Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska may announce his candidacy for President today, it’s being reported. While a vociferously anti-war Republican might be thought to have little chance of connecting with the base, he may pick up support from moderate suburban Republicans in the bigger states, potentially significant if they vote earlier in the primary schedule than is customary. And his candidacy will place pressure on the unimpressive Republican pack to define, and talk about more, their positions on the widely unpopular war. Which may benefit the Democrats in the short term, but if the surge fails, might leave him well placed.
Hagel isn’t an opportunist, having begun to criticise the war as early as 2005 (and having earlier, according to Bob Woodward, sounded warnings to the administration). With the GOP race already shaping up to be much dirtier and nastier than the Democratic one, Hagel, a Vietnam War vet, hasn’t been swiftboated yet. Perhaps John Howard could do the honours? Terrsts win, cut and run, etc. Oh hang on, that worked so well for him last time when he lobbed some unguarded rhetoric at Obama.
Update: He’s not running, just yet. Which is clever. I’ve got a feeling Newt will get into the race too, and there may be a few people sitting on their hands on the Democratic side of the aisle waiting for the frontrunners to kill themselves off. Which may put paid in future election cycles to the whole idea of starting the thing a year before anyone votes.
Interesting. Hmm, I don’t know much about this guy; has he had any major legislative achievements? Anything that his reputation is stapled to?
On the one hand, senator from obscure state = not so great as governor of big state. But then Clinton aced at least half of that equation, anyway.
If the guy’s got a clean(ish) record and a forthright image, he could do well by navigating between the utter disgust for Bush, the dislike and weaknesses of some of the main Dem frontrunners (as well as a residual disgust for the Dems that is exceeded only by disgust for the Bush clique; though not necessarily for the mainline GOP), and the general weakness of the GOP frontrunners. I think this race has really needed a dark horse. So far, Hillary gets the Klingon-like technocrat advantage, and Obama gets the “gee,-what-a-breath-of-fresh-air” advantage. I don’t think the GOP frontrunners have any built-in advantage like that, yet. But maybe this guy could corner the “I’m-not-a-retard-like-Bush,-But-I’m-ALSO-not-a-Dem” advantage. I bet it’s bigger than people estimate.
Unless, of course, he’s a retard, too.
President Hegel. Hee hee. Hey, why not; how could it get any worse than now?
Hagel would be the only non-interventionist candidtate from either side. Obmar is a hawk on Iran, and so is Clinton. And that conflict is as phoney as Iraq.
Hagel would be the only one to go to for Americans who are fed up with military adventures.
If he gets funding and numbers, he doesn’t have to win anything. He will change the political debate. Even Wolfowitz and Perle have condemned the Iraq occupation. That hardly makes that position antiwar then, does it?
The warmongers are desperate to attack Iran.
What is missing in the candidate lineup from both parties so far is an anti-interventionist. And Hagel will be rhe closest thing to that.
Update: He’s not running, just yet. Which is clever. I’ve got a feeling Newt will get into the race too, and there may be a few people sitting on their hands on the Democratic side of the aisle waiting for the frontrunners to kill themselves off. Which may put paid in future election cycles to the whole idea of starting the thing a year before anyone votes.
j_p_z, yep then we would really have reached the end of history.
I should also point out that Hagel, as Pam observes at Pandagon, is a conservative not a moderate Republican:
http://pandagon.net/2007/03/12/sen-chuck-hagel-former-sen-fred-thompson-mull-prez-bids/
Hagel is an impressive guy, but the idea that he’d be a handbrake turn on Bush-Cheneyism is rubbish. There is no way a Republican President could repudiate Bush-Cheney entirely, especially as immediate successor: Elements of the Philosophy of Right, as it were, would prevail. The staff of a Hagel Administration would feature a lot of familiar faces from Bush II today. There might be a bit of a change of emphasis, as we saw from Johnson following Kennedy, Bush I following Reagan or Santos following Bartlet, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Hagel won’t win because the Republicans haven’t fully embraced the idea that the Bush-Cheney monoculture they created is toxic to their future, every bit as Hoover’s dithering over the Depression forced his party out of office for 20 years. If Hagel does well he’ll create a re-entry point for moderate Republicans, especially if he develops some green credentials and teams up with California’s Governor – but why would the Californian Governor waste his time with Hagel? You see the problem here.
The Republicans need a long spell out of office, just like the NSW Liberals are going through now, to show them just how out of sync they are with the community they seek to govern. Maybe there is a political question to which Republicans have the answer, but it seems from this distance – and many US voters agree – that the Republican answers do not address the questions before the American people.
Consider how tricky it would be for Hagel to either embrace Bush, or repudiate Bush to the point where he ceases to be a Republican and becomes some irrelevant lone drifter on the margins, and still win.
“There is no way a Republican President could repudiate Bush-Cheney entirely”
Hagel would probably have to ultimately steer a middle ground between endosring and repudiating Bush-Cheneyism.
Early on in his presidency, the Bush-Cheney thesis would be repudiated by Hagel (anithesis) but then elements of it would be endorsed (synthesis).
(How do you like them apples, Homer?)
Gosh, that took great courage because the war was, like, so popular in 2005.
There’s slightly more chance of having Republican President Hagel than there is of having Democratic President Lieberman, but somehow I don’t think either will be giving up their day jobs.
Snowball in Hell!
“President Hegel. Hee hee. Hey, why not; how could it get any worse than now?”
Depends if President Hegel is a Young Hegelian or a Right Hegelian.
Actually there are probably more versions of Hegel going around than there are constructs of Agent Smith in the Matrix – all adds to the dialetic tension I guess, but some of the Straussians are seriously loopy.
*Speculation alert*
If Hagel’s campaign gets up and going and if he stays the course of the primaries (both huge ifs), then his bloc of Convention votes may swing the nomination for the more isolationist of the two major GOP candidates (whoever they may be).
Spiros: not enough of an antithesis, that’s my point. Imagine a non-Republican President, go on.
Katz: the reason why the Christian Jihadists own the Republicans is because they can get the numbers out. Hagel might be a Christian (if he was Jewish or atheist we’d have heard all about it by now) but he doesn’t harp on about it. He’s not endorsed by the ayatollahs like Dobson or Robertson, hence he doesn’t have a big base of numbers to work with. He doesn’t come from a big state and he hasn’t raised a lot of money. This doesn’t necessarily mean he’s stuffed but it does mean that he has to overcome the sort of obstacles that only madmen and superheroes ever dream of tackling.
Andrew E on 13 March 2007 at 9:42 am
The staff of a Hagel Administration would feature a lot of familiar faces from Bush II today.
Hagel won’t win because the Republicans haven’t fully embraced the idea that the Bush-Cheney monoculture they created is toxic to their future,
The Republicans need a long spell out of office, just like the NSW Liberals are going through now, to show them just how out of sync they are with the community they seek to govern.
I agree with Andrew E’s prediction that Bush is a symptom, not cause, of Republican disease. I predict that Bush’s successor will be more realisticly dovish in foreign policy only due to the debilitated state of the US military.
The Republican party is structurally locked into positions far to the Right of normal Americans. The US is splitting into class and clan blocs which mitigate against centrist policies. This is due to the victory of the rich in the Class War and the unsatisfactory resolution of the Culture War (white flight to the South and mass incarceration of Blacks).
You only have to look at the record of John McCain, the supposed moderate alternative to Bush, to see how far to the Right the Republicans have drifted. Krugman notes that McCain is still a hawk on the war, voted to extend regressive tax cuts and is strongly anti-abortion. He is also witht the WSJ Open Borders crowd, to fuel Wal Marts hunger for cheap illegal labour.
Pat Buchanan was the one Republican candidate who offered a real choice, isolationist in foreign policy and exclusionist in border protection. He was more or less drummed out of the Republican party for his troubles. That is the fate that awaits candidates who do not toe the Beltway Right-wing line.
Razor, you got it in one:
“Snowball in Hell!”
AndrewE, you got it with flourish.
“…but it does mean that he(Hagel) has to overcome the sort of obstacles that only madmen and superheroes ever dream of tackling.”
Currently at Centrebet, Chucky is 50/1. Res ipsa loquitur. Guess he won’t get to yell out,”Heerreee’s CHUUCCCKKY !!”, on election night next year.
2012? Maybe; this present exposure won’t hurt. He’s certainly appealing to the moderate Republicans that Kim mentioned.
Agreed AE, the way Hagel tap dances around Bush/Cheney and their legacy will be crucial, but more so for a Hagel run in 2012.
Interestingly, Gore has firmed from 15/1 to 9/1 in the last few days. If he goes on a diet, Gore will challenge for Dem favouritism overnight. Drudge keeps sledging, the political paparazzi hovver. Tough work being a man of the times. Now, if only greatness could be thrust upon him…..
Gore knows what all the Beltway players have for breakfast. He’s a heretic, but he’s one of them. He speaks their language. No one is better qualified(Pres. Candidates) to get the MIC to play ball on global warming than he. Btw, the reson HRC appears to have ants in her pants recently is that Barack Obama has firmed from 7/1 to 7/2 in the last week. This shortening of Obama’s odds is not due to the heartland’s Georges and Marthas rushing the bookies with nickle and dime bets.
Andrew E: “the Republicans haven’t fully embraced the idea that the Bush-Cheney monoculture they created is toxic to their future, every bit as Hoover’s dithering over the Depression forced his party out of office for 20 years… The Republicans need a long spell out of office…”
Yes, exactly right. It’s astonishing to me that after the utter circus-clown performance of the incumbents, that the GOP can even seriously propose a candidate –ANY candidate– and not be laughed out of town. Or tarred and feathered, for preference. Imagine if these astonishing feats of incompetence and corruption had been managed by the Dems, what would the GOP be doing at the moment? Rove must be in heaven that his opponents are so blissfully idiotic.
I keep waiting for the Dems to form a proper formation assault, but it keeps on looking like it won’t happen. Where is the elder-statesman Dem outrider who is willing to talk, gravely and at length, about the sheer level of incompetence of the current White House, without fear of copping political consequences for not ‘supporting the troops’. It doesn’t even have to be about ideology at this point, just professionalism. The Repubs always sell themselves as the mature, realistic, sober, competent grown-ups, but this time around they have failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed, failed. How does it come about that this is not noted at exhaustive length, and in excruciating detail, by their opponents? Shit, I wish I worked in politics, apparently then I could go home early every day. I wonder if this goes to, say, the sociology of who in the world becomes a politician: my guess is that the current crop of sissified, ideologically-based, non-trade-union-fostered Dems are picked from the sorts of people who didn’t or wouldn’t play team sports growing up; and maybe that is why they have no fucking clue about how to win in a knife fight when it matters.
On the other hand, then we get this…
Andrew E: “the reason why the Christian Jihadists own the Republicans…”
This is flagrant ignorance of terms, and annoying equivocation of unequal sets. For the record, there are not now, nor have there ever been, any critters whom we might reasonably call “Christian” “jihadists”. The concept of jihad as normatively understood does not really appear in Christian thought, ever — not even at the high tide of the Crusades, which were another critter entirely. Just as “satori” is not the same thing as being “born again.” There are Christian thinkers who justify fighting from time to time, but to equate this with “jihad” is to basically forfeit the very idea that certain words mean certain things.
The reason why Socialist Pineapples can masticate for pro-choice egg-creams is…
Kim , you said
SWIFTBOATING from the accomplices of Mr-Air-Guard-AWOL and
America’sDubai’s bestest businesman is inevitable …. not only against Chuck Hegel but against John McCain too. We’ll all be “reminded”[wtf?] of how McCain “collaborated”[???] with the North Vietnamese Commies. Pack of lies? Of course! But that’s what swiftboating is all about.Chuck Hegel is in for a very rough ride; he’ll probably think the Viet-Cong were a far more honourable enemy than the renegade veterans and other gitless scumbags who will try to ambush him in this presidential campaign. If he is tough enough to stay the course despite all the sh*t that is thrown on him then he will have demonstrated that he is indeed presidential material.
It’s worth remembering that in 2000 McCain was actually the preferred candidate of the neo-conservatives; William Kristol described him as “the candidate of national greatness”. The neo-cons feared that George W might recycle his father’s jaded Kissingerian multilateralism (if only!) and that McCain would be more likely to adopt their favoured policy of muscular unilateral intervention.
And for the life of me, I can’t understand why sitting senators bother running for president. In the entire 20th century, just two – Warren G Harding and John F Kennedy – moved straight from the senate to the White House. Harding does not offer a shining example for anyone to follow, and Kennedy only made it thanks to the excellent grassroots election day effort of his father’s friends in the Italian-American business community. Since 1900 two families – Roosevelt and Bush – have each supplied as many presidents as the entire membership of the senate. With respect to the 2008 race, what does this mean? Good news for Guiliani, Romney and (should he so decide) Gore. Not so good for virtually all of the other announced candidates.
When I despair over the state of US politics, as I often do, I comfort myself by pondering the possibilities of quantum theory. Which suggests that somewhere out there in the vast swirl of other universes, where every possible alternative reality is being played out, there is one where Jed Bartlet, Nobel prize winner and northeastern liberal democrat, is a successful two-term president in real life, and George W Bush, slacker ne’er do well son of a rich but disreputable family, plays the fictional version on TV. Except, of course, in this reality, “The West Wing” is not a drama but a surrealist farce.
Here, j_p_z, not that you will ever listen but prefer to believe you can get away with blaming the disaster that is the Republican Party as being all the fault of sissified Democrats.
Proverbially, Governors are supposed to have a better shot than Senators because they don’t have those nasty flip flop voting records to defend/explain/ignore and have executive experience. But they’re very thin on the ground – Huckabee in the GOP field seems to mainly be in there because he’s Governor of Arkansas and Richardson dropped out of the Dems field. Giuliani plays up the executive experience, but his record in NY, like his private life, ain’t gonna set the “base” on fire once they find out there’s more to it than s11.
Interesting poll on Republicans’ attitude to the race has just come out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/us/politics/13pollcnd.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
wbb: Well it’s a nice speech, and in the resounding tones of old, which is fine in itself; but it’s not the exhaustive, exhausting, nit-picking anatomy of incompetence, arrogance and corruption which I think is called for. The case needs to be made and substantiated not just with grand rhetoric, which is untrustworthy, but with the simple, boring, and omnipresent facts of the existing record. And there’s mountains of the stuff. One could literally begin just by citing Bush’s pre-inauguration campaign pledge to “restore honor and integrity to the White House” and see what that crock of shit got anybody. The Dems are criminally negligent for not beginning their counterattack in Florida in 2000. Only somebody asleep at the wheel could have failed to start making political hay immediately.
“…not that you will ever listen but prefer to believe you can get away with blaming the disaster that is the Republican Party as being all the fault of sissified Democrats.”
Dude, what’s with the blinders? Lawd knows there’s enough blame to go around; I’m just homing in on a relevant portion of it. Only an idiot (or an ideologue, same difference) believes that anything in politics is due to holistic, one-theme/one-cause master narratives. I’m not trying to “get away with” anything; this is a conversation, and so I’m bringing up points that I think are important but are being neglected. To be sure, there are squillions of other points to be made as well, and that’s fine, too. But the plain fact is that there is no very good reason why Mr. Bush should ever have become president. None. The Dems were holding a straight flush, and they folded to a pair of threes. Then they fucking did it again, in 2004. Unbelievable. And for that, they should be resoundingly kicked in the arse, from here to Pluto. Like the old song from Godspell goes, “Ya better start / to learn yer lessons well.”
btw, I think that the sociology of who decides to do what in the world, and for what reasons, is very interesting, and for all I know may be an under-explored topic in the actual social-sciences literature; for instance, the question of ‘who becomes a journalist in the US media, and why do they do it’, if carefully examined, might yield all sorts of interesting insights about what’s so wrong with the MSM. Same goes for big-time politics, I think. Who _are_ these people?
Pols, j_p_z!
But yeah, it’s more than reasonable to say that the Dems contributed mightily to their own defeat in 00 and 04. Not that that precludes sheeting blame where it’s due for the Rovean campaign evil
By the way, talk of the US blogosphere is that McCain appears to be running for Fuhrer rather than Prez based on his Death Star advertising:
http://wonkette.com/politics/walnuts/mccain-running-for-president-of-death-star-243602.php
No wonder staffers have been resigning in droves and writing op/eds about how the dude they thought was “Mr Plain Speaking Independent” turned out to be “Mr Nutsoid Militarist Opportunist”…
Kim, what’s with the crazy new gravatar? What’s that a picture of? What have you done with the old, charming one?
First Mark bails, now you’re switching to some weird new picture that can’t be understood… Too… much… change! Brain… hurts… Argh! Must… destroy… Tokyo…
Kim and j-p-z:
Maybe John McCain won’t have to be swiftboated after all …… the do-it-yourself job seems to be working just fine. Pity.
Seeing as this thread has morphed from being about Hagel and disengagement to being about McCain and generalised bellicosity, perhaps the following snippet belongs here.
Pelosi has agreed to remove the requirement that Bush seek Congressional approval for war on Iran.
Yes, folks. When all those years ago a Republican Congress voted for war on Iraq, it seems that Iraq also encompassed Iran.
Well it is pesky you know. Two countries, next door to each other, bearing almost identical names.
At least Austria and Australia had the decency to be in different continents, in different hemispheres.
What’s the beef here? If Bush wants a war with Iran, all he has to do is ask? Don’t the Dems want to be asked?
What cowardice.
Katz:
Chuck Hegel has been upstaged by a Californian and a woman.
See, I told you Nancy Pelosi would be a far more dynamic and tricky POTUS than Mr Air-Guard-AWOL.
No word on her Inauguration date yet, is there?