Ironic, don't you think, that the most influential paper in nation happens to be located in Hillary Clinton's home state and most of the columnists on the op-ed page seem hate her guts.

Today Bob Herbert joins in the fun, bashing the Clintons for raising an objection with Barack Obama over his supporter David Geffen's attack on the former First Couple:

If Bill and Hillary Clinton were the stars of a reality TV show, it would be a weekly series called "The Connivers." The Clintons, the most powerful of power couples, are always scheming at something, and they're good at it. [snip]

When Senator Obama talks about bringing a new kind of politics to the national scene, he's talking about something that would differ radically from the relentlessly vicious, sleazy, mendacious politics that have plagued the country throughout the Bush-Clinton years. Whether he can pull that off is an open question. But there's no doubt the Clintons want to stop him from succeeding.

The line of the Hillary haters (or Obama supporters, if you prefer) goes something like this: what Geffen said was more or less true, therefore it's not really an attack. Herbert writes this morning, "In all the uproar over Mr. Geffen's comments, hardly anyone has said they were wildly off the mark."

Yesterday Maureen Dowd went with something similar on Meet the Press:

I think that David Geffen gave voice to what a lot of Democratic donors and supporters had been secretly worried about, and, in fact, it's reflected in Hillary's own talking points for her supporters, which is the fact that she's polarizing, that she's calculating, that she's overscripted, and that her relationship with Bill could still cause problems. And, you know, he was bold enough to say that, and that sort of broke the dam of nervousness over that.

Two points. Obviously, there's a partisan double standard at play: if a Republican had said the same things about the Clintons as Geffen, we wouldn't be having a nuanced discussion about whether it was an "attack" or whether the person was merely "giving voice" to concerns held by a lot of Democrats. In fact, I don't recall any of that taking place when William Safire called Clinton a "congenital liar" way back when.

The second, and more important point is that Obama defenders have now established a sort of baseline which will serve as a helpful guideline: anything goes, even personal attacks, so long as it's true. So Bob Herbert won't be upset if a major Clinton supporter comes out in the press and starts talking about the fact that Obama did "a little blow" in his younger years, or that his wife sits on the board of a company whose biggest customer is Wal-Mart and paid it's CEO a ridiculous $26.2 million last year, or that the Obamas appear to be unbelievably savvy when it comes to buying real estate (though I can't believe the Clintons or their surrogates would want to go there).

Of course we all know that if a major Clinton donor came out and said any of these things, in all likelihood Bob Herbert (being the intellectually honest fellow he is) would be at the front of the line decrying it as a vicious, sleazy, and mendacious attack and calling in on the Clintons to disassociate themselves from the remarks - even though it's all true.

Good grief. Note to John McCain's campaign: if you're looking to mend fences and try to become the choice of conservative Republican primary voters, it's best not to go around trumpeting news of an endorsement by Senator John Warner of Virginia - especially after Warner just finished spearheading an effort in the Senate to rebuke the President and undermine his Iraq policy.

The endorsement game is really a bizarre phenomenon. I suppose, in the aggregate, endorsements offer a campaign the "aura of inevitability," but there's little evidence that individual endorsements (or newspaper endorsements, for that matter) really help, and I think this is an instance where an endorsement actually does more harm than good.

Apropos Mitt Romney's comments on Iran, the Associated Press reports some encouraging news:

TEHRAN, Iran - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced a new round of sharp criticism at home Monday after he said Iran's nuclear program is an unstoppable train without brakes. Reformers and conservatives said such tough talk only inflames the West as it considers further sanctions. The criticism came even as new signs have arisen that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is growing discontented with Ahmadinejad, whom he is believed to have supported in 2005 presidential elections.

The quote of the day (QOTD) comes from a WSJ interview with PJ O'Rourke from last month that I somehow missed at the time:

"I have no idea if some societies, anthropologically speaking, aren't really suited for democracy. I don't think that's true. But there certainly are societies that just love to fight. Northern Ireland, for instance. You couldn't stop that problem because they were having fun--they were really, really enjoying themselves. It would still be going on full-force today if the sons of bitches hadn't accidentally gotten rich. What happened was, more and more people started getting cars, and television sets, and got some vacation time down in Spain, and it wasn't that they wanted to stop fighting and killing each other and being lunatics, but they got busy and forgot."

As an aside, O'Rourke has been one of my favorite authors for as long as I can remember. Parliament of Whores is one of the best works of political humor ever, and the collection of essays in Republican Party Reptile is equally as funny while covering more ground. Though O'Rourke gained notoriety for "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink," my personal favorite has always been "High-Speed Performance Characteristics of Pick Up Trucks."

German economic growth ended 2006 on a high note. Real GDP grew 3.7% in 2006, the fastest growth rate in more than 15 years, more than twice as fast as the 1.7% growth rate of 2005, and significantly above the identically disappointing 0.2% real growth rates of 2002, 2003, and 2004.

The acceleration of growth in 2006 caused many forecasters to become more optimistic about Germany, and some even began to predict an economic renaissance in Continental Europe. After years of sub-par performance, this would be welcome.

But all this excitement appears misplaced. On January 1, 2007, the German VAT tax was raised from 16% to 19%, while the top marginal income tax rate increased to 45% from 42%.

The knowledge that these tax rates would rise in 2007 created an incentive to bring income and spending forward into the lower tax year. For Germany, this means that growth was stolen from 2007, which artificially boosted economic activity in 2006.

Early data for 2007 on consumer and business confidence show a reversal from the positive news of 2006. Both industrial production and factory orders fell in December, and January retail sales are weaker than at any time since early 2004.

While the consensus has settled on a German real GDP growth rate of 1.5% to 2.0% for 2007, we suspect that this is overly optimistic. The European Central Bank is running what we would call a neutral monetary policy and the German government is planning a reduction in corporate tax rates in 2008. In other words, there will be an incentive to push income and profits from 2007 forward into 2008.

Germany remains a very high tax economy. The top marginal income tax rate is 45%, social security taxes are 19.9%, health care payroll taxes are 14.3%, while unemployment insurance is 4.2%, and corporate tax rates are roughly 40% (when local taxes are included). These high tax rates suggest the surge in 2006 economic activity was nothing but one-year wonder.

The Libby jury loses a member.

Initial release: Bush job approval 36%, handling of Iraq at 31%, and Democrats hold a 20-point advantage (54 to 34) on who the public trusts to do a better job of handling Iraq.

As dismal as those numbers are, they all represent a slight improvement for the President over last month's survey.More results this evening.

I sat down with Governor Romney at this headquarters in Boston on Friday. I asked to record the interview and Governor Romney agreed without hesitation, and as I turn the recorder on Romney is in the middle of commenting on the fact that his every utterance these days is captured on tape in one way or another:

ROMNEY: You've got to be really careful about what you say and do anywhere you are. I actually had a dream about being in parking garage and having somebody in front of me taking too long to get their change and honking the horn and then yelling back, and getting out and yelling at each other and then seeing it on YouTube the next day. So I said 'OK', I've got to really be careful, you know, in my personal life.

RCP: So how's the campaign going for you so far? Is it what you expected?

ROMNEY: It's gotten going a lot faster than I would have expected. I saw George Stephanopoulos last week, he said he was hired on as the first Clinton campaign employee in what would be the equivalent of October of this year. And we have many tens of employees at this point. And even this early the response in states that really are early in the process: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, the response is really quite surprising. Large numbers of people, lots of questions, enthusiastic reaction.

RCP: What's the question you get asked most?

(more...)

From Pat Buchanan's column yesterday:

NATO is packing it in as a world power. NATO is little more than a U.S. guarantee to pull Europe's chestnuts out of the fire if Europeans encounter a fight they cannot handle, like an insurgency in Bosnia or Kosovo. NATO has one breadwinner, and 25 dependents.

At the end of the Cold War, internationalists like Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana declared, "NATO must go out of area, or go out of business." What Lugar meant was, with the Soviet threat lifted from Europe, NATO must shoulder more of the global burden.

But the Balkan crises of the 1990s showed that Europeans are not even up to policing their own playground. The Americans had to come in, gently push them aside and do the job. The message Europe is today sending to America, with the withdrawals from Iraq and the refusal of Italy, Germany and France to fight in Afghanistan:

"We are not going out of area again. If you Americans want to play empire, go right ahead. We will not again send our sons overseas to fight in regions of the world from which we withdrew half a century ago. You're on your own."

Where does this leave NATO? This leaves NATO as little more than a U.S. guarantee to go to war for the nations of Europe, while Europeans can be freeloading critics of U.S. policy around the world.

NATO is an expensive proposition. We maintain dozens of bases and scores of thousands of troops from Norway to the Balkans, from Spain to the Baltic republics, from the Black Sea to the Irish Sea.

What do we get for this? Why do we tax ourselves to defend rich nations who refuse to defend themselves? Is the security of Europe more important to us than to Europe?

In the early years of World Wars I and II, Europeans implored us to come save them from the Germans. We did. In the early Cold War, Europeans welcomed returning GIs who stood guard in the Fulda Gap.

Now, with the threat gone, the gratitude is gone. Now, with their welfare states eating up their wealth, their peoples aging, their cities filling up with militant migrants, they want America to continue defending them, as they sit in moral judgment on how we go about it.

Don't be surprised if 90% of U.S. troops in Europe today are gone ten years from now.

When John Edwards announced his intention to run for president last year, he was immediately considered a top tier candidate in the Democratic field: He had already demonstrated considerable political skill and an ability to raise money in his strong 2004 showing. He also was seen as benefiting from an even more front-loaded primary schedule in 2008 that should work in his favor.

But for someone as smooth as Mr. Edwards, the first few months of his campaign have been anything but. While his two main rivals have been sucking up media oxygen with dueling announcements and maiden tours to early primary states, Mr. Edwards has managed to make only a few headlines -- none of them good.

First, he took flack from his base for giving a hawkish, saber-rattling speech on Iran, telling an Israeli audience that "all options" were on the table and that "under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons." Shortly thereafter, news broke that Mr. Edwards, whose central campaign theme is closing the economic gap between the "two Americas," is living in a newly constructed 28,000 square-foot estate outside Chapel Hill, N.C., worth an estimated $6 million.

The biggest embarrassment came two weeks ago when Mr. Edwards hired two left-wing feminist bloggers to run his campaign web site, only to have their history of writing vulgar and inflammatory posts revealed. After receiving extreme pressure from his left-wing base, Mr. Edwards at first kept the women but tried to distance himself from their remarks. Both resigned less than a week later.

The latest snag for the Edwards campaign is a story in Variety that quotes him as telling a Hollywood fundraising group that Israel bombing Iran's nuclear facilities is the "greatest threat to short-term world peace." Yesterday Mr. Edwards' campaign denied he made the remark, but Variety is standing by its reporting.

As you'd expect, the net results of Mr. Edwards' missteps is that he's losing ground in the polls. Nationally, he remains mired in third place, ten points behind Barack Obama and close to 30 points behind Hillary Clinton. More concerning, however, is that he appears to be slipping in Iowa, one of his strongholds and a place where he must finish well if he wants to have a shot at winning the nomination.

Two recent polls tell the tale: A new survey by Strategic Vision shows Mr. Edwards' lead has slipped to six points, down four points from the previous month. A Zogby poll released last week is even worse: The 11-point lead he held in January has completely evaporated.

With the Democratic hopefuls attending their first "candidate forum" Wednesday in Nevada, the race is only beginning, and there'll be plenty of time for Mr. Edwards to recover his mojo. But even at this early date, Democrats are searching the field looking for a winner. Mr. Edwards' bumbles have raised doubts about his political skills in a year when Democrats believe the presidency is theirs for the losing.