When I called the PatriotMomWest this morning to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day, our conversation ranged from family matters to matters educational, intellectual and political. A Democrat, my Mom expressed frustration with the two Senators running for her party’s presidential nomination: “When Democrats have such a chance to recapture the White House, they couldn’t have picked a worse selection of candidates.”

While my Mom and I do differ on politics, we both agree on the Democratic contenders, her views in accord with my view that if the Democrats had a strong nominee, my party would be toast this year.

I wonder if there are more Democrats like my mother, familiar with the political landscape and the issues of the day, but dissatisfied with their choices in the current presidential contest. To be sure, we’ve read how supporters of one (of the two remaining) candidate are reluctant or unwilling to support the other should their man (or woman as the case may be) fail to win their party’s nod.  But, I have only heard passing reference to Democrats looking for a alternative to Obama an Hillary, most in context of the movement to draft Al Gore.

There do seem to be pretty strong divisions among the Democrats. They may be unified in their hatred of George W. Bush, but they’re divided amongst themselves. Despite the favorable political climate this year, the Democrats do seem in disarray.

No wonder they’re so eager to make John McCain into the new Bush. Bush-hatred seems to the the only thing uniting all too many of them.

I wonder if there are more Democrats like my Mom who realize that the only way for the Democrats to profit from this favorable political climate is to find a stronger candidate than one of the two remaining contenders.

Reading earlier this week that Hillary Clinton made another multi-million dollar loan to her campaign, $6.4 million earlier this month (on top of $5 million earlier this year), I wondered where has all her money gone.

The media has focused on the vast sums her rival, Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama, has raised.  But, thanks in large part to her husband’s operation and appearances, she also raised a considerable chunk of change. Just over a year ago, the Washington Post reported that she had shattered the record for fundraising at that point in a presidential election (first quarter of the year before the vote).

As of March 31, she had raised nearly $190 million. And while not devoting significant resources to the caucus states (as did her Senator) and while he “vastly outspent” her in recent contests, her “campaign had started April with more than $10 million in unpaid debts.”

She doesn’t seem to have spent her money very effectively. Maybe that’s why she’s so enamoured with government programs. Like them, her campaign takes in lots of money, but to little positive effect.

As Hillary’s quest for the Democratic nomination which once seemed inevitable now seems impossible, a number of people are speculating why she lost.

I have long believed her personality would make it difficult for Mrs. Clinton to win. In this campaign, as Karl Rove put it she “came across as calculating, contrived, stiff and self-concerned.” Contrast that with Obama’s charismatic presence, making it even more difficult for her to convince people of her ability to lead and unie the nation.

To be sure, in the debates (and some of her TV interviews–a format she had shunned in the early days of the campaign), she impressed many (including yours truly) with her intelligence and command of the issues. But, it didn’t seem to make much difference.

That may have a lot to with the kind of campaign she ran. In Time, Karen Tumulty identifies the Five Mistakes Hillary Made. This is a good essay, where Tumulty identifies only the flaws in Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. There was far more to her loss than mistakes on the trail.

To be sure, had Mrs. Clinton run a better campaign, she might have been able to pull it off. In addition to her personality, I think two other factors accounted for her loss, the first related to her character, that being the issue of trust. And the second being the media.

(more…)

In Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove, former adviser to President Bush wrote that presumptive Republican nominee John McCain

is realistic enough to know he will fall behind Mr. Obama once the Democratic nomination is settled. He’s steeled himself and his team for that moment. And he’s comforted by a belief that there will be plenty of time to recapture the lead. Mr. McCain saw Gerald Ford come from 30 points down to lose narrowly to Jimmy Carter in 1976, and watched George H.W. Bush overcome a 17-point deficit in the summer to hammer Michael Dukakis in the fall of 1988.

The polls are already starting to show this, with Obama inching ahead in most surveys.

Now that the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination is all but over (Jay Cost offers a dissenting view to this conventional wisdom), an Obama surge should suggest his potential for success this fall.

As I learned in researching a previous post on polling, polls in May and June tend to show the candidate of the party out of power running far ahead of the candidate of the incumbent party when that latter party has been in power for eight years.

Yet, in the most recent of those elections (2000, 1988 and 1976), the candidate of the incumbent party was able to close the gap by the November election in 2000 and 1976 while reversing the numbers in 1988 and retaining the White House for his party.

Only one polls (CBS/New York Times which tends to skew in favor of the Democrats) shows Obama with the kind of lead challengers like George W. Bush in 2000, Mike Dukakis Jimmy Carter enjoyed in 1988 and 1976 respectively. But, the month is still young. Next week’s polls should provide a better gage.

Should the CBS/NYT poll be a harbinger and other polls should similar margins for the Illinois Democrat, expect him to be a stronger candidate that some forecast. Still, even if Obama bests McCain by large margins, it will not necessarily be time for Republicans to panic.

Should, however, most polls continue show a tight race, even with Obama slightly ahead, if history is any guide, John McCain should win this fall.

Provided of course, he doesn’t get cocky and runs an aggressive campaign.

With both parties’ nominees all but selected, I was wondering something about this summer’s political conventions.

Will the most recent Democratic president losing favor with a broad swath of his party’s rank and file, will he be speaking at their August confab in Denver?

And given the incumbent Republican president’s low approval ratings, will the GOP want him to speak a week later in St. Paul?

Given Bill’s quest for the limelight, I’m sure he’ll find a way to finagle his way onto the agenda of the Democratic National Convention, but Bush will bow out from speaking at the Republican convention, part of it will be his own decency, realizing it’s no longer his turn to shine and part will be the party’s interest in making this an election about the next four years not the preceding eight.

Right after posting my piece, John McCain & the Gay Vote, I e-mailed Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff encouraging him to link it on the Blade’s Blogwatch. Readily assenting, he alerted me to a post he had just posted on the presidential election.

After reading it, I wrote back, taking issue issue with some of his points and standing “by my prediction that McCain will do better than 30% of the gay vote provided Obama is the Democratic nominee–and am even willing to bet a dinner (with wine) on it.” He took the bet.

As usual with anything Kevin has written, this post is well-worth reading even as I disagree with many of his major points. I disagree with him that the gay political movement is a “civil rights struggle.” If it is, then it’s over. By the traditional understanding of civil rights, we have them in the sense that we can participate fully in civil society. We can vote in elections, express our views publicly, associate with individuals of our own choosing and other wise carry about our lives freely as do our straight peers.

The problem is that most states (and the federal government) do not recognize our partnerships and the military still discriminates against openly gay individuals. We need legislation recognizing those unions and overturning that ban. But, note, these are privileges the state grants not rights it denies.

As to the issue of the McCain vote, I don’t think the issues Kevin raises, particularly the Supreme Court, will matter much to gay Americans considering a vote for the Arizona Senator. While many of them, including yours truly, wish the presumptive GOP nominee would push to repeal DADT, we understand that our candidates don’t have to be perfect.

The gay Democrats and Independents (as well as a near unanimity of gay Republicans) likely to vote for McCain will do so because of his overall record. They see that while his record on gay issues is far from perfect, he did lead the opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 while the then-presumptive GOP presidential nominee, George W. Bush, gaining a reputation for attacking gays and losing support in our community.

(more…)

Shortly after posting my piece where I put forward my belief that the race for the Democratic presidential nomination is over, I perused the blogs to read what others were saying about the state of the campaign.

Hugh wrote he didn’t expect Hillary “to bail, at least not until the final primaries are held and the Tony Rezko trial verdict in. (Final arguments open Monday.)” He observed:

. . . if Rezko is convicted and is facing a long stretch in jail, won’t he have to think long and hard about naming names in order to limit his years in federal prison? Clearly Rezko and Obama are close. That’s a huge potential nightmare for the Dems, and Team Hillary won’t be shy about underscoring the dangers of an unfolding scandal consuming Chicago politics.

While it may be a little far-fetched, it’s still within the realm of possibility that Rezko has some damaging information on the likely Democratic ominee. Perhaps, Hillary is clinging to this as her last best hope to return to the White House.

Just as some lefty bloggers assumed Scooter Libby would implicate the Vice President, some in the Hillary camp may well be hoping that Rezko implicates Obama.

What a delicious irony that would be, if some scandal brings Obama’s presidential bid to a halt and puts Hillary on the path to the White House when numerous scandals failed to prevent her husband from getting there and failed to evict him from that prestigious property before his lease was up.

Now that Barack Obama has all but cinched the Democratic nomination, I am going to offer a prediction which will likely upset some of the Illinois Senator’s most enthusiastic gay supporters in the netroots. Obama will receive the lowest share of the gay vote of any Democratic presidential nominee since pollsters identified gays as a voting bloc.

I expect McCain to hold the gay votes George W. Bush drew in 2004 and pick up about 10-20% of John Kerry’s vote. That would mean the GOP nominee will take somewhere between 30 and 38% of the measured gay vote. His actual gay vote (as was Bush’s) will, in my view, be higher.

Given how much grief we gay Republicans take from our peers for our politics, many of our fellows prefer not to discuss politics. When approached by exit pollsters, they would be less likely to take the time to answer their surveys than would be gay Democrats. That’s why, I believe, George W. Bush may have gotten as much as 30% of the gay vote in 2004 and why McCain could get as much as 40%.

Yet, it seems this year there is less stigma attached to a vote for John McCain. I say this noting the number of gay Democrats (and Democrat-leaners) who have publicly said they would for McCain. It’s not just that they’ve told me. Other friends, some Democrats, have reported that a a good number of their fellows have said they prefer McCain to Obama.

No gay outreach is necessary. These people are aware of John McCain’s opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment and have seen enough of Barack Obama not to trust him.

The real question is whether McCain’s increased share of the gay vote will make a difference. It could help secure his margin in Florida and make him more competitive in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. A lot depends on how other demographic groups break. If Obama continues to do poorly among Catholics, the gay vote could tip the balance in these states–and possibly others as well.

Every now and again as a blogger, you think you’re onto something. You make an observation or unearth a fact which will generate interest in the blogosphere, maybe even getting notice in the MSM. So, you write your post, double-check your facts, review your text, then e-mail a number of bloggers alerting others to your revelation.

But, hours later, you find that no one else really takes notice.

Other times, you’ll hack out a post to find your getting links up the wazoo (sometimes without sending out a similar e-mail (as I did with this post which survived the hijacking of our blogspot site).

Yesterday after beginning research on a post I was writing (anticipating Hillary’s success in Indiana), outlining the episodes in her life which defined her as a narrow partisan, I thought I chanced onto a huge story.

One of those episodes was her decision to skip the funeral of one of her predecessors as First Lady. So, I contacted the Nixon Library (amazingly friendly & helpful people), confirming within a matter of minutes that Mrs. Clinton had not attended Mrs. Nixon’s funeral.

Then, I googled Mrs. Clinton’s White House schedule for the date of the funeral (June 26, 1993) and found she had attended a political fundraiser that day. It was as if I had hit pay dirt. It seemed big news to me that the then-First Lady would prefer a partisan event to a religious ceremony honoring a woman who had transcended her husband’s partisanship to serve as a unifying national figure during her tenure as First Lady.

I wrote out my post, e-mail a number of bloggers. Only Pajamas picked it up. Maybe it was the interest in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. Or maybe it was just that the story wasn’t as big as I had thought it was.

(more…)

What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday, I thought Hillary might emerge from yesterday’s primaries in the driver’s seat for the Democratic nomination. She had had a good two weeks, raising $10 million online in the twenty-four hours after her Pennsylvania victory, getting good reviews from her interview with Bill O’Reilly (and an audience of 10 million viewers), drawing large & enthusiastic crowds at her campaign appearances, earning admiration from erstwhile adversaries and rising in most polls.

At the same time, her opponent had a rough two weeks, with media focus on his former pastor and people taking notice of his contradictory explanations of his relationship with that unhappy man. I thought that ol’ Clinton luck was kicking in and she’d Indiana easily while keeping Obama’s margin in the single digits.

But, then Tarheel or Hoosier State Democrat. When they voted yesterday, things started to change.

Last night, when I went to bed, I expected to wake up to learn she had dropped out, but when I flipped on FoxNews, heard she was campaigning in West Virginia.

My best guess is that it was the trust issue which did her in. Only 54% of Democrats in Indiana think she’s honest and trustworthy. (44% do not.)* That coupled with her changing campaign persona may have factored into yesterday’s outcome.

I hate to break this to my conservative friends eager for a drawn out contest, but it’s over. It’s over. Mighty Clinton has struck out.

———

*Jim Geraghty links the CNN exit polls which show that only 49% of Democrats think she’s honest and trustworthy and references a Washington Post article showing an “erosion of trust” in the former First Lady.

UPDATE: Hugh says HIllary won’t quit. The Corner’s James Robbins writes:

It will only end if Hillary Clinton loses the will to keep fighting. It all comes down to her inner strength, her belief in herself and her destiny. Right now the only person who can prevent Hillary from taking this all the way is Hillary.

Perhaps had I known Mrs. Clinton would do as poorly as she did last night, I would not have written as many critical posts as I had in the past few days. I had expected her to do well, to lose to Obama in North Carolina by a margin similar to that of her victory in Pennsylvania and to win Indiana by a comfortable margin.

Perhaps, Democrats in those states saw her as did I, a politician pandering and leaving principle by the wayside. They just didn’t trust someone who seemed to believe only in her own ambition.

She might not have won the narrow margin she did in the Hoosier State had it not been for her longtime nemesis of the airwaves. According to Byron York, the Obama campaign contends that “just under 7% of the primary electorate the number that may be attributed to a ‘Limbaugh Effect.’“

Not to mention the last-minute deciders breaking for her 56-44 in Indiana. Seems this time the polls underestimated Obama’s support. If those deciding in the past few days broke for her, he must have led among those who decided before this weekend, something we only saw in one or two polls.

She didn’t get a big enough margin of victory in Indiana to maintain the bounce she got out of the Keystone State, but then she didn’t see to get much bounce from that victory.

Watching the speeches, I thought both candidates went out way too long. It seems the victory speech has become a stump speech. She seemed a little melancholy. At one time, I actually thought she was going to call it quits. Her husband looked particularly glum. Commentators on Fox agreed while Kathryn Jean Lopex wrote that he and Chelsea had the look of “a loved one with when you’re proud of them as they face a loss/embarrassment bravely.“

She may stay in to win next week in Kentucky and West Virginia, but for all intents and purposes, it’s over. Hillary Clinton has lost the Democratic nomination. And she may not be in the position she’s in now had she not been as overconfident as she was last fall, banking on knocking out her opponents by early February.

(more…)

When Bess Truman, the wife of Harry S Truman, the 33rd president of the United States and a Democrat, died in 1982, Nancy Reagan, wife to the then-incumbent Republican president of the United States, traveled to Missouri to attend her funeral.

Eleven years later, when funeral services for Pat Nixon, wife of a former Republican president, were held on June 26, 1993 at her husband’s library and birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton was in Washington, attending a fundraiser for Mary Sue Terry, then the Democratic candidate for Governor of Virginia, at the residence of West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller.

Mrs. Clinton prefers Democratic politics to paying homage to one of her predecessors.

In the current issue of the Weekly Standard, Noemie Emery observes the *strange new respect” many on the right currently accord Mrs. Clinton, largely because of her tenacity on the campaign trail. No fan of the former First Lady, I admire how scrappy she’s become, her back up to the wall, “hanging in there with ferocious and grim resolution.”

My admiration might become respect if the New York Senator had been as consistent in support of certain principles as she has been tenacious on the hustings. Right now it seems the only thing Mrs. Clinton believes is that she should be president.

Emery finds she’s now “running the classic Republican race against her opponent, running on toughness and use-of-force issues.” This lady has gone from decrying Republican tactics to adopting them for her own survival.

She seems to have had as many campaign strategies in 2008 as she had hairstyles in the 1990s.

And seemingly as many views on each issue.  This weekend she said again that she was “actually against Nafta” while the recently-released schedule from her days as First Lady shows how diligently she lobbied for that treaty’s passage.

As another conservative woman puts it, “If Hillary has shown anything over a lifetime of climbing the greasy pole of political power, it’s that she’s willing become whatever you want her to be.” (Via Thunder Run).

Many of Hillary’s supporters claim she’s a strong woman, so strong says one that she makes Rocky Balboa seem weak, but wouldn’t a strong woman be steadfast in support of something more significant than her own political survival? While we commend her perseverance, we wonder about someone so determined to promote herself.

In yesterday’s Powerline, Paul Mirengoff, grateful that he doesn’t have to participate in the selection of the Democratic presidential nominee argues why, he believes, Obama would make a better president than Ms. Hillary:

It’s hard to see Clinton being a good president, at least from my perspective. However, there probably are limits as to how bad she would be. Hillary seems to understand that the world is a dangerous place; that our enemies make it so; and that therefore, at a minimum, we should not be in a rush to accommodate them.

Obama may or may not grasp these basic realities. If he does not, then he will be another Jimmy Carter.

Yet, in contrast to Clinton, one can imagine Obama turning out to be a good president. That’s because there’s some evidence that he’s intellectually open to deviations from orthodox liberalism in ways that Clinton isn’t. In addition, there may be something to his (admittedly self-serving) claim that he’s temperamentally better suited than Clinton to working with his political adversaries. It’s difficult to see how he could be more poorly suited.

Paul’s analysis is remarkably similar to my own. Whereas Hillary dismisses Reagan’s ideas as “bad,” Obama recognizes them as significant even finding, finding merit in such conservative proposals as market approaches to reducing pollution and charter schools to improving education.

Just as smart as (if not smarter than) his brainy Democratic rival, Obama at least shows respect for the intellectual ferment on the right embodied in the Reagan Revolution. This is not to excuse the Illinois Senator for his liberal voting record or for his ever-changing explanations of his relationship to his angry former pastor, but it does show an intellectual curiosity and openness to new ideas that seems wanting in the wonkish Senator from New York.

It just seems that the Democratic frontrunner would sit down with his ideological adversaries for reasons other than political necessity.

Remember how CNN got all worked up when John McCain failed to denounce a supporter who had asked him how he was going to beat the b****, using the word for “female dog” to describe Mrs. Clinton. Well, someone recently asked him a question using a derogatory term for a part of the female anatomy and that network is nowhere to be found.

Maybe it’s because that the person posing the question supports Barack Obama’s presidential bid and used the “C” word to describe Mr. McCain’s wife (presumably a Republican) and not the “B” word to describe former President Clinton’s wife (most definitely a Democrat).

Jim Hoft informs us that Marty Parrish, one-time office manager for Delaware Senator Joe Biden’s presidential bid, asked the presumptive GOP nominee at an Iowa even if it were true that he ever called his wife a c—. Parrish now works for the Huffington Post.

Although CNN reporter Rich Sanchez devoting a lengthy segment of his show to the Republican woman’s use of the “B” word to describe Mrs. Clinton, wondering about McCain’s refusal to apologize for his supporter’s colorful remark, he has not seen fit to run a segment on this Democratic operative’s use of the “C” word to describe Mrs. McCain nor has he considered Obama’s refusal to apologize for his supporter’s sexually explicit remark.

Maybe Sanchez would have shown greater interest had the Democrat used the word to describe Mrs. Clinton.

And you wonder why some believe CNN stands for Clinton News Network.

The time has come as I finally get my official “say” in the 2008 election.  Tomorrow is the North Carolina Primary!  And we have a lot going on in the Tar Heel state besides that one primary race you are hearing a lot about.

So for all of you from North Carolina who read GayPatriot or have family/friends that do…. here are my official, personal endorsements.  (GP Ed. Note:  I respectfully still disagree with Dan on his support of John McCain, so these are my PERSONAL endorsements).

FOR REPUBLICAN NC GOVERNOR:  Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory.

It is about time that the largest metro area in the state have a larger say in Raleigh.  Our voice has been minimized lately because the former DEMOCRAT from our area who was the Speaker of the House is sitting his ass in jail due to massive corruption.

McCrory is the seven-term Mayor of the City of Charlotte.  He has governed with, what I would call, a conservative pragmatism.  Not perfect, but just right for being a Republican mayor in the second largest city in the South. (Yes, that’s right Atlanta!)   He has made job growth, fighting crime and cracking down on illegal immigration the cornerstones of his campaign.   I think he is the best GOP candidate to win back the Governor’s Mansion for conservative governing this year.

DISCLOSURE:  I am a proud financial contributor to McCrory for Governor.

FOR DEMOCRAT PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION:  Senator Hillary Clinton

As a proud footsoldier of Operation Chaos, it is my duty to urge unaffiliated and switched-Republicans in North Carolina to VOTE HILLARY!!! (I think a little vomit just came up…)   

Ahem, anyway… if we have to have a Democrat in the White House I’d much rather have the devil we know than the silver-tongued devil we don’t know.   

Oh yeah….and on gay rights — Hillary, Obama & McCain are all the same; why waste my breath on that topic?

FOR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION:  “NONE OF THE ABOVE”

We have a cool option on the North Carolina ballot that I plan to use tomorrow:  None Of The Above (NOTA); technically the spot on the ballot reads: No Preference - Republican.

I cannot in good conscience vote for John McCain who, without the pantsuit and cackle, looks to be a lot like Hillary Clinton rather than Ronald Reagan to me.  I fear the unchecked President McCain (with support/acquiensence) of the Democratic Congress) will roll the clock back on securing the border, ensuring economic growth and may allow millions of Americans to be vaporized because he doesn’t want to even consider the Jack Bauer-treatment of terror suspects.  Don’t even get me started about the threat as President he poses due to his blatant disregard to the freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment (McCain-Feingold).

Sorry John…. you may have won over others in the Republican Party — but you have a LONG way to go with me.   I can at least let you know how I feel … with my vote for ‘NOTA’ tomorrow in North Carolina.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Although I completely disagree with Tom Hanks’ endorsement of Barack Obama, I do applaud his maturity, humor and historical context for doing so. If only more Hollywood types would thoughtfully do the same, then perhaps they would be relevant again in our world.

Bravo, Tom Hanks!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

On Friday while working away on the step-master at my gym, I glanced up to see Arianna Huffington puffing away on CNN (or was it MSNBC?), calling into question John McCain’s national security credentials. This former McCain supporter claimed her one-time candidate has made repeated public statements showing he doesn’t understand the difference between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam.

Posturing for the netroots, Arianna is merely repeating a notion propagated on the left (most notably by the New York Times) about the presumptive Republican nominee’s confusion of the two leading Muslim sects. A number of conservative bloggers have exposed this MSM interpretation for that fraud that it is. Simply put, it twists McCain’s statements out context (See e.g. these two Powerline posts: here and here).

What struck me about Mrs. Huffington was how far she had come since 2000 when she enthusiastically backed the Arizona Senator for the Republican nomination. While supporting that good man, she frequently badmouthed his GOP rival that year, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush. Her anti-Bush barbs helped her get the attention of Hollywood left-wingers who were already unfavorably disposed to the man, but who had only previously known her as a Republican pundit.

Once she began bashing a Republican, they started taking notice of her political comments, praising her where once they had ignored her. That praise become like an aphrodisiac to this Angelena.

Realizing she could find a greater welcome among the Angeleno political set as critic of Republicans rather than as an advocate for a revitalized conservatism (which she had been throughout the 1990s), she shifted her focus in order to better appeal to her neighbors. Her new-found anti-Republican identity has afforded her a degree of prominence she had not previously enjoyed. Her books now get more mainstream attention. Her web-site, the Huffington Post has become a leading source of left-wing opinion.

So eager has she become to retain her position of leadership in the netroots commentariat that she is now spurning the man whom she once so eagerly supported, merely because he is the Republican nominee. What a delicious irony. Had she not supported John McCain in 2000, she would likely not have gained the media platform from which she now denounces him.

(more…)

During the 1992 campaign, a number of people noted Bill Clinton’s extraordinary luck. Paul Tsongas, the only man to offer him a serious challenge for the Democratic nomination, didn’t demonstrate much of an appeal outside the Northeast. Then-Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, the man who promised to be his most formidable opponent, foundered in New Hampshire (finishing a distant third) and never became a serious threat nationwide.

When the primary campaign moved South, no one could rival the Arkansas Governor on his own turf and he built up a formidable lead.

While spring and summer polls showed him running third behind then-President George H. W. Bush and businessman Ross Perot, that eccentric executive dropped out during the Democratic National Convention, giving an added boost to that party’s nominee. When Pat Buchanan spoke later that summer at the Republican National Convention, going way beyond his allotted time and bumping the Gipper out of prime time, the media focused more on his angry rhetoric than on the actual Republican nominee.

That GOP nominee compounded his problems by running an inept campaign, even looking at his watch during one debate.

Later, after Clinton won the White House, but his party lost Congress, he was able to play off the most visible Republican of the day, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. When that Georgian whined that Clinton made him exit the back door on AIr Force One, the Democratic incumbent turned the tables in budget negotiations with congressional Republicans, setting the stage for his 1996 reelection victory.

Bill Clinton had amazing good fortune in the opponents he drew.

Lately, I’ve been wondering if, by some process of osmosis, his luck has rubbed off on his wife. Just when her opponent seemed to be bouncing back from his loss in the Keystone State, Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor goes on a media tour, showing to the world how seriously radical and apparently unhinged he really is. Americans begin to question more seriously the associations of this relative newcomer to the national political stage.

And Ms. Hillary, as I noted in a previous post  ”is improving in the polls . . . because she is the only Democratic alternative to Obama.“

That ol’ Clinton luck. Both Bill and his wife seem blessed by the opponents they’ve drawn.

Should she manage to wrestle the Democratic nomination from Obama (a question which remains open), let us hope that John McCain emerges as a more formidable foe than have been past Clinton adversaries.

As I read Charles Krauthammer’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post about Barack Obama, at times, i thought I was reading about the Clintons. For some of the Illinois Senator’s qualities, his sense of being annointed and his attempts to revise his past, are similar to those of Mrs. Clinton and her husband.

Just as Obama is now cutting off his former pastor when but barely six weeks ago, he claimed he could not disown him reminds, (Bill) Clinton cut off his close friend Lani Guinier whom he tapped for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in 1993. As soon as it became public that she favored racial quotas and her nomination became controversial, he claimed he had never read her writings and withdrew it.

Just as Bill abandoned his friend when he became politically expedient to do so, so does Obama abandon his longtime pastor when that latter displays his views “live on national TV at the National Press Club.” Both back away from an associate only when when the public becomes aware of that associate’s controversial views.

In describing why the Democratic frontrunner’s association with Wright is relevant, Krauthammer uses an expression, highlighted by yours truly below, which could well describe the public statements of former President Bill Clinton and his wife:

This 20-year association with Wright calls into question everything about Obama: his truthfulness in his serially adjusted stories of what he knew and when he knew it; his judgment in choosing as his mentor, pastor and great friend a man he just now realizes is a purveyor of racial hatred; and the central premise of his campaign, that he is the bringer of a “new politics,” rising above the old Washington ways of expediency.

While Hillary doesn’t claim to offer a new kind of politics as does her opponent, she does have the habit of changing stories about her past, notably her misrepresentations of her experience in Bosnia and her claim that she always opposed NAFTA (when White House records show quite the opposite).

No wonder she doesn’t want to let the public have full access to the records of her experience, now under lock and key at her husband’s library. Just as is the list of donors to that Arkansas institution.