa moment in Pennsylvania," headlines Britain's Daily Telegraph, but emphasizes that her opponent has an "insurmountable lead in the numbers of pledged delegates chosen during the primaries and caucuses...." Therefore she can only win by twisting the arms of the undecided super-delegates. "But winning by a super-delegate coup would be a victory that many Democrats would consider a low blow, and not worthy of Rocky at all." So what should the Democrats do then? Well, according to many European commentators the answer is clear: End the stalemate, choose a candidate and focus on the real opponent – the Republicans. |
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| 22.04.2008 |
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| It sounded like a typical Bloomberg story: Lots of numbers, jargon like "in line with previous estimates", and descriptions about raising cash and filings with government oversight committees. But it wasn't. What looks like your average business story about an IPO or the issuing of new shares was a story about the latest figures from the presidential campaigns. According to Bloomberg, Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama raised $41 million in March, while Hillary Clinton raised about $20 million and John McCain came in last with $15 milllion. That means that Barack Obama raked in about the same amount of money in March that Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats spent during the entire federal election campaign in 2002, the last regularly scheduled election. According to a summary (in German) of election spending in 2002, the SPD invested approximately €26 million or $41.5 million, while the Christian Democrats spent €24.5 million or $39 million. The smaller parties were clearly outspent by SPD and CDU and came in between €3.5 and €5.8 million. No doubt, the U.S. election campaigns are far more professionally orchestrated than German ones. But when you look at the outcome, do voters really get more bang for the buck? |
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| 21.04.2008 |
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| The next president of the United States will have no experience in managing a large organization. Neither John McCain, Barack Obama, nor Hillary Clinton possess any first-hand knowledge of how to run a huge bureaucracy such as the executive branch of the U.S. government. As senators, they lead a relatively small staff that doesn't compare to the managerial challenges presented by larger institutions. None of them has headed a large company, served as a cabinet secretary, or as a state governor, a traditional training ground for future presidents. The last president who wasn't a governor before being elected was George Herbert Walker Bush. Still, as a former director of the CIA, one could certainly argue that he had experience in managing a huge bureaucracy. In Europe, as in the U.S., many politicians have experience running smaller governmental entities before taking over the top job. In Germany, Angela Merkel's predecessors, Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Kohl, both served as "Ministerpräsident" (governors) of a German state. Chancellor Merkel has not, but she gained executive experience during her stints as a cabinet minister in the Kohl administration. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French Premier Nicolas Sarkozy both learned the ropes of running an executive during long years in government positions. Is managing a large organization a prerequisite for running a country then? Well, it certainly doesn't hurt. |
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| 20.04.2008 |
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| Gordon Brown's visit to Washington went practically unnoticed last week. The timing was bad. When the pope is in town, a British prime minister just plays second fiddle. Still, one important issue was addressed during Brown's meeting with President George W. Bush. Both are united against Iran's nuclear program and want to increase the pressure on Tehran. "I make no apology for saying that we will extend sanctions where possible, on Iran," Brown said, adding that he was in talks with other European leaders about how to achieve that goal. The prospects for stepped up sanctions don't look bad. French Premier Nicolas Sarkozy reiterated his tough stance against Tehran's nuclear ambitions last month by saying that Europe's security was at stake because of Iran's missile plans. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has repeatedly voiced her opposition to Iran's nuclear program and vowed to step up sanctions if necessary. In their debate in Pennsylvania, Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama made it clear that preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons would be high on their priority list if they were elected. Republican candidate John McCain, considered to be a foreign policy hawk, has often stated his opposition against Iran's nuclear program in stark terms. What does all of that mean? It shows that their is a common view among the major European players and the presidential candidates from both parties about Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Whether it will last beyond the campaign remains to be seen. |
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| 19.04.2008 |
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| As the last of the three presidential candidates, John McCain released his tax returns yesterday. According to documents published on his campaign website, his income last year was $405,409. McCain was under pressure to release his tax returns after both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made their statements public. Immediately after the tax dump on Friday, an interesting debate ensued: Not about how much McCain earned, or how much taxes he paid. Instead, the debate focused on the fact that the Arizona senator had only released tax returns for the last two years and had not included his wife's income, while Obama and Clinton had published their tax returns, including their spouse's income, back to 2000. This would never happen in Germany. Candidates for the chancellorship releasing copies of their official tax returns? Angela Merkel, Kurt Beck or Frank-Walter Steinmeier publishing not only their incomes, but also their investments and donations down to the last cent? Unthinkable in Germany and probably most other European countries. Just last year, after nine months of deliberation, Germany's supreme court narrowly rejected a suit by nine members of parliament who didn't want to publish the additional income they make on top of their fixed salary. Their reason: It isn't the public's business to know what they earn in addition to their salary. Germany's former Interior Minister Otto Schily until now has refused to provide the required information. Next week the presidium of the Bundestag will decide whether he will be fined. |
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| 18.04.2008 |
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| What goes up must come down. That is an experience Barack Obama is making right now. Gone are the days when it seemed like the world media were entangled in a love affair with the candidate. In those days, it seemed like no story about Obama could be published that did not include a comparison of him to either JFK oder MLK. No story could go online without declaring that he represented the "politics of hope." Epitomizing the Obama swoon was conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks. "It may not be personally convenient for him, but the times will never again so completely require the gifts that he possesses. Whether you’re liberal or conservative, you should hope Barack Obama runs for president," Brooks wrote in October 2006, calling the Illinois senator a "new kind of politician." Less than two years later, disappointment has set in. In his latest column titled "How Obama Fell to Earth", Brooks notes that "Obama has emerged as a more conventional politician and a more orthodox liberal." Brooks is not alone. The media are taking a second look at the candidate. Statements or actions by Obama that wouldn't have been newsworthy a year ago now make the headlines. Is that fair? Perhaps not, but who said it would be. |
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| 17.04.2008 |
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| Pope Benedict's visit to the U.S. has sparked a media debate about the Catholic vote in the presidential election. Catholics account for approximately 20 percent of the American electorate and until recently were considered a safe bet for the Democratic candidate. Not anymore. Like many other groups, Catholics are no longer a monolithic voting block united around one candidate or cause. That makes wooing them so much harder. So far, Hillary Clinton has done the best job appealing to Catholic voters. "On the Democratic side, they're the biggest single reason Sen. Hillary Clinton is still afloat," writes CNN Vatican expert John L. Allen jr. Among Catholic voters, Clinton beat Barack Obama decisively in Texas and Ohio and hopes to pull it off again in all important Pennsylvania, where Catholics make up more than 30 percent of the population. What makes Hillary Clinton so attractive to Catholics? It helps that she is popular among Latinos, who are predominantly Catholics. But as Allen points out, Clinton also carries the "Catholic 'Reagan Democrats,' meaning socially conservative blue-collar voters." Obama's "Bittergate" remarks could alienate him even further from mainstream Catholic or Christian voters. On the Republican side, John McCain's biggest plus among Catholic voters is his pro-life stance. His biggest drawback for Catholics is his ardent support for the war in Iraq. It is too early to tell who will end up with the Catholic vote in November. However, a check of the Catholic Voting Guidelines 2007 reveals that "Catholics know that the protection of the unborn is the 'dominant issue' among all politics issues." Based on this premise, Catholics would have to vote for John McCain in November. |
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| 16.04.2008 |
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| On its English language website, Al Jazeera, the Arabic news channel keeps its readers updated on the U.S. election campaign. Without taking part in the ongoing debate about Al Jazeera's alleged bias, I found the results of an ongoing online poll about the U.S. election very interesting. Users are asked to choose among seven candidates (3 Democrats, 4 Republicans) who they would like see as the next president of the United States. They are also asked to check where they live based on a list of world regions. Obviously, the results of online polls are not representative. But as Al Jazeera points out on its poll results page, they may be indicative as a representation of the views of Al Jazeera readers. Not surprisingly Barack Obama is the current overall winner. As of Wednesday night, Central European Time, Obama received 40.5 percent of 11,493 votes. Guess who comes in second and third? Mitt Romney with 19.2 percent and Ron Paul with 15 percent of the vote respectively. Never mind that Romney dropped out of the race some time ago, as has Mike Gravel on the Democratic side, and Ron Paul is not actively campaigning anymore. It is simply mind-boggling that Ron Paul apparently has a rather strong international following. Perhaps not surprisingly, due to their stated or perceived positions concerning the Middle East, Hillary Clinton and John McCain garner only 7.7 percent and 4.9 percent of the vote respectively. European and U.S. poll takers overwhelmingly (63.5 percent and 44.1 percent) want Barack Obama as president, followed by Ron Paul (15.4 percent and 18.1 percent). Voters located in the Middle East, however, have a very different perspective on the candidates. With a whopping 71.5 percent of the vote, they favor Mitt Romney, who in all other regions never makes it out of the single digits. Romney's exceptional standing with Middle Eastern poll takers may be explained by a yearning for a savy business professional as president of the U.S. Needless to say that Ron Paul again comes in second with 14.1 percent. None of the three viable candidates, McCain, Obama, Clinton is a hit with Middle Eastern poll takers. McCain and Clinton stay below the two percent mark, Obama gets barely 10 percent of vote. If these results are indeed indicative of the views of Al Jazeera readers, it does not bode well for American-Middle Eastern relations. Addendum: Multiple votes by a single user are technically possible in the Al Jazeera U.S. election poll. This may explain some of the results. |
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| 15.04.2008 |
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| The preferences of the German public among U.S. presidential candidates are clear. If Germans had a vote in the election, Barack Obama would be the next president. Until today. With his proposal to institute a "gasoline tax holiday" John McCain is sure to win the hearts and minds of German motorists. Every summer, just before Germans hit the Autobahn to drive to their vacation destinations, there is an emotional public debate about price fixing by the major oil companies. The media and politicians demand investigations of the issue. Then everyone goes on vacation and relaxes. The following summer we start the debate again. McCain cleverly proposed his "gasoline tax holiday" on the day millions of Americans file their tax retuns and with gas prices reaching new heights. It comes with almost no political cost for him. The bill that is apparently being prepared by the Senator's staff will probably never make it into law. But that doesn't really matter. Whether the summer gas tax break is passed or not, McCain has positioned himself as someone who cares for ordinary people and is no elitist. Interestingly enough, German politicians have not yet taken up McCain's idea of an abolition of the gas tax during the summer. With taxes amounting to roughly 70 percent of the gas price of approximately eight dollars a gallon at the pump in Germany, motorists would surely appreciate the move. With a national election looming here in Germany next year, here are some German suggestions for the presidential candidates how to reach ordinary voters: The grand coalition just voted to increase state pensions for some 20 million people, more than originally planned, in 2008 and 2009. Others are calling for increased benefits for families with children and for the reinstitution of tax breaks for people commuting to work. More proposals from this side of the Atlantic are surely yet to come. Barack Obama is apparently in desperate need to connect with American workers. Perhaps he should take a page from the playbook of German politicians. |
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| 14.04.2008 |
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| For the European observer, one of the most fascinating and sometimes perplexing aspects of the election campaign is the role religion plays. By that I don't mean the influence of organized religious groups (i.e. Evangelicals) on party politics or candidates, but the very personal statements candidates make about their religious practices and experiences. Over the weekend it seemed like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama competed for an award for the most publicly outspoken candidate on personal faith. Both appeared at the appropriately named Faith in Public Life's Compassion Forum at Messiah College in Pennsylvania to talk about their belief. The event was broadcast live by CNN and will also be shown by CCN (Church Communication Network) next Sunday at congregations nationwide. According to CNN, Clinton said, "I don't think that I could have made my life's journey without being anchored in God's grace and without having that, you know, sense of forgiveness and unconditional love." Obama claimed that nobody in a presidential campaign on the Democratic side in recent memory had done more to reach out to the church than he had. Now, obviously each candidate is free to talk about his or her religious beliefs, especially when ones faith is an important factor for a large segment of the electorate. But how valuable are those statements really for devout voters, when they are made at an event just set up for this occasion in the very state that could decide the Democratic primary? |
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| 13.04.2008 |
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| What do journalists do when they want to know what the average Joe thinks about a certain topic? Right, they ask a taxi driver. So that is exactly what I did to find out how Germans feel about the presidential race. On a brief and pleasant ride in Bonn, I asked my driver, Heinz-Gert, what he thought about the U.S. election and who his favorite candidate was. Obviously when you ask a stranger about a political issue – or any issue for that matter – you never know what you get. So I was secretly hoping for a useable answer. I wasn't disappointed. Heinz-Gert is definitely rooting for Mrs. Clinton. "Hillary has that special something you need for this office." When I asked, whether he thought that her gender would influence voters, he said: "No. She has a lot of experience and is simply qualified for the job." That, according to Heinz-Gert, is just what Barack Obama is lacking. "He seems to young." What about John McCain then? I attribute it solely to his politeness, but when I brought up McCain, Heinz-Gert smoothly switched the topic of conversation to the weather. Everyone in the Cologne-Bonn region beware: At the end of the week a cold front is approaching. One minute later we arrived at my home. I paid and Heinz-Gert pointed out that he was a 30-year veteran taxi driver, a factoid I was welcome to use in my post. | ||||||||
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