We're about to learn a lot more about Marco Rubio's career plans

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

Yesterday, Daily Intelligencer reported that an announcement from the Republicans' Great Cuban Hope is coming soon:

A year after declaring he'd run for the Senate or the presidency in 2016, but not both, Marco Rubio has made up his mind. Following reports that the Florida senator has reserved the Freedom Tower in Miami, on Monday he confirmed on Fox News's The Five that he'll "announce on April 13 what I’m going to do next in terms of running for president or the U.S. Senate," according to Politico. "So you will announce that you’re running for president?" said co-host Dana Perino. "I'll announce something on April 13," Rubio replied. The senator's being coy, but feel free to start getting excited about his Senate reelection campaign!

Well, maybe. Let's consider that possibility:

He won't run for president, because he doesn't want to lose (and he would), but he'll run for Senate, because he wants to win (and he will). It's probably just that simple.

Now, would he really lose were he to run for president? He'd almost certainly lose to Hillary, who is, of course, the certain Democratic nominee, but it's highly likely he wouldn't even come close to the Republican nomination.

I hesitate to make too much of the silly Iowa Republican straw poll, and I won't, but Rubio finished a distant seventh at the end of February with just 4%, well behind even fellow Floridian Jeb Bush, who ended up with a disappointing (for him) 8%. Now, that's a straw poll of the extremists who make up the base, but mainstream polls put him well back as well.

Now, it could be premature to back out. After all, there are loads of ups and downs in any nomination race -- just think back to 2012, when every challenger to Romney as the general frontrunner seemed to have his moment at the top of the pack. And Rubio could very well emerge as the bridge between the extremist base (represented by Ted Cruz, as well as by more defined social conservatives like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee) and the somewhat less extremist establishment (represented by Bush and Chris Christie), with Rand Paul representing the iconoclastic quasi-libertarian elements of the party. Currently, the bridge figure appears to be Scott Walker, but he's untested on the national stage and might not have the staying power to remain a serious contender throughout the long and winding race. So why not Rubio?

Well, maybe because Rubio just doesn't seem to have it. And by "it" I mean that nebulous quality that seems to propel a select group of politicians, even a dud like Romney, into presidential politics. He just seems too raw, too immature, too unprincipled, too shamelessly opportunistic.

And it's that last point that matters now. He knows where the opportunity is, and that's not in a run for the White House that is sure to end in defeat but in a re-election campaign for the Senate.

And hey, if he does end up announcing that on April 13, at least we can say he did the realistic thing, which is not something that can be said about many Republicans these days.

But...

What if that isn't his decision? What if he does decide to run for president? I mean, he's booked the Freedom Tower. Generally, you'd make an exciting announcement at such a venue, not one that is sure to disappoint the enthusiastic supporters who would turn out for such an event.

So it would seem that he's going for it, that he really thinks he can win -- and I suppose he has a shot, though of course politicians in their bubbles of sycophantic cheerleaders always think they can win.

But if that's the case, the above still applies. He could emerge as the bridge candidate, if more of an establishment type than a base type, but the odds are against him, and his biggest weakness may very well be himself.

New documentary confirms Mitt Romney lost 2008 election, never became president

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I've never liked Mitt Romney. Well, he was okay back when he was a "moderate," back when he was Massachusetts governor, back before he decided he needed to give the far right a massive bear hug in his quest for the presidency, at least if you ignore the cruelty he inflicted while heading up Bain, but 2012 pretty much confirmed that he was, as I kept calling him, from as early as January, a privileged rich douchebag with a plutocratic sense of entitlement, the champion of the rich against the people -- and especially against the "47 percent."

But you know what? Through all that, and despite all that, he's always seemed like a fairly likeable guy. He's a plutocrat, to be sure, but all that right-wing nonsense on social and foreign policy made sense as a shameless appeal to the Republican Party's right-wing mainstream, to both the grassroots base and the movement conservatives whose support he would need to secure the nomination. No, I don't excuse him for embracing the far right, but it was always pretty clear that deep down he wasn't terribly comfortable contorting himself so shamelessly, whatever the political necessity of doing so.

In any event, he is what he is and he's largely gone from the political scene, and so it's both hard and pointless to keep up any level of vitriol against him. There's still a lot I don't like, and he's still -- and will always be -- a privileged rich douchebag, but... whatever. And yet... he is back, sort of. There's a new Netflix documentary, MITT, premiering on January 24, that looks at Romney's two White House runs, in 2008 and 2012 -- the filmmakers followed him on his campaigns for six years. Stunningly, it includes the very moment Romney realized he lost the 2008 election (among many other private and personal moments). Yes, he deserved to lose, and yes, he should have known it was coming, but one can't help but be touched by the intimate sadness of the moment. This was a man who had committed so much of his life to his quest for the presidency, and he had come so far, and so close (if not all that close, actually), and then it was over, just like that.

Anyway, it looks like an interesting film, an intimate portrait of a man who, whatever his privileges, almost made it to the very top but who, throughout, seemed to have traded in his soul, who stopped being human, in a do-whatever-it-takes effort to realize his ultimate political goal. Even if you don't like him, even if you object to everything he is and stands for -- and I object to a lot of it -- you have to admit that there's something tragic about that, and you can see it on his face when defeat finally hits him.

Here's the trailer:

You mean Chris Christie may not actually be the second coming?

By Richard K. Barry 

The new book by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann chronicling the 2012 presidential campaign contains some interesting revelations about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, the man so many in America seem ready to anoint an across-the-aisle-working, pragmatic saint who can save America.

In a review of Double Down: Game Change 2012, CNN's Peter Hamby writes this, referring to the Romney team's vice presidential vetting file:

According to the authors, Romney and his team were shaken by what they discovered about Christie during "Project Goldfish," as the hush-hush veep search process was known. [The] "disturbing" research file is littered with "garish controversies," the authors write: a Justice Department investigation into his free-spending ways as U.S. attorney, his habit of steering government contracts to friends and political allies, a defamation lawsuit that emerged during a 1994 run for local office, a politically problematic lobbying career that included work on behalf of a financial firm that employed Bernie Madoff. And that's not to mention the Romney team's anxiety about the governor's girth.

Hamby adds this:

For Christie, who is coasting to reelection on Tuesday and already laying behind-the-scenes groundwork for a 2016 presidential bid, the book's revelations are a Drudge-ready public relations nightmare that will send his advisers scrambling to explain awkward aspects of his record and his personal life just as he is stepping onto the national stage.

Never did like that Chris Christie.

Mitt Romney says something clever

By Richard K. Barry

Mitt Romney has been critical of the GOP's approach of shutting down the government to attack Obamacare, as have many Republicans. He has also flattered himself by saying that if he'd been elected president not only would he have given opponents of the ACA a single spokesman, but he would have reached across the aisle to Democrats.

My guess is that the only reaching across the aisle Romney would have done would be to grab Democrats by the balls. As for Republicans lacking focused leadership, he said this:

When you don't have a president, every congressman, every senator, every governor, thinks they're the spokesman for the party. And the one that lights their hair on fire is the one that gets on the evening news.

On that, Romney has a point. In today's GOP, everyone is in charge so no one is in charge. And I would add that as much as Republicans criticize Obama for not negotiating, it's difficult to negotiate when there is no clear understanding of where the power lies.

DeMint wants a Mulligan

By Mustang Bobby

Former Sen. Jim DeMint, who left the Senate to make a pile of money scamming wingnuts through the Heritage Foundation, claims that the election of 2012 didn’t count because the Republicans never got their real message out and Mitt Romney sucked as a conservative.

DeMint thinks the election results don’t accurately reflect national sentiment and therefore can’t be used to argue against his desire to move the party to the right. True conservatism never got a hearing—particularly not in regard to Obamacare, which was, after all, modeled after a Massachusetts law signed by Romney. “Because of Romney and Romneycare, we did not litigate the Obamacare issue,” he says. Essentially, DeMint is declaring a mistrial. His side can still prevail, he says, but only by awakening the angry, alienated masses who were put off by Romney’s tepid impersonation of a conservative.

So much for the GOP re-examination, autopsy, and rebranding. (By the way, as upyernoz reminds us, Romneycare, which begat Obamacare, was invented by the Heritage Foundation.)

The good news is that if the Republicans actually listen to Mr. DeMint — and the point theBusiness Week article is that he’s the one really calling the shots on Capitol Hill — it’s going to be a very long time before there’s another Republican president.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Republicans have been very, very good to social conservatives

By Frank Moraes 

I have a bone to pick with Paul Krugman. His column today is quite good, "Republicans Against Reality." The first half of the article is about Republican dysfunction. He highlights last week's transportation bill fiasco. It's an old story. Talk to any conservative (and sadly many liberals as well) and they will tell you that there is loads of wasteful spending in the government. But when you ask them what ought to be cut, the first thing they say is: foreign aid. There are two problems with this. First, foreign aid really does help us out globally by pushing back against all the bad stuff we do. (And note: Israel gets by far the most foreign aid of any country.) Second, foreign aid only makes up about 1% of the federal budget.

So the problem the House Republicans are having is that they've gone along with Paul Ryan's new mythical budget. But when it comes to actual policies, the House members don't like it because it requires cutting programs that their constituencies like and depend upon. So vauge notions of cutting "waste": gooood! Concrete ideas of cutting actual programs: baaad!

The second half of Krugman's article is about how the Republican leadership is reaping what it sowed. He writes:

For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party's base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities -- deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

That is mostly true, but I take exception to the claim that the Republican Party has abandoned the social conservative base. Just in terms of policy, they got things like the Defense of Marriage Act and Terri Schiavo. But more important, they've gotten really conservative judges throughout the federal court system. I don't have any doubt that if Roe v. Wade came up for a vote in the Supreme Court that it would be overturned. So social conservatives have gotten what they want.

Read more »

In GOP Land, America is 89% white

By Frank Moraes 

Benjy Sarlin has a great article about the New Southern Strategy that I've been writing about, "How the GOP Stopped Worrying About Latinos and Learned to Love the Base." It lays out the best statistical counter argument to Sean Trende that I've read. As you know, I don't think any of this really matters. The Republican Party has no intention of changing. For one thing, they have a long history of getting people to vote against their best interests by voting Republican. That's what the "Reagan Democrats" were: people who resented blacks more than they cared about their own well-being. So it only makes sense that they would continue to think that they can win elections while remaining unpopular. And the recent damage to the Voting Rights Act only makes that opinion all the more compelling to the Republican Party.

And that got me thinking: voter suppression. There is a very old theory about liberals and conservatives. It claims that liberals make policies based upon the way they want people to be, but conservatives base their policies on the way people actual are. I think there actually used to be something to this. A lot of socialist thought assumed that incentives didn't matter whereas conservatives were all about incentives. For the last few decades, though, liberals have been all about incentives. In as much as conservatives think about incentives, they now believe they are the only thing that matters, which is just as big a mistake as thinking that they don't matter at all.

But in a more fundamental way, the Republican Party believes things that are clearly untrue. We saw this most clearly last year where even Mitt Romney went into election day thinking he was going to win despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But more to the point, I have noticed that a lot of conservatives really do think that any time a Republican loses an election it is a sign of voter fraud. I believe this comes from the extremely insular nature of conservative politics. Just look at the Deer Lady: it is clear she never hears anything about politics that is not filtered through a right-wing extremist.

Read more »

Childbirth is dangerous; abortion is not

By Frank Moraes 

There is a great deal of pretending in public life. For example, people pretend to care about children who float away in balloons. But they don't really. They like the drama. But they don't know the kid or the parents. The kid is probably a brat and the parents, as we now know, are assholes. This situation is so much worse in politics. The Onion made fun of this recently in an article, "Romney Drops By To See How Down-And-Out Family He Met On Campaign Trail Doing." As we all know, "humanizing" campaign stops are about as real as the Tooth Fairy. Think: Paul Ryan cleaning pots at a soup kitchen.

But the fakery goes much deeper than that. What I most hate are claims by politicians that they are helping rather than hurting. The common argument is that we need to gut welfare programs to protect the poor from the horrors of government dependence. You see, it is those meanie liberals who want to help the poor who are really hurting them. Of course, if conservatives really wanted to help the poor, they would provide universal healthcare for the poor; they would provide good (equalized) schools; they would provide free college. Think about it on the most basic level: if conservatives wanted to help the poor, they would at least provide good food for their children. But what did the conservatives in the House of Representatives just do? The moderates voted to cut nutritional assistance. The extremists voted against this because it didn't cut enough. So I think we can reasonably conclude that when it comes to the poor, conservatives are only using claims of helping as an excuse for taking money away from them.


Read more »

Nothing fails like failure

By Richard K. Barry

The Hill is reporting that Mitt Romney would like to lend his name and profile to the 2014 election cycle.

Eric Fehrnstrom, a top adviser to Romney’s presidential bid who has remained close to the former Massachusetts governor, said Romney has already received requests from candidates and campaign committees for support.

“I wouldn’t be surprised to see him out on the campaign trail. He's already received a lot of requests to help candidates and party committees, especially on the fundraising side. Even though Mitt has ruled out another run for elective office, he wants to do what he can to help the party grow and become stronger,” he said.

While it would be very easy to be snarky about how much help Romney could actually provide to Republican candidates, there are probably ways in which he could be useful.

Ryan Williams, a spokesman for Romney during his 2012 bid, outlined three ways in which he expects Romney to help the candidates he endorses: “He can help them tap into his network, help them raise resources and help bring attention to their campaigns.”

Okay on the tapping into networks and resources, but would campaigns really want the kind attention he might bring? I'm just asking. He was, after all, a disaster as a campaigner. Let's just call it what it was.

They could always bring him out to say, "Hey, at least I'm not as bad as this guy."

(Cross-posted at Phantom Public.)

Money matters

By Mustang Bobby 

The way the Republicans tell it, the economy is still collapsing, the deficit is ballooning, the tax hikes in January are killing business, and Barack Obama is a socialist bent on crushing small business under the heel of the federal government with regulations on top of regulations. Oh god oh god we're all gonna die.

Except none of that is true:

The Congressional Budget Office reported Tuesday that the federal budget deficit is declining this year compared to fiscal 2012.

For the first seven months of 2013, the deficit was $489 billion. That is $231 billion less than the budget shortfall for the comparable period last year.

The decrease is almost entirely due to revenue increases.

And we are seeing the strongest rate of job growth in eight years.

Meanwhile, the stock market is booming, the Dow having hit 15,000 earlier this week.

As for the growth of regulations from the federal government, it's a canard you always hear from the Republicans — the party of vaginal probes, by the way — but it's been debunked time and again, even when it was a campaign issue for Mitt Romney.

As I've said before, if Barack Obama is a socialist, he really sucks at it.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

A guide to the Republican civil war

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In a post yesterday on the ongoing Republican civil war, which is well worth reading, Mario Piperni included this helpful chart from Daily Kos's Markos Moulitsas of "all the various conservative factions" in the GOP:

But there's one thing missing: power.

Yes, there's something of a civil war going on in that wretched party, but Republicans have a long history of putting aside their bitter differences for the sake of electoral success, including last year when they all got in lockstep behind Romney after a rather brutal primary campaign that saw the party search desperately for an anybody-but-Romney candidate.

Don't discount this. Power, or rather the quest for power over all else, is what holds the party together in a way that just isn't the case with the Democrats. It's that old dynamic at work: Those on the right want to be in power, while those on the left want to be right. They put aside their differences and unite for an overriding common purpose, while we bicker amongst ourselves. We strive for truth, they strive for power, and all the things power brings. (We're getting better at the whole questing for power thing, but Republicans are ahead of us by a fairly wide margin.)

I certainly hope the current divisions in the Republican Party, and within conservatism generally, do damage to it at the polls. Maybe immigration and marriage equality and warmongering really are divides that can't be overcome. Certainly the extremism, absolutism, and general craziness on the right are taking their toll.

But something tells me they pull it together. The civil war is real, and it's entertaining, but it likely won't ever amount to much more than a sideshow.

Rep. Paul Ryan flames out

By Richard K. Barry

Yeah. This goof.

What's up with Rep. Paul Ryan's popularity? A new Rasumussen poll finds that just 35% of all likely U.S. voters view Ryan favourably, which is down 15 points from his 50% favourability rating last August just after Mitt Romney picked him as his running mate.

Fifty-four percent (54%) have an unfavorable opinion of the Wisconsin congressman. These figures include 17% with a Very Favorable view of him and 23% with a Very Unfavorable one. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided.

So, what happened?

Two things: The stench of defeat rarely helps anyone's popularity, and then there's this, as noted by The Week:

In his new budget outline unveiled last week, Ryan once again put forward the policies he championed in the 2012 election: Lower tax rates across the board and cuts to programs aimed at the poor. Those policies did not sit well with voters last year, and they're not getting any more popular. Even the Republican National Committee conceded that point, saying the GOP had to change its ways because voters considered the party's positions "scary" and "out of touch."

Democrats were supposed to be oh-so-scared of this very serious Republican thinker after he was chosen by Romney to share the ticket. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now. Paul Ryan's ideas suck and the American people get that. 

That's what's happened. 

Enduring another Romney?

By Richard K. Barry

Roll Call is reporting that Scott Romney, Mitt's brother, is giving some thought to running for the senate seat that will be vacated by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). According to the piece, Romney is a "Harvard-educated corporate attorney at the Detroit-based law firm Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn, LLP."

Scott Romney is not exactly a political high flyer, having once run unsuccessfully for the Republican Party nomination to become Michigan Attorney General and having lost an election for a place on the Michigan State Board of Trustees.

Whatever. I guess if your last name is Romney you think you're are just naturally qualified to do anything.

As for the Democrats:

Rep. Gary Peters told The Detroit Free Press editorial board that he is “going to seriously consider” running. Peters, who ended 2012 with nearly $500,000 in cash on hand, is considered the Democrats’ top recruit.

Levin's recent announcement that he would not seek re-election in 2014 has set things in gear in Michigan on both sides of aisle.

This should be a hold for Democrats, but it's still a concern that so many are choosing not to run in 2014.

Just go, Mitt

By Richard K. Barry

Goodbye!

It is not always true that campaigns and candidates end up hating their opponents at the end of any given campaign. It might be hard to believe, but it is possible to run for office in an honourable way such that no one feels disgusted at the end of the endeavour.

I can't speak for President Obama or his team, but, for me, Mitt Romney proved himself to be such a despicable creature that I feel nothing for his disappointment or Ann's tears at having to face such national public rejection. They clearly expected the great unwashed masses to understand that their social betters should, after all, be in charge. It must seem incredible to the Romney's that "the people" disagreed. 

We now hear that Mitt says "his heart said he was going to win the presidency, but when early results came in on election night, he knew it was not to be." He added that the loss hit him hard, and that Ann cried.

Maybe it's his contempt for nearly half the electorate as "takers" that annoys me most. Maybe it's the ease with which he lied about so many things that rankles. Or, more likely, it is his sense of entitlement that those who have made themselves a lot of money should be allowed to lead those who have not. It's as close as we get to royal ascension in America. The rich think they should be able to pass on the mantle of power to their own and are bloody annoyed when it doesn't work that way.

Cantor's big speech

By Frank Moraes 

Eric Cantor gave a speech and I think it sucked. What are the odds?

Ezra Klein provides a nice rundown of all of Cantor's policy proposals. He isn't too impressed either, but I think he gives Cantor far too much credit.

There is one big way that the Republicans could signal that are changing: they could talk seriously about the jobs crisis in America. But they won't do that. To some extent, they must believe that the public wouldn't really buy it. After all, for the last few years (and especially the last couple of months) the Republicans have been hammering on this issue. But it is always in a vague and negative way. John Boehner uses pretty much every opportunity to slam President Obama for not doing anything to create jobs.

The problem for the Republicans is that it has been all to clear that they are against any legislation that would actually help the jobs crisis. Instead, when they talk about jobs, everyone rightly hears, "Let's cut the taxes of rich people!" So it isn't surprising that Cantor didn't touch this issue. The truth is that the only Republican idea for creating jobs is to cut the taxes of rich people. Since they cannot think outside that paradigm, it is probably all for the best to say nothing.

Read more »

The "Oh, crap" moments of the 2012 campaign

By Richard K. Barry

Just to prove politics can be fun, First Read asked some campaign insiders from the Romney and Obama sides about their "Oh, crap" moments of the 2012 campaign:

Eric Fehrnstrom of the Romney campaign answered Gingrich winning South Carolina; Beth Myers of the Romney camp said it was Romney's three-state loss to Santorum (on Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri); Romney strategist Stuart Stevens said it was the close primary race in Michigan; Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said it was their worry that Romney might wrap up the nomination after the New Hampshire primary.

I might have thought Eric Ferhnstrom would have said his "Oh, crap" moment was when he realized he actually used the Etch-A-Sketch imagery to describe how Romney would supposedly pivot away from radical conservatism after he got the nomination.  And I can't believe no one from the Romney campaign cited the first time they saw the 47 percent video. 

As for Obama's crew, I think maybe their moment was really when they realized their candidate forgot to show up for the first debate. That was mine.

In more general terms, Republicans across the country must have had their collective moment when they surveyed the stage at any one of the GOP nomination debates seeing Gingrich, Paul, Bachmann, Santorum, Cain, Perry, and Romney, and thinking, "this is the best we can do? -- oh, crap."

Tagged out

By Mustang Bobby

Via TPM:

Tagg Romney, son of former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said on Monday that he has decided against a run for Secretary of State John Kerry’s Senate seat in Massachusetts.

[...]

“I have been humbled by the outreach I received this weekend encouraging me to become a candidate for the US Senate. I love my home state and admit it would be an honor to represent the citizens of our great Commonwealth. However, I am currently committed to my business and to spending as much time as I can with my wife and children. The timing is not right for me, but I am hopeful that the people of Massachusetts will select someone of great integrity, vision, and compassion as our next US Senator.”

I guess the trees weren’t the right height this time.

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Polishing a turd

By Mustang Bobby

(Ed. note: For more on the Republican "fix" for itself, see Frank's post from yesterday, "Occasionally principled thoughtless assholes." See also our post on immigration and how moving to the left slightly is part of the fix, "Don't get excited about immigration reform." -- MJWS)

The GOP doesn't see anything wrong with their party that a quick buff and shine won't fix:

"It's not the platform of the party that's the issue," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said Friday after being easily reelected to a second, two-year term. "In many cases, it's how we communicate about it. It is a couple dumb things that people have said."

A slide presented during a closed-press strategy session said that Mitt Romney might be president if he had won fewer than 400,000 more votes in key swing states.

"We don't need a new pair of shoes; we just need to shine our shoes," said West Virginia national committeewoman Melody Potter.

So as far as they're concerned, it's not what you say but how you say it. So they can still be anti-women, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, pro-pollution, pro-mythology and anti-science; they just need to market it better.

Yeah, that's the ticket. 

(Cross-posted at Bark Bark Woof Woof.)

Al Gore is wealthier than Mitt Romney. Ho hum.

By Richard K. Barry

According to Time, Al Gore has "built a net worth to some $300 million, according to the scorekeepers at Forbes. By their measure, he is now richer than the renowned supercapitalist Mitt Romney."

How did he makes his money, I'm sure you are asking? Here's one way:

The late Steve Jobs installed him on Apple's board, encouraged Gore’s regular interventions around company head­quarters in Cupertino, Calif., and compensated him with stock options that Gore recently exercised for nearly $30 million.

And then there is this:

That check landed close behind Gore's estimated $100 million profit on the sale of Current TV to al-Jazeera, a deal in the waning hours of 2012 that sent Gore bashers into orbit. Gore is also a co-founder, along with former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood, of Generation Investment Management, a private partnership that pursues what Gore calls sustainable capitalism. With more than $3.5 billion under management, the firm pursues Gore's belief that companies prosper over the long haul if they pay attention to values beyond the quarterly earnings report.

Okay. Whatever.

Read more »

Obama can have Hagel, but...

By Frank Moraes

My colleague Michael J.W. Stickings makes what I think is the strongest case against Obama's pick of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense, "Obama Misses Opportunity With Hagel Nomination." Basically, the optics are all wrong on this. Why is our Democratic president yet again picking a Republican as defense secretary? I think I know: Obama cares more about his legacy than he does the legacy of his party.

Despite decades of shrill and incompetent military policy from Republicans, the American people still consider them strong on national security. Of course, one could use this to argue that it doesn't matter who Obama nominates. If 9/11, Iraq, and Afghanistan weren't enough to change perceptions, what difference would a Republican defense secretary nomination make? But I think it does matter. The ineptitude of the Bush Jr years have made the Republican footing on national security much less firm.

Glenn Greenwald has been boosting for Hagel for a long time. In his most recent writing on the subject he deals with liberal displeasure with the (then) upcoming nomination, "Chuck Hagel and Liberals: What Are the Priorities?" He argues that there are two liberal complaints and that neither is very strong. First, there is the claim that Hagel is anti-gay. Greenwald rightly points out that this is long in the past and that he has apologized for it. The second is the optics concern of Michael's and mine. To this Greenwald points out that the current defense secretary, Leon Panetta, is a strong Democrat.

Read more »